Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Richard Branson's Virgin Group is looking for someone to work and live on Necker Island, and that person could be you.



"Fancy working on Necker Island?" the job description for a personal assistant and admin assistant on LinkedIn says. "Thought so! Well a pretty exciting opportunity has come up and Necker Islands General Manager Keny Jones is looking for a new PA to combine with Richard Bransons office, who are looking for a new admin assistant. One person to help look after both offices!"



Necker Island, Branson's private island resort in the British Virgin Islands, can be rented in full or, during certain weeks, on an individual room basis. According to the resort's website, it can accomodate 22 people.



The role is an administrative one and "despite the sunshine," it's "not for everyone," the LinkedIn post says.



Duties include "diary and email management, general correspondence, filing and archiving, booking travel and providing cover for Richards PA when they're on holiday, amongst a whole host of other admin-related tasks."



The job description has been viewed more than 17,000 times on LinkedIn. Applications are due by March 10 and those interested must submit a resume and a video no longer than two minutes to iwanttobeyourpaaa@virgin.com.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The trial of a man accused of killing a Swedish journalist aboard his submarine began today in Copenhagen, Denmark.



Peter Madsen, a Danish inventor, has been charged with murder and indecent handling of a corpse in connection to Kim Wall's death last August. He's pleaded guilty to the latter but denies killing her, saying she died in an accident.



Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said in court that after the 30-year-old Wall boarded the submarine on Aug. 10, she texted and sent pictures to her Danish boyfriend. The last messages were sent after 8 p.m. local time and included:



"I'm still alive btw."



"But I'm going down now!"



"I love you!!!!!"



"He brought coffee and cookies tho"



Later that evening, Wall's boyfriend was unable to reach her and reported her missing, the prosecutor said.



Wall traveled for work but was based out of Copenhagen. She'd talked to an editor at Wired magazine about doing a story on Madsen's space lab and Copenhagen Suborbitals, a crowdfunded amateur space program. She'd reached out to both in March and April, and spoke to Madsen about a possible interview.



Wall heard back from Madsen on Aug. 10. They chatted that afternoon, with Madsen sending her a message in English that read: "The ship is ready and in good shape. Just waiting for the Wired reporter."



Wall responded: "Amazing. I'm only a few minutes away."



Madsen, 47, is accused of tying up Wall and abusing her before killing her and dismembering her body. He was charged with "sexual relations other than intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature" after her remains were discovered to have stab wounds near her genitals.



Wall's torso was discovered Aug. 21. Other body parts were found later. Pictures of Wall's body are so graphic, they'll only be shown to those judging the case, the prosecutor said.



Madsen has offered shifting explanations as to what happened. According to the prosecutor, he deliberately sunk his submarine after killing Wall and blood found on his nostril was hers.



During the trial today, Betina Hald Engmark, Madsen's attorney, confirmed that he intentionally sunk the submarine, which he admitted during an Aug. 12 interrogation.



Investigators never found Madsen's phone, but they were able to recreate its content, the prosecutor said. Before boarding the submarine with Wall on Aug. 10, he had searched for words including "beheading," "girl" and "agony." Videos showing women being tortured and executed also were found on his computer.



A psychologist and other doctors who evaluated Madsen after he was charged said he appeared "highly untrustworthy," "perverted" and "sexually deviant." They concluded he didn't show signs of psychosis, but that he had narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits including a lack of empathy and the ability to manipulate others.



Madsen's attorney said the prosecution's argument wasn't objective, and pointed out that a sexual-assault charge only was applicable if such behavior took place while Wall was still alive.



A verdict is expected April 25.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Vous etes confrontes a une infestation par la puce, la punaise de lit ? Voici plusieurs actions qui sont a mettre en uvre pour faire []
Federal prosecutors in Corpus Christi on Wednesday filed civil lawsuits to forfeit condo units in Florida and California they alleged were purchased as part of a money laundering scheme involving former Mexican officials.

Prosecutors allege that Jose Manuel Saiz Pineda, the former governor of the southern Mexican state of Tabasco, bought the property using money stolen from that state. He faces money laundering and bank fraud charges in Corpus Christi.

The government is trying to seize property in Houston as well, and the allegations mirror those in cases against former government officials from other Mexican states who are accused of laundering stolen funds in San Antonio and South Texas.

In those cases, prosecutors here allege that government officials embezzled tens of millions of dollars in Mexico and transferred the money to U.S. banks, where it was shifted to offshore accounts in some cases and used to buy real estate in others. The investigations have resulted in property seizures across San Antonio, as well as in South Padre Island, Brownsville and McAllen.

Most of those cases ended in either guilty pleas or civil settlements and several are ongoing. So far only one of the people targeted, Saiz Pinedas wife, Silvia Beatriz Perez Ceballos, has gone to trial. Last year, a jury in Corpus Christi convicted her of bank fraud but acquitted her of money laundering. Because they werent able to secure a money laundering conviction, and because Saiz Pineda and a co-defendant are in custody in Mexico facing charges there, the U.S. government is using civil lawsuits to try to take control of property they said was purchased with stolen money.

They allege that Saiz Pineda, who was finance minister for Tabasco from 2007 to 2012, used a complicated network of trusts in New Zealand and Ireland and a limited liability company in Delaware, a state known for its opaque business disclosures, to wire $6.5 million to the U.S. to purchase a condo unit in a tower on West Century Drive in Los Angeles, near Beverly Hills. The former state treasurer is also accused of using a network of companies in Florida and Delaware to wire $2.7 million to the U.S. for the purchase of a condo in Sunny Isles Beach, an oceanfront community in the Miami area.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government filed two similar civil lawsuits to seize the house where Perez Ceballos was living in Sugar Land before her 2017 arrest and $1.9 million in a Bermuda bank account.

Perez Ceballoss attorney, Andino Reynal, said it appears the government is trying to seize property it couldnt take after his clients money laundering acquittal.

Our position is that this was resolved by the jury in the criminal trial and this is an attempt by the government to end run the jurys verdict, he said. Theyre trying to re-litigate an issue they already lost on.

Reynal said Perez Ceballos does not have a connection to the California and Miami properties.

In a response to the lawsuit against the Sugar Land house, Saiz Pinedas lawyers wrote that the government does not have evidence that the property was purchased with funds traceable to stolen Mexican state funds and asked a judge to dismiss the case.
A 22-year-old man was arrested early Thursday after he allegedly shot two people on the Southwest Side.

Jailen Michael Collins now faces two charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He was booked into the Bexar County Jail on a $150,000 bond.

According to police, Collins knew the two victims, 19-year-old James Berg and 23-year-old Drevonte King. He went to their house and opened fire, striking the back windshield of a vehicle. He then fled.

RELATED: Man arrested, woman found dead after 24-hour standoff in Bexar

The victims then began searching for Collins, and found him near the intersection of Hayden and Clegg drives. The men began fighting, and during the fight, Collins shot them both, police said.

Collins then got into a vehicle with another suspect and fled the scene. Police found the car and stopped them in the 5300 block of Old Pearsall Road, but both men fled into a park on foot.

K-9 officers and a helicopter unit came to the park and began hunting the suspects. They were both found and arrested, though the second suspect was released pending further investigation. It is unclear if he will face charges.

Paramedics took the two victims to University Hospital for treatment.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Caleb Downs is a crime reporter for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here.| cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns
Three people accused of helping three murder suspects escape the Bexar County Jail last week were arrested Thursday.

Gabriela De Arroyo, 59, Michelle Ramirez, 23, Marcus Maldonado, 17, each face a third-degree felony charge of escape from a correctional facility, according to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar. All three of the additional suspects are family and friends to the inmates, Salazar said.

Four other current Bexar County Jail inmates will also be charged at a later date, Salazar said.

Authorities said the three acquired and helped sneak into the jail the tools inmates Jacob Anthony Brownson, Luis Antonio Arroyo and Eric Trevino needed to make their escape on March 2. Brownson, Arroyo and Trevino are all charged with capital murder.

RELATED: Video: Two people killed when plane crashes, explodes at Laredo airport

One of them is also accused of picking the three up from jail after their escape.

De Arroyo, Luis Arroyo's mother, put together a package containing narcotics, a saw blade and a long metal object, according to the affidavit.

Maldonado, a close friend of Treivno's, attached the packaged to a bottle outside the jail on Feb. 23, which was hoisted up into the recreational area using a fishing line, Salazar said.

Investigators said the inmates got the fishing line out through a hole made through bars that were meant to block the top of the recreation area.

"They're pretty thick bars," Salazar said. "Being that they were having to climb up and sneak into this high area, it took some time."

After acquiring the tools, they continued making the hole larger over time.

Ramirez, Eric Trevino's ex-girlfriend, picked up the inmates while her child was in the car with her, according an arrest affidavit.

She dropped them off at De Arroyo's apartment on Hickman Street, where the inmates changed clothes, according to the affidavit.

Ramirez then took the inmates to a Sonic Drive In on Blanco Street before calling the police, which helped lead to their capture.

In an interview with deputies, De Arroyo denied speaking to her son during the escape. However, the mother can be seen on surveillance video holding a cell phone to her ear. Deputies also obtained recorded phone calls where De Arroyo is asking her son in Spanish to stick his arm out so they can see him, authorities said.

While being walked to the jail, De Arroyo thanked reporters for taking her picture.

"Maybe everything is not what it seems to be," she said. "I haven't done nothing."

Later, she appeared to ridicule the sheriff's office.

"How can they let my son go with this many people in charge," she said. "Why are they blaming me? They have to blame themselves."

Salazar said he is creating a team deputies that will inspect "every nook and cranny"of the jail to prevent this from happening again.

Salazar also said he's working with county officials to "harden" the jail.

"We're conducting a pretty exhausting inspection of all the recreation areas and making sure there's no tampering," he said.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com
San Antonio police arrested a man Tuesday after he allegedly shot at his pregnant ex-wife.

Lorenzo Leos, 22, and the woman ended their relationship in 2017, according to an arrest affidavit.

The news the woman had begun seeing someone else and was pregnant upset Leos, who, using Facebook, text messages and phone calls, threatened to kill the woman and her unborn child, according to the affidavit.

RELATED: SAPD: Man shot in forearm after infidelity accusation

On Feb. 21, the woman and her friend stopped by Leos' home to pick up paperwork, according to the affidavit.

As they drove off, Leos pulled up behind them in his car and pulled out a gun, according to the affidavit.

The women sped away but Leos fired a shot at them that pierced their car, police said.

Police said they recovered a 9mm casing from the street, believed to be from Leos' firearm.

He was arrested Tuesday on two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A judge set his bail at $150,000.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com
A former Texas teacher accused of having an improper relationship with a student was arrested on an outstanding warrant while re-entering the United States, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Aracely Sauceda, a Santa Rosa woman, was stopped at the Progreso International Bridge checkpoint on Wednesday, authorities said.
A man on Texas' 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders list has been arrested by Colorado police.

Dakota Marcus Stewart, 26, was pursued by state authorities for several months after he failed to register as a sex offender because of a previous conviction.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, he was listed as a high-risk offender.

In 2009, police said Stewart, also known as Demetrius Rasputin, was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child after exposing himself to two young girls in the Fort Worth-area.

STUDY: Native-born Texans commit more crimes than undocumented immigrants

Stewart was arrested in Florissant, a small town roughly 100 miles south of Denver, located west of Colorado Springs in Teller County

Police said Stewart's arrest was a multi-agency effort and a result of investigative work.

Stewart was added to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders list in October 2017.

Up until his arrest, police were offering a $5,000 reward for any tips leading to his capture.

The arrest was not the result of tip information received through Texas Crime Stoppers, so no reward will be paid.

Above: See which Houston neighborhoods have the most registered sex offenders.

Fernando Ramirez is a reporter for Chron.com and the Houston Chronicle. You can read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93.
It took until Wednesday morning to confirm, but incumbent Kel Seliger has not only won the Republican  and only primary for District 31 state Senate, but he avoided a runoff by a narrow margin.

Seliger had a clear lead throughout election night Tuesday; however, it couldnt be confirmed until Wednesday whether or not he would face Mike Canon in a runoff election. He had a 50.48 percent lead as of midnight. At issue was Andrews County not filing elections returns with the Secretary of States Office.

Those were simply the last boxes in, and nothing could be finalized until Andrews County. It would have had the same effect in any county, Seliger said Wednesday.

Andrews County elections administrator Gracie Mendodza told the Reporter-Telegram she filed with the secretary of state at 10 p.m. and that she didnt know why results werent received. She said the Secretary of States Office contacted her Wednesday morning and she filed results again.

Mendoza had no idea the possibility of a runoff hung in the balance because of Andrews County. I dont find out anything until the next day because Im so busy here.

Early voting results showed Seliger had the lead in Andrews County. It was four boxes in Andrews County, but I had more than 50 percent on everything else at that point, and its not unreasonable to expect that the remaining boxes would be the same, which wouldnt change anything.

Seliger, who first took office in 2004, ultimately won the district with 50.42 percent of the vote, a majority.

The state senator said the campaign was tough. He faced Canon in 2014 and won by just 5 percent. This time, a third candidate, former Muleshoe mayor and restaurateur Victor Leal, entered the field, which presented the chance of a runoff.

Campaign events often involved heated but cordial exchanges with Canon -- who was endorsed by conservative political advocacy group Empower Texans -- and Leal -- a former board member of conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Canon told the Reporter-Telegram that hes considering calling for a recount but that hes learning more about his options. Canon won five counties, including Midland. In 2014, he won 11 counties. Leal led the vote in Bailey County, where the county seat is Muleshoe, his hometown. There are 37 counties in District 31.

When asked about how he won more counties this primary election than in 2014, Seliger said its clear a lot of people that he works hard to represent their county. So alienated are educated, PTA members and locally elected officials that theyre increasingly intolerant of the agendas of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Empower Texans, referring to both organizations push for the state to adopt a school vouchers program, which he opposes.

He also said his continued to effort to stay in touch with people to maintain an active dialog and conducting many town hall meetings, now at 411, makes a difference, which is something Im going to continue to do.

Every citizen in the 31st district will have an opportunity to see and talk with me before the 86th Legislature. I think thats very important, he said.

Some have speculated that Seliger wont be able to achieve much in the legislative session because his type of conservatism doesnt mesh well with the type espoused by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, which is considered more conservative.

To start off, they are people who would like to see me not get much done, Seliger said. Im going to go down there to represent my district, and I look forward to working with the lieutenant governor, and I will help where I can see fit on his agenda and expect the same thing on mine.

Seliger said he is grateful for the voters. After 14 years, its a reflection on the job that youve done; theres nothing really speculative about what I do or the way Im going to do it. I really appreciate that.

So many people worked so hard on this campaign as volunteers and who made contributions to the campaign. We could not have done that without them, he said. He also credits his campaign success to his secret weapon  his wife. Im convinced there is no political spouse in Texas who works harder on a campaign than she does. Im assuming shes not out there today putting more signs up, because we dont need them.
Home flipping is still hot. Need proof? Just turn on HGTVchances are there's a show about flippers on right now, adding fresh paint and shiny new appliances to some home they bought on the cheap, hoping to rake in the profits at sale.

But as home prices across the nation continue to rise and the supply of lower-priced homes is drying up, some flippers are having to look for new places to find deals. And some of the emerging flipper hot spots aren't where most folks would expect.

The market with the biggest increase in flippers last year was Buffalo, NY, which saw a 34% surge, according to a recent report from real estate data firm ATTOM Data Solutions. (The report included only metros with at least 1 million people.)

ATTOM looked at all single-family and condominium properties that were bought and then resold over a 12-month period. The firm included only 174 metropolitan areas where sufficient data were available.

The struggling upstate New York manufacturing town was followed by New York City, at 29%; Dallas, at 23%; Louisville, KY, at 22%; and Birmingham, AL, at 17%.

"These markets are not the primary markets that many people would think of [for] investing in real estate," says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM. "They're more off the beaten path, so there's less competition from other investors and there's more availability for deals."

Meanwhile, there were fewer flips in places such as Miami, where it fell by about 14%, and Los Angeles and Seattle, which were down 2%, as home prices are too high for many investors to get in on the market and make good profits, he says.

That's why more investors are seeking out places such as Buffalo. Most of the flippers in Buffalo are locals seeking to cash in on the area's revitalization and the improving housing market, says Chris Naugle, president of FlipOut Academy, a Buffalo-area school for potential home flippers. The market is particularly appealing to investors because rents are often higher than mortgage payments.

The median home list price is $100,000 in the city, according to realtor.com data.

"It's an appealing market because the price points are low," Naugle says. "It's a lot easier for someone who wants to get started but doesn't have millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars."

But prices are rising and it's becoming harder to get deals, he says. Still, rising prices also allow investors to rent out or sell their properties for more money.

Nationally, home flippers made record profits in 2017. More than 207,000 homes were bought, rehabbed, and then resold within a 12-month window last year, up 1% from 2016. That's the most flips since 2006. (Flips made up about 5.9% of all single-family home and condo sales in 2017.)

Flippers made an average gross profit of $68,143 last year, up 5% from 2016. But this represented only the difference between the sale price and the resale priceand didn't factor in the cost of repairs on the properties. Those other costs are estimated to be between 20% and 33% of the home's value. It took an average of 182 days to complete the flips.

The returns on the initial investments were lower, about 49.8%, compared with the all-time high of 51.9% the previous year. That's mainly due to the housing shortage leaving fewer lower-priced properties on the market that appeal to those planning to flip them.

But that's still higher than the lead-up to the financial crisis from 2004 to 2006, when returns averaged about 31%, according to ATTOM.

"More people have confidence in the housing market and are willing to invest in it in the form of home flipping,says Blomquist. But with prices rising and more investors competing for fewer, cheaper properties, he says, flippers will have to go farther afield to find profits in 2018.

The markets with the highest home-flipping rates were Memphis, TN, at 12.8%; Las Vegas, at 9.1%; Tampa, FL, at 9%; Birmingham, at 8.6%; and Phoenix, at 8.5%. (This is different from the markets seeing the biggest increases in flippers.) In one ZIP code in Memphis, 38116, flips made up 31.5% of all annual home sales.

"It's flip central," Blomquist says of Memphis. "It's a market that yields good returns for home flippers because of the lower-priced properties available there."

Most of the flippers in the city are buying homes, rehabbing them, renting them out, and then selling them to investors in the Northeast or on the West Coast, says Dan Butler, co-founder of Memphis-based CrestCore Realty, which rehabs properties for mom-and-pop investors and often manages the properties for those who rent them out.

Rentals are popular in the city as many residents can't afford to buy or can't qualify for a mortgage. The median household income in the city was just under $37,000 from 2012 to 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the lack of inexpensive homes on the market is beginning to affect local flippers.

"Everybody has to pay several thousand more for their properties," Butler says. "People are going to have to shift their return on investment expectations by a couple of percentage points."

The post Where Are the New Hottest Markets for Home Flippers? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
What is the most spoken language in Africa? This is a huge continent with different parts of which are distinguished by unique customs and culture, including those that relate to languages. We will help you understand their diversity and highlight the most popular ones.

According to linguists, there are 1500-2000 languages in Africa. The following four main groups can be distinguished from them:

Afro-Asian (approximately 200 languages) covers almost the whole of North Africa.

Nilo-Saharan includes about 140 languages spoken by about eleven million people in Central and East Africa.

Niger-Saharan covers two-thirds of the African population. The main branch is the Niger-Congo group, which includes more than 1000 languages with about 200 million speakers. The Bantu languages in Central, South and East Africa form a subgroup of the Niger-Congo group.

The Khoisan contains about thirty languages of the western part of South Africa.

All African languages are considered the official languages of the African Union.

What is the most spoken language in Africa? We invite you to consider top 10.

1. English

Most widely spoken language in Africa is English. According to several resources, there are around 700 million English speakers in Africa. The black continent does not differ from other regions of the world in this sense.

The importance of English in Africa is also due to the fact that some countries were European colonies until the middle of the 20th century. After the British colonization, the local population had no choice but to learn this language. English speech can be heard on the streets of such countries as Botswana, Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, etc. A total of about 23 states use it. At the moment, English is the most spoken official language in Africa.

2. Arabic

Arabic is the Semitic language used by more than 280 million people around the world. It is official in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Eritrea, and some other states. Also, residents of many countries use it as non-official language.

Dialect can depend on the region. Striving to understand the cultural characteristics of a particular country, it's worth taking into account this nuance. In any case, you first need to learn the general standard.

3. French

120 million people in 24 countries of the black continent speak French, but with their own language peculiarities.

African French is only the language of oral communication but the number and magnitude of deviations from the classic French language are so great that it is impossible not to single out this dialect in a separate post

4. Swahili

Swahili is one of the most widely spoken African languages. It belongs to the Bantu language group being its largest representative. Experts estimate that about 100 million people speak this language, mainly in central and eastern Africa. Such a large number of Swahili speakers is due to the fact that it has become the language of international communication in the region and today it is used from Mozambique to Somalia and from the western shores of the Indian Ocean to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The uniqueness of Swahili is that it is the only native African language that has been able to achieve such position.

At the same time, Swahili is native only for 5 million people. The most popular languages of international communication (English, French, and Arabic) were imposed by the colonialists on the black continent. Since 2004, Swahili has become the first African language to be recognized as the official language of the African Union.

The origin of Swahili is the result of the merger of the languages of Arab and Indian immigrants and the local Bantu population. Today Swahili uses Latin (this is the merit of European missionaries). Till the nineteenth century, this language used Arabic script.

In the modern world, even a very rare language is on everyone's lips. A paradox, isn't it? The names of Disney heroes of the popular cartoon "The Lion King" are taken from Swahili: Simba in Swahili means "lion", Pumbaa is "lazy", and Rafiki is a "friend". And the name of the soundtrack for the cartoon "Akuna Matata" is translated from Swahili as "no problem".

5. Hausa

Among the languages of the Semito-Hamitic family, there is the Hausa language which is used by more than 50 million people. This is one of the main languages of Niger, Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Cameroon. Despite the fact that some features of Hausa are characteristic for many Sudanese languages, it has an undeniable connection with the Semitic, Cushitic, and Berber languages.

The question of the place of the Hausa language among other African languages has long been very controversial and in all classifications, it was placed in isolation from all the languages of Africa. However, in reality in the southern part of Northern Nigeria and in the lower reaches of Logone-et-Chari, south of the Lake Chad, and also to the east of it, there are several dozen tribes whose languages are very close to the Hausa. They are sometimes called Sudan-Hamitic or Chado-Hamitic languages.

6. Oromo

Oromo is the name of the language and one of the African peoples. The language of Oromo is native to about 35 million people on the planet. Most users speak Oromo in these African countries: Somalia Peninsula, Ethiopia, Kenya (northern part of the country).

There is a written language with a slightly modified Latin alphabet called Qubee. But the Arabic alphabet is also used. In the past, the Ethiopian alphabet was the basis of Oromo writing.

7. Yoruba

The Yoruba language is based on the Latin alphabet. It is used by around 30 million people, mainly in the west and southwest of Nigeria, as well as in the central and western areas of Benin, in the eastern districts of Central Togo.

READ ALSO: How many languages in Nigeria?

The Yoruba language is divided into eight main dialects, differing mostly phonetically. The division into dialects roughly corresponds to tribal division.

8. Igbo

It is the language of the Igbo people, widespread in the southeast of Nigeria. The number of Igbo speakers is estimated at 24 million people. The language is divided into a number of dialects, some of which are regarded as independent languages. Igbo is written on the Latin graphical basis, dialects have their own written traditions. There is no single literary norm.

Since the end of the 20th century, the so-called central Igbo used according to the norms of the central zone of language distribution became increasingly popular, especially in the sphere of written use.

9. Amharic

Amharic is from the Semitic family of languages and is the state language of Ethiopia. Around 18-21 million people speak it, most of them live in Ethiopia. Also, Amharic speakers can be found in a number of other countries, in particular in Eritrea, Canada, the United States, and Sweden.

The name "Amharic" comes from the name of the Amhara region in the north of Ethiopia, which is considered the historical center of the Amharic language.

10. Shona

Shona is the language of the Bantu group. It is prevalent in South Africa, mainly in Zimbabwe. Today it is used by more than 10 million people.

We hope that it was interesting for you to find out about most spoken languages in Africa. Learn English and French but dont forget about traditional dialects!

READ ALSO: 10 uses of English language in Nigeria

Source: Legit
- Adams Oshiomhole said the implementation of the new minimum wage has nothing to do with politics

- The former Edo governor said it has to do with political will

- He noted that some states failed to implement N18,000

A former governor of Edo, Adams Oshiomhole, says the federal governments proposal to implement a new minimum wage is not a political gimmick to win the 2019 general elections.

Oshiomhole said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sidelines of the 26th convocation lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), Ikorodu. The title of the lecture was Crisis of Governance, Governance of Crisis: The Role of Education in Nibbling Governance Crisis in Nigeria.

According to the former governor, the government has said it will begin implementation of workers minimum wage by the third quarter of 2018. Oshiomhole, who is also a former president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said the governments pronouncement on the minimum wage is only about a political will.

READ ALSO: Senate urges President Buhari to rescind decision on Peace Corps Bill

He said there was already a case to review the wages prior to the election, adding that he was not bothered about when the implementation of the new minimum wage would start. According to him, he is only bothered by the fact that some workers in some states are still not paid the current N18,000 minimum wage in use.

He said denying a worker the minimum of N18,000 was enough to prick the conscience. Oshiomhole quoted President Muhammadu Buhari as saying that he does not know how anyone who has not paid workers for two, three months or even one year is able to sleep."

As governor of Edo, I increased the minimum wage from N18,000 to N25,000 a month for the least paid worker. And I did that to dismiss and to close the debate whether a higher minimum wage is desirable.

Rather than going to be giving a lecture on why a higher minimum wage is inevitable, I thought it is better to use my executive power to increase the minimum wage and to pay it. Not only did I pay it for as long as I was governor, my successor has continued to pay it.

"And Edo has continued to deliver on infrastructure and on its mandate to the admiration of its residents," the former governor said.

The federal government, through the minister of labour and productivity, Chris Ngige, had on February 27 said implementation of the new minimum wage would begin in the third quarter of the year.

NLC had proposed N56,000 for the least paid worker to the federal government. A 30-member committee on minimum wage headed by a former Head of Service of the Federation, Ama Pepple, was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2017.

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Legit.ng had reported that the minister for labour and productivity, Chris Ngige, on Monday, March 5, assured Nigerian workers that implementation of a new minimum wage in the country would be done.

He said the committee set up for that purpose by the federal government had already started work. Ngige gave the assurance while speaking with journalists shortly after witnessing the swearing in of newly-elected chairmen of the 18 local government councils in Edo at the Government House, Benin.

Who should get higher salary - doctors or teachers? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Senator Ike Ekweremadu has called for the nations democracy to be protected; as he cautioned that the era of military takeovers has not passed

- The deputy Senate president highlighted the situation in Kogi and warned the state governor to stop harassing his political opponents

- Citing various instances where federal lawmakers have been harassed, he warned against turning Nigeria's democracy into a joke

The deputy president of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has stated that it is not unlikely for the military to take over, as he noted that the nations democracy is receding, Vanguard reports.

Ekweremadu made his comment in reaction to a motion sponsored by Ahmed Ogembe, the senator representing Kogi Central.

READ ALSO: Senate rejects bill to modify NYSC uniform to suit religious beliefs

Legit.ng gathers that Ogembe alleged that the Kogi state governor, Yahaya Bello, organized thugs to disrupt an empowerment programme for his constituents, which he had organized.

The deputy Senate president warned that Nigerias democracy must not be turned into a joke, as he cited various instances where federal lawmakers have been harassed.

Ekweremadu told the Kogi governor that the road he is travelling will not lead him anywhere.

He continued: You will recall that sometime last year when they wanted to recall Dino, I advised the governor that they are wasting the resources of that state, that it is mission impossible.

They took three pages in the newspaper abusing me. Are we still hearing the recall today? Money has been wasted. If he doesnt stop, there is no how he will come back in 2019, never, no he will not.

God will show him that he is a God of justice; and this is a message to all those people who have caused all kinds of problem in Nigeria at different levels.

The problem in Nigeria is that our democracy is receding. Who says the army cannot take over? Let us not joke with our democracy that is the issue. The house of a senator was destroyed in Kaduna state. We also are talking about Kwankwaso, who was stopped from going to his state where he ruled for eight years.

In Kaduna, Shehu Sani cannot organise a meeting, and we are talking about a democracy."

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the chief of army staff, Tukur Buratai, warned army officials to stay off politics and politically related activities.

Buratai said this in a statement issued by the former spokesman of the Army, Brig Gen Sani Usman.

He said: This is to inform the public that the chief of army staff (COAS), Nigerian army, has received information that some individuals have been approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons. On the basis of that, he has warned such persons to desist from these acts.

What is working well and what needs improvement in Nigeria? - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng
- President Buhari has been rebuked by Senator Ben Bruce rebuked over alleged offer to help Ghana fight corruption

- The senator advised the Buhari-led administration to focus on fighting the corruption in Nigeria first

- He accused the presidency of fighting opposition rather than corruption

Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, representing Bayelsa East constituency, on Tuesday, slammed President Muhammadu Buhari over an alleged offer made by the president to help neighbouring country, Ghana, fight corruption.

Bruce, referring to the recent report by Transparency International on corruption in Nigeria, said the Buhari administration should focus more on combating the terrorism in Nigeria first. The senator, who made this statement on his Twitter page, also accused the presidency of fighting opposition instead of corruption.

READ ALSO: Economic recovery: IMF applauds CBN, confirms Nigeria out of recession

He tweeted that: If corruption is increasing in your nation, you make yourself a laughing stock if you promise to fight it in another nation. Charity begins at home. The major challenge facing President Buharis anti-corruption war is that for almost three years, it has been delivering activity instead of delivering results.

They have been making noise instead of making news. Theyve been practising propaganda instead of setting proper agenda."

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Recall that Legit.ng earlier reported that President Buhari was the only foreign leader invited to the event held at the Independence Square as special guest of honour.

In his speech, he commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo of Ghana for the warm reception and congratulated his strides in office.

Meanwhile, some media platforms reported that President Buhari, in his Ghana Independence Day speech, promised to help Ghana to fight corruption. This has sparked outrageous reactions from both Nigerians and Ghanaians on various social media platforms.

Critically reading through President Buharis speech at Ghanas 61st Independence anniversary at the Independence Square in Accra, Legit.ng fact check showed that there is no part where he stated that Nigeria will help Ghana fight corruption.

In the speech, President Buhari noted that Nigeria and Ghana were benefitting immensely from leaders committed to improving their economies and tackling corruption.

List President Buhari's achievements in two years - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- No fewer than 2,435 police officers have been deployed in Plateau state ahead of President Muhammadu's arrival in the state

- The police officers were deployed to ensure safety of the president during his stay in the state

- The officers will also ensure security of lives and property in the state during the president's visit

Ahead of President Muhammadu Buhari's visit to Plateau state, the police command in the state have deployed 2,435 police officers to ensure the safety of the president, Premium Times reports.

Legit.ng gathered the deployment was disclosed by the police public relations officer of the Plateau state police command, Terna Tyopev.

He said: We (the Plateau police command) have deployed 2,435 police officers to ensure security of lives and property during President Muhammadu Buharis visit to Plateau state. We deployed two units of command from Nasarawa state police command."

READ ALSO: 10mw Katsina wind power plant to be commissioned by federal government in March, 2018

Governor Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa state has already arrived Heipang Airport, in Barkinladi local government area , waiting for the president to arrive.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that the government of Plateau state declared Thursday, March 8 as public holiday to enable residents welcome President Muhammadu Buhari on a one-day working visit to the state.

Izam Azi, head of service, announced this on Tuesday, March 6, in Jos, after an emergency State Executive Council meeting.

He said: The holiday will afford civil servants and other citizens the opportunity to give the president a rousing welcome."

Also reported by Legit.ng was the federal government's announcement that it was investing N771 million into building 80 houses in Plateau state under the Federal Housing Programme (FHP).

Olurinola, who inspected work on the housing project located at Laminga village in Jos on Sunday, March 4, said he was very impressed with the quality of work at the site.

He commended the Plateau state government for donating the 5.04 hectares of land for the project, and particularly lauded its collaboration with the federal government to execute the project.

Are Nigerian policemen the worst in the world? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- The Power Generation Companies in Nigeria (GENCOs) have filed a lawsuit against the federal government over alleged preferential treatment to other power firms

- The defendants in the suit are the federal government, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the minister of power, works and housing, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET), Azura and Accugas

- Victoria Ibezim Ohaeri, the executive director of Spaces for Change, said that the GENCOs took a right step at this time

The electricity challenges in the Nigeria may stretch and worsen as the Power Generation Companies in Nigeria (GENCOs) have filed a lawsuit against the federal government before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, over alleged preferential treatment to two of its competitors with the intention to destroy its business growth and prosperity.

The GENCOs said that its members were almost collapsing due to debts in excess of N1 trillion. The firms currently generate 80 per cent of the power consumed in Nigeria. They accused the presidency of giving preferential treatment to Azura Power West Africa Limited and Accugas Limited to the detriment of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry and the power sector generally, Vanguard reports.

READ ALSO: 2019: Igbo APC group endorses Ambode for second term

The defendants, in a suit filed by 13 GENCOs, are the federal government, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the minister of power, works and housing, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET), Azura and Accugas.

The GENCOs, represented by Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited (Mainstream), Transcorp Power Limited (Transcorp Power), Egbin Power Plc (Egbin) and Northsouth Power Company Limited (Northsouth), are arguing that the defendants, have continuously meted out unfair treatment to them, their investors and suppliers.

The firms said that the failure to pay them has brought them to be incapable of carrying out their obligations to their lenders, O&M contractors, equipment manufacturers, service providers and other persons and organisations.

As exhibit, the GENCOs attached a letter they had sent to Babatunde Fashola, the minister of Power, Works and Housing on the various issues, including confirmation of a plan for 100 per cent payment of all outstanding indebtedness and interests due to the GENCOs for electricity supplied and ancillary services provided by them; 100 per cent payment (not 80 per cent payment) of all invoices to be submitted by GENCOs under the payment assurance programme and payment of all sums due as capacity charge to the GENCOs from 2013 till presently.

READ ALSO: Court confirms suit seeking to jail Sarakis agent over Kwara central senatorial poll

In her comment on the incident, Victoria Ibezim Ohaeri, the executive director of Spaces for Change, told newsmen that the GENCOs have taken the right step to go to court at such a time.

I think the GENCOs have taken the right step to head to the court. Let the court decide or rule on the issues raised.

Also, the former managing director and chief executive officer of Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Oladele Amoda, remarked that the development showed that the sector is passing through a tough period.

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Amoda stated: All stakeholders, including the Federal Government, NERC, GENCOs, DISCOs and others should come together in order to rescue the sector from collapse. Indeed, if the allegations, especially unfair treatment against the GENCOs are true, something needs to be done urgently in order to tackle the liquidity and other problems that stare the sector in the face.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that the federal government would be commissioning a section of the 10 megawatts (mw) Katsina wind power plant by the end of March. The project which kicked off in 2010 was stalled after a French contractor was abducted.

Legit.ng gathered that while briefing officials of the federal ministry of power, works and housing and a delegation from the Katsina state government, the consultant and assistant project manager for OT Otis Engineering, Pius Onyenagubo, said that the plant could come alive in March.

Nigerian electricity crisis explained - On Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Nigeria
- The Lagos state police command has stated that a missing student, Yemi Olaniyan, did not pass the night at the Ojodu police station

- Olaniyan had reportedly gotten stranded on arrival in Lagos from Osun state, and informed his friend that he would spend the night at the station

- A relative has alleged that something fishy is going on; stating that the missing student would not lie about his whereabouts

The family of one Yemi Olaniyan, a final year student of accounting at the Osun state University, Okuku campus, has been thrown into confusion over his whereabouts, Punch reports.

Yemi allegedly spoke last with a colleague, Oyin, around 7:30pm on Tuesday, February 28; informing her that he would pass the night at the Ojodu police station, since he had gotten stranded upon arrival in the state.

He had traveled to Lagos for the first time on that day to submit some documents at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria office in Yaba, where he hoped to undergo his industrial training.

READ ALSO: 2019: Igbo APC group endorses Ambode for second term

Legit.ng gathers that when contacted, the Ojudu police station however, stated that Olaniyan had not visited the station, neither was he detained there. According to his mother, Folashade Olaniyan, when she could not reach her son, his friend, Oyin, had informed her that he said he would be spending the night at the Ojudu police station.

She stated: He came to submit some forms for his IT at the ICAN office in Lagos. One of his colleagues in school said he called her around 7.30pm. He told her that he had submitted the documents, but it was late. He said he would be passing the night at the Ojodu police station.

That was the last we heard from him. We have been calling him since then, but his line has not been reachable. Our family members went to the police station, but the police denied that he came to the station.

A relative of the missing student, Adeniyi, stated that something was fishy; as he said Olaniyan would not lie about his whereabouts. He stated: He is a final year student of accounting at the Osun state University. He left the campus for Lagos to submit some forms for his IT on February 28 at the ICAN office in Yaba.

He also went with the documents of some of his colleagues for submission. After he submitted the documents, he discovered it was late. He went to the police station to sleep over because he was a stranger in Lagos. That was his first visit to Lagos. He explained his situation to the police, and they requested his identity card.

He called one of his colleagues, Oyin, who also gave him her documents for submission, that he would be sleeping at the Ojodu Police Station and that he would return to school the following day. I know Yemi very well. There was no reason for him to lie if he was not at the police station. We want the relevant authorities to unravel the circumstances surrounding his disappearance.

Efforts to reach the missing student proved abortive as he could not be contacted on his mobile phone.

The Lagos state police commands public relations officer, SP Chike Otti, stated that there was nothing to show that Yemi had indeed spent the night at the police station.

In his words: The attention of the command has been drawn to a post on the internet purporting that one Yemi Olaniyan, a final year student of accounting at the Osun state University, Okuku campus, who came to Lagos to submit documents for his IT at an ICAN office in Lagos and thereafter slept at the Ojodu Police Station, is missing.

It was also mentioned in the post that Mr Yemi Olaniyans trip to Lagos was his first to the city. The Lagos state police command hereby states categorically that Yemi Olaniyan was never a guest at the Ojodu police station as alleged. There is no record to show that he was at any police station in Lagos, either as a visitor or a detainee. Besides, no police station in Lagos operates as a guest house. It is not allowed.

Otti noted that there was no ICAN office near the Ojodu police station and urged the family to file a missing persons report.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng came across the sad story of a young final year student who was reportedly declared missing.

The unidentified ladys photo was shared on social media to call attention to her case if she is seen by anyone, after it was put up by a Twitter user identified as Euphemia Agomuo. A contact information was also put out for anyone who had information about her disappearance.

In her post, the Twitter user revealed that she was not related to the missing lady. She further added that she shared the photo because she was touched by the story.

Are Nigerian policemen the worst in the world? - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng
- No fewer than 48 suspected kidnappers, armed robbers and cattle rustlers have been paraded by the Nigerian police in Niger state

- Some of the things recovered from the suspected criminals are guns, fake dollars and 35 exotic cars

- The suspects have reportedly confessed to the police

The Nigeria Police Force, Niger state command, has paraded 48 suspected kidnappers, armed robbers, car snatchers and cattle rustlers arrested with exotic weapons, expensive cars and fake dollars to the tune of N490 million.

The suspects were paraded on Wednesday, March 7, at the Bosso Division of the Nigeria Police, Niger state command by the force public relation officer, CSP Jimoh Moshood.

Some of the weapons recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

READ ALSO: APC has borrowed $11trn in 3 years - Melaye

The suspects have reportedly confessed to the various criminal roles they played in the commission of the crime. Investigation is ongoing to arrest other members of the gangs still at large. All suspects would be arraigned in court on completion of investigation.

Communication gadgets recovered from the kidnappers. Photo source: NPF

Items recovered from the suspects are listed below:

Thirty Five (35) Exotic Cars Five (5) AK47 Rifles Three (3) Pump Action Guns Two (2) Single Barrel Guns Three (3) SMG Rifles One (1) Revolver Pistol Two (2) Locally Made Pistols 822 Rounds of AK47 ammunition 68 9MM ammunition Four (4) Live Cartridges. Five (5) Plasma TV Sets One (1) Home Theatre Radio Seven (7) Vehicle Trackers Demobilizes Seven (7) Wrist Watches Two (2) Laptops Women Wrappers. Four (4) Different Vehicle Number Plates One (1) Standing Fan Huge Sums of suspected fake US Dollars equivalent to about N490 Million

48 suspects paraded by the police. Photo source: NPF

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Fake dollars recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

Exotic vehicles recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

Legit.ng earlier reported that a suspected cult member and pipeline vandal, Temona Alison, who is said to be on the wanted list of the police in Bayelsa state, has been arrested.

Alison, who is in his 20s, was apprehended by the Bayelsa state police command strike force on Sunday, March 4, in his house on Tombia-Ammassoma Road by Boxi water.

See the faces of newly arrested criminals in Lagos state - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Alpha Beta, a private consulting firm, reacted to the allegations that it is handling the collection and administration of the new Lagos state land use charge

- The firm said it has no contract with Lagos government concerning the execution of the new land use charge

- The state House of Assembly also said that Alpha Betas name was mistakenly put in the new law and will be removed soon

Alpha Beta Consulting said on Thursday, March 8, that it has no contract with the Lagos state government in the execution of the states newly-introduced land use law.

The firm, however, did not react to the allegations that its name was specifically mentioned in the new law that hikes tariffs for homeowners across the state, Premium Times reports.

The companys deputy managing director, Bode Oluyemi, said: We would like to state that our company, Alpha Beta Consulting, is not involved in the collection and administration of the Land Use Charge of Lagos state.

READ ALSO: 48 kidnappers arrested with exotic weapons, millions of fake dollars in Niger state (photos)

Although we do business with the state as we do with other individuals and organisations that require our services, Land Use Charge collection and/or administration is not part of our brief.

Legit.ng gathered that Alpha Beta issued the disclaimer due to agitations by Lagosians over the new rates for land use and the claim that Alpha Beta had been specifically favoured by the law as a potential consultant to be engaged in verification of land use payments to state coffers.

Reacting to the allegations, the Lagos House of Assembly responded on Wednesday, March 7, said that Alpha Beta was erroneously written into the state law.

Tunde Braimoh, a spokesperson for the Lagos State House said: It was a very costly mistake that should not have happened.

It was erroneously put in the draft copy of the law and were already working to remove it completely.

The section of the proposed Lagos State Land Use Charge Act 2018 said which mentions Alpha Betas name read: Alpha Beta or any other designated person(s) or corporate body who has the responsibility of monitoring the incoming revenue of the state through the collecting banks, shall provide a report to the Accountant-General of the State.

Braimoh, however, said that Alpha Beta would be removed from the law within three weeks.

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Lagos residents have been allegedly reporting on social media that they have started receiving notification about the new tariffs.

Legit.ng previously reported that Lagos state had begun the distribution of the 2018 land use charge demand notices for properties across the state.

The distribution reportedly ought to have been carried out much earlier in the year, but was delayed by a review of the Land Use Charge Act by the state House of Assembly.

The review process entailed a repeal of the old law, public hearings and enactment of a replacement by the House of Assembly on January 28, before it was signed into law on Thursday, February 8.

Ambode's second term is shaking, says Lagos woman - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- Rex Tillerson, United States secretary of state, has warned African countries to be careful when requesting for loans from China

- Tillerson stated that it is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of the agreements before taking the loans

- He said that the United States is not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa

The United States secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, on Thursday, March 8, warned African countries to be wary of the Chinese government and its loan facilities.

Tillerson told African countries to weigh Chinese loans carefully, adding that the United States was not trying to keep Chinese investment away from the continent, Premium Times reports.

Legit.ng gathered that the US secretary has been criticising China and its investment in Africa in the past few days. It was learnt that the Chinese government has pumped billions into infrastructure projects across Africa.

READ ALSO: Ahead of Buhari's visit, over 2,000 police officers deployed in Plateau state

On Thursday, March 8, Tillerson told news conference in Ethiopia that African leaders need to carefully consider their agreements with China.

He said: We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa, but it is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty.

According to him, Chinese investments do not bring significant job creation locally, adding that if a government accepts a Chinese loan and gets into trouble, it can lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that China gave Nigeria a loan of $4.5 billion to buy appropriate farming tools to boost local agriculture. The tools included: tractors, bulldozers, graders, irrigation pumps and so on.

Chief Audu Ogbeh, the minister of agriculture, and Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state made the announcement on Tuesday, April 4, 2017.

Ogbeh said: "We came to brief the president on developments following our visit to China in April last year and our negotiations on a number of issues to deal with machineries for agricultural development."

What must President Buhari do to regain the trust of Nigerians? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- The Nigeria Police Force has continued to lay siege on the headquarters of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) office in Abuja

- Efforts to get the police to vacate the building have proved abortive

- Leader of the 'Our Mumu Don Do' movement, Charles Oputa (Charly Boy), has joined those campaigning for the police to vacate the premises

Leader of the 'Our Mumu Don Do' movement, Charles Oputa popularly known as Charly Boy, has berated the Nigeria Police Force for continuously laying siege on the premises of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) headquarters in Abuja, after several court judgements.

Charly Boy who openly shed tears due to the high handedness of the policemen, made the comment came on Thursday, March 8, after he and members of the PCN were prevented from taking possession of their office.

The office has been under siege by police personnel since February 28, 2017, the day the premises was officially commissioned.

Despite different court orders given at Federal High Court, Abuja with the attendant letter from the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Ibrahim Malami, that the police should obey the two subsisting court orders, the inspector general of police, Ibrahim Kpotun Idris, has ignored the orders.

Charly Boy displays emotion as police stops Peace Corps from occupying office on Thursday, March 8. Photo credit: PCN

READ ALSO: National Assembly to override President Buhari's rejection of Peace Corps bill

The House of Representatives had also waded into the matter through its committee on public petitions, as it urged the police to comply with court orders and the advice of the AGF on Tuesday, March 6.

Legit.ng gathered that the officers of PCN under the leadership of the national commandant, Dr Dickson Akoh, were ushered by some officials of Civil Society Organisations, to take possession of their office. They were however, resisted by a detachment of well armed mobile police officers from the FCT police command.

Reacting to the conduct of the police, Charly Boy described their action as "act of injustice," vowing to stand firm against it. His words: This is our country, we would have no place to call our own or go to, if we allow our system to erode. We won't alow the IGP or anyone to give the youths reasons to resorting to self help or anarchy.

Charly Boy who openly shed tears due to the high handedness of the policemen. Photo Credit: PCN

The civil society coalition led by Comrade Olayemi Success, said it was very ironical that, the same police which was supposed to be enforcing the law could not obey court orders, the AGF and the order of Nigerian parliament.

He lambasted the force for embarrassing Nigeria before the international community, which caused the recent rating of Nigeria police being the worst in the whole world.

On his part, the Peace Corps Boss, Akoh, said, as peaceful people and law abiding organisation, his men would retire home while waiting for the response of the IGP. Akoh said the office was rented for 3 years with N13.8m annual rent, adding that, the police had already vandalised the premises and looted some valuables.

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Meanwhile, the council of commandants and Board of Trustees of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) have called on President Buhari to reevaluate and reconsider his decision to withhold his assent to the Peace Corps bill.

They made the call at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday, March 2, arguing that there was no security agency in Nigeria that was currently undertaking the functions ascribe to Peace Corps in the said bill.

Speaking on behalf of the organisation, the national commandant, Dr Dickson Akoh said the bill does not conflict with that of the functions of any existing security agency in the country.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Accolades continue to pour in all over the country for Vice President Yemi Osinbajo

- Osinbajo turns 61 on March 8 and he is being celebrated all over the country

- One of those who joined in praising the vice president is renowned publisher, Mariam Mohammed

Renowned publisher and public relations expert, Mariam Mohammed, has joined other Nigerians to wish Vice President Yemi Osinbajo a happy birthday.

In a statement sent to Legit.ng Mohammed said: I raise a toast to an amazing leader, academic and mentor without measure. As a man of grace, you have demonstrated that the gift of God is not to be taken lightly, and for this, you have committed yourself to service and betterment of our country, and society.

While extolling his good virtues, she added: I join millions of Nigerians, women and men of goodwill to wish the peoples Vice President and a godly man a Happy Birthday and urge you to continue to inspire with your dedication, zest and unflinching loyalty to God and country.

Vice President Osinbajo received accolades across the nation today on his birthday. Photo credit: Kaduna state government

READ ALSO: Lovely photos of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as he clocks 61

On its part, the ruling All Progressives Congress recalled the role Osinbajo played after the formation of the party in 2013.

He was tasked alongside other notable party members to design and produce our partys manifesto, culminating in the presentation of the partys roadmap to a new Nigeria.

The highly-cerebral Osinbajo has endeared himself to the generality of Nigerians as a team player in the current administration and a very dependable ally of the president. Osinbajo has been a key support base in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administrations ongoing efforts to deliver on election promises made to Nigerians.

We wish him the very best in the years ahead in service to the party and nation, the party's national publicity secretary said in a statement sent to Legit.ng.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has felicitated with Osinbajo, on the occasion of his 61st birthday, thanking him for being a loyal and dependable partner.

Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well-wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, to Nigeria, and to humanity, the president said.

READ ALSO: Tinubu hails Osinbajo at 61, says VP's position did not change his humility, commitment

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo delivers a speech on the Biafra war - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
By Don Quijones of Spain, UK, and Mexico, editor at Wolf Street. Originally published at Wolf Street

In a surprise move, the European Unions top court has ruled that Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses contained within almost 200 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between EU member countries violate EU law, casting doubt on such deals as well as others struck by the bloc as a whole. ISDS clauses allow foreign investors or corporations to sue governments for passing laws or regulations that could undermine the value of their investments.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) found that an award of damages to Dutch-based insurer Achmea from Slovakia under a bilateral investment treaty inherited from former Czechoslovakia contravened EU law since the arbitration tribunal that made the ruling was not a court of a member state. As such, it had no power to refer matters to the ECJ, the highest court of the EU.

The arbitration clause in the BIT has an adverse effect on the autonomy of EU law, and is therefore incompatible with EU law, the court said.

The ruling could have widespread repercussions, not only for EU-based investors seeking redress for changes in government regulation that affect their bottom line but also for investors from outside the bloc. In total 196 BITs between EU members contain such clauses, some concluded between western EU countries to protect investments of their companies in former Soviet countries before the latter joined the EU.

ISDS cases do not get heard in a court of law, under the scrutiny of a judge and/or jury, but rather in front of arbitration panels made up of three professional arbitrators  one representing the company, one representing the country and the other chosen by the first two to sit as president of the panel. None of these arbitrators are trained judges; they are very handsomely paid private individuals, often representing some of the biggest international corporate law firms, mostly from the U.S. and Europe.

In recent years, ISDS has become such a toxic concept that even Beltway institutions such as the Cato Institute have called for its purging from future trade agreements  an idea that appears to be supported by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and could even be applied to a newly negotiated NAFTA agreement.

Europe is already halfway there, but not everyones on board. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Poland and Romania have all came out in Slovakias defense against Achmea, as has the European Commission. By contrast, the governments of Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland believe that the clause at issue and, more generally, clauses of a similar kind used in the 196 BITs currently in force between EU Member States are perfectly valid.

Besides dividing Europe, the ruling could also pit the EU, which is in the process of developing its own multilateral investment court, against powerful international arbitration tribunals that will be determined to protect their racket, including the International Centre for Settlement of Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the Washington-based World Bank. If the EU prevails, the cancellation of the investment dispute clauses could end up costing corporations and investors billions of euros in lost compensation.

A case in point is the cascade of lawsuits brought by dozens of European and other international investors against the Spanish government over its decision to withdraw a raft of renewable energy subsidies between 2011 and 2013.

The lucrative taxpayer-funded subsidies had triggered a stampede of investors and companies, domestic and international, into the sector. But when the financial crisis began biting hard, the Zapatero government announced a cut of 30% to the subsidies. When the conservative Popular Party came into office, it deepened the cuts. With the honey jar withdrawn, renewable energy consumers and companies suddenly saw their funds wither. Many projects collapsed.

While thousands of Spanish investors lodged appeals with the nations Supreme Court, a group of large foreign businesses took the case to international arbitration, often through EU-based affiliates in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Fifteen businesses that had invested in Spanish solar energy lodged their first international claim, using the Energy Charter of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL).

They were joined by a further 20 investors, including sovereign funds, German municipalities, and a Canadian civil service pension fund. Even major Spanish companies such as Abengoa and Isolux presented compensation demands, arguing that their solar energy plants belonged to affiliates in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.

At one point Spain was the focus of so much legal action that it climbed to third place in the global leader board of nations facing Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) suits, just behind two notorious bugbears of international capital, Venezuela (24 complaints) and Argentina (20). It already has two rulings against it, to the tune of some 128 million. The total settlement could have reached 7.5 billion  enough to seriously impinge the governments already strained finances.

But then Brussels came to the rescue by arguing that awarding legal damages to European investors could be construed as State aid and would therefore be illegal. [As an aside, its curious how the billions of euros of free debt gifted to Europes biggest corporations as part of the ECBs corporate bond buying program never qualify as illegal State aid]

Now, in its new ruling, the ECJ has set a very important precedent. Put simply, EU-based investors, including international investors operating through an EU-based affiliate, will no longer be able to sue European countries through international tribunals. Instead, they will have to go through European courts.

Given the deep flaws and inadequacies of the ISDS clause, which essentially enables foreign investors to ride roughshod over domestic laws and regulations, the ECJs decision to invalidate it, at least as a mechanism to settle disputes between EU companies and Member States, is a long-awaited step in the right direction. If Brussels decides to go the whole hog and apply the ruling to the trade treaties it strikes as a bloc, it could spell the beginning of the end for ISDS. By Don Quijones.

After the merger, three companies will control 60% of the worlds seed and pesticide markets. Read The Oligopolization of Food Supply Hits a Snag
A Tipperary restaurant which was closed by the Food Safety Authority last month had a kitchen that had not been cleaned in a considerable time.

Mould was seen on surfaces and there was a build up of grease and food debris in several areas.

The FSA closed the restuarant for one day on February 14 but has just released the full report into the reasons for the closure.

China Kitchen, Market Street, Clonmel was subject to the closure order after a visit by a HSE inspector under the Food Safety Authority of Ireland Act.

The inspectors report states:

The premises had not been cleaned in a considerable time and this was evident from mould growth on surfaces adjacent to food storage and preparation, heavy build up of grease and food debris in a number of areas including the gas cooker, wok cooker, work surfaces, food containers and utensils.

Dirty cardboard on the floor, extraction hood and grease filters were encrusted with grease and dirt. All fridges were in poor condition with rusty shelving and dirty and damaged seals.

Pools of blood and raw meat juices were noted in one of the fridges. Large accumulations of dirt and old food debris were found behind freezers.

The report continues:

At all stages of production, processing and distribution, food is to be protected against any contamination likely to render the food unfit for human consumption, injurious to health or contaminated in such a way that it would be reasonable to expect it to be consumed in that state.

 2 boxes of cooked chicken pieces were stored directly in raw chicken cardboard boxes

 Food stored in dirty, defective, chipped containers

 Container of raw sausages stored directly on cooked pork

" Food stored in non food grade bins or containers

 Raw meat not suitably wrapped in the freezer resulting in freezer burn.

Regulation (EC) 852/2004 on the Hygiene of foodstuffs , .. .. Chapter VI Food Waste. 1. Food waste, non edible by products and other refuse are to be removed from rooms where food is present as quickly as possible, so as to avoid their accumulation.

 Food waste, including two refuse sacks of waste and 5 dirty buckets of used oil were stored in a food room where trays of cooked meats were cooling.

The inspector also reported that a food worker was not maintaining a high degree of personal cleanliness and was wearing a dirty, ripped apron. No hand washing occurred during the inspection despite raw meat being directly handled.
Clonmel Folk Club's next concert will feature legendary Limerick songwriter Johnny Duhan, probably best known for his song 'The Voyage'.

The concert is on Tuesday, 13th March, doors 7pm, concert at 8pm, at the Town Hall, Parnell Street. Tickets 15 from Ger Ambrose Jewellers, the club website, or through ticketweb.

Johnny Duhan started his career as a 15-year-old front man in the Limerick beat group Grannys Intentions. After achieving some success in Dublin, they moved to London and were signed to the Decca/Deram record label, releasing several singles and one album, Honest Injun.[

However, the band disbanded before Duhan was twenty one. Despite offers to front other bands, Duhan turned his back on the popular music industry and started writing folk songs, poetry and prose. He has condensed his various works over 40 years into a quartet of albums: Just Another Town, To The Light, The Voyage and Flame.

These correspond with the four chapters of his lyrical autobiography, To The Light. His songs have achieved notability, largely thanks to the focus put on them by Christy Moore, The Dubliners and Mary Black.

The Duhan song The Voyage has become a modern classic. Christy Moore stated that The Voyage has been performed at over a million weddings worldwide.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller addressed NATOs transatlantic partnership at the annual Brussels Forum conference on Thursday (8 March 2018). She took part in a panel discussion entitled Rebuild Transatlantic Trust, together with representatives from government and business.

The Deputy Secretary General stressed the importance of the transatlantic bond, noting that troops from North America and Europe currently serve together in NATOs four battlegroups in the eastern part of the Alliance, helping to deter aggression. In the field, on the ground, we see the essence of transatlantic trust, she said.

She underscored that NATO is focused on transatlantic burden-sharing, and many European Allies have stopped cutting their defence spending, and are stepping up their contributions to Alliance security. On European defence, she stressed the need for complementarity between NATO and EU efforts.

Organised by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Brussels Forum brings together political, economic and intellectual leaders from Europe and America to discuss key challenges facing the Euro-Atlantic area.
(Natural News) Widely regarded as one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Harvard sure made a serious mistake when it decided to throw what ended up amounting to more than $1 billion in investment cash at an agricultural plantation project in northeast Brazil that reportedly ended up becoming an absolute failure.

Also the worlds richest university, Harvard apparently thought that it could somehow sidestep the pitfalls that other universities had already encountered with the project  conveying that iconic arrogance and self-superiority for which Harvard is also prominently known. In the end, the whole project basically collapsed, and one of the largest investments the school ever made towards this type of venture all but vanished into thin air.

According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity  they have to save face, after all  the initial investment made towards the project was at least $150 million. But by the time the venture had failed, Harvards current endowment chief, N.P. Narv Narvekar, wrote down the value of the schools globe-spanning natural resources portfolio by a shocking $1.1 billion, bringing it to $2.9 billion.

What the project entailed was a large agricultural investment holding in one of the poorest areas of Brazil that aimed to further fill the coffers of Harvards massive endowment. Poor people in the remote forests of northeast Brazil would grow tomatoes to make tomato paste, and sugar and other products to make ethanol. The hope was that the profits from all of these products would outpace those of normal stocks and bonds  but it didnt work.

Harvard has mismanaged donor money many times in the past

This isnt Harvards first toilet flush of donor money, though. There have been many occasions in which the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution of higher learning squandered donor cash on projects that never panned out in the end. And it all stems back to the misguided belief among Harvards finest that theyre better, smarter, and more intelligent than everyone else, in every area of life.

According to Thomas Gilbert, a finance professor at the University of Washington, Harvards many, many financial mistakes over the years all stem back to one single miscalculation, if you will: The belief among Harvards money managers that they were fully capable of managing all of the potential risks involved with investing. And between the years of 2010 and 2014, these money managers were given a whopping $242 million to nurture their personal delusions in this regard.

They became loose cannons, Gilbert is quoted as saying. When youre managing donor money, its appalling.

Whats more, even when Harvard isnt losing money year after year, it routinely performs at the bottom of the barrel compared to its peers. Over the past decade, in fact, Harvard posted a 4.4 percent average annual return on its many investments, which represents the worst figure out of any of any institution in its class.

Harvard even performs poorly in the simplest type of investment: A market-tracking index fund holding 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. According to the official numbers, Harvards returns in this area of investment are a paltry 6.4 percent annually, which is most certainly nothing to brag about.

Harvard has failed in trying to invest in California vineyards. It failed with Central American teak forests. It failed with cotton farms in Australia. It failed with a eucalyptus plantation in Uruguay. It failed with timberlands in Romania. The moral of the story: Harvard has become an absolute failure of an institution, at least with regards to money management and investing.

The natural resources portfolio was supposed to be the crown jewel, stated Joshua Humphreys, president of the Croatan Institute, a non-profit group that focuses on sustainable capitalism. But they (Harvard) were known for taking outsize risks, and those can cut both ways.

Sources for this article include:

Bloomberg.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) As I write this, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is dropping a hammer on the state of California.

And frankly, its about time.

After warning Gov. Jerry Brown and fellow Democrats who run the single-party state for months their sanctuary policies that protect illegal aliens from deportation were going to land them in legal hot water, the AG was in the state to announce that the Justice Department was filing suit.

California, we have a problem, Sessions said, addressing an annual conference organized by California Peace Officers Association. A series of actions and events have occurred here that directly and adversely impacts the work of our federal officers.

Last fall, Democrats voted in favor of turning the entire state into a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Brown, acting on the advice of some law enforcement groups in the state, made some modifications to the legislation that were slightly less accommodating to the open-borders crowd, but he nevertheless signed the legislation, and Californias sanctuary state status became official Jan. 1.

But since then state and local officials have become illegal immigrant zealots, even going so far as to tip off non-citizen aliens less than 24 hours before Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were to begin round-up operations.

For example, the mayor of Oakland has actively  has been actively seeking to help illegal aliens avoid apprehension by ICE, Sessions said during his address.

Its true. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf last week tipped her community off after she learned of confidential information regarding the raid. As bad as her obstruction of justice was  the DoJ is looking into that, by the way  she went even further and insisted that ICE agents performing their sworn duty were racists.

Thats not hyperbole; she really means it. And thats disgusting. (Related: Report: Justice Dept. reviewing possibility of charges against Oakland mayor who TIPPED OFF illegal aliens to ICE raid.)

According to Fox News, Schaafs warning to northern California illegal aliens likely led to hundreds of them escaping, including those with violent and sex-related convictions.

Schaaf claimed that she issued the warning to protect illegal aliens and her community; what a joke, except that nobodys laughing  especially ICE agents and a number of California law enforcement officials. Or Jeff Sessions.

As Fox News noted, the ICE raids netted 232 arrests of illegal aliens in the San Francisco Bay area, of which, officials with the immigration enforcement agency said, 180 were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed from the country and had come back illegally.

The arrests included 115 who had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges, and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors.

But according to acting ICE Director Thomas Homan, who was furious at Schaaf, as many as 800 illegal aliens who were on ICE agents lists managed to escape.

What she did is no better than a gang lookout yelling Police! when a police cruiser comes in the neighborhood, except that she did it to an entire community. This is beyond the pale, he told Fox & Friends last week.

This is a whole new low, to intentionally warn criminals that law enforcement is coming, he added.

One of those who Schaaf helped escape is a Mexican national whod been convicted for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, as well as a conviction for drunk driving; hed been deported in 2003. Another had a conviction for sodomizing a drugged victim in 2012 as well as a DUI this year.

These are some of the people that Schaaf helped to escape. She should be held liable to the fullest extent of federal law, and I hope they throw the book at her.

Meantime, Sessions has made it clear the Trump administration has run out of patience with California officials. It couldnt have come too soon.

Let the legal games begin.

J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

FoxNews.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

DailyCaller.com
(Natural News) As Facebook and Google soak up an ever-increasing share of online ad revenue  estimated to be approaching 80 percent  news and information websites are looking for creative ways to serve ads and make money from them.

Some, like the Newsweek Media Group (NMG) , may even be bending the law in order to cash in on shrinking piece of the online ad pie.

As reported by Buzzfeed, the troubled publisher of Newsweek, which has devolved from a respected news source to clickbait factory, and International Business Times admitted earlier this week that three of its sites were operating malicious code experts say is designed to commit advertising fraud.

On Tuesday, NMG issued a statement saying that the company has been alerted to a piece of potential code that disrupted ad tracking and ad viewability. The statement said further that the code affected IBTimes.sg, IBTimes.co.in and IBTimes.co.uk.

The media group said it has launched an internal investigation to identify the individuals responsible and will take the necessary action.

The media companys admission comes after a Buzzfeed News report in February that revealed probes by several ad technology firms discovered a number of NMGs websites were buying traffic and engaging in ad fraud. The group denied it was doing anything wrong at the time. (Related: Tucker Carlson schools Buzzfeed editor Ben Smith over publication of BOGUS dossier: You ran this because it was TRUMP (Video))

Buzzfeed reported further:

A source told BuzzFeed News that the sudden admission by NMG may be connected to ongoing reporting by the Wall Street Journal. A recent Journal story revealed new details about an investigation into NMG by the Manhattan District Attorney, including that the DA is now looking into reports of ad fraud.

BuzzFeed News asked NMG if its press release was issued as result of questions from the Journal. The press release speaks for itself, said Ken Frydman, CEO of Source Communications, a PR firm recently retained by the company.

Newsweek itself has no shortage of problems. In January investigators from the Manhattan District Attorneys office raided Newsweeks offices, removing 18 computer servers as part of a lengthy investigation into the companys finances.

The investigators, armed with a search warrant, took photographs and gathered information about the servers and their capacity, according to sources close to the matter. Throughout the day, investigators were seen closely examining the equipment inside the server room, the magazine itself reported online.

A grand jury investigation of NMG has been ongoing for more than 18 months; part of the probe has involved loans the company took out in order to purchase the servers. In addition to having cash-flow problems, NMG has also been in trouble with the IRS.

And now its been accused of ad fraud, which was first found by DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement company, in 2017. In previous interviews with Buzzfeed, the company said that it classified IBTs Singapore, India, UK, and U.S. sites as having fraud or sophisticated invalid traffic.

DoubleVerifys chief operating officer, Matt McLaughlin, also said that Newsweeks UK edition was fraudulent, adding that the site was running very similar malicious code. He further noted that the code NMG is using aims to interfere with a third partys ability to measure how much of a digital ad was actually viewable during a users browsing session. To be valid, it has to be at least partially viewable to a browser.

He said it was exceedingly rare to find a reputable publisher running the code  but again, the term reputable is relative, especially in the case of Newsweek.

But also Buzzfeed, whose editor, Ben Smith, chose to publish in full the unverified (and completely bogus) Trump dossier in January 2017, a decision that has resulted in the website being sued multiple times by people mentioned in the document.

The Left-wing media is eating itself in an attempt to remain relevant. I say good riddance, but it sure is fun to watch.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

TheNationalSentinel.com

Buzzfeed.com
About 400 students in San Jose's Alum Rock Union Elementary School District on Thursday walked out of class in a symbolic gesture meant to echo the feelings of community members who believe that the district is operating off track.

Many parents have been showing up in force at previous district board meetings which they say have been dysfunctional.

The district was subject to a six-month state audit that found poor governance and board micromanagement. The audit also found that the district has no plan for a $25 million loan repayment.

Most recently, Superintendent Hilaria Bauer and the board battled over her evaluation which she wanted done in public. It was ultimately done behind closed doors.

When speaking about the expected walkout, Bauer said she wants the students in class.

"We want them to be learning," she said. "So the place where they learn is at school. That's where the powerful conversations can be held."

Parent Olivia Ortiz wants her child to be in the classrom, but she's willing to sacrifice some school time if it results in change.

"I want our kids in school," she said. "We want that, for sure. But then, as a parent, as a mom, I have my kid in first grade here at this school, Id rather him lose half a day of school than lose his eight years without having the right resources for his education."

The student walkout is planned for 12:30 p.m. Thursday on what is a minimum day. That means students will miss about an hour to 1 1/2 hours of school.
A California judge has ordered the Home Depot to pay $27.8 million to resolve allegations of unlawfully disposing of hazardous waste, and discarding records without rendering private customer information unreadable.

The ruling in the Alameda Superior Court was connected to a civil enforcement action filed on Feb. 15 by the San Diego County District Attorney's Office and eight other prosecutor's offices in the state.

The suit alleged more than 300 Home Depot stores routinely and systematically sent hazardous waste to local landfills that were not permitted to receive those wastes, according to San Diego's DA Summer Stephan.

They included pesticides, aerosols, paint, batteries, mercury-containing fluorescent bulbs and electronic waste.

Her office's inspection team searched dumpsters belonging to Home Depot stores in a coordinated effort with other offices in the state between 2013 and 2015.

They determined the stores were also throwing out documents containing sensitive customer information into store trash bins, Stephan said.

As a result of the claim, Home Depot looked at its procedures and made changes including adding customer records lock boxes in several areas of the store to provide employees a place to discard sensitive information. Those changes will cost the company at least $6.8 million, according to the San Diego DA's office.

The chain must pay $18.5 million in civil penalties and costs with an additional $2.5 million to fund environmental projects.

All 23 Home Depot stores in San Diego County are subject to the terms of the settlement, the DA's office said.

Matt Harrigan with Home Depot Corporate Communications told NBC 7, "Were pleased to have settled this and we remain committed to the responsible disposal of waste. Well continue to work with California officials to that end."


What to Know The California laws were passed in response to Trump's promises to sharply ramp up the deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally

One law prohibits employers from letting immigration agents enter worksites or view employee files without a subpoena or warrant

Another CA law stops local governments from contracting with for-profit companies and ICE to hold immigrants

Gov. Jerry Brown accused Attorney General Jeff Sessions of lying in an attempt to appease President Donald Trump when he visited California Wednesday to announce that the Justice Department is suing over the state's immigration policies.

Brown fired back at Sessions less than an hour after the attorney general finished speaking to a group of law enforcement officers about the lawsuit -- the latest salvo in a feud between the Trump administration and California leaders.

Dozens of demonstrators gathered in Sacramento to protest Sessions' appearance. The protest Wednesday came a day after Sessions announced the Trump administration is suing the state over several laws that restrict government authorities and private businesses from cooperating with federal immigration agents.

Demonstrators blocked traffic outside a hotel where Sessions delivered his speech and chanted "stand up, fight back" and "no justice no peace."

Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, speaking at their joint news conference, denounced Sessions' speech and the lawsuit.

"Here in California, we respect the law and the Constitution," said Becerra. "We expect the federal government to do the same."

Brown began the news conference by saying that Sessions is acting "more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer."

"This is pure red meat for the base," Brown said. "It's not about law enforcement. It's not about justice, and it really demeans the high office.

"This is basically going to war against California, the engine of the American economy. It's not wise, and it's not right."

The lawsuit is the most aggressive move yet in the Trump administration's push to force so-called sanctuary cities and states to cooperate with immigration authorities. Brown is named in the lawsuit along with Becerra, who said the state is on firm legal footing.

"Our track record so far when it comes to any dispute with the federal government has been pretty good," Becerra said.

The U.S. Justice Department is challenging three California laws that, among other things, bar police from asking people about their citizenship status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities. The suit filed in federal court in Sacramento says the laws are unconstitutional and have kept federal agents from doing their jobs.

"The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you," Sessions said in prepared remarks. "I believe that we are going to win."

Earlier Wednesday, Brown mimicked President Trump on Twitter as he criticized Sessions for coming to Sacramento "to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don't work here. SAD!!!"

During Wednesday's speech, Sessions also had particularly strong words for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who issued an unusual public warning last month that she was tipped off that an immigration operation was imminent, perhaps within 24 hours.

"How dare you?" he said of Schaaf at a California Peace Officers Association meeting in Sacramento. "How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?"

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights issued a statement Wednesday, characterizing the Trump administration's approach to the immigration issue as "fear mongering."

"Attorney General Sessions and the Trump Administration are utilizing the tools of deception and fear mongering to advance a draconian, inhumane and broad anti-immigrant agenda," said Angelica Salas, CHIRLA's executive director.

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in an escalating feud between the Trump administration and California, which has resisted the president on issues from taxes to marijuana policy and defiantly refuses to help federal agents detain and deport immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it will increase its presence in California, and Sessions wants to cut off funding to jurisdictions that won't cooperate.

"I say: Bring it on," said California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the so-called sanctuary state bill. Democratic Assembly Speaker Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was among those suggesting that Sessions shouldn't come at all.

The lawsuit was filed as the Justice Department also reviews Oakland Mayor Schaaf's decision to warn of an immigration sweep in advance, which ICE said allowed hundreds of immigrants to elude detention. Schaaf said Tuesday the city would "continue to inform all residents about their constitutional rights."

The California laws were passed in response to Trump's promises to sharply ramp up the deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally.

One prohibits employers from letting immigration agents enter worksites or view employee files without a subpoena or warrant, an effort to prevent workplace raids. Another stops local governments from contracting with for-profit companies and ICE to hold immigrants. Justice Department officials said that violates the Constitution's supremacy clause, which renders invalid state laws that conflict with federal ones.

The Supreme Court reinforced the federal government's primacy in enforcing immigration law when it blocked much of Arizona's tough 2010 immigration law on similar grounds. The high court found several key provisions undermined federal immigration law, though it upheld a provision requiring officers, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally.

In this case, California "has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and responsibility of Congress to protect our homeland," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement.

Sessions has blamed sanctuary city policies for crime and gang violence.

Only the California State Sheriffs' Association actively opposed the so-called sanctuary law.

Becerra, who is up for election in November, said sanctuary policies increase public safety by promoting trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, while allowing police resources to be used to fight other crimes.

"We're in the business of public safety, not deportation," he said.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf held a press conference Wednesday to respond to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions by repeating the "How dare you?" phrase he used after she warned of a recent federal immigration raid.

Sessions criticized Mayor Libby Schaaf in a speech to law enforcement officials after he sued California over laws that restrict cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities.

Afterward, she said of Sessions, "How dare you vilify members of the community, distract people from a broken immigration system that breaks up families and distort the reality of declining violent crime in a sanctuary city like Oakland."

Schaaf also took to Twitter to remind people of a report she tweeted out in January of this year that shows a decline in the citys violent crime rate.

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According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations violent crime index, the city of Oakland has seen a decline in violent crime rate over the past five years, dropping a total of 23 percent from 2012 to 2017.

The FBIs crime index tracks murders, rape, robbery and assault.

A total of 553 shootings and 125 homicides were reported in 2012 while 227 shootings and 72 homicides, Oaklands second-lowest homicide rate since records were kept in 1985, were reported in 2017.

Officials say that is in part due to a consistent crime-fighting strategy that focuses on community relationships with a stable leader on top of the Oakland Police Department.

"We're seeing the payoff for sticking to a solid game plan," Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said. "But let's be clear, this is not 'mission accomplished.' This is progress acknowledged."

Interim director of the city's new department of violence prevention and manager of the Oakland unite division of the human services department, Peter Kim, said that efforts have always been focused on interrupting violence as it happens, and preventing future violence.

"Oakland's holistic approach-addressing the complex and multiple risk factors associated with violence: poverty, unemployment, discrimination, substance abuse, educational failure, fragmented families, and domestic abuse has contributed to the significant decline in violence," Kim said.

Reports show that a decline in police force is also a contributing factor. Oakland Police use of force incidents dropped 75 percent in five years. A reported 1,244 incidents occurred in 2012 while only 309 were reported in 2017.

"Relationships at the ground level make all Oaklanders safer," Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said. "Our residents need to trust our officers and our officers need to respect every resident; when we establish that common bond, then we're all working together to make positive change."

The citys mayor continues to strategize to keep the violent crime index at a decrease as she ensures that though numbers look better, the job is not yet done.

"We must continue to combat the root causes of crime to deliver on our goal to bring holistic community safety to all Oaklanders," Schaaf said.
A 13-year-old boy is hospitalized after he was shot in the arm Wednesday afternoon in San Jose, police said.

The shooting was reported in the 3000 block of Cadillac Drive, just off South Winchester Boulevard. The boy's injuries are not life-threatening, police said.

Wednesday's incident is the second shooting in the area in the past month.

On Feb. 7, a gunman chased down a mother of two and shot her to death.

No other information was immediately available.
A day after the Department of Justice sued California over its sanctuary city laws and Attorney General Jeff Sessions scolded Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for alerting undocumented immigrants about possible ICE arrests, President Donald Trump called her a disgrace.

The comments came during a cabinet meeting and were the first time the president spoke out about Schaafs actions publicly.

When asked about sanctuary cities, Trump said: We are working very hard  the justice department has done a fantastic job. I do think we should have legislation where we put an extra line in the money we give them  you want the money, you cant have sanctuary cities.' That way we avoid the court battles all the time, which we will probably win  They want the money, they should give up on the sanctuary cities. It harbors horrible criminals.

He then took aim at Schaaf:

"What the mayor of Oakland did the other day was a disgrace. They had close to 1,000 people ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets ... many of them, they say 85 percent of them are criminals and had criminal records. And the mayor of Oakland went out and warned them all, scattered, so instead of taking in a thousand they took in a fraction of that."

Trump said that the mayors actions put the lives of federal agents in danger:

"They were all set, this was long in the planning and she said get out of here and she's telling that to criminals. And it's certainly something we are looking at with respect to her individually. What she did is incredible and very dangerous from the standpoint of ICE and border patrol. Very dangerous. She really made law enforcement much more dangerous than it had to be. So we are looking at that situation very carefully.

Schaaf responded to Trump's comments while she was in San Francisco for International Womens Day.

Im proud to live in a country where everyone can criticize elected officials, Schaaf said with a smile, the Mercury News reported.



Im so appreciative of the Oakland community. I have obviously gotten much criticism, but much of it from outside of this community and some of the feelings of being supportive and being heard, of being stood up for, those have been really wonderful for me to hear."



Throughout this journey with this new administration we are navigating the complicated power relationship between local, state and federal governments, she said. Thats part of the beauty of our Constitution. Thats part of the beauty of our democratic form of government. Mine is one of the many voices in that debate and I feel confident that the court system, which now has this case, is going to help us see some clarity.

Schaaf also wished Trump a happy international women's day.



On Wednesday, Sessions criticized Schaaf at a California Peace Officers Association meeting in Sacramento.

How dare you, he said of Schaaf. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?

Schaaf responded using the same How dare you phase:

How dare you vilify members of our community by trying to frighten the American public into thinking that all undocumented residents are dangerous criminals, she fired back.
Some people are offering an interesting tip to protect car owners from thieves busting into vehicles in San Francisco.

At least two signs posted near Alamo Square Park encourage folks to adhere to common knowledge break-in prevention tips: lock your car, take your keys with you and conceal your belongings. The last tip is much more bizarre. It spurs car owners to "fill a decoy purse with thousands of angry, poisonous bees."

A woman who lives in the neighborhood said residents crafted the signs.

NBC Bay Area has reached out to the San Francisco Police Department for comment.

Christie Smith/NBC Bay Area

Last year, 28,984 car break-ins were reported to San Francisco police, according to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. For comparison's sake, there were 24,624 car break-in reports in 2016, an 18 percent increase.



A recent NBC Bay Area hidden-camera investigation revealed thieves smashing into cars, snatching valuables and darting from the scene in a matter of seconds.
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation and NBC Bay Area/KNTV will host Decision 2018: The Race for Governor, a debate among candidates running for California governor, on May 8. The debate will be moderated by Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director and Moderator of Meet the Press.

The debate is scheduled to take place at the California Theatre in downtown San Jose from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. It will be televised live on KNTV NBC Bay Area (Comcast channel 3 and 703 and over-the-air on 11), KSTS Telemundo 48 (Comcast channel 18 and 718 and over-the-air on 48), and broadcast live on KQED radio (FM channel 88.5).

SVCF and NBC Bay Area will announce participating candidates and panel moderators by the end of April.



The debate will focus on a myriad of issues impacting Californians, including housing, transportation, the environment, education, and issues affecting children. The first 30 minutes will focus exclusively on issues facing Northern California, followed by an hour of discussion on issues facing the whole state.

The people of California have always been the catalysts for change not just here in the state, but across the nation. Thats why the choice for governor is so important, said Stacy Owen, President and General Manager of NBC Bay Area and Telemundo 48. NBC Bay Area and Telemundo 48 share a core mission with SVCF to help empower the people of the Bay Area through information and resources. This debate is a critical part of that mission.

Candidates will be invited to participate in the debate based on objective criteria, including the results of independent statewide polls that will be conducted from March 9 to April 16 by the Public Policy Institute of California, University of Southern California Dornsife and Los Angeles Times, University of California at Berkeley and Institute for Governmental Studies, and SVCFs own independent poll (which will be conducted by a nonpartisan team).

In addition to airing live on KNTV, KSTS and KQED radio, the debate will be offered for live broadcast on television and radio throughout California by stations affiliated with NBC, Telemundo and NPR.

To join the conversation online about the debate as it approaches, use #CAGovDebate on Twitter, and follow @nbcbayarea and @siliconvalleycf.
It has been reported that the lead county in outward migration is the Bay Area. Many are moving out of the Bay, into much more affordable cities. But, before considering packing up, calling your local U-Haul and moving, keep in mind that it'll cost you to move out of the Bay, almost as much as it will to stay.

So many people are leaving the Bay Area that there are not enough rental trucks to go around, causing rental truck rates to peak.

It costs $121 to rent a U-Haul from Phoenix to San Jose, but it costs $1,301 to rent one from San Jose to Phoenix. Why? Because there are simply no trucks in the Bay.

A new study published by University of Michigan professor Mark J. Perry, showed that this was simply a supply and demand issue, SF Gate reports.

One city in specific has had the greatest issue with his new report, CBS News reported that a San Jose U-Haul business are having trouble getting their rental vans back "because so many are on a one-way ticket out of town."

This piece of information led Perry to look into the cost of renting a U-Haul truck with destination to a city outside the Bay Area versus renting one with destination to the Bay.

He found that it costs $121 to rent a U-Haul from Phoenix to San Jose, but it costs $1,301 to rent one from San Jose to Phoenix. Why? Because there are simply no trucks in the Bay.

Perry also calculated the rate of renting a truck to and from other cities like Las Vegas, Portland, Ore., Nashville and Atlanta, all which were much higher outbound from San Jose.

"To help balance truck inventories and take advantage of higher demand in some rental markets than others, it's natural that U-Haul would implement demand-based, dynamic pricing," Perry wrote, according to SF Gate.
A 19-year-old student accused of killing his parents at Central Michigan University has been transferred to jail from a hospital.

Records show that James Davis Jr. was moved to the Isabella County jail on Wednesday. He heard the murder charges against him while in a hospital bed this week.

Authorities say Davis Jr. shot his parents, James and Diva Davis, of Plainfield, Illinois, in his dorm room last Friday.



He was captured early Saturday after a 16-hour manhunt in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

A train conductor called 911 when he spotted Davis Jr. in his underwear. Chris Bagwell, president of Great Lakes Central Railroad, says the crew wondered if he might try to jump on the train.

A funeral for Davis Jr.'s parents is set for Saturday in Broadview, Illinois.
Power is out for thousands of homes and businesses across Connecticut after the powerful noreaster Wednesday and Eversource says it hopes to have power restored to everyone by 11 p.m. Sunday.

Eversource, which supplies power to more than 1.2 million customers, is reporting more than 33,118 power outages, as of 7:30 p.m. Friday. The power company released town-by-town power restoration estimations.

Search for your town below or click to see it here:

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You can check the outage report here.

United Illuminating, which provides power to more than 330,000 customers, is reporting more than 3,500 outages at 7:30 p.m.

This will be a multi-day restoration effort. There is a lot of work that is being done, that will need to be done, and we have every available line and tree crew, mutual aid crew, support person. Everybodys at work to get these customers back on,  Mitch Gross, of Eversource, said Thursday.

The storm Wednesday dumped more than two feet of heavy, wet snow in parts of Connecticut and brought down trees and power lines. This was the second noreaster to hit in less than a week.

A statement from Eversource says the storm broke hundreds of poles and took down thousands of feet of power lines.

Your Snowy Nor'easter Highlights

Michael Tetreau, the First Selectman of Fairfield, said United Illuminating is reporting that power restoration in town will not be complete until Saturday.

Anyone whose power is out should report it to the utility company.

If you are an Eversource customer, you can report it online here or call 800-286-2000.

United Illuminating customers can report an outage using UIs automated phone system at 800-722-5584. To report an outage via mobile, text OUT to 839-884 (TEXT-UI), or visit Outage Central at uinet.com.

You can sign up for outage alerts to get restoration updates from UI. To receive them via mobile device, text REG to 839-884 (TEXT-UI), or visit Outage Central on uinet.com for more alert options.
A Hartford state representative, who was advised to step down by Connecticut's speaker of the house last week after questionable text messages with a teenager surfaced, tells NBC Connecticut he has resigned.

Texts obtained by the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters show Angel Arce exchanging messages with a 16-year-old girl. The girl in question is now 18 years old.



"I have decided to resign from my position as a state representative and town committee member. I do not want my presence to be a distraction to the very important work that occurs at the capitol and on the town committee every day. I also do not want my family, friends and supporters to be burdened in any way," Arce said in a statement that was put out by his attorney.

Arce is also stepping down from his post on Hartford's Democratic town committee.

One Democratic source describes the text messages as "not explicit and not at all appropriate."

The messages prompted several state leaders, including Governor Dannel Malloy and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, to call for Arce to quit.

"In light of the nature of such information, I strongly encourage you to resign your office of State Representative for the 4th District in the Connecticut House of Representatives," the letter from Aresimowicz said on Mar. 1.

On Wednesday, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Arce has been a dedicated state representative and knows "he wants to do the right thing for his district."

No criminal investigation is underway since the messages are not explicit.
Weeks after the untouchable matatu tout Felix Mwingirwa was accused of assaulting passengers at Tea Room in Nairobi, the bully tout is yet to be brought to book.

Last week, the National Police Service issued a statement saying the tout had three pending assault cases in court.

He was later arrested and charged with causing a disturbance, not assault as had been expected. He was then released on a Sh50,000 cash bail.

And in an interesting turn of events, the tout framed two witnesses, who claimed to have tried to help the assaulted passenger on January 30th. John Kariuki Mwaniki and John Kithinji were arrested on Sunday, with junior officers at Central Police Station claiming the arrests followed orders from above.

I really dont know why they were arrested, but anything is possible with Msanii, (Mwingirwa) because he is really connected. He has senior police officers who protect him, said an officer.

According to sources within the police force, Mwingirwa works in cahoots with senior police officers to collect protection fees from drivers, and hotel and bar owners.

Other touts at Tea Room in Nairobi confirmed Mwingirwas links to the police saying they feared for their lives.

Even if we tell you everything, this man will not go to jail. Rather, we are the ones who will end up being accused of things we have not done, a tout said, adding that Mwingirwa was linked to some of the top police officers who own matatus in the city.

But on Tuesday, DCI boss George Kinoti stated that no one is untouchable and ordered an immediate and comprehensive probe on Felix Mwingirwa.

The DCI also dropped the charges against the two witnesses who were set to appear in Court on Tuesday.

No one is untouchable. A criminal is a criminal and I will not tolerate this, said Kinoti, adding that he would personally visit the station to deal with the matter.

The tout should be investigated and charged with criminal offenses.

On Wednesday, city police chief Joseph ole Tito said the DCI will establish the activities the conductor has engaged in and whether he is working with officers of Central Police Station in particular.

We are calling on members of the public to share information on accusations against the tout. We are aware the accused has three assault cases pending in court, one dating back to 2004, Tito said.
What to Know The storm brought up to two feet of heavy, wet snow in parts of the state.

Power remains out for more than 140,000 across the state Thursday morning.

It could take several days to restore power to everyone,

More than 117,000 customers remain without power in Connecticut on Thursday morning after a nor'easter dumped more than two feet of heavy, wet snow in parts of the state and dozens of roads are closed because trees and wires are down.

The snow weighed down trees and took down power lines Wednesday night and there were around 160,000 power outages at one point. It could take several days to restore power to everyone, according to Eversource spokesperson Al Lara.

One town with widespread power outages is Old Saybrook. Officials said power will not likely be restored today and the lack of power means many people do not have water.

The YMCA in Westbrook is open to the public and will be providing warm showers and a charging station.

At 12:30 p.m., Old Saybrook Senior High School will open and offer a warm meal, hot showers, charging stations, WiFi access and shelter. Water hoses will also be available for residents to fill containers to bring water home. Domestic animals will not be allowed at the resource center.

Officials from United Illuminating said they expect it to take at least two days to restore power.

Gov. Dannel Malloy said 40 state roads are closed and public safety requests will be the top priority for utility companies.

He said the highways are in good shape Thursday morning, but some roads might be slippery.

Travel on Wednesday afternoon and evening was difficult. AAA said at 10 p.m. on Wednesday that they had received more than 600 calls, mostly for drivers who slid off the road.

Connecticut State Police said there were at least 1,526 calls made to the department. Malloy said Thursday that state police responded to 166 accidents with no injuries and six with minor injuries during the storm.

The storm closed hundreds of schools on Wednesday, with some schools announcing closures and delays again on Thursday. See the full list of closures here.

State offices are also affected. The governor told employees at state offices to come in an hour later than usual because of the impact from the storm.

Snow totals for areas in Litchfield and Fairfield counties were up to two feet. Some towns along the New York border are close to 20 inches.
More than 500 doctors and medical residents from Quebec, Canada, are speaking out against their own pay raises, which they find offensive given the struggles of nurses and patients, CNBC reports.

"We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations," they said in a letter, also signed by 150 medical students.

Canada has a public health system that provides "universal coverage for medically necessary health care services provided on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay," according to a government website.

While the average Canadian physician is paid $260,924 U.S. ($339,000 Canadian) per year, according to a recent Canadian Institute for Health Information report, that doesn't take into account what doctors must pay in overhead.
A Dallas teacher is a finalist in a $1 million Global Teacher Prize. Out of 30,000 applicants from 173 countries, Thomas J. Rusk Middle School teacher Akash Patel made the list of the 50 best. According to Bill Gates via a Twitter video about the award, Finalists were selected based on a rigorous set of criteria, including their proven effectiveness in inspiring students and helping them learn. The winner will be announced in Dubai on March 18th.

NBC 5s Kristin Dickerson attended one of Mr. Patels morning classes in Dallas to learn how his global experience is shaping his young students.

Now! Other disadvantages? asks teacher Akash Patel to a room of students.

Inside the classroom of 7th and 8th graders are global citizens in training.

Mas rapido, means what? Patel asks.

Hes a Spanish teacher who didnt grow up speaking the language.

My first language is Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi because my parents speak three languages between them, Patel said.

Patel is from Western India, but hes a product of the world.

Ive been to a lotSouth America, all of Central America, said Patel while pointing out his travels on a map.

Hes visited 35 countries, and the only continent Im missing right now is Africa and Antarctica, Patel said.

Along the way, hes learned six languages. Spanish came five years ago while rescuing sea turtles in Costa Rica.

So it was a do-or-die situation where I was a person who didnt speak a word of Spanish, put into a small town conserving sea turtles, and everybody spoke Spanish. So I had to get it! Patel said.

He already loved the culture and its similarities to his Indian culture, so he spent time in Central America perfecting the language, and realized he wanted to take his passion one step further.

And I was like, I want to be a teacher, I think, if I learned it I can teach others to learn it too. Patel said.

Now a second-year Spanish teacher, hes sharing his worldly perspective by bringing the world into his classroom.

Buenos dias! Patel said to a group of college students in Colombia joining his classroom via Skype.

This virtual discussion provided an opportunity for his students to practice Spanish, while subtly expanding their perspectives.

The other idea is for them to dispel stereotypes. How important is it for children to be able to see that we are all the same despite our differencesno matter where we come fromwhether its Colombia, Equatorial Guinea, or Venezuela, we all have the same aspirations for our families and regardless of who we are or where we come from were all the same, Patel said.

He wants to use his life experience to help grow global tolerance, peace and understanding.

One example, is the material that his students use to write.

They write on paper, which is made out of elephant poo called, PoopooPaper. One elephant gives you about 200 sheets of paper every day, doesnt stink and it doesnt smell, Patel said.

Another example came during a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of technology (while speaking in Spanish and English with his students). Patel shared, Steve Jobs would travel a lot to IndiaMr. Patels Country. He used to go there on spiritual visits.

They are both examples of subtle lessons that come directly from his unique life experience.

Patel is hoping to use his story to inspire his classroom by following the message of a favorite quote: I learned to give, not because I have plenty, but because I know what it feels like to have nothing, Patel said. And thats what I want to emphasize and teach to these children tooyou dont have to be rich to make a difference in someones life. We can all make a difference.

Hes sharing a love for service and life-long learning while imparting a competitive edge among his students.

Mr. Patel, you speak six languages, Patel said while recalling a conversation with one of his students, and I want to speak seven and Im going to be trolling you in 10 years, Yes! Thats the way, thats what I want out of this classroom.
What to Know Remains preliminarily identified as Christina Morris, a 23-year-old woman presumed dead since she disappeared Aug. 30, 2014.

The Collin County Medical Examiner's Office will confirm the person's identity and cause of death.

Field had been searched previously in Morris investigation; nearby cell tower pinged convicted kidnapper's phone after her disappearance.

Skeletal remains unearthed Wednesday in a field in Anna have been identified as Christina Morris, a 23-year-old woman presumed dead after being reported missing in August 2014.

Plano Chief of Police Gregory W. Rushin said during a news conference Thursday afternoon that the Collin County Medical Examiner's Office positively identified the remains as those of Christina Morris.

NBC 5 News

"We will continue to investigate this case and work with the Collin County District Attorney's Office in our continuing effort to seek justice for the family and loved ones of Christina Morris," Rushin said.

Until a positive identification is made by the Collin County Medical Examiner, we will have no more public comments on the human remains found yesterday in Anna, TX.  Collin Co. Sheriff (@CollinCoSO) March 8, 2018

Earlier in the day Morris' mother, Jonni Hare (nee McElroy), placed flowers at the site where the remains were found. At a news conference Thursday afternoon Hare thanked both the police and the public for standing by her family as they continually searched for her daughter over the last three and a half years.

[[476308513,C]]

Staff Photographer

"I know our daughter is in a better place. I know she's in heaven. I know she's proud of us for not giving up," Hare said. "Please understand that we need to grieve. We need to heal. We need our time."

Officials took no questions at the news conference Thursday and offered no information about what may have caused Morris' death.

Along with Morris family, volunteers who spent weekends helping search for Morris packed into the Plano Police Department to offer support.

It was a day that I think a lot of us thought at this point wouldnt happen, said volunteer Stacey Blair. Its very much a double-edged sword for all of us because, while we do want to find her, it took that little bit of hope away.

Blair and others in the group said they still plan to get together from time to time to do something good in Christinas name.

[[476311683, C]]

NBC 5's Diana Zoga has an update on the investigation after skeletal remains that were unearthed Wednesday in a field in Anna were identified as Christina Morris, a 23-year-old woman who has been presumed dead after being reported missing in August 2014.

NBC 5's Meredith Land has a look at the timeline of the case of Christina Morris. Skeletal remains unearthed Wednesday in a field in Anna have been identified as Morris, a 23-year-old woman who has been presumed dead after being reported missing in August 2014.

[[476319343, C]]

[[476335233, C]]



Morris was last being seen leaving The Shops at Legacy with friend Enrique Arochi on Aug. 30, 2014. Following Morris' disappearance, Arochi maintained that after he walked into the parking garage with Morris that the two separated and he never saw her again. Investigators later found Morris' DNA in Arochi's trunk; he was eventually sentenced to life in prison for her kidnapping.

Should Morris' cause of death be ruled a homicide, officials have not yet said what that may mean for Arochi.

After multiple police departments guarded the area overnight, investigators returned to the field Thursday to continue scouring the area for evidence.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The day before, officials could only confirm a crew clearing brush and doing excavation work in a field unearthed a partial skeleton along the 1800 block of Taylor Boulevard, about a mile east of U.S. Highway 75.



The field is less than a mile from a cell tower that pinged Arochi's phone the day after Morris disappeared, The Dallas Morning News reported; officials confirmed the area was searched at least once before during the investigation into Morris' disappearance.

Arochi, meanwhile, has maintained his innocence in the case and in a jailhouse interview with The Dallas Morning News (below) apologized to Morris' family for not being able to help more in the search for Christina. He urged anyone with information in her disappearace to come forward so that he could be freed and return to his family.



Vigil Held Thursday Night

Neighbors living in the Anna neighborhood near where Morriss remains were found organized a vigil Thursday night. It brought together dozens of strangers whove followed the search for Morris from afar with those whove given up every weekend for the last three and a half years to search for her.

This is sad. This is heart wrenching. This is horrible. Its your worst nightmare, and you see someone going through all that pain. But its tears of happiness because we brought her home. We found her. Shes at peace, said Roxanne Salmon who was part of the search parties.

Together they joined in prayer for Christina and her family. While no family was present, friends shared a reminder that just because Christina has been found doesnt mean shell be forgotten.

NBC 5's Diana Zoga and Allie Spillyards contributed to this report. Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change.
The promoter of the failed Fyre Festival in the Bahamas has pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges.

Billy McFarland entered the plea Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, agreeing not to appeal any sentence between 8 to 10 years.

The 26-year-old McFarland admitted using fake documents to trick investors in the festival.

The festival was promoted as an ultra-luxurious event on the Bahamian island of Exuma over two weekends last April and May.

Customers hoping to see Blink-182 and the hip hop act Migos arrived to learn music acts were canceled. Their upscale accommodations and gourmet food consisted of white tents and cheese sandwiches. McFarland declined comment outside court.

McFarland has been free on $300,000 bail since his June arrest. Sentencing was set for June 21 before Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald.
The mayor of Oakland, California, responded to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions by repeating the How dare you? phrase he used after she warned of a recent federal immigration raid.

Sessions criticized Mayor Libby Schaaf in a speech Wednesday to law enforcement officials after he sued California over laws that restrict cooperation with U.S. immigration authorities.[[476158553, C]]

Afterward, she said of Sessions: How dare you vilify members of the community, distract people from a broken immigration system that breaks up families and distort the reality of declining violent crime in a sanctuary city like Oakland.

Schaaf issued an unusual public warning last month about an immigration operation in Northern California.

Sessions said, How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?

California Gov. Jerry Brown denounced Sessions for coming to the state to speak about a lawsuit targeting policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, saying Wednesday it was unprecedented for him to act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer."[[476153053, C]]

Shortly after Sessions speech to law enforcement officials, the Democratic governor accused the attorney general of lying and trying to appease President Donald Trump.

What Jeff Sessions said is simply not true and I call upon him to apologize to the people of California for bringing the mendacity of Washington to California, Brown told reporters.

Sessions said several California state laws prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from making deportation arrests and singled out elected officials for their actions. He had particularly strong words for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who issued an unusual public warning last month about an immigration operation. [[476153053, C]]

How dare you? he said of Schaaf at a California Peace Officers Association meeting in Sacramento. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?

The Justice Department, in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Sacramento, is challenging three California laws that bar police from asking people about their citizenship status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities.[[476081733, C]]

It wasnt something I chose to do, but I cant sit by idly while the lawful authority of federal officers are being blocked by legislative acts and politicians, Sessions said, straying from his prepared remarks.

More than a dozen attendees in a room of about 200 people gave the attorney general a standing ovation.

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in an escalating feud between the Trump administration and California, which has resisted the president on issues from taxes to marijuana policy and defiantly refuses to help federal agents detain and deport immigrants. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it will increase its presence in California, and Sessions wants to cut off funding to jurisdictions that wont cooperate.

I say: Bring it on, said California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat who wrote the so-called sanctuary state bill. Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was among those suggesting that Sessions shouldnt come at all.

The lawsuit was filed as the Justice Department also reviews Schaafs decision to warn of an immigration sweep in advance, which ICE said allowed hundreds of immigrants to elude detention. Schaaf said Tuesday that the city would continue to inform all residents about their constitutional rights.

The California laws were passed in response to Trumps promises to sharply ramp up the deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally.

One prohibits employers from letting immigration agents enter worksites or view employee files without a subpoena or warrant, an effort to prevent workplace raids. Another stops local governments from contracting with for-profit companies and ICE to hold immigrants. Justice Department officials said that violates the Constitutions supremacy clause, which renders invalid state laws that conflict with federal ones.

The Supreme Court reinforced the federal governments primacy in enforcing immigration law when it blocked much of Arizonas tough 2010 immigration law on similar grounds. The high court found several key provisions undermined federal immigration law, though it upheld a provision requiring officers, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally.

In this case, California has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and responsibility of Congress to protect our homeland, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. [[238427591, C]]

Sessions, who has blamed sanctuary city policies for crime and gang violence, spoke Wednesday to groups representing police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys, narcotics investigators and the California Highway Patrol. Only the California State Sheriffs Association actively opposed the so-called sanctuary law.

Dozens of demonstrators chanted stand up, fight back and no justice, no peace outside the hotel where the meeting was held and some blocked traffic on a major thoroughfare. A heavy police presence was on hand.

Demonstrator Henry Gordon of Sacramento said he hopes Sessions gets the message that Californians will resist efforts to separate families and deport immigrants.

Becerra, who is up for election in November, said sanctuary policies increase public safety by promoting trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, while allowing police resources to be used to fight other crimes.

Were in the business of public safety, not deportation, he said.
Festival of the Kite: What makes a more stunning backdrop to a beautiful, darting, brightly hued kite? A perfectly blue sky, the sort of sky that writers might describe as "cobalt" or "azure," or a moody dome full of puffy clouds? You're more likely to see the latter on Sunday, March 11, but the rain may leave early, giving kite mavens a chance to gather at Redondo Beach Pier for this long-running, as in 44 years, festival. It's free to join or watch, and there's other stuff going down, too, like a car show and chalk festival. Breezy beauty, heralding the start of Daylight Saving Time.

Smorgasburg LA Pop-up: You know you can count on seeing this huge food-stall-tastic extravaganza every Sunday at ROW DTLA. But when your eyes also see it, at Santa Monica Pier, on Saturday, March 10, well, believe them, for that really is the downtown event calling upon the westiest part of town. It's free to enter, dozens upon dozens of delectable vendors will be on the pier, and the rain or shine bit? Yeah, that stands, to don your slicker and get to supping, in Santa Monica, Smorgasburg LA-style.

"Bingo Hall" Opens: You love The Autry Museum? Dig into great, funny, and inclusive Theatre at the Autry!, too, as Native Voices presents "Bingo Hall." Playwright Dillon Chitto's story follows Edward Anaya, who calls the bingo games at the pueblo twice a month. But college is calling Edward, which makes him ponder what's next, what the future shall bring, and who he'll be "if he leaves home and bingo behind." The comedic play, which is billed as if "... Ferris Bueller if he lived in a pueblo," opens on Friday, March 9 and runs through Sunday, March 25.

Celebrate Nowruz: Where to join the "largest Nowruz celebration in the nation"? Why right here in Southern California, of course, at UCLA on Sunday, March 11 from noon to 5 o'clock. The traditional Iranian New Year festivities will include a Spring Walk parade, dancing, to-dos for kids, music shows, and "a rare performance by Iranian living legend Sima Bina." The outdoor happenings are free, while the music in Royce Hall is ticketed. Say hello to spring, welcome the brighter days with a full embrace, and join the Farhang Foundation for this major celebration.

ArtNight Pasadena: The free admission, join-for-nothing events keep rolling, with this beyond-beloved, twice-a-year happening in the Crown City. It's on Friday night, do note, which is very much a part of the weekend, and it lasts a good four hours, so you can soak up so many artsy visuals and musicale delights, all for free, free, free. There's a free shuttle, too, to whisk you from the Norton Simon Museum to The Armory Center for the Arts, and beyond, and food trucks will be about (so do bring cash). Enjoy, art people, from 6 to 10 o'clock on March 9.
What to Know The White House says Mexico, Canada and other countries may be spared from Trump's planned tariffs under national security "carve outs"

Brazil's yellow fever outbreak has now infected more people than the previous one, which had been the largest in decades

A physical altercation allegedly broke out between Tommy Lee and his 21-year-old son, according to TMZ

Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.

Lawmakers, Business Brace for Rollout of Trump's Tariff Plan

The White House says Mexico, Canada and other countries may be spared from President Trump's planned steel and aluminum tariffs under national security "carve-outs," a move that could soften the blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners and dire economic warnings from lawmakers and business groups. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a "case by case" and "country by country" basis, a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exemptions from Trump's plan. The update came as congressional Republicans and business groups braced for the impact of expected tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, appearing resigned to additional protectionist trade actions as Trump signaled upcoming economic battles with China. Trump was expected to announce the tariffs Thursday afternoon. The looming departure of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed the promised tariffs, set off anxiety among business leaders and investors worried about a potential trade war.

McDonald's Flips Iconic Golden Arches Upside Down

Patrons at a McDonald's in Lynwood are doing a double take. Yes, the restaurant's iconic "golden arches" are upside down. It's not a snafu, and no one is getting fired. McDonald's has turned its "M" into a "W" in honor of International Women's Day, and the Lynwood location was the only one in the country chosen for the logo flip outside. "Everyone knows the golden arches, so to demonstrate the importance of elevating women by flipping that iconic sign really makes a statement," said Nicole Enearu. Enrau, along with her mother and sister, is the owner-operator of the Lynwood McDonald's and 17 others. While her store has the distinction of being the only one in the nation with an upside down sign, 100 other McDonald's locations will have the flipped logo on packaging, placemats and employee shirts and hats. "I think it's pretty inspiring and empowering for women all over the world, and it's very uplifting," said McDonald's customer Ellesse Matthews. While this is the first year McDonald's is celebrating International Women's Day, customers are hoping it won't be the last.

1 Student Dead, Another Hurt in High School Shooting

Authorities said they are investigating a fatal shooting at an Alabama high school as apparently accidental, lamenting the death of a 17-year-old female student in the incident that also left a 17-year-old boy injured. Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said investigators are seeking to piece together the exact circumstances surrounding the shooting at dismissal time at Huffman High School, one of the city's largest. He added the probe will involve scouring school surveillance video for clues and completing interviews among students and staff at the large magnet school. "At this particular time, we are considering this accidental," the police chief said at a news conference just hours after the shooting. "Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions." The shooting prompted a brief lockdown though students were subsequently released and authorities said they had subsequently determined that the shooting was not perpetrated by "someone from the outside" the school. Wilson declined to say who fired the gun or to identify what firearm, adding it had been recovered by authorities.

Brazil Yellow Fever Outbr eak Largest in Decades

Brazil's yellow fever outbreak has now infected more people than the previous one, which had been the largest in decades. The Health Ministry said officials have confirmed 846 cases of the mosquito-borne disease. Of those, 260 have died. In the 2016-2017 outbreak, Latin America's largest nation saw 777 cases and 261 deaths. Large swaths of Brazil have long been at risk for yellow fever. But the previous outbreak and the current one are happening in areas not previously considered at risk for the disease and where vaccination rates were low. The current outbreak is hitting the populous states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais hard and encroaching on major cities. In response, Brazil has launched a campaign to vaccinate more than 23 million people.

Tommy Lee Posts Photo of Bloodied Lip After Alleged Fight With Son

Tensions are flying high between Tommy Lee and his son Brandon. According to TMZ, a physical altercation allegedly broke out between Lee and his 21-year-old son. No arrests were made, however, Lee was transported to a nearby hospital after his son allegedly gave him a fat lip. The Los Angeles County Fire Department confirms to E! News they did in fact respond to Lee's Calabasas home at roughly 10:50 p.m. last evening for an assault call. Lee posted a photo of his bleeding face on social media, writing, "My heart is broken. You can give your kids everything they could ever want in their entire lives and they can still turn against you. Good job Brandon! Great son!" The post has since been deleted. Brandon, who is the son of Lee and Pamela Anderson, told TMZ his father was drunk and he punched him in self-defense. But in a tweet posted by Lee in response to the allegations, the musician gives new details on his side of the story.
The Trump administration is challenging three California laws that, among other things, bar police from asking people about their citizenship status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to Sacramento Wednesday, one day after the suit was filed there, to speak to law enforcement officials. He accused the mayor of Oakland of endangering law enforcement agents' lives after warning the public last month of an upcoming immigration operation, and was subsequently rebuked by Gov. Jerry Brown, who accused him of lying.

The lawsuit is the latest volley in an escalating feud between the Trump administration and California. The state has defiantly refused to help federal agents detain and deport undocumented immigrants. Sessions said that makes cities more dangerous.

"It wasn't something I chose to do, but I can't sit by idly while the lawful authority of federal officers are being blocked by legislative acts and politicians," Sessions said, straying from his prepared remarks.

[NATL] Top News Photos: Pope Visits Japan, and More

More than a dozen attendees in a room of about 200 people gave the attorney general a standing ovation.

Of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Sessions said, "How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda?"

Brown contended that it was unprecedented for Sessions to "act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer." The Democratic governor also accused the attorney general of lying and trying to appease President Donald Trump.

"What Jeff Sessions said is simply not true and I call upon him to apologize to the people of California for bringing the mendacity of Washington to California," Brown told reporters.

Earlier, Brown had responded to the lawsuit on Twitter in a parody of President Donald Trump's own Twitter style:

"At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they dont work here. SAD!!!"

BREAKING NEWS: Attorney General Sessions to make major sanctuary jurisdiction announcement at 26th annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day! Join us as we go live on Facebook Wednesday, March 7 at 8:00 a.m. PST. https://t.co/kdhS04czIP #lawenforcement #legislation #California pic.twitter.com/npkjq5w4vE  CPOA (@CalPeaceOfficer) March 6, 2018

Brown is named in the lawsuit along with Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who said the state is on firm legal footing.

"Our track record so far when it comes to any dispute with the federal government has been pretty good," Becerra said.

Dozens of undocumented immigrants were arrested across Northern California last month, according to federal officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations.

The arrests sparked fear in immigrant neighborhoods and kept people at home for fear of being arrested, according to local business leaders. The arrests came amid a nationwide debate over whether local jurisdictions that call themselves sanctuary cities, like Oakland, must cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

About half of the individuals arrested had criminal convictions in addition to immigration violations, including convictions for assault/battery, crimes against children, weapons charges and DUI, according to ICE.

The California laws were passed in response to Trump's promises to sharply ramp up the deportation of people living in the U.S. illegally.

One prohibits employers from letting immigration agents enter worksites or view employee files without a subpoena or warrant, an effort to prevent workplace raids. Another stops local governments from contracting with for-profit companies and ICE to hold immigrants. Justice Department officials said that violates the Constitution's supremacy clause, which renders invalid state laws that conflict with federal ones.

The Supreme Court reinforced the federal government's primacy in enforcing immigration law when it blocked much of Arizona's tough 2010 immigration law on similar grounds. The high court found several key provisions undermined federal immigration law, though it upheld a provision requiring officers, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally.

In this case, California "has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and responsibility of Congress to protect our homeland," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement.

The Justice Department is also reviewing Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf's decision to warn of the immigration sweep in advance, which ICE said allowed hundreds of immigrants to elude detention.

Both Schaaf and San Francisco Mayor Mark Farrell responded Tuesday to the news of Sessions's planned appearance in Sacramento.

This is not the first time that the federal administration has rattled its saber. We have seen repeated attacks on our city and its values - from insulting tweets to hateful policy decisions - but San Francisco will not be intimidated," Farrell said. "Our priority is the safety and wellbeing of our residents and no attack will undermine the values of our City. San Francisco is and will remain a home for hardworking immigrants and I am committed to defending and supporting our longstanding sanctuary policies.

Schaaf called Oakland a "city of immigrants."

"We will continue to exercise our legal right to exist as a sanctuary city," Schaaf said. "We will continue to inform all residents about their constitutional rights, and we will continue to support Californias sanctuary status."

We will also distinguish between law abiding residents who work hard and contribute to our community from dangerous criminals," Schaaf added. This administration has tried to portray all immigrants as villains. We know that is a racist lie, and we will shed light on that myth every day."

San Francisco Mayor Sam Liccardo also chimed in:

As a former federal prosecutor, I know how to follow the law," he said. "I also know that this Administrations radical shift toward indiscriminate enforcement of immigration law is making urban communities less safe. Police chiefs of major cities throughout the nation agree that we critically need to ensure that every resident  regardless of status  will not hesitate to call 911 in an emergency, to report a crime or share information with the police.[[476066463, C]]


Pennsylvania school districts, parents and activists have argued before a panel of judges that the state has failed in its constitutional duty to provide students an adequate education.

A long-running lawsuit over how schools are funded, which was dismissed and then revived last year, was argued in Commonwealth Court on Wednesday.

Attorneys for the governor, education officials and top lawmakers argue that the state is fulfilling its duties and that the lawsuit raises political questions that courts shouldn't answer.

"There is no dispute that all Pennsylvania public school students deserve a high -quality education and access to educational resources necessary to be successful in the 21' century," a brief filed by Gov. Tom Wolf said. "The work to increase funding for public schools is not over."

The case was filed before Wolf took office, but it has fallen to the current governor to address the ongoing lawsuit. Wolf has supported Philadelphia regaining control of its school district.

"He has been steadfast in fighting for more and fairer education funding since day one," a spokesperson for the governor said.

Judges also questioned their ability to determine what an adequate education would be, which was the reason for the previous dismissal of the suit.

But a lawyer for the plaintiffs said students in districts that can't afford textbooks are less well-off than those in wealthier areas.
As usual, we have links to the biggest stories today.

Stormy Daniels sues Trump over alleged affair and hush agreement According to the legal complaint filed in California state court and tweeted out by her lawyer on Tuesday, Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, signed the document on behalf of the President instead. The porn star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims in the lawsuit to have had an affair with Trump several years prior to his presidency.

What should Kim trust more: his nuclear weapons or Trump? Trumps inconsistency and bellicosity will not result in a denuclearized North Korea, but the fear of a US attack in both North and South may result in a de-escalation of tensions. And the reality of the New Trump Era is that avoiding an unnecessary second Korean War would count as a major foreign policy victory for both Washington and Seoul.

Mississippi may pass most restrictive abortion ban in the US The Senate passed a version of House Bill 1510, known as the gestational age act, with minor changes regarding the penalty to providers who break the law. In its current form, doctors would lose their license to practice medicine and face civil penalties.

Why boys love guns, and what to do about it Reconciling these two facts is difficult for many parents, who are unsure whether their sons fun play at home is in any way related to the fear they feel for their safety when their sons leave the home.

Carmen Jorda: Former racer criticized for stance on women racing in F1 The Spaniard  who sits on the FIAs Women in Motorsport Commission  suggested female drivers would find it easier in Formula E, the worlds premier all-electric racing series. After getting behind the wheel of a Formula E car for a demonstration ahead of last weekends race in Mexico, Jorda was asked by reporters if the car was indeed easier to drive for women.

A jet plane that takes off like a helicopter Picture international air (CNN)  travel without the hassle: no costly airport transfer, no busy security line or passport control, no waiting to board or depart. Instead, youre in and out of the airplane in minutes and jet setting across the world to your destination in no time at all.

Key Trump economy adviser Cohn resigns US President Donald Trumps top economic adviser Gary Cohn is resigning, the White House has said. It is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from President Trumps team. There has been speculation that Mr Cohn, a supporter of free trade, was angered by Mr Trumps plans to impose tariffs on aluminium and steel imports.

Coca-Cola to launch alcoholic drink Coca-Cola is planning to produce an alcoholic drink for the first time in the companys 125-year history  with an alcopop-style product in Japan. It is keen to cash in on the countrys growing taste for Chu-Hi  canned sparkling flavoured drinks given a kick with a local spirit called shochu.

BBC reporter harassed by Russian MP A BBC journalist has alleged that she was sexually harassed by the senior Russian politician Leonid Slutsky. BBC Russian Services Farida Rustamova is the third journalist to openly accuse him of improper behaviour. The Duma deputy denied the accusations and has threatened to take the women to court for defamation.

Sad story of Australias first gay wedding A dying woman and her partner were the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Australia, it has been revealed. After the nation redefined its marriage law in December, Jo Grant and Jill Kindt obtained an exemption from an official waiting period. Ms Grant died from cancer on 30 January, less than seven weeks after marrying Ms Kindt.

Einstein note to young woman sold A note written by Albert Einstein in 1921 to an Italian scientist who had refused to meet him has sold for $6,100 (4,300) at an auction in Jerusalem. The Nobel-winning scientist, then 42, wrote to Elisabetta Piccini, a 22-year-old chemistry student. Ms Piccini lived one floor above his sister, Maja, in Florence.

A chicken laid a huge egg with another egg already inside it An egg inside an egg sounds like some weird metaphor for something, but no. It appears to be a literal thing. Stockmans Eggs in Queensland, Australia, posted an image of an absolutely enormous chickens egg on Sunday. That poor, poor chicken. Soon Australian outlets started running the story that inside the mega-egg another, smaller egg had been discovered.

A teenager was so thirsty for shirtless Michael B. Jordan, she broke her retainer Imagine being so thirsty that you break your retainer. A teenager was that overwhelmed during a scene in Black Panther. The whole thing started when Tumblr user nitramaraho responded to a GIF set of Michael B. Jordan, featuring him as shirtless Erik Killmonger in Black Panther.

Black Panther was packed with amazing tech. Heres how the real world compares to Wakanda. The futuristic elements of Black Panther are definitely reminiscent of technologies being currently developed in the real world.

Jeff Bezos knocks Bill Gates off the top of Forbes richest people list Forbes magazine has released its annual list of super duper rich people on Tuesday, and move over Bill Gates because Jeff Bezos is flush with cash. Surprising no one, the Amazon CEO topped the list with a $112 billion net worth.
The flickering and popping started sometime around 7 p.m. Wednesday.

After hours of snow, wind and freezing rain, transformers throughout New Jerseys Cherry Hill neighborhood started to give out.

It just popped all over the place. It was like fireworks, Cherry Hill resident Alan Blair said. It happened so quick.

His home lost power and the family was forced to sleep huddled beneath layers of blankets just to keep warm through the night.

Down the street, a large tree branch crashed through a neighbors skylight. The limb still dangled into Ron Shellings living room on Thursday morning, letting in cold air and spreading wood chips onto his furniture and carpet.

"I tried to clean most of it up," he told NBC10.

Even a nearby Wawa closed its doors as volunteer firefighters cleared trees.

Thousands of people throughout the region remained without power Thursday after a late March nor'easter slammed into Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and up through New England. At one point on Wednesday, more than 195,000 customers were in the dark.

Power companies scrambled to meet demand. At least 7,000 of PECOs outages lingered from the previous nor'easter, which hit our area less than one week ago.

In hard-hit Bucks County, the American Red Cross set up a shelter for people left in the dark at the Middletown Municipal Building in Langhorne.

I think its very likely well be here through the end of the week and then it really just depends on what happens with the weather, Peter Brown from the American Red Cross said.

Some families werent taking any chances. NBC10 reporter Deanna Durante spoke with residents who were packing up the essentials and heading to a hotel.

Packing the essentials in bucks county as families head to hotels as far as NJ to get electricity @NBCPhiladelphia pic.twitter.com/0iOwUv4ujm  Deanna Durante (@deannadurante) March 8, 2018

For residents still living in the dark, NBC10 has some tips on what to do with perishable food:

Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible to keep the items inside cold.

The fridge will keep items cold for about four hours.

A full freezer will remain cold for about 48 hours.

If you are in a pinch, always know the closest supplier of dry or block ice. Dry ice can help save your food, keeping a full freezer cold for up to 48 hours.

You can always use those coolers you have on hand (or go buy some) where you can keep tightly packed food.

Check each food item independently for unusual odor, color or texture. If anything seems odd, or the food feels warm, throw it away. NEVER taste food to see if its safe.

Food may be safely refrozen if it still contains ice crystals or is at 40 degrees or below. If any frozen meat, poultry, fish or eggs were exposed to 40 degrees of higher for two hours or more toss it.

And remember: When in doubt, throw it out.
Women across the world shouted their demands for equality, respect and empowerment Thursday to mark International Women's Day, with protesters in Spain launching a 24-hour strike and crowds of demonstrators filling the streets of Manila, Seoul, New Delhi and beyond.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world is at "a pivotal moment for women's rights," telling a star-studded event at U.N. headquarters that "for decades, women have been calling for the equality that is their right."

"Today, they are shaking the pillars of patriarchy," Gutteres said. "They are insisting on lasting change. This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want."

See how people around the world empowered women.

AMERICA

In California, a Los Angeles-area McDonald's temporarily flipped it's iconic golden arches from an "M" to a "W," and it was the chain's only U.S. location chosen to honor Women's Day with its logo. The upside-down arch also appeared Thursday on the fast-food giant's website and social media accounts, and packaging and worker uniforms had the flipped logo at about 100 of its 14,000 restaurants.

Activists and union members held a rally on International Womens Day in Chicago to recognize the inequalities women face daily and also social, economic, political and cultural accomplishments of women.

In New York, women statues across the city were adorned in flowers as part of a celebration by clothing retailer Old Navy on International Women's Day.

EUROPE

Some 5.3 million people in Spain staged protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence. In Barcelona, protesters disrupting traffic into the city center were pushed back by riot police. Strikes were especially noticeable in media, with prominent female anchors and journalists absent TV and radio programs. Later, after a full day of striking, thousands of women took over the central arteries of cities across Spain for evening marches.

International Women's Day is a public holiday in Russia, but opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak staged a solo picket outside the lower house of the Russian parliament in Moscow to demand the resignation of a prominent lawmaker whom several female journalists accuse of sexual harassment.

In Italy, actress Asia Argento, who helped launch the #MeToo movement, united women against the power imbalance in favor of men with #WeToo. She marched later in Rome and participated in a strike to show the contributions of women at home and in the workplace.

Elsewhere in Italy, Catholic women challenged Pope Francis to give women a greater voice in Catholic Church decision-making, warning about how its all-male leadership refuses to change their entrenched second-class status.

On a lighter note, a leading French newspaper pointed out discrimination and the gender pay gap by upping its price for men. The left-leaning daily Liberation said that for one day only, men would pay 50 euro cents more than women, in a reflection of the 25 percent less that women in France are paid, on average.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, considered by many to be one of the world's most powerful women urged in a video message to continue the fight for equality, saying, "many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights ... but there's still a lot to do."

And Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle met female students in Birmingham studying science, technology, engineering and math as part of their celebrations marking Women's Day.

ASIA

In China, students made light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the country's president. One banner joked that a boyfriend's term should also have no limits, while another said, "A country cannot exist without a constitution, as we cannot exist without you!" But photos of the students' banners, like other content about the proposed amendment, were quickly censored on social media.

Hundreds of activists in pink and purple shirts protested in Manila against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, calling him among the worst violators of women's rights in Asia. Human rights groups have condemned Duterte's sexist remarks, including one in which he asked troops to shoot female communist rebels in the genitals.

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women, who would have been afraid to leave their homes during Taliban rule, gathered in the capital to commemorate the day and to remind their leaders that plenty of work remains to be done to give Afghan woman a voice, ensure their education and protect them from increasing violence.

Hundreds of South Koreans, many wearing black and holding black #MeToo signs, rallied in central Seoul. South Korea's #MeToo movement has gained significant traction since January. The list of women who speak out is growing day by day.

In India, hundreds of women, including students, teachers and sex workers, marched through the capital to bring attention to domestic violence, sexual attacks and discrimination in jobs and wages.

"Unite against violence against women," one placard urged. "Man enough to say no to domestic abuse," said another. "My body, My choice."

In Pakistan, men sometimes assault women for refusing to marry them, and acid attacks are not uncommon. A victim of an acid attack joined hundreds of activists who rallied in Pakistan's port city of Karachi on Thursday to denounce violence against women.

AFRICA

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged men to stop physically abusing their wives. Domestic violence is common in Uganda, although victims rarely report perpetrators to the police for fear of being stigmatized or thrown out of their homes.

"If you want to fight, why don't you look for a fellow man and fight?" Museveni said, calling domestic abusers cowards.

Tim Sullivan in Delhi, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, and AP correspondents around the world contributed to this report.
A New Jersey teacher is recovering at home after being struck by lightning during the rare weather phenomenon known as thundersnow at the height of Wednesday's nor'easter.

Manchester Middle School 8th grade teacher Jessica Geiger was outside on bus duty as the school prepared for dismissal around 2:30 p.m. Suddenly, lightning struck the umbrella she was holding, Manchester Township police and school officials said.

Geiger was standing on the sidewalk in front of the school with other staff members when the strike occurred.

"The staff members in the vicinity were also shaken, however they helped [Geiger] inside the building and the nurse was able to attend to her," Manchester Schools superintendent David Trethaway said in a letter to NBC10.

"She was transported to the hospital where she did undergo some tests and remained overnight for observation."



Geiger was shaken and in pain but conscious throughout the ordeal, Trethaway said.

She was treated for non-life-threatening injuries and was home resting Thursday, according to Trethaway.

He praised the actions of staff members who divided up to tend to Geiger while also ensuring the safety of students.

On Thursday, several of them wrote cards expressing good wishes to their teacher.

"[Geiger] is an excellent teacher who is well respected and loved by the staff and students and we are all very happy that she is going to have a full recovery," Trethaway said.



There were reports of thundersnow in Manchester Township around the same time the lightning struck, NBC10 First Alert Weather chief meteorologist Tammie Souza said. There were more than 30 reports of lightning strikes across the region as a major March nor'easter battered towns in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware on Wednesday.

Tammie described thundersnow as a "thunderstorm in winter conditions."

"Instead of a quick burst of heavy rain that you would get, you get a quick burst of extremely heavy snow  maybe 2 or 3 inches an hour," she said. "You get the lightning, you get the thunder and you might get some gusty winds."

PHOTOS: 2nd March Nor'easter Strikes With Heavy, Wet Snow
A man wearing a hospital gown was found dead Thursday in Hillcrest, San Diego police said.

Officers were called to the location on 6th Avenue directly under the Washington Street bridge just before 6 a.m.

The location of the incident is about a block away from Scripps Mercy Hospital and at the Washington offramp from southbound SR-163.

The man was wearing a patient wristband from Scripps Mercy, San Diego police confirmed to NBC 7. No details were given on the date of the wristband. We have reached out to the hospital to ask for more information.



A tarp covered the body as it lay in the parking lot of a skilled nursing facility.

The death investigation was ongoing and there were few details Thursday afternoon, officers said.

Investigators are reviewing security camera footage from nearby buildings to try and determine what may have happened to the man.

The man's identity has not been released.

No other information was available.

Please refresh this page for updates on this story. Details may change as more information becomes available.
An Olympian High School sophomore was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of making a threat on social media, Chula Vista police confirmed.

In her Instagram post, the 10th grader threatened a school shooting, police said.

Olympian HS officials contacted police on Wednesday after they saw the threat on Instagram.

Officers went to the student's home and interviewed her and her mother. Both were cooperative of the investigation.

The student admitted that she made the threat, but told police that she made it as a joke and thought it would be funny.

Officers searched the girl's house and found no weapons. She was taken into custody and transported to Juvenile Hall.

"The Chula Vista Police Department takes all school threats seriously, regardless of the intent or the ability of a persons ability to carry out the threat at that time," the department said in a release detailing the incident.

In the weeks following the deadly Parkland, Florida high school shooting, law enforcement agencies in San Diego have made several arrests regarding threats.

On Monday, March 5, a teenager was booked into juvenile hall, accused of making criminal threats on social media aimed at Canyon Crest Academy. The school is in the San Dieguito Union High School District.

A Borrego Springs High School student was suspended on March 1 for threatening to blow up the school. County prosecutors determined no charges would be filed in the case.

A 14-year-old West Hills High School freshman was arrested on Feb. 28 for posting a photo of an AR-15 rifle made out of Legos on Instagram with a caption that read, "Don't come to school tomorrow."

On Feb. 27, a Westview High School student was arrested after he was overheard telling classmates to stay home, SDPD investigators said. The unidentified teenager was booked into juvenile hall.

On Feb. 26, a teenager, 17, who was a former student of Torrey Pines High School was arrested and accused of threatening to conduct a shooting at the school. It was the second arrest involving the school. In an unrelated case, a 14-year-old freshman was booked into juvenile hall for making verbal and written threats to harm others, police said.

San Diego police are looking for leads into who tagged various buildings on the campus of Rancho Bernardo High School. The messages discovered by staff on Monday, Feb. 26 referenced the deadly Parkland shooting.

On Feb. 23, an 18-year-old El Centro man was charged with making criminal threats against students and teachers at Imperial High School in Imperial County.

On Feb. 21, San Diego police were made aware of messages on social media threatening a shooting at two Clairemont schools - Madison High School and Creative Performing Media Arts Middle School. The next day, a second message was posted that added San Diego High School and School of Creative and Performing Arts to the list of possible targets. Officials with San Diego Unified School District said the threats were believed to be connected to a middle school student.

On Feb. 20, a message scrolled on the wall of a girls' bathroom prompted an increase in security at High Tech High in Point Loma. That same week, additional security was in place at San Marcos High School for a separate threat and at Scripps Ranch High School following a student's comment perceived to be threatening to public safety.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson may often play a hero on the big screen, but the action star took to social media to thank a handful of real life heroes who assisted in an undisclosed medical crisis Saturday involving his 2-year-old daughter Jasmine.

"Something happened to my family that I would never want to happen to any of you guys out there," Johnson revealed on Instagram. "We were up all night in the emergency room. We had something scary happen with our baby girl Jasmine. She's OK now, thank God. But I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who was so caring and concerned and responsive."

Johnson took time to thank the 911 operator, the Los Angeles Fire Department first responders as well as members of the UCLA Medical team who asisted during the emergency.

"To all you mommies and daddies out there, when emergencies like these happen I highly recommend you stay as calm and as focused as possible because our little babies they pick up on what we're putting out especially in times of stress," he said.
A man who had a stranger shoot at him on a busy Northern Virginia street last summer says the shooter used a racial slur against him and then opened fire, missing him but hitting his girlfriend twice.

The shooter says he fired in a moment of panic and acted in self-defense.

The trial of Ernest Stickell, 59, began Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia, less than a year after Stickell opened fire on Ricardo Jennings and Dejonte Holt the morning of Wednesday, July 19, 2017.

As News4 reported, the road rage clash began on the Beltway before 8 a.m., continued onto the Eisenhower Connector and left Holt, then 33, with gunshot wounds to the neck and shoulder.

Jennings testified Wednesday that Stickell cut off Holt's SUV twice, the couple got out to confront him, Stickell called Jennings the N-word and then Stickell opened fire.

Stickell's defense lawyer said Stickell had no idea why the couple confronted him and that he opened fire out of fear.

Jennings testified that Holt was giving him a ride to work when they were cut off twice by a white van. First, as they exited the Beltway, the driver went around them and slammed on the brakes. Then, he cut them off again on the Eisenhower Connector, he said.

Jennings said Holt then drove the SUV around the van and stopped in front of it. Then, they both got out.

"What's your problem?" Jennings said he asked Stickell.

He said Stickell cursed him and used the N-word.

Jennings, who is black, said he cursed back, calling Stickell, who is white, a "cracker."

He testified that Stickell then jumped out of the van with a gun and took aim at Holt's head. He fired multiple times and hit the woman in the neck and shoulder.

She fell to the ground, and Jennings said Stickell then fired twice more, trying to hit him.

Jennings ran and hid in the bushes, and Stickell drove off.

Witnesses chased him and got his license plate number, but he was able to get away.

Later in the day, Stickell, of Mechanicsville, Maryland, turned himself in to Maryland State Police in Frederick. He was charged with malicious wounding and use of a firearm in a felony.

Outside the Alexandria courthouse, Stickell himself told News4 on Tuesday that he would plead self-defense. He declined additional comment.

Holt, of Bladensburg, Maryland, is able to work after she was shot, but she copes with ongoing emotional distress.

Jennings' mother, Earlette Williams, told News4 on Tuesday that Stickell never should have opened fire.

"You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. It wasn't fair," she said. "It should not have happened. No one should use a gun for the wrong reason."

The jury has heard from several witnesses who saw the confrontation and shooting.

Stickell was the target of a racial harassment suit in 2001, as News4 previously reported. A man Stickell supervised at an auto glass company alleged that Stickell used racial slurs against him, against customers and even against Stickell's own wife, who was African American.

"In one particularly egregious episode, Stickell placed a picture of a monkey between the pages of a parts manual ... that Spriggs regularly used," court filings say. "Stickell had captioned the picture with X's and O's, along with the notation 'so you'll never forget who you are.'"

Stickell is expected to take the stand in his own defense soon.
An employee for the United States Secret Service has been arrested on charges he possessed and distributed child pornography, police say.

Jeffrey Litteral, 52, of Denton, Maryland, was arrested Tuesday night near his home, Maryland State Police said Wednesday.

Litteral has been charged with possession of child porn, distribution of child porn, possession of obscene material and distribution of obscene material.

The investigation into Litteral started in 2017 when a Maryland State Police investigator received information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about possible child pornography being uploaded online.

After arresting him, police served a search warrant for Litteral's home in Caroline County and recovered electronic equipment. Investigators will do forensic tests on the equipment.

The U.S. Secret Service said in a statement that Litteral has been placed on administrative leave.

"All Secret Service issued equipment has been retrieved and the employees access to all Secret Service facilities is terminated. These allegations, if proven true, are intolerable and are condemned by the Secret Service," the agency said.



State police said additional charges are possible.

Litteral is being held in jail without bond.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump plan to meet in May for nuclear disarmament talks, a whiplash development that would put two leaders who've repeatedly insulted, threatened and dismissed each other in the same room, possibly in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

It would have been an unthinkable suggestion just a few months ago, when the insults were at their peak  Trump was a "senile dotard" and Kim was "Little Rocket Man"  and the North was snapping off regular weapons tests in a dogged march toward its goal of a viable nuclear arsenal that can threaten the U.S. mainland.

Liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who some believe has maneuvered the two leaders to this position, reflected the hope and relief many here feel about the planned summit when he declared Friday that it will be a "historical milestone" that will put the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula "really on track."

But there's also considerable skepticism.

North Korea, after all, has made a habit of reaching out, after raising fears during previous crises, with offers of dialogue meant to win aid and concessions. Some speculate that the North is trying to peel Washington away from its ally Seoul, weaken crippling sanctions and buy time for nuclear development. It has also, from the U.S. point of view, repeatedly cheated on past nuclear deals.

And now the North has landed a face-to-face meeting with the leader of the world's most powerful country, a nation that North Korea has long sought to draw into talks that it hopes would establish a peace treaty to end the technically still-active Korean War and drive out all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, removing what the North says is a hostile encirclement of its territory by Washington and Seoul.

"Great progress being made," Trump tweeted after the South Korean national security director, Chung Eui-yong, emerged from a meeting with the U.S. president and announced the summit plans to reporters in a hastily called appearance on a White House driveway.

That remains to be seen.

North Korea still produces propaganda declaring its continuing dedication to the "treasured sword" of its nuclear program. Washington still remains publicly dedicated to annual war games with the South that the North claims are invasion rehearsal they're expected to resume next month, after being postponed during the Winter Olympics in the South  and to keeping 28,500 troops in the South and 50,000 in Japan, largely as a way to deter North Korean aggression.

North Korea is engaged in "a ploy to serve its own interests" and make Kim look like "a bold leader of a normal, peace-loving nuclear power," according to Duyeon Kim, a visiting research fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum think tank in Seoul.

"But in spite of the deceptive cloak, the agreement posed an opportunity for the United States. It put the ball in Washington's court, and provides a window for the Trump administration to engage and test the regime through direct negotiations," Kim wrote on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists web page.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in Djibouti on Friday that the decision to meet with Kim Jong Un was made by Trump himself and resulted from a sharp change in the North Korean leader's stance.

"What changed was his posture in a fairly dramatic way. It was a surprise to us that he was so forward-leaning," Tillerson said. He said it would take "some weeks" before the timing of the talks is worked out.

North Korea appeared to confirm the summit plans. A senior North Korean diplomat at the United Nations in New York, Pak Song Il, told The Washington Post in an email that the invitation was the result of Kim's "broad minded and resolute decision" to contribute to the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula.

Talks between Washington and Pyongyang have previously been overseen by lower-level experts, and have often bogged down, even when so-called "breakthroughs" have come, in the pesky details, such as allowing outsiders in to inspect North Korea's nuclear compliance, for instance.

Now, the talks will start at the top. And there will be no time to settle all the problems that have scuttled previous negotiations.

It's anyone's guess what Trump and Kim might decide in the highest-level meeting in what has been essentially a bloody, seven-decade standoff between their countries.

The announcement Friday followed weeks of softening ties between the Koreas, orchestrated by the South Korean leader, Moon, and culminating in a visit by Kim Jong Un's sister to the South to observe the Olympics in Pyeongchang and then Chung's trip to meet with Kim in Pyongyang.

"This is a tried-and-true North Korean tactic, reaching out at the height of crisis in hopes of breaking out of spiraling tensions with the United States," according to a report by Zhixing Zhang and Evan Rees, Asia specialists at Stratfor, a geopolitical analytical group. "In this instance, Pyongyang has skillfully played on South Korea's fear of a military strike and hopes of reunification."

Trump took office vowing to stop North Korea from its pursuit of a working long-range nuclear-tipped missile. He's oscillated between threats and insults directed at Kim that have fueled fears of war, and more conciliatory rhetoric.

The historic announcement comes during a period of unparalleled tumult in the Trump's West Wing, with the president's policy agenda stalled and morale sinking as staff departures proliferate and disrupt efforts to instill more discipline and order.

Earlier Thursday, Chung briefed Trump and other top U.S. officials about the rare meeting the South Korean had with Kim in the North Korean capital. During that meeting, the rival Koreas agreed to hold a leadership summit in late April, the first in a decade.

Kim "expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible," Chung told reporters. "President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization."

The White House said Trump's meeting with Kim would take place "at a place and time to be determined." Trump said that sanctions against the North will remain in place until there's a deal.

Chung, who credited Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign for the diplomatic opening on the nuclear issue, said Kim understands that routine U.S.-South Korea military drills "must continue."

Kim, who had used his annual New Year's address to warn the United States of a supposed nuclear button on his desk, has an economy that's been battered by heavy international sanctions.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said that the Trump-Kim meeting's success could depend on whether the United States can accept a freeze of North Korean nuclear weapons, rather than a direct process to eliminate them.

But already Trump seemed to have bigger goals in mind: "Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze," the U.S. president said in a tweet.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung and Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.
The White House says Mexico, Canada and other countries may be spared from President Donald Trump's planned steel and aluminum tariffs under national security "carve-outs," a move that could soften the blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners and dire economic warnings from lawmakers and business groups.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a "case by case" and "country by country" basis, a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exemptions from Trump's plan.

The update came as congressional Republicans and business groups braced for the impact of expected tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, appearing resigned to additional protectionist trade actions as Trump signaled upcoming economic battles with China. Trump was expected to announce the tariffs Thursday afternoon.

The looming departure of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed the promised tariffs, set off anxiety among business leaders and investors worried about a potential trade war.

"We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers," 107 House Republicans wrote in a letter to Trump.

At the White House, officials were working to include language in the tariffs that would give Trump the flexibility to approve exemptions for certain countries.

"He's already indicated a degree of flexibility, I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC. "We're not trying to blow up the world."

Trump signaled other trade actions could be in the works. In a tweet, he said the "U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft." A White House official said Trump was referencing an ongoing investigation of China in which the U.S. trade representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are "unreasonable or discriminatory" to American business.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said an announcement on the findings of the report  and possible retaliatory actions  was expected within the next three weeks.

Business leaders, meanwhile, continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raising the specter of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump's rollback of regulations.

"We urge the administration to take this risk seriously," Donohue said.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security. He has tried to use the tariffs as leverage in ongoing talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggesting Canada and Mexico might be exempted from tariffs if they offer more favorable terms under NAFTA.

Lawmakers opposed to the tariffs, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested more narrowly focused approaches to target Chinese imports. But members of Congress have few tools at their disposal to counter the president, who has vowed to fulfill his campaign pledge.

"I don't think the president is going to be easily deterred," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has suggested hearings on the tariffs.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Trump had listened to him and others who disagree with the direction of the trade policies. "I thank him for that and he's been a good listener. The difficulty is so far I haven't persuaded him," Alexander said.

Republicans in Congress have lobbied administration officials to reconsider the plan and focus the trade actions on China, warning that allies such as Canada and members of the European Union would retaliate.

The EU said it was prepared to respond to any tariffs with counter-measures against U.S. products such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Levi's jeans and bourbon. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said the EU was circulating among member states a list of U.S. goods to target with tariffs so it could respond quickly.

The president plans to rally Republicans in western Pennsylvania on Saturday in support of Rick Saccone, who faces Democrat Conor Lamb in a March 13 special House election. Trump has told associates the tariffs could be helpful to the GOP cause in the election in the heart of steel country.

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly, Alan Fram and Lorne Cook contributed to this report.
Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua has responded to the viral Kikuyu song Ikamba describing it as despicable and evil.

The song, composed and performed by artistes Isaiah and Waharaka, is being investigated by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission on allegations of hate speech.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Governor Mutua noted that Kambas and Kikuyus descended from the same ancestors.

We have traditionally referred to each other as in-laws  athoni. We are one people separated by the area where we traditionally call home and influxes of the same language.

We strongly condemn utterances and actions that perpetuate tribalism and hatred among the Kamba and Kikuyu. A hate song targeting a community is not only evil but also unacceptable, he added.

The Machakos County boss further said it was improper to blame one community for trading in charcoal and to release a hate song over the actions of a few.

Destruction of property and vigilante actions only happen in a lawless country. The Kamba and Kikuyu are friends who live peacefully with each other and condemn acts that perpetuate discord, said Mutua.

Mutua also jumped to Kitui Governor Charity Ngilus defence and urged stakeholders to respect her ban on charcoal trading.

The Maendeleo Chap Chap leader also asked leaders to preach and practice love, tolerance, and peace, and understand that their actions and statements affect the behaviours of their people.

Mutua was speaking flanked by his Nyeri colleague Edward Mutahi.
The Trump administration has quietly decided once again to allow Americans to import the body parts of African elephants shot for sport, despite presidential tweets decrying the practice as a "horror show."

President Donald Trump personally intervened in November when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first said it would lift an Obama-era ban on elephants imported from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The agency contends that encouraging wealthy big-game hunters to kill the threatened species would help raise money for conservation programs.

"Big-game trophy decision will be announced next week but will be very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal," Trump tweeted on Nov. 19, placing the policy on hold after a public backlash to the earlier decision.

More than three months later, the federal agency overseen by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a letter dated March 1 announcing that the importation of elephant trophies will now be approved on a "case-by-case basis." The letter cites a December ruling in a long-running lawsuit challenging the ban filed by Safari Club International and the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association.

Zinke recently told people privately that Trump has called him several times to discuss what to do about elephant trophies. Nether the Interior Department nor Fish and Wildlife issued a media release over the last week to announce the decision, which was quickly condemned by environmental advocates.

"The Trump administration is trying to keep these crucial trophy import decisions behind closed doors, and that's totally unacceptable," said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Elephants aren't meant to be trophies, they're meant to roam free."

Trump's two adult sons are trophy hunters. A photo of Donald Trump Jr. holding a knife and the bloody severed tail of an elephant he reportedly killed in Zimbabwe in 2011 has sparked outrage among animal rights activists.

Zinke is also an avid hunter who after arriving at Interior last year ordered the arcade game "Big Buck Hunter Pro" to be installed in the employee cafeteria at the agency's Washington headquarters, a move he said would promote wildlife and habitat conservation.

In June, the department removed longstanding protections for grizzly bears near Yellowstone National Park, a step to potentially allow them to be hunted. The Fish and Wildlife Service also quietly began issuing permits in October allowing African lions killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia to be imported. Previously, only wild lions killed in South Africa were eligible.

The world's largest land mammal, the African elephant has been classified as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act since 1979. A licensed two-week African elephant hunt can cost more than $50,000 per person, not including airfare, according to advertised rates.

Illicit demand for elephant ivory has led to devastating losses from illegal poaching as the natural habitat available for the animals to roam has also dwindled by more than half. As a result, the number of African elephants has shrunk from about 5 million a century ago to about 400,000 remaining. And that number continues to decline each year.

According to the United Nations, as many as 100,000 African elephants were killed between 2010 and 2012. For forest elephants, the population declined by an estimated 62 percent between 2002 and 2011.

Associated Press reporter Matthew Daly contributed.
New Hampshire is predicted to get up to a foot of snow in the latest nor'easter Wednesday into Thursday morning.

"It's New England," said Darren Johnson of Pembroke. "It's what we do."

The consensus among people in Manchester was that New Englanders stay prepared for snow on any given day.

"It's 70 degrees one day," said Jared Breault. "A foot of snow the next. That's how we roll."

"I have gasoline in my generators," said Johnson.

"I hunker down until it's over with," said Joanne Ouimette.

The storm is expected to expected to pass Thursday morning.

Lisa Leary has a 30-minute drive from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.

"I brought an extra set of clothes in case I had to stay over," she said.

Hope Wooten was in Manchester from Vermont for a conference. Wooten said the snow was more than she bargained for.

"The eight-to-12 inches is a little intimidating," Wooten said.

For many residents, the snow was far less intimidating.

"We have to work and things go on, right?" said Leary.

"When it's over with, you go out and snow blow your way out of there," said Ouimette.

One man said he's already looking past the snow to the spring.

"It's new England, I'm just waiting for opening day," he said.
Breweries and business development professionals from all across the country are in Vermont this week, learning how to capitalize on craft beer.

A three-day event called the "Beer Marketing and Tourism Conference" is underway in South Burlington, with beer makers, tour operators, travel promoters, and others from 33 U.S. states and three countries in town for the event.

Participants are discussing topics including best practices for social media, how to enhance customer experiences, how to build partnerships with other sectors to boost visits to breweries, and leveraging a passion for beer to revitalize downtowns.

"People that really like craft beer are thoughtful about a lot of things, and active in a lot of things," said Ryan Newhouse, one of the conferences organizers, describing why craft beer drinkers are key customers many businesses hope to target. "They're active in their community, and they're thoughtful about what they eat and what they drink. They want to challenge their palates. We always say beer is social  and this just proves it again and again and again."

Wendy Knight, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, told the audience at a panel discussion Wednesday morning that one reason interest in beer tourism is particularly high in Vermont is the proximity of breweries to ski resorts and other outdoor activities.

Some of the leading sponsors of the conference include the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, the Vermont Convention Bureau, the Vermont Brewers Association, and the Vermont Ski Areas Association, among others.

The Beer Marketing and Tourism Conference continues Thursday, when Gov. Phil Scott, R-Vermont, is scheduled to visit and discuss the significance of beer tourism to Vermonts travel sector.
A New Hampshire school has fired a teacher who was arrested late last month for alleged sexual misconduct while he was employed by a different school.

Thursday, Derryfield School in Manchester announced it had fired 47-year-old David Pook, who faces two counts of witness tampering and two counts of conspiracy to commit perjury.

The New Hampshire Attorney General's office says Pook's arrest came as a result of a 2017 report concerning sexual assaults by teachers on their students at St. Paul's School.

That investigation has followed inappropriate behavior such as student sexual conquest rituals like the "senior salute," a practice which led to the arrest and conviction of Owen Labrie in 2015.

Authorities said Pook taught at the Concord prep school for eight years but left under "questionable circumstances" in 2008.

Pook was employed at the Derryfield School in Manchester since 2009.

"At the time that David Pook was hired at Derryfield, as is our protocol, references were carefully checked and background checks were done," that school said in a statement. "However, references are only as good as the veracity of the source. St. Paul's School Rector, Michael Hirschfeld, issued a statement today saying, 'The school leadership [at St. Paul's School] at the time should never have given Mr. Pook a recommendation and the fact that it did not inform Derryfield of Mr. Pook's boundary issues was a failure for which we apologize.'"

According to the AG, the investigation focused on Pook's relationship with a female student at St. Paul's School while he was a teacher there.

As part of the investigation, that former student and Pook were called before a grand jury. Based on testimony and other evidence, authorities were able to bring charges against Pook.

He is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges in the Merrimack County Superior Court on March 15.
With the approach of Mothering Sunday, Philip Young reflects on the complete parenthood of God, and explains his view that He should be seen as Mother as well as Father.

I will be celebrating Mothering Sunday on March 11. I will, however, be more restrained about celebrating its close neighbour, Mothers Day.



There is a difference here: On Mothering Sunday all of us can celebrate that, as human beings, we are all capable of being Mothering. All, both men and women, have mothering instincts as part of our human nature.



Mothers Day, on the other hand, has been rather taken over by sentimentalism and commercialism and is usually restricted to women who are mothers - the card, flower, and chocolate industries do particularly well.



Mind you, I shall still be sending my 98-year-old mother a card and will hope to visit her to thank her for being such a wonderful mother for 65 years. I will be able to celebrate that she has been a wonderful mother to my sister, brother and me. Also, that she has passed on her mothering skills to all three of us.



I hope that if you are in church on Sunday that flowers will be offered to both women and men and also to those who are not parents. I hope they will be offered to celebrate the mothering skills that we can all develop as we grow as human beings.



One particular joy is to see our children develop their own mothering and caring skills. This can happen when children have younger siblings, but also when they offer to care and mother their own parents or their own friends.



One thing to celebrate on Mothering Sunday is the wonderful way in which God is to us both a father and a mother. With most of the emphasis in our churches on God as Father, it is good to reflect and celebrate the Motherhood of God. There is much to celebrate, but I thought I would focus on three aspects. God as birth-giver, God as compassionate, and God as wisdom.



God gives birth in creation. God gives birth all the time. In this way we can see God primarily as Mother. Childbirth is the moment when a new human being comes into the world. But all human beings are invited to be co-creators and to give birth to the new. So, we can celebrate God being mother, but we can also celebrate ourselves as mothers whenever we are being creative.



There are many ways we can help to create  art, literature, beauty, new ideas. Living as human beings to our full potential is an act of giving birth to our own particular contribution to life in all its fullness.



What we celebrate perhaps most about motherhood is that wonderful act of caring and compassion that is at the centre of being a mother. What a mother gives birth to she naturally nurtures and cares for. Love, caring and compassion are shared human attributes that are worth celebrating and encouraging. The world is so in need of kindness and care. What a huge difference we can all make by offering our care and kindness to one another and to our living planet.



The other value worth celebrating is wisdom. The ancient Greek word for wisdom is Sophia and is seen as being female. In our information-dominated world the emphasis is on facts and knowledge, but without wisdom these are worthless. Heart knowledge and a motherly intuition are far more important than head knowledge and cold facts.



I think wisdom and the Holy Spirit go hand in hand. Whereas God the Father and God the Son are usually seen as being male, maybe God the Holy Spirit is seen and felt as being feminine?



I believe that the assets of mothering are for all of us as we grow up to be more fully human and more fully divine at the same time. Let us be nurtured by the divine feminine.



Thank God that we can all celebrate Mothering Sunday.



The image above is courtesy of https://pixabay.com





Philip is an Anglican, Quaker, and a member of the Third Order of Franciscans, and now lives in Felixstowe. Until July 2014 he was the Diocesan Environmental Officer for the Norwich Diocese. In June 2017 he stood as an Independent Candidate for the General Election in the Suffolk Coastal Constituency. He is now a freelance writer on spiritual and political matters. He is available to run Quiet Days, give talks, presentations or to preach and can be contacted at philipyoung@btinternet.com

The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive and good-natured debate between website users.

We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here.
VMware has expanded its portfolio of cloud tools to help enterprises improve the manageability of their public cloud and on-premises environments. At the same time, VMware announced the first global expansion of VMware Cloud on AWS, its joint hybrid cloud service with Amazon Web Services.

Complexity is on the rise for enterprises as they expand their use of cloud computing  which often is not limited to a single cloud provider. VMware estimates that nearly two-thirds of companies will use two or more cloud service providers in addition to their on-premises data centers.

VMware Cloud Services are designed to provide a consistent set of tools  for visibility, operations, automation, security and governance  across multiple public cloud and on-premises environments. The goal is to enable consistent operations from the data center to the cloud, providing greater visibility into cloud usage, infrastructure costs, network performance and application monitoring, for example.

The need to support a complex set of new and existing applications is driving cloud adoption, and the needs of the applications are driving cloud decisions, said Raghu Raghuram, chief operating officer for products and cloud services at VMware, in a statement. VMware Cloud gives customers unprecedented flexibility to develop any type of application, deploy these apps to any cloud and deliver them to any device, while leveraging a consistent infrastructure across clouds and a consistent set of operations across any cloud.

VMware Cloud Services

Two new products and two upgraded products are among the announcements VMware made today:

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension for Private Cloud

VMwares Hybrid Cloud Extension services are SaaS offerings designed to support large-scale application migrations between diverse vSphere environments, on-premises and in the cloud. VMware has previously announced Hybrid Cloud Extension services for both IBM Cloud and VMware Cloud on AWS; these are now available for enterprises that want to extend their VMware-based environments to the public cloud.

The new service  VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension Service for Private Cloud  is geared for self-managed private enterprise data centers. Its designed to make it easier for enterprises to migrate applications without modification, with little or no application downtime, in environments that span multiple private data-center locations.

VMware Log Intelligence

This new log-analysis service is a single troubleshooting tool that works across private data centers and multiple clouds, including VMware Cloud on AWS. Log Intelligence uses machine learning algorithms and log analytics to scan for anomalies in data center and cloud environments and give IT teams visibility into application behavior and infrastructure health.

Wavefront by VMware

VMware updated its SaaS-based metrics monitoring and analytics platform, Wavefront by VMware, to include 45 new integrations, including GCP, Chef, GitHub, Spark, Nginx+, and Mesos. In May 2017, VMware acquired Wavefront, which specialized in monitoring complex applications  consisting of hundreds of microservices in containers with lifespans of seconds  spread across private and public clouds. Wavefront by VMware now supports Kubernetes in Pivotal Container Service, application platform services such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and enterprise applications running on VMware-based private clouds. It also now integrates with VMwares vRealize Operations, a monitoring tool that helps enterprises troubleshoot and plan capacity for virtualized environments.

VMware Cost Insight

Cost Insight is VMwares cost monitoring and optimization service for public and private clouds. Its designed to help IT teams analyze, track and streamline cloud spending. Cost Insight already supported AWS, Microsoft Azure and VMware-based private cloud data centers. Now it includes support for VMware Cloud on AWS. When enterprises want to consider migrating workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS, Cost Insight can provide details about how much the migration would cost. Its also tied to VMware Network Insight, so users can calculate the impact of networking costs during a migration.

VMware Cloud on AWS goes global

In addition to the new and updated cloud management tools, VMware announced the European expansion of its AWS offering. VMware Cloud on AWS (the bare-metal cloud platform that makes it easier for customers to run VMware workloads on the Amazon Web Services public cloud) is now available in the AWS London region. After the UK, European expansion will continue with the AWS data center in Frankfurt, Germany.

Since launching VMware Cloud on AWS just six months ago, weve seen tremendous interest from our global customer base and multi-national enterprises. Today marks an essential starting point for our global expansion to deliver unparalleled hybrid-cloud services in major geographies around the world, said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of the cloud platform business unit at VMware, in a statement.

The hybrid cloud model with VMware and VMware Cloud on AWS is a key component of the technology and business transformation at Brinks, according to Greg Osgood, global vice president of infrastructure and security at the Richmond, Va.-based cash-management company.

VMware and VMware Cloud on AWS are the foundation of Brinks global infrastructure, Osgood said in a statement. These systems allow the company to easily move workloads between its private cloud and the public cloud, providing agility for production services and disaster recovery. Using these VMware technologies, and with a partnership with Eastern Computer Exchange, Brinks successfully consolidated its North America data center operations in 2017, and is planning to extend this model to Europe, Latin American and Asia in 2018.

VMware also debuted a partner program for its AWS cloud service.
NEW MILFORD  A proposal to allow commercial slaughterhouses on farms in town won support from hunters and farmers in a public hearing this week, but also sparked worries that it could pave the way for large meat-packing facilities and generate disagreeable sights, smells and sounds.

The zoning code already allows farms to slaughter their own cattle. The proposed amendment would strike language forbidding commercial slaughterhouses from the definition of farm, allowing farmers to slaughter animals from other sources.

The Farmland and Forest Preservation Committee, an appointed panel that is seeking the change, had hoped to head off possible concerns with restrictions written into the amendment requiring that slaughterhouses be located on lots 10 acres or larger, positioned more than 200 feet from neighboring homes and comply with U.S. Department of Agriculture standards.

But those restrictions were not enough for Zoning Board Chair Bill Taylor, who worried that the amendment could create a loophole allowing large slaughtering facilities on larger tracts of land. Board member Charles Bogie agreed, saying that what begins as an incidental or accessory use could become a primary use later on.

But Margery Feldberg, who raises cattle commercially on De Hoek Farm on Hine Road and has a USDA-approved slaughtering facility, said that would be highly unlikely because the amendment also requires landowners to obtain a special permit for any slaughterhouse.

Resident Bob Jackson, who owns property next to a farm, said he worried about traffic, noise, and pollution from such a facility. Another resident, Mary Ellen Novak, said there could be unintended consequences if the regulation were not airtight, noting that in New Jersey, where there are many slaughter facilities, the smell is very bad.

A Hartford man, Alex Herbst, questioned the propriety of slaughterhouses of any kind.

There is no humane way to kill a sentient animal who wishes to live, he said, adding that farmers may be desensitized to the screams of distress of an animal being slaughtered, and in a residential area, that may be haunting and disturbing to children.

Zoning member Robert DiMichele asked Feldberg about what happens to the waste from the slaughtering process.

Feldberg said the "bloody stuff" on her farm goes into a holding tank, which is later pumped out and taken to the local sewer treatment plant. She said she also buries carcasses, as allowed by the USDA on her farm.

The amendment is not intended to create large industrial slaughterhouses such as Kansas City at the turn of the century, she added.

The Zoning Commission next meets March 13. The board has until March 27 to make a decision on the proposal or grant an extension to discuss it further.
Most of the CCTV cameras installed within the Nairobi Central Business District (CBD) are not working, an audit report presented to the Nairobi County Assembly indicates.

The Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday heard that a total of 42 cameras installed by the defunct Metropolitan Ministry in 2012 were out of commission due to lack of maintenance.

Nairobi County Transport and Infrastructure acting Chief Officer Frederick Karanja told the committee that the Sh437 Million cameras were never officially handed over by the now defunct ministry.

After they were installed, the cameras were operational for a while but as of today, I can confirm no camera is working due to lack of maintenance.

City Hall is unable to repair and maintain the cameras because some systems are still under lock and key. If the Government can officially hand it over to the county then we will be able to include it in our budget, Karanja stated.

According to reports, there is a stand-off between the county government and the national government over who should take up responsibility for the surveillance gadgets.

Members of County Assembly (MCAs) were shocked by the discovery and raised concerns over the security risks posed by the apparent breach.

Karen MCA David Mberia regretted that the cameras were decommissioned stating that they could have helped solve the murder of former Kabete MP George Muchai.

It is sad that up to date we do not know who killed Muchai. Perhaps if the cameras were operational we could have known who the MPs killers are, Mberia lamented.

It is very worrying that Nairobians continue to operate thinking the cameras are operational yet that is not the case. This matter should be urgently resolved to ensure residents are safe, PAC Chairman Wilfred Odalo added.

The Committee also heard that a control room set up at City Hall was also retired and officers stationed there withdrawn.

Karanja, however, noted that the Sh14.9 billion National Surveillance, Communication and Control System installed by Safaricom was still operational but exclusively used by the police.
Every day across the United States, Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers triage and safely transport myocardial infarction (MI) patients to the hospital. Currently, there are no nationally available clinical data tools in place that allow them to find out how these critical heart patients fare after they enter the hospital. But soon the American College of Cardiology (ACC) will launch eReport EMS, a new product that will allow them to access and assess this important information.

EMS providers are an important part of the care team and play a pivotal role in the care of heart patients. They must quickly and accurately assess and treat the patient, choose the best hospital to transport the patient to, alert the hospital and report critical data to them, such as ECG findings, patient allergies and more.

"eReport EMS data will help EMS providers and hospitals better understand how this care impacted the patient and discover new ways to strengthen EMS care, as well as help improve quality cardiology care measures overall," said William Oetgen, MD, MBA, FACC, ACC executive vice president for science and quality, education, and publications. "eReport EMS also bridges a gap in the continuum of care, so it now reaches from the first interaction the heart patient has with the EMS provider until that patient is discharged from the hospital."

Reports from eReport EMS are developed using data from the American College of Cardiology's NCDR ACTION Registry. The ACTION Registry is a risk-adjusted, outcomes-based quality improvement program that focuses exclusively on high-risk STEMI/NSTEMI patients. It helps hospitals apply ACC clinical guideline recommendations in their facilities and provides invaluable tools to measure care and achieve quality improvement goals. Currently, over 800 hospitals participate in the ACTION Registry nationwide.

Using eReport EMS, EMS providers can:

Gain access to reports based on all ACTION records on cases they were a provider for, as indicated by their EMS agency identifier.

View specially designed eReports that include selected metrics of aggregate performance of EMS care, hospitals and the overall system of care--information that is most important to EMS providers

Although they will not be able to access individual patient level data, eReport EMS will give EMS providers overall data on how their patients fare at a particular hospital. For instance, they'll be able to see if they correctly diagnosed patients, if their work was performed quickly and how many patients improved and went home.

eReport EMS will launch later in 2018, and will be available through a secure, password-protected online dashboard that EMS providers can access through a participating hospital. Information about how to access eReport EMS will be announced prior to the product launch. Requests to access eReport EMS can be emailed to [email protected]

"The American College of Cardiology is a home for the entire cardiovascular team, and EMS providers are a valued part of that team," Oetgen said. "We want to do an even better job in supporting them in their important work and help them in their efforts to continuously improve their processes of care for critical heart patients and to strengthen our entire system of cardiac care."
Mount Sinai researchers have shown, for the first time, the complex web of links between physical and behavioral characteristics, like age, body mass index (BMI), and substance use, and specific patterns of brain structure and function in patients with psychosis. The study is important because many of these characteristics can be targeted clinically to improve brain health in these patients.

The researchers found, among other things, that brain health declines as age, BMI, and substance use increase. Buthigher IQs were positively associated with multiple measures of brain health in people with psychosis.

The results of the study will be published online in JAMA PSYCHIATRY on Wednesday, March 7.

Psychosis is a term used to describe severe mental disorders characterised by symptoms in which an individual has sensory experiences of things that do not exist or beliefs with no basis in reality. Approximately 100,000 people experience psychosis each year in the United States and as many as 3 in 100 people will have an episode at some point in their lives. The findings of this study have important implications for clinical care as they identify multiple modifiable factors that can be targeted to improve brain health in patients with psychosis.

The research team, led by Sophia Frangou, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, examined data from 140 patients diagnosed with psychosis. They took high-resolution MRI brain scans to measure brain volume, cortical thickness, connections between brain regions, and connectivity of brain regions during mental tasks. The team then used a statistical method called sparse canonical correlation to discover the relationships between these features of brain integrity and measures of age, cognitive ability, BMI, substance use, physical activity, psychological trauma, family history of mental problems, and symptom severity. They found that higher age, higher BMI, and more severe psychotic symptoms were negatively associated with cortical thickness and brain activation during mental tasks. Conversely, higher IQ showed positive associations. In addition, substance use was negatively associated with measures of brain volume and brain wiring.

"These new results provide new insights on the many factors that influence brain integrity in patients with psychosis and provide evidence for the need for integrated physical and cognitive interventions in addition to psychiatric care," said Dr. Frangou.

"Patients with psychosis often have multiple health problems that impair their daily function and reduce life expectancy compared to the general population. Improving physical well-being and brain health should be the two pillars of clinical care for patients with psychosis."
Heart failure is more common, develops earlier and results in higher rates of illness and death in African Americans than in whites.

Now, the first genetic study of its kind to examine the genetic basis of heart failure in African Americans, led by the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa, Fla., has identified a genetic defect linked specifically to heart failure in this population. The discovery could lead to more precise and effective treatments for African Americans, who are more likely to suffer from a common form of heart failure of unknown cause called idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC). IDC is a condition in which the heart weakens, cannot pump blood properly and becomes progressively enlarged.

The study was published Feb. 26 in the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

"We know that this form of heart failure has a worse prognosis in African Americans and does not respond as effectively to most therapies as compared to the same treatments in Caucasian individuals of European descent. Yet, there had never been a genome-wide association study performed exclusively in African Americans," said senior author and project director Stephen B. Liggett, MD, professor of internal medicine and vice dean for research at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

"We undertook this study because of the severe under-representation of African Americans in these types of trials, and, our idea that the genetic causes might be different in this population," Dr. Liggett added. "Our genome-wide analysis suggests that is indeed the case, and we may need to develop new drugs to target IDC in African Americans."

The Genetics of African American Heart Failure consortium examined genetic variations in the genomes of 662 African-American patients recruited from five U.S. academic medical centers: the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, University of Maryland College of Medicine, and the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. All the study participants had no history of heart attacks and were diagnosed with IDC.

The researchers found that a variation in one gene, called CACNB4, could contribute to causing IDC in African Americans. That same genetic defect has not been found in white patients with IDC. More study is needed, Dr. Liggett said, but CACNB4 plays a key role in regulating calcium signaling important for cardiac muscle contraction, so a variation that interferes with the gene's function may lead to diminished pumping of blood by the heart.

In addition, variations in other genes suggested an association with IDC in individuals with African-American ancestry. So, the researchers mapped the biochemical pathways of these 1,000 genes, which created a network indicating the potential action by which these variations lead to IDC, and possible targets for new drugs. The consortium's analysis showed that genetic variations in African Americans account for 33 percent of the risk for IDC. And, many genes forming the pathway map were involved in how calcium regulates the work of heart muscle cells.

Dr. Liggett and his collaborators use various research methods, including examining genetic variation in different ethnic groups, with the aim of understanding how to best devise new drugs for treatment or prevention of heart failure. "Every time we perform these genetic studies, we learn something new and find another piece of the puzzle," he said, "Ultimately the dissection of this cardiovascular disease will lead to drugs that strike at damaging pathways with a high level of precision, resulting in personalized medicine for heart failure."

Nearly 6 million people in the United States have heart failure, a figure projected to increase to 8 million by 2030, according to the American Heart Association. The five-year mortality rates range from 30 to 50 percent, greater than for some cancers.
UCI-led study reveals potential tool for early dementia diagnosis

As we get older, it's not uncommon to experience "senior moments," in which we forget where we parked our car or call our children by the wrong names. And we may wonder: Are these memory lapses a normal part of aging, or do they signal the early stages of a severe disorder such as Alzheimer's disease? Currently, there's no good way to tell.

University of California, Irvine-led researchers, however, have found that high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain can be used to show some of the underlying causes of differences in memory proficiency between older and younger adults.

The study, which appears today in the journal Neuron, involved 20 young adults (ages 18 to 31) and 20 cognitively healthy older adults (ages 64 to 89). The participants were asked to perform two kinds of tasks while undergoing fMRI scanning  an object memory task and a location memory task. Because fMRI looks at the dynamics of blood flow in the brain, investigators were able to determine which parts of the brain the subjects were using for each activity.

In the first task, participants viewed pictures of everyday objects and were then asked to distinguish them from new pictures. "Some of the images were identical to ones they'd seen before, some were brand-new and others were similar to ones they'd seen earlier  we may have changed the color or the size," said Michael Yassa, director of UCI's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory and the study's senior author. "We call these tricky items the 'lures.' And we found that older adults struggle with them. They're much more likely than younger adults to think they've seen those lures before."

The second task was nearly the same but required subjects to determine whether the location of objects had been altered. Here, older adults fared quite a bit better than in the prior task.

"This suggests that not all memory changes equally with aging," said lead author Zachariah Reagh, who participated in the study as a graduate student at UCI and is now a postdoctoral fellow at UC Davis. "Object memory is far more vulnerable than spatial, or location, memory  at least in the early stages." Other research has shown that problems with spatial memory and navigation do manifest as individuals progress toward Alzheimer's disease.

Importantly, by scanning the subjects' brains while they underwent these tests, the scientists were able to establish a cerebral mechanism for that deficit in object memory.

They found that it was linked to a loss of signaling in a part of the brain called the anterolateral entorhinal cortex. This area is already known to mediate communication between the hippocampus, where information is first encoded, and the rest of the neocortex, which plays a role in long-term storage. It's also an area severely affected in people with Alzheimer's disease.

"The loss of fMRI signal means there is less blood flow to the region, but we believe the underlying basis for this loss has to do with the fact that the structural integrity of that part of the brain is changing," Yassa said. "One of the things we know about Alzheimer's disease is that this region of the brain is one of the very first to exhibit a key hallmark of the disease, deposition of neurofibrillary tangles."

In contrast, the researchers did not find age-related differences in another area of the brain connected to memory, the posteromedial entorhinal cortex. They demonstrated that this region plays a role in spatial memory, which was not significantly impaired in the older subjects.

"This suggests that the brain aging process is selective," Yassa said. "Our findings are not a reflection of general brain aging but rather of specific neural changes that are linked to specific problems in object but not spatial memory."

To determine whether this type of fMRI scan could eventually be used as a tool for early diagnosis, the researchers plan to expand their work to a sample of 150 older adults who will be followed over time. They will also be conducting positron emission tomography, or PET, scans to look for amyloid and tau pathology in their brains as they age.

"We hope this comprehensive imaging and cognitive testing will enable us to figure out whether the deficits we saw in the current study are indicative of what is later to come in some of these individuals," Yassa said.

"Our results, as well as similar results from other labs, point to a need for carefully designed tasks and paradigms that can reveal different functions in key areas of the brain and different vulnerabilities to the aging process," Reagh added.
Multiple neuropsychiatric diseases are major predisposing factors for functional decline in older people and may play a greater role in this age-related phenomenon than cardiovascular diseases, according to a new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in PLOS Medicine.

A progressive decline in physical function, commonly referred to as functional decline, is a strong health determinant in older people. The accumulation of chronic diseases, multimorbidity, plays a major role in functional decline and has a negative impact on quality of life. Cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases are common in older people and tend to cluster in the same individuals. Understanding the associations between cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric multimorbidity and functional decline may assist in managing the health and care of people with multimorbidity.

In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet aimed to find out how the increasing number and the combination of cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases are associated with two important measures of physical function in older people: walking speed and activities of daily living (ADL). Using data from the Swedish National study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K), they examined how these functions were affected in 2,385 older people with and without cardiovascular disease (such as ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation) and neuropsychiatric disease (such as mood disorders, dementia, and stroke).

Neuropsychiatric diseases may play a greater role

During the 9-year follow-up, individuals with multiple cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric diseases had the steepest declines in walking speed and ADL independence. The researchers observed significant declines over time for both walking speed and ADL in older people with one or more neuropsychiatric diseases, but only for walking speed in those with cardiovascular multimorbidity.

"Our findings suggest that the presence of multiple neuropsychiatric diseases may play a greater role in functional decline in older people than multiple cardiovascular diseases. Both patients and physicians should be aware that neuropsychiatric diseases are major predisposing factors for functional decline", says Davide Vetrano, PhD student at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society.
With its new concept car -- making its worldwide premiere at the Geneva Motor Show, March 8-18, 2018 -- Aston Martin is previewing what's to come from its premium car brand Lagonda, marking the beginning of a range of state-of-the-art, electric and autonomous luxury vehicles.

Aston Martin is turning Lagonda into a specialist electric vehicle brand, promising a range of zero-emission luxury vehicles. With the Lagonda Vision Concept, the British carmaker is above all showcasing its vision of luxury mobility. Here, the extra space gained by using an electric motor is used to ensure top-end comfort in the vehicle interior. Indeed, the front seats can swivel round to create a cozy, social environment in which the four passengers can have face-to-face conversations or work meetings. The interior also features prestige materials like carbon and cashmere.

Drivers of this concept vehicle can take the wheel in person or use level-four autonomous driving. That means that the vehicle is designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. All the "driver" has to do is enter a destination, then sit back and enjoy the ride.

The British carmaker announces a range of up to 650km for the Lagonda Vision Concept, but hasn't given much away about the vehicle's other technical specifications. That hasn't stopped it announcing two upcoming production models directly inspired by this concept car by 2023 (probably a coupe and an SUV), with the first model due to enter production in 2021.

Note that Aston Martin is also showing off its new DB11 and Vantage cars at the Swiss show.

Also Watch: 2018 Hyundai Elite i20 Review (Test Drive) | Exclusive | Cars18
Washington: An economist who believes that Chinese goods are literally poisoning Americans, advocates ending Washington's "One China" policy and says trade deals have weakened the United States economically with the connivance of US business, has emerged as the big winner from renewed turmoil in the White House.

While Peter Navarro says he is not in the running to replace Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn, who has said he will quit, he will be a big winner from the departure of a person seen as a bulwark against economic protectionism.

Sidelined under Cohn to whom he has reported since late last year, Navarro, who is Trump's trade adviser, would now appear to have free rein. He has publicly backed Trump's proposed steel and aluminum tariffs in a series of media appearances after being out of the public eye for months.

Navarro has endorsed withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement as well as from a trade deal with South Korea. He believes the World Trade Organization allows unfair tax practises like value added tax that penalise American business.

But his main target has been China. He has backed a 45 percent tariff on imports from China to combat what he says is Beijing's policy of illegal export subsidies, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and lax worker safety and environmental regulations.

He has challenged Washington's "One China" which recognizes Beijing and not Taipei diplomatically.

"Just as these Chinese leaders have been exploiting American weakness by cheating in the trade arena, they will acknowledge the strength and resoluteness of Trump and rein in their mercantilist impulses," Navarro and now-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wrote in an economic paper for the Trump 2016 election campaign.

Trump said on Wednesday he had demanded action from China on trade that appeared to align with Navarro's policies. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin also chimed in on taking action on China, telling Fox Business Network the United States would get "reciprocal trade with China."

"China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States," Trump wrote in a post on Twitter on Tuesday, mistakenly referring to a deficit where Beijing runs a surplus.

According to official data, China ran a trade surplus of $375.2 billion with the United States in 2017. Overall the U.S. trade deficit with other countries was $566 billion in the year.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the issue had been raised with a Chinese delegation last week. President Xi Jinping's top economic adviser Liu He held talks with the administration last week. Sanders said that she was not aware of any Chinese response so far.

Navarro, 68, has a Harvard doctorate in economics and is a Democrat. He is the author of several books highlighting the danger of China's economic and military rise, including "Death by China: Confronting the Dragon - A Global Call to Action".

He has also attacked Germany, saying its companies have benefited unfairly from an undervalued euro. Trump has threatened to impose hefty tariffs on European car imports.

Navarro's ire isn't reserved just for other countries. He believes American company executives have aligned themselves with China's agenda due to their "narrow profit-maximizing interests".

"Indeed, with their bread now being buttered offshore, so-called 'American' organizations like the Business Roundtable and National Association of Manufacturers transformed from staunch critics of Chinese mercantilism into open, and often very aggressive, soldiers in the pro-China Lobby," he wrote in "Death by China."

Unscrupulous Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding world markets with a range of bone-crushing, cancer-causing, flammable, poisonous, and otherwise lethal products, foods, and drugs, he also wrote in that book.

ODDBALL OR VISIONARY

Navarro's economic views have been dismissed by most economists as "fringe" and "oddball" although Trump has hailed him as a "visionary". He emerged unheralded as a China commentator in 2006 after years writing about energy regulatory issues as a professor at the University of California-Irvine.

He and Ross in their campaign paper for Trump calculated that had the United States been able to eliminate its $500 billion trade deficit in 2015, it would have bolstered the economy by 3.38 percentage points and produced a growth rate of 5.97 percent.

Those calculations were derided as "magical thinking" at the time by many economists, who noted that the trade deficit is determined by the difference between saving and investment, with rising imports caused by less savings and not by "perfidious foreigners and incompetent trade negotiators" as Trump has suggested, a report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics said at the time.

Trump says that America will emerge as a winner in any trade war as its imports are so large that other countries will be forced to negotiate.

"Our jobs have been stolen from us, our businesses have been taken," Trump told a press conference on Tuesday.
New Delhi: The government has changed e-way bill rules which are expected to help e-commerce companies in smooth transportation of goods and ease the method of calculating the value of goods.

The government has notified changes in rules of e-way bill which includes permitting even job workers to generate the electronic receipt for movement of goods.

Electronic way or e-way bill will be required from April 1 for transporting goods valued over Rs 50,000 between states.

In a major relief to FMCG companies, the government has allowed businesses to consider only the value of taxable supply for the purpose of generating e-way bill in cases where sales invoice includes both exempted and taxable supply of goods.

This would mean that if food products which are subject to GST are being sent along with items which are exempt from the tax, say milk, then only the value of food products shall be considered for e-way bill?.

Besides, to help smaller businesses operate within a particular state, it has said that vehicle details will not be required in case of movement of goods up to 50 kms (between the consignor/ consignee and transporter place). The limit was 10 km earlier, said tax consultancy firm PWC.

Also, it has done away with the requirement to produce e-way bill for intra-state movement of goods by road in cases where value of each consignment is less than Rs 50,000 but aggregate consignment value ?in the vehicle is more than Rs 50,000.

"This is a major relief for courier, e-commerce companies etc. and will reduce the paper work substantially. The Government should consider extending this relief to inter-state consignments as well," PWC said.

As per the amendments, the validity of e-way bill will now be till the midnight of the day immediately following the date of generation of e-way bill, instead of 24 hours earlier.

For example, if an e-way bill is generated at 3 pm on March 8th, 2018 for a movement within 100 kms., the ?validity period of one day shall be counted till midnight of March 9th, 2018. Earlier, the e-way bill would have been valid till 3 pm of March 9th, 2018.

"Therefore, in most cases, the industry will get more than 24 hours for the first 100 kms of shipment," PwC said.

As per the changes in the rules, in addition to principal manufacturer/ brand owner, the job worker can also generate e-way bill in case of inter-state movement of goods to job worker irrespective of the consignment value.

Earlier only the ?principal manufacturer could only issue the e-way bill.

"With these changes, E way bill Rules have become much simpler than earlier. The timing of these changes suggests that Government is keen to implement the e way system from April 1, 2018, as indicated recently," said Pratik Jain, Partner and Leader Indirect Tax, PwC.

AMRG & Associates Partner Rajat Mohan said one of the finest changes brought about by the government is an option given to taxpayers, who can now authorize transporters to generate Eway bills on their behalf.

"This provision will be a win-win situation, as first this would promote ease of doing business for taxpayers," he said.
Savitri, 30, was married four months ago to a man from Paljar, Sonipat. Savitri and her husband Shyamlal work together on a farm of a local Zamindar. We spend equal time on the field and do all kind of agricultural labour. Yet my husband earns more than me, she said.

The wage difference between the couple reflects the patriarchal mindset, which leads to the woman getting paid less than the man in every job. While Savitris husband is paid between Rs 180-200 for a days work, Savitri makes a little less than Rs 120 for the same job as his husbands.

But I cant complain. Theres still time that we start earning like men, she said.

Dreze agrees. He believes that most of these problems faced by the women farmers in the country stems from deep-rooted patriarchy and discrimination against women. Unless government starts to acknowledge that women are the pillar of farming in India, and actually starts to work for them, these issues will continue to surface, he suggested.

The other reason for this wage gap is migration of the men folk to cities looking for jobs and other source of income. Employment in agriculture is available for fewer days per year, which makes it essential for men to migrate in search of better-paid work. Thus women are forced to fill this vacuum.

Ashish Yadav, who runs a women self-help farmer community in Sonipat says that, In many cases women are also forced to accept work as an agricultural labourer in their own village under meager wages.

This dependence of women labour, especially during the peak periods of sowing and harvesting, has become very common. They [women] take up the job for whatever they are being offered. The men folk are away and the responsibility to take care of the family is on a womans shoulders, Yadav said.
Back in the day, the only school fundraiser I remember participating in was hawking holiday cards at my neighbors doors in Kansas City, Missouri.

Each re-usable box contained a set of 12, not particularly artistic or enticing greeting cards. My sales would surely have increased had the product originated from one of KCs proudest business icons  Hallmark Cards. No such luck.

Today, annual fundraisers cooked up by friends, parents and donor groups  for both public and private schools  are standard fare necessary to help close a financial gap and meet bottom-line expenses. From crab feeds to chic galas, from silent auctions to culinary experiences, theres one type of fundraiser I find hard to resist: sales of objet dart!

Thats what youll discover at Napa Makes, a one-day, art shop debuting Saturday, April 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at its beneficiary, The Oxbow School, 530 Third St. in Napa. Profits will be earmarked for the Stephen Thomas Scholarship Fund. Admission is free, family and dog-friendly.

Napa Makes is the brainstorm of local friends Liz Murray, Emma K. Morris and Jordan Felling. All three women have hands-on, artsy backgrounds and connections with Bay Area artisans who craft one-of-a-kind items.
Nashik: Nearly 25,000 farmers are marching from Nashik to Mumbai to protest against the governments anti-farmer policies and press for various demands, including a complete loan waiver.

They plan to 'gherao' the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha after reaching Mumbai on March 12, said Sunil Malusare of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), which has organised the protest.

The farmers had started the 180-km long march on Tuesday from the CBS chowk in Central Nashik and are walking on the Mumbai-Agra National Highway.

Apart from loans, they have also demanded a waiver of electricity bills, and the implementation of the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission.

"We also want the state government to refrain from forceful acquisition of farm lands in the name of development projects like the super highway and the bullet train," AIKS secretary Raju Desle said.

The government had announced a loan waiver last year following unprecedented protests by farmers in various parts of the state. Desle claimed that as many as 1,753 farmers have killed themselves since the BJP-led state government announced the conditional farm loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore.

AIKS national president Ashok Dhavle, local MLA J P Gavit and other leaders are leading the long march. Dhavle earlier alleged that the BJP government had betrayed the farmers by not honouring the assurances given to them.

"We will demand a complete change in the river linking scheme proposed to be implemented in Nashik, Thane and Palghar, so as to ensure that tribal villages are not submerged and water is made available to these districts and other drought-prone areas," he said.

Farmers are also demanding the transfer of forest land to those who have been tilling it for years and an increase in the compensation for peasants whose crops were damaged in the recent hailstorms and pink bollworm infestation.
Saharanpur: Semi-urban and rural India have perennial issues that their urban counterparts choose to ignore. Caste discrimination is one such issue that becomes evident when one crosses over to villages bordering Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh.

Brijesh Devi, one of the rare scheduled caste principals, is one of the three teachers in a school which has over 200 students from classes one to five in Baliyakhedi village. The principal claimed 71 of her students are from the scheduled caste, while 121 of them belong to other backward classes.

We have no other option but to make children clean the campus and sometimes toilets as well. However, upper caste parents have strictly told us not to involve their children in the process. The upper caste students come in at 9 am and leave around 3 pm. The other children come early to tidy up the school, said Brijesh Devi.

When News18 visited the school, two girls belonging to the scheduled caste community walked out of their classroom to offer water. How can you expect the teachers to teach as well as clean and then attend visitors, said the principal, who claims to hail from a government school herself where caste discrimination was more than evident.

While children are very young to understand caste principles, this discrimination is being doctored into their tender minds. The entire class is my friend. I play with everyone, said 10-year-old Shikha Devi.

The student then went on to name three boys who, regardless of the time they enter the class, are made to sit close to the teacher every day. The child doesnt exactly understand the reason but was aware that it had something to do with their family. I dont know why this happens. Maybe they are weak students and their MaaBapu (mother-father) want them to sit close to the teacher, she said laughingly, her innocence clear.

The principal decided to not address the practice and began talking about how the government has turned a deaf ear to their pleas for better facilities.

Just 15 kilometres away, further into the rural landscape, discrimination became a graver reality.

The government school in Bani Kheda village has two cooks who prepare lunch for the mostly upper caste students. The schools principal, Rajpal, confirmed that one of the employees was from a scheduled caste. The principal, himself, belongs to a scheduled caste community.

I cook for the kids and wash the utensils. Earlier, I used to wash the childrens plates but with the new principal coming over, students have been told to do so themselves. The other cook is my friend, we have been working together for quite some time now, but he does not wash any utensils. I do not have a problem with it, I think this is normal, said Sajjan, who has accepted dual treatment as a part and parcel of life. The other cook had left for the day after preparing the meal.

The separation between students based on their caste does not just stop there. Although all students sit together to eat their meals, the plates provided are different.

There are a few lower caste students in the school and we have different plates for them. The upper caste parents have asked us not to mix plates and belongings, if any, between both sets of children. While I have no problem with this, I find it funny as the cooking and the washing of utensils is done by our cook from the scheduled caste community. What will happen by keeping plates separate, I dont know, Rajpal said with a laugh.

The school has a total of 63 students with the majority belonging to the Saini community, who are traditionally land-owners and farmers but are suffering financially due to deteriorating livelihood and farming conditions.

THE FLIP SIDE

A couple of wooden cots, an exasperatingly long hookah stand, a dominating tractor and a large expanse of cemented patch housing cows and buffaloes  the example of a typical upper caste house in the villages of Saharanpur.

Just because we cannot afford expensive private education doesnt mean we will let our children mix with the lower caste. We are an upper-class family. We were born with this supremacy and we need to maintain that, said Amrish Sharma, a farmer by profession residing in the semi-urban areas of Saharanpur.

Sharma lives away from his family for several months during the ploughing and reaping seasons. He has handed the responsibility of his children to his wife and parents.

We are planning to shift our children to private schools. Most of our relatives send theirs there. Till the time the children dont transfer to their new school, they need to maintain a distance from the scheduled caste kids. I have specifically told my sons and daughter not to mix with those kids as they are dirty and will teach them wrong things. As they grow up, they will understand the difference between us and them, said the Sharma households daughter-in-law.

Parents of the other caste children have also accepted the treatment meted out to them as a norm in their day-to-day life.

This has been going on for years. It is nothing new. We do not have enough money to send our wards to private schools and even if we do, they are discriminated there as well. They are not allowed to sit on first benches and are purposely given low marks, alleged Shivpal, whose daughter studies at the local government school.

REPORT CARD

Ministry of Human Resource Development defines Right To Education (RTE) as every childs right to free and compulsory education till completion of elementary teaching in a neighbourhood school. It clarifies that compulsory education means an obligation of the appropriate government to provide free elementary education, ensure compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary teaching of every child in the 6-14 age group. The RTE Act, 2009, makes it compulsory for the government to provide free textbooks within the first week of admission.

The ground reality, though, is different. Braj Bala, principal of Prathmik Vidyalaya for girls, said, The admission process ends by April second week and the books from government offices come by October-November. Till then, the children study with old textbooks.

News18 visited eight other schools and confirmed with the principals that this was not just a one-off.

Yes, this is true. We are trying to get in touch with government officials concerned to sort the matter out but it takes time. I have seen schools using old textbooks until the time they get newer ones. Which is good, isnt it? said PK Pandey, Saharanpur District Magistrate.

A survey conducted by an NGO called the RTE Forum in 2014-15 across 457 schools in 10 states, found that textbooks were not available on time in 50% of the schools.

Books are not the only concern in the setup. The condition of school toilets, classrooms and campuses (if any) has been brought up numerous times over the years, only for the government to accept but not act on the issue.

A bus conductor, who works on the Saharanpur-Delhi route, perfectly summed up the scenario. People in the city will read, remorse and forget about this by the end of the day. How will the situation improve? We dont know.

(#BeingADalit is a series by News18 to understand what it takes to be a persecuted minority in India.)
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) moved the Supreme Court against the acquittal of the Talwar couple in their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj's murder. The Allahabad High Court had in October 12 last year acquitted the dentist couple, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the 2008 twin murder case.

The move by the agency comes months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the Supreme Court against the Allahabad High Court verdict.

Four years after they were held guilty for the murder of their daughter Aarushi Talwar, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were exonerated by the Allahabad High Court on October 12, 2017. The judgment was pronounced by a two-member Allahabad High Court bench, which said conviction cant be based on suspicion and the couple must be given "benefit of doubt".

The CBI filed an appeal challenging the high court order acquitting the Talwar couple, CBI's spokesperson said. The high court had freed them of the charges on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

A CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013 in connection with the case.

Before the high court's order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars' Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over a shoddy probe into the case which was making national headlines, the case was handed over to the CBI on a recommendation by the then chief minister Mayawati.

After CBI took charge of the probe, in 2010 it submitted a closure report in which it claimed that the murders couldnt be investigated in the absence of evidence. However, the case was reopened by the CBI court, which on November 25, 2013, found them guilty of the murders and sentenced them to life. The couple then filed an appeal in the Allahabad High Court challenging the previous courts order.
If Liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they can be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. ~ Aristotle

Democratic representation, a vital limb in the struggle for gender justice, is fundamentally an amalgamation of political consciousness, activism and involvement in decision-making process. The Constitution of India from its Preamble to its text aptly reflects the significance of representation.

The expressions, JUSTICE, social, economic and political as well as EQUALITY of status and of opportunity testifies the constitutional acceptance of inclusive, just and fair democratic representation.

But is the representation really fair? While our country is obsessed with the idea of motherhood, is the political class tolerant enough to share power with women?

Legislative and intra-party representation

According to a study conducted by Inter-Parliamentary Union, India ranks 148th in the list of 193 countries in terms of womens representation in the lower or single house of parliament, as of 1st February 2018. The world average percentage of women representation stands at about 22%, whereas in case of India it is mere 11.8%.

Noticeably, countries like Burundi, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Fiji and Ghana rank better than India. In South Asia, countries like Nepal (48), Afghanistan (54), Pakistan (89) and Bangladesh (91) rank much higher than India. Even in the case of Upper house i.e. Rajya Sabha, the representation of women stands at meagre 11.1%.

An empirical study of the members of legislative assemblies of States reveals that the situation is much more horrendous, wherein out of 4128 legislative constituencies only 358 are represented by women legislators.

The figures on representation of women leaders highlight a tragic fact-- the chasm between the myth of empowerment and the ground reality. Even within parties, women have been conveniently ignored which gets testified through both, the constituent instruments of the parties and the empirical data gathered. Of the seven national parties recognised by Election Commission of India, the constituent instrument of only four parties (namely INC, BJP, TMC and CPI) talk about reservation to women in some form or the other at different decision making platforms. However, some of these provisions appear to be mere elephants teeth because the effect of the provisions pertaining to reservation often gets diluted and nullified by the discretion given to the partys president. For instance, Article VI-A of the constitution of the Indian National Congress provides for 33% reservation of seats at different Committees for women. However, a subsequent clause provides that Notwithstanding anything contained in the above provision in the Article VI(A) (a), the Congress President shall have the authority to relax the percentage of sectoral representations for the categories stated above. A similar camouflaged provision is present in TMCs constituent instrument as well. The number of women in the apex decision making body of the parties narrates the entire story.



Although the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) offers specific reservation to women in its National Executive body without any caveat, it fails to fulfill the required mandate of its own constitution. The BJPs constitution provides for reservation in 40 out of 120 seats, i.e. 33% in its National Executive. However, in the current scenario, only 8 out of 95 members (8.4%) are women.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), though not a national party, had promised alternate politics. And yet, it has only one female member in its nine-member Political Affairs Committee and not a single female minister in its government in Delhi.

The dismal state of affairs is replicated even in the ticket distribution system of these political parties. During the 16th Lok Sabha elections, the largest partyBJP-- gave only 38/428 tickets to women candidates while Congress gave 60/464 tickets. Similarly, other national parties like BSP gave 21/503 tickets, CPI gave 6/67, CPI (M) gave 11/93 tickets and NCP gave 4/36 tickets to women candidates.

Quite surprisingly, the political parties led by women leaders display a similar outlook. During the Legislative Assembly Elections, in Uttar Pradesh, BSP gave only 21 tickets out of 403 to women; whereas in West Bengal, TMC gave 43 tickets to women out of 293; and in Tamil Nadu, AIADMK gave 29 out of 234 tickets to women candidates. Given the apparent centrality of political parties in Indian politics, it becomes immensely strenuous for independent candidates to contest successfully, especially for female candidates. None of the 206 women candidates, who contested the 16th general elections independently, won.

In order to ensure adequate representation of women in the local bodies, the Parliament of India passed the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment in 1993, which reserves a minimum of one third of the seats for women in all local bodies. Some legislatures like Delhi and Bihar have reserved more than one-third of the total seats for women. Notwithstanding the pious objective of the above-mentioned amendments, the ground reality has hardly improved. It is aptly reflected in the recently held local bodies elections in Mumbai and Delhi. In the BMC elections, only 15 out of 113 unreserved constituencies were won by women. Similarly, in the MCD elections out of the 272 constituencies, 138 were reserved for women. As a tokenism, the major political parties of Delhi like BJP, Congress and AAP offered 2, 6 and 7 tickets respectively to women in unreserved constituencies. Arguably, most of the tickets offered to women candidates even in reserved constituencies were not based on their own personal endeavours or recognition, rather on the affiliation of their husband or other relatives.

Representation in the Executive organ

Even in the case of the second limb of government, i.e. executive, we can find quite a grim situation. A survey of the various executive posts created by the Constitution of India revealed the following. In the present Union government, out of total 82 ministers, 9 are women (6 out of 28 cabinet ministers and 3 out of 54 other ministers). Since independence, India has had 1 woman as President, 1 woman as Prime minister and no woman as Vice President. There have been only 30 women governors and 16 women chief ministers till now. No woman has ever held the position of Chairman of Finance Commission, Cabinet secretary or, the Attorney General of India. Out of 22 there has been only one Chief Election Commissioner, whereas three women have chaired the UPSC out of 28. Even an institution like RBI has never witnessed a woman as Governor. Presently, out of 35 there are 5 women serving as chief secretary in states and Union territories. There is no woman advocate general in any of the states.

Representation in Judicial set-up

While there has been much debate on the issue of judicial reforms in India, little ink has been spilt in understanding the interconnected issue of skewed gender dynamics of the system. The Supreme Court of India has not witnessed a single woman as chief justice. It has had only 7 woman judges on the bench till now. As per the report published by Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy which covers data till November 2017, across Indias 24 High Courts, slightly over 10% judges are women, with not even a single woman judge in eight High Courts. (Vidhi 2018:2) Further, 86 women have occupied the post of a High Court judge. Even in the case of lower judiciary, out of 15,959 judges, only 4,409 (27%) are women. The data pertaining to promotion within the lower judiciary depicts widening gender imbalances. These are appalling figures despite the existence of women-reservation in lower judiciary of some states.

Indias Constitutional and International law obligations

The obligation to provide a level playing field in terms of opportunities finds its place both under the Constitution of India as well as Indias International Law obligations.

In furtherance of the aspirations expressed in the Preamble of our Constitution, Article 14 ensures right to equality to be a fundamental right, inevitably mandates for equal opportunity which even gets reflected in Article 15(3). Article 39A obliges the state to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities. In addition to it, Article 46 imposes a duty on the state to protect the weaker sections from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.

The Convention for Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, of which India is a signatory, obliges the state parties under article 7, to take appropriate measure to eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life of the country and, in particular, to ensure to women, on equal terms with men, the right to vote in all elections and to be eligible for election to all publicly elected bodies as well as the right to participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government.

In addition to it, Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which binds the state parties including India, provides that every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions [...] to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors.

It is immensely perplexing to witness the parochial and discriminatory approach of the political class on issues of representation. While on one hand they appear to be apostles of representational inclusiveness on criteria like caste or region, quite paradoxically on the other hand there is a conspicuous apathy among the political class on the issue of womens representation, despite the fact that in all the cases the underlying issue remains discrimination only. It can be attributed, inter alia, to the understanding of the political class that unlike other sections of the society, women dont exist as an exclusive political class or a unified vote bank in itself. There can be manifold reasons for poor representations of women in India, ranging from socio-historic forces inherited from nationalist movements to the inherent masculinity of popular politics to clandestine institutional hurdles like family and marriage to current socio-economic and political policies.

The need for more women in governance

An effective representation of women in the decision-making structures will have a bearing on the policies, vision and structure of institutions.

A multi-pronged strategy is required to ensure adequate representation of women at different platforms of governance. Owing to the peculiarities of the institutions, no straightjacket formula can exhaustively serve the purpose. On the legislative and political front, clue can be taken from global experiences and adapted accordingly. For instance, nearly half of the top fifty countries in the IPU list have voluntary party quotas system which have been applied in different ways.

In some European countries like Sweden, the zipper system requires party candidate lists to alternate between one male and one female candidate or that every three candidates must include one woman. Liberal democracies like United States, Australia and New Zealand offer Soft quota system which is based on the rationale that gender parity will occur in a piece meal manner without the need for rules. Reserved seats are the most popular gender quota system adopted in many Sub-Saharan countries, South Asia and in the Arab region.

Legal candidate quotas are the preferred system in Latin America and the Balkans. In addition to ensuring womens reservation at all legislative levels, the Parliament and Election Commission should promote mechanism for clear and transparent rules to ensure internal democracy, with specific focus on gender equality. Even the political parties should consider special measures to ensure womens participation in decision-making positions within the organisation. On the executive front, womens participation can be ensured through some form of effective reservation in both the permanent and political executive.



In addition to it, training of both men and women might help to sensitise them towards this issue. Judiciary presents a typical case altogether due to huge disparity between the womens enrolment in law courses and bar.

The absence of infrastructural amenities and existence of socio-economic hardships act as barriers to women participation. In addition to reservation for women at educational and institutional levels of at least 33%, revamp of working conditions is also needful. Equal participation of men and women is not only a prerequisite of justice and democracy, but an inevitable condition for human existence as well.

Anmolam is a lawyer and runs a non-profit organisation BDLAAAW.

Farheen Ahmad is a research scholar at South Asian University, New Delhi.
Mumbai: A special TADA court in Mumbai remanded Mohammed Farooq Yasin Mansoor aka Farooq Takla to CBI custody till March 19 after the agency informed the court that he was an active conspirator in the 1993 Mumbai blast case along with Dawood Ibrahim, Anees Ibrahim and others.

Takla, who had been wanted since the serial blasts, was arrested by the CBI on Thursday morning from Delhi Airport after he was extradited from Dubai. He was brought before Justice GA Sanap of the Special TADA Court in Mumbai around 7pm.

Public prosecutor Deepak Salvi, while producing the accused, told the court, "Takla helped and aided the transportation of four accused in the blast case. He helped them move from Mumbai to Pakistan via Dubai and back. He also helped in their logistics such as arranging air tickets and finding accommodation."

The four accused had travelled to Pakistan to receive arms and ammunition and get training in handling explosives. Salvi informed the court that many accused have confessed to Takla's active role in conspiracy and in providing logistical support.

"Further he also provided their expenses while in Dubai and apprised them about their next step of sending them to Pakistan from Dubai in order to receive training in weaponry," reads the remand application of the CBI.

The application goes on to say that the accused is deeply involved in the criminal conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, including the Bombay blast case, and that he was never available in this case as he remained absconding despite the agency's best efforts to nab him. The CBI had issued non-bailable warrants and a red corner notice against him.

The CBI sought his custody for 14 days, stating that it needs to ascertain various facts concerning his role as well as the role of other co-accused and other facts of conspiracy within his knowledge.

While the court granted custody till March 19, the lawyer of Takla, Farhana Shah opposed the custody stating that a chargesheet has already been filed in this case and all witnesses have been examined. The court, however, said that the custody of the accused is essential in this case.

Several family members of Takla were also present in court. Takla's brother Ahmed Langda, who was acquitted in the 1993 blast case, fainted after the court was informed that it was through his help that agencies were able to nab Takla.

The series of explosions in Mumbai in 1993 killed 257 people and injured more than 700 and destroyed property worth over 100 crore. Over 100 accused have been convicted in the case over the last several years and more than 20 are absconding, includinf most wanted gangster Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, who are said to be the masterminds of the blast.
New Delhi: After a series of defeats in by-elections and local body polls, the BJP in Rajasthan may be increasingly relying on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to garner votes in the build-up to the Assembly elections later this year.

Vasundhara Raje in her stint as the Chief Minister has seldom shared dais with Prime Minister Modi in political rallies. But all that will soon change beginning Thursday afternoon when the Prime Minister visits Jhunjhunu on International Women's Day.

Despite being one of the most backward districts, Juhunjhunu has shown exemplary results in encouraging women's education is part of the Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao campaign.

Raje, reports said, personally oversaw preparations for Modis first visit to the state since the bypoll loss. Everything from seating arrangements and parking facilities to drinking water availability has to be perfect, she reportedly told officials. She even visited the landing strip where the Prime Minister is scheduled to land, to check if everything was in order.

Since the bypoll loss in Ajmer, Alwar and Mandalgarh, Raje has come under fire within the state unit of the party over the last one month.

First, the Kota district unit of the BJP was in an open split over whether or not the state should continue under her leadership. Ashok Chuadhary, President of the BJPs OBC (Other Backward Castes) wing in Kota district, had written a letter to party president Amit Shah demanding a change in leadership.

Days after Chaudharys letter bomb, Raje loyalist and Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria was cornered by BJP MLAs in the Assembly over deteriorating law and order situation. The first to open fire against his own Home Minister was Babu Singh Rathore, BJP MLA from Jodhpurs Shergarh, who raised the issue of a caste-conflict that broke out in Jodhpurs Samrau village in January.

Rathore hit out at Rajasthan Police for failing to protect citizens and said, Of what use are police officers who do not protect citizens? If the police is unable to protect the people, you (the government) should ensure that citizens get gun licences so that at least they can take up arms to protect themselves and their families!

Talking about rampant illegal mining in Alwar, BJP MLA Gyandev Ahuja claimed the Alwar Superintendent of Police (SP) was autocratic and corrupt as he was taking bribes from every police station in the district and, in turn, allowing illegal mining to continue.

While sources say that Raje plans to make amends, the Congress has smelled blood. WhatsApp forwards and social media messages in Rajasthan liberally use the word Maharani (Queen) to refer to Raje as a ruler far removed from the lives of ordinary citizens.

Keen to break the image, Raje who won a two-thirds majority in the last Assembly polls, is also working to remove the elitist tag, beginning with the major sops announced in her state budget speech last month. Farmers who have taken loans up to Rs 50,000 from cooperative banks till September 2017 will get a full loan waiver, she said.

She went on to announce several sops for farmers, such as 7 lakh new power connections in rural areas. Raje further declared the setting up of an Agricultural University in Alwar District, where the BJP lost the bypolls earlier this month. The wages of aanganwadi workers was also raised Rs 6,000 per month.

In addition to the loan waiver, the state budgets other major focus was road connectivity for remote areas, particularly those in Western Rajasthan. As Raje promised to resolve the drinking water crisis, she announced that the government will ensure access to pure drinking water in 27 districts. In another major announcement, Raje said that people over the age of 80 will be able to travel for free on Rajasthan Roadways busses.

As the Congress readies its battle plans for the crucial Assembly election test later this year, Raje, too, has planned damage control measures of her own.
Paris: Two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned from a blunder-struck trip to India, Emmanuel Macron arrives in New Delhi hoping to avoid the missteps of his ally.

Trudeau and Macron are often compared internationally because of their broadly similar political views, as well as youth and good looks. But the French leader will be eager to make a different impression on his Indian hosts.

Trudeau, already facing suspicions in India that Canada was too soft on Sikh separatists back home, was seriously embarrassed when a former militant was invited to a dinner with him in Mumbai.

Even before this revelation, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris last year.

Macron will "spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi," a source in the French presidency said, adding that they had "formed a close relationship" during Macron's first nine months in power.

They will meet Saturday for talks before Macron attends a solar power summit on Sunday designed to showcase India and France's commitment to fighting climate change, which both leaders have made a priority.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, France's 40-year-old president is set to make the almost obligatory visit to the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a few hours drive from the Indian capital on Sunday.

On Monday, he heads to the chaotic Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the river Ganges, which the Indian premier has promised to modernise and clean up.

Having seen Trudeau pilloried on social media and in the Canadian press for donning traditional Indian clothing at every opportunity, Macron is likely to be far more conservative in his dress-sense.

ARMS AND REACTORS

As well as discussing climate change and ways to build closer diplomatic ties, the two biggest issues between the countries in recent years  defence and nuclear energy sales  will also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the world's biggest arms buyer.

Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron has travelled widely since his election last May, presenting himself as the dynamic new face in the European Union who is driving reform efforts in the 28-member bloc.

The centrist has invested time and energy in building relationships with the world's nationalist strongmen, including US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the world's biggest democracy and its huge, yet still untapped, business potential.

The United States and leading European Union members have spent years wooing successive governments in New Delhi, seeing the country as a counter-weight to China in the region.

Macron is set to announce plans to allow Indian navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.
New Delhi: Minutes after the Supreme Court upheld his daughter Hadiyas marriage to Shafin Jahan, Ashokan said that the court has not explored all angles in investigating the case. The Supreme Court on Friday set aside the Kerala High Court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya in the Kerala 'love jihad' case.

The SC said that Hadiya can't be in anyone's custody and she is free to follow her pursuits. She can complete studies, live with whosoever she wants. Nothing remained for the court to decide after she expressed her will, an apex court bench said on Thursday. The court further added that she can't be compelled to go or live with anyone.

Speaking to News18 after the verdict, Ashokan said that he was happy with the judgment on letting the NIA probe continue but still believes that the court has not taken into account all aspects of the case.

The marriage was a concern for me and I still think that the court has not fully looked into all the aspects. But see, the court has upheld the NIA investigation which is a good thing, he said, without elaborating on what aspects he was hinting at.

While he said that a review petition was something that still needs to be discussed, sources close to him said Ashokan could go ahead with the review if he wanted to, but chances of it landing up at the same SC bench were high, something that Ashokan consider before taking any step.

Earlier, Hadiyas father had told the court that she was being psychologically and physically abducted.

This, over a month after the Supreme Court observed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) cannot probe the marital aspect of the Hadiya case.

During the course of the SC hearing, Hadiya has maintained that she voluntarily wanted to be with her husband Shafin Jahan. In January, when Supreme Court Justice Chandrachud asked her about her dreams for the future, she said, "I want freedom."

The Kerala High Court had annulled Hadiyas marriage to Jahan in May 2017 and gave her custody to her parents.

The Supreme Court, in January 2018, had said that it is only Hadiya herself, who has the rights to decide on her choices.
New Delhi: In a big victory for freedom of choice, a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, on Thursday, upheld the marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan, ruling it is was her choice to live with whoever she wishes to.

The verdict set aside the controversial 2017 ruling by the Kerala High Court, which had given the custody of the 24-year-old to her father Ashokan. The HC had stated that Hadiya was incapable of taking decisions relating to her marriage.

The apex court, while granting freedom to Hadiya, maintained that she was free to live with whoever she wants, and that it cannot allow state or any other party to make inroad into this extremely private space.

The Kerala HC had earlier declared the marriage of Shafin Jahan and Hadiya (Akhila) as "null and void". The division bench order of Justices K Surendran Mohan and K Abraham Mathew said the marriage was a sham and had no consequence in the eye of the law.

The HC went on to state that the girl was weak, vulnerable and capable of being exploited in many ways.

Her marriage being the most important decision in her life can be taken only with the active involvement of her parents, the HC has ruled.

However, that was not all. Allowing a plea filed by Hadiyas father, the HC flagged the role of extremist organisations in influencing her and instilling radical thoughts in her.

The ruling came on the face of continuous reiterations by Hadiya that her embracing Islam and marriage to Shafin Jahan happened after a gap of two years, therefore, they had no connection with each other.

Hadiya in her statement to the court said that she got attracted to Islam seeing her roommates and that she wanted to learn more about the religion.

The matter was soon taken to the apex court. In January this year, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told the court that it had made substantial progress in their investigations into alleged love jihad cases, which were conducted at the apex court's direction

A three-judge bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar, DY Chandrachud said the NIA could continue its probe into the cases but it cannot investigate the marital status of a man and woman.

We are not concerned with it (probe). Whether you carry on your investigation or arrest someone, we are not concerned. You can investigate it but you cannot investigate their marital status, the bench had said.

However, Hadiyas father in a last-ditch attempt to save his daughter from being indoctrinated, filed an affidavit in the court claiming that attempts were made to take Hadiya to Syria and that she was psychologically and physically abducted.

The SC verdict upholds a womans choice to choose her partner, religion and her life.
Hyderabad: A 23-year-old woman was allegedly assaulted by her husband after she turned off the Wi-Fi router at their house in Dundigal area last night, police said on Thursday.

The woman was admitted to a hospital after her grandmother lodged a complaint with the police, who have recorded her statement, said Punjagutta police station inspector S Ravindar.

He said the accused, identified as Umar P, a driver, lost his cool after his wife turned off the wifi router connection on Wednesday midnight and thrashed her mercilessly.

"The alleged incident occurred at the house of the woman's in-laws. Umar dropped his wife to her grandmother's house in Somajiguda after the incident," said the officer.

Police booked Umar under sections 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 341 (wrongful restraint), and 498 A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) of the IPC, the inspector said.

As the offence took place under the Dundigal police station limits, the case will now be transferred for further investigation to that police station, he said.

No arrest has been made so far.

Speaking to reporters, the woman said she was beaten up continuously for switching off the WiFi of his phone. "He hit me on my neck, head, chest. He also thrashed me near my ear and lower part of the eye. After being hit below my eye,I ran out of the house after which he stopped hitting me," she claimed.

Further investigation is on.
A nationally-renowned poet who calls Napa County home will join the visiting faculty of the Napa Valley Writers Conference, giving local writers and book lovers a new connection to the week-long poetry and fiction workshop, now in its 38th year as a project of Napa Valley College.

Jane Mead is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently World of Made and Unmade, which was nominated for a National Book Award and a finalist for the Griffin Prize for excellence in poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Among her honors are a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award.

Meads appearance in the faculty lineup coincides with the conferences continuing efforts to engage the local community. For the second year in a row, scholarships designated specifically for Napa County writers are available to partially underwrite the fees for this years conference, slated for July 29  August 3.

Applications are now open to participate in the juried fiction and poetry workshops, with a deadline of April 2. A reading fee of $25 is due upon application, and full tuition costs $1,025.

Funds for the scholarships were contributed by the Napa Valley Writers, which is the local branch of the California Writers Club, and Napas Community Projects Foundation.
New Delhi: Even as the search is on for the four missing sailors of Maersk Honam ship, including one Indian, the company said that "hopes are fading" to find them.

"While search operation continues the hope of finding our missing colleagues is fading. We are in contact with their families and they know that tragically, the time passed decreases the likelihood of finding their loved ones alive. Our thoughts and prayers go to them," Sren Toft, chief operating officer of AP Moller-Maersk said in a statement on Thursday.

The missing seafarers are two Filipinos, one South African and one Indian national.

The missing Indian crew member has been identified as Sakim Hegde, one of the cooks on board, a senior official from the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS), Indias maritime regulator, said.

At least 22 crew were evacuated from Maersk Honam container ship on Tuesday after a distress signal was sent when they were unable to bring the fire under control. They immediately received help by a nearby vessel, ALS Ceres. One of the rescued seafarer, a Thai national, succumbed to injuries the following day.

The deceased crew member breathed his last while being taken to Colombo in the merchant ship which rescued them. The death and deteriorating health of two others led the company to divert the merchant ship to Kochi, Maersk chief operating officer Soren Toft told PTI

Maersk Line further said in its statement that among the rescued members, a Thai and a Filipino sailor, were in urgent need of medical care as their conditions worsened. They were evacuated by Indian navy vessel and handed over to the Indian coast guard of Thiruvananthapuram and are now receiving medical treatment. They are accompanied by one of the evacuated Indian colleagues, who is well versed in Malayalam.

The sailors, who have been at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, have been identifed as Deepu Jayan (31) hailing from Ambalathara in Thiruvananthapuram, Alen Roy (34), a Filipino and Sukun Suven peng (36) a Thai national, a hospital release said. It was also stated that they were injured after falling from the ship that caught fire off the Lakshadweep coast.

The remaining 19 crew members were ferried to Kochi by ALS Ceres, where they are being treated and counselled by medical professionals and crisis psychologists.

"We are doing our outmost to care for and closely follow the conditions of all evacuated colleagues. Also, we have an ongoing contact with their closest relatives," Sren Toft said.

According to the visuals received on Thursday, the fire continued to rage through the forward portion of the ship, and was slowly spreading towards the bridge of the vessel. The high temperatures had melted the containers onboard. Coast Guard Ship 'Shoor' was on the spot and fire fighting was underway. An ICG spokesperson said the ship is spewing out toxic smoke and the duo are showing signs of toxic gas inhalation.

@IndiaCoastGuard Ship Shoor fighting major fire onboard 353mts long container vessel MV Maersk Honam at about 650 NM from Kochi coast. Fire reported in 100X60 Mtr area. Nil oil spill. @DefenceMinIndia pic.twitter.com/DseLkh03Mh Indian Coast Guard (@IndiaCoastGuard) March 8, 2018

Toft said the ICG is coordinating both the fire fighting as well as search and rescue efforts, and has called out for more help from merchant vessels passing through the busy shipping route. The company has also commissioned a heavy duty ship specialising in fire fighting to help extinguish the blaze, he said.

Asked about the cause of the fire, Toft said it is too early to "speculate" on that. The fire started from cargo hold number 3 on the vessel located close to the crew accommodation, he said.

The crew decided to jump ship after multiple efforts at containing the flames failed, he said. Without specifying the quantity, Toft said a few of the over 7,800 containers on board had cargo classified as "dangerous".

He, however, said it is premature to blame them for the fire and added that shipping lines regularly carry such cargo in the containers.

The ship has a capacity to carry 15,000 standard 20-foot equivalent (TEUs) containers and was carrying over 12,000 TEUs on the voyage from Singapore to Suez when the incident occurred on Tuesday.

The company's efforts are directed towards saving the ship commissioned only last year, he said. "The fire is still blazing, the situation is still critical...very, very seldom that we have incidents of this severity," Toft said.

(With inputs from PTI)
Bengaluru: The Siddaramaiah government in Karnataka unveiled a state flag on Thursday. The flag or Naada Dwaja with red, white and yellow colours has state emblem Ganda Bherunda, a two-headed mythical bird in the middle.

The committee to decide the design of the flag headed by Kannada Development Authority (KDA) chairman S G Siddaramaiah submitted the new design to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at the Vidhana Soudha on Thursday morning.

The CM has accepted the design and assured the committee that he will send it the Centre. He said that there was no bar on state flags in the Constitution and all states can have their own flags.

Earlier, Karnataka had an informal or unofficial yellow and red flag used by Kannada organisations and others. The same flag was used at government functions. After public demand for an official flag, Siddaramaiah had formed a committee to come out with a design.

The Kannada flag had led to a war of words between the ruling Congress and main opposition BJP when the committee was formed. BJP leaders, including Shobha Karandlaje, had questioned it saying that Siddaramaiah was practising divisive politics. After public uproar against BJPs stand, the saffron party decided to quieten its stand on the issue.

Even the Union Home Ministry had expressed its disapproval then.

Speaking to News18 Siddaramaiah said Kannada flag is not unconstitutional. It is not barred by the Constitution. The only thing is we have to hoist it below the national flag, which we will anyway do. We will send the design to the Centre. Hope they approve it. There has been a long pending demand for it. I am happy that we finally have a Kannada Baavuta (Kannada Flag).

The chief minister who has been cleverly using the Kannada nationalism card to counter BJPs nationalism card seems to have put the saffron party on back foot once again. Following a huge protest over Hindi imposition by the Centre, Siddaramaiah had ordered removal of Hindi signage from Bengaluru Metro in last July. He has also taken several measures to uphold the primacy of Kannada in Karnataka.

The BJP has decided to maintain silence over the new Kannada flag fearing that any opposition might cost them votes and the party will be branded as anti-Kannada.

The BJP has also woken up to Kannada sentiments and playing its own Kannada card in the elections. The JDS has welcomed the Kannada flag though initially it called it an election gimmick.
Thiruvananthapuram: In a major setback to the state government and the ruling CPM, the Kerala High court has directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the investigation into the murder of youth Congress worker Shuhaib in Kannur.

The directive from Justice Kamal Pasha came on Wednesday just four hours after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan stated in the Assembly that there was no need for an investigation by the central agency.

On Monday too, two days after the government said it was open to any probe, the Chief Minister had said there was no need for a CBI investigation.

This is the fourth case of political murder from Kannur district to be probed by the Thiruvananthapuram unit of the agency.

Allowing the petition filed by CP Muhammad and SP Razia, parents of Shuhaib, the single bench accepted their argument that a fair and proper investigation into the case may not be possible under the local police. It also dismissed the argument of the government that only the Division Bench of the High court can order a CBI investigation.

The court directed the state to provide all support to the CBI to investigate the case. It also said, if the CBI feels that a fresh investigation is required in the case, it was free to approach the court. It ordered the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the police should hand over the case diary and all related documents to the CBI.

The court observed that the workers at lower ranks of the political parties were used as pawns in the hands of their leaders to finish off their political rivals.

Reacting to the court's directive, the Chief Minister said the court may have its own stand and he is not aware of it. "The government's stand is clear and the police investigation is in the right direction," he said.

Both the district and state leadership of CPM tried to put up a strong defence following the new development.

CPM State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan who termed CBI as an agency of RSS said the party is not afraid of any kind of investigation. Across the country, the Sangh Parivar is after the communists. The investigation is a ploy to divert the attention from their attack on Communists," he said.

CPM District secretary P Jayarajan who tried to view it as the result of an unholy nexus between Congress and BJP said his party has nothing to hide in this murder.

Thirty-year-old Youth Congress worker, Shuhaib was murdered on the night of February 12 with 37 cuts allegedly by CPM workers while he, along with a few friends, was waiting in front of an eatery near Mattanoor. All the 11 people arrested by the SIT are CPM workers.
Kolkata: It requires a lot of grit, passion and sacrifice for a young woman to serve the Indian Armed Forces. Not only this, rigorous training and a strong mental strength to perform at par with the male counterparts is something that keeps testing these women in all quarters.

On International Women's Day, let's bring the focus on five fabulous women officers of the Indian Coast Guard, who are deployed at the remotest Islands of Andamans and are excelling at all these and more.

PREETI POSWAL

Surrounded by dense forest in the middle of the sea at Campbell Bay Island, 537 kilometres from Port Blair, Assistant Commandant Preeti Poswal works round the clock to secure one of the most strategically significant islands of the country.

Assistant Commandant Preeti Poswal provides all kinds of 'logistic support for all operational units. (Photo: News 18)

She is the second in command at Campbell Bay and a key officer to provide all kinds of 'logistic support for all operational units'. With China upping its presence in the region, her posting at this island is of great significance with the Malacca Strait - an important 'choke-point' in the southeast of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands falling under her jurisdiction.

A great shooter trained in physical combat and capable of operations in rough sea  Preeti's operational acumen comes handy in fine tuning decisions in deploying Coast Guard assets for maritime operations, including medical evacuations from international ships.

A native of Meerut, Preeti is also involved in social work at far-flung islands of Nicobar like Makachua (Little Nicobar), Munak (Nancowry Group), Kamorta.

"It is a matter of pride to serve my country in one of the remotest islands in India  Campbell Bay. Daily challenges always excite me to work harder and take me closer to my dream of being in the Armed Forces," she said.

AVANTIKA SURYAVANSHI

Assistant Commandant Avantika Suryavanshi is posted at the Coast Guard's Air Enclave at Port Blair. She is an expert pilot, who is responsible for securing Exclusive Economic Zone in Andamans.

Posted in Port Blair, Assistant Commandant Avantika Suryavanshi is responsible for aerial surveillance and keeps an eye on 'uninvited foreign guests'. (Photo: News 18)

Her expertise in flying aircraft made the headlines in 2016, particularly for carrying out a safe single engine landing. She was decorated with the Director General Indian Coast Guard Commendation as hers was the maiden single engine landing by a lady pilot displaying maturity and skills, which far exceeded what was expected of her with a flying experience of only 600 hours.

Posted in Port Blair, at present she is responsible for aerial surveillance and keeps an eye on 'uninvited foreign guests'. Avantika, who hails from Gujarat, is comfortable with all kinds of latest weapons attached to the aircraft and she is known as one of the finest officers when it comes to mid-air operations (of any kind).

"My job is to protect the sea despite being in the air. It gives me a wide and clear perspective. There can no other rewarding feeling than to protect not just the Indian waters, but also these remote and beautiful emerald isles of Andaman and Nicobar. If ever asked, I'll always say it with great sense of pride and satisfaction," said Avantika.

DHARAKESHWARI RAJENDRAN

For Assistant Commandant-rank officer, Dharakeshwari Rajendran, playing with INSAS is a passion. She loves reading and handling the different kinds of weapons available with the Armed Forces.

Dharakeshwari Rajendran (right), an Assistant Commandant-rank officer, attended rigorous camps at INA as the section commander and is also good at firing INSAS. (Photo: News 18)

She is assigned to keep surveillance along the Maritime Boundary at various places in Andamans on a regular basis and she underwent a number of sub courses and has completed the Coast Guard Law and Operation Course. She is very efficient on ground as well as on sea operations and has showed outstanding talent in some rescue and operations against poachers.

She attended rigorous camps at INA as the section commander and is also good at firing INSAS.

She said, "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do, which you could have done. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour and catch the trade winds in your sails to explore your dream and discover. My only wish is to face the extreme challenges every day. Without these challenges, my life would be nothing."

NIDHI JAISWAL

To keep a close watch on air space violation in the archipelago, Coast Guard Air Enclave at Port Blair has one of the finest officers  Deputy Commandant Nidhi Jaiswal.

The officer had served more than four and half year in Daman, which is the premier air station of Indian Coast Guard with its own aerodrome. She is known to have maintained the highest standards of flight safety in a time-bound manner.

Nidhi is progressively and persistently focused on issues of concern, especially those pertaining to Aircraft Act Violation, enhancing airspace for aircraft operation, setting up of human-friendly infrastructure for round-the-clock availability of aeronautical information at Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Deputy Commandant Nidhi Jaiswal is known to have maintained the highest standards of flight safety in a time-bound manner. (Photo: News 18)

When contacted, she said, "The Indian Ocean is the key to the seven seas in the 21st century. The destiny of the world will be decided in these waters and I am proud to be a part of the force that protects these waters, the Island, its islanders and the indefinite treasures it has."

DEVIGA S

Last but not the least is Assistant Commandant Deviga S, who is posted at THE Coast Guard Regional Headquarters in Port Blair.

Deviga has been enthusiastically leading her male colleagues from the front, for meeting all challenges along with keeping their morale high.

Besides her responsibilities as a Coast Guard officer, she is actively involved in several social events to educate the girl child in remote islands like Car Nicobar, Campbell Bay, Katchal, Kamorta etc.

Assistant Commandant Deviga S has been enthusiastically leading her male colleagues from the front, for meeting all challenges along with keeping their morale high. (Photo: News 18)

"It is the question of identity that I am interested in the empowerment that one has taken to decide whom they want to be and how they should be recognized by the world. Well, we compete every day! Not with the other gender, not with the society, but with ourselves, to make bold decisions. Comparing a woman with a gentleman shall be the last thing I would do. How do I compare the Sun and Water? But that's what has motivated me. I was compared, therefore, I had to compete. And here I am, with the identity I have chosen for myself," Deviga said.
Chandigarh: To overcome the shortage of teachers in senior secondary schools, the Punjab government has approved a new rationalisation policy to appoint teachers in schools facing staff crunch. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meet headed by chief minister, Captain Amarinder Singh.

The government said that the new policy will removes the distinction between various categories of schools and teachers will be posted irrespective of the nature of schools. By removing the category distinction, teachers can now be posted anywhere between SSA, RMSA, Model and Adarsh schools. Officials said services of 1,500 surplus teachers will become available with this.

As per this policy, the post of a head teacher would only be created in primary schools if the number of students is more than 60 to help increase student strength in schools. The teacher student ratio at present is 27 in primary schools, 22 in middle schools, 16 in high schools and 29 for senior secondary schools.

Although the ratio is well within the norms, there is still a shortage of teachers at both inter district and intra-district levels.

The policy also makes it mandatory for school principals to take classes - 12 per week for principals and 15 for headmasters.

The spokesperson said the enrollment of students as on April 30, 2018 would be taken as the base to implement the new policy. In case of staff surplus in the school, the teachers with the longest stay would be shifted out to a common pool and all the vacancies would be put on the government website.

A list of the surplus teachers in a particular subject based on seniority will be prepared and they would be given the chance to opt for a school. Teachers suffering from life threatening disease would not be shifted out. The policy also highlighted that many teachers preferred to get posted in middle schools, since there are no Board exams.

As per the norms, there are seven sanctioned posts in the middle schools with average strength of 22 students, which leads to a high level of under-utilisation of teachers, whereas, at the same time, there is shortage of teachers in the high schools and senior secondary schools.

The requirement of teachers, as per the norms of Government of India, in middle schools is three (single section). The policy provides for four posts of teachers with English/SST, Maths/Science, Punjabi and Hindi as subjects in place of the present seven. One post and one section would be increased accordingly, in case the number of sections in a school increases, which would help the department save 8,007 posts, having annual financial implication of Rs 576 crore.
Beijing: China on Thursday reacted sharply to the quadrilateral coalition between the US, Japan, Australia and India and its Indo-Pacific concept, saying it was a "headline grabbing" idea which will "dissipate like sea foam".

The recently revived regional grouping known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) describes Asia-Pacific region as the 'Indo-Pacific'.

Asked if the Indo-Pacific strategy being furthered by the four-nation grouping will affect China's multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was a "headline grabbing" exercise.

There was "no shortage of headline grabbing ideas" but they were "like the foam on the sea" that "gets attention but will soon dissipate", he told a press conference on the sidelines of parliament, the National Peoples Congress (NPC).

Wang said contrary to the claims made by some academics and media outlets that the strategy was aimed at containing China, the four countries have made it clear that it targets no one.

"I hope they mean what they say," he said.

While the US officials have been highlighting Indo-Pacific including the Indian Ocean as well as the South China Sea in the Pacific, officials of India, China, Japan and Australia held a working level meeting of the "quad" last year in Manila.

"Let us not forget the BRI has received the support of over 100 countries. Nowadays stroking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting confrontation will find no market," Wang said.

Touted as Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious project, the BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe.

It also includes the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which India opposes as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Wang also said it was time the "China threat theory" was laid to rest, asserting that Beijing's contribution to the global economic growth was bigger than the US, Japan and the European Union combined.

Those who do not have bias or practice double standards will see China's development as an opportunity instead of a threat, Wang told a press conference on the

sidelines of the national legislature's annual session.

Noting that for decades the West has made all kinds of assessment and predictions about China, Wang said to some Westerners China was either collapsing or threatening.

"As China grows, the China collapse theory has collapsed and become an international laughing stock. The China threat theory with its various sensational versions is losing market," he said.

Wang said for years China had been the leading contributor to global economic growth at more than 30 per cent.

"Chinas contribution is bigger than that of the United States, Japan and euro zone combined," he said.

China accounts for more than 70 per cent of poverty reduction worldwide, a miracle in human history, he said.

In the past five years, with its Belt and Road Initiative and other major proposals, China has come to the fore in championing global governance, free trade and an open global economy, besides contributing to the UN Peace Keeping Force, Wang said.

He also said China was on a long march to modernisation and has no need or intention to replace the US' international role.

"Some Americans allege that China will replace America's role in the world. This conclusion is fundamentally wrong," Wang said.

Responding to question on US President Donald Trump's move to raise tariffs on steel and aluminium, Wang said trade war was never the right solution as it will harm both the initiator as well as the target country in a globalised world.

"In the event of a trade war, China will make a justified and necessary response," Wang said.

"We hope China and the US will have a calm and constructive dialogue as equals, and find a win-win solution," he said.

Despite elements of competition, China-US ties are defined more by partnership than rivalry, he added.

Wang lauded Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is set to become Chinese leader for life as NPC is expected to ratify a constitutional proposal to remove the term limits for President.

Xi, who is in his second five-year term, is regarded as the most powerful leader as he heads the ruling Communist Party and the military.

He has visited 57 countries and received more than 110 foreign heads of state since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, deepening the world's understanding of China, enhancing China's profile and influence, and facilitating the solution to many global problems, Wang said.

Apart from hosting the four major events in China, Xi will attend the BRICS Summit in South Africa, the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Papua New Guinea and the G20 Summit in Argentina this year, he said.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the Centre for coming out with a bulky affidavit of over 700 pages on the issue of inadequate facilities for children living in orphanages and child care institutions and said it cannot waste everyone's time.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Deepak Gupta said this when the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) came up with an over 700-page document.

"Why do you file such a big affidavit," the bench asked the counsel representing the Centre.

To this, the counsel responded that the affidavit was only of 10 pages and rest were annexures.

"Do not file so much. You are wasting your time and everybody else's time. The only person enjoying is the one who is doing photocopies. You file these 10 pages along with a chart only," the bench said and asked the ministry to file a status report within two weeks and said the matter be listed for hearing thereafter.

The apex court had on February 20 rapped the Kerala government for not ensuring adequate facilities to children living in orphanages and child care institutions there as mandated under the law.

It had noted that according to the affidavit filed by the state's chief secretary, several such institutions have stated that they cannot provide proper infrastructure to children living there.

The top court was hearing a PIL filed on the basis of a 2007 newspaper report alleging that orphanages in Tamil Nadu's Mahabalipuram, which were run by NGOs and government institutions, were reportedly involved in systematic sexual abuse of children.

The court had last year passed a slew of directions including setting up of a data base of children living in orphanages and child care institutions to ensure their safety and welfare.

It had directed the Centre, states and union territories to complete the registration of all child care institutions by the year-end and said the registration process should include a database of all children who are in need of care and protection and update it every month.

The court had also directed that all vacancies in State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR) be filled across the country by the end of 2017.
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government has set up a fund to provide pension to spinsters above 50 years, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced on Thursday.

Addressing a gathering in Bhopal on the occasion of the International Women's Day, Chouhan, who was accompanied by his wife Sadhana Singh, said the government would set up the "Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh", which will be used to give pension to elderly unmarried women in the state.

"Why should women be honoured on just one day, why not every day? In India, women have been considered to be Godessess since time immemorial. Even Gods are known to have sought help of 'Shakti' in times of extreme crisis," he pointed out.

The Chief Minister said that a number schemes aimed at women empowerment were going on in the state.

"Several programmes have been launched in the state for the welfare of girls and women. The government will set up Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh, which will be utilised for women empowerment and provide for pension to unmarried women above the age of 50 years," he added.
Kolkata: Massive protests rocked the Jadavpur University campus on Thursday evening when a group of students affiliated to Hindu Jagran Manch tried to burn effigies in front of the university. The right-wing students had planned a protest against the alleged involvement of JU students in defacing a bust of Jana Sangh leader Shyama Prasad Mookerjee's on Wednesday.

Some police officials were also injured in the violent clashes that followed the protests after several Left-leaning students stood up to the right wing supporters' protests and outnumbered them outside the university gate.

This comes a day after a bust of Jana Sangh leader Shyama Prasad Mookerjee was defaced on Wednesday and two Lenin statues were taken down in Tripura.

The Hindu Jagran Manch had planned a protest outside the JU campus at 6.30 pm on Thursday, which was allegedly disrupted by the Left students. The Manch supporters have alleged that they were severely beaten up even before they could start with the protests.

On the other hand, the protesting group of JU students have alleged that two right-wing supporters entered their rally and hurled abuses on the students, when the situation flared up.

The situation remains tense even now as protesters continue to clash despite a heavy police presence at the university area, which is located near the Jadavpur Police Station.

JU students protests against RSS and right-wing organisations outside the university premises. (TV grab)

The heavy police deployment tried to pacify the clashing students, which resulted in a few of the police officers being injured.

Several politicians, including CPIM leader Shatarup Ghosh has reached the university area and said that the protests shouldn't have turned violent. On the other hand, Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh has also condemned the violence.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered to check the debt profile of companies who have proposed investments at the recently concluded UP Investors Summit last month.

Yogi's order comes in the backdrop of alleged bank loan defaults and frauds by private companies.

The state government has signed more than 1000 MoUs worth 4.28 lakh crores during the summit. Now, the government is conducting due diligence with each MoU to ensure the seriousness of the investors.

As per the information, Uttar Pradesh Infrastructure and Industrial Development Commissioner (IIDC,) Anup Chandra Pandey has directed the nodal officers to carefully analyse each MoU pertaining to their respective departments for the debt profile, financial standing, turnover and business verticals of each investor, and forward their recommendations by Friday.

According to Officials, Korea based firm Worldbestech Company will invest Rs 90,000 crore in projects like gas power plant, food processing ventures and cold storage, which constitutes almost 20% of the total MoU's signed during the UP Investors Summit.

"We shall set up a gas-based power plant and allied companies in Mathura that would also solve the problem of potato growers of Mathura and adjoining districts," Worldbestech CEO and President K K Kim said while briefing state Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on the investment plans.

On February 22, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Kanpur-based industrialist and Rotomac owner Vikram Kothari and his son Rahul, both directors in the company, for alleged default on loan repayments to the tune of Rs 3,695 crore.

Meanwhile, another Kanpur-based company Shri Lakshmi Cotsyn Limited had landed in a soup by failing to pay off 3900 crores borrowed from a consortium of 16 banks led by Central bank of India.
You may know him as Dr. Noah Drake Of "General Hospital" or Pastor Charles of "American Horror Story," but Rick Springfield is also the Grammy-award winner performer of "Jessie's Girl" and other Top 40 hits.

He will perform at the Uptown Theater on Sunday, April 29. Tickets go on sale on Friday, March 9 at noon.

Springfield starred opposite Meryl Streep in the feature film "Ricki and the Flash," and also was cast as the creepy Dr. Pitlor in HBOs drama "True Detective," as Lucifer on the CW hit, "Supernatural."

In 2014, Springfield received with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located around the corner from the first apartment he lived in when he arrived in the U.S. from Australia in 1971.

In his album, The Snake King, Springfield departs from the power pop he has been known for to explore the blues side of his rock 'n' roll.
China will create a bastion for giant pandas three times the size of Yellowstone National Park to link up and encourage breeding among existing wild populations of the notoriously slow-reproducing animal, state media reported today. At least 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) has been secured over the next five years for construction of the Giant Panda National Park in mountainous southwestern China for the nation's favourite creature, the China Daily reported.

Plans for the park -- which would cover 27,134 square kilometres (10,476 square miles) -- were first put forward early last year by the ruling Communist Party and the State Council, China's cabinet, the paper said.

Yellowstone, established in 1872 as the first US national park, spans 8,983 square kilometres.

The Chinese park plans are aimed at enabling wild pandas that are currently isolated in several different areas of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces to mingle and hopefully breed. Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key factor -- along with habitat loss -- in their status as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

More than 80 percent of the world's wild pandas live in Sichuan, with the rest in Shaanxi and Gansu. The funding was secured via an agreement signed Tuesday by the Bank of China and the Sichuan provincial Department of Forestry, the paper said. The bank is to secure the financing by 2023, to go toward poverty alleviation among people living in the remote area and necessary infrastructure and other construction for the park.
Have you missed a few periods lately? It could be a sign you're pregnant  but it could also be a sign of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects a womans hormone levels. Women with PCOS produce higher-than-normal amounts of male hormones. This hormone imbalance causes them to skip menstrual periods and makes it harder for them to get pregnant. PCOS can lead to increased risk of some serious medical health issues for women down the road, so it's important to know the symptoms and get the right treatment and diagnosis. Many women have PCOS but dont know it. It is a health problem that affects one in 10 women of childbearing age and up to 70 percent of women with PCOS don't get diagnosed. Here, 8 signs you might want to schedule an appointment with your doctor.

1) Weight gain

About half of women with PCOS will have weight gain and obesity that is difficult to manage.

2) Fatigue

Many women with PCOS report increased fatigue and low energy. Related issues such as poor sleep may contribute to the feeling of fatigue.

3) Unwanted hair growth

Areas affected by excess hair growth may include the face, arms, back, chest, thumbs, toes, and abdomen. Hirsutism related to PCOS is due to hormonal changes in androgens.

4) Thinning hair on the head

Hair loss related to PCOS may increase in middle age. Brittle and dry hair is also one of the symptom.

5) Infertility

PCOS is a leading cause of infertility. When your body doesn't create enough progesterone for a complete menstrual cycle, it causes undeveloped eggs to turn into cysts in your ovaries. The cysts then prevent healthy eggs from travelling down your fallopian tubes and into your uterus.

6) Acne

A face full of pimples post-puberty is also a symptom. Since an influx of hormones at puberty often causes acne, it's understandable that the excess hormones caused by PCOS would do the same. Other skin changes such as the development of skin tags and darkened patches of skin are also related to PCOS.

7) Mood changes

Having PCOS can increase the likelihood of mood swings, depression, and anxiety.

Pelvic pain. Pelvic pain may occur with periods, along with heavy bleeding. Pain may also occur when a woman isnt bleeding.

8) Sleep problems

Women with PCOS often report problems such as insomnia or poor sleep. There are many factors that can affect sleep, but PCOS has been linked to a sleep disorder called sleep apnea. With sleep apnea, a person will stop breathing for short periods of time during sleep.
Everything seems to make Daniela Vega smile: her transition from male to female, her family's unwavering support, and her rise from hairdresser to actress with the backing of Chilean director Sebastian Lelio, who won the Oscar for best foreign film. As Maria in the film "A Fantastic Woman" -- her fifth movie role -- Vega plays a transgender woman confronting discrimination and rejection by the family of her deceased partner. The role has thrust her into the international spotlight and made her a Hollywood darling.

And at Sunday's Oscar ceremony, she became the first transgender person ever to present a performance at the movie industry's most important event.

The 28-year-old's dignity and poise have caught the attention of media across the world, from Spain's El Pais to The Guardian in Britain and Vanity Fair and The New York Times in the United States. The US magazine W included her in its list of top 10 performances of 2017, featuring her in a photo alongside heartthrob Robert Pattinson. The New York Times said Vega evinced "a charisma that defies pity and a sense of poise that can be both intimidating and heartbreaking."

Friends and acquaintances describe Vega as an ambitious woman, determined to go far in her career, and one who throws herself fully into her work. Vega was born into a middle-class Santiago family and began her acting career in theatre plays such as Migrants and The Butterfly Woman and by taking singing lessons. Her aptitude for poetry led her into the arts world and she appeared in a video for the song Maria by Chilean musician Manuel Garcia and made her cinematic debut in the movie The Visit by Mauricio Lopez Fernandez, in which she also played a transgender woman.

But until Lelio -- an Argentinian-born Chilean director who initially hired her as a "cultural advisor" -- cast her in his Oscar-winning movie, Vega was earning her living as a hairdresser in a salon in Santiago.

Vega's mother Sandra Hernandez told El Mercurio newspaper that when she was pregnant, doctors told her she was going to have a girl, and so she had bought earrings and pink girls' clothing in preparation. Vega was bullied at school and under pressure from her mother. When she was 15, she turned to the internet to explore why she felt the way she did about her adolescent body, and her attraction to men. That's when she realized she was transsexual.

Those were hard times to face up to such a realization in conservative Chile, still struggling to escape the legacy of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990, and shocked by charges of child sex abuse in the powerful Catholic church. But shielded by her parents and her younger brother Nicolas, she began her transition to her new sexual identity. It took three years. "I have known the love of my family, of a partner, I have been surrounded by a great amount of love," Vega told AFP.

Vega has not changed identity or gender on her passport because this is barred under Chilean law.

The team that made the movie will be received Tuesday by Chile's outgoing President Michelle Bachelet, who in August sent to congress a bill to authorise gay marriages and adoptions. Chilean rights groups have expressed hope that the Oscar for "A Fantastic Woman" and the mounting global recognition for Vega will help the bill's passage. But the new government of conservative Sebastian Pinera, who takes over the reins from Bachelet on Sunday, have not made encouraging statements in favor of the legislation.
It was a usual winter afternoon in Aligarh. The preparation for the traditional Numaish (fair) was underway. The bright fuchsia and turquoise coloured Shamianas were being set up at the ground, announcing the arrival of the much-awaited fair.

The committee members for Numaish, which also included some 'Urdu experts', were debating over the right way to write the calendar date in Urdu. The opinions were divided over whether 'a date in Urdu should be written from left to right or right to left'.

I, like other reporters present at the scene, asked a few questions for the story I was covering. That's when one of the experts on Urdu, who also happened to be the committee member on organizing the fair, asked me how he could be questioned on the matters of Urdu.

He was so agitated that he raised his hand at me. As a spontaneous reaction, I raised my hand back at him, saying, "Not again!" This didn't go down well with him.

While wiping the stains of betel juice, he said, "Aye, kaun hai tere peeche?" (Who is behind you?). His tone was authoritative and totally uncalled for.

I understood his question very well but replied in a rather dismissive tone, "Mere peeche, Atiq Bhai khade hain, dikha nahi?" (Atiq bhai is standing behind me, didn't you see?)

He again emphasized on what he meant earlier, this time clearer and direct. "Who is backing you?" he asked. I responded saying, "No one is."

His curiosity was not allayed and it was evident as he slowly retracted his steps towards his car. That was his moment of initiation into the world where empowered women need no patrons.

He was not someone dangerous or who would have targeted me with a tamacha, but still one of my well-wishers advised me to 'balance my independence'.

"Don't walk like you own this road," he suggested.

This, I believe, was to assure me of not falling into this patriarchal trap of Aligarh where a woman is politically and socially known and active only if someone powerful backs her.

His reaction did not come to me as a surprise. When I moved to Aligarh in 2014, a few months ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, one of the woman journalists I met and who had dropped out of the profession, told me, "Yeh purush pradhan Pradesh hai... sambhalke rehna.' (This is a male dominated field. You have to be careful.)

As I stayed longer in that city, it started revealing me its patriarchal mindset more garishly.

At the time of covering elections of Aligarh Muslim University Student's Union in 2014, Kehkashan Khanam, from theology department was talked about as the sole woman contesting the students' union elections in the main campus. The election officer then had lamented: We have such a big population of women students but still just one of them has come up for polls."

On the day of filing her nomination papers, Khanam and I had a discussion over how difficult it was for a woman to contest elections in AMU.

"If a woman contests, the general belief of people becomes that some politician is backing her," she told me. "I think women don't want to invite unnecessary associations and accusations of being backed by powerful leaders, so they stay away from politics of the campus."

Women students were rarely seen hanging out at the male dominated dhabas. There were no women eating chicken biryani or socializing over chai. This simple part of their daily life was seen as an act of breaking the tradition.

Months later, when some women of the Aligarh Muslim University started the Why loiter campaign to occupy public spaces, there was an immediate backlash from conservative elements online. It was seen as an aberration.

In this land, like many other places in our male dominated societies across the world, there were characteristics of a society starved of celebration of women presence in public spaces  powerful or playful.

As a result, when I rode a pillion with my photographer covering remote and interior areas of Aligarh, when I visited police stations and walked down the campus late in the evening, I was challenging the idea of a woman's behavior, and doing something that men do.

No matter which police station I called or visited for a story, I was greeted as "Haan Eram Bhaiyya bolo." (Yes brother tell me.) This was replicated in AMU as well when some people would call me, "Aur Eram Agha Sahab, kal kya likh rahin hain aap?"

This was happening with me for the first time. I quickly updated the sahib and bhaiyya greetings on my Facebook page. In a minute, this reached the liberated corridors in New Delhi. My feminist friends started analysing the social factors behind this.

"Do they associate confidence with men?" "This is the traditional male behavior where any important thing is taken to be man's job." "Down with patriarchy".

My timeline buzzed with feminist rants from the metropolitan Delhi but what started with social media, ended with social media. I was soon back on the ground to write stories. Things never changed.

Towards the end of my Aligarh assignment in 2016, my photographer gathered courage to tell me about what other male journalists talked about me. "I think I should tell you now... some people wanted me to inquire about your personal life. They wanted to know if you are a married or a divorced women," he told me.

"They would often say, 'Why would any young woman leave Delhi, Mumbai and come to Aligarh?' Aisa kya hai Aligarh mein? Kuch gadbad hai. Maloom karo."
Hyderabad: Two BJP ministers resigned from Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Thursday, a day after Telugu Desam Partys chief Chandrababu Naidu decided to pull out his two ministers from the Union Cabinet.

BJP ministers, K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao, submitted their resignation to the speaker.

Top government sources said that there is not much left to speak to Naidu. Rajnath Singh is not planning to reach out to him anymore. Amit Shah will later decide on party level regarding BJP next step, but as far as government is concerned, TDP is on way out, they said.

Meanwhile, demanding fulfilment of assurances including Special Category Status made in Rajya Sabha and provisions of AP Reorganisation Act, TDP MPs continued to protest outside Parliament.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday night decided to pull out Telugu Desam Party's two ministers from the Union Cabinet, but said that the party would remain in alliance with the BJP, for now.

The decision was taken at a meeting called by Naidu late in the evening, hours after finance minister Arun Jaitley said that the Centre can't offer special status, but would offer a special package with equivalent funding to the state.

Holding an emergency press briefing, Naidu said that Arun Jaitleys statement was the last straw. I laid out all the demands concerning special status for the state to the Centre, but the finance minister made it clear that he cannot give it. What is the purpose of joining the Cabinet when the Centre cannot resolve the states problems? he asked.

We have waited enough. We have believed in false promises enough. Our ministers are resigning from the Union Cabinet. We will do whatever it takes to fulfill the aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh, he said.

Referring to Jaitleys statement that the Centre had already given Rs 4,000 crore to the state, he said that the government is more interested in showing calculations than helping out. You were part of bifurcation. Now comparing with other states is not right. Its not right to say that sentiments will not get funds. It is like degrading our state, he said.

But he clarified that only the resignations of two TDP MPs  civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science and technology YS Chowdary - will happen on Thursday and the decision on quitting the BJP alliance will be taken at a later date. We have to see and plan what happens next from here. Telugu public is ready to fight and come out of this problem, Naidu said.

He said that the decision to pull out the ministers was taken after consulting all the MPs and MLAs of the party. The BJP has not fulfilled its promises. We have incurred big losses as a state. We never asked for bifurcation, he said.

He further said that as a courtesy, he had called the PMs office to inform him about the decision, but PM Modi did not come on line.

Sources in the BJP, however, said they were confident that this was a temporary setback and a compromise would be reached. On Jaitleys failed outreach effort, they said that the finance minister only said what was constitutionally possible.

The development comes after months of uncertainty and strained ties between the two alliance partners. Earlier in the day, Naidu had hinted that he could sever ties and also used Congress president Rahul Gandhis offer of special status to the state if his party comes to power to hit out at the BJP.

I have followed the federal spirit and worked on mutual co-operation principle with the Centre. People of the state now feel insulted and if I don't raise my voice now, they will not pardon me," he said.

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister said he had only gone into an alliance with the BJP for the sake of doing justice to AP. He had earlier said that he had made 29 trips to Delhi and met the Prime Minister and other central ministers but they did not pay heed. Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in an unscientific manner and is facing lot of hurdles, he said.

The protests had intensified after the Union Budget 2018 did not have any special funds for the state. Since then, the ties between the two allies have been strained and the partys MPs have been protesting outside the Parliament every day during the Budget Session.
Singapore: Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress President Rahul Gandhi today said there is a general atmosphere of "intimidation" in India where "nasty form of politics" of dividing people are being played to win elections.

Speaking at a panel discussion at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Gandhi also said that there is a challenge to the institutional structure of India.

"If you ask me what am I proud about my country...it is the idea of plurality. It's the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they won't face any problem and that is being challenged...," he said.

"There is a particular type of politics that's not only happening in India but in a number of places - of dividing people, of using (their) anger to win elections and that's what is happening in India," he told the audience at the school, which is part of the National University of Singapore.

Commenting on the recent controversy of four senior Supreme Court judges holding an unprecedented press conference, Gandhi said, "They actually went out to the press and said listen we need the people to hear our voice because there is something fundamentally wrong."

"I don't know if you know the details about the comments they (judges) were making but the centre of the issue is the case of (BJP president) Amit Shah. So, there is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country," he said, apparently referring to the issue of alleged mysterious death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case. Shah was discharged as an accused in the case.

Gandhi alleged that there is a "very very aggressive and organised attack on the system and on the judiciary. If you speak to the press, if you talk to business people, they will also tell you that we feel intimidated. So there is a general atmosphere of intimidation."

The Congress president said that the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned was that an India where everybody is comfortable regardless of religion, community, regardless of state.

"The idea that anybody coming to India, even the foreigner coming to India, feel comfortable in the country...that idea is being challenged now," he asserted.

"Where we are running into trouble now is the levels of violence and anger that you are seeing in India and this to me is a syndrome," he said, adding that "I'm proud to say that our vision is bringing people together." Responding to a question, Gandhi accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in anti-minorities politics.

"Mahatma Gandhi died protecting minorities. We, the Congress party, have been protecting minority people for the last 70 years. We don't like an India where people are persecuted, where people are being beaten up for what they eat, what they say and what they wear," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi controls the law making, he controls the UP police, he controls the Haryana police, he controls these things. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India," Gandhi said, without elaborating.

Asserting that "we will fight him and we will defeat him" in the election, he said "very soon you will see India where everybody is respected and everybody is loved."

He also criticised BJP's Kashmir policy, saying the UPA government had curbed terrorism by 2012 but it resurfaced after the BJP came to power in 2014. "In 2014 when I went to Jammu and Kashmir I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can do to years and years of policy-making," he said.

The BJP has lost the touch with the people and created a strategic problem in Jammu and Kashmir, he said and underlined the need to engage people and win their trust.

He also slammed the BJP government over its "bad record" of creating jobs, saying "our record is better".

Responding to a question on International Women's Day today, Gandhi said the Congress party had sought to pass the Women's Reservation Bill but it was opposed by other parties.

On India's foreign policy, he said India has to have peaceful relations with China, the US, Europe, Asean and others. He said India and China should have a peaceful and co-operative relationship. "One complaint I have of the BJP foreign policy in general... is that it is very tactical and episode," he said.

He also spoke of India's potential of developing a health care for the global markets. Gandhi is on a two-day visit to Singapore and will meet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tomorrow. He will then travel to Malaysia where he will meet Prime Minister Najib Razak and members of the Indian community.
Chennai: Even as the political slugfest over statue vandalism continues to rage across the nation, top leaders of the ruling party in Tamil Nadu  AIADMK  seem to be striking a discordant note with each other on the debate.

While both Chief Minister Palaniswami and his deputy Panneerselvam criticized the objectionable Facebook post against Dravidian movement stalwart Periyar, their words seemed to disagree with each other.

All AIADMK MLAs gathered at the party headquarters on Thursday to address the issue of a statue of Periyar being defaced in Vellore soon after Tamil Nadu BJP leader H Raja wrote a Facebook post calling him a casteist.

Edapadi K Palaniswami said, "H Raja has said that his social media administrator wrote the Facebook against Periyar and those remarks are condemnable. Strict action should be taken against this administrator who incited violence."

On the other hand, Panneerselvam said, "H Raja should apologise for the statement that was posted on his Facebook account. The justification given by H Raja is ridiculous."

While Panneerselvam directly held Raja responsible for the comments, Palaniswami put the onus on the administrator.

Sources say, all is not so well within the merged AIADMK. Many from both sides of the two factions headed by Palaniswami and Panneerselvam admitted that the hearts of the two sides haven't merged.

In February, Panneerselvam had said that it was at the insistence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he had merged with the EPS faction. Now, looking at such contradictory statements by the CM and his deputy, political analysts say EPS is trying to maintain a healthy relationship with the BJP while OPS is trying to go on an anti-BJP path.

Political commentator RK Radhakrishnan observes, If I didn't know EPS and OPS well enough, I'd be tempted to say that this is them playing good cop bad cop. But that is not the case. OPS wants to chart an anti-BJP path because EPS and two of his ministers look firmly entrenched in the pro-BJP group. There's no doubt that what Raja said was atrocious. The fact that EPS will not even condemn this transgression shows how scared and beholden he is to the BJP.
New Delhi: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has said that TDP pulling out of the Modi government shows that everyone is taking inspiration from the Shiv Sena. Two Telugu Desam Party ministers in the Central government submitted their resignations on Thursday after the Centre failed to satisfy their demands of special status for Andhra Pradesh.

Shiv Sena will do everything according to its own schedule, said Thackeray late on Thursday evening, in reaction to the rift between BJP and its NDA ally TDP.

Earlier, another Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut had said, We were expecting this. Other parties have walked out of the NDA too. Allies no longer have good relations with BJP. Gradually their grudges will spill out and eventually everyone will walk out of alliance.

The Shiv Sena has always been vocal in its criticism of the BJP-led NDA government both at the Centre and Maharashtra.

The party on Thursday took its discord with the BJP a notch higher to say it was them who had inspired the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP to quit the alliance and Shiv Sena will take the right action at the right time.

Ahead of the bitterly fought BMC elections in Mumbai, Thackeray had said he is putting the BJP on notice. The Maharashtra BJP too has time and again attacked Sena saying they run a mafia raj.

The Telugu Desam Party on Thursday officially pulled out of the NDA government at the Centre over its demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh after months of strained ties with alliance partner BJP.

Civil aviation minister, Ashok Gajapati Raju, and minister of state for science and technology, YS Chowdary, went to the PMs residence to hand over their letters of resignation.

With this, BJP has irked a crucial ally in the south while in the west, the Shiv Sena, which has never shied away from voicing its discontent with the party issued a mild threat on the same day.
Chennai: Tamil superstar Rajinikanth on Thursday slammed as "barbaric" the controversial comment of H Raja on Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar, but said with the BJP leader expressing regret, the issue need not be "magnified" further.

"Raja's comment indicating that Periyar's statue be removed and the subsequent vandalism were a barbaric act. I strongly condemn it," he said.

"It is my humble view that the issue need not be magnified further as Raja has expressed regret," Rajinikanth, who is all set to launch his political party, said.

His comments come in the background of continuing incidents of defacing of statues of various leaders in the country.

On March 6, a statue of Periyar was defiled in Tirupattur in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu after Raja posted a comment on Facebook that the rationalist leader's statue would meet the same fate of Communist leader Lenin's statue in Tripura.

However, facing flak from political parties in the state, the BJP leader later deleted the post and blamed his social media administrator for the lapse.

The state unit of BJP has distanced itself from the post, saying it was a personal view.

Raja in his deleted post had said: "Who is Lenin and what is the connection between Lenin and India? What connection India has with Communists? Today Lenin's statue removed in Tripura, tomorrow it will be the statue of E V Ramasamy in Tamil Nadu".

Rajinikanth is the latest to condemn the BJP leader.

Ruling AIADMK, DMK, MDMK and several other parties had strongly condemned Raja's remarks with most demanding his arrest.

Rajinikanth's contemporary and Makkal Neethi Maiam founder, Kamal Haasan had also hit out Raja's comments.

Rajinikanth had earlier this week made his first major speech wherein he emphasised that he would provide good administration like late chief minister and AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran.
New Delhi: BJP president Yeddyurappa on Thursday lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over deteriorating law and order in Karnataka and said the chief minister was running the state like 'Tughlaq darbar" ahead of the state assembly polls.

His remarks come a day after the state's most senior anti-corruption officer P Vishwanatha Shetty was hospitalised after he was stabbed repeatedly at his office in Bengaluru.

"By God's grace, he (Shetty) is still alive. I don't know how Siddaramaiah reacts to such incidents. When there is no safety for high-rank officers, will there be for ordinary people? The law and order has completely collapsed," Yeddyurappa told reporters.

He said the chief minister claimed that his government was number one. But it seems the government is number one is in terms of atrocities on women and breakdown of law and order in the state, the BJP leader said.

"It seems Siddaramaiah is running the government like a Tughlaq darbar. We have to bear it for two months," he said.

Yeddyurappa, BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls, exuded confidence that his party would win more than 150 seats and form the government.

He also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to visit Raichur on March 13 for the inauguration of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

Yeddyurappa was in the national capital to meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to request for inclusion of Talavara and Parivara tribal communities in the list of the Scheduled Tribes (STs). He also met Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda on the arecanut issue.

"On April 19, 1991, the Centre had incuded Nayak, Weda and Valmiki communities in the ST list but not Parivara and Talavara tribes. We met the home minister and asked him to include these two communities in the ST list," he said.

The home minister has assured that the issue will be resolved at the earliest, he added.

On the areca nut issue, the state BJP chief said the central government has been asked to clear concerns over quality of areca nut and protect the interest of farmers.

"Areca nut (supari) is being grown and consumed for ages. Some concerns were raised by Congress on its quality in Lok Sabha and that has affected farmers. There is no such content in areca nut which is harmful to health," he added.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar among other party members were part of the two meetings.
Lucknow: Those disturbing peace and harmony by vandalising statues should be booked under the sedition law, BSP chief Mayawati on Thursday demanded, a day after a statue of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar was damaged in Meerut on Wednesday.

There have also been several other instances of statues of prominent leaders being vandalised from across the country in recent days.

"Such acts are not in the interest of the country as they weaken the democratic and secular fabric as well as harm communal harmony," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a statement in Lucknow.

Now even in Uttar Pradesh, in Meerut, the statue of Baba Saheb Ambedkar was vandalised, she added.

She urged followers of the leaders, whose statues were vandalised, to exercise restraint while demanding "prompt and strict action" against those harming harmony in the society.

"Mere tall claims and rhetoric by the central and state governments against such forces will not serve any purpose. Action needs to be taken against them under the sedition law," the BSP chief stressed.

Demanding proper security to the memorials, statues and parks set up in the memory of Dalit and other ideologues, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati alleged if no action was taken, it would mean these incidents were part of a BJP-RSS conspiracy.

On the occassion of International Women's Day today, the BSP president asked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh to implement the schemes meant for the welfare, progress and security of women, with a special focus on those belonging to the Dalit and deprived sections.
New Delhi: The Telugu Desam Party pulled out from the NDA government at the Centre on Thursday over its demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh after months of strained ties with alliance partner BJP.

Civil aviation minister, Ashok Gajapati Raju, and minister of state for science and technology, YS Chowdary, went to the PMs residence to hand over their letters of resignation.

While Raju conveyed gratitude in his brief resignation letter, Chowdary mentioned that the prevailing circumstances in his constituency and the decision of the TDP chief left him with no option but to resign.

A last ditch effort by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to broker peace in a 10-minute long phone conversation with Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu also failed.

According to sources, Naidu told the PM that he was left with no choice but to quit the government after finance minister Arun Jaitley ruled out giving special status to the state on Wednesday.

At a press conference after submitting their resignation, the two outgoing ministers reiterated what Naidu has said - that the people of AP have sacrificed a lot and they quit from the Centre to fulfill their wishes.

They also said that although they have quit the central government, they would continue to support and be a part of the NDA. Yes, there are problems, but solutions are being worked out, Raju

said.

We continue to support the NDA, but there were certain commitment given by national parties and now everyone in Andhra Pradesh wants that. My party directed us to resign, he added.

Chowdary echoed Raju and said that apart from the BJP, Congress too had failed the state. Promises made by then PM Manmohan Singh on the floor of Rajya Sabha must be fulfilled, he said.

Revealing what transpired at the PMs residence, he said that both he and Raju thanked the PM for giving the opportunity to serve under him. The PM said that he is with the people of Andhra Pradesh, he said.

At an emergency press briefing on Wednesday night, Naidu had announced that the two ministers would resign, but the TDP would remain in alliance with the BJP, for now. A decision on whether it would also end the alliance would be taken at a later date.

In response, two BJP ministers also resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Thursday morning. BJP ministers, K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao, submitted their resignation to the Andhra Pradesh Speaker.

The Andhra CM had said that Arun Jaitleys statement was the last straw. I laid out all the demands concerning special status for the state to the Centre, but the finance minister made it clear that he cannot give it. What is the purpose of joining the Cabinet when the Centre cannot resolve the states problems? he asked.

Referring to Jaitleys statement that the Centre had already given Rs 4,000 crore to the state, he said that the government is more interested in showing calculations than helping out.

You were part of the bifurcation. Now comparing us with other states is not right. Its not right to say that sentiments will not get funds. It is like degrading our state, he said.
Addis Ababa: Washington's top diplomat began his first Africa tour Thursday by meeting with the African Union chief, who said the continent had moved on from a reported insult by President Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and AU commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed security and counter-terrorism, trade and development, corruption and conflict in an hour-long meeting at the continental body's headquarters in the Ethiopian capital.

However. looming over the meeting was Trump's alleged description of Africa as a "shithole" in January, which forced the president to pen a letter reaffirming his commitment to the continent and dispatch his top diplomat to try to heal rifts.

Faki, however, insisted the slur was now in the past.

"I received a letter written by President Trump to myself and I shared that with other African leaders. I believe this incident is in the past," he said.

Tillerson's five-nation Africa tour -- to include Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria -- has been described by analysts as a "listening tour", with no deals or initiatives due to be announced.

"The purpose of my trip is to listen to what the priorities of the countries here on the continent are and see where there is good alignment," said Tillerson.

Tillerson praised the AU as a "force for good".

He and Faki discussed continued US support to African counter-terrorism forces in Somalia and the Sahel but no new concrete commitments were given.

Tillerson said the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is "clearly an example of countries coming together to counter terrorism, promote stability and enable the delivery of much-needed aid."

"We have not yet won that battle in Somalia and we must stay at it," he said.

Tillerson also warned against blind acceptance of Chinese investment, warning African countries to "consider the terms of those investments" lest they "forfeit sovereignty".

He also solicited African support in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

"African nations can contribute to this goal," he said.
Salisbury: A nerve agent was used to deliberately poison a former Russian double agent and his daughter, Britain's top counter-terrorism officer said on Wednesday, in a case that threatens to further damage London's ties with Moscow.

Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in the southern English city of Salisbury on Sunday afternoon.

Both remain critically ill and a police officer who attended the scene is also in a serious condition in hospital.

"This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent," London Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley told reporters. "I can also confirm that we believe the two people originally who became unwell were targeted specifically."

Rowley said government scientists had identified the specific nerve agent but he would not say what it was because it was part of the investigation. He also declined to give any details about how it was administered to Skripal, 66, and his daughter.

England's chief medical officer said the incident posed a low risk to the wider public but anyone feeling unwell was advised to seek medical advice.

While Rowley would not say any more about the investigation, a U.S. security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the main line of police inquiry was that Russians may have used the substance against Skripal in revenge for his treachery.

Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest by Russian authorities in 2004.

He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006 after a secret trial and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies caught in the West as part of a Cold War-style spy swap at Vienna airport.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said if Moscow were behind the incident then Britain could look again at sanctions and take other measures to punish Russia, which he cast as a "malign and disruptive" state.

Russia denied any involvement, scolded Johnson for "wild" comments and said anti-Russian hysteria was being whipped up intentionally to damage relations with London.

"It's very hard not to assess this (speculation) as provocative black PR designed to complicate relations between our two countries," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday.

"NEED TO DETER RUSSIA"

Malcolm Sperrin, a professor at the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, said nerve agents could cause heart failure, respiratory arrest, twitching or spasms.

"Im not aware of a nerve agent having been used in this way previously," he said.

Britain has specifically drawn parallels with the 2006 murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was killed with the radioactive polonium-210 in London.

A previous British inquiry said Russian President Vladimir Putin probably approved the murder of Litvinenko, who died after drinking green tea laced with the rare and very potent radioactive isotope at London's Millennium Hotel.

Russia denied involvement in the death of Litvinenko, which the British inquiry said had been hatched by the Federal Security Service (FSB), main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

Litvinenko's murder sent Britain's ties with Russia to what was then a post-Cold War low. Relations suffered further from Russia's annexation of Crimea and its military backing for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Former British defence minister Michael Fallon called for a stronger response if it turned out that Russia had been involved in the Skripal affair.

"Weve got to respond more effectively than we did last time over Litvinenko. Our response then clearly wasnt strong enough," Fallon told Reuters. "We need to deter Russia from believing they can get away with attacks like this on our streets if its proved."

The British capital has been dubbed "Londongrad" due to the large quantities of Russian money which have poured in since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. It is the Western city of choice for many oligarchs from the former Soviet Union.

BIG OPERATION

Rowley said hundreds of detectives were now working on the Skripal case to build up a timeline of his movements over the last few days.

Officers have sealed off the area of Salisbury where Skripal was found as well as the Zizzi pizza restaurant where they dined and the Bishop's Mill pub where they had a drink. They also set up cordons near Solstice Park, a business park, in the nearby town of Amesbury.

Skripal's son, Alexander, died last year aged 43. British media have said his death occurred during a visit to St Petersburg, Putin's home town. Skripal's wife Liudmila died of cancer in 2012.

Both Alexander and Liudmila Skripal are buried at the London Road Cemetery in Salisbury.

The Skripal case has come shortly before Russia's presidential election on March 18, which Putin is expected to win comfortably, extending his rule by a further six years. The former KGB officer has been president since 2000.
Washington: The Haqqani Network continues to enjoy significant support inside Pakistan due to which the terrorist group still carrying out across the border in Afghanistan, a top NATO commander has said.

General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, the second in command in the Haqqani Network, he said, is effectively driving the Taliban today.

"We still see that there is a significant support, or at least provision of safe haven to Haqqani network (in Pakistan)," Pavel told Defense Writers Group yesterday.

A number of high profile attacks in Afghanistan in the last couple of months were delivered by the Haqqani network, General Pavel said.

General Pavel has been Chairman of the NATO Military Committee since June 2015.

As such he said Pakistan has a very important role to play in the Afghan peace process.

That means creating the conditions where all opposing forces will see their chance at the negotiating table rather than on battlefield, he said.
London: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Tehran would not negotiate over its presence in the Middle East region with the United States and Europe.

"European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It's none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here?" Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Khamenei said Iran would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.
Macau: Macau has finished drafting a proposed new law barring foreign judges from hearing national security and defense cases, an unprecedented move that has heightened concerns over Beijing's grip over the gambling hub. The proposed draft law, announced in February by Sonia Chan, the enclave's mainland-China born justice secretary, has been completed, Macau's Legal Affairs Bureau said in an email to Reuters.

A spokesman said the amendments were needed out of "consideration of major interests such as safeguarding the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the country".

Chan said in February that the amendments would help speed up trial proceedings. She added that such cases should be exclusive to local judges, as they might involve confidential information about the nation and national defence.

The draft law is part of suggested amendments to Macau's Judicial Framework Law that was implemented in 1999 when the former Portuguese colony reverted to Chinese rule. The government will submit the relevant legal proposals to the Legislative Council after internal procedures are completed, the spokesman added, without giving a time frame.

Some Portuguese lawyers in Macau expressed alarm that the proposal violates Macau's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and weakens judicial independence in the city, which is home to international gambling companies including Sands China and MGM China.

"This is totally ridiculous and a very dangerous step," said a legal source who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter. "It is a real attempt on the autonomy of the judicial system."

While there haven't been many cases in Macau in recent years involving national defence or security, some said the proposal could be part of a broader move to phase out Portuguese-speaking legal practitioners from Macau.

10 of the territory's 49 magistrates now hold foreign citizenship, mostly from Portugal.

The head of Macau's Lawyers Association, Jorge Neto Valente, called it "a bad solution to create a special body of judges for the trial of a specific type of crime," according to TDM, Macau's public broadcaster.

Macau, like the neighbouring financial hub of Hong Kong, is governed under a "one country, two systems" framework which allows for certain liberties not permitted on the mainland, such as a free press and an independent judiciary.

Both places allow foreign judges to rule in their judicial systems as part of the Basic Law.

There have been growing fears, however, that autonomy in Macau is being corroded at a faster pace than in the former British colony, where there is deeper opposition to Beijing's rule.

More than half of Macau's population of 650,000 immigrated from China in recent decades, which has helped foster a stronger affinity for the mainland than in Hong Kong, where most of the population was born locally.

A liberal lawmaker and government critic, Sulu Sou, is now facing charges of aggravated disobedience during a protest against Macau's leader, Fernando Chui.

Pedro Cortes, a senior partner with the law firm Rato, Ling, Lei & Cortes in Macau, said the proposal could get passed this year in the predominantly pro-establishment Legislative Assembly. "It is going to be easy to pass this type of legislation, whatever is the final version proposed," he said.
Paris: A 45-year-old woman filed a new rape case in France on Wednesday against Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, the third against the Islamic studies professor, judicial sources said on Wednesday.

The woman accused Ramadan of violent sexual assault on multiple occasions between early 2013 and June 2014, according to the filing seen by Reuters.

Ramadan's lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

Ramadan was ordered last month to remain in custody in France and was notified that he was the target of a full investigation into rape allegations, which he denied.

Ramadan is a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, an Islamist thinker and activist who founded the Muslim Brotherhood. He enjoys a substantial following among young Muslims and has challenged French restrictions on wearing veils.
Addis Ababa: Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson on Thursday said the United States was "a long way from negotiations" with North Korea, which this week made a shock offer to discuss denuclearisation.

Tillerson, who is in Ethiopia on his first-ever Africa tour, said the signals from Pyongyang may be positive but stressed negotiations with Kim Jong Un's regime were not going to happen soon.

"I think as President Trump has indicated, (there are) potentially positive signals coming from North Korea by way of their intra-Korean dialogue with South Korea," he told journalists.

But "in terms of direct talks... we're a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it," he said.

He said a first step would be "talks about talks" to see if "conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations." Details are still sketchy, but South Korea announced Tuesday that the North had stated there was "no reason" to hold on to its nuclear weapons "if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed".

The North is open to "frank" talks with the United States on denuclearisation and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, the South's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with Kim.

President Donald Trump welcomed the offer as "very positive".

However his Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he was "quite skeptical" and Vice President Mike Pence said the US position towards North Korea would not change "until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearisation."

China today urged the United States and North Korea to start negotiations as soon as possible, while Japan has warned it could be a ploy to play for time, and urged "concrete" steps from Pyongyang.
The convention also revealed that labor unions, the partys cash cow, are not unified going into this years elections. While left-leaning unions such as the nurses are beating the drums for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsoms bid for the governorship, helping him finish first in the endorsement balloting, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who finished dead last, can tout support of police unions and the United Farm Workers Union.

The latter is important because Villaraigosa needs strong Latino support to have a chance of winning the governorship. However, the convention also displayed the ever-wider fault lines among Latino factions, especially those from Los Angeles and environs.

The regions Latino political clans joust with each other constantly for dominance in local government, legislative and congressional arenas.

The obvious rivalry of de Leon and Rendon, the grandson of immigrants from Mexico, is one example. And when Secretary of State Alex Padilla took the podium to introduce and praise Feinstein, it underscored his rivalry with de Leon.
Justice League vs. The Legion of Super-Heroes is coming to DC in 2022

Plus Wonder Woman returns to the Justice League while OMAC returns to the DCU
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In the second major recent combination of a Connecticut insurance giant and prescription drug provider, Cigna is acquiring Express Scripts for $67 billion, including debt it will absorb in the deal. It comes months after the deal that saw CVS Caremark buying out Aetna.

Cigna and Express Scripts promised the plan will reduce prices for customers and change peoples lives for the better, in the words of Cigna CEO David Cordani during a Thursday conference call. The companies aim to complete the merger by the end of the year contingent on approvals by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. Shares of Cigna were down 11 percent Thursday to below $173, with Express Scripts up 9 percent to $80.

The combined company will be known as Cigna and based in Bloomfield under Cordani, while maintaining the Express Scripts brand and offices in St. Louis, where it is based. Express Scripts CEO Tim Wentworth will take the title of president, with Wentworth saying Thursday the companies had been in talks for months.

CVS is in the process of acquiring Aetna for $69 billion, a deal that proved a boon for Connecticut when Rhode Island-based CVS scrapped Aetnas previous plan to move its Hartford headquarters to New York City under CEO Mark Bertolini.

Cordani noted that Cigna has operated its own pharmacy benefit management subsidiary that he called high performing but that he and the Cigna board felt they could not pass up the value offered by Express Scripts for Cigna and its customers.

Its all about improving affordability and customization for our customers, Cordani said. We are committed to being a global health service company, so expanding the services is quite important. ... We get quite excited about thinking about a future where we have a billion meaningful touch points with customers every year, because health and well-being happens every day.

The companies reported having combined revenue of $123 billion last year on a pro forma basis, and earnings of $10.5 billion, with the goal of doubling profits by 2021. Cigna and Express Scripts stated they can save more than $600 million annually by operating as one, including through administrative efficiencies without stating immediately any impact on jobs.

Cigna had 46,000 employees as of December, including about 4,200 in Connecticut.

Under Wentworth, Express Scripts added 1,000 employees last year to give it a total workforce of 26,500 people as of December. Express Scripts has mail-order pharmacies in Missouri, New Jersey, Arizona, Indiana and Ohio among more than 100 U.S. facilities and seven more in other countries.

Express Scripts processes 115 million prescriptions annually for medications for some 85 million people, with the company offering Medicare drug plans in Connecticut. In 2016, Express Scripts was the second largest pharmacy benefit manager in the country, between the Caremark operations of CVS and the OptumRx subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare.

Express Scripts has been in litigation with Anthem, which has the largest share of the Connecticut health insurance market, related to the pricing agreements in contractual relationships between the companies. And Express Scripts is one of several companies to receive a subpoena from New Yorks attorney general on steps it has taken to fight opioid abuse, with Express Scripts having indicated it is cooperating with the New York investigation.
For company values to be truly meaningful, employees need to buy into them. Yet, many leaders think they alone should define these values and then pass them on to employees.

Related: Stand for Something: How to Establish Authentic Core Values

Instead, William Vanderbloemen, founder and CEO of Vanderbloemen Search Group, advises entrepreneurs to define values early on with employees. At the Houston-based church-staffing company, Vanderbloemen sat down with his then team of 10 to figure out their kind of crazy -- or what made the organization unique.

Each employee wrote his or her ideas on a Post-it note. Then, those note swere hung up on an office wall for several months to give people time to reflect. From there, the team members narrowed down their preliminary values to the companys core nine.

I believe weve stayed true to our values because rather than a top-down approach, I looked for values that are embedded in our people, Vanderbloemen told me via email. Because of these strong values, Vanderbloemen Search Group was honored as one of Entrepreneurs Top Company Cultures last year.

But because every company is unique, entrepreneurs must determine the right approach for their individual team.

Pay attention to successes.

Early on, Madison, Wis.-based weather network and analytics company Understory tried different approaches to leadership and execution. This allowed the organization to figure out the best way to operate. But, it also provided insights about the companys values.

Related: 4 Ways to Bring Your Organizational Values to Life

We found that every time we achieved critical milestones or knocked our goals out of the park, our team exemplified certain traits, founder and CEO Alex Kubicek said in an email.

These common traits became the basis for Understorys values. Since employees already had connections to these pillars, it was easy for team members to incorporate them into their actions.

Think about your own employees skills and traits. Which ones unite them as a team? Which ones help them to succeed? Take this list of qualities, and discuss it with employees. Find out what resonates with them and what aligns with the company mission. This will help the organization form unique values that represent the team as a whole.

Create "shocking rules."

Companies like Facebook create shocking "rules," or rules meant to get employees to stop and think about the companys mission. At Facebook, one of these rules is move fast and break things. The underlying message is to disrupt the status quo. No matter how the company changes, that shocking rule is always there to guide employees.

Deputy, a New South Wales, Australia-based workforce management platform, also has a shocking rule: Get over yourself.

Our mission at Deputy is to improve the lives of hourly employees and business owners, CEO Ashik Ahmed said via email. To achieve our mission we need to uphold a culture that is selfless.

Draft several different "rules," then present them to employees. Clearly explain what each one means and how its tied to the companys identity. Then, have them vote on which rule resonates most with them.

All potential rules should embody the company and help impact employees actions. Focus on being short and memorable. Also, make sure the language reflects how people actually talk in the office.

Know when to redefine values.

The main purpose of company values is to guide employees. But if the company goal changes, then so should the values.

For example, when the New York City-based internship and entry-level job search marketplace WayUp was founded, the main goal was growth. But, after a few years, things had changed.

Our original values were too execution-oriented, CEO and co-founder Liz Wessel said in an email. However, as we continued to evolve as an organization, we realized that our core principles didnt set the tone for how to get things done, and didnt focus on the intentions behind the actions.

Meet with employees and discuss the progression of the company. Talk about how the values have been successful in the past but also how they might fail in the future.

Also, consider other aspects of the company that might have changed over the years. For instance, the companys target customer demographic might have evolved or expanded. If so, define new values that will help your employees meet those new needs.

Tie values to recognition.

Its easy for employees to get excited about values when theyre first established. But, over time, values get pushed out of the spotlight.

This is why Boston-based video advertising platform ViralGains ties company values to employee recognition. Each month, employees choose a peer they feel has truly exhibited the company's values. Then, during an all-hands meeting, each individual presents an award to the person he or she nominated and explains why that chosen co-worker was so inspiring.

Related: Inspire Employee Loyalty With Recognition Rooted in Company Values

This award gave our employees a means to voice genuine, unforced recognition within the organization, creating tremendous buy-in and appreciation of our core values, president and COO Dan Levin said via email.

Another option is to offer value perks. Whether its a bonus or an extra day off, reward employees who positively represent your company and what it stands for.

Related:

How to Define Company Values the Way One of Entrepreneur's 'Top Culture' Winners Does

Giving Just Lip Service to Your Values and Vision Is a Lot Like Not Having Values or Vision

Scale Your Values to Scale Your Business



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


With its scientific algorithms, we trusted robots to deliver neutral, fair, impartial answers. Since they are supposed to be free from unjust human biases and filters from past experiences, we believe that just as 2+2 = 4, mathematical formulas are black and white. We have found instead that the data scientists who create these algorithms have their own unconscious biases, which are subtly filtered down inside of the algorithms and act on these predispositions. More revealing is that even without the presence of bias during the development phase, machines are learning from the discriminatory undertones they perceive in our society.

Related: Artificial Intelligence Is Likely to Make a Career in Finance, Medicine or Law a Lot Less Lucrative

We can see this bias at play when we use Google to search for images of CEOs, with significantly more white males appearing than women or minorities, and search results for higher-paying jobs appear more to men than women. An algorithm designed to predict the likelihood of a person committing a future crime became unfairly racist. Researchers at Boston University and Microsoft New England found that machines associated the word "programmer" with the word "man," rather than "woman," and that the most similar word for "woman" is "homemaker."

AI's predictive power creates solutions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is arriving at a time of great necessity. AI's importance is reflected in research conducted by McKinsey, which found total annual external investment in AI was between $8 billion to $12 billion in 2016. With its increasing ability to collect vast amounts of data, AI quickly turns this information into actionable insights, providing critical strategic advantages. Chatbots can find answers to customer queries much faster than humans, diagnose diseases and make accurate predictions that can drive product innovation. The predictive data can be used to detect fraud or match the unemployed with available jobs that utilize their skills, and solve complex traffic problems.

Related: A Humanoid Robot Called Sophia Mocked Elon Musk After Being Asked About the Dangers of AI

Are chatbots reflecting a biased world?

The most straightforward solution, it seems, would be to train programmers so that they do not unintentionally write code or use data that is biased. Neutrality can be difficult to discern during the development phase, as Beauty.AI learned when the results of its first machine-judged beauty pageant resulted in winners that all had fair skin. Developers realized after the fact that the machine was not taught to recognize those with dark skin.

Enlightened developers are not enough.

The creation of fair and balanced algorithms is critical and necessary yet reflects only part of the solution. Machines have the potential to have hidden biases, whether or not they originated from any predisposition of the designer. Machines continuously learn from outside data to do their task better. We are designing machines to think and learn. The extreme example of continuous improvement is Elon Musk's scenario where bots trained to eliminate spam might eventually learn to wipe out the humans who create spam. While we are far from this extreme, it's important to understand that the algorithms used by AI depend upon deep learning, which uses neural networks. However pure the original code is, the machines will always be vulnerable to replicating the bias it sees as it engages with the world.

Related: 5 Reasons Machine Learning Is the Future of Marketing

This type of learning was evident after Microsoft's Tay chatbot imitated what it read on Twitter, regardless of how vicious the behavior. Tay lived less than 24 hours before it was influenced by racist tweets. As Tay learned and engaged through conversation and dialogue, it very quickly learned to use these statements to spin its own racist tweets.

AI can perpetuate and reinforce a bias that already exists. For example, if an organization has traditionally hired male CEOs, a bot trained to find future CEOs would look at the past for likely candidates, based upon real data that indicates that previous CEOs were male. The machine would use male candidates as a predictor of someone who is qualified for a job.

Algorithms that only provide results "similar to" previous data create a bubble of their own, as we have experienced in news feeds that are free from conflicting viewpoints. Without opposing points, we lack necessary insights for significant decisions that foster creativity and innovation.

Related: 10 Artificial Intelligence Trends to Watch in 2018

Value alignment is a teachable skill.

Mark O. Riedl, an associate professor at the College of Computing, School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, proposes an attractive solution, Quixote, that involves immersing bots in literature. In his paper, which he presented at the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, he explains that strong values can be learned, and, "that an artificial intelligence that can read and understand stories can learn the values tacitly held by the culture from which the stories originate." He explains that stories are encoded with implicit and explicit sociocultural knowledge that could build a moral foundation in the bot and could teach the bot how to solve a problem without harming humans.

Literature can be ambiguous and abstruse, and some of the greatest books of all time were once regarded as nefarious by school boards, calling for their ban. The more significant question is how will we, as a society, come to a consensus regarding what is socially responsible literature reading material for our bots?

AI is not a replacement for people.

The goal has never been for AI to replace humans, but rather to support, amplify and enlighten. At a minimum, AI developers can take a more active role to ensure biases are not inadvertently created. Human oversight is still needed at all levels of development, and to ensure there is a healthy mix of opposing views to encourage diversity. Additionally, this must be supported by an equal opportunity for everyone to develop these systems.

Related:

Why Are Some Bots Racist? Look at the Humans Who Taught Them.

Alexa Is Randomly Laughing, But Nobody's in on the Joke

Ready, Set, Go: The Third Dubai Smartpreneur Competition Is Now Open For Entries



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


"They want me in there for grand jury on Friday," Nunberg told Bloomberg News. "I'm not paying the money to go down there. What's he going to do? He's so tough -- let's see what they do. I'm not going to spend 40 hours going over emails. I have a life."

Nunberg told the Post that he planned to tear up his subpoena on Bloomberg TV and would let Mueller "arrest me," all of which misses the point a little bit. Nunberg and his lawyer are free to petition Mueller to narrow the scope of the subpoena. They can also seek to quash it. But if Nunberg simply ignores the subpoena, Mueller will ask a court to intervene. After a review, the court is likely to cite Nunberg for contempt -- which would probably mean that a judge, not Mueller, would then send Nunberg off to prison.

Nunberg kept plowing ahead throughout Monday afternoon and evening. He told MSNBC's Katy Tur that Mueller's request for "every e-mail I had with Roger Stone and with Steve Bannon," (as well as his email contacts with current and former Trump advisers Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski) was "ridiculous." When Tur changed gears to ask if Mueller's investigators "have something on the president," Nunberg was helpful.

"I think they may," he responded. "I think he may have done something during the election."

Ouch.
Dana Loesch's bogus defense of the National Rifle Association and her use of the term "legacy media" tells me she is a public relations professional for the arms industry. Why else would the NRA go to such great lengths after so many tragic events against students and other with high-priced military-grade weapons than to place profits before people.

Of course, the print and electronic media in the U.S. have in the past been used to manipulate the public, such as William Randolph Hearst's rush to judgment about the sinking of the battleship Maine that led directly to a war against Spain and the U.S. takeover of that country's colonies, the blame placed on Germany for starting World War I, the cover-up of the banker's plot to overthrow the newly-elected FDR administration in 1933, the still "cold case" of the execution of President Kennedy, the as yet incomplete government investigation into the attack on 9/11, the "unaccounted" for trillions of dollars at the Federal Reserve and the Department of Defense, the disappearance without trace of one hundred thousand American children yearly estimated by the FBI and the exposure of the media monopoly by the late Prof. Ben Bagdikian, to name a few instances where the mainstream media has failed us, with the very worst being the CIA's "Operation Mockingbird."
The South China Morning Post reports that China launched a scaled-down model of a multipurpose, reusable space plane from a test site in the Gobi Desert late last month, part of its race to develop space travel technology.

The hypersonic space drone lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Inner Mongolia, accelerated to more than five times the speed of sound and reached orbital altitude before returning safely to ground, according to a researcher with knowledge of the experiment.

Chinas goal was to develop a space plane for both military and civilian missions, capable of traveling fast enough to penetrate missile defense systems and with the heft to help rebuild satellite networks or lift tourists to space, the researcher said.

Development of the prototype was led by the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang, Sichuan province. Also known as Base 29, the military-run facility has some of the most advanced wind tunnels for hypersonic research in the country.

Ye Youda, a senior hypersonic vehicle researcher working at the base, confirmed the test took place but said he could not give details because the project was classified for defense purposes.

Without revealing the nature of the vehicle, state-run Science and Technology Daily said on February 23 that the test was a breakthrough, with the vehicle landing precisely as planned.

Lead scientist Liu Gang was quoted as saying it was the first time China had conducted this kind of test.

It will be able to take off from a normal airport and take spacecraft into orbit. It will be a revolution for space transport, Zhang told state broadcaster China Central Television.

He said Tengyun, a civilian version of the space plane, would be able to carry both passengers and cargo into orbit or to a space station.

The vehicle would be reusable  bringing down launch costs  and be driven by a hybrid engine that could take in air in the atmosphere and burn rocket fuel once in space.

DARPA and Boeing are developing XS-1, a hypersonic space plane that would launch vertically as a rocket and return to ground as a plane. It is also called the Phantom Express. It would be as large as a commercial airliner and be able to put a medium-size satellite to lower-Earth orbit.

The US project was launched last year with the first flight scheduled for 2020.
NEW HAVEN  Barrence Whitfield is a soul screamer who can conjure up spirits and raise the dead with the best of them, and hes coming back to Cafe Nine on March 16  so LOOK OUT!

If youre the kind of person who belongs at a Barrence Whitfield & The Savages show, chances are you know it by now. They have, after all, been doing this for more than 30 years at this point.

But if you dont  get with it! Crawl out from under your rock and get on the dance floor! These guys really rock!

Showtime is 9:30 p.m., with New York Citys Daddy Long Legs opening. Admission is $15, available in advance at cafenine.com. Cafe Nine is at 250 State St., at the corner of State and Crown.

Whitfield, even at age 62, can still jump around onstage like a teenager  or at least sort of like he did 30 years ago when they all played at The Nightshift Cafe in Naugatuck  and his band remains one of the hottest bands on Planet Earth.

For a few years now, co-founder and original (and former Lyres and DMZ) guitarist Peter Greenberg and original (and also former Lyres) bassist Phil Lenker have been back on board.

If youve never seen Barrence Whitfield & The Savages  one of the best things ever to come out of Boston  do their thing at Cafe Nine, you are missing a soulful force of nature. Luckily, you have a chance to rectify that.

Dont blow it!

The longtime key to what makes Barrence Whitfield & The Savages great (other than Greenbergs chunky, twangy garage-rock/rockabilly guitar and Whitfields remarkable ability to SCREEEEEAM his lyrics in so many different ways) is their ability to mine deep to unearth forgotten sources of music.

They do that like the longtime present and former record store employees that they are.

Whitfield and the Savages have this thing about digging up little-known and long-forgotten rock and R&B gems, reworking them and throwing them out there as new songs.

They did it many years ago with songs like Big Mamou  their hopped-up version of a Louisiana classic  and Juicy Fruit, the obscure Rudy Greene jump blues tune that Whitfield sped up to something approaching triple speed and turned into a classic bit of punk soul.

On their last Bloodshot Records album, Under The Savage Sky, they did it with Timmy Mr. Soul Satisfaction Willis Im a Full Grown Man, Kid Thomas The Wolf Pack, Eddie Snows Im a Good Man and Mercy Babys Rock and Roll Baby.

And theyre STILL doing it on their latest, just-released Bloodshot Records album, Soul Flowers of Titan.

Whitfield, born Barry White in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1955, is by no means a stranger to Greater New Haven. Besides those scorching shows at The Nightshift, hes played a number of times in more recent years at Cafe Nine.
Courtesy of GuitartownCT

HAMDEN  North Carolina-based Zoe & Cloyd  thats Natalya Zoe Weinstein and John Cloyd Miller  play bluegrass-inspired Americana music, with a few twists along the way.

Longtime performers on the Asheville, North Carolina, music scene, Zoe & Cloyd are a couple, and will perform March 16 in a GuitartownCT show at Best Video Film & Cultural Center.
CHESHIRE  Theres a New Haven County connection in the book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of Americas Shining Women by Kate Moore, said Cheshire Public Library librarian Eileen Topitzer. So she took a chance.

On a whim, I emailed the ... bestselling author Kate Moore and asked her if shed consider visiting us from London to promote her book, Topitzer said in an email.

Moore agreed to add Cheshire to her U.S. promotional tour and will be stopping at the 104 Main St. library Thursday at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the book. Topitzer said the library will have books available for purchase and signing with the help of RJ Julia Booksellers. Moore will also stop the same day at Fairfield Public Library at noon.

As the book jacket says the subject matter, World War I raged across the globe, hundreds of young women toiled away at the radium-dial factories, where they painted clock faces with a mysterious new substance called radium. Assured by their bosses that the luminous material was safe, the women themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered from head to toe with the glowing dust.

With such a coveted job, these shining girls were considered the luckiest alive  until they began to fall mysteriously ill. As the fatal poison of the radium took hold, they found themselves embroiled in one of Americas biggest scandals and a groundbreaking battle for workers rights.

The area connection? Some of these women worked at the Waterbury Clock (Company), said Topitzer. The legacy of these women is truly remarkable. Lawsuits brought by the radium girls paved the way for American labor rights milestones and helped lead to the creation of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
WASHINGTON - Special counsel Robert Mueller has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin - apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

Nader began cooperating with Mueller after he arrived at Dulles Airport in mid-January and was stopped, served with a subpoena and questioned by the FBI, these people said. He has met numerous times with investigators.

Last year, Prince told lawmakers - and the news media - that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.

In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump's inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration.

Prince told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that he did not plan to meet Dmitriev in the Seychelles but that once he was there discussing possible business deals with UAE officials, they unexpectedly suggested that he visit the hotel bar and meet Dmitriev.

"At the end, one of the entourage says, 'Hey, by the way, there's this Russian guy that we've dealt with in the past. He's here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, he'd be an interesting guy for you to know, since you're doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space,' " Prince told lawmakers.

The two men, he said, spoke for no more than 30 minutes, or about the time it took him to drink a beer.

"We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the USA," Prince told lawmakers. "I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism."

Prince said he went to the Seychelles as a private businessman, not as an official or unofficial emissary of the Trump transition team. During the congressional interview, which became testy at times as Democratic lawmakers pressed him to be more specific in his answers, Prince repeatedly complained that he had reason to believe U.S. intelligence agencies were leaking information about his activities.

Asked to comment on assertions that new evidence appears to contradict Prince's description of the Seychelles meeting, a spokesman for Prince referred to his previous statements to the committee and declined further comment.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Prince has known Nader for years and once hired him to try to generate business from the Iraqi government in the years after the U.S. invasion of that country. That effort was not successful, according to Prince's statements in a subsequent deposition.

Nader, according to current and former officials, was known to Trump transition and administration officials as someone with political connections in the Middle East who could help navigate the tricky diplomacy of the region.

Nader had also attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between senior Trump advisers and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, whether any Americans assisted in such efforts, and any other matters that arise in the course of his probe.

Investigators now suspect that the Seychelles meeting may have been one of the first efforts to establish such a line of communications between the two governments, these people said. Nader's account is considered key evidence - but not the only evidence - about what transpired in the Seychelles, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nader has long served as an adviser to the UAE leadership, and in that role he met more than once with Trump officials, including Steve Bannon and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the matter. After the Seychelles meeting, Nader visited the White House several times, and met at least once there with Bannon and Kushner, these people said.

Nader could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer declined to comment.

Nader - and the Seychelles meeting - are also of interest to Mueller's team as it examines whether any foreign money or assistance fueled the Trump campaign, and how Trump officials during the transition and early days of the administration communicated with foreign officials, particularly Russians.

Nader's cooperation with the special counsel was first reported by the New York Times.

The UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective, according to U.S. European and Arab officials. Such a concession by Moscow would have been likely to require the easing of U.S. sanctions on Russia, which were imposed for Russia's intervention in Ukraine in 2014, those officials said.

Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition. However, according to people familiar with the Seychelles meeting, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his discussion with the Russian official.

---

The Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey, and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
NEW HAVEN  Predicting the future of American protest movements might not be possible, but a panel assembled by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Greater New Haven branch pointed to a wealth of information on the efficacy of protest movements in the past.

The panel began with a documentary clip of how a small group of students at Fisk University used nonviolent protest tactics to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, Tenn., launching a movement that gathered national attention. Siobhan Carter-David, an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University who moderated the panel, said what stood out to her was how the protestors put their bodies on the line.

Michele Thompson, a professor of history at SCSU, said there also were multiple examples of how Vietnam War protestors put their bodies on the line  whether it be self-immolating or Muhammad Alis refusal to enlist in the draft.

He used his body, giving up prime years of his career by going to prison, she said.

Richard Lucas, a graduate assistant at Yales Afro-American Cultural Center enrolled at the Yale Divinity School, said the tactic taken in Nashville  communicative suffering  has pros and cons: it plays well in the media when racist white people use violence against black people who are committing no crime and not reacting, but it also depends on the audiences morality.

Our movement today is not a movement of suits, he said, addressing the issue of respectability. Mid-century civil rights protestors often donned suits and were college students, playing on the nations perceptions of how people of a certain social-economic class are more deserving of dignity.

The individuals leading the current movement for black lives, he said, are mainly people who are not men or heterosexual , people with tattoos and all sorts of working class people wearing skinny jeans and worn-out sneakers.

David Canton, director of Connecticut Colleges Africana Studies Program and an assistant professor of history there, said respectability and racism play a role in how the public perception of young black protestors in urban centers like Ferguson, Mo. , and Chicago is different from that of the affluent, mostly white, high schoolers in Parkland, Fla. He said it was an inconvenient narrative that Parkland students visited Chicago to discuss gun violence, so it went mostly unreported in the media.

Troy Paddock, chairman of SCSUs history department, said nonviolence has been the only viable tactic for people protesting government, as violence cannot overpower a government. He said Cold War protestors in Eastern Europe used theatrical, nonviolent protests to oppose their authoritarian governments.

The only way you can challenge the legitimacy of a government is showing how it doesnt live up to its ideals, he said.

The panel was divided on the efficacy of voting as a protest tactic. Thompson, a native Alabaman, said the recent upset election of Democrat Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate was a triumph of voters, especially black women, being politically engaged. Lucas, however, said voting and marches are two of the lowest forms of civic engagement.

Its really in that day-to-day work, he said, by building community power. The election of Barack Obama, Canton added, was a historical deviation because of power building within electoral politics, but also did virtually nothing to reverse existing power structures.

State Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, who was in attendance, said she sees voting, in its truest context, is a daily activity.

We are the 99 percent, she said, a reference to a slogan of Occupy Wall Street, a protest against wealth inequality at the beginning of the decade. The lobbyists are pretty much running the show.

Dori Dumas, president of the Greater New Haven NAACP chapter, said she chose to have an event at SCSU to educate and embolden students on their right to protest.

Many students are turned away, discouraged and intimidated, but it is your right, she said.

Jerrod Delee, vice president of the SCSU chapter of the NAACP and a junior at the school, said he believes theres a spirit of activism in the student body. Last month, the SCSU Black Student Union led a march after a white professor allegedly used a racial slur in class, an incident that earned the attention of the school administration.

Everybody really got together and united, he said.

Thompson said she believes there have been more protests in recent years than any period since the early 1970s.

I dont know if were entering into a decade of protest, she said.
James Conaway, author of "Napa At Last Light: Americas Eden in an Age of Calamity," will visit Napa County Library on Saturday, March 10, at 2 p.m.

It is the third book in Conaways critically acclaimed Napa trilogy. This program is presented in collaboration with Napa Bookmine.

"Napa at Last Light" reveals how the beautiful, isolated Napa Valley wine region of California exploded into an extraordinary outsized version of the American dream and whose vineyards sparked a power struggle between old family stewardship and multinational corporations.

It contains prescient warnings of the destruction done to the land as a result of the rapid growth of the industry, giving a grim timeliness to this books publication.

The Napa Library is at 680 Coombs St., Napa.
It was on a trip to Spain that Sonoma County vintner Derek Benham decided he needed to try something new. By his own admission, he had never been much for gin, but the Spanish version of a gin and tonic so entranced him that he instantly foresaw his business taking a new course.

I was eager to recreate the experience of drinking G&Ts in Europe, and dreamed of doing so through my own craft spirit, Benham said.

Benhams Graton-based business, Purple Wine + Spirits, had heretofore produced branded and private label wines sourced from wine of the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma counties. Purple Wine prides itself on sustainability and utilizing as many local ingredients as possible, and Benham brought the same spirit to D. George Benham Sonoma Dry Gin, launched in 2016.

The Meyer lemon and Buddhas Hand botanicals sourced from California inspired the gin, he said. We added Sonoma in the name to provide a sense of place, and strike a chord among those who only associate Sonoma with wine.

Though vintner culture is the lifeblood of California wine country, Benham and his distiller, Jeff Duckhorn, see the nationwide microdistilling craze as benefiting the palates of their customers and neighbors.

In Napa and Sonoma counties, people really want to eat and drink locally, Duckhorn said, adding that the local craze is especially prevalent in California.

Duckhorn has also helped Benham craft a Graton vodka and the Redwood Empire American Whiskey  the latter partially composed of rye aged in port and wine barrels.

Duckhorn, who started out as a home brewer and distiller, initially came to Purple Wine + Spirits as an accountant. In fact, he brought the same passion for organization hed used keeping books to later keep tabs on his mixology.

I probably overuse them, but I love spreadsheets and I use them for everything, he said, adding he even has a spreadsheet that shows the botanical breakdown of each California ingredient used in the gin.

I know what each botanical by percentage contributes to the recipe, and we can replicate that for consistency, Duckhorn said.

While crafting their spirits, Benham and Duckhorn often turned to the discerning palates of their wine country brethren for the beta tasting of the new gin, whiskey and vodka.

There were probably 20 of us at the first gin tasting, Duckhorn said, including not only those in the booze biz but colleagues from other industries. I think we had 16 gins and then three or four of our own gins. We tasted them all blind.

What came out of that blind tasting was that Graton Distilling could make a name by concentrating specifically on the citrus profile for the D. George Benham Gin.

We found that citrus is something that we really could corner the market with the availability of the local lemons and the ability to zest [the flavor] and distill it fresh, Duckhorn said. It took us the better part of 2015 honing that in for the gin.

Graton Distilling distributes throughout California and to several states on both coasts, largely thanks to their wine partnerships. Duckhorn said that the distillery aims to expand into barrel-aging their gins and also releasing single malt whiskeys as well.

The craft spirits industry right now is the wild west. Its kind of where the beer industry was 15, 20 years ago, Duckhorn said. People are really willing to share ideas. Ive reached out to other people with questions, and [distillers] are really open [to discussions], which is great. It makes for a fun time in the industry.

Our spirits all represent and incorporate a different aspect of California, Benham, whose overseas trip has produced great returns, said of his Golden State wares. Im not sure what the future holds, but I plan to continue to stretch even further beyond our current portfolio with more spirits and libations.


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ROME  For archaeologists, the excavation of Romes newest subway line has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Two years after a second-century military barracks was found during the excavation of the Amba Aradam station, archaeologists last week presented the remains of a richly decorated domus, or house, that they believe belonged to the commander of the military post.

Even after the discovery of the military complex, we didnt imagine that wed find a house with a central courtyard, a fountain and at least 14 rooms, said Simona Morretta, the state archaeologist responsible for the site. One of the rooms appears to have been heated.
Does it ever bother you that the customers only know you as That Helpful Man? Andrew asks Mercado. Mercado shrugs. Later, back at his mothers apartment, Andrew reacts violently after discovering that she has bought a tub of Safeway ice cream rather than his preferred brand, Haagen-Dazs. His spite toward anything everyday  what in last weeks episode he derided as ordinary  is visceral and explosive. He slams the tub onto the kitchen floor, making a mess.

When his mother asks why it matters, Andrew tells her about Reuben Mattus, the brands founder, who made up its Danish-sounding name. Its a brief but sad moment, one that reveals how consumer abundance, or the illusion of it, has made Andrew so petulant, childish and self-indulgent that he despises his own mother.

In the gay world, we soon learn, Andrew is more Safeway than Haagen-Dazs.

At a gay bar with his handsome friend Jeff, a Navy veteran, Andrew laments that he isnt approached more by men; Jeff urges him to take the initiative, but Andrew fears rejection in the same way he fears getting his hands dirty. For him, its existential. Being told no is like being told I dont exist, he says. Its like Ive disappeared or something.

People get rejected every day, and we may never truly understand why most move on with their lives while Andrew moved on to become a killer. But were learning more about just how pernicious his fear of invisibility is, even at this early stage. When Andrew visits an escort agency, its brusque manager wastes no time in informing Andrew about the customers preferences  another rejection. (My clients never ask for Asians, she says after asking him to drop his trousers. And they never ask for Asians with attitude.) Deciding he doesnt need help finding a sugar daddy, he browses a local newspaper, studying the arts and philanthropy pages to identify suitable targets.

A target found, he stalks the La Jolla Playhouse for a performance of Marivauxs 18th-century comic play The Triumph of Love. Just as planned, he catches the eye of Norman Blachford, a wealthy entrepreneur whose partner, as we know from last weeks episode, has recently died of AIDS. Andrew ends up becoming the kept man of Lincoln Aston, a friend of Normans.

Its on Lincolns dime  purportedly to look into art acquisitions  that Andrew travels to San Francisco and buys a fateful drink for a handsome young man sitting alone at the bar. That man turns out to be David, the Minneapolis architect, who is visiting San Francisco for work. (Frustratingly, we never learn more about the friends with whom Andrew is dining.)
I was drawn to the column that became Yesterday in Styles in part because I always got a chuckle when editors at magazines like GQ would poke fun at themselves by resurfacing old cover stories in which they anointed velour bodysuits, form-fitting coveralls or some other soon-to-be fashion faux pas as the next hot trend.

But since our lifestyle coverage in Styles aims toward the serious, or at least consequential, I wanted to give the column a little heft. The idea was to do an archaeological deep dive through Styles sections from five, 10, even 20 years ago, and select one article each week that seemed either prescient or revealing, summarize it in a punchy manner, then use it as a yardstick to measure cultural progress or lack thereof. Its a little bit nostalgia, a little bit chest-puffery and a little bit self-flagellation.

Every week, the Styles desk churns out dozens of stories, and some merit re-examination more than others. For example, no one probably needs to look back on the Calvin Klein runway show from 1989. (Or if someone does, it isnt me.)

Instead, along with my editor, Anya Strzemien, and our visual editor, Tracy Ma, we have tried to focus on those social topics where attitudes have changed the quickest. Consider gay marriage. In 1999, the idea of a legal same-sex union was still so hard to imagine that Bob Morris, the Styles columnist, wrote an article about the acute brand of alienation that some gay people felt when they were forced to attend straight weddings. Does cynicism die with inclusion? Mr. Morris said, looking back on the article. (He married his own partner in 2008.) Maybe.

And what about self-branding? Today, it seems as though every actor, athlete, politician, YouTube influencer and Starbucks barista bills himself or herself as a brand. But it was not always so. The notion almost seemed the stuff of satire in 1997, when Alex Kuczynski documented the trend of average Joes and Janes adopting the Martha Stewart ethos and presenting themselves to the world as a brand in order to boost their professional or even romantic standing. Sometimes, as Marx observed, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. And sometimes, it seems, it starts as farce.
Instead, the city has taken more modest steps, including expanding a free after-school test-preparation program and offering the admissions test during the school day at some middle schools that historically have not sent many students to the specialized schools. In the fall, the city revamped the exam, scrapping a section in which students had to take paragraphs with sentences that had been scrambled and reassemble them. The education department said the changes would make the test more equitable by better reflecting what students actually learn in school.

Despite these efforts, the percentage of students admitted to the specialized schools who are black or Hispanic is actually down slightly from before Mr. de Blasio was elected. In 2013, 12 percent of students who received offers were black or Latino.

At Stuyvesant, the most competitive of the schools, only 10 black students and 27 Latino students received offers this year; last year, the comparable numbers were 13 and 28.

Matt Gonzales, the director of the School Diversity Project at New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for school integration, and a member of a group that is advising the city on how to integrate schools, said that he was not surprised, given that the mayor had not made any substantive effort to change the admissions process.

I question the premise that we need to have specialized high schools, Mr. Gonzales said, calling them undemocratic. Nonetheless, he said, if the city wanted to maintain the schools, there were ways to make them more reflective of the citys population  such as instituting a system in which the top students at every middle school were offered admission.
The Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) unveiled last week its "Smart Defence Initiatives" as it tries to harness the latest technological developments, such as robotics, artificial intelligence and data analytics, to enhance its capabilities and operational effectiveness.

RSS Sovereignty, the second LMV, during IMDEX 2017



According to the RSN, the security environment is becoming more complex and uncertain, and we now face a wider spectrum of threats. This is particularly true for Singapore, a maritime nation situated amongst many small islands, and having to deal with a porous maritime security environment. In addition, as a maritime trade hub, the waters that the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) protects are extremely congested with both large merchant vessels and small craft transiting through the narrow Singapore Strait.

Our video coverage aboard RSS Independence, the first LMV



Revolutionary Ship Design -- Littoral Mission Vessel (LMV)

The RSN's newest class of ships, developed in partnership with the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and Singapore Technologies Marine, features many innovative design concepts for both operations and engineering support. The design process adopted a novel "design the support" approach, where key downstream engineering and logistics support considerations were factored upfront in the vessel's design. Its stacked mast maximises sensor coverage while allowing maintenance to be carried out more efficiently, and has led to the reduction of time spent at dock for mast-related defects. In addition, the LMVs are designed to be more capable than the Patrol Vessels (PVs) they replaced. Key features include (i) the co-location of the Bridge, Combat Information Centre and Machinery Control Room in the Integrated Command Centre for more effective and efficient maritime security operations; and (ii) automation, sense-making and decision support systems for both combat and platform systems. This has enabled the multi-mission capable LMVs to be operated with a leaner baseline crew of 23 personnel, as compared to the 30-man PVs, even though the LMVs are larger and more complex vessels. The innovative design solutions to our LMVs will save us at least $65 million across the 30-year life span of the platform, when compared to the PVs.

ST Marine's VENUS 16 MCM USV at IMDEX 2017

Unmanned Vessels to Enhance Maritime Security and Homeland Defence.

Currently, the RSN operates manned ships to patrol the Singapore Strait and scan the seabed for mines to keep our shipping lanes safe for navigation. The RSN is developing three types of Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs), namely the Coastal Defence USV to conduct coastal patrols, the Mine Countermeasure USV with Towed Synthetic Aperture Sonar (TSAS) to conduct underwater scans of the seabed to detect mines, and the Mine Countermeasure USV with Expendable Mine Disposal System to conduct mine disposals (refer to Table 1 below for more details on their technical specifications). DSTA worked closely with the RSN to achieve semi-autonomous operation of the TSAS, through an automatic Launch and Recovery System that allows the operator to remotely launch the sonar as well as recover the sonar upon completion of survey operations. In addition, the fully automated detection and classification system on board the USV is able to rapidly detect and classify mines, reducing the time required by more than 50%.

Video interview on ST Marine's USV projects at IMDEX 2017



Equipped with advanced sensors and software, all three types of USVs will provide comprehensive maritime security for Singapore. When operational, the USVs can perform their tasks at much lower cost and with less manpower than manned platforms. The Coastal Defence USVs will eventually take over the role of patrols in the Singapore Strait, which is currently undertaken by the PVs and LMVs. This will allow our manned warships, like the LMVs, to be deployed at further ranges from Singapore, and more strategically for complex missions. As overall programme manager for the USVs, DSTA ensures that the USVs meet design objectives through rigorous technical assessments and feasibility studies. The key features of the USVs include:

a. High Speed and Better Manoeuvrability. The USVs are designed for high speed and manoeuvrability for its operations. The USVs hull also enables good sea-keeping, allowing the USVs to operate in the Singapore Strait even during monsoon seasons.

b. Autonomous Navigation with Collision Avoidance. The USVs can navigate safely and operate autonomously in proximity with other vessels with the in-built Collision Detection and Collision Avoidance system. The USVs are also able to manoeuvre autonomously by waypoint navigation and maintain its position relative to other vessels. This reduces the workload and frees up the capacity of the operator remotely controlling the USV in the Singapore Strait, which is the busiest shipping lane in the world, to have increased situational awareness and ability to detect suspicious activity.

c. Low Manning. With the high level of autonomy and integrated Command and Control systems aboard, the Operator Control Station located ashore or on board platforms at sea, can control the movement and payload of the USV with minimal manpower required.

The RSN's LMV class is already fitted with advanced data analytics systems.



Enhancing Operational Effectiveness

Leveraging Data Analytics for Predictive Maintenance. Equipment maintenance on board the ship is currently conducted according to pre-planned schedules. Defects are rectified as and when they occur, which impacts readiness and increases costs. The RSN is conducting trials to use data analytics on key equipment parameters such as engine health, vibration and temperature data on critical systems to predict when defects may occur. Ship crew will then be triggered to take pre-emptive steps to prevent defects and avoid costly repairs. Currently, trials for predictive maintenance of the frigate's diesel generators are being conducted and the resultant cost savings are projected to be $1 million per year, with the potential to adapt it for other systems.

Smart Base Access. Currently, the base security screening process is labour-intensive and time-consuming. The RSN has started a Smart Base Access project that utilises a combination of facial recognition and digital identification to simplify the process while maintaining high security standards. Without the need for laborious verification methods, the Smart Base Access project will reduce the number of security personnel required and could generate savings of $160,000 per year in Changi Naval Base alone. The trial for Smart Base Access will start at the end of February 2018.

Enhancing Maritime Security

Leveraging Data Analytics to Enhance Maritime Security. As the national lead for the Whole-of-Government (WoG) Maritime Security (MARSEC) efforts, the RSN is continually refining the system and leveraging data analytics improve detection of anomalies and its sense-making capabilities.

a. Improving Anomaly Detection with Video Analytics. The RSN has a comprehensive network of coastal surveillance sensors to detect any maritime threats in the Singapore Strait. The RSN is collaborating with DSTA and DSO National Laboratories to develop video analytics to automatically classify vessels and flag out anomalies, in order to increase situational awareness and reduce human error. This will increase the RSNs operational efficiency and translate to manpower savings of about 30%, as personnel who were previously conducting manual scanning of video screens can now focus on higher-end tasks.

b. Improving Sense-making Capabilities. The RSN-led Singapore Maritime Crisis Centre (SMCC) is developing a sense-making system that collates and fuses information from Whole-of-Government agencies and open sources, and applies data analytics to uncover MARSEC threats and activate operational responses to deal with possible terrorist plots. For example, the National Maritime Sense-Making Group (NMSG) within the SMCC analyses data from a vessel's voyage and its crew's "pattern of life" to assess potential threats. This information has been used to cue other national agencies to check suspicious vessels and even deny specific crew members from entering Singapore. NSMG has also worked with the Police Coast Guard (PCG) to analyse parameters of previous smuggling incidents to obtain the vessel types that has a higher probability of being involved in smuggling activities. This has allowed the PCG to be more targeted in the vessels they inspect.

RSS Sovereignty, the second LMV, during IMDEX 2017

Q&A with Collin Koh, South East Asia Maritime Security expert



Navy Recognition (NR) - In your opinion, does the LMV really brings a plus to the RSN or was the program launched to benefit the local industry (ST Marine) first and foremost ?

Collin Koh (CK): It really brings a plus to the RSN from both technical and operational perspectives. The 8 LMVs were intended to replace the 11 patrol vessels, which thus represents a significant streamlining of manning and logistical requirements. At the same time, each LMV is vastly more capable of multiple functions than the older patrol vessel. However, theres always an arms export dimension to it. ST Marine has been marketing its stable of warships for the export market, perhaps eyeing clients seeking cheaper alternatives to those products built by more established, Western shipbuilders. The LMV is no exception. However, the primary aim is foremost to equip the RSN, and use the successful employment of this vessel as the marketing point.



NR- Do you think the focus on USV / unmanned system is related to the RSN manning issues ?

CK: Very much linked to it. The RSN is known to be looking at unmanned systems for various aspects of operations for quite some time, including exploring the feasibility of a fully unmanned MCM force for example. And USVs have obvious MCM, maritime security and ASW applications. So besides the wider aim of service (or for that matter, the entire SAF) automation effort to reduce crewing requirements, the use of unmanned systems is also envisaged to add another new edge to the navy and on par with world class contemporaries.



NR- LMV, USV and now "Video Analytics" and "sense-making systems". Those are all very advanced if not "avant garde" projects or programs. Would you say that the RSN is the most technologically advanced navy in South East Asia, if not in the whole Pacific region (bar the US Navy) ?

CK: There are commentaries about RSN being the best little navy in the world and so on such accolades. But modestly speaking, while the RSN is one of the most advanced of its league worldwide, and in various measure could match major navies in certain tech and human capital aspects. However, within SE Asia, the RSN is probably the most balanced of all, having developed various air, surface, subsurface, and cyber beyond the traditional domains. In a way, the RSN is also blessed with the countrys geography - unlike its neighbours which often face persistent capacity shortfalls given the disproportionately large maritime zones, Singapore is able to devote resources not just to gain critical mass of assets but to focus on qualitative improvements by investing in both foreign and domestic R&D capabilities. Still, some of Singapores neighbours possess naval capabilities that the RSN doesnt have - RMN with underwater launched SM-39 Exocet USGW for anti-ship, and VPN with the Klub-S SLCMs for both anti-ship and land attack roles.



Collin Koh is a research fellow at the Maritime Security Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
In Philadelphia, whites received 10 times as many conventional mortgage loans as African-Americans during 2015 and 2016, even though the two groups reside in the city in roughly equal numbers.

Banks have subverted the purpose of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was supposed to get them to lend and invest more, and open more branches, in low- and moderate-income areas. This was to correct decades of damage the federal government caused by encouraging lenders to ignore black areas until the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968. The Reveal study found that affordable mortgages issued in historically black neighborhoods to comply with the reinvestment act were going to white newcomers instead of longtime black residents. This has accelerated a pattern of gentrification that forces out black residents.

These problems are rampant throughout the United States. Three years ago, for example, a striking study commissioned by the city of Richmond, Va., found that black applicants were less likely to receive home purchase loans or refinance loans regardless of their incomes.

Upper-income black people were even more likely to be denied loans, as compared to similarly situated whites, than lower income black people were to their white counterparts. This underscored yet again that African-Americans cannot escape economic discrimination simply by becoming wealthier, especially when financial institutions persist in punishing them for living in majority minority neighborhoods. A destructive bill pending in the Senate would deepen this problem by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting mortgage data that allows regulators and fair housing groups to ensure that home loans are being issued in a nondiscriminatory way.

By denying African-American families mortgage credit, the financial industry also denies them the opportunity to accumulate household wealth  part of the reason that white median family net worth is nearly 10 times that of black families. Beyond that, the decision to withhold credit from minority neighborhoods has turned too many of them into hollowed-out areas with high poverty, failing schools, lower property values and a markedly worse quality of life.
But just as important, if not more so, there were marked differences between the parties in terms of the tone of their primaries.

On the Democratic side, there was bitter internal strife, dating back to the previous election cycle, between the establishment Democrats and the populist Berniecrats. Many of the latter are not committed partisans: While they are highly motivated to support populists, many refuse to lend their support to more conventional Democratic candidates. As we saw in 2016, many former Sanders supporters sat out the general election, voted for a third-party candidate or voted for Donald Trump.

Democrats should be concerned about their ability to mobilize populists in the races establishment figures won. So the party could find itself facing another enthusiasm deficit for many key races, even with Mr. Trump in the White House.

On the Republican side, there was clear unity behind the president and his party. The races were mostly about which candidate was most supportive of President Trump. As a result, it seems likely that Republican voters will support whoever is on their ticket in the general election.

We can count on Republican primary voters to turn out in November as well. Republicans reliably vote in midterms, and again it is important to note that primary patterns suggest that enthusiasm is particularly high in the Republican base this year, too.

Republicans are motivated, in part, to act as a bulwark against any blue wave that might be coming their way. Following Mr. Abbotts lead, candidates like Senator Ted Cruz have been doing their best to reinforce expectations of a possible Democratic surge in order to get his voters fired up: We know that the left is going to show up, Mr. Cruz said on Tuesday. The extreme left, theyre angry. Theyre filled with rage. They hate the president.
The United States has moved to allow hunters to import big-game trophies, including elephant tusks and lion hides, acquired in certain African countries with approvals granted on an individual basis.

The decision, reported in a memorandum published last week by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, overturns an Obama-era ban on some trophies and contradicts public statements by President Trump, who had endorsed the restrictions.

In November, agency officials moved to lift the ban on elephant trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. The new policy supersedes and broadens that decision, officials said.

Traditionally, the agency has considered imports of trophies from certain endangered species on a nation-by-nation basis. The Endangered Species Act stipulates that in order for such trophies to be approved, exporting countries must demonstrate that hunting enhances survival of a particular species in the wild  by reinvesting the money into conservation, for example, and by supporting local communities.
I think it was probably either the mayor of New York or Vladimir Putin. I am going to leave it to you great investigative reporters to follow the facts and ferret out the truth.

GOV. ANDREW M. CUOMO, during a call with reporters, responding to rumors that his longtime rival Mayor Bill de Blasio has encouraged the actress Cynthia Nixon to jump into the governors race.
WASHINGTON  Attorney General Jeff Sessions sued California this week for not doing enough to find and punish unauthorized immigrants, and said on Wednesday he was girding for an epic battle.

California is using every power it has  and some it doesnt  to frustrate federal law enforcement, he said in a speech in Sacramento. So you can be sure Im going to use every power I have to stop them.

One of the weapons Mr. Sessions is counting on is a 2012 Supreme Court ruling siding with the Obama administration, which had sued Arizona for violating federal immigration laws. But in that case Mr. Obamas lawyers accused the state of going too far in trying to find and punish unauthorized immigrants.

The state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority.
President Trumps lawyer secretly obtained a temporary restraining order last week to prevent a pornographic film star from speaking out about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump, according to legal documents and interviews.

(Read the restraining order.)

The order, issued by an arbitrator in California and reviewed by The New York Times, pertained to the actress Stephanie Clifford, who had been paid $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election in what she calls a hush agreement. In recent weeks, she had prepared to speak publicly about Mr. Trump, claiming his lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, had broken the agreement.

The details of the order emerged on Wednesday after the White Houses spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Mr. Trumps lawyer had won an arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels.

Ms. Sanderss statement put the White House in the middle of a story that Mr. Trump and his lawyer had been trying to keep quiet for well over a year. The turn of events created the spectacle of a sitting president using legal maneuvers to avoid further scrutiny of salacious accusations of an affair and a payoff involving the porn star.
I am really happy with whatever anyone calls me, Mr. ORourke said in an interview. He said Texas voters were far more interested in discussing jobs, health care and immigration.

They want us to take on these really urgent priorities, he said, not just this smallness and pettiness that dominates the national conversation today.

But as Mr. Trump showed, derisive nicknames can plant doubt, as it did in the case of Crooked Hillary Clinton, and Little Marco Rubio during the campaign, and with Low Energy Jeb Bush, Liddle Bob Corker and Cryin Chuck Schumer, among others, as president.

Of course Mr. Cruz comes to this game with his own label liability: He was born Rafael Edward Cruz, but goes by Ted.

Cruz lacks Trumps visceral instincts, said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist. Plus, I suspect voters are getting tired of Trumps schtick from Trump; theyre unlikely to want a pale imitation.

So if Mr. ORourke is going for a Latin sound to appeal to one segment of Texas voters, Mr. Cruz could be accused of veering Anglo-Saxon to appeal to another.

That Mr. Cruz would move so quickly to try to skewer his opponent is a measure of how seriously he is taking the challenge from Mr. ORourke, even though no Democrat has won a statewide office since 1994.
WASHINGTON  The head of the United States Forest Service stepped down Wednesday amid an investigation into sexual harassment accusations against him, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department said.

The resignation of the agencys chief, Tony Tooke, comes days after PBS NewsHour reported that the Agriculture Department was investigating sexual misconduct complaints against him, including that Mr. Tooke had relationships with subordinates before his appointment to the top role.

According to the departments spokesman, Mr. Tooke said in an email to his employees that he had been cooperating with the investigation but wanted to make way for a new leader.

I have been forthright during the review, but I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media, Mr. Tooke wrote. What I can control, however, are decisions I make today and the choice of a path for the future that is best for our employees.
WASHINGTON  President Trump once said I alone can fix it. Looks like he may have to. No one else seems to be sticking around.

The record-high turnover at the White House has now reached 43 percent with the pending departure of Gary D. Cohn, the national economic adviser, as the team that arrived with Mr. Trump 13 months ago heads for the doors in increasing numbers and the president increasingly relies on his own judgment for key decisions.

The head-spinning pace of departures has contributed to the sense of disarray in the West Wing, but it reflects the way Mr. Trump has operated since he announced that he was running for president. He constantly searches for new voices, but burns through staff as he quickly loses faith in the people around him, leaving him with a dearth of advisers on whom he genuinely depends. In effect, it can feel like a presidency of one.

Mr. Trump said this week that this did not lead to chaos but to a healthy refreshing of his team, adding that a reasonable amount of conflict helped him make better decisions. But Washington veterans see a dysfunctional operation in which a president becomes trapped in an insular bubble and too dependent on his own instincts and assessments, however informed they may or may not be.
MEXICO CITY  Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, met with Mexicos president on Wednesday, arriving just weeks after a planned meeting between the nations leaders fell apart because of a bitter phone dispute over Mr. Trumps proposed border wall.

Mr. Kushners meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto was meant to soothe tensions. Plans for the two presidents to meet have been abruptly canceled at least twice since Mr. Trump took office, and the relationship between their countries is suffering its roughest patch in decades.

But the encounter between Mexicos president and Mr. Kushner, a political newcomer whose top-secret security clearance was stripped last month, underscored the profound shift in approach that the Trump administration has taken with Mexico, and with the region more broadly.

Officials announced the visit less than a day before it happened, offering no guidance on what would be discussed.
The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) announced the expansion of their unmanned ocean observation fleet of Wave Gliders to the 9th Regional District,headquartered in Niigata, Japan. This growth is part of JCGs multi-year, ocean monitoring program to provide enhanced, real-time situational awareness of ocean currents, wave activity, and weather along Japans coastlines.Prior to this expansion, JCG deployed fleets of Wave Gliders in four regional districts, forming the first, unmanned ocean observation network in Japans history.

The Japan Coast Guard (JCG) announced the expansion of their unmanned ocean observation fleet of Wave Gliders to the 9th Regional District,headquartered in Niigata, Japan. This growth is part of JCGs multi-year, ocean monitoring program to provide enhanced, real-time situational awareness of ocean currents, wave activity, and weather along Japans coastlines.Prior to this expansion, JCG deployed fleets of Wave Gliders in four regional districts, forming the first, unmanned ocean observation network in Japans history.

Liquid Robotics Wave Glider floats on the surface of the ocean, but are propelled by a wave-powered undersea glider. (source: Liquid-Robotics)

In addition to extending this service to the 9th Regional District, JCG is publishing the environmental data for free and in real-time to Japans commercial fisheries and tourism industries. The availability of both current and historical oceanographic data from more geographic locations provides the commercial and tourism industries with increased insight into weather patterns and ocean conditions that could adversely affect the safety and efficiency of their maritime operations.



We are honored to support JCGs leadership to improve the level of maritime monitoring and safety around Japan through the use of autonomous ocean observation platforms like the Wave Glider, said Gary Gysin, President and CEO of Liquid Robotics. Together with Hydro Systems Development, we are excited to support the next phase of growth and are committed to their continued success.



Wave Gliders are environmentally safe and a more effective way to expand national ocean observation systems when compared to traditional methods such as ships. By utilizing a network of unmanned systems, JCG isable to provide access to continuous, real-time meteorological and oceanographic information from seas where monitoring ships often cannot operate and without putting personnel at risk.



It has been our pleasure to support the Japan Coast Guard in their mission to enhance monitoring and safety of Japans maritime environment, saidTakashi Kitsuda, President of Hydro Systems Development. We applaud Liquid Robotics for far exceeding all expectations in support of this truly innovative endeavor.
As soon as China announced it would remove term limits on the presidency, its censors and propaganda machine kicked into gear. The surprise move would clear the way for Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely. Its a break from Chinas decades-old rules to prevent power from being too centralized around one person. In China, the most important political announcements are made through the state-owned news organizations. This explosive news was announced by Xinhua news agency on Sunday in the afternoon. So how did officials try to spin the news? On Weibo, Chinas version of Twitter, China.com published this video focusing on the central role of the president. In the face of the complicated domestic and international situation, this will further promote the sustainable development of various great causes. China Central Television ran a similar editorial, stating that the people love their dear leader. Global Times, a Chinese daily, published an editorial recommending that people firmly support the constitution amendment suggestion, which is both the rational choice and our belief. But the same day, it published an editorial that depicted the news in a softer light, saying, The change doesnt mean that the Chinese president will have a lifelong tenure. The Peoples Liberation Army Daily is the voice of the military. It published a write-up saying that soldiers and armed policemen all support the decision. President Xi Jinping has consolidated his control of the army, and all of the soldiers are supporting him 100 percent. State-run media tried to control the narrative in Hong Kong, too. That video was made by the Ta Kung Pao. Its a pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper. And I think the most important part of the video is trying to let people know that the Chinese constitution actually had been changed four times in the past several decades. So its not a big deal. So people dont need to freak out. But not everyone was on board. Chinese citizens took to social media networks to voice their disagreements. One user said he couldnt use the word disagree on Weibo, because it was apparently a violation of the social platforms terms. But perhaps not surprisingly, those comments were swiftly removed from the web.
 Tech, Foe and Friend:

Social media and big data: Good or bad? How about both.

They allow for niche targeting of voters, which usually means the undecided, but in the case of Britains decision to withdraw from the European Union, Professor Grayling noted, it also meant encouraging complacency with social media posts telling anti-Brexit voters that there was no way theyd lose, making them less likely to turn out to vote.

At the same time, social media is also now being used by young people to demand change  whether its around the issue of guns in the United States, or in Britain with those who are calling for a second Brexit vote through a group called Our Future, Our Voice.

 Transparency vs. Secrecy:

An Australia Letter reader in Canberra, Brett Kennedy, emailed last week with a smart question for our discussion: How can democracy be sustained and furthered in a world where Western governments are taking every opportunity to increase secrecy around their functions and reduce transparency of their actions and decisions?

Im zealot for transparency, as some of you know, so I paraphrased the inquiry.

Mr. Megalogenis agreed that it was a problem, noting that Australian politicians were continually trying to to avoid transparency and questions  except from friendly journalists.

What he and Professor Grayling concluded was that most of todays leaders have simply not come to grips with the current moment of existential challenge for democracies: Politicians are still waltzing in a world where the stakes are small and intimately tied to their own party loyalty, their donors and re-election.

What might it take for them to wake up, mature and reinvigorate government?

What needs to happen for the public to be better informed and to demand more from their elected representatives?

These questions came up, too, from me and from the audience. And besides the answer I felt compelled to toss out there (subscribe to The Times!) a consensus emerged around the simplest possible idea: People just have to do it.
Museums throughout the Chicago metropolitan area have begun an ambitious collaborative effort to flesh out the citys art history beyond the well-known stories of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. At institutions large and small, 29 exhibitions on unsung artists, including Bill Walker, Yasuhiro Ishimoto and Ralph Arnold, are rolling out this year under the banner Art Design Chicago.

The initiative is led by the Chicago-based Terra Foundation for American Art. Since 2012, it has invested $6.5 million in 78 grants to encourage new scholarship on artists and designers working in Chicago and to promote the exhibitions and related publications and public programs.

We were responding to what we heard from our institutions was an interest and need to present a broader story of what has been the necklace of Chicago art, said Elizabeth Glassman, president and chief executive of the Terra Foundation. The grant opportunities allowed curators to propose projects many had longed to do but couldnt because of budget constraints. The vast majority of shows in Art Design Chicago, Ms. Glassman said, would not have happened without the Terra funding.
Our guide to stand-up, improv and variety shows happening this weekend and in the week ahead.

APOLOGIES FROM MEN at the Peoples Improv Theater Striker (March 9, 9:30 p.m.). The #MeToo fallout brought about a flood of firings, new organizations and pledges to change, but a vast array of apologia from perpetrators also ensued. The comedian Lauren Maul has taken these and graciously turned them into animated videos and original music, a full album of which is available for purchase online.

212-563-7488, thepit-nyc.com

LEWIS BLACK AT CITY WINERY (March 15, 8 p.m.). Those who enjoy their comedy with a hefty helping of cathartic anger punctuated by indignant finger pointing could do no better than this veteran comedian. Mr. Black, a mainstay of The Daily Show, is as dynamic a performer as his talents are varied, with no small number of stand-up specials, books and film roles under his belt.

212-608-0555, citywinery.com

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH at the Gramercy Theater (March 15, 8 p.m.). Employee of the Month is a monthly comedy show and podcast in which Catie Lazarus talks with wildly fascinating famous people about their jobs. The hilariously unassuming British actress Emily Mortimer will be one of Ms. Lazaruss guests, as will the comedian Hannibal Buress, the Hamilton music director Alex Lacamoire and others.

212-614-6932, venue.thegramercytheatre.com
DIAMOND MOUNTAINS: TRAVEL AND NOSTALGIA IN KOREAN ART at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 20). Mount Kumgang, or the Diamond Mountain, lies about 90 miles from Pyeongchangs Olympic Stadium, but its a world away: The august, multipeaked range lies in North Korea and has been impossible to visit for most of the past seven decades. Featuring stunning loans from the National Museum of Korea and other institutions in Seoul, South Korea, this melancholy beauty of a show assembles three centuries worth of paintings of the Diamond Mountain range, and explores how landscapes intermingle nostalgia, nationalism, legend and regret. The unmissable prizes here are the painstaking paintings of Jeong Seon, the 18th-century artist who is perhaps the greatest of all Korean painters. And later impressions of the mountains, including a blotchy vision from the Paris-based modernist Lee Ungno, give a deeper historical weight to very live geopolitics. (Farago)

212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

THE FACE OF DYNASTY: ROYAL CRESTS FROM WESTERN CAMEROON at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 3). In the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster in its own right. These massive wooden crests  in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows  served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Mets recent acquisition of an 18th-century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of Western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a sculpture divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own. (Farago)

212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION at the Museum of the Moving Image. The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of Americas great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program Sam and Friends before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft-faced Kermit, was crafted from his mothers old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace-and-love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and story boards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago)

718-784-0077, movingimage.us

PETER HUJAR: SPEED OF LIFE at the Morgan Library and Museum (through May 20). Its hard to say which is more surprising: that Peter Hujars photographs of underground life in New York in the 1970s and 80s have found their way to the Morgan Library and Museum, or that the classically minded institution has become unbuttoned enough to exhibit them in this heartbreaker of a show. Hujar (1934-87) lived most of his professional life in the East Village and, through studio portraits and cityscapes, captured a downtown that has since been all but erased by time, gentrification and AIDS. Although he was little known by the mainstream art world in his lifetime, this show, startlingly tender, reveals him to be one of the major American photographers of the late 20th century. (Holland Cotter)

212-685-0008, themorgan.org

THE INCOMPLETE ARAKI at the Museum of Sex (through Aug. 31). It remains a bit of a tourist trap, but the for-profit Museum of Sex is making its most serious bid yet for artistic credibility with a two-floor exhibition of Japans most prominent and controversial photographer. Nobuyoshi Araki has spent decades shooting Tokyo streetscapes, blossoming flowers and, notably, women trussed up in the baroque rope bondage technique known as kinbaku-bi, or the beauty of tight binding. Given the venue, its natural that this show concentrates on the erotic side of his art, but less lustful visitors can discover an ambitious cross section of Mr. Arakis omnivorous photography, including his lastingly moving Sentimental Journey, picturing his beloved wife, Yoko, from honeymoon to funeral. (Farago)

212-689-6337, museumofsex.com
I do it very instinctively. Its not always pretty; it can be aesthetically a bit strange. I also like things that are playful, but in a really smart way.

You seem to have an eye for young artists.

Theres such good energy here. I went to the School of Visual Arts M.F.A. open studios yesterday, and it was fun and bubbly, and there were a couple of really good artists. You can meet them at a point before it gets too New York and serious. It used to be that young artists werent being looked at until they were a bit older.

How did Times Square Space develop?

I did that as a crazy experiment and it went really well: Basically, when an office moves out, I move into spaces between rentals. Its quite nice because you get the remnants of their presence.

Your parents are such major collectors, do you have separation between your works and theirs?

It started off with boundaries, and then it started getting confusing. I would buy something, and then my mum would want it as well, for a show. Now, if its purchased by me, I have authority over it, so I can say, Oh, I dont want it to be in that show. But its still part of the larger collection.

Youre young. Has the New York art world made space for you?

Ive made my own space, I like to think. If you come in and youre genuinely interested, and you want to learn, usually people are welcoming  as long as you are serious about it, and willing to do the work. Because they can also be quite discerning.

Whats the difference between the London and New York art worlds?

Londons more intimate, and it feels sometimes more experimental. The spaces are more affordable. Here, theres amazing work, but I think it can be a bit too much about the market. Maybe a difference is that theres always six things a night here, whereas in London there would be one or two  which is maybe better. [laughs]
Ms. Leonards art often has a collaborative dimension. In a 1993 project with the filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, the sharing was direct. Ms. Dunye was working on a film called Watermelon Woman, partly about the life of a black lesbian Hollywood actress named Fae Richards, whose career had been thwarted by racism. Ms. Leonard created what amounted to an elaborate archival storyboard for the film, photo-documenting the actresss life.

In fact, Fae Richards is an invented character. And, although her life is more than plausible, Ms. Leonards documentation of it, on display at the Whitney, is entirely staged. As a pictorial narrative  a film made from stills  the piece is a tour de force. It reveals this artist to be not only a gifted storyteller, but a virtuoso of photographic technology.

Some of that technology became obsolete even as Ms. Leonard was using it. And the idea of obsolescence  of the present slipping irretrievably into the past  haunts her recent work. A series of pictures called The Analogue Portfolio, dated 1998-2009  and made with a now-discontinued dye-transfer process  records the facades of small storefront shops on the Lower East Side, and in countries shes visited: Cuba, Mexico, Uganda. Many of the New York shops she shot a decade and more ago are now gone, wiped out by high rents and globalization. Chances are their equivalents elsewhere are too.

If Ms. Leonard has strong ideas or feelings about this, they arent spelled out in individual pictures. Her art isnt expressive that way: the opposite, really. It sometimes suggests the point-and-shoot blankness of tourist photography. Evidence of her investment tends to lie in how she returns to a subject or theme.
MANCHESTER, England  Nirvana. You probably barely recognize the name, but by the time this page is ink on your fingertips, Nirvana will have sold 1,000,000 copies of their new LP.

Thats how I opened the most significant cover story I wrote for the NME, on Nov. 23, 1991. But there will be no more inky fingers for NMEs readers. This week, what was once Britains most important music newspaper and a taste maker on both sides of the Atlantic will put out its last print edition after 66 years.

The NME opened the gateway to a musical universe far beyond my reach when I was growing up in rural northern England in the late 1970s. I remember the ritual of racing to the shop, sitting on the wall outside, wildly leafing though the ink-smudged pages searching for news of one of my favorite artists. Later, making a second immersive reading of the music papers, from cover to cover, with a flashlight, in bed.

I arrived at the NME in 1986, age 22, after a year spent living in a wooden shed in Hollywood, writing about artists such as Janes Addiction and Metallica for another British music newspaper, Sounds. Bands in California would rush to buy the few copies of the NME that were stocked at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, craving insight into what was happening in the British scene and a deeper understanding of how American artists music was going down in Britain.
What does it mean to be an American?

It is a question many people are grappling with, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. And it is one of the reasons the New-York Historical Societys coming exhibition, Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms, is so powerful.

We planned this before Trump got elected, but its taken on a different resonance since, said Margaret K. Hofer, the museum director.
Why has it taken so long for network television to catch up to cable?

I joke that what we do on a network drama is basically fill the gaps between commercials. Therefore, when you have a winning formula, why change it? I think thats why most of the risk is usually taken on cable. Thats a sweeping generalization, of course. But a network is about such large audiences and large amounts of money that shows dont really get a chance to fail. Its scary because obviously were going into the unknown. I truly believe that when there are preconceptions that are faced and dealt with that people are not scared anymore. And then the world becomes a better place.

Is CBS anticipating a backlash?

I dont know what CBS is thinking. I do know theyve been accused over the last couple of years of being not very diverse, with a lot of white men leading their shows. And I think theyre going to start using this show as an example [of increased diversity]. Its not just that theyve got a gay lead and a gay couple, but the mayor of New York is an Indian woman, and theres an African-American woman whos the boss of the precinct. I mean, yeah, possibly some people wont like it, but hopefully there will be more people who do. But we live in a funny time. People voted in Trump. They could do anything.

Cop shows thrive on the will they-wont they tension between partners. Whats standing in for that here?

Hes a rule breaker and shes very much by the book. Hes idiosyncratic and shes very ordered. So theres that straight lines and curvy lines kind of conflict. We did talk about how wouldnt it be funny if in the future an ex-girlfriend of mine appears and [Lizzie] will be, Oh, I thought you were gay. And I go, Oh, well, you know  college. That changes the whole idea that our sexuality is black and white. And thats another thing hopefully we can present to America. It would be hilarious if they made out at the office party.

Youre a vocal supporter of L.G.B.T. causes, youve volunteered for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and now youre going to bat for gun regulations and wider health care by supporting an upstate New York candidate.
THE OATH on Crackle. O.K., so it turns out 50 Cent didnt actually invest in Bitcoin. But hes had real success in his television ventures, most notably as executive producer and star in the hit show Power. Now hes throwing his weight behind The Oath, which explores police gangs. The show was created by Joe Halpin, a former undercover cop in the South Central section of Los Angeles. Sean Bean stars, bringing the same brooding intensity to street fights that he displayed in the fantasy worlds of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

LIBERATION DAY on Sundance Now. It sounds like a tale straight from the Seth Rogen playbook, but it actually happened: In 2015, an art-rock band from Slovenia known for its fascist aesthetic played a concert in North Korea. This documentary shows the band, Laibach  which had previously been banned in Yugoslavia for its use of imagery associated with totalitarianism  preparing to perform in Pyongyang for the countrys 70th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule. In his review in The New York Times, Glenn Kenny described it as a consistently understated chronicle of Westerners who are very carefully playing with fire.

Whats on TV
Or are we? Two new books about kids and screens  Anya Kamenetzs The Art of Screen Time and Naomi Schaefer Rileys Be the Parent, Please  examine the evidence and offer advice for anxious parents. How much screen time is too much? Is digital media like food: O.K. if you consume good-quality ingredients, in moderation? Or is it more like cigarettes or even heroin, possibly unsafe at any dose? And might screens be just another way to guilt parents  and mothers, in particular  into thinking that were not doing enough?

Alas, the evidence is incomplete. Researchers arent allowed to overstimulate a random sample of babies to see what happens to their brains. (Though as Kamenetz says, you can do this to mice, and they go a little nuts.) Scientists even have trouble running studies in which some participants watch less; one said he could get families to reduce their screen times only by 20 minutes. And the iPad hasnt even celebrated its eighth birthday.

But there are worrying correlations. Kids who watch more than two hours of TV per day have double the risk of childhood obesity. Those who watch screens before bed sleep less, making it harder to concentrate and learn. And simulated violence can desensitize children to real-life suffering, and is linked to increased anxiety and fear.

Image Credit... Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Kamenetz, lead digital education correspondent for National Public Radio, is the more soothing voice. She points out that not every child  or even every heavy user  will suffer ill effects. As with food allergies, for lots of kids, a peanut is just a peanut. She advocates an approach inspired by Michael Pollans well-known dictate on food: Enjoy screens. Not too much. Mostly with others. (Her most upsetting conclusion, echoed by Riley and the American Academy of Pediatrics, is that parents should watch alongside toddlers.)
Ms. Steavenson, who studied history at Cambridge University, has been reporting on the Middle East since 2002. She has had tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and reported from Lebanon during the war in 2006. She lived for a year and a half in Cairo during the Arab Spring and also spent a year living in Jerusalem. I felt like I had a unique viewpoint from having spent a lot of time in the Middle East and then being in Paris and seeing the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, she said. The novel was a way to describe all these shards of conversation, of complaint and different reactions.

Ms. Steavenson cited Arthur Koestlers Darkness at Noon, Truman Capotes Breakfast at Tiffanys and Graham Greenes The Quiet American as her touchstone novels. In all three each cog of the plot turns the next and everything is just very well organized, she said. Psychologically theyre fascinating about how you get from one place to another. When Ms. Steavenson began to write Paris Metro she asked her agent to get in touch with Matt Weiland, a senior editor at W.W. Norton & Company. Over a decade earlier, Mr. Weiland had been working for the magazine Granta and had edited three of Ms. Steavensons long-form reported pieces from Iraq and Lebanon.

When reporters want to write fiction I usually run for the hills, Mr. Weiland said in a telephone interview. But going back to those Granta pieces, what Wendys writing evinced was just an incredibly natural eye for character and a great sense of crafting scenes. Very quickly she got close to the people she was meeting and talking with and you felt as though you knew them and you cared about them. I think thats a mark of what the finest novels can or should do.

Ms. Steavenson has been lined up to give some readings of Paris Metro in Washington, Boston and New York. She was born in Manhattan (her mother is a New Yorker and her father, who died two years ago, was British) and lived there for a few years during her 20s. So it will be a homecoming of sorts. Though I didnt grow up there I would say that Im a New Yorker in my heart, she said. I want matzo ball soup, and it makes me annoyed when Europeans walk slowly on the sidewalk.

Ms. Steavenson is now working on her second novel, which she said is about mothers and daughters, genetics, nature and nurture. The first half is set in Manhattan during the 1960s and the second half in Europe 20 years later. She is also getting an itch to do some reporting again, but in a different way than before. Im a bit less: Must go to Mosul, she said. Im more scared. I dont know if it got scarier. I think it did. You just see the toll it takes and you lose too many people. There are too many people close to you kidnapped. I got scareder, no doubt about it.
In a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, armed militias are burning villages. Scores of people have been killed, and over 100,000 have been displaced. Its often hard to tell whats going on in distant parts of the world. But by using satellite data, we can monitor this conflict in almost real time and detect flare-ups that may indicate violence is starting to spread. What were seeing doesnt look good. This was the scene in western Uganda in February: waves of refugees fleeing violence in the D.R.C. and crossing Lake Albert. At the height there were between five and a half and six thousand people coming across per day. Andrew Harper was on the shore. They grabbed everything that they owned, which was basically nothing, and they brought it with them on the boat. All these very clear signs were indicative that whole areas had been basically cleansed. The refugees said that armed men had burned houses, forcing entire villages to flee across the lake, most to the town of Sebagoro. Many came from here, in Ituri Province. But the scale of the violence was unclear. So we analyzed aerial data. NASA satellites captured the locations of active fires every day, and many were burning on the days that people fled. Now, most were probably forest fires, not acts of violence. So we used OpenStreetMap data to pinpoint populated areas and obtained new high-resolution satellite pictures of those villages. They tell a clear story. Heres one village photographed before the violence began, and the same village on Feb. 17. Nearly every structure is burned. This pattern emerged in village after village, all along the lake shore. Humanitarian groups estimate that more than 2,000 homes have been destroyed. Now, while satellite data gives us a clearer picture of the unrest, Ituris history helps us understand why the violence has suddenly erupted at this time. In the early 2000s, two communities, the Hema and the Lendu, were involved in a bloody conflict. More than 50,000 people were killed before peace was restored. Why this currently is happening now is fairly suspicious. These communities were reconciling. Relationships had improved. Stearns says that this time, its not ethnic tensions, but political motivations that are most likely driving the conflict. The country has been in a period of political turmoil as President Joseph Kabila fights for his political survival. It is one of, unfortunately, many, many different, often interlocking conflicts. More recently, the violence in Ituri has spread inland. The situation has escalated, with figures of displacement basically doubling in a week. Our reporting suggests that after the lakeshore villagers fled, the violence spilled over this mountain ridge, driving people westward, many toward the town of Bunia. Up to 100,000 people are displaced in the Ituri province. This is probably not a very good sign. So, while its unclear whats stoking this violence, its troubling how suddenly it flared. And for the many displaced, who knows when, or even if, theyll be able to return home?
(Want to get this briefing by email? Heres the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Heres what you need to know:

Curtain-raising for tariffs

 President Trump is set to sign sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports this afternoon, under a legal provision that allows him to take actions to defend national security.

More than 100 Republican lawmakers urged the president to drop the plan, which would initially exempt Canada, the largest source of steel and aluminum for the U.S., and Mexico. Washington is linking the exemptions to renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The proposal has raised fears of retaliation. Choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription, Chinas foreign minister said today. (Our senior economics correspondent calls it more of a skirmish.)
 In memoriam: Kalman Aron survived seven Nazi camps on scraps of food from guards whose portraits he drew. He lived to become a prominent American portraitist. [The New York Times]

 Pope Francis has paved the way for the canonization of Pope Paul VI, who led the Roman Catholic Church through turmoil in the 1960s and 70s, and the Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero. [The New York Times]

 The Trump administrations plan to open a new American Embassy in Jerusalem has a hitch: The site lies partly in disputed territory. [The New York Times]

 A Utah lawmaker introduced a bill that would rename the states most scenic highway after President Trump. (An opponent countered with his own proposal: a Stormy Daniels rampway.) [The New York Times]

 Europeans running late to work or school can offer a novel excuse: Some clocks are running slow because of a dispute between Kosovo and Serbia. Really. [Associated Press]

Smarter Living

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.
BEIJING  China pledged Thursday to hit back at the United States if it sets off a trade war, issuing its strongest threat yet as President Trump prepares to impose more tariffs against China.

The White House is hours away from putting into effect sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs on its trading partners that have caused an international outcry. But more worrying to China are separate trade sanctions that Mr. Trump could impose under an investigation into Chinas intellectual property practices. Hundreds of Chinese companies could be singled out in that process, known as a Section 301 investigation.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual meeting of Chinas legislature, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, History has shown that fighting a trade war has never been a correct way to solve a problem.

Especially given todays globalization, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription, Mr. Wang said. The outcome will only be harmful. China would have to make a justified and necessary response.
TOKYO  Getting hired seemed like the tough part.

Then Maho Nishioka showed up for her new job at a Japanese construction site. The workers she supervised refused to talk to her and ignored her instructions. Once, an angry client stopped her from inspecting a concrete bridge, disregarding the fact that she was the only engineer on site qualified for the job.

He yelled at me and asked why a woman was doing the work, Ms. Nishioka said. I was mortified.

Even in a country where female workers are chronically underemployed and underpaid, the construction industry has long stood out as among the unfriendliest to women. But two decades after Ms. Nishioka started that first job, a declining birthrate and Japans reluctance to open up to immigrants have left the construction industry  and the economy as a whole  with its deepest labor shortage in years.

Both the industry and the government see women as a possible solution. Through a public push and a marketing campaign, together they are trying to double the number of women in construction, perhaps the ultimate challenge in the countrys broader effort to involve more women in the economy.

So far the government has fallen short. Female participation in the work force has improved only slightly. Structural issues like long hours and relatively low wages remain major barriers.
When Frances McDormand used the closing of her best actress acceptance speech at the Academy Awards on Sunday to promote inclusion riders, a contract clause for actors that would require filmmakers to meet diversity benchmarks in their cast and crew, she jolted the idea into national consciousness.

It raised the question of when the first A-list star would insist on one in his or her own contract.

That still hasnt happened. But on Wednesday, the actor Michael B. Jordan took a step, announcing that his company, Outlier Society Productions, would adopt the rider for its projects.

The announcement made him the first major actor to publicly adopt the idea since Ms. McDormands speech. But Mr. Jordan, the villain of Black Panther and the hero of Creed, gave no indication that he would require the rider for the blockbuster movies he performs in.
Thousands of years ago, a special child was born in the Sahara. At the time, this was not a desert; it was a green belt of savannas, woodlands, lakes and rivers. Bands of hunter-gatherers thrived there, catching fish and spearing hippos.

A genetic mutation had altered the childs hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that ferries oxygen through the body. It was not harmful; there are two copies of every gene, and the childs other hemoglobin gene was normal. The child survived, had a family and passed down the mutation to future generations.

As the greenery turned to desert, the descendants of the hunter-gatherers became cattle-herders and farmers, and moved to other parts of Africa. The mutation endured over generations, and for good reason. People who carried one mutated gene were protected against one of the biggest threats to humans in the region: malaria.

There was just one problem with this genetic advantage: From time to time, two descendants of that child would meet and start a family. Some of their children inherited two copies of the mutant hemoglobin gene instead of one.
If you are asking, "When does Daylights Savings time start in 2018 in the U.S.A.?" The answer is the date that Daylight Savings Time (DST) will begin for Florida is at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 11, 2018.





Daylight Savings Time 2017 begins before Easter (or Resurrection Sunday) when days become longer and longer heading closer to the Spring Equinox.





The rest of the United States will also turn their clocks forward on March 11, 2017 with the exception of Hawaii and Arizona because those states do not practice Daylight Savings Time.





This means that we lose (not gain) an hour when we turn our clocks ahead an hour to 3:00 a.m. when our clocks reach 2:00 a.m. on Sunday.





A helpful way to remember whether to set our clocks ahead or behind one hour during the Daylight Saving Time change for Spring 2018 is to "Fall Back" and "Spring Ahead."





Daylight Saving Time will end again on Sunday, November 4, 2018.





Why was Daylight Saving Time Created?





Benjamin Franklin did not propose Daylight Saving Time. This misconception grew out of the proverb "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" that was published in Franklin's Poor Richards' Alamanac.





Daylight Savings Time actually started in Europe during World War I as a way to economize fuel usage. The United States started Daylight Savings Time a year after WWI in 1918.





What was the first country to institute Daylight Saving Time?





Germany and Austria-Hungary, also known as the Axis Powers in World War I, first instituted Daylight Saving Time nationwide in 1916 in order to economize energy usage during the war.





Correct Spelling of Daylight Savings Time





Is it "Daylight Savings Time 2018" or "Daylight Saving Time 2018"? The correct term is without the "s" but the added "s" has become widely used in the United States.





Image credit: Wiki commons
In your opinion, what is  or should be  the purpose of prison? In other words, how does incarcerating people serve society? What should prisons do for convicted criminals?

In Turn Prisons Into Colleges, Elizabeth Hinton writes:

Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry  just like college students. Or even with them. This would be a boon to prisoners across the country, a vast majority of whom do not have a high school diploma. And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race. The idea is rooted in history. In the 1920s, Howard Belding Gill, a criminologist and a Harvard alumnus, developed a college-like community at the Norfolk State Prison Colony in Massachusetts, where he was the superintendent. Prisoners wore normal clothing, participated in cooperative self-government with staff, and took academic courses with instructors from Emerson, Boston University and Harvard. They ran a newspaper, radio show and jazz orchestra, and they had access to an extensive library. Norfolk had such a good reputation, Malcolm X asked to be transferred there from Charlestown State Prison in Boston so, as he wrote in his petition, he could use the educational facilities that arent in these other institutions. At Norfolk, there are many things that I would like to learn that would be of use to me when I regain my freedom. After Malcolm Xs request was granted, he joined the famous Norfolk Debate Society, through which inmates connected to students at Harvard and other universities.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

 Based on Ms. Hintons article, what do you think she believes is the purpose of prison? What does she think prison should do for society? For incarcerated people?

 Do you think prisons should provide incarcerated people with access to education programs? Why or why not? How would this serve individuals and society?

 If you do think prisons should give education opportunities, how extensive do you think these should be? Should they offer college and high school courses? Degree programs? Books for inmates to educate themselves? Or, as Ms. Hinton suggests, should prisons actually look like college campuses  with classes taught by university professors, a student government, extracurricular activities and a library?

 Some lawmakers have opposed offering education programs in prisons, arguing that they waste taxpayer money on educating criminals, give convicts a competitive edge over law-abiding citizens in the job market, threaten prison security by encouraging protests and escape, defeat the purpose of serving a sentence and even make smarter criminals. What do you think of this reasoning? Does it change your mind or reinforce your opinion on educating incarcerated people? Why or why not?

 Ms. Hinton writes that education is a civil right that improves society and increases civic engagement. To what extent do you agree with this statement and why?
3. An additional challenge: What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else youve read or seen? If so, how and why?

4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the Reply button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

6. To learn more, read Arctic Boyhood. Mr. Collardey writes:

I started making documentaries by shooting fragments of my familys life on their farm, in the snow-covered mountains of Jura, in eastern France. My fascination with documenting rural, snow-covered and remote worlds on film is what led me to Greenland.

I first visited Greenland in 2015. That was when I met Julius, a villager who guided me through the five villages around Tasiilaq, which with around 2,000 inhabitants is the largest town on Greenlands east coast. It quickly became obvious I would focus my film on Juliuss own village, Tiniteqilaaq. The village has only around 60 inhabitants and is isolated from the rest of the world by ice for about nine months every year. Over the course of the next year, I spent several months there and learned to share the lifestyle of its inhabitants: I went hunting and fishing with the men, shared family dinners of seal and narwhal, and attended baptisms and funerals. Little by little, I was accepted by Juliuss friends and family. After all, we shared more in common than it might have seemed: Since I come from a village of 250 in Jura, there is nothing less exotic to me than a village half that size.

Ultimately, I wound up using my time in Juliuss town to make my fourth feature film, A Polar Year, from which this short documentary is adapted. Just as my feature film traces the villages life over one year, through the changing seasons and rhythms of life and death, for this short I followed one of its young residents during the routine of a single day.

The result is a portrait of Asser Boassen, an 8-year-old Tunumiit boy who wants to become a hunter. Like many children of his village, Asser has not been raised by his biological parents. Instead, he lives with his grandparents, Thomasine and Gert Jonathansen. In many ways, Assers daily life as a young boy, fed by the hunting tradition passed on by his grandfather and by the mythical stories told by his grandmother, represents challenges many in modern Greenland are navigating. When Asser turns 12, he will have to leave his village to attend middle school in the city, far away. When he returns to his village, he will be 16, effectively an adult, and uprooted from the traditions and knowledge he spent his childhood absorbing from his grandparents. Across the country, Inuit children are torn between two conceptions of education, one rooted in their native identity and the other imposed by a globalized world  knowledge that is essential for navigating that very world. The outcomes are often problematic. But for now Asser is just a child dreaming to become a great hunter. As great as Qajaarngaa, the mythical hunter who triumphs in Assers grandmothers tale.
THE EYES OF WILLIAM KLEIN at the Quad Cinema (through March 13). The Quad celebrates the impending 90th birthday of the photographer and filmmaker William Klein, who has worked in a range of modes  documentaries, satires and portraits of the fashion world. He parodied that last milieu in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, screening on Friday and accompanied by the short Broadway by Light, in which the lights of Times Square seem to dance to the music of Maurice Le Roux. His documentaries include biographical chronicles of Muhammad Ali (Muhammad Ali, the Greatest, showing on Saturday and Tuesday) and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver (Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther, on Saturday and Sunday).

212-255-2243, quadcinema.com

POLICE STORY at the Metrograph (March 9-18). Jackie Chan directed himself  and, more important, performed his own stunts and martial arts  in the first installment of his long-running Hong Kong cop series. Reviewing the film at the New York Film Festival in 1987, Vincent Canby didnt get the appeal, writing that Police Story is of principal interest as a souvenir of another culture. That appraisal hasnt stood the test of time: This new digital restoration shows that Mr. Chan is peerless when it comes to using an umbrella to latch on to the outside of a moving bus or sliding through multiple stories of glass and wire lights in a shopping mall because taking the escalators would be too slow.

212-660-0312, metrograph.com
On the basis of Leaning Into the Wind, when it rains, the British artist Andy Goldsworthy immediately drops to the ground and lets the water outline his body. He describes two ways of approaching the world: You can walk on the path, or you can walk through the hedge. Its almost a given that this documentary about his ephemeral, nature-based art will eventually show him trudging through a hedge, oblivious to or uninterested in the perfectly functional sidewalk next to it.

Leaning Into the Wind is a de facto sequel to Rivers and Tides (2003), by the same director, Thomas Riedelsheimer. Because time erases or alters Mr. Goldsworthys sculptures, movies are the ideal medium to capture them (although with the sequel, the switch from 35-millimeter film to digital cinematography has removed some of the artisanal quality).
So it stands to reason, then, that although Claires Camera, the latest of Mr. Hongs films to open in New York, was shot in Cannes, a little beach town on the French Riviera known for hosting perhaps the most famous film festival in the world, theres nary a glimpse of ritz and glamour to be seen. Yes, the movie opens in a makeshift Korean film sales office, and on one of its doors hangs a poster for Mr. Hongs 2016 movie, Yourself and Yours. But theres no red carpet, no paparazzi, and the beach the characters visit seems far from the cinema palaces of Cannes.

The relatively plain settings allow the filmmaker to do what he does best: focus on his characters, whose befuddlement is sometimes funny and sometimes troubling. In a maddeningly elliptical conversation at a cafe table outside, a young assistant, Man-hee (Kim Min-hee, of the 2016 film The Handmaiden), is fired by her boss, Yang-hye (Chang Mi-hee). As it happens, Man-hee had a one-night stand with the director So Wan-soo (Jung Jin-young), who is officially dating Yang-hye, albeit perhaps on the sly. Ninety-five percent of the mistakes in his life, he muses, have been because of drinking.
Your love is going away like water in the fingers, complains Renato (Ricardo Herrera) to his lover, Ivan (Pablo Sotomayor Prat), near the beginning of Shining Moon (El Destello de la Luna), the new film from the Chilean director Gustavo Letelier. Though both are underemployed actors, Renato is clearly the more theatrical of the two: Fond of declamatory monologues and carefully calibrated gestures, hes a man who seeks the light as instinctively as any newly liberated soul.

With passions dwindling and careers stalled, the men gratefully accept lead roles in a film about Lola and Ana, a pair of aging cross-dressers and former drag artists. Renato, however, finds the characters grotesque; and as he works to overcome his prejudices  mainly through speechifying and pensive stares  Mr. Letelier (who wrote the story with Victoria Wharfe McIntyre) takes direct aim at his countrys repressive and homophobic history. In the film-within-the-film, effigies of fascist, religious and Communist leaders hang on Lola and Anas wall, silent reminders of violence and fear.
Its never a good sign when a movie racks up its first ironic music cue before there is anything to be ironic about. The Strangers: Prey at Night opens with the 80s rock classic Kids in America by Kim Wilde, I guess because some of the masked rampaging killers in this movie are youngish, and are in America.

This is a follow-up to The Strangers, an exercise in sadism from 2008 that got some respect from folks who, I believe, were yearning a little too hard for a subtext feast along the lines of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Prey at Night follows an unhappy family  Christina Hendricks as mom, Martin Henderson as dad, Bailee Madison and Lewis Pullman as their discontented teens  to a trailer park for an overnight stay that turns into slaughter. Theres a lot of low-lying fog before the masked killers come a-calling, and a lot of arterial stab wounds after they show up.
He briefly hangs on, gasping but mute, throwing his nominal comrades in arms into a fast-spiraling panic. The most appealing, or rather the least obviously terrible, of these is Khrushchev (a superb Steve Buscemi), the minister of agriculture and a cunning, outwardly drab schemer. Like a seasoned standup, Khrushchev tells his wife which of his jokes made Stalin laugh, an accounting that she dutifully preserves for future reference. When he learns that Stalin has taken ill, Khrushchev hastily pulls a jacket and pants over his pajamas and rushes to his side, where Beria (Simon Russell Beale, brilliant), the head of the secret police, the N.K.V.D., has already taken up position and begun plotting.

The Death of Stalin is based on graphic novels by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, and Mr. Nury shares writing credit here with Mr. Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin and Peter Fellows. Its a seamless effort that comes alive with a dazzling ensemble that includes Jason Isaacs as Zhukov, a preening military force, and Michael Palin as Molotov, a first deputy prime minister. When the story opens, Molotov has no inkling that hes about to make a miraculous escape. Like the rest of Stalins men, he has helped create a world of bureaucratically administered terror, one in which each bullet to the head is rationalized on a neatly typed hit list. And now hes on such a list.

Mr. Iannucci draws from history with its competing narratives, bending it to his purposes. Real traumas and outrages are mentioned in passing, rather than dutifully explained; theres a brief look inside the gulag, for instance, with its desperate prisoners and splatters of blood. For the most part, though, the Stalin-era atrocities are the ghastly background for the frantic intrigue of his hangers on. Khrushchev soon emerges as one of the canniest of these survivors, though Beria moves faster and initially with far more lethal force. Soon after Stalin finally dies, Beria sends out his own kill list, embracing  as Selina Meyer of Veep once put it  continuity with change.
The director Roland Joffe (who made The Killing Fields, about Pol Pots slaughter in Cambodia, and The Mission, a tale of 18th-century colonialism with pronounced allegorical accents) is not known for a light touch. Here, adapting a play by Michael Ashton, he makes South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the 1990s his subject, and The Forgiven is heavy-handed from its early texts explaining apartheid through its end credits.

Mr. Ashtons scenario, on which Mr. Joffe collaborated for the screenplay, pits the real-life figure Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker) against a fictional composite, Piet Blomfeld (Eric Bana), an unrepentant one-time death squad member and now a prison lifer. Blomfeld taunts Tutu, quoting Milton at him (the Better to reign in hell line, what else), while the archbishop holds that no one is beyond redemption. As it happens, Blomfeld holds the key to an atrocity mystery that the commission is investigating.
A conversation with Johanna Godoy

Gallup's Regional Director for the World Poll in Latin America and the Caribbean

What do you see as the No. 1 problem facing women in your region?

Godoy: The two main problems women face in Latin America are violence -- or insecurity -- and inequality.

Femicide rates in some countries are very high. In Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador and even countries like Argentina, one woman every day is killed because of her gender. Studies in Brazil show that one in three women have experienced a violent episode in the past year. In general, a "machismo" mindset is still very present in most of the countries in this region.

It's hard for Latin American women to compete with men, especially in terms of salary and job opportunities. Nevertheless, it is easy to see women's gains in business and politics. In recent years, Latin America has elected more female presidents than any other part of the world.

What do Gallup's World Poll data say about it? Are things getting better or worse?

Godoy: Our World Poll data show that people in Latin America continue to feel less safe than people do in other regions, and there has been a general decline in how safe they feel in the past five years. Latin American women feel significantly less safe than men do walking alone at night in the areas where they live, and the gap shows no sign of narrowing. In 2017, less than one-third of women felt safe.

Our data also show that fewer than one in four women in Latin America overall say women in their countries are treated with respect and dignity. In 2017, this percentage was lowest in Colombia (15%) and highest in Nicaragua (46%). Numbers have been declining in Venezuela, Mexico, Panama and Ecuador in the past five years. So, in general, the data do not show much improvement in this area.

Is the situation getting better or worse in some countries than others? If it is getting better, what is going on? What are governments or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) doing?

Godoy: Governments and NGOs have created media campaigns to raise awareness of the problems women face. The improvements are slow. We can see positive indicators like the rising number of women with advanced degrees in top positions in the government and private sector. Also, there are individual initiatives across the region calling women who have suffered from violence to get together and fight together. There are organizations focused on girls and their rights, and some that are introducing young women to technology and job opportunities.

Do you have any stories or examples from your work in these countries that you can share that illustrate how things are getting better or worse for women?

Godoy: On different occasions, we had to finish the interview suddenly because the man of the household would not allow his wife or girlfriend to be interviewed. We have had to interrupt interviews because the man of the household arrived after drinking alcohol and turned verbally violent toward the women in the house, and even toward the interviewers.

One day, we were in a low socio-economic area interviewing a young woman. We were sitting on the floor. The house was very basic. When we asked the ladder question [the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale], she responded, "10" [best possible life]. When the interview ended, I asked her why she selected that response, and she said because she was alive and that she does not expect much more.

But, Latin America is a land of contrast. Despite the gender inequality and violence toward women, it's also a culture of matriarchy, where the older woman (grandmother, mother) is very involved in the day-to-day decisions and is commonly seen as the head of the house. It's very common for a household to be without a male figure. The mother figure is very strong in the Latin culture.

##SPEEDBUMP##

Do you ever think something like the #MeToo movement that has been highly publicized in the U.S. could happen in your region?

Godoy: There are similar movements in some countries in the region. For example, in Argentina, there is a movement called #NiUnaMenos that started before #MeToo spread in the U.S. There have been multiple protests and marches. In Mexico, actresses and famous people in the media have raised their voices. The short response is yes.

Find out more about Gallup's World Poll and its survey research in Latin America.
Three days before Yoselyn Ortega killed two young children in her care, she begged a psychologist to squeeze her into his schedule. At first he was reluctant, but she insisted, and he finally agreed to see her on his lunch hour.

During a 45-minute session, Ms. Ortega complained to the psychologist, Thomas Caffrey, about financial troubles and expressed worry about her teenage son, whom she had left 12 years earlier with her family in the Dominican Republic and had only recently brought to New York City. She told the psychologist her heart had been racing with anxiety.

She was certainly distraught, Mr. Caffrey recalled, as he testified for the prosecution on Thursday in Ms. Ortegas trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. She seemed to have the world on her shoulders.

But Mr. Caffrey, who has been a therapist in Manhattan for nearly four decades, including a stint as chief psychologist with the Metropolitan Correctional Center, said he saw no sign that Ms. Ortega was disconnected from reality or had been experiencing hallucinations. She didnt tell me about any concerns about voices or visions, he said.
Leer en espanol

Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, were adding the stories of remarkable people.

In 1993, the Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayon, known for her signature collage-based style and her work reflecting the Afro-Cuban religion Abukua, was invited to show at the Venice Biennale in Italy. She was determined to make it, despite obstacles in her home country. Cuba was going through an economic depression at that time, leaving it dark and uncertain, with drastic food and fuel shortages.

With no other way to get to the airport 20 miles from their home in Havana, she and her father mounted their bikes and started riding. Ms. Ayon raced ahead of her father, who rode with her work strapped to his bicycle. She made it in time to board, but he did not  and neither did her work (though it did eventually make the trip).

For Ms. Ayon, who was born Jan. 23, 1967, in Havana, art was how she communicated.

It is the way, the manner, the solution that I found to say what I wanted, she said in an interview in Revolucion y Cultura Magazine in February 1999.

When Ms. Ayon was small, her bountiful energy exhausted her mother, who when the girl was 5 enrolled her in an art program at the Maximo Gomez library in Havana. Ms. Ayon flourished and began to enter national and international art competitions, winning awards and honors. In 1976, her work was featured in a painting competition for children in Hyvinkaa, Finland.
A survivor whose life had been shaped by grief, Bronte was perhaps emboldened to write as few, if any, women had before: tales of resistance and insistence on trusting ones own sense of true morality, however unconventional. In Jane Eyre, she wrote from the first-person perspective of a child, an innovation that gave voice and power even to the very young; she created, too, a heroine who was, like Bronte herself, plain, pale, small, and yet frankly desirous, as well as worthy of desire.

Bronte once wrote to a friend that she considered the marital ambitions of women of no means or beauty an imbecility which I reject with contempt, a practical response to the frank injustices of class and a kind of sexism. In her novels, however, those same plain women are entitled to not just any marriages, but to passionate, loving ones. The interior lives of Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe are shared in such detail that the characters unfair burdens are plainly manifest; Bronte could make great sweeping plotlines of the small moments and humiliations in an unmarried womans life. Lucy Snowes struggle to find a private place to read a long-awaited letter reads, over several pages, with the suspense and drama of a Spenserian quest.

A miniaturist of the soul, Bronte captured shades of emotion with a psychological subtlety that still feels exquisitely modern. When Lucy Snowe, battling depression, is advised to cultivate her own happiness, her strong response will feel familiar to many a 21st-century person who has the condition: No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness, she wrote. Happiness is not a potato to be planted in mould and tilled with manure.

She had a mordant wit, which could protect her only so much from the series of losses that left her so fragile. It is useless to tell you how I live, she wrote to a friend in 1851. I endure life  but whether I enjoy it or not is another question. She startled readily, and wrote to friends complaining of crushing insomnia, a poor appetite, grief and flashbacks; she put off writing letters for fear of how dejected she would feel if the replies came too slowly. Her two most intense romantic passions  one, involving a married Belgian school master, was meticulously memorialized in Villette; the other, for her publisher, George Smith (also captured in the characteristics of a doctor in Villette)  were both unrequited.

But reader, she married, eventually, at the age of 38, choosing Arthur Bell Nicholls, a pastor who worked for Brontes father. Although she acknowledged frankly that he was not her intellectual equal, he pursued her persistently, and against her fathers wishes, possibly imbuing a late-in-life courtship with a jolt of romance.

Did Bronte ultimately find the kind of happiness that she described as a glory shining far down upon us out of heaven? In Villette, Lucy Snowe describes her own feelings about happiness: The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives  the life of thought, and that of reality. And provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of strange and necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work and a roof of shelter. Once Bronte married, however, her life of thought suffered. My own life is more occupied than it used to be, she wrote to a friend. I have not so much time for thinking.

Literature would no longer be the business of her life; whether the pleasures of marriage could offset that loss remains unclear. To one friend, she wrote, It is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman to become a wife. But several months later, she wrote, I have a good, kind attached husband, and every day makes my own attachment to him stronger.
For more than three decades, America stood with our allies to support democracy in Myanmar and demand freedom for thousands of Burmese political prisoners. That unified stand ultimately led to the election in 2015 of the countrys first civilian government after a half-century of direct military rule. Unfortunately, such promising progress has been squandered.

We need to show equal resolve now to stop the violence and safeguard the rights and freedoms of all Burmese peoples. The United States should take the lead in four ways, and ask our partners and allies to join us.

First, we must demand an end to impunity in Myanmar and hold the perpetrators of these most recent atrocities accountable. The coordinated decision by the State Department and the European Union to cease consideration of travel waivers for current and former senior leaders of the Burmese military is a good start, but it is not enough.

Passing the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, a bill sponsored by Senator McCain, would impose sanctions on Burmese military and security forces responsible for the bloodshed and send the strong message that those who commit atrocities will pay a price. There can be no free and peaceful future for the country built on impunity for war crimes and persecution.
Next weeks special congressional election in southwestern Pennsylvania will test whether, deep in Trump country, union support can help elect a Democrat running on a middle-class economic agenda. A victory would remind Democrats of the electoral power of organized labor. Even though it has relied on unions electoral muscle for nearly a century, the party has often failed to shore up labors diminishing strength. Our research demonstrates what an enormous electoral mistake that has been.



Political analysts have long argued that dwindling union power would be bad for Democrats. The conservative strategist Grover Norquist, for instance, has speculated that the decline of labor in recent years could mean that Republicans (and President Trump) may continue to win big despite Mr. Trumps unpopularity. But there were not reliable estimates of the size of that effect on elections.

We have quantified the electoral effects of one kind of anti-union law, commonly called right to work legislation. Those bills allow workers to opt out of paying fees to a union at their workplace  even if those workers benefit from union bargaining and protections. The results are ugly for Democrats and for the working class.
More important, the Trump administration has repeatedly dropped the ball on efforts that might have succeeded in prompting China to curb production, something that would have benefited not just the United States but also allies that are now threatening to retaliate by imposing tariffs on American goods and services.

Most experts agree that China is not moving fast enough to close steel mills and aluminum smelters that it no longer needs because its economy is growing more slowly as it has gotten much bigger. The countrys leaders fear that moving faster could hurt its economy, harm state-owned banks that have lent to the metal industries and create unrest among workers who lose their jobs. But experts like Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University, say that the United States, the European Union and other countries could pressure China to move faster to address this problem, especially if they worked together.

Characteristically, the Trump administration has displayed none of the diplomatic and economic savvy required to get China to change its policies. On Jan. 12, 2017, the Obama administration filed a case with the World Trade Organization that accused China of unfairly subsidizing aluminum producers and thus driving down global prices for the metal. But Mr. Trumps trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, has failed to ask the W.T.O. to convene a panel of judges to hear the case, effectively suspending it. Mr. Lighthizers office declined to answer questions about the case.

Perhaps Mr. Lighthizer, a trade lawyer who has represented the steel industry, did not believe the case would have been successful because he shares Mr. Trumps contempt for the W.T.O., an organization the United States was instrumental in creating to help prevent trade wars. Last month, Mr. Trump said the organization makes it almost impossible for us to do good business, arguing that American officials get to pick too few judges on its dispute resolution panels. But these assertions are belied by the fact that the United States has won nearly 86 percent of the cases it has brought before the W.T.O. since 1995.

Another opportunity for addressing excess steel production came in talks last summer between Chinese officials and Mr. Trumps commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, and his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. The Chinese told the Americans they would be willing to reduce Chinas steel production capacity by 150 million tons by 2022. But Mr. Trump rejected the offer. An unnamed administration official told The Financial Times that Mr. Trump wasnt interested in striking a deal because he had already decided that he wanted to impose tariffs.
Throughout the late summer and fall, Lowenstein traveled the country, coalescing antiwar party activists and students at the local level into a loose coalition. I said well build the base first, he explained, then the candidate will come along. He first approached Senator Robert Kennedy of New York, who took the meeting simply out of courtesy to his young staff members, then Senator George McGovern; both said no. He then went to James Gavin, a liberal, retired lieutenant general who had served briefly as ambassador to France and who now argued that America was squandering resources in Vietnam that could be put to better use in the urban communities. He likewise said no. Finally, Lowenstein approached McCarthy, the senior senator from Minnesota. It took several conversations, but when McCarthy asked, How do you think wed do in a Wisconsin primary? Lowenstein knew he had found his candidate. I was ecstatic, he said. It was like music, like an organ welling up in my ears.

Image Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein. Credit... Bettmann Archive/Getty

Johnsons advisers understood that the primaries were mostly of symbolic importance. In 1968 only 15 states selected their delegates by popular vote. Roughly 60 percent of convention delegates were chosen by party bosses, and the bosses almost always stood by the incumbent. Nevertheless, as one top White House aide, Harry McPherson, told the president in a memo, they were staring down the barrel of a change election, and as the incumbent president you are (to some degree, at least) the natural defender of the status quo. You represent things as they are  the course we are following, the policies and programs we have chosen. Standing against change, he added, is a tough position today.

At first, McCarthy did little to rattle the presidents campaign. There was a good reason he was Lowensteins last call. Though he had won election five times to the House and twice to the Senate, he was a cold, aloof character who preferred to hole up in his Senate office, reading poetry, rather than glad-hand in the cloakroom.

Unsurprisingly, he proved an uninspiring candidate. He refused to appear before the multitude of state organizing conferences that were desperate to meet their newly anointed opposition candidate. Disengaged from campaign strategy and unfamiliar with many of the staff members and local activists whom Lowenstein recruited for the effort, he had to be dragged into canvassing on his own behalf. During his two-week campaign swing through New Hampshire, he regularly failed to show up at his own events and declined to make appearances at factory gates (Im not really a morning person, he demurred). When Johnny Carson, the host of NBCs Tonight Show, asked what kind of president he might be, McCarthy offered simply, I think I would be adequate.
PARIS  On Nov. 9, 2016, when we Europeans woke up to the news of Donald Trumps election as president of the United States, most of us understood that it would have a significant impact on world politics. What we did not realize at the time was how much that event would alter the basic fabric of international relations.

Over the past 16 months, we have been through roughly three stages in dealing with the fact that our first ally, the United States of America, is ruled by such an unorthodox president. We began by betting on human wisdom and political realism: Soon enough, Donald Trump, the nationalist, populist candidate, would wise up and become President Trump. Maverick politicians tend to do this in democratic societies.

Then came the adults in the room stage. When it became clear that there was no wising up in the Oval Office, we were led to believe that fortunately, the celebrated checks and balances of the American system were functioning. The toxic Steve Bannon would soon be on his way out. Some experienced, reliable generals were taking over; their advice would prevail. How would official Washington have reacted if generals were appointed to key posts in a French or German government? Not warmly, one suspects. But these being no ordinary times, Europeans went along with the idea.

For those who still bought it, the adults in the room theory took a serious beating last month at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top dogs in foreign and defense policy. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis came, but surprisingly did not take the floor. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, did speak but was very publicly chided a few hours later by a presidential tweet because he forgot to say that Russian interference had no impact on Mr. Trumps election.
To the Editor:

Re Justice Dept. Sues California Over State Immigration Laws (news article, March 7):

This is basically going to war against the State of California, Gov. Jerry Brown said on Wednesday.

This is not only a war against California. This is a nationwide civil war that has been festering just beneath the surface for some time, and more recently has surfaced with a vengeance.

Im not sure how best to define the adversaries  certainly not strictly by region  but its fairly easy to predict where proponents of either side will stand on any given issue, sanctuary cities being an obvious example. It is really a fight for the soul of America, and a great deal hangs in the balance.

I can say that my side is not winning that battle at the moment. But there is hope. Lets make November 2018 our Gettysburg.
CAMBRIDGE, England  Italys election this week has destroyed any remaining hope that the center in European politics can prevail.

On the same day that members of the Social Democratic Party in Germany gave reluctant blessing to another grand coalition in Berlin, Italians went to the polls and delivered more than half their votes to anti-establishment parties. The center-right coalition that emerged when Silvio Berlusconi formed Forza Italia is now led by the League, a far-right party that threatens thousands of migrants with deportation. And as in nearly every recent European election, the principal center-left party lost a large number of voters. Given these results, the only possible government that can emerge in Rome will contain at least one of the two insurgent populist parties: either the League or the Five Star Movement, the single largest party in Parliament.

Italys situation is particular, but not unique. Across the Continent, the old politics has shattered: The once-dominant parties of the center right and center left have been unable over the past two decades to secure support for policies generated within the context of the European Union and the euro single currency.

Since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, establishing the European Union and laying the groundwork for the creation of the euro, policy on a range of issues from budgets to asylum have been taken beyond the control of democratically elected national governments. An increasing number have become subject to majority-voting within the Council of the European Union, as with immigration. Sometimes, policy is just dictated by Germanys sheer exercise of power, as in the case of the refugee and migrant crisis.
A conversation with Jihad Fakhreddine

Gallup's Regional Director for the World Poll in MENA and Iman Berrached

Gallup's Research Program Manager for MENA

What do you see as the No. 1 problem facing women in your region?

Fakhreddine: The prospect of unemployment. Having a university education does very little to improve their prospects of getting a job. Universities may be full in many Arab countries, with even larger female populations than male. But for many women, as is the case for their male counterparts, a university degree is increasingly becoming a passport to nowhere. Many expect the government to provide jobs, but that sector is already saturated. Political instability in a number of Arab countries is blocking economic prospects.

Less-educated Arab women are also in a precarious state. The agricultural sector is quickly losing its share of the national GDP -- and, adding insult to a persistent economic injury, the manufacturing sector's GDP share is also shrinking.

Berrached: I would say for Gulf countries, it is women's labor force participation. By that, I don't just mean participation by showing up or giving women jobs, but actually engaging women in the workforce and having their voices and ideas valued and heard. And across the whole region, gender-based violence.

What do Gallup's World Poll data say about this? Are things getting better or worse?

Fakhreddine: Our World Poll data show that the percentage of women across the region who are out of the workforce is in the low 70s. This is down from the upper 70s a decade ago, but it is still very high. The unemployment picture doesn't look much better. About 30% of women in the workforce are unemployed -- double the unemployment percentage for men.

Berrached: Worldwide, women feel less safe walking alone at night where they live than men do, and the MENA region is no exception. However, while there's still a pretty large gender gap on this question between men and women, it looks like things may slowly be improving.

Is the situation for women getting better or worse in some countries than others? What are governments or the private sector doing?

Fakhreddine: The issue is that what ought to be driving economies is the private sector, not the states. In many Arab countries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are growing in number and type of activity. But, at the same time, there is growing suspicion about their aims.

Berrached: It's better for some countries, and worse for others. Safety is a big concern for women in Egypt, for example. Recently, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey ranked Cairo as the most dangerous megacity for women, with its high rates of harassment and lack of opportunities. However, just a few weeks ago, an Egyptian man was sentenced to three years in prison in the first sexual harassment case ever taken to court in the country. The ruling could set a new precedent.

That situation is different from the one in Tunisia, which recently passed a number of laws related to female empowerment and equality. Some of the new legislation makes it a crime for men to verbally abuse or harass women, and it strengthens the punishment for abusers, including family members.

Saudi Arabia has made some great strides too, recently allowing women the right to drive and to attend sporting events and concerts.

If you could pick one problem to solve for women in your region, what would it be?

Fakhreddine: I am not sure we can work to solve it, but the problem I would address is the quality of education and its relevance to their future.

Berrached: For me, it's gender-based violence.

##SPEEDBUMP##

What additional questions do you wish we asked women, but haven't yet?

Fakhreddine: On the spur of the moment, I would want to ask two qualitative questions: What is the first thing you think about your life when you wake up in the morning? What do you think about when you go to bed?

Berrached: Questions about violence or fear -- but asking about these types of things can be very risky and tricky. I would also like to ask what they dreamed of becoming when they grew up.

Find out more about Gallup's World Poll and its research in the Middle East and North Africa.
To the Editor:

The Price They Pay (ScienceTimes, March 6):

The article states that some consumer groups and lawmakers have questioned whether drugs developed with taxpayer money should carry lower price tags.

In fact, Pfizer is exclusively responsible for the discovery and development of the rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz and assumed all the risk in applying insights from the publicly available, basic research results of an outstanding researcher at the National Institutes of Health to help advance an existing research and development program.

We converted the new understanding of disease biology into an actual treatment for patients  a vast endeavor that rarely succeeds.

The price that patients pay for the medicines their doctors prescribe is set by insurers, and we advise insurers that this price should be as low as possible. In your article, the patient was prescribed Xeljanz for a use not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and his insurance ultimately did not cover the cost.
Early Tuesday morning, Donald Trump tweeted:

The new Fake News narrative is that there is CHAOS in the White House. Wrong! People will always come & go, and I want strong dialogue before making a final decision. I still have some people that I want to change (always seeking perfection). There is no Chaos, only great Energy!

Lies. Of course the White House is in chaos. Its just that Trump has lived his whole life in a state of chaos, so it feels perfectly normal to him. The only energy around Trump is a vortex of complicity and incompetence.

Furthermore, it should be clear to us all at this point that Trumps public relations approach to dealing with unfavorable news is simply to rush to the nearest microphone  or log into Twitter  and say that the exact opposite is true, even when his statement is an easily provable lie.

Being right is never the point; retaliation is the point.

Later in the day, during a news conference with the prime minister of Sweden, Trump continued on this point, saying:

The White House has tremendous energy. It has tremendous spirit. It is a great place to be working. Many, many people want every single job. You know, I read where, oh gee, maybe people dont want to work for Trump, and believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House. They all want a piece of that Oval Office. They want a piece of the West Wing. And not only in terms of it looks great on their resume; its just a great place to work. Its got tremendous energy.
Womens progress in America has been inextricably tied to the availability of birth control. Landmark Supreme Court decisions in 1965 and 1972 recognizing a constitutional right to contraception made it more likely that women went to college, entered the work force and found economic stability. Thats all because they were better able to choose when, or whether, to have children.

A 2012 study from the University of Michigan found that by the 1990s, women who had early access to the birth control pill had wage gains of up to 30 percent, compared with older women.

Its mind-boggling that anyone would want to thwart that progress, especially since women still have so far to go in attaining full equality in the United States. But the Trump administration has signaled it may do just that, in a recent announcement about funding for a major family planning program, Title X.

Since 1970, the federal government has awarded Title X grants to providers of family planning services  including contraception, cervical cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted infections  to help low-income women afford them. Its a crucial program.
Austins practical efforts for the cause were unusual. But a fellow resident of Elizabeth, N.J., Elias Boudinot, an aide to George Washington who served as president of the Continental Congress, director of the United States Mint and other important posts, wrote several books urging the new republic to act as patron to the Jews and assist in their return to the territory God promised to Abraham. In a book published in 1816, Boudinot wrote, Who knows but God has raised up these United States, in these latter days, for the very purpose of accomplishing his will in bringing his beloved people to their own land.

Why have American Christians been so interested in the fate of the Jews, even decades before the foundation of the international Zionist movement? One reason is that they were members of a society steeped in the Bible. Many historians emphasize the importance of republican sources like Cicero and Livy to the American political tradition. The problem with this argument is that relatively few Americans could read Latin or were familiar with Roman history. Unlike the classics of republican thought, the Bible was universally available and familiar even to those unable to read English. As such, it provided a shared idiom for thinking through matters of public concern.

The availability and familiarity of Scripture made biblical analogies expedient. But the deeper reason the Cyrus model has particularly appealed to Americans is that it placed the United States and its colonial predecessors in what might be called sacred history  the Bibles sweeping story of the creation, corruption and redemption. Since the Puritans, many Americans have wanted to believe that their own endeavors were part of that story. They faced a problem, though: The Bible revolves around the nation of Israel, makes no mention of the New World. By describing their experiences in terms of its central nations, places and figures, Americans have been able to see themselves as participants in the Biblical drama. Some Americans believed that they were themselves a replacement for the biblical Israel, but others contended that they were more accurately compared to Cyrus.

In a political culture formed by the Bible, it has often seemed natural to support a reunion of the people and land that many Americans saw as the model for their own history. Far from representing a weird deviation from norms, evangelicals who see Mr. Trump as a successor to an ancient Persian king are participants in an old American tradition. When, in 1953, former president Harry Truman was introduced as the man who help establish the State of Israel, he grumbled: What do you mean, helped create? I am Cyrus!
It is, by most measures, a standard-issue parking space, albeit one tucked under the Sterling Mason, a handsome building designed by the architect Morris Adjmi in TriBeCa. But the 12-by-24-foot spot below the lobby may well be the key to finally securing a buyer for the $15.5 million Penthouse C, the last unsold condominium in the 32-unit building.

Or at least thats what the broker, Leonard Steinberg, president of the residential real estate brokerage firm Compass, believes.

Mind you, the penthouse, a four-bedroom, 4,986-square-foot duplex, has a lot going for it on its own, including interiors by Gachot Studios and French doors leading to a roomy terrace. But Mr. Steinberg, who was brought in by the buildings developer, Taconic Investment Partners, to market the holdout, is aware of the abundance of luxury condos on the market in TriBeCa. So he has decided to throw in the parking space as an added enticement, on the theory that buyers with the wherewithal to purchase the apartment might also own a vehicle.

You can take the elevator down to your car, said Mr. Steinberg, estimating that the parking spot is worth about $1 million, based on the sale price for a similar perk in a nearby building. After returning from a trip, you can unpack comfortably and privately, without the hassle of holding up traffic on the street.
DMAChoice.org, a tool offered by the Data & Marketing Association, lets you remove your name and address from a number of these lists. After registering an account and paying a $2 fee, you can unsubscribe from entire categories of mail  like catalogs and advertisements  or unsubscribe from specific catalogs you dont want. Catalogchoice.org is a free alternative, but only allows you to unsubscribe from catalogs one at a time  you cant remove yourself from entire lists.

Note that this wont unsubscribe you from catalogs from businesses that youve been a customer of  only ones where youre a prospect. If youve actually purchased a product from a company, youll have to visit their website and unsubscribe from their catalog manually through customer service.

Lastly, in order to unsubscribe from those preapproved credit and insurance offers, youll need to sign up for OptOutPrescreen.com, a service offered by the major credit bureaus. Youll need to give them some information, including your Social Security number, but dont worry  its a legitimate service, recommended by the Federal Trade Commission. You can opt out of these offers for five years online, or you can mail in a form to opt out permanently.

Avoid Mail Intended for Previous Residents

Not everyone is great about changing their address when they move. When you move to a new house or apartment, youll probably get occasional mailings intended for the previous residents  but those should slow down eventually. If you keep getting them months or years later, however, you have a few options.

First, resist the temptation to throw these away. It wont solve the problem, and in some cases it could even be illegal. Instead, cross out all bar codes on the envelope (so it doesnt get automatically sorted), write Return to sender: Recipient moved on the front and stick it back in the mailbox. This will send it back to the Post Office and hopefully back to the original sender, so they wont keep mailing stuff to your address.

If things are really bad, you can fill out a change of address form for the previous occupant with Left No Forwarding Address in place of the new residence, or file a complaint with the postmaster. Hopefully, in most cases, this wont be necessary.

This Wont Stop Everything, but Your Mailbox Will Feel Lighter

After going through the above steps, you wont necessarily see a decrease in junk mail right away. Almost all of these mailings will take a few weeks or a few months to stop, since theyll have already been prepared ahead of time. But over time, you should see the junk mail slow to a trickle.

Not everything is so easily stopped, unfortunately. You may still get mailings for local businesses, charities youve donated to or other mailings that dont use the above lists. For the remaining stragglers, sort them into a separate pile (instead of throwing them away) and try contacting each sender directly. You can also download Paper Karma, which will let you take a photo of the mailing with your smartphone, and then attempt to do all the unsubscribing work for you.
1. Calvin Klein and Pyer Moss Were New Yorks Showstoppers

New York is not a fashion week city traditionally known for its sets and productions. Aside from Marc Jacobs  who became known for his elaborate collection tableau before he stripped everything away except the audiences folding chairs  the focus is typically on the product, not the performance. However, this season Raf Simons at Calvin Klein and Kerby Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss changed all that. Simons trucked in 50,000 gallons of popcorn from Chicago and filled the floor of the old American Stock Exchange building with the stuff, which piled up in drifts along the sides of four rickety barns, crunched under guestss feet, and stuck to models shoes and prairie-dress-meets-hazmat-suits they wore down the runway. The effect was like a B-movie nuclear winter in a dream western town.

Jean-Raymond gathered together a celestial choir for one night only to provide a soaring live soundtrack of Born in the USA and Home is Where the Hatred Is and Alright for his urban ode to the black cowboy. Both backdrops framed collections that dealt with the American myth and modernity in different ways, giving them added emotional weight. The message was in the clothes, but also in the context. In both cases, they gave you something more to chew on.  VANESSA FRIEDMAN, fashion director, Styles
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages  and a few last-chance picks of shows that are about to close. Plus, a Times Talks event. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater.

Previews and Openings

ADMISSIONS at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center Theater (in previews; opens on March 12). A play of personal statements and professional compromise, Joshua Harmons drama centers on the admissions director of a private school whose own son is applying to college. Daniel Aukin directs a cast including Jessica Hecht, Andrew Garman and Ben Edelman.

212-239-6200, lct.org

DIDO OF IDAHO at Ensemble Studio Theater (previews start on March 14; opens on March 22). E.S.T.s Youngblood, one of the citys balmiest incubators of new talent, produces Abby Rosebrocks new play. When Aeneas deserted Dido, it didnt go especially well for Carthage, so what will happen if musicologist Nora convinces her lover to leave his wife? Mikhaela Mahony directs.

www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org

ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE at the Marquis Theater (in previews; opens on March 15). That frozen concoction that helps us hang on comes to Broadway. The Jimmy Buffett jukebox musical, with the book by Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl) and Mike OMalley (Shameless), interweaves porch-rock classics with a story of a womans vacation romance with the resorts showman. Director Christopher Ashley salts the rim.

877-250-2929, escapetomargaritavillemusical.com
Friday

1) 3 p.m. NEW ART, OLD ISSUES

Through its ground-level galleries devoted to contemporary New Zealand art, the Auckland Art Gallery (free for New Zealanders; 20 New Zealand dollars, or about $14.50 for international adults) is a great place to get a feel for national concerns and the influence of the indigenous Maori culture on visual art. The lace-like paper panels, entitled Milk and Honey, commissioned from the artist Lonnie Hutchinson that explore the exploitation of indigenous women are particularly powerful. Wander upstairs under space-potato sculptures by the artist Judy Darragh suspended in the atrium, part of a 2011 expansion, to an older wing of the building where a series of portraits by the painter Charles F. Goldie, done in the early 20th century, lovingly capture detailed images of his tattooed Maori subjects.

2) 5 p.m. CRUISING K ROAD

Take a walk on Aucklands counter cultural side along Karangahape Road, known locally as K Road. Near the citys oldest cemetery, a string of music shops, cheap clothing dealers and craft stores mingle with bars and restaurants over several blocks. Wander into the vintage shopping mall St. Kevins Arcade to browse the retro wares, from the secondhand bookstore Green Dolphin, focusing on childrens books, to vintage-inspired dresses from Rita Sue Clothing.
Whether its the Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand or Roman Holiday in Rome, many noteworthy movies are filmed in appealing locales all over the world that travelers may want to visit and enjoy.

According to Angela Tillson, a film location manager in Kauai who has worked on the set of films including Jurassic Park: The Lost World and The Descendants, exploring a beloved movie set destination through the eyes of the film makes for an enjoyable vacation.

Seeing a place with a focus on a movie you love will give you a perspective that the average tourist doesnt usually get, she said. Here are her tips to get started.

Choose Your Destination

If theres a movie you love, you can find out where it was filmed by looking at the credits at the end of the film or by going online to The internet Movie Database, also known as IMDB, which often lists filming locations. Once you know the locale, you can start planning your trip.
Story Highlights Even in gender-equality pioneer countries, majorities see abuse as a problem

Concern about domestic violence on par with terrorism concerns

58% think women in Portugal treated with respect

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein affair and ensuing #MeToo movement, this year's International Women's Day will likely generate a lot of discussion about the progress yet to be made in combating sexual misconduct against women. Just as the Weinstein scandal showed that even famous and powerful women can be vulnerable to sexual abuse, Gallup's data highlight that gender-related violence remains a prevalent problem even in some of the most progressively minded countries in Europe.

Across European nations surveyed in 2016, more than three in four adults said domestic violence and sexual assault were "serious problems" in their country, placing residents' concern about these issues at least on par with their concern about terrorist attacks.

More Than Three-Fourths of Residents in European Countries Say Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Are Serious Problems Please tell me whether you think each of the following is a serious problem or not a serious problem in [country]. Yes, serious problem % Gang violence 79 Sexual assault 77 Domestic violence 77 Acts of terrorism by country residents 75 Acts of terrorism by nonresidents 75 Outbreaks of contagious disease 62 Current level of immigration 57 Gallup World Poll

Though these results vary significantly by country, clear majorities in all 13 countries regard domestic abuse as a serious problem, from two-thirds in Ireland (66%) to almost all adults in Portugal (98%). Even in European countries often viewed as pioneers in gender equality and family-friendly policymaking -- such as the Netherlands, Iceland and Sweden, three of the five best-rated countries in the United Nations' Gender Inequality Index -- about eight in 10 residents say domestic abuse is a serious problem.

At Least Two-Thirds in All 13 Countries Say Domestic Violence Is a Serious Problem Please tell me whether you think domestic violence is a serious problem or not a serious problem in [country]. Yes, serious problem % Portugal 98 France 90 Malta 90 Iceland 85 Sweden 82 Belgium 80 Netherlands 79 Denmark 78 Finland 75 Cyprus 73 Luxembourg 72 Switzerland 68 Ireland 66 Gallup World Poll

Portuguese residents' perception of domestic violence as a serious problem seems to reflect more general concerns about treatment of women in the country. Fifty-eight percent of Portuguese adults believe women in the country are treated with respect and dignity, easily the lowest figure among the 13 countries included in the analysis. High rates of domestic abuse -- particularly cases in which women have been murdered by their spouses -- have made headlines in Portugal in recent years, as have the Portuguese government's efforts to pass legislation that better protects battered women.

Portuguese Least Likely to Say Women Are Treated With Respect and Dignity Do you believe women in [country] are treated with respect and dignity, or not? Yes, treated with dignity and respect % Switzerland 94 Denmark 93 Finland 92 Ireland 92 Luxembourg 91 Belgium 89 Iceland 89 Netherlands 87 Malta 85 Sweden 81 France 75 Cyprus 68 Portugal 58 Gallup World Poll

In most countries studied, women are somewhat more likely than men to view domestic violence and sexual assault as serious problems in the country. The gender gaps are largest in Switzerland and Iceland; most notably, 72% of Swiss women feel sexual assault is a serious problem in the country, vs. 52% of Swiss men.

In Most Countries, Women Are More Likely Than Men to View Sexual Assault as a Serious Problem Please tell me whether you think sexual abuse is a serious problem or not a serious problem in [country]. % Serious problem Women Men % % Portugal 96 93 Iceland 92 77 France 91 86 Denmark 88 84 Sweden 86 80 Belgium 81 80 Netherlands 80 68 Switzerland 72 52 Cyprus 67 62 Finland 62 50 Ireland 60 58 Northern Cyprus 51 49 Gallup World Poll

Women are also somewhat less likely than men to say women in their country are treated with dignity and respect (79% vs. 86%, respectively, across the 13 European countries studied). Further, women in more vulnerable groups -- including those with low levels of education and those who are unemployed or underemployed -- are especially likely to disagree that women in their country are respected.

Implications

Fueled by the current momentum for gender parity, this year's International Women's Day has adopted the theme "Press for Progress." Prevailing concerns about domestic violence and sexual assault in Europe indicate there is much work to be done even in countries that are held up as models of gender equity. However, in demonstrating that these problems are taken so seriously by majorities of residents in each country, the data also offer hope for the kind of social change that leads to sustainable progress.

Find out more about Gallup's World Poll research in Europe.

Read more stories in the International Women's Day Special Edition.
It turned out the next Google  at least in terms of the wealth it generated  was Facebook, in which Mr. Thiel was an investor. It was less than two miles away.

If I had to give that talk again, Id say there was far less than a 50 percent chance that its in a 50-mile radius, he said. Perhaps the next great company would be in China, he suggested; perhaps elsewhere in the United States.

The natural concentration of the tech industry was always an odd thing.

These technologies enabled globalization. They were about destroying the tyranny of place, he said. It was a bit paradoxical that the overwhelming majority of them emerged in this very small place.

There are other reasons to leave. As the valley has gotten bigger and richer, it has, he feels, grown more close-minded.

Sam Altman of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator, is a friend of Mr. Thiels. He said the investor had a point. Silicon Valley has lost some of its ability to tolerate controversial ideas that sometimes create a lot of value, he said.
Mr. Peterson nevertheless remained outside, and he told other officers arriving on campus to do to the same. Do not approach the 12 or 1300 building, Mr. Peterson said. Stay at least 500 feet away.

Mr. Peterson resigned eight days after the shooting once the sheriff, Scott Israel, placed him under internal investigation for failing to try to confront Mr. Cruz as quickly as possible, as outlined in office policy. Mr. Petersons lawyer defended his client a few days after his resignation, saying Mr. Peterson thought the gunman was outside the building  something that appears at odds with Thursdays timeline.

The 911 calls came into the sheriffs office through a regional county system. The first police officers to respond to the shooting came from the city of Coral Springs, which is near the school and operates its own, separate call system.

Using the adults as intermediaries, the recordings revealed, county dispatchers tried to gather information and make recommendations about how the students could shelter inside the school.

Tell her to be as safe as she can, a dispatcher told a woman whose granddaughter was in the school. If she can find somewhere secure, then do so, but use her best judgment.

Only one of the recordings was of a call from inside the school  the one from the unidentified boy, who was speaking too softly for the dispatcher to hear him clearly.

Im sorry, I cant hear you, the operator responded. Whats happening?

Somebody is shooting up Stoneman Douglas, he said.
California farms are heavily dependent on immigrants to fill their physically demanding and often low-paid jobs, and it is no secret that many of those immigrants are in the country illegally.

Employers contend that they have no way of knowing when a worker submits a fake Social Security number on their I-9 forms, the federal document on which employees attest they are citizens or otherwise legal. Supporters of tougher immigration enforcement say that employers are just winking at the issue.

A common way for the government to root out illegal labor is to audit companies I-9 records. By federal law, ICE sends companies a letter before beginning an audit, and by the new state law, companies must pass that news on to their employees.

When Bee Sweet Citrus, a large grower and shipper of oranges, lemons and grapefruit in Fowler, in Central California, plastered on the wall an advisory about ICEs inspection plans, the company lost some packers, sorters and administrators, one employee said.

I resigned out of fear, said the worker, Ana, who asked that her surname be withheld because she is undocumented. She said she hung on until Feb. 16, close to the deadline for the company to submit paperwork to ICE, so she could make another months rent. (The company said it was complying with state and federal laws regarding the ICE audit, but declined to comment further.)

Faith in the Valley, an advocacy group based in Fresno, said it had received a spate of calls from workers rattled after seeing the notices about audits. Manuel Cunha, the president of Nisei Farmers League, a growers organization, said, I have never seen workers quit like this before.

There is fear and hysteria, he said.

ICE has also stepped up activity in urban areas, conducting sweeps and delivering audit notices to hundreds of businesses in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles.
WASHINGTON  Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, said Thursday that doctors and hospitals should tell patients how much their care would cost before patients received treatment. And if they do not do so voluntarily, he said, the government may use its leverage to force them to disclose the information.

Mr. Azar, speaking to a conference of health insurance executives, said that such information would give patients more control over their health care. And that, he said, would advance one of the Trump administrations top priorities: the value-based transformation of our entire health care system.

You ought to have the right to know what a health care service will cost  and what it will really cost  before you get that service, Mr. Azar said.

His speech  and similar remarks this week by other federal health officials  amounts to an experiment in jawboning by an administration viscerally opposed to new regulations. It is unclear what President Trump will do if the exhortations fail to produce the desired results. Mr. Azar hinted, at a news briefing on Thursday, that the administrations policy preferences could be included in Medicare regulations and perhaps, if necessary, in legislative proposals.
They hide behind Twitter hashtags, Facebook ads and fake news stories. Theyre the work of bots and trolls, and one of the most skilled countries at deploying them is Russia. So how do these entities actually work to spread disinformation? We asked two experts. This is St. Petersburg-based activist Ludmila Savchuk. She has tracked disinformation campaigns and even gone undercover to learn how they work. And this is Ben Nimmo, a London-based analyst who focuses on information warfare. Lets define whats what. A bot is short for robot. Its an automated social media account that operates without human intervention. During the 2016 presidential election, suspected Russian operators created bots on Twitter to promote hashtags like #WarAgainstDemocrats. A troll is an actual human being, motivated by passion or a paycheck to write social media posts that push an agenda. In 2015, Savchuk worked undercover for over two months at a troll factory in Russia that has gone by many names, including Glavset and the Internet Research Agency. Troll accounts are usually anonymous or pretend to be someone else, like hipsters or car repairmen. But it can even get stranger. Trolls can also set up bots to amplify a message. Facebook is one common platform for Russian trolls and bots, which, in 2016, used fake accounts to influence U.S. elections. Heres how some experts think that played out. American officials suspect Russian intelligence agents of using phishing attacks to obtain emails damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign. They then, allegedly, created a site called DCLeaks.com to publish them. A troll on Facebook, using the name Melvin Redick, was one of the first to hype the site, saying it contained the hidden truth about Hillary Clinton. An army of bots on Twitter then promoted the DC Leaks, and in one case, even drove a #HillaryDown hashtag into a trending topic. Facebook believes that ads on divisive issues created by Russian trolls were shown to Americans over four million times before the elections. Russian-linked trolls and bots also tried to exploit divisive issues and undermine faith in public institutions. Federal investigators and experts believed Russian trolls created Facebook groups like Blacktivist, which reposted videos of police beatings, or another, Secured Borders, which organized anti-immigrant rallies in real life. Today, Russia hopes to win the second Cold War through the force of politics as opposed to the politics of force. How can you stop them? You cant. Even Vladimir Putin seems to agree. But IDing their tactics helps contain their influence. If a suspicious account is active during the workday in St. Petersburg or posting dozens of items a day, those are red flags. Decode the anonymity. Look for alphanumeric scrambles in a users name, and try Googling its profile picture. Look at the language. If an account makes grammar mistakes typical for Russian speakers, or changes behavior during times of strained Russian-U.S. relations, then congratulations. You might have caught a bot or pro-Kremlin troll.
WASHINGTON  President Trump dined at the ornate Georgetown home of a prominent Washington lawyer on Wednesday night with wealthy donors who are expected to play crucial roles in financing his re-election campaign.

The dinner was the latest in a series of donor events associated with a pair of independent groups  America First Policies and America First Action  that are aiming to raise $100 million this year, mostly in large donations, to support Mr. Trumps agenda and the election campaigns of allied congressional candidates.

Attendees included donors and operatives who are working to raise money for the America First groups, such as the Dallas financial executive Roy W. Bailey and the Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm, as well as the presidents eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., according to someone briefed on the list of attendees and published reports.

Mr. Hamm and Mr. Bailey are on the board of America First Policies, a nonprofit group that was created to advocate Mr. Trumps agenda and that has paid for a series of polls and strategy memos about the political effects of the Trump administrations efforts. America First Action, on the other hand, is a super PAC that is raising money to air advertisements in support of Republican congressional candidates allied with the president.
WASHINGTON  President Trump defied opposition from his own party and protests from overseas as he signed orders on Thursday imposing stiff and sweeping new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. But he sought to soften the impact on the United States closest allies with a more flexible plan than originally envisioned.

After a week of furious lobbying and a burst of last-minute internal debates and confusion, Mr. Trump agreed to exempt, for now, Canada and Mexico, and held out the possibility of later excluding allies like Australia. But foreign leaders warned of a trade war that could escalate to other industries and take aim at American goods.

The actions we are taking today are not a matter of choice; they are a matter of necessity for our security, Mr. Trump said in a ceremony at the White House where he officially authorized the tariffs, which will go into effect in 15 days.

Flanked by a handful of steel and aluminum workers, some wearing coveralls and holding hard hats, Mr. Trump presented the move as a way to rebuild vital industries decimated by foreign competition. Our factories were left to rot and to rust all over the place; thriving communities turned into ghost towns, he said. That betrayal is now over.
Indeed, some teachers who went to the meeting at the mall in Morgantown said their lack of collective bargaining rights left them no choice but to continue their strike.

It we cant negotiate with the people that were supposed to negotiate with, then were really just sticking out our necks and saying, this is what were fighting for, said Lindsay Smalls, a sixth-grade science teacher. Were just going to stick up for ourselves.

Wildcat strikes led by rank-and-file workers are rare these days, but they recall the big miners strikes that racked West Virginias coal country in the early part of the 20th century. That pattern of labor activism changed with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, sometimes called the Wagner Act, giving most workers a federally protected right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining.

The Wagner Act does not cover public employees, though, and some states, like West Virginia, do not give public employees the right to bargain collectively. For that reason, the states two teachers unions, the West Virginia Education Association and the state branch of the American Federation of Teachers, do not function as those in other states might, although they do lobby for teachers and help with grievances. Membership is voluntary and far from universal.

Even so, they were quick to respond as frustration built over rising health insurance costs and other issues earlier this year. It was the unions that started the long walkout by conducting a vote and calling for the statewide work stoppage, which began on Feb. 22.

It started off with the membership following their state leaders, said Gary Price, the superintendent of schools in Marion County, who, like his colleagues around the state, kept schools closed during the walkout. But when the state leaders made a decision that the employees didnt like, they took it in a different direction.

At that point, the course of the strike was in the hands of teachers in each of the states 55 counties making their own separate decisions about what to do, though they monitored the mood elsewhere over social media. In Mr. Prices county, teachers gathered for a heated meeting at a high school, where people stood up and cried out every time they heard that another countys schools would be closed the next day.
 25 Minutes, and I Like Indie Comedy

Take My Wife

When to watch: Now, on iTunes.

Add it to your Watchlist

Season 1 of Take My Wife streamed on Seeso in 2016  but then Seeso folded before Season 2 could air. At long last, both seasons are now available for purchase on iTunes. The stand-up comedians Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito, who are also married, created and star in the show as approximate versions of themselves, and the series is more generous than your typical welcome to my neuroses autobiographical comedy. Its also a platform for queer and gender nonconforming comedians  rare in stand-up, and rarer still on television. Wife is often more preachy than laugh-out-loud funny, but its sermon is one worth hearing.

 an Hour, and I Like Animals
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia  More than a year into his tenure as the nations chief diplomat, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has a set of diplomatic tools that he and aides use at nearly every stop.

Theres the tight smile Mr. Tillerson wears when asked about insulting remarks by President Trump that have angered or bewildered entire continents.

Theres the shrug or dismissive laugh when he is trolled or overshadowed by Russia or China, rivals the Trump administration has yet to develop a coherent strategy to contain or surmount.

And theres the signature pause that follows when his aides are asked why he has yet again failed to schedule a meeting during his trip with opposition or rival political leaders  the kind of encounters past secretaries of state routinely undertook to emphasize the importance of pluralism, and to hedge against sudden changes in government.
A conversation with Neli Esipova

Gallup's Regional Director for the World Poll in former Soviet states and Eastern Europe

What do you see as the No. 1 problem facing women in your region?

Esipova: Domestic violence. In many countries in my region, there are few laws on the books that protect women. Russia and Uzbekistan have no domestic violence laws. The number of shelters in these countries is minimal. Women don't even have places to hide and be safe.

In this region, women enter the workforce at the same level as men. You'd expect that they would get equal treatment elsewhere. Not in the home. Women have to juggle both; they raise children, take care of the family, and work. On top of this, some of them are being beaten. In Russia, for example, one woman dies from domestic violence every 40 minutes.

What do Gallup's World Poll data say about it? Are things getting better or worse?

Esipova: Domestic violence is something that people never talk about -- it's often viewed as a family matter, but everyone knows it is a problem. Both times we asked about it across the whole region -- in 2009 and again in 2015 -- majorities in nearly every country said domestic violence is a serious problem in their country. In 2015, majorities in 11 out of 14 countries said it is a serious problem.

Domestic Abuse Viewed as a Serious Problem Across Former Soviet States Serious problem % Lithuania 78 Georgia 77 Latvia 73 Kyrgyzstan 73 Moldova 70 Tajikistan 70 Armenia 64 Estonia 64 Russia 58 Ukraine 56 Belarus 52 Azerbaijan 48 Kazakhstan 47 Uzbekistan 40 Gallup World Poll, 2015

We asked this question again in Russia last year after Parliament reduced the punishment for assaults on spouses and children that do not result in serious injury. Two in every three Russians in 2017 said domestic violence is a serious problem. This is up from 58% in 2015 but similar to what we found in 2009. So, things are not getting better.

Is the situation getting better or worse in some countries than others? What are governments or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) doing?

Esipova: There is still no developed system that protects women. It is mostly NGOs in the region that push for changes, and they face strong resistance from conservative groups who see these laws as interfering with families.

Late last year, Armenia finally passed a new law that makes domestic violence a crime and protects the victims. That leaves just Russia and Uzbekistan without domestic violence laws.

But for the most part, people across the entire region -- including Russians -- aren't very happy with their governments' efforts to fight the problem. In 2015, for example, majorities in Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia and Russia said their governments are not doing enough to combat the problem.

Government Doing Enough to Fight Domestic Violence Yes No % % Uzbekistan 87 7 Tajikistan 85 7 Azerbaijan 56 28 Kazakhstan 49 28 Belarus 46 34 Kyrgyzstan 44 47 Georgia 39 44 Armenia 27 51 Estonia 26 50 Lithuania 26 59 Russia 22 51 Moldova 21 55 Latvia 19 60 Ukraine 11 58 Gallup World Poll, 2015

When we asked this question again in Russia in 2017, about half -- 47% -- said their government is not doing enough. Just 29% said their government is doing enough. The majority of Russian women do not think their government is doing enough -- they are more likely than men to feel this way.

We also repeated a question from 2009 asking what should be done in a hypothetical situation in which a man regularly beats his wife and children and the wife reports the violence to the police. Two in three Russians say the man should be forcibly evicted from the home -- the same as in 2009. But the 13% who say the man should keep living in the home increased from 5%.

##SPEEDBUMP##

Do you ever think something like the #MeToo movement that was highly publicized in the United States could happen in your region?

Esipova: It already has in some countries. Before #MeToo spread in the U.S., there was the #IamNotAfraidtoSay movement, under which thousands of Russian and Ukrainian women posted their stories of harassment and domestic violence on social media. But in Russia, lawmakers have been pretty dismissive about it. One Parliament member said recently that if a woman doesn't want attention, nobody will harass her.

Find out more about Gallup's World Poll and its research in former Soviet states and Eastern Europe.
The guerrillas refashioned themselves as a political party late last year, keeping their acronym, FARC, but changing the name to the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force. They fielded a host of candidates for this years elections for the legislature and the presidency that which included some of the most feared guerrilla leaders among their ranks.

The campaigning did not go well. Mr. Londono was attacked by protesters who pelted his motorcade with rocks, on one occasion doing severe damage to his vehicle. A prominent Senate candidate, Luciano Marin, known by his nom de guerre, Ivan Marquez, was forced to cancel campaign events after they were mobbed.

The tensions forced FARC to suspend its campaigning last month, declaring it unsafe. The former rebels blamed right-wing parties, while others in Colombia argued that the group was simply confronting an angry electorate victimized for years by FARCs kidnappings and deadly attacks. Just a tiny percentage of Colombians say they would consider voting for them.

On Thursday, Felix Antonio Munoz, a former FARC commander who is running for the Senate, said the atmosphere remained unsafe for the group. We need to generate new conditions that guarantee that political participation is inclusive, he told reporters gathered in the city of Armenia on Thursday.

While the group has a diminished profile on the campaign trail, it will still have a presence in the Colombian legislature no matter how the election goes. Under the peace deal, the former guerrillas were guaranteed five seats in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives.
BEIJING  In the lofty chambers of the Great Hall of the People, delegate after delegate to Chinas legislative body brushed aside questions this week about the constitutional change on the table that could extend Xi Jinpings presidency.

I think people are overinterpreting this issue, Yao Jinbo, the chief executive of 58.com, a Craigslist-like consumer site, said on the opening day of the National Peoples Congress, vowing like all others who would speak to journalists that he would support Mr. Xis move.

Please do believe in the party, he urged, and the wisdom of the party.

Not everyone agrees.

For all the orchestration of public support for the proposed changes, dissenting voices continue to surface. For now, at least, they are sporadic and apparently spontaneous, amounting to a faint rumble. They suggest the stirrings of internal discontent  if not yet outright opposition that could build over time.

Maneuvering quickly and with guile, Mr. Xi is moving to secure approval for the change at a planned vote Sunday by the National Peoples Congress on abolishing a rule that since 1982 has restricted the countrys presidents to two five-year terms.
This will be open to anyone who accepts its components, Mr. Munoz said. Its not an agreement against anyone. Its in favor of open trade.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump went in the opposite direction, announcing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the United States. He said that Canada and Mexico were being exempted for now, and that allies like Australia could later be excluded. His order could affect Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Turkey, though he said he would have leeway to add or take countries off the list as he sees fit.

The United States has gone from being a leader to actually being the No. 1 antagonist and No. 1 source of fear on trade, said Jeffrey Wilson, the head of research at Perth U.S.-Asia Center at the University of Western Australia. If youre a trade policy maker in Asia, your No. 1 fear is that Trump is going to take a swing at you.

He added that such fears could prompt countries, however reluctantly, to tether themselves more closely to China. The U.S. is really delivering the region to China at the moment, Mr. Wilson said.

The new agreement  known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership  drops tariffs drastically and establishes sweeping new trade rules in markets that represent about a seventh of the worlds economy. It opens more markets to free trade in agricultural products and digital services around the region. While American beef faces 38.5 percent tariffs in Japan, for example, beef from Australia, New Zealand and Canada will not.

Once it goes into effect, the agreement is expected to generate an additional $147 billion in global income, according to an analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Its backers say it also bolsters protections for intellectual property and includes language that could prod members to improve labor conditions.
LONDON  The leaders of an anti-Muslim extremist group in Britain have been found guilty of hate crimes and sentenced to prison, months after they drew international attention for helping President Trump get entangled in a diplomatic dispute with British leaders.

A judge in Folkestone Magistrates Court on Wednesday convicted Paul Golding, the leader of the group, Britain First, of one count of religiously aggravated harassment, and Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader, of three counts of the same offense. Mr. Golding was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, and Ms. Fransen to 36 weeks.

The two were convicted over posting videos online of their harassment of Muslims in May 2017, at the same time as a trial of three Muslim men and a teenager who were accused and later convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl.

Britain First, estimated to have about 1,000 members, was little known outside the country until November, when Mr. Trump tweeted links to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim videos made by the group, some of which were misleading.
im still alive btw

but going down now!

i love you!!!!!

he brought coffee and cookies tho

After that, she went silent.

Forensic experts later found her blood on Mr. Madsens face. Her underpants and nylon stockings, with cut marks, were found in the submarine. The courtroom was shown a video tour of the vessel, and the prosecutor showed footage of divers efforts to recover Ms. Walls body parts from the bottom of the ocean. There were shots of plastic bags, containing clothing and limbs, weighed down by metal pipes.

Mr. Madsen sat calmly, resting his chin on his fists at times, as he followed the proceedings intently. After a lunch break, he took the stand.

At times cheeky, at times condescending, he had an answer for everything. He stuck to his most recent account that the death was a terrible accident caused by a malfunction that made the engines stop, the pressure to drop, the hatch to lock shut and gases to poison the air in the submarine, resulting in Ms. Walls death. He said he survived because he was on top of the submarine at the time.

He said a vent suddenly opened, allowing the hatch to open and fresh air to gush in. He said he tried to hide the death out of consideration for Ms. Walls family. I didnt want to share with the rest of the world the horrible manner in which she died, he said.

He said he tried for two hours to get her body overboard, but gave up.

At that point, Peter Madsen cant do anything else, he said, speaking of himself in the third person. He said he drove around, rested, then decided the only thing left to do was to cut her up.

When it was suggested that violent online videos inspired the mutilation, he disagreed, saying that he watched them to access feelings of empathy. I have a tendency to always root for the underdog and the weaker party, he said.
PRISTINA, Kosovo  Physicists tell us that time expands and contracts because of relativity. Poets and philosophers tell us that time alters with love and age. And, across Europe, microwave ovens tell us that time changes with tussles between Balkan nations.

A dispute between Serbia and Kosovo has disrupted the electric power grid for most of the Continent, making certain kinds of clocks  many of those on ovens, in heating systems and on radios  run up to six minutes slow.

It is one of the stranger examples of technology binding together far-flung parts of the world, and one quirky effect of more than two decades of conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

The slowdown began in mid-January, and since then clocks in 25 countries, from Poland to Portugal and Denmark to Turkey, have lost time. The fluctuation in the power supply is infinitesimally small  not nearly enough to make a meaningful difference for most powered devices  and if it were a brief disturbance, the effect on clocks might be too little to worry about.
MOSCOW  Sitting down with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria late last year, a senior Kremlin envoy described the benefits to come as Moscow shepherded the Syrian conflict toward a political settlement, particularly in rebuilding the war-ravaged country.

But Mr. Assad cut the Russian off, asking why, with the Syrian government so close to victory, a political solution was necessary at all, according to a senior Arab diplomat who was briefed on the meeting.

Nearly two and a half years after he intervened militarily to prop up Mr. Assad, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia finds himself stuck in Syria, not quite able to find a solution despite having declared mission accomplished on at least three occasions. While Mr. Putins military intervention established the Kremlin as a major player in the Middle East for the first time in decades, extricating Russia from Syria is proving far more difficult than he envisaged.

The problem is that Moscow has effectively tied its fortunes to those of Mr. Assad, with limited room to maneuver.
LONDON  The former Russian spy Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, remain unconscious and are in critical but stable condition, Britains home secretary, Amber Rudd, told lawmakers on Thursday, adding that it was too early to apportion blame for a brazen and reckless attack involving a nerve agent.

A police officer who assisted the two victims, and was also hospitalized, is in serious but stable condition and is conscious, talking and engaging, Ms. Rudd added, in an update on an investigation that has stirred much speculation about Russian involvement. In a police statement, the officer was identified as Nick Bailey, a detective sergeant.

While she described the incident as an attempted murder in the most cruel and public way, Ms. Rudd said she would refrain from attributing blame until the hundreds of antiterrorism police and security officials working the case reached conclusions based on solid evidence.

There will come a time for attribution, Ms. Rudd said, promising that there would be consequences for those behind the attempt on the life of Mr. Skripal and his daughter, who were taken ill on Sunday afternoon in the city of Salisbury.
ROME  In the era of #MeToo and Times Up, International Womens Day arrived on Thursday with a renewed sense of urgency.

For many women, there was a keen awareness of a major shift in the firmament when it came to gender parity, the treatment of women in the workplace and sexual dynamics.

But others  scratching out lives in developing countries in Africa, toiling away at jobs with little pay in Latin America or scrambling to raise children without help in the Middle East  most likely had little time left over to reflect on the day designated to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, and as a call to action, according to the website.

Nonetheless, Margrethe Vestager, the European competition commissioner, said on Twitter: There is a lot to fight for: Engage! Women and men alike. We need power to make equality a reality.
Activists release Documentation of the Oppressed, National Database on hate violence

India

oi-Shreya

Documentation of the Oppressed- a national Database on hate violence- was released on March 7 in the National Capital. This database, a first of its kind after is a joint civil society effort and is run by a large network of civil society organizations both at the national and at the grassroot level. The work on the database had started in late 2017 from 2014.

The objective of the database is to encourage community-based reporting and intervention through a common documentation platform for the civil society of marginalised groups: DOTO database. A platform that addresses both immediate and long-term issues related to the systemic violation of fundamental rights, erosion of constitutional values and the organization and deployment of 'hate'.

DOTO database is simple, and easy to use, and seeks to create a large-scale repository which can then be used for various purposes: from activating the legal machinery in individual cases, to national and international advocacy.

Currently, the database has 488 incidents in which 2607 victims are reported. These incidents record different kinds of violence and the major categories of nature of violence include Murder/Lynching (54), Physical Assault (125), Attack Against Religious Infrastructure (51) and Communal Violence (52).

Zafrul Islam Khan, the chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission, pointed out that thousands of minorities have suffered. He highlighted that the incidents of terror which have been on the rise in the nation. He lauded the effort behind the database and stressed on the need of reporting.

Teesta Setalvad, the founder of Peacemap and Helpline, was also present at the launch. The initiative Peacemap is a seven-stage conflict management platform that aims to warn, predict and prevent violence across India.

Amnesty International has also been working on a database which looks at the prejudice behind the hate crimes. Likhita Banerjee from the organisation pointed out that the database records cases of caste violence, mob lynchings, hate crimes against other identities like Adivasis, Dalits and transgenders.

Ram Puniyani, a senior activist, pointed out that the efforts like this database are a major step in moving towards social justice. He said that we should also address the hatred that has been created after 9/11 all over the world so that innocents can live with dignity in the society.

John Dayal, a senior activist, illustrated the years of experience of civil society and Christian Networks in documenting cases of violence against Christians, and how they have been using church-based documentation, a specific helpline to record data and thereafter the network of lawyers and advocacy tools at national - international level to pursue justice. He stated that they submitted 316 cases of violence against Christians in the year 2017, at UPR process of United Nations.

Other dignitaries Adv Sanjay Hegde, Senior Adv, Supreme Court of India, Ravi Nair, Civil rights activist, and senior journalist Saba Naqvi also spoke based on their experiences of dealing with state institutions.

OneIndia News
Special status row: Two TDP ministers resign from Modi cabinet

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Two union ministers from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) resigned, but the BJP's two ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu's state cabinet have quit this morning.

The announcement was made by Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu after an hour-long meeting with party MPs, MLAs and cabinet colleagues.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary are the two ministers who have been asked to resign from their respective offices.

The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet to met PM Narendra Modi at 6 PM today and submitted their resignation letter.

#Delhi: Aviation Minister & TDP MP AG Raju arrives at YS Chowdary's residence. Both the TDP ministers will meet PM Modi at 6 PM. pic.twitter.com/GqmpXLQeC3  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

According to media reports, TDP MP and Union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju has sought an appointment with Modi to resign from the cabinet.

Backing the decision, YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday said all MPs from Andhra Pradesh should submit resignations to mount pressure on the Centre over the special status issue.

"All MPs should submit mass resignations and we should support each other in the no-confidence motion," Jagan said, adding that the state was bifurcated on the very condition that special status would be given.

Naidu directed two Telugu Desam Party ministers to resign from Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led cabinet amid the growing strain in ties between his party and the Bharatiya Janata Party over alleged neglect of the state in the Union Budget.

"This is our right. The Centre is not fulfilling the promises it made," said Naidu, who has been urging the Centre to give 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu said he had tried to reach out to PM Modi to convey his party's decision before publicly announcing it, but in vain. "We have shown patience for four years. I tried to convince the Centre... The Centre is not in a mood to listen," he told reporters in Amravati, the capital of Andhra.

"FM Jaitley today not only denied special category status to Andhra Pradesh as promised under the state reorganisation Act but also spoke in a way of insulting and humiliating the state by trying to project as if we were making unjustified demands against national interests," said the Andhra CM.

BJP ministers resign from AP cabinet

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in Andhra Pradesh submitted their resignation from state cabinet, moments after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers to resign from the Union Cabinet.

#AndhraPradesh : BJP Ministers in Andhra Pradesh cabinet submitted their resignation in the CM office in Amaravati. pic.twitter.com/0P33Y4S5Uu  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

The ministers, who have submitted their resignation, are State Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and State endowment minister Pydikondala Manikyala Rao in Naidu's cabinet.

Naidu, adderssing the state budget session with commenced today, says BJP ministers from him Cabinet have resigned. "These ministers worked good in the state. They brought considerable reforms in their departments. I thank them for their services," he is quoted as saying by ANI.

Soon after Naidu's press conference, BJP MLA Akula Satyanarayana spoke to media and announced that the two BJP ministers in the state cabinet, namely Kamineni Srinivas and Paidikondala Manikyala Rao, will resign on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday, Jaitley said the Centre was committed to meeting all promises made to AP at the time of carving out of Telangana four years back but rejected its demand for a special status.

OneIndia News
Fearing COVID-19 family in AP locked themselves up for 15 months

Andhra special status row:Two TDP ministers resign from Modi govt

India

oi-Madhuri

The two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government resigned on Thursday.

Civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science YS Chowdary's resignations, to protest the denial of special category status to Andhra Pradesh, came soon after Prime Minister Narendra Narendra Modi spoke to Naidu on the phone.

Speaking to ANI, AP Excise Minister KS Jawahar said,''We did not get the special category status, that is why our ministers resigned. Our CM went to Delhi 29 times, argued & begged for the state, but until now we haven't received any interest in the matter. The time is over, we are ready to battle.''

Earlier today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu amid political tension between BJP and TDP over granting special status to the state.

According to TDP Sources, ''AP CM Naidu explained to the Modi about reasons leading to central ministers' resignation and TDP withdrawing from Union Government.

Earlier in the day, ANI reported that BJP ministers in the Andhra Pradesh government, Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao, resigned from the state cabinet.

Meanwhile, the two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet met PM Narendra Modi at 6 PM today. They were directed yesterday by Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu to submit their resignations.

The BJP on Thursday pulled two of its ministers out of the Andhra Pradesh government which is led by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), in the backdrop of increasing hostilities between the parties over special category status to the state.

On Wednesday, Naidu said, "We have taken the decision to pull out two TDP ministers, civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Union minister of science and technology Srujana Chowdary, from the Union cabinet as all our efforts to get special category status failed. It was a last resort decision."

Naidu's remarks came hours after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the Centre could not accommodate TDP's demands for "special category" status or tax relief for the state.

The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and four in the Rajya Sabha.

OneIndia News
Cant presume all Covid deaths during second wave were due to negligence: SC

Cannot order for use of traditional remedies like Red Ant Chutney as cure for COVID-19: SC

Dont want terrorists to know what software is being used: Centre to SC on Pegasus row

CBI moves SC challenging Talwars' acquittal in Aarushi Talwar murder case

India

oi-Madhuri

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday has moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of Nupur and Rajesh Talwar for the murder of their daughter, Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj.

The Talwars had been convicted by the CBI court which tried the case, in November 2013. The next day, the CBI court sentenced them to life imprisonment.

The Uttar Pradesh Police had accused Rajesh Talwar of killing his daughter in a fit of rage, and arrested him on May 23, 2008, six days after Aarushi's body was found.

On May 31, 2008, the case was transferred to the CBI. The agency initially absolved the parents but later held them responsible for the two murders.

OneIndia News
PM Modi must make statement in Parliament, clarify whether snooping was done: Chidambaram on Pegasus row

Chidambaram on India giving 2.5 crore Covid jabs: 'Why did we have to wait until the PMs birthday?'

Chidambaram pushed 80:20 gold scheme despite DRI warning on black money and laundering

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Former Union Minister, P Chidambaram would find himself in a spot of bother after the Public Accounts Sub Committee sought a CBI probe against him for the controversial 80:20 gold import scheme. The PAC has alleged that Chidambaram had ignored objections of the Department of Revenue Intelligence.

The PAC's Sub Committee headed by BJP MP, Nishikant Dubey found that Chidambaram had approved the controversial gold import scheme by ignoring objections of the DRI.

It may be recalled that Union Law Minister, Ravishankar Prasad had said that Chidambaram should answer why he approved the scheme in the last days of the UPA government. What the need for the RBI to approve the scheme with such speed.

The Sub Committee found that the DRI was not in favour of the 80:20 gold import scheme that was launched in 2013 when Chidambaram was the finance minister. The DRI had hinted that the scheme would lead to round-tripping of black money and money laundering.

The Sub Committee decided to recommend a CBI inquiry into the procedures that were followed by Chidambaram in launching this scheme.

PNB scam: Raghuram Rajan was warned about 80:20 gold scheme by jewellery industry

The BJP it may be recalled accused Chidambaram of granting several private firms including PNB scam accused, Gitanjali Gems, gold import benefits on the day of the counting of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP also sought to know how many cuts was given and to whom for the decision.

Prasad targeted the Congress and Chidambaram, whose son Karti Chidambaram has been arrested by the CBI in a corruption case, at a press conference which was described by the BJP as an "expose on the politics of lies and deceit" of the opposition party.

Prasad alleged that the then Congress-led UPA government "destroyed" the economy by not letting the real stressed assets get reflected in banks' books and said total advances given by banks in the last six years of its rule rose to Rs 52.15 lakh crore from Rs 18.06 lakh crore in 2008.

Only 36 per cent of these advances were identified as stressed assets but they rose to 82 per cent, he said, alleging that under the then "so-called economist" prime minister Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram, the banking system was "sought to be derailed by interventions, patronage and pressure".

However, it was Chidambaram who was the main target of the ruling party.

He, Prasad alleged, gave seven private firms benefits under 80:20 gold import scheme on May 16, 2014, the day Narendra Modi-led BJP was swept to power, ousting the UPA.

"What does it mean? On May 16, the Manmohan Singh government is losing, P Chidambaram's chair is in danger... Chidambaram and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi should tell us why this order to benefit seven private firms was passed on that day. Is it corruption or jumla (rhetoric)?" he asked.

They want a true picture of Chidambaram to appear before the country, Prasad said and also sought to target the Congress' top brass as he claimed that the then finance minister was doing so with "blessings" of others.

It was the "height of shamelessness" to take such a decision on May 16, the BJP leader said, adding that the RBI had cleared it a few days later before the Narendra Modi-led government scrapped the decision within a few months of coming into power.

"Chidambaram please reply, is it jumla or blatant favouritism, mala fide conduct and rampant corruption? The Congress party should answer who were these people lobbying for Gitanjali and what was the cut," he asked.

No corrupt people will be spared by the BJP government, he said

Chidambaram has repeatedly used the term 'jumla' to mock the BJP government's policies.

The Congress has been resorting to "fear, lies, concoction and confusion" to target the BJP government, he said and spoke about the opposition's campaign on the Rafale deal and several other issues to claim that these were all baseless charges.

The Congress is anti-reform and that is why it is opposed to Aadhaar and the GST because these measures bring about transparency and curb corruption, he claimed.

Prasad reiterated the government's stand that no loan given under its tenure had turned into a non-performing asset (NPA).

He also said Jatin Mehta, a businessman who is also said to have fled India after defaulting on loans, had escaped India in 2012.

Rahul Gandhi must answer these questions when he returns from Italy, he said. Taking a dig at the Congress chief, Prasad said Gandhi can take his help in use of social media as he was also the IT minister and Gandhi were often found "lacking in homework" in his tweets targeting the government.

OneIndia News
Expected, allies don't have good relations with BJP now: Shiv Sena on BJP-TDP crisis

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

A day after the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP), decided to break ties with the Centre, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut said it was an "expected" move, and that allies no longer hold good relations with BJP, ANI reported.

The latest developments come after the Modi government ruled out the special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

On Wednesday, Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant said, "The BJP doesn't respect its allies. TDP is realising it now. We have been saying so for a very long time. BJP only says Sabka Saath but while deciding policies there is no Sabka Saath. They should take decisions unanimously by consulting all but they don't do that."

The Telugu Desham Party (TDP) on Wednesday night decided to pull out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre and asked two of its ministers in the Modi government to tender their resignation on Thursday but kept the door for ties with the BJP ajar.

The TDP took the "painful decision in the interest of the state" as it was left with "no other option", party chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said at an emergency press briefing.

Naidu's announcement came barely hours after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley told a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday evening that funds equivalent to what a special category state receives would be extended to Andhra Pradesh, but drew a line saying politics cannot increase the quantum of money.

"We have now come out of the NDA. Party-to-party (TDP-BJP ties) issue will be decided later," he added, hinting that their alliance may continue in the future. Naidu said Jaitley's announcement was the "last straw" for the TDP.

Naidu had repeatedly insisted on special category state status for Andhra Pradesh following mounting pressure from the opposition.

OneIndia News
Twin brother expresses unhappiness seeing his sister & they are just days old

The twins are having a serious fight and they cant even talk!

This little girl is in tears and the reason will make you LoL

Touching: Big sister sings You Are My Sunshine to little brother with Down Syndrome

Fr Jose Poothrukayil no longer an accused in Sister Abhaya death case

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

In a major twist of events, a special court has removed Fr Jose Poothrukayil from the array of accused in the case relating to the death of Sister Abhaya. She was found dead under mysterious circumstances at a convent in Kottayam, Kerala in 1992.

Special judge, J Nazar found no clear evidence against the priest in the suspected homicidal drowning case. The court however ordered Fr. Thomas Kottoor and Sister Stephy, to face trial.

The CBI which probed the case informed the court that though there were no eyewitnesses, there was enough evidence to prosecute the accused. The agency said that Sister Stephy had hit Abhaya thrice on the head with the blunt side of an axe when she entered the convent's kitchen to drink water and found the suspects in an objectionable position.

The CBI further said that the accused threw Abhaya into the convent's well to make it appear as a case of suicide or accident.

OneIndia News
Get over the Dawood fixation: India lost interest in him in 1994

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

An advocate said earlier this week that Dawood Ibrahim has indicated that he wanted to surrender. A day later he said that he was quoted out of context. The news regarding the surrender of Dawood Ibrahim is nothing new and he had made a similar offer several years back, but the same did not go through due to the conditions put-forth by him.

The question is was India ever serious about his surrender or capture? A file of 1994 continues to catch dust and the notings in the file clearly indicate that it was the closest India came to nabbing Dawood.

Back in 1994, V Balachandran who was an officer with the Research and Analysis Wing was sent to Pretoria in South Africa to discuss the security to be provided to Nelson Mandela who was scheduled to visit India in January 1995.

It was at that time that Dawood's businesses were flourishing in South Africa. During the meeting, Balachandran was shown 18 passports of Dawood. They told him about his frequent visits to South Africa in connection with a major mandrax smuggling racket.

This racket was becoming a headache for South Africa and their intelligence agencies sought India's help to curb the same. Balachandran tells OneIndia that they were serious about the issue. They sought for an operational plan to nab Dawood and they were confident that with our assistance they could achieve the same.

I was given a presentation on how the gang was smuggling mandrax into South Africa. I also told that he had built up local contacts. While the South Africans would handle the local issues and also their in-house intelligence, they had said that India should chip in with an operational plan. I was ready for it, but also said that I would need clearance from New Delhi."

Balachandran on his arrival prepared a report on the Dawood issue. "I was quite sure that if the operations are carried out along with South Africa, the don could have been nabbed. I had mentioned that this is for the first time that a foreign country is extending cooperation in nabbing Dawood Ibrahim."

The report had all details of what the South Africans had told me. I had mentioned about his 18 different passports and also the fact that Dawood was using different nationalities to enter into South Africa. A detailed preparation on mandrax smuggling was also part of my report."

"The government, however, did not appear to be interested. I did my level best to ensure that the report was looked at. I even tried my best to pursue the government to look into the report and also act upon it.

The government on the other ensured that the report was not acted upon. It was taken from one person to another, tossed around before it made its way into a heap of files. The file was never opened after that.

After this, the proposals that were made to capture Dawood became a usual routine. I could say with confidence that no government since 1993 has made any effort to nab Dawood.

OneIndia News
Karnataka polls: Siddaramaiah's cabinet clears state flag, Kannada pride gets a push

India

oi-Anusha

In a move that is sure to give the Kannada pride agenda a boost ahead of Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018, Karnataka cabinet has approved a new State flag. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday unveiled the new Karnataka State Flag- a yellow, white and red combination with the state emblem at the centre.

Kannada language, flag and pride came to be Siddaramaiah's game-changing agenda against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in poll-bound Karnataka. Push for a separate state flag helped the Congress win over pro-Kannada organisations and Kannada voters and propel the image of BJP as a pro-Hindu party ahead of the elections. The state flag unveiled on Thursday will be sent for Union Home Ministry's approval after which it will be made official.

"This is the new Karnataka State flag but an official announcement will be made only after the union government approves the same. There will be no legal hassles and no norms will be violated. The State Flag will be hosted below the National Flag," Siddaramaiah said while unveiling the flag during a meeting with representatives of pro-Kannada organisations.

The Karnataka chief minister had formed a committee in 2017 to look into the design as well as legal aspects of having a separate flag for Karnataka. The new flag is likely to take the Congress' Kannada pride strategy a level higher ahead of Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018.

The proposed flag will now be sent for approval to the Union Home Ministry effectively putting the ball in BJP's court. With the unveiling of the flag, the Congress can claim to have pushed for Kannada pride while putting the onus on the BJP to ensure clearance. Kannada pride has come to be an important agenda to further the 'insider versus the outsider" fight between Siddaramaiah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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
Law against Love Jihad and why Kerala needs it the most

Love Jihad: Continue with probe without interfering with Hadiyas marriage, SC To NIA

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The Supreme Court has directed the NIA to continue with the investigation into the Love Jihad case without interfering with the marriage of Hadiya. The instruction was given to the counsel appearing for the NIA.

While issuing the directive, the court reserved orders on the matter pertaining to the annulment of Hadiya's marriage. The verdict is likely to be delivered at 2 pm today.

Earlier the NIA in an affidavit denied the allegations made by Akhila alias Hadiya that she was misled to portray her husband Shafin Jahan as a terrorist.

The NIA in its affidavit denied that it behaved with her with prejudice as if she is a criminal or terrorist. The allegation is baseless as the NIA was conducting investigation in a fair and objective manner based upon evidence and material collected so far, the affidavit also stated.

The allegation that Shafin Jahan was portrayed as a terrorist was incorrect and it had carried out the probe under directions of the Supreme Court and whatever it had stated reflected in the status report filed by the agency, the NIA also said.

Further the agency noted that it had almost completed the investigation into the case popularly known as the Kerala Love Jihad case. It is yet to examine two individuals, Fasal Musthafa and Shirin Shahand, who are material and crucial witnesses in the case.

It has been learnt that these two witnesses are presently in Yemen and they had left India even the probe was started. Look out circulars had been issued to apprehend them if they visit the country.

The NIA rejected Hadiya's charge that the agency had created a story (of love jihad' and forced conversions to Islam) and were trying to establish it without any proof.

OneIndia News
In Nagaland, the CM is the richest with assets worth Rs 36.41 crore

Neiphiu Rio takes oath as Nagaland chief minister along with 11 other ministers

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Senior Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) leader Neiphiu Rio, along with the council of ministers took oath today as the Chief Minister of the Nagaland.This is Rio's fourth time as the Chief Minister of Nagaland.

Governor PB Acharya administered the oath of office and secrecy to Rio and the 11 ministers at the main rostrum of the ground, in the presence of BJP president Amit Shah, other union ministers.

Meghalaya's newly-appointed Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and his counterparts from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur were present at the swearing-in ceremony.

CM of Manipur N Biren Singh, CM of Arunachal Pradesh Pema Khandu, CM of Assam Sarbananda Sonowal and CM of Meghalaya Conrad Sangma at the oath ceremony of Nagaland CM designate Neiphiu Rio in Kohima. pic.twitter.com/yjRrU39aTp  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

BJP chief Amit Shah, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the ceremony in state capital Kohima.

Defence Minister Niramala Sitharaman, MoS Home Kiren Rijiju, BJP President Amit Shah and BJP National General Secretary Ram Madhav at the oath ceremony of Nagaland CM designate Neiphiu Rio in Kohima. pic.twitter.com/6o8fgTc0XX  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

In a first, the chief minister and council of ministers of a newly-elected government in Nagaland took oath in full public view.

The swearing-in ceremonies in the state have so far been high-profile shows at the Darbar Hall of Raj Bhavan, with VVIPs, VIPs and top bureaucrats in attendance. The newly-mandated alliance government, comprising 34 elected members of the NDPP, BJP, National People's Party (NPP), JD(U) and an Independent, however, has decided to take the oath before the public.

Neiphiu Rio, who floated the NDPP just ahead of the Assembly elections in Nagaland, had forged a pre-poll alliance with the BJP. The NDPP-BJP alliance had won 30 seats (NDPP 18, BJP 12) in the February 27 Nagaland Assembly polls.

Governor P B Acharya on Tuesday said he had received letters of support in Rio's favour from 12 legislators of the BJP, one letter from the JD(U) and another from an Independent MLA, besides the 18 legislatures of the NDPP.

Outgoing Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang on March 6 submitted his resignation which the Governor accepted and asked him to continue in office till an alternative arrangement was made.

OneIndia News
SC asks Karti to approach Delhi HC for relief in INX Media Case

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Karti Chidambaram to approach Delhi High Court for interim relief in INX Media Case. The apex court requested acting chief justice to allocate matter to an appropriate bench. The apex court asked the Delhi HC to hear the matter tomorrow.

Deferring the case for further hearing on March 9, the SC declared that it would not provide any interim protection from arrest by the Enforcement Directorate.

This comes a day after the CBI has moved the special court seeking permission to conduct a narco-analysis test on Karti Chidambaram.

The CBI had also sought a production warrant for Indrani Mujerjea, promoter of INX Media and Karti's chartered accountant, Bhaskararaman. The court has asked the CBI to come back with the relevant applications and argue the matter on March 9.

On 28 February 2018, the CBI arrested Karti Chidambaram, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son, in connection with the INX media money laundering case.

CBI stated that Karti has been evasive in the replies it has sought over a period of time, which has caused the delay in concluding the investigation.

Sources have alleged that more evidence has been found against Karti taking a bribe and a bigger amount of money changing hands.

OneIndia News
Cannot order for use of traditional remedies like Red Ant Chutney as cure for COVID-19: SC

Dont want terrorists to know what software is being used: Centre to SC on Pegasus row

SC restores Hadiya marriage, tells NIA to continue probe into Love Jihad cases in Kerala

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the marriage of Hadiya with her husband Shafin Jahan. While upholding the marriage, the court however told the NIA that it could continue its probe into the Love Jihad case.

The order of the Supreme Court was passed on an appeal filed by Jahan who had challenged the order of the Kerala High Court which had annulled the marriage while terming it as a sham.

The order delivered by a Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra took into account that when Hadiya was summoned to court she admitted to her marriage with Shafin Jahan. Moreover a marriage between two consenting adults cannot be interfered with the SC also observed. The court said when it interacted with Hadiya it found that she had exercised her free consent in getting married. Further the Bench also said that Hadiya is free to pursue her future endeavours as per the law.

The court observed that the Kerala High Court was wrong in annulling the marriage. It said when two consenting adults get married there cannot be interference.

The court however said that it would not interfere with NIA probe in the Love Jihad case. The probe into the cases of Love Jihad by a well oiled network in Kerala would however continue, the Bench said.

OneIndia News
Immoral and un-democratic says TDP after four of its MPs join BJP

Special category status: YSR Congress keeps options open for political support

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Amid resignations of TDP and BJP leaders, YSR Congress chief, YS Jaganmohan Reddy, announced that his party would support any political party which offers 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh.

Jaganmohan Reddy, said, "Whosoever is ready to give 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, It will have YSRCP's support. All the options are open for our party. For us Andhra Pradesh comes first and is above all the other issues."

The demand for a special category status for Andhra Pradesh is resonating in Delhi with YSR Congress Party holding a protest at the Parliament Street suing the second part of the budget session.

The Lok Sabha was adjourned today for the fourth day in a row following an uproar by National Democratic Alliance member Telugu Desam Party and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam over various matters. Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 2 pm.

YSR Congress has launched a campaign - HODHA MANA HAKKU, PACKAGE THO MOSAPOVADDU (NO COMPROMISE ON SPECIAL CATEGORY STATUS) demanding 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh.

Delhi: YSR Congress MPs protest outside Parliament over special category status to #AndhraPradesh pic.twitter.com/GqZE9wVeP2  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

YSR Congress MPs have been protesting outside Parliament demanding special category status for Andhra Pradesh. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) also joined the chorus and demanded that the special package for the status be increased.

Thousands of supporters of YSR Congress Party including party MPs and MLAs held a dharna at Parliament Street in Delhi on Monday demanding Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh.

OneIndia News
PM gifted copy of Gandhi's speech about need to make India 'Atmanirbhar': Sabarmati Ashram trust

Statue war continues: Gandhi targeted in Kerala, Ambedkar in Tamil Nadu

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Amid reports about vandalism of statues in parts of the country, an idol of Mahatma Gandhi in Kerala's Kannur district anda bust of Baba Ambedkar in Tamil Nadu's Thiruvotriyur Periyar Nagar were found disgraced today morning.

The statue situated in front of the Taliparamba Taluk Office was vandalised at around 7 am on Thursday, whereas red paint was found splashed across the Ambedkar figurine in Tamil Nadu's Thiruvotriyur., local media reported.

The incident comes to the fore despite a stern warning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh against such acts.

According to the reports, an unidentified person pulled down the spectacle , garland and fled the spot when people caught him in the act. Police on lookout for person who wore a Saffron lungi.

The bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee was damaged by activists of Left-leaning outfit 'Radical' in south Kolkata on Wednesday. A statue of B R Ambedkar was damaged by unidentified people in Uttar Pradesh's Mawana on Tuesday, triggering protests by Dalits.

Followinf the incident on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned the vandalism of statues in many states triggered by the razing of Communist hero Lenin's statue in Tripura on Monday, an act condoned by some BJP leaders, followed by similar incidents in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

"(The) Prime Minister has strongly disapproved reported incidents of vandalism in parts of (the) country," an official statement said.

Also, the Home Ministry on Wednesday issued a second advisory, its second in the day, holding district magistrates and superintendents of police "personally responsible" for such incidents of vandalism.

OneIndia News
Thanks to dysfunctional metal detector, Justice Shettys attacker walked in with ease

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

On Wednesday in a shocking incident, Justice P Vishwanath Shetty, the Lokayukta of Karnataka was stabbed in his office which is located a little over 100 meters from the Vidhan Soudha in Bengaluru.

Looking at the manner in which the incident took place, it was clear that there was a complete security lapse. He managed to enter the Lokayukta's office situated in the MS building with a dagger. He passed through a metal detector without being detected. The reason being the metal detector was non-functional.

The Lokayukta handles some of the most sensitive cases. In such an event it is quite ironic that the attacker was able to enter the building and also reach the Lokayukta's office with a dagger undetected. For one, the metal detector was not working. Secondly, he was not frisked by the security personnel.

Karnataka Lokayukta stabbed: Police find motive behind incident

Justice Santhosh Hegde, former Lokayukta of Karnataka says that security has always been a concern and he had raised this several times during his tenure. Justice Hegde tells OneIndia that it goes on to show how lax the security is. It is surprising that a person in such high office has been attacked with such ease.

Justice Hegde also adds that the Lokayukta's office is a public office and it is bound to have a lot of people. This, however, does not mean that security must be compromised. I have learnt that there are several instances when people have passed through without even making an entry in the registry.

Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Shetty stabbed in his office at Bengaluru

If one looks at the log entry made by Tejraj Sharma the accused, he had stated that he was an advocate. However, the police had revealed that he was a furniture shop owner from Tumkur. According to the log, he had entered the premises at around 12.45 pm under the pretext of meeting the assistant registrar of enquiries.

Investigations suggested that he was walking around the Lokayukta's office for some time. He is said to have barged into the chamber during the lunch break and stabbed Justice Shetty thrice.

OneIndia News
Hafiz Saeed gets clearance for his political outfit Milli Muslim League

International

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By Chennabasaveshwar

The Islamabad High Court on Thursday suspended the Election Commission's decision to refuse the registration of Hafiz Saeed's Milli Muslim League (MML), the political wing of the banned Jamaat -ud-Dawa (JuD), and directed the poll body to review its decision.

The Election Commission of Pakistan in September 2017 had refused to grant recognition to MML and warned leaders against using the party's name during election campaigns.

Hafiz Saeed announced in December, a few days after release from house arrest on 24 November, that his organisation will contest the 2018 elections. Milli Muslim League is an Islamist political party established by Jammat-ud-Dawa in 2017. Saifullah Khalid is president of Milli Muslim League.

The MML got the nod a day after Lahore High Court extended stay against 26/11Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's detention. Ahead of the visit of the UN Security Council monitoring team here, the Lahore High Court on January 24 had restrained the federal government from arresting Saeed on his petition.

On January 23, Saeed had moved the court seeking protection from his possible arrest by the federal and the state governments, under the alleged pressure from the US and India.

OneIndia News
In touch with all concerned: India on reports of kidnapping of Indian national in Kabul

WHO Experts' Group to take a call on EUL for Covaxin on October 6

Indo-China trade hit historic high of USD 84 bn despite Doklam standoff

International

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The bilateral trade between India and China reached USD 84.44 billion in 2017 despite a tense standoff between the two countries at Doklam.

A rare novelty of the bilateral trade otherwise dominated by the Chinese exports was about 40 per cent increase of Indian exports to China in 2017 totalling to USD 16.34 billion, data of the Chinese General Administration of Customs accessed by PTI in Beijing showed.

The bilateral trade in 2017 rose by 18.63 per cent year-on-year to reach USD 84.44 billion. It is regarded as a landmark as the volume of bilateral trade for the first time touched USD 80 billion, well above the USD 71.18 billion registered in 2017.

The trade touched historic high despite bilateral tensions over a number of issues including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China blocking India's efforts to bring about a UN ban on Jaish-e-Muhammad leader Masood Azhar, Beijing blocking India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as well as the longest military standoff at Doklam lasting 73 days.

The bilateral trade stagnated around USD 70 billion for several years despite the leaders of both the countries setting USD 100 billion as the target for 2015.

Though it is still about USD 20 billion short, officials on both sides expect trade and Chinese investments in India to pick up further this year as both the governments are trying to scale down tensions and step-up the normalisation process.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit China in June this year to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Qingdao. Reciprocal visits by Chinese leaders too were expected to take place this year.

There were also expectations that the new Commerce Minister of China to be named later this week in government reshuffle was expected to visit India in the coming weeks for talks to improve bilateral trade.

While the bilateral trade reached a new landmark, the trade deficit too continues to remain high at USD 51.75 billion- registering a growth of 8.55 per cent year-on-year in 2017.

According to India's trade figures, the deficit had crossed USD 52 billion in 2017. India has been pressing China to open the IT and Pharmaceutical sectors for Indian firms to reduce the massive trade deficit.

As per the Chinese trade data, India's exports to China increased by 39.11 per cent year-on-year to USD 16.34 billion in 2017.

India's imports from China increased by 14.59 per cent to USD 68.10 billion.

India has emerged as the seventh largest export destination for Chinese products, and the 24th largest exporter to China. Significantly, diamonds along with copper, iron ore, organic chemicals and cotton yarn contributed to the increase Indian exports to China.

India's exports of diamonds grew 4.93 per cent totalling to USD 2.59 billion. India was the second largest exporter of diamonds to China with a market share of 33.06 per cent after South Africa.

Also, Indian exports of copper registered a significant increase of 115.78 per cent to reach USD 2.15 billion. India's cotton including yarn and woven fabric exports to China showed an increase of 1.86 per cent to reach USD 1.30 billion. India was the second largest exporter of cotton to China with 15.04 per cent market share in 2017. India's exports of Zinc to China showed a sharp increase, taking it to USD 240 million.

China's exports, on the other hand, were dominated by electrical machinery and equipment registering an increase of 28.23 percent to USD 21.77 billion. India was the largest destination for China's Fertilizers exports registering 16.98 per cent of its total Fertilizers worth USD 1.03 billion to India.

India was also the largest export destination for Chinese Antibiotics- with exports worth USD 783 million taking place in 2017. Chinese exports were also led by organic chemicals, worth USD 6.56 billion in 2017.

OneIndia News
Rahul discusses jobs, economy with Indian-origin CEOs, to meet Indian diaspora tonight

International

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday met Indian-origin CEOs of various companies in Singapore and discussed a range of issues including jobs, investments, and the prevalent economic condition in India.

The Congress party posted on Twitter that Rahul discussed a range of issues, such as job creation, investments and prevailing economic conditions, during his meeting with the CEOs.

During the meeting, the Congress chief admitted that the party "faced a storm" in 2012 and in the next two years "the system was destabilised and we saw the consequences".

He said, "We faced a storm in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014 the system was destabilised and we saw the consequences. We have a clean slate now, and a new opportunity. We will present you with a new Congress Party that envisions the values you were born with."

Attacking the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rahul said that while the Congress sees society "as a system that has to be kept in balance", the ruling party "is less concerned about peace and tranquillity".

"We see society as a system that has to be kept in balance. The BJP, on the other hand, is less concerned about peace and tranquillity. We see very serious dangers of polarising society and risks arising from them," said Rahul during his interaction with the CEOs.

Later in the day, Rahul Gandhi is expected to address members of the Indian community living in Singapore.

Rahul is on a 3-day visit to Singapore and Malaysia where he will meet the Indian community, business leaders and members of the Indian Overseas Congress.

He is also slated to meet the Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong and the Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak.

OneIndia News
Acid attack survivors

Acid attack survivors walk the ramp during a fashion show on the occasion of International Women's Day, in Thane, Mumbai on Wednesday. PTI Photo

Female bikers

Female bikers leave for a road trip along with women cops after the launch of 'All Women Patrolling Squad" by the South Delhi district police, at Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi on the eve of Women's Day on Wednesday. PTI Photo

Women cops

Women cops leave for a road trip after the launch of 'All Women Patrolling Squad" by the South Delhi district police, at Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi on the eve of Women's Day on Wednesday. PTI Photo

Girl students display self-defence

Girl students display self-defence and martial art skills after their training at Vovinam, a Vietnamese martial art institute, on the eve of International Women's Day at Saidabad in Hyderabad on Wednesday. PTI Photo

Women mechanics

Women workers check the maintenance of a train ahead of International Women's Day celebrated on 8 March, in Guwahati on Wednesday. PTI Photo
In accordance with the peoples request to remove the curfew for a short period to attend their essential activities including purchasing of food and other items, President Maithripala Sirisena has decided to remove the curfew from 10 a.m. and re-impose at 6 p.m. in the Kandy District, the Department of Government Information announced today.

According to the press issued by the Director General of Government Information Attorney-at-Law Sudarshana Gunawardhana, the President Secretary Austin Fernando has instructed to Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara in this regard.

Meanwhile, the government requests the people to use of this grace time period given on humanitarian ground in responsible manner.

(Courtesy: Government News Portal)
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From Common Dreams

Their collective imprisonment is not only as a result of the perpetual military occupation of their land by Israel, but also by the fact that their leadership has operated for many years in a self-centered fashion.



'The Israeli soldier who shot Mohammed did not receive even a reprimand for shooting-to-kill an unarmed boy.'

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As global voices continue to demand the freedom of 17-year-old teenage Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, Israeli authorities have arrested nine additional members of her family.

Those who were detained on February 26 include Ahed's 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi.

Israeli troops had shot Mohammed in the head last December, shattering his skull. The teenager, who is awaiting reconstruction surgery, is unlikely to receive proper medical care in Israeli prisons.

Ahed's crime was that she slapped an Israeli soldier in a video that, since then, went viral, shortly after her cousin was shot. He was then placed in a medically-induced coma.

The Israeli soldier who shot Mohammed did not receive even a reprimand for shooting-to-kill an unarmed boy.

The Israeli military provided an outrageous explanation of why the Tamimi family members, all hailing from the small village of Nabi Saleh, were detained in a pre-dawn army raid.

"The detainees are suspected of involvement in terrorist activities, popular terror and violent disturbances against civilians and security forces," the Israeli military spokesperson said.

By "popular terror," the statement was referring to the recurring protests led by the 500 residents of Nabi Saleh against the illegal settlements and Apartheid Wall. These protests have been a staple in the everyday life of the village for nearly 12 years.

Anywhere between 600,000 and 750,000 illegal Jewish settlers live in settlements placed strategically throughout the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. They are a glaring violation of international law.

Aside from the massive Israeli army build-up in the Occupied Territories, the armed settlers have been a major source of violence against Palestinians.

Ahed and Mohammed Tamimi, along with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and teenagers, were born into this violent reality, and feel trapped.

Their collective imprisonment is not only as a result of the perpetual military occupation of their land by Israel, but also by the fact that their leadership has operated for many years in a self-centered fashion, orbiting far away from Nabi Saleh and its tiny, struggling but brave population.

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According to a press release by BDS, Juliano Medeiros, PSOL's president, stated:

PSOL's resolution reaffirms the Brazilian Left's long-standing commitment to the Palestinian people and to the pursuit of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

and the Latin America Coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), Pedro Charbel, said:

The BNC is heartened by the PSOL's reaffirmation of its support for the BDS movement for Palestinian rights. The party has heard the call from Palestinian civil society for a meaningful and effective expression of solidarity, and it has responded affirmatively. We hope the party and all its members will keep working to advance BDS in Brazil.

Brazilian authorities use Israeli armed vehicles to repress demonstrations in Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro's deadly military police, notorious for targeting poor Black and Brown people, receives training from Israeli companies. Brazil spends millions on Israeli weapons and military technology.

The Brazilian government should heed the call by Brazilians and Palestinians alike to stop trading in military weapons, technology and training with Israel.

Whether in Rio's favelas or in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, we are working together to defeat a global industry of injustice.
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Palestinian teen activist was imprisoned by Israel at age 16, turned 17 in jail, and is now enduring a hidden trial. Ahed, her family and her lawyer have called for an open courtroom, but Israel says it must close her trial to the public for her "protection." The courtroom has barred media, diplomats, and human rights observers.

CodePink insists on an open trial in their petition here, saying:

Text of CodePink's letter to the State Dept:

Dear US State Department,

It is horrible that Israel has closed the courtroom for the military trial of 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi. They are trying to hide from the international community while they try a child in a military court with an over 99% conviction rate.

Seventeen-year-old Ahed Tamimi is facing up to 10 years in prison. Each year, Israel arrests and prosecutes around 700 Palestinian children in military court. Israel's abuse of Palestinian children must stop.

We ask you to demand that Israel open the courtroom and that you send a representative of the US government to be present throughout Ahed Tamimi's trial.

Sincerely,
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Lady Liberty

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If you keep moving towards a particular destination, then eventually, despite delays, distractions and denials, you will arrive there. With this in mind, we need to consider where current trends are taking our nation. To me, the outcome might be called "Confederacy 2.0".

The practical authority of the federal government is being challenged to a degree not seen since the Civil War. Overcoming the marijuana prohibition by states is nullification in real terms. Then there are efforts to secure hemp production (Rhode Island) or decriminalize all illegal drugs (Oregon) or ignore federal food-safety regulations (Maine) or undermine climate-change inaction by reaching out to other nations (California) or restoring net neutrality (Washington state). Recent examples of "interposition" have emerged in which state officials shield illegal immigrants from capture by federal authority -- the sort of thing that preceded secession in our past.

Would some states "nullify" if abortion was blocked by Congress (NYS Constitution)? Or would others refuse future federal orders about gun control (Missouri legislature)? How about surveillance issues or aspects of the NDAA that suggest future martial law (Idaho House)? The trends by states are already there, for better or worse.

The end of the American Dream and projected trillion-dollar deficits coupled with deep political polarization suggest that our central government will lose much of its "soft power" to control the nation. Additionally, both political parties are damaging the very legitimacy of federal elections -- blaming outcomes they don't like on supposed non-citizens voting or sketchy foreign meddling (although Saudis and Israelis are given a 'free pass'). Ironically, our political system seems to be thereby achieving the very mass distrust allegedly engineered by Russia!

Bad marriages don't always end in divorce. Sometimes, partners stick together in name only, enduring the misery (and discreetly "seeing other people"). This may be a model for the future USA even if outright secession never happens -- and it does no good to argue points of law about what the Constitution allows when the Bill of Rights is so casually disrespected -- by colleges, courts and both parties, each in their own way. This is about what states or even parts of states can get away with, regardless of what the Supreme Court says (as has happened with marijuana). It is also about the centrifugal forces that can tear a nation apart when seeking greedy partisan advantage overwhelms all else. There was a time when our nation achieved Voting Rights, Civil Rights and Medicare as a nation -- things that appear impossible today.

If de facto "Confederacy 2.0" seems implausible to you as a future of broken federal authority, then what will overcome the challenges that will cause it? Will we deeply unite as citizens, live within our means and stop flirting with collapse as an unsustainable global empire? Will we stop the erosion of a common national culture, secure our borders with compassion and maintain the historical standards of citizenship? (Do you believe in miracles?)

It might be the least bad outcome that we can realistically hope for. Find a nice state and move there.

Good Luck to us all.
From The Nation

Another storm is sweeping into Reykjavik on this dark and cold late-winter evening, but in the downstairs hall of the century-old Hannesarholt cultural house, several dozen Icelanders are basking in the warmth of their country's rich literary heritage. The lecturer tonight is a small woman with a large personality. Her enthusiastic two-hour presentation, punctuated with dramatic readings, wry humor, and songs, traces the evolution of the love story across the centuries. The emphasis is on the evolving role of women and the emergence of feminist sensibilities. The crowd is thrilled by the literary depth and intellectual breadth of the evening and rewards Katrin Jakobsdottir with a standing ovation, which she graciously accepts before heading back to her day job -- as prime minister of Iceland.

Energetic and impassioned, determined to lead not merely with legislation but with lessons, Jakobsdottir is the first elected head of state who comes from a new breed of Nordic left-wing parties that link democratic socialism, environmentalism, feminism, and anti-militarism. She is, as well, one of a number of young left-leaning women who have emerged as prime ministers and party leaders in countries around the world at the same time that the United States has been coming to grips with the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the election of Donald Trump. While the United States wrestles with retrograde leadership -- and the fantasy that a country can only be made great by doing something "again" -- other countries are electing women who, in the words of Laura Liswood, secretary general of the Council of Women World Leaders, are "channeling today's zeitgeist."

"Women represent change, because they're from a historically unrepresented group, and younger women represent a generational shift as well," says Liswood, who for decades has studied the role of women in politics and government. "It's almost as if everyone has permission to step away from the traditional ways of thinking. Society has changed sufficiently to talk about what is possible."

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That embrace of possibility stands in stark contrast to the hidebound and reactionary messages sent by Trump's election and his approach to governing. It also offers perspectives on how to forge a new politics that might give the United States permission to step away from its own traditional ways of thinking. There will always be those who embrace an American-exceptionalist dogma that insists there is nothing to learn from the rest of the world -- and even less to learn from a remote island nation with a population that's dwarfed even by small American states -- but Iceland has captured a lot of imaginations. When I tweeted about the new prime minister's left-wing politics and agenda after she assembled her coalition government last fall, I got 72,000 likes -- and a lot of responses from Americans asking "How can I move there?" or, better yet, "Can we have one of these please?"

Settled into a chair in the modest conference room outside her office in the former Danish prison that serves as Iceland's Stjornarrad (Cabinet House), Jakobsdottir acknowledges the sudden interest in the country's political progression. "I can understand," says the literary critic who became prime minister. "It's a little different."

The international press has referred to Jakobsdottir as "the anti-Trump." And as she races to implement Iceland's sweeping pay-equity law (quoting John Stuart Mill and talking about "the inequality that has the deepest roots in us all"); charges the head of Iceland's largest conservation NGO with running the environment ministry; and discourses knowledgeably about the economic and social changes that will extend from automation, it's easy to understand why.

"I began my political participation through demonstrations."

But the "anti-Trump" label draws an eye-roll from Jakobsdottir. She isn't preoccupied by a desire to square off against the US president, either on Twitter or on the global stage. She's much more interested in showing what Iceland can do, and in establishing a new model for what a leader might look and act like in the 21st century. When she appeared at the One Planet Summit in Paris last December -- just months after Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement of 2015 -- Jakobsdottir didn't spend her time griping about US obstructionism; she came to announce her country's plans for "going further" than the goals of the accord. Promising "a carbonless Iceland in 2040," she cheekily proposed a race to ditch fossil fuels: "There are other nations making such goals, but our time schedule is ambitious, and we are going to be five years ahead of our neighbors in the Nordic countries."

For Jakobsdottir, politics is the art of the imaginable. Not of sweeping assertions and empty-headed certainty, mind you -- she knows she's the leader of a small country that has seen wild political mood swings since 2008, when it experienced the largest systemic banking collapse (relative to the size of its economy) of any nation in history. And she knows that the coalition government she now leads -- which aligns her proudly socialist, environmentalist, feminist Left-Green Movement with a pair of center-right parties that are not particularly popular among her own party's activist base -- is an unprecedented project that is held together in no small part because of her status as the most trusted political figure in Iceland. She recognizes that politics in Iceland, and perhaps internationally, must produce smart, forward-looking alternatives to the toxic mix of right-wing populism, yearning for an unenlightened past, and lies about the future that has emerged in an age of desperate but often ill-focused anger over dead-end neoliberalism.

"We are trying to do things differently," Jakobsdottir says. In a world where most leaders of countries are still men, and where a good many of those men root their understandings in decades-old political models and practices, it's worth noting that a 42-year-old feminist who embraces the #MeToo movement, recalls that "I began my political participation through demonstrations," and gets excited about the way that grassroots movements can change politics and society is still a rarity on the global stage. "I've gone to one international meeting, which was the global summit in Paris," Jakobsdottir says. "And I noticed that there were a lot fewer women than men. So I was like, 'OK, the numbers are not too high for us right now. We've got to change that.'"

Will we? "Oh, yes, I think that's doable."

Jakobsdottir has a thing for the word "doable." She uses it a lot -- and with a refreshing confidence that not just her own small country but the world can and will be transformed, politically, socially, and culturally, for the better.

Mobilizing Iceland to address climate change and then leveraging that mobilization to influence the rest of the world? "It's huge, but it's doable," Jakobsdottir says. "I can already see that the other Nordic countries are saying [that they want to be] carbon-neutral by 2045 -- so it's a little bit of a race. And you can't do this just by reducing emissions. We also have to change the way we are using lands, restoring wetlands -- really change the way we think. But, yes, we can do that."

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"I think it is important that parents know what is going on."

- Scott Schmerelson, LAUSD Board Member

Under the current rules of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), "a charter school [is] required to notify all parents, guardians and teachers in writing within 72 hours when the District issues a Notice of Violations...and that the notification include the District's rationale for the action". However, no such notification was made after a Notice of Violation was issued to Granada Hills Charter High School on March 3, 2017, alleging unapproved alterations to the District-owned campus that "were a risk to the health and safety of [the school's] students, staff, and other individuals." The Charter School Division staff did request "that they share that information with families because it was significant", but the school's administration refused to do so. To date parents and guardians have not been notified of the dangers existing in their children's school and no formal action has been taken against Granada for breaking this rule



Jose' Cole-Gutie'rrez

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Scott Schmerelson

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While the California Charter School Association (CCSA) continues to push for the expansion of their publicly funded private schools under the guise of parental choice, they have simultaneously worked to ensure that their operations are kept from the prying eyes of the taxpayers. However, without having access to information like notices to cure or violations, parents cannot make educated choices. Keeping parents isolated allows charters to maintain the illusion that no complaints against their operations have been filed. It is an environment that is ripe for disaster and allows corruption and waste to flourish.

The proposed Holding GHCHS Accountable to Their Charter resolution takes a small step towards ensuring accountability for charters in the area of enrollment. However, at least one Board Member needs to present it to the Board in order for it to proceed. You can encourage them to do this by signing the petition on Change.Org and calling their offices:

George McKenna 213-241-6382

Monica Garca 213-241-6180

Scott Schmerelson 213-241-8333

Nick Melvoin 213-241-6387

Ref Rodriguez 213-241-5555

Kelly Gonez 213-241-6388

Richard Vladovic 213-241-6385

____________________________________________

Carl Petersen is a parent and special education advocate, elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and was a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race. During the campaign, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action and Dr. Diane Ravitch called him a "strong supporter of public schools." His past blogs can be found at www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com.
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From The Nation

The defining characteristic of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for too many years now has been its well-honed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Drowning in conventional wisdom, disconnected from realities on the ground, and instinctively inclined to react to Republicans rather than to set its own agenda, the DCCC is such a bumbling enterprise that even the chairman of the Democratic National Committee recently distanced himself from its so-called "strategies."

When DNC chair Tom Perez was asked his opinion of a ham-handed move by the DCCC to circulate selectively edited and disingenuously framed opposition research against Texas Democrat Laura Moser, a popular progressive running in the party's crowded primary in the Houston-area's 7th Congressional District, he replied: "I wouldn't have done it.

That was a wise response, as grassroots Democrats are figuring out that taking advice from the strikingly-inept folks in DC might not make as much sense as following their own instincts in districts like the seventh, where Republican incumbents are vulnerable to defeat. After Moser answered the DNC attack by urging primary voters to reject the counsel of "Washington operatives trying to tell Texans what to do," the voters did just that.

Moser was one of the two top finishers in the initial primary, beating out several other serious, and well-funded, contenders. A May runoff will feature Moser, a tech-savvy activist who popularized the Daily Action text-messaging tool that because a favorite with resistance campaigners against Trump and Trumpism, and corporate lawyer Lizzie Fletcher, who ran with the backing of Emily's List and a number of wealthy donors. Moser won 24 percent of Tuesday's primary vote to 29 percent for Fletcher. The next closest contender, progressive physician Jason Westin, won 19 percent.

There's a good case to be made that the DCCC helped Moser, whose grassroots fund-raising spiked after the attack. She also earned a late-in-the-race endorsement from Our Revolution, the group formed by Bernie Sanders backers that had established a strong presence in Texas -- and when the results came in, Texas populist Jim Hightower, an Our Revolution Board member, said: "The voters of Texas showed they are the only deciders in the race to represent them in Congress."

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Palestine Advocacy Project's latest billboard ad campaign: Ahed Tamimi

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The Palestine Advocacy Project is raising awareness about Israel's mistreatment of Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi with two billboards on Interstate 95 northbound in Connecticut. The billboards are in Bridgeport and Stratford. I-95 is the main north--south Interstate Highway on the East Coast of the U.S., (though in actuality, it runs primarily east and west in CT.) The interstate has daily traffic volumes of 120,000 to over 150,000 between the New York state line and the junction with I-91 in New Haven, CT. Bridgeport and Stratford are on that route.



Palestine Advocacy Project's latest billboard ad campaign: Ahed Tamimi

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The Palestine Advocacy Project explains the billboard initiative:

The first billboard compares the apartheid regime in Israel with the former apartheid regime in South Africa. The text strikes through the name of Nelson Mandela and instead proposes Ahed Tamimi just below. Both Nelson Mandela (imprisoned for 27 years by South Africa's apartheid government) and Ahed symbolize courageous resistance to a repressive government and apartheid systems. Ahed, who spent her 17th birthday in military prison, was arrested without charge and can be held up to 6 month with no due process rights, like so many other Palestinians. When she does go to trial, she will be in a court that has a 99.74% percent conviction rate for Palestinians. Israel's settlers operate with virtual impunity in the Occupied West Bank.

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United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X) Is Set to Benefit from Trumps Policies

Source: Stock Traders Daily

Technical Summary

Term  Near Mid Long Bias Weak Strong Strong P1 40.34 37.25 35.18 P2 42.26 43.88 41.28 P3 45.39 50.28 47.72

Long Term Trading Plans for X March 14, 2018, 8:39 am ET The technical Summary and associated Trading Plans for X listed below will help you make important timing decisions for your trades. This data is based on our proprietary analysis for X. In addition we offer Market Timing Models and Stock Filters in the links above which may increase the proficiency of the decisions you make. X - (Long) Support Plan Buy over 35.18 target 41.28 stop loss @ 34.92.

The technical summary data tells us to buy X near 35.18 with an upside target of 41.28. This data also tells us to set a stop loss @ 34.92 to protect against excessive loss in case the stock begins to move against the trade. 35.18 is the first level of support below 40.24 , and by rule, any test of support is a buy signal. In this case, support 35.18 would be being tested, so a buy signal would exist. X - (Short) Resistance Plan Short under 41.28 target 35.18 stop loss @ 41.54.

The technical summary data is suggesting a short of X as it gets near 41.28 with a downside target of 35.18. We should have a stop loss in place at 41.54 though. 41.28 is the first level of resistance above 40.24, and by rule, any test of resistance is a short signal. In this case, if resistance 41.28 is being tested, so a short signal would exist.



























United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X) is among major US steel makers that are set to benefit from a recent US Department of Commerce report submitted to the Trump administration regarding the state of the US steel industry. Some of the recommendations in the report include the important role that the US steel industry plays in the countrys national security agenda.

The United States is currently the biggest importer of steel and steel products given that many steel companies have closed their manufacturing facilities in the country even as demand for steel products has been rising. The US currently relies heavily on steel imports from China and given the trade tensions between China and the US, the Trump administration is reevaluating the trade relationship between the two countries.

Review Our US Steel Corp Trading Plans Here.

Our technical analysis of the stock reveals that the company reported lower revenues in Q4 2017 as compared to Q3 2017, but this is likely to change in upcoming quarters, especially if President Trump approves the implementation of the DoC recommendations. The steel maker is set to benefit from the implementation of protectionist policies by the Trump administration in order to safeguard and revive the steel industry.

The companys quarterly growth has been relatively steady since Q2 2016 with a major spike in Q2 2017, but this is likely to change in future quarters. The companys projected future quarterly growth was pegged at a slightly higher level, but this was before the DoC report.

President Trump is likely to impose massive tariffs on steel imports in an effort to fulfil his campaign promise of reviving American manufacturing industries. Most voters in the steel belt voted for Trump based on his campaign promise to revive the steel industry and it is highly unlikely that he will not honor his campaign promise.

The companys revenues have been rising steadily since Q1 2016 and are likely to spike much higher once Trump approves the DoC recommendations.

Based on the technical data and associated charts at the time this article was written, Stock Traders Daily has provided detailed trading plans, with integrated risk controls, to its clients. These plans will change in real time as prices move. To receive an update or to review the detailed trading plans associated with this data please review our Real Time Trading Report for US Steel.
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By Dave Lindorff



We need gun reform now, student lie-in at the White House to protest gun laws

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A salute to the kids of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida!

After experiencing a terrifying attack on their school by a tragically unhinged former student armed with an assault-style rifle who killed 14 of their classmates and three teachers and seriously injured another 14, they didn't retreat into fear and victimhood. Instead they are taking to the streets, taking to buses to the state capital in Tallahassee, and are using social media to organize a national youth campaign to get assault weapons and large-capacity magazines banned.

In refusing to be silenced by the National Rifle Assn. and political charlatans like Florida Sen. Marc Rubio or President Trump, or co-opted by Democratic politicians eager to use the issue of gun control to win points in next November's congressional elections, these students and the tens of thousands of high school kids who have joined them across the country in states blue, red and purple, they have in one stroke revived the idea of mass political action.

These kids are not being polite. When someone like Sen. Rubio or Florida Gov. Rick Scott or the Florida state legislature comes up with an excuse like blaming the shooting on mental illness rather than the easy availability of mass-killing military-style weapons, they shout "BS!" When they're told the answer is to arm teachers, they shout "BS!" When they're accused of being "paid crisis actors" or manipulated, they shout "BS!" And when the Florida legislature insults them by ignoring their mass trip to the state capital to demand a hearing on gun legislation, they mass in front of the statehouse, shout "BS!" and demand to be heard.

The whole political battleground over gun ownership in the US has just undergone a tectonic shift as great as if a 9-point tremor had struck. For the first time in memory, huge corporations like Delta Airlines are abandoning their backing for the NRA, dropping lucrative and once popular marketing discount programs for NRA members on pain of being boycotted -- a threat that has even gigantic companies like Apple and Amazon worried. No wonder the NRA had their latest version of Charlton Heston, Dana Loesh, put out a short ad in which, like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, she poses in black with a giant hourglass, darkly warning the "lying media," Hollywood "phonies," unpatriotic athletes, politicians who "watch America burn" and late night hosts," that "Your time is running out -- the clock starts now."

The gun lobby making this threat is suddenly running scared. Like that other top lobbying organization, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, which was stood up and ignored by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016, their bluff has been called. Once cowed politicians are realizing they can stand up to such lobbies and still retain or maybe even gain support among voters, it's their days that are numbered.

Will the student movement, on this once sacred issue of gun rights, succeed?"

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This Preface, written for the current, third version of the book published in 2013, is in my voice, that of Steven Jonas, the book's real author. The Preface is quite long and will in this series be published in three parts. Indeed, it should have been published before the previous installment, which was the book's Chapter One, written in the voice of the fictional author, Jonathan Westminster. Please forgive the mistake. For continuity, following the publication of the Preface (in its three parts), I will be beginning the body of the book again, with Chapter One.

I. The Origins of this Book

I began thinking about what would eventually become the book you see before you in the mid-1980s, after the re-election of Ronald Reagan. The thinking process went on for quite a while, and both the story-line and the format (novel, non-fiction, some combination of both?) underwent numerous changes. Whatever form the book would eventually take, I was concerned that during the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush the Republican Religious Right (RRR) was becoming ever more powerful. I began to think about what might happen were they to take over effectively full governmental power at the Federal and widely at the state levels. Being an academic, to support whatever form I might come up with, I began collecting material on positions that both governmental and non-governmental representatives of the RRR were then taking about the matter of what they would indeed do, were they to gain that effective control. I gathered it from a variety of sources: published articles, books, fund-raising letters, position papers, newspaper and magazine articles about them. Finally, in 1994, I came up with the outlines of a scenario that they might follow, and began writing this book.



Donald Reagan. As much as the .mainstream. Repubs. would like to deny it, Trump is a direct political descendant of the former .B. movie actor.

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I am a writer of non-fiction, not fiction. (Believe me there are major differences in skills between the two. I regard the latter as much more difficult than the former. Non-fiction writers simply need to be able to undertake description and analysis, sometimes simply reporting. We need to use references. However, we do not need to be able to write dialogue, describe scenes and settings in appropriate prose, or engage in character development.) Thus for this book, even though I decided that I would be writing primarily in the non-fiction style, at the same time I would be writing fiction in the sense that after a certain point I would be making up the plot-line certainly introducing fictional characters. At the same time, while the story-line would be set in the then-future, it would be based on real policies and politics that real people on the Right were promoting in the 1980s and 90s. And so I came up with what I describe as a "cross-over" book: fictional non-fiction, purportedly written by a future professor of political science, "Jonathan Westminster." (For more detail on him, please see IV, below "Historical Voices.") The book is a supposed retrospective on the (supposed) U.S. fascist period, published in2048 on the 25th anniversary of the re-establishment of U.S. Constitutional Democracy, July 4, 2048, following the triumph of the Movement for the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy in the Second Civil War (2022).

To my mind the most important feature of this book is that what is projected to happen is to the extent possible based on what the Republican Religious Right had been telling us, prior to the time I wrote the book in 1994-1996 (and indeed is still telling us), they would do if they were ever able to gain full control of the government. Indeed they were telling us that as far back as the 1980s, but back then nobody wanted to listen. They are telling us much more loudly now. More people are listening and more people are getting very afraid of a future governed by the Republican Religious Right. Nevertheless, to date no real political opposition with power and money behind it has developed. One of the main points that I make in the book is that the fictional transformation of the Republican Party to what I call the "Republican-Christian Alliance" and then on to the "American Christian Nation Party" takes place out in the open and nobody in a position of political power and political authority says boo to a goose.

I wrote the book as a warning, to which no one took heed. I published the original version of this book in 1996 under my own imprint, the "Thomas Jefferson Press." The title of that version was The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-22 . The future-historical scenario is framed by a series of (fictional) documents: Presidential Inaugural addresses, Constitutional Amendments, Presidential Declarations, a Supreme Court decision, one treaty with a foreign power, several acts of Congress, and the Declaration of the Movement for the Restoration of Constitutional Democracy.

With the help of my good friend Patrice Greanville, the Publisher of Punto Press, I am issuing the warning again. It is still not too late. But someone is going to have to wake up to the real threats to our body politic presented to us by the modern Republican Religious Right. Someone is going to have to start naming names, taking identities, and stop pretending that the party that runs on religious- and race-based hate and makes liberal use of the Hitlerian Big Lie technique, is not a) qualitatively different from its predecessor and b) a real threat to U.S. Constitutional Democracy as we know it.

II. A Brief Overview of the Book

The book is a novelized chronicle of the rise and fall of a Fascist regime in the United States during the years 2001-2023. It is intended to present a barebones view of the events of the "Fascist Period," as it could have been seen contemporaneously to those events. Further, it attempts to show how the origins of each major step taken by Republican Religious Right during the Period, in most instances represented by a major document (as mentioned above), could be found either in what is by Westminster's time called the U.S. pre-fascist "Transition Era," 1981-2001, or in events that took place in one or another of the fascist states that existed in other parts of the world between 1922 and 1945. The principal goals of this book are similar to those of its major forebears: Jack London's The Iron Heel and Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here , as if those authors had written those books with 20/20 hindsight.

As noted, many 20th century sources are used to explicate the then-stated goals of the Republican Religious Right, ranging, for example, from the 1992 Republican Party Platform, to fundraising letters written by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, to position papers of the litigatory arm of [the] Rev. Pat Robertson's "Christian Coalition" (the chief national political organization of the old Religious Right), called the "American Center for Law and Justice." All sources are referenced in the text either by the name of the principal author or, if none is listed, by the name of the publisher. The reference sources are listed at the end of each chapter.

This book does not deal with the projected outcomes of Republican Religious Rightist policies over which there was in the late 20th century considerable scientific controversy. Thus, for the most part excluded are, for example, in the environmental arena (except for natural resources policy) the (even-then) predictable effects of global warming caused by human activity (1), the marked destruction of the ozone layer, and the sharp decline in biodiversity. Many of the predicted environmental disasters caused or significantly abetted by Republican Religious Rightist policies are as of 2012 indeed occurring or well on their way to occurring (2, 3, 4). However, the book does project a future "Resource Based Economy" (RBE) based on the ever-expanding power of the extractive industries (which have exploded before our very eyes). However, in the late 20th century, the outcomes of those policies could not have been predicted with nearly the accuracy of those predictions that could then have been made of the political and economic outcomes for the country if Republican Religious Right took power.

Once in power at the Federal and state levels, the Republican Religious Right is then projected to have achieved virtually all of its stated goals in the political, social, and economic arenas, and then some. In the beginning, at least, through the electoral process they did this entirely by legal/constitutional means. The predictably widening use of force and violence came later. And the more profound results of the takeover, such as the creation of the apartheid-based "New American Republics," came later too, but predictably as well.

A. A Note on Foreign Policy

Except for some allusions to the "Latin Wars," I did not deal with foreign policy issues in the book. It is long enough as it is (as is this new introduction). Therefore, I am not going to deal with the many obvious ones here. Suffice it to say that, in a reverse of this book possibly being a guidebook for the Republican Religious Right as they proceed with their domestic policies, the real foreign policies of the Bush Administration (and some of the Obama Administration as well [5]) would likely find a home in the State and Defense Departments of the fictional Republican-Christian Alliance.

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This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

Here's a thoroughly humdrum figure from the post-9/11 world: this February an estimated 1,294 people were killed in Iraq and another 266 wounded, including ISIS militants, numerous civilians, Iraqi security forces, Kurds, and Turks. Few of them died in major combat, just low-level incidents, suicide bombings, and bodies found in mass graves. And keep in mind that that's what passes for a peaceful month in the country George W. Bush invaded and occupied in March 2003. Since then, the violence there has never ceased, amid insurgencies, religious strife, the rise and fall (and rise) of terror groups, acts of ethnic cleansing, and other horrors without end. A number of Iraq's major cities, including Fallujah, Ramadi, and its second largest urban area, Mosul, are little more than rubble today. Hundreds of thousands of its people, many of them civilians, have been killed and more wounded. In the last few years, an estimated 1.3 million Iraqi children have been displaced in the war against ISIS, even as the country remains deeply riven and without access to the funds necessary to truly rebuild.

And that, of course, is just one ruined land in the Greater Middle East, a region from Afghanistan to Libya increasingly filled with failed states, terror groups, and ruins as, almost 17 years after the attacks of 9/11, the Trump administration once again ramps up the war on terror (which should long ago have been renamed the war for terror). Today, TomDispatchregular James Carroll, a former columnist for the Boston Globe, leaves Donald J. Trump in the dust and returns to the fateful moments when all of this first began, when President George W. Bush launched what would be, to choose a word that has long been on Carroll's mind, a "crusade" not just against terrorism but, as it turned out, against much of the Islamic world. Carroll, whose new novel The Cloister, is set against the age of the original crusades, takes in its enormity so many years later. Tom

God Wills It!

The War on Terror as the Launching of an American Crusade

By James Carroll

America may be sinking ever deeper into the moral morass of the Trump era, but if you think the malevolence of this period began with him, think again. The moment I still dwell on, the moment I believe ignited the vast public disorder that is now our all-American world, has been almost completely forgotten here. And little wonder. It was no more than a casually tossed-off cliche', a passing historical reference whose implications and consequences meant nothing to the speaker. "This crusade," said President George W. Bush just days after the 9/11 attacks, "this war on terrorism""

That, however, proved to be an invocation from hell, one that set the stage for so much of the horror to follow. The Crusades were, of course, a centuries-long medieval catastrophe. Bush's Global War on Terror, in contrast, has already wreaked comparable havoc in a paltry 17 years, leading to almost unimaginable mayhem abroad and a moral collapse at home personified by President Donald J. Trump.

Despite the threads of causality woven together as if on some malignant loom that brought about his election -- the cult of reality-show celebrity, the FBI director's last-minute campaign intervention, Russian mischief, Hillary Clinton's vulnerability to self-defeat and misogyny, electoral college anomalies, Republican party nihilism, and a wickedly disenchanted public -- the ease with which such a figure took control of the levers of power in this country should still stun us. Some deep sickness of the soul had already played havoc with our democracy's immune system or he wouldn't have been imaginable. Think of him as a symptom, not the disease. After Trump finally leaves the Oval Office, we'll still be a stricken people and the world will still be groaning under the weight of the wreckage this country has brought about. How, then, did we actually get here? It might be worth a momentary glance back.

A Fever Dream of a War

"This is a new kind of evil." So said the president that September 16th, standing on the South Lawn of the White House. "And the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." In that way, only five days after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush elevated a band of petty nihilists to the status of world-historic warriors. "And the American people must be patient," he continued. "I'm going to be patient."

He, of course, is long gone, but what he initiated that day is still unspooling. It could have been so different. September 11th was a tragic moment, but the initial reactions of most Americans to those collapsed towers and a damaged Pentagon were ones of empathy and patriotism. The selflessness of first responders that day had its echo in a broad and surprising manifestation of national altruism. The usual left-right divides of politics disappeared and the flag, for once, became a true symbol of national unity. The global reaction was similar. From across the world, including from erstwhile adversaries like Russia and China, came authentic expressions of support and sympathy, of grief-struck affection.

But in every phrase the president would speak in those weeks -- "this is war" with us or against us" dead or alive" -- he chose to take this country on quite a different path into the future.

Two days before invoking the Crusades, for instance, he presided over a religious service, which, though officially defined as "ecumenical," took place in the neo-Gothic National Cathedral. "Just three days removed from these events," he said from that church's pulpit, "Americans do not yet have the distance of history. But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil" This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing."

In a specifically Christian setting, that is, George W. Bush answered the criminal attacks of 9/11 not by calling on international law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice, but by a declaration of cosmic war aimed at nothing less than the elimination of Islamist evil. Labeling it a "crusade" only underscored the subliminal but potent message conveyed by television cameras that lingered on the cathedral's multiple crucifixes and the bloodied figure of Jesus Christ. Held up for all to see, that sacred icon sent a signal that could not be missed. A self-avowed secular nation was now to be a crusader, ready to display the profoundly Christian character of a culture erected on triumphalist pieties from its Pilgrim roots to the nuclear apocalypticism of the Cold War.

Bush's message was received in the Arab world just as you might expect. There, his reference to "this crusade" was rendered as "this War of the Cross." Even then, many Muslims knew better than to regard the president's characterization of the conflict to come as purely accidental and of no import, just as they would later disregard the insistence of America's leaders that their country's violent intrusions across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa were not "religiously" inspired in any way. Today, of course, Donald Trump's brazen denigrations of Muslims have made clear just how on target observers in the Islamic world were about what lay behind Washington's new "global war."

At the time of Bush's cavalier use of crusade, I was one of the few here to take offense and say so. I feared even then that stumbling into sectarian strife, into -- in the argot of the day -- a "clash of civilizations," could set in motion, as the original Crusades had, a dynamic that would far outrun anyone's intentions, loosing forces that could destroy the very principles in whose name that "war of choice" was declared. Little did I know how far short of an accurate damage assessment my thoughts would fall.

In fact, Bush's use of that term wasn't a stumble, however inadvertent, but a crystal-clear declaration of purpose that would soon be aided and abetted by a fervent evangelical cohort within the U.S. military, already primed for holy war. With what Bush himself called "the distance of history," it's now possible to see the havoc his "crusade" is still wreaking across much of the globe: Iraq and Afghanistan are in ruins; Syria destroyed (with Russian, American, Israeli, Turkish, and Iranian warplanes testing one another in its airspace); Yemen gripped by a war-induced famine; the Turks at the throat of the Kurds; the Israeli-Palestinian peace process dead; Libya a failed state; U.S. Special Ops garrisons in Somalia, Niger, and across Africa; and Europe increasingly politically destabilized by refugee flows from these conflicts. Meanwhile, Bush's crusade became the American disease now peaking in the fever dream of President Donald Trump.
ROLLS-ROYCE SHOWCASES CLEANER & MORE EFFICIENT POWER FOR CUSTOMERS AT WINGS INDIA 2018 NewsPatrolling.com: Rolls-Royce is pioneering the power that matters so that its customers can give a cleaner, more efficient and reliable experience to travellers. At Wings India 2018, the premier civil aviation exhibition in the country, Rolls-Royce is showcasing its latest Trent aero engines including the Trent 7000, Trent 1000 and Trent XWB which offer the very latest in aero engine technology delivering fuel efficiency and environmental performance to support Indias growing civil aviation industry. The Rolls-Royce booth (Hall A Booth 31) also features a visualisation of a Carbon Titanium (CTi) fanset being developed for Rolls-Royces next generation UltraFan engines, and a quarter scale model of Trent 7000 engine that exclusively powers the new Airbus A330neo, along with interactive audio-visual content.







Ewen McDonald, Rolls-Royce, SVP, Customers and Services (APAC)  Civil Aerospace, said: With rapid growth in Indias civil aviation industry, we expect a significant demand for widebody aircraft by airlines to meet increased passenger growth and operational efficiencies. Our Trent engines powering leading widebody aircraft are much more fuel-efficient, cleaner and quieter than previous engines, allowing airlines to improve operational efficiency as well as offer better passenger experience. In line with our vision to pioneer the power that matters to our customers, we are well-positioned to offer our strong portfolio of more efficient and cleaner products and solutions and play a key role in Indias growing aviation sector.







According to aviation regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Indias domestic air traffic nearly doubled to 117 million passengers in 2017 compared with 67 million in 2011, driven by a strong economy and low-fares and most airlines are pursuing expansion plans to support this rapid growth in passenger traffic. Rolls-Royce, which early in the next decade expects to power more than 50 per cent of in-service widebody passenger aircraft, has a strong track record of supporting airlines growth and helping them transition from narrowbody to widebody fleets.







In India, Rolls-Royce has been steadily building its capabilities across engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, digital and customer support to support local growth. The Aerospace Engineering Centre in Bangalore has over 600 engineers contributing to global aerospace engine programmes. Rolls-Royces R2 Data Labs, an acceleration hub for data innovation which set up a facility in Bangalore last year, develops data applications that unlock design, manufacturing and operational efficiencies and creates new service propositions for customers. A growing footprint coupled with its strong commitment to India enables Rolls-Royce to offer the right combination of experience and new technologies and contribute towards Indias growth ambitions.





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IZF invites companies to participate in Africa CEO Forum 2018

www.izf.net

The AFRICA CEO FORUM, next 26th and 27th of March in Abidjan, capital city of Ivory Coast, is the unparalleled meeting of the most influential African and international CEOs, bankers and investors. It provides a unique platform dedicated to the private sector in Africa taking place in a ready to business environment. This unique event, taking place every year since 2012, brings together more than 1.200 participants ready to debate and exchange ideas on the issues affecting Africas economic development each year.With unparalleled exhibitions and the greatest networking opportunities, AFRICA CEO FORUM 2018 gathers several private companies from all the continent and different sectors of activity, delivering an exemplary experience putting Africapitalism at the forefront of the global agenda highlighting the best in economics, culture, industry development, and tourism in Africa.Attending companies can achieve several goals at once, including the expansion of their network of top-level business contacts, promoting their company in Africa and internationally, learning from the best practices of fast-growing companies, and finding new financial partners.With an 8% growth rate in 2017, Ivory Coast is a driving force of regional integration within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) offering an advantageous business for international investors due to an improving financial system and infrastructure.IZF is delighted to extend the invitation to participate in this event and join the conversation on the latest issues concerning private investment and initiatives concerning women, technology and youth.About IZFIZF is an organization that encourages business development in the francophone area, and helps business leaders by providing them with information essential to their activities, while connecting local and international business partners and promoting the idea of cooperating.To learn more about IZF, investment opportunities in the Francophone Sector of Africa or Foreign Direct Investments, please contact us ator talk to one of our representatives:IZF Association TeamTel.: (+226) 25 30 11 08E-mail: contactizf@izf.netIZF Association01 BP 543 Ouagadougou 01 - BURKINA FASOTel.: (+226) 25 30 11 08E-mail: contactizf@izf.net
FiberLight Promotes Kevin Coyne to Chief Operating Officer

www.fiberlight.com

www.fiberlight.com

Additional Organization Restructure and Realignment Efforts Will Ensure Continued Financial Discipline and Improve Customer ExperienceAtlanta  March 6, 2018  FiberLight, LLC (FiberLight), an industry leading provider of high-capacity fiber-based network connectivity solutions, today announces the promotion of its Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Kevin Coyne, to the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO). As a member of FiberLights Board of Directors and one of the companys original founders, Kevin has held a progression of roles within the organization since 1998. While maintaining focus on finance, accounting, treasury, tax, carrier access and other cost-control teams, Kevins new role will expand his responsibilities to include guidance and oversight for engineering, construction, information technology and project management activities.This appointment is the latest in a series of organizational changes designed to capitalize on FiberLights unique position as a highly-profitable lit and dark fiber service provider. With industry-leading scalability, FiberLight boasts a long history of constructing and deploying reliable, customized network connectivity infrastructure and transport solutions. Under Kevins leadership, FiberLight will embrace financial and operational discipline across all departments to ensure continued organizational stability and industry-leading churn, leverage and EBITDA performance.Im excited to take on additional responsibilities within the FiberLight organization. By partnering with leaders from our internal teams, I will have the opportunity to provide greater focus and direction as we create new standards, processes, and controls to enable cost savings and operational efficiency, says Kevin. We continue to invest in state-of-the-art platforms which will allow FiberLight to scale rapidly while maintaining growth through both organic and acquisitive opportunities. As the demand for advanced connectivity grows, continued improvements within the organization will enable us to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver purpose-built low-latency solutions across our dense and unique fiber footprint.In addition to Kevins promotion, FiberLight has also implemented additional organizational changes to support its mission to better serve customers and internal teams, including the creation of new leadership positions and specialized departments. Jay Anderson has been promoted to the newly-established role of chief engineer, where he will be responsible for overseeing network architecture and capacity, managing relations with trusted equipment vendor partners, and implementing cost-effective engineering standards. In addition, FiberLight has created a new Project Management Office under the leadership of Becky Ingram, which will select, prioritize, allocate resources to, and ensure successful completion of organization-wide initiatives and projects. Finally, to standardize its post-sales operations and ensure high quality construction and delivery practices that exceed customer expectations, FiberLights Construction, Field Services, and Service Delivery teams have been aligned across all markets under Wayne Wooley, Ron Holt, and April Stoume, respectively.Kevin has been an influential resource who has informed my vision for FiberLights future in the industry. He has been instrumental to the companys growth and success to date, and his expertise will ensure we continue to remain profitable and grow revenues while delivering high-value solutions for our customers, states Don MacNeil, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), FiberLight. The changes were announcing today, combined with recent internal restructure efforts, are a clear sign to our customers and partners that FiberLight is poised to leverage our one-of-a-kind network and operational efficiencies to ignite digital transformation across all our markets.To learn more about FiberLight and its services, visit# # #About FiberLightFiberLight is a premier provider of fiber-optic based, high-performance networking services for telecom carriers, government, enterprise, content providers and web-centric businesses. FiberLight owns over 1,900,000 miles of robust fiber networks in over 44 key growth areas in US cities and towns within Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C., offering wide area networking options at layers 1, 2 and 3 to major commercial hubs throughout the country. To learn more about FiberLights service offerings, visitMedia Inquiries:PR Contact for FiberLight:iMiller Public Relations221 Harbor HillMamaroneck NY 10543Tel: +1.866.307.2510Email: pr@imillerpr.com
A new era in the movie industry has just begun

Before you know it, you will be able to watch Hollywood premieres and the latest movies online at the same time as they are shown in theatres.According to statistics, price of movie tickets in theaters is increasing globally. In the U.S. alone, the price has doubled in the last eight years and reached amount of $8.97 in average, whilst premiers cost up to $19.Having that in mind, founders of Cinesseum.com decided to offer a revolutionary alternative at the more affordable price.Cinesseum.com is a new website and the first in the world of that kind, which will enable people to watch the world premieres and the latest movies online at the same time as they are shown in theatres."People are thrilled with an idea. Every day we are getting emails and support from all around the world. Thousands of people already signed up to our waiting list, and that number is increasing as we speak. That's motivating us to work even harder in order to provide an awesome online movie experience and to launch the worlds first online movie theater as soon as possible", said Marko Maksimovic, CEO, and co-founder of Cinesseum.comAs stated by Cinesseum.com founders, the website will operate according to the same principle of theatre tickets, with the only difference that this ticket will be in e-form. By using your e-ticket youll be able to watch the movie on the website, with as many people as you want. Moreover, founders guarantee not only the theatre standard video quality but digital sound quality as well.CinesseumIvan Begova 9, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia, EuropeContact information:Marko MaksimovicCo-founder of Cinesseum.comEmail: office@cinesseum.com
SonicWall Cyber Threat Report Illustrates Intense Cyber Arms Race

onicWall, the trusted security partner protecting more than 1 million networks worldwide, announces research and intelligence from its 2018 Cyber Threat Report. In sum, the company recorded 9.32 billion malware attacks in 2017 and saw more than 12,500 new Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) reported for the year.The cyber arms race affects every government, business, organization and individual. It cannot be won by any one of us, said SonicWall, CEO, Bill Conner. Our latest proprietary data and findings show a series of strategic attacks and countermeasures as the cyber arms race continues to escalate. By sharing actionable intelligence, we collectively improve our business and security postures against todays most malicious threats and criminals.The annual threat report frames, compares and contrasts advances made by both cybersecurity professionals and global cybercriminals.Cyber attacks are becoming the No. 1 risk to business, brands, operations and financials32 billion total malware attacks in 2017, an 18.4 percent year-over-year increase from 2016Ransomware attacks dropped from 638 million to 184 million between 2016 and 2017Ransomware variants, however, increased 101.2 percentTraffic encrypted by SSL/TLS standards increased 24 percent, representing 68 percent of total trafficWithout SSL decryption capabilities in place, the average organization will see almost 900 attacks per year hidden by SSL/TLS encryptionSonicWall identifies almost 500 new previously unknown malicious files each dayThe risks to business, privacy and related data grow by the day  so much so that cybersecurity is outranking some of the more traditional business risks and concerns, said Conner.Security Industry AdvancesTotal ransomware attack volume declines.Even with WannaCry, Petya, NotPetya and Bad Rabbit ransomware attacks stealing the headlines, the expectations of more ransomware attacks simply did not materialize as anticipated in 2017. Full-year data shows that ransomware attacks dropped from 638 million to 184 million between 2016 and 2017.Volume marked a 71.2 percent drop from the 638 million ransomware attack events SonicWall recorded in 2016Regionally, the Americas were victimized the most, receiving 46 percent of all ransomware attack attempts in 2017Europe saw 37 percent of ransomware attacks in 2017SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), a cloud-based, multi-engine sandbox, identified one new malware variant for every 250 unknown hitsSSL/TLS use increases again.Web traffic encrypted by SSL/TLS standards made yet another significant jump in 2017. This shift has already given more opportunity for cybercriminals and threat actors to hide malicious payloads in encrypted traffic.Encrypted SSL/TLS traffic increased 24 percentSSL/TLS traffic made up 68 percent of total traffic in 2017Organizations are beginning to implement security controls, such as deep packet inspection (DPI) of SSL/TLS traffic, to responsibly inspect, detect and mitigate attacks in encrypted trafficEffectiveness of exploit kits impacted.With most browsers dropping support of Adobe Flash, no critical flash vulnerabilities were discovered in 2017. That, however, hasnt deterred threat actors from attempting new strategies.SonicWall provided protection against Microsoft Edge attacks, which we observed grew 13 percent in 2017 over 2016SonicWall also protects the most popular Adobe products  Acrobat, Acrobat DC, Reader DC and Reader  and we observed attacks against these applications were down across the boardNew targeted applications (e.g., Apple TV, Microsoft Office) cracked SonicWalls top 10 for the first timeLaw enforcement turns the tide.Key arrests of cybercriminals continued to help disrupt malware supply chains and impact the rise of new would-be hackers and authors.Law enforcement agencies are making an impact by arresting and convicting malware authors and disruptorsCybercriminals are being more careful with how they conduct business, including dynamic cryptocurrency wallets and using different transaction currenciesCooperation between national and international law enforcement agencies is strengthening the disruption of global cyber threatsStabilizing the cyber arms race requires the responsible, transparent and agile collaboration between governments, law enforcement and the private sector, said the Honorable Michael Chertoff, Chairman of the Chertoff Group, and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. Like we witnessed in 2017, joint efforts deliver a hard-hitting impact to cybercriminals and threat actors. This diligence helps disrupt the development and deployment of advanced exploits and payloads, and also deters future criminals from engaging in malicious activity against well-meaning organizations, governments, businesses and individuals.Cybercriminal AdvancesMore unique types of ransomware found in the wild.While the total volume of ransomware attacks was down significantly year over year, the number of ransomware variants created continues an upward trend since 2015. The variant increase, coupled with the associated volume of 184 million attacks, leaves ransomware a prevelant threat.Ransomware variants increased 101.2 percent in 2017SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers created 2,855 new unique ransomware signatures in 2017, up from the 1,419 published in 2016Ransomware against IoT and mobile devices is expected to increase in 2018SSL encryption still hiding cyber attacks.Hackers and cybercriminals continued to encrypt their malware payloads to circumvent traditional security controls. For the first time ever, SonicWall has real-world data that unmasks the volume of malware and other exploits hidden in encrypted traffic.Encryption was leveraged more than previous years, for both legitimate traffic and malicious payload deliverySonicWall Capture Labs found, on average, 60 file-based malware propagation attempts per SonicWall firewall each dayWithout SSL decryption capabilities in place, the average organization will see almost 900 file-based attacks per year hidden by TLS/SSL encryptionIndustry reports indicate as high as 41% of attack or malicious traffic now leverages encryption for obfuscation, which means that traffic analysis solutions and web transaction solutions such as secure web gateways each must support the ability to decrypt SSL traffic to be effective, wrote Ruggero Contu and Lawrence Pingree of Gartner.*Malware cocktails mixing things up.While no single exploit in 2017 rose to the level of darknet hacker tools Angler or Neutrino in 2016, there were plenty of malware writers leveraging one anothers code and mixing them to form new malware, thus putting a strain on signature-only security controls. SonicWall Capture Labs uses machine-learning technology to examine individual malware artifacts and categorizes each as unique or as a malware that already exists.SonicWall collected 56 million unique malware samples in 2017, a slight 6.7 percent decrease from 2016Total volume of unique malware samples in 2017 was 51.4 percent higher than 2014Chip processors, IoT are emerging battlegrounds.Cybercriminals are pushing new attack techniques into advanced technology spaces, notably chip processors.Memory regions are the next key battleground that organizations will battle over with cybercriminalsModern malware writers implement advanced techniques, including custom encryption, obfuscation and packing, as well as acting benign within sandbox environments, to allow malicious behavior to remain hidden in memoryOrganizations will soon need to implement advanced techniques that can detect and block malware that does not exhibit any malicious behavior and hides its weaponry via custom encryptionSandbox techniques are often ineffective when analyzing the most modern malware, said SonicWall, CTO, John Gmuender. Real-time deep memory inspection is very fast and very precise, and can mitigate sophisticated attacks where the malwares most protected weaponry is exposed for less than 100 nanoseconds.About the SonicWall Capture Threat NetworkData for the 2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report was gathered by the SonicWall Capture Threat Network, which sources information from global devices and resources including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories; crossvector, threatrelated information shared among SonicWall security systems, including firewalls, email security, endpoint security, honeypots, content-filtering systems; SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection multiengine sandbox; and SonicWalls internal malware analysis automation framework.Building 9,Dubai Internet CityDubai, UAE
Cincoze Announces Sunlight Readable Panel PC and Touch Monitor for Outdoor Applications

http://www.cincoze.com/

Cincoze is proud to announce sunlight readable panel PC and touch monitor CS-100 Series. The product series incorporates an ultra high brightness backlight module up to 1,600 nits which provides superior readability under a high-ambient light condition and even direct sunlight. CS-100 Series also supports wide range operating temperature (max. range: -20C ~ 70C) to ensure stability and reliability of the system in outdoor environments.Built with solid aluminum die-casting front bezel, true flat IP65 front panel protection and 7H anti-scratch projected capacitive touchscreen make it ideal for installation in harsh environments. Without compromising rugged functionality, CS-100 Series still keep slim-type design and provide the same look and feel within Cincoze display computing solution.CS-100 Serie also supports optical bonding for an alternative. By eliminating the air gap, optical bonding can reduce reflection and increase sunlight readability. In addition, it has higher resistance to shock & vibration, prevents fog formation during rapid temperature change, and also benefits better touch performance and heat dissipation.Furthermore, CS-100 Series is fully supporting Convertible Display System (CDS) technology which is based on modular design concept. It can offer users the possibilities of upgrading computing module and changing display module. Comparing with regular standalone panel PCs, it is more cost-effective and reduces on-site maintenance time.Taking advantages of Cincoze patent CDS technology, CS-100 Series is compatible with existing CDS models, including M1000 monitor module, P2000 and P1000 system modules. The users can easily configure their applications, such as heavy-duty lifting & moving equipment, e-toll collection system, car-sharing system and outdoor kiosk. said Brandon Chien, CEO of Cincoze. With the launch of CS-100 Series, Cincoze is not only providing the products for indoor use, but also expanding its product range to outdoor use.CS-100 Series offers five panel sizes that range from 10.4 to 19 inches and the industrial panel PCs are available with two different CPU versions, an including Intel Core and an Intel Atom to fulfill different performance requirements.Key features of CS-100 Series:- 10.4 to 19 TFT-LCD with Ultra High Brightness up to 1,600 nits- Wide Range Operating Temperature (max. range: -20C ~ 70C)- True Flat IP65 Front Panel Protection- Rugged Aluminum Die-casting Front Bezel- Convertible Display System (CDS) Technology Supported- Supports Optical BondingAbout CincozeCincoze, a professional manufacturer of embedded computing platforms. We design, manufacture, and market Rugged Fanless Computer, Industrial Panel PC and Monitor for harsh and demanding environments. With its leading-edge products and application-driven functionalities, Cincoze enables new technologies and solutions for multiple applications, including factory automation, machine automation, machine vision, in-vehicle computing, intelligent transportation, and surveillance.7F., No.4, Aly.1, Ln.235, Baociao Rd, Sindian Dist., New Taipei City 23145, TaiwanTel: +886-2-2918-8055Fax: +886-2-2918-8066
Global Needle Coke Market Statistics Reveal Rising Demand from the Steel Industry, Forecast Report 2016 - 2025

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The popularity of needle coke as a premium grade, petroleum coke used in the manufacture of graphite electrodes is well-known. It is vital to know that, there are only few companies that actively manufacture needle coke. The market share as well as other factors are analyzed through a smart report added to the wide database of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). This research report is titled Needle Coke Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016  2025 that involves market insights together with business opportunities available in the worldwide needle coke market.Free Sample Copy of Report @Production of needle coke needs specific feedstocks, calcination settings and coking environments. The hardware components used are similar to conventional delayed coker unit. This research report focuses on each of the factors related to production and market status to enlighten the readers in a crisp manner. The initial section of the report offers knowledge about market definition and scope. This is followed by key research objectives and research highlights. This portion of the reports discourses the global needle coke market size, US$ Mn, 2016-2025, which is quite necessary to decode the actual picture. Furthermore, key market indicators together with market dynamics such as drivers, restraints and opportunities can be accessed without much hassle.Based on geography, the global needle coke market is spread across North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe and Middle East & Africa. Out of these, the Asia Pacific region is estimated to manage a significant share of the needle coke market as a result of rise in demand for steel as well as increased mining activities across India and China. Further, the market in North America is likely to expand at a substantial pace during the period between 2016 and 2025. This is due to higher claim for needle coke from India, China and other regions in Asia for superior needle coke used in steel production.Browse Full Global Needle Coke Market Report with TOC :It is analyzed that, apart from the steel industry the market for needle coke is concentrated towards aluminum industry, nuclear power, aerospace and lithium battery. The final section of the report deals with the competitive landscape that talks about the various players active in the global needle coke market. Some of the major players mentioned in the report include Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Phillips 66, JXTG Holdings, Inc., Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., Seadrift Coke LP, C-Chem CO., LTD., PETROLEUM COKE INDUSTRIES CO. (K.S.C), Bao-steel Group, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Company Limited and Baotailong New Material Co., Ltd.About (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY  12207 (United States)Telephone: +1-518-730-0559 (US- Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Drum Liner Market: North America Projected to Remain the Largest Regional Market

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Nowadays, drum liners are available in different types and made with variety of materials. These can be fit in drums of various sizes and can be customized as well. A new report based on drum liner market titled Drum Liner Market: North America Projected to Remain the Largest Regional Market During the Forecast Period: Global Industry Analysis (2012 - 2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017 - 2027) has recently been added to the vast database of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE).Free Sample Copy of Report @The comprehensive report begins with an executive summary containing key information including market overview, market analysis along with range of market related data. The next section of market introduction covers basics of the market and defines market and shares details on market taxonomy. The market viewpoint section provides details of report analysis for future opportunities, understanding key trends and other details using porters five forces, pestle analysis, pricing analysis and value chain analysis. For its readers, the study shares historical 2012  2016 and forecasted data 2017  2027 related to market size and volume analysis of global drum liner market.For thorough analysis, the report has divided the global drum liner market into segments which are drum liner type, capacity size, design type, material type, end use and region. The drum liner type segments is further sub-segmented into flexible drum line, rigid drum liner and semi rigid drum liner. The capacity size segment is divided into less than 15 gallons, 15-33 gallons and more than 33 gallons. The design type segment is categorized into straight-sided liners, accordion liners, combination liners and others. The material type segment is bifurcated into LLDPE, LDPE, Polypropylene, HDPE and PTFE. The end use segment is divided into industrial chemicals, petroleum & lubricants, food & beverages, paints, inks & dyes, cosmetics & pharmaceuticals, building & construction and others. Geographically, the global drum liner market is divided into key regions which are North America, Latin America, Japan, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia pacific Excluding japan and Middle East & Africa. According to the report analysis the Asia Pacific Excluding Japan and Middle East & Africa are the most promising regions for growth of global drum liner market.Browse Full Global Drum Liner Market Report with TOC :The research methodology of the global drum liner market report is based on forecasts that focuses on global as well as regional trends. Overall, the report offers in-depth analysis and key insights supported by a range of data that will shape the market during the assessment period.About (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY  12207 (United States)Telephone: +1-518-730-0559 (US- Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Latest Report on: Thoracic Stent Graft Market Market Report 2018-2025 Abbott Laboratories, Cordis

Thoracic Stent Graft Market Trends 2018

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A market study "Global Thoracic Stent Graft Market" examines the performance of the Thoracic Stent Graft market 2018. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Thoracic Stent Graft market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Thoracic Stent Graft market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Thoracic Stent Graft Market 2018 report includes Thoracic Stent Graft market Revenue, market Share, Thoracic Stent Graft industry volume, market Trends, Thoracic Stent Graft Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report. It shows manufacturing capacity, Thoracic Stent Graft Price during the Forecast period from 2018 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Thoracic Stent Graft Market 2018 : Abbott Laboratories Cordis Corporation Boston Scientific C.R. Bard Medtronic Biosensors Lifetech Scientific BIOTRONIK Gore MedicalThoracic Stent Graft Market : By ApplicationCardiovascular DiseasesCardiac AneurysmKidney FailureThoracic Stent Graft Market : By TypeHemodialysis Access GraftEndovascular Stent GraftPeripheral vascularFirstly, the report covers the top Thoracic Stent Graft manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Thoracic Stent Graft report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Thoracic Stent Graft industry, Thoracic Stent Graft industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Thoracic Stent Graft Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Thoracic Stent Graft research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Thoracic Stent Graft market revenue worldwide.Finally, Thoracic Stent Graft market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Usqyresearchstore.com is a leading market intelligence team which making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact US:5001 Spring Valley Rd #400,Dallas,TX 75244, USAContact No. +1-214-661-1669Email: sales@qyresearchstore.com
Osteoporosis Drugs Market 2018 - Major Participants: Novartis International AG, F. Hoffmann La Roche Ltd., Pfizer Inc and more

Osteoporosis Drugs Market

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Market Scenario:Osteoporosis is weakening of bones due to lower bone mass resulting in and micro-architectural deterioration of bone tissue and subsequent higher risk of a broken fracture. It generally occurs at an advanced age and women are more susceptible to it than males by about three to four folds. WHO estimates that around 1.66 million hip fractures occur each year worldwide due to osteoporosis. According to national osteoporosis foundation about 54 million Americans suffer from osteoporosis. The disease also has a genetic bias in that it Caucasians are more affected than Asians. The disease prevalence is lowest in African population. The Osteoporosis Drug Market driving factors were identified to be rise in the geriatric population, increased screening, drug induced osteoporosis, alcoholism and smoking, increased awareness and focus towards female health, rising prevalence of diseases, conditions and medical procedures that may cause bone loss such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, thalassemia, hormonal disorders, modern lifestyle etc.The market restraints are loss of patents of block busters, greater penetration of generics and fragmentation of market, poor efficacy and side effects of present therapies, non-life threatening nature and poor symptoms of osteoporosis etc.Taking all the factors into consideration, we expect the global osteoporosis market which totaled ~ $10,855 million to reach 14,300 million by 2022, growing with a CAGR of 4.7%.Key Players for Global Osteoporosis Drugs Market:Some of the key players in this market are: Eli Lilly and Company, Merck & Co., Novartis International AG, Amgen Inc., F. Hoffmann La Roche Ltd., Pfizer Inc., Novo Nordisk, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. and others.Get Sample report atRegional Analysis of Global Osteoporosis Drugs Market:Globally America is the largest market for osteoporosis drugs. Europe is the second-largest market for osteoporosis drugs. The developed regions are expected to hold their market leadership in the near future but with falling market share due to rise of Asia Pacific region which is expected to be fastest growing region in osteoporosis drugs market. The Asia pacific region will be led by China and India. Africa is expected to be a laggard in the global osteoporosis market.Segments:Global osteoporosis drugs market has been segmented on the basis of drug class which comprises bisphosphonates, calcitonins, selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMS), parathyroid hormone (PTH) and others. On the basis of route of administration; market is segmented into oral, injectable and others. On the basis of gender the market is segmented into male and female.Table of Contents1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of Study1.3 Research Objective1.4 Assumptions & Limitations1.5 Market Structure:2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3 Market Dynamics3.1 Drivers3.2 Restraints3.3 Opportunities3.4 Challenges3.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4 Market Factor AnalysisContGet Discounted report atAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune  411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.com
Now Available Global Meat Speciation Testing Market Forecast and Growth 2017-2027

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Global Meat Speciation Testing Market: OverviewMeat speciation testing is a process to quantify relative levels of animal DNA in the total meat using diagnostic techniques such as PCR, ELISA, etc. Due to intense scrutiny in food production industry, there is an increased pressure for technological advancements in the speciation testing market, in order to provide quality products with less production cost. This, in turn, leads to high demand for meat speciation testing market as well.Global Meat Speciation Testing Market: DynamicsThe growth of the global meat speciation testing market is driven by the rising health concern among the consumers and high demand for packaged meat. To counter the same, meat product manufacturers are investing in research and development in order to meet the regulatory specification.Download PDF Brochure @Some macroeconomic factors making a positive impact on global meat speciation testing market includes rapid rate of urbanization, increasing population, and increasing domestic income. The trend identified in the global meat speciation testing market is mergers and acquisitions between processed meat manufacturers and contract research organizations. The company manufacturing meat speciation testing products has a significant opportunity in regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, attributed to growing health consciousness among a large number of population.Global Meat Speciation Testing Market: SegmentationGlobal meat speciation testing market is segmented by form, technology, species, and by region. On the basis of form, the global meat speciation testing market is sub-segmented as raw, processed, and cooked. Among these raw segment is expected to contribute for the significant revenue share with a relatively high growth rate over the forecast period in global meat speciation testing market. Processed segment is followed by a raw segment in terms of both value and volume in the global meat speciation testing market. On the basis of the technology, the global meat speciation testing market is segmented as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique, and molecular diagnostic technique, wherein PCR segment contribute comparatively high revenue share in global meat speciation testing market is expected to the most attractive segment over the forecast period, whereas ELISA segment is expected to grow at a significant growth rate. Based on species, global meat speciation testing market is sub-segmented into sheep (Ovis aries), horse (Equus caballus), chicken (Gallus gallus), pig (Sus scrofa), cow (Bos taurus), and turkey (Meleagris galloparvo). Among these, the chicken segment is expected to contribute for the substantial revenue share over the forecast period with significant growth rate.Global Meat Speciation Testing Market: Regional overviewOn the basis of geographies, the global meat speciation testing market is segmented into seven regions -- North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific except Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Among the regions, North America accounts for a relatively high share of the global meat speciation testing market in terms of value, attributed to relatively high revenue share in the packaged food product market. Western Europe is followed by North America in global meat speciation testing market, owing to high demand for meat products across the region. Eastern Europe and Japan also accounts for significant value share in the global meat speciation testing market. The Asia-Pacific is expected to register relatively high growth rate in the global meat speciation testing market over the forecast period, owing to rapidly growing population across the region particularly in the countries such as China and India. Latin America and Middle East Africa is expected to have relatively high opportunity for meat speciation testing market players, attributed to rapid growth of the economy. Overall, the outlook for the global meat speciation testing market will have a positive growth over the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Global Meat Speciation Testing Market: Key PlayersFew players of meat speciation testing market include Scientific Analysis Laboratories, Geneius Laboratories Ltd., AB Sciex LLC, Genetic ID NA, Inc., LGC Science Group Ltd., Neogen Corporation, ALS Limited, Eurofins Scientific SE, and VWR International LLC.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
AS-Interface Market - Growing Demand in Industrial Automation Rapidly Growing Dynamic Markets AS-Interface stands for actuator sensor interface. An AS-Interface is a networking solution which is used in PLC, DCS, and PC-based automation systems.It is a master slave system where a single AS-Interface where a single AS-Interface master is used to exchange I/O data with up to 62 to AS-Interface slave devices.The main purpose of AS-Interface is to connect I/O devices such as actuators, sensors, rotary encoders, push buttons, and analog inputs and outputs using a single 2-conductor cable.



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An AS-Interface serves as an alternative to hard wiring of field devices. It used as a partner network for networks such as Profibus, DeviceNet, and industrial Ethernet. AS-Interface is used to link connection to a higher level controller system with other devices, which enables a smooth flow of data given to the slaves. It enables effective monitoring, controlling, and execution of the manufacturing process.



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Demand for AS-Interface technology is high since it addresses the lowest level of a control system architecture.The recent trend in the semiconductor and electronic devices market is to replace simple sensors and actuators with AS-Interface sensors and actuators. AS-Interface replaces the wires that link a controller with sensors and actuators.



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It serves as a single cabling system which is fast, easy to wire, and easy to operate. Using AS-Interface is cost effective as it replaces the vast number of wires in networks of industrial and automation sites. The use of AS-Interface offers cost saving of around 15% to 20% over the other bus systems which use traditional cabling methods.



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Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.



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Global Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market: Application, Growth Factor, Demand and Analysis, Development Trends and Forecast to 2022

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Global Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market Professional Survey Report 2017-2022.A Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) is a part of the third generation of firewall technology, combining a traditional firewall with other network device filtering functionalities, such as an application firewall using in-line deep packet inspection (DPI), an intrusion prevention system (IPS).This research report provides an in-depth analysis of the global Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market based on enterprise size, services, solution, end-use industry, and geography. The report also provides an analysis of the factors that drive and restrain the growth of the Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) market. It discusses the prevailing market trends, prospective growth opportunities, and major strategies increasing the popularity of the global market. It provides market estimates and forecasts for all the segments in terms of revenue.Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market Estimated to Grow at a CAGR of +12% During the Forecast PeriodThe report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the market growth over the forecast period. The competition in the global market for Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) will likely heat up in the next couple of years on the back of entry of a substantial number of solution providers. This statistical surveying report presents an all-inclusive assessment of the worldwide market for Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), taking several market verticals, such as the production capacity, product pricing, the dynamics of demand and supply, sales volume, revenue, and the growth rate of this market into consideration.Download PDF Sample Copy:Company Profiled: The Key Players operating in the Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market includes Emsisoft, Fortinet, 360, Kaspersky Lab, WatchGuard Technologies, Check Point, Barracuda Networks, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Cyberoam(Sophos Technologies), Hewlett Packard Enterprise, McAfee, Privacy policy, Beijing NetentSec, Cisco Systems, Sangfor Technologies.The report provides competitive landscape of the Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) market, thereby listing out all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The competitive landscape section of the report gives an overview about the market share of several key players for the year 2017. Moreover, key takeaways section provided at the end of competitive landscape section would help the operating companies to make the best move in the market.These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the market growth. Factors including market position, offerings and R&D focus are attributed to company's capabilities. This section also identifies and includes various recent developments carried out by the leading players.For More Information:The regional analysis of the Global Market splits the global market into key regions that include both continents as well as specific countries that are currently shining in terms of either demand, volume or overall growth. Users of the report can focus on these regions if they are looking to expand their business borders.The stages of development of Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) market with respect to many geographic regions have also been presented thoroughly. This information which is provided helps the emerging players gain up-to-date information which can help them take perfect business decisions. In similar way, many other segments and sub segments are mentioned in this market helping in conveying impeccable data to the users.To Get Reasonable Discount:Table of ContentsGlobal Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1 Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) 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 Market ForecastAbout QYReports:We 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.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Patient Monitoring Devices Market 2018 - Major Vendors are GE Healthcare, Abbott Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, Philips Healthcare and others

Patient Monitoring Devices

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Market HighlightsThe Global Patient Monitoring Devices Market has been evaluated as steadily growing market and it is expected that the market will continue to grow similarly in the near future. These monitoring devices continuously check patients vital signs by using a medical monitor. Patient monitoring devices market has various functions such as glucose monitoring, blood monitoring, temperature monitoring, cholesterol monitoring, weight monitoring etc. Electrocardiography is fastest growing sub-segment, it is largest in cardiac monitoring market and fastest growing in neurological device. Electrocardiography is the process that checks for problems with the electrical activity of your heart. Electrocardiography is very helpful to diagnose unexplained chest pain or pressure, cause of symptoms of heart disease, to check how well medicines are working and see if they are causing side effects that affect the heart. Increase in consumer awareness is driving the market growth which expected to grow in same pace in near future. Patient monitoring devices manufacturers trying to make more advance, accurate and innovative device to provide desirable solution.Global Patient monitoring devices market is segment into two major segments and its sub-segments such as based on type, based on product type and based on end user. Global Patient monitoring devices market is expected to reach USD 23.4 billion by 2022 at a CAGR of 5.7%. North America is the largest market for patient monitoring devices while Asia-Pacific region is fastest growing. Europe is second largest market for patient monitoring device and expected to grow steadily during forecasting period.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 120 market data tables and figures spread over 80 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Patient Monitoring Devices Market Research Report Global Forecast to 2022.Get Sample report atGlobal Radiology Information System Market Players:There are plenty of large and small market players which operate in this market all over the globe. GE Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, BIOTRONIK SE & Co. KG, Abbott Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, CAS Medical Systems, Inc., Spacelabs Healthcare, Honeywell International, Inc., Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co.Regional Analysis:Depending on geographic region, Patient monitoring devices market is segmented into four key regions: Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Considering the global scenario of the market, North America comprise largest market share in global Patient monitoring devices market. Moreover, the European market is also growing continuously. On the other hand, Asia-Pacific market is expected to grow at the fastest pace and rapidly in the Patient monitoring devices Market segment during the forecasted period. Middle East & Africa region are likely to have a limited but steady growth in the market.Segmentation:Patient monitoring devices Market has been segmented on the basis of product type which comprises of Central monitoring stations, Portable bedside monitors, Electrocardiogram (ECG) Devices, Hemodynamic Monitoring Devices, Fetal and neonatal monitors, Respiratory Monitors, Weight management monitors, Temperature monitoring devices, and others. On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into Hospitals and clinics, Ambulatory care centers, Home care and others.Get Discounted report atAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune  411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.com
Fillings & Filling Mixes Market Forecast Research Reports Offers Key Insights

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Global Fillings & Filling Mixes Market: OverviewFillings & filling mixes are the natural or synthetic flavoured fillings used as stuffing or topping on the variety of food products. Fillings and filling mixes are most widely used in confectionary and bakery products. For instance, doughnuts, pastries, cakes, pie are the popular items where fillings have the majority of share.The fillings and filling mixes with the variety of flavours add texture and fine taste to the baked goods which often attracts the consumers and increases the probability point of sale. Besides, filling and filling mixes provides food product manufacturers new ways to diverse there product range with additions of luscious fillings. Primarily, fillings & filling mixes are available veg based, non-veg based and fruit based types. The new product development in the fruit based fillings is considerably strong owing to the increased demand ready to eat diversely flavoured food toppings.Download PDF Brochure @Global Fillings & Filling Mixes Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe fillings & filling mixes is primarily driven by the growing demand for bakery and confectionary food items. The growth of the confectionary industry is one of the major driving factors for global fillings & filling mixes market. The changing food habits of the consumers, increase in the disposable income, and growing demand for ready to eat food are some of the factors contributing to drive the global fillings and filling market.However, the consumers health concern over intake of sugar-related food items restricts the sugary fillings & filling mixes market to some extent.Global Fillings & Filling Mixes Market: Region wise OutlookThe global fillings & filling mixes market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America holds major share in the global fillings & filling mixes market owing to the growth of sugar-free product items, fruit based crushes, etc. Also, the robust confectionary industry in the North America region boosts the global filling & filling mixes market. The fillings & filling mixes market in Western Europe, is expected to grow at a significantly high CAGR owing to the fact that, consumers in the Western European countries have the highest spending on confectionary products. Also, consumers inclination towards the adoption of premium fillings is an added advantage for fillings & filling mixes manufacturers. APEJ fillings & filling mixes market is expected to exhibit high attractiveness index for key manufacturers such as Macphie Ltd, Tereos to penetrate more in the region with an aim to increase their market share in the region. However, the economic fall down in the China, has impacted the growth of confectionary industries coupled with consumers limiting sugar products owing to health reasons.Obtain Report Details @Global Fillings & Filling Mixes Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global fillings & filling mixes market include:TereosThe Hershey CompanyMacphie LtdDPO InternationalDawn Food Products, Inc.EFCO PRODUCTS, INCSLEAFORD QUALITY FOODS LTDGlazir d.o.o.CrumbT. Lynch Foods LimitedLawrence Foods, Inc.Fruition Manufacturing LimitedAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700,Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Latest Report on: Lead Free Solder Ball Market Report 2018-2025 Senju Metal, DS HiMetal, MKE, YCTC

Lead Free Solder Ball Market Forecast 2018

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A market study "Global Lead Free Solder Ball Market" examines the performance of the Lead Free Solder Ball market 2018. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Lead Free Solder Ball market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Lead Free Solder Ball market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Lead Free Solder Ball Market 2018 report includes Lead Free Solder Ball market Revenue, market Share, Lead Free Solder Ball industry volume, market Trends, Lead Free Solder Ball Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report. It shows manufacturing capacity, Lead Free Solder Ball Price during the Forecast period from 2018 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Lead Free Solder Ball Market 2018 : Senju Metal (Japan) DS HiMetal (Korea) MKE (Korea) YCTC (Taiwan) Nippon Micrometal (Japan) Accurus (Taiwan) PMTC (Taiwan) Shanghai hiking solder material (China) Shenmao Technology (Taiwan)Lead Free Solder Ball Market : By ApplicationBGACSP & WLCSPFlip-Chip & OthersLead Free Solder Ball Market : By TypeUp to 0.4 mm0.4-0.6 mmAbove 0.6 mmFirstly, the report covers the top Lead Free Solder Ball manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Lead Free Solder Ball report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Lead Free Solder Ball industry, Lead Free Solder Ball industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Lead Free Solder Ball Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Lead Free Solder Ball research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Lead Free Solder Ball market revenue worldwide.Finally, Lead Free Solder Ball market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Usqyresearchstore.com is a leading market intelligence team which making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact US:5001 Spring Valley Rd #400,Dallas,TX 75244, USAContact No. +1-214-661-1669Email: sales@qyresearchstore.com
Skin Toner 2018 Global Industry Key Players - L'Oreal , Kose Corporation , Kao Corporation , Johnson & Johnson , Shiseido Market Analysis And Forecast To 2025

Global Skin Toner Market

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Global Skin Toner MarketIn this report, the global Skin Toner 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 2025.Global Skin Toner market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingL'OrealKose CorporationKao CorporationJohnson & JohnsonShiseidoThe Procter & Gamble CompanyThe UnileverLotus HerbalsBurts & BeesLUMENESea BreezeHimalaya DrugHerbalineZymo CosmeticsDebon HerbalBan Labs LimitedRequest a Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Skin Toner in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoLiquid FormGelsMistsOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingCreamCleanserEmulsionTable of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal Skin Toner Market Research Report 20181 Skin Toner Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Skin Toner1.2 Skin Toner Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Skin Toner Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Skin Toner Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Liquid Form1.2.4 Gels1.2.5 Mists1.3 Global Skin Toner Segment by Application1.3.1 Skin Toner Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Cream1.3.3 Cleanser1.3.4 Emulsion1.4 Global Skin Toner Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Skin Toner Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Skin Toner (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Skin Toner Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Skin Toner Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)7 Global Skin Toner Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 L'Oreal7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 L'Oreal Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Kose Corporation7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Kose Corporation Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Kao Corporation7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Kao Corporation Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Johnson & Johnson7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Johnson & Johnson Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Shiseido7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Shiseido Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 The Procter & Gamble Company7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 The Procter & Gamble Company Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 The Unilever7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 The Unilever Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Lotus Herbals7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Lotus Herbals Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Burts & Bees7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Burts & Bees Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 LUMENE7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Skin Toner Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 LUMENE Skin Toner Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Sea Breeze7.12 Himalaya Drug7.13 Herbaline7.14 Zymo Cosmetics7.15 Debon Herbal7.16 Ban Labs LimitedContinued.Complete Report Details @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 Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt LtdOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Get Affordable Locksmith Services from Affordable Locksmith OKC

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Affordable Locksmith OKC is a certified and professional locksmith company that has built its market reputation due to its effective and mobile locksmith services. Available 24/7365, the company is ever within reach to deal with any emergencies with the response time based on a clients exact location. Affordable Locksmith OKC uses the state-of-the-art locksmith tools and technologies currently offered on the market which gives them an edge of over their competitors since they can handle both manual and electronic locks comfortably.The Managing Director said, At Affordable Locksmith OKC, we have a team of expert dispatchers and on-site technicians in Oklahoma City who provide ready solutions. They have been serving Oklahoma City and its surroundings for many years which has lead us to be a trusted locksmith solutions provider for commercial and residential clients in the region. Our technicians are well-versed in residential and commercial locking systems and can deal with the different problems concerning high-security locks, access control, master key system, rekeying, and break in repairs without damaging your property. Also, we offer the greater Oklahoma region with free quotes which are helpful for customers to assess our services and opt accordingly.Clients looking to get a locksmith in Edmond OK should choose Affordable Locksmith OKC for these reasons. They have heavily invested in the latest locksmith technologies and equipment and ensured each member of their team is acquainted with the current developments in the industry. This allows them to handle any locking and unlocking needs be it in homes, business premises, or vehicles efficiently. Also, their availability is outstanding. Clients can reach them by making a simple phone call, and they will arrive at their location on time at any time throughout the year. Lastly, they give clients a full estimate and ensure that they are well informed and comfortable before beginning any work.The Managing Director said, If you are looking for a professional and trusted car locksmith in Edmond Oklahoma, you will find them at Affordable Locksmith OKC. Our locksmiths are conversant with car locking mechanisms and know the working dynamics of even the most high-tech vehicles. We also have a mobile dispatch team that we can send to any location in Oklahoma to handle any car locksmith needs including ignition repair, lock rekeying, key extraction, transponder keys and car lockouts to mention a few. We handle car locks with dexterity and professionalism allowing you to access your car without causing any damages.Affordable Locksmith OKC works in strict adherence to the laws established by the local and federal government. They are also fully bonded, certified, and insured. As a company, they have taken compliance as their foremost urgency as they focus on upholding the principles of transparency and honesty in their business. Clients within Oklahoma and its surroundings will have a peace of mind when they contact them for locksmith services since they can be sure that they are working with professionals.About Affordable Locksmith OKCIt is a registered locksmith firm that offers 24/7 locksmith services to their clients in Oklahoma City.It is a registered locksmith firm that offers 24/7 locksmith services to their clients in Oklahoma City.Affordable Locksmith OKC2737 NW 140th StOklahoma City, OK 73134Telephone number: (405) 367-3484Email: jason@affordable-okc-locksmith.comWebsite:
Global Bladder Cancer Market Research and Forecast 2018-2023

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Global Bladder Cancer Market, Size, Share, Market Intelligence, Company Profiles, Market Trends, Strategy, Analysis, Forecast 2018-2023GLOBAL BLADDER CANCER MARKET INSIGHTS:Global Bladder cancer market is a tumour, which starts in the cells of the bladder. Factors such as increasing incidence of bladder cancer fuel the growth of the market. As per American Medical Association, a growth of 31% in global bladder cancer has been recorded in 2015 as compared to 2005 Furthermore, rise in awareness about cancer and their available therapies, increasing healthcare expenditure, growing smoking and tobacco consumption are also motivating the market.Sometimes, bladder cancer is asymptomatic in nature, due to which patients cant get diagnosed in the due course of time. It is the major restrain for the market. Cisplatin is a generic drug available for the treatment of bladder cancer. It is being manufactured all across the globe. Besides that, various companies are getting FDA approval of new drugs for bladder cancer and numerous drugs are being sent for clinical trials. Hence, innovation in drug development, subsequent technological advancements, and pipeline products are expected to find immense opportunity during the forecast period.For More info:The global bladder cancer market is analysed on the basis of geographical regions that are contributing significantly towards the growth of the market. The market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. North America is expected to dominate in the global bladder cancer market owing to high prevalence of bladder cancer in the US. The major factors that are augmenting the market are high prevalence of bladder cancer diseases, high healthcare expenditure, and government policies. Asia Pacific region is expected to have a considerable market growth during the forecast period. Major countries contributing in the region are India, China, and Japan. Large patients base, continuous increment in economy &healthcare facilities are the major factors for the growth of the market in the region.The major companies active in the market are AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Eli Lilly, Epocrates, Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Merck & Co, Novartis, Pfizer and so on. These companies are focusing on product innovations, expansions, finding new markets or innovating their core competency to expand their individual market share. The report includes detailed insights into market overview, strategic recommendations, key company analysis, key findings, analyst insights, market determinants, market segmentation and company profiling of the market.MARKET SEGMENTATION:Global Bladder Cancer market is segmented on the basis of regional outlook and following segments:Global Bladder Cancer Market Research and Analysis, By Cancer TypeGlobal Bladder Cancer Market Research and Analysis, By DiagnosisGlobal Bladder Cancer Market Research and Analysis, By TherapyGlobal Bladder Cancer Market Research and Analysis, By RegionTHE REPORT COVER:Comprehensive research methodology of Global Bladder Cancer Market.This report also includes detailed and extensive market overview with key analyst insights.Exhaustive analysis of macro and micro factors influencing the market guided by key recommendations.Analysis of regional regulations and other government policies impacting theGlobal Bladder Cancer Market.Insights about market determinants which are stimulating the Global Bladder Cancer Market.Detailed and extensive market segments with regional distribution of forecasted revenues.Extensive profiles and recent developments of market players.Orion Market Research (OMR) is an Indian research company known for its crisp and concise reports.The company is equipped with an experienced team and young brigade of analysts. The company provides quality syndicated research reports, customized research reports, company profiling, consulting and other research-based services. OMR provide global and regional market reports of various domains such as healthcare, energy, IT, chemicals, and automobiles. The company provides a 360-degree view of the market with parametric analysis, key market insights, key findings, statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, extensive segmentation, key trends, strategic recommendations and detailed company profiles.CORPORATE OFFICE:Orion Market Research Pvt Ltd116, Shagun ArcadeVijay Nagar SquareIndore, Madhya Pradesh  India- 452010Email: info@omrglobal.com, support@omrglobal.comIndia: +91-780-304-0404Global: +1-646-755-7667
Market Insights: Global Smart Card IC Market to grow at a CAGR of 8.22% during 2017-2021

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A smart card is a plastic card that is embedded with an integrated circuit (IC). Smart cards are usually manufactured from plastic, namely, polyvinyl chloride (PVC). They are also made from polyesters or polycarbonates. There are two types of smart cards: contact-based smart cards and contactless cards. In a contact-based smart card, the card comes in contact with a physical reader. In a contactless card, a transaction is established through a remote contactless radio frequency interface.The global smart card IC market to grow at a CAGR of 8.22% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global smart card IC market for 2017-2021. The report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAClick to get Sample PDF:Technavio's report, Global Smart Card IC Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- Infineon Technologies- NXP Semiconductors- SAMSUNG- STMicroelectronicsOther prominent vendors- Atmel- EM Microelectronic-Marin- ON Semiconductor- Renesas Electronics- Shanghai HuaHong Integrated CircuitMarket driver- Increase in number of financial frauds- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Growth of net banking and mobile wallets- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend- SIM cards for M2M communication- For a full, detailed list, view our reportView Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Gift Packaging market Projected to Grow Steadily During 2017-2027

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Over the past decades, the global gift industry witnessed an impressive growth, owing to the expanded customer base along with increasing applications of innovative products at attractive prices. The gift market comprises of corporate gifting as well as personal gifting. Moreover, the gift packaging market experienced a revolution with new product innovations in the food as well as in the non-food segment accompanied by eye-catching packaging. Nowadays non-food gifting are not only restricted to small electronic items, bed sheets but also include gift vouchers, soft toys, artworks, artificial jewelries and many more. At the same time, various product types like cookies, fruit baskets, wine hampers, different types of cheese which comes under the categorization of food gifting for occasions like festivals, birthdays, etc. are also in the trend. The changing lifestyle together with customers ability and willingness to pay for innovative products drove this change in the gift packaging market.Nowadays, wrapping paper are in demand for gifts packaging. Some of the conventional examples of wrapping paper are recycled newspaper, reusable gift wrap, decorative lunch bags, gift box, decorative shopping bags and many more. The new alternatives for gift wrapping are also being introduced, for example, using a decorative handkerchief which also has other application can further fuel the growth in demand for gift packaging market. The gift market is expected to expand with a healthy growth rate of over 10% which in turns growth of the gift packaging market in the near future.Request to Sample Report -Gift Packaging Market: DynamicsThe growing e-commerce in the gifting space is one of the major factor which is expected to drive the demand for the gift packaging market. Big e-commerce companies such as Snapdeal and Amazon play a vital role in fuelling the demand for gift packaging market. Further, increase in per capita income, increasing exposure to global trends is offering impetus to the growth of overall gift industry which in turn is escalating the gift packaging market across the globe. Personal gifting in number of occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, fathers day, and Mothers day is on the rise as the consumers, want uniqueness, different styles and personalization in their gift items, to match their status.In past years, food gifting was limited to the conventional sweets only, but nowadays customers are moving towards consistent quality products with a good taste in attractive packaging, which is a result of growing incidence of adulteration in conventional sweets.Gift Packaging Market: SegmentationOn the basis of packaging type, the global gift packaging market is segmented into,Primary PackagingSecondary PackagingTertiary PackagingOn the basis of product type, the global gift packaging market is segmented into,Gift boxesContainersRibbons & BowsGift SacksGift bagsWrapping paperTissue Paper & ShredsCellophane overwrap & bagsGift card & Money holdersOthersOn the basis of Materials, the global gift packaging market is segmented into,PlasticsPaper & PaperboardMetalsGlassOthersGift Packaging Market: Region Wise OutlookIn terms of geography, the global gift packaging market divided into five regions which includes North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Out of the five regions, Asia pacific represents the largest global gift packaging market, owing to the growth of rising disposable incomes coupled with the widened customer base. In Asia Pacific, developing countries like China and India, are the most lucrative countries for increase in consumer spending and rise in GDP.Request Report TOC @Gift Packaging Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players of the global gift packaging market are Smurfit kappa Group, Packlyn Ltd, Shenzhen Fuxiang Gifts & Packaging Co. Ltd., Interpak, Ebro Color GmbH, and many more.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite :
Mining to be Leading Revenue Generator for Global Ship loader & Unloader Market

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The worldwide ship loader & unloader market is relied upon to display a solid development through the span of the estimated time frame. The study of worldwide ship loader & unloader has been minutely examined and researched upon by Transparency Market Research (TMR). The market research report displays a far reaching examination of the worldwide radar market alongside a framework of the opposition existing among the center players working in the market. The competitive scene segment incorporates a few parts of the key players, for example, advancement and improvements center systems, product portfolio, prime work force, region covered, acquisitions, agreements, mergers, and other monetary and non-budgetary techniques. As the players operating in the global ship loader & unloader market strive to present customers with differentiated products in order to sustain in the market, the competition is likely to increase in the years ahead. The companies operating in the market are FLSmidth, AUMUND Group, ZPMC, SMB Group, Sandvik, VIGAN Engineering S.A, NEUERO, AMECO, EMS-Tech, Buhler, and Xinapse Systems Ltd., among others.Request Sample Report@According to TMR, the global ship loader & unloader market is anticipated to witness a meagre CAGR of 3.1% over the course of the forecast period.On the basis of region, the global ship loader & unloader market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, and the Middle East and Africa. Among these, Europe is expected to emerge as the leading region in terms of demand and consumption of ship loader. The region is expected to reach a valuation of over US$17,800 Mn by the end of 2026. The growth of the region can be attributed to the rising sea trade from in countries such as Spain, Italy, Russia, the U.K., France, and Germany. The ongoing construction of ports and the need for port material handling equipment that is used for the loading and unloading of bulk cargo is one of the core factors that is expected to trigger the growth of the ship loader & unloader market in Europe.Based on product type, the global ship loader & unloader market has been bifurcated into stationary and mobile. By the end of 2026, there is going to be a close competition between these with valuation and growth rate near to the edge of the other one.On the basis of technology type, the market has been divided into mechanical and pneumatic. Between these two, mechanical led the market in terms of value crossing US$31,800 Mn by 2026 end. However, pneumatic is expected to lead the market over the course of the forecast period in terms of CAGR.Obtain Report Details @In terms of application, the global ship loader & unloader market has been classified into mining, packaging, construction, manufacturing, sea ports and cargo terminals, and others. Amongst these, mining is expected to dominate the market closely followed by sea ports and cargo terminals.Based on bulk type, the global market for ship loader & unloader has been bifurcated into dry and liquid with dry leading the market throughout the course of the forecast period. The use of ship loader & unloaders more in the dry bulk type other than liquid because they are easy to carry and are hassle free as well.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
APAC Craniomaxillofacial Devices Market share set to cross USD 270 mn by 2023

Global Market Insights, Inc.

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According to Global Market Insights, Inc., Worldwide craniomaxillofacial devices market was worth USD 1.14 billion in 2015 and will collect a revenue of USD 1.93 billion by the end of 2023 with an annual growth rate of more than 6.8% over 2016-2023. The aging population across the globe is also a major driver influencing the market across key geographies. Elderly patients have lately been giving preference to dental implants for better anatomy, which will further stimulate craniomaxillofacial devices market share.The number of oral and maxillofacial surgeries have increased considerably since the last decade. Craniomaxillofacial devices market growth is expected to be influenced heavily in the ensuing years, subject to the aforementioned fact. Of late, specialist surgeons have been giving preference to technologically advanced devices for carrying out facial reconstruction surgeries. Thus, it is undeniable that the escalating technological advancements in medical equipment will influence craniomaxillofacial devices industry share notably.Request for a sample of this research report -Pertaining to the relatively limited competition in craniomaxillofacial devices industry, major biggies are investing heavily to develop technologically advanced devices. One such device is the 3D printed implant that has been introduced in the market. Nowadays, the 3D printed implant technique is increasingly used for cranial reconstructive surgeries such as external prosthetics and crowns, owing to the flexibility of the product. Moreover, technical advancements in the implementation of robot assisted CMG technology will fuel the product demand. For instance, advanced CMF distraction systems are extensively deployed across oncology, orthognathic surgery, and trauma reconstruction, owing to their role as bone stabilizers. On these grounds, craniomaxillofacial devices market size from CMF distraction systems is slated to register a modest annual growth rate of 8.8% over the coming six years. Screws, footplates, distractor body, and extension arms are the prominent constituents of this product. Of late, CMF procedures also encompass bio absorbable materials.Bio-absorbable implants are gaining popularity in orthopedic surgical procedures subject to the material benefits such as radiolucency, minimized requirement of hardware based removal, and capability to transfer gradual load to healing tissues. This material, as analyzed, is mainly used for soft tissue fixation and for the fixation of fractures. Pertaining to the same, craniomaxillofacial devices market share from bioabsorbable material will exhibit a CAGR of 7.5% over the coming timeframe, having had a revenue of USD 280 million in 2015. The materials superior capabilities to assimilate with the body will propel its demand further, especially since it helps to avoid secondary surgeries. Industry giants have been undertaking further research to invent specialized materials.Browse key industry insights spread across 94 pages with 53 market data tables & 40 figures & charts from the report, Craniomaxillofacial Devices Market in detail along with the table of contents:Cosmetic surgeries are becoming increasingly popular among the people due to their capability to enhance an individuals appearance. The rising trends toward cosmetic surgeries like jaw replacement and chin augmentation are thus estimated to propel craniomaxillofacial devices market across the globe. Considering long-term effects, surgeons have been giving preferences to temporomandibular joints in case of jaw replacement. On that note, craniomaxillofacial devices industry size from temporomandibular joint replacement is likely to witness the highest annual growth rate of 11.2% over 2016-2023.The governmental organizations of various countries are investing heavily to develop global healthcare infrastructure. A recent news report speaks about HLL Infra Tech Services Ltd. making strategic alliances with an India-based project management and consultancy company KITCO to develop healthcare infrastructure projects, which is likely to spur the regional craniomaxillofacial devices industry. The Make in India initiative by the Indian government has also generated lucrative opportunities for the industry giants in the healthcare sector. As per reliable sources, many of the developed countries have been giving preferences to the India belt as far as cosmetic surgeries are concerned, subject to the availability of cost-effective therapies. On that note, Asia Pacific craniomaxillofacial devices market will exhibit a growth rate of 8.8% over the coming six years. The escalating requirement of minimally invasive medical treatments along with the growing prevalence of orthopedic disorders will fuel the product demand over the years ahead across the APAC region. India, Japan, and China will be the prominent revenue contributors.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @The cases of facial deformities and facial fractures are increasing exponentially across the U.S., owing to the lack of precautions at worksites. North America has been witnessing tremendous development in the residential and industrial sectors, which has led to the availability of advanced healthcare facilities, thereby fueling craniomaxillofacial devices market size. As per estimates, U.S. craniomaxillofacial devices industry is slated to surpass a revenue of more than USD 1 billion by the end of 2023.Medtronic, Stryker Corporation, Zimmer-Biomet, Inc., and KLS Martin LP are the prominent players in craniomaxillofacial devices market. Industry giants are heavily involved in technological developments along with clinical process enhancements to sustain their business position. Craniomaxillofacial devices industry giants have also been engaged in strategic alliances with their competitors and as well as with research institutes to bring about a massive change in their product portfolios.Browse Related Reports:Cosmetic Implant Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Germany, UK, Italy, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa), Application Potential, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2016  2023About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:Explore Our Blog @
Advanced Marine Power Supply Market - Communication and Internal Lighting to Emerge as Key Applications

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The vendor landscape of the global advanced marine power supply market is becoming increasingly crowded and competitive. Increasing expenditure of countries across the globe in military and naval vessels has encouraged many companies to extend their product portfolios and expand their geographical outreach, observes Transparency Market Research in a recent report.Request Sample Report@Some of the leading companies in the market are ABB Ltd, Schneider Electric SE, Emerson Electric Company, Systems Sunlight S.A., EnerSys, HBL Power Systems Ltd, Exide Industries Ltd, ENAG, Powerbox International AB, Newmar, Eaton Corporation Plc, Marine Electric Systems Inc. and Analytic Systems.According to the report, the global advanced marine power supply market valued at US$4310.8 mn in 2016 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.7% from 2017 to 2025, rising to a valuation of US$6469.6 mn by 2025.Geographically, Asia Pacific acquired the dominant share in the overall advanced marine power supply market in 2016, thanks to the vast rise in cross-border trade along with increase in ship owners in countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China are increasing the demand for advanced marine power supply devices in the region. Europe acquired the second largest share of the global advanced marine power supply market in 2016 and the regional market is expected to expand at a decent pace during the reports forecast period. In terms of power supply source, the segment of renewable power is expected to gain massive traction in the next few years as emissions regulations for vessels become stringent.Browse Market Research Report @Rising Number of Vessels and Rising Focus on Using Cleaner Power Sources to Drive MarketThe global market for advanced marine power supply is chiefly driven due to the rising number of vessels across the world and the increasing expenditure of military and navy of several countries on submarines and ships. In Addition, the rising demand for renewable energy sources to power ships is also playing a key role in the positive expansion of the global advanced marine power supply market.Applications such as internal lighting, navigation lighting, communication, surveillance system, and engine control, are in great demand and are leading to promising growth avenues for the overall market. Despite mostly positive growth opportunities, however, the high maintenance cost of ships and wear and tear of marine power supply products is one of the key factors that restricts the overall growth of the market to a certain extent. Nevertheless, companies could benefit from public-private partnership agreements such as the Global Industry Alliance, which was formed to reduce the greenhouse gas emission and promote low carbon marine transportation.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Advance Anesthesia Monitoring Devices Market Leaders 2018: Astrazeneca (UK), GlaxoSmithKline (UK), Universal Health Services Inc. (US), Biogen (US) and others.

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Market Research Future adds new report of Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Treatment Market Research Report- Global Forecast till 2023 it contains Company information, geographical data, Market Information and Full TOC.Neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.2% during forecasted period. Neuropsychiatric is the mental disorder occur due to disturbance in the function of cerebral system. Mania and hallucination are some of the major neuropsychiatric diseases. Neuropsychiatric diseases occur at any age but the paediatric neuropsychiatry is getting a huge demand due to increasing number of infants, children and adolescents suffering from neuropsychiatric diseases. Increasing prevalence of different neuropsychiatric diseases across the globe is the major driving factor for the growth of the market. While long term treatment and lack of clinical trial data for neuropsychiatric diseases may hamper the growth of the market.Segmentation:Global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market is segmented on the basis of disorders into degenerative diseases, neurotic disorders, psychosis and others. On the basis of treatments it is segmented as shock treatment, drug treatment, others and on the basis of end users it is hospitals, clinics, research centres and others.Access Sample copy of Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Treatment Market Report@Study Objectives Global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market:Detail market analysis of global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market with region and competitive analysis. Detail analysis of parent market and different drivers and restraints affecting the growth of the market.Detail Information about the present and forecasted market with its key players that influences the market on global scale. Analysis of the market of the different factors like- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc.To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market.Detail information on the possible segments and sub segments of the market. And regional analysis of the market- North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa. Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untappedFor more Inquiry on Neuropsychiatric Disorders and Treatment Market Report @Regional Analysis:On regional basis, North America commands the largest share of global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market. Increasing prevalence of neuropsychiatric disorders and governmental support for the research and development of the medicines in this area are the major driving factor for the growth of the market in North America. Europe commands the second largest market followed by Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a fastest rate due to rapid development of the healthcare sector in this regions.Key Players for Global neuropsychiatric disorders and treatment market:Astrazeneca (UK), GlaxoSmithKline (UK), Universal Health Services Inc. (US), Biogen (US), Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH (Germany), Eli Lilly (US), Bristol-Meyer Squibb (US), Johnson & Johnson (US), Pfizer (US), Wyeth (US), Otsuka Holdings Co. Ltd (Japan), Astellas Pharma Inc. (Japan).Table of Content:INTRODUCTION.1 DEFINITION.2 SCOPE OF STUDY.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS & LIMITATIONS.2.2.1 ASSUMPTIONS.2.2.2 LIMITATIONS.3 MARKET STRUCTURE:2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2. RESEARCH PROCESS:2.2 PRIMARY RESEARCH2.3 SECONDARY RESEARCH:3 MARKET DYNAMICS3. DRIVERS3.2 RESTRAINTS3.3 OPPORTUNITIES3.4 MACROECONOMIC INDICATORS4 MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS4. PORTERS FIVE FORCES MODEL4.2 BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS4.3 BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS4.4 THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS4.5 THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES4.6 INTENSITY OF RIVALRY5. GLOBAL NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS AND TREATMENT MARKET, BY DISORDERSContinuedBrowse Full Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune  411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Food Service Packaging Market Expected to Grow Over 4.5% - Forecast to 2023

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Market Research Future published a research report on Food Service Packaging Market Research Report- Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.The food service packaging is packaging used for the packaging of all kinds of food such as dairy products, fruits & vegetables and others with the objective of preserving the food for a long duration of time.The global food service packaging market is majorly driven by the emphasis on proper food packaging, owing to the increase in demand for ready to eat and processed packaged food. The food service packaging usually involves materials such as plastic, paperboard and metals. The low cost of these materials are also driving the growth of the food service packaging market. The market is growing, owing to the increase in the number of restaurants and their takeaway facilities.Food service packaging market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 4.5% during the forecast period.Get Sample of Report @Regional Analysis:The Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow the highest in the global food service packaging market, owing to the increasing urbanization in the developing nations. The rapidly changing consumer taste & preferences and the increase in adoption of takeaways from restaurants by consumers, is leading to the growth of the region. North America market is dominating the market due to the existence of large customer base for packaged food.Key Players:The key players of food service packaging market are Amcor Limited (Australia), Ball Corporation (U.S.), Ampac Packaging LLC (U.S.), Bemis Company Incorporated (U.S.), Crown Holdings Incorporated (U.S.), BWAY Corporation (U.S.), Greif Incorporated (U.S.), Letica Corporation (U.S.), Rock-Tenn Company (U.S.) and others.Intended Audience: Distributer & Supplier companies End Users consultants and Investment bankers Government as well as Independent Regulatory AuthoritiesEnquiry before Buying @Scope of the ReportThis study provides an overview of the global Food service packaging market, tracking two market segment across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global Food service packaging market by its product, application and region.By Product Flexible Packaging Rigid Packaging Paper And Pouches Bags OthersBy Application Dairy Products fruits and vegetables Baked Goods OthersBy Region North America Asia Pacific Europe Rest of the WorldThe report for Food service packaging market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.Access Full Report @1... Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope Of The Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market Size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3... Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4... Global Food Service Packaging Market, By Product4.1 Flexible Packaging4.2 Rigid Packaging4.3 Paper And Pouches4.4 Bags4.5 Others5... Global Food Service Packaging Market, By Application5.1 Dairy Products5.2 Fruits And Vegetables5.1 Baked Goods5.2 Others6 Regional Market Analysis6.1 Introduction6.2 North America6.2.1 U.S.6.2.2 Canada6.3 Europe6.3.1 U.K6.3.2 France6.3.3 Germany6.3.4 Spain6.3.5 Rest Of Europe6.4 Asia-Pacific6.4.1 China6.4.2 Japan6.4.3 India6.4.4 Rest Of Asia-Pacific6.5 Rest Of The World7... Competitive AnalysisContinues...About Us:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for , regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Media Contact:Market Research FuturePune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone No. :+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Medical Smart Textile Market Intelligence with Competitive Landscape 2027

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Global Medical Smart Textile Market Information by types (Wireless-enabled garment, Sensitized vest, others) by application (patient health monitoring, patient protection, patient safety, others) by end users (Hospitals, Clinics, others) - Forecast to 2027The Worldwide Medical Smart Textile Market is developing with the fast pace; for the most part because of the expanding social insurance innovation. As indicated by a current report distributed by the Market Research Future, The worldwide Medical Smart Textile Market is blasting and anticipated that would pick up conspicuousness over the figure time frame. The market is estimated to display surprising development by 2027, surpassing its past development records as far as incentive with a conspicuous CAGR amid the anticipated period (2017  2027).The developing significance in the advancement of Smart Textile for the medicinal business is driven by the objective to expand the adaptability of patients who require persistent observing of such physical parameters. In this way, the utilization of Fiber optic sensors (FOSs) is increasing gigantic acknowledgment as another option to customary electrical and mechanical sensors for the observing of warm and mechanical parameters. The reasonable effect of FOSs is related to their great metrological properties, their little size and their adaptability, and in addition to their resistance from electromagnetic field.Medical Smart Textile has benefits in which they have the chance to utilize keen material in light of fiber optic in an attractive reverberation imaging condition, where standard electronic sensors can't be dynamic, This last quality makes Fiber optic sensors (FOSs) fitting for observing organic parameters (e.g., respiratory and pulse checking) amid attractive reverberation strategies and methods. Additionally innovative work enthusiasm for relating FOSs and materials into a solitary structure to create wearable sensors is quickly developing which additionally picks up premium and open door for producers to go into the market.Global Medical Smart Textile Market - Competitive AnalysisAiQ Smart Clothing Ltd.(Taiwan), Innovation in Textiles (UK), SENSING TEX S.L.(SPAIN), Schoeller Textile (Switzerland), Ohmatex ApS (Denmark), Stretchable Circuits was (Germany), E.I. DuPont De Nemours and Co (US), Gentherm Inc (US), Carre Technologies inc (Hexoskin), these are some of the prominent players at the forefront of competition in the Global Medical Smart Textile Market.Get a Brochure of This Report @Medical smart textile technology has a great deal to offer patient monitoring. Sensors integrated right into the medical textile provides the least frustrating way to monitor vitals, as patients will notice it about the same as anyone would notice any other type of clothing.For example, Carre Technologies Inc (Hexoskin) has developed a biometric smart shirt which permits its users lab-quality analysis just by getting dressed. In this technology the sensors are actually made of textile, with next to no hardware in the shirt.Additionally Medical smart textile, for example, keen outfits wouldn't be as large as a common healing center outfit however a slight coziness is a minor cost to pay for disposing of the considerable number of wires which are required for understanding observing. Also there will always be worries with network when talking about to remote checking. In any case, the utilizations are complex and effortlessly specially designed to all kind of patient, those in post-operational recuperation would be allowed to move about without disturbing any screens. Patients experiencing cardiovascular infections could have a fix installed in their smart gown over the chest which will give careful consideration to examples and peculiarities in the heart rate. Ladies in labor might have the capacity to unrestraint the ultrasound transducer ties for a more casual option keeping in mind the end goal to screen fetal vitals. Shrewd material could even be worn amid surgery to permit specialists more flexibility as they work amid surgeries.Nevertheless, with a continued rise in many parts of the world of chronic disease--such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease and respiratory disorders, aging populations that are living longer and an increase in the number of surgeries performed in key healthcare markets such as US and Europe, smart textile improvements are on the rise to make use of developing electronics and medical technology. In some clinical trials, smart medical textile has shown to protect against infectious disease, help sense the state of the wearer's health, and help prevent, treat, and manage health.Brief TOC1 Report Prologue2 Introduction2.1 Scope of Study2.2 Research Objective2.3 Assumptions & Limitations2.3.1 Assumptions2.3.2 Limitations3 Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary ResearchGrab Attractive Discount @4 Market Dynamics4.1 Introduction4.2 Drivers4.3 Restraints4.4 Opportunities4.5 Challenges5 Market Factor AnalysisTOC ContinuedAbout US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices Market Poised to Reach US$ 8.5 Bn by 2025

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A new research study titled Global Market Study on Cardiac Arrhythmia Monitoring Devices: Implantable Cardiac Monitors Product Type Segment to Grow at the Highest CAGR During 2017 - 2025 has been submitted to the database of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). According to the report, the global cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market is projected to grow at 6.6% CAGR during the period 2017-2025, and reach a valuation of nearly US$ 8.5 Bn.Request a Free Sample Report @The report offers detailed analysis on the key factors that are influencing the growth of the market. According to the report, the global cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market continues to be influenced by a range of macroeconomic and industry-specific factors. Growing investments in healthcare, favorable government policies, and rising popularity of portable ECG devices are among the key factors that are driving the growth of the market. However, product recalls and concerns about the efficacy of advanced ECG monitors are hindering growth.The global cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices market has been segmented into application, product type, end user and region for in-depth analysis. The application segment is further sub-segmented into atrial fibrillation, conduction disorders, tachycardia, bradycardia, ventricular fibrillation, premature contraction and others. According to the report, ventricular fibrillation segment remains the largest in terms of application. This segment is projected to grow at 5.8% CAGR during the assessment period.The product type segments is categorized into implantable cardiac monitors, ECG stress test devices, holter monitors, resting ECG devices and mobile cardiac telemetry monitors. The report projects mobile cardiac telemetry monitors to grow at a brisk pace during the assessment period.Read the Complete Report with TOC @The end user segment is divided into ambulatory surgical centers, homecare settings, emergency medical services, hospitals and diagnostic centers and long term care centers. Hospitals remain one of the most lucrative end users for cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices globally. This segment is projected to grow at nearly 7% during the assessment period.The report has divided the global market into major regions which are North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. North America, led by the US, continues to be one of the leading markets for cardiac arrhythmia monitoring devices globally.Some of the companies profiled in the report are NUUBO Smart Solutions Technologies, SL, GE Healthcare (General Electric Company), Spacelabs Healthcare, Inc. (OSI Systems, Inc.), Fukuda Denshi Co., Ltd., AliveCor, Inc., Medronic, Plc., Koninklijke Philips N.V., Welch Allyn  A Hill-Rom Inc. Company, Nihon Kohden Corporation, Biotelemetry, Inc., Biotronik, Inc. and St. Jude Medical, LLC. (Abbott Laboratories).About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:
Autoclave Indicator Tape Market | USD 808.2 Million To be Crossed By Global Market - Global Forecast to 2023

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Market Research Future published a research report on Autoclave Indicator Tape Market Research Report- Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Global Autoclave Indicator Tape Market, By Method (Gravity Discharge, Vacuum Autoclave ) By backing material (Paper, Plastic, Woven and Others) and Region - Forecast 2017-2023.Market Highlights:An autoclave chamber is capable of heating lab or medical devices above the boiling point. This process effectively sterilizes the instruments. Due to the high heat and pressure created in autoclaves during operation, proper loading and use must be followed to prevent burns and other accidents. Moreover, the easy maintenance of these ready-to-use and easy-to-use sterile instruments, and their long life, act as major driving factors for the market. Geographically, Americas are expected to be the largest market for autoclave by 2023. Apart from the significant investments made in the US, the growth of this market will be driven by investments in research facilities from Brazil, Chile, and Columbia. Autoclave Indicator Tape will grow in Asia-pacific region, with China and India expected to be the most promising markets.Global Autoclave Indicator Tape Market is expected to reach at market size of ~ USD 808.2 Million by the end of forecast period with CAGR of ~5 % between 2017 and 2023.Get Sample of Report @Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and 25 figures spread over 135 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on The Global Autoclave Indicator Tape Report -Forecast to 2023.Key Players:The prominent players in the autoclave indicator tape includes  3M (U.S), Spectrum Chemical Manufacturing Corp (U.S), Guangzhou Maidi Medical Co. Ltd (China), VWR (U.S), Medline Industries, Inc. (U.S), Narang Medical Limited (India), Komal Health Care Pvt. Ltd.(India), Anqing Yiren Medical Material Co., Ltd (China) and Thomas Scientific (U.S).Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis show that the global market of autoclave indicator tape market is estimated to grow at USD 808.2 Million by the end of year 2023. Autoclaves provide a physical method for disinfection and sterilization. They work with a combination of steam, pressure and time. Autoclaves operate at high temperatures and pressure in order to kill microorganisms and spores. They are an economical way of sterilizing and decontaminating items. Because some materials present specific hazards such as generation of toxic and noxious gas. So, the autoclave indicator tape is designed to distinguish between processed and unprocessed items. Increased regulations and the requirement for proper sterilization in private clinics have given rise to the demand for sterilizers that are easy to use and maintain. North America is leading the market of autoclave indicator tape. The global autoclave indicator tape is expected to grow at CAGR of 5% between years 2017 to 2023.Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.Access Full Report @Table Of Contents -1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope Of The Study2.2 Research Process2.3 Market Size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Autoclave Indicator Tape Market, By Method4.1 Introduction4.2 Gravity Discharge4.3 Vacuum Autoclaves5 Global Autoclave Indicator Tape Market, By Backing Material5.1 Introduction5.2 Paper5.3 Plastic5.4 Woven5.5 Wraps5.6 Others6 Regional Market Analysis6.1 Introduction6.2 North America6.3 Europe6.4 Asia-Pacific6.5 RoW7 Competitive AnalysisContinues...About Us:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for , regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Media Contact:Market Research FuturePune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone No. :+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Aerospace Robotics Market worth 4.54 Billion USD by 2022

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According to latest research on "Aerospace Robotics Market by Type (Scara, Cylindrical, Articulated, Catesian), Component (Controller, Processor, End Effector, Drive, Sensor) Technology (Traditional, Collaborative), Application and Region - Global Forecast to 2022"The aerospace robotics market is projected to grow from USD 1.81 Billion in 2016 to USD 4.54 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 16.55% during the forecast period.Factors such as increasing use of robots for efficient aircraft production, growing use of robotics to handle aircraft orders backlog, and increasing labor costs are expected to drive the growth of the aerospace robotics market.Download PDF Brochure @Articulated segment estimated to witness the highest growth during the forecast periodBy type, the articulated segment of the aerospace robotics market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Articulated robots are used for various functions, for instance drilling, fastening, and painting, among others. They are the most preferred and widely used robots in the aerospace industry because of the wide range of applications for which they can be used. Articulated robots dominate the automated world in terms of speed and agility.Sensors segment estimated to witness the highest growth during the forecast periodBased on component, the sensors segment of the aerospace robotics market is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period, owing to the increasing use of robotic sensors to provide essential inputs about an objects motion, location, velocity, and temperature, among others.Request Sample Report @Collaborative segment estimated to witness the highest growth during the forecast periodBased on technology, the collaborative segment of the aerospace robotics market is estimated to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. This segments growth is driven by the increasing demand for human safety while working alongside robots, in the aerospace industry. Customers/manufacturers in the aerospace industry are showing an interest in collaborative robots, as these robots can safely work alongside humans.Asia-Pacific market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast periodAsia-Pacific is the fastest-growing markets for aerospace robotics, due to increase in the number of aircraft deliveries in the region. The regions major economies, such as India, China, and Japan are increasingly investing in automation solution for aircraft manufacturing. These countries are also expected to increase their acquisition of robotic systems and invest in research & development in aerospace manufacturing.Speak to Analyst @Some of the major players in the aerospace robotics market include Yaskawa Electric Corporation (Japan), Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), and FANUC Corporation (Japan).MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.Markets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India1-888-600-6441
Frozen Fish and Seafood Market 2018 Global Analysis By key Players : AquaChile, Clearwater Seafood, High Liner Foods, Iglo Group, Leroy Seafood, Marine Harvest, Austevoll Seafood

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In this report, the global Frozen Fish and Seafood 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 2025.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Frozen Fish and Seafood in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaRequest a Sample Report @Global Frozen Fish and Seafood market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingAquaChileClearwater SeafoodHigh Liner FoodsIglo GroupLeroy SeafoodMarine HarvestAustevoll SeafoodToyo Suisan KaishaLyons SeafoodsSajo IndustriesSurapon FoodsTassal GroupTri Marine InternationalCollins SeafoodsMaruha NichiroAsian GroupNippon Suisan KaishaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoFrozen FishFrozen ShrimpFrozen ShellfishOtherOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingDirect ConsumptionProcessing ConsumptionIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Research Report 20181 Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Frozen Fish and Seafood1.2 Frozen Fish and Seafood Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Frozen Fish1.2.4 Frozen Shrimp1.2.5 Frozen Shellfish1.2.6 Other1.3 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Segment by Application1.3.1 Frozen Fish and Seafood Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Direct Consumption1.3.3 Processing Consumption1.4 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Frozen Fish and Seafood (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Frozen Fish and Seafood Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 North America Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 Europe Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.9 Southeast Asia Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.10 India Frozen Fish and Seafood Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 North America Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 Europe Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.5 Japan Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.6 Southeast Asia Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.7 India Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)5 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.3 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Price by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Production Growth by Type (2013-2018)6 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Consumption and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)6.2 Global Frozen Fish and Seafood Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2013-2018)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesContinuedAccess Complete Report @ABOUT US: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 features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Hi Torque Starter Motors Market- Key Growth Factors and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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A hi torque starter motor is an advance type of starter motor that is witnessing rapid growth opportunities as a replacement for the conventional starter motor. Hi torque starter motors have beneficial parameters, such as a high-speed motor, compact size, and a set of reduction gears. A hi torque starter motor weighs less and is small as compared to conventional starter motors, and thus it operates at a high speed. Therefore, efforts by original equipment manufacturers to manufacture fuel-efficient and lightweight vehicles are estimated to boost the demand for hi torque starter motors.The rise of advanced technology adoption in automotive vehicles by key manufacturers is estimated to support growth of the hi torque starter motors market. Moreover, automotive vehicle production has been a prime growth factor for the global hi torque starter motors market. The global hi torque starter motors market is estimated to witness effects of macroeconomic factors, such as rising disposable income, rising standard of living, and rapid urbanization. These factors will amount toward contribution of high demand for passenger vehicles, which, in turn, will have a positive impact on the overall market. The growing focus towards eco-friendly solutions for vehicles to tackle the rising pollution levels is estimated to drive the demand for electric vehicles, which in turn is projected to augment demand for the global hi torque starter motors market over the forecast period.Key manufacturers focus on development and adoption of light and efficient starter motors, which is estimated to spur the global hi torque starter motors market. Moreover, manufacturers are shifting production plants or establishing new ones in emerging automotive markets to capitalize on the growing demand for automobiles and benefit from the low capital and labor costs in these regions. Automotive component markets in countries, such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Mexico are projected to benefit significantly from the demand for aftermarket and OEM products, which in turn is expected to be beneficial for the hi torque starter motors market.Request to Sample of Report @Factors, such as increasing electrification of vehicles and stringent emission control regulations in various regions, such as Europe and North America are estimated to drive growth of the global hi torque starter motors market.Key growth drivers for this market are growth in automotive demand, production and vehicle parc. The increasing focus of manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency of vehicles and increase the average miles travelled per year is estimated to fuel growth of the global hi torque starter motors market.The global hi torque starter motor market is estimated to be hampered by the high adoption rate of hybrid vehicles, which do not require a separate starter motor.The Asia-Pacific hi torque starter motors market is estimated to remain dominant over the forecast period, owing to its major share in automotive production and vehicle parc. Countries, such as China, India, Japan and South Korea are estimated to be growth drivers in the Asia-Pacific market. The Asia-Pacific region is estimated to witness high growth opportunities, owing to the presence of fast growing economies, such as India, and China, and the growing vehicle production in these regions.Japan hi torque starter motors market is estimated to register stable growth over the forecast period, owing to comparatively high advance technology development and adoption rate. Additionally, factors such as relatively low vehicle production costs, GDP, growing personal disposable income and government initiatives towards FDI are estimated to support growth of the Asia-Pacific hi torque starter motors market.Request Report For TOC @The Europe hi torque starter motors market is estimated to witness optimistic growth, owing to high investment by the automotive sector in research and development activities. In the North America hi torque starter motors market, Canada is estimated to show positive growth over the forecast period; however, the U.S. is projected to dominate the market. Furthermore, Latin America and MEA are expected to register relatively fast growth over the forecast period.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. 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Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Market Status and Outlook 2018

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Market Professional Survey Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.The intensive report here gathers the numerous points of view to be considered with regard to the general Solar Grade Polysilicon market which verbalizes the present-day information and future predictions with reference to the dynamic forces at play. The prime purpose behind the study is to offer the reader with a broad configuration and make available the required materials and records. The quantifiable and testing explanations behind the analysis, besides elucidating information on factors, for instance, drivers, restraints, and projections to gage the cumulative result of the general Solar Grade Polysilicon market over the mentioned period in the report. The report additionally provides a brief and in-depth analysis of the predefined market, which combines some current events of the industry at work which are liable to trigger a change in the market or may cause any negative impact.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringPolysilicon Technology Company (PTC)MBM Solar Holding IncQSTecGCL GroupWACKER CHEMIEOCILDK SolarDaqo New EnergyKCCPolysilicon Technology Company (PTC)Enter your information below to receive a sample copy of this report @This report inspects the overall Solar Grade Polysilicon market by instigating the previous market trends and occurrences. This is required to figure out the current competitive landscape and how it is prone to change. The analysis of the report is carried out in several layers starting with primary research parameters, followed by secondary research. Each segment and sub-segment of the market is exhaustively perused and studied. Various market influencing factor at both local and global levels are considered. The report thus segments the overall Solar Grade Polysilicon market based on geography, its type, and by end-use.The report uses a few demonstrated industry analysis contraptions. They allow the examination to gather a succinct evaluation of the general Solar Grade Polysilicon market and help the reader and market players to be directed regarding theory and business judgments. The broad coverage of the market gives this report a distinct edge. It gathers significant and discretionary research structures in this manner. Seasoned analysts have made a note of the recorded experiences and derived from it a way to change predict and to design a structure for the general Solar Grade Polysilicon market in the years ahead.Table of ContentsGlobal Solar Grade Polysilicon Market Professional Survey Report 20181 Industry Overview of Solar Grade Polysilicon1.1 Definition and Specifications of Solar Grade Polysilicon1.1.1 Definition of Solar Grade Polysilicon1.1.2 Specifications of Solar Grade PolysiliconRead Complete Table of Content @2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Solar Grade Polysilicon2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Solar Grade Polysilicon2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Solar Grade Polysilicon2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Solar Grade Polysilicon3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Solar Grade Polysilicon3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Major Manufacturers in 20173.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Major Manufacturers in 20173.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Major Manufacturers in 20173.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Major Manufacturers in 20174 Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Overall Market Overview4.1 2013-2018E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2013-2018E Global Solar Grade Polysilicon Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2017 Solar Grade Polysilicon Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)Get discount copy @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Solar Grade PolysiliconTable Product Specifications of Solar Grade PolysiliconTable Classification of Solar Grade PolysiliconFigure Global Production Market Share of Solar Grade Polysilicon by Type in 2017Figure Multicrystalline based ingot/wafer and cells ExamplesTable Major Consumers in Multicrystalline based ingot/wafer and cellsFigure Novel wafer applications such as string ribbon and molded wafer ExamplesTable Major Consumers in Novel wafer applications such as string ribbon and molded waferAbout Us:QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Ambulatory Surgery Center Market 2018- QHC, Elmhurst, SCH, SurgCenter Development

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The Global Ambulatory Surgery Center Industry 2018 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Ambulatory Surgery Center industry.Firstly, Ambulatory Surgery Center Market report provides a basic overview of the Ambulatory Surgery Center industry including definitions, classifications, applications and Ambulatory Surgery Center industry chain structure. Global Ambulatory Surgery Center Market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, Ambulatory Surgery Center industry competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status on Ambulatory Surgery Center Market scenario.To get sample copy of Report Click Here:-Major Manufacturers Analysis of Ambulatory Surgery Center :- AmSurg, THC, HCA Healthcare, Mednax, Team Health, Surgical Care Affiliates, QHC, Surgery Partners, Medical Facilities, NOVENA, Community, Terveystalo Healthcare, SurgCenter Development, Elmhurst, Healthway Medical, SCH, Eifelhoehen-KlinikAmbulatory Surgery Center Market: Type Analysis:- Single-specialty Centers, Multi-specialty CentersAmbulatory Surgery Center Market: Application Analysis:- Gastroenterology, Ophthalmology, Pain Management, Orthopedics, OthersSecondly, Ambulatory Surgery Center Market report includes, development policies and plans are discussed, manufacturing processes and cost structures. This Ambulatory Surgery Center Industry report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, Ambulatory Surgery Center Market revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the Ambulatory Surgery Center report focuses on global major leading industry players (in Ambulatory Surgery Center market area) with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Global Ambulatory Surgery Center Market report also includes Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis.Browse Complete Report details with TOC Click Here :-All above Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue, Contact Information covered in Ambulatory Surgery Center market report.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Table of ContentsChapter One Ambulatory Surgery Center Industry OverviewChapter Two Ambulatory Surgery Center Manufacturing Cost Structure AnalysisChapter Three Ambulatory Surgery Center Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four Ambulatory Surgery Center Production by Regions, Technology and ApplicationsChapter Five Ambulatory Surgery Center Sales and Sales Revenue by RegionsChapter Six 2013-2018 Ambulatory Surgery Center Productions Supply Sales Market Status and ForecastChapter Seven Ambulatory Surgery Center Key Manufacturers AnalysisChapter Eight Ambulatory Surgery Center Price Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Ten 2018-2023 Ambulatory Surgery Center Industry Development TrendChapter Eleven Ambulatory Surgery Center Industry Chain Suppliers and Contact Information AnalysisChapter Twelve Ambulatory Surgery Center New Project Investment Feasibility AnalysisGet Discount and Inquiry Before Buying click here:-Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.James Johnson420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300New York City, NY 10170.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email ID: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Other Website:
Future Trends and Growth Analysis of Aircraft Hydraulic System Market by 2025

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Factors such as rise in global air travel and surge in new aircraft deliveries in countries such as China, Mexico, Brazil and India are estimated to be the key growth drivers in the global aircraft hydraulic system market.Hydraulic systems have experienced a major transformation in terms of weight (they have become lighter over the years), simplification of inspection, ease of installation and maintenance requirements (latest hydraulic systems demand minimum maintenance). Hydraulic systems are not new to the aircraft market. In the past, aircrafts have used hydraulic brake systems. As the aircraft industry is evolving, manufacturers are coming up with newer systems. Hydraulic power systems were developed to meet the requirements of the modern-day aircraft industry.Aircraft hydraulic systems enhance the efficiency of an aircrafts components. Aircraft hydraulic systems facilitate easy operation of flaps, landing gear, brakes and flight control surfaces in aircrafts. The complexity of aircraft hydraulic systems depends on the size of the aircraft. For instance, smaller size aircrafts need hydraulic fluid only for wheel brakes. Larger size commercial aircrafts, on the other hand, require hydraulic systems that are complex and large in size. To achieve the essential consistency, an aircraft hydraulic system may consist of several subsystems. Each subsystem include actuators & filters, reservoir, pump, vane & spur gear, hydraulic fluid, pressure regulator, accumulator, valves and others (connectors).Aircraft hydraulic systems have many advantages such as lower cooling cost, high reliability, load handling capacity and high power to weight ratio. Such beneficial parameters are estimated to spur the global aircraft hydraulic system market over the forecast period.Request to Sample of Report @Rise in global air travel and surge in new aircraft deliveries are the primary factors driving the growth of the global aircraft hydraulic system market. The demand for new aircrafts from countries such as China, Mexico, Brazil and India is increasing and this is expected to affect the global aircraft hydraulic systems market in a positive way.Furthermore, attractive investments in research & development of aircraft hydraulic systems by developed nations to investigate the scope of reliability, load handling capacity and high power to weight ratio will work in favour of the global aircraft hydraulic system market.However, fluctuations in the aviation industry may act as a growth restraint in the global aircraft hydraulic system market. Additionally, global economic uncertainty may also hamper the growth of global aircraft hydraulic system market.Moreover, factors such as high maintenance cost and high system weight result in increased usage of electric systems which is estimated to act as a growth restraint for the global aircraft hydraulic system market.The Global Aircraft Hydraulic System market is segmented on the basis of type as follows: Closed Center Hydraulic System and Open Center Hydraulic SystemThe Global Aircraft Hydraulic System market is segmented on the basis of component as follows: Actuators & Filters, Reservoir, Pump, Vane & Spur Gear, Hydraulic Fluid, Pressure Regulator, Accumulator, Valves, and Others (connectors)The Global Aircraft Hydraulic System market is segmented on the basis of end-use as follows: Commercial Aviation, Business Aviation, Military Aviation and OthersThe Global Aircraft Filter market is segmented on the basis of platform into: Fixed-Wing Platform and Rotary Wing PlatformThe Global Aircraft Filter Market is segmented on the basis of aircraft type into: Large Widebody, Medium Widebody, Small Widebody, Single Aisle and Regional Jets.Geographically, Japan is estimated to be a lucrative market for aircraft hydraulic systems over the forecast period. In North America aircraft hydraulic system market, the U.S. aircraft hydraulic system manufacturers are witnessing huge opportunities in the market as the domestic aircraft industry is undertaking international projects to develop small jets and transport & patrol aircrafts for defence.Request Report For TOC @Asia-Pacific aircraft hydraulic system market is estimated to account for a dominant market share of the global market over the forecast period owing to economic growth, new structural activities and high demand for new aircrafts. Europe aircraft hydraulic system market is estimated to register stable growth during the start of the forecast period and register strong growth between 2022 and 2027 owing to significant economic recovery. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are estimated to register rapid growth over the forecast period.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. 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Memory Integrated Circuits (IC) Market is Set to Garner Staggering Revenues by 2020

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An integrated circuit (IC), also known as chip or a microchip is a layout of electronic circuits built over a small plate made of semiconductor material. ICs are very compact and can have up to several hundreds of transistors and other components embedded on a semiconductor plate of very small size. ICs were made possible by various experiments showing that semiconductor devices can perform the functions of vacuum tubes. The mass production and reliability of ICs ensured the rapid adoption of standard integrated circuits in place of circuits using discrete transistors. ICs can store data of over 64 GB on a single chip of size comparable to a fingernail. There are primarily two types of ICs for memory storage viz. volatile and non-volatile memory. Volatile memories are memories such as random access memories (RAM) which can retain data stored on them as long as power supply is provided. Non-volatile memories are read-only memories (ROM) which have data stored on them irrespective of power supply.A sample of this report is available upon request @The memory ICs find applications in memory based electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers, tablets, medical devices, smart cards, digital cameras, communication equipments and other digital electronic devices. Memory ICs are predominantly used in smart-phones, media players, and USB drives. With growing adoption and enhancements in smart-phones, there is a rising demand for sophisticated memory ICs in recent years. This demand is expected to grow at a high rate owing to the ongoing development in the smartphone devices. Another application contributing to the demand of memory ICs is tablet computers.The demand for memory ICs is expected to rise with growing adoption of tablet PCs. In addition, increasing use of digital cameras and camcorders worldwide too contributes to the demand for memory ICs. Memory ICs are also used in smart cards such as driving license, e-passport and other identification cards. Installation of memory ICs makes it convenient to maintain records of the card holder leading to growing adoption of these cards. Automotive and medical sectors are the emerging application areas of the memory ICs. Memory ICs are used to maintain the records of patients in medical equipment such as electrocardiographs, diagnostic imaging apparatus, medical PCs, blood analysis devices and other electronic medical recording systems.Geographically, Asia-Pacific has shown the fastest growth in memory ICs market due to the growing population and consumption of consumer electronics in this region. Asia-Pacific accounts for over a quarter of the global memory ICs market. In addition, rising number of suppliers of semiconductor material required for manufacturing of ICs is boosting the production of memory ICs. North America follows Asia-Pacific with growing development in medical and automobile sector along with the consumer electronics.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @In North America, Agilent Technologies, CyOptics, Enablence Technologies, Ciena, Emcore Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Finisar Corporation, Infinera Corporation, JDS Uniphase, Kaiam Corporation, Intel Corporation, Kotura Inc, Luxtera, Oclaro Inc., Neophotonics Corporation, Onechip Photonics among others are the providers of memory ICs. In Europe, Aifotec AG and Alcatel Lucent are leading manufacturers of memory chip ICs. In Asia-Pacific, Avago Technologies is among the leading manufacturers of memory ICs.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Micro Printing Market to Surge at a Robust Pace in Terms of Revenue Over 2025

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Micro Printing Market OverviewMicro printing is an anti-counterfeit technique of printing alphabetic letters and numbers on currency, stamps, bank checks and others item of value for security purposes. Micro print is generally invisible with our naked eyes and is generally placed at an unnoticeable area of the item. The computer scanner and photocopier machines cannot view the micro print and hence display it in the form of line or dots. The demand for micro printing has arisen due to focus on detecting and preventing fraudulent activities. The global micro printing market has witnessed tremendous growth due to its global adoption across different verticals, especially for driving licences and employee ID cards.A sample of this report is available upon request @Micro Printing Market DynamicsThe main factor that drives the growth of micro printing market is development and introduction of innovative products and services. Government and corporate organizations are increasingly adopting micro printing for identity cards and licences as a security tool to avoid misuse and fraud. This is another factor that has boosted the growth of global micro printing market. Currency and stamps are the prominent sectors for micro printing market.The global micro printing market is quite mature and there is limited scope for new entrants to survive. The market is expected to show double-digit growth during the forecasted period.The US$ 100 bill has been released recently with micro printing along the quill of the note. Development of cost-effective micro printing technology has further enhanced its application range along different verticals. The different universities around the world are researching on micro printing to enhance its scope and fuel future opportunities.Researchers from Penn State University have recently discovered cost-effective artificial cells using micro printing technology, which can be used for drug and gene delivery devices.Micro Printing Market SegmentationThe global micro printing market is segmented on the basis of type, application and geography. On the basis of type, the global micro printing market is categorized into  micro- embossing, special inks, magnetic inks, UV invisible inks, infrared ink marking and others. On the basis of application, global micro printing market is categorized into  currency, stamps, bank cheques, labels, defence, packaging, ID cards, consumer electronics and others. On the basis of geography, global micro printing market is divided into  North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Middle East & Africa.The micro printing technique is used as an additional security measure by the government and corporate companies for providing licence and employee identity card. The micro printing provide easy detection and prevents misuse of fraudulent or duplicity of the things of importance. Packaging and ID card are the segments which are expected to witness the highest growth during forecasted period. The micro printing has an increasing scope to be used in biomaterials and bio sensing applications. There are innovative products like microprint pen, patented by Google to create a unique mark. There is a need to understand the value chain for micro printing market that include product OEMs, contract manufacturers, service providers, component suppliers, system integrators, maintenance providers and others in order to understand and exploit current market dynamics.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Micro Printing Market Key PlayersDiagramm Halbach GMBH (Germany), Saueressig GmbH Co KG (Germany), Team NiSCA (U.S.),Xerox Corporation (U.S.),Micro Format Inc. (U.S.), Hewlett-Packard Company (U.S.), Gallas Label & Decal (U.S.),Brady Inc. (U.S.), Printegra (U.S.), Huber Group (India) etc. among others are some of the top players in global micro printing market. These companies adopt the strategy of innovation, mergers and acquisition in order to grab maximum market share in global micro printing market. Innovative efforts are needed to improve the output quality of micro printing, reduce the cost of micro printing devices and development of end user acceptable product.About UsFuture Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Ascites Global Key Players  Sequana Medical, BioVie, PharmaCyte Biotech Inc.,Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA Market Analysis & Forecast 2017 to 2023

Ascites

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AscitesOverviewAscites is an abnormal accumulation fluid in the abdominal cavity. Liver cirrhosis is the most common case of ascites. Its presence is a sign of significant portal hypertension. Other less common factors that may contribute to ascites development are heart failure, kidney failure, cancers, and infection in pancreas. Ascites is a major complication of cirrhosis and is also an important landmark of chronic liver disease in the natural history.The rising alcohol consumption directly leads to the rising hospitalized cases and mortality due to alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Rising prevalence of cirrhosis and its related complications directly promotes the growth of ascites market.The global ascites market is expected to reach USD 3710.4 million by 2023 from USD 2806.1 million in 2016. This market is expected to grow at a stable CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period d 2017-2023.Click here for sample report @Key Players:Some of key the players in the ascites market are Sequana Medical, BioVie, PharmaCyte Biotech Inc., Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA, BD, GI Supply, Medtronic plc, and others.Major Highlights of Reports:On the basis of diagnosis, the global ascites ultrasound, CT scan, laparoscopy, angiography, and others. Ultrasound segment commanded the largest market share of 25.9% in 2016, and this segment is also expected to grow at a fastest CAGR of 4.4% during the forecast period 2017 to 2023.On the basis of treatment, the global ascites market is segmented into surgeries, and others. Surgeries segment is further segmented into peritoneovenous shunting, liver transplantation, transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS), others. The surgeries market is projected to reach USD 2119.2 million by the end of 2023 at the CAGR of 4.3% during 2017 to 2023.Geographic Analysis of the ReportOn the basis of regions, the market is segmented into Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East & Africa. The Americas hold the largest share of the global ascites market and is expected to reach USD 1,292.2 million by 2023. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market, which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.5% over the 2017-2023.ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Panda Security Announces Inaugural Business Cybersecurity Summit

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Panda Security, a leading company in advanced cybersecurity, announced today that it will be hosting its inaugural "Panda Security Summit" this May.This premier Panda Security Summit will be held in Madrid May 18th with more than 500 attendees.Ian McShane, Research Director and Analyst at Gartner, will be one of the speakers at the event which includes five conferences and 10 workshops.For more information and registration, visit:This conference is a not-to-be-missed event for all cybersecurity professionals across Europe.The one-day conference comprises five different talks, six speakers and 10 workshops where keynote speakers will discuss the latest in threats and protection as well as overall state of cybersecurity.At the talks, Gartner will give its independent analysis, and the attendees will learn about cyber-resilience strategies employed by governments, large businesses and SOCs.The Panda Security Summit (#PASS2018) will take place in the Teatro Goya (Goya Theatre) in Madrid. Around 500 attendees are expected, among them CISOs and CIOs from large companies from Spain and from the rest of Europe.In addition to the guest speakers, PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware lab, will present a new report with its predictions on cybersecurity, an analysis of the main trends and practical examples of corporate security.Following the speaking session, attendees will get first-hand experience in various workshops and demo booths on how to make their organizations cyber-resilient with the latest visionary products and services from Panda Security.Key speakers include:. Jose Sancho  Chairman of Panda Security. Ian McShane  Research Director at Gartner. Javier Candau  Head of the Spanish National Cryptologic Center. Carles Sole  CISO at CaixaBank. Nicola Esposito  Director of the CyberSOC EMEA Center at Deloitte. Pedro Uria  Director of PandaLabs at Panda SecurityA not-to-be-missed event for all cybersecurity professionals. Managing change helps an organization to become resilient, and the Panda Security Summit will be an event that will change your perspective. Don't miss the the first edition of this event. Register here -About Panda SecurityPanda Security are a leading multinational in advanced cybersecurity solutions and in systems management and monitoring tools. Since its inception in 1990, it has consistently maintained a spirit of innovation and marked some of the most important advances in the world of cybersecurity.For more information, visitNeil Martinneil.martin@uk.pandasecurity.comTel. 0800 368 9158Direct Tel: 01344 398983Linkedin -Facebook -Twitter -Youtube -3000 Hillswood DriveChertseySurreyKT16 0RS
Water test kit Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2018  2025

Global Water test kit Industry

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Global Water test kit IndustryLatest Report on Water test kit Market Global Analysis & 2025 Forecast Research StudyGlobal Water test kit market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingFirst AlertDrinking Water SpecialistsWatersafeBaldwin MeadowsPoolmasterAfwfiltersChemtech International, Inc.LaMotteHachWilhelmsenAnsac TechnologyThermo Fisher ScientificFilterWaterTry Sample Report @eographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Water test kit in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesEUChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoDigitalNon-digitalOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingCommercialIndustrialInstitutions and OrganizationsHouseholdOthersSome points from table of content:Global Water test kit Market Research Report 20181 Water test kit Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Water test kit1.2 Water test kit Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Water test kit Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Water test kit Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Digital1.2.4 Non-digital1.3 Global Water test kit Segment by Application1.3.1 Water test kit Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Commercial1.3.3 Industrial1.3.4 Institutions and Organizations1.3.5 Household1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Water test kit Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Water test kit Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 EU Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 South Korea Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Water test kit (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Water test kit Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Water test kit Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)For Detailed Reading Please visit WiseGuy Reports @2 Global Water test kit Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Water test kit Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Water test kit Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Water test kit Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Water test kit Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Water test kit Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Water test kit Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Water test kit Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Water test kit Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Water test kit Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Water test kit Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Water test kit Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Water test kit Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 United States Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 EU Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.9 South Korea Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.10 Taiwan Water test kit Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Water test kit Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Water test kit Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 United States Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 EU Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.5 Japan Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.6 South Korea Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.7 Taiwan Water test kit Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)5 Global Water test kit Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Water test kit Production and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.2 Global Water test kit Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.3 Global Water test kit Price by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Global Water test kit Production Growth by Type (2013-2018)6 Global Water test kit Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Water test kit Consumption and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)6.2 Global Water test kit Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2013-2018)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/CountriesContinued.For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comAbout UsWise 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.Contact Us:Norah Trent+1 646 845 9349 / +44 208 133 9349Follow on LinkedIn: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 Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt LtdPune  411028Maharashtra,Ph: +91 841 198 5042
PodM2M to Launch Hierarchical IoT Billing Platform at Mobile World Congress 2018

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PodM2M, (a division of Pod Group), a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) specializing in global connectivity solutions for the IoT market, has today announced that its hierarchical billing platform, Pod Billing, will be launched at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. The platform is designed to enable systems integrators and hardware manufacturers to monetize their IoT solutions by billing recurring revenue at every tier of the value chain.One of the biggest barriers to the growth of the IoT is the lack of tools to enable IoT companies to quickly launch and bill new recurring services. Pod Billing brings together PodM2Ms global connectivity with a subscription-based product creation tool and a tiered billing hierarchy. This enables users to quickly create new products and services, manage IoT connectivity and bill an infinite number of subsidiary accounts with custom invoicing at every stage.The out-of-the-box solution is designed to remove the burdens many IoT companies face when implementing recurring services, allowing them to quickly get new services to market without risking large investments in software development, administrative overheads or time-consuming negotiations with operators.On one hand, it includes PodM2Ms agnostic connectivity based on operator relationships built up over 20 years to cover 600+ networks in 185 countries, including native agreements with four major North American carriers. Multi-network, multi-IMSI, eUICC and LPWAN options are available, all supported 24/7 by a multi-lingual team. On the other hand, the flexible product engine allows users to create end-to-end solutions by combining existing devices with subscription-based connectivity and other value-added services. Existing platforms can be easily integrated via API to centralize management and billing. Solutions can then be assigned to a hierarchy of resellers and billed on a recurring basis, which is pre-defined by the user.As we have worked closely with our customers over the years, we have seen an increasing need for a centralized, scalable billing platform to enable them to benefit from the recurring revenue the IoT can bring, commented Charles Towers-Clark, CEO Pod Group. Creating innovative IoT applications is only one half of the story, the other half is about being able to develop ongoing relationships with resellers, distributors and end users by offering them access to additional services which can be centrally billed on a subscription basis. This is the key to unlocking the value of the IoT.Pod Billing will be demonstrated at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (26th Feb to 1st March 2018) on PodM2Ms stand #7C21L, Hall 7, Great Britain Tech Zone.About PodM2MWe provide IoT connectivity, billing, and security in one platform. As part of Pod Group, we focus on helping IoT companies quickly implement secure, scalable applications and bill recurring services. Our Pod Billing platform allows you to bill an infinite hierarchy of users and manage agnostic connectivity on 600+ networks. We also provide multi-network, multi-IMSI and eUICC solutions. But thats the easy part. To get RoI from your application, you need to capture revenue from every tier of the value chain. What makes us tick is applying 20 years of experience in IoT technologies to help generate real, recurring revenue. For more information, please visitPodM2M1161 Mission Street San FranciscoNina Pineda
Global Load Break Switch Market 2018 - ABB, Eaton, GE, Ensto, Fuji

Global Load Break Switch Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Load Break Switch Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Load Break Switch Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Load Break Switch industry, and estimates the future trend of Load Break Switch market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Load Break Switch Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportBenchmarkingABBEatonSchneiderGESiemensSocomecRockwellEnstoFujiLucy ElectricLSISPowellThe market research report explores the Load Break Switch market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Load Break Switch Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Load Break Switch market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Load Break Switch. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Load Break Switch market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Load Break Switch is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Load Break Switch market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Load Break Switch market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Load Break Switch market 2018 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Load Break Switch production volume, data pertaining to demand and Load Break Switch supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Load Break Switch along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Load Break Switch across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Europe Inland Waterways Vessel Market Share, Research Report and Industry Forecast To 2024

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Strongly characterized by energy efficiency, reliability, and more capacity of energy exploitation, European inland waterways vessel market is slated to cross a major revenue benchmark in the coming seven years, exceeding a valuation of USD 115 billion by 2024. The figure is almost double of its revenue collection of USD 55.85 billion in the year 2016, which is deemed to be a positive indicator for the overall growth prospect of the market. While speaking of the commercialization potential of European Inland waterways vessel industry, it has been observed non-passenger vessel accounted for almost 60% of the overall revenue share.An estimation further validating the aforementioned declaration - in 2016, total volume of good transported through Europe inland waterways was almost 554 million tonnes, an approximate increment of 0.9% compared to what was recorded in the year 2015. The sheer popularity of non-passenger vessels in Europe inland waterways transport is primarily on account of its superiority over rail and road modes, on grounds of efficiency and energy consumption. Energy consumed in per km/ton of good transportation through waterways is approximately 50% lesser than rail mode and 17% less than that of road transport. Furthermore, ensuring a high degree of safety even while transporting hazard prone goods, European inland waterways vessel market from non-passenger vessels is claimed to gain remarkable proceeds over 2017-2024.Request For Sample Of This Report @In an era where the European Government has been continually promulgating an energy efficient low carbon economy, Europe inland waterways vessel market stands to gain exceptional prominence in the coming years. Inland waterways transport, on European corridors, has always been a competitive alternative to road and rail transport, ensuring a more sustainable environment friendly mode in terms of harmful gas emission, energy consumption, and noise. For the record, more than 37000 kms of inland waterways in the continent connect hundreds of industrial belts and cities, particularly in Western Europe. Furthermore, estimates claim, almost 21 out of 28 Member States of European Union have inland waterways with interconnected waterways networks in 13 states. The extensive share of inland waterways transport facilities in the continent is aptly depicting the growth potential for inland waterways vessel market in Europe.If there is one iota of detail that is obscurely obvious about European inland waterways vessel industry, it is the fact that the business space is highly driven by regulations. The European Commission has been constantly working on improvising the legislation, in a bid to facilitate the integration of inland waterways transport in intermodal logistics chains. For instance, in the year before last, the Netherland Presidency had apparently inked an agreement with the European Parliament, dealing with the revision of standards concerning the technical requirements for Europes inland waterways vessels. For players operating in European inland waterways vessel industry, this is a vital pointer that should be taken into consideration.Elaborating further, for the record, prior to the enactment of this revised standardization, technical requirement for vessels operating in Europe Inland waterways were under the Directive 2006/87/EC, while those operating on Rhine were under the canopy of CCNR (Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine). However, maintaining an equivalence between the certificates issued by these two regimes has proved to be difficult for Europe inland waterways vessel market giants. The latest reviewed proposition implemented by CESNI (The European Committee for drawing up standards in the field of inland navigation), reportedly, would be applicable for vessels operating both on river Rhine and EUs inland waterways. In the light of this scenario, it is apt to infer that the profound backing of administrative bodies is influential and has much to contribute in Europe inland waterways vessel industry size.Make an inquiry before buying this report @While speaking of the growth potential of inland waterways vessel market in Europe, it is imperative to mention some of the crucial details which experts believe has much to impact on the business dynamics. Statistics depict, inland waterways, which in early 1970s, accounted for almost 14% of freight transport in European countries, depreciated to 9% twenty years later, due to urbanization. Yet, experts believe, well equipped waterways, the Rhone and the Rhine in particular, are efficient enough to handle bulk traffic, provided solid investment is made in its maintenance and improvisation. While not exactly a roadblock, the hefty cost associated with this factor is somewhat standing as a stumbling obstacle in Europe inland waterways vessel market penetration. Nonetheless, stringent legislations enforced upon the ship owners with regards to carbon footprint abatement is expected to support the business growth. Moreover, a harmonized regulatory framework (Directive 2006/87) for issuing technical certificates to all inland waterways vessels of Member States, in all plausibility, would further scale up the profit margin of European inland waterways vessel industry.Europe Inland Waterways Vessel Market Size By Vessel (Passenger Ships [Class IV, Class V], Non-passenger Vessels [Freight Vessels, Tug Boats, Workboats], Pleasure Boats [Motor Cruiser, Sailing Cruiser, Narrow Boat, Houseboat]), By Fuel (LNG, Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, Diesel Oil, Heavy Fuel Oil, Biofuel), Industry Analysis Report, Country Outlook (France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Hungary, Austria, Romania, Slovakia), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2024Fractovia.org is one of India's leading in-house and free news portal. It is fully automated, and operates on a constant premise, interfacing with news sites and offering redesigned breaking features to readers across the globe. Our mission is to offer individuals opportunities for connections with news writers and distributors which they can pursue. We operate by mapping articles pertaining to breaking news, constantly and progressively, against a pre-determined word-based theme, offering important connections to readers and clients, as well as distributers.29L Atlantic Avenue, Suite L 105,
Global Solar-powered UAV Market Will Grow At A CAGR Of 12.65% During The Period 2017-2021

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Solar-powered UAV Market 2017-2021" to its huge collection of research reports.About Solar-powered UAVUnmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones are autonomous aircraft, which are remotely controlled from the ground or through onboard computers. Conventional UAVs are available in various sizes. While the large-sized ones, which are employed for tactical missions, are powered by internal combustion engines, smaller ones are mainly powered by electric motors. However, since the last decade, the advent of new technologies has led to the development of UAVs powered by photovoltaic cells, hydrogen fuel cells, and hybrid-electric propulsions engines. Solar-powered UAV platforms use photovoltaic panels to absorb energy from the sun and convert it into electrical energy to thrust the engines. The use of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell system in a solar-powered UAV allows it to achieve an uninterrupted flight for over six months. The Helios Prototype was one of the earliest solar-powered UAVs (developed by AeroVironment in 1999 with funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)), which used PEM-based fuel system. Solar-powered UAVs find their applications in defense and commercial sectors.Technavios analysts forecast the global solar-powered UAV market to grow at a CAGR of 12.65% during the period 2017-2021.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global solar-powered UAV market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the retail selling price as the average selling price of the product.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Solar-powered UAV Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAeroVironmentAirbusAlphabetFacebookThales GroupMake an Enquiry about TOC @Other prominent vendorsAC PropulsionBoeingDJILockheed MartinSilent Falcon UASSunlight PhotonicsMarket driverFocus on greater use of renewable energy sourcesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeRegulatory challenges with drone operationsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendFocus on greater use of renewable energy sourcesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?Table of ContentsPART 01: EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPART 02: SCOPE OF THE REPORTPART 03: RESEARCH METHODOLOGYPART 04: INTRODUCTIONMarket outlinePART 05: MARKET LANDSCAPEMarket overviewGlobal solar-powered UAV marketAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact :ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @
Global Insulating Adhesive Tape Competition by Players

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Insulating Adhesive Tape Market: Insulating Adhesive Tape is a type of pressure-sensitive tape used to insulate electrical wires and other material that conduct electricity. It can be made of many plastics, but vinyl is most popular, as it stretches well and gives an effective and long lasting insulation. The Global Insulating Adhesive Tape Market by Top Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 This report represents the revenue opportunities in the Global Insulating Adhesive Tape Market through to 2022, highlighting the market size, Trends and growth by technology, Gross Margin, sector and size band.Avail complete Report @Scope of Report:The Insulating Adhesive Tape Industry Research Report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Insulating Adhesive Tape industry market by types, applications, players and regions. This report also displays the production, Consumption, revenue, Gross margin, Cost, Gross, market share, CAGR, and Market influencing factors of the Insulating Adhesive Tape industry in USA, EU, China, India, Japan and other regions, and forecast to 2022, from 2017.Avail free sample brochure of report @Applications: Electrical and electronics Communication industry Auto industry AerospaceMaterial Types: Cloth Insulating Adhesive Tape PVC Insulating Adhesive Tape PET Insulating Adhesive TapeKey Players: 3M Achem (YC Group) Tesa (Beiersdorf AG) Nitto IPG Scapa Saint Gobin (CHR) Four Pillars H-Old Plymouth Teraoka Wurth Shushi Yongle Yongguan adhesive Sincere Denka Furukawa Electric Sika AG (Switzerland)Procure Report @About Us:MarketIntelReports in-house domain consultants to discuss any research and intelligence requirements of clients to provide suitable syndicate reports, suggest custom analysis partners and act as a representative to procure the best services and quotes from global publishing houses in case a consulting assignment in the need of the hour. We believe in providing quick turnaround times for any data or report queries with our publishing partners so that any strategic planning studies can be executed with ease and efficiency. We welcome you to have a pleasant market tour with us.Contact Us:Market Intelligence Reports PTE. LTDNorth Bridge RoadHigh Street CentreSingapore (179094)
Liquid Bath Soap Market Professional Survey Report

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Soap is a salt of fatty acids. They are used for various purposes in our routine activities like bathing, washing, cleaning, and others. Nowadays, consumers look to their soap products not only to deliver skin cleansing but also to deodorize, moisturize and exfoliate their skin. The key drivers for the overall growth of liquid bath soap market are the strong performance of bath soap coupled with the integration of skin enhancing and moisturizing benefits. Many US consumers prefer liquid bath soap over soap bars as they believe bar soaps harbored germs after use, thereby perceive liquid soap to be more hygienic and anti-bacterial.For more information about this Report visit @As consumers are becoming more educated and aware especially in the personal care sector, they are looking for alternatives which they are not afraid to use on their skin. Liquid bath soap gives them a more natural formulated alternative as compared to soap bars. So, with the traditional bar soaps, sales are declining across the globe, liquid bath soap is becoming an alternative choice for consumers in the personal care sector. With the increasing hair and scalp-related problems, such as dandruff, hair loss, itching, damaged hair and others, there is strong demand for soaps with natural ingredients. To capitalize the growing demand, the manufacturers are producing various new and innovative organic products which will fulfill specific requirements presented by consumers of different age groups.Liquid Bath Soap Market: DynamicsIn recent years, the consumers are becoming more aware and health conscious especially in the personal care sector and started looking into ingredients of soap and bath products demanding products with natural and organic compositions. While, the liquid bath soap is hygienic, anti-bacterial and has natural ingredients, which can be a major factor towards the growth of liquid bath soap market. Moreover, nowadays due to current economic circumstances, the consumers are very cost conscious. They want products with high health benefit ingredients and low cost.While, the new companies are competing with branded offerings by promoting their new innovative products like liquid bath soap, bath oil, and others and selling them at lower cost with same nutritional and cosmetic benefits which is fueling the growth of liquid bath soap market. Another factor towards the growth of liquid bath soap market is most people use showers for bathing as a more eco-friendly part of their daily hygiene routine and many people don't even have bathtub due to increasing number of households. However, liquid bath soaps are considered to be one of the most non-environment friendly segments in nature because the production and packaging of these liquid soaps use almost twenty times more energy and raw materials as compared to soap bars which can act as a restraint to the growth of apple extract market.Liquid Bath Soap Market: SegmentationThe liquid bath soap market can be segmented on the basis of product type, Flavor type, packaging type, and distribution channel. On the basis of product type, the liquid bath soap market can be segmented into body wash and shower gel. On the basis of flavor type, the liquid bath soap market can be segmented into Coco mademoiselle scented, Fruit & pink jasmine, lemon, ginger root, menthol, rose fragrance and others. On the basis of packaging type, the liquid bath soap market can be segmented into bottle, tube, and pouch. On the basis of a distribution channel, the liquid bath soap market can be segmented into direct sales and indirect sales. The indirect sales market can be further sub-segmented into the specialty stores, wholesalers, hypermarket, supermarket, convenience stores, online retailers and others.Liquid Bath Soap Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of the regional outlook, liquid bath soap market is segmented into five different regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. Latin America and the Middle East and Africa are expected to have the considerable growth in next few years.Request to Sample of Report-Liquid Bath Soap Market: Key Player:Some of the major players operating in liquid bath soap include Colgate-Palmolive Company, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., PZ Cussons, Unilever PLC, Crabtree & Evelyn, AVON PRODUCTS, Unilever, Pears, Nivea, and Adidas.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Cloud Billing Market: Advanced Technologies & Growth Opportunities in Global Industry

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Cloud billing involves the process of generating bills using a set of defined billing policies from the resource data. A cloud billing service module is used for a service oriented architecture that covers functional requirements including quote service, conversion policies, user identification, and payment schemes along with the non-functional ones such as security, standards, fault tolerance, and scalability among others. Billing solutions are generated from the cloud that provides a solution supporting multi-tenancy where vendors run it in a public cloud allowing multiple operators to access it. This process does not provide any customization along with the compute resources being paid on the basis of usage or on monthly basis rather than a long-term contract.The global cloud billing market has been segmented on the basis of type, provider, end use industries and geography. Based on type, the global market for cloud billing has been segmented into metered billing, provisioning, subscription billing and cloud service billing among others. On the basis of provider the market includes cloud service provider, managed service provider and telecom & communication service provider. Retail, manufacturing, education, telecommunication, healthcare and media form the different end use industries based on which the global market has been segmented.Browse the Report to Know Worldwide Industry Analysis and New Market Opportunities Explored @Global cloud billing market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.It is the ability to issue invoices faster along with reduction of errors that form some of the major drivers for this market globally. Usage of cloud billing system enables reaching a client quickly along with reducing the chance of typo errors. Moreover, using this system helps in monitoring customer subscription that may be weekly, monthly or yearly. This process helps in tracking the whole payment system of customers along with sending timely reminders regarding the due payment further reducing chances of deferred payment.Usage of cloud billing system improves the overall record keeping making it faster to access along with the ability to access these information from anywhere without being physically present at the location. With all these drivers that has a positive impact on the growth of this market, there are certain challenges as well that has a negative impact on the implementation procedure of this technology.Request Sample to Know Industry Outlook, Growth Prospects and Key Opportunities @One such factor being the security related issues that may risk the customer related data to get hacked along with the chances of confidential data being used by third person posing challenges for this market. In addition to this, it is also the high costs along with the possible chances of downtime that form some other restraints to restrict the growth. Considering these drivers and restraints, it is the technological shift for faster information access that provides huge scope of opportunities for this market in the coming years.Get TOC of This Report @Geographically, North America formed one of the major regions contributing to the growth for this market. The rising implementation of cloud based technology along with better access to client demands has been some of the major reasons for the rising demand of this market. Asia Pacific formed another major region along with being one of the fastest growing region for this market globally.Some of the key players that are operating in the global cloud billing market include Computer Sciences Corporation (The U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (The U.S.), Amazon Web Services, Inc. (The U.S.), Aria Systems(The U.S.), NEC Corporation (Japan), Amdocs Inc. (Israel), Oracle Corporation (The U.S.), SAP SE (Germany), Cerilion Technologies Ltd. (The UK),CGI Group Inc. (Canada) and Zuora, Inc. (The U.S.) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Core Banking Solutions Market: Evolving Technology, Trends and Industry Analysis

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The banking sector is in a state of fluctuation, with various regulatory, demographic factors and technologies cutting across the breadth and length of the value chain. These factors are positively impacting the way banks carry on their business as the conventional banking methods are insufficient to meet growing customer expectations and improve profitability. Core banking solution helps the client to operate their bank accounts and financial services from any branch.The key factor is driving the market of core banking solution due to the increasing demand of this new technology among the customer for better service and security. The increasing need of managing accounts of customers from a single server is fueling the growth of core banking solution market. Moreover, banking services are looking for cost effective solutions which can help them in reducing replacement costs. This factor is acts as a trigger, boosting the market of core banking solution and is expected to witness a significant growth during the forecast period.Moreover, this new core banking solution technology helps in increased digitization and connectivity and more security in financial institutions. Owing to this factor, the market is growing significantly and is expected a stable growth during the forecast period.However, in rural areas banks have been facing challenges to meet customer requirement in terms of technology and culture. Therefore, this factor is acting as a restraint of this market.Browse the Report to Know Comprehensive Evaluation Of The Market Via In-Depth Qualitative Insights @The market ofcore banking solutionis segmented into three categories: by deployment, by solution and by service. By deployment the market of core banking solutioncan be divided intocloud and on premises. By solution the market is segmented by deposits, loans, enterprise customer solutions, other. In terms of service, the market of core banking solutioncan be divided into managed service and professional service.By geography the global subscriber data management market is segmentedinto North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. The North American held the largest market share in core banking solution market in 2016 and is expected to hold its position during the forecast period. Owing to its developed economic of U.S. and Canada, there is a high focus on innovations in technology and research and development is fueling the growth of this market.Request Sample to Know An Insight On the Important Factors and Trends Influencing the Market @North America, followed by Europe, is expected to become second largest revenue generating region for core banking solution market in 2016. The Asia Pacific (APAC) is expected to be the fastest growing region in the core banking solution market. The growth in APAC is primarily driven by the rising adoption of web and mobile based business applications in banking sector. Middle East and Africa has shown a remarkable growth in core banking solution followed by Latin America in recent years.Get TOC of This Report @The global core banking solution market is marked by some strong competition from the major players operating in this industry. Numerous merger and acquisition, joint venture and partnership agreement, product innovation, research and development and geographical extension are some of the key strategies adopted by this player to ensure long term sustenance in these market key participants in the global core banking solution industry include Infosys Limited (Karnataka, India), HCL Technologies Limited (Noida, India.) and Tata Consultancy Services (Mumbai, India), Capgemini SE. (Paris, France) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Fresh Compressed Yeast Market: Key Industry Developments

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Fresh Compressed Yeast is basically made from cream yeast left after water is drained off from the freshly prepared yeast by mixing it with a little cottonseed oil, emulsifiers, and with help of centrifugal force. Fresh compressed Yeast is suitable for use in all types of yeast used in bakery products including Pan Breads, French Breads, Rye Breads, Bread Roils, Croissants and Yeast raised donuts countries. Food segment of fresh compressed yeast mainly include bakery as a major share of the fresh yeast market followed by feed industry. Fresh compressed yeast is majorly used by bakers for making high quality cakes and breads that cannot be made by dry yeast or by any other alternative product. The purpose behind limited use of fresh yeast at home is it has very low shelf life, extremely perishable, must be kept refrigerated, and should be used within a couple weeks of purchase. Europe is predominantly the major consumer of fresh compressed yeast holding the largest market share of fresh yeast followed by the North America fresh yeast market.For more information about this Report visit @Fresh Compressed Yeast Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe Fresh Compressed Yeast Market is estimated to be primarily driven due to its application in bakery and confectionery items yeast market is continuously showing a spurring growth owing to increasing trend of processed and fast food consumption, especially bakery items. The European yeast market is growing at significantly high rate due to increasing consumption of processed food products, awareness about the nutritive value of yeast, and increased alcohol consumption. Increasing opportunity for fresh compressed yeast market is in Asia-Pacific region due to increasing disposal income and changing lifestyles of consumers who demand more processed food such as bakery products. Also fresh compressed yeast manufacturing companies can also increase their market by improving their distribution channel. Fresh compressed yeast market have an opportunity in emerging markets such as China and India, as demand for bakery products is continuously increasing with the increase in population.The fresh compressed yeast market has few restrained to it one of the main restraining factor of fresh yeast market is its limited availability in emerging markets even retailers usually stock it seasonally. Another factor restraining the fresh yeast market is due to its perishability and requires refrigeration for maintaining required desirable temperature conditions.On the basis of product type, market is segmented into:-,, Bakers Yeast, Brewers Yeast, Bio-ethanol Yeast, Feed Yeast,,On the basis of Application type, market is segmented into:-,, Functional food, Feed, Beverage Industry, OthersThe Fresh Compressed Yeast Market is divided into seven regions, namely Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), North America, Japan, Western Europe, and Middle East and Africa (MEA). In the Asia-Pacific region, China is expected to be one of the major consumer of fresh compressed yeast followed by U.S. in North America being second-largest region. In U.S. it has been extensively used in different form of fresh compressed yeast derivatives in various fortified supplements, functional food and many other applications. There has been a significant rise in the export volume of the Fresh Compressed Yeast out of the China as well. This has shown some positive growth effect on other Fresh Compressed Yeast products market particularly Latin American regions such as Brazil and Argentina also. In the APEJ region in ASEAN countries such as Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodian cuisines demand has increased significantly making APEJ region one of the growing market for the Fresh Compressed Yeast products.Request to Sample of Report-Fresh Compressed Yeast Market: Key PlayersSome of the prominent players operating in the business of fresh compressed yeast market includes: AngelYeast Co. Ltd, Lesaffre Yeast Corporation, Associated British Foods plc, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, and Koninklijke DSM N.V., Other players in this segment include Lallemand Inc., Alltech, Leiber GmbH, Oriental Yeast Co., Ltd, and Synergy Flavors, Kerry Group plc, Sensient Technologies 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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Genmai Cha Market: Report Scope and Market Segmentation

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Genmai cha is a traditional Japanese green tea prepared from roasted brown rice and consequently possesses a pleasant nutty flavor combined with the taste of green tea. Along with rice, it contains many other herbs and amongst consumers, is popularly called as the popcorn tea. The commercialization of all the Japanese recipes around the world has led to the rise of genmai cha market around the world. The genmai cha has many applications in healthcare and food industry and is mostly consumed as a functional beverage and an alternative to the conventional tea beverages. The consumer with high awareness and acceptability for continental food and beverages contribute significantly to the genmai cha market. The growth of the genmai cha market is directly linked to the rise in green tea consumption and varieties of green tea available in the tea.For more information about this Report visit @Genmai Cha Market: SegmentationThe genmai cha market can be segmented on the basis of source, applications and distribution channel.On the basis of source, the genmai cha market can be segmented as organic and conventionalOn the basis of applications, the genmai cha market can be segmented as pharmaceuticals and functional beverage industry.On the basis of packaging, the genmai cha market can be segmented as tea-bags, carton boxes and aluminum seal packagesOn the basis of distribution channel, the genmai cha market can be segmented as modern trade, convenience stores, retailers and other retailers.Genmai Cha Market: Drivers, Restraints, and TrendsThe genmai cha market across the world is largely driven by the consumers preference for functional beverage. The extensive brands and the brewing stories behind the traditional Japanese recipes, is the major factor in driving the consumer base, and is fuelling the growth of the genmai cha market. The rise in the genmai cha market is also attributed to the increase in Japanese restaurants and cafes around the world, and the availability of the genmai cha in many hotels. Macro-economic factors like the introduction of export target by the Japanese government is also likely to nourish the genmai cha market globally. The distribution channel also plays an important role in the growth of the genmai cha market, like availability of genmai cha at popular grocery and convenience stores has made the product within reach to the consumers. Many consumers around the world are influenced by the false health claims made by the companies for the promotion of the product and hence, the genmai cha market may face slack in regions where consumer acceptability of the product is on the base on scientific basis. The taste of the genmai cha is a demand side factor and is likely to be weak restraint in the growth of the genmai cha market.Genmai Cha Market: Regional OutlookThe genmai cha market in North America and Latin America is impacted by the tea and coffee consumer base. Consumers in this region are opting for a healthy alternative in food and beverage. The coffee-consumers are opting for more caffeine-free beverages. In Europe, the genmai cha market is influenced by the growth in Japanese cafes and restaurants. Japan remains the strongest region in the genmai cha market. Other regions influenced by the Japanese cultures, like China, are likely to see a growth in the genmai cha market. Overall, the Asia Pacific will show growth in the genmai cha market. The Middle East and Africa may see a very slow growth in the genmai cha market. Availability of products and consumer awareness is a key factor affecting the growth of genmai cha market in this region.Request to Sample of Report-Genmai Cha Market: Key PlayersYamamotoyamaGranum, Inc.D?MatchaMAIKONOCHA-HONPOSasaki Green Tea CompanyKyoto Obubu Tea FarmsAbout 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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Nicaraguan Insurance Industry - Market Report by Current & Upcoming Trends 2022

Nicaraguan Insurance Industry

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Nicaraguan Insurance IndustryOverview'Governance, Risk and Compliance  The Nicaraguan Insurance Industry' report is the result of extensive research into the insurance regulatory framework in Nicaraguan Insurance.It provides detailed analysis of the insurance regulations for life, property, motor, liability, personal accident and health, and marine, aviation and transit insurance. The report specifies various requirements for the establishment and operation of insurance and reinsurance companies and intermediaries.Click here for sample report @Brief of the Report:The report provides insights into the governance, risk and compliance framework pertaining to the insurance industry in Nicaraguan Insurance, including:An overview of the insurance regulatory framework in Nicaraguan Insurance.The latest key changes, and changes expected in the countrys insurance regulatory framework.Key regulations and market practices related to different types of insurance product in the country.Rules and regulations pertaining to key classes of compulsory insurance, and the scope of non-admitted insurance in Nicaraguan Insurance.Key parameters including licensing requirements, permitted foreign direct investment, minimum capital requirements, solvency and reserve requirements, and investment regulations.Details of the tax and legal systems in the country.Major Highlights of Reports:The Nicaraguan Insurance industry is regulated by the Financial Services Unit of the Ministry of Finance.Composite insurance is permitted in Dominica.100% FDI is permitted in the Nicaraguan Insurance industry.Motor third-party liability insurance and windstorm insurance for the export of bananas are compulsory classes of insurance.Non-admitted insurance is not permitted in the Nicaraguan Insurance industry, with a few exceptions.Major Scope of the Report:The report covers details of the insurance regulatory framework in Nicaraguan Insurance.The report contains details of the rules and regulations governing insurance products and insurance entities.The report lists and analyzes key trends and developments pertaining to the countrys insurance regulatory framework.The report analyzes the rules and regulations pertaining to the establishment and operation of insurance businesses in the country.The report provides details of taxation imposed on insurance products and insurance companies.Reasons To BuyGain insights into the insurance regulatory framework in Nicaraguan Insurance.Track the latest regulatory changes, and expected changes impacting the Nicaraguan Insurance industry.Gain detailed information about the key regulations governing the establishment and operation of insurance entities in the country.Understand key regulations and market practices pertaining to various types of insurance product..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Wireless Intrusion Prevention Systems Market: Technological Advancements, Evolving Industry Trends and Insights

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Wireless intrusion prevention systems are utilized by organizations to locate and block intrusion attacks on the wireless local area network (WLAN). Previously, wireless intrusion prevention systems were primarily utilized for detecting unwanted wireless access points (APs). However, with product evolution and advancements in technology, these systems can now prevent a wide variety of attacks on the WLAN. The security requirements vary from organization to organization and hence the wireless intrusion prevention systems are also different in each organization. Organizations can choose a system based on device management style, types of attacks to be blocked, whether recordings of the attack are required or not among others.Such criterion differentiates the product of the different vendors from each other. End users also need to check the accuracy of attack prevention, in terms of false positives and false negatives. This is because, such statistics of detection rates for false positives and false negatives are generally not provided by the wireless intrusion prevention system vendors. The wireless intrusion prevention systems can be split across different management servers, thus allowing other servers to function normally even when one of the servers is not functioning. Certain wireless intrusion prevention systems are designed to function even when connection is lost to the management server.Browse the Report to Know Influential Factors Determining the Trajectory of the Market @The market for wireless intrusion prevention systems is primarily being driven by the growing dependence on wireless technologies. Organizations are now more reliant on WLAN and hence any intrusion on WLAN can severely affect the functioning of the organization. Any unauthorized access to the WLAN can lead to further access to the organizations data, client devices, systems and even wired networks. Wireless intrusion prevention systems can prevent such intrusions effectively and hence is seeing growing applications globally. This in turn is driving the market for wireless intrusion prevention systems. Additionally, the types of cyber attacks and threats has been becoming more and more advanced, leading to the need for advanced wireless intrusion prevention systems by organizations. Owing to the advancements in cyber attacks, the advanced wireless intrusion prevention systems are being offered by the vendors at a higher price.Also, depending on the type of hardware and software implemented, the price can be higher even. Such factors have again been positively impacting the growth of the wireless intrusion prevention systems market globally. Furthermore, several countries are implementing regulations for organizations to mandatorily have better protection and security for the data. Such regulations have also been boosting the application of wireless intrusion prevention systems, in smaller organizations also, who were previously relying on simpler modes of cyber security. This in turn is further fuelling the market for wireless intrusion prevention systems, across the globe.Request Sample to Know Evolving Technology, Trends and Industry Analysis @However, factors such as low awareness of wireless intrusion prevention systems and continual usage of legacy systems, which cannot be integrated with modern wireless intrusion prevention systems, have been restraining the growth of the market to some extent. Considering the rise in number of cyber attacks and growing importance of data privacy of various organizations, the wireless intrusion prevention systems market is expected to witness several growth opportunities, during the forecast period.The global wireless intrusion prevention systems market has been segment, by deployment type, into APs having dedicated wireless intrusion prevention systems, dedicated wireless intrusion prevention system sensors and others. On the basis of architecture, the market has been segmented into hardware, software and services. By end use vertical, the market for wireless intrusion prevention systems has been segmented into banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), healthcare, telecommunication and information technology (IT), retail, and others. On the basis of regions, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America and Middle-East & Africa.Get TOC of This Report @The major companies of the wireless intrusion prevention systems market globally are Vanderbilt Industries (Ireland), Cisco Systems, Inc. (The U.S.), Mojo Network, Inc. (The U.S.), Aruba (The U.S.), and Fluke Corporation (The U.S.) among various other companies.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Hosted PBX Service Market 2018 - 3CX, Jive Canada, Intermedia.net,Inc, Digium, Inc

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The statistical surveying information incorporated into the Hosted PBX Service report is the aftereffect of significant essential and optional research exercises. The report fragments the worldwide market for Hosted PBX Service based on makers, item compose, applications, and Region. In this report, each fragment is contemplated completely and measurements are introduced in detail. The report offers an exact outline of the worldwide Hosted PBX Service advertise covering key factors, for example, drivers and restrictions affecting the development.Get the sample report :Top manufacturers of Hosted PBX Service Market Report :3CXJive CanadaIntermedia.net,IncRingCentral, IncDigium, IncVirtualPBX.com, IncXO Communications, LLCTelePacific CommunicationsMegapathBullseye TelecomMitel Networks CorporationShoreTel Inc.The worldwide Hosted PBX Service advertise report is the result of the intensive investigation of the market, which will help showcase players to manage and develop exponentially in the gigantically aggressive market.Enquire before buying Hosted PBX Service Market report :The Hosted PBX Service report is set up after essential and auxiliary levels of research exercises. Essential research speaks to the heft of research endeavors, supplemented by a broad optional research. Auxiliary research incorporates investigation of late exchange, web sources, and factual information from government associations, exchange affiliations and offices. This has ended up being the most dependable, powerful and fruitful approach for getting exact Hosted PBX Service advertise information, catching industry member's bits of knowledge and perceiving business openings. The write about the worldwide Hosted PBX Service showcase likewise talks about a portion of the main players display in the market, winning rivalry, key procedures received and their current advancements.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
User Authentication Solutions Market: Applications and Global Markets

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The user authentication solution refers to verification of a wide range of transfers of human to machine credentials which require the authenticity of the user for confirmation. In contrast the term machine authentication refers to automated process which does not require a human input. User authentication is required in all human to computer interaction other than automatically and guest logged in to a particular account. The authentication authorizes human to machine interaction on wireless and wired networks so that the system can provide access to internet and network connected resources and systems. There has been significant advancement in the field of user authentication.The user authentication solution market by authentication factor could be segmented into possession factors, knowledge factors and inherence factors. The knowledge factor require the user to have a certain exclusive knowledge which may include ID password and User names or pin number which is exclusively known by the user fall under this category. Possession factor include all the attributed which the user needs to possess in order to log in. Some of the possession factors may include smart phone apps, key fobs, SIM Card and employee ID card among others.Inherence factor include different inherent traits which the user require for the confirmation of the user login. The inherence factors may include component like retina scans, biometrics, finger vein scans, fingerprint scans, voice recognition and facial recognition among others. The knowledge factors segment in the authentication solution market segmented by authentication factor held the largest share in the authentication solution market in term of revenue share.Browse the Report to Know Repository of Analysis and Information for Every Facet of the Market @The user authentication solution market by type has been segmented into single factor authentication and two factor authentication. The two factor segment in the user authentication solution market segmented by type held the largest market share in terms of revenue. The two factor authentication products could be divided into token or a hardware and software which recognizes and authenticates a particular individual at the time of logging in.The user authentication solution market by end use industry has been segmented into Defense and Surveillance sector, automotive industry, healthcare sector, telecommunication industry, consumer electronics, IT sector, service sector and others. The telecommunication sector segment in the user authentication solution market segmented by end use industry is expected to lead the market in terms of revenue share. The healthcare sector is expected to grow at the fastest rate over the next few years.Request Sample to Know Emergence of Advanced Technologies and Global Industry Analysis @Geographically the global user authentication solution market has been broadly segmented into North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. North America leads the global user authentication solution market. Europe followed North America in terms of revenue share. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest rate over the next few years in terms of revenue growth in the user authentication solution market. The user authentication solution has high adoption rate in North America, thus resulting in the high revenue share. Huge growth in demand for smart phones, tablets and laptops is expected to result in the high growth rate for the user authentication market in Asia Pacific.Get TOC of This Report @Some of the key players operating in the user authentication market include Computer Sciences Corp. (Virginia, U.S.), CA Technologies Inc. (New York, U.S.), GermaltoNV (Amsterdam, The Netherland), SecureAuth (U.S.), VASCO Data Security International Inc. (Illinois, U.S.) and SecurEnvoy Ltd (U.K.) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Morel Mushroom Market - To Make Great Impact In Near Future by 2025

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Morels are the most desired mushrooms in the world. Unlike other edible mushrooms such as Oyster and Portobello, Morel Mushrooms are not grocery farmed but are gathered from the wild and possess substantial economic importance. These temperature specific mushrooms are highly elusive and an invaluable commodity in the global markets.For more information about this Report visit @The morel mushrooms thrive in burnt areas such as areas after forest fires. The edible part of the morel mushroom is the fruiting part of the underground organism called mycelium that is symbiotically attached to the trees. Morel Mushrooms cannot be defined of a specific shape, size or color. Their shape varies from puffed up round pear shaped to flat oblong rectangular. They can be grey or yellow in color and the size may vary from few inches to half a feet. However, all the Morel Mushrooms have a similar honeycomb like structure on the exterior which helps the hunters to identify them.Market Segmentation:Morel mushrooms market can be segmented on the basis of type, distribution channel and region.Morel mushroom can be segmented into black morels, yellow morels and half free morels. They basically differ amongst each other in their origin& growth. Like yellow morels are commonly found under deciduous trees whereas, black morels are mostly found in coniferous forests, burned and disturbed ground conditions.On the basis of distribution channel, morel mushroom market can be segmented into retail sales, online retail and others.On the basis of region, Morel Mushrooms market can be segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Japan.Drivers, Restraints, and Trends:The rapid increase in the demand for the specialty mushrooms is considered as the key driver of the morel mushrooms market. Furthermore, the increase in knowledge and awareness regarding health issues coupled with advancement in product offerings are the primary reasons to drive the morel mushrooms market during the estimated period.However, despite of the growing increase in need of the morel mushrooms, there are factors that are affecting the growth and the overall industry development at a high rate. Few of which include the growth surroundings and environment of the morels such as wildfires, temperature requirements, specific soil requirements. Another restraint in the global market of morel mushroom is that the plant is often confused with false mushrooms that are usually poisonous. It leads to less popularity and mistrust of the product among the users ultimately expected to effect the global market growth.Regional Outlook:Among Asian countries, China and India are the significant manufacturers of morel mushrooms due to favorable environment condition, also cheap and high availability of laborers. Asia-Pacific represents the considerably high market share and is expected to grow substantially in the forecast period. North America is experiencing a rapid growth in terms of morel mushrooms consumption due to rising demand for specialty mushroom across the region. Europe is also expected to be the major consumer for morel mushroom. Increasing demand for specialty mushroom in restaurants is expected to drive the market growth across the region.Request to Sample of Report-Key Players:Major players in the Morel Mushroom segment are Wiebke Trading Company, Lijiang Huali Bio-Product Development & Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, LLC Georgian Herbs, Segur Obier, Liaoning Huixin (Fusen) Food Co., Ltd., Ekofrut 2006 Ltd, Niba Co., Ltd., Sai Saffron Exports, Virgin Food Technology Co. Ltd, Kashmir Walnut Group, Yunnan Green Wild Funji Co., Ltd, Kashif Hussan Company, John and Joel Corporation, Kunming Johnleemushroom Co., Limited, Konkordia Food, LLC Georgian Herbs to name a few.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Retail Cybersecurity Market: Industry Outlook, Growth Prospects and Key Opportunities

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Computer security or cyber security involves protection of computer systems from various theft or damage done to hardware or software along with saving systems from service related disruptions. It includes controlling the physical access to the hardware along with protecting against harm that might come via data and code injection or network access. Many a times, it is also seen that malpractices by operators either intentional or accidental leads to the IT security problems. System becomes susceptible to being tricked into other deviations from secure procedures through different methods. Cyber security that provides protection to systems, networks and data within cyberspace is an extremely important issue for all businesses and its smooth functioning in the long run. This is likely to gain more importance with growth in internet penetration and application.Retail industry is experiencing huge growth along with rising advancements and application of technology that are used for maintaining the demand and supply of customers. This has led to the application of cyber security in retail sector resulting in the growth of retail cyber security market. Segmentation for the global cyber security market has been done on the basis of solutions, security type and geography. Based on solutions, this market has been segmented into risk & compliance management, unified threat management, security and vulnerability management, web filtering, encryption and disaster recovery among others. Network, cloud, application and wireless security among others are the various segmentations for this global market based on security type.Browse the Report to Know Worldwide Industry Analysis and New Market Opportunities Explored @Global retail cybersecurity market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa.Online retail industry is experiencing immense growth as customers nowadays are opting for faster technological solutions to purchase what they need that has been a major driver for this retail cybersecurity market. Time saving processes along with cost-effectiveness associated with the online retail industry has helped in the rising demand for this market. Along with this, the technological advancement has also lead to the rising chances of cyber-attacks leading to the loss of confidential information of customers that further boosted the demand for retail cyber security globally. Considering these drivers, there are certain factors that has negative impact on the overall market.Request Sample to Know Quantitative Market Analysis, Current and Future Trends @Some of these factors include the technological risk associated with computer such as virus or malware along with the malpractices done by certain operators that has negatively impacted the global market. Post consideration of all these drivers and restraints, it is the growth of IoT (Internet of things) technology along with the prevention of computer systems from ransomware that is likely to provide opportunities for the growth of this market during the coming years.Geographically, it is North America that is expected to dominate the global market followed by Europe. The growth of online retail sector along with rise in application of IoT technology has been some major drivers to push the growth of this market. Asia Pacific has contributed to be another major region for this market along with accounting one of the fastest growth globally. Some major countries contributing to the growth in this region includes China and India among others. Rise in internet penetration along with growth of online retail sector has been some of the important aspects to have a positive impact on this market.Get TOC of This Report @Some of the key companies that are operating in the global retail cybersecurity market include Symantec Corporation (The U.S.), IBM Corporation (The U.S.), EMC RSA (The U.S.), Intel Security (The U.S.), Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (The U.S.), Cisco Systems, Inc. (The U.S.), Fireeye, Inc. (The U.S.), Rapid7, Inc. (The U.S.), Trend Micro, Inc. (Japan) and Sophos Ltd. (The U.K.) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. 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Antigua and Barbuda Insurance Industry Expected to Observe Major Growth by 2022

Antigua and Barbuda Insurance Industry

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Antigua and Barbuda Insurance IndustryOverview'Governance, Risk and Compliance  The Antigua and Barbuda Insurance Industry' report is the result of extensive research into the insurance regulatory framework in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance.It provides detailed analysis of the insurance regulations for life, property, motor, liability, personal accident and health, and marine, aviation and transit insurance. The report specifies various requirements for the establishment and operation of insurance and reinsurance companies and intermediaries.Click here for sample report @Brief of the Report:The report provides insights into the governance, risk and compliance framework pertaining to the insurance industry in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance, including:An overview of the insurance regulatory framework in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance.The latest key changes, and changes expected in the countrys insurance regulatory framework.Key regulations and market practices related to different types of insurance product in the country.Rules and regulations pertaining to key classes of compulsory insurance, and the scope of non-admitted insurance in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance.Key parameters including licensing requirements, permitted foreign direct investment, minimum capital requirements, solvency and reserve requirements, and investment regulations.Details of the tax and legal systems in the country.Major Highlights of Reports:The Antigua and Barbuda insurance industry is regulated by the FSRC.Composite insurance is permitted in the countryNon-admitted insurance is not permitted. However; non-admitted reinsurance is permitted.Insurance premium tax is imposed at the rate of 3%.MTPL, workmens compensation, marine third-party liability, and personal indemnity insurance for insurance brokers are compulsory in Antigua and Barbuda.Major Scope of the Report:The report covers details of the insurance regulatory framework in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance.The report contains details of the rules and regulations governing insurance products and insurance entities.The report lists and analyzes key trends and developments pertaining to the countrys insurance regulatory framework.The report analyzes the rules and regulations pertaining to the establishment and operation of insurance businesses in the country.The report provides details of taxation imposed on insurance products and insurance companies.Reasons To BuyGain insights into the insurance regulatory framework in Antigua and Barbuda Insurance.Track the latest regulatory changes, and expected changes impacting the Antigua and Barbuda Insurance industry.Gain detailed information about the key regulations governing the establishment and operation of insurance entities in the country.Understand key regulations and market practices pertaining to various types of insurance product..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Multichannel Campaign Management Market: An Insight On the Important Factors and Trends Influencing the Market

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Multichannel campaign management help the companies to communicate, define and orchestrate various offers to consumers across mobile, email, websites and call centers. Digital marketing integrated with campaign management aims at achieving contextual marketing, branding and transactional marketing. In addition, digital marketing also aims at extending the marketing process through various channels which includes digital signage, video, social applications, web, point-of-sale terminals and kiosks among others. Currently, due to rise in competition, companies are looking for innovative technologies to market their products globally.Hence, companies are focusing on multichannel campaign management that facilitates the companies to communicate, rewrite and create various offers to both outbound and inbound customers. Innovations in internet technologies have opened path for innovative ways of communication across web. Hence all these factors play an important role in the development of global Multichannel Campaign Management market. Hence, Multichannel Campaign Management market is expected to grow at a swift pace during the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.Global Multichannel Campaign Management market has been segmented on the basis of services, deployment type, end users and end user industry. By services, the market is further bifurcated into system implementation and integration, consulting services and training and support. On the basis of end users, the market is segmented into enterprises, advertisers and publishers. By deployment type, the global Multichannel Campaign Management market is further bifurcated into on-premise and cloud.Browse the Report to Know Insights into the Competitive Scenario of the Market @End user segment is further segregated into pharmaceuticals and healthcare, telecommunication, transportation, Retail and Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) among others. Trend shows that companies are focusing on digital marketing in marketing their product globally. Multichannel campaign management integrated with digital marketing is expected to drive the global Multichannel Campaign Management market owing to growing trend and wide acceptability of digital marketing. In addition, increase in networking and technological advancements is also boosting the demand of global Multichannel Campaign Management market.Evolution of advanced technologies has facilitated wide growth of advanced mobility options, social networking and internet usage. Hence the marketers have started focusing on high return digital marketing solutions over traditional methods of marketing. However, customer privacy concerns followed by technological compatibility constraints and changing marketing channels dynamics have been identified as major restraints of the global Multichannel Campaign Management market.Request Sample to Know Emergence of Advanced Technologies and Global Industry Analysis @Geographically, global Multichannel Campaign Management market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle- East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America. In 2016, North America held the largest share of the Multichannel Campaign Management market owing to the strong advancement in network and technology in this region .The U.S is the largest contributor in this regional market.Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for global Multichannel Campaign Management market owing to the growing awareness of businesses to manage customers and marketing campaigns across all channels. All these factors are expected to increase the demand of Multichannel Campaign Management market during the forecast period from 2017- 2025.Get TOC of This Report @The major players operating in the global Multichannel Campaign Management market includes Adobe Systems (The U.S), IBM (The U.S) Experian (Dublin), Oracle (The U.S), SAP AG (Germany) , Teradata (The U.S) and SAS Institute, Inc. (The U.S) among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports proin-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Gas Detection Equipment Market: Rising Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Activities to Stoke Demand, notes Fact.MR

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A fresh study, covering Gas Detection Equipment Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking - Global Review 2017 to 2026 has been broadcasted to wide online repository of Fact MR, which presents deep focus on the Industrial Goods Market. This smart study contains precise data that offers a clear insight about market current scenario and future projections for the benefit of readers. Moreover, the study enclosed significant data which tends to make the research a powerful source for analysts and industry experts who are looking to gain necessary knowledge about the prevailing market trends, opportunities and drivers present in the Gas Detection Equipment Market.Request for Sample Report-With the rise in emphasis on ensuring workers safety across various end-use industries worldwide has provided an impetus to adoption of several protective systems such as gas detection equipment. Several industrial standards, along with governmental norms and regulations implemented to ensure safety and health of laborers in manufacturing industries has necessitated requirement for gas detection equipment.Manufacturers around the world are developing smart gas detection equipment by directing their focus toward implementation of innovative wireless technology, and robust integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. Rapid adoption of smart gas detection equipment, which enable remote notifications, are likely to be a major factor contributing to expansion of the global gas detection equipment market in the near future. As smart gas detection equipment utilize wireless technology such as ZigBee, Wi-Max, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, end-users are enabled to track function of the product even from remote locations at all times. Additionally, companies producing gas detection equipment have introduced innovative concepts by focusing on the enhancement of the sensitivity & efficiency of sensors in detection of harmful gases. The highly sensitive CO and smoke detectors impart appropriate early warning, which in turn enables prompt investigation, control, and actions before thoughtful damage. Leading players in global gas detection equipment market have also been concentrating on the integration of sensors capable of detecting more than one gas.A recently compiled Fact.MR research report projects a steady 5.0% CAGR, in terms of value, for the global gas detection equipment market during the period 2017 to 2026. Over 980 Mn units of gas detection equipment are pegged to be sold across the globe by 2026-end.Browse Full Report with TOC-North America to Dominate Global Gas Detection Equipment MarketDemand for gas detection equipment in North American industries is gaining huge traction on the back of illness caused by harmful gases such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). Governments in the region have implemented mandatory regulations regarding adoption of gas detection equipment so as to ensure health and safety of workers and employees in various manufacturing industries. North America will continue to dominate the global gas detection equipment market, in terms of value and volume.Competition TrackingLeading manufacturers in the global gas detection market are providing additional features including modified use of sensors and multi-gas detection. Local vendors are sustaining their position in the market with the provision of products integrated with basic features at relatively lower costs. In addition, manufacturers of gas detection equipment have are collaborating with insurance companies in order to attract a larger customer base. Key players significantly contributing and underpinning growth of the global gas detection equipment market include Conspec Controls Inc., Sensidyne, LP, Global Detection Systems Corp., Analytical Technology Inc., Gas Measurement Instruments Limited., Enmet LLC., ESP SAFETY INC., Gastech Australia Pty Ltd., Trolex Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., General Electric Company, United Technologies Corporation, Fortive Corporation, Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA, MSA Safety Incorporated, Halma plc., 3M Company, RKI Instruments, Inc., and Emerson Electric Co.Check Discount on This Report-About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized Industrial Goods market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MRSuite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandTelephone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.com/Web:
Blood Preparation Market share research by applications and regions for 2017-2024

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Blood preparation market is poised to be one of the most profound sectors in the healthcare space having already attained a commendable industry valuation of USD 44 billion in 2015. Robust technological development which has become the root of the medical fraternity is one of the prominent factors stimulating blood preparation industry trends globally. The concept of blood preparation was initially introduced in 1960 when the centrifugation of the blood was carried by means of a specialized equipment dubbed refrigerated centrifuge. Since then, driven by the increasing prevalence of surgical procedures and demand from casualties, Blood preparation market has been witnessing an escalated global commercialization.As per WHOs statistics, approximately 112.5 million blood donations are collected across the world, per year. The major origin of this volume is from high-income countries which account for nearly 50% of the total collection. The blood can be transfused to the patient in either an unmodified state or can be utilized more efficiently by processing it into components such as platelet concentrates, red cell concentrates, cryoprecipitate, and plasma. In the latter scenario, the sample can be utilized by more than one patient. However, the former known as Whole Blood dominated the product landscape of the blood preparation industry by contributing to 48% of the overall volume in 2015. This was followed by the second most popular product- blood derivatives which held 34% of the global blood preparation market share in the same year.Request sample copy @Blood components is another product segment of the blood preparation market slated to witness a strong growth over the coming years. This product category encountered a comparatively moderate growth than its counterparts, owing to its lesser degree of penetration across the low-income countries.Below is the percentage of blood processed into components based on the regions and their respective fiscal status, Credits- WHO: Low-income countries- 50% of the collected blood undergoes separation into components Lower-middle-income countries - 59% of the collected blood undergoes separation into components Upper-middle-income countries - 92% of the collected blood undergoes separation into components High-income countries- 97% of the collected blood undergoes separation into componentsResearch also depicts the differences in the transfused patient base category and the applications relevant to the different geographies, which impacts the overall blood preparation industry dynamics. For instance, in high-income countries, the transfused patient base majorly falls in the category of geriatric population accounting for over 76% of the overall transfusion. The transfusions in these regions are mostly carried out for cardiovascular surgeries, massive trauma, transplant surgeries, and hematological disorders. On these grounds, the U.S. will lead blood preparation industry having registered a massive revenue of USD 19 billion in 2015. The region is forecast to record a growth rate of 3.5% over 2016-2024. Supportive regulatory framework across the U.S. is also a leading factor driving the regional demand. For instance, FDA monitors the collection, storage, and transport of blood and works in partnership with health insurance agencies to implement optimal reimbursement for blood components.Make Inquiry about this report @As per CDC, 1-2 of every 1000 people in the U.S. are detected with DVT (Deep Brain Thrombosis) or PE (Pulmonary Embolism) annually. As per the estimates, the two aforementioned ailments are listed as the leading causes of demises and dominated the application landscape of the blood preparation market in 2015. Reportedly, Thrombocytosis and Pulmonary Embolism together accounted for 43% of the overall blood preparation industry size in 2015.The top-notch companies engaged in this business space including- Pfizer, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Leo Pharma, Sanofi, Celgene, Bristol-Myers, and Baxter Healthcare are constantly making efforts to diversify their products and services in sync with the fast-paced technological developments and the demand of the increasing patient base. The companies are investing heavily in R&D to develop novel, efficient, and affordable anticoagulants and antithrombotic drugs. In 2015, anticoagulants led the blood preparation industry landscape holding a revenue of USD 17 billion.The robust investments in healthcare infrastructure development will further lead to a remarkable expansion of blood preparation market in Europe and Asia Pacific. Europe market share is claimed to be prominently driven by France and Germany, slated to register CAGR of 2.3% and 1.8% respectively. APAC blood preparation industry will also witness substantial growth over the coming years driven by the favorable health norms and technological advancements in healthcare across this region. China, India, and Japan are slated to be the chief revenue pockets for APAC. As per estimates, Japan blood preparation market will register an annual growth rate of 5.9% over 2016-2024.Over the years, blood preparation industry might certain face growth challenges pertaining to the disease transmission risks such as HIV, Hepatitis B and C, AIDS, and Syphilis pertaining to the blood transfusion process. However, the aggressive efforts by the industry players to develop advanced and safe blood testing technologies will certainly create a profitable roadmap for the overall marketplace. Global Market Insights, Inc. projects the global blood preparation market to surpass a valuation of USD 64 billion by 2024.About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Optical Satellite Communication Market: Emergence of Advanced Technologies and Global Industry Analysis

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Optical Satellite Communication Market: IntroductionOptical satellite communication is also known as free space optical communication that uses optical technology to transmit information in the form of light. Optical satellite communication technology is adopted by most of the telecom operators to transfer digital data through wireless network at high speed. Optical satellite communication system uses laser to transmit signal to provide high quality signal.Optical satellite communication will became an important aspect in future space infrastructure. Moreover, continuous advancement is going on to improve speed and efficiency of transmission signal. Optical satellite communication has several applications in space vehicles and weather forecasting.Browse the Report to Know Insights into the Competitive Scenario of the Market @Optical Satellite Communication Market: Drivers and ChallengesThe major factor driving the demand for optical satellite communication is the rising need of data connectivity among devices that are used by astronauts in space for the purpose of research and development. Moreover, optical satellite communication technology improves overall operational performance in space. Optical satellite communication system provides support services for manned space activity which is also turning to be a major factor responsible for driving the growth of optical satellite communication market.Request Sample to Know Quantitative Market Analysis, Current and Future Trends @The major restraints faced by the vendors in optical satellite communication is owing to its high cost of installation.Optical Satellite Communication Market: SegmentationSegmentation of optical satellite communication on the basis of transmission medium:Intersatellite LinksWirelessGet TOC of This Report @Segmentation of optical satellite communication on the basis of Laser type:Microwave laserAIGaAs laser diodeSilex LaserYAG laserCO2 laserOptical Satellite Communication Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players of optical satellite communication market are: Acorde, Adtec digital, Agilis Satcom, Vanacom, AVL technologies, and Codan Satcon.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Catheters Market trends research and projections for 2017-2024

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The thriving growth of pharmaceutical and medical devices industries have significantly impacted the global catheters market growth trends. The technological advancements in the field of medical devices have led to a major transformation from the use of conventional methods of medical interventions to minimally invasive operations. Innovations and technological improvements in the form of touch-free, contact force-sensing, and anti-microbial products has also favored the global catheters industry trends. A substantial rise in the patients preference for the use of minimal invasive techniques for monitoring and operational purpose will stimulate catheters industry growth over the coming period. As per a report by Global Market Insights, Inc., Catheters market pegged at USD 29.4 billion in 2015 is anticipated to record an annual growth rate of 11% over the period of 2016-2024. In terms of revenue, the industry is estimated to cross USD 73 billion by 2024.A notable rise in the occurrence of neurovascular disorders including cerebral hemorrhage, arteriovenous malformation, stroke, and chronic kidney diseases have stimulated catheters product demand to perform highly complex minimally invasive surgeries. Moreover, the rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, renal failure, diabetes and upsurge in geriatric population base will also push the market demand for cardiovascular catheters. Increase in number of minimally invasive cardiovascular surgeries has fueled the high usage rates of cardiovascular products. Cardiovascular catheters industry contributes to the largest share accounting for more than 38% of overall catheters industry revenue and is projected to exceed a market valuation of over USD 20 billion by 2024.Request sample copy @The global catheters industry is expected to witness several technological innovations to enhance the healthcare operators efficiency with respect to maneuverability and flexibility. For example, an aggressive research has been carried out on developing the catheters technologies in order to lower the infections associated with catheters. The initiation of phase II study of urinary Foley catheters with Sharklet Technologies micro-pattern aims to prevent the bacterial growth on the surface of the catheter. For conducting its phase II study, Sharklet Technologies has received a funding of USD 1.2 billion by NIH. Many other technologies are being developed to combat the rising concerns of catheters based infections and increase the awareness level about the proper use of catheter. This has significantly driven the demand of catheters market in the developed and the developing countries to exploit the large untapped opportunities.Increasing penetration rates of specialty catheters in Latin America and Asia Pacific, owing to its less invasive ablation procedures and commercial attractiveness has driven this product segment. With an estimated annual growth rate of 13.4%, the specialty catheters market is expected to be the most profitable business segment over the period of 2016-2024. Holding for more than 87% of the global catheters market size, U.S. contributed to the largest regional revenue share. Quick and proper access to healthcare, rapid technological advancements, and high disease awareness levels in this region have supported the market expansion which was pegged at USD 8.6 billion in 2015. Boston Scientific Corporation, a worldwide developer and manufacturer of medical devices based in Massachusetts, U.S. is a dominant industry player profoundly participating in the North America catheters market.Make Inquiry about this report @Asia Pacific and Latin America offer potential growth opportunities for the catheters industry players. Supportive governmental initiatives to promote awareness and healthcare access will further strengthen the industry expansion in the emerging economies of Asia Pacific and LMA. China and India have witnessed high penetration rates of urology and neurovascular catheters and have thus created huge market opportunities. A significant rise in the disposable incomes of the regional population will further encourage heavy investments and product growth in the region. Asia Pacific catheters market is estimated to witness an annual growth rate of 14.7% over the period of 2016-2024. Furthermore, Europe catheters market is expected to overtake North America revenue share by accounting for over USD 28 billion over the coming seven years. The fast-paced growth is subject to major revenue contribution and robust catheters industry expansion in Germany, Spain, and France. Coloplast is a leading regional player having strong distribution network and thus accounts for major share in Europe.It can be thus seen that the global catheters market is quite fragmented in nature with the presence of many small, regional, and established players. The major parameters influencing the competitive hierarchy of catheters market include product offerings, price, and quality. Strict regulatory guidelines and massive amount of investment in research and developments may pose barriers to the growth of mediocre industry players, particularly on grounds of the quality. Some of the renowned industry participants include Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Teleflex, and Medtronics Inc.Report ContentChapter 1. Methodology and Scope1.1. Research Methodology1.1.1. Initial data exploration1.1.2. Statistical modeling and forecast1.1.3. Industry insights and validation1.2. Data SourcesChapter 2. Executive Summary2.1. Catheters industry 3600 synopsis, 2012 - 20242.1.1. Business trends2.1.2. Regional trends2.1.3. Product trendsChapter 3. Catheters Industry Insights3.1. Industry segmentation3.2. Industry Size and forecast, 2012 - 20243.3. Industry Impact forces3.3.1. Growth drivers3.3.1.1. Rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases3.3.1.2. Increasing prevalence of neurovascular, and urology disorders3.3.1.3. Growing global geriatric population base3.3.1.4. Rising demand for minimally invasive surgeries3.3.2. Industry pitfalls & challenges3.3.2.1. Growing prevalence of catheter based hospital acquired infections3.4. Growth potential analysis3.5. Porters analysis3.6. PESTEL analysis3.7 Company market share analysis, 20153.7.1. North America catheters market share analysis, 20153.7.2. Europe catheters market share analysis, 20153.7.3. Asia Pacific catheters market share analysis, 2015Chapter 4. Catheters Product Insights4.1 Catheters market share, by product, 2015 & 20244.2 Cardiovascular4.2.1 Market estimates by region, 2012  20244.3 Urology4.3.1 Market estimates by region, 2012  20244.4 Intravenous4.4.1 Market estimates by region, 2012  20244.5 Neurovascular4.5.1 Market estimates by region, 2012  20244.6 Specialty4.6.1 Market estimates by region, 2012  2024Chapter 5. Catheters Regional Insights5.1. Catheters market share by region, 2015 & 20245.2. North America5.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.2.2. U.S.5.2.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.3. Europe5.3.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.3.2. Germany5.3.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.3.3. France5.3.3.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.3.4. Spain5.3.4.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.4. Asia Pacific5.4.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.4.2. China5.4.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.4.3. Japan5.4.3.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.4.4. India5.4.4.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.5. Latin America5.5.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.5.2. Brazil5.5.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.5.3 Mexico5.5.3.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  20245.6. Middle East Asia5.6.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012 - 20245.6.2. South Africa5.6.2.1. Market estimates and forecasts by product, 2012  2024About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Construction in Vietnam - Energy and Utilities Sector will Observe Major Growth Due to Heavy Investment, 2022

Construction in Vietnam

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Construction in VietnamOverviewIn real terms, the Vietnamese construction industry posted positive growth during the review period (20132017). Growth was supported by the implementation of the governments Seventh Five-year National Socio-Economic Development Plan (20112015). As part of this, the government developed various industrial, agricultural and infrastructural projects across the country during 20112015.The industry is expected to expand over the forecast period (20182022), albeit at a slightly slower pace. The industrys expansion over this period is expected to be mainly supported by the governments efforts to improve the quality of the countrys overall infrastructure.According to the governments estimates, the country requires over the VND10.5 quadrillion (US$480.0 billion) until 2020 to develop major infrastructure projects, including the construction of 1,380km of highways and 11 power plants with a total installed capacity of 13,200MW.Click here for sample report @Major Highlights of Reports:The report also explain, the residential construction market to retain its leading position over the forecast period, with a share of 44.3% of the industrys total value in 2022. The governments effort to bridge the gap between demand and supply for affordable housing in the country is expected to support the markets growth over the forecast period. According to estimates of the Ministry of Construction, over 1.0 million affordable housing units need to be constructed in the country by 2020, in order to accommodate the rising low-income population.The government considers public-private partnership (PPP) projects to be a vital means to promote economic growth. Accordingly, in October 2017, the Ho Chi Minh City government announced plans to implement 105 projects under the PPP model by 2020.The report also showcase, the infrastructure construction market output to record a forecast-period CAGR of 14.03% in nominal terms, driven by governments effort to reduce traffic congestion on the back of expanding population in the country. In September 2017, the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) announced plans to make several large-scale investments to upgrade various existing airports in the country. Accordingly, ACV plans to invest VND12.2 trillion (US$537.1 million) to construct a new terminal and renovate existing runways and terminals in Noi Bai International Airport.The energy and utilities sector will be supported by large-scale investments. For example, the Power Development Plan 7, which was approved in 2016, involves an estimated investment of VND3.1 quadrillion (US$143.5 billion) to develop various energy projects in the country between 2016 and 2030.The total construction project pipeline in Vietnam as tracked by the Construction Intelligence Center (CIC), including all mega projects with a value above US$25 million, stands at VND12.3 quadrillion (US$546 billion). The pipeline, which includes all projects from pre-planning to execution, has a healthy balance, with 56% of the total value in pre-planning and planning as of January 2018..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Attendance Tracking Software Market: Emergence of Advanced Technologies and Global Industry Analysis

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Attendance tracking software is a sort of business software or application that is designed to optimize and track the periods that the workers or employees spend on the job and preserve records of the salaries and wages paid. This is a common type of application used almost in business of all sizes. Attendance tracking software delivers management personnel with varied tools to aid minimize waste and maximize cash flow. The programs is likely to maintain, generate and archive important tax and payroll information. The records ascertain importance during the event of audit by taxing authorities. A good attendance software suite is likely continue to function correctly as an organization advances. It also aids to regulate labor costs by decreasing over-payments which are mostly triggered by paying employees for period that are not working, and reduces interpretation error, transcription error and intentional error.Increasing need for employee efficiency and productivity is one of the primary factors driving the attendance tracking software market during the forecast period. Advanced analytical tools offers employers with enhanced understanding of the behavior of the employees. Such perceptions have impelled organizations to apply content analytics and predictive in improving operational efficiency. Increasing cloud based solution is also another important factor boosting the growth of the attendance tracking software market across the world. Switching to a cloud based software application helps in reducing money spent on installing, configuring and maintaining a system. It aids in accommodating organizations growth easily and have the access to the current updates easily.Browse the Report to Know Worldwide Industry Analysis and New Market Opportunities Explored @Apart from this benefits, it is easily accessible from anytime and from anywhere. Increasing emphasis on workforce optimization and mobile applications is also bolstering the demand of the global attendance tracking software market. Workforce optimization is likely to help improving productivity, service and reduces costs and risks. Increasing adoption of automation is also bolstering the demand of attendance tracking software market across the globe. Automation of the system is likely to increase the productivity of the workforce since it carries out the repetitive tasks thereby allowing the workforce to focus on other productive tasks. Furthermore, it also increases accuracy and reduces the cost of operation.Despite of numerous driving factors there are certain factors hindering the growth of the attendance tracking software market globally during the forecast period. Since the biometric system captures all the detail of an individuals such as fingerprints, that are possibly be compromised or hacked due to various security reasons. However, this factor is likely to have medium impact during the forecast period.Request Sample to Know Emergence of Advanced Technologies and Global Industry Analysis @Increasing adoption of attendance tracking software among the small and medium sized organizations is likely to create opportunities in the global market. Moreover, inclination towards human resource analytics is also an important opportunity in the global market.On the basis of types the global attendance tracking software market is bifurcated into proximity cards and biometrics. The proximity cards is further bifurcated into magnetic strips, connect less smart card and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Moreover, the biometric has been further segmented into fingerprint, facial recognition, hand geometry and iris recognition. Based on deployment type, the attendance tracking software market has been bifurcated into cloud and on premises.Get TOC of This Report @In addition, the market has also been segregated on the basis of end users that encompasses banking and financial sectors, healthcare, logistics and transportation, IT and Telecom, Retail, Government offices and others. The geographic bifurcation of the market comprises North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.Some of the key companies in the attendance tracking software market includes International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Kronos, Inc. (U.S.), SAP SE (Germany), Automatic Data Processing LLC. (U.S.), Oracle Corporation (U.S.), Ultimate Software Group, Inc. (U.S.), Workday, Inc. (U.S.), Workforce Software, LLC. (U.S.), Reflexis Systems (U.S.), Inc. and RITEQ Pty Ltd. (Australia).About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Mexico Automotive Parts Die-Casting Market Report 2017, Trends, Analysis, Share, Estimates and Forecasts to 2022.

The Mexico Automotive Parts Die-Casting report provides an in-depth analysis of the various market segments and its sub-segments.Products Covered: Pressure die-casting Vacuum die-casting Squeeze die-casting Semi-solid die-castingRaw Material Types Covered: Aluminium Zinc Magnesium OthersApplication Types Covered: Body assemblies Engine Parts Transmission parts OthersThe report focuses on current and upcoming market trends such as Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, and Challenges, technological advancements, Porters Five Forces analysis to assess the intensity of competition in the market. The market values are presented in the form of tables and graphs for better interpretation.Market Size EstimationsThe market assessment is made by the core industry experts using our 360 research approach. The data is derived from the most reliable, authenticated data sources and is validated by the industry experts (Primary Research). Both top down and bottom up analysis are implemented to enhance the accuracy of the market figures. The market projections are calculated for the next 8 years using the actual market numbers of previous year as the base value.Company ProfilingThis section provides the overview of the key players that are leading in the industry, covering their business operations, financials, list of products & services, SWOT analysis, major developments such as mergers & acquisitions, agreements, partnerships, joint ventures, new product launch, expansions etc.Report Highlights:- Market share assessments for all the mentioned market segments and sub-segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 8 years for all the given segments- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping, mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsWe offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg,MD, 20877, USA
Beverage Emulsion Market: Opportunity Map by 2025

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Beverage emulsion is a well-known class of food item. It consists of a continuous aqueous phase, in which an oil phase that is discontinuously dispersed in the form of microscopic droplets. Beverage emulsions are generally distinguished as oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions. Dilute beverage emulsions are typically composed of a weighting agent in order to increase the density, flavour oil blend, and a polymeric emulsifier/stabilizer which consists of either gum acacia or modified starch or gum. To reduce the particle size to 0.2 to 2.0 micro diameter, two-stage high-pressure homogenization (2000 - 5000 psi) is employed. A typical composition might also include sweeteners, preservatives, hydrocolloid, water, citric acid, and colourings in the water phase. Citric acid used in the beverage emulsion is to control pH, bringing the pH below 4.5, and benzoate as a preservative.For more information about this Report visit @Market Segmentation:Beverage emulsion market is segmented on the basis of source, type, application and region. On the basis of source, the market is segmented into acacia gum, modified starch and others. Among all these segments, acacia gum is expected to account the maximum value as well as volume share in the beverage emulsion market globally. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into colour emulsion, flavour emulsion, cloud emulsion, and vitamin carrier.The flavour emulsion provides the beverage with flavour and cloudiness in certain formulae, whereas, the cloud emulsion provides only cloudiness with minimal or no flavour. In a cloud emulsion, the flavourless oil can be orange terpenes or vegetable oils. Colour emulsion is used to provide only colour to the beverage and the vitamin carrier helps to add the extra vitamin to the beverage. On the basis of application, the beverage emulsion market is segmented into alcoholic beverage and nonalcoholic beverage. Among both the segments, the nonalcoholic beverage accounts the major market value share, and is expected to dominate the market over the forecast period.Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of beverage emulsion is divided into five different regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. Among these segment, Europe and Asia Pacific are expected to have the major market share globally, as it is the largest producer and exporter of beverage emulsion. In Europe region, Germany and France are generating the major revenue, followed by Spain. In terms of revenue, Asia Pacific is also one of the important contributor to the beverage emulsion market. China, Australia & New Zealand probably has the largest beverage emulsion market in the Asia-Pacific region.Market Drivers:There are many benefits that impact costs for the manufacturer and make fortified foods more economical for the end consumer. Microencapsulation technology can improve the stability of nutrients, preventing ingredient interactions and degradation. The coating matrix effectively separates particles and prevents them from contacting each other. Microencapsulation can also reduce overages required, by minimizing losses. Overages can be expensive, and minimizing them will have a positive impact on gross margin. There can also be an extension of shelf life, which also provides economic benefits for the manufacturer, significantly driving the growth of encapsulated beverage emulsion.Spray drying is the most common encapsulated flavour system. It involves spraying an emulsified flavour system into a heated chamber with any combination of ingredients including fibres, gums, lipids (fats and waxes), proteins or sugars. Encapsulation technologies have many benefits to the product development process. Manufacturers earlier used to face a lot of problems with liquid flavours, because when a liquid flavour was incorporated into any food material during processing, a part of that flavour was reduced, which created an altered flavour. This flavour was more inconsistent with the original formulation. Using an encapsulated flavoured beverage emulsion, rather than another form, prevented this loss and resulted in a better flavour, which is similar to the original profile.Request to Sample of Report-Market Key Players:Some of the key players in beverage emulsion market are Symrise AG, Givaudan SA, Archer Daniels Midland Company, International Flavours & Fragrances, Inc., Sensient Technologies Corporation, Ingredion Incorporated, FrieslandCampina Kievit GmbH, Tate & Lyle PLC, and Cargill, Incorporated 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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
HD Map Market: Technological Advancements, Evolving Industry Trends and Insights

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HD or high definition maps, are fast gaining traction on account of the increasing awareness about the sophisticated technology which helps to provide accurate navigation and higher dependence on the internet. In fact, HD mapping is an essential part of the autonomous cars that have flooded our roads these days. Its demand is also being driven by the popularity of app-based online cab aggregators such as Ola and Uber. This is because HD maps provide detailed information about road traffic, road shape, lane slope, curvature, roll data and elevation.The global HD maps market is highly dynamic in nature on account of the numerous mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, partnerships among players. Companies are also trying to expand their shares through product development through research and development and by expanding their outreach geographically. Some of the key players in the market are HERE, TomTom NV, Google Inc, Alibaba, NavInfo, Mapmyindia, and Sandborn.At present, North America accounts for maximum share in the market and going forward too, will likely retain its dominant share. The rising uptake of advanced technology in day-to-day life is one of the primary drivers of North America market. In terms of market attractiveness, Asia Pacific is slated to surpass all other regions. China and India are the main drivers of growth in Asia Pacific on account of their improving economies, fast-paced urbanization, growing internet penetration, large populations, increasing spending capacity of the people, and the popularity of car rental services as well as autonomous vehicles.Browse the Report to Know Insights into the Competitive Scenario of the Market @HD or high definition maps are essential in the core chain of driving services. In addition, rising awareness regarding advanced technology and dependence on the internet is driving this market. High definition refers to accuracy in high technology, which gives accurate results. HD map is used for accurate navigation and it helps the driver to reach the exact location. HD mapping is the core of new autonomous cars. LIDAR, Radar and visual cameras are the sensors to a cars vicinity. Demand for HD map application is growing significantly owing to the rising demand for car renting services such as Uber and Ola. HD maps give detailed information about road traffic, road shape, lane slope, curvature, roll data and elevation. Thus, demand for HD maps is growing globally.Rising trend of self driving cars, autonomous driving trends, and self driving car renting services globally is anticipated to fuel the growth of the HD map market during the forecast period. Moreover, due to the numerous benefits of HD maps such as indication of road conditions, traffic conditions, weather forecast and others, their demand is growing positively and is anticipated to significantly grow during the forecast period. However, many rural areas in developing countries such as India, China, and Brazil do not have self drive or rented driving car services.Request Sample to Know An Insight On the Important Factors and Trends Influencing the Market @Moreover, HD maps cannot detect the location or the road condition and traffic situation in rural areas due to poor internet connection. Governments and manufacturers are taking initiatives to provide free internet connections in such areas. Therefore, the HD map market is expected a see steady growth in rural areas during the forecast period. The impact of this restraint is high in recent times; however, it is expected to be low during the forecast period.The market of HD map is segmented into two categories based on component and industry. Based on component, the market of HD map is segmented by cameras, positioning systems, involving LIDAR and inertial measurement unit (IMU) among others. In terms of industry, the market of HD map is segmented by auto makers, internet firms, digital map providers and sensor vendors among others.Get TOC of This Report @By geography, the global HD map market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America HD map market held the largest market share in 2016 and is anticipated to hold its position throughout the forecast period. Asia-Pacific (APAC) HD map market is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period of 2017-2025. Increasing adoption of advanced technology in the daily life is the major driving factor in North America and is expected to fuel the overall market growth of HD map market during the forecast period.Numerous mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnership agreements, product innovation, research and development, and geographical expansion are some of the key strategies adopted by key players to ensure long-term sustenance in this market. Major participants in the global HD map industry include HERE (U.S.), TomTom NV (Netherlands), Google Inc (U.S.), Alibaba (Japan.), NavInfo (China), Mapmyindia (India), and Sandborn (U.S).About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Body Fat Measurement Market outlook with industry review and forecasts

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Bioimpedance analyzers to spur body fat measurement market revenue over 2016-2024, U.S. to majorly influence the global landscapeThe rising incidences of metabolic disorders along with a steep rise in the obese population is anticipated to benefit body fat measurement market development. For instance, the obese population across the globe has risen tremendously since 1980, with a record of more than 1.4 billion obese adults in 2014. In addition, innovations in BIA equipment along with growing consumer consciousness regarding the benefits of health & fitness is expected to create a strong platform for the expansion of body fat measurement industry. According to Global Market Insights, Inc., Body fat measurement market value, which was evaluated at USD 402.6 million in 2015, is projected to hit USD 798 million by 2024.Taking into consideration the geographical trends, Europe body fat measurement industry, which produced a revenue of nearly USD 126.7 million in 2015, is expected to experience a notable surge over the coming seven years. UK and Germany body fat measurement markets, which contributed nearly 14% and 23.5% respectively toward the regional revenue in 2015, are more likely to influence the business trends across Europe.Request sample copy @Asia Pacific body fat measurement market is projected to register significant gains of 8.9% during 2016 to 2024. A huge patient base along with a substantial increase in the number of screening activities for checking obesity levels will lucratively impact the business growth graph. Mounting presence of reputed BIA equipment manufacturers across the region coupled with the rise in consumer disposable incomes will further boost the regional revenue. China and Japan are predicted to majorly drive the regional share, fueled by the strong economic development in both the countries.Popular use of ADP (Air Displacement Plethysmography) and DEXA (Dual Emission X-ray Absorptiometry) products across the Asia Pacific is also expected to create lucrative avenues for the industry players to make heavy investments and thus expand their business across the continent. The enforcement of beneficial reforms such as the twelfth five-year plan by the Chinese government to improve the healthcare services are expected to boost body fat measurement market trends across the region.U.S. body fat measurement industry size, which was evaluated at over USD 146 million in 2015, is slated to favorably influence the business trends over the next few years. The industry is projected to surpass USD 274 million by 2024. The rise in the proportion of metabolism associated ailments along with the surge in life-threatening disorders such as heart problems, stroke, and diabetes is forecast to benefit the business progression. According to the observations recorded by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, more than 33% of the U.S. population were obese in 2014.Make Inquiry about this report @Governments in various regions of Europe and North America have introduced several schemes to combat and overcome the obesity problems, thereby impelling body fat measurement market.Dual emission x-ray absorptiometry, air displacement plethysmography, body fat skinfold calipers, bioimpedance analyzers, and hydrostatic weighing are the major products of body fat measurement market. Bioimpedance analyzers, which contributed nearly USD 144 million toward body fat measurement market share in 2015, are expected to further drive the industry growth over the span of the next few years. The development can be credited to technological breakthroughs that suitably help to raise the body fat measurement accuracy of the product.Mounting use of DEXA (Dual Emission X-ray Absorptiometry) bone densitometers to check the body composition has led to high demand for DEXA software. Additional testing abilities of the product are forecast to beneficially influence the development of body fat measurement industry over the coming timeframe.Global body fat measurement industry is highly fragmented with heavy participation of both the SMBs and the large enterprises, thus leading to an aggressive competitive landscape pertaining to market share as well as sustainability. Industry participants are focusing on implementing key business growth strategies such as product benchmarking and value differentiation to stay ahead of the competition. Omron Global, Hologic Incorporation, Diagnostic Medical Systems (DMS) Group, Jawon Medical Company Limited, LAccessorio Nucleare S.r.l., Beurer GmbH, AccuFitness LLC, Inbody Company Limited, GE Healthcare, Tanita Corporation, and COSMED are the major participants of body fat measurement market.Data TablesTABLE 1 Body fat measurement Industry 3600 Synopsis, 2012-2024TABLE 2 Global Body Fat Measurement Market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 3 Global Body Fat Measurement Market, by region, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 4 Body Fat Measurement Market  Growth DriversTABLE 5 North America body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 6 North America bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 7 North America calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 8 North America hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 9 North America Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 10 North America DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 11 North America others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 12 U.S. body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 13 U.S. bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 14 U.S. calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 15 U.S. hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 16 U.S. Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 17 U.S. DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 18 U.S. others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 19 Europe body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 20 Europe bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 21 Europe calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 22 Europe hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 23 Europe Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 24 Europe DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 25 Europe others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 26 Germany body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 27 Germany bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 28 Germany calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 29 Germany hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 30 Germany Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 31 Germany DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 32 Germany others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 33 UK body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 34 UK bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 35 UK calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 36 UK hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 37 UK Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 38 UK DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 39 UK others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 40 APAC body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 41 APAC bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 42 APAC calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 43 APAC hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 44 APAC Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 45 APAC DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 46 APAC others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 47 Japan body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 48 Japan bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 49 Japan calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 50 Japan hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 51 Japan Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 52 Japan DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 53 Japan others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 54 China body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 55 China bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 56 China calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 57 China hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 58 China Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 59 China DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 60 China others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 61 LATAM body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 62 LATAM bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 63 LATAM calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 64 LATAM hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 65 LATAM Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 66 LATAM DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 67 LATAM others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 68 Brazil body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 69 Brazil bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 70 Brazil calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 71 Brazil hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 72 Brazil Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 73 Brazil DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 74 Brazil others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 75 Mexico body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 76 Mexico bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 77 Mexico calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 78 Mexico hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 79 Mexico Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 80 Mexico DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 81 Mexico others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 82 MEA body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 83 MEA bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 84 MEA calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 85 MEA hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 86 MEA Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 87 MEA DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 88 MEA others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 89 South Africa body fat measurement market, by product, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 90 South Africa bioimpedance analyzers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 91 South Africa calipers market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 92 South Africa hydrostatic weighing market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 93 South Africa Air-Displacement Plethysmography market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 94 South Africa DEXA market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)TABLE 95 South Africa others market, 2012  2024 (USD Million)About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Blog:
Arrowroot Market Overview Till 2025 | Industry Size, Share and Forecast

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Starch obtained from the rootstock of several tropical plants i.e. maranta traditionally known as Maranta arundinacea is known as Arrowroot. Maranta is a large perennial herb found in the rainforest habitats. Arrowroot tuber contains up to 23% starch. It also contains a good amount of potassium, iron and B vitamins. Saint Vincent, one of the largest island in the Caribbean Sea located between Saint Lucia and Grenada has a long history of arrowroot production. Arrowroot powder is naturally gluten free, grain free, vegan and paleo-friendly. Arrowroot has been used as thickening agent in food products like gravies, stews, and sauces. It has a wide range of application in the food and pharmaceutical industry.For more information about this Report visit @Arrowroot Market: Segmentation:Arrowroot market can be segmented into nature, form, end use, and distribution channel.On the basis of nature, Arrowroot can be segmented into organic and conventional. Due to rising demand for the organic product from the food and pharmaceutical industries, the volume share for organic Arrowroot is being anticipated to be higher than the conventional segment.On the basis of form, the Arrowroot can be segmented into Liquid and powder. Arrowroot in its powder form has a wide range of application in the food industry. Arrowroot powder is being used as thickening agent in the production of sauces. It is also being used in baking, roasting, and frying. Since arrowroot contains a good amount of potassium, iron and B vitamins, it has several health benefits such improving metabolism and heart health. Owing to large-scale application in food industry, arrowroot powder is being expected to have higher volume sales as compared to its liquid form.On the basis of end use, the Arrowroot can be segmented into the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and cosmetic industry. Due to the higher demand for arrowroot powder from the food industry, it is being anticipated that food industry to have higher value sales in terms of end use for arrowroot market.On the basis of distribution, Arrowroot can be segmented into a direct channel and indirect channel. An indirect channel can be further sub-segmented into Supermarket/Hypermarket, Specialty Store, E-retailers and others (Club and specialty store). Arrowroot has its main distribution flow in modern trade stores like hypermarket/supermarket and convenience store which are easily accessible to target customers. Due to rising internet penetration in the recent past globally, distribution through E- Retailers are expected to surge the market.Arrowroot Market: Regional Outlook:The global Arrowroot market has been categorized into seven key regions including North America and Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. Arrowroot plants are usually found in West Indies, Florida, Australia, South Asia, Brazil, and Thailand. However, arrowroot has its largest production occurring in one of the islands in the Caribbean Sea i.e. Saint Vincent located Saint Lucia and Grenada. Owing to the large scale application in food industry, there will be a rise in demand for the product in the North American region which is being considered as one of the largest food industry globally. Hence North America and Asia Pacific region has been expected to have higher value share for arrowroot market globally. On the other hand European regions has been tagged as the emerging market for arrowroot market due to the rise in demand for arrowroot powder in the cosmetic industry.Arrowroot Market: Demand Driver:The global Gluten free product market is expected to grow at faster rate in the coming years owing to the rising awareness of its health benefits. Arrowroot being a gluten-free product will witness its growth in terms of value and volume sales globally. Due to its large-scale application in the food industry especially as a thickening agent, will help drive its demand for the product.Request to Sample of Report-Arrowroot Market: Key Players:Some of the key players in this market are Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), Avebe U.A., Bobs Red Mill Natural Foods, Britannia Industries Limited, Mountain Rose Herbs, Sainsbury's, Great American Spice Company, Azure, Bramble Berry, Inc., Aryan International, The Sundaram Overseas Operation and other such companies.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Asia-Pacific Power Generation Construction Projects Market by Technology, Drivers, Opportunities and Forecasts to 2022

Power Generation Construction: Asia-Pacific

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Power Generation Construction: Asia-PacificOverviewAsia-Pacific continues to set the pace for global economic growth, which is mirrored in its increased demand for power to fuel its vibrant industrial production and growing cities. The Asia-Pacific region comprises 60% of the global population, and consumes more than half of the global energy supply.China is the dominant investor in renewable energy, driven by the requirement to be less dependent on fossil fuels, which powered the growth in industrial production and the countrys urban expansion over the last two decades.This report provides detailed analysis, information and insights based on 2,338 CIC projects in Asia-Pacific, including detailed metrics on the region's power generation construction projects (as tracked by the CIC) split by country, value and ten types of project, including nuclear, fossil fuels and renewable sources such as solar, biomass and wind. Country profiles are provided for the top 10 countries including China, India and Pakistan.Click here for sample report @Major Highlights of Reports:The highest value of projects are at the planning stage, with US$873.8 trillion, followed by projects at the execution stage with US$801.7 billion.China leads the project pipeline, with projects valued at US$541.8 billion, followed by India with US$470.5 billion.Coal is the dominant investment for power generation projects in Asia-Pacific however renewable sources are eroding the influence of coal power with significant investment in hydroelectric, nuclear, wind and solar power.Coal power projects have the highest value at the execution stage and planning stage.China is the lead investor in nuclear, solar, biomass and wind power; India is the highest investor in coal and hydroelectric.Public investment is responsible for the funding of the highest proportion of projects, with 41%, with private funding at 34% and the remaining 25% of projects financed jointly by public/private funding.Assuming all projects tracked go ahead as planned, annual spending would reach US$412.6 billion in 2019.The top contractor in the region is Sinohydro Corporation followed by China Nuclear Engineering and Construction Corporation (CNECC) both based in China.ScopeThe report provides analysis based on CIC projects showing total project values for Asia-Pacific and analysis by stage and funding for the top ten countries. The top 50 projects are listed for the region giving country, stage, value and type of power generation construction. Values by ten types of project power categories are given including nuclear, wind, coal and biomass. Power generation capacity (MW) analysis is also provided. Ranked listings of the key operators for the sector are also provided showing the leading contractors, consulting engineers and project owners..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @About UsWise 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.Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Foodservice Equipment Market to Witness Steady Growth at 5.2% CAGR During 2016-2024

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Rising number of restaurants, hotels, and fast-food joints will remain a primary driver to the global foodservice equipment market. Up from US$ 27.69 Bn attained in 2015, the market for FSE is likely to reach US$ 28.91 Bn by 2016 end. Developing regions are expected to raise significant demand for foodservice equipment. Asia Pacific will remain the most lucrative market for foodservice equipment.Increasing market demand for processing, handling, and storage of food products will continue to fuel the market for innovative foodservice equipment. In addition to cooking and baking equipment, the demand for refrigerators and other freezing equipment is also projected to propel due to an ever-growing need for food storage. Evolving consumer lifestyle, including the consumption of packaged and ready-to-eat foods will be another strong factor pushing the market growth. Growing popularity of processed or preserved foods is expected to boost the demand for FSE further. Soaring activities of food and beverages import and export is identified to be a major factor escalating the demand for FSE.Request For Report Sample@A shift from refrigerators, freezers, and other storage equipment to advanced technology, energy-efficient equipment will remain a key driver bolstering the demand for foodservice equipment. Rising inclination toward open kitchens and growing adoption of digital menus and online ordering facilities will further support the market growth. Beside, hotels and restaurants, a growing number of takeaway food joints, nursing homes and hospitals, hostels, religious trusts, and charity/welfare institutions will also raise substantial demand for advanced FSE in order to process and serve significant amounts of food within a timeline.Rising consumer inclination toward healthy yet indulgent food, growing preference for grab-and-go culinary settings, and digitised foodservice are a few recent trends in the global FSE market. In addition, open kitchen renovation is a trend among restaurant owners and foodservice operators. These trends will continue to hold a positive impact on the market growth.Based on product type, baking equipment and cooking equipment segments will continue to lead the market in 2016 with a collective share of around 47%, followed by dishwashers, and food and drink preparation equipment segments.On the basis of end-user, full-service restaurants are expected to remain the largest consumer of FSE, followed by quick-service restaurants. Demand for FSE from the full-service restaurants segment is likely to exceed US$ 19 Bn in 2016, whereas that from the rapidly growing quick-service restaurants is expected to cross US$ 5 Bn by 2016 end. Hotels and club restaurants, coupled with caterers, will also support the market growth.By region, North America will remain dominant in 2016, accounting for over 29% market share in 2016. However, this region is anticipated to witness a fall against rapidly flourishing market in Asia Pacific post-2016. This growth in APAC is attributed to slashing crude oil prices and shipping costs, resulting in a remarkable sprint in sales. Europe will be the third largest market.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Middleby Corporation, Hobart Corporation, AB Electrolux, Manitowoc Foodservice Inc, Ali S.p.A, Libbey Inc., Tupperware Brands Corporation, Fujimak Corporation, Duke Manufacturing Co. Inc., Cambro Manufacturing Company, Inc., Vollrath Co., Hoshizaki Electric Co., Ltd., Dover Corporation, and Rational AG are some of the key players competing in the global foodservice marketplace.Long-term Outlook: Over 2016-2024, the global foodservice equipment market is anticipated to expand at a steady CAGR of 5.2%, attaining the revenues worth US$ 42.92 Bn by 2024 end.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Asset Tracking Software Market 2018 Global Key Players: Zebra Technologies Corporation, Stanley Black And Decker, Honeywell International, Datalogic S.P.A by Forecast to 2023

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Market Highlights:On the basis of regional analysis the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. North America region is generating highest market share in the asset tracking software market owing to better network infrastructure, digitization and higher technology implementation. Digitization in North America is mainly due to the invention of advanced technology and economies benefitting from it.North America region is leading due to presence of major players from the region in the asset tracking software market and presence of big retail chains. The implementation of asset tracking software solution by both small and medium enterprises is increasing rapidly, especially one into IT & retail sector.The Asset Tracking Software Market is gaining demand as organization seek to improve their business growth by shifting from on-premise to cloud based. The initial low cost, saving amount spent on infrastructure, automatic Streaming upgrading and seamless integration is driving the market of cloud based Asset Tracking Software market.The asset tracking software market is expected to grow at approximately USD 11 Billion by 2023, at 15% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.Major Key Players: Zebra Technologies Corporation (U.S.) Stanley Black And Decker, Inc. (U.S.) Honeywell International, Inc. (U.S.) Datalogic S.P.A (Italy) Trimble Inc. (U.S.) Ubisense Group Plc. (U.K.) Mojix, Inc. (U.S.) Impinj, Inc. (U.S.)Request a Sample @Asset Tracking Software Market Segmentation:In IT & telecommunication sector, asset tracking software is used by organization owing to its excellent software tracking solutions and enrich cloud solutions. The software can be used for IT asset tracking, equipment tracking, facility management, tool tracking, funding management and instruction compliance.Market Research Analysis:The asset tracking software market in North America region is growing due to high adoption of cloud solutions by enterprise and need to improve information governance in organizations. According to the study, the asset tracking software market will show rapid growth in Europe region. Asia-Pacific market is estimated to be one of the fastest growing market as it is continuously investing into research and development of asset tracking software market and growing complexity associated with managing asset is driving asset tracking software market in the region.Increasing population, and growing IT landscape is boosting the market in the region. The region is witnessing high adoption of asset tracking software tools by enterprises. Developing countries such as India and China are adopting asset tracking software tools at large scale owing to growing e-commerce and manufacturing sector from numerous industries and the need to designed efficient software for asset management of business is one of the prime factor that is boosting the market in the region. By vertical segment, retail and IT & telecommunication sector is driving the asset tracking software market. The region is witnessing high growth in asset tracking software market due to growing technological advancement in plant, machinery and software management.Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of asset tracking software market is being studied for regions such as Asia Pacific, Americas, Europe and Rest of the World. North America region accounts for highest market share in asset tracking software market owing to presence of major players in the region. The region consists of major retail chain players and software developers this is one of the significant reason that is propelling the market in the region.Countries such as US and Canada contributes large amount of revenue in the asset tracking software market in the region. AsiaPacific region is expected to be growing at the highest CAGR in the asset tracking software market. Owing to the increasing e-commerce industries in the region that are investing huge in asset tracking tools to improve business efficiency and productivity is one of the significant factors boosting market in the region.Access Report Details @Intended Audience Investors and consultants System Integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firms Technology solution providers IT Solution Providers Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM)Table of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Type2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Asset Tracking Software Market, By ComponentTable 2 Asset Tracking Software Market, By DeploymentTable 3 Asset Tracking Software Market, By Oraganization SizeContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research ComponentFigure 2 Asset Tracking Software Market: By Component (%)Figure 3 Asset Tracking Software Market: By Deployment (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Czech Republic Baby Food Sector Key Players - Nutricia AS, Hipp Czech SRO, Nestle Cesko SRO, and Hame AS Market Analysis & Forecast 2018 to 2022

Baby Food Sector: Czech Republic

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Baby Food Sector: Czech RepublicOverview:The baby food sector has performed relatively well, particularly over the last two or three years, boosted by higher birth numbers, a better economy and a decrease in VAT. The country continues to produce a significant quantity of baby food as consumers have positive attitude to industrially prepared baby food.The Czech market is accustomed to fruit-based baby meals, but savory lines, especially meat-based varieties, are more recent innovations, which have grown strongly in popularity in recent years. Health concerns have led to higher sales of organic food.Click here for sample report @Major Companies mentioned are:Nutricia AS (Danone)Hipp Czech SRONestle Cesko SROHame AS (Orkla)Major Highlight:In 2015, sales of organic foods rose by 11.4% baby food are one of the most purchased types of organic food. It is expected that the market for baby food will rise by 4.8% over the next six years, with volume growth expected in all the sectors.Major Scope Of the Report:Baby Food sector demand increased with reduction in VAT level in January 2015, the impact of manufacturer price increases negated much of the benefit. All sectors saw stable prices in 2016, apart from meals.Milks accounts for 39.7% of retail sales. In terms of volume, wet meals and juices are more dominant, claiming 61.4% of consumption in 2016, compared with 24.8% for milks (dried weight).Imports of baby food have increased slightly overall, and in 2016 stood at 12,028 tons. The majority, 71% of imports comprise cereals and milks.Exports are considerably higher than imports, and in 2016 stood at 29,809 tons. Exports are dominated by meat and sweet meals.Danone leads in all three of the main categories. The only other two companies of significance are Nestle and Hame, which from early 2016 has been owned by Orkla.Supermarkets/hypermarkets now control the largest share of volume sales, at 70.3% in 2016, ahead of pharmacies and drugstores with 20.7%, while the share of other grocery outlets has now slipped to under 10%. Internet shopping is beginning to be a feature of the Czech market.The highest growth rate will be seen in the milks sector, with breastfeeding rates unlikely to pick up significantly in the near future.Reasons to buyEvaluate important changes in consumer behavior and identify profitable markets and areas for product innovation.Analyze current and forecast behavior trends in each category to identify the best opportunities to exploit.Detailed understanding of consumption by individual product categories in order to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.Investigates which categories are performing the best and how this is changing market dynamics..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @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. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Self-Driving Cars and Light Trucks Market 2017 - Global Industry Size, Shares, Trends, Growth, Analysis and Forecast 2023

Self-Driving Cars and Light Trucks

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Self-Driving Cars and Light Trucks: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.Worldwide markets are poised to achieve significant growth as self-driving cars and light trucks permit users to implement automated driving. Fleet vehicles from Uber, Google and similar users are likely to be the early adopter groups. Tesla, Mercedes, and Audi are among the vendors with a leadership position in the personal luxury vehicle self-driving car markets,Every car maker seeks to participate in this self-driving personal vehicle market. The ability to do so depends on implementing next generation technology that is very expensive to get working. Vendors ae seeking to work together to set standards and develop shared modules that provide basic functionality. Cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence software, and LiDAR are among the modules being developed.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Autonomous vehicle technology has the potential to institute major change in personal mobility. Autonomous cars are the next generation of manual cars, poised to provide thrust for a large replacement market. Autonomous vehicles are the base for building a personal car services, particularly in large cities. Carmakers and Silicon Valley companies bring different skills to the task of building a self-driving car. Together they are finding common ground to transform the personal vehicle industry. One thing they are unlikely to transform is performance.Every person who owns a vehicle has a preference on performance. The Tesla has gained recognition for offering a self-driving vehicle, but it is first and foremost a performance vehicle. This characteristic will not change as self-driving vehicles come on the market. People like the customization of features and functions in their car.This customization aspect of self-driving vehicles does not get talked about much, but it is a very important part of the industry. It will not go away just because cars are run by software. From auto racing to personal preference, ever car has its own personality and its own comfort. Performance is part of the package. Every car maker seeks to participate in this self-driving personal vehicle market with a distinctive offering. The ability to have unique appear to customers depends on implementing next generation technology in a manner that works effectively and is relatively inexpensive to implement.Apple, IBM, and Google are sure to be among the significant software vendors for all the self-driving car and light truck market participants. IBM has a huge head start with its excellent middleware branded integrated solutions that are hardened and reliable. Google has mindshare and early market success with its early market trials.As automated process hits the auto industry as a disruptive force, it parallels the automated piloting of the airline industry that saw significant labor savings implementation. Automated vehicle driving can be done anywhere just by connecting the car to integrated adaptive cruise control, adaptive steering and braking, and lane assist systems all working off one central processor.Self-driving cars and light trucks incrementally add automated process to driving. As software is added to cars and light trucks it is done in concert with modification to the steering, breaking, and other automotive systems. Autonomous functions for vehicles are increasingly adopted.Change is incremental, we do not have fully functioning self-driving cars immediately, rather, steering, collision avoidance, parking, test driving, series of camera and radar based monitoring systems, lane assist, and adaptive cruise control are being implemented, presaging rapid adoption of self-driving cars and light trucks as the various functions mature and work in the real world.The market for self-driving car and light truck vehicles is anticipated to expand in parallel with the deployment of appropriate roadway controls funded by government programs. The large public investments for self-driving vehicles so far has been for development of technology that works for military purposes. The extension of this type of automated system to commercial fleet vehicles will be rapid after 2019The self-driving car designs amalgamate a group of features to represent an automated process solution. These include the hardware, the software middleware, the steering system, adaptive cruise control, numerous software applications, an integrated systems approach, and related services. Significant investments in research and development are necessary as the emerging self-driving cars and light trucks industry builds on incremental technology roll outs.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @Self-driving car and light truck commercial market shipments forecasts indicate that markets beginning to develop in 2016 will rise to $3.6 trillion by 2023. Spectacular growth is a result of various moves toward autonomous vehicles that can go across the US by themselves, provide automated navigation,, integrated braking and steering. Most auto vendors have gone beyond the testing stage to offer vehicles that have strong navigation capability.Safety modules are complimented by mapping vehicles that provide navigation. The Tesla and other vehicles provide driver alerts but fall sort of complete self-driving.Market driving forces relate primarily to the need for increased safety and personalization for autos. Car manufacturers are positioning with self-driving car models to meet demand at the high end, and in every category of car and light truck. Many self-driving vehicle car vendors are making automation for personal vehicles and light trucks a reality.Companies ProfiledMarket Leaders- Google- BMW Group- Daimler AG / Mercedes-Benz- GM- Nissan- Toyota- Ford- Tesla- Fuji- Kairos- Hyundai- Volkswagen / AudiMarket Participants- Allen Vanguard- Audi- BAE Systems- Boston Dynamics- Bosch Group- Evatran Group- BMW- Buick Group- Chrysler / Dodge- Daimler AG/Mercedes-Benz- ECA Robotics- Elbit Systems- Evatran Group- Ford / Lincoln- Fuji Heavy Industries / Subaru- General Dynamics- Google Self-Driving Car- GM / Cadillac- iRobot Revenue- Kairos Autonomi- Kongsberg- Jaguar Land Rover- Lockheed Martin- Mesa Robotics- Mitsubishi- Nissan- Qualcomm- Thales Group- Toyota / Lexus- Vecna Technologies- Volkswagen / Porsche- Volvo- Visteon- WiTricityMake an Enquiry of this report @Key Topics- Automotive- Automated driving- Automated vehicles- Autonomous vehicles- in-vehicle compute, Infiniti, Internet of things, Itseez, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia, machine learning, Mobileye, QNX, Toyota, Wind River, Yogitech Robot Cars and Trucks- Robot steering- Robot breaking- Robot automotive systems- Autonomous functions for vehicles- Collision avoidance- Automated parking- Robot Parking- Robot test driving- Car cameras- Car LiDAR- Car radar- Truck follow me systems- Radar based monitoring systems- Lane assist- Adaptive cruise controlAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
400G Optical Transceivers Market 2017 - Global Industry Size, Shares, Trends, Growth, Analysis and Forecast 2023

400G Optical Transceivers Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "400G Optical Transceivers Market Size, Shares - Industry Trends, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.The growing availability and cost effectiveness of 100 Gbps, and 400 Gbps devices is one of the key factors boosting the demand for 400G optical transceivers. These optical transceivers consume less power and are thus in much demand. Also, 400G optical transceivers are not so costly, and are thus being preferred. Some of the other benefits of 400G optical transceivers include their small size and the fact that these transceivers are smart. The increasing efforts from the vendor side in the industry are resulting to the development of high quality technology and leading edge broadband network capability. They are thus in high demand from mega data centers. The shift towards cloud computing, increasing adoption of augmented reality, and high penetration of IoT are working in favor of the global 400G optical transceivers market. In addition to this, the penetration of smartphones across the globe has also benefitted the growth of this market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The 2016 study has 525 pages, 121 tables and figures. The vendors in the 400G optical transceivers industry have invested in high-quality technology and processes to develop leading edge broadband network capability a being implemented in the mega data centers.400G optical transceivers market driving forces relate primarily to the implementation of networks within the mega data centers and the interconnects between the data centers.Software as a Service (SaaS) is a primary offering.- Global adoption of the Internet- Driving rapid growth of the mega datacenter- Data centers support Internet applications- Online commerce- Streaming video- Social networking- Cloud services- Software as a Service (SaaS)- 400G Transmitter / TransceiversLeading vendors offer a broad product selection. They are positioned with innovative technology. Optical module manufacturers address the needs of all major networking equipment vendors worldwide. Leading vendors have taken a leading role in transforming the data communications and telecommunications equipment market.The shift has been away from utilizing discrete optical components to leveraging the design and pay-asyougrow flexibility offered by pluggable modules. 400G Optical transceiver products are compliant with Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH/OTN and PON standards. They generally operate at data rates of 400 Gb/s and higher.400G Transmitter / Transceivers are capable of distances ranging from very short reach within a datacenter to campus, access, metro, and long-haul reaches. They feature outstanding performance. Units work over extended voltage and temperature ranges. They are positioned to minimize jitter, electromagnetic interference (EMI) and power dissipation.Mega Datacenter Online Commerce, Streaming Video, Social Networking, And Cloud Services are key to operations of mega data centers.Global adoption of online commerce, streaming video, social networking, and cloud services such as Software as a Service (SaaS) is driving rapid growth of the mega datacenter. The storage and computing requirements supported by the datacenters present new challenges to connectivity within the datacenter in terms of bandwidth, transmission distance, power consumption, and cost.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @The product portfolio offered by vendors for telecom and datacenter and cloud applications effectively addresses these requirements and challenges.Covering data rates up to 400Gb/s in compact form factors, vendor products enable green field deployments and the upgrade of existing datacenters in a cost-effective manner. WAN telco applications Internet, enterprise augmented reality, and IoT Drive optical network adoption as the mega data centers are poised for significant growth to support trillion-dollar app markets. Global adoption of the Internet is driving rapid growth of the mega datacenter and the need for very high speed network transmission. Optical transceivers are used to upgrade telecommunications networks and launch very large mega data centers. The development of innovative products is essential to keeping and growing market share.A 400G optical transceiver is a single, packaged device that works as a transmitter and receiver. An optical transceiver is used in an optical network to convert electrical signals to optical signals and optical signals to electrical signals. Optical transceivers are widely deployed in optical networking for broadband. Optical transceiver manufacturers test to ensure that their optical transceivers have compliance with the defined specifications. Testing of key optical parameters: transmitter optical power and receiver sensitivity is a big deal.According to the research, 400G Optical transceiver markets are driven by the use of mega data centers that implement broadband networks in cloud computing environments. Video, Internet adoption, and tablets drive demand for broadband mega data centers. Markets are influenced by apps, augmented reality. IoT, the move to cloud computing and the adoption of smart phones by 9.5 billion people by 2020. Mega data centers that support online commerce, streaming video, social networking, and cloud services for every industry are expected to adopt 400G optical transceivers as a fundamental technology. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a primary offering that will leverage 400 G optical transceivers in the mega data center.High-speed serial transceivers form the backbone of networks. Communications, servers and many other electronic systems depend on high-speed serial transceivers. Global adoption of the Internet is driving rapid growth of the mega datacenter. Data centers support online commerce, streaming video, social networking, and cloud services.Leading vendors offer a broad product selection. They are positioned with innovative technology. 400 G optical module manufacturers address the needs of major networking interconnect equipment vendors and companies building mega data centers. Leading vendors have taken a leading role in transforming the data communications and tele-communications equipment market.The global 400 G optical transceiver market is expected to be at $22.6 billion in 2023 driven by the availability and cost effectiveness of 100 Gbps, and 400 Gbps devices. Next generation optical transceiver devices use less power, are less expensive, and are smarter and smaller. The adoption of widespread use of the 100 Gbps devices, followed by 400 Gbps devices and the vast increases in Internet traffic are core to helping manage change in the large mega data center and communications interconnect and infrastructure markets.Companies ProfiledSelected Market Leaders- Finisar- Lumentum- Broadcom- Oclaro- Fujitsu- Source Photonics- Sumitomo- NeoPhotonics- NEC- Innolight Technology- Emcore- Accelink Technologies- Oplink Communications- NTT- Furukawa ElectricMarket Participants- Acacia- ACON- Applied Optoelectronics- GigPeak- Huawei- Inphi- IPG Photonics- Nokia- Qorvo- Viavi Solutions- XilinxMake an Enquiry of this report @Key Topics- 400G Optical Transceiver- Augmented Reality- Internet of Things (IoT)- Network Core- DWDM- Data rates 100 Gb/s- Data rates 400 Gb/s- Mega Data Center Optimized- Internet Protocol Traffic- Mobile Backhaul- Broadband Optical SectorAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Consumer Healthcare Sensor Market is Expected to Witness a Steady Growth by 2025

Consumer Healthcare Sensor Market

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HTF MI recently introduced Global and United States Consumer Healthcare Sensor study with 100+ market data Tables and Figures spread through Pages and easy to understand detailed TOC on " Consumer Healthcare Sensor Market by Type, by End-Users/Application Therapeutic, Imaging, Handheld and Homecare, Fitness and Welness & Others, Organization Size, Industry, and Region - Forecast and outlook to 2022". At present, the market is developing its presence and some of the key players profiled in the report includes Infineon Technologies AG, Invensense. Inc., Koninklijke Philips N.V., Maxim Integrated, Banner Engineering Corporation, Cambridge Temperature Concepts, Danaher Corporation, Ecardio Diagnostics, ELMOS Semiconductor AG, Aptina Imaging Corporation, Atmel Corporation, 3M, Ametek, Inc., Analog Devices, Inc., Measurement Specialties Inc., Melexis Corporation, Avago Technologies, Temperature Sensor, Image Sensor, Motion Sensor, Touch Sensor, Heart Rate Sensor & Others amongst others. The market Study is segmented by key regions which is accelerating the marketization.Early buyers will receive 10% customization on reports. Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @The growth of the Consumer Healthcare Sensor market has been attributed to demand in application/end-users such as Therapeutic, Imaging, Handheld and Homecare, Fitness and Welness & Others. Furthermore the research is geographically segmented as United States, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America & Middle East and Africa.Request Sample of 2018-2025 Consumer Healthcare Sensor Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications @:In terms of application the market is categorized under Therapeutic, Imaging, Handheld and Homecare, Fitness and Welness & Others and by following product type which includesTo get a deeper view of Market Size, competitive landscape is provided i.e. Revenue (Million USD) by Players (2012-2017), Revenue Market Share (%) by Players (2012-2017) and further a qualitative analysis is made towards market concentration rate, product/service differences, new entrants and the technological trends in future. Company profile section of players such as Infineon Technologies AG, Invensense. Inc., Koninklijke Philips N.V., Maxim Integrated, Banner Engineering Corporation, Cambridge Temperature Concepts, Danaher Corporation, Ecardio Diagnostics, ELMOS Semiconductor AG, Aptina Imaging Corporation, Atmel Corporation, 3M, Ametek, Inc., Analog Devices, Inc., Measurement Specialties Inc., Melexis Corporation, Avago Technologies, Temperature Sensor, Image Sensor, Motion Sensor, Touch Sensor, Heart Rate Sensor & Others includes its basic information like legal name, website, headquarters, its market position, historical background and top 5 closest competitors by Market capitalization / revenue along with contact information. Each player/ manufacturer revenue figures, growth rate and gross profit margin is provided in easy to understand tabular format for past 5 years and a separate section on recent development like mergers, acquisition or any new product/service launch etc.Buy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to display the Global and United States Consumer Healthcare Sensor market.Chapter 1, to describe Definition, Specifications and Classification of Consumer Healthcare Sensor, Applications of Consumer Healthcare Sensor, Market Segment by Regions;Chapter 2, to analyze the Manufacturing Cost Structure, Raw Material and Suppliers, Manufacturing Process, Industry Chain Structure;Chapter 3, to display the Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of , Capacity and Commercial Production Date, Manufacturing Plants Distribution, Export & Import, R&D Status and Technology Source, Raw Materials Sources Analysis;Chapter 4, to show the Overall Market Analysis, Capacity Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Analysis (Company Segment), Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment);Chapter 5 and 6, to show the Regional Market Analysis that includes United States, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America & Middle East and Africa, Consumer Healthcare Sensor Segment Market Analysis (by Type);Chapter 7 and 8, to analyze the Consumer Healthcare Sensor Segment Market Analysis (by Application) Major Manufacturers Analysis of Consumer Healthcare Sensor;Chapter 9, Market Trend Analysis, Regional Market Trend, Market Trend by Product Type, Market Trend by Application [Therapeutic, Imaging, Handheld and Homecare, Fitness and Welness & Others];Chapter 10, Regional Marketing Type Analysis, International Trade Type Analysis, Supply Chain Analysis;Chapter 11, to analyze the Consumers Analysis of ;Chapter 12, to describe Consumer Healthcare Sensor Research Findings and Conclusion, Appendix, methodology and data source;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Consumer Healthcare Sensor sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Enquire for customization in Report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Craig Francis (PR & Marketing Manager)HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA  08837Phone: +1 (206) 317 1218sales@htfmarketreport.com
Workforce Analytics Market Global 2018 Key Players: IBM, ADP LLC, Kronos Inc, Tableau Software, Workday Inc by Forecast to 2023

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Market Highlights:Workforce analytics is a platform designed by the combination of software and algorithms implementing the statistical models to the work force related data giving the benefit to the enterprises to efficiently optimize the human resources management. The result of the workforce analytics allows the organizations to develop and improve the methods of recruiting and effectively take the hiring decisions. Additionally the analytics software help the organizations identify the new positions needs and predicting the success of the employee. This proves a great benefit to the higher management in identifying the factors that influence the employee job satisfaction.With the advancements in technology and increase in the global trade, it has made a huge impact on the work culture across the globe for different organizations resulting in the decrease of the skilled workforce. This dynamic change in the workforce has made the management to utilize the workforce analytics to better optimize the customer needs and employee workforce.The market for workforce analytics is segmented by type, deployment, organization size, industry vertical and by region. On the basis of type, it is divided into solutions and services. Services are further bifurcated as consulting service, system integration service, and managed services. The services segment is dominating the market for workforce analytics by type due to changing workforce and labor challenges that are faced by the enterprises globally. Also, due to the changing work dynamics and different governmental labor rules and regulations, the demand for consulting services is growing and is expected to grow significantly in the forecasted period. The segmentation is also done on the basis of deployment. Under deployment, the cloud-based workforce analytics is leading segment in Workforce Analytics Market majorly due to ease of implementation and user-friendly environmental features. The market is also divided into large organizations and SMEs under organization size for the industry verticals like banking, insurance, government, retail, and logistics, healthcare and manufacturing.Major Key Players: ADP LLC (U.S.), Aquire, Inc (U.S.) Cornerstone OnDemand Inc (U.S.) Genpact Ltd (Bermuda) IBM Corporation (U.S.) Kronos Inc (U.S.) Oracle Corporation (U.S.) PeopleSreme Pty. Ltd (Australia) SAP SE (Germany) Tableau Software (U.S.) Tower Watson & Co (U.S.) Visier Inc (Canada) Workday Inc (U.S.) WorkForce Software, LLC (U.S.)Request a Sample Report @Regional Analysis:On the basis of region, the market for workforce analytics is divided into North America, Europe, Asia pacific and rest of the world. North America region is leading the market in workforce analytics majorly due to the presence of big and large number of vendors. Also Increase in the early adoption of cloud - based workforce analytics from U.S and Canadian companies with the shift towards software as a service in cloud-based workforce analytics. Following North America is Europe and Asia pacific.Increase in infrastructure and awareness of benefits of workforce analytics across the Asia Pacific regions are expected to grow the market during the forecast period. India, China, and Japan these are the countries have the highest market share of workforce analytics market. Rapid economic development in the region, increasing citizen prosperity is playing a key role in the growth of this market.Various dynamic and diversified international organizations, domestic organizations and as well as new entrants form a competitive landscape. The leaders are innovating continuously and increasingly seeking market expansion through various strategic mergers and acquisitions, innovation, increasing investments in research and development and cost-effective product portfolio.Segments:For the purpose of this study, Market Research Future has segmented the market of workforce analytics into type, deployment, organization size, industry vertical and region.Type Solution ServicesDeployment On Premise On CloudOrganization Size Large SMEsIndustry Vertical Banking Insurance Government Retail Logistics Healthcare ManufacturingRegion North America Europe Asia pacific Rest of the world.Browse Full Report Details @Intended Audience Storage providers Network providers Banking Institutions Insurance providers Higher management Research firms Software investors Software Developers Software Testers Analytics solutions providers IT enablers Database solutions Cloud providers Insurance companies Banks Telecommunication companiesTable of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Workforce Analytics2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Workforce Analytics Market, By TypeTable 2 Workforce Analytics Market, By DeploymentTable 3 Workforce Analytics Market, By Organization SizeContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Workforce Analytics Market, By Type (%)Figure 3 Workforce Analytics Market, By Deployment (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Agriculture market - Future of Farming & Reduce Production Cost

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a significant solution towards the improved agricultural productivity. As AI is the mainstay of robotics, increasing adoption of robotics in agricultural sector for better crop yield and increased consumption power has expected to drive the market. Gradual shift of farmers towards robots, smart sensors, automated machines, drones, and growing trends of precision farming have spurred the market.Rising demand from increasing population, adoption of advance technologies and Information Management System (IMS) for crop productivity and government initiatives for modern agro-techniques adoption are the probable reasons to foster the market over the forecast period. Moreover, the application of machine learning enabled solutions and predictive analysis in various agricultural practices are anticipated to rise exponentially.For more Insightful Information Request a Sample PDF@Other factor driving the market is raising demand for improved food quality along with focused farm productivity. Precision farming technologies help in creating traditional agricultural activities more predictable & efficient. Raising implementation of AgriBots in farming applications for improving crop health and monitoring productivity will also benefit the industry growth.However, high cost involved for gathering accurate field data acts as a barrier for the market. In addition, lack of standards, unawareness of farmers for AI technology and limited historical data availability may also hinder the growth of the market. Although, increasing demand for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and growth opportunities offered by various emerging countries in North America and APAC have paved a steady path for the growth of AI in agriculture industry.Global AI in agricultural market has been segmented by technology and application. Based on technology, the market is segregated into Predictive Analysis, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. Application segment includes Drone Analytics, Livestock Monitoring, Precision Farming, and Agriculture Robots. The rapid usage of Computer Vision Technology including plant image recognition, and the increasing demand for crop health analyses and continuous monitoring are the key factors contributing to the growth of this segment. Also, market for drone analytics is estimated to grow owing to the extensive application for making real-time decisions as well as for diagnosing and mapping of crop health. Furthermore, satisfactory government rules and regulations for drones in agricultural sector is anticipated to fuel the growth of drone analytics application.North America has been witnessed as the largest market for AI in agriculture. The rising demand for advanced agricultural technologies among the large-scale market players is anticipated to spur the market growth in this region. AI technology application aims to improve the productivity and crop management techniques. The rising adoption of computer vision technologies and deep learning for AI applications is one of the key drivers for the market expansion in the APAC countries such as China, and India over the forecast period.Obtain Report Details @Major market players are Iteris, Trimble, Agrosmart, Farmlogs, AGCO Corporation, Agworld, Granular, Gamaya, Hortau, aWhere, Grownetics, John Deere, Scicorp, Pycno, and Raven Industries. These key players are adopting marketing strategies including merger & acquisitions, R&D, collaboration, product launch, and global expansion.Companies such as Blue River Technology are using robotics and automation to support farmers finding more effective ways to protect their crops from weeds. The company has manufactured a robot called See & Spray which controls via computer vision to monitor and precision spray on cotton plants. In September 2017, chief manufacturing company, John Deere acquired the Blue River Technology and the company is supposedly investing $305 million to complete this transition.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 StatesUK Office109 ,Straford Street,LeedsWest Yorkshrie LS11 6JGUnited KingdomToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email-sales@xpodenceresearch.com
Smart City Market 2018 Global Top Key Players: IBM, Cisco Systems, AT&T Inc, Siemens AG, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation by Forecast to 2022

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Smart City Market Overview:The next phase of urban development in cities has emerged in the form of the smart cites revolution. Market Research Future, a firm which specializes in market reports related to the Information and Communications Technology sector among others, recently published a report on this market. The market for global smart cities is expected to reach USD 1933 Billion by 2022.Increased pace of urbanization has entailed the need for smart cities concept. The demand for smart cities concept and tools has diversified significantly due to government initiatives related to funding and R & D activities. Development of the concept of Internet of things has also added to the growth of the smart cities concept. Better internet connectivity has also played a vital role in the development of this industry.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players:The key players in global smart city market include Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. (China), IBM Corporation (U.S.), Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.), AT&T Inc. (U.S), Siemens AG (Germany), Oracle Corporation (U.S.) Microsoft Corporation (U.S) among others.Industry Segments:The industry for global smart cities can be divided into following categories of component and application. The segmentation on basis of component is into hardware, software and service. While, on the basis of component, the hardware component in smart city accounts for the largest market share and is growing with approximately 30.65% CAGR during forecast period. On the basis of application, the category is divided into utility, transport, government, residential, education, healthcare and others. In this segmentation, the transport sub segment holds majority of market share growing with approximately 30.34% CAGR by the end of forecast period.Detailed Regional Analysis:The market for global Smart City Market is projected to develop at an encouraging rate during the forecast period. The North American market is anticipated to achieve a majority share in the smart city market. High adoption rates related to internet of things, development of high end infrastructure and focus towards energy saving and availability of efficient network connectivity is driving market in the North American region.This region is followed by the European region in this market. Nevertheless, Asia-Pacific is estimated to be the fastest rising region in smart city market due to the increasing initiatives and high investment initiated by governments.Global Competitive AnalysisThe industry players in the segment are effectively utilizing their primary resources to initiate long lasting growth changes. A trend of volume-driven growth has been observed in the market of late with the development of different varieties of product types. The sector is meanwhile also undergoing considerable transformation which has accelerated the growth pace of the sector. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be harnessed by ensuring ongoing process improvements and maintaining financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Conversely, with companies aiming to capture a considerable share of the market segment as early as possible, experimentation with various advantage points is being seriously considered and implemented.Industry Updates:Jan 2018:Kuching, Malaysia has invested into it vision of becoming a smart city with the launch of Sacofa Open Fibre Infra Access (Sofia) recently. Sofia has the ability to deliver high-speed internet connections to residential or commercial buildings. With the innovative infrastructure, the people of the city would be able to be better linked with the outside world with more ease.Jan 2018:The Department of Homeland Security in the US is reaching out to tech entrepreneurs and innovators to advance smart city tools for first responders. The department's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) launched also launched a smart city grant named the Request for Innovators designed for tech companies that can develop tools to assist first responders. S&T has partnered with the First Responders Group and the Smart Cities Internet of Things Innovation (SCITI) Labs to coordinate the grant that awards selected entrepreneurs and tech companies with roughly $50,000 to design initial prototypes, and if they prove useful S&T will provide an additional $100,000 for research and development.Jan 2018:Malaysia will be the first country apart from China to adapt the smart city system established by the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group Holding. Its subsidiary, Alibaba Cloud, has launched the smart city initiative called Malaysia City Brain, which will harness artificial intelligence, big data and cloud technologies to support the countrys digital transformation and help its cities run more efficiently.Browse Full Report Details @Jan 2018:Panasonic is developing a "smart city" infrastructure in Colorado, US with the aim of turning the area into a smart city by 2026. The initiative is part of a larger Panasonic program called CityNow. The development of the town will happen on a 400-acre of empty land near the Denver Airport, the company has installed free WiFi, LED street lights, pollution sensors, a solar-powered microgrid, and security cameras initially.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
finfo launches to reduce mobile costs by 30%.

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finfos automated cost visibility solution leads to actionable insights on monthly corporate expenses, driving down costs by 30% in year one alone.Specialist FinTech business finfo, has launched to bridge the gap between business intelligence tools and managed service providers by offering bespoke infographic style reporting on corporate mobile phone usage and other expenses.Managing Director & Founder Anthony Devine provides a brief insight into the industry. FTSE 100 companies typically spend over 1m per year on business mobile contracts and private use contributes around 48% of the total cost.CIOs and CFOs today face a tremendous lack of transparency and control when it comes to centrally paid expenses such as company mobile phones. Decentralised or hidden reporting leaves the end-user unaware of their business spend.Unpopular policies can have disastrous effects on morale and engagement. Direct employee engagement provides a sense of accountability, which encourages employees to be thoughtful spenders. Self-regulation and changing habits enable organisations to achieve savings and increase the value of each pound spent without impacting on day-to-day activities.Chief Technology Officer, Stuart McLellan explains how finfo helps with changing habits. Our bespoke reports are delivered direct to employees via email and text message. This enables them to gain visibility of their usage compared to their peers, without the need to login to a portal.Portals provided by network providers rarely see login rates pass 20%. 92% of finfo reports are opened within 3 minutes, enhancing cost visibility and governance.finfo serves Forbes 100 and FTSE 100 clients by analysing thousands of active monthly users mobile phone spend and provides actionable insights to managers and executives. For the first time employees can be identified where usage is excessive.Learn more atfinfoHope Park Business CentreTrevor Foster WayBradford, BD5 8HH, UKCall +44(0)800 689 1019Email press@finfo.io
Global FBAR Filters Market 2018- Broadcom, Qorvo, RF360, TAIYO YUDEN, Teledyne

global fbar filters market

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https://market.biz/report/global-fbar-filters-market-2017/74956/

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The Global FBAR Filters Industry 2018 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the FBAR Filters industry.Firstly, FBAR Filters Market report provides a basic overview of the FBAR Filters industry including definitions, classifications, applications and FBAR Filters industry chain structure. Global FBAR Filters Market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, FBAR Filters industry competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status on FBAR Filters Market scenario.To get sample copy of Report Click Here:-Major Manufacturers Analysis of FBAR Filters :- Broadcom, Qorvo, RF360, TAIYO YUDEN, Teledyne, API Technologies, Vectron, QualtreFBAR Filters Market: Type Analysis:- FBAR with Supporter, FBAR with Acoustic MirrorFBAR Filters Market: Application Analysis:- Aerospace and Military, Telecommunications, Consumer Electronics, Industrial, OthersSecondly, FBAR Filters Market report includes, development policies and plans are discussed, manufacturing processes and cost structures. This FBAR Filters Industry report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, FBAR Filters Market revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the FBAR Filters report focuses on global major leading industry players (in FBAR Filters market area) with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Global FBAR Filters Market report also includes Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis.Browse Complete Report details with TOC Click Here :-All above Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue, Contact Information covered in FBAR Filters market report.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Table of ContentsChapter One FBAR Filters Industry OverviewChapter Two FBAR Filters Manufacturing Cost Structure AnalysisChapter Three FBAR Filters Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four FBAR Filters Production by Regions, Technology and ApplicationsChapter Five FBAR Filters Sales and Sales Revenue by RegionsChapter Six 2013-2018 FBAR Filters Productions Supply Sales Market Status and ForecastChapter Seven FBAR Filters Key Manufacturers AnalysisChapter Eight FBAR Filters Price Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Ten 2018-2023 FBAR Filters Industry Development TrendChapter Eleven FBAR Filters Industry Chain Suppliers and Contact Information AnalysisChapter Twelve FBAR Filters New Project Investment Feasibility AnalysisGet Discount and Inquiry Before Buying click here:-About Us- Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact US :James Johnson420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300New York City, NY 10170.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email ID: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Other Website:
Neural Network Software Market Key Players Oracle Corporation, Qualcomm Technologies Inc, SAP SE IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc by Forecast 2023

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Market ScenarioCompanies such Neurala, Inc. (U.S.), Oracle Corporation (California, U.S.), Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (U.S.). SAP SE (Germany), IBM Corporation (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Intel Corporation (U.S.), and Google Inc. (U.S.), are the leading providers of neural network software in the global market. Recently, Neurala, Inc. has announced their investment in Neural Network AI Software. With this announcement, the company wants to initiate deep learning of neural network platform which is a smart move towards smart products such as toys, cameras and self-driving cars.Emergence of artificial intelligence and the latest technologies are the driving factors of the growth of Neural Network Software Market. With the increasing use of artificial intelligence along with neural network software in which the learning process of the brain can extract patterns and synchronize with smart move. The latest technologies such as smart devices are using neural network software that can learn, adapt and interact in real time.Request a Sample Report @The global neural network software market is segmented into component, type, end user, and region. The type are segmented into data mining and archiving, analytical software, optimization software, visualization software and others. The component are segmented artificial neural networks, deep neural networks, services, platform and other. The end users are segmented into BFSI, healthcare, telecom and IT, transportation, and others. The market is spanned across regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world.The regional analysis of neural network software market is being studied for region such as Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India), North America (U.S., Mexico, Canada), Europe (U.K, Germany) and Rest of the World. North America is one of the leading regions across the world in terms of market share. The neural network software market in this region has a huge demand due to increasing demand of data analysis, machine learning, predictive analysis and others, which is propelling the market growth to a large extent. The neural network software market in Europe region is expected to witness rapid growth in the forthcoming period. Whereas, Asia Pacific countries such as China, Japan, and India is an emerging market for neural network software market is expected to be the highest CAGR in the coming years.The global neural network software market is expected to grow at USD ~18 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of ~19% during the forecast period 2017-2023.Key Players: Oracle Corporation (U.S.), Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (U.S.). SAP SE (Germany), IBM Corporation (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Intel Corporation (U.S.), Google Inc. (U.S.), Alyuda Research LLC (U.S.), Neural Technologies Ltd. (U.K), Starmind International AG (Switzerland), Neuralware (U.S.), Ward Systems Group Inc. (U.S.), Afiniti (U.S.), GMDH LLC (U.S.), Slagkryssaren AB (Sweden),Access Report Details @Global Neural Network Software Market Segmentation:The global neural network software market is segmented into, component, end user, and region. The type are segmented into data mining and archiving, analytical software, optimization software, visualization software and others. The component are segmented artificial neural networks, deep neural networks, services, platform and other. The end users are segmented into BFSI, healthcare, media, telecom and IT, transportation, retail and others. The market is spanned across regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world.Market Research Analysis:The global neural network software market is studied on the basis of four regions: the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of world. North America region is dominating the global neural network software market. The neural network software market is witnessing a high growth due to huge demand of data mining and archiving, analytical software, optimization software, and others. Europe is projected to hold the second largest share of neural network software market during the forecast period. Asia Pacific is expected to witness the highest CAGR in the coming years.Intended Audience: Neural network software companies Neural network software providers Technical universities System integrators Managed Security Service Providers Professional service providers Research and development companies Market research and consulting firms Solution providers Technology standards organizations Technology investors System IntegratorsTABLE OF CONTENTS:1 Executive Summary2 Scope Of The Report2.1 Market Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objectives2.2.2 Assumptions & Limitations2.3 Markets Structure3 Market Research Methodology3.1 Research Process3.2 Secondary Research3.3 Primary Research3.4 Forecast ModelContinue...LIST OF TABLESTable 1 Global Neural Network Software Market: By Region, 2017-2023Table 2 North America Neural Network Software Market: By Country, 2017-2023Table 3 Europe Neural Network Software Market: By Country, 2017-2023Table 4 Asia-Pacific Neural Network Software Market: By Country, 2017-2023Table 5 Middle East & Africa Neural Network Software Market: By Country, 2017-2023Table 6 Latin America Neural Network Software Market: By Country, 2017-2023Table 7 Global Neural Network Software By Type Market: By Regions, 2017-2023Continue...LIST OF FIGURESFIGURE 1 Global Neural Network Software Market SegmentationFIGURE 2 Forecast MethodologyFIGURE 3 Five Forces Analysis Of Global Neural Network Software MarketFIGURE 4 Value Chain Of Global Neural Network Software MarketFIGURE 5 Share Of Global Neural Network Software Market In 2017, By Country (In %)FIGURE 6 Global Neural Network Software Market, 2017-2023,FIGURE 7 Sub Segments Of TypeContinue...About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact Us:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune  411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +91 841 198 5042Mail: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Pleurisy Market 2018 to 2022 by Global Service Provider Leaders: Sontec Instruments (U.S.), Pilling Surgical Inc. (U.S.), Integra LifeSciences Corporation (U.S.) and Olympus Corporation (Japan)

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https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/pleurisy-market-1711

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The Global Pleurisy Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.2% during the forecast period 2017-2023. There is wide market for pleurisy globally owing to increasing prevalence of chronic disease such as lung cancer, heart surgery, pancreatitis, chest trauma, autoimmune disorder, and asbestosis globally. These disease are consider as the leading causes for pleurisy. According to World Health Organization (WHO), in 2016, more than 90% of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) deaths occur in the low and middle-income countries, also the Global Burden of Disease Study reports a prevalence of 251 million cases of COPD globally in 2016. Report suggests that the primary cause of COPD is exposure to tobacco smoke.According to a report published by British Society for Rheumatology, in 2016, Rheumatoid arthritis affects roughly 700,000 people in the U.K, and at least 115,000 people in the U.K live with Crohns diseaseIncreasing prevalence of chronic disease, rising demand for better treatment, increasing investment in research and development, and availability of funds drive the growth of the market. Moreover, increasing government support, changing lifestyle, and rapidly developing technology is expected to fuel the market growth during the forecast period. However, high cost of the treatment may slow the market growth during the period 2017-2023.Get Complementary Sample Pages @Regional AnalysisThe Americas dominate the global pleurisy market owing to the presence of huge patient population with chronic diseases, and increasing government support for research & development. Furthermore, market players of this region continue to be involved in providing quality products which give an edge to this region in global leader.Europe holds the second largest share of the global pleurisy market as result of increasing focus of various government agencies on the treatment of chronic diseases. Moreover, the growing public awareness about healthcare is likely to boost the European market.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing pleurisy market across the globe. Japan holds a major share of the regional market due to availability of advanced technology and huge healthcare spending. Moreover, rapidly developing economy, increasing healthcare expenditure, and the governments initiatives for research & development is projected to drive the market in China and India over the forecast period.The Middle East and Africa holds the least share of the global market due to limited availability of medical facilities. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait are expected to drive the Middle East & African market. Whereas, the African region is expected to witness a moderate growth.SegmentationThe global pleurisy market is segmented on the basis of diagnosis devices, treatment, and by end user. On the basis of the diagnosis devices, it is segmented into thoracentesis, video-assisted thoracic surgery, imaging devices, blood test, and others. Furthermore, imaging devices are segmented into the computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, and others. On the basis of the treatment, it is segmented into antibiotics, antifungals, blood thinners, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and others. On the basis of end user, it is segmented into hospital, clinics, diagnostics laboratories, and others.Key PlayersSome of the key players in this market are: Scanlan International, Inc. (U.S.), Sontec Instruments (U.S.), Pilling Surgical Inc. (U.S.), Integra LifeSciences Corporation (U.S.), Olympus Corporation (Japan), Delacroix-Chevalier (France), Myra & Co. (India), Wexler Surgical (Texas) and others.Browse Complete Report @Major TOC for Pleurisy Market:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of Study1.3 Research Objective1.4 Assumptions & Limitations1.5 Market Structure:2 Research Methodologies2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3 Market Dynamics3.1 Drivers3.2 Restraints3.3 Opportunities3.4 Challenges3.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4 Market Factor Analyses4.1 Porters five forces model4.1.1 Bargaining Power of suppliers4.1.2 Bargaining Power of Customer4.1.3 Intensity of Competitors4.1.4 Threat of New Entrants5 Global Pleurisy Market, by diagnosis devices5.1 Introduction5.1.1 Thoracoscopy5.1.2 Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery5.1.3 Imaging devices5.1.4 Blood Test5.1.5 Others..TOC ContinuedAsk Questions to Expertise @About US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Chronic Idiopathic Constipation (CIC) Treatment Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Chronic Idiopathic Constipation Treatment Market

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Chronic idiopathic constipation is a functional gastrointestinal disorder which leads to difficulty in defecating. It is a more chronic or severe condition and the symptoms of the disease include bloating, abdominal discomfort, hard stool, incomplete evacuation, gastric pain, and strain during the bowel movement. It is an idiopathic condition due to the causes of the disease are unclear, however, it may cause due to psychological, neurological, and psychosomatic conditions. Chronic idiopathic constipation is majorly caused in the adults or geriatric people. Diagnosis of CIC is difficult due to the lack of physiological causes and physicians look for symptoms like weight, blood in stool, and low blood count among others.Increase in the prevalence of chronic idiopathic constipation due to change in lifestyle and food habits, rise in awareness about the CIC treatment, increase in the demand for CIC drugs, and availability of the over-the-counter CIC drugs in the market are driving the chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market. Moreover, various pipeline drugs for the CIC treatment and frequent product approvals from various drug regulatory bodies are propelling the chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market. However, lack of physiological symptoms for the disease and less number of drugs available for CIC treatment are the factors anticipated to hinder the growth of chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented on the basis of the drug class, route of administration, distribution mode, and distribution channelBased on the drug class, Chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented into the following: Emollients Laxatives Bulk-forming agents Chloride channel activators Osmatic products OthersBased on the route of administration, Chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented into the following: Oral ParenteralBased on the distribution mode, Chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented into the following: Prescription mode Over-the-counter drugsBased on the distribution channel, Chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented into the following: Hospital pharmacies Retail pharmacies Online pharmacies Drug StoresTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC) treatment market is growing at a significant CAGR owing to recent product approvals and competitors focus on the development of newer drugs for CIC treatment. Moreover, increase in the prevalence of chronic idiopathic constipation cases also expected to propel the market revenue over the forecast period. Acquisitions and mergers, product approvals, and product launchings are the key strategies adopted by the companies for increasing their revenue share in the market. For instance, In January 2017, FDA approved Trulance manufactured by Synergy Pharmaceuticals used in the treatment of chronic idiopathic constipation.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Geographically, chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa. North America has a significant share in chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market owing to increase in the prevalence if CIC disease (according to National Institute of Health, approximately 63 Mn people affected with CIC in U.S.), change in lifestyle, recent FDA approvals for CIC treatment drugs, and increase in healthcare expenditure. In Europe, increase in aging population, rise in R&D activities for CIC treatements, availability of over-the-counter CIC drugs, and increase in per capita income might bolster the chronic idiopathic constipation treatment market. However, Asia Pacific exhibiting lucrative growth owing to the rise in geriatric population, and increase in adoption of CIC treatments.Some of the players in Chronic Idiopathic Constipation (CIC) Treatment market are GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (U.K.), Bayer AG (Germany), Allergan Plc. (Ireland), Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (U.S.), Astellas Pharma, Inc. (Japan), synergy pharmaceuticals, Inc. (U.S.), Sanofi S.A. (France), and Pfizer, Inc. (U.S.) to name a few.Get access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Contact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXEmail: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comToll Free (US): +1-866-598-1553Website @
Global Flight Information Display Systems Market 2018- AirIT, Damarel Systems International, NEC CORPORATION

Global Flight Information Display Systems Market

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https://market.biz/report/global-flight-information-display-systems-fids-market-2017/41687/

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The Global Flight Information Display Systems Industry 2018 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Flight Information Display Systems industry.Firstly, Flight Information Display Systems Market report provides a basic overview of the Flight Information Display Systems industry including definitions, classifications, applications and Flight Information Display Systems industry chain structure. Global Flight Information Display Systems Market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, Flight Information Display Systems industry competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status on Flight Information Display Systems Market scenario.To get sample copy of Report Click Here:-Major Manufacturers Analysis of Flight Information Display Systems :- AirIT,Damarel Systems International,NEC CORPORATION,Simpleway,Gentrack,NET DISPLAY SYSTEMS,Infologic,DIGITIMES,Intersystems,MvixFlight Information Display Systems Market: Type Analysis:- Gate Information Display System (GIDS),Baggage Information Display Systems (BIDS),Passenger Information Display System (PIDS),Flight Information Management Systems (FIMS)Flight Information Display Systems Market: Application Analysis:- Passenger System,Non-Passenger SystemSecondly, Flight Information Display Systems Market report includes, development policies and plans are discussed, manufacturing processes and cost structures. This Flight Information Display Systems Industry report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, Flight Information Display Systems Market revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the Flight Information Display Systems report focuses on global major leading industry players (in Flight Information Display Systems market area) with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Global Flight Information Display Systems Market report also includes Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis.Browse Complete Report details with TOC Click Here :-All above Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue, Contact Information covered in Flight Information Display Systems market report.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Table of ContentsChapter One Flight Information Display Systems Industry OverviewChapter Two Flight Information Display Systems Manufacturing Cost Structure AnalysisChapter Three Flight Information Display Systems Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four Flight Information Display Systems Production by Regions, Technology and ApplicationsChapter Five Flight Information Display Systems Sales and Sales Revenue by RegionsChapter Six 2013-2018 Flight Information Display Systems Productions Supply Sales Market Status and ForecastChapter Seven Flight Information Display Systems Key Manufacturers AnalysisChapter Eight Flight Information Display Systems Price Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Ten 2018-2023 Flight Information Display Systems Industry Development TrendChapter Eleven Flight Information Display Systems Industry Chain Suppliers and Contact Information AnalysisChapter Twelve Flight Information Display Systems New Project Investment Feasibility AnalysisGet Discount and Inquiry Before Buying click here:-About Us- Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact US :James Johnson420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300New York City, NY 10170.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email ID: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Other Website:
Commercial Antenna 2018 Global Market Key Players -Cobham plc., Morad, Shakespeare Company LLC, Motorola Inc., Accel Networks, Laird PLC.....

Commercial Antenna Market 2018

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Commercial Antenna Market 2018Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Commercial Antenna  Global Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Manufacturers, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2025 To Its Research Database.Description:In this report, the global Commercial Antenna 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 2025.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Commercial Antenna in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Commercial Antenna market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingCobham plc.MoradShakespeare Company LLCMotorola Inc.Accel NetworksLaird PLCSouthwest AntennasTESSCOWinegard Co.MP AntennaRequest for Sample Report@On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoMetal and AlloysCeramicPTFEPlasmaOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingConsumer ElectronicsHealthcare/MedicalInformation TechnologyCommunicationOthersComplete report details @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of Contents:Global Commercial Antenna Market Research Report 20181 Commercial Antenna Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Commercial Antenna1.2 Commercial Antenna Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Commercial Antenna Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Commercial Antenna Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Metal and Alloys1.2.4 Ceramic1.2.5 PTFE1.2.6 Plasma1.3 Global Commercial Antenna Segment by Application1.3.1 Commercial Antenna Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Consumer Electronics1.3.3 Healthcare/Medical1.3.4 Information Technology1.3.5 Communication1.3.6 Others1.4 Global Commercial Antenna Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global Commercial Antenna Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Commercial Antenna (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Commercial Antenna Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)2 Global Commercial Antenna Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Commercial Antenna Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Commercial Antenna Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Commercial Antenna Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Commercial Antenna Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Commercial Antenna Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Commercial Antenna Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Commercial Antenna Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Commercial Antenna Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion7 Global Commercial Antenna Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Cobham plc.7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Cobham plc. Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Morad7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Morad Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Shakespeare Company LLC7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Shakespeare Company LLC Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Motorola Inc.7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Motorola Inc. Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Accel Networks7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Accel Networks Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Laird PLC7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Laird PLC Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Southwest Antennas7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Southwest Antennas Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 TESSCO7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 TESSCO Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Winegard Co.7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Winegard Co. Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 MP Antenna7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Commercial Antenna Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 MP Antenna Commercial Antenna Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)7.10.4 Main Business/Business OverviewContinued..Contact US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us: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 Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd: Pune  411028: Maharashtra,: Ph: +91 841 198 5042
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Global Femtocells Equipment Market Survey 2018 | Netgear, Airvana Inc, Gemtek technologies, Fujitsu Limited and Others

Femtocells Equipment Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Femtocells Equipment Market Professional Survey Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies Femtocells Equipment in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringNetgearAirvana IncGemtek technologiesFujitsu LimitedAricent IncUbiquisys LtdAlcatel LtdNokia SolutionsSamsung ElectronicsVodafoneCiscoTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into2G Femtocell3G Femtocell4G FemtocellOthersBy Application, the market can be split intoResidentialCommercialOthersBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaTable of ContentsGlobal Femtocells Equipment Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Femtocells Equipment1.1 Definition and Specifications of Femtocells Equipment1.1.1 Definition of Femtocells Equipment1.1.2 Specifications of Femtocells Equipment1.2 Classification of Femtocells Equipment1.2.1 2G Femtocell1.2.2 3G Femtocell1.2.3 4G Femtocell1.2.4 Others1.3 Applications of Femtocells Equipment1.3.1 Residential1.3.2 Commercial1.3.3 Others1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Femtocells Equipment2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Femtocells Equipment2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Femtocells Equipment2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Femtocells EquipmentGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Femtocells Equipment3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Femtocells Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Femtocells Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Femtocells Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Femtocells Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Femtocells Equipment Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Femtocells Equipment Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Femtocells Equipment Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Femtocells Equipment Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Femtocells Equipment Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Femtocells Equipment Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Femtocells Equipment Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis5.2 China Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.2.1 China Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis5.4 Southeast Asia Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.4.1 Southeast Asia Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.4.2 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.4.3 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.4.4 Southeast Asia 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis5.5 Japan Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.5.1 Japan Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.5.2 Japan 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.5.3 Japan 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.5.4 Japan 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis5.6 India Femtocells Equipment Market Analysis5.6.1 India Femtocells Equipment Market Overview5.6.2 India 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.6.3 India 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales Price Analysis5.6.4 India 2016 Femtocells Equipment Market Share Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Segment Market Analysis (by Type)6.1 Global 2012-2017E Femtocells Equipment Sales by Type6.2 Different Types of Femtocells Equipment Product Interview Price Analysis6.3 Different Types of Femtocells Equipment Product Driving Factors Analysis6.3.1 2G Femtocell of Femtocells Equipment Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.2 3G Femtocell of Femtocells Equipment Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.3 4G Femtocell of Femtocells Equipment Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.4 Others of Femtocells Equipment Growth Driving Factor AnalysisContinue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market 2018- Neogen, Crystal Chem, SGS S.A., Intertek Group plc

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The Global Food Allergen ELISA Kits Industry 2018 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Food Allergen ELISA Kits industry.Firstly, Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market report provides a basic overview of the Food Allergen ELISA Kits industry including definitions, classifications, applications and Food Allergen ELISA Kits industry chain structure. Global Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, Food Allergen ELISA Kits industry competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status on Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market scenario.To get sample copy of Report Click Here:-Major Manufacturers Analysis of Food Allergen ELISA Kits :- Neogen,Crystal Chem,SGS S.A.,Intertek Group plc,TUV SUD Psb Pte. Ltd,ALS Limited,Eurofins Scientific SE,Merieux Nutrisciences Corporation,AsureQuality Ltd,Microbac Laboratories Inc,Romer Labs Diagnostic GmbH,Symbio Laboratories,Sciex,Thermofisher,Crystalchem,NeogenFood Allergen ELISA Kits Market: Type Analysis:- Peanuts & Soy Allergen,Wheat Allergen,Milk Allergen,Eggs Allergen,Seafood AllergenFood Allergen ELISA Kits Market: Application Analysis:- Bakery & Confectionery,Infant Food,Processed Food,Dairy Products & Its Alternatives,Seafood & Meat Products,OthersSecondly, Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market report includes, development policies and plans are discussed, manufacturing processes and cost structures. This Food Allergen ELISA Kits Industry report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the Food Allergen ELISA Kits report focuses on global major leading industry players (in Food Allergen ELISA Kits market area) with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Global Food Allergen ELISA Kits Market report also includes Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis.Browse Complete Report details with TOC Click Here :-All above Company Profile, Product Picture and Specifications, Capacity, Production, Price, Cost, Gross and Revenue, Contact Information covered in Food Allergen ELISA Kits market report.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.Table of ContentsChapter One Food Allergen ELISA Kits Industry OverviewChapter Two Food Allergen ELISA Kits Manufacturing Cost Structure AnalysisChapter Three Food Allergen ELISA Kits Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants AnalysisChapter Four Food Allergen ELISA Kits Production by Regions, Technology and ApplicationsChapter Five Food Allergen ELISA Kits Sales and Sales Revenue by RegionsChapter Six 2013-2018 Food Allergen ELISA Kits Productions Supply Sales Market Status and ForecastChapter Seven Food Allergen ELISA Kits Key Manufacturers AnalysisChapter Eight Food Allergen ELISA Kits Price Gross Margin AnalysisChapter Ten 2018-2023 Food Allergen ELISA Kits Industry Development TrendChapter Eleven Food Allergen ELISA Kits Industry Chain Suppliers and Contact Information AnalysisChapter Twelve Food Allergen ELISA Kits New Project Investment Feasibility AnalysisGet Discount and Inquiry Before Buying click here:-About Us- Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact US :James Johnson420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300New York City, NY 10170.Tel: +1(857)2390696Email ID: inquiry@market.bizWebsite:Other Website:
2018 Influenza Vaccination Market Revenue of Top Players: BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (U.S.), Novartis AG (Europe), Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Etc by 2022

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The Global Influenza Vaccination Market is expected to grow at an approximate CAGR of 8.2% during the forecast period. America dominates the Global Influenza Vaccination Market Increasing prevalence of the influenza and high per capita healthcare expenditure are the major driver for the American influenza vaccination market. Moreover, the presence of developed economies like the U.S. and Canada and growing geriatric population within the regional boundaries of the Americas fuels the market growth. Europe holds the second market for influenza vaccination owing to the availability of funds for research and huge patient population. Moreover, global players like F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Novartis AG are present within the region which fuels the market growth. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region for the market. Presence of developing economies like India and China and favourable government policies along with the growing geriatric population boosts the regional market growth. The Middle East & Africa has the least share in the global influenza vaccination market. Presence of the poor economies in the African region restrains the market growth during the forecast period. Majority of the market of the Middle & Africa region is held by the Middle East region.Get Exclusive Sample Copy @nfluenza (flu) is a contagious respiratory disease that is caused by influenza viruses. Influenza viruses infect the respiratory tract (nose, throat, and lungs) in humans. The symptoms and complications of flu are more severe than common cold. Influenza usually comes on suddenly and may include symptoms such as fever, headache, malaise, cough, sore throat, nasal congestion and body aches. Yearly influenza vaccine can prevent lot of illness and death caused by influenza virus. Influenza vaccine can be given to most individuals 6 months of age and older to protect against influenza.Influenza Vaccination Market Segments:Global Influenza vaccination market has been segmented on the basis of Influenza type which comprises of seasonal, pandemic and zoonotic. On the basis of manufacturing technology, market is segmented into egg based technology; cell culture based technology, recombinant technology. On the basis of end user, market is segmented into hospital, ambulatory, research laboratory and others.Key Players for Influenza Vaccination Market:Some of the key players in this market are: Abbott Laboratories, Astrazeneca PLC, Biocryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., CSL Limited, Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., Glaxosmithkline PLC, Hualan Biological Engineering Inc., Instituto Butantan, Japan Vaccine Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, Nanotherapeutics Inc., Protein Sciences Corporation, Roche Holding AG, Sanofi SA, Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd, Shanghai Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd., Shionogi & Co., Ltd., Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and others.Browse Complete 90 Pages Report @Brief TOC:1. Report Prologue2. Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations3. Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & Assessment5. Market Factor Analysis5.1 Porters Five Forces Analysis5.1.1 Bargaining Power Of Suppliers5.1.2 Bargaining Power Of Buyers5.1.3 Threat Of New Entrants5.1.4 Threat Of Substitutes5.1.5 Intensity Of Rivalry5.2 Value Chain Analysis5.3 Investment Feasibility Analysis5.4 Pricing Analysis6. Global Influenza Vaccination Market, By Influenza Influenza Type6.1 Introduction6.2 Seasonal Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20236.3 Pandemic Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20236.4 Zoonotic Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20236.5 Others7. Global Influenza Vaccination Market, By Manufacturing Technology7.1 Introduction7.2 Egg Based Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20237.3 Cell Culture Based Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20237.4 Recombinant Based Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20237.5 Others8. Global Influenza Vaccination Market, By Vaccines8.1 Introduction8.2 Fluzone Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20238.3 FluMist Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20238.4 Fluvax Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20238.5 Fluvirin Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20238.6 Others9. Global Influenza Vaccination Market, By End Users9.1 Introduction9.2 Hospital & Clinics Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20239.3 Research Organizations Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  20239.4 Academic Institutes Market Estimates & Forecast, 2017  2023TOC Continued!LIST OF TABLESTable 1 Influenza Vaccination Industry Synopsis, 2017  2023Table 2 Global Influenza Vaccination Market Estimates And Forecast, 2017  2023, (USD Million)Table 3 Global Influenza Vaccination Market By Region, 2017  2023, (USD Million)Table 4 Global Influenza Vaccination Market By Influenza Type, 2017  2023, (USD Million)Table 5 Global Influenza Vaccination Market By Manufacturing Technology, 2017  2023, (USD Million)LIST OF FIGURESFigure 1 Research ProcessFigure 2 Segmentation For Global Influenza Vaccination MarketFigure 3 Market Dynamics For Global Influenza Vaccination MarketFigure 4 Global Influenza Vaccination Market Share, By Influenza Type 2016Figure 5 Global Influenza Vaccination Market Share, By Manufacturing Technology 2016Ask Questions to Expertise @About US:Market Research Future (MRFR), enable customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact Us:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone: +1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Europe Residue Testing Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Europe Residue Testing Market

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Europe Residue Testing Market report gives comprehensive outlook on Europe Residue Testing across the region with special emphasis on countries Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Poland, Others. This report on Europe Residue Testing market gives historical, current, and future market sizes (US$ Mn) of residue type, technology, application and countries. This report studies Europe Residue Testing market dynamics elaborately to identify the current trends & drivers, future opportunities and possible challenges to the key stakeholders operating in the market. In addition, the market report includes regulatory scenario, and competition analysis with vividly illustrated the competition dashboard to assess the market competition. Moreover, PBI analyzed Europe Residue Testing market to better equip clients with possible investment opportunities across the regions (Regional Investment Hot-Spots) and market unmet needs (Opportunities).A sample of this report is available upon request @Europe Residue Testing Market:Europe Residue Testing Market is projected to expand at a growth rate about 5.0% over the forecast period.Adoption of ready-to-eat foods, stringent residue monitoring policies are expected to drive the Europe Residue Testing market.Paradigm shift towards ready-to-eat foods, high use of veterinary drugs, stringent government regulations, frequent pesticide residue monitoring programs are expected to create lucrative opportunities over the forecast period. Focus shift towards Eastern Europe countries are enables create demand for residue testing. Residue test kit manufacturers expand their operations in Eastern Europe region owing to the improved economics, growing local production of GM free feed, better investment, climate change, and the arrival of green revolution, which are having positive impact on Eastern Europe residue testing market.Heavy Metal Residue Testing Market is expected to account for 30% revenue share in Europe residue testing market and projected to grow over 6.0% CAGR over 2017 to 2023. High contamination of heavy metal especially arsenic (As) in France, Spain, and Italy is expected to create demand for Heavy metal residue testing.In 2016, spectroscopy technology segment expected to account for 28% revenue share in Europe residue testing market and projected to grow at 8.0% CAGR over 2017 to 2023.Meat & Poultry Residue Testing Market is projected to represent lucrative opportunities, due to increased veterinary drugs usage hormonal analogues for milk production, beta agonist for muscle development. Heavy metal contamination is trending in meat samples across the region. For instance, in accordance with European Food Safety Authority statistics, 2014, about 25 million cattle produced meat and dairy were tested in EU, 531 or 0.42%, samples were non-compliant. Heavy metal, especially copper (Cu) accounted for 210 non-compliant samples in bovines, followed by 71 resorcylic acid lactones. Out of 1, 35,000 porcine samples 0.28% or 378 samples were non-compliant, 210 samples are detected with copper (Cu) traces. Surge in heavy metal, antibiotics, mycotoxin contamination expected to unlock the potential of Europe residue testing market.France and Spain both accounted for significant share in Europe Residue Testing market.Germany Residue Testing Market is expanding at 6.0% CAGR from 2017 to 2023, due to high adoption of convenience foods in Germany, rising awareness of trace elements and hazards, government support to frequent residue monitoring plans.France Residue Testing Market projected to accounts around US $250 million in 2016, expand at a significant CAGR from 2017 to 2023. Stringent government regulations, high amounts of heavy metal contamination, state-of-art technologies to detect residues from imports and domestic food ingredients are witnessed to foster demand for residue testing market.Geographical expansions, collaboration, novel product launches are the major strategies adopted market players. For instance, in 2015, SGS established the local field research facilities in Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria to focus on the regulatory trials (GLP and GEP) to develop pesticides and fertilizers. SGS accredited to provide regulatory trials to support residue, ecotox, environmental fate and efficacy field trials in Ukraine, and have received the equivalent in Turkey.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Competition AssessmentKey players profiles in the Europe Residue Testing market include, SGS SA, Intertek Group plc., Eurofins Scientific, Bureau veritas S.A., ALS Limited, Neogen Corporation, Idexx Laboratories, AsureQuality, Charm Sciences, Inc., Microbac Laboratories, Inc., UnisensorKey Findings of the Report: Europe Residue Testing market is expanding approximately 5.0% CAGR over 2017 to 2023. UK Residue Testing Market is growing at 6.0% CAGR over forecast period. Based on Application, meat and poultry is expected to expand at significant CAGR over the forecast period. Based on Residue Type, Heavy metal, veterinary drugs segments are expected to create lucrative opportunities for residues testing over the forecast period.Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, historic market (2012-2016) and forecast (2017-2023) The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, company share analysis, key market developments, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, unmet needs, and trends that are currently affecting the market The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and startups details that are actively working in the market The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario The report analyses the impact of socio-political environment through PESTLE Analysis and competition through Porters Five Force Analysis in addition to recent technology advancements and innovations in the marketDetailed SegmentationBy Residue Type Toxinso Mycotoxino Others Pesticide Residueso Insecticideo Herbicideo Fungicide Others Food Allergens Veterinary Drugs Heavy MetalBy Technology Immunoassay Spectroscopy Chromatography (LC, GC, HPLC) OthersBy Application Dairy Products Fruits & vegetables Meat & poultry Cereals, grains & pulses Processed foods Functional Food Ingredients Nuts, Seeds & SpicesBy Country Germany France UK Italy Spain Russia Poland Rest of EuropeGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Precision Business Insights mission is to provide high-quality market research reports and generate key insights to our clients. PBIs approachable strategies are to help clients to make key decisions for business growth.Precision Business Insights vision is to become most valued partner to fortune 500 companies by providing agile, accurate, and actionable market insightsContact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXEmail: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comToll Free (US): +1-866-598-1553Website @
Automotive Connectors Market 2018: Global Industry Size, Share, Key Players, and Key Country Outlook To 2022

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Automotive Connectors Market is characterized by the presence of many global, regional, and local companies. The market is highly competitive with all the players competing to gain market share. Intense competition, rapid advances in technology, frequent changes in government policies, and environmental regulations are key factors that confront the market growth. In addition, global footprint network, product offerings, R&D investments, and strong client base have become the key areas to have the edge over the competitors.Automotive Connectors Market Global Forecast to 2022 report deeply analyzes Automotive Connectors Market by Connection Type (Wire to Wire, Wire to Board, Board to Board), by System Type (Sealed, Unsealed), by Application (Body Control & Interiors, Engine Control & Cooling System and others) and by Region.Connectors are electromechanical components essential for connecting electrical circuits together. In automotive industry, the connectors are used in the automotive-oriented equipment to connect electrical devices and wires.Automotive Connectors Market Key Players:Continental Ag (Germany), Hitachi, Ltd. (Japan), ThyssenKrupp Ag (Germany), Wabco Holdings Inc. (Belgium), Dunlop Systems And Components Ltd. (U.K.), Accuair Suspension (California), Firestone Industrial Products (U.S.), Hendrickson International Corporation (U.S.), Beijing West Industries Co., Ltd. (China), Mando Corporation (South Korea), ZF Friedrichshafen (Germany), LORD Corporation (U.S.), Volvo (Sweden), Air Lift Company (Michigan), and VB-Airsuspension (Netherlands).Get Sample Copy Of Global Automotive Connectors Market Research Report - Global Forecast to 2023 Report at:Market ScenarioThe global automotive connectors market is majorly driven by rise in the security needs in the automobile. Connectors are used in a majority of security systems in automobiles. With the increase in theft of automobiles, there is an increased need of security systems in the automotive, which further leads to the growth of the automotive connectors market. With the booming smart car industry, the use of connectors in the smart cars is increasing. This leads to the growth of the automotive connectors market. The increase in electrification in the vehicles is also expected to drive the demand of the automotive connectors market in the region.Automotive Connectors Market, By RegionAsia-Pacific is expected to dominate the global automotive connectors market due the boom in manufacturing of vehicles in developing nations such as India and china and the evolution of concept & increase in manufacturing of electric vehicles. In Europe region, the rise in strict government regulations for the safety of automotive and passengers and the increase in safety concerns amongst the consumers is contributing to the growth of the automotive connectors market in the Europe region.Intended Audience:Automotive connectors manufacturersDistributer & Supplier companies.End Users.Consultants and Investment bankers.Government as well as Independent Regulatory Authorities.Product Analysis:Product matrix which gives a detailed comparison of the market for different recycled product types.Additional Information:Regulatory Landscape.Pricing Analysis.Macroeconomic Indicators.Geographic Analysis:Geographical analysis across 15 countries.Company Information:Profiling of 10 key market players.In-depth analysis including SWOT analysis, and strategy information of related to report title.Competitive landscape including emerging trends adopted by major companies.Browse Complete Report of 100 Pages on Automotive Connectors Market Global Forecast to 2022 at:The report for Automotive Connectors Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Market 2018 | Fitbit, Xiaomi, Apple, Garmin, Samsung and Others

Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Market Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Consumer Smart Wearables 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 2025.Geographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Consumer Smart Wearables for these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesChinaEuropeJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Global Consumer Smart Wearables market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Consumer Smart Wearables sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingFitbitXiaomiAppleGarminSamsungJawboneMisfitPolarMotoHuaweiBBK (XTC)LifesenseRazerOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoFitness BandSmart WatchesSmart GlassesOthersOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, includingFitness and WellnessInfotainmentTable of ContentsGlobal Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Market Report 20181 Consumer Smart Wearables Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Consumer Smart Wearables1.2 Classification of Consumer Smart Wearables by Product Category1.2.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Fitness Band1.2.4 Smart Watches1.2.5 Smart Glasses1.2.6 Others1.3 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Fitness and Wellness1.3.3 Infotainment1.4 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market by Region1.4.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 China Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Consumer Smart Wearables Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Consumer Smart Wearables (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2025)Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Competition by Players/Suppliers, Type and Application2.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.2.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.3 Global Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume and Value) by Region2.3.1 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)2.3.2 Global Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)2.4 Global Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume) by Application3 United States Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Value (2013-2018)3.1.1 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)3.1.2 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)3.1.3 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)3.2 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)3.3 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)3.4 United States Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)4 China Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Value (2013-2018)4.1.1 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)4.1.2 China Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)4.1.3 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)4.2 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)4.3 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)4.4 China Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)5 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Value (2013-2018)5.1.1 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)5.1.2 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)5.1.3 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)5.2 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)5.3 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Europe Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)6 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Value (2013-2018)6.1.1 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2018)6.1.2 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)6.1.3 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)6.2 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Players (2013-2018)6.3 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)6.4 Japan Consumer Smart Wearables Sales Volume and Market Share by Application (2013-2018)Continue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Enterprise-DRM Information Rights Management Market 2018-2023: Locklizard, AdobeSystems, Oracle, Microsoft, OpenText

Global Enterprise-DRM Information Rights Management Market 2018

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The latest research report entitled Global Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market 2018 present by QY Market Research provides the comprehensive and top to bottom analysis of the key regional industry existing of the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market on a global level. This research report mainly focuses on the core regions such as North & South America, Europe, Africa, South & Middle East Asia and Australia and additionally the global top countries like (the United States, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Russia, India, China, Korea and Japan).Access Sample Copy of Report Here:The worldwide Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market report state and future possibilities of the segment have together been inspected. Furthermore, key strategies inside the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market that highlights associations, product advancements, link-ups, and acquisitions, etc., specified. In addition, Upstream raw materials, equipment, and downstream buyer's investigation are equally completed. This comprehensive research encompasses of market benefit, deals, Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market sales, possibilities, and difficulties also venture the growth rate. Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of the Global Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market 2018:1. Fasoo2. Vitrium3. Vaultize Tech4. Locklizard5. Nextlabs6. Seclore7. Adobe Systems8. Intralinks9. Oracle10. Microsoft11. Dell/EMC12. OpenTextInquiry for Purchasing, Visit Here: Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market (Application Analysis):- SME, large enterpriseIn the primary segment, the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management report renders the marketing research and forecast of Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market on a regional as well as the world level. The Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management report is basically isolated into six parts and every half aims at the synopsis of the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management past, present and future states of the market, the possibility of the venture on many strategies and arrangements. Other than the definition and classification, the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market report also examines the essential factors and export and describe a comparison of the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market that focuses on the patterns and improvement.In the next segment, This Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management report offers the exact data on the promoting channels and novel project ventures. So, the modern-day professionals and the prevailing industry rival get the path of these business sectors as well as regional analysis. This report additionally backing the new contestants, readers, financier and the settled players to set up their plans and choose which section or sub-section to make investments on to harvest most extreme benefits. Key Elements of the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market:1. Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market advancement for the regional as well as country level segments.2. Entire analysis of worldwide market forecast and the outlook for 2022, and predicting of CAGR by an estimated period.3. In-depth investigation of Types/product and Applications.4. Resourceful mapping the current key trends.5. Crucial commendation in main business segments on the basis of Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market assessment.6. Scrutinize the deciding market trends and new modified technology in the Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management Market.In conclusion, Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management report analyzes key information, strategies, and factors. Furthermore, this report blended entire beneficial information together for the learning and understanding the important facts related to the global Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market. The Enterprise-DRM/Information Rights Management market share and manufacturing cost with the SWOT analysis everything is incorporated into this report.About Us:Business Worldwide is a trusted brand in the research industry with a capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long-term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive, Software and Aerospace.Contact Us:Joel JohnBusiness Worldwide, United States
Global Communications Hardware Market In-depth Analysis and Business Development, Forecast 2018-2025

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Summary:The study of 2018 Market Research Report on Global Communications Hardware Industry provides the market size information, In-Depth Analysis along with Competitive Insights and Segmentation.Key Players:Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE, Telefonica, Huawei, Samsung, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, China Mobile, Korea Telecom, SoftBankRequest a sample of this report @Description:In our aim to provide our erudite clients with the best research material with absolute in-depth information of the market, our new report on Global Communications Hardware Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2018 market research report on Global Communications Hardware Market is an in-depth study and analysis of the market by our industry experts with unparalleled domain knowledge. The report will shed light on many critical points and trends of the industry which are useful for our esteemed clients. The report covers a vast expanse of information including an overview, comprehensive analysis, definitions and classifications, applications, and expert opinions, among others. With the extent of information filled in the report, the presentation and style of the Global Communications Hardware Market report is a noteworthy.Key Regions:North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, IndiaThe Global Communications Hardware Industry report provides key information about the industry, including invaluable facts and figures, expert opinions, and the latest developments across the globe. Not only does the report cover a holistic view of the industry from a global standpoint, but it also covers individual regions and their development. The Global Communications Hardware Industry report showcases the latest trends in the global and regional markets on all critical parameters which include technology, supplies, capacity, production, profit, price, and competition.Browse the complete report @The key players covered in the report provide a detailed analysis of the competition and their developments in the Global Communications Hardware Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Communications Hardware Market report.On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into 5G Infrastructure, 5G Wireless EcosystemOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, including Military Use, Civil UseThe report also focuses on the significance of industry chain analysis and all variables, both upstream and downstream. These include equipment and raw materials, client surveys, marketing channels, and industry trends and proposals. Other significant information covering consumption, key regions and distributors, and raw material suppliers are also a covered in this report.Finally, the Communications Hardware Market report ends with a detailed SWOT analysis of the market, investment feasibility and returns, and development trends and forecasts. As with every report on Orbis Research, the Communications Hardware Industry is the holy grail of information which serious knowledge seekers can benefit from. The report which is the result of ultimate dedication of pedigree professionals has a wealth of information which can benefit anyone, irrespective of their commercial or academic interest.Place a purchase order of this report @Major Points from Table of Content:Chapter One: Communications Hardware Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Communications Hardware Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Communications Hardware Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)Chapter Four: Global Communications Hardware Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)Chapter Five: Global Communications Hardware Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter Six: Global Communications Hardware Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter Seven: Global Communications Hardware Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisChapter Eight: Communications Hardware Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter Nine: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter Ten: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter Eleven: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter Twelve: Global Communications Hardware Market Forecast (2018-2025)Chapter Thirteen: Research Findings and ConclusionChapter Fourteen: AppendixContact sales@orbisresearch.com for more information.About Us:Orbis Research (orbisresearch.com) is a single point aid for all your market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customized reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialization. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required market research study for our clients.Contact Us:Hector CostelloSenior Manager  Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019For More PRs:Follow Us on LinkedIn:Follow us on Twitter:
Carrier Fluids Market Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast

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Carrier fluids are high performance fluids that improve the transportation of certain materials such as automotive detergent, sand pack, and lubricants. Carrier fluids possess low VOC content and are biodegradable. Additionally, they possess excellent flow ability, low toxicity, and compatibility with other fluid components in comparison to conventional solvents. Other characteristic features of these fluids are low temperature properties, good solvency, and high burn characteristics. These fluids are used in various industries such as automotive, oil & gas, petrochemicals, metal working, and semiconductor. These fluids are widely employed in the semiconductor industry during synthesis of a wide variety of ferrofluids typically required during the manufacture of computers, tablets, and wafers. Carrier fluids are used in oil drilling operations, particularly during the installation of gravel pack and shale gas production. They are further used in automotive during engine oil filling operation.Read Report Overview @Based on type, the global carrier fluids market can be divided into oil type, synthetic, and water. Water based carrier fluids are widely employed in the transportation of highly viscous fluids, while oil based are employed for water sensitive formulations. Demand for water based carrier fluids is expected to rise significantly during the forecast period, as they are cost effective and biodegradable. Based on formulation, the market can be segmented into various types such as mineral oil, polyglycol, fatty acids, diesters, and phthalate esters. Polyglycol type of carrier fluids have high water absorption capacity; however, these have poor viscosity, lubricity, wettability, and corrosion protection. Mineral oil based carrier fluids are available in low or high range of viscosities and have better properties than polyglycol. Diester and phthalate are popular types of carrier fluids available in the market. Demand for diester and phthalate is anticipated to rise significantly in the near future due to their characteristic features such as eco-friendliness, good solvency, and low ecotoxicity.Rise in stringent regulations on certain solvents due to the risk of high VOC emission and environmentally sustainable benefits of carrier fluids are the primary factors driving the market. Apart from benefits associated with carrier fluids, growth in automotive and electronic industries and constant research activities in the oil & gas industry are the other factors responsible for the market growth. Fluctuation in raw material prices and maintenance of rheological characteristics of carrier fluids are few of the challenges for manufacturers. However, continuous efforts toward development of varied formulations of carrier fluids with improved features and performance may create opportunities for manufacturers.Geographically, the global market for carrier fluids can be segregated into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. In terms of consumption, North America is the leading region due to the rise in oil & gas exploration activities such as deep water exploration for oil drilling. In Asia Pacific, countries such as India, China, and Japan are experiencing swift growth due to the expansion in automotive and electronic industries. For instance, China has become the hub of semiconductor production since the last few years. Strong government initiatives led to high tech research & development in the field of high quality wafers. This further resulted in an increase in investment in integrated circuits from 40% to 70%.Furthermore, strong FDI investment in India, typically in the electronic industry, and rising consumer awareness are also encouraging manufacturers to opt for quality products. Companies are following the strategy of merger & acquisition for producing innovative products. These factors are driving the market for carrier fluids in Asia Pacific. Growth of the market in Europe is expected remain stable due to revival in economy of the region. The market in Middle East & Africa and Latin America is expected to expand moderately due to the rise in investment by various automotive and electronic manufacturers in these regions.Request to view Sample Report:Key players operating in the global carrier fluids market include E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, MKU Chemie Group, The Chemours Company, and Emery Oleochemicals.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Elevators And Escalators Market Is Projected To Reflect A Value Of Over US$ 133,800 Mn At A CAGR Of 7.4% Over The Forecast Period, 2017-2026

Elevators and Escalators Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Elevators and Escalators Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2026" to its huge collection of research reports.The global elevators and escalators market is expected to witness significant demand attributed to growing need for convenient and speedy traveling to different levels of the building. As traveling to different levels of the building continues to remain a significant challenge for the patients of arthritis, constructors are increasingly installing travolators or flat moving walkways for the customers. In addition, installation of the escalators and elevators allow a large number of people to travel to different levels of the building smoothly. The customers do not need to wait in the cue to travel to different levels of a building.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report reveals in-depth insights on the crucial aspects of the global elevators and escalators market and offers information on the competitive landscape, growth patterns, important segments and factors fuelling growth of the global market.Global Elevators and Escalators Market: DynamicsGrowth of the global elevators and escalators market is mainly bound by various macro-economic and micro-economic factors. The report reveals that the global elevators and escalators market is mainly driven by the growing need for convenience traveling to various levels of a building. As carrying luggage to different levels of the building can be a challenging tsk, the constructors are increasingly installing escalators and elevators in various buildings. Installation of the elevators and escalators will continue to offer convenient travelling for the old aged people and children. Moreover, growing need to offer convenient traveling to the different levels of the buildings is further expected to enable the disabled customers conveniently navigate through the buildings. Escalators and elevators are very commonly seen in the underground train stations, airports and shopping malls. Equipping the commercial buildings with escalators and elevators will continue to favor the customer significantly. Such factors are expected to reflect positively towards growth of the global elevators and escalators market.A recent trend witnessed in the construction industry is that the constructors are increasingly equipping the buildings with weatherproof elevators. Moreover, bound to comparatively less space within the building, constructors are focusing on installing weatherproof elevators outside the buildings. Besides installation of the top and bottom escalators, demand for the inclined and flat travolators is expected to remain high in the global elevators and escalators market.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @In addition, the global elevators and escalators market is expected to witness significant growth attributed to increasing demand in the aviation industry. As the need for traveling to different floors of the airport arises, constructors are increasingly equipping the airports with escalators and elevators. Moreover, the flat escalators or travolators are also used by the passengers in order to transport a large number of people and their luggage conveniently, smoothly and quickly. As the customers could face challenges carrying their luggage around the airport, the travolators increasingly allow the end users to reach the platform for flight with their luggage conveniently. Such factors are expected to witness significant growth in the global elevators and escalators market.Global Elevators and Escalators Market: SegmentationIn the next section, the global elevators and escalators market is mainly segmented as service type, application, and region. On the basis of service type, the global market is expected to be segmented as maintenance & repair, refurbishing and new equipment. Based on application, the global market is mainly segmented as residential, commercial and industrial. By region, the global market is segmented as North America, Latin America, Europe, Japan, APEJ and MEA.Make an Enquiry of this report @Global Elevators and Escalators Market: CompetitionKey market players in the global elevators and escalators market are Kone Corporation, Otis Elevator Company, Thyssenkrupp AG, Schindler Group, Hitachi, Ltd., Fujitec, Toshiba Elevators and Building Systems Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, SJEC Corporation, Hyundai Elevator Co., Ltd., Kleeman Hellas SA, Canny Elevator and Shanghai Mechanical.About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Epoxy Adhesives Market to Record Sturdy Growth by 2021

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Epoxy adhesives are high strength adhesives used extensively across various industries. They are made of epoxy resins, which are in turn made up of the chemical bisphenol A. Epoxy adhesives can be used for adhesion of numerous substrates such as wood, metals, plastics, glass and stones. After application, epoxy adhesives require time for curing or setting. This can be done with the help of heat or by exposure to ultra violet light or at room temperature. The epoxy adhesives cured by exposure to ultra violet light are used to manufacture fiber optics and opto electronics. Epoxy adhesives have strong adhesion which makes them the most commonly used structural adhesives.Report Overview @Epoxy adhesives find extensive use in aerospace, automotive, building & construction and semiconductor industry. Of these industries, aerospace and semiconductor industries are the two major consumers of epoxy adhesives. The growth of the aerospace industry is a key driver for the growth of epoxy adhesives market. The blades of aircrafts are joined using epoxy adhesives.Due to the superior mechanical properties of epoxy adhesives, such as resistance to creep under sustained load, temperature and pressure variations, they are the adhesives of choice for the aerospace industry. The semiconductor industry makes use of epoxy adhesives to manufacture printed circuit boards, integrated circuits and transistors. The semiconductor industry is growing exponentially due to the increase in usage of electronic gadgets. This is driving the market of epoxy adhesives.However, the application of epoxy adhesives must be carried out with protective gear owing to the toxic fumes which are emitted during its application. Technological advances to make the adhesives safer for humans during application are expected to open new areas of opportunity for the market of epoxy adhesives.China, Germany, the U.S and U.K are major consumers of epoxy adhesives. The aerospace and semiconductor industry in these countries are the largest markets of epoxy adhesives. The growth of this market is also seen in other Asia Pacific countries. South Korea and Japan are large scale manufacturers of epoxy resins. The market of epoxy adhesives is expected to grow considerably in the forecast period in Asia and Europe. Latin America shows a steady demand of epoxy adhesives for the building & construction industry.The application of epoxy adhesives requires pre treatment of substrates which ensures superior adhesion. There are two major types of epoxy adhesives  one component, heat curing epoxy adhesive and two component room temperature curing epoxy adhesive. One component epoxies are used as alternatives to welding and riveting and have excellent adhesion to metals. These epoxy adhesives require cold storage to provide sufficient shelf life. They are used for bonding large areas and find application in aerospace industry for assembly of aircraft panels and rotor blades.The two component epoxy adhesives are cured at room temperature and can take up to several days to weeks to achieve adhesion. These adhesives can be used on all types of substrates including rubber, wood, plastics, glass and ceramics. The market of epoxy adhesives is fragmented across the globe. There are numerous small, medium and large players in this market, which serve many markets and produce numerous epoxy adhesive variants.Get Sample Copy of this Report @For instance, Henkel manufactures electrically conductive adhesives. The major players in this market include- Henkel, Permabond, The Gorilla Glue Company, 3M, Ardex, MG Chemcials, MAPEI, 5M, Epotek, Powerblanket and Masterbond 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,USA Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Pedicle Screw Systems Market Expected to Expand at a Search CAGR through 2017  2027

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Over the last two decades, there has been a significant progress in the pedicle screw instrumentation technique for the spine. The use of pedicle screws has gradually progressed from the use in the lumbar spine to their use in more complex anatomy such as the thoracic and thoracolumbar level. The pedicular screws have several advantages over the conventional rod and hook constructs. The pedicular screw allows spinal arthrodesis stability and offers three column control over the spinal elements thereby improving deformation. The placement of the pedicle screw is independent of the laminar integrity thereby expanding its application to a different level of spinal pathologies such as degenerative, oncologic, degenerative and deformity correction.Pedicle Screw Systems Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe pedicle screw market is expected to boom owing to the increasing prevalence rate of arthritis and the aging population. As age increases bone becomes fragile and is prone to more wear and tear. The field of orthopedics has thus grown significantly in recent years and doctors are now acquainted with procedures and equipment which can save more lives. Moreover, healthcare providers are using healthcare data to gather information about the various characteristics of the orthopedic patient and their health outcome. Using mathematical analysis, the patient characteristics help predict the possible outcomes from a surgery.Request Report Sample@Pedicle Screw Systems Market: SegmentationPedicle screw systems market is classified on the basis of type, application, and region.Based on type the pedicle screw systems market is segmented into the following:Conical pedicle screwCylindrical pedicle screwDual cored pedicle screwBased on application the pedicle screw systems market is segmented into the following:SpondylolisthesisFractureScolisisSpinal tumorFalied fusionOthersPedicle Screw Systems Market: OverviewPedicles are basically dense stem like structure that projects from the posterior of a vertebra and connects to other structures. The polyaxial pedicle screw made of titanium is resistant to corrosion and is MRI compatible. The mobile head is has a threaded screw and helps lessen the vertebral stress through its swivels. These pedicle screws are used to correct deformity and treat trauma. The pedicle screws may be used in instrumentation procedures to fix plates and rods to the spine. The pedicle screws may also function to immobilize a part of the spine to assist fusion by holding the desired bone structures together.Visit For TOC@Pedicle Screw Systems Market: Region-wise OutlookIn terms of geography, the pedicle screw systems market has been divided into five regions including North- America, Asia- Pacific and Middle-East & Africa, Latin America and Europe. North America dominated the non-magnetic vital signs monitoring systems market owing to the increase in the number of orthopedic joint replacement surgery rate and the various pedicle screws approved by the FDA. AsiaPacific is expected to be the fasted growing region during the forecast period with increased number of orthopedic surgeries undertaken.Pedicle Screw Systems Market: Key Market ParticipantsSome of the market contributors to the pedicle screw systems market are Aesculap Implant Systems, LLC, DePuy Synthes Spine, Inc., CTL Medical Corporation, Orthopeadic Implant Company, LDR Holding Corporation, Z-medical GmbH + Co. KG, X-spine Systems, Inc., Globus Medical, Inc., Auxein Medical and Alphatec Spine, Inc.About Us Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Inland 2018 Global Market Key Players -American Commercial Lines LLC,Ingram Industries,AP Moller  Maersk A/S,Jeffboat, LLC,European Cruise Service....

Inland Market 2018

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Inland Market 2018Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Inland  Global Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Manufacturers, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2023 To Its Research Database.Description:Inland Market Global Report 2018 from The Business Research Company provides the strategists, marketers and senior management with the critical information they need to assess the global inland market.Description:Where is the largest and fastest growing market for the inland? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The inland market global report from the Business Research Company answers all these questions and many more.The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the markets historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider transportation services market, and compares it with other markets. The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market. The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market and forecasting the future. Drivers and restraints looks at the external factors supporting and controlling the growth of the market. Market segmentations break down market into sub markets. The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It covers all the regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets. It draws comparisons with country populations and economies to understand the importance of the market by country and how this is changing. Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified. The trends and strategies section highlights the likely future developments in the market and suggests approaches companies can take to exploit this. The inland market section of the report gives context. It compares the inland market with other segments of the inland market by size and growth, historic and forecast. It analyses Expenditure Per Capita, The Inland Market Indicators Comparison.Request for Sample Report@ScopeMarkets Covered:Companies Mentioned: American Commercial Lines LLC,Ingram Industries,AP Moller - Maersk A/S,Jeffboat, LLC,European Cruise ServiceCountries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, Russia, UK, USA and Australia.Regions: Asia-Pacific, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, South America, Middle East And AfricaTime series: Five years historic and forecast.Data: Ratios of market size and growth to related markets, GDP, Expenditure Per Capita, The Inland Market Indicators Comparison.Data segmentations: country and regional historic and forecast data, market share of competitors, market segments.Sourcing and Referencing: Data and analysis throughout the report is sourced using end notes.Complete report details @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of Contents:1. Inland Market Characteristics2. Inland Market Size And Growth3. Inland Trends And Strategies;4. Pestle Analysis5. Inland Market Customer Information;6. Inland Market Regional And Country Analysis7. Inland Market Segmentation8. Inland Market Segments9. Global Inland Market Comparison With Macro Economic Factors10. Inland Market Comparison With Macro Economic Factors Across Countries11. Asia-Pacific Inland Market12. Western Europe Inland Market13. Eastern Europe Inland Market14. North America Inland Market15. South America Inland Market16. Middle East Inland Market17. Africa Inland Market.Inland Market Competitive Landscape18.1. Company Profiles18.2. American Commercial Lines LLC18.2.1. Overview18.2.2. Products And Services18.2.3. Strategy18.2.4. Financial Performance18.3. Ingram Industries18.3.1. Overview18.3.2. Products And Services18.3.3. Strategy18.3.4. Financial Performance18.4. AP Moller - Maersk A/S18.4.1. Overview18.4.2. Products And Services18.4.3. Strategy18.4.4. Financial Performance18.5. Jeffboat, LLC18.5.1. Overview18.5.2. Products And Services18.5.3. Strategy18.5.4. Financial Performance18.6. European Cruise Service18.6.1. Overview18.6.2. Products And Services18.6.3. Strategy18.6.4. Financial PerformanceContinued..Contact US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us: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 Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd: Pune  411028: Maharashtra,: Ph: +91 841 198 5042
Global Gas Engine Market Trends, Active Key Players and Growth Projection Up to 2025: Caterpillar, Cummins, DEUTZ, GE Power Generation, KUBOTA Engine

Gas Engine Market

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Gas Engine Market 2018Wiseguyreports.Com adds Gas Engine Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2023 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Gas Engine Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Gas Engine Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline, the quantity of production, required raw material, and the financial health of the organization.This report offers an overview of the market trends, drivers, and barriers with respect to the Gas Engine market. It also provides a detailed overview of the market of different regions across United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and Others. The report categorizes Gas Engine market by by Fuel Type, by Power Output, and application. Detailed analysis of key players, along with key growth strategies adopted by them is also covered in this report on Gas Engine market.This report focuses Global market, it covers details as following:Key PlayersCaterpillarCummins Inc.DEUTZFPT Industrial S.p.A.GE Power GenerationKUBOTA EngineMAN EnginesMWMPerkinsRolls RoyceSIEMENS Engines & GensetsWartsilaWeichai Holding Group Co.,Ltd.Request a Sample Report @Key RegionsNorth AmericaUnited StatesCanadaLatin AmericaMexicoBrazilArgentinaOthersEuropeGermanyUnited KingdomFranceItalySpainRussiaNetherlandOthersAsia & PacificChinaJapanIndiaKoreaAustraliaSoutheast AsiaIndonesiaThailandPhilippinesVietnamSingaporeMalaysiaOthersAfrica & Middle EastSouth AfricaEgyptTurkeySaudi ArabiaIranOthersMain types of productsGas Engine Market, by Fuel TypeNatural GasSpecial GasOthersGas Engine Market, by Power Output0.5 MW1 MW1 MW2 MW2 MW5 MW5 MW10 MW10 MW20 MWGas Engine Market, by Key ConsumerUtilitiesManufacturingOil & GasOthersIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:Global Gas Engine Market Research Report 2017-2022 by Players, Regions, Product Types & ApplicationsChapter One Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source1.2.1 Secondary Sources1.2.2 Primary Sources1.3 DisclaimerChapter Two Gas Engine Market Overview2.1 Market Coverage2.2 Global Gas Engine Market Sales Volume Revenue and Price 2012-2017Chapter Three Gas Engine by Key Players 2013-20183.1 Global Gas Engine Sales Volume Market Share by Key Players 2013-20183.2 Global Gas Engine Revenue Share by Key Players 2013-20183.3 Global Key Players Gas Engine Key Product Model and Market Performance3.4 Global Key Players Gas Engine Key Target Consumers and Market Performance.Chapter Six Global Key Players Profile6.1 Caterpillar6.1.1 Caterpillar Company Details and Competitors6.1.2 Caterpillar Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.1.3 Caterpillar Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.1.4 Caterpillar Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.2 Cummins Inc.6.2.1 Cummins Inc. Company Details and Competitors6.2.2 Cummins Inc. Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.2.3 Cummins Inc. Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.2.4 Cummins Inc. Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.3 DEUTZ6.3.1 DEUTZ Company Details and Competitors6.3.2 DEUTZ Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.3.3 DEUTZ Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.3.4 DEUTZ Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.4 FPT Industrial S.p.A.6.4.1 FPT Industrial S.p.A. Company Details and Competitors6.4.2 FPT Industrial S.p.A. Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.4.3 FPT Industrial S.p.A. Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.4.4 FPT Industrial S.p.A. Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.5 GE Power Generation6.5.1 GE Power Generation Company Details and Competitors6.5.2 GE Power Generation Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.5.3 GE Power Generation Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.5.4 GE Power Generation Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.6 KUBOTA Engine6.6.1 KUBOTA Engine Company Details and Competitors6.6.2 KUBOTA Engine Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.6.3 KUBOTA Engine Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.6.4 KUBOTA Engine Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.7 MAN Engines6.7.1 MAN Engines Company Details and Competitors6.7.2 MAN Engines Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.7.3 MAN Engines Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.7.4 MAN Engines Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.8 MWM6.8.1 MWM Company Details and Competitors6.8.2 MWM Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.8.3 MWM Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.8.4 MWM Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.9 Perkins6.9.1 Perkins Company Details and Competitors6.9.2 Perkins Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.9.3 Perkins Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.9.4 Perkins Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.10 Rolls Royce6.10.1 Rolls Royce Company Details and Competitors6.10.2 Rolls Royce Key Gas Engine Models and Performance6.10.3 Rolls Royce Gas Engine Business SWOT Analysis and Forecast6.10.4 Rolls Royce Gas Engine Sales Volume Revenue Price Cost and Gross Margin6.11 SIEMENS Engines & Gensets6.12 Wartsila6.13 Weichai Holding Group Co.,Ltd.Continued.Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US: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 features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Vacuum Coating Equipment Market to record an impressive growth rate during the forecast period 2016  2024

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Vacuum coating equipment industry is consolidated with major companies covering a chunk of the overall business landscape. Key players sharing this market space include Buhler Group, Kolzer SRL, BCI Blosch Group, Scientific Vacuum Systems Ltd., CVD Equipment Corporation, ULVAC, Inc., and Semicore Equipment, Inc.With the passage of time, vacuum coating equipment market has transited from an idea in a laboratory to one of the most highly commercialized industries globally. The distinguished equipment feature of vapor deposition technology is allowing the industry to capture the attention of a variety of sectors including automobile, electronics, energy, and power. An escalation in consumer demand for upgraded vehicles along with industrial automation is acting as a key propellant behind this industrys rapid expansion. Vacuum coating not only improves the visual appearance of the vehicles but at the same time meet the functional criteria of durability and scratch resistance.Request for a sample of this research report @With a wide range of applications across myriad sectors, vacuum coating equipment industry is set to attain a remarkable value in the years ahead. As per Global Market Insights, Inc., vacuum coating equipment market is poised to exceed a revenue of USD 47 billion by 2024 with a CAGR of 8 % over the coming seven years.Based on the various vacuum coating equipment available in the market, physical vapor deposition (PVD) vacuum coating equipment industry is witnessing a significant demand from industrial and automotive sectors. A continuous upsurge in passenger vehicle sales rate globally is expected to leave an influential impact on the overall vacuum coating equipment market.PVD coating day by day is replacing other conventional coatings such as chrome plating, painting, electroplating, etc. Longer shelf life, scratch resistant surface, bright colors that result in better performance of the engine, are some of the driving factors behind the industrys significant expansion. PVD coating based vacuum coating equipment industry almost covered 39% of the overall market in 2015, and is anticipated to grow strikingly at an annual rate of 9% over the coming seven years. However, the complexity of the product may somewhat hinder the growth projection.The application spectrum of PVD coatings comprises microelectronics, cutting tools, medical equipment, solar power plants, and storage. Among these, the solar power plants are likely to exhibit a commendable demand for PVD vacuum coating equipment industry on account of the rising initiatives both by the private and government entities to set up solar power plants, particularly across the developing countries such as India and China. In addition, the other PVD coating application segments such as microelectronics and storage are anticipated to witness moderate gains over the coming years.Browse Full Research Report on Vacuum Coating Equipment Market @Combating the drawbacks of PVD coating such as complex functioning, Magnetron sputtering has emerged as the most promising product in the overall vacuum coating equipment industry. Despite having a comparatively lower market share than the other vacuum coating products, this segment is slated to witness an appreciable CAGR of 9% over the coming seven years. The growth can be attributed to the wide range of applications of this product such as electrical resistance films, corrosion-resistant films, magnetic films, opto storage devices, gas sensors, and metallizing for microelectronic circuits and chip carriers.The evolving automotive industry is also offering huge business opportunities to the CVD vacuum coating equipment market. This equipment provides a uniform coating layer on the product and can be customized as per the products specifications. CVD vacuum coating equipment industry is also gaining a considerable share from its heavy deployment in integrated circuits, photovoltaics devices, metal-organic frameworks, polymerization, low-K dielectrics, and gas sensing.U.S. being a leading participant in the renewable energy production, is estimated to remarkably contribute toward the global vacuum coating equipment market. Latin America is also likely to be a major ground for the vacuum coating equipment market growth in the coming years, attributed to the region being one of the largest commodities producers in the world.Europe, led by Germany, will also contribute massively toward global vacuum coating equipment market growth. MEA, which held 2.3% of the vacuum coating equipment industry share in 2015, will also depict swift gains over the coming seven years.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Asia Pacific vacuum coating equipment market accounted for 50% of the global industry landscape in 2015. The region is projected to witness substantial gains in the years ahead with the rapid industrialization and expanding consumer electronic industry in this region.About Fractovia.orgFractovia.org is one of India's leading in-house and free news portal. It is fully automated, and operates on a constant premise, interfacing with news sites and offering redesigned breaking features to readers across the globe. Our mission is to offer individuals opportunities for connections with news writers and distributors which they can pursue. We operate by mapping articles pertaining to breaking news, constantly and progressively, against a pre-determined word-based theme, offering important connections to readers and clients, as well as distributers.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAFractovia.orgPhone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@fractovia.orgWebsite:Blog:Connect with us: Facebook | Twitter
Shale Gas Market 2018 - Applications, Challenges, Growth, Shares, Trends, Top Players and Forecast to 2024

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A recent report published by Infinium Global Research on shale gas market provides in depth analysis of segments and sub-segments in global as well as regional markets of shale gas market. The study also highlights the impact of drivers, restraints and macro indicators on the global and regional markets of shale gas over the short term as well as long term. The report is a comprehensive presentation of trends, forecast and dollar values of global shale gas market. According to report the global shale gas market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 13% over the forecast period of 2018 - 2024.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Segments CoveredThe report on global shale gas market covers segments such as application, and technology. The application segments include commercial applications, transportation, industrial and manufacturing applications, power generation, and residential applications. On the basis of technology the global shale gas market is categorized into hydraulic fracturing (fracking), horizontal drilling, and water use.Geographic CoverageThe report provides regional analysis covering geographies such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World. In this section the key trends and market size for each geography is provided over the period of 2016  2024. The countries covered in the North America region include the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; while Asia-Pacific includes China, Japan, India, South Korea, Malaysia and among others. Moreover, European region covers countries such as Germany, UK, France, Spain, and rest of Europe. The U.S. drives the growth in the North America region as it is the largest market in the region. The Asia-pacific region offers a substantial potential for the market growth owing to rapid growth in markets such as India and China. The APAC region is projected to experience a growth at a CAGR of x.x% over the period of 2018 - 2024.Companies Profiled:The report provides profiles of the companies in the global shale gas market such as, Antero Resources, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell plc, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, BHP Billiton, Devon Energy, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Baker Hughes Incorporation, PetroChina, and Encana Corporation.For More Enquiry on This Report:Report Highlights:The report provides deep insights on demand forecasts, market trends and micro and macro indicators. In addition, this report provides insights on the factors that are driving and restraining the global shale gas market. Moreover, IGR-growth matrix analysis given in the report brings an insight on the investment areas that existing or new market players can consider. The report provides insights into the market using analytical tools such as porters five forces analysis and DRO analysis of shale gas market. Moreover, the study highlights current market trends and provides forecast from 2018 to 2024. We also have highlighted future trends in the shale gas market that will impact the demand during the forecast period. Moreover, the competitive analysis given in each regional market brings an insight on the market share of the leading players. Additionally, the analysis highlights rise and fall in the market shares of the key players in the market. This report will help manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of the shale gas market to understand the present and future trends in this market and formulate their strategies accordingly.About UsInfinium Global Research and Consulting Solutions is started with a single motto of being business partner of first choice. We at Infinium work on the strengths of our clients to ensure we help them consolidate their market position. We firmly believe in the fact that if you are able to develop newer opportunities then you find there is no dearth of opportunities for you. With our strategic research approaches and deep dive in the market segments, we try to find out new opportunities that our clients can encash with their existing resources. Our experts with over 100 years of cumulative experience in research offer the best in the industry services to our clients to ensure that they achieve their business goals.Contact UsInfinium Global Research,Toll Free:U.S. + Canada: 1-800-638-0796,Website :Email: sales@infiniumglobalresearch.com
Global IoT Solutions for Energy Market 2018 Key Players: AGT International, Cisco Systems, Inc., Davra Networks, Flutura Business Solutions LLC., IBM, Telit.

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IoT Solutions for Energy Market:WiseGuyReports.com adds IoT Solutions for Energy Market 2018 Global Analysis, Growth, Trends and Opportunities Research Report Forecasting to 2025reports to its database.Executive SummaryThis report studies the global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry market, analyzes and researches the IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeAGT InternationalCisco Systems, Inc.Davra NetworksFlutura Business Solutions LLC.IBMTelitMaven Systems Pvt. Ltd.SAP SESymboticware Inc.Intel CorporationAccentureMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoAnalytic SoftwareHardware PlatformServiceConnectivityMarket segment by Application, IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry can be split intoOil & GasSolarWindOthersIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Request Sample Report @Table of ContentGlobal IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size, Status and Forecast 20251 Industry Overview of IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry1.1 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Overview1.1.1 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market by Type1.3.1 Analytic Software1.3.2 Hardware Platform1.3.3 Service1.3.4 Connectivity1.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Oil & Gas1.4.2 Solar1.4.3 Wind1.4.4 Others2 Global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Competition Analysis by Players2.1 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size (Value) by Players (2013-2018)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 AGT International3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Cisco Systems, Inc.3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Davra Networks3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Flutura Business Solutions LLC.3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 IBM3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Telit3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Maven Systems Pvt. Ltd.3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 SAP SE3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Symboticware Inc.3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Intel Corporation3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 Accenture4 Global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size by Type and Application (2013-2018)4.1 Global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size by Type (2013-2018)4.2 Global IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry Market Size by Application (2013-2018)4.3 Potential Application of IoT Solutions Market for Energy Industry in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of IoT Solutions Market for Energy IndustryContinuousFor further information on this report, visit Contact Us:Norah Trentsales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US); +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us: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 Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone :+91 841 198 5042
ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Market Professional Survey Report 2018: BioTelemetry Inc Company, Cactus Semiconductor, Cognionics, Coland Holdings Limited, Cybernet Medical

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This report studies ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2013 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.Get Sample Copy of this Report @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAdvanced Medical Electronics CorporationAerotel Medical Systems (1988) LtdBen-Gurion University of the NegevBioTelemetry Inc CompanyCactus SemiconductorCognionicsColand Holdings LimitedCybernet MedicalEasyG LLCEP LtdGeorge Washington UniversityHeart TronicsHMicro IncIMEXCO GeneralJohn Hopkins University...On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoStationary Monitoring EquipmentPortable Monitoring EquipmentBy Application, the market can be split intoHospitalClinicPhysical Examination CenterOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaMajor Points Covered in Table of Contents 1 Industry Overview of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.1 Definition and Specifications of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.1.1 Definition of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.1.2 Specifications of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.2 Classification of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.2.1 Stationary Monitoring Equipment1.2.2 Portable Monitoring Equipment1.3 Applications of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment1.3.1 Hospital1.3.2 Clinic1.3.3 Physical Examination Center1.3.4 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment2.4 Industry Chain Structure of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20173.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20173.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20173.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Major Manufacturers in 20174 Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Overall Market Overview4.1 2013-2018E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2013-2018E Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2017 ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2013-2018E Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2017 ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2013-2018E Global ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Sales Price4.4.2 2017 ECG (Electrocardiogram) Monitoring Equipment Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)Browse full report with Table of Content @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-
Agriculture Robots Market - Marking a Turning Point in Agriculture, Future of Farming is Going High Tech

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The global agricultural market is expected to witness significant demand owing to the growing demand of agricultural productivity through effective and efficient farming operations. Growing technological advancement such as mobility, sensing, navigation, and localization is projected to boost the industry growth. These robot enables safe, cost-effective, and efficient production of grains, horticulture, nursery crops, fruits, nuts and vegetables. Agriculture Robots are also referred as AgBots or FarmBots, or AgriBots. The industry is anticipated to rise owing to the growing population and increasing demand for enhanced agricultural production.Recent technologies such as Geographic Information System (GIS), Global Positioning System (GPS), precision farming with the help of big data is gaining traction in the market. Big data has also been extensively used by farmers in order to make better decision on planting, harvesting as well as fertilizing the crops. Furthermore, increasing government initiatives to adopt modern technologies and monitoring of crop condition for yield production are projectedto foster the AgBots industry. The trend for enhancing agricultural resources, in more sustainable and efficient way, is positively influencing the farmers along with growing demand in global food supply.Few other factors positively impacting the market includes prominence of AgBots in horticultural environment, penetration of harvesting robots or FarmBots in fruits and vegetable farming. Furthermore, shortage of agricultural workers along with increasing labor costs, and rising global population with prime need of food security are also anticipated to fuel the industry growth over the forecast period. Increasing application of precision agriculture & pesticide spraying, with rising demand for livestock farming, and also proliferation of robots in forestry applications are also considered to influence the market demand.AgriBots are widely adopted for farming purpose owing to the benefits associated such as accuracy, fatigueless functioning, least human workforce interference, cost benefits, and faster task accomplishment. Additionally, few advanced technologies such as use of wireless sensors, drones & wearable penetration, driverless tractor, 3D print technology in agriculture are anticipated to drive the industry over the forecast period. High popularity of indoor farming, quicker adoption for automated technologies is further expected to contribute significantly to the AgBots market. ,AgBots market has been segmented on the basis of products and application. Based on products, the market is further segmented as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Milking Robots, Material Management and, Driverless Tractor. The UAV segment is expected to depict highest market share over the forecast period. Milking Robots or automatic milking system is used to extract milk from cattle. This product would help in reducing the workforce costs with increased milk yield. Industrialization growth of the agriculture sector in countries such as India, China is likely to spur the growth of driverless tractors.On the basis of application, market has been segmented as dairy management, field farming, soil management, and crop management. The growth of field robot deployment for fertilizing and weeding has anticipated to spur the global market for soil management segment. However, increasing awareness of farmers for software solutions available for field surveys and data analytics are few reasons to increase market for crop management application.On the regional basis, North America is expected to contribute majorly owing to the highly adaptive consumers for new technology. The approvals from Federal Aviation Administration in the region have encouraged the application of products such as drones with improved imaging capabilities for better crop yield. The European nations have restructured the regulations for drone operations, which anticipates the growth in the region over the forecast period. The industrialization of the agriculture sector and increasing venture capitals are expected to create positive impact on the segment demand.Free PDF Sample Previewing Latest Advancements with Future Forecast -Global key players include AGCO Corporation, BouMatic Robotics B.V., Autonomous Solutions Inc. and Agribotix LLC. Vertical integration and licensing of technologies are the common strategies adopted by the industry to enhance their market presence. Other vendors in the market include Fullwood AB Electrolux, SAC, Blue River, Harvest Automation, GEA Farm Technologies, GeckoSystems, and Agrobot. In April 2017, AGCO Corporation launched MARSMobile Agricultural Robot Swarms, which are equipped with its own integrated planting units working in efficient and effective way to reduce manpower.Obtain Report Details @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 StatesUK Office109 ,Straford Street,LeedsWest Yorkshrie LS11 6JGUnited KingdomToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email-sales@xpodenceresearch.com
Leading Technology Innovations in Global Predictive Analytics Software Market  2018

Predictive Analytics Software

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This report studies the global Predictive Analytics Software market, analyzes and researches the Predictive Analytics Software development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.The report Global Predictive Analytics Software Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application highlights key dynamics of Predictive Analytics Software sector. The potentiality of this sector has been examined along with the significant challenges and growth opportunities. The present market scenario and future predictions of the sector has also been studied in-depth in this report. The report also provides the key market players that are assessed on numerous parameters such as manufacturers summary, revenue generation, product portfolio, and sales analysis of Predictive Analytics Software segment in the forecast period. Also, this report involves major market drivers and restraints of the given market.Segmentation based on Type includes:Cloud-basedOn-premisesSegmentation based on Application includes:Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)Large EnterprisesMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket competition by top manufacturers:AnodotSisenseThe MathWorksMicroStrategyAlteryxRadiusAllocableMaroon.aiSAS InstituteRealEyeGMDHAlpha7Obtain Sample Copy @Table of Contents -1 Industry Overview of Predictive Analytics Software1.1 Predictive Analytics Software Market Overview1.1.1 Predictive Analytics Software Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Predictive Analytics Software Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Predictive Analytics Software Market by Type1.3.1 Cloud-based1.3.2 On-premises1.4 Predictive Analytics Software Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)1.4.2 Large Enterprises2 Global Predictive Analytics Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Predictive Analytics Software Market Size (Value) by Players (2013-2018)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Anodot3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Sisense3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 The MathWorks3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 MicroStrategy3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Alteryx3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Radius3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Allocable3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Maroon.ai3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 SAS Institute3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 RealEye3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Predictive Analytics Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 GMDH3.12 Alpha7In order to Browse the Complete Report, Please Visit:About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on Global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-
Global Flexible OLED Display Industry : Insights, Development, Research and Forecast 2018-2026

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Albany, NY, 8th March : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Flexible OLED Display Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2026" globally.As flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays become more and more affordable, it is likely that new functions will soon be integrated to this technology in the near future.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Although curved Flexible OLED displays will be the first to be introduced, patents filed by top manufacturers recently have meant that rollable, bendable, and foldable devices will soon foray into the market. Foldable displays are expected to be preferred on the back of their portability, while catering to consumer demand for large displays. In addition, with surging demand for wearable devices, bendable displays will find huge application in this area, such as in smart watches. Rollable flexible OLED displays are likely to witness use in future televisions that would be developed in tubular form equipped with retractable roll-out display.Transparency Market Research has collated a new report on the global market for flexible OLED displays, for the forecast period 2017 to 2026. The report offers a detailed market forecast on imperative dynamics that have potential to leave substantial footprints on growth of the market. In addition to the provision of latest trends, curbing factors, and propelling factors affecting the market growth, an evaluation on crucial data regarding different market parameters has been rendered by the report.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Report StructureThe report commences with a chapter titled executive summary, which delivers a precis of the global flexible OLED display market. With regards to sales expansion and revenues from worldwide sales of flexible OLED display, intelligence related to lucrative regions for expansion of the global flexible OLED display market is engulfed in this chapter. A chapter titled overview follows the executive summary, and includes a definition of flexible OLED display that trails behind a succinct market introduction. This chapter demonstrably portrays wide scope of global flexible OLED display market. Chapters following the overview explicate key dynamics affecting growth of flexible OLED display market worldwide, while inundating imperative points such as the global economy, bottom line of enterprises, and fiscal stimulus. Some chapters in the report propound information regarding cost structure and pricing analysis of global flexible OLED display market.Competition LandscapeThe report offers a diligent research on global flexible OLED display market in its concluding chapter, comprising data pertaining to companies contributing substantially to expansion of the market. The report incorporates an intensity map that tracks occupancy of leading market participants across the regional segments. In addition to emphasis on profiling market participants rigorously, this chapter offers insights on these players based on SWOT analysis, company overview, key developments, key financials, and product overview.Research MethodologyA robust research methodology that is proven and tested is employed by TMRs analysts while compiling the global flexible OLED display market report. The research methodology employed depends entirely upon primary & secondary researches, to glean necessary knowledge pertaining to global flexible OLED display market.Browse Report @Data collected is then validated by the analysts a couple of times to ensure the reports authenticity, making it an authoritative source of reference for report readers.ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Ongoing Study Offers Key Foresights on Expansion of Champagne Market During 2017-2027

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Champagne is a product produced from grapes that are grown in the Champagne region of France.The grapes that are used are very specific such as Pinot Noir, Pinot Meuniere, and Chardonnay. These grapes are fermented to make wine that contains about 9% of alcohol by volume. Champagne is also known as sparkling wine and is strictly regulated by Comite Champagne of France. Various wine producing country, produces sparkling wine similar to champagne, but any other wine which might resemble champagne cannot be sold or labelled as champagne. All champagne is a sparkling wine, but all sparkling wine is not a champagne.Grapes that are grown according to the appellation rules are only allowed to make champagne.Market Segmentation:Champagne marketis segment on the basis of grape used, type of wine, distribution channel, flavour and region.On the basis of grape used the market is segmented into Pinot Noir, Pinot Meuniere, and Chardonnay. Black pinot noir and pinot meuniere are the primarily used grapes for champagne making but small amount of white chardonnay grapes are also used. On the basis of type of the market is segmented into prestige cuvee, blanc de noirs, blanc de blancs and rose champagne. On the basis of distribution channel champagne market is segmented into supermarkets/hypermarkets, specialty stores and online stores. Supermarkets/hypermarkets is anticipated to hold a relatively high share in the champagnemarket. Online stores have also contributed significantly to the growth of champagnemarket over the forecast period. On the basis of flavors the market is segmented intobrut and fruity flavour. Fruity flavour segment can further be segmented into apple, pear, citrus, strawberry, nutty, cream and vanilla. Nutty flavored champagnes are the most common in old world champagne. The most popular style of champagne today is the Brut. Brut Champagne is considered as a dry champagne and has a dry taste, with very low sugar levels.Request For Report Sample@Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of champagneis divided into five different regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, APAC, and MEA. Among these segment Europe is expected to have the major market share globally, as it is the largest producer and consumer of champagne. In Europe market the countries like France and U.K. are generating the major revenue.Market Drivers:The rising economic growth in developing economies has been a key factor driving the growth of the global champagne market in recent years. The increasing acceptance for consumption of alcohol in the cultural beliefs of consumers in these regions is propelling the growth of this market. Bars and lounge are those businesses which are specialized in selling a variety of alcoholic drinks that patrons can consume onsite in a social environment. Oftentimes, bars cater to an affluent clientele, offering expensive premium champagne. Many lounges also offer a wide variety of inexpensive flavored champagne, which have become increasingly popular among those who for social gathering. The above-mentioned factors are resulting in increasing penetration of the bars and lounge culture which in turn is boosting the growth of champagne market. Availability of a wide variety of flavored champagne is resulting in increasing consumer base and this is expected to fuel market growth over the forecast period. Introduction of flavors such as candy, fruit, and nutty etc has been leading to an increasing number of individuals, to try consume champagne.Visit For TOC@Market Key Players:Some of the 10 key players in champagne market areMoet Hennessy USA, LANSON-BCC, Vranken - Pommery Monopole, Champagne Laurent-Perrier S.A.S., Pernod Ricard, Remy Cointreau, Centre Vinicole Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte, Martel, Louis Roederer and Taittinger.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Shortening Market 2018 Global Overview,Research,in-Depth Analysis,Forecasts, Applications,Shares & Insights

Shortening Market 2018

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Shortening Market 2018 Global Overview,Research,in-Depth Analysis,Forecasts, Applications,Shares & Insights.Description:This report studies the Shortening market, Shortening refers to edible fats or vegetable or animal origin used in baked goods primarily to improve the eating qualities of the finished product thorugh making it tender and 'short'. There is a variety of shortenings available. These differ mainly in their origin, flavor, and consistency.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Shortening in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comMarket Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversOlenexADMWalter RauY?ld?z HoldingVFI GmbHAAKZeelandiaPuratosPrinces GroupHAS GroupMarket 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 etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversAll Purpose ShorteningEmulsified ShorteningHigh Stability ShorteningMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoBakingFryingConfectionery and PastryOtherThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Shortening market.Chapter 1, to describe Shortening Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Shortening, with sales, revenue, and price of Shortening, 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 Shortening, for each region, from 2013 to 2018;Continue..Report Details @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Shortening Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 All Purpose Shortening1.2.2 Emulsified Shortening1.2.3 High Stability Shortening1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Baking1.3.2 Frying1.3.3 Confectionery and Pastry1.3.4 Other1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 United States Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Olenex2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Olenex Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 ADM2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 ADM Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 Walter Rau2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Walter Rau Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 Y?ld?z Holding2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 Y?ld?z Holding Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 VFI GmbH2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 VFI GmbH Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.6 AAK2.6.1 Business Overview2.6.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.6.2.1 Type 12.6.2.2 Type 22.6.3 AAK Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.7 Zeelandia2.7.1 Business Overview2.7.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.7.2.1 Type 12.7.2.2 Type 22.7.3 Zeelandia Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.8 Puratos2.8.1 Business Overview2.8.2 Shortening Type and Applications2.8.2.1 Type 12.8.2.2 Type 22.8.3 Puratos Shortening Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)ContinueFor more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US: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 features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Exclusive Market Study Estimates that Global Hand Tools Market will Grow at 3.9% CAGR During 2016-2026

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Competitive advantage of adopting power tools has lowered the adoption of hand tools. Multiple industrial operations are being equipped with power tools to benefit from their cost-effectiveness, lesser labour-induced work and higher efficiency. Furthermore, advancements in existing power tools are swiftly outpacing the upgrades done on conventional hand tools. In the long run, there is a possibility that hand tools might lose their applicability to power tools. Future Market Insights projects that during the forecast period 2017-2027, the global market for hand tools will showcase a moderate growth, registering a CAGR of 3.9%.Future Market Insights recently published report, titled Hand Tools Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027, estimates the global hand tools market to reach US$ 15.6 Bn value by end of 2017. In the ten-year forecast period, the global demand for hand tools is likely to witness a downtrend, bringing in just over US$ 22.3 Bn in revenues towards the end of 2027. Factors impacting the growth of global hand tools market are compiled in the report, which include:Request For Report Sample@There has been a rise in the number of major manufacturing plants and industries in the world, wherein hand tools are widely used for maintenance purposesAutomotive repair & maintenance sector is presently a lucrative industrial vertical for application of hand toolsAlthough, the global demand for hand tools is predicted to decline due to rising prices of raw materials such as iron ore and aluminiumIncreasing prevalence of DIY activities and rising employment opportunities for technical jobs are observed as key trends of the global hand tools market. The report further reveals that a majority of hand tools sold in the world will be used for industrial purposes. In 2017, industrial application of hand tools is expected to net global revenues worth over US$ 9.3 Bn. Key findings in the report also indicate that metal cutting tools will be observed as top-selling products, registering a steady revenue growth at 4.9% CAGR. Also, throughout the forecast period, over 40% of global hand tool sales will be accounted by retail distribution channels. Online distribution of hand tools is also expected to gain traction towards the latter half of forecast period.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):North America is estimated to remain as the most-lucrative region for growth of hand tools market. Consistently procuring one-third share on global revenues, North America will remain the dominant region in the global hand tools market through 2027. On the other hand, the hand tools market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will register fastest revenue growth, exhibiting 6% CAGR over the forecast period. Companies such as Channellock, Inc., Akar Tools, Ltd., Apex Tools Group, Wera Tools, Snap-On, Stanley Back Decker, Kennametal Inc., Klein Tools, and JK Files (India) Limited are profiled in the report as key manufacturers of hand tools in the world.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Fitness Tracker Ring Market Share 2018 Analysis, Share and Size, Trends, Industry Growth And Segment Forecasts To 2023

Fitness Tracker Ring Market Share

https://www.marketresearchengine.com/fitness-tracker-ring-market

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New York, March 08, 2018: Fitness tracker rings are activity tracker devices which may be accustomed track sleep, fitness, and calories. These are small wearable devices designed to be water-resistant and may be wore throughout daily activities as well as swimming, bathing and exercising. Further, this innovative small technology is incredibly useful to trace individuals health on regular basis. Further, by merely worn it on the fingers it will monitor heart rate as well. Moreover, fitness hunter ring could be a reversible wearable device with lithium ion battery and once absolutely charged its battery lasts up to 3-4 days. Moreover, fitness hunter ring has ability to live overall active minutes, activity varieties, active pulse rate, sleep period, calories burned, resting heart rates, distance travel and steps.The Fitness Tracker Ring Market is expected to exceed more than US$ XX Billion by 2022 at a CAGR of XX% in the given forecast period.The major driving factors of Fitness Tracker Ring Market are as follows: Rising adoption of fitness trackers among consumers Compatibility with daily activities such as bathing, swimming, exercising and other activitiesBrowse Full Report Here:The Fitness Tracker Ring Market is segmented on the lines of its Distribution channel and regional. Based on distribution channel segmentation it covers online stores and Offline stores. Marine Propeller Market on geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geographic market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for Fitness Tracker Ring Market and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2015, estimates for 2016 and 2017, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2022.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for devices related to Fitness Tracker Ring Market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin International, Samsung, Apple, Misfit and TomTom. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.Request Sample Report:Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Market Research Tactics3 Market Summary4 Quality Market Insights5 Fitness Tracker Ring Market Overview5.1 Introduction5.2 Market Dynamics5.2.1 Drivers5.2.1.1 Rising adoption of fitness trackers among consumers5.2.1.2 Compatibility with daily activities such as bathing, swimming, exercising and other activities5.2.2 Restraints5.2.3 Opportunities5.2.4 Challenges6 Regulatory Market Synopsis7 Fitness Tracker Ring Market, By Distribution Channel:8 Fitness Tracker Ring Market, By Geographic Region9 Competitive Landscape10 Company ProfilesFitbitJawboneGarmin InternationalSamsungAppleMisfit and TomTomAbout UsMarket Research Engine (MRE) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. MREs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each Market Research Engines research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Global Market for Fruit Beer Market to Reflect Steadfast Expansion During 2017-2027

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Fruit beer is nonspecific term which is generally used to refer various type of beer made from fruit. Fruit beer in any form (stout, large, etc.) contains fruit which is added as a flavoring agent or an adjunct. Fruit beer is originated in Belgium and now it is found in other parts of the world as well. There are lambic and oud bruins which have fruit or fruit syrup added after fermentation as a flavoring and these are termed fruit limbic or fruit beers. Fruity aroma in the fruit beer is very important factor. The strength of the aroma is very much dependent on the fruit used in the brewing process. Some fruits like cherries, plums and raspberries have a more aggressive aroma than the fruit such as blueberries or peach. The aroma of the hop or malt is still present in the fruit beer as it is the base aroma on which fruity smell additionally occur.Market Segmentation:Fruit beer marketis segmented on the basis of flavor, distribution channel and region. On the basis of flavor the fruit beer market is segmented into raspberry, peach, blueberry,cherries, plums and others. Among all these flavor, raspberry flavoured fruit beer segment is expected to account for significant share of total fruit beer market during the forecast period. The demand for fruit beer is more as it is one of the most refreshing beverage consumed during summers and the flavors offered are very much loved by women. On the basis of distribution channel the fruit beer market is segmented into hyper/supermarket stores, departmental stores, specialty store and online retailers. Hyper/supermarket is expected to hold a relatively higher share in the fruit beer market, followed by specialty store segment. As we all know online stores offers great discounts and easy delivery options of the product at the doorstep, thus this segment is anticipated to grow enormously in the forecast periodRequest For Report Sample@Market Regional Outlook:Regional segment for the market of fruit beer is segmented into five different regions: North America, Latin America, Europe, APAC and MEA. Among these segment Europe is expected to represent for the largest market share globally, and is also expected to remain dominant during the forecaster period. In North America, countries like U.S. is the key market for fruit beer. In terms of revenue North America is the expected to be the second leading contributor in thefruit beer market.Market Drivers:The fruit beer market is also driven by the love for refreshing beverage by women population. Fruit beers flavor possess a fine balance between the traditionally found malt beer and the sweetness of fruit. Fruit beers are available in different flavors unlike traditional beers. Furthermore, the unique flavor profile of fruit beers has made it one of the most popular beverage among the consumers in the west.Flavor, much like the aroma, must have a noticeable character imparted by the fruit. The sugar present in selected fruit is generally totally fermented, which creates a drier finish and lighter flavors, because of which the amount of extra added sugar in these beer in considerably less and the flavor of the fruit becomes more noticeable. Rising ever-increasing population, increase in the number of bars and restaurants, disposable income, increase in the acceptance of western culture and relaxation in the rules and regulation related to the operation of fruit beer industry are some of the major driving force for fruit beer market. Increasing disposable income among the working class population allows the consumers to socialize more in bars and restaurants and spend more on alcoholic beverage. In addition, consumers are now willing to pay more for premium segments as well. All these combined factors are fuelling the growth of the fruit beer market in the forecast period globally.Visit For TOC@Market Key Players:Some of the major players in Fruit Beer market includes Joseph James Brewing Company, Inc., Lindemans Brewery, Lost Coast Brewery, Magic Hat Brewing Company, New Belgium Brewing Company, Brewery Ommegang, All Saints Brewery, Shipyard Brewing Company, Unibroue, Wells & Young's Ltd., Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck N.V., Abita Brewing Co. and Pyramid Breweries, Inc. among othersABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Ongoing Study Reveals Key Factors that Will Drive the Growth of Plant Based Beverages Market During 2017-2027

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Plant-based beverages are dairy alternatives made from plants such as potato, oat, coconut, almond, hemp, soy, and rice. The global plant-based beverages market is expected to grow at a significant growth rate, attributed to food and beverages industry across the globe over the forecast period. The Europe plant-based beverages market is expected to register a relatively high revenue share over the forecast period followed by North America plant-based beverages market, attributed to increasing demand for plant-based beverages in the retail as well as food service centres segment. Asia-Pacific is expected to account for relatively high volume share with a significant growth rate in the global plant-based beverages market over the forecast period.Global Plant Based Beverages Market: DynamicsThe major factor driving the industrial segment in global plant-based beverages market include increasing health consciousness among consumers and high demand for low-fat food and beverages across the globe. Growing food & beverages industry and medicinal benefits of plant-based beverages are also some of the important factors driving the global plant-based beverages market. Companies manufacturing plant based beverages products can leverage potential opportunities in regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, attributed to rapidly growing demand for food & beverages and low-fat food and beverages over the forecast period. The changing food habits and trying new and expensive food items by the consumers are another important factor trending the global plant-based beverages market.Request For Report Sample@Global Plant Based Beverages Market: SegmentationThe global plant-based beverages market is segmented on the basis of product type, distribution channel, source, and region. On the basis of product type, a single segment is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market over the forecast period. The retail segment is expected to expand at a significant growth rate over the forecast period on the basis of a distribution channel. Among the source segments, a natural segment is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market. The natural segment is followed by organic segment and is expected to expand at a significant growth rate over the forecast period in global plant-based beverages market.Based on the product type, the global plant-based beverages market is segmented into:SingleFruitsStrawberryBananaOrangeRaspberryPomegranateLemonOthersHerb & SpicesCinnamonMintPeppermintOthersDry Fruits & NutsCoconutAlmondHazelnutOthersBeansChocolateCoffeeVanillaOthersCaramelNeapolitanPinacoladaSoyRiceBlendsBased on the distribution channel, the global plant-based beverages market is segmented into:RetailHypermarket/ SupermarketGrocery StoresOnline ChannelFood ServiceBased on the source, the global plant-based beverages market is segmented into:NaturalOrganicGlobal Plant Based Beverages Market: Regional OverviewOn the basis of geography, the global plant-based beverages market is fragmented into seven regions namely, North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East & Africa and Japan. Among the regions, North America is expected to dominate the global plant-based beverages market in terms of revenue contribution owing to increasing health consciousness among consumers in the region. North America is followed by Western Europe in global plant-based beverages market, attributed to high demand for low-fat food and beverages across the region. APEJ plant-based beverages market is expected to expand at a significant growth rate, attributed to the high growth of plant-based products and beverages in the region over the forecast period. The Middle East & Africa is expected to represent a moderate opportunity in the global plant-based beverages market, owing to the moderate economic, agricultural, and industrial growth in the region. Overall, the outlook for the global plant-based beverages market is positive over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Global Plant Based Beverages Market: Key PlayersSome of the players identified in the global plant-based beverages market include So Delicious Dairy Free, E.I. WhiteWave Services, Inc., Blue Diamond Growers, Pacific Foods of Oregon, Inc., Dream Beverage, Inc., Califia Farms LP, The Coca-Cola Company, Sunrich Naturals, Chia Star, Inc., and Graindrops LLC.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Humidity Transmitters with Ethernet Interface

EE310 humidity / temperature and EE360 moisture in oil transmitters

www.epluse.com

Beside the RS485 interface with Modbus RTU protocol, the EE310 humidity and temperature transmitter and the EE360 moisture in oil transmitter from E+E Elektronik now feature an Ethernet interface with Modbus TCP protocol.The EE310 and EE360 represent the latest generation of industrial transmitters from the Austrian sensor specialist E+E Elektronik. A multi-functional 3.5" TFT colour display provides a comprehensive overview of the measurement task and allows the user to perform all settings directly on the device. An integrated data logger stores up to 20,000 values per measurand.Ethernet and RS485 InterfacesAs a standard, the measured data is available on two voltage or current outputs. The devices can be optionally fitted with an RS485 module with Modbus RTU protocol or with an Ethernet module with Modbus TCP protocol. The interface settings can be performed with a PC using the free configuration software or directly on the device via display and push buttons. The Ethernet module features Power over Ethernet (PoE) and an IP65 rated RJ45 connector. Both interface modules are available also for retrofitting.EE310 Humidity and Temperature TransmitterThe EE310 measures relative humidity and temperature and calculates dew point temperature, frost point temperature, wet-bulb temperature, water vapour partial pressure, mixing ratio, absolute humidity and specific enthalpy. The transmitter is available for wall or duct mount, as well as with remote probes. The probes can be employed up to 180 C (356 F) and 20 bar (290 psi). Pluggable probe versions allow for quick and easy replacement.EE360 Moisture in Oil TransmitterThe EE360 is dedicated for monitoring the moisture content in hydraulic, lubrication and insulation oils as well as diesel fuel. The device measures water activity (aw) and temperature (T), and calculates the absolute water content (x) in ppm. The stainless steel probe can be installed into the process with an ISO or NPT slide fitting, which facilitates the accurate control of the immersion depth. Using the optional ball valve, the probe can be mounted or removed even without process interruption.Service-Friendly DesignThe modular IP65 enclosure facilitates installation and maintenance. The active part of the device, which accommodates the electronics and the probe, can be replaced within seconds while the back cover and the electrical connection remain untouched.E+E Elektronik develops and manufactures sensors and transmitters for humidity, temperature, dewpoint, moisture in oil, air velocity, flow and CO2. Data loggers, hand-held measuring devices and calibration systems complete the comprehensive product portfolio of the Austrian sensor specialist. The main applications for E+E products lie in HVAC, building automation, industrial process control and the automotive industry. A certified quality management system according to ISO 9001 and ISO/TS 16949 ensures the highest quality standards. E+E Elektronik has a worldwide dealership network and representative offices in Germany, France, Italy, Korea, China and the United States. The accredited E+E calibration laboratory (OEKD) has been commissioned by the Austrian Federal Office for Metrology (BEV) to provide the national standards for humidity and air velocity.E+E Elektronik Ges.m.b.HLangwiesen 74209 EngerwitzdorfAustriaT: +43 (0) 7235 605-0F: +43 (0) 7235 605-8info@epluse.atPress contact:Mr. Johannes FraundorferT: +43 (0)7235 605-217pr@epluse.at
Youforma Launches Mobile App, Offers Simplified Education Insights for Students One of its Kind in India

www.youforma.com

Youforma, a one-stop platform for students to gather information about careers, admissions, scholarships and exams, and make the right decisions is all set to launch its mobile app on 15 March 2018. This first-of-its-kind app will use intelligent mapping technology to understand the interests and educational aspirations of students and provide them with insights, news and updates that are most relevant to them.When it comes to career or education crossroads, there is no fit-for-all choice. Hiring practices have undergone a transformation, and now companies are looking for more than just good grades. We want passion and innovation in our workplaces. We believe that happens only when people get to do what they love. With this vision, we wanted to help students by providing them access to relevant information in their formative years, so they could effectively plan their future., says Sharan Madawal, Founder of Youforma.Youformas mobile app is built for students of age group 10-25. They can search and gather information about scholarships, competitive exams, colleges, courses, application deadlines, hobby classes and internships. Students can also set real time alerts on the app, while the desktop platform even allows students to apply to colleges and exams online. Parents can also use the app to understand the current trends in education and guide their children in the right direction.Youforma mobile app is currently available for download free of cost from Google Play.Highlights of the Youforma App Intelligent mapping algorithm to match students interests to relevant educational options, news and updates Seamless information shortlisting from over 100 news and education-related sources Career guidance from experts Real-time alerts on competitive exams and scholarships Information for Primary to Post-doctoral studentsAboutYouforma aims to simplify the admissions process and making it friendly for the students and institutions. It is a venture by Madvish Technologies, a company established to build scalable, easy-to-use technology solutions for the education vertical. Founder, Sharan Madawal, has been instrumental in developing award-winning products that help educational institutions streamline internal operational processes and admission processes.For more information, please visitor contact +91 78470 90909NASSCOM, 10,000 Startup Warehouse,No.150, Diamond District,
Jagriti 2018  IWD International Womens Day Celebrations at Banasthali World's Largest Fully Residential Women's University

Jagriti 2018  IWD International Womens Day Celebrations at Banasthali World's Largest Fully Residential Women's University

http://www.banasthali.org/

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The United Nations Theme for this year IWD is The Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming womens lives and the message from Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres is Achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world."International Womens Day 2018 is an opportunity to transform this momentum into action, to empower women in all settings, rural and urban, and celebrate the activists who are working relentlessly to claim womens rights and realize their full potential. This year, International Womens Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for womens rights, equality and justice. Sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women have lately been capturing headlines and public discourse, propelled by a rising determination for change.It is also an opportunity to consider how to accelerate the UN 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal number 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; and Goal number 4 Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning. Some key targets of the 2030 Agenda include ensuring that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes; ensuring that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education; ending all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere; eliminating all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation; and eliminating all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.The Womens Studies and Research Centre at Banasthali for which the Coordinator is Prof Manju Singh is indeed a hub of activities all round the year. The IWD celebrations this year was aptly named Jagriti 2018. The competitions conducted included Poster making with theme Women in Changing Scenario, Collage Making with theme Gender Sensitization, self composed poetry in Hindi or English for theme Womens Issues, Slogan Writing for theme Stop Violence Against Women, Dumb Charade with themes Women Achievers and Violence against Women, Extempore covering Womens issues, Screening of Documentary made on rural women of Banasthali by Ms Dolly Ashwin fourth year Chemical and open house discussions. Ms Dolly and team also presented a Nukkad Natak on wrong notions about menstruation to the rural women at Anaupcharik Mahila Shiksha Kendra. The poem by Sakshi Sharma on women status was hard hitting and soul searching indeed. The rural women were thrilled to watch the documentary made on them. The team of Banasthali students danced with the village women thus bridging the rural urban divide.The students and faculty who participated in Jagriti 2018 at Banasthali left with beaming faces and pride that they were indeed part of an institution which is a jewel in the crown among the womens universities not only in India today but across the globe.For more details about Banasthali seeAbout Banasthali: The Institution which is also the largest fully residential womens university in the world has played a big role in revolutionizing womens education in the country for the last eight decades with a belief that there is a tremendous role of higher education in empowering the women. Banasthali has scripted numerous success stories in a wide range of fields, and stands tall among the citadels of learning in India today. Team Banasthali with Vice Chancellor J C Bose Memorial Award for eminent scientist recipient Prof Aditya Shastri a highly acclaimed alumnus of BITS Pilani, SUNY State University of New York Stony Brook and MIT USA is indeed racing forward to be the very best among global women universities. Matter of pride that Banasthali has been selected by NITI Aayog along with ISB CCMB in Top 10 to host Atal Incubation Centre. Proud to be Banasthali alumni who call themselves as Banasthalites can be found in all latitudes, longitudes and altitudes in all walks of life across the globe.Banasthali UniversityP.O. Banasthali VidyapithRajasthan  304022Phone 91 1438 228456 / 228341Email: info@banasthali.ac.inWebsite:Facebook:
Network Traffic Analyzer Market Research, Market Scope, Market Drivers  Thriving Market Opportunities and Trends

Network Traffic Analyzer

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https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/report/global-network-traffic-analyzer-market-size-status-and-forecast-2025

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This Network Traffic Analyzer Market Report is prepared by studying and understanding the various fundamentals and also different levels of research regarding the Network Traffic Analyzer industry. It will also be an important measure to analyze the important and major players in the market and understand the market scenario in detail.This report studies the global Network Traffic Analyzer market, analyzes and researches the Network Traffic Analyzer development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeCisco SystemsSolarWindsNETSCOUT SYSTEMSCA TechnologiesIpswitchManageEnginePlixerColasoftHPENokiaKentikGenie NetworksMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoCloudOn-premisesMarket segment by Application, Network Traffic Analyzer can be split intoBFSIHealthcareGovernmentRetailOthersGet Sample Copy of this Report @Major Points Covered in Table of Contents 1 Industry Overview of Network Traffic Analyzer1.1 Network Traffic Analyzer Market Overview1.1.1 Network Traffic Analyzer Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Network Traffic Analyzer Market by Type1.3.1 Cloud1.3.2 On-premises1.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 BFSI1.4.2 Healthcare1.4.3 Government1.4.4 Retail1.4.5 Others2 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size (Value) by Players (2013-2018)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Cisco Systems3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 SolarWinds3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 NETSCOUT SYSTEMS3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 CA Technologies3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Ipswitch3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 ManageEngine3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Plixer3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Colasoft3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.8.5 Recent DevelopmentsBrowse full report with Table of Content @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-
Tamper Evident Bag Sealers Market Intelligence with Competitive Landscape

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Safe and secure packaging has been the top priority of product manufacturers in order to ensure that the product is getting delivered to the customers in their intact form. Also, with the stringent regulations laid by various authorities regarding safety of product packaging has led to an advent of tamper evident bag sealers. Tamper evident bag sealers allow the observer to easily identify any case of tampering with the product.The rising awareness among consumers and stringent regulations laid down by national and international authorities on the safety of product packaging has led to a shift in design. Deliberate or unintentional tampering of food products has been witnessed in the past leading to catastrophic events which required a more careful approach to packaging. This factor is significantly contributing to the growth of the global tamper evident bag sealer market globally.Global Tamper Evident Bag Sealers Market: Market Dynamics: One of the primary factors driving the growth of the global tamper evident bag sealers market is the stringent government regulations that strictly advise the incorporation of tamper evident packaging to be incorporated in the packaging format. The growth of the pharmaceutical market is also a driving factor of the global tamper evident bag sealers wherein it is mandatory to use tamper evident labels or packaging type that ensures high safety of the pharmaceutical product. However, the tamper evident bag sealers market faces stiff competition from all other alternatives of tamper evident packaging which are gaining more traction in the market.Another factor restraining the growth of the global market is certain issues with the sealing process such as non-adherence of the seal to the container which give rise to safety issues as well as delay in the production process.Request Report Sample@Global Tamper Evident Bag Sealers Market: Market Segmentation: The global tamper evident bag sealers market is segmented on the basis of machine type, end use, and geography. On the basis of machine type, the global tamper evident bag sealers market is segmented into: Automatic, Manual (Handheld); On the basis of end use, the global tamper evident bag sealers market is segmented into: Food & Beverages, Pharmaceuticals, Others (Industrial goods); Tamper evident bag sealers are extensively being used in the Food & Beverage as well as pharmaceutical industry.Global Tamper Evident Bag Sealers Market: Regional Outlook: On the basis of geography, the global tamper evident bag sealers market is segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, and Europe. North America is expected to lead the global tamper evident bag sealers market on the backdrop of highly technologically advanced end use industries as compared to other regions. Also, the rules laid down by the FDA also make it mandatory to incorporate tamper evident packaging for certain end user industries such as pharmaceuticals. Apart from North America, Asia Pacific is expected to witness growth at the highest CAGR attributed to growth of the packaging industry in key economies such as India and China. China accounts for a major share in the packaging machinery market, and hence, the tamper evident bag sealers market is expected to witness growth in the Asia Pacific region. Middle East & Africa along with Latin America are expected to witness growth at a sluggish pace to less technological advancements as well as less developed end user industries.Global Tamper Evident Bag Sealers Market: Key players: Some of the key players operating in the global tamper evident bag sealers market are Innoseal Systems Inc., Tamper Technologies Ltd, Quick Pak Inc., ADSURE Packaging Limited, and Butler Staple Company.Request For Table Of Content @Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market InsightsValley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Automotive Platooning Systems Market to Register Stable Expansion During 2016-2026

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The automotive platooning systems is defined as the collection of vehicles that travel together and which are in active coordination with each other. The vehicle platooning system uses different technologies to attain safe and competent transport. Platooning systems decrease the distance between two vehicles using electronic and mechanical coupling. This system allows the vehicles to accelerate or brake simultaneously. In addition to this, there are many advantages of automotive platooning systems. Some of them are increased traffic and fuel efficiency, more safety and driver comfort. There has been a lot of research and development activities over the past few years to make this concept a reality. The major players are also participating in several projects such as SARTRE, PATH, GCDC, Energy ITS, and many more, where this technique is tested and verified. The automotive platooning system is expected to be very lucrative market in the upcoming years.Automotive Platooning Systems Market: Drivers and RestraintsOne of the major driver for growth in the automotive platooning systems market is its added advantages such as great fuel economy, less traffic collisions and reduced congestion. The increasing automotive manufacturing is expected to boost the demand for automotive platooning systems, thus driving the global automotive platooning systems market. The major players in automotive platooning systems market are heavily investing in the development of platooning technology. The major challenges for the automotive platooning systems market are impaired drivers, technical errors of the vehicles and implementing new applications in existing road infrastructures.Request For Report Sample@Automotive Platooning Systems Market: SegmentationThe automotive platooning systems market can be segmented based on vehicle type asLight commercial vehiclesHeavy commercial vehiclesThe automotive platooning systems market can also be segmented based on mode of communication asVehicle to Vehicle (V2V)Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I)Automotive Platooning Systems Market: Regional OutlookOn the basis of region the global pour point depressant market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific Countries excluding Japan and Japan. The automotive platooning systems is still undergoing a lot of research activities. These systems are expected to be largely adopted in the developed countries as compared to developing ones. Regions such as North America and Europe are anticipated to implement this system in the near future. The adoption level of automotive platooning systems is expected to increase a lesser pace in developing regions such as Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe.Automotive Platooning Systems Market: Major key playersSome of the major players identified in the global automotive platooning systems market are:Denso International America, Inc.Volvo Group Venture CapitalMagna InternationalUPS Strategic Enterprise FundIntel CapitalNokia Growth PartnersThe research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geography, technology and applications.The report covers exhaustive analysis on:Market SegmentsMarket DynamicsMarket SizeSupply & DemandCurrent Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies involvedTechnologyValue ChainRequest For Report Table of Content (TOC):Regional analysis includesNorth America (U.S., Canada)Latin America (Mexico. Brazil)Western Europe (Germany, Italy, France, U.K, Spain, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand)JapanMiddle East and Africa (GCC, S. Africa, N. Africa)ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Elevator Traction Machine Market to 2022 Top Manufacturers GAL, Otis, Kinetek, Wittur, ZIEHL ABBEG, Kone, Montanari, SASSI, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, KM, Yaskawa, NAWOOTEC, An Fam, Schindler

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https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/2017-global-and-regional-elevator-traction-machine-market-research-report-forecasts-2022/?utm_source=RR-SP

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Elevator Traction Machine Market report 2022 focuses on the major Types and Applications for the key players. Elevator Traction Machine market research report also provides analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market. The Elevator Traction Machine market research report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of Elevator Traction Machine Industry.Elevator traction machine is the power unit of the elevator, and usually located at the elevator machine room. The elevator traction machine used to refer to the collection of components that raise or lower the elevator. These include the drive motor, brake, speed reduction unit, sheaves and encoders. Generally, there are two standard types of driving machines provided for elevators: gearless machine and geared machine.Request for a Sample Copy of Elevator Traction Machine Market Report @Key Questions Answered in this ReportWhat will the market size be in 2022?What are the key factors driving the global Elevator Traction Machine market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key players in the Elevator Traction Machine market?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?The report covers forecast and analysis for the elevator traction machine market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2012-2016 along with a forecast from 2017 to 2022 based on both output/volume and revenue. The study then describes the drivers and restraints for the elevator traction machine market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes the study of opportunities available in the elevator traction machine market on a global level.The report has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global elevator traction machine market collected from specialized sources. The competitive landscape section of the report provides a clear insight into the market share analysis of key industry players. Company overview, financial overview, product portfolio, new project launched, recent development analysis are the parameters included in the profile.Demand for this market rises from the Residential, Commercial, Industrial, and other applications. All the segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends and the market is estimated from 2017 to 2022. Relevantly, the report and company profiles specify the key drivers that are impacting the demand in global elevator traction machine market.Global Elevator Traction Machine Market Key ApplicationsResidential, Commercial and IndustrialGlobal Elevator Traction Machine Market Key RegionsNorth America, Europe, Asia Pacific and ChinaGlobal Elevator Traction Machine Market Key Vendors including:GAL, Otis, Kinetek, Wittur, ZIEHL ABBEG, Kone, Montanari, SASSI, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, KM, Yaskawa, NAWOOTEC, An Fam, Schindler and request free sample to get a complete list of companies.For more information on this report, Please visit at:This report is based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global market collected from specialized sources. Research analysts have derived insights using a mix of primary and secondary research with an aim to provide a holistic picture of the market. The research methodology used to estimate and forecast the market begins with capturing data on key players revenues in the market through secondary research. The bottom-up procedure was employed to obtain the overall market size of the global market. Specific to this market, global market volume & revenue is estimated on the basis of the sales information of key major players.After arriving at the overall market size, the industry is then divided into several segments and sub-segments which are then verified through primary research by conducting extensive interviews with key people such as CEOs, sales managers, Directors and executives. Drawing on research, expert interviews, and extensive experience working with market-facing companies worldwide, main trends that have begun- and will most likely continue-to affect this industry are identified and analyzed.Related Reports: -2017 Global and Regional Elevator Traction Machine Market Research Report Forecasts 2022This report focus on Global and regional market, providing information on major players like manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, traders, customers, investors and etc., major types, major applications from Global and major regions such as Europe, North American, South American, Asia (Excluding China), China and etc.More Report @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:
Research on GPON Technology Market Scope, Emerging Market Trends and Regional Outlook 2018

GPON Technology Market

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https://www.qyresearchgroups.com/report/global-gpon-technology-market-size-status-and-forecast-2025

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2018 GPON Technology Market provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics and a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining industry growth.The GPON Technology market revenue generation is also included in the report. The various segments from which major sales of the market is obtained is included within the report along with the regional segmentation. The regional segmentation helps the market players to understand where to make investments and where there will support from both the consumers and government.This report studies the global GPON Technology market, analyzes and researches the GPON Technology development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeHuaweiZTENokiaFiberhomeCalixADTRANDASAN ZhoneCiscoNECAllied TelesisIskratelUnizyxAlphionMarket segment by Type, the product can be split into2.5G PONXG-PONXGS-PONNG-PON2Market segment by Application, GPON Technology can be split intoTransportationTelecommunicationsHealthcareEnergy & UtilitiesResidentialOthersGet Sample Copy of this Report @Major Points Covered in Table of Contents 1 Industry Overview of GPON Technology1.1 GPON Technology Market Overview1.1.1 GPON Technology Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global GPON Technology Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 GPON Technology Market by Type1.3.1 2.5G PON1.3.2 XG-PON1.3.3 XGS-PON1.3.4 NG-PON21.4 GPON Technology Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Transportation1.4.2 Telecommunications1.4.3 Healthcare1.4.4 Energy & Utilities1.4.5 Residential1.4.6 Others3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Huawei3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 ZTE3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Nokia3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Fiberhome3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Calix3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 ADTRAN3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 DASAN Zhone3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Cisco3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 NEC3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Allied Telesis3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 GPON Technology Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 Iskratel3.12 Unizyx3.13 AlphionBrowse full report with Table of Content @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-
Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Market By Offering (Solutions,Services), Technology, Deployment type, Applications Forecasts to 2023

Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On  Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Market By Offering (Solutions,Services), Technology, Deployment type, Applications Forecasts to 2023.Description:Audible & Visual Signaling Devices is a comprehensive range of signaling products designed for use in areas where the prevalence of harsh environmental conditions and where there is a risk of explosion due to the presence of flammable atmospheres. Signaling devices can be in the form of the audio or visual type depending on the signaling devices. The major product in this report include Strobe & Beacons, various type signal Lights, Bells & Horns, Fire Alarm/Call Points, Speakers & Tone Generators and Visual &Audible Combination Units used in the Oil & Gas, Chemical & Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverages, Energy & Power, Mining and other industries.Get a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comScope of the Report:This report focuses on the Audible & Visual Signaling Devices in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversPatlite CorporationFederal Signal CorporationWerma Signaltechnik GmbHEaton Corporation PLC (Cooper Industries)Rockwell Automation, Inc.Potter Electric Signal Company, LLCHoneywell (Novar GmbH)R. Stahl AGSchneider ElectricE2S Warning SignalsTomar Electronics, IncMoflash Signalling LtdMarket 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 etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversStrobe and BeaconsOther Signal LightsBells and HornsFire Alarm/Call PointsSpeakers and Tone GeneratorsVisual & Audible Combination UnitsMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoOil and GasChemical and PharmaceuticalFood and BeveragesEnergy and PowerMiningOthersThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Audible & Visual Signaling Devices market.Chapter 1, to describe Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Audible & Visual Signaling Devices, with sales, revenue, and price of Audible & Visual Signaling Devices, 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 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices, for each region, from 2013 to 2018;Continue..Report Details @Table Of Contents  Major Key Points1 Market Overview1.1 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Strobe and Beacons1.2.2 Other Signal Lights1.2.3 Bells and Horns1.2.4 Fire Alarm/Call Points1.2.5 Speakers and Tone Generators1.2.6 Visual & Audible Combination Units1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Oil and Gas1.3.2 Chemical and Pharmaceutical1.3.3 Food and Beverages1.3.4 Energy and Power1.3.5 Mining1.3.6 Others1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 United States Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2013-2023)1.5 Market Dynamics1.5.1 Market Opportunities1.5.2 Market Risk1.5.3 Market Driving Force2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Patlite Corporation2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 22.1.3 Patlite Corporation Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.2 Federal Signal Corporation2.2.1 Business Overview2.2.2 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Type and Applications2.2.2.1 Type 12.2.2.2 Type 22.2.3 Federal Signal Corporation Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.3 Werma Signaltechnik GmbH2.3.1 Business Overview2.3.2 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Type and Applications2.3.2.1 Type 12.3.2.2 Type 22.3.3 Werma Signaltechnik GmbH Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.4 Eaton Corporation PLC (Cooper Industries)2.4.1 Business Overview2.4.2 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Type and Applications2.4.2.1 Type 12.4.2.2 Type 22.4.3 Eaton Corporation PLC (Cooper Industries) Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)2.5 Rockwell Automation, Inc.2.5.1 Business Overview2.5.2 Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Type and Applications2.5.2.1 Type 12.5.2.2 Type 22.5.3 Rockwell Automation, Inc. Audible & Visual Signaling Devices Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2016-2017)ContinueFor more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US: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 features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Research report covers the Powder Bed Fusion Market share and Growth, 2017-2025

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Powder Bed Fusion Market OverviewAdditive manufacturing is a unique process which manufactures parts directly from a digital 3D blueprint. It uses a layering approach to building up materials step by step. It is also known as 3D printing and can be effectively utilised to produce dense metallic parts with a high degree of precision. It has the advantages of part customization, complexity, consolidation and light building material. It is of great importance in the aerospace, defence, automobile manufacturing, and oil & gas industries.The powder bed fusion market is one part of the overall metal 3D printing processes, the other being Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology. In this method, each powder bed layer is selectively fused together by using laser or electron beams. It includes Direct Metal Laser sintering (DMLS), Selective heat sintering (SHS), Selective laser sintering (SLS), and Electron beam melting (EBM) and Selective laser melting (SLM). All these processes involve spreading the powder material over various layers. They can use any powder based materials, but commonly used examples are Nylon, Stainless Steel, Titanium, Cobalt Chrome, Steel, and Aluminium.Powder Bed Fusion Market Drivers3D printing in the powder bed fusion market is most suited for places where there are low volume and high geometric complexity. With increasing technology and decreasing cost, though, the powder bed fusion market is only likely to grow. Some of the drivers include the greater complexity of devices required in a faster time period. Powder bed fusion manufacturing allows more complex designs with a lighter building material. This can allow rapid prototyping, vital in industries like aerospace, defence and even the automobile industry. It is also vital in cost and weight reduction, which can dramatically improve cost savings over the lifetime of the product.Read Report Overview @These cost-savings can also be passed onto consumers, benefiting both them and manufacturers. It has also made significant inroads in the medical and oil & gas industries. It is used to build medical instrumentation like guides to assist proper surgical placement, medical implants like hip joints and external prostheses like hands. Thus, the booming aerospace industry worldwide along with the ageing population requiring medical devices can be considered the two main drivers of the powder bed fusion market.Powder Bed Fusion Market RestraintsSubstantial progress has been made in the powder bed fusion market, however, some challenges still remain. Reduction in cost will benefit any industry and the price of the powder bed fusion equipment is still prohibitively high. Performance in terms of speed, process control and accuracy will also go a long way in boosting adoption of devices sold in the powder bed fusion market.In-process quality control, monitoring and closed loop control systems will also help to improve the consistency, reliability and uniformity of the equipment. Greater speed in building the machines, designing more complex variations and reducing assembly line requirements could also widen the scope of the powder bed fusion market in the years to come.Request Sample Report @Powder Bed Fusion Market Key RegionsThe powder bed fusion process finds widespread application in the aerospace, medical and oil & gas industries. Therefore, the powder bed fusion market will have the greatest growth opportunities in those regions where these respective industries are dominant. For the aerospace & medical industries, the main regions to target include the U.S, the E.U, China, Japan and India. The Middle East accounts for 3/5th of global crude oil production, so manufacturers would be well-advised to not ignore this dynamic region either. Hence, there is great growth potential for the powder bed fusion market across the world.Powder Bed Fusion Market Key Market PlayersSome of the powder bed fusion market key players include EOS, SLM Solutions, Phenix, Arcam and Concept Laser.ABOUT US:Persistence 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:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Specialty Cheese Market Leading Players Analysis 2018 | Bel Brands, ORNUA FOODS NORTH AMERICA INC, BelGioioso Cheese and Arla Foods | Industry Review

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Latest Industry Updates:Dec 2017 Leading berry company Naturipe Farms has been awarded at this years New York Produce Show and Conference for its Naturipe Snacks product line that combines fruit, cheese, and nuts into one portable package.July 2017 Land OLakes launched a line of USDA Organic Cheddar cheese powder at IFT in Las Vegas te respond to consumer demand for natural dairy ingredients free from food coloring and dyes.April 2017 Dean Foods Company and KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese have announce their strategic collaboration spotlighting Dean's DairyPure brand milk and KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese (KMC).March 2017 ermont Creamery became an independently operated subsidiary of Minnesota-based Land O'Lakes. It will continue to produce its fresh and aged goat cheeses, cultured butter and fresh dairy at the creamery in Websterville, Vermont.Receive a Sample Report @Competitive Analysis:The specialty cheese market is competitive with major market players operating at the global level. The key industry players in the market have adopted the strategies such as geographical expansion, product launch, partnerships, and acquisitions. Most of the companies operating in this market are focusing on expanding its operations across the geographies, augmenting its capabilities and investing in research and development to offer products with better functionality.The leading market players in the global specialty cheese market are Bel Brands (U.S.), ORNUA FOODS NORTH AMERICA INC (U.S.), BelGioioso Cheese Inc (U.S.), Arla Foods (Denmark), Kanegrade Ltd. (U.K.), Kraft Heinz Ingredients (U.S.), and Saputo Inc. (Canada) among many others.Market Overview:Specialty cheese is a type of cheese in which there is particular attention given to natural flavor and texture of the cheese. Specialty cheese is derived from various sources of milk such as goat milk, sheep milk, whole cow milk, skimmed cow milk and buffalo milk and it is a rich source of protein, calcium and phosphorus. The main focus in specialty cheese is on the natural flavors added to it such as herbs, spices, fruits, nuts and others. They are available in various types such as fresh, aged fresh, soft white, semi-soft, hard, flavored, and others.Inclination of the consumers towards application of various types of cheese in their fast food and snack products is driving the market of specialty cheese in this region. Market Research Future, a firm which specializes in market reports related to the Food, Beverages & Nutrition sector among others, recently forecasted in its report on Global Specialty Cheese Market Research Report- Forecast to 2023 that the market will demonstrate an exceptional CAGR during the forecast period.Availability of wide range of specialty cheese along with increasing application of specialty cheese in fast food products, snacks, bakery products, and others is driving the growth of the market. Changing lifestyle and consumption pattern among the consumers are the supporting factors in the growth of specialty cheese market. Moreover, inclination of consumers towards fast food and snacks is boosting the market of specialty cheese. However, surge in the prices of milk may hamper the specialty cheese market growth in developing countries.Access Report Details @Regional Analysis:Specialty Cheese Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and rest of the world (RoW). Europe is dominating the specialty cheese market followed by North America. Growing consumption of specialty cheese in snacks and fast foods by the increasing population is the major factor driving the specialty cheese market in Europe. Moreover, changing lifestyle and increasing disposable income in countries such as India, china and Japan is expected to grow the specialty cheese market in Asia Pacific. Additionally, high focus on R&D is increasing the range of specialty cheese products which will surge the market in rest of the world.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Low Rolling Resistance (LRR) Tire Market to Reflect a Holistic Expansion During 2016-2026

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Tires are considered as an important factor to improve the vehicle efficiency and reduce overall fuel consumption. According to International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), it is estimated that improvements in tire energy efficiency could reduce the fuel consumption by 3 to 5% and greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million metric tons annually, across all existing passenger vehicle fleets. In the quest for increasing fuel efficiency and gas mileage, automotive manufacturers are pushing tire makers to develop LRR tires, which have shown improvements in increasing fuel economy in recent years. While LRR tires are frequently used for hybrid cars, mainstream vehicles are expected to gain traction for LRR tires over the forecast period. Tire and automotive manufacturers globally have strived to increase fuel efficiency in recent years by equipping automobiles with LRR tires.Low Rolling Resistance(LRR) Tire Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe main factors driving the demand for LRR tires, is their ability to save significant amount of fuel when compared to tires that are not designed for LRR. It has been estimated by the automotive industry that a 10% increase in the tire rolling resistance will result in about 1.5% decrease in the vehicle fuel economy. More and more fleets every year are recognizing the benefits of LRR tires which represent a good investment for dealing with fuel economy, thus accelerating the demand of global LRR tires throughout the forecast period. Moreover, government regulations, stringent emission and safety norms globally is anticipated to fuel the demand of LRR tire market over the forecast period (2016  2026).Request For Report Sample@The fact that the cost to operate LRR tires is relatively higher as compared to other tires which do not have low rolling resistance technology, is one of the factors inhibiting the growth of LRR tires market globally. Increasing adoption of LRR tires by commercial vehicles such as on highway truck fleets in last two years, is one key trend observed in global LRR tire market.Global Low Rolling Resistance (LRR) Tire Market: SegmentationOn the basis of vehicle type, the global LRR tire market is segmented into,Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV)Heavy Commercial Vehicle (HCV)Passenger VehicleOn the basis of configuration, the global LRR tire market is segmented intoDual tireWide-baseOn the basis of sales channel type, the global LRR tire market is segmented intoOEMAftermarketGlobal Low Rolling Resistance (LRR) Tire Market: Regional OutlookIn terms of geography, the global LRR tire market has been divided in to seven key regions including North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan.The global LRR tire market is expected to register healthy CAGR during the forecast period. North America is anticipated to be the dominant market for LRR market followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Factors such as adoption of safety regulations by government agencies along with an increase in vehicle sales and safety installations per vehicle, are fuelling the demand for LRR market globally.Request For Report Table of Content (TOC):Global Low Rolling Resistance (LRR) Tire Market: Key PlayersSome of the market participants in the global LRR tire market are Apollo Tyres Ltd, Bridgestone Corporation, Continental AG, Michelin, Maxxis International, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Pirelli & C.SpA, Yokohama Rubber Company and Sumitomo CorporationABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Impact of Existing and Emerging Gastroesophageal pH Meter Market Trends And Forecast 2017-2025

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Gastroesophageal pH meter is a direct in vivo measurement that record and measures the pH in esophagus for the evaluation of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Gastroesophageal pH test is performed by inserting a thin plastic catheter through a nostril into the esophagus using an endoscope. Catheter tip contains a sensor which measure the acidic level. The sensor is placed above the lower esophageal sphincter, area specialized of esophageal muscle.The sensor records each reflux of the acid in this position. The gatroesophageal pH test measures the amount of acid backing up or refluxing from stomach into the esophagus. Results of gatroesophageal pH test are affected by some medications like H2 blockers, proton pump inhibitors, antacids, nitrates, and others. The gastroesophageal pH test is commonly done to confirm the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease or to identify the cause of various symptoms like heartburn, uncommon symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (like chest pain, asthma, chronic cough and other throat symptoms).A recently developed device for the monitoring of gastroesophageal pH uses a capsule called the bravo capsule. The capsule contains a battery, an acid sensing probe, and a transmitter. In addition, the capsule also contains a small magnet. Probe monitors the acid in the food pipe (esophagus) and accordingly transmits the information to a recorder. The bravo pH capsule is attached to a delivery system. It is a catheter free test which measures the pH level in your esophagus.Read Report Overview @These measurements are used to evaluate the heartburn and acid reflux symptoms. However, the bravo pH test is not for those who are having an implantable cardiac pacemaker, obstructions, varices, and severe esophagitis. The gastroesophageal pH monitoring has helped in the advancement of knowledge regarding gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The gastroesophageal pH meter has become an important tool in the management and diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).According to the CDC, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a very common disorder which is affecting mostly the children worldwide.Gastroesophageal pH Meter Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global gatroesophageal pH meter market is driven by the rising adoption of in vivo measurements for the gastroesophageal reflux disease. Rising incidence of diseases related to the esophageal disorders is also the key factor which is driving the growth of global gatroesophageal pH meter market. However, lack of skilled physicians is expected to restrain the growth of gastroesophageal pH meter market.Gastroesophageal pH Meter Market: SegmentationThe global gastroesophageal pH meter market is classified on the basis of product type, test type and end userOn the basis of product type, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market is segmented as: Bench Top pH Meters,Portable pH Meters,Continuous pH Meters,,On the basis of test type, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market is segmented as:Catheter based,Wireless based,,On the basis of end user, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market is segmented as: Hospitals,Diagnostic Centers,Clinics,Ambulatory CentersGastroesophageal pH Meter Market: OverviewBased on product type, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market is segmented into bench top pH meters, portable pH meters and continuous pH meters. Amongst all, portable pH meters are expected to hold maximum share in the market due to its compatibility.Based on test type, the market is segmented into catheter and wireless based gastroesophageal pH test. Due to the poor tolerance of catheter based pH test, wireless based test holds the maximum share in the market of global gastroesophageal pH meter. Based on the end user, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market is segmented into hospitals, diagnostic centers and others.Request Sample Report @Gastroesophageal pH Meter Market: Regional OverviewIn terms of region, the global gastroesophageal pH meter market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe are the leading player of gastroesophageal pH meter market owing to increasing awareness and successful research in product innovations. Asia Pacific region is also expected to grow due to increasing investment in health care spending and rise in research and development.Gastroesophageal pH Meter Market: Key PlayersThe key players in the global gastroesophageal pH meter market are Medica SpA, EB Neuro S.p.A., Diversatek, Inc., Medical Measurement Systems, LABORIE, Medtronic Plc. among others.ABOUT US:Persistence 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:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Major Key Players of Polymer gel market & Industry share 20162024

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Polymer gel market is projected to witness significant demand in medical industry by 2024. Hydrogels, which led the polymer (crosslink) gels industry in 2016, have been achieving rising popularity in drug delivery system, wound care, contact lenses, cosmetic surgeries and tissue engineering. Hydrogels have been used in moist dressings, as components of pastes for wound care and as debriding agents. Their high-water content allows vapor and oxygen transmission in various wounds & burns. The WHO has projected that by 2020, individuals aged 60 years and more in the globe will outnumber the kids younger than five. As a result, healthcare providers and governments will seek to sustain the quality of treatment and care provided in the coming years. These traits present brighter potential for crosslink gels in the medical applications by 2024.Polymer Gel Market Size will surpass USD 55 billion by 2024; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.Request for a sample copy of this report @The modernizing agriculture sector will mark significant demand for super absorbent polymer hydrogels in the near future. The polymer gel market demand will be accredited to their superior properties such as: water saving, improving soil quality, reducing fertilizer applications and decreasing the irrigation frequency- thus resulting in stronger and healthier plant growth even under hot and dry climatic conditions.Aerogels will be the fastest growing segment in polymer gel market and will have high demand in contrast to the conventional thermal insulation (for instance, calcium silicate, fiberglass, expanded perlite, etc.) in the next 7 years. The high demand will be mainly attributed to the unique features of aerogels including: small space requirement, corrosion resistance, uniform performance in elevated temperatures, etc.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Personal care & hygiene sector contributed to more than 50% share in global polymer gel market in 2016. Crosslink gel applications in this sector have been majorly in feminine care products, adult incontinence care products and baby diapers. Population escalation across the globe, rising living standards in the emerging economies, ageing population particularly in Japan and China will be some factors facilitating the scope for crosslink gels in personal care segment.Rising needs of sustainability will encourage the crosslink gel applications in various environmental applications. Hydrogels are having rising demand in industrial wastewater treatment, waste solidification in oil & natural gas drilling fluid & drilling mud, etc. Aerogels are used in filtration applications, for instance, in water filters to remove Naphta products (crude oil); in antimicrobial air filters for ventilators, etc. These traits present brighter growth aspects for polymer gel market in environmental applications in the near future. The processes for liquefaction and gasification of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been the challenging services demanding industrial thermal insulation. Polymer gel market from aerogels products are projected to hold substantial demand with CAGR over 8% for insulation application in oil & gas industry by 2024.Browse Complete Report Summary @Space exploration is estimated to be a significant area of growth for aerogels by 2024. Aerogels are used as flexible, thin insulation in space suits, cryogenic insulation in space shuttle, etc. North America polymer gel market led the demand for aerogels in 2016 holding high share above 40% and is estimated to follow the similar trend by 2024. Hydrogels industry was led by Asia Pacific in 2016, which will also to see robust demand by 2024.Major manufacturers in polymer gel market include: BASF, Paul Hartmann, ADM, Evonik, Nippon Shokubai Co. Ltd., Buhler AG, ConvaTec Healthcare, SNF Holding Company, Chemical Industries, Ltd., Aspen Aerogels, Active Aerogels, Cabot Corporation, Aerogel UK Ltd, JIOS Aerogel, etc.Read Our Blog:About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:Social Media: Google+ | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
Mobile Health (mHealth) Market is Projected to Reach $60 Billion By 2020

Mobile Health (mHealth) Market

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New York, March 08, 2018: The mHealth market is segmented based on Equipment as Blood Glucose Meters, BP monitors, Pulse Oximeters, Neurological Monitoring, Cardiac Monitors, Apnea & Sleep Monitor, Wearable fitness sensor device and Heart Rate Meters, Others. The mHealth market is segmented based on service as Wellness Services Market, Prevention Services Market, Treatment Services Market, Diagnosis Service Market, Monitoring Services Market, Healthcare Systems Strengthening Solutions Market. The mHealth market is segmented based on Stakeholders as Mobile Operators, Device Vendors, Healthcare Providers, Application Players. The mHealth market is segmented based on Therapeutic segment as Cardiovascular, Diabetes, Respiratory, Neurology, Others.The era of mHealth is eHealth which means electronic health which is health care services through mobile technologies such as mobile phones. To generate data on an individuals biology, physiology, as well as the daily environment, mHealth uses wireless and mobile technologies. There are increasing incidences of chronic diseases such as heart ailments, diabetes, and cancer is expected to boost demand. 3G & 4G LTE networks enable services such as video calling & high-speed data transfer which further helps in the fast delivery of telemedicine services. The services are provided in a two way as well as one way mode which is dependent on the data access programs.Global mobile health (mHealth) market is estimated to reach $60 billion by the end of 2020 at a CAGR of 33% till 2020.Browse Full Report:The major driving factors of mHealth market are as follows: The number of active subscribers is increasing and the coverage of mobile networks is growing. This in turn increases the demand for smart devices. There is increase in the occurrence of the lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity fueling to the growth of the market. There is an increase in the cost of medical services and complexity. Although the per capita income is increasing but there is no increase in the quality of medical services. There is an increase in the inclination towards preventive care. Portability, ease of use, automation and customizationThe restraining factors of Mobile Health (mHealth) market are as follows: Lower accuracy and the nascence of technologies especially in developing and under-developed regions.The mobile health market geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geography market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global mHealth Market and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2020.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for mHealth Market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for various types of mHealth market with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Philips healthcare, Omron HealthCare Inc., Bayer Healthcare, LifeWatch, Cardionet Inc., Masimo Corporation, Sanofie, Boston Scientific, AT&T Inc., and Johnson & Johnson. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Market Segmentation of Mobile Health Market:BY EQUIPMENT Blood Glucose Meters BP Monitors Pulse Oximeters Neurological Monitoring Cardiac Monitors Apnea & Sleep Monitor Wearable fitness sensor device and Heart Rate Meters OthersBY SERVICE Wellness Services Market Prevention Services Market Treatment Services Market Diagnosis Service Market Monitoring Services Market Healthcare Systems Strengthening Solutions MarketBY STAKEHOLDERS Mobile Operators Device Vendors Healthcare Providers Application PlayersBY THERAPEUTIC SEGMENT Cardiovascular Diabetes Respiratory Neurology OthersBY GEOGRAPHY North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the WorldRequest Sample Report:Table of Contents1 INTRODUCTION2 Research Methodology3 Executive Summary4 Premium Insights5 Market Overview6 Industry Insights7 Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety Software Market, By Functionality8 Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety Software Market, By Delivery Mode9 Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety Software Market, By End-Users10 Geographic Analysis11 Competitive Landscape12 Company Profile12.1 AB-Cube12.2 Arisglobal12.3 Extedo GMBH.12.4 Ennov.12.5 Online Business Applications, Inc12.6 Oracle Corporation.12.7 Sarjen Systems Pvt. Ltd12.8 Sparta Systems, Inc12.9 United Biosource Corporation12.1 Umbra GlobalReasons to buy this Report:1) Obtain the most up to date information available on all active and planned mHealth Market globally.2) Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry.3) Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of mHealth Market industry and unit capacity data.4) Assess your competitors refining portfolio and its evolution.About UsMarket Research Engine (MRE) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. MREs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each Market Research Engines research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market 2018: Robert Bosch GmbH, Continental AG, Harman International, Visteon Corporation

Automotive Instrument Cluster Market 2018

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Automotive Instrument Cluster Market 2018Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market Share, Size, Trends, And Business Opportunity Analysis Report 2018 include historic data, with forecast data to 2023. Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market report is helpful for future strategy development, and to know about Market Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, And Global market size, share, Growth, Trends, key players forecast to 2023Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market Information Report by Product Type (Head-up Display, Information Display, Infotainment & Navigation, Instrument Cluster, Telematics, and Others), Technology Type (Basic and Advanced), End Market (Economic Passenger Car, Luxury Cars, And Mid-Scale Priced Vehicle), Vehicle Type (passenger car and commercial vehicle), and region.Get Sample Report of Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market @Market ScenarioAutomotive cockpit electronics consists of the instrument panel, and other controls that enable the driver to drive the vehicle. The instrument panel is used to display relevant information on single large display to make it easier for the driver to ride the vehicle. In traditional form, there were self-contained systems that included steering, braking, traction, and other. Various technologies such as integrated infotainment, and driver assistance system (ADAS) have evolved now, and are part of automotive cockpit electronics industry. Automotive cockpit includes various products such as HUD, information display, infotainment & navigation, instrument cluster, and telematics. Head-up display is the most common and trending technology evolved in the cockpit module segment. Head-up display is a transparent display that displays the information in such a manner that the user is not distracted in any manner. The users will have their entire focus over driving the car with additional information showing on the windshield. An instrument cluster includes the speedometer, and other digital devices rather than analog device that is difficult to read. Automotive cockpit electronics is developed to enhance the driving experience of the driver by creating a comfortable environment in the vehicle. The electronics in the cockpit is built-in to provide safety for the driver and passenger. The demand for electronics in automotive has increased to with the increased demand for safety, quality infotainment, and better ride.Key PlayersThe key players in global automotive cockpit electronics are Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), Continental AG (Germany), Harman International (U.S), Visteon Corporation (U.S), and Delphi Automotive PLC (U.K), Denso Corp. (Japan), Alpine Electronics Inc. (Japan), Johnson Controls (U.S.), IAV (Germany), and Magneti Marelli (Italy).The factors that are responsible for the growth of automotive cockpit electronics are growing demand for the innovate technologies such as head-up display, increase in the awareness for the safety. The growth is also powered by increase in the per capita income of the customers, and growing demand for the advanced autonomous cars with changing demand for advanced electronics devices. It shows all the information such as navigation and other relevant information for the driver in the line of sight. In case of instrument panel, the driver has to take his eyes off for a few moments but not in case of head-up display. Due to increase safety provided by innovative technologies in automotive cockpit module, cockpit electronics are expected to grow during the forecast period.The automotive cockpit electronics market is segmented based on product type, technology type, end market, vehicle type, and region. On the basis of product type, the market is segmented as HUD, information display, infotainment & navigation, instrument cluster, telematics, and others. The Head-up display segment is expected to dominate the automotive cockpit electronics market during the forecast period due to increase in demand Head-up display in the luxury and premium vehicles. The growing awareness about the safety features of head-up display, is expected to drive the segment in future. On the basis of technology type, advanced cockpit electronics is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period due to the features of advanced systems. Windshield head-up display, advance information display, and advance telematics, are some such systems. On the basis of end market, luxury car segment is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period due to the advance feature developed in the luxury cars. Automotive OEMs are majorly focusing on development of high end infotainment and display system in the luxury vehicle to improve safety and attract more customers. This growing development in the luxury cars is expected to drive the segment in the future.On the basis of region, the market has been segmented as North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific region is expected to dominate the automotive cockpit electronics market during the forecast period due to the growing demand of vehicle in emerging countries such as India, China, and Japan. The demand for the cockpit electronics module is directly linked with the production of the vehicle. The increase in production of the vehicle, will result in the growing demand for cockpit electronics in the vehicle. Europe is expected to be the second largest region to dominate the market during the forecast period owing to the rise in the ownership of the passenger cars in Europe. Germany is expected to account for the largest market share during the forecast period due to a large number of passenger and commercial vehicle in this region. The increase in the passenger and commercial vehicle, is expected to result in the growth of region in future.Get Details Information of Automotive Cockpit Electronics Market @Continued.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.CONTACT US:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312sales@marketresearchfuture.com
N-Butanol Market to register a healthy CAGR for the forecast period, 2017-2025

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Global N-Butanol Market: Market IntroductionN-butanol also known as n-butyl is an alcohol with chemical formula C?H?OH that is produced through the petrochemical process, as well as through fermentation of sugar derived from agricultural crops. It is used as an intermediate, to produce high-value resin and specialty solvents which is used in a variety of formulated products such as paints and coating, cosmetic and fragrances, adhesives, ink, camphor, dyes and others. It is also used in different coating applications such as cross-linked baking finishes and lacquers.Global N-Butanol Market: Market DynamicsThe increasing usage of n-butanol in butyl acetate, butyl acrylate, plasticizers, and glycol ethers owing to high demand in engineering plastics, automotive coating, marine coating, adhesives, and super absorbent polymers is expected to aid a robust growth of the n-butanol market. The growth of global solvents market can also be attributed as a driver of global n-butanol market.In addition to this, the preferred usage of n-butanol as a diluent and reactant in the manufacture of ureaformaldehyde and melamineformaldehyde resins is expected to create a growth opportunity for the n-butanol market. On the other hand, product maturity,volatile raw material prices affecting production rate and environment regulations pertaining to n-butanol are some of the restraining factors faced by the global n-butanol market. Strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions with regional enterprises to augment market footprint are key market expansion strategies been practiced by the major manufacturers across the globe.Read Report Overview @Global N-Butanol Market: Regional OutlookSurge in investments by numerous major players in the developing countries including China, India, Sweden, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia is expected to augment the industry growth. Asia Pacific is the expected to be the record a dominant market in terms of volume and is expected to witness a high growth during the forecast period, with China being the major end use market. Apart from Asia Pacific, North America and Europe are expected to hold high potential in the n-butanol market in the region due to development in the end use markets.U.S. holds the prominent share of the North American N-Butanol market. The largest share is the consequence of maximum agreements & collaborations, and expansions happened due to the presence of the key players in the country. The market in Germany dominates the European market for n-butanol having accounted highest market share followed by France. Middle East and Latin America is also giving positive sentiments for the growth of n-butanol in the region.Global N-Butanol Market: Market SegmentationThe global n-butanol market can be segmented based on its application and region. On the basis of application, the market is divided into direct solvent, butyl acrylate, butyl acetate, glycol ethers, and plasticizers, ureaformaldehyde, melamineformaldehyde, and others.Request Sample Report @Global N-Butanol Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the key market participants in the global n-butanol market are Sasol Ltd, BASF SE, Dow Chemical, OXEA, BASF-PETRONAS Chemicals., Eastman, Mitsubishi Chemical, Grupa Azoty, KH Neochem, Sinopec, Cobalt Technologies, CNPC, INEOS, Formosa Plastics Corp, Saudi Kayan, and Perstorp Holding AB, among others.ABOUT US:Persistence 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:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Nuclear expert says nuclear builds contribution to South Africas GDP will be 'staggering'

'How all these energy sources can complement each other'

http://www.african-utility-week.com

Nuclear energy is certainly not any more expensive than any other energy source, says nuclear expert Dr Anthonie Cilliers, explaining that the large 9600MW nuclear programme has created an impression of a single expensive mega-project, when in fact the purpose of the fleet approach was to drive down costs over time and increase the learning rate. This should be broken up into smaller chunks, for example, should two nuclear reactors be added to the current plant at Koeberg, the cost would be no more than the guarantees already provided by treasury for the current IPP programme, whilst two nuclear reactors would produce more units of electricity per year (and more reliably) than the units on the IPP programme.He adds: I agree that South Africas fiscus is constrained at the moment, I believe this will change and when it does we need to be prepared. If we cannot afford nuclear new build we cannot afford any new build. We also have to remember that the new IRP has not been gazetted and with an outdated IRP, I find the approval of any energy projects (including nuclear) irrational.Nuclear Power AfricaDr. Anthonie Cilliers is the National Coordinator of SAN-NEST (South African Nuclear Education, Science and Technology) the R&D Programme Manager: Advanced High Temperature Reactor (AHTR) and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. A regular commentator and speaker at African Utility Week, he returns this year as a panellist during the Nuclear Power Africa conference at the event from 15-17 May in Cape Town.Nuclear is certainly part of the energy mix in Africa, says Daniel Njoroge Butti, Energy Economist at the Karatina University in Kenya, another expert who will share his views at African Utility Week and asked whether there is appetite for investors to fund nuclear energy projects, he replies: the definitive answer is YES.With regards to costs he explains that in my view, nuclear energy has significantly high initial costs but very low operating costs vis a vis other energy sources like renewable energy which has relatively low initial costs and periodical costs involved in operations which eventually become very high. On the other hand, coal energy presently is considered an outdated source of energy given that it does not meet various conditions as a clean energy. Hence the only conversation that should be sustained is a decent conversation of how all these energy sources can complement each other.'We need to replace coal with nuclear'In South Africa, says Dr Cilliers, the common belief is that we have excess electricity that we do not need nuclear energy in the short term. This is a slight misnomer as the excess electricity stems from the recent high prices which in turn are constraining our economic growth. The reality is that South Africa needs more electricity at an affordable cost to support economic growth  for this an intervention by government is required. We also tend to forget that many of our coal stations are reaching end of life within the next 10 years, we are already seeing the operation and maintenance cost of these plants rising. We need to plan to replace these coal plants with nuclear plants, we have no other option.According to Dr Cilliers: specialists in South Africa are currently working on a project to determine the macro-economic impact of nuclear build programmes on a country in partnership with the International Atomic Energy Agency and 15 other countries. What we are seeing is that the contribution to the GDP from these projects (during construction and operation) is staggering as it becomes an enabler of economic growth and job creation, directly, indirectly and inducing new jobs in other sectors  far more than industries that rely heavily on import and local assembly.Balanced combination of energiesThe energy sector should play a more versatile role by providing safe, reliable, affordable and clean energy for the country, is the opinion of Des Muller of NuEnergy Developments and a member of the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africas Supply Chain Development Sub-Committee.He adds: this can only be achieved through a balanced combination of Thermal, Renewable/Hydro and Nuclear Energy. Sustainable energy systems should also be able to augment our water supplies, power an imminent electric transport sector and reduce our high transmission losses through decentralised power generation at the load-centres.To read the full interviews with Dr Anthonie Cilliers, Daniel Njoroge Butti and Des Muller and other event expert speakers and partners, go to the event websitesAward-winning energy platformThe 18th annual African Utility Week will gather over 7000 decision makers from more than 80 countries to discuss the challenges, solutions and successes in the power, energy and water sectors on the continent. Along with multiple side events and numerous networking functions the event also boasts a seven track conference with over 300 expert speakers.The conference programme will address the latest challenges, developments and opportunities in the power and water sectors: ranging from generation, T&D, metering, technology and water.The African Utility Week expo offers an extensive technical workshop programme that are CPD accredited, free to attend, hands-on presentations that take place in defined spaces on the exhibition floor. They discuss practical, day-to-day technical topics, best practices and product solutions that businesses, large power users and utilities can implement in their daily operations.Dates for African Utility Week:Conference and expo: 15-17 May 2018Awards gala dinner: 16 May 2018Site visits: 18 May 2018Location: CTICC, Cape Town, South AfricaAfrican Utility Week is the flagship energy event organised by the multi-award winning Spintelligent, leading Cape Town-based trade exhibition and conference organiser, and part of Clarion Events Ltd, based in the UK. Other well-known energy events by Spintelligent are Future Energy Nigeria and Future Energy East Africa. More events include Agritech Expo Zambia, Property Buyer Show, DRC Mining Week, Eduweek, Farm-Tech Expo Kenya, Nigeria Mining Week and the Mining Baraza in Kenya.Senior communications manager: Annemarie RoodbolTelephone: +27 21 700 3558Mobile: +27 82 562 7844Email: annemarie.roodbol@spintelligent.comWebsite:Postal address: PO Box 321, Steenberg, 7947, South Africa
China Brand E-commerce Service Market : Industry Analysis and Detailed Profiles of top Industry Players 2021 Baozun Inc, Rkylin Group, Lily & Beauty, Leqee Inc.

Market Research Report

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "China Brand E-commerce Service Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021)" to its huge collection of research reports.Scope of the ReportThe report entitled China Brand E-commerce Service Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2017-2021), provides analysis of China brand E-commerce service market, with detailed analysis of online shopping market size in China in terms of GMV, brand E-commerce service market by GMV and its penetration of brand E-commerce in online shopping followed by a analysis of brand E-commerce service market in terms of GMV. Under competitive comparison, different players in China brand E-commerce market have been analyzed on the basis of market share.Moreover, the report assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of brand E-commerce service market in China has also been forecasted for the years 2017-2021, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Baozun, Inc., Rkylin Group, Lily & Beauty and Leqee, Inc. are some of the key players operating in China brand E-commerce service market whose company profiling is done in the report. In this segment of the report, business overview, financial overview and the business strategies of the companies are provided.Company CoverageBaozun Inc.Rkylin GroupLily & BeautyLeqee Inc.Executive SummaryBrand e-commerce is a sub category of e-commerce. E-commerce refers to the electronic transaction with the aim to sell or buy products of relatively less known brands as well as established/ well known brands via online mode. Brand e-commerce is the selling or buying of products of popular brands specifically. Branded products in general denote uniqueness and superior quality.E-commerce service providers offer brands that are keen to build up a strong online presence with a wide range of services such as logistics, IT, warehouse management and customer services. On the other hand, brand e-commerce service provider refers to e-commerce services being given by the provider to brands such as Levi, Samsung, Lee and many more.Make an Enquiry about TOC @China brand E-commerce service market is expected to increase at high growth rates during the forecast period (2017-2021). China brand E-commerce market is supported by various growth factors such as increasing disposable income, rise in number of smartphone users, spike in exports/ imports through cross border E-commerce, ease of online payment and reduction in delivery time.However, E-commerce companies refraining from outsourcing and high degree of reliability on telecommunication infrastructure are some of the challenges faced by the market. Seasonal nature of China E-commerce industry, boom in rural E-commerce and declining GMV concentration are some of the latest trends existing in the market.1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 E-Commerce: An Overview2.2 Brand E-Commerce: An Overview2.3 Brand E-Commerce Service: An Overview3. China Market Analysis3.1 China Online Shopping Market: An Analysis3.1.1 China Online Shopping Market by GMV3.2 China Brand E-commerce Market: An Analysis3.2.1 China Brand E-commerce Market by Penetration3.2.2 China Brand E-commerce Market by GMV3.3 China Brand E-commerce Service Market: An Analysis3.3.1 Chine Brand E-commerce Service Market by GMV4. Market Dynamics4.1 Growth Drivers4.1.1 Increase in Number of Smartphone Users4.1.2 Upsurge in Purchasing Power4.1.3 Spike in Exports/Imports through Cross Border E-Commerce4.1.4 Ease of Online Payment4.1.5 Reduction in Delivery TimeAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact :ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @
RFID Pallet Wrappers Market Growth with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2025

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Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market: OverviewRFID pallet wrappers are the machine that wraps a stretched film of plastic around a loaded pallet to provide primary function of extra support to products being transported, and with the new technological advancement of RFID labels embedded in the machine, the shipment can be tracked from several feet away. RFID pallet wrappers are the buzz in the packaging industry as it helps to improve the supply chain and thus improve quality. The mounted RFID refers to radio frequency identification refers to an electronic device which consists of chip and antenna.The inevitable process of manufacturing and distribution that involves the package to travel in a conveyor and since tracking product movement is the key aspect for RFID. Thus its an important function that the antenna should be able to track tagged packages. The RFID pallet wrappers help to provide distinctive ID to each product wrapped and with individual information such as date shipped, manufacturing location, lot number, etc. After the wrapping process, the labels is printed with the help of thermal-transfer printer that is human readable information and then is encoded with RFID. The application of RFID pallet wrappers has penetrated in improving the supply chain in retail, transportation, and automation.Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market: DynamicsWithstanding the soft economy RFID pallet wrappers deployment has gained tremendous traction in last year. The key driver to RFID pallet wrappers is its ability to track pallet and identify valuable commodities in the course of global commerce. Moreover, the asset tracking helps to maintain the whereabouts of the valuable asset that is fueling the growth of the RFID pallet wrappers.Read Report Overview @RFID pallet wrappers, especially with ultra-high frequency, is a potential factor for the growth of the market. Owing to its perfect match for tracking and asset management and getting a return on investment. Moreover, the tags can be encrypted to provide minimum information of the package thereby securing the details. Through RFID pallet wrappers faster delivery of the order and fill the order in a timely manner, and customer relationship is ensured, the potential factor adds advantage to the growth of RFID pallet wrappers. The companies driving RFID pallet wrappers market are Wal-Mart Stores Inc.,The Home Decor Inc., ACE Hardware Corp, and Wegmans Food Market Inc. are some of the major companies that use RFID pallet wrappers for improvement of business process and overall supply chain operation. Enabling such infrastructure that is fully equipped with RFID pallet wrappers requires relatively higher investment as compared to traditional method of pallet wrapping which is a challenging factor to the growth of RFID pallet wrappers market.Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market: SegmentationBased on RFID: Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market is segmented into Ultra-High Frequency,High frequency and Near Field Communication,Low Frequency,Dual Frequency (NFC & UFH)Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global RFID pallet wrappers market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America holds the major share in the RFID pallet wrapper market due to rising demand for packaging in manufacturing and food & beverage industry.Request Sample Report @The market in APAC and Latin America is expected to be the prominent contributor to the growth of RFID pallet wrapper market owing to the proliferation of manufacturing industries in the region. The regions in Europe is anticipated to grow at moderate CAGR; this is due to the restrained manufacturing operation in the Western and Eastern Europe. The strong development in the region of MEA for pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and food & beverage industry is anticipated to attract demand for RFID pallet wrappers over the forecast period.Global RFID Pallet Wrappers Market PlayersFew of the prominent players in the global RFID pallet wrappers market are as followsREO-PACK,Kalamazoo Packaging Systems,Pallet Wrapz, Inc.,AIDA Centre, S.L.,Lantech, Inc,EAgile Inc.,SATO America, LLC.ABOUT US:Persistence 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:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Market Analysis 2018 Worldwide Leading Players | Spectrum Collections, Kat Von D Beauty, Beauty B, PHB Ethical Beauty | Industry Updates, Development, Opportunities and Future Growth

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Market Overview:Cruelty-Free Cosmetics Market is segmented on the basis of product-type, form, distribution channel and region. Based on the product-type, makeup & color cosmetics is found to be dominant holding a major market share. Amongst the various forms, cream is calculated to hold a major share owning to better packing leading to convenience usage of the product. Convenience and one stop purchase of the product has led to the increased sale of cruelty-free cosmetics through supermarkets and hypermarkets.Global cruelty-free cosmetics market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.1% during the given forecast period. Increased trend of adoption of natural ad vegan lifestyle has a positive impact on the cruelty-free cosmetics market due to which it is found to gain its popularity. Increasing support for animal welfare globally has a positive impact on this market. Also, increase in disposable income and improved living standards of consumers, is found to influence the growth cruelty-free cosmetics market. Shift in consumers perception and high consumption of organic products has raised the sale of cruelty-free cosmetics.Receive a Sample Report @Major Key Players:This report includes a study of strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, product launches by the major cruelty-free cosmetics market players. It further includes product portfolios, developments of leading major players which includes Kat Von D Beauty (U.S.) Beauty B (U.S.) PHB Ethical Beauty (U.K.) COVER FX Skin Care Inc. (Canada) INIKA Organic (Australia) Spectrum Collections (U.K.) and L'Oreal S.A. (France)A shift in consumers preferences towards organic products due to governments stringent regulations in various regions has influenced the positive growth of cruelty-free cosmetics in the market. Change in consumers perception and claim that animal testing is unethical and should be prohibited has increased the market share of cruelty-free cosmetics. Celebrities promoting vegan lifestyle and encouraging consumers to adopt the use of vegan personal care products is also driving the sale of vegan beauty products. Key players are following strategies of merger and acquisition of small players due to high demand across the globe.The global cruelty-free cosmetics market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Europe region has the major market share followed by Asia Pacific. Based on increasing beauty consciousness and high awareness among the consumers, cruelty-free cosmetics have gained popularity in various regions. U.S., China, U.K., Germany, and Singapore are considered the major importers of cruelty-free cosmetics.Regional Analysis:The global cruelty-free cosmetics Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Europe holds a major market share followed by Asia Pacific region. Developing economy has resulted in changed consumers spending behavior leasing to increased demand for non-animal tested and no-animals ingredients products from the developed countries of regions contributing to the positive growth of cruelty-free cosmetics market. U.S., China, U.K., Germany, and Singapore are the major importers of cruelty-free cosmetics.Access Report Details @Downstream Analysis:Consumption of cruelty-free cosmetics is growing at a significant rate based on high consumers demand for products containing natural ingredients which need not be tested on animals and are non-allergic. As consumers are becoming more beauty conscious globally, cruelty-free makeup & color cosmetics tend to hold a major share in the market. Further, based on the form, cruelty-free cream dominates the segment based on easy application and high shelf-life of the product.Sale of cruelty-free cosmetics through supermarkets and hypermarkets is found to be high on a global level. This is due to consumer convenience and preference for one-stop shopping experience. In addition, based on the adoption of advanced technology by the consumers into their daily routine and convenience shopping experience, the sale of Cruelty-Free Cosmetics through e-commerce is found to escalate at a positive growth rate.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) Market: 2018 Automotive Industry Size, Share, Growth, Key Players Analysis To 2023

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Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) Market Analysis 2018 to 2023 Research Report explores Global Advanced high strength steels (AHSS) Market Size, Share, Trends, Key Players and Regional Forecast by AHSS Product Type (Dual Phase, Martensitic Steel, Boron Steel and Others), by Vehicle Type (Passenger Car and Commercial Vehicle), By Application (Body & Closures, Suspensions, Bumper and Others) and Region.Advanced high strength steels (AHSS) Companies Studied In This Market Report: AK Steel Holding Corporation (U.S.), ArcelorMittal S.A. (Luxembourg), China Baowu Steel Group Corp., Ltd. (China), Kobe Steel Ltd.( Japan), POSCO (South Korea), SSAB AB (Sweden), Tata Steel Limited(India), ThyssenKrupp AG(Germany) and United Steel Corporation (India).Get Sample Report of Global AHSS Market 2018@AHSS Market Insights:Automotive Advanced high strength steels (AHSS) steels are considered major materials for future applications in the production sector. Advanced High Strength Steels or AHSS have quickly been adopted by automotive industry, and these steels are known for their increased strength, lightweight composition and improved performance under impact and energy transfer when exposed to a collision. Increasing vehicle production, lower cost of AHSS materials than other lightweight materials, and growing government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are some of the factors driving the growth of the market. Moreover, growing vehicle demand and engineering advancement for improving the life of vehicles, are some of the factors that drive the demand for the market. The automotive AHSS market is witnessing an upward trend, as auto manufacturers are focusing more on improving safety and fuel economy, while reducing the costs of manufacturing.Focus on light weighting in automobiles is well underway, and will continue in the future. With the objective to reduce fuel emissions and to meet greenhouse gas requirements, automobile manufacturers need to significantly reduce the weight of vehicles. The recent efforts to build lightweight cars from aluminum and carbon-fiber composites, acts as a major restraint for the growth of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) market.AHSS Market Segmentation:Global automotive AHSS market has broadly been segmented on the basis of product type, vehicle type, application and geography. By product type, Dual-phase steel is the most widely used product of AHSS by the automotive industry. On the basis of vehicle type, Passenger cars are expected to witness highest revenue in the forecast period. On the basis of application, it has been segmented as body & closures, suspensions, bumper and others.AHSS Market Regional AnalysisAsia Pacific is dominating the market due to major sales in automotive. Development of automotive manufacturing industries in developing economies such as China and India are driving the market for automotive AHSS. Factors such as availability of low-cost manual and innovation in engineering, focus on fuel efficiency and sustainability, and the rising vehicle production levels, drive the market of Automotive AHSS. The region being a globally competitive automotive manufacturing hub, also pushes the market of Automotive AHSS.Europe holds the largest market share in automotive AHSS market, followed by Asia Pacific due to factors such as strict emission norms laid down by the government and improvement in the economic conditions and increasing investment by the industry players in the region.Browse AHSS Market Report of 110 Pages At:The report for Global Automotive AHSS Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.
Synthetic Fiber Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2026

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Synthetic Fiber Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2026" to its huge collection of research reports.A recently compiled report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) on the global synthetic fiber market submits forecasts for the period 2017 to 2026, along with a detailed market analysis, and dynamics having potential to leave significant footprints on expansion of the market. In addition to provision of recent trends, impeding factors, and driving factors impacting the market expansion, an evaluation on imperative data with respect to different market parameters is rendered by the report.Report StructureThe beginning chapter of this report, titled executive summary, delivers a precis of global synthetic fiber market. The executive summary contains imperative market numbers viz. the forecast (2017-2026) CAGR and the historical (2012-2016) CAGR. Market numbers delivered in this chapter concern with the market segments, especially the product and regional segments. Apropos to sales growth rate and revenues from sales of synthetic fiber worldwide, intelligence regarding financially worthwhile regions for expansion of the synthetic fiber market is incorporated in this report.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @A chapter titled overview follows the executive summary, incorporating definition of synthetic fiber that proceeds an incisive market introduction. This chapter demonstrably portrays global synthetic fiber markets broad scope. The chapters succeeding overview explicate key dynamics affecting the synthetic fiber markets growth across the globe, and offer imperative nodes that include the bottom line of enterprises, global economy and fiscal stimulus. In addition, few chapters in this report deliver information regarding pricing analysis and the cost structure of global synthetic fiber market.Competitive LandscapeIn this report, the reader will also gain access to information regarding competitive landscape of the market, which comprise market share analysis of leading companies operating in the market. The data offered in this section shed light on competition matrix based projected value share. The competition matrix benchmarks key market participants on the basis of their performance. Insights into market share, infrastructure facilities, top line growth, future outlook and recent developments is give in this section.Research MethodologyThe research methodology applied for compiling the report on global synthetic fiber market is tested & proven. Hence, the facts and figures pertaining to the synthetic fiber market provided in the report are highly accurate and credible. The research methodology involved exhaustive primary & secondary research that allowed analysts to make certain assessments. Moreover, data gathered using the research methodology underwent multilevel verification to ensure its authenticity and applicability.Table of Content1. Global Outlook2. Global Synthetic Fibre Market - Executive Summary3. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Overview3.1. Introduction3.1.1. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Taxonomy3.1.2. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Definition3.2. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Size (000 Tonnes) and Forecast, 2012-20263.2.1. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Y-o-Y Growth3.3. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Dynamics3.4. Supply Chain3.5. Cost Structure3.6. Pricing Analysis3.7. Raw Material Sourcing Strategy and Analysis3.8. List of Suppliers3.9. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By Region4. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Analysis and Forecast 2012-20264.1. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Size and Forecast By Synthetic Fiber Type, 2012-20264.1.1. Polyester Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.1.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.2. Nylon Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.2.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.3. Acrylic Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.3.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By RegionGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @4.1.4. Other Synthetic fibres Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.4.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.1.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.2. Global Synthetic Fibre Market Size and Forecast By End Use Industries, 2012-20264.2.1. Industrial Use Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.2.1.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.2.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.2.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.2.2. Apparel Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.2.2.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.2.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.2.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.2.3. Home Furnishing Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.2.3.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.2.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.2.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.2.4. Others Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.2.4.1. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Region4.2.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.2.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region5. North America Synthetic Fibre Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20265.1. North America Outlook5.2. North America Parent Market Outlook5.3. North America Target Market Outlook5.4. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Country5.4.1. US Market Size and Forecast (000 Tonnes), 2012-20265.4.2. Canada Market Size and Forecast (000 Tonnes), 2012-20265.5. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By Synthetic Fiber Type5.6. Volume (000 Tonnes) Comparison, By End Use IndustriesContinue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on @
Stabilizer Bars Market Key Growth Drivers 2025

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A stabilizer bar is a part of automobile suspension used to reduce the body roll of a vehicle during sharp and fast cornering and at the roads which are irregular. Stabilizer bar connects the opposite right and left wheels of a vehicle together through a short lever arm connected by a torsion spring. The stabilizer bar helps in increasing the suspension roll and its resistance to roll independent of the spring rate in the vertical direction.Read Report Overview @Stabilizer bar links are made four to six inches long and connected to the stabilizer bar at an angle of 90-degree. Stabilizer bar links are used to connect outer end of the stabilizer bar to the suspension component. Few vehicle have one stabilizer bar, and some have more than one stabilizer bar in the middle of the rear wheels. With the increase of stabilizer bars in the vehicle, the stabilizer bar links will increase as these are used to connect the stabilizer bar to the suspension system.Over the period, this stabilizer bar links worn out, thus affecting the handling of car, whenever it breaks down, as the bars disconnect from one side of the vehicle. The vehicle leans more towards the corners with a broken bar, and the vehicle can tumble or can get imbalance during motion or movements. Owing to the increasing production of the automobile, the stabilizer bars market is expected to register a significant CAGR over the forecast period.Global Stabilizer Bars Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe growing automobile industry is one of the major factors driving the stabilizers bars market. Stabilizer bars are one of the key components for manufacturing any automobile. Mobile healthcare facilities, transportation of goods, Construction activities, e-commerce business, are few of the major industries which are fuelling the market of automotive, and thus the stabilizer bars market.Minuscule magnitude is one of the major restraints in the market effecting the growth over the forecast period. Further, decline in demand for automobiles and decline in production of automobiles are the major circumstance in where the stabilizer bars market may fall.Depending on a geographic region's global sea buckthorn berry market is segmented into seven broad regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East Africa. APEJ is anticipated to dominate the stabilizer bars market over the forecast period. Countries such as China, India, and South Korea are the key contributor to the growth of stabilizer bar market in the region. The increasing demand for vehicles owing to growth in automotive industry in the region are the factors, anticipated to enhance the sales of stabilizer bars market in this region.Western European and North America stabilizer bars market is anticipated to be followed by the APEJ market. Eastern Europe stabilizer bars is expected to grow due to the automotive industry in Russia is on an expansion stage.Japan has some of the major automobile manufacturers based there, such manufacturers will catapult the demand of stabilizer bars. MEA and Latin America are anticipated to provide a positive market of stabilizer bars, even though both these region are lacking automobile manufacturers. However, the aftermarket and automotive service industry is expected to provide the essential demand of stabilizer bars in this particular region.You can now buy a single user license of the report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
District Heating Pipeline Network Market 2024 Advanced Research By BRUGG, Logstor, Perma Pipe, CPV Ltd, Microflex, Flender, Thermaflex

District Heating Pipeline Network Market, District Heating Pipeline Network Market Study, District Heating Pipeline Network Market

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MarketStudyReport.com Adds New Global District Heating Pipeline Network Market 2017  2024 research report providing information and data by pipe, by diameter, by application, industry analysis report, regional outlook, application potential, competitive market share & forecast spreading across 430 Pages with table and figures in it.District Heating Pipeline Network Market size in 2016 was valued over USD 400 billion and the cumulative installation is set to exceed 850 thousand Km by 2024.Growing concerns pertaining to greenhouse emissions coupled with increasing demand for space heating systems will stimulate the district heating pipeline network market. Extreme climatic conditions across Europe, China and the U.S. will further stimulate the product demand. According to Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the average temperature in Southern Finland during winter season ranges between 00 to -40 Celsius.The U.S. market size is set to reach over 5 thousand Km by 2024. Growing district heating systems penetration across residential and commercial establishments along with ongoing adoption of clean energy technologies will foster the industry growth. According to the International District Energy Association (IDEA), out of 601 heating systems installed in the U.S., 289 are district energy-only systems.Ongoing legislative reforms pertaining to sustainable energy technologies along with modernization and expansion of existing heating networks will foster the district heating pipeline network market. Government focus toward energy efficient buildings will further propel the industry growth. The European Unions Renewable Energy Directive has introduced standards toward reduction and limitation of emissions caused by the industrial establishments.Get Sample Copy of this Report:Rapid urbanization and industrialization across the developing nations along with favorable government initiatives toward zero emission buildings will drive the global market. As per Knoema in 2016, the people residing in urban areas in Japan constituted 94.3% when compared with 93.9% in 2015.Polymer pipes is set to witness strong growth on account of increasing usage as a service pipe in DH systems. Rapid development of thermoplastic technologies along with ongoing innovations toward pipe material will drive the business growth. Corrosion free, ease of transport and low carbon emissions are some of the prominent features which will stimulate the product penetration.Growing adoption of small scale heating technologies across the residential establishments along with government-backed research and development initiatives toward development of more efficient insulating materials will propel the 20 mm -100 mm diameter pipes. Increasing use as a service pipe as these can be easily transported, rolled, and installed in the constructions will stimulate the product penetration.Increasing suburban population owing to rapid urbanization across the evolving economies will stimulate the market from residential applications. Government assisted renewable technology targets coupled with ongoing investments toward real-estate sector will foster the industry outlook. According to World Bank, people residing in urban areas of India accounted for 33.14% in 2016 when compared with 32.37% in 2014 across India.China district heating pipeline network market is predicted to grow owing to increasing suburban population coupled with increasing investments toward residential and commercial establishments across the nation. Ongoing government initiatives toward adoption of energy-efficient systems will further propel the industry outlook. The Government of China with the support of European Union launched EU-China 2020 strategic agenda and China-EU partnership to strengthen the nations urban infrastructure.Eminent players across the district heating pipeline network market include REHAU, Uponor, BRUGG, Logstor, Perma Pipe, CPV Ltd, Microflex, Flender, Thermaflex, Huntsman, Smithline, Aquatherm and Golan Plastic.Purchase this report at:What Information does this report contain?What was the historic market data from 2013 to 2016, what is the industry growth forecast from 2017 to 2024?A detailed analysis of regulatory trends, growth drivers, industry pitfalls, challenges and opportunities for participantsWhich are the leading market products, applications & regions and how will they perform by 2024?What are the technology & innovation trends, how will they evolve by 2024?Which companies lead the industry, how are they positioned in the market in terms of sustainability, competency, production capacity and strategic outlook?For More Information:Related ReportDistrict Heating Market Size by Source, By Application, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2024District Heating Market size will exceed USD 280 billion by 2024, as reported in the latest study. Rising concerns toward greenhouse gas emissions coupled with strong demand for efficient and cost-effective systems will drive the district heating market size. Introduction of emissions reduction target by countries including China, UK, Denmark, Germany, and Russia under their climate action plans will complement the business outlook. Denmark, in its National Energy Policy and National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP) has setup a target to completely phase out the usage of oil from heating applications across the building structure by 2035.Read more atMore 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.com
Whiplash Protection System Market: 2018 Automotive Industry Size, Share, Growth, and Key Company Analysis to 2023

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Whiplash Protection System Market Analysis 2018 to 2023 Research Report explores Global Whiplash Protection System Market Size, Share, Trends, Key Players and Regional Forecast by Type (Backrest, Headrest and Others), By Vehicle Type (Passenger Vehicles and Commercial Vehicles) and By Region to 2023.Whiplash Protection System Manufacturing Companies Studied In This Market Report: Robert Bosch (Germany), Delphi Automotive (UK), Hyundai Mobis (South Korea), Continental AG (Germany), Grammer AG (Germany), Autoliv Inc. (Sweden), Lear Corporation (US), Takata Corporation (Japan), Volvo Group (Sweden).Get Sample Report of Global Whiplash Protection System Market 2018@Whiplash Protection System Market Insights:Automotive whiplash protection system is one of the most essential vehicle parts, which is being given a lot of attention by major vehicle manufacturers. Automotive industry has become one of the major revenue generating industries, and has several technological developments in the last few years where, automotive whiplash protection system being one of them. The global automotive whiplash protection system market has seen a remarkable growth in the global market and it has been observed that, its demand in the future is expected to grow at12.10% CAGR.Automotive safety has become a major concern for both users and automotive manufacturers. Safety systems such as seat belt and airbags have procured and evolved at a rapid pace during the past few years. Recently, whiplash protection systems have witnessed high demand from a large number of vehicles users. Whiplash protection system is an arrangement that protects the driver against automotive whiplash injuries. This system was first developed by Volvo in 1998, and only after a few years, many other automotive manufacturers started installing the same into their vehicles. This market has majorly been benefitting by factors such as rising awareness regarding road accidents, strict government regulations and policies on road safety, growing sales of passenger cars, and technological advancements. Also, the major opportunity for market growth is the shift of global automotive companies to the emerging economies, and the rising demand for high end vehicles. However, the major challenge for automotive whiplash protection system market is higher installation cost, and expensive cost of raw materials. These factors may to slow down the growth of the market.Whiplash Protection System Market Segmentation:The global automotive whiplash protection system market segments has been divided into type, vehicles type and region. On the basis of type, the market has been segmented as headrest, backrest and others. The headrest segment is expected to dominate the global market by type in 2016 in terms of market revenue. On the basis of vehicle type, the market has been segmented as passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles. Among them, passenger vehicles have accounted for the highest market share in 2016 in terms of revenue. The strict government regulations and policies on road safety and the rising awareness regarding road safety, have been major growing factors, which increase the demand for automotive whiplash protection system in passenger cars.Whiplash Protection System Market Regional Analysis:Geographically, the global automotive whiplash protection system market has been divided as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. Among these regions, North America has dominated the global market due to factors such as strict regulations on road safety, rising disposable income and growing new vehicle registration. Europe is the second leading region in terms of revenue. Asia Pacific has emerged as the fastest growing economy. During the last few years, APAC has sold the highest number of vehicles, where China, Japan and Indonesias contribute much significantly. Moreover, the growing demand for passenger vehicles has become a major driving factor for APAC region.Browse Whiplash Protection System Market Report of 100 Pages At:The report for Global Automotive Whiplash Protection System Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
DEV Systemtechnik Launches the First 16x16 L-Band Distributing Matrix With 20 Outputs

16x16 Matrix - DEV 1985 16

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DEV Systemtechnik (provider of RF signal transmission solutions, is introducing a new L-Band Distribution Matrix in its product portfolio. The 16 matrix can be ordered with up to 16 input and 20 output channels and fits in a compact 2RU chassis.The 16 (DEV 1985) provides a high degree of flexibility: the number of input and output channels can be changed; connectors and impedances can be configured even after purchase. In addition to electrical and optical inputs, the DEV 1985 supports variable gain and slope and comes with a local user interface. Other features known from DEV matrices such as an integrated spectrum analyzer and LNB powering on all channels can also be optionally included in the 16x16 matrix.The new 16 is designed for operation via DEV's Web Interface for multiple users. The Secure Lock Operation mode allows users to lock a switched path so that other users cannot redirect those paths. Intelligent redundancy options with RF Sensing allow the matrix to automatically restore service via a backup path in the rare event of a primary path failure.DEV Systemtechnik develops and manufactures a complete range of products and systems for the optical and electrical transmission of Radio Frequency (RF) signals via coaxial cable or fiber. For over 20 years DEV has designed, engineered, and manufactured RF transmission equipment for satellite, broadcast, and cable applications. All products are built to meet the highest standards of system availability, reliability and manageability.DEV Systemtechnik GmbHGruner Weg 4A61169 Friedberg (Hessen)GermanyTom BeutelspacherEmail: tbeutelspacher@dev-systemtechnik.comPhone: +49 (0) 6031/ 6975-142Fax: +49 (0) 6031/ 6975-114
Nurse Call Systems Market is Expected To Be Worth USD 1.5 Billion By 2021

Nurse Call Systems Market

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New York, March 08, 2018: A Nurse Call system is an emergency call system used for the patients to call for nurse service in case of an emergency. This is used by majority of hospitals or health care facilities to alert nurses. The alarm used can be a buzzer or audio or visual way. Due to the growing demand for emergency communication and in order to provide better health services these systems are widely used. There will be rise in the innovative nurse call systems in the coming years.The global Nurse Call System Market to cross at USD 1.8 billion by 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 14% in the given forecast period.You Can Browse Full Report:The major driving factors of Nurse Call systems are as follows: Increasing baby boomer population. Need for more diversified and integrated platforms. The preference for mobility devices. Changing reimbursement scenario. Rising budget allocation in healthcare for elderly people.The restraining factors of Nurse Call systems are as follows: The government regulations on distribution and manufacturing of nurse call systems are restricting the growth of this market.The Nurse Call systems is segmented by equipment type as Nurse call buttons, Nurse call intercoms, Nurse call Mobile Systems, Nurse Call Integrated Communication Systems. The Nurse Call Systems is segmented by communication technology as wired communication Equipment, Wireless Communication Equipment. The Nurse Call system is segmented by End use as Hospitals, OPD Clinics, Assisted Living Centers, and Ambulatory Services.The Nurse Call Systemsgeographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geography market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the Nurse Call Systems and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2021.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for Nurse Call systems.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for various types of Nurse Call systems with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Rauland-Borg Corporation, Stanley Healthcare, Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., Tyco SimplexGrinnell, Ascom Holding AG, Cornell Communications, Inc., Azure Healthcare Limited, Jeron Electronic Systems, Inc., and Vigil Health Solutions, Inc.. are provided in the report. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Market Segmentation of Nurse Call Systems is as follows:By Equipment Type Nurse Call Buttons Nurse Call Intercoms Nurse Call Mobile Systems Nurse Call Integrated Communication SystemsBy Communication Technology Wired Communication Equipment Wireless Communication EquipmentBy End-use Hospitals OPD Clinics Assisted Living Centers Ambulatory ServicesBY GEOGRAPHY North America Asia Pacific Europe Latin America and Africa Middle EastRequest Sample Report:Table of Contents1 INTRODUCTION2 Research Methodology3 Executive Summary4 Premium Insights5 Market Overview6 Nurse Call Systems Market: Industry Insights7 Global Market, By Instrument8 Global Market, By Technology9 Global Market, By Application10 Global Market, By End User11 Global Market, By Region12 Competitive Landscape13 Company Profiles13.1 Introduction13.2 Ascom Holding AG13.3 Hill-ROM Holdings, Inc.13.4 Tyco International PLC13.5 Honeywell International, Inc.13.6 Rauland-Borg Corporation13.7 Siemens AG13.8 Schrack Seconet AG13.9 Azure Healthcare Limited13.10 Tektone Sound & Signal Mfg., Inc.13.11 Intercall Systems, Inc.About UsMarket Research Engine (MRE) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. MREs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each Market Research Engines research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Three Wheelers Market Sees Promising Growth during 2017 - 2025

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Three wheelers are one of the integral part of an automobile sector that are mostly preferred for public transportation. The increasing demand for inter-city transportation with increasing urbanization is observed to escalate the demand for three wheelers market.Many prominent countries in three wheelers market such as India are focusing towards replacement of liquid fuels with the batteries by 2030. Prominent companies are developing electric and hybrid technologies to be incorporated in three wheelers in order to reduce environmental impact and introduce eco-friendly mode of public transport.Read Report Overview @One of the most dynamic factor for the growth of three wheelers market is the public transport for short to medium distances anywhere in the cities. Such cost effective mode of transportation is in demand for countries with moderate logistic infrastructure and population that has low disposable income.Moreover, the cumulative growth in good carriers has uplifted these compact three wheelers market for the transportation medium where trucks and other four wheelers are not affordable and not accessible to the destination. Also the increase in oil prices is expected to give advantage to small vehicles such as three wheelers in long term.However, a dramatic drop is anticipated in inland and export sales of a country due to replacement of three wheelers by small four wheeler mini truck. Companies like Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors are focusing to expand their mini truck segment and put forth in the market in affordable price and loading capacities. Such development is likely to hamper growth for three wheelers market over the forecast period.Based on the geography, Asia Pacific region is expected to remain prominent in the three wheelers market over the forecast period. Countries such as India is to remain prevalent the domestic and export business segment during the forecast period. A prosperous growth is observed in China followed by other Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia. This is attributed to the increasing population and need of transportation medium for rural and semi-urban areas of the nation.Many Indian established players are focusing to manufacture three wheelers complied of BS (Bharat Stage) VI norms which will be implemented by 2020 in order to keep particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and Sulphur emission in check. The Germany based Bosch AG is developing LEFIS (Lean Electronic Fuel Injection Systems) for three wheelers in order to meet BS VI norms.North America and Latin America are expected to provide significant opportunities in three wheelers market for snowmobiles, watersleds and touring motorcycle in near future. Three wheelers market is expected to find healthy prospects to aging baby boomers owing to the increased safety requirement.Currently, Asian countries such as India and China dominate the three wheeler market in terms of production as well as sales in domestic and export markets. Established three wheeler manufacturers dominate the export as well as domestic market. Northern African, ASEAN and Latin American countries are prominent importers of three wheelers from Asian manufacturers.You can now buy a single user license of the report @About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Pressure Sensor Market: 2018 Automotive Industry Future Trends, Size, Share Outlook To 2023

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Pressure Sensor Market Analysis 2018 to 2023 Research Report explores Global Pressure Sensor Market Size, Share, Trends, Key Players and Regional Forecast by Type (Backrest, Headrest and Others), By Vehicle Type (Passenger Vehicles and Commercial Vehicles) and By Region to 2023.Pressure Sensor Manufacturing Companies Studied In This Market Report: Infineon (Germany), Sensata (US), Robert Bosch (Germany), Denso (Japan), Delphi (UK), Texas Instruments (US), NXP (Netherlands), Analog Device (US), Melexis (Belgium), General Electric (US), and TE Connectivity (Switzerland).Get Sample Report of Global Pressure Sensor Market 2018@Automotive Pressure Sensor Pressure Sensor Market Insights:Automotive pressure sensor has been witnessing steady growth over a period of time. The boom in the automotive industry is expected to positively impact the automotive pressure sensor market. Increasing demand for safety features in automobiles, stringent government norms, and rapidly rising safety awareness among individuals, are some of the factors primarily driving the automotive pressure sensor market. Rapidly rising integration of advanced driver assistance systems in vehicles has provided a positive outlook to the automotive pressure sensor market. With the New Car Assessments Program awarding safety ratings based on vehicles safety performance, automotive manufacturers have been increasingly integrating automotive pressure sensor in vehicles.Earlier available only in premium vehicles, automobile manufacturers have started integrating these features in entry level vehicles and broaden their customer base thus propelling the demand in the automotive pressure sensor market. With the increasing popularity of vehicle electrification among individuals, the market for automotive pressure sensor, is expected to register high growth rate during the forecast period.Pressure Sensor Market Segmentation: by Application (ABS, Airbag, TPMS, Engine, HVAC, & Transmission), Technology (MEMS, Strain Gauge, & Ceramic), Vehicle Type (Passenger Vehicle and Commercial Vehicle) and by Regions - Global Forecast To 2023.Pressure Sensor Market Regional Analysis:The market for automotive pressure sensor systems is expected to grow with an increase in demand for automobile, majorly in the U. S. There is an immense demand of commercial vehicles in the country. With the increase in demand of commercial vehicles, there has been an increase in demand for automotive pressure sensor market. The growth of the North America region is also driven by the presence of major automotive system manufacturers, which are mainly focusing on key developments such as expansion, mergers & acquisition, product launch and others. Existence of major manufacturers and availability of sophisticated technology in this region is expected to propel the demand in the automotive pressure sensor market during the forecast period. Owing to all these factors, the growth of the region is expected to grow at a rapid pace.Due to the presence of most populous countries of the world such as China and India, the dominance of Asia Pacific becomes evident in the global automotive pressure sensor systems market value. Automotive Pressure Sensor systems market has been experiencing rapid growth in the last two years, owing to the rising sales of passenger cars, emerging economies, shift of global players and technological advancements, as they are giving the much needed thrust to the market. Rapid rise in vehicle production compliments the automotive pressure sensor market in this region. Another major reason behind Asia Pacific leading the global market is that the countries within this region were able to sustain its economy during the global economic crisis of 2008-09 and have been able to showcase continued growth in automobile production and sales, across the globe.Browse Pressure Sensor Market Report of 111 Pages At:The report for Global Automotive Pressure Sensor Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.comAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.
Crane Market Trends Shows Steady CAGR Growth During 2017-2024

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MarketStudyReport.com Adds New Global Crane Market research report for the period of 2017  2024 to its research database covering information and data by Product, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook, Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast spreading across 850 Pages with table and figures in it.The global Crane Market Research Report for the period of 2017 - 2024 that shows the market will cross USD 20 billion by 2024, according to a new research report.The mobile crane market is the fastest growing segment in the global industry owing to the increase in residential construction and urban infrastructure projects. The industry is being primarily driven by the rise in investments for the development of smart cities in countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Growing population and migration of people to urban areas has led to an increase in demand for efficient transport infrastructure facilities, causing a significant rise in the number of urban infrastructure projects and escalating demand for mobile cranes. The region has also witnessed a rise in investments for power plants, which is aiding the global mobile crane market growth.Europe crane market accounted for around 33% of the global revenue for cranes owing to the rise in investments in renewable energy and the rental market. Ongoing large construction projects in Europe are anticipated to drive the crane market over the coming years. The construction industry in Europe, has been recovering over the last few years after it tumbled post-recession. Several regional government administrations of countries such as UK, Germany, France and Italy are planning on undertaking construction projects, which include construction of railway tunnels, underwater tunnels connecting major European countries, and port extension, among others, which are using several types of cranes. In addition, the Russian crane market is also in state of revival, which is aiding the industry growth.Get sample Copy of this report:Prominent players in the crane market include Manitowoc, Hitachi Sumitomo Heavy Industries Construction Crane Co., Ltd., XCMG Group, Tadano, Ltd., Liebherr Group, Konecranes PLC, Komatsu Ltd., Terex Corporation, and Palfinger AG among others. The industry dynamics are characterized by high competition with the presence of several regional and international players.As many of the companies have a longer operating history, brand recognition, established customer base, and supplier relationships and greater financial resources, it has become difficult for the new companies to compete with them. However, several companies are ensuring new product development initiatives to foster the crane market growth.Rise in construction spending is the major factor escalating the crane market growth. Shifting government focus on infrastructure development along with increasing consumer preference for luxurious and aesthetic constructions will provide an impetus to the industry growth. Rising necessity for houses along with investment regarding infrastructure development such as smart city projects and increased construction expenditure particularly in economically stabilizing countries is expected to propel the crane market. Population growth, environmental impacts and urbanization has up surged the need for smart and sustainable infrastructure solutions. Providing efficient building methods coupled with ability to offer effective integration, planning and designing, are major factors driving the crane market growth.Developed markets are set towards a more positive outlook for construction industry as fallout from global fiscal crisis recedes, public finances and household incomes improve. In the developed countries including North America and Europe, aging infrastructure and the process for restructuring and maintaining these aged infrastructure is unable to match the pace of deterioration. Rising awareness among people about the major link between infrastructure and quality of life has resulted in a major public policy shift, favoring the overall construction industry thereby providing an impetus to the crane market.High investments and maintenance costs for the equipment is a key factor challenging the crane market growth. The cost of cranes is relatively high, which is discouraging manufacturers, businesses, and OEMs from procuring high-end systems. Companies are considering investments for automated equipment to meet the international quality standards. Development of infrastructure in emerging economies demands an increase in the number of cranes which are manufactured and hired for construction purposes. Rental companies are providing the equipment which incorporate the latesttechnological advancements, owing to which there is a rise in the demand for rental crane services.Get a discount on this report atGrowth drivers: Global increase in construction spending Rising demand for telematics cranes in the U.S. Rapid urbanization in the U.S. Growing demand for cranes in the utility sector in Europe and Asia Pacific Rapid infrastructure development in BRIC countries Growing urbanization and safety concerns in IndiaCrane market research report includes in-depth coverage of the industry with estimates & forecast in terms of revenue and volume in USD and Units from 2013 to 2024, for the following segments:Crane Market, By ProductMobile Crane Truck Loader Crane Rough Terrain Crane All Terrain Crane Crawler Crane Fixed Crane Monorail Crane Stiffleg Crane Tower Crane Gantry CraneCrane Market, By ApplicationConstruction & Mining Utility Electric Telecom Water Manufacturing Transport/Shipping Oil & Gas/EnergyThe above information has been provided on a regional and country basis for the following: North America: U.S., Canada Europe: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia. Asia Pacific: China, India, Japan, South Korea Latin America: Brazil, Mexico Middle East & Africa (MEA): Saudi Arabia, UAE. South Africa.Related Report:(AWP) Aerial Work Platform Rental Market Size By Product (Boom Lift, Scissor Lift, Vertical Mast Lift, Personnel Portable Lift), By Application (Construction, Telecommunication, Transportation & Logistics, Government), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Landscape & Forecast, 2017  2024Increasing commercial and residential construction projects coupled with the rise in investments in public infrastructure worldwide are expected to support the AWP rental market over the forecast timeline. Government administrations in several emerging economies have renewed their focus on the development of urban infrastructure projects, such as airport developments and smart cities, owing to which the access platform rental market is witnessing a sharp increase in demand. Moreover, growing safety concerns in workplaces following the surge in fatal injury rates is compelling various authorities to make more utilization of these equipment.Read more atMarketstudyreport.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:
Mobile and Tower Cranes Market: Industry Outlook, Growth Prospects and Key Insights

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Albany, USA, 2018-Mar-08  /EPR Network/ A latest research report titled as Mobile and Tower Cranes Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2025 has been recently added to the vast portfolio of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) online research offerings. This report is a professional and in-depth analysis on the present state and future prospect for the global market. It provides valuable information to the industry insiders, potential entrants or investors. It includes an exhaustive enquiry with the reliability of logic and the comprehensiveness of contents.Click here For Free Sample Report @Mobile cranes are lifting devices, which incorporate a cable suspended latticed boom or hydraulic telescopic boom designed to be moved between operating locations by transport over the road. There are various types of mobile cranes such as all-terrain, rough terrain, truck crane, crawler crane, and telescopic truck mounted cranes. Whereas, tower cranes are fixed cranes and have to be attached on-site. The tower crane present itself like a vertical metallic structure with a horizontal boom that can turn over an angle up to 360 degrees. Mobile tower cranes are combination of mobile and tower cranes. Increasing investment by governments as well as infrastructure companies is the major driving factor for increasing demand for mobile and tower cranes. Moreover, there is increase in demand for high capacity lifting for greater height application which is contributing in the growth of mobile and tower cranes market. The global mobile and tower cranes market was valued at US$ 23,033.8 Mn in 2016 and is forecast to expand at a CAGR of 3.5% from 2017 to 2025, reaching a value of US$ 31,240.6 Mn in 2025.Rising Construction Activities Worldwide Boost GrowthThe global mobile and tower cranes market is segmented on the basis of type, application and geography. On the basis of type, the market is segmented into mobile cranes, tower cranes and mobile tower cranes. Mobile cranes segment has been further sub-divided into all terrain, rough terrain, truck crane, crawler crane and telescopic truck mounted cranes. Among these, all terrain cranes has the highest adoption rate in mobile and tower cranes market. The tower cranes segment is has been further sub-segmented into self-erecting crane, flat top, luffing jib tower crane and hammerhead cranes.In terms of application, the mobile and tower cranes market is segmented into oil & gas, construction, shipping & port and others. The rising demand for construction of smart cities across various countries and various mega construction particularly in developing countries is boosting the demand for mobile and tower cranes in these regions.Browse Full Report with TOC @Asia Pacific to Emerge Dominant during Forecast PeriodBased on the geography, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South America. Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the crane market in terms of volume over the forecast period owing to increasing construction activities in the region. Asia Pacific led the mobile and tower cranes market in 2016 and is expected to show sustainable growth throughout the forecast period. Countries such as China, India, and Japan will contribute significantly to the growth of this regional market. The primary driver for the growth of mobile and tower cranes market in Asia Pacific region is rising construction activities due to the advent of smart cities. Middle East & Africa region is also anticipated to experience promising growth in the mobile and tower cranes market during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the prominent presence of oil & gas refineries which requires large number of mobile and tower cranes.Over the last few years, organizations have changed the way they used to operate earlier. Major companies are focusing on product innovation and acquisitions and mergers to expand their business. Major mobile and tower cranes market players profiled in the report include ELMAK, FAVELLE, FAVCO BERHAD, Hyva Cranes, Kobelco Cranes Global Ltd, Konecranes, Liebherr, Manitex International, Manitowoc, Sany Heavy Industry Co., Ltd, Tadano Faun, Terex Corporation, WOLFFKRAN International AG., YONGMAO and Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co Ltd.Enquire about this Report @About Market Research Reports Search EngineMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Kiwi Website Design Being Considered Top Website Development Company Auckland

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Kiwi Website Design is being considered the top website development company all over in Auckland again. The company has a reputation of garnering major support from its client pool for being the best website development organization and providing the best of its kind, atop website design service Auckland that no other competitor has been able to compete with.The Kiwi Website Design is known for its top website design service Aucklandcity. Because since the start, the company has focused on its content development and its website designing skills, so that they can improve their clients website by implementing the most attractive UI that they possibly can.Many of their clients have praised their attractive UI designs and how they have improved upon them. For all of my website designs, I rather prefer going to Kiwi Website Design than any other organization in Auckland. One of the clients said. I have been with the Kiwi Website Design since the time of their inception. I have not seen any client of their leaving their organization because of poor quality work and that has somewhat led them to such a high position today. They always give their best to their work., said another.One of the reasons why many people chose Kiwi Website Design as thetop website design service Auckland over other organizations is because of their professional work environment and qualified web designers. According to many of their clients, the Kiwi Website Design only hires highly qualified designers and the reason for them having a smaller staff than other designing organizations is that they only hire people after rigorous testing.Not only are their web designers professional, but their support team also helps me out whenever I need help with anything. From helping me out in operating the website to the back panel of the website, they helped me out with almost everything.Another reason why their clients prefer them is that of their price margin and always coming up with affordable solutions that will help out their clients website needs. I only required a very simple and effective website for my small business with very limited functionality. As compared to other organizations which were insisting on taking website packages that were not useful to me, Kiwi Website Design helped me out by coming with a website development plan from which I was very comfortable.Many of Kiwi Website Designs clients claim to be working with them for years and claim that they will more than likely be working with them for years to come. The main reason for thatis that they consider Kiwi Website Design more reliable than any other website designing organization which also provides the top website design service Aucklandand that too at very affordable prices.Kiwi Website Design has achieved a lot in a very small period because of their dedication to their work,and this same path will help them lead the website designing industry of AucklandKiwi Website Design has had the privilege of working with more than 300 Kiwi Businesses as well as many exciting entrepreneurial and start-up companies in Australia, USA and UK. No matter what size the client, we are dedicated to providing the highest quality work and the greatest possible return on investment.9 Anzac Street, Takapuna, Auckland 0622
Costume Jewelry Market- Industry Trend Analysis and Forecast

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Costume jewelry (also known as fashion jewellery, trinkets, junk jewelry, fake jewelry and fallalery) is a jewelry made of less valuable materials as compared with valuable materials such as gold, diamond, platinum and other precious metals and gem. The raw material used for these jewelleries include base metals, glass, plastic, synthetic stones, semi-precious stones, beads, ivory, lac, leather, terracotta, pearl and metals such as silver, aluminum and brass. On the basis of products, the costume jewelry industry is broadly categorized as bracelets, brooch, earrings, necklaces, chokers, bangles, finger rings, toe rings, anklets and pendants.Request for Table of Contents @The costume Jewelry industry operates as a true global industry as the raw materials are mostly sourced from Australia, Africa, Russia and Canada, manufacturing takes place in China, India, Italy and Turkey whereas the largest markets is North America, followed by Europe.The developing economies such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are the fasted growing market with double digit growth rates. Asia Pacific is the largest producer of costume jewelry and expected to take over North America in terms of consumption in the coming years. High growth rate in Asia Pacific region is attributed to the rising income of the consumers in these countries. Further, with the massive urbanization and westernization taking place, the consumers are now becoming more fashionable and trendy. Moreover large population of young consumers (average age is 29 year and 37 year respectively for India and China) are also a key contributor in overall growth of costume jewelry in these countries.The key drivers for the costume jewelry include increasing prices for gold and other precious gems and pearls, internationalization of brands and increasing demand of men costume jewelry. Some of the key challenges for the costume jewelry industry include rising raw material cost and fad sensitive market of fashion jewelry. The unorganized supply chain of the raw materials in costume jewelry industry also act as a major restraint for the industry as it sometimes lead to steep hike in the prices of raw materials. Online channels, which are still new trend, offer new opportunity for the market.Get Sample Copy of this Report @Some of the major player in operating in the industry includes, Buckley Jewellery Limited, The Colibri Group, Avon Products Inc, Swank Inc, H. Stern Com. & Ind. S.A., Cartier SA, Channel S.A., Louis Vuitton North America, Inc., Stuller, Inc., Yurman Design, Inc., Billig Jewelers, Inc. and Gianni Versace S.p.A.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:
Women Wear Market Value Projected to Expand by 2020

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The global womens wear market has shown a good growth rate over the forecasted period. Fashion is one of the important aspects of womens wear and it keeps on changing. It is very difficult for a company to establish itself in womens wear segment due to the fast changing fashion style. In the womens wear market brand loyalty and brand recognition are the keys for a successful business. There are various channels available where womens wear can be purchased. These channels include department stores, boutiques, retailers, specialty stores and online. Global womens wear market can be bifurcated into five categories: clothing, footwear, sportswear, accessories and others.Request for Table of Contents @Europe represents the largest market for womens wear, closely followed by North America. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for womens wear. Increasing promotional activity, rising disposable income, increasing consumer confidence and increasing shoppers eagerness to keep up with the latest fashion trends are some of the major driving force for womens wear market. With the lower effect of economic recession, employment rate and disposable income levels are rising, which allows the consumer to spend more on apparels.Get Sample Copy of this Report @Thus increase in the confidence level of consumer which allows them to spend money easily. According to the National Bureau of Statistics China, annual per capita disposable income of urban households in China increased from USD 2,271.0 in 2008 to USD 3408.5 in 2012. The overall annual disposable income in India medium household income increased from USD 1,366.2 billion in 2010 to USD 1,587.6 billion in 2013.Some of the major companies operating in the womens wear market include GAP Inc., H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB, The TJX Companies, Inc., Marks and Spencer Group plc, Benetton Group, Pacific Brands Limited, Etam Developpement, Fast Retailing Co., Esprit Holdings Limited, Aoyama Trading Co., Mexx Group, Arcadia Group Limited, NEXT plc and Nordstrom, Inc.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:
Feed Premix Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Feed Premix Market

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Feed premix consists of essential nutrients to promote growth of animals. Increased global population and their need for protein rich food is create demand for medicated food.Surge in the demand for protein rich food across the globe, rising cattle, poultry industry are expected to increase demand for animal premix market. Rise in the awareness among the farmers regarding feed ingredients is expected to fuel the feed premix market.Gradual increase in Asia Pacific population enables creates demand for poultry and cattle products such as meat and milk.However, stringent regulations, rising raw material cost is hampering the growth of feed premix market globally.A sample of this report is available upon request @Feed premix market has been segmented on the basis of product type, Animal typeBased on the product type, Feed Premix market has been segmented into the following: Vitamins Amino acids Minerals Antibiotics OthersBased on mixture type, Feed Premix market has been segmented into the following: Poultry Swine Bovine Canine Feline OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Favorable government regulations to offer the quality of animal feed are expected to offer tremendous growth opportunities for the industry players. Animal feed industry experienced notable changes from the past decade, adoption of pre-mixed feed to provide nutrients to the cattle, swine, poultry others are creating demand for market players plunged in to Feed Premix market.Rising R&D expenditure, increased production of cattle and poultry in the middle income countries are expected to boost the market size. Innovative technologies and expanded applications to the veterinary healthcare are anticipated to create lucrative opportunities over forecast period.Need more information about this report @Geographically market has been segmented into following regions Viz. North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.North America feed premix market is dominated by U.S., it is witnessed for significant CAGR over the forecast period due to growth in poultry industry, cattle as well as swine. Rising disposable income in middle income countries such as China and India, increasing poultry and swine production enables foster the market.Stringent regulations and Germany feed premix market is expected to account for major revenue share over the forecast timeframe. Favorable government policies to enhance awareness are expected to create demand for feed premix market.Emerging nations China, India, Mexico are expected to offer growth opportunities for global Feed Premix market.Brazil is witnessing major revenue share in Latin America, owing to increased meat production in the country such as poultry, cattle industry.Global feed premix market is dominated by players such as DSM NV, Evialis, Nutreco NV, Biomin, DLG Group, BEC Feed Solutions, Cargill Inc., DBN Group, Land O Lakes Feed, Archer Daniels Midland, Charoen Pokphand, Godrej Agrovet, ForFarmers, Continental Grain Company, Nippai, Lallemand Animal Nutrition, De Heus, Kent Feeds, InVivo NSA.Get access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Contact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXEmail: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comToll Free (US): +1-866-598-1553Website @
Plant Growth Regulators Market: Global Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Plant Growth Regulators Market

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Plant growth regulators are the natural or synthetic chemicals that are sprayed or otherwise applied to a seed or plant in order to alter its characteristics. They are sometimes referred to as plant hormones. Farmers can add plant growth regulators to crops in order to achieve a desirable goal, ranging from increasing insect and disease resistance to increasing root strength. Some plant growth regulators are used to stunt growth. Growth regulators can be either organic or synthetic. Organic sources of the plant growth regulators includes naturally sourced amendments such as seaweed and liquid kelp. Commercial growers like nurseries generally uses synthetic growth regulators.Rising profitability concerns for farmers has forced farmers to adopt novel methods like organic farming & usage of agrochemicals to ensure crop protection and also to reduce costs which is the major driving factor of the plant growth regulators market. Growing concerns among farmers about the plant health and productivity, increase in the food exports and imports, long term usage of fertilizers are the few other factors which are expected to contribute to the growth of the plant growth regulators market. However, strict regulatory framework, lack of awareness and high costs of the products are the factors which are hindering the growth of the plant growth regulators market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The plant growth regulators market is classified on the basis of type and geography.Based on the type, plant growth regulators market is segmented as Gibberellins Cytotoxins Auxins Abscisic acid Vitamins EthyleneTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @The promotion of modern agricultural practices to sustain the increasing population combined with the government policies involving various countries are favouring the growth of the plant growth regulators market. Plant growth regulators market is having less consolidation owing to presence of few companies globally. Companies are also adopting several growth strategies like acquisitions, mergers, collaborations, agreements and new product launches etc. For instance, in July 2017, Crystal Crop Protection launched innovative range of insecticides, fungicides and plant growth regulators in Delhi.Need more information about this report @On the basis of geographical regions, plant growth regulators market is classified as into five key regions as Asia- Pacific, North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa and Latin America. Europe is the dominating market for plant growth regulators due to the growing activities of organic farming, increase in availability of land for the organic practices. North America holds a significant position in the plant growth regulators market due to rapid emerging organic farming industry especially in U.S. India, China and New Zealand are having the largest share in APAC region in plant growth regulators owing to the intensive agricultural farming, favourable FDI policies by the government of India, strong adoption of the modern agricultural practices etc.Some of the players in Plant Growth Regulators Market Syngenta AG (Switzerland), FMC Corporation (U.S.), The Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Nufarm Limited (Australia) and BASF SE (Germany).Get access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Contact to Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXEmail: sales@precisionbusinessinsights.comToll Free (US): +1-866-598-1553Website @
Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market 2017- Aroma Dead Sea, Ahava, Aqua Dead Sea, Kawar

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market Research Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.The growth trajectory of the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market over the assessment period is shaped by several prevalent and emerging regional and global trends, a granular assessment of which is offered in the report. The study on analyzing the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market dynamics takes a critical look at the business regulatory framework, technological advances in associated industries, and the strategic avenues. The study strives to offer incisive insights into the developmental framework on which the growth of the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market hinges on. In doing so, the research tries to lay bare key strategic and operational risks underpinning new business models that might cause disruption in the competitive landscape. The report takes into account major research and development activities undertaken by stakeholders and tries to identify avenues where lucrative prospects lie. To this end, the study also sheds light on regional investment trends Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market and evaluates their impact on emerging opportunities in the coming years.Download Free exclusive Sample of this report:Strategists, business owners, CEO and other CxOs, and budding entrepreneurs looking for clear signals for the trajectory of the markets growth will find the study helpful. The study on the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market is prepared with the help of extensive volumes of reliable secondary research that is in no way exhaustive. The findings are further backed by intensive rounds of primary research, including interviews and events. The research on the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market employs a variety of statistical tools to arrive at reliable market projections on major segments into which the entire market can be broken into. Combining rigorous models of research with Porters five force analysis and SWOT analysis, the study tries to offer evidence-based insights on the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market, which can be indispensable for effective strategy formulations. The study also zeroes in on prominent trends in expected to expand the horizon of the market and the influence on new policy formulations in the global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics market in various nations.Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsGlobal Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market Research Report 20171 Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics1.2 Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Facial Care Cosmetics1.2.4 Hair Care Cosmetics1.2.5 Eye Care Cosmetics1.2.6 Body Care Cosmetics1.3 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Segment by Application1.3.1 Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Men1.3.3 WomenGet more information from Table of Content:2 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type3 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)4 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)5 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Market Analysis by Application7 Global Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Aroma Dead Sea7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.3 Aroma Dead Sea Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Ahava7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.3 Ahava Dead Sea Mud Cosmetics Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business OverviewEnquiry For Discount Visit @QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. 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Air Traffic Control System Sales Market Report for Period 2018 till 2025

Air Traffic Control System Sales

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The Global market Air Traffic Control System report explores the statistics about the Air Traffic Control System market and makes future estimations based on the survey of the collected database.A new market assessment report on Air Traffic Control System Sales brings to light a detailed statistics on the dramatic shift in the competitive landscape and business environment of the Air Traffic Control System Sales market for the forecast period 2018 - 2025.Request for Sample Copy of Global Air Traffic Control System Sales Market 2018 @The comprehensive study offers an overview of the current state of development of the business as well as predicts the course of progress across different regions. A large number of factors including the major driving forces, threats and opportunities are taken into account to present an analytical picture of the industry portrayed in the report.The study is a professional probe into the revenue generated and capacity estimates for the Air Traffic Control System Sales market for the forecast period 2015 - 2025 empower the business owners to maintain a competitive edge over their rivals. The research further examines and provides data on the market by type, application and geography interspersed with illustrations and other graphical representations.The market analysis not only determines the attractiveness of the industry but also the evolving challenges and opportunities and their association with the weaknesses and strengths of prominent market leaders. Other factors taken into consideration when studying the industry include profitability, manufacturing capability, distribution channels and industry cost structure and major success factors.Global Air Traffic Control System market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Air Traffic Control System sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players including- Thales Group Indra Sistemas Raytheon Company Northrop Grumman Corporation Searidge Technologies Nav Canada Altys Technologies Artisys, S.R.O Saipher Atc Cyrrus Limited Lockheed Martin Corporation Harris Corporation Frequentis Ag Intelcan Technosystems Inc. Nats Holdings Limited Acams Airport Tower Solutions Honeywell International Inc. Leonardo S.P.A Skysoft-Atm Adacel Technologies Limited JezetekOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into- Hardware System Software SolutionEnquire Before Buying @On the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, including- Communication Navigation Surveillance AutomationGeographically, this report split global into several key Regions, with sales (K MT), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Die Attach Materials for these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), covering United States China Europe Japan Southeast Asia IndiaThe study segments the complete Air Traffic Control System Sales market on the basis of different application, end-use, end-user, and production capability. From a business standpoint, the industry has been thoroughly examined across various countries located in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and others. The size of the industry for the forecast period 2017 - 2022 is evaluated on the basis of current sales figures and past financial report can be used to forecast the future sales.The research provides answers to the following key questions: What will be the size and the growth rate of the Air Traffic Control System Sales market for the forecast period 2018 - 2025? What are key drivers believed to shape the future of the market during the estimated period? What are the prominent industry players dominating the Air Traffic Control System Sales market during the forecast period? What are the major trends influencing the development of the industry? What are the key challenges likely to hinder the progress of the market? What are major opportunities and threats encountered by the business owners operating in the business vertical?Browse the full Report of Global Air Traffic Control System Sales @Follow Link Twitter:Follow Link LinkedIn:Follow Link Google Plus:Follow Link Facebook:Planning to invest in market intelligence products or offerings on the web? Then marketexpertz has just the thing for you - reports from over 500 prominent publishers and updates on our collection daily to empower companies and individuals catch-up with the vital insights on industries operating across different geography, trends, share, size and growth rate. There's more to what we offer to our customers. With marketexpertz you have the choice to tap into the specialized services without any additional charges.40 Wall St. 28th floor New York CityNY 10005 United Statessales@marketexpertz.com+1-800-819-3052
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What do Chloe Kim, Logan Paul and the Florida school shooting survivors all have in common?

Yes, they've all made headlines recently (although some headlines are better than others), but they are also all members of the generation following Millennials: Generation Z or iGen.

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State and widely cited author on Generation Z, defines iGen as the generation born in the years between 1995 and 2012, meaning the oldest iGen members are 23, and the youngest are five.

Like with Millennials, social scholars have plucked out several traits that seem to characterize the generation. Generation Z members are characterized by their heavy social media presence, risk aversion and entrepreneurial spirit.

Now, it appears that Generation Z members are finally starting to emerge from the shadow of their Millennial predecessors in the news cycle.

Click through the slideshow above to learn more about what to expect from iGen.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe Kim was one of breakout stars of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and her rise to stardom was in part due to her social media habits. In addition to winning gold in the women's halfpipe, Kim became an internet sensation by tweeting about her food cravings while in the middle of competition.

Although it was commonly believed that individuals born in the late 1990s were Millennials, Twenge noticed in 2017 that there were "big shifts in teens' behavior and attitudes" in the early 2010s, leading her to believe that the cutoff between Millennials and iGen should actually be around 1995, as opposed to 2000. Other research groups have suggested a similar cutoff around 1995, with a cutoff somewhere between 2009-13.

For those interested, here are the rough cutoff years for the three generations preceding Generation Z, according to the Pew Research Center:

-Baby Boomers 1946-1964

- Generation X 1965-1980

-Millennials 1981-1995 (note: Pew cuts Millennials off at 1997, but more recent studies cut them off at 1995.)

Others argue that there is another generation around 1980 which has been dubbed Xennials. At this point, Millennials are probably perfectly willing to let any other group grab headlines, no matter what you want to call them.
In the last year, the Midland Noon Rotary Club, through its Community Needs Committee, gave more than $21,600 in funding to various Midland County organizations and programs. The committee now has more than $28,000 to fund the community's needs.

Recent recipients include Midland Kids First, The Midland County Sheriff Office's SKID program, The ARC of Midland, Adoption Option, Camp Fish Tales, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, The Rock Center for Youth Development, The Family and Children's Services of Mid-Michigan, Midland Young Life and the West Midland Family Center.
[March 07, 2018] Xerox Reinforces Significant Benefits of Its Proposed Combination with Fuji Xerox The Board of Directors (the "Board") of Xerox (NYSE:XRX) today issued the following letter to Xerox shareholders, reinforcing its belief in the significant benefits of the Company's proposed combination with Fuji Xerox: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180307006372/en/ (Graphic: Business Wire) *** Dear Xerox Shareholders, On January 31, 2018, Xerox announced its plans to combine with Fuji Xerox - the joint venture Xerox and Fujifilm established in Asia 56 years ago - to create a global leader in innovative print technologies and intelligent work solutions. As a result of a comprehensive review of the Company's strategic and financial alternatives, Xerox's Board and management strongly believe that the combination with Fuji Xerox is the best path forward to create value for Xerox and its shareholders: The combination creates significant immediate and long-term value for Xerox shareholders ;

; Xerox shareholders will be owners of a larger, stronger and more valuable company with enhanced prospects for growth and value creation;

owners of with enhanced prospects for growth and value creation; Xerox and Fujifilm are already closely aligned , and both have demonstrated track records of success in transformation ;

, and both have ; The agreement establishes strong governance and ownership safeguards for current Xerox shareholders; and

The existing Fuji Xerox joint venture has been integral to Xerox's competitiveness for many years, and the combination will optimize the benefits of this partnership for our Company.

The Transaction Creates Significant Immediate and Long-Term Value for Xerox Shareholders The Transaction provides Xerox shareholders with significant value both at closing, which is expected to occur in the second half of 2018, and over time. This includes a substantial cash dividend that will be paid to Xerox shareholders contingent upon consummation of the Transaction, as well as the upside of a significant investment in a larger, stronger and more competitive company.



Value Delivered to Xerox Shareholders at Closing

+ $2.5 Billion Special Dividend 49.9% Ownership Stake in the (~$9.80 per share) Combined Company Significant, certain value representing ~33%

of Xerox's current market capitalization Larger, stronger and more competitive company with a more attractive financial profile Our partner in the Fuji Xerox joint venture, Fujifilm, will own the other 50.1 percent of the combined company. Fujifilm will also consolidate the same share of the debt associated with the special dividend paid to Xerox shareholders at closing, but will not receive any portion of this payment. The relative ownership of the combined company is favorable to current Xerox shareholders and implies an over 15 percent premium relative to Xerox's unaffected stock price of $30.35, which was prior to media reports about a potential transaction on January 10, 20182. In addition, Xerox and Fujifilm teams have already identified $1.25 billion in annual cost savings opportunities from combining the two companies, demonstrating the highly synergistic attributes of this Transaction. As shown in Figure 1: Total Illustrative Value Creation for Xerox Shareholders, this compelling shareholder value equation represents an illustrative total value of approximately $45 per share for the combined company1,3,4. Importantly, this does not reflect the value creation or multiple expansion opportunity over time that we believe should result from the combined company's enhanced revenue profile, global reach, scale and competitiveness. Shareholders Will Be Owners of a Larger, Stronger and More Valuable Company The Transaction will create an industry leader with $18 billion in revenue that is better positioned to compete and capture growth opportunities in the marketplace by leveraging the global reach, scale, technology and innovation strengths of the two companies. With direct access to high-growth markets in Asia Pacific, Xerox will operate as a truly global platform for the first time in its history. Beyond the $1.25 billion in cost synergies described above, we believe the combined company will have an improved revenue profile based on significantly strengthened manufacturing, distribution, innovation and R&D strategies, as well as improved cost competitiveness across global markets. This is expected to result in an at least $1.0 billion revenue expansion opportunity for the combined company. We believe the improved revenue trajectory will increase the valuation of the combined company, while enabling the vast majority of the cost savings to flow to the bottom line. Specifically, the revenue and cost synergies identified through this combination include: Developing a more complete and competitive product portfolio with enhanced offerings in areas where Xerox is currently underpenetrated, such as high-speed inkjet and low-end A3;

with enhanced offerings in areas where Xerox is currently underpenetrated, such as high-speed inkjet and low-end A3; Streamlining global R&D, product rollout and marketing strategies to deliver best-in-class solutions with greater coordination, efficiency and improved time-to-market;

to deliver best-in-class solutions with greater coordination, efficiency and improved time-to-market; Leveraging Xerox and Fuji Xerox's integrated delivery and servicing capabilities to improve our solutions architecture and expand client relationships globally;

to improve our solutions architecture and expand client relationships globally; Transforming small and midsized business (SMB) strategy by expanding our channel reach and increasing cost competitiveness through synergies;

by expanding our channel reach and increasing cost competitiveness through synergies; Creating an integrated global manufacturing, distribution and R&D platform by applying best-in-class practices; and

by applying best-in-class practices; and Optimizing the global footprint of manufacturing, distribution and R&D centers, and eliminating duplicative costs at corporate and support functions. In addition to the $1.25 billion of cost synergies related to these actions, there is a separate cost reduction program already underway at the existing Fuji Xerox joint venture, which is expected to deliver $450 million in annual cost savings over the next two years. This brings the total annual cost savings target for the combined company to over $1.7 billion to be completed by 2022, with approximately $1.2 billion achievable by 2020 (See Figure 2: $1.7 Billion in Total Annual Cost Savings by 2022). By capitalizing on these opportunities, the combined company is expected to return to revenue growth by 2020, faster than Xerox could achieve on its own, and deliver industry-leading operating margins in the high teens by 2022. As a result, the combined company's operating leverage is projected to drive free cash flow in excess of $2.0 billion. This will enable us to support investments in innovation, strategic growth initiatives and attractive capital returns over time. As both Fujifilm and Xerox have previously communicated, the combined company will maintain a commitment to return at least 50 percent of free cash flow to shareholders - in line with Xerox's current capital return policy. This future capital return policy is in addition to the $2.5 billion special dividend that will be paid to Xerox shareholders at closing. While Xerox has been successfully executing its strategy to improve its revenue trajectory and expand margins, we believe the future value potential of the combined company, driven by the substantial revenue and cost synergy opportunities, exceeds what would be achieved as a standalone company. The synergies from bringing together two highly complementary businesses will be a leap forward on our path to become the industry leader and enhance shareholder value. The proxy statement we will file in due course will include additional disclosures regarding the financial profile of the combined company, which we believe will reinforce the compelling value of this Transaction. Xerox and Fujifilm Are Already Closely Aligned, and Both Have Demonstrated Track Records of Success in Transformation Our longstanding relationships with Fujifilm and Fuji Xerox provide this combination with greater execution certainty than most M&A transactions. The companies have a long history of working together and know each other well. The combined company will have an experienced leadership team, led by Xerox's CEO Jeff Jacobson, entirely committed to realizing the full value potential of the new company. As evidenced by the proven track record of decisive actions at both Xerox and Fujifilm, the combined company will also build on a strong legacy of significant recent transformations at both companies: Xerox's Transformation Fujifilm's Transformation Successfully completed the separation of Conduent in January 2017, unlocking significant shareholder value.

Delivered on all of its commitments for FY'17 to drive revenue and margin improvements: Exceeded its aggressive cost reduction target as part of its three-year "Strategic Transformation" program in its second year by $80 million, reaching $680 million gross cost savings in FY'17; Increased penetration in strategic growth areas representing 40% of total revenue versus 36% in FY'15; Executed the successful launch of 29 new workplace devices, representing the Company's largest new product launch in its history; Signed 65 new dealer partners to enable channel expansion in the small and midsized business (SMB) market; and Took a series of steps to optimize its capital structure including reduction of $800 million of debt and $836 million pension contributions as well as simplification of operations through elimination of accounts receivable

of its commitments for FY'17 to drive revenue and margin improvements: Survived the digitalization of the photographic industry through a dramatic business transformation while many of its peers struggled.

Successfully diversified its portfolio to faster-growing markets, such as document solutions, imaging, healthcare and functional materials (86% of revenue in FY'16 vs. 46% in FY'01).

Implemented major restructuring actions between fiscal years 2007-2011, significantly improving the Company's operational performance and returning the Company to steady profit generation.

Delivered on its commitment to enhance capital returns to shareholders, including dividend increases for 8 consecutive years.

Drove total shareholder return of approximately 200% in the last 5 years compared to 138% for the Tokyo Price Index during the same period 5 .

. Maintained a strong investment grade credit rating, while supporting shareholder returns and significant M&A investments.

Implemented a series of actions to enhance its governance structure and increase transparency, including: Increasing the Board's independent director ratio; Strengthening management with leadership changes and consolidating reporting lines; and Integrating Fuji Xerox's accounting and audit functions with those of Fujifilm.

The Transaction Agreement Establishes Strong Governance and Ownership Safeguards for Current Xerox Shareholders Strong governance protections for current Xerox shareholders have been built into this Transaction, including: 5 independent Xerox designated directors that will serve or select their replacements for 5 years; after 5 years, those 5 board seats may only be replaced by other independent directors, if reasonably acceptable to the then-serving independent directors;

that will serve or select their replacements for 5 years; after 5 years, those 5 board seats may only be replaced by other independent directors, if reasonably acceptable to the then-serving independent directors; An independent Audit Committee as required by the NYSE standards;

as required by the NYSE standards; An independent Conflicts Committee , the majority of which will comprise Xerox designated directors for 5 years; the Committee will oversee any proposed transactions including those with Fujifilm to ensure the terms are fair to the combined company and no less favorable than arm's length terms; and

, the majority of which will comprise Xerox designated directors for 5 years; the Committee will oversee any proposed transactions including those with Fujifilm to ensure the terms are fair to the combined company and no less favorable than arm's length terms; and Other provisions limiting the ability of Fujifilm to engage in interested party transactions and to obtain disparate consideration in connection with a future sale. Existing Fuji Xerox Joint Venture Has Been Integral to Xerox's Competitiveness, and the Combination Will Optimize the Benefits to Xerox For 56 years, Fujifilm and Xerox have jointly owned and operated the Fuji Xerox joint venture. This partnership is among the most successful cross-border collaborations between the U.S. and Japan, and has existed in its current form (25% owned by Xerox, 75% owned by Fujifilm) since 2001. Xerox has significantly benefited from this relationship over the years. Today, Xerox sources more than two-thirds of its equipment products from Fuji Xerox, including the vast majority of the office equipment sold to enterprise customers. Fuji Xerox designs and manufactures this equipment using the shared IP that the two companies have developed together over the decades. It is important to note that Xerox, in its sole discretion, determines the volume of business it conducts with Fuji Xerox and is not subject to any minimum purchase obligations under the existing supply agreement. In fact, Xerox at times solicits other proposals to determine which supplier best meets the Company's requirements in terms of cost, quality and pricing. Based on this ongoing sourcing analysis, we believe it is highly unlikely that Xerox would be able to achieve attractive pricing and terms with alternative suppliers. Xerox benefits from Fuji Xerox's superior technology, design and manufacturing expertise, as well as attractive pricing. As a result, our supply relationship with Fuji Xerox has grown and been sustained at mutually-beneficial economics over time. Xerox's strategy for bringing innovative, high-quality products to the market - in partnership with Fuji Xerox and other suppliers - has clearly been successful, as evidenced by our #1 equipment revenue market share and industry-leading margins. The proposed Transaction will also solve for suboptimal aspects of the current joint venture structure by enabling Xerox to: Reach revenue growth sooner with access to faster-growing regions;

Optimize its cost structure through enhanced control over its supply chain; and

Simplify its financial profile and operations through full consolidation of Fuji Xerox's income and cash flow. Combining Xerox with Fuji Xerox builds upon this strong partnership to create a global platform with enhanced scale, competitive positioning and financial flexibility. The combination presents tangible, achievable opportunities for value creation both in the near and long term. We will provide more information about our partnership with Fujifilm and the Fuji Xerox joint venture in further communications with our shareholders. The Combination Is the Best Path Forward for Xerox Xerox's Board of Directors, in consultation with world-class financial and legal advisors, explored all strategic and financial options reasonably available to improve the Company's growth trajectory, better compete in a challenging industry environment, and ultimately create shareholder value. This included options for its standalone business, capital allocation strategy and the current Fuji Xerox joint venture construct, as well as other potential strategic transactions. Upon thorough evaluation over many months, the Board concluded that the proposed combination with Fuji Xerox is superior to other alternatives and in the best interest of all Xerox shareholders because: Xerox shareholders are realizing value based on relative valuation, immediate and certain value provided by the special dividend, and significant upside from an ongoing interest in the combined company;

based on relative valuation, immediate and certain value provided by the special dividend, and significant upside from an ongoing interest in the combined company; The Transaction creates a stronger, larger and more competitive company with an accelerated path to revenue growth and shareholder value creation;

with an accelerated path to revenue growth and shareholder value creation; Substantial cost savings opportunities are unlocked that will drive margin expansion and fund future investments; and

that will drive margin expansion and fund future investments; and Shareholders rights and interests are protected in the new company through strong governance measures. Xerox's Board of Directors is focused on creating long-term value for the Company and its shareholders. Our Board members are confident in the many benefits of the combination and the bright future Xerox will have as a result. Thank you for your continued support and investment in Xerox. The Board of Directors of Xerox



Robert J. Keegan Cheryl Gordon Krongard Gregory Q. Brown Charles Prince Joseph J. Echevarria Ann N. Reese William Curt Hunter Stephen H. Rusckowski Jeffrey Jacobson Sara Martinez Tucker Additional Information and Where to Find It This filing may be deemed to be solicitation material in respect of the transaction with Fujifilm described herein (the "Transaction") and/or the matters to be considered at the Company's 2018 Annual Meeting. In connection with the Transaction and the 2018 Annual Meeting, Xerox plans to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (" SEC (News - Alert)") and furnish to Xerox's shareholders one or more proxy statements and white proxy cards and other relevant documents. BEFORE MAKING ANY VOTING DECISION, XEROX'S SHAREHOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT(S) AND WHITE PROXY CARD(S) IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AND ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC IN CONNECTION WITH THE TRANSACTIONS AND/OR THE COMPANY'S 2018 ANNUAL MEETING OR INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE IN THE PROXY STATEMENTS BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE TRANSACTIONS AND/OR THE COMPANY'S 2018 ANNUAL MEETING AND THE PARTIES RELATED THERETO. Xerox's shareholders will be able to obtain a free copy of documents filed with the SEC at the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. In addition, Xerox's shareholders may obtain a free copy of Xerox's filings with the SEC from Xerox's website at http://www.xerox.com under the heading "Investor Relations" and then under the heading "SEC Filings." Participants in the Solicitation The directors, executive officers and certain other members of management and employees of Xerox may be deemed "participants" in the solicitation of proxies from shareholders of Xerox in favor of the Transaction or in connection with the matters to be considered at the Company's 2018 Annual Meeting. Information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be considered participants in the solicitation of the shareholders of Xerox in connection with the Transaction or the Company's 2018 Annual Meeting will be set forth in the applicable proxy statement and other relevant documents to be filed with the SEC. You can find information about Xerox's executive officers and directors in Xerox's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017, Xerox's and such persons' other filings with the SEC and in Xerox's definitive proxy statement filed with the SEC on Schedule 14A. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This filing, and other written or oral statements made from time to time by management contain "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "will", "should" and similar expressions, as they relate to us, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect management's current beliefs, assumptions and expectations and are subject to a number of factors that may cause actual results to differ materially. Such factors include but are not limited to: our ability to address our business challenges in order to reverse revenue declines, reduce costs and increase productivity so that we can invest in and grow our business; changes in economic and political conditions, trade protection measures, licensing requirements and tax laws in the United States and in the foreign countries in which we do business; changes in foreign currency exchange rates; our ability to successfully develop new products, technologies and service offerings and to protect our intellectual property rights; the risk that multi-year contracts with governmental entities could be terminated prior to the end of the contract term and that civil or criminal penalties and administrative sanctions could be imposed on us if we fail to comply with the terms of such contracts and applicable law; the risk that partners, subcontractors and software vendors will not perform in a timely, quality manner; actions of competitors and our ability to promptly and effectively react to changing technologies and customer expectations; our ability to obtain adequate pricing for our products and services and to maintain and improve cost efficiency of operations, including savings from restructuring actions; the risk that individually identifiable information of customers, clients and employees could be inadvertently disclosed or disclosed as a result of a breach of our security systems; reliance on third parties, including subcontractors, for manufacturing of products and provision of services; our ability to manage changes in the printing environment and expand equipment placements; interest rates, cost of borrowing and access to credit markets; funding requirements associated with our employee pension and retiree health benefit plans; the risk that our operations and products may not comply with applicable worldwide regulatory requirements, particularly environmental regulations and directives and anti-corruption laws; the outcome of litigation and regulatory proceedings to which we may be a party; the risk that we do not realize all of the expected strategic and financial benefits from the separation and spin-off of our Business Process Outsourcing business; the effects on our business resulting from actions of activist shareholders; and other factors that are set forth in the "Risk Factors" section, the "Legal Proceedings" section, the "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" section and other sections of our 2017 Annual Report on Form 10-K, as well as our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K filed with the SEC.. Furthermore, the actual results of the Transaction could vary materially as a result of a number of factors, including, but not limited to: (i) the risk that the Transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect Xerox's business and the price of Xerox's common stock, (ii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the Transaction, including the receipt of certain approvals from Xerox's shareholders and certain governmental and regulatory approvals, (iii) the parties may be unable to achieve expected synergies and operating efficiencies in the Transaction within the expected time frames or at all, (iv) the Transaction may not result in the accretion to Xerox's earnings or other benefits, (v) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the Transaction agreements, (vi) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the Transaction on Xerox's and/or Fujifilm's business relationships, operating results, and business generally, risks related to the proposed Transaction disrupting Xerox's current plans and operations and potential difficulties in Xerox's employee retention as a result of the Transaction, (vii) risks related to diverting management's attention from Xerox's ongoing business operations, (viii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Xerox, its officers or directors related to the Transaction agreements or the Transaction and (ix) the possibility that competing offers or acquisition proposals for Xerox will be made. Xerox assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments, except as required by law. Fuji Xerox is a joint venture between Xerox Corporation and Fujifilm in which Xerox holds a noncontrolling 25% equity interest and Fujifilm holds the remaining equity interest. In April 2017, Fujifilm formed an independent investigation committee (IIC) to primarily conduct a review of the appropriateness of the accounting practices at Fuji Xerox's New Zealand subsidiary and at other subsidiaries. The IIC completed its review during the second quarter 2017 and identified aggregate adjustments to Fuji Xerox's financial statements of approximately JPY 40 billion (approximately $360 million) primarily related to misstatements at Fuji Xerox's New Zealand and Australian subsidiaries. We determined that our share of the total adjustments identified as part of the investigation was approximately $90 million and impacted our fiscal years 2009 through 2017. We concluded that we should revise our previously issued annual and interim consolidated financial statements for 2014, 2015 and 2016 and the first quarter of 2017 the next time they are filed. Our review of this matter has been completed. However, Fujifilm and Fuji Xerox continue to review Fujifilm's oversight and governance of Fuji Xerox as well as Fuji Xerox's oversight and governance over its businesses in light of the findings of the IIC. At this time, we can provide no assurances relative to the outcome of any potential governmental investigations or any consequences thereof that may happen as a result of this matter. About Xerox Xerox Corporation is a technology leader that innovates the way the world communicates, connects and works. We understand what's at the heart of sharing information - and all of the forms it can take. We embrace the integration of paper and digital, the increasing requirement for mobility, and the need for seamless integration between work and personal worlds. Every day, our innovative print technologies and intelligent work solutions help people communicate and work better. Discover more at www.xerox.com and follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at @Xerox. ______________________________________



1 Based on 254.7 million basic shares outstanding assuming no conversion of preferred shares. 2 Based on $7.0 billion (reflecting 75% of Fuji Xerox implied by the midpoint of 7x - 8x Fuji Xerox 2018E EBITDA per p. 28 of Xerox Presentation as filed on February 9, 2018), 267.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding, and taking into account the ~$9.80 special dividend paid to Xerox shareholders at closing. 3 The sum of (a) $13 / share or $7.0 billion (reflecting 75% of Fuji Xerox implied by the mid-point of 7-8x Fuji Xerox 2018E EBITDA per p. 28 of Xerox Presentation as filed on February 9, 2018), multiplied by 49.9% and divided by 267.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding and (b) $10 / share or $8.1 billion unaffected market capitalization for Xerox as of January 10, 2018 less $2.5 billion of additional net debt to fund cash dividend, multiplied by 49.9% and divided by 267.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding. 4 Based on $3.2 billion in present value of transaction synergies (mid-point of 7-8x run-rate synergies of $1.25 billion, multiplied by 49.9% and discounted to the present per p. 29 of Xerox Presentation as filed on February 9, 2018), divided by 267.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding. 5 Reflects share price performance in JPY, including dividends and repurchases for the 5-year period from January 10, 2013 through January 10, 2018 prior to media reports about a potential transaction with Xerox. *** Note: To receive RSS news feeds, visit https://www.news.xerox.com. For open commentary, industry perspectives and views, visit http://twitter.com/xerox, http://connect.blogs.xerox.com, http://www.facebook.com/XeroxCorp, https://www.instagram.com/xerox/, http://www.linkedin.com/company/xerox, http://www.youtube.com/XeroxCorp. Xerox and Xerox and Design are trademarks of Xerox in the United States and/or other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180307006372/en/

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Adam Dresden, a Ferris State University senior in surveying engineering from Midland, is among more than 50 Ferris State University students spending spring break participating in activities to benefit residents of low-income areas or working to restore and create housing in storm-damaged or impoverished communities.

Members of the registered student organizations for His House Christian Fellowship, Newman Center from St. Pauls Catholic Church and Wesley House left Big Rapids late last week to offer assistance in Juarez, Mexico; Chicago; and Slidell, Louisiana. All of the groups will conclude their alternative spring break mission trips by Sunday.
To the editor:

We're now getting a better understanding as to why law enforcement missed all the red flags surrounding the Parkland shooter. Have you ever heard of the Obama Administration's "School Promise Program?" If not, Google it. You will be shocked.

Turns out that Parkland was the most violent school in the state of Florida. From 2011-2012 there were more than 1,000 arrests, at this one high school. Obama was concerned with the rate/number of minorities put into the justice system. So the Obama Department of Education and Department of Justice teamed up with Parkland and local law enforcement. The Promise Program was designed to keep minorities out of the justice system, by keeping law enforcement, out of the schools. The program left criminal law enforcement up to the school system. In short, 1,000 arrests went down to 350 arrests in one year, by simply looking the other way.

Because of the Promise Program, the Parkland shooter was never arrested for anything, therefore his background check was clean when he purchased a gun. If this program did not exist the shooter would never have been able to buy a gun.

Then we had Clinton's Assault Weapons Ban, put in place between 1994-2004. Several studies have determined that this ban had no effect on reducing crime or gun violence.

Folks ignore all the anti-gun propaganda coming from progressive Democrats and the progressive media. Their solutions have not worked in the past and will not work in the future.

The only reasonable course is to have strong deterrents. For example:

 Require armed security in all schools and eliminate Gun Free Zones. A visible armed presences will serve as a deterrent.

 Eliminate the School Promise Program. Violent people need to be put into the justice system.

 Allow Conceal Carry except where alcohol is served. Everyone has a right to defend themselves and will serve as a deterrent.

 Require a complete review/rethink of our Schools Shelter in Place/Active Shooter protocols. Hiding is no defense.

 Ban any clip for a hand gun or rifle that carries more than five rounds. The gun is not the issue, it's the clip. Banning high capacity clips does not infringe on a person's right to have a gun.

DON BAILEY

Hemlock
To the editor:

The Midland County Emergency Food Pantry Network held a mobile food pantry at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Midland on Feb. 24. The free food giveaway also was funded by the generous congregations of the 1st Ward and the 2nd Ward.

Ninety-eight volunteers unloaded the semi-truck from Flint on Friday and then served 209 families (565 individuals) on Saturday morning. The 16,008 pounds of frozen meats, onions, potatoes, canned and boxed goods, and bakery items were purchased from the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan in Flint. The Network is also grateful to the many donors of food, money and time throughout the year to the Network's mission of "always food in every home."

Midland County residents in (financial) need of food and personal care items during the year may call the Network number of 486-9393 to leave your name and phone number. The third MFP in 2018 is scheduled for March 21 at Faith United Methodist Church in Coleman. Thanks again to the members and staffs of the 1st Ward and the 2nd Ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for their partnering support in this ministry.

SALLY ANN SUTTON

Midland County EFPN
You may or may not have heard that a parent has mounted a campaign to challenge the use of the award-winning book "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Native American author Sherman Alexie, which has been read for several years in the ninth grade at Midland Public Schools. This parent believes that teenagers should not read a book that discusses typical teenager thoughts and feelings, particularly in relation to sexuality. Basically, the teenage boy admits that masturbation is pleasurable. Taking into consideration human developmental stages, I dont think the average teenager will find that shocking or particularly revelatory.

The parent also takes offense at the main character mocking God, and pointing out that Native Americans have reason to feel some bitterness about Christianity. This is a particularly rich exploration in the book. The parent criticizes a passage saying that Christians taught Native Americans to be intolerant, but that simply acknowledges history. Christians did express intolerance. Christianity was used as a justification to take Native American children from their families in order to civilize them. They were sent to boarding schools where they were forced to convert.

Christianity was also used to justify the expulsion of native peoples from their lands, even though many had already converted. These are important facets of our country for people to explore and question. Learning about another persons experience requires that one sets aside his or her perspective to listen to another. Being a person who is not Native American, I do not get to judge how that history has made a particular person feel, and yet the parent seems to think that because she only views her faith positively, students should not be allowed to read this contradictory opinion.

But even more relatable, perhaps, for some of the students is that much of the anger expressed and mocking of God relates to his terrible pain and grief. He faces so much hardship in his life and grief after so many people who are important to him die within a short time. His outbursts are a coping mechanism. I think Christian charity demands a bit more empathy than is expressed when one tries to withhold literature.

Other parents sharing the petition by forwarding the email are adding their names while admitting that they have not and do not intend to read the book. This is ridiculous and it should be beneath the school district that followed proper vetting procedures to even entertain complaints by people who dont even know what they are talking about.

It is sad that some people in this community live by such fear of exposure to diversity, and I hope that most people will be dismayed to learn that this is happening.

To my knowledge, this book represents one of only two non-white authors selected for ninth-grade English (and this is the first year the number increased to two). Its a good book. There is a reason it has earned so many accolades. But recently Sherman Alexie has been accused of preventing other Native American authors from gaining success and exposure for their work, so it may be worth a conversation about selecting another author. Generally, we need to add more diversity to our curriculum, not take away the only book that helps our students see the world from a different and challenging perspective. That is how we grow as people and remember to recognize the human dignity and worth in those who are not like us.

Jennifer Vannette has a doctorate in history from Central Michigan University. She is a resident of Midland.
Boyne volleyball drops to Sault in three, Rambler soccer edged by Elks
PokerStars Announces MEGASTACKS and Festival Lille & Marbella

March 08, 2018 Jason Glatzer

PokerStars has announced five new events to its PokerStars LIVE schedule this year and additional paths to win coveted Platinum Passes.

The PokerStars MEGASTACK schedule kicked off in Dublin with a 170 buy-in event and a 50,000 guarantee in January. The festival will be returning once again to the Irish capital on April 19-22 before hitting London on April 27-29.

Another new stop announced is the PokerStars Festival Marbella (Spain) on June 4-10 where a Platinum Pass will be awarded to the winners of the Main Event, Marbella Cup, and High Roller.

Shortly after will be the PokerStars MEGASTACK Gujan-Mestras (France) on June 27 to July 1 followed by the PokerStars Festival Lille (France) where three more Platinum Passes will be given away.

Event Date Platinum Passes Awarded to PokerStars MEGASTACK Dublin April 19 - 22, 2018 PokerStars MEGASTACK London April 27 - 29, 2018 Main Event winner PokerStars Festival Marbella June 4 - 10, 2018 Main Event winner, Cup winner, High Roller winner PokerStars MEGASTACK Gujan-Mestras June 27 - July 1, 2018 PokerStars Festival Lille July 16 - 22, 2018 Main Event winner, Cup winner, High Roller winner

Win a Platinum Pass

The next opportunity for players to win a Platinum Pass online is the Spinball Giveaway All-In Shootout on March 12 at 15:00 ET. Players can earn a ticket for this event by collecting at least one puzzle piece on any two days between now and March 11.

Opportunities to win a Platinum Pass at a PokerStars Live event in March include the Super Series 6, which is being held in Manila from now until March 11, the PokerStars London Series from March 9-11, and PokerStars MEGASTACK San Remo from March 13-18.

The Stars Group owns a majority share in iBus Media.
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By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO (Reuters)  California Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday accused President Donald Trumps administration of declaring war on the most populous U.S. state, after the Justice Department sued to stop policies that protect illegal immigrants against deportation.

The Democratic governor made the charge shortly after Attorney General Jeff Sessions intensified the Republican administrations confrontation with California. In a speech in the state capital, Sessions accused California of obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts and vowed to stop the states defiance.

Sessions addressed a law enforcement group in Sacramento, a day after the Justice Department filed suit against California, Brown and the states Democratic attorney general over so-called sanctuary policies that shield illegal immigrants.

California absolutely, it appears to me, is using every power it has  powers it doesnt have  to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure Im going to use every power I have to stop them, Sessions, the top U.S law enforcement officer, said in his speech.

Brown called the attorney generals trip to California a political stunt and his description of Californias laws a lie.

Like so many in the Trump administration, this attorney general has no regard for the truth, Brown told reporters, adding that the laws were crafted with input and support from California police chiefs. This is basically going to war against the state of California.

Brown in October signed into law a bill that prevents police from inquiring about immigration status and curtails law enforcement cooperation with immigration officers.

Sessions said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents carry out federal law and that California cannot forbid them or obstruct them in doing their jobs.

In recent years, the California legislature has enacted a number of laws designed to intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officers, to intentionally use every power the legislature has to undermine the duly-established immigration law of America, Sessions told a California Peace Officers Association conference.

The lawsuit, filed late on Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento, takes aim at three state laws passed last year that the Justice Department contends violates the U.S. Constitution and the supremacy of federal law over state law.

Trump has made fighting illegal immigration a signature issue, first as a candidate and now as president. Part of that effort involves a Justice Department crackdown on primarily Democratic-governed cities and states that Sessions calls sanctuaries that protect illegal immigrants from deportation.

LAW OF THE LAND

Immigration law is the province of the federal government, Sessions said. There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land.

I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg, he added. This matter has been settled.

The Union armys victory at Gettysburg in 1863 is often described as the turning point of the Civil War, in which the South declared for states rights and tried to secede from the United States.

Brown later echoed the Civil War theme when he said the lawsuit was unprecedented, particularly because it was delivered by a fella coming from Alabama talking to us about secession. Sessions home state was part of the South during the Civil War.

Sessions accused Democratic Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf of actively seeking to help illegal immigrants avoid ICE.

Last month, Schaaf issued a statement alerting local residents that ICE agents were preparing to conduct an operation in the area, saying it was her moral obligation. A few days later, ICE announced the arrest of more than 150 people for immigration violations in the San Francisco-Oakland area, saying about half had additional criminal convictions.

The White House has called Schaafs actions outrageous and said the Justice Department was reviewing the matter.

Heres my message for Mayor Schaaf: How dare you. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement officers to promote your radical open-borders agenda, Sessions said on Wednesday.

Sessions also called Democratic California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom an embarrassment for supporting the mayors actions.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Writing by Ben Klayman; Editing by Will Dunham and Rosalba OBrien)
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By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Republicans have more reason to be nervous about the prospects of keeping control of the U.S. Congress this year after Democrats came out in force in Texas congressional primary elections.

State figures show that more than 1 million Democrats cast votes in primary races across the state on Tuesday, almost twice as many as in 2014, the last time primaries were held for a midterm election.

Texas has long been a conservative bastion, but the much stronger turnout in the primary races to select nominees from their own party shows Democratic voters are highly motivated, threatening Republican control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in midterm elections in November.

The surge in Democratic enthusiasm continued a pattern seen in earlier special elections and in the governors race in Virginia last year, with voters largely galvanized by their opposition to Republican President Donald Trump.

Any increase in a primary electorate is some kind of a new voter, and that is a new level of engagement, said Ed Espinoza, executive director of Progress Texas, a progressive strategy firm in Texas. Theres a sense of populism. People want their democracy back.

About 1.5 million Republicans voted in the primary races on Tuesday, only slightly more than four years ago.

Many Republicans watched the Texas returns with growing unease, but some said that with the general election still seven months away it was too early to suggest Democrats have an upper hand in taking either chamber of Congress.

They still have a long way to go, said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant in Austin, Texas, who contended that without Trump on the ballot in November, Democrats may yet have problems motivating voters to come out to the polls.

Democrats need a net gain of two seats in the Senate and 24 seats in the House to gain control of those chambers.

While Trump won Texas handily in the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have targeted three House districts in suburban Dallas and Houston and in southern-central Texas, where Trumps opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, won the majority of votes.

Tuesdays turnout gave that effort a boost, although analysts say Republican incumbents remain favored to win those seats.

Opinion polls show that Trump is struggling with college-educated, affluent voters who live in cities such as Dallas and Houston.

Some of the Trump effect is beginning to manifest itself, said Joe Brettell, a Republican strategist in Houston. He said Trumps hard-right positions on issues such as immigration and gun control were alienating moderate suburban voters that his party needs to remain competitive.

David Wasserman, a congressional elections expert in Washington, said that even in a primary election, the enthusiasm level showed by Democrats is consequential.

That matters when it comes to knocking on doors, making phone calls, putting up signs  all of the grassroots activity that comes to winning congressional races in the fall, he said.

(Additional reporting by Dan Trotta in New York; edited by Kieran Murray and Jonathan Oatis)
By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Two Democratic senators on Wednesday asked major vendors of U.S. voting equipment whether they have allowed Russian entities to scrutinize their software, saying the practice could allow Moscow to hack into American elections infrastructure.

The letter from Senators Amy Klobuchar and Jeanne Shaheen followed a series of Reuters reports saying that several major global technology providers have allowed Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software deeply embedded across the U.S. government.

The senators requested that the three largest election equipment vendors  Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart Intercivic  answer whether they have shared source code, or inner workings, or other sensitive data about their technology with any Russian entity.

They also asked whether any software on those companies products had been shared with Russia and for the vendors to explain what steps they have taken to improve the security of those products against cyber threats to the election.

The vendors could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear whether any of the vendors had made sales in Russia, where votes are submitted via written ballots and usually counted by hand.

According to voting machine testing and certification from the Election Assistance Commission, most voting machines contain software from firms which were alleged to have shared their source code with Russian entities, the senators wrote. We are deeply concerned that such reviews may have presented an opportunity for Russian intelligence agents looking to attack or hack the United States elections infrastructure.

U.S. voters in November will go to the polls in midterm elections, which American intelligence officials have warned could be targeted by Russia or others seeking to disrupt the process.

There is intense scrutiny of the security of U.S. election systems after a 2016 presidential race in which Russia interfered, according to American intelligence agencies, to try to help Donald Trump win with presidency. Trump in the past has been publicly skeptical about Russian election meddling, and Russia has denied the allegations.

Twenty-one states experienced probing of their systems by Russian hackers during the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.

Though a small number of networks were compromised, voting machines were not directly affected and there remains no evidence any vote was altered, according to U.S. officials and security experts.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is running for re-election and, after winning his primary race on Tuesday, he immediately released a radio ad attacking Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto ORourke.

The ad is a 60-second country jingle with lyrics insisting that a liberal man cant represent Texas, that ORourke wants to take away firearms away from gun owners, and that the Democrat is a phony for not going by his given birth name.

The song accuses ORourke  full name Robert Francis ORourke  of wanting to fit in, going on to say, So he changed his name to Beto and hid it with a grin.

This is a rich attack coming from Ted Cruz, whose real name is Rafael Edward Cruz and who went by the nickname Felito as a young boy. According to his biography, the reason he stopped going by Rafael and the diminutive version of it was precisely that he wanted to fit in. His name, which he said rhymed with Cheeto and Frito, was fodder for bullies at his school. He then chose to start going by Ted.

When asked about the ad, Cruz said he and his team were just having a sense of humor. Pressed about the fact that he himself doesnt go by his given name, Cruz responded, Youre absolutely right. My name is Rafael Edward Cruz. I am the son of my father Rafael Cruz, an immigrant from Cuba who came to Texas with nothing.

ORourke dismissed the ad as frivolous during an interview on CNNs New Day.

I just dont think thats what folks in Texas want us to focus on, he said. We can get into name-calling and talk about why the other person is such an awful guy, or we can focus on the big things we want to do for the future of our country, for the generations that will succeed us  We can focus on the small, mean, petty stuff, or we can be big, bold, courageous, and confident.
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Late yesterday the New York Times reported that Donald Trump had contacted two witnesses in the Mueller probe. According to the Times, The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.

The witnesses are White House Counsel Donald McGahn and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

As was reported last night in PoliticusUSA these actions almost certainly will add to Special Counsel Muellers case against Trump for obstruction of justice.

But what the Times did not report is that these actions may lead to entirely NEW charges by Mueller against Trump, for the crime called witness tampering.

According to knowledgeable attorneys, including former federal prosecutors, when the subject of an investigation is known to have talked to witnesses the prosecutors will also be looking for evidence that the subject has tried to intimidate witnesses or get them to change their testimony. Even if such efforts are not successful, the mere ATTEMPT to influence witnesses in federal criminal proceedings can constitute the crime of witness tampering. Tampering with witnesses, if proven, would be a crime even if the underlying investigation produces no charges against that person.

Given President Trumps history of trying to bully, influence and coerce high ranking officials such as the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the prosecutor will be looking at whether or not he tampered with these two witnesses.

President Trump asked FBI Director James B. Comey for his loyalty, and he has publicly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe. All of these actions may focus a case by Mr. Mueller against the president personally for both obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

It makes it look like youre cooking a story, and prosecutors are always looking out for it, Julie R. OSullivan, a law professor at Georgetown University and expert on white-collar criminal investigations, told the New York Times. It gets at the issue of consciousness of guilt in an obstruction case or witness tampering case because if you didnt do anything wrong, why are you doing that? she added.

Seth Abramson, a former federal prosecutor tweeted:

People misunderstand the sorts of conversations defense lawyers have with their clients: as I can say from long experience, Trump's lawyers would have EXPRESSLY told him BEFOREHAND that the actions we know he later engaged in constituted FELONY WITNESS TAMPERING. So yeshe knew.  Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 8, 2018

During his show The Beat MSNBCs chief legal correspondent Ari Melber stated that he believed the revelation of Trumps conversations with McGahn and Priebus also could lead Mueller to add the charge of witness tampering against Trump.

The conclusion from all the attorneys who have commented on this story Trump was way out of line in talking to witnesses. At the very least it created the appearance of impropriety. And in a worst-case scenario, it may lead to more federal criminal charges being made against the President of the United States.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Showers early, becoming a steady rain later in the day. High 82F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low around 75F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
The violent attack came without warning in a quiet, lakeside neighborhood on Johns Island.

A man, armed with a knife, approached the woman from behind as she returned home after dropping off two of her five children at school.

Court documents on Wednesday revealed new details in the Feb. 13 kidnapping of a 4-year-old and the assault that left her mother hospitalized for two weeks. They were released after Thomas Lawton Evans, 37, made his first court appearance on seven state charges.

The arrest affidavits stated that Evans drove his girlfriend's car to the Todd family's home. As the mother walked inside, Evans pushed her into the house and began the brutal attack in front of her three children.

Evans forced the mother onto the kitchen floor, where he rammed her head into the hardwood several times and punched her face, according to the affidavits. The woman suffered facial fractures, bleeding on her brain and neck injuries, the documents said.

"(He) then kept the victim captive while restrained inside the residence for approximately an hour," affidavits said.

Evans appeared briefly in a courtroom Wednesday and waived his right to a bond hearing. He faces two kidnapping charges and one count of attempted murder, first-degree criminal sexual conduct, armed robbery, first-degree burglary and weapon possession. He had already been jailed on a federal kidnapping charge.

Investigators found evidence that the mother had been sexually assaulted during the home invasion, according to the affidavits.

Authorities said Evans took the mother's purse  containing a debit card  and abducted the 4-year-old, leaving the younger children behind.

A frantic search for the girl ensued, with residents of the Whitney Lake subdivision joining authorities in combing through wooded areas, lakes and trash cans.

She was rescued Feb. 14 in Alabama after railroad workers saw a man asleep in a parked car with a young girl inside.

Evans was captured after a police pursuit that ended in Mississippi. He was driving a stolen car.

While hospitalized, the mother picked two possible suspects out of a six-person photographic lineup, saying the two people were similar to her attacker, the affidavits said. One of them was Evans.

Evans had been freed from state prison Feb. 1 to serve the remainder of a 10-year sentence on community supervision in the Upstate.

But two days before the abduction, he showed up in Berkeley County with a woman's car, a Honda. Deputies encountered him but said they had no reason to arrest him at the time. Authorities tried to check on the car owner, 39-year-old Sharon Hayden, at her Spartanburg County home, but she wasn't around.

Affidavits identified the car owner as Evans' girlfriend, and Evans told investigators that he drove the car before and after the assault.

Hayden's car was later found abandoned in Georgia, where authorities said Evans stole another vehicle. Meanwhile, Hayden's whereabouts have remained unknown. The documents released Wednesday gave no indication about her fate.
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Asia Pacific Capnography Devices Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023

Asia Pacific Capnography Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:39:07

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# 715 Words

Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Digital Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Market Outline: Asia Pacific Capnography Devices MarketCapnography is the process of monitoring partial pressure or concentration of carbon dioxide in respiratory gases by using capnogram. It is majorly used as a monitoring tool during intensive care and anesthesia. Capnography helps to anesthesiologists to prevent the hypoxia and help to determine the situations that can lead to hypoxia and may cause irreversible brain damage. Due to these advantages, capnography is widely used in endoscopic suites, emergency rooms, x-ray rooms, and on-site emergency and trauma centers. In healthy individuals, difference between the arterial blood and expired CO2 partial pressure is very small however, in presence of lung disease, and some congenital heart disease the difference is increased and can exceed 1 kPa.Market Dynamics: Asia Pacific Capnography Devices MarketIncrease in the prevalence of respiratory diseases such as COPD, pulmonary embolism, bronchospastic diseases and asthma, growing geriatric population, technological advances in capnography devices such as are anticipated to fuel the Asia Pacific capnography devices market. Moreover, wide range of applications of capnography such as hypoventilation, esophageal intubation, and endotracheal tube placement, rise in awareness about capnography devices among physicians, and adoption of newer technologies are expected to boost the market. However, alternative devices availability for capnography such as pulse oximeter, new clinical studies restraining the usage in non-intubated individuals, and issues associated with capnography usage are impedeing the growth of the market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Asia Pacific Capnography Devices MarketCapnography devices market is segmented on the basis of product type, technology, application, and end userBased on product type, market is segmented into the following: Capnographso Micro-Stream Capnographso Side-Stream Capnographso Main Stream Capnographs DisposablesBased on technology, market is segmented into the following: Hand-Held Monitors Stand-Alone Monitors OthersBased on application, market is segmented into the following: Anesthesia Procedural Sedation Intensive Care Pain Management Emergency Medicine OthersBased on end user, market is segmented into the following: Hospitals Clinics Ambulatory Surgical CentersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Country Analysis: Asia Pacific Capnography Devices MarketGeographically, Asia Pacific capnography devices market has been segmented into China, Japan, India, ASEAN Countries, Australia & New Zealand, South Korea and Rest of Asia Pacific. China capnography devices market growth driven due to increase in the prevalence of COPD (approximately 3,953 COPD cases observed per 100,000 population), adoption of newer technologies, and improving healthcare infrastructure are propelling the market growth. India capnography devices market is projected to grow at a significant rate owing to increase in geriatric population, which may lead to rise in respiratory diseases prevalence. Increase in R&D activities for the innovation of newer technologies, rise in awareness about capnography devices, and launching of newer products are bolster the Japan capnography devices market.Competition Assessment: Asia Pacific Capnography Devices MarketSome of the players in Asia Pacific capnography devices market include: Masimo Corporation (U.S.) Covidien plc (Medtronic, plc. (Ireland)) Nihon Kohden Corporation (Japan) Smiths Medical, Inc. (U.S.) Welch Allyn Inc. (U.S.) Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands) Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA (Germany)Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, and forecast from 2017-2023 The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, key findings, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, challenges, and trends that are currently faced by the industry The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and start-ups details that are working in the industry The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenarioGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
Europe Biostimulants Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Country Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023

Europe Biostimulants Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:47:45

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Precision Business Insights,



Kemp House,



152  160 City Road,



London EC1V 2NX



Satya

Lead-Digital Marketing

+1-866-598-1553

email

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com





# 868 Words

Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Digital Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Market Outline: Europe Biostimulants MarketBiostimulants are the biological fertilizers used to increase the plant productivity and development, in addition to nourishment of agriculture products. These are formulated from micro-organisms, enzymes, trace elements, and plant hormones among others. Biostimulants help to improve the plant metabolism, nutrient availability, water holding capacity, and increase the production of antioxidants and chlorophyll. Biostimulants improve the plant growth and development entire the crop life cycle from seed germination to plant maturity.Market Dynamics: Europe Biostimulants MarketIncrease in the demand for quality food products with better yield, rise in adoption of sustainable farming practices, increase in R&D for cost-effective production process, and advantages of biostimulants such as decrease in chemical fertilizers using are anticipated to fuel the biostimulants market. Moreover, decrease in arable land due to increase in population, increase in government support such as providing subsidies on bio-fertilizers, and sudden changes in environment due to global warming affect the crop yield are the factors driven the biostimulants market over the forecast period. However, low awareness about biostimulants among farmers, high R&D expenditure, lengthy process for product approval, and fewer opportunities for patent approval due to easy raw material availability are restrained the growth of biostimulants market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Europe Biostimulants MarketBiostimulants market is segmented on the basis of product type, crop type, application, and formulation typeBased on product type, biostimulants market is segmented into the following: Humic Substances (Fulvic Acid and Humic Acid) Microbial Amendments Seaweed Extracts Vitamins and Amino Acids Trace Minerals OthersBased on the crop type, biostimulants market is segmented into the following: Fruits and Vegetables Cereals and Row Crops Turfs and Ornamentals OthersBased on the application, biostimulants market is segmented into the following: Foliar Treatment Seed Treatment Soil TreatmentBased on the formulation type, biostimulants market is segmented into the following: Dry Products Liquid ProductsTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Market Summary: Europe Biostimulants MarketEurope biostimulants market is growing at a significant CAGR owing to increase in R&D activities for the innovation of cost-effective biostimulants. Entry of new players into the market, non-toxicity nature of biostimulants, and low ecological footprints are anticipated to fuel the biostimulants market. Moreover, government initiatives encouraging the farmers for the adoption of biostimulants also upsurge the revenue of market. For instance, in June 2011, European Biostimulants Industry Consortium (EBIC) was formed to foster the role of biostimulants in agriculture to increase the product yield. Furthermore, Acquisitions and mergers, collaborations, product approvals, and launchings are the strategies followed by the market players to increase their market revenue in Europe biostimulants market. For instance, in July 2017, Valagro inked an agreement with Syngenta AG to supply the biostimulants for seed treatment. In addition, in May 2016, Sheriff Amenity launched Aminoturf, Rapidroot, and HumiKpro biostimulants in UK.Country Analysis: Europe Biostimulants MarketGeographically, Europe biostimulants market is segmented into Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, UK, Poland, and Rest of Europe. France biostimulants market is growing due to increase in the demand for quality food products, government initiations for improving the crop yield, and rise R&D activities are in the country. Germany biostimulants market accounted for significant share, which is attributed to increase in consumer preference for organic agro products, launching of newer biostimulants in Europe region, and collaboration between the companies. Russia biostimulants market has a significant growth rate owing to increase in agriculture production due to increase in population, government supporting for eco-friendly farming practices, and increase in the productivity of oilseeds and cereals.Need more information about this report @Competition Assessment: Europe Biostimulants MarketSome of the players in the global biostimulants market include: BASF SE (Germany) FMC Corporation (US) Syngenta AG (Switzerland) Arysta LifeScience Corporation (U.S.) Bayer CropScience AG (Germany) Valagro (Italy) Koppert B.V. (Netherlands) Biovert S.A. (Spain) Sheriff Amenity (U.K.)Notable Market Developments: Europe Biostimulants Market In June 2017, Valagro opened new biostimulants plant in Brazil for the expansion of business in Latin America regionKey Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, and forecast from 2017-2023 The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, key findings, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, challenges, and trends that are currently faced by the industry The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and start-ups details that are working in the industry The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenarioGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
Europe Capnography Devices Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Country Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023

Europe Capnography Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:51:12

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Kemp House,



152  160 City Road,



London EC1V 2NX



Satya

Lead-Digital Marketing

+1-866-598-1553

email

https://www.precisionbusinessinsights.com





# 760 Words

Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Digital Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Market Outline: Europe Capnography Devices MarketCapnography is the process of monitoring partial pressure or concentration of carbon dioxide in respiratory gases by using capnogram. It is majorly used as a monitoring tool during intensive care and anesthesia. Capnography helps to anesthesiologists to prevent the hypoxia and help to determine the situations that can lead to hypoxia and may cause irreversible brain damage. Due to these advantages, capnography is widely used in endoscopic suites, emergency rooms, x-ray rooms, and on-site emergency and trauma centers. In healthy individuals, difference between the arterial blood and expired CO2 partial pressure is very small however, in presence of lung disease, and some congenital heart disease the difference is increased and can exceed 1 kPa.Market Dynamics: Europe Capnography Devices MarketIncrease in the prevalence of respiratory diseases such as COPD and asthma in Europe region mainly in UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, technological advancements in the capnography devices, and recommendations by European Resuscitation Council (ERC), Association of Anaesthetists of the Great Britain & Ireland (AAGBI), and Intensive care Society in U.K. for the using of capnography devices are anticipated to fuel the capnography devices market. However, alternative devices availability for capnography such as pulse oximeter, new clinical studies restraining the usage in non-intubated individuals, and issues associated with capnography usage are impede the growth of capnography devices market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Europe Capnography Devices MarketCapnography devices market is segmented on the basis of product type, technology, application, and end userBased on product type, market is segmented into the following: Capnographso Micro-Stream Capnographso Side-Stream Capnographso Main Stream Capnographs DisposablesBased on technology, market is segmented into the following: Hand-Held Monitors Stand-Alone Monitors OthersBased on application, market is segmented into the following: Anesthesia Procedural Sedation Intensive Care Pain Management Emergency Medicine OthersBased on end user, market is segmented into the following: Hospitals Clinics Ambulatory Surgical CentersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Country Analysis: Europe Capnography Devices MarketGeographically, Europe capnography devices market is segmented into Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Poland, UK, and Rest of Europe. Germany capnography devices market is growing due to increase in the prevalence of COPD (approximately 6,155 cases observed per 100,000 people), increase in the R&D activities for the innovation of newer products, and expansion of business by market players are propel the market. France capnography devices market is projected to grow at a significant rate, which is attributed to rise in prevalence of COPD and other respiratory diseases (according to European COPD Coalition, 3.5 Mn COPD cases were present and approximately 16,000 people die every year), and mandatory usage of capnography devices in anesthesia conditions are expected to boost the market. U.K capnography devices market driven by increase in geriatric population and change in lifestyle, rise in focus on the development of newer devices by market players, and product approval and launchings are propel the market over forecast years in the country.Competition Assessment: Europe Capnography Devices MarketSome of the players in the Europe capnography devices market include: Covidien plc (Medtronic, plc. (Ireland)) Masimo Corporation (U.S.) Nihon Kohden Corporation (Japan) Smiths Medical, Inc. (U.S.) Nonin Medical, Inc. (U.S.) Welch Allyn Inc. (U.S.) Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands) Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA (Germany) Viamed Limited (England)Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, and forecast from 2017-2023 The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, key findings, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, challenges, and trends that are currently faced by the industry The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and start-ups details that are working in the industry The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenarioGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Country Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023

Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:52:27

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Precision Business Insights,



Kemp House,



152  160 City Road,



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Satya

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+1-866-598-1553

email

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# 756 Words

Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Digital Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Market Outline: Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics MarketHemostasis diagnostics are the devices used to determine the hemostatic defects, which cause excessive bleeding. Hemostasis is defined as the stopping or slowing the blood flow from damaged blood vessel. During the hemostasis, blood changes from liquid state to the gelatinous state. Hemostasis maintained in the body by three mechanisms namely, blood coagulation, platelet plug formation, and vasoconstriction. Hemostasis diagnostics may help to predict the cause of bleeding during surgery by identifying the hemostatic defects in patients. Different types of tests such as prothrombin test, activated clotting time, platelet function, and other coagulation tests are carried to identify the hemostasis defects.Market Dynamics: Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics MarketIncrease in the prevalence of hemostasis related disease in Europe countries (according to The European National Registry of Congenital Coagulopathies 2017, the number of cases identified with hemostasis is increased from 7000 in 2000 to 11,000 in 2015), rise in number of surgery cases, rise in R&D investment for novel tests and devices innovation, and well developed healthcare infrastructure are expected to boost the hemostasis diagnostics market. However, high cost of advanced hemostasis products, and stringent regulations for the test approvals are expected to hamper the growth of hemostasis diagnostics market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics MarketHemostasis diagnostics market is segmented on the basis of product type, test type, technology, and end userBased on the product type, the market is segmented into the following: Systems Consumables Point-of-Care Testing DevicesBased on the test type, the market is segmented into the following: Fibrinogen Test Activated Clotting Time Platelet Function Prothrombin Time Heparin & Protamine Dose-Response Test For ACT Activated Partial Thromboplastin Time Anti-Factor Xa Other Coagulation TestsBased on the technology, the market is segmented into the following: Optical Mechanical Electrochemical OthersBased on the end user, the market is segmented into the following: Hospitals Clinics Diagnostic Centres Others (POC)To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Regional Analysis: Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics MarketGeographically, Europe hemostasis diagnosis market is segmented into U.K., France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Rest of Europe. U.K. hemostasis diagnostics market accounted for significant share, which is attributed to rise in prevalence of hemophilia (according to World Federation of Hemophilia Global Survey 2010, approximately 6,573 people are suffering from hemophilia), increase in prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, and adoption of newer technologies are expected to propel the market in U.K. France hemostasis diagnostics market is growing due to rise in funding for launching test kits. For instance, in March 2016, Emosis, a French company raised 1 Mn Euros funding from Cap InnovEst for the development of hemostasis test kits. Germany hemostasis market growth driven by increase in the R&D for innovation of newer products, rise in prevalence of hemophilia disease, and expansion of business by market players in the country. Russia hemostasis diagnostics market is rising due to organization of training programs for doctors on coagulation testing by market players.Competition Assessment: Europe Hemostasis Diagnostics MarketSome of the players in the Europe hemostasis diagnostics market include: Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. (Switzerland) Sysmex Corporation (Japan) Abbott Laboratories (U.S.) Alere Inc. (U.S.) Nihon Kohden Corporation (Japan) Siemens Healthineers (Germany) Danaher Corporation (U.S.) Instrumentation Laboratory (U.S.) Grifols S.A (Spain) Beckman Coulter, Inc. (U.S.) Emosis Diagnostics (France)Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, and forecast from 2017-2023 The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, key findings, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, challenges, and trends that are currently faced by the industry The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and start-ups details that are working in the industry The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenarioGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 06:02:02

For International Womens Day, AHF AFRICA Says Keep the Promise to Women!

AHF AFRICA MEDIA CONTACT:

Oluwakemi Gbadamosi, Senior Manager, PR and Communications, AHF Africa

+256771870163

Oluwakemi.gbadamosi@aidshealth.org

or

US MEDIA CONTACT:

Ged Kenslea, Senior Director, Communications, AHF

+1 323.308.1833 work

+1 323.791.5526 mobile

gedk@aidshealth.org

or

Denys Nazarov, Director of Global Policy & Communications, AHF

+1 323.308.1829

dn@aidshealth.org

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization operating in 39 countries, will mark International Womens Day (IWD), a day of advocacy and celebration by and for women and girls, with events in over a dozen of AHF countries on or around March 8th.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201803070064

Women celebrate International Women's Day event. (Photo: Business Wire)

IWD is formally observed each year on March 8th as a combined global holiday and campaign that promotes and commemorates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. IWD also brings governments, organizations and businesses together to spark change for gender equality through action advocacy.

Almost 18 million women over the age of 15 make up over half of all adults living with HIV according to the World Health Organization, and women ages 15-24 account for 60% of those infected in that age group. Additionally, HIV positive women in many countries are not afforded equal access to treatment and are often victims of discrimination and increased violence  including infringement upon their sexual and reproductive rights.

The scenario is no different in Sub-Saharan Africa; according to the UN Women, women account for 56% of new HIV infections among adults; while young women aged 15-24 accounted for about 66% of new infections among young people. Factors such as sexual and gender-based violence, lack of access to healthcare services, forced or early marriages, gender inequalities, and weak laws increase their risk of acquiring HIV.

The world cannot go on talking about the end of AIDS while HIV remains one of the leading causes of death among women, especially among young women and girls in developing countries. From the smallest community clinic, all the way to the national health programs and at the international level, we must keep the promise to women by ensuring that they are empowered and able to access reproductive and health services, including HIV treatment, testing and prevention without long waiting times and without fear of intimidation and stigma, said AHF Chief of Global Policy, Advocacy & Marketing Terri Ford. We will not rest until this happens. On this International Womens Day, we want the world to hear loud and clear  women must be at the forefront of the global AIDS response if we want to overcome this deadly epidemic, and to do that we must invest our efforts and resources into whats been proven to work  test and treat, and a comprehensive prevention strategy. On March 8, lets pledge to keep fighting for women!

Many factors that fuel HIV among women and girls continue to exist because of weak laws and the lack of an enabling environment which makes it difficult for them to make decisions about their health and live up to their full potential. Governments must strengthen and implement laws that protect the rights of women and girls regardless of their location, status or qualification. Our goal is to see these barriers removed through targeted advocacy, service delivery and pushing for favourable policies," added Dr. Penninah Iutung, AHF Africa Bureau Chief.

AHF calls on decision makers, organizations and people everywhere to do their part to help narrow this gap and ensure that women have unimpeded access to lifesaving HIV testing, prevention services and treatment.

To view a selection of photos from last years IWD, please visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aidshealth/collectio

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 872,000 clients in 39 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201803070064

On International Women's Day, AHF Africa says KEEP THE PROMISE TO WOMEN #IWD18 #AHF #KeepThePromisetoWomen
Anaesthesia Machines Market: Market Intelligence, Product Matrix, Industry Insights, and Forecast 2017-2023

Anaesthesia Machines Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 11:41:04

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Kemp House,





152  160 City Road,





London EC1V 2NX



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Global Anaesthesia Machines Market: By technology (Continuous, Intermittent), By Product (Standalone Anaesthesia Machines, Portable Anaesthesia Machines), By End User (Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres and Others) By Geography: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012 to 2016 and Forecast 2017 to 2023Market Outline: Global Anaesthesia Machines MarketAnaesthesia refers to the practice of controlling the pain during the surgery using anaesthetics. Anesthesia also provides control in breathing, blood flow, blood pressure heart rate and heart rhythms. Anaesthesia machines support the administration of the anesthetics into the body. The basic function of the anaesthesia includes preparation of the gas mixture of precisely known, but variable composition. Other functions include providing oxygen, enabling the patient ventilation and minimising the anesthesia-related risk for patient as well as staff. The mixture of gas can be delivered to breathing system. Anaesthesia machines evolved from the simple pneumatic devices to more sophisticated, computerized machines. The development led to the need for safety and user convenience.Market Dynamics: Global Anaesthesia Machines MarketGlobal anesthesia machines market is primarily driven by technological advancements in machine owing to the patient safety and user convenience. In addition, growth in disease prevalence and surgeries that require anesthesia coupled with the adaptation of the anesthesia information management system that has changed the paper-based practices to digitalized machines expected to bolster the anesthesia machines market over the forecast period. Furthermore, continuous development in healthcare industry worldwide and rise in government funding for healthcare infrastructure. However, high cost of anesthesia machines and unfavorable reimbursement policies are expected to hamper the market growth over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Global Anaesthesia Machines MarketGlobal anaesthesia machines market is segmented based on technology, product type, end user and geographyBased on technology, market is segmented into Continuous IntermittentMarket Summary: Global Anaesthesia Machines MarketGlobal anaesthesia market is expected to grow at notable rates owing to the increase in prevalence of the diseases and accidents leading to the rise surgical treatment. The growth of surgeries is attributed to growth of global anaesthesia market. According to World Health Organization (WHO), there were about 266.2 to 359.5 Mn surgeries were performed in the year 2012, and it is 38% increase compared to previous 8 years. Companies operating in global anaesthesia market are adopting the acquisition strategies to grow it market presence and strengthen its position. For instance, in March 2011 Royal Philips Electronics has acquired a global provider of anesthesia machines, Dameca, to expand its anaesthesia portfolio. Furthermore, market is witnessing market developments and new product launches with advanced features by the companies.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Regional Analysis: Global Anaesthesia Machines MarketGeographically, anaesthesia machines market is divided into five key regions, i.e. North America, Europe, Asia- Pacific, Latin America, and The Middle East & Africa. North America anaesthesia machines market is expected to grow at significant rates owing to the developed healthcare infrastructure, technological advancements and adaptation of digital monitoring and management systems. Furthermore, growing prevalence of the diseases that require surgeries and aging population also expected to drive the North America anesthesia machines market. Middle East and Africa anesthesia machines market expected to have notable growth rate owing to the presence of a large patient pool and growing number surgeries for the treatment of various diseases. Asia Pacific anesthesia machines market is expected to have lucrative growth opportunities owing to developing healthcare infrastructure in developing countries such as India and China coupled with the technological advancements in anesthesia machines providing high patient safety and convenience for the users.Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, regional market share, historic market (2012-2016) and forecast (2017-2023) The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, company share analysis, key market developments, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, unmet needs, and trends that are currently affecting the market The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and startups details that are actively working in the market The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario The report analyses the impact of socio-political environment through PESTLE Analysis and competition through Porters Five Force Analysis in addition to recent technology advancements and innovations in the marketGet access to full summary @
Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:31:10

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Market Outline: Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices MarketNegative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is also known as vacuum assisted closure therapy or Wound VAC. Negative pressure wound therapy is type of therapy in which suction is used to draw fluids and drain away from an open wound. A special type of dressing is used to create the vacuum environment at the site of wound that increases the blood flow and also keeps the area clean. This will help to prevent and heal the infection. Devices for the negative pressure wound therapy may be mechanical or powered (electrical).Market dynamics: Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices MarketLatin America negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices market is mainly driven by the technological advancements that overcome the disadvantages or risks involved in negative pressure wound therapy, growing prevalence rates of diabetes and ageing population who are more susceptible to the chronic or acute wounds. Furthermore, development of small and portable NPWT devices that adds on to the patient acceptability is expected to boost the market revenue growth. However, lack of skilled professionals and availability of alternative wound therapy techniques may hamper the market growth over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketLatin America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented based on type, application and end userBased on type, Latin America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented into Single Use / Disposable Conventional UseBased on application, Latin America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented into Pressure Ulcers Diabetic Foot Ulcers Burn Wounds Venous Leg UlcerBased on end user, Latin America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented into Hospitals Ambulatory Surgical Centres Homecare OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Regional Analysis: Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketGeographically Latin America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented into Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela and Rest of Latin America. Mexico negative pressure wound therapy devices market expected to exhibit notable growth rate due to adaptation of easy to use and portable devices for the long term wound care, favourable reimbursement policies. Brazil negative pressure wound therapy devices market is expected to account for large revenue share owing to higher prevalence rates of diabetes and chronic wounds. Furthermore. Market players are expanding their market presence by introducing technologically advanced devices and reaching out to the more number of patients. For instance, In September 2012, Kinetic Concepts, Inc. has expanded its operations in Brazil, this enabled KCI to deliver its therapies to more patient outcomes through provision of specialist wound management training in vacuum assisted closure therapy (NPWT therapy).Need more information about this report @Competition Assessment: Latin America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketSome of the market players in Latin America negative pressure wound therapy devices (NPWT) market include Molnlycke Health Care (Sweden) Acelity L.P. Inc. (U.S.) Smith & Nephew Plc (U.K.) Devon International Group, Inc. (U.S.) Cardinal Health, Inc. (U.S.) Medela (Olle Larsson Holding AG) (Switzerland) Carilex Medical Inc. (China) Equinox Medical Technologies B.V. (Netherlands) ConvaTec Group plc (U.K.) H & R Healthcare Ltd. (U.K.)Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, country market share, historic market (2012-2016) and forecast (2017-2023) The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, company share analysis, key market developments, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, unmet needs, and trends that are currently affecting the market The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and startups details that are actively working in the market The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario The report analyses the impact of socio-political environment through PESTLE Analysis and competition through Porters Five Force Analysis in addition to recent technology advancements and innovations in the marketGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices Market: Market Estimation, Dynamics, Regional Share, Trends, Competitor Analysis 2012-2016 and Forecast 2017-2023

North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 10:34:29

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Precision Business Insights,Kemp House,152  160 City Road,London EC1V 2NXLead-Digital Marketing+1-866-598-1553

Market Outline: North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices MarketNegative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is also known as vacuum assisted closure therapy or Wound VAC. Negative pressure wound therapy is type of therapy in which suction is used to draw fluids and drain away from an open wound. A special type of dressing is used to create the vacuum environment at the site of wound that increases the blood flow and also keeps the area clean. This will help to prevent and heal the infection. The devices for the negative pressure wound therapy are mechanical or powered (electrical).Market dynamics: North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) Devices MarketNorth America negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices market is mainly driven by the growing awareness and adaptation of NPWT devices. Furthermore, presence of the key market players in the region and technological advancements of negative pressure wound therapy devices may drive the market revenue growth in North America Region. However, recent product recalls and availability of alternative wound therapy procedures may hamper the North America negative pressure wound therapy market over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Market Scope: North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketNorth America negative pressure wound therapy devices market is segmented based on type, application and end userBased on type, North America negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) devices market is segmented into Single Use / Disposable Conventional UseBased on application, North America negative pressure wound therapy devices (NPWT) market is segmented into Pressure Ulcers Diabetic Foot Ulcers Burn Wounds Venous Leg UlcerBased on end user, North America negative pressure wound therapy devices (NPWT) market is segmented into Hospitals Ambulatory Surgical Centres Homecare OthersTo view TOC of this report is available upon request @Country Analysis: North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketGeographically North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices market is segmented into Canada and United States (U.S.). U.S. negative pressure wound therapy devices market expected to account for major revenue share owing to presence of well-informed patient pool and growing adaptation rate of NPWT devices coupled with growing prevalence rates of diabetes and chronic wounds in the country. According to the U.S. National Institute of Health, chronic wounds currently affect about 6.5 Mn people in U.S. and numbers likely to increase. Canada negative pressure wound therapy devices market projected to have significant growth rate over the forecast period due to new product launches and increase in adaptation of NPWT devices for wound healing. For instance, in November 2012, Kinetic Concepts, Inc. (Acelity L.P. Inc.) launched V.A.C. Ultra NPWT system in Canada.Competition Assessment: North America Negative Pressure Wound Therapy Devices (NPWT) MarketKey players profiles in North America negative pressure wound therapy devices (NPWT) market include Molnlycke Health Care (Sweden) Acelity L.P. Inc. (U.S.) Smith & Nephew Plc (U.K.) Devon International Group, Inc. (U.S.) Cardinal Health, Inc. (U.S.) Medela (Olle Larsson Holding AG) (Switzerland) Carilex Medical Inc. (China) Equinox Medical Technologies B.V. (Netherlands) ConvaTec Group plc (U.K.) H & R Healthcare Ltd. (U.K.)Need more information about this report @Key Features of the Report: The report provides granular level information about the market size, country market share, historic market (2012-2016) and forecast (2017-2023) The report covers in-detail insights about the competitors overview, company share analysis, key market developments, and their key strategies The report outlines drivers, restraints, unmet needs, and trends that are currently affecting the market The report tracks recent innovations, key developments and startups details that are actively working in the market The report provides plethora of information about market entry strategies, regulatory framework and reimbursement scenario The report analyses the impact of socio-political environment through PESTLE Analysis and competition through Porters Five Force Analysis in addition to recent technology advancements and innovations in the marketGet access to full summary @About Precision Business InsightsPrecision Business Insights is one of the leading market research and business consulting firm, which follow a holistic approach to solve needs of the clients. We adopt and implement proven research methodologies to achieve better results. We help our clients by providing actionable insights and strategies to make better decisions. We provide consulting, syndicated and customised market research services based on our client needs.Email: sales@ precisionbusinessinsights.com
Home Healthcare Software Market

PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 07:46:03

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Home healthcare services market is expected to grow at a robust rate between 2016 and 2024, with emergence of new entrants in market and improving macroeconomic conditions worldwide.Until recently, medical documentation involved cumbersome paper work. Technological advancements and introduction of advanced software has eased the way industry use to operate, making work process easier and more efficient. Healthcare industry has greatly benefitted from integration of IT systems. With technological advancements, home healthcare software such as telehealth solutions and clinical management systems are available in the market.Home healthcare enables healthcare services to be delivered at patients home  thereby alleviating healthcare costs.Get The Holiasitc SAMPLE With TOC: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/33 Population aged above 65 years forms the bulk of home healthcare software marketHome healthcare market is driven by various sociological, demographics, and macroeconomic factors, most notably the integration of information technology solutions in healthcare industry to meet challenges in patient data retrieval, payment and claim processing as well as storage and accessibility. This is further propelled by government initiatives to improve healthcare infrastructure.High prevalence of chronic disorders among geriatric population in turn fuels demand for nursing homes and assisted living care facilities for specialized attention. However, introduction of home healthcare software solutions is expected to bridge the gap between geriatric patient expectation and healthcare providers. The system offers solutions at patients home, thereby minimizing overall operational cost and high ROI for providers as well.Though the market is expected to grow at a rapid rate, weak financial support from government along with low adaptability in emerging economies are major challenges inhibiting growth of overall industry.Home Healthcare Software Market Taxonomy:Coherent Market Insights (CMI) has segmented the home healthcare software market by:Product TypeTherapeutic ApplicationDevicesPlatformEnd UserBy product type, the home healthcare software market has been segmented into agency homecare software, hospice solutions, telehealth solutions, clinical management systems, and others.On the basis of therapeutic application, CMI has segmented the home healthcare software market into clinical and non-clinical solutions. Clinical segment is expected to grow at impressive rate over the forecast period.On the basis of devices, mobile devices are expected to gain traction over laptop and tablet in the home healthcare software market.Homecare agencies and hospice agencies are key end-use segments in the home healthcare software market.Alignment between payers and providers along with access to electronic health records has boosted overall North America home healthcare software market growthAmong regions, North America is expected to dominate the global home healthcare software market throughout the forecast period. However, the market in the region is expected to lose considerablemarket share to developing regions, namely Latin America and Asia. Growth of the market in the region is primarily driven by increasing demand in the U.S., accounting for over 85% of overall market. Technological advancements along with high healthcare spending across all verticals is expected to propel market growth. Moreover, health awareness level among the population in developed regions is high compared to other regions. However, the market in Canada is expected to witness sluggish growth over the forecast period.Europe is the second-largest market and is expected to create substantial opportunities for players. Over 65% of the revenue generated in the regional market is expected to be from Germany, UK and France. Markets in Russia and Poland are expected to grow at substantial rate.Asia-Pacific is a lucrative market for home healthcare software due to the easy availability of skilled manpower, cheap labor and highly developed information technology sectors in the countries particularly China and India. Moreover, India is one of the leading markets for IT software. Relaxation in FDI cap is expected to boost overall presence of MNCs in the region. Though the Asia Pacific market is vibrant, there are a lot more challenges present in the market that inhibit proper capitalization of the market opportunities. The market is highly volatile with wide variations in demographics and economic conditions. The market in China, once the power engine of Asia Pacific, is witnessing low growth, due to noticeable decline in healthcare expenditure in the region. On a positive note, India is witnessing rapid transformation across various healthcare verticals. Companies need to fully understand the demographic and macroeconomic situation to generate high ROI from the region. Markets in Latin America and MEA are expected to witness sluggish growth over the forecast period.Get More Details On this Report:Some of the major companies contributing to the global home healthcare software market are Agfa Healthcare, Mckesson Corporation, NextGen Healthcare Information System LLC, GE Healthcare, MEDITECH, Medical Information Technology, Inc. (Meditech), Cerner Corporation, Siemens Healthcare and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc.Catch us at 3rd International Conference on Separation + Drying Technologies for Milk & Whey at Cologne, March 19 and 20, 2018About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunityContact Us:Coherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +12067016702E-mail:sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit our news Website: http://www.coherentchronicle.com
PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-08 14:30:36

FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Xebec Adsorption Inc--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Montreal, Quebec (FSCWire) - Xebec Adsorption Inc (TSX Venture:XBC). has issued a press release with the following headline:Xebec Talks to InvestorsTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Xebec Adsorption Inc, or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Xebec Adsorption IncSource: Xebec Adsorption Inc (TSX Venture: XBC, WKN: A0RPQ3, ISIN: CA9838911027, OTC Bulletin Board: XEBEF)Date: March 08, 2018Time: 8:30 AM EST--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Xebec Adsorption Inc and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2018 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
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For the first time in Coca-Colas 125-year history, the company is planning to produce an alcoholic product in Japan.

The BBC reports that the company is keen to cash in on the countrys growing taste for Chu-Hi, a canned sparkling flavoured drinks given a kick with a local spirit called shochu.

The product is typically between 3 per cent and 8 per cent alcohol by volume.

A senior Coke executive in Japan told BBC the move was a modest experiment for a specific slice of its market.

Jorge Garduno, Coca-Colas Japan president said, We havent experimented in the low alcohol category before, but its an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas.

As the mordern consumer becomes more health conscious, Coca-Cola has been diversifying from fizzy drinks, including buying water and tea brands.

Last November, Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog speculated that Coca-Cola might move into alcohol, as it looked to premium segments such as adult craft beverages.

The phrase alcopop, with which the company hopes to model its alcoholic drink, typically refers to sweet but alcoholic drinks. In the 1990s UK brands of same content such as Hooch, Reef, Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Breezer became hugely popular.

But they were controversial, raising concerns that they encouraged young people to drink alcohol in large quantities because they were so easy to consume.

It is, however, still unclear whether the alcoholic drink would be sold outside of Japan, Mr. Garduno noted.
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The Bank of Industry (BoI) said on Thursday that it had disbursed over N20.5 billion in 2017 to 346 enterprises owned by women.

The Managing Director of BoI, Kayode Pitan, made the disclosure at the banks celebration of the 2018 International Womens Day in Lagos.

The International Womens Day is celebrated on March 8 annually to recognise the roles of women and seek gender equality and women empowerment.

The theme of the 2018 celebration is: Press for Progress.

Mr. Pitan was represented by Waheed Olagunju, BoIs Head of SMEs.

He said the bank recognised the role, achievements and contributions of women entrepreneurs to the development of the nations economy.

The managing director said the disbursement impacted positively on livelihood, job creation and GDP growth.

Mr. Pitan said the bank had earmarked N22 billion for 2018 to support women businesses and build on past successes to drive economic growth and recovery.

He reiterated BoIs commitment to supporting women entrepreneurs through the banks Gender Business Group promoting women enterprises through innovative, financial and business support services.

He said the bank would continue to equip women with requisite skills and knowledge aimed at driving entrepreneurship growth.

According to him, supporting women can unleash, a strong force for innovation, productivity, wealth creation and economic growth.

Earlier, Aisha Abubakar, Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, said that the Federal Government would continue to support female entrepreneurs to boost inclusive and virile economic growth.

The minister was represented by Temitope Gbamgboye, a Director in the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development.

Mrs. Abubakar said that the government would not hesitate to expand its programmes to encourage more women to embrace entrepreneurship.
The National Electoral Commission (NEC) of Serial Leone, said results of Wednesday general elections, especially presidential, would not be announced until they were tallied.

Chairman of the commission, Mohamed Conteh, made this known to journalists on Thursday in Freetown.

He, however, said that the commission had started receiving results of the elections at its five Regional Tally Centres, but could not be specific on when they would be announced.

According to Mr. Conteh, the results will be released as soon as possible but after they have been tallied.

He urged Sierra Leoneans to be patient with the commission as it computed the results of the elections.

By 2 a.m. this morning, result has begun to arrive at the regional tally centres. All five regional tally centres are operational.

We welcome the presence of agents and observers to these centres today and as we walk through the process.

Reconciliation and results forms in their sealed tamper-evidence envelopes are being delivered to four of the regional centres and they are arriving as I speak to you.

We are now at full speed in the four centres where data entry is underway. As you can see, because we value accuracy above speed, there may be time delay. The tally takes longer.

We will not announce results until every last one is counted. Please, be patient with us and be peaceful.

Let us understand that the NEC is the only mandated authority responsible to deliver elections results.

The only result is the one that I, as the Chief Electoral Officer and National Electoral Officer, will announce on behalf of the commission, he said.

Mr. Conteh said that irregularities recorded in the elections included missing ballot papers, production error in the ballot papers in few areas where lower elections were postponed.

He said, Several irregularities were recorded during the day but this was minimal.

Of 17,755 sealed boxes of ballot papers, only 37 or 0.2 per cent was problematic. Though they were few, each of these irregularities was swiftly addressed.

Also speaking at the conference, NEC Commissioner, Western Region, Miatta French, said that the commission could not have conclusive figure on the election until the tally was done.

Mrs. French said that the commission would follow the percentage pattern of releasing the results.

We will still give 25, 50 and 75 per cent announcement as we promised and we will do it as soon as we get it.

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I know for sure that for Western region, a lot of results are coming in and we have to wait for the others.

As soon as we catch up with 25 per cent, we will read the first batch; at 50 per cent, we will read the next batch.

She expressed hope that at the end of Thursday or on Friday, some of the results would be announced.

On alleged planned to hack the commissions system, Mrs. French she said the commissions data base was not always fully online and that security measures were in place to secure it.

She added that the commission was prepared for re-run if the need arose.

(NAN)
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Forbes magazine said on Thursday it was excluding all Saudi Arabian tycoons from its annual list of the worlds richest people after dozens of top businessmen from the oil-rich-kingdom were detained in a crackdown on corruption last year.

Most detainees were released after reaching settlements with the authorities, who say they arranged to seize more than 100 billion dollars in assets through such deals.

But the government has provided few details about who was netted in the sweep, what they were accused of and how much they gave up.

Forbes said earlier in the week that it was impossible to know definitively who gave how much to whom and when.

The magazine said it had removed the 10 Saudi billionaires who made the cut last year, including those detained in the crackdown like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

Talal is said to be with wealth previously valued at 18.7 billion dollars and Mohammed al-Amoudi, whose treasure stood at 8.1 billion dollars.

With greater clarity regarding their wealth, some might eventually return to the ranking, Forbes said.

The magazines Middle East edition said in a separate statement on Thursday that the wealth of Saudi billionaires was believed to have increased from 42.1 billion dollars last year.

It was so, due to the rise in oil prices and capital markets globally but would be excluded due to the reported asset seizures.

Alwaleed, who told reporters in an interview hours before his release in January that he did not expect to give up any assets to the government, sued Forbes in 2013, alleging the magazine had under-valued his wealth.

The magazine listed 2,208 billionaires worldwide in 2018, up from 2,043 in 2017. (Reuters/NAN)
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The United States Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, on Thursday told African countries to be wary of the Chinese government and its loan facilities.

Mr. Tillerson warned that African countries should weigh Chinese loans carefully, adding that Washington was not trying to keep Chinese investment away from the continent.

The U.S. Secretary has been taking a dig at China and its investment in Africa in the past few days, although he had been roundly condemned by Russian foreign minister Sergei lavrov, who is also visiting Zimbabwe on Thursday.

On Tuesday, he said China encouraged dependency, utilised corrupt deals and endangered Africas natural resources.

Mr. Tillerson, a former Exxon Chief Executive, is seeking to bolster economic and security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to China for aid and trade.

The U.S. diplomat is also believed to be seeking smooth relations with African countries after President Donald Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as Shithole countries in January, a comment he later denied.

The trip is his first to Africa, which has since turned to China in trade and investment agreements.

The Chinese government has pumped billions into infrastructure projects across the continent, although critics say there is often little gains for local economies because Chinese firms and nationals build the roads and rails.

On Thursday, the U.S diplomat told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital that African leaders need to carefully consider their agreements with China.

We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa, he said, (but) it is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty.

Mr. Tillerson said that Chinese investments do not bring significant job creation locally and criticised how the country structures loans to African governments, saying if a government accepts a Chinese loan and gets into trouble, it can lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default.

Mr. Tillerson arrived Ethiopia on Wednesday and visited the African Union headquarters, built by China, on Thursday.

He was due to meet with Ethiopian officials on Thursday afternoon before flying to tiny Djibouti, host to sprawling military bases owned by the U.S, China, Japan, France, and Italy.

He is also billed to visit Nigeria.
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The House of Representatives says it will take another look at the Peace Corps Bill and consider reasons given by President Muhammadu Buhari for not signing it, before deciding what to do next.

The House will also consider another 21 bills yet to be assented to by the president.

The 22 bills (including the Peace Corps Bill) were either rejected or not responded to by the president.

Raising a point of order on Thursday, Uzomma Nkem-Abonta (Abia  PDP), drew the attention of the House to the 22 bills that were transmitted to the president at various times which he did not sign.

He quoted various sections of the Constitution which mandates the National Assembly to override the president if he fails to assent a bill after 30 days.

He urged the House to look at the bills that were transmitted to the president, and see if the reasons he gave were good enough.

The constitution says the rejected bills will come back to the House for us to look at it, veto it or otherwise, he said.

Speaker Yakubu Dogara mandated the Chairman, House Committee on Rules and Business to schedule a date when the House will look at the bills again and see the reasons given for not assenting, and decide on what to do.

The president had in a letter sent to the House of Representatives, rejected a bill to establish the Peace Corps of Nigeria.

He cited financial implications and duplication of duties of existing security agencies, as reasons for withholding his assent to the bill.

The National Assembly is empowered by the provisions of section 58(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, to override the president on Bills.

While the House requires 240 members to make up its two-thirds, the 109-member Senate requires 73 members to veto the presidents assent.

Order 12(b)(c) of the Standing Orders and Rules of the House of Representatives (2016) also provides that the rejected Bill could be looked upon by the House (through a motion) and if supported by two-thirds of the Reps, the Bill is proclaimed law without the assent of the president.
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Nigerias crude oil has helped Indonesia achieve energy sufficiency, the Head of Economic Affairs of the Indonesian Embassy, Dwiyatna Widinugraha, has said.

He made this known when he led a delegation from his country on a courtesy call on the Group Managing Director of the the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru on Wednesday, at the NNPC towers in Abuja, a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES revealed.

The statement was sent on Wednesday and signed by the Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Ndu Ughamadu.

Mr. Widinugraha, when discussing the purpose for his visit added that his country is in need of increased crude oil allocation from Nigeria.

He stated that Indonesia with a population of more than 250 million people needed about 1.6 million barrels of crude oil daily to meet its burgeoning energy needs as an emerging economy and would love to have a Government-to-Government arrangement with Nigeria in that regard, the statement said.

Buttressing the head of Economic Affairs point, the Vice President of Pertamina, the Indonesian National Oil Company, Anizar Burlian, said the delegation was in Abuja to thank Nigeria for helping them meet their local oil demand and to further explore better arrangements of buying the countrys very high grade crude oil.

Over the years, we have bought huge amount of crude oil from Nigeria. We are extremely happy to buy more Nigerian crude oil which is globally rated to be of very high grade and which is very suitable for our refineries, Mr. Burlian stated.

He also indicated interest in opportunities in the Nigerian upstream, midstream and downstream sectors of the Nigerian oil industry.

LResponding on behalf of the corporation, Adokiye Tombomieye who represented the Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division COMD), Mele Kyari, said NNPC would be consistent in assisting Indonesia in the area of crude oil supply.

He also said that the request for a government-to-government crude supply arrangement should be routed through the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari.

Concerning investment, the corporation advised the team to articulate its request in a proposal to enable the management review and act accordingly.
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The National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) has cautioned health workers in the country against falsification and manipulation of results or data of immunisation.

The Executive Director of NPHCDA, Faisal Shuaib, gave the warning while speaking with journalists after a stakeholders meeting on immunisation in Suleja, Niger on Thursday.

Mr. Shuaib said that his agency would not tolerate the falsification of immunisation data and would punish any erring health worker that indulged in such dubious act.

He said that the agency, under his leadership, had accepted the result of the survey released recently by partners which puts the immunisation coverage in the country to about 33 per cent.

After several years of telling lies of immunising unrealistic number of children, it is now time to be realistic and reflect the correct figures of vaccinated children.

In the past, there was a claim of 120 and 150 per cent coverage in the result of vaccination conducted across the country, he said.

The executive director said that the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo and the leadership of the National Assembly had pledged their commitments to put things in the right position.

Also, Seth Berkley, the Chief Executive Officer of Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation (GAVI), said that in spite of the huge investment on vaccination in the country, the result got was not impressive.

Mr. Berkley disclosed that Nigeria had the highest numbers of unimmunised children in the world.

According to him, about $700 million has been expended on the provision of vaccines to Nigeria.

The executive officer said the problem in the immunisation programme could be addressed with the commitment of political leaders and traditional rulers in the country.
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President Muhammad Buharis wife, Aisha Buhari, has charged perpetrators of abductions and various harmful practices against women and girls to stop.

She was speaking during an event to mark the 2018 International Womens Day, on Thursday, March 8, 2018 at the National Center for Women Development, Abuja.

Mrs. Buhari observed that for Nigeria, the day must be marked with a difference considering the sad incident of the abduction of girls, especially the case of Chibok and Dapchi, which must take the national spotlight.

As a mother, I share the sorrow and agony of the parents at this time, it is my sincere hope that efforts by government will soon lead to their release, she said.

She introduced a local theme tagged, Leave our daughters alone which she said, is a strong call for the end of abductions, charging the media to own the campaign and spread message.

She also charged wives of the Governors to propagate the campaign in their various states, stating that the message must echo through all corners of Nigeria and be on everyones lips.

Leave our daughters alone, leave our daughters alone, leave our daughters alone she said.

Speaking earlier, wife of the Vice President, Dolapo Osinbajo, while congratulating women as they celebrate the special day, said it is sad that Nigerian women were witnessing the worst of times.

She however noted that at the same time, they (women) are also witnessing the best of times in many respects. This is because there are many good stories happening around women, she said.

Director-General of the National Center for Women Development, Mary Ekpere-Eta, said this year, there was an unprecedented global movement for womens rights, equality and justice.

She said sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women has captured public discourse, propelled by a rising determination for change, which she noted were instrumental to the declaration by the Wife of the President on the harmful practices affecting women and girls in Nigeria.

Aisha Buhari

She drew attention to the plight of rural women, who despite their hard work lack basic infrastructure and services, decent work and social protection, and are left more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

She called for urgent action to reverse this trend and ensure better life for the rural women.

Goodwill messages were delivered by UNICEF, UN Women, UNFPA and a host of others.

Highlight of the event was an exhibition of womens business products.
After three months of staying away from work, non-teaching workers of Nigerian universities on Thursday gathered in Abuja for a protest march that ended with a rally at the National Assembly.

The workers are protesting the refusal of government to address the issues over which they had been on strike since December 4.

The workers are angry over the sharing formula adopted by federal universities for the N23 billion released to them last year by government as earned allowances for their workers. They said their colleagues in the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) took for themselves the bulk of the money and left the non-teaching staff with pittance.

The workers, who are members of three staff unions in the universities, are also asking government to intervene in alleged large-scale corruption in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

Their protest on Thursday commenced at 8:50 a.m at the Unity Fountain in the Central Business District of Abuja and featured the workers march to the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Assembly before dispersing at 12:15p.m.

During the procession, the workers waved placards with inscriptions such as Government must respect agreements, Pay us our salaries and allowances, Allowances are our right. Pay us our right, and Our universities need urgent intervention now.

Involved int the protest were members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions(NASU), and the National Association of Academic Technologists, (NAAT) from federal universities across the country and the Federal Capital Territory.

Also at the event in solidarity were the president of the Nigerian Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, and members of Education Rights Campaign.

Speaking during the protest, the National Chairman of the Joint Action Committee of the three unions, Samson Ugwoke, said the protest was to sensitise the public on the strike and remind them that government is yet to do the needful.

He said their three months old strike was due to non-implementation of agreement by the government.

Members of the unions arriving at Unity fountain

Balance of earned allowances, implementation of NIC judgement regarding staff schools in Nigerian universities, shortfalls in salaries, impunity in the university system, injustices and corruption in the system are among our grievances, Mr. Ugwoke said.

Government has refused to release the reports of the panels that investigated the ways money are spent in the system. Something must be done about the impunity in the universities in order to secure the future of our youths, he said.

The chairman said he was aware the Federal Executive Council meeting yesterday took a decision on the strike but the unions will would not know the outcome until a meeting later on Thursday with the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige.

Members of the unions arriving at Unity fountain Members of the unions arriving at Unity fountain

The NLC president, Mr. Wabba, said the issues in the education sector had lingered for too long.

He lamented that the system and students have been suffering since the inception of the strike.

The fact that there was a collective bargaining agreement which was not implemented is one of the reasons for this awareness rally. Education is too important to be toyed with.

Mr. Wabba said the social partners must find a way to address the issues as the sector is not doing well because the government had not paid adequate attention.

One of the protesters decried the absence of the education ministers and permanent secretary at the rally.

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How can we have a Minister of Education, a Minister of State for Education, Permanent Secretary and none of them could come out and address us despite informing them officially?, the protester said.

Joel Ojo, the director of Tertiary Education at the Federal Ministry of Education, however, assured the protesters that the federal government was committed to bringing issues in the strike to closure.

Our interaction at the Ministry of Labour on Tuesday is an example of effort being put in place to ensure the needful is done, he said. Just give us the benefit of doubt , I assure you it will be resolved, Mr Ojo said.

Some of the protesters who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES said the conflicts in the universities were caused by the teaching staff because they are at the helm of affairs and connive with ministry official to cheat the non-teaching staff.

Confidence Okafor from Nnamdi Azikiwe University alleged that the Committee of Vice-Chancellors was responsible for disparities among university workers.

He said the committee gave the federal government the impression that non-teaching staff are irrelevant and the university can function without them.

The federal government released money through a particular union, it has never happened in the university. We suspect fraud and we are insisting that government should look into it, Wale Akinremi from University of Ibadan said.

He said the non-implementation of the court judgement on staff schools is an attempt to weaken the primary education system.

We are not just fighting about money but the issues affecting the education system. For quite three months that we have been on strike, students are losing scholarships, losing job opportunities and cannot go for service, lots of things are happening, Mr Akinremi said.

Addressing the protesters, senator representing Kaduna Central District, Shehu Sani, said the demands of the workers were legitimate

As representative of the people, we have the constitutional, political and moral responsibility to advance, defend and protect the demands of the people. I am not making an empty promise. But right now when i step into the chamber, i will raise the issue and pursue it, he said.

The unions began an indefinite strike on December 4, accusing government of violating an earlier agreement.
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President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Abuja said Nigerians in the areas affected by Boko Haram insurgency are in the best position to provide correct assessments of the changes that have taken place since he assumed office in 2015.

Receiving a delegation from King Salman of Saudi Arabia at the Presidential Villa, President Buhari said his administration was mindful of the three-pronged promises made to Nigerians before the 2015 elections, assuring that he remained undeterred and focused on securing the lives and properties of all Nigerians.

From the very time we came until now, we have been able to do our best, and we remain focused on delivering on our promises, he said.

President Buhari told the Saudi Arabian delegation that the priority of his administration had so far been on securing the country, buoying the economy and curbing corruption so that Nigerians would start benefitting from the rich natural and human resources of the country.

The president expressed appreciation to the King Salman Aid and Relief Centre, and the Saudi Development Fund for providing relief materials, worth $10 million, to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North-east.

In his remarks, the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Dan-Ali said the delegation from Saudi Arabia had already visited the Ministry of Defence, Defence Headquarters and taken a tour of IDP camps in Maiduguri as part of their schedule.

The leader of the Saudi Arabian delegation from King Salman, Nasser Bin Mutlaq, said the visit and the donation of materials was an extension of the good relations both countries had shared over the years.

We are directed to offer materials and food for the displaced persons in the North-east worth 10 million dollars. We have had a field visit to the places and seen the humanitarian situation ourselves, he added.
President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration will soon address unemployment among Nigerian youth and tackle hunger in the country using agriculture.

Mr. Buhari stated this on Thursday at a town hall meeting in Jos on the first day of his two-day visit to Plateau State.

We cant overcome unemployment and hunger if we dont eat what we produce from our farms, he said. Everywhere I went on state visits, Kano, Nasarawa and Taraba states, I have seen teeming unemployed youth.

He commended the Plateau State Government for keying into agricultural policies of the federal government.

He said the federal government will refund money spent by the Plateau State Government on federal roads.

I hereby direct the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Federal Ministry of Works, Power and Housing as well as other relevant agencies to expedite action towards the refund of such funds to the Plateau State Government.

Speaking on his administration efforts in fighting corruption, Mr. Buhari said plans are on to reclaim landed properties corruptly acquired by government officials.

Responding to alleged marginalisation of women in his appointments, the president assured Nigerian women of full participation in governance under the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Governor Simon Lalong had during an address told President Buhari that his administration was focused on security and welfare of citizens.

He said his administration had made judicious use of the bailout funds given the state, revived moribund industries and fully paid salaries of civil servants and pension.

Plateau State remains one of the few states in the country that has paid workers salaries and pension up to date, the governor said.

Mr. Lalong said his administration spent N46 billion on urban roads across the three senatorial districts of the state, some of which were commissioned by the president.

The governor faulted claims that the federal government had abandoned the recently abducted Dapchi schoolgirls.

It is not true that President Buhari is not concerned about the abduction of Dapchi schoolgirls. We are all witnesses to the fact that President Buhari has deployed more securities to Yobe with the aim of rescuing the abducted girls.

The Dapchi schoolgirls abduction incident is an unfortunate situation, no one will wish that such a thing happen anywhere.

He called on Nigerians with useful information toward rescuing the abducted schoolgirls to assist security operatives.

During interactions, Plateau stakeholders requested Mr. Buhari to help resettle internally displaced persons still at camps across the state.

The traditional ruler of Jos, Jacob Buba, at his palace appealed to Mr. Buhari to consider establishment of state police to curtail insecurities in Nigeria.

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Mr. Buba who is the chairman council of chiefs of the state, also suggested devolution of powers to lower tiers of governments.

A large crowd besieged the state government house trying to catch a glimpse of President Buhari. They overpowered security operatives at the gate and forced their way into the government house premises.

At the town hall meeting were the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh; former deputy senate president, Ibrahim Mantu; former deputy governor of Plateau, Jethro Akun; former minister of state for information, Ibrahim Nakande, religious and opinion leaders.

The state visit by President Buhari ends Friday morning, with the commissioning of newly procured tractors for farmers.
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Abdullahi Adamu, who was recently removed as chairman of the Northern Senators Forum, is making moves to remove the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, the senator representing Ebonyi Central, Obinna Ogba, has alleged.

Mr. Ogba (Ebonyi-PDP) on Thursday tendered evidences he claimed were phone conversations between Mr. Adamu and some other people on alleged plans to remove Mr. Saraki and other members of the senate leadership.

Coming under Order 43 of the senate standing order, Mr. Ogba urged the senate to investigate the matter.

I rise this morning to bring to the notice of the senate that there is a plan by some pople in this senate, maybe under the leadership of my distinguished colleague, particularly Senator Abdullahi Adamu. Mr. President, you remember in January, distinguished Senator Misau made a comment here that there was a plan to remove the Senate President and in fact the leadership.

Now, I have reliable information that some people are already planning to destabilise the Senate, including the Senate leadership by organising demonstration of which money is already exchanging hands. I believe that all of us are all leaders in this in this country and everybody who sees something that will destabilise the country or the senate or even the democracy should avoid it. As we are here, if there is any going on, you have the opportunity to raise, not to go outside the chambers to start planning civil resistance; market women to come for demonstration against the leadership of the senate.

Mr. President, I want this Senate to investigate this matter properly, I have evidence to show what Im saying. There is a telephone conversation going on which any other person can also print it out, between senator Abdullahi Adamu and some other people.

When senator Misau raised it in January we didnt take it as anything, I am saying this, we must stand up to look into this.

Mr. Ogba, after his presentation, proceeded to tender what he called documentary evidences against Mr. Adamu.

The Senate resolved to refer the matter to the committee on petitions to report back in two weeks.

Ike Ekweremadu, who presided, pleaded with anyone planning to destabilise the country to desist from doing so.

The difference between military, autocratic regime and any other oppressive regime is the parliament. Once we remove the parliament, there is going to be problem. In whatever we do, we must continue to preserve the sanctity of the parliament. I want to appeal again that anyone planning to destabilise this country is not doing us any good, he said.

In January, While speaking on the appointment of the Director General of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Abubakar, Isa Misau, Bauchi-APC accused a minister of leading a plot to remove the senate president.

When we were on holiday, so many people were going behind that they should try and remove the senate president. And it was a minister that was spearheading that thing. What is the reason, they said that the senate president would leave APC that they should create problems for him (Saraki). What kind of country is this? Everything is about religion, about tribe, he said
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Britain will build a new wing in a Nigerian prison so that it can transfer Nigerian prisoners there, the government in London has announced.

Reuters reports that the new wing will be built at Kirikiri Prison in Lagos.

The new 112-bed wing, which will cost 700,000 pounds ($973,000) and be compliant with United Nations standards, will make it easier for Britain to comply with a prisoner transfer agreement it signed with Nigeria in 2014.

Under the deal, eligible prisoners serving criminal sentences in Nigeria and Britain can be returned to complete their sentences in their respective countries.

The British government however did not indicate how many prisoners might be moved or when the project is likely to be completed.

The British prison system has been showing signs of severe strain in recent years, with overcrowding, rising suicide rates and a growing problem with drug trafficking and other crimes within jails that were sometimes built in the Victorian era.

Reuters reported Thursday that in a written statement to parliament, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said tenders had been placed and a supplier identified to conduct the building work at Kirikiri in Lagos, but the supplier remained unnamed.

Details showed that the project will be funded from Britains Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, which has an annual budget of more than 1 billion pounds and aims to commission projects that can help prevent conflicts and stabilise countries or regions.

Nigerian prisons, many built more than a hundred years ago, are usually overcrowded, leading to the spread of diseases. Kirikiri is not one of the oldest prisons in Nigeria but it does date back to colonial times.

In February, the Nigerian government said the prison in Port Harcourt currently has nearly 5,000, with about 3,700 of them had been awaiting trial for more than five years. The prison was originally designed to hold 800 prisoners.

In July 2017, the Controller General of Nigerian Prisons Service, Jafaru Ahmed, said there was urgent need for adequate funding of prisons across the country in order to properly achieve major objectives of prisons service as well as ensure greater efficiency.

We can improve the prisons service by improved funding that is one of our major constraints. We have gone to developed countries to see how prisons are efficiently run. The facilities that we have in Nigeria, most of them are obsolete and overstretched because of the high population. If there is improved funding, all the facilities that supposed to be in place will be in place, he said.
Abdullahi Adamu, the senator accused of plotting to remove the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has denied the allegation.

Mr. Adamu said the Senate President is like a son to him and at no time did he make a move to oust him from power.

At the plenary on Thursday, Obinna Ogba (Ebonyi-PDP) accused Mr. Adamu of plotting, in collaboration with some other senators, to remove Mr. Saraki as Senate President.

He tendered what he called documentary evidence of the plot to support his claim.

Mr. Adamu was not at the plenary when the allegation was raised against him.

He later spoke by phone with journalists, who shared the details with PREMIUM TIMES.

Reacting to the allegation Thursday evening, Mr. Adamu said at no time was he interested in becoming the Senate President.

Im not in town. I lost someone and Im presently in Nasarawa State. However, a colleague called me and drew my attention to what happened on the floor of the senate today. It is amusing but very saddening at the same time.

I am not in anyway after Saraki. Saraki is like a son to me. I have every right to contest for the Senate President seat three years ago when the 8th Senate was inaugurated, but I never did because I wasnt interested. It is therefore, not logical for anyone to say Im interested in the seat now, and will be planning to destabilise the Senate. To achieve what? For what purpose? It is not right for anyone to make such unfounded insinuations.

We are almost three years in office, election year is drawing nearer, and I think any one thinking of upstaging the leadership of the Senate for any reason will only be fighting a lost battle because it is not what should naturally occupy the mind of any serious-minded lawmaker now.

He vowed to appear before the ethics committee drafted to investigate the matter.

I am not in anyway afraid of anyone who thinks Ive offended him, I have the neck to carry my cross, but no one should cook up lies just to discredit me or any senator for that matter.

If Im asked to appear before the committee on Ethics and Privileges, I will come out clean because whoever raises the allegations will have to come out and present incontrovertible facts to prove the allegations.

Then, names of other so-called collaborators will be made known, they will be confronted, evidence of such meeting will be produced, those accused will be asked to defend themselves, and recommendations will be made by the committee based on facts presented to it.

Mr. Adamu was one of the 10 senators who publicly criticised the Senates passage of the Electoral Act. He said the amendment to section 25 of the act, which re-ordered the sequence of election, was targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari.

One week after the confrontation, Mr. Adamu was removed as chairman Northern Senators Forum amid allegations of mismanaging N70 million belonging to the group.

Mr. Adamu in his reaction on Thursday vowed to continue to fight for what he believes in.

As for me, let me repeat that Im not in anyway after Saraki, I cant be after Saraki, and I wont do anything to upstage the leadership as being claimed because its a fruitless venture.

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But if I believe strongly in cause, I stand by it. If Ive offended anyone by my strong stand on some issues in the Senate in accordance with my conviction, I stand by it anytime. But the issue of trying to cause disaffection in the senate is a no issues at all.

Whatever we do in this world, we must be ready to bear our cross, Im ready to bear mine. Anyone who know me will say clearly that Im not plotting to remove Saraki. Let them look for another thing to say.

.

I am not in anyway afraid of anyone who thinks Ive offended him, I have the neck to carry my cross, but no one should cook up lies just to discredit me or any senator for that matter.

If Im asked to appear before the committee on Ethics and Privileges, I will come out clean because whoever raises the allegations will have to come out and present incontrovertible facts to prove the allegations. Then, names of other so called collaborators will be made known, they will be confronted, evidence of such meeting will be produced, those accused will be asked to defend themselves, and recommendations will be made by the committee based on facts presented to it.

Mr. Adamu was one of the ten senators who publicly criticised the Senates passage of the electoral act. He said the amendment to section 25 of the act, which re-ordered the sequence of election, was targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari.

One week after the confrontation, Mr. Adamu was removed as chairman Northern Senators Forum amid allegations of mismanaging N70 million belonging to the group.
The national commandant of the Nigerian Peace Corps, Dickson Akoh, has defended his supporters who clashed with the police in a bid to forcibly regain control of the headquarters of the paramilitary group on Thursday.

Security agencies sealed the groups head office in Abuja in February 2017, taking Mr. Akoh and over 40 other Peace Corps leaders into custody on allegations that they committed fraud and constituted a national security threat.

The police kept the accused in custody for several days before they were eventually arraigned at the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court. The court granted all the accused bail after taking their pleas.

However, the Peace Corps countersued for fundamental rights enforcement and claiming damages. Mr. Akoh also prayed the court to order the police to vacate its office.

At least two federal judges have ruled in favour of the Peace Corps and asked the police to leave the groups office and stop harassing its members, but the police ignored the court orders, saying they had filed an appeal.

But Mr. Akoh said the police did not file an appeal or a notice of a stay of execution. PREMIUM TIMES could not immediately confirm whether the police appealed the rulings or not. Police spokesperson, Jimoh Moshood, promised to make details of the appeal available to PREMIUM TIMES, but has yet to do so weeks later.

Apparently angered by the polices tactics, members of the Peace Corps have been making efforts to enforce the law by themselves.

Three weeks ago, they made an unsuccessful attempt to take over the building overlooking the Jabi Lake along Alex Ekwueme Way. Mr. Akoh said his supporters backed down because the police told him that the office would be reopened within a week, but Sadiq Bello, Abuja police commissioner, denied giving such assurances when asked by PREMIUM TIMES.

The attempt was made after the expiration of a 48-hour ultimatum which a House of Representatives committee gave the police on to vacate the office.

Shortly after 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, Mr. Akoh and his supporters made another attempt to take over their office. This time, they were joined by Charly Boy, Deji Adeyanju and other civil rights activists who have picketed several agencies around Abuja in recent months.

This is our country, we would have no place to call our own or go to if we allow our system to erode, Charly Boy said during the attempted takeover. We wont allow the Inspector-General of Police or anyone to give the youth reasons to resort to self-help or anarchy.

The supporters, numbering hundreds, initially made their way into the premises by overpowering the officers manning a police truck that had been stationed outside the building since it was seized a year ago.

The officers, however, called for a reinforcement and the protesters were soon dispersed.

Mr. Akoh said the action was not a break in but an enforcement of a series of court pronouncements which asked the police to end their year-long siege at the groups head office.

The property is our property so there was nothing like a break-in, Mr. Akoh told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview at his office Thursday evening. We were only there to enforce different court judgements that ordered the police to vacate the building.

We also have the support of the members of the House of Representatives who asked the police to obey court rulings and vacate our office within 48 hours, he added. Were supposed to be a nation of law.

Mr. Bello told PREMIUM TIMES that the police officers did not physically assault the Peace Corps today, but said he urged Mr. Akoh and his supporters to desist from taking the laws into their hands.

Mr. Akoh confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that he spoke with the commissioner after the attempted takeover, but said the police chief only asked him to direct all complaints relating to the closure to the Force Headquarters.

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The latest stand-off comes as the National Assembly is preparing to review President Muhammadu Buharis veto of the Peace Corps Bill.

The Peace Corps Bill has been passed by the National Assembly since last year, but the presidency only recently vetoed it, citing a lack of finance and potential security implication of creating another paramilitary group.

Several government agencies are strongly against the legalisation of the Peace Corps as a federal establishment, saying the group has no unique value that dozens of existing agencies dont already offer.

Yet, thousands of Nigerian youth are keenly interested in seeing the group, which was initially registered as a non-governmental organisation, become a federal agency.
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The Nigerian Union Teachers (NUT), Bauchi State Chapter, said on Thursday that the 26,000 teachers in its Primary School system was grossly inadequate for the state.

The NUT State Chairman, Danjuma Sale, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Bauchi.

When you look at the number of teachers, the statistics show about 26,000 teachers in the state, which is grossly inadequate.

The number of teachers cannot cover the number of schools we have in the state.

By set standards, each school should have not less than 15 to 30 teachers, especially schools that have all the class arms, he said.

The NUT chairman, therefore, called on the state government to urgently address the issue of inadequate teachers in the existing schools within the towns, the local government areas and their environs.

The inadequacies are not just in the number of the teachers but in terms of qualified, committed and dedicated teachers, who are ready to serve and be posted to any part of the state, he said.

Mr. Sale stressed that the absence of a proper distribution of teachers across the state affected the learning process of the children.

Teachers are more concentrated in the urban and local government headquarters, to the detriment of schools in the rural areas.

The government needs to take urgent steps to post teachers across the schools in the state, he said.

Mr. Sale, however, pleaded with the teachers to remain committed and resolute in their duties as parents, guardians, mentors and teachers to the children.

(NAN)
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A former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has arrived Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, to attend a meeting of the Nigeria Zero Hunger Forum.

The zero hunger forum is an ongoing federal government programme that has been put in place to totally end hunger by the year 2025.

The Maiduguri meeting is the third in the series of such meeting.

The former president arrived Maiduguri alongside governors of Ondo, Ebonyi, Benue and Ogun states who were represented by their deputies.

The meeting which is currently holding at the Multi-Purpose Hall of Government House Maiduguri, is being attended by the host governor, Kashim Shettima, and officials from federal ministry of agriculture, as well as others from Borno, Benue, Jenni, Sokoto, Ogun and Ebonyi states.

Mr. Obasanjo was a major supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari in the build up to the 2015 election, but has since asked the president not to seek re-election saying his performance in office has been poor.

Details to come later
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The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has commenced the distribution of food items in Malkohi and Fufore Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in Adamawa State.

Abbani Imam, NEMA Coordinator in charge of Adamawa and Taraba, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Yola on Thursday that the agency had released two trucks of food items to the camps.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how IDPs in the two camps staged a peaceful demonstration over food shortage on Wednesday. The victims, many of who were displaced from Borno after Boko Haram attacked their homes, said they were last given food in January.

Meanwhile, Adamu Bukar, an IDP in Malkohi camp, has confirmed that they had started receiving the food items from NEMA.

Mr. Bukar thanked the agency for the quick response.
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The National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) has called on intending Muslim Pilgrims from Gombe State to be ready for biometric data capturing for this years Hajj.

Abdullahi Muhammad, the Chairman of the commission, made the call in Gombe on Thursday while addressing Hajj officials and intending pilgrims on the preparations for this years exercise.

The chairman, who was represented by his Commissioner of Operations, Abdullahi Sale, said that the biometric data was compulsory for all intending pilgrims.

He said that the new measure was a directive from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia along with the payment of 2,000 Saudi Riyals equivalent of N163, 000 by each pilgrim that had travelled to the holy land before.

According to him, NAHCON is trying its best to ensure that this years hajj fees will not exceed that of last year.

Mr. Muhammad advised intending pilgrims to complete their payment before the end of the March deadline.

He said that the delay in announcing this years fees was not from the NAHCON as the commission had concluded negotiations in the holy land on flight and hotel payments, among others.

Sale Muhammad, the Chairman of Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Board, Gombe State, pledged to intensify the sensitisation programme for intending pilgrims to acquaint them of the new development.

Its something that is a bit tedious because the three centres for this biometric data capturing of finger prints is in Kano, Abuja and Lagos and if you see the number of pilgrims that we have.

Almost 95,000 pilgrims will go to Saudi Arabia this year and we only have three centres.

You can imaging the congestion; every intending pilgrim has to go to one of the centres to get captured which is going to bring a very big problem, he said.

He said that most of the pilgrims were from rural areas and would going be difficult for them.

(NAN)
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\The Chief Judge of Nasarawa State, Justice Suleiman Dikko, has granted pardon to 20 inmates awaiting trial in Laifa, Keffi, Wamba and Nasarawa Prisons.

Mr. Diko pardoned the inmates on Thursday at the end of his four-day tour of prison formations across the state.

He told journalists in that two of the inmates were from Lafia, 17 from Keffi, while one is from Wamba prisons respectively.

He explained that the routine visit was part of his duties aimed at decongesting the prisons in the state and ensuring that inmates who were wrongly detained got justice.

Given the alarming rate of crime in the state, particularly in Mararaba-Abuja area, all hands must be on deck to ensure that justice prevailed.

The police and the state Ministry of Justice need to get more counsels in order to effectively prosecute the rising number of cases in the state, he said.

He urged the police, prison authorities and other stakeholders to rise up to their responsibilities by ensuring speedy administration of justice in the state.

He advised the discharged inmates to exhibit good character and avoid committing crimes that would take them back to prison.

Earlier, Dalyop Patrick, the Controller of Prisons in the state, said the four prisons had 1, 402 inmates.

Mr. Patrick said 514 of them were convicts while 905 were awaiting trial.

He appealed for more vehicles to take inmates to courts among others.

(NAN)
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More than 4,000 persons displaced by the raging violence in Benue are taking refuge in Plateau State, Governor Simon Lalong said on Thursday in Jos, the state capital.

Mr. Lalong made the disclosure at a town hall meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, who is on a two-day working visit to the state.

The governor said that the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), were Tiv and Fulani people displaced as a result of farmers/herders clashes.

He said that Plateau was also hosting thousands of IDPs from other crises-ridden states like Adamawa, Borno, Kaduna and Yobe.

As a governor of this state, my major worry is that Plateau has been bearing this burden alone without any support either from the federal or affected state governments, he said.

Mr. Lalong urged the president to consider some special funding support to complement the states efforts at being a good host to those fleeing the crises zones.

The support of the federal government will go a long way to prove to our people that the Buhari-led administration is deeply interested in the affairs of our state, he said.

Mr. Lalong called for serious, prompt and proactive measures to end farmers/herders clashes, and commended Mr. Buhari for rising up to the challenge by setting up a committee to curb farmers/herders conflicts.

He expressed confidence that the hydra-headed monster would be nipped in the bud very soon.

The governor said that the Plateau road map to peace launched by Buhari on Thursday, would address the vicious circle of violence in the state.

(NAN)
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The Kano State Public Complaints and and Anti-Corruption Commission has arraigned former Commissioner of Health during Rabiu Kwankwasos administration, Abubakar Labaran, before the State High Court for allegedly diverting tuition fees and allowances meant for indigenes of the state studying in an Egyptian university .

Mr. Labaran was arraigned on a three-count charge of alleged criminal breach of trust, violation of civil service rules and corruption.

The alleged offences are said to contravene sections 315 and 123 of the Penal Code and section 24 (a) (i) of the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti-corruption Law (2008).

He pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

The defence counsel, Nuraini Jimoh, said the accused was not served properly, noting that he heard of his arraignment from the chairman of the Kano State Public Complaints and Anti Corruption through the media.

He therefore appealed to the court to grant the accused bail on ground of an illness which requires regular medical attention. He assured the court that Mr. Labaran would not jump bail if granted.

The prosecution counsel, Mahmud Balarabe, however, denied the accused was not formally notified, saying he was served through his counsel. Mr. Balarabe filed a counter-affidavit to the bail application.

In her ruling, the trial judge, Aisha Rabiu, faulted the prosecution counsel for not serving the accused directly, being an originating surmmon.

Justice Rabiu observed that the charges are simple offences that can be treated by a magistrate court grade three and that they are bailable.

The judge granted the accused bail on condition of N200,000 bond and two sureties and adjourned the case to April 30 for hearing.

The State Public Complaints and Anti-Corruption Commission said it received a petition against Mr. Labaran accusing him of corrupt practices in handling allowances and tuition fees of Kano State indigenes studying for degree course in Nursing at Almansoura University, Cairo, Egypt.

Although Governor Abdullahi Ganduje served as deputy-governor to Mr. Kwankwaso and belongs in the All Progressives Congress as his former boss, the two men have fallen out since Mr. Ganduje took the helm and are now implacable political enemies.
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A chairmanship aspirant in Kagarko Local Government Area of Kaduna State has pulled out of the race citing the crisis in his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.

Shunom Adinga said he saw no sense in contesting in the local government polls under a party that is divided.

Addressing journalists at his campaign office in Barnawa, Mr. Adinga said he took the decision to withdraw after consultations with his family and stakeholders of the party in his local government area.

It is a pity to watch helplessly while the party we helped build in the state collapses because of lack of internal democracy and party supremacy, which has led to internal wrangling and the polarisation of the party.

While APC Government House is being chaired by Shuaibu Idris ,APC Restoration /Akida is chaired by Danladi Wada.

As it is now, I dont know which faction is the authentic.While the crisis is deepening, each faction has its separate office and followers and has expression of interest form.

It is on this point that I feel that my integrity and credibility will be at stake if I continue to depend on a house that the rooftop is detached from the other components of the house.

However, I want to make it categorically clear that, my love, affection and membership of the APC remains intact. Im still an unalloyed member of the party; I still pay my allegiance to the APC. And Im urging all my teeming followers to remain committed to our great party.
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The chairman of the Obafemi Awolowo University branch of the Non-Academic Staff of Universities (NASU), Wole Odebunmi, has regained freedom after spending the last two days in detention.

The chief magistrates court, Ile-Ife, which ordered Mr. Odubunmi be remanded in prison on Tuesday, granted the unionists application for bail Thursday.

Mr. Odebunmi was arraigned for allegedly assaulting Olarinde Olaide during one of NASUs protests against the sharing principle of the academic earned allowances.

The prosecution submitted that Mr. Olaide was mobbed and assaulted while the union led by Mr. Odebunmi disrupted postgraduate exams at OAU.

The bail bond granted Mr. Odebunmi, by F. I. Omisade, the magistrate, included two sureties, who are civil servants on grade level 10.

It should not have degenerated up to this level, the magistrate said, speaking on the crisis between the university and the workers.

The counsel to the accused expressed happiness over the outcome of the proceedings.

This is just one of those normal court cases, he said. We have been successful with the bail application.

Also, a senior lecturer at the university, Kehinde Ajila, told our correspondent that the court case was being fuelled by some of the university officers and that it was aimed at frustrating the struggle of the aggrieved workers.
Travis Smock Of The Peoples Company Can Be Contacted With Any Questions And People From Other Iowa Areas Like Black Hawk County, Delaware Co., Fayette, Clayton Counties & More Looking For Land Are Welcome.

By: Peoples Company

Travis Smock: (319) 361-8089

Contact

Travis Smock

***@peoplescompany.com

(319) 361-8089 Travis Smock(319) 361-8089

End

-- There is land ahead! There is a Buchanan County Land Auction held by the Peoples Company coming up. Travis Smock is getting the word out that the Peoples Company is holding this event at the Aurora American Legion on March 22, 2018 at 10AM. The Auction will be at 302 Warren Street in Aurora, Iowa 50607. The Peoples Company slogan is...Innovative, Real Estate, Solutions. That is exactly what will be happening with over 236 M/L offered in 2 Tracts. This is a Farmland Auction and if you have any questions feel free to call Travis Smock and he will be of great service to you.Travis Smock is a Land Broker and is licensed to sell in Iowa through the Peoples Company. The Auction will consist of two outstanding tracts with Tract 1 totaling 156 acres m/l and Tract 2 totaling 80 acres m/l. The Farms will be sold using the "choice" auction method with the successful bidder will having the choice to take one or both tracts. Both tracts are highly productive soils and well drained with outstanding yield potential.Farm is leased for the 2018 crop year and all cash rent will go to the Buyer. The winning bidder of Tract 1 will receive a credit of $12,833 at closing with the remaining payments due on July 1st and December 1st, 2018. The winning bidder of tract 2 will receive a credit of $6,667 at closing with the remaining payments due on July 1st and December 1st, 2018.Tract 1: From Aurora, head South on Highway W45 (Slater Avenue) for approximately 3.5 miles to 150th Street. Travel East on 150th Street for approximately 3/4 mile. Tract 1 is located on the corner of Taylor Avenue and 150th Street.Tract 2: From Lamont, head South on Highway 187 (Washburn Avenue) for 3 miles to 160th Street. Travel West of 160th Street for 1/2 mile and Tract 2 will be located on the north side of the road.For more information you can visit: https://peoplescompany.com/ listings/14114- lamont-aurora
The industry-leading, independent residential real estate firm expands beyond its home base, opening offices in Raleigh and Charlotte.

By: Mark Spain Real Estate

Charlotte and Raleigh are now open! Check out more details at MarkSpain.com.

Contact

TC McClenning, @RealtorPR

Top Cat Creative Services, 404-819-0643

***@topcatcreative.com TC McClenning, @RealtorPRTop Cat Creative Services, 404-819-0643

End

-- Mark Spain Real Estate, headquartered in Alpharetta, Ga., and with five offices in Georgia, has launched an extensive expansion plan that will take it well beyond the borders of Georgia. Its first out-of-state offices have recently opened in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina."We have a pretty aggressive Southeast expansion plan in motion for the next five years," says Chairman and CEO Mark Spain. "As with any plan, we will tweak and improve it along the way. I could not ask to have a better leadership team with me to make this growth possible. From assessing where to expand to creating and implementing a set of systems so nothing gets missed in the opening of our brand in each new city, they have adeptly done it all."While these internal expansion plans were taking place, Mark Spain Real Estate was also expanding in Georgia and having a record sales year. In 2017, Mark Spain Real Estate sold $550 million in gross residential real estate, showing a 25 percent growth over 2016. On average, the Mark Spain team sold 8 homes per day, helping a record 2,318 clients buy or sell a home in 2017.The Georgia real estate firm opened a southside real estate office in Stockbridge in June, to better serve its client base in the southern metro Atlanta counties, also known as the Southern Crescent. A few months later, at the start of October, a third metro Atlanta location would open in Marietta. This sales team is located on South Marietta Parkway near the famous Cobb County landmark, the Big Chicken, in the American Business Center."Our Southeast expansion plan includes taking a look at fast-growing metropolitan areas with a lot of new housing stock being built," commented John Makarewicz, president of Mark Spain Real Estate ( http://www.MarkSpain.com ). "Our goal is always to service middle income families so those markets are attractive."So where will Mark Spain Real Estate signs be popping up next? Tennessee by this summer and Florida will be introduced to the Mark Spain brand at year-end.To learn more about the firm, the markets it serves, or its Guaranteed Sold program, visit MarkSpain.com, call 800-350-0221 or follow the firm on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/ MarkSpainRealEstate ) or Twitter (https://www.twitter.com/MarkSpainTeam)###Mark Spain Real Estate is an industry-leading estate firm with offices throughout the southeast. Prior to forming his own independent firm in January 2016, Mark Spain and his team were annually the No. 1 ranked large team for sales production with the Atlanta Realtors Association for more than 10 consecutive years and annually appeared in the top 10 of thelist of America's top 1,000 agents and teams. In 2017, Mark Spain Real Estate sold a record $550 million in real estate, helping 2,318 clients sell or purchase a home. Mark Spain has sold more than $3 billion in collective gross sales for his career. In addition, MSRE is the No. 1 most reviewed real estate company on Zillow in the entire United States.MSRE was honored in 2017 as one ofTop Places to Work. In July 2017, Mark Spain and his team earned the No. 2 ranking in the U.S. for closed transactions on "The Thousand Top Real Estate Professionals,"a national awards ranking, sponsored annually by REAL Trends and advertised in. In September,ranked MSRE No. 2,097 on its annual Inc. 5000 List, a ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. This award joins a growing list of accolades for MSRE, including an(ABC) Pacesetter Award and the 2018 Bulldog 100 Award, which recognized the 100 fastest-growing businesses owned or operated by UGA graduates.
VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Future Market Insights presents pertinent insights and a revised forecast of the global 3D printed medical devices market in its published report titled '3D Printed Medical Devices Market": Global Industry Analysis (2012-2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017-2027)'. The global 3D printed medical devices market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 18.1% during the forecast period 2017-2027. Increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and rising awareness regarding personal care are major factors that are driving the growth of the 3D printed medical devices market.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161020/430874LOGO )

Increased Ability to Innovate Aids the Global 3D Printed Medical Devices Market

With increasing popularity of 3D printing, medical devices manufacturers are particularly focused on innovations. Substantial need for individualized yet economical medical solutions is met through 3D printing. Complex features of integration such as hard and soft areas, solid and porous structures, multi-material and multi-color, which seemed to be difficult by implementing conventional manufacturing techniques, is made simpler through 3D printing. Patient-specific implants are being manufactured based on CT and MRI scans provided by surgeons, which results in reduction of the overall surgical cost. This has increased the popularity of 3D printed medical devices all around the world.

Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents and Figures: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1501

Global 3D Printed Medical Devices Market: Segmentation and Forecast

The global 3D printed medical devices market is segmented based on application, technology, material type, end user and region. On the basis of application, the market has been segmented into orthopedic Implants, dental implants and cranio-maxillofacial implants. Orthopaedic implants application segment accounted for a higher revenue share in global 3D printing devices as compared to others in application segment. Orthopaedic implants segment in the application category of the global 3D printed medical devices market was estimated to be valued at nearly US$ 170 Mn in 2017 and is slated to reach a valuation of nearly US$ 970 Mn in 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 19.2% during the period of assessment.

Based on the material type, 3D printed medical devices market is segmented into metals and alloys, biomaterial inks and plastics. The biomaterial inks segment was estimated to be valued at nearly US$ 65 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to reach a valuation of nearly US$ 400 Mn in 2027, displaying a CAGR of 20% during the period of forecast.

Based on the end user, 3D printed medical devices market is segmented into hospitals, ambulatory surgical centres and diagnostic centres. Hospital end user segment accounts for higher demand for 3D printing devices as compared to other distribution channel segments such as ambulatory surgical centres and diagnostic centres, registering a CAGR of 18.7% over the forecast period.

Preview Analysis on Global 3D Printed Medical Devices Market Segmentation By Application Type - Orthopaedic Implants, Dental Implants, Cranio-maxillofacial Implants; By Technology Type - Stereolithography (SLA) - Liquid,Based 3D Printing, Selective Laser Sintering (SLS),Powder Based 3D Printing, Digital Light Processing (DLP),Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM),Plastic Filament Extrusion Based, technology, Electronic Beam Melting (EBM), PolyJet / InkJet 3D Printing: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/3d-Printed-medical-devices-market

Global 3D Printed Medical Devices Market: Regional Forecast

On the basis of region, the global 3D printed medical devices market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and the Middle East and Africa. Revenues in Western Europe are expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.6%, whereas Eastern Europe is anticipated to grow at 15.5% over the forecast period. The Western Europe 3D printed medical devices market was estimated to be valued at nearly US$ 65 Mn in 2017 and is slated to reach a value of nearly US$ 360 Mn in 2027. The Eastern Europe 3D printed medical devices market was estimated to be valued at nearly US$ 40 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to reach a value of nearly US$ 160 Mn in 2027.

Our advisory services are aimed at helping you with specific, customised insights that are relevant to your specific challenges. Let us know about your challenges and our trusted advisors will connect with you: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1501

Global 3D Printed Medical Devices Market: Competitive Landscape

Some of the players in the global 3D printed medical devices market include 3D Systems, Inc., Arcam AB, Stratasys Ltd., FabRx Ltd., EOS GmbH Electro Optical Systems, EnvisionTEC, Cyfuse Biomedical K.K. and Formlabs, Inc. among others. Key players are focusing on strengthening their position by establishing new facilities in North America region. Moreover, companies are targeting Asia-Pacific region and Europe by distribution agreements with local players. In order to increase their revenue, major players in the North America region are entering into agreements with hospitals and academic institutes.

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Compression Garments and Stockings Market Segmentation By Product - Compression Garments (Upper Compression Garments, Lower Compression Garments), Compression Stockings (Gradient Compression Stockings, Anti-Embolism Compression Stockings); By Application - Varicose Vein, Wound Care, Burns, Oncology, Other Indications; By Distribution Channel - Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Clinics, Online Sales, Other Healthcare Facilities: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/compression-garments-and-stockings-market Teleradiology Market Teleradiology Market Taxonomy By Modality - X-Ray Scans, CT Scans, MRI Scans, Ultrasound Scans, Nuclear Scan, Cardiac Echo, Mammography, Electromammography; By End User - Hospitals, Clinics, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Radiology Centres: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/teleradiology-market



Teleradiology Market Taxonomy By Modality - X-Ray Scans, CT Scans, MRI Scans, Ultrasound Scans, Nuclear Scan, Cardiac Echo, Mammography, Electromammography; By End User - Hospitals, Clinics, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Radiology Centres: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/teleradiology-market North America and Europe Artificial Pancreas Systems Market North America and Europe Artificial Pancreas Systems Market Segmentation By Distribution Channel - Hospitals and E-Commerce; By Disease Indication - Diabetes Type 1 and Diabetes Type 2: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/north-america-and-europe-artificial-pancreas-systems-market

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WASHINGTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy and its partners are on a mission to create a financially literate future (#afinlitfuture) and believe it is "Within our Reach."

Financial Literacy Month (#FLM18), sometimes also referred to as Financial Capability Month, has been celebrated each April since 2000. Throughout the month, events and activities focus on raising public awareness about the importance of financial literacy and the need for financial education, celebrate individual and collective achievements in the effort, and address new and evolving issues in the field. This year, the Jump$tart Coalition will focus its events using the theme: "Within our Reach: #afinlitfuture."

"Over the past 20 years, we have made great strides laying the groundwork for effective financial education and financial literacy awareness," said Laura Levine, Jump$tart Coalition president and CEO. "With our partners, affiliates, parents, teachers, schools and many others working together, I do believe a financially literate future for our nation's youth is within our reach."

Financial Literacy Month, which was originally promoted by Jump$tart, is recognized across the country by organizations large and small, with a wide variety of event and initiatives that focus on financial education and financial literacy. The Jump$tart Coalition's two premier events  its Annual Awards Dinner and Hill Day  also bring together the financial literacy community to collaborate, network, and demonstrate the coalition's collective strength and commitment.

Annual Awards Dinner

The Jump$tart Coalition on April 10 will recognize leadership and outstanding achievement in the effort to advance student financial literacy at its 2018 Annual Awards Dinner at the JW Marriott Washington, D.C. A reception begins at 6 p.m. and dinner and awards at 7 p.m. This year the coalition will recognize:

 William E. Odom Visionary Leadership Award  Tim Ranzetta, founder, Next Gen Personal Finance

 Federal Leadership Award  U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio-3)

 Innovation Award  Funding the Future

 State Coalition of the Year  Jump$tart Washington

Learn more at jumpstart.org/awards18.

Hill Day

More than 50 organizations  from the business, finance, nonprofit, association, government and academic sectors  will gather on Capitol Hill to illustrate the importance of financial literacy.

Thanks to this year's honorary co-hosts U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Financial Literacy Day on Capitol Hill (Hill Day, #FLHillDay2018) is slated for April 12 from noon to 3 p.m. in Hart Senate Office Building Room 902.

The event is open to the public; a free buffet lunch begins at noon with remarks by Sen. Reed and Reps. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) and Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio-3). Event sponsors, to date, are GM Financial, the LendingTree Foundation, the National Credit Union Foundation and Visa.

Neither tickets nor a reservation is needed to attend Hill Day. Learn more at jumpstart.org/hillday.

PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12695727

SOURCE Jumpstart Coalition

Related Links

http://www.jumpstart.org


NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- We owe an incredible debt of gratitude to the men and women who serve and have served in our United States Military. Our veterans and troops sacrifice so much, put their lives on the line, and too many have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our American Freedom. CALLAHEAD, New York's innovative portable restroom company, has a new special event portable restroom to help us say, "thank you" to these American heroes. In honor of our U.S. Military, Charles W. Howard, CALLAHEAD'S President and CEO, has designed The Beachhead Portable Restroom. Mr. Howard states, "As Americans, we must show our great appreciation for the men and women of the United State Military. Our American heroes are an inspiration, and why I designed The Beachhead Restroom for CALLAHEAD to give back to these brave men and women." With every Beachhead rental CALLAHEAD will donate 20% of all proceeds to charities supporting Veterans and Troops of the United States Military.

The BEACHHEAD Restroom The BEACHHEAD Restroom promises to donate 20% of all proceeds to charities supporting our military and veterans.

Fittingly, CALLAHEAD chose this portable restroom's name after the term "beachhead" which is the military operation when soldiers reached a landing beach by sea to defend an area. Beachhead operations were significant in World War II, and Vietnam. The Beachhead Restroom by CALLAHEAD has an exterior signage artistically designed with an American Flag and silhouette of a soldier to honor our heroes who sacrificed so much for our country. It is a great special event portable toilet you will feel proud of renting, and guests will be happy to use with all the VIP amenities included.

A CALLAHEAD uniformed technician will professionally deliver the Beachhead Restroom your desired location. Privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and pride are what you will receive with this patriotic portable toilet. The self-closing spring loaded door locks from the inside to expose an exterior occupancy sign. Inside the Beachhead is everything you would expect from a catering hall restroom. Users will immediately be impressed by the beautiful fresh scent inside the Beachhead supplied by CALLAHEAD'S wall mounted Headmist. The Headmist automatically releases a pleasant scent to keep the Beachhead smelling fresh and clean. A hands-free pedal flush toilet, separate non-splash urinal, and hand washing sink with all the extra amenities will impress guests. The Beachhead Restroom has a wall mounted double roll toilet paper dispenser, and CALLAHEAD'S own Headliner toilet seat covers to provide every guest a clean and dry toilet seat. Soap and hand towel dispensers are mounted near the sink and also filled by CALLAHEAD. The pretty floral arrangement, mirror, and coat and hat hook complete this full-service portable restroom experience.

To see this patriotic portable toilet you can view the Beachhead on YouTube where Kimberly Howard, wife of Charles W. Howard, will show you all the details of this full-service VIP portable restroom. The Beachhead is a great portable toilet for just about any short-term rental including private parties, fundraisers, bachelor parties, family gatherings, corporate events, parades, holidays or just about any social gathering in need of portable toilets. You will show our United States Military that you care, and say "thank you" when you rent the Beachhead for your next event. CALLAHEAD guarantees 20% of all proceeds will go directly to U.S. Troop and Veteran charities. CALLAHEAD'S Beachhead Restroom is available for professional uniformed delivery to New York's five boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, and the Bronx, and all of Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties.

CALLAHEAD is New York's largest portable sanitation company with more innovative products than any other company in their industry. They use only hospital grade cleaning service to ensure the world's cleanest equipment for every portable restroom need. In business since 1976, CALLAHEAD is thankful for our military, our freedom, and their customers.

If you would like to learn more about CALLAHEAD'S equipment and outstanding service, you can visit www.callahead.com, or call toll-free at 1.800.634.2085.

Media Contact:

Korynn Bottone

[email protected]

800-634-2085

SOURCE CALLAHEAD Corp.

Related Links

http://www.callahead.com


NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

CannabisNewsWire Editorial Coverage:

The first wave of companies to enter the Canadian cannabis industry were grounded in medical marijuana, which was legalized in 2001. As the country prepares for legalized adult recreational-use this summer, new recreational brands are joining the scene, and many companies rooted in medicinal cannabis are taking action to participate in this second wave of the Canadian market. With its strong branding and modern store design, Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTC: CHOOF) (CHOOF Profile) is branded to appeal to the Canadian adult consumer ready to experience the cannabis lifestyle. Aurora Cannabis, Inc. (TSX: APH) (OTC: APHQF) is making strategic investments to establish footing in the recreational sector, while OrganiGram Holdings, Inc (TSX-V: OGI) (OTC: OGRMF) is taking measures to increase its production capacity ahead of a surge in product demand. Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc (TSX-V: FIRE) (OTC: SPRWF) has entered into multimillion-dollar agreements to supply cannabis to retail-oriented companies, and in Quebec, Hydropothecary Corp. (TSX-V: THCX) is expanding its greenhouse capacity to potentially increase its cannabis production to 30x its current volume.



Highs Coming for Canadian Cannabis



As established companies get serious about brand expansion, supply agreements, and potential retail revenues, investments within Canada's cannabis sector are soaring. The industry saw $1.2 billion investments in January alone - a 600 percent increase over the previous year - setting an incredible pace for continued growth. Currently, the State of California is the largest legal cannabis market in the world. With a population nearly as large as California's and an influx of cannabis capital, Canada is on track to potentially become one of the world's largest recreational-use markets. The country's combined medicinal and recreational market size is expected to reach $6 billion by the year 2021, surpassing the value of its whiskey and spirits industry.





While the Canadian cannabis industry has found impressive success with medicinal marijuana in recent years, a different approach will be needed to target recreational consumers. Cannabis producers that recognize this tremendous potential are pursuing investments in recreational brands that appeal to the retail market. One of Canada's most recognizable cannabis producers, Aphria, Inc. (TSX: APH) (OTCQB: APHQF), recently shelled out $230 million to acquire recreational brand Broken Coast - one of many M&A deals within the burgeoning industry.



A Relaxed Brand for a Relaxing Product



One of the new companies looking to stake a claim in the recreational market is Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF). Choom is based in British Columbia, though its hip, modern brand has been designed around the tropical, relaxed ambiance of Hawaii. The company's name, "Choom", and style invoke Hawaiian culture, in particular easy days on the beach and in the countryside enjoying a casual atmosphere that connects with relaxation, which fittingly is one of the main appeals of cannabis. The company's name, Choom, which means "to smoke marijuana" - comes from a slang word used by a fun-loving group of friends (including former U.S. President Barack Obama) who grew up together in Hawaii during the 1970s.

This relaxed, friendly and informal approach to selling cannabis is designed to tap into a younger market with socially liberal values and disposal income to spare, and differs radically from the marketing focus of medical marijuana companies. The look and feel more closely resembles a food or alcoholic beverage brand, evoking warm feelings instead of healing/medicinal properties, which are the focus of established brands. In short, it's exactly the sort of approach the recreational cannabis industry will need.

Moving forward, the advantage in the legal cannabis sector seems likely to go to companies such as Choom, which are able to innovate with their branding, creating appealing lifestyle choices. Strict limitations on advertising cannabis will prevent the big medical marijuana players from using their financial clout to dominate the market through saturation advertising, which will create a space for young brands such Choom to grow via agile, modern techniques where traditional approaches aren't an option.



From Seed to Sale



Choom appears to have another market advantage with its vertical integration. The business has a seed-to-sale model that covers the whole cannabis pipeline, from growing and processing the plants to selling the final product in its own stores. This control over the entire business process allows the company to maximize efficiencies and ensure integration along the supply chain.

This advantage starts in the growing facilities, where Choom will fully oversee the growth of carefully crafted strains of cannabis. Existing facilities are planned for Vernon and Chemainus, Canada, to ensure that the company is prepared for the market as soon as possible. Choom is refitting both facilities, a process scheduled to be complete by July, with more than 13,000 square feet of growing space in planning.

Choom has announced a clear plan for its move into this market. With the Canadian cannabis market expected to see dramatic growth in early stages, the company has capacity to expand as needed. A second phase of expansion is in place for both facilities, which will significantly increase the growing space and allow for doubling crop yields by early 2019.

At the sale end of this supply chain are Choom's dispensaries, which are designed with a clean, stylish, and modern feel, much like a more relaxed version of an Apple store, a favorite of millennials and those with disposable income. These stores have been envisioned to appeal to two different but important market sectors. One is existing cannabis users, who will be looking for more convenient ways to buy their product once the law changes. The other is the group of "curious customers," who weren't willing to use cannabis while it was illegal but are interested in trying it now. Choom's relaxing retail space is designed to draw in customers from both sides, quickly building up a strong high street brand.



Preparing for Change

To power further growth, the company also recently completed a financing initiative, exceeding expectations and raising CAD $2.7 million (http://cnw.fm/AkT9x). The funds are being invested in advancing the company's development strategy, as well as for growth and acquisitions.

Having recently released the retail design for its dispensaries (http://cnw.fm/DIl3r), Choom is readying those facilities ready for legalization as well. And with the official launch of its retail program, the company has created the opportunity to develop a chain of branded cannabis dispensaries across Canada (http://cnw.fm/jqn8I).

"Choom is using design and retail strategies that have worked successfully at some of the most profitable storefronts in the country. We are telling our Choom story with our stores and will elevate the concept of a high-quality product though our new retail environments, and we're inviting others to join us," Choom president and CEO Chris Bogart stated in the press release.

As the legal cannabis market prepares to open in Canada, Choom appears to have all the pieces in place to create a national premium recreation brand.



A Sector in Waiting

As the creation of Canada's legal recreational cannabis sector approaches, other companies are also preparing for the change.

One of Canada's biggest cannabis producers, Aurora Cannabis (TSX: APH) (OTCQB: APHQF), is investing in a range of related companies to set itself up for expansion into the recreational sector. The Vancouver-based organization has invested in The Green Organic Dutchman, a company that produces farm grown, organic, pesticide-free medical cannabis in small batches using all natural, organic craft growing principles. It has also teamed up with Liquor Stores NA Ltd. to convert existing retail outlets into cannabis retail stores.

Another licensed producer of medical marijuana, OrganiGram Holdings (TSX-V: OGI) (OTCQB: OGRMF), recently received an expanded cultivation license from Health Canada, enabling the company to move forward with its expansion strategy that would increase current capacity from approximately 5,200 kg/year to an estimated 16,000 kg/year. Its longer-term plan is to increase production to 65,000 kg/year over the next two years.

Supreme Cannabis Company (TSX-V: FIRE) (OTC: SPRWF) has made its mission to grow sustainable cannabis companies to cater to the growing recreational market. To this end, it has invested in late-stage ACMPR applicant company BlissCo, and has agreed to provide cannabis to that company through its 7ACRES subsidiary. 7ACRES will also supply cannabis to Namaste subsidiary, Cannmart.

Quebec-based Hydropothecary (TSX-V: THCX) has signed a letter of intent with Societe des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) to supply 20,000 kg of cannabis to Quebec's recreational cannabis market in its first year of operation. This recent announcement follows news in December that the company added 78 acres of land adjacent to its existing 65-acre facility, and that it is working on a 1 million-square-foot greenhouse designed to increase its production to 108,000 kg per year, 30 times the current capacity.

Based on all forecasts, Canada's cannabis market is set for significant expansion in 2018. New actors and existing medical companies alike are preparing to seize this opportunity through production, distribution, and retail growth. With a clearly defined growth strategy, Choom Holdings is demonstrating its intention to rapidly become a recognizable national brand.

For more information on Choom Holdings, please visit Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF) .



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EMERYVILLE, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Private non-profit colleges make up some of the most expensive schools in the United States. And while some private non-profit institutions are much less expensive than the chart-toppers, they still command a pretty penny from their students. However, there may be some financial upsides to attending private non-profits. For one, need-based financial aid grants may reduce the big sticker prices. Also, student loan outcomes may also be favorable for bachelor's degree holders of private non-profits. American Financial Benefits Center (AFBC), a document preparation company that helps federal student loan borrowers apply for and recertify federal repayment plans, invites student loan borrowers with private, non-profit educations to evaluate the effect of their school type of on their financial situation.

"While it may seem like a moot point to figure out how your education affects your finances now, it might be helpful for future decision-making, like whether to attend graduate school or how to approach a job search," said Sara Molina, Manager at AFBC.

USA Today named Columbia University as the most expensive school in the country in 2018, with Vassar College and Harvey Mudd College following in second and third place. All three of these schools have tuition prices of over $50,000 per year. However, these colleges also have need-based financial aid programs designed to help lower-income students and families shoulder less of the cost. Private colleges, usually those that are not as selective as the aforementioned schools, are also known to discount tuition outside of need in order to entice students to attend.

Student loan outcomes of graduates of private non-profit four-year colleges also seem favorable. In a study conducted by researchers at the New York Federal Reserve, it showed that bachelor's degree holders and attendees of private non-profit four-year schools had low default rates. A recent report from the Brookings Institution showed slightly conflicting information, specifically private non-profit four-year attendees had higher default rates than attendees of public universities. But the Brookings report matched the NY Fed study in that bachelor's degree holders had the best outcomes of all categories of degree attainment.

AFBC members and any student loan borrowers might examine how their specific institution may have affected their financial aid and student loan outcomes. Regardless of educational experience, though, AFBC offers clients application and recertification assistance for income-driven repayment plans. These plans often lower the borrower's monthly payment to an affordable amount, thus helping protect against default.

"Knowing more about how you got to a specific financial place can be very valuable," said Molina. "We offer a stellar service to our AFBC clients to help them stay on top of their loans, in an effort to help them stay out of default and even plan for the future."

About American Financial Benefits Center

American Financial Benefits Center is a document preparation company that helps clients apply for federal student loan repayment plans that fit their personal financial and student loan situation. Through its strict customer service guidelines the company strives for the highest levels of honesty and integrity.

AFBC is a member of the Association for Student Loan Relief (AFSLR), and each representative on the phone has received the Certified Student Loan Professional certification through the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators (IAPDA).

Contact

To learn more about American Financial Benefits Center, please contact:

American Financial Benefits Center

1900 Powell Street #600

Emeryville, CA 94608

1-800-488-1490

[email protected]

Related Links

AFBC home page

SOURCE American Financial Benefits Center

Related Links

https://afbcenter.com


EMERYVILLE, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Big cities may be perceived as hubs promising professional advancement with endless opportunities. However, rural towns can offer professional value, as well, and are starting to offer incentives to lure individuals and families to move in. Those incentives may include free land to build a house on or help with student loans. However, American Financial Benefits Center (AFBC) reminds student loan borrowers that if they would rather not uproot their lives for those financial temptations, they may be able to improve their financial situation at home through income-driven repayment plans. The company helps its clients apply for and stay enrolled in such plans so that they have more financial freedom to focus on their financial goals.

"Student loan borrowers may do some strange things to get rid of their debt," said Sara Molina, Manager at AFBC. "Moving to a small town might not be that strange, but it can be a drastic move and might not be right for everyone."

Small, rural towns offering student loan relief do so in an attempt to revive the town. These towns may be struggling economically, even if they appear to be doing fine. Towns like Niagara Falls, New York, as well as many counties in Kansas labeled Rural Opportunity Zones, are offering new residents thousands of dollars of student loan repayment when they move in.

However, small town life is not for everyone. Some individuals simply prefer bustling city streets and other perks of city life. And that's okay. Federal student loan borrowers who need assistance tackling their student loans, but who decide that packing up and moving to a small town isn't the best move for them, should consider federal repayment programs.

There are several income-driven repayment plans (IDRs) that calculate monthly payments on income and family size. Some borrowers may even see a payment as low as zero dollars. Any reduction in student loan payment amount can potentially allow borrowers to increase their focus on other financial goals such as saving for an emergency fund, paying down other debt, or saving up to buy a house.

"No matter where you live, it's important that you make your student loans work for you," said Molina. "If payments are too high, IDRs might help. We've certainly gotten good feedback from AFBC clients whose payments are now affordable thanks to IDRs we helped them apply for. But if small-town life sounds appealing to you, by all means, take that leap."

About American Financial Benefits Center

American Financial Benefits Center is a document preparation company that helps clients apply for federal student loan repayment plans that fit their personal financial and student loan situation. Through its strict customer service guidelines the company strives for the highest levels of honesty and integrity.

AFBC is a member of the Association for Student Loan Relief (AFSLR), and each representative on the phone has received the Certified Student Loan Professional certification through the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators (IAPDA).

Contact

To learn more about American Financial Benefits Center, please contact:

American Financial Benefits Center

1900 Powell Street #600

Emeryville, CA 94608

1-800-488-1490

[email protected]

Related Links

AFBC home page

SOURCE American Financial Benefits Center

Related Links

https://afbcenter.com


W. CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- In celebration of International Women's Day and Women's History Month, one of the world's top leaders in standards and related services (ASTM International) is releasing a special issue of Standardization News magazine focused on the growing number of women who work with technical standards. The organization also launched a new "ASTM News" app featuring the award-winning magazine and a newsfeed.

Katharine Morgan, the first woman president in the 120-year-old organization's history, said, "The standardization community has led the way in providing opportunities for women, but we still have work to do  overall  in terms of attracting more girls and women to the engineering and STEM fields."

The "Women in Standards" March-April issue features the voices of dozens of women role models, including engineers, association leaders, consumer advocates, and more. It includes: a Q&A with Society of Women Engineers President Jonna Gerken of Pratt & Whitney, information on a United Nations-driven effort to involve more women in standardization, networking opportunities for women in standards, and more.

ASTM International will also highlight women's voices on its LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (@ASTMIntl) channels throughout the month.

In addition, ASTM International has launched its free new "ASTM News" app that hosts the mobile-responsive edition of Standardization News as well as a feed for ASTM International news releases. It is now available in Google Play and the App Store or by searching "ASTM News."

About ASTM International

Committed to serving global societal needs, ASTM International positively impacts public health and safety, consumer confidence, and overall quality of life. We integrate consensus standards  developed with our international membership of volunteer technical experts  and innovative services to improve lives Helping our world work better.

Media Inquiries: Nate Osburn, tel +1.610.832.9603; [email protected]

SOURCE ASTM International

Related Links

http://www.astm.org


"Developing the Smart Neighborhood is just one of the ways that we are staying at the forefront of emerging technology while ensuring that we are prepared to continue to meet our customers' changing energy needs," said Pedro Cherry, executive vice president of customer service and operations for Georgia Power. "We are proud to unite industry leaders that bring a shared commitment to customer innovation, as well as unmatched industry expertise in their areas, and understand the value that a smart, connected new home offers for homebuyers."

"We are always looking for new ways to innovate and provide consumer inspired features in our homes," said Brent Landry, vice president of operations for PulteGroup. "The convergence of multiple, high-quality partners on this particular community is sure to yield some exciting results for each of us and our homeowners."

State-of-the-art home automation, solar energy and battery storage are key elements of the Georgia Power Smart Neighborhood. Participating partners include:

Alarm.com  Home buyers look for security and peace of mind and Alarm.com delivers innovative home security technology. Alarm.com's smarter home security solutions include professional monitoring and connect a wide array of smart devices, making them easily controlled through a single, intuitive mobile app for home owners.

GreenMarbles  The smart home of the future is fully automated with all home systems connected. GreenMarbles, known as Green Automation in Georgia , is an institutional integrator specializing in home automation and energy management solutions. With GreenMarbles, the home automatically responds to the homeowner's activities, location and schedules, integrating thermostats, locks, lights, garage doors and water sensors.

, is an institutional integrator specializing in home automation and energy management solutions. With GreenMarbles, the home automatically responds to the homeowner's activities, location and schedules, integrating thermostats, locks, lights, garage doors and water sensors. Hannah Solar  Georgia is a national leader in solar energy, with solar installations of all sizes in place across the state and more customers considering solar for their homes and businesses every day. The Georgia Power Smart Neighborhood will demonstrate the effectiveness of residential solar energy with full-service solar integrator Hannah Solar installing rooftop solar panels and battery storage for each home.

 is a national leader in solar energy, with solar installations of all sizes in place across the state and more customers considering solar for their homes and businesses every day. The Georgia Power Smart Neighborhood will demonstrate the effectiveness of residential solar energy with full-service solar integrator installing rooftop solar panels and battery storage for each home. Mercedes-Benz Energy  Mercedes-Benz Energy provides home energy solutions to support the transition to a sustainable future. Their home batteries maximize clean energy usage by storing solar energy for use when the sun isn't shining. Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage Home also gives Smart Neighborhood homeowners additional peace of mind with a reliable and safe source of backup power.

Sunverge Energy  The Sunverge Energy Distributed Energy Resource (DER) control and orchestration platform is an edge/cloud-based virtual power plant, residential battery, and home energy management systems (HEMS) control software, which allows utilities to control and orchestrate renewable DERs for better integration with the distribution grid and core utility operations. For Smart Neighborhood residents, Sunverge Energy's platform will enable the full value stacking of benefits from the Mercedes-Benz Energy battery, in conjunction with managing load via smart thermostats and grid-interactive water heaters, by forecasting and scheduling operations to automatically provide energy bill savings when paired with Georgia Power's Smart Usage or Nights & Weekends energy rate.

Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company, which emphasizes the importance of robust research and development to better serve customers. The Smart Neighborhood initiative, including separate projects with Georgia Power and its sister operating company Alabama Power, reinforces Southern Company's commitment to research and development (R&D) to benefit 9 million customers in the United States. Georgia Power also continues to conduct R&D through programs developed with and approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission such as separate solar energy research projects with the University of Georgia and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

In addition to the technology partners above, Georgia Power is also collaborating with Southern Company R&D to better understand the interactions between rooftop solar and in-home battery storage and the existing electric grid for energy efficient homes. Additional research partners include the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which will be developing the Smart Neighborhood's home energy optimization platform that will intelligently schedule each homes' major appliances, in coordination with solar and batteries, to minimize cost while optimizing each homeowner's comfort. Additionally, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is providing design guidance, data analysis and final reports for the Smart Neighborhood project.

The partnership with Georgia Power is another example of PulteGroup's commitment to sustainability. The first 46 townhomes developed at Altus at the Quarter will be a part of the Georgia Power Smart Neighborhood and will feature the Hutton floor plan featuring 2,349+ sq. ft. four-story townhome with 3-4 bedrooms and 2-car garage. The community is located at the intersection of Marietta Boulevard and Bolton Drive. Development is underway with the grand opening scheduled for later this year. Click here to learn more.

About Georgia Power

Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower), Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower) and Instagram (Instagram.com/ga_power).

About PulteGroup

PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM), based in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of America's largest homebuilding companies with operations in approximately 50 markets throughout the country. Through its brand portfolio that includes Centex, Pulte Homes, Del Webb, DiVosta Homes and John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods, the company is one of the industry's most versatile homebuilders able to meet the needs of multiple buyer groups and respond to changing consumer demand. PulteGroup conducts extensive research to provide homebuyers with innovative solutions and consumer inspired homes and communities to make lives better. For more information about PulteGroup, Inc. and PulteGroup brands, go to pultegroupinc.com; www.pulte.com; www.centex.com; www.delwebb.com; www.divosta.com and www.jwhomes.com. Follow PulteGroup, Inc. on Twitter: @PulteGroupNews.

SOURCE Georgia Power

Related Links

http://www.georgiapower.com


ARLINGTON, Va., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) today issued a data call for its Impacts of E-Commerce on the Trucking Industry report. The brief online questionnaire seeks to capture how the emergence of e-commerce has changed industry business models and operations.

The results of this data collection, combined with an extensive analysis of emerging e-commerce trends, will yield quantifiable insight into how the trucking industry has adapted to growing e-commerce activity. This research will provide carriers with an understanding of how the industry has responded to these structural shifts in the relationships between consumers, businesses, and logistics.

Motor carriers are encouraged to provide data, confidentially, through ATRI's survey by Friday, April 6, 2018. The survey is available online at TruckingResearch.org.

Respondents who submit completed surveys by the deadline are eligible for entry in a raffle to win one of five $100 gift cards and will receive an advance copy of the Impacts of E-Commerce on the Trucking Industry report. The results of this study will be available later this year.

ATRI is the trucking industry's 501(c)(3) not-for-profit research organization. It is engaged in critical research relating to freight transportation's essential role in maintaining a safe, secure and efficient transportation system.

SOURCE American Transportation Research Institute
Customers in Asia Pacific Region embracing robotics to drive productivity gains.

KITCHENER, ON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Avidbots Corp. today announced the opening of a regional sales and service office in Hong Kong. The office will support customers throughout the Asia Pacific Region, with a focus on direct sales in the Hong Kong and Macau markets as well as support for market entry into mainland China.

Avidbots has designed the future of commercial floor cleaning. The Avidbots Neo is a purpose-built floor scrubbing robot that integrates state of the art navigation technology with hardware designed for ease of use, longevity, serviceability, safety, and high productivity. Deploying the Neo allows innovative facilities and building service contractors to reduce costs, improve the productivity of their cleaning teams, and position themselves at the forefront of facilities management innovation.

Embracing connected technologies to enhance efficiency is a pillar of Smart Cities around the globe. The Asia Pacific Region is home to numerous Smart Cities, with Hong Kong and other Chinese cities leading the way. By being able to provide direct sales and service to this region, Avidbots will be able to continue its rapid global expansion.

"The Avidbots' vision is to bring robots to everyday life to expand human potential," says Faizan Sheikh, CEO of Avidbots. "We are excited to be able to directly service the Hong Kong, Macau, and China markets in order to help those markets leverage the power of robotics in support of their Smart Cities strategy."

The Avidbots Neo is currently deployed on 4 continents, servicing some of the world's leading shopping malls, airports, education facilities, healthcare centers, manufacturing sites, and other commercial spaces. The company's 40,000 sq ft headquarters is located in Kitchener, ON, Canada, with sales and service in the U.S.A., Canada, Japan, Singapore, Australia, France, Norway, and UAE.

About Avidbots

The Avidbots Corp. vision is to bring robots to everyday life to expand human potential. Its first product is the NEO self-driving floor scrubber, which is widely deployed and trusted by the world's leading facilities and building service contractors. As a 100% vertically integrated company headquartered in Kitchener-Waterloo, Canada, Avidbots offers comprehensive sales, service and support to customers on 4 continents. For more information, visit www.avidbots.com.

SOURCE Avidbots
Commercial real estate firm retains Best Managed designation for seventh consecutive year; recognized for overall business performance and sustained growth

TORONTO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Avison Young, the world's fastest-growing commercial real estate services firm, announced today that it has achieved Platinum status with the Canada's Best Managed Companies program by retaining the Best Managed designation for seven consecutive years.

Sponsored by Deloitte, CIBC, Canadian Business, Smith School of Business, TMX Group and MacKay CEO Forums, the Best Managed program recognizes the best-in-class of Canadian-owned and managed companies with revenues greater than $15 million demonstrating strategy, capability and commitment to achieve sustainable growth.

Every year, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies compete for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates their management skills and practices.

Now in its 25th year, Canada's Best Managed Companies is one of the country's leading business awards programs, recognizing Canadian-owned and managed companies for innovative, world-class business practices.

The announcement was made today by the national sponsors and in a special report in Maclean's magazine (print) and Canadian Business (online).

"On behalf of the board of directors of Avison Young, our employees, our clients and our partners, we are truly honoured to be recognized as a 2018 winner of the Canada's Best Managed Companies Platinum Club designation," comments Avison Young Chair and CEO Mark Rose. "The past seven years have been a period of tremendous growth for Avison Young. Throughout it all, our employees in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Europe have set new standards for leadership, innovation and execution while giving back to the communities in which we operate."

Rose continues: "This award also gives us third-party confirmation that our values, our unique Principal-led ownership structure, our collaborative culture, and our client-centric approach are making a difference in the commercial real estate industry. We thank Deloitte and the other award administrators for recognizing us as one of Canada's Best Managed Companies for the seventh consecutive year, and we salute all new and repeat winners."

"Best Managed Platinum winners have exceptional insights and knowledge into business management practices. They are an inspiration and really take their game to a new level," states Lorrie King, Partner, Deloitte and Co-Leader of the Canada's Best Managed Companies program.

Over the past nine years, Avison Young has grown from 11 to 82 offices and from 300 to more than 2,600 real estate professionals in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Europe.

"When everyone in an organization is aligned and treats the client as the primary focus at every inflection point of decision-making and service, that approach enhances the culture of the organization," says Avison Young Principal and Chief Human Resources Officer Pam Mazza, based in Chicago. "The Avison Young culture of collaboration and transparency creates an environment conducive to attracting a diverse group of professionals who co-operate on all fronts. This environment makes day-to-day business management quite easy."

"Companies that earn Platinum Club status exemplify exceptional vision and leadership and a sustained commitment to growth and innovation," says Dino Medves, Senior Vice-President and Head, CIBC Commercial Banking. "CIBC is proud to recognize these and all of the 2018 Canada's Best Managed Companies as leaders in their industries."

The 2018 winners of the Canada's Best Managed Companies award will be honoured at the annual Canada's Best Managed Companies gala in Toronto on April 11, 2018. On the same date, the Best Managed symposium will address leading-edge business issues that are key to the success of today's business leaders.

Avison Young Principal Jeff Flemington, based in Toronto, notes: "We have always strived to be innovative and creative, and to deliver solutions to our clients with honesty and integrity. Our clients and employees all share this award because without each other, our seven years of success with the Canada's Best Managed Companies program would not have been possible."

Adds Avison Young Principal Sherry Quan, based in Vancouver: "Our business strategy has always been to provide unwavering support for clients in all markets by offering a safe pair of hands; this award verifies that our Principal-led, no-silos approach is resonating in the marketplace. We are truly humbled to receive this award."

A bout Canada's Best Managed Companies

Canada's Best Managed Companies continues to be the mark of excellence for Canadian-owned and managed companies with revenues over $15 million. Every year since the launch of the program in 1993, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies have competed for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates their management skills and practices. The awards are granted on four levels: 1) Canada's Best Managed Companies new winner (one of the new winners selected each year); 2) Canada's Best Managed Companies winner (award recipients that have re-applied and successfully retained their Best Managed designation for two additional years, subject to annual operational and financial review); 3) Gold Standard winner (after three consecutive years of maintaining their Best Managed status, these winners have demonstrated their commitment to the program and successfully retained their award for 4-6 consecutive years); 4) Platinum Club member (winners that have maintained their Best Managed status for seven years or more). Program sponsors are Deloitte, CIBC, Canadian Business, Smith School of Business, TMX Group and MacKay CEO Forums. For further information, visit: www.bestmanagedcompanies.ca

About Avison Young

Avison Young is the world's fastest-growing commercial real estate services firm. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Avison Young is a collaborative, global firm owned and operated by its principals. Founded in 1978, the company comprises 2,600 real estate professionals in 82 offices, providing value-added, client-centric investment sales, leasing, advisory, management, financing and mortgage placement services to owners and occupiers of office, retail, industrial, multi-family and hospitality properties.

For further information/comment/photos:

Sherry Quan , Principal, Global Director of Communications & Media Relations, Avison Young: 604.647.5098; cell: 604.726.0959; [email protected]





, Principal, Global Director of Communications & Media Relations, Avison Young: cell: Mark Rose , Chair and CEO, Avison Young: 416.673.4028





, Chair and CEO, Avison Young: [email protected]

www.avisonyoung.com

Avison Young is a 2018 winner of the Canada's Best Managed Companies Platinum Club designation, having retained its Best Managed designation for seven consecutive years

Follow Avison Young on Twitter:

For industry news, press releases and market reports: www.twitter.com/avisonyoung

For Avison Young listings and deals: www.twitter.com/AYListingsDeals

Follow Avison Young Bloggers: http://blog.avisonyoung.com

Follow Avison Young on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/avison-young-commercial-real-estate

Follow Avison Young on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/AvisonYoungRE

Follow Avison Young on Instagram: www.instagram.com/avison_young_global

SOURCE Avison Young Commercial Real Estate (BC)

Related Links

www.avisonyoung.com


President and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Wheeler said, "We're thrilled that Barb is getting the recognition that she deserves. She has been a great conduit between our North America, India, and Europe teams, encouraging more international collaboration. She's also been instrumental in expanding the A. O. Smith Women's Resource Network to other countries, such as India and Canada."

VanderMolen has finance and accounting responsibility for the North America, India, Europe and Export areas of the business. This group represents a significant portion of the revenue and profit for A. O. Smith and operates in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Turkey. Her role includes leading analytical and pricing teams that provide business and financial insight and ensures business decisions are based on solid financial criteria.

VanderMolen joined A. O. Smith in 2008 as director of financial planning and analysis for the former Water Products Company. She was recently appointed to the advisory committee of the A. O. Smith Women's Resource Network, an initiative created to further develop women's talents and leadership capabilities. In 2016, she was recognized in the Supply House Times Women in Industry Top 20, in addition to earning the Nashville CFO award by the Nashville Business Journal in 2015.

"I am honored and grateful to receive this STEP Award, but I know that business or personal success cannot be achieved alone. I am proud to work for a fantastic company that attracts and retains many talented people. And with our development initiatives at A. O. Smith, including the Women's Resource Network, I am hopeful that more employees from our organization will be recognized in the future," VanderMolen notes.

The STEP Ahead Awards are part of the larger STEP Ahead initiative, launched to examine and promote the role of women in the manufacturing industry through recognition, research, and leadership for attracting, advancing, and retaining strong female talent. In five years, STEP Ahead Award winners have impacted more than 300,000 individuals  from peers in the industry to school-aged children. Women constitute one of manufacturing's largest pools of untapped talent. Women totaled about 47 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2016, but only 29 percent of the manufacturing workforce. Not only does the STEP Ahead initiative bolster manufacturing's attractiveness to women, it also plays an important role in improving the perception of careers in the industry among younger generations.

"Companies across the U.S. agree there is a talent shortage in manufacturing. Through the STEP Ahead Awards, we hope to take another step toward closing this gap by highlighting the stories of successful women in manufacturing and giving them a platform to encourage other women to join the industry and be role models for the next generation," said Carolyn Lee, executive director of The Manufacturing Institute. "The women being honored demonstrate what modern manufacturing careers are all about: making an impact in their communities with meaningful careers that offer significant opportunities for growth."

The Manufacturing Institute will recognize VanderMolen and all other recipients of the STEP Ahead Awards at a reception in Washington, D.C., on April 10. The STEP Ahead Awards program will highlight each honoree's story, including their leadership and accomplishments in manufacturing.

VanderMolen is the second A. O. Smith employee to receive a STEP Ahead award. Carol Peters, director-operations at the company's Johnson City, Tenn. plant, was recognized with a STEP Ahead award in 2013 in her previous role as production manager.

About The Manufacturing Institute

The Manufacturing Institute (the Institute) is the 501(c)(3) affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers. As a non-partisan organization, the Institute is committed to delivering leading-edge information and services to the nation's manufacturers. The Institute is the authority on the attraction, qualification and development of world-class manufacturing talent. For more information, please visit www.themanufacturinginstitute.org.

About A. O. Smith Corporation

A. O. Smith Corporation, with headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis., is a global leader applying innovative technology and energy-efficient solutions to products manufactured and marketed worldwide. The $3.0 billion company is one of the world's leading manufacturers of residential and commercial water heating equipment and boilers, as well as a leading manufacturer of water treatment products. For more information, visit www.aosmith.com.

SOURCE A. O. Smith Corporation

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LAS VEGAS, March 8, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- New Dickey's Barbecue Pit franchisee Kim Fewlass plans to open five Dickey's locations throughout Nevada with his wife and business partner, Susan.

The first of the five locations is slated to open in Spring 2018 in Las Vegas with another location following in Fall 2018. The final three locations will open in the coming years.

"At Dickey's Barbecue Pit, we pride ourselves on serving each and every guest authentic, Texas-style barbecue," says Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc. "With new franchisees such as Kim and Susan that truly love the brand, we can continue our growth and more importantly continue serving our guests delicious barbecue."

A retired commercial airlines captain, Kim was looking to find a new passion to dive into and found a natural fit with Dickey's. "I have loved travelling the world, looking for new and delicious barbecue options," says Kim. "When I decided that it was time to open my own restaurant, I knew Dickey's would be worth the dedication that is required to be a Pit Master. I love the product, the feel of the store and look forward to bringing slow-smoked barbecue to Las Vegas."

Find your nearest Dickey's location here.

About Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc.

Dickey's Barbecue Restaurants, Inc., the nation's largest barbecue chain was founded in 1941 by Travis Dickey. Today, all meats are still slow smoked on-site in each restaurant. The Dallas-based family-run barbecue franchise offers several slow-smoked meats and home style sides with 'No B.S. (Bad Stuff)' included. The fast-casual concept has expanded to more than 550 locations in 45 states. In 2016, Dickey's won first place on Fast Casual's "Top 100 Movers and Shakers" list and in 2017 again won a top 10 on the list. Dickey's Barbecue Pit has also been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine, Franchise Times, and Nation's Restaurant News. For more information, visit www.dickeys.com.

Media Contacts:

Callie Head

[email protected]

Ashley Richardson

[email protected]

SOURCE Dickey's Barbecue

Related Links

http://www.dickeys.com


BELIZE CITY, Belize, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite being on opposite sides of the globe, Belize and Australia are connected as the home to the planet's two largest barrier reefs. These fragile habitats are under threat from environmental impacts and must be protected. To help, the Belize Tourism Board has partnered with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to create the Sister Reef Project, a campaign to raise awareness and funds for Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the Belize Barrier Reef.

The Sister Reef Project

The Sister Reef Project is an online fundraiser benefitting WWF. Travelers are encouraged to buy credits to enter to win multiple curious items and experiences in Belize, while simultaneously donating to a worthy cause. All funds from the project will go toward WWF to support its reef conservation efforts in both Belize and Australia.

"Belize is home to the world's second-largest barrier reef and we want to keep it that way," said Karen Bevans, Director of Tourism at the Belize Tourism Board. "Belizeans know the importance of a healthy reef and many rely on it for their livelihood. Our economy is built on tourism, with reef-related tourism and fisheries supporting about 190,000 people. That's why Belizeans across the countryfrom hotels, tour operators, restaurants and moreare coming together and donating what valuable goods and services they can to support this effort."

Prizes up for grabs as part of the Sister Reef Project include:

Accommodations at more than a dozen resorts

Roundtrip airline tickets

Exclusive adventure and cultural experiences, like an aerial tour over the Great Blue Hole, luxury sailing excursion, diving and caving tours, and private culinary experiences

Many more items and experiences

How to Donate

Starting March 8, 2018 and continuing through March 29, 2018, U.S. travelers can visit SisterReefProject.com and make a donation to the online fundraiser. Every $5 USD donation can be applied to purchase credits that will allow them to enter for a chance to win many different curious Belize experiences, while simultaneously donating to a worthy cause. Participants may come away with one of more than 40 prizes or experiences worth over $59,000 USD. But because the reef promises the unexpected, the prizes will be tooall listed items will initially be hidden and will be unlocked as individual donations occur.

To view auction items, donate and learn about reef conservation, visit SisterReefProject.com.

The Belize Barrier Reef

Spanning 185 miles of the country's coastline, the Belize Barrier Reef is the largest reef system in the Northern Hemisphere, second only in the world to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. It comprises seven key marine reserve zones, over 400 cayes (islands) and three atolls. Home to more than 500 species of fish and marine life, 70 hard coral and 30 soft coral, the Belize Barrier Reef is a world-class diving and snorkeling destination, attracting visitors from around the globe. It was dedicated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

For more information on traveling to Belize, visit TravelBelize.org, and join the community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

About the Belize Tourism Board

The Belize Tourism Board (BTB) is a statutory body within the Belize Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, and it is governed by a Board of Directors appointed Tourism Industry Association and Belize National Tour Operators Association. BTB is dedicated to building tourism in the most economically and environmentally sustainable manner. As a part of its responsibilities, the BTB promotes Belize as a premier tourism destination to both in-country and international consumers. Among its outreach to the international travel market, the BTB markets the country's unique attractions to travelers, members of the travel trade industry and media outlets in key markets. The BTB is also dedicated to developing and implementing tourism programs that will help strengthen and grow the Belizean tourism industry; promote good destination stewardship; and instill high quality standards for accommodations and travel experiences. For more information on the BTB and its services, visit www.travelbelize.org.

About the World Wildlife Fund

WWF is one of the world's leading conservation organizations, working in 100 countries for over half a century. With the support of almost 5 million members worldwide, WWF is dedicated to delivering science-based solutions to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth, halt the degradation of the environment and combat climate change. Visit www.worldwildlife.org to learn more and follow our news conversations on Twitter @World_Wildlife.

SOURCE Belize Tourism Board

Related Links

http://www.travelbelize.org


AUSTIN, Texas, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Women are revolting against stereotypes and breaking free from the boundaries many factions place around them. No longer are women accepting the sour pill of unrealistic societal norms. To this end, they instead celebrate the feminine spirit and strength on International Women's Day taking place on March 8, 2018. With this revolution, comes the body positive movement and a new clothing brand created by Bella Pear LLC out of Austin, Texas. Bella Pear has conceived the BePear Brand, a novel perspective on fashion.

Bella Pear

"As an entrepreneur and founder of Bella Pear, and as a woman, I am passionate about disrupting the fashion industry that for so long has ignored the needs of women of different shapes and sizes," said Frances Pinedo, founder and CEO of Bella Pear.

The BePear Brand is focused on providing garments to the pear-shaped figure and curvy bodies in all sizes. Fashion is about art and beauty, but sometimes unreasonable expectations are piled on women. The average woman in the USA is 5'4", 160 pounds and wears size 14. However, typical industry designs are often based on a 5'10" and 110-pound straight body. Pinedo believes the fashion industry needs to acknowledge that women come in different shapes and sizes, all of which are beautiful. BePear brings a change to this methodology with its proprietary size chart and designs that have been specifically created for the curvier body.

The BePear approach first designs for the average-sized pear and curvy figures - simple elegant pieces which are versatile and timeless. Keeping true to the BePear philosophy, the sizes are adjusted up and down based on this body type. Initial designs centered on the straight figure which are then sized down on height and outwards on shape are not necessarily complimentary for a curvy body. The garment will pull and tug in the wrong areas and ill-fitting clothing will make a huge difference in a woman's appearance and level of comfort. Bella Pear believes women should feel comfortable with their bodies while embellishing their curves.

BePear arose after extensive research over the last three years on the beautiful pear-shaped figure and the needs of this market. The overriding "problem area" was the waist to hip ratio. The pear-shaped and hour-glass figures naturally have a smaller waist and are hip-endowed with the hips being up to two sizes larger than the waist under today's standard size charts. This presents a challenge when shopping as these customers may find that garments will either fit too loose at the waist or too tight at the hips. Shopping for clothing turns into a scavenger hunt regardless of a size 4 or size 24 for this figure. Consequently, the BePear brand was launched to cater to the needs of this group during the summer of 2017 through its e-commerce site www.bepear.com.

BePear has two product lines: an exclusive collection of designs specifically created for the pear-shape and curvy bodies, as well as the BePear Approved collection, which are garments and accessories that have been vetted by the BePear team as harmonizing with this body type. With the latter, the BePear team strives to standardize the sizing such that a re-calculated BePear size is provided to the customer for best-recommended fit. BePear ships in the USA only at this time, but incredible opportunities exist in other regions of the world, and the team is assessing next markets.

In celebration of International Women's Day, the BePear team is collaborating with Texas A&M's MS Marketing Program on a "My Body Shape is...Mine" campaign. This initiative is designed around women's empowerment and will take place at the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas, leading up to International Women's Day on March 8. Bella Pear firmly supports the body positive movement and women's embrace of their uniquely beautiful bodies, pushing the norms towards a more accepting and progressive world.

About Bella Pear

Frances Pinedo is the CEO and founder of Bella Pear LLC based out of Austin, Texas. She has been a cutting-edge entrepreneur for over 20 years across many industries, some of which include financial services, restaurant, consulting and fashion. Ms. Pinedo is a problem-solver having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Operations Research and Stanford University Graduate School of Business in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

#MYBODYSHAPEIS #INTERNATIONALWOMENSDAY #PRESSFORPROGRESS #BEPEARFASHION #BEPEAR

Media Contact:

Rene Gonzalez

512-809-0863

[email protected]

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Celebrating International Women's Day

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Related Links

BePear

SOURCE Bella Pear

Related Links

http://www.bepear.com


American police officers enforce law and order, tirelessly advocating for safety and peace while serving and protecting their communities. Their job is not an easy one  on good days it is a joy, on rough ones it is thankless. At its worst it can be incredibly dangerous, requiring lives on the line at a moment's notice.

Many men and women in blue are injured in the line of duty, and these courageous individuals should be recognized for their sacrifice, especially if said injuries hinder their career or bring them to an untimely halt. According to the latest data from the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, there were "51,548 assaults against law enforcement officers in 2015, resulting in 14,453 injuries."

Through Bio-One's campaign, select officers will get a fresh start in a new industry that requires similar grit, wisdom, and compassion. Bio-One associates, not unlike those in law enforcement, have the opportunity to help people in their greatest time of need and make a difference where it counts.

The benefits are clear: Entrepreneur Magazine named Bio-One as one of the 100 Best Franchises in the nation for 2017. A rewarding career in a recession-proof industry, Bio-One franchises thrive with the guidance and ongoing support from their corporate team.

Eligible candidates should either be former police officers or current officers who, as a result of injury, are no longer able to perform their duties as police officers in a traditional sense. Individuals may be submitted for consideration on BioOneBacksTheBlue.com, and will be chosen based on the substance and sentiment of their stories.

The first winner will be chosen and announced during Police Week, May 13th-19th 2018. The next will be announced during or around September of 2018.

For more information, please visit www.BioOneBacksTheBlue.com.

SOURCE Bio-One

Related Links

http://www.biooneinc.com


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Browse 156 Tables and 43 Figures spread through 164 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Blow Molding Resins Market"

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/blow-molding-resin-market-8448983.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

The growth of the Blow Molding Resins Market can be attributed to the increasing consumption of blow molding resins in the packaging, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical industries. Blow molded products possess excellent stiffness and Environmental Stress Cracking Resistance (ESCR), high load melt strength, and excellent rigidity. Such properties enable the use of these resins for blow molding applications.

Among types, the polyethylene segment of the Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2017 to 2022

Based on type, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, and others. Among types, the polyethylene segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2017 to 2022. The increased use of blow molding resins in various applications can be attributed to their high stiffness and Environmental Stress Cracking Resistance (ESCR), high load melt strength, and excellent rigidity.

Get PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=8448983

The packaging application segment of the Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2017 and 2022

Based on the application, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into packaging, automotive & transportation, construction & infrastructure, and others. The packaging segment is projected to be fastest-growing application segment during the forecast period. The growth of the segment is attributed to the increasing use of blow molded products to package pharmaceutical, food & beverages, cosmetics, and industrial products, such as chemicals, acids, and lubricants.

Automotive & transportation is projected to be the second largest market for blow molding resins during the forecast period. High demand for blow molding resins to produce automobile parts, such as panes and railings, bumper supports, fenders, mudguards, door locking systems, consoles, garnish pillars, cockpit systems, and fuel tanks is expected to fuel the growth of the segment.

The Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on region, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, South America, and Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth of the Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market can be attributed to the presence of the leading blow molding resins producers in the region. Moreover, the growing demand for blow molding resins in packaging applications, such as pharmaceutical and food & beverage products in countries, such as China, Japan, and India also contribute to the growth of the Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market.

Exxon Mobil (US), LyondellBasell (Netherlands), DowDuPont (US), SABIC (Saudi Arabia), INEOS (Switzerland), Solvay (Belgium), Formosa Plastics (Taiwan), Chevron (US), Eastman (US), China Petroleum (China), and Reliance Industries (India), among others are the key players operating in the Blow Molding Resins Market.

Know more about Blow Molding Resins Market:

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/blow-molding-resin-market-8448983.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
Innovative start-up applies AI to protect sensitive information

TORONTO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Awz HLS Fund I, a pioneering Canadian venture capital fund, announced today a US $3 million investment in MinerEye, an Israeli start-up company in the field of data privacy and protection. MinerEye offers Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered information governance to automate the identification and tracking of non-compliant data in enterprise scale repositories and storage platforms. This investment completes MinerEye's first financing round at a total of US $3.6 million.

MinerEye's patent-pending technology fuses computer vision and machine learning to identify sensitive data patterns based on learning sets of exemplar files. MinerEye's Data Tracker product scans and clusters large on-premises data repositories as well as cloud repositories, and then tracks the data's behaviour to alert and trigger policy enforcement tools and report on non-compliant data. The product is commercially available having already been installed in several large financial institutions in the US and Europe.

Yaron Ashkenazi, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Awz HLS Fund I commented: "Organizations are now starting to deal with a growing number of challenges regarding data protection. MinerEye's technology provides a unique data management and protection solution to allow organizations to cope with the growing risks to organizational information and new regulatory requirements. Our investment in MinerEye is consistent with our early investments and focuses on companies that provide a significant, innovative and creative solution against threats in the business and public sectors through breakthrough technologies from the cyber, intelligence and physical security sectors".

This investment follows six other investments made by Awz HLS Fund I in Israeli hi-tech companies in the last 18 months. Recently, Awz HLS Fund I announced a US $4.5 million investment in NanoLock Security, an Israeli company specializing in cyber-shielded technology components for the IoT market. In 2017, AWZ HLS Fund I announced a US $3.5 million investment in SIGA Data Security, an Israeli company that develops cyber security technologies for critical control and operation systems in the operational technology (OT) space, as well as a US $5.25 million investment in Octopus Systems Ltd, an Israeli company that developed a cloud-based information platform that protects organizations from cyber and physical attacks.

Yaniv Avidan, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of MinerEye added: "Organizations are inundated with "Dark Data" - data that is typically unstructured, unidentified and unclassified. This dark data is continuously created, modified and stored during regular business activity, but later fails to be governed or reused according to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. MinerEye's Data Tracker technology ensures increased data control and compliance for companies facing the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Our mission is to put data in order, and make it more protected, compliant and reusable."

About Awz HLS Investment Fund I LP:

Awz HLS Fund I is a groundbreaking Canadian cyber security and intelligence venture capital fund, founded by attorney Yaron Ashkenazi, a former Israel Security Agency (ISA) officer living in Toronto, Canada. The fund's executive team and advisory committee include a former public safety minister from Canada, former senior executives from Canadian and Israeli security and intelligence agencies, and global business and financial experts. The team includes Hon. Stockwell Day, former Canadian Public Safety Minister; Richard Fadden, former Canadian National Security Advisor to the PM and Director of CSIS; Lt. Gen. (Ret) Michael Day, former CAF Special Operations Forces Commander; Erez Kreiner, former Director of the National Information (Cyber) Security Authority under the ISA; Haim Tomer, former Head of the Mossad Intelligence Division; and Gary Barnea, the former Director of the ISA Protection and Security Division. Awz HLS Fund I will invest over US $30 million in Israeli companies that have developed cutting-edge cyber security, intelligence and physical security technologies. Awz HLS Fund I will also invest in establishing subsidiaries in North America in cooperation with several of its investee companies.

SOURCE AWZ HLS Investment Fund

Related Links

http://www.national.ca


DOVER, N.J., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- This month, Casio America, Inc., a leader in electronic musical instruments, is featuring renown jazz artist and Indiana University professor in Arts Administration, Monika Herzig in its Artist Program. Casio's Artist Program supports both aspiring and established musicians by providing them with the most innovative tools and technology to compose and perform their music, whether they are in the recording studio, performing on stage or traveling on tour.

Herzig discovered her love of playing the piano at the age of ten and since that time, has traveled the globe, bringing her jazz piano talents to music lovers everywhere. She has released more than a dozen CDs that have earned her several awards including a Down Beat Magazine Award for 'Best Original Song' in 1994. Her newest project, 'SHEroes' features the world's leading female jazz instrumentalists, including Leni Stern, Jamie Baum, Ingrid Jensen, Jennifer Vincent, Ada Rovatti, Mayra Casales, Reut Regev, and more and is slated for release March 23, 2018 via Whaling City Sounds. In addition to supporting her new album 'SHEroes', Herzig will organize and present Jazz Girls Days  a concept initiated by SFJazz five years ago  for the first time in Indiana. The events will take place in Indianapolis and South Bend featuring some of the world's leading female jazz performers such as Jamie Baum and Leni Stern in addition to regional leaders. Female jazz students ages 12-18 are invited for a free day of clinics, discussions, and mentorship. The events will be combined with a series of concerts between March 8-12, more info and signup links at www.monikaherzig.com.

"I've had the chance to play all different types of keyboards from every brand, but once I was able to get the Casio Privia under my fingers, it was literally the solution to all of my problems," said Herzig. "Having built-in sound allows me to gig without the need for an amp in acoustic settings, the keyboard is light-weight and the quality is amazing. The Privia line of keyboards is one that I'll continue to use moving forward."

Herzig currently owns and uses Casio's Privia PX-560; it will also be utilized on her upcoming release tour, which takes place from April 9-16. The PX-560 features Casio's renowned Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer Action II keyboard, which accurately reproduces the touch and response of a concert grand piano. The PX-560 is not just a highly capable stage piano, but a full-fledged synthesizer. The PX-560 features Casio's Hex Layer technology, borrowed from the flagship Privia Pro PX-5S. This means musicians can create massive splits and layers, with four zones and a total of 14 layers at once. Additionally, this keyboard features a 256-note polyphony, 600 preset tones, 400 user tones and 20 programmable insert effects, among many other features.

"Monika Herzig embodies everything we look for in a musician partner," said Stephen Schmidt, vice president of Casio's Electronic Musical Instrument division. "Her dedication to not only performing as a decorated jazz pianist, but to the students she teaches and impacts at Indiana University, easily makes her an artist we are proud to have on our roster and will continue to work with. By using Casio keyboards, we hope she continues to create music for people far and wide."

Herzig is part of the current roster of Casio artists including Anthony Patterson, Roshon, ThunderSOUL Orchestra, Rachael Sage, Aaron Todd, Tom Brislin, Eldar Djangirov, and more. For additional information about Casio's Artist Program or portfolio of electronic musical instruments, please visit www.CasioMusicGear.com.

About Casio America, Inc.

Casio America, Inc., Dover, N.J., is the U.S. subsidiary of Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and business equipment solutions. Established in 1957, Casio America, Inc. markets calculators, keyboards, mobile presentation devices, disc title and label printers, watches, cash registers and other consumer electronic products. Casio has strived to realize its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. For more information, visit casio.com/home

SOURCE Casio America, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.casiousa.com


HOUSTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- With the blockchain decentralized ledger promising faster, cheaper and efficient infrastructures for real-world applications, billions of dollars are flowing into pilot projects and start-ups from entrepreneurs around the world. Currently, Bitcoin and the Altcoin markets are worth $400 Billion and growing. Blockchain's technology, security, and immutability have also given rise to a revolutionary new way to form contracts called Smart Contracts. William Cooper, CEO of Christianet, has concluded that "Smart Contract technology will be impossible for companies to ignore as it represents a major paradigm shift to a programmable economy."

A Smart Contract is a computer program that directly controls the transfer of digital currencies or assets between parties under certain conditions. A Smart Contract not only defines the rules and penalties around an agreement in the same way a traditional contract does but it also automatically validates the contract conditions and enforces those obligations through code alleviating the need for litigation. Smart contracts work synergistically with blockchain technology, and Mr. Cooper has concluded that "Smart Contracts have the staggering potential to automate, disrupt, and replace processes across many industries." With its potential to disintermediate financial institutions, remittance companies, and many other transactional middleman businesses, companies across all business verticals will be left with no other choice than to implement Smart Contracts as part of their future business and marketing plans.

The number of applications that utilize Blockchain and Smart Contract technology has grown exponentially. Blockchain capabilities have proven useful in fields such as real estate, supply chain logistics, government contracts, insurance policies, the pharmaceutical industry, music industry, medical records, investment funds, mining, banking, and advertising. According to Accenture research published in early 2017, investment banks alone could save up to $12 billion a year by adopting blockchain and Smart Contract technologies. Gartner has estimated that by 2022, Smart Contracts will be used by more than 25 percent of global organizations.

The evolution of Smart contracts will radically change the economy as we know it. Major players like Microsoft and IBM are currently offering Blockchain solutions to their enterprise clients. Tech startups are aggressively capitalizing on the tech explosion by building new services and products that utilize the Blockchain. And this is only the beginning. With a new technological revolution on the horizon, a new form of marketing and storytelling is needed. ChristiaNet's CEO, William T. Cooper believes that "companies embracing the Blockchain and Smart Contract technology are poised to gain a significant competitive advantage over their competition." Mr. Cooper has further determined that the "early adopters will revolutionize how business is conducted today by dominating their market space and permanently displacing their competition."

ChristiaNet is a pioneer in Digital and Social Media Marketing. Since 1997, we have worked in every conceivable industry from the solo entrepreneurs to multi-national corporations to produce millions in revenues. Our CEO, William T. Cooper, holds a Master's in Economics and a Computer Science Degree enabling him to thrive in high-tech, high-performance environments.

For more information, contact us: https://www.christianet.com

Shanon Cooper, CMO, ChristiaNet, Inc, 832-561-7098

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Blockchain Technologies

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Blockchain Mining

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LinkedIn Profile

SOURCE ChristiaNet, Inc.

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https://www.christianet.com


SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cloud Foundry Foundation, home of the most widely-adopted open source cloud technologies in the world, today announced additional keynote speakers, a diversity documentary and an end user panel discussion, for the North American Cloud Foundry Summit, April 18-20, 2018 at the Boston Convention Center. The Summit is supported by Platinum sponsors Dynatrace, IBM, Pivotal and VMware.

Newly announced keynotes include:

Molly Crowther , Vulnerability Management Lead, Cloud Foundry Project

, Vulnerability Management Lead, Cloud Foundry Project Chen Goldberg , Engineering Director, Google Cloud

, Engineering Director, Google Cloud Chuck Knostman , VP, Digital Technology & Strategy, T-Mobile

, VP, Digital Technology & Strategy, T-Mobile Demo with Stephen Levine , Project Lead for Buildpacks & CF Local, Cloud Foundry

, Project Lead for Buildpacks & CF Local, Cloud Foundry Demo with Zach Robinson , CAPI Project Lead, Cloud Foundry

, CAPI Project Lead, Cloud Foundry Demo with Troy Topnik , Product Manager, Cloud Application Platform, SUSE

The Foundation has also released details of a Cloud Foundry end user panel discussion with Andrea Hirzle-Yager from Allianz, Enes Yildirim from Boeing and Mike Crisafulli from Comcast, moderated by TechCrunch's Ron Miller.

Cloud Foundry Foundation has hosted a diversity event at every Summit and 2018 will be no exception. Sponsored by Google, the Diversity Luncheon will focus on the gender pay gap with a screening of Eighty Twenty: The Gender Pay Gap Exposed, the first episode of docuseries The Chasing Grace Project, written and directed by Jennifer Cloer, co-founder of Wicked Flicks Productions. Following the episode will be a Q+A with Cloud Foundry Foundation Executive Director Abby Kearns and Jennifer Cloer.

"These latest additions will be must-see talks on the program," said Abby Kearns, Executive Director, Cloud Foundry Foundation. "I'm thrilled to have such a knowledgeable and passionate selection of end users, developers and managers on stage to discuss Cloud Foundry at our first East Coast summit."

In addition to day-long themes, Cloud Foundry Summit offers topic-based tracks, including a full-day track on government use cases of Cloud Foundry as well as a brand new track on Containers and Serverless, which includes sessions on Cloud Foundry Container Runtime, Serverless frameworks, Function-as-a-Service and more. A full list of tracks is as follows:

Cloud Native Java (sponsored by IBM)

Cloud Native.NET (sponsored by Pivotal)

Containers & Serverless (sponsored by VMware)

Cloud Foundry in the Enterprise

Core Projects Updates

Experiments & Extensions

Government

Operating Cloud Foundry

Wild Card

Other highlights include:

A panel on ecosystem, moderated by TechCrunch's Frederic Lardinois .

. User Day, a full-day Unconference exclusively for Cloud Foundry users to talk shop and trade best practices.

A free Hackathon for developers. Prizes awarded to top three teams and first place winners announced on stage during Friday morning keynotes.

Hands-on training workshops for all levels (add-on during registration).

Cloud Foundry Foundation's Kearns and CTO Chip Childers will host discussions that map to the day-long themes "Ecosystem" and "Interoperability." The interactive discussion-based style stimulates critical thinking, draws out innovative ideas, focuses more on technical specifics and highlights user stories.

The 2018 Summit comes on the heels of the record-setting 2017 Silicon Valley Summit and capacity crowd at the European Summit in Basel. With support from Platinum sponsors Google, IBM, Pivotal and SAP, the 2017 Summit in North America set new attendance records. Cloud Foundry has seen vast growth worldwide with 3,000+ contributors since inception; more than 61,000 commits in the last 12 months alone; 69,500 people participating in global community events; and 65 total Foundation members. As stated in market research from Gartner, Cloud Foundry's total market value is approximately $3.1 billion, rising to $5.25 billion in a few years.

Find the full schedule here: https://cloudfoundry.org/event_subpages/na2018-schedule/ and register online: https://www.regonline.com/registration/checkin.aspx?EventId=2090045&MethodId=0&EventSessionId=&startnewreg=1.

Cloud Foundry is an open source technology backed by the largest technology companies in the world, including Dell EMC, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, Pivotal, SAP and SUSE, and is being used by leaders in manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services. Only Cloud Foundry delivers the velocity needed to continuously deliver apps at the speed of business. Cloud Foundry's container-based architecture runs apps in any language on your choice of cloud  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, VMware vSphere, and more. With a robust services ecosystem and simple integration with existing technologies, Cloud Foundry is the modern standard for mission critical apps for global organizations.

About Cloud Foundry Foundation

The Cloud Foundry Foundation is an independent non-profit open source organization formed to sustain the development, promotion and adoption of Cloud Foundry as the industry standard for delivering the best developer experiences to companies of all sizes. The Foundation projects include Cloud Foundry Application Runtime, Cloud Foundry Container Runtime, BOSH, Open Service Broker API, Abacus, CF-Local, CredHub, ServiceFabrik, Stratos and more. Cloud Foundry makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale applications, and is used by more than half the Fortune 500, representing nearly $15 trillion in combined revenue. Cloud Foundry is hosted by The Linux Foundation and is an Apache 2.0 licensed project available on Github: https://github.com/cloudfoundry. To learn more, visit: http://www.cloudfoundry.org.

Contact:

Lonn Johnston

For Cloud Foundry Foundation

[email protected]

+1 650.219.7764

SOURCE Cloud Foundry Foundation

Related Links

http://www.cloudfoundry.org


LOURES, Portugal, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Hovione announced today that in the last year their manufacturing facilities were the object of eight inspections, performed by different Health Authorities. The inspections revealed that all Hovione sites were in compliance, this reflects a solid Quality System and a vibrant Quality Culture.

This is the first press release that reports on the outcomes of inspections in the previous year. This will now be a regular commitment, it is another feature of our commitment to transparency.

Hovione inspections during 2017

Site Authority Date Type of inspection Outcome Portugal Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation Jan 2017 PAI for an Intermediate Drug Product GMP certificate granted Jul 2017 PAI for an Intermediate Drug Product GMP certificate granted FDA, USA Mar 2017 PAI for an Intermediate Drug Product Form 483  6 observations  site approved Nov 2017 Surveillance inspection No Form 483 INFARMED, Portugal, EU Jul 2017 GMP inspection to a new building GMP certificate granted Macau PMDA, Japan Dec 2017 GMP inspection 11 minor observations reported Ireland Ministry of Healthcare of the Russian Federation Jul 2017 PAI for an Intermediate Drug Product GMP certificate granted FDA, USA Dec 2017 Surveillance inspection No Form 483

"Each inspection at Hovione is considered to be of highest importance for the organization and for our customers. We are considering every audit and every inspection as a learning opportunity to continuously improve our Quality Systems and Operative Mechanisms. The number of inspections and their outcome demonstrate our commitment and capacity in the development of new drugs, and ability to manufacture highest quality products for our customers as well as for millions of patients that we proudly serve together. We are especially happy to share that all of the GMP surveillance inspections were concluded successfully with no form 483 observation," said Joerg Gampfer, Vice President of Quality at Hovione.

"We have a culture of quality that puts patient safety first. These inspections are important steps for Hovione and our customers. They shape our behaviors and motivate us to always improve our services to customers. Hovione has all the ingredients for an outstanding partnership going from clinical programs all the way to commercial supply," added Frederic Kahn, Vice President Marketing and Sales.

About Hovione

Hovione has over 57 years of experience as a CDMO and is currently a fully integrated supplier offering from drug substance to drug product intermediate to drug product. With four FDA inspected sites in the US, China, Ireland, and Portugal, and development laboratories in Lisbon and New Jersey, the company provides branded pharmaceutical customers services for the development and compliant manufacture of innovative drugs and is able to support highly potent compounds. For generic pharmaceutical customers the company offers niche off-patent API products.

In the inhalation area Hovione is the only independent company offering a complete range of services.

Please visit www.hovione.com

Contact

Isabel Pina, Director of Corporate Communications

Tel.: 0035121 982 9362 - [email protected]

SOURCE Hovione

Related Links

http://www.hovione.com


CHICAGO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CAG) will host a webcast and conference call to review its fiscal 2018 third quarter results on Thursday, March 22, 2018, at 9:30 a.m. ET. The company's news release will be issued at approximately 7:30 a.m. ET.

The live audio webcast and presentation slides will be available on conagrabrands.com/investor-relations under Events & Presentations. The conference call may be accessed by dialing 1-877-883-0383 for participants in the continental U.S. and 1-412-902-6506 for all other participants and using passcode 3125366. Please dial in 10 to 15 minutes prior to the call start time. Following the company's remarks, the conference call will include a question-and-answer session with the investment community.

A replay of the webcast will be available until March 22, 2019.

About Conagra Brands

Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CAG), headquartered in Chicago, is one of North America's leading branded food companies. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit, Conagra Brands combines a rich heritage of making great food with a sharpened focus on innovation. The company's portfolio is evolving to satisfy people's changing food preferences. Conagra's iconic brands, such as Marie Callender's, Reddi-wip, Hunt's, Healthy Choice, Slim Jim and Orville Redenbacher's, as well as emerging brands, including Alexia, Blake's, Frontera, Duke's and Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP, offer choices for every occasion. For more information, visit www.conagrabrands.com.

For more information, please contact:

MEDIA: Mike Cummins

312-549-5257

[email protected]

INVESTORS: Brian Kearney

312-549-5002

[email protected]

SOURCE Conagra Brands, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.conagrabrands.com


NOVI, Mich., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CPS) will present at the 30th Annual ROTH Conference on Monday, March 12 in Dana Point, Calif.

Cooper Standard's Jeffrey Edwards, chairman and CEO, will discuss the Company's business and strategies from 9:30 to 10 a.m. PT. A link to the live webcast will be available here  www.wsw.com/webcast/roth32/  and a replay of the webcast will be available on the Company's website following the event (www.ir.cooperstandard.com).

About Cooper Standard

Cooper Standard, headquartered in Novi, Mich., is a leading global supplier of systems and components for the automotive industry. Products include rubber and plastic sealing, fuel and brake lines, fluid transfer hoses and anti-vibration systems. Cooper Standard employs approximately 32,000 people globally and operates in 20 countries around the world. For more information, please visit www.cooperstandard.com.

CPS_F

Contact for Analysts: Contact for Media: Roger Hendriksen Sharon Wenzl Cooper Standard Cooper Standard (248) 596-6465 (248) 596-6211 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cooperstandard.com


LONDON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The Corporate Counsel & Compliance Exchange in April is launching with a 50/50 speaking faculty. Amongst the 2 days of the Exchange is a panel discussion led by all-female women in the legal industry titled "Legal Department 2.0".

12 female speakers and 12 male speakers are leading discussions on how to transform into the legal department of the future

All female panel discussion on "Legal Department 2.0" led by Citi Group, Fleetcor and British business bank

Legal Technology, Cultural Transformation, Living with GDPR, Proactive Risk Management and Driving Innovation are the key themes for the UK Exchange event

New Generation of Innovative General Counsels

The age of innovation has produced a new generation of innovative GCs. From developing the millennial GCs of the future by fostering development to implementing the latest technologies, they drive efficiency and cultural transformation.

In this session, we will explore the different steps senior in-house counsel can take to drive this transformation within their own legal department and the impact this can have on the wider business.

Panelists at the Corporate Counsel Exchange

Sharon Blackman, Director and Deputy General Counsel at Citi Group. Named as one of 25 high achieving and influential British lawyers of Afro-Caribbean descent in 2016's Powerlist by the Powerful Media and shortlisted as a Champion for Women in the Women in Banking Finance 2017 Awards, Sharon will be joining the interactive panel.

Natalie Salunke, Head of Legal Europe at Fleetcor. Prior to joining Fleetcor as its new Head of Legal, Natalie worked at Enterprise Rent-a-Car where she was European counsel since 2015, acting as the company's lead legal adviser for all commercial and corporate legal matters in Europe. She also worked in-house with NetSuite, Venda, and Travelex and in private practice at Taylor Wessing in 2009.

Shanika Amarasekara, General Counsel and Company Secretary at British Business Bank. Shanika is responsible for ensuring that the legal interests of the bank and its stakeholders are protected and making sure that the governance aspects of the institution function smoothly. Before joining the British Business Bank in June 2014, she worked at International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation, RBS, and Allen & Overy.

About the Corporate Counsel and Compliance Exchange

The Corporate Counsel and Compliance Exchange will bring together 80 of the leading General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officers to discover new ideas and make new connections across a productive two-day event. Immerse yourself in interactive group discussions, lively panel debates and one to one meetings focused on finding solutions and strategies to the highest priority changes to include:

Cultural Transformation of the Legal Sector

Living with GDPR

Proactive Risk Management

Becoming a Driving Force for Innovation in the Company

Driving Efficiency of the Legal Department with the Latest Legal Technology

Corporate Counsel Exchange delegates are hand-picked for the unique advantage they bring to each Exchange. A fantastic speaker line up is already confirmed at the Exchange, including UBER, HSBC, Royal Mail, Ericsson, Citi, Dyson, GSK, BT, Network Rail, Telefonica and many more.

"Great format, perfect size, high quality of participants - excellent opportunity to compare experiences with our counterparts in other companies and industries," - General Cousel, Chartis Europe SA

The Corporate Counsel and Compliance event will be taking place at the Marriott Heathrow Hotel London on 23rd - 24th April 2018 where attending delegates can gain insight into innovative and forward-thinking legal solutions for 2018.

To access the full agenda of speakers at the Corporate Counsel and Compliance Exchange please visit http://bit.ly/2FAHESV or contact:

Rachel Zieminski at IQPC Exchange E:[email protected] T:+44 (0) 207 3689369

SOURCE Corporate Counsel & Compliance Exchange
SILVER SPRINGS, Md., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa Research Association of America (Debra of America) and the Pachyonychia Congenita Project (PC Project) are pleased to announce a joint Externally-Led Patient-Focused Drug Development (EL-PFDD) meeting with the FDA on our respective rare diseases, pachyonychia congenita (PC) and epidermolysis bullosa (EB).

This historic meeting will be held on Friday, April 6, 2018, at the College Park Marriott Hotel in Hyattsville, MD, near the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) headquarters. The purpose of this meeting is for individuals affected by PC and EB, as well as their caregivers, to provide unique perspectives to the FDA on living with their condition and what defines a meaningful treatment. The EL-PFDD meeting is divided into two sessions. The morning session will focus on input from PC patients and caregivers. The afternoon session will focus on EB patients and caregivers. Anna Bruckner, M.D., Children's Hospital Colorado, will provide a clinical overview of each condition.

The EL-PFDD meeting is designed to communicate to FDA the impacts of PC and EB on individuals' daily lives, what types of treatment benefits make the most impact on peoples' lives, and perspectives on how well available therapies are working.

The EL-PFDD meeting will be an in-person meeting with a live webcast for remote viewing, including the ability to respond to polling questions in real time. PC Project and Debra of America will identify and invite a small number of affected individuals and caregivers to participate in panel discussions during the meeting. A former FDA official will facilitate panel discussions, polling questions, and comments from the audience. The meeting is open to the public, and anyone is welcome to register to attend either in person or via the webcast.

The data and information from this meeting will be incorporated within the FDA's risk-benefit analysis of potential new products or therapies intended to treat the symptoms and relieve the burdens of PC and EB. Additionally, the data and information may be relevant not solely to FDA, but for academic researchers, and the regulated drug industry designing clinical trials.

Pachyonychia Congenita (PC) is an ultra-rare genetic autosomal dominant skin disorder. PC is caused by a mutation in one of five keratin genes: KRT6A, KRT6B, KRT6C, KRT16, or KRT17. PC is a chronically debilitating disease due to impaired ambulation associated with plantar keratoderma, blistering, and pain that make walking difficult or impossible. Other standard features of PC may include palmar keratoderma, nail dystrophy, and cysts, all which can be extremely painful.

Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) is a rare connective tissue disorder. There are many genetic and symptomatic variations of EB, but all share the prominent symptom of extremely fragile skin that blisters and tears from minor friction or trauma. Internal organs and bodily systems can also be severely affected by the disease. The list of manifestations and secondary illnesses can be long requiring multiple interventions from a range of medical specialists. EB is always painful, often pervasive and debilitating, and in the more severe cases lethal before the age of 30.

Patient engagement has become a priority for the FDA. Historically, the patient voice has been absent from the drug development process unless a clinical trial was failing or a drug was being considered for approval by the FDA. Today, the FDA wants to hear the patient voice throughout the process to ensure the most efficient and potentially the most efficacious drug development process.

If you are interested in attending this meeting either in person or via the live webcast, please contact PC Project at [email protected] or Debra of America at [email protected]

Media Contact:

Brett Kopelan

Phone: 917-566-6547

Email: [email protected]

Related Images

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image2.jpg

SOURCE Debra of America
NORTH CANTON, Ohio, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Diebold Nixdorf (NYSE: DBD), the world leader in driving connected commerce, will showcase its latest technologies and services that infuse agility across the end-to-end commerce ecosystem. At this year's Money20/20 Asia conference in Singapore, March 13-15, Diebold Nixdorf will demonstrate how it's utilizing the best of data analytics and machine learningcoupled with its global scale and expertiseto transform business operations and provide personalized, seamless consumer experiences.

The company's latest solutions address the most critical opportunities to deliver a connected commerce future by:

Enhancing consumer engagement and loyalty: Being agile in digital innovation is a critical competitive differentiator for financial and retail players. Diebold Nixdorf will showcase its latest mobile solution, Vynamic Digital, which enables businesses to better engage with consumers and pull banking, shopping and payments closer together. In addition, Diebold Nixdorf's latest data analytics platform, Vynamic Analytics, delivers a holistic view of the consumer journey across multiple channels to create personalized experiences by understanding behaviors. Through data and mobile apps, all connection points become smarter to deliver real-time personalization and drive consumer engagement and loyalty.

Maximizing breadth of touchpoints: Built to empower consumers to bank and shop how they want, when they want, Vynamic Transaction Engine integrates solutions spanning mobile devices, branches, automated teller machines (ATMs), kiosks, point-of-sale terminals and stores. When coupled with Vynamic Analytics, new insights can be generated to enhance operations across any channel  putting consumer preferences, not the technology, at the heart of the experience.

Transforming business outcomes: Through virtual reality and an interactive touchscreen, Diebold Nixdorf will demonstrate how its 'as-a-service' offerings can enable retailers and financial institutions to rethink their underlying business models and transform their operations for better outcomes. Integrated business solutions, day-to-day operations, payment processes, cash handling, pricing and inventory management across all channelsphysical and digitalare transparent and in view. This enables financial institutions and retailers to manage operations and consumer experiences consistently, efficiently and securely.

"We're in a period of prolonged disruption which requires banks and retailers to differentiate from emerging competitors in new ways. The data is showing that this isn't a simple story of pushing further online, as the best players are extending their transformation across all channels," said Devon Watson, chief marketing officer, Diebold Nixdorf. "Our solutions aim to accelerate physical channelswhether it be point-of-sale, ATM, branch or store  and integrate them much more tightly to the digital experience. By partnering with us to transform operations, our clients can unlock agility and efficiency in physical channels that enables them to differentiate the entire consumer journey." For more information, visit Diebold Nixdorf's Money20/20 Asia booth, #D22 or visit our website.

Connect with Diebold Nixdorf:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/diebold

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dieboldnixdorf

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DieboldNixdorf

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DieboldNixdorf

About Diebold Nixdorf

Diebold Nixdorf is a world leader in enabling connected commerce for millions of consumers each day across the financial and retail industries. Its software-defined solutions bridge the physical and digital worlds of cash and consumer transactions conveniently, securely and efficiently. As an innovation partner for nearly all of the world's top 100 financial institutions and a majority of the top 25 global retailers, Diebold Nixdorf delivers unparalleled services and technology that are essential to evolve in an 'always on' and changing consumer landscape.

Diebold Nixdorf has a presence in more than 130 countries with approximately 23,000 employees worldwide. The organization maintains corporate offices in North Canton, Ohio, USA and Paderborn, Germany. Shares are traded on the New York and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges under the symbol 'DBD'. Visit www.DieboldNixdorf.com for more information.

SOURCE Diebold Nixdorf

Related Links

http://www.dieboldnixdorf.com


SAN DIEGO, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Peter Farrell, the founder and Chair of ResMed, the San Diego based global manufacturer of CPAP masks, machines and other products that diagnose, treat or help manage sleep-disordered breathing, has endorsed Dr. James Veltmeyer for Congress in the 52nd District.

Dr. James Veltmeyer for Congress

ResMed employs over 6,000 people and Dr. Farrell also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Farrell Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization that contributes to the support of "education, health, human welfare and the arts." Some of the Foundation's beneficiaries include the San Diego Foundation, UC San Diego Cardiovascular Center, San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Harvard University Division of Sleep Medicine.

"I am supporting Dr. Veltmeyer for Congress since he is the one candidate whose life is an example of the virtues of integrity, faith, and perseverance, virtues that are sorely lacking on Capitol Hill. We need a member of Congress who will keep his word and honor his commitments. I am convinced Dr. Veltmeyer will be that kind of representative for the 52nd District," said Dr. Peter Farrell.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/drjamesveltmeyer

TWITTER: [email protected]

CONTACT:

Dr. James Veltmeyer Andrew Russo 619-647-6420 831-595-8914

SOURCE Dr. Peter Farrell
ORLANDO, Fla., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Nick Nanton partners with Serial Entrepreneur Russell Brunson, co-founder of ClickFunnels, to co-produce the upcoming short film, tentatively titled "O.U.R.: Operation Underground Railroad and the Fight to End Modern Day Slavery," where they'll reveal the story of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.). Former Homeland Security Special Agent/Undercover Operator and CIA analyst, Tim Ballard, founded O.U.R. based on multiple experiences of knowing where children were being trafficked across the globe, but not being able to help them in his federal role if there was no connection to the U.S. government. The film follows Ballard as he leads the anti-human trafficking organization on their mission to change the world through rescuing and rehabilitating children who have been trafficked.

Operation Underground Railroad

"There is so much tragedy in the world, and I see so much of it on a daily basis with the work we do at O.U.R. to help save children across the world who are being trafficked. But there is also so much hope and redemption in the stories that are not being told of those who are being rescued and are being given a second chance at life. We are thrilled to be working with Nick and Russell and the rest of the team on this documentary. It's an amazing opportunity to share with the world how much progress can be made when a group of people say 'enough is enough' and band together to make a difference," said Ballard.

Russell Brunson's generous support to create the film will help bring awareness and aid in the fight against human slavery. When Brunson first brought the idea of the film to Nanton he knew it was a story that was worth being told and something he had to be a part of. "What these guys are doing is nothing short of incredible. I'm so happy to be able to play a part in spreading their message. Most people have no idea how many women and children are being trafficked and in most cases, they think that it is not happening in their city. They are wrong. I had no idea of the breadth and depth of this problem until I got involved with O.U.R.," said Nanton.

The film will portray O.U.R's mission to help save children all across the globe and features a mission where they teamed up with officials in Haiti to arrest human traffickers, save children, and send a strong message to its country that the trafficking of children will not be tolerated. Featured in this movie are Tony Robbins, Glenn Beck, Congresswoman Mia Love, Senator Orrin Hatch, members of the casts of Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera, and many others.

Brunson stated, "Entrepreneurs have a responsibility to use their creativity and innovation to make the world a better place. As the CEO of ClickFunnels, I see every day the impact entrepreneurs have on the world through the products and services that they sell. Then you look at an organization like O.U.R. -a community of people who are going into the darkest places on Earth to rescue kids from situations that are worse than our scariest nightmares, and it hits you just how important it is to get as much visibility and support to them as possible. So many people don't realize the pervasiveness of human trafficking all over the world, yes, even in the United States. When I first realized how dire the situation is, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I am absolutely honored to be alongside Tim Ballard and his team providing whatever resources and talents we have to get his message on a national and global platform."

About Operation Underground Railroad:

Operation Underground Railroad is a registered 501(c)(3) organization that brings together former CIA, Navy SEALS, and Special Ops operatives. O.U.R. partners with local law enforcement agencies around the world to save children from this modern day slavery. Founded by CEO, Tim Ballard, in 2013, O.U.R. has rescued more than 1,000 victims and helped arrest over 445 traffickers worldwide.

About Nick Nanton:

From the indigenous hill tribes of Oaxaca, Mexico with villagers in a mud hut to the Virgin Galactic Space Port in Mojave with Sir Richard Branson, 5-Time Emmy Award Winning Director/Producer, Nick Nanton, has become known for telling stories that connect. Why? Because he focuses on the most fascinating subject in the world:

PEOPLE.

As co-founder of the largest personal branding agency in the world, DNA: The Dicks + Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency, representing more than 3000 clients in 36 countries around the world, Nick has helped his clients craft their message in order to build their platform and share their unique gifts with the world.

Nick has shared his message with millions of people through his speeches, blogs, lectures, films, media placements and contributions to more than four dozen best-selling books. Nick's Wall Street Journal Best-Seller, StorySelling, shares the secrets of how to sell without selling by simply connecting with the art of story. Nick has directed more than 50 documentaries (garnering 18 regional Emmy nominations and 5 wins), including:

Visioneer: The Peter Diamandis Story (Emmy: Director, Suncoast)

Mi Casa Hogar (Emmy: Director, Suncoast)

Esperanza (Emmy: Documentary, Topical, Suncoast)

Jacob's Turn (Emmy: Director, Ohio Valley)

Nick specializes in bringing the element of human connection to every viewer, no matter the subject. He is currently directing and producing the series, Masters of Success, featuring legends in the worlds of business, entrepreneurship, personal development, technology, and sports.

Learn more at www.nicknanton.com.

Contact:

Lindsey Driggers

Dicks + Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency

800-980-1626

[email protected]

SOURCE Nick Nanton

Related Links

http://www.nicknanton.com


CHANTILLY, Va., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Engility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: EGL), an engineering and government services company, today held its annual employee trade show. The industry-unique event showcases people, ideas, and new technologies from around the company.

More than five hundred Engility employees, including systems engineers and experts in aerospace, anti-terrorism and defense, gathered today in the Washington, DC area. They shared and discussed the latest technologies and differentiated capabilities in use across the company's numerous business units. The annual summit began in 2007.

"The knowledge and technical expertise displayed at this show create a real meeting of the minds. For example, our employees had the opportunity to meet with senior systems engineers supporting the Air Force Global Positioning System, as well as experts building in cybersecurity from the keel-up on the Navy's new Frigate-class ship," said Gay Porter, vice president of Technical Solutions. "Every year this event results in some 'lightbulb' moments as employees imagine unique solutions they could leverage for their clients' missionsfurthering customer confidence."

Engility employees experienced and tested different cutting-edge technologies, including Synthetic Analyst, the company's proprietary artificial intelligence solution. Last year, that solution was successfully adapted for Pentagon customers based on conversations at the employee trade show. We also saw great success in introducing training capability to customers who only knew of Engility's engineering work. This year, several data analytics tools (e.g., MetaSift and Cloud ASCEND) garnered a lot of attention from employees serving customers in complimentary areas like high performance computing, cybersecurity and mission operations.

About Engility

Engility (NYSE: EGL), a $2 billion technology leader, has 8,800 employees around the world working to make a difference. Our history of delivering results for the defense, federal civilian, intelligence and space industries goes back more than 60 years. We provide leading-edge solutions and services on Earth, in space and across cyber around systems engineering & integration, high performance computing, cybersecurity, readiness & training, enterprise modernization and mission operations support. To learn more about us, please visit www.engilitycorp.com and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media : Scott Fazekas Engility Holdings, Inc. (703) 984-5068 [email protected] Investor Relations : Dave Spille Engility Holdings, Inc. (703) 984-6120 [email protected]

SOURCE Engility Holdings, Inc.
WASHINGTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Equal Justice Works, the nation's leading nonprofit organization committed to mobilizing the next generation of public interest attorneys, today announced the launch of the Georgia Housing Corps (GHC), a new Fellowship program addressing barriers to housing stability in rural and urban communities in Georgia.

"We are thrilled that the Georgia Housing Corps will help ensure that underserved families have the safe, stable housing they need to live and thrive in their communities," said David Stern, Executive Director at Equal Justice Works. "Housing plays a critical role in the health and well-being of families and its importance cannot be overstated."

Sponsored by the Georgia Bar Foundation, these eleven Fellows and seven community advocates will provide a combination of services including client representation on housing and housing-related issues, community outreach and education to community members and property owners, and advocacy to remove systemic barriers to housing at the local and statewide levels.

"Affordable housing empowers families and is key to strengthening communities," said Len Horton, Executive Director at the Georgia Bar Foundation. "We are proud to support the Equal Justice Works Georgia Housing Corps initiative, which will provide greater access to legal counsel for low-income residents to obtain safe and secure homes."

Over the past three decades, Equal Justice Works has awarded more than 2,000 Fellowships to public interest lawyers committed to building a more just society. Roughly 85 percent of Fellows continue to serve the public interest beyond their Fellowships.

Below is the current list of GHC Fellows and community advocates:

Natasha Alladina

Alexandria Arnold

Shameka Dixon

Farley Ezekiel

John Gainey

Dominque Madison

Gentry Mander

Chad McCranie

Shannon LeVar Mills

Katrina Monroe-Pettway

Teresa Moore

Erik Provitt

Crystal Redd

Lee Robbins

Stephanie Styles

Jazz Watts

Click here to learn more about the program participants.

About Equal Justice Works

Equal Justice Works is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a just society by mobilizing the next generation of attorneys committed to equal justice. In collaboration with the nation's leading law schools, law firms, corporate legal departments, and nonprofit organizations, Equal Justice Works offers a continuum of opportunities that provide the training and skills that enable attorneys to provide effective representation to underserved communities and causes. Visit www.equaljusticeworks.org for more information.

About Georgia Bar Foundation

The Georgia Bar Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization named by the Supreme Court of Georgia in 1983 to receive IOLTA funds to support legal services for the poor; to improve the administration of justice; to promote professionalism in law practice in order best to serve the public; to aid children involved in the justice system; and to advance the legal system through historical study. The Foundation has a 19-member Board of Trustees, 16 of whom are appointed directly by the Supreme Court of Georgia and three of whom are members by virtue of being officers of the State Bar of Georgia. The Foundation has three staff members.

CONTACT: Heena Patel

Communications Manager

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 202-466-3686

www.equaljusticeworks.org

SOURCE Equal Justice Works

Related Links

http://www.equaljusticeworks.org


ADDISON, Texas, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ultimate Ventures, a DMC Network company, is celebrating an incredibly exciting first quarter with the recent win of two of the industry's top corporate event planning awards.

Ultimate Ventures' Creative Design Manager, Casee Safford, accepting the Gala Award for Best Corporate Event. Koi fish imagery on ghost chair

On February 2nd at the Gala Awards ceremony held in New Orleans, Dallas-Fort Worth based corporate events and destination management company, Ultimate Ventures, received a 2018 Gala Award for "Best Event Produced for a Corporation or Association (Under $100,000)". Special Events Magazine's Gala Awards showcases the best of the best in the special events industry internationally; from design and decor to logistics and technology.

On Sunday, March 4th, Ultimate Ventures took home the trophy for Best Decor Design ($25,000 - $75,000) at the Texas Star Awards ceremony held in San Antonio. The Texas Star Awards, produced by the Texas chapters of the International Live Events Association, is a globally recognized awards competition designed to honor the exceptional professional achievements of individuals and organizations from the Texas events industry.

The winning event of the Gala Award and the Texas Star Award was an awards program created for a luxury hotel chain themed Simplicity Meets Style: An Abstract Koi Pond Awards Night. Held at the W Hotel Dallas, this Koi Pond inspired event was truly unique. Like a koi fish swimming gracefully through water, guests were drawn into a surreal world of sparkling beauty complete with subtle Asian accents, custom decor pieces, and splashes of color provided by otherworldly lighting design.

"Every detail of this event, from the first look to guest's departure, was meticulously planned," said Beverly Brin, DMCP, General Manager of Ultimate Ventures. "With only three weeks to design and execute the event, I'm so proud of our team for not only rising to the occasion, but for exceeding our client's expectations so spectacularly."

About Ultimate Ventures, a DMC Network Company

As the most awarded corporate event and destination management company in Texas, Ultimate Ventures prides itself on providing exceptional experiences for clients holding meetings and conferences in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Recognized as a Top 25 DMC worldwide by Special Events Magazine, our seasoned team is uniquely qualified to assist clients with a full range of services including special events, team-building, group excursions, and transportation logistics.

To learn more about Ultimate Ventures, visit our website at www.uvdmc.com.

Contact: Val Lenington

Director of Marketing for Ultimate Ventures

T: 972-732-8433

E: [email protected]

W: www.uvdmc.com

SOURCE Ultimate Ventures

Related Links

http://www.uvdmc.com


DALLAS, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) today extended its bookable flight schedule through Nov. 3, 2018. This autumn, the carrier is adding more flights to link cities across the United States with nonstop service that will make it easier and quicker for Customers to reach people and places that are important in their lives.

New Nonstop Routes

Beginning Oct. 3, 2018, Southwest will add daily nonstop service between:

Houston (Hobby) and Columbus, Ohio

Houston (Hobby) and Louisville, Ky.

Denver and Memphis, Tenn.

Beginning Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018, the carrier will add weekly nonstop service on Sundays between:

Oklahoma City and Nashville, Tenn.

Denver and El Paso, Texas

Phoenix's Leading Low-Cost Carrier Grows with More Nonstop Flights

Southwest is investing in Phoenix by adding more flights and frequencies on its most popular routes.

Beginning Oct. 3, 2018, the carrier will fly one additional flight Mondays through Fridays between:

Phoenix and Austin, Texas (Increased from four to five roundtrips)

Phoenix and Denver (Increased from ten to 11 roundtrips)

Phoenix and New Orleans (Increased from one to two roundtrips)

Phoenix and San Antonio (Increased from three to four roundtrips)

Phoenix and San Jose, Calif. (Increased from six to seven roundtrips)"This additional service continues our Purpose of getting Customers to the places that matter most to them with our friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel," said Craig Drew, Southwest's Senior Vice President of Air Operations who serves as Southwest's Executive Ambassador for Phoenix. "Our Customers are looking for more options to fit their busy lifestyles, and we're answering their demands by adding more service on the most popular routes from Sky Harbor."

Seasonal Service Returns

Beginning Oct. 3, 2018, the carrier will add seasonal service nonstop between:

Albany, NY and Las Vegas (Flights operate Sundays through Fridays)

Beginning Saturday, Oct. 6, 2018, the carrier will add weekly service on Saturdays between:

Cleveland and Orlando, Fla.

Milwaukee and Fort Myers, Fla.

Beginning Sunday, Oct. 7, 2018, the carrier will add service between:

Oakland, Calif. and Tucson, Ariz. (Flights operate weekly on Sundays)

New Service Begins Today

The carrier also expanded its international presence in south Florida today with previously announced new daily service between Ft. Lauderdale and Aruba. This is the 10th international destination Southwest serves on a daily basis from a new international concourse in Ft. Lauderdale.

Also beginning today, the carrier inaugurated new daily service between Milwaukee and Houston (Hobby).

This Saturday, March 10, the carrier will begin operating several previously announced nonstop routes weekly on Saturdays between:

San Jose, Calif. and Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos

Sacramento, Calif. and Cabo San Lucas/Los Cabos

Indianapolis and Cancun (Flights operate seasonally)

Tampa, Fla. and Detroit (Flights operate seasonally)

Tampa, Fla. and Omaha, Neb. (Flights operate seasonally)

Also March 10, the carrier will begin seasonal nonstop daily service between San Diego and Puerto Vallarta.

On Sunday, March 11, weekly service on Sundays will begin with new nonstop routes linking:

Sacramento, Calif. and New Orleans

San Diego and El Paso, Texas

The carrier continues to expect its 2018 available seat miles to grow in the low five percent range, year-over-year. To book a seat on these or any other flight, visit Southwest.com.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Specific forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements related to the Company's anticipated service offerings and network and capacity plans, opportunities, and expectations. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that are difficult to predict and that could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in or indicated by them. Factors include, among others, (i) the impact of economic conditions, consumer behavior, fuel prices, actions of competitors (including without limitation pricing, scheduling, capacity, and network decisions, and consolidation and alliance activities), and other factors beyond the Company's control, on the Company's business decisions, plans, and strategies; (ii) the Company's ability to timely and effectively maintain the necessary information technology systems and infrastructure to support its operations and initiatives; (iii) the impact of governmental regulations and other governmental actions related to the Company's operations; and (iv) other factors, as described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the detailed factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2017.

ABOUT SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO.

In its 47th year of service, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) continues to differentiate itself from other air carriers with exemplary Customer Service delivered by more than 56,000 Employees to a Customer base topping 120 million passengers annually, in recent years. Southwest became the nation's largest domestic air carrier in 2003 and maintains that ranking based on the U.S. Department of Transportation's most recent reporting of domestic originating passengers boarded. During peak travel seasons, Southwest operates more than 4,000 weekday departures among a network of 100 destinations in the United States and 10 additional countries. Southwest has announced its intention to sell tickets in 2018 for service to Hawaii, subject to requisite governmental approvals.

Southwest coined Transfarency to describe its purposed philosophy of treating Customers honestly and fairly, and low fares actually staying low. Southwest is the only major U.S. airline to offer bags fly free to everyone (first and second checked pieces of luggage, size and weight limits apply, some carriers offer free checked bags on select routes or in qualified circumstances), and there are no change fees, though fare differences might apply.

As launch customer of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 in North America, the Company operates the largest fleet in the world of Boeing aircraft, all of which are equipped with satellite-based WiFi. Customers who connect to the WiFi network may use their personal devices to view on-demand movies and television shows, as well as nearly 20 channels of free, live TV.

With a bold new look first unveiled in 2014, Southwest is progressing through a multi-year refresh of its fleet to showcase the carrier's Heart: a new logo, aircraft livery, interior design featuring new seats, Employee-designed uniforms, and an updated airport experience, all of which showcase a dedication of Southwest Employees to connect Customers with what's important in their lives.

From its first flights on June 18, 1971, Southwest Airlines launched an era of unprecedented affordability in air travel described by the U.S. Department of Transportation as "The Southwest Effect," a lowering of fares and increase in passenger traffic wherever the carrier serves. With 45 consecutive years of profitability, Southwest is one of the most honored airlines in the world, known for a triple bottom line approach that contributes to the carrier's performance and productivity, the importance of its People and the communities they serve, and an overall commitment to efficiency and the planet.

Book Southwest Airlines' low fares online at Southwest Airlines or by phone at 800-I-FLY-SWA.

SOURCE Southwest Airlines Co.

Related Links

http://www.southwest.com


SUGAR LAND, Texas, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Financial Guidance Center, a nonprofit credit counseling agency headquartered in Las Vegas, NV, has announced its decision to join Money Management International (MMI), the nation's leader in nonprofit solutions for personal financial challenges.

Formed in 1972, Financial Guidance Center has proudly provided consumers in Nevada and Utah with economic security through financial education and counseling for 46 years. "We are excited about the possibilities this merger signifies," said Michele Johnson, CEO of Financial Guidance Center. "This partnership will allow us to deliver a greater range of financial tools and resources to local consumers. With MMI's expanded reach and wealth of established programs and services, we will be able to provide more consumers with the education and support necessary to overcome their financial challenges."

MMI provides the foundation for empowered financial choices through expert professional guidance, including 24/7 support by telephone and internet. Local residents will continue to have access to in-person counseling and education services through Financial Guidance Center's existing offices, located at 2650 S. Jones, Las Vegas, NV 89146 and 3100 Mill Street #111, Reno, NV 89502.

"Financial Guidance Center has long been a local leader in the financial counseling and education field," said Ivan Hand, President and CEO of MMI. "We are very pleased to be able to add their experience and expertise to the MMI family and look forward to expanding on the foundation of high quality consumer service they have established."

To find out how MMI can help solve your financial challenges, schedule an appointment to speak with a certified credit counselor at MoneyManagement.org or call 866.864.8995. To speak with a counselor about an existing Financial Guidance Center account, call 800.451.4505.

CONTACT:

Thomas Nitzsche

Media Relations

404.490.2227

[email protected]

About MMI

Money Management International (MMI) is changing the way financial challenges are solved. MMI helps create, restore, and maintain a life of financial wellness through empowered choices. For 60 years, our clients have achieved financial confidence through nonprofit programs that educate, motivate, and liberate. MMI inspires action by delivering expert professional guidance and timely solutions that are aligned with our client's goals. Experiencing a financial challenge? Find your solution 24/7 at 866.864.8995 and MoneyManagement.org.

SOURCE Money Management International

Related Links

http://www.moneymanagement.org


Oleg Vornik, DroneShield's CEO, commented "We are very pleased with the market response to our roll-out of DroneSentinel and its sister-product DroneSentry. Since we commenced marketing the products several months ago, we have been overwhelmed with enquiries and interest from a number of end-users. The market is hungry for a cost-effective solution that works in a wide range of environments, and is available today. DroneShield has started satisfying this market need."

DroneSentinel provides its users with a highly-modular multi-method drone detection capability and includes and integrates radar, radio frequency, acoustic, thermal and optical (with a range extender) sensor detection, i.e. all the key technologically viable detection methods that currently exist. For interception, DroneSentry integrates these layered detection methods with a radio-frequency jamming system, where lawful. This integrated detect-and-defeat functionality can be deployed either via a "man in the loop" function or in the automatic mode.

The DroneSentinel version ordered in this instance incorporates RadarZero, the portable and miniaturised radar (roughly the size of a paperback book) rolled out by the Company just earlier this month.

The DroneSentinel was purchased by one of the Company's European partners. The order also includes DroneGuns, the Company's advanced rifle-shaped jammer. The products will be used to set up a DroneShield demonstration hub in the Netherlands, the home of the NATO Joint Force Headquarters, where there has been significant interest in counterdrone products across a number of domestic Dutch and international customers.

The order comes against the backdrop of a helicopter crash, reported by the pilot to have been caused by a drone, in South Carolina, USA. This is the first reported helicopter crash caused by a drone, and the first reported drone-related civilian aircraft crash in the United States.

In turn, that crash comes just days after the Transportation Safety Board of Canada released a report on a collision in Quebec involving a drone and a charter plane, and in a separate incident, a drone was reported to have collided with an air-tour helicopter in Hawaii.

Oleg Vornik said "We are delighted to have established a European demonstration hub for our products in one of the key NATO countries. Governmental end-users, both military and civil, throughout Europe, are currently largely helpless against the threat of intentional or unintentional drone misuse. As the density of the drone "population" has increased dramatically, the frequency and the severity of incidents have gone up. As a result, governmental end-users have now recognised the need to have tools at their disposal to detect and mitigate drones.

The Dutch demonstration hub will enable European end-users to swiftly and efficiently observe the Company's products in action, before making purchase commitments or seeking budgetary allocations from their governing bodies for purchase commitments."

About DroneShield Limited

Based in Sydney, Australia and Virginia, USA, DroneShield is a worldwide leader in drone security technology. The Company has developed the pre-eminent drone security solution that protects people, organisations and critical infrastructure from intrusion from drones. Its leadership brings world-class expertise in engineering and physics, combined with deep experience in defence, intelligence, and aerospace.

SOURCE DroneShield Limited
PERTH, Australia, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- FMG Resources (August 2006) Pty Ltd (the "Company"), a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of Fortescue Metals Group Ltd ("Fortescue") (ASX: FMG), announced today that as of 5:00 p.m., New York time, on March 7, 2018 (the "Early Participation Date"), pursuant to its offer to purchase (the "Tender Offer") for cash up to US$1,400,000,000 (the "Tender Cap") in aggregate principal amount of its 9.750% Senior Secured Notes due 2022 (the "Notes"), the Company has received tenders of and accepted for purchase US$446,912,000 aggregate principal amount of the Notes. On March 8, 2018 (the "Early Settlement Date"), the Company will pay the Total Consideration for such Notes as set forth in the table below. The Total Consideration was determined in accordance with the terms of the Tender Offer based on the principal amounts of Notes tendered.

Title of

Security CUSIP ISIN Aggregate

Principal Amount

Outstanding Aggregate

Principal

Amount

Tendered(1) Aggregate

Principal

Amount

Accepted for

Purchase (2) Percent of

Aggregate

Principal

Amount

Outstanding

Accepted

for

Purchase Total

Consideration(3)

(4)(5) 9.750%

Senior

Secured

Notes

due

2022 144A:

30251GAS6

Reg S:

Q3919KAH4 144A:

US30251GA566

Reg S:

USQ3919KAH43 US$2,160,441,000 US$446,912,000 US$446,912,000 20.69% US$492,720,480





(1) As of the Early Participation Date. (2) As of the Early Participation Date. (3) US$1,102.50 per US$1,000 principal amount of Notes accepted for purchase by the Company. (4) Includes the US$5.00 Early Participation Payment (as defined herein). (5) All Holders whose Notes are accepted for purchase will also receive the accrued and unpaid interest on the purchased Notes from the last interest payment date for the Notes up to, but excluding, the Early Settlement Date.

The Tender Offer is being funded with borrowings under a US$1.4 billion syndicated term loan facility, dated February 20, 2018.

The Tender Offer is described in the Offer to Purchase, dated February 21, 2018 (the "Offer to Purchase"), and the related Letter of Transmittal, each previously sent to Holders of the Notes. As set forth in the Offer to Purchase, Holders of Notes who validly tendered and did not withdraw their Notes on or prior to the Early Participation Date, and whose Notes have been accepted for purchase (subject to the Tender Cap), will be entitled to receive the Total Consideration, which includes an early participation payment of US$5.00 per US$1,000 principal amount of Notes (the "Early Participation Payment") on the Early Settlement Date. In addition to the Total Consideration, accrued and unpaid interest will be paid on all Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase from the applicable last interest payment date to, but not including, the Early Settlement Date.

The Tender Offer is scheduled to expire at 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on March 21, 2018, unless extended or earlier terminated (such time, the "Expiration Date"). The Company's acceptance for purchase of additional Notes is subject to the Tender Cap. If the aggregate purchase price of Notes (not including accrued interest) that are validly tendered and not withdrawn would exceed the Tender Cap, the amount of Notes accepted for purchase may be subject to proration with the proration factor depending on the aggregate purchase price of the Notes validly tendered, but Holders who validly tender Notes on or prior to the Early Participation Date and whose Notes are accepted for purchase will not be subject to proration.

The Company and Fortescue have retained J.P. Morgan Securities LLC ("J.P. Morgan") as the Dealer Manager for the Tender Offer. Ipreo LLC ("Ipreo") is acting as the Information Agent and Depositary for the Tender Offer. For additional information regarding the terms of the Tender Offer, please contact J.P. Morgan at (866) 834-4666 (toll-free) or (212) 834-2494 (collect). Requests for documents and questions regarding the tendering of Notes may be directed to Ipreo by telephone at (888) 593-9546 (toll-free), facsimile at (888) 254-6152, or by email at [email protected].

This news release does not constitute an offer or an invitation to participate in the Tender Offer. The Tender Offer is being made pursuant to the Offer to Purchase and the Letter of Transmittal, copies of which have been delivered to Holders of the Notes, and which set forth the complete terms and conditions of the Tender Offer. Holders are urged to read the Offer to Purchase and the Letter of Transmittal carefully before making any decision with respect to their Notes. The Tender Offer is not being made to, nor will the Company accept tenders of Notes from, holders in any jurisdiction in which it is unlawful to make such an offer or solicitation. None of Fortescue, the Company, their board of directors, the Dealer Manager, the Information Agent and Depositary or the trustee for the Notes makes any recommendation as to whether Holders should tender Notes in response to the Tender Offer. Neither the Offer to Purchase nor any related documents have been filed with, or have been approved or reviewed by, any federal or state securities commission or regulatory authority of any country. No authority has passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the Offer to Purchase or any related documents, and it is unlawful and may be a criminal offense to make any representation to the contrary.

Certain statements in this press release, including those describing the completion of the Tender Offer, constitute forward-looking statements. These statements are not historical facts but instead represent only Fortescue's belief regarding future events, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside Fortescue's control. It is possible that actual results will differ, possibly materially, from the anticipated results indicated in these statements.

SOURCE Fortescue Metals Group Ltd
Every four minutes someone dies from COPD in the United States. It is estimated that up to 12 million Americans could have COPD, but are completely unaware of it. This event will educate professionals who treat patients with COPD  the third leading cause of death in the United States. Educators and speakers include prominent health care leaders, who will cover various topics, including:

Updated GOLD strategy for the Diagnosis, Management and Prevention of COPD

COPD: Comorbidities, Diagnosis and Treatment in the Hospital

Role of Pulmonology Rehabilitation in COPD Patient Transition

COPD Acute Exacerbations

Healthcare Practitioner Role - Transitioning the COPD Patient to Post-Acute Care

Advanced Illness Management (AIM): Palliative Care

Executing a Longitudinal Care Pathway from Hospital to Home

The comprehensive training opportunity costs $250 physicians and $150 for other healthcare practitioners. Registration is available at https://ganesco.cvent.com/COPDPatient2018.

According to Nancy Nunley, president, Ganesco, who designed and developed the educational program in conjunction with the Global Education Group, a division of Ultimate Medical Academy, the event will provide several advantageous continuing education opportunities to physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, and other healthcare practitioners, including:

Traditional (live) continuing education (seven hours) and AARC non-traditional (three hours) online at www.ganesco.com

Deliberation on the transitional pathways from hospital-to-home for the COPD patient, and the clinician's role in instituting and managing those pathways

Implementation strategies to initiate practice changes in the diagnosis, therapeutics, and management of COPD patients in acute to sub-acute environments

Review of the latest updated strategies from the Global Initiative for Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD)

Discussions on other clinically relevant topics from some of the top COPD practice leaders

"The information presented during this high-profile learning event is vital for healthcare professionals seeking to implement and enhance practice changes to improve the quality of life for COPD patients and the distribution efficacy of care," said Nunley.

For more information and to register for the continuing education event, visit https://ganesco.cvent.com/COPDPatient2018.

Ganesco is a US-based company that develops and manages continuing education programs and software platforms for medical professionals to fulfill their license or credential requirements.

For more than 10 years, Global Education Group has helped our education partners succeed through effective and intelligent Joint Providership partnerships. Global is Accredited with Commendation by the ACCME to provide Continuing Medical Education (CME) for physicians, and we hold an additional six accreditations to certify education for the entire spectrum of health care professionals.

UMA makes career-focused education convenient, affordable and relevant to the needs and demands of today's health care industry. Ultimate Medical Academy is a dynamic career school committed to empowering students to excel in the health care field. UMA strives to provide an educational experience that maximizes value to its students in a professional, supportive and ethical environment.

Physician Accreditation Statement

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of Global Education Group (Global) and Ganesco, Inc. Global is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

This CME/CE activity complies with all requirements of the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act. If a reportable event is associated with this activity, the accredited provider managing the program will provide the appropriate physician data to the Open Payments database.

Physician Credit Designation

Global Education Group designates this live activity for a maximum of 7.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Nursing Continuing Education

Global Education Group is accredited with distinction as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

This educational activity for 7.0 contact hours is provided by Global Education Group. Nurses should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Respiratory Care Continuing Education

This program has been approved for 7.0 contact hours Continuing Respiratory Care Education (CRCE) credit by the American Association for Respiratory Care, 9425, N. MacArthur Blvd, Suite 100, Irving TX 75063.

Global Contact Information

For information about the accreditation of this program, please contact Global at 303-395-1782 or [email protected].



SOURCE Ganesco Inc.

Related Links

http://www.ganesco.com


CHICAGO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- As of today, Beacon House of Pacific Grove, CA (www.beaconhouse.org), will be a Gateway Foundation affiliate (www.gatewayfoundation.org). The nonprofit partnership expands Gateway's national alcohol and drug treatment programs to California. The agreement will serve more Californians with the highest quality of addiction care.

In 2017 alone, more than 60,000 people died from increased opioid use. As recently announced by the Federal Government, for the next two years it will spend $17B to combat this crisis. "More communities than ever before are negatively impacted by opioid use. Our nation needs stronger treatment alignments -- like ours -- across the U.S., to effectively combat this epidemic," says Dr. Tom Britton, Gateway Foundation President, CEO. "For 60 years Beacon House made great strides in addiction treatment and care. This new partnership continues our health care mission to treat more residents and clients more effectively," adds Phyllis Meagher, Beacon House President, CEO.

Gateway Foundation serves over 6,000 people a day across seven states. It is the largest U.S., nonprofit treatment provider specializing in substance use disorders. Beacon House addresses alcohol, opiate, and sedative addiction, among other addictions.

"For our existing clients and stakeholders, this partnership means we are stronger and better together. We advance all effective treatments available and will create innovative, new programs," said Britton. "Working together, we lead the way for community-based, integrated healthcare for people in need. We look forward to building up Northern California's addiction treatment capacity," Meagher adds. "Beacon House will have its biggest outreach footprint ever under this partnership -- and with a nonprofit partner with 50 years of sound experience. This is something Californians should be proud of."

About The Gateway Foundation: Since 1968 our goal has been straightforward: help clients get their life back on track and achieve a life of sobriety, free from drug use and symptoms of mental illness. A life that is productive, socially responsible, and healthy. Gateway Foundation is the largest nonprofit treatment provider in the U.S. specializing in substance use disorders for men, women, adolescents, and clients diagnosed with co-occurring mental health disorders. Gateway's professional clinicians support over 6000 people a day to successfully complete treatment by developing a personalized plan to treat the underlying causes of substance use disorder not just their addiction to drugs or alcohol.

About Beacon House: With two locations in Pacific Grove, Beacon House treats men and women seeking to realize a lifetime without drugs and alcohol. Offering inpatient and outpatient programs, Beacon House prides itself on providing a warm, homelike setting for those in need of a safe, comfortable environment as they begin a path to lasting recovery.

SOURCE Gateway Foundation

Related Links

http://www.gatewayfoundation.org


DUBLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Strategic Assessment of Global Airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS Market, 2017" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This study discusses the market for airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS business models for defence and commercial applications by evaluating drivers, restraints, trends, and key companies to develop strategic conclusions beneficial to industry stakeholders.



The segments covered are defence, para-public service, supranational organizations, oil and gas, energy and power, telecommunication, and rail transport. This study will benefit those who are interested in learning about evolution of business models from procurement and operation of airborne platforms for ISR and inspection activities to a contracted service model.

This study discusses the key aspects of ISR and surveillance services and identifies areas of opportunities in the defence and commercial segments and also the various business models suitable for each segment. All aerospace industry participants and the rest of the industry verticals will benefit from this study as this is a growth insight investigating the big picture perspectives of ISR and Surveillance as a service and how it is looking to revolutionize the rest of the industries across the globe.



Technology companies that are looking to offer airborne services for ISR and commercial surveillance operations across the industries will also benefit from this study as they will get to understand their potential role in the future. This research is aimed at identifying business model transformation in the industry ecosystem and emerging growth opportunities available to market participants to convert the transformation to opportunities for revenue/market share growth.



Key Issues Addressed:

What is driving and restraining the global defence and commercial airborne ISR and Surveillance market?

What business models are currently being used in each sector?

How is the global ISRaaS market segmented and how will the market evolve?

Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary

Introduction

Key Questions This Study Will Answer

Market Valuation

Key Findings

2. ISRaaS and SURVaaS Segments

Airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS Segments

3. Drivers and Restraints

Market Drivers

Drivers Explained

Market Restraints

Restraints Explained

4. Market Trends

Market Trends

Trends Explained

5. Segment Analysis

Airborne ISRaaS-Defense

Airborne ISRaaS-Para Public Services

Airborne ISRaaS-Supranational Organizations

Airborne SURVaaS-O&G

Airborne SURVaaS-Energy and Power

Power Line and Pipeline Inspection Business Model Canvas

Airborne SURVaaS-Rail Transport

Airborne SURVaaS-Telecommunications

6. Growth Opportunities and Companies to Action

Airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS Market Maturity

Growth Opportunity Overview

Airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS Market-5 Major Growth Opportunities

Growth Opportunity-Managed Services Business Model

Airborne ISRaaS and SURVaaS Market-Competitive Landscape

Strategic Imperatives for Success and Growth

7. The Last Word

The Last Word-3 Big Predictions

8. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/24t83w/global_airborne?w=5



Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


The Sahara city of Dakhla and pearl of southern Morocco is readying to host the 4th edition of the Crans Montana Forum to attract this March 15-20 some 3,500 participants representing 162 countries and over 40 international and regional organizations from around the world.

This annual event, become a must for all those who are supporting Africa and its world integration, will bring together Heads of State and Government, Ministers, regional & international organizations, MPs and above all top Business operators from Africa, other countries of the South and from the whole World, the institution said in a press release on its website.

This new edition will focus on strengthening solidarity, the economic, social and environmental development of the continent and its relationships with other countries in the World, notably in the framework of South-South Cooperation.

This 4th edition will highlight by a ceremony in honor of Moustapha Cisse Lo, speaker of the parliament of the Economic Community of West African States, who will be awarded the Crans Montana Foundation Award.

The award was granted to Moustapha Cisse Lo, according to the organizers, in recognition of his efforts at the head of the ECOWAS parliamentary institution to promote the integration, freedom and development of African peoples and especially to enhance the free movement of people and goods between the 16 ECOWAS member states.

The 2018 Forum will feature a number of new initiatives, including an international conference on Urban Global Management, a New Challenge for all Africa, a high-level panel on the Ocean Economy & Fishing Industry, a strategic sector for Africa, with a special focus on the Blue Belt Initiative, and an international conference on the Silk Road in Africa & Asia-Africa Partnerships with Morocco standing as a new gateway to the Silk Road in Africa.

A special program will be dedicated to the migration flows management, an issue on top of the African agenda as the continent is currently experiencing a significant evolution in terms of internal Migration. Participants in the program will try to develop an African approach through coordinating innovative actions, notably regarding development policies, employment and human rights. They will also discuss means of fostering a new Euro-African partnership, and implementing concrete actions in favor of youth to promote self-fulfillment and reduce Brain Drain.

The forum also features a meeting on energy security and renewables in Africa to focus on the ambitious policies undertaken by Morocco regarding access to energy, notably renewables, which represent a model for the whole Continent, the organizer say.

Other topics to be discussed at the forum include sustainable agriculture and its resilience to Climate change consequences; food and nutritional security in Africa; womens empowerment in the economic & political frameworks, among others.
MCMINNVILLE, Ore., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Domaine Serene Winery founders Grace and Ken Evenstad have pledged $6 million to Linfield College, the largest gift in Oregon history in support of wine education. The gift is also one of the largest donations in Linfield's history and will allow the college to significantly expand its wine education program, which already offers the first interdisciplinary liberal arts bachelor's degree in wine studies in the United States.

The gift will endow the Grace and Ken Evenstad Center for Wine Education at Linfield, as well as an endowed faculty position, the Evenstad Chair in Wine Studies. It will also fund the design and construction of the Evenstad Wine Laboratory as part of a new science building under development on the college's McMinnville campus.

Traditional viticulture and enology programs focus primarily or exclusively on the craft of growing grapes and making wine. In contrast, the Grace and Ken Evenstad Center for Wine Education will include a Wine Studies degree that incorporates the historical, geographical and environmental aspects of growing grapes and the making, bottling and selling of wine, as well as coursework on sensory-evaluation techniques and industry-specific communication issues.

"Ken and I were drawn to the fact that this new and unique program will focus on all aspects of running a successful and sustainable wine business," said Grace Evenstad. "In our opinion, the real benefit is that it focuses on building a high level of quality throughout the entire business of winein winemaking, management, accounting, sales, marketing, etc. This gift will enable thousands of future students to follow their passions in the wine business. It will prepare them for success and will enable the American wine industry to benefit for generations, even centuries, to come."

Linfield currently offers a wine studies minor that can be paired with other academic programs, and is in the process of developing a standalone major. The Center for Wine Education at Linfield also offers wine management and wine marketing certificates online, holds a wine lecture series, provides a summer Wine Industry Immersion Program and hosts one of the world's premier wine eventsthe International Pinot Noir Celebrationeach summer. The Oregon Wine History Archive is housed at Linfield.

"This tremendous gift is not only a boon to Linfield College, it's a major investment in the future of wine education in our state," said Linfield College President Thomas L. Hellie. "We are deeply grateful to Grace and Ken for this important giftand we're proud of their faith in Linfield's wine education program."

In June 2017, internationally known wine climatologist Gregory V. Jones succeeded Ellen Brittan, the founding director of the Center for Wine Education. Jones will become the first to hold the Evenstad Chair in Wine Studies title.

"It is such an honor for Linfield College and myself to be recognized and supported by the Evenstads. Through their generosity and vision, Linfield College will be able to provide a unique, liberal arts education in wine studies that will help develop future leaders of the Oregon wine industry," said Jones. "In addition, the Grace and Ken Evenstad Center for Wine Education will deliver numerous activities that will engage and educate the wine industry and community, enriching the Oregon wine experience for everyone."

The Evenstads and Linfield share a goal of helping support Oregon's wine industry as it develops into one of the world's premier grape-growing and wine-producing destinations.

"From the first day that we set foot in the Dundee Hills, we have been on a never-ending quest to grow and produce the finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the world," said Ken Evenstad. "By making this donation to Linfield College, we are investing in the future thought-leaders of the global wine industry. With this partnership, it is our hope that the newly endowed wine studies program acts as a magnet to attract the brightest minds from around the world to further propel our industry to even greater heights on the world's stage."

Charitable giving is an essential part of the fabric that makes up the culture at Domaine Serene and the legacy of Grace and Ken Evenstad. With the Linfield gift, the Evenstads have now donated or raised more than $20 million for philanthropic causes nationwide.

Grace and Ken Evenstad founded Domaine Serene in the Dundee Hills of Oregon in 1989. For the past 29 years, Domaine Serene, under the guidance of the Evenstads, has been focused on excellence in a never-ending quest to produce world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Domaine Serene's wines represent the achievement that is possible in Oregon, one of the finest regions in the world for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

The partnership between Domaine Serene and Linfield is already underway, with on-site educational programs hosted by the winery and a January study-abroad trip for Linfield students that included a visit the Evenstad's French winery, Chateau de la Cree in Burgundy.

Founded in 1858, Linfield is a four-year liberal arts college with campuses in McMinnville and Portland, Oregon. Twenty-five percent of Linfield students are the first in their families to attend college, and more than one-third are American students of color. The U.S. State Department honored Linfield for being Oregon's top producer of Fulbright Scholars in 2017-18.

For additional information, including photos and video, please visit: www.linfield.edu/winecenterpress.

SOURCE Linfield College

Related Links

http://www.linfield.edu


CALGARY, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (TSX:CP) (NYSE:CP) is strengthening its leadership team with the addition of Joan Hardy, Vice-President, Sales and Marketing, Grain and Fertilizer.

Hardy comes to CP after 12 years at Richardson International, Canada's largest agri-business and a global leader in agriculture and food processing, where she served as Vice-President, Transportation. There she was responsible for rail, marine and truck transportation as well as sales contract management and administration across Richardson's North American network. Prior to joining Richardson International, Hardy spent 21 years at Canadian National, where she held various roles, including Assistant Vice-President, Sales and Senior Director in CN's customer service centre.

"In Joan, CP is getting a proven leader with experience across the grain supply chain," said John Brooks, CP's Senior Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer. "She brings to the table an incredible combination of 20-plus years of railroad experience and more than a decade as a grain and fertilizer shipper and customer of the railways. Her unique blend of experience will only enhance the customer experience for CP shippers while further cementing CP's role as a leader within the grain supply chain."

Effective April 1, 2018, Hardy will join a strong team within Sales and Marketing, led by Chief Marketing Officer, John Brooks, Vice-President responsible for ECP and Merchandise, Coby Bullard, and Vice-President Intermodal and Automotive, Jonathan Wahba. Hardy will be located in Winnipeg, the home of key grain shippers, and is well positioned to further CP's goal of sustainable, profitable growth.

"I look forward to joining the dynamic team at CP," Hardy said. "I am very excited to leverage my experience and skills to further improve CP's service in the grain and fertilizer space and to assist CP in delivering for its customers, shareholders and employees."

Hardy is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manitoba and a member of the Association of Professional Engineers in Manitoba.

For more on CP's grain movements this crop year, visit http://www.cpr.ca/en/customer-resources/grain.



About Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific is a transcontinental railway in Canada and the United States with direct links to major ports on the west and east coasts, providing North American customers a competitive rail service with access to key markets in every corner of the globe. CP is growing with its customers, offering a suite of freight transportation services, logistics solutions and supply chain expertise. Visit cpr.ca to see the rail advantages of CP. CP-IR

SOURCE Canadian Pacific

Related Links

http://www.cpr.ca


WASHINGTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa about a letter he sent to President Trump after it was announced Thursday afternoon that the U.S. would be placing tariffs on the importation of steel and aluminum from countries outside North America, with an exemption process in place for other nations.

"The Teamsters congratulated the President for putting in place a policy that will punish bad actors who have been dumping cheap steel and aluminum in the U.S. marketplace for years. However, the Teamsters believe that the tariff exemption for Canada should be permanent and not tied to ongoing NAFTA negotiations.

"The administration's investigation into global steel and aluminum over-production proves what unions have been saying for some time, that our national security is at risk if the country's manufacturing base continues to diminish. The Teamsters stand ready to work with the White House and with other North American unions to defend and to describe how implementation of these tariffs will protect American workers and our national well-being."

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

Contact:

Ted Gotsch, (202) 624-6911

[email protected]

SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


"We are confident that the addition of Arrow Aircraft as an authorized sales representative will allow for the HondaJet to be successful in the fast-growing business aviation market of India. We are looking forward to their strong sales and promotion of the most advanced light jet in the market," said Honda Aircraft President and CEO Michimasa Fujino.

Arrow Aircraft Managing Director of Sales and Charters Rohit Kapur added, "We are excited to be appointed as HondaJet India. The business aviation market continues to grow in our area and the HondaJet's performance and features are a true game changer. We are looking forward to providing our customers with a dedicated sales team for the fastest, most comfortable and efficient business jet in its category."

Honda Aircraft has established a worldwide dealer and authorized sales network to provide unsurpassed service and support for HondaJet customers. The HondaJet authorized network spans territories in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The HondaJet is an advanced light jet which incorporates many technological innovations in aeronautical design and it was the most delivered jet in its category in 2017.

For more information, visit hondajet.com

About HondaJet

The HondaJet is the fastest, highest-flying, quietest, and most fuel-efficient jet in its category. The HondaJet incorporates many technological innovations in aviation design, including the unique Over-The-Wing Engine Mount (OTWEM) configuration that dramatically improves performance and fuel efficiency by reducing aerodynamic drag. The OTWEM design also reduces cabin noise, minimizes ground-detected noise, and allows for the roomiest cabin and largest baggage capacity in its class and a fully serviceable private aft lavatory. The HondaJet is equipped with the most sophisticated glass flight deck available in any light business jet, a Honda-customized Garmin G3000. The HondaJet is Honda's first commercial aircraft and lives up to the company's reputation for superior performance, efficiency, quality and value.

About Honda Aircraft Company

Honda Aircraft Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Honda Motor Co., Inc. Founded in 2006, Honda Aircraft's world headquarters is located in North Carolina, the birthplace of aviation. The challenging spirit upon which Mr. Soichiro Honda founded Honda Motor Co., Ltd. is alive today as Honda Aircraft fulfills one of Honda's longstanding dreams to advance human mobility skyward.

SOURCE Honda Aircraft Company

Related Links

https://www.hondajet.com


CHICAGO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Hub International Limited (Hub), a leading global insurance brokerage, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Leitao Insurance Agency, Inc. (Leitao). Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Located in Ludlow, Massachusetts, Leitao is a multi-line insurance brokerage firm providing Personal and Commercial lines products.

"The Leitao Team will be a welcome addition to HUB New England and we look forward to having them on board and continuing to serve their valued clients," said Timm Marini, President of Personal Insurance at HUB New England.

About Hub's M&A Activities

Hub International Limited is committed to growing organically and through acquisitions to expand its geographic footprint and strengthen industry and product expertise. For more information on the Hub M&A experience, visit WeAreHub.com.

About Hub International

Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Hub International Limited (HUB) is a leading full-service global insurance broker providing property and casualty, life and health, employee benefits, investment and risk management products and services. From offices located throughout North America, HUB's vast network of specialists provides peace of mind on what matters most by protecting clients through unrelenting advocacy and tailored insurance solutions. For more information, please visit hubinternational.com.

CONTACT:

Media: Marni Gordon

Phone: 312-279-4601

[email protected]

M&A: Clark Wormer

Phone: 312.279.4848

[email protected]

SOURCE Hub International Limited

Related Links

http://www.hubinternational.com


BENGALURU, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Infosys (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services today announced that it has been positioned as a Leader in the 2017 NelsonHall NEAT vendor evaluation for Digital Marketing Services. Infosys has been acknowledged for its prowess in delivering immediate client benefits and ability to meet timely client requirements.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/633365/Infosys_Logo.jpg )



The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) analyzed the performance of 11 vendors offering digital marketing services and their ability to anticipate future client requirements. Infosys has been ranked as a Leader for its next-generation digital transformation services.

Key strengths mentioned in the report:

Infosys was acknowledged for its strong commitment to enhance overall client experience and efficiency through personalized and segment specific data analytics

Infosys' endeavor in developing a cognitive digital marketing toolbox utilizing home-grown solutions like Customer Genome, Infosys NIA, and other tools and frameworks help in driving effective digital spending and decision making for clients

The report also highlighted the company's focus on transformational marketing design programs, and consulting services to identify client requirements and provide recommendations

Infosys was recognized for scaling up its onshore, nearshore, and offshore delivery network across North America , EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies

, EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies An ecosystem of digital marketing partnerships and strategic alliances along with Infosys' IT outsourcing capabilities were acknowledged for rapidly implementing digital marketing infrastructure for clients

Ravi Kumar, President & Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Infosys, said, "This recognition as a leader in digital marketing services is testimony to the company's continuous progress and success in implementing digital marketing infrastructure for our clients. We have a strong global team that works on digital marketing services offering analytics, consulting and operational support. Last year, our strategic acquisition of Brilliant Basics, a product design and client experience innovator, further expanded our worldwide connected network of digital studios and sharpened our focus on fulfilling global client requirements for end-to-end digital transformation solutions."

Ivan Kotzev, Research Analyst, Customer Experience (CX) Services, NelsonHall, said, "Infosys has once again proven its ability and emerged as a leader in digital marketing services. The scoring methodology is a combination of analyst assessment, principally around measurements of the ability to deliver immediate benefit; and feedback received during interviews of vendors' clients. Infosys' continuous dedication to deliver immediate benefits through investments in digital marketing consulting, content management and campaign management has not only elevated its position in the industry but has also helped in the growth of clients."

About NelsonHall

NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next-generation IT and business services. With analysts in the U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe, NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. And for vendors, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies. NelsonHall's research is rigorous and all-original, and widely respected for the quality, depth and insight of its analysis.

About Infosys Ltd.

Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 200,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

SOURCE Infosys
SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- iRewardHealth, today announced it will be a premier sponsor of Appcues' first west coast Drunk User Testing event happening in San Francisco on March 15, 2018. This event, inclusive of great food, drinks, and networking, is designed to help companies build products that users not only love, but can effectively navigate. At the event, attendees will have the opportunity to interact with iRewardHealth's mobile application and provide valuable, honest feedback to help shape future product decisions and create a more intuitive, enjoyable user experiences.

Event Details:

Who: iRewardHealth and Appcues What: Drunk User Testing San Francisco Where: Covo SF

981 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA

94103 When: Thursday, March 15, 2018

6:00pm - 9:00pm PT Why: Shape the future technology and network with the local San Francisco tech community Includes: Open bar, appetizers, a Lyft credit, and a photo booth to capture the festivities Tickets: Visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/drunk-user-testing-tickets-41970683444 to purchase your ticket!

About iRewardHealth

iRewardHealth is a mobile application built to revolutionize preventative health in the workplace. Using a proprietary algorithm, iRewardHealth rewards employees' healthy actions with cash to help them build healthier habits over time. iRewardHealth uses a personalized and flexible approach, working closely with companies to effectively motivate long-term behavior change.

iRewardHealth was founded in 2014 by a team of behavioral scientists looking to expand their impact beyond an office. You can learn more at www.irewardhealth.com or follow iRH on Twitter @irewardhealth.

About Appcues

Appcues is a user engagement platform that accelerates growth for companies by helping them put their products to work. By creating unique user interface patterns that are customized and on-brand, Appcues enables anyone to improve conversion and reduce churn by making their product experiences user-friendly and personalized. With Appcues, any company that is investing in its product can make it more usable and feature-rich for customers.

Founded in 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts, companies depend on Appcues to improve user engagement and product adoption rates. Learn more at www.appcues.com and follow us on Twitter @Appcues.

Media Contact:

Alexandra Brillaud

[email protected]

SOURCE iRewardHealth

Related Links

http://www.irewardhealth.com


VANCOUVER, CANADA, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Avigilon Corporation ("Avigilon") (TSX: AVO), provider of trusted security solutions, is pleased to announce that leading independent proxy advisors Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. ("ISS") and Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC ("Glass Lewis") have recommended that Avigilon's shareholders ("Shareholders") vote FOR the plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement") whereby Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE: MSI) will acquire all of Avigilon's issued and outstanding common shares for cash consideration of CAD$27.00 per common share, as previously disclosed.

ISS and Glass Lewis are independent international corporate governance analysis and proxy advisory firms. Both guide institutional investors in making informed proxy voting decisions, based on careful review of disclosure materials.

In recommending that Shareholders vote FOR the Arrangement, ISS advised:

"Shareholder approval is warranted due to the adequate sale process supervised by the special committee of independent directors, and the all-cash offer premium to the unaffected market price that provides shareholders with immediate liquidity."

In recommending that Shareholders vote FOR the Arrangement, Glass Lewis advised:

"Overall, we find that the analyses presented by the advisors are generally reasonable and contain adequate disclosure. The proposed purchase price represents an 18.2% premium to the unaffected closing price of Avigilon shares on January 31, 2018, the last trading day prior to announcement, and a 22.7% premium to the average closing share price over the one-month period ended on that date. Further, it represents premiums of 29.6%, 41.4% and 57.9% to the average closing share price over the three-month, six-month and one-year periods ended on that date, respectively. Based on the foregoing factors and the support of the board, we believe the proposed transaction is reasonable and in the best interests of shareholders."

Avigilon's special meeting of Shareholders to approve the Arrangement will be held on Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. (Pacific time) at the Vancouver Club  Ballroom, 915 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia.

VOTE YOUR SHARES TODAY.

The Avigilon Board of Directors UNANIMOUSLY approves the Arrangement

and recommends that Shareholders Vote FOR the Arrangement.





Shareholders are reminded to vote their proxy before

10:00 a.m. (Pacific time) on Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Shareholder Questions

For more information and assistance in voting your proxy, please contact Laurel Hill Advisory Group at:

Laurel Hill Advisory Group

North America toll-free: 1-877-452-7184

International: 416-304-0211

Email: [email protected]

About Avigilon

Avigilon Corporation provides trusted security solutions to the global market. Avigilon designs, develops, and manufactures video analytics, network video management software and hardware, surveillance cameras, and access control solutions. To learn more about Avigilon, visit avigilon.com.

 2018, Avigilon Corporation. All rights reserved. AVIGILON, the AVIGILON logo, and TRUSTED SECURITY SOLUTIONS, are trademarks of Avigilon Corporation. Other names or logos mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Keep current on Avigilon

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and view Avigilon videos on YouTube.

For further information:

Investor Enquiries:

Avigilon Investor Relations

T: (604) 629-5182

[email protected]

Media Enquiries:

Amy Day

Senior Manager, Global Communications

T: (604) 629-5182 x2625

[email protected]

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information and statements in this news release contain and constitute forward-looking information or forward-looking statements as defined under applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements normally contain words like 'believe', 'expect', 'anticipate', 'plan', 'intend', 'continue', 'estimate', 'may', 'will', 'should', 'ongoing' and similar expressions, and within this news release include, without limitation, statements (express or implied) respecting the closing of the Motorola Solutions acquisition and expected actions to follow therefrom.

Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, actions, or developments and are based on expectations, assumptions, and other factors that Avigilon's management currently believes are relevant, reasonable, and appropriate in the circumstances, including, without limitation, assumptions that: the acquisition will complete under the terms, structure, and timeline currently contemplated; the special meeting will occur and on the timeline currently contemplated; the Avigilon shareholders will provide the requisite approval for the acquisition; all other requisite third party approvals (including, without limitation, from stock exchanges and courts) in connection with the acquisition will be obtained in a timely manner and on satisfactory terms; Motorola Solutions will have sufficient capital resources to complete the acquisition; the parties will be able to satisfy the other conditions to the closing of the acquisition and on the timeline(s) currently contemplated; Motorola Solutions' vision and strategy will remain aligned with those of Avigilon; no significant events will occur outside of Avigilon's normal course of business; and the continuation of the business and operations of Avigilon, and the integration thereof with Motorola Solutions, following completion of the transaction will occur as currently contemplated.

Although Avigilon's management believes that the forward-looking statements are reasonable, actual results could be substantially different due to the risks and uncertainties associated with and inherent to Avigilon's business and the transaction, as more particularly described in the "Risk Factors" section of Avigilon's Annual Information Form dated March 6, 2018 and the Management Information Circular dated February 21, 2018 for the special meeting, each of which is available under Avigilon's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Material risks and uncertainties applicable to the forward-looking statements set out herein include, but are not limited to: the acquisition is not completed in a timely fashion or at all; the special meeting to approve the acquisition is delayed; the Avigilon shareholders do not approve the acquisition on the current terms or at all; any requisite third party approval is not obtained in a timely fashion (or at all) or on satisfactory terms; Motorola Solutions does not have or obtain sufficient capital resources to complete the transaction; the announcement of the transaction and the dedication of substantial resources of Avigilon to the completion of transaction has a negative impact on Avigilon's ongoing business operations and future financial condition and prospects; a third party makes a bid to acquire Avigilon prior to the completion of this acquisition; the respective strategies and vision of Avigilon and Motorola Solutions become incongruous leading to, for instance, delays in product development and availability; unforeseen challenges in integrating Avigilon's business and operations with Motorola Solutions; a loss of key Avigilon personnel, customers, and/or suppliers; and other unforeseen events, developments, or factors causing any of the aforesaid expectations, assumptions, and other factors ultimately being inaccurate or irrelevant. Although Avigilon has attempted to identify factors that may cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those disclosed in the forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, predicted, estimated or intended. Also, many of the factors are beyond the control of Avigilon. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Avigilon undertakes no obligation to reissue or update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or events after the date hereof except as may be required by law. All forward-looking statements contained in this news release are qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Avigilon Corporation

Related Links

www.avigilon.com


ORRVILLE, Ohio, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Jarrett Companies, based in Orrville, OH, is pleased to announce the purchase of the property formerly owned by Schneider National located in Seville, OH. Jarrett Companies, which currently employs 260 employees, is the parent of Jarrett Logistics Systems, a third party logistics company and the flagship brand in their corporate portfolio, PackShip, a white glove & final mile carrier and Jarrett Fleet Services, a truck fleet maintenance company.

Schneider National will lease back 6 acres of the property from Jarrett Companies for parking and dropping & hooking of their equipment.

Jarrett Fleet Services (JFS) will relocate to the property and will occupy two service buildings totaling 37,000 square feet of shop space to expand its maintenance and repair services to its customers. The 53-acre property is located near the I-71 and I-76 interchanges, which is in a heavy truck traffic area with easy accessibility to the Cleveland and Akron markets, allowing JFS an opportunity for significant growth.

PackShip will be utilizing the property for dropping & hooking of their equipment and as an autonomous truck Transfer Hub. When autonomous trucks become commercially available, the property will be utilized as a Transfer Hub, where trailers are exchanged between driverless trucks and local drivers. Autonomous trucks will haul trailers to the Transfer Hub and PackShip drivers will perform the delivery to the final destination.

"We are pleased to add this property to our portfolio and expand our services in JFS and PackShip. This purchase will allow us to continue growing by engaging technology that positively impacts and disrupts the logistics industry today and in the future," said Mike Jarrett, president of Jarrett Companies.

About Jarrett Logistics Systems

Jarrett Logistics Systems (JLS), is a company that specializes in transportation management services for manufacturing companies, wholesalers and distributors who ship or receive products from all over the world. JLS service offerings can be broken down into five categories: Operational Excellence; Procurement; Technology; Freight Payment Services; and Business Intelligence. The JLS Routing Center has been the backbone of the operation and has transformed clients supply chains into a proactive, strategic advantage for their businesses. JLS is headquartered in Orrville, OH with additional locations in Indianapolis, IN and Los Angeles, CA. For more information about Jarrett Logistics Systems, visit www.jarrettlogistics.com, email [email protected], or call 877.392.9811.

About PackShip

PackShip is a multi-vertical logistics company providing custom solutions in packaging, shipping, final mile delivery, and business-related services to the retail and commercial markets. Learn more at www.packshipusa.com

About Jarrett Fleet Services

Jarrett Fleet Services focuses on providing full service and professional fleet maintenance and repair services for trailers, straight trucks, and trucks, including body, frame, structural and painting. Learn more at www.jarrettfleetservices.com

Contact: Matt Wagner

Company: Jarrett Logistics Systems

Tel: (800) 872-1622

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Jarrett Companies

Related Links

http://www.jarrettlogistics.com


LEWISTON, Maine, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Judith W. Andrucki is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Professional Member in the field of Family Law and Litigation in recognition of her role as an Attorney at Andrucki & King Law Offices.

A regional law firm, Andrucki & King Law Offices is a practice that has dedicated its firm solely to assisting clients in the area of Family Law and Litigation. A firm believer that every family law case is exclusive and requires careful skill and attention to detail, the law firm believes in providing, "in-depth and high quality service to individuals involved in domestic disputes." Offering a wide array of services to their clients, Andrucki & King Law specializes in Adoption, Alternate Dispute Resolution, Appeals, Child Protection, Child Support, Custody, and more. Dedicated to quality customer service and ensuring that their client's legal matters are handled with integrity and proficiency, the firm prides themselves on keeping their clientele well informed.

Amassing over thirty eight years of experience in the field of Law, Andrucki is a prominent figure within the industry. Throughout her career, Andrucki has attained experience within the areas of Family Law and Litigation.

Co-author of Maine's Alimony Statute published in 1990, Andrucki currently serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Maine Music Society.

In recognition of her professional accolades, Andrucki was the recipient of the AV Preeminent Peer Review Rating by Martindale-Hubbell, one of the highest recognitions in the legal industry.

To further her professional development, Andrucki is an affiliate of several organizations including the Family Law Section of the Maine Bar Association and has presented at numerous Continuing Legal Education programs. Having served on the Judicial Evaluation Committee of the Maine Bar Association and on the Friends of Pettingill Park, Andrucki presently serves as a Trustee of the University of Maine System and Maine Public Broadcasting.

Throughout the course of her education and training, Andrucki attained her Medical Doctor degree from George Washington University, School of Medicine, in Washington DC. Thereafter, Andrucki earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Maine, School of Law in 1979. Later, she went on to receive her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Andrucki dedicates this recognition to her husband, Martin E. Andrucki.

For more information, please visit http://andruckilaw.com/

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


SHANGHAI, March 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- JW Therapeutics today announced the completion of a $90 million Series A financing, where a consortium led by leading global investors Temasek, Sequoia Capital China, and YuanMing Capital is joined by a lineup of other investors, including Oriza Seed Capital, Yipu Capital, AVICT Global Holdings, and existing investors WuXi AppTec Group, and Juno Therapeutics.

JW Therapeutics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company founded by Juno Therapeutics and WuXi AppTec Group in 2016 to focus on leading cell-based therapy technologies.

By combining Juno's world-class technology and platform with WuXi AppTec Group's local expertise, R&D and manufacturing platform, and broader partnerships, JW Therapeutics has successfully initiated the development of its first CD19-directed investigational therapy, JWCAR029 (a CAR-T therapy being studied for the treatment of B-cell malignancies initially focusing on relapsed and refractory DCBCL). JWCAR029 has moved into clinical phase, and the IND has recently been accepted by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). JW Therapeutics has built a fully validated clinical GMP facility in line with global QMS standards, and established a strong team led by seasoned biotech/pharma leaders.

"The proceeds from this round of financing will be used to further advance our JWCAR029 clinical program, develop a therapeutic pipeline and build a new commercial manufacturing facility," stated James Li, co-founder and CEO of JW Therapeutics. "It will greatly accelerate the development and commercialization of JW Therapeutics' portfolio to meet the vast unmet medical needs and provide innovative treatment options to patients in China."

"I am very pleased that the company has attracted such a stellar group of investors to support its growth. JW's mission is to bring the most advanced therapies to patients in China," commented Dr. Ge Li, Chairman of JW Therapeutics, and Chairman of WuXi AppTec Group.

"Collectively we aim to help cancer patients around the world live longer and better lives," said Hans Bishop, CEO of Juno Therapeutics. "We believe CAR-T therapies have the potential to do this, and we are excited that this round of financing will help accelerate the development of these leading-edge therapies to benefit patients in China."

"Sequoia China has always followed technological innovation and development in the healthcare industry closely. CAR-T cell therapy is one of the major breakthroughs in biotech," said Neil Shen, Founding and Managing Partner of Sequoia China. "By supporting the growth of JW Therapeutics, a leading domestic player in this space, we hope to help even more patients regain their health and thus contribute to the further development of life sciences in China."

Dr. Lawrence Yuan Tian, Founding Partner of YuanMing Capital said, "YuanMing Capital invests in the leading biotech companies in China. We believe in JW Therapeutics' great potential in cell therapy, and look forward to supporting the growth of the company through the life sciences ecosystem that we are building."

About Temasek

Incorporated in 1974, Temasek is an investment company headquartered in Singapore. Supported by 11 offices globally, Temasek owns a S$275 billion portfolio as at 31 March 2017, mainly in Singapore and the rest of Asia.

Temasek's portfolio covers a broad spectrum of industries: financial services; telecommunications, media & technology; transportation & industrials; consumer & real estate; life sciences & agribusiness; as well as energy & resources. Temasek's investment activities are guided by four investment themes and the long term trends they represent: Transforming Economies; Growing Middle Income Populations; Deepening Comparative Advantages; and Emerging Champions.

As an institution, Temasek has a stake in the well-being of the larger community. Temasek recognises that environmental, social and governance factors can impact its stakeholders as well as the long term sustainability of companies and businesses.

About Sequoia China

The Sequoia team helps daring founders build legendary companies. In partnering with Sequoia, companies benefit from our unmatched community and the lessons we've learned over 46 years working with Apple, Cisco, Oracle, Google, Alibaba, Airbnb and JD.com among many others. As "The Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs", Sequoia China focuses on four sectors: TMT, healthcare, consumer/service, and industrial technology. Over the past 13 years we've had the privilege of working with more than 500 companies in China.

About YuanMing Capital

YuanMing Capital (US Dollar Fund) is a healthcare specialty fund, focuses on the investment in pharmaceutial research and development, innovative medical devices and high-end medical services in both China and the United States. The team is composed of well-known entrepreneurs and biomedical experts who have a wealth of experience in pharmaceutical R&D, management, entrepreneurship, and a broad resource in healthcare and finance. The partners have founded the Sino-US Alliance for Healthcare Investment and R & D, Wuhan University Health Alliance, Chinese Entrepreneurs Forum, China-US Business Leaders Roundtable, and played an important role in China Pharmaceutical Innovation and Research Development Association (PhIRDA), BayHelix, the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Association (SAPA), and the China Global Expert Recruitment program. YuanMing Capital focuses on creating life sciences ecosystem to provide strong enabling and value-added services to its portfolio companies.

About WuXi AppTec Group

WuXi AppTec Group is a leading global pharmaceutical, medical device open-access capability and technology platform company with global operations. As an innovation-driven and customer-focused company, WuXi AppTec Group provides a broad and integrated portfolio of services to help our worldwide customers and partners shorten the discovery and development time and lower the cost of drug and medical device R&D through cost-effective and efficient solutions. With its industry-leading capabilities in small molecule R&D and manufacturing, cell therapy and gene therapy R&D and manufacturing, and medical device testing, WuXi platform is enabling more than 3,000 innovative collaborators from more than 30 countries to bring innovative healthcare products to patients, and to fulfill WuXi AppTec Group's dream that "every drug can be made and every disease can be treated."

About Juno Therapeutics

Founded on the vision that the use of human cells as therapeutic entities will drive one of the next important phases in medicine, Juno Therapeutics brings innovative technologies from some of the world's leading research institutions, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Seattle Children's Research Institute (SCRI), the University of California, San Francisco, and The National Cancer Institute. Juno Therapeutics is building a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. Juno Therapeutics is a Celgene company.

SOURCE JW Therapeutics
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lastline Inc., the leader in advanced network-based malware protection, today announced that the Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named the company a winner in the 14th Annual Global Excellence Awards. These prestigious global awards recognize cybersecurity and information technology vendors with advanced, ground-breaking products, solutions, and services that are helping set the bar higher for others in all areas of security. Lastline was awarded honors in every category in which it was considered.

"Info Security Product Guide's recognition validates our market leading breach protection and advanced malware detection technology," said Bert Rankin, Lastline CMO. "Awards such as ISPG's 'Innovation in Next Generation Security' reflect our leading-edge capabilities that enterprises rely on to detect and defeat today's most damaging and costly threats. We are honored to receive these awards."

Lastline was awarded:

Innovation in Next Generation Security | 100-499 Employees  Gold winner

Best Security Software | 100-499 Employees  Silver winner

Security Products for Large Enterprise | 100-499 Employees  Bronze winner

More than 40 judges from a global spectrum of industry voices participated and their average scores determined the 2018 Global Excellence Awards Winners. The awards are the latest recognitions that Lastline has received for its Lastline Breach Defender breach protection and Lastline Enterprise advanced malware detection products. In NSS Labs 2017 Breach Detection Systems group test, Lastline again achieved 100 percent in both malware detection and overall Security Effectiveness, the only product ever to repeat with perfect results. In addition, the company has a history of winning industry awards, including:

Cyber Defense Magazine Cyber Security Leader Award for 2017

Golden Bridge Awards in Information Security and Risk Management Innovations, and New Products and Services  Security Software

Red Herring 100

100 Network Products Guide IT World Awards in Best IT Product and Services: Security Software, and Hot Technology and Products Suitable for USA

About Info Security Products Guide

Info Security Products Guide sponsors the Global Excellence Awards and plays a vital role in keeping end-users informed of the choices they can make when it comes to protecting their digital resources and assets. It is written expressly for those who are adamant on staying informed of security threats and the preventive measure they can take. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including tomorrow's technology today, best deployment scenarios, people and technologies shaping cyber security and industry predictions & directions that facilitate in making the most pertinent security decisions. Visit www.infosecurityproductsguide.com for the complete list of winners.

About Lastline

Lastline provides breach protection products that are innovating the way companies defend against advanced malware with fewer resources and at lower cost. We deliver the visibility, context, analysis, and integrations enterprise security teams need to quickly and completely eradicate malware-based threats before damaging and costly data breaches occur. Headquartered in Redwood City, California with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia, Lastline's technology is used by Global 5000 enterprises, is offered directly and through resellers and security service providers, and is integrated into leading third-party security technologies worldwide. www.lastline.com

SOURCE Lastline Inc.

Related Links

http://www.lastline.com


VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. (CSE: LDS), (OTCQX: LDSYF), (XETR:LD6) ("LDS" or the "Company") announces CSPA Group Inc. and LDS Scientific's launching of Reveur, a new luxury brand of cannabis products for the California market.

The CSPA Group Inc. has been test marketing the core product in selected retail stores in California and the initial results have been very positive. The new product line Reveur (the French word for Dreamer) will focus on the higher upscale luxury market using only fresh frozen organically grown cannabis strains processed at minus 50 degrees Celsius preserving all the natural terpenes and flavonoids. The Company has produced 15,000 grams of Reveur Live Resin products in February. The Reveur product launch will begin March 15 2018, with deliveries to strategically targeted retailers throughout California.

The product launch has been affected by the most recent testing requirements in California, which have created time delays in all accredited laboratories for the cannabis required testing. The new testing requirements are for concentrations of THC, THCA, CBD, CBDA CBN, CBG cannabinoids, twenty-two Terpenes, twenty residual solvents, herbicides and pesticides. The current timeline on a full spectrum laboratory result from a third-party accredited laboratory is running 10 to 15 business days. Brad Eckenweiler, CEO of LDS, stated, "In our manufacturing process we are now running four full spectrum testing protocols at four intervals in the process. First test prior to processing, second test on first pass extraction or crude product, third test upon distillation, and fourth test on the final product. We are confident that these protocols will benefit our customers and the industry." These new testing requirements have added additional time to production and additional cost, full spectrum test cost are running between $650 to $850 per laboratory sample. The results are critical at each level of testing to allow the material to continue in the manufacturing process, because as the material becomes more concentrated the results become more finite in ppm (parts per million), which may effect the suitability of the final product for the market place. The Company is looking forward to the larger market distribution of the Reveur product line. The CannastripsTM product line has also been test marketing flavours for final formulation this month and based on those results the new formulation decisions will be announced and the much anticipated launch will be scheduled.

About Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc.

Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. is a licensed, state-compliant vertically integrated cannabis-related company. From our isogenic pollination nursery to our cutting edge, state-of-the-art production facility located in Southern California, LDS has become one of the most diverse, innovative and scientifically based cannabis companies throughout North America. The Company's technology produces infused strips (similar to breath strips) that are not only a safer, healthier option to smoking but also a new way to accurately meter the dosage and assure the purity of the product. From start to finish, the production process tests for quality and composition of all the ingredients used in each and every strip, resulting in a delivery system that is safe, consistent and effective.

On behalf of the board of directors of Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc.

Brad Eckenweiler

CEO & Director

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

[email protected]

1-866-347-5058

Cautionary Disclaimer Statement:

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release.

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. In addition, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Although Congress has prohibited the US Justice Department from spending federal funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws, this prohibition must be renewed each year to remain in effect. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

SOURCE Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc.

Related Links

http://www.lifestyledeliverysystem.com


HUNTSVILLE, Ala., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Missile Defense Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) an $80.6 million fixed-price contract for modified ballistic re-entry vehicles and separation modules for missile defense tests. Under the contract, Lockheed Martin will develop and produce unarmed re-entry vehicles for integration into target missiles through 2022. The contract also includes options for additional modified re-entry vehicles and mission support.

"The re-entry vehicle is essentially the bullseye for an interceptor missile, and it is also one of the most complex parts of the target," said Sarah Reeves, vice president of Missile Defense Programs at Lockheed Martin Space. "In today's environment, it's incredibly important to test against threat-representative targets that look like enemy missiles, and we are proud to continue to provide that capability to the Missile Defense Agency."

The modified re-entry vehicles will be designed and produced in Huntsville, Alabama, by a Lockheed Martin team with decades of experience with missile defense targets. Subcontractors include Huntsville companies Dynetics, Inc., which will provide the aeroshell structures, and Battelle, which will provide the hit detection system.

Instead of carrying warheads, modified ballistic re-entry vehicles carry sensors to measure the accuracy and effectiveness of the target, interceptor and missile defense system. Testing against a capable, threat-representative re-entry vehicle helps ensure the ballistic missile defense system is ready to detect and destroy enemy missiles.

Since 1996, Lockheed Martin has helped the Missile Defense Agency's systems keep pace with threats and delivered more than 50 threat-representative missile targets and 36 modified ballistic re-entry vehicles.

As the world's leader in air and missile defense systems and technologies, Lockheed Martin delivers integrated missile defense solutions that protect citizens, critical assets and deployed forces from current and future threats. The company's experience spans missile design and production, hit-to-kill capabilities, infrared seekers, command and control/battle management, and communications, precision pointing and tracking optics, radar and signal processing, as well as threat-representative targets for missile defense tests.

For additional information, visit our website: www.lockheedmartin.com/missiledefense

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

SOURCE Lockheed Martin

Related Links

http://www.lockheedmartin.com


GLENDALE, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Now, more than ever, issues facing women are gaining momentum worldwide. With the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements spurring activism in the US, #PressForProgress  the call for gender parity championed by International Women's Day 2018  couldn't come at a better time.

Gender parity is a cause that is wholeheartedly endorsed by Lucille Sive, CEO of The Travel Corporation's (TTC's) Africa Division. One of the first women in the travel industry to break the "glass ceiling," Sive proudly promotes gender parity in her home country, South Africa, by supporting sustainable economic growth for disadvantaged women.

Sive has spearheaded many sustainable and responsible travel initiatives in Africa, and these are what she is most proud of and holds closest to her heart. Uthando, a unique non-profit organization which raises funds for life-changing community development programs in Cape Town, was personally selected by Sive to partner with African Travel, Inc., a TTC brand that she oversees. Sive and African Travel are deeply involved with Uthando projects that help women in the Khayelitsha township gain skills and earn income.

The eKhaya eKasi "Home in the Hood" Art and Education Centre is the setting for two of these projects. A vibrant community resource, eKhaya eKasi offers after-school programs in literacy and performing arts for children, and assists unemployed adults with job skills and entrepreneurship training. Beading and weaving are among the skills women learn here, and the artisanal gifts they make and sell allow them to support their families while improving the health of their local community.

"The women of Africa are so resilient and resourceful," says Sive. "I am so proud that we're able to partner with Uthando on these amazing projects that help foster independence and empowerment in women who are making a difference in their communities. It is truly inspirational."

Guests on various African Travel itineraries receive beaded rhinos made by the women of eKhaya eKasi as gifts, and starting in summer 2018 African Travel also plans to give blankets made by these women to local orphanages and underprivileged children.

Buying locally made gifts and products is one of many ways to promote sustainable tourism. Here, Lucille Sive offers four more tips for those who want to travel sustainably:

Stay at hotels or lodges that are environmentally conscious and value sustainability and conservation . For example, African Travel's Tanzania Honeymoon itinerary includes accommodation at One Nature Nyaruswiga, an eco-camp where luxury living, sustainability, ecology and conservation coexist in one place.

. For example, African Travel's Tanzania Honeymoon itinerary includes accommodation at One Nature Nyaruswiga, an eco-camp where luxury living, sustainability, ecology and conservation coexist in one place. Take trips that support conservation and sustainability. Travelers who book African Travel's Majestic South Africa itinerary directly help rhino conservation; the company also donates $50 per couple towards the building of a rhino boma at Shamwari Game Reserve.

Travelers who book African Travel's Majestic itinerary directly help rhino conservation; the company also donates per couple towards the building of a rhino boma at Shamwari Game Reserve. Bring your own water bottle . Discarded plastic water bottles are not only an unsightly scourge on the landscape, they are also harmful to animals and wasteful of resources. Bringing your own re-fillable water bottle means a new one doesn't need to be manufactured, and decreases the amount of garbage that end up in landfills or as stray litter.

. Discarded plastic water bottles are not only an unsightly scourge on the landscape, they are also harmful to animals and wasteful of resources. Bringing your own re-fillable water bottle means a new one doesn't need to be manufactured, and decreases the amount of garbage that end up in landfills or as stray litter. Practice safe social media during safaris. When you're snapping all those amazing wildlife photos to share on social media, make sure you aren't putting the animals in danger by alerting poachers to their whereabouts through geotagging your images.

For more information or to book a 2018 adventure, contact your favorite travel professional, call African Travel, Inc. at (800) 727-7207, or visit www.africantravelinc.com. CST 2071444-20

Don't forget to check out African Travel, Inc.'s Journal Page!

Get travel tips, photos and testimonials, and stories from the bush. Subscribe to the RSS feed to get all of these things in one place.

Follow African Travel, Inc. on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and join the conversation using the hashtag #WeKnowAfrica

About African Travel, Inc. - "We Know Africa"

For over 40 years, African Travel, Inc. has created luxury, handcrafted safaris ensuring immersive and authentic cultural encounters across the continent. "We Know Africa" because our passionate and knowledgeable experts have lived and traveled extensively throughout Africa and can craft extraordinary, life-changing vacations tailored to each guest's individual needs and preferences, with exceptional five-star service every step of the way. For information and inspiration, visit www.AfricanTravelInc.com.

About USTOA African Travel, Inc. shares the coverage available under the USTOA $1 Million Travelers Assistance Program with affiliates of TravCorp USA, Inc. In addition, TravCorp Financial Services Limited provides a guarantee of $20 Million.

About The TreadRight Foundation

Created as a joint initiative between The Travel Corporation's (TTC) family of brands, The TreadRight Foundation is a not-for-profit that works to help ensure the environment and communities we visit remain vibrant for generations to come. Founded by Brett Tollman, Chief Executive, TTC, to date TreadRight has supported more than 40 sustainable tourism projects worldwide. To learn more about our past and current work at TreadRight, please visit us at TreadRight.org.

SOURCE African Travel, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.AfricanTravelInc.com


"The acquisition of an innovative brand like Componex adds tremendous value to our family of web handling companies, specifically our Precision Rolls Group," said Greg Jehlik, CEO of Maxcess. "Being deeply focused on expansion through organic growth, product development and acquisitions, Componex is a perfect example of a category leader and an addition that will generate significant capabilities at other Maxcess facilities around the world moving forward."

The Componex acquisition further expands Maxcess' ability to serve customers with a one-stop-shop offering for their web handling needs. Most notably, Componex brings its high-performance, patented WINertia line of dead shaft idlers to Maxcess' comprehensive portfolio of web handling solutions.

"Maxcess can take Componex to the next level by introducing our WINertia technology to markets outside of North America," said Cal Couillard, President of Componex. "Its size and scope provided a logical landing spot for the company that we worked so hard to build over the past 20 years."

"Over the past two decades, the Componex management team has successfully built a well-regarded brand, known for performance and innovation, and a leading position in an attractive market segment," said Tim Heston, Principal at Bertram Capital. "This acquisition is a continuation of Bertram's buy-and-build strategy, marking our fifth add-on acquisition for the Maxcess platform during our five years of ownership. We are eager to support Maxcess with further consolidation of best of breed companies in this sector."

About Maxcess

Maxcess helps its customers maximize productivity through innovative products and services worldwide. By combining more than 300 years of global service and support across the storied brands of Valley Roller, Webex, Fife, Tidland and MAGPOWR, Maxcess offers an unrivaled network of application experts. Visit them online www.maxcessintl.com

About Componex

Componex is a worldwide leader in the web handling industry with clear-cut, differentiated, value. Componex provides innovative precision products at competitive prices with the shortest lead time in the industry. Visit them online http://www.componex.net/

About Bertram Capital

With over $1.3 billion in committed capital, Bertram Capital is a private equity firm targeting investments in lower middle market companies. By supplying flexible investment capital and committing a wealth of operational and strategic resources to each investment, we make it our core objective to move companies, management teams and employees toward unlocking their full potential. Visit www.bertramcapital.com for more information.

SOURCE Bertram Capital

Related Links

http://www.bertramcapital.com


MONTREAL, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - US President Donald Trump will clarify his position today around 3:30 pm regarding tariffs on aluminium and steel imports in the United States. This announcement will have a major impact on the Canadian aluminium industry, since Canada is the main supplier of aluminium to the United States.

Mr. Jean Simard, President and CEO of the Aluminium Association of Canada, is available to answer questions from the media and explain the impacts of this decision on the aluminium industry in Canada.

Mr. Simard can address these topics in particular:

Impact of the decision on the Canadian aluminium industry in case Canada is not exempted from tariffs;

is not exempted from tariffs; Impact of the decision on Canada-US trade relations, including NAFTA negotiations;

Any other topic regarding the aluminium industry at home and abroad.

About the Aluminum Association of Canada (www.aluminum.ca/en)

The Aluminium Association of Canada (AAC) is a non-profit organization representing three Canadian world-class aluminium producers: Alcoa, Alouette, and Rio Tinto operating ten smelters in Canada, nine of which are in Quebec, and employing over 8,000 workers.

SOURCE Aluminum Association of Canada
MIAMI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Mi9 Retail, a leading provider of omni-channel retail software, is pleased to announce the appointment of Gregg Monastiero as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales. He joins the Mi9 Retail senior leadership team and will assume responsibility for the company's global sales and account management organization.

Monastiero has spent his career building and leading high-performing enterprise sales teams, with a focus on retail and ERP systems, and brings a wealth of experience driving exponential revenue growth for technology companies. Monastiero most recently served as President of Symphony Retail AI. Over his career he has run sales organizations of fast-growing global companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, JDA, and Infor.

His visionary leadership combined with his innate sales intuition have earned him well-deserved industry recognition. Gregg received his MBA from Babson College and is an active member of The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).

"I'm thrilled to be joining the Mi9 Retail leadership team and look forward to strengthening our sales capabilities to deliver added value to our customers," said Gregg Monastiero. "The market for Mi9 Retail solutions is significant and I plan to help the company achieve its aggressive growth goals."

"Gregg Monastiero is the ideal addition to the executive team," commented Neil Moses, CEO of Mi9 Retail. "I have faith in his abilities to accelerate our business through this next stage of our growth plan."

About Mi9 Retail

Mi9 Retail is passionate about helping retailers create great experiences for their customers  online, in-store, and on any device. We know that great retail experiences happen when optimized inventory management intersects perfectly with well-executed customer engagement strategies to deliver higher customer loyalty, better margins, and a more engaged workforce. Our solutions for merchandise management, digital commerce, and store operations are used by leading retailers across the globe. The company is headquartered in Miami, FL, with operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Visit www.mi9retail.com to learn more.

SOURCE Mi9 Retail

Related Links

http://www.mi9retail.com


PALM BEACH, Florida, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

MarketNewsUpdates.com News Commentary

Recent reports that Apple is now chasing after cobalt from active mining companies has put a huge spotlight on the industry concerning the valuable metal's impending supply shortage. More than 60 percent of the world's cobalt is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By moving to buy straight from miners, Apple is looking to find a level of guaranteeing their supply chain is clean. Demand for as well as the price of cobalt has skyrocketed since just over a year on projections of fast-growing demand for electric vehicles, whose lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are also dependent on the metal. Some industry professional believe it is likely the market will see other major electronics manufacturers like Samsung and LG Chem follow the path taken by Apple by opting for longer-term contracts with major cobalt miners to secure future supply. Cobalt/Lithium miners with developments include: LiCo Energy Metals Inc. (OTC:WCTXF) (TSX-V:LIC), First Cobalt Corp. (OTC: FTSSF) (TSXV: FCC), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), Advantage Lithium Corp. (OTC: AAUKF) (TSXV:AAL), Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE).

LiCo Energy Metals Inc. (OTCQB: WCTXF) (TSX-V: LIC.V) BREAKING NEWS: LiCo Energy Metals is pleased to the update its shareholders on the completion on the Teledyne Cobalt Property Phase 1 diamond drilling program. During the fall of 2017, LiCo completed 11 diamond drill holes totaling 2,200 m. The drill program, along with the Phase 1 diamond drilling program completed on the Glencore Bucke Property, satisfied LiCo's flow-through financing obligations.

"We are extremely pleased with the overall results, especially the grades and widths of the cobalt mineralization intersected in the majority of the drill holes from the Teledyne Phase 1 drill program. We view the results of both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke drill programs as being successful" commented Mr. Tim Fernback, President & CEO of LiCo. "Now that we have all the drill results, LiCo will design the Phase 2 drill program which will then become the basis of completing a 43-101 Compliant resource estimation. We are very excited about the future and commencing Phase 2 on both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke properties in the future".

From 1979 through to 1980, Teledyne Canada Ltd., completed 6 surface diamond drill holes and 22 underground diamond drills for an aggregate of 3,160.8 m on the Teledyne Cobalt Property. Based on the surface and underground diamond drill programs, historical reserves of 60,000 tons in the geologically inferred category, and 40,000 tons in the probable category, at an average grade of 0.45% Co, 0.6 oz/t Ag was estimated (Linn, 1983). The reserve estimate is a historical estimate as defined by National Instrument 43-101. The historical reserve estimate contains categories that are not consistent with current CIM definitions. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. No attempt was made to reconcile the historical reserve calculations as reported by Teledyne Tungsten. LiCo is not treating the historical reserve estimate as a current mineral resource or mineral reserve. Read this and more news for LiCo Energy at: http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/wctxf.html



LiCo's Phase 1 diamond drill program was designed to confirm and extend the existing known mineralization along strike and up and down dip, and LiCo was successful in completing this objective. The program tested the Teledyne Zone for a strike length of approximately 220 m. A Summary of the most significant results of the Phase 1 Diamond Drill Program completed on the Teledyne Cobalt Property are:

- TE1701 0.62% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m including 3.92% Co over 0.75 m from 140.25 to 141.00 m.

- TE17-02 0.95% Co over 1.90 m from 143.0 to 144.9 m, incl. 2.58% Co over 0.60 m from 144.30 to 144.90 m.

- TE17-02 0.59% Co over 3.90 m from 156.0 to 159.9 m, incl. 2.22% Co over 0.60 m from 156.6 to 157.2 m.

- TE1704 1.82% Co over 6.00 m from 138.00 to 144.00 m, including 5.06% Co over 1.75 m from 141.25 to 143.00 m

- TE1705 2.32% Co over 4.00 m from 126.5 to 130.50 m

- TE1705 1.70% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m.

- TE17-07 0.50% Co over 2.10 m from 127.60 to 129.70 m

- TE17-08 0.77% Co over 3.40 m from 169.50 to 172.90 m, including 1.17% Co over 2.00 m from 169.50 to 171.50 m.

- TE17-08 0.59% Co over 1.20 m from 174.00 to 175.20 m.

- TE17-08 0.62% Co over 0.60 m from 178.60 to 179.20 m.

- TE17-11 0.54% Co over 2.00 m from 130.00 to 132.00 m

A summary of the most significant results from the Phase 1 diamond drilling program are provided in Table 1, while drill hole collar information is provided in Table 2 which can be seen at: http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/wctxf.html



In other mining industry news and developments:



First Cobalt Corp. (OTCQB: FTSSF) (TSXV: FCC) recently announced it has commenced its 2018 borehole geophysical and optical televiewer survey program to test holes drilled in Cobalt South and for the first time in Cobalt North. The borehole program is intended to expand known zones of cobalt mineralization and further define the controlling structures in these two areas. The borehole geophysical data will also be used to assess ground geophysical methods for detecting blind cobalt mineralization elsewhere in the Cobalt camp. Dr. Frank Santaguida, vice-president of exploration, commented: "Combining survey data with assay results and geological logs allows for quicker assessment and follow-up during the next stage of drilling. Borehole televiewer surveys are a relatively modern mineral exploration tool that will help map previously mined silver vein systems and could spatially define mineralization trends to predict where cobalt mineralization occurs."

In an article issued by Miningne.ws, several parties are interested in buying Freeport-McMoRan Inc's (NYSE: FCX) cobalt project in the Democratic Republic of Congo but not at a price that would interest the miner and so it is not planning a sale, Freeport's chief executive officer said. As a result, Freeport is looking at other options for the asset, including possibly a joint venture to develop the large cobalt project, CEO Richard Adkerson said. Freeport last year tried to sell its cobalt assets, including the Kisanfu exploration project in Congo and the Kokkola cobalt refinery in Finland, to China Molybdenum, as part of its sale of a stake in its Tenke Fungurume copper mine in the Congo. Read the full article here http://www.miningne.ws/2018/02/27/miner-freeport-says-no-plans-to-sell-congo-cobalt-asset/

Orocobre Ltd. (OTC:OROCF) (TSX:ORL) and Advantage Lithium Corp. (OTCQX: AAUKF) (TSXV:AAL) recently provided an update on the results of the pumping test conducted on CAU07 in the northwest sector of the Cauchari joint venture properties, located in the Jujuy province, Argentina. The exploration program is being managed by JV partner Advantage Lithium, which hold 75 per cent of Cauchari. Orocobre owns 33 per cent of Advantage Lithium's issued capital. Included highlights were: Positive results from CAU07 four-step pumping test suggest rates as high as 36 litres per second are achievable; CAU07 constant rate pumping test conducted at 17 litres per second over 48 hours with flow limited by the pump capacity; Good brine chemistry with 19 samples taken over the pumping test averaging 601 milligrams per litre lithium and 4,853 milligrams per litre potassium with a magnesium-lithium ratio of 2.6 to 1; Hole CAU13 in the southeast sector of Cauchari intersected a sequence of sandy sediments below 400 metres, adding additional brine volume in this area for the coming resource estimate.

In a recent article, it was reported Vale (NYSE: VALE) is reevaluating its plans for its Vale New Caledonia nickel project due to its improved results and the positive impact of higher cobalt prices, chief executive officer Fabio Schvartsman said on Wednesday February 28. "We are waiting to see where things are going to move forward to in order to make a decision in the VNC situation," he told analysts during a conference call. It is clear that the situation now is different from where we were six months ago and we are reacting accordingly," Schvartsman added. Vale said in 2016 that its patience with VNC had ended and warned that it was considering alternatives for the then loss-making project. Read the full article Here https://www.fastmarkets.com/base-metals-news/americas/vale-optimistic-prospects-nickel-project-new-caledonia-ceo-says/

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SOURCE MarketNewsUpdates.com
ST. PAUL, Minn., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Today a bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers introduced a bill in the Minnesota House to raise the state tobacco sale age to 21. Minnesota would become the sixth state in the nation to pass a Tobacco 21 law, which aims to protect youth from tobacco addiction and prevent death and disease. The proposal was announced at the State Capitol by Representative Dario Anselmo (R-Edina). Bill coauthors include Representatives Keith Franke (R-St. Paul Park), Sandy Layman (R-Cohasset), Dave Baker (R-Willmar), Mark Uglem (R-Champlin), Mary Kunesh-Podein (DFL-New Brighton), Laurie Halverson (DFL-Eagan), Rena Moran (DFL-St. Paul), and Mike Freiberg (DFL-Golden Valley). The legislators were joined by youth, medical professionals and supporters from the Minnesotans for a Smoke-Free Generation coalition.

"As a parent and as a legislator, I want to do everything in my power to ensure young people are free from addiction," said lead author Rep. Anselmo. "The harms of tobacco use reach all of our families and communities  whether we are Republicans, Democrats, rural or urban. Minnesotans are leaders, and I want us to be at the forefront of this issue. I hope we can all come together and support this commonsense public policy change that makes the health of young Minnesotans a top priority."

Raising the tobacco sale age to 21 is an effective way to keep commercial tobacco products away from young people. Nearly all addicted smokers  95 percent  start before age 21. In Minnesota, raising the tobacco age to 21 would prevent an estimated 30,000 kids from becoming smokers over the next 15 years. Last year, a Tobacco 21 bill was introduced in the Minnesota Senate.

Several Minnesota communities have taken the lead on Tobacco 21, passing local policies to protect youth. Since 2017, five Minnesota cities have passed Tobacco 21 policies, including Plymouth, Edina, Bloomington, St. Louis Park and North Mankato. Several other Minnesota localities are actively considering Tobacco 21 policies. To date, five states (Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Maine and Oregon) and more than 290 localities have raised the tobacco sale age to 21.

"Driving down healthcare costs is another top priority for me," added Rep. Anselmo. "Reducing tobacco use, which costs Minnesota more than $7 billion a year in lost productivity and excess health care, will make a big impact."

There is ample evidence that the tobacco industry aggressively markets to 18- to 21-year olds to recruit replacement tobacco users, using tactics like candy flavoring, magazine advertisements and event sponsorships to attract young people to tobacco. Raising the tobacco age would reduce teens' ability to buy tobacco products themselves or access them through friends.

Young people, including advocates who have helped to pass local Tobacco 21 policies, joined the event to call for legislators to support a statewide Tobacco 21 law.

"Minnesota has a choice to make," local advocate and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network volunteer Caitlin DeVos said. "We can lead the way toward a tobacco-free future and put the health of our community and young people first, or we can let Big Tobacco companies continue to profit off selling deadly products to our teens. It should be an easy choice."

Recent data show the tobacco industry's tactics have disrupted Minnesota's progress in lowering tobacco use. In fact, for the first time in 17 years, the Minnesota Youth Tobacco Survey found an increase in youth tobacco use. The survey demonstrated the urgent need to address rising youth tobacco use, which is led by easy access and youth-targeted flavoring, products and advertising.

"Passing Tobacco 21 would send a strong message to the nation that Minnesota is still a leader on tobacco prevention," Molly Moilanen, Co-Chair of the Minnesotans for a Smoke-Free Generation coalition, said. "Thank you to Rep. Anselmo and all the bill authors for standing up for the next generation of Minnesotans."

About Minnesotans for a Smoke-Free Generation

Minnesotans for a Smoke-Free Generation supports policies that reduce youth smoking and help end the death and disease associated with tobacco use, including raising the tobacco age to 21, limiting youth access to menthol-, candy- and fruit- flavored tobacco, keeping tobacco prices high and funding future tobacco prevention and cessation efforts.

Partners include: A Healthier Southwest, African American Leadership Forum, Allina Health, March of Dimes, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, Medica, American Lung Association in Minnesota, Apple Tree Dental, Association for Nonsmokers  Minnesota, Aurora/St. Anthony Neighborhood Corporation, Becker County Energize, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, CentraCare Health, Children's Defense Fund-Minnesota, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, ClearWay MinnesotaSM, Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio  CLUES, Dodge County Public Health, Essentia Health, Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare, HealthEast, Perham Health, HealthPartners, Hennepin County Medical Center, Hope Dental Clinic, Horizon Public Health, Indigenous Peoples Task Force, ISAIAH, LAAMPP Alumni, Lake Region Healthcare, Lincoln Park Children and Families Collaborative, Local Public Health Association of Minnesota, Mayo Clinic, Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, Minnesota Cancer Alliance, Minnesota Council of Health Plans, Minnesota Hospital Association, Minnesota Medical Association, Minnesota Oral Health Coalition, Minnesota Public Health Association, MN Association of Community Health Centers, MN Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Model Cities of St. Paul, Inc., NAMI Minnesota, North Memorial Health Care, NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center, PartnerSHIP 4 Health, Rainbow Health Initiative, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, Steele County Public Health, Tobacco Free Alliance, Twin Cities Medical Society, UCare, Vision In Living Life "Change is Possible", WellShare International and Zumbro Valley Medical Society. Find out more at: smokefreegenmn.org.

SOURCE Minnesotans for a Smoke-Free Generation

Related Links

https://www.smokefreegenmn.org


"MomentSnap is a game changer. Our high-adoption units are outperforming national sales averages by powerful margins," said Chris Schricker, Director of Training at Dave & Buster's. "Not to mention it spares our managers from burning hours on spreadsheet maintenance every week. That means they're out on the floor engaging with guests instead of in the back office. This is a rock star operator's tool."

MomentSnap customers have seen tangible increases in critical business metrics gamified through its employee-facing platform.

"After deploying MomentSnap to our servers and running competitions on a few high-margin, bread and butter menu items, we saw increases in storewide per-person average sales of nearly 4%," said JT Riley, Director of Operations at the Cincinnati-based full-service restaurant chain Taste of Belgium. "I don't have to tell any operator how significant that increase is at scale. MomentSnap is allowing us to claim new money on the table."

In January, MomentSnap launched its in-app communications interface, actualizing its philosophy of top-to-bottom transparency: through TeamStream, the c-suite can scan company leaderboards and send a customized message directly to employees. This unprecedented recognition ability contributed to an average enterprise employee adoption rate of 70% for 2017.

"Our employees are the heart of our business and our success is entirely dependent on their level of engagement," said Ron Bellamy, Chief Improvement Officer at Flynn Restaurant Group. "Through MomentSnap, our entire management team  from the C-suite to our General Managers  can identify high performing servers at our Applebee's locations across the country and send them a personalized message. It's scalable recognition and appreciation, with a few swipes on your device."

MomentSnap's engineering infusion will accelerate development of its product roadmap, including a forthcoming automated people analytics system.

"We're at an inflection point in hourly workplace culture," said Kam Desai, MomentSnap co-founder and CEO. "Enterprise success in the coming decades is predicated upon an engaged, motivated workforce. In seven years, 75 percent of American workers will be millennials. Print-outs and gold star stickers aren't going to cut it anymore."

For more information, please visit www.momentsnap.com.

For press enquiries, contact Grayson Ullman at [email protected].

SOURCE MomentSnap
Montanas Jon Tester is one of the Democratic senators from very red states whos looking to be in some peril heading toward November. Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Amid the fairly large swings in the congressional generic ballot over the last three months, the odds of a Democratic takeover of the House have gone from very high to shockingly low to reasonably strong. As Nate Cohn notes, over the long term Trumps approval ratings and the corresponding congressional polls have been relatively steady. It just doesnt feel that way, given the wild gyrations of daily political news, reflecting in wildly gyrating short-term polling data.

The topic thats received less attention over the last few months is the landscape for U.S. Senate races. Originally (and properly) understood as terrible for Democrats, who hold 26 of the 35 seats up in November (or now 26 of 36 if you add in Mississippis special election), the landscape at first offered Republicans hopes of gaining a filibuster-proof 60 seats, particularly after Donald Trump carried ten states with Democratic senators facing voters in 2018.

But Trumps low popularity during his first year in office, along with relatively high approval ratings for Democratic senators, made Democrats more optimistic as the midterm election year approached. And when Republicans unaccountably lost a Senate seat in Alabama in December, the path to a Democratic takeover of the Senate looked suddenly very real, particularly when combined with the likelihood of a second Senate election in blue-trending Arizona and the recruitment of a formidable Democratic candidate in dark-red Tennessee.

But even as Democratic optimism grew, there were signs of gradual erosion in the position of Democratic senators in states not only carried by Trump but carried very heavily.

Now we have some directly relevant data about the ten Democratic senators from Trump-carried states in the form of head-to-head trial heats as measured by SurveyMonkey for Axios in online polling from mid-February through early March. Where no clear Republican favorite in a given race has been identified, incumbents were tested against generic (unnamed) Republicans.

At this point, four of the Trump Ten senators are trailing generic opponents, and one (Claire McCaskill) is trailing a named opponent (Josh Hawley). Unsurprisingly, Trumps approval ratings in all five states are in the 50s or 60s (as compared to 43 percent nationally, in SurveyMonkeys high-but-not-wildly-so assessment).

Generic opposition can be stronger or weaker than an actual opponent; its mostly a test of basic partisanship. Heidi Heitkamps newly minted opponent, Representative Kevin Cramer, is probably stronger than a generic Republican. The assortment of less-than-gargantuan Republicans who are running against Jon Tester may be easier to beat than a generic candidate. In other cases (notably Joe Donnellys Indiana and Joe Manchins West Virginia), Republicans must navigate fractious primaries and then get their act together for November. And Claire McCaskill, who looked toasty six years ago until GOP nominee Todd Akin self-destructed, is a living reminder that you never know what might happen next.

But to borrow Donald Rumsfelds famous distinction, there are known unknowns along with the unknown unknowns. We know, for example, that Florida governor Rick Scott is going to spend an obscene amount of money in his likely race against Bill Nelson. We dont know if it will be enough to overcome Nelsons relatively strong positioning (according to SurveyMonkey, hes up by nine points against Scott) in a highly competitive state. We also know that Sherrod Brown has a populist profile that might appeal to a significant sliver of 2016 Trump voters. But we dont know if it will be enough in a state where Trumps approval rating is over 50 percent. And a big imponderable everywhere is the extent to which partisan polarization and the continuing unpopularity of Congress make it all but impossible for Democratic senators to survive in states like West Virginia and North Dakota. In states less red than those, Democratic prospects could depend on a wave in Democratic turnout, along with a little luck and a lot of money.

All in all, its probably wise to avoid too many generalizations about the Senate races of 2018 at this point. But its not too early to place in the back of ones mind the fact that in 2020 the Senate landscape will be close to neutral, and should tilt blue in 2022.
Nowadays, Chinese women have got better career development. Liu Qing (Jean Liu), president of Didi Chuxing, a major Chinese ride-sharing company, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2017. While commenting on Liu's achievement, Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, acclaimed her as an innovator whose pursuit and hard work have changed the way the Chinese people commute to and from work, travel and interact with each other.

In fact, female entrepreneurs like Liu Qing have come to the fore in large numbers in China. According to a latest survey, 31 percent of senior roles in Chinese enterprises are held by women. This significant ratio is ahead of the rest of the world.

Women have long been active in almost all trades and professions in China. Today, there is nothing new about women serving as white-collar workers, attendants, computer programmers, engineers, rural e-commerce employees as well as bus drivers. In addition, more and more women have participated in the deliberation and administration of state affairs. In the ongoing First Session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), women account for 24.9 percent of the total number of deputies - setting a new record in the history of the NPC.

Looking back in history, as early as the 1950s, China proposed that, "women can hold up half the sky." There have consistently been proposals submitted during the annual two sessions to safeguard equal rights, such as, the drafting of anti-domestic violence laws, improving the maternity insurance system and increasing the retirement age.

Education is a prerequisite for obtaining quality work, and now, females account for 47 out of every 100 people with higher education in China. Thirty years on from the "Spring Buds Program," 3.57 million disadvantaged girls have gained work skills or started university. At the same time, rapid economic growth has given everyone more opportunities  regardless of gender or age.

Of course, we should applaud the strides made by women, but we must remain vigilant to the long shadow of the patriarchic system which exists, particularly in some rural areas. Women in the workplace still face discrimination, especially in regard to maternity welfare. We look forward to increasing the efforts of the whole of the community to achieve a harmonious, equal and respectful society.

China Mosaic

http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm

New vision of women's development in China

http://www.china.org.cn/video/2018-03/08/content_50682603.htm

About China.org.cn

Founded in 2000, China Internet Information Center (China.org.cn/China.com.cn) is a key state news website under the auspices of the State Council Information Office, and is managed by China International Publishing Group. We provide round-the-clock news service in ten languages. With users from more than 200 countries and regions, we have become China's leading multi-lingual news outlet introducing the country to the outside world.



We are one of the country's authoritative outlets for government press releases and are authorized to cover various major events. "Live Webcast" is our online webcasting service to present State Council Information Office press conferences in both Chinese and English languages. We are reputed for timely and accurate delivery of news and information, and wide interactions with audiences. In addition, we are authorized to publish and live broadcast major events and press conferences of ministries, local government agencies and institutions as well as enterprises.



In the era of mobile internet, we endeavor to create an array of products for mobile devices headed by the multilingual WAP platform and the mobile APP. We also use Chinese and international social media to publish information for different user groups.



In the future, CIIC will continue to offer authoritative information about China, tell China's stories, voice China's opinions, and introduce a vivid, panoramic and multicultural China to the world through multi-language, multi-media and multi-platforms.



SOURCE China.org.cn
Located just south of I-10 between Woods Road and FM 1489, the business park at Twinwood is part of a proposed 14,000-acre master-planned community of low, medium and high-density residential along with retail, hospitality, higher education and office. The property is owned by Houston businessman Putera Sampoerna.

MAN Diesel & Turbo's new North American headquarters, a 137,434 square-foot build-to-suit owned by Houston-based Welcome Group, will house 105,309 square feet of air-conditioned service shop space and 32,125 square feet of office space. The Design/Build project by Houston-based KDW is slated to span one year, beginning in the second quarter of 2018.

The Augsburg, Germany-based manufacturer of marine propulsion systems and turbomachinery will combine its two current operations in Houston and Deer Park in order to broaden its equipment servicing capabilities in the new Twinwood location.

"Our goal has been to bring our two Houston area operations under one roof," notes Tony Ruegger, managing director of MAN Diesel & Turbo. "We're certainly looking forward to expanding our equipment servicing capabilities in Twinwood."

The new plant is expected to employ 142 workers.

"The property offers global companies a convenient west Houston location with immediate access to Interstate 10," says Glenn Plowman, president of Twinwood. "We're thrilled to welcome MAN Diesel & Turbo as our first corporate resident."

MAN Diesel & Turbo represents another in a long line of projects developed by Welcome Group and KDW, including several in Texas for Germany-based companies. The two firms also have teamed to develop millions of square feet of other commercial and industrial projects throughout the state.

"We are proud to kick off the business park at Twinwood and add to our four million square-foot Texas portfolio with a well-respected tenant such as MAN Diesel & Turbo," says Welcome Wilson, Jr., president and CEO of Welcome Group. "After an extensive land search, the Twinwood site was selected for its quality location within the growing west Houston market."

Half of the world's trade is powered by MAN marine engines, including those which power the CSCL Globe, one of the world's largest container ships capable of transporting 19,100 containers, and Pioneering Spirit, the world's largest vessel ever built in terms of gross tonnage, breadth and displacement. MAN Diesel & Turbo also offers a wide range of process turbomachinery, including compressors, steam turbines, expanders, and gas turbines for oil and gas, chemical processing, and general industrial applications.

"Our pre-construction group and in-house architectural team worked with MAN to program its entire campus from the inside out with future phases that will eventually double the square footage of this initial phase," says Keith Dalton, president and CEO of KDW.

Bob Berry and Jacob Bravo of Avison Young represented MAN Diesel & Turbo in the lease negotiations. Welcome Realty Advisors represented Welcome Group.

Acquisition and construction financing was provided through Katie Sandoval of Hancock Whitney Bank. Vince Yokom of the Waller County Economic Development Partnership and Waller County Judge Trey Duhon also collaborated on the project.

SOURCE MAN Diesel & Turbo
NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sixty percent of the nation's adultsor 150 million Americanslive with at least one chronic condition like heart disease, arthritis or hemophilia. And while their chronic diseases may differ, what these Americans share is the need to access quality healthcare through health insurance with no annual or lifetime limits on benefits, irrespective of their pre-existing medical conditions. But with some Members of Congress continuing their campaigns to eliminate patient protections provided by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), the National Hemophilia FoundationNHFtoday launches its own campaign: the 2018 Red Tie Campaign.

NHF's Red Tie Campaign aims to help galvanize a bipartisan Congressional majority to act decisively to protect access to affordable, quality healthcare for people with bleeding disorders and all chronic conditions. Bleeding disorderssuch as hemophilia, von Willebrand disease, and rare factor disordersprevent the blood from clotting normally; can result in extended bleeding after injury, surgery or trauma; and can be fatal if not treated effectively.

"NHF has been the bleeding disorders community's chief advocate since its founding in 1948 and since we've never shied away from a fight, we've been at the forefront of every major public policy effort over the past 70 years," said Val Bias, NHF CEO. "But if there's ever been a time to unite for bleeding disorders and other chronic diseases, it's now and it's through our movement, the Red Tie Campaign at www.RedTieCampaign.org."

NHF issues its call-to-action to Congress on March 8

NHF and over 500 members of the bleeding disorders community from more than 45 states and the District of Columbia formally launch the 2018 Red Tie Campaignand kick-off the observance of NHF's 70th anniversaryon Capitol Hill on March 8 during meetings with nearly 300 Members of Congress and their staffs. The community's advocacy focuses on maintaining the retention of hard-won patient protections provided under the ACA that are vital for people with bleeding disorders and with all rare, chronic and expensive conditions, including:

Continuing the prohibition on annual and lifetime dollar limits on essential health benefits (EHBs), such as doctors' services and prescription drug coverage;

Ensuring that federal standards for the essential health benefits and other protections established by the ACA are maintained so that access to care won't vary dramatically from state-to-state; and

Continuing the requirement that plans offer coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions without charging them more based on their health status.

The bleeding disorders community is also asking Congress to continue federal programs that support the national network of 135 Hemophilia Treatment Centers. These specialized healthcare centers provide expert, multidisciplinary care to individuals with bleeding disorders.

How America's 150 million-strong chronic disease community can engage

Members of the bleeding disorders community and all Americans living with chronic diseases are invited to participate in the Red Tie Campaign by visiting the campaign hub, www.RedTieCampaign.org, to:

Donate to support NHF's: funding of promising research into better treatments and cures; advocacy to preserve and expand access to affordable, effective healthcare; and provision of essential education to individuals with bleeding disorders and healthcare professionals; Sign the letter of support reinforcing the continuation and strengthening of ACA healthcare protections; and Get creative in showing your best red-tie-style using NHF's virtual photo booth and sharing your photo via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using #RedTieCampaign.

"When you visit www.RedTieCampaign.org and make a donation, sign our letter of support, and show us how fashion-forward you can be in wearing our symbol, the red tie, you'll help NHF ensure that people with bleeding disorders live happy, healthy and productive lives," said Bias. "On behalf of our three-million-member community, I thank you for your support."

About the "red tie" and acknowledging Red Tie Campaign sponsors

In 2016, NHF worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to designate as an official U.S. health observance the month of March as Bleeding Disorders Awareness Month. At that time, NHF also introduced the red tie as the community's symbol, reflecting the fact that blood tiesembodied in the color red and the tieare what bind the community together.

NHF wishes to thank the sponsors of the 2018 Red Tie Campaign, including the bleeding disorders community, our 52-chapter network, and the following companies and organizations: Alnylam; Bayer; CSL Behring; CVS Specialty Pharmacy; Genentech; Grifols; The Hemophilia Alliance; Novo Nordisk; Pfizer; and Shire. Learn more at www.RedTieCampaign.org.

About bleeding disorders

More than three million Americans have either hemophilia, von Willebrand disease or rare factor deficiencies, all of which: prevent the blood from clotting normally; can result in extended bleeding after injury, surgery or trauma; and can be fatal if not treated effectively. Learn more at www.hemophilia.org/.

2018 marks NHF's 70th anniversary

NHF (the National Hemophilia Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is dedicated to finding better treatments and cures for inheritable bleeding disorders and to preventing the complications of these disorders through education, advocacy and research. Established in 1948, NHF has 52 chapters throughout the United States. Additional information on NHF and bleeding disorders can be found at www.hemophilia.org/. To locate an NHF chapter near you, visit https://www.hemophilia.org/Community-Resources/Chapter-Directory.

Contact :

Brett Spitale, Tel. 646-784-0368

Email: [email protected]

Beth Marshall, Tel. 646-530-3598

Email: [email protected]

Editor's Note: NHF's Michelle Rice (SVP, External Affairs) and Brett Spitale (VP, Advancement) are available to provide additional insight. For information and/or to schedule an interview, please contact Brett Spitale at 646-784-0368 or [email protected].

SOURCE National Hemophilia Foundation

Related Links

http://www.hemophilia.org


Last year, the UAE government announced a $10 million grant to support rebuilding and recovery efforts in Texas, after Hurricane Harvey devastated the state with torrential rain and historic flooding. While large portions of the state were impacted by Hurricane Harvey, the City of Houston was hit particularly hard. At the peak of flooding, one-third of Houston was under water, and 75 of the city's 275 schools were closed due to water damage.

Given the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Harvey, Ambassador Al Otaiba and UAE Embassy officials are coordinating with local leaders to fully understand the broad needs of Houston's recovery efforts.

"We are committed to helping Houston recover and rebuild after Hurricane Harvey," said Ambassador Al Otaiba. "We want to support our friends in the ways they need it most, and today's discussions will ensure we do just that."

During his trip to Houston, Ambassador Al Otaiba joined other senior leaders from the UAE to celebrate the official opening of the UAE Consulate in Houston.

The Ambassador participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony with UAE Minister of Energy Suhail Mazroui, UAE Minister of State Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Consul General in Houston Saeed Al Mehairi and Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards.

Following the ribbon cutting, the officials spoke at a reception hosted in collaboration with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, to celebrate the Consulate opening and highlight the partnership between the UAE and Houston. The Ambassador and UAE officials also visited with Emirati patients who are receiving care at MD Anderson.

The UAE and MD Anderson have a longstanding relationship, and hundreds of Emirati patients receive treatment at MD Anderson each year. In 2011, the UAE's Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation announced a $150 million grant to MD Anderson to support the Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Building for Personalized Cancer Care. The building was dedicated in April 2016.

"The UAE has deep and strong ties in this community," said Consul General Al Mehairi. "The Consulate in Houston is a testament to our commitment to Houston and the local community."

The UAE Consulate in Houston provides support services to UAE nationals residing in the greater Houston area and works to expand business relationships and cultural exchanges between the UAE and Texas.

For media enquiries contact [email protected].

SOURCE Embassy of the United Arab Emirates

Related Links

http://www.uae-embassy.org


Composed of 65% female leadership team (vice presidents and above), Old Navy is no stranger to the power of women. Gap Inc. is the only U.S. retailer to make the 2018 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index and was the first Fortune 500 company to report equal pay for equal work in 2014.

"We are proud that Old Navy has been at the forefront of supporting and elevating women in the workplace and want to honor the women in history who helped pave that path for us," said Sonia Syngal, President & CEO of Old Navy. "Inspiring future female leaders is something that we can all commit to, and this activation was our way of celebrating them in a uniquely Old Navy way."

Old Navy's "Flower Empower" installations, inspired by the colors and patterns of the brand's floral spring dresses, will be on display and open to the public for everyone to enjoy on Thursday, March 8th at the following locations:

Eleanor Roosevelt  72 nd Street and Riverside Drive

 72 Street and Riverside Drive Fearless Girl (with a floral nod from her counterpart the Charging Bull)  8 Broadway (at Trinity Plaza )

) Gertrude Stein  Bryant Park (south east side of the park)

 (south east side of the park) Golda Meir  1411 Broadway (corner of 39th Street and Broadway)

 1411 Broadway (corner of 39th Street and Broadway) Harriet Tubman  122 nd Street and Frederick Douglass Blvd.

 122 Street and Frederick Douglass Blvd. Joan of Arc  93rd Street and Riverside Drive

The brand invites everyone to pay tribute to these powerful women, share photos and spread awareness with @OldNavy and #hipowered.

As an ongoing celebration of sheroes, Old Navy is supporting Monumental Women, a movement dedicated to public representations of important women, with a $25,000 donation to the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund. The fund is committed to creating a monument to women suffragists in New York City's Central Park, where all 23 historical statues currently honor male figures.

About Old Navy

Old Navy is a global apparel and accessories brand that makes current American essentials accessible to every family. Originated in 1994, the brand celebrates the democracy of style through on-trend, playfully optimistic, affordable and high quality product. A division of San Francisco-based Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS), Old Navy brings a fun, energizing shopping environment to its customers in more than 1,000 stores around the world. For more information, please visit www.oldnavy.com.

About the Stanton and Anthony Statue Fund and Monumental Women

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund, with its campaign Monumental Women, seeks to honor all the women who fought for the right to vote in its proposed Central Park Monument, as well as to promote the interest in, and knowledge of, Women's History. The Statue Fund is a 501(c)(3) charity: monumentalwomen.org.

Media Contacts:

Dava Huber

[email protected]

212-206-4678

Caitlin Kelly

[email protected]

212-230-1800

SOURCE Old Navy

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PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Onkos Surgical, Inc., a specialty medtech company dedicated to advancing innovation for the surgical oncology market, announced today that Dr. Steven Gitelis and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, has entered the first patient in the S urgical O ncology R esearch T eam (SORTTM) Registry. The SORT Registry, sponsored by Onkos Surgical, is the first of its kind, multicenter, platform designed to prospectively collect functional, psychosocial and oncological outcomes.

"This is a major milestone for Onkos and the musculoskeletal oncology community of surgeons and patients. When we started our company, we made a commitment that we would place a large investment in collecting prospective outcomes for the musculoskeletal oncology patient," said Patrick Treacy CEO and Co-founder of Onkos Surgical. "The SORT Registry is a cloud-based platform that will allow surgeons to collect prospective data and collaborate with other institutions to drive larger data sets. We are the first and only company to invest in a registry of this kind. We believe the registry will provide meaningful information that will drive innovation while providing clinicians with data that may lead to improved patient outcomes."

Steven Gitelis, MD, Onkos Surgical Chief Medical Officer and Associate Dean for Surgical Services at Rush University said, "This is an unprecedented opportunity for my musculoskeletal oncology colleagues to collaborate in a way that will answer important questions. The SORT Registry provides a research platform that will enable individual institutions to prospectively collect their own data while partnering with other leading institutions around the country to answer questions that will potentially impact how we treat patients in the future. In the past, small data sets have impacted the ability to truly change the paradigm of patient care. This registry has the potential to change that." Dr. Gitelis is also a Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Rush.

"We have several leading cancer institutions around the country who are interested in this platform," said Jerry D'Alessio, PhD, Onkos VP of R&D and Advanced Engineering. We spent a tremendous amount of time refining the protocol and analytical tools to enable surgeons to prospectively assess functional, psychosocial and oncologic outcomes. The cloud-based platform allows the surgeons to design prospective studies and enables patients to participate in the analysis of their outcomes. We are excited to expand this registry over the coming year."

Mr. Treacy added, "Onkos has made a commitment to musculoskeletal oncology. We continue to make investments that will advance innovation and we know that our singular and dedicated focus to this group of surgeons and patients may lead to meaningful improvements in patient care."

About Onkos Surgical

Based in Parsippany, NJ., Onkos Surgical is a privately held surgical oncology company founded in 2015. Onkos Surgical believes surgical oncology deserves attention, focus and innovation. Through dedication and strategic partnerships, Onkos Surgical will advance surgical oncology solutions and advocate for and support the surgeons and caregivers that dedicate their lives to the surgical treatment of cancer.

For more information, visit www.onkossurgical.com

Media contacts:

Sean P. Curry

Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations

[email protected]

(973) 264-5400

SOURCE Onkos Surgical

Related Links

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EDISON, N.J., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pankaj Gupta, M.D., M.B.A., is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Lifetime Member in the field of Medicine in recognition of his role as Senior Medical Director and Geriatrician at Emblem Health.

A not-for-profit health insurance company that delivers high quality and focused medical care, specializing in services tailored to geriatric patients, Emblem Health has provided services to their clients for decades. Dedicated to offering eminent customer service, Emblem Health is dedicated to the health and wellness of their patients.

Amassing over twenty years of experience in the field of Medicine, Dr. Gupta is a highly respected physician. Senior Medical Director and Geriatrician at Emblem Health, throughout his career, Dr. Gupta has attained expertise within the areas of healthcare management and administration. In his current role, Dr. Gupta "assists in providing clinical expertise and business direction to support medical management programs and promote the delivery of high quality focused medical care."

Attributing his success to his perseverance, drive, and working hard for a 'common mission,' when asked his advice to newcomers in the medical industry Dr. Gupta states the importance of "doing what's best for the patient." Dr. Gupta believes that "the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others" as stated by Mahatma Gandhi.

Prior to his role in the medical industry, Dr. Gupta worked as an international banker. Since becoming a medical doctor, Dr. Gupta has held increasingly senior positions in the healthcare industry, including Chief Medical Officer for Senior Whole Health in New York, and a leadership role with Humana  a Medicare Advantage Health Plan. Additionally, Dr. Gupta has served as a Medical Director for UnitedHealth Group from 2007  2013.

Throughout the course of his education and training, Dr. Gupta attained his Medical degree from St. George's University School of Medicine in Grenada in 1996. Additionally, Dr. Gupta holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Cornell University S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Colgate University. Dr. Gupta completed his Geriatric Fellowship from Harvard Medical School.

In recognition of his professional accolades, Dr. Gupta was the recipient of the 2017 Top Doctor Award.

When not working, he enjoys nature photography and scuba diving in the Caribbean as well as Dee Jaying.

Dr. Gupta dedicates this recognition to his parents and his wife for their continuous support.

For more information, visit www.emblemhealth.com.

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

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Roybal , an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UCSF, won the inaugural award for his groundbreaking development of Synthetic Notch (synNotch) receptors. While this work melded synthetic biology with immunotherapy, an increasingly important pillar of treatment in oncology, his research has potential to make a much wider impact in biology and medicine.

"It's an honor, and exciting on many levels," said Roybal of the award. "I'm still amazed at the widespread interest in the work. We have received countless requests to collaborate on projects that range from fundamental biology research to applied research for the treatment of cancer, autoimmunity and regenerative medicine. It's an incredible experience to have your work widely adopted and used across many fields of research. The award reflects this, which I am very proud of."

The honor comes with a $25,000 cash prize. Roybal's award-winning essay, "Refining Cell Therapy," will be published in the March 9 issue of the journal Science.

"Kole's work is designed to expand what's possible in cell therapy and builds on his previous first-in-class studies," said Fred Ramsdell, Ph.D., vice president of research at the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. "That is one reason why the Parker Institute has chosen to support his research. This is just the beginning, and we're all very excited to see what comes next."

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, or CAR-T therapy, is one of the most promising new immunotherapy treatments for cancer. The first such cell therapies were approved for the first time in August 2017 to treat blood cancers. In essence, T-cells from a patient are extracted and engineered to identify and kill a patient's cancer cells. Those pumped-up T-cells are then increased in number and infused back into the patient.

However, CAR-T can cause side effects such as inflammation, or in some cases, harm normal tissue. Solid tumors, which create a hostile environment for T-cells, remain a challenge as well.

Roybal, along with former colleague Leonardo Morsut, Ph.D., sought to engineer a solution to these challenges by creating a new class of synthetic T-cell receptors while the two were postdoctoral researchers in the lab of Wendell Lim, Ph.D., at UCSF. In seminal papers on the synNotch system, they demonstrated that T-cells could be engineered to recognize distinctive signals in their environment and react in a specific way.

When sensing a certain signal, for example, the cells could turn on a gene for a disease-fighting antibody, or turn off a gene to prevent a T-cell from wearing out when fighting a solid tumor. SynNotch cells could also deliver drugs directly to tumors, sidestepping the toxicity associated with systemic drug delivery.

Because the cells can also be programmed to recognize multiple targets on a cancer cell, it means treatment can be better aimed at tumors only, helping cut down on cross-reaction with normal tissue and unwanted side effects.

This framework for engineering cells that could be programmed to sense things in the environment and act in a specific way has opened up possibilities across basic science and medicine, according to the award committee.

"In principle, this synthetic switch could respond to cancer and autoimmune conditions, and possibly disorders of nerve and muscle cells," said Science biomedicine editor Priscilla Kelly, Ph.D., in a statement. "Roybal's work shows how cutting-edge science can deliver therapeutic opportunities for currently intractable diseases."

Roybal will receive his award in Germany on March 20.

Learn more about the prize on the Science website.

About the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy

The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy brings together the best scientists, clinicians and industry partners to build a smarter and more coordinated cancer immunotherapy research effort.

The Parker Institute is an unprecedented collaboration between the country's leading immunologists and cancer centers. The program started by providing institutional support to six academic centers, including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford Medicine, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Pennsylvania and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The institute also provides programmatic support for top immunotherapy investigators, including a group of researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Robert Schreiber, Ph.D., of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Nina Bhardwaj, M.D., Ph.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Phil Greenberg, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The Parker Institute network also includes more than 40 industry and nonprofit partners, more than 60 labs and more than 300 of the nation's top researchers focused on treating the deadliest cancers.

The goal is to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies capable of turning most cancers into curable diseases. The institute was created through a $250 million grant from The Parker Foundation.

SOURCE Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy

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HARRISBURG, Pa., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority's annual "I Am Patient Safety" contest reveals the exemplary patient safety efforts of Pennsylvania healthcare workers.

This year's contest expanded its outreach; specifically attracting nominations from long-term care and ambulatory surgical facilities. The contest added nine nomination categories and patients, with facility permission, had the opportunity to nominate healthcare workers who they felt deserved recognition.

Nominations from this year's contest told stories of patient-centered care, process improvement initiatives, innovative solutions to current patient safety challenges, and extraordinary measures to keep harm from reaching patients.

"I Am Patient Safety is our way of reminding healthcare workers that they are making a difference; some through their daily job functions, others from going the extra mile, and others from thinking outside the box. Their efforts support the Authority's mission of safe healthcare for all patients," said the Authority's executive director, Regina Hoffman.

In its fifth year, "I Am Patient Safety" recognizes and celebrates 10 individuals or teams selected from 206 nominations.

The Authority publicly recognizes each winner leading up to Patient Safety Awareness Week 2018 (March 11-17) through a robust social media campaign and formal award ceremony at the Authority's inaugural Pennsylvania Patient Safety Summit (P2S2), scheduled for April 5, 2018.

"The contest's growth indicates that people are proud of their work regarding patient safety. These individuals deserve to be recognized," said Hoffman. "The real reward is that the information, education, and strategies for safe patient care are being applied to truly make patients safer."

For more information about the Authority, patient safety topics, Advisory articles, and safety tips for patients, please visit patientsafety.pa.gov.

The Authority's mission is to improve the quality of healthcare in Pennsylvania by collecting and analyzing patient safety information, developing solutions to patient safety issues, and sharing this information through education and collaboration. Its vision is safe healthcare for all patients.

Like the Authority on Facebook

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SOURCE Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority

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AMSTERDAM and LAS VEGAS, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, today announced participation in two programs to help improve medication adherence rates among at-risk, high-cost patient populations. Leveraging the Philips Medication Adherence Solution (PMAS), Lynn Community Health Center (LCHC) of Lynn, Mass. will work with Partners Connected Health of Partners HealthCare [1] to implement a Philips connected in-home medication dispensing solution to help improve treatment plan compliance among patients with mental illness. Triad HealthCare Network of Greensboro, N.C. will also incorporate Philips medication dispensing device in a program designed to improve patient medication adherence among chronic disease patients within the Medicare Advantage population.

As health systems work to better manage high-risk, high-cost patient populations to deliver value-based care successfully, it is critical they have access to the right data with actionable insights. PMAS offers care providers data-driven insights to help optimize medication management and increase patient engagement. By partnering with spencer Health Solutions, Philips offers a connected ecosystem: a monitored in-home dispensing device, pre-packaged, unit-dose medications from mail order and specialty pharmacies, a clinician portal and a caregiver app. The advanced solution provides clinicians, pharmacists and caregivers with daily notifications of non-adherent patients, helping to facilitate delivery of proactive and preventive care, while driving down costs of medical complications related to non-adherence, such as unplanned hospital visits.

"Medication non-adherence costs the U.S. health system over $310 billion every year,[2] and results in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths annually.[3]Philips data aggregation platforms provide continuous and seamless availability of data and their interpretation to help improve patient outcomes and financial results," said Derek Ross, Business Leader of Population Health Management, Philips. "Participating in these programs with Partners Connected Health and Triad HealthCare Network helps our customers improve medication adherence of their highest-acuity patients, and to deliver better value-based care."

"Patients on complex medication regimens are at a high-risk for being unable to take their medication as prescribed. We have used technology successfully in the past to help such patients manage their medications. This would be our first trial in patients with mental illness, and if successful, would open an exciting opportunity to manage these patients in more effective ways," said Dr. Kamal Jethwani, Senior Director at Partners Connected Health.

"Barriers to optimal health outcomes for our most vulnerable patients remain extensive and persistent," said Emily Johnson, LCHC's Director of Community Outreach. "With this program and our partnership with Partners HealthCare and Philips, our goals are to improve medication adherence rates through connected technology, build a foundation of intensive and ongoing care coordination, and cut costs of unplanned hospital visits."

"Medication non-adherence is a multibillion dollar problem," said James Osborne, MD, FACP, Senior Medical Director for Population Health, Cone Health, Triad HealthCare Network. "Through this program, we hope to discover an effective method to give our complex patients with a history of non-adherence the ability to stay on track easily. In turn, we aim to reduce unnecessary emergency transports and hospitalizations, and more effectively manage the cost of care."

Programs designed to help improve medication adherence

LCHC's program, funded by the Mass Health Policy Commission, will specifically target patients enrolled in MassHealth Primary Care Clinician (PCC) plans who are over 20 years old with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or major depression. Inadequate medication adherence among this population is one of the main causes for LCHC's inpatient admissions and emergency department visits. Patients with complex mental illness are often on intricate treatment regimens with five or more prescriptions, and the behavioral challenges associated with their illnesses contribute to the likelihood of uncoordinated care and medication non-adherence.

Through a multi-faceted approach of intensive care coordination, clinical pharmacy consultation and Philips connected in-home medication dispenser, LCHC's study aims to demonstrate a reduction in overall healthcare utilization by 15 percent, home health utilization by 40 percent, and both acute inpatient and outpatient utilization by 10 percent by the end of November 2018. By focusing on the highest risk patients, LCHC projects a savings of $1.4 million by the completion of the program.

Separately, Triad HealthCare Network's program aims to enroll patients covered under three leading Medicare Advantage Part D health plans, with the goal of improving medication adherence rates, and consequently, overall patient health. Patients within this particular population tend to be the highest utilizers of their health systems and often live with chronic conditions that require complex prescription regimens.

The success of Triad HealthCare Network's pilot program will be determined by performance indicators such as reduced costs of care and increased rates of medication adherence. Insights generated from PMAS, along with refill histories and pharmacy claims data, will assist healthcare providers and insurers to design a streamlined approach in caring for large, at-risk populations enrolled in the Medicare Advantage Part D health plans.

Philips Population Health Management

PMAS is part of Philips' Population Health Management portfolio, which aims to achieve the quadruple aim of healthcare  better clinical outcome, lower cost, improved patient and staff satisfaction  via integrated solutions that include analytics, remote patient management and virtual care programs, and connected devices to help provide high quality care and manage cost and utilization while improving outcomes and revenue. For more information on Philips full suite of integrated solutions, visit booth #3812 at the 2018 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition taking place March 4-9 at the Sands Expo in Las Vegas, NV. For updates on Philips presence at HIMSS, follow @PhilipsLiveFrom and visit www.philips.com/himss.

[1] The project described is supported by an Innovation Investment Award from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC). The contents of this release are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the HPC.

[2] New England Health Care Institute (NEHI), 2009.

[3] National Council on Patient Information and Education. Accelerating Progress in Prescription Medicine Adherence: The Adherence Action Agenda. A National Action Plan to Address America's "Other Drug Problem." October 2013. http://bemedicinesmart.org

For further information, please contact:

Kathy O'Reilly

Philips Group Press Office

Tel. : +1 978-221-8919

E-mail : [email protected]

Twitter: @kathyoreilly

Silvie Casanova

Philips North America

Tel: +1-978-659-7467

E-mail: [email protected]

About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2017 sales of EUR 17.8 billion and employs approximately 74,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.

SOURCE Royal Philips

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He went to Jared. Photo: Handout/Presidency of Mexico

Over the past two weeks, weve learned that the FBI does not believe Jared Kushner can be trusted with top-secret intelligence; that at least four foreign governments have discussed trying to influence American policy by manipulating Kushners inexperience and perceived susceptibility to bribery; that the government of Qatar rejected an investment pitch from Kushners father just weeks before Kushner (reportedly) backed a blockade against that core U.S. ally; that Kushners family business won $500 million in financing from a pair of American firms, right after their top executives had White House meetings with Jared; and that all of this has made the presidents son-in-law a focal point for Robert Muellers counterintelligence investigation.

And yet Kushner is still conducting high-level diplomacy for the United States. On Wednesday, the senior White House adviser traveled to Mexico for a meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto. Relations between the U.S. and its southern neighbor are more fraught than at any time in recent memory. NAFTA negotiations have stalled; disputes over Trumps border wall have led to the cancellation of two meetings between the U.S. president and Pena Nieto; and Trumps newly unveiled steel tariffs threaten to spark a trade war on the North American continent.

So clearly, a 37-year-old real-estate heir  with no background in diplomacy, specialized knowledge of geopolitics, or permanent security clearance  should be the one in charge of ironing things out. Who cares if Mexico happens to be one of the four nations that American intelligence officials caught plotting to manipulate Kushner through bribery? And anyway, its not like Jared will be handling these affairs by himself. After all, Mexico is one of the few countries that still has a United States ambassador. Now, take a sip of tea and read this account of Jareds trip from the New York Times:

Mr. Kushner, who also met with Mexicos foreign minister, did not invite the American ambassador  Roberta S. Jacobson, a diplomat with more than 30 years of experience in the region  to join him in the meetings, according to a senior American official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

This is not the way foreign policy normally is, or should be, conducted, said Christopher Sabatini, a lecturer at Columbia University. The sending of the presidents son-in-law  someone with no experience in Mexican-U.S. relations  is another example of the de-professionalization and personalization of diplomacy that will hurt U.S. interests and leverage in the region.

If Jared Kushners family wasnt desperately seeking $500 million loans from entities tied to foreign governments, his position in our government would still be a scandal. Delegating authority over vast swaths of U.S. foreign policy to your son-in-law  whose chief qualification for such a role is the business savvy that allowed him to make a $1.2 billion bet on the American housing market in 2007  is inherently corrupt. Allowing said son-in-law to retain that authority  while a special counsel is investigating allegations that he abused his influence over American foreign policy to advance his business interests  is madness.
COSTA MESA, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, March 29th, PIRCH's Glendale Showroom will celebrate the launch of Lynx's new ceramic burner, a first in the industry. The event will be an opportunity for PIRCH to thank loyal clients and vendor partners, while continuing PIRCH's homecoming celebration with the brand's return to its California roots. The festivities will include tastings prepared by Lynx's Executive Chef Andres Dangond using the new ceramic burner technology, which is more reliable, clean, and responsive than the traditional brass burner.

Alen Tanemura, Director of Appliances and Outdoor, says: "Lynx's new ceramic burner has once again added revolutionary innovation to their product that will provide our customers with a vastly improved burner! PIRCH has always had a relentless focus on building a curated assortment centered around disruptive brands who provide meaningful innovation, reliable product, and offer unrivaled support to our customers and team. With this in mind, we are honored to support Lynx with the launch of their new ceramic burner."

The creation of Lynx Grills was the vision of a group of innovators who, for more than 30 years, manufactured stainless steel products for the commercial restaurant industry. Today, Lynx Grills uses the same engineering to create grills that are made to last by offering a lifetime warranty against rust  even under the most extreme weather conditions. With continuous innovation as a hallmark of the company, Lynx's design engineers have continually introduced a long list of "firsts" to the industry. For more information about Lynx Grills, visit www.lynxgrills.com.

PIRCH Showrooms promise guests and the design trade an elevated experience that will educate and inform, whether shopping for a single appliance or seeking inspiration for a complete renovation. Their famed "try before you buy" concept is accomplished in working kitchens where a curated selection of the world's best appliances can be tested, and in the "Sanctuary," where customers can try working showerheads and faucets for themselves before purchasing. Highly trained experts are ready to service a project from inception to delivery and installation, providing the industry's leading "peace of mind." PIRCH has showrooms in Costa Mesa, Glendale, Rancho Mirage, and San Diego.

For event details and press inquiries, please contact:

Ellie Sohm (212) 535-5518 [email protected]

SOURCE PIRCH

Related Links

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MORRISTOWN, N.J., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- PLT Health Solutions, Inc. announced the appointment of Seth Flowerman as President for the company. It also announced the appointment of Devin Stagg as Chief Operating Officer. Former President & CEO Paul Flowerman will continue to serve as Chairman. The new senior management structure of PLT is consistent with the transition of the company from a supplier of ingredients to a comprehensive solutions development and commercialization partner for consumer products companies in supplements, food and beverage markets. Seth Flowerman joined PLT in 2010 after the previous start-up he founded was acquired. He was most recently Executive Vice President, where he oversaw PLT's corporate leadership team, corporate strategic initiatives, strategic alliances and oversaw the expansion of the company's international business.

Seth Flowerman has been appointed President of PLT Health Solutions. Devin Stagg has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of PLT Health Solutions.

According to Paul Flowerman, Chairman of PLT Health Solutions, the appointment of Seth Flowerman as President is an acknowledgement of his role in the dramatic growth of the company in sales, quality of strategic vision and experienced workforce in the last five years. "Over the past five years, Seth brought his distinctive and informed business vision to PLT, working closely with colleagues and partners to build on our strengths and develop and implement our 2020 Strategic Growth Plan. He has positively impacted policies and processes throughout the company and has led the development and execution of several of our most successful growth initiatives," he said. "We live in a world where the role of the traditional ingredient supplier is being radically transformed  wherein we are being called upon to be highly innovative, exhibit scientific leadership and revolutionize transparency and quality initiatives  at the same time as we work in a highly competitive business environment. While Seth is the 3rd generation of the Flowerman family leadership at PLT, he brings experience and strengths uniquely focused on the company's future," he added.

Devin Stagg: Finance, Entrepreneurial & Natural Products Experience

A member of the company's Executive Team, Devin Stagg will be responsible for leadership and management across the organization in his new position as Chief Operating Officer, as well as driving the organization to achieve sales, profitability, and other business and corporate culture goals. He is also responsible for developing and managing strategic partnerships that are essential to maintaining PLT's innovation pipeline. Prior to this new position, he was PLT's Vice President, Strategy and Business Development.

According to Paul Flowerman: "Devin Stagg has made major contributions to strengthening our internal and external business platforms and has helped develop our growth strategies while driving business performance and identifying innovative business opportunities for PLT."

Paul Flowerman: 40-year Leader in Natural Products Industry

Paul Flowerman, who is continuing in the role of Chairman of PLT Health Solutions, began working at the company in 1976. He was responsible for transitioning the company from an importer/distributor into an ingredient-based solutions provider to consumer products companies  via partnerships developed with manufacturers around the world. Paul has been a leader and an advocate within the Natural Products in developing many of the standards that are today an increasingly important part of the transparency and quality transformation that is affecting the industry today. As for his new role, he says: "Consumers are giving preference to brands that deliver on both fulfilling an important need and that contribute to making the world a better place. I am excited to be actively exploring how PLT may better accomplish that second goal during the months and years ahead."

Seth Flowerman is the President and CEO of PLT Health Solutions and holds an MBA in Strategic Operations and a B.Sc in Applied Economics & Management from Cornell University. Immediately prior to joining PLT Health Solutions, Mr. Flowerman was the President & Founder of Career Explorations, LLC  a staffing firm he formed in 2003 and successfully exited in 2010. He was previously named one of BusinessWeek's 25 Under 25 Entrepreneurs and has been featured in a broad range of publications including Forbes, The Boston Globe, and Yahoo! Finance among others.

Devin Stagg is a graduate of the College of Arts & Sciences at Cornell University where he earned a BA in Economics and is also a graduate of the Program in Leadership Development at Harvard Business School. Among other roles prior to PLT health Solutions, Mr. Stagg worked in equity capital markets for Citigroup Global Capital Markets, advising corporate clients on products ranging from initial public offerings to convertible bonds.

Media Contact: Company Contact: Mark Falconer Steve Fink Sciencewerks PLT Health Solutions, Inc. Voice: 407-412-9705 Voice: 973-984-0900 x214 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE PLT Health Solutions
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The WT Group, a Hoffman Estates-based engineering, design and consulting firm in business for more than 45 years, has launched a major rebrand to position the firm for future growth.

"We have established a new corporate identity and strategic brand presence for our company that more clearly defines who we are and what we do," said Troy N. Triphahn, chief operating officer of the WT Group. "As a company with a broad portfolio of services, our vision is to provide the marketplace with a clear view of the full range of capabilities we provide to clients here in the Chicago area and across the country."

For nearly half a century, the WT Group has delivered a growing portfolio of engineering, design and consulting services through a series of entrepreneurial adventures, including Innovative Aquatic Design, Corporate Design and Development Group, Recreation Accessibility Group and Pratum Construction. These divisions retained logos separate from W-T Engineering, building on their individual reputations in the market. Today, the launch of the new WT Group name, logo, integrated corporate identity program and redesigned website represents the first major rebranding in the history of the organization, bringing all of WT Group's business units together under a unified, corporate umbrella.

With a corporate name and branding system incorporating a distinctive bold logo and color scheme, the WT Group is positioned as a forward-looking organization committed to serving businesses and municipalities facing challenging engineering and design agendas.

"Along with the rollout of our new brand identity, we've launched a totally redesigned WT Group website," Triphahn said. "We wanted to provide our clients and visitors with a view of the WT Group and everything we do that fully encompasses what our organization stands for and what our capabilities are today." The site details the diverse industries served and solutions provided by the firm in addition to a detailed project portfolio and other business information. Visit the new WT Group website at wtengineering.com.

The new website, brand and corporate identity were recently introduced to the entire WT Group team by Triphahn and other members of the organization's senior management team. Supporting the brand rollout is the WT Group's value statement: "Engineering with Precision, Pace and Passion."

In addition to the firm's presence as a major provider of engineering and design services, Triphahn noted that one of the WT Group's core values is its commitment to giving back to the community. The company's charitable arm, the WT Foundation, actively promotes the development of new talent in the field of engineering through educational assistance and scholarships to prospective engineering students. Scholarships are given each year to a graduating senior pursuing a college degree in engineering from the local high school district. The WT Foundation also grants scholarships to a child of a WT Group employee.

In addition, the WT Group supports the Children's Advocacy Center of North & Northwest Cook County, which exists to provide multidisciplinary approaches to severe physical and child sexual abuse cases. Another local organization allied with the WT Group is Friends of HE Parks, the charitable arm of the Hoffman Estates Park District. The agency provides a variety of village parks, facilities and recreational opportunities for families of all income levels.

"Community involvement is as much a part of the WT Group's DNA as our focus on delivering premier engineering and consulting services," said Triphahn.

About the WT Group

Headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, the WT Group is a diversified engineering, design and consulting firm delivering the expertise of over 150 skilled professionals serving clients in all 50 states. The firm's engineering solutions include civil, structural, mechanical, aquatic, telecommunications, along with solutions in land surveying, accessibility consulting, design & program management and construction management.

Media Contact: Nicole Ciesla, NiKnack Marketing, (224) 532-1051, [email protected]

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SOURCE WT Group

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http://wtengineering.com


OAKLAND, Calif., March 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Members of the Bay Area News Group newsroom staff, winners of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the deadly Ghost Ship Fire, publicly denounced their corporate owner's business practices Thursday, according to the Pacific Media Workers Guild, a San Francisco-based labor union affiliated with The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America.

Journalists including Thomas Peele, Harry Harris, Matthias Gafni, David DeBolt, Erin Baldassari, Aaron Davis, Karl Mondon and Ray Chavez planned to gather outside the Oakland offices of the East Bay Times on Thursday, March 8, at 12 noon, to issue a statement condemning the ongoing layoffs and other cutbacks by Digital First Media and its majority owner, Alden Global Capital.

It appears to be the first public protest of its kind, in which members of a Pulitzer Prize winning team have gone public in denouncing the anti-journalism policies of their own employer.

Digital First Media, the nation's second largest newspaper chain, owns the Bay Area News Group, which includes the East Bay Times and The Mercury News, along with the Monterey Herald and many other news organizations in California and around the country. Staff at more than a dozen DFM properties are represented by The NewsGuild, a sector of the Communications Workers of America.

Alden Global Capital, a secretive vulture hedge fund, and DFM were recently sued by another hedge fund for diverting company revenues to invest in unrelated Alden investment projects and real estate.

The statement issued by the BANG news workers reads in part:

"We have dedicated our careers to informing the community through high-quality journalism. Every day, we strive to live up to principles enshrined in the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. One of these principles calls on journalists to "expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations."

"Today, we the journalists of the East Bay Times and Mercury News, joined by our colleagues throughout the region and all around the country, are taking action in accord with that principle by publicly denouncing the ongoing destruction of our newsrooms at the hands of our company's owners, a secretive Wall Street hedge fund, Alden Global Capital.

"We are distressed by the loss of valued colleagues, forced to depart in repeated rounds of layoffs ordered on behalf of Alden, the majority owner of Digital First Media, the nation's second largest newspaper chain, which includes the Bay Area News Group. Some of the deepest job cuts came just days after we won the Pulitzer. And the layoffs continue to this day  with more to come."

"Alden's slash-and-burn policies are gutting newsrooms, undermining the public trust upon which communities deeply depend," the journalists declared.

Reporters, photographers and others gathered along the shores of Lake Merritt on Thursday to issue the statement  a stinging public rebuke of Alden-DFM, which has been sued by another hedge fund for allegedly diverting company revenues to dubious Alden investment schemes.

"Alden's goal, according to a respected news industry analyst, is to extract maximum profits before shutting down or selling whatever is left of our company in two or three years.

"There is no long-term strategy other than milking and continuing to cut," said Harvard Nieman Lab's Ken Doctor. "Their view is that in 2021, they'll deal with that then. Whatever remnants are there, they'll try to find a buyer."

The statement was signed initially by: Thomas Peele and George Kelly, Co-Chairs, BANG-East Bay Guild Unit; and by Lisa Krieger and Karl Mondon, Co-Chairs, Mercury News Guild Unit. Names of other supporters are being added.

For more information and a copy of the full statement and fact sheet: Please visit dfmworkers.org and aldenexposed.com. Follow us on Twitter: #AldenExposed

For more information, Contact:

Carl Hall

Executive Officer

Pacific Media Workers Guild

o 415-421-6833 c 415-298-2265

[email protected]

SOURCE The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America
CANTON, Ohio, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Republic Steel, the nation's leading provider of special bar quality (SBQ) steel, today announced that it is positioned to restart its Lorain facility, including its idled electric arc furnace, casters and rolling mills, on short notice as a response to the recently announced steel tariff.

Republic is prepared to respond quickly to an anticipated uptick in demand across the nation. Republic currently has open capacity at its Canton melt shop and would restart Lorain which would provide more than a million tons of new production capacity to support the SBQ bar & coil and seamless tube round markets. This could result in Republic bringing back 1,000+ jobs to its Lorain, OH facility. Republic anticipates that it would take a few months to hire and train employees and restart its idled equipment. "Republic is more than prepared to support market demand that has been previously supplied by imports" says Jaime Vigil, President & CEO. He continues "we maintained our Lorain facility while it's been idled waiting for the opportunity to restart and it appears that time is finally here."

About Republic Steel

Republic Steel is North America's leading supplier of special bar quality (SBQ) steel, a highly engineered product. Republic's products include hot rolled steel bars, cold finished steel bars, cold heading quality rod and wire and leaded steel bars. With headquarters in Canton, Ohio and steelmaking capabilities in Canton, and Lorain, Ohio, the company also operates value-added rolling and finishing facilities in Canton, Lorain, Massillon, and Solon Ohio; and Lackawanna, N.Y. Republic employs approximately 850 people.

For Additional Information Contact:

Ted Thielens

Republic Steel

[email protected]

SOURCE Republic Steel
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. and BOSTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Riverside Partners, a Boston based private equity firm, announced today that its portfolio company, Loftware, Inc., the global leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions, with over 5,000 customers in 100 countries, has acquired Gap Systems, a leading provider of SaaS based artwork management solutions headquartered in the United Kingdom. With this announcement, Loftware extends its global presence and offers a new cloud-based digital platform with solutions that redefine how enterprises create, manage and print complex labeling and packaging artwork, and scale across their operations.

With this acquisition, Loftware unites complementary companies, teams and solutions. Loftware dynamically addresses a complete range of customer and regulatory mandates by producing mission-critical barcode labels and documents across the supply chain, while Gap Systems controls complex packaging artwork processes throughout the product lifecycle. Together, they uniquely address the full spectrum of labeling and packaging artwork requirements across a broad range of industries, with a special focus on Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, Manufacturing, Food & Beverage, Chemical, Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods and more. The combined platformwhether used for labeling, artwork management or bothenables customers to improve time to market, mitigate risk, reduce supply chain complexity, optimize costs and increase agility.

"Several years ago, Loftware partnered with Riverside Partners to embark on a meaningful expansion of our business. With the support of the team at Riverside, we are transforming the Label and Artwork Management space by delivering this unprecedented platform," commented Loftware President and CEO, Robert O'Connor, Jr.

David Belluck, General Partner at Riverside Partners, added, "Our investment thesis for Loftware anticipated growth both organically and through selective strategic acquisitions to extend its leadership position in enterprise labeling. With their sustained performance and now the acquisition of Gap Systems, Loftware is well on its way to achieving those objectives."

This acquisition provides customers with complete range of capabilities all in one scalable, highly configurable set of solutions. Available for SaaS, cloud-based or on-premise deployment, the platform integrates with existing business processes and empowers business users to manage variability with dynamic, data-driven printing to ensure greater consistency and accuracy.

"Loftware and Gap offer truly complementary solutions that the market needs, especially as companies look to standardize on a single platform that can create, manage and print labels and packaging artwork across worldwide operations," stated Gap Systems Founder and CEO, Paul Goldberg. "Now internal and external stakeholders in packaging, regulatory, quality, operations, manufacturing, supply chain and marketing can address a more extensive set of requirements."

About Loftware

Loftware, Inc. is the global market leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions with more than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries. Offering the industry's most comprehensive labeling solution, Loftware's enterprise software integrates SAP, Oracle and other enterprise applications to produce mission-critical barcode labels, documents, and RFID Smart tags across the supply chain. Loftware's design, native print, and built-in business rules functionality drives topline revenue, increases customer satisfaction, and maximizes supply chain efficiency for customers. With over 30 years of industry leadership, Loftware's Enterprise Labeling Solutions and best practices enable leading companies to meet their customer-specific and regulatory requirements with unprecedented speed and agility.

About Gap Systems

Based in Leeds, UK, Gap Systems has been a noted leader in Artwork Management for over 15 years, providing solutions to leading companies in consumer-packaged goods, food & beverage, pharmaceuticals and other industries. With a focus on helping companies in regulated industries achieve compliance, Gap Systems offers solutions designed to support complex packaging artwork processes throughout the product lifecycle and across a range of stakeholders.

About Riverside Partners

Founded in 1989, Riverside Partners is a middle market private equity firm currently investing Riverside Fund V, L.P. The fund focuses on growth-oriented companies primarily in the healthcare and technology industries. Riverside Partners is particularly experienced at partnering with founders, owners and management teams and it brings substantial domain expertise and operating experience to its portfolio companies. For more information, visit www.riversidepartners.com.

SOURCE Riverside Partners

Related Links

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NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) today announced an innovative, collaborative relationship with Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business to advance the emerging field of sustainability accounting through education, research, and public events. The collaboration will educate the next generation of business leaders and embed sustainability accounting that is ultimately focused on financial performance into best practices at companies and investment organizations alike.

Fordham University will provide a permanent venue for SASB Standards Board meetings, beginning with SASB's next Standards Board meeting at Fordham tomorrow. New York City's central location enables the SASB to establish a more prominent presence in the world's largest capital market, thereby promoting greater transparency while facilitating access and engagement among key stakeholders.

"I am thrilled with this collaborative relationship between SASB and Fordham," said Jean Rogers, SASB Founder and Chair of the SASB Standards Board. "We are excited to have a consistent home for the SASB Standards Board meetings and to kick off the SASB speaker series. We look forward to collaborating with the faculty and students of Fordham."

SASB and Fordham share complementary goals. Fordham is positioned to contribute its thought leadership and to guide academic research to advance the field of sustainability accounting, promoting cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental collaboration toward meaningful and innovative outcomes. SASB can provide Fordham and its students with a deep understanding of the SASB Standards, underlying research, and key market perspectives, giving them practical tools, confidence with the issues, and a competitive advantage in the workforce.

"This collaboration with SASB is about embracing ideas that are mutually beneficial to the global business world and to society," said Barbara Porco, Director for The Center for Professional Accounting Practices at Fordham University Gabelli School of Business. "And a big part of this partnership is about training the next generation of sustainability leaders in business. The natural synergies between Fordham and SASB are fantastic."

In addition to hosting Standards Board meetings at Fordham, SASB and Fordham will work together on a variety of other activities and joint objectives, including:

Promoting thought leadership on sustainable accounting issues, including SASB's annual conference hosted at Fordham and an innovative speaker series launching soon

and an innovative speaker series launching soon Expanding SASB's research efforts by engaging Fordham to conduct academic research into current and emerging topics relating to financially material sustainability issues

to conduct academic research into current and emerging topics relating to financially material sustainability issues Developing and testing education materials for students, enabling students to appreciate the potential significance of sustainability issues on their future employers and careers

In addition, SASB and Fordham will continue to collaborate on ways to demonstrate and communicate the impact of a market standard on measuring, managing, and improving performance on critical sustainability issues.

About SASB

Established in 2011, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is an independent standards-setting organization dedicated to enhancing the efficiency of the capital markets by fostering high-quality disclosure of financially material sustainability information that meets investor needs. SASB develops and maintains sustainability accounting standardsfor 79 industries in 11 sectorsthat help public corporations disclose financially material sustainability information. For more information, visit www.sasb.org and follow us on Twitter @SASB.

About Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business

Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition to more than 15,100 students in its four undergraduate colleges and its six graduate and professional schools. For more information, visit www.fordham.edu and follow Fordham on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/fordhamnyc

Media Contact

Matt Garrison

Director of Communications

SASB

(646) 512-4038

[email protected]

SOURCE Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

Related Links

http://www.sasb.org


NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- Literacy Pro, an innovative digital reading and assessment program from the international division of Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, was named the Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year by the 2018 GESS Education Awards. The GESS Education Awards recognize high-quality and diverse educational products, resources, service and people as well as the best educational establishments and the most dedicated members of the teaching profession.

For more information about Literacy Pro, visit scholastic.com/literacypro.

As the Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year, Literacy Pro was recognized for its strength in guiding educators to support students in grades 212 in reaching reading proficiency goals, connecting them to authentic books that will maximize their achievement, and building a culture of reading within a school.

Currently used in 47 countries, Literacy Pro provides an online adaptive assessment that measures students' reading comprehension and generates a personalized book list that matches each student's reading level and individual interests. Each title includes a comprehension quiz that provides an opportunity for students to earn points towards certificate levels in the program. Educators also have access to dashboards where they can view detailed reports that inform instructional decisions and ensure students are reaching required levels of proficiency, all of which can be customized within the program to support different curriculum benchmarks.

Literacy Pro Library, an enhancement of the program, offers an interactive ebook library consisting of more than 900 titles including popular series Goosebumps, Discover More, A True Book, and more. The Library includes resources such as audio books, interactive vocabulary, and a student recording feature to provide a personalized experience for all readers. Additionally, educators can assign books to students using reading levels and content areas and monitor their reading progress.

QUOTES:

Anne Boynton-Trigg, VP, Export Sales and Marketing at Scholastic

"We are honored that Scholastic Literacy Pro has been named 'Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year' and is receiving recognition as a program students and educators can depend on to inform classroom instruction and independent reading. The program's ability to effortlessly match students with engaging, authentic texts they want to read creates a culture of reading that engages every child while building the foundation they need to become lifelong learners.

Leticia Becerril, Educator and Literacy Pro user, Colegio Cuernavaca, Mexico

"Literacy Pro and Literacy Pro Library provide teachers with evidence-based data so we can make the best teaching and learning decisions to develop our students into successful, proficient readers."

Since 2017, Scholastic Literacy Pro has received the BESSIE award for Best Primary Literacy Resource Website and was a finalist for the 2018 BETT award for Best Primary Content Resource.

For more information about Scholastic, visit http://mediaroom.scholastic.com.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/344322/scholastic_logo.jpg

SOURCE Scholastic

Related Links

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Photo: Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

I dont have any clue who George Nader is, admits Representative Mike Conaway. The House of Representatives has 435 members, many of them quite ill-informed, so it comes as no shock that a member would admit a total lack of familiarity with a man featured in two A1 stories in the New York Times.

George Nader is a Lebanese-American businessman who attended a suspicious 2016 meeting in the Seychelles with representatives of the Trump team, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, and is currently cooperating with Robert Mueller. The meeting seemed likely to have been arranged in order to broker some arrangement where Russian sanctions would be lifted and Trump and/or members of his family would get some personal financial benefit. Possibly it had some innocent purpose. Its the kind of thing a person trying to get to the bottom of the Russia story would definitely want to look into.

What makes Conaways lack of familiarity with the name George Nader especially troublesome is that Conaway is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and putatively running the lower chambers investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If youre getting the idea that maybe Conaway and his party arent utterly determined to uncover foul play between Moscow and Trump Tower, your suspicions are warranted. Conaway recently declared the investigation to be nearing its completion. All investigations have a natural conclusion, he explained. As soon as we have everybody interviewed, well start working on the report, well get the report finalized, and well move forward. Every investigation ought to have a conclusion, including this one. So were coming towards the end of it.

Investigations, you see, have a natural conclusion. It is out of his hands. And so while Conaways committee has not forced the witnesses to answer questions Democrats believe they should answer, or even learned the names of major figures in the underlying investigation, theres no arguing with nature. Anyway, its not like theyre investigating something like Benghazi, which took place in 2012 and was still being investigated four years later in a fruitless attempt to establish that the Obama administration deliberately lied.

But while the investigation into Russian election interference is coming to an end, the investigation into the people who are still investigating it is just getting started. Devin Nunes, who recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation after being caught sneaking to the White House to coordinate with the administration, has been running a counter-investigation trying to discredit the Department of Justice and the FBI. Nunes and his staff have leaked a continuous stream of pseudo scandals to right-wing news outlets, all of which have claimed to expose nefarious conduct by the Deep State against Trump, and then disintegrated upon inspection. Nunes is now touting a new explosive revelation:

The story, reported by right-wing message receptacle John Solomon, reveals that the Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer, who was told by Trump staffer George Papadopoulos that the Trump campaign had illicit dirt Hillary Clinton, once facilitated a donation to fight AIDS through the Clinton Foundation. Downer is a member of Australias conservative party, and exactly what his involvement in a charitable donation has to do with any of this is hard to say. Republicans are dutifully expressing suspicions that it means something. The Clintons tentacles go everywhere, states Representative Mark Meadows, in lieu of any coherent theory.

Meanwhile, Republican members Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy are calling for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue various debunked Republican theories that the FBI has done something wrong in its investigation of Trump. We think this is a very serious matter regarding conduct by the FBI and by some in the Department of Justice that calls for the appointment of a special counsel who will have subpoena and prosecutorial powers, exclaims Goodlatte. The House Republicans are winding down their pretend efforts to find out what Russia did in 2016 and who helped them, and ramping up their efforts to smear law enforcement.
NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Smartly.io, a leading Facebook advertising automation platform, today announced that the company has grown more than 100% year-over-year globally, driven by rapid expansion of its customer base, including a global contract with Uber. The ride-sharing app, along with game publisher Ubisoft and online food service Delivery Hero, join a roster of over 600 brands and agencies that rely on Smartly.io to run their Facebook and Instagram advertising at scale.

Customers select Smartly.io not only for its powerful technology, but also its global presence: Following the launch of its first Latin American office in Buenos Aires, and the first Australian-New Zealand office in Sydney, Smartly.io teams are now based across five continents, nine cities and seven countries to offer local support.

"As an on-demand business, there are no days off. Finding a company that operates in a variety of locations and time zones was critical in choosing the right marketing partner," said Katie Heimerich, Marketing Manager, Paid Social at Uber. "That's why we partnered with Smartly.io. Not only do they bring new Facebook ad functionality to the market faster, but they also offer real-time support at both a local level and through a 24/5 online customer service chat."

To bolster a growing footprint, the company has welcomed more than 85 team membersa 94% increase from 2016 to 2017. Among the new hires, Andrew French has been appointed General Manager of Smartly.io EMEA, bringing ten years' industry expertise from previous roles at Somo, Ad.IQ and, most recently, AdColony, where he was the company's first hire outside of the U.S. After being acquired by Opera Mediaworks in 2014, French ran AdColony's unified EMEA business, which contributed significantly to overall company revenue.

In his role at Smartly.io, French will drive customer acquisition and lead go-to-market strategies for this region. "It's an exciting time to be part of Smartly.io. The company made tremendous progress in 2017, reaching $1 billion in annual ad spend on its platform. I'm eager to work with this talented group of people and help solve our customers' marketing challenges, so they, too, can grow their businesses," said French.

Other company milestones include receiving top honors from Digiday's WorkLife awards for a tech platform in the Most Innovative Culture category, as well as individual recognition for co-founder and CTO, Tuomo Riekki, who was named to Forbes' annual 30 Under 30 list, which selects the top young leaders of their industry.

"When Smartly.io began in 2013, Facebook's advertising ecosystem was nowhere near the size it is today. Now in 2018, we see new Facebook ad formats, like Dynamic Ads and Canvas, bringing incremental revenue growth to our customers and other sophisticated marketers," said Kristo Ovaska, founder and CEO, Smartly.io. "Since the beginning, Smartly.io's mission has been to make Facebook marketing easy, efficient and enjoyable by automating manual tasks, optimizing with third-party data and providing best-in-class technical support. Our recent global achievements underscore this commitment, as the most important metric will always be the success and happiness of our customers."

To learn more about how Smartly.io automates and optimizes Facebook and Instagram advertising at scale, visit www.smartly.io.

About Smartly.io

Smartly.io is a SaaS company that automates Facebook and Instagram advertising at scale for leading global advertisers. The Smartly.io platform helps brands create, launch, and optimize campaigns with first-to-market solutions and features. Founded in 2013, Smartly.io is a fast-growing community of nearly 180 Smartlies in Helsinki, Berlin, New York, Singapore, San Francisco, Dubai, Sydney and now also Buenos Aires.

Contact: Sarah Babbitt, 617-779-1803, [email protected]

SOURCE Smartly.io

Related Links

https://www.smartly.io


WASHINGTON, March 7, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The High Tech Inventors Alliance (HTIA) applauds Senators Cotton and McCaskill for introducing legislation addressing the issue of patents and Sovereign Immunity of Native American tribes.

This legislation respects the historical understanding of tribal sovereignty while allowing the Patent Office to continue unhindered in reexamining its work where appropriate and canceling patent awards that should not have been issued through the Inter Partes Review (IPR) Program. In addition to reinforcing PTO's ongoing effort to improve patent quality, IPR also serves as an important mechanism to deter abusive litigation that is often based on invalid patents.

Two weeks ago, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board (PTAB) ruled that tribal sovereign immunity does not bar the Inter Partes Review of patents that have been transferred to tribes in an attempt to evade Patent Office review. The PACED Act would confirm the correctness of that decision.

The High Tech Inventors Alliance is comprised of eight technology companies: Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Google, Intel, Oracle and Salesforce. These companies have over 447,000 employees in the United States, have invested $62.9 billion in research and development in the past year and hold a total of over 115,000 U.S. patents.

SOURCE High Tech Inventors Alliance
Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) has been providing humanitarian relief and assistance to Syrian refugees through the efforts of its HHRD Middle East North Africa (MENA) office in Jordan over the past several years. In 2013 HHRD became a registered NGO in the region and has been actively engaged with enforcing 9 of its programs which have helped well over 1 million people in Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia.

HHRD is successfully operating an Orphan Support Program which is providing livelihood and subsistence to over 2,000 orphans. Through educational support programs, winter and summer camps, medical checkups, and financial assistance these children are given countless opportunities. In Kind Gifts bring 40 foot containers full of winter clothing, medical supplies, nonperishable foods, toys and more to be distributed throughout the year for those who left their homes with nothing. The Shelter Relief program allows families to move from unsecure tents to micro-shelter homes which provide protection from environmental elements. Through the Skills Development program, educational training and courses empower refugees to live a self-sustaining life.

Recent developments in Syria show little to no sign of the conflict resolving. As a result, HHRD USA urges donors to support its Syrian Refugee Humanitarian Assistance Fund to help those who cross into neighboring countries with hopes of survival.

HHRD is a global humanitarian organization responding to human sufferings in emergency situations around the world regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, class and religion. To donate please visit www.hhrd.org or call 1-888-808-4357(HELP).

Helping Hand for Relief and Development is a 4-star Charity Navigator and a member of Inter-Action. It is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) tax exempt organization. Tax ID# 31-1628040  Contact Media Relations: [email protected]

SOURCE Helping Hand for Relief and Development

Related Links

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SAN RAMON, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Being respectfully assertive is probably good for your health. But what about being assertive about your health? More specifically about your healthcare? Healthcare and the associated costs and paperwork can be very confusing. For example, tests and treatment costs can vary widely by region, healthcare provider, and health insurance carrier. Financial Education Benefits Center (FEBC), a membership benefits company, is offering a health advocacy service as a benefit to members of multiple plan levels in order to help them with the administrative side of healthcare.

"Making sense of your medical bills or trying to coordinate your treatments between different doctors can be a massive headache," said Jennifer Martinez, Manager at FEBC. "With a professional helping you out, it could be a big relief."

Many individuals have a hard time advocating for themselves, asking for what they want, or inquiring further when they are confused. The health advocacy benefit puts a trained professional at the disposal of FEBC members who may need help dealing with their healthcare coordination. FEBC members who use the health advocacy benefit can call a number and speak to a healthcare industry professional about coordinating care, analyzing medical bills, and non-urgent health questions.

This advocacy service is about better outcomes, including saving money. The assistance with medical bills can be used if an FEBC member receives out-of-pocket medical charges above a certain amount. Advocates helping with medical bills will review a member's bills to identify any errors in the bill and also negotiate charges from the provider for possible savings. The membership benefit is not insurance, but rather an advocacy service.

This advocacy service is part of a bigger package of health-related benefits that FEBC members of different plans levels can enjoy. With a variety of benefits that address both physical and mental health, promoting wellness is at the core of this new suite of benefits.

"Individuals may be afraid to ask for help, but the truth is our healthcare system can be confusing," said Martinez. "This health advocacy benefit is about getting help that may be very much needed."

About Financial Education Benefits Center

Financial Education Benefits Center is located in San Ramon, California. The membership company has already helped thousands save money and obtain the necessary education required to live a financially healthy life.

Financial Education Benefits Center has partnered with several name brand third-party companies to expand the financial and educational products and services available to its members and to provide a variety of wellness services as well.

Contact

To learn more about Financial Education Benefits Center, please contact:

Financial Education Benefits Center

2010 Crow Canyon Place Ste. 100

San Ramon, CA 94583

1-800-953-1388

[email protected]

Related Links

FEBC homepage

SOURCE Financial Education Benefits Center

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https://febcp.com


LAS VEGAS, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- After a year in the making, testing and proving its ROI, Talega Systems launches IDXSEO, a highly innovative real estate search WordPress software plugin to give a competitive edge to solo real estate brokers, agents and small brokerages.

IDXSEO Innovative Real Estate Software

Tested and proven on Luxury Realty Group's Las Vegas brokerage website, IDXSEO demonstrated its ability to drive ROI to double digits over the initial cost of the software in just a short period post-deployment. With its creative lead generation, innovative search features, advanced SEO (Search Engine Optimization) functions, social media sharing and marketing automation integration, IDXSEO takes real estate search, and soon social media intelligence, to another level. Talega Systems knows that typically a solo real estate broker, agent or small brokerage wouldn't either have such a broad range of innovative technology solutions or could afford the high cost some IDX providers charge for the equivalent of what IDXSEO provides.

Wanderson Fernandes, Luxury Realty Group's IT manager, said, "Implementing IDXSEO enabled our boutique real estate brokerage with innovative functions that our prospects and clients love. IDXSEO far exceeded expectations from search engine placement to revenue generated from IDXSEO leads in just a few weeks. IDXSEO plus its additional software tools helped us redevelop our old brokerage website in a short period into a professional level website that typically only larger brokerages have. Overall, the cost of IDXSEO paid for itself in a few weeks by following the implementation guidelines and SEO advice Talega Systems provided. That was not true for past IDX provider experience."

With many new and large real estate brokerages recently announcing they're reinventing themselves to being more technology driven, Talega Systems saw an opportunity for solo brokers, agents and small brokerages to move towards leveling that ever-evolving technology playing field. To accomplish that goal, Talega Systems created IDXSEO with many innovative functions including:

A vastly improved user experience with creative searches and lead generation features

Informative real estate data and trends from neighborhoods to zip code statistics

Social media intelligence for targeted marketing automation to prospects and past clients

Website pages and polygon map searches that highlight the local expertise of the broker or agent

Active, Pending, Contingent and Sold status icons on polygon maps and detail listings

Stay-on-page map search results driven by various sort parameters

Property details comparison capability

Website pages that show well on mobile devices

Extensive SEO features from schema and open graph to page speed enhancements

IDXSEO overall:

Gives the ability to access raw MLS data (RETS) without a middleman

Feeds a self-customized professional website laden with innovative features

Gives the equivalent of a virtual marketing assistant via marketing automation software

Costs significantly less than some IDX providers who control ownership of your website, charge for website modifications and have high prices for custom websites

Allows website ownership and modifications to be made under the control of the IDXSEO customer

Media Contact:

Bruce Hiatt

Phone: 702-570-8120

Email: [email protected]

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IDXSEO Innovative Real Estate Software

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Talega Systems is an innovative technology firm providing SEO, Custom Website Design and Development and Created IDXSEO, highly innovative real estate software

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IDXSEO Overview

An IDXSEO Overview of Core Functions

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IDXSEO

SOURCE Talega Systems LLC

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe, a "fresh-casual," Mediterranean inspired restaurant that prepares more than 100 items from scratch daily and has 82 locations in 16 states, hosted a celebration for its 20th anniversary on Wednesday in Birmingham, AL.

As part of the celebration festivities, the first 200 guests in line received a free signature pasta. Other giveaways included chances to win free signature pasta for a year.

In 1998, Keith Richards found his passion for Tazikis Mediterranean Cafe and its Greek food inspired menu after taking a trip to Greece with his wife, Amy. The couple celebrated the restaurants 20th anniversary and continued success on Wednesday, March 7. Tazikis now has 82 locations in 16 states with plans to open several more locations this spring in Ohio, Oklahoma, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida. Taziki's Founder Keith Richards makes hiring individuals with special needs a priority within his restaurants. He works with schools and special needs students across the country to grow herbs including basil, rosemary, oregano and parsley, which are then sold to Tazikis restaurants. Richards program, HOPE (Herbs Offering Personal Enrichment) is in the process of receiving its 501c(3) status.

Keith Richards, Founder of Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe, found his passion for Taziki's and its Greek food inspired menu on a 1997 trip to Greece with his wife, Amy. In 1998, they opened their first restaurant at the Colonnade in Birmingham.

"It was an extraordinary day as we celebrated Taziki's 20th anniversary in the location where it all began," said Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe Founder, Keith Richards. "I enjoyed celebrating with hundreds of customers and providing them with one of our most popular dishes as a way to say, 'thank you' for all their support."

From perfectly grilled meats served with signature sauces to mouth-watering salads filled with fresh fruits and veggies, Richards has mastered the art of creating imaginative, Mediterranean-inspired dishes. The Birmingham-based fast-casual chain's growing franchise was ranked by Restaurant Business as 17th on their Future 50 List.

Richards makes hiring special needs students a priority within his company-owned restaurants and encourages his franchisees to do the same. He has also taken the company's involvement a step further by working with schools and special needs students across the country to grow herbs including basil, rosemary, oregano and parsley, which are then sold to Taziki's restaurants. Richard's program, HOPE (Herbs Offering Personal Enrichment) is in the process of receiving its 501c(3) status.

Several students from the HOPE Program in Shelby County, AL attended Taziki's 20th anniversary celebration.

Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe' was the first national franchise to achieve REAL Certification from the United States Healthful Food Council (USHFC), the emerging national standard for foodservice nutrition and sustainability. Taziki's is also now the largest chain restaurant to complete the certification process.

"We are planning for the next 20 years," said Richards. "That includes adding more menu items and opening more restaurants across the U.S."

The restaurant will open new locations in Ohio, Oklahoma, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida this spring.

For those looking to learn more about franchise opportunities with Taziki's, visit http://tazikiscafe.com/franchise/.

About Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe

Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe is headquartered in Birmingham, AL and currently has 82 locations in 16 states. The recipes are all made fresh and inspired by Mediterranean cuisine. The menu features freshly grilled meats, original sauces and healthy side dishes. Taziki's is open for lunch and dinner, offers take-out as well as catering for events large and small. Visit Tazikiscafe.com for more information. Follow events and promotions on Twitter- @Tazikis, Instagram- @tazikis and on Facebook- Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe.

Contact: Holly Lollar

Phone: (205) 807-3759

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe

Related Links

http://tazikiscafe.com


CHICAGO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation (ALPLF) will award its prestigious Lincoln Leadership Prize to Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair. Mr. Blair is widely recognized around the world for his stewardship of the United Kingdom through an especially important period in its history, and has been lauded for his post-governmental philanthropic work enhancing government effectiveness, particularly in Africa, and promoting stability and understanding in the Middle East.

The Lincoln Leadership Prize  to be awarded April 24, 2018, in Chicago  is an annual award that recognizes outstanding individuals for a lifetime of service in the spirit of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The award honors individuals who manifest great strength of character, individual conscience and unwavering commitment to the defining principles of democracy.

"We are delighted to honor Mr. Blair with the Lincoln Leadership Prize," said Ray McCaskey, Chair of the ALPLF Board of Directors. "He embodies the kind of leadership that President Lincoln would have recognized and appreciated. Through his tenure as Prime Minister and his global good works since then, Mr. Blair embodies the spirit of President Lincoln. President Lincoln and Mr. Blair both led their countries through tumultuous times and understood they would make decisions that might be unpopular with the general public," McCaskey added. "Yet, they remained singularly focused on the policies that would strengthen their countries and improve the lives of their constituents in the long term."

President Lincoln led the United States through the four-year Civil War. It was Lincoln's leadership that preserved the Union, paved the way for the abolition of slavery and strengthened the federal government.

Mr. Blair, who was the longest serving Labour Party Prime Minister (1997 to 2007), guided the Northern Ireland peace process, bringing the country together after decades of conflict. Throughout Mr. Blair's tenure he prioritized legislation that transformed the lives of citizens. Under Mr. Blair's leadership the UK Government introduced the National Minimum Wage and civil partnerships; revitalized public services, particularly health care and education through a program of investment and reform; increased maternity leave and pay; lifted the young and old out of poverty; and passed equality and human rights legislation.

Since leaving office, Mr. Blair has spent most of his time working in the Middle East and Africa, and on the fight against religiously based extremism. The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change is supporting the next generation of leaders to meet some of the most difficult challenges they face today: helping countries alleviate poverty, raise living standards, foster religious and cultural tolerance, and advance peace and reconciliation. The Institute is also driving forward practical policy solutions to meet some of these challenges and re-kindle a vision of optimism for the future.

Mr. Blair will add the Lincoln Leadership Prize to other honors he has received including the Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Liberty Medal. He also was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME magazine in 2008. Mr. Blair obtained his B.A. in Jurisprudence from St. John's College, Oxford, and then became a member of The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn and enrolled as a pupil barrister. His political career began in 1983 when he was elected a Member of Parliament for Sedgefield and went on to become the leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and Prime Minister in 1997.

"It is fitting that Mr. Blair be the first British citizen to receive this coveted prize, since President Lincoln had his own English roots. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk," said Dr. Carla Knorowski, Chief Executive Officer of ALPLF.

Since 2006, the ALPLF has awarded the Lincoln Leadership Prize to 10 prestigious individuals who serve in the Lincoln tradition. Previous honorees include Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Civil Rights Activists The Little Rock Nine, Filmmaker Steven Spielberg, 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton, former Polish President Lech Walesa, Journalist Tim Russert, Astronaut James Lovell, Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

This event is only one of many the ALPLF and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum will host as part of the yearlong celebration of the 200th anniversary of Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, which formally became a state December 3, 1818. The annual event also serves as the primary fundraiser for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation for the benefit of the Museum and Library, which is not a part of the National Archives Records Administration's federal system of presidential libraries. For more information about the Lincoln Leadership Prize please visit www.alplm.org. For tickets and/or table sponsorship information please call 312/553-2000.

About the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation supports the collections and the educational and cultural programming of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum; fosters Lincoln scholarship through the acquisition and publication of documentary materials relating to Lincoln and his era; and promotes a greater appreciation of history through exhibits, conferences, publications, online services, and other activities designed to promote historical literacy.

Media Contact:

Lisa Soard

[email protected]

773.559.5586

SOURCE Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation (ALPLF)

Related Links

http://www.alplm.org


Richard Painter. Photo: Erika Goldring/Getty Images

Richard Painter has spent much of the past 13 months calling Donald Trump a treasonous, racist pervert on cable news and Twitter. Now, he is exploring the possibility of helping that pervert gain another loyal vote in the Senate.

On Wednesday, Painter, a former ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, announced that he is forming an exploratory committee for a Senate campaign in Minnesota. Specifically, Painter is considering a run for the seat that was vacated by Al Franken last year, and which is currently occupied by Democrat Tina Smith. Painter is a lifelong Republican, but isnt certain whether he will run on the GOP ballot line, or the Democratic one, or as an independent.

I need to think about whether theres a place for me in the Republican Party, he told reporters. Im going to be considering any and all options, going on to say that he is a centrist in many ways  right up the middle.

Painter framed his campaign as a quest to get the corrupting influence of big money out of politics. Which is a perfectly fine theme for a quixotic, publicity-stunt campaign. The trouble is that Painters exploratory committee is all-but certain to find that he has an approximately zero percent chance of winning a Republican Senate primary.

Donald Trump very nearly won Minnesota, and is still beloved by the GOPs rank and file. Meanwhile, the chances of a lifelong Republican ousting Tina Smith for the Democratic nomination are slim. Which means that if Painter wants to run a vanity campaign through November, hes going to have to run as an independent. And such a candidacy just might win enough left-leaning voters who enjoy Painters MSNBC appearances to throw the election to a Republican  which is to say, Painters candidacy just might ensure that Donald Trump gets to keep making lifetime judicial appointments from now until (at least) 2021.

The ethical choice here is clear. Lets see if Painters explorations lead him to it.
"Lexus crafts experiences for its guests with the same level of care it crafts its vehicles," said Cooper Ericksen, Lexus vice president of marketing. "Using actual letters sent to our dealerships shows how each interaction, large or small, makes the overall Lexus experience exceptional. These experiences are the very DNA of what makes Lexus, Lexus."

With the brand's launch in 1989, Lexus reinvented the luxury car market  introducing new levels of service, customer satisfaction, and quality never before offered by any of the leading brands of the time. That commitment, captured in the Lexus Covenant, is the inspiration for the "Letters" campaign. It is a pledge to value the customer as an important individual, to do things right the first time, and to always exceed expectations. "The Lexus Covenant is what drives dealers and associates to treat customers as they would treat guests in their own home and to go to any lengths to serve them better," added Ericksen.

To showcase the installation, Lexus has created a 60-second video featuring guests reading their handwritten letters to dealerships as a Lexus craftsman carefully folds and hangs each one. One reads, "It is with a very grateful heart that I write you about your amazing employees," while another adds, "Eric volunteered to come to my rescue that evening as soon as Lexus closed" and "Brad met me personally in the service bay." A mother concludes with "This may seem like a little thing, but to a mom, these things really matter. My three-year-old even noticed, and said, 'He wanted to be sure we were really safe, didn't he?'"

The video is being shared on Hulu and Pandora, as well as displayed through other strategic online and social integrations.

Murphy refers to his pieces as perceptual art because the main emphasis of the work is on the viewers' perception. "I took my ability to make things and combined it with my passion to create experiences for people and put them together," said Murphy. The project took hundreds of hours to complete, with the folding and hanging of each origami piece taking nearly 200 hours. "This is a very tight, precise craft," added Murphy. "If it is more than one millimeter off it is considered an error."

The "Letters" art installation  which measures 8-feet wide by 16-feet long, and is suspended 13 feet from the ground  was designed by the artist to be fully transportable, making it available for viewing at select corporate and dealer events across the country. For more information, visit lexus.com/guest-experience.

About Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy is a well-known and respected visual artist who helped pioneer perceptual art, and is one of the first  and best  at creating large 3-D installations. Murphy has previously worked with a long list of popular brands, including Nike, Air Jordan, TIME, NPR, Disney and the Obama presidential campaign. He was the ideal selection for the "Letters" campaign not only due to his innovative technique, but because he established a career in art not just to create something for people to see, but to create art that people can experience.

About Lexus

Lexus' passion for brave design, imaginative technology, and exhilarating performance enables the luxury lifestyle brand to create amazing experiences for its customers. Lexus began its journey in 1989 with two luxury sedans and a commitment to pursue perfection. Since then, Lexus has developed its lineup to meet the needs of global luxury customers in more than 90 countries. In the United States, Lexus vehicles are sold through 240 dealers offering a full lineup of luxury vehicles. With six models incorporating Lexus Hybrid Drive, Lexus is the luxury hybrid leader. Lexus also offers six F SPORT models and two F performance models. Lexus is committed to being a visionary brand that anticipates the future for luxury customers.

www.facebook.com/lexus

www.twitter.com/lexus

www.youtube.com/LexusVehicles

https://plus.google.com/+Lexus/posts

www.instagram.com/lexususa

https://vine.co/LexusUSA

https://www.pinterest.com/lexususa/

https://www.lexus.com

Note to Editors: Lexus product information and images are available online via our news media website http://LexusNewsroom.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Nancy Hubbell Erin Portman

(469) 292-4954 (512) 736-1640

[email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Lexus

Related Links

http://www.lexus.com


WASHINGTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the wake of almost every recent American mass shooting, from Sandy Hook to Parkland, online conspiracy movements have relentlessly targeted survivors and the families of victims. Ahead of the March For Our Lives, the National Press Club and Newsy will host a panel discussion featuring Stoneman Douglas High School student Suzanna Barna, the father of the late Virginia news anchor Allison Parker Andy Parker, Washington Post's Abby Ohlheiser, and Newsy's Liz Wahl, all of whom have been targeted by conspiracy movements. They will also be discussing possible tech and policy solutions to this rapidly spreading problem. The event, "Truthers: When Conspiracy Meets Reality," will be moderated by the National Press Club's Vice President Alison Kodjak.

The night will begin with a screening of Newsy's 22-minute documentary report, "Truthers," which explores these conspiracy movements, and spotlights a pattern of online harassment that has real-world consequences.

The event will begin at 6:30 PM at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Tickets cost $10. Press interested in covering the event should contact Laura Coker at [email protected].

Event Details:

WHAT: The National Press Club and Newsy's "Truthers: When Conspiracy Meets Reality"

WHEN: Thursday, March 22, 2018 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM ET

WHERE: The National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St NW, Washington, D.C.

WHO:

Suzanna Barna , Senior, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Abby Ohlheiser , Digital Culture Reporter, The Washington Post

Andy Parker , Founder, For Alison Foundation

Liz Wahl , National Correspondent, Newsy

Alison Kodjak , Health Policy Correspondent, National Public Radio; Vice President, National Press Club

About The Organizers

The National Press Club, a private club for journalists and communications professionals, has been a Washington, D.C., institution since 1908. As the World's Leading Professional Organization for Journalists, the Club and its Journalism Institute serve its members through work to preserve a free press, professional development and training, and social activities that build a vital media community. The Club also is a world-class conference and meeting facility that hosts thousands of events each year for clients from around the globe.

Newsy is your source for honest, in-depth context on stories that matter. We're a national news network created for people who aren't satisfied with getting only the loudest part of the story. We strive to deliver more  more context, more solutions and greater understanding on the people and events that shape our world.

Contact: Laura Coker, [email protected], 202-662-7581

SOURCE National Press Club

Related Links

http://www.press.org


NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- TrueLane Homes, a leading company focused on affordable single-family rental homes, announced today that Taylor Carvajal, a senior real estate executive with extensive single-family rental and finance experience, has joined the company as Chief Operating Officer.

Taylor Carvajal joins TrueLane Homes

"I am thrilled to welcome Taylor to TrueLane Homes," said Alan True, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "With his wealth of experience in real estate investment and management, particularly in single family residential, Taylor will lead TrueLane Homes' efforts of expanding into new markets across the country to realize its vision: bringing professionally managed, quality, affordable rental housing to families that need it." Mr. Carvajal will report to Mr. True, and be based in Newport Beach, California.

Since 2012, TrueLane Homes has been investing in select markets and professionally rehabilitating homes to increase the availability of affordable rental housing for working class families. As Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Carvajal will have management responsibility over the company and the day-to-day operations of the business. In addition, he will work alongside Eric Kim, Chief Development Officer, to direct and assist finance and capital markets activity across TrueLane Homes' affiliates and sponsored entities. Mr. Kim was recently promoted to the position and leads the company's capital development, strategy and marketing efforts in driving overall business growth. "Taylor will be instrumental in our ongoing portfolio expansion efforts, and I am eager to partner with him and work closely in achieving our goals," said Mr. Kim.

Prior to joining TrueLane Homes, Mr. Carvajal served as Chief Financial Officer of Single Family Residential at Amherst Holdings. He has also held senior finance positions at The Blackstone Group, Ares Management, Goldman Sachs and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he was a Director in the firm's Global Capital Markets Group.

Concurrent with his professional career, Mr. Carvajal served for ten years as an officer in the United States Navy and is the recipient of the Bronze Star for outstanding duty performance during combat operations in Iraq. In 2010, he was selected as the Navy Reserve Junior Military Intelligence Officer of the Year, and is the recipient of the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation and Iraq Campaign Medals. Mr. Carvajal received a B.S. cum laude from the University of Southern California and an M.S. from the University of Virginia.

ABOUT TRUELANE HOMES

TrueLane Homes has been investing in single-family rental homes and revitalizing communities since 2012. As a leading single-family rental investment and management company focusing on quality, affordability and customer service, TrueLane provides a resident experience to make tenants feel at home. The company currently owns over 1,000 homes across 11 select markets.

By exclusively concentrating on the working-class segment of the single-family rental industry, TrueLane Homes has made a lasting impact on tenants, communities and home values. TrueLane has consistently achieved institutional quality rehabilitation of major home components that would otherwise not have been performed, thereby significantly improving home value and positively impacting the neighborhoods and tenants' quality of living.

TrueLane Homes has developed a comprehensive platform to efficiently acquire, renovate, lease and operate properties to exacting standards. The institutional management team has been enormously successful in pioneering the single-family rental home industry and has vast and in-depth experiences across the real estate and finance industries. For more information, visit www.truelanehomes.com.

Media Contact:

Eric Kim

Senior Vice President, Capital Markets & Finance

TrueLane Homes

888-665-8636

Email: [email protected]

Related Links

TrueLane Homes

SOURCE TrueLane Homes

Related Links

http://truelanehomes.com


On March 10, "professional kid" Sean Kenney and his team will begin building a life-sized LEGO mural. Kenney and his team have constructed multiple award-winning creations out of the children's toy across the nation, and will be working on the two Minnesota-themed murals. The second build starts March 16. A kid's area will be nearby for children to create their own LEGO masterpieces while parents view the Honda lineup, including the all-new 2018 Accord and the 2018 Civic Type R.

"Let's be honest: We love LEGOs as much as children do, and when creatives construct masterpieces with our favorite bricks, we can only be excited," remarked Kyle Allison, association president and GM of Luther Hopkins Honda. "We can't wait to see how Sean Kenney's team transforms Minnesota landmarks and Honda icons into a LEGO masterpiece."

For the March 13 military appreciation night, all active-duty service members and veterans are invited to sign a brand-new 2018 Honda Ridgeline that has been wrapped in a patriotic theme.

March 16 will feature a special "after dark" viewing of all the auto show has to offer. At 6 p.m., specialty lighting will illuminate the auto show, giving visitors a unique view of interiors and exteriors of their favorite vehicles as if the sun had set.

Going further, the GTCHDA partnered with iHeartRadio for the auto show. This comes on the heels of GTCHDA's recent announcement as an official sponsor of Minnesota United FC. Visit the GTCHDA's Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram accounts to learn more about the association's involvement in the community.

About the GTCHDA: The GTCHDA consists of eight Honda dealers serving the greater Twin Cities area, including Buerkle Honda, Inver Grove Honda, Luther Brookdale Honda, Luther Honda of St. Cloud, Luther Hopkins Honda, Mills Honda, Richfield Bloomington Honda, and Walser Honda. Learn more at https://www.GreaterTwinCitiesHondaDealers.com

SOURCE Greater Twin Cities Honda Dealers

Related Links

https://www.GreaterTwinCitiesHondaDealers.com


MINNEAPOLIS, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The 45th Annual Twin Cities Auto Show presented by SuperAmerica will roll into the Minneapolis Convention Center March 10  18, 2018. The event, which is one of the top 15 auto shows in the country, is produced by the Greater Metropolitan Automobile Dealers Association of Minnesota, Inc. (GMADA).

The Twin Cities Auto Show will showcase approximately 600 vehicles from 36 domestic and imported brands. This year's display will be the largest in years featuring an estimated $21 million in new vehicles and exhibits.

Minnesota sells new trucks by a 3-1 margin to new sedans. This year's show will highlight this unique attraction to the truck market. A new indoor track called the Mitsubishi Minnesota Mile will make its world premiere at the annual Minnesota Show. It is an indoor test track based on our state's two seasons: winter and road construction. Guests will get to experience a Mitsubishi on potholes, icy roads, and travel through a maze of cones.

Sitting on the opposite end of the show floor is the ever-popular trail rated ride, Camp Jeep. The 30,000 square-foot Camp Jeep display is an interactive, off-road experience that features "Jeep Mountain" and several obstacles.

In addition, one of the Show entryways is called the "Ram Entrance" and features a collection of 2019 Dodge Rams.

"Minnesotans love their trucks," stated GMADA President Scott Lambert. "The Show is a reflection of what the Midwest is looking for in a vehicle."

The "Car of the Show" is the 2019 INFINITI QX50, a luxury mid-size crossover with world-first technologies, standout design and enhanced interior space, on an entirely new platform.

Another highlight of the Show will be the new Acceleration Alley featuring two Hurst Heritage performance vehicles built by GSS Supercars and the Lexus LC 500 Black Panther (used in the movie of the same name).

The Twin Cities Auto Show is produced by the Greater Metropolitan Automobile Dealers Association of Minnesota, Inc. (GMADA) The GMADA is an organization of 130 new car and truck franchised dealers in the Greater Minneapolis and St. Paul area. The 2018 GMADA Chair is Jeff Lupient, the GMADA President is Scott Lambert and the Auto Show Director is Mary Velline.

For information, visit www.TwinCitiesAutoShow.com.

SOURCE Twin Cities Auto Show

Related Links

http://www.twincitiesautoshow.com


CARDIFF, Wales, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

- Autonomous Car Detroit organised by Automotive Megatrends takes place in Dearborn, MI on 14 March 2018

- Uber's Head of Vehicle Programs, Stephen Lesh to deliver keynote address

- Great Wall Motor, Continental, Elektrobit, Magna and MCity to discuss 'The path to Level 5 autonomy'

- New for 2018: Two conference tracks covering urban mobility, mapping, human factors, vision systems, testing & validation and artificial intelligence

- 20 speakers from OEMs, suppliers and other industry stakeholders

- FREE TICKETS for Automotive World site license holders and vehicle manufacturer employees

Automotive Megatrends returns to Michigan in March 2018 for the latest edition of Autonomous Car Detroit.

Autonomous Car Detroit creates a live forum for the stakeholders making the self-driving car a reality. 250+ delegates will enjoy fantastic networking opportunities, insightful presentations and high level discussions, making Autonomous Car Detroit an unmissable event.

https://automotivemegatrends.com/autonomous-car-detroit

Autonomous Car Detroit will open with a keynote address from Stephen Lesh, Head of Vehicle Programs at Uber. Stephen will share insight into how autonomous vehicles are being incorporated into ride-sharing networks.

The morning panel discussion will focus on 'The path to Level 5 autonomy', featuring:

Vladimir Djapic, Mapping & Localization Manager, Great Wall Motor

Mapping & Localization Manager, Jeremy McClain , Director, Systems & Technology North America, Continental

Director, Systems & Technology North America, Hurley Davis , Country Engineering Manager USA , Elektrobit

Country Engineering Manager , Heinz Mattern , Electronics Director Product Development, Magna

Electronics Director Product Development, Huei Peng , Director, MCity

For 2018, we've added two conference tracks covering urban mobility, mapping, human factors, vision systems, testing & validation and artificial intelligence, with presentations from:

Jeff Shields , Maven Manager for Field Operations, Maven

Maven Manager for Field Operations, Nathan Donnell , Director of INRIX Parking Services, INRIX

Director of INRIX Parking Services, Jon Demerly , Product Owner, AVP & Urban HAD, Zenuity

Product Owner, AVP & Urban HAD, Edwin Olson , CEO & CoFounder, May Mobility

CEO & CoFounder, Jun Pei, Co-Founder & CEO, Cepton

Co-Founder & CEO, Frans de Rooij , Director of Business Development, TomTom

Director of Business Development, Volker Sasse , Vice President, NavInfo, Chairman, NDS / OADF,

Vice President, Chairman, Dr. Xin Chen , Director of Engineering, Highly Automated Driving, HERE Technologies

Director of Engineering, Highly Automated Driving, Gila Khami, Research Lab Group Manager, User Experience Technologies, General Motors

Research Lab Group Manager, User Experience Technologies, Chris Rockwell , CEO, Lextant

CEO, Barry Snyder , Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Axalta Coating Systems

Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Sheikh Shuvo, Product & Solutions Manager, Mighty Ai

Product & Solutions Manager, Allan Steinhardt , Chief Scientist, Aeye

Chief Scientist, Jason Eichenholz , Co-Founder & CTO, Luminar Technologies

Co-Founder & CTO, Gaurav Kumar Singh , Machine Learning and Deep Learning Researcher, Ford Motor Company

Machine Learning and Deep Learning Researcher, Humayun Irshad , Lead Scientist Machine Learning, CrowdFlower

Lead Scientist Machine Learning, Carl Squire , US Managing Director, IPG Automotive

US Managing Director, Edward Schwalb , Lead Scientist, Machine Learning Group, MSC Software

Lead Scientist, Machine Learning Group, Dan Mender , VP of Business Development, Green Hills Software

VP of Business Development, Ales Alajbegovic , Vice President, Ground Transportation Applications, Exa

Vice President, Ground Transportation Applications, Paul Drysch , Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Civil Maps

Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Paul Liu , Principal Architect, Samsung

For more information and to obtain tickets for this unique conference, please go to https://automotivemegatrends.com/autonomous-car-detroit

SOURCE Automotive Megatrends
Hooper is President and CEO of The Directors' Council which consults with major companies to improve the effectiveness of their corporate governance. Previously, she served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Voyager Expanded Learning and of Stadtlander Drug Company, Inc. Prior to joining Stadtlander, Hooper was Corporate Vice President, Caremark International Inc, and President of the International Business Group, responsible for the expansion of Caremark into Europe, Canada and Japan. She began her career at Baxter International, Inc., serving in roles of increasing responsibility, including as President of Baxter Canada, Canada's largest health care and laboratory supplies company.

With more than 25 years of corporate board experience, Hooper is an audit committee financial expert with over 20 years of experience chairing the audit committees of several major public companies. In 2017, she was selected as the Director of the Year by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

"I am thrilled to welcome Michele to the United family. She is a highly regarded business leader with expertise in areas that are important to our success, including operations strategy and finance," said United CEO Oscar Munoz. "With Michele, we are gaining a board member who hails from our hometown and brings a tremendous track record, across multiple industries, of making an impact in the boardroom and beyond."

"Along with Oscar and the entire board, I enthusiastically welcome Michele," said Robert Milton, chairman of the Board. "With her addition to our already experienced board, I am confident that we will achieve our goals to be a continued leader in operational reliability and in improving the customer experience."

"I look forward to joining the United board and am excited to help build on the strong foundation United has established over the last two years on its journey to become the best airline for everyone it serves," said Hooper.

Hooper currently serves as a director of PPG Industries, Inc. (former Chair, Audit Committee) and UnitedHealth Group (Chair, Nominating and Governance Committee). She earned an MBA in Finance and Accounting at the University of Chicago and a BA in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

About United

United Airlines and United Express operate approximately 4,500 flights a day to 338 airports across five continents. In 2017, United and United Express operated more than 1.6 million flights carrying more than 148 million customers. United is proud to have the world's most comprehensive route network, including U.S. mainland hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Newark/New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. United operates 744 mainline aircraft and the airline's United Express carriers operate 518 regional aircraft. The airline is a founding member of Star Alliance, which provides service to 191 countries via 28 member airlines. For more information, visit united.com, follow @United on Twitter or connect on Facebook. The common stock of United's parent, United Continental Holdings, Inc., is traded on the NYSE under the symbol "UAL".

SOURCE United Airlines

Related Links

http://www.united.com


HOUSTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Capital Advisors LLC ("USCA") announced today that Jarrett Kovics has joined the company as a Senior Managing Director and Head of Business Development. Prior to joining USCA, Mr. Kovics was the Western Divisional Director for Robert W. Baird & Co.'s (Baird) Private Wealth Management business. There he oversaw the recruitment of more than 100 advisors nationally, 42 of those based in Texas.

As Head of Business Development, Mr. Kovics will lead the growth and expansion of USCA's Wealth Management business. In this senior leadership position, he will report directly to Patrick Mendenhall and David King, USCA's two Managing Partners.

"With his extensive experience in advisor recruitment into existing and expanding markets, Jarrett is an ideal fit for this new role at USCA," commented Patrick Mendenhall, a Managing Partner at USCA. "Watching his tremendous success and rapid promotions to ultimately lead half the country for a major wealth management firm reinforced my belief that he will be instrumental in the future expansion of USCA's wealth management business."

"I am honored to join a firm that truly partners with clients, advisors, and staff in a cutting edge work environment," said Kovics.

Mr. Kovics began his career as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley before moving to Citi Smith Barney. In 2010, he joined Baird to serve as Branch Manager of their Dallas and Fort Worth wealth management offices. He was later promoted to Regional Director of the Texas Market and then Western Division Head for Baird's Private Wealth Management group. In that role, he oversaw Baird's branches in the Western half of the United States.

About U.S. Capital Advisors LLC

Based in Houston, Texas with additional offices in Dallas and Austin, U.S. Capital Advisors ("USCA") is an integrated financial services boutique with primary business lines in Wealth Management, Capital Markets and Asset Management. USCA's Wealth Management division provides a full range of advisory services and solutions to high net worth individuals and family offices, managing and advising on $6 billion of client assets. USCA's Capital Markets division, which includes the firm's, Equity Research, Institutional Client, Investment & Merchant Banking, and Public Finance businesses, advises corporate, institutional and municipal clients. USCA's Asset Management division includes the firm's multi-manager business, which focuses on alternative investments for individual and institutional investors. USCA was founded in 2010 and is privately owned. Securities offered through USCA Securities LLC, member FINRA/SIPC; Investment advisory services offered through USCA RIA LLC and USCA Asset Management LLC; Municipal advisory services offered through USCA Municipal Advisors LLC, MSRB registered.

Contact:

Pat Mendenhall

Managing Partner

713-366-0511

[email protected]

U.S. Capital Advisors LLC

www.uscallc.com

SOURCE U.S. Capital Advisors LLC

Related Links

http://www.uscallc.com


Its back! The demand to defund Planned Parenthood is again wreaking havoc on Washington. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images

Here we go again.

Just when it looked like the final, omnibus appropriations bill designed to implement Congresss two-year budget deal would float through the process by the March 23 deadline without a lot of drama, an old conservative deal-breaker is back, as Politico reports:

House Republicans are demanding a series of controversial abortion and health care policies in the annual health spending bill, setting up a showdown with Democrats and threatening passage of an omnibus spending package to keep the government open.

Democrats are vowing to block the slew of long-sought conservative priorities. The riders would cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood, eliminate a federal family planning program and ax the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, according to sources on Capitol Hill. Republicans also want to insert a new prohibition on funding research that uses human fetal tissue obtained after an abortion.

Its the Planned Parenthood defunding  this time expanded beyond Medicaid to any federal money  thats the bright, flashing red light. Its something that the anti-abortion lobby began selling to congressional conservatives as a must-have initiative back during the largely contrived controversy over the womens health groups alleged support for late-term abortions in order to harvest fetal tissue for sale, which blew up in 2015 and became the main reason congressional Republicans nearly shut down the federal government that fall.

Since then, the defunding demand has become a regular feature of Republican politics. But its generally been understood that it was only going to happen via some vehicle thats not vulnerable to a Senate filibuster. And thats why in 2017 right-to-life types agreed with House Speaker Paul Ryans suggestion that defunding language be left out of appropriations bills and instead inserted into a filibuster-proof budget-reconciliation bill. After a back-and-forth struggle with the Senate parliamentarian over the germaneness of the defunding demand to a budget bill, the whole effort went down along with the failed attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare.

There was then some saber-rattling from the anti-abortion lobby demanding that Republicans find some way to put their defunding bill into the second budget-reconciliation package, focused on tax cuts. But the germaneness problem loomed even larger there, and in the end, the GOP legislators had to drop even a more modest RTL measure allowing tax-preferred savings for the unborn.

That brings us up to 2018. And you have to figure no one was angrier at the brusque decision of congressional Republicans to forego any further budget legislation in this election year than the anti-abortion folks, who saw their one likely vehicle for achieving their foremost aim vanish.

You have to figure thats why the Planned Parenthood defunding measure (along with some other anti-abortion zingers) popped up again in the appropriations process. Thats really the only avenue left for dealing with it in a way that gave the RTLers some big hostages (i.e., every other item in the vast omnibus appropriations bill). But it came as something of a surprise nonetheless:

Those sudden demands stunned the top Democrats in the room, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who until then thought they were having productive talks with their GOP counterparts.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who leads the House Labor-HHS spending panel, has acknowledged that a delay in talks could force another short-term spending patch. Congress must approve new government funding by March 23 or risk a third shutdown this year.

In other words, Cole is signaling that the demands of the anti-abortion lobby could make his party bend the knee, even if it risks another government shutdown. The odds of Democrats going along with this demand are virtually nil. But even if the RTLers dont get their way, they may for sure insist on another big and dangerous gesture of GOP loyalty to the Cause.

As we speak, its likely that GOP leaders are trying to work out some alternative concessions, perhaps involving executive actions from the Trump administration, perhaps extending to budget legislation next year. But anti-abortion activists know as well as anyone that there may not be a firm Republican majority in the House next year to move the ball forward on their priorities. So they could just decide that they have little to lose by going to the mats. And it could all get ugly.
TUCSON, Ariz., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vector, a nanosatellite launch company comprised of new-space and enterprise software industry veterans from SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Sea Launch and VMware, today announced it will conduct a dedicated launch of two PocketQube satellites using an Alba Orbital deployer (AlbaPOD) on the Vector-R launch vehicle later this year from the Pacific Spaceport Complex  Alaska (PSCA) in Kodiak. Alba Orbital, a manufacturer of PocketQube satellites, will launch the Unicorn-2a satellite platform and a satellite developed by Delft University of Technology, Delfi-PQ1. The launch itself marks a historic moment for both Vector and Alba Orbital as its first orbital launch attempt and the world's first PocketQube dedicated launch.

"Launch continues to be one of the biggest challenges for our customers, and Vector's dedicated launch services provide them the ability to lower both risk and the cost associated with it," said Jim Cantrell, CEO and co-founder of Vector. "The PocketQube movement in the satellite industry is a perfect example of how entrepreneurs are coming together to remove as many barriers as possible for those looking to get to space, which aligns perfectly with Vector's mission. We are excited to have Alba Orbital onboard as our first orbital customer and excited to be launching the world's first PocketQube exclusive launch."

Glasgow, Scotland-based Alba Orbital offers low-cost, turnkey access to space through the development of PocketQube satellites. The advanced 3p PocketQube satellite platform, Unicorn-2, will allow payloads with more demanding requirements to fly on a PocketQube for the very first time, helping to save satellite operators more than 50% on hardware and launch. Delfi-PQ1, developed by Delft University of Technology is focused on further proving the capabilities of space technology miniaturization through a standardized core platform and will be deployed by Alba Orbital in their 6p AlbaPod. By providing enabling platforms, parts and technical expertise to global companies, universities and space agencies, Alba Orbital helps to break down barriers faced by space entrepreneurs.

"At Alba Orbital, we aim to provide our customers with the lowest possible turnkey access to space, and offering dedicated, affordable PocketQube satellites is a significant step in the right direction," said Tom Walkinshaw, CEO of Alba Orbital. "Working alongside Vector is a natural fit, providing both organizations the ability to deliver on our customers' needs, and move closer to ubiquitous access to space."

Vector recently submitted its first launch application to the Federal Aviation Administration to enable orbital launching from the Pacific Spaceport Complex  Alaska in Kodiak, marking a key milestone toward Vector's goal of establishing multiple launch facilities throughout the United States and beyond. Throughout this year, Vector plans to test major elements of its Vector-R launch vehicle in advance of its orbital launch.

To learn more about the Vector-R launch vehicle, visit https://vector-launch.com/vector-r/

To find out more about Alba Orbital's platforms and services, visit http://www.albaorbital.com/

About Vector

Founded by the original founding team of SpaceX, Vector is a disruptive company that connects space startups and innovators with dedicated, affordable and reliable launch services, enabling platforms and vehicles to access space efficiently and in a more optimized way than ever before possible. For more information, visit http://www.vectorspacesystems.com/

About Alba Orbital

Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Alba Orbital wants to get more people building and launching their own satellites. We provide a hub of support for the fledgling class of PocketQube satellites by not only building our own platforms but providing parts and technical expertise to companies, universities and space agencies around the world. PocketQubes are 5cm cubed spacecraft, proposed by Prof Bob Twiggs of Morehead State University (formerly Stanford). The first 4 PocketQubes made orbit on the 21st of November 2013. For more information visit http://www.albaorbital.com/

SOURCE Vector

Related Links

http://vectorspacesystems.com


JAMESTOWN, Va., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Virginia's 2019 Commemoration, American Evolution, continues its multi-year partnership with the Tom Tom Founders Festival through the 2018 presentation of the American Evolution Innovators Cup. On April 12 at the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, entrepreneurial teams of college and university students from across Virginia will compete as they showcase their compelling business ideas.

Designed to cultivate the next generation of Virginia's entrepreneurial leaders, the Innovators Cup encourages Virginia students at the undergraduate and graduate level to submit their best business concepts. Students will compete for $20,000 in prizes, mentorships with celebrated innovators, and collaborations with investors. A panel of high profile investors, including Steve Huffman, Reddit cofounder, will evaluate each submission. The deadline to apply for the Innovators Cup is March 11, 2018.

"We are immensely proud to partner with The Tom Tom Founders Festival and look forward to another momentous year of recognizing economic ingenuity and advancement in Virginia," said Kathy Spangler, Executive Director of the American Evolution. "Since the founding of our nation in the Virginia colony during the 1600s, the tradition of free enterprise has propelled the country forward, and with the Innovators Cup we are encouraging future generations of innovators."

American Evolution will have a presence at various other Tom Tom Founders Festival events, which will be held in Charlottesville, VA, from April 9-15 and visitors are encouraged to stop by to learn more about 2019 Commemoration initiatives. American Evolution will have a tent at the Community Potluck on April 9 and at the Block Parties from April 13 to 15, as well as a lounge at the Jefferson Theater from April 11 to 13.

At this year's festival, American Evolution will also announce plans for the 2019 Innovators Cup, which will encourage students to hone their business skills and gain a deeper understanding of the Commonwealth's long history of innovation and entrepreneurship. The competition will culminate with a multi-day program for students at the 2019 Tom Tom Founders Festival and a robust American Evolution student track where young people can fully immerse themselves in the themes of the 2019 Commemoration.

The 2019 Commemoration, American Evolution commemorates the 400th anniversary of several pivotal events that took place in 1619 Virginia, which have had an enduring impact on Virginia and America's history. These events set the state and the nation on a course towards the ideals of democracy, diversity and opportunity. In addition to key programs that recognize the launch of free enterprise in the Commonwealth, the Commemoration also raises awareness about the arrival of the first recorded Africans to English North America, the First Representative Legislative Assembly in the New World, the recruitment of English women in significant numbers to the Virginia colony, and the first official English Thanksgiving in North America.

About the 2019 Commemoration

The 2019 Commemoration, American Evolution, highlights events that occurred in Virginia in 1619 that continue to influence America today. Featured programs, events and legacy projects will position Virginia as a leader in education, tourism and economic development. American Evolution commemorates the ongoing journey toward the key ideals of democracy, diversity and opportunity. Dominion Resources is an American Evolution Founding Partner and Altria Group is a Virginia Colony Partner.

About the Tom Tom Foundation and Founders Festival

The Tom Tom Foundation is the nonprofit organization that hosts the annual Tom Tom Founders Festival. Supporting high-impact events throughout the year, the Foundation seeks to empower the innovators whose creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and dedication to community help ensure a better future for us all. The action-packed Founders Festival is held during the week of April 13 (hometown hero Thomas Jefferson's birthday) in Charlottesville, VA and features outstanding local music, art, and food, as well as high-stakes startup competitions and high-impact conversations with business, entrepreneurial, and academic and civic leaders. Learn more at www.tomtomfest.com.

SOURCE American Evolution

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SEATTLE and NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- With projects to date including working with major corporations such as Hyatt Hotels, Radical Galaxy Studio has earned its rank as one of the top providers of virtual and augmented reality content in the real estate industry.

Today the company is excited to announce, in partnership with Bradley Snyder, formerly of Apollo and Eastdil Secured, a major scaling and expansion of the current Bellevue, Washington business with the opening of a new office in New York City.

Radical Galaxy Announces Managing Partner, Bradley Snyder

Mr. Snyder will serve as Managing Partner alongside Matthew Shaffer. "We are thrilled to work with Bradley to meaningfully grow the business while continuing to push the technological boundaries within the real estate industry," said Mr. Shaffer. Mr. Snyder managed real estate investments at leading private equity firm Apollo Global Management after spending time advising real estate transactions at Eastdil Secured.

"At Apollo, I saw firsthand the tremendous impact of new technologies on the way we design, develop, manage and sell real estate," Mr. Snyder commented. "After implementing disruptive real estate technologies such as VTS, Matterport and Leverton into my own deals over the years, I knew immediately a company like Radical Galaxy had an opportunity to impact the industry in the same way."

Mr. Shaffer will continue to lead the team based in Bellevue, Washington while Mr. Snyder will lead the expansion in New York. The New York office made its first hire by welcoming Taylor Nederlander on board. Ms. Nederlander will focus on marketing and business development.

About Radical Galaxy:

Radical Galaxy Studio, LLC (https://radicalgalaxy.com/) is a creative studio specializing in visual solutions for the un-built architectural environment focusing on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). The Radical Galaxy team consists of designers, architects and developers who have teamed together to push boundaries and use cutting edge tools to create inspirational work. In addition to VR/AR/MR, Radical Galaxy offers architectural renderings, 360 videos and panoramas, animations and real-time PC walkthroughs.

Matthew Shaffer Bradley Snyder Managing Partner Managing Partner 10400 NE 4th St. Suite 500 175 Varick St. Suite 544 Bellevue, WA 98004 New York, NY 10014 [email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Radical Galaxy Studio

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CanBev will operate one of the first cannabis-infused beverage production facilities in Canada. The joint venture partnership will focus on manufacturing, marketing and distribution of cannabinoid-infused beverages for the medical and future adult-use cannabis markets.

WeedMD will be the exclusive cannabis supplier and distributor for CanBev cannabis-infused beverages and will designate production space at its 610,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility in Strathroy for CanBev's operation. As an emerging cGMP certified food grade production plant, WeedMD's Strathroy facility will equip CanBev with extensive production infrastructure, including 25,000 sq. ft. of packaging area and cold storage, as well as adequate space to expand for future growth.

"As WeedMD builds out its production footprint, we will focus on product innovation, extending our product line and building new brands. Canadian medical consumers, especially those in seniors' care, are interested in functional beverages as they integrate cannabis into their medical treatment plans," said Michael Kraft, Chairman of WeedMD. "We are eager to work alongside Phivida's world-class management team to develop cannabinoid-infused beverages and brands for both the medical and adult-use markets."

Phivida will be responsible for product innovation, research and development, formulation and branding. Phivida will also sublicense encapsulation technologies to CanBev for enhanced bioavailability and solubility and create new consumer brands to serve target consumer segments in the pending adult-use market.

"Phivida is pleased to partner with an industry leader and build towards a leadership share of the global cannabis-infused beverage market," said John-David A. Belfontaine, President and Chairman of Phivida. "WeedMD is the ideal partner for Phivida, as they will provide CanBev with the ability to distribute into the federally legal medicinal cannabis market in Canada and apply for a license for cultivation and sales under the ACMPR. WeedMD provides CanBev with solid infrastructure, strong management, world class genetics and proven success in the Canadian health care market. Phivida provides CanBev with the opportunity to bring our premium cannabinoid-infused beverages to patients and consumers across Canada and bring federally legal cannabis-infused consumer packaged goods and brands to the Canadian market for the first time in the history of the industry."

CanBev has no plans to sell any cannabis-infused products in the U.S. or any other market unless or until it is legally permissible to do so at all government levels. The joint venture is subject to the parties finalizing definitive documentation and TSX Venture Exchange approval.

About WeedMD Inc.

WeedMD Inc. is the publicly-traded parent company of WeedMD Rx Inc., a federally-licensed producer and distributor of medical cannabis under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations (ACMPR). The Company operates a 26,000 sq. ft. indoor facility in Aylmer, Ontario, and is awaiting its second-site cultivation license for its greenhouse facility located in Strathroy, Ontario, representing 610,000 sq. ft. or 14 acres under glass. WeedMD has entered into supply agreements in addition to strategic relationships with established cannabis brands. The Company is focused on providing medical cannabis to the long-term care, assisted living and seniors' markets in Canada through its specialized and comprehensive platform. It is dedicated to educating healthcare practitioners and furthering public understanding of the role that medical cannabis plays - including as it pertains to regulatory requirements, indications and potential side effects.

For more information, access our investor presentation here and corporate video here.

About Phivida Holdings Inc.

Celebrating Health and Wellness, In Harmony, Phivida's mission is to lead the alternative health care sector as the benchmark standard in premium cannabinoid infused foods, beverages and clinical products. Using nanoencapsulation technology, Phivida converts phytocannabinoids into water soluble delivery format, enhancing bioavailability, and timed released within the body. Phivida's encapsulated cannabinoids are infused into functional beverages, foods and supplements containing a proprietary blend of phytonutraceuticals studied to target a range of health conditions, from chronic pain to terminal diseases. The World Anti-Doping Association's recent decision to lift its ban of CBD from hemp oil and the World Health Organization's recent statement supports the clinical benefits of CBD worldwide. Phivida is traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange as "VIDA".

For a list of Phivida's cannabinoid infused consumer products click here.

Follow WeedMD On:

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

Instagram



Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information based on current expectations. Statements about the date of trading of the Company's common shares on the Exchange and final regulatory approvals, among others, are forward-looking information. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. The Company assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by law.

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

SOURCE Phivida Holdings Inc.

Related Links

www.phivida.com


Young served in a variety of executive and board level management roles in Houston and London before moving to Midland several years ago. Young earned a BBA and MBA from the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University, and holds a CPA license from the State of Texas.

Young's most recent role with West Texas National Bank was as Senior Vice President of Business Development.

Chris Whigham, President, stated that, "WTNB is excited about the experience that Young brings to our senior management team, as well as the relational and financial opportunities he will develop in the markets we serve."

About West Texas National Bank:

Strategically located throughout West Texas, WTNB has professionally banked this area since 1904, and now has offices in Dallas and Houston.

West Texas National Bank has a team of Treasury Cash Management Professionals, Commercial Lenders and Agri-professionals throughout our branches to support your growth and ongoing business needs.

Our Board Members and Senior Management have deep hands-on experience in the E & P and Midstream sectors. WTNB has seasoned energy bankers and engineers, a strong capital base, and robust financial syndication relationships with many of the largest regional and national energy banks.

West Texas National Bank provides extensive financial EXPERTISE and a sophisticated banking experience with bankers and branches located in its clients' hometown areas.

WTNB has the EXPERTISE to help fuel your energy business.

To find out more, please visit their secure website at https://www.WTNB.com.

WTNB: Our Experience; Midland-Based; Lending Our Strength; Fueling West Texas.

Member FDIC.

Equal Housing Lender.

West Texas National Bank

Jonna D. Smoot

VP, Marketing

https://www.WTNB.com

SOURCE West Texas National Bank

Related Links

https://www.WTNB.COM


OAKLAND, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ExpoWest  For more than a decade, Hodo has disrupted tofu in America by making radically better-tasting, artisanal tofu. The company introduced fresh yuba to the American market and brought eaters across the country forms of tofu and tofu-based dishes never tasted widely before. Now, Hodo continues to push boundaries with new ingredients, textures and flavors. With new packaging, a new logo and new products, Hodo conveys possibilities beyond what eaters think they know.

Taste is paramount to Hodo's leadership in the growth of plant-based eating. Key ingredients of the company's success: clean, minimally processed ingredients, high protein, innovative product development, close collaborations with the country's top chefs, and fresh conversations about the world's original plant protein.

New Packaging Design: Adventurous, Plant-Protein-full, Serving Inspiration. Roll out May 2018.

The new logo and vibrant package colors are bold and the look is modern, expressing Hodo's outlook on ingredients and dishes as dynamic, evolving, and drawing on many influences.

The back of the package features easy infographic-style visuals for how to serve the products. These images quickly communicate the convenient versatility of the products. Hodo customers are curious, and education has always been a big part of Hodo's brand.

"Our food is delicious  and we want our new logo and packaging to reflect exactly that," says Founder Minh Tsai.

New Dishes: Tofu Cubes lead the evolution of the company. Launching Summer 2018.

Hodo's newest products showcase just how cuisine-transcending tofu can be. These protein-rich dishes are made with our delicious organic firm tofu, chopped into cubes and tossed in 3 unique and exciting spice blends:

Chermoula Moroccan

Spicy Harissa

Southern Barbecue

Hodo's Tofu Cubes taste great on rice bowls, tacos, salads, noodles, and in scrambles. They are ready to eat in just 5 minutes on high heat on the stove.

Customer favorites at Hodo include: Thai Curry Nuggets, Sesame Yuba Noodles, Tofu Veggie Burger, and Spicy Sichuan Tofu.

About Hodo

Hodo transforms time-honored techniques into modern, delicious, ready-to-eat products that have customers reveling in the discovery of new flavors, aromas and textures. Since Hodo's early days at farmer's markets in 2004, Hodo has made tofu enthusiasts out of top chefs and home cooks who never noticed plant-based protein before. Today, we are a team of deliciousness-obsessed makers in Oakland, CA who handcraft plant-based foods for people who love to eat well. All Hodo products are USDA Organic, Non-GMO, vegan, gluten-free, kosher certified, and an excellent source of protein. Hodo products are available at select retailers across the nation.

For more information, please visit www.hodofoods.com.

Taste the new product line and see the packaging unveiled at Expo West, #5696.

Media Contact:

Emunah Hauser

[email protected]

510-333-8391

SOURCE Hodo

Related Links

http://www.hodofoods.com


The NJBIZ "Best Places to Work in New Jersey" survey and awards program recognizes and honors the top places of employment in New Jersey that benefit the state's economy, workforce and businesses. The "Best Places to Work in New Jersey" awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, May 1st, 2018 at iPlay America's Event Center in Freehold, NJ.

"It's an honor to have been named one of New Jersey's Best Places to Work for a seventh year," said Chris Sullens, CEO at WorkWave. "It's a true testament to the culture we've built and the dedication of our employees. This award is the result of their unwavering commitment and hard work, and I can't thank them enough."

Some of the many reasons employees rave about WorkWave are the endless perks and amazing company culture. WorkWave offers employees a variety of perks that set them apart from competitors, including free lunch daily from local restaurants, company-wide health and wellness events, team building events, and employee appreciation days. In addition, the company's home within the Bell Works metroburb is a state of the art facility featuring ample meeting space and game rooms where employees can unwind.

The benefits don't stop there, as the company also provides employees with a robust healthcare package and 401(k) matching, a significant amount of paid time off, generous maternity and bonding/partner leave, paid holidays, and tuition reimbursement. In addition, the WorkWave team is extremely passionate about giving back to the local community in which they live and work. Throughout the year, the company actively participates in charitable events, including volunteering at Fulfill NJ and the Give Back Your Lunch program in which employees donate lunch funds for a worthy cause.

WorkWave is hosting a Spring Career Fair on March 14th at Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ. Applicants can register at http://ow.ly/gW3l50gENqK.

About WorkWave

WorkWave, an IFS company, is dedicated to simplifying the complexity of running field service and other fleet-based businesses, large or small - a $45+ billion market worldwide. The company's suite of solutions, which include PestPac, WorkWave Service, ServiceCEO, WorkWave Route Manager, WorkWave GPS, GPS Heroes and ContactUs, allow WorkWave clients to easily attribute and automate sales and marketing activities, improve their back office efficiency and increase their visibility into field operations through a single, easy to use interface. WorkWave's platform provides its 8,000+ clients an unprecedented level of business insight and information, enabling them to increase efficiency, increase revenue and provide a 5-Star customer experience. Founded in 1984, WorkWave has been recognized with multiple awards for its outstanding growth and culture, including the Inc. 5000, SaaS Award, and Best Place to Work by NJBiz & Inc. Magazine. For more information, visit www.workwave.com.

About IFS

IFS develops and delivers enterprise software for customers around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. The industry expertise of our people and solutions, together with commitment to our customers, has made us a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in our sector. Our team of 3,500 employees supports more than one million users worldwide from a network of local offices and through our growing ecosystem of partners. For more information, visit: www.IFSworld.com.

About NJBIZ "Best Places to Work in New Jersey"

The awards program, created in 2005, is produced by NJBIZ. The "Best Places to Work in New Jersey" program is made up of 100 companies split into two groups: 65 small/medium-sized companies (15-249 employees) and 35 large-sized companies (more than 250 employees). Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the 100 Best Places to Work in New Jersey. The overall registration and survey process was managed by Best Companies Group (BCG). BCG also analyzed the data provided and used their expertise to determine the final rankings. For more information on the "Best Places to Work in New Jersey" program, visit njbiz.com/events.





Contact Ken Wincko Email [email protected] Phone 800-792-6067 Website www.workwave.com

SOURCE WorkWave

Related Links

http://workwave.com


SACRAMENTO, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The City of Sacramento and Ygrene, a national leader in energy efficiency and resiliency financing, today celebrated five years since the launch of the nation's first comprehensive, privately-funded energy financing program for both residential and commercial buildings. Known as PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), the program formerly called 'Clean Energy Sacramento' has now become a national model, expanding to over 500 cities and counties across the U.S.

"Sacramento was ahead of the curve when it launched PACE right here five years ago," said Sacramento Vice Mayor Steve Hansen. "Through the PACE program, we have shown that good public policy can improve our environment, create jobs, save residents money, and help our city exceed its carbon reduction goals. Ultimately, Sacramento is proving that the idea of being more energy efficient is both a pragmatic and lifestyle choice, and not a luxury, that everyone should be able to adopt."

Since its Sacramento launch in 2013, Ygrene has funded more than 2,500 projects in the city, of which over 90 percent are residential, to the tune of more than $55 million. Nearly 700 jobs have been created and almost 55,000 metric tons of CO 2 have been abated.

"Sacramento has become the model for PACE partnerships and Ygrene's focus on local government priorities. Its rapid growth since our start five years ago proves that the program is working," said Ygrene CEO Rocco Fabiano. "We look forward to continuing our partnership with Sacramento and expanding PACE to other cities to help them achieve their resiliency and energy efficiency goals."

The inaugural project, financed through Ygrene on March 8, 2013, upgraded the chiller at 520 Capitol Mall. The $513,000 project was projected to reduce costs to building management by $47,000 a year for 25 years, all while improving property value more than the cost of the project. According to news reports, 520 Capitol Mall sold for $28 million in 2016.

PACE continues to represent one of the best examples of a public-private partnership, designed to promote choice, allow homeowners to upgrade their home and generate local jobs. To date, Ygrene has provided over $1 billion of private capital to more than 500 local communities, creating thousands of jobs and investing millions into local economies across the U.S.

In 2013, the greater Sacramento area was also home to the largest at-the-time commercial PACE project in the nation. The Metro Center Corporate Park in Natomas installed $3.16 million worth of energy-saving equipment across the four-building campus. Upgrades were projected to lower utility costs by $140,000 annually.

Ygrene's PACE programming is helping communities throughout California and across the nation meet their energy efficiency and resiliency goals. The full list of jurisdictions where Ygrene's PACE system has been approved can be found here.

About Ygrene:

Ygrene Energy Fund is a national leader in residential and commercial energy efficiency and resiliency financing. Founded in 2010, Ygrene's award-winning, privately funded Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program is revolutionizing the home improvement industry, making it easier for property owners to invest in their futures and a healthier environment. Ygrene is delivering greater choice for home and business owners by providing accessible and affordable financing for energy efficiency, renewables, water conservation, storm protection and seismic upgrades. Recognized as one of the fastest growing asset classes in the country, PACE has proven to be a successful tool for supporting public policy initiatives, all without the use of public tax dollars or credits. To date, Ygrene has provided over $1 billion of private capital to more than 500 local communities, creating thousands of jobs and investing millions into local economies across the U.S. Learn more at ygrene.com.

SOURCE Ygrene

Related Links

http://ygrene.com


Paul sighin. Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

For a brief period in late January, it looked like the Trump tax cuts were working as promised (politically speaking): One month after the president claimed his first major legislative victory, the Democrats polling advantage in the generic ballot was collapsing  while support for the GOP tax law steadily climbed.

In December 2017, just 26 percent of voters told Monmouth University that they approved of the Republican tax bill; one month later, that figure was 44 percent. Quinnipiacs findings were similar: In mid-December, 26 percent of its respondents approved of the legislation, by early February, 39 percent did. The bills absolute level of support varied across other polls, but virtually all testified to the same trend. Meanwhile, it looked like the Democrats big blue wave was sliding back out to sea: In late December, FiveThirtyEights poll of polls had the public favoring a Democratic Congress over a Republican one by 13 points; by early February, that advantage was down to just 6  a margin that would likely be too small for the party to overcome Republican gerrymandering and reclaim the House.

There was always reason to suspect the GOPs gains would prove transient, and that the 2018 race would revert back to its long-run mean. But Republicans had a coherent argument for why the new trend would prove durable: As more Americans realized that the tax law had fattened their paychecks  and came to associate the strength of the broader economy with the Republican bill  their hearts would soften to the party in power.

But then a funny thing happened: In February, the Trump tax cuts took effect, a large majority of Americans saw their take-home pay increase  and Democrats reassumed a nearly double-digit lead in the generic ballot, the presidents approval rating tumbled, and, according to two new polls, support for the tax law fell.

Since late January, approval of the tax law in Monmouth Universitys survey fell by three points to 41 percent  while the Democrats lead in the 2018 race swelled by seven, from a mere 2 percent to 9. Meanwhile, Quinnipiacs latest poll has support for the tax law declining three points to 36 percent, and opposition rising three points to 50 percent.

Now, declines of this size  in just two polls  arent conclusive evidence that support for the tax bill is waning. But these results, combined with the Democrats polling resurgence in recent weeks, do strongly suggest that the Trump tax cuts arent generating a sea change in American public opinion. The legislation is no longer historically unpopular. But it isnt popular, either. And theres little evidence thats going to become so.

Its true that the law should provide at least a modest tax cut to 80 percent of American households  and that only a small minority of Americans seem to be aware that their taxes just went down. But multiple post-tax-cut paychecks have already been mailed. And the percentage of Americans who believe their taxes have gone down remains resolutely low: In Monmouths poll, just 24 percent of voters say they expect their federal taxes to go down, while 37 percent expect them to go up. Other polls have put that first figure higher, but virtually all have put it below 40 percent.

Republicans could blame the public for its ignorance on this front. Or, they could also blame themselves for giving massive tax breaks to the wealthy, and so small they could be erased by your rising health-insurance premiums tax breaks to working people. As the New York Times notes in its latest dispatch from Trump country, even voters who have noticed their tax break arent terribly impressed with it:

At Slyders Tavern, Matt Kazee, a machinist, drank a couple of beers as he waited for burgers to take home for dinner. His tab was about equal to the increase in his take-home pay after President Trumps tax cut found its way into the nations paychecks.

I have seen a little uptick in my paycheck, about what I expected, about 30 bucks, said Mr. Kazee, who voted twice for President Barack Obama before backing Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. It felt to me about like where things were 15 years ago.

His underwhelmed reaction was not what Republicans had in mindOther workers described their increase as enough for a weeks worth of gas or a couple of gallons of milk, with an additional $40 in a paycheck every two weeks on the high side to $2 a week on the low. Few are complaining, but the working class here is not feeling flush with newfound wealth.

And some are convinced that what the tax cut has given them upfront will ultimately fade.

Hes pulling out jazz hands and shiny stuff up front and will screw us on the back end, said Brian Barkalow, a worker at Requarth Lumber, where the Wright Brothers once bought wood for their planes.

The GOP may still keep its House majority this fall. But if Paul Ryan keeps his gavel, it will be because of gerrymandering  not widespread gratitude at what he did with his power.
Hemso has acquired three university properties in central Helsinki. The tenant is the University of the Arts Helsinki, which consists of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, the Sibelius Academy, and the Theatre Academy. The seller of the property is Helsingfors Universitetsfastigheter AB. The University of the Arts has signed

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This past week, a group of acclaimed authors embarked on a tour in honor of the launch of Hope Nation: YA Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration, which was released by Philomel on February 27. More than 400 fans attended events across the U.S. to celebrate the essay collection. The festivities kicked off in the Dallas area on February 25, with a panel featuring authors Angie Thomas, Julie Murphy, and Ally Carter, as well as the editor of the anthology, Dr. Rose Brock, co-founder of the North Texas Teen Book Festival. Weve rounded up a selection of photo highlights from the tour.

(From l.): Angie Thomas, Julie Murphy, Rose Brock, and Ally Carter discussed Hope Nation at the South Irving Library in Irving, Tex.

(From l.): Anthology contributors Libba Bray, Rose Brock, David Levithan, Jason Reynolds, Alex London, Brendan Kiely, and Gayle Forman took part in a panel at the Strand Bookstores Rare Book Room in New York City.

Brock (l.) fielded a question from the audience during the Los Angeles event at the Barnes & Noble The Grove, which featured authors Atia Abawi, Marie Lu, and Nicola Yoon.

(From l.): Thomas, Carter, Brock, and Murphy spread some hope at the South Irving Library.
Last March, the Guardian ran a news report that seemed to insert a giant question mark into the story of Chinas phenomenal rise as a player on the global childrens book publishing scene. According to the piece, based on reporting by Hong Kongs South China Morning Post, Chinas central government, out of concern for growing Western influence over the nations estimated 220 million people age 14 and under, had ordered a sharp reduction in the number of new foreign childrens books on the lists of the nations publishing houses. The news came as American and European publishers were just getting used to reaping the rewards of a giddy sellers market in simplified-Chinese-language rights, and to entertaining dreams of huge sales in a retail market that could become four times larger than North Americas.

As the Guardian article made the rounds online, I was planning my third trip to China. On order was a 10-day, four-city tour organized by Beijing-based Ever After Books, with a packed lineup of talks and workshops with the Chinese publishing community. For most programs, I was to be joined by American publisher Neal Porter and Belgian artist Kitty Crowther, the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner. As an adviser to the Ever After imprint of Trustbridge Media, I had been recommending Western titles for publication in China for two years and writing guides to the books for Chinese parents.

My China connection had come about serendipitously and had proven to be a very rewarding experience, so when the Guardian story ran, I was eager to learn more about the rule and its likely consequences. On arriving in Beijing in mid-August, it was the first question I had for all my friends.

I had begun following developments in China about five years earlier, after learning that a Chinese edition of Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom was in the offing. By 2013, with the Chinese rush for translation rights to Western childrens books well underway, a publisher there had recognized my collection of Nordstroms editorial correspondence as a teaching tool for an industry impatient to play cultural catch-up. Within a year, not only had more of my books about childrens books been signed up for Chinese editions but I was also asked to lecture in China and work with Ever Afters editors.

China historically had taken a no-nonsense approach to educating its children, publishing school books and other texts designed to advance the childs core knowledge and academic skills, but no titles that Westerners would recognize as imaginative literature. News of the new rule aligned with press reports of President Xi Jinpings determined appeals to the Chinese people to reject Western values and re-embrace Confucianism. While the ubiquity in China of Western brands, from KFC to Prada, might have seemed enough to suggest that Xis nationalist message was falling on deaf ears, the reality remained that all Chinese publishing was subject to government control and that the current leadership was consolidating its power.

Neal and I arrived in Beijing together and were driven into town to meet Kitty for dinner and a taste of Chinese opera in a nightclub-like setting. The next morning, I gave my first talk at the National Library and had my first chance to see some old friends. I was surprised when not one of the publishing professionals I spoke with sounded the least bit fazed by the new government policy. One translator laughed heartily when I asked about it. Like weather, he said. Sometimes cloudy! And an editor who has held several key positions over the years commented that the new rule merely illustrated the guiding principle of contemporary Chinese life summed up in the catchphrase enter by the back door and roughly translates as: rules matter, but relationships matter more.

The fact that a two-tiered system of childrens book publishing has evolved in China in recent years seemed to bear out this observation. On the margins of the big state-owned houses, a second tier of smaller, quasi-independent companies have established themselves by the back-door route of purchasing bundles of ISBNs from the state firms. Acquiring ISBNs in this way entitles the buyerin much the same way that purchases of air rights work for developers hereto publish an equal number of books. Companies in this second group are required to tether themselves to one of the state-run entities by a distribution agreement that ensures that no book can see the light of day without first being approved by a government censor. So the editorial freedom gained by publishing as an indie press farther from the center of scrutiny is ultimately one of degree rather than of kind. But it is nonetheless real.

Kitty, Neal, and I spoke at the National Library, the Beijing Book Fair, on college campuses, and at publishers offices and bookstores in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Xian. Besides editors, illustrators, writers, and students, the largest group who came to our programs were book promoters, enterprising mothers who operate private home libraries that serve as a community resource and source of personal income. The main purpose of the workshops I led for promoters was to help hone their critical skills and broaden their knowledge of classic Western books. Many I met seemed already to have a sophisticated understanding of the genre; they were far from beginners.

Chinas home library book promoters, unlike their Japanese counterparts, typically charge a membership fee and sell or rent copies of books they discuss. One reason there are so many promoters is that they fill a gap left by Chinas still-spotty commitment to public library service. Most promoters have only a local following, but a few have been able to reach much larger audiences. In Shanghai, Auntie Magic, a high-level media executive who directs a literacy NGO during her off-hours, hosts regular evening guest-author events that sometimes draw hundreds of parents. Her Magic Reading media platform has attracted 100,000 online subscribers.

The August tour also took me to Xian, the university town that was Chinas first capital and is home to the spectacular display of terracotta warriors unearthed around the first Chin emperors tomb; and to Shenzhen, an up-from-nowhere high-tech megacity of more than 20 million. Forty years ago, Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, was a ragtag marketing town of 30,000. Things changed rapidly after the central government designated it in 1980 as Chinas first Special Economic Zone. The region grew into a financial and new-media powerhouse with a brassy reputation. (Aptly, its U.S. sister city is Houston.) Like Chinas much older cities, Shenzhen has a dedicated core of book promoters. And with a nod to its self-image as a city of the future, its municipal authorities sponsor a variety of childhood literacy initiatives in which promoters have a role. A centerpiece of these efforts is an annual citywide celebration which, similar to our Childrens Book Week in its original iteration, takes place in November, running not just for seven days but all 30.

Chinese childrens literature professionals are quick to acknowledge they are engaged in a game of cultural catch-up. A senior staffer at the National Library laid out the historical timeline for me with characteristic precision. We are 100 years behind the United States, he said, 70 years behind Japan, 50 years behind Taiwan, and 30 years behind Korea.

Rule or no rule, I could see that Chinese childrens book publishing was entering its next phase, with the goal of generating prizeworthy childrens books for export to the world. In June 2016, on a visit to the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, I was introduced to the two instructors responsible for Chinas first degree program in picture-book art. As I arrived, the senior students were installing their graduation exhibition, which consisted of completed book projects paired with marketable product tie-ins. As I toured the gallery, I could see skillful work in a variety of styles and media. I could also see that the students shared a distinct reluctance to create characters that a reader could identify with on an emotional level. The characters in their books were rarely shown close-up, and some appeared only as tiny figures on the horizon. Were the students uncomfortable asserting their charactersor their ownindividuality, or fearful of encouraging children to do so? If that was the case, then they clearly had more to learn before their work would win acceptance abroad.

Even so, it seemed likely that the flow of notable Chinese picture books to the West would increase dramatically in the next few years. For one thing, more Chinese illustration students than ever were training at American art colleges like the School of Visual Arts and the Maryland Institute College of Art. And Chinese illustrators were being presented at home with a growing abundance of models to emulate. Last August, the National Library hosted a touring exhibition of illustration art by all 26 past winners of the Hans Christian Andersen Award, most of whom have been Europeans, and China has joined the tour itinerary of the Bologna Book Fairs annual Illustrators Exhibition. Within the last year, Beijings Dandelion Press acquired simplified Chinese-language rights to about 30 of Maurice Sendaks picture books as well as all three of the art books published by Abrams about Sendaks life and work. I had been wondering whether a rebellious child hero like Sendaks Max could possibly make it past the government censor. When I asked about this at Dandelion, I was reminded of Chinas recently ended one-child policy. An unintended consequence of that policy had been the creation of an entire generation of spoiled, unruly little emperors incapable, in the eyes of their doting parents and grandparents, of doing any wrong. Viewed from that perspective, Max was a most familiar contemporary Chinese character, his raucous behavior of far lesser account than his brash little-boy adorableness. In addition, from a cultural catch-up perspective, it weighed heavily in the books favor that Where the Wild Things Are was a venerated American classic.

Cao Wenxuans selection as the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award winner for literature put an impressive new feather in Chinas cultural cap. At this years Bologna Book Fair, the countrys publishers will have their best chance yet to show the world how far they have come. As this years honored guest nation at the fair, China will sponsor programs with Cao and other authors and an exhibition of its leading illustrators. The countrys childrens publishers will be bringing 700 new books to market, up from 100 titles in 2014, the second year of Chinas Bologna fair participation. Things happen fast in China. It would not be at all surprising if some unknown Chinese illustrator or writer proved to be the talk of the fair.

At the Beijing airport as I headed home, I found myself standing near the end of a very long passport control line. After waiting patiently without progress for a long time, I began to worry I might miss my flight. Apparently, I looked worried too, because just then someone nearby spoke up in English to suggest that I go straight to the front of the line and demand to be taken care of immediately. Reluctantly I decided to give it a try, and soon came face-to-face with a uniformed clerk with a stony stare. As the clerk tried to wave me off, a second bystander kindly volunteered to interpret. Finally worn down, the man in the uniform gave in, stamped my passport, and let me through.

I crossed over into the secure area and took a moment to regain my calm. I felt shaken but was also suddenly amused as it dawned on me what I had just done. I had exited China by the back door.
The creators of Beanstack, an innovative software program for managing reading initiatives, recently teamed up with investor and ABC-TVs Shark Tank judge Mark Cuban to sponsor the Beanstack Winter Reading Challenge for Librarieswith remarkable success.

Cuban challenged adult and youth library communities to meet a collective goal of reading at least one million minutes and 50,000 books during the month of January, offering a donation of $35,000 if the goal was met. More than 100 libraries nationwide, plus two in South Korea and one in Japan, signed on to participate, and their patrons rose to the occasion, surpassing the minutes-read target in week two and the books-read target in the final week of the month.

Ultimately, challenge participants logged seven million minutes of reading time and read 84,002 books. The challenges most-read title overall was A Wrinkle in Time, with Goodnight Moon, the Harry Potter series, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Dan Browns Origin registering strong showings in their respective genres.

Cuban became an investor in Zoobean, Beanstacks Va.-based parent company, after its founders, Jordan Lloyd Bookey and Felix Brandon Lloyd, impressed him with their vision and product on Shark Tank in 2013. With Beanstack, Zoobean offers its 600-plus public library and school customers an online platform for use in reading programs, early literacy initiatives, and book clubs. The service provides tools for readers to track their progress and earn incentives, as well as to send personalized emails or text messages recommending a book or upcoming event.

Cuban approached Bookey and Lloyd about his interest in funding a reading challenge utilizing the Beanstalk software. Mark Cuban is one of our more active investors. He is a passionate literacy advocate, and he was very motivated to do something with us to encourage reading, explained Bookey. He talks about how his mother used to give him her spare change whenever he finished a book as a child, and he believes that reading led to his success.

Of Cubans prize money, $25,000 was donated to First Book, and the remaining $10,000 (plus an additional $1,500 donated by Zoobean) was distributed among the initiatives seven top-performing, Special Honor libraries. The funds will be used for community programs or donated to local nonprofit organizations.

One of the library systems earning that designation was Lincoln Cities Libraries in Lincoln, Neb., where staffers spread word of the challenge by making posters and bookmarks, and by posting information on the systems website and Facebook page.

Vicki Wood, the libraries youth services supervisor, was extremely pleased with her communitys response. In general, our library system is very well-loved and used, but we were overwhelmed with the positive spirit of our participants, she said. The timing was perfect, because many people had made New Years resolutions to read more. Our public schools werent in session until January 8, and we had a batch of wintry weather, keeping people inside. All these factors, and a bit of competitive spirit, boosted participation, and time spent reading.

She expressed gratitude to Cuban for making this all possible, adding that the reading challenges philanthropic angle provided extra incentive for librarians and their patrons alike. I think this is especially true since the main beneficiary was First Book, an organization that supports childrens literacy, she noted. Our prize money will go to a program we call Begin with Books, which provides low-income children with a new book when they visit their doctor for a well-child check or to receive an immunization. And, since we purchase our books for this program through First Book, it truly is a win for everyone.
Buying UK broadcaster Channel 5 has proved to be a big step up for Viacom for whom its successful and dynamic Nordic business is also likely to be a template for other global business, said VIMN Northern and Eastern Europe president James Currell.





Speaking at Cable Congress 2018 , Currell said that digital disruption was all around his area of responsibility and that it was spread very differently: from the hugely dynamic Nordic region driven by mobile access to the UK where linear is still strong and East Europe where linear TV still dominates.Of the linear channels chiming for Viacom, none seems as vibrant as Channel 5, which after being part of the Viacom fold since 2014 was described as a really big step up and a real success. This success, Currell noted, showed that the company's focus still remained on traditional pay-TV providers. "We still believe in the bundle," he said, "and we will support our partners."Yet what Currell felt could really be the model going forward for the company was Paramount Plus in the Nordic region. The package is a higher-tier set-top box offer which gives access to first-window films and leading pay-TV brands. Currell sees an opportunity to introduce the same model elsewhere, potentially as a mobile app.Looking to the future, Currell said that Viacom was seeing a real positive shift I the content industry. Ten years ago, the basic job was adding US content to individual pipelines, but it was all about owning content in local markets. "People like stories about them," Currell noted. "We are investing $1 billion a year in content origination - this is around 800 hours of content ... [Our] source of growth is further investment in local originated content."
US Hispanic media company Univision has requested the withdrawal of its initial public offering (IPO) proposal.





According to Univision Holdings Inc, the move is due to current market conditions. The media company has requested the withdrawal of its Form S-1 on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has not yet declared the registration statement effective.At the same time as halting this important strategic move Univision has named with immediate effect the appointment of Peter H Lori as chief financial officer, replacing Francisco J Lopez-Balboa, who joined the company in 2015 to lead the IPO.I would like to thank Frank for his tremendous contributions to Univision since joining in 2015, during which he led a strong and capable finance and accounting organisation in addition to managing our relationships with many of our external stakeholders, said Randy Falco, president and CEO.Having served as EVP finance, chief accounting officer and deputy chief financial officer for Univision, Lori will now be promoted to CFO.Pete has been a critical member of our senior finance team for the last 13 years and has the right combination of corporate finance and accounting expertise, clear leadership skills and deep knowledge of our company to drive financial growth at UCI, added Falco.
Kushner with Flynn at the White House, shortly before he was fired for lying about meetings with Kislyak. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Despite their insistence that there was no collusion with the Kremlin, Trump associates had plenty of secretive interactions with Russians. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that a meeting in the Seychelles days before Donald Trumps inauguration was an effort to set up a back channel between the Kremlin and the incoming administration. As you may recall, Jared Kushner previously admitted that he discussed the possibility of communicating privately with Moscow during the transition  though he said his goals were innocent, and the link was never established.

The true nature and purpose of these efforts remain a mystery, but recent reports have shed more light on the push establish a link between Team Trump and the Russians in the months before the president was sworn in. Heres what we know so far.

Kushner, Flynn, and Kislyak Discuss Back Channel

 There were several calls between Sergey Kislyak, Russias ambassador to the U.S., and Trump campaign officials Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn prior to Election Day, according to Reuters. In a statement before his closed-door appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee in July, Kushner said he had no recollection of these calls. Kushner initially failed to list dozens of contacts with foreign officials on his security-clearance form, and was recently stripped of his temporary top-secret clearance.

 Kushner and Flynn secretly met with Kislyak in Trump Tower on December 1, 2016. Last spring the Washington Post reported that Kushner proposed using Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S. to establish a back channel for communication between the Trump transition and the Russian government. U.S. intelligence intercepted Kislyak describing the request to his superiors.

Kushner told Congress that Kislyak raised the idea, saying he wanted to convey information from his generals about the Syrian civil war, but needed a secure line. Kushner said he suggested going through the Russian embassy, but nothing came of it:

I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration.

 On December 1, Kushner, Flynn, and Kislyak also talked about setting up a meeting between a Trump associate and a Russian contact, according to the Post:

In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a Russian contact in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.

 Flynn resigned as Trumps national-security adviser on February 13, 2017, saying he gave fellow administration officials incomplete information on his discussions with Kislyak regarding sanctions. On December 1, 2017, he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those discussions during the transition, and hes now working with Mueller.

Trump welcomes Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan to the White House on May 15, 2017. Photo: Xinhua News Agency/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

Secret Trump Tower Meeting With Emirates Leader

 Kushner and Flynn, along with Steve Bannon, had another secret Trump Tower meeting with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates on December 15, 2016. In a breach of protocol, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan did not notify the Obama administration about the meeting, and U.S. officials only learned about the visit when his name was spotted on a flight manifest.

 This week we learned that George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Zayed and has ties to various Trump aides, was present at the Trump Tower meeting. He is reportedly cooperating with Mueller and testified before a grand jury last week.

 Both Trump and the UAE were interested in finding a way to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran. In April 2017, the Post reported that Zayed and his brother sought to help establish a back channel between Trump and Putin, and were approached by Trump associate Erik Prince:

Following the New York meeting between the Emiratis and Trump aides, Zayed was approached by Prince, who said he was authorized to act as an unofficial surrogate for the president-elect, according to the officials. He wanted Zayed to set up a meeting with a Putin associate. Zayed agreed and proposed the Seychelles as the meeting place because of the privacy it would afford both sides. He wanted to be helpful, one official said of Zayed.

Erik Prince, who doesnt need much of a reason to hop on a plane to the Seychelles. Photo: Chuck Kennedy/TNS via Getty Images

The Seychelles Meeting

 Erik Prince, founder of the security firm Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, had no official role in the Trump transition, but he reportedly served as an informal adviser, providing advice to Trumps inner circle, including his top national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, according to Bloomberg. He told Congress that he visited Trump Tower twice during the transition.

 On January 11, 2017, nine days before Trumps inauguration, Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, who runs a Kremlin-controlled wealth fund, in the Seychelles. Nader, who has known Prince for years, was reportedly at the meeting as well.

 While Mueller is said to have evidence that the purpose of the meeting was to establish a back channel between the Trump team and Russia, Prince denied that in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in November.

 Prince claimed he flew to the Seychelles because he received a one-line invitation from Zayeds scheduler, which said, His Highness would like to see you if you can come out to the Seychelles. Prince said he believed this meant they had a business proposal, but nothing specific came up during his hour-long meeting with Zayed and his associates.

Prince testified that toward the end of the meeting, the Emiratis suggested that he meet with Dmitriev, who happened to be at the hotel.

At the end, one of the entourage says, Hey, by the way, theres this Russian guy that weve dealt with in the past. Hes here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, hed be an interesting guy for you to know, since youre doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space, Prince testified.

 Prince said he chatted with Dmitriev for about 30 minutes, discussing business and Russias hopes for reestablishing normal trade relations with the U.S. I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism, Prince said.

Unanswered Questions

 Did Prince lie about the Seychelles meeting while testifying before Congress?

During his Russia investigation interview, Mr. Prince was asked directly by me and Mr. Schiff who he met with while he was in the Seychelles, Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell told CNN. He never gave the name George Nader. If he met with George Nader, he lied under oath.

Republicans dismissed their Democratic colleagues concerns, and are unlikely to pursue the matter.

 If Kushner was seeking a back channel to Moscow, was the Seychelles meeting the result of that effort, or part of a separate push to forge a link to the Kremlin?

 Why would Trump associates continue pursuing a back channel nine days before the inauguration? If their aim was to pressure Russia into distancing itself from Iran, likely in return for sanctions relief, they could have waited until after January 20 and used official channels.

 Muellers team is also said to be looking into whether foreign money was funneled into Trumps political efforts in an attempt to buy influence. Was the secrecy surrounding various contacts with Russia part of a stunningly inept attempt to keep their discussions from the outgoing Obama administration, or the result of something far more nefarious?
Despite the over-the-top (OTT) market seeing unprecedented growth as falling barriers to entry allow creators to build larger audiences, to thrive in a crowded market, creators and distributors must make sure content experiences are as accessible, mobile and user-friendly as possible, says a study by Vimeo.





The online video community provider has released its market study based on data from 3.6 million OTT subscribers across 230 countries and territories, including information about platform, location and content. It looked at the viewing patterns of consumers on the Vimeo OTT platform across 1.3 billion data points. This report tells the story of today's OTT audience, how and where they consume video, and how they make decisions about where to view it.Even though apps account for just about a third of Vimeo OTT's subscriptions, the study showed that over half of subscribers watch videos on apps, reflecting what Vimeo said was a growing appetite to consume content on various screens in different ways. This growth of time spent on apps was said to be significant. On Vimeo, OTT subscribers collectively spent about 10,823 hours a day watching video on their apps.Customers who sign up via an app platform were found to be less likely to churn. Of the platforms used for these apps, the survey broke down to web, 44%; iOS, 31%; android, 11%; Roku , 10%; and tvOS, 4%. Nearly three-fifths of customers who sign up via the web eventually add mobile or connected device viewing to their watching habits.The survey also found that free OTT trials were essential for driving conversion, enticing potential customers and giving them a taste of what the service has to offer. Vimeo found that 60% of people who sign up for a free trial become paying OTT customers. Customers who started a free trial on Roku (69.4%) and iOS platforms (69.6%) were most likely to become subscribers.People were 33% more likely to sign up for a free trial via an app then they were on the web. Vimeo OTT customers saw up to a 72% conversion on these platforms. By comparison, industry-wide, over a quarter of US broadband households signed up for at least one free trial on an OTT service in 2017, ranging from Netflix to Amazon Prime, HBO Now and Showtime. Of those users, 47% subscribed to at least one service after the free period expired. The survey also showed that a mere single percentage of consumers were serial trailers who take advantage of free trials to avoid paying for services.Looking at how content length affects completion for OTT services on Vimeo, the survey found that on average, a 30-minute video saw a completion rate of about 80% while a two-hour video saw an average completion rate of 65%. Yet the key takeaway was that there were industry advocates for both short-form and long-form video content. For maximum engagement, Vimeo advised OTT creators to tailor the length of video content to the app in which their content would live and to consider mobile apps for shorter content and TV apps for longer videos.
Top Navy and Marine Corps officials on Wednesday expressed concern over China's expanding global reach and said the superpower was rapidly buying up foreign land to win without fighting.

When it comes to China, the bottom line there is the checkbook, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer told lawmakers during a House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing.
Iraq is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections in May. At least 28 Iraqi political parties associated with paramilitaries that fought Islamic State (IS) have registered to run candidates. Many of these parties, like their parent militias, have close ties to Tehran.

Most of these militias formed after IS captured Mosul. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraqs senior Shiite cleric, issued a fatwa proclaiming that fighting against IS was a sacred defence. Those who died would be revered as martyrs.

The fatwa led to the formation of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF)), which attracted around 60,000 fighters organised into some 60 units. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directs at least 44 of these 60 Shia paramilitaries; others are under the authority of Sistani or are affiliated with Moqtada al-Sadr. These fighters playeda central role in countering IS in Fallujah, Ramadi and Baiji. Many in Iraq believe the PMFs probably saved Baghdad from IS.

To understand why Iran is determined to see a sympathetic government in Baghdad, its important to recall two key events that took place soon after the Iranian Revolution began in 1979, and which have come to define Iranian national security considerations.

First, the US government attempted to free the 53 diplomats who had been taken hostage in November 1979 after students had overrun the US embassy in Tehran. In April 1980, as diplomatic negotiations continued to secure their release, Washington sent a military force into Iran in a failed attempt to free the hostages. Iran has come to see Operation Eagle Claw as typifying American perfidy.

Second, within months of the revolution, Saddam Hussein launched an all-out war against Iran. Between 300,000 and 1 million Iranians died in the eight-year conflict.

These experiences have instilled in Irans ruling elite (many of whom were alive during the war) a sense that Iran is always under threat. One Iranian strategy to ensure its security has been the development and support of proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban in Afghanistan , Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. These entities promote Iranian national interests by engaging Irans enemies, whether they are Israelis, Americans or Saudis.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Tehran held the view that a pro-US administration in Baghdad was unacceptable. Iran fears encirclement by the Americans. It already shares a 920-kilometre border with Afghanistan and a 960-kilometre border with Pakistan, both American allies.

Now the regime wants a pro-Tehran government in Baghdad. That would give Iran a safe western border, allow it to influence oil prices (Iraq has the worlds fifth-largest proven oil reserves with 140 billion barrels), and enable Tehran to continue to challenge Saudi dominance in the region.

In the early 2000s, Tehran preferred that both Iraq and Afghanistan should remain in a state of manageable chaos that kept the Americans occupied and unable to focus on Iran. Thus, from the moment that the Americans took charge of rebuilding Iraq, the Iranians sought ways to bleed the Americans dry, primarily through their campaign in Anbar province.

Irans growing influence in Iraq became clear in 2008 when David Petraeus, then-commander of US Central Command, received a text message from Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Irans elite al-Quds Force. The message read:

General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual whos going to replace him is a Quds Force member.

The message highlighted the brazenness of Suleimani and of Iran when it came to dealing with Iraq. And it illustrates why Iraqs former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, later noted that nothing got done in Iraq without the approval of Suleimani.

Following the 2010 parliamentary elections, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was struggling to form a government, a group of Iraqi parliamentarians went to Qom to celebrate the Eid al Fitr holiday. They met with Suleimani, who then persuaded Moqtada al-Sadr to support Maliki. In return, Maliki agreed to work towards removing US forces from Iraq.

Seven years later, Irans influence across Iraq remains obvious. With the rise and fall of IS, Tehran has another opportunity to shape political developments in Iraq. This is bound to concern Irans neighbours, particularly the Saudis, who appear determined to stop Irans growing influence in the region.
House Majority PAC, the top outside organization dedicated to Democrats flipping control of the House of Representatives, announced Thursday that it is booking more than $40 million in television advertising for the final weeks of this years midterm elections.

The ads will run in 33 media markets, spanning dozens of potentially competitive races. The largest booking comes in Los Angeles, where the organization plans to spend more than $5 million on advertising that will reach several Republican-held districts Democrats are targeting.

2018 will bring a barrage of frantic negative attack ads from GOP outside groups, but HMP is ensuring were prepared early on to fight back, said Charlie Kelly, the groups executive director. Momentum is on our side, and with smart, strategic investments, we will help Democrats win across the country.

Campaign committees and super PACs often book television airtime well in advance to lock in lower rates, as the price is likely to rise closer to Election Day. The initial buy from House Majority PAC targets areas where Democrats expect to see the most competitive races, but may shift in the coming months if the dynamics change.

The largest investments are in big city markets, which are the most expensive and are also home to dozens of GOP-held seats that are considered winnable. Democrats are targeting a string of suburban districts across the country, many of which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. The second largest investment is in Minneapolis, with $3.5 million. Minnesota advertising may be particularly expensive this year, with a competitive governors race, two Senate races and several tightly contested House races, which could explain the large outlay there.

In Texas, the group plans to book $2.2 million in Dallas, $1.9 million in Houston and $850,000 in San Antonio, the three metro areas that cover targeted districts. Clinton defeated Trump narrowly in each of them, though Democrats dont yet have candidates finalized there, with all three going to May runoffs after Tuesdays primary. In Florida, the PAC is booking nearly $2 million in Orlando and more than $1 million in Miami, where it is targeting a district that overwhelmingly supported Clinton but is represented by Republican Carlos Curbelo.

In Philadelphia, where Democrats are targeting several districts following the state Supreme Courts redrawing of the congressional map, the super PAC is planning to book $2.9 million in ads. Its also booking $1.7 million in Denver, where Democrats are challenging Rep. Mike Coffman, who represents a perennial swing district.

The other metro areas where House Majority PAC plans to book more than $1 million in ads are Chicago, San Diego, New York City, Seattle, Sacramento, Portland, Maine, Las Vegas and Detroit.
In Indiana, one Republican Senate candidate released his first ad last week with a clip of himself shooting a rifle and declaring himself pro-gun while touting an A rating from the NRA.

In West Virginia, a GOP Senate candidates new digital ad released the same day touted an NRA A+ rating and said the candidate was endorsed by West Virginia gun owners.

In Montana recently, a Senate candidate posted on Facebook a picture from a gun show; in Ohio, a Senate candidate did the same from a local gun shop.

And in Florida, two top Republican candidates vying to replace outgoing Gov. Rick Scott came out against his plan to raise the age for purchasing all guns to 21, which the two-term governor introduced in the days following the deadly school shooting in Parkland last month.

Students from the state have mounted a public campaign for gun control measures in the weeks since a gunman killed 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Believing that the politics of new gun legislation had shifted, gun control activists and Democrats rallied around the cause, several Republican lawmakers signaled openness as well, and even President Trump appeared to endorse several new measures that most in his party oppose.

But in statewide primaries across the country, GOP candidates have not embraced this movement and, in many cases, have doubled down on their support for the NRA and gun rights, signaling that there has been little if any shift in the politics of guns from the partys perspective.

Damned if you do, damned if you dont, Mac Stipanovich, a veteran Republican strategist in Florida, said of candidates opposing new gun measures. If you dont, you may not win the nomination. If you do, you may not win the general election.

The situation is most prominent in Florida, where legislation that includes raising the age limit to 21 for all firearm purchases, a three-day purchase waiting period and funding for mental health and school safety narrowly passed the state Senate this week. Both of the top Republican candidates for governor, Rep. Ron DeSantis and Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, opposed the proposed restrictions. Putnam, who previously referred to himself as a proud NRA sellout, received praise from the organization on Twitter after announcing his stance.

The politics in the gubernatorial race are in stark contrast to the politics in the Florida Senate race, where Scott is widely expected to challenge Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson without facing competition in the primary. Stipanovich said Scott can afford to take a risk because he lacks an intraparty rival, while Putnam and DeSantis have to try to thread the needle between the GOP base and the broader general electorate.

In several cases, Republican candidates have gone out of their way to highlight the issue and flex their muscles on gun support. In Georgia, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a leading candidate for the nomination for governor this year, led the charge to prevent a tax break for Delta after the airline ended its discount for NRA members. Cagle called it discriminating against law-abiding gun owners.

Secretary of State Brian Kemp, another candidate in the gubernatorial primary, proposed that the tax break instead fund a sales tax holiday over the Fourth of July for the purchase of guns, ammunition, holsters and safes.

Other Republicans across the country havent been nearly as high profile on the issue as those in Florida or Georgia, but have nonetheless emphasized their pro-gun stances. Rep. Todd Rokita, who is in a three-way primary in the Indiana Senate race, showed a clip of himself shooting a rifle in his first ad of the cycle. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey similarly highlighted his pro-gun position, along with his NRA rating, in a digital ad that same day.

In Montana, which has a crowded GOP Senate primary, businessman Troy Downing posted pictures of himself at a gun show, and touted his support for the Second Amendment. In Ohio, businessman Mike Gibbons, who is challenging Rep. Jim Renacci in the Senate primary, posted a picture of himself at a local gun shop holding a rifle.

The positioning of these candidates makes sense as they battle to win over primary voters. Though the NRA has a negative image in the country overall, it remains highly popular among the Republican electorate. In a Quinnipiac poll this week, only 38 percent of voters had a positive view of the NRA, but 78 percent of Republican voters held a favorable impression of it. More than half of GOP voters said the NRA has the right amount of influence over politicians, and 58 percent of Republican respondents oppose stricter gun laws.

In the Buckeye State gubernatorial race, theres a similar situation to Florida, with candidates to replace Gov. John Kasich opposing new gun restrictions the governor proposed, including banning armor-piercing ammunition and bump stocks, and banning third party purchases. In a statement after Kasichs proposal was released, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor said she was deeply concerned that a Republican administration proposed to roll back the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Ohioans in response to a tragedy.

Banning the sale of certain weapons, ammunition, or accessories does nothing to address the root causes of these evil acts, she said.

Taylor had worked to make guns an inflection point in the primary before the Florida shooting thrust it into the national spotlight. She said in a speech in January she didnt trust Attorney General Mike DeWine, her main opponent, on the issue. DeWine had an F rating from the NRA when he served in Congress in the 1990s and early 2000s, but his standing with the organization improved after his first term as attorney general. DeWine proposed a three-point plan after the Florida shooting that included improvements in school security and the background check system but no new gun restrictions.

Reducing the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners or proposing new bans doesn't address the problems, DeWine said. The Buckeye Firearms Association has endorsed him in the race, while Ohioans for Concealed Carry has backed Taylor.

Given the unprecedented and sustained attention on gun violence in the aftermath of the Florida massacre, Republicans have proposed policy solutions that could help prevent future shootings. However, though some moderates and lawmakers in swing House districts have called for gun restrictions, the main focus has centered on school security and mental health. Josh Holmes, a veteran Republican strategist, said Republican candidates need to present some ideas for change, but should avoid having the debate revolve around firearms.

You have to have an answer to the question of how you want to make sure our kids are safe in school, Holmes said. That doesnt need to be a gun control answer because for two-thirds of the country those things are incompatible. But if you dismiss it as a candidate, you do it at your own peril because it is a serious concern, a serious problem, and something I think virtually every American is looking for answers to.

In several primary debates that have taken place since the shooting -- key opportunities for candidates to distinguish themselves from opponents on policy -- Republicans instead answered in lockstep on backing school security measures while opposing any new gun restrictions. In a Republican debate for the Maine gubernatorial election, none of the five candidates supported any new gun measures, but rather supported allowing teachers to carry guns, or putting armed guards at schools. In a Pennsylvania gubernatorial debate, all three GOP candidates (pictured) similarly talked about improvements in school security and opposed any new restrictions.

I dont think we should automatically go to and equate the monster in Florida with those that are trying to exercise their Second Amendment rights here in Pennsylvania peacefully, said Paul Mango, one of candidates.

They did diverge in one area, though: Mango and state Sen. Scott Wagner said they would not refuse donations from the NRA; Laura Ellsworth, a lawyer, said she would.
It seems fitting -- as we learn that not just retired Russian spies are being poisoned but their daughters as well -- to point out that March 8 is the 35th anniversary of Ronald Reagans evil empire speech. The latest attack, apparently with a rare nerve agent, targeted former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. They were found in a peaceful park in the southern English city of Salisbury and are in critical condition as of this writing.

This is the latest in a series of such malevolent machinations on British soil, which has taken the lives of numerous enemies of Vladimir Putin. Until now, authorities in the U.K. havent seemed too eager to even investigate these assassinations, let alone castigate the most obvious culprit. But something has changed this time, perhaps because Skripals 33-year-old daughter was targeted or maybe because a British first responder is in the hospital himself.

No attempt to take innocent life on UK soil will go either unsanctioned or unpunished, vowed British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who accused Moscow of undermining the fundamental basis of international order.

Sadly, these developments make clear that Reagan's 1983 address is relevant again. He was the headliner that March day at the annual conference of the National Association of Evangelicals, held in Orlando. Reagan warmed to his theme slowly, prefacing it with ruminations about his own religious faith and the animating beliefs of Americas Founders. To do this, the president and his speechwriters provided the requisite out-of-context reflections of Thomas Jefferson and William Penn (as well as an absurd and invented Alexis de Tocqueville quote later employed frequently by Bill Clinton), along with a denunciation of Roe v. Wade.

The only passages of Reagans speech remembered today had nothing to do with any of that.

In prefacing his central point, Reagan took aim at the nuclear freeze movement then sweeping the West. His objections were two-fold. First, he characterized it as counterproductive. By creating false hopes, it was undermining his strategy to eventually effectuate deep reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the worlds two superpowers.

More importantly, in Reagans telling, the freeze movement was based on a false moral equivalency between the United States and its main Cold War adversary. Reagan rejected that construct. In his speech to the evangelicals, he referred to the Soviet Union as the focus of evil in the modern world. He then made news -- and history -- with this passage:

So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware of the temptation of pride -- the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

This was the second time Reagan had used that language as president. Nine months earlier, while appearing before members of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster, Reagan outlined his vision of the status of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the bloc of nations under its control, he said, were in the throes of a revolutionary crisis within their own borders. Their system, he added, was nearly bankrupt.

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of human history in denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens, Reagan proclaimed. It is also in deep economic difficulty.

Reagan rhetorically tossed back at the Soviets the infamous Leon Trotsky boast, by proclaiming that he believed freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history. This was not containment Reagan was discussing in his June 8, 1982 speech to Parliament, but ultimate triumph over Soviet-style communism. The victory of good over evil.

To intellectual elites on both sides of the Atlantic, Reagans formulation seemed simplistic back then. To the British police officers and bystanders who witnessed the results of a nerve gas attack in Salisbury this week, and to a government finally coming to terms with the implications of a modern Russia controlled by a former KGB colonel, well, sometimes the lines between good and evil are pretty clear.
Not long ago I waited for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair assistance.

Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed -- late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss their connecting flights -- most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.

Two passengers had boarded with two dogs each. No doubt the airlines' policy of allowing an occasional dog on a flight is understandable. But now planes are starting to sound and smell like kennels.

Special blue parking placards were initially a long-overdue effort to help the disabled. But these days, the definition of "disabled" has so expanded that a large percentage of the population can qualify for special parking privileges -- or cheat in order to qualify.

In California, 26,000 disabled parking placards are currently issued to people over 100 years of age, even though state records list only about 8,000 living centenarians.

Current crises such as homelessness and illegal immigration did not start out as much of a public concern.

Originally, progressive politicians felt that cities should bend their vagrancy laws a bit to allow some of the poor to camp on the sidewalks. Bathroom and public health issues were considered minor, given the relatively small pool of so-called "street people."

Few objected to illegal immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. Foreign nationals came unlawfully across the border in relatively small numbers -- thousands, not millions. Fifty years ago, America was eager to assimilate even the few arrivals who arrived illegally. Not now. The melting pot gave way to the identity politics of the tribe that asks little integration of the newcomers.

Whether out of guilt or out of fear of being perceived as exclusionary by harder leftists, progressives cannot, or will not, draw realistic limits to illegal immigration or homelessness. Yet both cost the law-abiding public billions of dollars in social services, often at the expense of American poor.

This rapid spread of progressivism leads to an endless race for absolute equality and an erosion of prior rules. It also makes once-liberal positions seem passe, recasting those positions as dangerously reactionary.

In 2008, Barack Obama ran for president on a number of Bill Clinton's centrist Democratic policies. Obama opposed gay marriage as contrary to his own Christian beliefs.

Obama supported increased security along the border with Mexico. As a senator, he had voted for a 2006 measure to create 700 miles of new fencing along the Mexican border.

But by the time Obama sought re-election in 2012, progressives were routinely labeling Obama's positions on gay marriage and immigration as homophobic and nativist, respectively.

Twenty years ago, there was honest debate over global warming. Ten years ago, there was still honest debate over the effects of human-induced climate change. Five years ago, there was still honest debate over the cost-benefit analysis of dealing with the problem.

Not now. Anyone who doubts that there is an existential man-caused threat to the planet -- requiring the radical and costly reconstruction of the global economy and society -- is considered a "denier," deserving of professional ostracism or worse.

In the eternal search for perfect justice and equality, what starts out as liberal can quickly end up as progressively absurd. The logic of equality of result, rather than equality of opportunity, demands that there is always one more group, one more grievance, one more complaint against the shrinking and overwhelmed majority.

The conservative ancient Athenian philosopher Plato once made his megaphone Socrates lament that in ancient Athens' nonstop search for perfect equality, soon even the horses would have to be accorded the same privileges as humans.

Socrates' fantasy was an exaggeration intended as a reminder about the craziness of always-creeping mandated equality. Now it seems not far from the mainstream positions of animal-rights groups.

If we insist that the human experience is not tragic and cyclical, but instead must always bend on some predetermined arc to absolute equality and fairness, then unfortunate results must follow.

One, what is welcomed as progressive on Monday is derided as intolerable on Tuesday. The French and Russian revolutions went through several such cycles. After reformers had removed absolute rulers, the reformers were soon derided as too timid. Then came far more radical revolutionaries, who were in turn beheaded or shot as dangerous counter-revolutionaries.

Second, when rules and regulations are always watered down as too exclusionary, the descent to no rules is quite short. The ultimate destination is nihilism and chaos. We see that now in Venezuela and Cuba -- and increasingly in California as well.

(C) 2018 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown reached out to discuss ways in which they could work together on trade policy. At first glance, it would seem an unlikely pairing -- a New York billionaire and the scruffy Ohio lawmaker who was on Hillary Clintons shortlist for vice president -- but both had been railing against unfair trade deals for decades.

Great letter, Trump responded in a handwritten note. "I will never let you down."

Fast-forward to earlier this month, when Trump hastily announced he would be placing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a proposal deemed sacrilegious by traditional Republican orthodoxy and sure to win him few allies. One of them was Brown, who welcomed action he said could stop China from dumping steel into the U.S. market, calling it well overdue.

Such an alliance has incensed Republicans, even those closest to Trump, who are concerned the tariff push will undermine the benefits they hope to reap from a good economy and new tax cuts while boosting rivals they need to defeat in November. Other manufacturing-state Democrats like Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, applauded Trumps move. And Democrat Conor Lamb, who is proving to be competitive in next weeks special election in a Trump district outside of Pittsburgh, also backed the proposal -- even using it to outflank his opponent, Rick Saccone, who also supports tariffs.

Trump was expected to officially roll out the new tariffs during an afternoon ceremony at the White House on Thursday, but the status of the policy is still unclear. He will also hold a rally in that Pittsburgh-area district this weekend, where he believes his trade policies will benefit Saccone. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Wednesday that the policy could potentially include exceptions for Canada and Mexico, depending on U.S. national security interests. Lawmakers hope the president will outline specifics of the plan, having seen the initial announcement spook allies and spark talk of retaliation from U.S. trade partners.

The president has long been consistent on trade policy, a rarity compared to his twists and turns on most other issues, and his stance helped steal away working-class voters from Democrats in 2016. Trumps allies have portrayed the tariffs as a promise kept to constituents, and argue the president has a unique bond with voters in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. But Republicans fear that that constituency is still narrow, particularly in a midterm election year.

It scrambles political alliances as part of a political appeal to a narrow band of voters, mostly residing in areas where the steel industry may be concentrated. But the negative consequences are potentially much broader and longer lasting, warned Republican strategist Kevin Madden. Tariffs and trade fights have the potential to wipe out some of the economic optimism being felt around the country, and that was a key asset for the president and Republicans heading into 2018 midterms.

Ahead of Thursdays rollout, over 100 House Republicans signed a letter written by Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, urging the president to reconsider his decision in order to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that Republicans fear the proposal "could metastasize into a larger trade war. And Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, also raised concerns, signaling how members of the GOP are worried about electoral consequences.

But the exit Tuesday of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who was seen as the last line of defense against Trumps protectionist trade policies, made clear that the president would push forward despite the political and policy ramifications. Though many Republicans have lamented Cohns departure, Trump supporters are likely to cheer it. The former Goldman Sach executive and registered Democrat always seemed antithetical to Trumps campaign message, particularly on prescriptions for the economy.

Brown is running for re-election this year in Ohio, which Trump won by eight percentage points. But his support for the presidents tariff plan has less to do with that and more to do with seeing an issue he has long championed finally elevated and acted upon. This has been really one of the causes of Sherrods career, working to fix the trade dynamic that has really sold out a ton of Ohio workers across the state, said his campaign manager, Justin Barasky. When Trump says he wants to do something about it, Sherrod is unsurprisingly going to be supportive of doing something.

Brown has long been a critic of free-trade agreements, opposing NAFTA since its inception when he was a congressman. He is in frequent contact with Trumps top trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer. And while the Democratic base demands party lawmakers defy Trump at every turn, Brown sees his stance on trade as central to his own identity. Railing against China and currency manipulation was a centerpiece of his 2012 re-election campaign, for example.

The position also allows him to squeeze his opponent, Rep. Jim Renacci, whom the president has endorsed. Renacci is waiting for the details of the tariff policy before announcing whether he supports it. The congressman is looking for a balance between free trade and fair trade, his spokeswoman said.

The plan is finding unlikely allies on the House side, too. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Youngstown who has been critical of his partys leadership, especially on economic issues, backs tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, with the caveat that they be tailored toward China and exempt North American and European allies.

We can't just be against it because Trump is proposing it, Ryan said in an interview with RCP. Theres nobody in our region of the country who has been working in the manufacturing world who doesn't completely understand what the Chinese steel dumping has done. Its hollowing out our neighborhoods and downtowns.

Ryan said he was disappointed with the way in which Trump first announced the plan, comparing him to a bull in a china shop and criticizing him for laying out too broad an approach that unnecessarily rattled the stock market. But, he is imploring his Democratic colleagues to embrace the proposals fundamentals.

It's a lot more than just tariffs; it signals a real understanding that you get the working-class issues, he said. While it's not necessarily a silver bullet, it communicates to everyone that youre willing to be tough on the elite who will benefit from these global trade agreements. Youre signaling a lot by being for this and understanding the issue.

Ryan points to the way in which Lamb has been able to compete in a district Trump won by 17 points. "For too long, China has been making cheap steel and they've been flooding the market with it. It's not fair and it's not right, Lamb said during a debate with Saccone last week, calling Trumps plan long overdue.

His opponent also embraced the policy, arguing that "our competitors around the world have slanted the playing field, and their thumb has been on the scale and I think President Trump is trying to even that scale back out. But Lamb, who enjoys union support then accused Saccone of supporting construction projects that use foreign steel. The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette backed Trump on tariffs in an editorial this week, "The president was elected to defend American workers. He ran on this issue. It would be ludicrous if he reneged on his promise to act decisively on trade.

Unions have also been supportive. This is a great first step toward addressing trade cheating, and we will continue to work with the administration on rewriting trade rules to benefit working people, said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Pennsylvanias Casey, who is also up for re-election in a state Trump narrowly won, saw the tariff announcement as aligned with his priorities. When countries cheat on trade, Pennsylvania workers lose. I urge the administration to follow through and to take aggressive measures to ensure our workers can compete on a level playing field.

But his colleague Pat Toomey, a Republican and former president of the conservative Club for Growth, calls it a big mistake .

Red state Democrats up for re-election this year are waiting to see what the actual policy looks like, but have previously echoed sentiments expressed by their party colleagues. As senators from leading steel and iron ore producing states, we have seen firsthand how this steel dumping has displaced American steelworkers, wrote Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters last spring ahead of Trumps visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. We respectfully urge you to make it clear to President Xi that Chinese steel dumping and illegal trade practices are unacceptable.

But elsewhere, the political benefits for Democrats are less clear. In Wisconsin, a state Trump carried by just one point -- and that global trade skeptic Bernie Sanders won in the Democratic primary -- Republican Gov. Scott Walker has spent the past week denouncing the plan.

Despite good intentions, the @POTUS proposed tariffs could put places like Bemis Co. and its 5,000 Wisconsin workers at risk. Thats why I am respectfully asking him to reconsider, Walker, who is running for re-election this year, tweeted Wednesday.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a liberal who also faces re-election in Wisconsin in November, has been more cautious than some of her colleagues, saying she would like to see the plans details before weighing in. She has expressed concern about the ramifications of broad tariffs, and the fallout of a trade war on drivers of her states economy, including agriculture. Leaders of the Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson company, who met with Trump early in his presidency, have vehemently opposed the proposal, arguing it would hamper expansion.

Republican strategist Brandon Scholz said the Wisconsin electorate was drawn to Trumps tough guy, negotiator, shake things up persona more than trade specifically. For Walker to take this very aggressive, forward-looking position and tell the president no way speaks volumes, Scholz said.
Lie, forget, who can keep track? Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

At this point, everyone should know that the man who went on TV days after firing the FBI director and suggested he did it because of the Russia probe does not have a sharp legal mind. Therefore, the New York Times report that Trump asked two staffers about their testimony to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, against the advice of his legal team, does not come as a surprise.

Trump reportedly asked his former chief of staff Reince Priebus if Muellers investigators had been nice, and privately disputed a Times report from January that said White House counsel Don McGahn testified that Trump had once asked him to fire Mueller. Experts say that probably doesnt rise to the level of witness tampering, though the president shouldnt be adding anything to his long list of potential attempts to obstruct justice.

The McGahn episode raises some other troubling questions. The January Times report said Trump ordered Muellers firing, but McGahn threatened to quit rather than conveying the directive to the Justice Department, and the president backed down. Now the paper reports that after the story was published, thenWhite House staff secretary Rob Porter told McGahn that the president wanted him to release a statement saying it was false:

Mr. Porter, who resigned last month amid a domestic abuse scandal, told Mr. McGahn the president had suggested he might get rid of Mr. McGahn if he chose not to challenge the article, the people briefed on the conversation said.

So Trump might have threatened to fire McGahn if he didnt publicly lie about his failed attempt at a Saturday Night Massacre. But theres another possibility: Trump thought he was demanding that McGahn release a truthful statement, because he didnt recall ordering Muellers firing. The Times continues:

Mr. McGahn did not publicly deny the article, and the president later confronted him in the Oval Office in front of the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, according to the people.

The president said he had never ordered Mr. McGahn to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn replied that the president was wrong and that he had in fact asked Mr. McGahn in June to call the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to tell him that the special counsel had a series of conflicts that disqualified him for overseeing the investigation and that he had to be dismissed. The president told Mr. McGahn that he did not remember the discussion that way.

Mr. Trump moved on, pointing out that Mr. McGahn had never told him that he was going to resign over the order to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn acknowledged that that was true but said that he had told senior White House officials at the time that he was going to quit.

So Trump tried to fire Mueller then forgot about it, or did such a poor job of conveying his instructions that McGahn thought he wanted him to initiate the special counsels dismissal. Choose your own frightening tale of White House dysfunction.
Georgian citizen Archil Tatunashvili died in custody in breakaway Tskhinvali Region (South Ossetia), on February 23 (Civil Georgia, February 23). Subsequently, the de-facto authorities have refused to hand over the body of the deceased (Civil Georgia, February 26) or to allow the return of two other detained Georgians to Tbilisi-controlled territory (Civil Georgia, March 1). Together, these developments highlight the dilemma the Georgian government currently faces vis-a-vis both of its breakaway regions.

On the international stage, the Georgian government maintains the appearance of the status quo, displaying a seemingly uncompromising stance toward South Ossetia, Abkhazia and, hence, Russia. Thus, at the recent meeting with the United States Defense Secretary James Mattis, during the 54th Security Conference in Munich, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili stressed anew Russias aggressive actions in Georgias occupied territories and the grievous human rights situation on the ground (Facebook.com/KvirikashviliOfficial, February 17).

However, domestically, Georgian authorities have been unequivocally attempting to reinvigorate the notion of a direct dialogue with the conflict regions, as Prime Minister Kvirikashvili again titled this endeavor during his December 12, 2017, meeting with the Parliamentary faction Georgias Patriots; the talks were dedicated to issues linked to the occupied territories (Interpressnews.ge, December 20, 2017). Addressing the ongoing advancement of the so-called borderization process (a piecemeal, surreptitious push of the occupation line more deeply inside Tbilisi-controlled Georgian territory) in the Tskhinvali Region, and its coordination from Russia, Kvirikashvili exclaimed, What do you think we can do in such cases, enter into a new military conflict?! [] Unfortunately, other than activating international mechanisms, we have no other means to react [to this process] (Interpressnews.ge, December 20, 2017)

Furthermore, defending the dialogue with the breakaway regions, Kvirikashvili stressed, Let me tell you this directly: we do not have the same approach [as Georgias opposition, which rejects such direct talks]. You will see this once we introduce changes in the Law on the Occupied Territories, as intended by the new [legislative] package, about renewing trade mechanisms. I agree that without direct talks with the conflict regions, no such conflict has ever been resolved (Interpressnews.ge, December 20, 2017).

That new, deeper legislative and executive measures of a direct dialogue are already in the making, was confirmed by Zurab Abashidze, the Georgian governments special envoy to Russia, in his January 15 interview with the Russian paper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Abashidzes discourse exhibited the same pattern of seemingly bemoaning the relentless pulling of Abkhazia and South Ossetia into Russias orbit in military, political and economic terms, yet, at the same time, eagerly welcoming Moscows support in opening direct talks with the breakaway regions. I believe, Russia could effectively facilitate a direct Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian dialogue. This interest is shared by the international communities, which, in fact, fully share Georgias position, Abashidze stated, without clarifying which international communities he had in mind. Abashidze also disclosed something that was hardly reported in Georgia itself: Prime Minister Kvirikashvili suggested increasing the level of official participation in the Geneva talks between Georgia, the breakaway regions and Russia, aiming to use this platform for the aforementioned direct dialogue (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 15).

Attempts at initiating such direct talks have been underway since at least last year. In 2017, Abashidze sought in meetings with his Russian counterpart, Grigory Karasin, the establishment of transit routes through both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which effectively amounts to recognition of direct economic relations with the breakaway regions and thus acknowledgment of them as legitimate political entities and partners of Georgia (see EDM, March 7, 2017). Yet, Abashidze is careful to veil this circumstance by stressing that the decision to set up the trade routes (via the mediation of a Swiss border control service company, SGS)which was already ratified by Georgia and is awaiting confirmation from Russia (see EDM, February 8, 2018)is a Georgian-Russian agreement (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 15).

In response to these government efforts, pro-Western Georgian opposition parties, as well as a number of independent experts, have underlined that taking up direct talks with Sukhumi and Tskhinvaliespecially only on economic and social questions while ignoring the main political problem of Georgian sovereignty and internally displaced personsjeopardizes Georgias long-established policy of non-recognition of the breakaway regions. If official Tbilisi holds a dialogue with the regimes extant in Tskhinvali and Sokhumi, it will be a sign that they are not Russias puppets, but legitimate players. As a result, Georgia will destroy its own position with regard to the Russian occupation. Official dialogue with these regimes means that in two regions of Georgia we have no Russian occupation, but rather two independent actors, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, noted local international relations expert Davit Batashvili. Occupation has only one legitimate outcome: liberation of the territories and restoration of the sovereignty of the victim state. To the contrary, resolutions of conflicts between the center and regions [] are open-ended issues, Batashvili stressed (Civil Georgia, February 7).

Thousands of Russian troops remain stationed in both breakaway Georgian territories. At the same time, the Russia-backed authorities in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali have continued to repeatedly perpetrate and attempt to cover up violent incidents against Georgian citizens on territories controlled by themthe death of Archil Tatunashvili being just the latest case in point. But none of this has deterred the current Georgian government from nevertheless seeking to open a direct dialogue with the breakaway regimes.

In the case of Tatunashvili, who was accused by the South Ossetian side of genocide against the Ossetian people, Georgian authorities have had to rely on Georgian Patriarch Ilia II to appeal to his Russian counterpart, Patriarch Kirill, to help repatriate the body. Tatunashvili was allegedly brutally mishandled by the Tskhinvali regimes authorities (Civil Georgia, March 5). The European Union and the United States both condemned this overreach by the South Ossetian regime (Civil Georgia, February 28). Nevertheless, the current Georgian government seems keen to turn the approaching tenth anniversary of the Russian-Georgian August war into, in Abashidzes words, a threshold of sorts for our better future relations (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 15). Tbilisi apparently hopes to accomplish this, the governments critics assert, by de facto recognizing the breakaway regions as independent actors of the conflict rather than collaborators in the ongoing Russian occupation.
Athens, GA (30605)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. High around 75F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near an inch..

Tonight

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low around 70F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
TORRINGTON - Tim Melady looks for passion - a consuming desire to dance - when a young applicant auditions for Nutmeg Ballet.

In the younger kids I am looking for potential and the ability to understand and the passion to dance, passion for ballet, he said. That over body shape, that over everything else.

Everything else can be taught.

Melady is principal ballet master and one of two national audition tour directors for Nutmeg Ballet. He has recently completed his eighth nationwide audition tour, where he evaluated hundreds of young men and women in more than a dozen states and Canada.

There are some beautiful dancers in the world, he said. And Nutmeg can offer as much as anybody else. We have a wonderful mens scholarship program. We can offer one or two scholarships for gifted dancers, dancers we think have real potential for the Nutmeg environment.

As a gifted male dancer and a 1985 Nutmeg graduate, he is able to reach out to young males who might still believe that ballet is just for girls.

There are fewer males in the program than females, he said. But Ive had three boys who had come before and want to come again, and each one is precious to us. Our dance reputation is very good and they want to come here.

When he represents Nutmeg in the smaller cities and shows them what the school has to offer, Melady sees the dancers eyes light up. They are seeing new things, he said. This school has a fantastic international reputation.

Of course, so do other, bigger schools, but often when a student chooses a bigger school they are dissatisfied, he said. They will come back and audition for us and say, Oh, I went to that big program last year and I didnt get any individual attention. Now I am auditioning for Nutmeg because I know you will give me the individual attention. Youve already given me corrections during the audition.

Nutmeg is a standalone ballet school, not a school that is connected to a ballet company, he said. The advantage we have is that we just train the dancer. There isnt that kind of aggressive competition to get the eye of the director, to please somebody.

As a former Nutmeg student, Melady clearly believes in the program. Everything reaffirms why we do this, he said. One of the greatest things is to see all this beauty. These kids really want to become dancers just like I did, just like Victoria (Mazzarelli 84, artistic director).

The students he recruits have that same energy and drive that we did, he said. We give them that impetus to move forward and become a dancer. The world needs more dancers. We need more dancers. We need more ballet-trained dancers that enjoy and will continue the art form, he said.

His advice to passionate dancers who want to excel?

Dont waste that talent. Dont waste that energy. Dont waste that desire, because its very rare. Yes, its hard to make it, and the payoff isnt monetary. You are living in this art form and its alive.

Area parents interested in having their dancers audition may contact Nutmeg Conservatory at 860-482-4413 or going to www.nutmegconservatory.org.

- END -
A small act of kindness at a Houston-area Waffle House has gone viral.

On Saturday at 2900 Fm 1764 in La Marque, Evoni Williams, 18, was working behind the counter when an older customer with an oxygen tank was struggling to cut his food.

"Without hesitation, she took his plate and began cutting up his ham," wrote Waffle House patron Laura Wolf on Facebook along with a photo she took of Williams and the man. "This may seem small but to him, I'm sure it was huge. I'm thankful to have seen this act of kindness and caring at the start of my day while everything in this world seems so negative."

READ MORE: Houston-area boy banned from school because of long hair

Wolf's photo has since been shared more than 35,000 times on Facebook and netted more than 55,000 votes on Reddit.

Williams, originally from Galveston, graduated from Texas City High School in May and started at Waffle House a month later. She never expected the act of kindness to grab so much attention.

"I didn't know the photo was taken until a couple hours later. When I saw it, it's just something I would do for anybody," Williams told Chron.com on Wednesday afternoon.

The city of La Marque will recognize Williams at 1:45 p.m. Thursday at Waffle House.

"City of La Marque is proud to have this thoughtful young woman working in our city and we'd like to acknowledge and honor her," city spokeswoman Colleen Merritt said in a provided comment. "La Marque Mayor Bobby Hocking is passionate about our community's youth and wants to encourage her dreams of attending college."

A request for comment has been placed with Waffle House.

Fernando Alfonso III is a digital reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on twitter at @fernalfonso.
DARIEN  A Stratford mans comment on Facebook about a newspaper story on school shootings led to his arrest on a charge of disorderly conduct.

On Feb. 24 Raymond Moerloer, of Sedgewick Avenue, wrote, Thanks for the reminder, I need to buy ammo, on the story, which was about a planned walk out in support of gun control. Police received several anonymous complaints about the comment.
The Unite the Right rally in 2017. Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Jason Kessler, the white nationalist who organized last summers deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, is suing the city for denying his request to hold a one-year anniversary event in August.

Kessler applied for a permit for the anniversary march last November and the city turned him down citing the danger to public safety posed by a gathering of angry young racists. It sounds like a reasonable decision given the chaos that erupted in the college town last year, which included the death of Heather Heyer, a counterprotester who was killed when a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd.

In his lawsuit, Kessler blames the city for the violence that engulfed its streets last summer. Its an assessment that comports with an independent review released in December. Prepared by the law firm of a former U.S. attorney, the report said Charlottesville police allowed the white nationalists and the counterprotesters to clash in the streets in hopes of declaring the assembly unlawful and shutting down the entire rally.

White civil rights activists cannot allow a precedent to be set where a government can trample on our rights, blame us for it and we take it lying down, Kessler wrote on his website.

He says in the lawsuit that Charlottesvilles willingness to allow other, bigger rallies proves the city is attempting to silence his speech. White rights arent allowed a platform but white genocide is, the suit says.

Kessler isnt just insisting on holding the rally, he wants it to be on the same dates as last years. They are relevant to his political message, the suit says, and forcing him to hold the rally on another date would dilute and alter his message.
TORRINGTON  National Youth Service Day will be held on Tuesday, April 17. The Mayors Office in conjunction with the Torrington Area Youth Service Bureau and the Mayors Committee on Youth wish to recognize the contributions and actions exhibited by the young people of our community.

National Youth Service Day reinforces in young Americans the importance and excitement of helping others. Presently, T are looking for young people to honor for their many hours of volunteer time. A few of the many suggested activities for recognition are: aid to the hungry/homeless/illiterate, drug and alcohol prevention, and assisting the handicapped.

By honoring our youth we will recognize and encourage the many positive contributions that young people are making in their communities. The ceremony is planned for Tuesday, April 17, 4 p.m., in Coe Memorial Park, Torrington. Anyone is interested in nominating a youth can call the Torrington Area Youth Service Bureau at 860 496-0356 Ext 3 to obtain a nomination form. The deadline for nominations is March 31.

Library presents Women in the Armed Forces

LITCHFIELD  Women in the Armed Forces During WWII, A Presentation by John Cilio, will be held Tuesday, March 30 at 2 p.m. at the Oliver Wolcott Library, 160 South St., Litchfield.

At the urging of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the idea of women in the U.S. Military took shape in the early 1940s. In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, nearly 400,000 women joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad.

By the end of the war, there were few noncombatant jobs in which women did not serve, including positions that hadnt even existed when the war began. General Eisenhower told Congress after the war, that when the formation of womens units was first proposed, I was violently against it. Then he added, Every phase of the record they compiled during the war convinced me of the error of my first reaction. Eisenhower went on to fight for a permanent place for women in the US Armed Forces.

Cilio is an historian who thrives on researching the ghosts of our past; uncovering the underlying forces and historical trends that one single event rarely impacts. He believes that often the consequences of a historical incident are hidden from those that experienced it. Only by looking back can one sense the full impact of those moments in time.

Space is limited. Registration is required and can be done by calling 860-567-8030 or visiting owlibrary.org and clicking on Events/Adult Events.

History club to meet March 19

The Gunn Historical Museums Washington History Club in the Morning will meet at the Washington Senior Center on Monday, March 19 at 10 a.m. The topic of discussion will be the history of the Washington Supply Company. Founded in 1893, and celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, The Supply is a Washington institution with a long history. Valerie Sedelnick, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Washington Supply Co., Jay Combs, Vice President and Service Manager, and former employees will be in attendance and joining the conversation. Guests can bring memories, stories, photographs, and object to share.

The Washington History Club in the Morning is a program of the Gunn Historical Museum and meets the third Monday of the months of September, December, March and June at 10:00am at the Washington Senior Center to discuss the history of Washington, Washington Depot, Marbledale, New Preston and Woodville. Share your memories and stories with the group or just come and listen to the fascinating conversation about our town's past. Bring your photos and objects for show and tell!

Everyone is invited to attend this free program. The Washington Senior Center is located at 6 Bryan Hall Plaza, Washington Depot. Call the Gunn Museum at 860-868-7756 or view www.gunnmuseum.org for more information.

Legislators to hold update sessions

State Senator Kevin Witkos (R-8) and State Representative Bill Simanski (R-62) are holding two Legislative Updates in March in Granby and New Hartford. The Granby event will take place on Monday, March 19, 7-8:30 p.m. in Granby Town Hall, located at 15 North Granby Road, Granby.

The New Hartford event will be held on Tuesday, March 27 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Licia & Mason Beekley Community Library, 10 Central Avenue, New Hartford.

The Legislative Updates are free and open to the public. Each event provides an opportunity for the public to meet with local state lawmakers to discuss the 2018 legislative session and major state issues.

For more information, including information any potential weather related cancellations, visit www.senatorwitkos.com or www.repsimanski.com.

Quilt, needle art show scheduled in Winsted

Winchester Center Congregational Church will hold its 11th Annual Quilt & Needle Art Show Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29.

Organizers are holding a Quilt and Needle Art Challenge, Lesser Known National Holidays Across the Year to celebrate the many Lesser Known National Holidays Across the Year by making a quilt or needle art piece depicting your holiday choice. Choose a Lesser Known National Holiday from one of the websites below or one of your choice. Its a chance to make that small wall hanging for yourself or a friend to celebrate a special day, such as: Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, Umbrella Day, Puppy Day, Sewing Machine Day, Best Friends Day, Frog Jumping Day, World Kissing Day, Howl at the Moon Day and Night, Ride Like the Wind Day, Origami Day, Wear Brown Shoes Day, Make Up Your Mind Day, or any other special lesser know holiday. Visit https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/fun/, http://www.holidayscalendar.com/holidays/weird/, or http://www.emotionscards.com/locations.html (Gives day and month long celebrations).

Size: Perimeter will measure between 36 and 144 total (for example: 8 x 10 or 12 x 6 both have 36 perimeters and 36 x 36 or 42 x 30 both have 144 perimeters. Or any combination that results in a perimeter between 36 and 144) Materials: The work can be quilted, appliqued, felted, crocheted, hooked, knitted, embroidered, woven, or any other type of needle art construction. Include the date of the holiday as part of the quilt either as a large part of the design or as a small part written on one corner

Enter quilts online at winchestercentercongchurch.org by April 1. Entries must be at the Church by April 26. All entries will be hung as a group display at our 11th Annual Quilt and Needle Art Show. Prizes will be awarded.
Barclays bank Uganda says it has already started implementing the new accounting standards that all commercial banks across Africa are required to adopt before the end of this year.

The International Financial Reporting Standards 9 (IFRS 9) requires that all commercial banks put aside money to cater for expected losses from the loans that they give out. This would mean that commercial banks require more money at hand if they are to give out loans or expected credit loss (ECL) provisioning.

Rakesh Jah, Barclays Uganda CEO said: We have been conservative when it comes to provisions. We dont see new accounting standards impact us.

In January, BOU Governor Tumusiime-Mutebile told a Uganda bankers association dinner that most commercial banks in the country were at varying stages of preparedness with regard to putting in place the requisite IFRS 9 governance frameworks, policies, procedures and information system capabilities.

The new standards were approved by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in 2014 and banks must implement them this year.

With this new standard, banks are expected to be more critical on whom they give credit to and the cost of credit is also forecast to move up a little, according industry watchers.

Meanwhile, Barclays Africa group also announced it had started using the name Absa Group Limited as its new brand after its parent firm Barclays PLC sold its majority stake in the group.

It said it would trade as Absa across its operations currently branded Barclays in Africa.

The changes for the rest of the subsidiaries outside South Africa will have to be approved by shareholders and regulators and will be implemented in phased manner.

Maria Ramos, the group CEO, said: We will be Absa, not as you know it, but re-launched, represented, and with an identity fit for the new forward-looking approvals.

Barclays Uganda will also have to change its identity to Absa. The bank has up to June 2020 to have changed all its brands from Barclays to Absa. Barclays PLC has reduced its stake from 62.2% in the Africa group to 14%, making it one of the minority shareholders in the lender.

amwesigwa@observer.ug
Authorities in Cambodias Kratie province on Thursday opened fire on a group of people protesting over a long-running land dispute with a rubber plantation, killing as many as eight people and injuring dozens of others, according to sources.



More than 400 residents of 2 Thnou commune, in Kraties Snuol district, blocked National Road 76A for three hours, beginning around 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, after workers from the Memot Rubber Plantation and security forces burned down the huts and razed the farms of 300 villagers locked in a dispute over ownership of the land, witness Tin Pheak told RFAs Khmer Service.



The demolition came a day after Kratie provincial authorities met with the villagers in a bid to resolve the dispute with Memot  which leased the land around the same time residents settled in the area  but were unable to come to an agreement, she said.



Around 150 soldiers, police and military police were deployed to remove protesters from National Road 76A, Tin Pheak said, and security forces fired on residents during the ensuing confrontation.



When authorities opened fire on the protesters, I saw two people were killed right away and another two injured, she said.



As of now, I know that six people were killed and 40 injured. All the six dead are men. Some of those who were killed are from nearby villages.



Tin Pheak said that the authorities confiscated our smart phones and destroyed them, apparently in a bid to prevent video of the incident from being made public.



We tried to help victims by sending them to hospitals and we are still searching for some missing people, she said.



I saw six dead bodies being dragged from a creek inside a forest ... So far two bodies have been claimed by relatives, but the other four bodies have not been taken from the forest yet.



An official with a local civil society organization, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, also confirmed that six people had been killed and several others injured.



Unarmed villagers



Tin Pheak stressed that the clash occurred after the company sent authorities to demolish and burn down our houses.



We residents asked them to stop the demolition, but they didnt listen to us, she said, adding that the villagers were unarmed and only resorted to throwing sticks and stones at authorities after they opened fire.



Had they not opened fire on us first, we would not have thrown anything at them. The authorities were all well armed.



Authorities later confiscated our smart phones and destroyed them as they were afraid that we used them to record the incident.



The Phnom Penh Post also quoted Tin Pheak as saying that she had seen a woman and man shot dead by the authorities, and had helped move the bodies away from the road. After returning from calling for help, the police already put [a] body in a car, she added.



Tin Pheak said that she had also been hit in the face by a police officials gun.



The Post quoted another villager at the clash, who requested anonymity, who said he saw a man fall over after being shot in the chest.



Death toll rises



Later on Thursday, witnesses told RFA they had discovered two more bodies, bringing the total of number dead to eight.



One of the sources, who declined to provide her name, said that the eight dead included one woman, and echoed Tin Pheaks claims that around 40 people were injured, adding that a number of villagers remain missing.



She said Kratie provincial authorities ordered security forces to fire on the protesters, adding that two people were killed on the spot, and that many of those injured suffered bullet wounds to the arms and legs.



The authorities warned me [not to talk to media], but I will speak, because even if I die, it will be worth it, as long as all the residents can get their land back and not have their homes burned down, she said.



I feel so sorry for them, since some of them have many kids. Myself as well  I have five children. If they shoot and kill me, thats fine, but I just want to make sure that I can get the land back for my children.



Another resident who asked to remain unnamed told RFA that the incident had led to pure chaos.



Now it happens that some people are missing and we are still searching for them, she said, adding I dont know how many people were arrested.



A video of the confrontation, circulating on Facebook, shows villagers with sticks and machetes arguing with authorities, including soldiers carrying rifles. In a later segment, dozens of shots can be heard as the villagers run away, and a separate video purportedly shows a man shot in the thigh receiving medical treatment from fellow protesters.



Claims dismissed



In the hours following the confrontation, authorities offered a significantly different account of what happened in 2 Thnou commune, with Major General Nay Toeung Loeung, the deputy commander of Region 2 and commander of Kratie sub-military operations, telling government-aligned Fresh News Media that reports by The Phnom Penh Post and Radio Free Asia are totally incorrect.



There was no death toll and only two people were injuredone in his buttock and another one in his thighand they were sent to the hospital right away.



Fresh News also quoted Kratie provincial governor Sar Chamrong dismissing reports that residents were killed and that several others had been injured by police firing on protesters. He said a man and a woman had suffered minor injuries, while another villager was arrested for sparking the confrontation, in which protesters wielded homemade guns.



The Kratie provincial government also released a press statement denying the claims and calling earlier reports fake news.



Provincial authorities conducted a security and safety exercise  surrounding company land so as to prevent encroachment from a group of people, the statement said, adding that a confrontation occurred after residents gathered and blocked the National Road 76, whereby a provincial working group tried to compromise for reopening the road, but was rejected by protesters.



Protesters then employed violence against our working group by throwing knives, axes, stones, missiles from rubber slingshots, arrows, and Molotov cocktails, causing injuries to seven members of our provincial working group, it said.



As a result, our working group decided to fire into the air, so as to protect our members and protect the safety of the whole working group. No one was killed during the clash, although nine people were injuredseven of whom are authorities.



Information lockdown



The Phnom Penh Post quoted rights group Adhoc coordinator Be Vanny, who it said initially reported the shooting deaths, as saying he was simply passing on information he had received, and that he was wanted by police.



The Post cited Soueng Sen Karuna, land rights coordinator at Adhoc, as saying that he had been contacted by a Kratie Provincial Court official demanding his group retract its statement and that if not, youll have a problem.



A doctor at the district referral hospital and the director of the provincial hospital declined to provide details when asked by the paper about the incident.



Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Sexual harassment in China is still rife, feminists and NGOs said ahead of International Women's Day on Thursday, although the #MeToo movement has been gaining some traction on the country's tightly controlled social media platforms despite widespread state censorship.

A survey of more than 400 female Chinese journalists found that more than 80 percent of them had been victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, report author and founder of the Anti-Sexual Harassment (ATSH) campaign group Sophina Huang said.

Huang, herself a former journalist for a state-run news agency and a Guangzhou newspaper, said she was inspired by the global #MeToo hashtag campaign encouraging victims of sexual abuse and harassment to speak out.

Huang's survey was based on 416 valid samples out of 1,762 responses from 15 areas of China, including Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hubei, Zhejiang, Shandong and Sichuan.

"Whether on campus or in the workplace, sexual harassment is widespread," Huang told journalists at a joint news conference with the Guangzhou Gender Education Center. "Therefore we must introduce an anti-harassment mechanism without delay."

Huang, whose report recommends anti-sexual harassment training, guidelines for the sensitive handling of complaints, punishment of perpetrators and psychological support for victims, said she will send her findings to major Chinese media, the ruling Chinese Communist Party-backed All China Women's Federation, and the department of propaganda.

"[We need] a system that includes preventative training, investigation of allegations, punishment of offenders and psychological counseling for the victims," Huang said. "All of these factors would add up to a system that works to prevent sexual harassment."

"We definitely need training and workshops in this area, but there is nothing like this in mainland China; there is nothing," she said.

The majority of respondents to Huang's study were heterosexual women journalists in the 18-34 age range, 83.7 percent of whom reported sexual harassment in the workplace.

Of these, more than 40 percent had been sexually harassed between two and four times, and 18.2 percent more than five times.

More than 90 percent of the perpetrators were male, with more than 40 percent holding a position of power over the victim, as their boss or supervisor.

Some 30 percent of cases involved colleagues, around 37 percent were perpetrated by strangers, and some 17 percent people the journalists had been sent to interview.

Harassment behaviors were reported as anything from unwanted sexual jokes or comments, showing victims obscene words or pictures, staring in a lewd manner or deliberately touching victims without their consent.

Only around three percent of victims complained to their organization, with two women taking their complaints to the police. The majority of victims said nothing, because they didn't think it would be effective, and could affect their privacy, careers or personal lives, Huang said.

But more than 61 percent said the incidents had affected their self-esteem and self-confidence, with at least 44 women reporting a negative impact on their personal relationships and social life.

Twenty-two respondents said they had quit their jobs as a result, while 29 said they suffered mental distress and depression and 10 self-harmed or had suicidal thoughts.



Government censors at work

Earlier this year, Beihang University fired a professor, Chen Xiaowu, after he was publicly accused by his former PhD candidate Luo Xixi on social media of sexual harassment and assault.

Luo's #MeToo whistleblowing was among the first to make headline news in China, and Chen's dismissal represented an "initial victory" for Chinese women, she has said.

But whenfeminists posted photos of themselves on social media to mark International Women's Day, hoping to build an online movement, their content was deleted immediately by government censors, activist Xiao Meili told RFA.

"Some people tried to start an anti-sexual harassment movement ... and 38 women at different universities started it, but everything they posted was deleted," she said. "[The authorities] seem to be targeting every possible topic, and what with tighter security during the National People's Congress (NPC), they're not happy about a participatory movement at this time."

Many women who campaign against sexual harassment and gender discrimination in China have also been directly targeted by the authorities.

The detention of five Chinese feminists detained ahead of International Women's Day 2015 as they planned a public campaign against sexual harassment on public transport prompted an international outcry.

Wu Rongrong, Li Tingting, Wei Tingting, Wang Man, and Zheng Churan were released "on bail" in 2015 after being detained for several weeks on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," and have faced restrictions on their freedom of movement since.

Guangdongs response

In the southern province of Guangdong, the debate on sexual harassment on public transport has resulted in the introduction of segregated "female only" carriages on some subway lines in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

But a local resident surname Gao said there has been little public education to accompany the move.

"They haven't really done much propaganda work on this, so a lot of people don't know about it," Gao said. "Also, only a small section of the train has been set aside, which gives the impression that women are being corralled off and their freedom of movement curbed."

"The only way to tackle this problem is with a range of measures to tackle sexual harassment," she said.

Feminist activist Guo Jing said nongovernment groups have been pressing the authorities to tackle the issue through a number of campaigns in the past couple of years, but to no avail.

"But I think that these campaigns by civil groups are, at some level, forcing the government to face up to the issue," she said.

Chinese women are also lagging behind in terms of economic clout.

China ranked 100th out of 144 in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2017.

Women's rights activist Zhang Qing said the ranking didn't come as a surprise to her.

"Chinese women are entering a dark period in their history," Zhang said. "There has been a lot of suppression of human rights since [President] Xi Jinping came to power, and women's rights were the first to bear the brunt of that onslaught."

"Also, we have never had a leader blatantly tell Chinese women, as Xi Jinping has, that we should stay home," she said, adding that plans to remove presidential term-limits will make life even harder for women.

"If Xi Jinping becomes the emperor, we won't get a change of leadership until he dies," she said. "How many more years will women have to put up with this treatment for?"



Reported by Wen Yuqing and Wong Lok-to for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Gao Feng and Han Qing for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
As China's highest-ranking leaders got behind plans to allow an indefinite term in office for President Xi Jinping this week, analysts slammed the move as a historical "regression" to the politics of late supreme leader Mao Zedong.



A draft amendment to China's constitution that will likely be passed by the rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC) in the next few days will remove a two-term limit from the offices of president and vice president, paving the way for indefinite rule by Xi.



Xi has told a recent meeting that he agrees with the proposed amendments, which were made "with an eye on the big picture," state media reported.



The move is a "major step" forward for the rule of law and modernization, Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying.



Former China Youth Daily editor Li Datong, who posted and forwarded an open letter opposing the move on the social media platform WeChat, said it was a regressive step, however.



"This is a retrograde step; we are now moving backwards," Li said. "Don't people care how this guy turns out?"



Li said the predictability of the two-term system had at least offered political stability since late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping brought in the measure with the country's brand-new constitution in 1982.



"He's not going to hand power over to anyone else as long as he's still alive," Li said. "Of course he's going to agree with these amendments. It would only be news if he didn't agree with them."



Li said the move is a sign of Xi's deep fear of being undermined by a political rival.



"Nobody with any self-confidence would behave like this," he said. "I told them a while back that they'd become a global laughing stock, and that people would feel quite alarmed at the direction our country is going in."



'Somewhat sickening' to watch

Contemporary Chinese historian Feng Chongyi of the University of Technology in Sydney said Xi had managed to get himself to this point using "autocratic tricks."



"This is an old trick, to persuade people further down the ranks that they should express their loyalty to you," Feng said. "All autocratic regimes behave in this way."



Feng said Xi's self-promotion was "somewhat sickening" to watch.



"Xi Jinping has become his own champion, which is a pretty low-down trick," he said. "The problem is that all those mediocre bureaucrats rely on the whole party machinery for their bread and butter."



"There is no way that they are going to have the guts to stand up to Xi Jinping," he said. "What's crucial here is that they have already suppressed any opposing voices, online and in the media."



The parallels with late supreme leader Mao Zedong were once more highlighted when immigration authorities in Macau, which returned to Chinese rule in 1999, refused entry to a prominent dissident author who penned an explosive biography of the late Chairman.



Organizers of the Macau Literary Festival said they had been "unofficially" warned that "Wild Swans" author Jung Chang, who has also written about Mao, wouldn't be admitted to the city to speak at the festival.



Investigative journalist Suki Kim, who went undercover to write a bestselling book about life in North Korea, and a former intelligence officer writing North Korea-themed detective stories under the pen-name James Church would also be refused entry, they said.



The city, whose partially elected local government is loyal to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, has previously denied entry to pro-democracy activists and some Hong Kong journalists.



'Damaged, murky' Macau

Writers' group Hong Kong PEN hit out at the move as "deplorable."



"We urge the Macau administration not to use access to their city as a covert tool of political control in determining what kind of books are deemed acceptable," the group said.



In Macau, pro-democracy lawmaker Sulu Sou said the move was unacceptable.



"The authorities have a responsibility to find out what happened and to make a full public account of what actually happened here," Sou told RFA.



"Macau has always had a damaged, murky sort of image," he said. "All we can do is guess which department decided this was a problem. The real reason is hard to tell, but they are using security as an excuse to cloak their actions."



Zhang Weiguo, U.S.-based editor of Hong Kong online magazine The Trend, said China looks set to return to Mao-era levels of political and ideological controls.



"Ever since Xi Jinping came to power, he has sought to direct ideology across the board," Zhang said. "This is basically a restoration [of an imperial-style system], a return to the Mao era."



"He uses Mao's methods to shore up his own power: he wants to become a second Mao Zedong," he said. "Of course authors like these are going to be on their blacklist."



Reported by Ng Yik-tung, Sing Man and Lam Kwok-lap for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Lin Ping for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Prominent exiled Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa said Wednesday that a Red Notice alert for his arrest, which was recently removed by international policing organization INTERPOL, is just one example of how Chinas government is using the alleged threat of terrorism to silence its critics around the world.



The president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that his case, which was closed last month after nearly two decades, demonstrates the need for countries and international policing mechanisms to reject efforts by authoritarian governments to target dissidents abroad.



My case is just one example of the Chinese governments campaign to use the narrative of terrorism and extremism to silence any criticism and to justify its own reign of terror in my home country, he said, referring to East Turkestanthe name preferred by many ethnic Uyghurs for their historic homeland, now ruled by China and known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.



The resolution of the INTERPOL case, after 20 years, provides one small example of what must be done to stand up for what is right. People in free societies need to work together to push back against the Chinese governments shocking tactic of intimidating human rights defenders living in free countries.



Isa called on democratic governments to break their silence about Beijings targeting of dissidents in their countries and urged them to work together with civil society groups to strengthen global institutions and uphold universal values with respect to human rights and liberty.



In February, INTERPOL confirmed that it deleted a Red Noticean international wanted person alertfor Isa, who fled China in the mid-1990s, for his involvement in peaceful Uyghur student protests in the late 1980s.



Isa, who was granted refugee status in Germany in 1996 and later gained German citizenship, learned in 1999 that China had issued a Red Notice against him, demanding his arrest and extradition back to China to face charges.



As a result of the alert, Isa had faced harassmentincluding detention and arrestby authorities in South Korea, India, the U.S., Turkey and Italy while advocating for human rights for the Uyghur people.



As recently as July last year, Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs had referred to the activist as a terrorist wanted under the red notice of Interpol and by the Chinese police.



Extraterritorial harassment



Speaking after Wednesdays press conference, moderator Louisa Greve applauded INTERPOL for creating a new system that allows it to review the information in its databases and working to prevent activists such as Isa from becoming the subjects of politically motivated arrest alerts.



She told RFAs Uyghur Service that despite the election of Chinese Deputy Minister of Public Security Meng Hongwei as president of INTERPOL in 2016, all international organizations work on the basis of carrying out the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Interpol is no exception.



Sophie Richardson, China director for New York-based Human Rights Watch, called the removal of Isas Red Notice a victory for anybody who has been unfairly or arbitrarily listed by an organization that really isnt accountable to the public, noting that INTERPOL often recycles baseless legal warrants from governments that have no real rule of law, like China.



She said that long-time advocacy, both by Dolkun and organizations that helped him, was responsible for the removal of his arrest alert, as well as some exposure of how China is abusing the Red Notice system inside and outside the country.



I think, actually, in a way, having Meng Hongweias very senior Chinese police officialat the head of Interpol has drawn more scrutiny of the organization and how it works in hopefully a positive way, she said.



Rebecca Shaeffer, senior legal and policy officer for UK-based Fair Trials, called Isas case low hanging fruit because of how publicized it was, but warned that many, many activists and ethnic minorities and journalists are suffering in silence with cases that are not so high profile.



They dont have championsthey dont have the name recognition that INTERPOL was able to use to gain clarity on the fact that this was a politically motivated case, she said, noting that for other cases it wont be so clear and much more legal advocacy will be necessary.



We should also remember that its only one case among many, and that the situation of extraterritorial harassment of activists and their families by China continues and its going to take more than one application and one Red Notice deletion to stop that.



Repressive measures



Since Xinjiang party chief Chen Quanguo was appointed to his post in August 2016, he has initiated unprecedented repressive measures against the Uyghur people and ideological purges against so-called two-faced Uyghur officialsa term applied by the government to Uyghurs who do not willingly follow directives and exhibit signs of disloyalty.



China regularly conducts strike hard campaigns in Xinjiang, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.



While China blames some Uyghurs for "terrorist" attacks, experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2009.



Reported by Kurban Niyaz for RFAs Uyghur Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
The chairperson of the Industrial Training Council (ITC), Dr Joseph Muvawala, has expressed concern about ongoing move by the ministry of Education to merge the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) and Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) into one examination and assessment body.

Muvawala argues that the mandates of the two institutions are clearly cut out but there is still ongoing confusion on the roles performed by the two institutions.

Dr Joseph Muvawala (R) hands over Occupational and Modular Assessment results to minister John Chrysostom Muyingo. Photo: Yudaya Nangozi

Upon review of the draft Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy, I was disturbed to learn that that DIT features so latently and there are deep-seated proposals that it should be merged with UBTEB, Muvawala said.

He made the remarks during the release of the 7th series of the Occupational and Modular Assessment results conducted by the DIT at the office of the president conference hall on Wednesday March 7.

He explained that while UBTEB conducts formal assessments, DIT conducts in-company and apprenticeship assessments and recognition of prior learning. This, he said, implies that the DIT complements roles of UBTEB and the two institutions do not conflict at all.

The merger is therefore not reasonable as proposed in the TVET policy document. The objective of the policy should therefore not be to kill the DIT but allow it to perform its mandate, said the National Planning Authority executive director.

The state minister for Higher Education, Dr John C. Muyingo, who presided over the release, told The Observer that the ministry has no idea about the proposal as highlighted by Muvawala.

Where did you get these proposals? I dont know where you get these things. That proposal [to merge UBETEB and DIT] has not come anywhere close to us, Muyingo said.

The issue is that if such an issue ever happens, we have to discuss it first with relevant stakeholders. Dont even waste time talking about that proposal.

According to Muyingo, once the two institutions are merged, government is likely to lose the quality assurance element which is key to improving the value and competitiveness of Ugandas goods and services.

When tasked to explain further about the proposal, Muvawala declined to speak after this reporter told him the minister had opposed its existence.

If the minister has spoken, I dont add anything. You just take what he said, he said.

However, a draft institutional framework for skills development seen by The Observer indicates that: the fact that DIT is both regulating and awarding qualifications creates a conflict of interest which must be resolved

It adds that since DIT and UBTEB are generalist awarding bodies, merging the assessment and awarding functions in the two institutions may also simplify the qualifications landscape from an employers perspective.

Each party undoubtedly has specific skills, knowledge and experience from which the other could benefit. The longstanding dislocation of two different types of assessment and accreditation could be overcome [with a merger], reads part of the framework.

CANDIDATES PERFORMANCE

While presenting the results, DIT director Patrick Byakatonda noted an improvement in performance and candidature from 17,028 in 2016 to 22,526 in 2017.

The assessment in four sectors of agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and tourism and hospitality was conducted between October 16 and December 1, 2017 from 708 assessment centres in 38 occupations across the country.

Of the 22,526 candidates, 12,240 (54.3%) were female and 10,286 (45.7%) male. In terms of performance for the full occupational assessment (level I, II & III), at least 7,907 were registered.

Of these, 7,206 (91.1%) were successful, 85 were referred, 293 failed and 323 were absent. Under modular (non-formal) assessment, 14,619 candidates were assessed of which 11,688 (79.95%) passed, 400 failed and 2,531 were absent.

Byakatonda said coordination reports revealed that missing candidates had initially completed training but joined the world of work without attaching importance to assessment.

In a speech read by Muyingo on behalf of the Education minister, Janet Museveni challenged the DIT to put in place strategies that will encourage more skilled Ugandans to have their competences certified. This is in addition to initiating an Information and Assessment System to help in tracking the assessment and placement of successful candidates in the job market.

It is gratifying to learn that you have started on the process of computerising the system to achieve this goal. I pledge increased support from my ministry to enable you execute your mandate, Museveni said.

We want to ensure that all skilled workers get an opportunity to be assessed and certified even if they never got a chance to go to school.

According to Museveni, certifying people from the non-formal sector will further their chances of entry into the labour market on equal terms as qualified skilled workers.

She encouraged successful candidates to add value and ensure quality of their products in order to enhance competitiveness both within the local and regional markets.

nangonzi@observer.ug
Austrian authorities say a 23-year-old Afghan man has admitted stabbing and severely injuring four people in Vienna because he was "upset about his lifes situation."

Police said on March 8 that the suspect, whose name was not made public, acknowledged the stabbings of a 20-year-old Afghan male acquaintance and three members of a separate family.

The victims' names were also not released.

The suspect was detained shortly after the stabbing of the 20-year-old late on March 7 in the Austrian capital, police said.

Earlier in the evening at about 7:45 p.m. local time, he allegedly attacked three members of a family -- the 67-year-old father, the 56-year-old mother, and their 17-year-old daughter -- on the large shopping street of Praterstrasse in the center of Vienna.

Police said the father was in critical condition, while his wife and daughter remained hospitalized in stable condition. The injured Afghan man was also reported to be stable.

Authorities said the motive for the attack on the family was unclear. But they said the suspect told police he knew the Afghan man, saying he was targeted because "he holds him responsible for his previous drug addiction."

The suspect also said he was in a "bad, aggressive mood and upset about his life's situation" when he committed the attacks, police reported.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Hundreds of women marched in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on March 8 to mark International Women's Day and to remind authorities that much remains to be done to give Afghan women a voice, ensure their education, and protect them from increasing violence.

The head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Sima Samar, addressed women in Afghanistan's security forces.

"Your safety represents the safety of all Afghan women," she said, reminding women in uniform to report any abuse by superiors to the rights commission.

Samar said no one has the right to comment on their physical appearance or to speak to them disrespectfully.

The overall situation for Afghan women has gradually improved in the last decade, especially in the major urban areas, but those living in rural parts of the country still face major discrimination and violence.

In a March 8 statement, the United Nations called on the Afghan government to redouble efforts to ensure that "womens voices are heard in public and women are members of key decision-making bodies such as the Supreme Court or holders of senior positions such as governorships or ministerial appointments."

"Empowering urban and rural Afghan women is essential to reducing poverty, inequality, and violence against women," said Toby Lanzer, acting head of the UN in Afghanistan.

Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, have voiced concern at women's rights in Afghanistan.

With reporting by AP
The United Nations envoy to Afghanistan has urged the Taliban to accept an offer by Afghanistans government of direct peace negotiations that could lead to an end to more than 16 years of fighting.

"The offer of negotiation is on the table," Tadamichi Yamamoto on March 8 told a UN Security Council meeting that renewed the mandate of the UN political mission in the war-torn country for another year.

"It is now incumbent upon the Taliban to come forward with an offer of their own, and start direct talks with the government to put an end to the suffering of the Afghan people," said Yamamoto, who also heads the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

"Making peace and reaching out to opponents requires resolve, courage, and above all national unity," Yamamoto said, adding that "political leaders need to put the national interest above a partisan agenda."

On February 28, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered to allow the Taliban to establish itself as a political party and said he would work to remove sanctions on the militant group, among other incentives, if it joined the government in peace negotiations.

In return, the militants would have to recognize the Kabul government and respect the rule of law.

But the Taliban has continued to reject direct peace talks with the Afghan government and insisted it will only negotiate with the United States, which it calls a "foreign occupying force." The Taliban also says that NATO forces must withdraw before negotiations can begin.

The United States has refused to withdraw troops as demanded by the Taliban and has insisted that Kabul must play a lead role in peace negotiations.

The Afghan government and the Taliban held peace talks in 2015, but they broke down almost immediately.

Earlier this week, Washington called on the Taliban to give "serious" consideration to Ghani's offer.

"This is not a surrender that's being offered to the Taliban, but a dignified process for reaching a political framework," said Alice Wells, a U.S. principal deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of South and Central Asian affairs.

Wells is scheduled to deliver remarks on Signs Of Hope For Afghan Peace Talks on March 9 at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

The Western-backed government in Kabul has been struggling to fend off the Taliban and other militant groups since the withdrawal of most NATO troops in 2014.

The new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, announced in August, aims at breaking a stalemate with the insurgents and at pushing them to the negotiating table.

The United States has since deployed 3,000 more troops to the country to train, advise, and assist as well as to conduct counterterrorism missions, and increased air strikes against the militants. The United States currently has about 14,000 uniformed personnel in Afghanistan.

Addressing the UN Security Council, Yamamoto expressed concern over the growing number of civilian casualties at the hands of militants from a branch of the extremist group Islamic State in Afghanistan.

He also said he hoped parliamentary elections could be held in 2018 and a presidential vote in 2019, but that "timelines remain tight."

With reporting by AFP
A senior Armenian Health Ministry official has acknowledged that the government's controversial new restrictions on pharmaceutical sales touched off some problems, but he said Yerevan is moving to resolve them.

Deputy Health Minister Sergey Khachatrian said on March 7 that health officials suspected problems might arise even before the new system was introduced, and those concerns were confirmed on the first day.

Lines of customers formed at pharmacies in Yerevan and other towns across Armenia on February 28, one day before the phased entry into force of a government ban on over-the-counter sales of antibiotics and other types of medication.

As the restrictions took effect, confusion persisted as many customers were not aware of the restrictions or had problems with obtaining doctors prescriptions for the medicines, as required under the new system.

Starting on March 1, pharmacies were not allowed to sell, without prescriptions signed by doctors, antibiotics, hormone therapy drugs, and painkillers containing codeine  a total of 2,700 of roughly 4,700 medicines sold in Armenia.

Ministry officials said the restrictions were needed to curb self-treatment that can cause serious harm to peoples health.

Responding to the confusion and widespread discontent among the public, the government on March 6 softened the ban by narrowing its application only to antibiotics, psychotropic, and antiviral drugs.

The bans on over-the-counter sales of medication for injections and hormone therapy drugs are now due to go into effect in July and October, respectively.

Although a lot of preparatory work had been done, in practice a number of problems began to emerge in connection with the filling [of prescriptions], patients visiting doctors, the lists of drugs for over-the-counter sale and sale by prescription only," Khachatrian said.

"Now we are monitoring these issues and coming up with solutions, he said.
European power operators say a dispute between Serbia and Kosovo is sapping a small amount of energy from the continent's electricity grid and causing electronic clocks to run several minutes late across Europe.

The Brussels-based power operators association ENTSO-E said on March 7 that "political disagreements" between the Balkan neighbors have caused a decrease in the electric frequency in the continental network since mid-January.

"The decrease in frequency average is affecting those electric clocks that are steered by the frequency of the power system and not by a quartz crystal," it said in a statement.

As a result, clocks for radio alarms, ovens, and heating systems currently are running about six minutes late in all Western European countries, it said.

The power association said it "is urging European and national governments and policy makers to take swift action" to resolve the dispute between Serbian and Kosovar authorities that it said "has led to the observed electricity impact."

The association said the problem stems from a shortfall of power production in Kosovo. All of the nations in Europe share a power grid, with each nation putting power into the grid and making it available for consumption.

Each nation's electricity contribution is agreed to and measured by the grid operators to keep the system operating at a preset energy level.

But lingering political differences between Serbia and Kosovo have prevented the two Balkan countries from resolving how to compensate for the shortfall in Kosovo's power production, the association said.

Serbia's power grid company EMS AD blamed the missing power on Kosovo, which it said is "uninterruptedly withdrawing, in an unauthorized manner, uncontracted electric energy" from the grid.

EMS AD, which is tasked with balancing the Kosovo grid, said it "has committed all its resources to resolving this issue in a swift and efficient manner."

The Serbian power company said that the Kosovo operator KOSTT has already taken action to resolve the problem and had "ceased, as of March 3, its unauthorized power withdrawal."

In Pristina, KOSTT Deputy Director Kadri Kadriu said that the problem was in northern Kosovo, an area populated with some 40,000 minority Serbs who refuse to recognize the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Some of the ethnic Serbian customers haven't been paying the power bills they've been receiving from the Kosovar government, the power company said.

"KOSTT is supplying the north of Kosovo with electricity and it is considered as a loss," Kadriu said.

The problem has been aggravated by Serbia's refusal to recognize the declaration of independence in 2008 by Kosovo, which Belgrade still regards as a province of Serbia.

While 116 other countries recognize Kosovo's independence, Serbia has blocked Pristina's attempts to join international organizations like the UN and the European power association ENTSO-E.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and dpa
Balkars in Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria are marking the 74th anniversary of their mass deportation to Central Asia by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Balkars are a Turkic-speaking and predominantly Muslim ethnic group that numbers an estimated 110,000 people.

Prayers in the region's mosques on March 8 were dedicated to those who died during their deportation to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan between 1944 and 1957.

The head of Kabardino-Balkaria, Yury Kokov, called the deportation "a monstrous crime by the criminal ruling [Soviet] regime."

In a statement on March 7, Kokov said that all residents of Kabardino-Balkaria "share the bitterness of loss and honor the memory of the victims of all political repressions."

About 38,000 Balkars, more than half of whom were women and children, were deported on March 8, 1944, to Central Asia by Stalin's government, which accused them of collaborating with Nazi Germany.

Those who survived deportation were able to return to the North Caucasus in 1957, after the Soviet Union's Supreme Council restored the Kabardino-Balkar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
The European Union has criticized Belarus for executing convicted murderer Kiryl Kazachok and urged President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government to abolish capital punishment.

Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, said in a statement issued on March 8 that the EU "expects Belarus, the only country in Europe still applying capital punishment, to introduce without delay a moratorium on the death penalty as a first step towards its abolition."

"In light of the execution in Belarus of Kiryl Kazachok, which took place in October 2017 but was brought to the public's attention only now, the European Union again reaffirms its strong opposition to capital punishment in all circumstances," the statement said.

Minsk-based Vyasna (Spring) human rights center said on March 7 that relatives of Kazachok had only been informed in recent days that he had been executed in October.



Kazachok was sentenced to death in December 2016 after a court in the southeastern city of Homel found him guilty of killing his 17-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter in order to punish his wife for wanting a divorce.

The court found that Kazachok was drunk when he carried out the killings.



Kazachok refused to appeal the sentence.



The EU and rights groups have, for years, been urging Belarus to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.



Activists say there are currently five convicted murderers on death row in Belarus.
BRUSSELS -- Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili says that Tbilisi is ready to take more action to preserve the hard-won visa liberalization regime that enables its citizens to travel to the EU's Schengen Area without obtaining a visa.

Margvelashvili made the pledge on March 8 in Brussels, where EU interior ministers met to discuss concerns about possible Georgian abuse of the visa-liberalization system, with both Germany and Sweden reporting several hundreds of asylum applications from Georgia since visa-free travel to the Schengen zone began in March 2017.

"The Georgian government has taken an extremely active and responsible position on every issue that has been brought by our partners [in the EU]," Margvelashvili said after talks with European Council President Donald Tusk.

"We are ready even further to do our best on working together, on having a much more effective and functioning and long-standing cooperation," he added.

Tusk welcomed what he called "the commitment of the Georgian authorities to continue working with EU member states to make sure that [the visa-free regime] will function properly."

'Worrisome' Uptick In Asylum Seekers

Speaking to journalists ahead of the EU Home Affairs Council, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere called the increase in the number of asylum seekers from Georgia "worrisome."

The Georgian government is taking all necessary steps to ensure that the number [of asylum seekers] will not continue to rise, de Maiziere continued. "We are also satisfied with the Georgian government's willingness to cooperate when it comes to accepting the return of those whose asylum requests have been rejected."

But he also said that Germany will hold talks with other EU member states "about what consequences there will be if this situation continues."

Swedish Interior Minister Morgan Johansson said Sweden would raise its concerns when Georgian Interior Minister Giorgi Mghebrishvili travels to Stockholm on March 13.

In Sweden, Georgians have constituted the highest group of asylum seekers after Syrians so far this year.

And Johansson said his ministry had identified Georgian citizens in international criminal groups carrying out burglaries in the country.

Although suspension of visa-free travel was not on the table at the March 8 meeting, Georgia will be under pressure to stop the flow of asylum seekers to the EU.

"The question, as I know, has not been raised in any discussion so far, but I don't know if it will come up  maybe," the Swedish interior minister said.

According to EU diplomats, who are familiar with the issue but are not authorized to speak on the record, proposals such as more information campaigns in Georgia, stricter controls over the issuance of Georgian passports, and closer cooperation between Georgian police and those in various EU countries were being raised with Margvelashvili in meetings with EU officials in Brussels.
Several women who had attempted to gather in Tehran to mark International Womens Day have been detained, reports said.

Womens rights activists had announced that they would stage a peaceful protest outside the Labor Ministry in the Iranian capital on March 8 to call for more rights.

On this one day, out of an entire year, we as women of this country should be able to make these cities our own, stay in the streets, and return to our homes at days end, without having our bones crushed, they said in a statement issued earlier this week.

Women and men who attempted to gather for the demonstration were confronted by security forces who dispersed them, according to social-media accounts.

More than a dozen people were reportedly detained.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, the BBC, and Kalame


Hundreds of Kosovar Albanians have celebrated the Night of Fires, the anniversary of the launch of the armed resistance to the regime of the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic 20 years ago.

People holding lighted torches assembled on March 7 in the evening in the town of Prekaz, 50 kilometers west of the capital, Pristina, where Adem Jashari, a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander, and more than 50 family members were killed by Serb Army and paramilitary forces in 1998.

Kosovo's 1998-99 armed resistance ended after a 78-day air strike campaign from NATO against Serbia to stop a bloody crackdown against ethnic Albanians.

Milosevic's brutal crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians killed around 10,000 people.

In 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, which has been recognized by 117 countries, including the United States, but not by Serbia or Russia.

With reporting by AP
Police together with Chieftaincy Military Intelligence (CMI) have arrested another two suspects alleged to have orchestrated the kidnap and killing of Susan Magara, a 28-year-old accountant whose body was found dumped near Kajjansi last week.



The two suspects who include Bob Kibirango and Patrick Agaba were arrested a few days after the arrest of Ronald Asiimwe also known as Kanyankole, the prime suspect in the heinous crime.

Susan Magara's body was found dumped in Kitiko three weeks after her kidnap on February 7 Kibirango, a known associate of Kanyankole was arrested over the weekend by operatives of the Police Flying Squad who had been tracking him down. Kibirango, a known associate of Kanyankole was arrested over the weekend by operatives of the Police Flying Squad who had been tracking him down.

Patrick Agaba, a businessman who is well known in Kampala for driving expensive motor vehicles number plated 'PATO', was arrested in South Africa by South African police after they were tipped off by Uganda's State House officials.

A highly placed source in security told URN that Agaba travelled to South Africa on February 25 and was carrying the ransom money which was allegedly given to the kidnappers by the Magara's family on February 24.

Magara's kidnapped had demanded for $1 million (about Shs 3.5 billion) in ransom but the family reportedly managed to raise between Shs 700-800 million a few days before her eventual murder.



"Our intelligence revealed that Agaba transported the money which was in dollars out of the country through Entebbe Airport, " the source who preferred anonymity said.



Agaba has been a frequent traveller between Uganda and South Africa. He got a visa last year in October claiming that he was invited by Mercedes Benz company of South Africa as an employee of Spear Motors Uganda.



It was the same visa that Agaba used to transport the money to South Africa. It is still unknown whether the suspect was found in possession of some of the money.

Police and CMI have been interrogating Kibirango and Kanyankole but are yet to get a confession from any of them. Preliminary investigations into the killing suggest that Magara may have been raped before she was killed.

Police and CMI are now using pieces of evidence collected during autopsy to connect the suspects currently in custody to the crime scene.



Magara was kidnapped on February 7 on Kabaka Anjagala road as she was driving to her home in Lungujja. She was later killed after three weeks in her kidnappers' custody and her body dumped in an area between Kajjansi and Kigo, on the Southern bypass.




A group of Kyrgyz activists have found a unique way to fight alleged corruption in the judicial system.

The group is compiling a blacklist of judges the activists believe are corrupt or known for bias and "unlawful rulings."

The group's members include lawyers, rights defenders, and political activists who often participate in open trials.

The blacklist so far consists of 23 judges of different levels from across Kyrgyzstan, and it will grow, says activist and former lawmaker Asiya Sasykbaeva.

"We must cleanse the court system of them," Sasykbaeva told RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service on March 7.

Rights activist Rita Karasartova says the list includes judges who "carry out political orders" and also those who target journalists.

Some judges, however, accuse the activists and their supporters of bias.

The plan to publicly name and shame allegedly corrupt judges was first announced during a rally the activists held in front of the government headquarters in Bishkek in which they demanded reforms to the judicial system.

The rally was held on March 5, the national day of judiciary employees.

'Fabricated Charges'

Activists were joined by several people who claim they have fallen victim to unfair rulings.

Bakhtybek Yusupov, a resident of the southern city of Osh, accuses a city judge of corruption.

"I fell victim to an illegal court ruling that favored a group close to a corrupt judge. I was sentenced  on fabricated charges because they wanted to take my house," Yusupov claimed.

The Osh city court, where Yusupov was tried some five years ago, said that the judge who oversaw the case was fired in 2016.

Among the "blacklisted" judges is Kymbat Arkharova, a district judge from the capital, Bishkek.

Arkharova is among those recently nominated to be a Supreme Court judge, but the activists are seeking to block her nomination.

The activists claim Arkharova is among the judges involved in politically motivated court rulings against journalists and rights defenders.

Arkharova, however, rejects the accusation and insists her nomination was based on merit.

"Envious people can say whatever they like. There are two sides in every process, and inevitably one of them will be left unhappy," Arkharova said.

Almazbek Abdyldaev, the head of the Osh Provincial Court, told RFE/RL that it's unacceptable to blacklist judges when their rulings aren't to someone's liking.

"Each verdict is based on legal norms," he said. "Judges can't issue a verdict as they please. It's impossible."

'Rampant Corruption'

The activists, meanwhile, are calling on President Sooronbai Jeenbekov not to allow judges whose reputations have been tarnished to find a place in the Supreme Court.

In February, Jeenbekov made accusations of rampant corruption in the country's criminal justice system.

"I don't have any intention of in interfering in the activities of judges," the president said on February 8. "However, if they release [someone involved in] a serious crime, or violate laws and citizens' rights, I would not stand by indifferently."

"I will get involved in every issue in which people's rights are violated and the interests of the state are undermined," the president added.

Activists say they are sending the blacklist to the president.

If corrupt judges end up taking high positions at the Supreme Court, activist Rita Karasartova said, "it would mean that the president's statement was just empty words."

Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service correspondent Kubanychbek Zholdoshev.
President Donald Trump's former campaign chief has pleaded not guilty to the latest set of criminal charges brought by the U.S. special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Paul Manafort, who entered the plea on March 8, faced a second set of bank and tax fraud charges that were filed last month by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Mueller filed the updated charges last month against Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, in what was seen as a bid to pressure the two men to cooperate with Mueller's investigation.

A day after that new indictment was issued, Gates announced he would plead guilty, and agree to work with investigators.

The charges Manafort faces stem largely from his work as a lobbyist prior to his joining the Trump presidential campaign in early 2016, though prosecutors say the allegedly criminal acts continued while he served as campaign manager.

Manafort was fired by Trump in August 2016 amid revelations of off-the-books payments by a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.

The question of Russian interference has overshadowed Trump's administration.

Three congressional committees are probing the issue, and Mueller has indicted or secured guilty pleas from 19 people and three Russian companies.
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before U.S. President Donald Trump took office was an effort by his campaign to establish a back channel with the Kremlin, The Washington Post has reported.

The meeting in the Indian Ocean island nation in January 2017 was between Erik Prince, a prominent U.S. military contractor who is the brother of Trump's education secretary, and Kirill Dmitriyev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund who is close to President Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reported late on March 7.

Citing people familiar with the matter, whom it did not identify, The Washington Post said that a witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition team could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries.

The Washington Post said that George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

The Washington Post said Nader started cooperating with Mueller's investigation as a witness in January.

Prince denied that he met with Dmitriyev on behalf of Trump and referred reporters to his public comments on the meeting last year.

Last year, Prince told lawmakers and the media that the meeting was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Seychelles for meetings with officials from the United Arab Emirates.

Prince had no formal role in Trump's campaign and said he went to the Seychelles as a private businessman, not as an unofficial emissary for Trump.

Prince said he was introduced to Dmitriyev by U.A.E. officials and spoke with the Russian for no more than 30 minutes. He specifically denied last year that the meeting was arranged to set up a back channel of communication with the Kremlin.

We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the U.S.A., Prince told lawmakers.

I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism.

The Washington Post said the U.A.E. agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its close relationship with Iran -- a key objective of both the Trump administration and several Gulf Arab countries.

The Washington Post, citing U.S. officials, said such a concession by Moscow would have been required to justify any easing of U.S. sanctions on Russia by the Trump administration.

The Washington Post said that while Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks with the Kremlin.

After the Seychelles meeting, Nader visited the White House several times and met at least once there with former presidential adviser Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, The Washington Post said.

With reporting by Reuters


A son of Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah and 19 other people were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike this week in Afghanistan, officials say.

Abdullah, who is also known as Iman Diri, was killed in the Chawgam area in the eastern province of Kunar on March 6 when a training camp for suicide bombers near the Afghan border was hit by two missiles, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The officials were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Two other regional commanders of the Pakistani Taliban -- Gul Mohammad and Ustad Yaseen, who trained suicide bombers -- were also among the dead, Pakistani media reported.

Afghan authorities earlier said 27 militants were killed in the strike that targeted an Islamic seminary.



Fazlullah's son is the fourth high-profile Taliban figure to be killed by drones within a month.

Pakistani Taliban deputy chief Khan Said Mehsud, also known as Sajna, was last month killed in a drone strike, which was followed by the killing of two other commanders.

With reporting by dpa, tolonews.com, and dawn.com
The ice is broken in relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the thaw is well under way, and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev is going to Tajikistan on March 9-10 as a sign a figurative spring has arrived.

Mirziyoev has made better relations with Central Asian neighbors a priority since he became Uzbekistan's leader in September 2016.



This was no small feat, as the late Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, had done much before his death in 2016 to sour ties with Uzbekistan's neighbors since all five Central Asian countries became independent in late 1991.



Mirziyoev visited Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan during 2017, but not Tajikistan.



Inevitably, there was some speculation that there were issues between Tashkent and Dushanbe that needed to be worked out before the new Uzbek president traveled to meet with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

But perhaps it was simply that more time was needed for both countries to become accustomed to the idea that they could be friends.



Uzbekistan's relations with Tajikistan have been described as bad or tense, but those terms could equally apply to Uzbekistan's relations with any of its neighbors at one point or another during Karimov's rule.



In fact, Uzbek-Tajik relations have been downright nasty. At times their governments have actively worked against each other's interests.

So, as Mirziyoev and Rahmon usher in a new era in relations between their two countries, let's take a look at what many people hope will be left behind.



Sheltering The Enemy



The roots of the bad ties between the Uzbek and Tajik governments, or more accurately between Karimov and Rahmon, lie in the 1992-97 Tajik civil war.



Karimov strongly supported the Tajik government in its fight against opposition forces dominated by the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). In September 1992, Karimov sent a message to a World Forum of Tajiks meeting in Dushanbe asserting that "close ties between Uzbeks and Tajiks based on common customs and traditions and cultural similarities are an indisputable fact." In December 1992, Uzbekistan's Supreme Soviet approved sending a battalion to Tajikistan to prop up the government there and its new leader Emomali Rahmon (then Rakhmonov), who had not even been in power one month at that time. Uzbek troops were already in Tajikistan by that time, aiding government forces, and they would stay there until after the Tajik civil war ended.

Karimov did not want "Islamists" to come to power in Tajikistan, and he was not the only one who felt that way. Colonel Mahmud Khudaiberdiev, commander of the Tajik Army's First Brigade, was also opposed to the Tajik opposition, specifically the IRPT, having any say in the governance of Tajikistan. The Tajik Peace According signed in Moscow in June 1997 gave the opposition 30 percent of the posts in government.



Karimov and Khudaiberdiev viewed this as a loss. Khudaiberdiev mobilized his unit in August 1997 and marched on the Tajik capital, but the mutinous colonel was thrown back. He and his troops disappeared, but not for long.



On November 4, 1998, Khudaiberdiev invaded northern Tajikistan. After four days, he was forced to retreat and again vanished. It seemed obvious that Khudaiberdiev had come from, and escaped back to, Uzbekistan.

On November 12, President Rahmon addressed Tajikistan's parliament, saying he had proof that Karimov had aided the rebels. "By organizing coups and helping rebels, the Uzbek leadership wants to take the whole of Tajikistan under its control," Rahmon said.



Officials in Tashkent vehemently denied any connection to Khudaiberdiev and expressed indignation at being accused of helping the Tajik rebels. Uzbekistan then pulled its battalion out of Tajikistan "for financial reasons" and redeployed some of those troops to guard the border with Tajikistan.



On February 16, 1999, a series of bombs exploded in Tashkent. Karimov's government quickly blamed Islamic extremists for the attack and initiated a crackdown that saw thousands of Muslims detained and sent thousands of others fleeing from the country.

'Ragged Refugees'



In May 1999, there was a shoot-out in the mountainous Tavil-Dara area of central Tajikistan. The disarmament process was still under way in Tajikistan, and officials feared this was another violation of the tenuous peace deal.

The government sent representatives to the scene to ascertain what happened. They found a large group of Uzbeks, several thousand, whom Tajik authorities described as "ragged refugees."



Many had arrived in Tavil-Dara after the crackdown started in Uzbekistan, but not all. Tavil-Dara was a Tajik opposition stronghold during the civil war, and in May 1999 it was the base of an Uzbek national who had joined the IPRT forces during the war. His name was Jumaboy Khojiev, better known by his nom de guerre, Juma Namangani.

The shoot-out occurred when some members of the Uzbek group decided they would take a chance on an amnesty offer from the Uzbek government and return home; a fight broke out with the members of the group who rejected leaving Tajikistan.



The last phase of Tajikistan's disarmament was scheduled for early August and the government and the opposition asked Namangani and his group to depart.



They did. They descended from the mountains into southern Kyrgyzstan at the start of August and seized a village there.



Both the Kyrgyz and Uzbek governments called on Tajik authorities to do something about these militants, but the Tajik government denied any connection to the militants and insisted they could not have come from Tajikistan.



Kyrgyz authorities paid the militants a ransom to release the villagers and some military personnel captured when they went to negotiate with militants. The militants left but quickly returned in greater numbers, announcing they were the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and stating their cause was to overthrow Karimov's regime in Uzbekistan.



Eventually Tajik authorities admitted the IMU was present in the Tavil-Dara area and they reportedly made a deal to transport the IMU out of Tajikistan to Afghanistan.

Karimov was furious that Tajikistan did not annihilate the IMU in Tavil-Dara though in fairness Tavil-Dara was pounded during the civil war and government forces could still never take and hold it.



Karimov said the IMU would come back. And they did in the summer of 2000, attacking southern Kyrgyzstan again and this time areas in eastern Uzbekistan. Tajikistan again denied any connection and declined to attack IMU bases on Tajik territory.



Uzbekistan planted land mines along the borders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan that would continue to kill and maim innocent civilians for many years.



In November 2009, Uzbekistan's ambassador to Tajikistan, Shokosim Shoislomov, said his government had no intention of demining the border area.



"These mines in mountains do not affect anybody, and there is nothing to do for a normal person in such places which are difficult to access," Shoislomov said. "Only those who want to cross the border illegally are going there. It is these people against who mines were planted at certain sections of our border with Tajikistan."



Namangani was killed in Afghanistan in November 2001. Khudaiberdiev's location is unknown, but Tajik officials said several times over the years they believed he was in Uzbekistan and as recently as November 2013 Tajik helicopters "strayed" over Uzbek territory, some believed looking for a training camp where Khudaiberdiev allegedly was present.



Spying



Of all the people sitting in Uzbekistan's prisons for spying none are so numerous as those convicted of spying for Tajikistan. Many are women, some mothers such as Alana Kim, 36, sentenced in August 2017 to 10 1/2 years in prison for spying on behalf of the Tajik government.



Uzbek state television has devoted entire programs to Tajikistan's alleged espionage in Uzbekistan, programs such as Sotqinlik Girdobi (Whirlwinds of Treason) in 2013 and Jinoyat Va Jazo (Crime and Punishment) in 2014.



Tajikistan has not sent as many to prison on charges of spying for Uzbekistan, but there have been some -- such as Boymurad Anarov, an ethnic Uzbek convicted in January 2010 for giving Uzbekistan information about Tajikistan's Sangtuda-1 and Nurek hydropower facilities.



Bad Neighbor



And there are also the many criticisms Tashkent and Dushanbe have leveled against one another over the years.



On November 30, 1998, while continuing to deny involvement in Khudaiberdiev's raid into northern Tajikistan, Karimov said the amount of narcotics seized along the Kyrgyz and Uzbek borders with Tajikistan was proof the Tajik government and law enforcement agencies were involved in the illegal narcotics trade.



Tajikistan has complained many times about Uzbekistan unilaterally demarcating the border and constructing watchtowers and border posts without informing Tajik authorities.



Both governments accuse border guards of the other country of being involved in livestock rustling and other transborder crimes.

Uzbekistan has claimed Tajikistan's aluminum plant is polluting the air in Uzbekistan and bringing contaminated water downstream.



And then there is the perennial issue of water rights versus hydropower needs that has divided downstream Uzbekistan and upstream Tajikistan for years.



The two governments have gone to great lengths to demonize each other and all this has played out in state media of the two countries.



So if Mirzioyev has been slow in going to Tajikistan, it could be because the idea of Tajik-Uzbek friendship required some time to set in.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL
News of the poisoning of a former Russian military intelligence officer in Britain came slowly to state-run television in Russia.

For almost two days after the sudden hospitalization of Sergei Skripal, who has lived in England since being swapped for nearly a dozen alleged Russian spies in 2010, the incident was all over British front pages and led newscasts.

In Russia, the story was picked up by online news sites and newspapers, including Moscow's prominent radio station, Ekho Moskvy.

But there was little mention of it on the main national TV channels, which are overwhelmingly the main medium by which Russians get their news.

That was until the evening of March 7, when Channel One's main evening current affairs program, Vremya Novostei, reported on it, with a less-than-subtle commentary.

'Dangerous Profession'

Skripal is "by training, a traitor to his country," host Kirill Kleimenov said. "I don't wish death on anyone," he added, "but for purely educational purposes, for anyone who dreams of such a career, I have a warning: being a traitor is one of the most dangerous professions in the world."

Though couched as a commentary, the prominence of the statement, and its placement in the evening newscast of the country's main national TV channel, dovetailed with the adamant denials of Russian involvement, given by the Foreign Ministry and other official sources.

British officials have said the substance believed to have been used in poisoning Skripal and his daughter Yulia was a nerve agent, a toxin that requires sophisticated chemical expertise and laboratory equipment.Both remain hospitalized in critical condition; up to 21 police officers were also treated for exposure.

U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and outside experts, have said those facts alone suggest the involvement of a state security apparatus.

Skripal was a colonel in Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU. He was arrested in December 2004, and a Moscow military court found him guilty almost two years later of passing the identities of Russian agents working undercover in Europe to Britain's MI6 intelligence agency.

'Strange Incidents'

Though the assertion that Skripal was killed for treasonous actions has raised eyebrows, the commentary wasn't out of character for Russian state TV.

In 2006, in the days after the death of Aleksandr Litvinenko, a former officer with Russia's Federal Security Agency who ingested the highly radioactive isotope polonium-210, several Russian TV channels opted to highlight the British reaction rather than the death itself.

A long-running Channel One editorial-style program known as Odnako ("However"), previously hosted by commentator Mikhail Leontyev, regularly spun outlandish conspiracy theories.

Leontyev, who later became spokesman for state oil company Rosneft, actively promoted the debunked theory that a Ukrainian fighter jet was responsible for shooting down the Malaysian MH17 passenger airliner over Ukraine in 2014.

In 2008, an anchor on a nightly news program for state-run Rossiya TV suggested that Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic "got a well-deserved bullet" for his pro-Western policies when he was shot and killed in 2003. Serbias Embassy lodged an official protest with the Russian Foreign Ministry at the time.

In his Skripal commentary, Kleimenov wrapped up his remarks by wryly suggesting that life in Britain might be hazardous.

"Something is wrong there," he said. "Maybe it's the climate, but in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with grave outcomes there."


An influential Russian lawmaker who is accused of sexually harassing several journalists has asked for forgiveness amid growing calls for his resignation.

State Duma member Leonid Slutsky, who has denied wrongdoing and threatened to sue his accusers for defamation, issued the appeal on Facebook on March 8, which Russia and other countries mark as International Women's Day.

It came as opposition politician Aleksei Navalny called for Slutsky's ouster and as presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak and several activists staged single-person protests outside the Duma, Russia's lower parliament house.

In a growing scandal that is testing President Vladimir Putin's ruling elite ahead of an election that seems certain to hand him a new term, at least three female journalists have accused Slutsky of sexual harassment.

"Using the occasion [of the holiday], I would like to ask forgiveness from those of you whom I have ever willingly or unwillingly caused any distress," Slutsky wrote. "Believe me, there was no ill intent."



Three women -- Yekaterina Kotrikadze, a deputy editor at RTVI television; Dozhd TV producer Darya Zhuk; and BBC Russian Service correspondent Farida Rustamova -- have in recent days accused Slutsky of sexual harassment, saying he made crude, unwanted advances, trying to kiss them and touching them inappropriately.

Navalny expressed his solidarity with the journalists and called Slutsky, the chairman of the Duma's International Affairs Committee, "a repugnant lawmaker," harshly criticizing other lawmakers who had publicly supported Slutsky, 50, in the face of the accusations.

"All those who support and shield Slutsky are horrible," Navalny wrote on his website. "And Slutsky himself is not only a revolting person, who humiliates and offends people by sexually harassing them, he is also a swindler," Navalny wrote. He accused Slutsky of corruption, posting what he said was evidence that he lives a lavish lifestyle that cannot be accounted for far beyond his means and saying that he deserves a "shameful ouster" from the Duma.

Also on March 8, presidential candidate and journalist Ksenia Sobchak staged a protest in front of the State Duma holding a poster which read "Lawmakers, we do not want you!"

Sobchak also accused presidential candidate and Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky of "covering up" for Slutsky, who is a member of the LDPR .

A representative of Amnesty International staged a similar protest outside the Duma after Sobchak, holding a poster with an ironic message targeting State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, a senior Putin ally and former deputy chief of staff at the Kremlin.

"Mr. Volodin, are you afraid of investigating sexual harassment in the Duma? If so, change jobs!" the message read, in an apparent swipe at Volodin's own message to female journalists on the occasion of Women's Day, which said, "Is it dangerous for you to work in the Duma? If so, then change jobs."

Several other activists staged similar protests outside the Duma holding posters saying: "The Duma is a lawmaking (not some other) organ," "Mr. Slutsky, 'a little bit' also counts," and "Lawmaker Slutsky, come out, I will touch you 'a little bit.'"

According to the BBC, which cites an audiotape that Rustamova recorded at a meeting with Slutsky, he told her: "I don't feel people up. Well, OK, just a little. 'Feel people up' is an ugly expression."

With reporting by Ekho Moskvy and Vedomosti
British investigators have announced that a "nerve agent" was used in an attempt to murder Russian former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury on March 4. But they have not specified what nerve agent was used in the attack.

RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz spoke on March 8 about the case with Alastair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds and a member of the British government's advisory group on chemical warfare agents.

RFE/RL: When you consider all the symptoms reported by witnesses who discovered Sergei Skripal and his daughter incapacitated on a bench in Salisbury, and the fact that a first respondent police officer was also exposed, does this information point specifically to any particular nerve agent?

Alastair Hay: It's a laboratory investigation now that has identified the nerve agent. And it was [Britain's] chemical defense establishment. They are very accomplished. The government has said it is not one of the more common [nerve] agents. So what they're essentially ruling out is sarin and VX. [Nerve agents] that you hear less about in the news are tabun and soman. I think it is, possibly, one of those. It could be cyclosarin. But since they said it's not Sarin, they're probably ruling out the Sarin-like compounds. So [of the five main nerve agents], tabun and soman are the likely candidates. Of course, there are other nerve agents as well. We'll just have to wait and see what the final investigation reports.

RFE/RL: Victims can be exposed to nerve agents through ingestion, or in the case of an aerosol compound, through inhalation or skin contact. Do you think this attack was carried out with a nerve agent in aerosol form?

Hay: At this stage, I don't know. I was considering that it might have been an aerosol delivery because there seems to have been some residual contamination  which is why one police officer became ill. If he came into contact with a contaminated surface, he would have become ill.

RFE/RL: If it was an aerosol delivery, would it have been more likely that they were exposed while they were outside walking rather than inside the restaurant or the pub they'd visited before they became incapacitated?

Hay: More likely, but I have to reserve judgment on that.

RFE/RL: Is it possible that an ordinary chemist could have manufactured such a nerve agent? Or is this more likely a case of the nerve agent being manufactured in a laboratory with military capabilities?

Governments have a fairly good idea of how other governments have produced different agents.

Hay: I think it's more a case in which we are talking about a military capability. If you are a diligent chemist, you will find procedures for making sarin and tabun and various other chemical agents. But there's the complexity in making it and how efficient the reaction is. And, of course, there is the risk of exposure in making something, too.

So containment to make sure that the laboratory person is not exposed is absolutely crucial. So I think, really, what one is looking at here is probably more a military-type manufacture. But again, we just have to wait and see.

RFE/RL: What kind of evidence do British investigators need to determine how and where this nerve agent was manufactured?

Hay: If the forensic people have been able to get environmental samples, then there is a possibility that they may contain either some breakdown products or unreacted reagents in the mixture. This could help to provide a fingerprint on the method of manufacture. Governments have a fairly good idea of how other governments have produced different agents. So that could also give a clue.

You wouldn't get that sort of information from looking at biological samples; that is, blood or urine from the individual [victims], because the contaminants would be there in very small amounts. But environmental samples would provide you the best opportunity of trying to get a decent fingerprint.

RFE/RL: Suspicions have been raised about the possible role of Russia. Are there any other specific lines of inquiry that investigators would be following to determine if there are connections to any state actors?

Hay: Ideally, what they would be looking for is to try to establish that fingerprint by looking at environmental samples to try and get a clue about how it might have been made. If you know the method of manufacture that will give you some clue as to how somebody might have procured something. That would give them a good indication of the possible source.

It's going to be some time before the British government is in a position to say who it suspects.

Then, of course, they will be looking at all the possible contacts of the [victims], where they were, and so on -- who might have met them in the intervening period. The investigation will involve looking at camera footage to try to identify many of the people who were in the area. It will be all of that evidence that they'll have to assess.

In my view, it's much, much too early to point a finger at anybody at this stage. It was obviously an intention to kill at least one of them. I don't know whether the daughter was affected inadvertently. Who did it? We have to wait until there is much more evidence.

RFE/RL: As a field investigator into previous attacks involving chemical agents, what are the hindrances to being able to say for certainty who carried out a nerve agent attack?

Hay: If you've got a smoking gun, it becomes much more difficult to determine whether there are fingerprints on the trigger if somebody has made an attempt to wipe the fingerprints off. It looks like a pretty sophisticated job. So the complications of identifying are magnified and it's going to be some time before the British government is in a position to say who it suspects.

The implication [of possible Russian involvement] was made by our foreign secretary [Boris Johnson]. But I don't think the evidence warrants finger pointing at Russia at this time. The evidence needs to be assessed in a cold and calm way. Then we'll see what it indicates.

RFE/RL: How long do you think it will take before the British government will be in a position to point a finger in this case?

Hay: I think we will be talking about weeks in this instance. What form all of the investigations are going to take and what routes the government is going to pursue, I am unclear. But I would think quite a lot of that evidence would be collected over weeks. Possibly months. But that's unlikely. The government is under pressure here to do something quickly. It will be putting pressure on everybody to try and come up with their evidence promptly so it can be assessed.


WASHINGTON --The top U.S. military commander in Europe warned that the Balkans are facing increased covert and overt pressure from Russia, and that Washington and NATO need to do more to keep the region from destabilizing.

Army General Curtis Scaparrotti also told a Senate committee on March 8 that the United States has not come up with an effective response to Russian cyberthreats, in what is the latest warning from top U.S. military and civilian officials.

Scaparrotti, who oversees U.S. military forces in Europe and is the supreme allied commander for NATO, was asked by lawmakers on the Senate Armed Service Committee if there were regions in Europe facing new threats from Russia.

"The area I am concerned about today is the Balkans actually," he said. "Russia is at work in the Balkans and we have kind of taken our eye off the area."

"That is an area we could have problems with in the future," he added.

The Balkan nation of Montenegro became the 29th member of NATO last year, a step that was bitterly criticized by Russia and opposed by some Montenegrins who advocate closer ties with Moscow.

Montenegrin officials have alleged that a coup attempt in 2016 that involved two Russian citizens, and several Serbian nationals was a plot orchestrated by Russian intelligence to destabilize the country ahead of its NATO accession. The Kremlin denied the claim.

Russia continues to have strong military and cultural ties to Serbia.

Cyberthreats

Scaparrotti was also asked about how the United States was responding to Russian cyberactivity, which U.S. intelligence warned has increased notably in recent years.

I dont believe there has been an effective response, he told senators.

State-backed hackers are alleged to have been involved in attacks on infrastructure in Ukraine, and U.S. officials have charged that Russian spy agencies oversaw a hacking campaign aimed at U.S. political parties and election systems in recent years. Russian officials rejected the accusation.

Last week, the man nominated to head U.S. Cyber Command, Army Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone, testified before the same Senate committee that the United States must impose costs on online "adversaries" to make them stop.

Nakasones comments followed even stronger remarks made by the man he is replacing, Admiral Mike Rogers, who said that the Kremlin believes "there is little price to pay" from Russia cyberactivity.
KYIV -- Several hundred women marched in Kyiv on March 8, demanding equal rights in a demonstration on International Women's Day.

The women marched in the center of the capital, chanting "Women's rights are human rights!" and "Liberty, Equality, Womens' Solidarity!"

Marchers held posters protesting domestic violence, sexual violence, sexism and discrimination by gender.

The organizers of the march wrote on Facebook that the event's goal is to demand from the government "equal rights and opportunities" for women, "proper attitude" to them and "ratification of the Istanbul Convention."

The Istanbul Convention is the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence that was signed in 2011.

International Women's Day is a state holiday in Ukraine and some other former Soviet republics, including Russia.


At least 5,000 residents of the West Nile Arua district have received free health care courtesy of Airtel Uganda.

These essential services were provided during a recent health camp at St Kizito primary school in Ombaci where the telecommunications company gave back to the community. The camp is part of its wider efforts to boost socio-economic development in West Nile.

More than 5,000 residents received free health care at the Airtel health camp

Free dental care, eye checkups, blood donations, safe male circumcision, cancer screening, teaching the youth how to make recyclable pads, sexual and reproductive health and general medicine were made available to the people.

Emphasis was placed on hepatitis B screening and testing in response to the ministry of Health statistics, which show a high prevalence of the disease in the sub-region.

Patricia Agenrwot, a charcoal seller and resident of Arua, especially thanked Airtel for the blood donation drive.

I think everyone who has the ability should join this blood donation cause to save our brothers and sisters from dying. Today, I have been checked and taught about womens health, she said.

Uganda has been going through a blood crisis in recent weeks, with majority of public health facilities lacking this life-saving resource.

Airtels human resource director Flavia Ntambi Lwanga said the health camp was designed to improve lives.

We at Airtel, not only want to provide the best telecommunications services in the country, but to also be a big part of enhancing and bettering the lives of those in communities in which we operate, she said. Today, we are proud to have bettered over 5,000 lives.

Ntambi thanked the firms partners Hinds Feet project, ministry of Health and Uganda Red Cross for joining in this noble cause.

According to the Arua district health office, despite efforts, the health indicators for the population in Arua are very poor with a high prevalence of infectious and communicable diseases.

winniekari0@gmail.com
WASHINGTON -- The United States says it is offering multimillion-dollar rewards for information leading to the location of Pakistani Taliban chief Mullah Fazlullah and two other militant leaders believed to be in Pakistan.

The State Department said in a statement on March 8 that it is offering a reward of up to $5 million for information on Fazlullah, leader of the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or Pakistani Taliban.

It said rewards of up to $3 million each are also being offered for information on TTP-linked militants Abdul Wali of Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA) and Mangal Bagh of the Lashkar-e-Islam group.

Each of these individuals is believed to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of the United States and its nationals, the statement said.

In addition to opposing the Pakistani military, one of TTPs stated goals is the expulsion of [U.S.-led] coalition troops from Afghanistan. The group has demonstrated a close alliance with Al-Qaeda and, since 2008, has also repeatedly publicly threatened to attack the U.S. homeland.

According to U.S. officials, TTP gave explosives training to Faisal Shahzad, who they say failed in his attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square in New York City in May 2010.

The group was also behind the massacre of more than 150 people, mostly children, at a Peshawar school in December 2014, an incident that rocked Pakistan and sparked a major antiterror campaign there.

TTP militants were also blamed for a shooting attack in 2012 on Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who has since championed the rights of Pakistani girls to receive schooling.

Malala was disfigured by the attack but survived and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her girls' education campaign.

The new U.S. push against the Pakistani Taliban came as Pakistan's foreign secretary, Tamina Janjua, visited Washington for talks with U.S. officials on improving counterterrorism cooperation.

The United States last year withheld $2 billion in military aid from Islamabad, charging that Pakistan tolerates militants operating within its borders and saying that it must act more aggressively against them to receive aid in the future.

Pakistan denies the U.S. charges.

Earlier on March 8, Pakistani intelligence officials said a son of Mullah Fazlullah and 19 other people were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike this week in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar near the Pakistani border.

Fazlullah's son Abdullah is the fourth high-profile Taliban figure to be killed by drones within a month. Last month, Pakistani Taliban deputy chief Khan Said Mehsud, also known as Sajna, was killed in a drone strike.

Abdullah was killed in the Chawgam area in the eastern province of Kunar on March 6 when a training camp for suicide bombers near the Afghan border was hit by two missiles, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

Two other regional commanders of the Pakistani Taliban -- Gul Mohammad and Ustad Yaseen, who trained suicide bombers -- were also among the dead, Pakistani media reported.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal


A controversial Uzbek imam has suggested that homosexuality is a disease that worries the world community and offered advice on how couples can prevent having gay babies.

Rahmatulloh Saifutdinov, the chief imam of Tashkents Mirzo Yusuf Mosque, told worshippers that fantasizing about someone other than your spouse during sex can lead to a woman giving birth to a homosexual child.

Speaking during a sermon after Friday Prayers on March 2, Saifutdinov suggested that some Uzbek women think about handsome strangers while making love to their husbands:





For example, women are fantasizing about handsome Turkish soap opera actors. There are many such posts on social media by some married women, Saifutdinov said. Its like having three people taking part in the [sexual] intercourse.

Such a sexual act, according to the prominent imam, could lead to a woman potentially becoming pregnant with a homosexual baby boy.

Saifutdinov was equally unforgiving about mens intimate fantasies.

Men, too, are not allowed to imagine another beautiful woman when they are having sexual intercourse with their wives, because this may lead to the birth of a lesbian child, the imam warned.

Saifutdinov made the comments during a sermon dedicated to harmonious marriage, family values, and spousal rights and responsibilities in marriage.

Saifutdinov didnt back his claims with any scientific evidence and wasnt available for comment when contacted by RFE/RL.

The imams assistant told RFE/RL that Saifutdinov had no further comments about the topic.

Saifutdinovs comments came days after Uzbekistan banned the extremely popular Turkish soap opera Endless Love, amid calls by both radical and moderate Muslims to get the TV series off the air.



The soap opera included plotlines common for the genre: about love, relationships, marriage, infidelity, and even topics such as suicide.

Religious groups in Uzbekistan suggested that Endless Love undermined Islamic values.

During his most recent sermon, Saifutdinov made no reference to the Turkish soap opera.

Saifutdinov courted controversy last year when he said Uzbek men should not study and practice obstetrics because being Muslim is not compatible with being a male obstetrician.

"It's an embarrassment [to allow male obstetricians]. We should stop it," the imam said in a sermon that had been recorded and posted online. But he later backtracked on those comments and accused the media of blowing them out of proportion.

Saifutdinov is also a professor at the Tashkent Imam Al-Bukhari Islamic Institute and runs a website on which he promotes moderate Islamic values and posts his speeches and articles.

Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by RFE/RL Uzbek Service correspondent Khurmat Babajanov


Dream Hotel Group to open Unscripted Tulum in 2020

Tulum, Q.R.  Dream Hotel Group has announced the expansion of their hotel line into the seaside resort town of Tulum.

The company says they will be expanding with their Unscripted brand, which is set to open during 2020. Once complete, Unscripted Tulum will offer 97 guestrooms, two swimming pools and a large open-air dining area. It will also host a spa, wellness center and large rooftop area with restaurant, lounge and bar.

The hotel says they expect this brand will draw the new type of millennial, the 24/7 connected traveler.

Dream Hotel Group is also expanding additional brands into Central America including Unscripted Belize and Dream Belize.

The new Unscripted Tulum hotel is a major milestone for the company, who says the new establishments will position them as international hospitality leaders, paving the way for new growth.

We are thrilled to announce the development of three new hotels in two of the worlds most desired destinations, said Jay Stein, CEO of Dream Hotel Group. We are honored to partner with Luke and Mauricio to bring both brands to market and excited to see our brands resonating on such a wide scale.

The first two hotels to open will be the Belize brands in late 2018. Unscripted Tulum will be developed third by Vertical Hospitality and is slated to open in 2020.

We are excited to bring our progressive lifestyle brand Unscripted to the chic coastal town of Tulum, said Christian Glauser Benz, Vice President of Development, Latin America and the Caribbean, Dream Hotel Group.

This project reflects our passion and plans to create unique experiences for creative global travelers across Mexico and Latin America.

Mauricio Hernandez Pulido, Head of Vertical Hospitality, a subsidiary of Capital Vertical Grupo Empresarial said, We are thrilled to be partnering with Dream Hotel Group to launch its Unscripted brand in Tulum.

Tulum is the hottest destination in Mexico and Unscripted Tulum represents a new fresh approach to travel in the region.

Unscripted Hotels, the companys newest lifestyle brand and hospitality concept for the creative progressive traveler, is on track to be the fastest growing dynamic brand with three operating hotels in the United States by 2020, and an additional opening in Birmingham, England, the groups first hotel in Europe.
Mexico may be exempt from Trump steel tariffs says US

Mexico City, Mexico  Mexico along with Canada and possibly other countries, could be exempt from import duties on steel and aluminum planned by the United States for reasons of national security, the White House said Wednesday.

We expect the president to sign something before the end of the week and there are possible exclusions for Mexico and Canada for national security, and possibly other countries for the same, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the administration is drafting the official documentation for tariffs and that they could be announced as early as Thursday or Friday.

Mnuchin refused to discuss any specific country that may be exempt from tariffs on the basis of national security.

It is expected that on Thursday, no later than Friday, President Trump will enact the law that sets tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

Earlier, President Donald Trumps chief of trade said the administration is willing to exempt other countries besides Mexico and Canada from the planned rates for aluminum and steel that have generated concern about the start of a trade war.

Ross cited a statement earlier in the week when Trump said he would be willing to exempt Mexico and Canada in exchange for cooperation in the Nafta renegotiations.

The Commerce Secretary said Trump would not have indicated his willingness to exempt Mexico and Canada in exchange for cooperation to update NAFTA if he wanted to blow up the world.

Ross spent the morning doing media rounds to counter the idea that the new tariffs would trigger a global trade battle.

The president said that if we can fix something with Canada and Mexico they will be exempt. It is not inconceivable that others can be exempt on a similar basis, Ross said.
State government responds to US security alert, says tourism activities remain normal

Cancun, Q.R.  The government of Quintana Roo has issued a statement regarding the update to the US security alert published March 1 that now forbids its employees to travel to Playa del Carmen.

In relation to the decision of the US Embassy to publish the update, the government of Quintana Roo said:

In Playa del Carmen and throughout the state, tourist and economic activities take place normally. Hotel occupancy today registers 80 percent in the main tourist destinations. The police forces work day and night to preserve the tranquility of the inhabitants and visitors of Quintana Roo. We do not know the reasons for the decision of the United States Government to issue this statement. We are attentive to collaborate with them in providing security to their citizens who visit us. We maintain a relationship of respect, care and protection for our visitors and provide security and attention for them permanently. US visitors are welcome in Quintana Roo and Mexico. In the security tasks, the Mexican Army, the Armed Navy of Mexico, the Federal Police, the Public Security Secretariat of the State Government and the municipal corporations participate in a coordinated manner.

The government released the statement after the US Embassy in Mexico City published a security alert citing an undetonated device regarding an out-of-service Barcos Caribe ferry.

However, investigators from Mexico and the US are still working on details of the February 21 explosion that injured several Americans, Canadians and Mexican nationals. Official details or causes have not yet been released.

The March 7 US Embassy update also includes the closure of the Playa del Carmen consular agency.
Hondas product range includes Jazz, Amaze, WR-V, City, Civic and CR-V with sales and service networks across 367 facilities in 263 cities

Following easing of restrictions on economic activity, Honda Cars India has opened 155 of its dealerships across the country. The opening of these dealerships is not without a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) so as to pay close attention to the health and safety of all employees and customers.

Honda Cars India will also be working closely with these dealerships so as to ensure that every dealerships strictly adheres to these safety and sanitization regulations. The company has assured customers that all dealer partners have been instructed to take all measures in terms of social distancing, sanitization of all equipment and fitness checks both at showrooms and at workshops.

Below is a short video in which Honda Cars India authorized dealer  Indel Honda, shows how the premises of their showroom has been thoroughly sanitized using proper equipment.

Sanitization will help to provide a safe and secure environment so as to arrest the spread of coronavirus. The protocols are to be followed at the time of entry into the dealership, test drives, all sales activities and while receiving the cars for servicing. It will also extend to handling on the shop floor right upto delivery of the car to the customer. The safety guidelines will be extended to customer lounge areas, back office, shop floor and parts storage areas.

Where contactless environment is concerned, use of digital mediums will be the order of the day. Sales and service will be via online Honda from Home online booking platform which will allow customers to browse through the product options, select their preferred dealership and book their car online.

The digital portal will allow customers to buy Honda cars servicing customers across Hondas nationwide network of 375 touch points across 263 cities in India. This online portal is similar to the Click to Drive and Click to Buy launched by Tata Motors and Hyundai Motor India respectively.

Honda Cars India has two manufacturing facilities in Tapukara, Rajasthan and Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Production at both these plants had come to a halt in March 2020 when the lockdown was announced. Along with opening of dealerships, Honda Cars India has now resumed production activity at its Tapukara Plant while they await approvals to restart the Noida plant. Greater Noida is a hotspot for the coronavirus and hence the company has not received permissions to restart the plant from the Uttar Pradesh Government.
Kidnap-for-ransom is a growing vice in Kampala and the Kawempe division has been hit particularly hard hit in recent weeks.

Four-year-old Mariam Nankubuge, daughter of Muhammad Seruwooza and Hasfah Nakimbugwe of Katoogo zone in Bwaise, is one of four children grabbed in February. Nankubuge went missing on February 11. Her mother says the child was taken from their compound after the kidnapper persuaded Nankubuges elder sister to leave her alone with him, and sent her to buy ice cream.

Mariam Nankubuge is still missing

When Shadia returned from the shop, she found Nankubuge missing and called me. We started looking for her up to now, she said this week.

We have reported to different police stations but they have no clues. We have not received any call or message or letter from any kidnapper, she said.

Meanwhile, parents of the three other children, who were recovered after paying significant ransoms, are still coming to terms with the trauma.

Usher Bukenya of Wamala in Nabweru says his four-year-old Ashely Bukenya was kidnapped on February 2.

I also saw the kidnapper at 8am sitting near my gate when I was leaving for work but took it lightly. When I returned home at 1pm, I found the same man near my gate and closed it tightly. However, the small gate was left open and that is where my child passed, he said.

Bukenya said they realized Ashely was missing at 2pm.

I panicked, and went to UBC and community radios to make announcements. I also reported to different police stations in Katooke, Wamala and Kawempe. Many people gathered at my place and guided me on how to recover my child, he said.

Still in shock, Bukenya received a call from a stranger telling him to read a message sent to his phone.

In the message, he was accusing me of being careless with my child. He told me to stop making announcements because I was wasting time and money since the child was with him, he remembers.

He told me to send Shs 5 million on mobile money. If I failed, they would chop off his head and dump it in my compound. He also told me to send Shs 100,000 to feed my child.

Bukenya dashed to Central police station in Kampala and reported to Flying Squad, a violent crime police crack unit. The commandant, Hebert Muhangi, assigned around 20 police officers to the case.

We spent the whole day in Matugga, Kagoma and Kawanda tracking the kidnappers movements , he said.

At one point, police advised that the money be sent as investigations proceeded.

I started borrowing till I got Shs 4.2 million and sent it to kidnappers. On February 6, they told me to pick my child from a washing bay opposite Saidinah Abubakar hospital, Matugga, Bukenya said.

So happens that the kidnappers monitored his movements.

As I was driving, they asked me, where I had reached. When I lied to them, they abused me and told me the exact place where I was. They later told me to stop  he said.

They told me to remove all the people I was travelling with in the car. They told me to send more mobile money. They later dumped my child at the washing bay.

After a week, Ashely recognised his captors on TV news. They were being paraded at Kawempe police station upon being arrested for kidnapping another child.

I took the boy to police and he identified the man who kidnapped him. I was very angry and almost went for the kidnappers neck to strangle him, he said.

In the case of Bob Kambere of Kisumu zone, Katooke, their six-year-old son, Joel Bwambale, was kidnapped as he rode a bicycle around the neighbourhood on February 15.

A kidnapper deceived the child that he was going to buy him another bicycle. They took him to Wattuba village in Matugga and hid him in their house. The kidnapper left a letter at my home with their telephone contacts, directing us to send mobile money Shs 70,000 to feed my child. They also told us to send Shs 6 million as ransom, Kambere said.

After Kambere sent Shs 4.2 million, the kidnappers informed the parents to pick the boy from Saidinah Abubakar hospital where Joel was found crying.

We asked him to direct us where he was kidnapped and he took us there. We went back the following night and managed to arrest the suspects at 4am, a police source said.

In the third case, the five-year-old child of an official working in the Directorate of Public Prosecutions in Kampala was recovered after the family paid Shs 4.5 million. The boy was dropped off at the DPPs office by a boda boda cyclist.

The childs parents arrested the boda boda cyclist, suspecting him to have kidnapped the boy since he returned him. But the cyclist defended himself, claiming that he was just given the child to drop, a police source said.

When the suspected kidnappers were arrested, this cyclist identified one of them as having given him the kidnapped boy to drop off.

The O/C CID Katooke police station, Robert Agaba, said, so far, two suspects; Ian Mugula and God Kasanya are being held at Kawempe.

Kidnap victims 2016 to-date

1. Mariam Nankubuge, 4, from Bwaise, February 11, still missing.

2. Ashely Bukenya, 4, from Bwaise, February 2, recovered February 6 from Matugga.

3. Joel Bwambale, 6, from Bwaise, February 15, recovered on February 20.

4. Faith Emmanuel Poni, 4, from Kampala Parents School, kidnapped March 14, 2017 and rescued by police, March 18, 2017.

5. Susan Magara, 28 from Lungujja, February 7, recovered dead February 27 along Northern By-pass.

6. Issac Makubuya, 27, missing, February 13, 2018

7. Fatumah Sendagire Nabiwemba, a senior prosecutor, recovered on February 6, after disappearing on December 12, 2017 from her home in Gayaza.

8. Twin girls, 5, from Mabaale, Luweero recovered by police in February from Masindi.

9. Dr Kenneth Majoku, Mulago hospital dentist, kidnapped and robbed of Shs 5.4m on December 20, 2017.

10. Gerald Yashaba, rescued September 18, 2017, when kidnappers allegedly led by Superintendent of Police Gerald Edyegu were asking for Shs 360m.

11. Daniel Weldo, Eritrean businessman, kidnapped and killed in 2016.

12. Sharon Amutebi, II, missing since March 5, recovered March 6.

13. Derrick Musoni Mukyega, missing since March 4 2018.

zurah@observer.ug
Catherine Jane Ngila, a professor of applied chemistry, was awarded the best woman scientist in South Africa in the physical sciences in August 2016. She also became the African Union Kwame Nkrumah best woman scientist in the East African region in January 2017.



SciDev.Net interviewed Ngila last week (28 February) on, among others, her journey to becoming one of the top brains among African women in science, the challenges she has faced along the way and how she overcame them.

Could you describe to us briefly who you are?

I was born in Ithiani village, which is located in Kenyas Kitui county, where I received my primary and secondary education before attending Lugulu Girls in Bugoma County, Kenya, for my advanced level qualification.



I obtained my bachelors and masters degrees at Kenyatta University in Kenya and studied for my doctoral degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

I hope we can achieve gender equality where women and girls are empowered to ensure inclusive and quality education for all. Catherine Jane Ngila, Morendat Institute of Oil and Gas

I have research interests in water resource management. For nearly 30 years I have worked in academic institutions  Kenyatta University, University of Botswana and South Africa-based University of KwaZulu-Natal and University of Johannesburg until April 2017 when I joined Morendat Institute of Oil and Gas at Kenya Pipeline Company as the first deputy director in charge of training.



How successful do you consider yourself as a female scientist?



Well, I climbed the academic ladder from tutorial fellow to full professor. In the university there are four to five key performance areas: teaching undergraduate and supervising postgraduate students; research, development and innovation; community outreach; international networks and management or leadership. I have had significant outputs in the five areas.



I have taught from first year undergraduate to postgraduate students, and have successfully supervised postgraduate students, leading to 22 honours degrees, 26 masters degrees and 20 PhDs. I have also trained 15 postdoctoral fellows.



I have also published significantly: about 300 journal articles, conference proceedings and book chapters. I have produced potentially commercial materials used as filters for water treatment.

Significant funding for research and provided bursaries for postgraduate students have also been sourced by me. Some of these students are now lecturers, senior lecturers or associate professors.

Moreover, I have presented my research findings in about 30 countries as either keynote speaker or invited speaker, at various conference or workshops platforms. A number of conferences that brought researchers together have been organised under my stewardship. I have been involved in several partnerships.

I have delivered many community public lectures to high schools and other audiences. On management, I have been a coordinator of various teaching and research programmes, deputy head of academic department and served from 2013 to 2016 as the head of the Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Johannesburg.



What are some of the major obstacles you faced in your career?



Coming from a humble beginning after my mother died when I was only five years old and later my father died while I was in high school, I was subjected to a lot of hardships as I had to raise money to support myself in schooling. This was really challenging.

Also, working in foreign countries can be challenging, especially in regards to getting promotions. Not being able to get appointed to positions you know you deserve and (are) qualified for has been one of my disappointments. The journey continues till today as I look forward to occupy more senior management positions.

Other challenges include achieving academic growth and getting published in journals with high impact factor. But then, these are challenges for all those working in academic institutions. One has to work hard to improve the quality of academic research before recognition of ones work in these highly-rated journals.



How did you overcome the challenges?



I worked extremely hard whether at school or at the workplace to get excellent performance outputs and promotions. For example, in 2013, when I was the head of Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Johannesburg, I had to prepare a very involving proposal for equipment funding.



Because I was quite busy with administration and management duties, I could not set aside sufficient time to write the proposal. Two days before the deadline, I had to sit in the office for two nights without sleeping and eating, except for taking coffee or showering, until I submitted the application and beat the deadline.



I was successful in getting the funding from the South Africa National Research Foundation to buy research equipment worth almost US$1 million. That is what I call resilience and determination.



In your view, what are some of the problems African women face in science and how can they be addressed?

Stereotypes at all levels still exist even in higher educational institutions. It is difficult for women to get appointed to leadership positions. Women need to be given opportunities even through affirmative action to help address such stereotypes.

Women CEOs are not many.

There are also challenges of trying to balance family life and academics or other careers. Moreover, the lack of women role models for young girls is a challenge. Women in Africa face limited exposure, making it difficult for girls to develop good interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

I hope we can achieve gender equality where women and girls are empowered to ensure inclusive and quality education for all. Catherine Jane Ngila, Morendat Institute of Oil and Gas

For girls and women to develop confidence, they need to be supported and encouraged. It is proven that women excel when they receive encouragement and assurance, not ridicule.



What do you think needs to be done to inspire African girls into pursuing careers in scientific fields?



African girls need exposure to scientific equipment at an early age. Girls need to have women in STEM as role models. Women scientists and engineers need to write books so that girls will identify with their successes and challenges.

Women need to be involved more often in various media activities to act as role models. There is a need for more women to be involved in innovative research that has real life applications for the communities to appreciate their contributions. Also, there is the need for a database to be established showing successful women in various STEM careers. I believe that African women have the capability to excel in the sciences and make Africa advance a lot in socioeconomic development.

Women CEOs  in governments and private companies  should make efforts to increase the number of women in senior positions.



Today is the International Womens Day. In your view, of what significance is this day to women?



It is important for raising awareness about the achievements women have made over the years. Statistical data needs to be created to demonstrate such achievements.

The world has to be reminded that gender-based violence on women need to stop. I recently watched CNN reports on women sex trafficking in Nigeria and abduction of about 100 young girls by Boko Haram group in February 2018, which also occurred in Nigeria. These are demeaning and evil practices that portray women as lesser beings.

I hope we can achieve gender equality where women and girls are empowered to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.



Q&As are edited for length and clarity.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
Inviting men with no symptoms to a one-off PSA test for prostate cancer does not save lives according to results from the largest ever prostate cancer trial conducted over 10 years by Cancer Research UK-funded scientists and published today (Tuesday) in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford found that testing asymptomatic men with PSA detects some disease that would be unlikely to cause any harm but also misses some aggressive and lethal prostate cancers.

This highlights the flaws of a single PSA test as a way to screen for prostate cancer, and shows the need to find more accurate ways to diagnose cancers that need to be treated.

The CAP Trial, which spanned almost 600 GP practices in the UK and included more than 400,000 men aged 50-69, is the largest trial ever to investigate prostate cancer screening. The trial compared 189,386 men who were invited to have a one-off PSA test with 219,439 men who were not invited for screening.

After an average of 10 years follow up, there were 8,054 (4.3%) prostate cancers in the screened group and 7,853 (3.6%) cases in the control group. Crucially, both groups had the same percentage of men dying from prostate cancer (0.29%).

There is no national screening programme for prostate cancer in the UK, but men over 50 can ask their GP for a PSA test.

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More than 11,000 men die of prostate cancer each year in the UK. While some prostate cancers are aggressive and lethal, others are clinically insignificant and will never lead to any harm or death if left undetected. Ideally, aggressive prostate cancers need to be identified and treated as early as possible. But finding a cancer that would never have caused men harm during their lifetime can have a serious impact on quality of life, including the worry of a cancer diagnosis, the possibility of infection following a biopsy and impotence and incontinence following treatment.

Professor Richard Martin, lead author and Cancer Research UK scientist at the University of Bristol, said: "Our large study has shed light on a highly debated issue. We found that offering a single PSA test to men with no symptoms of prostate cancer does not save lives after an average follow-up of 10 years.

"The results highlight the multitude of issues the PSA test raises -- causing unnecessary anxiety and treatment by diagnosing prostate cancer in men who would never have been affected by it and failing to detect dangerous prostate cancers. Cancer Research UK is funding work that will allow us to follow the men for at least a further five years to see whether there is any longer-term benefit on reducing prostate cancer deaths."

Dr Emma Turner, a Cancer Research UK scientist at the University of Bristol and co-author of the study, said: "Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in men in the UK. We now need to find better ways of diagnosing aggressive prostate cancers that need to be treated early."

Dr Richard Roope, Cancer Research UK's GP expert, said: "The PSA test is a blunt tool missing the subtleties of the disease and causing men harm.

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"This trial illustrates that we need to develop more accurate tools if we want to save men's lives. Cancer Research UK's hunt for finding early stages of aggressive prostate cancer is not over. For example, we're funding research into faulty genes which make some men more likely to develop prostate cancer and studying how these genes could help doctors to identify patients who are more at risk.

"We do not recommend that the PSA test should be routinely offered to men without symptoms. However, if a man is particularly worried about his risk of prostate cancer, he should have a full discussion about his risk with his GP."

The UK National Screening Committee does not recommend PSA screening for prostate cancer, but men over the age of 50 without symptoms can ask to be tested as per the Prostate Cancer Risk Management Programme (PCRMP).

Cancer Research UK is calling for Public Health England's PCRMP to be updated to reflect the evidence from the CAP trial.

Each year there are about 47,000 cases of prostate cancer and more than 11,000 deaths in the UK and about 165,000 cases and 29,000 deaths in the US.
Twenty-five years after the first 'scientists' warning to humanity', a new report is continuing to gain momentum and is already the one of the most talked about papers globally since Altmetric records began.

The paper, World scientists' warning to humanity: A second notice, has prompted speeches about the research in Israel's Knesset and Canada's BC Legislature, with signatories increasing with the specially formed Alliance of World Scientists.

The latest translation includes Polish, with universities set to discuss the recommendations later this month and a push by the University of Silesia for city-wide implementation.

Co-author at the University of Sydney Dr Thomas Newsome has helped the report go viral, which has prompted almost 9,000 Tweets. The paper is inspiring responses such as the publication of a friendly satirical high-profile "final warning."

The paper's cumulative score is currently in sixth place out of more than 9 million publications, since Altmetric started tracking attention to research more than six years ago.

Three letters in comment, as well as a response companion piece by the Warning authors publishes today in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience.

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The response piece, "Role of Scientists' Warning in shifting policy from growth to conservation economy," highlights two key areas for action in policy and science:

1. Nobel Prize in Economics incorporating the limits of the biosphere -- The Economic Sciences Prize Committee should give greater weight to externalised environmental limits. 2. Carbon pricing globally -- already implemented or planned by some 42 countries and 25 states, provinces and cities but there is an urgent need for higher carbon prices.

"There are critical environmental limits to resource-dependent economic growth," the authors state.

Lead author of the warning letter and new response paper, ecology Professor William Ripple at Oregon State University said: "Our scientists' warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public."

The "second notice" warning paper has received an additional 4,500+ endorsements by scientists since it published in November 2017.

There are now approximately 20,000 expert endorsements and/or co-signatories to the paper online; signatures and donations are encouraged at scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu. Updates continue from co-author @NewsomeTM on Twitter.

The paper's Altmetric of about 7100 is gaining ground on the top paper for 2016, former United States President Barack Obama's review of the healthcare system, which accumulated a score of 8063 in four months; most of the top 100 of all time have an Altmetric below 6000.
Young women enrolled in high schools and colleges told Washington State University researchers that people routinely make sexual comments, both in-person and online, about them and their bodies.

Stacey J.T. Hust, associate professor in WSU's Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, and Kathleen Boyce Rodgers, associate professor in WSU's Department of Human Development, talked with more than 100 young people from across Washington state in focus groups about media and their romantic and sexual relationships. Hust and Rodgers also conducted in-depth interviews with 16 individuals.

Although Hust and Rodgers talked to adolescents before the start of the #MeToo campaign, the researchers noted that the young women they spoke with shared stories similar to those shared on social media as part of the grassroots campaign.

"Even most of our youngest female participants, who were freshmen in high school, had already experienced some form of sexual harassment," Hust said.

The young women viewed such sexual harassment as normative, Rodgers said.

Disengaging

"When these women experienced harassment," Hust added, "they typically disengaged from the situation, whether that meant deleting an online app or avoiding boys in the school hallway. They did not feel comfortable confronting or reporting the harassment because they didn't think they had the power to change the behavior."

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Double standard, differing perspectives

"Our qualitative data suggest that adolescents and young adults identify a pervasive sexual double standard in which boys are rewarded for sexual aggression and girls are shamed for sexual agency," Rodgers said.

Some of the men Hust and Rodgers spoke with in their interviews rejected these gender stereotypes and said they wouldn't comment on a woman's body. "Others, however, didn't seem to understand that such comments could be unwanted," Rodgers said.

Such gender stereotypes affect how they interpret sexual media content and how they act in their romantic and sexual relationships, Hust said. "The information we gathered in our focus groups and in-depth interviews support what we have found in our surveys of young people," Hust said.

Hust's and Rodgers' previous studies of young people have consistently identified a relationship between young people's perceptions of media content and their intentions to have healthy sexual relationships. The authors' found women who believed in gender stereotypes and endorsed music that degraded women were significantly less likely to engage in healthy sexual consent negotiation.

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In another study, Rodgers & Hust found women who accepted the sexual objectification of women and who found music videos as entertaining were more accepting of sexual comments about their bodies. Further, young women who accepted female objectification and viewed music videos as realistic were more accepting of unwanted physical sexual harassment (i.e. being touched or grabbed).

Adolescents talk about romance

Hust and Rodgers report their findings in a book titled "Scripting Adolescent Romance: Adolescents Talk about Romantic Relationships and Media's Sexual Scripts," by Peter Lang Publishing Group. In addition to sexual harassment, the authors share adolescents' and young adults' stories related to media, gender stereotypes, virginity, romantic relationships, sexual activity and dating violence.

"We wanted to share our participants' stories so that parents and practitioners can empower adolescents' and young adults' to participate in healthier romantic and sexual relationships" Hust said

Hust said she and Rodgers are hopeful that the book will provide a "resource for young people who may feel isolated by or uncomfortable with their experiences." It provides a "springboard" for conversations between parents and teens about "romantic relationships, setting boundaries, and how to have healthy relationships."

Hust and Rodgers will present an overview of their findings March 26-27 at WSU's annual Murrow Symposium.
For the first time, scientists from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UH Manoa) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) will deploy a small fleet of long-range autonomous underwater vehicles (LRAUVs) that have the ability to collect and archive seawater samples automatically. These new robots will allow researchers to track and study ocean microbes in unprecedented detail.

Ocean microbes produce at least fifty percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere while removing large amounts of carbon dioxide. They also form the foundation of marine food webs, including those that support global ocean fisheries. Edward DeLong and David Karl, oceanography professors in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) have been studying these microbes for decades. For this project, they and their teams are collaborating with engineers from MBARI to test new ways of adaptively sampling oceanographic features such as open-ocean eddies, swirling masses of water that move slowly across the Pacific Ocean, which can have large effects on ocean microbes.

In late February 2018, MBARI engineers completed the construction and testing of three new LRAUVs in collaboration with UH Manoa scientists, and delivered them last week for their first deployment in Hawaiian waters. As the LRAUVs move through the ocean, they collect information about water temperature, chemistry, and chlorophyll (an indicator of microscopic algae) and send this data to scientists on shore or on a nearby ship. Additionally, a unique aspect of these AUVs is an integrated Environmental Sample Processor (ESP), a miniature robotic laboratory that collects and preserves seawater samples at sea, allowing researchers to capture a snapshot of the organisms' genetic material and proteins.

MBARI has been developing ESPs for about 15 years. The first instruments were about the size of a 55-gallon drum. These latest ESPs, the third generation, are eight to ten inches in diameter -- one-tenth the original size -- and were designed specifically to fit inside an LRAUV.

Jim Birch, MBARI's lead engineer on the ESP project commented, "When we first talked about putting an ESP in an AUV, I thought to myself 'this is never going to happen.' But now I really think this is going to transform oceanography by giving us a persistent presence in the ocean -- a presence that doesn't require a boat, can operate in any weather condition, and can stay within the same water mass as it drifts around the open ocean."

With its surveying ability, the LRAUV allows scientists to discover, track, and sample open-ocean eddies, which can be over 100 kilometers (62 miles) across and last for months. When these eddies spin counterclockwise they bring water from the depths up toward the surface. This water often carries nutrients that microscopic algae (phytoplankton) need to survive.

"The new LRAUVs can transit for over 600 miles, and use their own 'eyes and ears' to detect important oceanographic events like phytoplankton blooms," DeLong explained. "These new underwater drones will greatly extend our reach to study remote areas, and also will allow us to sample and study oceanographic events and features we can see by remote satellite imaging, even when ships are not available."

An expeditionary cruise aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's (SOI) research vessel Falkor leaves on March 10 for open-ocean sea trials of MBARI's newly-designed LRAUVs. During this cruise, the researchers will locate an eddy using satellite data and then deploy the LRAUVs to survey the feature and collect water samples. When the robots return to the surface and are recovered, UH Manoa researchers will extract DNA from the filters. This information will provide unique insight into the eddy's duration, stability, and influence on the ocean systems; and will improve current ocean models, which are critical for developing expectations on the health of future oceans.

"Although this fleet of AUVs will never replace our need for a capable research vessel, it will provide much needed access to the sea and the collection of novel data sets that would not otherwise be possible," said Karl.
Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, has found a promising new treatment for allergic contact dermatitis that offers an alternative to corticosteroids and their possible side effects. The research is published this month in Dermatology and Therapy, available here.

Working in an experimental model of allergic contact dermatitis, the research team developed a mixture of antioxidants and moisturizers, combined with potent free radical scavengers and inhibitors, which suppressed an inflammatory response to the irritant. The cream relieved itch, reduced swelling and protected peripheral nerves in the affected area.

Allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) is caused by exposure to an allergen in sensitive people. Sensitizing allergens include nickel and gold, perfumes, soaps or organic compounds. Although removal of the allergen reduces symptoms, recovery can take weeks. The authors also note that allergic contact dermatitis represents 5-10% of doctor visits.

One of the current primary treatments for severe allergic contact dermatitis is the use of corticosteroids. Long-term use of corticosteroids can result in skin atrophy, spider veins, loss of skin color or corticosteroid acne. They can disrupt the skin's barrier and lead to adrenal suppression, altered growth, hypertension, hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and cataracts, and they may increase the risk for certain cancers.

The experimental cream, on the other hand, successfully treated allergic contact dermatitis in mice, without the side effects of corticosteroids. The new cream works in a different way by preventing or stopping the process that initiates inflammation.

This project is part of a long collaboration that Dr. Bazan developed with Dr. Ricardo Palacios-Pelaez from Spain on inflammation, immunity and neurodegenerative diseases.

"Now with the new cream, we targeted some of those mechanisms in a relatively less complex condition in the skin, always with translational-enabling goals," said Bazan.

Other members of the research team included Drs. William Gordon, Surjyadipta Bhattacharjee and Bokkyoo Jun at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence, as well as Drs. Virginia Garcia Lopez, David Rodriguez Gil, Javier Alcover Diaz, Fernando Pineda de la Losa, Ricardo Palacios Pelaez, Concha Tiana Ferrer and Gabriela Silvina Bacchini from Madrid, Spain; along with Helene Varoqui at Ochsner.

"While our results are very promising, additional studies are needed to determine the ideal duration of treatment and the most efficacious concentrations of the active components in the test formulations that will best alleviate ACD," Bazan concluded.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, as well as LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence.

This work is part of Bazan's innovative research searching for novel fundamental principles of tissue/organ injury involving inflammation, immunology, genetics and epigenetics. Most of his efforts are focused on responses to damage to the brain and retina and include Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, pain, Macular degeneration and traumatic brain injury, but as these findings demonstrate, fundamental discoveries have broad application.
At about 8:15pm on Saturday, March 3, all police units received a radio message from Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura, announcing new appointments and transfers of senior officers.

A man many in the opposition identify as the regimes top hatchet man driven by a single-minded determination to crush their legitimate political activity was signalling the end to a most controversial 12 years at the helm of the police.

The message advised that more appointments and transfers would follow. Less than 24 hours later, Gen Kayihura was relieved of his duties and replaced by long-serving career officer, the amiable and scholarly John Martins Okoth Ochola, 60.

Sacked: Kale Kayihura

President Museveni announced the sacking of Kayihura and Security minister Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde in a media release posted on his official social media platforms. It now turns out that Kayihura was given very short advance notice that he was out although he still met one-on-one with the principal before.

Knowledgeable sources intimate that he only learnt of his sacking hours to the time. Tumukunde, on the other hand, had reportedly been informed about a month ago.

It is understood that Museveni met with him and said that much as he appreciated what Tumukunde was doing, it was better for both to be retired in order to maintain a balance since his activities had created the impression of a fight with Kayihura.



Sacking Kayihura and leaving Tumukunde would worsen the animosity between the two, since Kayihura would look at it as a defeat on his side, the source said.



Museveni is also reported to have told Tumukunde that he would bounce back to cabinet in the next cabinet reshuffle while Kayihura may be sent to school abroad. The reported Museveni-Kayihura meeting is said to have happened at State Lodge Nakasero on the same day he lost his job.

Sources say the president had summoned his police chief for a briefing about running investigations into last weeks shock murder of Susan Magara, three weeks after the 28-year-old girl from a wealthy and politically well-connected family was kidnapped.

The briefing was reportedly also attended by investigators handling the case, according to sources. It is said that Museveni was rather fed up with the unhealthy fights between Kayihura and Tumukunde, blamed for the deteriorating security situation.

Their misunderstandings had become a regular topic of discussion in the National Security Council (NSC) that Museveni chairs. In one NCS meeting, Museveni asked the two army generals why they continued to fight in public yet they could resolve their differences under the NSC.

These differences were discussed in the NSC after the January 19 arrest of gang leader Abdallah Kitatta and his Boda Boda 2010 accomplices. The matter was also discussed in cabinet. While Tumukunde has on several occasions spoken openly about their misunderstandings, it is a subject that Kayihura has avoided.

When he appeared before parliaments Appointments committee in September 2017 after Museveni renewed his contract, Kayihura denied there was a feud. Tumukunde had a week earlier expressed reservations about a Kayihura retention in light of increased serious crime across the country.

The two are reported to have fallen out in 2005 after Kayihura, a few months before his first appointment as IGP, oversaw Tumukundes arrest on charges of abuse of office and spreading harmful propaganda.

About two weeks ago, Kayihura wondered in an interview why Tumukunde had taken it personal.

I was only a military assistant to the president [then]; you cant say that I am the one who arrested him. It was a group of people who were directed to carry out the arrest, he cant therefore rightfully accuse me of arresting him, Kayihura said.

The soldiers that arrested Tumukunde included Kayihura, Maj Geoffrey Kyambadde and Maj Gen James Mugira.

KAWEESI MURDER

Ever since Tumukunde became security minister, the police chief has increasingly appeared to be under pressure.

He leaves at a time the public image of his police is in ruins; reviled for its brutality against regime opponents and civilians, and widely ridiculed as unprofessional and heavily infiltrated by extortionists, murderers and all manner of violent criminals.

Tumukunde turned the screws, pointing out how amidst widespread human rights violations the police under Kayihura were not up to the job.

And then something stunning happened early last year. In the early morning of March 17, 2017, former police spokesman Assistant Inspector General of Police Andrew Felix Kaweesi left a pregnant wife and members of his adoring family at home.

His Toyota Prado TX had only travelled a very short distance from the gate before coming to a cold stop in a hail of bullets fired by hit-men riding on motorcycles. Kaweesi perished alongside his driver and bodyguard. It is said that the killers made sure all three were dead by pumping several more bullets into the bodies.

Andrew Felix Kaweesi's car was sprayed with bullets last year, leaving him, bodyguard and driver dead

According to sources, Museveni is not happy with how police went about the Kaweesi murder investigation, especially when parallel investigations by other security agencies are pointing at the possibility of an internal hit job.

Kayihura is also blamed for the delayed closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera project in the face of spiralling criminality in Kampala. Last month, the media was awash with reports that Museveni had ordered Kayihura to sack the polices director for ICT Amos Ngabirano because of his role in the CCTV procurement and parliament security system fiascos.

Government reportedly lost over Shs 450bn meant for security systems at parliament. A full body scanner was set up in the Speakers chambers on the 6th floor of Parliamentary buildings instead of at the main entrance after it was discovered to be defective, according to security sources.

In a February 20 interview, Kayihura denied any wrongdoing in the procurement of parliaments security system.

My role was at the initial stage; we were getting threats from some terror groups on parliament. I got an opportunity to address the Parliamentary Commission and advised them to invest in security technologies to back up the manual systems, Kayihura said.

It was their project which was implemented by a joint inter-agency technical team, he said.

Weeks after the 2016 election, a security report detailing the nature and unclear activities of the so-called crime preventers was handed to Museveni. The gist was that this was an irregular network of millions of police informers clandestinely assembled by the police chief to advance his unstated political ambitions.

Kayihuras reported attempts to clarify the issue with State House never quite passed muster. At this point, the clock started ticking 
The indictment of 13 Russians in the operation of a "troll farm" that spread false information related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election has renewed the spotlight on the power of "fake news" to influence public opinion. Now, an Indiana University faculty member who studies the spread of misinformation online is joining prominent legal scholars, social scientists and researchers in a global "call to action" in the fight against it.

Filippo Menczer, a professor in the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, is a co-author of a paper published March 8 in the journal Science that calls for a coordinated investigation into the underlying social, psychological and technological forces behind fake news. This is necessary to counteract the phenomenon's negative influence on society, the authors said.

"What we want to convey most is that fake news is a real problem, it's a tough problem, and it's a problem that requires serious research to solve," said Menczer, who also a member of the IU Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research and founder of the IU Observatory on Social Media, a platform that provides tools for identifying automated social media accounts and analyzing the spread of misinformation across social networks.

The paper includes estimates that the number of automated "bots" is 60 million on Facebook and up to 48 million on Twitter, the latter based upon a recent study by Menczer and colleagues. It also cites an analysis that found the average American likely encountered one to three fake news stories in the month before the 2016 U.S. election.

"The spreaders of fake news are using increasingly sophisticated methods," he added. "If we don't have enough quantifiable information about the problem, we'll never be able to design interventions that work. This paper is really a call to groups across the globe -- academics, journalists and private industry -- to work together to attack this problem."

This includes the tech companies that create the platforms used to produce and consume information, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. The authors said these companies have an "ethical and social responsibility transcending market forces" to contribute to scientific research on fake news.

Additionally, the article's authors point out that false information affects not only the political sphere but also areas not previously regarded as political, such as public health topics like nutrition and vaccinations, as well as the stock market. They also said the problem is particularly intractable because some research has found that repeating a lie to correct it can actually ingrain false information in the mind.

One solution Menczer and his colleagues propose is rigorous research into the effectiveness of high school courses that help students recognize illegitimate new sources. They also propose specific changes to the powerful algorithms that increasingly control people's access to information online.

"The challenge is there are so many vulnerabilities we don't yet understand and so many different pieces that can break or be gamed or manipulated when it comes to fake news," Menczer said. "It's such a complex problem that it must be attacked from every angle."

Menczer is a prominent voice on the fight against fake news whose research is frequently cited in major media outlets and academic conferences. The essay's co-authors include researchers at high-profile organizations such as Microsoft, Harvard, Yale and MIT.
Water, always important, always controversial, always fascinating, remains surprising. For a substance that is ubiquitous on Earth, three quarters of our planet is covered with it, researchers can still be surprised by some of its properties, according to Arizona State University chemist C. Austen Angell.

Angell, a Regents Professor in ASU's School of Molecular Sciences, has spent a good portion of his distinguished career tracking down some of water's more curious physical properties. In a new piece of research just published in Science (March 9), Angell and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have, for the first time, observed one of the more intriguing properties predicted by water theoreticians -- that, on sufficient super-cooling and under specific conditions it will suddenly change from one liquid to a different one. The new liquid is still water but now it is of lower density and with a different arrangement of the hydrogen bonded molecules with stronger bonding that makes it a more viscous liquid.

"It has nothing to do with 'poly-water,'" Angell adds recalling a scientific fiasco of many decades ago. The new phenomenon is a liquid-liquid phase transition, and until now it had only been seen in computer simulations of water models.

The problem with observing this phenomenon directly in real water is that, shortly before the theory says it should happen, the real water suddenly crystallizes to ice. This has been called the "crystallization curtain" and it held up progress in understanding water physics and water in biology for decades.

"The domain between this crystallization temperature and the much lower temperature at which glassy water (formed by deposition of water molecules from the vapor) crystallizes during heating has been known as a 'no-man's land,'" Angell said. "We found a way to pull aside the 'crystallization curtain' just enough to see what happens behind -- or more correctly, below -- it," Angell said.

Phase transitions of water are important to understand for a multitude of applications. For example, the well-known and destructive heaving of concrete roads and footpaths in winter is due to the phase transition from water to ice under the concrete. The phase transition between liquid states, described in the current work, has much in common with the transition to ice but it occurs at a much lower temperature, about -90 C (-130 F), and only under super-cooled conditions so it is likely to remain mostly a scientific curiosity for the foreseeable future.

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Angell explained that a couple of years ago he and his research associate Zuofeng Zhao, were studying the thermal behavior of a special type of "ideal" aqueous solution they had been using to explore the folding and unfolding of globular proteins. They wanted to observe these solutions' ability to supercool and then vitrify. Seeking the limit to the glassy domain, they added extra water to enhance the probability of ice crystallization and found that instead of finally evolving heat as ice crystallized (leaving a residual unfrozen solution) as is normally found when cooling saline solutions, it actually gave off heat to form a new liquid phase.

The new liquid was much more viscous, maybe even glassy. Furthermore, by reversing the direction of the temperature change, Angell and Zhao found that they could transform the new phase back into the original solution before any ice would start to crystallize.

"This observation, published in Angewandte Chemie, raised considerable interest but there was no structural information to explain what was happening," Angell said. That changed when Angell visited the University of Amsterdam two summers ago, and met Sander Woutersen, a specialist in infrared spectroscopy who became very interested in the structural aspects of the phenomenon.

In the Science paper, the team with Woutersen, his student Michiel Hilbers and his computational colleague Bernd Ensing has now shown that the structures involved in the liquid-liquid transition have the same spectroscopic signatures -- and the same hydrogen bonding patterns -- as are seen in the two known glassy forms of ice produced by laborious alternative processes (high- and low-density amorphous solid phases of water).

"The liquid-liquid transition we had found was now seen to be the 'living analog' of the change between two glassy states of pure water that had been reported in 1994, using pure pressure as the driving force," Angell explained.

The results would seem to "provide direct evidence for the existence of a liquid-liquid transition behind the 'crystallization curtain' in pure water," Woutersen said, adding that the findings offer a general explanation for the thermodynamic anomalies of liquid water, and a validation for the "second critical point theory" put forward by Gene Stanley's group to explain those anomalies.

"This behavior is almost unique among the myriad of known molecular liquids," Angell added. "Only a few other substances are thought to exhibit it, but none have been proven to date."
It is a widely-held belief in the West that every African has seen a wild animal up-close and personal  if they dont own one in their backyard, that is.

What a misconception! On the contrary, a big number of Ugandans have not enjoyed the wildlife that roams their national parks and reserves, and consider it a Western thing; a mentality tourism stakeholders are determined to change.

Seeing a lion for 20-year-old Jackline Mbabazi has been a dream she thought would only be achieved when she starts working and earning her own money to go on safari.

A woman teases a monkey with a banana

She missed several school tours because her parents could not afford them, but last weekend, she had the opportunity to see a lion and lioness, free of charge. This was during the fourth Pearl of Africa Tourism Expo organised at the Sheraton Kampala hotel from February 24 to 25.

I have never gone to the zoo or any national park and in our geography classes, we were only taken to see lakes and mountains, but now that I have an opportunity. I want to see the lion at least, Mbabazi said.

She and her three friends in their S6 vacation head excitedly to the mini zoo set up at the expo to view caged animals. There are many children and adults who, like Mbabazi, are getting a chance to see things they would otherwise have experienced at a cost.

The Observer talked to a few of them about what they thought about the expo.

Under the theme Rediscovering the Pearl, the expo was organised by the ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities and its partners including the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB), Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), and the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC).

According to UTB chief executive officer Stephen Asiimwe, the expo hosted buyers from more than 10 countries who are expected to market the countys tourism potential worldwide.

Daudi Migereko, the UTB chairman, said the expo, which attracted more foreign exhibitors, presented Uganda with the chance to learn from other exhibitors and to not only promote Ugandan tourism but also East Africa as a region.

Exhibitors from Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Kenya, among others, wooed revellers with reasons why they should visit their countries.

Among the Ugandan exhibitors were hotels, cultural groups, traditional wear designers, UWEC, UWA, tours and travel agencies and others.

My best part was when they put that python around my neck. I was so scared and excited at the same time. And then there was that tour around the city on the bus rooftop  that was just breathtaking. Can we have more than one expo in a year? an excited Linnet Adeke said, clinging to her older sister Rhonas hand who did not seem as excited.

Rhona almost collapsed, she said, when she saw her young sister accepting a mature python to be put around her neck.

She then turned to Adeke with a warning: Never put that python on yourself even when Im not around. The day they will put it on you when it is hungry is when you will understand what Im talking about!

Meanwhile, atop the new double-deck bus in Kampala city, a group of boys sat on the stationary vehicle to enjoy the view at such heights. On Sunday, a trip around the city was scheduled and would cost each of them Shs 25,000, but they were too excited to mind the price..

We dont have many buses like this [one] in Uganda, do we? Hakim Kitaka asked me. So, if you see us sitting here even when the bus is not moving, it is because we are excited about it and cant wait to have the ride tomorrow.

More games

With options to choose from, some of the revellers chose paintball to pass time, and target shooting at a fee of Shs 5, 000 for 10 shots.

Christopher Araali held the gun as I arrived and he, together with friends had wagered on who would shoot all the bottles at the other side within the paid-for 10 shots.

I have always wanted to be a soldier, although I fear death. Because of my love for guns, this has been my favourite point at the expo. I can do this all day, Araali said before aiming a perfect shot that shattered the bottle across. He did not shoot them all and lost the wager.

Shortcomings

Even as the expo grows bigger each year, it is still below the mark when it comes to representing Ugandas full potential in cultural diversity, flora and fauna. For James Mulumba, who has attended all the past four expos, this one should have been better.

To be honest with yourself; if you were a foreigner and you came to this expo to see the things you have seen, would it leave you with the hunger to see more? The things they are displaying are the same over and over and they dont represent even 1% of what Uganda has to offer, a disappointed Mulumba said. I think the tourism authorities should do more than this.

For Innocent Ayeko, the essential aspect of town life was ignored at the expo. He said a tent displaying Kampalas nightlife would not have hurt, especially for foreigners at the expo.

The officials at the opening ceremony just talked about it but I think this is something we have to throw out there as a country; our nightlife, he said. People know us as a country that parties from Monday to Monday and for me to come here and not see a single tent trying to at least explain our nightlife is so disturbing.

More voices from the Expo

Justus Amanya

From the look of things, Kenya, Rwanda and even Tanzania are far better at these expo things. What we are seeing here today should have been more in all aspects.

Suleiman Okello

This is a good initiative for promoting tourism although many people dont even know that this expo is taking place. I think there should be more advertising next time so that many Ugandans can come too.

Peace Ayikoru

The mini zoo is so exciting. You know coming here and you see those animals out of their habitats is some good experience. I wish the expo could be organised more than once a year so that Ugandans get to know where to tour.

Julian Mirembe

This is my first expo and I can authoritatively say it has blown me away. It is not the organisation that I expected to find here. I have been more interested in the fact that hotels are here too. Ugandans fear hotel accommodation so much.

kamogajonathan50@gmail.com
Markets regulator Sebi is believed to have returned NSE's settlement plea on a high-profile probe into the co-location issue as the probe is at critical position with regard to brokers and former senior executives of the exchange.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) had filed the application with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) last year.

It had sought a settlement with the regulator in connection with a probe relating to allegations of unfair access to its high frequency trading systems to some brokers.

A consent settlement allows entities to settle charges by paying a penalty without admission or denial of guilt.

"Sebi doesn't appear keen to agree to a settlement plea filed by NSE at the moment as the probe is at a critical position with regard to the role of several people including brokers and some people having held senior positions at the exchange in the past," a regulatory official said.

The queries sent to the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on the status of the settlement plea remained unanswered.

The bourse's Rs 10,000 crore initial public offer has been delayed because of probe in the co-location matter and the regulator had earlier issued show cause notices to several individuals and the exchange, while the role of some brokers is also being probed
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a former communications specialist with insider trading based on nonpublic information he learned about an impending acquisition of the company where he worked.

The SEC alleges that Robert M. Morano, a former employee of UTi Worldwide, Inc., obtained more than $38,000 in illegal profits by purchasing shares in the company before it and DSV Air & Sea Holdings A/V jointly announced UTi's acquisition. According to the SEC's complaint, Morano, who was responsible for helping the company publish press releases and other communications, learned confidential details about the planned acquisition the day before it was publicly announced and immediately bought approximately 17,500 shares of UTi in three brokerage accounts. The next day, after DSV and UTi's announcement was made public, UTi's shares increased over 50% on heavy trading, and Morano sold all of his shares.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Oregon on March 5, 2018, charges Morano with violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder. The SEC is seeking an injunction, disgorgement plus interest, and a penalty.

The SEC's case is being led by Brian T. Fitzsimons, and supervised by Brian O. Quinn, Jan M. Folena, and Scott W. Friestad. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) today pulled out its two ministers - A Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary - from the Union Cabinet. Raju held the office of Union Aviation Minister, and Chowdary was the Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences. Both the ministers submitted their resignations today.

Our ministers in central cabinet and BJP ministers in our cabinet have resigned. However, these ministers worked good in the state. They brought considerable reforms in their departments. I thank them for their services: #AndhraPradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu in state assembly pic.twitter.com/hcNhREHcnD - ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

The TDP chief in a tweet on Wednesday said: "The Centre has been taking one sided decisions and our patience has run out now. When the purpose of joining the union cabinet hasn't been fulfilled, it's best to resign now."

I am not angry with anyone. This decision has been taken only to benefit the people of Andhra Pradesh. - N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 7, 2018

This comes after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday ruled out any possibility of giving special category status to Andhra Pradesh, citing constitutional obligations. The Finance Minister referred to the 14th Finance Commission's recommendation which does not permit special category status to a state except the north-eastern states and the three hilly provinces.

LIVE UPDATES

06:20 pm: Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary submitted their resignations to the Prime Minister: Report



17:15 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. Two TDP ministers, who resigned from cabinet today in the morning, will meet the Prime Minister at 6 pm. Andhra Pradesh CM Naidu explained to the Prime Minister about reasons leading to the ministers' resignation and TDP withdrawing from the Union Government, according to ANI.

Delhi: The two TDP MPs in the Union Cabinet, AG Raju & YS Choudhary arrive at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg to meet PM Narendra Modi. pic.twitter.com/pHvBxEvPHK - ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Other parties putting pressure on Naidu with false propaganda: Ananth Kumar

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar today said that YSR Congress and other parties were creating political pressure with false propaganda on the issue of special status to Andhra Pradesh. "The TDP has demanded special status. We are discussing with them...Unfortunately, YSR Congress and other parties are indulging in all sorts of false propaganda, spoiling the political atmosphere in the state and putting pressure on Chandrababu Naidu," Kumar said. He further said that the YSR Congress was falsely propagating that the Centre has not done anything for Andhra Pradesh. Amid this political pressure, Naidu has taken certain decisions.

RJD Leader Manoj Jha on TDP's Special Status Demand

N Chandrababu Naidu took a historical step. Why did our CM (Nitish Kumar) took a step back? Letter was written to him to create pressure over issue of special status to Bihar. This is much needed especially with the kind of disparities here. CM should muster up at least 1% of Naidu's courage.

Ram Vilas Paswan on TDP's Special Status Demand

Nitish's government has been demanding Bihar's special status for long and we've got a special package which is monetarily as beneficial as special status. But, despite this some people aren't satisfied and to them I will just say that India can only grow in NDA's regime.

Two BJP ministers resign from AP Cabinet

Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday resigned after the TDP decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government. Health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations.

01:35 pm: Let us not get confused. When the state of Andhra Pradesh was made, the people did not want to be treated as a residue material. There were some assurances made. UPA govt made some commitments, now these commitments are the questions: TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju



01:20 pm: Prime Minister Modi had promised Special Status to Bihar in March 2014 during Lok Sabha election rally at Muzaffarpur. Nitish (Bihar CM) must play that speech recording in front of the Prime Minister: Lalu Prasad Yadav.



Why Nitish not asking his boss to accord Special Status to Bihar? PM Modi had promised Special Status to Bihar in March 2014 Loksabha election rally at Muzaffarpur. Nitish must play that speech recording in front of PM. For personal gains Nitish surrendered Bihar's benefits. - Lalu Prasad Yadav (@laluprasadrjd) March 8, 2018

01:02 pm: TDP MP CM Ramesh arrived at the Parliament wearing t-shirt with 6 demands for the state of Andhra Pradesh printed on it.

TDP MP CM Ramesh arrived at the Parliament wearing t-shirt with 6 demands for the state of Andhra Pradesh printed in it. #Delhipic.twitter.com/F5K7qmGgkO - ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

What Arun Jaitley spoke yesterday is not good. You are holding hand of the North Eastern states but not Andhra Pradesh's. You are giving industrial incentives to them, not to Andhra Pradesh. Why this discrimination? Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu.

10:30 am: No one from AP was willing to bifurcate, all resources related to generation of employment were in Hyderabad, bifurcation was not done in a scientific way & injustice done with the Andhra Pradesh: TDP MP Srinivas

Other parties who are sympathetic to our cause have also started protesting on various issues but in support of us. Next step is coming out of the cabinet, after FM Jaitley's statement yesterday: Jayadev Galla, TDP pic.twitter.com/23FJOY3Sq4 - ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

It is not good that TDP has decided to breakaway from with NDA. Want to appeal to AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu that he must think over this decision once again for development of people of AP they should stay with NDA: Union Minister Ramdas Athawale.

Andhra Pradesh CM and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu late night on Wednesday accused the Modi government of not honouring its promise and threatened to pull out of the Modi Cabinet. "Arun Jaitley's statement was the last straw. They are apparently predetermined. They don't appear to help the state," he said.

Finance Minister Jaitley in a press conference on Wednesday said that the government was committed to meeting all promises made to Andhra Pradesh at the time of carving out of Telengana four years back.

"But giving special category status, as demanded by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, to any state apart from those in the North East and three hilly provinces is not constitutionally possible after the implementation of the 14th Finance Commission recommendation," he added.

(With inputs from agencies)
An astronaut flew over San Bruno on Wednesday and revealed to the 800 earthlings below that he wears socks to work, eats lasagna and spent part of this week fixing the space station toilet.

And the Internet doesnt work any better in near-zero gravity than it does on Earth, spaceman Scott Tingle said.

Its very slow, he said. But its better than nothing.

The 11-minute shortwave radio conversation with Tingle  orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station  was the biggest thing to hit Parkside Intermediate School in some time. Thats because classes were canceled while Tingle spoke from 250 miles overhead on his special radio hookup. Students and teachers crammed into the schools gym, where local ham radio clubs had set up their equipment.

Principal Kerry Dees blew a whistle and called the proceedings to order. She declared it a great day in the history of the mighty Parkside Panthers.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Dees said. This is beyond your imagination!

And then a dozen students trooped up to a bank of shortwave radios and read their questions into the mike. Each student had been instructed to say over at the end of each question, so that Tingle  who was fed the questions in advance  could rattle off his answers. All eyes were on the clock, because radio contact with the space station would last only about 11 minutes.

At the precise moment, the radio folks twiddled their dials and history arrived at Parkside over frequency 145.805 megahertz.

Good to be with you, Panthers! said Tingle from on high.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

Speaking fast  and remembering to say over at the end of each question  students asked if it was OK to bring pets into space, whether astronauts wear special shoes, if being an astronaut was bad for your health, and whether Tingle had ever traveled outside the Milky Way galaxy.

Tingle said pets arent allowed, astronauts wear socks instead of shoes, working out on the space station exercise equipment keeps astronauts fit, and that he had never been outside the Milky Way, but that it would be awesome if he could.

To most questions, Tingle replied that being an astronaut was awesome or really neat or pretty cool.

It turns out that talking to such school assemblies is a fairly common thing for Space Station astronauts, who have months of time on their hands. Maintaining public interest in the space program since the last moon landing in 1972 and the last space shuttle launch in 2011 continues to be a big part of an astronauts job  one that could come to an end if the Trump administration is successful in making the space station a private entity as planned by 2025.

Ham radio hobbyist and Parkside parent Nick Hart organized the event, borrowed the radios, erected the antennas on the roof, snaked the wires through the gym and arranged for emergency batteries just in case something went wrong.

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As for the Space Station, which has orbited the Earth 106,000 times since its launch 20 years ago, its running about as well as any other vehicle of its age. Tingle told the students that its systems get old and you have to fix things. This week, he said, he worked on the cameras, the computer, the exercise equipment and the toilet.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

And then, before more students could ask about space suits, dizziness, injuries, dreams, or how exactly one fixes a space station toilet, the International Space Station flew beyond radio range. The conversation and the school assembly came to a crackly, static-filled end.

Gym students were ordered out to the track to run two laps, and science teacher Linda Ballentine ushered her pupils back to their classroom to write a brief essay about the chat and what they had learned, science-wise.

Theres no free lunch at Parkside, Ballentine said.
San Francisco wants robot-car makers to demonstrate their vehicles to public safety personnel before cars without drivers hit city streets.

I am specifically requesting that all (autonomous vehicle) manufacturers who intend to apply for a driverless testing or deployment permit participate in a safety assessment exercise in San Francisco, Mayor Mark Farrell wrote in a letter addressed Dear Autonomous Vehicle Manufacturers and sent Thursday.

The point of the voluntary program is for robot-car makers to show their vehicles safety features and to make sure that San Francisco first responders, transit operators and other city staff know how to interact with the no-driver cars in case of an emergency.

This is the future of driving in our country and here in San Francisco, Farrell said in an interview. Im very supportive. As the industry evolves, as mayor, public safety is my first concern.

Farrell said he had personally called several companies already and received positive reactions to his request. Makers of self-driving cars want (them) to be known as the safest vehicles on the street, he said. My hope is that everyone we ask will participate in this program.

If companies refuse, San Francisco has no authority to ban their no-driver cars from operating here, he said.

The Department of Motor Vehicles issued regulations late last month allowing companies to apply to test cars without backup drivers, and said it could begin issuing permits for driverless tests by April 2. Some 50 companies, almost all in the Bay Area, already have DMV permits to test autonomous cars with backup drivers ready to take control.

The DMV and industry sources said they expect several companies will want to apply early for the no-driver testing permits.

DMV rules for no-driver cars include notifying cities before driving the cars within their bounds, and providing a plan to interact with law enforcement.

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Waymo, a sister company of Google that has been a pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry, said it would like to eventually test and operate truly driverless vehicles in California; that it believes in working with public safety officials; and has already talked to San Francisco about setting up first responder training.

Farrell said he envisions a big demo day, at which the first companies to apply for no-driver permits would show off their vehicles to key personnel from police and fire departments, California Highway Patrol, parking control and transit operators.

While the first such day could happen by the end of this month  and Farrell hopes to attend  it would be an ongoing process as companies continue to apply for driverless testing and, eventually, operation with paying passengers.

Among issues to cover: showing where important documents will be stored; providing training on the cars features, technology and systems; and demonstrating how they will work when surrounded by pedestrians, bicyclists and Muni buses.
From 2001 to 2005, Howard Leach, appointed ambassador to France by President George W. Bush, served in Paris, alongside his wife, Gretchen Leach. The two were pillars of San Francisco society, not career diplomats, but recognized as generous donors to the Bush campaign.

Because she had so many friends here, Gretchen Leach decided to keep them informed by writing a series of letters widely distributed to her friends. Those are the main contents of a book (published by Vantage Point Historical Services), Letters From Paris: My Life as the Wife of the U.S. Ambassador to France From 2001 to 2005.

The author explains that it was a deliberate decision not to write about political matters. Instead, the letters were intended to chronicle the social side of our life in Paris. Some of the revelations are personal; others shed light on the diplomatic requirements of the posting, still others on government protocol. Howard Leach is identified in the book as HHL. Highlights:

For a visit to Paris, the Bush staff required 800 hotel rooms. President George W. Bush eats a lot of bananas. He said its just because they are good for you.

The Leaches went to a memorial service for Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who was killed in the Columbia accident. ... HHL was up front with all the officials, looking dashing in a white satin yarmulke. At the end of the service, security escorted us to the door as if he was a rock star.

My guard is a rather funky but extremely professional young female. ... But she is beginning to get on my nerves. Today she wore the most God-awful perfume! Im going to have to do something about that. A few chapters later: The girl with the awful perfume hasnt been assigned to me for a while. She is still around, though, on the conditions that she tie her wild hair back and not wear any of that perfume.

At weekend hunts, I am definitely on the birds team, writes Leach, and delight when they fly over unscathed. After one weekend staying with other guests  including Scandinavian royalty  at a 300-room chateau, nearly a thousand dead birds were laid out and surrounded by votive candles in the shape of the crest of the Queen of Denmark. At the end of the evening, four musicians emerged in regional costume and played The Star-Spangled Banner and God Bless America.

Stores like Zara do a very good job of creating copies of Chanel and Prada, but personally, I have a problem with it because those clothes are all over Paris being worn by not the best dressed. In other style notes, Catherine Deneuves hairdresser charges 692 euros for a cut.

In Normandy, the Leaches attended a large and fancy wedding, with the bride being from a very high profile family. It did get a little dicey when the priest started disparaging the rich as he made his comments to the bride and groom. When it was time for communion, the grandfather of the bride said to the priest, Im not sure I should take communion, as I am rather rich. So the priest bypassed him.

As to French wit: Humor is not their strong suit  there is usually nothing frivolous in conversation, and people dont laugh just because theyre having fun, or sit down and tell a joke. And, writes Leach, they dont much like dancing, either.

James Comey, who served as chief of the FBI from 2013 until 2017, when he was fired by President Trump, will appear at the Curran Theater in San Francisco on April 23. Comey will be part of that theaters onstage Show & Tell series, most of which are conversations with artists and writers. He will be hawking his new book, A Higher Loyalty, with every ticket ($45 to $85) including the cost of a book.

The series also includes a May 10 appearance by photographer Pete Souza, whose new book is Obama: An Intimate Portrait.

Writing Dear Answer Man: Trump Edition in the New Yorker, Calvin Trillin answers a question from Worried: If Jared Kushner is forced to leave the White House, does that mean there will be no peace in the Middle East? The Answer Man assures the signer of the letter, Worried, that The White House has pledged to replace Kushner with someone equally qualified.

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

I have to yell at him because I feel hell understand me better.

Woman to man, overheard at Starbucks on Solano by James Beck
Pour one out for Bergamot Alley, the 6.5-year-old Healdsburg wine bar that will pour its final glasses of Verdicchio, Lacrima di Morro dAlba and other zany varietals on March 31.

After that, Bergamot Alley will be dead in body, but not in spirit: It will live on, say owners Kevin and Sarah Wardell, as a digital platform. The new website will be a portal for the Bergamot Alley wine clubs, a wine marketplace and a platform for education.

Weve been working on this for a long time, says Kevin Wardell, a veteran of A16 and Flour + Water. This is the direction we wanted the Bergamot Alley brand to go. Their existing wine clubs have been growing, and with two children at home, growing that business while running the bar seemed too onerous. We knew wed be coming to a junction point in our careers and our time schedules at one point.

With a lease extension on the horizon, the Wardells thought this was a good time to make a transition.

While its tempting to imagine that demographic shifts and rising real estate prices in fast-gentrifying Healdsburg might have prompted the decision to close the bar, Kevin Wardell insists that wasnt the case.

Healdsburg has been growing, and theres lots of second-home owners taking over the landscape of town, he says. We were fortunate to enjoy year after year of business growth.

Since announcing the news, Wardell says the outpouring of support has been tremendous.

Thats because Bergamot Alley was a singular Wine Country institution  the industrys ultimate off-duty hangout. In its early years, the bar made the bold choice to serve no American wine, focusing instead on the wines of Europe, especially the lesser-known backroads of Italy that Wardell had come to love so much at A16. Varietal wines were always privileged over blends. Even to seasoned wine professionals, the selection leaned obscure (c.f. the Mollard I drank while reviewing the bar for a 2016 column). Wardells two favorite grape varieties, Verdicchio and Lacrima di Morro dAlba, from Italys Marche region, were perennial by-the-glass options.

John Storey/Special to the Chronicle

The vibe was educational, emphasized by the bars quirky motto: Hippo Sweat is Red. The hope, Wardell explains, was that you would leave Bergamot Alley having learned something about wine, but even if you didnt, at least you would have learned that hippo sweat is red.

It was true when it opened, and it remains true now: Id rather have a drink at Bergamot Alley than any other bar or restaurant in Healdsburg.

In a way, the digital extension makes perfect sense, since Bergamot Alley has been more than just a bar for years now. In 2013, the Wardells organized the inaugural Seven Percent Solution, an event showcasing California wines made from non-standard grape varieties. (At the time, 93 percent of Northern California vineyards was planted to just eight grape varieties.) Seven Percents size and notoriety grew over time, and it will live on, though Kevin Wardell isnt yet sure where this years annual spring tasting will take place.

The new online-only Bergamot Alley will be organized into three main sections: a subscription club focused on varietal wines from Italy; a set of subscription clubs focused on other European wines; and a marketplace for Seven Percent Solution wines, all Californian.

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And what will become of the space at 328 Healdsburg Avenue? Wardells answer is cryptic, suggesting that he might have something in the works. We would be involved in the decision process of whats next for that space, he says. Whether or not were going to be involved in whats next remains to be seen.

Theyll be hosting a series of events during the bars final month, including a yacht rock dance party, a fried chicken pop-up and a big blow-out sale and celebration on the bars final day of service, March 31.

We have nothing but love for what we created in town, Wardell says, but were really excited to move on.

Bergamot Alley, 328 Healdsburg Ave., Healdsburg. (707) 433-8720 www.bergamotalley.com

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine, beer and spirits writer. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob
Daniel Wu was just getting warm in Ireland as he took a phone call from the Bay Area.

With production on his AMC television series Into the Badlands snowed out for the day, Wu took advantage of the unexpected break for some family time, taking daughter Raven out for an afternoon of sledding.

Family comes first for the Berkeley-born Oakland resident, even as his career rises to new heights. Not only is the post-apocalyptic martial arts series Into the Badlands in production for Season 3, which premieres April 22, Wu is a co-star with Oscar winner Alicia Vikander in the reboot of Tomb Raider, which opens Friday, March 16 in Bay Area theaters.

Its by far the biggest role hes had in a Hollywood film  hes already a big star in Asia, where Wu, 43, has been a leading man for nearly two decades. And now that its common for the Chinese film industry and Hollywood to partner up, Wu is finding more opportunities.

Im definitely ready for it, Wu said. Im in the perfect position because Im part of that industry in Asia, I have a box-office value. But I am American, and a fluent English speaker, so dialogue is not a problem.

Despite being increasingly in demand, he isnt second-guessing his decision to call Oakland his home base. He moved back four years ago with wife Lisa Selesner, a.k.a. Lisa S., a former actress and supermodel, and Raven, now 4. Part of the reason was so Raven could be educated in the Bay Area, and partly to be close to his father, now 89.

I feel guilty because I was away for 20 years, Wu said. We can take advantage of this time so she can get to know the one grandparent thats left now.

Graham Bartholomew/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Also, I love the Bay Area so much. Its so much different now than it was when I was growing up. You couldnt go to downtown (Oakland) at night, you just didnt do that. Now, theres great places to eat downtown, places to go and have a drink, all that kind of stuff. Its become like Brooklyn.

For now, those restaurants will have to wait. Wu and family will be in Ireland working on Into the Badlands through the first week of May. Wu helped pitch the series, in which he stars as Sunny, the best clipper (like a samurai) in the Badlands, a brutal feudal society ruled by Barons, including Sunnys boss, Quinn (Marton Csokas). A trained martial artist, Wu is a producer as well, in charge of the fight unit.

Badlands takes a physical toll on me, Wu said. A Donnie Yen movie has four or five fights for the whole film. We have dozens and dozens of fights during a season. Its like nonstop; Im working six days a week.

I wish I was 10 years younger, it would be a lot less painful for me. (laughs) But Im pushing through.

Wu said hes broken a rib and at one point severely twisted a knee that required intensive physical therapy.

I felt like Steph Curry in that Houston series where he injured his knee and didnt come back until the Finals, said Wu, a Warriors fan since childhood. I felt exactly like him. ... The doctor said two or three weeks, but I was back in six days, with my knee strapped.

Because of its popularity, Into the Badlands has increased its episode load each season. The first season had six episodes, the second season 10. Season 3 will have 16 episodes, the first eight of which will be telecast in the spring, with the other eight shown in the fall after a summer break. A Season 4 is already planned.

Ilzek Kitshoff/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

But first, Wu does battle alongside Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The Swedish-born Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl) assumes the role made famous by Angelina Jolie.

Wu arrived in South Africa, where the film was shot, directly after Season 2 of Badlands had wrapped. He said he was stunned when he arrived and found Vikander as in shape as he or anyone in his Badlands fight crew.

When I got there, she had been training for three or four months, Wu said. She had put on at least 15 pounds of muscle. Like, her shoulders made me feel embarrassed. She transformed herself completely.

There was some gnarly, hairy stuff that she wanted to do, and she did it. She earned a lot of respect, lets put it that way. She was really tough. She took a real beating on this one, and took it with aplomb.

Dominic West, Walton Goggins and Kristin Scott Thomas also co-star.

Wu took the family along with him to South Africa. He and Lisa love the country; they own a small place there and have visited yearly for the past 15 years, getting married there in 2010.

Where this new Hollywood success takes Wu, even he doesnt know. Twenty-one years earlier, he graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in architecture. Before embarking on a career in the real world, he decided to go to Hong Kong to witness the handover from Britain to China.

While there, Wu fell into modeling and arthouse director Yonfan spotted him in a magazine layout and cast him in his film Bishonen (Beauty). He quickly became a Hong Kong movie star  he is known as in Ng Yin-cho in Asia  in action films such as Gen-X Cops, Cop on a Mission and with Jackie Chan in New Police Story, as well as comedies and the occasional drama, and his lone directorial effort, The Heavenly Kings.

Internationally, he was a co-star of the science-fiction film Europa Report, and in Hollywood he recently had a small role in the disaster film Geostorm.

I never meant to go into this industry, Wu said. Every opportunity I got was a blessing. I feel completely blessed. I dont take this for granted. Its a dream I never thought Id have.

G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BRfilmsAllen

Tomb Raider: Starts Friday at Bay Area theaters.

Into the Badlands: Season 3 begins April 22 on AMC.
Now Playing: Gov. Jerry Brown calls federal lawsuit announced by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions Video: SFChronicle

A lawsuit filed against California by the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to overturn three California laws, all passed in 2017, on the grounds that they interfere with federal immigration enforcement. These are the laws:

SB54, also known as the California Values Act or the sanctuary state law. It prohibits local law enforcement officers and agencies from keeping detained immigrants in custody after their scheduled release date so that immigration agents can take them into federal custody; from notifying federal agents of an immigrants scheduled release date; from providing immigration agents with personal information about detainees; and from granting immigrations agents access to local jails. Those prohibitions do not apply to detainees held on serious criminal charges or to cases in which federal agents have obtained a judicial warrant. The law also prohibits local officers from asking detainees about their immigration status.
The CBI on Wednesday moved a special court seeking permission to conduct narco analysis test on Karti Chidambaram, arrested in the INX media case.

Special judge Sunil Rana said that he will take the matter on March 9 when Karti is brought to the court after three days of custodial interrogation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The court will also take up for hearing two other applications of the CBI seeking production warrants of Karti's chartered accountant S Bhaskararaman, arrested in the money laundering case, and co-accused Indrani Mukerjea, court sources said.

On Tuesday, Karti was sent to three more days of CBI custody with the court saying that the extension of his remand was necessary to maintain continuity in the investigation to secure evidence to arrive at the truth.

The application for narco analysis test assumes significance as the agency yesterday alleged that Karti was not cooperating in the investigation and was "evasive" in his replies.

Mukerjea is currently in a Mumbai prison in connection with murder case of her daughter Sheena Bora.

Karti was arrested on February 28 at the Chennai airport on his return from the UK, in connection with the FIR lodged on May 15 last year alleging irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving overseas funds worth about Rs 305 crore in 2007 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union finance minister.

The CBI has alleged that Karti received Rs 10 lakh as bribe for the FIPB clearance.
WASHINGTON - Special counsel Robert Mueller has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin - apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

Nader began cooperating with Mueller after he arrived at Dulles Airport in mid-January and was stopped, served with a subpoena and questioned by the FBI, these people said. He has met numerous times with investigators.

Last year, Prince told lawmakers - and the news media - that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.

In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump's inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration.

Prince told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that he did not plan to meet Dmitriev in the Seychelles but that once he was there discussing possible business deals with UAE officials, they unexpectedly suggested that he visit the hotel bar and meet Dmitriev.

"At the end, one of the entourage says, 'Hey, by the way, there's this Russian guy that we've dealt with in the past. He's here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, he'd be an interesting guy for you to know, since you're doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space,' " Prince told lawmakers.

The two men, he said, spoke for no more than 30 minutes, or about the time it took him to drink a beer.

"We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the USA," Prince told lawmakers. "I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism."

Prince said he went to the Seychelles as a private businessman, not as an official or unofficial emissary of the Trump transition team. During the congressional interview, which became testy at times as Democratic lawmakers pressed him to be more specific in his answers, Prince repeatedly complained that he had reason to believe U.S. intelligence agencies were leaking information about his activities.

Asked to comment on assertions that new evidence appears to contradict Prince's description of the Seychelles meeting, a spokesman for Prince referred to his previous statements to the committee and declined further comment.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Prince has known Nader for years and once hired him to try to generate business from the Iraqi government in the years after the U.S. invasion of that country. That effort was not successful, according to Prince's statements in a subsequent deposition.

Nader, according to current and former officials, was known to Trump transition and administration officials as someone with political connections in the Middle East who could help navigate the tricky diplomacy of the region.

Nader had also attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between senior Trump advisers and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, whether any Americans assisted in such efforts, and any other matters that arise in the course of his probe.

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Investigators now suspect that the Seychelles meeting may have been one of the first efforts to establish such a line of communications between the two governments, these people said. Nader's account is considered key evidence - but not the only evidence - about what transpired in the Seychelles, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nader has long served as an adviser to the UAE leadership, and in that role he met more than once with Trump officials, including Steve Bannon and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the matter. After the Seychelles meeting, Nader visited the White House several times, and met at least once there with Bannon and Kushner, these people said.

Nader could not be reached for comment, and his lawyer declined to comment.

Nader - and the Seychelles meeting - are also of interest to Mueller's team as it examines whether any foreign money or assistance fueled the Trump campaign, and how Trump officials during the transition and early days of the administration communicated with foreign officials, particularly Russians.

Nader's cooperation with the special counsel was first reported by the New York Times.

The UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective, according to U.S. European and Arab officials. Such a concession by Moscow would have been likely to require the easing of U.S. sanctions on Russia, which were imposed for Russia's intervention in Ukraine in 2014, those officials said.

Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition. However, according to people familiar with the Seychelles meeting, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his discussion with the Russian official.

---

The Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey, and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.
Home Depot has agreed to pay $27.8 million to settle a lawsuit by the state accusing the company of illegally dumping hazardous wastes from its California stores and discarding customer records without concealing the customers identities.

The lawsuit against the nations largest home improvement chain, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, came after a 2-year investigation by inspectors from Attorney General Xavier Becerras office, eight counties and the city of Los Angeles.

The inspectors combed through trash dumpsters outside 45 Home Depot stores and found illegal waste disposals in every one, and personal customer records in many of them, Becerra said Thursday in announcing the settlement.

This is unacceptable and illegal, he said. The suit also accused Home Depot of violating the states Unfair Competition Law by sidestepping costs that other companies paid for proper waste disposal.

Home Depot, based in Atlanta, has 232 stores in California.

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Were pleased to have settled this and we remain committed to the responsible disposal of waste, said company spokesman Matt Harrigan.

The settlement includes about $16.6 million in civil penalties and $1.85 million for reimbursement of law enforcement and investigation costs and attorneys fees.

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In addition to the costs of complying with the disposal laws, Home Depot agreed to spend $6.85 million on further environmental compliance actions and about $2.5 million on environmental protection projects.

The settlement includes a court-supervised injunction requiring Home Depot to dispose of hazardous wastes only in state-approved facilities, and not in dumpsters, trash compactors, sinks or drains, and to shred customer records before disposing of them. The company must submit annual reports on its compliance and can ask a judge to lift the injunction after five years if it shows it has been following the rules.
A San Francisco police officer who became known as the Hot Cop of the Castro was either trying to avoid legal trouble or a dangerous crowd of bystanders when he fled the scene after plowing his personal Dodge Charger into two pedestrians in North Beach.

Those were the dueling stories offered jurors on the first day of the trial of Christopher Kohrs, who was off-duty at the time of the 2015 crash.

Prosecutors are seeking a felony conviction, while Kohrs attorneys for the first time laid out their defense: the muscular lawman felt threatened by a very aggressive crowd whose members recognized him as an officer thanks to his hunky online persona.

Thousands and thousands of people knew him, defense attorney Peter Furst told the Superior Court jury in his opening statement. It was a good thing in the beginning, but in the context of this case, not so much.

Kohrs, 40, is charged with two felony counts of hit and run stemming from an early morning wreck on Nov. 29, 2015.

He was behind the wheel of his orange 2009 Charger with his brother Nathan in the back seat and a friend, 45-year-old Norman Banks, sitting up front, authorities said.

The three had been clubbing at Fort One Bar and Lounge on Leavenworth Street near Fishermans Wharf and left around 2 a.m. While heading west on Broadway, authorities said, Kohrs hit the two male pedestrians as they crossed near Montgomery Street around 2:20 a.m., seriously injuring both.

Though he apparently had a green light, prosecutors said, Kohrs ditched his friends, the victims and his car, which had a smashed windshield, and took off on foot.

The victims, Victor Perez and Frank Vilches, were left bloodied. Vilches, who nearly died, suffered permanent disabling injuries and racked up medical bills exceeding $600,000, his attorney wrote in a lawsuit against Korhs and the city.

Eight hours went by before Kohrs turned himself into police. Prosecutors were frustrated because they couldnt collect evidence to indicate whether Kohrs had been intoxicated while driving. The officer was on medical leave from the department at the time due to a knee injury.

Kohrs was ordered to stand trial on two charges: hit and run causing injury and hit and run causing serious permanent injury. He has pleaded not guilty and is on unpaid administrative leave.

On Wednesday, Furst unveiled the core of his defense, contending that Kohrs ran away because he feared a very, very aggressive crowd of more than 100 people that began to gather.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

This is a dangerous neighborhood, Furst said. Crowds form and all types of things happen.

This crowd was focused on Kohrs, the lawyer said, because they knew him as the Hot Cop of the Castro.

They said, Its the Hot Cop! F the police! Furst told jurors.

Kohrs worked in the departments Park Station for seven years. A neighborhood resident noticed his good looks and bulging biceps and began posting pictures of him on social media.

Soon, fan pages dedicated to Kohrs began cropping up and images of him went viral. Kohrs used the attention for charity, going shirtless during benefits and posing as a calendar model.
The folks behind the Koi Palace dim sum empire, which includes the Instagram-friendly Dragon Beaux in the Richmond, are headed to Ghirardelli Square with a new high-profile project  Palette (like an artists palette).

Dennis Leung, the current GM of Dragon Beaux and the future GM of Palette, told Inside Scoop the project is still very much in its infancy. They only recently applied for the liquor license for the restaurant and its still in the process of being transferred from Jonathan Waxmans shuttered eponymous restaurant.

Though its early, Leung provided the some details regarding the food, though its possible they could change. Yes, there will be dim sum and yes, it will be colorful. There will be a significant seafood-focused section of the menu; and there will be an outdoor counter-service component, most likely serving dim sum on-the-go.

This was something weve been looking at for a while, Leung said.

Outside of the dim sum, which Leung said will be the star at the new restaurant, the Koi Palace team plans to have a wok station where seafood dishes like clams and mussels will be prepared, and a barbecue station where grilled half-lobsters and skewers are in the mix.

We like our dishes to be very attractive. We like to use a lot of natural colors, like what weve done with the Five Guys Xiao Long Bao at Dragon Beaux, Leung said. We want to be part of the food culture. We see how Millennials dine. They take lots of photos, so a lot of the dishes we have will be very colorful at Palette. It will be something like artwork.

Theres no time frame for when the restaurant will open, Leung said, mainly because of the construction work still needing to be done. Leung said Palette will have fish tanks in the dining room displaying the restaurants seafood offerings.

Add in reworking the bar so it better integrates into the dining room, and Leung said theres a long road ahead. Still, he said he couldnt deny the palpable excitement among his team.

We knew this area was in need of Chinese food, he said. Its great that it will be in such a high-profile, historic location.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

The future of their Ghirardelli Square location has been in limbo since Waxmans quietly shuttered last year. At the time, and based on documents obtained by the Chronicle, Waxman allegedly left town with at least $116,000 in unpaid bills. The celebrity chef also was said to owe more than $70,000 to Jamestown Premier GHRSQ, the proprietors of Ghirardelli Square.

When it debuted, Waxmans was meant to breathe new life into one of the citys premiere tourist destinations. Now, it looks like those hopes are going to be pinned on Palette, the latest addition to the ever-growing Koi Palace empire, which Leung acknowledged.

Were looking to forward to it, he said.
As delegates start reaching the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur to attend the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS), the highest decision making body of the outfit, there is intense speculation that the Saha-Sarkaryavah ( Joint General Secretary) Dattatreya Hosabale would be elevated to the rank of Sarkaryavah (General Secretary). The incumbent Sarkaryavah Suresh Joshi, better known as Bhaiyaji Joshi, recently had a knee implant but he is recovering and may seek an extension. The sarkaryavah is the second most important person in the Sangh hierarchy.

There is no election for the post of Sarsanghchalak, the RSS chief. Mohan Bhagwat is at the helm right now. The Sarsanghchalak appoints his successor, who holds the position for life. The delegates elect the General Secretary, the executive head who does day-to-day coordination and execution of the Sangh's activities. In many ways, he is considered most powerful man in the RSS parivar.

With the BJP in power in more than 20 states and actively seeking more political space in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka, this RSS meeting becomes very important. Hosabale hails from Karnataka and had earlier worked in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, or ABVP, the RSS's student wing. If he is elevated, he will be the first lateral entrant in the RSS to reach the number two spot.

Joshi was first elected as General Secretary in 2009 after the elevation of Mohan Bhagwat as the RSS chief. He is already over 70 and his health may work against an extension. Although the delegates can choose from a wider talent pool, the obvious choice comes from Joshi's deputies: Suresh Soni, Dr Krishna Gopal and Dattatreya Hosabale. Soni takes care of education and related works for RSS and affiliates while Krishna Gopal does day-to-day coordination with the BJP.

Hosabale is considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and commands immense respect in BJP as well as in RSS. The congregation, from March 9 to 11, will be attended by 1,300 odd delegates of RSS and its affiliates. BJP is represented by two delegates -national president and organisation secretary. Among affiliates, VHP has the most delegates -- 40. Rest are regular volunteers, members of state units, etc.

At 63, Hosabale is contemporary of Narendra Modi and may bring better coordination in governance and party work, especially before the 2019 general elections. RSS might claim that it has no role to play in the politics of BJP but the last four years of the National Democratic Alliance rule has shown that the pracharaks not only influence policy making, but also help BJP expand into new frontiers. Sunil Bansal did it in Uttar Pradesh, Sunil Deodhar in Tripura, Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana and Sudhan Singh is steering them in Odisha. A heavyweight like Dattatreya Hosabale will define the contours of the RSS' relationship with BJP.

Once elected, the general secretary is expected to make his own team. Speculation is rife that BJP's organisation secretary -representative of RSS in the party-Ram Lal might have to make way for Sunil Ambekar, National Organisation Secretary at ABVP. Along with this, a shuffle in the organisation secretaries at other RSS affiliates is also possible. But the focus would remain on the elevation of Hosabale. Many of his contemporaries and colleagues in ABVP are active in BJP and some became chief ministers as well. He commands respect for his openness, technology savvy image and excellent communication skills. He played a pivotal role in ensuring the rollback of the controversial land acquisition bill, supported the centre backed labour reforms, et al. As per RSS rules, on the second day the general secretary gives a presentation on the work done during his tenure and then announces that, since his term is over, a new Sarkaryavah must be elected. An election officer is then appointed from among the senior functionaries, and subsequently other seniors propose a name. The convention is that the name is generally accepted, and the Sarkaryavah is declared elected unopposed.
Michael Macor/The Chronicle

Attorney General Jeff Sessions paraded into Sacramento Wednesday brandishing the administrations latest lawsuit against California, aptly embodying President Trumps war on immigrants. Both Sessions appearance and Trumps broader anti-immigrant agenda are crude plays to the countrys divisions and prejudices, designed to distract us from the rapidly accumulating evidence of the presidents unfitness to govern.

Sessions cynically compared the federal attack on Californias sanctuary laws, which limit official and private cooperation with the administrations effort to purge the state of undocumented immigrants, to the federal struggle with the South over slavery and segregation, saying, There is no nullification. There is no secession. The difference, of course, is that the former Alabama senator and the president are using the power of the federal government to promote rather than end official racism.
After decades of hearings, reports and public meetings and a comprehensive review by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Interior, as well as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the United States and the Westlands Water District hammered out a landmark, bipartisan settlement that provides a transparent, fair and equitable solution to a 50-year dispute over the federal governments responsibility to provide drainage services for Central Valley farmers.

It is fair for farmers, who lost the productive use of their land, and for the federal government, which faced liability for the property damage estimated by the Justice Department to be as high as $2 billion. Negotiated by the Obama administration, the settlement resolves the long-standing litigation, clearing the way for farmers who receive water from the federal Central Valley Project to regain productive use of their land, and providing numerous economic and environmental benefits for the San Joaquin Valley and California.

Now it is time for Congress to finalize the settlement.

Despite efforts by some to tie the settlement to unrelated issues, the basis of the settlement was solely the determination of which entity was at fault. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has found that the Department of the Interior is required to provide drainage services for lands served by the San Luis Unit of the Central Valley Project, and the governments failure to provide drainage caused the environmental damage to farmlands.

As with any settlement, both parties were required to compromise and agree to terms that they did not want to accept in order to provide finality to a decades-long conflict.

First, Westlands agreed to retire no less than 100,000 acres of land from production, which reduces the amount of land that can be farmed in the region. The district has retired that farmland.

Second, the settlement limits Westlands to 75 percent of the water it is contractually entitled to receive.

Third, Westlands will indemnify the United States for future claims resulting from the federal governments failure to comply with the law.

And, Westlands agreed to take responsibility for drainage and damage to drainage-impaired lands.

In exchange, the federal government will forgive a $375 million debt for Westlands share of the cost of the extension of the Central Valley Project that delivers water to the district. Failure to resolve the litigation and take responsibility for drainage and damage to drainage-impaired lands would keep the region in extended limbo and affect the Bureau of Reclamation budget by as much as $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Thats one of the reasons the settlement was approved by the Obama administration and is also supported by the Trump administration. Regarding agricultural operations in the future, Westlands and the Obama administrations Interior Department developed several options: land retirement, groundwater management, source control, regional reuse projects, drain-water treatment and salt disposal. Moreover, Interior reiterated: Westlands will be subject to all state and federal laws and regulations regarding its obligation to provide drainage and will be subject to those requirements under the settlement. And if Westlands fails to perform, its water supply will be shut off.

There have been decades of delay for the Central Valley farmers who lost the productive use of their land. The settlement is a bipartisan agreement that was hammered out over a decade and brings finality and stability to the states agricultural producers.

The final step in the process is Congressional approval of the settlement. That action will demonstrate that a carefully negotiated, bipartisan agreement can be approved for the benefits of all parties.
Kevin Berne/American Conservatory Theater

In Vietgone, which opens this week at the American Conservatory Theaters Strand Theater, playwright Qui Nguyen finds a peppy, zippy lyricism in the vulgar side of the American vernacular:

John Wayne did not sit bitch behind his best buddy on a rusted-out death bike.
Its not only Democrats whove put a target on the back of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County).

On Wednesday, former Assembly GOP leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach pulled papers to run against Rohrabacher, although he had not officially filed as of Thursday afternoon.

Though Baugh hasnt served in elective office since he was termed out of the Assembly in 2000, hes made no secret of his interest in Rohrabachers seat. But even though hes raised more than $500,000 for a congressional campaign, hes said in the past that he was waiting for the 70-year-old Rohrabacher to retire.

But with a bunch of well-financed Democrats  and even a couple of Republicans  poised to challenge Rohrabacher, Baugh may have decided its now or never.

Not only is Rohrabachers seat a top Democratic target in November, but the congressman isnt making his re-election road easier with his pro-Russia stances and his reputation as Russian President Vladimir Putins favorite congressman.

Rohrabachers name has came up in connection with Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into possible Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election and links with others with ties to Russia.

Rohrabacher already has filed for re-election. The filing deadline for the June 5 primary is Friday.

 John Wildermuth

Call me by my ballot designation: State election law forbids former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa from being referred to as former Los Angeles mayor on the ballot in the primary election for governor  only sitting officeholders can use their title. Villaraigosa is proposing calling himself public policy adviser  that has his opponents licking their chops.

If hes listed as public policy adviser, they can ask, for whom? And that leads to Villaraigosas consulting work from 2013-16 for Herbalife, which makes and markets nutritional supplements and personal care products. In 2016, the Federal Trade Commission said the company agreed to pay $200 million to consumers to settle charges that it had deceived consumers into believing they could earn substantial money selling diet, nutritional supplement and personal care products.

Lets be real, the only thing Antonio Villaraigosa can currently advise on is how to best target innocent Californians, said Fabien Levy, candidate and state Treasurer John Chiangs deputy campaign manager. Voters want to elect someone they can trust and who will fight for them, not someone who will sell out for the quickest buck.

Replied Villaraigosa spokesman Luis Vizcaino, Sad that John Chiangs campaign would resort to attacks, but our focus remains on fixing this economy so it works for more Californians.

Former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin cant use her old job title, either, but the one she proposed Thursday is unlikely to be as controversial: Educator/Youth Advocate.

 Joe Garofoli

Its always partisan: Californias top-two primary system, where the two candidates with the most votes, regardless of party, advance to the November election, was supposed to eliminate partisan elections.

Key words: supposed to.

If anyone thinks GOP businessman John Cox isnt running for the top-two equivalent of the Republican nomination for governor, they should take a listen to his new radio ad.

In the spot, Cox talks about how Kate Steinle was killed in San Francisco by an illegal alien convict and how that incident is chilling testimony of how (Democratic candidate for governor and former San Francisco Mayor) Gavin Newsoms sanctuary city values differ from the rest of us.

Incredibly, San Francisco refused to turn over to immigration authorities a criminal alien with seven prior felony convictions, he continues. The shooter said it was an accident, so, of course, a San Francisco jury voted to acquit. Like I said, different values.

Cox vowed that on his first day as governor, I will act to repeal Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsoms Sanctuary State and restore the rule of law.

Cox closes with a reminder, if any was needed, of just where hes coming from: If youre ready to take California back, join me. Im John Cox, Republican candidate for governor.

And just where was this GOP-centric spot running Thursday morning? Conservative icon Rush Limbaughs radio program, hardly a hangout for Democrats and middle-of-the-road independent voters.

Its no secret Cox is trolling for voters desperate to support someone with an R after their name on the ballot. And while there arent enough GOP voters in the state to elect a governor, there may be enough to push a Republican into second place in June, especially if Democratic votes are split among four serious candidates.

As far as Cox and his team are concerned, there will be plenty of time to worry about winning in November after June 5.

Conservative Republicans are who is going to turn out for a June primary, said Matt Shupe, a spokesman for Cox. We know we arent stealing any votes from Gavin.

 John Wildermuth
This article has been corrected from its original version.

Iris Canada  who became the poster elder for property disputes when she lost her ownership rights in her Lower Haight apartment a few years ago  died in May at age 100. But the fight over the future of her former home continues.

On Thursday the Planning Commission is expected to rule on whether Peter Owens, the co-owner of 670 Page St., will be permitted to convert the building into condominiums.

Owens became the target of housing activists in 2016 after moving to evict Canada, who had lived in the building from the 1950s to 2012. Owens, who said she forfeited her ownsership rights at that point, bought into the building in 2002 with the goal of converting it to tenancy-in-common units and eventually to condos. Though the other tenants moved out, Canada resisted and eventually won a life estate agreement, where she was allowed her to remain in the unit until she died.

But in 2016 Owens argued that she had actually been living elsewhere with family for six years, rather than in the Page Street flat.

It doesnt look too promising for Owens. Planning staff is recommending that the commission reject the conversion request. At a January hearing, Commissioner Dennis Richards stated that he found the whole case distasteful.

Whats going on in this city kind of makes me sick, Richards said. Its so selfish and so money-oriented.

 J.K. Dineen

Registration required? A former legislative aide for San Francisco Supervisor London Breed is facing a city ethics complaint for failing to register as her campaign consultant, after receiving $2,583 from Breeds Democratic County Central Committee campaign account as payment for consulting services.

Gabrielle Lurie/Special to The Chronicle

Conor Johnston left Breeds office last year to become a consultant for the cannabis industry, specializing in government relations. He also describes himself as a periodic adviser to Breed.

Filings from Breeds 2016 DCCC campaign account show five payments to Johnston last year, amounting to $1,000 for campaign consulting and $1,583 for content creation and editing, services usually provided by campaign consultants.

San Franciscos ethics rules require anyone who is paid $1,000 or more for campaign consulting in a calendar year to register with the city.

Johnston pushed back Wednesday, characterizing the complaint as a bogus political ploy from backers of Mark Leno, one of Breeds leading opponents in the mayoral race.

The Ethics Commission is barred from commenting on the complaint, which was filed Tuesday by Castro district resident Aaron Stella, who described himself as a fan of Leno.

Should the commission pursue the case, it could fine Johnston $5,000 or three times the amount of money he failed to report  whichever is greater.

 Rachel Swan

Making space: The citys much-hyped effort to create housing by allowing property owners to convert basements, storage spaces and laundry rooms into legal apartments is being strangled by red tape, and Supervisor London Breed says that is unacceptable.

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.

Stephen Lam/Special to The Chronicle

There are 419 accessory dwelling unit  ADU  projects in the planning pipeline. Many are proposing multiple units, which means that the number of individual units pending approval is actually 1,100 ADUs.

Thats a lot of housing  the equivalent of about three Rincon Hill apartment towers. But only about a quarter of those projects have been issued permits so far, and only 23 have been completed.

Whats the holdup? We made ADUs legal, so why is it taking so long to implement? said Breed, who is running for mayor and positioning herself as the most pro-housing candidate in the race. Its been two years. There is too much bureaucracy.

To get to the bottom of the delays, Breed is proposing an ADU task force that would include officials from the Planning Department, Department of Building Inspection and Fire Department. The working group would go through the cases in the backlog and figure out which applications can be sped up.

ADUs are a creative way to produce more housing in a market that desperately needs it, she added. We need to get these units to the market sooner rather than later.

 J.K. Dineen
Check out Yelps listing for New Woey Loy Goey in San Franciscos Chinatown, and below its rating (3.5 stars), food photos and hours, youll encounter a text box that covers the individual customer reviews: Customer Alert: Poor Food Safety Score!

Yelp has been posting these alerts on approximately 5 percent of the citys restaurants since 2015, and San Francisco is the only city in the country to have them. A new Harvard Business School working paper claims that the boxes reduce Yelpers intention to visit by 21 percent.

But people in the restaurant industry say the alerts also point out significant flaws in the citys health inspection scoring system, hurting restaurants long after they may have cleaned up their act.

On March 1, Michael Luca and Daisy Dai  economics professors who helped Yelp design the alert boxes several years ago  published Digitizing Disclosure: The Case of Restaurant Hygiene Scores, outlining the projects rationale and measuring its effectiveness. Luca said they were inspired by a 1998 law requiring Los Angeles restaurants to post placards on their entrances displaying their health inspection ratings, depicted as a letter grade: A, B or C.

This became a canonical example of disclosure  how information can improve the functioning of markets and how people can make better decisions, Luca said.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health issues health inspection scores on a 100-point scale, and restaurants may post scores in discreet locations. The public can also search the departments site for a restaurants current and past ratings.

In an effort to further publicize the scores, Luca and Dai helped Yelp link restaurant listings to scores from the health department database in 2013, and Yelp began posting them at the top of each restaurants page, right below the hours of operation. According to Luca, posting scores allows you to reach customers when theyre making a decision, rather than at a later moment when they arrive at the restaurant. Two years later, the economists worked with Yelp to create an alert for restaurants with scores of 70 or below, which the department classifies as poor.

Not surprisingly, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association is not thrilled with the Yelp program. The health department scores are entirely based on routine inspections, conducted between every six and 18 months. But the posted scores may not always reflect the current cleanliness of the venue, association head Gwyneth Borden said.

If you get a bad inspection from the Department of Public Health, anything below 70, (the inspectors) come back in a week. You must have corrected high-risk violations or you would be shut down, said Borden. If you see that 70, that was fixed within a week. You fix the violations, but live with the score until the next inspection.

More disturbingly, Borden points out, if customers complain to the health department about a violation and the inspectors respond by paying a visit  even shutting the restaurant down  that non-routine inspection doesnt result in a score.

If the restaurant is open, that means theyve been inspected and should be safe to eat, said Rachel Kagan, spokeswoman for the health department. We are not out to punish restaurants. We work with them all the time to improve food handling practices and safety.

Tracking the effects of scores  and the Yelp alerts  is impossible without obtaining detailed sales data from restaurants, Luca and Dai admit. Both Kagan and Borden said they have heard anecdotal reports from restaurateurs that low scores have indeed affected sales.

The economists used a number of online metrics to come to their conclusion, Dai said: The measures we use, when people land on this page, do they click on the restaurants URL link or on the telephone number to call? Do they search for directions? Do they tend to write a review afterward?

According to these measures, which did track individual users at a granular level  yes, Yelp can record your searches and what you do with the findings  customers were 12 percent less likely to pursue such actions on listings with low scores, and an additional 9 percent less likely to do so when an alert box appears. Furthermore, visitors who have encountered an alert are 10 percent less likely to leave a review.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Yelps alert-box practices, and the study methodology, do raise concerns.

Why doesnt an alert box appear with Cafe Prague (score: 68) or Lam Hoa Thuan (score: 60), but does with New Woey Loy Goey (score: 70)?

Does a failure to click on a map mean that a diner will actually avoid a restaurant? Are regulars of a restaurant even likely to check Yelp scores?

Borden suggests that shortening the time between inspections would keep restaurants from growing lax with hygiene. The challenge in assessing health risks has less to do with a snapshot and more when there are long periods between inspections, she said.

Luca said that, for him, the purpose of using Yelp alerts isnt just to steer diners away from restaurants with significant violations. He considers public scores an accountability system. They cause restaurants to clean up, he said. Theyre a high-powered incentive for restaurants not to do poorly in the first case.
The phrase puttin on the dog took on elevated meaning this Lunar New Year as the San Francisco Symphony celebrated renowned chef Cecilia Chiang at its Chinese New Year Concert and Imperial Dinner. A week later, festivities continued when the Asian Art Museum heralded architect Kulapat Yantrasast, designer of the museums $90 million expansion that breaks ground this spring.

We celebrate the legacy of our dear friend and mentor, Cecilia Chiang, toasted gala chairwoman Xiaojun Lee at the Feb. 24 Symphony fete. She disrupted the notion of fast, cheap Chinese food at her iconic restaurant, the Mandarin, by creating a sophisticated cuisine that awakens the entire palate.

During a preparty hosted by gala sponsor Tiffany (where deep-pocketed donors were gifted with gorgeous porcelain boxes decorated with a Tiffany-blue dog), Lee recalled meeting Chiang in 2016 when she produced the PBS series The Kitchen Wisdom of Cecilia Chiang.

Now a vibrant 98, Chiang describes herself as a happy person whos more than a chef with a diverse interest in art, food and fashion. She loves whatever shes doing  from restaurant consulting or working with the Chinese American International School in San Francisco to planting roses and spending time with an array of friends.

When I arrived here, I didnt know much English and it was difficult. So now I have the chance to help new immigrants who dont know the language but want to open a restaurant. It keeps me young, says Chiang. The United States welcomed me, allowing me to introduce Chinese food and culture here. And for that, Im very grateful.

The Symphony dedicated its all-Eastern music concert, led by conductor Xian Zhang, to the late Mayor Ed Lee. He was a fan of this annual fete benefiting the Symphonys community and education programs, including Adventures in Music, now in its 30th year of providing music experiences to all San Francisco public-school students in first- through fifth-grades.

Mayor Lee was a staunch supporter of the Symphony, said Symphony trustee Margaret Lui Collins. And were honored to have his wife, Anita Lee, and their daughters, Brianna and Tania, here to celebrate his life and love of music.

Post-concert Imperial Dinner guests, many accessorized with red or swathed in traditional cheongsams, strolled to Sound Box where Blue Print Studios set an elegant scene  a perfect pairing for McCalls Caterings delicious Chiang-inspired menu (crab salad with pickled lotus, soy-braised beef and black cod, and lilikoi meringue tart) that was introduced by a dramatic parade of roasted duck.

Raising her glass, Lee sang praise to Chiang: Cecilia is an amazing woman, and her story is an immigrant tale. Her family was torn apart by war. She was defrauded; she endured prejudice and hate. But through hard work and determination, Cecilia fulfilled her dreams. And inspires all of us.

New chapter: Pant suits defined a new wave March 1 at the Asian Art Museums Transformation gala led by architect Kulapat Yantrasast and Lucy Sun.

Kulapat always wears a jumpsuit, said Sun, decked in a glam, beaded version of the traditional work suit, with a joking aside: He says with this style, you can eat as much as you want.

And 425 guests feasted on an exquisite, Asian-inspired McCalls meal in a tent tricked out by Kulapat, whose signature monochrome style was expressed by black linens adorned with white orchids.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Asian Art Museum Director Jay Xu toasted the museums 15th year in its Civic Center home and paid tribute to gala donors whose support benefits the museums education programs serving 35,000 students and educators every year.

But this year marks a new chapter, a chapter of transformation: expanded facilities for art with much richer and more diverse content to transform the visitors experience, he enthused. Our mission is to make Asian art and culture essential for everyone.

After the Hiplet Ballerinas wowed the crowd by rocking out in toe shoes, 450 more guests landed back at the museum for a post-party starring a silent disco and old-school rocking-out to the Spazmatics. Specialty drinks were whipped up by sponsor Kikori Whiskey, as well as soothing mini-boba teas by the Boba Guys.

In fact, it was sort of a test run for Boba co-founders Bin Chen and Andrew Chau, who are collaborating with chef Deuki Hong on a new cafe concept at the museum.

Chau is a UC Berkeley grad who grew up in South City. His father, Danny Chau, a Chinese native, is a retired Muni driver who was honored by Mayor Lee for never missing a day of work as he guided bus lines 22, 10 and 12 all over San Francisco.

As the child of an immigrant, to do a museum project, especially in this museum, marveled Chau, its just amazing.
A 14-year-old boy in Southern California, not yet old enough to drive, has been arrested and booked after dressing up in a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department uniform and driving around, occasionally attempting to investigate nonexistent crimes, police say.

The minor, who was not identified, took his great-grandfather's car, a white Ford Explorer, and outfitted it with red and blue emergency flashing lights behind the windshield. The car had had its license plate removed.

But his cover was soon blown on March 5 after he pulled into a driveway in Victorville and told the house's occupants that he was there to investigate a domestic disturbance, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

The owner of the home told him that there was no problem there, and closed the door. The teen then tried to enter, but the door had been locked. The homeowner, apparently suspicious, then followed the teen to the driveway before words were briefly exchanged and the teen left. The Victorville resident then called the police to report what had happened.

As it turned out, that wasn't the boy's only encounter that night. Police discovered that not only had he fabricated another domestic disturbance claim as reasoning to visit another house, but he also "initiated a traffic stop" on a woman driving a red vehicle. In that instance he issued the woman "a warning and let her go." That stop was caught on a homeowner's driveway camera.

The following day, Sergeant J. Monroe saw and pulled over a car he believed was a match for the white Explorer. When it was confirmed, the 14-year-old boy was detained and his house was searched, revealing that the teen had been collecting police equipment, including simulation firearms, ballistic vests, counterfeit money, and uniforms.

The boy was arrested and booked at High Desert Juvenile Detention Center, but local police are seeking more information.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.




An advocacy group that publicized alleged abuses of immigration detainees in Contra Costa County has been banned from further visitation by the sheriffs office.

Volunteers with Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, a San Francisco group that monitors jails where immigrants are detained, were notified by an email from Capt. Kristi Butterfield that their visitation privileges would be revoked.

The sheriffs office said the group poses a security and safety hazard to the West County Detention Facility in Richmond.

CIVIC, which publicized a letter from 27 detainees that alleged abuses at the facility including being kept locked up for hours and told to use bags in their cells when they needed to use the toilet, said the move to ban volunteers was retaliation for their advocacy.

Weve been doing this here since 2011 and we havent changed anything were doing, said Rebecca Merton, CIVICs national visitation coordinator. Weve never had our clearance revoked before.

The ban came the day before Attorney General Jeff Sessions visited Sacramento after filing a suit against Californias sanctuary laws, some of which CIVIC helped draft, Merton said.

CIVIC volunteers were told that they were losing their access for habitual violations of policies regarding harassment and discrimination, treatment of offenders, confidentiality, and other ethics agreement violations.

Butterfields Tuesday email said that a review of emails, phone calls and radio and newspaper interviews found that CIVIC had violated behavior guidelines for volunteers who interact with detainees. The violations were characterized as systemic to the entire organization rather than certain actions by any individuals.

Merton said the sheriffs office would not provide specific examples of how the group had violated any particular policies when she requested that information.

Merton said CIVICs next steps are to regain access to detainees being held in Contra Costa County, and that it is considering possible legal action on First Amendment grounds. Volunteers assist detainees by connecting them with legal services, helping them with documents and funding bond payments, in addition to providing emotional support through visitation.
To safeguard the savings of small investors, the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval to introduce Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2018, in Parliament. The aim is to check illicit deposit-taking schemes, which happens to be a widespread practice in the country.

According to an official statement, "Companies/institutions running such schemes exploit existing regulatory gaps and lack of strict administrative measures to dupe poor and gullible people of their hard-earned savings." The Bill features three different types of offences, namely, running of unregulated deposit schemes, fraudulent default in regulated deposit schemes and wrongful inducement in relation to unregulated deposit schemes. The Bill states it will provide for punishment and heavy pecuniary fines to act as a deterrent.

Moreover, for the orderly growth of the chit funds sector and for removing the bottlenecks being faced by the chit funds industry, various amendments to the Chit Funds Act, 1982, have been proposed.
President Trumps denunciation Thursday of Libby Schaaf, in televised remarks that were replete with inaccuracies, capped a week and a half of conservative criticism of the Oakland mayor and further elevated her newfound national prominence in the anti-Trump resistance.

Trump, echoing his attorney general and immigration chief as well as a host of Republican commentators and legislators, attacked Schaafs warning about an imminent deportation operation in Northern California, calling the public announcement a disgrace that endangered federal officers.

The presidents comments on Schaaf and Californias pro-immigrant sanctuary policies, made at the start of a Cabinet meeting, intensified questions about whether federal officials  Trump included  have accurately described the four-day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation that began Feb. 25.

Trump said, incorrectly, that 150 people had been arrested during the operation called Keep Safe, which was designed to send a message to California leaders that they could not shield immigrants from federal law. ICE officials reported making 232 arrests.

The president said Schaaf had, in her Feb. 24 warning, told undocumented immigrants to scatter and get out of here. Though she did warn undocumented immigrants, Schaaf did not tell them to flee. In her statement that night, she said she sought to encourage community awareness and included contact information for an Oakland nonprofit group that provides legal help to those facing deportation.

Moreover, Trump said ICE had been prepared to arrest close to 1,000 people before Schaafs warning. The comments came a day after Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a speech in Sacramento that ICE failed to make 800 arrests that they would have made if the mayor had not acted as she did.

But ICE has provided no information suggesting it tried to arrest that many people, and prior statements by the agency appear to contradict the figures.

In a Feb. 27 statement, before the operation ended, ICEs acting director, Thomas Homan, said that 864 criminal aliens and public safety threats remain at large in the community, and I have to believe that some of them were able to elude us thanks to the mayors irresponsible decision.

John Sandweg, who directed ICE under the Obama administration, said its hard to measure what impact Schaafs announcement might have had on the arrest numbers.

He suspects the higher numbers included everyone on an ICE target list. But in agency operations, he said, a fair percentage of people on target lists are not taken into custody, often because information the agency has on an individual, such as an address, ends up being faulty.

To sit there and say 800 people got away, thats probably misleading, Sandweg said.

Still, he said Schaafs decision to announce the raid was not ideal for officer safety.

Trump also quoted the agency as saying that roughly 85 percent of those sought by federal officers had criminal records. ICE said that of 232 people arrested, 115 had past criminal convictions. Some of these people were not targets of the operation, instead falling into the category of collateral arrests.

Speaking with reporters Thursday, Schaaf  who has in the past been accused of being too moderate in some quarters of Oakland politics  wished Trump a Happy International Womens Day.

I am proud to live in a country where everyone can criticize elected officials, said Schaaf, who was elected in 2014 and appears to be on track for re-election this fall. I have obviously gotten much criticism, but much of it from outside of this community. ... Im so grateful to live in this community.

Some legal experts have said Schaaf probably averted legal jeopardy by not providing specific operation details in her warning, which she said relied on information from confidential sources.

Still, a number of lawyers have lined up to represent the mayor should the Justice Department pursue a case. Former U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag told The Chronicle she is advising Schaaf and Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker without fee, but declined to comment further.

Trump said during his Thursday remarks that his administration should find a way to withhold federal grant money from places like California and Oakland that have enacted sanctuary policies limiting cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration agents.

The administrations effort thus far has been blocked by the courts.

You want the money, you cant have the sanctuary cities. That way we avoid the court battles all the time, which we probably will win, but who needs it? Trump said. They want the money, they should give up on the sanctuary cities.

Oaklands laws on shielding immigrants go further than most. Last summer, the City Council rescinded an agreement that allowed Oakland police officers to work with federal agents on cases of human trafficking, drug smuggling and other cross-border crimes. In January, the council passed an ordinance that bars officers from giving any support  including traffic control  to federal immigration officers.

The Justice Department on Tuesday filed suit against California, accusing the state of interfering with immigration enforcement. The lawsuit aims to overturn three laws passed in 2017 that protect immigrants in the country illegally. At Thursdays Cabinet meeting, Trump, a regular critic of Sessions, said his department was doing a fantastic job on sanctuary cities.

Of Schaaf, Trump said, What the mayor of Oakland did the other day was a disgrace, where they had close to 1,000 people ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets. Many of them, they say, 85 percent of them were criminals and had criminal records. And the mayor of Oakland went out and she went out and warned them all, Scatter, so instead of taking in 1,000, they took in a fraction of that, about 150.

Trump referred to a Justice Department review of Schaafs actions, saying, This was long in the planning and she said, Get out of here, and shes telling that to criminals, and its certainly something that were looking at with respect to her individually. ... She really made law enforcement much more dangerous than it had to be, so were looking at that situation very carefully.

Other statements by ICE about the enforcement operation have been under scrutiny.

Officials said last week the government went after specific people and does not target aliens indiscriminately. But a construction worker from the Central Valley, Miguel Botello, told The Chronicle that he and three colleagues were stopped outside a convenience store in Atwater (Merced County) by ICE officers who asked to see proof of legal status.

The other three men were arrested, he said, and two were quickly deported to Mexico. ICE has provided no evidence that any of the men had been targeted in the operation.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Hamed Aleaziz contributed to this report.
March is Women's History Month, and the Bay Area is home to many impressive women  both today and throughout history.

Laudable Bay Area women have been astronauts, tech leaders, artists, athletes, authors, politicians and more. No matter if these ladies were drawn to the Bay Area for school and job opportunities or are native daughters, each has left a lasting impact.

Today is also International Women's Day, as people celebrate and protest around the world. To read about more fascinating and influential Bay Area women, past and present, see the gallery above.

One of the most fascinating San Francisco figures was Lillie Hitchcock Coit, the woman who gave her name to Coit Tower.

Lillie arrived in San Francisco as a child in 1851 and soon became enthralled with the city's firefighters. According to legend, she was walking home from school as a 15-year-old and saw Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5, her favorite crew, struggling to make it up Telegraph Hill to the site of a fire.

Little Lillie threw her books aside and ran to grab the ropes of the truck.

"Come on, you men!" she cried. "Everybody pull and we'll beat 'em!"

Of course, the team made it up the hill, all thanks to the teen's urging.

Fact or fiction, Lillie's life became inextricably linked to the fire department. She was an honorary member of Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5, awarded with a gold badge she wore often, and a patron for the firefighters of the city. As an adult, she was an exceptional figure in San Francisco society, boasting skills in poker, dancing and hunting. Until her own death, she visited the sickbeds of ill firefighters and always sent flowers to their funerals.

Upon her death in 1929, she left one-third of her wealth to the city "for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city I have always loved." Some of that money was used to build Coit Tower, which the city named in her honor.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence and police translation services announced a $50,000 settlement Thursday for a San Francisco woman who said she was sexually assaulted by her ex-partner, and was then arrested by officers who wouldnt provide her an interpreter.

I had to stand up and demand that language access is a right for all of us, Dora Mejia, 40, said through a Spanish-speaking interpreter at a rally celebrating the resolution of her case. Liberty does not have a price.

In her lawsuit against the city and its Police Department, Mejia said her ex-partner attacked her in her Mission District apartment in May 2014, and he then called police to falsely accuse her of attacking him. When officers arrived, the ex-partner had left.

Mejia said the officers refused to provide her with an interpreter, told her to communicate in English the best she could, and showed no interest when she tried to describe past abuses by her former partner. The officers then provided an interpreter to the ex-partner for a phone interview, listened to his account and arrested her, leaving her three children with him, she said.

Mejia spent the night in jail, but was released on bond and freed when prosecutors declined to charge her. Meanwhile, she said, her ex-partner had obtained a restraining order that separated her from her children for a month.

She sued the officers and the city, seeking damages for lost wages and pain and suffering, and court orders requiring compliance with department policies. One of those policies, adopted in 2007, requires police to identify a persons primary language and provide interpretive services, either through a bilingual officer in person or by telephone.

In a report on the case in September 2015, the citys Office of Citizen Complaints found that the officers had violated department policies on language services, had failed to properly investigate the case and had arrested Mejia without cause.

One of the officers spoke to Mejias 5-year-old daughter, who said she had seen her mothers partner get on top of her and tried to kiss her before she pushed him away. Police ignored that evidence and, by failing to provide an interpreter, prevented Mejia from explaining her case or contradicting her ex-partner, the offices report said.

The vice president of the citys Police Commission, Thomas Mazzucco, referred to the incident at a commission meeting Feb. 21, citing a situation in which they werent sure who was the victim and who was the assailant because of the language issue.

Mejia recalled her own anguish Thursday, saying, I do not wish any mother the pain of being separated from her children. The settlement announcement was held at the Womens Building in the Mission District, in recognition of International Womens Day.

Mejias lawyer, Saira Hussain of Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, said the case had led to some improvements in police policies. She said the department now requires officers to watch a training video on responding to domestic violence, and also requires immediate translation of statements by non-English speakers  a measure that might have changed officers response to Mejia, Hussain said.

But Hussain said San Francisco, despite having one of the best language-access policies in the country, needs to do much more. In particular, she said, police treat the policy on interpretive services as voluntary and often fail to make a bilingual officer available.

Advocacy organizations and the police have had a language-access working group for more than 10 years, the attorney said. We need them to make this a priority.

Police are working on improvements, Cmdr. David Lazar told the Police Commission at the Feb. 21 meeting. In the past, he said, when an officer needed bilingual help, the dispatcher would put out a call for volunteers, but they now have a list as to whos certified to respond and will contact someone on that list.

The Police Department is offering department members training on interpreter skills and testing eligible officers to help expand the ranks of the LEP (limited English proficiency) program, police spokesman David Stevenson said Thursday.

In response to Mejias case, John Cote, spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said domestic violence is something the city takes very seriously and works hard every day to counter. We feel this settlement is a fair outcome given the facts in this case and the inherent cost and uncertainty of litigation.
Its misleading to say that Sarah McBride has written a memoir at 27 years old. Whatever the idea of a memoir from a still fresh-faced adult might connote, McBride subverts it: The past few years of her life contain more human experience than many lifetimes.

When she was 21, McBride came out as a transgender woman. In the years since, McBride, who dreamed of a political career as a child, has made history. She pushed antidiscrimination legislation as a prominent trans activist and was both the first trans woman to work at the White House, as an intern, and the first trans person to speak at a national political convention.

In between, McBride also met and fell in love with a transgender man, Andy Cray, an LGBTQ health advocate and fellow activist, who she married and subsequently lost to cancer when she was just 24.

The tumult of these years  the affirming highs and the devastating lows  are chronicled in her vital and powerful new memoir, Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality (Crown Archetype; $26). The book journeys through McBrides process of coming out, to her family and the world, the loss of her husband and the determined fight for political protection of trans and LGBTQ lives.

Now the national press secretary at Human Rights Campaign  the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the country  McBride acknowledges how much shes lived through.

But Im also reminded that there are so many 27-year-old people who have experienced so much more than me, right? Who arent just widows or transgender people, but who are experiencing hardship that I cant even imagine, McBride says.

McBride persistently acknowledges her privilege  her coming out is repeatedly met with love and support throughout the book  while seeing in it a responsibility to fight for those who are more vulnerable to discrimination and violence.

More remarkable, though, is McBrides strength for optimism; the book maintains hope not only amid harrowing personal loss, but also ultimately in the wake of Donald Trumps presidential victory, a dramatic shift after former President Barack Obamas historically pro-LGBTQ administration. Revisiting these parts of her life, particularly her husbands battle with cancer, was a process of rediscovering that hope, McBride says.

The quote from my brother (a radiation oncologist) really struck me, she says, referring to the chapter chronicling her husbands decline. When Andys health was deteriorating, he said, As someone who had watched a lot of people pass away, this is going to be very difficult, but look around you and take stock in acts of amazing grace.

Her brother was referring to the breadth of love that she would witness from friends and family during this period  a lesson that would broaden into the Trump era.

In many ways, that amazing grace, that unending hope, is the story of the last year and half of people marching, of people fighting, of diverse voices coming together and being heard in new ways, she says.

Toward the end of the book, McBride recounts meeting a 7-year-old transgender girl who asked her a simple question: Whats your favorite part about being transgender?

It was a profound moment for McBride. Amid the swirls of vitriol and violence, hate and hardship that surrounds trans narratives came a celebratory question from a child. It took more than twenty-years to hear that question for the first time, McBride writes.

It was also an indication of whats to come. McBride says her book matters now more than ever, in acknowledging the progress thats been made, even if the political tide appears to have shifted since the election.

Because frankly, McBride says, change always seems impossible until its inevitable.

Brandon Yu is a Bay Area freelance writer.

Book events

Sarah McBride: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 15. Free. The Bindery, 1727 Haight St., S.F. www.booksmith.com

Patton Oswalt: The actor, writer and comic discusses his late wife Michelle McNamaras book, Ill Be Gone in the Dark. 7 p.m. Thursday, March 8. $15. Public Works SF, 161 Erie St, S.F. www.publicsf.com

W. Kamau Bell: The Berkeley writer, comedian and cultural commentator discusses his career and work. 8 p.m. Friday, March 16. $30. Zellerbach Hall, 101 Zellerbach Hall, No. 4800, Berkeley. https://calperformances.org
Number of the day

$112 billion

That was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos estimated wealth as of Feb. 9, making him the first $100 billion mogul to top Forbes annual rankings of the worlds richest people. Meanwhile, President Trumps fortune sank during his first year in office despite a surging stock market. Most of Bezos fortune is tied up in Amazon stock, which soared 59 percent during the period tracked by Forbes. Trump saw his fortune sink by about $400 million to $3.1 billion, leaving him as the worlds 766th richest person.

Coke may give it a shot

Coca-Cola may be getting into the booze business again. Its experimenting with a canned beverage that would be a mix of sparkling water and an alcoholic Japanese drink, but didnt say when it might show up on shelves or what it would be called. Coca-Cola Co. sold wine about 40 years ago, but stopped in 1983. Last year, it added a line of fruity alcohol mixers in Spain.

Amazon Primes Medicaid discount

Amazon has taken another step to woo low-income shoppers from Walmart. The online retailer opened its discounted $5.99-a-month Prime membership on Wednesday to people on Medicaid. Since June, Amazon has offered the same Prime discount to people using food stamps or other government assistance through an Electronic Benefit Transfer card.
Conservatives are zeroing in on a new enemy in the political culture wars: Big Tech.

Arguing that Silicon Valley is stifling their speech and suppressing right-wing content, publishers and provocateurs on the right are eyeing a public relations battle against online giants like Google and Facebook, the same services they once relied on to build a national movement.

In a sign of escalation, Peter Schweizer, a right-wing journalist known for his investigations into Hillary Clinton, plans to release a film focusing on technology companies and their role in filtering the news.

Tentatively titled The Creepy Line, Schweizers documentary is expected to have its first screening in May in Cannes, France  during the Cannes Film Festival, but not as part of the official competition. He used the same rollout two years ago for his previous film, an adaptation of his book Clinton Cash that he produced with Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News.

The Creepy Line alludes to an infamous 2010 speech by Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, who dismissed concerns about privacy by declaring that his companys policy was to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.

The documentary dovetails with concerns raised in recent weeks by right-wing groups about censorship on digital media  a new front in a rapidly evolving culture war.

If the mainstream media is a perennial enemy of the right, Big Tech is a fresh and novel foe, arguably more relevant to 2018. Facebook, Google and their ilk are facing tough questions about their inability to police the content they distribute, including Russian propaganda during the 2016 presidential campaign. The companies have also been accused by lawmakers, critics and activists of monopolistic tendencies and manipulative product design.

The critique from conservatives, in contrast, casts the big tech companies as censorious and oppressive, all too eager to stifle right-wing content in an effort to mollify liberal critics.

This could end up being the free speech issue of our time, said Alex Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News, which has published articles accusing Google and Facebook of, among other sins, political bias. The Silicon Valley elites are saying: We dont care what you want to see  we know what you should see. We know better.

Big Tech is easily associated with West Coast liberalism and Democratic politics, making it a fertile target for the right. And operational opacity at Facebook, Google and Twitter, which are reluctant to reveal details about their algorithms and internal policies, can leave them vulnerable, too.

Its the perfect foil, said Eli Pariser, a former executive director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org and the author of The Filter Bubble, a book about how consumers find information online. Theres not even a real basis to establish objective research about whats happening on Facebook, because its closed.

Google, Facebook and Twitter loomed large at last months Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md., where dozens of guests squeezed into a standing-room-only ballroom for a discussion called Suppression of Conservative Views on Social Media: A First Amendment Issue.

Among the panelists were James OKeefe, the guerrilla filmmaker who has tried to undermine news outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, and James Damore, an engineer fired by Google after he circulated a memo arguing that biological differences accounted for the low number of women in engineering.

Damore  a new celebrity in the right-wing world, who, in an interview, said of his first foray to CPAC, Theres definitely a lot of people that want to take selfies  described a culture of dogmatic liberalism at Google.

There are political activists in all of these companies that want to actively push a liberal agenda, he said. Why does it matter? Because these companies are so ubiquitous and powerful that they are controlling all the means of mass communication.

Schweizer, 53, was a speechwriting consultant to President George W. Bush. His reporting has been cited by the Times and 60 Minutes, although he often uses a bombastic style akin to that of Breitbart News.

He is also the president of the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. He and Bannon founded it with funding from the family of Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedge fund manager and donor to Donald Trumps presidential campaign.

Schweizer declined to identify the films financial backers. A spokeswoman for the institute said it was not involved in the project.

In the rights more Internet-savvy quarters, tech services have been a regular  and fruitful  subject of discussion since before the 2016 election. In May that year, Facebook was forced to respond to claims that the curators of its Trending Topics feature had suppressed conservative news sources, a controversy that called attention to Facebooks editorial power.

That charge of editorial bias was echoed last weekend by Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind Infowars, who accused YouTube of planning to delete his organizations account, a claim that was widely shared among conservatives.

YouTube did delete some videos that accused teenage survivors of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting of being crisis actors, and it issued strikes, or warnings, to the accounts of Infowars and Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and Infowars contributor.

Facebook has also caught flak for adjusting the algorithm for its News Feed to emphasize posts from friends, family and groups over content from public pages. The change was part of an effort by the company to answer criticism, but also to reinvigorate its oldest and most profitable product, which recently recorded a decline in U.S. daily users for the first time in its history.

The Facebook adjustment has affected virtually every media organization that is partly dependent on it for audiences, but it appears to have hit some harder than others. They include right-wing sites like Gateway Pundit and the Millennial-focused Independent Journal Review, which was forced to lay off staff members last month.

BuzzFeed recently bought ads on Facebook with the message, Facebook is taking the news out of your News Feed, but weve got you covered, directing users to download its app. Away from the political scrum, viral lifestyle site LittleThings, once a top publisher on Facebook, announced last week that it would cease operations, blaming a full-on catastrophic update to the revised algorithms.

Right-wing media has pounced. In late February, citing statistics from the social analytics firm NewsWhip, Breitbart published an article on the effects on the presidents Facebook page with the headline EXCLUSIVE: Trumps Facebook Engagement Declined By 45 Percent Following Algorithm Change. The drop, the article insinuated, occurred following a year of pressure from left-wing employees and the mainstream media for allowing the president to win the 2016 general election.

Still, the brewing backlash did not stop Google and Facebook from courting the very crowd that now seems ready to declare them enemies. Both companies were sponsors at this years CPAC, leading to a few awkward moments.

Facebook, which sponsored a help desk for attendees featuring smiling representatives and cookies frosted with emoji icons, provided a demonstration of its virtual reality program, Oculus. But the company was forced to apologize for including a first-person shooter simulation, given that the conference took place a week after the Parkland massacre.

Google, which has co-sponsored CPAC three of the past six years, held a lavish reception for attendees featuring an open bar and a roaring outdoor fireplace.

Marlow, the editor of Breitbart, was asked in an interview what he thought about Googles giving a party in the midst of a crowd that is gunning for it.

The least they can do, Marlow said, is buy us a drink.
Delhi High Court ruled that excluding genetic disorders from insurance policies is discriminatory and violative of citizens' right to health. The high court also told the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) that its primary duties include "settlement of insurance claims" and "governing and regulating" exclusions in insurance contracts.

"IRDAI ought to have supervised the manner in which the term genetic disorders is being misused by insurance companies to reject genuine claims. Obviously, it turned a blind eye to the functioning of insurance companies," the court said.
The best way to shield a school from a gunman is to have a metal detector. Or doors that can be remotely locked. Or Twitter-trawling bots looking for threats. Or bulletproof clipboards, whiteboards and backpacks.

So says the fast-growing group of companies that sell school safety equipment. They have strengthened their marketing to school safety officials in the wake of the shooting last month at a high school in Parkland, Fla. But even as school districts rethink their security and seek to increase their budgets, they have little guidance from government agencies or independent consumer groups on which equipment would actually protect their students.
Alaska Airlines/Virgin America will eliminate or reduce service to five cities it currently serves from San Francisco International Airport SFO in what the Seattle-based carrier called a move to improve efficiency. It is also making schedule reductions at Los Angeles International Airport LAX.

Flights from SFO to Minneapolis, Fort Lauderdale, and Mexico City will be eliminated after May 19. Flights to Denver will end after June 5. Alaska Airlines cancelled its non-stop service from SFO to Cancun, Mexico on March 3. The carrier has reduced service on its SFO to Chicago-O'Hare non-stop flight to just once a day in each direction.

Alaska is also planning a round of cuts in Southern California. Non-stop flights from Los Angeles International Airport to Orlando will end July 5. The airline also discontinued non-stop flights from LAX to Havana and Cancun in January 2018. Alaska's flight from San Diego to Mexico City will be eliminated after May 19.

"There has been low-demand for these flights and we need to utilize aircraft elsewhere on the route map," said Oriana Branon, Alaska Airlines's Director of Community and Public Relations for the Bay Area. "This change is indicative of how we are looking across the network and making decisions to ensure we are running as efficient of an operation as possible."

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Branon said that passengers holding reservations on terminated routes will be re-accommodated on Alaska Airlines flights via its Seattle hub or another city it serves. (When we checked, many of these terminated flights are still for sale online but Branon said that they will be removed soon.)

The flights to Chicago, Denver and Fort Lauderdale were among Virgin America's core routes from San Francisco before its takeover by Alaska, but business travelers were known to complain about the sparse frequency of the flights. One flight per day on a key business route like SFO-Chicago was just not enough to tear fliers away from allegiance to United or American.

For example, Alaska currently operates SFO to Denver twice a day. Its competitor, United Airlines, operates the route up to nine times a day. Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines also fly non-stop between the two cities, several times a day.

The cuts come after a period of growth for Alaska Airlines at its SFO hub. Between September and October 2017, the airline added four new destinations, Raleigh-Durham, Baltimore, Indianapolis and Kansas City.

Don't miss! The 9 largest airlines at SFO

Alaska has been courting Bay Area fliers aggressively after its merger with Virgin America. The airline launched a multimillion dollar advertising campaign in the market in an attempt to attract new business and retain fliers who were devotedly loyal to Burlingame-based Virgin America. Alaska serves for Bay Area airports, SFO, Oakland, Mineta San Jose, and Sonoma County as well as Sacramento.

What do you think of Alaska Airlines' pullback in California? How's it doing on its quest to become the Golden State's preferred carrier? Please leave your comments below.

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Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.
Yellow Dog Productions/Getty Image

Two members of a West Oakland gang were sentenced to 43 years in prison Wednesday for their roles in a series of crimes that included a 2011 shooting that resulted in the death of 1-year-old Hiram Lawrence, officials said.

Houston Nathaniel III, 28, and Dionte Houff, 36, both of Oakland, pleaded guilty in federal court to their involvement in a criminal racketeering conspiracy as well as attempted murder, distribution of controlled substances and use of firearms.
An armed robbery suspect shot and killed by San Francisco police in the citys Mission District was identified as a 19-year-old man who worked and lived in the neighborhood where he died, officials and the mans friends said Thursday.

Jesus Delgado-Duarte was killed Tuesday night by a hail of bullets during a standoff with police as he hid inside the trunk of a Honda Civic along Capp Street near 21st Street, authorities said.

Video of the incident appears to show Delgado-Duarte opening fire from inside the trunk moments before police unleash a barrage of more than a dozen gunshots.

Police arrested two other young Mission District residents who were inside the Honda that night, officials said. They were identified Thursday as Victor Navarro-Flores, 19, and 18-year-old Cristina Juarez.

Both suspects were arrested on suspicion of two counts of felony first-degree robbery and one count of conspiracy.

A memorial of pictures, flowers and candles was set up Thursday near the area where Delgado-Duarte, who went by Adolfo, was killed. Signs reading You will be missed, Rise in Power and Justice 4 Jesus Delgado were posted on a wall over dozens of glass and tealight candles.

Residents in the Mission District said Delgado-Duarte worked at a MetroPCS store.

Neighborhood activists rallied on Wednesday night, marching from the scene of the incident to the Mission police station to protest the shooting. Another demonstration was planned for Friday evening.

A 35-year-old man named Hector, who would not give his last name, visited the memorial on Thursday and said he was Delgado-Duartes cousin. He described Delgado-Duarte as an active young man who was born in Mexico and brought to San Francisco when he was a baby.

He was always happy, Hector said. He always wanted to go play basketball or soccer or whatever. He never wanted to just be on the couch laying around.

Hector said he was surprised to learn about the shooting and at first refused to believe it.

Its really sad, he said. Ive been coming back and forth to the memorial since (Wednesday).

Also visiting the memorial was 19-year-old Samuelo Sanchez. He described Delgado-Duarte as a fun-loving person whom hed known since the two were kids.

I was so shocked, Sanchez said of the killing. I know people will think about him like he was a criminal now, but he wasnt like that.

At the same location two days earlier, police said they encountered the three suspects inside a Honda after being flagged down by two armed-robbery victims at 10:35 p.m. a block away.

Police took the driver, later identified as Navarro-Flores, into custody at the scene. During the arrest, the officers noticed the cars trunk was ajar and someone was hiding inside the vehicle.

Additional officers arrived on the scene and surrounded the car. In several videos captured by witnesses of the standoff, an officer is heard speaking in Spanish, ordering the man to raise his left hand and get out of the car.

One witness captured the shocking final moments, showing Delgado-Duarte raising what appears to be a gun and shooting from inside the trunk before police return fire. The witness did not give his name to The Chronicle, but said he sold the footage exclusively to KPIX-TV.

Delgado-Duarte was pronounced dead on the scene. A gun was recovered from the cars trunk, police said. No officers were injured.

Juarez, arrested after the shooting, and Navarro-Flores each is being held on $225,000 bail.
The San Francisco police officer once known as the Hot Cop of the Castro was ordered to stand trial Wednesday in connection with a North Beach crash that left two men with serious injuries.

Christopher Kohrs, 39, faces two felony counts of hit and run for his alleged role in the Nov. 29, 2015 incident. He was originally charged with two counts of hit and run causing injury, but Superior Court Judge Robert Foley elevated one of the charges to hit and run causing serious permanent injury.
The online travel market is making new strides. After focussing on the consumer market, the online travel agents (OTAs) such as MakeMyTrip (MMT) and Yatra are tapping the corporate sector, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with new products tailored for them. Yatra, for instance, launched a self-booking platform for SMEs this year, under which the clients would get corporate deals with minimum or no cancellation and rescheduling charges. In addition, the SME customers can manage their employee profiles, travel policy compliance, and approval workflow using the product. MMT launched a similar product MyBiz in 2017. In a conversation with Business Today's Manu Kaushik, MMT's chief business officer Ranjeet Oak talks about the product development and its journey so far. Here are the excerpts.

What is the idea behind this product, and it's potential?

MMT is a market share leader in the business-to-consumer travel side. It is the largest online player in India, and we have been steadily building our market share over the past few years. On the consumer side, we are looking at what we have left untapped, which is the corporate travel segment. As per our estimate, it is a $30-billion market in India alone, and it is a fragmented market with few TMCs [travel management companies] covering top companies. A large portion of SMEs that do travel for business have the option of an online tool, which helps them get the same advantages that large companies get for their business travels.

SMEs have become a lot more comfortable with online transactions. In addition, the online payments have really been driven hard over the last one year in India. The entire GST compliance and a chance to get Input Tax Credit throw up a new opportunity. All these factors encouraged us to come up with a tech-based solution, which is to bring all the consumer-side technology to the corporate travel bookings. The tool is available both on the desktop and the app.

Can you explain the typical travel booking processes in large corporations and SMEs?

In the large corporations, there would be a TMC who would typically do a lot of bookings of flights. In a large company, there will be a process where you need to get an approval, and the travel requisition will be done through an email that will go to the manager. Once the approval is done, the travel desk sends a couple of travel options, the employee selects one of the options, and then the travel desk sends the ticket. They do the booking using their own systems.

There are a lot of TMCs such as Carlson Wagonlit and FCM Travel, etc. At the global level, there is American Express. There are many companies that provide travel services to large organisations. From a large organisation point-of-view, the travel policy management is required and adds a level of complexity into the system. Anyway, the requisition process takes between 12-18 hours. The second thing is that if a company has an offline travel management firm, which might be a standalone travel operator, there is a lot of opacity in the pricing. Because, only a couple of options are sent by the offline travel company to the traveller, and there is no way for the traveller to check what the actual pricing is. All these things create problems in the system.

The mid-and small-size companies would not get the advantage of any TMC because they will first need to give a minimum amount of travel as a guarantee for a TMC to be interested. We felt that there was an opportunity for us to tackle this problem using technology, and we have built in all these processes in the backend network, including travel policy management, approval flow, centralised payment and billing options, centralised GST upload and invoicing. It has given smaller companies an opportunity to sign up on the platform, get advantage of all these things without any requirement of minimum travel criteria. Also, we have aggregated the demand across SMEs and we continue to do that as we build our customer base.

So you aggregate demand?

When we aggregate demand, we can supply and get better rates and better options for our [SME] customers. The classic example would be that since we are able to predict an aggregated demand across a location such as Aerocity in Delhi, we know we are going to have thousand nights booked across our customer in Aerocity. We go back and work with our [hotel] partners in Aerocity to see what [rates] we can give our customers. It's a win-win situation. For our [hotel] partners, they get their hotel rooms filled, and for the SME customers, they get rates as if they are a large company. This is bringing value to SMEs because they are part of a large aggregated demand pool. I think that is helping our SME customers save a significant amount when they are booking through us.

In the last quarter, we have saved about a million dollars for over 4,000 SMEs booking through us. We have close to 25,000 registered SMEs on our platform but over 4000 are active.

Why are you targeting SMEs, and not large corporations?

The philosophy of our product is to cater to small companies and then make it resonate for a large company. We are surprised that we already have some inbound interest from large companies to convert their [existing] booking process to this technology-based booking process. We are keeping it completely technology-based so that it can be scaled, and transparent pricing can go to the customer. If a large company comes on board and says I need an offline-ish process, we politely decline. Right now, large companies are in testing process. They have put in some of their people on to our product, and within the next quarter we should be making some announcements about large companies shifting to this platform. Our target has largely been fragmented travel segment, which is over $7 billion (corporate SME) market for just flights and hotels. The total business travel market in India is at about $30 billion.

What is the average size of the transactions that are happening through SMEs?

From an average transaction value, I would say it's slightly higher than the overall business-to-consumer [segment] numbers. What we have seen is there is a lot more stickiness. There are a few [other] products available in the market, which have not been able to scale up because of either branding or customer acquisition issues. Some of the larger players who operate with large companies have launched their mobile products. They are entering into the fray to make sure that this part of the market is turned completely from offline to online. We probably have the largest bandwidth of hotels as well as the partnerships because of the market share on the business-to-consumer side. We will keep that intact to ensure that our customers get the best rates on the hotel side.

Does your competition have similar mobile apps?

Not all of them. Some are entering into the market with mobile app. The big difference that we bring to the table is that our [MyBiz] mobile app has all the features that have worked on the business-to-consumer side. Interestingly, we have the same app [for both personal and corporate bookings], and customers can actually toggle between the personal and corporate profiles [on the same app].

How much booking is coming from mobile and desktop?

Currently, we have a split of around 50-50 on desktop and mobile. On the business-to-consumer side, 70 per cent of the bookings are coming through individuals.
There are dozens of critically lauded, extremely popular bars in San Francisco, so it's especially an honor when a publication dedicated to all things cool  Esquire Magazine  plucks just one and adds it to the ranks of their Best Bars in America.

This week, two editors, Jeff Gordinier and Kevin Sintumuang, added 24 bars across the country into what they call their "growing Hall of Fame" of best bars in the country.

But the bar might not be what you first think. It's not on Eater's Cocktail Heat Map, which includes such new and trendy bars like Pagan Idol, Wildhawk and Anina. It's not even on Yelp's list of the 10 best cocktail bars in San Francisco, which lists ABV, Holy Water and Trick Dog among the city's finest.

Nope. Their pick, Bar Agricole, is an established classic, at least by San Francisco standards. Here, the bar and restaurant, situated on 11th Street across from Slim's, is lauded for its "agrarian" approach to classic cocktails. Here's Sintumuang's writeup, which precedes a recommendation to get the oysters:

It is good to be reminded, every once in a while, that booze is an agrarian product. Which is why whenever I'm in San Francisco, I find my way to Bar Agricole (translation: Farm Bar). To start: the Ti' Punch, a simple classic that consists of nothing but sugar, the pith of a lemon, and a rhum agricole from Martinique that has that whiff of freshly cut sugarcane. Then wind your way through other rums and calvadoses that capture the essence of the earthly products they were born from. It'll make you swear off the industrially produced stuff.

Interested tipplers take note: come prepared to splurge. The bar menu is not cheap; cocktails there will set you back $12-$15 a glass.

Note: Esquire is a Hearst publication.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


Like San Francisco, Palo Alto and Marin, San Jose will soon get its own Shake Shack.

The bad news? It's not going to be very easy to get to. Well, unless you're about to fly somewhere.

As NBC Bay Area revealed Wednesday, Shake Shack's next location  which should be its fourth in the Bay Area when completed  will be at the San Jose International Airport before the end of 2020.

As part of the airport's $267 million contract extension with HMSHost, an airport food service company, a handful of new food and drink vendors will open shop at Terminals A and B in the next few years.

RELATED: Shake Shack is coming to the Bay Area  first Palo Alto, then Marin and SF

One of them is Shake Shack, and others include fast food joint Chick-fil-A, a breakfast restaurant called The Great American Bagel, an airport installment of Emeryville's Trader Vic's, and a beer bar called International Beer Union. (Gordon Biersch, also at the airport's Terminal A, will also expand.)

RELATED: Now that we're getting Shake Shack, here are the fast food chains the Bay Area still needs

Shake Shack first opened in New York in 2004 as a hot dog cart. Its founders, which now operate 160 locations nationwide, took their time in coming to the Bay Area due to the region's competitive restaurant landscape.

"Without a doubt, San Francisco has been one of, if not my favorite city to eat in," said Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti to The San Francisco Chronicle in January. "We have a profound respect for the city and its chefs. We were just wanting to find the right time to come here."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.
Dinesh A Keskar, Senior Vice President of sales, Asia Pacific and India, Boeing, has always made it a point to be there at all the major airline industry events. During the international meet Wings India 2018, organised by the Federation of the Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in Hyderabad, Keskar said the government's Udan scheme could open up a new market for aircraft makers like Boeing. While speaking to Business Today, he also talked about the company's plan for the Indian market.

About the Udan (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagarik) scheme: It is good for us. When it takes off, and if - as is being suggested - the passenger traffic grows 15 to 20 per cent, then after four to five years that route becomes eligible to fly a Boeing 737.

On reports in media around the challenges that Airbus is facing with engines: We hope they can resolve this quickly for the benefit of our customers, and in turn for their customers, which are the passengers.

On anything in it for Boeing: No.

On the order book position: There are so many planes Spicejet 175, Jet 75, 10 787s to Air India. We are dominant player in wide-body in India, almost equal (to Airbus) in narrow-body and dominate on wide-body.

Hope to close 75 aircraft order soon: Jet Airways CEO

Vinay Dube, CEO of Jet Airways, who was also present at the inauguration of the Wings India 2018 aviation event, spoke briefly on the company's plans for the year 2018.

On fleet expansion: We are in the process of evaluating an order for the extra 75 aircrafts and hope to close the deal with one of the manufacturers here soon, probably by the fiscal year end.

On the Udan Scheme: We are happily participating in the Udan scheme.

On Air France-KLM pact: We have seen more connectivity than ever in our Paris and Amsterdam hubs.
MIAMI  The 19-year-old shooting suspect accused of attacking his former high school in Florida was charged Wednesday in a 34-count indictment handed up by a grand jury.

The grand jury in Broward County charged the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.

The indictment of Cruz, who has confessed to the killings, was essentially a formality, and the primary legal debate now centers on whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Cruzs lawyers have offered a plea bargain  consecutive life sentences without parole  in a bid to avoid a trial and the threat of execution.

The only question is does he live or does he die? said Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender, whose office is representing Cruz. The question for the community, and specifically the victims families  is it worth what will be a three-year trial odyssey followed by a 15-year appellate odyssey?

State attorney Michael Satz, who will try Cruz himself, has said the rampage at Stoneman Douglas High certainly is the type of case the death penalty was designed for, though he has not yet said if he will seek capital punishment.

The indictment came as the Florida House passed a school safety bill that includes new restrictions on rifle sales and a program to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the governor for his signature. Gov. Rick Scott declined to say Wednesday whether he would sign the legislation.

The vote of 67-50 reflected a mix of Republicans and Democrats in support and opposition.

The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons. It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

The provision to voluntarily arm trained school guardians, including librarians and school counselors, threatened to derail the legislation. But the families of all 17 people killed in Parkland sent House members a letter urging them to vote yes.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools; establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.

On Monday, the state Senate narrowly approved the proposal, which faces opposition from the powerful National Rifle Association.

Associated Press contributed to this report.
Families visiting Americas iconic national parks this summer might be surprised to find a new attraction amid the canyons, cliffs and juniper trees: the Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway.

A Utah lawmaker has introduced a bill that would rename the states most scenic route in honor of the president, placing 62 Donald Trump signs along a 600-mile stretch that rolls through or near five national parks: Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion.

The bills sponsor, state Rep. Michael Noel, a Republican, is calling the move a show of gratitude to Trump for the presidents December decision to slash the size of two contentious national monuments in the state, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

An opponent of the bill, state Sen. Jim Dabakis, has said he would fight it by adding the name of an adult film star who is reported to have had an affair with the president. If it gets to the Senate, Dabakis threatened on Twitter this week, I will present an amendment that the frontage road be designated as the Stormy Daniels Rampway.

But Dabakis, a Democrat, could be on the losing side in a state where the Legislature is dominated by Republicans who have supported Trump for scaling back the monuments.

I think its going to happen, he conceded in a telephone interview from the Senate floor. If a vote is forced, there is not a lot of Utah politicians that are going to stand up and say they are against anything Trump.

First, though, the bill needs to pass the House and to be introduced in the Senate. In a meeting with reporters on Tuesday, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, declined to take a stance on the highway  or the Stormy Daniels on-ramp idea  but said it might be a little premature to name the route for a man who has barely entered his second year in office.

I recognize the zeal and enthusiasm that some have for Donald J. Trump, and I share the enthusiasm, Herbert said. But there is probably a reason why we wait five years for people to vote to be put in the Hall of Fame.

Though many presidents have had highways named in their honor  there is the President George Bush Turnpike in the Dallas area, the John F. Kennedy Expressway in the Chicago area and about a dozen highways named for Ronald Reagan  such a proposal is unusual this early in a presidents tenure.
1 School shooting: A 17-year-old girl was killed in a shooting at dismissal time Wednesday at an Alabama high school and a 17-year-old male student was injured, authorities said, adding they were investigating it as accidental. Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said his department is seeking to determine the circumstances of the shooting shortly before 3:30 p.m. at Huffman High School, adding investigators had already begun seeking witnesses and would examine surveillance video. He said police have already questioned students but declined to say how many. No arrests have been made.

2 Back to class: Schools across West Virginia reopened Wednesday as families got back into their daily routines following a nine-day teacher strike. The statewide strike was declared over Tuesday after the Legislature passed and the governor signed a 5 percent pay raise to end whats believed to be the longest strike in state history. The last major strike, in 1990, lasted eight days. The paralyzing walkout shut 277,000 students out of classrooms, forced their parents to scramble for child care and cast a national spotlight on government dysfunction in West Virginia.
NEW YORK  Special counsel Robert Mueller has quietly gathered evidence that a Donald Trump associate met with a Russian official shortly before the presidents inauguration to create a back-channel between the Kremlin and the incoming White House administration, according to a report.

Erik Prince, founder of controversial private military contractor Blackwater USA, met with an official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin last January in the Seychelles, the small island off the eastern coast of Africa, several people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

One of the witnesses cooperating with Muellers probe has told investigators that Prince, 48, set up the meeting in order to discuss future relations between Washington and Moscow, serving as a de facto representative for Trumps transition team.

Prince was never officially part of Trumps transition. Hes also the younger brother of Trumps Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The revelation could land Prince in trouble, as he has previously testified before Congress that he attended the Seychelles meeting as a businessman, not as a representative of the Trump administration. He also testified that he randomly encountered the Russian official, Kirill Dmitriev.

Trump claims his administration has no ties to the Kremlin and frequently blasts the notion that his campaign colluded with Russians as a hoax cooked up by vengeful Democrats.

In another development, it was revealed this week that Trump recently approached two key witnesses cooperating with Mueller about what they told investigators, breaking with the advice of his lawyers.

Mueller recently learned that Trump asked his ex-chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his special counsel interview had gone and whether the investigators had been nice to him, two people familiar with the discussion told The New York Times.

In a second instance, Trump directed White House counsel Donald McGahn to draft a statement pushing back against reports that he had asked for Muellers firing, the sources said. But McGahn declined to draft the statement, reminding Trump that he did in fact once ask him to see to it that Mueller be booted.

While the episodes likely do not amount to witness tampering, Trumps insistence on approaching Muellers witnesses about their testimony could give the appearance that hes attempting to interfere.
The creditors have chosen Tata Steel and UK-based Liberty House for running the bankrupt companies Bhushan Steel and Amtek Auto, respectively. Of the remaining 10 big companies taken to National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for finding resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), six are at different stages and the final selection of the highest bidders are expected by next month. Of course, there are legal hurdles in the way of taking the final call in some cases. In the rest four cases--- Jyoti Structures, Alok Industries, Lanco Infratech and Era Infra--- the proceedings are yet to gain momentum. A status check.

Bhushan Steel

Tata Steel emerged as the highest bidder of the company, with a Rs 36,000 crore resolution plan and 12 per cent equity offering to lenders. JSW Steel was another bidder in race for the company.

Amtek Auto

Liberty House has emerged as the highest bidder for Amtek Auto. American hedge fund Deccan Value had also submitted the bid for the auto component manufacturer. The deal value is expected to be around Rs 4,500 crore.

Essar Steel

ArcelorMittal and NuMetal, a consortium backed by VTB Group and estranged promoter Rewant Ruia, had submitted the bids. The sources say that the sale will be delayed as creditors of Essar pushed back the decision after the eligibility of the bidders was questioned. ArcelorMittal held stake in another bankrupt company Uttam Galva.

Jaypee Infratech

JSW Group is believed to be the highest bidder for Jaypee Infratech's assets, with an offer of around Rs 9,900 crore. The Interim Resolution Professional had received six offers, including from Adani group and Jaypee Infratech's parent company Jaiprakash Associates. The final decision is expected in this month.

Monnet Ispat

There is only one bid for Monnet. The resolution plan was submitted jointly by JSW Steel and AION Capital and the final decision is expected by third week of March, says a banking source. The media reported that JSW-AION submitted a Rs 3,750 crore bid for the steelmaker.

ABG Shipyard

UK-based Liberty House has become the sole bidder for the Ahmedabad-based shipbuilding company after Shapoorji Pallonji group withdrew from the race. The company is believed to have offered Rs 3,000 crore for the beleaguered shipyard.

Bhushan Power and Steel

The resolution plan for the steel company is likely to be finalised in this month. Earlier reports said that Tata Steel is the highest bidder with Rs 24,500 crore offer, ahead of JSW Steel. But Liberty House went to NCLT against the resolution professional and lenders to Bhushan Power and Steel for not accepting its offer.

Electrosteel Steels

Vedanta, Tata Steel, and Edelweiss Alternative Assets Advisors and Renaissance Steel India had submitted resolution plans for the company. Reports said that Vedanta was well poised to emerge the preferred bidder. However, Renaissance moved NCLT questioning the eligibility of Vedanta and Tata Steel in submitting the bids.

Apart from the 12 cases, Binani Cement has also attracted quite a few potential bidders. Dalmia Bharat-led consortium has submitted the highest bid for the cement maker, according to the sources. The consortium-which also has Bain Piramal Resurgence Fund--- has offered a Rs 6,700-crore, nudging out Aditya Birla Group's UltraTech Cement. But UltraTech has challenged the proceedings at the Kolkata bench of the NCLT, seeking transparency on the bid evaluation. Sources say that the committee of creditors (CoC) has firmed up its decision for Dalmia.
Asif Zardari rejected re-electing Raza Rabbani

ISLAMABAD: In an interesting development, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chief Asif Ali Zardari on Wednesday rejected the idea of re-electing Raza Rabbani as Senate chairman as proposed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif.



Addressing a joint press conference with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman in Islamabad, Zardari said, I dont want that to happen. When asked that the PML-N has already shown its willingness to support Rabbani, the PPP co-chairman smiled wryly and said, Thank you very much, I do not want that.



The PPP supremo said the JUI-F chief had sought some time for consultations within the party to come to a decision on the matter of extending support for the Senate top slots and expressed hope that Maulana would back his partys candidate like always.



Talking to media, Fazlur Rehman said he proposed to Zardari the name of Raza Rabbani for the next chairman of the Upper House. To a question, he said that he was considering recommendations put forward by the PPP and the ruling PML-N, adding that a meeting of the partys executive committee would be held for consultations in this regard.



Earlier in the day, deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif discussed the issue of Senate chairmanship with JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman, National Party President Mir Hasil Bizenjo and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party head Mehmood Khan Achakzai at a joint meeting of the heads of the PML-N and its allied parties.



The meeting was called to devise a strategy for the election of Senate chairman scheduled for March 12, alongside the oath-taking ceremony for the senators-elect.



I want to see a personality like Raza Rabbani as Senate chairman, Nawaz Sharif was quoted as saying during the meeting. Following the meeting, Nawaz asked the JUI-F chief to convey to the PPP his partys willingness to support Rabbani. We think Raza Rabbani has been a good chairman and we are willing to support him. If this is not possible, we will field our own candidate, Nawaz said.



Bizenjo, while speaking after the meeting, said the decision to select the chairman and the deputy chairman of the Upper House will be finalised in a day or two. He said the three parties combined had the required numbers of votes to elect a chairman of their choice but that they were yet to reach consensus on a candidate. He hoped that a joint candidate would be announced by Friday.



PML-Ns Saad Rafique, Mushahidullah Khan and Mushahid Hussain have, meanwhile, been tasked with contacting MQM senators for their support.



The PML-Ns allies have been asked to approach senators from the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and Balochistan.



PPPs Saleem Mandviwala and Sherry Rehman had been strong contenders for the slot of Senate chairman, but Sherrys nomination was opposed by PPPs allies. Farooq H Naeks name is also being considered for the top slot, party insiders claimed.



Sources said Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will neither field its own candidate nor support those nominated by the PPP or the PML-N for the Senate top slot. PTI might instead support a candidate from among independent senators from Balochistan or FATA if either of them contests for the seat, they added.



Another source, however, claimed that the PTI and PPP had entered into an agreement to get Saleem Mandviwalla elected for the post of Senate chairman. For the deputy chairman slot, the two have agreed to support Anwaar ul Haq Kakar, an independent candidate who was elected from Balochistan in the recent elections.



In the Senate polls last week, the PML-N emerged as the largest party in the Upper House of parliament. The party bagged a total of 15 Senate seats across the country, according to unofficial results, taking its total strength in the 104-member House to 33.
Sardine fishing nets will remain empty for a fourth straight year along the West Coast, where biologists are comparing the dramatic decline of the schooling fish to the infamous collapse that led to the downfall of Montereys once-thriving Cannery Row.

The northern Pacific sardine population, stretching from Mexico to British Columbia, has plummeted 97 percent since 2006, according to an assessment released this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The perilously low numbers give regulators no choice but to close fishing, which had been scheduled to start July 1, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The 14 voting members of the fishery council, which makes policy along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, will meet April 8 in Portland, Ore., to discuss the results, but everyone agrees a fishing ban is inevitable. The council is required by federal law to close ocean fishing when the numbers fall this far below conservation objectives.

This sardine population has completely crashed, said Ben Enticknap, a scientist for Oceana, an ocean conservation advocacy group. It is alarming.

The sardine population is at just under 3 percent of its peak population in 2006, when the tiny fish which are measured using their collective weight as if inside a fishing net  reached 1,774,784 metric tons, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The latest assessment projects that 52,065 metric tons of sardines will be swimming along the West Coast on July 1. Thats well below the 150,000 metric-ton threshold required for commercial fishing. Last years estimate was 86,586.

Biologists blame the collapse on natural fluctuations  which have been common throughout history, according to recent sediment studies  as well as changing ocean conditions. Conservationists, however, believe overfishing made a bad situation worse.

Enticknap said regulators allowed sardine fishing to continue until 2015 despite warnings by scientists that the population was ready to collapse. He said the same mistake was made in the mid-1950s when the Monterey Bay canneries made famous by John Steinbecks novel Cannery Row began failing.

Stiff quotas and catch limits required under federal law by the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act helped save the tiny epipelagic fish, and their population increased throughout the 1990s.

In the 2000s, Monterey Bay once again became the Bay Area hub of sardine fishing, with a large population also thriving off the coast of San Francisco.

Fishing fleets hauled in huge quantities of the nutrient-rich fish around the Channel Islands in Southern California and along the Oregon coast. It wasnt unusual for a boat to bring in up to 65 tons a day of sardines, which are generally frozen in big blocks for use as bait in commercial long-line fishing and for feed at Australian and Japanese bluefin tuna farms.

The catch was bringing in $10 million to $20 million in annual revenue until the latest collapse.

At the April meeting, Oceana will ask fishery managers to declare the population overfished and develop a recovery plan.
WASHINGTON  An adviser to the United Arab Emirates with ties to current and former aides to President Donald Trump is cooperating with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and gave testimony last week to a grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mueller appears to be examining the influence of foreign money on Trumps political activities and has asked witnesses about the possibility that the adviser, George Nader, funneled money from the Emirates to the presidents political efforts. It is illegal for foreign entities to contribute to campaigns or for Americans to knowingly accept foreign money for political races.

Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the effective ruler of the Emirates, also attended a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that Muellers investigators have examined. The meeting, convened by the crown prince, brought together a Russian investor close to President Vladimir Putin of Russia with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Trumps team during the presidential transition, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

Naders cooperation in the special counsels investigation could prompt new legal risks for the Trump administration, and Naders presence at the Seychelles meeting appears to connect him to the primary focus of Muellers investigation: examining Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Nader represented the crown prince in the three-way conversation in the Seychelles, at a hotel overlooking in the Indian Ocean, in the days before Trump took office. At the meeting, Emirati officials believed Prince was speaking for the Trump transition team, and a Russian fund manager, Kirill Dmitriev, represented Putin, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Nader, who grew close later to several advisers in the Trump White House, had once worked as a consultant to Blackwater, a private security firm. Nader introduced his former employer to the Russian.

The significance of the meeting in the Seychelles has been a puzzle to U.S. officials ever since intelligence agencies first picked up on it in the final days of the Obama administration, and the purpose of the discussion is in dispute. During congressional testimony in November, Prince denied representing the Trump transition team during the meeting and dismissed his encounter with Dmitriev as nothing more than a friendly conversation over a drink.

A lawyer for Nader did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Dmitriev has repeatedly declined to comment about the Seychelles meeting, as has Yousef Al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador in Washington.

Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs banker with an MBA from Harvard, was tapped by Putin in 2011 to manage an unusual state-run investment fund. Where other such funds seek to earn returns on sovereign wealth, Dmitrievs Russian Direct Investment Fund seeks outside investments, often from foreign governments, for unglamorous infrastructure projects inside Russia.

The Obama administration imposed sanctions on the fund as part of a raft of economic penalties after the Russian government sent military forces into Ukraine in 2014.

The United Arab Emirates, which Washington considers one of its closest Arab allies, has invested heavily in Dmitrievs fund as part of an effort to build close relations to Russia as well. After Mohammed met with Putin in 2013 in Moscow on a state visit, two investment arms of the government in Abu Dhabi committed to invest $6 billion in the Russian Direct Investment Fund, eventually paying to build projects like roads, an airport and cancer treatment centers in Russia.

Dmitriev became a frequent visitor to Abu Dhabi, and Emirati officials came to see him as a key conduit to the Russian government. In a 2015 email, the Emirati ambassador to Moscow at the time described Dmitriev as a messenger to get information directly to Putin. The email was among a large number hacked from the account of the ambassador to Washington and published online. The now former ambassador to Moscow, Omar Saif Ghobash, did not respond to an email about the leak.

Nader was first served with search warrants and a grand jury subpoena on Jan. 17, shortly after landing at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people familiar with the episode. He had intended to travel on to Mar-a-Lago, Trumps Florida estate, to celebrate the presidents first year in office, but the FBI had other plans, questioning him for more than two hours and seizing his electronics.

Since then, Nader has been questioned numerous times about meetings in New York during the transition, the Seychelles meeting and meetings in the White House with two of Trumps senior advisers, Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, who has since left the administration.

Public accounts of the Seychelles meeting have varied sharply. Questioned about it during testimony in November before the House Intelligence Committee, Prince dismissed his encounter with Dmitriev as little more than a chance run-in.

He was in the Seychelles for a meeting with Mohammed and Emirati officials, Prince said, and after the meeting, the officials suggested he meet Dmitriev at the bar of the Four Seasons hotel.

We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the United States, Prince said about the meeting, which he said lasted about 30 minutes.

I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Josef Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism, he told lawmakers.

Shortly after the Seychelles meeting, Dmitriev met with Anthony Scaramucci, then an informal Trump adviser, at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In an interview afterward with Tass, a Russian news agency, Scaramucci criticized the Obama administrations economic sanctions on Russia as ineffective and suggested that the Trump administration and Russia could find common ground on numerous issues.

We have to make the world safer, we have to eliminate from the world the radical Islamic terrorism, and we have to figure out the ways to grow the wages for working class-families, said Scaramucci, who later had a brief but calamitous stint as White House communications director. Whether in Russia or in the U.S., I think there are a lot of common objectives.
There is a major tension that defines todays Napa Valley. It goes like this: Napa is what it is because of wine grapes. Wine grapes require finite resources, such as land and water. Left unfettered, would viticulture strip this precious valley of redwoods and oaks, deplete its water supply, ravage its lush landscape with hotels, tasting rooms and traffic? At what point do the interests of environmental conservation get to temper those of commerce?

This tension is the story of Napa at Last Light: Americas Eden in an Age of Calamity, by James Conaway, a former Washington Post reporter. The book is the third entry in Conaways trilogy of modern Napa Valley history. The first, Napa: The Story of an American Eden (1990), told the birth of Napa as we know it today  the sagas of Inglenooks John Daniel, of Robert Mondavi, of Beaulieu Vineyards Andre Tchelistcheff. The second book, The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley (2002), picks up the story in the heady 1990s, the era of Robert Parker and cult Cabernets, recounted as dramatically as its subtitle would suggest.

Napa in 2018 is a much different place  wealthier, more famous and more crowded  than it was in 1990 or 2002, and Conaways third book, accordingly, presents the stakes as higher. Whereas questions of preservation and development were present in the first two works (milestones like the passages of the Agricultural Preserve and the Winery Definition Ordinance, for example, are chronicled), these questions dominate the third book in a much louder way.

The authors own voice has gotten louder, too. If it was left just shy of explicit in the first two books, Conaway now makes his position resoundingly clear: that development in Napa, of residential, commercial and agricultural enterprises alike, must be curbed. The time has come to say No more, both on principle and as a practicality, words not just for Napa but also for America, he writes.

The problem with Napa at Last Light is not Conaways position. Hes right to take a stand for the future of Napas environment. And today the stakes are higher than ever: a ballot measure this spring could permanently limit vineyard development in Napas oak woodlands and watershed. The problem, rather, is the way Conaway tells the story: melodramatically and hyperbolically. In doing so, he does a disservice to those he hopes to support.

Conaways argument is made through a series of episodes in which the interests of business and the environment collide. Grape grower Andy Beckstoffer opposes Jean-Charles Boissets plan to expand Raymond Winerys hospitality center. The organization Citizens Voice attempts to block the construction of a new winery in St. Helena by the owners of Schramsberg Vineyards. Neighbors fight Craig and Kathryn Halls plan to plant a vineyard at their Walt Ranch property on Atlas Peak.

Conaway makes clear who are his heroes and villains at the earliest opportunity. The books most moving episode belongs to Conaways ultimate hero, the vintner Randy Dunn, who raises $5 million to help purchase the Wildlake Ranch on Howell Mountain so that he can put its 3,000 acres in a land trust. Its an act of altruism told beautifully.

His black-and-white portraits of villains, meanwhile, verge on caricature. For example, Mike Davis, a former technology entrepreneur, wants to cut down trees to develop a vineyard next to Wildlake. So even when Davis does something youd expect Conaway to approve of  install a windmill  its treated with sarcastic dismissal. Some speculated that Davis embrace of alternative energy could indicate that [Davis] believed carbon emissions caused by power plants contributed to, well, if not global warming then to excessive amounts of stuff in the air.

Conaway is a master of the vague condemnation. Vineyard managers, according to the author, are proxy dynamiters and bulldozer operators. Wealthy newcomers to Napa, those drifting one percenters, are unburdened of scruple, accountability, and any sense of the past, who perceive the very Earth through the bars of a dollar sign. Farming, in his view, is that now-established euphemism for radical landscape alteration.

Yet when did farming ever, in history, not alter its landscape? Conaway appears to believe that all farmers should be yeomen, in the model of his idol Thomas Jefferson, whose agrarian ideals are invoked throughout the trilogy. (Considerable ink is spilled reminding readers of an explicit connection: There is a winery in Napa Valley, owned by the Corley family, called Monticello.) The ultimate denunciation of modern-day Napa Valley seems to be its failure to realize the Jeffersonian ideal: Thomas Jeffersons faded agrarian dream had devolved into a celebration of commerce as the ultimate expression of democracy, just as the notion of enlightenment had devolved into tourism.

Its not clear that enlightenment was ever Napa Valleys principal goal. Conaway would make a more compelling case for environmental protection had he better grounded his arguments. Viticulture had become a gloss for almost any profitable transaction, he writes, even if in direct conflict with the vision that had inspired Jefferson and created the agricultural preserve in the first place. Yes, but the agricultural preserve would almost certainly have never been established were viticulture not a profitable transaction.

The mythic, overwrought register of Conaways prose also weakens Napa at Last Light: One property is a bona fide Mediterranean-type floristic province. The list of nationalities supplying vineyard labor is long, running down the spine of the Americas like a tenuous, shadowy conduit akin to the black plastic pipes delivering the source of life to the vines.

Now more than ever, Napa needs strong voices who will advocate for the protection of its natural beauty, its residents safety and its agriculture. In Napa at Last Light, Conaway falls short of the challenge. This story, and the future of Napa Valley, deserves better.

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine, beer and spirits writer. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley

Napa at Last Light

Americas Eden in an Age of Calamity

By James Conaway

(Simon & Schuster; 308 pages; $26)
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

Activists in San Francisco's Mission District today remembered the victim of an officer-involved shooting that occurred nearly two years ago as they simultaneously mourned the loss of another life at the hands of police Tuesday night.

Police fatally shot a man as they were investigating a robbery near 20th and Capp streets around 10:35 p.m. Tuesday.

According to police, two people flagged down officers and described being robbed by the occupants of a black Honda Civic. Officers caught up with a vehicle matching that description nearby on Capp Street between 21st and 22nd streets.

Two people in the vehicle were detained. Officers tried to detain a third person, who was reportedly in the car's trunk, and that's when the officer-involved shooting occurred. A gun was found in the car's trunk, police said.

Police have not released further details about exactly how the shooting occurred.

A handful of members of the group Justice For Luis Gongora Pat today rallied outside the Mission police station at Valencia and 17th streets to protest the recent police shooting.

Adriana Camarena with the group said today's impromptu rally was a reaction to "this new tragedy."

"We want SFPD to change ... There's no police accountability, no one to enforce it," Camarena said.

Group members earlier today met at the site of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Luis Gongora Pat, which occurred near the corner of Shotwell and 19th streets on April 7, 2016.

Today marked exactly one year and 11 months since that shooting.

Officers shot Gongora Pat, 45, several times after Homeless Outreach Team members called police because they allegedly saw him swinging a large kitchen knife.

The officers reportedly told him to put down the knife, in both English and Spanish, several times and struck him with less-lethal beanbag rounds. However, officers shot him when he ran toward them with the knife, according to police.

Gongora Pat's family has since been advocating for San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon to charge the officers with murder.

"He never charges any officers in a shooting. Never since he entered office," Camarena said.

Last week, Gongora Pat's family met with Gascon for the first time since the shooting to discuss updates in the investigation.

According to the group, Gascon explained why the law makes it hard for him to charge officers in shootings but said he is between six to eight weeks away from reaching a decision on whether the officers, identified as Sgt. Nate Steger and Officer Michael Mellone, will be charged.

A vigil and march will be held this evening for the victim in Tuesday's shooting. The vigil is planned at 5 p.m. near the site of the shooting at Capp and 20th streets.

799-6621

San Francisco police (415) 837-7395
OAKLAND (BCN)

An update on the investigation into the killing of 28-year-old Shaleem Tindle by BART police near the West Oakland station in January will appear on the agenda for the next meeting of BART's Board of Directors, finally allowing the board to respond to the extensive public comment they've been receiving on the matter.

Tindle was engaged in a physical struggle with another man when he was fatally shot by Officer Joseph Mateu in the 1400 block of Seventh Street around 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 3.

Graphic footage of the shooting captured on Mateu's body-worn camera prompted public outrage when it revealed Tindle had been shot three times in the back while raising at least one of his hands.

Tindle's family has been outspoken in calling the young black father's death a "lynching."

Activists packed the board chambers for BART's last meeting on Feb. 22 to stand in solidarity with Tindle's family in their demand that Mateu be fired, but the item was not on the agenda.

That meant the board could not respond without violating the Ralph M. Brown Act, California's open records law, which is nominally intended to prevent government boards from operating in secrecy.

This morning, after more than an hour of impassioned public comment from Tindle's family and activists, board president Robert Raburn announced that an upcoming meeting of the BART Police Citizen Review Board was scheduled for Monday, and that Tindle's death would likely be discussed.

"That's not the same thing," said organizer Cat Brooks, with the Anti Police-Terror Project, interrupting Raburn as he spoke.

"No!" she stood up and shouted from the audience, telling the directors that they "aren't doing another piece of business" until meeting the group's demand that Tindle be put on an upcoming agenda.

After a moment of uproar from the crowd packed into the board chambers, director Lateefah Simon spoke, saying that as a black woman and a mother she felt she had a responsibility to move this process forward in the interest of justice for Tindle's family.

She moved to have an update on the investigation into Tindle's death added to the agenda for the next meeting, and that motion was seconded by director Bevan Dufty.

Brooks called that a victory, brought about as a result of community pressure.

"They were really clear that we shut the BART meeting last time, and that we were going to continue to shut it down," Brooks said. "I think there was a clear message that we were upping the ante next time if he wasn't on the agenda."

Brooks said the APTP's next goal will be to ensure that Mateu loses his job, then push to disarm the BART Police Department.

"This question remains of why BART police officers have guns," Brooks said. "They don't need the guns, and every time we see them engage with the guns -- from Nate Greer to Oscar Grant to Shaleem Tindle -- a community member is killed."

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San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said today that his investigation into a fatal officer-involved shooting in Redwood City in December found no violations of California criminal statutes by the law enforcement officers who shot at the suspect.

In a statement, Wagstaffe said he concluded that the use of lethal force by seven police officers and a sheriff's deputy during a confrontation with 31-year-old Marco Antonio Carlos on Dec. 30 was a legal response to Carlos' conduct.

The confrontation began at 2:25 p.m. when officers responded to reports of a man with a gun pacing back and forth in front of a Wells Fargo ATM at 1900 Broadway.

Officers arrived at the scene and found Carlos, a transient, outside the bank and armed with a .45-caliber semi-automatic firearm in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Carlos was familiar to them from previous encounters, according to Wagstaffe.

Officers set up a perimeter to protect bystanders and keep Carlos from leaving the area. For the next 10 minutes, officers tried to de-escalate the situation by talking to Carlos and tried to get him to surrender peacefully.

According to Wagstaffe, Carlos ignored officers' commands to drop his weapon. He then pointed his gun toward an officer and fired.

Seven officers and a deputy immediately fired back, discharging 25 rounds in three seconds, causing Carlos to instantly fall to the ground. Officers immediately administered first aid to Carlos, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

In a letter Wednesday to Redwood City police Chief Dan Mulholland and San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos, Wagstaffe said his investigation concluded that the officers exercised their police powers in a lawful manner.

"Confronted by a subject who was armed and shooting, public safety required responding officers to use deadly force to protect themselves and others in the immediate vicinity," Wagstaffe said in the letter.

"These officers are to be commended on their preparation for crises such as this one, as well as for their professionalism under such stressful circumstances," Wagstaffe said.

Reports and videos used in the investigation are available for public inspection and can be reviewed by contacting Senior Inspector Richard Maher of the District Attorney's Office's Bureau of Investigations at (650) 363-4858.

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363-4752
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A former U.S. Justice Department lawyer was sentenced in San Francisco Wednesday to two years and six months in prison for crimes related to stealing and trying to sell sealed federal whistleblower lawsuits.

Jeffrey Wertkin, 41, of Washington, D.C., worked in the Justice Department's civil fraud division from 2010 to 2016, specializing in so-called whistleblower cases in which an individual alleges illegal conduct within an organization or company.

He left the Justice Department in 2016 to work for a private law firm, Akin Gump, in Washington D.C.

In a plea agreement in November, Wertkin admitted that as he was leaving the government, he stole copies of sealed whistleblower lawsuits that were not assigned to him.

At first, Wertkin used the documents to try to solicit the targeted companies to become clients of the law firm. Later, he admitted, he tried to sell two of the stolen lawsuits to the companies being sued.

In one of those cases, Wertkin called the general counsel of an unidentified company headquartered in Sunnyvale under an assumed name, offered to sell a copy of a sealed lawsuit against the company, and mailed a copy of the cover page of the lawsuit as proof that he had it.

The general counsel then called the FBI, according to court documents. In phone calls recorded by the FBI, Wertkin negotiated to sell the document for $310,000.

He then flew to the Bay Area with the lawsuit and, wearing a wig and sunglasses, was arrested in a Sunnyvale hotel lobby as he handed the document to an undercover FBI agent on Jan. 31, 2017.

Wertkin admitted in his plea agreement that after being freed on a $750,000 bond following his arrest, he returned to his Washington office and tried to destroy copies of most of the stolen documents.

Wertkin pleaded guilty in November to two counts of obstruction of justice for stealing and seeking to sell stolen lawsuits to the Sunnyvale company and a second corporation in Oregon. He also pleaded guilty to a third count of transporting stolen property across state lines in the case of the lawsuit concerning the Sunnyvale company.

Prosecutors said in a sentencing brief that Wertkin copied and stole at least 40 sealed lawsuits and said the case was "one of the most disturbing cases of public corruption ever prosecuted in the Northern District of California."

Defense attorney Cristina Arguedas said in a brief that Wertkin's actions were an aberration in an otherwise "honorable and law-abiding life" and stemmed from undiagnosed anxiety and depression, exacerbated by his fear of not meeting business expectations at his law firm job.

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436-7264

Defense attorney Cristina Arguedas (415) 845-3000
OAKLAND (BCN)

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and other prosecutors announced today that a judge has ordered Home Depot USA to pay $27.84 million for unlawfully disposing hazardous wastes.

The settlement, which was ordered by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, also resolves allegations that Home Depot, which is based in Atlanta, discarded records without rendering private customer information unreadable.

"Today's settlement marks a victory for both environmental and consumer protection throughout California," O'Malley said in a statement.

"My office works tirelessly to investigate and prosecute companies large and small that endanger our precious resources by illegally disposing of hazardous waste. We also strive to ensure that consumers' privacy and security is maintained and protected," O'Malley said.

She said the judgment is the culmination of a civil enforcement action filed on Feb. 15 that was led by her office, the California Attorney General's Office, and the district attorneys of Monterey, Riverside, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Ventura and Yolo counties and the city attorney of Los Angeles, with assistance by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The civil complaint alleged that more than 300 Home Depot stores and distribution centers throughout the state were routinely and systematically sending hazardous wastes to local landfills that were not permitted to receive those wastes, and were tossing documents containing sensitive customer information into store trash bins, potentially exposing the information to identity thieves.

Prosecutors said 45 trash compactors belonging to 31 Home Depot stores were inspected and the inspections revealed that all 45 compactors contained hazardous waste and many of the compactors also contained discarded records containing sensitive customer information that had not been shredded or rendered unreadable.

The unlawfully disposed of hazardous wastes included pesticides, aerosols, paint and colorants, solvents, adhesives, batteries, mercury-containing fluorescent bulbs, electronic waste, key shavings and other toxic, ignitable and corrosive materials.

The discarded records containing customer information included customer names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Prosecutors said that after Home Depot was notified of the investigation, it took steps to cooperate and to dedicate additional resources toward environmental compliance and improving its hazardous waste and customer record management compliance programs.

In the settlement, Home Depot has committed to employing hazardous waste compliance managers dedicated specifically to ensuring the proper handling and management of hazardous wastes, and to conducting daily store inspections to ensure that hazardous waste and hazardous materials are being properly handled.

Under the final judgment, Home Depot must pay $18.487 million in civil penalties and costs.

An additional $2.513 million will fund supplemental environmental projects furthering consumer protection and environmental enforcement in California and Home Depot will spend at least $6.84 million for the compliance environmental measures to which it has committed.

The settlement also prohibits Home Depot from engaging in similar future violations of law.

Becerra said, "We take seriously our obligation to protect the health and well-being of our communities and that is why we are holding Home Depot accountable."

Becerra said the fact the investigation's finding that Home Depot failed to properly manage and dispose of hazardous waste and personal customer information "is unacceptable and illegal."

In a statement, Home Depot said, "We're pleased to have settled this and we remain committed to the responsible disposal of waste. We'll continue to work with California officials to that end."

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(510) 777-2230

Alameda County DA spokeswoman Teresa Drenick (510) 272-6280

Court of Judge Brad Seligman (510) 267-6939

Home Depot (777) 384-4646 or (770-384-2304

Attorney General press office (415) 703-5837

Monterey County Deputy District Attorney James Burlison (831) 647-7713
Marin County Public Health officials are warning people not to harvest mussels, clams and oysters along the county coast because they may contain lethal levels of a naturally occurring toxin, paralytic shellfish poison, or PSP.

The California Department of Public Health notified Marin County Public Health Officer Dr. Matthew Willis and staff Tuesday about a recent mussel sample from the Chimney Rock sentinel station in the Point Reyes National Seashore that contained levels of PSP 37 times the "alert" level.

The California Department of Public Health also issued a warning today advising people not to eat recreationally harvested mussels, clams or scallops from San Francisco and San Mateo counties where dangerous levels of PSP were found in mussels.

The warnings for all three counties do not apply to commercially sold clams, mussels, scallops or oysters from approved sources, the California Department of Public Health said.

The paralytic shellfish poison can cause illness or death in humans who consume contaminated shellfish, and cooking the shellfish does not alleviate the toxicity, the California Department of Public Health said.

Symptoms of PSP include tingling, numbness, headaches, dizziness, nausea, rapid pain or respiratory problems and require immediate medical attention, the California Department of Public Health said.

The symptoms are typically followed by loss of balance, lack of muscular coordination, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and in severe poisoning complete muscular paralysis and death from asphyxiation.

Surges in PSP content in shellfish can be caused by changes in water condition or temperature, flow and salt content. Higher levels of PSP typically occur in summer months.

There have been 542 reported illnesses and 39 deaths from PSP in California over the past 90 years, according to state statistics.

The PSP levels recorded in Marin County are the highest in 20 years, but no illnesses have been reported recently in the county, Willis said. The latest samples showed record levels near Chimney Rock and points north of Stinson Beach, he said.

"Because these are potentially lethal levels, we want to make sure no one is out there collecting shellfish until it's safe again," Willis said in a statement. "Please warn anybody who is out with boots and shovels looking for shellfish at low tide."

The National Park Service has been notified to post warning signs at locations along Drakes Bay within the Point Reyes National Seashore.

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SANTA ROSA (BCN)

A man was shot multiple times in Santa Rosa on Wednesday night but his injuries are not considered to be life-threatening.

Santa Rosa police were responding to an unrelated call at the Coddingtown Mall Apartments at 2001 Range Ave. when they heard several gunshots at about 9:14 p.m.

Police began searching the complex and started receiving reports of the gunshots.

They found a man suffering from several bullet wounds and began giving him aid, police said. The victim was then transported to the hospital.

Detectives from the gang crimes team investigating the shooting believe it was a targeted incident.

Police are offering a reward up to $2,500 for information that could lead to the arrest of a suspect. Anyone with details is asked to call (707) 543-3670.

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1Reyes 16.34  Hiel de Betel edifico a Jerico a precio de la vida de su hijo . _____________________________________ De las cosas mas valiosas que un hombre puede tener despues de Dios es su familia y bien tonto es quien no la cuida o como este la sacrifica a su vocacion, nombre e intereses. Ese necio personaje, Hiel de Betel, es uno de ellos. Hay quienes como este hombre, por ignorancia de la palabra de Dios (Josue 6.26), o porque saben que esa maldicion tiene quinientos anos y creen que ya Dios la olvido y no se va a cumplir, que cinco siglos sobre la Biblia es demasiado tiempo para que una maldicion sea cumplida, o como un desafio opositor, sacrifican sus hijos, esposa o padres a sus caprichos, planes y proyectos. No les importa inmolar la familia y utilizar las vidas de los suyos si a precio de los mismos logran los niveles sociales y la reputacion que quieren. Se embarcan en un proyecto contrario a la voluntad de Dios, a una empresa precedida por la maldicion divina y pi
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

Officers negotiated with a man who fired gunshots outside a home Tuesday night in San Francisco's Ingleside neighborhood and eventually convinced him to surrender.

Around 8:50 p.m., officers responded to the 200 block of Miramar Avenue where they learned a man was inside a home armed with a gun.

The man, 31, had allegedly fired shots outside the home, according to police.

When officers arrived they surrounded the area. After negotiating with the suspect, he surrendered to officers.

Police said no one was injured during the incident. Police did not release the suspect's name.
A San Francisco man pleaded no contest to felony arson charges in connection with a fire late last year in the Brisbane area, San Mateo County prosecutors said Wednesday.

Isaac Aaron Tuialuuluu, 33, was found dancing barefoot around a fire that was roughly 15 by 20 yards in size in the vicinity of Quarry and Sand Hill roads around 12:20 p.m. on Dec. 7.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed legislation requiring manufacturers and medical distributors that produce home injection devices to submit a plan for safe disposal of the waste that results from their products.

The Safe Sharps Ordinance, in conjunction with the county's existing Safe Drug Disposal Ordinance first passed in 2015 to provide easy drop-off locations for unwanted or expired medications, will ensure that the community is safely disposing of medical devices with sharp points or edges.

In 2009, it was estimated that 1.7 million sharps products are generated each month in Santa Clara County, with the number expected to grow each year.

In the ordinance itself, sharps waste is defined as needles, syringes and lancets that can cut or puncture the skin and are necessary for patient care outside of traditional health care settings.

Sharps can become contaminated with blood-borne pathogens and have the possibility of unintentionally transmitting deadly infectious diseases, including HIV and hepatitis B and C, county officials said.

Sharps manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies who produce and distribute medicines requiring home injection have six months from the starting date of the ordinance, officially April 6, to detail their plan on safe disposal of consumer-generated waste.

Bill Grimes, the county Consumer & Environmental Protection Agency's manager, said the plan will be comprehensive in outlining how a company proposes to physically implement disposal kiosks, how they will reach out to the surrounding community, how they plan on reaching out to host sites for the kiosks and how they will meet the diverse needs of each demographic in the county.

The agency has a 60-day review period to agree on what works in the plan before it takes effect, Grimes said.

There is language in the ordinance to accommodate more than one plan, but in studying similar ordinances in Alameda and Santa Cruz counties, county staff found that the norm is having all medical providers working together to strategize best practices through one non-profit steward.

Santa Clara County's environmental agency also found that the neighboring counties typically benefited from having the same locations for disposing of unwanted or expired medicine and safe disposal boxes for sharps waste, according to Grimes.

There will be an option to pick up prepaid sharps containers for free mail-back services for homebound residents as well.

Grimes and his colleagues expect the kiosks to pop up at high-traffic areas in each district they've designated in the county, including places like senior centers or community centers.

The county is on track to have more take-back locations for meds than any county in California, Grimes said. There are currently 57 locations for unwanted medication drop-off services and that number will increase to an expected 100 by the end of the year.

The county's goal is to have the Safe Sharps Ordinance-endorsed kiosks installed and up and running by later this year or early 2019, Grimes said.

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DUBLIN (BCN)

A convicted murderer was arraigned today on two counts of murder for the shooting and stabbing deaths of two young women in Fremont in 1986, police said today.

David Emery Misch, 57, who was dressed in a red jail uniform and wore glasses, briefly looked at the family members of alleged victims Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Duey, 20, at his brief appearance in Alameda County Superior Court.

Misch, who was represented by Assistant Public Defender Mark McGoldrick today, is scheduled to return to court on March 16 to finalize his legal representation and possibly enter a plea.

The slayings of Xavier and Duey had gone unsolved for 32 years but newly re-examined DNA evidence connected Misch to the crimes and the Alameda County District Attorney's Office filed murder charges against him Friday.

Prosecutors also filed five special circumstances murder allegations against Misch: two for allegedly killing the two women during the course of a rape and three for allegedly committing multiple murders.

Misch currently is serving a term of 18 years to life in state prison for his murder conviction for the December 1989 stabbing death of 36-year-old Margaret Ball at her home in unincorporated Hayward.

He was transferred from state prison to the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on Wednesday to face the charges for the deaths of Xavier and Duey.

Fremont police said Xavier and Duey, who were best friends, were found dead along the side of Mill Creek Road, a little more than a mile east of Mission Boulevard, shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, 1986.

Police said a motorcyclist driving on Mill Creek Road discovered the bodies at about 12:30 a.m. and immediately called authorities, who discovered that the two women had been shot and stabbed several hours earlier.

Xavier's Pontiac Sunbird was found about 6 miles away from the crime scene in the parking lot of the Mission Valley Shopping Center in Fremont, according to police.

Xavier and Duey had attended a birthday dinner for a family member and were last seen together at about 8 p.m. on Feb. 1, 1986, at a convenience store in the area of Farwell Drive and Mowry Avenue, police said.

Their personal belongings, including purses and identification, have never been found.

Fremont police said several people of interest were identified and interviewed over the years but detectives would rule most of them out and eventually the case went cold and was eventually suspended.

But in 2016 cold case Detective Jacob Blass began to re-examine case files as well as several pieces of evidence, including those that had been processed for DNA in recent years, and the evidence identified Misch as the main suspect, according to police.

Fremont police said Misch lived in the area at the time of the slayings and was a known commercial burglar and drug user.

Police said they don't believe Xavier and Duey had any history or contact with Misch before they were killed.

About 15 family members and friends of Xavier and Duey attended Misch's arraignment today but they declined to talk to reporters.

After the hearing, they met in a private room with Assistant District Attorney Annie Saachi, who specializes in prosecuting cold cases involving DNA evidence.

272-6213
A 19-year-old man who died in a police shooting Tuesday night in San Francisco's Mission District has been identified as Jesus Delgado-Duarte, according to the San Francisco medical examiner's office.

Delgado-Duarte was killed as officers were investigating a robbery near 20th and Capp streets around 10:35 p.m.

According to police, two people flagged down officers and described being robbed by the occupants of a black Honda Civic. Officers caught up with a vehicle matching that description nearby, on Capp Street between 21st and 22nd streets.

Two suspects in the vehicle were detained.

Officers tried to detain a third person, later identified as Delgado-Duarte, who was reportedly in the car's trunk and that's when the officer-involved shooting occurred, according to police.

Police have not said exactly how the shooting occurred. A gun was found in the car's trunk, police said.

A handful of members of the group Justice For Luis Gongora Pat rallied outside the Mission police station at Valencia and 17th streets Wednesday to protest the latest officer-involved shooting.

A vigil and march was also held by Delgado-Duarte's family and friends Wednesday evening at the site of the shooting.

Several agencies are conducting separate investigations including the Police Department's homicide detail, the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, the city's Department of Police Accountability, the SFPD Internal Affairs Division and the medical examiner's office.

Per policy, police will hold a town hall meeting within 10 days of the officer-involved shooting to inform the community about what happened.

Anyone with information is asked to call the San Francisco police tip line at (415) 575-4444. Callers can give anonymous tips.

A man fatally struck by a hit-and-run driver Monday evening when he got out of his vehicle after causing an initial crash on Interstate Highway 280 in San Jose has been identified by the Santa Clara County medical examiner's office.

Gabriel Armendaraz, 29, of San Jose, got out of his green Honda sedan after it struck the right rear side of a white Chevrolet pickup truck driving south and traveled out of control, consequently hitting a tan Toyota sedan, California Highway Patrol officials said.

Armendaraz emerged from the sedan and was struck by another vehicle traveling south that did not stop after the collision, according to the CHP.

The San Jose man was pronounced dead at the scene.

The woman driving the Chevrolet was taken to a hospital as a precaution, while the man driving the Toyota was also hospitalized for minor facial injuries, CHP officials said.

The Toyota driver had three children in the backseat, but none of them were injured, according to the CHP. A CHP officer took the children home to their mother.

Anyone who witnessed the series of collisions or has information about them should call CHP Officer Torres at (408) 467-5400.

A victim who succumbed to her injuries resulting from a DUI-related traffic collision that took place in San Jose in early February has been identified as a city resident, according to the Santa Clara County medical examiner's office.

Finis Uyeda was pronounced deceased at a hospital on Feb. 28, just a day after celebrating her 84th birthday, San Jose police said.

On Feb. 4 at 9:56 p.m., police responded to a major injury traffic collision on Bernal Road at the northbound U.S. Highway 101 off-ramp intersection, police said.

When officers arrived, they found both drivers in critical condition. Both were transferred to a hospital, according to police.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Uyeda was driving her white 2018 RAV4 going north to exit at Bernal Road and continued into the intersection when a black 2013 Hyundai, traveling south on Bernal Road, ran a red light and collided with her vehicle, police said.

The driver of the Hyundai, 53-year-old San Jose resident Elizabeth Marie Armendariz, was arrested and booked into the county jail on suspicion of felony DUI, according to officers.

No information is being given at this time when Armendariz's next court date will be.

San Jose police will submit the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office for review.

Police said that this was the 11th fatal collision on San Jose city streets this year.

Anyone with information about the collision should contact San Jose police Traffic Investigations Unit Detective Kelvin Pham at (408) 277-4654.

Three family members charged with murder in connection with the death of a man found near San Francisco's Union Square last month pleaded not guilty during their arraignment Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Christopher Hardee, 47, Nicole Hardee, 40, and Kayleb Hardee, 19, have all been charged with murder, robbery, burglary, and conspiracy, according to court records.

The trio, all Petaluma residents, is accused of killing 31-year-old San Francisco resident Andrew Emmett.

On Feb. 7, officers responded around 6:35 p.m. to a report of an unresponsive man in a wheelchair in the 500 block of Post Street. There, they found Emmett outside suffering from numerous cuts and bruises and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, police said.

Homicide investigators were able to quickly identify the Hardee family as suspects and at about 2 p.m. the next day, San Francisco and Petaluma police served search warrants in the 100 block of Marshall Avenue in Petaluma where they arrested them.

Christopher Hardee, Nicole Hardee and Kayleb Hardee are all being held without bail and they're set to appear in court next on March 23, according to court records.

An 82-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries when a car struck him near San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf on Wednesday evening, police said.

Around 6:55 p.m., officers responded to a report of a crash involving a vehicle and pedestrian near the corner of North Point and Mason streets, according to police.

There, officers determined the man was walking on Mason when the vehicle struck him. He was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

The driver was not arrested, police said.

A 20-year-old driver was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries after he crashed into a parking garage early this morning near San Francisco State University, police said.

Around 12:20 a.m., officers responded to a report of a crash near 19th Street and Junipero Serra Boulevard.

The driver apparently lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a garage, according to police.

No other injuries were reported in the crash.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said today that his investigation into a fatal officer-involved shooting in Redwood City in December found no violations of California criminal statutes by the law enforcement officers who shot at the suspect.

In a statement, Wagstaffe said he concluded that the use of lethal force by seven police officers and a sheriff's deputy during a confrontation with 31-year-old Marco Antonio Carlos on Dec. 30 was a legal response to Carlos' conduct.

The confrontation began at 2:25 p.m. when officers responded to reports of a man with a gun pacing back and forth in front of a Wells Fargo ATM at 1900 Broadway.

Officers arrived at the scene and found Carlos, a transient, outside the bank and armed with a .45-caliber semi-automatic firearm in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Carlos was familiar to them from previous encounters, according to Wagstaffe.

Officers set up a perimeter to protect bystanders and keep Carlos from leaving the area. For the next 10 minutes, officers tried to de-escalate the situation by talking to Carlos and tried to get him to surrender peacefully.

According to Wagstaffe, Carlos ignored officers' commands to drop his weapon. He then pointed his gun toward an officer and fired.

Seven officers and a deputy immediately fired back, discharging 25 rounds in three seconds, causing Carlos to instantly fall to the ground. Officers immediately administered first aid to Carlos, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

In a letter Wednesday to Redwood City police Chief Dan Mulholland and San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos, Wagstaffe said his investigation concluded that the officers exercised their police powers in a lawful manner.

"Confronted by a subject who was armed and shooting, public safety required responding officers to use deadly force to protect themselves and others in the immediate vicinity," Wagstaffe said in the letter.

"These officers are to be commended on their preparation for crises such as this one, as well as for their professionalism under such stressful circumstances," Wagstaffe said.

Reports and videos used in the investigation are available for public inspection and can be reviewed by contacting Senior Inspector Richard Maher of the District Attorney's Office's Bureau of Investigations at (650) 363-4858.

A San Francisco man pleaded no contest to felony arson charges in connection with a fire late last year in the Brisbane area, San Mateo County prosecutors said Wednesday.

Isaac Aaron Tuialuuluu, 33, was found dancing barefoot around a fire that was roughly 15 by 20 yards in size in the vicinity of Quarry and Sand Hill roads around 12:20 p.m. on Dec. 7.

Tuialuuluu also said he didn't know who started the fire, although two lighters were found in his pocket and a witness said he had been chanting "burn fire burn" prior to the officers' arrival.

Tuialuuluu, who was on probation at the time and already has a prior strike conviction, faces 32 months in state prison when he returns to court for sentencing on April 11.

He remains in custody on $50,000 bail.

Researchers say that sinking land in the Bay Area will increase the risk of flooding predicted for 2100 due to rising sea levels.

Several locations, such as Treasure Island, Foster City and the San Francisco Airport could be at risk, according to researchers from University of California at Berkeley and Arizona State University.

These sinking land areas could nearly double the impact of flooding from sea level rise alone.

Original estimates predicted that 20 to 160 square miles of the San Francisco Bay could be flooded by 2100, based on the rate of sea level rise.

Taking into account subsidence, or the gradual sinking of land, researchers say this number could increase to between 48 and 166 square miles.

Even then, the number offered by scientists is only an average. If there are king tides, storms, or other scenarios of peak water-level change, scientists say the risk of flooding could be even higher.

"The ground goes down, sea level comes up and flood waters go much farther than either change would produce by itself," said author Manoochehr Shirza, a member of NASA's sea level change planning team and a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow.

Researchers say city planners and local officials will use their findings to plan for the future and improve emergency response strategies.

Voters in the Kentfield School District have tentatively approved a parcel tax measure to maintain core classes and retain teachers, according to results from Tuesday's vote-by-mail election.

Measure A received 68.82 percent approval and needs 66.7 percent to pass. Ballots were returned by mail or dropped off at the Elections Department only.

Ballots that were postmarked on or before Tuesday will be picked up from post offices through Friday and the next update will be Monday at 5 p.m.

There were 2,989 yes votes and 1,354 no votes at of 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Measures A renews an existing $1,143 per parcel tax and increases it by $355 to $1,498 annually for 10 years. The measure also includes an annual 3 percent increase beginning July 1, 2019.

District officials say the revenue will maintain math, science, writing and reading classes, attract and retain exceptional teachers and preserve small class sizes.

They said a defeat of Measure A would have caused layoffs of teachers, librarians and counselors, close libraries and special math and science programs.

The Marin United Taxpayers Association's spokesman Michael Hartnett said the district ignored the voters' rejection of a parcel tax increase in 2016 and said budget cuts and layoffs did not occur when that measure failed.

The district has two schools, A.E. Kent Middle School with 530 students in grades 5-8 and Bacich Elementary School with 700 students in grades K-4.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and other prosecutors announced today that a judge has ordered Home Depot USA to pay $27.84 million for unlawfully disposing hazardous wastes.

The settlement, which was ordered by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, also resolves allegations that Home Depot, which is based in Atlanta, discarded records without rendering private customer information unreadable.

"Today's settlement marks a victory for both environmental and consumer protection throughout California," O'Malley said in a statement.

"My office works tirelessly to investigate and prosecute companies large and small that endanger our precious resources by illegally disposing of hazardous waste. We also strive to ensure that consumers' privacy and security is maintained and protected," O'Malley said.

She said the judgment is the culmination of a civil enforcement action filed on Feb. 15 that was led by her office, the California Attorney General's Office, and the district attorneys of Monterey, Riverside, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Ventura and Yolo counties and the city attorney of Los Angeles, with assistance by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The civil complaint alleged that more than 300 Home Depot stores and distribution centers throughout the state were routinely and systematically sending hazardous wastes to local landfills that were not permitted to receive those wastes, and were tossing documents containing sensitive customer information into store trash bins, potentially exposing the information to identity thieves.

Prosecutors said 45 trash compactors belonging to 31 Home Depot stores were inspected and the inspections revealed that all 45 compactors contained hazardous waste and many of the compactors also contained discarded records containing sensitive customer information that had not been shredded or rendered unreadable.

The unlawfully disposed of hazardous wastes included pesticides, aerosols, paint and colorants, solvents, adhesives, batteries, mercury-containing fluorescent bulbs, electronic waste, key shavings and other toxic, ignitable and corrosive materials.

The discarded records containing customer information included customer names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Prosecutors said that after Home Depot was notified of the investigation, it took steps to cooperate and to dedicate additional resources toward environmental compliance and improving its hazardous waste and customer record management compliance programs.

In the settlement, Home Depot has committed to employing hazardous waste compliance managers dedicated specifically to ensuring the proper handling and management of hazardous wastes, and to conducting daily store inspections to ensure that hazardous waste and hazardous materials are being properly handled.

Under the final judgment, Home Depot must pay $18.487 million in civil penalties and costs.

An additional $2.513 million will fund supplemental environmental projects furthering consumer protection and environmental enforcement in California and Home Depot will spend at least $6.84 million for the compliance environmental measures to which it has committed.

The settlement also prohibits Home Depot from engaging in similar future violations of law.

Becerra said, "We take seriously our obligation to protect the health and well-being of our communities and that is why we are holding Home Depot accountable."

Becerra said the fact the investigation's finding that Home Depot failed to properly manage and dispose of hazardous waste and personal customer information "is unacceptable and illegal."

In a statement, Home Depot said, "We're pleased to have settled this and we remain committed to the responsible disposal of waste. We'll continue to work with California officials to that end."

Fremont police Chief Richard Lucero announced today that he will retire in July after more than 31 years of service.

City officials said Lucero began his career as a police officer in 1987 and rose through the ranks to become police chief in 2013 and his entire law enforcement career has been in Fremont.

As he rose through the ranks of sergeant, lieutenant and captain, Lucero served in several specialized assignments including SWAT, street crimes, narcotics, and internal affairs.

Lucero said in a statement that he is "extraordinarily grateful" for what the members of the department have contributed to the Fremont community during his administration.

Lucero said his commitment to making Fremont a safe place to live and work included introducing the use of regionalized trailing hounds Blaze and Xena to better locate missing persons and criminal offenders and launching a pilot study of electric patrol vehicles.

"Police Chief Rich Lucero has been the bedrock of the Fremont Police Department, driving innovation and inspiring excellence among those he worked with," City Manager Fred Diaz said in a statement.

"His leadership guided the department through the most difficult of circumstances, and they truly rose to every challenge. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to serve with Rich and I'm going to miss his thoughtful and responsive approach that helped the department, and community, to flourish," Diaz said.

Fremont officials said they will conduct an internal recruitment for a new police chief in the coming months.

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"No one elected me to be fearful," Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told reporters Wednesday afternoon, responding to a fresh round of criticism from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who condemned her earlier in the day for warning the public about last week's immigration sweeps.

"They elected me to stand up for the people of my community," Schaaf said. "They elected me to have courage during difficult times -- and these are difficult times."

On Feb. 24, she alerted the immigrant community of impending mass detentions in which ICE officials detained at least 232 of their roughly 1,100 targets throughout Northern California.

Despite White House statements that the U.S. Department of Justice has been instructed to look into a possible obstruction of justice investigation, Schaaf said Wednesday that she's not aware of any formal request for documents related to a criminal investigation into her actions.

Melinda Haag, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California and a litigator with a high level of expertise in this particular kind of case, is consulting with the Oakland city attorney to represent the mayor on a pro-bono basis, according to Schaaf. She declined to provide details on the substance of their discussions, citing attorney-client privilege.

"The agenda of this administration is petty political vindictiveness," Schaaf said.

"Clearly they are picking a fight with California," Schaaf said. "They are picking a fight with diverse sanctuary cities and the people who lead them, but I cannot let that distract me from my job."

Schaaf said it was not her intention to get caught up in the national debate over sanctuary cities, but said she believes she's speaking on behalf of the people she represents. She also expressed confidence that any questions regarding the legality of sanctuary city and state policies will be settled by the courts.

"Federal law is the supreme law of the land," U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday morning in Sacramento to a gathering of the California Peace Officers Association, a day after the federal government sued California over state laws that it alleges interfere with immigration enforcement.

"I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg," Sessions said. "This matter has been settled."

In addition to referencing one of the most famous battles of the Civil War, Sessions called on the state to "stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else" for the purpose of frustrating federal immigration enforcement and advancing a pro-immigrant, "open borders" policy that he described as radical and irrational.

During his lengthy speech, Sessions bemoaned the changing demographics of the nation, saying that the percentage of "non-native born" residents is rising, and will soon reach the highest point in history.

He specifically called out Schaaf over her decision to leak news of the impending ICE raids, which critics say may have put ICE agents at risk of violence during the operation.

"How dare you?" Sessions asked. "How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of our law enforcement officers to promote a radical open borders agenda?"

He stated that sanctuary city and state policies in California directly and adversely affect the efforts of federal law enforcement officials to reduce the numbers of immigrants living in the state, a fact not lost on the politicians who enacted and continue to support those policies.

Sessions also made an appeal to local law enforcement officers, apparently soliciting their support regardless of the positions taken by elected leaders like Schaaf.

"We are fighting to make your job safe," Sessions said. "We intend to win this fight."

"You can be sure about this: We have your back," he added.

Wednesday afternoon, one reporter asked Schaaf about the seemingly warm reception Sessions enjoyed in Sacramento, pointing out that the crowd at the California Peace Officers Association meeting may have included local law enforcement from Alameda County.

Schaaf responded, saying her focus has been on the Oakland Police Department and Chief Anne Kirkpatrick.

"She has been unequivocal in her support of Oakland's Sanctuary City policies and for the values this community believes in," Schaaf said of Kirkpatrick.

"Many law enforcement leaders have said that sanctuary policies actually help them fight crime," Schaaf added. "They know they must have the trust of all members of the community for them to do their jobs safely and effectively."

Activists in San Francisco's Mission District Wednesday remembered the victim of an officer-involved shooting that occurred nearly two years ago as they simultaneously mourned the loss of another life at the hands of police Tuesday night.

Police fatally shot a man as they were investigating a robbery near 20th and Capp streets around 10:35 p.m. Tuesday.

According to police, two people flagged down officers and described being robbed by the occupants of a black Honda Civic. Officers caught up with a vehicle matching that description nearby on Capp Street between 21st and 22nd streets.

Two people in the vehicle were detained. Officers tried to detain a third person, who was reportedly in the car's trunk, and that's when the officer-involved shooting occurred. A gun was found in the car's trunk, police said.

Police have not released further details about exactly how the shooting occurred.

A handful of members of the group Justice For Luis Gongora Pat rallied Wednesday outside the Mission police station at Valencia and 17th streets to protest the recent police shooting.

Adriana Camarena with the group said Wednesday's impromptu rally was a reaction to "this new tragedy."

"We want SFPD to change ... There's no police accountability, no one to enforce it," Camarena said.

Group members earlier in the day met at the site of the fatal officer-involved shooting of Luis Gongora Pat, which occurred near the corner of Shotwell and 19th streets on April 7, 2016.

Wednesday marked exactly one year and 11 months since that shooting.

Officers shot Gongora Pat, 45, several times after Homeless Outreach Team members called police because they allegedly saw him swinging a large kitchen knife.

The officers reportedly told him to put down the knife, in both English and Spanish, several times and struck him with less-lethal beanbag rounds. However, officers shot him when he ran toward them with the knife, according to police.

Gongora Pat's family has since been advocating for San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon to charge the officers with murder.

"He never charges any officers in a shooting. Never since he entered office," Camarena said.

Last week, Gongora Pat's family met with Gascon for the first time since the shooting to discuss updates in the investigation.

According to the group, Gascon explained why the law makes it hard for him to charge officers in shootings but said he is between six to eight weeks away from reaching a decision on whether the officers, identified as Sgt. Nate Steger and Officer Michael Mellone, will be charged.

A convicted murderer was arraigned Wednesday on two counts of murder for the shooting and stabbing deaths of two young women in Fremont in 1986, police said.

David Emery Misch, 57, who was dressed in a red jail uniform and wore glasses, briefly looked at the family members of alleged victims Michelle Xavier, 18, and Jennifer Duey, 20, at his brief appearance in Alameda County Superior Court.

Misch, who was represented by Assistant Public Defender Mark McGoldrick Wednesday, is scheduled to return to court on March 16 to finalize his legal representation and possibly enter a plea.

The slayings of Xavier and Duey had gone unsolved for 32 years but newly re-examined DNA evidence connected Misch to the crimes and the Alameda County District Attorney's Office filed murder charges against him Friday.

Prosecutors also filed five special circumstances murder allegations against Misch: two for allegedly killing the two women during the course of a rape and three for allegedly committing multiple murders.

Misch currently is serving a term of 18 years to life in state prison for his murder conviction for the December 1989 stabbing death of 36-year-old Margaret Ball at her home in unincorporated Hayward.

He was transferred from state prison to the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on Wednesday to face the charges for the deaths of Xavier and Duey.

Fremont police said Xavier and Duey, who were best friends, were found dead along the side of Mill Creek Road, a little more than a mile east of Mission Boulevard, shortly after midnight on Feb. 2, 1986.

Police said a motorcyclist driving on Mill Creek Road discovered the bodies at about 12:30 a.m. and immediately called authorities, who discovered that the two women had been shot and stabbed several hours earlier.

Xavier's Pontiac Sunbird was found about 6 miles away from the crime scene in the parking lot of the Mission Valley Shopping Center in Fremont, according to police.

Xavier and Duey had attended a birthday dinner for a family member and were last seen together at about 8 p.m. on Feb. 1, 1986, at a convenience store in the area of Farwell Drive and Mowry Avenue, police said.

Their personal belongings, including purses and identification, have never been found.

Fremont police said several people of interest were identified and interviewed over the years but detectives would rule most of them out and eventually the case went cold and was eventually suspended.

But in 2016 cold case Detective Jacob Blass began to re-examine case files as well as several pieces of evidence, including those that had been processed for DNA in recent years, and the evidence identified Misch as the main suspect, according to police.

Fremont police said Misch lived in the area at the time of the slayings and was a known commercial burglar and drug user.

Police said they don't believe Xavier and Duey had any history or contact with Misch before they were killed.

About 15 family members and friends of Xavier and Duey attended Misch's arraignment Wednesday but they declined to talk to reporters.

After the hearing, they met in a private room with Assistant District Attorney Annie Saachi, who specializes in prosecuting cold cases involving DNA evidence.

The driver of an SUV ran away from a collision that killed an 18-year-old woman Wednesday afternoon in Vallejo, police said.

Someone called police at 3:43 p.m. to report the collision on Vervais Avenue near Fleming Avenue East.

When officers got there they determined that a 1994 GMC Suburban was traveling north on Vervais Avenue and stopped close to Elna Drive.

Police said the vehicle rolled backwards on Vervais as the driver was inside.

It appeared the driver tried to negotiate the corner at Fleming Avenue East but the SUV left the road and hit the woman who was walking on the sidewalk.

The SUV kept going, overturned and stopped on the opposite sidewalk.

Police said the woman who was struck suffered severe injuries. She was taken to a hospital and died.

Police said she was a Vallejo resident and her name won't be released until her family is told.

A boy has been taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening after being shot in San Jose Wednesday afternoon, according to police.

At 1:31 p.m., officers responded to a call of a person shot in the 3000 block of Cadillac Drive near Winchester Boulevard. Officers located a boy suffering from one gunshot wound.

The motive and circumstances around the shooting are under investigation, police said. No suspects had been identified or apprehended as of Wednesday afternoon.

A Contra Costa County family is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a suspect or suspects in a woman's killing, county sheriff's officials said.

The reward is being offered for information in the killing of Danville resident Emily Courchesne, who was found dead Oct. 6, 2017.

At 10:05 a.m. that day, deputies were dispatched to a home in the 24000 block of Marsh Creek Road in unincorporated Contra Costa County near Byron where they found Courchesne's body inside the home, according to sheriff's officials.

Detectives later determined that it was a homicide and believe Courchesne was killed sometime between the evening of Oct. 4 and the early morning hours of Oct. 5.

Sheriff's officials said that the Danville woman had been house-sitting at the home, which is on a farm in Byron.

A transgender activist and former teacher was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on three counts of murder for the shooting and stabbing deaths of a teenage man and two women in East Oakland in November 2016.

Dana Rivers, 63, of San Jose, is scheduled to return to Alameda County Superior Court on March 21 to have her trial date set.

Rivers, a former Sacramento schoolteacher, gained national attention when she had a sex change operation and became a woman in the 1990s.

In addition to the three murder charges, at the end of a preliminary hearing Alameda County Superior Court Judge Allan Hymer ordered Rivers to face a jury on the special circumstance allegation that she committed multiple murders and on charges of arson of an inhabited structure or property and possession of metal knuckles.

She's accused of killing 19-year-old Toto M. Diambu, who was also known as Benny Diambu Wright, 57-year-old Patricia Wright and 56-year-old Charlotte Reed.

Oakland police who came to the gruesome scene said Rivers was covered with blood, was holding a gasoline canister and was about to flee when she was arrested by officers who responded to reports of gunfire at a house in the 9400 block of Dunbar Drive at about 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, 2016.

Authorities described the area as a quiet residential neighborhood.

Police said Rivers tried to set the house on fire but the blaze was confined to the garage area and was quickly controlled.

Police said Diambu was found shot to death in front of the house and Wright and Reed were found dead inside. Wright and Reed had both been stabbed and shot, according to police.

Officers found ammunition and knives in Rivers' pockets when they searched her, Oakland police Officer Hector Jimenez wrote in a probable cause statement.

As officers were detaining Rivers, she "began making spontaneous statements about her involvement in the murders," Jimenez wrote.

Wright and Reed were married, according to their Facebook pages.

A motive for the three homicides wasn't disclosed during Rivers' preliminary hearing but prosecutors said it will be revealed at her trial, which may not take place for several years since she could face the death penalty and the attorneys in the case need time to prepare.

Diambu graduated in spring 2016 from the Berkeley High School Academy of Medicine and Public Service.

Wright worked for the Berkeley Unified School District from 2006 to 2015, beginning as a deaf interpreter and then becoming a special education teacher at King Middle School in Berkeley. After she retired, she became an elementary school teacher at Berkeley Arts Magnet School.

Wright also worked part-time as a computer prep teacher at Esperanza Elementary School in Oakland, according to Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki.

Rivers was born as David Warfield but in 1999 she told her employer, the Center Joint Unified School District in the Sacramento area, that she was transgender and planned to live as a woman.

Rivers was asked to leave her job after a small group of parents complained about her and she later became a spokeswoman for transgender issues.

A man was shot multiple times in Santa Rosa on Wednesday night but his injuries are not considered to be life-threatening.

Santa Rosa police were responding to an unrelated call at the Coddingtown Mall Apartments at 2001 Range Ave. when they heard several gunshots at about 9:14 p.m.

Police began searching the complex and started receiving reports of the gunshots.

They found a man suffering from several bullet wounds and began giving him aid, police said. The victim was then transported to the hospital.

Detectives from the gang crimes team investigating the shooting believe it was a targeted incident.

Police are offering a reward up to $2,500 for information that could lead to the arrest of any suspects. Anyone with details is asked to call (707) 543-3670.

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OAKLAND (BCN)

A transgender activist and former teacher was ordered today to stand trial on three counts of murder for the shooting and stabbing deaths of a teenage man and two women in East Oakland in November 2016.

Dana Rivers, 63, of San Jose, is scheduled to return to Alameda County Superior Court on March 21 to have her trial date set.

Rivers, a former Sacramento schoolteacher, gained national attention when she had a sex change operation and became a woman in the 1990s.

In addition to the three murder charges, at the end of a preliminary hearing Alameda County Superior Court Judge Allan Hymer ordered Rivers to face a jury on the special circumstance allegation that she committed multiple murders and on charges of arson of an inhabited structure or property and possession of metal knuckles.

She's accused of killing 19-year-old Toto M. Diambu, who was also known as Benny Diambu Wright, 57-year-old Patricia Wright and 56-year-old Charlotte Reed.

Oakland police who came to the gruesome scene said Rivers was covered with blood, was holding a gasoline canister and was about to flee when she was arrested by officers who responded to reports of gunfire at a house in the 9400 block of Dunbar Drive at about 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, 2016.

Authorities described the area as a quiet residential neighborhood.

Police said Rivers tried to set the house on fire but the blaze was confined to the garage area and was quickly controlled.

Police said Diambu was found shot to death in front of the house and Wright and Reed were found dead inside. Wright and Reed had both been stabbed and shot, according to police.

Officers found ammunition and knives in Rivers' pockets when they searched her, Oakland police Officer Hector Jimenez wrote in a probable cause statement.

As officers were detaining Rivers, she "began making spontaneous statements about her involvement in the murders," Jimenez wrote.

Wright and Reed were married, according to their Facebook pages.

A motive for the three homicides wasn't disclosed during Rivers' preliminary hearing but prosecutors said it will be revealed at her trial, which may not take place for several years since she could face the death penalty and the attorneys in the case need time to prepare.

Diambu graduated in spring 2016 from the Berkeley High School Academy of Medicine and Public Service.

Wright worked for the Berkeley Unified School District from 2006 to 2015, beginning as a deaf interpreter and then becoming a special education teacher at King Middle School in Berkeley. After she retired, she became an elementary school teacher at Berkeley Arts Magnet School.

Wright also worked part-time as a computer prep teacher at Esperanza Elementary School in Oakland, according to Oakland Unified School District spokesman John Sasaki.

Rivers was born as David Warfield but in 1999 she told her employer, the Center Joint Unified School District in the Sacramento area, that she was transgender and planned to live as a woman.

Rivers was asked to leave her job after a small group of parents complained about her and she later became a spokeswoman for transgender issues.

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Defense attorney Timothy Rien (925) 449-0666
SAN JOSE (BCN)

A victim who succumbed to her injuries resulting from a DUI-related traffic collision that took place in San Jose in early February has been identified as a city resident, according to the Santa Clara County medical examiner's office.

Finis Uyeda was pronounced deceased at a hospital on Feb. 28, just a day after celebrating her 84th birthday, San Jose police said.

On Feb. 4 at 9:56 p.m., police responded to a major injury traffic collision on Bernal Road at the northbound U.S. Highway 101 off-ramp intersection, police said.

When officers arrived, they found both drivers in critical condition. Both were transferred to a hospital, according to police.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Uyeda was driving her white 2018 RAV4 going north to exit at Bernal Road and continued into the intersection when a black 2013 Hyundai, traveling south on Bernal Road, ran a red light and collided with her vehicle, police said.

The driver of the Hyundai, 53-year-old San Jose resident Elizabeth Marie Armendariz, was arrested and booked into the county jail on suspicion of felony DUI, according to officers.

No information is being given at this time when Armendariz's next court date will be.

San Jose police will submit the case to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office for review.

Police said that this was the 11th fatal collision on San Jose city streets this year.

Anyone with information about the collision should contact San Jose police Traffic Investigations Unit Detective Kelvin Pham at (408) 277-4654.

###

793-1900

San Jose police spokeswoman Officer Gina Tepoorten gina.tepoorten@sanjoseca.gov

San Jose police spokesman Sgt. Enrique Garcia enrique.garcia@sanjoseca.gov
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) says it has deported 100 illegal African immigrants for engaging in fraudulent activities in the country.



This represents a sharp increase in the number of illegal migrants, who have been deported from Ghana in the past two years.



Head of Public Affairs of GIS, Superintendent Michael Amoako-Atta, who disclosed this, stated that his outfit, over the past three months, had embarked on swoops in some parts of Accra based on intelligence to arrest illegal migrants domiciled in Ghana.



Supt. Amoako-Atta, who spoke to the press, noted that 20 illegal immigrants were deported from the country in 2016 while 58 others were also deported last year.



Speaking to Accra-based radio station Citi Fm, he said, We set up our intelligence gathering in some spots in the city and through that we were able to arrest mostly African migrants, who were in the country and whose stay was in contravention of the immigration laws of the country.



He noted that the suspects were screened and arrested.



Mostly, the offences ranged from illegal employment, overstaying, some with suspicious characters and some with fraudulent documents, Supt Amoako-Atta stated.



The deportation of the 100 immigrants comes at a time when there is public outcry about the upsurge in criminal activities in the country.



This month, there have been two daylight robberies in the Greater Accra Region.



Some masked men raided the premises of Royal Motors, an automobile company and made away with the companys sales from the previous day.



Barely 24 hours later, a Lebanese was shot and killed by armed robbers after they succeeded in robbing him of cash of GH200,000 at the Heavy Industrial Area.



According to Supt Amoako-Atta, the deportation was part of measures put in place by the GIS to support other security agencies in the fight against crime in the country.



He added that government has provided GIS with 50 multi-purpose motorcycles to help combat criminal activities at the countrys borders and other entry points.







Source: Daily Guide









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The Minority in Parliament has called for a special security screening for all the 151 voluntary returnees and 72 Ghanaian migrants to be repatriated from Libya to Ghana.



According to them, the security screening should be carried out by experts as well as surveillance on the returnees to ensure that they do not add to the security challenges of the country.



Mr Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, Ranking Member on Foreign Affairs was reacting to a statement made by Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration on the alleged sale of African migrants in Libya on the floor of Parliament.



In October 2017, there were media reports about alleged sale of African migrants as slaves in Tripoli and other parts of Libya. The reports were supported by a video footage, which had been obtained by the American News Network (CNN).



Later, the Minister constituted a five-member team that went to Libya to ascertain the facts on the ground and to establish the extent of the involvement of Ghanaians in the alleged slave trade



Mr Okudzeto-Ablakwa also said the Minority was making the call to government based on a Special Report by the Attorney General of Libya, which came out last year in which Ghana was mentioned and some Ghanaians migrants were also identified as collaborating with ISIL and engaging in acts of terrorism.



He said given the recent security threats and the arrest of some people with grenades, it was important for government to thoroughly screen the returnees.



He expressed concern that the government only informed NADMO and the Ghana Immigration Service to be part of the evacuation exercise leaving out other security agencies, and described it as not good enough.



He said; the repatriation of the Ghanaian migrants from Libya should not come and add to the security woes of the country.

Source: GNA









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On Saturday, March 3, 2018, The Childrens Home of Pittsburgh & Lemieux Family Center celebrated 125 years of serving children and families through their three programs: Adoption, Childs Way daycare for medically fragile children, and the Pediatric Specialty Hospital, a 30 bed transitional pediatric hospital.

Shake Your Booties 125th Birthday Party marked the 17th year of the annual gala with over 500 guests, including special VIP guests Jerome and Trameka Bettis and Rick Sebak, event emcee and former Steeler, Craig Wolfley, The Childrens Homes CEO Pam Schanwald, Bob and Lisa Pomepeani, event co-chairs Steve Smith and Claire McGee, and honorary guests Tina and Jonathan Forehand. Jonathan is a 4-year-old former patient of the Pediatric Specialty Hospital who recovered from multiple brain surgeries at The Childrens Home. VIP guests enjoyed a private VIP section with photo opportunities with Jerome Bettis and specialty cocktails in light up cups. Every guest enjoyed an open bar, gourmet hors doeuvres and food stations, birthday cake, a silent auction, live auction, raffle, 50/50, wine toss, mystery bags, readings from Psychic Mike, magic from Lee Terbosic, live music from Jason Kendall Productions and a program highlighting the recovery of former patient Jonathan Forehand. With the largest attendance in the history of Shake Your Booties, the birthday party-themed gala raised over $300,000 to directly support the three programs of The Childrens Home.
SACRAMENTO  In the latest sexual harassment case to shake up the Capitol, the state Senate ordered Sen. Bob Hertzberg to stop hugging co-workers after an investigation found that the veteran lawmaker engaged in several instances of unwanted hugging and touching of lawmakers and legislative employees.

The Senate released a report Thursday that showed that among the incidents investigators substantiated was a complaint from a male sergeant at arms who said that in 2016 Hertzberg backed into him and was grinding against him in a manner that was unwelcome and offensive to the employee.

But in another high-profile complaint by former Assemblywoman Linda Halderman, the investigators found that he hugged the lawmaker once in 2010 and did not find evidence to back her allegations that he repeatedly embraced her after she asked him not to. Investigators said Halderman, a Republican from Fresno, declined to be interviewed. The report makes no mention of her most serious allegation  that Hertzberg pinned her arms and pushed his groin into her during one unwanted hug in the Capitol hallway eight years ago.

In the written reprimand, the Senate Rules Committee told Hertzberg, a Democrat from Van Nuys, outright that he can not initiate hugs because he had previously been warned that this behavior was, at times, unwelcome. Further incidents could result in more severe discipline, the warning said.

You cannot solve the problem by asking someone if a hug is unwelcome or welcome because a person may not feel comfortable telling you it is unwelcome, stated the reprimand letter from the Rules Committee, which acts as the human resources arm of the Senate.

Hertzberg is a former Assembly speaker who was elected to the Senate in 2014. He is well known at the state Capitol for indiscriminately giving bear hugs, prompting the nickname Huggy Bear.

I understand that I cannot control how a hug is received, and that not everyone has the ability to speak up about unwelcome behavior, Hertzberg said in a statement. It is my responsibility to be mindful of this.

The four instances investigators substantiated, according to the report released Thursday, were:

 In 2010, Hertzberg likely hugged Halderman on one occasion and likely hugged others on that day, as was his practice. The hug made her uncomfortable.

 In 2015, Hertzberg hugged a female senator in a manner that made her uncomfortable, but did not continue when she asked him to stop.

 In 2015, Hertzberg hugged an assemblywoman in a way that made her uncomfortable on more than one occasion, but he was not aware that the hugs were unwelcome.

 In 2016, Hertzberg danced briefly with his backside against a male Sergeant at Arms in a manner that was unwanted and made the Sergeant uncomfortable.

More for you California Sen. Tony Mendoza resigns under threat of expulsion...

Investigators found several aggravating factors, primarily that Hertzberg had been previously warned by Senate leadership that his hugging and touching made others uncomfortable. In a 2015 case, the Senate warned Hertzberg that the behavior should not be repeated, according to documents released in February.

Hertzberg did not heed that warning, according to the report released Thursday.

He should have taken this information more seriously, investigators wrote. Instead, he missed opportunities to understand that some people were genuinely troubled by his hugging.

Investigators also pointed to a series of mitigating factors in his favor, including that they did not find his behavior to be sexually motivated in any of the instances. Investigators also said Hertzberg seemed genuinely remorseful and that many witnesses described his hugs as friendly, warm and welcoming.

But Halderman, in a text to The Chronicle on Thursday, said: It would be best for everyone if, in the future, Bob Hertzberg kept his creepy hands to himself. She declined to comment further.

The investigation into Hertzberg is among 14 cases that the Legislature has been probing in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which emerged at the Capitol in November when hundreds of women signed a letter saying sexual harassment and abuse are pervasive in Sacramento politics. Three lawmakers have resigned amid scandals: Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia (Los Angeles County), Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-San Fernando Valley, and Assemblyman Matthew Dababneh, D-Encino (Los Angeles County). All three have denied wrongdoing.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), took a voluntary unpaid leave as the Assembly investigates allegations of groping and sexual harassment against her. She denies the allegations.

Investigators substantiated allegations against Mendoza and Bocanegra. An Assembly spokesman said he could not comment on whether the investigation into Dababneh is ongoing despite his resignation.

The reprimand of Hertzberg stands in sharp contrast to its planned expulsion of Mendoza.

Mendoza resigned on the day the Senate planned to vote on whether to expel him. The investigation into allegations against Mendoza found he more likely than not engaged in unwanted sexual advances toward six women, including interns in his office. None of the women alleged that theyd had a sexual relationship with Mendoza or said he had been physically aggressive or sexually crude toward them, investigators said.

Mendoza filed a lawsuit against the Senate last month in which he says in part that he was discriminated against when he was stripped of his committee post and forced to take a paid leave while another Senator, who is Caucasian, a reference to Hertzberg, was not.

Hertzberg did not lose any of his committee posts and was not asked to take a leave of absence during the investigation, which was completed Feb. 20. Hertzberg is chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Water committee.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, explained the difference in how the cases were handled by saying the allegations against Mendoza and other lawmakers came from subordinates while those against Hertzberg came from his peers. In the the sergeant at arms case, Hertzberg does not oversee his employment.
NEW YORK  Fresh off a series of tumultuous TV interviews, ex-Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg revealed Tuesday that he is contemplating seeking treatment for alcohol abuse.

"I'm a little worried about me," Nunberg told The New York Daily News in a wide-ranging interview. "I'll talk more about it next week."

Speculation swirled that Nunberg had been hitting the bottle before giving several bizarre interviews Monday evening, during which he repeatedly vowed to not comply with a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller. Nunberg insisted he would rather go to jail than hand over email correspondences or appear before a grand jury to answer questions about the Trump campaign and its ties to the Russian government.

Nunberg backpedaled on those boisterous claims Tuesday.

"I got carried away," he said. "I'm trying to just get this over with."

Nunberg declined to confirm whether he was drunk during the TV interviews, but said that he came to his senses afterward and now intends to cooperate with Mueller's investigators.

"I made my point, I got my venting out," he said. "Let me just give them what they want because there's nothing there anyway."

The 36-year-old lawyer was booted off the Trump campaign after it was revealed that he had made racially charged social media posts about the Rev. Al Sharpton and former President Barack Obama. Nunberg was a communications adviser for the campaign and worked closely with longtime Trump associate and political trickster Roger Stone.

Nunberg lambasted Trump after the firing, accusing the soon-to-be president of not having a "coherent political ideology."

But on Tuesday, Nunberg said getting fired from the campaign left wounds that took a long time to heal.

"I was very close to Donald Trump," he said. "I was heavily invested in that campaign. I wasn't very good after getting fired."

Nunberg said he will make an appearance before Mueller's grand jury Friday, pledging that he will "tell the truth."

Despite the scathing headlines, Nunberg concluded that his chaotic TV interviews weren't all in vain.

"The media is stipulating, 'Oh, how could you do this? Why would you do this?' To me it's pretty cool to be the first," Nunberg said. "If you work in Gonzo-style politics, this is what you do."

Nunberg added that he also decided to go on live TV because he wanted people to know how grueling it has been to be in contact with the special counsel's office.

"I just wanted people to know my story," he said. "Why do I have to get dragged through something like this?"
You can add the late Glen Campbell's family to the list of musical dynasties that have migrated from Los Angeles to Nashville, TN. One of this country clan's SoCal swan songs is selling the Agoura Hills home containing the family's Agoura Borealis Recording Studio. It's now on the market for $960,000.

"It was built with a lot of love and brought us a lot of joy," said Campbell's wife, Kim.

She told us while their family was living in Arizona over a decade ago, two of Campbell's sons moved to Los Angeles to work in the music industry. To bypass the expense and hassle of renting apartments, rehearsal facilities, and recording studios, the family bought a place in 2006 where the music and living situation would be resolved in one fell swoop.

They found a three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,938-square-foot home with a pool in the town of Agoura Hills, just north of Calabasas. The location was also 15 minutes away from Malibu, where Glen and Kim eventually settled.

Home with recording studio realtor.com

Pool realtor.com

After purchasing the place, they converted the three-car garage into a first-class recording studio designed by Arthur Kelm, the vice president, general manager, and chief engineer of Capitol Records. Kelm installed a live tracking room with a vocal booth and a control room with a large isolation booth/amp room. He also floated the floors and made the facility soundproof, with perfect acoustics.

Professional home studio realtor.com

Control room realtor.com

The aesthetics, however, were Kim's responsibility. Kim, who at the time was studying interior design at UCLA, used lush fabrics and finishes throughout the studio and the house. But "it was the boys who wanted the blue floors in the studio," Kim said, "so I said, 'Why not?'"

Studio with blue floor realtor.com

Kim also did the interior design for the two homes they purchased in Malibu, one on Latigo Road and the other on Cavalleri Road.

"I had a lot of fun with the design of the one on Cavalleri," she said. "I designed the kitchen island to look like a ship."

Ship-style kitchen island designed by Kim Campbell realtor.com

"I'm kicking myself for selling the [Malibu homes]" when the family moved to Nashville, she said. She wishes she would have kept one of the places, so she'd have a place to stay when she visits Malibu. On the other hand, she said she enjoys staying with friends when she's in town.

Kim's aesthetic in the Agoura Hills house includes the crisp updated bathrooms, the pale wood floors, the wrought-iron balcony off the master, the white kitchen with stainless-steel appliances, and the floor-to-ceiling tile fireplace.

Living room realtor.com

White kitchen with stainless-steel appliances realtor.com

One of the last family project they worked on in the Agoura Borealis Recording Studio was the Grammy-winning music for the Academy Awardnominated documentary "I'll Be Me," about Glen's career and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

Kim said it's now been about four years since she and Glen moved to Nashville to be with their daughters, Shannon and Ashley, both of whom had recording contracts in Tennessee.

"I needed their help taking care of Glen," she said. He died in August, at the age of 81.

Their son Cal stayed behind in California to run the studio in Agoura Hills. He recently co-produced Ashley's debut album, "The Lonely One." But Cal's now ready to join his family in Nashville, hence the sale of this property.

Agoura Borealis Recording Studio realtor.com

Listing agent Michael Stone believes it's the perfect space for another musical family or a recording or voice-over artist who wants to work from home.

He's also been approached by people who think it would be an ideal investment property, to be used as a "recording industry Airbnb." Think of the possibilities when there's a seamless transition between studio and homerecording sessions could go as long as they please, and middle of the night musical inspiration could be put to tape immediately.

You'd never know the musical history by looking at this, but that's its beauty. Soundproof and private, it's waiting for its next sheet of music to be written there.

The post Glen Campbell's Family Is Selling SoCal Home Featuring a Sweet Recording Studio appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
A federal appeals court gave a go-ahead Wednesday to an unprecedented suit by 21 young people who accuse the federal government of endangering their future, and the planet, by failing to act against global warming.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco did not delve into the merits of the lawsuit, saying those could be addressed, along with the governments legal challenges, by the presiding judge as the case proceeds. But by denying the Trump administrations request to dismiss the suit, the appellate panel moved the suit one step closer to trial in federal court in Oregon.

We think we can be there in six months, said Julia Ann Olson of Wild Earth Advocates, lead attorney for the youths. There will now be a full trial on climate science and what our federal government did to create this dangerous situation.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Olson said the plaintiffs, from different states, now range in age from 10 to 21. Their suit, filed in Oregon in 2015, said their future was imperiled, and their constitutional rights violated, by federal policies that worsen climate change.

Government officials have known for decades that oil, coal and other fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide that heats the atmosphere, but have promoted mining and use of those fuels while temperatures reach historic levels, said the suit, which has drawn support from numerous environmental groups. It relies on the public trust legal doctrine, which makes the government responsible for managing natural resources, like land, air and water, for the benefit of its inhabitants.

If they prove constitutional violations, the plaintiffs want the courts to order the government to establish a carbon-free energy system by midcentury.

The suit was filed during President Barack Obamas administration, and Olson said the evidence keeps building under President Trump, who is named as a defendant in the case. Trump has denied human-caused climate change, and his administration has promoted coal mining and offshore oil drilling.

After a federal judge in Oregon refused to dismiss the case, the Trump administration asked the appeals court to intervene. Justice Department lawyers argued that the youths claims had no legal basis, that the court orders they sought would violate the constitutional separation of powers, and that the evidence they demanded from the government would be too burdensome to produce.

The court was unconvinced.

Litigation burdens are part of our legal system and the federal government is not immune, Chief Judge Sidney Thomas said in the 3-0 ruling. He said nearly one-fifth of all suits filed in federal court last year named the U.S. as a defendant, and noted that the government can challenge specific demands for evidence before the lower-court judge and seek dismissal again before trial.

There is enduring value in the orderly administration of litigation by the trial courts, free of needless appellate interference, Thomas said.
ABCNews.com(NEW YORK) -- Exactly four years after the fateful Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, what happened to the plane and its 239 people on board finally came to rest remains one of the world's great aviation mysteries.



The flight is presumed to have landed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. Investigations and search efforts have been focused on an area called the 7th arc, where the aircraft is considered to have exhausted its fuel and descended into the water west of Australia.



The mystery has left the aviation world desperate to know where the aircraft is, why it went missing and how it has evaded investigators for years.



A Texas-based seabed intelligence company called Ocean Infinity is currently using submarine drone technology, which is more advanced in efficiency and precision than what was used in previous searches, to try to answer some of those questions. But, so far it hasn't returned any results either, despite covering an area Australian scientists targeted "with unprecedented precision and certainty."



Texas-based company is latest hope for the recovery of MH370



The company's search was conducted as part of a "no-find, no-fee," 90-day contract with the Malaysian government.



Ocean Infinity is using a 378-foot vessel named Seabed Constructor with 65 crew members from Ocean Infinity, two Malaysian Navy officials and 8 autonomous underwater vehicles armed with cameras and sensors.



Multiple drones search the seafloor in a grid and send data back to investigators for analysis. If anything appears to resemble aircraft debris, they take a closer look. So far, nothing of significance has been found.



This may sound like a familiar story.



An initial 120,000 square kilomenter search led by the Australians lasted two-and-a-half years and cost $150 million before officials decided they were looking in the wrong place. That search ended in January 2017.



At that time, Australian investigators said they were ending their seafloor search, but pointed to a still-unsearched 25,000 square kilometer area further north.



Ocean Infinity had expressed interest in the search -- and were willing to pay for the operation themselves, unless they found the airliner. The company said any recovery process would be left to the governments. In the event the company finds MH370, the could be paid as much as $70 million. They launched in January 2018.



On Tuesday, Seabed Constructor had covered 23,000 of the 25,000 square kilometers highlighted by the Australians, according to a company spokesperson.



Sources close to the search operation told ABC News the company plans to remain at sea, searching, until the 90 days are up near the end of April.



What Happened to Missing Plane MH370 and the 239 People on Board?



Multiple theories have surfaced to explain how the jet vanished with relative invisibility, but there have been no definitive answers.



Authorities analyzed the Captain's home flight simulator and revealed the pilot practiced a flight similar to that of flight MH370: A Boeing 777 flight from Kuala Lumpur that traveled along the Strait of Malacca before turning left into the Southern Indian Ocean. The simulated flight traveled until fuel exhaustion before ending in the Southern Indian Ocean, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.



"The MH370 captains flight simulator showed someone had plotted a course to the southern Indian Ocean," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre said in a statement in July of 2016. "The simulator information shows only the possibility of planning. It does not reveal what happened on the night of the aircraft's disappearance, nor where the aircraft is located."



The search efforts since the day of the flight MH370's disappearance have stretched the boundaries of science, but so far have been fruitless.



It's unclear how much investigators could learn in the event Ocean Infinity finds the jet. Even if the black box is retrievable and functional after years on some the ocean's deepest floors, the cockpit voice recorder operates on a loop and the mysterious early moments of the flight likely would have been erased.



However, one key question may be answered if the cockpit is found: Who was in control during the plane's final moments?



As the world observes the anniversary Thursday, families and friends of those on board flight MH370 are attending events and coming together online to grieve the loss of the 239 souls. Four years later, they still do not know exactly what happened.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Working in tech isnt what it used to be. As creative types from New York, Los Angeles and London move to companies such as Apple and Facebook, theyre cultivating social circles that arent defined by code, and hosting after-hours cocktail parties and roundtable salons that encourage performances.

The San Francisco contingent of Soho House hosted its first large-format dinner last month designed to satisfy that sweet spot between creativity in the arts and creativity in tech. Its part of the London-based private clubs new Cities Without Houses program, which is designed to cultivate Soho House experiences in cities that dont have a physical Soho House (including San Francisco, New Orleans and Paris). A membership fee entitles guests to attend film screenings and fitness programs, as well as visit Soho House locations in other cities.
LONDON  A British police official on Thursday updated the number of people who sought treatment after a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, saying around 21 had been given medical help and support.

Only three people remain hospitalized after the poisoning Sunday in the southern English city of Salisbury  ex-spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a British police officer who tried to help them. Health officials insist there has been a low risk to the public.

Authorities havent said who launched the attack, but British officials have warned of a strong response if the Russian government is found to be responsible.

Multiple people have been treated, around 21 people, including the man and the woman found on the bench, Wiltshire acting police chief Kier Pritchard told Sky News, referring to Skripal and his daughter, who were found unconscious.

Pritchard said that of the new total, a number of them got hospital treatment including blood tests, support and advice. Previously, authorities had said only that several people had sought treatment.

Police havent provided details on the nerve agent that was used, and the ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said whoever is behind the attack is guilty of a brazen and reckless act. She said Britain would respond strongly when it is clear whos to blame.

She said that enormous resources were being used to determine who poisoned Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. They were found unconscious on a bench, triggering a police inquiry headed by counterterrorism detectives.

A police officer who came to their aid is hospitalized in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, Rudd said. He was identified Thursday as Sgt. Nick Bailey.

The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act, Rudd told Parliament. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.

The Russian Embassy in London tweeted that it agreed with Rudd: First evidence then conclusions on Mr. Skripals case. Responsible political approach.
TEL AVIV Israels founding fathers, who etched a commitment to encouraging Jewish immigration into the declaration of independence, might be surprised to find that, seven decades later, the state is relying on Christians to fulfill that promise.

What was once a strictly Jewish-funded mission is increasingly being bankrolled by evangelical Christians. Israels Christian allies now fund about a third of all immigrants moving to the country, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

The figures reflect the ever-tightening relationship between Israel and its evangelical Christian allies, whom Israel has come to count on for everything from political support to tourism dollars.

After 2,000 years of oppression and persecution, today you have Christians who are helping Jews, said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group that raises money from evangelical Christians for Jewish causes.

Israel has long depended on diaspora Jewish communities, especially in the U.S., for donations and to lobby their local governments on its behalf. But evangelical communities have become increasingly important.

Israeli charities raise millions of dollars from Christians around the world, and evangelical Christians make up 13 percent of all tourists to Israel. A parliamentary caucus works with evangelical legislators around the world to foster support for Israel.

Israel has no better friends, I mean that, no better friends in the world than the Christian communities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last year.

European and American Jewish philanthropists championed immigration to Israel even before the creation of the state in 1948, by working to settle Jews in what was then Ottoman and British Palestine. In the decades after independence, the government partnered with Jewish groups to organize dramatic airlifts of Jews from troubled countries.

Christian support for the immigration to Israel largely began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and has grown in recent years as American Jews have redirected charitable donations to niche causes.

Not everyone is pleased. Some in Israel are suspicious that the evangelical embrace stems from a belief that the modern Jewish state is a precursor to the apocalypse  when Jesus will return and Jews will either accept Christianity or die.
MADRID  Women across Europe and Asia shouted their demands for equality, respect and empowerment Thursday to mark International Womens Day, with protesters in Spain launching a 24-hour strike and crowds of demonstrators filling the streets of Manila, Seoul and New Delhi.

Spanish women were staging dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence. In Barcelona, protesters disrupting traffic were pushed back by riot police.

In Madrid, hundreds of women gathered in its central square to demand change. Teresa Sonsur, a 38-year-old social services agency worker, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination.

What we see in our job in social services is that the women are doing all the hard work, dealing with the customers, but in the positions of management it is always men, she said.

In France, a leading French newspaper found a witty way of making its point about discrimination and the gender pay gap  by upping its price for men. The left-leaning daily Liberation said that for one day only, men would pay 50 euro cents more than women, in a reflection of the 25 percent less that women in France are paid, on average.

Across Asia, women came out to mark the day. In China, students at Tsinghua University used the day to make light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the countrys president. One banner joked that a boyfriends term should also have no limits.

At rallies in Pakistan capital Islamabad, its largest city Karachi, and the cultural capital of Lahore, women denounced violence against them in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives each year in so-called honor killings.

Hundreds of activists in pink and purple shirts protested in downtown Manila against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, calling him among the worst violators of womens rights in Asia.

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women, who would have been afraid to leave their homes during Taliban rule, gathered in the capital, Kabul, to commemorate the day.

In India, hundreds of women marched through the capital, New Delhi, to bring attention to domestic violence, sexual attacks and discrimination in jobs and wages.

In Africa, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged men to stop physically abusing their wives. Domestic violence is common in Uganda, although victims rarely report perpetrators to the police for fear of being stigmatized or thrown out of their homes.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark  The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body strongly denied killing her, asserting at his trial Thursday that she died accidentally because of a pressure problem in the submarine.

Peter Madsen, who is accused of torturing Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine, also denied he was sexually attracted to her.

Sitting on his hands as he testified at the opening of his trial in Copenhagen City Court, Madsen appeared irritated at times as he brushed off any suggestion of sexual activity with Wall before or after her death.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen read from a psychiatric report describing Madsen as an intelligent man with psychopathic tendencies. Madsen himself told the court Thursday that he was a promiscuous person.

Madsen has admitted to dismembering Walls body before he buried her at sea, saying he could not lift her up the submarine tower in one piece to throw her overboard so he had to cut her up.

Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsens submarine on Aug. 10 to interview the 47-year-old co-founder of a company that develops and builds manned spacecraft. Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times.

Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Walls body parts were found on the ocean bed.

If found guilty, Madsen faces between five years and life in prison  which in this case means 16 years that could be extended as long as Madsen is deemed dangerous  or he could be locked up in a secure mental facility if deemed necessary by psychiatrists, for as long as hes considered sick and a danger to others.

Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Walls death prior to the trial. He initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on a Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head.
BAGHDAD  A Baghdad court has convicted the sister of the top leader of the Islamic State on terrorism charges and sentenced her to death, a spokesman said Thursday.

The spokesman of Iraqs Supreme Judicial Council, Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, said in a statement that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis sister was found guilty for offering logistic support and help to (Islamic State militants) in carrying out criminal acts.
1 Award revoked: The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has revoked a prestigious human rights award it had given to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, now Myanmars civilian leader, faulting her for failing to halt or even acknowledge the violence against her countrys Rohingya Muslim minority. Suu Kyi, who endured 15 years of house arrest for taking on the military dictatorship in Myanmar, was only the second person to receive the award, in 2012. It was named after Elie Wiesel, a fellow recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and a Holocaust survivor who was one of the museums founders. Wiesel was the first recipient.

2 Netanyahus warning: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel may face early elections due to a coalition crisis. Netanyahu said Wednesday that he wants his government to complete its term in November 2019. He said if all parties in this coalition ... agree thats what we do, and if not then we will go to elections now. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has said his Kulanu party will bolt the coalition if the budget doesnt pass in the next few weeks. Coalition partners are feuding over whether to include military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Qantas Airlines is facing turbulence after telling its 30,000 employees to avoid using words such as "husband," "wife," "mum," "dad," and even "guys."

The Australian airline, known for its cute koala mascot, recently sent an information packet for its Spirit of Inclusion Month to its staff. It contained what Qantas deemed potentially offensive terms and advised men not to "manterrupt" women and speak over them in the workplace.

The packet was leaked to the tabloid Sydney Daily Telegraph, which ran a front-page story about it headlined "Mumbo Jumbo."

"Husband" and "wife" were flagged because they "can reinforce the idea that people are always in heterosexual relationships," the packet said.

"In the same way, always referring to 'mum and dad' can make many families feel excluded  both same-sex couples and single-parent families... Words like 'love,' 'honey' or 'darling,' even when used as terms of endearment, often offend. In the workplace, it is best to avoid these sorts of words."

Referring to someone as "abrasive" or "bubbly" was discouraged because the terms are rarely used to describe men.

And speaking of men, "mankind" was bumped in favor of "humanity." "Guys" suffered the same fate. Staffers were instead advised to use "team," "folks," "people," or "you all."

Even historical references were spotlighted. Employees were told to shun the word "settlement" in describing the arrival of the British in the 1700s and instead use "invasion" or "occupation," which more accurately describes the subjugation of Aboriginal people.

The material was developed by the Diversity Council of Australia and was "intended to start an internal discussion about how language choice can impact how inclusive (or not) a workplace is," said Qantas spokeswoman Annabelle Cottee in an email. She said it did not represent a change in policies or procedures.

While diversity proponents greeted the airline's new discussion, conservative pundits and politicians assailed it.

Former prime minister Tony Abbot said the packet was "political correctness that's gone way over the top," according to the Telegraph (UK).
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Jakarta: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is no doubt hoping claims his son was sidelined by Goldman Sachs for blowing the whistle on controversial Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB will not distract from the upcoming summit of South East Asian leaders.

But Alex Turnbull says his role in exposing the 1MDB scandal is likely to appear in soon-to-be published book by two Wall Street Journal reporters.

Malcolm Turnbull's son Alex reportably had a role in blowing the whistle on controversial Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB. Credit:AAP

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Alex Turnbull would not comment on an article in The Australian which quoted him saying he was "b-tracked" by Goldman Sachs for raising concerns about 1MDB and claimed "whistleblowing is a shit business".

Alex Turnbull said he was misquoted by The Australian newspaper although his complaint is similar to comment he appears to have made on a Malaysian blog, realpolitikasia, earlier this month.
The Consolidated Pastoral Company, a huge beef enterprise with Australian cattle stations covering about 5.5 million hectares, is a great example of how a local agricultural business "can flourish and grow" with support from foreign investment, according to the companys chief executive.

The company was formed by the late billionaire Australian businessman Kerry Packer 35 years ago with the purchase of a Northern Territory cattle station.

Consolidated Pastoral, which has recently been advertised for sale and is generating speculation it could sell for as much as $1 billion, is tipped to attract interest from foreign investors.

The company was formed by the late billionaire Australian businessman Kerry Packer 35 years ago with the purchase of a Northern Territory cattle station. It now has 16 cattle stations in Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia, as well as an 80 per cent stake in two Indonesian feedlots.

The Packer family exited the business in 2009, when it sold its majority stake to the English private equity firm Terra Firma. Some estimates have put the 2009 sale price at $425 million.
As Forbes can attest, Gina Rinehart is not short of a quid at the moment. But even her considerable wealth stretches only so far.

So the Rinehart-backed Sirius Minerals - the Aussie run UK company which is attempting to fund a multi-billion dollar potash mine beneath North Yorkshire - is being forced to go cap in hand to Theresa Mays government for a helping hand.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Sirius chairman, Russell Scrimshaw - one of the founding fathers at Andrew Twiggy Forrests Fortescue - said it is essential for the FTSE-listed company to secure a $US2 billion ($A2.55 billion) debt guarantee from the government to ensure it can push ahead with the next phase of the project.

In order to fully realise this transformational opportunity for the UK, a partnership with the UK Government, in the form of a Treasury Guarantee under the Infrastructure Project Authoritys scheme, is essential, Scrimshaw said in his end of financial year report to investors this week.
Sacked Doughnut Time Brisbane employee Freya Fraser says she was often told to take money out of the till to cover her late wage, as employees across the country say they are owned thousands in unpaid wages.

The 23-year-old worked an average 35 hours a week, first at East Brisbane then at South Bank, and said she was owed approximately five weeks pay, about $3849 before tax, along with super when she was told she no longer had a job on Sunday.

Freya Fraser working at a Doughnut Time store in East Brisbane before she was sacked. Credit:Johnathan Oldham.

About half of the companys remaining stores were shuttered in the sale of the company from former owner Damian Griffiths to his former group chief executive, Dan Strachotta.

Mr Griffiths apologised to sacked staff earlier this week and said while the sale amount could not be disclosed due to commercial confidentiality clauses, it would help clear some of the wages owing.
The $1.2 billion bid by AccorHotels for Mantra Group has been given the green light by the competition regulator, in a move that will create the biggest hotel operator chain in the country.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission gave the go-ahead after finding little overlap between the two groups, which operate in different parts of the market. The $3.96-a-share cash offer gives Mantra an implied market capitalisation of $1.182 billion.

AccorHotel's Sofitel Darling Harbour hotel.

''Accors business is mainly focused on hotel-style accommodation and its brands include Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis. Mantra's focus is on serviced apartments, which it offers through its Peppers, Art Series, Mantra and Breakfree brands," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said.

''The combined Accor-Mantra will still compete with other international and national chains, as well as many independent hotel and accommodation providers.''
Government zoning of residential areas has pushed the average property price up by 40 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne, fuelling inequality and locking out new homeowners from the property market, the Reserve Bank has found.

In a research paper that calls for a fundamental rethink of government policy, the central bank said zoning "had driven prices substantially above the supply cost," as east-coast homeowners fight to stop medium density "Hong Kong style" developments being built in their suburbs.

"We estimate that the average Sydney house, valued at $1.16 million in 2016, represents a $395,000 structure on a $765,000 block of land," the analysis says.

Zoning is raising property prices by up to 40 per cent Credit:Dallas Kilponen

Up to 70 per cent of a house's value was made up by the land zoned for residential purposes in Sydney and Melbourne, according to the report by economists Ross Kendall and Peter Tulip.
Shokoofeh Azar couldn't imagine a life beyond the confines of the tiny boat on which she and 75 other people were making the perilous crossing from Indonesia to Christmas Island in search of sanctuary.

"I couldn't think about future. When you are in the boat and you see storm and disaster and everybody was crying," she says. "You face your death when you see the huge waves and you alone in this  always when I close my eyes and remember that I feel we have been in a small matchbox in the ocean."

Shokoofeh Azar is an Iranian refugee, ex-Christmas Island detainee, whose book has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize for women writers. Credit:Justin McManus

Seven years on from the terror of that voyage, the former journalist, short story writer and artist who escaped from Iran with the help of people smugglers has much to be happy about. Not least is that her first novel, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, has been shortlisted for this year's Stella Prize for writing by Australian women.

That's significant because Azar wasn't sure if her novel, written in Farsi and translated into English, would be understood here. "I wasn't sure people would like my style of writing."
The most interesting part about 12 Strong is that some of it, maybe even a lot of it, might be true, but since Hollywood doesn't care about whether it is or not, it's hard to tell which bits they faked. You can be sure some of it never happened. On the other hand, a lot of this feels pretty credible, even with the compulsory patriotic over-egging.

For the red-blooded American male audience for which it is primarily intended, it also has a heapin' helpin' of the things people in other parts of the world sometimes despise  the hero-shots of American soldiers in slow-motion walking towards camera after the successful completion of their mission, the thrilling aerials of the battlefield (before and after Armageddon) and the quiet sentimental moments as real men look at pictures of wives, girlfriends and kids, dreaming of home. It even has the one-line cliches that every war movie of the last 20 years can't seem to resist. My favourite is "let's do this!"

12 Strong has everything you want in a war picture, almost. The action is frequent and gripping, the heroism present but understated, and the sense of tactical complexity has survived the script-writing process, so there is more geo-political subtlety than one expects from a post-9/11 American war movie.

The story concerns 12 American special forces men who went into Afghanistan a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks to fight with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Their mission was secret  which just means it takes a little longer for it to end up becoming a movie. This one has been in planning since 2009, shortly after Doug Stanton's non-fiction book told the story of these men, who took to horses to fight with their (mainly Pashtun) allies.

Chris Hemsworth has become the world's favourite action man in the last year or two. He's not quite the new Errol Flynn, because Errol was never this buff, but he has carved out a remarkable niche  a masculine ideal who's both soft and strong, funny and hard, and capable of making bad lines sound good.

He has to use all of those talents here as Captain Mitch Nelson, a brilliant soldier who has never actually seen action. Michael Shannon plays his mentor, who backs him up when he demands to lead his old team into Afghanistan to get the bad guys. Michael Pena is his usual reliable sidekick as Sergeant Diller, and David Negahban does good work as Northern Alliance General Dostum, who knows more about war than any of these damned Yankees.

If this film had been made 20 years ago, I guarantee it would have been much stupider than it is. The American war movie since 9/11 has had to sharpen up: people still want wish-fulfilling action, with lots of dead enemy, but they also want to know a bit more about who they are fighting and why.

That's where 12 Strong excels: it offers more complexity than most in this genre. Nelson's soldiers are smarter, less gung-ho, and more informed about Afghan politics and history than I expected.
Rebel Wilson wants $1.3 million extra from Bauer Media on top of the record defamation damages the magazine publisher was ordered to pay the Hollywood star.

Ms Wilson, 38, was last year awarded $4.56 million by a Victorian Supreme Court judge after a jury found the publisher of Woman's Day and The Australian Women's Weekly magazines defamed her in a series of articles in 2015 that depicted the actor as a serial liar about her age, real name and upbringing.

Rebel Wilson after her court victory last year. Credit:Eddie Jim

The payout was the largest for a defamation damages bill in Australian legal history.

Now the Pitch Perfect star wants Bauer Media to pay most of the $1.4 million she spent fighting the case.
It is a lucky thing that Jonathan Bayad, the owner of this cute little Filipino joint, works the floor himself, lunch and dinner. Not too many floorstaff could handle hours on end of These Boots Are Made for Walking, Strangers in the Night, I've Got You Babe, We're Caught in a Trap, and Pretty Woman.

It's OK for you young things, who never heard them first time round. Me, I've heard them a million, billion times. And here they are again at Rey's Place, which is as itsy-bitsy and teeny-weeny as a yellow polka-dot bikini. (Yup, that too.) Named for Bayad senior, it's in a cosy little terrace house just up Crown Street from Bar Reggio. A dark wooden staircase links a small, bottle-lined ground-floor dining room with an equally small basement dining room, with a nostalgic colonial tone set by mantelpiece clocks, marble-topped tables and milk-glass lights.

Kare kare is owner Jonathan Bayad's favourite. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Filipino food has rarely risen above happy, messy street food level in this country, but with a young, food-mad Asian-Australian generation now dining out, its time may have come. Bayad and Filipino head chef Shaun Oligo take the kind of food they grew up with, and dress it up for dinner with mates. So sisig, a rich, porky mix traditionally made with pig's cheeks, ears and livers, comes squished into steamed bao sliders ($14 for two) that give it a slightly claggy mouthfeel.

Anyone lusting after their mum's chicken adobo (an addictive dish of chicken braised in the classic Filipino flavour hits of soy, coconut vinegar and bay leaves) will have to settle for adobong pritong manok ($13) instead; fried chicken wings stuffed with a chicken adobo mousse. It's quite satisfying in its own right, but guys, we want chicken adobo as well.
Good morning, Canberra and happy Friday!

Just one more day of work until the long weekend (if you need some inspo for what to do, we've got you covered).

It was chilly overnight but we're heading for a top of 27 today, with 28 forecast for Saturday and 32 for Sunday.

Let's have a look at what's making news today:

Almost 30 per cent of AMC inmates report heroin use
We told you earlier this week about Canberra mum and businesswoman Mikaela Jade winning the New Generation Award presented by Veuve Clicquot.

Mikaela has developed a free app - Indigital Storytelling - which uses augmented reality, to bring alive ancient indigenous stories.

Canberra woman Mikaela Jade, winner of the a New Generation Award, sponsored by Veuve Clicquot with the champagne house's international director Thomas Bouleuc and Hollywood actress Freida Pinto. Credit:Chloe Paul

She was announced the winner on Tuesday at a lunch in Sydney attended by the likes of Hollywood actress Freida Pinto and Channel Nine's Sylvia Jeffreys.

Thomas Bouleuc, the international director of Veuve Clicquot, also travelled from Paris to Sydney for the event.
Several high-profile Commonwealth government buildings were included in a failed $1 billion property proposal involving the Malaysian government and a senior ACT public servant.

In 2014 Nic Manikis, then a senior official at the Community Services Directorate, tried to broker the deal through a Singapore-incorporated company called Ladylaw Securities, of which he was one of the directors.

Former ACT public servant Nic Manikis has been caught up in a $1billion property deal saga with the Malaysian government. Credit:Jamila Toderas

An investment proposal written by Ladylaw Securities and signed by Mr Manikis included details of seven target properties for purchase by Malaysia's state-controlled Employees Provident Fund.

On the list of target investments was Aviation House, an office block on Furzer Street in Phillip, which was leased at the time by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Australian Public Service Commission.
A legal bid by Salim Mehajer to force his former council to sell him a multimillion-dollar parcel of land in Lidcombe has been thrown out of court after he failed repeatedly to produce documents to the other side.

The property developer and former deputy mayor of Auburn has been in jail since January 24 after he was charged with perverting the course of justice and conspiring to cheat or defraud in relation to an allegedly staged car crash.

Salim Mehajer refused to give his former council access to documents on his laptop. Credit:Daniel Munoz

The 31-year-old made a third bid for bail on Wednesday but was knocked back by the Local Court.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed an unrelated court case brought by one of Mehajer's companies, Sydney Constructions and Developments, against Cumberland Council, into which Auburn Council was amalgamated in May 2016.
The NSW government decision to buy more than $2 billion in new trains that are unable to fit through tunnels in the Blue Mountains would have been better thought through if the government had embraced engineering safeguards that have been proposed for several years.

Believe it or not, anyone in NSW can call themselves an engineer and there is no requirement that engineering advice be taken into account during the conception and development of major projects like this one.

One of the tunnels on the Blue Mountains line that will be upgraded to make it suitable for the new intercity trains.

NSW is now the only major state on the eastern seaboard where this is the case, after Victoria joined Queensland this week in adopting a professional registration system for engineers and the appointment of a chief engineer in government to ensure engineering advice is at the centre of decisions about engineering projects.

Most people are gobsmacked to hear that engineers working on everything from approving your plans for a house extension to managing huge projects like WestConnex do not have to be registered or licensed, unlike other professionals like electricians, architects, doctor and nurses.
An artist's impression of apartment blocks that are planned for Lords Road in Leichhardt if the site is rezoned. Credit:Platino Properties

A developers proposal to rezone industrial land in Leichhardt for a residential development housing more than 300 apartments has attracted widespread opposition from the community.

But the four members of the Sydney Central Planning Panel were evenly split, with the panels chairwoman Maria Atkinson using her casting vote to reject the rezoning proposal for 67-73 Lords Road in August 2017.

The majority found the compelling reason for not supporting the proposal was the loss of employment land, the panel said in its decision.

But the dissenting panel members said a decision not to rezone could damage the integrity and credibility of the planning system.
Tin church rises from the dead

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Months after Brisbane City Council gave the green light to a controversial development at a Brisbane bowls club the lord mayor said he did not want the development at all.

On January 24 the council approved RetireAustralias plans to build 94 units in a complex ranging from three to five storeys at the Tarragindi Bowls Club site.

Design images for the Brisbane City Council-approved Tarragindi Bowls Club development.

The approval was granted despite more than 1800 objections against the development.

Elected Labor representatives across all three levels of government have since supported residents in trying to overturn the decision by way of legal appeal.
The list of Australia's adversaries in the dispute goes some way to explain its duration and its complexity. When negotiations began in the 1970s to establish the seabed boundary between Australia and Timor, Australia had already signed an agreement with Indonesia settling the seabed boundary either side of East Timor. Indonesia's foreign minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, subsequently said with that agreement Australia had "taken his country to the cleaners". Portugal, the colonial power in East Timor, was wary and put off negotiations.

Australia's long-running disagreement over the boundary and the lucrative rights to the Greater Sunrise oilfield  first with Portugal, then Indonesia and latterly with independent Timor-Leste  has now concluded with the signing of a treaty.

Australia should be more sympathetic to Timor-Leste's interests than it has shown itself in the past.

At long last Australia has done something like the right thing by Timor-Leste in the dispute over the maritime boundary the countries share. But it has done so only after trying every other alternative for nearly five decades.

After Portugal abandoned its colony and Indonesia had invaded it, the disputed East Timor boundary, with its resources wealth, came up again. Indonesia was less accommodating. The result was the so-called Timor gap  in effect, a diplomatic agreement to disagree on where the boundary lay. An irregularly shaped patch of seabed territory constituted the boundary, and shared the wealth according to a complex formula that still favoured Australia.

When Timor-Leste became independent in 1999, Australia wanted its new government simply to keep to the terms of the treaty it had inherited from Indonesia. The Timorese, quite reasonably, demurred, but Australia did its best to bully it aside.

Though the dispute's origin as a negotiation between Australia and a colonial power over the rights to mineral resources on the seabed perhaps explains Australia's initial aggression, subsequent developments including the birth of the new, and poor, independent Timor-Leste, removed any justification for it.

Though it did make concessions, Australia has been trying, in effect, to wrest away as much as it can of Timor-Leste's only serious source of national income. For a wealthy country that aspires to be a leader in a relatively poor region, this has not been a good look. Although the agreement ends the boundary dispute and resolves the Timor gap anomaly in Australia's seabed border, it does not settle everything.

One remaining question is the exact division of revenue from resources won from the sea floor in the zone. The agreement stipulates that if a pipeline is built from the Greater Sunrise fields to Timor-Leste for processing, the revenues will be divided 70:30 in Timor-Leste's favour. If the pipeline comes to Australia, where a plant already exists, the ratio would change to 80:20 for Timor-Leste. The difference reflects the gains to be expected from a processing plant for the country hosting it. When the issue comes up for decision, Australia should be more sympathetic to Timor-Leste's interests than it has shown itself in the past.
Two Bureau of Meteorology staff have reportedly been questioned by Australian Federal Police over an elaborate cryptocurrency operation using the bureau's powerful computers.

On Thursday the AFP confirmed officers raided a business at a Docklands address on Wednesday, February 28, in relation to an ongoing investigation but declined to comment further.

A single unit of cryptocurrency Bitcoin is currently worth $13,000. Credit:Bloomberg

ABC News reports two IT workers at the government agency, whose Melbourne offices are on Collins Street in Docklands, were questioned over allegedly using the bureau's computers to mine for cryptocurrency such as bitcoin.

Cryptocurrency miners compete against each other to solve complex mathematical problems with the first person to succeed awarded a set amount of cryptocurrency.
A Victorian detective has been charged with multiple offences, including having prohibited weapons and leaking secret police information after a probe by the corruption watchdog.

The detective senior constable was charged on Thursday with offences including seven counts of improperly taking advantage of a regulated person's position, two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon, and one count of unlawful disclosure of police information.

The alleged offending, dating back to 2015, follows an investigation by the Independent Broad-Based Anti-corruption Commission and the matter is due before the Dromana Magistrates' Court on April 5.

AAP
Public housing can be a tough place for kids to have fun, especially when the government takes away your trampoline.

Brothers Amaniel, 3, and Isaiah, 5, were given a trampoline by their grandparents as a Christmas present after moving into the Carlton North public housing estate with their mother and baby sister in September.

Since then, they've been happily bouncing with the other kids who live there. That was until the department responsible for public housing recently vowed to remove the trampolines because of liability fears.

Amaniel and Isaiah play on their trampoline before it is taken away. Credit:Jason South

The boys' mother, Sara Gebrehiwot, said having the trampoline at the estate was a good thing because it kept her children occupied and helped them make friends.
It happens so often, that its not even remarkable. Men leer as they walk past or hang from car windows and make sexist comments.

And its this cloying harassment that brought 16-year-old Faith OConnor-Ludowyke and her friend Sunday Belford-Long, also 16, to the International Womens Day rally on the steps of Melbournes State Library.

Maetenee Long, 19, Sunday Belford-Long, 16, and Faith OConnor-Ludowyke, 16, at the International Women's Day rally in central Melbourne. Credit:Miki Perkins

Im sick of not being able to walk down the street without a dirty old man making comments, says Ms OConnor-Ludowyke.
Nearly 30 residents will be booted from a troublesome St Kilda boarding house as the state government responds to complaints from neighbours about violence, drug taking and street prostitution in the area.

Melbourne comedian and prominent radio host Kate Langbroek brought national attention to the issue when she complained about violence around the Regal boarding house on Little Grey Street after she was injured in an attack at her home last Friday.

The Regal boarding house on Little Grey Street in St Kilda. Credit:Google Maps

She told her radio listeners on Wednesday that dangerous behaviour had become "rampant" in the suburb ever since residents of the former Gatwick Hotel were moved into nearby public housing.

"I love St Kilda and I'm not going to stand by and watch it happen," she later told The Age. "You can't have this housing establishment in the middle of other homes and apartments without some security."
Construction will resume on the $6.7 billion West Gate Tunnel project less than 24 hours after the controversial project was dramatically blocked in Parliament by the Coalition and the Greens.

Workers involved in major construction on the tunnel received phone calls while they were on the job on Wednesday afternoon telling them to stop work after a special planning scheme amendment was revoked.

Planning amendments are needed for projects that require rezoning before they can be built. Blocking an amendment in Parliament is historically rare, but the strategy is being increasingly used by the Coalition and the Greens to stop government projects.

An artist's impression of the Footscray Road elevated freeway section of the West Gate Tunnel. Credit:Victorian government

Planning Minister Richard Wynne signed a new planning scheme amendment on Thurday morning to allow construction to continue.
Utzon resigns

"Discussion between Mr Joern Utzon and Government and Opposition leaders yesterday only confirmed Mr Utzon's resignation as architect for the Sydney Opera House project. Mr Utzon said that he had intended up to yesterday to stay architect of the Opera House, but he felt the Government had forced him out of the project. He had not been able to get anywhere in his last eight to 10 months' work."

Troubled waters

"The U.S. Ambassador to Spain splashed in the Mediterranean off Palomares today, just to show there is no radioactive danger in the water. In the same area, meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. Air Force and Navy men continued to search for a missing nuclear bomb, lost after a B-52 bomber crashed in January. The Ambassador, Mr Angier Biddle Duke, went to the beach to calm fears of lingering danger from the lost bomb."

To the point
Victoria's pollution watchdog has failed to properly monitor air quality across the state with many highly-populated centres going unchecked, a scathing review has found.

A report by the Victorian Auditor General has revealed the Environment Protection Authority was unable to show that its data collection truly reflected the air quality experienced in most Victorian communities.

The audit analysed EPA data monitoring between 2010 and 2016.

Traffic on The West Gate Bridge. Credit:Pat Scala

It identified 40 urban centres, using 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics data, that were not covered by the EPAs air monitoring network.
Basically, a network of volunteers' computers bounces traffic around the globe, which prevents anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis from being able to discern a user's location or usage. Data gets encrypted at each bounce until it reaches its destination, where it is decrypted without the final destination being able to tell where it has come from. What was your first impression of Tor when you downloaded it? It took me only minutes to download the browser and it's free. It's not as glamorous-looking as I expected; many of the sites are very plain and slow. It can get down to old dial-up speeds. Journalist Eileen Ormsby: "There are those who believe the dark web is the future of the internet." Credit:Kristoffer Paulsen You've spent the last five years investigating the dark web. What's the big fascination?

It began for me with Silk Road, the dark web drugs bazaar set up in early 2011 that sold every drug imaginable. I knew several people who were using Silk Road  to buy marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine  but it was also much more than just a market to buy drugs. I'm a strong advocate for drug law reform. I believe that prohibition, the "war on drugs", is killing people. Silk Road seemed to offer a safer alternative to people who were going to buy drugs anyway, by providing harm-reduction advice and sellers who had public feedback  in much the same way as eBay or Amazon  which encouraged quality control. Silk Road had a philosophy of not selling anything "the purpose of which is to harm or defraud another person" and offered customers the opportunity to purchase drugs in a violence-free environment. I didn't agree with most of the extreme libertarianism of Silk Road, but some things resonated. I became an active member of the Silk Road community, engaging with the many characters who inhabited that world. From there I started my website, All Things Vice, which was mostly dark web-related news. Transactions on the dark web have traditionally been via the electronic currency bitcoin, which is virtually untraceable. Bitcoin was the original cryptocurrency of choice on the dark web, created in part as a response to the global financial crisis as a "f... you" to the banks. Neither the sender nor the receiver needed to know the identity of one another.

Bitcoin is used for dark web transactions. Credit:AFP How does bitcoin work? A customer finds someone who is selling bitcoin, which is perfectly legal. Once they agree to a price, the customer makes a cash deposit into the bitcoin seller's account, and once that happens, the agreed amount of bitcoin is transferred into the digital address provided. Do you see bitcoin becoming the major currency of the 21st century? Maybe not bitcoin, but certainly cryptocurrency. Bitcoin itself has fallen victim to its own popularity over the past year, becoming slow and expensive to transfer because it was not designed to be so heavily used. However the technology that underpins it, the blockchain, is being developed in all kinds of legitimate ways and new cryptos are emerging daily. Most of them are scams or pump-and-dump schemes, but some have shown ongoing stability.

Many people say bitcoin will be the Myspace of cryptocurrency: the trailblazer, dominant in the early days, but eventually taken over by a superior kind of Facebook or Instagram. Administrators of markets within the dark web are now experimenting with other currencies, such as monero and litecoin, which may become the currency of choice. Silk Road was shut down in late 2013 by US authorities and its kingpins later jailed, but a huge amount of bitcoin went missing. You interviewed a Silk Road supplier called Mongoose in prison in Bangkok who had a theory  Mongoose is probably "Variety Jones", one of the original architects of Silk Road; he's considered by many the brains behind the operation. After Silk Road was taken down by US authorities, they seized bitcoin worth several million dollars, but a lot of the currency couldn't be accounted for: estimates ranged between 400,000 and 600,000 missing bitcoins. Ross Ulbricht (the owner of Silk Road) led a simple life in San Francisco; there's no evidence he cashed out the bitcoins he amassed. Four-hundred-thousand bitcoins would be a gobsmacking $6 billion today; a single bitcoin was worth less than $1 when Silk Road started. The Silk Road site, shut down in 2013, was a dark-web bazaar for drugs. During the Silk Road investigation, two of the lead agents  one with the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the other with the Secret Service  were found to be corrupt, feeding Ross Ulbricht information in return for payment. These two are now serving prison sentences in the US. The defence team of Ulbricht unearthed an as-yet-unidentified third rogue law-enforcement agent.

Mongoose ran a tale that this rogue agent got it into his head that Mongoose knew how to extract the missing bitcoin from Ulbricht. He said the agent had threatened to kidnap Ulbrichts family until he gave up the whereabouts of the bitcoin. However, Mongoose is a colourful character to say the least, and its difficult to separate fact from fantasy. Did Silk Road have links with drug cartels? The markets that came after it dwarfed Silk Road's size in both the number of illegal goods for sale, and profits. That said, dark web transactions form a miniscule part of the worldwide drug trade. So far none of the owners of the sites who have been identified have had any obvious links to organised crime or cartels. Obviously, some of the drugs would originate from the cartels and it is likely some organised crime groups are on the dark web as vendors. British model Chloe Ayling recently grabbed headlines after claiming she'd been kidnapped in Milan by two men who planned to auction her on the dark web. Since Ayling's release, the truth of her story has been questioned by authorities. Do sex auctions really happen on the dark web? While there is no doubt human traffickers use the dark web to communicate and conduct business, there is zero evidence of sites where public auctions of kidnapped Page 3 models take place.

British model Chloe Ayling claimed shed been kidnapped in Milan to be sold on the dark web. Ayling's captors were supposedly going to auction her on a site called Black Death. Is this real? There is certainly a site called Black Death on the dark web, but I doubt you will receive a blonde in the mail if you send them bitcoin. Motherboard, an online magazine, published an article on Black Death a couple of years ago, and readers soon matched the photographs that were supposedly girls for sale with stills from BDSM movies on Pornhub. What about hit men on sites like Besa Mafia, offering everything from a savage dog bite on a target to a fatal gunshot? Hit-man services are a staple of the dark web. In my book I go through trying to hire one to kill a (fictional) ex-husband of mine. People tend to think of hit men as the suave, stealthy assassins we see in the movies, but often their advertisements are barely literate. Besa Mafia was different, offering a slick website interface and the proven techniques of the darknet markets of bringing buyers and sellers together. The idea was that the hit man and the person ordering the hit would never need to know each other's identities, but mistakes get made. I attended a trial in Minnesota of someone who paid Besa Mafia $US13,000 to murder a devoutly religious wife and mother and there were a lot of twists and great detective work that went into unmasking her killer.

The Besa Mafia site boasted of offering killers for hire. You were threatened by Besa Mafia. After I started writing about Besa Mafia's operations, the owner started bombarding me with threats: everything from hacking my computer and placing child porn on it, to sending one of his operatives to beat me up and rape me. He was fond of reminding me that I didn't know who or where he was, but he knew who I was and where I lived. As I'm still standing, I can tell you my relationship with the potential hit man took an unexpected turn. This example, of ISIS terrorists being killed, was a hoax. Is it fair to say that "white collar" crime  stolen credit cards, forgeries, stolen banking details  is increasing on the dark web?

I'm not sure I would consider it "white collar", as it's generally seen as one of the lowest classes of crime within the darknet markets. "Carders" are often treated with derision as common thieves. Silk Road didn't allow the sale of anything designed to defraud others, so back in those days "carders" operated in completely separate markets. More recent mass markets within the dark web allow such sales, but many drug buyers are uncomfortable sharing a place with them. There are fewer technical barriers to getting into carding now, so more people are doing it. Fake IDs have always, and will always, be a staple of any sort of crime, online or off. Just when we might think some of the stories of the dark web may be sensationalised, we discover that British paedophile Matthew Falder has just been jailed for 32 years in the UK for crimes including encouraging child rape on the site Hurt 2 The Core. Police described the geophysics researcher as the worst sex offender they have encountered online. Matthew Falder was caught as part of the multinational taskforce sting that brought down the dark web's PedoEmpire network, which was run by Australian Matthew Graham. Hurt 2 The Core was a PedoEmpire site dedicated to sourcing, sharing and discussing all aspects of "hurtcore". Hurtcore is a fetish for people who get aroused by the infliction of pain, or even torture, on another person who is not a willing participant. British paedophile Matthew Falder. Credit:AP

Although it can apply to animals, adults or children, the hurtcore sites on the dark web tend to be almost exclusively a subset of the paedophile sites. It can be so sadistic that even most paedophiles are repulsed by it. Videos and photos generally come out of poverty-stricken countries, but the market is worldwide. Falder was unique in that he forced his victims to torture themselves rather than abuse them personally. He used the Hurt 2 The Core forums to crowd-source ideas for blackmailing his victims into increasingly humiliating and painful acts. These were the most difficult sections of the book to write. It took up to 100 investigators four years to track and detain Falder, and he's just one of possibly thousands of evil doers on the dark web. What does that say about its impenetrability? The desk and computer where Falder plotted his crimes. Credit:AP The dark web creates a lot of problems for law enforcement because they can't track users through the usual computer methods. They have to rely on old-fashioned detective work, trying to identify users through distinctive features in pictures and videos, or through social media. The paedophilia scene adds a further layer of complexity because the vast majority of it is not commercial. With the drugs/weapons/ fraud markets, there is a money (or cryptocurrency) trail to follow. Illegal porn tends to be made and shared among participants for free.

To get access to the most extreme sites, members have to provide original material depicting child abuse, so obviously law enforcement can't participate in that. At best, they can hope to take over the account of someone they have busted, but even that can be short-lived as members have to constantly produce new material or be locked out. Law enforcement has undertaken some very controversial methods, including running one of the largest paedophile sites in the world for more than a year in order to try to identify as many offenders as possible. What is the biggest myth about the dark web? The biggest myth by far is that it's 10 times larger than the internet; this gets propagated by tabloid media all the time. It stems from a lot from people using the terms "deep web" and "dark web" interchangeably when they are different things. The deep web is just everything that you won't reach using Google or any other search engines, such as the pages behind a pay wall or a password (your banking details, for example). The dark web makes up a tiny fraction of the deep web. A really, really tiny fraction. It's infinitely smaller than the clear web. As for myths of what can be found on the dark web, many people believe there is a further, deeper, darker section of the dark web, called Mariana's Web or the Shadow Web, containing the greatest horrors. Snuff movies. Gladiator fights to the death. A collection of psychopaths who play demented games of conkers, swinging babies by their ankles to try to crush the skull of their opponent's child. They're all just creepy stories.

The most popular myth of all is "red rooms", where people  usually women  are tortured to death live on camera while those who have paid to watch type in torture commands in a chat box. Think the movie Hostel, with webcams. There is some truth to this rumour, but the execution is not like you see in the movies. Most notably, because it involves children, not adults. How big a problem is "doxxing" on the dark web: releasing someone's personal data (address, phone number, email) to blackmail them? To be honest, I've seen very little of this, in the way you describe it, on the dark web. It's more common on the clear web. The greatest crime you can commit within a dark web community is the doxxing of somebody. Every illegal market or forum will remove any attempts to dox one of their users and ban the username that posts the information. It is considered the digital equivalent of ratting on someone to law enforcement. On the other hand, those same markets have no problem selling stolen personal information from hackers that will be used for financial gain. Many people who use the dark web aren't criminals. Whistleblowers, journalists and free-speech advocates can depend on it. Does the dark web have its place? It most certainly does. The dark web is a useful tool for people who need privacy and secrecy: people living under oppressive regimes may use it to share views that oppose their government, or even just to access Facebook. Journalists can use it to safely confer with their sources; humanitarian workers can use it to meet and discuss their work. Whistleblowers can upload documents and data without any chance of it being digitally traced back to them. WikiLeaks is an example of an early adopter of Tor for whistleblowers.

There are those who believe the dark web is the future of the internet and that this will be a good thing because it will give us our privacy back. Our mobiles and PCs contain our entire life, information that is being heavily mined by everything from Facebook to the banks. Most of us somewhat willingly give up our privacy for the convenience of cookies remembering our login details, or how much of a video we watched, or which sporting event we've been to recently. Everywhere we go online, we leave a digital footprint: of our browsing history, our purchases, our taste in clothes, our political affiliations, our physical location. We happily hand over detailed personal information to a company in the hope of getting a free latte when we walk past a coffee chain. We've given up our privacy for convenience, and that's not always a good thing. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter seem to be particularly vulnerable to hackers and evidence suggests the malware problem  malicious software that spreads viruses and Trojan horses  is growing. Google and Facebook started out with a do-no-evil image, but they have sold us out, despite all their demurrals. Even by doing a Facebook quiz you're giving a lot of information away. Are you telling us we should be more worried about the clear web than the dark web?
Launched in October last year and nicknamed 'Codi', Telstra says its virtual assistant makes use of "artificial intelligence" and has already engaged with "hundreds of thousands" of customers.

Telstra customers have blasted the launch of a virtual assistant support 'chatbot' that fails to answer basic questions, can't differentiate between names and countries, and is often unable to transfer users to a human agent without multiple attempts.

It comes as research firm Gartner recently predicted that 25 per cent of all customer service operations would use virtual customer assistants by 2020.

"As more customers engage on digital channels, virtual customer assistants are being implemented for handling customer requests on websites, mobile apps, consumer messaging apps and social networks," Gene Alvarez, managing vice president at Gartner, said in February.

"This is underpinned by improvements in natural-language processing, machine learning and intent-matching capabilities."

Organisations making use of virtual customer assistants have reported a reduction of up to 70 per cent in call, chat and/or email inquiries after implementing it, according to Gartner research. They also report increased customer satisfaction and a 33 per cent saving per voice engagement.

"A great virtual customer assistant offers more than just information," Alvarez said. "It should enrich the customer experience, help the customer throughout the interaction and process transactions on behalf of the customer."
The endless horizon of ramshackle refugee shelters lining the hills of Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, is a world away from the views across Sydney harbour that will greet Aung San Suu Kyi when she flies into Sydney next week for the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit.

Yet the plight of the one million Rohingya refugees that reside there must be front and centre on the ASEAN agenda when the Australian government hosts one of the first visits of Suu Kyi outside of Myanmar since the Rohingya crisis began.

Aung San Suu Kyi. Credit:AP

The leadership of Suu Kyi, who heads the civilian government in Myanmar, has been under intense scrutiny since the violence in August 2017  condemned by the United Nations as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing"  led to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing for their lives.

Her critics may argue that Australia should not host her visit, given her failure to condemn the violence against the Rohingya. But Australia is right to extend the invitation. The ASEAN summit presents a key opportunity for leaders in our region to engage with Myanmars leader in finding a durable solution to this crisis. And, as host, Australia also has a special responsibility to show leadership.
Hanoi: Mai Khoi Do Nguyen has long been described as Vietnams Lady Gaga. In more recent years, as her political activism has come to the fore, her expressions of rude dissent, she has also been compared to Russia's infamous protest band, Pussy Riot.

Both comparisons hold true, and yet neither do. Mai Khoi is both a serious artist and a serious activist. She insists that the two sides of the coin cannot be so easily isolated from one another.

Mai Khoi Do Nguyen, Vietnam's answer to Pussy Riot.

Western journalists often see Vietnam through a political lens, Mai Khoi says. When they report on me, the focus is on acts of dissent and my music gets filtered out.

However, to a large extent, Mai Khoi has invited this focus.
Head of counter-terrorism policing Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley speaks about the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Credit:AP

London: The former Russian double agent poisoned with a nerve agent in an attempted murder last weekend was linked to the company that compiled the infamous Trump dossier alleging the US President had compromising Russian connections, British media have reported.

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were still in a critical but stable condition in intensive care after the attack in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon, UK time.

Skripal was convicted of treason and imprisoned in 2006 in Russia for passing intelligence to MI6. In 2010 he was pardoned and sent to the UK as part of a spy swap deal.

The London Telegraph reported that he moved to Salisbury and became close to a security consultant employed by Christopher Steele, a former spy who founded an investigative research firm called Orbis Business Intelligence.
Such suspected lethal clandestine operations on foreign soil were supposedly consigned to the dustbin of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991. History, according to some, "ended" at that point. The ineluctable march of the Western model of free market economies combined with democratic polities seemed inevitable. Whatever contingencies might arise, at least we would never live in the shadow of a nuclear holocaust again.

The one-time double agent has been living in Britain since gaining his freedom from a Russian jail as part of a prisoner-spy swap with the West eight years ago. Now he is in a critical condition in hospital, along with his daughter, after being poisoned with a nerve agent . A police officer who was one of the first on the scene is seriously ill.

Now Russia has returned as an assertive, expansionist power with a substantial nuclear arsenal, though without Marxism or Leninism. Its leader considered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. Those events made an indelible impression on Vladimir Putin, who was stationed in Dresden as a middle-ranking KGB officer. His personal sense of grievance and humiliation plays an inordinate role in framing the strategic behaviour of the resurgent Russian Federation.

The Western alliance has been slow to respond to the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia as a disruptive power. This has been a dangerous collective failure, the roots of which are structural and cultural. The hubris that mistakenly classified the collapse of a single political system for permanent triumph of our way of life is obvious with hindsight. Having been a military professional for much of the period since the Vietnam War, the perils of prediction are obvious to me.

Remember when the "inevitable" rise of Japan and the eclipse of American hegemony was the central issue of the US election campaign in 1992? Remember Tony Blair in Chicago in 1999, nobly but naively proclaiming the universal right of the West to intervene to stop genocide anywhere in the world? Then the long war against Islamic extremism, which would consume our attention and resources for the remainder of the 21st century?

British police guard a restaurant in Salisbury, near to where Sergei Skripal was found critically ill. Credit:AP

It is easy to scoff at failed predictions. However, strategists and policymakers are obliged to try to forecast the immediate and long-term future. Such imperfect speculation shapes policy - and the diplomatic postures and military forces that are required to execute them. If the future defies meaningful prediction, what lessons does history offer?
Former Melbourne school principal Malka Leifer has been placed on house arrest after a Rabbi's testimony. Credit:AP

Jerusalem: An Israeli court has ordered the former principal of an ultra-Orthodox school in Australia wanted on child sexual abuse charges to be freed from detention on house arrest, after the defence brought in a chief rabbi to vouch for her.

Malka Leifer is set to be released on bail on March 9 at 10am local time, pending an appeal by the prosecutor.

She would be monitored by two supervisors in the northern Israeli town of Migdal Haemek under the custody of the towns chief rabbi, Yitzhak Grossman, who was brought in as a character witness by her defence lawyer.

Rabbi Grossman, the recipient of the 2004 Israel Prize, the country's highest cultural honour, argued to the court for the accused former principal of Elsternwick's Adass Israel school to be freed while she fights extradition to Australia.
The Syrian government onslaught on eastern Ghouta, which began more than two weeks ago, has become one of the fiercest campaigns of a war now entering its eighth year, with bombardment killing hundreds of people. White Helmet rescuers carry a victim after airstrikes and shelling hit in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus on Wednesday. Credit:AP Live footage broadcast by Syrian state TV from the outskirts of the town of Mesraba earlier on Wednesday showed enormous clouds of smoke rising into the sky. The sounds of explosions and jets could be heard. A state TV correspondent said militant defences in the town were being hit by "preparatory fire" in advance of a planned infantry assault. "Mesraba is under heavy attack today," said Khalil Aybour, a member of an opposition council in Ghouta. Capturing Mesraba would be a major step towards severing the northern half of Ghouta, including its biggest town Douma, from the southern part. Government forces have seized more than 50 per cent of the territory so far.

On Wednesday pro-government forces advanced, taking the small town of Beit Sawa to Misraba's south, a Hezbollah-run media unit said. The Observatory said this advance deeper into the centre of the enclave enabled them to bring the remaining north-south link within firing range. Civilians have been fleeing frontline areas into Douma and hiding in cellars, with aid workers saying many children had told them they had not seen daylight in 20 days. "It's bad in the basement, but it's better than the bombing," Adnan, 30, a Douma resident who has been sheltering below ground with his wife and two-year-old daughter together with 10 other families, told Reuters by telephone. The United Nations says 400,000 people are trapped in the towns and villages of the eastern Ghouta, under government siege for years and already running out of food and medicine before the assault. An aid convoy reached the area this week but government officials had stripped out most medical supplies. The United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, Ali al-Zatari, asked the government to commit to a ceasefire on Thursday to let in more aid.

At least 867 civilians killed Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful ally, has offered rebels safe passage out with their families and personal weapons, while continuing to aid in the offensive. The proposal echoes previous agreements under which insurgents, in the face of military defeat, were permitted to withdraw to opposition-held areas along the Turkish border. The Observatory said that at least 867 civilians have been killed by government bombing and shelling in this offensive, with at least 62 killed on Wednesday. The Observatory said an extra 700 pro-government militia fighters had arrived at the front as reinforcements to join the operation. The UN Security Council called on Wednesday for its February 24 resolution demanding a 30-day ceasefire across Syria to be implemented and it voiced concern about the country's humanitarian plight, the council president said.

Despite the ceasefire resolution, Moscow and Damascus have not halted the campaign to retake eastern Ghouta, arguing that the fighters they are striking are members of banned terrorist groups unprotected by the truce. The Russian Defence Ministry said some rebels wanted to accept the proposal to evacuate. So far rebels have dismissed it in public. The military spokesman for one of the main eastern Ghouta rebel groups said it would defend the territory and there were no negotiations over a withdrawal. "The factions of Ghouta and their fighters and its people are holding onto their land and will defend it," Hamza Birqdar of Jaish al-Islam told Reuters in a text message. The opposition says such evacuation agreements amount to a policy of demographic change by which Assad has forcibly displaced those who oppose him. In an interview on state TV, a Syrian army colonel expressed confidence that Ghouta would fall quickly, saying the people there would return to the "state's embrace ... very, very, very soon".

Russian warplanes have taken part in the eastern Ghouta operation, and the White House has accused Russia of complicity in the killing of civilians there. Defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the worst setback for the anti-Assad rebellion since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing, ground assaults and the promise of safe passage out. Moscow and Damascus say the Ghouta campaign was necessary to halt rebel shelling of the capital. The Observatory says such shelling has killed at least 27 people in Damascus since February 18. Syrian state media gave a higher death toll and said at least five people were injured on Wednesday due to rockets falling on government-held Damascus. A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad said he anticipated rebels would end up cornered in Douma and would accept a withdrawal deal.
Florida legislators, spurred by last month's deadly high school shooting, have passed a raft of new laws to raise the legal age for buying rifles, impose a three-day waiting period on all gun sales and allow the arming of some school employees.

Swift action in the Republican-controlled statehouse, where the National Rifle Association (NRA) has long held sway, was propelled in large part by the extraordinary lobbying efforts of young survivors from the massacre three weeks ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

It governor Rick Scott signs it, it will be the first successful gun control measure in Florida in more than 20 years.

But the legislation, while containing a number of provisions student activists and their parents from Parkland had embraced, left out one of their chief demands - a ban on assault-style weapons like the one used in the February 14 rampage.
The second disturbing development for Trump is the growing financial scandal(s) hanging over Kushner's head. His security clearance was downgraded, setting off much interest in his financial situation. He was already known to be deeply in debt, filed multiple corrections to his financial disclosure form and met with the CEO of a Russian bank under US sanctions. But there is much, much more. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, with Ivanka Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday. Credit:AP Ethics experts Fred Wertheimer, Norman Eisen and Virginia Canter write on Kushner's White House meetings with representatives of two financial firms, Apollo Global Management and Citigroup, before receiving massive loans. That's an ethics thicket that may go beyond the appearance of a conflict of interest. "That will depend on the details of the discussions that took place between Kushner and [Apollo executive Joshua] Harris, and the benefits Harris and Apollo may have received," they write. "The possible violations here are many. For example, according to [American] ABC News, six weeks after Apollo extended its loan, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an inquiry into the private investment fund. ABC said, 'While there's no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the agency's decision to drop the inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the timing has once again raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner's family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.' " Kushner is now caught up in two other financial controversies. The first involves Qatar. ("Kushner also has an apparent or perhaps even an actual conflict with respect to matters involving that country, in part because it is one of Apollo's largest investors in its real estate trust. Qatar was also considered a prospective investor for the Kushner family property at 666 Fifth Ave. in New York, which has a $US1.2 billion mortgage loan due early next year.") Kushner should have recused himself from matters dealing with Qatar but instead played a role "in determining a US response to the blockade of Qatar by its Saudi and United Arab Emirates neighbours . . . only a month after the Kushner Cos. unsuccessfully solicited funding from the Qatar finance minister for the 666 Fifth Ave property."

The second concerns a report that four foreign governments were aware of Kushner's financial problems and may have attempted to exploit his finances in dealings with Kushner. One is left with the sinking feeling that any Kushner meeting with a foreign government or a financial institution may involve improper influence-peddling and conflicts. Perhaps he should stay home for the foreseeable future. Stormy Daniels in 2007. Daniels' lawsuit seeking to void an agreement silencing her in exchange for $US130,000 is now a topic of much questioning in the White House press room. Sanders declared without explanation, "The President has denied the allegations against him and, again, this case has already been won in arbitration." But what about the lawsuit alleging that she was coerced by Michael Cohen and Trump into signing a false statement? As for the hush money and whether Trump knew about the payment, Sanders could only say, "Not that I'm aware of." That's the classic non-denial denial. The lawsuit is not just embarrassing; the payment, if known to Trump and designed to preserve his presidential campaign, as Daniels alleges, may have violated several laws. For starters, it was never reported in financial disclosure statements. Eisen, Noah Bookbinder and Richard Painter have filed a claim with the Office of Government Ethics alleging that Trump should have identified the agreement in his financial disclosure statement filed in June 2017. Eisen tells me, "Certainly there is a very substantial potential campaign finance violation here. But as more and more information comes out about the actual transaction with Stormy, there is also a significant possible omission on the President's financial disclosure forms. . . . Those forms require disclosure of all the President's assets and liabilities."

He asserts that "we cannot help but ask whether he intentionally omitted information about his interest in the Stormy Daniels agreement and the LLC that holds it - an apparent asset." Because that disclosure is filed under penalty of perjury, Eisen has also filed a complaint with the Justice Department. Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney. Meanwhile, Common Cause has filed a claim with the Federal Election Commission alleging that the deal was a campaign contribution. If Cohen paid it all by himself, it's above the legal limit; if Trump ultimately paid it, he failed to disclose it. Eisen and Painter explain: "If Trump has an outstanding debt to Cohen for the $US130,000 payment, or an interest in the LLC that holds the agreement, he should have disclosed them; our watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics asking them to get to the bottom of the matter. Such omissions - if any - would have been disqualifying in the White Houses in which we worked, and no clearances would have been forthcoming while any question remained open. "And that is just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally hundreds of other issues. Take Trump's web of financial dealings that exposes him to influence by foreign governments, sovereign wealth funds and banks controlled by foreign governments. His extensive business activities in foreign countries including Canada, China, the Dominican Republic, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Scotland, St Martin, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Venezuela have already yielded conflicts or potential conflicts."
Bogota: Colombia's FARC political party hasdropped out of this year's presidential race, as their candidate, former guerrilla commander Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londono, recovers from heart surgery.

In a statement, the party cited Wednesday's surgery and the overall political environment for the decision, saying they were abandoning "our presidential aspirations."

Former guerilla leader, Rodrigo Londono, smiles during a press conference last month. Credit:Bloomberg

The FARC - formerly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - signed a peace deal in November 2016 that put an end to the hemisphere's oldest and largest guerrilla group.

Under the terms of that controversial agreement, the FARC are guaranteed 10 congressional seats in Sunday's legislative election.
Data explosion: Futureproofing your video surveillance infrastructure

Video surveillance systems are producing more unstructured data than ever before. A dramatic decrease in camera costs in recent years has led many businesses to invest in comprehensive surveillance coverage, with more cameras generating more data. Plus, advances in technology mean that the newest (8K) cameras are generating approximately 800% more data than their predecessors (standard definition). Traditional entry-level solutions like network video recorders (NVRs) simply arent built to handle massive amounts of data in an efficient, resilient and cost-effective manner. This has left many security pioneers grappling with a data storage conundrum. Should they continue adding more NVR boxes? Or is there another, better, route? Retaining video data In short, yes. To future proof their video surveillance infrastructure, an increasing number of businesses are adopting an end-to-end surveillance architecture with well-integrated, purpose-built platforms for handling video data through its lifecycle. This presents significant advantages in terms of security, compliance and scalability, as well as unlocking new possibilities for data enrichment. All of this with a lower total cost of ownership than traditional solutions. Security teams would typically delete recorded surveillance footage after a few days or weeks Previously, security teams would typically delete recorded surveillance footage after a few days or weeks. However, thanks to increasingly stringent legal and compliance demands, many are now required to retain video data for months or even years. Theres no doubt that this can potentially benefit investigations and increase prosecutions, but it also puts significant pressure on businesses storage infrastructure. Data lifecycle management This necessitates a more intelligent approach to data lifecycle management. Rather than simply storing video data in a single location until its wiped, an end-to-end video surveillance solution can intelligently migrate data to different storage platforms and media as it ages. So, how does this work? Video is recorded and analysed on a combination of NVR, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and application servers. Then, its moved to resilient file storage for a pre-determined period, where it can be immediately retrieved and accessed for review. Finally, based on policies set by heads of security, data is moved from file storage to highly secure, low-cost archive storage such as an object, tape or cloud. Data is moved from file storage to highly secure, low-cost archive storage Long-term storage This process is known as tiering. It allows businesses to use reliable, inexpensive long-term storage for most of their data, whilst still enabling security pioneers to retrieve video data when the need arises, such as during a compliance audit, or to review footage following a security breach. In a nutshell, it offers them the best of both worlds. Scaling your video surveillance infrastructure can be a headache. Businesses that rely on NVRs  even high-end units with 64 or even 96 hard drives  are finding themselves running out of capacity increasingly quickly. In order to scale, security pioneers then have to procure new boxes. With NVRs, this inevitably involves a degree of guesswork. Should they go for the largest possible option, and risk over provisioning? Or perhaps a smaller option, and risk running out of capacity again? Common management console Security pioneers can easily add or remove storage capacity or compute resources  separately or together As businesses add new cameras or replace existing ones, many end up with inadequate surveillance infrastructure made up of multiple NVR boxes along with several application servers for running other surveillance functions such as access control, security photo databases, analytics, etc. This patchwork approach leaves security pioneers scrambling for capacity, maintaining various hardware footprints, repeating updates and checks across multiple systems, and taking up valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere. By contrast, flexible HCI surveillance platforms aggregate the storage and ecosystem applications to run on the same infrastructure and combine viewing under a common management console, avoiding swivel chair management workflows. Plus, they offer seamless scalability. Security pioneers can easily add or remove storage capacity or compute resources  separately or together. Data storage solutions Over time, this ensures a lower total cost of ownership. First and foremost, it removes the risk of over provisioning and helps to control hardware sprawl. This in turn leads to hardware maintenance savings and lower power use. Many security pioneers are now looking beyond simple data storage solutions for their video surveillance footage. Meta tags can provide context around data, making it easier to find and access when needed Instead, theyre asking themselves how analysing this data can enable their teams to work faster, more efficiently and productively. Implementing an end-to-end video surveillance architecture enables users to take advantage of AI and machine learning applications which can tag and enrich video surveillance data. These have several key benefits. Firstly, meta tags can provide context around data, making it easier to find and access when needed. Object storage platform For instance, if security teams are notified of a suspicious red truck, they can quickly find data with this tag, rather than manually searching through hours of data, which can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Plus, meta tags can be used to mark data for future analysis. This means that as algorithms are run over time, policies can be set to automatically store data in the right location. For example, if a video is determined to contain cars driving in and out of your premises, it would be moved to long-term archiving such as an object storage platform for compliance purposes. If, on the other hand, it contained 24 hours of an empty parking lot, it could be wiped. These same meta tags may be used to eventually expire the compliance data in the archive after it is no longer needed based on policy. Video surveillance architecture Continuing to rely on traditional systems like NVRs will fast become unsustainable for businesses Even if your organisation isnt using machine learning or artificial intelligence-powered applications to enhance your data today, it probably will be one, three, or even five years down the line. Implementing a flexible end-to-end video surveillance solution prepares you for this possibility. With new advances in technology, the quantity of data captured by video surveillance systems will continue rising throughout the coming decade. As such, continuing to rely on traditional systems like NVRs will fast become unsustainable for businesses. Looking forward, when moving to an end-to-end video surveillance architecture, security pioneers should make sure to evaluate options from different vendors. For true futureproofing, its a good idea to opt for a flexible, modular solution, which allow different elements to be upgraded to more advanced technologies when they become available.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies with a few showers later in the day. High 83F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Rain showers in the evening will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Low 73F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Image 1 of 22 (Image credit: Roscosmos) First woman in space: Valentina Tereshkova The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, blazed a trail for the many female spaceflyers who would follow. Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, was selected from more than 400 applicants to launch on the Vostok 6 mission June 16, 1963. She was 26 at the time. Born in the village of Maslennikovo northeast of Moscow, Tereshkova volunteered for the Soviet cosmonaut program after Yuri Gagarin made history as the first man to fly in space on April 12, 1961. She was not a pilot, but had extensive parachuting experience, with 126 jumps under her belt. (Gagarin parachuted to Earth, ejecting from the Vostok capsule during descent as part of the landing sequence.) Infographic: How Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 Vostok 6 flight worked Tereshkova was one of four women who received 18 months of training for Vostok 6, and was ultimately selected to pilot the flight. The mission launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome two days after Vostok 5, piloted by cosmonaut Valeriy Bykovsky, with the two spacecraft's coming within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of each other. Tereshkova spent 70 hours in space and orbited Earth 48 times during her mission. Though an icon of Soviet space exploration, she never flew in space again and became a test pilot and instructor.

Image 2 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First American woman in space: Sally Ride On June 18, 1983, NASA astronaut Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space when she launched on the STS-7 mission of the space shuttle Challenger. She was the third woman in space, after Valentina Tereshkova and Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, who flew on the Soyuz T-7 mission on Aug. 19, 1982. Born in Encino, California, Ride studied physics and English at Stanford University, ultimately earning a Ph.D. physics in 1973. She joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1978 as one of the first six female astronauts to join the U.S. space agency. More: Sally Ride: First American Woman in Space (Pictures) Ride was 32 when the STS-7 mission launched into space. The mission was NASA's seventh shuttle flight and marked the first time a woman controlled a space shuttle robotic arm. STS-7's main mission was deploy communications satellites for Canada and Indonesia. Challenger returned to Earth with Ride and her STS-7 crewmates on June 24, wrapping up a six-day flight. Ride would make history again in 1984 when she launched on the Challenger's STS-41G mission, beginning the first American woman to fly in space twice. In 2012, Ride died from cancer at age 61.

Image 3 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First female space station commander: Peggy Whitson NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson became the first woman to command the International Space Station when she took the helm of the outpost in April 2008 during Expedition 16. It was science that led to Whitson's space career. A native of Mount Ayr, Iowa, Whitson grew up as a chicken farmer and earned a Ph.D in biochemistry from Rice University in 1985, after which she began working as a biochemist at NASA as a National Research Council Resident Research Associate. She officially joined NASA's Johnson Space Center as a biochemist in 1989 and served as the project scienctist for the Shuttle-Mir program in 1992. In photos: Record-breaking NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson In 1996, Whitson was selected to become a NASA astronaut and first launched to the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 5 crew in 2002. She spent 185 days in space on that flight, and also served as NASA's first official Science Officer on the station. Then came Expedition 16, when Whitson took her historic command of the space station. During the 192-day flight, Whitson welcomed a NASA shuttle mission commanded by another woman, Pamela Melroy, and racked up her career fifth spacewalk. On her next spaceflight in 2016, she became the first woman to command the space station twice when she took command of Expedition 51. She holds the record for being the oldest woman in space, having returned from her final mission at the age of 57. Whitson retired from NASA in June 2018. She has spent a total of 665 days in space.

Image 4 of 22 (Image credit: Getty) First female spacewalker: Svetlana Savitskaya The first woman to complete a spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), was Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. Savitskaya became the second woman to fly in space in August 1982 - 19 years after Valentina Tereshkova's flight - when she served as a research cosmonaut on the space station Salyut 7. She launched on a Soyuz T-7 spacecraft on Aug. 19 , 1982 and spent returned to Earth eight days later. But it was during Savitskaya's second trip to Salyut 7 in 1984 that she made history as the first woman to walk in space. She was also the first woman ever to fly in space a second time. Savitskaya launched with two crewmates aboard Soyuz T-12 on July 17, 184 and spent 12 days on Salyut 7. Her spacewalk occurred on July 24, when she and crewmate Vladimir Dzhanibekov spent more than three hours spacewalking and performing welding experiments in orbit. Born in Moscow, Savitskaya was determined to fly at a young age. She began parachuting at age 16 and joined the Soviet Aerobatics Team at age 18 to perform daredevil stunts and performances in aircraft, according to the UK Space Agency. She was selected to join the Soviet cosmonaut corps in 1980 and holds a master's degree in flight engineering.

Image 5 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First U.S. female spacewalker: Kathy Sullivan NASA astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a spacewalk when she floated outside the space shuttle Challenger during mission STS-41-G on Oct. 11, 1984. Sullivan's spacewalk occurred just months after the first-ever spacewalk by a woman (cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya's excursion in July of that year) during Challenger's nine-day mission to deploy an Earth observation satellite (the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite) and demonstrate satellite refueling technology. Sullivan holds a Ph.D in geology and joined NASA's eight class of astronauts in 1978, training for spaceflight for six years while awaiting her first assignment. That assignment was the STS-41-G mission, when she became the first American woman to walk in space. In April 1990, Sullivan returned to space on the shuttle Discovery, this time to help deploy the Hubble Space Telescope. In 1993, Sullivan left NASA to serve as chief scientist for NOAA and ultimately became NOAA's Administrator in 2014.

Image 6 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First African American woman in space: Mae Jemison NASA astronaut Mae Jemison flew on space shuttle Endeavour in September 1992, becoming the first African-American woman to travel to space. Born in Decatur, Alabama, Jemison grew up in Chicago and earned degrees in chemical engineering and African and African-American studies at Stanford University, as well as doctorate in medicine from Cornell University. After working as a doctor for several years and serving term in the Peace Corps, Jemison joined NASA as an astronaut in 1987. Jemison launched into space on Endeavour on Sept. 12, 1992 as part of the seven-person STS-47 crew. She served as a mission specialist, performing experiments in two bone cell research experiments among other tasks. Endeavour carried a Spacelab module in its payload bay to allow room for more than 43 different studies during the mission. Jemison spent just over 190 hours in space during the STS-47 mission and left NASA in March 1993.

Image 7 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First female space shuttle commander: Eileen Collins NASA astronaut Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, a role that required an astronaut to have at least 1,000 hours of experience piloting jet aircraft. Collins commanded the STS-93 space shuttle mission in July 1999, and went on to command a second time in July 2005.

Image 8 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First woman to spend (nearly) 1 year in space: Christina Koch In April 2019, NASA announced that Expedition 59 astronaut Christina Koch's mission at the International Space Station would be extended to last 328 days. She broke the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman  a record that was previously held by NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who spent 289 consecutive days in space from 2016 to 2017. Koch launched to the space station on March 14, 2019 and returned to Earth on Feb. 6, 2020.

Image 9 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First all-female spacewalk On Oct. 18, 2019, two NASA astronauts made space history with the world's first all-female spacewalk. NASA astronauts Christina Koch (left) and Jessica Meir test their spacesuits for their historic Oct. 18, 2019 spacewalk. NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir went outside the International Space Station on an unplanned repair spacewalk to fix a fault battery component. Koch, a spacewalk veteran, led the EVA while Meir performed her first spacewalk. Koch and Meir were part of the Expedition 61 crew, with Koch also flying the first nearly yearlong space mission by a woman. Koch set a new record for the longest single spaceflight, having spent 328 consecutive days on board the orbiting laboratory. (The previous record holder was Peggy Whitson, who spent 289 consecutive days in space.)



Image 10 of 22 (Image credit: NASA.) First teacher in space: Barbara Morgan NASA's original plan to send the first teacher to space was thwarted when Christa McAuliffe and her six crewmates were killed aboard the space shuttle Challenger, which was destroyed just after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986. Twelve years later, McAuliffe's backup Barbara Morgan became the first educator to reach orbit under NASA's Teacher in Space program, when she flew on the STS-118 flight of the shuttle Endeavour in August 2007. She spent a total of 12 days in space during her first and only spaceflight. Before she joined NASA in 1998, Morgan taught math, science and reading classes to elementary school students in Montana, Idaho and Ecuador for 24 years. She retired from NASA in 2008 to continue teaching at Boise State University.

Image 11 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First to sequence DNA in space: Kate Rubins NASA astronaut and microbiologist Kate Rubins became the first researcher to sequence DNA in space during her first mission to the International Space Station in 2016, when she spent 115 days working as a flight engineer for Expedition 48. Rubins, who holds a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University, sequenced DNA samples from a mouse, a virus and bacteria to test a commercially available DNA sequencing device called MinION. "With a way to sequence DNA in space, astronauts could diagnose an illness, or identify microbes growing in the International Space Station and determine whether or not they represent a health threat," NASA officials said in a statement. "A space-based DNA sequencer would be an important tool to help protect astronaut health during long duration missions on the journey to Mars, and future explorers could also potentially use the technology to identify DNA-based life forms beyond Earth."

Image 12 of 22 (Image credit: Sputnik/Alamy) First Briton in space: Helen Sharman British food chemist and private citizen Helen Sharman became the first British person to fly in space when she visited the Mir space station aboard the Soyuz TM-12 in May 1991. During this flight, she also became the first woman to visit the Mir space station. Sharman's road to space was a bit different from the professional astronauts and cosmonauts of NASA and Russia's Roscosmos agency. In 1989, Sharman answered a radio advertisement calling for applicants to fly in space as part of Project Juno, a collaboration between private British companies and the Soviet Union to launch a Briton into space. She beat out nearly 13,000 other applicants to win the coveted spot and spent 18 months training to fly on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft. Sharman launched to Mir on May 18, 2991 and spent eight days in space performing biological and crystal growth experiments, as well as talking with British schoolchildren via radio.

Image 13 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First Canadian woman in space: Roberta Bondar Roberta Bondar became Canada's first female astronaut when she flew on the STS-42 space shuttle mission in 1992.

Image 14 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First Japanese woman in space: Chiaki Mukai The first Japanese woman in space was Chiaki Mukai, representing the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA). Mukai flew on the space shuttle Columbia during mission STS-65 in July 1994. At the time, she set the record for the longest flight to date by a female astronaut.

Image 15 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First French woman in space: Claudie Haignere Doctor Claudie Haignere became the first and only French woman to travel to space when she flew to the Russian space station Mir in 1996. In 2001, she became the first European woman to visit the International Space Station.

Image 16 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First woman to join an ISS crew: Susan Helms The first female member of an International Space Station crew was NASA astronaut Susan Helms, who served as a flight engineer during the Expedition 2 mission from March to August 2001.

Image 17 of 22 (Image credit: Documentary Channel) First female space tourist: Anousheh Ansari Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist when she funded her own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule in 2006 through the firm Space Adventures.

Image 18 of 22 (Image credit: Alexander Nemeov/AFP/Getty) First South Korean in space: Yi So-yeon South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon became her country's first space traveler when she rode to the International Space Station on Russia's Soyuz TMA-12 in April 2008.

Image 19 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) First marathon in space: Suni Williams NASA astronaut Sunita Williams became the first person to run a marathon in space during the Expedition 15 mission in 2007. She officially registered for the Boston Marathon and ran 26 miles in 4 miles and 26 minutes on the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station.

Image 20 of 22 (Image credit: China Ministry of National Defense) China's 1st female taikonaut: Liu Wang China's first female astronaut Liu Wang waves to supporters while clad in a spacesuit just before boarding the Shenzhou 9 space capsule for a successful June 19, 2012 launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

Image 21 of 22 (Image credit: NASA) Most time in space: Peggy Whitson The woman who has spent the most total time in space is Peggy Whitson, who has logged 665 days, 22 hours and 22 minutes in orbit over the span of three trips to the International Space Station. When she returned from her final trip to space in 2017, she had logged more hours in space than any U.S. astronaut  male or female.
GOES-R Weather Satellite

NASA

On Nov. 19, 2016, an Atlas V rocket launched the first next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series (GOES-R) satellite. See photos from the launch and mission in our full gallery here. Check out our full launch story and video recap.

GOES-16 Close View of March 7 Storm

NOAA

This close-up view from a full Earth image by GOES-16 weather satellite shows the powerful nor'easter bringing snow to the northeastern U.S. on March 7, 2018 at 10:26 a.m. EST (1526 GMT).

GOES-16 Nor'easter March 7, 2018

NOAA

A full-disk view of the Earth on March 7, 2018 as seen by the GOES-16 weather satellite at 10:26 a.m. EST (1526 GMT).

Bomb Cyclone GOES-East Full Earth View

NOAA

This full-disk view of Earth from the GOES-East satellite shows a storm swirling over a darkened United States Jan. 4, 2018 at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT).

The Sun by GOES-16

NOAA

The GOES-16 satellite's Solar Ultraviolet Imager took images of the sun using six wavelengths of light, spotting a large coronal hole in the sun's southern hemisphere on Jan. 29, 2017. See a video and the full story.

GOES-16 Earth & Moon

NOAA/NASA

NOAA's GOES-16 satellite took this photo of Earth at 1:07 p.m. EDT (1807 GMT) on Jan. 15. It was created using several of the 16 spectral channels available on the GOES-16 ABI instrument.

GOES-16 Earth Animation

NOAA/NASA

NOAA's GOES-16 satellite created the composite images that make up this animation in January 2017.

GOES-16 Caribbean

NOAA/NASA

The Caribbean islands and part of the southeastern United States are visible in this photo taken by NOAA's GOES-16 weather satellite.

Hurricane Irma GOES East Sept. 9

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES East satellite captured this visible image of Category 4 Hurricane Irma on Saturday (Sept. 9) at 10:37 a.m. EDT (1437 GMT).

GOES East View of Hurricane Harvey

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

This visible-light image of Hurricane Harvey taken from NOAAs GOES East satellite on Aug. 25 at 10:07 a.m. EDT (1407 GMT) clearly shows the storms eye as the storm nears landfall on Texas southeast coast.

GOES East View of Hurricane Maria, Sept. 19, 2017

NASA/NOAA GOES Project

This image of Category 5 Hurricane Maria moving through the eastern Caribbean was taken at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Sept. 19, 2017, by NOAA's GOES East satellite.
WASHINGTON  Skills to fight off enemies in space will be essential in wars against the likes of China and Russia, military strategists warn.

That presumption has put Air Force Space Command in the spotlight.

"We are at the war fighter table. We are not in the cheap seats anymore," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Guastella Jr., director of integrated air, space, cyberspace and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations at Air Force Space Command.

Guastella is a career fighter pilot who is now a "space operator." At Space Command, leaders are trying to bridge the cultural divide between the air and space professions to create a more cohesive force of space combatants. "We are in a cultural shift to a war fighting mentality," he said Friday at a Mitchell Institute breakfast meeting on Capitol Hill. [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Concepts]

The Air Force is now staging "Space Flag" war rehearsals in virtual-reality simulations. Satellite technicians who operate communications, missile warning and navigation constellations are challenged to respond to enemy attempts to take down U.S systems. The next Space Flag is scheduled in April.

Satellite operators typically are viewed as technical support to war commanders, but increasingly they will take center stage, Guastella said. At Air Force training exercises like Red Flag, space has been a sideshow. Officials are trying to change that.

The idea is to give them "realistic training," Guastella said. "Operators have to decide: Can I maneuver my satellite and stay on mission? Or do I need to do something more drastic, come off mission and survive? What other assets out there can help me?"

Bomber and fighter pilots today can train in simulators that feel like real combat, there is no such thing for space. Current space simulators were designed for a "benign environment," he said. The Air Force has requested funds in the Pentagon's 2018 and 2019 budgets for systems that simulate contested space environments.

Separately, the Air Force conducts high-level strategic drills focused on space known as the Shriever War Games. These have taken place in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for many years but are now taking on additional importance as they have become a venue to experiment with new technologies and concepts.

The Shriever games give Space Command an opportunity to "fast forward five to 10 years, look at future capabilities that we're looking at buying," Guastella said. Officials want to "determine the relative value" of next-generation systems and "what really helps operators."

Space and intelligence operators are the primary target audience for Space Flag and the Shriever games, but increasingly the events are aimed at "big decision makers" who are in charge of budgets and policy but don't necessarily grasp the space world.

Another shift at Space Command has been the addition of intelligence officers and analysts. Foreign powers threatening satellites are a relatively new concern for the United States. As space forces take on war fighting and deterrence roles, they need better intelligence, Guastella said. "We have increased the intelligence manning across the command, from the squadron level, the group level, the wing level," he noted. "We are baking in the importance of intelligence into the space force."

A cadre of intelligence experts dedicated to space is "here to stay," Guastella said. "We'll build intelligence professionals that are steeped in space."

One of Space Command's missions, "space situational awareness," also will change, Guastella said. "We'll be paying less attention to benign objects and more attention to objects that may be adversarial," he said. "I'm really confident that with what we're doing in intelligence and space situational awareness, we are making a huge difference."

Intelligence reports about the capabilities of China and Russia to take out satellites or interfere with signals have alarmed U.S. defense leaders, and have sparked a heated debate in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill on what to do next.

Some officials have argued that current military satellites are attractive targets to enemies because of the their huge size and price tags. There is a push to transition to more resilient systems such as large constellations of small satellites. Guastella did not want to take sides on the matter. "Everything is on the table," he said.

The space force for now assumes that existing systems will be around for the foreseeable future. "We have the cards that we're dealt with right now," he said. "A lot of those cards we're going to have for a significant amount of time. But we're going to work to protect what we have."

Guastella suggested that there is nothing particularly unusual about enemies threatening the United State with some new technology. "Bad guys come up with new widgets. We figure out a way to change our tactics, techniques and procedures."

There is a growing focus, however, on "what we build into the future," Guastella said.

Unlike other generals who complain about the military's plodding procurement system, Guastella would not offer an opinion on the issue. "I've never seen a military commander that doesn't want stuff sooner. It's in our nature. Space is no different," he said. "The demand signal is off the charts."

He cautioned against rushing off to buy new systems, though. "These are important decisions. It's important we take our time. We need to move out, but we need to move out smartly." Meanwhile, "we are finding our way to fight with what we have right now."

Guastella also declined to weigh in on the escalating feud between the Air Force and leaders of the House Armed Services Committee over the congressional push to create a separate space corps. "The fact that we're thinking and talking about this is interesting.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
A team of scientists from the University of Arizona have engineered an instant replay switch for evolution. The technique, known as ancestral gene resurrection, inserts ancient genes into modern E. coli bacteria. It gives researchers the opportunity to watch evolution unfold again and again, providing insights into how life evolved on early Earth, and what it might potentially look like on other planets.

"Organisms can function just fine even when they've been engineered with an essential gene that is over 700 million years old," the study's lead author Betul Kacar, an astrobiologist at the University of Arizona, tells Astrobiology Magazine. "This work is a proof of concept. The next questions are: How far back can we go? And would we expect the sequences to evolve and function the same way that they did? Just because sequences are similar doesn't mean that the gene will function in the same way."

Kacar and colleagues published their work in the Journal of Molecular Evolution.

In 1989, famous evolutionary biologist Stephan J. Gould proposed a thought experiment: if you could rewind time and let evolution happen all over again, would the end result resemble life on Earth as we know it? For decades, the idea of "replaying life's tape" remained purely a theoretical question and fodder for endless debates among scientists. At the heart of the debate is the tension between chance and determinism in trying to understand how an organism's past constrained its future. [Photos: Earth's Most Ancient Organisms]

The development of recombinant DNA technology  taking a gene from one organism and inserting it into the genome of another  began to provide opportunities for researchers to answer Gould's question experimentally. Kacar worked with her postdoctoral advisor Eric Gaucher at Georgia Tech on a NASA-funded project to replay evolution again and again with the laboratory workhorse bacterium E. coli. Kacar wouldn't be evolving E. coli from scratch, but rather rewinding the evolution of a specific key protein that the bacteria needed to survive.

E. Coli (Image credit: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health)

An ancient tool for building proteins

In 2008, Kacar reconstructed the 500-million-year-old sequence of an important bacterial gene called Elongation Factor-Tu (EF-Tu), which helps to string together amino acid building blocks into fully formed proteins. This version of EF-Tu emerged just after the Cambrian explosion, when life began growing ever more complex. As a ribosomal protein, it sat at the heart of the cell, which depended upon the functioning of this protein for its very survival.

The ancient EF-Tu gene differed from its modern counterpart in E. coli at 28 spots. Since these bacteria can't survive without EF-Tu, Kacar's first task was to see if the archaic gene could even function in modern E. coli. She replaced the bacterium's two copies of EF-Tu with a single ancient version and waited.

"The gene was like Rip Van Winkle  it had to learn to adjust when everything around him had changed," Kacar says.

The ancient-modern hybrid bacterium was able to grow, but its time travel came at the cost of a two-thirds drop in evolutionary fitness, as measured by the bacterium's growth rate. With this dramatic decline, Darwinian evolution could take the stage and start tinkering with the thousands of genes in the bacteria. Kacar created six different populations of these hybrid bacteria and then let them grow in the lab for 2,000 generations. Each of these populations provided a potential new ending for evolution.

In all but one of Kacar's populations of bacteria, the E. coli evolved with their interloper EF-Tu gene in an identical fashion. Rather than changing the EF-Tu gene itself, the cells increased the amount of EF-Tu protein they produced to cope with the reduced function. Of all of the millions of possible solutions that the bacteria could have found, they largely seemed to settle on the same one. Kacar calls this increase in production of inferior proteins the "emergency response system" of an organism. Regardless of its simplicity, the change worked. Increasing the amount of the ancient EF-Tu protein helped to restore bacterial fitness.

But that doesn't mean that these are the only possible solutions to the problem. Kacar began her experiments with only six different populations of E. coli. In the wild, natural selection would have been able to mold the descendants of millions of different organisms. Also, 2,000 generations are an evolutionary blink of an eye. Because all six lineages of bacteria happened upon this solution, Kacar believes that increasing the amount of misfit protein might be a temporary measure until a better mutation comes along.

At top is a comparison of the amino acids in the modern EF-Tu gene compared to the ancient version. The small differences between the two are highlighted. At bottom left is a ribbon visualization of the ancient EF-Tu gene, and at bottom right we see the EF-Tu gene attached to a 70S ribosome (which links amino acids together for protein synthesis). (Image credit: Betul Kacar et al/CC BY 4.0)

Expanding the research

Kacar has continued growing her lineages to see what evolution might come up with next. She has also begun performing similar experiments in cyanobacteria and proteins central to photosynthesis, including Rubisco, which transforms atmospheric carbon dioxide into glucose. Kacar's work on Rubisco was previously covered here by Astrobiology Magazine.

The importance of this work, Kacar says, isn't just relevant to life on this planet. Knowing how life is or isn't constrained by its starting materials could tell scientists a lot about what life might look like on other planets, she tells Astrobiology Magazine. Ancient gene resurrection may also tell scientists how life might adapt in the future to a shifting climate and other anthropogenic changes.

"This work will help us in understanding the limits of life by combining synthetic biology and evolutionary biology," she says. "In this way, we can approach wider problems in astrobiology concerning the distribution of life."

The work was supported by NASA Astrobiology through the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology Program, a NASA Early Career Research Award and a NASA Astrobiology Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This story was provided by Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program. This version of the story published on Space.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.
The entire arc of the Milky Way can be seen in the southern sky in this view from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert.

Miguel Claro is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical skyscapes that connect Earth and the night sky. Join Miguel here as he takes us through his photograph "The Arc of Milky Way in the Twilight with the Moon and Zodiacal Light above VLT."

The entire arc of the Milky Way galaxy extends across the southern sky in this lovely panoramic view from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile.

This image was captured at the end of nautical twilight, or about an hour after sunset. During nautical twilight, darkening skies render features along the horizon nearly indistinguishable, and starlight begins to outshine the diffused, residual sunlight as it scatters in the atmosphere and fades into the western horizon.

Four 27-foot (8.2 meter) telescopes and four 6-foot (1.8 m) auxiliary telescopes make up the VLT array, which sits atop the Cerro Paranal mountain in the Atacama Desert. [Amazing Space Views of ESO's Very Large Telescope (Photos)]

The bright object glowing in the left corner of the Milky Way's arc and to the left of the small tower is not a star, but the great globular cluster Omega Centauri. A little farther to the left and inside the structure of the arc are the bright stars of Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri.

In the middle of the image, the strong light of crescent moon illuminates the Antu ("Sun") telescope, one of the four main optical telescopes in the VLT array. Above the moon, we can see the planet Saturn, the orange star Antares in the constellation of Scorpius, and the dark streaks of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. Filled with opaque interstellar dust, these dark lanes appear to connect this nebula to the arc of the Milky Way, which stretches more than 200 degrees across the night sky.

In the background of this same region, a faint white light called the zodiacal light illuminates the atmosphere. In the foreground at right, we can see the Yepun ("Evening Star") telescope reflecting a silver color as the moonlight reflects on its metallic surface. In the extreme right edge of the image, the Andromeda galaxy is visible as an elongated diffuse dot.

Editor's note: If you captured an amazing astronomy photo and would like to share it with Space.com for a story or gallery, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

To see more of Claro's amazing astrophotography, visit his website, www.miguelclaro.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Jupiters cloud bands  seen here in this image created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstadt and Sean Doran, using data from NASA's Juno spacecraft  extend more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) into the planets interior, three new studies suggest.

The colorful stripes of Jupiter run more than 1,000 miles deep and hold so much gas that their mass is about three times that of the entire Earth, three new studies find.

Jupiter's atmospheric stripes have been known for centuries; famed astronomer Galileo Galilei was the first to see the dark bands and bright zones on the largest planet in our solar system. "These bands are related to strong winds flowing on Jupiter," said Yohai Kaspi, lead author of one of the three studies and a planetary scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel.

However, until now, scientists were uncertain how deep those bands reached into Jupiter. NASA's Juno spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, "is now providing a 3D picture of these streams of Jupiter, and they go far deeper than ever expected," Kaspi told Space.com. [Jupiter in Pictures: The Amazing Views of Juno]

Juno orbits Jupiter every 53 days. As the planet's gravitational field tugs on Juno, the radio signals that the probe sends back to Earth shift a bit. The greater the mass under Juno, the stronger the gravitational pull the spacecraft and its radio waves experience. Because Juno's flybys are in different orbits each time, it can map the gravitational field of different parts of the planet.

As Jupiter's belts of winds can flow at speeds of about 223 mph (360 km/h), they disrupt how mass is spread across the planet. Therefore, mapping Jupiter's gravitational field can shed light on how deep these winds extend below the surface.

The researchers found that these stripes extend 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) deep, or about one-twentieth the distance to the center of the planet  far deeper than previously thought. "These flows on Jupiter contain about 1 percent of the mass of Jupiter, which is equal to about three Earth masses," Kaspi said. "In comparison, Earth's atmosphere is less than one-millionth the mass of Earth."

One of the other studies found that, beneath the level of these winds, the planet's interior moves as a single body. In other words, it behaves as if it were a rigid solid, despite its fluid nature. Prior work suggested this is because, at the high pressures found within Jupiter, the hydrogen that makes up much of the planet separates into protons and electrons that generate strong magnetic drag forces that suppress winds flowing in opposite directions, the researchers said.

Future research will investigate how far Jupiter's Great Red Spot goes. "We know it's a storm that's lasted for hundreds of years sitting in the same place, but we've only seen it from the outside before," Kaspi said. "Now, with Juno, we can capture a 3D picture of it, which could help shed light on why it's been there so long."

Juno should also help reveal whether Jupiter possesses a solid core and, if so, estimate its mass.

"Knowing whether or not Jupiter does have a core would change our theories about how planets form," Kaspi said. "Since Jupiter was also the first planet in the solar system, forming after the sun, understanding Jupiter's origins would also help us understand the formation of the whole solar system."

The scientists detailed their findings in three studies in the March 8 issue of the journal Nature. You can find them here, here and here.

Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
NASA says it's seen strong interest from potential international partners in its lunar exploration plans, such as contributions to the proposed Lunar Orbital Platform - Gateway, formerly the Deep Space Gateway.

WASHINGTON  There is significant interest in NASA's new lunar exploration plans from potential international partners but the country can't take its position of leadership for granted, an agency official said March 5.

In a talk at a Space Transportation Association luncheon here, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said both current International Space Station partners and emerging space nations showed an interest in cooperating with NASA on those plans during discussions at the Second International Space Exploration Forum (ISEF2) last week in Tokyo.

"It's clear the U.S. is a leader throughout the international space community. That really came through our work with the space station," he said. "As we look forward and do things around the moon, we're going to have to keep a strong international presence."

Countries are interested in cooperating on NASA's lunar exploration plans in a variety of ways, Gerstenmaier said. Those plans are centered around development of the Lunar Orbital Platform  Gateway, a human-tended facility in cislunar space, as well as a series of lander missions that would culminate with human missions to the lunar surface in the late 2020s. [From Ike to Trump: Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]

One area of cooperation, he said, is in development of life support systems for the Gateway, citing interest from the European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency JAXA. NASA, he added, also has plans to develop life support systems, "so we'll figure out some way there" for cooperation among agencies.

Another area of interest, he said, is in developing lunar lander capabilities. NASA has plans in the near term to partner with companies developing small commercial landers, and ultimately develop larger landers. But there are few details about how NASA, working with commercial or international partners, might develop those larger landers in the 2020s.

"I don't think we fully understand all the requirements that we need to do a human-rated lunar lander today," Gerstenmaier said. He noted the Apollo-era Lunar Module wouldn't meet current NASA safety requirements. Early small lunar lander missions in this new architecture could "tease out" those requirements for human-rated landers, he said.

In addition to identifying missions and technologies on which countries can cooperate with NASA, the agency is working to develop standards for deep space technologies. NASA announced March 5 a set of draft interoperability standards that the agency and ISS partners developed in the areas of avionics, communications, environmental control and life support systems, power systems, rendezvous operations, robotics and thermal systems.

Gerstenmaier said he passed out information about those proposed standards at the ISEF2 meeting. "This is a way we're going to set for the international community to operate with us," he said. "Moving forward, this is U.S. leadership. We have set the standard for the rest of the world to follow."

He added that there is "really strong" interest in cooperation from nations outside the ISS partnership. "We're trying to create an environment where any space agency, no matter how small they are, can participate and find a niche," he said. He cited as examples of that interest the presence of a large delegation from Luxembourg at the ISEF2 meeting, as well as cooperation with the United Arab Emirates as that country selects its first group of astronauts.

One issue may be finding roles for all potential partners on the Gateway and related lunar projects. "The problem's going to be that there's more international interest than the Lunar Orbital Platform  Gateway can really accommodate, so we're going to have to open the trade space up and see if they want to contribute in the transportation area or if they eventually want to contribute in the landing," Gerstenmaier said.

Another cautionary point, he said, is concern by partners in the shifting directions of NASA's space exploration plans over the last decade. "We are clearly the partner of choice that other countries want to work with," he said. "But, they also recognize that we change our minds, we think differently, we get redirected."

That's led some partners to consider alternatives, opening up opportunities for them to cooperate with China on its planned space station and other exploration plans. "They're hedging their bets and they're talking with China," he said. "If we don't show leadership, and we don't show some consistency of purpose, and we don't show that we really have a plan moving forward that makes sense to them, they will be ready to pivot to the Chinese at the right time."

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Some of the most monstrous black holes in the universe are growing faster than their host galaxies, new research suggests.

Supermassive black holes are believed to exist at the centers of most, if not all, large galaxies, where they feed on surrounding gas, dust and other material. Two new studies suggest that these massive black holes are much bigger than expected based on the rate at which surrounding stars are forming, the researchers said.

"We are trying to reconstruct a race that started billions of years ago," Guang Yang, a researcher at Penn State and lead author of one of the studies, said in a statement. "We are using extraordinary data taken from different telescopes to figure out how this cosmic competition unfolded." [Images: Black Holes of the Universe]

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, Yang's study examined the rate at which black holes grow in galaxies located 4.3 billion to 12.2 billion light-years from Earth. The researchers compared the growth rate of a black hole to the growth rate of stars in the host galaxy.

An image from the Chandra X-ray Observatorys Deep Field-South. The Chandra image (blue) is the deepest ever obtained in X-rays. It has been combined with an optical and infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope, colored red, green, and blue. Each Chandra source is produced by hot gas falling toward a supermassive black hole in the center of the host galaxy, as depicted in the artist's illustration. (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn. State/G. Yang et al & NASA/CXC/ICE/M. Mezcua et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/A. Jubett)

Earlier research has suggested that black holes and the stars in their host galaxies generally grow in tandem with each other. However, the new findings, which are available on arXiv.org and will be published in the April issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, show that the larger the galaxy, the larger the ratio between the growth rate of its black hole and its stars.

"An obvious question is, 'Why'?" Niel Brandt, a researcher at Penn State and co-author of the study, said in the same statement. "Maybe massive galaxies are more effective at feeding cold gas to their central supermassive black holes than less massive ones."

In a second study, which also used Chandra data, a team of researchers found that, in larger galaxies, black holes grow about 10 times faster than the galaxy's stars are formed.

"We found black holes that are far bigger than we expected," Mar Mezcua, lead author of the second study and a researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, said in the statement. "Maybe they got a head start in this race to grow, or maybe they've had an edge in speed of growth that's lasted billions of years."

For that study, the researchers focused on black holes in some of the "brightest and most massive galaxies in the universe," according to the statement. They looked at 72 galaxies at the center of galaxy clusters located up to about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth.

Along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the researchers used data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array, the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and the Very Long Baseline Array. The researchers were able to estimate the masses of the supermassive black holes based on their associated X-ray and radio emissions. The team found that the black holes were about 10 times larger than estimated using traditional methods that assumed that black holes and their galaxies grow in tandem.

Furthermore, almost half of the black holes that the researchers studied weighed in as even bigger "ultramassive" black holes, rather than just supermassive black holes, according to the statement.

Whereas supermassive black holes are generally millions of times heavier than our sun, "ultramassive" black holes are estimated to harbor at least 10 billion solar masses.

"We know that black holes are extreme objects," J. Hlavacek-Larrondo, co-author of the second study and a researcher at the University of Montreal, said in the statement. "So it may not come as a surprise that the most extreme examples of them would break the rules we thought they should follow."

The second study was published Feb. 11 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The full article text is also available on arXiv.org.

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Nancy Grace Roman was the first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, and she helped fight for what would become the Hubble Space Telescope.

At a time when men dominated the field of astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman stepped up to become "the mother of Hubble."

Roman was the first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters and the first woman to hold an executive position at the space agency. In her role, she successfully managed a number of astronomy-based projects, including what would eventually become the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The idea of Hubble was something that was among the astronomical community for generations; it was not something that was new," Roman said in a video released by NASA in February. "Astronomers badly wanted a large telescope above the atmosphere." [The Hubble Space Telescope: A 25th Anniversary Photo Celebration]

In the video, Roman discusses how she helped bring light to Hubble, and she talks about the pervasive bias against female scientists that she had to overcome along the way.

Math over Latin

Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16, 1925, in Nashville, Tennessee. She was the only child of Georgia Frances (Smith) and Irwin Roman. Her father held a joint degree in physics and mathematics, and his work in geophysics meant that he moved frequently in Nancy's early years.

But it's her mother that Roman credits for her interest in astronomy. In a fascinating 1980 oral interview with the American Institute of Physics, Roman said that when the family lived in Michigan, her mother would take her out at night and show her the constellations and the northern lights, as well as plants and animals.

The family lived in Reno, Nevada, for two years when Roman was still young. The second summer she was there, when she was about 11, she started an astronomy club with the girls in the neighborhood.

In her early high school days, Roman made the deliberate decision to go into astronomy, despite the long period of education it would require. She decided that if it didn't work out as a career, she could teach physics and mathematics to high school students.

"I don't know exactly at what age it was, but I do remember it was a conscious decision on my part," Roman said in the oral interview.

While her parents were both supportive, she didn't receive a lot of outside encouragement.

"I was told from the beginning that a woman could not be an astronomer," she said in the NASA video.

In fact, when she asked her high school counselor for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin, the response was scathing.

"She looked down her nose at me and sneered, 'What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?'" Roman said. [Women in Space: A Gallery of Firsts]

In 1946, Roman received her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College, which she said she selected because it had a decent astronomy department at the time. Swarthmore was where she received her first encouragement regarding astronomy, when the head of the physics department told her that he usually tried to talk women out of going into physics. "But I think maybe you might make it," he said.

Roman went on to pursue her doctorate from the University of Chicago. But her thesis adviser there was not exactly supportive.

"There was a period in which he went for six months without speaking to me, even when I said hello to him in the hall," Roman said in the video. "He didn't want anything to do with me."

In the oral interview, she said that may have been part of the reason the department pushed her to leave without completing her degree, recommending her for a teaching position at Vassar College in New York.

Ironically, once she completed her doctorate in 1949, the same professor didn't want her to leave. Roman remained at the University of Chicago, working at its Yerkes Observatory before becoming an instructor and then an assistant professor. Despite such successes, she didn't think that she would be offered a tenured position.

"Right or wrong, I didn't think that I, as a woman, had a chance at tenure," Roman said in her oral interview. "I just didn't think I had a chance. I may be wrong, but I don't think so."

She moved on to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) for several years, studying radio astronomy. Then, in 1959, a talk by chemist Harold Urey triggered her interest, resulting in a conversation that would change her career.

"One of the team"

The United States consolidated its space operations in October 1958, replacing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics with a new agency called NASA.

After the Urey talk, Roman was approached by a colleague who had once been at NRL but was now at the newborn NASA. He asked her if she knew anyone who would like to set up NASA's program in space astronomy.

"The idea of coming in with an absolutely clean slate to set up a program that I thought was likely to influence astronomy for 50 years was just a challenge I couldn't turn down," Roman said in the oral interview.

In 1959, Roman became the first chief of astronomy in the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters, and the first woman to hold an executive position at NASA.

Paradoxically, she was hired as a fresh doctoral student, despite her years of experience and international reputation. She said that was because her previous salary was so low that the civil service did not recognize her work to that point as professional experience.

Despite being a female astronomer in a crowd of men, Roman said that she had no problems with her NASA colleagues.

"I was accepted very readily as a scientist in my job," she said in the video. "The men were very cooperative, and I felt that the men treated me as one of the team without a problem."

The "Mother of Hubble"

In the years she spent at NASA, Roman was involved in multiple projects. One of them was known as Space Telescope, a massive instrument proposed to orbit Earth and capture data without interference from the planet's atmosphere.

Astronomer Lyman Spitzer hatched the idea of an optical space telescope in 1946. But he faced years of rejection, due in part to the cost as well as the technological challenges.

Eventually, the space-telescope idea came to Roman's attention. She took a practical approach to bring the project together.

"If the aerospace companies were going to put a lot of money into designing a telescope, they might as well design one that made sense," she said in the video.

In 1960, Roman brought together astronomers from all over the country who represented the interests of the astronomical community. She sat them down with NASA engineers and had the two groups hammer out a design for an instrument that could gather the data the science community desired.

Roman and her colleagues met several times to discuss what was then known as the Large Space Telescope. Once other programs, such as Gemini, Apollo and Mariner, began to generate a wealth of space-engineering data, Roman became a strong NASA advocate for what would eventually become the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble launched in April 1990 and continues to make important observations and discoveries today.

"She made it possible to get early telescopes up [into space] to learn what needed to be learned," science historian Bob Zimmerman told Space.com back in 2009. "As soon as that technology started to mature, she was pushing for the design work. Her hard-nosed nature helped get the telescope built." [Hubble in Pictures: Astronomers' Top Picks (Photos)]

Roman retired from NASA in 1969, though she continued to work as a contractor at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for several years.

But retirement hasn't stopped her from encouraging other women to continue the journey she started so many years ago. On Roman's 90th birthday in 2015, NASA said she continued to speak "eloquently and intelligently with a passion to encourage young women to pursue careers in science and engineering."

"I'm happy about the fact that women can get senior jobs now," Roman said in the video. "They're not being quite as discouraged as I was."

There are still two things she would like to see improve. One is the issue of salaries: According to the Wall Street Journal, female astronomers and physicists earn just 85 percent as much as their male counterparts.

The other issue is the percentage of women in the field. Although changes in attitudes over time have made it easier for women to obtain senior positions in astronomy now than back in Roman's day, she said that there still aren't many women at high levels in the field.

In an earlier interview, as reported by NASA, Roman gave some advice to women who wanted to enter the field of astronomy and work for the space agency.

"My career was quite unusual, so my main advice to someone interested in a career similar to my own is to remain open to change and new opportunities," Roman said. "I like to tell students that the jobs I took after my Ph.D. were not in existence only a few years before. New opportunities can open up for you in this ever-changing field."

Follow Nola Taylor Redd at @NolaTRedd, Facebook, or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
JAKE AND HOLT MEET THEIR MATCH ON AN ALL-NEW "BROOKLYN NINE-NINE" SUNDAY, APRIL 1, ON FOXSterling K. Brown ("This is Us") Guest-StarsJake embarks on an all-night long interrogation in order to elicit a confession out of a suspect (guest star Sterling K. Brown). But when Captain Holt skips the opera in order to stay back and help, the two cops clash over how to get him to talk in the all-new "The Box" episode of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE airing Sunday, April 1 (8:30-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (BRK-516) (TV-14 D, L)Cast: Andy Samberg as Det. Jake Peralta; Andre Braugher as Capt. Ray Holt; Terry Crews as Sgt. Terry Jeffords; Melissa Fumero as Det. Amy Santiago; Joe Lo Truglio as Det. Charles Boyle; Chelsea Peretti as Gina Linetti; Stephanie Beatriz as Det. Rosa Diaz; Dirk Blocker as Det. Hitchcock; Joel McKinnon Miller as Det. ScullyGuest Cast: Sterling K. Brown as Philip Davidson






It was a great episode of The Resident this week, a lot better than last weeks. Ive said it, and Ill say it again, this show is better when it focuses on the characters, with the hospital as a playing ground, than the other way around. In No Matter the Cost, the characters continued to evolve, their storylines developing at a nice pace, as we learned more about them outside the hospital setting.



Mina continues to be an absolute badass, but she also becomes something more. As the episode starts, getting home in a bad neighborhood, she gets mugged. Instead of giving up her purse, she fights off her assailant. She fights him off so well that she then has to drive the sixteen year old kid to the hospital unconscious. A big sister/little brother type of dynamic developed between them, leading to some great interactions with him. Mina has stopped being the stone cold surgeon we were introduced to a couple of episode back. She is becoming more and more human, as the show progresses and she is becoming a really well rounded character.





I think thats the most words youve said ever, in the past 3 years that Ive known you. -Nic

Is he biting every ones head today or just mine?-Jude

Lily would have died. You were right. We have to do something about Lane. -Devon

When Athibas parents dont want to come get him, Nic decides to drive him home herself, but Mina wont let her go there alone. So, she tags along to protect the white girl with the savior complex. This led to some great interactions between the two leading ladies. We havent seen much of the two together until now, but it was interesting to see them open up to one another. After Nic manages to convince the parents to give their son another chance, we learn that her sister was an addict, one year sober now, and she wished someone would have done the same for her sister at the time. This tidbit of information gave new meaning to Nics previous conversation with the patient.The budding female friendship was a refreshing aspect of the episode. Mina is blunt and honest. She gets to the point, asking what others are thinking. She simply inquires about what the deal with Jude and Conrad is, but she gets a not so blunt and honest answer form Nic.Mina joking took me off guard, but that didnt make it any less enjoyable. Their laughs were contagious; their smiles made me smile. Anyone else? A little later, Nic finds out just how much Mina cares for her community, when she sees her treating a young girl in her home with medicine taken from Chastain. While in the beginning, Nic tried to convince Mina it was a bad idea, she still came to understand where Mina was coming from. I am convinced Nic is the type of person that would do the same.Conrads case of the week is one of a malnourished ballet dancer with a digestive issue. When he convinces the patient to give him 24 hours to find out what is wrong with him, the doctors start fighting over him. (This is not a problem in Canada quit the opposite actually. No one actually wants to commit to a patient unless they are sure its in their department.) Conrad was not happy about this, and was removed from the case by his attending.Still, it seems like hes alone against everyone else, battling the system: one man against an army. And again, I wanted to ask what made Conrad so special, that he can get away with almost anything.Conrad isnt at his best in this weeks episode with his professional relationships, romantic relationships, friendships and family relationships. All the doctors at the hospital seem to be against him. Nic and Jude seem to be getting closer, and Papa Hawkins just resurfaced in his life. The exchange between Conrad and his father at breakfast was tense. Conrad doesnt want him in his life, its the reason he left for the army. There surely is more to it than an absentee father, but in this episode, there just wasnt anything to point to something else. His father wants him to run his own hospital. He seemed to be trying. It does seem like a valid offer. On the romantic relationship side, jealousy comes over him when he witnesses a scene, from afar, between Jude and Nic that isnt what it looks like. Cheese and grits dont go a long way with the nurse practitioner hes trying to win over, but opening up to her will. Conrad just isnt ready for that yet, and it pained me to see him so broken his in the end.The battle continues between Lane and Nic, and while Nic was kicked off of Lilys case, Devon wasnt. In the pilot, Conrad gave Devon the responsibility of Lilys care, this week, Nic indirectly did the same. The next step in Lilys treatment is bone marrow transplant. There is a big chance the treatment could kill her, and Lilys scared, but shell do it, if thats what it takes. All cloak and dagger, Nic reveals to Devon her suspicions about Dr. Hunter, who she believes is committing insurance fraud by over medicating her patients. The first year resident wont listen to her, at first.Despite it being out of the ordinary with Dr. Hunters patients, Devon asks for a full panel on Lily, holding his ground to make sure its done. And to his surprise, he finds something wrong with Lilys kidneys function, catching it just in time. If they had gone through with the transplant she would have died. Dr. Hunter blamed someone at the clinic, but I felt like she was covering her ass, and so did Devon. This sets the tone for the episodes to come, with Nic and Devon working together to bring down the oncologist, and that should be pretty interesting.I thought the episode was great. But maybe thats just me, I love character driven shows.
Sydney (Australia), March 07, 2018 (SPS) - Responsible for North Africa and the Middle East in the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Matthew Neuhaus clarified that his country supports the efforts of the United Nations and its Envoy to solve peacefully, the conflict of Western Sahara.

The declarations of the Australian responsible, respond to a series of questions, on the Western Sahara, formulated in the Parliament of Australia by Senator Lee Rhiannon.

In his response to the question regarding the importation of phosphate from Western Sahara, the representative of the Australian government clarified that there are legal and juridical considerations on the importation of resources from Non-Self-Governing Territories.

In this regard, the Australian government recommended its companies to provide legal advice before starting their activities in Western Sahara.

Finally, the representative of the Government of Australia said that it is possible to consider raising, in the UN Human Rights Council, the issue of human rights in occupied Western Sahara. SPS

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Chaheed El Hafed , March 08, 2018 (SPS) - The National Union of Saharawi Women (UNMS) praised the historic role played by Saharawi women in the struggle for liberation in a statement issued Thursday on the occasion of March 8, International Women's Day, coincides with the anniversary of the first martyr of the Frente POLISARIO, Bashir Lehlawi.

The statement issued by the Union of Sahrawi Women highlighted the historical situation that characterizes the celebration of March 8 this year, where the national cause achieves more victories on the way towards the completion of sovereignty and liberation throughout the national territory such as the decision of the South African Supreme Court and the decision of the EU Court of Justice on 27 February ,which has refuted all Moroccan claims of sovereignty over Western Sahara.

The Sahrawi Women Union saluted the spirit of peaceful resistance that all our people, women, children, and old people are waging. We highly appreciate their steadfastness in the struggle to wrest our legitimate rights to freedom, independence and dignity in the land of Western Sahara.

The NUSW demanded an end to the Moroccan State serious violations of human rights in the occupied territories, stopping the plunder of the natural resources of Western Sahara, unconditional release of all Saharawi political prisoners and the dismantlement of the Moroccan military wall of shame. SPS

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March 8 is International Women's Day, and here in Connecticut we have a lot of women to celebrate.

As of 2017, Connecticut (and the United States as a whole) is home to more women than men. The U.S. Census reports that in that year, 51.2 percent of Connecticut's population was female.

To celebrate the majority population, we took a look at which southern Connecticut towns are proportionately home to the most women. The top female town is Hamden with 53.6 percent female majority (as of 2015).

Weston is the most male-dominated town in the area with 50.7 percent of the population being male. Brookfield, Stamford and West Haven land right in the middle with perfect 50/50 ratios.

We also looked at where the independent women livespecifically where there is the highest percentage of female householders (homes owned or rented by women with no husband present). Bridgeport tops that list with almost 25 percent of homes in the city owned or rented by women alone.

And not only that, Connecticut was recently named one of the best states for women in 2019. Financial website WalletHub took a look at factors like social and economic well-being and health care and safety in each state and found that Connecticut ranks number six in the countryup from it's ranking of number eight in 2018.

Since 1987, March has been Women's History Month. The roots of National Women's History Month go back to March 8, 1857, when women from various New York City factories staged a protest over working conditions, the U.S. Census writes.

"International Women's Day was first observed in 1909, but it was not until 1981 that Congress established National Women's History Week to be commemorated annually the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month. Every year since, Congress has passed a resolution for Women's History Month, and the president has issued a proclamation," according to the U.S. Census.

Click through the slideshow above to see the breakdown of the genders in each southwestern Connecticut town.
With 90,534 outages across the state, utility companies said it could be days before power is fully restored.

Eversource reports that 7 percent of its customers in the state do not have power, while 2.09 percent of United Illuminating customers are without power as of 8:45 p.m. Thursday.

This storm packed a powerful punch, with heavy snow and brisk gusts that brought down trees and limbs, which were already in a weakened condition from last weeks noreaster, Tony Marone, UIs chief executive officer, said in a statement. We have mobilized our entire workforce to support the restoration effort and, in addition to the resources we had on hand for the storms arrival, we are calling in more restoration personnel to scale up our response.

Eversource said it does not know how long it will take to restore power, but it could take multiple days.

This is a multiday restoration effort, said Mitch Gross, a spokesman for Eversource. Crews remain very busy, and were getting a lot of help from other power companies out-of-state.

He said that these out-of-state crews have been working in Connecticut since last weeks storm.

They have remained here, working alongside Eversource line and tree crews, he said.

Gross said Eversource is also working with police and fire departments to help unblock roads.

In New Canaan, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said that he expected that some residents wouldnt have power back until Tuesday.

Were going to ask churches to open up if people need venues to go, Moynihan said. Were following the restoration and emergency protocols.

As of 3:15pm Thursday, United Illuminating employees restored 73 percent of customers who lost power. At the height of the outages, UI reported 33,739 customers lost power.

Still, 6,811 UI customers remain without service, and the company said that additional crews and resources will join the effort in the days ahead.

United Illuminating said its first priority is to work with towns and the state to de-energize downed lines, clear roads and restore critical facilities, such as hospitals and shelters.

Then, the company will assess damage and repair primary lines and circuits, followed by repairing lines that serve a smaller group of customers. Finally, crews will restore service lines to individual homes and buildings, United Illuminating said.

Monroe has 1,698 customers in the dark as of 8:45 p.m., down from the 3,575 customers as of 1:15 p.m. Thursday. While Redding has 1,839 without power, down from 2,500 customers earlier.

Meanwhile, Stamford has 2,349 outages, Norwalk has 2,313 outages, Westport has 2,620 and Wilton has 2,630, according to Eversource. Fairfield has 2,419 outages, according to United Illuminating.

Newtown, Ridgefield, Weston and Greenwich have between 386 to 2,212 outages, according to Eversource.

Trumbull, Easton and Shelton have between 880 to 1,058 outages, according to United Illuminating.

Other municipalities, such as Danbury, have less than 800 outages, according to Eversource.
STAMFORD  City representatives have decided, at least for now, that citizens will not be allowed to speak at their monthly board meetings.

Longtime representative John Zelinsky, D-11, had proposed that 15 minutes be set aside during each meeting to allow citizens, who would each be given three minutes, to tell the citys ruling body whats on their minds.

But representatives this week rejected Zelinskys proposal and an amended one that would set aside 20 minutes, giving citizens one to three minutes, depending on how many signed up to speak.

The vote came at the same meeting at which representatives agreed to form a special Communications Committee tasked with recommending ways to enhance dialogue between citizens and their government.

Some representatives said they voted against changing Board of Representatives rules to allow public-participation sessions  which the Board of Education and Board of Finance have permitted for years  because they want to first see the special committees recommendations.

City Rep. Monica Di Costanzo, D-7, said changing the rules is premature, and members would do harm in implementing this before the committee finishes its work. She is concerned that 15 or 20 minutes isnt enough, Di Costanzo said.

Its important that residents have full access to the board  but I dont feel we should slight residents, she said, by inviting them to attend a meeting and creating a situation where theres lots of anger and disheartened residents because they are not allotted the time.

She voted against the proposal, as did city Rep. David Watkins, R-1.

The simple truth is that 15 minutes is not enough to give our citizens a voice, Watkins said. What will happen is that a small group of activists particularly interested in a topic will monopolize whatever time we have, and that will not be reflective of the voice of our city.

Allowing people only a minute to speak doesnt sound to me like a formula that will make our constituents feel any more listened to than before, Watkins said.

City Rep. Bob Lion, D-19, had a similar view, saying he thinks citizens need to have greater access to the entire board but the measure could have unintended consequences.

Some of the consequences would stem from signing up speakers first-come, first-served, Lion said.

If we have a contentious issue  we may hear only one side, he said. If we suspend the rules to allow all sides to be heard  we will essentially make a meeting into a public hearing.

If the time limits are not relaxed, this would be seen as a way of stifling debate, Lion said. We need to do this in a manner that allows everyone to speak.

City Rep. Diane Lutz, D-14, disagreed.

I think I would rather have one to three minutes to address the board personally  than have zero minutes, Lutz said.

Longtime Rep. Annie Summerville, D-6, felt the same.

We can never give the public enough opportunity to express their concerns, Summerville said. I remember a time when we gave them 30 minutes.

Zelinsky said the arguments of some of his fellow representatives missed the point of his proposal.

This would give constituents the opportunity to express their concerns to all board members, not just their own representatives, Zelinsky said. They might influence the way another representative is thinking on an issue.

Advocacy groups have monopolized public-comment sessions before the Board of Education and the Board of Finance, Zelinsky said, but thats what democratic government is about.

You can find fault with everything, Zelinsky said. Having served a long time on this board, I would say that, with the exception of some budget meetings, very few people show up to our meetings. I dont think that by passing this well get busloads of people coming to speak on a particular issue.

If that should happen, the rules can be amended to manage it, he said. Promoting public participation in city government is worth the inconvenience, he said.

Our constituents would like our Board of Representatives to be more transparent, Zelinsky said. Yes, we are the voice of our constituents, but let the people voice their opinions at board meetings.  lets not say its not going to work before we try.

But his proposal failed, 14-16, with three abstentions at Mondays meeting.

Now, it seems, citizens chances of addressing Stamfords 40-member governing body lie with the Communications Committee. Board of Representatives President Matthew Quinones, D-16, will appoint at least five members who will meet monthly and report back systems and processes that can improve how the board and city government communicate with the residents of Stamford.

Like Zelinsky, the Communications Committee has a lofty goal. In order for the Board of Representatives to effectively execute its responsibilities, the resolution creating the committee states, the board must successfully communicate with citizens, educate them about current and pending law changes and receive input on the issues affecting their lives.
STAMFORD  Todays popular musicals feature the Founding Fathers, rap and masked men hiding in opera houses. But Trinity Catholic High School is throwing it back to the more classic, dance-heavy musicals of an older time with its production of Guys and Dolls this weekend.

Guys and Dolls is set in 1950s New York and follows Sky Masterson, a gambler who makes a bet he can take Sarah Brown, a conservative missionary, to Havana for the night. Despite being set in a different era, the stars of the show have taken to it with its music from a bygone era and showstopping dance numbers.

Its my favorite yet, said Trinity senior Evan Guerrera, who plays Nathan Detroit, leader of an illegal crap game in the show. I really like the music. Its classy. Usually, musical theater music isnt my cup of tea, but this vibes with me.

The jazzy tunes of Guys and Dolls were a drastic change from the rap Gurrera normally listens to, but sophomore Dena Valentine, who plays Sarah Brown, said the music brought her back to the Frank Sinatra she listens to with her family.

Ive always had a connection with old-timey stuff, the 15-year-old said. I really get that vibe from this show. ... Its very energetic and very inspiring in a way. Its so much different from anything Ive done before. Once youre in it, youre entranced by it.

Brady Hayes, a junior who plays Sky Masterson, said the smooth-talking vibe of his character is typical of romantic leads from that era.

Hayes, 17, said Guys and Dolls will be his 14th show, but its been a challenge for him and his castmates.

It was very interesting, because Ive never portrayed a character like that before, he said. It was a challenge, but a nice, new feeling. I had a hard time of getting to know the character, but over time, it got smoother as we went along.

Jessica Bircaj, a junior who plays Nathan Detroits flustered fiancee Miss Adelaide, said the show has more big numbers, particularly dance oriented, than anything shes done before. But the 16-year-old said the show has improved her dance skills.

Joyce Flanagan, the shows director, agrees, saying many of the students took to the show quickly.

This is the perfect show for this group of kids, she said. They adjusted to it quickly.

ekayata@hearstmediact.com; @erin_kayata
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton expects the biggest snowfall after 1 p.m., he told meteorologist Jim Cantore in an interview on The Weather Channel.

He said Eversource and public works crews have been busy since last weekend's storm, but are still ready for this one.

"Nobody's allowed to go home," Boughton said. "We keep everybody here 'til the last flake falls."

In addition to having public works crews at the ready, he city also has snowmobiles that can be used to help motorists and residents stuck in the snow, he said.

While Boughton's appearance on The Weather Channel comes in time to help residents prepare for one of the year's largest storms, it is not the first time the Danbury mayor has turned up on national television.

In October 2017, the declared gubernatorial candidate made an appearance on Fox Business Network to promote Danbury as a possible site for Amazon's second headquarters. Despite the push, that bid failed when Amazon whittled their over 200 proposals down to 20, with Danbury and several other Connecticut cities getting the axe.

Boughton has also made media appearances not in connection to the city, most recently appearing in a Super Bowl LII commercial for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

This story has been corrected to show that Boughton appeared on Fox Business Network.
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Editor's Note: Entrepreneur's "20 Questions" series features both established and up-and-coming entrepreneurs and asks them a number of questions about what makes them tick, their everyday success strategies and advice for aspiring founders.

How do you turn customers into devoted fans? As the co-founder of ecommerce retailer Zulily, Darrell Cavens has worked to make sure that every transaction ends when the user has found something completely unique.

For the unfamiliar, the site, which turned 8 this year offers sales of up to 70 percent off on brands ranging from LEGO to Vera Bradley every morning at 6:00 am PST. In 2013, the company went public, and two years later, it was bought by QVC for a deal worth $2.4 billion. (Cavens now serves as the president of new ventures at QVC.)

As of the start of 2018, Zulily had a 90 percent customer return rate and a base of 5.3 million active customers.

Prior to launching Zulily, Cavens was the CTO of Blue Nile, a Seattle-based online jewelry platform, and he currently sits on the board of Deliveroo.

After the acquisition, Cavens now serves as president of new ventures at QVC. In this role, Cavens is looking for the next big retail success, overseeing a team that is constantly on the search for new partnerships and potential acquisitions to join Zulily under the QVC umbrella.

We caught up with Cavens to ask him 20 Questions and ask him what makes him tick.

1. How do you start your day?

I go to the gym three days a week, [because] I feel so refreshed when I workout and then come into the office. Other mornings, I'll go meet with an entrepreneur and talk [to them] about their business.

2. How do you end your day?

I'll head home and try not to work in the evenings. A couple of years ago, I had one of my team members tell me I was sending a lot of email during the evening and [it was stressing her out]. It was one of those moments where I realized I was doing it because it was convenient for me, but that I was causing stress and anxiety for them, because they felt like they had to respond to it. So now try to fit those communications in during the day and not make the team feel like they have to be always on.

3. Whats a book that changed your mind and why?

Different by Youngme Moon, who is a teacher at the Harvard Business School. The book is about approaching problems differently. A lot of people think their ideas are different, but a lot of the challenge of new businesses is thinking about a problem in a different way.

4. Whats a book you always recommend and why?

Every time we hire a new executive at Zulily I buy them a copy of Sam Walton's book Made in America. It's the story of the early WalMart days. Folks look at WalMart and think of it as a large company, but the book is a story of building that business one store at a time, one person at a time. I like the approach he took about taking folks that were not viewed as qualified for roles and giving them a stretch opportunity.

Related: Health and Beauty Mogul Bobbi Brown Shares The Biggest Time Sucker -- and What You Can Do About It

5. Whats a strategy to keep focused?

I turn off all notifications so I can focus. I try to be focused on what I'm doing, but I would say I have an open-door policy and I get interrupted a lot. But I view it as valuable if I can help the team solve their problems or help them think through a problem.

6. When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?

My dad was an engineer, so we were always building things. We grew up on a small hobby farm, so whether it was building a fence, a barn or chopping wood, it was always about using your time effectively to get things done. As a kid, I always wanted to see the practical side of what I was doing. I was never a big fan of the theory behind things so much as driving to get things done.

7. What did you learn from the worst boss you ever had?

Of all my employee reviews over the years, there's only one I can ever remember. My boss at the time, pulled me into his office and said, I just have one piece of advice for you: You need to shut up and listen more.

It was one of those moments that it kind of smacks you in the head and you're like I can't believe you just said that. I came to realize that I had this tendency to talk over people and not listen to what they were saying. It's probably one of the pieces of advice that's changed my life more than anything. [It's so important to] sit back and listen to other people and not think you know everything.

8. Who has influenced you most when it comes to how you approach your work?

My co-founder Mark Vadon at Zulily. Over the eight years [I worked with him at former company] Blue Nile I probably quit on him three or four times. Every time he talked me out of it and convinced me to take on a different job. I remember when he gave me the marketing team. I looked across at him and I was like, but I don't know anything about marketing. He kind of laughed at me and said, you're smart and you'll figure it out. He had so much influence in giving me opportunities to stretch beyond what I thought I was able to do.

9. Whats a trip that changed you?

In 2007 Mark and I flew out to Pennsylvania and had a day touring QVC and learning about the business. I was blown away by the scale of the business, the approach to storytelling, the product and customer passion. And now, after starting Zulily and selling the business to QVC and taking on a role within QVC to run this new ventures division, that was an amazing bit of fate to do that back then and then to be here now.

Related: Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran Explains Why You Must Make Time in Your Schedule For Fun

10. What inspires you?

I work to learn. I love to think of new ideas and new approaches to problems. I think that you can do just about anything if you set your mind to it, so what gets me excited every day is a problem that is a challenge to solve.

11. What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?

I was a competitive canoe racer in high school. As we started training more, my dad said we should look into seeing if there was a way to build a clubhouse. Being the engineer that he is, he was able to get a grant and led a project to build us a clubhouse. Once we did that, I started a canoe and kayak camp and ran it for a number of years.

12. What was an early job that taught you something important or useful?

I was a consultant at a early internet company in 1993. The [team] asked me to teach a class in this programming language, even though I didn't actually know [it]. I remember walking in being terrified to teach this class, and then came to realize I only needed to be a couple chapters ahead of the students. It was intimidating and scary, but it's a lesson that if you can get confidence around what you do know and be vulnerable about what you don't, you can sell your way through it.

13. Whats the best advice you ever took?

My old boss telling me to shut up [and listen]. I tend to think out loud, so the way that I get new, fresh ideas is talking, but I realize that can overwhelm people if you're not giving them a chance to speak.

14. What's the worst piece of advice you ever got?

Very few things drive me nuts more than someone saying, well that's just how it is and that's how it's supposed to be done. New ideas come from people challenging the status quo. When I have folks give me advice or guidance to just accept things the way they are, I try to understand why are they saying that. What is the constraint? If there's a better idea out there, let's lean into that.

15. Whats a productivity tip you swear by?

I try not to keep up on my email. I could easily spend six hours a day just doing email, if I let it take over. To be more productive, I focus on what I think is important and not let other people's priorities overtake [mine]. If you're always taking on whatever is inbound from folks, you never move your own agenda forward.

16. Is there an app or tool you use in a surprising way to get things done or stay on track?

WhatsApp for close friends and business associates. LastPass, a password manager is one that has changed how I think about security. I also my Fitbit. I try to beat 14,000 steps a day. Over the last year and a half, I've also become an avid user of MyFitnessPal where I track everything I eat. I have managed to lose 40 plus pounds over the last year.

17. What does work-life balance mean to you?

It's changed a lot over the years. I think when we started Zulily there was work with no balance. I was always on. I'd get up early and work late. I did that for probably the first four years of the business and realized it took a toll on me. Over the last four or five years, I stopped working on Saturday. And then about two years ago I stopped working on Sundays as well. I feel a lot healthier [now].

18. How do you prevent burnout?

Surrounding yourself with great people that can take on big chunks of the work for you. When we started this business there were two of us around the table. Today there are over 3,500 people at Zulily and at QVC 25,000 plus people.

In many ways over the last eight years I've probably had five different jobs. The last few have been about hiring great people, handing things off and getting out of their way. You can scale a lot better with great people around you.

19. When youre faced with a creativity block, whats your strategy to get innovating?

Get in a room with a couple of folks. I'm not somebody that can sit in a room at a computer screen or with sheet of paper and come up with the idea. If I can get two or three people in the room and can talk through something, that's when the great ideas come out.

20. What are you learning now?

My new role at QVC is running new ventures. We are looking for businesses to acquire and partner with. I'm learning how to do the side of business development and how to evaluate these businesses at scale. It's a pretty big mindset shift.

Related:

This Successful Ecommerce Entrepreneur Explains How to Tell The Difference Between Urgent and Important

27 Founders Reveal Their Favorite Tool to Keep Them Organized

This Successful Entrepreneur Explains Why You Don't Need Billions to Build a Brand That Hits Home



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


If youre interested in investing in early-stage companies, it is wise to focus some of your investments on companies led by women. This is what Ive learned not only as an entrepreneur working alongside my wife, who founded a successful business, but also in the six years since I joined Golden Seeds, a network of angel investors that exclusively funds women-led companies.

Related: This Tech Founder Was Often the Only Woman in the Room When She Started Her Company. Here's Her Advice for Young Entrepreneurs.

There are more than 11 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. today, which represents an increase of 26 percent from a decade ago, according to a 2017 report by American Express. In 2005, women represented less than 3 percent of the companies that received startup funding. In 2016, women-led companies represented 22 percent of early-stage companies that received funding, according to data from the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. These women-owned and women-led early-stage businesses need backers. Its more difficult for women to secure funding for their startups, which offers investors an opportunity to invest in promising companies while doing their part in advancing gender parity.

The reason I invest in this high-potential segment is backed by widely available research revealing that companies with gender-diverse boards of directors and management teams produce a superior return on equity. It just seems right to support the idea of gender diversity, but there is also data to prove the point. Women-led and women-owned companies yield above-market returns on investments, according to an analysis by MSCI ESG Research. And personally, Ive had the opportunity to see numerous pitches from women-led companies, and I consistently see entrepreneurs who fit the profile angel investors want to see.

These are some of my observations:

Women create businesses that solve problems.

My wife, Susan, created a successful company, Intimacy, based on solving a problem. Women were wearing ill-fitting bras, and throwing away money on the wrong garments. In building the business, Susan made a name for herself as the bra whisperer on shows like Oprah, Dr. Oz and The Today Show in part because the problem she identified and solved was so widespread. When we sold the company in 2012, we had 18 stores and sales of nearly $40 million.

Related: More Women Are Entering Franchising -- and It's Changing the Industry

I see this in many of the women founders and executives who approach us while raising funds for their companies. They are less likely to create a product simply because its feasible or technology suddenly allows them to do so. Instead, they focus on addressing real issues or problems theyve observed or experienced.

This is true in every industry. The founders Ive met are addressing issues in fields including health care, clean technology, artificial intelligence (AI), enterprise technology, consumer products and services, cybersecurity and others  issues that affect millions of people worldwide. And women entrepreneurs dont just stop at solving the problem. They make sure theres a streamlined, cost-effective solution thats both time- and resource-efficient.

Women founders move forward with less capital, but ample experience.

The resource efficiency of women entrepreneurs is often by necessity. While women have made great strides in entrepreneurship in the past decade, they still lag behind their male counterparts when it comes to raising capital. Women know theyre likely to start with less funding, but determined to scale their companies, they generally learn early to be capital efficient.

Related: 4 Things Women Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Approaching Angel Investors and VCs

It helps that when women start or lead companies, they tend to bring with them five to 10 years of experience in their respective fields -- at least according to the many women-led companies with which Ive met. While theres the occasional phenom, a recent college grad or student, one recurring theme with women entrepreneurs is experience, and that experience contributes to success.

Women are also becoming serial entrepreneurs, with the measurable track records and results angel investors want to see. Golden Seeds reports this was rarely true when the organization was founded in 2005. But this is changing. For instance, in 2017, serial entrepreneurs were one-third of the women-led companies in which the network invested, marking a significant shift.

Women entrepreneurs are creating collaborative, diverse company cultures in every city.

Much like great ideas, great women entrepreneurs are everywhere. This is one of the main reasons why Golden Seeds network of angel investors is nationwide. Of course, there are talented women entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and Atlanta, but lets not forget about those female-run startups in many other locations.

Related: Being a Female Entrepreneur Can Be Incredibly Lonely. This Founder Is Changing That.

Regardless of their location, the women founders Ive met are creating diverse workforces and company cultures. I saw this firsthand in the company my wife founded, and it has been repeated innumerable times in the years since, as I have witnessed dozens of pitches by women entrepreneurs. Women-led company cultures tend to be collaborative, inclusive and consultative.

Investing in smart, driven entrepreneurs and the companies theyre leading is a sound decision -- one more female and male investors should consider.

Related:

A Hurricane Took Her Home and Uprooted Her Staff: Hear How This Entrepreneur Pushed Forward and Recommitted to Her Company

Words of Wisdom for Every Shepreneur Out There

How Women Entrepreneurs Are Challenging Social Norms



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


STAMFORD-City police are investigating the report of a man walking into the Stamford Hospital Emergency Room with two stab wounds to the stomach early Thursday morning.

Sgt. Chris Broems said Stamford Hospital reported the injured man to police at 4:30 a.m., but he was not certain of the time the man was stabbed. He said the victim was intoxicate and was not very cooperative with police.
G 4S, the security and outsourcing giant, has dodged the problems that have hit rival outsourcers and posted a leap in profits.

Revenues climbed by 3% at the worlds fourth-largest private-sector employer, with profits up by 30% to 386 million.

The spokeswoman said revenues at its care and justice business, which runs prisons in the UK and Australia, were flat because the company was being really selective about bidding.

Carillion, which had scores of government contracts, went bust in January while outsourcer Interserve is also struggling.

G4S had an early indicator of the problems to come with Government contracts on thin margins when it won part of a Home Office contract to support asylum seekers in 2013. The contract quickly proved to be unprofitable, leading to a profit warning.
T oday is International Womens Day, a time to celebrate the advances we have made in achieving equality between the sexes  especially this year, the centenary of womens suffrage  and to draw attention to the areas in which this is still work in progress.

And  the clue being in the title  this is also a time to draw attention to the formidable challenges that women in other parts of the world face in achieving even the most basic parity with men, in respect of fundamentals such as access to education and justice.

The real goal for International Womens Day is, of course, to make it redundant: to arrive at a situation where equality between the sexes is taken for granted, the norm, throughout the world.

But before that happy day arrives, there is still much to be done.

Disparity in pay is, as we have found this year, a fundamental area for reform. And a precondition for dealing with the issue is to quantify it.

The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, is taking a robust approach to the Governments requirement that firms employing more than 250 people should provide a gender-pay audit by the beginning of next month.

Of some 9,000 firms that come into this category, only 1,600 have so far done so. Ms Rudd has made clear that the Government Equalities Office is prepared to exact unlimited fines to force firms to meet their obligations.

We can then address the reasons for the disparity, currently at 18.4 per cent.

The interesting aspect of todays events to mark IWD is that they range across the board, as we report today.

In business, finance, sport, music and politics, people are discussing how to make these professions more inclusive.

Some initiatives are controversial, others are feel-good and celebratory, but they all serve to draw attention to those areas in which women could make even greater contribution in the future.

Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle are today visiting a project that seeks to encourage girls to take up careers in science and technology: its a useful reminder that equality in the professions starts with girls choices in schools.

International Womens Day is also for men.

If women are taking equality for granted across the board, men now feel able to exercise responsibility in areas that were once primarily womens, chiefly in raising their children. Thats progress.

For gender equality is not a zero-sum game. It benefits everyone.

The police and the spy

The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury had another, unintended victim: the unfortunate police officer who came to the rescue of Mr Skripal and his daughter as soon as he saw they were in difficulties.

As a result he too was poisoned and is in intensive care, though he is now, thank goodness, awake and talking.

His prompt response to people who needed his help is absolutely characteristic of the police: it is a reminder of how much we owe to their selfless ethic of public service.

The ambulance service, too, was exemplary in its swift and effective response, a reminder of the risks that its workers undergo in carrying out their vital work.

We take our public services for granted, yet they put themselves routinely in harms way on our behalf.

As for Mr Skripal himself, we have a duty of care towards those agents who work, or have worked, for Britain; if he was concerned about his safety, as has been alleged, then the intelligence services should have taken his concerns seriously.

This is plainly a complex investigation and work in progress.
After travelling from New York to London, Milan and Paris for Fashion Week AW18, the fashion set headed to Disneyland, but not for a well deserved break - instead, for Opening Ceremony's latest fashion show instalment.

Back in February, the New York brand announced that it was taking its love for nostalgic cartoon characters to new heights, by staging its SS18 show at the happiest place on earth, Disneyland.

Designers Carol Lim and Humberto Leonwho are known for breaking with tradition when it comes to fashion shows, however Disneyland was definitely a new feat.

Not only was it a massive milestone for the brand, who are only the second ever hold a fashion show at the theme park in its 53-year-history (the first was staged in 1978), but also for Disney, who are currently celebrating Mickey Mouse's 90th anniversary.

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Unsurprisingly, the unisex collection paid homage to the loveable character, as a plethora of mouse-adorned hoodies, jeans, dresses and jackets took to the runway in Toontown.

Getty Images for Disney

The latest collection also managed to put a contemporary spin on some of Disney's most recognisable graphics as Opening Ceremony mixed cartoons with streetwear silhouettes.

Getty Images for Disney

From shoulder pads resembling mouse ears to floor-sweeping gowns and Kim Kardashian-approved biker shorts, Opening Ceremony certainly gave the kids' brand back some style and street cred.

Getty Images for Disney

And obviously you couldn't have a show at Disneyland without a little nostalgia.

Getty Images for Disney

From the 90s Buffalo boots on the model's feet to Mickey and Minnie taking centre stage during the finale, the show really was a happy ever after.
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M any female artists would argue that their gender is an irrelevant aspect of their work - but when they continue to be underrepresented in art galleries, it becomes necessary to champion it.

For International Womens Day, weve collected eight of the most brilliant female artists whose work is on show in London galleries.

A report in 2013 found that only 5% out of more than 100 commercial galleries in London had an equal split of male and female artists.

Those heading up major London art galleries like Tate have made a commitment to address the gender imbalance in permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, but a world in which gallery walls reflect the people within them is still something of a waiting game.

Here are eight brilliant women artists whose work is on show in London right now.

Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell (nee Stephen) (1912)

National Portrait Gallery, London

She got a portrait of her own - quite a few, in fact. Vanessa Bell painted her sister Virginia Woolf many times, often with a haunting, faceless quality that seems to have more than captured her essence as a brilliant, complicated woman. Its part of the National Portrait Gallerys permanent collection, where it is currently on show.

Angelica Kauffman RA, Self-portrait (1770)

Royal Academy of Arts, London

Angelica Kauffman was one of the founding members of the RA, but she has half the reputation that she deserves. She created a number of self-portraits in attempt to securely make her image a well-remembered part of art history.

Mary Moser RA, Spring (ca. 1780)

Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond

Fellow female RA founder Mary Moser is all too readily dismissed as a girly flower painter, like other female artists (Georgia OKeeffe, anyone?). As someone who helped bring the RA into being, her impact is, inevitably, continually underestimated.

Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries 1 /15 Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Mary Seacole by Albert Charles Challen 1869, National Portrait Gallery, London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun 1755 - 1842, Self Portrait in a Straw Hat after 1782, The National Gallery, London. Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Malala Yousafzai by Shirin Neshat 2018, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Olive Morris by Neil Kenlock 1973, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Dame Christabel Pankhurst by Ethel Wright exhibited 1909, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell 1912, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Catharine Macaulay (nee Sawbridge) by Robert Edge Pine circa 1775, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari' by Jerry Barrett 1856, National Portrait Gallery, London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen circa 1810, National Portrait Gallery, London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, National Portrait Gallery, London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Queen Elizabeth I associated with Nicholas Hilliard circa 1575, National Portrait Gallery London Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Princess Victoria aged four by Stephen Poyntz Denning, by permission of Dulwich Picture Gallery Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Elizabeth and Mary Linley, c.1772 Thomas Gainsborough, British, 1727 - 1788, by permission of Dulwich Picture Gallery Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun 1755 - 1842, Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, The National Gallery, London. Portraits of inspiring women in London's galleries Artemisia Gentileschi, The National Gallery, London

Gwen John, Dorelia in a Black Dress (c.1903-4)

Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Duveen Paintings Fund 1949

Welsh artist Gwen John championed the sisterhood when she painted her friend and fellow artists Dorelia McNeill on a trip where they slept rough in France and sketched their way around the country. They took new opportunities for women artists in the early 20th century, training at the Slade School of Art and joining a group of bohemian artists. See this work at Tate Britain.

Agnes Martin, Faraway Love (1999)

Tate / National Galleries of Scotland/ Estate of Agnes Martin

Restrained but yet full of emotional power, this painting by Agnes Martin can be seen at Tate Modern. Women are often asked to justify themselves, to entertain or accommodate: Martins unashamedly abstract work resists those demands.

Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Vase (about 1685)

The National Gallery, London

Dutch artist Rachel Ruysch is one of the few female artists in the National Gallerys permanent collection, representing women in the field of still lifes and flowers in the 17th and 18th century.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, after 1782

The National Gallery, London

Elisabeth Vigee Le Bruns work is on show in the National Gallery, with this self-portrait marking her claim as a celebrated portrait painter of her time. Famous patronage-givers included Queen Marie Antoinette.

Artemisia Gentlieschi, Self-portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1615-17

National Gallery, London
T hroughout March, the Evening Standard is running a special series to mark Womens History Month, covering everything from forgotten female heroes to the brilliant women of today.

This week, the Southbank Centres annual celebration of women and the fight for gender equality is back. Women of the World Festival, now in its 8th year, is a space to champion, create, argue and reflect on what it means to be a woman, what holds us back, how far there is to go and how far weve come.

This years festival kicked off with Women in Creative Industries Day, beginning with an awards ceremony to honour the achievements of pioneers and trailblazers like Lubaina Himid and Reni Eddo-Lodge, followed by a day of passionate debate.

From what it means to be a genius to how leaders can do things differently, powerful women came together to encourage each other and share their wisdom.

Here are some of the ways that they believe we change the world, and make equality a reality.

Challenge why intersectional groups are being marginalised

Director Karen Tomlin said that she asked senior men within the theatre industry how many black female directors they could name. One thought for a long time and came up with the answer of three - including her. Others mused on it and agreed there was a strong presence - but they couldnt name any. We were so invisible that people thought we were already there, she said. She argued that we shouldnt fight over a hierarchy of oppression, but challenge how and why marginalisation of minority groups is taking place.

Challenge words that are masculine constructs

The word genius is an irrelevant construct from the 19th century, made by men, said Tea Uglow, Creative Director of Googles Creative Lab in Sydney. Harriet Vine, co-founder of Tatty Devine, deconstructed the word, finding that a lot of its traits - self-confident, rule-breaking, unconventional, persistent - are often criticised when displayed by women. But many worried that these words make their mark on girls from a young age, by which time their negative impact has already been embedded.

Eight paintings by women you have to see in London 1 /8 Eight paintings by women you have to see in London 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell (nee Stephen), 1912 National Portrait Gallery, London 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Artemisia Gentileschi, Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, about 1615-17 National Gallery, London 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Angelica Kauffman RA, Self-portrait, 1770 Royal Academy of Arts, London 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Mary Moser RA, Spring, ca. 1780 Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Gwen John, Dorelia in a Black Dress, c.1903-4 Tate. Presented by the Trustees of the Duveen Paintings Fund 1949 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Agnes Martin, Faraway Love, 1999 Tate / National Galleries of Scotland/ Estate of Agnes Martin 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Vase, about 1685 The National Gallery, London 10 paintings by women you have to see in London Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, after 1782 The National Gallery, London

Invite more than one member of an intersectional group onto a panel

When theres more than one trans person on a panel, we get to actually talk about something other than toilets, said author Juno Dawson. Organisations preoccupied with box-ticking can actually stifle a conversation from happening - groups need to be allowed to exist in those spaces for more than other to justify their own existence.

Achieving gender equality will require some people to give up their seat

People at top tables need to be prepared to give up their seat, argued Tomalin, adding that too often black female directors are held back by emerging artist schemes. These schemes, giving the illusion of investment in diverse groups, end up being a way to hold back experienced women by keeping them perpetually in training.

Theres always that one little thing that they have left to learn. Always, she said. Women need to be given room to move up,, and that will require others to make space.

Dont let anyone tell you that work that is personal is not serious

Poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz talked about how a fellow poet and friend, Hollie McNish, had recently been criticised by someone for being - they argued - not technically accomplished enough as a poet. (McNish has won a Ted Hughes Award). Because she takes the chance to say something how she needs to say it, and her poems have the word and, and she speaks her truth, Mahfouz said.

Illustrator Manjit Thapp echoed this point, adding that artists like Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kasuma have created work that is personal but also profound. Art by women can be so many different things, she said.

Bring in a different way of working

Director Phyllida Lloyd, who was awarded the Chairs Award at the Women in Creative Industries Award for her Donmar Shakespeare trilogy, used her acceptance speech to argue for a new way of working. When her company came together, the all-woman group spoke about how they often felt anxious about taking up space - but together, they made it a space where anything could happen. If you believe that how you do your work is as influential as the work you do, then a theatre rehearsal room is the perfect place to model social change, she said.

Living with doubt does not make you weak

Royal Court boss Vicky Featherstone, awarded the Gender Equality Champion Award for her work addressing sexual misconduct in theatre, made the case for being able to live with doubt as a leader. When the No Grey Area day of action was quickly set up following the Kevin Spacey allegations, she said, If it didnt work, it would be my fault - but thats OK, wed move on and try something else. If you have a platform already, you can live with the doubt of not knowing if something will work. Its about taking responsibility for failure and not pretending to know all of the answers, she said.

Speak up - even if it feels uncomfortable

Vanessa Kingori is so great at her job that, in 2016, she got an MBE for it. Shes worked her way up to become the publisher at Vogue, working alongside new editor Edward Enninful, and she gives a masterclass in how to talk confidently about her many achievements. But she admitted that she was once chronically shy and didnt even speak until she was three. I have never been somebody who spoke up for myself, she said. Until someone said to me, its really important for you and for everyone else to speak up - it didn't come easily and other people need to know that it's possible.'"

Empower other women to have a platform

When the Royal Courts trainee director, Milli Bhatia, approached Vicky Featherstone and asked if she and a group of women who worked there could run events for International Womens Day, Featherstone said yes. She was thinking back to her time as a trainee director at West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1991, when she asked her boss - Jude Kelly - if she could try running her own street festival.

She said to me, I will support you, I will give you the platform, I will challenge you, but I will let you do the work. Jude handed me the power by saying, yes, Im here - but you can do it, Featherstone said.

And remember: change is coming

I take heart from the fact that we used to have something called the Divine Right of Kings, and we got past that, Southbank Centre boss and WOW Festival founder Jude Kelly said. I have come round to the idea that we may well be able to have a new world, and not just a swap-in."
W hen you win an Oscar, the rest is noise. But for a brief moment on Sunday night, as Maya Rudolph read her films name aloud, Rachel Shenton felt a stillness envelop her.

Everythings silent. Your whole world stops, and you stand there thinking, could that actually be us?, says the former Hollyoaks actor, 30, who collected the Best Live Action Short Film award for The Silent Child, a picture about a profoundly deaf four-year-old girl.

I was in disbelief. You think theres something else coming, a mistake  then suddenly everything snaps back in an instant, youre being hurried for time, and you have to get up on the stage. The scariest part was that she was told she had an audience of 33 million.

Talk about bizarre. Meryl Streep had been sitting yards away from us all evening, looking so calm and serene. I guess shes a seasoned Oscar nominee. Wed followed Salma Hayek down the red carpet earlier, not quite knowing what to do with ourselves. It was such a surreal evening  one of those things where you cant take it in when youre right in the epicentre of it.

Oscars 2018: Rachel Shenton delivers speech in sign language

Shenton had eyes only for her deaf co-star Maisie Sly, accompanying her own acceptance speech with British Sign Language for the younger actors benefit. My hands were shaking, so I was worried my signing would be a bit rubbish, she says. But we could see Maisie, and how happy she was. She was calm as a cucumber. Shes six years old so shes got an advantage in all this business. Shes totally unfazed by it, and was more concerned with going to Disneyland today.

The trophy is so much heavier than it looks that her director and fiance Chris Overton, 29, admits he struggled to keep it aloft.

By Shentons own ambition, theyre not a party couple. They live in Waterloo, south London, with her white Alsatian, Cassie, and prefer long walks in the Lake District to crazy nights out. Did they make an exception for the Oscars? We got to bed at 5am and woke up at 8am  but only because they were dealing with so many phone calls. It makes a change from watching it in bed, she says. They even forgot to pick up their $100,000 goodie bags.

After the ceremony finished at 8pm, they were whisked off to have their respective statuettes engraved and then took a cab to the legendary Vanity Fair afterparty. And then? We were there for five minutes, says Shenton. We went in, grabbed an In-N-Out burger and left. We just wanted to take the Oscar back to the crew who worked so hard on everything. That was our priority  to get back to our family and have our own party. They rented an AirBnB, which assistant director, Bryony Pulizzi  one of their 13 crew members had decorated with gold balloons. It had a little red carpet, so Slys siblings could dress up and walk it like their sister.

The couple did, however, dine with Shentons writing hero Aaron Sorkin and director Steven Spielberg over coffee mousse chocolate cups at the official Oscars Nominees Luncheon before the ceremony. Overton ended up directing the E.T. auteur as they tried to take a photo together. The lighting was wrong, so I ended up shuffling Spielberg around to get better lighting, he says. And there was a shout out from Robbie Williams on Twitter, Shentons old neighbour from her years growing up in Stoke-on-Trent. I know Robbies dad quite well, she says. The whole community is buzzing. I love that. Does she think Tinseltown struggled with her accent? I like to think my accent isnt strong enough  but its funny, I get people coming up to me in America and saying I sound like Mel B. Shes from Leeds. They just hear a British accent and probably cant quite work it out. Thats the nice thing about sign language  no accent.

The film, which is 20 minutes long, tells the story of Libby, played by Sly, who lives a silent life until a social worker, played by Shenton, teaches her how to communicate through sign language.

We wanted to shine a light on deafness and raise the profile of deafness, but also put that light on the lack of access to education for deaf children, says Shenton, who has been an ambassador for the National Deaf Childrens Society since 2011, and a patron of the charity dDeaflinks Staffordshire, for which she completed a ten-day fundraising trek across the Great Wall of China.

Getty Images

Qualified in British Sign Language, in 2014 she was cast in the American teen drama Switched at Birth, playing a student teacher who was fluent in sign language (a whole episode was also conducted entirely in American Sign Language while she was cast). Millions of children all over the world live in silence, failed by education. In the film, Libbys family is middle class and refuse to let her learn sign language, limiting her to lip reading at school. But, Shenton says, it can happen in upper-class families, middle-class families, lower-class families. These issues are universal, and they dont discriminate  theres a lack of awareness whatever your background.

On discrimination, she says her own black Suzanne Neville dress was not entirely in solidarity with the Times Up movement. I just love black  its flattering, she says. But she does see International Womens Day as a celebration. Everyone  men and women  were saddened by all the stories that were coming out from the #MeToo campaign. It seemed like it was another day, another story. But I actually think from that a positive thing has happened, and it really does feel that times are changing. We had the first female cinematographer this year  and as much as thats crazy in 2018, it does feel that weve turned a corner.

Diversity, she says, is, however, about more than race and gender. Its really important to remember that disability is diversity, and that disabled actors and disabilities are something that is hugely underrepresented in film.

Not all men dominate the Oscars, as Overton had to talk over the exit music. The autocue was flashing at me, Get Off!, and when the music starts playing youre really in trouble. But the most important thing for me was Rachel, and thanking her. It really was her determination that drove us  me and the whole team. They raised 10,000 to make the film via an Indiegogo fundraiser. The writing, the fundraising and 12 years of work went into this film. It starts and ends with her. But wed have worked on it for another decade. This had to get made.

Oscars 2018: Winners - In pictures 1 /24 Oscars 2018: Winners - In pictures Guillermo del Toro accepts the Oscar for Best Picture for 'The Shape of Water' Reuters Gary Oldman accepts the Oscar for Best Actor for 'Darkest Hour' Reuters Sam Rockwell, winner of the Best Supporting Actor award for 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri;' actor Frances McDormand, winner of the Best Actress award for 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri;' actor Allison Janney, winner of the Best Supporting Actress award for 'I, Tonya;' and actor Gary Oldman, winner of the Best Actor award for 'Darkest Hour,' pose in the press room during the 90th Annual Academy Awards Getty Images Guillermo del Toro accepts the Oscar for Best Picture for "The Shape of Water" from presenter Warren Beatty Reuters Allison Janney, winner of the award for best performance by an actress in a supporting role for 'I, Tonya' Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Frances McDormand accepts Best Actress for 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' onstage during the 90th Annual Academy Awards Getty Images Sam Rockwell, winner of the award for best performance by an actor in a supporting role for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri', and Viola Davis pose in the press room at the Oscars Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Rachel Shenton using sign language and Chris Overton accept the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for "The Silent Child Reuters Roger Deakins accepts the award for best cinematography for "Blade Runner 2049" at the Oscar Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Guillermo del Toro accepts the Oscar for Best Picture for 'The Shape of Water' Reuters Guillermo del Toro and Sally Hawkins take the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Picture for "The Shape of Water" from presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway Reuters Guillermo del Toro accepts Best Picture for 'The Shape of Water' from actor Warren Beatty onstage during the 90th Annual Academy Awards Getty Images Gary Oldman accepts the Oscar for Best Actor for 'Darkest Hour' Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Chadwick Boseman helps James Ivory pick up his award for best adapted screenplay for "Call Me by Your Name" from the stage floor as Margot Robbie looks on at the Oscars Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Guillermo del Toro, winner of the award for best director for "The Shape of Water" celebrates in the audience at the Oscars Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Sebastian Lelio (foreground center) and Nicolas Saavedra, from back left, Daniela Vega, Alejandro Goic, and Pablo Larrain accept the award for best foreign language film for "A Fantastic Woman" at the Oscars Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Australian Film Editor Lee Smith (right) celebrates next to US actor Matthew McConaughey after he won the Oscar for Best Film Editing for 'Dunkirk' during the 90th Annual Academy Awards show AFP/Getty Images Kobe Bryant, winner of the award for best animated short for 'Dear Basketball' poses in the press room at the Oscars Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, winners of the Best Original Song award for 'Remember Me' from 'Coco,' pose in the press room during the 90th Annual Academy Awards Getty Images Jordan Peele accepts the award for best original screenplay for "Get Out" at the Oscars Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Jeffrey A Melvin, Paul D. Austerberry, and Shane Vieau, winners of the award for best production design for "The Shape of Water", pose in the press room at the Oscars Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Mark Bridges, winner of the award for best costume design for 'Phantom Thread' Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Lucy Sibbick, Kazuhiro Tsuji, and David Malinowski accept the award for best makeup and hairstyling for 'Darkest Hour' at the Oscars Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Guillermo del Toro, winner of the awards for best director and best picture for "The Shape of Water," poses in the press room at the Oscars Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

The story is personal for Shenton. My dad lost his hearing very suddenly when I was 12, becoming profoundly deaf. As I said in my acceptance speech, its a silent disability. For me, I can understand that its so easy to go through life not quite registering this world around you, one where everyday things from car horns to telephone calls are taken for granted. But it gave me the impetus to learn sign language and I fell in love with it and the deaf community. Her late father, she says, would have been proud.

The Hollyoaks-Hollywood connection ran strong this year. Shenton played Mitzeee Minniver in the Channel 4 soap, where she met Overton, AKA the cage fighter character Liam McAllister. We owe a lot to that show, says Shenton. Im extremely proud of Hollyoaks. No one could be flying the flag more happily. What I think is that its an excellent training ground, especially for actors who are starting out, because the schedules are so thick and fast, you have to adapt. Its a really good way to learn your craft. I wouldnt have met Chris if it wasnt for Hollyoaks.
H ow are you planning to celebrate Mothers Day this year?

While some people love taking their mums out for afternoon tea, treating them to gifts or maybe getting them a nice bouquet of flowers, sometimes simple things like settling down to watch a great film can be the best way to spend the day.

After all, the world of cinema has celebrated mothers relationships with their children countless times down the years; the unbreakable bond between mother and child has been right the heart of many Hollywood movies, and strong matriarchal characters have proved to be some of the most compelling characters ever put on screen too.

So, if youre looking to celebrate Mothers Day with a movie, these are the best films about mother and child relationships, listed in no particular order.

The best films to watch on Mothers Day

Freaky Friday

Freaky Friday (2003) trailer

After a mother and daughter with a fractious relationship find themselves trapped in the others body, they learn to respect each other more than ever before and see things from a whole new perspective. Whether you prefer the 1976 original with Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster or the 2003 remake with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, Freaky Friday is a great body-swap comedy with a heart of gold.

Lady Bird

Lady Bird - Trailer

Lady Bird might have just missed out on an Oscar at this years awards, but the film is one of the most touching movies released over the past 12 months. Saoirse Ronans protagonist and her mother Marion, played by Laurie Metcalf, might clash at times, but their time together represents one of the most compelling on-screen mother-daughter relationships of recent times. Whether theyre bickering over Lady Birds future, or listening to the Grapes of Wrath on audiobook together, their relationship always feels incredibly relatable and real.

Brave

Brave Trailer

Disney and Pixars underrated 2012 film Brave follows the fearless daughter of a King and Queen, whose acts of defiance come to have huge impacts across the kingdom. The animation might be set in medieval Scotland, but the central relationship between the Queen and her daughter is as timeless as they come.

Juno

Juno trailer

Offbeat and quirky are the two words always that are always used to describe comedy Juno, which proved a great indie hit back in 2007. Ellen Pages portrayal of a young woman finding herself unexpectedly pregnant is fantastic, while the films tone strikes a great balance between eccentric humour and thought-provoking reflections on family. Incidentally, Junos parents in the film (played by JK Simmons and Allison Janney) both now have Oscar victories to their name following Janneys win for her performance in I, Tonya at the 2018 Academy Awards.

Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias

Steel Magnolias follows a group of women in Louisiana who must learn to deal with loss following the death of a close friend. The movie boasts a star-studded cast list with Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah, Olympia Dukakis and Julia Roberts all delivering inspiring performances. Its a film focusing on mother-daughter relationships that pulls at the heartstrings but delivers an ultimately life-affirming message.

Bad Moms

Bad Moms - official trailer

The title of this 2016 comedy might seem inappropriate on Mothers Day, but Bad Moms takes an alternative and highly enjoyable look at what it means to be a mother. Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Jada Pinkett Smith all star in the film, which sees a group of extremely-hard working mums who let their hair down in spectacular style with a huge night out.

Mamma Mia

Mamma Mia! - Official trailer

When Amanda Seyfrieds character invites three men to her wedding in an attempt to discover who her real father is, she begins a journey with her mother (Meryl Streep) that will bring them closer together than ever before. Some of the singing in this 2008 romp might not be the best (Pierce Brosnan tries hard though, bless him) but if youre looking for a fun movie to relax into this Mothers Day, this could be the one for you.

Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment - Trailer

This 1983 drama centres around a powerful and at times confrontational relationship between a widowed woman and her daughter, who goes against her mothers wishes in marrying her husband. The pair work to understand the other in this 1983 tearjerker, starring the likes of Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jeff Daniels, Danny Devito and Jack Nicholson.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Official Trailer

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the story of a young woman going against convention and her family learning to reconnect and support her along the way. The 2002 romcom features has a strong, if not always agreeable, mother/daughter relationship at its heart too, making it a great option this Mothers Day.

The Kids are Alright

The Kids Are All Right - Official Trailer
A mbience: 3/5

Food: 3/5

Hampstead is supposed to be nicer than Brixton.

It has big aspirational houses on tree-lined streets, along which small children scooter to prep school. It has blue plaques for dead poets and two Daunt bookshops. It has the Heath for Sunday strolls in healthy air and proper pubs for post-stroll pints. Moving here from SW9 should feel like a step up in the world. But theres a massive disclaimer that comes with lovely, life-affirming Hampstead that I missed when I decided to move in with my NW3 lifer boyfriend. That disclaimer? There are no good restaurants in Hampstead.

This is problematic. Brixton has shipping containers of street food and teeming, steaming markets of Jamaican, Colombian and Eritrean abundance, locavore indie restaurants and chaotic Technicolor choice overload. Hampstead has Cote and Carluccios and Cafe Rouge  but now, also Cafe Hampstead, a new independent restaurant on Rosslyn Hill inspired by the cafe culture in Tel Aviv. Im hoping for a Palomar 2.0. Im desperate.

Frankie McCoy

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Inside, Cafe Hampstead was promising enough, with green floor tiles and faux art deco lamps; a shiny curved bar and inoffensive muzak (I bet theyve paid someone to make their playlist, said my boyfriend, who personally crafts the nine-hour-long playlists for his own restaurants). And it was promisingly packed. On a Sunday evening we were surrounded by the blow-dried bobs and intelligent specs of mothers and husbands driven 300m from home. All had their phones out  standard  except not for Insta snapping but for illuminating the perfectly readable menu in the perfectly well lit restaurant, in that way that provokes teenage children to mute fury at dinner.

The pizza tasted like a supermarket margherita  Basics, not Taste the Difference

That menu, though. It was just weird. As expected from a cafe inspired by Tel Aviv, there was hummus and harissa. As expected from a cafe in Hampstead that calls itself Cafe Hampstead, there were crowd-pleasers of schnitzel and cod. Then, though, there was a pizza section, at a restaurant that had in no way suggested Italian leanings until the word pizza blundered into phonelit view. Not just pizzas, but fusion pizzas: Egyptian-style with calamari and cumin; a minced lamb, labneh and zaatar Druzi. The latter was, quite frankly, awful. Besides the wedge of dry lemon skulking in the middle, it tasted like a supermarket margherita  Basics, not Taste the Difference. With a sprinkle of mince and a white squiggle of Philadelphia Light labneh, it would be rejected from a Pizza Express 7th birthday party.

Safe bets were indeed safer and better. Chicken schnitzel was cornflake-crisp and huge enough to do without its lumpy mash side. Chicken pargit  well-griddled chicken in labneh and tomato-seed sauce  is designed for mums who dont fancy cod. A bit pierce film and microwave, but fine. Beetroot feta salad and burnt aubergine were harmless gastropub fodder. It was the Israeli snacks that stood out. Hummus was gelato slick and topped with warm stocky chickpeas, dripping juice into dip with Marmite stickiness. Lamb arayes werent thin and crepe-like but two thwacking great hunks of lamb sausage, gamely rich and musky, stuffed inside bread so thick and crisp it was practically shortcrust. This was a lamb sausage roll pie and precisely as delicious as that sounds. A dessert of tahini ice cream with caramel sauce was great, as though hummus had been sweetened, coldly condensed and lavished with tarry muscovado.

Cafe Hampstead serves a potluck supper. Ill happily go Hampstead native for more lamb arayes but the pizzas had me screaming for Brixtons sourdough-flipping shipping containers. This restaurant is dysfunctional. At least, thats what my new therapist says.

Cafe Hampstead

1 Pitta 1

1 Hummus 5

1 Burnt aubergine 7

1 Lamb arayes 9

1 Beetroot salad 7

1 Chicken pargit 15

1 Schnitzel 13

1 Druzi pizza 12

1 Tahini ice cream 7

1 Glass of Greco 5.50

Total 81.50
T oday, 8 March, marks International Womens Day and the ways to celebrate girl power this year are aplenty.

From the WOW Festival at Southbank Centre to talks, workshops and comedy performance, theres lots of ways to laud lady power in London. But what about celebrating on social media?

From the internet's most inspiring female artists, activists and influencers, below are some accounts guaranteed to lift you up:

The Wing

The Wing is actually a female-only shared working space in Brooklyn but there's nothing dry and 9-5 about their Instagram feed.

A mixture of humorous, important kick-ass memes and quotes (that sit alongside some dreamy interior shots of the space) - this will make you 'get-up and go' each day.

Mari Andrew

Mari Andrew's illustrations of everyday life and feelings are well-worth following.

Observing what so many don't, her drawings are relatable, endearing and often reassuring. Previously a writer, she started illustrating at the age of 28 when she was going through a difficult time. Three years and almost 800 thousand followers later, her first book is due to be released (this month).

Paris Lees

Journalist, presenter and Trans activist Paris Lees is a fierce campaigner for human rights. She's had a remarkable journey - from being bullied at school to spending time in prison and becoming the first openly Trans model to feature in British Vogue - her no B.S. approach to life will inspire you daily.

VC London

This group of female bikers are redefining the stereotype of women on motorbikes. The three friends operate out of an east London motorbike workshop, organising womens-only classes and offering advice to first-time female riders.



Setting up an Instagram and calling ourselves VC was a way to document a few friends just having fun riding and wrenching our motorbikes, VC-er Gemma Harrison told us last year.

Petra Collins

Although this 25-year-old Canadian photographer has quickly taken her dreamy teenage portraiture to high fashion (she shot editorials for the likes of Vogue, Allure and CR Fashion Book), her Instagram still remains true to her young feminist roots. All of the young women she shoots are her muses, and appear hyper-feminine, glowing and natural. Even the images she previously shot of Kim Kardashian have a dreamlike aesthetic.

I just really love [photography] so much, Collins told the New Yorker. Even holding the camera and looking through it makes me happy.

Nefarious Skate Crew

Come hang is their mantra, and it shows. This all-girl skateboarding collective supports female skaters of all experience levels, and serves as a platform to develop that encouragement. Their posts will make you want to grab a board and do it too.

Kate Bingaman-Burt

She doodles. She paints. She teaches. What doesnt this Portland, Oregon-based illustrator do? This Instagram account follows the projects of commercial artist and graphic design professor Bingaman-Burt as she draws, leads workshops across the U.S. and inspires young people to bring more art into their lives.

A highlight? The time she drew every daily purchase over the course of eight years. Thats nearly 3,000 drawings. Inspiring, right?

Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Fazlalizadeh is a New York-based illustrator and muralist, who recently created the Stop Telling Women to Smile Series to address gender-based street harassment. She pastes portraits of women with captions aimed at men outside in public places around New York. Her impact on tackling street harassment has travelled far and wide, taking on international locations like Paris and Mexico City. 

Grace Timothy

Beauty journalist and author of Mum Face, Grace Timothy, is refreshingly honest about both the highs and lows of motherhood. Not shying away from the sleepless nights, stress and body changes - she offers messages that are applicable to all of her followers whether they're mothers or not.

Tess Holliday

Plus-size model, beauty blogger and mum Tess Holliday has done it all. Shes modelled for Vogue, done dozens of television and print interviews and now even has a clothing line under her name.

But Hollidays Instagram is more than just glitz and glamour - its a peek into her more vulnerable side. She posts teary-eyed selfies after she stays up all night with her new baby, fashion shoots with products that donate to charity and, of course, posts that promote her Eff Your Beauty Standards campaign. For cute baby pictures and a whole lot of body positivity, Hollidays account is a cant-miss.

Lula Hyers

Hyers art represents everything a young, teenage feminist might aspire towards. Its bold, brave and pushes boundaries with every single post. The 21-year-old New York-based artist posts videos and photos of her friends, who often pose nude, kissing or dancing in their undergarments. Hyers is a voice for queer youth as well, and promotes other women to explore their sexualities and sense of self, just as Hyers does. Her Instagram features people of all races, sexualities and genders, which allows for a unifying discourse in the comments on her posts.

I really like knowing I can look back and see my friends in a particular moment, whether theyre laughing or crying or doing drugs, she told New York Times Live. I can see them shaving their head or going through a break up. Were all going through this shared experience of growing up, even though were not always on the same page.

Laura Medalia

This self-proclaimed Coder Girl brings style to software engineering through her Instagram account and blog. She mixes fashion with coding, and posts about her daily life as a computer virus-kicking ninja who happens to wear leopard print Chelsea boots.
I wonder what James Wood would make of Upstate if it were written by someone who wasnt James Wood. His take-down, I imagine, would be forensic and brutal. He would write a long polemic about the art of fiction that would make you exclaim My god, yes, thats what a novel should do!

Wood, a former Durham choirboy, clearly knows how the deed is done: the New Yorkers literary critic has written five persuasive books of essays about fiction, including How Fiction Works (2008). He is always keen to raise everyones game, to guard against jarring metaphors and narrative inconsistencies. But thats no guarantee he can do the deed himself.

Wood has admitted that his first attempt at a novel, The Book Against God (2003), was hampered by self-consciousness. So he must know hes taking a risk with a second.

Set in 2006, the story centres on Alan Querry, a plain-thinking middle-aged property developer from the North of England. He has two daughters: Helen, a London music executive, who goes at life full pelt; and Vanessa, a hyper-sensitive philosophy lecturer who now lives in upstate New York.

When Alan and Helen learn that Vanessa has suffered another bout of depression, they travel to snowy Saratoga Spring to see her. Alan watches his daughters and wonders how best to live: like Helen, embracing life but perpetually distracted? Or like Vanessa, quiet and bookish, who must concentrate so hard just in order to be alive.

Both have been marked in different ways by their parents divorce and their mothers death. Look, Im very simple, compared to you and Helen, Alan tells Vanessa, perplexed as to how he ended up sharing his life with melancholy and very complex women.

Its not a bad premise: there are parallels with J M Coetzees Disgrace, but I cant think of too many novels about fathers and adult daughters. It might have been a profound meditation on luck and injustice; instead its a beige play-by-play account of Alans American trip: breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Theres a Theresa-May-In-The-Cornfield quality to Woods writing, suggesting he doesnt get out much. Alans laptop is described as a proud white magic box full of secrets and tricks. When Helen has a drink with her father and sister, its an irresponsible gin-and-tonic. (Why irresponsible? Its her first! Shes on holiday!)

Worse, they are constantly telling each other bad family jokes, as if Wood feels the need to signpost his humour. In fact, the funniest line is about how unfunny Alan is, his jokes going on and on, like an alarm you fumbled to switch off in the morning.

The best books of 2017 - in pictures 1 /24 The best books of 2017 - in pictures The best books of 2017, as chosen by ES Writers Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides Rohan Silva: "[This book] is not only the best thing Ive read all year  it also couldnt be more 2017, featuring transgender teenagers, rape allegations on campus and much more." Asias Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century by Richard McGregor Michael Burleigh: "Richard McGregors stunningly good Asias Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of US Power in the Pacific Century tackles how the interplay of Chinese assertiveness with Trumps dissolution of US power is fundamentally altering the balance of power in this vast region." A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin and The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray David Sexton: "By far the most compelling political book of the year was Douglas Murrays The Strange Death of Europe, which raises the debate beyond current squabbles to whats really happening now to European civilisation." Mr Lear, A Life of Art and Nonsense by Jenny Uglow and Mozart's Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt Jane Shilling: "The Owl and the Pussycat, the Jumblies, the Old Man with a Beard  the characters in Edward Lears nonsense verse have beguiled generations of readers with their captivating exuberance and melancholy." Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie and The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson George Osbourne: "Here are two books that have helped us interpret our confusing world this year." Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin Claire Allfree: "It takes the form of a conversation between a teenage boy and a dying older woman but its also a nightmare dispatch from modern-day Argentina, every page stuffed with horrors. Its dazzling, unforgettable, and deeply strange. Ive never read anything like it." What You Did Not Tell by Mark Mazower Robert Fox: "The story of the Mazowers, their blood relatives and connections, is the reality check to the worlds romanticised and fictionalised by Conrad, John le Carre and Robert Harris. They suffered and survived world wars, revolution, show trials and holocaust." Black Tudors by Miranda Kaufmann and To Catch a King by Charles Spencer Dan Jones: "Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann was that rare thing: a book about the 16th century that said something new." In The Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott and First Love by Gwendoline Christie Arifa Akbar: "In the Days of Rain is Rebecca Stotts astounding memoir of her fathers life, and her own, in a fundamentalist Christian cult, and is written with the rigour of a historian and the eye of a novelist." Blue Planet II by by James Honeyborne and Mark Brownlow and The Standing Chandelier by Lionel Shriver Katie Law: "Lionel Shrivers novella The Standing Chandelier was terrific, skewering the notion that the sisterhood beats all, and doing so much more eloquently than all the rubbish grip-lit currently doing the rounds." A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre and Grant by Ron Chernow Simon Sebag Montefiore: "John le Carres A Legacy of Spies is a brilliant novel of deception, love and distrust to join his supreme espionage canon  an elegaic meeting of our tawdry past and splintering present through a reinvestigation of how Smiley artfully exploited a case that cost the life of a beautiful woman  by our greatest novelist, long overdue for the Nobel Prize." Unwinnable: Britains War in Afghanistan 20012014 by Theo Farrell and Travels in a Dervish Cloak by Isambard Wilkinson Justin Marozzi: "As a reminder of how not to prosecute a war in a far-off place that has confounded the best efforts of many foreign powers over the centuries, Theo Farrells masterful account of Britains ill-fated adventure in Afghanistan, Unwinnable: Britains War in Afghanistan 20012014 is surely the last word on the subject." David Jones by Thomas Dilworth and Red Famine by Anne Applebaum Melanie McDonagh: "Thomas Dilworths account of the life and works of David Jones  David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet  is pretty well the perfect biography." Selected Poems by Thom Gunn and Deaths of Poets by Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley Claire Harman: "Do we prefer poets who die young and tragically to aged pen-pushers like Eliot? What, they ask, is the price of poetry? This is definitely one for the eggheads Christmas stocking." The Politics of Opera: A History from Monteverdi to Mozart by Mitchell Cohen Anne McElvoy: "Operas, the author argues, change their political meanings according to their setting, and the deep research and clear prose here hit a high C." Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry Johanna Thomas-Corr: "'A mothers death lasts a lot of years,' she writes in her second collection, which is about grief, estrangement and the question of where parent ends and child begins." Munich by Robert Harris, Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout and Basked of Deplorables by Tom Rachman Nick Curtis: "I did enjoy Elizabeth Strouts Anything Is Possible  piercing, sort-of short stories that comprise a sort-of sequel to the excellent My Name is Lucy Barton." After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus and WTF: What Have We Done, Why Did It Happen, How Do We Take Back Control by Robert Preston Matthew dAncona: "Robert Pestons WTF: What Have We Done, Why Did It Happen, How Do We Take Back Control is a fascinating exploration of the new political landscape and that rarest of things: a successful blend of personal reflection and objective analysis." Syria: Recipes from Home by collated by Itab Azzam and Dina Mousawi and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Richard Godwin: "I was so pleased that George Saunders won the Booker for Lincoln in the Bardo. Hes like literary psilocybin, scaring the bejesus out of you before revealing the world anew." We are the End by Gonzalo C Garcia and Paranoid Narcissism by Miguel Cullen Ian Thomson: "It casts a jaundiced eye on the world of computer-gaming and disappointed love. I was swept up the dizzy-making, pleasurably nutty prose and the sarcastic, sweet-sour humour." Heather, The Totality by Matthew Weiner and Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney Susannah Butter: " Rooney has a light touch, a talent for recounting conversations and for making you feel the heavy weight of her characters secrets. She doesnt shy away from politics either." Your Life In My Hands by Rachel Clarke and The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard Rosamund Urwin: "In The Day That Went Missing, Richard Beard gives an account of watching his brother drown when they were both children. It is more than just a study on grief, exploring memory and the savagery of the stiff upper lip. No book has moved me more this year." Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker and What Doesnt Kill Us by Scott Carney William Leith: "One of my favourite books this year, and definitely the most useful, was Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker. He tells us all sorts of things about sleep and dreaming. Now I go to sleep much earlier and feel much better for it."

Shall I go on? Theres the sentimentality. Theres the clunky foreshadowing: have you heard of this senator from Illinois who has just announced his presidential candidacy? There are tiresome comparisons between British and American culture. There are fussy metaphors: a croissant is an obese horn of plenty. A semi-tumescent dick suddenly leaps out the page. You suspect Wood is pinching bits from writers he admires.

Which is not how fiction works, as Wood himself has argued. As a critic, he is acutely sensitive to voice. Novelists should use the kind of figurative language that their characters would produce.

As Alan reflects on Vanessas meagre academic output, he thinks: She was like a trumpeter playing Haydn in a symphony, picking up the instrument only every hundred bars of so. But theres little about Alan that suggests hes a connoisseur of classical music.

However, its biggest crime is its lifelessness. Wood famously criticised Zadie Smith for her hysterical realism, pursuing vitality at all costs. Upstate is crying out for some vitality. Its a book without a central nervous system. Why did he write it?
H air today

Holland Park

Kirstie Allsopp and Elizabeth Saltzman went back to the roots for the Josh Wood Colour party at the colourists foliage-bedecked atelier, where shampoo was swapped for champagne and Laura Bailey was just dyeing to have a snap with Wood himself.

Josh Wood Colour party 1 /6 Josh Wood Colour party Josh Wood and Laura Bailey Cecilia Chancellor Kirstie Allsopp Hermione Corfield Coco Konig Sheherazade Goldsmith

La madre della moda

Milan

Anna Dello Russo took a long, hard look at herself at the charity auction and party she threw during Milan Fashion Week (not hard to do when her face was emblazoned on cakes and dresses galore), where she auctioned off 30 outfits, as modelled by Hailey Baldwin and Caroline Vreeland.

Anna Dello Russo charity auction 1 /10 Anna Dello Russo charity auction Jasmine Sanders Margherita Missoni Francesca Versace Virginia Galateri Di Genola Carlo Sestini Giovanna Battaglia;Oscar Engelbert Doina Ciobanu Robin Cavalli Caroline Vreeland Anna Dello Russo

Silent Night

Westminster
C heers to International Womens Day then, and what better way to celebrate than with an all female-brewed pint of craft IPA?

London is full of extremely cool women making beer and while, obviously, the idea of female brewers shouldnt be remarkable  ale was originally brewed by women, alewives, back in the medieval era  brewers today have a reputation as bearded dudes with tattoos.

Aiming to change that is Sophie de Ronde, who five years ago launched the International Womens Collaboration Brew Day (try saying that after two pints of grapefruit-lime double IPA) with a group of other female brewers on 8 March. 126 women brewers around the world will be whipping up their unique Unite beer in honour of IWD, with a theme this year of exotic. Women can bring more diverse impact into the brewing industry in terms of creativity and excellence, points out de Ronde. If anyone has a passion for flavours then brewing is akin to being a chef.

Sophie de Ronde

Just dont suggest to de Ronde that beer brewed by women might have girly, sweet flavours. Thats the stereotype we try to avoid. Women who drink beer dont drink beer because its girly, light and fruity. Women drink the same beer that men do because it appeals to their palate, she says. There is a beer out there for everyone, whether it be a standard bitter, triple IPA, barley wine, fruit beers, sours

The London faction of IWCBD centres around Walthamstows Wild Card Brewery and its uber-cool head brewer Jaega Wise, a chemical engineer and brewhead. In 2017 she brewed a stupendous rhubarb pale ale in collaboration with women from Five Points, Fourpure, Weird Beard and more. This year Wild Card is also a partner in E17s Wild Women Week (until 11 March), a music and beer celebration for women that raises money for Girls Rock London (a not-for-profit project that creates opportunities for girls and women in London to make and perform music). Head up to the Ravenswood Tap Bar for spoken word alongside your Queen of Diamonds IPA on 8 March.

Wiper and Trues XX
T he discussion of womens rights has never felt as omnipresent as it does in 2018.

Everywhere you turn theres a feminist rally, campaign or new book celebrating women (present company included). But how much do we really understand about the history of the movement, the key players and the various waves?

Look no further, because weve compiled a handy guide to the history of feminism, so next time youre at a rally you can wax lyrical about the benefits of your favourite wave by referring to this simple breakdown.

Pre-waves: Protofeminism

Feminism as we know it today didnt get started as an official discourse until the 19th Century but before that, women attempted to assert their rights and overcome structural oppression just as they have forpretty much the entirety of time.

In Ancient Greece, the poet Sappho celebrated female milestones from puberty to childbirth, in the middle ages, nun Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) authored two books that rejected negative depictions of women in Christianity and the Christine de Pizan wrote The City of Ladies (1405), considered one of the first feminist texts.

In the 17th Century, Mary Astell wrote A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), appealing for womens education and arguing that women shouldnt marry if they didnt want to  a wild thing for a woman of the time to utter.

Mary Wollstonecrafts 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Women kicked off the first wave, surmising it wasnt possible for women to be free if they were dependent upon the will of men.

The first wave: Womens Enfranchisement (Mid 1800s-1920s)

The first wave of feminism came about when womens calls for equality synthesised into a clear movement. It focused on womens fight for the vote by the peaceful suffragists (led by Millicent Fawcett) and the militant suffragettes (led by Emmeline Pankhurst). They believed that women could not be free unless they were self-governing and felt that women must enter the political sphere in order to make change.

In the early movement, suffrage coexisted alongside abolition, and former slave, Sojourner Truth, became famous for her spontaneous and impassioned 1851 speech Aint I a Woman? in which she argued for the rights of women of colour. But the movement was dominated by white women, who soon saw advances by people of colour as a possible hindrance to their movement.

In 1918 and 1920 respectively, women in the UK and the US were granted the vote and soon after entered the political sphere.

The second wave: Womens Lib (1960s -1980s)

Following two world wars in which women had more than proven their worth outside the home, women assembled in the 1960s alongside the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war protests.

Second wave feminists espoused social, sexual and reproductive liberation, helped along by the commercial availability of the pill in 1961. They lived by Carol Hannishs motto, the personal is political, and advocated for a universal sisterhood.

They argued that beauty ideals objectified and held women back, spurred on by thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir whose 1949 The Second Sex explained gender as a social construct. Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (1963) staunchly rejected domesticity became a bestseller, and Gloria Steinems radical feminist magazine, Ms, was a 1970s favourite. They did not burn their bras!

London's modern-day suffragettes - in pictures 1 /16 London's modern-day suffragettes - in pictures Adwoa Aboah Dave Benett Michaela Coel Nils Jorgensen/REX/Shutterstock Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff Twitter Claire Kober Jeremy Selwyn Nimco Ali Dave Benett / Getty Images for S Carrie Gracie PA Munroe Bergdorf Dave Benett Nadia Rose Dave Benett Debbie Wosskow and Anna Jones Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Sharon Horgan Charles Sykes/Invision/AP Alison Owen Dave Benett Sarah Wood MP Kemi Badenoch Jenny Goodall Helena Morrissey Jason Alden/REX Vicky Featherstone Rebecca Reid Margot James REX/Shutterstock

Womens lib was criticised for being white and middle-class dominated, so also saw the rise of intersectional feminism after the phrase was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in the 1980s. Thinkers like Audre Lorde and bell hooks argued for a more inclusive movement that fought for race, class and LGBTQ rights, creating accessible works that could be understood by many.

The third wave: Girl Power (1990s)

The third wave benefited from the preceding ones, but rejected many of their mentalities. Unlike their academic fore sisters, they believed that feminism should be for everyone, rejecting the universal sisterhood as excluding LGBTQ and trans women and instead promoting a feminism defined by the individual.

Lipstick feminists tossed aside the idea of beauty as patriarchal oppression and embraced push-up bras and high heels to prove that femininity and intelligence were not mutually exclusive. Pop stars like Madonna and The Spice Girls preached girl power in platform shoes and conical bras.

Riot Grrrls rejected the idea of female victimhood, and sought to undermine sexists by reclaiming words like bitch and slut and creating feminist zines littered with the words.

Feminist writers included Rebecca Walker, who was fed up with discussions of a postfeminist age, Judith Butler developed upon gender constructs in Gender Trouble (1990) and Eve Ensler encouraged women to love their bodies in The Vagina Monologues (1996).

Whatever feminism third wavers adopted (and, in fact, whatever they did) was considered a sign of women exercising their power to choose.

The fourth wave: Hashtag Activism (2011- present)

Women's march London

Driven in the digital sphere, the fourth wave (which we are in now) is a global wave of feminism fuelled by social media. Celebrating all cultures, it is the most intersectional, inclusive, and gender fluid of all the waves.

The fourth wave has seen people mobilise and organise through social media, starting movements through blogs (Malala Yousafzai), viral videos (Pussy Riot), collectives (Sisters Uncut) and Ted Talks (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and protesting widely against sexual harassment and assault, domestic violence, period poverty, paternity leave and equal pay.

The fourth waves holds people accountable through movements such as Laura Bates Everyday Sexism, anti-FGM campaigns by Nimco Ali and Leyla Hussein, the Black Lives Matter organisation and the exposing of endemic sexual assault across multiple industries resulting in Times Up, and it explores how patriarchal oppression is also damaging to men.

Fourth wave feminism is embraced by celebrities and politicians alike so that today, a century after women secured the vote, it is no longer a dirty word but something to be proud of. It has turned from waves into a full-blown tsunami that sees no likelihood of slowing down any time soon.
T o celebrate International Womens Day, Thomas Cook Airlines have piloted an all-female flight from Manchester to Gran Canaria today.

The Captain, First Officer and seven crew, along with the engineers and ground staff were all females as were the NATS air traffic controllers who cleared the A321 aircraft with 212 customers on board for take-off.

The flight was captained by Jane Paros, who has been flying since 1990, with First Officer Berglind Rafnsdottir-Teasdale and First Officer Victoria McCarthy. The crew comprised Victoria Starkey, Faye Emanuel, Lindsay Dixon, Stephanie Ashall, Susanne Johnston, Victoria Britland and Kelly Adrio.

A move Thomas Cook hope will inspire more women to get into the aviation industry as the UKs Civil Aviation Authority says that 570 of the British industrys 9,846 pilots and co-pilots are women  just under six per cent.

So in conjunction with the flight, Thomas Cook have announced that they are partnering with aviation and airline pilot academy FTEJerez in launching a scholarship programme to attract more women to piloting.

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The scholarship was launched in memory of French pilot Elise Raymonde de Laroche, the first woman ever to receive a pilot's licence, 108 years ago on this day, 8 March, 1910.

Global day trip destinations from London - in pictures 1 /11 Global day trip destinations from London - in pictures Bahamas Unsplash Marrakesh, Morocco Unsplash New York City, United States Unsplash Blue Lagoon (via Reykjavic), Iceland Unsplash Tenerife, Spain Unsplash Helsinki, Finland Unsplash Toronto, Canada Unsplash Washington DC, United States Unsplash Boston, United States Unsplash Dubai, United Arab Emirates Unsplash Chicago, United States Unsplash

Open for female applicants, successful candidates will be trained at FTEJerez as part of the Thomas Cook Airlines Mentored Cadet Pilot Training Programme. Female pilots entering this programme will be eligible to apply for a 30,000 (26,775) scholarship which will be offset against their training costs at FTEJerez.

And aspiring female pilots will also be able to apply for the scholarship, every year for the next five years.

Paul Hutchings, UK Managing Director and Group Airline Director of Operations at Thomas Cook Airlines said in a statement, With International Womens Day today and Women of Aviation Worldwide Week, there was no better time to fly an all-female crew and highlight that our industry is for men and women. We want to raise awareness of the many opportunities to build a career and encourage more women into the aviation industry at all levels.
T he man accused of stealing Frances McDormand's Oscar from an after-party will deny a charge of grand theft, his lawyer has said.

Terry Bryant, 47, allegedly swiped McDormand's best actress Academy Award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, as she celebrated at the Governors Ball on Sunday night.

Lawyer Daniel Brookman said: "We intend to forcefully resist the charges and defend our client very aggressively."

Mr Brookman made the comment at a press conference at Los Angeles' Foltz Criminal Justice Centre where Bryant was due to appear.

Oscars 2018: Governors Ball Party - In pictures 1 /10 Oscars 2018: Governors Ball Party - In pictures Frances McDormand and Pedro McDormand Coen REUTERS Allison Janney, winner of the award for best performance by an actress in a supporting role for 'I, Tonya', attends the Governors Ball after the Oscars Eric Jamison/Invision/AP Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd Reuters Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actor, Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb attend the 90th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball Getty Images Academy Award Winner for Best Supporting Actress, Allison Janney, attends the 90th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball Getty Images Mark Bridges, winner of the award for best costume design for 'Phantom Thread' and Laura Dern attend the Governors Ball after the Oscars Eric Jamison/Invision/AP Best Supporting Actress laureate Allison Janney attends the 90th Annual Academy Awards Governors Ball AFP/Getty Images Kobe Bryant and Danny Glover. Reuters Best Animated Short Film winner Kobe Bryant and Mary J. Blige Reuters Jordan Peele Reuters

Prosecutors have said Bryant was witnessed taking the statuette before being detained near an exit.

In a since-deleted video selfie posted to Facebook, Bryant was seen dressed in a tuxedo being lavished with praise while clutching the award and courting congratulations.

"Look it, baby. My team got this tonight. This is mine," he said, before planting a kiss on the Oscar's head.

Bryant was also captured on video leaving the ball while brandishing the award to photographers, one of whom confronted him after not recognising him as a winner.

Police said he handed the bronze statue back without a struggle and was arrested.

Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said he faces up to three years in jail if convicted and that a $20,000 (14,400) bail had been requested.

McDormand, 60, won her second best actress Oscar for Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Her publicist said she celebrated being "happily reunited" with the bronze statuette with a double cheeseburger from California's In-N-Out Burger chain.

Bryant's case has been adjourned until the afternoon.
A 19-year-old has become the first teenage fatal shooting victim of the year after being gunned down outside a cinema.

Armed police rushed to the scene in Wood Green following reports of shots being fired just after midnight.

They found a 19-year-old man suffering a gun shot injury.

He was rushed by paramedics to hospital in central London but doctors could not save him and he died a short time later.

The scene of the fatal shooting in Wood Green / Barney Davis

Witnesses said the victim was targeted outside the Vue Cinema on High Road with friends.

Friends screamed for help as the teenager lay dying in the entrance to the cinema.

A taxi cab owner said: Im sad because he was a young lad who should have been protected.

He was a good customer and used to order cabs from me. All his friends are shocked.

A witness said he heard what he thought were fireworks as he left Wood Green station.

He said: I was near the entrance to the Tube station when I heard what I thought was fireworks.

There werent many people around as it was late so there was no big reaction. I didnt see anybody running away, just people looking toward where the sound came from.

There was a guy shouting at paramedics to save him.

A shop owner nearby called for more CCTV in the area and said that lots of teenagers hang around the cinema late at night.

The victim is the seventh teenager to be killed in London this year but the first to be shot.

The Homicide and Major Crime Command are now investigating the killing, with a large crime scene today remaining in place.

A spokesman for the Met said: Police in Haringey were called to Hollywood Green, High Road, N22 at 12.32am following reports of a shooting.

Armed police attended along with London Ambulance Service and found a 19-year-old man suffering from a gun shot injury.

He was taken by LAS to a central London hospital where he died a short while later.

No-one has yet been arrested and enquiries continue, police said.
A victim of the Parsons Green Tube bombing broke down in tears today as she relived the moment she was badly burned in the blast.

The woman, who was referred to in court as Miss S, suffered burns to her hands, face, and legs when an improvised explosive detonated on the District line train.

The Old Bailey heard that she was engulfed in a fireball as it ripped through the carriage on September 15 last year and still bears scars from the incident.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, the woman said she heard a very loud bang when the bomb went off. I heard a bang and people screaming, she said. I saw people running and I think I saw fire.

Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, 18, is accused of planting the homemade bomb on the train

She told the court she was knocked to her knees as she fled the train in panic, and then noticed her clothes had caught fire. My coat was burning and my tights had melted, she said, wiping away tears.

Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, 18, is accused of planting the homemade bomb on the train during the morning rush hour.

Miss S told the jury she had noticed a man with an odd-looking bag in the carriage but did not notice when he got off the train.

Hassan, 18, is accused of packing shrapnel into a plastic bucket containing 400g of explosives then leaving it to go off on a timer / PA

Aimee Colville, another commuter, told the court she also heard a bang and the train shook, before she saw a wall of glass fly across the carriage. She said she either fell or was knocked to the floor, then noticed flames coming over my right side, coming over my face.

Ms Colville said she had put on hair spray that morning and felt her hair catching fire. She fled the station to seek help.

This morning jurors saw CCTV footage of the moment the fireball tore through the carriage, which contained 93 people. Cameras showed flames briefly filling the carriage before commuters fled the train at about 8.20am.

A plastic bottle of acid on top of table in conservatory which Ahmed Hassan allegedly bought on Amazon to make explosives / PA

It is alleged that Hassan built the bomb at his foster home in Sunbury in Surrey, using chemicals he had bought online and packed with shrapnel to cause maximum injury.

He allegedly took the bomb, in a bucket inside a Lidl shopping bag, from his home to Wimbledon station where he armed it using a modified kitchen timer. He then planted the bomb on a train heading to Edgware Road before getting off at Putney Bridge. The device partially detonated at the following stop, Parsons Green.

Jurors have heard that Hassan sneaked into the UK in October 2015 on the back of a lorry through the Channel Tunnel, and then claimed asylum because of his treatment in his native Iraq.

He told Home Office investigators in January 2016 he had been recruited by Islamic State in Iraq and trained to kill, but claimed he was forced into joining the extremist group by threats to his family.

Hassan, who was arrested the day after the bombing in Dover, denies attempted murder and causing an explosion likely to endanger life or damage property.
T he police officer who was poisoned by a nerve agent in an attack on a former Russian spy has been named as Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey.

DS Bailey is seriously ill in hospital after being one of the first on the scene when Sergei Skripal, 66, and daughter Yulia, 33, were attacked in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Home secretary Amber Rudd told the House of Commons his condition "remains serious but stable" and that he was "conscious, talking and engaging" on Thursday.

Wiltshire Police confirmed 21 people had received medical treatment in connection with the incident.

Russian spy 'poisoning': Sergei and Yulia Skripal are fighting for life in hospital / PA

Mr Skripal and his daughter were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury town centre, having fallen into a "catatonic state" after eating out at a nearby Zizzi's restaurant.

Forensic scientists were seen bringing in equipment to scour the former double agents semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac, as hundreds of detectives and analysts worked on reconstructing their movements prior to the attack.

In a fresh sign of the deterioration in relations between Russia and the UK, Boris Johnson claimed Russia was "in many respects a malign and disruptive force".

Forensic specialists seen outside Mr Skripal's Wiltshire home / Andrew Matthews/PA

However the Russian Embassy said it was "completely untrue" to suggest the country's special services were involved and criticised Mr Johnson for speaking "in such a manner as if the investigation was already over".

Mr Skripal was convicted in 2006 of passing state secrets to MI6 before being given refuge in the UK as part of a spy swap.

Personnel are helped out of their hazmat suits / Andrew Matthews/PA

Their relatives told the BBC Russian Service that the former spy believed the Russia special services would come after him at any time.

An anonymous relative was quoted as saying he knew it would end badly and that he would not be left alone.

Sergei Skripal: What we know so far

The deaths of his wife and son had died in the last ten years are reportedly being considered as part of the investigation.

The Met Police said the case was being treated as attempted murder and Mr Skripal and his daughter were deliberately targeted.

He was described by neighbours and acquaintances as a quiet, kind and grandfatherly man, which is at odds with reports he remained in contact with the security forces during his time in Salisbury.

Yulia: The 33-year-old is in critical condition after the suspected assassination attempt / Facebook

They described him as educated, well-read and widely travelled but with few friends. He rarely mentioned his past and seemed unaware of an imminent threat to his life.

His weekly routine appears to have included regular visits to Taste of the East, a Polish deli where he would buy meats, and visits to the Railway Social Club.

Ebru Ozturk, 41, owner of Bargain Stop convenience store, about half a mile from Mr Skripals house, sold him milk and scratchcards last week.

New pictures show Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal on CCTV days before falling critically ill

She said: I felt he was a professional with the government but he never said so. You could tell he had done some important jobs but he said he had retired.

"We had talked about the different countries hed been to but nothing about the military. He told me he was from the Ukraine but had lived in Russia. He told me he didnt have many connections there.

A former Kremlin official has claimed that the ex-double agent had remained in regular contact with the Russian embassy.

Valery Morozov, who was exiled to the UK and was an associate of Mr Skripal, said he believed that the former spy was still working in cyber-security.

He also claimed that he chose to distance himself from Mr Skripal because he was keeping dangerous company.

Mr Morozov told Channel 4 News: Every month he was going to the embassy to meet military intelligence officers.

It is also claimed that Mr Skripal gave regular lectures to the British security services on the inside workings of the Russian security agency.
P olice officers on self-proclaimed poo watch have conceded defeat after a drugs suspect managed to hold out for almost seven weeks without going to the toilet.

Lamarr Chambers, 24, was arrested in Harlow, Essex, on January 17 and was suspected of swallowing a stash of drugs.

Essex police applied to courts to repeatedly extend his custody time after he refused to empty his bowel and pass the package he was believed to be hiding.

But after 47 days, and "following medical and legal advice", police decided to release him and he was escorted to hospital.

The CPS discontinued charges of intent to supply a Class A drug and driving matters and rearrested him on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of a Class A drug.

He was then released on bail and taken by police car, in company with a medical professional, to hospital for treatment.

Deputy Chief Constable Ben-Julian Harrington, who made the call to release Chambers from custody, said: "On the basis of all the medical evidence in this case it is most appropriate, both in the interests of Mr Chambers and of justice, to ensure he receives the hospital treatment he needs.

After detaining Chambers back in January, officers from Essexs gangs and urban street crime unit began tweeting the stand-off, labelling it #poowatch.

Police at the custody unit closely monitored the detainee for signs of movement.

But he refused to budge, despite being offered medical help and being constantly provided with food and water.

The force provided regular updates on his status, writing after the third day that our man on #poowatch" was still showing no movements/items to report.

He will remain with us until Friday when we are back at court where we will be requesting a further eight days should he not produce anything before that hearing, they added.

The Twitter account had earlier written: "Male doesn't seem to understand that eventually he will need/have to go."

Officer applied for custody extensions at seven court hearings as they waited for Chambers, of Brixton, London, to go for a poo.

He had been arrested by officers from Essex Police's Operation Raptor West, the gangs and urban street crime unit for Harlow, Epping Forest, Brentwood and Thurrock district.

Chief Superintendent Paul Wells, Essex Police's lead for Operation Raptor, said at the time: "Drug dealing and a gang lifestyle is not glamorous.

"You'll be exploited, be the victim or perpetrator of violence, you'll spend your days wondering whether a rival dealer or police officer will find you first.

"You'll be expected to courier and deliver drugs and that might involve you swallowing or carrying them inside you, which is particularly dangerous.

"If you are arrested and suspected of having drugs inside you, we can and will keep you in custody until you produce them. It's important that Essex Police continues to highlight the reality around drug and gang-related crime."
B lack cab drivers today accused Sadiq Khan of failing to do enough to help Londons squeezed taxi trade.

The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association criticised the Mayor for not listening to its demands to increase the number of taxi ranks in London from 500 to 600.

And the group called for an increase in the number of bus lanes in which black taxis are able to travel, saying it had identified as many as 60 possible extra routes across London.

"The Mayor was elected in 2016 on a manifesto that promised to support the taxi trade, said LTDA General Secretary Steve McNamara.

"Yet nearly two years later it seems London is stuck in neutral and we are here to help."

But the Mayors office hit back at the claims, saying Mr Khan had opened 90 new cab ranks and 18 extra bus lanes to taxis.

The LTDA said Mr Khan had not met them since August 2016, just three months after he took office, and criticised his plans to ban all vehicles from Oxford Street in a radical bid to tackle air pollution.

Mr McNamara also hit out at a traffic ban at Bank junction in the City, introduced in a bid to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians.

Conservative London Assembly member Keith Prince said black cabbies badly need help from the Mayor as they faces pressure from rival private hire firms.

Ride hailing app Uber is appealing after being stripped of its licence to operate in London last year amid safety concerns.
B rexit is being used as an excuse not to tackle major domestic issues that would help fuel growth, business leaders will warn.

Britain's exit from the European Union has been allowed to "cloud over the rudderlessness" of recent years, Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, will say.

The Government must focus on fixing the basics , including improving roads, railways and airports, boosting housing supply and simplifying the immigration system, he will tell the BCC annual conference.

Mr Marshall will say: "Business know that success so often depends on getting the basics right first. The same holds true for the UK economy.

"It's time for Westminster to join us in focusing on the basics. By addressing the less flashy things that always seem to fall between the cracks.

Theresa May is to hear Brexit has been "allowed, by government and opposition alike, to cloud over the rudderlessness of recent years" / PA

"We must equip this country for future success - by fixing the fundamentals first.

"Successive governments have acknowledged that more could be done to get the basics right for business. Indeed, the current Government's developing industrial strategy is up-front about many of these challenges.

"Yet the leadership and the infrastructure simply aren't there to make change happen."

Mr Marshall will say businesses want a radical vision they can get behind.

Jeremy Corbyn is also expected to be criticised in the speech in a thinly-veiled swipe / PA

"There is a real hunger coming from businesses across the UK for real leadership and vision. Businesses want to see a radical, optimistic vision for the future of the UK," he will say.

"The reason is simple: they want something to get behind. A national sense of mission that unites the efforts of business, government and the public at large with a real sense of purpose.

"There are those who would argue that Brexit is that mission, but they have entirely missed the point.

"Brexit is a process, not an outcome. It has been allowed, by government and opposition alike, to cloud over the rudderlessness of recent years; a convenient excuse to plough attention and resources into a process of disconnection, rather than to take the far harder step of re-imagining Britain for the future and then marshalling all available brainpower, management capacity and financial resources into making it happen."

In a thinly-veiled swipe at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Mr Marshall will attack politicians who promote a " superficially seductive" argument for nationalisation.

He will say: "Our business communities are worried about the rhetorical assault on capitalism and wealth generation emanating from some quarters of Westminster.

"Those who seek to divide our business communities by pitting the small against the large, or by demonising some sectors while championing others, must be challenged. Those who suggest that the solution to poor procurement and questionable outsourcing decisions by government is the wholesale nationalisation of entire swathes of the economy must also be challenged.

"Facing down the superficially seductive argument for nationalisation won't be easy - but it's vital to the future success of communities and prosperity all across the UK."

A Government spokesman said: "The government's commitment to boosting the productivity and earning power of people and places across the UK remains steadfast.

"Through our industrial strategy, we are building a Britain fit for the future, with a plan to help businesses create better, higher-paying jobs in every part of the UK.

"We have already committed to raising investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, ensuring our world-class research and innovation base continues to thrive, have invested in skills such as maths, digital and technical education to generate highly skilled jobs and have launched the 1.7 billion transforming cities fund, which will address weaknesses in city transport systems while improving connectivity, reducing congestion and introducing new mobility services and technology."
A top Brexiteer minister today admitted that European Union fishermen could be handed rights to fish in UK waters after Brexit.

Asked to promise British fishermen would not be sold out in Brexit negotiations, Defra minister George Eustice told MPs that the UK would manage access to our own waters in future.

His words left open the possibility the EU could succeed in demanding fishing rights in return for a trade deal.

The issue was raised a day after the EU issued a document saying it would seek reciprocal fishing rights in the trade talks which begin this month.

In the Commons Tory MP Martin Vickers demanded that the fishing industry will not be sold out in these negotiations as they were in the Seventies.

Mr Eustice replied: We have consistently been clear that when we leave the European Union we leave the Common Fisheries Policy. That means under international law we become an independent coastal state and we will manage the fisheries resources in our exclusive economic zone and manage access to our own waters. His words did not exclude reciprocal rights with the EU.

Chancellor Philip Hammond appeared to suggest fishing rights could be traded away yesterday in a Q&A.

He said: We would be open to discussing with our EU partners about the appropriate arrangements for reciprocal access for our fishermen to EU waters and for EU fishermen to our waters. We would have to negotiate the basis on which such an arrangement could be fair and appropriate for us.

Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermens Federation, strongly rejected the EU demand.

He said: There cannot be fairer shares for our fishing communities if we maintain existing reciprocal access. This latest gambit must be rejected.

Repatriating fishing rights was a key promise made by Brexiteeers in the EU referendum in coastal communities.
A black university student captured on video the moment she was apparently subjected to a tirade of sickening racist abuse as she was left hiding in her dorm room.

Posts on Twitter appear to show the student cowering in her bedroom as shouts of we hate the black people and f*** the blacks can be heard the other side of her door.

The Nottingham Trent Uni student, named Rufaro Chisango, said she was too scared to leave her room during the shocking incident and complained to management at her accommodation.

But she said they had not dealt with the issue, sparking criticism that the university should have acted sooner.

Victim: The student, known as Ruu on her Twitter, said she hid in her room / @rufarochisango_

The university has launched an urgent investigation into the video.

Nottinghamshire Police said two 18-year-old men had been arrested in connection with the video and remained in police custody on Thursday morning.

In the minute-long video clip, posted on Wednesday, at least two men are heard shouting "we hate the blacks" and making other racist comments.

In a post on her Twitter account, Ms Chisango said reception staff at her halls of residence had told her that Monday night's incident would be "dealt with" but by Wednesday night she had heard nothing from them.

Writing on Twitter, Ms Chisango said: "I'm fuming, the way people in the same uni halls as me are chanting 'we hate the blacks' outside my bedroom door. Words cannot describe how sad this makes me feel, in this 2018 people think this is still acceptable.

"Okay this happened Monday night, the video wasn't able to catch what else they were saying which was 'blacks would go back to picking cotton'.

"I'm the only black person on my floor and they were chanting this outside my door so don't be surprised to why I didn't leave my room."

Other chants captured by the video include "We are the black haters" and "Sign the Brexit papers".

Abuse: She filmed herself hiding behind her bedroom door as the chants could be heard outside

At one point during the video, a female interrupts the chants, saying leave her alone and shouting black and white people together.

The shocking footage went viral, with north London MP David Lammy replying to Ms Chisango urging her to contact her local politician.

Please contact the Police and your Member of Parliament and cc me in. All my love and solidarity, he wrote.

After several people hit out at the university for not instantly removing the suspected perpetrators, Nottingham Trent tweeted saying: "We are investigating this as a matter of urgency. We are taking this extremely seriously and do not tolerate behaviour like this."

In a longer statement, a spokeswoman for the university added that it was "shocked and appalled" at the video.

The statement read: "This kind of vile behaviour will not be tolerated. Those suspected perpetrators have been suspended immediately pending a full investigation. We have contacted the student who made the complaint and are providing support to her and others affected. And we will be liaising with the police about this incident."

The statement added: "We value being a diverse global community, with staff and students from across the world.
T he UK will become poorer over 15 years after Brexit under all possible scenarios, according to the Government's analysis.

The Whitehall analysis found that economic growth would be hit by any of the existing models for a future relationship with the EU - a Norway-type European Economic Area (EEA) model; a free trade agreement; or World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

Even in the best scenario  retaining access to the single market through membership of the EEA  GDP could decline by 1.6 per cent, according to the analysis published on Thursday.

It also quashes claims that the Government would benefit from a Brexit dividend, instead showing a rise in annual borrowing under all scenarios.

Parliament's Brexit committee published the impact report on Thursday following a battle over Government secrecy. Brexit secretary David Davis resisted its release but in January MPs voted for the document to be published in full.

Hilary Benn said the analysis suggests Brexit will have an 'adverse effect' on the economy / Neil Hall/Reuters

But Government rejected the conclusions at the time of the leak, with a source reportedly saying the study does not take into account the details of our desired outcome - a new deep and special partnership with the EU - or predict the conclusions of the negotiations.

Brexit committee chair, Labour MP Hilary Benn, said on Thursday the analysis suggests Britains exit from the EU will have an adverse effect on the economy.

Theresa May: I want the "broadest and deepest possible relationship" with the EU after Brexit

He said: The results of this analysis, undertaken by the government with the aim of quantifying the potential impact of leaving the EU on the British economy, are already largely in the public domain in one form or another.

Allowing this information to be considered in its full context, rather than selectively quoted, will help properly to inform public debate about how the figures were arrived at and what the economic effects of Brexit might be.

The analysis suggests there will be an adverse effect on the economy of the UK and all its regions, and that the degree of impact will depend on the outcome achieved in the negotiations.

The study found under the worst scenario  if Britain left without a deal and was forced to fall back on WTO rules  GDP could decline by a cumulative 7.7 per cent over 15 years, while under a free trade agreement it could fall by 4.8 per cent.

Even in the best scenario GDP could decline by 1.6 per cent, according to the analysis

It also considered the regional impact of Brexit under the scenarios, with the north east of England likely to suffer most economically, and London least.

And analysis into the estimated impact of the possible outcomes on government borrowing showed Government would not benefit from a Brexit dividend.

While the Treasury would no longer have to pay into the EU budget, the report suggests this would not compensate for the amount the exchequer would lose.

After 15 years annual net borrowing would be around 20bn higher under the EEA option, 60bn higher under the free trade agreement option and more than 80bn higher under the WTO option.

A graph shows annual change in borrowing after Brexit in all scenarios

However, pro-Brexit MPs questioned the validity of the forecasts. Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the backbench European Research Group, said the research had been so widely leaked and ridiculed for its approach that it is of little consequence, according to The Guardian.

He previously said the findings were "highly speculative".

In the report, Whitehouse officials warn that the analysis is highly uncertain, and suggest analysing the potential impact of different exit scenarios is an unprecedented challenge.

Despite this, campaigners have claimed the report shows Prime Minister Theresa May is pursuing Brexit in the knowledge that it will harm the economy.
O ne-year-old Isaiah Haastrup has died after having his life support withdrawn following a legal row over his treatment.

His father Lanre Haastrup said he was "so proud" of his son as he confirmed he had died on Wednesday evening.

Isaiah suffered "catastrophic" brain damage due to oxygen deprivation at birth.

Mr Haastrup told the Guardian: Isaiah was extubated at 1pm and breathed on his own till 7.50pm before he died. This was completely different from the three minutes the experts told the court he will only breathe due to his injury.

Isaiah Haastrup's mother Takesha Thomas and father Lanre Haastrup outside the High Court in London / PA

He demonstrated that he wanted to live and can breathe on his own, and could have been weaned off the ventilator. I am so proud of him.

Mr Haastrup and Isaiah's mother Takesha Thomas, both 36, from Peckham in south London, had fought an unsuccessful legal battle against King's College Hospital over whether his life support treatment should continue.

A High Court judge had ruled in January that it would be in Isaiah's best interests for treatment to be withdrawn.

A last resort legal bid at the European Court of Human Rights failed on Tuesday after a protracted battled in English courts.

A High Court judge had given doctors permission to provide only palliative care to Isaiah against the wishes of Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas.

Mr Justice MacDonald analysed evidence at hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in January.
P rince Harry pulled a starstruck schoolgirl out of the crowd to meet his fiancee Meghan Markle after she revealed her hopes of becoming an actress.

Sophia Richards, 10, told Harry that she dreamed of an acting career as she stood waving her Union Jack flag in a line of schoolchildren in Birmingham on Thursday.

He is said to have pulled her out of the crowd to meet Ms Markle after hearing of her ambitions.

Sophia said: "[Prince Harry told me] 'You need to be confident and you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Birmingham's Millennium Point 1 /38 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visit Birmingham's Millennium Point Meghan Markle hugs a child as she arrives to Birmingham PA Meghan Markle greets well-wishers AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle takes part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle talks to children as she arrives to Birmingham Getty Images Meghan Markle hugs a child as she arrives to Birmingham AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle arrives to Birmingham Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle talk to sisters Jean Dickinson and Irene Gould PA Prince Harry and Maghan Markle Splash News Members of the public wait to greet Prince Harry and Meghan Markle outside Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham Hannah McKay/PA Wire Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle takes part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle hugs a child as she arrives to Birmingham PA Meghan Markle AP Meghan Markle hugs a child as she arrives to Birmingham Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle greet well-wishers AFP/Getty Images Meghan Markle talks to school children AP Children await Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's visit to Birmingham Getty Images Members of the public wait to greet Prince Harry and Meghan Markle outside Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle greet well-wishers as they arrive at Millennium Point AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet members of the public on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point PA Meghan Markle talks to children as she arrives to Birmingham Getty Images Meghan Markle greets well-wishers AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (L) attend an event hosted by social enterprise Stemettes to celebrate International Women's Day at Millennium Point in Birmingham AFP/Getty Images Prince Harry takes part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Meghan Markle talks to children as she arrives in Birmingham Getty Images A well-wisher takes Meghan Markle EPA Meghan Markle arrives with her fiance Prince Harry AP Meghan Markle arrives with her fiance Prince Harry AP Meghan Markle arrives AP Meghan Markle and Prince Harry arrive in Birmingham AP Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet members of the public on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham Getty Images Prince Harry and Meghan Markle take part in an International Women's Day event at Millennium Point in Birmingham PA Prince Harry and Meghan Markle meet members of the public on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham PA

"Meghan said that one day she will see me being an actress."

The Royal couple were in the Midlands on International Women's Day to meet young female students and encourage them to pursue careers in science and engineering. They were continuing their pre-wedding tour of the UK.

Other schoolchildren in the crowd were equally thrilled to meet them and shake their hands.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle mark International Women's Day in Birmingham

"It was like a miracle," said Francesco Farina. His friend Ariadna added: "I'm never washing my hand again."

Ms Markle had previously broken with royal protocol as she embraced a charity worker during the couple's visit to Edinburgh last month.

Alice Thompson, co-founder of charitable enterprise Social Bites, said Prince Harry's fiancee had wrapped her arms around her after being offered a handshake during the Edinburgh visit on Tuesday.

The 27-year-old told the Standard: "It was at the end when I went in for a handshake with Meghan and she just embraced me.

"They were both so genuine - showing the kind of interest and good nature you can't fake."

Prince Harry meets sausage dog on visit to Birmingham

Harry and Ms Markle are due to be married on May 19 at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
A former Met Police firearms officer who lifted the lid on bullying and victimisation at Scotland Yard is now claiming 144,000 in damages from the police watchdog alleging it is institutionally racist.

Carol Howard, 39, won a 37,000 payout from the Met in 2015 over her treatment as one of only two black officers and 12 women in the elite 700-strong Diplomatic Protection Group.

The former firearms PC, who appeared on a poster promoting the protection of Londoners during the 2012 Olympics, revealed she had been targeted by a malicious, vindictive, and spiteful boss.

She left the Met after the tribunal win and joined the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) as an investigator in 2016.

She has now taken the watchdog to an employment tribunal over claims she was locked out of investigations and treated as an embarrassment.

Payout: PC Carol Howard won 37,000 from the Metropolitan Police

Giving evidence yesterday at the Central London Employment Tribunal, Ms Howard, from Coulsdon, claimed the watchdog deliberately frustrated enquiries to protect senior police officers under investigation.

She said: The white managers I worked with are not independent and believe that their duty is not to investigate wrongdoing officers but to protect the reputation of the police force concerned and its senior officers in particular. They are corrupt.

In my view, the IPCC is an institutionally racist employer. It is therefore unfit to investigate claims of race discrimination against the police.

It is corrupt and not fit for purpose. It is neither independent nor impartial. It protects senior white police officers.

Ms Howard told the tribunal she was initially turned down for a job by the IPCC, but was successful second time around in October 2016, when she used her married name, Carol McCabe. She then changed her name back to Howard on the police system, and believes the IPCC feared the Met would see her appointment as an act of revenge.

I was treated as an embarrassment to them as my presence would annoy the Met and my visible presence may cause a meltdown, she said.

Major Met Police shake-up as officer numbers to fall to 30,000

Ms Howard said she was immediately banned from working on any IPCC case involving the Met, and later on she found herself sidelined in other major investigations.

I believe that the IPCC moved to restrict me and hide me away, she said.

Rather than believe in me, they believed in their own need to protect their reputation by not upsetting the Met.

In her claim for damages, Ms Howard argues that black and ethnic minority IPCC officers are treated differently from their white colleagues and suffer from a hostile working environment.

She left the IPCC after six months in March 2017 when her contract was not renewed.

The IPCC, now replaced by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is fighting Ms Howards claim over loss of earnings and injury to feelings, denying all the allegations made against it.

A spokesperson said: We completely refute all of the allegations made by Carol Howard and are robustly doing so at the employment tribunal.
D ramatic new pictures today reveal how police officers put their lives at risk as they responded to the nerve agent poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter.

They also show members of the public strolling in a Salisbury park unaware that a suspected assassination attempt using a very rare toxic substance had just been carried out, potentially putting them in mortal danger.

An officer believed to have been stricken by the poison was today conscious and talking in hospital, raising hopes that he will be able to provide vital clues about the targeting of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd voiced anger at the outrageous crime as hundreds of police were involved in the hunt for the perpetrators.

The police officer investigating the red bag at the scene

The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act, she told the Commons. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.

Sergei Skripal: What we know so far

Ms Rudd sought to reassure the public that they were not believed to have been put at significant risk by the poisoning in The Maltings area of the Wiltshire city. She said: The Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies, has said that the risk to them is low.

Police at the home of Sergei Skripal last night in Salisbury / PA

She added that the hospitalised officer was engaging with, talking to, people, adding: He is not in intensive care, but its a serious situation.

Amber Rudd declined to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible for the Salisbury attack

Salisbury MP John Glen, a Treasury minister, said: I pay tribute to the vital and dedicated work of Wiltshire Police officers and the way they have supported the community at this bewildering time.

Yulia: The 33-year-old is in critical condition after the suspected assassination attempt / Facebook

My thoughts and prayers are with the officer currently hospitalised... we wish him and his family well.

Mr Skripal and his daughter were still fighting for their lives today at Salisbury district hospital.

Investigators next to a police tent outside the Mill pub at the Maltings in Salisbury / PA

As the Evening Standard revealed yesterday, they were poisoned with a very rare substance, which points towards state involvement as it was likely to have been manufactured in a laboratory.

Amid increasing claims that Russian security forces may have been involved  strongly denied by the Russian Embassy in London  two Cabinet ministers stressed that once the culprit had been identified, strong action would follow.

A forensics tent at the scene in Salisbury / Getty Images

Ms Rudd said: There is nothing soft about the UKs response to any sort of state activity in this country. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said that Britain would not be pushed around by Russia or other countries and that action would be taken to ensure Britain continues to be a safe place to live.

However, Yury Filatov, the Russian ambassador to Ireland, said the case showed that Britain could not protect people harboured in its lands, but added there was no evidence of Russian involvement.

He told the BBC: My own conclusion would be that for some reason the British territories are very dangerous for certain types of people who are under the jurisdiction of the British Government.

There were calls today for the Government to expel dozens of diplomats if a link between the Kremlin and the poisoning is proven.
I nvestigators began a fingertip search of Russian spy Sergei Skripals home in Salisbury today as new details emerged of the possible nerve agent used in the assassination plot.

Forensic scientists were seen bringing in equipment to scour the former double agents semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac, as hundreds of detectives and analysts worked on reconstructing the movements of Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia before they collapsed on Sunday.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the nerve agent used in the attack in the Wiltshire city was very rare.

Sources say the particular type of nerve agent is a key part of the investigation.

One, said to be familiar with the inquiry, told the BBC it was likely to be rarer than the sarin gas thought to have been used during the Syrian civil war and in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

Sergei Skripal: What we know so far

VX, the nerve agent used to kill the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia last year, is also said not to be the substance in question.

The attack on Mr Skripal, 66, and Yulia, 33, is thought to be the first time that a nerve agent has been used in an assassination attempt on British soil. The pair remain in a critical but stable condition.

The investigation is focusing on the Skripals last movements before they were found on a bench at around 4pm on Sunday. Detectives are scouring hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from cameras around the city centre.

Yulia: The 33-year-old is in critical condition after the suspected assassination attempt / Facebook

Two sites in the city centre remain closed: the Zizzi restaurant in Castle Street, where the couple drank white wine and ate seafood risotto, and The Mill pub, where they are said to have had a drink.

A witness who saw the pair at the restaurant said Mr Skripal was acting very strange and was very agitated.

The witness said: He seemed to lose his temper... and he just started screaming at the top of his voice, he wanted his bill and he wanted to go. Among other developments:

The Duke of Cambridge, the president of the Football Association, has no plans to attend the World Cup in Russia, although this decision predates the poisoning, a royal source said.

Sources played down the theory that Mr Skirpal may have been unwittingly poisoned by his daughter after she opened a gift from friends as they ate. It had been suggested that Kremlin-linked assassins secreted nerve gas in the present as Yulia prepared to fly from Moscow.

Double agent: Sergei Skripal was found unconscious in Salisbury, where he has been living a quiet retirement

Yulia may have visited her father to mark the anniversary of the death of his son Alexander, 43, who died in a Moscow hospital on March 1 last year.

Mr Skripal was said to be close to a British security consultant based in Salisbury who worked for Christopher Steele.

Mr Steele, a former MI6 officer, compiled a notorious dossier on US president Donald Trumps alleged links to Russian president Vladimir Putin. It raises questions over whether the Kremlin believed that Mr Skripal helped compile the dossier.

Whitehall officials are drawing up a list of Russian officials they could expel from the country if it emerged Moscow was behind the assassination attempt.

A forensics tent at the scene in Salisbury / Getty Images

Dozens of witnesses have responded to a police appeal for people who were in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward.

Mr Skripal, previously a colonel in Russian military intelligence, was arrested in 2004 in Moscow and convicted of spying for MI6.

In 2006 he was sentenced to 13 years in prison but in 2010 was exchanged in a spy swap and flown to Britain. The MP for Salisbury, John Glen, said Skripal bought a house in the city in 2011.

He was described by neighbours and acquaintances as a quiet, kind and grandfatherly man, which is at odds with reports he remained in contact with the security forces during his time in Salisbury.

CCTV of a man and woman walking through an alleyway in their investigation into the alleged poisoning of a Russian double agent in Wiltshire

They described him as educated, well-read and widely travelled but with few friends. He rarely mentioned his past and seemed unaware of an imminent threat to his life.

His weekly routine appears to have included regular visits to Taste of the East, a Polish deli where he would buy meats, and visits to the Railway Social Club.

Ebru Ozturk, 41, owner of Bargain Stop convenience store, about half a mile from Mr Skripals house, sold him milk and scratchcards last week.

She said: I felt he was a professional with the government but he never said so. You could tell he had done some important jobs but he said he had retired.

We had talked about the different countries hed been to but nothing about the military. He told me he was from the Ukraine but had lived in Russia. He told me he didnt have many connections there.

Investigators next to a police tent outside the Mill pub at the Maltings in Salisbury / PA

However, Mr Skripal is said to have had meetings with someone who witnesses described as a well-dressed Englishman in Salisburys Cote Brasserie restaurant, where the pair spoke in English and Russian.

He also mentioned to others that he went on business trips to Poland. Local taxi drivers spoke of regularly taking him to the railway station for trips to London.

Amber Rudd declined to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible for the Salisbury attack

A former Kremlin official has claimed that the ex-double agent had remained in regular contact with the Russian embassy. Valery Morozov, who was exiled to the UK and was an associate of Mr Skripal, said he believed that the former spy was still working in cyber-security. He also claimed that he chose to distance himself from Mr Skripal because he was keeping dangerous company.
P oisoned former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and the first police officer on the scene are all in comas, according to reports.

The ex-Russian army colonel, who sold secrets to MI5, was targeted by a nerve agent in what is feared to be an assassination attempt orchestrated by the Kremlin.

Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon.

Sky News reported they are both in comas in intensive care, along with the police officer who first arrived following calls from concerned members of the public.

Yulia: The 33-year-old is in critical condition after the suspected assassination attempt / Facebook

A Whitehall source told The Times: The feeling is that [Sergei Skripal] is not going to make it out of this.

I think it could be more positive [for Yulia]. They are hopeful that she might be able to pull through.

Double agent: Sergei Skripal was found unconscious in Salisbury, where he has been living a quiet retirement

The police officers condition is believed to be less severe than the other two victims.

It comes as counter-terror police work to unravel what appears to be a sophisticated chemical weapon plot.

It remains unclear who is responsible for poisoning the pair, but the attack has stoked tensions between Britain and Russia amid suspicions of state responsibility.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons about the incident on Thursday.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been "targeted specifically".

An investigator in protective gear after the alleged poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal / PA

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

He said: "Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

"Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act."

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

New pictures show Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal on CCTV days before falling critically ill

Nerve agents, which are chemical weapons, have been used in assassinations and attacks in war zones in recent years.

Kim Jong Un's half-brother Kim Jong Nam was killed at an international airport in Malaysia last year in an attack using a nerve agent known as VX.

Another well-known nerve agent, sarin gas, killed more than 90 people in a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, drawing international condemnation of the Bashar Assad regime.

Police inside a Zizzi restaurant near to where the pair were discovered in Salisbury / PA

Access to such toxins are tightly regulated, meaning the Salisbury plot would have taken considerable planning to execute.

Mr Rowley reiterated his appeal for anyone who was in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward to help with the "missing pieces" in the case.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the incident posed a "low risk" to the public and advised that all the sites the par were known to have visited had been "secured".

Public Health England later confirmed it had contacted all first responders who had attended the scene.

Russia have denied responsibility for the attack, which comes seven years after Mr Skripal was released from the country as part of a spy swap with the US.

He had been convicted in his home country in 2006 for passing state secrets to MI6.

Boris Johnson threatens fresh Russia sanctions if Kremlin responsible for Sergei Skripal 'poisoning'

The investigation has triggered a diplomatic row and prompted crisis talks in Whitehall but Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police must respond to "evidence, not to rumour".

It comes as police extended the cordons in Salisbury city centre, and also sealed off part of a business park in nearby Amesbury.
L ondoners hopes of a bright start to spring were potentially dashed as forecasters warned the Pest from the West could make way for downpours and thunderstorms.

Heavy rain was expected to move in from the South West as wintry conditions that continued wreaked havoc on much of the UK this week began to ease off on Friday.

Temperatures were expected to creep up to 14C to see off recent blizzards on Saturday, with thunder and hail sweeping across the South and South West England on Sunday.

Met Office forecaster Oli Claydon said the North West and southern Scotland would see the worst of the rain moving in over the weekend.

'Beast from the East' by drone

But he added: There will be the chance of thunder and lightning as rain and showers push across the south and south west [on Sunday], with a chance of hail too."

A yellow weather warning remained in place for ice and snow showers remained in place for parts of Scotland this morning, expected to last until 10am.

UK Weather: Beast from the East freeze - In pictures 1 /64 UK Weather: Beast from the East freeze - In pictures Snow storm over London NPASLondon/Twitter The frozen canal at Little Venice, London Jeremy Selwyn A multi-car collision on the M66 NEAR Ramsbottom and Bury Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) Ice climbers at Kinder Downfall, High Peak in Derbyshire PA RFA Tidespring battles powerful weather conditions sparked by the Beast from the East EPA/Ministry of Defence Members of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards take part in a snow ball fight prior to the combined St David's Day celebration and pre-deployment service at Elizabeth Barracks, Pirbright, Surrey PA A police car on fire on the M62 near Huddersfield. PA Andrea Geile skies along Princes Street in Edinburgh PA Heavy snowfall hits St Paul's Cathedral Zuma / Splash News Storm clouds over Dublin Bay PA Paddington Station today Jeremy Selwyn The M876 to Glasgow is closed PA A man walks in the snowy conditions in Larbert PA Edinburgh Castle in the snow PA Members of the public make their way through snow the streets in Alexandria, Scotland Getty Images Jock the Shih Tzu plays in the snow Getty Images Waterloo Station tracks covered in snow Jeremy Selwyn A man clears snow in Alexandria, Scotland Getty Images Snow-covered members of the public walk through heavy snow in Westminster Getty Images A stranded car covered in snow in Whitley Bay in Tyne and Wear PA Police push a car on the on the M80 Haggs in Glasgow PA A blizzard hit Trafalgar Square School children from Wearhead Primary School, in County Durham, which stands more than 1,100 feet (335m) above sea level and which remained open despite blizzards thanks to teachers battling through the elements and a parent with a digger PA Snow continues to fall in Westminster Jeremy Selwyn A man clears snow from a car in Larbert PA Fabio Fodaro cycles during a blizzard at Helix Park in Falkirk PA The scene on the M80 Haggs in Glasgow PA Police push a car on the on the M80 Haggs in Glasgow PA Huge crowds outside Oxford Circus Tube station @_kathyharvey People walk in the snow on Horse Guards Parade Reuters Whiteout: Londoners brave the snow in Piccadilly Circus Tony Villalon Three-year-old Wilfred Martin, enjoys sledding in the snow in Richmond Park, Londo PA Victor the polar bear enjoys the snow at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster PA Giant waves crash over Seaham lighthouse near Durham as the "Beast from the East" brings heavy snow and freezing temperatures to much of the country PA Spectacular sunrise over Canary Wharf James Burns/London from the Rooftops Vehicles get stuck on a hill on the A30 near Land's End in Cornwall following heavy snow that made driving conditions difficult PA Battersea looking beautiful in the snow Hatty Collier People walk their dogs on Blyth Beach in Northumberland PA A swimmer braves the snowy conditions at King Edwards bay near Tynemouth PA Frozen foutains at Trafalgar Square Jeremy Selwyn Stationary traffic on the M20 near Ashford, Kent PA Pedestrians cross Whitehall as snow falls AP Pedestrians walk across millennium bridge in front of St Paul's as heavy snowfall hits London AFP/Getty Images A snow-covered Tube train early today Londoners woke to wintry scenes Jeremy Selwyn A lorry shed its load on the M20 overnight Kent Police RPU Snow falls on Wimbledon Common Alex Lentati A London bus travels through the snow in Oxford street EPA Snow surrounds the Angel of the North in Gateshead PA People walk past Buckingham Palac PA People walk along Bankside, London in the snow PA Snow at Horse guards in London Jeremy Selwyn Rare snow seen at Brighton Beach James Mayes Toby Stanton walks to school in Ashford, Kent, as heavy snowfall is affecting roads across the UK PA Highways England/Twitter Cars travel through Great Chart in Ashford, Kent PA A Eurostar train passes through Ashford, Kent PA Vehicles on the M20 between Junctions 8 and 9, as heavy snowfall is affecting roads across the UK PA A double decker bus carefully makes it way through the snowfall in London Jeremy Selwyn Cars drive through falling snow on the A41 in Hemel Hempstead Jeremy Selwyn Parents walk their children to school in Ashford, Kent PA Newcastle Quayside following heavy overnight snowfall PA Walkers in the snow near to Another Place by Anthony Gormley, on Crosby Beech near LiverpooL PA Fishing boats moored in Scarborough harbour PA Commuters battle the snoiw across London Bridge Jeremy Selwyn

About 120 schools were shut in Wales, 130 in Bradford, with scores more closed in Liverpool and Lancashire on Thursday.

Liverpool and Yorkshire were the worst hit by the blast of icy weather, with police in West Yorkshire warning motorists not to travel unless absolutely necessary after they dealt with "numerous" early-morning collisions.

But not everybody was unhappy about the renewed cold snap, which came after extreme conditions crippled rail services up and down the country last week.

Delighted people were pictured sledding down hills and building snowmen as a thick blanket of snow settled over Merseyside just days after last week's big freeze.

People sledging in Camp Hill, in Woolton, Liverpool / PA

Shoppers were seen braving the cold in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, as snowflakes fell on the spring flowers. Roads were seen covered in a layer of slush and ice as temperatures plunged.

The extended cold weather comes as the UK approaches spring time, which in meteorological seasons has already begun.
O xford University has apologised after a picture emerged of a female cleaner scrubbing out 'Happy International Women's Day' graffiti that had been daubed onto a flight of steps.

Oxford academic Professor Sophie Smith tweeted the photo of the incident at the universitys Clarendon building, sparking an angry backlash on International Women's Day 2018.

Professor Smith claimed the woman was told to clean up the graffiti by security.

It comes as people around the world mark International Womens Day, celebrating the achievements of women in societies across the globe.

The image was branded shameful by social media users, with one adding: having a woman scrub off chalk that says Happy International Woman's Day while some blokes stand around in the background isn't a good look.

Twitter user Jessie Raymond added: A picture's worth a thousand words.

Oxford University apologised for the incident, saying in a statement: We are deeply sorry for this and for offence caused. International Women's Day is hugely important to Oxford. This should not have happened.

Responding to the apology, Professor Smith added: I appreciate your apology, but far more importantly can you please make sure that the woman asked to remove the message receives a heartfelt apology, a warm cup of tea, the rest of the day off and, along with all our precarious staff, good enough pay to live in this city.

The Clarendon Building dates back to the early 18th Century and is next to Oxford University's iconic Bodleian Library.
I t has been confirmed that the former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter who are currently fighting for their lives in hospital were targeted with a nerve agent.

Mr Skripal,66, and Yulia Skripal,33, remain in comas following the attack which occurred in the middle of Salisbury town centre on Sunday afternoon.

The pair were found slumped on a bench before being taken to hospital where they remain in critical condition.

Nerve agents are groups of chemical compounds developed to kill those affected in minutes, affecting the nervous system and causing the target to lose control of their body's motor functions.

Russian spy 'poisoning': Sergei and Yulia Skripal are fighting for life in hospital / PA

The most widely-known nerve agents are Sarin gas, which was first produced in Germany in the 1930s and has seen use in the war in Syria - and VX, developed for military use in chemical warfare by researchers in England in the 1950s.

The use of Sarin gas and VX was banned in warfare by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, if a human is exposed to a nerve agent they are likely to die within minutes if they are not treated with an antidote.

Symptoms which emerge after a nerve gas attack can include wheezing, vomiting, and seizures.

Victims may feel excruciating pain all over and foam at the mouth and experience uncontrollable diarrhoea.

How does a human come into contact with a nerve agent?

Nerve gas or agents are a silent threat. They are odourless and colourless compounds which can be breathed in or absorbed. In the Salisbury Russian spy incident, a line of inquiry is that the victims were sprayed with the agent while sitting on a bench.

According to the OSHA, nerve agents can get into your body through skin or mucous membranes and can be spread through the air as a gas.

The agent can also be mixed into a water supply.

What are the symptoms?

Victims lose control of their body

Experts say that nerve agents works by interrupting messages sent from the brain to the muscles and organs.

The chemical in the agent causes a build-up of the enzyme, acetylcholinesterase, which usually signals our muscles to stop contracting.

Dr Simon Cotton from the University of Birmingham said: They interfere with the transmitting of nerve impulses.

Our bodies use a molecule called acetylcholine that migrates the gaps between cells  it goes from one cell and slots into the second and triggers a nerve impulse.

The body has to get rid of acetylcholine that is docked in the receptor because it builds up and you keep getting nerve impulses and become overstimulated.

"If you have ever seen a fly on its back, twitching with its legs in the air, it is experiencing over stimulation."

He continued:Our bodies have got an enzyme that breaks up acetylcholine called acetylcholinesterase  what a nerve agent does is bind to the acetylcholinesterase and stops it from working.

As such, the muscles become over stimulated causing them to become tired and stop working.

Problems breathing

Mr Cotton said people who are exposed to a nerve agent can experience difficulty breathing.

This is due to the lungs becoming unable to draw in or expel air properly.

Excess mucous may leak into the lungs preventing the victim from inhaling oxygen.

Foaming at the mouth

One of the first symptoms that can be caused by nerve agents is foaming at the mouth and nose.

This is due to the body producing an excess amount of fluids in the mucus membranes.

Victims may experience extra amounts of saliva, watery eyes and a runny nose.

In some cases the body may create so much extra fluid that a foam may form around the nose and mouth.

Police and fire crews at the scene next door to Zizzi in Salisbury amid the investigation into the alleged poisoning of a Russian spy / Jeremy Selwyn

Pupils shrink to the size of pinpricks

As the toxins from the nerve agent attacks the bodys neurotransmitters pupils can dilate to the size of a pinprick.

In the final stages before death, people can lose the ability to control their eyes, their pupils will not react to light and they will become unable to see.

Vomiting and Diarrhoea

As the body desperately tries to get rid of the chemical from its system, a person can begin to urinate and defecate uncontrollably.

Experts say victims also experience severe abdominal pains and will begin to vomit profusely.

Seizures

If a person is exposed to a high dose of nerve agent they may experience severe and violent convulsions.

As neurotransmitters begin to fire continuous signals to muscles, certain parts of the body can begin to seize uncontrollably.

Nerve agents effects the bodys smooth muscle function which can cause spasms in individual parts of the body causing the victim to twitch and tremble at random times.

Excruciating pain

As the body begins to break down, a person may experience headaches, abdominal cramps, and a pain in your heart.

Once exposed to a nerve agent, people can die within minutes

Mr Catton said that that just milligrams of a nerve agent can kill a human within minutes.

If an antidote is not administered immediately it is very likely that the person will die.

What is the antidote?

There are two antidotes including atropine and pralidoxime chloride, which will prevent the over stimulation of muscles in the body.

In order to stop the affects an antidote must be ingested immediately.

What happens if you are exposed to the nerve agent and dont die?

If a person survives a nerve agent attack, they could face life long problems.

Research has revealed an array of conditions associated with nerve gas exposure which include chronic fatigue, widespread pain, memory problems, skin rashes, gastrointestinal and respiratory difficulties.
A teenage girl has become the latest victim of a US school shooting after apparently being killed accidentally by a boy showing off a gun.

The 17-year-old, named by friends as Courtlin Arrington, died on the way to hospital following the incident at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama.

According to reports, the shooting occurred when a 17-year-old boy showed off the weapon to girls at the end of the school day.

The boy reportedly shot himself in the leg as he put the gun back into his trousers. He was taken to hospital and later released and questioned by police. No one has been arrested.

Courtlin, who was set to graduate from high school in May, had reportedly already been accepted into college to become a nurse.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said: We are not just talking about some person, (were) talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy.

Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson offered his condolences to the victims families and said: At this particular time, we are considering this accidental. Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions... This should not happen in schools.

Friends also today paid tribute to the teenager. Mya La Shunn wrote: I cant believe this... they took you away nobody kno the pain and hurt behind this.Every memory we shared will be cherished.

Ka Ron said: Its so sad how our parents cant even send us to school in the morning & know we are coming back home that afternoon.

The killing comes just weeks after 17 students were killed on Valentines Day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
A ustralian police are hunting a group of 'Irish' mothers who they suspect are scamming restaurants in a bid to claim free meals and drinks.

The boisterous fraudsters are said to trash restaurants and cafes while attempting to get let off the bill.

One restaurant owner accused the women of placing glass into their meal and demanding a refund.

At least six businesses in Brisbane and the nearby suburbs of Spring Hill and Fortitude Valley have been targeted by the gang over the last week.

A restaurant owner posted a picture of a shard of glass said to have been placed in a meal by the scammers Facebook / Facebook

Police told news.com.au they are aware of a number of similar incidents involving the group and urged businesses to come forward.

Marie Yokoyama warned others in the industry to watch out for the women after they allegedly pulled the scam at her restaurant Birds Nest Rest last week, making off with around 100 ($180) worth of food and drinks.

She wrote on Facebook: There are a group of fraudster Irish girls going around Brisbane claiming they find glass in their food and then demand everything for free.

Ms Yokoyama said one lady started screaming halfway through her meal that there was glass in her food and that her mouth as bleeding.

Other businesses said they had been targeted by the fraudsters

She added: Upon inspection I knew that this had not come from our restaurant but they were relentless. We don't have any thick glass of this sort in the restaurant. I was so scared and terrified of them that I made their meals and drinks free.

The restaurateur added that the group refused to leave after the incident, demanding more drinks and letting their children running around the restaurant.

She said she kept the glass shard because I was so confident it had not come from us.

Honestly these were the worst customers (if you can call them that) that I have ever had in my life and I want to make sure that they don't pull this scam on anyone else. For the first time in ever - these people drove me to scream my head off at a customer, she said.

Luke Purnell, a member of staff at nearby pub, said he helped to remove the crowd.

He told Channel 7: They were very boisterous, very drunk, you could tell theyd been at it all day.

And it appears it was not the first time such an incident has occurred.

On Thursday, a coffee shop owner told local media several aggressive women came into his outlet demanding they receive their lunch for free.

They claimed they had been served the wrong food on a previous occasion.

While at least three restaurants in the area replied to Ms Yokoyama on Facebook and claimed they had been scammed by the group.

One woman shared a picture of a group of women alleged to be the scammers.

She said it had been originally posted on a hospital forum in Brisbane last week by a hotel.

Queensland police said they are aware of the incident and are making follow up inquiries.

"Police urge any businesses that have been a victim of similar offences to contact them.
A new book by a lion researcher has claimed that Cecil the lion suffered incredible cruelty for 10 hours before his death.

Cecil, a protected black-maned lion, was killed outside of a national park in Zimbabwe by an American dentist on hunting trip in 2015.

His death sparked worldwide outrage with many people calling for a ban on game hunting.

Now, three years later, a new book by Lion researcher Dr. Andrew Loveridge has revealed more details surrounding the animals final hours.

Protestors speak out over Cecil's death / AP

When researching for his book, Mr Loveridge, who had been studying Cecil for eight years before his death, spoke to game staff, researchers and community members in the Hwange National Park area where Cecil lived.

In the book entitled: "Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa's Iconic Cats," he claims that the lion suffered for a long time after it was shot by an arrow.

A passage from the book which was published in the National Geographic read: In media reports it was widely touted that Cecil suffered in agony for 40 hours. This claim is inaccurate and exaggerated. It's unlikely he'd have lived that long with such a severe thoracic injury."

But he went on to say: He most definitely did not die instantly and almost certainly suffered considerably.

Judging from the events described by Cornelius and the data sent by the GPS collar, the injured lion most likely was killed 10 to 12 hours after being wounded."

According to Mr Loveridge, Cecils wound was severe.

The arrow had missed the vital organs or arteries that would have caused rapid blood loss and a relatively quick death.

Certainly, the lion was so incapacitated that in all those hours he'd been able to move only 350 meters from the place where he was shot," he said.

Cecil the lion killed

Mr Loveridges book corroborated accounts that the lion was lured out of the confines of the National Park in order for the hunters to overcome regulations.

Walter Palmer, the man who killed Cecil was publically shamed for the murder, but never faced any charges over the lions death.

He has since said that he did not realise Cecil was regarded as a national treasure.

In an interview shortly after the death of Cecil, he said:"If I had known this lion had a name and was important to the country or a study obviously I wouldnt have taken it.

"Nobody in our hunting party knew before or after the name of this lion."
F ive million women have joined Spain's first nationwide "feminist strike" to campaign for gender equality and fight gender violence.

Under the slogan If We stop, The World Stops, millions of women working both in and outside their homes, unpaid caregivers and students were called on to join the 24-hour strike by the March 8 Commission.

The movement is made up of a number of feminist organisations demanding equal opportunities for working women.

CCOO and UGT, two of the main workers' unions in Spain, called for morning and afternoon two-hour work stoppages.

Demonstrators gather in Madrid city centre / AFP/Getty Images

In Barcelona, protesters who disrupted traffic in the city centre were seen in social media videos being pushed by anti-riot police agents.

In Madrid, mayor Manuela Carmena joined a protest outside her office. She tweeted: "The aim has been achieved.

AFP/Getty Images

"This isn't only about calling for true equality, but also about facing the need to change how the world treats women. It's about feminism.

A European commission report last year said the pay gap between men and women in Spain had fallen from 18.1 per cent in 2007 to 14.9 per cent in 2015.

Meanwhile a recent Spanish study found that women on average were paid 12.7 per cent less for doing the same job as male colleagues.

In the UK, businesses have been warned they could face legal action after the Government sent out letters warning them to report on their gender pay gap on Thursday.

Companies with more than 250 employees are now legally required to report their figures to the Government.

While British comedian Richard Herring showed his support for IWD, personally replying to anyone who asked "when is International Men's Day?" on Twitter.
I ncredible new footage of enormous explosions on the surface of the Sun which are far bigger than planet Earth has been released by NASA.

The stunning video, taken from the space agencys Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, shows two humongous eruptions bursting from the surface on Friday.

Gigantic fiery bursts of light can be seen expanding so much that they disrupt the stars magnetic field, creating rippling coils.

NASA scientists described the dramatic explosions, which occurred between 18 hours of each other, as relatively small in comparison to the size of the Sun.

Explosions: The eruptions expanded to sizes bigger than Earth (NASA) / Nasa

But the gigantic balls of fire both reached sizes far bigger than Earth.

Describing the footage, NASA said in statement: A relatively small active region erupted twice in 18 hours.

After each burst, one can see the magnetic fields lines, which appear as bright coils, spiraling around the region.

The footage briefly fading to black was caused by the Earth passing between the satellite and the sun.

The Sun is 109.2 times larger than Earth and makes up 99.8 per cent of the mass of our entire solar system.
'Women need to feel empowered'

Meghan has her own reputation for being outspoken when it comes to womens rights.

Speaking at the recent forum for the Royal Foundation, she hinted that she would be using her charitable influence to support women and womens issues.

Meghan and the Duchess of Cambridge at the forum

I think whats interesting is I hear a lot of people saying, when speaking about girls empowerment, finding and knowing their worth, or womens empowerment as well, youll often hear people say well youre helping women find their voices, she said.

And I fundamentally disagree with that because women dont need to find a voice, they have a voice. They need to feel empowered to use it and people need to be encouraged to listen.

And I think right now in the climate that we are seeing, with so many campaigns  I mean with Me Too and Times Up  there is no better time to really continue shining a light on women feeling empowered and people really helping to support them, men included in that - it makes such a tremendous difference.
A secret meeting in the Seychelles shortly before President Donald Trumps inauguration was an attempt to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin, it was claimed today.

The meeting between Erik Prince, the founder of private security firm Blackwater, and a Russian official close to Vladimir Putin in January last year was arranged to discuss how the Trump White House could communicate with Moscow in the future, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Quizzed on Capitol Hill about the meeting in the past, Mr Prince has described it as a chance encounter.

But the Post alleges that a witness co-operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller claims the meeting was set up for a representative of the Trump transition team to discuss building a method of communication between the governments outside normal diplomatic channels. It has been revealed that George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who was part of the Seychelles meeting, is cooperating with Mr Muellers investigation, which is looking into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election and any links to the Trump campaign.

Last year, Mr Prince told US lawmakers that his meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, came about because he happened to be at a hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Prince said: At the end, one of the entourage says, Hey, by the way, theres this Russian guy that weve dealt with in the past. Hes here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him since youre doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space. The two men, he said, spoke for no more than 30 minutes.

We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the USA. I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism.

He said he went to the Seychelles as a businessman, not as a representative of the Trump administration.

A spokesman for Mr Prince declined to make any comment today.

In a separate report, the New York Times claims Mr Mueller is aware of two conversations Mr Trump had with witnesses about their interviews with investigators. The president told one aide that White House counsel Don McGahn should deny a previous story alleging the president asked him to fire Mr Mueller. Mr Trump also reportedly asked his former chief of staff Reince Priebus how his interview went, and whether investigators were nice.
T heres no underestimating the power of a great book. A set of ideas that can influence us to the point of motivation, action and change.

With that in mind, we asked a group of exceptional women journalists, entrepreneurs, librarians and best selling authors like Chloe Caldwell, Dreda Mitchell and Sara Pascoe to compile a go-to list of feminist reads that spoke to them in a life-altering way.

International Womens Day is particularly highlighted this year, coming on the heels of global movements for womens rights, equality and justice. From the rise of the #MeToo movement to the #TimesUp campaign against sexual harassment following the scandals in Hollywood, the need for change is wide spread. In January, the second annual womens march took large cities across the globe by storm, while in the UK we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the British womens right to vote.

The theme for International Womens Day 2018 is #PressForProgress. The day is meant to bring together global governments, women's organisations, businesses and charities and will be marked with talks, performances, rallies, networking events and marches.

Key events include the annual Women of the World (WOW) Festival at the Southbank centre showcasing exhibitions, lectures, markets, food and drink. Penguin Publishing have also launched a pop-up bookstore featuring solely female authors. The Like a Woman Bookshop will be open from 5-9 March, with categories like Essential feminist reads, Inspiring young readers, Women to watch and Changemakers.

However you choose to celebrate women today we've rounded up some top feminist book recommendations by inspiring women in literature and business.

Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles - Recommended by Chloe Caldwell

Chloe Caldwell, author of Women, a novella detailing female friendship and sexual confusion recommends Chelsea Girls as her essential feminist read. Eileen Myles' autobiographical coming-of-age story about her Christian upbringing, and fight for survival as a young poet in 1970's New York is considered a staple in feminist literature. ''This was the first book that I read which made me think: Hey, are women allowed to write like this? Solely from their perspective about their experiences? Unflinchingly, with vulgarity and humour? I was surprised to learn that we are allowed to write like men. I was 21 when I read it, and ten years later I still return to it time and time again.

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg - Recommended by Vicki Psarias

''Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead'' the international bestseller written by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg about women, ambition and maintaining the difficult balance between work and family. ''Sheryl offers insight into why women are held back both in society and the workplace (citing the Heidi/Howard study which found gender bias against women (Heidi) despite having the exact same experience and accomplishments as Howard'', writes well-known Honest mum blogger and award winning film maker, Vicki Psarias.

''Despite this, Sandberg empowers the reader to step up, lean in and shine as she has done time and time again in both her career and life asking the reader, 'What would you do if you weren't afraid?'. Sandberg has inspired a generation of entrepreneurial women like myself to lean in and be proud of who they are writes Psarias.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys' by Viv Albertine - Recommended by Rhyannon Styles

Viv Albertine was obsessed with playing in a band in part because she had never seen a girl with an electric guitar. This book is a memoir of her journey from obscurity to leading one of the most influential bands 'The Slits', to post-punk life, marriage, divorce and IVF. Her turbulent life has encouraged many inspiring women including the author of New Girl: A Trans Girl Tells it like it is, Rhyannon Styles.

Styles writes, ''This is perhaps not the most 'classic' choice when you think of empowering female reads but reading about Viv Albertine's life encouraged me to be bolder, stronger and visible as a transgender woman. It encouraged me to find my inner voice, to harness its power and blast into the world as Rhyannon Styles.''.

How to be Both by Ali Smith - Recommended by Zainab Zuma

The 2014 multi-award winning novel by Scottish author Ali Smith is a story told from two perspectives: George, a fastidious 16-year-old girl, living in modern Cambridge, and Francesco del Cossa, an Italian renaissance artist responsible for painting a series of murals at the ''Palace of not being bored''.

The two versions of the book were published simultaneously. Zainab Zuma, Creative Manager at Penguin Random House Publishing tells us "Quite apart from being a frankly astonishing book, 'How to be both' by Ali Smith is also a kind of gender playground where the bounds of femininity become fluid and ambiguous. Its melancholy, tender, playful, daring and it leaves an indelible mark on all who read it.

'Man Made Language' by Dale Spender- Recommended by Bea Davenport

Have you ever noticed a slightly misogynistic tone in your partner's or boss's language that wasn't really their fault? This book by Australian feminist writer Dale Spender examines those numerous areas of sexism as they appear in the English language.

There are many feminist classics that really spoke to me as a young woman in the 1980's, so it was hard to choose just one. But this is a breathtaking analysis of how language contributes to keep women in their place, and for someone who works with words, it was eye-opening,'' argues author lecturer and journalist Davenport. You cant read this and ever again argue that using the word man when you mean human is irrelevant, for example. But of course, it covers much wider territory than that and argues beautifully that language is never neutral. If someone says, Oh, Im not a feminist, I ask Why? Whats your problem? Davenport concludes.

'Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution' by Rachel Moran - Recommended by Sara Pascoe

Rachel Moran tells her own story of resorting to prostitution at age fifteen while revealing the emotional cost of selling her body in order to survive. At age 22 she managed to liberate herself, go to university and finish this book. All due to her amazing residual strength and remarkable courage.

This incredible book is a lesson in empathy, coercive economics and incredible writing. Please read it, whatever you think you know and understand about prostituted women, says Sara Pascoe, English writer, stand-up comedian and actress.

'The Color Purple' by Alice Walker - Recommended by Dreda Mitchell

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel tells the tale of Celie, a young black woman living in poverty and segregation. The story details a group of women joined by the love for each other, the children that they care for as well as their gruesome experiences at the hands of abusive men.

"This is an emotional, mesmerising, epic story of how a young, black girl rises up and fights against abuse, racism, injustice, misogyny to become the powerful, educated woman she is meant to be." says Dreda Mitchell, British author of the award winning book Running Hot.

Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys - Recommended by Kate Gielgud

This 1939 modernist novel is highly experimental in nature and deals with female vulnerability, loneliness and depression during the years between the two World Wars. ''This book was given to me by Irina Brook, daughter of Peter Brook. We were in a production of Lady Chatterleys lover in 1995, and I had just been through a very difficult time in my life,'' says Kate Gielgud, Tri-borough Libraries health information coordinator.
N etflix users have objected to the streaming services announcement of a forthcoming documentary about Rachel Dolezal, a former civil rights activist who lied about having African-American ancestry.

Viewers criticised the platform for funding a project based on a white woman passing as black, rather than shows which feature genuine black women.

One Twitter user wrote: Oh hell no! When PERFORMING blackness gets more attention than actually BEING BLACK.

Another posted: So @netflix just announced the Rachel Dolezal documentary. It's called #TheRachelDivide and I'm in my office screaming why is this happening?

A third wrote: Rachel Dolezal is getting a documentary on Netflix. I can't wait to watch the struggles of a white woman pretending to be a black woman OR Netflix could always just go ahead and make a documentary about a black woman but that would be crazy.

Hey @Netflix, Rachel Dolezal doesn't need a documentary streamed on your site. She's fraudulent and problematic. Why don't you take all that money and put it towards projects made by real black women? tweeted a fourth.

Netflix was forced to defend its decision to air The Rachel Divide, denying claims that it had paid Dolezal for the series.

Controversial: Netflix users have slammed its new Rachel Dolezal documentary / Netflix

It tweeted responses to a few concerned users, writing: To clarify one thing: Like all subjects for our documentaries, Rachel Dolezal did not receive any payment for this project.

We worked with filmmakers Laura Brownson and Roger Ross Williams, who wanted to explore Dolezals life as a microcosm for a larger conversation about race and identity.

The film is focused not just on her life but on the larger conversation, including people who see her actions as the ultimate expression of white privilege.

Netflix - In pictures 1 /20 Netflix - In pictures The Crown Netflix Narcos Juan Pablo Gutierrez/Netflix Stranger Things Netflix House of Cards CBS Paramount Orange is the New Black JoJo Whilden/Netflix via AP Better Call Saul The Defenders Sarah Shatz/Netflix Jessica Jones Myles Aronowitz/Netflix Daredevil Netflix The Punisher Patrick Harbron/Netflix Luke Cage 'Uncomfortable': Mike Colter as Luke Cage Netflix Lemony Snicket Lilyhammer Making a Murderer AP Grace and Frankie The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Bojack Horseman Netflix Master of None K.C. Bailey/Netflix The Get Down Gilmore Girls

In the trailer for the series, which profiles the effect of Dolezals identification as black on her family, she can be seen arguing with her son.

He tells her: I really dont want to focus on this for the rest of my life.

To which she responds: Do you think I do?

Her son hits back: Well why dont you just let it go away? Why did the interviews have to happen then, mum?

Filmmaker Laura Brownson spent two years filming Dolezal and her two sons in an attempt to better understand what the disgraced civil rights activist calls her trans-racial identity.
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The US is considering the option of military action against Syria. The alleged use of chemical weapons (CW) by the Syrian government, which is not backed by any solid evidence, is to serve as the pretext. Syrian President Assad is going to be punished. On March 6, US President Trump and Israeli PM Netanyahu discussed the threat posed by Irans presence in Syria and ways to counter it.

Chemical weapons? But why should Syrias President Assad use them if he has had no trouble winning with conventional weapons wherever he goes? Couldnt the rebels be using CW? Instances of that have been uncovered and confirmed. But no, US officials dont even bother to give a passing thought to such unimportant and irrelevant considerations. They know better who to blame and who deserves to be made to pay for the wrongdoings they believe have taken place. In April, 2017, the US delivered a missile strike against a Syrian military facility, in flagrant violation of international law.

Its worth noting that a group of US senators visited Israel in late February. According to them, a conflict between Israel and the pro-Iranian forces in southern Lebanon was imminent and that fighting would likely encompass Syria as well. Israel has been increasing its support of proxy groups in Syria recently.

Senator Lindsey Graham believes that Tehran is testing the US and Israel and that the administration is not doing enough to push back against Iran in Syria and throughout the Middle East.

On Feb. 28, just three days before Israeli PM Netanyahu arrived in the US on March 4, Fox News offered its audience an exclusive report on a military base being built by Iran in Syria. It claimed this information was evidence that Tehran was preparing for a permanent presence in the country. The story was presented as a real scoop and the timing was carefully chosen. The report plays into the hands of both the administration and as well as those in Congress who are calling for a more resolute stand on Syria.

Israel enjoys almost unlimited US backing, which forces America to become involved directly or indirectly in the hostilities. Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would order airstrikes against Syria if the use of CW were confirmed.

Israel is a privileged ally but its not only Israeli security that drives American policy. And its not so much Syria but Iran the US has in its crosshairs. If America allows Iran a land bridge linking it to the Mediterranean via Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, this will frustrate its main Middle East allies  the Persian Gulf monarchies. Lebanon will leave the sphere of Western influence. The tensions between Sunni Arab states and Iran boost US arms sales to rich Middle Eastern countries, which is hugely profitable. Thus a belligerent stand toward Tehran allows America to preserve its political clout in a region where its policy has been such a disaster in recent years.

It will be too hard to reach any agreement on the recently discovered offshore gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean, which are a bone of contention between Israel and Lebanon. And the gas exports from these fields could diminish or eliminate the need to import Russian gas to Southern Europe, which would kill the prospects for the Turkish Stream project. Without Iran, Lebanon could be pressured into an agreement on terms dictated by Israel and Americas European allies.

With access to the Mediterranean, Iran could build naval bases that would threaten the NATO naval forces there. The ability to ship exports by sea would boost Irans income, making the country richer and more powerful.

Attacking Syrian forces to force a retreat will reduce Moscows influence and hamper the diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Syria that have been so successful recently. So-called rebel groups, so recently and spectacularly defeated, will reemerge as a force to be reckoned with. From Washingtons perspective, a divided Syria with vast swaths under the control of pro-US and Israel-backed groups is better than a united country in which the West can take part in the peace talks but not as a party that controls territory or exerts significant influence on the balance of power.

Inventing a reason to use force against Syria is a way to fight Iran and roll Russia back. This is a very dangerous policy. As a result, Syria will become a battlefield where powerful actors clash in their pursuit of strategic goals. That will be much worse than fighting jihadists. This scenario can be avoided through diplomatic efforts headed by Russia with the input of all. Thats what Moscow is talking about but the US does not listen. There were times when the US ignored Moscows concerns about Russias security. On March 2, Russian President Putin unveiled information about the new super weapons Russia alone possesses in the world today. In this same manner Washington may find that participating in Moscow-sponsored peace initiatives is a much better way to settle the Syrian conflict than instigating tensions as it is now doing, but it may already be too late.
The United States of America spends something like $80 billion annually on intelligence gathering and analysis. When the CIA was founded by the National Security Act in 1947 the intention was to create a mechanism that would warn about an imminent threat. The memory of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base was still fresh, and the legislation was popularized by the slogan no more Pearl Harbors.

In spite of the dedication of considerable resources and manpower, there have been some major intelligence failures in the past seventy years, starting with the inability to anticipate the breakout of the Korean War and including the embrace of false intelligence on Saddam Husseins alleged weapons of mass destruction. But the most recent failure is perhaps more consequential than either Korea or Iraq.

On March 1st, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke before his countrys Federal Assembly plus a large group of both local and foreign journalists, outlining his plans for the economy and also dealing with other domestic issues should he be reelected later this month. The final third of the presentation was on national defense and, in its substance, was clearly directed at a global audience, particularly the United States.

He explained

During all these years since the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty [in 2001] we have been working intensively on advanced equipment and arms, which allowed us to make a breakthrough in developing new models of strategic weapons.

He was referring to the RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, which has almost unlimited range and ultra-high speed, enabling it to employ trajectories including strikes coming over the South Pole that can defeat existing American Anti-Ballistic Defense systems. Russia has also produced and deployed a hypersonic glider weapon system Avangard.

But the real game changer is the Russian ability to negate Americas ability to project power through its navy. The already deployed air-launched Kinzhal anti-ship missile has a range of 2000 kilometers and a hyper-sonic speed that makes it nearly impossible to intercept. The development has made Americas thirteen aircraft carrier groups obsolete. President Putin made clear that Russia now has an overwhelming military advantage in cruise and ballistic missiles that are capable of penetrating U.S. defenses.

The new reality may or may not impel policymakers in Washington to approach Moscow and seek a new round of negotiations for arms control, but the real shock deriving from the Putin announcement is the failure of the intelligence community to anticipate the developments and advise their significance. Some of the new systems were hardly secret, with development of the Sarmat, for example, known to western governments for a number of years.

There will no doubt be a blame game in Washington over the inability to learn of Russias arms programs, but the questions that probably will not be asked relates to the intelligence agencies themselves and their capabilities, or lack thereof. It is no secret that organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have seen their basic missions change since 2001. An organization that used to pride itself on its ability to conduct classic espionage operations involving recruiting and running spies suddenly heard from policymakers that those skills were no longer in demand. Many officers who were made redundant or forced to retire were precisely those individuals who had cut their teeth on running operations directed against the old Soviet Union. They had the language and cultural skills necessary to collect information on Russia. With their departure, those capabilities also largely vanished.

Instead of spying, American intelligence agencies working mostly against what was broadly described as terrorism, used technology to locate potential targets and kill them. The CIAs Clandestine Services, once the haven of its spies, became under President Barack Obama, a largely paramilitary operation focused on military solutions rather than espionage. This process was accelerated under Obamas CIA Director John Brennan, who worked assiduously to reduce the influence of the former spies within the Agency. Brennan reportedly had once wanted to become a spy but was kicked out of the training program as unsuitable.

So, has America learned that its intelligence agencies are doing all the wrong things and that the national defense strategy is unsustainable because the Russian-American relationship is now on a new footing? Possibly, but it is perhaps more likely that Washington will avoid asking the hard questions.
Iran, Russia, Turkey, the United States and Israel are all present in Syria along with the Assad government and a considerable number of Syrian rebel groups who are still not united . Everyone has different goals and a different (often constantly shifting) set of allies. Keeping track of who is doing what to whom and why (and for how long) has become increasingly difficult. A current summary of allies, foes, frenemies and chimeras goes like this;

Israel wants to keep Iran out of Syria and Lebanon and avoid a war with Iran. For this has the support of the U.S., Russia and most Gulf Arab states. None of these supporters is willing to provide any military assistance, at least not until Iran actually attacks Israel.

Russia wants to get Turkey out of NATO, to keep the Iranians from starting a war with Israel and make the Americans look bad. At the same time Russia needs to do this on the cheap and make Russia look good, especially to Russians back home. That is proving difficult as most Russians were not enthusiastic about the Syrian operation in the first place and popular support has been declining.

Turkey wants to create a security zone on the Syrian side of the border that has no Kurds or Islamic terrorists in it. Turkey also wants to show the Sunni Moslem world that it can handle Iranian aggression (without going to war with Iran) and keep the Israelis out of Lebanon and Syria. Turkey is willing to play diplomatic games with Russia and Iran to achieve these goals as well as send troops into Syria to fight, and get killed. .

The U.S. wants to ensure that ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) does not reestablish itself in Syria. To help with that the American are doing what they can to help the local Kurds maintain autonomy in northeast Syria (east of the Euphrates) where the Kurds have always been dominant. Secondary objectives are keeping Iran, Turley and Russia out of Syria. The U.S. and Israel are allies and any attack on Israel will trigger American intervention on the Israeli side. But short of that the Americans are quite blunt about stating that their troops are in Syria to deal with terrorists, not Iranian preparations for an attack on Israel. The Americans will not stop Kurds in the northeast from going to the aid of Kurds defending Afrin. The Turks asked the Americans to stop the Kurds and the U.S. refused.

Syria in general wants all the fighting to stop but the minority Assad dictatorship wants to resume ruling all of Syria and the Syrian rebels want Assad gone.

Iraq would like less violence in Syria and less Iranian interference in Iraq. Iraq also wants its Kurds to be less independent and reduce Islamic terrorist activity in Iraq.

All this can get confusing. For example Israel has persuaded Russia to do what it can to prevent Iran from assembling, arming and positioning a large force of non-Iranian forces to attack Israel. Russia has limited ability to block Iranian efforts but does what it can. Iran is building bases to support a large force of Lebanese (Hezbollah), Syrians (whichever Shia Syrians it can recruit) and lots of foreign Shia mercenaries (mainly Afghans, Iraqis other non-Iranian Shia) in parts of Syria where Russia does not have much military power on the ground and Russian air power cannot occupy ground or otherwise interfere with what Iran is doing. Russia does not want Iran starting a war with Israel but as a practical matter Iran is pretty irrational when it comes to Israel and cannot be stopped by Russian, Turkish or American threats. Russia has publicly criticized Iran for regularly calling for the destruction of Israel. Russia has also sided with Turkey in disagreements with Iran over strategy and tactics in Syria. Russia still considers Iran an ally, but a flawed one that really should work on their bad habits. Currently Turley, Russia and Iran all say they are working out their differences and continuing to cooperate in Syria.

The Afrin Angle

On January 20th Turkey began an offensive into northwest Syria against Afrin a town northwest of Aleppo city and long controlled by Syrian Kurds. Turkey is determined to make Afrin part of a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Turkish border. The Assads and Iran are supporting Syrian Kurds defending Afrin. The Assads, Iran and the Syrian Kurds can all agree that keeping the Turks out is a good thing. So far the Turks have suffered about 300 dead but 80 percent of those are FSA rebels working with the Turks. The defenders have suffered heavier losses and continue to hold onto most of the territory they controlled before the Turkish offensive began with FSA (non-sectarian Free Syrian Army) and Turkish forces attacking in at least five different columns. The Turks have air support and larger numbers, or did until Kurdish and Syrian reinforcements showed up in late February. The Turks claim they have killed, captured or chased away about 3,000 Kurdish fighters in and around Afrin since January.

The Kurds east of the Euphrates have less to worry about because the presence of American troops there (to supply air strikes, training and advice) keeps the Turks out, as well as the Assads, Russians and Iranians. The Syrians have always been practical when it came to forming needed alliances and this is especially true with the Kurds. But there are different groups of Kurds. Thus the Kurds west of the Euphrates are not American supported and vulnerable while those east of the river definitely are. The Kurds on both sides of the river share the same goal of Kurdish autonomy in northern Syria but the Turks have insisted that there be no Kurdish forces west of the river and are willing to go to war over that and they are doing so with the help of thousands of FSA rebels.

SDF considers the Turkish offensive against Afrin as another Turk move to help ISIL and other Islamic terrorists in Syria. Much of the fighting for the Turks is being done by Syrian FSA rebels who had once been allies of the SDF. But the FSA and SDF were also rivals and many FSA rebels accepted Turkish offers to work with Turkish troops to clear Kurdish forces from the Syrian side of the border and then run this neutral zone under Turkish protection. At the same time American forces in the northeast note Assad forces are massing near American bases and may attempt to advance. The Assads are willing to have an autonomous Kurdish northeast but want Syrian troops to have at least a token presence in the northeast and want the Americans gone. That last condition will be difficult to achieve. The Americans have made it clear they are in Syria to deal with ISIL and other Islamic terrorist threats. Syria has long been a sanctuary for Islamic terror groups and the United States plans to stay in Syria until convinced that the traditional Syrian policy of offering sanctuary to all manner of terrorists is a thing of the past. That may be difficult because the Assads have long depended on that policy for all sorts of reasons.

Russia Makes A Big Mistake

Russia took a chance trying to embarrass American troops in northeast Syria. The February 7th advance by Russian and Syrian forces was quickly repulsed by American firepower. The Russian force had no air support or anti-aircraft weapons and no backup plan other than for the survivors to retreat as quickly as possible. The Russians were hoping to push American troops out of a base near oil fields east of the Euphrates. The Russian force suffered heavy losses which included about 200 Russian military contractors. The American did not publicize this but the Russians did because it was a great embarrassment for the Russians.

Iran Makes A Bigger Army

Iran appears to control most of the military forces available to the Assads but is careful how these forces are used. The Iranian controlled militias are better armed, trained and led than the Syrian military. The Iranians maintain strict standards. Local militias who will not cooperate are cut off. Since Iran pays its irregulars this Iranian support is often critical. When a local militia cannot pay its fighters the group often falls apart. The Assads take advantage of this by allowing the unpaid militiamen to join the Syrian Army (which these militiamen are technically deserters from.)

The Iranian forces includes 3,000 Iranian personnel, 8,000 Hezbollah fighters (with more on call in Lebanon) and some 70,000 pro-Iran militias. About a fifth of these are foreign Shia mercenaries recruited, armed and led by Iranians. The rest are local pro-Assad militias that are equipped (and often paid) by Iran. Russia is the main source of logistic, technical, air and diplomatic (via a UN veto) support. But Iran has the most armed people on the ground. To make matters worse the main function of the Iranian ground forces is to prepare for a war with Israel.

The Americans

While there are only about two thousand U.S. troops in Syria there are more than five times as many providing support from nearby airbases and even more distant facilities, including intel and other analysts back in the U.S. but on call 24/7 via satellite comms. In this way the United States continues to monitor ISIL activity in Iraq and Syria and conduct airstrikes daily. So far this year this has been 2-4 airstrikes a day. Most of these airstrikes are still in Syria while in Iraq F-16s, ground attack and armed helicopters from the Iraqi air force provide dozens of sorties a day. There are some American helicopter gunships stationed in Syria but otherwise the airpower comes from Iraq or other bases in the region.

Grinding Down Ghouta

Ignoring the bad publicity over airstrikes against civilians, Syrian troops split the rebel-controlled Ghouta suburbs (15 kilometers east of Damascus) district outside Damascus apart. The ground advance came after two weeks of artillery fire and airstrikes that began on February 18th. At first the Syrian troops and Iranian mercenaries could not move forward but in the last week that changed and now the rebels holding Ghouta abandoned territory to better defend two isolated rebel controlled areas. The bombardment and ground fighting has left nearly 900 civilians dead.

Responding to criticism that Russian airstrikes in Syria (Ghouta) have killed so many civilians since mid-February, Russia pointed out that the Russian airstrikes are directed at Islamic terror groups among the rebels and that Russia has a less restrictive ROE (Rules of Engagement) and that is not going to change. The Ghouta fighting has been particularly intense so far in 2018 and has left the Assads frustrated in their effort to capture what is one of the last rebel strongholds around Damascus. This 100 square kilometer (40 square miles) enclave held over 300,000 people at the beginning of the year and was the scene of a major chemical weapons attack in 2013. In mid-2017 the Ghouta area was controlled by over 10,000 armed rebels and at the end of the year that had not changed much. There are about six rebel factions, most of them Islamic terror groups divided between those associated with al Qaeada and the rest supported by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil states. These factions have spent a lot of time fighting, or feuding, with each other. Despite that the Ghouta rebels have tied down a lot of Assad forces to keep an eye on them and the rebels will cooperate in defending the area if attacked. In July 2017 Russian military police established about a dozen checkpoints in the Ghouta area and that was as much to reassure the people in the area that Russian and Syrian air strikes would not return but to also monitor movements of known rebels. But the rebels kept shooting, despite ceasefires and more pro-government forces set up patrols around the rebel controlled area. In early 2018 the government tightened the blockade in an effort to literally starve the rebels out. This works better during the cold weather and this has caused growing hardship even though some food and other supplies continue to get into Ghouta. But not enough is smuggled in to support all the people in rebel held areas. Even when the UN is allowed to deliver supplies only food is allowed in with medical supplies being seized as forbidden items. Destroying the rebel presence in Ghouta is a high priority for the government. As long as that rebel presence exists outside the capital Assad claims of having taken back control of Syria are suspect.

Corruption

For Syrians a major casualty of the civil war has been the growth of corruption. Syria ranks 178th out of 180 countries (173 out of 176 last year). Progress, or lack thereof, can be seen in the annual Transparency International Corruption Perception Index where countries are measured on a 1 (most corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt) scale. The most corrupt nations (usually Syria/14, South Sudan/12 and Somalia/9) have a rating of under 15 while of the least corrupt (New Zealand and Denmark) are over 85.

The current Syrian score is 14 (13 in 2016) compared to 62 (64) for Israel, 18 (17) for Iraq, 40 (41) for Turkey, 49 (46) for Saudi Arabia, 28 (28) for Lebanon, 32 (32) for Pakistan, 28 (26) for Bangladesh, 33 (36) for the Maldives, 38 (36) for Sri Lanka, 40 (40) for India, 15 (15) for Afghanistan, 30 (28) for Burma, 29 (29) for Russia, 41 (40) for China, 17 (14) for Libya, 71 (66) for the UAE (United Arab Emirates), 75 (74) for the United States, 27 (28) for Nigeria, 43 (45) for South Africa, 73 (72) for Japan, 37 (37) for Indonesia and 54 (53) for South Korea,. A lower corruption score is common with nations in economic trouble and problems dealing with Islamic terrorism and crime in general. Syrias corruption score has gotten much worse since 2012, when it was 26.

March 7, 2018: The SDF in the northeast is sending 1,700 of its fighters to help defend Afrin. These SDF reinforcements are from the Euphrates River Valley, where they were searching for ISIL groups hiding out there. This is the main reason the Americans are in the northeast and the loss of so many SDF forces may be a problem for continued American assistance.

March 6, 2018: In the north, at the Russian controlled Hmeimim airbase a Russian An-26 twin-turboprop transport crashed while landing in clear weather. The six crew and 33 passengers (most of them officers including a general) died. The aircraft was coming from Aleppo and the cause was apparently equipment failure.

March 5, 2018: In response to its numerous (over a dozen) tanks losses, mostly from ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) Turkey obtained a manufacturing license to build the Ukrainian Zaslon-L APS (Active Protection System) for at least a hundred of its Leopard 2 and M60 tank. Zaslon consists of a radar to detect incoming missiles and small rockets to rush out and disable the incoming threat. A complete APS weighs between 500 and 1,000 kg (depending on the type of vehicle it is installed on). Zaslon has been available since 2010 and has worked in combat with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. The Turkish firm that is to manufacture Zazlon had been working on its own APS but had not gotten it to work yet. The Turks were unable to obtain APS from the other two major manufacturers (Israel and Russia) because there are diplomatic problems with those two.

March 4, 2018: In the northeast the American supported military training program for the local Kurds is turning out over a thousand trained troops each month. The Syrian Kurds have over 50,000 experienced fighters (including female units) but the training program turns these fighters (most of them part-timers) into trained soldiers with an understanding of common tactics, weapons and procedures in general.

March 3, 2018: Responding to Israeli requests Russia blocked Iranian efforts to set up a naval base at the port of Tartus. This is where Russia has already built a facility (and has a long-term lease) to handle the needs of its warships operating off the coast. Tartus is also where Russian military cargo for Russian and Syrian forces is unloaded. Meanwhile Iran has built a new base 16 kilometers northwest of Damascus and is apparently planning more. These large bases tend to get hit with Israeli airstrikes before long but apparently Iran is hoping to improve air defenses enough to cause the Israelis some losses. Israel believes Iran has three large bases in Syria and seven smaller tactical ones near areas where there is active fighting. Iran is also bringing in more rockets, missiles, ammunitions and weapons for the 80,000 militiamen it supports in Syria. In response Israel is preparing for an Iranian attack from Lebanon and/or Syria. In addition to moving more troops to the Syrian border, improving the security fence and anti-aircraft/rocket defense Israel is also making deals with rebels on the Syrian side of the border in an effort to establish a 40 kilometers deep buffer zone. Israel has long provided some support (usually medical, in Israeli hospitals) for cooperative Syrian rebels. Now that support includes material aid and airstrikes and artillery fire against shared threats. Nevertheless Iran keeps pushing its mercenary forces closer to the Israeli border.

March 2, 2018: Deaths from the civil war left over 2,000 dead in February. The Syrian war has killed at least 400,000 since 2011 with 39,000 killed in 2017, down from 49,000 in 2016. While we are at it, how many people has the Assad government of Syria killed so far? By the end of 2017 ISIL lost control of the last bits of territory it had controlled in Iraq and Syria since mid-2014. Most of Syria is now back under the control of the Assads, although most of the population is not. In 2011 there were 21 million people living in Syria, now there are about 14 million. Most of the lost population is still alive, but outside Syria (mainly in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan). The Syrian civil war saw the Assad government deliberately attack pro-rebel civilians. Since that included most of the Syrian population the immediate goal was not to kill them (although over 100,000 direct deaths were probably the result) but to get the pro-rebel Syrians to flee their homes and, preferably, the country. About a third of the population did just that. Many of these refugees want to return, but only if it is safe. That may not be for a while. Over the last three months the Assads have waged an artillery and aerial attack on 300,000 civilians in rebel controlled suburbs of Damascus. That campaign has killed about 3,000 civilians so far.

March 1, 2018: Iran called for negotiations to work out an end to the fighting in Syria and Yemen. This is another way of saying we cant win so what will you offer us so we stop trying. While this means the end of the Shia rebellion in Yemen the Iranians are not likely to give up their military presence in Syria.

February 21, 2018: Two Russian Su-57 stealth fighter prototypes appear to have been flown to the Russian air base in Syria. The Russians apparently plan to test some Su-57 features in a combat environment. The Su-57 is nowhere near ready for combat but it can fly and some of its features (limited stealth, some electronics) are operational. Besides, it is great publicity for an aircraft Russia hopes to export someday. The two American stealth fighters are operational in Syria. F-22s have flown some missions and Israel has declared its F-35I operational, the first non-U.S. user of that new aircraft to do so.

February 20, 2018: Iranian backed Shia militia were sent to Afrin to assist the Kurds there in defending Syrian territory from foreign (Turkish) invasion. The Syrian Kurds have always been willing to cooperate with the Assads as long as it helped the Kurds. Russia opposed this Iranian decision to confront the Turks but did not halt air support for Assad forces.

February 19, 2018: Russian officials admitted that the dozens of foreign troops killed in eastern Syria during a February 7th battle were not Russian military personnel but were working for Russia. Many of the dead were Russian and the rest were from nations that used to be part of the Soviet Union. The official admitted that the many wounded Russian military contractors were being treated in Russian military medical facilities in Syria. By now the extent of Russian participation, and loss, in the attack became known and it was much larger (about 200 dead) than anyone thought. Initially Russia would admit that only five Russians were killed. But it turned out all the Russian casualties were military contractors from the Wagner Group, the largest military contractor in Russia and active in several areas, mainly Ukraine (Donbas) and Syria. The contractors handle security and, in the case of the Deir Ezzor attack, form special combat units normally used to go after ISIL or other difficult foes on the ground. Working for Wagner is not a military secret in Russia and death benefits (up to $88,000 depending on rank and job) are paid promptly and in most cases the body is quietly returned to the family. Friends and family of the Wagner casualties will usually discuss the loss on the Internet and after a while an accurate estimate of contractor casualties is known. The contractors themselves sign a non-disclosure agreement but that does not apply to family and friends. Posts to the Internet or other communications with family tend to become public after a while.

Russian military personnel in Syria are paid nearly as well as the Wagner personnel and receive bonuses in addition to their regular pay. But deaths among Russian military personnel in Syria, even though all of them are volunteers, is a much bigger deal back in Russia than the death of a Russian mercenary.

February 18, 2018: Russian diplomats told Israel that Russia would support Israel if Iran attacked. However Russia was not convinced that Israel shooting down an Iranian UAV over Israel on the 10th was an Iranian attack. After all, Syria or Hezbollah (which Russia considers a Lebanese not an Iranian force) have been using Iranian UAVs for a long time. This was an example of how unreliable Russian support is. Other Middle Eastern allies of Russia, like Iran and Turkey, have noticed the same thing. Russia apparently also persuaded Israel to not destroy Iranian weapons (missile and rocket) factories in Syria and Lebanon after the February 10th incident where they destroyed an Iranian UAV that had entered Israeli air space. Israel and Russia are continually making deals involving decisions like this but in the end Israel will do what it has to do to defend itself and Russia openly acknowledges that.

February 17, 2018: Russian military personnel in Syria have been ordered to stop using smart phone and to replace them as soon as possible with older models that lack GPS, high speeds and other features that are used by many commercial UAVs and quad copters. The frequencies used by smart phones capable of controlling small UAVs will be jammed around Russian bases in Syria not only to make it more difficult for quad copters to be used for mass attacks but to prevent Russian personnel from posting military information on the Internet.

February 10, 2018: In southern Syria (Golan Heights and Israel border) an Israeli F-16I was shot down by a Russian built S-200 (SA-5) surface to air missile. This was but part of a very complex day. It began when an Iranian UAV (launched from an Iranian base in central Syria) entered Israeli air space and was shot down 90 seconds later. In retaliation Israel sent eight F-16Is to hit the Iranian base, especially the operations center for the larger Iranian UAVs operating over Syria. This facility was destroyed and some Iranians were killed. Israeli warplanes had dealt with the SA-5 for years and could destroy all the Syrian SA-5 launchers and radars. But Israel had an understanding with Russia, a nation that was something of a frenemy in Syria and the Russians wanted the SA-5s left alone. Even though the SA-5s were older tech they still posed some risk to Israeli (and American) warplanes and that is what happened to the F-16I today. Post-crash investigation determined the cause was pilot error (not implementing countermeasures properly.) The aircraft crashed on the Israeli side of the border and the crew of two safely ejected. Israel then prepared to carry out their plan to destroy the Syrian air defense system when the Russian leader called the Israeli leader and asked that the Israeli attack be put on hold. Given the relationship Israel and Russia had developed over many decades, Israel agreed. But now the Russians owed Israel a favor and the Israelis consider that another weapon to use against the Iranian threat in Syria.
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TICKERS: USGD; USGDF

Source: Streetwise Reports (3/7/18)

A new exploration company with a project that has seen some high-grade drill results begins trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange.



American Pacific Mining Corp. (USGD:CSE) begins trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) on March 8; the ticker symbol is USGD. The new company has optioned NOVO Resources' Tuscarora property in Nevada.

Tuscarora consists of 24 unpatented BLM lode mining claims and is located 50 miles north of Elko, Nevada. The project is positioned between two major gold trends, Carlin and Jerritt Canyon.

Drilling that NOVO Resources conducted in 2016 at Tuscarora found high grades, including 3.1m @ 74.18 g/t gold and 1.5m @ 143.50 g/t gold.

With many industry observers noting that NOVO Resources' project in Australia has the potential to be a massive, Witwatersrand-type deposit, that company's focus has remained Down Under, and it optioned Tuscarora to American Pacific Mining.

The terms of the option agreement to acquire 100% of the property are:

Make cash payments to NOVO Resources of CA$375,000

Deliver shares of American Pacific Mining Corp. stock equivalent to CA$200,000

Complete US$100,000 per year in expenditures on the property

After that, American Pacific Mining will pay a royalty to NOVO Resources of 0.5% of net smelter returns; this can be reduced to zero by paying US$500,000. American Pacific Mining will also pay a royalty to Nevada Select Royalty Inc. of between 2% and 4%, depending on the price of gold.

Dr. Quinton Hennigh, president and chairman of NOVO Resources, stated: "We believe that Tuscarora is a quality asset with promising mineralization. We look forward to seeing American Pacific Mining further develop the project and we are excited to participate in its true potential as shareholders of American Pacific Mining."

American Pacific Mining is helmed by an experienced team. Warwick Smith, CEO and director, is a venture capitalist who co-founded and led Western Pacific Resources Corp. Eric Saderholm, president and director, is the former Western U.S. Exploration Manager for Newmont and is an Elko-based geologist. Director Ken Cunningham has over 40 years of experience in mineral exploration, including 12 years as the president and CEO of Miranda Gold Corp.

Eric Saderholm, American Pacific Mining's president and director, noted that "American Pacific will build upon previous exploration work and use the most modern geophysical and drilling techniques to test this exciting, promising district. It was the potential of this project and the tight structure and commitment of American Pacific Mining that lured me into leaving a quality position with Newmont Mining. There is an upcoming emergence of profitable, mid-tier mining companies and we will be leaders in the exploration space as this trend continues."

American Pacific Mining has approximately 33 million shares outstanding. The IPO round was done at $0.25 with a half warrant at $0.35 (one year). The company has approximately $3 million in cash.

Want to read more Gold Report articles like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent articles and interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Streetwise Interviews page.

Disclosure:

1) Patrice Fusillo compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She or members of her household own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own shares of American Pacific Mining Corp., a company mentioned in this article.
TICKERS: SVB; SVBL

Source: Streetwise Reports (3/7/18)

A company exploring in northern Mexico looks to have hit a major high-grade zone under its already defined deposit.



One of the highest-grade silver projects in the world is the Mangazeisky Silver Project in Russia. Operated by Silver Bear Resources, the deposit boasts reserves of 809 g/t silver and Indicated and Inferred resources in the 1,300-1,400 g/t range.

Excellon Resources' La Platosa stands out as one of Mexico's highest-grade mines. It offers Measured and Indicated resources of 760 g/t silver.

Silver Bull Resources Inc.'s (SVB:TSX; SVBL:NYSE.MKT) Sierra Mojada project in Coahuila, northern Mexico, may be giving both these projects a run for their money. The company announced on Feb. 21 assays from seven drill holes from its newly discovered sulphide zone that sits under its oxide zone.

Highlights include:

Hole T17022 -- 6 meters @ 802g/t silver, 5.87% zinc, 3.3% copper, and 0.54% lead.

Hole T17019 -- 2 meters @ 1,300g/t silver, 13.52% zinc, 3.87% copper, and 2.95% lead.

Hole T17021 -- 6 meters @ 5.8% zinc, and 0.47% copper.

Silver Bull's project contains oxide mineralization and sulphide mineralization. The company previous exploration concentrated on the oxide portion; its 2015 Technical Report with a "NI 43-101 compliant measured and indicated "global" resource of 58.7 million tonnes grading 3.6% zinc and 50g/t silver at a $13.50 NSR cutoff giving 4.670 billion pounds of zinc and 90.8 million ounces of silver."

"Silver Bull's stock is already in an established uptrend and looks set to do very well indeed during silver's expected major bull market." -- Clive Maund

Within that resource the company noted that there is a "measured and indicated 'high grade zinc zone' within the Lerchs-Grossman (LG) Optimized Pit of 10.03 million tonnes with an average grade of 11% zinc at a 6% cutoff, giving 2.426 billion pounds of zinc, and a measured and indicated 'high grade silver zone' of 19 million tonnes with an average grade of 102.5g/t silver at a 50g/t cutoff giving 62.6 million ounces of silver."

Now the company believes that it is on to something much bigger.

Tim Barry, CEO of Silver Bull, noted that "the new sulphide zone is proving to be very productive for high grade sulphide mineralization." The just-released drill asssays targeted the "second of three steeply dipping, discreet structures we have identified in the sulphide zone. Drilling from the first structure announced in the previous news releases of holes T17001 to T17014 were dominated by high grade silver-copper sulphide mineralization grading up 1,300g/t silver and 6% copper."

"A second structure defined by holes T17010 and T17018 to T17022 is dominated by extremely high zinc sulphide mineralization, grading up to 48% zinc and suggests a metal zonation in the mineralization," Barry added.

Silver Bull has opened up silver workings to the west. Barry explained, "A recent Channel sampling program clearly shows the continuation of high grade mineralization towards the west. Our underground geological mapping of this area shows a number of high angle structures up to 2 meters wide containing sulphide mineralization grading up to 1,300 grams per ton silver, 42% zinc, 18% lead, and 13% copper that appear to feed into the overlying oxide zone. This will be the next target of our drill program in this area."

Silver Bull noted that it plans to deploy its Termite drill rig to "test the grade, thickness, and continuity of the sulphide mineralization identified by the channel sampling program."

That means the company will to continue to release drill results over the next weeks and months.

A number of industry observers have Silver Bull on their radar.

Technical analyst Clive Maund wrote on March 2 that Silver Bull Resources is "now at an excellent entry point. Coeur Mines finished selling its holdings in the stock a while back and the stock has been kept in check by some selling of warrants. However, the company announced a significant discovery last month."

On March 5, Maund wrote, "We have been accumulating Silver Bull this year on minor weakness because this is a stock that is already in an established uptrend and looks set to do very well indeed during silver's expected major bull market." He noted, "Silver Bull's latest 6-month chart looks very positive indeed, with the gentle reaction that has been going on for about 7 weeks now being a normal correction to the sharp run-up at the start of the year." Maund concluded that "Silver Bull is a strong buy here and holders should stay long."

Ron Struthers wrote in Struthers Resource Stock Report on Feb. 21, "Silver Bull came out with more strong drill results this morning. I believe the only reason the stock is so cheap is the recent weakness in the mining market and there were some warrants being exercised. There are still about 27 million warrants but most of these are from the 8 cent financing and do not expire until July 2019 so will not be any pressure on the stock price this year."

"The channel samples they have done in areas yet to be drilled are spectacular, mostly running 15% to 30% zinc with 100s of grams silver and some decent copper and lead grades too," Struthers stated.

Struthers added, "I would be accumulating this stock before it wakes up in the investment community. I would bet major mining companies already have an eye on this as these high grade sulphide zones keep getting bigger. Silver Bull can drill very inexpensively using their underground termite drill, probably around one-third the cost as typical above ground drilling with a contractor."

"Sooner or later the Bull is going to come back to the SilverBull stock price. The chart is a thing of beauty. A nice uptrend channel is in place and currently it is just above the 20 cents support area. An excellent time and price to buy," Struthers concluded.

Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold wrote in November, "Channel sample results released in late August showed silver as high as 1.13 kg per ton, 22% zinc, 3.26% lead and 12.8% copper. The in the ground value of that rock is $2284 and economic under any conditions. But channel samples don't trump drill core. A month ago Silver Bull began to release the numbers from the first underground drill program for this year showing 294 g/t silver and 0.96% copper over 25.5 meters. That's a still respectable $226 per ton in the ground."

Want to read more Gold Report articles like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent articles and interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Streetwise Interviews page.

Disclosure:

1) Patrice Fusillo compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She or members of her household own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Silver Bull Resources. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Silver Bull Resources.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Silver Bull Resources, a company mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosures:

Ron Struthers, Struthers Resource Stock Report

I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Silver Bull Resources and Garibaldi Resources. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company currently has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Silver Bull Resources.

Struther's Resource Stock Report Disclaimer:

All forecasts and recommendations are based on opinion. Markets change direction with consensus beliefs, which may change at any time and without notice. The author/publisher of this publication has taken every precaution to provide the most accurate information possible. The information & data were obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but because the information & data source are beyond the author's control, no representation or guarantee is made that it is complete or accurate. The reader accepts information on the condition that errors or omissions shall not be made the basis for any claim, demand or cause for action. Because of the ever-changing nature of information & statistics the author/publisher strongly encourages the reader to communicate directly with the company and/or with their personal investment adviser to obtain up to date information. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Any statements non-factual in nature constitute only current opinions, which are subject to change. The author/publisher may or may not have a position in the securities and/or options relating thereto, & may make purchases and/or sales of these securities relating thereto from time to time in the open market or otherwise. Neither the information, nor opinions expressed, shall be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any stock, futures or options contract mentioned herein. The author/publisher of this letter is not a qualified financial adviser & is not acting as such in this publication.

321 Gold Disclosure:

Silver Bull is an advertiser on 321 Gold.

CliveMaund.com Disclosure:

The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr. Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stockmarket analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction. Mr. Maund does not own shares of Silver Bull Resources.
A Matata volunteer firefighter is one of 42 female recruits who are being recognised today as part of International Womens Day.

Kiahli Ibbetson, 19, is part of the second lot of recruits in Wing 315, which has a total of 80 new recruits, the largest number of female recruits ever in a single wing.

The wing begins at the Royal New Zealand Police College on Monday.

Fittingly, Dame Jenny Shipley is the Wing Patron and she will be supporting recruits through their training. Dame Jenny was the first female Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Kiahli feels honoured to have the opportunity to learn from Dame Shipley.

She has been instrumental in encouraging women into areas traditionally held by men.

I will certainly be encouraged to perform to the best of my ability  I dont want to fail in front of a former Prime Minister.

Kiahli is excited and nervous about starting at the college. She has wanted to join New Zealand police for a long time, and started the process when she was just 17.

As a volunteer Fire Fighter in Matata, she has worked closely with police in her community and seen first-hand what a rewarding and challenging job it is.

She says joining the Matata Volunteer Fire Service, which is also a first responder brigade, has been one of the most worthwhile experiences of her life.

Joining police and getting paid to do this valuable work in the community was an obvious choice.

I know being a police officer wont always be the easiest of jobs, but I know Ill feel a sense of satisfaction at the end of the day knowing that Ive helped keep my community safe, she says.

New Zealand police has set an ambitious target of having 50 per cent female recruits by 2021.

In December 2017 NZ police held its first Womens Recruitment Day.

Wing 315, which is over 50 per cent female, demonstrates we are making significant progress towards achieving this target, says Deputy Chief Executive: People, Kaye Ryan.

Police are looking to recruit people who are compassionate and empathetic, and who want to make a positive difference in their community.

Gender and ethnic diversity are an important priority for NZ police, and we are committed to improving our numbers of women so we can better represent the communities we serve.
Air New Zealand will increase capacity into and out of Tauranga by adding a new weekday Wellington return flight and operating the larger ATR aircraft on early morning flights to Auckland.

The national carriers extra flight to the capital will start this April, aiming to meet demand during peak business times.

The extra flight means there will now be two peak morning flights departing Tauranga before 7.30am.

The schedule also sees existing morning flights to Auckland retimed with two peak morning weekday flights for the business community. Both early morning flights will be operated by the airlines68-seat ATR aircraft.

Some other evening services into Tauranga from Auckland will also be operated by the larger ATR aircraft.

The changes reflect capacity growth on Tauranga services of more than 20 per cent over the winter months compared to the same period last year. The finalised schedule sees a total of 87 return flights from Tauranga to the two cities per week.

Kristin Dunne.

Tourism Bay of Plenty Chief Executive Officer Kristin Dunne says she is delighted with the extra capacity, with the airport acting as an important gateway for visitors to Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty.

We have been in discussions with Air New Zealand for quite some time to help this become a reality and meet the needs of a growing economy.

This is a show of faith from Air New Zealand in recognising the exponential growth this region has experienced  one that is forecast to continue.

Tauranga Airport manager Ray Dumble says greater numbers help to enhance operational efficiency.

He adds that Tauranga is one of the fastest-growing airports in New Zealand in terms of arrivals and departures, and that more connectivity will be great for the city.

With the constant migration of families and businesses from the likes of Auckland to here, we are seeing increased demand for flights. This applies especially during peak business times.

I applaud Air New Zealand for addressing this issue by adding more flights and creating a user-friendly schedule - and I have no doubt our business community does too.

This will only further enhance Taurangas reputation as a leading airport and destination.

Air New Zealand Regional Affairs Manager Ian Collier says its terrific to see continued strong demand for services into and out of Tauranga.

We are pleased we have been able to achieve this additional capacity at peak business times on both our Tauranga-Wellington and Tauranga-Auckland routes.

This is a result of collaboration between the local chamber, airport, council and Bay of Plenty Tourism, and will be of great benefit to the wider community.

The new schedule will be publsihed progressively.
Police officers, firefighters and rescue services  to some theyre just everyday people doing a job.

But to others theyre the first point of call in emergencies, rescues and in times of danger; the men and woman sacrificing time away from their own loved ones to ensure the safety of everyone elses.

Now, residents from the Bay of Plenty will get the chance to walk in their shoes for a day, during an array of recruitment and open days this weekend.

Kicking it off is the Tauranga Fire Brigade recruitment day, held at Chapel Street Shopping Centre, on Saturday, March 10.

Station officer Jeff Francis says the day is a great chance for those interested in a career in the industry to get up close with volunteers.

Being a fire fighter is not a nine-to-five commitment, says Jeff. When you are on call, you have to be ready to respond at the drop of a hat and tackle whatever challenge you may be about to face.

Its not just about putting out fires - calls can be to any number of incidents, from medical emergencies and flooding to motor vehicle accidents and chemical spills.

Volunteer fire fighters from Tauranga will be at the shopping centre from 9am-12pm on Saturday.

Members of the public will have the chance to talk to fire fighters about what they do, find out about the equipment they use, try it out and see if they have what it takes to volunteer.

Following this, members of public will also get to go behind the scenes at Tauranga Police Station during their public open day on Sunday, March 11, from 10am-12pm.

The day is part of a nationwide opening of police stations.

Bay of Plenty District Commander, Superintendent Andy McGregor, says it will enable police to connect with local communities and will be a good chance for people to get a glimpse of a potential career path.

There will be a number of activities on display during the day to give a real insight into the job we do, says Superintendent McGregor, including displays from the Armed Offenders squad, police dog teams and staff from specialist teams including road policing, youth and CIB.

Well also have staff on hand at both events who can talk to and provide advice and information to anyone considering policing as a career.

The event is often popular in the region and has been attended by thousands in previous years.

Coinciding with this is the Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter 2018 open day, from 10am-2pm, at Tauranga Hospital.

Spokesperson Nadine Rogers says: We host this event at our hangar every year. The community are able to come and see inside the hangar and get the chance to see the helicopter and meet the crew.

The day involves demos, competitions and a barbecue and Nadine says its often quite popular.

Its an opportunity for us to educate the public on what we do and its also a chance to give back to the community. Without them, the rescue helicopter wouldnt be there.

We rely heavily on community funding both from business and individual funding.

Nadine adds while they ask for a donation, it is a free event.

Concluding the event is a toy run, which is part of the Ulysses Club annual charity ride.

Its in aid of the Trustpower TECT rescue helicopter and St John Ambulance, says co-ordinator Marius Swanfield.

Our ride begins in Papamoa Plaza, departing at 11am, and then stopping at the ASB Park roundabout, through Maungatapu, past Welcome Bay, Barkes Corner and down Cameron Road.

Anyone with a motorbike can come along. Basically we ask all riders to buy a toy run badge for $10, which also gives them a lucky draw ticket for some donated prizes.

All the riders bring little toys and we hand out toys to the children at the hospital after the ride.
EU Challenges Yacht VAT Avoidance In Three States

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

08 March 2018

The European Commission has sent letters of formal notice to Cyprus, Greece, and Malta for not levying the correct amount of value-added tax (VAT) on yachts.

Specifically, the infringement procedures launched on March 8 concern:

First, the reduced VAT base for the lease of yachts offered via a general VAT scheme in Cyprus, Greece, and Malta. The Commission said while current EU VAT rules allow member states to not tax the supply of a service where the effective use and enjoyment of the product is outside the EU, they do not allow for a general flat-rate reduction without proof of the place of actual use. Malta, Cyprus, and Greece have established guidelines according to which the larger the boat is, the less the lease is estimated to take place in EU waters, a rule which greatly reduces the applicable VAT rate.

Second, the Commission is challenging the incorrect taxation in Cyprus and Malta of purchases of yachts by means of what is known as "lease-purchase." The Commission said the Cypriot and Maltese laws currently classify the leasing of a yacht as a supply of a service rather than a good. This results in VAT only being levied at the standard rate on a minor amount of the real cost price of the craft once the yacht has finally been bought, the rest being taxed as the supply of a service and at a greatly reduced rate.

This VAT issue can generate major distortions of competition and featured heavily in the coverage of last year's "Paradise Papers" leaks, the Commission said, explaining: "The Paradise Papers revealed widespread VAT evasion in the yacht sector, facilitated by national rules which do not comply with EU law. As well as the infringement procedures launched today by the Commission, the European Parliament has recently indicated that its new committee to follow up on the Paradise Papers would also look at this issue."

Pierre Moscovici, Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation, and Customs Union, said: "In order to achieve fair taxation we need to take action wherever necessary to combat VAT evasion. We cannot allow this type of favorable tax treatment granted to private boats, which also distorts competition in the maritime sector. Such practices violate EU law and must come to an end."

The three states have two months to respond to the arguments put forward by the Commission. If they do not act within those two months, the Commission may send a reasoned opinion to their authorities, after which it could refer the states to the European Court of Justice.
EU 'Ready To React' To US Tariffs

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

08 March 2018

The EU hopes to convince the US that introducing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports is "not the right move," but is ready to act should any such measures be implemented.

On March 1, Donald Trump said that the US will "be instituting tariffs" of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminium imports. The proposed action follows investigations between April 2017 and January 2018 by the US Department of Commerce. These investigations concluded that steel and aluminium imports threatened US national security and recommended the imposition of trade restrictions.

The EU's College of Commissioners met on March 7 to discuss the EU's response. Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said afterwards that as no decision has yet been made by the US regarding Trump's proposals, no formal action has been taken by the EU.

Malmstrom said that the Commissioners hope that as the EU is a US security partner it will be excluded. The EU also hopes "to convince the US administration that this is the right move."

The Commission has made clear that it "stands ready to react proportionately and fully in line with the World Trade Organization rules in case the US measures are formalized and affect [the] EU's economic interests."

Malmstrom warned that any such tariffs would "put thousands of European jobs in jeopardy" and would have to be "met by [a] firm and proportionate response."

According to Malmstrom, overcapacity is the root cause of problems in the sector, driven by "the fact that a lot of steel and aluminium production takes place under massive state subsidies, and under non-market conditions." She stressed that the only way to address these issues is "by cooperation, getting to the source of the problem, and working together."

"What is clear is that turning inward is not the answer. Protectionism cannot be the answer, it never is."
IRS Urged To Extend This Year's S Corp Election Deadline

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

08 March 2018

The National Society of Accountants in the US has asked Internal Revenue Service Acting Commissioner David Kautter to extend the deadline for corporations to elect to be treated as an S corporation.

In a letter sent to Kautter on March 8, the NSA requested a six-month extension for the current calendar year.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in December of 2017 made substantial changes to the tax law as it relates to pass-through entities, including S corporations, with the introduction of a new Section 199A of the Internal Revenue Code on which guidance has yet to be released. This Section provides that S corporations will generally be entitled to a deduction for each taxable year equal to the sum of:

The lesser of (a) the taxpayer's "combined qualified business income amount;" or (b) 20 percent of the excess of the taxpayer's taxable income for the taxable year over any net capital gain plus the aggregate amount of qualified cooperative dividends; plus

The lesser of (a) 20 percent of the aggregate amount of the qualified cooperative dividends of the taxpayer for the taxable year; or (b) the taxpayer's taxable income (reduced by the net capital gain).

"Clearly, Section 199A is not only complex and confusing, but the effective tax rate can vary substantially depending on the definition of various terms [used] therein," said the NSA. "None of the terms used in Section 199A have been defined in any guidance issued by the IRS since the enactment of the provision. Nevertheless, NSA members as well as tax professionals across the country are being asked by clients to make our own interpretations of Section 199A, even as IRS and Treasury Department personnel have made numerous speeches acknowledging that the scope of this Section could change markedly depending on how official pronouncements choose to define some of the terms mentioned above."

The IRS has listed Section 199A as a priority in its Priority Guidance Plan, updated on February 7. However, the NSA pointed out that while priority guidance is expected by June 30, any entity that wishes to be treated as a S corporation for tax purposes for this calendar year must do so by March 15, even in the absence of such guidance.

"It strikes us that making an election in March when the guidance on which such election may be based will be issued in June is unfair to taxpayers, tax professionals, and the tax system itself," said the NSA. "Assuming the regulations under Section 199A are in fact issued by June 30, any entity considering making a S election should be given a six-month extension, until September 15, 2018, to do so. This extension would afford time for all affected parties, as well as their tax adviser, to read and understand any such regulations and how they may impact their tax liabilities.
It was rumored that Google would release its developer preview of Android P next week, but the initial alpha build arrived yesterday. Its aimed squarely at devs, allowing them to see what changes have been implemented in the next mobile OS, so there isnt a lot of information on what everyday users can expect. But the preview has revealed some interesting details.

As reported last month, Android Pstill no confirmation that it will be called Pistachio Ice Creamfeatures built-in support for handsets with iPhone X-style notches. These have appeared in several phones, including the Zenfone 5, Noa N10, and LGs G7 (or whatever it will end up being called). The preview allows developers to see how their apps will work with the cutouts.

One feature likely to appeal to the billions of messaging app users is the revamped notifications. These can now include multiple lines from conversations, and users will be able to select images, stickers, and Googles smart replies from within the notification itself. You might also notice that the settings panel and notifications drawer now have rounded corners, though this could change in the final release.

Another previously reported feature has also been confirmed: Android P will stop malicious apps from accessing a phones camera and microphone. Android P restricts access to mic, camera, and all SensorManager sensors from apps that are idle, writes Google.

Other changes include support for HDR VP9 video and HEIF, a multi-camera API that allows developers to access data from more than one camera at once, and support for WiFi RTT (round-trip time), which improves the accuracy of indoor tracking by measuring the distance between Wi-Fi access points without connecting to them.

Power-efficiency tools like Doze, App Standby and Background Limits are being upgraded in Android P. There are also improvements to security, privacy, ART performance, and Kotlin optimizations. The Autofill function is getting a boost, which should make using password managers easier, and the OS will warn users when they install an app that targets a platform earlier than Android 4.2.

You can download and flash the developer preview of Android P if you have a Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, or Pixel 2 XLGoogle has confirmed that the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and Pixel C tablet wont be getting Android P when its released. The company warns that this initial release is for developers only and not intended for daily or consumer use. Well learn more about Android P at Google I/O in May.
French company Qarnot has shown off a new device that can simultaneously mine cryptocurrency and keep your home warm. As most know, cryptomining requires a lot of processing power and therefore can generate a lot heat. Rather than letting it go to waste, the QC1 computing heater has an efficient solution.

Qarnot has been building products that fuse multi-CPU high-performance computing servers with electrical heaters since 2010. These are sold to real estate companies, local authorities, building owners, etc., who are looking to place heaters in their properties. Companies then rent these servers for data crunching purposes, such as 3D rendering and VFX for film studios.

With the QC1, Qarnot is generating heat from the GPUs instead of the CPU and selling directly to the consumer. It features two AMD graphics cardsSapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX580s with 8GB of VRAMdesigned to mine at 60 MH/s, and has no fans or hard drive, making it noiseless.

The QC1 takes only 10 minutes to set up, according to Qarnot. Just plug in an ethernet cable, add your Ethereum wallet address, and wait for the digital currency to start rolling in. You can monitor progress and boost the heating with the associated app. Qarnot says that at current Ethereum prices, users can expect to mine around $120 per month, and it doesnt take any of the coins. The QC1 can be accessed to mine other cryptos, if you wish.

While it might save on heating bills, the QC1 crypto heater's price will likely put some people off. It costs $3600 and is available for order now.
On the outside, Apple tries very hard to maintain a clean public image. After performing an annual internal audit on working conditions of employees and supplier activities, serious violations of policies have been discovered. Issues range from falsifying working hours to harmful environmental practices.

This marks the 12th year that Apple has performed supplier audits to ensure that its reputation remains intact. Out of the 756 suppliers spanning 30 different countries, 197 suppliers were audited for the first time. The number of under-performing suppliers dropped to just 1 percent in 2017, significantly reduced from 14 percent in 2014. Exceptional or high performers account for 59 percent, up from 47 percent in 2016.

Out of all the suppliers subject to audit, 44 "core violations" of policy were found. This is twice as many found compared to last year. A major issue discovered in three different cases was employees being forced to give up large portions of their pay to keep their jobs. Collectively, workers in the Philippines gave up over $1 million in order to maintain their jobs at a contractor facility. Apple has since ordered the money be paid back to employees.

Working hours have traditionally been a concern for contract workers. Apple mandates that all employees under contract must not work more than 60 hours in any work week. This past year, compliance on working hours fell from 98 percent in 2016 down to 94 percent. There were 38 instances where hours were forged to try and hide policy violations.

COO Jeff Williams states, "Were committed to raising the bar every year across our supply chain." Upon finding violations of policy, the chief executive of a supplier is directly notified and is given a probation notice. Apple requires that corrections be made or it will consider cutting ties with non-compliant contractors.

Last year, ten mineral and chemical refiners were dropped from Apple's supply chain after refusing to allow an audit to take place. An additional six businesses opted to cut ties with Apple of their own will before being asked to participate.
On Sunday, a drill was performed as part of the commemoration and the flag was raised at half-mast as a sign of national mourning. | Read More
National Australia Bank has dumped Flight Centre's corporate bookings division as its travel provider after discovering the company had been overcharging it to process bookings.

NAB tore up a contract worth about $30 million a year in gross bookings in late 2017 after finding what it believed were abnormalities in its billings from corporate bookings business, FCM Travel Solutions, according to several well-placed sources.

Flight Centre co-founder and chief executive Graham Turner said the company had a 'commercial disagreement with NAB which was quickly and fully resolved last year'. Credit:AAP

It is understood that fees NAB incurred were in excess of what it felt was agreed under the contract between the big four bank and FCM.

The discovery prompted fury within the bank, which is understood to have pored over several years of bookings made through FCM to assess how much it was overcharged and look for any other discrepancies.
Office landlords are facing a double-edged sword.

While the vacancy rate maybe at record lows, which is great for recurring income inflow, it also inhibits them in capturing the wave of high rents as most rents were signed years ago.

In the recent reporting season, all office landlords used the words, ''record low vacancy, best conditions in year'', one even said ''never had it so good'' and ''we have a healthy long weighted average lease expiry''.

Confidence in commercial property reached a new high in the first quarter, according to NAB's survey. Credit:Louie Douvis

They are all correct, as there is nothing more heart warming than knowing your office tower is fully let, or close to it and tenants are still banging down the doors. Naturally, any vacant space will always be a drag on income inflow so landlords will look to fill the space as soon as possible.
Researchers at RMIT University have developed the worlds first working rechargeable proton battery, which they say will be smaller and cheaper to produce than lithium-ion batteries.

Carbon, which is the primary resource used in our proton battery, is abundant and cheap compared to both metal hydrogen-storage alloys and the lithium needed for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, lead researcher Professor John Andrews told Fairfax Media. It should be reasonably cheap as opposed to lithium-ion, which is scarce.

The proton battery is world-first development.

He said it would also be more environmentally friendly in its production.

Our latest advance is a crucial step towards cheap, sustainable proton batteries that can help meet our future energy needs without further damaging our already fragile environment, Professor Andrews said.
Megan Monte and Josephine Skinner, two 30-something curators, met five years ago in Sydney suburbia. It was at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, where Monte was the curator of an exhibition called The Social and Skinner was one of the artists with a video installation.

Monte, as a curator who had grown up in Campbelltown, knew the breadth and depth of artistic talent in the western suburbs of Sydney. Bristol-born Skinner was living in Bondi and working as a curator at Stills Gallery, an eastern suburbs institution which for 26 years as a commercial gallery focused on selling Australian photomedia, until it closed last July.

Megan Monte and Josephine Skinner standing in front of Amber Koroluk-Stephenson's Somewhere in the Middle, at new Paddington gallery Cement Fondu. Credit:Nick Moir

Now the very place they met, suburban Sydney, will be the focus of a new exhibition, Suburbia, in the 270 square metre space where Skinner worked, that was Stills. It will open this Saturday as Cement Fondu, a new exhibition and live arts space. If Paddington wouldn't come to Parramatta, they decided to bring Parramatta to Paddington; or at least the works of four artists from Parramatta Artist Studios, as well as a host of artists who focus on suburban themes, from the kitsch to the quirky.

The curatorial duo had the idea of "looking beyond our own backyard" in bringing the artworks of 15 artists together.
Essays

Feel Free

Zadie Smith

Hamish Hamilton, $35 In 1974, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published an essay on the subject of consciousness, in which he posed a famous question: what it is like to be a bat? Near the end of Zadie Smith's Feel Free, there is an essay in which she ponders a related and rather more pressing question: what is it like to be Justin Bieber? Zadie Smith's intelligence shines in her inquisitive essays. Credit:New York Times What would it be like, she wonders, to be the focus of so much hysterical adulation? What would it be like to have achieved a level of celebrity that makes the kinds of ordinary human interactions we take for granted all but impossible, and to have done so at such a young and vulnerable age, when historical precedent (cf. Michael Jackson) suggests that this is not exactly conducive to a person's psychological wellbeing? It is an indication of Smith's approach to essay writing that she not only spins her Bieber-inspired thought experiment into a substantial reflection on the nature of selfhood and the constitutive problem of our social being, but that she does so with reference to the work of the early 20th-century philosopher and mystic Martin Buber  which is to say, her argument turns on a segue that's cuter than a warehouse full of Hello Kitty stationery.

Feel Free, by Zadie Smith. The lure-you-with-the-Bieb, slap-you-with-the-Bube technique is very much in evidence in Feel Free. Smith's essays often use playful pop-culture references and self-deprecating humour to smooth the path for their serious concerns. The upside of this is that her writing is always lively and accessible, even at its most cerebral; the downside is that some of her conceits can come across as a little strained. Future historians seeking to understand the weird intellectual decadence that presaged the collapse of civilisation in the middle decades of the 21st century may well turn with interest to the essay in which Smith cites Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard's treatise on the savage irrationality of religious faith, to explain her sudden realisation in her early 30s that she quite likes the music of Joni Mitchell. Feel Free is Smith's second volume of non-fiction and it roams more widely than its predecessor, Changing My Mind. The new collection extends her range to art criticism, magazine features (there is an overlong soft-profile of comedy duo Key and Peele), and thinkpieces on topical subjects such as Brexit and urban development. The glue that binds the volume, and the thing that grants the essays their charm, is her affable persona. Among other things, Feel Free provides regular glimpses of what it is like to be Zadie Smith. You check your diary: one-on-one lunch with Jay-Z. You go to dinner, find that you are seated opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov. You are relaxing at your in-laws' house when you get a phone call from an editor at Harper's offering you a regular column. That sort of thing.
History

Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly became Prime Minister

Nicholas Shakespeare

Harvill Secker, $29.99 History looks inevitable afterwards, but at the time it's often messy and uncertain. The year 1940 with the fall of France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain is a dramatic case in point. Now the image of that time is Churchill with cigar and V for Victory sign. (Just think about the Oscar-winning film Darkest Hour). But there was nothing inevitable about it: just as Britain's decision to fight and not surrender after the fall of France was never foregone. Six Minutes in May, by Nicholas Shakespeare. John Lukacs's Five Days in London, a masterfully condensed study, concentrates on the time immediately after Churchill took over from Neville Chamberlain. It's a truism to say that World War II was won by Russian dead and American money. But, says Lukacs, "in May 1940 Churchill was the one who did not lose it". This was "the hinge of fate" (Churchill's phrase), when Europe's destiny was decided. Nicholas Shakespeare's much longer study looks at the period to May 10, 1940, when Churchill became Prime Minister. Its title refers to the six minutes for the House of Commons to deliver what amounted to a vote of no-confidence in Chamberlain on May 7. In this sense Shakespeare's study works as a prequel to Lukacs' book.

Shakespeare, whose great uncle was a Conservative MP at the time, delves deeply into the period, even unearthing new material. The first half of the book focuses largely on Britain's spectacularly botched Norway campaign in early 1940. Although Churchill was highly significant in the campaign, and should have worn the blame for the defeat, it was Chamberlain who copped the flak. That six-minute vote was on the conduct of the Norway campaign and, therefore, the competence of the prime minister. While Chamberlain won, more than 40 Conservative MPs crossed the floor and from that moment everything was up in the air. Although there is too much detail about Norway, and too many cameos of those involved, sometimes cluttering rather than clarifying, Shakespeare's book really takes off when examining the three days to May 10. It's dramatically captured: the speeches in a crowded parliament condemning Chamberlain, the hand-wringing by rebel Conservative MPs, the backroom manoeuvres and the sheer tension of the times, for it must be remembered that bombing and invasion were seen as imminent. Indeed, on the day Churchill was appointed, Germany launched its blitzkrieg on the low countries that, in a matter of weeks, led to the collapse of France. But, in the weeks leading to the vote, Churchill was far from everybody's favourite. He had form (Gallipoli and then Norway), was seen as rash, labelled a half-breed by the aristocracy (his mother was American), and a man with no judgment: the wrong man to lead the country through perilous times. Lord Halifax was the favourite, but didn't want the job. He was not a war leader, may have sued for peace and in late May (with Churchill's knowledge) was pursuing peace options through the Italian ambassador. It's intriguing to speculate how far he would have gone; the first thing the Germans would have demanded was the surrender of the Royal Navy.
Police are investigating an alleged assault of television personality and business identity Mark Bouris outside high-profile Sydney restaurant The Grounds of Alexandria on Wednesday morning.

It is understood Mr Bouris has met his lawyers and is co-operating with police who were called to the venue following reports that Mr Bouris was att

acked by an unknown man.

A statement from Mr Bouris' office on Thursday afternoon said: "While Mark Bouris was on a business telephone call during a break in filming his new TV series on Wednesday morning he was the victim of an assault. He suffered only minor injury."
With actress Rooney Mara in the starring role as Magdalene, and Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus Christ, Davis made the focus of the movie the spirituality within.

"I wanted to make sure the film was very human and relatable and in some ways, what we're saying is, divinity is within us, we have to go inside to find God, not up to a temple or a church. It's in us," he said.

Davis said it felt like the right time to tell Magdalene's story, a time when he says the "patriarchy is shivering".

"When we were making it all these things started to unravel, it was weird. Like Pope Francis acknowledged Mary, created a feast day in her name, and then Harvey's whole thing played out and the #MeToo campaign and it did feel a little bit like divine intervention," he said.

"In some ways I've got to be like Mary and have faith and not waiver. But I do believe this film will have a long life and be appreciated for a long time."
Victorias state-owned forestry corporation has been charged with illegal logging of a rainforest in East Gippsland after a near two-year investigation.

The Andrews governments Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning is pursuing VicForests over alleged destruction of a protected section of native forest near Cann River in the states far east.

VicForests will defend the charges in court next month.

VicForests is alleged to have illegally logged within a rainforest buffer zone.

If found guilty of breaching the Sustainable Forests Act it will face financial penalties of up to $38,000.
VAMFF's bridal parade

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For many of us, the bottom line is that the "tampon tax" is fundamentally discriminatory. Sanitary protection is essential for women and making it more expensive than it needs to be penalises women for menstruating.

"Only a bunch of blokes sitting around a table would come to the conclusion that sanitary pads are anything other than an essential good."

"Australia levies GST on tampons but we don't apply it to Viagra, she said during a speech at the National Press Club ahead of International Womens Day.

I wholeheartedly support the end of the tampon tax  but there is another way to balance the financial scales back in our favour. We could opt out of tampons altogether. Its not just the $25 million Australian women are handing over in GST. According to market research firm IBISWorld, the sanitary protection sector in Australia is worth a whopping $2.4 billion.

How do we opt out? It's simple: menstrual cups!

Menstrual cups are bell shaped silicone receptacles that sit inside the vagina and collect menstrual blood. Like vaginas, they come in different shapes and sizes. They are easy to use, although like tampons; take a bit of getting used to at first.

Now, obviously a menstrual cup will require a small financial investment. There are several brands to choose from, most cost in the region of $50. But over the course of ten years, that will save you around $550.

There are other reasons to get on board the menstrual cup wave. They are more environmentally friendly than tampons (the average woman uses 10,000-12,000 disposable menstrual products in their lifetime  and thats not even factoring in the plastic wrapping). And they are better for our vaginas. Tampons can cause vaginal dryness because they absorb natural moisture as well as menstrual fluid. Menstrual cups, on the other hand, do not interfere with the vaginal environment.
Australian National University will now offer 26 weeks of parental leave to new parents, regardless of whether they are the birth parent or if they are the primary carer.

The move was announced on Thursday to coincide with International Women's Day and means that if a couple were both employees at the university they would be entitled to 52 weeks of leave between them.

ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt says staff were elated to hear about the new parental leave policy. Credit:Jay Cronan

Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt said the announcement, while a surprise to staff today, had been two years in the making. Professor Schmidt said there would be "no little tricky bits" with the policy, but that there would be a time limit after the birth of a child for parents to use the leave.

"Care-giving is not just a female responsibility, so providing parents 26 weeks of paid parental leave, no matter what the circumstances," was important to the university Professor Schmidt said, noting that the policy acknowledged diversity in family structures.
The results were hardly surprising, said Mrs Tonacia, who herself spent 10 years as an unsworn employee in the AFP and is now the chief executive of Picking Up the Peaces. "I have mixed feelings about the report," she said. "There is nothing in there that surprises me. I've seen the very best and the very worst of people in terms of how mental health is viewed in the AFP." Picking Up the Peaces is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to raise awareness and support for those struggling with PTSD. The 200 page report was prepared by the Phoenix Australia Centre for Post-traumatic Mental Health, described by Mrs Tonacia as a "world-leading" team of researchers.

The review found that, while there might be an appropriate level of mental health support for staff, there was little coordination between the different areas and "little understanding of their respective roles and responsibilities". "With respect to services provided by the AFP, there was general dissatisfaction with the employee assistance provider (EAP) and staff felt that the Psychological Support Services was not readily available to staff," the report read. "The rehabilitation and compensation process for injured workers was seen as disjointed and unsupportive, adding to distress." Any meaningful attempts to address this dysfunction and the stigma associated with mental health support within the federal police needed to start at the top, Mrs Tonacia said. "There's a really great quote about leadership that goes, 'It matters what leaders do, or don't do. The culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is willing to tolerate'.

"I have mixed feelings in terms of the AFP having the ability to act on that. The problem they are going to face is that the culture [at the moment] is strong. "[But]I would like to see the AFP take a very strong stand." In addition to concerns around mental health support, the Phoenix study also identified a number of other cultural issues within the AFP. These included a reluctance among some officers to embrace policies aimed at promoting women, and worries that the organisation would not embrace LGBTI staff. "Stop the gender panic," one employee told the researchers.

"LGBTI members feel that it is not safe to come out at work, which is a source of stress that is not seen to be taken seriously by the organisation," researchers also noted. The AFP's Chief Medical Officer Dr Katrina Sanders was also unsurprised by the report's findings. "I think if we're honest with ourselves, we knew that we had some work to do in this area and that's why we got Phoenix on board," she said in February. "I think with the support services, and there are a number of them, and they've very good, but we really needed advice on a strategy on how to support the AFP for decades to come, rather than what we have now. "So, absolutely there is a lot of work to be done."
Fewer than three per cent of children in Canberra are indigenous but they make up about a quarter of kids in the child protection system.

That's the alarming picture painted by the latest report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as Canberra once again records the nation's second highest rate of indigenous children in state care.

Winnunga Nimmityjah chief executive Julie Tongs at Boomanulla Oval. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos

Chief executive of Canberra Winnunga Aboriginal Health Service Julie Tongs said the crisis was now "out of control", a year after 2016 figures sparked community outrage and a government review.

"[It feels like] we've got more kids in out of home care now than what we did during the Stolen Generation," Ms Tongs said.
Some interesting solutions to gender signage for toilets (C8) have been sighted. A distinctive Queensland take on the matter  toilet doors with signs Mangoes and No Mangoes were observed by both Marcia Horvai of Pennant Hills and Maurice Collins of Wollongbar. Llewellyn Dickeson of Culburra Beach was in a restaurant in Puno, Peru that had a novel solution to gender neutral toilets. "There were three doors, one for Women, one for Men and in between them one labelled Liberal with the graphic of a llama instead of the usual female/male figure."

"A sign on the bar of my local bowling club tells me a pie is $3, but I'm going to suggest they charge an extra 14 , just for the fun of it," writes George Manojlovic of Mangerton. "Then perhaps they can discount the 14 to any perceptive person whose penny drops."

The amusement our wonderful hospital workers can get out of their medical knowledge even after long, exhausting shifts is a joy to behold. Following the DNR ambulance sightings (C8) Tess Osborne of West Pymble was stuck in traffic on her way home from a shift at the hospital, and "noticed the number plates of the cars around her: HPU, BNO and NFR, which in hospital speak are Has Passed Urine, Bowels Not Open and Not For Resuscitation." Tess says she saw them in that order too.

Andrew Constance's likening of the Central Station redevelopment to "open heart surgery" has caused Stephanie Edwards of Roseville some concern. "Has he now been appointed Minister for Transplantation?"

There is much mirth to be found in printing industry terminology (C8), however Richard Stewart of Pearl Beach reminds us that all trades have their fun traditions, such as "the boss instructing the apprentice: get me the left handed Phillips screwdriver from the tool box, and 6 four inch sky hooks."
While passengers were mostly calm, one passenger deep in the queue exclaimed: "this is diabolical". Airport staff reopened screening just before 7am, but delays were expected to last a while. Credit:Nick Moir By 8am the backlog of waiting passengers was returning to normal at both the international and domestic terminals and new arrivals were being processed, Sydney Airport spokeswoman Cait Tynan said. "Everyone has been fantastic, she said. We thank them for their patience and understanding." Justin Ahern, 42, arrived at the airport at 6.30am for a 9am Perth flight to "beat the Sydney traffic", and did not seem bothered by the delays.

"It's inconvenient but it's not too bad, he said. Flights seem to be leaving almost on time. Its not the end of the world." Thousands of passengers were stuck in the check-in section of the domestic terminal after the technical issue. Credit:Nick Moir Rein Turley was at the domestic terminal for a flight to Adelaide, and she said despite the delays people seemed to be "in good spirits". "I think the one person really smiling is the terminal cafe owner," she said.

Speaking about 6.45am, Ms Turley said she estimated more than 2000 people were waiting in the departures hall. "The IT issue has been fixed and they have started letting people on the earliest flights through." Jennifer Olding, 29, arrived at the international terminal at 4am for a flight to London via Dubai. She said the gates between the departure hall and border security were closed. Passengers at the international terminal were not able to go through border security due to a technical issue. Credit:Nick Moir "They announced that they had a power outage and so no one could go through border security," she said.

"Then they said they didnt know if it would be 30 minutes or several hours and they were working to rectify the problem but no one could log onto any of their systems so no one could pass through customs." She said there were only about 500 people in the departures hall when she arrived, but crowds rapidly built up. "It's absolutely packed," she said. Airline staff were also unable to pass through customs. Ms Olding said she spoke to a border protection officer at a coffee stand who had no idea when he'd be allowed in to start working. "Everyone's pretty good-tempered, probably because we all got up so early," she said. "But I reckon in an hour, it won't be so nice."

A technical issue shut down passenger processing at both the international and domestic terminals on Friday morning. Credit:Nick Moir Sydney Airport delays felt around Australia A Brisbane Airport Corporation spokeswoman said Brisbane would feel the knock-on effects from Sydney. "The whole of Australia is going to feel the effects of this," she said. "Passengers are most definitely being told to contact their airline staff if they've got concerns about the schedule."

Several flights arriving in Brisbane from Sydney were delayed or cancelled, with Jetstar and Virgin flights most affected. Virgin cancelled a flight to Brisbane and several other arrivals were delayed, while one departing Jetstar flight from Brisbane to Sydney was delayed by more than an hour. Passengers at the international terminal began to go through border security about 6.45am. Credit:Nick Moir The chaos at Sydney Airport is also affecting peak-hour flights to Melbourne. Melbourne Airport spokesman Grant Smith said the technical issues would have a "variety of impacts" on Melbourne throughout the morning.

"There are a couple of inbound flights held on the ground in Sydney," he said. "One TigerAir flight has delays posted, it has been pushed back by at least an hour." Mr Smith said the airport was approaching its peak morning period for flights between Melbourne and Sydney. "There are so many flights at this time of day," he said. "A lot could change." He said the best thing for passengers to do is check the status of their flight with their airline.
A handyman, who used his access to an elderly womans home to steal her belongings, has been jailed.

Business was in trouble: Aaron James Scott Simons. Credit:Facebook

Aaron James Scott Simons pinched a fridge, a television set, a pedestal fan, an electric mower, a DVD player, a portable clothes line, a kettle, four canvas prints, two heaters and a pair of binoculars - $6500 worth of goods in all - in the seven days he held a key to the home in Wollongong.

The 81-year-old womans daughter employed Simons - a family friend - to carry out repairs and maintenance at the home after her mother, suffering from dementia, moved into a retirement home.

The family paid him $3500 upfront and handed him the key on January 16.
A professional poker player accused of being the architect of a $76 million fraud has had his bail revoked over concerns he would "do a [Tony] Mokbel" and abscond before his trial in the County Court next week.

Leading Senior Constable Steve Howe told court on Thursday he had received credible information that Bill Jordanou, 58, was planning to flee overseas by boat, after spending the past four years on bail.

Bill Jordanou

Leading Senior Constable Howe said Mr Jordanou had recently finalised several property deals that would help finance his bid to avoid trial on March 13.

In the County Court last week, Mr Jordanou's legal counsel said his client would plead guilty to a string of fraud and deception charges.
Perth Zoo welcomed its newest family member with a baby giraffe born to mother Kitoto and father Armani on Wednesday afternoon.

Zoo staff said first-time mother Kitoto went through "textbook labour" to give birth to the baby girl calf at 5.29pm.

Mum and bub. Credit:Hannah Barry

"To cause the least disturbance for Kitoto whilst she was in labour, the keepers and vets watched via remote CCTV monitors installed in preparation for the birth," a spokeswoman said.

"Our expert zoo keeping staff assisted the calf to stand about one hour after birth and we were elated when she started suckling, ensuring she got the colostrum and vital nutrients from Kitoto's milk.
Tim Winton in Lake Dundas, in WA: "The thing about West Australia is that there is nothing between us and Antarctica. The swell and the trade winds come pouring up, really raw and nasty." Credit:Lynn Webb Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size In 1965, when the author Tim Winton was five, his father, John, a motorcycle cop, was riding through Perth when a drunk driver ran a stop sign and collided with him. The impact sent John flying into a brick wall, crushing his chest, shoulder and hip. His ribs were shattered, and his lungs collapsed; when the paramedics got to him, they had to perform an emergency tracheotomy in the street. He'd also suffered massive concussion, and lay comatose for days in the resuscitation room at Royal Perth Hospital. When he returned home, he was a physical and emotional wreck. He'd gone from being the family's sole breadwinner to being bedridden, unable to move or shower himself. It was up to his wife, Bev, to manage the house and cope with the kids: Tim and his three younger siblings, Andrew, Michael and Sharyn. A week or so after John came home, a stranger showed up on the doorstep. His name was Len Thomas. Thomas said he'd heard about the accident, and that Bev was having a tough time, and that he wanted to help. "It was so weird," Winton says, when we meet in Fremantle, Perth's port city. "We had never met this guy before, and here he was, turning up, unannounced and uninvited, offering to give us a hand." Almost every day for the next few weeks, Thomas came to the house, where he carried Winton's father from his bedroom to the bathroom and gently washed him. Tim didn't know what to make of it: a stranger, in the bathroom, with his father? Now all he could do was sit outside the door, listening to the tap water running, and the two men talking in low, soft voices. As it soon became apparent, Thomas was an evangelical Christian: apart from washing John, he'd been laying hands on him, and anointing him with olive oil. Thomas's intercession, what Winton now calls "an act of grace", changed the family forever. Soon after his father's recovery, Winton's parents became devout and lifelong Christians. Every Sunday morning, and in the evening too, the family went to church, where they would listen to sermons on degradation and redemption. In Perth's blithely secular suburbs, the Wintons' conversion marked them as outsiders and oddbods. "At the same time, the church community was incredibly unifying and nurturing," Winton tells me. "Your life had meaning and you belonged, and you had this amazing connection with people who weren't blood relatives but who treated you like family." Winton lost his faith in his early 20s. "At one point I reached the limits of the educational and cultural experience of the people around me," he says. "I just wasn't getting any answers, no real feedback. And sometimes the feedback was negative because they felt threatened." It was hard for his parents, who remain religious. "It was a struggle for them to understand. And I didn't want to disappoint them."

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Yet there was another part of Thomas's legacy that has never left him. "Len showed me that there is another way of being a man, that you didn't have to get a double century at the MCG or mow down a machine-gun post and get a Victoria Cross. You could be just decent and gentle and kind. For me, that was incredibly revelatory." Tim Winton (at rear) with brother Michael and father John in Karrinyup, north Perth, circa 1965, not long before his fathers accident. Credit:Courtesy of the Winton family With 29 books to his name, including four Miles Franklin winners and two Booker Prize nominations, Winton is, as American poet and critic Ron Rash puts it, "one of the world's great living novelists". Yet he dresses as if he's sneaking out the back door on his way to a spot of beach fishing. The day we meet, he's wearing thongs and boardies, a peak cap with "Challenger Marine" written on it, and plastic wrap-around 7-Eleven sunnies. At 57, there is something about him that is reassuringly grounded, deeply earthed, like a wharf pylon; in the event of a cyclone, he is exactly the sort of thing you'd tether yourself to. As it's too late for lunch and too early for beer, Winton gives me an impromptu tour of Fremantle, where he is spending time in the lead-up to Perth Festival Writers Week. Situated just south of the Swan River, Fremantle was where Perth's first settlers arrived, in 1829, "dumped right here on the beach", as Winton puts it, "with their trunks of clothes and grand pianos". Large parts of the town are heritage-listed, and their sandstone facades have been carefully restored. In the 1970s, though, central Fremantle was largely derelict, its rotted-out terraces home to squatters and hippies. "We used to come here to play music and jam in the basements of some of these buildings," Winton says. "The whole area is built on salt marshes, and it's only a metre above sea level, so when the tide came up the water would seep through the floorboards." Fremantle's contingent nature, the feeling that it's just hanging on, is typical of Western Australia as a whole, the majestic, sun-scorched immensity of which induces in the visitor a sense of dizzying oblivion. "It's a pretty singular place," he says. "It's saying to you: like it or lump it." In Winton's fiction, this landscape is the ultimate crucible, invariably bringing out the best in women and the worst in men, from the feckless gamblers in his 1991 breakthrough novel, Cloudstreet, to Fred Scully, the protagonist in his 1995 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, The Riders, whose search for his headstrong wife leads to a kind of psychological disintegration. To be a male lead in Winton's world is, more often than not, to be nursing some pretty deep wounds. Jaxie Clackton, the teenage anti-hero of his new novel, The Shepherd's Hut, is wounded deeper than most. Jaxie lives in a one-pub town north of Perth. His mum is dead, his dad is a violent drunk; Jaxie calls him Captain Wankbag, or the Cap, for short. "He wouldn't give you the sweat off his balls, the old Captain, but when it come to dishing out a bit of biff when you weren't looking, well, then he was like fing Santa." Everyone in town knows Jaxie hates the Cap. Then, one afternoon, Jaxie comes home to find his father dead, squashed under his ute in the garage  he'd been repairing the engine when the jack collapsed. Afraid he'll be blamed for it, Jaxie takes off north, trekking across the vast, bare West Australian wheat belt, hiking at night, napping when he can, en route to the goldfields, and then further north to meet his cousin Lee, the only girl he's ever really known or loved. On the way, however, he comes across a saltpan, in the middle of which is a shepherd's hut and a defrocked old priest named Fintan MacGillis.

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The Shepherd's Hut is vintage Winton, not only in its sense of place  the saltpan, the scrub, the withering heat  but also in its language. The story is told solely through Jaxie's voice, which is the prose equivalent of a good long slug of room-temperature rum, a mongrel vernacular that is profane, funny and implausibly prideful. Jaxie knows he's a "dirty fup" and a shitkicker: all he dreams of is a "normal" life with Lee, of escaping together and getting a room of their own, "like something off TV". In the meantime, he's running like a "chased rabbit", so afraid and full of hate that he can barely string two words together. "Jaxie is hyper vigilant," Winton says. "He's basically a very damaged person. He's been beaten; he's witnessed his mother being beaten." He has become suspicious of tenderness and empathy; all instinct, no insight. He is a danger to others as well as himself, the very embodiment of what Winton calls "toxic masculinity". "The thing is that he doesn't want to be like that," Winton tells me. "He wants to find peace, he wants to be a better person, to grow up to be a proper man. But he doesn't know how to, because he's never had anyone to show him." Tim Winton. Credit:Lynn Webb After our little walk through town, we station ourselves in a deserted seaside cafe that has been fitted out to look like a Greek taverna but which actually resembles a hastily retiled 1960s surf club that has been painted blue and filled with wobbly formica tables. Seagulls scour the floor, gorging on a rich bounty of dropped chips. It is so strangely, so inimitably Australian that I feel like applauding. I also feel a little confused. Somewhere along the line Winton got a reputation as something of a recluse; a bit reticent, reserved  gruff, even. Long on ponytail and short on words. I don't know if I've got the wrong Tim Winton, but the guy I meet in Fremantle quite literally will not shut up. No sooner has he settled into his chair than he embarks on a long, leisurely, free-ranging riff on his favourite writers (Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Donal Ryan, Anne Enright), the history of Perth (basically it was founded as a real-estate scam), parochialism in Australian publishing (with his first few books his editors suggested he put in a glossary, to explain Western Australia's wildlife to east coast readers), and his picaresque family background, which includes the fact that for 30 years his paternal grandmother, Olive Winton, lived in a tent in the backyard of her suburban Perth home, in an effort to escape her seven children. Olive was a fearsome creature: terrifyingly organised and relentlessly industrious. Having walked off their farm at Margaret River between the wars, she and her husband started a smallgoods store, called Wintons, in inner-city Perth. "They sold everything," Winton tells me. "Fish, ice-creams, you name it. They also did deliveries. Her husband was a frustrated musician and songwriter and vaudevillian. As she saw it, all the men in her life were dreamers. And so it was Olive who really ran the business, from this old Boer War army tent in the backyard."

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His maternal grandmother, Sadie Mifflin, couldn't have been more different. "Olive was all about discipline and delayed gratification. Sadie and her family were all about instant gratification: horses, the booze, the fags." Sadie regarded Olive's side of the family as insufferable bores and wowsers. One day, when Tim was about nine, she bailed him up in the kitchen of her house, and, overcome with disgust, gave it to him with both barrels. "We were Jesus-creepers, fing idiots, and why in God's name couldn't we have any fun?" he wrote in his 2016 memoir, The Boy Behind the Curtain. Later, piqued by conscience, she gave him a half-melted Cherry Ripe from her mildewy handbag. The upcoming film adaptation of Wintons novel Breath stars and was directed by Simon Baker (at left). Credit:Nic Duncan Winton was born in the Perth suburb of Karrinyup, where he grew up in social housing, but the family moved from time to time, with each of his father's postings, including to Albany, a port city in the state's far south. He returned to Perth to study arts at what is now Curtin University, where he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, which won the Vogel Literary Award in 1981. Not long after, he moved with his wife, Denise, then a nurse, to a small coastal town a couple of hours' drive north of Perth. It was here that they raised their three children, Jesse, Harry, and Alice  all of whom are now adults. He keeps the name of the town secret to protect the family's privacy. "It's a real issue," Winton says, a little sheepishly. "When the kids were young we would walk separately in public, in the city, anyway, just so they weren't bothered or gawked at." The coast and the ocean have shaped much of Winton's fiction, particularly his 2009 Miles Franklin-winning book, Breath, a coming-of-age tale about two boys who grow up under the tutelage of an older surfer, Bill "Sando" Sanderson. (A film adaptation, starring Simon Baker as Sando, is being released in May.) "The thing about West Australia is that there is nothing between us and Antarctica," Winton says. "The swell and the trade winds come pouring up, really raw and nasty, and there's very little to break them down." Some of his most memorable moments have been spent out on WA's reefs and rock shelfs and outer bommies, remote breaks which are renowned, in surfing circles, for their numinous beauty and potential for grievous bodily harm. These days, Winton does most of his surfing closer to home. "I'd be out there five days a week, pretty much whenever I can," he says. "Really, surfing accounts for almost the entirety of my social life." It also amounts to a type of incidental ethnography, an opportunity for Winton to observe what he describes as the increasingly "florid behaviours" of the young men sitting with him in the line-up.

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It was in the surf, for example, that he first began noticing something "less than lovely" about the local boys: a spiky nihilism, a contempt for gentleness and decency, and, most worryingly, a reflexive misogyny. It was mainly the things they said to one another. About women, and girls. About other races, too, and even about nature. "Some of these guys were the full Dickhead Package," he says. "They were rednecks. But there was also a script there. It was almost as if they were rehearsing what they thought a real man should be like." That "script", the abiding notion of men as invulnerable, flinty, emotionally distant, is as destructive as it is resilient, a kind of prison where the best parts of boys  the sensitive parts, the nurturing parts  go to die. "It's so impoverishing," Winton says, wincing. "It stops men from growing. They become emotional infants, little man-boys who despise women and lean on them in equal measure." He pauses. Nods. "Wow," I say. "So how did we get here?" "I dunno," says Winton. He wriggles in his chair, stares out the window. It's a murky area, this gender and culture stuff, and I get the feeling he's thinking his way through it as we sit here. "Maybe it was the '60s, you know? The whole Aquarius thing, everyone being encouraged to 'follow their own bliss'. They were given this dud message that they were somehow absolved of responsibility." All the "self-actualising" was good news for women, since they had for so long been denied any "self". But the benefits for men were less clear. Sure, all those tired old models, the traditional pathways to manhood, were swept away, but they weren't replaced with anything, or at least nothing especially solid or coherent. "It's a little bit like what has happened with the modern economy," he adds. "Like neo-liberalism. It has reduced us all to players in the market. What is 'the market' anyway? Like, what the hell? "These days nothing is expected of you, and nothing is given to you. But your journey to maturity is wrapped up in a sense of deeper culture, of spirituality even. Without that, all that's left is sex, money and alcohol." And so here we are, untethered by narcissism, fractured by the market, all floating in space, yearning for connection. A bit of a downer, I say, to which Winton laughs, almost apologetically. I say it reminds me of a scene in The Shepherd's Hut, where Jaxie is at a Christmas get-together with Lee. All the aunts and uncles are there, plus, of course, Wankbag, reeking of rum and scratching his beard. They're playing happy families. No mention of the abuse, the beatings. Jaxie can't stand it, and runs out of the room, into the bush.

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WA Nationals leader Mia Davies has blasted what she calls the "ridiculous and malicious" findings of an internal party review which said she used a serious complaint against former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce for "political advantage".

A secret review by WA Nationals state president James Haywood found former WA Rural Woman of the Year Catherine Marriott's complaint against Mr Joyce was lodged on February 20 - the same day Ms Davies shocked the party by becoming the first senior figure to call for Mr Joyce's scalp.

WA Nationals leader Mia Davies.

Mr Hayward's review found Ms Davies' resignation demand was a "political manoeuvre" designed to minimise damage to the WA Nationals from the growing scandal in Canberra.

"But it ultimately has placed our party firmly in the spotlight and has appeared to make us look like co-conspirators," he said.
Bob Salmond is quite right about most of the points that he raises concerning the degradation of Northbourne Avenue by the light rail project and the planned replacement of many of the low-rise buildings flanking the avenue by tall ones (Letters, March 8). However, he has overlooked a very important one: its trees. An avenue is, by definition, a broad thoroughfare lined by trees, usually in two rows. Northbourne Avenue had the added asset of having a further four rows of trees, along with the grass, along its median strip. Most well-known avenues also present a tree-lined vista, either to one landmark structure or between two of them. Perhaps the best-known and loved example is the Avenue des Champs Elysees in Paris, with the Place de la Concorde at one end and the Arc de Triomphe at the other. It is flanked by buildings generally no taller than six storeys.

Northbourne Avenue has a potential advantage over the Avenue des Champs Elysees: its median strip. If the landscaping of this strip were to be handled sensitively, with low to medium-height trees and grassed areas softening the effect of the rail track, it could be something Canberrans could be proud of. Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin Gallery latest to suffer In the four years since its "opening" by Kevin Rudd in 2013, Canberra's $1 billion new spooks HQ in Russell was long unoccupiable due to flooding and the same astonishingly substandard construction as most of the new lakeside apartments across the water from it. New art exhibition venues both in Commonwealth Place on the Parkes waterfront and next to the ACT Legislative Assembly soon had water penetration issues, one requiring closure for repairs. And who can forget the new Museum of Australia's spectacular roof failure after a hailstorm-downpour last decade?

Now the outrage of the National Portrait Gallery's building, at the tender age of 10, having to close for six whole months so as to be ripped apart, expensively and once again on the public purse, to fix leaks and  even more incredibly, apparently  substandard floors. Its director claims this is the inevitable fate of wildly popular art venues worn to pieces by patrons, and indeed proud evidence of the NPG's success (quoting figures of 1400 visitors a day, or 200 an hour, or about three a minute), seems to presume we're all morons and have never heard of all the famous, perfectly waterproof and solid-floored galleries across the world, from the Pompidou Centre (1977) to the Prado (1819). And indeed the NGA next door (1982), built at a time before self-regulation by industry pirates. A more pressing royal commission than the one we had into the CFMEU would examine the apparent incompetence and fraud in residential and commercial building design, materials and techniques which deregulation has permitted since the 1990s. This is the same industry which funds parties, and disproportionately, the Coalition. Alex Mattea, Kingston

Pirate builders run riot What is wrong with building standards these days? The National Portrait Gallery is to be closed for six months for repairs only 10 years after construction all at taxpayers' expense. Major repairs are being made to Parliament House 30years after opening. One hears of shoddy apartment construction all around Australia. My in-law's weatherboard house in Adelaide, and my father's house in Sydney, both built in the 19th century, have never been closed for repairs. Something is amiss.

Rod Holesgrove, O'Connor Bill pay 'protection' It was such a delight when I could go online and simply pay my utilities bill with ActewAGL without having to work out some forgotten username and password designed to protect me from some nefarious character seeking to hack into my account and, well, pay my utilities bill for me. But now, in a retro experience, I find that I am "protected" from paying my electricity bill despite transcribing the account number off the bill, giving my surname and my date of birth and (deceitfully) warranting that I have read their terms and conditions. Back to the future! Time to go off-grid.

Ian Douglas, Jerrabomberra, NSW Drown the roos next? Peter Curtis (Letters, March 7), you are correct to caution me on "culinary biases". I wrote in despair, disappointed Jenny Moxham's observation (Letters, February 23) that "fully conscious dogs are routinely blow torched (in some Asian countries), the myth being the more pain suffered by these animals, the more tender and aphrodisiac the meat" did not attract a flood of outraged letters. Perhaps I am simply wrong; we are "part of Asia". I await the real estate advertisement  "High rise executive flats in the capital city of the Republic of Australia, thousands to choose from, right on the waterfront of Lake Burley Griffin with great views of kangaroos drowning".

Ronald Elliott, Sandringham, Victoria Prison check a plus Civil Liberties Australia in its recent newsletter stated the ACT is now ready for a United Nations sub committee to inspect places of detention in the ACT. "The right to be free from torture and cruel, inhumane treatment or punishment is an absolute right in international law that cannot be limited," the ACT Minister for Justice, Shane Rattenbury, said. Such a new measure will only enhance the rehabilitation program already in existence, bringing benefit to those incarcerated as well as encourage their custodians to seek it. In particular, it could be of immediate benefit to prisoners who have been isolated in their cells for long periods.

Keith McEwan, Gordon The relentless criticism of the ABC as being biased by the Turnbull government and the Murdoch press does not hold up to scrutiny. I have researched many polls and surveys and in every case the ABC, SBS and Fairfax Media score well ahead of the Murdoch press when it comes down to balance, trust and fairness. No matter who conducts the polls, the results are the same every year  people trust the ABC more than any other news source. Also in these polls, Fairfax Media always scores higher than The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and The Australian on fair and equitable reporting.

The government receives bad press simply because it has lost the confidence of the people. Ray Armstrong, Tweed Heads South, NSW Free trade a myth President Trump's decision to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium has produced widespread concern, even from fellow Republicans, that it could lead to a trade "war" with other countries imposing retaliatory tariffs on their imports from the US. Even if Trump overcomes the resistance from Congress, it would be premature for Australia to condemn his decision.

A key point to recognise here is that measures to protect domestic industries may involve much more than tariffs. Most important from our viewpoint are the large subsidies provided to agricultural production in the European Union. Accordingly, with many obstacles to free trade already in place, Trump might be seen as adding only another one of limited significance in the overall level of protection. It may be that he is justified because the main offender (China) is subsidising its production of steel and aluminium. The main danger arising from the Trump announcement would be if protective governments, such as China and the European Union, threatened to "retaliate" and started a war of retaliation.

This may or may not happen, but it would then open up for debate a comparison between the three about relative protective levels which could result in a more efficient outcome. It is also possible that it would revive the merits of a world trading system with reduced protection, which the Doha round failed to achieve. Trump could then claim that he has stirred the pot. Des Moore, Institute for Private Enterprise, South Yarra, Victoria Women have more sense

On reading Alan Barron's letter (March 8), in which he made the point that men are under attack in our society, I was minded to turn back to page 4 of the same issue of the CT to the public service article on that page. In it, the author makes two interesting points, first that about 70 per cent of the employees of the Department of Human Services are women, and second, that only 46 per cent of the Senior Executive Service are women. Then follows an argument as to how we need to get even more women into the SES but I can see nothing to suggest the need to get the overall number of men up from 30 to 50 per cent even though that would seem to be a far greater inequality. There are undoubtedly many reasons why there are more men than women at higher levels in the public service. One of them is undoubtedly that many women who are every bit as competent as their male colleagues choose to give the first priority to their families. The feminists will argue, correctly, that men should take a greater share of that work. But, until they do, the women are the carers. And, surprising as it may be, most women probably think it is more important that their children grow up emotionally healthy and well-adjusted than that they get to spend endless hours editing briefs, starting at work at 8am and going home at 9pm. Who would want it? Perhaps the lack of women at the top levels of the public service is a credit to their common sense.

Stan Marks, Hawker Aid priority disparity Thanks for Pope's cartoon on International Women's Day (CT,March 8, p.19), highlighting contrasts in our aid program. This was exemplified in Dakar in February, where world leaders were asked to replenish the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). It's the only global fund dedicated solely to strengthening education systems in the world's poorest countries. The GPE helps promote girls' education in Afghanistan  20,010 girls are benefiting from GPE's $US55.7 million grant aimed at increasing and sustaining their access to education. At Dakar, $US3.1 billion was sought for supporting the GPE during 2018-20. The GPE had aimed to reach 870 million children, have 19 million children complete primary school and train 1.7 million teachers.

Australia was asked to contribute $200 million, but only managed $90 million of the reduced $US2.3 billion raised. That's the financial contrast, where our aid for women's development has fallen far short of what's needed. Like the Australian government's interest? Peter Graves, Curtin Nobody 'under attack' Alan Barron (Letters, March 8) asserted: "Men have given away nearly 1 million jobs to women." In my 40-plus working years, I don't recall a single instance of a male saying to me (a female): "Here  I give you my job." I earned each position I held (and hold). Even the briefest look at objective data identify many careers where women are clearly and inappropriately under-represented; studies performed decades ago through to today demonstrate consistently that teams make higher quality decisions with mixed representations. There remain roles where women are under-represented  and where men are under-represented.

I've never been in a workplace where "men are being marginalised and their rights and status denigrated". When I see a #MeToo for men of the same gravity as for women, I could be more sympathetic to Barron's views. Judy Bamberger, O'Connor Thorny one for Nats Why is it that a woman would have a better chance of leading the Taliban than the Nationals? M. Moore, Bonython

To the point CAN THE APVMA MOVE The new Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud, should demonstrate that he is "not following in anyone's footsteps" by immediately canning the costly and ill-conceived APVMA move to Armidale. Malcolm Robertson, Chapman PLIBERSEK A WINNER

Viva Tanya! (National Press Club address, March 7). Tanya Plibersek for Prime Minister! John Rodriguez, Florey GREED TRIUMPHS The American President has announced he is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminium imports. I seem to recall a great deal of government fanfare around the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. It seems that the President is breaching that agreement. American greed Trumps ethical behaviour again. J. Grant, Gowrie

MAKING A SPLASH Wow $37 million for a Molongo splash pool, Canberra's needy should find a snorkel. Matt Ford, Crookwell, NSW IDEA FANCIFUL Regarding the wars in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the idea of war crimes and crimes against humanity is well-intentioned. But applying laws to the conduct of war is somewhat ridiculous since war is essentially about humans killing humans.

Rod Matthews, Fairfield, Vic DEFENDING INDEFENSIBLE Malcolm Turnbull, Darren Lehmann and Steve Smith. Three apparent leaders defending the indefensible with regard to Michaelia Cash and David Warner. Peter Crossing, Glengowrie, SA TIME TO GET TOUGH

Australia should be talking to Germany, Japan and South Korea about Trump's trade war. Mr Trump should be told that if he imposes trade tariffs, the allies will close his military bases. Be tough, let him know he will suffer serious retaliation. Don't weakly ask (beg on bended knee?) for exemptions. Kenneth Griffiths, O'Connor CLIMATE OXYMORON Douglas Mackenzie's letter on climate change's perils (Letters, March 7) uses logic, facts and common sense. He even "expects our politicians take climate change seriously". That's an oxymoron if ever I have heard one. Pat Barling, Holder
She is one of Canberra's quiet achievers. Modest, accomplished, doing good work behind the scenes for years without fanfare or fuss.

But community advocate and philanthropist Diane Kargas Bray was recognised for all her hard work in the most public way possible on Thursday when she was announced the 2018 Canberra Citizen of the Year.

Diane Kargas Bray, 2018 Canberra Citizen of the Year, at home in Red Hill on Thursday. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos

Chief Minister Andrew Barr bestowed the honour upon Ms Kargas Bray for "outstanding contribution to the Canberra community through her social enterprise and philanthropic work".

"Our 2018 winner gives her time freely and is a mentor and role model to those who meet and work with her," Mr Barr said.
The Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, has given a fresh indication that the government could wind back its policy to demolish and rebuild Sydney sporting stadiums, after he insisted a final decision still had to be made.

Mr Barilaros comments are at odds with the Premier Gladys Berejiklian, who was last week asked to guarantee she would pursue the controversial policy through to next years election.

That is our intention, of course, Ms Berejiklian said.

Deputy Premier John Barilaro has cast fresh doubt over the government's stadium policy. Credit:Jay Cronan

In response to opposition questions in Parliament, Mr Barilaro indicated on Thursday that the $2.5 billion policy was not a done deal.
North Queensland is bracing for a possible major flooding event, with some areas to experience their worst flooding in nearly a decade.

The Herbert River is set to peak on Thursday night, with nearby Ingham set to experience flooding similar to the 2009 event.

Swiftwater rescue crews have been sent from Brisbane to the Ingham area to help with any evacuations or emergencies. Credit:AP

A major flood warning is also in place for the Tully River, which will impact several towns including Tully and Innisfail.

Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford said swiftwater rescue crews have been sent from Brisbane to the Ingham area to help with any evacuations or emergencies.
The council on Tuesday gave Mr Doyle a final opportunity to respond to the findings against him. His lawyer this week said Mr Doyle remained too ill to respond to questions. Multiple women came forward with other sexual harassment allegations, including fellow Melbourne councillor Cathy Oke. A report by the councils investigator, QC Ian Freckelton, has not been publicly released nor have its findings been made public. Councils chief executive Ben Rimmer said this week that he aimed to release a summary of the Freckelton investigation outcomes as soon as possible. A spokeswoman said Melbourne City Council had repeatedly stated that we would like the independent investigation completed as quickly as possible, consistent with fairness and natural justice afforded to all parties. Ms Sullivan said the past few months had been traumatic. "I didnt think it would become this." Credit:Jason South

Ms Sullivan said her experience of the alleged harassment had been awful. You lose all this confidence and you feel like you have betrayed yourself for not standing up for yourself - you think, Did it happen because I looked a certain way? or Did he feel like he could target me?  Ms Sullivan said she did not want the sexual harassment case to be her legacy. I dont want to be some spokesperson for sexual harassment. I dont want to join the #MeToo movement, Im not interested. I was just a woman who was in a position who had to resign and had every right to complain - I didnt think it would become this. When the allegations became public, Mr Doyle hired a public relations firm to speak for him. He released text exchanges that purported to be between the pair that included a photo of Ms Sullivan in a bikini holding her three-year-old son on a beach.

Ms Sullivan sent this photo to her fellow Team Doyle members in July, as part of an ongoing light-hearted text message exchange. Mr Doyle has denied the allegations. Credit:Eddie Jim The Herald Sun ran the bikini photo, with Ms Sullivans sons face blurred, on its front page, with the headline Rob, Im so lucky to have you. This headline came from an unrelated message. The bikini shot was accompanied by a story inside that began: Tessa Sullivan wouldnt take no for an answer. Ms Sullivan was on holiday when she first saw the front page photo. I was there with my son and he looked at the photo and he said, Look mum - thats me! They had blurred his face but its his favourite swimsuit; he would know it anywhere. I just hope he doesnt remember that when he grows up. She said the photo had been an innocent family snapshot.

It was a photo of me, taken by my husband, with my son on the beach. It was spun in such an ugly way, and I had sent it around Team Doyle as just a group sending around funny texts as part of the camaraderie between us. We would send photos of beer, or someone at the races or the snow. Ms Sullivan said she had been painted as a woman begging for it. She has threatened to sue the Herald Sun for defamation, but has not yet filed an action. It appears the Herald Sun has this week removed all images of Ms Sullivan in a bikini and removed two stories Ms Sullivan had demanded be taken down. Ms Sullivan said she was scared of the media when she entered local politics in Melbourne. She said she was made a lot more fearful of Mr Doyle because, she said, he would boast of his influence in the media. So I was very frightened of the power of the press - I felt powerless because I had not been in politics for 30 years. I dont know Neil Mitchell or Jeff Kennett.

Ms Sullivan said she felt her treatment by sections of the media had damaged the possibility the truth would come out. She said she was tired of being asked why she went public with her accusations against Mr Doyle. The councils code of conduct was flawed - councillors with problems were supposed to report to the lord mayor, which was not an option for Ms Sullivan. She told her fellow councillors about the alleged harassment, talked to multiple female members of State Parliament and sought advice from lawyers, including one of Australias highest-profile workplace lawyers, Josh Bornstein. In the end she felt she had little option but to make a complaint, and then resign. I am sick of people saying, She is a lawyer, why didnt she do this or that? Im not stupid, I did everything.
Melbourne City councillor Rohan Leppert will run for lord mayor in a bid to see The Greens capture their first town hall in an Australian capital city.

Cr Leppert, 33, was elected to Melbourne City Council in 2012 and heads its arts, culture and heritage portfolio.

He is also deputy chair of planning, and has been outspoken on many development issues.

Melbourne City councillor Rohan Leppert will run for lord mayor Credit:Justin McManus

He has been one of the highest profile critics of the Andrews governments plans to allow Apple to tear down a significant chunk of Federation Square and replace it with an Apple store.
Victorias Liberal Party has so far preselected just one woman as a new candidate for a safe seat at this years state election, compared with three men who have been picked to replace retiring members in blue ribbon seats.

The number of female candidates chosen to contest winnable seats has put the party at risk of falling short of a target leader Matthew Guy set almost two years ago to lift the number of female Liberal MPs by 10 per cent by 2018.

Liberal frontbench MP Heidi Victoria.

But the Opposition refused to concede it was on course to miss its own target, arguing it could still boost its female numbers from its current 27 per cent to 37 per cent with an emphatic election win in Novembers poll.

The Liberals have so far preselected 10 women to run in seats they do not hold but consider winnable, so must count on a strong swing against Labor at the election to hit its target.
Cape Town: South Africa's drought-stricken tourist metropolis Cape Town will not run out of water this year as previously feared, the city says.

The all-clear was given after new projections showed that, without rainfall, "Day Zero" - the day the city runs out of water - would be in August.

John Viljoen, a Bloomberg reporter, fills his toilet with used shower water, also known as "grey water" in Cape Town. Credit:Bloomberg

"As this date falls deep within the normal rainfall period, it is no longer appropriate to project the date without any consideration of rainfall ... Day Zero can be avoided completely this year," deputy mayor Ian Neilson said in a statement.

Mmusi Maimane, the leader of South Africas Democratic Alliance (DA) party told a press conference on Wednesday that water consumption had declined steadily, and if it continued at this rate and the rains came, Day Zero would be avoided.
Indonesias foreign minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, subsequently said that with that agreement Australia had taken his country to the cleaners. Portugal, the colonial power in East Timor, was wary and put off negotiations.

The list of Australias adversaries in the dispute goes some way to explaining its duration and its complexity. When negotiations began in the 1970s to establish the seabed boundary between Australia and Timor, Australia had already signed an agreement with Indonesia settling the seabed boundary either side of East Timor.

Australias long-running disagreement over the boundary and the lucrative rights to the Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields  first with Portugal, then Indonesia and latterly with independent East Timor  has now concluded with the signing of a treaty.

At long last Australia has done something like the right thing by East Timor in the dispute over the maritime boundary the countries share. But it has done so only after trying every other alternative for nearly five decades.

After Portugal abandoned had its colony and Indonesia had invaded it, the disputed East Timor boundary, with its resources wealth, came up again. Indonesia was less accommodating. The result was the so-called Timor gap  in effect, a diplomatic agreement to disagree on where the boundary lay. An irregularly shaped patch of seabed territory constituted the boundary, and shared the wealth according to a complex formula that still favoured Australia.

When East Timor became independent in 1999, Australia wanted its new government simply to keep to the terms of the treaty it had inherited from Indonesia. The Timorese, quite reasonably, demurred, but Australia did its best to bully it aside.

Although the disputes origin as a negotiation between Australia and a colonial power over the rights to mineral resources on the seabed perhaps explains Australias initial aggression, subsequent developments including the birth of the new, and poor, independent East Timor, removed any justification for it.

Although it did make concessions, Australia has been trying, in effect, to wrest away as much as it can of East Timors only serious source of national income. For a wealthy nation that aspires to be a leader in a relatively poor region, this has not been a good look. Although the pact ends the boundary dispute and resolves the Timor gap anomaly in Australias seabed border, it does not settle everything.

One remaining question is the exact division of revenue from resources won from the sea floor in the zone. The agreement stipulates that if a pipeline is built from the Greater Sunrise fields to East Timor for processing, the revenue will be divided 70:30 in East Timors favour. If the pipeline comes to Australia, where a plant already exists, the ratio would change to 80:20 for East Timor.
London: The leaders of a far-right British party, one of whom gained widespread attention after a message she posted online was retweeted by US President Donald Trump, have been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.

Paul Golding, 36, leader of the anti-immigration Britain First party, and his deputy Jayda Fransen, 31, were convicted of filming and harassing people they believed were involved in a rape trial involving a number of Muslim men at a court in Kent.

They posted their actions on the Britain First website and delivered offensive leaflets to homes in the area where those involved in the case lived, prosecutors told Folkestone magistrates court.

Jayda Fransen, 31, of the British First party, gained widespread attention after a message she posted online was retweeted by US President Donald Trump.

"The prosecution case demonstrated these defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously aggravated abuse at innocent members of the public," Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said in a statement.
Jerusalem: Alleged child abuser Malka Leifer will remain in custody in a psychiatric ward after prosecutors appealed to stop her release to house arrest.

At the hearing in Israels Supreme Court on Thursday, Leifers defence lawyer Yehuda Fried argued that the former Melbourne school principal was not a flight risk, and that while recent evidence may show her living a normal life, Leifer was unfit to stand trial and was still having psychotic episodes - a claim that saw her extradition trial abandoned three years ago.

Despite Fried's efforts, Leifer will remain in custody in the medical facility for the next few days, until the Supreme Court judge evaluates the evidence and makes a final ruling next week.

The decision to keep her in remand comes a day after the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ordered Leifer to be released from custody. She had been held in prison-like conditions at the Eitanim psychiatric hospital since her re-arrest on February 12.
Mazda Vision Coupe Wins Concept Car Of The Year

 Top automotive designers crown sleek Japanese aesthetic-inspired design vision model

 Second design award for VISION COUPE, which points the way forward for Mazda vehicles

GENEVA - March 8, 2018: The Mazda VISION COUPE has won Concept Car of the Year at the 11th-annual Car Design Night Geneva held on 6 March during Geneva Motor Show.

The panel of 18 judges who selected the VISION COUPE included several individuals currently serving as design directors at global automakers. Its another honour for Mazdas stunning concept, which was named Most Beautiful Concept Car of the Year last month in Paris at the 2018 Festival Automobile International.

Following on the Paris award, we are delighted once again to have VISION COUPE recognised with a global design prize. Its truly an honour to have this model, which aims to express the essence of Japanese aesthetics, applauded by some of the worlds top car designers, said Ikuo Maeda, Mazda's managing executive officer in charge of design and brand style. The essence of this design concept will be evident in the next generation of Mazda cars, the first of which is due to be launched in 2019.

Revealed in Tokyo in 2017, the VISION COUPE represents the next phase for Mazdas KODO  Soul of Motion designs, whose expression of vitality and dynamism was evolved in pursuit of an essential Japanese aesthetic. The concepts flowing and deceptively simple one motion form speaks of elegance and quality.

Hosted by Car Design News, an online and print publication targeting the international automotive design community, Car Design Night Geneva is held every year to coincide with the Geneva Motor Show.
Find these stories and more in the March 8 issue of The Carillon.

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This article was published 7/3/2018 (1292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Find these stories and more in the March 8 issue of The Carillon.

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Playoff mode

Sports editor Terry Frey sets up the start of the MJHL playoffs and the high-flying Steinbach Pistons.

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Reporter Jordan Ross talks with a new Steinbach restaurant operator about what she has to offer and what connects her to the community.

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Reporter Dave Baxter reports from the Hanover School Division board meeting where trustees approved the budget for next school year.
Photo: Getty Images

Heres something to celebrate today, on International Womens Day: A record number of women are running for office in 2018. In the U.S., 32 Fortune 500 CEOs are women, three women are on the Supreme Court, and three of the last eight U.S. Secretaries of State have been women. Last year, 15 of 146 world leaders were women, eight of whom served as their countrys first female leaders.

Were getting there. We have a long way to go. Below, 25 famous leaders in various industries share their thoughts on power  how to define, attain, wield, and share it. Read on for collected wisdom that seems more vital now than ever  from Loretta Lynch, Angela Merkel, Toni Morrison, and more.

1. Condoleezza Rice, Former U.S. Secretary of State

Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence. When people talk about management style, theyre really talking about how someone uses power. Ive been in positions where I had to be heavy-handed, and Ive been in positions where I needed to bring people together and persuade them  But sometimes you have to make difficult decisions, and you have to make them stick. Oprah, February 2002

2. Sandra Day OConnor, Former Supreme Court Justice

For both men and women, the first step in getting power is to become visible to others  and then to put on an impressive show. The acquisition of power requires that one aspire to power, that one believe power is possible. As women then achieve power and exercise it well, the barriers fall. Thats why Im optimistic. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be even more women out there doing things  and well all be better off for it. Certainly today women should be optimistically encouraged to exercise their power and their leadership skills wherever it might take them. The Majesty of the Law: Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice, April 2004

3. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice

People ask me, When will you be satisfied with the number of women on the court? When there are nine. For most of the countrys history, they were all white men. CBS Sunday Morning, October 2016

4. Indra Nooyi, CEO, PepsiCo

Just because you are CEO, dont think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. Ive never forgotten that. Fast Company, April 2011

5. Madeleine Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State

I have often been the only woman in the room and I thought to myself, Well, I dont think Ill say anything today because itll sound stupid, and then some man says it and everyone thinks its brilliant and you think, Why didnt I talk? If we are in a meeting, were there for a reason. The bottom line is if youre only there, not speaking you kind of create the impression that youre not prepared to be there. Time, September 2017

6. Emmeline Pankhurst, British Political Leader

Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on Earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible. And so this Cat and Mouse Act which is being used against women today has failed. Freedom or Death, November 1913

7. Elizabeth Warren, Member of the U.S. Senate

If you dont have a seat at the table, youre probably on the menu. Washington works for those who have power. And no one gives up power easily, no one  Nobodys just going to say Women have arrived and lets just move over  We have a chance but we have to fight for it. Mother Jones, September 2014

8. Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives

When I decided to run for leadership, people said, Who said she could run? Maybe you could just tell us some of the concerns that women have and well make some changes around here. And I thought, Youre not catching on  Power is not influence. You have people thatll have these magazine articles that will say The 100 Most Influential People in the World and Ill look at it and think, Thats interesting. Thats influence. Thats not necessarily power. Power is when you have the power, the ability to make change. Influence is important in making change, but power is where you have the tools and the capacity and the opportunity to do so. So being Speaker of the House, thats real power. The Washington Post, July 2016

9. Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

I know that for many women, getting to the top of their organization is far from their primary focus. My intention is not to exclude them or ignore their valid concerns. I believe that if more women lean in, we can change the power structure of our world and expand opportunities for all. More female leadership will lead to fairer treatment for all women. Lean In, March 2013

10. Gloria Steinem, Journalist

Well never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. The Chicago Tribune, April 2003

11. Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors

Wherever you are in your career  your first position, or a manager, or even an executive  you have to be ready to stand up for yourself. But, it should be done in a firm but respectful way. Always remember, respect is earned. Learning to read the situation is also important. Most of all, never waver on integrity. If someone calls you bossy because you didnt let them push you around, so be it. Refinery29, February 2015

12. Melinda Gates, Philanthropist

To me, empowerment means if a woman has her voice and her agency. Can she say what she thinks needs to be said in any setting? Does she have the agency to make decisions on behalf of herself and her family? If you sit on a corporate board and you dont think you can voice what youre seeing on that board or in that corporation that is wrong, then you dont have your voice  When a woman in the U.S. gets on a corporate board, when theres one of her, shes not going to make a change. When there are two or three, then she has agency and she has her voice because theres a power in the collective. Then they get the other men on the board with her who are also saying, Hey, were seeing the same things, and they come forward as a group. Theres a power in the collective of the group. Men have had these natural networks for a long time. Women have tons of social networks, but its not until you get them together, and get them together in the right way, that they give women their voice and their agency. The Cut, May 2016

13. Michelle Obama, Former First Lady

For me, this issue has always been personal. See, back when I was a girl growing up in a working-class neighborhood, most of the folks I knew  including my parents  didnt go to college. But with a lot of hard work  and a lot of financial aid  I had the chance to attend some of the finest universities in the country. And I can tell you that education was everything for me. It opened doors. It gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions and make my voice heard in the world. For me, education was power. Playbill, November 2016

14. Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice

I have a style that is Sonia, and it is more assertive than many women are, or even some men. And its a style that has held me generally in good stead. Theres nothing wrong with being a little bit quieter than me or more timid than me, but if youre doing it all of the time and not waiting for the moments where you need to be more assertive and take greater control, then you wont be successful. And I dont think I would have been successful if I didnt know how to soften myself and tone it down at important moments. Der Spiegel, April 2014

15. Yuri Kochiyama, Activist

Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware  Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrows world is yours to build. Consciousness Is Power, November 1995

16. Malala Yousafzai, Activist

Some people only ask others to do something. I believe that why should I wait for someone else? Why dont I take a step and move forward. When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful. The Boston Globe, September 2013

17. Loretta Lynch, Former Attorney General

I think sometimes women face the very real risk of not being seen, and not being heard, and so thats why I always tell young women, make yourself seen, and make yourself heard  this is your idea, this is your thought. Own it, express it, be the voice that people hear. The Washington Post, September 2016

18. Toni Morrison, Novelist

I tell my students, When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game. Oprah, November 2003

19. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany

I dont believe you are simply born with the ambition of becoming chancellor. But if you want to make a difference, if you enjoy putting ideas into practice, then the post of chancellor has to be the one presenting the biggest opportunity of all.Spiegel, 2005

20. Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice-President, Apple

I have learned to listen and to hone my instincts, to be perceptive and to be receptive. To change. To constantly live in ambiguity. How else can leaders today look around the corner and warn others of whats coming? Only when you follow your instincts and continually renew your mind can your possibilities become realities. TedTalk, 2013

21. Tsai Ing-Wen, President of the Republic of China

I think that the society and our democracy are mature enough to place emphasis on the quality and the value of the individual politician, rather than their gender. Some people will find it fashionable to have a woman leader, but I think the reason people chose me as the leader of this country is because my policies and my values suit the needs of Taiwan today. We represent people who want to have change in the society. The Washington Post, 2016

22. Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO, TaskRabbit

I think that many of my lessons have been around being authentic as a leader, being fully who I am as a person and allowing that authenticity to shape my leadership style. I was a different leader when I worked in India with Google. Earlier I joined companies that shared my values and now I get to shape a company that reflects my values. Ive learned to connect the individual to the collective we are trying to create. Stanford Business, 2017

23. Maxine Waters, U.S. Representative

You know what Im told? Im told that there are so many people out there who believe they dont have power, that they dont have influence, and what they have to say doesnt make a difference. I would like, in the best way possible, to support people being able to think of themselves as people with influence and power. Elle, 2018

24. Denise Morrison, CEO, Campbell Soup Company

I encourage everyone  women and men alike  to be strategic about their careers. We plan for everything, but people often overlook developing a strategic plan for their career. Women need to be willing to take jobs with full P&L responsibility  jobs on the front line running brands, services and businesses. You need a portfolio of skills that will help you reach your ultimate career goal.Forbes, 2017

25. Michele Buck, CEO, Hersheys

Make an impact in every single assignment that you are given. Look at it as how can I take this to the next level. And be confident in yourself. I think women just dont have as much inherent confidence in themselves. They tend to be harsher critics of themselves than they need to be. So go for it. Fortune, 2018
Scene from the strike. Photo: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images

Women in Spain are observing International Womens Day with a massive, nationwide feminist strike  and, according to the main trade unions, 5.3 million people have participated.

Per The Guardian, the event is intended to highlight sexual discrimination, domestic violence, and the wage gap. The slogan for the strike is if we stop, the world stops and their manifesto  which calls for an end to sexual violence and oppression  can be read here.

The strike, during which women have been encouraged to participate in two-hour walkouts, was organized by a group called the 8 March Commission. Madrid mayor Manuela Carmena and Barcelona mayor Ada Colau have both expressed strong public support. According to the BBC, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz also canceled her events for the day, saying she was on a domestic strike.

As people in public positions, we have the duty to mobilize on behalf of those who cant go on strike, Colau said of her decision to support the strike. This is the century of women and of feminism; weve raised our voices and we wont stop. No more violence, discrimination, or pay gap.
Photo: Olivia Arthur/Magnum Photos

Women of the World is a series of snapshots of how women live, in honor of International Womens Day. The conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is notorious for its guardianship system, under which Saudi women must have a designated legal male guardian  usually a father, brother, or husband  who can make decisions on her behalf. Though the rule was officially softened in 2017, male guardians still exert significant influence: Women in Saudi cant get a passport, travel outside the country, or get married without their guardians permission. Amal* is a 28-year-old woman living in the suburbs of a city in Saudi Arabia. She spoke to the Cut about how the guardianship system impacts her life.

My dad is my guardian, but for the majority of my life I didnt think that my decisions  especially the big ones  were made by him. I was not physically forced into marriage or into a specific major in college; even when he forced two of my sisters to marry men they didnt want to, I thought that he simply must know better than they do. But when I look back, I realize I was manipulated into thinking the choices he made for me were my own, even though I know now that they werent.

Im unmarried, so I still live in my familys home. I have to ask my fathers permission to leave our property and one of my brothers must escort me anywhere I go, even to places like the doctor. Usually Im stuck in the house because women in Saudi Arabia arent allowed to drive. (This will change in June when the ban is lifted, and I plan to get my license  and a motorcycle  as soon as possible). My brothers arent as conservative as my dad, but they are just as protective. Theyre taught to behave this way by our male elders and by society; even if they wanted to be better, and I think that they do, its not easy for them. I know my father and brothers think everything they do for me is for my own good.

Even though Im highly educated, I am unemployed because my father and brothers refuse to drive me to work at a job where men are present, and most of the all-female jobs Im qualified for  like teaching or working at a bank  are extremely competitive. Many women in Saudi who work can also choose to hire a driver, but my family refuses to let me ride in a car with a male stranger. When I was 26, I applied for a prestigious scholarship that would allow for me to travel abroad; thousands of Saudis apply and I was one of the few chosen for an in-person interview in Riyadh. My father had encouraged me to apply, but when I told him I got the interview and I would pay for the plane ticket there myself, he refused to let me go. I lost out on the educational opportunity of a lifetime because he refused to escort me to Riyadh. So many of my friends who are from similar tribes are doctors or have scholarships in the United States because their parents let them stay there alone, but my father wont give me that option.

I convinced myself that every decision that my father made on my behalf was one Id made on my own.

Because I am such a strong-willed, opinionated person, I coped for a long time by going into complete denial. I convinced myself that every decision that my father made on my behalf was one Id made on my own. It was easier for me to accept his decisions if I could believe that they were mine, too. I didnt want to believe that Im weak. I refused to believe that I was a 20-something whose dad chose everything for her. But now I know that he did then  and he still does. I feel numb about it all. Its overwhelming to be almost 30 and my dad is still the one saying no to job opportunities because they dont meet his very specific criteria.

Im not sure what would happen if I decided to defy my dad. Im not sure if he would involve the police, or the tribe, or if he would just disown me altogether. But its not just the material consequences that keep me from going against his wishes: I also love him, and respect him, and even after everything thats happened I still want him to agree with my decisions. I feel paralyzed and like a failure, sometimes; I dont know if its the actual guardianship system that is keeping me from moving out and getting a job and marrying the person I want to, or if its the fear and respect I have for my dad. Some days I just want to be able to take a meaningful step in my life without having to ask myself if my dad would agree with it or not. Usually I end up feeling that not fighting with him and keeping the peace in the house is the only option I have  but its me who ends up paying the price for going along with his decisions.

It would be amazing to be the one who decides something for once and to do it without asking permission, even something as small as going outside and taking a walk.

*Name has been changed. Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Shruti Kapoor Photo: Republic TV, India

Women of the World is a series of snapshots of how women live, in honor of International Womens Day. Since the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in 2012 made international headlines, Indian activists have worked overtime to end gender-based violence in a nation where sexual violence is still a taboo topic. Luckily, more and more groups dedicated to empowering and educating women to speak out are springing up around the country, including Sayfty, a nonprofit founded by Dr. Shruti Kapoor. Although Kapoor is now based in New York, shes focused on helping women and girls in India, where she was born and raised. She spoke with the Cut about her work.

Like many women and girls, I dealt with sexual harassment growing up in India, but the messaging I received was always that my personal safety was not something I should be worried about. Instead, it was something my father, brother, or husband would be responsible for; they would take care of me. So, if I ever experienced any sort of harassment on the street  a catcall or an unwanted touch  I would ignore it or look away.

It was not until I moved to the U.S. in 2000 to get my Ph.D. in economics that I really started to understand what freedom for women and girls really meant: to be able to wear what you want, walk at any hour of the night and feel safe, to not have to be chaperoned by a male member of the family. I was teaching full-time when the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, occurred. Jyoti had boarded a bus on her way home from a movie one night with a male friend. She was beaten and raped by several men, thrown half-naked onto the road, and later died from her injuries.

Along with millions of other people, I felt affected by the gang rape. I was very angry and upset, but I also took it as an opportunity to actually do something about the issue. Thats when I decided to start Sayfty, with the aim of really encouraging women and girls to speak out against gender-based violence.There are two components to our work at Sayfty: one is the education and the other is empowerment. Our ultimate goal is to actively encourage women and girls to do something about their personal safety.

The unfortunate part is that its so ingrained in our culture that a lot of the time, we unknowingly normalize it. Harassment just becomes part of our daily lives, and we ignore it.

Gender violence is very common in India, but its also very common in other parts of the world. The U.N. has stated that one in three women will face some form of sexual abuse or violence during the course of their lifetime. In India, the story is no different. The unfortunate part is that its so ingrained in our culture that a lot of the time, we unknowingly normalize it. Harassment just becomes part of our daily lives, and we ignore it.

Last year there were more than 34,000 rape cases that were reported in India. A lot of women and girls dont even report these crimes, so you can imagine the number must be higher. India has all the laws set in place that are needed to protect women and girls, but our judicial system has loopholes that prevent women and girls from getting any sort of justice for many, many years. If a woman is raped, it might take her up to 15 or 20 years to get any form of justice  if she even gets justice at all. So many cases dont see the light because theres no system for fast-tracking them, so women get caught up with a system which is corrupted, slow, and bureaucratic.

Sexual violence is still a taboo topic in India. While there is a lot of growing awareness and things are changing in a positive direction, a lot of women will face stigma. Starting with your own family, you will be discouraged to report  because many times you have been abused by a family member and not a stranger. If you do find the courage to walk up to the police station to report it, the police might not even believe you and they might mock you or disrespect you.

I go back to India up to three times a year to work on Sayfty projects or attend related events. Luckily, my family in India has always been supportive of my professional goals, which is not the norm for all women there. Although my dad was very protective and strict growing up, my parents always encouraged me to follow my dreams. But not everyone feels the same way. Because Sayfty is such an active community online and we are talking about sensitive issues like marital rape, we have been subjected to trolls and online harassment. People have sent crude messages, tried to trivialize our work, and criticized us for standing up for women instead of men.

I dont want people to feel like India is a really unsafe place for women and girls  at the end of the day, I was born and raised there. It can be dangerous, but not to the degree that you cant walk the streets at all. You just have to be more alert and aware. But no matter who you are  whether youre a politician, school teacher, or an average Joe  I want you to know that violence against women is not acceptable. You need to stand up against it. You need to call out when you see something.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Photo: Moises Saman/Magnum Photos

Women of the World is a series of snapshots of how women live, in honor of International Womens Day. Hyung-Sook Kim, 90, fled from North to South Korea with her late husband during the Korean War, leaving a 6-year-old daughter behind. She intended their separation to be temporary, but when the war ended in 1953, closing the border, she and her daughter were stranded on opposite sides.

I came to South Korea with my husband, my husbands brother, and a baby I carried on my back. Because I had the baby, I had to leave my daughter with my mom, but I was told we were going to go back home in a month, so I thought Id only be gone for a little while. After I left I couldnt go back, because the way was blocked.

I have four children who were born in South Korea, one daughter and three sons. For years, I thought my [other] daughter was dead, so I couldnt believe it when I got a call from North Korea. I was puzzled  my granddaughter, a 43-year-old teacher, had applied for a reunion, but we didnt know who she was because I didnt even know my daughter had a child. So I contacted the Korean Red Cross, and I told them I didnt know her. They asked me to have a DNA test, and the results came back positive: She was my granddaughter. After that, I decided to go to North Korea to see her.

I went to North Korea on October 25, 2015, with my oldest son and youngest son, and my daughter and my granddaughter came to see us. Youll never know how I felt to see [my daughter]. Its a matter beyond the imagination of those who have not experienced it. Its pointless to try to describe how I felt.

I didnt recognize her at first. Shes 69 years old now. I left her when she was 6, so a lot had changed in between. Because she had gotten old without freedom, she looked older than I did. Other people asked me whether she was my sister. The life over there  the living conditions in South and North Korea are so different. How much toil must she have gone through, I thought, that people asked me if I was there to see my sister, when I am her mother? That breaks my heart. One day after the trip, I got so upset thinking about it that I had to be hospitalized. Meeting and then having to separate again  its really hard to describe all the feelings.

I didnt recognize her at first. Shes 69 years old now. I left her when she was 6, so a lot had changed in between.

We met for 12 hours over three days. We would meet at the reception hall, and when the time was up, we would separate and wait for the next scheduled meeting. There was always a North Korean agent at the table with us, so they werent able to talk with me freely. When they spoke about what North Korea is like, they only talked about how good a person their leader is. We couldnt ask more, and even if we had, they wouldnt have been able to answer  thats how they trained all of the people there. We couldnt talk about what life in South Korea is like, either. We would just listen and react thats all we could do. They were under such tight control.

The North Koreans gave them only two hours of freedom in their schedules, without agents. During those two hours, they came to our hotel and we were able to exchange gifts and talk about what we wanted to talk about. There were rules about what we couldnt bring  for example, we couldnt bring items like gold  but I brought a lot of daily necessities that my granddaughter would need for her everyday life. She said she needed medicine, so we bought a whole bag for her. As soon as the two-hour period was over, they would get up right away and leave.

When we left, my granddaughter said to me, Grandma, can you tell me your address in South Korea? So I said, What are you going to do with that? She said, I will send you an email. I asked, Can you send email? She said, Yes, I can. I said, Okay, try sending, and told her my address. Its already been two years and I havent heard a word.

Recently was the New Year celebration by the lunar calendar. As I was observing the day, how could I not think of my daughter? The fact that we cant see each other really breaks my heart. I think that unification of the Korean peninsula will happen, and my selfish wish is that unification will happen in my lifetime, but I dont know about that. There are many folks here in South Korea who have separated with families in the North, and there are a lot of folks here who are just waiting.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left) and African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, hold a news conference after their meeting at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

African Nations Should Avoid Forfeiting Sovereignty to China Over Loans, Says US State Secretary

ADDIS ABABAU.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on March 8 that African countries should be careful not to forfeit their sovereignty when they accept loans from China, the continents biggest trading partner.

Tillerson is using his first diplomatic trip to the continent to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade.

We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa, Tillerson told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital. It is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty.

The United States is the leading aid donor to Africa but China surpassed it as a trade partner in 2009. Beijing has pumped billions into infrastructure projects, though critics say the use of Chinese firms and labor undermines their value.

Tillerson said Chinese investments do not bring significant job creation locally and criticized how Beijing structures loans to African government.

If a government accepts a Chinese loan and gets into trouble, he said, it can lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default. According to a just-released assessment of Chinas One Belt, One Road (OBOR) infrastructure projectwhere several African countries will participateby the U.S.-based think tank Center for Global Development, nearly 82 percent of Djiboutis external debt is owed to China. Djibouti was also listed among eight countries at high risk of debt distress due to future OBOR-related financing.

The growing Chinese lending to the continent has also attracted criticism from some Africans, who say Chinas agenda is to feed its appetite for African raw materials like oil, timber, and minerals, and secure contracts for its firms.

Many African governments enjoy close ties with both Washington and Beijing. Kenya, for example, inaugurated a $3.2 billion railway funded by the Chinese regime last year. For the last three years, Kenya has received more than $100 million annually in U.S. security assistance.

Asked about Tillersons criticism of Chinas approach on the continent, Kenyas foreign affairs minister Monica Juma said: This country is engaging with partners from across the world driven by our own interests and for our own value.

Opaque Contracts

Tillerson arrived in Ethiopia, Africas second most populous nation, on March 7 and visited the African Union headquarters the following day. The complex was funded and built by the Chinese regime and is seen as a symbol of Beijings thrust for influence and access to the continents natural resources.

French newspaper Le Monde reported in January that the Chinese had bugged the complex and were secretly transferring data from computers to a server in Shanghai.

Ethiopia is home to some of Beijings biggest investments, from a railway to Djibouti that opened last year to factories and industrial parks.

Earlier this week, Tillerson criticized Chinas approach to Africa which he said encouraged dependency through opaque contracts and predatory loan practices.

Ethiopias prime minister resigned suddenly last month and a state of emergency was imposed but protests in the restive Oromia region have continued.

The secretary of state met Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned as prime minister but is still acting in the post awaiting a replacement. Details of their discussions were not released.

Tillerson said after meeting his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu that the answer to political turmoil in Ethiopia was greater freedoms.

It is important that the country moves on past the state of emergency as quickly as possible, he said.

Tillerson reiterated previous calls for African states to cut ties with North Korea.

North Korea has more than a dozen embassies on the continent. The Trump administration has said that Pyongyang earns hard currency from arms deals with African governments and the trafficking of wildlife parts from Africa.

Tillerson is due to fly to Djibouti, host to military bases owned by the U.S., China, Japan, France, and Italy.

He will then visit Kenya, a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia, before traveling to Chad and Nigeria, which are also battling to contain Islamist insurgents.

From Reuters. Epoch Times staff member Annie Wu contributed to this report.
(L-R) Bob Nault, MP for Kenora, Lorraine Crane, the chief of Slate Falls, and Jane Philpott, Canada's minister of Indigenous services, make a toast with cups filled with water from a new water treatment facility built to serve members of the Slate Falls First Nations community. (Courtesy of the office of Bob Nault)

After 14 Years, First Nations Community Has Access to Safe Drinking Water

Members of a northern Ontario First Nations community that was under long-term boil-water advisories for 14 years can now access safe drinking tap water thanks to a new water treatment plant.

The Slate Falls First Nation, located approximately 550 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, had been under 11 drinking water advisories since 2004. The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the plant, which was built with a $11.6 million investment by the federal government, was held yesterday.

Today is a big day to make changes to our lifestyle and we are very excited to finally be able to drink water right from the tap, said Slate Falls chief Lorraine Crane in a statement.

The community is looking forward to not having to purchase water or boil the water, and after almost 14 years of the boil water advisory, it will be a positive adjustment and a change to our lifestyle, she said.

The ceremony was attended by federal minister of indigenous services Jane Philpott, Member of Parliament Bob Nault, whose riding includes the region, and other community leaders.

We are pleased to celebrate this milestone and look for continued investments from the federal government for infrastructure projects to ensure that all First Nations in NAN [Nishnawbe Aski Nation] territory have access to safe drinking water, said Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) grand chief Alvin Fiddler. NAN represents 49 First Nations communities in northern Ontario.

Today in Slate Falls Nation we celebrate the grand opening of the communitys water treatment and distribution plant! @gcfiddler @janephilpott pic.twitter.com/Jegdc9vWiK  NishnawbeAski Nation (@NANComms) March 6, 2018

There are currently 81 long-term advisories on public drinking water systems on reserve. The federal government says it has plans to end all advisories by 2021.

The 2016 budget allocated $1.8 billion over five years to improve on-reserve water and wastewater infrastructure, in addition to $141.7 million over five years for monitoring and testing of drinking water.

The 2018 budget proposes an additional $172.6 million over three years to expedite removal of drinking water advisories, aiming to advance the end date by one year to 2020.

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After Dad Passes Away, Daughter Sends Him Letters Tied to BalloonsThen Unusual Reply Comes

Every year Emily Hinchberger, 11, sends a letter to her father, who died 11 years ago. She ties the letter to a balloon and sends it on its way.

She loved the idea of being able to communicate with her dad, her mother, Rebecca Crawford, told KSBW. I think that was an easy way as a child to understand that it would get to him.

This year, Emilys letter found its way from Hollister, California, to a San Ardo vineyard, about 60 miles away, where a man picked it up on his way to work and shared it with Veronica Manzo, of Bakersfield.

Dear Daddy, I miss you so much, the letter read. Guess what, I got all As in 6th grade and 1B in P.E. I wish you were here to see how I was doing. I love you, talk to you next year. Love, Emily.

Manzo was moved by the girls letter.

I have a daughter close to Emilys age and my daughter is extremely close to her dad, said Manzo. My heart just dropped when I read that letter. I just couldnt imagine my child going through such a loss.

Manzo posted pictures of balloons and the letter on social media and tried to find the sender. She succeeded.

After getting in contact with Crawford, Manzo offered to pay for private horse riding lessons for Emily.

Emilys father used to love horse riding.

He grew up around horses. Hes always ridden horses, Crawford said. Emilys always asked me to get her riding lessons, which isnt the cheapest thing to do.

Emily thought it perhaps wasnt an accident where the balloon landed.

I was thinking that the wind, maybe he did that or maybe he pushed it in the direction [of Bakersfield.] Its really cool to know he is up there looking out for me, she said.

Furthermore, the person who will give Emily her riding lessons is her fathers former girlfriend from high school. Crawford expects it will give Emily a chance to learn more about her father during his teenage years, just as shes entered that age herself.

Emily has learned something already.

Even when you lose a loved one, theres more people around you who care, and they will help you get through it, she said.

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Bikini-Clad Drunk Driver Pleads Guilty in Car Crash That Killed Man and Unborn Child

A college student in Texas who plowed into another vehicle while she was driving drunk, killing a man and his unborn child, pleaded guilty this week.

Shana Elliott, 22, was arrested after running head-on into another vehicle on State Highway 21 in San Marcos in 2016.

The crash killed Fabian Guerrero and injured his wife Kristian Guerrero, who was driving.

Kristian Guerrero was five months pregnant at the time and her unborn baby was killed, reported KXAN.

Kristian Guerrero, who had recently gotten married, underwent a full day of induced labor to deliver the baby, though the baby was lifeless.

The baby was just perfect, her aunt Diane Castillo told People magazine. Kristian got to hold his hand for a while, and his paternal grandmother got to hold him as well. Everybody is really just devastated from everything that has happened.

Initially, the baby had a heartbeat but doctors then did another test and found the baby had died.

They did an ultrasound soon after the accident and the babys heartbeat was still there, Castillo said. Kristian was so relieved that she would still have part of her husband after finding out he had passed. When they did the second ultrasound, they found that the baby had no heartbeat and had died in the womb.

Elliott was originally arrested for driving while intoxicated but after Fabian Guerrero died, the charges were upgraded to intoxicated manslaughter.

Elliott was a senior at Texas State University when the accident occurred.

A witness told police officers at the time that after the crash, a woman in a bikini was seen rolling a bottle of alcohol under a vehicle.

Elliott later admitted to officers that she had been drinking beer and alcohol that day while floating on the San Marcos River, reported KXAN. Her blood alcohol content was .199 at the time of the crash.

Now that Elliott has pleaded guilty, the jury was instructed to return a guilty verdict and then decide a sentence.

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Message in a Bottle Containing Ashes of Young Woman Washes up on British Island

A message in a bottle containing the ashes of a young woman who wanted to see the world has been washed up in one of the remotes parts of the UK.

Fisherman John Macleod found the touching tribute in a small pink bottle on the shore of Scalpay, Outer Hebrides in Scotland while taking a walk with his brother.

When we sat down and opened the bottle and saw there was a message inside we got a bit of a shock. Ive never seen something like it and probably never will again, he said.

The pink plastic bottle, that was originally sent out to sea in Cornwall about 310 miles away, contained a small amount of Laura Newmans ashes along with a note asking those who find it to get in touch with her parents.

Newman was only 24-years-old when she passed away on in August 2016. She suffered from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy after twisting her ankle on holiday which caused her an extreme amount of pain.

She had trouble moving, eating, couldnt tolerate light, vibration or loud noise around her and her only contact with the outside world was eventually through her online friends.

Her parents wanted to scatter her ashes at all the places where she loved to travel and to put some of them in a pink bottle so she could continue her journey.

Its traveled virtually from Lands End to Scalpay in about seven months, Macleod said. I think its a beautiful story.

He added, It feels like fate that we found it out on the exact date of the 18 months on from when she died.

Macleod found the email address in the hand-written message was wrong but persisted with trying out different emails until he got the right one.

The 44-year-old fisherman threw the bottle back into the sea at the same spot he found it, to let it continue its journey.

Laura Newmans mother, 59-year-old Fay Newman, revealed that Macleod was the first person to get back to her.

This is the first time someone has gotten back to us and hopefully well be hearing from people for years to come. Weve looked at Scalpay online and its beautiful. She would have loved it, she said.

We wanted to scatter her ashes in all of the places that she liked to go and were still going to scatter them wherever we go on holiday. But my husband had the idea to put some of her ashes into a pink bottle so that she could continue traveling.

Laura loved going to Cornwall and researching where her online friends were from but unfortunately wasnt able to see as much of the world as she would have liked, her mother said. She made friends with people all around the world, never judging people for their beliefs, race or color.

The night before her death, her mother sat by Lauras bedside and made something for her to eat before she attempted to sleep.

But the pain caused by her condition meant that she would struggle to sleep but on that fateful night, she also struggled to breathecausing both an air and regular ambulance to be called to their home.

Laura had made her parents promise to never keep her on life support and they stood by their promise. A coroners report revealed that she died from a combination of ingestion of vomit, intestinal blockage, and RSD.

Laura was an aspiring doctor and had hoped to go to university.

She was such a caring person, she would have made a brilliant doctor, her mother said.

We know that if there is life after this one that she will strive to achieve all the things she missed out on in this life.

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Federal police officers and soldiers arrive at the dock where an explosion occurred on a ferry in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on Feb. 21, 2018. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Canada Updates Security Alert for Mexico after Playa del Carmen Incidents

The Canadian government has updated its security note on travel to Mexico to indicate that the U.S. Embassy is closing its consulate in the city of Playa del Carmen following incidents on ferries operating out of the tourist hot spot.

On Feb. 21, an explosive device detonated on board a ferry that links Playa del Carmen to the town of Cozumel, injuring over 20 people. On March 1, local authorities found another explosive device on a ferry operating on the same route. The incidents are still under investigation.

Avoid tourist ferries travelling in the region until further notice, be vigilant and monitor local media (including social media), reads the travel advisory on the Canadian governments website.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico said on March 7 that it had received information about a security threat in Playa del Carmen and that all U.S. government employees are prohibited from travelling to the city, effective immediately. The embassy also said its closing its local consulate until further notice.

Initial reports following the Feb.21 explosion indicated that three Canadians were among the injured. However, a Global Affairs Canada spokesperson told CBC News that the reports are inaccurate.

Playa del Carmen, located in southeast of Mexico, is a popular coastal tourist resort town.

There are existing travel advisories by the Canadian government warning that Canadians should avoid non-essential travel to northern and western states in Mexico due to high levels of violence and organized crime.

According to data from Statistics Canada, Mexico is the second-most popular foreign destination for Canadians after the United States, with around 2 million visits by Canadians to Mexico each year.

There have been a number of cases of Canadians experiencing violent encounters in Mexico in recent years. However, the Canadian government has not issued a national advisory against travelling to Mexico.

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(L to R) Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Wanda Robson, and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz at the unveiling of the new $10 note in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 8, 2018. (Bank of Canada / screenshot)

Civil Rights Icon Viola Desmond Immortalized on Canadas New $10 Bill

In a historic ceremony in Halifax on International Womens Day, Viola Desmond became the first black person and first non-royal woman on a regularly circulating Canadian banknote.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz spoke during an unveiling ceremony for the $10 note. But the star of the ceremony was Wanda Robson.

Robson, Desmonds younger sister, was greeted with loud cheers at the start of the ceremony. She delighted the crowd with stories of her big sisters courage.

I give the artist so much credit, said Robson. I say thank you, thank you, thank you for that. What else can I say?

Our family will go down in history.

Its a big day for Halifax, a big and important day for Canada, said Morneau.

Desmonds story is a powerful one.

On Nov. 8, 1946, Desmond refused to leave the whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre. This took place nearly a decade before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama in the United States. The incident, in which Desmond was eventually dragged out of Roseland Theatre, fined, and thrown in jail by police, sparked a key moment in Canadas civil rights movement.

The deck was doubly stacked against Desmond because of her gender and the colour of her skin, said Morneau, adding that she paved the way for a broader understanding of human rights across Canada.

Desmond, who died in 1965, was an entrepreneur who sold her own line of cosmetics.

Viola was tireless as she chased her dreams, Morneau said.

New Note

The new $10 banknote is vertical. On its back is the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, located in Winnipeg. The note will be printed on polymer, which was introduced to Canadian banknotes in 2011.

Im immensely proud of all the innovation that went into this notefrom the public consultation process that encouraged a national conversation on the important contributions of women in Canadian history, to the notes beautiful vertical design, to its cutting-edge security features, said Poloz

He noted that it is long past time to feature an iconic Canadian woman on a banknote and that it has been a goal of his since he became governor.

Poloz emphasized that even with the proliferation of digital payments, the number of physical notes in circulation keeps increasing.

The Bank of Canada got Canadians directly involved in the decision-making process for the new $10 note. More than 26,000 nominations were received, including one from Robson.

The new $10 note will go into circulation later this year.

With files from The Canadian Press.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz

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Convicted Sex Offender Could Face Longest Punishment in California History

A convicted sex offender from Fresno, California, could face the longest punishment in the states history.

Cornelio Jimenez, 42, was found guilty on Wednesday, March 7, on 34 counts of child molestation on two girls who were aged 4 and 7 at the time of the offence, one count of possessing more than 600 images of child porn, and one count of using a child to produce porn, reported the Fresno Bee.

"I have to molest her every chance I get."

At 6:30 @ABC30, disturbing emails on top of terrible video.

This Fresno sex offender who recorded abuse while hiding from police could face the longest punishment in California history. pic.twitter.com/XaDVaEWDB9  Corin Hoggard (@corinhoggard) March 7, 2018

Each count of child molestation carries a possible sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Since Jimenez had already been convicted of attempted child molestation in 1997 in Washington, each sentence he now faces could be doubled to 50 years to life in prison, according to prosecutor Deborah Miller.

He had also previously pleaded guilty to failing to update his registration as a sex offender.

Jimenez now faces 1,882 years to life in prison, which could be the longest jail sentence in Californian history, reported ABC13, citing experts.

VERDICT: Jury finds Cornelio Jimenez guilty on all 36 counts of sex crimes and child porn. He could face 1882+ years to life in prison at sentencing, which would be the longest in California history, according to court experts. Background @ABC30 story:https://t.co/7oZiOaCSeY  Corin Hoggard (@corinhoggard) March 7, 2018

California has strong laws against sexual assault, especially when against children, Miller told Fresno Bee.

We cant give child molesters enough time in prison. Theres just not enough years to give them, she added.

The 42-year-old was arrested in 2015 after police received two tip-offs from Microsoft and Dropbox about someone distributing child porn.

When we became aware that he was sending emails where he was referencing ongoing molestation of children in the home, the very next day we executed a search warrant on the house, Fresno police Detective David Wilkin told the newspaper.

During his trial, Miller said Jimenez discussed molesting children in his emails.

Theres this very cute little 4-year-old girl that I babysit about once a week, Miller said, quoting one of Jimenezs emails, according to ABC 13.

I have hella pictures of her. I have to molest her every chance I get, she continued.

Investigators found more than 40 videos showing Jimenez molesting the two children and nearly 10,000 files of child porn were used as evidence in the case.

The prosecutor said the two girls were abused during the period of June 2014 to June 2015. She also said Jimenez lied to police about where he lived for more than a year, reported ABC13.

After Jimenez was arrested, he confessed to his crimes.

Defense lawyer Angelica Rivera argued that two of the 36 counts of child abuse involved the same criminal act.

The easy thing to do in this case is to clump all the counts together, Rivera said, reported ABC 13.

Thats the easy thing to do. The right thing is to take them separately, she added. But even so, the punishment would only be reduced to 1827 years to life, according to ABC13 citing Miller.

Jimenez is scheduled for sentencing May 8. pic.twitter.com/MPwW5L1H0c  Corin Hoggard (@corinhoggard) March 7, 2018

Before the trial, Jimenez turned down a plea deal of 75 years to life.

Jimenez is scheduled to be sentenced on May 8 and will remain in Fresno County Jail on no bail.

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A photo of Swedish journalist Kim Wall who was aboard a submarine "UC3 Nautilus" before it sank. (TT News Agency/ Tom Wall Handout via Reuters)

Danish Inventor Denies Murder in Swedish Journalist Death Trial

COPENHAGEN, DenmarkDanish inventor Peter Madsen denies murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homebuilt submarine in August but admits indecent handling of a corpse, his defense lawyer said at the opening of his trial in Copenhagen on Thursday, March 8.

Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who was researching a story on the entrepreneur and aerospace engineer, went missing after Madsen took her out to sea in his 17-meter (56-foot) submarine in August last year.

Later that month, police identified a headless female torso washed ashore in Copenhagen as Walls.

The accused denies voluntary manslaughter, but admits violating the law about indecent handling of a corpse, his lawyer Betina Hald Engmark said in court.

Under the Danish penal code, manslaughter is used to describe the deliberate killing of a person and there is no distinction between manslaughter and murder. Involuntary manslaughter is used when the killing is not intentional.

Madsen is charged with murdering and dismembering Wall, along with a charge of sexual assault without intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature.

He has admitted dismembering her body on board his submarine and dumping her body parts in the sea.

He maintains that she died as a consequence of an accident, Hald Engmark told TV2 News before entering the court.

The cause of her death is yet to be determined, but the prosecutors said she died by strangulation or cutting of her throat.

Reporting by Emil Gjerding Nielson

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Dog Put Down in Virginia After Mauling and Killing 8-Day-Old Newborn Girl

A dog was put down in Virginia after killing a newborn girl in Lee County on Wednesday, March 7.

The little girl was just 8-days-old when she was attacked in her bassinet by a wolf-mix canine, reported WBIR.

The dog was destroyed after authorities responded, Lee County Sheriff Gary Parsons said. The hybrid was initially locked up at the pound following the attack.

The parents of the child and owner of the dog signed a waiver that enabled authorities to put the dog down.

A family member rushed the child to a medical facility in Big Stone Gap, from which she was flown to UT Medical Center.

But she ultimately passed away from her injuries.

The babys name has not been publicly released.

The family has two other children, reported WJHL.

Dog mauls infant to death in Lee County https://t.co/OxfBy7P9mS pic.twitter.com/rzQHJWwUqz  Times-News Online (@timesnewsonline) March 8, 2018

Charges may be forthcoming, Parsons told the Kingsport Times-News.

We are going to continue to look into it and see what develops and of course consult with our commonwealths attorney to see if any charges are to be placed, he said.

Some municipalities have rules governing wolf hybrids, such as requiring a permit for them or outlawing them entirely.

Several jurisdictions in the Washington area ban the animals, according to a report from The Washington Post from 1995.

The hybrid is a wild animal, and it has wild instincts, said Gary Sprifke, a Prince William animal control administrator at the time, who was setting up a notice to hybrid owners to notify them they would have to give up their wolf hybrids or face a misdemeanor.

Hybrids play by an entirely different set of rules than dogs. Thats what causes problems.

Counties that ban wolf hybrids include Arlington County, The Post reported in 2017.

A wolf hybrid is the result of a wolf mating with a dog.

A state law says that any county, city, or town in Virginia has authority to establish a permit system to ensure responsible ownership of hybrid canines, which may include requiring permits. While some states classify wolf-canine hybrids as wild animals, though, Virginia as a state explicitly does not.

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Pruitt has proposed the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obamas costly climate change initiative. He likewise is leading the effort to rescind Obamas Waters of the United States rule, which imposed a new definition for the waters the federal government can regulate under the Clean Water Act. The broad definition, if enacted, would infringe on property rights and override the role of states in water stewardship.

In addition to initiating a variety of other regulatory repeals, Pruitt halted the EPAs manipulation of judicial review with a directive to end the agencys sue and settle scheme. For years, EPA regulators worked in concert with advocacy groups to engineer legal settlements resulting in more stringent regulation by precedent than it could have enacted following the formal rulemaking process. Similarly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ended the Obama administrations practice of funneling billions of dollars in settlement funds to left-wing allies.

Republican Ajit Pai, a career official of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Trump as its first Indian American administrator, also slashed red tape. The commission reversed the 2015 net neutrality rule (formally titled the Open Internet Order), which subjected internet service providers to regulations crafted decades ago for telephony.

Slashing Red Tape

However, the process of regulation is so ingrained in the political system that its not always possible to shift into reverse.

The administration inherited 1,985 regulations in the rulemaking pipeline, 966 in the proposal stage and 1,019 in the final stage. The administrations new Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions reflects the withdrawal of 635 previously listed rulemakings, another 244 regulations rendered inactive, and the delay of 700 rulemakings. The agenda also commits federal agencies to cutting future regulatory costs to the private sector by $9.8 billion.

Nonetheless, federal rulemaking slowed dramatically in 2017, with the Trump administration issuing two-thirds fewer regulations in its first year (1,209) than the administrations of both presidents Barack Obama (3,356) and George W. Bush (3,233). The number of major rules, those anticipated to cost the private sector $100 million or more annually, numbered just 32 in Trumps first year, compared to 73 under Obama and 51 under Bush.

Executive Orders

The president has also issued a variety of executive orders (EOs) and presidential memoranda directing agency administrators to take specific regulatory actions. Signaling a major change in energy policy, for example, the president directed agency officials to expedite requests for approvals to construct and operate the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to invite TransCanada to resubmit its application for construction and operation of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Two other executive orders are intended to have a direct and substantial impact on the extent of future rulemaking.

EO 13771 directs agency officials to identify for repeal at least two existing regulations for every new regulation they promulgate and White House officials have even raised the goal to eliminating three regulations for each new one issued. The order also calls for a budgeting process to manage regulatory costs, and prohibits any increase in the total incremental cost of all regulations unless required by law or advised by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
FBI Agent and Estranged Wife Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide at Maryland Home

An FBI agent and his estranged wife were found dead in Maryland this week.

The pair were scheduled to appear back in divorce court on Wednesday, March 7, reported The Capital Gazette.

Officers responded in Crownsville to a report of a domestic assault from a woman who said she was calling on behalf of the victim, who was being threatened by her recently estranged husband.

The Anne Arundel County Police Department responded and officers found Donna Fisher, 54, severely stabbed. She was soon pronounced dead at the scene, reported Fox5.

David Raynor, 52, the FBI agent, was found suffering from stab wounds and a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was also pronounced dead at the scene.

Both were found outside of the home.

A spokesman for the FBI said that Raynor had been a special agent with the bureau since 1996 and was stationed at the Baltimore field office since 2003.



Sources told CBS that the domestic situation was not related to any case that Raynor was working on.

The FBI declined to specify what job Raynor had at the bureau.

Court records show that Fisher filed for divorce in March 2017 and the pair appeared in court for the first time on Tuesday.

Proceedings were scheduled to continue through Thursday but the deaths happened prior to the scheduled appearance on Wednesday.

A neighbor of the couple said he knew the pair and that they had gone out of their way before to help him.

When my wife was sick he provided a small generator, he was very helpful and friendly, Jim Lind told The Gazette. Donna was very friendly and personable, always walking through the neighborhood.

Another neighbor said the couple had two children.

Court records indicate that child support was one of the issues being discussed in court.

From NTD.tv

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Breannah Lee Piva took her own life in 2015 after she was savagely bullied at school. (Do It For Bree Bullying Program/GoFundMe)

Grieving Parents Fight to Stop Bullying After Their 16-Year-Old Daughter Takes Her Own Life

Parents of a teenager who was bullied so viciously that she took her own life have spoken out about their grief and are campaigning against the unwanted, aggressive behaviour.

Joanne and Michael Piva said their daughter Breannah Lee Piva took her own life in 2015 when she was 16 after she faced years bullying on a daily basis at Ayr High School in north Queensland, Australia, reported 9News.

Breannah not only suffered from verbal abuse but also dealt with physical altercations and telecommunication bullying, according to a GoFundMe page set up to fundraise money for the Pivas campaign.

Breannah was thrown in front of a car, belted up on numerous occasions, hospitalised on multiple occasions. She lived in fear from the bullies, the page read.

Michael said the Piva family made multiple complaints to the school over the years. The Pivas also discovered through information obtained by freedom of information laws that Breannah had made more than 20 complaints to the school over a period of three years.

But nothing was done, he told the news station.

Some of the complaints which were handwritten by Breannah detailed separate incidents of physical abuse.

[Name withheld] threw a bottle of iced coffee at me and then came up behind me and rubbed marshmallow over my face and collar of my uniform, one complaint read, reported 9News.

All year she has given herself permission to hit me across the back of my head with either her books or her hand as hard as she can and even when I tell her to stop she says she has her own permission to do it, another read.

Breannah also received serious verbal threats to her life.

Yesterday I was walking home and a group of kids from AHS started calling out to me saying oi forget were gunna bash you, were gunna kill you and I walked into Coles to avoid them, the complaint read.

The Pivas have now taken legal action against the high school over the intense bullying their daughter had suffered.

The familys lawyer Sarah Sarinas said Breannah was struggling to cope.

She was reaching out for help and support and she was let down time and time again by the school. They were aware of the problem and they didnt fix it, Sarinas told the news station.

There are a pile of incident reports there and thats what makes this case all the more shocking that nothing was done and it has led to tragic consequences for this family, she added.

Joanne said her daughter had come home with bruises and black eyes on several occasions, reported 9News.

I have taken her to the hospital and to the police, but the police say they cant charge anyone because theyre under 17, she told the news stations.

She got one message from a boy on her phone saying if she didnt kill herself he would kill her. But police say they couldnt prove who exactly sent the message as the owner of the phone blamed someone else.

The circumstances surrounding her report to the police are unclear. According to the website Lawstuff, it is considered illegal to engage in bullying and if the bully is over 10 years of age, they can be charged with a criminal offence that may carry a jail sentence.

Breannahs younger sister Michaela said on the night her sister died that Breannah had received a number of abusive text messages.

She just went really quiet and asked me to leave her room, Michaela told 9News.

The next time I saw her she was dead.

The Pivas have set up the Do It For Bree foundation to offer free workshops to our youths, according to the foundations website.

Our goal is to attend schools throughout the region and eventually Queensland and Australia-wide to run free workshops that deal with bullying, depression and youth suicide, the website said.

It also aims to stop bullying, prevent youth suicides and raise awareness about depression.

The crowdsourcing page set up for Pivas foundation is fundraising $10,000 for the cause.

Last week, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote to every school principal across Australia to join a national effort to stop bullying.

We believe all students have the right to be safe at school, Turnbull said in his letter to schools, reported Newscorp.

This is our chance to stand together. Together we can reduce the incidence of bullying, whether inside the school gate or online, and eliminate it wherever we can.

Bullying and violence has no place in Australia.

The letter also urged schools to sign up for the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence on March 16.

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Iran Could Be Using Your Smartphone Apps to Spy on You

Recent reports reveal how the Iranian regime has been using malicious apps to spy on users smartphones. The report was issued in one of the most recent publications of the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), widely held as the most influential Iranian opposition party.

In the report, NCRI exposes the attempts of government-backed hackers to develop apps designed to feed information on users devices back to central servers. This practice on the part of the regime was originally identified by researchers of the US branch of NCRI. The evidence was compiled into a paper titled Iran Cyber Repression: How the IRGC Uses Cyberwarfare to Preserve the Theocracy and was released in February. As a result, Google was able to identify at least one application on Google Play engineered by Iranian programmers. That app, called Telegram Black, has been removed from Google Play and the developer banned from offering additional apps on the site. Unfortunately, this incident is really just the tip of the iceberg.

Producing publicly available apps loaded with malware is and has been a broad-based strategy of the Iranian regime for quite some time. The regime has created close to 100 spyware apps, including Mobogram, Telegram Farsi, Hotgram, Wispi, and Telegram Talayi, all designed to resemble popular apps. These programs have already been unwittingly downloaded by hundreds of Iranian citizens.

The appearance of Telegram Black shows the risk these programs pose to international users as well. According to Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the NCRI-US, the Iranian security apparatus contains a unit called the Intelligence Organization, a specific department allocated to cyberwarfare. This is the department that deals with the cyberwarfare against the Western countries [and] against its own population.

Planting malware in publicly accessible app venues could prove to be one of the most effective routes to target the West in the digital sphere.

In some ways, these reports are old news.

Iran has been using the internet to suppress its own citizens forever. This practice has been on the uptick ever since the recent protest movement began in Iran last December.

What is important to note about this story are two very important points in regards to US national security, both to the threat posed by Iran specifically, as well as the broader cyber integrity of the United States as a whole.

Iran is expanding its cyberwarfare tactics to an international scale. In fact, there is much evidence to suggest that one of the main motivations of the regime to implement cyber repression on the Iranian people is to test the efficiency of various tactics and then export them to enemy countries.

The Iranian regime is currently hard at work to test the success of these apps on the people of Iran first, said Jafarzadeh. If not confronted, its next victims will be the people of other nations.

Speaking to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence almost two weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats voiced a similar sentiment. Iran will try to penetrate US and allied networks for espionage and lay the groundwork for future cyberattacks, said Coats in his statement.

All of this confirms the theory posed by several experts over the past months that Iran will resort to the cyber realm to target its adversaries. This applies to both direct cyberattack as well as intelligence-gathering operations. Iran has a strong track record on this already.

In late 2017, for instance, British intelligence officials reported that a series of hacks in June 2017 that targeted several Parliament members, including Prime Minister Theresa May, was executed by cybercriminals connected to the Iranian government. The hacks affected some 9,000 accounts and exposed approximately 100 sensitive communications. While Iran may not be the most advanced in cybercapabilities, the country has proven itself capable enough to execute substantial operations.

The second takeaway from these reports is the implication for cyber integrity of the civilian realm. Much talk has been generated about threats to domestic information systems in the United States ever since reports by American intelligence agencies came out back in October, warning of the exposure of critical infrastructure to state actor attacks. The importance of this warning and others that followed was underscoring the vulnerability of the private sphere in general as the most likely cybertarget of Americas enemies. Planting malware in publicly accessible app venues could prove to be one of the most effective routes to target the West in the digital sphere.

Until now, Irans 80-million-strong population has been a testing ground to determine the most successful methods for cyberintrusion and attack. The evidence shows the method adopted by the regime to create malicious apps disguised as legitimate. It is no surprise that this same tactic is now being used to target international users. The aforementioned NCRI report lists a handful of supposedly problematic apps that are available outside of Iran. The list includes Mobogram, Telegram Farsi, and Telegram Black. U.S. media has reported that most, if not all, are indeed still available for download.

Noteworthy in these reports is that the specific tactic being used by Iran-backed programmers to disseminate their malicious apps has been producing forks, or unofficial copies of other officially licensed programs. Using this method will likely lead Iran to produce replicas of the most popular applications in the US in the hopes that users will take the bait.

Iran attempts to hide viruses in popular applications smacks of the growing concern revolving around the so-called supply chain hack, namely the danger of devices and programs becoming infected with malware at some point before reaching the consumer. This threat has become increasingly more central in the world of IT security over the past several years. This danger has prompted a new level of awareness to ensure the digital products Americans use, either devices or programs, are secure from the point of manufacture to the point of delivery.

Luckily, the work of private activism in tandem with industry leaders was able to expose and at least partially neutralize the threat posed by Irans latest attempts to target international users. At the very least, this revelation will serve as a wake-up for both private and government organizations about the need to stay vigilant in combating Irans activities in the cybersphere.

Samuel Siskind is a Jerusalem-based consultant and researcher on physical and information security for private and governmental institutions. This article was originally published on OpsLens.com
Members of The Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) assist police at Kalvebod Faelled in Copenhagen on Aug. 23, 2017 in search of missing bodyparts of journalist Kim Wall close to the site where her torso was found on, Aug. 21. (MARTIN SYLVEST/AFP/Getty Images)

Journalist Told Boyfriend Im still alive in Final Texts Just Before Being Murdered

The Swedish journalist who was brutally murdered then cut up texted her boyfriend just before dying and told him she was still alive.

Kim Wall texted her boyfriend in August just moments before going down into a submarine in Denmark.

Im still alive btw (by the way), she said. But going down now! I love you!!!!!!

She added one last message a minute later, reported Metro.

He brought coffee and cookies tho, she said.

The 30-year-old then boarded the homemade submarine crafted by a Danish inventor.

The journalists body parts and clothing was discovered in the ocean in the days and months following her disappearance.

Peter Madsen, the inventor, at first claimed that he dropped Wall off and didnt know what happened to her after that.

He then said she died in an accident, saying she may have died of carbon monoxide poisoning or from hitting her head on the hatch, he said.

As Kim Wall's murder trial begins, friends seeking 'justice' hope her legacy empowers women journalists. https://t.co/9B2sFMgCAc "She was courageous in asking challenging questions to people who held power," her friend Coleen Jose said. pic.twitter.com/9vppoFSmSd  ABC News (@ABC) March 7, 2018

Kim Wall, 30, a journalist, boarded a self-built submarine of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, last August, for an interview. Her torso was found days later in waters off Copenhagen, and Mr. Madsen then alleged she hit her head & died. Trial starts today. pic.twitter.com/0tUtQhlFRB  Aaron Vallely (@Vallmeister) March 8, 2018

Prosecution wants to make the argument that #KimWall's death was murder and it was premeditated #SubmarineTrial #PeterMadsen  Maddy Savage (@maddysavage) March 8, 2018

Danish inventor goes on trial over murder of Swedish reporter https://t.co/8ZaWtldbWq  Irish Times World (@IrishTimesWorld) March 8, 2018

Madsen took the stand on the first day of his trial in Copenhagen on Thursday and denied he killed Wall.

I deny that I am guilty of the murder of Kim Wall, Peter Madsen said, after his lawyer entered a not guilty plea, reported The Guardian. There is nothing worse that can happen to a person like me than to sail out with another person and return alone.

Madsen said his story has changed because he wanted to spare her family.

I was only thinking about Kim Walls relatives, he said. Its a very, very horrible story. I knew she was dead and she would not come back. I had only one purpose and it was to spare the relatives as much as possible.

While Madsen denies murdering Wall, he admitted to dismembering her body and throwing it into the ocean.

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Man Released From Jail After Not Using the Bathroom for 47 Days

English courts released a man arrested on suspicion of having drugs after he refused to go to the bathroom for 47 days.

Police posted updates of the case via Twitter, indicating the suspect, Lamarr Chambers, swallowed drugs at the time of his arrest and would need to release the evidence sooner or later. But Chambers both didnt go to the bathroom and refused medical treatment. Police had no way to obtain the drug evidence, Fox News reported.

Still no news, another day passes without any movement #day4inthebigharlowhouse https://t.co/zqt2j2MSTx  Op Raptor West (@OpRaptorWest) January 20, 2018

Where detainees are suspected of ingesting or concealing drugs inside their body, we must balance overseeing their welfare and ensuring that all evidence is captured to ensure the best possible chance of prosecution, Deputy Chief Constable B.J. Harrington said, via a press release from the Essex Police.

Lamarr Chambers was arrested on Jan. 17 and spent a week without using the bathroom, forcing police to return to court to ask for an extension on his detention. The police were forced to ask the courts for more extensions after he continued to not use the bathroom, Sky News reported.

Male has now been in police custody for the past 50hrs and will remain until he passes said items, he has refused food for all this time and will not accept that he will not be released until he releases #howlongcanyougo #mustbehungry https://t.co/17EtQtDB4K  Op Raptor West (@OpRaptorWest) January 19, 2018

Chambers was eventually released on March 5 due to health concerns. All charges were dropped. Police then rearrested him on another drug charge but allowed him to post bail. They then took him to a hospital, according to the press release.

On the basis of all the medical evidence in this case it is most appropriate, both in the interests of Mr. Chambers and of justice, to ensure he receives the hospital treatment he needs, said Harrington, via the press release.

Amazingly a further 24hours has past, suspect has now been with us for an entire week and not been to the toilet once! back to court tomorrow to request further detention until item/'s are recovered #comeon https://t.co/LE7uBZzFpI  Op Raptor West (@OpRaptorWest) January 24, 2018

Harrington highlighted the unique circumstances surrounding this case, via the press release.

Police forces have a legal and ethical responsibility for the welfare of anyone brought in to police custody. Although an investigation concerning the supply of Class A drugs is routine for our officers, there have in this case been some highly unusual circumstances, which have attracted national attention.

I would like to clarify that the detainee is continually being assessed by a custody #NHS medic with regard to his health. But it is HIS choice not to Poo. We can only but wait!  Pc Matt Hughes (@PcMattHughes) January 31, 2018

Chambers was suspected of a Class A drug charge. In the UK, Class A drug offenders are given the most severe drug penalties. According to the BBC, Class A drugs include heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. Alere Toxicology adds crack, magic mushrooms, methadone, and crystal meth to that list.

People found in possession of Class A drugs can go to prison for up to seven years along with a fine. Those proven to be selling Class A drugs could go to prison for life, according to the BBC.

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The Submarine UC3 Nautilus is lifted onto a block truck from the salvage ship Vina with the help of a container crane in Copenhagen's Harbor, on August 12, 2017. (JENS NOERGAARD LARSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Man Who Sunk Homemade Submarine Admits Burying Swedish Journalist at Sea

Danish submarine inventor Peter Madsen said that missing journalist Kim Wall died in an accident aboard his submarine, and that he then buried her at sea, according to Danish police.

Authorities say the Danish 46-year-old aerospace engineer previously lied about what happened and had denied he was in any way related to her disappearance, according to Fox News.

30-year-old Swedish freelance journalist Kim Wall was last seen by people off the coast of Copenhagen on Aug. 10. Her boyfriend reported her missing on Aug. 11.

Madsens previous story was that he dropped Wall off on an island off Copenhagen before the submarine sank. He said that the submarine malfunctioned, but authorities have indicated Wall may have died of a different cause. Authorities retrieved the submarine on Aug. 11. but have yet to find Walls body.

The Associated Press interviewed a boater who said he saw the submarine floating in a nearby bay on the morning of Aug. 11 and saw Madsen in the tower of the sub.

He then climbed down inside the submarine and there was then some kind of air flow coming up and the submarine started to sink, Isbak told AP. [He] came up again and stayed in the tower until water came into it.

Madsen then reportedly swam to a nearby boat as the sub sank. Police think he may have purposely sunk the submarine to hide evidence in Kim Walls death.

The 60-foot UC3 Nautilus was once the largest homemade submarine ever made. Wall was working on a feature story about Madsen and his creation at the time. She worked out of Brooklyn and wrote for publications such the New York Times, the Guardian, and Vice magazine. Her Swedish family laments that she came closer to her native Scandinavia only to lose her life, The Guardian reported.

Theres a dark irony in Kim, who traveled to North Korea and reported from Haiti, should disappear in Denmark, wrote Ms. Greve about the young journalist, in an quote translated by The New York Times.

The courts will allow authorities to hold Madsen a total of 24 days while Swedish and Danish authorities continue their investigation. Madsen is being held on preliminary charges of involuntary manslaughter.

Because the courts have partially lifted a closed door policy on the case, some information is coming out.

The defendant has explained to the police and the Court, that there was an accident on board which caused Kim Walls death and that he consequently buried her at sea at a non-defined location in the Bay of Kge.

From NTD.tv
(L-R) Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, Mexico's Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at a press conference regarding the seventh round of NAFTA renegotiations in Mexico City on March 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

NAFTA: US Wants a Deal Within Weeks, but Is It Possible?

The United States is suddenly proposing a sprint to the finish toward a new NAFTA deal within about four to six weeksa rapid pace that aims to soar past political obstacles and procedural hurdles.

Is it doable?

Count veterans of NAFTA 1.0 among the skeptics. The top Canadian negotiator in the original NAFTA and the top American trade official who completed the pact under Bill Clinton are expressing their doubts.

I dont think so, said John Weekes, Canadas chief negotiator in the original deal.

These are complex things.  These arent the sort of things you can just decide bang, bang.  It has to be a good agreement that makes sense for all three countriesand not taking shortcuts and not agreeing to a bad deal.

The stated reason for the hurry now is simple: Its the U.S. argument that political events beyond the spring could make it harder to finish a deal and get final ratification votes. In a few months, the Trump administration could face a more hostile Congress and a more combative Mexican president.

The United States argues that there are just two months left to get a deal this year, otherwise procedural rulesincluding more than six months required to ratify an agreement in the U.S. Congresswill make a final vote impossible before 2019.

A more realistic timetable in Weekess mind would be a deal by December. Thats similar to the estimate offered by his former American counterpart Mickey Kantor, Clintons first U.S. trade czar. He foresees at least six months more of negotiating.

Its going to take time, Kantor said. Trade agreements dont end before their time.  There are a number of issues on the tablethey have to be resolved.

Compare the current and past timetables.

The original NAFTA took 14 months to negotiate. Lawyers then combed the text for errors, Clinton was elected and insisted on new labour and environmental side-deals, and then there were ratification votes. In the end, it took about 30 months.

The current negotiations are into their seventh month. Of the roughly 30 chapters to complete, 6 are done so far. Thats not fast enough, current U.S. trade czar Robert Lighthizer said at the close of a round in Mexico City.

Now our time is running very short, said Lighthizer, who described the four-to-six-week horizon in a chat later with American media.

The threat of tariffs was also dangled over the negotiating table in Mexico City. Lighthizer suggested that if Canada and Mexico sign a quick NAFTA deal, that could void any tariffs before they take effect.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been hinting that Canada and Mexico may get a special exemption from the impact of the proposed steel and aluminum tariffs.

From The Canadian Press
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) (3rd from R) and members of the House Intelligence Committee talk to media on Capitol Hill, Washington, Jan. 29, 2018, after voting to publicly release a memo detailing potential abuse of power at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the FBI. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

OPINION: Democrats Lose in the Memo War

Schiff misleads the public in his effort to refute Nuness account

On Feb. 2, Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released his memorandum on the potential abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.

The Democrats, led by Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the committee, vehemently opposed the release of the Nunes memo, calling it distorted, misleading, or lies. Unable to stop the Nunes memo, Schiff authored his own memo in response. After much redaction, the Schiff memo was publicized on Feb. 24.

One of the key points of the Nunes memo was that the FBI and DOJ used the Steele dossier as the essential evidence to get a FISA warrant against Carter Page, allowing the FBI access to any electronic surveillance of this Trump associate. The claim in the Nunes memo was corroborated by a declassified criminal referral letter sent by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to DOJ.

There are many ways to refute the claim. For example, one can show the dossier was not used as evidence by the FBI and DOJ in the application for the FISA warrant. Alternatively, one can prove it was not sine qua non in the case, and there was actually essential and damning evidence.

Without the dossier, the FBI had no case.

The Schiff memo took the second approach. It confirmed the FBI and DOJ used the Steele dossier in Carter Pages case, but sought to downplay the importance of the dossier. Instead of being the essential evidence, the memo argues, the FBI and DOJ only used the dossier narrowly.

According to the Schiff memo, besides the dossier, the FBI and DOJ had compelling evidence and probable cause to believe Page was working with the Russians and was a recruitment target of Russian intelligence long before the bureau obtained the dossier. The FBI interviewed Page multiple times, including once in March 2016, before the dossier was produced.

In 2013, the DOJ indicted three Russians, two of whom allegedly tried to recruit Page. The Schiff memo mentioned this fact. Yet, the FBI did not apply for a FISA warrant against Page from 2013 to 2016, prior to the production of the dossier. Moreover, Page was not arrested or accused of any wrongdoing. Undoubtedly, the FBI and DOJ had nothing on Page before 2016. Otherwise, Page would probably have suffered a fate similar to that of the three Russians.

Only after the Hillary Clinton campaign delivered the dossier to the bureau, did the FBI and DOJ move against Page. Without the dossier, the FBI had no case. Pages volunteer role in the Trump campaign suddenly made him a highly valuable surveillance target. The officials at the FBI may have hoped that they had hit the mother lode where information of Trumps alleged collusion with Russia could be easily mined.

And so the dossier is not an insignificant piece of evidence, as the Schiff memo claimed. Without it, the FISA warrant against Page would not have been granted.

A more serious allegation in the Nunes memo was that the FBI and DOJ hid from the FISA court the fact that the Steele dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Schiff memo claims the FBI and DOJ were transparent. For example, according to the memo, DOJ told the FISA court in its application: The FBI speculates that the U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate #1s campaign.

Actually, the FBI knew for a fact the Steele dossier was an opposition research product commissioned by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The FBI also knew Steele was rabidly against Trump and was working to defeat Trump. It did not have to speculate anything.

The bureau liked Steeles work so much that later it even considered hiring him to get more dirt on Trump. If in its FISA application the FBI used speculation about the motives of those who produced the dossier, the bureau lied to the court.

The Schiff memo also claims Steeles credibility was based on his past reporting on Russia. The FBI has undertaken a rigorous process to vet allegations from Steeles reporting, including with regard to Page, says the memo. The FBI may have vetted Steeles past work. The question is if the FBI vetted the Steele dossier rigorously.

The Schiff memo says yes, but fails to provide evidence of vetting. Former FBI Director James Comey disagreed with the memo as well, calling the dossier salacious and unverified. Till today the Steele dossier remains a minimally corroborated document.

One of the goals of the Schiff memo is said to correct the record. It failed. On one hand, it affirmed the Steele dossier was presented as the essential evidence to the FISA court, which was a key argument of the Nunes memo. There is no record to correct on this matter. On the other hand, the Schiff memo contains much misinformation. Attacking the Nunes memo with lies cannot correct the record. It can only distort the record and mislead the public.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Police Officers Shot in Missouri Were Sent to the Wrong Address

The police officers who were shot in Missouri on Tuesday, March 6, were sent to the wrong address before finding something wrong at the house they responded to.

One of the officers, Christopher Ryan Morton, 30, was killed.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol said in a statement that Morton and other officers were sent to a house in Clinton when the 911 call that prompted the response actually came from an address in Windsor. The two towns are about 15 miles apart.

The cause of the call wasnt clear but the dispatcher could hear two women arguing in the background.

When Morton and other Clinton police officers arrived at the wrong home, they came into contact with a woman, Tammy Widger, outside the house.

Widger told officers there was no problem at the home but after officers confirmed the address with dispatch, they entered the house.

Inside, they encountered James Waters, who shot the officers.

7 months after one of their officers was shot and killed, the Clinton, Missouri Police Department lost another officer last night when Officer Christopher Ryan Morton was shot and killed. 2 other officers also shot and injured. Keep this small town in your thoughts and prayers pic.twitter.com/b6eWMYtMtU  LAPD HQ (@LAPDHQ) March 7, 2018

Waters, 37, killed Morton and wounded two other officersNathan Bettencourt was in stable condition on Wednesday while Nicholas Kasper was treated for his injuries and released.

After the officers were shot, a SWAT team entered the house and found Waters dead.

Investigators are working to determine whether one of the officers killed him or if he shot himself, reported The Associated Press.

Witnesses told the Kansas City Star that at least 20 gunshots were exchanged between the officers and Waters.

After Morton was shot, the other officers pleaded with Waters to stop and let them get him to safety.

Hang on buddy, were here, were here, Sheryl Long, who lives directly across the street, said they yelled. Stay with us, stay with us!

Please let us get our wounded officer out. There is no need for anyone else to get hurt. Theres been enough damage, Long recounted them yelling.

Family members and friends were mourning the loss of Morton, who served in Afghanistan before becoming a police officer.

The world has lost a great soldier and even a better person, said Matthew Hografe, who wrote in a Facebook post he had deployed with Morton four years ago, reported the Kansas City Star. You will never be forgotten.

He was always professional, funny, and took a positive outlook on this, added David Wilkinson on Facebook.

Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe acknowledged that the officers were sent to the wrong home but that they did their job.

Missouri officer is shot and killed and two other cops are injured after being dispatched to wrong address on 911 call https://t.co/0OMpyMqg3p  Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) March 8, 2018

It is a coincidence they were called to that specific address, Lowe said. It is tragic that happened. But the fact is they were in the act of committing crimes within that house. When [the officers] entered that house they were doing what they needed to ensure no one was hurt and there wasnt any other problems.

Widger was charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, and with maintaining a public nuisance.

Its unclear whether Waters, who was being sought in connection with a rape case, lived at the home. His relationship with Widger is also unclear.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol, Clinton Police Department, and the Henry County Sheriffs Department are investigating the case.

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Sessions Schools Sanctuary California on Rule of Law

Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulled no punches when he spoke about Californias sanctuary policies in Sacramento, California, on March 7the day after the Justice Department sued the state for its policies to shield illegal immigrants from federal immigration authorities.

Immigration law is the province of the federal government, Sessions said. I understand that we have a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration. But the law is in the books and its purpose is clear.

There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land.

Sessions said he isnt asking California to enforce immigration laws, but rather to just stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement.

A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law and creates an open borders system. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted, Sessions said.

The United States of America is not an idea; it is a secular nation-state with a Constitution, laws, and borders, all of which are designed to protect our nations interests.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit on March 6, aimed at three California bills that the DOJ says intentionally obstruct and discriminate against the enforcement of federal immigration law.

The first bill, Assembly Bill 450, prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials. California Attorney General Becerra warned business owners that they face a fine ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 if they cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The second, Senate Bill 54, restricts state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to ICE about the release date of removable criminal aliens who are in their custody. Instead, the criminals are often released back into the community.

The third, Assembly Bill 103, imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme of the federal detention of aliens held in state and local facilities, according to DOJ.

The Democrat governor of California, Jerry Brown, accused the Trump administration of basically going to war against the state of California, in a press conference following Sessions speech. Like so many in the Trump administration, this attorney general has no regard for the truth, Brown said.

Sessions also took aim at Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who recently publicly warned of an impending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in her area, saying it was her moral obligation.

The operation went ahead and scooped up more than 150 illegal aliens, but missed another 850, which ICE blames Schaaf for.

Heres my message for Mayor Schaaf: How dare you. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement officers to promote your radical open-borders agenda, Sessions said.

Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said the mayors warning allowed criminals to lie low during the operation.

The Oakland mayors decision to publicize her suspicions about ICE operations further increased that risk for my officers and alerted criminal aliensmaking clear that this reckless decision was based on her political agenda in opposition to the very federal laws that ICE is sworn to uphold, Homan said.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a statement on March 6 that the DOJ lawsuit was an example of federal government overreach, and vowed to fight it.

The 10th Amendment of the Constitution gives the people of California, not the Trump Administration, the power to decide how we will provide for the public safety and general welfare in our state, Becerra said. We intend to fight to protect the funding our law enforcement officers deserve.

The DOJ has previously threatened to withhold federal funding to jurisdictions that enact sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with ICE. After a challenge in court, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco ruled that the local $1 million grant was too small to justify an injunction while the lawsuit unfolds, given the states overall budget.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Indigenous women sing and drum during a rally for Tina Fontaine in Vancouver on Feb. 24, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)

Slain Teens Family Looking for Answers After Acquittal

'Her voice was stolen, says Tina Fontaines aunt

SAGKEENG FIRST NATION, Man.Thelma Favel woke up every morning before going to the Winnipeg courthouse, looked around her room and wondered what her grand-niece might have thought when she stayed in the same hotel in her final weeks alive.

During the second-degree murder trial for Raymond Cormier, the man acquitted last month of killing Tina Fontaine, Favel wanted to put herself in the teenage girls shoes.

Favel stayed in the same downtown hotel where the young girl was placed by Child and Family Services and walked the same streets where Tina was last seen alive.

I just found strength every day to get up and go. I walked the hallways, wondering which room she was in, Favel said. I just felt so close to her there.

Security camera footage was shown in court of Tina falling asleep between two cars behind a building named after Helen Betty Osborne, a Cree woman kidnapped and killed in Manitoba in 1971. Favel went there, too.

I just dont know what happened to her that month-and-a-half [in Winnipeg]. I just dont know what happened at all.

Tina spent much of her young life living with Favel on the Sagkeeng First Nation, north of Winnipeg. She was a kind girl who liked to study math and science, Favel said. She had a lot of friends and never got into trouble.

But after her father was murdered in 2011, Tina had difficulty coping. She left the First Nation in June 2014 to reconnect with her mother in Winnipeg. When Favel didnt hear from the girl, she called Child and Family Services for help.

In the following weeks, 15-year-old Tina disappeared multiple times, returned to government care and was placed in a hotel. Her 72-pound body, wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down by rocks, was pulled from the Red River that August.

Her death renewed calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and inspired volunteer groups such as the Bear Clan Patrol to protect the vulnerable on the streets.

Favel said she had faith in the justice system as she sat in court nearly every day throughout the more than three-week trial. She listened to testimony from experts and from people who knew Tina in Winnipeg. She heard audio of Cormier himself, recorded by police during a six-month undercover operation.

When Tinas voice from a 911 call was played in court, Favel said she just wanted to hear her over and over and over again.

Tina was with me. She was there with me every single day and I had my rosaries around my hand every day. Thats where I got my strength. I had to do it for Tina, she said, breaking into tears.

Her voice was stolen. She was silenced forever so I had to be there to be her pillar of hope, to get justice for her. Even that I failed at.

After a jury acquitted Cormier, rallies were held across the country for Tina. But Favel and her family are left wondering how Tina died and whether she will ever get justice.

Favel is exhausted and her husband has suffered two strokesone right after Tinas body was found and another when the trial started.

I thought he was the strong one, but big men do crumble because she captured his heart, Favel said. Tina was his heart.

Tina was tiny but powerful, Favel said. The teens family has found strength in the way her life and death have become a rallying cry for change.

Favel is not optimistic the acquittal will be appealed and said she would like to see other charges laid against Cormier. If there is an inquest or inquiry into Tinas death, she said she will still be there every step of the way.

Talking about Tina still hurtsits a reminder of a young, promising life taken too soon. But Favel said she knows its important because God had other plans for Tina.

She was silenced but still her cries are being heard everywhere. This is not over yet. She is going to do something about all of this wrong that is going on.

From The Canadian Press
Laborers fill orders of machine grade steel to be shipped throughout the Pacific Northwest at the Pacific Machinery Tool Steel Company in Portland, Oregon, on March 6, 2018. (Natalie Behring/Getty Images)

Steel and Aluminum Makers Restart Plants After Trumps Tariff Announcement

American steel and aluminum makers are rebooting stalled plants and calling back hundreds of workers with the expectation that President Donald Trumps proposed tariffs will soon be enacted.

United States Steel Corp. announced on Wednesday that it would fire up its blast furnace in Illinois and call back 500 workers, Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, Century Aluminum Co. said that it will restart smelting in Kentucky for the first time since 2015.

Our Granite City Works facility and employeeshave suffered too long from the unending waves of unfairly traded steel products that have flooded U.S. markets, U.S. Steel Chief Executive David Burritt told the Journal.

United States Steel Corp. was forced to idle furnaces and lay off hundreds of workers after cheap imports flooded into the country and pushed down prices.

Trump said he plans to a impose broad tariffs, 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum, though a final announcement is still pending. The president campaigned on a promise to bring back American jobs and put U.S. interests first when it comes to international trade.

Trump said early on Thursday morning that he will hold an afternoon meeting at the White House related to the tariffs.

Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military, Trump wrote on Twitter.

Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2018

Trumps proposed tariffs closely match the recommendation in a report submitted to the president by the Department of Commerce on Feb. 16. The department recommended a 24 percent global tariff on steel and a 7.7 percent global tariff on aluminum.

The report found that the quantities and circumstances of steel and aluminum imports threaten to impair the national security.

Steel and aluminum prices rose recently based on increased domestic demand and the presidents promise of broad tariffs, according to the Journal. As a result, several companies expanded U.S. production well before Trumps announcement last week.

Alcoa Corp. intends to reopen part of an idle smelter in southern Indiana in the spring. Big River Steel sped up production last year at a sheet mill in Osceola, Arkansas.

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Teen Firefighter Trainee Battling CancerWith Some Help From His Friends

Sixteen-year-old Timothy Richardson is on leave from the Hy-View Fire Companys Explorer program, while he fights leukemiain a different shirt every day.

Timothy is the son of a firefighter, and all he has ever wanted to do with his life was to follow in his dads footstepsrisking his own safety to help others.

Knowing that people are on their worst days, just knowing that, and you can help them in their worst times, it really just gives you a sense of pride, Timothy told WGRZ.

It will be a while before Timothy resumes his fireman training, though.

Timothy will be spending a lot of time flat on his back in a hospital bed while chemotherapy drugs are pumped into his body to battle the cancer cells.

The Maryvale, New York High School junior will spend the next month in Oishei Childrens Hospital in Buffalo. He will be under treatment for a total of about two years.

Timothy could have asked for any kind of help. He could have asked for money, free transportation and lodging for his parents, anything. His fellow firefighters would have happily done whatever they could.

What kind of help has he asked for? T-shirts.

While hes in the hospital, Timothy hopes to be able to wear the shirt of a different firehouse every day.

I put the feelers out, town of Hamburg, town of Amherst, West Seneca, anybody that I knew and the outpouring has just been phenomenal, said Hy-View safety officer and Explorer advisor Joe Lent told WKYC.

I didnt expect anything less. Timmys going to have a lot of shirts to wear.

Richardsons father, Matthew is a firefighter at U-Crest Fire Company in Cheektowaga. His sister Michelle, 19, is a former firefighter Explorer. Now Timothy is learning that all firefighters are part of his family.

He knows he has his brotherhood of the fire department behind him, Timothys mother, Deanna, told WKYC.

From a Runny Nose to a Dangerous Disease

Timothys ordeal started on Feb. 15 when he had a doctor check out what looked like a sinus infection, according to his Facebook page.

He was back in less than a week with swollen glands in his neck.

A series of biopsies over the next few weeks eventually revealed the dreaded diagnosis: the teen had leukemia.

Doctors are adamant that Timothy has leukemia, not lymphoma. Leukemia is much more easily treatable.

His Facebook page, Timmys Battle, says, Timmy is allowed to have visitors and is encouraged to have visitors. The family just asks that people call ahead to make sure he is feeling well enough at the moment.

For anyone who wants to send a T-shirt: Tims size is mens XL and his address is:

Timothy Richardson at John R. Oishei Childrens Hospital

818 Ellicott St Buffalo NY 14203

ATT: J 12 South

Room 1210

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Author Tariq Ramadan is seen during an interview with Reuters in New York April 8, 2010. (Reuters/Mike Segar)

Third Rape Case Filed Against Islamic Scholar Ramadan

PARISA 45-year-old woman filed a new rape case in France on Wednesday against Swiss academic Tariq Ramadan, the third against the Islamic studies professor, judicial sources said on Wednesday.

The woman accused Ramadan of violent sexual assault on multiple occasions between early 2013 and June 2014, according to the filing seen by Reuters.

Ramadans lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

Ramadan was ordered last month to remain in custody in France and was notified that he was the target of a full investigation into rape allegations, which he denied.

Ramadan is a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, an Islamist thinker and activist who founded the Muslim Brotherhood. He enjoys a substantial following among young Muslims and has challenged French restrictions on wearing veils.

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Utah Police Say Teen Who Attempted to Detonate Explosive Device Researched ISIS

A teenager who tried to detonate an explosive device at a Utah High School this week researched the terrorist group ISIS, police said.

The homemade explosive device was taken to Pine View High School on Monday, 5.

The St. George Police Department said that some extremely perceptive students alerted the school security officer of the potential bomb and a preliminary investigation indicated that the backpack had a homemade explosive device.

The school was evacuated and multiple teams of law enforcement officers disarmed the device.

After examining the device, bomb squad members indicated that if it had detonated; the device had the potential to cause significant injury or death, the department said in a statement.

A search warrant served at the home of the suspect uncovered a number of materials. Based on our investigation we can confirm this was a failed attempt to detonate a homemade explosive at the school, the department stated.

NEW: @sgcitypubsafety is charging the suspects "failed attempt to detonate a homemade explosive" inside Pine View High School yesterday with: 76-10-402: Manufacture, possession, sale, use or attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction prohibited. ? > Jack Whalen pic.twitter.com/gJQ5Q8OZ74  D.J. Bolerjack (@DJBolerjack) March 6, 2018

Officers found that the male had been researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization, the department said.

The suspect admitted to spraypainting ISIS IS COMI on the school the same morning the bomb was found, reported KUTV.

The suspect is also believed to have replaced the high schools flag with an ISIS flag on Feb. 14, the same day that the school shooting in Florida left 17 dead, reported the Deseret News.

The juvenile male has been arrested but not identified publicly.

The suspect was charged with manufacture, possession, sale, use or attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction prohibited, the department said. More charges may come later, including charges from a Feb. 15 criminal mischief incident at Hurricane High School.

Materials found at the suspects home appear to link him to that incident.



Pine View High student Jack Whalen said he was one of the students who initially saw the smoking backpack and alerted the school resource officer.

One of my friends actually went and notified the police at our school; and as he was notifying, one of the teachers walked by and I stopped this teacher and said there was a backpack that had smoke coming out of it, he told St. George News.

However, Whalen said it took the officer a long time to evaluate the threat, with the entire lunch period going by.

By the end of (lunch), when the fourth period had started, then they evacuated uswhich kind of worried me because it took them the entire lunch period to evacuate all the students for something dangerous in the building, he said.

The police department said the officer acted quickly, though, and thanked the officer and the program that funds officers in schools.

The department stated, He was then able to call in appropriate teams, such as; the Washington County Bomb Squad and Jax, the bomb-detecting K-9 from Dixie Regional Medical Center, to identify and disarm the explosive device. Wed also like to say thank you to the Bomb Squad and to Jax and his handler for responding to the call out.

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Wisconsin Man Allegedly Kills Landlord After Rent Raised by $30

A Wisconsin man admitted to killing his landlord after his rent was raised.

Jason Tilley, 37, met with his landlord regarding the rent recently and later told investigators that he became irate after the landlord informed him the monthly rent would be raised by $30.

Before the increase, the rent was $560 a month.

Tilley told officers that after shooting the landlord, who has not been named, he had a couple of beers and shots, bought some new clothes, went to sleep, and went to work the next morning.

The wife of the landlord reported her husband missing on March 1.

She and her daughter told police officers that he was scheduled to meet with a tenant named Jason at his apartment complex on South Packard Avenue, reported TMJ4.

A Greenfield police officer went to Tilleys apartment unit and found blood on the door and door frame.

A witness told the officer that Tilley and the landlord were talking outside the garage of the building around 3:30 p.m.

Officers found the body on March 2 in the garage, wrapped in a blanket, reported the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

An autopsy of the landlord revealed he died from a gunshot wound.

Other tenants in Cudahy were shocked. Sharon Cebula said she knew Tilley and the landlord had a tense relationship but never imagined it would result in a murder.

You know, someone loses a temper, maybe you want to smack them or somethingbut to kill him? Cebula said, reported WTVM.

Tilley was arrested and appeared in court on Wednesday.

His cash bond was set at $750,000.

Hes been charged with first-degree intentional homicide and possession of a firearm by a felon.

WTVM reported that Tilley was previously convicted of felony offenses, according to criminal records.

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Woman Who Filmed 11-Year-Old Son Smoking Cannabis Bong Sentenced 9 Months

An Australian mother faces nine months in prison after a video of her giving her 11-year-old son his first bong went viral last year.

In footage posted to Facebook in August 2017, the 29-year-old woman from Whyalla, South Australia, films her son smoking a marijuana pipe, while she laughs and encourages him.

With the camera pointed at her son sitting with a pipe in his hand, the young mother says, Here we are recording [son] having his very first bonggo for it son.

The boy lights the device and inhales. But after a few seconds, he pulls away coughing and tries to hand the drug back to his mother.

Nah smoke it all, you wanted a cone you have to smoke the whole lot! The woman tells her son.

She is also heard instructing the boy as he is lighting the pipe: You have to put your finger on the hole, you have to put your finger on the back.

Less than a day after the video was posted online, police charged the woman, who cannot legally be identified, with supplying drugs to a child, the Daily Mail reported. The offense carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and/or a fine of $1 million.

The 29-year-old later pleaded guilty to supplying a banned substance to a child on two occasions in 2017.

On Tuesday, March 8, a District Court Judge sentenced the mother to jail for two years, one month, and one week, with a nine-month non-parole period.

According to the Daily Mail, the woman sought to explain her actions as a misguided attempt to put her son off cannabis, after she found out that he was smoking the drug.

Judge Geraldine Davison, however, said she found the explanation very difficult to accept given the content of the video.

It shows very little insight in relation to the dangers of smoking cannabis for you and your son and the dangers of exposing children to such substances at such a young age, Judge Davison said, report the Mail.

In a letter to the court, the woman said that the drug was a harmless, natural and safe alternative to prescription medication.

While the woman filmed both instances of her sons drug use, she reportedly said that someone had stolen the footage and uploaded it online without her permission.

The court also heard that the woman allegedly had a difficult childhood and had started using cannabis from the age of 11, a drug she was still smoking.

In sentencing, the judge took into account the womans lack of insight, the effect of being separated from her son, as well as the seriousness of the offense.

She will reportedly be eligible for parole in November.

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Woman Who Went to Hospital to Deliver Baby but Ended up Losing Both Kidneys Hears Verdict

A woman who went to a hospital in Hawaii to deliver her third baby in 2013, but ended up losing both kidneys, has been awarded $24.7 million. Her attorney, Rick Fried, told Hawaii News Now could be the biggest ever verdict in the state.

What happened there was totally unnecessary, Fried said at a news conference. It has been a very, very rough course and has totally changed her life.

Marites Campano, then 37, was admitted to Tripler Army Medical Center to deliver her third child in July of 2013. Her husband is in the Navy.

Her child was born at 1:10 a.m., the morning after she checked in, but Campanos condition had been deteriorating since she got there.

It got even worse after the birth but Campano did not receive IV antibiotics.

By the time a rapid response team took control of Campanos situation shed been in constant pain for around 48 hours and went into sepsis, Hawaii News Now reported.

Campano was admitted to the intensive care unit, where she suffered multi-organ failure and was placed on a ventilator.

The mother ultimately lost both kidneys. She underwent a kidney transplant and survived but will now need approximately 15 days of hospitalization every year going forward for treatment, the judge said.

She will also likely require more kidney transplants in the future as its likely the kidney she received would fail in about seven years, reported KHON2.

Of the almost $25 million, more than $18 million dollars is slated to pay for the future transplant, hospital visits, and dialysis.

Because Campano can no longer work, the rest is meant to cover future wage losses and mental anguish.

The government admitted liability in the case, leading to the judgment.

The court concludes that the care providers at Tripler negligently breached the medical and/or nursing standards of care in their treatment of Marites beginning on July 22, 2013, the judge said in the verdict.

During the incident, Marites and her family and friends believed that she would not survive.

The family has since moved to San Diego.

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Young Girl Dies Suddenly in Her Sleep

An 11-year-old girl from Mobile, Alabama, died unexpectedly just a few days ago.

Janiyah Taylor died in her sleep on Monday morning, March. 5. The sudden death has left her family and friends feeling confused, and devastated, FOX10 reported.

She was remembered as a leader, a dancer, a learner, and a friend.

11-year-old girl dies suddenly in her sleep https://t.co/Cx7ssqJbgc pic.twitter.com/Qef4MEZA3a  WIS News 10 (@wis10) March 8, 2018

She was a vibrant young lady. Very, very vibrant, Rachael Reese, dance instructor and owner of Elevation Dance Company told FOX10. A joy to be around. She was determined. She just always wanted to be better and do better.

Taylors instructor said the news hit her hard.

It was numbing. It was shocking. It came out of nowhere. Also, it didnt only break my heart but it hit very close to home, Reese told FOX10.

Janiyah had spent eight months learning ballet, jazz, and hip-hop dance at Elevation Dance company.

This sweet girl had an impact on her whole community. She left a mark here a very good mark, she said.

Reese said the hardest part was telling Janiyahs dance mates that she would not be coming anymore.

They cried a lot. Theyre still crying according to their parents. Theyre still trying to understand why, why did she have to go like that and they couldnt tell her bad. Theyre still trying to understand. Theyre still young, explained Reese.

Its unclear yet what exactly caused her death.

A GoFundMe account has been set up for her family. As of writing, it has already surpassed its $1000 goal.

Janiyah was a student at Whitney Elementary, according to a GoFundMe comment. Im sorry for this families loss we all here at Whitney Elementary is going to miss her and her smiling face she was one of the students that we love to have in our presents we will always remember you Niya. Love the Whitley Elementary CNP Staff.

Shes dancing in heaven more than she ever could on earth, Reese told FOX10.

Elevation Dance Company will sell rubber bracelets on Saturday to raise money for Janiyahs family. The bracelets have Janiyahs name on them and they are selling for $2. You can buy one or donate at Elevation Dance Company at 2180 Schillinger Road North this Saturday, March 10 from 9 am to 12 noon. All proceeds will go to Janiyahs family for funeral and burial expenses.

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3 1 of 3 Story Pirates / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Story Pirates / Contributed photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Kids get to contribute their own ideas in the Story Pirates newest interactive comedy, at the Palace Theatre in Stamford, on Sunday, March 25.

In this show, scientists Tom Edison (no relation to that Thomas Edison) and Dr. Marissa Morice return home from a wild adventure in the Stone Age, only to discover their time machine has made an unexpected detour. They wind up on a stage in front of a huge audience thats expecting a show; the problem is theyre just scientists, not actors.
The Irish ... and How They Got That Way is an uplifting musical that celebrates all things Irish, as seen through the eyes of Irish-American writer/teacher Frank McCourt, who was raised in the slums of Ireland.

The late McCourt earned a Pulitzer Prize for his memoir, Angelas Ashes, in which he told the story of his childhood with great humor and compassion. He also wrote the book for the off-Broadway musical, The Irish ... and How They Got That Way, which will be performed at Warner Theatres Nancy Marine Studio Theatre in Torrington on Saturday, March 10, through Sunday, March 18.

When the musical was performed in 1997 at the Irish Repertory Theatre, it featured an eclectic mix of tunes, from the traditional Danny Boy to U2s I Still Havent Found What Im Looking For.

Those two songs, along with Finnegans Wake, will be among the tunes in the Torrington show, which is directed by Meredith Porri and features original music arrangements by Rusty McGee.

Porri said shes happy to be directing this show because its a beautiful story of Irish history. When I first read it, it had me laughing and crying, she said. I knew it would be a challenge and an important project to work on. She shared more via email.

Q: We understand this musical celebrates all things Irish from the 20th and 21st centuries. What are some subjects it touches upon?

A: This show covers the Irish potato famine, the immigration to America and even some of the U.S. presidents who hold connections to Ireland.

Q: McCourt is known for his razor-sharp wit, coupled with his trademark bitter irony and boundless love for the Irish. Can you give an example of this from the show?

A: Theres a very funny scene between an Irish housemaid and her mistress. I dont want to give it all away, but lets just say the Irish housemaid takes everything her mistress tells her literally, and it makes for a pretty funny scene.

Q: The Irish ... and How They Got That Way is described as a jovial, heartbreaking and inspiring tribute. It sounds like quite a challenge to work all that into one show. How did you accomplish it?

A: It is a bunch of vignettes, which creates a challenge all by itself. The cast consists of four players who play multiple roles, from Irish to British to American. This cast is extremely versatile, which contributed greatly to the ease of rehearsals and beauty of this little gem of a show.

Q: What do you hope audiences will take away with them?

More Information Warner Theatre's Nancy Marine Studio Theatre, 82 Main St., Torrington. Saturday, March 10, to Sunday, March 18. Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 8 p.m. $30. 860-489-7180, www.warnertheatre.org See More Collapse

A: Our goal is to have them both laughing and crying throughout the show. There are moments that tug at every heartstring, and there are other moments that will have you rolling in the aisles. This show is for everyone, and Im confident our cast of players will bring you a wonderful, engaging, funny and heartfelt show.
Using cutting-edge museum technology, Mystic Seaports new exhibit will transport visitors to Alaska via Murmur: Arctic Realities.

Thats the word from Mystic spokesman Dan McFadden. The exhibit is a large, kinetic sculpture installation that represents an Alaskan pingo, or ice hill. It also has a mixed reality component where people can don a Microsoft HoloLens headset and be transported virtually to the Arctic. The latter part is pretty cutting edge for museums and we are excited to experiment in this area.

In a news release, the museum said the installation is by Seattle-based artist John Grade, who is known for large-scale projects that bring aspects of the natural world to the exhibition location. For Murmur, he is using salvaged Alaskan yellow cedar to create an intricately carved sculpture (15 feet by 38 feet by 42 feet) that represents a pingo ... that grows over centuries in the Arctics highest latitudes, then collapses, pockmarking the tundra.

This sculpture simulates an actual pingo in Alaskas Noatak National Preserve mapped by Grade using photogrammetry. Visitors will not only witness the pingos impressive scale, but will be able to enter inside the sculpture as its walls open and close, mimicking the hills life cycle.

Mystic Seaport, 75 Greenmanville Ave. Thursday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through March 23. $28.95, $26.95 seniors, $18.95 for ages 4-14. 888-973-2767, mysticseaport.org
A storm that left anywhere from 5 to 25 inches throughout Fairfield County on Wednesday, towns and cities are working on clearing downed trees and wires, reopening roads and completing snow removal.

Below are updates from the towns and cities and they make progress in their cleanup efforts.

Update  SCHOOL CLOSURES, DELAYS (for Friday)

Darien High School and elementary schools might have a 2-hour delay Friday. The official announcement will be made via email by 5:30 a.m. Friday.

Easton Public Schools will be closed Friday.

Fairfield public and parochial schools will be closed Friday.

Greenwich Public Schools will have a 2 hour delay.

Middlesex Middle School is without power. If power is not restored, the school will remain closed Friday. If power is restored, there will be a 2-hour delay.

New Canaan Public Schools will be closed Friday.

New Milford Public Schools will have a 2 hour delay Friday.

Newtown Public Schools will be closed Friday.

Redding School District will be closed Friday.

Stamford Public Schools will be closed Friday.

Westport Public Schools will have a 3 hour delay Friday.

Weston Public Schools will be closed Friday. District offices will be closed. All day and evening activities are canceled.

Wilton Public Schools will be closed Friday.

Update 9:50 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Westport

Firefighters responded to two calls on Warnock Road for downed trees and wires Thursday.

Update 9 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Bridgeport

City officials remind residents to help neighbors with snow removal  especially if your neighbors are elderly or have disabilities.

UI currently has 313 customers without power in the city  a mix between homes and businesses, officials said.

Two major jobs are being focused on Thursday evening.

Crews are making the site safe for repairs on Beechmont Avenue, where 93 people are without lights. And on Wilmont Avenue, 23 people are in the dark. A transformer is being repaired.

Once those two are taken care of, officials said, crews will head over to Summit Street (where 22 people are without power) and Colorado Avenue (where 21 people are without power).

There is not estimated restoration time, but crews will work nonstop until power is restored.

Update 8:05 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

New Canaan

Crews are making progress in town to get roads passable, according to the Emergency Operations Center. Despite efforts, a significant amount of hazards still remain in town.

Eight areas of town are completely blocked off, with no access in or out. Barricades and caution tape should not be removed or moved.

Roughly 17 percent of town remains without power.

Metro-North estimates the New Canaan branch line of service will resume at some point Friday.

Town Hall and the library will serve as warming centers. Town Hall opens at 8:30 a.m. and the library opens at 9 a.m.

The YMCA is open for shower facilities until 10 p.m. Thursday and will open at 5:30 a.m. Friday.

A map of road closures in town can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2Fo9YsI.

Wilton

Route 7 will be closed in the area of Four Seasons Racquet as Eversource works on repairs in the area. A detour is in place.

Update 8 p.m.  EVERSOURCE

Statewide estimated restoration times will be announced by Eversource on Friday, according to a news release sent out Thursday evening. The announcement will include when the majority of customers will be restored, with town-by-town restoration estimates shared by Friday evening.

Eversources line and tree crews are working nonstop alongside dozens of out-of-state crews to repair destruction caused by Wednesdays snowstorm.

The damage caused by the storm is extensive and widespread leaving hundreds of broken poles and thousands of feet of downed power lines around the state, a news release said.

Crews are working directly with communities to clear hundreds of blocked roads, while simultaneously assessing damage and restoring power.

Update 7:45 p.m.  ROAD CLOSURE

Derby Avenue in Seymour is closed at Ives Road becuase of wires down in the roadway. Reported at 4:26 p.m.

Update 5 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Monroe

Town officials said more than 30 percent of Monroe remains without power Thursday and that Eversource representatives have been at the Emergency Operations Center throughout the day.

While crews are working, Eversource has advised that they are currently unable to provide an estimated time of full restoration, officials said. We have been told to anticipate some level of outages to continue throughout the weekend, if not longer.

Some streets remain partially blocked, officials said, and only Old Zoar Road and Stanley Road remain completely closed.

The senior center will be available as an overnight shelter. Anyone who needs to take shelter at the center should arrive and check in no later than 10 p.m. Thursday. In the event the shelter is unneeded, it will open at 8:30 a.m. Friday as a warming center.

The library will close at 5 p.m. Thursday and reopen at 10 a.m. Friday as a warming center.

Water is available at the senior center and at Monroe Police Department in the vehicle bay area.

Norwalk

Norwalk has nearly 3,000 Eversouce residents without power. A priority in town is clearing blocked roads for emergency vehicles, officials said, and then power restoration will become the focus.

The city is working alongside the American Red Cross to open an emergency shelter at Brien McMahon High School at 7 p.m. Thursday for those without power. A dinner will be not served at the shelter Thursday. The shelter is pet-friendly.

This will be a long restoration process, we appreciate everyones patience with the first responders and public works staff trying to assist, town officials said.

Update 4:05 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

New Canaan

There are 190 roads in town that remain impassable and 28 percent of the town is without power. No restoration estimate has been provided by Eversource.

Crews are working to gain access for emergency vehicles, police said.

Prepare for several days of prolonged outage, police warned. Warming centers are open at Town Hall and the library.

A map of what still needs to be cleared in town can be found at http://bit.ly/2Fo9YsI.

Update 3:20 p.m.  METRO-NORTH

New Haven Line is experiencing delays of 10 to 15 minutes because of weather-related track conditions requiring attention, as well as single-tracking between South Norwalk and Noroton Heights.

The 4:47 p.m. train from Stamford to New Haven has been canceled. The next train will be at 4:52 p.m.

Metro-North is operating on a reduced schedule Thursday. The New Canaan and Danbury branches remain suspended until further notice, the rail service said. Customers should expect extremely crowded conditions and delays due to the residual effects of the storm.

A full schedule for Metro-North Thrusday can be found at http://as0.mta.info/mnr/schedules/sched_form.cfm.

Update 3 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Greenwich

Although the fire at Sunshine Avenue was brought under control quickly, the Greenwich Fire Department is still uncertain how it was caused.

Greenwich outages went up to 1,592 and the Round Hill Church Community House, at 397 Round Hill Road , is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. as a warming and charging center.

Spokesman for Eversource Energy Mitch Gross said, around 2:30 p.m., the company has announced this storm will require a multiday restoration effort.

In Greenwich, Hemlock Drive was added to the list of street closures about an hour ago in the section between Valley Drive and Edgewood Drive for emergency repairs.

Lt. John Slusarz of the Greenwich Police Department said that there may not be a full list of closures available until later Thrusday evening as officers are still out gathering information, but that overall clean-up efforts are going well.

Update 2:45 p.m.  LOCAL ROAD CLOSURES

Brookfield

Police said around 12:30 p.m. that Beverly Drive remains closed and Rocky Road has one lane open.

Fire officials ask residents to shovel out fire hydrants throughout town if they can.

Connecticut State Police

State police urged tractor trailers and buses  and all other vehicles  to clear all snow and ice before traveling.

On Interstate 84 eastbound near exit 27 Thursday, snow flew off the top of a tractor trailer and severely cracked the windshield of a vehicle traveling behind the truck.

There were no injuries, state police said, but there were shards of glass all over the operator of the vehicle after the windshield was shattered.

The tractor trailer continued eastbound and the driver of the vehicle was unable to get the license plate.

Easton

Crews are in town to work on power restoration.

Police have set up a charging station in the lobby of the police department for residents who need to charge phones or get warm. Water is also available.

Eastons highway department is working to plow the roads and clear trees and branches from town.

Fairfield

All afternoon and evening school activities are canceled. The Central Office is open Thursday night for a meeting.

Fairfield Parks and Recreation will be open until 9:30 p.m. Thursday and from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday for anyone who needs a hot shower.

If you are without power and need a place to shower, do not hesitate to come use ours, the Parks and Recreation department said. Just bring a towel and a change of clothes.

Monroe

The Senior Center on Cutlers Farm Road is open for shelter and the Edith Wheeler Memorial Library is open as a warming center.

Norwalk

There are at least 46 streets in the city that remain closed, police said.

Redding

The Redding Community Center will be open for residents to get warm and charge their devices Thursday.

Shelton

River Road at Hawthorne Avenue is closed because of to low-hanging wires. Police ask that residents avoid the area.

Trumbull

Town officials and police urge residents to exercise caution since there are numerous trees and power lines down throughout town.

Plows are not able to clear streets with downed trees and power lines, so please be patient, town officials said.

All downed wires should be treated as live, officials said, and people should stay inside if possible. There are over 100 incidents around town with trees and wires involved. Some roads remain completely closed.

Trumbull Westfield Mall, Trumbull Main Library and Trumbull Senior Center can be used as places to get warm.

Weston

Numerous trees and power lines remain down.

Westport

As of 1 p.m., 36 roads in town remained closed. A full list can be found on the Westport Fire Departments Facebook page.

Wilton

About 130 roads in town are still being affected by Wednesdays snowstorm. A full list can be found on the Wilton Police Department Facebook page.

Update 2:30 p.m.  ROAD CLOSURES

The Connecticut Department of Transportation has recorded the following road closures as of 2:20 p.m. Those some of these roads have been closed since early Thursday morning and late Wednesday evening, they still remain closed.

Make sure to browse the list before hopping in your vehicle to travel anywhere Thursday afternoon.

Route 53 in Weston is closed at Old Hyde Road because of a tree down with wires in the roadway. Reported at 6:45 a.m.

Route 53 in Norwalk at Chestnut Hill Road and Pumpkin Lane is closed because of a tree down with wires in the roadway. Reported at 6:40 a.m.

Route 7 in Norwalk at 700 Main Ave. is closed because of a tree down with wires in the roadway. Reported at 6:36 a.m.

Route 102 in Ridgefield is closed at Old Branchville Road because of a tree down on the wires. Reported at 10:49 p.m. Wednesday.

Route 107 in Redding is closed at Redding Road because of a tree down on the wires. Reported at 10:27 p.m. Wednesday.

Route 107 in Redding is closed at Hill Road because of trees down on the wires. Reported at 10:22 p.m. Wednesday.

Route 115 in Seymour is closed by Colony Street because of a tree down on the wires. Reported at 9:58 p.m. Wednesday.

Update 2 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

The Westport Police Department is working with Eversource to clear roads, Captain Ryan Paulsson said.

Were working slowly but steady because we have to work with Eversource to remove the wires to make it safe enough for the town to cut up and remove fallen trees and open the roads, he said. Thats whats taking the longestmaking sure its safe so crews can go in and clean the roads.

He urged residents to avoid down wires.

We want to remind people if they see wires, stay away because you dont know if theyre live wires or not, Paulsson said. If you go out, please be careful if there are down wires and dont walk past yellow tape or barricades if you see them.

As of 2:10 p.m., Bridge Street bridge is now open, Westport police said via Twitter.

Update 1:30 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Fairfield

More than 150 roads were impassable as of 11 a.m. because of downed trees and wires, police said.

Update 12:45 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Fairfield

Fire Chief Dennis McCarthy said during the height of the storm there was very little that could be done safely. When it began to ease, around 7 p.m., McCarthy said he requested a make safe crew from UI, and the town opened its Emergency Operations Center.

DPW crews were ready to partner up with UI to open roads the fire chief said, adding the town strongly disagrees with UIs policy to not have those make safe crews work after 8 p.m.

UI has just agreed that a single Make Safe crew assigned to remove wires from the 134 trees/wires road closures will be working overnight tonight, McCarthy said. Much work is needed to get roads open and power restored in Fairfield. Much work is needed to fix the Make Safe protocol.

Westport

First Selectman Jim Marpe issued a code red message from the Emergency Operations Center on Thursday morning.

Wednesdays snowstorm caused significant damage to the towns power grid, with about 1/3 of the town is without power. Eversource does not have an estimate on when power will be fully restored, but customers should expect to be out for several days, Marpe said.

It is critical that you keep well clear of any low-hanging wires or wires down in yards, streets and driveways, he said in a release. You and your family must be particularly vigilant as snow may have covered the downed wires. Look up, look down, look all around to ensure your safety. And please, do not drive over wires, do not drive under low-hanging wires or trees, and do not move barricades or barrier tape and enter an unsafe area.

Residents can warm up and charge their devices at the Westport Center for Senior Activities on Imperial Avenue, Westport Town Hall and the YMCA on Allen Raymond Lane.

Marpe warned the snow is very heavy.

It is very challenging to shovel, and will strain even the fittest back and strongest heart, he said. If you must shovel, work slowly, take small shovels-full and take breaks. The sun and warm temperatures today will help - let Mother Nature do the work.

Update 12:10 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

New Canaan

In a meeting with local media Thursday morning, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said that he expected that some New Canaan residents wouldnt have power back until Tuesday.

Were going to ask churches to open up if people need venues to go, Moynihan said. Were following the restoration and emergency protocols.

Moynihan added that Public Works would be working to remove fallen trees all day Thursday and into Friday.

Darien

According to Chief of Police Ray Osborne, there are about 30 roads in Darien that are closed or partially closed due to fallen trees and live wires as of 8:20 a.m.

"Darien Police Department is working with Eversource and Public Works to clear the roads. Please assume all downed wires are energized and stay clear," Osborne tweeted Thursday morning.

Update 12 p.m.  LOCAL UPDATES

Redding

The Redding Community Center will be open for residents to get warm and charge their devices.

Redding Police is advising people to drive carefully because there are still trees and wires down.

More than 2,400 customers, or about 66 percent of the town, is still without power, according to Eversource.

Trumbull

There are more than 100 incidents around Trumbull where wires and trees are involved and multiple roads are closed, according to a post on the towns website. The Westfield Trumbull Mall, library and senior center are open as warming centers.

Update 11:25 a.m.

Outages

The number of households without power in the state has risen to almost 143,000, as of 10:45 a.m. Thursday, and utility companies say it could be days before power is fully restored.

Eversource reports that 10 percent of its customers in the state do not have power, while 3.8 percent of United Illuminating customers are without power.

United Illuminating expects some customers could be without power for two days. The company said on Twitter it will update customers on specific restoration times as crews assess damage.

Eversource said on Twitter it does not know how long it will take to restore power.

We do not have any estimated restoration times at this moment, but will provide them as soon as we have them, Eversource said. Please plan to be without power for multiple days as we work through this restoration.

Trees weighed down by heavy, wet snow significantly damaged the electric system, Eversource said.

Our priorities today are to work with local police and fire departments to address emergency conditions, begin the process of clearing tree and wire damage, and clear blocked roads, Eversource said.

Meanwhile, United Illuminating has almost 300 employees working on restoring power to customers. Overnight, of the over 33,000 customers who lost power, UI restored more than 20,000 by Thursday morning, the company said on Twitter.

We will continue to work until every customer is restored, United Illuminating said.

In a social media post, United Illuminating said its first priority is to work with towns and the state to de-energize downed lines, clear roads and restore critical facilities, such as hospitals and shelters.

Then, the company will assess damage and repair primary lines and circuits, followed by repairing lines that serve a smaller group of customers. Finally, crews will restore service lines to individual homes and buildings, United Illuminating said.

Monroe is the hardest hit town in Fairfield County, with 55 percent of the town, or 4,370 Eversource customers, in the dark. Meanwhile, Westport has 3,950 customers out, Norwalk has 3,280, Stamford has 3,100, New Canaan has 3,030, Wilton has 2,975 and Weston has 2,660.

Newtown, Redding, Ridgefield and Greenwich have between 1,400 to 2,200 outages, according to Eversource. Fairfield has 2,400 outages, according to United Illuminating.

Trumbull, Easton and Shelton have between 1,000 to 1,700 outages, according to United Illuminating.

Other municipalities, such as Danbury, have less than 1,000 outages, according to Eversource.

Fairfield

Residents who have no power and want to take a hot shower can use the towns Fitness Center, located at the Recreation Department, 75 Mill Plain Road, until 9:30 p.m.

Black Rock Church, 3685 Black Rock Turnpike, has also offered its church as a warming shelter for those without power who want to warm up, or charge phones, or use the internet. The church will be open until 5 p.m., but may extend the hours if needed. Light food and coffee will be available.

Trumbull

A 30-year-old man was uninjured after a tree fell on his home in Trumbull during Wednesdays snowstorm, fire officials said.

The tree grazed the house and there was nothing catastrophic and nobody was injured, according to Long Hill Fire Department Chief Alex Rauso. Trees were down near several houses in Trumbull, but Rauso said he did not know of any major damage to homes.

Greenwich

First Selectman Peter Tesei lifted the local state of emergency around 10:30 a.m. Thursday and the parking ban will be lifted at noon.

Greenwich Emergency Management Director Daniel Warzoha said its been a busy morning. There are eight other streets closed in Greenwich currently because of downed trees and wires, and a fire was just reported in Old Greenwich.

The (roads) that are blocked, I don't know how long theyre going to be blocked for, he said. We have no estimated power restoration times yet but were going to be meeting with Eversource later this afternoon.

A fallen tree on Brookside Park near Ferris Drive in Old Greenwich early this morning was not a surprise for local neighbors, the Howe and MacLennan families.

The park, they never cut down the trees, said Laura Howe around 9:30 Thursday morning as the clean-up crew began to set up shop in the road by her house. Weve been hoping somebody would come sometime to talk about that book. I had a big branch in my driveway; I had to drag it over.

Howe said the street lights also tend to go off during these storms as well.

Its very dark in here and were near the thruway, she said. So its very scary to me.

But Bruce and Kanako MacLennon were most affected by the fallen tree, as it pulled power lines down to their roof, with a few left laying in the snow and slush down their driveway.

There was a big tree down, said Bruce MacLennon, looking out his front door at crews removing the tree that blocked the road. That was part of a tree that came down - and it pulled that wire off the house ad the junction box off the house, $3,500 worth of damage in 2016.

(After that) we said, Youve got to clear that area,  MacLennon said. (The town) said, Well, you didnt complain before the tree fell onto your power line, so we arent responsible. So last year I complained about two other trees, like this one that just fell down, that were leaning over the road like this. And they took them out, but there is still one leaning over Lauras powerline. Its a mess. They dont do anything.

Even though Greenwich still has about 1,254 people without power, the numbers have remained steady throughout the night and Warzoha is confident the town will be focused on restoration from here on out.

If you look at the Eversource Outage map, we are in far better shape than some of the communities around us, Warzoha said. I'm sure its a combination of things, but we definitely dodge a bullet with this - I know there was more snow in the Newtown, Monroe area, and then Stamford definitely had a lot of outages. Westport and Norwalk were in the 3,000-4,000 range. They are where we were on Saturday. Sometimes theres no rhyme or reason to this.

Newtown

Nearly 80 roads are blocked, or partially blocked, by downed trees and wires, and roughly 2,400 homes without power, the town said on its website.

Eversources priority is clearing blocked roads so emergency vehicles can pass and then restoring power.

The municipal center and Senior Center are open for residents to warm up or charge phones.

Norwalk

Norwalk Director of Public Works Bruce Chimento, speaking from the citys emergency operations center at the fire headquarters on Connecticut Avenue at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, said about 24 roads remain closed due to downed power wires. He said hes given his crews authority to cut downed telephone lines but not electric wires.

We have to wait for Eversource. Theyre sending crews down, Chimento said. Theyre going to coordinate with my tree crews and some of our plows to open up the roads. I have 26 clearing crews opening roads.

Chimento said opening Richards Avenue, where a tree and wires have fallen, is his top priority. East Meadow Lane and Devils Garden Road are among the other roads that remain closed, he said.

Stamford

Though life seemed to be getting back to normal Thursday morning, Stamford was hit hard by Wednesdays noreaster storm, said Ted Jankowski, Director of Public Safety, Health and Welfare. The storm dumped approximately 10 inches of heavy, wet snow across the city, he said.

Thankfully no major injuries were reported, he said.

Jankowski said the 911 communications center fielded more than 800 calls during the storm, which brought down more than 250 wires, transformers and trees throughout the city. There were also 16 accidents with minor injuries reported, he said.

As of 10:40 a.m. 3,116 Stamford customers were without power, according to an outage map on the Eversource website. The map also shows there are 1,226 outages in Greenwich, 3,024 in New Canaan, 853 in Darien and 3,283 in Norwalk.

Jankowski said there are currently approximate 24 road closures, a majority of which are north of the Bullshead area in Stamford and predominately north of the Merritt Parkway. All main roads are now passable, he said.

As a precaution, Stamford Public Schools remained closed Thursday.

Stamfords Emergency Operation Center is activated, Jankowski said. The priority continues to be addressing life safety issues, and making roads passable for emergency response. We are also working with Eversource on a restoration plan.

Bradley International Airport

Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks reports that this afternoons schedule is on track with only a small number of cancellations and delays.

Update 10:30 a.m.

State

State Police responded to 1,526 calls for service during the storm between 11 a.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday, according to the departments latest report

There were 166 crashes without injuries and six crashes with injuries, Trooper First Class Kelly Grant said. Police also helped 565 motorists.

Update 10:20 a.m.

New Milford

New Milford is assessing the damage from Wednesdays storm. Mayor Pete Bass, the fire marshal, tree warden, as well as members from the towns department of public works and Eversource are working to resolve downed power lines, fallen trees and closed roads. The parks and recreation department and the police are also helping.

With yesterday's storm producing over a foot of wet, heavy snow, this has caused many trees to fall and power lines and road closures to go with it, Bass wrote on Facebook.

About 465 customers, or 3 percent of the town, is without power, according to Eversource.

Fairfield

With the possibility of yet another snow storm on Monday, its all hands on deck for Public Works crew, Public Works Supt. Scott Bartlett said.

Right now, the largest crews on working on clearing trees and with United Illuminating to remove wires and branches from roadways, Bartlett said, with a smaller crew concentrating on snow clean up.

Friday there will be a small crew hauling brush and trees, he said.

His employees were able to get a small four-hour break early Thursday, and are planning on working the rest of the day, Bartlett said. Whether they will be out again on Saturday all depends on Mondays forecast, he said.

Schools were closed for a second day Thursday, with 2,400 homes waking up to no power. According to Fire Chief Denis McCarthy, the towns emergency management director, there were 172 roads closed due to downed trees and wires.

Update 9:55 a.m.

Redding

Umpawaug Road closed around 9:45 a.m. due to a car accident on the south end just past Mallory Lane, according to First Selectwoman Julia Pembertons Facebook post.

The road was being used to divert traffic from Route 53 and Route 107, which are still closed from Wednesdays storm.

The Redding Police Department, dispatch and Highway Department are compiling a complete list of road closures and will post it on the town and police Facebook pages, as well as dispatchs Twitter account and through the CT Alert system.

Please try to be patient, Pemberton wrote. We are working as quickly as we can.

New Fairfield

Route 37 has been reopened, according to the state Department of Transportation. The road had been closed since Wednesday between Overbrook Drive and High Winds Road because of fallen wires.

Ridgefield

Ridgefield has been able to reopen some roads in the past couple hours. About 30 to 35 roads are still closed down from the 50 or so closed around 7:30 a.m.

Wilton

Trees or wires have fallen on nearly 100 roads in Wilton. The police department posted a full list on its Facebook page.

Bethel

Bethel town hall will open its showers and locker rooms from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for residents without power. Residents should bring their own towels and toiletries.

Just over 500 Bethel homes were without power, as of 9:30 a.m.

Eversource does not have an estimate for when power will be fully restored, but based on prior experience with storms of this magnitude, some homes could remain without power for several days, First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker said.

Throughout the state, Eversource plans to prioritize cleaning up roads that fire departments would be unable to access and blocked rocks that could not be accessed at all due to downed power lines, according to the Bethel Emergency Management and Fire Marshal Facebook page. Bethel officials are double checking their lists to be sure the does not have any blocked roads, according to the Facebook page.

Fairfield

Fairfield has 172 roads blocked due to downed trees and wires, and more than 3,060 homes are without power, the town said in an emergency message to residents.

Travel around town is difficult due to the many road closures, the town said. Please use caution when traveling and remember to check on you neighbors.

The town and United Illuminating are working closely to clear roads and restore power as quickly and safely as possible, but UI does not have an estimate on when power will be restored.

Resident should treat all downed wires as if they are energized, the town said. To report a downed power line or outage, call UI at 800 722 5584.

Stamford

Heavy snow falling in Stamford near the end of Wednesdays storm created a disaster area in North Stamford.

Public safety Director Ted Jankowski said as of 8 a.m. Thursday 27 roads remain closed mainly in North Stamford due to downed trees and power lines.

From about 5:20 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. all hell broke loose here, Jankowski said Thursday morning. He said city officials are working out their stradeegy to deal with all the trees and power lines.

Jankowski said about 10 inches of snow fell in Stamford throughout the storm.

What I really want is people to stay off the road so we can do our work. And the real message i want to get out is everyone should assume wires are live and stay away until Eversource and our city crews can look at them, Jankowski said.

There were no reports of injures during the storm.

City officials are reporting that they received more than 800 calls to the 911 dispatch center during the storm and there were about 258 wires, transformers and trees down.

There are 3,678 Stamford customers without power Thursday morning.

Numerous roads are impassable with the majority of them north of Bullshead and predominantly north of the Merritt Parkway.

Stamfords Emergency Operation Center is open and the priority continued to be addressing lifesaving issues and making roads passable for emergency response, city officials say.

The Department of Operations has more than 55 individuals and vehicles continuing with plowing roads and working with Eversource Line Crews in making roads passable. Operations crews have been working throughout the night, according to a news release from city officals.

There have been 16 accidents with minor injuries reported since the beginning of the storm.

The following roads were closed, as of 7 a.m.:

Hunting Ridge Road at Boulder Brook Road.

24 Fairmont Ave.

27 Holbrook Dr.

49 Woodley Road

Harry Road and Lakeside Drive

336 Wildwood Road

33 Pinnacle Rock Road

199 Janes Lane

95 Quarry Road

101 Breezy Hill Road

18 Barmore Dr. East

69 Riverbank Drive

16 Farms Road

185 Interlaken Road

Faunfield Road

108 Ken Ct.

Skyline Lane

Tanglewood Lane and Mayapple Road

17 Valley View Dr.

Green Tree Lane

250 Woodbine Road

40 Mianus Road

125 Hemlock Road

Update 9 a.m.

As the state cleans up from a massive storm Wednesday, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urged residents to drive carefully, as roads are clear, but slippery.

Malloy said in a media briefing Thursday morning that highways are in good shape, but that about 40 secondary state roads are closed, mostly due to downed trees and power lines caused by the heavy, wet snow and high winds..

He said State Police reported more than 160 car crashes with six minor injuries due to the storm.

Meanwhile, 160,000 households at most lost power throughout the state, Malloy said. Power has been restored to thousands, but 127,000 Eversouce customers and 12,660 United Illuminating customers are still without power.

We understand thats not optimal and were working with utilities and watching the utilities in the recovery efforts, Malloy told reporters in the basement of the William A. ONeill Armory. .

Malloy said that about 3.9 percent of UI customers and 10 percent of Eversource customers remained without power, and that the companies were concentrating on major incidents of downed lines.

There are a fair amount of trees that came down and that spread throughout the state, although there is a lot of concentration in the Southwestern portion of the state, Malloy said.

Malloy said utility companies will prioritize safety work and then try to restore power to the most affected areas.

Obviously, power companies cant get their power on immediately, he said. They have to, in many cases, take care of trees, remove trees, replace poles in some cases.and safety has to come first.

Malloy also asked residents to check on elderly neighbors and clear fire hydrants near their homes.

We could use your help to make sure you and your neighbors are safe, he said.

Malloy said statewide accumulations varied widely.

Youve got from three inches to lots of inches of snow, Malloy said. This is our own version of March madness.

Update 8:20 a.m.

Road closures

Several more roads have been closed across the area, according to the state Department of Transportation.

Route 53 at Old Hyde Road in Weston is closed because of a downed tree.

In Easton, Route 59 at Ridgeway Road, as well as North Park Avenue, is closed due to a fallen tree and wires.

Route 108 at Oak Ave and Wooster Street in Shelton is closed due to a fallen tree and wires.

In Monroe, Route 111 at Cottage Street is closed because of a down tree and wires.

Route 199 is closed at Atnichols Hills Road in Washington because of a tree fallen on the wires.

Route 313 by Warren Road in Seymour is closed for tree and wires down.

In Redding, Route 53 is closed at Umpawaug Road and Route 7 is closed at Umpawaug. Drivers are being diverted down Umpawaug, police said on social media.

Greenwich

As of 7:45 a.m. Thursday, there were eight roads closed in Greenwich with trees and wires down. Eversource is reporting approximately 5 percent of their customers are without power, about 1,525 households.

Closed roads include: Howard Road, Cliffdale Road, Strickland Road, Spring Street, Brookside Park in Old Greenwich Butternut Hollow, Old Mill Road, Hemlock Drive.

Those roads have both trees and wires down, said Lt John Slusarz of the Greenwich Police Department this morning.

"The roads that are clear are clear," he said. "It's those areas where the trees were hurting that they came down with the heavy snow. It is what it is."

His advice for Greenwich this morning: "Just take it slow take it easy, enjoy hopefully the last round of snow before spring."

Public Schools in Greenwich are closed as clean-up continues and Metro-North tweeted for commuters to expect delays .

"For today, March 8th, Metro-North expects to operate on a reduced schedule. Customers should expect extremely crowded conditions and delays due to the residual effects of the storm."

Update 7:55 a.m.

Bradley International Airport is open and its snow removal operations are ongoing.

Officials say that the airlines are still catching up with their schedules in response to the storm. About 30 percent of our morning departures canceled. Passengers who are scheduled to travel Thursday are advised to check with their airline on their individual flight itineraries and any potential rebooking options before heading to the airport.

Real time flight status updates are available at www.flybdl.org. Twitter users can also receive automated updates by tweeting their flight number @BDLFlightInfo.

Update 7:45 a.m.

Westport officials say that the town suffered significant damage to its roadside trees and power lines. Trees and downed wires have made numerous major roadways inaccessible including several arteries to the Saugatuck Train Station.

The long list of street closed include Bridge Street William Cribari Bridge, several locations on Partrick Road; Kings Highway South between Post Road West and Treadwell Avenue, and Cross Highway between Weston Road and Roseville Road.

There are numerous other streets that are impassable, too. This list may grow as further trees and/or wires may come down as a result of this storm.

Officials warn that downed power wires should be treated as energized and that conditions remain extremely treacherous -- unnecessary travel at this time is not advised.

Close to 50 roads are closed in Ridgefield due to fallen trees and wires, police said. Officers said they would have an updated list in an hour.

More than 70 roads in Weston were closed at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night. See a complete list on the towns website.

Brookfield police reported a couple roads were closed Thursday morning.

Update 7:20 a.m.

About 123,500 Eversource customers are without power, as of 7 a.m.

The towns with the most outages in the area are:

Bethel: 476

Brookfield: 844

Danbury: 891

Darien: 758, including limited power at the Middle School, with over 45 downed power lines in town

Greenwich: 1,446

Monroe: 4,320 or 54% of the town

New Canaan: 2,965, or 35% of the town

New Fairfield: 836

New Milford: 445

Newtown: 2,419, or 21% of the town

Norwalk: 3,024, or 10% of the town

Oxford: 1,048, or 19% of the town

Redding: 2,411, or 64% of the town

Ridgefield: 1,352

Seymour: 886

Sherman: 123

Southbury: 644

Stamford: 3,698

Westport: 3,718, or 30% of the town

Weston: 2,600, or 67% of the town

Wilton: 2,954, or 39% of the town

About 12,650 United Illuminating customers are without power, as of 7:10 a.m.

The towns with the most outages in the area are:

Bridgeport: 701

Easton: 1,510

Fairfield: 2,427

Hamden: 294

Shelton: 1,775

Stratford: 289

Trumbull: 1,040

Update 7 a.m.

All state offices will open an hour later Thursday due to poor weather conditions, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy announced.

Nonessential, first-shift employees should report to work one hour from their normal reporting time.

As the clean-up from yesterdays winter storm continues, we feel that its best to delay the opening of state offices in order to allow crews a little extra time to plow the roads and parking lots, Malloy said in a statement. We encourage everyone to exercise extreme caution while driving. We especially want to thank our hardworking state and local plow crews who have been working throughout the night to clear the roads across our state, as well as state and local emergency personnel and first-responders.

State police dispatchers in Bridgeport and Litchfield reported no major crashes overnight. A Southbury state police dispatcher said troopers saw the usual spin outs, but also had no major problems.

The highways are O.K., the Southbury dispatcher said. The side roads are terrible.

Original story 6:45 a.m.

After between five to 19 inches of snow dumped on Fairfield County Wednesday, thousands of residents are waking up to power outages and closed roads.

Several schools have also closed or announced delays for Thursday.

Eversource estimates almost 124,500 customers, or 10 percent of the state, are are without power, as of 6:30 a.m. Thursday. Stamford has the greatest number of outages in the area, with almost 4,000 customers in the dark.

United Illuminating reports more than 12,650 customers are without power, as of 6:30 a.m. Fairfield has the most outages with 2,400.

Fairfield First Selectman Michael Tetreau said on Twitter that there were 178 wires and 125 trees down, as of 5 a.m.

DPW teams have done a great job and will be working throughout the day, he said.

Metro-North will also be operating on a reduced schedule Thursday. The New Canaan and Danbury Branches remain suspended until further notice.

Metro-North said customers should expect extremely crowded conditions and delays due to the storm.

Dozens of roads are also closed, according to the state Department of Transportation. Some were closed Thursday morning, while others closed Wednesday night.

Route 67 near Wellers Bridge Road in Roxbury is closed because of fallen wires.

Route 133 near Beach Hill Road in Bridgewater is called because of a a tree down on the wires.

In New Fairfield, Route 37 between Overbrook Drive and High Winds Road is closed because of downed wires.

Route 116 in Ridgefield is closed near Wooster Street because of fallen wires. The road is also closed at Continental Drive because of a tree down on the wires. Route 102 is closed at Old Branchville Road because of a tree on the wires.

In Sherman, Route 55 is closed by Anderson Road due to a tree fallen on the wires.

Route 115 is closed by Colony Street in Seymour because of a tree in the wires.

Route 107 in Redding is closed at Hill Road, as well as Redding Road, because of a tree on the wires.

In Wilton, Route 7 at Honey Hill Road is closed because of a tree and wires in the roadway. Route 106 at Old Boston Road is also closed because of a fallen tree.

Route 47 between Moody Bridge Road and School Street in Washington is closed because of a tree fallen on the wires.

In Westport, Route 33 at Westport Road and Dudley Road is closed because of a fallen tree and wires.

Route 124 at South Avenue and Church Street, as well as at Gerdes Road, in New Canaan is closed because of a downed tree and wires.

In Darien, Route 124 at 985 Mansfield is closed because of a downed tree and wires.

Route 59 at Rose Road is closed in Fairfield due to a fallen tree and wires.

In Norwalk, Route 7 at 700 Main Avenue is closed because of a downed tree and wires.
Contributed / Courtesy of Beardsley Zoo

BRIDGEPORT  Staff at Connecticuts Beardsley Zoo are grieving the death of Harper, a 12-year-old red wolf who was euthanized Feb. 26 after battling an agressive form of cancer.

A resident of the zoo for three years, the male wolf was beloved by the zoo community, according to a news release from Beardsley. Harper will be deeply missed by all of us here at Connecticuts Beardsley Zoo, said zoo director Gregg Dancho in the release. He had a unique personality and related well both to his companion, Shy, and to his animal care staff. It has been our privilege to have known him since December, 2014.
In just a little over a decade, the co-working phenomenon has revolutionized the way millions of people work. International co-working giant WeWork is now the largest corporate occupier of commercial real estate in London, second in size only to the British government. Founded in New York City in 2010, WeWork recently received a $20 billion valuation (according to Forbes' Steven Bertoni), a testament to how much the model has taken off. The only U.S. startups with higher valuations are Airbnb and Uber.

Related: What Will Coworking Spaces Look Like in 2020?

Co-working spaces aren't just for digital nomads and startup entrepreneurs anymore, either. Fortune 500 companies like GM, GE, IBM and Microsoft all rent office space from WeWork. In fact, big businesses now comprise 30 percent of WeWork's monthly sales, according to Bertoni.

Companies that size can undoubtedly find more economical office space, but they flock to WeWork for something more intangible than square footage. WeWork, in fact, sells a culture of work far removed from the staid office environment of past decades. The emphasis is on community and work as fun. The company's hybrid of hospitality and technology has made its co-working model by far the most successful in the world.

While WeWork is based primarily in the United States and Europe, the company is also expanding aggressively in Asia. And, there, WeWork is far from the only game in town. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Circo recently more than doubled in size and has plans for further expansion. Indeed, different iterations of the coworking model exist in virtually every major city in the world.

If you're an entrepreneur who's just starting up or looking to expand into new markets, you may be trying to decide if joining the co-working revolution makes sense for you and your business. Certainly, advantages and disadvantages exist to choosing a co-working space over a traditional office. Here are several of them.

Cash flow and freedom from friction

If you're a solo entrepreneur or part of a very small team, co-working is likely the best choice for having a dedicated location for work. Yes, it's more expensive than working from home or a coffee shop, but co-working spaces offer an environment that's much more conducive to work.

Also, expenses like office furniture and renovations will be included in your rent, as will electricity, high speed internet and other utilities. Another aspect of the attraction of co-working spaces is that they allow you to work in a professional environment without high up-front costs or long-term commitments.

Related: Why Big Corporations Are Moving Into Coworking Spaces

When your team expands

But what happens when your team begins to grow? I spoke to Karl Kangur, founder of MRR Media, whose team grew fivefold in 2017. Kangur recently opted to lease a dedicated office in the co-working space where the company began, he told me: "Co-working spaces," he explained, "take all the hassle and admin out of setting up and running an office. It allows my team and me to focus on the work and growing our business."

Kangur said he sees enough value in co-working culture and flexibility that he's willing to pay a premium over what a private office of similar size might cost. "When you're growing rapidly, it's easier to upgrade and move to a new space. You're usually not locked into a long-term lease, and co-working-space owners are more flexible than traditional landlords," Kangur said.

Paying an additional expense for flexibility may be unnecessary or something your company can ill afford. When your team grows beyond a handful of people, it makes sense to evaluate whether moving to a private office makes better fiscal sense.

Facing your clients

One of the biggest potential disadvantages of establishing your team in a co-working space is the lack of control you have in presenting your business and brand to your clients. While spaces like WeWork and many others place a high premium on design and the creation of a trendy environment, their focus will be on their own brand, not yours.

That's why, even if you have a dedicated office within a co-working environment, there are likely to be restrictions on how much of a stamp you can put on your space. If you have a business that relies largely on face-to-face interaction with clients, consider the impression that your being in a non-dedicated office will leave on your clients.

From a practical perspective, meeting privately with clients is unlikely to be an issue. Most co-working spaces offer dedicated meeting and conference rooms to members. But it is difficult, in a co-working space, to create the level of gravitas that a private office does.This may be of particular concern for businesses that value confidentiality. The open-plan layout of co-working spaces is unlikely to inspire the sense of privacy and security that a private office can convey.

Related: Is a Coworking Space Worth the Cost if You're Already Working From Home?

When deciding between a co-working space and a private office, ask yourself how your current and target clientele will perceive your business. The perception of coworking spaces not being "serious" enough is changing, but the presence of Ping-Pong and foosball tables may still be off-putting to a more traditional client base.

Staying focused

One of the attractions of a co-working space for many businesses is that they foster an environment conducive to socializing. Typically, you'll find yourself surrounded by other entrepreneurs and their teams. This makes co-working spaces a hotbed for networking. For many people, these are positive attributes, but they can come at a cost.

A co-working space, for instance, affords you less control over whom you surround yourself with and your ability to minimize distractions. While most co-working spaces place a high value on maintaining a quiet, professional environment -- with dedicated phone booths for meetings and calls, etc. -- there is still a higher likelihood that you will be surrounded by distractions than in a private office.

If you have difficulty staying focused on your work, you may find it challenging to be as productive as you would in a private office. But consider that many co-working spaces offer free or reduced priced trials. So make sure to test-drive any prospective work location before you commit.

Final thoughts

Whether a co-working space or private office is best for you and your business depends on the intricacies of your operation. Evaluating your desire for ease of scalability, the impression you want to leave on clients and the kind of working environment you think would be best for your day-to-day tasks will be the key factors to decide on when choosing an office.

Perhaps there is no one universal answer -- indeed, we started out in a co-working space and found that as our business grew, it made more sense to scale up our headquarters in a private office. What you need from your environment will change as your business changes. Keeping an open mind and maintaining an attitude of self-evaluation are the best ways to ensure you're in the right space.

Related:

A Co-working Space vs. a Private Office: How Do You Choose?

This Start-up is Building a Hip Office Culture

This Entrepreneur is Ending Monday Blues, One Office at a Time



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


NORWALK  Plans have long been in the works to remove the 162-year-old Flock Process Dam from the Norwalk River, and yet the structure remains.

That left members of the Norwalk Common Councils Public Works Committee expressing healthy skepticism when Alexis Cherichetti, the citys senior environmental officer, this week explained the dam removal will begin in June and wrap up in October if all goes well.

Is that the big possible impediment? asked Councilman Thomas Livingston, a District E Democrat on the committee, referring to finding a contractor to perform the work within the allocated budget. Or is there some other reason it might not get done?

Said Cherichetti, No, its just finding a contractor at this point. The permits are pretty straightforward at this point. Weve kind of figured out how to get down there logistically. Its not an easy dam to get to.

After Cherichettis update, the committee recommended authorizing Mayor Harry Rilling to apply for and accept any additional grant funding that might be needed to see the project to completion.

I dont think any will (be needed), Cherichetti said. But the state really wants this dam to be removed so that when we go out to bid they would like the city to have the extra funding from this grant program to make sure that the physical removal of the dam can finally go forward this time.

The full council will consider the request to apply for additional funding, if needed, next Tuesday evening.

The state and federally funded dam removal project so far has run below budget with $130,000 spent on design, engineering and permitting with the physical removal estimated to run around $470,000, based upon a consultants report, according to Cherichetti.

But well see when we bid the project, Cherichetti said. Its always a bit of an unknown when youre looking for a contractor to go down into a river and remove a 14-foot high, 70-foot wide, 15-foot deep chunk of concrete.

The dam, located along the Norwalk River south of the Merritt Parkway, was built in the 1850s to generate power. Flock was the term for a tuft of wool or cotton fiber used to stuff mattresses, according to the Norwalk River Watershed Association, which supports its removal.

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection considers the dam to be an impediment to the runs of migratory fish along the river.

In October 2013, Norwalks legislative delegation in Washington, D.C., announced that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service had awarded Norwalk a $970,000 grant to remove it from the river.

The dam has provided a scenic backdrop for visitors of Hotel Zero Degrees Norwalk on Main Avenue  a point noted by Councilman Michael Corsello, an at-large Democrat on the public works committee.

So were going to lose that pretty waterfall that you looked out on from Hotel Zero? Corsello asked.

Cherichetti said the river will retain a pretty good ripple after the dam is removed given its fairly steep grade and bedrock on either side of it. How the dam is removed will be another factor in how water flows through the area afterward.

The management of this very large earthen dam, getting all that material out onto Main Avenue would be very cost prohibitive, Cherichetti said. So what were proposing to make is called an engineered rock ripple that basically takes the dam, which is now this 14-foot wall, and spreads it out really, from above the dam to below the dam at a 12 percent grade.

She said the 12 percent grade will be adequate for fish passage.

John Jacobson, an environmentalist who lives near Washington, D.C., and has family in the Norwalk area, emailed Cherichetti on Thursday, expressing hope that the dam will be removed this summer.

I hope your department is doing some public outreach so residents are as excited as I am for this opportunity to increase the range of Connecticut's anadramous fish and habitat improvement in general, wrote Jacobson in his email, which he copied to Hearst Connecticut Media. I look forward to hearing from you and getting updated information for this restoration project.
NORWALK  While running errands or walking her dog, Jennifer Balliett has been spreading the word: Moms Demand Action, a nonprofit aiming to prevent gun violence, is starting it own group in Norwalk.

Everywhere I go ... when it comes up, I tell them to come to a meeting, the Norwalk woman said of gun violence in schools. The topic arises with troubling frequency.

People in Norwalk, Stamford, Westport, Fairfield and upper Fairfield County are moving to start local groups with Moms Demand Action, and will host their first meetings this month. Modeled after Mothers Against Drunk Drivers  the organization many credit with the national minimum drinking age  Moms Demand Action has worked in every state on actions including keeping guns out of classrooms and preventing people from carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. While the organization has had a statewide chapter since 2012 (Moms Demand Action was founded the day after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School), these local groups mark a new development for the organization.

In recent weeks, the organization has seen an proliferation of new groups. Seventeen new local groups are under way in Connecticut.

The recent Florida shooting, which claimed 17 lives, sparked a political outcry among students, who began making their thoughts on gun reform known to elected officials. In Norwalk, school walkouts memorializing lives lost to gun violence have been organized for March 14, and across the country, students supporting gun reform are walking out from class April 20.

But parents have also been looking for ways to organize politically.

When Balliett heard about the shooting in Parkland, she immediately thought of the one that had happened in the Newtown elementary school when her own daughter was a first grader. The shooting inspired her friend, Kara Baekey, to begin Moms Demand Actions Connecticut chapter.

I thought: Whats Kara doing? And what can I do? Because this is ridiculous, Balliett said.

She wasnt the only one. The following meeting of the Connecticut chapter was scheduled to take place in a Panera Bread quickly grew to over 200 people and was moved to a Westport church to accommodate the crowd. At the end, Baekey put up signs marking geographic areas so that people could meet neighbors passionate about gun reform. Many came away from the meeting determined to start their own local groups.

It keeps us close to our mayor and our own legislators who are here, and I think thats where the grassroots effort starts, said Balliett, who will be leading the nascent Norwalk group along with Kim Hjelmar.

And while the organization is open to people of all genders and ages, A lot of us are moms, Balliett said. And were just busy. So having events that are close to home is just helpful.

Norwalks first meeting will take place on Saturday, March 17 at 2 p.m. at St. Pauls on the Green.

Balliett said Moms Demand Action is working to demand criminal background checks on all gun sales and require people from states with loose gun controls to follow Connecticuts gun laws while in Connecticut, rather than those from their home state. She hopes the meeting will lead to conversation and a list of people willing to volunteer in various capacities, from spreading the word to speaking with legislators or giving gun safety lessons to school Parent-Teacher-Student Associations.

If the Norwalk March for Gun Reform that drew hundreds of people out last Saturday was any indication, there are many on board with the organizations mission.

Balliett was moved by the number of people who attended the march, as well as their diversity  people of all ages and races from across the state.

The day also strengthened her resolve to take action. My daughter, on the way here, asked if she should be nervous about someone arriving here with a gun, she said as she passed out flyers for Moms Demand Action at the march. Thats something shes working to change.

Those interested in more information about Moms Demand Action can visit https://www.facebook.com/MomsDemandActionCTCentral/ or email connecticut@momschapterleaders.org.
NORWALK  Norwalk schools remained closed Thursday after a strong noreaster brought down trees, power lines and closed dozens of local roads the night before.

Many trees and branches were no match for the combination of wet, heavy snow followed by high winds, as city snowplow drivers saw first-hand while plowing Wednesday evening.

All the downed wires, all the downed trees, the limbs. Youre driving and because its dark you dont see the tree limbs down until youre right on top of it and the wires grab the truck and you just take all the wires down with you, said Scott Vetare, a heavy equipment operator with the Norwalk Department of Public Works. If you stay inside the cab, youre fine, you can just back off it. Mostly, they were communications lines, but there were a few fires last night that some of the guys saw from the telephone poles. So it was like Armageddon. It was crazy.

Roads blocked, schools closed

Norwalk police and Deputy Emergency Management Director Michele DeLuca reported no storm-related injuries, but 31 roads remained closed throughout the city as of late Thursday morning, and officials cautioned residents and motorists to treat all downed wires as live.

DeLuca said the city is working with the American Red Cross to open the emergency shelter at Brien McMahon High School Wednesday night for residents affected by the power outage.

Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling described the downed trees and wires as the biggest problem resulting from Wednesdays winter storm.

Some were laying on wires and knocking wires down, so we have to wait for Eversource to come and turn off the service before the trees can be removed, Rilling said early Thursday afternoon. So DPW crews are out, trying to remove all the trees, trying to get that done. From what I can gather, the roads are all done (plowed) except for the roads where trees are down.

The aftermath of the storm led to power outages at Silvermine Elementary, Brookside Elementary, Fox Run Elementary and Brien McMahon high schools, according to Board of Education Chairman Mike Barbis.

While outdated power systems have been a known issue at some of the district schools  mainly Cranbury and Fox Run elementary schools  Barbis said the power outages at the four schools Thursday had more to do with their location than their infrastructure.

He noted that electrical assessments are in progress after the schools facilities study was commissioned in 2015 and that assessments at Cranbury and Fox Run are ongoing.

I think what happened with the storm wouldve happened regardless, Barbis said.

Brenda Wilcox-Williams, a spokeswoman for the district, said Eversource crews responded to the school outages while custodians and the Department of Public Works worked together to take care of cleanup at district buildings.

I think the issue is less about the cleanup than it is where various locations stand on power outages, Wilcox-Williams said.

In Westport, First Selectman Jim Marpe issued a code red message from the Emergency Operations Center on Thursday.

Wednesdays snowstorm caused significant damage to the towns power grid, with about 1/3 of the town losing power. Eversource does not have an estimate on when power will be fully restored, but customers should expect to be out for several days, Marpe said.

It is critical that you keep well clear of any low-hanging wires or wires down in yards, streets and driveways, Marpe said. You and your family must be particularly vigilant as snow may have covered the downed wires. Look up, look down, look all around to ensure your safety. And please, do not drive over wires, do not drive under low-hanging wires or trees, and do not move barricades or barrier tape and enter an unsafe area.

Major cleanup under way

Bruce Chimento, Norwalks director of public works, said his crews were working with Eversource to clear downed wires and trees from the blocked roads. Richards Avenue was the top priority.

Eversource spokesman Mitch Gross said hundreds of the companys line-and-tree crews, along with out-of-state crews, were working in Connecticut Wednesday afternoon as part of a multi-day restoration effort.

There all over Fairfield County as well as all the towns affected that we serve, Gross said. They are very busy. Theyve been responding to emergency 911 calls. They are assessing damage, they are helping crews clear blocked roads. Its very difficult to move around southwest Connecticut due to the blocked roads. Were working with those towns to clear the blocked roads.

As of midafternoon, 10 percent of Eversources 31,181 customers in Norwalk remained without power, according to the companys outage map.

Municipal crews werent the only people busy cleaning up fallen trees and limbs. Bartlett Tree Experts had five crews working the Stamford-Norwalk region Thursday with more crews scheduled for Friday, according to Doug Williams, a licenses arborist and local manager of the companys Stamford office.

Theres a combination of fallen trees, cracked and broken limbs, and a lot of ornamental trees like birches that splayed over, said Williams, who predicted cleanup will take weeks. Its one thing to clear the roads and the driveways and get the trees off the houses. Then as arborists we have to go back and repair the trees.

Wednesdays storm, which dumped 6.1 inches of snow on Norwalk, was the second noreaster to hit the region in five days. A storm Friday brought heavy rain and winds, also bringing down trees. The National Weather Service forecasts scattered snow showers Friday, followed by mostly sunny skies over the weekend. Precipitation returns Monday with a 40 percent chance of snow and rain.
Memento Park

By Mark Sarvas

Farrar Straus Giroux. 288 pp. $26

---

The Nazis took everything from my mother's family. What good would reparations do?

After the fall of communism in Hungary, the new government was faced with a question: What to do with all the statues? Monuments to Marx, Lenin and other communist saints and heroes filled the country, as they did every place Soviet Communism had ruled. The Hungarian solution was ingenious: The city of Budapest opened Memento Park, an open-air museum where the statues were deposited. Rather than erasing the past, the park tried to cordon it off, to create a space where a difficult history could be encountered and mastered.

Memento Park is the setting for a key scene late in Mark Sarvas' new novel, but it is the larger resonance of the site that makes it an appropriate inspiration for the title of the book. For the confrontation with the past - personal, familial, national and religious - is Sarvas' central theme.

The story begins as Matt Santos, them middle-aged, moderately successful actor who is Sarvas' protagonist (and, the name suggests, perhaps alter ego as well), sees the past come crashing into his well-arranged life in the form of a haunted work of art. In his case, this is not a communist statue, but a pre-World War II painting called "Budapest Street Scene," by a (fictional) Hungarian artist named Ervin Kalman.

One day, Matt receives a call in his Los Angeles home from the Australian consulate, which informs him the painting used to belong to his Jewish family in Budapest before World War II. Evidently, in 1944, just before the German occupation of Hungary, Matt's grandfather traded the painting to a neighbor for exit passes, which he used to save his own life and that of his young son, Matt's father. Now "Budapest Street Scene" has resurfaced, and it rightfully belongs to him. And, by the way, it is worth millions of dollars.

Clearly, Matt has inherited not just a windfall, but a whole history on a piece of canvas. What does it want from him, and what does he owe it? These are the questions he struggles to answer in the course of "Memento Park," which takes the form of a long internal monologue with flashbacks, conducted by Matt the night before the painting goes up for auction.

While Sarvas' book is full of cunningly prepared surprises, it is also a fundamentally thoughtful and meditative story, whose real plot is Matt's achievement of a kind of perspective on his past. "It's possible to spend an entire lifetime looking at something, and even then, to fail to behold it in any meaningful way," he reflects at the beginning of the book, and the hidden purpose of the painting is to teach him to see clearly - not just art, but life itself.

In a sense, Matt is the last person who ought to be forced into such a reckoning. His role in life is not to see, but to be seen: He is a Hollywood actor, born into a time and place that loves actors more than anything else. ("I was born the year America elected president a B-movie actor who promised them 'a shining city on the hill,'" he wryly notes.) In many ways, he is living the California dream, complete with a girlfriend, Tracy, who is a blond swimsuit model. If he can't simply disappear into the timeless present of the screen, it is partly because he is Jewish, a legacy that comes to seem increasingly important to him.

Even more, it is because he is the son of his father, who emerges in all his stubborn, withholding, frightening strength as the book's most magnetic character. "My father taught me nothing," Matt insists. "There is no judgment implied in this, merely observation, though I know how it sounds." Perhaps this refusal to teach was deliberate, since his father experienced all the terrible history that Matt was spared. Born in Budapest, he escaped the Nazis and fled the communists, coming to America to start a new life. But the scars of the old life lingered, in his silences, rigidities and bursts of anger. A fanatical collector of model cars, he seemed to care more about his toys than his family.

The sudden advent of "Budapest Street Scene" forces Matt to reconnect with his father in ways that prove painfully enlightening. At the same time, it brings him in contact with Rachel, the lawyer who is helping him reclaim the painting, and who comes to represent for Matt the connected, contented Jewish life he never had the chance to experience. Who will win out in the struggle for his allegiance: Rachel, a figure of fantasy, or Tracy, the actual woman he has known and loved? Will he ever find out the true story of "Budapest Street Scene" and whether he deserves to take ownership of it? These are the questions that drive the narrative, and Sarvas keeps them expertly on the boil.

But in the end, it is Mark's father - that maddening embodiment of an inaccessible past - who dominates his life, and his story. While "Memento Park" is very much a book about the Hungarian Jewish experience, the dynamics it portrays are common to any immigrant family, where history is the thing everyone is trying to forget, even though it is present in every word.

---

Kirsch is the author most recently of "Rocket and Lightship: Essays on Literature and Ideas."
Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life

By Laura Thompson

Pegasus. 544 pp. $35

---

Agatha Christie's work has never gone out of style, nor out of print, in the four decades since her death - to the tune of more than 2 billion copies sold. But Christie's flame burns extra bright in the present, thanks to new film adaptations ("Murder on the Orient Express"), authorized sequels ("The Monogram Murders" and "Closed Casket,"by Sophie Hannah) and homages ("Magpie Murders," by Anthony Horowitz).

But derivative works and adaptations can't fully explain why Christie's work endures. A splendid biography by Laura Thompson, however, does. "Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life" was published in Britain over a decade ago and took an inexplicable amount of time to cross the pond. Yet the timing is perfect because Thompson's thorough yet readable treatment of Christie's life, in combination with artful critical context on her work, arrives at the reason for her endurance:

"As she would often do, Agatha has used the familiarity of the stereotype to subvert our expectations. It was one of the cleverest tricks she would play. It was, in fact, more than a trick: by such means she revealed her insight, her lightly worn understanding of human nature."

Christie, as Thompson details, came by such understanding through the traditional means of early hardship. Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in 1890, her middle-class upbringing in Torquay was idyllic, with a fierce, close relationship with her mother, a woman determined to shield Agatha from a repeat of her own childhood hurts. Young Agatha was imaginative but practical, a skillful nurse during World War I who wished for a domestic life as a wife and mother - and got it, after marrying Archie Christie and giving birth to their only child, Rosalind.

But her imagination needed an outlet. Healthy competition with her older sister, who also published stories, spurred Christie to write the book eventually published as "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920), the first of many outings for her iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

He seemed to have emerged from the ether, as Christie liked to tell it, though her careful reading of earlier detective fiction greats - especially Emile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq novels - was no doubt a contributing factor. The singular alchemy of careful plotting, ruthless character study and her "absolute belief that each person had an immutable essence, usually unknown even to themselves" was already in evidence.

Christie's life and work collided in 1926. She had already published "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," the Poirot novel that still provokes vociferous reader debate, to modest success and critical acclaim. By December she was infamous, the subject of constant media scrutiny, after an 11-day disappearance that ended when she was discovered at a Harrogate spa.

She never discussed the underlying reasons for the vanishing. Thompson lays out a plausible theory of a fugue state, brought on by the crushing discovery that Archie was in love with someone else, exacerbated by terror and shame that essentially paralyzed Christie. The spell broke, she and Christie divorced, she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan and lived a merry life of travel and riches and hard work. But the key enigma, this mystery story, is, as Thompson notes, "her finest, because it cannot be solved."

Afterward, there was the public Agatha, whose Poirots, Miss Marples and other detective fictions reached readers at a near-annual clip. But the more private one had a creative outlet, too, under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott. Thompson artfully demonstrates how Christie revealed in the Westmacott novels her pain about her collapsed first marriage, her difficult relationship with Rosalind and her overwhelming love for her mother.

Christie, in essence, was the Elena Ferrante of her day. She did not take public ownership of the pseudonym until the 1960s. While "Agatha Christie" could present herself as "the clever, controlled, sensible woman who knew all about human emotion but who dealt with it, every time, and kept chaos at bay," Mary Westmacott was, by contrast, the "sensitive, secret creature who had been born of the drifting ghost of Harrogate ... who could never have existed without the strange freedom that came from using another woman's name."

While Thompson makes a good case for reading the Westmacott romances, any Christie biography must ultimately be about the mystery novels that brought her such extraordinary commercial success. Thompson does not cheerlead when it isn't warranted - at least one of Christie's novels ("The Burden") is deemed "diffuse and barely structured" - and she argues that Christie's zenith, in plot and in prose, was during and after World War II.

That this era of tremendous carnage, societal upheaval and polarization would be Christie's triumph is obvious in hindsight. Her novels are the epitome of order restored out of chaos. She, too, needed that catharsis, and she determined to provide it to her readers.

But this isn't the full explanation, else why would we still be reading her work now? Surely, her brand of order cannot overcome all possible chaos caused by contemporary ills?

An insightful quotation by P.G. Wodehouse, in a 1969 letter to Christie, offers a further clue. "I don't find it spoils an Agatha Christie a bit 'knowing the end,'" he wrote, "because the characters are so interesting." As much as Christie's fame rests on her fiendish plotting, what girds their iron-cast base are the people who populate her stories. Poirot's little gray cells. Miss Marple's near-omniscient observations. The wants, needs, desires and grievances of incidental players and possible suspects.

When one wants, one is capable of murder. That's what Agatha Christie knew. That's what she wrote about so well. That's why we still read her - and always will.

---

Weinman is the editor, most recently, of "Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s" and the author of "The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World," to be published this fall.
The Riverboats at the Gateway Archthe Becky Thatcher and the Tom Sawyerinvite those of all ages to experience a unique adventure on the Mississippi River aboard a riverboat cruise.

Located beneath the Gateway Arch on the Mississippi Riverfront, the riverboats open for the 2018 season on Saturday, March 3. Cruises range from blues concerts and Sunday brunch to nighttime dinner excursions and front-row seats to Fair Saint Louis fireworks shows. A complete 2018 season cruise schedule (including fall 2018 cruises and dates) is available at www.gatewayarch.com.

St. Louis Riverfront Cruise

WHEN: Times vary by day. Call 877-982-1410 for daily schedule.

DETAILS: Journey to a time when steamboats ruled the Mississippi River. Narrated by the riverboat captain or a National Park Service ranger, this one-hour cruise highlights the rivers role in St. Louis past and present, and explores famous St. Louis landmarks and architecture.

TICKETS: $20/adults; $10/kids 3-15; children under age 3 are free. Save up to $3 with the Tram & Cruise Combo, which includes a St. Louis Riverfront Cruise and Tram Ride to the Top of the Gateway Arch. Special rates available for groups of 20 or more.

Skyline Dinner Cruise

WHEN: Fridays & Saturdays beginning in April; 7:30-9:30 p.m. (cruise boards at 7 p.m.)

DETAILS: Dine alongside stunning illuminated views of St. Louis! Enjoy live Dixieland music and indulge in a delicious dinner buffet including a beef carving station, chicken breast, baked cod (Friday cruises only), roasted potatoes, pasta Romano, fruit and vegetables, and dessert.

TICKETS: Reservations are required. $48/adults; $20/kids 3-12; children under age 3 are free. Special rates available for groups of 20 or more.

Sunday Brunch Cruise

WHEN: Sundays; April 1 (Easter), May 13 (Mothers Day), June 3 & 17 (Fathers Day), July 15, August 5 & 26; 1-3 p.m. (cruise boards at 12:30 p.m.)

DETAILS: Spend your Sunday afternoon brunching and cruising on the riverboats! Enjoy upbeat sounds of live Dixieland music and feast upon a delectable brunch buffet including French toast, cheese blintzes, eggs, carved prime rib, stuffed chicken breast, pasta, salad and more delicious fare.

TICKETS: Reservations are required. $45/adults; $18/kids 3-12; children under age 3 are free. Special rates available for groups of 20 or more.

Blues Cruise

WHEN: Thursdays; May 31, June 21, July 12 & 26, August 9 & 23; 8:30-11 p.m. (cruise boards at 8 p.m.)

DETAILS: A must-do tradition in St. Louis! Dance to some of the areas most popular blues bands on this evening cruise, which has been named the Best Place to Slow Dance by the Riverfront Times! (Visit www.gatewayarch.com to find the full lineup of bands.)

TICKETS: Reservations are required. $22/adults. Must be 21 or older to attend.

Fireworks Cruise

WHEN: July 4, 6 & 7; 7:30-9:30 p.m. (cruise boards at 7 p.m., the riverboat returns to the dock for the fireworks show at 9:30 p.m.)

DETAILS: With the return of Fair Saint Louis to the Gateway Arch park grounds, comes the return of the riverboats popular Fireworks Cruise! Celebrate Americas birthday and get an up-close view of the spectacular fireworks show that dazzles over the Mississippi River. NOTE: This cruise is very popular and will sell out soon. Please purchase your tickets in advance today.

TICKETS: Reservations are required. $48/adults and children.

HOW: Cruise reservations can be made by calling 1-877-982-1410 or visiting www.gatewayarch.com/buytickets.

LOCATION AND PARKING: The Riverboats at the Gateway Arch are located below the south leg of the Gateway Arch at 50 S. Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63102. Parking is available for a cash fee on the cobblestone levee in front of the riverboat dock.

RIVERSIDE EATS: Visitors can enjoy hot food, such as burgers, toasted ravioli and funnel cake fries, at the Arch View Cafe located on the dock of the riverboats. The cafe is open for lunch Saturdays and Sundays in April, and daily May through September.

PRIVATE CHARTERS: The riverboats are available for private charters such as happy hours, special dinners and even weddings. A variety of packages and menu options are available for groups of all sizes. Contact Natasha McIntosh at 314-923-3047 for more details.
Sophia Brown and Nick Narcisi will create the tempestuous relationship between renowned characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, the main stage production of the third annual Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, May 10-19, at the Grandel Theatre. Tim Ocel will direct the production for this years Festival titled, Tennessee Williams: The French Quarter Years.

The French Quarter-themed Festival will also include a one-man show, two panel discussions, a staged reading and a Stella Shouting Contest. The Festival will open with Streetcar at 7:30 p.m. on Thurs., May 10, at the Grandel Theatre. Festivities will kick-off at 5:30 p.m. with a traditional brass band, New Orleans-inspired parade through Grand Center led by Harvey Lockhart and the Point of View Jazz Ensemble from Healing Arts Center. The parade is open to the public.

A unique feature to this production of Streetcar is that it will reflect Williams original stage direction in terms of the lead characters ages. As noted in the original, Blanche is 30 and Stella, 25; productions typically portray Blanche in her mid-forties. Streetcar will also feature an original score by local pianist and composer Henry Palkes, whose solo and ensemble performances include concerts throughout the United States, most notably at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Palkes, the affiliate keyboard artist for the St. Louis Symphony since 1992, is currently performing with the First National Tour of An American in Paris.

Streetcar performances are scheduled Thurs. through Sun., May 10-13; Wed. and Thurs., May 16-17; and Sat., May 19. The Stella Shouting Contest will follow the May 13 performance. In addition, there will be no performance on Fri., May 18, as the Festival will join St. Louisans in celebrating the 100th anniversary of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Theatre.

The Wed., May 16, performance will be audio described by Minds Eye Radio for the visually impaired. Tickets to Festival events will be available March 1 at MetroTix.com. Visit www.twstl.org, or call 314-517-5253, for additional event information.

After the exhilarating response to some of our shows these last two seasons of the Festival, its evident that our community has a hunger for Tennessee Williams work, said Carrie Houk, founder and artistic director of the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. Streetcar is one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved plays in the history of American theater and were excited to be able to showcase it in the newly renovated Grandel Theatre. I think its important for generations to come, to know how much our city meant to Tennessee Williams and how much of it is reflected in his work. Hes an important part of our cultural landscape, both here in St. Louis and beyond.

Other highlights included in this years Festival include:

 acob Storms, the 2017 United Solo Best One-Man Show award winner, will present Tennessee Rising, Fri. through Sun., May 11-13, at the .Zack Theatre. Conceived, written and performed by Storms, the production sheds light on the legendary playwright. Talkbacks with Storms will follow the performances on Friday and Saturday.

 Two one-hour panels  Tennessee Williams: The French Quarter Years and A Streetcar Named Desire will be presented at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Sat., May 12, respectively, on the Streetcar set at the Grandel. The panels will be moderated by noted Tennessee Williams scholars David Kaplan and Henry Schvey.

 Interior: Panic, Williams stunning one-act precursor to A Streetcar Named Desire, will be performed with scripts-in-hand under the direction of Tom Mitchell, Head of the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The staged reading is set for 11 a.m. on Sat., May 19, on the Streetcar set at the Grandel Theatre.

Regarded as one of the finest plays of the 20th century and Williams greatest, Streetcar, which debuted in 1947, is the story of a troubled former schoolteacher, Blanche DuBois, after she leaves a small town in Mississippi and moves in with her sister (Stella) and her husband (Stanley) in New Orleans. With her flirtatious Southern-belle attitude, Blanche upends the precarious relationship between her sister and brother-in-law, leading to even greater conflict during her brief stay. Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1948), the original Broadway cast included Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Kim Hunter. Two years later, Laurence Olivier directed the London premiere starring Vivien Leigh and Bonar Colleano. In 1951, the movie A Streetcar Named Desire won four Academy Awards with the reprisal cast of Brando, Hunter, Leigh and Malden. Opera, ballet and TV adaptations of the play are continuously produced worldwide.

In addition to Sophia Brown, who is making her second Festival appearance, and Nick Narcisi, the St. Louis cast will include Lana Dvorak (Stella), Spencer Sickmann (Mitch), Amy Loui (Eunice), Isaiah Di Lorenzo (Steve), Jesse Munoz (Pablo), Jacob Flekier, Thomasina Clarke, David Wassilak, Maggie Winiger, and Isabel Pastrana. Narcisi, of Milwaukee, Wis., performs regularly throughout the Midwest, most recently with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Montana Shakespeare in the Parks and the Great River Shakespeare Festival.

Tennessee Williams was a brilliant playwright  one of the Masters of the American Theater, and what is significant about him and Streetcar is that he truly understood Blanche, Stella, Stanley and Mitch, and had the imagination to walk in their shoes, and to write the truth about them, said Ocel. Like every great play, Streetcar stirs us to think and empathize, leading us to some very thought-provoking questions about tension, desire and our basic human instincts about life itself.

Ocels previous local work includes productions at New Jewish Theatre (Old Wicked Songs and Speed-the-plow), Shakespeare Festival St. Louis (Henry IV), Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Union Avenue Opera and Metro Theatre Company. Ocel is an adjunct professor for Webster Universitys Conservatory of Theatre Arts.

In addition to Palkes, the creative team includes Sean Savoie (Lighting), Michele Siler (Costumes), Amanda Werre (Sound) and James Wolk (Set Design).

Leadership support for the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis is generously provided by Nancy and Ken Kranzberg and Mary Strauss. The Festival is also funded in part by the Missouri Arts Council and the Missouri Humanities Council.

About the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis

For more information, please visit www.twstl.org, or email info@twstl.org.
EDWARDSVILLE  A National School Walkout event has been gaining momentum over the past week in response to the Feb. 14 shooting that took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

The event, planned by Womens March Youth Empower, is scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. on March 14, the one-month anniversary of the shooting.

Students are being encouraged to walk out for 17 minutes, one minute each to honor the 17 lives taken in the Parkland tragedy.

As support for this movement has gained momentum, Edwardsville High School administration, recognizing that some students may take part in this event, has been preparing for it by communicating openly with students, teachers and parents. At some level, we will facilitate a meaningful and safe event for our students in the march, Edwardsville High School Principal Dr. Dennis Cramsey noted in a letter to parents.

While EHS teachers will remain in classrooms to provide instruction for those who choose not to participate, Cramsey noted that he had three main objectives in developing a plan for March 14.

His goals are to minimize the disruption to the learning environment, validate students feelings and ideas surrounding school shootings and school safety, and maintain a safe school environment for all students, faculty, and staff during the event.

Cramsey emphasized that he would be meeting with the high school students in the weeks prior to the National School Walkout. By opening a dialogue with students about the senseless tragedies that have occurred in schools throughout our nation, we hope to gather their thoughts on how to make a difference and prevent future occurrences, he stressed in the letter. I have directed our faculty to carry on instruction at the same high level that always occurs at EHS.

I have also encouraged teachers to use the issues facing our schools and our nation as learning opportunities, while remaining focused on the board-approved curricula and without inserting political bias into instruction, Cramsey added.

He also encouraged parents to speak to their children about their feelings pertaining to school safety and school shootings. Encourage your child to talk to me, a counselor, teacher, or an administrator about ways that we can ensure that the National School Walkout accomplishes the goals expressed above, Cramsey urged.

Cramseys letter reassured parents that school safety remains a number one priority. As we communicated in a letter to parents sent in the last week, I want to reassure you that we have a well-developed safety plan in place, he said. We continually review our safety plan and execute drills throughout the year to practice our response to emergency situations in an effective manner, and our School Resource Officers Sergeant Breihan and Officer Arendell remain a visible presence in our buildings.

Other area high schools are making preparations for the walkout as well. In Bethalto Community Unit School District 8, Superintendent Jill Griffin said Friday that the administration has been trying to come up with guidelines and procedures for those students who choose to participate in the planned March 14 walkout. So far no students have approached me or other administrators to say that they will, she said. Its not something the administration is encouraging.

The movement has gained such momentum through social media over this past weekend that a second event is also being planned for April 20 to coincide with the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

Intelligenceer reporter Steve Horrell contributed to this story.
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.

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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.

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Harley-Davidson, one of the first American companies Donald Trump pledged to help after taking office, is bracing for a one-two punch of harm at the hands of the president.

The motorcycle maker is warning that Trumps tariffs on steel and aluminum could drive up costs. European leaders threats of retaliation  which have specifically called out the iconic American company  also risk hurting sales overseas.

Harleys role as an American icon has contributed to Trump evoking the company or its industry when he attacks other countries for what he says are unfair trade practices. Its also one of the first names on the tip of other leaders tongues when they push back. This easy-to-politicize role is looking more like a liability than a strength at a time that the Milwaukee-based manufacturer is struggling with sluggish demand for its big bikes.

Trumps trade policies  and the retaliation they may inspire  are probably not going to help them out in the short term, Gerrick Johnson, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets, said by phone. Its ironic, since the president praised the company so quickly after moving into the White House, he said.

Harley supports free and fair trade, spokesman Michael Pflughoeft said in an emailed statement. Steel and aluminum tariffs would boost raw material costs regardless of where the company is sourcing them he said, and the punitive taxes that could be introduced in response would have a significant impact on its sales, dealers, suppliers and customers.

I get what hes trying to do, Johnson said of Trump. I hope hes bluffing, and I hope hes just trying to get others to remove their restrictions. Itd be nice if there was open, free trade across the board. Harley would be doing a lot better.

Harleys stock has dropped about 13 per cent this year.

The tariffs on U.S.-built motorcycles that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker floated last week would primarily hit Harley. While the company sold 61 per cent of its bikes in the U.S. last year, Europe was its No. 2 market, accounting for 16 per cent of deliveries to retail buyers.

Thats meaningful, said Jaime Katz, a Chicago-based analyst with Morningstar Inc. For every action, theres a reaction, and I think were seeing that thats sort of how this is playing out now.

Trumps plan to levy steel and aluminum imports isnt the first time the presidents trade policies have hurt Harley.

Chief Executive Officer Matt Levatich was a supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which could have lowered barriers for its bikes in some of the largest markets for motorcycles in the world. Trump withdrew from the long-planned trade pact in January 2017.

A week later, the president hosted Levatich and other Harley executives and union leaders for a White House listening session and praised the company.

We want to make it easier for business to create more jobs and more factories to be made in the U.S., and youre a great example of that, Trump said at the time.

U.S. motorcycle sales have continued to slump since then, spurring Harleys decision in January to close a plant in Kansas City, Missouri, eliminating about 260 jobs. The states Republican and Democratic senators and representatives last month asked Levatich to reconsider and said they learned of plans to shut the factory through media reports.

Trump has kept on the attack, criticizing India last month for its hefty tariffs on large imported motorcycles. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him the country would cut its duties to 50 per cent from as much as 100 per cent and has used the anecdote as a reason he wants to pursue a reciprocal tax  a term hes used for imposing levies that match what other countries charge.

Harley has worked to get around Indias tariffs by building a factory in the country to assemble bikes using many U.S.-made parts. BMOs Johnson said the company had planned to grow its Asian sales by getting levies reduced through the TPP.

Morningstars Katz said shes waiting to see if Trumps tariffs actually get implemented and what kinds of options are available for companies to avoid them.

What Donald Trump says changes day to day, she said. So to prognosticate what the tariffs are going to look like in three months or whenever it actually becomes executable  it can change multiple times.

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New YorkBlackBerry Ltd., seeking ways to stem revenue declines, is dusting off its old patents and asking other companies to pay up for using technology BlackBerry claims it invented years ago.

The latest skirmish broke out on Tuesday, when BlackBerry sued Facebook Inc. in federal court in Los Angeles, claiming the social media giant has built swaths of its empire on messaging technology invented by the former smartphone maker when Mark Zuckerberg was still living in a Harvard University dorm room. The move might seem strange, especially at a time when smartphone messaging apps are ubiquitous and dont seem to be all that different from one another.

But BlackBerry said it laid the foundation for the world of messaging apps now dominated by Facebook, Chinas Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Japans Line Corp. with its BBM app, which helped draw millions to the companys phones in the mid-2000s. BlackBerrys complaint claims the firm invented core aspects of modern messaging, such as notification icons, and when and how time stamps show up in a thread.

Read more:

BlackBerry sues Facebook over messaging technology

BlackBerry patents key to raising buyout debt

The stakes for BlackBerry are real. In the last two years, patents have become an essential and growing part of its business. Licensing revenue has more than tripled to $50 million a quarter since summer 2016, soon after the company first broke it out. At the end of 2017, patents made up 22 per cent of total revenue, up from just 6.3 per cent in May 2016.

Chief executive officer John Chen has hailed BlackBerrys vast library of patents as an untapped resource that will help him turn the company around. He justified getting out of the phone business by signing deals with manufacturers in other parts of the world to use the BlackBerry brand on their own phones.

After the fall of the BlackBerry handset, the company is shifting to other revenue sources, including monetizing its patent assets, said Matt Larson, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. Larson said its likely BlackBerry will win some sort of settlement in this case, but it may take a while.

Its a very difficult business, he said. Litigation trends in the U.S. and abroad have made it difficult for patent owners to enforce their rights in court, so bringing licensing customers to the table can be a slow and expensive process.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court made it much harder to enforce software patents, essentially saying that taking established ways of doing business and putting them on a computer shouldnt be considered new intellectual property. BlackBerry seems to have prepared its suit with this in mind by laying out a 117-page complaint against Facebook explaining why the patents it holds were truly innovative at the time they were invented, said Jim Wallace, a lawyer who represented NTP Inc. in a major court battle against BlackBerry in the early 2000s.

Theyve done everything they can to send a message to the defendants and the world: Weve got strong patents and you better not screw with us,  Wallace said. The NTP suit ended in 2006 with BlackBerry paying $612.5 million.

BlackBerry has a strong claim that Facebook infringed its intellectual property, a spokesperson said in an email. The company had been trying to do a licensing deal with Facebook for several years, before deciding to sue, she said.

BlackBerrys suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business, Paul Grewal, Facebooks deputy general counsel, said in a statement. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, BlackBerry is now looking to tax the innovation of others. We intend to fight.

The tactic has paid off for BlackBerry in the past. It secured ongoing payments from Cisco Systems Inc. in 2015 and phone maker Blu Products last October. Last month, it settled a fight with communications tech firm Avaya Holdings Corp., though terms of the deal werent disclosed.

BlackBerry settled its fights with Avaya, Blu and Cisco before the cases went to trial, and thats likely to happen here too, said lawyer Mark Schonfeld of Burns & Levinson in Boston, who specializes in software-patent litigation.

BlackBerry has one of the strongest patent portfolios in the United States in certain spaces, Schonfeld said, citing patents for wireless networks and digital information processing.

Yet the fight, even if it results in a settlement, may concern BlackBerry investors, said Michael Gordon, a legal analyst with CFRA, a New York-based forensic accounting and legal research firm.

The more that licensing companies have to litigate, the less the market likes that because litigation is expensive, Gordon said. The fact that they had to resort to litigation against a large company with a lot of resources is not a particularly bullish sign.

And Facebook is a formidable opponent.

Facebook certainly can afford to fight this and fight it vigorously and there will be other companies looking to Facebook to see how they react, Schonfeld said.

The lawsuit may be a declaration that BlackBerry expects other companies to reach licensing deals.

The lawsuit is not just written for Facebook; its written for others against whom they are going to proceed, Schonfeld said. A complaint of this detail is extremely unusual, and is probably meant to be used and understood, to create apprehension among other companies.

The case is BlackBerry Ltd. V. Facebook Inc., 18-1844, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles).

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Its hard to imagine anyone could make the name Zagat obsolete in the world of restaurant news. Yet Google almost pulled it off in just under seven years.

On March 5, nine-year-old restaurant guide The Infatuation announced it was buying the Zagat brand for an undisclosed amount. The company  best known for its #eeeeeats hashtag  now controls the 35-year-old Zagat name and its international catalog of reviews.

For some, the question isnt why Google sold off Zagat; its what took so long. The relationship between the two companies had been troubled for years. The 2011 purchase was championed by former Google executive Marissa Mayer, who saw Zagat as an asset for the maps division she controlled. But by 2013, some reviewers panned the release of the Zagat app, which had a difficult user interface and seemed designed to push content like Rose for Every Mood: What to Bring to Any Summer Occasion rather than help people find a good place to eat. Then a few years ago, Google chose to infuse its mapping services with features such as user-generated restaurant reviews rather than leveraging Zagat and its resources. It was a defensive move to ward off rivals such as Yelp and Apple, which were, at the time, credible threats to Googles dominance in local information. Zagat, meanwhile, was left to wither.

How did this happen? When Mayer departed in 2012, Zagat was left without an internal champion at Google, according to a former Zagat contractor who requested anonymity. Instead of hiring more full-time staff, Google relied on contractors for content and assigned a minimal number of engineers for major projects like the app launch and a 2017 web redesign, according to several people who worked for Zagat at the time. Over time, the number of contractors working on Zagat content decreased  there were just over a dozen to cover the globe  and coverage of notable cities such as London and Toronto was suspended.

Google declined a request for comment.

Eventually, the staff was told to de-emphasize reviews, which were the backbone of the business. Instead, employees were directed to focus on boilerplate guide lists, such as Best Brunch and Best After Work Drinks. The changes left the remaining staff frustrated, according to the former contractor.

Tim and Nina Zagat founded their eponymous guide as a hobby in 1979. The couple, having met at Yale Law School, started the business after a guest criticized a newspapers restaurant reviews at a dinner party. The Zagats began asking friends opinions and found 200 amateur critics to rate 100 restaurants for food, decor, service, and costs. An empire was born, and for years the Zagat guide was part of the calculus of figuring out where you were going to eat. Those days are long gone. By 2017, Zagat failed to even send out its annual survey  the basis for its restaurant rankings. No guide was produced, and no explanation was given.

Zagat freelancers werent notified of the The Infatuation deal beforehand, according to a current contractor who requested anonymity. Instead, they were told on Friday night that security was being updated and they would be locked out of Zagat tools, the contractor said. By Monday morning, they got the press release. The Infatuation didnt respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the site said it will operate Zagat as a separate brand, with a new, tech-driven platform that will be an alternative to other crowdsourced restaurant reviews.

In October, Google held its second Local Guides Summit in San Francisco. The program encourages users of the companys Maps app to upload photos and write reviews of places such as restaurants, and submit new locations. During the summit, Google announced that 50 million people were contributing to the program, a 1,000 per cent increase from the 5 million it tracked in early 2016. More than 700,000 venues are being added to Maps each month, according to the company. Maps has more than 1 billion users, making it a lot more efficient and broader than Zagats restaurant-review system.

I assume Google figured out that they didnt need the brand name in order to surface the information, said restaurateur Nick Kokonas, whose Alinea dining room topped the list in the 2012 Chicago Zagat guide. At the end of the day, Google can get all that Zagat information without actually owning Zagat, right?

With assistance from Mark Bergen

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I do not think Stormy Daniels is one of the major issues facing our country. Sen. Bernie Sanders in conversation this week with CNNs Anderson Cooper

Bernie Sanders, populist senator from Vermont and Hillary Clintons defeated challenger for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has twice tried to elevate the national conversation away from juicy scandals and on to more serious challenges facing the U.S.

The first, of course, was when, in a debate back in what now seems like political Paleolithic times, he famously said to Clinton: The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.

Read more: Melania Trump, out of sight since Stormy Daniels reports, will attend State of the Union

He was wrong on that before he was emphatically right. In fact, the media-hyped brouhaha about Clinton using a private email server when she was secretary of state helped Donald Trump defeat her in the presidential election.

But now, Clintons emails are supremely irrelevant as America struggles to gauge the seriousness  amidst a White House in chaos with fleeing staff, controversial steel tariffs, investigation into Russian meddling, global conflict  of the Stormy Daniels affair, otherwise salaciously known as The President and the Porn Star.

I like Stormy Daniels. She has a friendly smile. She may be in legally dicey territory trying to speak out now, and most certainly she is interested in the financial benefits of doing so.

But at least shes transparent about what shes doing.

Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with the U.S. president more than ten years ago, is suing him. She claims the non-disclosure agreement she signed is null and void, because Trump didn't sign it.

The adult film star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, allegedly used the pseudonym Peggy Peterson on a nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2016. That was when she took $130,000 (U.S.) from a Trump lawyer to stay quiet about an alleged sexual affair she had with Trump in 2006, right after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron.

She had a consensual affair with a famous blowhard rich guy (who also apparently used the pseudonym David Dennison in the 2016 agreement, and yes theres now a President Dennison meme out there) who improbably became president.

Now she yearns to be free to take full advantage of her 15 minutes of world fame. Go Stormy.

From appearing on the late-night circuit  although saying little  and embarking on a sleazy tour dubbed Making America Horny Again, Stormy has tried to stay relevant.

But now, like most of Donald Trumps senior staff facing special counsel Robert Muellers juggernaut, she has lawyered up.

I certainly hope shes not connected to the Russians, ha ha. No, she has sued the president claiming that the nondisclosure agreement was never signed by him and so she should be free to speak. Trump, in turn, secretly through his lawyer, silenced her again last week in a hush order upheld by a private arbitrator in California.

All of this will play out. There may be legal implications for the president, including the question of whether he broke campaign finance laws in his effort to financially silence Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the campaign.

But there wont be any moral ramifications. So why he even bothered to silence her, I dont know. A consensual affair with a porn star seems like small potatoes after Trumps grab em by the p---y audiotaped remarks about women became public before the election. And still they voted him in to the highest office in the land.

There are no family values arguments that can ever be made in favour of Donald J. Trump, whatever his constituency. In fact, one Republican commentator, acknowledging this, said softly on CNN, think of Barron, about this scandal.

Yes, do think of Barron, growing up in the shadow of such a mess of a man.

First lady Melania Trump alternates public displays of loathing her husband with remaining stoic and even sometimes still holding his tiny hand. Yech.

Trumps daughter Ivanka, along with her hapless husband Jared, is so embroiled in her own troubles that she may one day be thrilled to hawk a perfume called Complicit.

My point is this: when it comes to women, Donald Trump doesnt have the Midas touch. He has a Mud touch, a Merde touch, a way of reducing any woman who chooses to work or consort with him to reputational rubble.

Take Sarah Huckabee Sanders, 35, once an up-and-comer in Republican circles and now White House press secretary.

In this role, she lies publicly, she sneers at the press and therefore the public she is paid to serve. She scowls as she repeats her own fake-news mantra, The president has made this very clear before saying thats all, guys as she walks away soiled. Her choice.

I wont countenance anyone calling her a slob, as one former out-of-control Trump aide did (are there any in control?). Its her judgment, not her appearance, that is simply awful. She serves at the pleasure of this president.

Take Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the president and now confirmed to have breached ethical rules, once in urging the defeat of the Democrat who eventually banished the odious Alabama bigot and alleged sexual predator Roy Moore to the sidelines.

Take Hope Hicks, Trumps just resigned director of communications, who at 29 should have been celebrated as an efficient, discreet wunderkind. Instead, she slinks away covered in muck. She, too, served at the pleasure of this morally repugnant president.

So, to answer Bernie Sanders, yes, Stormy Daniels is not the most serious issue facing his country.

But President Donald Trumps attitude toward women as disposable bodies, souls and minds, to be used or betrayed any which way he desires? Now, thats an issue.

Rise, women, rise.

Judith Timson writes weekly about cultural, social and political issues. You can reach her at judith.timson@sympatico.ca and follow her on Twitter @judithtimson

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Almost as soon as we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I set out to make my family miserable. This was not difficult. It was late August, nearing 32 C and humid. All I had to do was propose we walk through the streets of the former Saigon to a restaurant for lunch.

At first, my wife, Jean, and our daughters Sasha, 7 , and Sandy, almost 4, were game. The road outside our Airbnb  an air-conditioned two-bedroom, with tile floors and brick walls, carved into a crusty ocher art deco building in central District 1  was oddly calm. Shade trees spindled past skeins of electrical wire, while the low plastic chairs of an open-air cafe sat neatly in the shade of a long, blank wall. When we came to a busy avenue, we all held hands and stepped bravely into traffic, trusting that motorbikes would swerve around us with unthinking grace. (And they did!)

Soon, though, the sun bore down, and we sweated our way along a market street. The rough pavement was at once dusty and damp, the din of shoppers and small trucks inescapable, the ripe scents of fruits and vegetables, fish and pork, as unrestrained as their vivid hues. All about was action, noise, aroma, drama  the kind of whirling vortex of energy I feed on.

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Not so the ladies. There was whining, dawdling, worry. One child had to be carried. (I bore that burden.) It is entirely possible that someone asked, Are we there yet? Finally, after 15 endless minutes, we reached a fluorescent-lit restaurant, Chi Tuyen, where we sat on blue plastic stools at a lightweight metal table and ordered bun thit nuong: nubs of pork grilled to caramelized sweetness on a tangle of cool rice noodles, shredded lettuce and herbs such as mint and perilla. The kids ate and calmed down, and Sandy played adorably with one of the kittens roaming the restaurant. Outside, rain began to fall, harder and harder, and then even harder. We were trapped, but there was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be.

Twenty years earlier, almost to the day, I had moved here to live. Vietnam and the United States had only recently re-established diplomatic relations, and I was a fresh college grad embarking on an adult life of adventure in an unknown land. Over the course of a year, I fell in love with the city everyone still called Saigon  with the seething chaos of its streets, the head-spinning variety of its flavours, the boundless outgoing enthusiasm of its people. In a lifetime of constant travel, Vietnam was my first, truest, deepest love.

And yet, although Id been back to visit a dozen times or more since 1997, Id never brought my wife and kids, primarily because Jeans family lived in Taiwan, so that island always took precedence on trips to Asia. In the summer of 2016, however, we found ourselves in Taipei for an extended period  long enough, I decided, to make a weeklong trip to Vietnam. First we would hit Ho Chi Minh City, then spend two days at a beach resort near Nha Trang  nothing overly ambitious, just enough for my family to begin to understand the place that made me who I am. Still, I worried: Would the people I love most love the land I love most?

How could they not? All around were visceral pleasures. At the entrance to our building sprawled a sidewalk restaurant, and every morning it would send up breakfast on a tray: bowls of bun bo hue, a spicy beef-and-pork noodle soup, or banh mi op la, fried eggs with baguettes as light as air. From the next-door cafe, I would fetch tall glasses of Vietnamese iced coffee, made from house-roasted beans and thick with condensed milk, plus pastries from Tous Les Jours, a Korean franchise bakery (not my pick, but the kids adored it). We would eat in our cosy little apartment, and Id sigh with contentment: This was just like my old life here  but now I had people to share it with.

From there, wed venture out to see friends Id long wanted my wife to meet. We visited Quynh Anh Pham, a thin, elegant video producer  known as QA  who had reinvented herself as Ho Chi Minh Citys premiere modern florist. Her shop and cafe, Padma de Fleur, lay down a still-unfinished alley; its courtyard was draped with dangling mokara orchids, watering cans painted blue and pastel pink, and weathered metal saucer lamps. The lemonades that QA served my daughters came garnished with pale roses, and there was yet another kitten for Sandy to play with. This was classic Saigon  an oasis of sophisticated beauty that a casual visitor might never glimpse.

Places like Padma de Fleur felt especially precious when I witnessed the big, obvious changes to the citys landscape. Like Takashimaya, the glittering, multistorey Japanese mall that had just opened in the heart of Saigon, within sight of the Opera House (still lovely, at about 120 years old) and bustling Ben Thanh Market.

It was as fancy a mall as Vietnam has seen, chock-full of international luxury brands (and a Japanese food court!), and it reminded me that in 1996, there was but one mall, Saigon Superbowl, out near the airport, where bumpkins would come to gape at, and fearfully attempt to ride, the citys sole escalator. Now, at Takashimaya, escalators intimidated no one  except for one stylish woman wearing wobbly 4-inch heels, who held tightly to the railing as she ascended. The mall felt so utterly normal that I didnt freak out when Sandy ran off and got lost for 10 minutes  this was no longer the rough-and-tumble city where youd worry about kidnappers.

Every excursion was an opportunity to compare the Vietnam I remembered with the Vietnam it now was, mostly to my delight, occasionally with disappointment. A road along the Ben Nghe Canal, for example, had been widened and landscaped into sunny modernity, but the project had wiped out old buildings, including an auto garage that, at night, turned into a secret shellfish restaurant.

Sasha, however, approved. I like this part of Vietnam, she said, gazing out the window of our taxi, because it looks well trained. Nice and clean and it looks good  like it works. The other parts . . .

She trailed off, and I knew why: Vietnam was not a hit with my family. The heat was rough. (What did they expect during summer in Asia?) They were not fans of the dirt, the chaos, the insects. The kids kvetched about being bored. (Just like at home!) Jean remarked, I dont think Southeast Asia is for families.

I didnt know quite how to take that. For decades, Id seen foreign families all over Southeast Asia  a major reason Id wanted to bring my own family here. On the other hand, I understood: Like New York, Ho Chi Minh City exists not for tourists but for its own lively populace; this metropolis doesnt care about coddling outsiders  its too busy entertaining itself.

So the task of entertaining fell to me. Whenever the heat grew too brutal, we would stop for sinh to, cool fruit shakes  orange, mango, banana, soursop, avocado  sold everywhere from the alleys of the backpacker district to market stalls in Cholon, the citys Chinatown. We took taxis and Ubers, not motorbikes. We rummaged the racks of Mayhem, a hidden-away vintage clothing store, and emerged with armfuls of finds, including an oversize flutter-sleeve top for Sasha and what Jean described as a ditsy floral dress for herself. I couldnt get over how far the city had progressed: 20 years ago, used clothes were only for the poor; now you needed a credit card to buy them.

Another friend, Vietnamese-American artist Trong Gia Nguyen, led us through the downtown gallery scene. At Galerie Quynh, which opened in 2003, I gushed over one of Trongs works, a laser-cut facsimile of a brise-soleil, the sun-shielding patterned screens that you see everywhere in Vietnam, cut to the size of a window or an entire buildings facade. At Dia Projects, Jean and I were entranced by Fruits, Children & the Cutting, Mai Hoangs disturbing, entrancing watercolour renderings of children as fruits  dragonfruit, passionfruit, strawberries  being opened, peeled, dissected. At each stop, Sasha sat on the ground and opened her notebook to draw, engrossed and uncomplaining. Sandy, meanwhile, was kept entertained by Trongs friend Athesia, a Canadian musician passing through on her way to gigs in Australia. Im told they discussed Frozen.

Occasionally, my ladies even entertained themselves. While taking an Uber through Cholon, Jean pointed out a trio of early 20th-century shophouses, slightly decrepit but charming still.

Is this where The Lover was filmed? she asked excitedly, referring to the 1992 movie based on the Marguerite Duras novel. If she could muster such enthusiasm, maybe my experiment was working? Love might be out of the question, but Id settle for like.

Instead, I got ambivalence. For every grand dinner of grilled pork and sour fish soup with old friends, there was a scary cockroach on some sidewalk. The grassy martini at Hum, a stylish vegetarian restaurant, was addictive, but we couldnt forget that grim immigration officer whod stamped us into the country. (I dont think hes happy to see us, Jean observed.) At the oddly named Somewhereland-Madam Fatty Fatt, a Colonial-era villa that had been renovated into a Hogwarts-like castle, the kids seemed content to work on crafts projects such as cutting felt into hats and cloaks for wooden witch figurines. (Meanwhile, Jean and I sipped iced coffees.) But this was too chill for Sasha. When youre young, you dont want to sit down and relax, she insisted. You want to move!

Which is why, on our last day before flying to the beach, I booked a van to the Cu Chi tunnels, the underground former Viet Cong base, about 90 minutes outside Ho Chi Minh City that is a major tourist draw. At last, the kids could roam and climb, and gawk at the barbaric traps used to catch enemy soldiers, while I pointed out ponds that were really bomb craters and told them about a war I was born too late to remember firsthand. And, of course, we clambered about in the metre-high tunnels, which is any kids dream but drew rivers of sweat from this American.

When we emerged, Sandy (who could stand fully upright in the tunnels) explained: You ate a lot of dinner  thats why you didnt fit in the tunnel.

Sasha was more succinct: This place is pretty amazing!

As my heart warmed, I also realized: Oh my god, my kids are . . . tourists. They like it easy. They like fun. Theyre on vacation. What did I expect? One day, perhaps, theyd outgrow easy fun and want to know how Vietnam turned Dad into Dad, but it didnt have to be today. Tomorrow wed be at a pristine beach resort, with a swimming pool and a villa twice the size of our Brooklyn apartment  easy fun for $500 a day. Someday, surely, we would return to Ho Chi Minh City. Maybe not next year, but someday. And then we could all compare the Vietnam we remembered with the Vietnam it would become.

For her part, Jean had but a single requirement for our return.

Next time, she said, I want to stay somewhere nicer.

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OTTAWAForeign and domestic groups looking to influence Canadian politics will soon face tougher rules around political financing and transparency, the Star has learned.

Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Goulds office confirmed new rules are in the works to strengthen and clarify rules governing foreign actors financing Canadian political advocacy, as well as domestic third party pressure groups.

That could mean stricter transparency rules for groups that fund Canadian advocacy through international donations, such as the New York-headquarterd left-leaning Avaaz or CitizenGo, a religious conservative group headquartered in Madrid.

CitizenGo recently launched a letter-writing campaign against changes to federal summer job grants that call on recipients to respect individual human rights in Canada, including reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, which are opposed by many faith groups.

Its campaign accounted for 31,278 of the 33,682 letters received by the government on the changes, Labour Minister Patty Hajdus office told the Star.

A Canadian spokesperson for CitizenGo, David Cooke, estimated that about 60 per cent of letters collected by his organization came from Canadians, with the remaining 40 per cent coming from like-minded foreign citizens.

We are concerned about the lack of transparency seen around many third parties on all sides of the political spectrum, Jordan Owens, a spokesperson for Gould, said in a statement.

Canada has robust finance rules governing political fundraising from foreign actors, but we will further strengthen and clarify these rules to ensure greater transparency in our political fundraising system and a stronger defence against foreign interference in our democratic process.

The new rules are expected later this spring. But Owens suggested theyll deal with transparency around how organizations seeking to influence the government are backed, where theyre located and how they use data and information collected from Canadians.

A total of 104 third-party groups spent more than $6 million during the 2015 federal election, according to financial reports filed with Elections Canada. Many of those groups were labour unions, and most would be considered to be on the left of the political spectrum.

Third-party spending, such as on advertising, is strictly regulated during election campaigns. But before the writ is dropped, its largely a free-for-all. And with fixed dates for general elections, third parties have a reliable schedule to prepare advocacy campaigns.

The unregulated pre-election campaign spending gave rise to concerns, particularly among conservatives facing broad progressive coalitions and union campaigns, that third parties could undermine the integrity of the Canadian electoral system.

It took us 40 years of scandal (and) sweat to come to a regime where we had the best in the world for control of money in politics, former Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley told the Canadian Press in 2015.

Now we are back in the jungle.

Concerns about foreign interference in domestic elections resurfaced today, with well-documented examples of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and an orchestrated cyber campaign to influence the Brexit vote. But its clear the Kremlin isnt the only threat to a level playing field in Canadian elections.

Conservative Sen. Linda Frum has introduced a bill that would prohibit Canadian third parties from using foreign money to finance election-related activities. Frum said it was a very positive development that Goulds office will take up the issue.

This issue does not belong to any individual. It does not belong to any party. Its a national concern, Frum told the Star on Tuesday.

(The change) that Ive been focused on is prohibiting foreign contributions to third parties for election-related activities. Thats a rule in almost every other Western democracy. Were one of the only outliers on this.
MONTREALA Montreal suburbs plan to ban all smoking in public places is drawing mixed reactions, with one anti-tobacco advocate saying it will do more harm than good when it comes to second-hand smoke.

Hampstead city council adopted a draft bylaw this week that would prohibit tobacco or marijuana smoking on municipal property, including sidewalks and streets.

If the bylaw is enacted, Hampstead would become the first municipality in the country to ban smoking in the street, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

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The bylaw, which could come into effect following a second vote in April, does not prohibit electronic cigarettes or smoking in cars.

Mayor William Steinberg says the law would protect peoples health and send a strong anti-smoking message.

He said the city was prompted to act by upcoming legislation to legalize recreational marijuana, which is worrisome to some of the towns 7,000 residents.

Both tobacco and pot, we dont want it happening in public, Steinberg told The Canadian Press. One of the reasons is second-hand smoke, which is harmful, especially for the elderly, for people with lung diseases and for young people.

The second reason is example  Young kids are still taking it (smoking) up. And when it comes to the legalization of pot, we definitely have concerns about more young people smoking pot.

So we dont want to have people setting a bad example. We dont want groups of teenagers or young adults going around smoking joints in our parks or on streets and sidewalks.

But Steinberg denies the bylaw is too draconian for the upscale residential town, which has no stores or office buildings.

If somebody wants to smoke a cigarette, they can smoke it on their property, he told The Canadian Press.

If somebody is working in one of our municipal buildings, for public works, you can walk a block and youre out of Hampstead and you can smoke to your hearts content.

But a spokesman for a non-smokers rights group believes the regulation will do more harm than good.

Francois Damphousse says the law will force more people to smoke indoors, which is much more damaging to the health of those around them.

We have been working for decades to try to control smoking indoors, and we want people to go smoke outdoors, and now they cant even go smoke outdoors, he said in an interview.

He said most complaints about second-hand smoke come from tenants or landlords who are bothered by smoking in their buildings, and he expects the number of those complaints to only increase if other cities follow Hampsteads lead.

Michael Bryant of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association believes the bylaw discriminates against low-income people, who are more likely to be smokers and less likely to own private residences.

The social science is clear that while smoking has gone down for the well-off, it continues to be somewhat medicinal for the poor, he said in a phone interview.

The effect is going to be that economically disadvantaged people are being pushed out of that community.

On the outskirts of Hampstead, several residents told The Canadian Press they felt the regulation would go too far.

People should be allowed to smoke on the streets, for goodness sake, said Jennifer Sugar, a smoker who lights up on her balcony.

Second-hand smoke is going to drift away in a second, its not going to bother anybody.

But David Naicker, an Ontario resident visiting Montreal, said he is in favour of the idea  even though he smokes.

Im a smoker, Im guilty as charged, but why not? he said as he paused for a cigarette break near the Hampstead border.

Society has to change, and it does kill you.

Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, says other cities will inevitably follow Hampsteads lead, especially as they grapple with how to handle the legalization of marijuana.

He said the upcoming legislation is a prompt for cities to address the issue, especially as citizens are increasingly demanding smoke-free environments.

Personally, hes in favour of Hampsteads ban, pointing out that people will still be allowed to smoke on private property.

Every restriction is a motivation for people to quit, he said.

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OTTAWAThe federal privacy watchdog wants limits on spies new power to collect publicly-available information, including on Canadian citizens.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien said Wednesday that just because information may be publicly-available, it doesnt mean its automatically fair game for spy agency collection.

We are of the view that, while the reasonable expectation of privacy attached to publicly-available information is reduced, there remains a residual reasonable expectation of privacy that requires protection, Therrien wrote in a submission to the House of Commons public safety committee.

Bill C-59, the Liberals national security overhaul, grants new powers for Canadas electronic spy agency to collect publicly-available information in the course of their duties.

The definition of that information is broad  very broad, in Therriens opinion  and includes anything that is published or broadcast for public consumption (or) is accessible to the public on the internet. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) would also be able to purchase databases from private vendors under the new powers.

Critics have warned the new powers open the door for CSE to purchase stolen or hacked material. While CSE says it will not purchase stolen information, C-59 does not explicitly prohibit the agency from doing so.

Therrien also raised the concern data brokers may not obtain Canadians consent before packaging publicly-available information into a database and selling it to spies.

Will publicly-available information always be lawfully obtained or created by a vendor, including in compliance with Canadas private sector privacy laws, notably its requirement for meaningful consent? Therrien wrote.

It is important in a country governed by the rule of law that national security agencies not be able to use the fruits of activities that may not be criminal, but are still unlawful.

Therrien is recommending CSE be limited to collecting only legally broadcast publicly available information, and purchase only data that was legally obtained by data brokers  including obtaining consent before collecting information on Canadians.

But in addition to illegally obtained data, the internet abounds with sensitive information that may never have been intended for public broadcast. Think of the 2015 Ashley Madison hack, where 39 million users had their sexual preferences, credit card information, and emails released publicly.

In a statement to the Star in January, CSE spokesperson Ryan Foreman said the agency would not obtain information unlawfully released, such as in a leak, or information that was not intended for public consumption. Foreman also said that CSEs overall mandate limits what it can do with publicly-available information on Canadians.

CSE would not be permitted to use publicly available information to investigate Canadians or build a dossier on them, as CSE does not have a mandate to investigate Canadians, Foreman wrote.

The intent of the publicly available information provision of the proposed CSE Act (in C-59) is to ensure that CSE is able to conduct basic research in support of its mandates without fear of breaching the restrictions on directing activities at Canadians.

While Therrien acknowledged CSEs public assurances on the issue, he still wants limits explicitly set out in the legislation.

Therrien recommended C-59 be amended to ensure the collection of publicly-available information be reasonable and proportional and always consider the effects on Canadians and people in Canada including their right to privacy.

The House of Commons public safety committee will resume their study of C-59 later this month.
Shabbir Jaffer applied to sponsor his aging mother to join him in Canada in 2007, shortly after his father passed away at their family home in England.

The agonizing wait for family reunification finally ended 11 years later, in January, when 80-year-old Nargis Anwar Jaffer died of pneumonia in a hospital back home  with the sponsorship application still in process.

We are utterly disgusted at the long time it took to process the case, said Jaffer of Richmond Hill, a retired businessman who moved to Canada in the 1990s and is a Canadian citizen. This is completely unfair and unacceptable.

The department said it could not comment on the case without the deceased persons consent due to privacy concerns.

A native of Kenya, the elderly Jaffer moved to the United Kingdom to flee ethnic persecution against South Asians in East Africa. She had two sons; Jaffer later moved to Greater Toronto.

Shabbir Jaffer, 60, said he submitted his mothers sponsorship application in September 2007, at a time when the Canadian governments immigration website stated the processing would take about 36 months. However, it wasnt until April 2012 when the family received a letter from Canadian officials that the application was being processed.

In November 2013, the Immigration Department wrote to say his mother might not meet the requirements for immigration because her health condition might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.

During a medical exam, a blood test identified a chronic renal insufficiency, suggesting the weakening of his mothers kidneys would likely progress to irreversible destruction and she might require dialysis and a kidney transplant down the road.

The provision of these health related services is costly, said the Immigration Department in its case file on Jaffer obtained by her family and reviewed by the Star. Waiting lists exist across Canada for patients requiring renal replacement therapy and/or kidney transplant; she will likely be placed on such list.

In February 2015, the department rejected the sponsorship application. After another two years, the family had its appeal heard by an independent tribunal last March.

At the appeal, Jaffer told an adjudicator that his brother in England is unable to care for their mother due to a health condition. In Canada, she would be cared for by Jaffer, his wife and their two adult children. The family also offered to cover the elderly womans medical expenses.

At the end, the appeal tribunal sent the sponsorship application back to the department to be reconsidered, concluding that there are sufficient humanitarian and compassionate considerations to warrant special relief in light of all the circumstances of the case.

Last May, the Immigration Department requested Jaffers mother for a new medical exam, and again additional medical information as recently as early January. Two weeks later, she died in London after contracting pneumonia. She had never required dialysis.

After 11 years of effort, thousands of dollars in fees first to the immigration ministry and then my lawyers, umpteen forms completed and submitted on time and at least three medical exams for my mother amount to nothing except pure heartache, said Jaffer, sobbing.

This is not how the government of Canada should treat its loyal, law-abiding taxpaying citizens. Something has to be done to overhaul the immigration system ... Its too late for me and my mother but perhaps others can benefit from an overhaul.

Natalie Domazet, the familys lawyer, said the case is the perfect example of the consequences that delays in immigration processing can have.

What strikes me is that the government created this category for parents and grandparents to be sponsored with the knowledge that this class would likely comprise of aging or elderly individuals, some with medical issues, said Domazet in an email.

The immigration department ought to have known that processing times could have significant impact on the ability of these applicants to join their families in Canada.
The two young women who will receive the first-ever Pam McConnell leadership award would have made the late city councillor unbelievably proud.

Winners Yusra Khogali, Black Lives Matter co-founder and leader, and Talisha Ramsaroop, Jane-Finch community leader, will be recognized on International Womens Day, Thursday.

When someone says you won the Pam McConnell Award, youre like yeah, no way, said Ramsaroop, who received the news last week.

She is a hero of women doing activism work all over Toronto. She has left a really big gap to fill.

McConnell served as a city councillor since 1994 and before that she was a school board trustee. When she died last July at the age of 71, she was remembered for fiercely advocating for social justice, fighting poverty, and bringing attention to issues affecting women and children.

Ramsaroop and Khogali were selected as winners of the Pam McConnell Young Women in Leadership award for their dedication to similar causes, said city spokesperson Olga Lukich.

McConnells daughter Heather Ann McConnell was part of the selection committee and said she was amazed at what all of the 11 award candidates have achieved.

My mother wouldve been just so unbelievably proud of the work these young women do, McConnell said.

Ramsaroop was selected for her absolute commitment to her community said McConnell. Ramsaroop has been instrumental in creating programs for youth focused on body image, sexism, health, well being and bereavement. She is also behind the Lotus Project, which focuses on creating space for Indo-Caribbean women to share their stories and build capacity.

Ramsaroops inspiration is the Jane-Finch community where she grew up, she said.

The older generation of women in this community have always been supportive of the younger generation, provided me with a lot of resources and helped me find my way, said Ramsaroop, who works at York University as a community projects co-ordinator.

I want to provide such a wonderful experience to others.

Khogali had to put herself in jeopardy and in the face of opposition to do the important work of Black Lives Matter, an organization that benefits not only Toronto, but also Canada and North America, McConnell said.

Along with organizing conferences, rallies, educational programs, gatherings and healing circles for the black community, Khogali is also an artist, said Lukich. She recently completed a residency with acclaimed artist Dbi Young at the Watah School.
The #MeToo movement has taken over Twitter feeds, dominated newspaper headlines, and unleashed a global reckoning for men who exploit their powerful positions to bully, harass and sexually assault women.

But when it comes to changing toxic gender dynamics  the scaffolding that enables everything from high-profile sexual assaults to more quotidian forms of female oppression  has the needle actually moved? According to one recent survey, the answer is yes, even if only by a quiver.

In the lead up to International Womens Day  the first since #MeToo went viral  non-profit organization Plan International Canada surveyed 3,000 Canadians for their perspectives on a number of gender equality issues. The charity, popularly known for its Because I Am a Girl gender equality campaign, wanted to understand whether the #MeToo movement has altered gender perceptions, according to Canadian president and CEO Caroline Riseboro.

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The online survey also included questions about womens experiences. The results painted a bleak but unsurprising picture: six in 10 women said theyve endured sexual comments from a male colleague or supervisor. Seven in 10 said theyve fielded sexual comments from total strangers. And women were twice as likely as men to feel that their gender has discouraged or blocked them from pursuing a job, hobby or academic field.

But there were also hopeful glimmers within the survey results, pointing to the potential of social media movements like #MeToo and Times Up.

Sixty-seven per cent of survey respondents believed #MeToo has empowered girls and women and roughly half said its had a positive impact on workplaces and schools  a finding that echoes a recent Angus Reid poll, where 65 per cent of Canadians said the movement has impacted the way they relate to co-workers.

Sixty-eight per cent also said #MeToo has caused men to re-evaluate how they interact with women; when isolating just male respondents, 67 per cent agreed with this statement.

Really, the final frontier (to change) is around the deep-seated social norms that we all hold about the power relationships between men and women, Riseboro said. And what were seeing is that 67 per cent of men are re-evaluating how they interact with women ... I think that is what were seeing as a powerful outcome of the #MeToo movement.

The me too phrase was initially conceived by American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, who first deployed it more than a decade ago to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual assault.

But #MeToo became a viral hashtag last October in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted the phrase and encouraged other sexual assault survivors to follow suit. The tweet spawned more than 12 million posts and reactions within just 24 hours and #MeToo has since come to symbolize the broader movement of victims  mostly women  going public with their stories of sexual harassment, discrimination or assault.

The movement has rippled across the globe, triggering positive changes while also generating backlash from misogynists and feminists alike. There have also been criticisms over the movements tendency to exclude or drown out the experiences of racialized or transgender women.

One of the more pervasive questions about #MeToo has been: is it actually driving real change? For Riseboro, she sees promise in the survey result that most men are now rethinking their interactions with women. But she also notes only 33 per cent of men said #MeToo changed the way they think about sexual assault.

We would have liked to see that number be quite a bit higher, she said. So we still have a long way to go.

University of Toronto associate professor Judith Taylor, who wasnt involved with the survey, pointed to another concerning statistic nestled within the surveys broader results. Amongst men aged 55 and over, three quarters said #MeToo has caused a rethink of the way men interact with women  but for boys and men under 25, only 53 per cent agreed.

(That) is terrifying, said Taylor, who studies social movements and feminist activism. That is a real red flag.

Taylor agrees overall that the #MeToo movement has caused a tectonic shift in the gender equality landscape. Not only are more women more empowered to speak up about their experiences, Taylor is witnessing an increased sophistication in the way people discuss and debate complicated issues.

But when it comes to creating real change, theres only so much that can be achieved through policy or legal reform, Taylor said. Societal transformation flows from a critical mass of changes at the individual level  perhaps starting with a viral hashtag, which just might prompt someone to start thinking a little bit differently.

People change their behaviour to realign it with their values. Collectively they do that and then the pernicious behaviour falls away, she said. Shifts in consciousness do happen; its just more slow than people would like.
Police and the family of a woman struck and killed while crossing a street in a town north of Toronto are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Canadian author and columnist Gordon Pape says his daughter, 51-year-old Kimberley Pape-Green, was hit by a car on the night of Jan. 22 while walking home from a bus stop in Newmarket, Ont.

York regional police say Pape-Green died after being taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Investigators say the driver of the car remained at the scene and no charges have been laid, but they are still seeking witnesses.

They are appealing to anyone who saw the collision and has not spoken with police to come forward.

Pape-Green was the mother of three children.

Kim was walking home from the bus stop, and now shes just gone. Our whole family is devastated by this, Pape said Wednesday in a release.

Pape called his daughter a seasoned pedestrian, saying she never had a drivers licence and always took transit.

Pape-Green was a voracious reader, said her younger sister, Deborah Kerbel, whose book Under The Moon was selected as a finalist for a Governor Generals Literary Award in 2012.

She was absolutely the reason I write books today, Kerbel said.

Pape-Greens daughter, Kendra Pape-Green, 25, also appealed to anyone who may have witnessed the crash to contact police.

All three of us hope that someone comes forward with more information with what happened to Mom, she said.

Pape-Greens husband, Tim, suffers from a rare debilitating disease and is unable to work.

She was the familys main means of financial support, said her daughter, who has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money to get the family through the crisis.
He still holds the top job in Stouffville, but Mayor Justin Altmann can no longer talk to his staff except by email.

He can no longer go to his office during working hours except to collect mail, pay bills and attend council meetings.

And he will be docked six months pay after his fellow councillors endorsed sanctions in two separate ethics complaints against him.

In a heated meeting that ended late Tuesday night, the town council voted 5-1 to endorse most of the integrity commissioners recommendations from an investigation that found Altmann shared confidential in-camera information during a media interview, and another that found he contravened the towns code of conduct when he failed to apologize for a vexatious CSI-style photo display of staff he put up in his office washroom.

Read more:

Whitchurch-Stouffville mayor docked six months pay, barred from talking to staff

Women demand to see secret threat assessment on Stouffville mayor

Stouffville mayor fails to apologize for CSI-style wall

We the council consider the protection of staff and public to be paramount, said Councillor Maurice Smith, after emerging from the portion of the meeting that was held in-camera. Council is disappointed that the mayor failed to take responsibility for his actions.

While his supporters were enraged, booing and jeering throughout the meeting, others say the town council had no choice but to take a hard line.

I couldnt foresee any other solution, especially after he refused to apologize for the wall, said Darlene Shaw, one of three women who were disturbed to find themselves on the washroom wall, and are asking for the release of a threat assessment done on the mayor last year in which he scored an 8 out of 10.

I am relieved that council have taken steps to protect staff, she said, adding she doesnt think we will ever see that threat assessment.

The penalties were implemented right away, Whitchurch-Stouffville town spokesman Glenn Jackson told the Star Wednesday.

The sanctions are immediate with payroll adjustments commencing during the next payroll cycle, Jackson said. His access card has been deactivated. We are still working out some logistical details about the emails.

The mayors monthly pay is roughly $5,075 (the equivalent of a month of town pay and a month of car allowance.) He will lose approximately $30,000 in total.

Altmann did not reply to the Stars request for comment on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, he and his wife listened in as his colleagues voted, and hugged supporters once the meeting was over.

I expected this is what they would do. And once again, natural justice and procedural fairness wasnt there. I couldnt defend myself, Altmann said after the meeting.

Since then, his supporters have taken to social media, with profile pictures saying I support Mayor Altmann. A few dozen residents have also started a petition to support the mayor for not being able to defend himself.

The mayor was given an opportunity during both integrity commissioner investigations to respond to the complaints, which he did.

In one private Facebook group, some residents considered setting up a GoFundMe page for the mayor, as was done months ago to help him pay recoup the cost of a replica chain of office he made for himself to wear around town. One resident said she opened up a bank account in Altmann and his wifes name.

Last week, integrity commissioner Suzanne Craig released her findings from the two separate code-of-conduct complaints.

The first investigation dealt with the mayors disclosure of in-camera information during a radio interview. The second dealt with Altmanns refusal over a 90-day period to apologize to staff for the wall of pictures, despite the wishes of council.

Craig put forward remedial actions in her reports for council to consider, including barring the mayor from town offices, barring him from talking to municipal staff and docking him up to six months pay  90 days per complaint, the maximum penalty allowed under the Municipal Act.

This is not a suggestion that the mayor not carry out his function, or not say hello  these recommendations are made to address concerns that your staff have brought forward to me, she said at the meeting.

Last year, Craig investigated the bizarre photo display in Altmanns office washroom that included pictures of staff, former politicians and members of the public, linked together with black lines and graphics.

Her report last September called the display vexatious and disturbing and concluded it constituted workplace harassment.

At the time, council docked Altmann one months pay and asked that he apologize to staff. But the mayor adamantly refused to do, citing errors in Craigs report.

The mayor reiterated this position on Tuesday and asked for a delay in proceedings so he could get his lawyer to respond. He asked if his wife could speak on his behalf, but his request was denied.

It is time now the truth come out. My council will be my judges, the mayor said before declaring a conflict of interest and leaving the council meeting Tuesday.

Craig had strong words for council in her last deputation on Tuesday (she submitted her resignation to the town of Whitchurch-Stouffville last month), citing the impact Altmanns refusal to apologize has had on staff and the reputation of the town.

The town council edict in which it requested that the mayor apologize to the complainant, who was a victim of workplace harassment, was to repair the damaged relationship between the mayor, staff and the town. However, the mayors conduct in response to this imposed corrective action has instead further damaged the town, Craig said.

I have no doubt that there are many here, including the mayor, who believe there is no need to apologize. I ask you then, why do we have rules?

On Tuesday, Craig also talked about how staff who spoke up about the wall have suffered over the past few months.

Some who have come forward have experienced subtle reprisals that prevent them from being fully productive in the workplace, she said. Some say it continues even today.

Craig also took exception to the way the mayor has dealt with the findings from her initial investigation and how his behaviour has affected staff.

Staff have viewed the mayors behaviour and the manner in which he refused to apologize  as an indication that nothing has changed, and they have therefore decided to put up with a toxic work environment while actively job-searching, and have resolved to leave once they have found new jobs.

Individuals have stated to me that they were looking for a sincere apology  and sincerity on his part.

In her closing words to council, Craig said: There are those who have no voice. You all have a voice.

Who represents the voice of those who have been silenced?
After detention, torture, and flight from war-torn Syria, Noura Al-Jizawi was invited to speak at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland last month. Presenting a final hurdle, her passport was then called a fake by border officials. It wasnt the first time, but Al-Jizawi didnt let it stop her  producing a receipt for the legal document from the Syrian embassy.

Al-Jizawi is a Syrian revolutionary-turned-University of Toronto student, pursuing a masters degree in global affairs through their scholars-at-risk program  which supports graduate students whove fled war or persecution. And, as of three months ago, shes a new mother. Juggling parenting and academia, shes still advocating for her home country internationally.

Speaking to the Star this week upon her return from Geneva, her infant daughter by her side, she recounted her perspectives on forcible displacement, refugees and siege in Syria, topics shed spoken on to the high ranking officials and foreign Ministers present at the UN. And the panel discussion, which was a year and a half in the making, came at an apt time.

It aligned with an ongoing seige of eastern Ghouta  described as desperate by Pawel Krzysiek, head of communications at the International Committee of the Red Cross on Tuesday. Hundreds have died and some children hadnt seen daylight for 15 days, with schools shuttered by shelling and people going hungry, the Associated Press reported. Around 400,000 people are believed to be trapped there.

The UN Security Council demanded a 30-day ceasefire of populated areas, including eastern Ghouta, Yarmouk, Foua and Kefraya, on Feb. 24. The order was made so humanitarian aid could be delivered, and the critically sick and wounded could be evacuated. Security council met behind closed doors on Tuesday to discuss the failure of that cease-fire, according to the Associated Press.

Sadly, theres no implementation, and it depends on the international players will, Al-Jizawi said. This attack against Eastern Ghouta, the besieged areas, must stop immediately. She said the foreign ministers in Geneva had made good, powerful statements on the matter, noting that strong diplomacy  not war  was needed to stabilize the situation in Syria.

Al-Jizawis convictions were forged from childhood in Syria, she told the Star. In grade school, she started to notice the number of her schoolmates who had missing fathers. As she moved through her school years, Al-Jizawi said she heard stories in particular about the women and mothers impacted by those missing people. A group of them would covertly share information about the issue, collected from newly-released prisoners, Al-Jizawi said. She wasnt part of that movement, but began to advocate around that time for the rights of missing people and against political detention. She and other advocates would meet secretly, discussing the authority situation in Syria. They concluded that revolution was the only answer.

But no one could predict when revolution would come, because revolution is the act of the majority of people, its not the act of a small group, she said. So they waited and advocated for change. In 2012, she was detained for six months. Shes spoken to several media outlets about being tortured at the time. Multiple members of her family were detained as well, so the family was displaced upon their release. She and her sister fled to Turkey in 2013, staying there until she was able to come to Canada. This is her first year at U of T.

This is what I need. I feel like its a real place to learn, she said.

When plans for the recent UN panel began, she said there were more areas under seige in Syria, but theyve since been displaced. Leaving was the only way for people to survive, she said, especially with their children. While she spoke, she tended to her daughter Naya.

If I could not have Naya in Canada, Naya would be stateless, she told the Star, cooing over the three-month-old in the lobby of Innis College. Many Syrian infants  born in refugee camps, in liberated areas, born from parents of the revolution side  they are stateless. Thats why so many people are seeking refugee asylum, just to protect the future of those kids.

With a two year degree ahead, she spoke about the possibility of going back to Syria only if there was a political transition. That, to her, meant ending the seige on her home country. This is the only way to protect civilians and to achieve political transition, and also to achieve justice and accountability to protect the future, she said.

Thats the only condition I could return.

With files from the Associated Press

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Upon hearing the news that Toronto police plan on undergoing an internal investigation of how its officers handled the Bruce McArthur case, community activist Nicki Wards first concern was that other cases being probed by the police force will be put on the backburner.

Before McArthur was arrested, police had already begun probing its handling of cases in Torontos gay community and around the village, like the murder of Tess Richey.

Richey, 22, was found strangled in Torontos gay village last year. But police didnt initially treat Richeys disappearance as suspicious. A week after she was found, police said its professional standards unit would be examining how officers handled the case. Kalen Schlatter, 21, has been charged with second-degree murder in Richeys death, and his case is now before the courts.

Read more:

Mayor John Tory calls for independent review of Bruce McArthur investigation

Ward also raised the case of Alloura Wells, a 27-year-old transgender woman found dead in the Rosedale ravine in August 2017. Wells family had reported her disappearance Nov. 6 last year, and were allegedly told the case was not high priority because Wells had been homeless for a number of years. Police spokesperson Mark Pugash told the Star that was certainly not the proper response from any part of this organization, and Chief Saunders said the force may take a look at its sensitivity in such cases. Wells body had been discovered in August, but was only identified by police weeks after she was reported missing.

Even Dean Lisowick, one of McArthurs alleged victims, was an illustration of an even larger problem, Ward said. He was homeless, and never reported missing.

My concern has always been that there are mechanical issues, in addition to the high probability that there were some LGBT bias or other biases, Ward said. The distinction between the ability to easily report and record someone as missing was highly problematic, in the case of Tess Richey, Alloura Wells, and indeed Dean Lisowick.

Then theres the overwhelming issue of cultural competence, or lack thereof. So, the difficulty in actually setting up a meaningful conversation, not a series of monologues from the police services. She hopes the other cases being probed, and the larger issues at hand, dont fall to the wayside while police zero in on what happened in the McArthur case.

Meanwhile, members of the community are processing the news that McArthur had been interviewed by police years before being arrested on multiple counts of murder. The fact that Bruce McArthur was interviewed by police earlier and that information was not made available to the current investigation just really boggles my mind, said Angus MacDougall, a member of Torontos gay community.

What Im furious about is the timing of all of this. Im just a person watching the story unfold like everybody else, but what it seems to look like to me is there were active killings occurring during the investigation but there were also signs pointing towards Bruce McArthur, he said.

Michael Erickson, co-owner of Glad Day Bookshop in the village, said what shocked him was that carding data was available to officers, but information about someone who was interviewed by police could get lost or be inaccessible. It continues the pattern that not everyone is being policed fairly and equally, and that the way in which police are profiling or giving value to certain people in our community is unfair, he said.

City councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who represents the Ward where the village is based, told the Star that the community has been fully aware that there are delicate matters that cannot be discussed in public.

What theyve been asking for since day one is a level or respect when they do have interactions with the police. They were asking that their lives be taken seriously, she told the Star. And theyre asking for the same level of service that the police officers would give any other community.

In a statement Wednesday, Tory said many of his calls for action, including the external probe, were recommended by representatives of the LGBTQ community, including the Alliance for South Asian Aids Prevention. Its executive director, Haran Vijayanathan, told the Star he believes the internal investigation is a necessary first step. But he, along with Tory, believes having an independent external investigation conducted is critical as well.

Vijayanathans understanding is that public feedback will be collected on the internal review report for 120 days after its released, and then the mandate of an independent review would be crafted from that feedback. The group currently has a good working relationship with both Tory and Chief Saunders offices, he said.

Were going to sit down and have a conversation. I know there is an intention and motivation to have that done as well, because in all honesty, we can always look internally to see what we did wrong, but it still may be biased in some capacity, he said. So its important to have that external third party investigate it as well. We can look what police think they did well, and then what actually happened, and then look to see what gaps exist and find solutions based on that.

Shakir Rahim, a board member with ASAAP, said the community always knew there were problems with the police response to their concerns. The question now is: What kind of negligence happened?

Along with Torys pledge to call for an independent review, the mayor also urged the province to consider holding a public inquiry once McArthurs criminal case has completed. Vijayanathan believes a further step could be to look at each individual case, but noted that would have to wait until any court proceedings end. This is just the tip of the iceburg, he said.

We still need to go beneath the waters.
With the looming threat of a change in Ontarios political climate, Premier Kathleen Wynne got some help from one of the worlds most famous climate-change activists.

Al Gore, the former American vice president whose Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth popularized the perils of extreme weather, was at Ryerson University on Thursday to give Wynnes June re-election bid a boost.

Its been a privilege for me to have had the opportunity over the last many years to work with Premier Kathleen Wynne, said Gore, former president Bill Clintons running mate in 1992 and 1996, before he lost the disputed 2000 presidential election narrowly to George W. Bush.

I travel all over the world and I cite Ontario as an example of a provincial government that is doing it right: creating jobs, building the base for economic progress, while also staving off the severe danger that the climate crisis poses to all of us, he said.

Gore said he was alarmed that Wynnes main political rivals, the Progressive Conservatives, want Ontario to abandon the cap-and-trade carbon-pricing market it shares with Quebec and California if it is elected June 7.

Under such a regimen, businesses have greenhouse-gas-emission limits  or caps  and those polluting less can sell or trade credits. The climate guru noted that this creates an economic incentive to reduce emissions and promote clean technology.

Anyone in Ontario who imagines for a moment that elections dont have consequences, think, for a moment, about my country and what is going on there right now, he said with a trademark heavy sigh during a 30-minute roundtable with journalists from the Toronto Star, The Canadian Press, and The Globe and Mail.

Asked what would happen if Wynne is defeated June 7, Gore did not mince words.

When we were approaching an election a little over a year ago in the United States, some people said: What would happen if Donald Trump wins? And a lot of people said: Well, it might not be so bad,  he said.

Oh yeah? Its worse than anybody thought it would be. I do know this: Ontario is moving forward; Ontario is making progress; Ontario is setting the standard for provincial and regional governments around the world, added the former vice-president.

Ontarios economic progress is the envy of North America and many parts of the world.

His comments came before he and Wynne addressed 800 people in a campaign-style event at Ryersons Mattamy Athletic Centre in the former Maple Leaf Gardens.

The premier, for her part, was grateful for Gores remarks.

Were at a really interesting moment in the history of this province . . . . This issue is going to be very much a part of the political discussion, she said of climate change.

Regardless of who wins Saturdays Tory leadership, all four candidates  former MPP Christine Elliott, ex-councillor Doug Ford, rookie PC politician Caroline Mulroney, and social conservative Tanya Granic Allen  have said they will end cap-and-trade and fight any carbon tax.

Recent public opinion polls suggest whichever PC hopeful is victorious could defeat Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath in the spring election.

At the conference, Wynne said cap-and-trade beats carbon taxation because it costs less for businesses and families.

Further, she continued, it guarantees that we will hit our targets for pollution reduction, although she did not elaborate on this point.

Last week, we learned our first joint (carbon) auction sold out; more than $400 million will go toward making our province greener, building things like public transit, affordable housing and bike lanes.

Gore, citing natural disasters that have recently hit North America, said the costs of climate change are already felt.

Fires burned for more than a year in Fort McMurray, and, last year, in my country, California had by far the worst fires in history  all climate-related, he said. Seventeen of the 18 hottest years ever measured have been since 2001. In Houston, Texas, 1.5 metres of rain  500 days worth of the full flow of Niagara Falls (fell) right into the middle of Harris County, Texas. The records continue to be broken.

Mother Nature (is telling) us, in other words, yes, we must change. The scientists have long given us the same answer.

Gore cited Californias climate-change policies as spurring its economy. Solar jobs now represent the single fastest growing job category in the United States, growing 17 times faster than other jobs are grown.

The will to change is, itself, a renewable resource, he said.

Gore denounced industrial lobbyists, who claim a right to use the sky as an open sewer, so that they can dump their pollution, the consequences of which, he said, are borne by future generations.

With files from Julien Gignac

Read more about:
Hamiltons anarchist collective says it did not organize the recent mayhem on Locke St., but supports what happened and the organized masked mob which carried out the attack.

The Tower broke its silence on Saturdays events Wednesday, noting on Facebook it was time to make its stance known given two recent attacks on the Cannon St. E. meeting space.

The ongoing effects of gentrification in this city are heartbreaking  waves of displacement, growing violence, and intensifying poverty, the post reads. You cannot expect for all of this to just be swept under the proverbial rug.

Read more:

Vandals who smashed Hamilton shop windows planned ahead, police say

Mob dressed in black damages vehicles, smashes storefronts on Hamiltons Locke St.

We have zero tears to shed for Locke St.

A sheet of plywood covered up the window of the meeting place of Hamilton anarchists Monday, and a post on The Towers Facebook page Wednesday said far-right goons broke in and trashed their free community library.

This comes just days after a masked mob of 30 people clad in black marched down Locke Street South Saturday night, throwing rocks through business windows and car windshields as well as lighting off fireworks and smoke bombs.

Hamilton police say they are investigating a break-in at The Towers space at 281 Cannon St. E. at Victoria Avenue, which happened around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

When police arrived, the front door was ajar and books and shelving were scattered across the floor inside, said spokesperson Const. Lorraine Edwards.

Police will follow up with any leads which may involve the concern for further retribution, Edwards wrote in an email.

The Tower wrote in its Facebook post it would not file police reports over the incidents.

On Tuesday, police said they had evidence linking the Hamilton Anarchist Book Fair held at Westdale Secondary School over the weekend with the planned attack on the Durand and Kirkendall neighbourhoods that caused an estimated $100,000 in damage.

An anonymous poster on the website Northshore Counter-Info claims to have taken part in the rampage, saying all my worst bosses have been small business owners  the problem isnt the size of the business, its that the relationship is exploitative.

The writer later adds: Turning the tables and finally counterattacking Saturday night helped me to shake off some of the fear and frustration that build up when youre trapped in a hopeless situation.

Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative also issued a statement Wednesday, noting it has nothing to do with the local anarchist community, The Tower, or the Anarchist Book Fair and its not an anarchist gathering spot.

The statement pointed to concerns with a recent Spectator story that stated Det. Sgt. Mike Cunliffe  who is heading up the Locke St. investigation  would not say if detectives had spoken to anyone at Sky Dragon or whether it was linked in any way to the weekends events.

Having spoken with current and several former co-op members, I can confidently state that the Sky Dragon condemns the Locke St. vandalism, and that we have always been opposed to the kind of politics, anarchist or otherwise, that use fear and intimidation to divide and distract people who would otherwise be allies in making progressive change.

Local organizations are reaching out to help businesses affected by Saturdays vandalism spree.

The City of Hamilton contacted the Locke Street BIA Tuesday, letting it know about the BIA Commercial Property Improvement Grant Program. Intended to help property owners with costs not covered by their insurer, the program could cover windows, doors, storefronts, awnings, signage or surveillance cameras damaged due to vandalism.

Blessings Christian Church, which worships in Stanley Avenue Baptist Church, plans to donate its collection money from Sunday to help the businesses in the aftermath of the attack. Pastor Bill DeJong said they will liaise with the Kirkendall Neighbourhood Association and the Locke Street BIA to figure out how best to assist, which could include helping to cover deductibles, he noted.
Canadas nice guy image doesnt extend to the world of outlaw bikers.

Thats the view of Andrew (Chef) Glick, 52, a longtime American bike gang leader whos now a key prosecution witness in an upcoming murder-for-hire trial in New Jersey thats centred around the illegal opioid trade, including fentanyl.

Leaders of the Pagans Motorcycle Club in the northeastern United States thought long and hard earlier this decade about expanding into Canada to support enemies of the Hells Angels in Quebec, Glick said.

The Pagans ultimately backed off on the idea of expanding north. A big part of the reason was that Canadian Hells Angels are considered particularly violent members of the outlaw biker  or one percenter  world, Glick said in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location.

(One per center is a biker term for the small group of motorcyclists who choose to live outside of the law).

In Canada and Australia, thats where the heaviest (toughest) one per centers are, Glick said. Being a one per center in Canada, I would say is a little more dangerous than being a one per center in the U.S.

New Jersey bikers are tough, but not near as violent as what Ive seen and read (about) in Montreal and Toronto, Glick said.

That said, American Pagans revel in a rough image. One of the clubs mottos is: Theres nothing a pickaxe cant solve and members wear patches on their vests stating, Very Bad Attitude. For his part, Glick got his nickname, Chef, because he worked in the kitchen at a casino and retirement home.

Aside from the rough reputation of Canadian bikers, Canadas anti-gang laws also made American members pause when thinking of expanding north, Glick said.

Canadian law gives court the power to impose up to 14 additional years in prison on anyone who commits a serious crime for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization.

There are currently about 300 members of the Pagans in the northeastern United States, where they are sometimes bitter rivals of the Hells Angels.

One of the top Pagans was pushing the expansion idea because it would make them an international club instead of just an American one, Glick said.

He was talking heavily, Glick said. I heard it was really close.

Glick alternately served as president and vice president of the Cape May County, New Jersey chapter of the Pagans until last November, when he agreed to cooperate with authorities in a high-profile murder-for-hire and opioid trafficking case and avoid a possible 40-year prison term.

Glick said he isnt proud of his decision to testify against his former clubmates in an upcoming case centred around the murder of radio show host April Kauffman, who was shot dead on May 10, 2012 in the 7,000 square foot mansion in Linwood, N.J. she shared with her physician husband.

I preached never to do this (cooperate with authorities) but I never thought Id be looking at 40 years, Glick said. It would basically be life for me.

I was looking at 40 years for weapons and drugs, Glick said.

The FBI alleges that April Kauffmans murder was arranged by her husband, Dr. James Kauffman, a physician in Egg Harbour Township, N.J., and members of the Pagans, including Glicks former buddy Ferdinand (Freddy) Augello, former president of the local Pagans chapter.

She was targeted for murder because she threatened to tell authorities how her husband and members of the Pagans were involved in a massive opioid trafficking ring, authorities say. Her threats came in the midst of an ugly divorce from the doctor, Glick said.

Glick was one of a dozen Pagans and associates who authorities say received prescriptions of OxyContin and other opioids including fentanyl from Dr. Kauffman, which they sold on the illegal market.

The doctor charged the bikers and their associates a fee of between $100 and $500 per prescription between 2011 and 2017, Glick said.

Dr. Kauffman was ultimately charged on Jan. 9, 2018 with arranging his wifes murder. Authorities said he hanged himself in Hudson County Jail after hearing that Pagans members had arranged for him to be killed in custody for threatening to cooperate with the prosecution.

Francis Mulholland, the alleged hitman in the April Kauffman murder, died of a heroin overdose in 2013.

Several members of the club, including Augello, are in custody on charges for arranging the April Kauffman murder and opioid trafficking.

Glick said he was always against killing her.

The doc kept complaining, Why is it taking so long?, Glick said. I said, Were working on it. Its not like there is a store where we can go to hire hitmen to kill women.

Glick said that Dr. Kauffman expanded his illegal opioid operation after his wifes murder five years ago.

He was a narcissistic guy, Glick said. Arrogant. I guess he thought if he could get away with murder, he could get away with anything.

April Kauffman was the host of a local radio show that advocated veterans rights. That made her popular with several members of the Pagans who have military backgrounds, Glick said.

Half of my chapter comes from the army or the marines, Glick said.

Glick said hes concerned for his safety as the trial of his former clubmates approaches.

Im not going to ride my motorcycle down the road here, he said.

I walk around and I look over my shoulder. I dont go out a whole lot.
On the eve of International Womens Day, Premier Kathleen Wynne held a town hall and fielded questions on everything from the treatment of Indigenous people, to in-school services for children with autism, to the strike at York University.

Among the contentious issues the premier was asked about at the question-and-answer session in Toronto Wednesday night was how police deal with minorities, and what the province is doing to address it.

They treat people of colour very poorly, said one man. You need to stop that, premier, please do something.

Read more:

Wynne gets rough ride from autoworker at town hall meeting in Ancaster

Wynne gets an earful in Ottawa town hall

Wynne said there is systemic racism in our society  that is the core of what we are dealing with in terms of changes that need to be made.

Im not saying racism only exists in police forces, stressed Wynne. It is something we deal with throughout society. Which is why we have made changes in terms of the laws around police officers ability to stop people on the street.

Referring to a law that took effect last year banning carding, Wynne said I know that there are challenges around that. 

But we basically said its not OK, its not legal to stop someone just because they are Black, or just because they are brown, or other than when there is a suspicion or a reason to stop that person. 

We can talk about whether its working or not, but its a culture shift, and its a hard shift for the police services to make, (but) we have made that change.

Another attendee said Black women are disproportionately having their children taken away from them by Childrens Aid and the courts.

Wynne said weve got to find ways to make change and move in the right direction rather than simply shutting down institutions. Its better to shut down what isnt working, Wynne said.

There is racism in our society, no doubt about it, she added. We are going to work to make the change that will help.

Wednesday night was the seventh town hall the premier has held in the province, and her second in Toronto.

Earlier in the evening, Wynne was asked by moderator and former journalist Jane Taber about news that the March 28 provincial budget will include a deficit.

We did balance the budget this year as we committed to, and we made a very intentional decision  even though the economy is doing well, there are people in the province who need support, there are people who arent benefitting from the economic growth that we are seeing  we, as we have been doing for a number of years, are going to tackle that uncertainty, Wynne said.

Its a very intentional decision to invest in the resilience of the people in this province, she said, adding that the economy is not just the balance sheet  I would worry more if we made the decision not to invest in people and not do the things that are necessary right now.

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One female, one male  one PC, one Liberal. But both, political game changers.

On International Womens Day, provincial MPP Lisa MacLeod and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were honoured by an organization devoted to boosting the number of females in elected office.

At a ceremony held in downtown Toronto, Equal Voice said MacLeod broke new ground by pushing for change at Queens Park shortly after she arrived more than a decade ago.

At the time, her daughter was just a toddler and she successfully lobbied for more family-friendly hours at the legislature, saying women should never have to choose between being a good mom and a good MPP.

MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton) told the crowd she was shocked  at the lack of support for female politicians with children. I also remember thinking to myself, I need to change that. 

Proceedings began in the afternoon, and went as late as midnight, she said, there were no change tables in the bathrooms and there were no high chairs in the dining rooms. Thats all changed now.

MacLeod  whose husband, mother and now 12-year-old daughter Victoria were in attendance  also spoke of her own struggles with depression, and the importance of mentorship to support women.

Trudeau, who received a catalyst for change award for male leaders, was lauded for making gender issues a priority for his government.

While strides have been made, there is still work to be done, he said.

The gender wage gap is still a national disgrace, Trudeau said, echoing the headline of a Chatelaine magazine from 1982 he recently came across. His government plans to put pro-actiproactiveity legislation in place for federally regulated sectors because the wage gap is just not right.

He said parliament will also be a more welcoming place for MPs who have children, with coming changes to standing orders so that infants can be cared for by their parent while theyre on the floor of the House of Commons. Babies should never be considered strangers in the house.

Gender equality, Trudeau also said, brings a stronger economy, makes stronger communities  but he lamented that there are not enough women MPs. Thats not acceptable; that has to change, he said.

Last week, the federal government unveiled a first-ever gender equality budget that includes the pay equity proposal and a new benefit that will encourage both parents to take time off work after having a child.

However, Trudeau has come under some criticism for lack of commitment to child care. While he has noted that last years budget committed $7 billion over 10 years, critics have said thats less than what the Liberal government promised more than 14 years ago.

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WASHINGTONIn the squabbling Trump White House, no insider is ever above rebuke and no one blacklisted beyond redemption. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, once barred from sending private emails and spotted skulking in West Wing hallways, has abruptly emerged from the chaos ascendant.

With his chief ideological rival, Gary Cohn, now headed for the exit, Navarro and his protectionist trade policies are taking centre stage as U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to impose the steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that Navarro has long championed.

Navarro, a 68-year-old former economics professor whose ideas were once considered well outside the mainstream, joined the Trump campaign in 2016 after one of his books on China happened to catch the eye of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner during an internet search.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

From the presidential campaign, Navarro made the leap to the new administration to head a new White House National Trade Council. But he was quickly sidelined by chief of staff John Kelly and closely managed by former staff secretary Rob Porter.

Gary Cohn, U.S. President Trumps top economic adviser, plans to resign. He opposed the presidents plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. (The New York Times)

As alliances shifted and staffers departed, though, Navarro made his move, encouraging Trump to embrace a plan that many economists, lawmakers and White House aides warn could lead to a trade war and imperil U.S. economic gains.

The president and the combative Navarro share the same hard-line views on trade that were a centrepiece of Trumps campaign. For decades, both men have accused China of unfair trade practices that have displaced American workers and hobbled the U.S. manufacturing base.

Peter speaks the same language as Trump does on these issues, said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser who is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He and Trump agree on an America First policy when it comes to trade and other issues, so he has emerged as a policy force in this administration.

Like Stephen Miller on immigration, Navarro has now become the face of Trumps trade plan. In interviews since Trumps surprise promise to impose the sweeping tariffs, Navarro has forcefully defended his boss and minimized any potential negative impact on the U.S.

Theres negligible-to-nothing effects, he said dismissively on CBS, later accusing the media of hyping prospects of a trade war.

Navarro had limited contact with Trump world until early in the campaign, when Kushner was drawn to his book, Death by China, while researching China policy. Kushner reached out and Navarro quickly became an economic adviser.

Despite his credentials as a Harvard Ph.D. and former professor at the University of California, Irvine, Navarro was less an academic focused on research than a master of controversy writing books such as The Coming China Wars. He has professed views that go further even than academic peers who see Chinas emergence in the global economy as hurting many U.S. workers.

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Trump has unconventional views on many issues. And here was an economist of some acclaim who was validating those positions, Moore said.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who has known Navarro for more than a decade, described him as someone who certainly speaks his mind and is not afraid to present ideas and data that are contrarian. And I think way more often than not, he makes a very persuasive case.

Persuasive to like-minded Trump, perhaps, but not to many free-trade-loving Republicans.

I think hes wrong on a lot of things, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, who opposes the tariffs.

We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers, 107 House Republicans wrote in a letter to Trump on Wednesday.

A day away from the presidents expected official action, his spokeswoman did say Mexico, Canada or other countries may be spared under national security carve-outs, a possible move that could soften the tariff blow.

But Navarro is still riding high.

Early in Trumps term, Navarro at first was outmanoeuvred by Cohn, the Goldman Sachs president-turned-Trump economic adviser.

Cohn-Navarro discussions sometimes turned into shouting matches, occasionally in front of Trump.

Navarro, excluded from Trumps trip to Asia last fall, was sometimes seen walking the West Wing halls at night. In an especially personal blow, he was required to copy in Cohn on all his emails after being accused of trying to circumvent West Wing processes, according to two people familiar with the policy. They spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration roles.

The White House regimen included a weekly trade policy meeting in the Roosevelt Room where aides with opposing views could talk through ideas to ensure recommendations brought to the president were fully vetted and legally sound. When Porter left, said one of the people, the process broke down and Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made their move.

Asked on Fox whether hed conducted guerrilla warfare, sneaking around the West Wing and trying to making an end-run around staffers, Navarro dismissed the narrative as a cheap shot spread by all sorts of malicious leakers.

Others said Navarro had bided his time, keeping his head down, persistently building his case. He waited as tariff decision deadlines set by Ross ticked closer, and the White House turned its attention back to trade after deciding to table the divisive issue while it worked on health care and taxes.

For a long time, there were a lot of long knives out to get him, said Paul, who served as a member of the White House Manufacturing Jobs Initiative before resigning last summer.

In the end though, said Paul, I think its pretty clear that the president is siding with the economic nationalists.

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We think of tattoos as fixed adornments. Plunge ink deep enough into the skin and there it will sit, suspended in subterranean connective tissue forever.

But what if I told you that tattoos are actually maintained by an ever-changing process  one in which ink crystals are continuously engulfed, regurgitated and gobbled back up, merely giving the illusion of stasis?

Thats what French scientists observed from studying tatted mice. In their model of tattoo persistence, published Tuesday in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, macrophages  immune cells that ingest foreign or unhealthy debris in the body  play a starring role. Targeting these cells, the authors suggested, might help improve tattoo removal procedures for people.

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As a tattoo is given, macrophages descend to capture invading ink. Probably because the ink granules are too bulky for the microscopic Pac-Mans to break down, they hold onto the pigment, your body art shining through their bellies.

With time, these original macrophages die and release their pigments, which get vacuumed up by new macrophages, starting the cycle over, said Sandrine Henri, a researcher at the Immunology Center of Marseille-Luminy who led the study with her colleague Bernard Malissen.

This research shows that tattoos are in fact much more dynamic than we previously had believed, said Johann Gudjonsson, a professor of immunology and dermatology at the University of Michigan who was not involved in the study.

The science behind your emblazoned anchor, sparrow or world map of places youve travelled has never fully been nailed down. For years, researchers suspected that tattoos worked by permanently staining fibroblasts, the cells that synthesize collagen, under the surface of our skin.

Then, looking at tattoo biopsies under the microscope, scientists saw macrophages laden with ink globules, and the story of tattoos became one of the immune system. Still, it was thought that tattoo-bearing macrophages were stable and long-lived, giving tattoos their permanence. What this study suggests is that, at least in mice, these macrophages are constantly being replaced.

Neither Henri nor Malissen have tattoos, and the pair didnt set out to study them. They were examining skin cells in black mice for another project when they noticed macrophages scavenging the melanin released by dying, pigment-making cells. They wondered if the same process occurred in tattoos.

Tattooing green stripes on the tails of albino mice (via stick-and-poke), the immunologists confirmed that macrophages sequestered the ink. When they selectively killed off macrophages, the tail tattoos remained unchanged; new macrophages had come in and slurped up the freed pigments.

Next, the team grafted tattooed skin from one mouse onto another. After six weeks, most of the ink-laden macrophages on the graft were from the recipient mouse, not the donor  evidence that the macrophages had gone through a cycle of renewal.

The authors speculate that targeting macrophages might enhance laser removal, which can take as many as 20 treatments. An estimated 1 in 5 adults in the United States have at least one tattoo, and tens of thousands of laser removals are performed each year.

Jared Jagdeo, a dermatologist at the University of California, Davis, has also wondered whether macrophages impede tattoo removal by reabsorbing lasered ink particles. Since 2014, he has performed a laser removal procedure that uses anti-inflammatory ointment to suppress macrophages.

It makes a difference, he said, noting that he often removes tattoos in 10 or fewer treatments.

But Nicholas Golda, a dermatologist at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, suggested other approaches might be simpler and more effective. Others have tried to promote tattoo inks that are more easily shattered by lasers, but these havent caught on because tattoo artists werent interested in making it easier for people to remove their art, he said.

And getting a tattoo of your lovers name, knowing that it can be easily erased, just doesnt pack the same romantic punch, does it?

For now, it seems, tattoos remain high-stakes, hard to reverse and sacred  but dont mistake them for a fixed, unchanging part of your body.
BRUSSELSThe European Unions top trade official warned Wednesday that a trade war leaves no winners but said the bloc was ready to strike back if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through with tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom also took aim at Trumps assertion that U.S. national security justified plans to slap tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.

The U.S. measures would mainly impact traditional allies of the United States, she said.

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The hardening stance from the 28-nation bloc underscores the global backlash to Trumps America First trade policies and worries that it could ripple through the world economy by triggering reactions from major U.S. trading partners.

Malmstrom noted that the list for possible EU tariff targets has grown to include some widely consumed American products such as cranberries, orange juice and peanut butter. That comes in addition to the bourbon, motorcycles and blue jeans that EU policy-makers have already set in their sights.

A trade war has no winners, Malmstrom told a news conference in Brussels, a clear counterpoint to Trumps remarks last week that a trade war would be easy for the United States to win.

She added that the European Union views the U.S. measures as an economic tool, not as a national security measure. EU leaders, she said, would lodge a complaint with the World Trade Organization if Trump imposes the tariffs.

We cannot see how the European Union, friends and allies in NATO, can be a threat to international security in the U.S., she said. We find that assumption to be deeply unjust.

U.S. President Donald Trump is reaffirming his plans to place tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. During a White House news conference, he said "trade wars aren't so bad." (The Associated Press)

Trumps plans have set off a furious lobbying campaign in Washington, as well as deep dissent inside the White House and Congress. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a staunch opponent of the tariffs, announced his resignation Tuesday, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have stood against the plans.

In Brussels, Malmstrom said that if Trump imposes the tariffs, he would be met with a firm but proportional response. The tariffs could cost Europe thousands of jobs, she said.

A draft of European countermeasures circulating in Brussels targets $3.5 billion (U.S.) in annual imports from the United States, including $1.1 billion in U.S. steel products, along with clothing, makeup, motorcycles, boats, corn, rice, beans and other agricultural products.

EU countries exported $6.6 billion in steel and $1.4 billion in aluminum to the United States last year.

Trump singled out the European Union on Tuesday after meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in Washington.

The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States, Trump said. Its been a very, very unfair trade situation.

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala.Police say a 17-year-old girl has been killed in a shooting at a Birmingham, Ala., high school that has left another student injured.

Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson said at a news conference after the shooting Wednesday afternoon at Huffman High School that authorities are seeking to determine whether the shooting was accidental.

Wilson declined to identify the dead student and the other injured. He also says authorities are investigating whether the gun accidentally discharged or if it was intentional.

The chief says the shooting occurred as school was being dismissed Wednesday, adding its not from where someone from the outside came into the school.

Wilson did not respond to questions as to who fired the gun, adding investigators have the firearm in their possession.

Birmingham Police Sgt. Bryan Shelton told local media organizations that one of the students suffered life-threatening injuries. He described it as an accidental shooting but details werent immediately available.

The Birmingham City School system said in a statement that the shooting prompted a brief lockdown.

Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal, the school system statement said. The school was placed on brief lockdown and police were called. It added that police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Local reports said Birminghams mayor, Randall Woodfin, had gone to the school with police.
JUBA, South SudanWiping tears from her cheeks, the young woman describes how she has resorted to prostitution to feed her children.

When South Sudans civil war broke out in 2013, her family fled their home to avoid violence. Her husband took her and their two children to a UN camp for safety. He has not been seen since then and is presumed dead. Bright and resourceful, she found offers of work as a cleaner and a waitress, but she said her male employers demanded sex.

If you refuse to sleep with them, youll never get a job, said Nancy, who spoke on condition of not publishing her full name.

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Theyll tell you to come tomorrow for work but then start calling you the night before asking to sleep in your house, she said of the hiring managers. If she didnt respond to their demands, shed show up to work the next day only to find that another woman had taken her place.

In three years, four bosses threatened to fire the young mother unless she had sex with them, she said. One of them told her it was company policy, she said.

After such exploitation Nancy said she decided to do sex work, where she said she has more control and makes more money to care for her children, who are now aged 4 and 7. She said she goes to bars where she picks up clients.

Im embarrassed, she said, her eyes darting to the floor. But its my only way out.

Nancy never reported her aggressors because she thought the authorities wouldnt believe her. I would just go home and cry, she said.

As International Womens Day is being marked across the globe, South Sudan remains a country where women face grinding difficulties. While women across much of the Western world have galvanized around the #MeToo movement by speaking out against sexual assault and letting women know that theyre not alone, most women in the fledgling nation of South Sudan remain voiceless.

Its a culture of silence, says Shelina Doro, a womens protection officer with the United Nations. Most women dont want to speak out for fear of reprisal, she said.

Violence against women in South Sudan is twice the global average, with 65 per cent of females experiencing physical or sexual abuse in their lifetime, according to a study by the International Rescue Committee and the Global Womens Institute.

Violence against women has escalated during South Sudans civil war, with rape being used as a weapon of war with impunity, according to many human rights groups. Gender experts say the war has magnified pre-existing inequities.

Sexual exploitation is a manifestation and glaring symptom of deep-rooted gender inequalities, said Renifa Madenga, former gender adviser to South Sudans Commission on Human Rights. The war has reinforced the power and control of men across the country, she said.

It is not just South Sudanese men who are sexual predators. Last month, the UN in South Sudan recalled a peacekeeping police unit of foreign soldiers after some members reportedly engaged in transactional sex with women living in a civilian protection camp.

South Sudans government encourages women to report any type of harassment, but officials say most women arent aware of their rights. Last year no reports were filed of sexual assault in the workplace, said James Simon, senior inspector in the Ministry of Labor.

Women tell me the government doesnt give them rights, but these are human rights and most of them dont know that, said Pita Rosalie, a social worker with the Ministry of Gender.

Rights groups are pushing campaigns such as #MeToo and #HerToo to go further than spreading awareness and to focus on advocacy and action, especially across Africa, where the movement has yet to gain steam.

Ultimately, the campaign that has empowered many can help empower an effort to create an African solution to what surely is a global problem and ensure that no one is left behind, said Cormac Smith, advocacy officer at Southern African Liaison Office, a South African-based rights organization, to The Associated Press.

Even though some women are fighting for a seat at the table, more than awareness is needed, said Funmi Balogun, a womens rights activist working with UN Women in South Sudan.

South Sudan is patriarchal, militarized and in conflict, said Balogun. I doubt if #MeToo would gain any traction at this point or even in the near future.
WASHINGTONAfter a week of hints and uncertainty, President Donald Trump said Thursday he would announce tariffs on imported steel and aluminum but with temporary exemptions for Canada and Mexico as he seeks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement. He suggested Australia and other countries might also be spared, a shift that could soften the international blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners.

The White House said Trump would sign the orders on Thursday afternoon as opponents of the tariffs engaged in last-minute lobbying to blunt the impact.

Were going to be very fair, were going to be very flexible but were going to protect the American worker as I said I would do in my campaign, Trump said during a Cabinet meeting.

The president reiterated that he would levy tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminum but would have a right to go up or down depending on the country and Ill have a right to drop out countries or add countries. I just want fairness.

The president indicated Canada and Mexicos treatment would be connected to the ongoing NAFTA talks, which are expected to resume in early April.

The process of announcing the penalties has been the subject of an intense debate and chaotic exchanges within the White House, pitting hard-liners against free trade advocates such as outgoing economic adviser Gary Cohn aiming to add more flexibility for U.S. trading partners.

The fight over tariffs comes amid intense turmoil in the West Wing, which has seen waves of departures and negative news stories that have left Trump increasingly isolated in the Oval Office, according to two senior officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal thinking. Trump was still hearing last-minute pleas from opponents of the tariff plan, and White House officials said they couldnt predict how the day would shake out.

Steel and aluminum workers were invited to the White House for the afternoon announcement with Trump.

Peter Navarro, Trumps trade and manufacturing adviser, said in an interview on Fox Business on Wednesday that the tariffs would go into effect within about 15 to 30 days and that the proclamation signed by the president would include a clause that would not immediately impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

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Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a case by case and country by country basis, a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exemptions from Trumps plan.

Congressional Republicans and business groups are bracing for the impact of the tariffs, appearing resigned to additional protectionist trade actions as Trump signals upcoming economic battles with China.

The looming departure of Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed the promised tariffs, set off anxiety among business leaders and investors worried about a potential trade war.

We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers, 107 House Republicans wrote in a letter to Trump.

At the White House, officials were working to include language in the tariffs that would give Trump the flexibility to approve exemptions for certain countries.

Hes already indicated a degree of flexibility, I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC. Were not trying to blow up the world.

Trump signalled other trade actions could be in the works. In a tweet, he said the U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. A White House official said Trump was referencing an ongoing investigation of China in which the U.S. trade representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are unreasonable or discriminatory to American business.

The official, who was not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said an announcement on the findings of the report  and possible retaliatory actions  was expected within the next three weeks.

Business leaders, meanwhile, continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raising the spectre of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trumps rollback of regulations.

We urge the administration to take this risk seriously, Donohue said.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security. He has tried to use the tariffs as leverage in ongoing talks to renegotiate NAFTA, suggesting Canada and Mexico might be exempted from tariffs if they offer more favourable terms under the trade agreement.

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WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump has exempted Canada and Mexico from his steel and aluminum tariffs, but he says he might change his mind later if two countries dont agree to a fair North American Free Trade Agreement.

Resisting furious global pressure, Trump declined to grant immediate exemptions to any other countries. He said everyone else can negotiate with his trade chief.

His decision on Thursday to exempt Canada conditionally  but immediately  is a partial victory for Canadian steel producers and for Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government after a frantic week of high-stakes diplomacy. Trump initially said he would give Canada no special treatment, then insisted he would lift a tariff on Canada only when the NAFTA impasse was resolved.

Still, his decision fell far short of the full, final tariff exemption sought by Trudeau and numerous senior members of Trumps own party. It ensures that a tariff cloud will hover indefinitely over the rocky NAFTA talks.

Were negotiating right now NAFTA. And were going to hold off the tariff on those two countries to see whether or not were able to make the deal on NAFTA. National security, very important aspect of that deal, Trump said at the White House, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and steelworkers. And, if were making the deal on NAFTA, this will figure into the deal, and we wont have the tariffs on Canada or Mexico.

If we dont make the deal on NAFTA, and if we terminate NAFTA because theyre unable to make a deal thats fair for our workers and fair for our farmers  . He did not finish the sentence.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland called the exemption a step forward. She said the government continues to view NAFTA and the tariff threat as quite distinct issues, and she said its approach to the NAFTA talks would not be altered by Trumps attempt to link the two.

Our approach has been consistent since the negotiations began last year. Todays announcement does not change that. We know a fair deal  a win-win-win deal  is within reach, she said in Toronto.

Freeland said it was inconceivable that Canada could pose a security threat to the U.S., and added that any tariffs imposed on that basis, which is Trumps official basis for these tariffs, would be unacceptable.

Trump signed a proclamation imposing the tariffs in 15 days on countries outside North America. The tariffs will be 25 per cent on steel products, 10 per cent on aluminum products. They will likely produce significant changes in global markets for both, and the ripple effects may spread throughout the U.S. economy.

Countries around the world have threatened retaliation  the European Union has compiled a list of dozens of American products, from peanut butter to makeup, to target with tariffs  and top Republicans told Trump they were worried about a possible trade war. But Trump, noting that he has supported tariffs for decades, said the move was not a choice, but a necessity, given the decimation of American communities by aggressive steel and aluminum imports.

Our factories were left to rot and to rust all over the place. Thriving communities turned into ghost towns. Not any longer, he said.

The text of the proclamation was more positive toward Canada than Trump was in his remarks. I conclude that Canada and Mexico present a special case, it quoted him as saying.

The best solution, the proclamation said, is to continue ongoing discussions with U.S. neighbours, given our shared commitment to supporting each other in addressing national security concerns, our shared commitment to addressing global excess capacity for producing aluminum, the physical proximity of our respective industrial bases, the robust economic integration between our countries, the export of aluminum produced in the United States to Canada and Mexico, and the close relation of the economic welfare of the United States to our national security.

There is sometimes little relationship between Trumps words in staff-written documents and the personal views that drive his decisions. Jerry Dias, president of the Unifor union that represents Canadian auto and aluminum workers, said Trumps decision to link the tariffs to NAFTA amounts to economic blackmail.

Youre dealing with an administration that doesnt want to deal anyway. And we need to be candid about that, said Dias, whose union also represents unionized employees at the Toronto Star.

Mickey Kantor, former U.S. commerce secretary and trade chief under Bill Clinton, took issue with Trumps threat.

I think blackmail is not something anyone should carry out in country-to-country relations, Kantor said in an interview. Is that clear enough?

Joseph Galimberti, president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, said they welcome the exemption. Efforts to convey to the administration the benefits of steel trade with Canada can be said to have paid off in this instance, he said, and the producers will continue to press their case.

Ottawa trade strategist Peter Clark said: I guess you shouldnt look a gift president in the mouth. But its not a really generous gift. He said the White House was clearly attempting to clean up the embarrassing mess Trump created with his haphazard initial announcement.

Speaking before Trump on Thursday, a senior administration official had suggested that the tariffs would not be tied specifically to the outcome of NAFTA talks. Rather, he said, they would be tied to broader discussions about our security relationship, of which NAFTA is one part.

The officials use of such language appeared to be an attempt to defend against potential legal problems Trump may have created with the World Trade Organization by tying a possible exemption for Canada and Mexico to the overall state of continental trade when the official justification for the tariffs is that steel and aluminum imports threaten U.S. national security.

But Trump dispensed with the facade; in his speech, he mentioned national security only in passing with regard to Canada and Mexico, spending most of his time on NAFTA.

Canada has adopted a posture of non-confrontation in response to Trumps NAFTA threats of all kinds. Trudeaus government has promised prompt retaliation for any steel and aluminum tariffs, but it has repeatedly vowed to remain at the NAFTA negotiating table as long as the U.S. is interested in negotiating.

The three countries remain sharply divided on several major NAFTA issues, including automotive manufacturing and government procurement. The seventh round of negotiations concluded Monday without major progress.

Trumps Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, exempted Canada and Mexico, along with many other countries, from the steel tariffs he imposed in 2002. Dozens of party members want Trump to offer the same kind of complete, unconditional exemption. Trudeau spoke Thursday with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who have been sympathetic to Canadas positions.

Canada is the top exporter of both steel and aluminum to the U.S. Although Trump has framed his tariffs as a response to unfair Chinese dumping of cheap steel, China ranks 11th on the U.S. list. Canadas steel industry, concentrated in Ontario, and its aluminum industry, concentrated in Quebec, say tariffs could cause them severe harm.

Chrystia Freeland says the government will push for Canadas provisional reprieve on U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs to become a permanent exemption. The foreign affairs minister says Canada views NAFTA as a separate negotiation. (The Canadian Press)

The decision on Canada and Mexico is more evidence of the impulsiveness and unpreparedness with which Trump often makes policy. The process of unveiling the tariffs has been exceptionally chaotic even by his own standards.

Last Thursday, before his team had come close to finalizing the details of a tariff plan, Trump announced that he would hit every country in the world with tariffs of 25 per cent on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum. Then, in a tweet on Monday, he said Canada and Mexico could eventually be exempted, but only when they agreed to a fair new NAFTA.

That did not satisfy Republican critics, and Canada had continued to threaten retaliation. On Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders said Canada might get an exemption based on national security. White House officials anonymously floated the possibility of a 30-day exemption linked to NAFTA, and they said Trump would hold a signing ceremony to impose the tariffs formally on Thursday afternoon.

But other officials told reporters that there was nothing ready to sign, and the afternoon meeting was left off the presidential schedule released Wednesday night. Then, in the morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he would hold the meeting after all.

Correction  Sept. 4, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Peter Clark is a trade lawyer. In fact, Clark is a trade strategist.

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TOKYOEvery North Korean woman would say Me Too  if she knew that this was a movement and if she knew that sexual violence was something she could fight.

Sexual assault and harassment are rife across all sectors of North Koreas misogynistic society, according to a new report published Thursday, International Womens Day, based on testimony from more than 40 women who have escaped from North Korea.

This is an epidemic across the state and the society, said James Burt of the London-based Korea Future Initiative.

We knew it was pervasive in state institutions but we discovered that it is prevalent across society. Its a social norm and it hasnt been challenged, said Burt, who wrote the report Us Too: Sexual Violence Against North Korean Women and Girls.

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North Koreas human rights abuses, from everyday repression and denial of food to egregious cases of torture and lifelong internment in concentration camps, have been extensively documented.

But little attention has been paid specifically to sexual violence against women.

The world doesnt know whats happening to North Korean women and girls, said Park Ji-Hyun, who was trafficked from North Korea and is now an advocate for North Korean womens rights. North Korea says women enjoy equality, but its not true.

When criticized about its human rights record, the regime in Pyongyang has previously said, North Korea is heaven for women.

There is no country in the world like North Korea where there are so many laws and regulations for women, and many social policies are endlessly enforced, the regime said in 2014, in response to a landmark U.N. report that documented widespread human rights abuses in the country, including the use of rape as a form of torture and forced abortions.

Sexual violence is so ingrained in North Korea that, when interviewing more than 40 women who had escaped, the researchers of Burts report had to explain to the women what the term meant. They thought it was just normal male behaviour, Burt said.

Once they understood, all of the women interviewed had either experienced sexual violence directly or knew someone who had. Many reported that men in positions of authority used their power to take advantage of women.

One woman described going to the mayors office to be allocated a house. I was 32 years old and I must have looked attractive in his eyes. I was raped in his office and received a house in return. I could not tell anyone about what happened, she told the reports authors.

What I want to say is this: In North Korea, a womans dream cannot be achieved without being raped or without selling her body, she said.

While women have gained more economic power in North Korea in recent years through the burgeoning private markets, they are not just selling food and consumer goods, but increasingly their bodies too.

There is a growing prostitution market inside North Korea, with women forced into sex work out of financial need, in addition to the steady market in northern China for North Korean brides.

One woman from the border city of Hyesan described to The Washington Post how she was sold, with the collusion of North Korean officials, to a Chinese man in the summer of 2016 for $12,000.

I wanted to die. But I thought that if I killed myself, my parents would be really sad, she said in an interview in Thailand last year. I feel so sad that this is our destiny as North Korean women. Our country is so poor that we can just be sold off and for such a small amount of money.

The women interviewed for the Korea Future Initiative report described a particularly high incidence of marital rape, which is not considered a crime in North Korea.

North Korean men will have sex whenever they want, especially after drinking alcohol, another of the women said. If the wife refuses, the husband will say: Are you having an affair with another man? He will then beat her. It is not even perceived to be wrong.

In state institutions for children  such as detention facilities, schools and Communist groups  the forced sexual initiation of girls under the age of 15 is widespread, the researchers found. Fear, together with a sense that this is a cultural norm, stops the girls from reporting it.

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Nearly 20 years ago, the Ontario Government took a profound step in recognizing the critical importance of the Oak Ridges Moraine to the long-term health and well-being of the GTA, its communities and its residents. The decision to protect the moraine and carefully manage future development was a milestone in the GTAs growth, and a stepping stone to the even-more ambitious Greenbelt Plan.

The protection of the moraine occurred under a Conservative government; the Greenbelt was implemented by the Liberals; and both initiatives were supported by the NDP. This is truly a non-partisan issue.

Together, the results of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and Greenbelt Plan were transformative: the creation of a contiguous, protected landscape linking the environmental treasures and agricultural countryside of the GTA, and recognizing the importance of ensuring clean water, healthy forests and wildlife habitat for the benefit of millions of southern Ontario residents.

Protecting the moraine was a landmark achievement, but it asks another important question: is protection alone enough? Much of the moraine has been transformed by generations of human activity, including farming, industry and the growth of our towns and cities. This includes many protected areas that are no longer able to perform important ecological functions, such as recharging our aquifers and providing sustainable habitat for endangered and threatened wildlife.

From the outset, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan recognized the importance of not just maintaining but also improving or restoring the ecological functions of the moraine, as well as creating new opportunities for public recreational access. The Conservation Authorities Moraine Coalitions 2015 report card identified the need for public authorities to take action to achieve these objectives. Such opportunities have been few and far between.

Thats why there is growing excitement about a proposal to create a new, publicly accessible green space in the heart of the moraine: the East Humber Headwaters Park. The property, over 500 acres (207 hectares) of largely vacant land in York Region, spans the entire width of a narrow corridor of the protected moraine area between King City and Richmond Hill.

The property is uniquely important: it provides an unbroken link between the east and western ends of the moraine, and includes the headwaters of the East Humber River. The vision for the proposed park includes restoring much of the landscape back to natural moraine habitat, allowing it to again provide critical ecological functions as a headwaters area.

The proposed East Humber Headwaters Park is a cant miss opportunity to create a landmark public space for millions of GTA residents. Thats why we  the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, the Township of King, the Regional Municipality of York, and the City of Toronto  have passed resolutions strongly supporting the project. The idea has also been embraced by local groups like Concerned Citizens of King Township and Save the Oak Ridges Moraine (STORM), as well as provincial organizations including Ontario Nature, EcoSpark and Earthroots.

However, our efforts alone arent enough. We need the Ontario Governments support for this park to become a reality. The land is privately owned, having been in the same family for nearly 80 years. The landowner is willing to work with the provincial government to exchange the property for less ecologically sensitive development land outside of the moraine and owned by the province.

Its very similar to the proven approach used to create important public spaces like the Oak Ridges Corridor Conservation Reserve, the Rouge National Urban Park, the Brick Works, and Bronte Provincial Park.

Opportunities like this are rare, and often fleeting. As the GTAs population continues to grow and expand, it is vital that we seize the chance to create outstanding public spaces for all to enjoy.

We urge the Ontario Government to heed the tremendous opportunity presented by the East Humber Headwaters Park and join with us to enhance the Oak Ridges Moraine and make this landmark public space a reality.

Maria Augimeri is chair, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority; Steve Pellegrini is mayor, Township of King; Wayne Emmerson is chairman and CEO, The Regional Municipality of York; Glenn De Baeremaeker is deputy mayor, City of Toronto and executive board member, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority.
In the maelstrom of criticism surrounding Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus recent visit to India, the Indian governments long record of human rights abuses has received astonishingly little attention.

In an open letter to Trudeau ahead of his trip, Amnesty International listed several pressing human rights concerns that needed to be raised: the continuing absence of justice for the 3,000 victims of the 1984 Sikh massacre; the criminalization of same-sex relationships, and the failure to criminalize marital rape; the use of indiscriminately firing pellet guns that have killed, injured, or blinded hundreds in Kashmir; the threatened expulsion of 40,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide back to Burma; and the severe persecution of minorities.

Following the victory of Indias right-wing BJP [Prime Minister Modis Bharatiya Janata Party] in May 2014  Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and Jains generally are fearful of what the future portends, warns a recent report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Threats, hate crimes, social boycotts, desecrations of places of worship, assaults, and forced conversions led by radical Hindu nationalist movements have escalated dramatically.

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Since the election of the BJP, scores of Muslims have been beaten, hanged, burned, or hacked to death by mobs, while Modi  most infamous for presiding over the coordinated slaughter of 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, when he was the states Chief Minister  has barely uttered a word of condemnation.

More than 40,000 crimes against Dalits (formerly untouchables)  rapes, home-burnings, murders  were reported in 2016, according to the governments own statistics; anti-Dalit violence has skyrocketed over the last four years.

Thousands of Adivasis (indigenous people) have been violently displaced by mining companies in the building of Indias vaunted economy, in some cases with the support of Canadian investors. Adivasi communities resisting the pillage of their lands and resources have been subjected to rape and extrajudicial killing by security forces.

Dissenters are prosecuted under draconian counter-terrorism and anti-sedition laws  recent targets include student union leader and BJP critic Kanhaiya Kumar; journalist Santosh Yadav, who exposed police brutality against Adivasis in Chhattisgarh; and photojournalist Kamran Yousuf, who documented protests against Indian army violations in Kashmir.

In Kashmir, the worlds largest democracy is administering one of the worlds largest military occupations  while the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1990 grants Indian forces the special power of committing crimes with impunity.

More than 70,000 Kashmiris have been killed over the last three decades, and many tens of thousands more have disappeared, incarcerated indefinitely without trial, or tortured in horrific ways: waterboarding, electrocution of genitals, injection of petrol into anuses. The landscape of Kashmir, once renowned for its beauty, is now pocketed with thousands of mass and unmarked graves.

On Feb. 23  Trudeaus last day in India  Kashmir marked the 27th anniversary of the mass rape of 150 women and girls by Indian soldiers, commemorated as Kashmiri Womens Resistance Day.

But despite the scale of atrocities, confronting Indias political and human rights violations in Kashmir has not been a priority for powerful nations, observes University of California Berkeley academic Angana Chatterji. U.S. President Barack Obamas visit to New Delhi in November 2010 was laden with prohibitions, the mention of Indias rule in Kashmir and its larger human rights record among them.

Canadian media has continued this tradition of silence in its punditry on Trudeaus India trip  in stark contrast to the widespread condemnations of Chinas human rights abuses by Canadian commentators during Trudeaus trade mission there in November.

Critics speculated ad nauseum about the Trudeau governments supposed support for Sikh extremism, while completely overlooking the extremism of the fascist-inspired BJP government Canada was so eager to woo. They remarked extensively on the lavishness of Trudeaus Indian wardrobe, while ignoring the many skeletons in Modis closet.

Similar skeletons fester in Canadas own closet  the exclusion and criminalization of refugees (under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, for instance), the dispossession of Indigenous peoples for corporate profit, the brutalization of marginalized communities by police, the use of counter-terrorism powers to suppress and punish dissent.

These are the shared dark undersides of Trudeaus sunny ways Canada and Modis shining India.

Azeezah Kanji is a legal analyst.

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The world should welcome North Koreas offer to discuss denuclearization with the United States. It shouldnt get its hopes up about the two countries actually reaching a mutually agreeable deal.

Assuming that Kim Jong Uns offer to talk is genuine, Kim offered the U.S. (at least rhetorically) a major concession by admitting that North Koreas nuclear weapon program can be bargained for. At the same time, he established a very strong opening position by explaining that Pyongyang affirmed its commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and will only abandon its nuclear bombs if the safety of its regime be guaranteed and military threats against North Korea [are] removed.

On the face of it, this is a reasonable demand. Every country in the world claims the right to live in peace and free of fear. But what the North Korean government means when it says that the U.S. must guarantee its safety and refrain from threatening it, and what policy-makers in Washington are willing to do to guarantee the regimes security may be two very different things.

That is because the history of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea suggests that the price that Pyongyang is looking for is far more than any U.S. President could bear.

In the past, North Korea has demanded the U.S. sign a peace treaty with North Korea as part of any bargain that resolves the tensions between the two countries. Previously, Kim Jong Il insisted that the withdrawal of American forces from the Korean Peninsula (approximately 23,000 are still stationed there today) was an absolute requirement for any deal that ended his countrys nuclear weapon program. At other times, Pyongyang has added other terms and conditions, such as an end to U.S.-South Korea military exercises and economic aid from the U.S.

Pyongyangs commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula contains another (perhaps unmeetable) demand. While in Washington denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula often refers to denuclearizing North Korea, ensuring that South Korea does not acquire nuclear weapons and that the U.S. continues to not deploy its own nuclear arms in the South, past North Korean proposals for denuclearization have included the provision that the U.S. cease to protect South Korea with its submarine- and land-based nuclear arsenal.

Could the U.S. deliver on North Koreas demands for a peace treaty, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea, and the practical dismantling of the U.S.-ROK military alliance?

In a perfect scenario, where both parties were highly motivated to fix their relationship, the first item is attainable. A major reduction in U.S. troops may be doable. The third  that the U.S. abandon an ally in an immensely important part of the world to 21st century American interests and send a message that Americas military alliances can be cracked by strong-arm diplomacy  is a non-starter.

A deal of this nature is made even more difficult by the fact that it's not only the U.S. and its allies that think North Korea should denuclearize. Both Russia and China agree. The United Nations Security Council  whose resolutions are generally treated as being legally binding  has routinely called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear arms.

The world has agreed that North Korea should get rid of its nuclear arms. From Washingtons point of view, allowing North Korea to dictate the terms of the U.S.s foreign policy in return for doing something the world believes it is obliged to do would cause irreparable harm to American credibility around the world.

Meeting Pyongyangs definition of denuclearization and regime security could mean the U.S. committing to a wholesale abandonment of its Asia-Pacific policy. It could mean allowing a foreign power to dictate its alliances and would cause tremendous alarm in Tokyo and NATO. It would throw Americas global defence and foreign policies into disarray.

Kim, to use a term from the art of negotiation, has anchored his opening position very firmly. He has made what appears to be a reasonable offer and extended an olive branch to the White House. It would be politically damning for the Trump administration to outright reject the offer. It may be more damning still to try to meet Pyongyangs demands.

Simon Palamar is a research fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). He is currently leading a project on the future of the postwar global order and its consequences for international security challenges in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia.

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Its 11 a.m. in Juba, at a gathering of women journalists  the first such workshop exclusively for women to be held in South Sudan.

Anna Nimiriano is the editor of the Juba Monitor, South Sudans most influential newspaper. Prominent womens activist Irene Ayaa stands next to Anna to share a story of what can happen when women journalists work together.

It was the midst of the return to conflict in July 2016, says Ayaa. The city had been shelled. Reports circulated of 300 dead in Juba, and others fleeing to Uganda, Kenya. But not Anna Nimiriano.

As bullets flew across Juba, Anna and Irene marched off to Jubas notorious Blue House prison. They went to demand the release of sector eminence and editor/publisher of the Juba Monitor, Alfred Taban. Taban was in jail for an editorial calling for a rethink of leadership in SouthSudan. Hed been put in jail without his diabetes medication.

At the very minimum, the women wanted to make sure he had his meds. They ended up petitioning  successfully  for his release.

Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) is Canadas leading media development organization. It has been working in South Sudan for the past two years with Canadian government support. JHR, which I run, has been fortunate to work with female journalists of Anna and Irenes calibre. This has put considerable firepower behind JHRs gender strategy in the worlds newest country.

JHRs gender strategy is simple: mentor women, like Nimiriano, into positions of leadership in media. Work with these women to help them own their leadership role. Thus empowered, these women work together to tackle difficult issues, such as Tabans jailing.

They also depoliticize coverage in favour of putting so-called womens concerns  stories about health, education, child welfare and the environment  high up the agenda. Putting a spotlight on womens issues helps prioritize solutions. The result is often both good for communities, and good for the outlets business.

JHR started prioritizing womens voices and concerns 12 years ago. The results have been spectacular.

Take South Sudan as a case study. Since Nimiriano took over the Juba Monitor, shes increased the number of so-called womens stories by 25 per cent. The paper has seen an equivalent increase in new advertising revenue from sponsors who want to reach a female audience.

Under Nimirianos watch, first as managing editor and then as editor-in-chief, reporters worked with JHR trainer Carolyn Thompson to cover one battalion of the SPLAs use of rape as a weapon of war. The government responded by arresting the soldiers named and putting them on trial.

Another Juba Monitor reporter covered girls rights to access education. This put a spotlight on the issue of girls not going to school  a major concern in a country where currently 70 per cent of children are not in formal education. It also helped ensure girls across Juba had access to funding they needed to pay school fees.

Over at Bakhita Radio, another JHR-trained journalist covered the issue of dowry on air  what happens when men cannot afford bride price. She worked with JHR trainer Mustapha Dumbuya. The story received a storm of response  and helped earn that journalist an international award.

Last year, the Canadian government launched a Feminist International Assistance Policy. The policy is designed to ensure womens voices and concerns are prioritized in all aspects of Canadian international assistance. It was unveiled to much acclaim last summer  and to delight at JHR, where it confirms a major plank of JHRs programming.

Today, on International Womens Day, JHR is celebrating its 12-year track-record of success in gender strategy by launching our Gender Impact Report. The stories of impact in it, such as those cited above, signal the wisdom of Canadas policy in practice.

All this, simply by putting women in the drivers seat of development.

Rachel Pulfer is the executive director of Journalists for Human Rights.
Finance Minister to table pre-election budget that returns Ontario to deficit, March 7

It was good to hear that Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa intends to invest in mental-health supports in his next budget. Since the 2010 Select Committee Report, all three parties have recognized we face a deficit in access to mental-health care.

Although the current government invested $180 million in new mental-health and addiction programs between 2011 and 2016, it invested $3.68 billion in other areas of health care during the same period.

The mental-health share of spending has declined to 6.5 per cent of health spending, when it should be increasing to 9 per cent as recommended by the Mental Health Commission in 2012.

In his budget, Minister Sousa should outline how he intends to spend the $1.9 billion Ontario will receive in federal Health Accord money for mental-health services and commit to funding at least 30,000 supportive housing units over 10 years, as recommended by the Mental Health and Addictions Leadership Council.

Hopefully, the government will also match the Health Accord funding, as the Progressive Conservatives have proposed, since the federal funding by itself only moves the dial 16-per-cent of the way to the 9-per-cent mental-health spending target.

The government should also ensure that it gets the funding out the door prior to the election writ dropping, so that access to services and supports actually improve now.

Steve Lurie, Canadian Mental Health Association, Toronto
In Doug Ford, Ontarios Tories are facing a Trumpian moment of truth as they choose their next leader  and possibly our next populist premier.

Weve seen it before, and it could happen all over again: Long before Donald Trump took the White House, Dougs brother Rob Ford took city hall.

Each proved the power of populism, negativism, nihilism. One promised to stop the gravy train in Toronto, another pledged to drain the swamp in Washington.

Despite being children of wealth, they recast themselves as enemies of the elites. Thwarting social conventions  be it smoking crack or cavorting with porn stars  they remade themselves as social conservatives.

Now, Doug Ford is campaigning by reincarnating himself as rightful heir to that wrongful tradition of impostor populism. Learning from his little brother, he understands that the Big Lie  be it on global warming, sex education or tax cutting  is best told by being consistently inconsistent with the facts.

If you tap into deep veins of public frustration, cynicism, resentment and contempt with shallow slogans, you will be richly rewarded. No matter the contradictions, the best confidence men  con men, for short  grasp that the most powerful politicians are those who understand the power of suggestion.

We have seen it in America with Trump, in Britain with Brexit, and across Europe where right-wing protest parties have romped to victory throughout history (well before social media disrupted our discourse). Canada is far from immune, Ontario is not exempt, and Toronto has already been there, done Ford Nation.

But this column is not offered as a finger-wagging warning against the perils of populism, nor a nostalgic lament for the politics of the past. Rather, it is intended as a challenge to the rest of us to find our voice, clear our heads, and listen up:

Not all populists are bad. But the good populists arent very good at it.

Donald Trump got through to people. Hillary Clinton got stuck on deplorables.

Rob Ford connected. George Smitherman couldnt.

Doug Ford pressed every Tory button, and his rivals aped him. Dont count on the other candidates, or media truth squads, or critical columnists to stop him, just as it didnt slow Trump.

The more coverage populists get, the more clicks accrue and the more votes pile up. The media merely amplify their audience appeal, boosting vote totals and circulation figures.

The only enduring antidote to right-wing populism and nihilism must be a progressive populism that proffers inspiration over frustration. Progressive populism must find its countervailing voice.

For what is populism but the political doctrine that appeals to ordinary people who believe their concerns are disregarded by the establishment? That todays populism has been turned on its head, co-opted by right-wing elites, is not just irony but larceny.

In Canada, Tommy Douglas emerged as a fiery prairie socialist populist, appealing to voters through the old CCF (precursor to todays NDP) with powerful rhetoric that resonated with Saskatchewan voters and gave rise to the miracle of medicare. In America, Bernie Sanders showed the potential for rallying young voters to a cause, even if he strayed into oversimplifications on the stump.

An expedient populist is the politician who tells people what they want to hear, habitually untruthfully. A truthful populist is someone who tells people what they need to hear without telling tall tales, so that it has the ring of truth.

How will Tories parse the populism this week? Its impossible to predict the results of so much mixed-up media coverage, frenzied membership sales and wild social media memes among the rivals:

Caroline Mulroney, counting on beginners luck, implausibly pitches herself as the change candidate despite being the daughter of ex-PM Brian Mulroney, whom she deployed as a high-profile fundraiser in the home-stretch (no cash envelopes, please). Never mind her dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, which bespeaks divided loyalties amid looming trade wars with her erstwhile adopted home.

Christine Elliott is the two-time leadership loser who quit the legislature in a huff. Now she has renounced her past progressive credentials (an early supporter of trans rights) and the partys carefully considered platform on carbon pricing in order to endear herself with regressive social conservatives.

And then theres Ford, who casts himself as a sharp-pencilled tax-fighter (forgotten the Scarborough subway levy?), but who has never lived down allegations in the Globe and Mail that he was a sharp-pencilled drug dealer as a young man. Despite his heated denials, the Globe tells me that a threatened libel suit never materialized  yet that hasnt stopped Ford from railing against imagined media conspiracies and Tory plots to thwart him (reminiscent of Trumpian claims the last presidential election was rigged).

Then theres Tanya Granic Allen, the fringe candidate who cant stop talking about anal sex, and whose supporters are deeply attracted to Ford. Forget not the fringe, for they may put Ford over the top in much the same way that the religious right was Trumps righteous enabler.

Let us ponder the power of populism, the impotence of policy, and the madness of Potemkin parties whose leadership races reward surging membership sales over substance. We have seen this act before, in Washington and Toronto.

We were warned.

Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

Tanya Granic Allen says she aims to be a voice for those who felt disenfranchised by former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown. Leadership candidates for Ontarios Progressive Conservatives spoke after their second debate on Wednesday. (The Canadian Press)

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As the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States scrutinizes Broadcom Ltd. (AVGO) - Get Broadcom Inc. Report CEO Hot Tan's unsolicited bid for Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) - Get QUALCOMM Incorporated Report , the hostile suitor touted its U.S. lineage and commitment to 5G wireless investment on Wednesday.

Shares of Action Alerts Plus holding Broadcom, which has made an unsolicited offer of $79 per share for Qualcomm, were down 1.4% to $247.46 on Wednesday morning. Qualcomm declined less than 0.1% to $62.09.

Cfius raised concerns about the impact Broadcom's hostile takeover would have on the U.S. leadership in wireless tech, national security and existing Federal contracts requiring security clearance, in a letter that Qualcomm made public Tuesday.

Broadcom, which is based in Singapore but is changing its domicile to the U.S., sought to assuage the Cfius concerns by pointing to its heritage in domestic technology in a Wednesday statement. While pledging to invest in 5G technology, the company noted that its business includes pieces of legacy Hewlett Packard Co., AT&T Inc. (T) - Get AT&T Inc. Report , Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and its namesake Broadcom Ltd.

For instance, predecessor company Avago Technologies Ltd. had its roots in Agilent Technologies Inc. (A) - Get Agilent Technologies, Inc. Report , a 2000 spin off of Silicon Valley icon Hewlett-Packard. Silver Lake and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) - Get KKR & Co. Inc. Class A Report bought Agilent's chipmaking operation for $2.66 billion in 2005 and renamed the business Avago. The next year, they hired CEO Hock Tan.

In 2014, Tan led Avago's $6.6 billion purchase of LSI Corp. which had ties to AT&T. LSI had purchased Agere Systems Inc., once part of Ma Bell's research and equipment arm Lucent Technologies Inc., for $6.6 billion in 2013.

Avaogo bought namesake chipmaker Broadcom for $37 billion in February 2016, ultimately taking name of the Irvin, Calif., company and creating a diversified semiconductor power.

The new Broadcom added to its data center products by acquiring Brocade for $5.9 billion, including assumed debt, in November 2017. Broadcom closed the deal just weeks after launching the hostile bid for Qualcomm.

Hock Tan has little incentive to drop the bid ahead of Qualcomm's April 5 sharheolder meeting, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon suggested in a Wednesday report.

"[T]hrowing in the towel now might send a message that Broadcom's own faith in their forthcoming redomiciling action is wavering," Rasgon wrote, adding that the move is important not simply for purposes of the Qualcomm bid. "We do not believe the company can afford to give this impression, as they need to be free to buy other assets in the future even if they can't manage to buy this one."

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Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Deal , our sister publication that offers sophisticated insight and analysis on all types of deals, from inception to integration. Click here for a free trial.
China's threat of a "justified" response to U.S. trade tariffs sits alongside a swelling trade surplus that offers no easy fix for President Donald Trump.

China's trade surplus with the United States swelled to just under $42 billion in the first two month of the year, according to data published Thursday, underscoring the difficulty President Donald Trump faces as he weighs placing tariffs on imported metals in an attempt to protect American jobs and level the global economic playing field.

A surge 44.5% surge in February exports from the world's second-largest economy, the most in three years, helped increase China's U.S. trade surplus to $20.96 billion last month, customs data indicated, modestly lower than last month's $21.895 billion tally but still firmly ahead of the pace recorded last year that ultimately took it to a record $375.2 billion. China also indicated that any attempt to punish its exporters by U.S.-led tariffs would be met with a "justified" response.

"A trade war is never the right solution," said China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "In a globalised world, it is particularly unhelpful, as it will harm both the initiator and the target countries. In the event of a trade war, China will make a justified and necessary response."

China's red-hot steelmaking industry is a major component of both its near-7% economic growth rate and a glut in global steel capacity that has depressed prices and threatened U.S. jobs.

However, the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that while Trump's plans to slap tariffs of 25% and 10% on non-American steel and aluminium respectively would cut steel imports by $14.2 billion a year, only $689 million of that total -- less than 5% -- would impact China's export engine.

"The global community requires a coordinated approach to address the concerns raised by China's overcapacity in (steel and aluminium) industries," said Peterson fellow Chad Brown. "New tariffs will impose economic and political costs on allies like Canada, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea, making them less likely to cooperate with the Trump administration on finding a solution."

The President himself appeared to suggest that co-ordination is needed, although in a Tweet Wednesday he hoped that officials in China would first address their swelling U.S. trade surplus before he and his colleagues in Washington prepared to act.

What is often forgotten -- or at least remains largely under-reported -- is the impact China's trade surplus has on America's ability to fund its budget deficit, which is expected to balloon by more than $1.5 trillion following last year's Republican orchestrated tax cuts.

China's foreign exchange reserves fell modestly last month, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange reported Wednesday, but still sit at a staggering $3.134 trillion and are comprised mostly of U.S. dollars earned over decades of trading in greenback-denominated markets for gold, oil, gas and other commodities.

It scooped up more than $130 billion over the first 10 months of 2017, according to the TIC data tables, as China's trade surplus with the U.S. topped $28.8 billion in November and swelled 12.7% over the first 11 months of 2017 to $251.26 billion.

Swapping those reserves -- which pay no interest -- for U.S. Treasury bonds -- which do -- has both expanded China's foreign exchange pile and held down government borrowing costs in the United States.

Earlier this year, in fact, U.S. Treasury yields spiked after reports that China was considering slowing or even halting their investments as a result of trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
ALTON  State Rep. Monica Bristow, D-Godfrey, will be hosting an I-Cash event with the Illinois State Treasurers Office to help connect constituents with their unclaimed property on Monday, March 12 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Hartford Public Library located at 143 W. Hawthorne St. in Hartford.

In the last two years, the Illinois State Treasurers Office has paid out over $300 million in unclaimed assets, so it is always worth doing a search to find out if you or a family member may have unclaimed property, said Bristow. I am happy to be able to provide this service downstate and will continue to do so in the months to come.
ELSAH  History will come alive as Historic Elsah Foundation presents, A Conversation between Benjamin Godfrey and James Semple: How Two Prairie Entrepreneurs Shaped the River Bend Region, at Farleys Music Hall in Elsah on March 15 at 7:30 p.m.

Accomplished re-enactors John Meehan (playing Captain Godfrey) and Kerry Miller (playing General Semple) will portray these prominent leaders of economic development in western Madison and eastern Jersey counties in a lively and thought-provoking exchange that covers the major issues of their day: the abolition of slavery, womens education, railroad and highway construction, and state banking.

The conversation takes place in the late 1840s when the Semple and Godfrey families lived barely three miles apart north of Alton. The oldest Semple daughter, Ada, attended nearby Monticello Female Seminary, a womens college Godfrey had founded a decade earlier.

Through business and politics, Semple and Godfrey undoubtedly knew each other. They were self-made men who took risks. Each suffered severe financial setbacks, which they regarded as temporary obstacles to be overcome. Both succeeded in doing so.

The program also features a documentary video of Benjamin Godfreys life. Zeke Jabusch, President of the North Alton Business Council, will narrate the video, which was produced by the Benjamin Godfrey Legacy Trail Committee for the Council. The video highlights nine area sites where historic markers of Godfreys accomplishments will be placed.

The program is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required. Parking is available. Refreshments will be served following the lecture.

The presentation is the first of four scheduled for the 2018 edition of the Hosmer-Williams Lecture Series. The theme for this years series is local history in the Riverbend in the years immediately after Illinois became a state in 1818. Liberty Bank has underwritten the Hosmer-Williams Lectures since 2012.

Attention media, print and otherwise, for additional information, contact George Provenzano, at gprovenzano@lc.edu, or visit our website, historicelsah.org
EDWARDSVILLE  More and more people have been coming to courthouses across the state seeking remedy to their problems without benefit of an attorney.

Nearly all would prefer having an attorney but may have had trouble finding or affording one, according to information from the Illinois Supreme Court.

But those self-represented litigants pose a myriad of challenges for circuit clerks, judges, court staff and others who find themselves involved in their case.

To address the problem, the state recently awarded grants eight circuits, including the Third Judicial Circuit, which includes Madison and Bond counties. The $15,000 grant will allow the much larger Madison County to expand more services into Bond County.

Madison County will also be purchasing computer terminals to add to its law library in the basement of the Madison County Courthouse, a move that will help them serve people who file their own cases or try to represent themselves. The law library has a law librarian, a clerk, and volunteers with Illinois JusticeCorps, which is administered by the Illinois Bar Association.

[Madison County Law Library throws the book at attorneys, citizens]

Among other things, the staff and volunteers help people navigate documents and the court systems.

The grants come from the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice along with the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts Civil Justice Division.

In a recent conversation, Circuit Judge Barb Crowder said the law library will also be re-arranged to better suit assist the huge number of self-represented litigants, which seems to be growing every month.

The grant will enable law librarian Angela Warta take on the additional role of coordinator with the seven other counties. The coordinators will be trying to make Illinois courts better, easier, and more accessible for self-represented litigants, according to an e-newsletter from the Illinois Supreme Court.

Coordinators will serve as a bridge, linking their courthouses with others throughout the State to share ideas, develop new resources, and establish programs for assisting self-represented litigants, the court said.

Warta, or another employee, will soon be driving over to Bond County each month to meet with Circuit Judge John Knight and Associate Judge Ron Slemer. Bond County plans to set aside a space for a computer terminal.

For now, a Madison County representative will make the 40-minute drive to Greenville to help people locate the appropriate forms and familiarize them with the services. As we see what the demand is, we thought we would also be able to roll out the ability to do appointments either by phone or Skype with our attorneys here, Crowder said.

Warta and the seven other coordinators plan to meet regularly by phone to exchange ideas.

Were hoping some of the things we do here will help other circuits throughout the state, because so many people need help with their legal services who just dont have the money or lawyers to deal with.
EDWARDSVILLE  Southern Illinois University Edwardsvilles Jeffrey Manuel, PhD, associate professor of historical studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2018 Collaborative Research Fellow by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

The program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, supports small teams of scholars as they research and co-author a major scholarly product.

The scholars who make up the 10th cohort of ACLS Collaborative Research Fellows exemplify the programs aim of supporting collaborations that produce knowledge individual research efforts could not, said ACLSs director of fellowship programs Matthew Goldfeder. Together, they demonstrate what can be accomplished when scholars with different expertise work together to ask big questions.

During the 2019-20 academic year, Manuel will work with Thomas Rogers, PhD, associate professor of modern Latin American history at Emory University, on a project entitled Agricultures Energy: Learning from the History of Biofuels in Brazil and the United States.

I am extremely happy that the ACLS is supporting this project through the Collaborative Research Fellowship program, said Manuel. Tom Rogers is one of the foremost historians of Latin American energy and environmental history. He brings unparalleled expertise in Brazils ethanol fuel program. This collaboration will allow us to answer big, transnational questions about the history of biofuels in the western hemisphere and their likely role in the future global energy system.

Their co-authored book project traces the linked histories of biofuels in the U.S. and Brazil during the 20th century.

Despite rapidly growing interest in the fields of energy and environmental history, few historians have tackled the long history of biofuels as alternatives to gasoline, nor addressed the long history of ethanol in a comparative or transnational context, Manuel said. Understanding the history of biofuels unlocks crucial new insight into comparative agricultural, food and energy policies in the western hemisphere.

A complete list of 2018 ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowships is available at ACLS.org.

The American Council of Learned Societies, a private, nonprofit federation of 75 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. Advancing scholarship by awarding fellowships and strengthening relations among learned societies is central to ACLSs work. This year, ACLS will award more than $20 million to over 350 scholars across a variety of humanistic disciplines.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India has returned an application made by National Stock Exchange of India, seeking to settle a probe into alleged lapses in preferential access given to a few stock brokers and traders through its co-location facilities.



NSE is in receipt of a letter from SEBI returning the consent application filed by NSE in the co-location matter, on account of ongoing investigations relating to the same matter, the country's largest stock exchange said in a statement on Thursday.

This will come as a setback for NSE and its MD and CEO Vikram Limaye, who had taken charge of the country's premier bourse only in July last year, and had made sorting out the regulatory issue his immediate priority. Just a couple of days after he had taken charge, NSE had filed a plea with the market regulator for settlement of the co-location issue under the consent process.

SEBI has been investigating complaints related to NSE's co-location facilities. Several former top executives of the exchange had also been issued show causes notices earlier in the matter.

The market regulator has now informed NSE that it can file the consent application again after the investigations are complete and the exchange said it intends to do the same in due course.

The issue dates back to 2015, when a whistle-blower wrote a letter to SEBI highlighting issues at NSE's co-location facilities.

Co-location means the server of the particular broker is located within the premises where the exchange's datacentre is located, for a fee. This helps in faster data movement. NSE launched co-location services in 2010.

It was alleged that certain stock brokers seemed to be getting early access to NSE's servers.

The exchange hired consulting firm Deloitte for an independent audit and lapses were found. In a red herring prospectus filed in late 2016 in relation to a proposed initial public offering, NSE disclosed that the the independent probe highlighted trends for certain periods where a few stock brokers appeared to be the first to connect to specific servers significantly more often than others.

The NSE IPO has been delayed due to the SEBI probe.

In a recent interview with THE WEEK magazine, Limaye had said that key to do things on his agenda were to get the regulatory issues sorted and the IPO, although the later would be contingent on sorting out the regulatory issues.

NSE said on Thursday that it was hopeful it would be able to float the IPO in the the financial year-ending March 2019.
Last year saw a handful of powerful women-centric films in Bollywood. From female sexuality, patriarchy, abuse, and ambitions, the films dealt with a variety of subjects. 2018, too, opened to a few spectacular performances by women and films that addressed subjects relating to women.

While Padman featured a man's struggle to spread awareness about menstrual hygiene, and introduce rural women to sanitary napkins, the controversial Padmaavat was an ode to the valour of Rajput queen Rani Padmini. Anushka Sharma's horror flick Pari which released last week, has also been received well.

The year promises a few more films with prominent female protagonists. This Women's Day, take a look at what is in store for the year for women in Bollywood.

Hichki: With Hichki, Rani Mukerji returns to the silver screen after a hiatus. She essays a teacher suffering from Tourette Syndrome, a neuropsychiatric disorder. Directed by Siddharth P. Malhotra, the film is an adaptation of Hollywood film Front of the Class. An inspiring and moving story of the teacher's struggles, the film is set to release on March 23.

Manikarnikathe Queen of Jhansi: After Deepika Padukone's Padmaavat, Manikarnika starring Kangana Ranaut is the next controversial release of the year. The epic biographical film based on the life of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, is directed by Telugu filmmaker Krish. Manikarnika has come in the line of fire after members of Sarva Brahmin Mahasabha raised objections over the film alleging it features a romantic scene between Rani Laxmibai and a British East India company agent. The films could turn out to be one of Kangana's career bests. The official release date has not been confirmed.

Veere Di Wedding: Four womenSonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Swara Bhaskar and newcomer Shikha Talsaniaare all set to rock on this all-women entertainer. The first look of the film showed the women, dressed in vibrant colours, getting ready for a grand wedding. Another poster showed the women, dressed in sherwanis, dancing their hearts out. The film, which will release on June 1.

Raazi: Meghna Gulzar's period film Raazi will feature Alia Bhatt in totally different avatar. Alia is playing Sehmat, a Kashmiri woman who marries a Pakistani officer with the intention to source out intelligence details and pass it off to Indian forces. Vicky Kaushal essays the role of the Pakistani officer. Raazi is expected to release on May 11.
Two Indian authors are among 16 from around the world to make the cut for the UKs annual Womens Prize for Fiction longlist released in London today to coincide with the International Women's Day.

Arundhati Roy's second work of fiction, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and Meena Kandasamys tale of a violent marriage, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, are in the running for the 30,000-pound prize set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English throughout the world.

"What is striking about the list, apart from the wealth of talent, is that women writers refuse to be pigeon-holed. We have searing social realism, adventure, comedy, poetic truths, ingenious plots and unforgettable characters. Women of the world are a literary force to be reckoned with," said Sarah Sands, a BBC editor and chair of the judges.

Others on this year's list include British Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie for Home Fire; Nicola Barker for H(A)PPY; Elif Batuman for The Idiot; Joanna Cannon for Three Things About Elsie; Charmaine Craig for Miss Burma; Jennifer Egan for Manhattan Beach and Imogen Hermes Gowar for The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.

This years longlist covers both new and well-established writers, like Booker Prize-winning Roy, and a range of genres. There are six first novels on the list and four nationalities are represented including India the UK, US and Australia. Roy, 56, who won the Booker Prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things in 1997, had been longlisted for the 2017 Booker for 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' but missed out being shortlisted.

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote international fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible, the Womens Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK between April 2017 and March 2018.

Any woman writing in English whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter is eligible. Sands leads this year's team of judges that include British Indian journalist and broadcaster Anita Anand, comedian Katie Brand, Womens Equality Party co-founder Catherine Mayer and actor Imogen Stubbs. The 2018 Womens Prize for Fiction will be awarded on June 6 at an awards ceremony in central London.

The winner, who will join the likes of previous winners Lionel Shriver, Naomi Alderman and Zadie Smith, will receive an anonymously endowed cheque for 30,000 pounds and a limited-edition bronze figurine known as a Bessie, created and donated by English artist Grizel Niven.
Over the last few days, rumour mills have been in overdrivespeculating about one of the most anticipated weddings in Bollywood.

In January this year, on Deepika Padukone's birthday, there were rumours of her engagement to Ranveer Singh in Sri Lanka. Now, the rumours have resurfaced again, with news of Deepika's parents meeting Ranveer's family in Mumbai.

According to some reports doing the rounds, the couple prefer a destination wedding like Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli. Reports have also suggested the wedding might take place in Mumbai according to South Indian rituals. On the other hand, other reports put off these rumours.

Deepika has reportedly been advised rest and to lighten work load due to her severe backache issues. Recently, she took a break from Vishal Bhardwaj's Sapna Didi biopic due to backcahe. Ranveer Singh is busy with his upcoming films Gully Boy and Simmba.
Actor and BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha has been roped in to play the lead role in a Narendra Modi biopic, reports emerged on Thursday.

During a recent function in London, he was conferred lifetime achievement award at a ceremony hosted by Britain's Asian Voice weekly newspaper. In the Q&A session that followed, he said, in reply to question, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be the role of a lifetime for him. "PM Modi is indeed our most dynamic action hero. And who wouldn't want to play him? I'm looking forward to doing full justice to it," reported Bombay Times. The same report also claimed that the the movie would be produced by Sheetal Talwar and directed by his wife Bhavna Talwar.

Earlier, filmmaker Mitesh Patel had announced a Rs 40 crore biopic on PM Modi, helmed by BJP MP Paresh Rawal. According to a report in Firstpost, the movie would cover all controversial periods of Modi's life including the 2002 riots and would not be an exercise in public relations. "You have to go beyond that (mimicry). If I have to mimic Modi ji, then there are many people (who can do that). Theres no mimicry here thats why it is difficult," Rawal told Firstpost.


It is party president Amit Shah who infuses a 'fearless' attitude in the minds of his prabhari (state in-charges) of the party who look after the BJP's growth in different states and the recent election in Tripura was no different.

This was revealed by the BJP's Tripura in-charge, Sunil Deodhar, in an exclusive interview in the upcoming print issue of THE WEEK that will hit the stands on Friday (March 9).

Deodhar described how Shah encouraged him to be brave and take on the powerful CPI(M) cadres in the state. Deodhar says the BJP was able to secure a majority in Tripura because its in power at the Centre.

Amitbhai told me that as long as the BJP government is in power in India, no BJP national leader would have to be afraid of their security. He also said there is no political party in India that could touch the state in-charge of the BJP in any state, Deodhar says in the interview.

According to Deodhar, the same confident attitude has been infused in BJP leaders in the other states as well. And they are working fearlessly in different states. In the interview, Deodhar details how he changed the BJP in Tripura by reaching out to people in the state.

Deodhar declared that the BJP would return to power in 2019 and would 'virtually take over' the whole of India.

Not only will we come back to power in 2019, we will get a majority on our own like last time. We have given good governance to India. Moreover, we took drastic steps to change India. We did not care whether they are popular or not, said the BJPs newest sensation.

Deodhar also says he is hearing many proposals from different sections in the party, like giving him responsibilities in Uttar Pradesh next year or for 'mission Bengal'. But he said he would be ready to do any duty given by the party president.

Opening up for the first time, Deodhar admits that he has a 'special interest' in the next West Bengal election.

But I cannot go there unless asked by Amitbhai, he says in the interview.

Meanwhile, the Tripura BJP is making all arrangements for a grand swearing-in ceremony for the first BJP government in Agartala. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would fly to Agartala on Friday for the ceremony for which the Assam Rifles Ground has been chosen as the venue.

The prime minister himself told me that he would come and see our swearing-in ceremony, Biplab Deb, BJP Tripura president and chief minister designate, said to THE WEEK.

Deb also said after taking charge, he would offer a residence for former chief minister Manik Sarkar. Sarkar left the CM bungalow on Wednesday and moved to the party headquarters with his wife.

We will also set up a MLAs' housing facility, which would accommodate all MLAs, said Deb.
It seems the CPI(M) in West Bengal has started applying the Modi formula. Twenty senior members, led by former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, have withdrawn from the party's state committee on Thursday. Buddhadeb was a politburo member who, during the last party Congress, had asked the party to relieve him from the politburo and the central committee.

This time he has also retired from the CPI(M)s state committee and state secretariat.

Partys state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra, who was renominated to the post for the second time, had proposed an age limit for party leaders to hold various posts. Mishra asked party members to set aside their candidatures from the state committee to pave way for young blood to come in.

Buddhadeb was the first to listen to him. He was ailing and attended this committee meet with oxygen tube inserted into his nostril. He was taken to the meeting by one of his companions. However, he was retained as a special invitee at the state committee.

Like Buddhadeb, leaders like Nirpuam Sen, Shayamal Chakraborty, Madan Ghosh, Basudeb Achaaria and Kanti Ganguly was also replaced by young blood of the party.

The exception was Biman Bose. Bose has recently crossed 75 but party leaders felt he was still active and physically efficient in the party work. Bose recently participated in many demonstrations and leaders feel he still has more to give to party.

However, it was not known whether Chakraborty, Ghosh and Acharia are still the members of the central committee.

Its not true that elders have been forgotten. They would give us advice from outside the committee. They are still party members and their advice would be valuable always, said Mishra.

Both Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechudi attended the 25th state committee meet held in Kolkata.
The Israeli Embassy in India boasts of an interesting achievement. It is female dominated. In fact, the entire political wing, right down from the deputy chief of mission, Maya Kadosh, is all female. The other departments, too, like the military and agriculture wings, are women dominated.

Celebrating this uniqueness, Kadosh recently hosted a small gathering, where the ambassador, Daniel Carmon, was not present, for obvious reasons. The best part about the female-dominated embassy is that it came about 'naturally' and not because of reservation. The staff often joke that the ambassador's tenure is likely to get over by this summer, and who knows, a woman could replace him!

Lutyen's Delhi has a fair smattering of women in diplomacy, starting with India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj herself. Swaraj is a good hostess, and not only for her Karva Chauth get-togethers.

She throws a grand party at the sprawling Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan lawns on International Women's Day, the guest list comprising women in governance and media. It's a bright, colourful lawn party, with a display of silks, chiffons and even denims. Last year, Swaraj, who was ailing, did not host the event. She is making up for the lost year with a bigger party this time around.

There are around a dozen women chiefs of mission in Delhi. This includes Australian High Commissioner Harinder Sidhu, Sri Lankan High Commissioner Chitra Wagiswara, Mexico's Ambassador Melba Pria and Finland's Nina Vaskunlahti. The Finnish Embassy, too, is female powered.

While the increasing number of female diplomats around the world is something to cheer about, specially on International Women's Day, the discussion at Kadosh's home did touch upon some interesting points.

In Israel, for instance, the number of women applying for jobs in the foreign service is on the rise; in some batches, the women even outnumbered the men. While female emancipation and all is good talk, the young diplomats wondered whether diplomacy was now being regarded as not-so lucrative by the men, and therefore the change in numbers.

Diplomacy, for all its trappings of power and glamour, is tough business. It entails postings away from home, and separation from the spouse, if both have equally demanding careers. The emoluments, the women wondered, were perhaps not worth the trouble for men, who saw more lucrative careers in the private sector, perhaps.

In India, diplomacy is still largely a male domain, despite Swaraj heading the ministry. Of the 900 diplomats in the service, only a smattering are female, though many have, in the past, held important posts. This includes Nirupama Rao, who was foreign secretary, and before that, ambassador to China and then the US.

India's first woman diplomat was C.B. Muthamma, who in 1970 went as ambassador to Hungary, becoming the first woman from the foreign service to be appointed ambassador. She later also served as India's ambassador to Ghana and the Netherlands.
Karnataka is soon to have its own flag, with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah unveiling the Naada Dwaja in Bengaluru on Thursday. The flag with red, white and yellow colours has the state emblem, ganda bherunda, in the middle.

The Congress government in the state had set up a nine-member committee in 2017 to design the flag. The committee headed by Kannada Development Authority (KDA) chairman S.G. Siddaramaiah submitted the design to the chief minister on Thursday morning.

Quoting certain sources, reports suggest that the yellow colour in the flag symbolises forgiveness, white stands for peace and red for bravery. The state emblem of Karnataka has the Sarnath lion symbol on the top and the red shield with the ganda barunda at the bottom. On either side are two lion-elephants.

Though the Karnataka cabinet gave its approval to the flag, it faces a major hurdle at the Centre where the Bharatiya Janata Party is in power. The saffron party had strongly opposed the state flag idea when it was in power in Karnataka, saying it would be against the unity and integrity of the country.

Siddaramaiah, however, defended the flag and said there was nothing unconstitutional in it. Kannada flag is not unconstitutional. It is not barred by the Constitution. The only thing is we have to hoist it below the national flag, which we will anyway do. We will send the design to the Centre. Hope they approve it. There has been a long pending demand for it. I am happy that we finally have a Kannada Baavuta (Kannada Flag)," the chief minister was quoted as saying by the News 18.

The BJP has not made any statements over the new developments. It is believed that the party fears that any move against the flag will lead it to be branded as anti-Kannada and would affect its election prospects, especially when the state is going to Assembly polls in a few months.
Two days after a statue of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin was demolished by activists celebrating the victory of the BJP in Tripura, and hours after a statue of Dravidian movement leader Periyar was vandalised in Vellore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday took up the matter with Home Minister Rajnath Singh. On his part, BJP president Amit Shah issued statements condemning the acts of violence.

The statement issued by the PMO said Modi strongly condemned the reported incidents of vandalism in certain parts of the country and said stern action will be taken against those found guilty. The home minister, in turn took serious note of such incidents of vandalism, and expressed his strong disapproval of such incidents.

To be fair, senior BJP leaders have never directed their supporters to go after the statues of leaders who represent the 'other ideologies'. But there are other things they have done that send out a message to some of their supporters, which includes lumpen elements no less than society as a whole does.

For one, Modi, Shah and company have openly enjoyed Nehru-bashing that goes beyond what is required, permissible and acceptable in a democracy. Going beyond the political rhetoric and speeches, they have taken steps to obliterate all things Nehruvian. The Planning Commission has become the NITI Aayog. The BJP leadership has tried to rewrite history in order to underplay or erase leaders or heroes, and bring upfront others in their place. Attempts have been made to alter school syllabi for similar reasons.

To drive all this, the BJP-led government has moved very subtly and swiftlybrought in people from the RSS background into departments, institutions and organisations dealing with history, archaeology and culture in educational institutions and bodies regulating and administering higher education.

Early into the Modi government's term, when Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen was removed as chancellor of Nalanda University, he had warned that the government was trying to take over academic institutions. There is a sudden rash of institutions, parks and buildings that have been named after Deen Dayal Upadhyay.

There is a subtle way in which the thinking of youth towards Hindutva-connected ideas is being moulded and the way the government handled the Jawaharlal Nehru University issuesaffronising what was a freethinkers' campusis all too well known.

Some students of Benares Hindu University had protested against a question in their paper on Social and Political Thoughts of Ancient India. One of the students, Vikram Singh, national general secretary of the Students Federation of India, wrote in his blog, The whole idea is to compel the students to think in a certain way.

Another student who did not want to be identified given the atmosphere of fear that prevailed, said, Students are being taught these fictitious concepts just to validate the policies of the present government. The 'concepts' pertained to GST in the times of Kautilya's Arthashastra and Manu as the first global citizen!

Among the first few acts of saffronising higher institutions was the appointment of Yellapragada Sudershan Rao as chairperson of the ICHR. Rao has long believed that Ramayana is not mythology but history. In fact, it was his role as the mythological Yudhisthira in the television serial Mahabharata that landed Gajendra Chauhan, hardly known otherwise, the top job at the Indian Film and Television Institutean appointment that led to protests and agitations there. Not surprisingly, he was a member of the BJP! Gopinath Ravindran, a former member secretary of the Indian Council of Historical Research, had raised concerns over the attempts to have history reframed, if not rewritten.

Therefore, while the party is promoting its icons and brushing aside those of other parties with the help of administrative control the government has, its supporters are doing the same but in their own way!

The destruction of the Lenin statue was neither stopped nor condemned for almost 48 hours. On the contrary, BJP leaders were allowed to defend it charitably. One can say the BJP's frenzied fans were celebrating the 3 per cent margin victory in Tripura.

It took only a few hours for the BJP leadership to wake up to the hooliganism and vandalising of statue of Periyar in Tamil Naduafter BJP leader H. Raja mentioned the possibility in a Facebook postbecause in the southern state, the saffron party is trying to woo voters and fish for a share in a future government, through the AIADMK.

The Dravidian parties as well as a lot of people in Tamil Nadu are miffed because Periyar represents Tamil pride. And not coming down on those who did this would have jeopardised whatever chances the BJP has of building an electoral relationship with the AIADMK. It also gave the BJP the chance to come down on Kolkata students who rampaged and vandalised a statue of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

From its stated goal of having a 'Congress-mukt Bharat', the BJP has taken one more step towards a Left-mukt Bharat and is gloating over it.

'New India' will have many things that will be India reimagined by the BJP. One will be a map that will be all saffron. To paint this saffron in Tamil Nadu, the BJP needs the AIADMK, which is itself fumbling post Jayalalithaa's demise.

Along with New India, the party is ushering in new politics. Hatred and division is the face of the BJP and it is a reflection of a new kind of politics, said Congress' national spokesperson Randeep Surjewala.

But a party so conscious of history and culture should also be conscious of preserving the two. These statues may not be akin to the Bamiyan Buddhas, but they nevertheless represent history. With no more than months to go for the Lok Sabha elections, the government is clearly mishandling the statue issue, in the process rekindling all its earlier, similar wrongs.
Amid the ongoing debate of giving combat role to the women in armed forces, the Indian Air Force is leading from the front, with maximum number of women officers joining the force in last three years. Indian Army, the world's second largest army, and the biggest among the three services, has not opened its door for women due to the vagaries of the battle-field.

Unlike countries like the US, Israel, Australia, Sri Lanka and Sweden, where women officers serve under various capacity in combat role, India has not opened combat field for women officers.

According to figures provided by the ministry of defence in the Parliament, Indian Army has 1,561 women officers till date, with maximum number of 292 of them in Army Ordnance Corps followed by Army Service Corps and Engineering Corps respectively. In the year 2016, it was 1,512 women officers while in 2015, strength of women officers in the army was 1,468.

Though efforts are on to give more important role to the women officers by giving them permanent commissioning, a section of the army has an opinion that the bulk of the army's junior commissioned officers (JCOs) and other ranks, who hail from rural India, are not yet ready to accept a woman as their leader in combat situations.

On the other side, Indian Air Force, has already given combat role to its women officer, as Avani Chaturvedi has become the first woman officer to fly MiG-21 Bison solo. Two of her colleagues Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh are set to script history as very soon they will be flying fighter jets. Apart from fighter stream, IAF has women in seven other areas of administration, logistics, meteorology, navigation, education, aeronautical engineeringmechanical and electricaland accounts. In fact in IAF, a number of women pilots have proven themselves flying helicopters and transport aircraft in high-risk rescue and other missions. Some women pilots have also flown sorties of AN-32 aircraft to the Advanced Landing Ground at Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) in Ladakh. DBO, the world's highest landing ground at 16,500 feet, is close to the Line of Actual Control with China and is a critical supply line to troops posted at the Siachen Glacier.

The Indian Navy, which has 469 women officers in the service, is yet to allow them on the warships. In 2015, only 382 women officers were in the Navy. But in November last, navy broke the glass ceiling, by deploying 70 women officers, whom they call as the combat aviators on navy's most sophisticated anti-submarine warfare aircraft, the US-built Poseidon 8-India (P-8I) and IL-38s used to detect warships and submarines in the Indian Ocean. Shubhangi Swaroop became the first pilot of maritime reconnaissance aircraft and three other women cadetsAstha Segal, Roopa A and Sakthi Maya Shad also created history by becoming the country's first women officers at the Naval Armament Inspectorate (NAI) branch of the Navy. However, the Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba had stated a few months back that future warships are being modified with 'suitable facilities' to accommodate women crew onboard. As of now navy has so far deployed women officers in eight branches.

Former navy commander Prasanna Edayilliam, who retired from navy after serving 14 years, is fighting a battle in the apex court for giving permanent commission to the women officer.

Giving permanent commissioning to the women officer is our fight. We have managed to reinstate five of the women officers after court's intervention and very soon others will be joining back the navy, Prasanna told THE WEEK.
A three-day meeting of the RSS' highest decision-making bodyAkhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabhawill begin from March 9 in Nagpur.

The meeting assumes significance as it is held every three years and this will be the last annual meeting before the 2019 general election.

In the meeting, major organisational changes in the Sangh and its affiliates are decided and the agenda of its action for the next three years is laid down.

There are reports that during the meeting, a major organisational change can be announced and a new Sarkaryavah (general secretary) of the Sangh can be appointed in place of incumbent Bhaiyyaji Joshi.

The Sarkaryavah is effectively number two in the Sangh and is the executive head of the organisation who looks after day-to-day activities.

While Sarsanghachalak is the top post of the RSS, its incumbent is seen in the role of a philosopher and guide leading the organisation.

All the regional heads of the RSS and its affiliates will attend the meeting. BJP chief Amit Shah is also expected to attend the meeting.

Around 1,500 delegates of the Sangh from across the country are expected to attend the meeting in which a host of issues will be discussed and deliberated upon.
Marxists all over India are angry, fired up and demanding attention because statues of their ideologist Lenin were pulled down in one corner of the country. The razing of the statues in Tripura resulted in tensions quickly escalating all over India.

However, the story of West Bengal former chief minister Jyoti Basu and his ideology stand out at this juncture. The most famous Indian Marxist had, many years ago, warned his partymen and followers against building his statues or preserving his chair, and even observing his birthday.

Almost seventeen years ago, shortly after quitting as the chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu said he had warned the party against worshiping people, including him.

During an interview with Kolkata-based newspaper The Telegraph, the legendary Marxist was asked what he felt about his party's move to building a statue or preserving his chair at the Writers Buildings. Just imagine what an absurd idea it was (of preserving chair). I have told them not to do anything to deify an individual, Basu replied. To explain his stand on building statues, Basu went on to quote Basanti Devi, wife of Bengali freedom fighter Chittaranjan Das: What good is a statue, except for being another place for bird-dropping?

History has no reason to remember an individual and it does not, said Basu in reply to another question in the same interview. The icon did not want to leave his mark. And, thats what communists do. Basu's statements gain more significance as it comes to light that Tripura government had spent Rs 4.5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh from public money for the two statues.

But soon after Basu's passing away in 2010, the Left Front government renamed the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass road to Jyoti Basu Sarani. The proposal was mooted and finalised by the then minister Gautam Deb, who was once a close aide of Basu. Currently, Deb is a central committee member.

The reason behind naming the street was clear. On both sides of the E.M. Bypass two satellite townships were createdRajarhat and Salt Lake. While Basu finished Salt Lake, he started Rajarhat which was sped up by his successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, but is yet to be completed.

However, after winning the historic mandate in 2011, Mamata Banerjee reversed the previous government's decision to name it after Basu. The road is currently called Biswa Bangla Sarani, with the name given by the chief minister herself.

Deb protested, but his party largely remained silent. A section of leaders wanted a movement against Banerjee's decision. But some veteran leaders resisted such attempts saying even Basu would not have accepted it.

Deb said, Let them do what they want to do. We will not be craving for it.

After the fall of Lenins statue, Banerjee said she would not have approved of such acts by her own partymen. We could have broken or uprooted Lenins statue, but thats not our education and learning. They (BJP) cannot pull down Lenin, Marx, Tagore, Vivekananda or Netaji, said Banerjee. The CPI(M) led a massive rally in Kolkata protesting the Tripura episode.

But as a BJP leader in Tripura said, I would rather suggest my party to set up statue of either Basu or EMS in place of Lenin. Only then our Marxist friends would understand who are dearer, Lenin or Basu.
A day after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu initiated the process of moving away from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), niceties were at play in Delhi and Amaravathi. On Thursday, senior members of both parties, the TDP and the BJP, generously praised and dignifiedly criticised each other. At the end of the day, the inevitable had to happen as announced earlier, and two Union ministers of the TDPY.S. Chowdary and Ashok Gajapathi Rajusubmitted their resignations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The bitterness that was expected was completely missing.

The day started with Chief Minister Naidu addressing the MLAs in the assembly. He was generous with his words for two BJP MLAs who were part of the state cabinet. Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments Minister Manikyala Rao resigned from their ministerial posts. He spoke highly about their work and at one point, even asked them to reconsider their decision to quit the cabinet.

At around the same time, the focus shifted on Rajya Sabha MP, Y.S. Chowdary and Lok Sabha MP A. Gajapathi Raju. A visibly uncomfortable Chowdary, said that he was following the orders of the chief minister and leader of his party. When a reporter asked him if Modi or the BJP is responsible for the present mess, he was quick to respond that it is wrong to point fingers at the prime minister. Chowdary kept repeating that they will do what is best for the state and resignations will give them more freedom to put pressure on the Centre.

Towards evening, Modi and Naidu spoke for ten minutes. Though it is unclear what transpired between the two, speculations were rife that that TDP will go back on its decision. The body language of leaders of both parties felt like there was still scope for compromise.

At around 6 pm, the two MPs met Modi and submitted their resignations.

The presser by the duo after bidding goodbye to the cabinet was no different. Chowdary went out of his way to defend the BJP and the prime minister. He said that it was wrong to completely blame the PM and its a fact that he has done his bit. Raju said that there is nothing wrong in trying different tactics to achieve their objective.

Both were clear that TDP was still a part of the NDA.

Earlier on Thursday, YSRCP chief and leader of opposition Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy termed Naidu's moves as opportunistic politics and dared him to come out of the NDA and support him in introducing a no-confidence motion on March 21.

The days events also prompted some creative and humour memes on the TDP and the BJP. While some compared them to a loving but warring wife and husband, one user said the TDP should outsource the implementation part of the exit to Shiv Sena, who are doing a better job of taking on BJP despite being an ally.
Trinity Mirror plc produces and distributes content through newspapers and associated digital platforms in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Continental Europe, and internationally. The company's Publishing division offers content through paid-for and free newspapers and related multi-platform digital sites; holds events and exhibitions related to publishing activities; provides contract publishing for football clubs and other sport-related organizations; and offers marketing solutions and commercial partnerships. This division publishes national newspapers, such as the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror, the Sunday People, the Daily Record, and the Sunday Mail; and regional titles comprising the Manchester Evening News, the Liverpool Echo, the Hull Daily Mail, the Evening Chronicle (Newcastle), The Sentinel (Stoke), the Leicester Mercury, the Evening Gazette (Teesside), the South Wales Evening Post, the Birmingham Mail, and the Derby Telegraph. Its Printing division provides newspaper contract printing services to third parties. The company's Specialist Digital division engages in the digital recruitment classified business. It operates job boards, including GAAPweb, TotallyLegal, and SecsintheCity to offer their clients access to databases of job candidates in the areas of finance and accounting, legal, and secretarial. This division also operates a digital communications agency that develops and manages digital communications through email, mobile, social, and Web. Trinity Mirror plc was founded in 1832 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

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Square, Inc. provides payment and point-of-sale solutions in the United States and internationally. The company's commerce ecosystem includes point-of-sale software and hardware that enables sellers to turn mobile and computing devices into payment and point-of-sale solutions. It offers hardware products, including Magstripe reader, which enables swiped transactions of magnetic stripe cards; Contactless and chip reader that accepts EMV chip cards and Near Field Communication payments; Chip card reader, which accepts EMV chip cards and enables swiped transactions of magnetic stripe cards; Square Stand, which enables an iPad to be used as a payment terminal or full point of sale solution; and Square Register that combines its hardware, point-of-sale software, and payments technology, as well as managed payments solutions. The company also provides Square Point of Sale software; Cash App, which provides access to the financial system, allowing customers to electronically send, store, and spend money; Caviar, a food ordering platform for restaurants to offer food ordering, pickup and delivery, to their customers; and Square Capital that facilitates loans to sellers based on real-time payment and point-of-sale data. Square, Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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National Bank of Canada engages in the provision of commercial banking and financial services. It operates through the following segments: Personal and Commercial, Wealth Management, Financial Markets, US Specialty Finance and International (USSF&I), and Other. The Personal and Commercial segment involves in banking, financing, and investing services offered to individuals and businesses as well as insurance operations. The Wealth Management segment focuses on the investment solutions, trust and lending services, and other wealth management solutions offered through internal and third-party distribution networks. The Financial Markets segment includes banking and investment banking services and financial solutions for large and mid-size corporations, public sector organizations, and institutional investors. The USSF&I segment comprises specialty finance expertise activities of subsidiary ABA Bank, which offers financial products and services to individuals and businesses; and activities of targeted investments in certain emerging markets. The Other segment encompasses treasury activities such as asset and liability management, liquidity management and funding operations, certain no

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SCHENECTADY  Schenectady's Statue of Liberty appears destined for its new home in Steinmetz Park as part of a planned memorial for military veterans who lived in the Goose Hill neighborhood.

And while Mayor Gary McCarthy said it's not set in stone, the idea isn't sitting well with Stockade resident David Giacalone, who has mounted a Bring Lady Liberty Home campaign to return the statue to Lower State Street and Washington Avenue.

For now, the 8-foot 4-inch sculpture sits in storage at the city garage on Foster Avenue where it's been for the past two years.

It ended up there while Liberty Park was being renovated.

The new Gateway Park, as it now known, is open.

"The design is not really conducive for the statue, so we're looking to move it to Steinmetz Park, which seems to be the direction its going," the mayor said this week. "I don't know if it's a done dea, but it's 99 percent there."

Giacalone points to the 2012 Gateway Plaza Implementation Plan with photos showing the 58-year-old statue at the park.

He said the mayor "unilaterally decided not to honor the plan that was adopted as a city document by the City Council and was fully supported by the public in the public comments and design work shop for an asinine reason.

"We waited four years thinking it was going to come back like they told us," he said andnoted that in August General Services Commissioner Paul LaFond in a text assured him that Lady Liberty would return to Gateway Park.

LaFond did not return a call Wednesday.

Camille Sasinowski, president of the Goose Hill Neighborhood Association, was overjoyed Wednesday at news that the statue is likely headed for the park on Lenox Road.

"I am so happy to hear that," said Sasinowksi.

The 67-year-old Sasinowski recalled how a discussion with a friend about how many of their peers and acquaintances had died while serving in the Korean and Vietnam wars sparked the idea for a veterans memorial in Goose Hill.

She subsequently read a newspaper article about the Statue of Liberty, prompting a call to McCarthy.

The mayor said he would consider the idea, added Sasinowski.

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Sasinowki said that the statute would be situated facing the pond with her back to Lenox Road, visible from any direction for all to see.

The memorial will feature a seating area, the American flag and a tablet bearing the names of what as of now are about 140 veterans with roots in Goose Hill, who were honorably discharged, said Sasinowski.

She estimates the memorial will cost about $25,000.

Fundraising is underway and Sasinowksi said organizers are hoping to have a dedication ceremony on Veterans Day in November.

Sasinowksi said having Lady Liberty at the park would be a great history lesson from youngsters from nearby Yates Elementary School who visit the park with their classes.

McCarthy expressed doubt that he and Giacalone could find common ground on this matter.

"I'm sure whatever decision I make that Mr. Giacalone will be opposed to it," said the mayor, adding he will soon make his final decision public.
SCHENECTADY  A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to unlawfully possessing a gun as a convicted felon.

As part of his guilty plea, Shaiquan Wright admitted he had on gun on Sept. 28, 2017, while walking in Schenectady. The 21-year-old faces up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and a term of post-imprisonment supervised release of up to three years.
Watervliet

President Donald Trump's decision to exempt Canada - at least temporarily - from the steep tariffs he imposed on steel and aluminum imports in a White House ceremony on Thursday will likely help ease any concerns at large manufacturers like the Watervliet Arsenal, which depends on both foreign and domestic steel for the cannon tubes that it makes for the U.S. Army.

The arsenal, which employs 560 civilian workers, relies on military contracts for nearly all of its revenue, and is undergoing a $41 million expansion as it looks to hire 200 additional workers.

Trump's plan to impose a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum on March 1 triggered a sell-off on Wall Street over concerns that the move would raise business costs and curtail the economic rebound.

It also caused uncertainty for employers who rely on steel for the products that they make.

Even before Trump announced Thursday that Canada and Mexico would be exempt from the tariffs as the U.S. continues negotiations with the two countries on the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, officials at the arsenal said they didn't believe any steel tariffs would have an immediate impact on their bottom line.

"A majority of out specialized steel products come from U.S. and Canadian suppliers," Watervliet Arsenal spokesman John Snyder told the Times Union before Thursday's White House ceremony. "Because of the uniqueness of our products, there is a long lead time on materials used to produce the cannon barrel. This lead time often ranges between six to eight months. Given that, many of our orders for steel materiel are already in place."

It is unclear how much steel the arsenal has to procure each year. Steel costs are critical to the arsenal's business model, which relies on orders from the U.S. Army and other branches of the military and foreign armies for revenue.

Since October, the arsenal has won $90 million in new weapons contracts. One of the latest is a $13.5 million contract from the U.S. Army to upgrade howitzer systems.

Of course, one of Trump's reasons for putting the tariffs in place was under the guise of national security. Trump has said that by relying too much on imported steel, the U.S. was putting its national security at risk. Therefore it makes sense that the new tariffs not hurt the U.S. Army's only cannon factory.

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"We want to build our ships, we want to build our planes, we want to build our military equipment with American steel and aluminum," Trump said during Thursday's White House ceremony.

Trump appears to have listened to criticisms from even those in his own party who said that the tariffs could hurt the U.S. economy and harm allies.

U.S. Rep. John Faso, a Republican House member from Kinderhook who represents parts of the Capital Region, said in a radio interview Thursday that blanket steel tariffs could hurt the state's economy since 600,000 jobs in New York rely on trade with Canada.

Canada exports nearly 90 percent of its steel to the United States, making Canada the No. 1 steel exporter to this country. Canada is also a major exporter of aluminum in the United States, accounting for 40 percent of the U.S. imports. A large portion of Canada's aluminum industry is based in Quebec across from the New York border.

"I hope they will come up with a policy that targets countries that are not our friends," Faso told radio host Fred Dicker on Talk 1300.
New Scotland

Bruce L. Decker disappeared much as he lived: seemingly without a trace.

After a week of searching, crews have scaled back their search for the Guilderland psychiatrist, who abandoned his vehicle and vanished into Thacher Park last month.

The search for Decker, 71, started Feb. 22 and was drawn down last Thursday, the day before a northeaster dumped 2 feet of snow on the area around the park. Another weather system was expected to drop more than a foot there on Wednesday.

Personnel from the state parks department, Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany County Sheriff's Office, volunteer fire departments and 12 volunteer search and rescue teams combed 2,442 acres for some trace of Decker. Park Police have not said if they recovered anything in their search.

Decker's public record is scarce, with little clue as to where he was from or how he came to Guilderland. He graduated in 1973 from the medical school at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and was licensed to practice in Rhode Island four years later.

He was licensed to practice psychiatry at various times in New York, Vermont and Rhode Island. His New York license expires at the end of this month.

Decker seemed to spend his time between condos in Guilderland and Providence, R.I. According to business records, he worked out of his home. On Tuesday, the one neighbor who answered the door at the Guilderland condo complex where Decker lived said she did not know him. Records indicate he lived there since at least 1998.

Records in all three states don't indicate any professional disciplinary actions against Decker. There are no liens or bankruptcies.

Nor is there any indication of family, associates or extended relatives.

Based on his digital outline, the only constants are medical licenses and voter registrations. He was not a member of any major political party nor does it appear he donated to any candidate.

Park Police began searching for Decker after his vehicle was discovered in the park's Paint Mine parking lot.

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A check of his residence indicated he may not have been home since Feb. 19, the agency said.

Searchers do have video of him in the park, but it doesn't indicate where he went or where he disappeared.

DEC said the search effort is being reduced, though additional field searches will resume once the snow melts.

Police have released little information about the search or the subsequent tips that have come in since Decker's disappearance. A Park Police spokesman did not respond to an email with specific questions about the search, or whether anyone had made contact with a family member.

Decker is white, about 5-foot-9 and has gray hair. He was last seen wearing gray pants, black jacket, gray plaid scarf and dark boots. Anyone with information is asked to call 518-584-2004.

shughes@timesunion.com - 518-454-5438 - @shugheswrites
It may not be a prerequisite, but if youre going to try your hand in the annual Times Union Oscar contest, it might help that youve once made a movie yourself.

Take, for example, Steve Swartz, our 2018 Oscar contest winner.

In the late 1980s, Swartz, who was raised in Schenectady and Albany, but who was then living in Austin, Texas, directed, wrote and starred in Never Leave Nevada, a film that was screened at the Sundance Film Festival back in the days before the Colorado forum for independent film was infiltrated by Hollywood heavies. It was a small-budget comedy about a pair of salesmen who cynically make money selling T-shirts to nuclear protesters.

It really was at the start of the Austin independence movement, Swartz said of the heady days when Nevada was made. In fact, (future star film directors) Richard Linkletter and Robert Rodriguez worked on my film. (Linkletter was on the camera crew and Rodriguez drew the artwork for posters of the film when it screened in Austin, he said.) The film gets a high (7.7) rating on imbd.com, and it also happens to be the feature movie debut for actor John Hawkes.

When not making his movie, Swartz has spent his professional life in education, teaching film at Florida State University in the 1990s, and when he returned to the Capital Region, teaching English as a second language in the Albany City School District and to international General Electric employees and their spouses. Swartz, 65 and now officially retired, is also a writer. He was the Schenectady County poet laureate from 2009-2015, and is currently working on a novel. He and his wife, Lyuda, live in Guilderland. They have a 22-year-old daughter, Katerina.

Movies still figure heavily in his life. I still see a lot of films, Swartz says. Im pretty knowledgeable.

There were few surprises in the major categories in this years Oscars. The Times Union offered eight categories to vote in: the top six (film, director, actor and actress (both lead and supporting), plus both screenplay awards (adapted and original). So out of those casting votes, 12 people went eight for eight. To break the tie we had a random drawing and Swartz won, and he will receive $50 in movie passes to a local cinema of his choice.

Votes for best film were fairly evenly cast for winner The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." Although Swartz liked Billboards, I saw The Shape of Water and I thought it was just a beautiful, gorgeous, brilliant film.

Swartz's first memory of going out to the movies was seeing The Guns of Navarone at Proctors. When asked to name his favorite films, his answers cover a wide variety from Groundhog Day to Saving Private Ryan to the lesser-known East/West, a 1999 film with Catherine Deneuve, and the early Robert Altman cult classic Brewster McCloud.

As for Never Leave Nevada? Should you ever want to see it, he said, its available on Youtube.
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Two Capital Region business owners were charged last month for burning commercial materials at their residential homes, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Wednesday.

Environmental Conservation Officer Brian Canzeri was investigating reports of illegal burning in Pittstown, Rensselaer County, on Feb. 24 when he discovered a resident had brought construction debris home to burn and bury, the DEC said.
ALBANY  A new poll shows there is broad, bipartisan support among New York voters for criminal justice reforms that include eliminating cash bail for low-level offenses and disclosing evidence sooner to those charged with crimes.

The statewide poll of 802 likely voters was sponsored by FWD.us, an organization co-founded in 2013 by Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg that has sought to influence policy on issues ranging from immigration to criminal justice.

Last month, senators in New York's Democratic Conference unveiled a series of proposed criminal justice reforms that included many of the issues touched on in the poll. It comes as there has been an increased focus on the fact people who cannot afford even low-level bail amounts often languish in jail for misdemeanor or non-violent crimes.

Zoe Towns, a senior criminal justice reform director at FWD.us, said that in the Bronx a person charged with a misdemeanor waits an average of 571 days for their case to go to trial.

The poll found that 86 percent of those polled believe a trial must take place within four months of an arrest. More than half thought defendants are entitled to a trial within eight weeks; while nine out of 10 of those surveyed support setting stricter speedy trial requirements, which would reduce the number of people held in jails while cases are pending.

"There's a real delta between what the public wants and what is currently happening," Towns said. "We hope that the finding will really ... encourage lawmakers to be bold on this issue."

On another issue, more than 70 percent of those surveyed would support a proposal to eliminate jailing a defendant prior to trial unless they are a documented flight risk or accused of a felony involving physical force or property damage in excess of $1 million.

More than three quarters of those polled also supported proposals to allow defendants to see all of a prosecutor's evidence against them before pleading guilty. In many instances, prosecutors are allowed to turn over evidence just prior to or even during a trial. An untold number of people routinely plead guilty to crimes without ever knowing the details of the evidence against them.

The poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group, also allowed respondents to listen to arguments for and against bail reform before and after they gave their input. After hearing both sides, there was a significant increase in the number of people who support or strongly support proposals to end jail before trial for misdemeanors and non-violent felony offenses.

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More than 70 percent of voters who have been victims of crime also supported ending pre-trial detention in those cases.

The poll also found that a majority of voters think it's a waste of money to lock up people for low-level offenses.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his annual budget address, also called for sweeping criminal justice reforms.

"Our criminal justice system is broken and we have to fix it," Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said during a press conference at the Capitol in early February "The Senate Republican majority's refusal to enact these laws, and allowing them to be watered down, will hurt New Yorkers and will hurt our desire to really reform the criminal justice system."

It's unclear whether Republicans who control the Senate will be willing to consider any of the proposals as part of the looming budget negotiations, where many legislative deals are consummated as part of the state's spending plan. GOP leaders have not issued a response to the Democrats' proposals.
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CLIFTON PARK - Two local men were caught with more than 20,000 unstamped cigarettes, State Police said.

Frank E. Short, 58, of Waterford, and Kevin M. Lecuyer, 57, of Troy were both charged with the felony after troopers said the caught them with the cigarettes during a traffic stop on Sunday.
Women@Work is a magazine, network and movement dedicated to sharing the stories of women in the Capital District's workforce. From corporate executives and entrepreneurs, to employees and retirees, we strive to tell the struggles and share in the successes of these women.

For International Women's Day, we asked our Women@Work staff and frequent contributors for their favorite stories from our magazines through the last year. For more on Women@Work stories, visit tuwomenatwork.com.

Want to join our Women@Work network? For only $25 for a year membership, you receive:

Six copies of our Women@Work magazine

FREE entry to our monthly networking breakfasts

Discounted entry to other events through the year

Opportunities to meet and connect with our 2,200-plus membership

Join or renew your membership by clicking this link.

Some of our stories in 2017 and 2018:

A profile of Janeen Uzzell, head of women in technology for General Electric on her international career.

A story by Alicia Biggs on the rise of female entrepreneurs in the Capital Region, and the personal ventures by several women starting their own businesses.

Women make up the majority of the nursing profession. Leigh Hornbeck looks into how state laws may evolve those jobs, and how local hospitals and other entities are evolving with it.

JOIN WOMEN@WORK Want to join our Women@Work network? For only $25 for a year membership, you receive: Six copies of our Women@Work magazine

FREE entry to our monthly networking breakfasts

Discounted entry to other events through the year

Opportunities to meet and connect with our 2,200-plus membership Join or renew your membership by clicking this link. See More Collapse

Capital Region women are ditching the dye and letting their silver and gray hair shine. Read more by Deanna Fox.

Noelene Smith's passion for Baby Institute gives low-income children a hand up, by Leigh Hornbeck.

Meet the Delmar woman who took her grandmother's iced tea recipe and started Nani's Iced Tea.

Profiles from our earlier Changemakers story series on:

(Not to be confused with our current Changemakers breakfasts, sponsored by Bank of America. You can find invitations for those here.)

The women who co-founded Extreme Molding in Watervliet used to have to tell people on the phone that their male bosses -- who didn't really exist -- approved of the purchases they were trying to make for their fledgling business. More by Deanna Fox.

Meet our 20 Under 20, an effort with the Girl Scouts Leadership Initiative, in which we highlighted 20 young women from the Capital Region who've made differences in their communities.

Deb Best, who writes our Best For Success feature, had several columns she wanted to share, especially in light of the #metoo movement and her human resources experience:

***

Have a story you'd like to pitch for Women@Work? Want to know more about joining? Email executive editor Susan Mehalick at smehalick@timesunion.com, or senior editor Sara Tracey at stracey@timesunion.com.

Check out more with this story as we update it through the day.
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The Tipperary town of Newport is in shock this week following the sudden death of university graduate Cillian Ryan in Edinburgh.

Cillian, the son of popular local bar owners Richard and Mary, died on Tuesday, March 6, from suspected meningitas.

He had moved to Edinburgh in January having completed his MA in Journalism at the University of Limerick. He had hoped to start work as a journalist in the city. Cillian previously graduated with a degree from University College Cork. He was a former student of St Mary's Secondary School in Newport.

Local Labour councillor and family friend Fiona Bonfield described Cillian as a "character".

"We couldn't believe it when we heard he had died," she told the Tipperary Star. "He was so young. It is so sad."

"Cillian helped me with my local election campaign in 2014 and did work experience with Deputy Alan Kelly," she said, saying Cillian loved politics, a love he got from his grandfather Neddy Ryan.

Cllr Bonfield said Cillian, who had been a member of the Labour Party, liked politics and books, and would be seen behind the bar reading a book even while helping his parents run their establishment.

"Books were his life, but journalism was his passion," she said.

Cillian posted on his Facebook page that he dreamed of being either a novelist or a journalist.

"He was following his dreams in Edinburgh," she said.

Cllr Bonfield said Cillian's death touched a massive community throughout Newport, Rearcross and Birdhill, as the family are related to the Coopers who run Coopers Bar.

It also touched the GAA community as Ryans is a big GAA house with people travelling between Limerick and Thurles for matches stopping in.

A post on the UL Journalism Department Facebook page said: "All of us here at the journalism department are shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Cillian Ryan, of Newport, Tipperary earlier this week. Cillian was one of our MA in Journalism class of 2016/2017 and had been due to graduate later this year. He was a popular classmate and a very talented young journalist and is fondly remembered by those who knew him here at University of Limerick. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends during this difficult time."

Cillian was a Master's student in journalism and new media, and Politics Editor for the Limerick Voice 2016.

Cillian is sadly missed by his loving parents Richard and Mary; brothers Cathal and Phelim; sister Eve; sister-in-law Grainne; brother-in-law Eamonn; niece Aoibhin; aunts, uncles, cousins and a large circle of friends.

Funeral arrangements later.
We're about to find out whether OnePlus can keep putting the pressure on flagship phone makers by taking the premium features you'd expect from devices costing $700 (or more in the case of the iPhone X) and putting them on phones that sell for hundreds of dollars less. That's been the trick OnePlus has pulled off with its phone lineup, most recently with the OnePlus 5T. And now we're about to see that phone's successor.

OnePlus has a press event scheduled for this Wednesday (May 16) in London, where it will take the wraps off the OnePlus 6. There's not a lot of mystery surrounding this new phone, though, as many details have already leaked out  in some cases from OnePlus itself.

Here's a roundup of what we know so far about the OnePlus 6, along with a few other rumors swirling around this upcoming phone.

OnePlus 6 Availability: It's still unclear when the OnePlus 6 will go on sale, but the phone maker gave us a pretty big clue by announcing plans for pop-up stores featuring the new phone in 27 cities on May 21.

It's still unclear when the OnePlus 6 will go on sale, but the phone maker gave us a pretty big clue by announcing plans for pop-up stores featuring the new phone in 27 cities on May 21. OnePlus 6 Pricing: You could pay more for this new phone than you would have for the OnePlus 5T. Pricing info reportedly leaked on Amazon's online store in Germany, where the OnePlus 6 could sell for 519.

You could pay more for this new phone than you would have for the OnePlus 5T. Pricing info reportedly leaked on Amazon's online store in Germany, where the OnePlus 6 could sell for 519. Another look at the OnePlus 6: It's not exactly a leaked image, but some rumor sites put together a 360-degree video based on CAD drawings of the OnePlus 6.

When Will the OnePlus 6 Arrive?

We're not 100-percent certain when the OnePlus 6 will land in users' waiting hands, but we can say when we expect to finally see OnePlus's next phone. The company announced a launch event in London on May 16 at noon ET. You'll be able to watch a live stream of the OnePlus 6 launch event if you can't make it over to the UK.

If the past is any indication, you won't have to wait long for the OnePlus 6 to ship. Last November, the OnePlus 5T went on sale five days after OnePlus announced the new phone.

OnePlus 6 has already announced plans for pop-up stores in 27 cities where you can purchase the new phone. You can get the details on locations from OnePlus's website.

How Much Will the OnePlus 6 Cost?

The OnePlus 5T came in at $499, more than $200 less than what Apple and Samsung charge for their top phones. That's still likely to be the case with the OnePlus 6, though rumors have the price of the new phone ticking upward.

One of the first indicators came from True-Tech, which received a leak on how the phone will be priced in India. According to True-Tech's source, the 64GB model of the OnePlus 6 will cost the equivalent of $555 in India, while the 128GB model will run the equivalent of $600. While that gives us a ballpark estimate of what to expect, international pricing is never simply determined by conversion alone, so take those numbers with a grain of salt.

This week, OnePlus 6 pricing briefly appeared on Amazon's store in Germany, and WinFuture spotted the leak before it was taken down. There, the phone was listed at 519 for the 64GB version and 569 for a 128GB option. BGR notes that the equivalent versions of the OnePlus 5T cost 499 and 559, respectively.

One other detail from that German Amazon leak: the OnePlus 6 will reportedly come in Mirror Black and Midnight Black colors.

A Notch, New Navigation Gestures, and More

It was OnePlus' worst-kept secret, so the company just went ahead and confirmed it themselves: there will be a notch. OnePlus relayed the controversial design decision to The Verge with an exclusive render back in March, shown below.





(Image credit: Image Credit: OnePlus and The Verge)

Apparently, users will be able to "hide" it, too. The feature was revealed by founder Pete Lau in a post on the phone maker's forums. Lau said that originally, OnePlus wasn't planning on giving owners the ability to conceal the notch with black bars on either side of the OLED display. However, the company went back on its decision after many members of the community requested the feature. According to Lau, the setting will arrive in a post-release update, so you won't see it launch with the handset.

The announcement of the notch to The Verge was accompanied by quotes from OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, who offered some justifications for the design and elaborated upon how it's not quite the same as previous iterations from other companies. According to Pei, OnePlus' implementation came as a result of not wanting to compromise the functionality of the ambient light sensors, front facing camera and earpiece (a reference to the Essential Phone), while also not needing to make room for a large depth-sensing system (a reference to the iPhone X).

OnePlus says it has moved the clock in the notification bar to the left side, which provides more room for status icons on the right. Many other phone makers have taken a similar approach, but OnePlus is also keen to point out its upcoming flagship will sport custom gestures that should aid navigation, also like Apple's top-of-the-line handset. These gestures were further teased on April 4 with a tweet illustrating a swipe down and up, perhaps signaling new motions for closing apps and returning to the home screen.

A Design with 'New Materials'

OnePlus just can't stop revealing new details about its upcoming phone. A company forum post details some of the design decisions for the OnePlus 6 and includes a few interesting tidbits. The phone will have a glass back (perhaps to enable wireless charging?), with five layers of Nanotech Coating to provide "an impression of depth."

The rest of what we know about the OnePlus 6's look comes from leaks. One of the best teases to date came courtesy of VentureBeat's Evan Blass back in March. Blass' leak depicts a gray, wooden finish that looks unlike anything we've seen from competitors in the space. It's not terribly surprising OnePlus would go off the beaten path here, as the company experimented in the past with the Sandstone White OnePlus 5T.

(Image credit: Image Credit: Evan Blass)

That's not to say we haven't seen the phone clad in more traditional materials as well. Back in February, Chinese site ITHome showcased a OnePlus 6 with a glossy back, resembling glass or ceramic. The device shown in the below photos aligns closely with the one shown in Blass' post (materials aside), as well as OnePlus' own teases. Based on them, the OnePlus 6 looks like it will offset its notch with a bottom "chin," while the opposite side of the handset will have a vertically-stacked dual camera system and pill-shaped fingerprint sensor.

(Image credit: Image Credit: ITHome)

You'll also note the "Designed by OnePlus" label near the bottom of the backside  something the company officially called attention to in its latest tweet. OnePlus posted another close-up of the product on April 20, touting the "same expert craftsmanship" alongside "new materials."

Finally, the latest design-related leak making the rounds shows the device from multiple angles, and comes to us originally from Baidu, by way of Dutch blog TechTastic. These images are suspiciously fuzzy, however, and in them the OnePlus 6 exhibits multiple small differences compared to earlier pictures that have us skeptical of the legitimacy of what we're seeing.

(Image credit: Image Credit: Baidu via TechTastic)

Notice the placement of OnePlus' iconic knurled Alert Slider: Here it's on the upper left, just like on the 5T, but OnePlus' own official image shows it switching sides to the top right. The proportions of the bezels also appear different on the product in these pictures, and the screws flanking the USB Type-C port are still present, while they are missing in Blass' leak. It's possible this is a pre-production prototype just as well as a fake, but we won't know for certain how it compares to the actual device until May 16.

For another potential look at the OnePlus 6, OnLeaks and CompareRaja took CAD drawings of the phone and turned them into a 360-degree video.

Dual Cameras Remain

OnePlus CEO Pete Lau posted several sample photos purportedly taken with the OnePlus 6's camera on Chinese social networking site Weibo on April 16. The images depict an assortment of scenes captured on a clear and sunny day, including one close-up of a flower that appears to demonstrate the capabilities of the phone's dual-camera Portrait Mode.

(Image credit: Image Credit: liuzuohu via Weibo)

The results are promising. One particular photo of a walkway through a courtyard shows a good balance of color saturation, contrast and detail. Although the samples are quite low resolution, they are encouraging  especially since we found the OnePlus 5T's cameras to be quite good for the price. What remains to be seen, however, is how the new setup performs in low light.



As far as specs are concerned, an earlier report from ITHome suggested that the cameras on the back of the OnePlus 6 will be rated at 16 and 20 megapixels. All renders of the device thus far suggest they'll be vertically aligned. Such a design would be a departure from the last generation of OnePlus' devices, which sported horizontally-arranged cameras placed in the top left corner near the antenna lines  making for a look that drew many comparisons to the iPhone 7.

Specs to Expect

Here's a rundown of what we're expecting from the OnePlus 6, based on both the company's public pronouncements and rumors surrounding the upcoming phone. For context, we're also including the OnePlus 5T's specs so you can see how the new model compares to what came before it.

Model

OnePlus 6 (rumored)

OnePlus 5T

CPU

Snapdragon 845

Snapdragon 835

RAM

Up to 8GB

6GB/8GB

Storage

Up to 256GB

64GB/128GB

Operating System

OxygenOS based on Android 8

OxygenOS based on Android 7.1.1

Display

6.2-inch OLED

6-inch OLED

Aspect Ratio

19:9

18:9

Rear Camera

16-MP (f/1.7), 20-MP (f/1.7) 16-MP (f/1.7), 20-MP (f/1.7)

Front Camera

20-MP (f/2.0)

16-MP (f/2.0)

Battery

3,450 mAh

3,300 mAh

Headphone Jack

Yes

Yes



OnePlus has already confirmed several details surrounding the OnePlus 6. The source was a post on the phone maker's official forum written by OnePlus' Pete Lau. In it, the co-founder rattled off a short list of specifications related to the new handset, and spoke about the company's commitment to ensure a snappy user experience through cutting edge hardware.

While we've heard for some time that the OnePlus 6 would employ Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 chipset  Lau said as much to CNET in January  the forum post also confirms that the device will see 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. While those are indeed impressive numbers (especially the generous amount of storage), Lau did not elaborate as to whether that spec reflected a base or more expensive variant.

For perspective, OnePlus previously offered two versions of the 5T: one 6GB/64GB model at $499, and another 8GB/128GB configuration at $559, neither of which came equipped with MicroSD slots.

Shortly before Lau's post went live, OnePlus' Twitter account shared a four-second teaser containing the text "The Speed You Need," followed by the number six. The video features no images of the product.

AirPods of its Own

Bluetooth certification materials spotted by Nashville Chatter hint that OnePlus may be planning to launch a wireless version of its Bullets V2 headphones alongside the OnePlus 6. The document was filed April 4 and lists a device named "OnePlus Bullets Wireless" with model number BT31B and Bluetooth 4.1 support. The wired Bullet V2 headphones have been on the market for a little over a year now and are regarded as one of the most well-rounded budget options out there.

A Special Edition?

In typical OnePlus fashion, rumors are already swirling about a special edition model. On April 6, entertainment site Deadline reported Marvel was partnering with OnePlus as part of an aggressive marketing campaign to support the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War movie. The phone maker more or less confirmed the rumor a little over a week later with a 10-second teaser posted on the OnePlus India Facebook page. The video was promptly taken down, but not before it could be ripped and re-posted on YouTube.

According to Deadline, this superhero-themed edition of the OnePlus 6 will feature Avengers branding, a unique design and 256GB of storage. For now, it is only pegged to release in the United Kingdom, though more countries may be in the plans. Last year, OnePlus and Marvel parent company Disney collaborated on limited run of Star Wars: The Last Jedi OnePlus 5T phones exclusive to China  so the prospect of an Avengers model this time around isn't terribly surprising.

Outlook

The OnePlus 5T proved the still up-and-coming phone maker could produce a great flagship-caliber handset that offered top-notch performance, camera quality and long battery life for hundreds less than the competition. But that competition is getting more fierce with each passing month. Nevertheless, if OnePlus can deliver a OnePlus 6 that fully takes advantage of the Snapdragon 845's power, has a great screen and perhaps improved facial recognition, the company has a very good shot at earning the title (once again) of best unlocked phone value.
The Nissan IMx KURO was unveiled today at the Geneva International Motor Show, marking the European debut of the IMx electric crossover concept vehicle.

Kuro, which means black in Japanese, comes to life on the IMx, which was first revealed at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 2017, with new look black trim and wheels, an updated grille and a new dark gray body color.

The Nissan IMx KURO provides a glimpse into the future of Nissan Intelligent Mobility, the companys vision for changing how cars are powered, driven and integrated into society. The innovative concept vehicle is designed to strengthen the link between car and driver as a close, reliable partner that delivers a safer, more convenient and more exciting drive.

Upgrades to the Nissan IMx KURO also include the integration of Nissans pioneering Brain-to-Vehicle (B2V) technology. B2V interprets signals from the drivers brain to assist with driving and to help the vehicles autonomous and manual systems learn from the driver.

The IMx KURO zero-emission crossover concept vehicle embodies the future of Nissan Intelligent Mobility, said Jose Munoz, Nissans chief performance officer. Nissan Intelligent Mobility is Nissans commitment to changing the way people and cars communicate, as well as how cars interact with society in the near future and beyond.

Making travel more enjoyable: Nissan Intelligent Driving

At the core of the Nissan IMx KUROs technological features is a future version of ProPILOT that offers fully autonomous operation. When ProPILOT drive mode is selected, the system stows the steering wheel inside the dashboard and reclines all seats, giving the driver more space and allowing the vehicles occupants to relax and enjoy their commute. When Manual drive mode is selected, the vehicle returns the steering wheel and seats to their original position, seamlessly transferring control back to the driver.

The B2V technology featured in the Nissan IMx KURO promises to speed up reaction times for drivers and will lead to cars that keep adapting to make driving more enjoyable. This breakthrough from Nissan is the result of research into using brain decoding technology to predict a drivers actions and detect discomfort:

Predict: By catching signs that the drivers brain is about to initiate a movement  such as turning the steering wheel or pushing the accelerator pedal  driver assist technologies can begin the action more quickly. This can improve reaction times and enhance manual driving.

Detect: By detecting and evaluating driver discomfort, artificial intelligence can change the driving configuration or driving style when in autonomous mode.

Nissans B2V technology is the worlds first system of its kind. The driver wears a device that measures brain wave activity, which is then analyzed by autonomous systems. By anticipating intended movement, the systems can take actions  such as turning the steering wheel or slowing the car  0.2 to 0.5 seconds faster than the driver, while remaining largely imperceptible.

The convenience and pleasure of electric driving: Nissan Intelligent Power

The Nissan IMx KURO zero-emission concept vehicle adopts Nissans new electric vehicle platform, designed for maximum efficiency. It allows the floor to be completely flat, resulting in a cavernous cabin and enhanced driving dynamics. With a low center of gravity, the chassis delivers sharp handling that promises to redefine the crossover segment.

The powerful, yet quiet powertrain delivers enhanced excitement. The IMx KURO is propelled by a pair of high-output electric motors at the front and rear, giving it all-wheel-drive capability. They combine to produce 320 kW of power and an astounding 700 Nm of torque  more than the Nissan GT-R supercar - sourced from a high-capacity battery thats been redesigned and re-engineered for increased energy density. This new battery supports a driving range of more than 600 kilometers on a single charge, so occupants can enjoy an extended adventure without worrying about recharging.

Part of the social infrastructure: Nissan Intelligent Integration

The Nissan IMx KURO can also contribute to the social infrastructure like no other vehicle before it. For example, after transporting its owner to the airport, the IMx KURO can park itself in a spot where the vehicle can connect to the local power grid and act as a virtual power plant by returning electricity to the grid, an extension of its vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-building features. Once the owner returns, the IMx KURO can pick them up at the terminal and drive home. The whole process is carried out efficiently, thanks in part to the increased battery capacity and connected-car technologies, including Seamless Autonomous Mobility.

New EV design philosophies for the autonomous era

Until now, vehicles have been designed with a clear differentiation between exterior and interior. Exterior design provides a sense of security from the outside, while the interior design gives drivers an appropriate environment for concentrating on driving.

This purpose-based differentiation is likely to change with the arrival of fully autonomous vehicles. Nissans designers sought to redefine the interior space of the IMx to create a sense of openness, while maintaining a feeling of privacy. To achieve this, they endeavored to design a space that links up the inside and outside of the vehicle.

They also wanted to convey the key characteristics of electric vehicles  quiet and smooth with a sense of light, yet powerful and dynamic. They took inspiration from the Japanese concepts of ma, a sense of space and time, and wa (harmony), expressing the coexistence of two seemingly contradictory concepts  stillness and motion.

Exterior design: showcasing the unique characteristics of electric vehicles

Since the IMxs debut at the Tokyo Motor Show, the Nissan design team, led by Alfonso Albaisa, senior vice president for global design, has made some small but significant changes to the vehicle  hence the new KURO designation.

The team simplified the grille to give it a stronger and more solid character and changed the color from pearl white to a deep smoky gray, with black finished wheels and trim. The new color treatment transforms the IMx, giving it a tougher, substantial presence.

The intention behind the changes to the styling was to test whether the IMxs concept as a showcase for Nissans autonomous driving and electric vehicle leadership could work with a different, more robust personality.

The main design features that made such a strong impact in Tokyo remain unchanged  from the familiar V-motion grille design to the supple character line rises and flows to the hood and rear end. The broad surfaces of the distinctively shaped front fenders start from the grille and expand seamlessly onto the body sides, creating a sense of layers.

After the Tokyo Motor Show, my team and I continued to consider the IMxs potential, Albaisa said.

We asked ourselves if the basic concept of the IMx could be more SUV-inspired by making some relatively simple changes to details, accents and color.

Taken all together, these relatively minor changes have combined to give the IMx KURO a completely different personality, and the addition of the KURO moniker reflects that. It looks purposeful and indestructible  which we think is an interesting position for this concept and the application of technologies that is showcased by the vehicle.

Interior design: spacious and relaxing, with simplicity

The IMx KURO concept vehicles interior adheres to the basic concept of space that can be found in a traditional Japanese house, suggesting a sense of openness.

The cars panoramic OLED instrument panel displays a view of the external environment in the background. A separate, wood grain-patterned display, positioned below the instrument panel and wrapping around the interior door trims, gives occupants a subtle sense of the outside, similar to shoji, a traditional Japanese paper screen.

The katanagare diagonal pattern on the seats has been delicately etched with a laser cutter. The head rest  patterned like kumiki, a Japanese interlocking wood puzzle  is made from silicon-material cushioning and a frame produced by a 3D printer.

Artificial intelligence enables the driver to control the instrument panel with eye movements and hand gestures. This intuitive interface results in fewer physical controls and switches, making the cabin of the IMx simple, yet highly efficient, and adding to its supreme comfort.
Kathmandu, Nepal: The plan to give the Cabinets complete shape is being delayed on the name of bringing the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum Nepal (SSF-N) on board. It is likely that cabinet expansion process would not complete near soon as the SSF-N has been seeking assurance of constitution amendment from the government allies- CPN UML and the CPN Maoist Center.

The SSF-N leaders have been insisting that they would decide to join the government once the left alliance inks a political agreement to amend the constitution. Interestingly, the SSF-N leaders have also been insisting that not only the demands of the SSF-N but also the entire grievances of other Madhes based political parties regarding the constitution amendment have to be committed to settle through the amend in the constitution.

Considering to the previous stands of the UML, it is likely that constitution would not be amended by fulfilling the entire conditions of the Madhes based parties including the Rastiya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN) as some demands seems to have against of the national integrity and sovereignty.

The SSF-N and the government allies would reach on the agreement if the prolific ministries were handed over to the former one as recent meeting are concentrated on division of powers in the government rather than other national interest including the amendment in the constitution.





Speculations are riffed that the government is preparing to add some ministries just to adjust the SSF-N in the government. As the UML and the Maoist Center had already agreed to share 10 and 7 ministries respectively out of 17 ministries in the center, this would not have speculations but pragmatism as the SSF-N has demanded at least three ministries including the Ministry of foreign affairs.

The number of the ministry would also be added as Prime Minister KP Oli has already earned reputation to split the ministries even though he is Champion even to criticize in similar circumstances. It seems that over ambition of the government and its allies of garnering two third majorities in the federal parliament would have led to the idea of adding some ministries even agreeing to fulfill the unfeasible demands forwarded by the SSF-N.

This will be misfortune not only the nation but also the government allies if the ministries are added just to adjust any parties or leaders on the name of garnering two third majority of the government allies in the federal parliament. The need of the hour is strong and stable government but not splitting the ministries or amending the constitution going against of the national interests.

As the UML Chair KP Oli has comeback in the government with strong parliamentary support and left a positive signal by including some comparatively clean figure in his cabinet, general people have also an expectation that the government would not indulge on the foul game on the name of making the government strong.

The Prime Minister should not delay to give full shape his cabinet as government has to start working on a war footing on a wide range of issues including governance and implementation of the federalism. The federals states are remaining functionless due to the absence of the government employees.

This is nothing than embarrassment situation that the government has failed even to mobilize the government employees in the respective provinces. The trade unions of different political parties have been creating obstacles to depute the government employees in the provincial levels and the local unites.

We will be happy if the SSF-N is participated in the government because its participation in the incumbent government will not only make able the government with strength of two third majorities, which would require in the time of constitution amendment, but also send message of unity in Teria region.
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Activists in Oaxaca donned gowns and veils before saying "I do" to their leafy loves.

And you thought we were treehuggers? A group of women in San Jacinto Amilpas, Mexico took to the trees in a mass marriage ceremony recently to declare their undying devotion to their arboreal amors.

But no, this wasn't a statement on modern love, it was part of an event called Marry a Tree, and it is helping to raise awareness about illegal logging and deforestation in the state of Oaxaca.

Marrying a tree is a way of protesting, to say that we need to stop exterminating Mother Earth every day, every minute, every second, tree bride Dolores Leycigi says.

I thought it was very interesting that we have a commitment, not only with this tree, but with all of nature, says another tree bride, Andrea Tanat. I thought about how much weve already damaged nature, so I decided to come and get married.

 PATRICIA CASTELLANOS/AFP/Getty Images

The ceremony was led by Peruvian actor and environmentalist Richard Torres. Torres happens to already be tree-betrothed; he married a tree in Bogota, Columbia back in 2014 in an effort to encourage the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to plant trees instead of inciting war, according to the Associated Press. And he's taken more brides since then as well.

While the marriages are obviously not legally binding, it is proving a great way to shine a light on illegal logging. "The practice of unlawfully transporting and selling timber has had devastating environmental impacts in Mexico and has been blamed for an increase in droughts," notes the Huffington Post. And indeed, the country's forests are taking a real hit with illegal logging, much of the illegal timber trade is thought to be controlled by criminal syndicates. Oaxaca is one of the five states hit the hardest by deforestation

You can see more about Torres and his many loves in the video below. And in the meantime, you don't have to marry a tree; you don't even have to actually hug one (though it does feel great!) ... all they need is some respect.
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ATTORNEYS representing Gary Griffith were in the process of drafting documents late yesterday as they prepare to file High Court action against the Police Service Commission (PolSC) over its decision to suspend him from acting in the capacity of Police Commissioner.
It must be a matter of sadness for any citizen with even basic knowledge of governance and the concept of serving the public interest to witness the thrashing around of persons involved in the appointment of a new commissioner of police (CoP).
My strong recommendation is: If you only have 14 days available for this trip, choose one country or the other. Fourteen days barely gives you enough time for one country, much less two. And youll lose a complete day of your limited time flying between Australia and New Zealand.

If you choose Australia as your destination, choose no more than 3 destinations for a 14-day stay. Each change in destination results in a loss of about 1/2 day in sightseeing time when you factor in the time needed to get to the airport, waiting at the airport, flying and then getting to your next accommodations.

If you choose New Zealand, you could spend a week on each island or, perhaps even better, spend all your time on the South Island.

And for either Australia or New Zealand, plan some destinations outside of the major cities as thats where the best parts are.
If you go to S. Caribbean, go in Oct., the earlier the better for the weather and possibility of seeing turtles in Tortuguero. In such a short time, you will have time to arrive to SJO, go to Tortuguero on the way to or from S. Caribbean (a night by SJO might be required for an early morning departure toward Tortuguero, boat access only), then continue to S. Caribbean (e.g., Cahuita National Park, etc.). In our two trips to that coast, incl. one for 2 wks, we were unable to use our snorkelling equipment once, due to waves and poor water visibility, incl. in Cahuita NP.

In the past, we snorkelled on the Pacific side, but found the experience not impressive, in comparison to some other destinations like Roatan, for ex.

If you go elsewhere, go in Dec., before the peak winter holiday season starts.

See for average weather and availability by months, and for S. Caribbean - average amounts of rainfall by months - . The key is Average, nothing is guaranteed for the few days you might be there.

For Destinations summary guide, you may want to read .

There are ready made 1-wk long itineraries that might get you started: .

See the Top Qns about CR on the right of the screen for Travelling Options in CR. It has a lot of links for each type of transportation.

Edited: 3 years ago
Re: Where to stay for our first trip to Costa Rica?

2. Re: Where to stay for our first trip to Costa Rica?

There isn't a "one size fits all" option. It depends on your own personal interests. For first timers, I would stick with the popular options. They are popular for a reason.

If you want to go fishing, that means close to the ocean. The fishing is better in April around the Central Pacific than further North. So I would think that Manuel Antonio is a must do. This also give you beach time, ziplines, and lots of nature options.

For the rest of the trip, I would say check out Monteverde or Arenal.

Monteverde is all about getting into the nature. Great nature reserves and hiking. Fantastic birding too. This is also where the commercial zip line was invented, and I think the best in the country are still here.

Arenal used to be famous for the live volcano. But the volcano has been sleepy for the last few years. While it still dominates the landscape, it isn't the attraction it once was. So this region has reinvented itself as the premier spot in the country for adventure experiences. Ziplines, water fall rappelling (canyoning), ATV tours, whitewater rafting, etc. Of course, there are numerous hot spring resorts here. All at different price points and varying levels of luxury.

I personally prefer to fly in and out of San Jose (SJO), especially if Manuel Antonio is in the mix.

I hope this helps. Let me know if I can offer any further advice.

Warm Regards,

Pat Hewitt

Costa Rica Travel Exchange

Edited: 3 years ago
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Hi,guys!

My wife and I are going to Vietnam for the first time in May.

We are early 40s and love Thailand(been over 20 times between us).

We mainly head for the shops,markets, street food and bars for a few beers to round off most days.Not massively into the beach.

We understand that it's not going to be the same as Thailand(and that's fine),just wanted to put over what we enjoy there and what we would like to see some of in Vietnam.

We got an absolute steal with the flights that we couldn't turn down (287pp from LHR),but we are only there for 2 weeks,no thanks to work! 

We land in HCMC around 11pm on the 5th,so it'll be straight to bed!

We are thinking of flying straight to Nha Trang in the morning for 4/5 days,then get the train to Quy Nhon for 1 night (saves us getting a cabin on the sleeper train and we want to see the scenery.),then train to Hoi An for around 5 nights,then fly back to HCMC for 2 nights before flying home on the 18th.

1. We are a bit concerned about the amount of Russians in Nha Trang(had terrible experiences with them in Sharm Egypt.),but we think it could cater for us with the bars,shops etc. Will 4 nights be enough?

2. Will 1 day and night in Quy Nhon be enough? It seems quiet and not overly touristy(which we would really enjoy too).

3. Will 2 days and nights be enough in HCMC?(or lose a day somewhere else to gain another day there?)

Sorry,it's long winded! Just want to cram in a fair bit on our first trip,then if we like it as much as I think we will,then we'll be back for longer next time with a view of doing the North,Hanoi and Halong Bay.

Thanks in advance! 

Scott.
Hi there,

My parents are travelling to Vietnam next month. I am trying to facilitate them with their trip. All answers appreciated 

1. Is it safe to drink tap water, brush teeth, eat salad etc?

2. What is most appropriate day and night time wear ie do they need long sleeve linen clothing?

3. What level DEET do they need to apply to prevent mossie bites?

4. On average how much per day in american dollars will they need. Hotel bed & breakfast paid in advance.

Many thanks in advance
1, always been lucky with food and drink and have tried many things in both countries. We drink bottled and use tap for teeth. We have ice and salads. As I said we might be lucky.

2, loose, light and quick drying clothing as it will be humid and hot. A cardi is useful or a lightweight fleece type zip up.

3, we use 50% deet, bought some great stuff called Expedition off the internet and never got bitten. It also didnt smell so awful.

4, we take sterling to Vietnam and change it there. We got best rates at the gold shops but it wasnt much better than hotels. We also use the ATMs. Its not worth getting currency before you go, you get better rates at the airport when you arrive. IMO. If the hotel gave arranged pick up that is usually covered by the hotel so no taxi fare.

Im not sure if you need a visa from Ireland, if so you pay in dollars but thats the only time you would use them.

In Cambodia the same applies to most questions and we took dollars there. Make sure none are marked or damaged else they wont exchange them, even in banks.

One more big of advice, get your parents a short list of some restaurants to head for. There are plenty of low priced decent local restaurants but not always easy to find and it can be a little daunting especially in the madness of Hanoi or Phnom Penh.

Its great you are helping them, they will get far more out of their trip with a bit of planning and places to head for. Also beware of taxi scams. I warned my friend who was there in Feb and she she still got into a bad situation. Better to get hotels to arrange or book them inside the airport. Hope they have a wonderful time, both countries are beautiful.
Re: 2nd trip to Japan - where to base for 1 week ?

3. Re: 2nd trip to Japan - where to base for 1 week ?

I would stay mostly in Nagasaki with perhaps a night of two in a spa town like Yufuin and some interesting day trips. Nagasaki has a different atmosphere from Tokyo or Kyoto.

You can connect directly to a flight to Nagasaki at Narita. Depending on the airline, sometimes same day connections are free.

Shikoku and Kyushu are my favourite part of Japan but you haven't said what you enjoyed in Japan on your first trip.

I believe that Nagasaki has a huge festival in October so your timing may depend on how you feel about crowds versus the sheer exuberant joy of Japanese festivals.
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We're planning a July trip to South Lake Tahoe with our 5 year old. We plan to meet up with friends that will be camping in the same area. II'm not into sleeping outside so we're trying to decide hotel or cabin for us and looking for recommendations. We plan to do kid friendly hikes, boat, beach kind of stuff while out here.

Do cabins typically have air conditioning? Is it cool enough that you don't need it? We're from the east with humidity so A/C in July is required typically.

Are there any sites you recommend (besides Trip Advisor) to help me get better acquainted with the area?

Any special things I should know taking a kid? Things that are must do, things to avoid?

I really appreciate all the comments.
It looks like the Gary Griffith vs the PSC matter is set to go all the way to the Privy Council. But Griffith's lead attorney, Senior Counsel Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj tells TV6, the determination should be quick, as he has already put the Privy Council on alert.
The Russian occupation occupying forces continue to provoke combat confrontations, with three enemy attacks on Ukrainian positions recorded over the past 24 hours, the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) headquarters has reported.

"Ceasefire violations do not cease. In the Luhansk sector, the enemy used anti-tank grenade launchers and large-caliber machineguns near Luhanske, as well as large-caliber machineguns near Troitske," reads the report.

In the Donetsk sector, the enemy fired from small arms from the temporarily occupied village of Staromykhailivka at the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Krasnohorivka.

"One Ukrainian serviceman was wounded as a result of enemy fire. The condition of our defender is satisfactory. He was taken to a military mobile hospital and received the necessary amount of medical aid," reads the report.

op
The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine is intensifying its actions to recover fines from Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman gave the respective instruction to the Justice Ministry, according to the government portal.

"Ukraine's position in the situation with Gazprom must be strict and consistent. Gazprom must comply with the Stockholm Arbitration verdict and also comply with the requirements of the Ukrainian antimonopoly authority and the decisions of the Ukrainian courts. Today, we talked about our actions in this regard with Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko," Groysman said on Wednesday, March 7.

He recalled that the formation of a package of claims by NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine against Gazprom in the Stockholm court in 2014 had also resulted in a number of decisions of the antimonopoly bodies of the European Union and Ukraine on violation of the monopoly legislation. Therefore, in January 2016, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine imposed a fine of almost UAH 86 billion on Gazprom for abuse of its monopoly position in Ukraine's natural gas market. The amount doubled in a year. Gazprom tried to challenge the decision of the Antimonopoly Committee, but the courts of all instances recognized the legality of Ukraine's claims.

The executive proceeding in this case is conducted by the Department of State Enforcement Service of the Ukrainian Justice Ministry on the basis of a court decision on the recovery of UAH 171.9 billion from Gazprom to the general fund of the state budget of Ukraine.

The seizure of assets belonging to Gazprom in Ukraine began in this case, Groysman said.

According to Groysman, "in the current situation, we must combine all our efforts to make Gazprom fulfill all its obligations. The Russian monopoly must bear strict responsibility for non-fulfillment of its obligations."

As reported, on February 28, the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce obliged Gazprom to pay NJSC Naftogaz $4.63 billion in compensation for the failure to meet its gas transit obligations. According to Naftogaz, this ruling means that Gazprom must pay Ukraine about $2.56 billion, taking into account the final payment for gas supplied in 2014 and 2015.

Gazprom, after the Stockholm arbitration issued a ruling not in its favor, launched the procedure for terminating contracts for the supply and transit of gas with Ukraine's Naftogaz.
Today, on March 8, someone celebrates the holiday of spring and femininity, and someone marks International Women's Day.

In 1977, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by member states, in accordance with their historical and national traditions. It also called for the creation of favorable conditions for the elimination of discrimination against women and for their full and equal involvement in social development. This decision was taken after International Women's Year (1975) and the UN Decade for Women (1976-1985), which had previously been proclaimed by the General Assembly. The theme for International Women's Day this year is "Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women's Lives."

Historically, it so happened that women's position was critical at the beginning of modern times. In most countries women were considered lower than men and unable to make decisions and participate in the political and state building process. Men dominated everywhere  in education, medicine, science, politics. The first female doctors, educators, scientists, politicians, businesswomen were similar to those daredevils who, plucking up extraordinary courage and will, dared to break out from gender segregation.

For over a century women have been defending their rights, fighting for equality with men. And even at the beginning of the 21st century, it has not lost its relevance. According to the UN, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, call for change and celebrate properly manifestations of courage and determination by ordinary women who played a crucial role in the history of their countries and communities.
Moscow also remains well-prepared to conduct a hybrid warfare intervention in the Baltics similar to what they did in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution.

U.S. leaders and their European allies are unprepared for the ways in which Russia's President Vladimir Putin is poised to wage war in Ukraine and the Baltics, according to a report by the Institute of the Study of War titled "Russia's Military Posture: Ground Forces Order of Battle".

"The Russian military is well positioned to launch a short-notice conventional war in Ukraine and a hybrid war in the Baltic States, the opposite of what Western leaders seem to expect in each theater," the study reads, according to LB.ua.

Read alsoRussian forces in Donbas almost equal those of all NATO allies in Europe  Ukraine official"NATO leaders increasingly warn of the threat of a conventional invasion of the Baltic States (or even Western Europe). But Russian ground forces are not deployed or organized to initiate a short-notice conventional war in that region. They have, however, redeployed and reorganized since 2014 in a way that would support a rapid mechanized invasion of Ukraine from both north and east, while remaining well-prepared to conduct a hybrid warfare intervention in the Baltics similar to what they did in Ukraine after the Maidan Revolution," it further reads.

Read alsoNATO says Russian warnings against allies "unacceptable"The study calls on the United States and its partners to re-evaluate the most likely Russian courses of action and reconsider the mix of military and non-military tools required to defend NATO allies and Ukraine from potential Russian aggression.
Diplomats and experts urged the Ukrainian authorities to create an independent anti-graft court.

On March 8, the Washington-based Friends of Ukraine Network (FOUN) released An Appeal for Decisive Action in Ukraines Fight Against Corruption.

The Foundation applauds that Ukraine has done more on reform in many sectors over the last four years than in the previous two decades, noting that "it needs to show greater leadership, effort and commitment to combat the pervasive, long-standing corruption that exists and has existed in public and private life".

"This was a principal demand of the Maidan Revolution of Dignity, and surveys show this remains a top priority of the people of Ukraine," the appeal reads.

Read alsoUPDATED: Ukraine's bill on anti-corruption court passes its first readingDiplomats and experts "strongly urge the Verkhovna Rada and the Ukrainian government to take immediate and urgent action on a number of priorities, including creating a specialized and independent anti-corruption court of the highest integrity in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission and conditions of the IMF program, supporting and not undermining the work of and ending the politically motivated attacks on the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Special Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office, reforming the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, and rescind the controversial clause in the existing anti-corruption law requiring those engaged in anti-corruption activities to file yearly asset declarations.

It is noted that politicians should not see the upcoming elections as an excuse to delay or compromise advancing these and other reforms.

Read alsoHigh profile prosecutor says launching anti-corruption court in 2018 impossibleThe appeal was signed by Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council, ex-Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Michael Carpenter, former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine William Miller, Steven Pifer and William Taylor, and others.

As UNIAN reported earlier, on March 1, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted in the first reading the draft law "On the High Anti-Corruption Court", submitted by the president on December 22.

Minister of Finance Oleksandr Danyliuk believes the bill will pass its second reading as early as April.

According to NABU Director Artem Sytnyk, the adoption of the law on the ACC before late March will allow actually launching it before the end of this year. Ukraine's international partners, as well as NGOs, have previously expressed their claims to the bill, in particular, as regards limitations of the role of international experts as advisers in the selection and appointment of judges.

In the opinion of international partners, including the International Monetary Fund, the full-fledged role of international experts in the appointment of judges is the key to the ACC independence and its ability to effectively perform its functions.

The creation of an anti-corruption court in line with the recommendations of the Venice Commission is one of the conditions for Ukraine's continued cooperation with the IMF, which is necessary to repay the country's external debts in the coming years.

According to an Atlantic Council expert Anders Aslund, the termination of cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF will lead to a significant devaluation of the hryvnia.
"Mistakes need to be fixed," Poroshenko said earlier.

Ukraine should roll back requirements for anti-corruption activists and journalists to declare their personal income and assets online.

The Kyiv visit on March 11-12 of EU top diplomat Federica Mogherini is an excellent opportunity for Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko to deliver on his promises to the EU and Ukraines other international partners in this regard, according to Human Rights Watch.

These requirements, embedded in a law adopted in March 2017, conflate state officials, who have a responsibility to divulge their assets because they enjoy certain privileges of office and their work is funded by taxpayers, with regular citizens who report on issues of public interest.

"This starkly contradicts the governments commitments to fighting corruption," the report says.

Poroshenko himself, in his annual address to parliament last September, called the adoption of these requirements our common mistake.

And mistakes need to be fixed, he added.

What the presidential administration proposed was two draft laws that would rightly drop the declaration requirement for anti-corruption activists but, surprisingly, add additional reporting for all nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine. How this is a good solution is anyones guess. Experts on NGO law have criticized these draft laws, calling them unnecessary, lacking legitimate aim, and out of line with international standards. The draft laws are currently under review by the Venice Commission, the Council of Europes top advisory body on constitutional matters, whose opinion is expected this month.

Read alsoProsecutors probe possible corruption among top anti-graft operativesMeanwhile, the April 1 deadline for activists online declarations is three weeks away. The activists, who are the driving force behind Ukraines ambitious anti-corruption reform, face two years in prison if they fail to file. The law also affects people providing various services to anti-corruption NGOs -- clean offices, deliver coffee and water, or do graphic design work.

The report urges the Ukrainian president President Poroshenko "not go forward with a proposal that would harm all independent groups in Ukraine".
Militants employed large-caliber machine guns and anti-tank grenade launchers.

Over the past day, March 7, Russian proxies violated ceasefire three times. One Ukrainian soldier was wounded amid the attacks, the press service of Ukraine's forces reported on Facebook.

"There is no full-out cessation of silence regime. Russian-occupation forces continue to provoke Ukrainian defenders to combat confrontations," the report says.

Read alsoRussia stages another "Ukraine ceasefire violation" show in DonbasIn the Luhansk direction, the enemy fired from anti-tank grenade launchers and large-caliber machine guns near Luhanske and also from large-caliber machine guns  near Troyitske.

In the Donetsk direction, the enemy located in the temporarily occupied Staromykhailivka fired from small arms at positions of the Ukrainian forces in the area of Krasnohorivka.
The latest Italian elections outcome came as a surprise for all racers. Some saw an unexpected failure, while some enjoyed striking success. For example, Silvio Berlusconi was convinced that his Forza Italia would receive at least 25% of the popular vote but saw a mere 15%. Berlusconi's satellite Mateo Salvini, leader of the Northern League secured an unexpected 19% support allowing him to nominate a prime minister from the alliance of right-wing forces. But will Brussels agree to the idea that Italy will be presented by Vladimir Putin's friend?

Another surprise was 32% for the Five Star Movement (M5S) founded by a comedian and blogger Beppe Grillo, who advocates the principles of direct democracy and review of relations with the EU. Grillo was even heard speaking in favor of a globally unrecognized referendum in the Ukrainian Crime ...

It is worth noting that Italy was actually divided

All these parties have repeatedly spoken up promoting a review of sanctions policy against Russia and promised to pedal the issue once they came to power. But it is unlikely that these words will turn into real action. That's because in matters of sanctions, Brussels even managed to "bend" Hungarians, who has consistently supported easing policies toward Russia.

It is worth noting that Italy was actually divided. The South has most voted for M5S populists due to the crisis and poverty. Grillo vowed radical reforms in the economy and lifting taxes. The country's North and Center, on the other hand, cast their votes for the "alliance of the right"  Forza Italia, the Northern League, and the Brothers of Italy.

The leftists, represented by the Democratic Party, failed the election with 19% of the vote and have already announced their retreat to the opposition. Therefore, coalition talks will be conducted by "pro-Putin populists": the right-wing forces and M5S. Experts don't rule out possible re-election amid low chances for an actual union of the two camps.

Ukraine should already start developing productive communication with representatives of the winner parties

However, there are several important conclusions regarding Ukraine in the context of Italy's elections. First, it should be remembered that the demand for populists is now prevailing across the EU. The latest elections in Italy are a great example This is the answer to both the economic and bureaucratic crises, high taxes, and failure to adequately address the influx of migrants.

Secondly, the right-wing forces and M5S share a positive attitude to the Kremlin's policies. Therefore, if said parties form a government, Italy's rhetoric on defending Russia in the EU will intensify.

Thirdly, Ukraine should already start developing productive communication with representatives of the winner parties.

Finally, although Italy still chairs the OSCE, new political forces are unlikely to drastically affect the organization's operations as the monitoring mission's policies are approved by all member states.

Taras Semeniuk is a Ukrainian political analyst
Colonel Gregory Wood, vice commander of the 30th Space Wing, and members of the community discuss the base's accomplishments, at the the annual State of Vandenberg Air Force Base luncheon hosted by the Lompoc and Santa Maria chambers of commerce.

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Former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter remain in a critical condition.

Britain will methodically work out who carried out a nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in a quiet English city, then take action, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Thursday.

Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in hospital in a critical condition since they were found unconscious on Sunday on a bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury, according to Reuters.

British media and some politicians have speculated that the Russian state could be behind the attack - suggestions dismissed by Moscow as part of an anti-Russian campaign.

When we have all the evidence of what took place we will, if it is appropriate, attribute it to somebody, she said during an interview on BBC radio.

If that is the case then we will have a plan in place. We need to be very methodical, take a cool head and be based on the facts, not on rumor, she said.

Read alsoRussian FSB earlier used substance that poisoned ex-Russian spy SkripalPolice said on Wednesday that a nerve agent was used against Skripal and Yulia. A British police officer who was also harmed by the substance was now able to talk to people although he remained in a serious condition, Rudd said.

Scientific tests by government experts have identified the specific nerve agent used, which will help identify the source, but authorities have refused to disclose the details.

Rudd was pressed during her BBC interview on whether Britain had been too soft on Russia following the murder in London in 2006 of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, sending out a message that such acts could be carried out with impunity.

She strongly denied this and hinted that if Russia turned out to be implicated in the attack on Skripal, action would be taken against it.

We are absolutely robust about any crimes committed on these streets in the UK. There is nothing soft about the UKs response to any sort of state activity in this country, she said.

We know exactly what were doing. We are going to be waiting for the evidence. When we have it, if we attribute, we will have a plan.
Minister for Privatisation Daniyal Aziz chaired a high level meeting on Thursday with the officials of Aviation Division, Civil Aviation Authority, Ministry of Finance, PIA, SECP.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Minister for Privatisation Daniyal Aziz chaired a high level meeting on Thursday with the officials of Aviation Division, Civil Aviation Authority, Ministry of Finance, PIA, SECP.

The meeting was held to discuss the proposed segregation of core and non-core business of PIA, prior to valuation of assets and liabilities. The Cabinet Committee on Privatization had approved the Privatisation Program in October, 2013 which included Restructuring of Pakistan International Airlines Corporation ('PIAC'), followed by divestment of GoP equity stakes to strategic partner with management control ("Transaction").

It may be recalled that the consortium was appointed by PC for the transaction which was to be undertaken in two phases i.e. formulation of restructuring & divestment strategy, following with facilitating private sector partnership in the core operations of PIACL.

Addressing the meeting, Daniyal Aziz said that only minority share of the airline is being offered to a third party as per unanimously passed law by all parties in the Parliament, the management control will remain with the government in accordance with that law.

There was no impact on employees whatsoever and they will continue to perform their duties as they are performing now. The minister further added that those deliberately trying to stir up trouble in the employees should not create false impression to politicize the process, already agreed upon by all.

Daniyal Aziz said that the recent board of Directors of Privatisation Commission meeting, CCOP and cabinet passed and ratified the plans presented by the Minister/Chairman Privatisation for the PIA transaction.

It was proposed in the meeting that In order to limit the interest of potential strategic investor to the ownership and management of the core aviation function carve out of non-essential assets and liabilities to a Government entity.

Given the quantum of outstanding liabilities vis- vis the intrinsic value of underlying assets (and operating cash flow of the business), it was proposed to carve-out legacy liabilities from PIA to improve the financial situation of the core business and enable future investment.

It was also proposed that non essential real estate assets including Roosevelt Hotel USA, hotel Scribe in France, domestic and foreign properties, Precision Engineering Complex which would be retained by the Government of Pakistan.

The airline business would attain positive balance sheet after transfer of legacy liabilities from PIACL which will further enhance its operational and structural outlook. It is pertinent to mention that financial advisors of privatization commission had last year presented three models for the financial restructuring and segregation of core and non-core assets and liabilities of PIA.

In the present meeting the participants deliberated upon those three models in detail and proposed the implementation of segregation. The participants agreed that the proposal to restructure PIA will be finalized after due process in accordance with the PIA conversion Act 2016.
A two-days National Conference on 'Recent Advancements in Pharmaceutical Sciences' started at the University of Sargodha (UoS) where scholars from various national universities shared their ideas, research studies and articles.

SARGODHA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :A two-days National Conference on 'Recent Advancements in Pharmaceutical Sciences' started at the University of Sargodha (UoS) where scholars from various national universities shared their ideas, research studies and articles.

The conference was organized by the College of Pharmacy, UoS, in collaboration with the Higher education Commission of Pakistan and Punjab Higher Education Commission, Lahore. VC Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad, informed the conference that enabling students to achieve maximum in their future endeavors and to ensure their maximum input in the development of society.

He said every educational institution should act as a platform through which students could learn more.

And when they pass out, they would face difficulties in their professional lives, he added.

Prof Dr Muhammad Jamshaid from the College of Pharmacy, University of Central Punjab Lahore, while addressing the ceremony as chief guest, said that holding a national conference on recent advancements in pharmaceutical sciences is quite laudable as drugs manufacturing plays vital role in safeguarding human health.

In his welcome remarks, Dr Sajid Bashir, Dean College of Pharmacy, informed the participants that aim of the national conference is to discuss current trends, setting objectives and targets for future.
(@rukhshanmir)

Sakib Foric, Ambassador of the Bosnia and Herzegovina called on Federal Minister for Defence Production, Rana Tanveer Hussain here Thursday.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Sakib Foric, Ambassador of the Bosnia and Herzegovina called on Federal Minister for Defence Production, Rana Tanveer Hussain here Thursday.

The Federal Minister welcomed the dignitary very warmly and highlighted the importance of relations of both the countries. Strategies of cooperation in the field of Defence Industry were discussed in the meeting.

Federal Minister mentioned that a delegation led by Nermin Dzindic Federal Minister of Energy of Bosnia & Herzegovina visited Pakistan in January 2018 which also visited Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF) and NRTC to explore the avenues of cooperation.

The Minister also said that the vision of the government of Pakistan was to enhance relationship with Bosnia in future. He stated that agreement between Pakistan and Bosnia provided legal framework and could play effective role to strengthen and diversify the Defence Industrial Cooperation.

Tanveer Hussain highlighted the importance of joint board meeting which was held alternatively in Bosnia and Pakistan. Rana Tanveer Hussain, expressed desire for greater participation by Bosnian defence industry in the IDEAS 2018 being held at Karachi in November 2018.
Federal Minister for Interior, Ahsan Iqbal said here Thursday the country has been put on road to economic progress and development after significant improvement in the law and order situation owing to the government's effective polices and sacrifices of law enforcement agencies and the role of Frontier Corps in establishment of the Government's writ in restive areas was highly commendable.

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Interior, Ahsan Iqbal said here Thursday the country has been put on road to economic progress and development after significant improvement in the law and order situation owing to the government's effective polices and sacrifices of law enforcement agencies and the role of Frontier Corps in establishment of the Government's writ in restive areas was highly commendable.

Addressing the passing out parade of 25th batch of Frontier Corps KP recruits at FC Training academy at Warsak, the Interior Minister said the civil and military leadership have taken unanimous and bold decisions that proved very fruitful in establishing peace in the country to a great extent and as such Pakistan was progressing with each passing day and the confidence of foreign investors were restored after CPEC.

Pakistan, he said, to join the club of 25 most economic developed nations by year 2025 in the wake of CPEC opportunities gifted by PMLN Government for people of Pakistan. He said political stability was imperative for economic progress an development.

Inspector General Frontier Corps North, Major General Muhammad Wasim Ashraf was present on the occasion. Speaking on the occasion, the Interior Minister said the operations being conducted under 'Radd-ul- Fassad' against terrorists and their facilitators would prove a last nail in their coffin.

The Minister said Operation Zarb e Azb had broken back of terrorists and established the writ of government in FATA. Operations Radul Fasad and Zarb e Azab and National Action Plan (NAP) have played key role in elimination of terrorism and establishment of durable peace in the country, he said, adding Operation Radd ul Fasaad will continue till elimination of last terrorist in the country.

He said the government would ensure security of lives and properties of people and no compromise would be made on this issue.

"The capacity of FC has been significantly enhanced under the National Action Plan that included establishment of new wings in the paramilitary force and provision of basic training and modern equipments and weaponry." Minister said the present govt has equipped FC with latest technologies and weaponry through a comprehensive reforms package and make it enable to meet the present day challenges and various programs were initiated in this regard.

"I am hopeful that the govt's steps would certainly enhance the professional competence of FC and the force along with others law enforcement agencies would continue to play active role in elimination of terrorism and for establishment peace in the country." "You are lucky to become part of a brave force that was engaged in defending the ideological and territorial borders of the country, which is a great honour for all of you" he told the passing out recruits.

Minister paid tributes to IGFC for his role in improving professional capabilities of the paramilitary force and the sacrifices offered by FC troops and other security personnel for defence of the country.

"Those FC troops who sacrificed their lives for defense of the country and protection of people lives are the real heroes of the country," he said. "The nation has high expectations from the pass out recruits who will follow the rich traditions set by the predecessors and will give every sacrifices for defense and security of the motherland." Earlier, the Minister was presented Guard of Honour.

The smartly contingents made an impressive march past received warm applause from participants. A total of 608 recruits belonging to different areas were passed out on this occasion. The participants also appreciated the impressive PT and drill show of the recruits and applauded them.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Thursday said Pakistan has come a long way in women empowerment in all spheres, and hoped their contributions would continue to make the country strong and prosperous in the days ahead.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Thursday said Pakistan has come a long way in women empowerment in all spheres, and hoped their contributions would continue to make the country strong and prosperous in the days ahead.

Speaking here at an interactive session with women from different walks of life to mark the international women's day, here at the PM Office, the Prime Minister said the women were making remarkable progress in health, education, sciences, politics and defence of the country.

The Prime Minister said the government was committed to facilitate the entry of women into every field and ensure they get equal opportunities, facilities and emoluments. He said the Pakistani women have not only been recognized at national level, but also at international level and the country has top notch front line combat pilots, educationists, health and IT experts.

He said Pakistan also boasts having the first Muslim woman head of government. Prime Minister Abbasi said the women in Pakistan have come a long way and achieved a lot, however in a lighter vein added that it was now time for the men to worry.

He said gone were the days when the country used to have a quota for women, now, he said, he believed it was time that the men need to get a quota. He said in every educational institution he went of the top ten students, seven were women.

He said the women have done their bit, now it was for the men to meet the challenge.

He said the women were excelling in all areas, however acknowledge that they still have a long way to go. He said the employers he has met, recognize that the women workers were more productive and hard working.

Abbasi however said the women in business still have a wide spectrum to cover and said there were barriers that need to be done away with. He said a number of women were part of the cabinet and were holding key posts.

He mentioned the 60 reserved seats for women in the parliament, and said he would have preferred that they too come through direct election. In this regard he said there was a need to create more opportunities for the women to come to mainstream politics.

The Prime Minister said the day was an opportunity to renew the commitment for individual and collective efforts in a way so as to protect social, economic, social and political rights of the women.

He said the government has taken several legal and administrative measures in the past few years to protect women rights. Abbasi asked the gathering to pledge to protect individual and collective rights, financially, politically and socially, for the women and said in this regard everyone has to play an active role.

The Prime Minister later went around different tables and discussed with the groups, issues related to national economy, politics, health, education and their impact on the women.
President Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday said the progress and development of a country lies in the welfare of its people and this continuous process inevitably requires participation of each and every individual.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :President Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday said the progress and development of a country lies in the welfare of its people and this continuous process inevitably requires participation of each and every individual.

Addressing at a the launch of National Socio-economic Registry (NSER) of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), the President said the prgramme would help BISP and other relevant organizations of the government to reach the destitute and marginalized segments of the society more easily and transparently.

President Mamnoon Hussain said the growing workforce of Pakistan, which was the sixth largest country in terms of population with sixty percent of youth, was a big asset. He said different avenues of development and progress were open for a country with such a youth bulge, however regretted that Pakistan stood second to certain countries in the African continent in terms of educational backwardness.

President Mamnoon said education with specific focus on professional training for youth should be given top priority and needed an immediate and effective attention. He said NSER by BISP was a step in this direction for collection of accurate data on poverty and lauded the BISP administration was constantly striving under its dynamic leadership to meet the challenges and improve the effectiveness of this programme.

He said the data would help to alleviate poverty by facilitating the establishment of an endowment fund, attracting the attention of corporate sector and promoting e-commerce. The President said the step would not only help public sector organizations to carry the development process forward, but would also facilitate civil society, national and international development partners to improve their performance.

He said the women beneficiaries who graduated this programme could play a vital role in this respect and commended the establishment of the committees comprising these women. He said it would lead the people living below poverty line towards self-reliance and play their due role in national development process.

The President expressed hope that this would result in rapid empowerment and greater employment of women which was an effective and quick way to alleviate poverty. Chairperson Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Marvi Memon highlighted the salient features of the programme.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested three persons Usman, Asim and Mushtaq who had been deported from Turkey, upon their arrival at Sialkot International Airport on Thursday.

SIALKOT, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested three persons Usman, Asim and Mushtaq who had been deported from Turkey, upon their arrival at Sialkot International Airport on Thursday. Mufakhar Adeel, FIA deputy director, said that the Agency had sent the accused behind the bars after registering separate cases against them.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

International Women's day held in the provincial capital on Thursday (March 8) like in other parts of the world to raise awareness about women empowerment and gender equality.

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :International Women's day held in the provincial capital on Thursday (March 8) like in other parts of the world to raise awareness about women empowerment and gender equality.

The theme of the day for the year was "Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women's Iives". Special gatherings, conferences, exhibitions, and festivals were organised by the different organisations to mark the day.

Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif issued a message on the day and said that respect to womenfolk and protection of their rights were part of islamic teachings.

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari also issued a message on the occasion and said the PPP believed in empowerment of women in society.

The Aurat March, a rally for a call for collective action, was managed which commenced from Hamdard Hall, Lyton Road here. The Aurat March was organised collectively by women from diverse classes, professions, ethnicities and different sections of society.
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Stakeholders, academicians, intellectuals and doctors stressed the need that women should get education as first priority adding that because education is key to the progress of every society.

QUETTA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Stakeholders, academicians, intellectuals and doctors stressed the need that women should get education as first priority adding that because education is key to the progress of every society.

They expressed these views while speaking at ceremony held to mark World Women's Day at Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University. Members of Balochistan Assemby including Yasmeen Lehri and Masooma Hayat, Vice Chancellor of SBKW University, Rukhsana Jabeen, Dr, Naila Ehsan, teachers and a large number of girls students attended the ceremony.

MPA Yasmeen Lehri said women have been playing important role in different walks of life including politics, health, and education. She said women should struggle for their due rights adding that today women have strong voices for their rights as they are sitting in decision making lawmaker bodies fighting for their legitimate rights.

Lehri said women reached in the parliament after hectic efforts and with cooperation of their party leaders. "Girl students are future of the country. They should play significant role for achieving their aims by completing their education", she added.

She attributed International Women Day to late rights leader, Asma Jahangir saying she had struggled for empowering women and protection of human rights. MPA Masooma Hayat said Balochistan's women were not backward adding that but they did not utilize their skills and abilities for protection of their due rights.

She said that women of rural areas were not aware about International Women Day. She said we should initiate awareness campaigns to aware women of rural areas about Women's Day. She said that girls should be provided with education.

Masooma said women parliamentarians had played important role in passage of some bills in the assembly for protection of rights of women. "Measures are being taken to establish women medical college in Quetta for imparting education to women in health sector," she said.

Vice Chancellor of Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University (SBKWU) Rukhsana Jabeen said education was important for every woman and added that by acquiring education, they could be able to face challenges of world.

She thanked fathers of girl students for supporting their daughters in various sectors including education and other walks of life. MPAs also congratulated the Vice Chancellor of SBKWU and teachers for successfully arranging the ceremony on International Women Day in university.

Meanwhile, National Party (NP) women wings marked International Women's Day under the leadership of Yasmeen Lehri at Press Club Quetta. While Pakistan People Party (PPP) Women Wings took out a rally to mark the day under the leadership of Ghazal Golla in which a large number of women participated.
The Executive Board of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Thursday ordered conducting twelve inquiries, one investigation and filing one reference against various accused of indulging in corruption, mal practices and abuse of power.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The Executive board of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Thursday ordered conducting twelve inquiries, one investigation and filing one reference against various accused of indulging in corruption, mal practices and abuse of power.

The EBNAB, chaired by Chairman NAB Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal ordered closing two inquiries against Giyan Chand Israni and others, messers Kashar Textile Mills Faisalabad and others owing to inadequate evidence against the accused, said a press release.

NAB has clarified the fact that the inquiries and investigations are initiated to probe the allegations, which are not binding until proved correct. NAB would verify the allegations from the concerned accused and then decide about the veracity of the allegations and decide to proceed further or otherwise.

According to details, the (EBM) Executive Board Meeting approved filing corruption reference against Chief Executive Officer PIDC Khalid Mehmood Chadda and others for buying 17 Kanal 6 marla land illegally and causing billion of rupee losses to national kitty.

The EBM accorded approval for conducting an inquiry against former IG, FC, Baluchistan Lt Gen Ubaidullah Khan owing to his reported involvement in a dubious transaction. Another such inquiry to probe dubious transactions would also be conducted against Brig (Retd) Asad Shahzada.

The EBM approved yet another inquiry against the officers, officials of Health department Sindh, the owners/directors of Messers Almad Solutions, who are accused of corruption in illegal purchase of medical equipments, which caused Rs 377 million losses to the national kitty.

EBM also approved investigations against Dr Ahsan Ali, Vice Chancellor and officers/officials of Khan Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan to probe alleged corruption in purchase of 161 vehicles and University's petrol fund, causing millions of rupee losses to the national exchequer.

The EBM approved inquiry against officers/officials of Irrigation department to probe mal practices in awarding the contract of Ghabeer Dam, causing millions of rupee losses to national kitty. EBM accorded approval to conducting inquiry against a broker, Qari Zulfikar Ali Sialvi, Haji Abdul Ghafoor of Model Town Daska for looting people.

EBM also approved inquiry against Chief Executive Officer Messers Baham Associates Private Limited Athar Hayat, who is accused of being involved in money laundering worth billions with the help of offshore company.

Another inquiry has also been approved against the officers/officials of Land Utilisation, Board of Revenue, Sindh and messers Fazia Housing Scheme, Karachi. The Sindh revenue officers are accused of allotting the state land to Fazia Housing Scheme, Karachi, illegally.

EBM approved inquiry against director (F & P) University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar Naek Muhammad and others to probe their involvement in the corruption in the purchase of equipments, which inflicted Rs 3200 million losses to national kitty.

Another inquiry has been ordered against former provincial minister Baluchistan Jaffar George, who is accused of corruption and abuse of authority. EBM approved an inquiry against procurement committee, for MI 171-E Helicopter, Government of Baluchistan and others for inflicting million of rupees losses to national kitty by purchasing helicopter on higher rates as comparing to market.

EBM approved inquiry against former DIG,Larkana, Sian Rakhio Merani and others for having assents worth millions beyond known sources of income. EBM approved inquiry against Sardar Atif Khan Mazari, MPA, who is accused of grabbing the state land illegally.

EBM has approved closing inquiry against former minister for excise and taxation, Sindh Giyan Chand Israni and others. The meeting passed same orders of closure of inquiry against messers Kashar Textile Mills Faisalabad and others owing to insufficient evidence against them.

Talking on the occasion Justice Javed iqbal said corruption is the mother of all ills and thus its elimination is imperative. NAB officers consider the elimination of corruption as their national responsibility.

They are trying their utmost to make Pakistan corruption free. Chairman said the inquiries, investigations and verifications should be concluded within the prescribed period of ten months.NAB was strictly pursuing the policy of "Accountability for All." The first and last affiliation of NAB is with Pakistan and its people.

NAB officers must perform their duties in accordance with law, merit and transparency.
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Federal Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique Thursday said that PML-N had not finalized any name as its candidate for chairman Senate so far.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Railways Khawaja Saad Rafique Thursday said that PML-N had not finalized any name as its candidate for chairman Senate so far.

Talking to media persons, he said PML-N was grateful to all its allies who assured us of their support. He informed a team under the leadership of Raja Zafar ul haq had been formed which would approach all allies and parliamentarians to form next strategy.

He said earlier, Nawaz Sharif had suggested the name for senate chairman but it was opposed by co-chairman PPP Asif Ali Zardari.

"Only he can tell the reason",he added. He pointed out that horse trading must be opposed by all political parties as it was against democratic act adding he said PML-N had been deprived from its political symbol before and if now its voters would not be allowed to cast their vote this would effect our strength.

He further said that there was no choice except to allow an elected senator to cast his vote who had given up his other nationality. "It is an essential principle to make the elections procedure cleaner," he said.
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First Lady Begum Mehmooda Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday said the objective of observing International Women's Day is to make the country's women self-reliant and provide them an effective status in the society.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :First Lady Begum Mehmooda Mamnoon Hussain on Thursday said the objective of observing International Women's Day is to make the country's women self-reliant and provide them an effective status in the society.

Addressing at an event held here to mark the International Women's Day by Red Crescent Women Forum, Begum Mehmooda said women in the country were enjoying protection of their rights besides their representation in parliament, quota in government jobs and legislation on protection against harassment at workplace.

Begum Mehmooda said islam had provided unprecedented rights to women in the history of mankind. She said Islam does not differentiate between the rights of a man and a woman but suggests a certain balance between them to maintain an equilibrium in family and society.

She said besides their rights, the women also had certain responsibilities on them particularly ensuring best upbringing of their young generation.

She encouraged women to also contribute their services in different professional fields to match their women contemporaries in the world.

Begum Mehmooda said women in the country had played a prominent role at many fronts from participation in Pakistan Movement to resistance against dictatorship and in the fields of education and sports.

She mentioned Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, Begum Raana Liaquat Ali Khan and Begum Waqarun Nisa Noon and today's shining examples of Malala Yousafzai, Arfa Karim, Samina Baig, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Hadiqa Bashir, Anousha Rehman and Shazia Parveen who proved themselves a pride for the country.

She lauded the activities of Red Crescent Women Forum, which she said would help the Pakistani women make achievements in different fields of life. Chairman Red Crescent Society Dr Saeed Ilahi also spoke on the occasion.
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Pakistan Ambassador to Oman Ali Javed Thursday appreciated the leadership and people of Oman for hosting 272,000 Pakistani expatriates, to their country since decades.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Pakistan Ambassador to Oman Ali Javed Thursday appreciated the leadership and people of Oman for hosting 272,000 Pakistani expatriates, to their country since decades.

Delivering a lecture at the National Defence College, Oman on a topic titled Peaceful Neighbourhood, he praised five decades visionary leadership of Oman.This was his second visit to NDC. He highlighted the core strengths and strategic overlap of bilateral relations, evolving regional dynamics and Pakistan's efforts to build, protect and promote global peace and security substantiated through leading contributions to UN Peace Keeping Operations and Maritime Security and Anti-Piracy operations.

Ambassador was accorded a warm welcome by commandant NDC Major Gen Salim Bin Mussallam Bin Ali Qatan. Both praised historical bilateral linkages and committed to furthering bilateral cooperation and exchanges. The commandant then accompanies the ambassador for lecture to the 5th Round of civil defence Course 2017-18.
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Pakistan considers Afghanistan as a brother and firmly believes that both the countries share a common future, said National Security Adviser (NSA) Lt. Gen. (Retd) Nasser Khan Janjua on Thursday.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Pakistan considers Afghanistan as a brother and firmly believes that both the countries share a common future, said National Security Adviser (NSA) Lt.

Gen. (Retd) Nasser Khan Janjua on Thursday. Talking to a delegation of Afghan students from different universities, he warmly welcomed them saying "You all are dear to us as our own sons and daughters".

The NSA assured the students that their concerns would be addressed by the relevant authorities and stressed the need of designing a comprehensive policy for Afghan students studying in Pakistan to ensure that scholarships awarded by the government were effectively utilized, said a press release.

He highlighted the strengths of both the countries which for the time being were unfortunately over shadowed by the events which were neither making of Pakistan nor Afghanistan; 1979 and 9/11 but both the countries continue to suffer.

Nasser Khan Janjua reiterated that the youth of both the countries should join hands and step forward for strengthening the trust between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Together they should march towards peace essentially needed to stabilize the region.

The students appreciated the positive approach of Pakistan towards Afghanistan and also for awarding scholarships to the Afghan students. They also expressed satisfaction over their stay in Pakistan. Alongside they also discussed different problems they were facing while studying in Pakistan with regards to syllabus, medium of instruction, promotion criterion and stipend etc.
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The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), for the second consecutive year, celebrated International Women's Day on Thursday in a befitting manner, which was attended by hundred of professional women representing different walks of life.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The pakistan stock exchange (PSX), for the second consecutive year, celebrated International Women's Day on Thursday in a befitting manner, which was attended by hundred of professional women representing different walks of life.

The psx organized this programme, in collaboration with United Nations' Women Forum, World Bank and Women on Board Pakistan (WOB) forum. On behalf of the participating organizations, the 'Ring the Bell' Gong ceremony was performed by Jamshed Kazi of UN Women, Ms.

Rahat Kaunain Hassan of WOB Pakistan, Ms. Sultana Siddiqui of Hum tv, Ms. Shazia Syed of Unilever Pakistan, Ms. Sabrina Dawood of Dawood Foundation and United Kingdom's Deputy High Commissioner to Karachi Ms.

Elin Burns and two poor ladies from Tharparkar. The Gong ceremony is also a symbolic activity to pronounce the opening of the market on special occasions like International Women's Day. PSX's Chief Executive Officer, Richard Morin, in his welcome address, spoke on a better gender balance within the stock exchange.

On this day, he said, around fifty Stock Exchanges in the world held similar programmes to signify women contribution to social and economic uplift, and to promote gender equality. He said that in Pakistan there were many talented women contributing a lot in the social and economic sectors.

They should be placed on right positions to make best use of their talent.

He underlined the need for better working environment for women, where there is no harassment and disrespect to women-folk.

He assured that the PSX would have zero tolerance to harassment of women working there. He also emphasized on developing a core of good female corporate executives so that they could command as competent board directors and other top leadership positions in Pakistan's listed or non-listed companies.

Chairperson, Women on Board Pakistan, Ms. Rahat Kaunain Nafees said more efforts and better policies were needed for women empowerment. 'We want women participation on merit and equality, not quota based,' she said.

The competent and professional women should be placed in Directors and other senior positions in the public interest companies; whether listed or not. There should be at least one-third ratio for women on the boards of public limited companies.

Thus, she continued, not less than one thousand trained professional women were required. Country Representative of UN Women, Jamshed Qazi said his organization was working to transform the life of women in Pakistan.

Stock Exchanges in the world were playing very active role in this regard. PPP , Member of National Assembly, Ms. Shazia Sobia Aslam highlighted the leading role of women parliamentarians in legislation. 'I am also working on and pursuing passage of Women Empowerment Bill,' she added.
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The present government has taken practical steps, adopted effective policies and enacted a number of laws for empowerment of women and the international community has appreciated all the initiatives unfurled in this regard.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The present government has taken practical steps, adopted effective policies and enacted a number of laws for empowerment of women and the international community has appreciated all the initiatives unfurled in this regard.

This was stated by Minister of State for Information, Broadcasting, National History and Literary Heritage Ms Marriyum Aurangzeb while addressing a ceremony held here at the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry in regard to International Women's Day.

She said that the government had also given preference to women in BISP, Prime Minister's Youth Programme and other similar initiatives with a view to encourage and empower them. Women could play a better role in the development of the society provided they were encouraged and afforded due opportunities by the society for that role, she added.

Marriyum said that since the inception of Pakistan the women beginning from Fatima Jinnah up to Kalsoom Nawaz had waged a struggle for democracy and Benazir Bhutto gave a new meaning to politics in our part of the world.

Benazir Bhutto rendered myriad of sacrifices for the cause of democracy and highlighted real identity of Pakistan at the global level, she added. The minister said the right to vote was bestowed on the Pakistani women much before some of the developed countries of the world.

She said that suppressing the independence of women through archaic and redundant traditions was also a crime, adding that people should avoid indulging in politics over women and making negative comments about them.

She said that it was a moment of great rejoicing to see ceremonies being held at the Presidency, Prime Minister House and all over the country to celebrate the International Women's Day with unremitting enthusiasm.

She said that the purpose to celebrate the day was to create awareness in the society regarding its responsibilities with respect to rights of women.

She said that it was also a collective responsibility of the parliament, government and civil society to play their due role for empowerment of women.

It was the duty of the government to adopt policies and enact legislation in that regard, she said, adding that the environment within the family and training also had a significant role in ensuring real empowerment of women.

Marriyum said that if the women were granted their rights and independence then they would never be a weak link in the society. The minister pointed out that Quaid-i-Azam without giving any formal official position to Fatima Jinnah always treated her as his equal and the purpose was to ensure gender equality.

Fehmida Mirza ran the National Assembly admirably during her five-year stint as its speaker, she added. She said that the women were not lagging behind their male counterparts in any sphere of the national life.

She said that if women were provided social opportunities it could end injustices that the women folk have to face in the society. The minister observed that no religion was against the rights of women and islam laid greater emphasis on them.

Marriyum said that apart from the Federal government the Punjab government had also done legislation for the rights of women which practically led to their empowerment. She said the women in positions of power should make efforts for the women from weaker segments of the society so that they could also achieve parity with them.

She said that Pakistan was one of those countries where immaculate policies were adopted and legislation was done but there were invariably challenges in regard to their implementation. The minister said that 50% of the world population consisted of women and if they did not take part in the development process then how could somebody even talk about development.

She said that if justice was not done in conformity with all its elements it always had repercussions.
The Senate Forum for Policy Research (SFPR) Thursday lauded the services rendered by Chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani on completion of his three years tenure.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The Senate Forum for Policy Research (SFPR) Thursday lauded the services rendered by Chairman Senate Mian Raza Rabbani on completion of his three years tenure.

The SFPR, a think tank comprising of serving and former Senators, passed a resolution recognizing the cooperation extended by the Chairman and the Senate of Pakistan for their cooperation in the performance of our functions during our tenure.

The forum performed its functions to the best of its abilities and afforded its help and cooperation to the Senate in performance of its functions. The resolution was moved by Ch. Muhammad Anwar Bhinder, member of the SFPR, said a press release.

The Forum also appreciated performance of the Chairman SFPR who always helped and guided in performance of its functions and duties.

We appreciate the services of the Secretary and the staff of the Forum who rendered innumerable services to the Forum.

There is no end to the achievement of the maximum progress in the performance of the function and an institution and there is always scope for further improvement and we hope that the incoming forum shall also be a source of strength and help to the Senate of Pakistan.

The Forum provided policy guidelines on issues of Public importance like the Issues of Forest depletion, Water Crisis in Pakistan, Compendium of Pakistan Laws and others. The Senate is an institution representing all the Federating Units and the services of the SFPR have always been recognized.

Forum hope and pray that incoming Senate may also serve the Nation and the Federating Units to the best of its capacity and ability.
Ambassador of the Republic of Tunisia to Pakistan Mr Adel Elarbi said here on Thursday that empowerment of society was not possible without socio-political and economic empowerment of women.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Ambassador of the Republic of Tunisia to Pakistan Mr Adel Elarbi said here on Thursday that empowerment of society was not possible without socio-political and economic empowerment of women.

He said this while speaking to a daylong seminar on 'Women Rights, Role and Responsibilities' organized by 'PINPOINT Institute, Islamabad-based think-tank organization' in collaboration with 'Pakistan In the world' magazine to commemorate and celebrate the 'International Women's Day'.

The ambassador said that Pakistani women were leading everywhere - from the United Nations to Nobel prize Winner. "The women are also working on key positions in various national and international organizations including Pakistan Army, Police and Education Departments, Civil and Foreign Services," he added.

Adel Elarbi said that there was a need to make the laws related to women known to the public. "We should practice these laws in reality", he added.

The ambassador said that women emancipation had remained very important in Tunisia.

He said that women played an important role in Tunisian history and society. Speaking on the occasion, member of national assembly (JUI-F), Asia Nasir said that women could be empowered through education, parental guidance and support.

She said around 27 laws were formulated to address various issues related to women. It was of great importance to ensure participation of women in each and every sphere of life, she added. Chairman of the PINPOINT Institute Islamabad, Tariq Khan said that the day was being celebrated each year to pay tributes to women for their social, political and economic achievements.

He said that women empowerment promoted economic growth in the society. Media had also played an important role in creating awareness among the masses about the issues being faced by women in the society, he added.
Federal Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal said Thursday that only state has the right to declare Jehad in an Islamic republic against evil forces and no citizen has the right to call for the killing of citizens.

PESHAWAR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Federal Minister for Interior Ahsan Iqbal said Thursday that only state has the right to declare Jehad in an Islamic republic against evil forces and no citizen has the right to call for the killing of citizens.

The minister said individuals self rulings for Jehad will create anarchy and destabilize peace in the country. Addressing a function here at Frontier Constabulary headquarters after inaugurating FC Flats and media talks, the Interior Minister declared that no enemy could defeat us until we have brilliant and brave jawans in the Army and FC.

He said some terrorists' outfits had made the country hostage few years back and the country was being considered most dangerous for living while today it was an emerging economic nation and peaceful country.

The government, Army and police were united in war against terrorism as result of which the terrorists were on the run. "We will not rest until elimination of the last terrorist. We will make the country a peaceful abode for our children." The Minister was presented salute upon arrival to the FC headquarter by the contingents of the FC troops.

He also laid floral wreath at Yadgar Shuhada on this occasion. In a media talks, he said PTI Chief Imran Khan was known for making tall claims and advises whereas he did not fallow the same in practical life.

"We put the country on road to progress under the leadership of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif but certain hidden forces were against it." Many important projects have brought to the country under CPEC by PML-N government which will ensure massive investment in the country besides making Pakistan an economic giant.

"We desire peace in Afghanistan as peaceful Afghanistan was in the interest of Pakistan," he said, adding India did not want peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan and arrest of Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav was a prove of it.

He said unrest and chaos had been prevailing in the country before PML-N government came into power and today peace and law and order situation has been restored and foreign investment are coming to the country as evident from CPEC.

"We had successfully eliminated terrorism from the country with the cooperation of nation and security forces in our five years tenure and established government writ in all restive areas including KP, FATA and Karachi." To a question he said, we want to make Pakistan a economic giant and are determined to make the institutions more strong and vibrant.

"We will construct new hospitals for FC and Frontier Corps and decided to provide best weaponry for civil armed forces." "It is for the political parties to ponder over the matters of horse trading in Senate election," he said, adding massive horse trading was reportedly done in PTI ranks in the recent held senate election as admitted by the PTI leadership.

PML-N is ready to cooperate with every one for elimination of horse trading in Senate elections in future. Our opponents have made a front against us but will continue to pass on the journey of progress and development and will work for strengthening of democracy, he concluded.
Women have to empower themselves and there is no other option for them but to stand against subjugation, societal taboos, customary practices and all sorts of discrimination.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Women have to empower themselves and there is no other option for them but to stand against subjugation, societal taboos, customary practices and all sorts of discrimination.

They need to dream big and to play their role in building a progressive and prosperous society. These were the views of the speakers at a special seminar on "Recognizing Struggle of Women Leadership", organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Thursday to mark International Women's Day.

Senator Sherry Rehman from Pakistan People's Party said women have been on the forefront of democratic struggle in Pakistan's political history. "We have seen the struggle of Fatima Jinnah, Benazir Bhuttoo and Asma Jahangir, who were the icon of resistance, peace and have been the champions of democracy," she added.

"Though our destination is far away but we shouldn't stop here and keep fighting and continue struggle for justice and rights." "We are proud to take Pakistan's first Hindu-Dalit girl 'Krishna Kumari' from a bonded laborer to a Senator in the upper house of the parliament, which shows the sign of a progressive change in our society," said Sherry Rehman, adding that one woman standing-up against the prejudice could brought significant change in the society.

Many women rights bills passed in the recent past owed to courageous women parliamentarians. It is great news that Pakistan's Senate has passed a bill to protect the rights of transgender. The bill was tabled by the women parliamentarians.

Senator Sassui Palijo from Pakistan People's Party said our policies needed to be more gender sensitized. "Strengthening human justice system is need of the hour. It is contingent upon the legislatures to pass legislations and fight for effective implementation." She regretted that we talked more of wars and power politics instead of giving a serious thought to growing poverty, hunger, unemployment and violations of fundamental human rights, especially for women.

Renowned poet, Kishwar Naheed said in old times women used to run into rooms, not for fear, but for hiding themselves to ensure veil (Parda).

She said now the time as well as the world has changed and hijab (veil) has become fashion.

"The women have started knowing about their rights over the period of time," she said, adding that there was need to change the mindset of men towards women's role in the society. Kishwar also recited her poem which highlighted women struggle and achievements.

Speaking earlier, Mushaal Hussein Mullick, wife of Hurriyat Leader Yasin Malik and Chairperson Peace and Culture Organization on the occasion said that almost every home and woman in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) was subjected to either physical or sexual violence.

"Now women have taken the leadership role in Kashmir, where the men (husbands, sons, fathers or brothers) were mostly held as prisoners or paralyzed by the Indian Army's brutal torture," she said.

Despite continued oppression and curfew, Kashmiri women were continuing their peaceful freedom struggle and even the pellet bullets could not kill their voices, she added. "Courageous Kashmiri women such as Asiya Andrabi and Sofi Fehmeeda are truly the champions of peaceful freedom struggle in IOK", said Mushaal, adding that women participation in peace initiatives was imperative, as any peace initiatives would be meaningless without Kashmiri women's participation.

Earlier, Dr. Humaira Ishfaq, Assistant Professor, Islamic International University said every day should be celebrated as women's day. "There is a dire need to promote equality in our society and we should move forward shoulder to shoulder," she said.

Mome Saleem from Heinrich B'll Stiftung (HBS) opined that Women Day was about the gender equality. "Women can perform equally and can achieve equal to men," she said adding that this women day was commemorated to mark women struggle and their achievements in different walks of life.

Uzman Haroon, Director Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) Unit SDPI while giving note of thanks said that we were living in a patriarchal society, where women voice was suppressed. "Women struggle starts from its birth", she said, adding, "we should continue our struggle every day, as every day was a brighter day for a woman."
Police on Thursday claimed to have arrested three drug pushers and recovered narcotics from their possessions.

SIALKOT, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Police on Thursday claimed to have arrested three drug pushers and recovered narcotics from their possessions. According to police, PS Kotli Syed Ameer arrested Iftikhar with 1.100kg charas while PS Sabz Pir arrested Shahbaz from Miraajkey with 1.100 kg charas.

Meanwhile, PS Phalora arrested Shafique and recovered 1.100 kg hashish from him. Police have registered separate cases against them and started investigations.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday that electricity shortage would be a thing of past in Pakistan after the completion of more than a dozen power stations being built under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to address power shortage in the brotherly country.

BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday that electricity shortage would be a thing of past in Pakistan after the completion of more than a dozen power stations being built under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to address power shortage in the brotherly country.

"China is building over a dozen power stations for Pakistan. Largest of which is supplying electricity to the tens of millions of Pakistanis. With the completion of all of them, electricity shortage will be a thing of past in Pakistan," he said while addressing a press conference on the sidelines of the First Session of the 13th National People's Congress (CPC), the country's national legislature, here.

The foreign minister said that the Belt and Road Initiative is a global public good and follows international rules. The initiative's projects must be of high standards, high quality as well as results-oriented and economically viable that benefit not only China but the world, he added.

The initiative is a platform for international cooperation thus follows market principles, Wang said, responding to questions that some countries seem to be harboring doubts over the initiative's transparency and its conformity to international rules.

"It's a transparent initiative launched by China. It follows the golden rules of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits," Wang said, adding that the initiative aims to be equal-footed, inclusive and universally beneficial.

"The planning and implementation of the initiative's projects have been discussed by the participants in the open. No country is dominating the process. All parties have an equal say. There is no backroom deal.

Everything is transparent. There is no winner takes all. Every project delivers win-win results," he said. A large number of projects carried out under the initiative are "adding needed momentum to the economic and social development of the host countries," Wang said.

Responding to a question four international events including the Boao Forum for Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Qingdao summit, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the first China International Import Expo will be hosted by China this year.

About forthcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to be held in the Chinese city of Qingdao in June this year, he said, the SCO was born in China, and the country looks forward to working with other SCO members to make the organization more cohesive, effective and influential.

The Qingdao summit will be the first one after the SCO admitted the new members including Pakistan and India, he said and added, "We welcome the SCO back to China and expected to embark upon a new journey." Wang Yi said, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China takes responsibility in maintaining world peace, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday, adding that the country is now better positioned to help settle global and regional disputes.

On China-India relations, he remarked that the Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight but should dance together. The foreign minister also spoke on the Korean Peninsula issue and said China's "suspension for suspension" proposal on Korean Peninsula issues is "the right prescription" for the problem and has created the basic conditions for the improvement in inter-Korean relations.

On Xi's diplomacy, he said, President Xi Jinping, as the chief architect of China's major-country diplomacy, has been personally involved in planning and conducting "brilliant" head-of-state diplomacy.

While commenting on China-US relations, he said, the relations between the two countries have gone through a lot in recent decades and there can be no alternative to the policies of dialogue and cooperation.

Wang Yi said, China has great confidence in its relationship with Russia, but there is always room to make ties even better. On China-Africa cooperation, he said, China will step up mediation in African flashpoints and will boost cooperation with African countries on strategic threats such as terrorism and piracy.

Responding to a question about China-ASEAN cooperation, he said, this year marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the strategic partnership between China and the ASEAN and his country looks to build a closer community with a shared future with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
More than 300 trains have been cancelled on Thursday throughout Spain as workers go on strike to defend women's rights on International Women's Day, the country's transport ministry announced.

Madrid, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 07th Mar, 2018 ) :More than 300 trains have been cancelled on Thursday throughout Spain as workers go on strike to defend women's rights on International Women's Day, the country's transport ministry announced.

Some 200 intercity trains out of 568 won't be operating, while 105 long-distance trains are cancelled, it said Wednesday. The underground in Madrid will also be affected. The 24-hour strike has been called by 10 unions.

Feminist groups have also asked women not to spend money and to ditch their domestic chores for the day. Meanwhile Spain's two main unions -- the CCOO and UGT -- have called their members to stop work for two hours on Thursday.

All are campaigning against inequalities between men and women. The upcoming strike has been the subject of much debate in Spain over the past weeks and many famous women have thrown their weight behind the stoppage.

Spanish star Penelope Cruz, for instance, has cancelled events she had planned and will also go on "domestic" strike, leaving her partner Javier Bardem to care for their two children. But two of the five female ministers in Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government have said it would be better to observe a work-to-rule, in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract.
Iran's First Vice-President Jahangiri Wednesday visited Baghdad on the invitation of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, IRNA reported. After the victory of Iraq over terrorist groups, grounds have been prepared for investment and economic activities in Iraq, he added.

BAGHDAD, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) ::Iran's First Vice-President Jahangiri Wednesday visited Baghdad on the invitation of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, IRNA reported.

After the victory of Iraq over terrorist groups, grounds have been prepared for investment and economic activities in Iraq, he added. He expressed the hope for the trip to bring about development in all fields and remove obstacles.

Jahangiri, heading a high-ranking delegation comprised of political and economic officials, is on a three-day visitto Iraq. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Mohammad Shariatmadari, as well as Minister of Agricultural Jihad Mahmoud Hojjati are accompanying the First Vice-President during his visit to Iraq.

Jahangiri is also scheduled to meet with Iraq's President Fuad Masum and Speaker of Iraqi parliament Salim al-Jabouri. The meetings will focus on the latest regional and international developments, as well as solutions for mutual cooperation.

Visiting the holy shrines in Karbala, Najaf and Kadhimiya are also among Jahangiri's itinerary. Both sides are also supposed to sign a comprehensive MoU comprising of 10 clauses.
Nepal cannot prosper until women are ensured with full political, economic and social rights, and the country is willing to work with China in the field of women movement and rights, a government minister said here on Thursday.

KATHMANDU, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :Nepal cannot prosper until women are ensured with full political, economic and social rights, and the country is willing to work with China in the field of women movement and rights, a government minister said here on Thursday.

Newly-appointed Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare Tham Maya Thapa made the remarks at the International Women's Day reception organized by the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu. "Nepali women seek cooperation and exchange programs with China to attain economic, social, cultural and political rights.

Nepali government wants to work together with Chinese government to achieve the goals and reach a new height," the minister said.

Congratulating the newly elected female politicians in the recent three-tier elections, Chinese ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong said that China will work continuously for women's development.

The ambassador said that the Chinese government attaches great importance to upholding women's rights and interests. As part of 100 health projects for other countries, China has been assisting Nepal in health projects for women and children, especially in rural areas.

The reception was attended by nearly 200 Nepali women guests, including leaders from various political parties, diplomats, business leaders, social activists and journalists.
A Rohingya man was shot dead Thursday as local gangs fired at each other in a crowded refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, police said.

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :A Rohingya man was shot dead Thursday as local gangs fired at each other in a crowded refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, police said.

Police said 32-year-old Hossain Ali was killed as he took part in a suspected turf war over drugs at Nayapara camp near Teknaf, an enormous settlement that is home to thousands of displaced Muslims from the persecuted minority.

Bangladesh says more than one million Rohingya refugees live in squalid camps in the region, having fled successive waves of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine district. Another man, wanted by police since being released from prison last year, was also shot but managed to escape, officials said.

Refugees at the camp told AFP at least 10 gunshots were heard in the early morning. Local police did not recover any weapons but Teknaf police chief Ranjit Kumar Barua confirmed Ali was "struck in the gun battle and died".

A Rohingya community leader, Mirza Ghalib, said it was believed the skirmish was over "yaba", the local name for the methamphetamine pills popular in Bangladesh. Police say most of the drugs enter Bangladesh from Myanmar via Rohingya traffickers, sometimes hidden in false bottoms on fishing boats.

In recent weeks, police have arrested half a dozen Rohingya in possession of large quantities of the addictive stimulant.

Nurul Alam, a known criminal with alleged ties to Rohingya militants, was also shot "but fled after being struck by bullets", Barua said.

Myanmar blames Rohingya militants for an August 25 strike on security posts in Rakhine state that triggered a fierce army crackdown. The UN and the US have said the retaliatory response by Myanmar security forces amounted to "ethnic cleansing".

Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine since August. Police allege Alam organised a raid on a Bangladeshi security post near Nayapara in 2016, in which a commander was killed and 11 guns stolen.

He was arrested and later released on bail in December pending a trial but quickly returned to crime, police said. Local community leaders believe Alam has ties to Rohingya militants but Ruhul Amin, local commander of the elite Rapid Action Battalion police unit, told AFP it was not clear if this was the case.

Alam allegedly appeared in a video holding assault rifles that was distributed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army. Myanmar last week bolstered security and artillery installations near along its border, saying it believed Rohingya militants were hiding in nearby camps.
The UN Security Council reiterated its calls for a ceasefire to take hold in Syria after holding a closed door meeting late Wednesday to discuss the failure of parties to implement the truce adopted by the body on February 24, Petra report said.

NEW YORK, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) ::The UN Security Council reiterated its calls for a ceasefire to take hold in Syria after holding a closed door meeting late Wednesday to discuss the failure of parties to implement the truce adopted by the body on February 24, Petra report said.

"The cessation of hostilities was discussed, during which the council reiterated its call for implementation of resolution 2401," Netherlands UN Ambassador Karel van Oosterom, said after the meeting.

Netherlands holds the presidency position for March. "We are now 11 days after the adoption of the resolution No.

2401, we are very disappointed with the fact that the implementation remains totally and completely inadequate," Swedish ambassador to the United Nations Olof Skoog told reporters before he walked into a closed-door emergency meeting of the Security Council.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres , Monday is scheduled to brief the council on the implementation of the resolution, which calls all parties to end hostilities and immediately ensure, safe humanitarian access, and medical evacuations of injured according to the international law.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The United Nations on Wednesday urged Sri Lankan authorities to take immediate action against perpetrators involved in communal violence and ensure appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in the affected areas

COLOMBO, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) :The United Nations on Wednesday urged Sri Lankan authorities to take immediate action against perpetrators involved in communal violence and ensure appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in the affected areas.

The UN Office in Colombo said in a statement that it was concerned about the recent incidents of communal violence in the island country and condemned these acts in the strongest possible terms.

"The United Nations also urges authorities, and all citizens to ensure that the rule of law is upheld, human rights are protected, and security and safety is ensured for all," the UN Office said.

The Sri Lankan police on Wednesday extended a curfew for the third consecutive day in Kandy, in Central Sri Lanka, after mobs clashed on the streets resulting in two deaths and several injuries.

Police spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekera said the curfew would stay in place till Thursday afternoon, while heavy security had been deployed throughout the district. Eye witnesses in Kandy said several businesses, homes and mosques had been damaged and violence had spread into Akurana and Katugastota in the suburbs of Kandy.

Due to the escalation of violence, President Maithripala Sirisena on Tuesday declared a week-long, nationwide state of emergency, the first since the country ended a civil war in 2009. In a national address, he appealed for calm and peace and warned of "stern action" against anyone spreading violence and rumors with the intention of provoking communal violence.
Zambia's First Lady Esther Lungu attended the celebrations to mark the March 8 International Women's Day held by an association of Chinese women living in the African country, Xinhua reported here on Thursday

LUSAKA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 08th Mar, 2018 ) ::Zambia's First Lady Esther Lungu attended the celebrations to mark the March 8 International Women's Day held by an association of Chinese women living in the African country, Xinhua reported here on Thursday.

During the celebrations held at the Lusaka National Museum in the capital, Lungu urged the Zambian women's participation in the country's efforts to promote gender equality and protect women's rights.

She said more need to be done in Zambia including reducing violence against women and ensuring women's access to economic empowerment.

Her remarks highlighted the focus of Women's Day celebrations this year in Zambia, with the theme "Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women's Lives." On behalf of the Chinese women association, Geng Hailing, wife of the Chinese Ambassador to Zambia, lauded the progress made in Zambia in promoting gender equality and the implementation of various programs for women's economic empowerment.

The celebrations on Wednesday featured performances by Chinese women and school students. Chinese Ambassador Yang Youming was also present.


Reality star of Animal Planets hit show Tanked and owner of Donut Mania, Brett Raymer hosted the grand opening of his fourth Las Vegas location at 1930 Village Center Circle Ste 4 (Pictured: Brett Raymer, Mike Hammer and John Di Domenico as Austin Powers  Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com).

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

The grand opening featured a Celebrity Donut Olympics with Las Vegas headliners and entertainers competing in doughnut challenges. Pictured here are owner Brett Raymer, Tenors of Rock, Mike Hammer, Murray Sawchuck, Jennifer Romas, Zowie Bowie, DJ Ashba, Douglas Lefty Leferovich, DJ Liz, Erwin The General Raymer and more.

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com

Photo credit: Ira Kuzma / www.IraKuzmaPhotos.com
# World Economic Forum was formed when and by whom, who is currently heading it, where is it headquartered, how many summits have been held so far, where is the next summit scheduled to be held, etc., can be asked in preliminary examination. In main examination, in Davos summit, it was discussed as to how malaria prevention can be strengthened using smart data. Write a note on this in 100 words, can be asked. From the same event, what were the major ideas discussed in the Davos summit? What was Indias position in each? can be asked in interview. Therefore the topic Davos Summit is one, but questions can be asked in different ways in different levels of the examination.
The Cambodian military is to hold joint military exercises with their Chinese counterparts focusing on counter-terrorism and humanitarian operations, according to Cambodias defense ministry.

A statement from the Ministry of National Defense said the Golden Dragon exercises would take place in Kampong Speu province between March 15 and March 30 and would be the second joint military exercises with China in recent months.

The ministry warned authorities in Kampong Speu not to be surprised by the explosions and the mobilization of military equipment in the area, or the use of live ammunition, and imposed a no-fly zone.

Cambodia and China increased military cooperation after Phnom Penh canceled its joint military exercises with the United States in the aftermath of a diplomatic fallout over the dissolution of Cambodias main opposition party.

Gen. Chhum Socheat, defense spokesman, said more than 200 military personnel would take part in the exercise, alongside some 200 Chinese officers.

Cambodia and China launched their first ever joint military exercises in 2016.
Rhona Smith, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia, on Wednesday called on the government to ensure full rights of political participation and warned that human rights could not be sacrificed for the sake of stability and development.



Smiths remarks followed a meeting with the president of the Cambodian Human Rights Committee (CHRC), Keo Remy.



She told reporters after the meeting that she had not specifically discussed the fate of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by the Supreme Court in November after its leader was arrested on treason charges.



But I did discuss the need to have full rights of political participation in Cambodia, and for the views of the people who voted in the elections to be respected and recognized, she said.



Later, the Facebook account of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia posted comments from Smith.



For many Cambodians who voted in 2013 and 2017 elections, their representatives seats are now occupied by those they didnt vote for or even know. This raises serious concern about political participation rights. I also raised individual cases of particular concern, she was quoted as saying.



The visit was Smiths fifth in the role and comes as the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen has led a months-long crackdown on political opposition and civil society. Kem Sokha, the CNRP president, was jailed in September, accused of leading a foreign-backed plot to overthrow Hun Sen.

Remy of the CHRC told reporters that human rights issues could not impede the governments plans for development of the country.



The duty of government is different from the duty of her role in defending human rights. The government rules one country. If we want to protect the majority of people, the millions of people, we must make a clear-cut decision, which would affect some corners. Particularly, we pushed for law enforcement, he said.



I believe ... she misunderstood the government. But one day, she will be aware that the government is doing the right job. The most important thing is that when Cambodia gets things done rightly, you will understand what the government has done is right, he added.



On Wednesday, Smith also met You Ottara, vice president of the Supreme Court, with whom she reportedly raised the issue of judicial independence, the separation of powers, and the dissolution of the CNRP.



Separately, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, on Wednesday said that he was seriously concerned by developments in Cambodia.

Since this [Human Rights] Council last met, the Supreme Court has dissolved the principal opposition party, disenfranchising opposition voters. Recently adopted amendments to the Constitution and Criminal Code are likely to further erode political rights and fundamental freedoms, he said.



I note and welcome recent improvements in social protection and the minimum wage, but I call on the Government to guarantee the political rights of the people, to respect the freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, and to release human rights defenders and political actors, he added.
The United Nations and International Red Cross said an aid convoy for the besieged eastern Ghouta area of Syria would go on as planned Thursday because of security concerns.

The U.N. continues to receive reports of escalating fighting in East Ghouta and shelling on Damascus endangering civilians and preventing humanitarian assistance from reaching hundreds of thousands of people in need, including thousands of vulnerable children, said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A 46-truck convoy was able to bring some supplies to the Duma section of eastern Ghouta on Monday, but the U.N., ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent cut short that mission as deadly violence continued in the area.

Tom said 10 full trucks and four partial trucks were unable to be unloaded, including half the food for 27,500 people.

The U.N. remains ready to deliver assistance to all people in need in Duma, other areas in east Ghouta and other hard-to-reach and besieged areas as soon as conditions allow, she said.

Fighting in eastern Ghouta has escalated in recent weeks as the Syrian government, backed by Russian forces, boosted efforts to recapture the area it has held under siege since 2013. The violence has left hundreds of people dead, and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says pro-government forces have effectively seized half of the territory held by the opposition.

Cease-fire ignored

The United Nations Security Council demanded a 30-day halt in fighting across Syria nearly two weeks ago in order to allow food and medical aid to reach those in need, but the resolution has been ignored.

Dutch Ambassador to the U.N. Karel van Oosterom, who holds the Security Councils rotating presidency, said the members called Wednesday for all parties in Syria to implement the cease-fire and expressed concern about the countrys humanitarian crisis.

He spoke after a closed-door session requested by Britain and France.

Weve called this meeting with the U.K. because the Syrian regime, as we speak, keeps besieging and bombing its own citizens in eastern Ghouta in complete violation of Resolution 2401 that was unanimously adopted by the council, French U.N. representative Francois Delattre told reporters.

Swedens representative to the U.N., Olof Skoog, demanded before the meeting full and immediate implementation of the resolution and immediate progress on medical evacuations from the area.

Council members are scheduled to discuss the implementation of the cease-fire again Monday when they meet with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

US blames Russia

In a tweet Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert accused Russia of not being committed to the cease-fire.

#Russia conducted 20 bombing missions in Damascus and Eastern #Ghouta the week of February 24. Now, Russia is also using #Syria to test SU-57 stealth fighter. So much for Russias commitment to cease-fire, civilian safety, and humanitarian assistance. Astana has failed.

Russias defense ministry said Tuesday that Syrian rebels, in addition to civilians, are free to use evacuation corridors to leave eastern Ghouta. Members of the opposition have said they will not leave.
President Donald Trump reacted positively to an unexpected willingness from North Korea to conduct talks on freezing its nuclear program, but some analysts are cautioning that the Trump administration does not have the experts in place needed to prepare and conduct such difficult negotiations.

A number of former U.S. ambassadors and senior advisers have also welcomed the unexpected North Korean overture, as relayed by South Korea, and said they would advise the Trump administration to proceed with caution to see if Pyongyang is sincere.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said the U.S. is in close contact with its South Korean ally and looks forward to learning more about the North Korean offer when South Korean officials come to Washington later this week to brief U.S. officials on their historic visit to Pyongyang.

Several qualified negotiators

At Tuesdays State Department briefing, reporters pointed out that the most obvious person to lead a U.S. team to prepare for possible direct talks with Pyongyang would have been recent retiree Joseph Yun, the veteran U.S. diplomat in charge of North Korea policy. Nauert rejected concerns that there is a void in leadership.

We have plenty of people who are more than qualified to have these types of conversations with the White House and also the Republic of Korea, our ally, she said.

Nauert mentioned Susan Thornton, who is the State Departments nominee for assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs who is acting in that position but has yet to be confirmed.

Nauert also mentioned Mark Lambert, director for Korea policy at the State Department, and Marc Knapper, charge daffaires at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.

The U.S. still does not have an ambassador to South Korea.

Opportunity too valuable to waste

Aaron David Miller, a senior analyst at the Wilson Center, has advised a number of Republican and Democratic secretaries of state.

Miller told VOA he believes if this recent offer of direct talks does represent a transformative change in North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns position, then it is too valuable an opportunity to waste, and the U.S. should test it  first through discreet dialogue before any structured negotiations take place.

Asked who in the Trump administration could prepare and conduct sensitive, complicated and grueling direct talks with North Korea, Miller drew a blank.

Right now, it is hard to identify any single individual or team of individuals that has both the negotiating experience and knowledge of the history, the cultural and political sensitivity, and knowledge of how the North Koreans behave and how they see the world, he said.

He added: In this republic, you might have to reach for people who have had experience and who are part of another administration. This administration may not be willing to do that.

Miller said if this offer of talks becomes serious, it would mean months, if not years, of negotiations. He said the president has created some running room for diplomacy, and that all sides are in a better position than they were before.

Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador and senior U.S. negotiator with North Korea, agreed that this is a rare diplomatic opening.

On Tuesday, Hill tweeted: A goal of cutting or curbing #NorthKorea nukes is not the same as eliminating those weapons, but the US should still pursue and see whether apparent offer can be a realistic starting point for total elimination.

After decades of frustrating negotiations with North Korea, the U.S. must resist the temptation to do nothing, because the threat will never go away on its own, he said.
In a protest against Chinas rule of Tibet, a Tibetan man set himself on fire Wednesday and died in Meruma Township in Ngaba County, Sichuan Province, eastern Tibet.

Tibetan sources and social media said Tsekho, a father of two, set himself ablaze around 5 p.m. local time.

Tsekho's protest occurred just days before the anniversary of the March 10, 1959, Tibetan Uprising Day, when thousands of Tibetans rose against Chinas military and declared Tibet's independence.

Tibetan exile President Lobsang Sangay expressed his deep concern Wednesday at reports of yet another self-immolation protest.

Despite repeated appeals from the Central Tibetan administration not to resort to drastic measures, at least 152 Tibetans, including Tsekho, have set themselves on fire since 2009 in Tibet, Sangay said Such protest are usually fatal.

He urged the Chinese government to heed the calls of Tibetans and allow His Holiness the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet. The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile said the dispute over Tibet can be best resolved by resuming dialogue with the Tibetan representatives.

This is the first reported self-immolation protest of 2018. The last case occurred in December 2017 and involved a man called Kunbey who also lived in Meruma Township. A local source described Tsekho, who was in his 40s, as a strong and optimistic character with great interest in the Tibetan cause.

While Tsekho's death has been confirmed, the whereabouts of his body is currently unknown. He is survived by his elderly father, his wife and two daughters.

Since 2009, more than 150 Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest China's military occupation  which has been in force since 1950  as well as human rights abuses and restrictions on Tibet's religious and cultural freedoms.

Free Tibet's director Eleanor Byrne-Rosengren said in a release, As Tibetans around the world prepare to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the national uprising in 1959, another protester inside Tibet has given his life to protest the ongoing Chinese occupation. Chinese authorities are quick to complain about its hurt feelings whenever anyone mentions Tibet or human rights. Yet Tibetans suffer far more tangible pain on a daily basis. Every time a politician or a company defers to one of Chinas melodramatic objections, they are telling the world that they believe a Tibetan life is worth less than the Chinese governments feelings. We cannot just stand by and condone this callous indifference.
Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court on Thursday upheld most of the convictions of a former Congolese vice president for interfering with witnesses during his war crimes trial, and ordered the original trial chamber to review his sentence.



The appeals ruling helps to solidify jurisprudence dealing with attempts by suspects to interfere with the course of justice at the court, which was set up to prosecute offenses including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes around the world.



Jean-Pierre Bemba was sentenced last year to a year in prison and fined 300,000 euros ($371,000) for interfering with witnesses in his war crimes and crimes against humanity trial at the court. The sentence came on top of an 18-year prison term he is serving for crimes committed in Central African Republic by a militia he commanded. Bemba also has appealed those convictions.



Convictions also were largely upheld against four members of Bemba's legal team for their roles in bribing witnesses so that they would give testimony that could help to acquit Bemba.



Sending the cases of Bemba and two of his team back to trial judges to review sentences, the appeals chamber said that the trial chamber wrongly assessed the gravity of the offenses. The suspended sentences of two members of the legal team were sent back to the trial judges because the appeals panel said that the court's rules do not include the power to impose suspended sentences.



Presiding Judge Silvia Fernandez de Gurmendi said the appeals panel acquitted Bemba and two members of his defense team on a charge of presenting false evidence during his trial because the rule under which they were originally convicted applies only to presentation of documents and in their cases it was wrongly applied to witness testimony.
A Venezuelan state governor made an unusual visit to Washington this week, seeking meetings in Congress to discuss the fate of a U.S. citizen imprisoned in the South American nation, U.S. sources said on Wednesday.

As the threat of fresh U.S. sanctions on socialist Venezuela loomed, Rafael Lacava, governor of Venezuelas Carabobo state, requested meetings to discuss Josh Holt, a Mormon missionary from Utah. He and his Venezuelan wife, Thamara Caleno, have been held since they were arrested in 2016 on weapons charges after Holt traveled to Venezuela for their wedding.

We are aware that (Lacava) is here. There are suspicions that the Venezuela government is using the illegitimate detention of Mr Holt as a bargaining chip to talk about U.S. sanctions, a U.S. official said.

We continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Holt and until he is released we continue to insist on regular ongoing consular contacts with him as called for under international law, the official said.

It is unusual for an official allied with Venezuelas socialist government, a U.S. adversary, to visit Washington for such meetings.

President Donald Trumps administration is considering new sanctions targeting Venezuelas oil sector to increase pressure on President Nicolas Maduro ahead of an election Washington and its allies consider a sham.

Maduro confirmed Lacavas visit during a speech in Caracas, saying: He's gone to Washington for some peace efforts.

Another U.S. source familiar with the situation confirmed Lacava was visiting to discuss Holt, but did not believe sanctions would be discussed in Congress since lawmakers would defer to the administration on any such matter.

While I am not able to speculate on what else might be on Mr. Lacavas agenda, I want to make very clear that the sole purpose of such meetings would be to encourage the release of MrHolt and his wife, the source said.

There would be no negotiation, and any claim to the contrary is simply false, the source said.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and other lawmakers are working for Holts release.

While Senator Hatch prefers to not share details of sensitive meetings related to his nearly two year effort to have Josh Holt released on humanitarian grounds, he is optimistic he is making progress and will continue to work with the State Department and colleagues in the Congress to identify those to meet and work with who can get it done, Hatch spokesman Matt Whitlock said.
The Baltimore spending panel has approved spending $200,000 to pay for attorneys that will represent immigrants facing deportation.



Mayor Catherine Pugh tells The Baltimore Sun that the move is meant to show the city supports its residents. The mayor compares public defenders provided to people who cannot afford attorneys in criminal cases to the new representation, funded in part by city taxpayers and in part by New York nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.

City Council President Bernard C. Jack Young says the funding could reduce government costs by keeping families together, preventing abandoned children from entering state care.



The funding approved Wednesday is expected to help 40 immigrants with lawyers provided by the Capital Area Immigrants' Rights Coalition.
The U.N. refugee agency warns that thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshs Coxs Bazar face a new threat from interactions with elephants roaming the huge settlement where they are living in squalid, overcrowded conditions.

More than 670,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August, escaping violence and persecution in Myanmar. Most of them are living in the Kutupalong refugee settlement in Coxs Bazar, the worlds largest refugee camp.

The refugees are faced with multiple threats, including disease outbreaks, malnutrition and risks to their lives from the imminent monsoon and cyclone season. Added to this is a new danger posed by their unexpected and potentially life-threatening interaction with wildlife.

The UNHCR reports the area now occupied by the Kutupalong refugee settlement has been for a long time an important habitat for Asian Elephants. Spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, says about 40 elephants in the area move between Bangladesh and Myanmar in search of food.

As a result of the interaction now between the refugees and the wildlife, we have the situation where 10 refugees have been killed in incidents where the elephants have come into the camp and not only killed people, but destroyed what very little property they had.

Mahecic says the UNHCR has teamed up with the International Union for Conservation of Nature to protect refugees from more dangerous encounters. He says the IUCN has been working with communities in Bangladesh for decades to help them live safely alongside wild elephants.

He says 17 highly trained Elephant Response Teams already are on watch in the camp. He says team members know how to approach an elephant, how to deter the animal from entering the camp, and keep everyone safe.
A fresh strike has handicapped Kenya's largest public referral hospital for almost a week, leaving the poor to pay the price for strife and dysfunction in the country's public health system. Last year's nationwide doctors' strike shut down all public facilities for three months

Rose Ngao walked into Kenyatta National Hospital two days ago hoping she would be admitted and have an operation to remove a growth in her stomach. Two days later, she sat outside the Accidents and Emergency section of the hospital, contemplating her next move.



She said she was scheduled for surgery any day, whenever they give her a date. But now, with the strike, she said she is being asked to go to a different hospital, to Mbagathi, to get blood.

This latest doctors' strike resulted from a horrific mistake at the hospital. Last week, a neurosurgeon opened the head of the wrong patient for brain surgery, a mix-up of identification tags saw the wrong man wheeled into the operating room.



The surgeon performing the surgery was suspended. More than 700 other doctors undergoing post-graduate training, commonly known as registrars, went on strike in a show of support for the doctor.



The doctors are demanding their colleague be reinstated immediately and for management to handle the hospital's systemic problems.



Samuel Oroko, chairman of the Kenya Medical Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), said "workers are overworked.



"Now in neurosurgery, we have three residents  one in casualty, one in theater, one in the wards," he said. "And they work 24/7, no break at all. These are human beings.These are issues. We are not saying we are protecting anybody. We are saying as a country, we need to take a complete overhaul of Kenyatta National Hospital system.



Surgeon David Kimani came to the defense of the doctors on strike, highlighting the challenges of working at Kenyatta hospital.



"You have one ICU Bed," he said. "You have three patients in need of that ICU bed. How do you choose who lives and who dies? We have only one CT scan to take care of 2,400 patients. We have an MRI that is dead."



A patient at the hospital, Jane Odhiambo, said she had to wait for hours at the hospital due to the doctor shortage. She said the poor are the ones who suffer because they do not have money to go to private hospitals.

This is the government hospital that is supposed to help the citizens, she added.

Scandals and corruption



Kenya's health system has also been mired in scandals of corruption and mismanagement. In October 2016, Kenyans were outraged when an audit revealed more than $50 million went missing from the Health Ministry.



The scandal came to light just days after President Uhuru Kenyatta expressed frustrations about the fight against graft in his government.



The Kenyatta National Hospital Board on Thursday recalled the suspension letter given to the doctor involved in the brain surgery mix-up and urged the striking doctors to resume work immediately.
British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Thursday will have a plan ready to respond if investigators identify someone responsible for a nerve agent attack against a former Russian double agent.

"There is nothing soft about the UK's response to any sort of state activity in this country," she told the BBC. "You may not hear about it all, but when we do see that there is action to be taken, we will take it."

British counterterrorism police have said Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent Sunday in the normally quiet town of Salisbury.

A police officer who was part of the initial response to the incident was hospitalized. Rudd said Thursday the officer remained in serious condition but was able to talk.

"This is being treated as a major incident of involving attempted murder by the administration of a nerve agent," Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley said. He would not identify the exact substance used or how it was delivered.

The poisoning is threatening a full-scale security and diplomatic crisis for Britain, with lawmakers demanding the government launch an urgent inquiry into more than a dozen recent suspicious deaths in Britain, all potentially tied to Russian intelligence services.

Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, are fighting for their lives after being found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping mall. Police have been examining CCTV footage and reportedly have focused their attention on a man and woman spotted nearby.

On Tuesday, Britain's foreign minister, Boris Johnson, prompted sharp Russian rebuttals when he assured British lawmakers the government would get to the bottom of the mystery and threatened the imposition of new sanctions on Russia, if the Kremlin were found to have been responsible. Johnson said while he was not pointing the finger at this stage, he described Russia as "a malign and disruptive force."

His remarks were characterized by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as "wild." Russian diplomats in London accused Johnson of "demonizing" their country.

Mark Edele, a Russia analyst at the University of Melbourne in Australia, told VOA investigators may never know who was responsible.

"If Russia is behind this, they will certainly deny it. If they're not behind it, they will also deny it," Edele said. "And the only way to really find out would be to catch whoever did this, which given the level of professionalism involved is probably unlikely."

The incident is drawing comparisons to Alexander Litvinenko, a highly public critic of President Putin and a Russian KGB officer-turned-British intelligence agent, who died agonizingly, days after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 in a London hotel in 2006. British doctors struggled in that case to identify the substance that killed him.

A British inquiry concluded the Russian leader probably approved the killing. The conclusion was dismissed angrily by the Kremlin as a politically motivated smear.

An eyewitness to the discovery of Skripal and his daughter, Jamie Paine, told British reporters the woman was passed out, frothing at the mouth and her eyes "were wide open, but completely white." He said, "The man went stiff, his arms stopped moving, but he was still looking dead straight." Adding to alarm, one of the emergency service workers who attended the pair has also been hospitalized.

Skripal, who served in Russia's military intelligence agency, GRU, was exchanged in a Cold War-type spy swap in 2010 on the runway at Vienna's airport. After serving four years in prison in Russia for spying for Britain's espionage service, MI6, he was one of four Russian double agents exchanged for 10 Russian sleeper agents expelled from the United States, including Manhattan socialite and diplomat's daughter Anna Chapman.

At the time, Putin, a former KGB officer, issued televised threats against those who had betrayed Russia. "Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me. These people betrayed their friends, their brothers-in-arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them," he said.

In 2006, a new Russian law was adopted formally permitting extra-judicial killings abroad of people Russian authorities deemed extremist or terrorists, allowing the Russian president alone to order a killing.

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Skripal had spied for Britain during the 1990s and continued to communicate with MI6 after his retirement in 1999 from the GRU, while working at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Moscow.

Russian prosecutors said Skripal received at least $100,000 for his collaboration with MI6, according to Russian news outlets. At his trial he admitted selling the names, addresses and code names of "several dozen" Russian agents operating in Europe to MI6 over a period of 10 years. British intelligence officials say Skripal identified as many as 300 Russian spies and moles.

A year after the spy swap, he bought a house in Salisbury for $360,000. He lived apparently quietly there with his wife, Lyudmila, until her death from cancer five years ago. But a relative told BBC Russia, "From the first day, he knew it would end badly, and that he would not be left alone," he said.

As British investigators piece together what happened to Skripal, senior British lawmakers say other suspicious Russia-linked deaths during the past two decades need to be re-examined.

Among them: former oligarch Boris Berezovsky; Scot Young, a businessman impaled on an iron fence after a fall from a window; Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian oligarch who died of an apparent heart attack in 2008; Yuri Golubev, an outspoken Putin critic, and Alexander Perepilichny, who fled Russia for London and gave evidence of high-level corruption to Swiss authorities.

VOA's Jamie Dettmer, Victor Beattie and Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
More than 2,500 Burundian refugees in Congo are seeking shelter in Rwanda because of fears they could be forcibly repatriated back home by Congolese authorities, according to a Rwandan official.



Most of the refugees had lived in Congo since 2015, when political violence erupted in Burundi over the president's decision to seek a disputed third term, Jean Claude Rwahama, a refugee official in Rwanda, said Thursday.



"We are still verifying the exact number of refugees but as we speak at least 2,579 of refugees have arrived in Rwanda," he said, adding that Rwanda is temporarily sheltering them at Bugarama refugee center near the Burundi border.



Francoise Ndayisenga, a leader among the refugees, said they were seeking asylum in Rwanda because they don't want to be forcibly sent back to Burundi. Nearly all the refugees are followers of a self-styled Catholic prophetess named Zebiya Ngendakumana, who is believed to be among the refugees seeking asylum in Rwanda. Citing their religious beliefs, the refugees have refused to have their fingerprints taken by refugee officials.



Roughly 44,000 refugees from Burundi are sheltering in Congo.



In September 2017, 36 Burundian refugees were killed by Congolese troops while protesting the expulsion of four of their countrymen from Congo. The U.N. called for a swift investigation into the killings and urged Congo's security forces to use force as a last resort.



The refugees' arrival in Rwanda coincides with a rise in militia violence in Congo's restive east.



Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled since 2001, was due to step down at the end of his second term in December 2016 but the vote was postponed while he remains in office. The election has sparked regular protests in which the security forces are accused of killing dozens of people.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed companion proclamations slapping 25 percent tariffs on steel coming into the country and 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum.

The across-the-board taxes are to go into effect in 15 days.

Amid fears that his action would ignite a trade war, Trump declared the dumping of steel and aluminum in the United States as "an assault on our country," suggesting foreign producers relocate their facilities to America.

"If you don't want to pay tax, bring your plant to the USA," he said.

WATCH: As TPP Eliminates Tariffs, Trump Moves to Implement New Ones

Trump was flanked in the Roosevelt Room by workers from those metals industries, some with hard hats in hand, as he signed the documents. Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Trade and Industrial Policy Director Peter Navarro were also among those in the room.

After an outcry from lawmakers, some industry executives and foreign governments, Canada and Mexico are being given specific exemptions from the tariffs for an indefinite period while negotiations continue on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

"We're giving Canada and Mexico sufficient time to address these issues at the request of the governments, but it's not open-ended," said a senior U.S. administration official. "The focus is on the broader security relationship, where we can address ensuring national security and eliminate any impairment whatsoever."

Other countries which are considered allies of the United States  such as Australia  will also be given "satisfactory alternative means to address the threat" the Trump administration perceives to American steel and aluminum manufacturers, the official said.

"This is not a softening of our position in any way whatsoever," insisted the administration official in a call with reporters that was conducted on the condition of not being named.

'Freest-trading nation'

Opponents of Trump's action see it as undermining the rules-based global trading system and using national security disguised as protectionism that will encourage other countries to resort to the same premise to protect their domestic markets.

The White House official rejected that argument Thursday, contending that the United States "is the freest-trading nation in the world" and arguing that the rules-based trading system, under the 23-year-old World Trade Organization with 164 member states, "is not working very well for the American people."

Trump signed the proclamations just hours after 11 other countries formalized a revised agreement in Chile that reduces tariffs and cuts trade barriers among the member countries.

Known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement (CPTPP), it replaces the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) from which Trump withdrew the United States.

The countries joining in the TPP successor are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

Trump boasted last week that trade wars "are good and easy to win" after his surprise announcement to levy the tariffs on the two metals.

"It's a promise made, a promise kept," the senior administration official said Thursday. "Nobody ... should express any kind of surprise."

National security argument

The Trump administration said that retaining a domestic steel and aluminum manufacturing capacity is a matter of national security to build everything from tanks to rockets, as well as critical infrastructure such as water treatment plants.

"This kind of action will maintain a workforce of skilled workers," according to the administration official, adding, "the national security rationale is unassailable."

The country's "aluminum and steel industries are severely under threat, being weakened or, in the case of aluminum, being driven to extinction," said the official.

The White House also is rebutting arguments the tariffs will lead to higher prices for American consumers and layoffs of workers in factories that will have to use higher-priced steel and aluminum.

Such reports are "hair-on-fire rhetoric" emanating from "lobbyists, politicians and swamp creatures," the U.S. official said.

According to the White House, the tariffs will add up to 2 cents to a six-pack of soda or beer and increase the cost of a $330-million Boeing 777 jetliner by a mere $25,000.

The tariffs, according to the White House official, will see steel and aluminum makers restarting factories, significantly increasing production and hiring hundreds of workers.

China issue

As far as China, it is "not a significant exporter to the U.S. at this time," according to the official. "The China problem is simply a massive, massive overcapacity that China has built up in both aluminum and steel."

In planned U.S. discussions with Canada, Mexico and all other countries that produce steel, "we need to address global excess capacity," the official said. "This is going to be a key part of one of the long-term objectives that the president has."

Trump said trade discussions are ongoing with Beijing, but "I don't know that anything's going to come of that."

At the end of the event, a reporter asked Trump about steel trans-shipments from China. He replied, "We're going to stop the trans-shipping," but then quickly added that if any such shipments are to continue, "it'll cost a lot more money."

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, from the Midwestern state of Ohio, told VOA, "China has continued to cheat by subsidizing land and energy and water and capital, and they will continue if we don't draw a line."

Trump should "have focused more on China and less on Canada and our trading partners that have played more fair," Brown added.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas told VOA he believes Trump has heard the voices who expressed concern about imposing the tariffs, but "the president's got some pretty fixed ideas about trade, and obviously he ran on those and, I think, feels obligated to follow through on his campaign promises."

Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said he is introducing a law to nullify the tariffs.

The chairman of the Senate's finance committee, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, also criticized the presidential action, but expressed hope of working with the Trump administration to "mitigate the damage."

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, says he fears "unintended consequences" from the tariffs  namely, retaliation by targeted countries.
Capitol Hills sharp divide on immigration extended to the Trump administrations decision to sue California for shielding undocumented immigrants, with numerous Democratic lawmakers blasting the Justice Departments action and many Republicans applauding it.

Its very disturbing, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told VOA on Thursday. Its all unnecessary.



The attorney general is doing something thats long overdue and necessary, the Senates No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, said.



Speaking Wednesday in Sacramento, California, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to force the state to abandon so-called sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants.



"California is using every power it has  and some it doesn't  to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I'm going to use every power I have to stop them," Sessions said. We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. We are fighting to have a lawful system of immigration that serves Americans. And we intend to win this fight."



California is one of several states, along with hundreds of municipalities across America, that do not alert U.S. immigration officials when an undocumented person is taken into custody or otherwise made known to local authorities.



Last year, California passed a set of laws the Department of Justice said obstruct federal immigration law and are unconstitutional, such as shielding companies employee files from immigration agents and prohibiting local law enforcement from alerting immigration agents when undocumented immigrants are released from custody.



Feinstein warned of draconian results if the administrations lawsuit succeeds.



Everyone in California is for law and order. What were not for are parents being picked up and deported when they bring their children to schools, or in the workplace, the senator said.



We know what the Trump administrations goal is: to change the face of immigration in America, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin said. People across the United States are doing their best, within the law, to resist that change.



Durbin added, We embrace immigration as part of our birthright, as part of our history and part of our future. And were going to resist in every legal way possible this effort by the Trump administration.



Cornyn told VOA the issue boils down to a basic constitutional concept: state and local governments cannot flout federal law.



We are either a nation or we are a confederation of cities and states that have different laws and rules, Cornyn said. In the end, the sanctuary policies that many of these cities have adopted are really a threat to the safety and security of the populations where these folks [undocumented immigrants] end up embedding.



"Arresting and deporting illegal immigrants shouldn't be shocking," California Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa said. "I commend Attorney General Sessions for taking action on California's lawlessness."



Last month, the Senate rejected a proposal to cut off federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities. The bill was named after Kate Steinle, a woman gunned down by an undocumented immigrant with a felony record who had been released from local custody in San Francisco in 2015.
Chinas Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged North Korea and the United States to hold talks as soon as possible, calling on all parties to take steps to move the situation forward and, as he put it, fight for peace.



During talks earlier this week, South Korean officials said North Korea had offered to hold talks with the United States about normalizing ties and denuclearization.

Many are still undecided about what to make of the development, which some analysts note could be a diplomatic breakthrough, an attempt to weaken sanctions or both.



In the past, North Korea has broken agreements to end its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and economic assistance.



Rough road ahead



Addressing reporters on the sidelines of Chinas annual top-level political meetings in Beijing, Wang Yi said while the issue has taken an important step in the right direction and there is a light at the end of the tunnel, the road ahead would not be smooth.



Whenever tensions have subsided on the peninsula the situation will be hounded by various interferences. Now is a crucial moment for testing the sincerity of the parties, Wang said. Peace must be fought for and opportunities need to be seized.



South Koreas President Moon Jae-in echoed similar concerns on Thursday when he said that many critical moments still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis.



South Korean envoys head to US



Moon made his comments as two senior officials from Seoul departed for Washington to brief officials there on the outcome of their recent visit to North Korea.



Late next month, President Moon and North Koreas Kim Jong Un are scheduled to meet at a border village for talks. It would be the third such meeting between the two sides since their 1945 division.



Seoul has said that North Korea is willing to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such talks, but how South Korea and the United States respond is less clear.



Military exercises



The toughest regime of sanctions on North Korea to date, which has had an effect on both Pyongyang and its closet allies, China and Russia, are expected to continue, as are military exercises conducted by Seoul and Washington.



North Korea views such exercises as a threat and wants them to stop. And it wants the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in South Korea.

When Wang Yi was asked whether he agreed that the complete withdrawal of troops was the only way to ensure peace on the peninsula, he did not directly answer the question.



He did argue that Chinas advocacy of a freeze for freeze (nuclear and missile tests in the North and military exercises in the South) had contributed to the current thaw.



During the winter games, North Korea did not conduct any nuclear tests and the United States suspended its exercises, he said.



This proves that Chinas proposal that suspension for suspension was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations, Wang said.



Wang did not mention the impact sanctions were having.



For now, however, it seems that military exercises between South Korea and the United States could continue. A spokeswoman for South Koreas Defense Ministry has said an announcement for the schedule of joint drills will come after the Pyeonchang Paralympics finish on March 18.



Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, said that it was perhaps neither sanctions or a freeze that had pushed North Korea to reach out to Seoul or express its willingness to talk with Washington, but its completion of three intercontinental ballistic missile tests last year.



North Korea has already completed the first step of its nuclear strategy, which is to first establish its basic nuclear deterrent capability, Zhao said.



After that, he adds, North Korea quickly began reaching out and moved to counter the negative impact of its tests.



This is really an opportunity that is hard to come by, Zhao said.If this opportunity isnt seized or if the North loses its patience after a period of waiting for the U.S. to come to the negotiation table, it may resume its nuclear tests and prove to the world that its nuclear capabilities are reliable and solid.



At that point, he adds, the opportunity will be missed for good.

Joyce Huang contributed to this report.
Former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and ex-Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga said they were denied entry to Cuba on Wednesday, after traveling to the Communist-run island to receive an award from a local dissident group.

The conservative former leaders said they were detained at Havana airport. They were to receive the award on behalf of the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas (IDEA), a forum of 37 former presidents and heads of state.

The Cuban dictatorship deported us today from the island for defending the democratic principles of the region, Pastrana wrote on Twitter. He also posted a photo of himself and Quiroga aboard a plane, flashing an L sign with their thumbs and forefingers to signify libertad (freedom).

Cuba responds

The Cuban foreign ministry declined to comment on the incident. But the Communist Party newspaper Granma accused IDEA, in an editorial Wednesday headlined Prizes, provocations and failed ideas, of seeking to sabotage progressive projects across Latin America.

As in 2017, the delivery of the prize is accompanied by a plan to stage a provocation in the Cuban capital this week, create instability and damage the countrys international image, Granma wrote.

The Colombian foreign ministry said in a statement it had contacted the Cuban government about the incident and was told by the Cuban embassy in Colombia that Pastrana had been informed Tuesday he would not be admitted to the island because of his planned attendance at IDEA.

The Colombian government regrets that these kind of incidents happen to Colombians who have been friends of countries close to ours, the statement added.

Others denied entry

Foreign dignitaries were also denied entry to Cuba last year when the Latin American Network of Youth for Democracy, a dissident group critical of Cubas government, awarded its international prize for human rights and democracy on the island for the first time.

Cuba brands dissidents as mercenaries, funded by foreign governments and exiles and out to topple the government.
U.S. President Donald Trump is set to go ahead with his plan to impose tariffs of 25 percent on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminum, but also vowed to remain flexible for specific countries. His comments came as 11 nations signed an expansive trade pact that aims to bring down trade barriers.

"I'm sticking with 10 and 25 [percent] initially," Trump said Thursday before a Cabinet meeting at the White House. "I'll have a right to go up or down depending on the country, and I'll have a right to drop countries or add countries."

Trump said he was staying the course to protect the American worker, even as he faced pushback from Republicans at home and threats of trade retaliation abroad.

The president is expected to sign a proclamation calling for the tariffs as early as Thursday, the same day 11 nations signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), an expansive trade pact aimed at bringing down trade barriers.

U.S. media reported the White House was still finalizing details of Trump's plan.

In an early morning tweet, Trump said he was looking forward to a Thursday afternoon meeting at the White House and the importance of protecting U.S. industries.

The White House said Mexico and Canada would be given a 30-day exception that could be extended.

Meanwhile, trade ministers from the 11 CPTPP signatories  including Canada, Mexico, Japan and Australia  met in Santiago, Chile. They signed the Asia-Pacific trade pact, a smaller, modified version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), led and strongly backed by the Obama administration as a counterweight to China's increasing influence in the region.

Trump withdrew from TPP shortly after taking office, arguing the deal shortchanges America and hurts the American worker.

Signatories to CPTPP said they will reaffirm and realize the TPP agreement, and also promote and enhance regional economic integration and trade liberalization. The deal aims to remove almost all tariffs among signing nations. The 11 members are Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Chile and Peru.

The TPP was the largest trade agreement in history when it was signed in February 2016. It was a centerpiece of the Obama administration's "Pivot to Asia" and was seen as helping the United States lead other countries in a strategic bulwark to temper a rising China, the world's No. 2 economy. The deal was never ratified by Congress.

Response from home

Meanwhile, Trump's decision to impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports continues to face strong backlash from lawmakers. On Wednesday, a number of members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the president, urging him to minimize negative consequences if he goes through with the tariff plan.

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas told VOA he believes Trump has heard their voices, but he said, "the president's got some pretty fixed ideas about trade, and obviously he ran on those and, I think, feels obligated to follow through on his campaign promises."

Cornyn said he hopes that "we'll continue the conversation on things like NAFTA. I think rather than broad tariffs that apply to our friends and allies, we ought to be more targeted, if they are going to exist at all."

The tariffs proposal has won support from some Democratic lawmakers in manufacturing states whose fortunes could be boosted by the tariffs protecting their metal industries.

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said in an interview with VOA, "We're a country that believes in the rule of law, and you enforce rules and you enforce laws. China has continued to cheat by subsidizing land and energy and water and capital, and they will continue if we don't draw a line."

Brown said he believes Trump "did the right thing" and he appreciated Trump being aggressive. However, he said he would have done it slightly differently. "I would have focused more on China and less on Canada and our trading partners that have played more fair," he said.
The U.N. environment program is taking aim at corporations and governments that threaten and intimidate environmental defenders and foul the planet for financial gain. A panel of environmental activists meeting in Geneva explored the actions needed to ensure a safe, healthy environment.

A film that began a panel discussion is narrated by Kenyan environmental activist Phyllis Omido. She succeeded in closing down a lead smelting plant in a slum near Mombasa, which she said spewed poisonous fumes into the air, killing and harming local residents, including her child.

While that battle was won, the fight is far from over. U.N. Environments head of communication for environmental governance, Niamh Brannigan, says threats against environmental defenders continue.

We have been receiving messages over the last two days to say that another environmental defender has been shot dead in the Philippines. Ricardo Mayumi of the Ifugao Peasant Movement. He has been leading the opposition to the Mini Hydro Dam in Santa Clara of the Santa Clara Power Corporation and we believe that he has been shot dead, said Brannigan.

Between 2002 and 2013, the United Nations reports 908 people in 35 countries have been killed defending the environment and land.

U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore says all human rights depend on the environment. Yet, she says people continue to pollute the Earths resources for short-term economic gain, endangering the lives and livelihoods of future generations.

The polluter must pay, so we say. But in practice it is those who have contributed the least who are paying the most... We know what to do  defend the environment and defend those who defend it... and hold those who violate the law accountable, she said.

Bianca Jagger is president and chief executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She calls for those who assassinate environmental defenders of indigenous peoples and their communities to be brought to justice. But she acknowledges that is difficult because governments often join forces with companies that exploit indigenous rights.

So, we need to make a call to all those multi-nationals or national companies that are involved in dams, mining and other exploitation of the land, who want to take the land away from indigenous people and their ancestral land from indigenous people that we need to put an end to that, she said.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment John Knox was instrumental in pushing forward the Environmental Rights Initiative that seeks to promote, protect and respect human and environmental rights. He says it is absolutely crucial that more be done to protect environmental defenders.

Four people on average a week are killed around the world for trying to protect the environment," said Knox. "If we cannot protect the people who are trying to protect the environment for the rest of us, everything else we are doing will be ineffective. So, it is absolutely vital that we do that.

Knox says the right to a healthy environment has been adopted by more than 100 countries. In an ironic twist, he notes one place where it has not been adopted is at the United Nations. He says it is time for this world body to recognize that everyone should be able to enjoy his or her human right to a safe and healthy environment.
Ethiopia's defense minister announced the arrests of the "main instigators" linked to anti-government protests roiling the country, insisting that armed federal patrols were trying to minimize violence. At least a handful of civilian deaths have been reported over the last several days.

"If these people were not arrested, imagine how much destruction would happen," Siraj Fergessa said at a Wednesday news briefing in Addis Ababa.

His comments came hours before U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's Wednesday evening arrival in the capital city, the first stop on a weeklong tour of five sub-Saharan African nations. The trip is intended to promote counterterrorism, peace, trade and investment, along with good governance.

Fergessa, who insisted Ethiopia's government would uphold the rule of law, did not disclose the number of arrests nor any names. He said only that it was less than during a state of emergency from October 2016 to August 2017. The government reported making roughly 16,000 arrests then; organizations such as Human Rights Watch put the number at "tens of thousands."

This week, a youth group called Qeerroo led a three-day boycott in the Horn of Africa country's vast Oromia region, blocking roads and asking businesses to temporarily close as it pressed for the release of all political prisoners. The boycott, which spread from Addis Ababa to other cities, ended Wednesday.

Emergency decree

Ethiopia has operated under a national state of emergency since Feb. 16, the day after the surprise resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. The Parliament approved the emergency decree Friday, setting off a fresh wave of protests.

At least six civilians have been killed by security forces since then, based on eyewitness and other expert accounts reported to VOA. Federal and regional officials in Ethiopia did not respond to VOA's repeated requests for verification or comment.

Fergessa, who also heads the Command Post implementing the emergency decree, did not comment on the number of civilian fatalities. But he did not deny that some deaths had occurred, saying "unfortunate encounters happen here and there."

Killed at home

One of the alleged victims was Digafe Dendena, a 65-year-old father of 10 killed Saturday morning at his home in the town of Guder. Relatives told VOA that at least five security troops had followed an adult son to the family home around 7 a.m., accusing him of blocking a road into the neighborhood. The troops roused Dendena from his bed and ordered him to clear stones from the road. When the elder man refused, he was shot dead, the relatives said.

His son, who confronted a security trooper while trying to protect his father, reportedly was hospitalized with wounds to his head and an arm.

The slain man's wife, Kenatu Gurmessa, told VOA: "These things happened in front of me, in my house. My husband has been killed and my son is injured. Our country is imploding. I pray to God to calm things down and bring peace. That's the only thing I can do."

A shopkeeper in Oromia's Mieso district also alleged government aggression during the state of emergency.

"Federal forces are breaking into shops in the absence of owners and looting the materials they want," he told VOA in a phone interview Tuesday, asking to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal.

The shopkeeper accused federal and regional security forces of excessive violence. "They are firing live bullets at the people," he said.

Nurzema Gale, administrator for Omonado Hospital in the western Oromia town of Jimma, told VOA Wednesday that it had treated three young men for gunshot wounds. They purportedly had been shot by security forces.

"There is bloodshed in Oromia. They barge into homes," Mulatu Gamachu, deputy chairman of the opposition party Oromo Federalist Congress, said of the troops. "These were unjust killings."

Fergessa, the defense minister, said protesters had attacked security forces with everything from knives and machetes to hand grenades, injuring 17 troops. He did not specify when or where any such incidents took place.

New prime minister expected

On Wednesday, the country's ruling coalition  the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)  announced that its executive committee would meet Sunday to choose a new chairman. In subsequent days, that person automatically would be presented to Parliament for approval as prime minister.

The country of 105 million has experienced spasms of unrest since late 2015 over ethnically based political divisions. Reuters news service reports the next leader is likely to come from the Oromo ethnic group, the country's largest, in a bid to ease tensions.

On Tuesday, before setting out on his Africa trip, Tillerson announced that the United States would contribute more than $110 million in new funding for humanitarian assistance in Ethiopia, where the violence has contributed to food and water shortages.

VOA Horn of Africa Service's Tsion Girma and Jalene Gemeda contributed to this report.
A number of eastern European states have ramped up their opposition to a new gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany.

The Nord Stream 2 project will bring Russian gas directly to Western Europe, but critics say it will increase dependence on Russia and enrich its state-owned energy firms, at a time when Moscow stands accused of undermining European security.

The $11 billion, 1,225-kilometer pipeline is on schedule for completion next year. It is a private project backed by Russian state-owned Gazprom and five energy companies from Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands. It also has the strong backing of the German and Russian governments.

We support the implementation of this project which is undoubtedly, absolutely free from politics. This is a purely economic and moreover purely commercial project, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters after meeting the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, last week in Moscow. Kurz also offered his support for the project.

Doing business with Putin

Many eastern states, however, say Europe should not be engaged in big business with President Putin. Some of the most vocal critics have been the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose foreign ministers traveled to Washington last week to meet Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Security these days is increasingly indivisible. Theres no clear division between internal and external security and also geographically, Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser told reporters in Washington ahead of the meeting.

The United States is opposed to Nord Stream 2, having sanctioned Russian companies over Moscows annexation of Crimea, along with foreign companies involved in Russian energy exploration. So far, those sanctions dont affect the new pipeline.

The European Commission also opposes the project but says there are no legal grounds to prevent the private investment from going ahead.

WATCH: Europe Split on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline as US Warns Against Dependence on Russian Gas

Softening sanctions

Opponents fear any additional revenues for Russia from Nord Stream 2 would soften the impact of sanctions. Many Eastern European states also question whether the new pipeline will benefit them economically, says Noah Gordon, analyst at the Center for European Reform, a London-based research group.

There could be bottlenecks through central Europe and Eastern Europe, and those places could see prices rise and they might be more exposed to a Russian political gas cutoff. Ukraine would lose about $2 billion a year in transit fees.

Currently, more than half of Russian gas exports to Europe are routed through Ukraine. Supporters of Nord Stream 2 say it would increase security of supply, citing recent price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv.

The EU hopes to mitigate the risk of increased dependence on Russia by investing in connecting pipelines across European borders.

The goal is a resilient gas market where gas flows freely across borders, Gordon said. For two years, Ukraine hasnt bought any gas from Russia. Instead they buy gas, Russian gas usually, indirectly from European traders like Germany, like the Dutch. So if the European gas market was in a strong enough state and if Europe was more energy efficient and used less gas, Russian or otherwise, Russia wouldnt be able to meddle or use gas as a weapon ever again.

Poland and Lithuania, which vehemently oppose Nord Stream 2, have built terminals for liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The United States wants to boost its LNG exports to Europe.

Both Europe and the U.S. hope that a diversified supply will help reduce Russias ability to use gas as a political weapon.
Georgian legislators in Tbilisi are mulling an expedited North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership strategy following nearly a decade of frustrated efforts to join the military alliance.

NATO leaders pledged in 2008 to secure membership for Georgia and Ukraine but stopped short of granting the former Soviet republics Membership Action Plan (MAP) status, which would speed membership.

Now, Tbilisi lawmakers say they are seriously considering a fast-track approach recently put forward by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation think tank.

"In accordance to our national priorities and by consultations with our strategic partners, we will make every effort to accelerate our integration," Georgian Parliamentary Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze told VOA, referring to the Heritage proposal to grant membership by temporarily excluding the country's Russian-occupied territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from NATO's Article 5 security guarantee.

Article 5 says an attack on one member is considered an attack on all members, which is why Moscow strongly opposes the NATO ambitions of Georgia in particular.

"Many are worried that Georgia's NATO membership will mean automatic war with Russia over the occupied regions," said Luke Coffey, the analyst who drafted the proposal for the conservative-leaning think tank. "Georgia can be invited to join NATO by amending Article 6 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty."

Article 6 defines specific territories within a given nation that would be subject to NATO's Article 5 security guarantee.

"This amendment can be made with Georgia's accession protocol as it was in 1951 when Turkey and Greece joined the alliance," said Coffey, describing his fast-track proposal as a temporary measure that would last until  and if  "Georgia's full, internationally recognized territory is re-established by peaceful and diplomatic means."

Although Georgia pledged in 2010 to not use force to try to regain control of the two breakaway regions, Russia never reciprocated and continues to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. The regions comprise 20 percent of Georgian territory, where Russia has maintained thousands of troops since fighting a five-day war against Tbilisi in 2008.

Coffey says offering Georgia NATO membership with an amended Article 6 would allow Georgia to join NATO more quickly and prevent Moscow from keeping other countries out of NATO by effectively occupying part of their territory.

However a top NATO official, who spoke on condition she not be identified, told VOA that the Brussels-based alliance believes Georgia should be able to enter NATO intact.

"Georgia will not be forced to choose between its territorial integrity and membership in NATO," she said. "We call upon Russia to reverse its recognition of these territories, to stop the construction of border-like obstacles along the administrative boundary lines and to abide by its international commitments.

"This principle is stated in international agreements including the Helsinki Final Act and the NATO-Russia Founding Act, both signed by Russia," she added. "No third country has a right to interfere on the issue of NATO membership. We support the right of all our partners to make independent and sovereign choices on foreign and security policy, free from external pressure or coercion."

NATO-readiness questioned

Critics of Georgia's NATO accession, such as William Courtney, a former U.S. ambassador to Georgia, say Tbilisi hasn't proven that it is ready for membership.

"NATO allies need to be sure that Georgia can accept the financial burden of NATO membership," Courtney told VOA.

"Currently, Georgia's per capita gross domestic product is far below NATO average  it's only one-fourth as high as the Baltic states," he said, adding that Georgian rule of law and subpar territorial defenses were also impediments to accession. "Once Georgia is ready to go into NATO, Russia will think harder about engaging in aggression against Georgia because Georgia at that point will be stronger in its defense, stronger in its democracy and economy."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, however, has said, "Georgia has all the practical tools to become a member."

Georgia is currently the fourth-largest contributor to NATO's Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, where 870 Georgian military personnel help train, advise and assist Afghan defense and security forces. Georgia was the largest non-NATO troop contributor to the International Security Assistance Force until the program was terminated in 2014.

"NATO [has] accepted countries that were less ready for membership than Georgia is today," said Mamuka Tsereteli, a senior fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program for transatlantic research and policy.

This story originated in VOA's Georgian service.
A 17-year-old girl was killed in a shooting at dismissal time Wednesday at an Alabama high school and a 17-year-old male student was injured, authorities said, adding they were investigating it as accidental.

Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said his department is seeking to determine the circumstances of the shooting shortly before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at Huffman High School, adding investigators had already begun seeking out witnesses and would examine school surveillance video.

At this particular time, we are considering this accidental, the police chief said at a news conference. Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions.

Wednesdays shooting prompted a brief lockdown at the school in Alabamas largest city but students were then released and authorities said they had determined that the shooting was not perpetrated by someone from the outside who entered the school.

No arrests

Wilson declined to say who fired the gun or to identify what firearm was retrieved by authorities. No arrests were immediately reported.

He did confirm metal detectors were in place and functioning in the school.

We are asking questions from the staff, the students, anyone who was in that area, Wilson said of the investigation. This should not happen in schools.

He said police have already questioned students but declined to say how many. No arrests have been made.

The Birmingham City School system said in a statement that the shooting prompted a brief lockdown and added two students were involved in the shooting at dismissal time.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin joined the news conference and said the deceased student would have turned 18 in about 30 days and was a senior who had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse.

We are not just talking about some person, (were) talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy, Woodfin said.

School will be open day after shooting

Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring said her goal was to support the family of the child who died and reassure parents about the safety of their children. She confirmed the citys schools would be open Thursday.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement Wednesday evening that she was saddened by the students death.

I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and, even though this was an accident, it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus.
Rallies were held around the world Thursday to celebrate International Women's Day and to demand an end to the exploitation, discrimination and violence that women face.

Hundreds of women stopped traffic outside city hall in Madrid in Spain's first national women's strike, in protest against wage gaps and gender violence. A recent study found Spanish women on average were paid nearly 13 percent less than their male colleagues. Female workers at the Spanish newspaper El Pais were among the strikers, the newspaper said in a post on Twitter.

In Manila, hundreds of women dressed in pink and purple took to the streets to protest against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who they said was one of the worst violators of human rights in Asia. They also protested the killings of 4,000 people under Duterte and his heavy-handed crackdown on illicit drugs.

Human rights activists say Duterte's vow to kill thousands of illicit-drug dealers has led police to carry out extrajudicial killings of suspected dealers and users.

In Seoul, women's groups used the day to boost support for the American-born #MeToo movement against sexual assault in the workplace. The movement has spread across the Asian economic giant after a female prosecutor revealed in January that she had been assaulted by a colleague several years ago, leading to the downfall of numerous high-profile men, including a provincial governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of raping his secretary.

More than 5 million people joined a two-hour strike by 10 unions in Iceland to demonstrate women's contributions to the economy and society. The strike sought to emulate Iceland's historic 1975 strike, in which 90 percent of the country's women took part.

Catholic women observed the day by challenging Pope Francis to give women a larger role in Catholic Church decision-making and threatening to leave the church if its all-male leadership refused to elevate women's status.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese, a fervent advocate for women's ordination, put the the church on notice in a speech delivered in Rome.

"The Catholic Church has long since been a primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny," she said. "Its leadership has never sought a cure for that virus, though the cure is freely available. Its name is equality."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the world's most powerful women, said in a video message that the struggle for gender equality was far from over.

"Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights ... but there's still a lot to do," she said.

In New Delhi, hundreds of women carrying placards and banners that read, "United we fight, united we win," "Don't rape" and "My body, My choice," marched through the streets to protest domestic violence, sexual attacks, and discrimination in jobs and wages.

In Myanmar, de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi urged women to build peaceful democracies using their strength in politics, economics and social issues.

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women, who would have been afraid to leave their homes during Taliban rule, gathered in Kabul to remind their leaders that plenty of work remained to be done to give Afghan women a voice, ensure their education and protect them from increasing violence.

And in China, students at Tsinghua University used the occasion to make light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the country's president.

In Cairo, the Egyptian museum displayed three artifacts highlighting the role of women in antiquity, including a stone head of of Nefertiti, the queen who wielded political and religious authority in tandem with her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten, about 3,300 years ago.



In Photos: International Women's Day
A Pakistani social media activist has reached out to his family after a mysterious disappearance of 14 months.

Samar Abbas, a Karachi native, contacted his family Tuesday to inform them he would be joining them soon, local media reported.

"We received a call from Samar on Tuesday and he informed us that he has been released," Abbas' brother, Azhar Abbas, told the daily newspaper Express Tribune on Thursday. "He told us he is safe and will soon return home."

Samar Abbas, the head of Civil Progressive Alliance Pakistan, an anti-extremism activist group, disappeared from Islamabad in January 2017. A police case was registered in the capital against Abbas' kidnapping.

At the time of Abbas' disappearance, four other liberal social media activists also went missing from different cities in Pakistan. The four rights activists returned after a few weeks and left the country fearing for their lives after they were accused of posting "blasphemous content on the Internet" during their absence through a social media campaign.

Blasphemy remains an emotive and highly sensitive topic in Pakistan, and anyone labeled as a blasphemer can face dire consequences. The deliberate insult to Islam or the Prophet Mohammad in Pakistan can carry a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.

Openly critical

The liberal social media activists apparently had raised their respective voices about political awareness, human and religious rights violations, religious intolerance and extremist ideologies. They also had openly criticized and challenged the actions and role of the country's establishment and military.

Two bloggers, Waqas Goraya and Asim Saeed, later blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency for their forced disappearances and said they were brutally tortured during interrogation.

Pakistan's government and armed forces denied any involvement in the bloggers' disappearances.

Several social media and rights activists have disappeared mysteriously in Pakistan during the past year, and some remain missing.

According to statistics submitted last year to the Apex Court by Pakistan's Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, about 1,498 cases of enforced disappearances remained pending with the government.

In December 2017, peace activist Raza Khan, 40, was abducted from Lahore, and his whereabouts are still unknown. Khan raised his voice on rights exploitation in Pakistan and was vocal against the misuse of blasphemy laws. Khan also wanted to promote peace between archrivals India and Pakistan.

Civil rights activists in the recent past have constantly expressed fear that forced disappearances of social media and civil rights activists are aimed at silencing dissent in the country.
A federal court in Pakistan has sided with a new political party whose bid to register with the national election commission was rejected because of the party's ties to an Islamic cleric designated as a global terrorist by the United Nations and United States.

In its ruling Thursday, the Islamabad High Court directed the commission to review the earlier decision against the Milli Muslim League. The MML is said to be a political wing of cleric Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) charity. Authorities have accused the cleric of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed 166 people, including Americans.

U.N. and U.S. officials say JuD is a front organization for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group blamed for carrying out the carnage in the Indian financial capital.

Washington has placed a $10 million bounty on Saeed, who is also the LeT founder, for allegedly masterminding the attack. The cleric denies the charges and links to LeT, saying Indian and U.S. pressure is forcing Pakistan to restrict his charity work.

The MML was established in August 2017 in a bid to find a place for JuD in Pakistan's political mainstream, sparking criticism of the government's counterextremism efforts.In October, the election commission rejected the MML's registration application, which is required for all political parties that want to take part in parliamentary elections.

Interior Ministry's input

The commission based its decision on written advice from the Interior Ministry, which said the party was linked to charities under domestic and international anti-terrorism sanctions. In response, the MML appealed to the high court.

The party's candidates have since run as independents in several by-elections, using photographs and banners featuring Saeed. The candidates could not win, but secured more votes than several mainstream political groups.

Thursday's court ruling came days after the global watchdog group Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said Pakistan was not doing enough to crack down on terrorist financing. The FATF, which monitors such activity and money laundering, said Pakistan would be placed on the group's terror watch list, known as the "gray list."

The decision followed a recent FATF meeting in Paris in which the United States, France, Britain and Germany introduced a resolution alleging that Pakistan had failed to adhere to the FATF guidelines to curb terror-related financial crimes.

In the run-up to the meeting, Pakistani authorities amended laws to blacklist individuals and groups such as JuD and its sister organization, Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), which is also a U.N.-designated terrorist organization. Those actions, however, failed to convince member nations.

Terror financing remains a major concern and challenge in Pakistan, where militant groups allegedly raise money under the guise of religion and welfare for the poor and spend it on terror-related activities there as well as in India and Afghanistan.

Financial risks

The FATF designation takes effect in June and could pose serious economic risks for Pakistan in terms of attracting foreign investment and dealing with foreign banks. Officials have downplayed those fears, and say Pakistan's placement on the gray list in 2012 did not prevent economic growth and investment.

Pakistani officials maintain they will be able to address international concerns to get the country removed from the latest gray list. Saeed is still moving about freely and delivering anti-India and anti-U.S. sermons in Lahore mosques. On Wednesday, a court in the eastern city prevented authorities from arresting him, citing lack of evidence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, interviewed by Russian state television, lavished praise on President Donald Trump but added that he was sorely disappointed with the U.S. political system, saying that it has been "eating itself up."

Speaking in a series of interviews that were included in a documentary released Wednesday, Putin described Trump as a great communicator.

"I have no disappointment at all," Putin said when asked about the U.S. president. "Moreover, on a personal level he made a very good impression on me."

The two leaders met on the sidelines of international summits last year. Putin praised Trump as a "balanced" man, who easily gets into the gist of various issues and listens to his interlocutor.

"It's possible to negotiate with him, to search for compromises," Putin added.

He also noted that he spent some time talking to Melania Trump when he sat next to her during an official dinner at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July. The Russian leader said he told her and the wife of the Italian premier "about Siberia and Kamchatka, about fishing ... about bears on Kamchatka and tigers in the Far East."

'You can't help exaggerating'

"I made some exaggerations," the action-loving Russian leader said with a grin. "When you talk about fishing, you can't help exaggerating."

Asked jokingly by the interviewer if he was trying to recruit the women, the KGB veteran responded by saying: "No, I stopped dealing with that a long time ago."

He added with a smile: "But I liked doing that. It was my job for many years."

Venting his frustration with the U.S. political system, Putin said "it has demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up."

"It's quite difficult to interact with such a system, because it's unpredictable," Putin said.

Russia-U.S. ties long have been strained by the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and other issues, and Moscow's hopes for better ties with the U.S. under Trump haven't materialized. Tensions have escalated further amid the ongoing congressional and FBI investigations into allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Speaking about the Russia-West rift, Putin said it has been rooted in Western efforts to contain and weaken Russia.

"We are a great power, and no one likes competition," he said.

He said he was particularly dismayed by what he described as the U.S. role in the ouster of Ukraine's Russia-friendly president in February 2014 amid massive protests.

US 'cheated' Russia, he says

Putin charged that the U.S. had asked Russia to help persuade then-president Viktor Yanukovych not to use force against protesters and then "rudely and blatantly" cheated Russia, sponsoring what he called a "coup."

Russia responded by annexing Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

"Few expected us to act so quickly and so resolutely, not to say daringly," Putin said.

He described the Western sanctions over Crimea and the insurgency in eastern Ukraine as part of "illegitimate and unfair" efforts to contain Russia, adding that "we will win in the long run."

"Those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves," he said.

Putin wasn't speaking in the context of a former Russian spy who was left in critical condition, along with his daughter, after coming into contact with a mysterious substance in Britain. Some have suggested it was a poisoning in which Russia may have had a hand, even though British authorities haven't revealed what the substance was and are still investigating. Moscow has denied any involvement.

Responding to a question about Russia's growing global leverage, Putin responded: "If we play strongly with weak cards, it means the others are just poor players, they aren't as strong as it seemed, they must be lacking something."

Ready to retaliate

Putin, who presented a sweeping array of new Russian nuclear weapons last week, voiced hope that nuclear weapons will never be used  but warned that Russia will retaliate in kind if it comes under a nuclear attack.

"The decision to use nuclear weapons can only be made if our early-warning system not only detects a missile launch but clearly forecasts its flight path and the time when warheads reach the Russian territory," he said. "If someone makes a decision to destroy Russia, then we have a legitimate right to respond."

He added starkly: "Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of Russian state I would ask: What is such a world for, if there were no Russia?"
The U.S. special counsel in the Russian election meddling investigation has learned of two conversations in which President Donald Trump asked witnesses about matters discussed with investigators, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The newspaper, which cited three unidentified people familiar with the matter, said Trump told an aide that White House counsel Donald McGahn should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January that said McGahn told investigators the president had once asked him to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

McGahn did not issue an statement and he "later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed," the Times report said.

Trump also asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview with the special counsel investigators had gone and whether they had been "nice."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Times story.

Mueller's investigation arose in part from the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. election and that its goals eventually included aiding Trump who won a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Russia denies the allegations and Trump says there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign.

Mueller also has been investigating whether the president has attempted to obstruct the probe, including whether he fired former FBI Director James Comey to undermine it. The Times report referenced the obstruction investigation with regard to Trump's interactions with McGahn and Priebus.
Russias foreign minister has signed economic agreements and solidified ties in Zimbabwe, one of five stops on an Africa tour that includes former Soviet client states Mozambique, Ethiopia and Angola.

The stated aim of Sergey Lavrovs trip to old ally Zimbabwe was to reaffirm relations and to ink deals that the Kremlin says will cement bilateral ties.

Throwing jabs at Tillerson

Lavrov signed three cooperation agreements on trade and industry during the Thursday visit to Harare which coincided with his American counterparts first trip to the continent this week.



The famously sharp-tongued official took the chance to slam the U.S. policy of imposing sanctions in Zimbabwe over alleged human rights abuses and other acts of repression.

We are certainly, categorically against any unilateral steps such as sanctions or trying to impose measures forcing this or that country to do something, he said. Such measures are unfortunately placed against Zimbabwe. We believe that these politicized steps distort the market and the countries that invoke these measures interfere illegally within the play of free-market forces.

He also criticized U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for his view on Chinese involvement in Africa, as the three traditional world powers compete for influence on the worlds fastest-growing continent. In a speech before his departure, Tillerson accused China of "encouraging dependency" in Africa.

I didnt know that Rex Tillerson was a specialist in Chinese-Africa, he said. Anyway, I do not think it is entirely appropriate if he indeed said that. And it was not appropriate of him to criticize the relations of his hosts when he was a guest there.

Old friends vs new allies

Tillerson's trip to Africa, which began Tuesday, is taking him to Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, all countries the United States has cooperated with governments to counter terrorism. Tillerson has said U.S. policy toward Africa is based on promoting security, development and good governance.

Analyst Anna Borshchevskaya of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says Lavrovs itinerary also tells a story.

The majority of these countries where Lavrov is going are former Soviet allies: Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Borshchevskaya told VOA. And theres several things that Lavrovs trying to do here. One is, the Kremlin has understood, for quite some time now, that Africa is important, economically and for a number of other reasons. Theyre also trying to return Russia back to the areas from which it retreated in the turbulent 1990s, and certainly Africa is one of those regions.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, special advisor to Zimbabwes President Emmerson Mnangagwa, says Zimbabwes interest in Russia is not ideological, but economic.



Russia is a superpower, he told VOA in Harare.We are now taking the relationship to a new level.  If Zimbabwe can produce world-class goods made in Zimbabwe for the global market, well be able to address most of the foreign currency constraints we have and create more jobs, for Zimbabweans.

Sebastian Mhofu contributed to this report from Harare, Zimbabwe.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met the head of the Anglican church in London on Thursday and promised to promote interfaith dialogue as part of his domestic reforms, the British faith leader's office said.

Prince Mohammed is making an official visit to London to promote Saudi Arabia as a tolerant, modernising economy and build a wider trade and investment relationship with Britain, a long-term defence ally.

On the second full day of his first foreign tour since becoming heir apparent to the Saudi throne last year, Prince Mohammed also had meetings with finance minister Philip Hammond, bankers and lawmakers, and was due to dine with Prime Minister Theresa May at her country residence later.

State oil giant Saudi Aramco, whose lucrative stock market listing Britain is vying with the United States to attract, signed a preliminary deal to pursue international gas opportunities with Royal Dutch Shell.

Prince Mohammed began the day with a symbolic visit to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion of millions of Christians globally, at Lambeth Palace in central London.

The Crown Prince made a strong commitment to promote the flourishing of those of different faith traditions, and to interfaith dialogue within the Kingdom and beyond, a statement from Lambeth Palace said.

The Archbishop shared his concern about limits placed on Christian worship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and highlighted the importance for leaders of all faiths to support freedom of religion or belief, drawing on the experience of the UK.

Saudi Arabia does not tolerate non-Muslims practicing their faith publicly, forcing Christians to risk arrest by praying in private homes.

Yemen conflict

Prince Mohammed and Welby viewed early texts from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths, including fragments of a Koran manuscript found in a Birmingham University library in 2015 that is thought to be among the world's oldest.

Earlier this week, Prince Mohammed met Coptic Pope Tawadros II at Cairo's largest Coptic cathedral, part of his drive to rid the Gulf Arab kingdom of its reputation as a global exporter of an ultra conservative brand of Islam.

Welby also voiced his distress at the humanitarian situation in Yemen, the statement said. A Saudi-led coalition is fighting a war in Yemen in which 10,000 people have died and 8.3 million people have been left dependent on food aid.

May, whose government has drawn widespread criticism for approving 4.6 billion pounds ($6.35 billion) worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, was likely to repeat her own concerns over the humanitarian situation in Yemen during a private dinner.

That criticism over the Yemen war and noisy demonstrations have contrasted with the warm welcome from the British government given the crown prince.

On Wednesday, Prince Mohammed met Queen Elizabeth for lunch and later met May to agree to target a 65 billion pound ($90 billion) increase in trade and investment ties.

A government spokeswoman said Prince Mohammed met with Hammond on Thursday, and two sources said there was also a meeting with Standard Chartered group chief executive Bill Winters and HSBC CEO John Flint. No further details of either meeting were available.
Sierra Leone's main opposition leader called for calm Wednesday night after his supporters engaged in running street battles with police, resulting in at least one injury at the end of an otherwise peaceful day of polling in the West African nation.

"I want every Sierra Leonean to behave themselves in a very peaceful manner so that we can have a peaceful election once in our lifetime," Julius Maada Bio told reporters at Sierra Leone People's Party headquarters in Freetown's posh Goderich neighborhood, where he was holed up at dusk after his supporters clashed with police on the street.

"We hope this does not mar the whole election, which has been relatively smooth," said Bio, a retired general who briefly seized power in a 1996 coup before handing power to civilian authorities.

Sierra Leone held general elections Wednesday in what analysts said was one of the most hotly contested races in the country's history. Bio was running for president against Samura Kamara of the ruling All People's Congress and 14 other candidates. The current president, Ernest Bai Koromo of the APC, must step down after serving two terms.

The vote went mostly smoothly across the country, but after polls closed, tensions rose in Goderich following an alleged incident outside the SLPP headquarters, where party officials said they were conducting a vote tally.

Bio accused police of trying to enter the compound without a warrant and putting him under "siege." He said police accused him of "hacking" and threatened to use tear gas and force to enter. Bio rejected the hacking allegation.

SLPP supporters then amassed in the streets, facing off against police carrying shields who had deployed. Police used pepper spray and electric shocks to disperse the growing crowd, and SLPP supporters then began throwing rocks and glass bottles at police. Police responded by throwing rocks back, prompting running battles.

At least one SLPP supporter was injured.

Claude Robert, with a gash on his forehead, said police hit him as he tried to block them from entering the SLPP compound.

A few armed soldiers were also on the scene but did not participate in the melee.

VOA was unable to reach police for comment, but officers withdrew from outside SLPP headquarters after the skirmishes.

As the clashes died down, Bio met with police and election observers, including former Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan, head of the African Union observer mission to Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone has enjoyed relative peace since its bloody civil war ended 15 years ago, but the country has been hit by crises recently, including the devastating 2014 Ebola outbreak and a deadly mudslide last year.

The APC has been accused of responding poorly to those disasters and of corruption. The party's supporters point to newly built roads and electricity connections during Koromo's decade in power.
Two South Korean envoys are heading to the United States to brief Trump administration officials about their talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Chung Eui-yong, the head of the National Security Office, left Seoul Thursday accompanied by National Intelligence Service Chief Suh Hoon. Chung and Suh are expected to discuss their meeting with Kim this week in Pyongyang with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

According to Chung Eui-yong, the North Korean leader unexpectedly offered to suspend testing its arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles while it engages directly with the United States to end his country's nuclear weapons program  as long as North Korea's security was guaranteed.

The rival Korean nations also agreed to hold a major summit in late April in the border village of Panmunjom.

Speaking to reporters Thursday in Addis Ababa, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. needs to be "very clear-eyed and realistic" about direct U.S.-North Korean talks.

"I don't know yet until we are able to meet ourselves face to face with representatives of North Korea whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations," Tillerson said. "And that's kind of the current state of play.''

President Donald Trump has expressed cautious optimism, saying earlier this week that Pyongyang appeared to be "sincere" in its offer to engage in talks.

After their meetings in Washington, Chung will travel to China and Russia to brief officials there about North Korea's offer, while Suh will travel to Japan. The three nations, along with South Korea and the United States, have been negotiating with Pyongyang for several years to end its nuclear weapons program. The talks have stalled since 2008.
South Korean envoys briefed American officials on Thursday on their unprecedented meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while the U.S. secretary of state said that though talks about talks might be possible with Pyongyang, denuclearization negotiations were likely a long way off.

South Koreas National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon flew to Washington where they were expected to explain North Koreas stance on possible future talks with Washington and the prospect of Pyongyang suspending nuclear tests if the security of the North's government is assured.

Chung, who led a South Korean delegation for a first-ever meeting with Kim on Monday, met U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster at the White House, beginning a round of discussions with senior administration officials. A South Korean official said President Donald Trump or Vice President Mike Pence might also join in.

Speaking during a trip to Ethiopia, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said South Korea was keeping the United States well informed, but suggested actual negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang were a ways off.

In terms of direct talks with the United States ... were a long ways from negotiations, Tillerson told a news conference in Addis Ababa.

We just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it, Tillerson added. I think the first step ... is to have talks, have some kind of talks about talks, because I dont know yet, until we are able to meet, ourselves, face to face with representatives of North Korea, whether the conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations.

Tillerson also reiterated previous calls for African states to cut ties with North Korea. Pyongyang has more than a dozen embassies on the continent, and the Trump administration has said it earns hard currency from arms deals with African governments and trafficking wildlife parts from Africa.

Mondays meeting with Kim Jong Un was the culmination of a series of North-South contacts that have helped ease fears of war in a standoff over Pyongyangs development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

Lingering tensions

In another sign of lingering tensions, the two Koreas will not march together at the opening ceremony of the Winter Paralympics, as they did at the Olympics last month in South Korea, because they cannot agree on a united flag that erases islands disputed with Japan, officials said.

Tensions over North Korea rose to their highest in years in 2017, and the Trump administration has warned that all options are on the table, including military ones, in dealing with Pyongyang, which has pursued its weapons programs in defiance of ever tougher U.N. sanctions.

Signs of a thaw emerged this year, with North and South Korea resuming talks and North Korea attending the Winter Olympics. During the Pyongyang talks this week, the two Koreas agreed to hold their first summit since 2007 in late April.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said sanctions should not be eased for the sake of talks and that nothing less than denuclearization of North Korea should be the final goal for talks.

China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, called on the United States and North Korea to hold talks as soon as possible, warning at a news briefing in Beijing on Thursday that things will not be smooth sailing.

A senior U.S. administration official said no decision on the possibility of the United States joining a summit of North and South Korea was expected to be made at the meeting with McMaster. Those discussions would be conducted in private among U.S. officials, the source said.
The Syrian military is continuing its relentless aerial and ground assaults on eastern Ghouta in a campaign to recapture the rebel-held Damascus suburb, forcing the postponement of a critical shipment of humanitarian aid, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.



The United Nations and the ICRC said the aid convoy for the besieged area would not embark as planned Thursday due to security concerns. Eastern Ghouta has been home to 400,000 people living under siege since 2013.



"The U.N. continues to receive reports of escalating fighting in east Ghouta and shelling on Damascus, endangering civilians and preventing humanitarian assistance from reaching hundreds of thousands of people in need, including thousands of vulnerable children," said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Difficult mission

A 46-truck convoy was able to deliver some supplies to the Duma section of eastern Ghouta on Monday, but the U.N., ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent cut short that mission as deadly violence continued in the area. Tom said 10 full trucks and four partial trucks could not be unloaded, including "half the food for 27,500 people."



"The U.N. remains ready to deliver assistance to all people in need in Duma, other areas in east Ghouta and other hard-to-reach and besieged areas as soon as conditions allow," she said.

Fighting in eastern Ghouta has escalated in recent weeks as the Syrian government, backed by Russian forces, boosts efforts to recapture the area. The violence has killed more than 900 civilians, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which added that pro-government forces have effectively seized half of the territory held by the opposition.



Rebels have accused Syrian government troops of using "scorched earth" tactics and said they trying to stop further advances by deploying more guerrilla-style ambushes.

Security Council



The U.N. Security Council demanded a 30-day halt in fighting across Syria nearly two weeks ago in order to allow food and medical aid to reach those in need, but the resolution has been ignored.

The Dutch ambassador to the U.N., Karel van Oosterom, who holds the Security Council's rotating presidency, said the members called Wednesday for all parties in Syria to implement the cease-fire and expressed concern about the country's humanitarian crisis.



He spoke after a closed-door session requested by Britain and France.



"We've called this meeting with the U.K. because the Syrian regime, as we speak, keeps besieging and bombing its own citizens in eastern Ghouta in complete violation of Resolution 2401 that was unanimously adopted by the council," French U.N. representative Francois Delattre told reporters.



Sweden's representative to the U.N., Olof Skoog, demanded before the meeting "full and immediate implementation of the resolution" and "immediate progress on medical evacuations" from the area.



Council members are scheduled to discuss the implementation of the cease-fire again on Monday when they meet with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.



In a tweet Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert accused Russia of not being committed to the cease-fire.

Russia's defense ministry said Tuesday that Syrian rebels, in addition to civilians, are free to use evacuation corridors to leave eastern Ghouta. Members of the opposition have said they will not leave.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has re-affirmed the U.S. commitment to Africa, two months after President Donald Trump's reported derogatory comments about the continent.



"I think the United States commitment to Africa is quite clear in terms of the importance we place on the relationship," said Tillerson at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. "The president himself wrote a personal letter to the chairperson, reaffirming the importance of this relationship."

Trump in January reportedly used an expletive to describe Haiti and some African countries. At the time, officials from the AU and several African nations said they were outraged by the reported comments.



On Thursday, Tillerson met with AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, who spoke of renewed ties.

"This incident is of the past," Mahamat said during a joint news conference with the secretary in the Ethiopian capital. "With the visit of Secretary of State Tillerson, the evidence of the relations between Africa and the United States is personified through his visit."



Tillerson said promoting peace and security, development and trade, and good governance, are three pillars of Washington's approach to Africa.



His visit to Addis Ababa came after Ethiopia officials decided to impose a state of emergency. But protests in the restive Oromia region have continued.



The top U.S. diplomat said after Thursday's meeting with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu the answer to political turmoil in Ethiopia is greater freedom. He said he hoped to see "the country move on past the state of emergency as quickly as possible."



Tillerson added, "We firmly believe that democratic reform, economic growth, and lasting stability are best addressed through an inclusive political process, rather than through the imposition of restrictions."



He noted the U.S. appreciated the statements on South Sudan made at the AU summit in January, where the African body raised the possibility of sanctions for the violation of cease-fires in the conflict-stricken nation.

Continental free trade



Meanwhile, the AU plans to sign a Continental Free Trade Agreement later this month aimed at economically integrating the continent, which has a population of 1.2 billion people and a combined estimated GDP of $3.5 trillion.



Tillerson said Washington supports "the African Union's economic regional integration efforts to lower intra-trade barriers on the continent, boost more intra-regional trade, which we know has been a central goal of the negotiations around the constant Continental Free Trade Agreement, which we are quite supportive of."

Fighting corruption



Leaders of the African Union, which represents 55 countries, also outlined an official theme of anti-corruption for the year of 2018 during its annual summit in January.



"We think these are all positive developments. So the continent is moving in one direction and we're just hoping the current administration is taking noteand is also engaging this continent in a direction in which it's trying to move," said Brahima Coulibaly, Brookings Institution's Africa Growth Initiative senior fellow.



Proposed cuts in aid



But the Trump administration is under criticism for a proposed 2018 budget cut on efforts to combat HIV and AIDS.



While Tillerson has announced nearly $533 million in new humanitarian assistance for food insecurity in some African nations, the Trump administration has not proposed a signature initiative to aid Africans.



"It is unusual for a secretary of state to make a trip like this and to have no deliverables, to have no initiative that they're ready to announce," said Witney Schneidman, the Brookings Institution's Africa Growth Initiative nonresident fellow.



After more than a year since entering the White House, Trump still has not nominated a chief U.S. diplomat for Africa, and embassies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Africa and in five other African countries remain without ambassadors.

China in Africa

Speaking Tuesday before leaving for Africa, Tillerson said the United States is "eager" to lower barriers to trade and investment on the continent, whose largest trading partner by far is China.



He pointed up that the U.S. approach of "incentivizing good governance" contrasts sharply with China's, "which encourages dependency, using opaque contracts, predatory loan practices and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty."



Tillerson's one-week, five-nation trip is focusing on counterterrorism, promoting peace, good governance and trade and investment. He is scheduled to meet with top officials in Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria  all of them U.S. allies in the war against terrorism and jihadist groups such as Boko Haram, al-Shabab and Islamic State.



Without partnerships to build infrastructure and achieve more economic development, Tillerson warned there will be "new ways for terrorists to exploit the next generation."



The secretary of state also said U.S. and African leaders "must work to find long-term diplomatic solutions" to regional conflicts "that cause so much human suffering."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has re-affirmed the U.S. commitment to Africa, in an effort to end the controversy caused by President Donald Trump's reported derogatory comments about the continent.

The top U.S. diplomats meeting Thursday with African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki came two months after Trump reportedly used an expletive to describe Haiti and some African countries. The African Union and several African governments said they were outraged by the comment.



I think the U.S. commitment to Africa is quite clear in terms of the importance we place on the relationship. The president wrote a personal letter to the AU, said Tillerson in a joint press conference with Faki at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.



Faki said that he had received a letter dated January 25 and this incident has been put in the past. Faki added the visit of the top U.S. diplomat is evidence that relations between Africa and the U.S. is personified.



Tillerson said promoting peace and security, development and trade, and good governance, are three pillars of Washingtons approach to Africa. He said the U.S. appreciated the statements on South Sudan made at the AU summit in January, where it raised the possibility of sanctions for the violation of ceasefires in the conflict-stricken nation.



Meanwhile, AU plans to sign a Continental Free Trade Agreement later this month aimed to economically integrate the continent, which has a population of 1.2 billion people and a combined estimated GDP of $3.5 trillion.



Tillerson said Washington supports the African Union's economic regional integration efforts to lower intra-trade barriers on the continent, boost more intra-regional trade - which we know has been a central goal of the negotiations around the constant Continental Free Trade Agreement, which we are quite supportive of.

Leaders of the African Union, which represents 55 countries, also outlined an official theme of anti-corruption for the year of 2018 at an annual summit in late January.



We think these are all positive developments. So the continent is moving in one direction and we're just hoping the current administration is taking note, and is also engaging this continent in a direction in which it's trying to move, said Brahima Coulibaly, Brookings Institutions Africa Growth Initiative senior fellow.

Lack of care for Africa?

But the Trump administration is under criticism for a proposed 2018 budget cut on efforts to combat HIV and AIDS.

While Tillerson has announced nearly $533 million in new humanitarian assistance for food insecurity in some African nations, the Trump administration has not proposed a signature initiative to aid Africans.



It is unusual for a Secretary of State to make a trip like this and to have no deliverables, to have no initiative that they're ready to announce, said Witney Schneidman, the Brookings Institutions Africa Growth Initiative nonresident fellow.



After more than a year since entering the White House, Trump still has not nominated a chief U.S. diplomat for Africa, and embassies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, South Africa and in five other African countries remain without ambassadors.

Speaking Tuesday before leaving for Africa, Tillerson said the United States is "eager" to lower barriers to trade and investment on the continent, whose largest trading partner by far is China.

He added the U.S. approach of "incentivizing good governance" contrasts sharply to China's, "which encourages dependency, using opaque contracts, predatory loan practices and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty."

Tillerson's one-week, five-nation trip is focusing on counterterrorism, promoting peace, good governance and trade and investment. He is scheduled to meet with top officials in Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, all of them U.S. allies in the war against terrorism and jihadist groups such as Boko Haram, Al-Shabab and Islamic State.

Without partnerships to build infrastructure and achieve more economic development, Tillerson warned there will be "new ways for terrorists to exploit the next generation."

Tillerson also said the U.S. and African leaders "must work to find long-term diplomatic solutions" to regional conflicts "that cause so much human suffering."
As divers found mutilated body parts in plastic bags on the ocean floor one by one, a gruesome puzzle as dark as any Scandinavian noir emerged in Denmark: A young Swedish reporter who had embarked on a submarine journey to interview its maker was tortured, murdered and disposed at sea.

Businessman Peter Madsen stands trial at Copenhagens City Court on Thursday for the killing of Kim Wall, 30, in his submarine off the usually quiet northern European country.

Madsen denies killing Wall and says she died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck. However, he has admitted cutting her up before he buried her at sea.

Two sides to Madsen

He had two sides: He could be a well-spoken and charismatic person who could speak for hours about his submarine. And then ... a much darker side, said retired adult movie actress Dorthe Damsgaard, 48, who met him several times.

Damsgaard told The Associated Press she had declined invitations to join Madsen in his submarine because she has claustrophobia.

He made it no secret to me about having sexual fantasies, Damsgaard said, describing him as funny, manipulative, serious and scary.

Madsens wife, who reportedly has sought a divorce, has told investigators that he openly spoke about attending fetish parties without her.

His former workshop, a low building of corrugated iron, sits on Refshale island, a once-bustling shipyard and industrial area across from downtown Copenhagen.

It was here that Wall embarked on the submarine journey on a sunny summer evening last year.

Soft spot for misfits

On Aug. 10, she and her Danish boyfriend, Ole Stobbe Nielsen, threw a goodbye party before moving to China. That evening, she received a text message from Madsen saying an interview was possible. For months, she had been trying to speak with him and she left the party to join the now 47-year-old Dane. Alone.

Wall grew up in southern Sweden, just across a narrow waterway from Copenhagen. She studied at Paris Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York, from where she graduated with a masters degree in journalism in 2013.

She wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, reporting on topics such as tourism in post-earthquake Haiti and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.

Caterina Clerici, a friend from Columbia, said Wall had a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform.

Rockets to submarines

Madsen doesnt fit into any boxes. According to a 2014 biography, he grew up in a small town west of Copenhagen with an authoritarian father. Considered a nerd at school, he challenged science teachers and built rockets in his past time.

In 2008 he co-founded Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium to develop and construct manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a homemade nine-meter (30-foot) rocket eight kilometers (five miles) into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space.

However, differences led to a split with his business partner in 2014. Madsen, known for his shifting moods and for hating to be contradicted, moved into another workshop.

In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen the same year, Madsen said he one day hoped to have a criminal career, adding he didnt want to rob a bank because no one must be hurt.

On the evening that he contacted Wall, Madsen also texted his associate Steen Lorck to call off a planned trip the following day in the submarine that first launched in 2008.

After Wall left to meet Madsen, her boyfriend received several text messages from her. He started worrying when the messages stopped coming and eventually alerted authorities, who launched a search for the submarine, which didnt have a satellite tracking system.

The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen was picked up unharmed. Initially, he told police he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.

Investigators found dried blood inside the submarine, and divers eventually found Walls body parts in plastic bags held down on the Baltic Sea bed by metal pieces. Her torso had been stabbed multiple times.

Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen claims Madsen tied up and tortured Walls before killing her, either by cutting her throat or strangling her. The murder has been called premeditated because he had brought along tools he normally wouldnt take with him on the submarine.

Madsen has undergone a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation and is deemed fit for trial. His defense lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, wont discuss the case before the trial begins.

Walls family has declined to comment for the time being.
U.S. President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty on Thursday to additional criminal charges stemming from the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and will face trial in July.

Manafort pleaded not guilty in a Virginia courtroom to charges ranging from bank fraud to filing false tax returns that were brought by Robert Mueller, the U.S. special counsel for the Russia probe.

Manafort also pleaded not guilty last week in Washington, D.C., to related charges, including conspiracy to launder money, and failing to register as a foreign agent for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government of former President Viktor Yanukovych. That trial begins in September.

Mueller is investigating alleged Russian interference in the election, possible obstruction of justice, and alleged financial crimes by Manafort and others.

Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia, and Moscow says it did not try to interfere in the election.

Manafort has been under increasing pressure to cooperate with Mueller, especially after his former business partner and former Trump deputy campaign manager Rick Gates pleaded guilty last month to lying to investigators and conspiring to defraud the United States.

Also on Thursday, another of Trump's former campaign managers, Corey Lewandowski, was interviewed by the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which has its own investigation into possible Russian election meddling.

Lewandowski helped Trump win the Republican presidential nomination, running his campaign for around 18 months. He was fired in June 2016 after he clashed with other advisers over how to appeal to the broader general electorate after Trump won the nomination.

Manafort then ran the campaign for several months.

The federal judge in Virginia set July 10 as the start of Manafort's trial.
Questions about the fate of Syrian refugees in Turkey are emerging as its forces in Syria's Afrin province fight a Kurdish militia linked to a long-running insurgency within Turkish borders.



Ankara has said the goal of its military offensive is to secure the Turkish border against terrorist threats posed by the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG, which the United States supports in the fight against Islamic State militants.



But a second goal is emerging: the return of Syrian refugees.



In recent weeks, Turkey's political leadership has been saying that with victory in the operation, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees could be sent to Afrin.



"We are not in a position to continue hosting 3.5 million refugees forever," said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech to village and provincial leaders. "We'll solve the Afrin incident, we'll solve Idlib, and we would like our refugee brothers and sisters to return to their own country," added Erdogan. Idlib borders Afrin and is one of the last remaining enclaves where Syrian rebel forces backed by Turkey are based.



Ankara has suggested between 350,000 to 500,000 refugees could be sent to Afrin.



Until recently, political leaders made few references to returning refugees. Instead, the government chose to use its refugee policy to enhance its humanitarian credentials, while at the same time castigating European countries for failing to match the country's humanitarian commitments.



The prospect of even citizenship to millions of Syrians was once touted. "Turkey is also your homeland...We are going to help our Syrian friends in offering them the chance, if they want it, to acquire Turkish nationality," Erdogan said in July 2016. But in a rare case of Erdogan misreading public sentiment, studies and opinion polls indicate strong opposition to his Syrian refugee policy.



"You look at survey upon survey...Turks resent Syrians. Up to 80 percent of survey participants express a negative opinion against Syrians," points out analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners. Yesilada said that sentiment "is understandable, for the same reason Germans don't like Muslim refugees, Turks don't like Arab refugees. There is a mistaken impression they take jobs, they undermine social order."



Refugee policy



In a politically polarized country, a rare consensus is found over opposition to refugees. A recent comprehensive study by Istanbul's Bilgi University recorded two-thirds of respondents, including 45 percent of Erdogan voters, said the government's policies toward Syrians are wrong.



The government has spent more than $30 billion in hosting refugees, including providing health and education, such as at the university level, something not available for Turks. Additionally, 75 percent of respondents said Turkish and Syrian communities could not live in peace.



In the past year, numerous clashes between Turks and Syrians have been reported across Turkey. Last July, more than 100 Syrian and Afghan families were evacuated from an Istanbul suburb, following two days of violence after Syrian youths allegedly killed a Turkish teenager.

With general and presidential elections due within 18 months, and surveys revealing the presence of Syrian refugees and terrorism as key issues of voter concern, analysts suggest the ongoing military offensive against the Kurdish militia in Afrin offers Erdogan an opportunity.

"So whatever territory Turkey occupies, it is going to be used to send back the Syrian refugees, largely Sunni Arabs. There is going to be ethnic dilution; it's a lose, lose for Kurds," said analyst Yesilada. "It's a very neat solution; as with all neat solutions, it's clever, but not ethical or moral."



Relocation



Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party has accused the government of seeking to change the demographic makeup ofthe predominantly Kurdish Syrian Afrin enclave. It is a policy the HDP says has been used in the past against Kurds living in the region.



Erdogan has dismissed such accusations, maintaining that he merely wants to right an injustice. "The whole issue is this: 55 percent of Afrin is Arab, 35 percent are the Kurds who were later relocated, and about 7 percent are Turkmen. [We aim] to give Afrin back to its rightful owners," the Turkish president said at a rally in the Bursa province.

With the majority of Syrian refugees dispersed across Turkey and many already carving out a life for themselves, questions are being raised as to whether talk of the mass return of Syrians is just electioneering by Erdogan.



"It's clear this kind of talk, is rhetoric, is intended for internal consumption for elections. It's a pipe dream; nothing of this kind [will] happen, for a number of reasons. Will these [Syrian] people - would they like to go and live there? [Afrin]. The Kurds will object to it, the Syrians will object to it, Russians will object it, the Iranians will object to it, the Arabs will object it, the entire world will object to it," said political scientist Cengiz Aktar. "What Erdogan may do, he may relocate [pro-Turkish] Arab [militia] proxies, a kind of border force inside Syria; this is a very old tactic."
A British police official on Thursday updated the number of people who sought treatment after a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, saying "around 21" had been given medical help and support.

Only three people remain hospitalized after the poisoning Sunday in the southern English city of Salisbury  ex-spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a British police officer who tried to help them. Health officials insist there has only been a low risk to the public.

Authorities haven't said who launched the attack, but U.K. officials have warned of a strong response if the Russian government is found to be responsible.

"Multiple people have been treated, around 21 people, including the man and the woman found on the bench," Wiltshire acting police chief Kier Pritchard told Sky News, referring to Skripal and his daughter, who were found unconscious.

Pritchard said that of the new total, "a number" of them got hospital treatment including blood tests, support and advice. Previously, authorities had said only that "several" people had sought treatment.

Police haven't provided details on the nerve agent that was used, and the ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said whoever is behind the attack is guilty of a "brazen and reckless act." She said Britain would respond strongly when it is clear who's to blame.

She said that enormous resources were being used to determine who poisoned Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. They were found unconscious on a bench, triggering a police inquiry headed by counterterrorism detectives.

A police officer who came to their aid is hospitalized in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, Rudd said. He was identified Thursday as Sgt. Nick Bailey.

"The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act," Rudd told Parliament. "This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way."

Russian response

The Russian Embassy in London, which has mocked other British politicians for suggesting Russian involvement, tweeted that it agreed with Rudd: "First evidence then conclusions on Mr. Skripal's case. Responsible political approach."

Police have refused to publicly speculate on who is behind the attack, but many experts have focused on Russia because of the similarity to the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.

A public inquiry found that Russia was responsible for killing Alexander Litvinenko, and that President Vladimir Putin probably approved it.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the Litvinenko killing or the attempted killing of Skripal, a former Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.

Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie of the research project CBW Events, which records the use of chemical and biological weapons, said the highly public attack appeared to be "an expression of power" intended to send a message.

"There's echoes of Litvinenko  you are doing it in a way that makes it obvious you're doing it," he said.

Russia is "obviously a clear candidate," but it is too soon to say who was behind the attack, Guthrie added.

"It's also possible there could be some troublemaker out there who wants to make it look like it was Russia," he said.

Chemical weapons

Nerve agents are chemical compounds that block nerve cells from sending messages to each other and the organs, preventing the body from working normally. They can be administered in gas or liquid form, causing symptoms including vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis and often death.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global chemical weapons watchdog based in The Hague, said Thursday the Skripal case was "of great concern," adding that it was in touch with British authorities over the attack.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, has said there was a low risk to the public, but experts say that nerve agents are highly dangerous and volatile.

"Nerve agents are not materials that can be made at home," said Andrea Sella, a chemistry professor at University College London. "Their level of toxicity is such that they are only to be manufactured in specialized facilities."

Sella said authorities will be looking to find impurities and residues that might provide clues to the precise chemical process used to manufacture the material. He added that if authorities found the container used to deliver the material, "it might well be possible to trace the origin of the substance."

Police and forensics officers are searching Skripal's home in Salisbury, a medieval city known for its towering cathedral, located 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of London, as well as a pub and a restaurant he and his daughter are believed to have visited Sunday.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned. He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicized spy swap in which the U.S. agreed to hand over 10 members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

Those who knew him in Salisbury were shocked, describing him as friendly and outgoing  hardly a man hiding out.

The owner of a local convenience shop frequented by Skripal described him as one of her favorite customers. Ebru Ozturk said she made sure to stock the food he liked, particularly smoked bacon and Polish salami.

"Usually he plays lottery and scratch cards," said Ozturk, 41. "Plus a few weeks he was lucky as well and laughed about it."
A suspected American airstrike in southeastern Afghanistan has destroyed a Pakistani Taliban-run suicide bombing training center, killing more than 20 militants.

Afghan officials confirmed and released few details of the attack Thursday, a day after it occurred in the Kunar province bordering Pakistan.

Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said the airstrike in the remote mountainous Shaltan area was carried out in coordination with Afghan military forces and it killed more than 15 terrorists.

But he would not say whether U.S. drones or jet fighters bombed the militant compound.

We were not aware of this report and have no additional information to offer, a NATO spokesman in Kabul, U.S. Army Captain Tom Greshback, told VOA when asked for his comments.

Pakistan intelligence sources have also confirmed the attack, saying missiles fired from a U.S. drone struck a facility where members of the extremist Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, were receiving training for suicide bombings.

The Pakistani sources have said 21 men were killed in the strike and released their names. The camps master trainer, Qari Yasin, and a son of TTPs fugitive chief, Mullah Fazlullah, were on the list along with another key militant commander.

Fazlullah would also frequently visit the training camp, but it was not known whether he was present there when the drone strike occurred.

Pakistani media quoted a TTP source as saying would-be suicide bombers were undergoing routine training when five missiles fired by an unmanned U.S. aircraft struck the center, dealing a disastrous blow to the militant group.

Islamabad maintains militants and top commanders linked to TTP have found sanctuaries in Kunar and adjoining Afghan province of Nangarhar after fleeing Pakistani counterterrorism operations and plot deadly terrorist attacks against Pakistan.

U.S. military commanders say that about 75 percent of militants filling the ranks of Islamic State terrorist group in Afghanistan are former TTP members.

American drone strikes and fighter planes have killed many top Pakistani Taliban commanders and several IS chiefs in eastern Afghanistan since the Middle East-based terrorist group began its extremist activities in early 2015.

The slain militants included Pakistani commander, Hafiz Saeed Khan, who founded IS Afghan branch and led the terrorist group until July 2016 when a drone strike killed him along with several aides.

The Pakistani Taliban last month confirmed the killing of its deputy chief, Khan Said Sajna, in a U.S. drone attack in the volatile border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The collision of a U.S. Navy warship with an oil tanker last year was caused when the warship made "a sudden turn" that put it in the path of the tanker, according to a report issued Thursday by the Singapore government.

Ten sailors aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain were killed when their ship collided with the Liberian-registered Alnic MC, Aug. 21, 2017, near the Strait of Malacca in Singapore territorial waters.

The report by the city-state's Transport Safety Investigation Board said "a series of missteps" led the USS John S. McCain to make its fatal turn just minutes before slamming into the Alnic MC.

The USS John S. McCain is named after the father and grandfather of U.S. Senator John McCain, both of them prominent admirals.

Two months earlier, another U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, collided with a Philippine container ship off the Japanese coast, resulting in the deaths of seven sailors.

A report issued last November by Admiral John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, found the collisions were avoidable and happened because of lax standards and poor preparation. They included failing to plan for safety as well as failures in adhering to sound navigation practice and executing basic watch procedures.

The commanding officers of both the USS John S. McCain and the USS Fitzgerald are facing criminal charges, including negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and endangering a ship. Several other officers from both ships are facing either criminal charges or administrative actions.

Several senior naval officers were fired as a result of the incidents, including Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the Pacific-based 7th Fleet, the Navy's largest.
Top U.S. defense officials on Wednesday delivered a short but powerful message to Russia, warning that Washington still has the ability to respond no matter what nuclear weapons Moscow has at its disposal.

The comments came during a brief budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee in response to questions about claims by Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country now has an arsenal of new, invincible nuclear weapons.

We are ready for all the threats that are out there and no one, no one should doubt this, U.S. Strategic Command chief General John Hyten said.

There is nothing they can do outside of a massive attack against our country that we would not have the ability to respond, he added. By the way, our submarines, they do not know where they are, and they have the ability to decimate their country if we go down that path.

Putin on Russian capabilities

Just last week, Putin used his annual state of the nation address to boast about Russias newest nuclear weapons, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a laser weapon, a nuclear-powered underwater drone and a new hypersonic missile.

During the speech, Putin showed a computer-generated video of one of the new weapons destroying Florida. And he bragged that the new weapons would make U.S. missile defense systems useless.

They have not succeeded in holding Russia back, Putin said, in a reference to the U.S. and its Western allies. Now they need to take account of a new reality.

U.S. Defense Undersecretary for Policy John Rood told lawmakers Wednesday that Putins comments, while not surprising, were nonetheless disappointing.

Were concerned about some of the doctrine we see emanating from Russia, talking about early escalation, a greater reliance on nuclear capabilities in a conflict, Rood said.

Committed to arms control

He also rejected Russian allegations that Moscow was pursuing new nuclear weapons because of Washingtons failure to abide by previous arms control agreements.

The United States remains committed to our arms control obligations, Rood said. Regrettably, the Russian Federations track record in terms of its adherence to its arms control obligations leaves a great deal wanting.

Despite the tough talk, Rood and Hyten shared few details during Wednesdays hearing, which lasted just over 30 minutes, with many U.S. lawmakers waiting until a closed-door session to ask their questions.

Aware of Russian progress

U.S. officials said previously that the nuclear weapons Putin promoted in his speech last week have been in development for some time, a process that they have monitored closely.

Officials, along with some analysts, have also cast doubt on how close some of the Russian weapons are to actually being operational.

The White House also has noted that, as part of its new $700 billion budget, the U.S. military is actively working to update its own nuclear arsenal and its missile defense systems.

Officials in Washington also point to the proposed fiscal 2019 budget, which calls for another $24 billion specifically to maintain and upgrade the countrys nuclear forces. It also allocates money for new low-yield nuclear warheads and sea-launched cruise missiles, all aimed to deter countries like Russia.

Regional missile defense

There are also plans to improve regional missile defense capabilities, including Patriot anti-missile batteries and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems currently deployed to counter threats from North Korea and Iran.

Additionally, defense officials say the U.S. is working on a new generation of missile defense sensors, lasers and other space-based capabilities to defend against the evolving threat from Russia and China.

But for now, U.S. officials warn the biggest danger stems from countries failing to understand Washingtons capabilities or resolve.

We have to guard against a miscalculation on behalf of our potential adversaries, particularly Russia and China, Strategic Commands Hyten said.

We cant allow them to think they can employ a nuclear weapon and the United States will not be able to respond, he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump has won an arbitration proceeding against adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, his spokeswoman said Wednesday, a day after Daniels sued Trump for the right to speak about the intimate relationship she claims they had.

A lawyer for Trump filed the arbitration proceeding against Daniels last week to seek a restraining order to shut her up and protect Mr. Trump, her lawsuit claims.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she is taking legal action to be able to speak freely about her relationship with Trump without fear of legal retribution.

Clifford is among a number of women who have spoken up about sexual encounters with Trump, who has denied the accusations.

Non-disclosure agreement

Her lawsuit claims Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen have made a concerted effort to silence her for more than a year.

According to the lawsuit, Trump never signed a non-disclosure agreement arranged between Cohen and Clifford to keep her quiet about their alleged affair.

Trumps failure to sign the hush agreement renders the pact invalid and she is free to talk about their relationship, the lawsuit claims.

Cliffords relationship with Trump began in the summer of 2006, not long after Trumps wife, Melania, gave birth to their son Barron, and lasted well into 2007, according to the lawsuit.

Reuters could not independently confirm any of the allegations. Trump has denied he had an affair with Clifford.

The president has addressed these (allegations by Clifford) directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told a news briefing.

This case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that, I would refer you to the presidents outside counsel, she said.

Payment and threats

Cliffords lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said she had faced threats by Cohen and others of legal penalties of $1 million if she spoke about Trump after signing the hush agreement.

My client wants an opportunity to tell her story, to tell the truth about what happened, Avenatti told CNN.

Cohen has said he paid Clifford $130,000 out of his own pocket in October 2016, days before the U.S. presidential election. Cliffords lawsuit claims the payment was part of the agreement for her to keep quiet.

Asked about the payment by Cohen to Clifford, Huckabee Sanders said she was not aware Trump knew of it at the time.

Cohens lawyer, Lawrence Rosen, confirmed in a statement that Cohen obtained an order from an arbitrator prohibiting Clifford from disclosing confidential information covered by the non-disclosure agreement.

Cohen did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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The trajectory of that leap remains to be measured. Goyanes will be planning her own seasons for the first time in her career, and she says she is excited to work with artists already in the Woolly fold as well as explore others who might be enticed into the tent. Her job, she said, involves decisions as simple as what is around us in the world: How do you connect dialogue and conversation with the art you are making, to the people who you want to see it?
Along with Jameson, Tullamore D.E.W. and Bushmills are two hugely popular lighter Irish blends. But if you want to go a little deeper in your Irish whiskey explorations, try some of these:
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In the days before he was forced to resign, Wilson argued that he had acted as a father seeking what was best for his daughter. Many parents in the school system countered that they, too, would like to do whats best for their children  but are unable to use their position as head of the school system to do so. The situation underlined the frustration many parents feel about unequal access to quality public education in the city.
Three things you can count on in life: death; taxes; and politicians calling for the resignation of the Prince Georges County Schools CEO during an election year, Russak said in a statement. Flippant and irresponsible intervention into the management of a complex system  one with such a huge impact on the lives of children and parents  ignores the progress achieved during the last five years.
After more than two years and spending $5 million, the committee concluded that James Earl Ray had assassinated King, in keeping with the consensus, but it released a report suggesting the high probability of a wider conspiracy to kill Kennedy  specifically, raising doubts about the long-standing one-gunman theory. The committee did not provide hard evidence for the conclusion or name alleged conspirators but stoked the notion that the mafia, Cubans and labor leader Jimmy Hoffa were among the possible conspirators.
The Trump administration is seeking to expand immigration courts and clear a backlog of roughly 600,000 cases, part of an immigration crackdown that includes the attempted cancellation of the Deferred Action for Early Childhood Arrivals program, the elimination of temporary protected status for immigrants from El Salvador and other nations, and a federal lawsuit filed this week that alleges that sanctuary city policies in California violate the Constitution.
House and Senate negotiators have been trying to hash out differences between two vastly different two-year state spending plans. Some met late Wednesday to discuss a compromise proposed by Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R-Augusta), but that did not break the impasse, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details.
She will be held in a detention center outside Tucson until December, when she is next scheduled to appear in court, the result of a Supreme Court ruling last month that people being held for deportation are not entitled to a bond hearing.
CWSA writes off solid waste disposal arrears for residents of the Grenadines

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Residents of the Grenadines whose solid waste disposal payments were in arrears have had them forgiven.

Garth Saunders, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Central Water and Sewerage Authority (CWSA), made the announcement on Monday, at a press conference held jointly with the St Vincent Electricity Services Ltd (VINLEC).

It was also announced that going forward, in order to ensure that residents receive their solid waste disposal bills in a timely manner, the bills will be distributed simultaneously with electricity bills.

Saunders explained that during the CWSAas outreach last year, it was discovered that garbage collection fees were not being paid on time because some persons were not aware of the waste management services being provided by the CWSA and because the distribution of bills was inconsistent.

Now, to ensure that bills are received on time, a partnership with VINLEC will see that company distributing solid waste bills along with the electricity bills, as of March 1, 2018.

aWe want persons to open their bill and you will see that you are being billed from January 2018 only. So, on that bill there should be no arrears,a Saunders explained.

He said the CWSA has worked along with some people who were owing, and has received some payments, but the outstanding arrears have been forgiven.

aIn other words no customer will be disconnected at any point in the future for non-payment of fees prior to December 31, 2017. So, from here going forward, you will only be liable for arrears built up from January 1st, 2018a Saunders said.

CEO of VINLEC Thornley Myers stated that VINLEC was actively supporting and collaborating with the CWSA out of the sense of national responsibility. He explained that delinquencies in waste disposal fees would result in the disconnection of customersa electricity supply.

He said the initiative was not intended to disconnect persons, but to ensure that the quality of the solid waste disposal service is satisfactory.

aWe are not of the view that immediately once a person runs into arrears we will get instructions to proceed and disconnect a person. So, when we get to the point, having to make a disconnection, it means that that customer is not only delinquent, but very delinquentIt is important for me to mention that the usual reconnection fee for electricity services disconnected will apply. Myers explained.

Saunders noted that bills will be due after 30 days and after 60 days, customers will be subject to disconnection. He said the CWSA will do everything to alert persons about the possibility of disconnection, but customers do not have to wait for the bill to know what is due, since the fee remains constant at $10 per month.

aYour bill will be the same month every month, so it is just a matter of arranging payments,a explained Saunders.

Winsbert Quow, manager of the Solid Waste Management Unit (SWMU) at the CWSA, observed that landfills are located on Bequia, Canouan and Union Island and garbage disposal is provided to residents twice a week. The SWMU also provides a white goods pick-up, and soon will provide pick-up of derelict vehicles.

The garbage disposal service is provided to 4,200 persons living in the Grenadines and are billed to aoccupied premisesa which utilize electricity. Payments may be made at banks, post offices, etc.(CB)
There has to be a more concerted effort  which we are a part of  to provide clean, indoor air. Filtered indoor air. Messaging that the air isnt good  isnt enough, Leahy said. And that we have to plan to be able to do that, and deploy those systems much more quickly, as you would in an emergency.
Fired Canouan workers to be reinstated in May

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Activist Terry Bynoe says he has been given the assurance that the construction workers who were fired on Canouan last week will be reinstated in May.

On Wednesday, February 28, some workers on the island blocked the entrances and exits of the resort with boulders, appliances and debris in protest of non-payment of wages.

The construction workers, employed by MNS Construction, a company owned by Matthew Snagg, were complaining that they had not been paid by investor/developer Andreas Pignataro of the Pink Sands Resort since December 2017.

After the protest, the workers received some of the money owed to them, but were told that their services would no longer be required by the developers.

Speaking to SEARCHLIGHT via telephone on Wednesday, Bynoe, who had joined the protestors on the frontline, said that last Sunday, March 4, he received a phone call from Pignataro and was given the assurance that the men would be rehired, once the protests stop. aaaaa

He said that Pignataro told him that work on the construction of the villas will soon stop and when construction resumes in May, the men will be given work. Construction is being halted so as not to disturb the guests of the hotel during the Easter period.

aOne of things that we discussed is that we reinstate the guys, so that we donat have no victimization, so that we can stop the protest and he assured me that he would rehire them,a said Bynoe, who also met with the Italian contractors attached to CCA Limited on Monday. CCA is responsible for the constuction of Pignataroas villas.

Bynoe said he took police officers with him to the meeting as witnesses of what was being said. aI met with the contractors and the police and I relayed to them that Pignataro assured me he would hire back the guysa I took the authorities with me so that they can hear what I heara.a

He said that if May comes and the workers are not reinstated, they will protest again.

aaSo, if anything turn out different, I want to warn them if they try to stall us, because they have guests for the Easter; guests will arrive some other time again; is not only one time guests will come, so is up to them if they want to give their word and they not true in anything they say.a

He revealed that Matthew Snagg of MNS Construction was not present at the meeting on Monday, because he had gone to mainland St Vincent to meet with personnel from the Labour Department. a

When contacted on Wednesday, Snagg said he was given his workersa January wages and as a result, only Februaryas wages are outstanding, as all other payments due to him were made last week.

aEverything is going to planathey state that the guys are going to go back to work, but they state that will happen in May,a Snagg commented, adding that he is not sure if the project operators will re-hire him or just take back the workers.

He said that he does not mind working on the development, once things are put place to avoid late payments and what happened last week.
During his 2006 addicted to oil State of the Union address , President George W. Bush bemoaned imports from unstable parts of the world and called for replacing 75 percent of Middle East oil imports by 2025. Well, in 2017, the U.S. imported approximately half as much oil from the Persian Gulf as it did in 2000; not too shabby. Overall, net imports accounted for 38 percent of U.S. consumption in November, down from 66 percent in 2007. The annual U.S. trade balance in fossil fuels improved by $233 billion as a result, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Never mind that the Cato Institutes Colin Grabow notes defense-related products require only 3 percent and 10 percent of domestic steel and aluminum production, respectively. Or that six of the top 10 nations that export steel to the United States have mutual defense agreements with the United States. Or that China, an actual military competitor and potential adversary, is not among the top 10. Or that Canada, a NATO ally, supplies more U.S. aluminum imports than the next 11 countries combined. Or that, as The Post reports, For nearly a quarter-century under U.S. law, Canada has been considered part of the U.S. defense industrial base, as if its factories were American. Or that the aluminum for military aircraft and the steel for military vehicles will be more expensive, so, effectively, the administration is cutting the defense budget. Catos Dan Ikenson says the administrations argument seems to be that an abundance of low-priced raw materials from a diversity of sources somehow threatens national security.
The GOP is trying to figure out just how far Trumps overhaul of traditional Republicanism should go as the party aims to protect its 24-seat majority in the House and two-seat majority in the Senate. The defensive mood of Republican voters as Trump deals with political controversies in Washington, plus a spate of GOP retirements, have left many lawmakers on edge. In several crowded Texas primaries Tuesday, most Republican candidates competed over who was closer to Trump in spirit and on the issues.
Davis noted that Clinton eventually apologized to the country and to his family, adding: I have never seen Donald Trump come even close to doing that, nor do I believe there is even a remote possibility that he will ever do that.
The committee has been struggling with the administration over certain Trump affiliates refusing to answer questions about the transition period and the administration that were not preapproved by the White House. Efforts to issue a contempt citation for former White House strategist and Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon have flagged as Republicans back away from their earlier zeal to force Bannon to be more forthcoming under a subpoena; Democrats have argued that witnesses such as Lewandowski and former communications director Hope Hicks should also be served with subpoenas for refusing to answer some similar questions.
Opposition Leader attends IDU meeting

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Leader of the Opposition and president of the New Democratic Party (NDP) Dr Godwin Friday recently returned to the state after attending the International Democrat Union (IDU) Party Leaders Meeting hosted by aPartido Populara in Salamanca and Madrid, Spain, from February 19 to February 21.

In his capacity as vice-chair of Policy and External Affairs of the Caribbean Democrat Union (CDU), Friday participated in high level meetings with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfonso Dastis, and other world leaders, and made representation on behalf of the CDU and the New Democratic Party at the IDU executive level meeting.

A release from the NDP said Friday had the opportunity to speak on the current state of affairs in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and on matters relating to climate change and financing for adaptation and resiliency building in the OECS.

Friday also made official visits to the residence of the Prime Minister of Spain, the Spanish Parliament and the Parliamentary Group of Partido Popular.

On his return, Friday described the meeting as a success, as he was able to make representation to world leaders on the effects and impact of climate change on vulnerable economies, such as the OECS. Given the discussions held after his presentation, he is confident that his message had the desired effect, the release from the NDP said.
The main theme of the trip appears to be one of security, as each of the countries on the itinerary plays an important role in the U.S. security strategy for the region. Ethiopia is one of the biggest contributors to peacekeeping troops in Africa and, alongside Kenya, a key ally in the fight against the Islamist militant faction al-Shabab in Somalia. Djibouti is home to the sole permanent American base in Africa, and Chad is a major ally in the fight against extremism in the Sahel region. About 7,500 U.S. troops and contractors are in Africa, mostly in the eastern part.
I wanted to die. But I thought that if I killed myself, my parents would be really sad, she said in an interview in Thailand last year. I feel so sad that this is our destiny as North Korean women. Our country is so poor that we can just be sold off and for such a small amount of money.
Make fishing a wealth generating activity  consultant Huggins

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The Fisheries Division in the Ministry of Agriculture, supported by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, hosted a aFishing as a Business Workshopa on Wednesday, February 28, at the Fisheries conference room in Kingstown.

The workshop was implemented under the National Zero Hunger Challenge Initiative (ZHCI) Action Plan of SVG, which seeks to support selected activities under the project. Some 29 participants were present at the workshop, which began at 4 p.m. and went up until 7:30 p.m.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Conroy Huggins, the national consultant: project operations assistant, challenged the fishers, boat owners and vendors to take full advantage of the training. He asked them to see what they do as a meaningful investment and said that their mindset and attitude has to change to maximize their earning potential. They need to see fishing as a wealth generating activity.

Lorenzo George, fisheries officer (extension) at the Fisheries Division, made remarks on behalf of the division. He expressed thanks to FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture for such a timely initiative and encouraged the fishers, boat owners and vendors to make full use of the training. He also informed stakeholders of the work of the Fisheries Division and upcoming projects that will benefit them.

Hayden Billingy, national project coordinator for Climate Change for Fish (CC4Fish) project, gave an overview of the CC4Fish project, which he stated will come on stream soon. He said the CC4Fish project, which is a regional project of which SVG is a beneficiary, will take the business training of the fishers even further. He said factors such as the impact of the Sargassum (sea weed), safety at sea, agroponics, aquaponics, diversifying the fisheras economy and training in survival skills at sea would be addressed. The project, he stated, has a multi-faceted approach.

The FAO national correspondent in SVG, Dr Coleen Phillips, highlighted the challenges faced by fisherfolk and farmers which need urgent attention, including praedial larceny, projection via the use of risk insurance, and protection of water resources. She informed the fishers that apart from the Zero Hunger Challenge Initiative Project, they will also benefit through the CC4Fish, which is a regional project.

The workshop facilitator Dougal James of Prime Consulting gave the rationale for the training, the aim of the workshop, the proposed training outcomes, and the objectives of the training. He shared recent data on studies of the fishing industry in SVG and gave reasons for the dismal performance.

He presented a way forward for the fishing industry, the components needed to set up a business, record keeping, understanding a business cycle and how the business works. He also shared with them how to practise good cash management.
We see this as an opportunity to have a frank discussion with Ambassador Lighthizer on the steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the U.S., and to once again make clear what the E.U. countermeasures would be. Theres no avoiding the elephant in the room, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal meeting preparations.
SVG Brewery sponsors Vincy Mas 2018

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The St Vincent Brewery Limited has cemented its support of Vincy Mas 2018, with the signing of a one-year sponsorship contract with the Carnival Development Corporation (CDC).

aWe at the CDC are very cognizant that our delivery of a festival and our mandate to support the development of the Carnival product in St Vincent and the Grenadines is very dependent on the goodwill of our sponsors and we are thrilled again that in 2018 you at the St Vincent Brewery Limited have come onboard with us to support Vincy Mas 2018,a said Chair of the Carnival Development Corporation (CDC) Ricky Adams on Tuesday.

Adams was speaking at the Victoria Park in the conference room of the CDC, where the one-year contract was signed.

Also present at the signing were chief executive officer (CEO) of the CDC Ashford Wood, Sales Marketing manager at the St Vincent Brewery Limited Lamont Medica and Marketing coordinator at the Brewery Kelvin Franklyn.

Going further, Adams said that the CDC was happy for the Breweryas support and the fact that the Brewery is a returning partner must mean that the CDC has been doing something good over the years.

aWe appreciate your sponsorship and we hope that at the end of it, the CDC, the St Vincent Brewery Limited and the Carnival components, Carnival as a building block of the economy and the culture of St Vincent and the Grenadines will benefit,a said Adams.

Commenting, Medica said that over the years the Brewery has always been a firm believer and supporter of cultural activities in St Vincent and the Grenadines, including Vincy Mas.

aIt is something that has been working for years; we have had no complaints, so it is a fruitful partnership that has been beneficial for both parties,a Medica stated.
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Kind and caring Breda was always thinking of others
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale speaks during a press conference at the Summit on Gun and Gang Violence in Ottawa on Wednesday.

OTTAWA  The federal Liberals say theyre treading cautiously as they shape new rules around which Canadians can access firearms, while groups are urging Ottawa to help beat down a rise in Winnipegs gang population.

"We know that gangs are on the rise in Winnipeg," said Robyn Dryden, co-ordinator of the Gang Action Inter-Agency Network. "We need to be investing more in prevention and intervention."

Dryden was speaking on the sidelines of a one-day summit on gangs and guns, which brought researchers, police and former gang members to Ottawa to help the government get the best use out of millions in spending and, more controversially, to limit access to certain guns.

In 2016, Winnipeg had the second highest per-capita rate of violent crimes involving firearms, at a rate double the national average but lower than Regina.

Officials have told Dryden somewhere between 2,000 to 3,000 Winnipeggers are involved in gangs; her group had pegged the estimate closer to 1,500 last year.

Though the national crime rate is on the decline overall, violent crime is dramatically rising. The number of firearm-related homicides increased fivefold from 2015 to 2016 across Canada, when 223 cases were recorded, while break-and-enters are also on the rise.

Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Ralph Goodale stressed theres no magic bullet to reversing these trends, but said a key part is tinkering with restrictions around gun licences, which have to be frequently renewed and are supposed to shut out those with criminal records and severe mental-health problems.

"As controversial as measures related to firearms can be  and we've seen the kind of debate that's been provoked in the past around these issues  that particular point with respect to background checks thats an area where there is broad, broad consensus."

Ottawa revoked 2,223 firearm licences in 2016, and one-fifth of those cases involved mental-health issues.

Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Bergen, who led the Tory push to end the long-gun registry, said shes open to some changes, such as improving technology around background checks.

She also wants to limit the use of prohibition orders, which allow police to effectively void gun permits when investigating a possible crime.

Goodale stressed the prime ministers letter assigning his major tasks specifically calls out "handguns and assault weapons," which are mostly illegal, and promised the Liberals will be "practical and fair with respect to legitimate firearms owners."

But Bergen said the long-gun registry, which was started by a Liberal government, was brought in under the same premise and ensnared rural Canadians. "I'm very skeptical; they seem to like to target people who live in rural and remote areas, instead of targeting the criminals, the gangsters, the people primarily in cities who are committing crimes with guns."

"We don't have a perfect system in Canada, but I think overall we've got a good system that makes sure guns don't get into the wrong hands in terms of licensing. Where we've got the big problems is people smuggling guns," Bergen said.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Meanwhile, advocates at Wednesdays summit called on Ottawa to boost funding for prevention services, and let communities steer how federal dollars are spent, a point Goodale seemed to reiterate.

Last year, Ottawa earmarked $327 million over five years to combat gangs and criminal gun use, with $100 million for each year afterward.

Dryden said the cash could boost intervention programs in Winnipeg. GAIN has been hamstrung by a lack of provincial support, with the Manitoba government gutting the groups annual $75,000 funding last summer.

She said the summit gave her some ideas on how to get former gang members involved with dissuading at-risk youth, after learning about some successful programs in Saskatchewan.

Matt Fast, outreach head for Newcomers Employment and Education Development Services, said youth leaving gangs, and those at risk of joining them, struggle to find work. "Businesses need to step up," he said.

Bergen said Liberals should consider funding for such work programs. She found Winnipeg's North End organizations had successful skills-training programs that were supported by Harper-era federal funding, and housing also plays a role.

"I think for a lot of people there is hope for rehabilitation. So we have to do that, but at the same time, making sure that Canadians' safety is paramount," she said. "Some of them got involved in gangs at a young age and they want to change their life."

Fast also echoed comments made by Winnipeg police last week: gangs are increasingly preying on immigrant youth, offering friendship and cash to people grappling to find work and social activities.

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"Theyre very trusting when they come to Canada, and the gangs are smart. They take advantage of this," Fast said, saying outreach to schools and different communities could help warn newcomers and give them mentorship opportunities.

The conference ranged from police wanting more access to mobile-phone data to experts concerned with guns bought over the internet.

Despite the grim gun-crime statistics, Adam Cotter, a crime analyst with Statistics Canada, said Winnipeg is "more or less the same" as other major cities.

Of all homicides in Winnipeg in 2016, 28 per cent of cases were gang-related, compared with 22 per cent for major Canadian cities.

"Not to minimize the impact at all, but firearm-related crime does account for a small proportion of all violent crime in Canada," Cotter said. He said just 20 per cent of crimes police investigated in 2016 were violent in nature, and of that subset, only three per cent involved a firearm.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Manitoba Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler says he assumed everyone understood a $10-million access road project into the Lake St. Martin flood-management channels area was an untendered contract.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler says he assumed everyone understood a $10-million access road project into the Lake St. Martin flood-management channels area was an untendered contract.

And that it was just part of an estimated $30-million road system into the eventual $540-million flood-mitigation construction site.

"We were just under the assumption that this was common knowledge," he told reporters Thursday.

A positive story Tuesday  that the access road will be built for crews and equipment to eventually construct flood-management channels to Lake St. Martin from Lake Manitoba, and on to Lake Winnipeg  became controversial.

The Manitoba Heavy Construction Association complained Wednesday the work was awarded without tender.

On Thursday, Schuler was still trying to make clear  for a second day  what he didn't at the outset: a Tory government that still taunts the NDP over two untendered contracts it tried to award while it was in power, has awarded $10 million in two separate untendered contracts for the road project.

Premier Brian Pallister told reporters Wednesday he wouldn't discuss the issue: "If the minister made a mess, he'll clean it up, not the premier."

On Thursday, Schuler sometimes referred to the situation as a "sole-source contract" (he'd used "sole-source tender" on Wednesday). He emphasized the province went without open tenders, because the two companies awarded separate portions of the road project have guaranteed at least 50 per cent of the workers will come from Indigenous communities in the area that were devastated by floods in 2011.

It was also not initially clear the access road announced is just the portion which already has environmental approval of a much-larger $30-million project.

"Any time the government does this, it has to justify it," Schuler said during a pre-budget photo opportunity at a Youth for Christ outreach centre in Winnipeg. "I should have made it very clear it was a sole-source tender.

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"This is not precedent-setting, it's a one-off. This is not something (untendered contracts) we want to see go forward," the minister said. "We believe Manitobans would say yes (to) 50 per cent Aboriginal participation."

Schuler said he played no part in choosing the companies that were awarded the work without tender.

"That is done within the department  I, as minister, have nothing to do with it," he said. "They identified the companies. No standards are ever compromised."

Schuler said the remainder of the road work project will be awarded through open tender.

Lake St. Martin is 250 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Visitors attending question period at the Manitoba legislature were required to pass through metal detectors for the first time on Wednesday as the legislative session resumed after a three-month break.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 7/3/2018 (1292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Visitors attending question period at the Manitoba legislature were required to pass through metal detectors for the first time on Wednesday as the legislative session resumed after a three-month break.

"We felt it was time to catch up with other provinces. We know that just about every province has better security measures than we have had," said House Speaker Myrna Driedger, who instituted the measure.

Metal detectors have yet to be installed at the front entrance to the Manitoba Legislative Building itself. The new security measure only applies to folks who wish to view proceedings in the legislative chamber from the visitors' gallery.

"The intent is to make sure that people that go into the gallery feel safe in our building," said Driedger.

The legislative building had to be evacuated one afternoon last October while MLAs were sitting after officials received what was later described as a crank call.

Driedger said that incident, in and of itself, did not precipitate the new security measure. The watershed moment for her was the 2014 shootings on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, she said. A gunman shot a soldier on ceremonial sentry duty and entered the Centre Block, where he was eventually shot dead by officers.

"I know that I was in the (legislative) building when the Ottawa incident happened and I saw the fear in this building," Driedger said in an interview at her office on Wednesday.

When she was elected House Speaker in 2016 she made it a priority to improve security in the building. However, her purview does not extend beyond the chamber; the security of the building falls under the Department of Justice. A committee is now reviewing future security measures for the entire building and its grounds.

A new law that was proclaimed last October allows for building security staff to screen persons entering the Legislative Building for weapons. A security officer may now also ask persons entering the building for ID. Security may refuse a person entry into the building if they refuse to verify their identity or be screened for weapons.

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On Wednesday, visitors who were screened by metal detectors before entering the visitors' gallery on the building's third floor appeared generally supportive of the new measure.

"It doesn't bother me. I'd rather be safe than sorry," said Margaret Feliksiak, who was at the legislature to oppose the government's decision to charge fees to Manitobans for sleep apnea machines.

Cynthia Doerksen, who frequently attends question period, was also positive about the move.

"I have no problem with it. It provides safety, right?" she said.

Driedger said visiting school groups will not have to pass through the metal detectors, but will access the visitors gallery through a separate door. An official later clarified that this will only apply to groups that have registered in advance with the the legislature's visitor tour program.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
The $95-million Innovation Centre launched last year by Red River College is  at first blush  one of those rare win-win-win projects.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

The $95-million Innovation Centre launched last year by Red River College is  at first blush  one of those rare win-win-win projects.

Billed as the first of its kind in Western Canada, the centre is designed to be a hub for the school, local businesses and other partners to collaborate and commercialize next-generation startup ideas and technology, while also ensuring students are "job-ready" for next-generation jobs.

It is also designed to be the latest jewel in the colleges growing Exchange District campus, a development that has brought life and people to one of the most vibrant and unique areas of the city.

Finally, it was supposed to deliver much needed political capital to the federal Liberal government, which agreed to provide $41 million in cash, and the provincial Progressive Conservative government, which supplied a loan guarantee to the college for the remainder of project costs.

When you have a project that is so embraced by so many different stakeholders, its nearly impossible to see how anyone could screw this up. Emphasis on the "nearly."

This week, the Free Press reported that the college had stopped tendering after Ottawa indicated the project would have to be "substantially complete" by November 2018. With the prospect of having the federal government pull out before all of its money could be committed, the school felt it had to pump the brakes. Unless the deadline is extended, the college says the project could be scuttled.

Lets look at all the givens in this equation. Given that the two levels of government approved the project last June, and given its ambitious parameters, and given the widespread support it has from all quarters, why wouldnt we be able to solve the simple problem of a deadline that, by all appearances, was never realistic?

Longtime political observers know that taxpayer-funded projects of this kind  even those that are considered win-win-win  are always susceptible to the changing winds of federal-provincial relations.

Lets back up a bit and look at the origins of this current deadline crunch.

This project is funded under a federal program aimed at making strategic investments in post-secondary schools across the country.

The Innovation Centre was one of the largest projects approved. The original deadline for completion of projects in this program stream was April 2018.

The federal government and provincial governments publicly committed to funding the Innovation Centre when it was unveiled in April 2017.

However, those commitments were not formalized until June, largely, sources said, because the province was in a holding pattern while it undertook a massive review of its capital investments.

With only 10 months between funding approval and the original deadline for completion, Ottawa agreed to push back the original deadline to November 2018 for this and other projects across the country caught in the same dilemma. That still only gave the college 17 months to finish a project that is, from a design and engineering perspective, quite complex.

However, when the college went back to Ottawa for another extension, there was push-back.

Negotiations are reportedly continuing, according to the school, but there was not enough progress to justify the awarding of several key construction contracts.

This situation is remarkable, in and of itself, because the federal government has already contributed $14 million to the Innovation Centre. And because Ottawa regularly delays infrastructure spending, pushing off its contributions years into the future.

What is the federal strategy here?

One school of thought suggests that Ottawa is involved in a little brinkmanship, holding firm to an unreasonable deadline to punish Manitoba for delays in approving funding and its decision to only provide a loan guarantee.

When one level of government puts up cash for a project, it typically likes to see the other level of government respond in kind. Failure to honour that tradition typically breeds hostility, a commodity found in abundance in the often-troubled relationship between the Manitoba government and federal government.

Perhaps the province did complicate this matter by dragging its feet and holding back on a cash contribution. However, nothing the province has done justifies the federal decision to put the project in jeopardy.

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Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr, Manitobas senior government MP, reportedly still supports the Innovation Centre, although you wouldnt know that from any public statement he has made about the deadline stalemate. The college says Carr is advocating for the project, but his silence on this dispute is worrisome.

Federal-provincial finger-pointing aside, its clear that Ottawa has the unilateral authority to solve the deadline crunch. It would be better for all involved if that came sooner, rather than later; delays will only serve to drive up the final cost of the project, which serves no one.

Even with all that has happened, its impossible to imagine the federal government walking away from this project. However, it is possible to imagine a scenario where, thanks to needless intransigence, Ottawa gets almost no credit for making a $41-million investment in downtown Winnipeg.

If that scenario comes to fruition, federal Liberals in this city will only have themselves to blame.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Legal cannabis won't bring a pot of gold to Manitoba's budget, Finance Minister Cameron Friesen warned Thursday.

Monday's provincial budget won't produce news about an anticipated windfall of cash from summer's expected cannabis legalization, Friesen told reporters during a pre-budget photo opportunity at the Youth for Christ facility downtown.

"We're not even estimating revenue for cannabis  we're not even convinced there will be any," Friesen said.

"Cannabis will not be a windfall, and Manitobans should not think that way."

The finance minister repeated frequent warnings from Premier Brian Pallister's government that the province has not yet been able to calculate the accompanying costs from legalized pot  traffic enforcement, driving under the influence, policing, addiction and other factors.

Nor would Friesen talk about specifics of the Pallister government's green plan  sometime later this year, that plan would set carbon taxes at a flat $25 a tonne of emissions.

"We don't have a carbon-pricing mechanism that lands on April 1" when the next fiscal year begins, he said.

Even though Friesen talked about multi-year strategies to eliminate the provincial deficit and to reduce the provincial sales tax, he wouldn't talk about what impact a full year of carbon taxes would have in subsequent budget years.

Friesen offered generalizations but few specifics about Monday's budget  a more affordable Manitoba, tax relief, lower taxes, controlled government spending.

"Manitobans deserve a break... keeping more of your hard-earned money," said the minister.

The recent federal budget failed to deliver a more affordable life for ordinary Canadians, Friesen said. "We're saying household affordability matters," he said, promising "significant measures to address the issue of affordability."

Friesen said the Tories are bringing "a better, more sustainable Manitoba. Manitobans pay enough taxes."

The Pallister government rejects "harsh austerity," the finance minister said. The budget will have increased spending in health care and education, he said, but, "We've got to get better value for our tax dollars."

Friesen said he talks regularly to credit-rating agencies, but won't say what they have been telling him lately about Manitoba's credit rating and its deficit.

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"There's tremendous risk right now for Manitoba" if the province was spending and borrowing the way the former NDP government did, he said.

Friesen wouldn't speculate what the impact would be on the province's borrowing costs if next month's Public Utilities Board decision on Manitoba Hydro's rate application falls short of the Crown corporation's request of a 7.9 per cent annual increase for six years.

Nor would Friesen say if the Pallister government will go even further with reducing administration beyond 15 per cent in the public sector and in reducing the public workforce. He just repeated the Pallister mantra that the government needs "all hands on deck" to solve our financial woes, and "we are inviting conversations" with organized labour.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
On International Women's Day, Manitoba's minister responsible for the Status of Women revealed the provincial government is hoping to create a third-party reporting system for sexual assault survivors.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On International Women's Day, Manitoba's minister responsible for the Status of Women revealed the provincial government is hoping to create a third-party reporting system for sexual assault survivors.

Before attending a luncheon at the Fort Garry Hotel, Rochelle Squires mentioned a new initiative that would allow survivors who don't want to or aren't comfortable going to police to still have data about their incidents of sexual assault collected anonymously.

Squires talked about a third-party reporting system while answering questions about the first Status of Women in Manitoba report, which was also unveiled Thursday.

She is working with counterparts across the country, including police services, to get a new reporting system off the ground. There is no financial framework or definite timeline for the project yet.

"(With third-party reporting) if a woman has a very negative experience, a sexual assault or a rape, and are not comfortable going to the police right away, (they) can reach out to an organization or an entity that might be a little bit more of a friendly environment for her to go forward, tell her story, have the data collected and not necessarily right away share (their story) with the police or maybe not ever share with the police, specific to her situation," Squires explained.

"But the police would then get that data and be able to put it in a system and then they could see trends  if there are trends  with perpetrators. They might be able to make some arrests based on anonymous data. Or that data is there and preserved for a situation where a survivor might feel comfortable six months after an experience (or) a year after an experience, and come forward and make that police report."

While compiling the Status of Women report, it became clear there was a lack of gender-segregated data to draw from, which extended to sexual assault reporting. The data gap is a problem plaguing the entire world, not just Manitoba, said Jeannette Montufar, chair of the Manitoba Women's Advisory Council.

Being aware of this issue now and taking action could help bolster the success of future reports, Montufar told reporters.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jeannette Montufar, chairperson, Manitoba Women's Advisory Council, just prior to the launch of the Status of Women in Manitoba luncheon at the Hotel For Garry on International Women's Day Thursday.

"As we move forward now, there are great opportunities to establish collaboration with, maybe universities, colleges, even with the bureau of statistics in the province, to collect more of this information that we can make into something thats going to allow us to make decisions," she said.

Though sexual assault is chronically under-reported, Manitoba still has the highest rate of police-reported sexual assault among the Canadian provinces, as per the new Status of Women report. There were 109 incidents per 100,000 people  almost twice the national rate  in 2016. That year, 1,431 incidents were reported in total.

"What's most unsettling is that we know roughly only about five per cent of survivors actually go to police to report," Squires said. "A lot of survivors have a different journey towards healing and recovery from sexual assault (or a) traumatic experience. And some of that does not include going to police right away."

Nicole Chammartin, executive director of Klinic Community Health, is one of many advocates who have long been pushing for anonymous third-party reporting systems in the sexual assault sphere. Such a system previously existed between Klinic and Winnipeg police, but was dissolved a few years ago, she said.

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"I think that theres a real need to really better understand the sexual assault and sexual violence landscape in Winnipeg, in Manitoba, in Canada. I think we lack a lot of information because we know its so under-recorded," she told the Free Press.

Chammartin emphasized that sexual assault survivors avoid going to police for various reasons, which may include feeling their own personal safety could be jeopardized. Klinic would be ready and willing to help navigate survivors' reports and pass them on to police, she said.

"I think for people who are (anonymously) reporting that can be empowering in terms of knowing that youre a part of understanding the scope of the problem," she said.

"At Klinic, thats something we really focus on  ensuring when people call that they feel heard, that they feel believed, that they feel supported. Those are key things. And so this is just another way to be able to do that, and to be do it safely."

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @_jessbu
Manitobas Progressive Conservatives have long-criticized the former NDP government for awarding untendered contracts. The Manitoba Heavy Construction Association is accusing the Tory government led by Premier Brian Pallister of doing the same thing.

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This article was published 7/3/2018 (1292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitobas Progressive Conservatives have long-criticized the former NDP government for awarding untendered contracts. The Manitoba Heavy Construction Association is accusing the Tory government led by Premier Brian Pallister of doing the same thing.

"Publicly funded contracts should all be tendered," association president Chris Lorenc said Wednesday, focusing on this weeks announcement of $10-million of access roadwork leading to the $540-million channel projects near Lake St. Martin. It was a sole-source tender, in which the province picked a contractor and then settled on a price.

"Its not just our members  industry at large was given no opportunity to bid," Lorenc said. Previously, "I am not aware of a sole-source (untendered) contract being awarded by this government."

It was tendered, Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler told reporters Wednesday, but the government chose only one bidder for each of two sole-source tenders, picking Indigenous groups which will provide jobs to residents of local flood-affected communities.

The minister said it should have been obvious to anyone who had checked the governments website on open tenders and saw the roadwork was not listed.

"They are a sole-source tender  theres an agreed-upon price" thats reached after negotiations with the contractor the government chooses. The province acted to provide employment for the communities badly hurt by the 2011 flood, he said.

"This is a one-off. That community has suffered greatly. This is part of an economic opportunity for them," Schuler said.

The minister said the agreed-upon prices were 10 per cent to 30 per cent less than the province had thought the project might cost. The bidders guaranteed 50 per cent of the work would go to Indigenous residents, and the rest would generally go to more specialized trades, he said.

Lorenc further challenged details of Tuesdays announcement on the Lake St. Martin access work.

He said the road isnt a $10-million project  its a series of road projects the provincial government has said could total $35 million.

"They still have an opportunity to correct this," Lorenc said.

The $10-million access road leads to the point at which construction of the flood-management channels will take place, the minister said Wednesday, agreeing it will be followed by additional roadwork, which will cost roughly $20 million more.

The road project in the spotlight Tuesday has environmental approvals, Schuler said. He wouldnt elaborate on where additional roadwork would go, because it hasnt been environmentally approved yet  however, he said its construction would go to open tender.

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Its the first time the Pallister government has used sole-source tenders, and it wont be a common practice, Schuler said.

The association has requested an urgent meeting with the minister, Lorenc said Wednesday. An aide to the minister said there were no details yet on any meeting scheduled.

"Were very disappointed. We were aware they were considering it  we advised against it," Lorenc said in an interview. "Sole source is not the way to go; they should be tendered."

The flood-management project seeks to build channels to Lake St. Martin from Lake Manitoba, and to Lake Winnipeg from Lake St. Martin. They may be completed as early as 2025.

While still not finalized, an expected deal would result in Ottawa and Manitoba splitting the first $500 million of the project, with the province responsible for any further costs.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba has laid off five managers and is redeploying eight other employees as it streamlines its operations.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba has laid off five managers and is redeploying eight other employees as it streamlines its operations.

WCB employees were informed of the moves by president and chief executive officer Winston Maharaj in an email late Wednesday.

"These changes are part of our ongoing effort to improve efficiencies and streamline services, while at the same time continuing to offer high-quality programs and services," Maharaj said in the email, a copy of which was obtained by the Free Press. "The decision to make these changes was difficult and made for business purposes with the best interests of the longer-term needs of the organization."

The management positions eliminated include:

 director, communications  corporate communications;

 manager, policy, planning and evaluation  policy and research;

 manager, customer service and quality  policy and research;

 manager, financial planning and analysis  actuarial services;

 IT security manager  information technology.

Eight non-management staff, including a communications supervisor and several service-quality analysts are to be redeployed. They remain on the payroll as the WCB and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Local 1063) negotiate their future employment.

"We're going to be at the table to try to minimize the direct impact to our members," said CUPE national rep Dale Edmunds. The union represents 510 of the WCB's roughly 600 staff.

The Workers Compensation Board is fully funded by premiums paid by employers. It receives no provincial funding.

Maharaj said every effort is being made to ensure the changes are handled in the "most respectful, compassionate and professional manner." WCB is providing separation packages and has retained an independent career transition and counselling service firm to provide support and resources to the affected management employees, he said in his email.

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He assured staff the restructuring is not based on individual performance but "on our ability to meet our customers needs while streamlining operations to better prepare the organization for the future."

He said there would be no further layoffs this year.

Part of the streamlining comes as a result of a WCB decision to merge its communications efforts with a related organization, Safe Work Manitoba.

Shannon Earle, WCB vice-president, human resources and strategy, said she could not estimate how much money the organization will save as a result of the changes, referring to compensation paid to departing staff.

"Longer term, there would obviously be cost savings," she said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
The great pipeline debate rages on. The newly minted government of British Columbia  leavened by a few Green party representatives  vows to block the Trans Mountain pipeline linking Alberta heavy crude to the coast. Albertas Premier Rachel Notley demands that the impasse be resolved in the national interest.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

The great pipeline debate rages on. The newly minted government of British Columbia  leavened by a few Green party representatives  vows to block the Trans Mountain pipeline linking Alberta heavy crude to the coast. Albertas Premier Rachel Notley demands that the impasse be resolved in the national interest.

Ironically, only a few short years ago, Alberta  presumably not in the national interest  was threatening to withhold payments to the federal government that ultimately, through equalization, support "have not" provinces, conveniently forgetting that Alberta was a beneficiary from these transfers in the 1950s and 60s.

Frank McKenna, past Canadian ambassador to Washington and present adviser to the Alberta government, tells us that not having outlets for Albertas heavy crude to offshore markets has cost Canadians $117 billion over the past seven years, due to the U.S.-controlled North American price of oil versus the significantly higher world price.

Given U.S. domination of the Canadian industry, it is unclear how much of this hypothetical wealth would have actually gone into Canadian pockets. Lest one think the B.C. government is acting from simon-pure motives, it has already approved the controversial Site C hydroelectric development, and cannot afford to rebuff its environmental constituents and its Green party acolytes by showing anything but violent distaste for Trans Mountain.

The case against this and other pipelines rests on two premises. The first is that pipelines are an environmental hazard and their inevitable failure leads to large-scale and irreparable damage. That such failures and resultant damage has occurred is an undeniable fact; the frequency of these breakdowns  the seriousness of which should in no way be minimized  measured against the total miles of pipeline, or the quantity of product moved through them, or the spills and damage associated with alternative means of moving the product, is relatively low.

The damage from pipeline spills almost always has long-term (though seldom permanent) effects, and can affect areas that otherwise experience little human impact. Although sophisticated technology for the early detection and isolation of spills exists, no technology is foolproof; we may be able to reduce the frequency and duration of spills, we will never eliminate them.

In the case of the Trans Mountain pipeline, the associated marine terminal is a more serious environmental risk, and although there are technical and systemic means to reduce that risk, it would require a degree of oversight beyond anything we have seen in port facilities to date.

The second premise is that the urgency of addressing climate change is so acute that we must take every measure we can to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and therefore any project that would expand our oil production, or even maintain it at present levels, ought not to proceed. The first half of this premise is undeniable. The signing of the Paris Accord seems to have lulled us to sleep, even though the target of this non-binding document  to contain global temperature increase to 1.5 C  is certain to be exceeded, and based on global actions underway so will the two-degree threshold beyond which scientists fear catastrophic consequences.

However, even in the unlikely event that lack of pipeline capacity will curtail domestic production  there are alternative means of transport  limiting Canadas oil production would fail to reduce global consumption because our customers simply will buy elsewhere. On the domestic front, Canadians are not yet disposed to limit either their driving mileage nor the size of their SUVs and pickups.

If you believe that advertising agencies are successful not in creating demand but in appealing to those latent desires that drive demand, pay attention to vehicle ads on TV; power and speed dominate. Fuel efficiency is mentioned only in connection with the pocketbook, not the environment. Electric vehicles get no more than a token ad here and there. And having torn up a great portion of our rail infrastructure, much of our regional and all of our local freighting relies on diesel-powered trucks.

The road to the promised land, where wind, water and sunlight (and maybe nuclear) will be our primary sources of energy, is unfortunately much longer than many imagine. Our high levels of public and private debt will certainly impede this transition. One reason is that we are not talking about simply supplying increases to energy demand with renewables (and this is happening only slowly), but replacing a large portion of our existing energy demand with renewables. Deeply ingrained cultural norms will also slow the process.

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As tepid as the climate change measures proposed by our provincial and federal governments are, theyve gone about as far as the electorate will tolerate. Some advocate leaving it to the "invisible hand" of the market. Unfortunately, the market is an idiot savant, a genius at determining prices but incapable of dealing with externalities like climate change; hence, the more visible hand of government is required to correct these distortions. Unfortunately, no government will get elected on a slogan of "$5-per-litre gas".

In the meanwhile, however, we face a serious dilemma. For better or worse, the exploitation of natural resources, including oil and gas, is a major component of our economy. The transition to a low-carbon future, like all such revolutionary transitions, will require a strong economy generating surplus wealth to underwrite this monumental task.

There is such a thing as a "national interest" (our Constitution, through the peace, order and good government clause, says there is). But how does such an interest apply to the oil and gas sector and, in particular, the building of new pipelines and expansion of existing ones? Our current federal government, and any future governments we might elect, cannot duck this dilemma. For surely there is a national interest here.

If one province can block a pipeline, why not a highway, a rail line, a pipeline carrying drinking water (Shoal Lake is in Ontario) or any other trans-boundary works or activity? And is that not of national concern? If it is determined that a strong oil and gas sector is essential to our economic health in the short term, then that is also a matter of national interest  as, of course, is plotting the course for rapidly diverting surplus wealth generated by a healthy economy toward a low-carbon future.

There is no zero-risk option here, whatever course is decided to be in the national interest.

Norman Brandson was deputy minister of the former Manitoba departments of environment, water stewardship and conservation from 1990 to 2006.
International Womens Day is a major global event that will be widely celebrated in some countries and virtually ignored in others.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

International Womens Day is a major global event that will be widely celebrated in some countries and virtually ignored in others.

In Latin America, el Dia Internacional de la Mujer is important. It is popularly observed in most if not all countries by women and men from all walks of life.

Eduardo Verdugo / The Associated Press files A woman holds a sign that reads in Spanish I exist because I resist during a demonstration marking International Womens Day in Mexico City in 2017.

On March 8, I will receive countless messages from friends and colleagues in Cuba and Guatemala, two countries where I have spent a considerable amount of time and maintain close personal and professional relationships.

Women  young, old, politically engaged or blissfully disinterested in politics  will congratulate me and other women on "our day."

Yet in Canada, I feel International Womens Day (IWD) is largely irrelevant. In fact, I was unaware of it until I started spending large chunks of time in Latin America. I have never had anyone in Canada or the United States wish me a Happy International Womens Day. It just doesnt seem to resonate in the same way that it does in Latin America.

Why is this the case?

The importance of the UN

Its likely attributable to the different contexts in which IWD takes place, and the different political and cultural meanings that the day of celebration and protest has assumed.

The first IWD was celebrated in New York City in 1909 to commemorate the march for womens rights that had taken place in that same city the previous year.

These activities were part of the struggle for womens suffrage, which was slowly extended to women around the world in the early 20th century. They were also part of the broader struggle for womens labour and economic rights, an agenda that was likely viewed by governments and citizens alike as communist propaganda.

The first IWD celebrations in New York were encouraged by the Socialist Party of America. From 1910 to 1917, IWD observances were held in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Austria, and Russia, among other places, mainly as the result of union and social democratic party activism.

Then, several decades later in 1975, the year of the first United Nations (UN) Conference on Women, the UN began an annual recognition and celebration of IWD.

The significance of the UNs involvement is undeniable for countries in Latin America and for womens movements in that region. Many activists within global and Latin American womens movements credit the UN and its declarations and conferences for improvements in womens rights and addressing gender discrimination.

The UNs resources have enabled women to pressure otherwise unresponsive governments for social and political change. The UN, however, has not played a similar role in Canada and the United States.

#MeToo and #TimesUp

The UN continues to be the main global advocate of IWD. It organizes activities and highlights the continued struggle for womens rights and gender justice.

The 2018 theme is "Time is Now: Rural and Womens Activists Transforming Womens Lives." It connects womens struggles to the UNs sustainable development goals and states that: "International Womens Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities."

This recognizes a prolonged and communal struggle for women, one that is reflective of historical and continued experiences of women in Latin America.

For women in North America, current experiences are perhaps better captured in the explanation on the UN Women website that IWD 2018 "comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for womens rights, equality and justice."

It notes that the movement "has taken the form of global marches and campaigns, including #MeToo and #TimesUp in the United States of America and their counterparts in other countries, on issues ranging from sexual harassment and femicide to equal pay and womens political representation."

While this is a timely and engaging articulation of the theme, it is focused on very recent and highly contested political events, and suggests that the struggle for gender justice is fractured and individualized.

Its also interesting to note that there is a competing global IWD campaign, supported not by the UN but by a conglomerate of corporate and non-governmental organizations. Its theme is #PressForProgress, which is a fairly diluted call to action, one that is aimed primarily at women in countries of whats now known as the Global North.

High rates of femicide in Latin America

The importance of the UN, the significance of its sustainable development goals and the cultural understanding of enduring historical struggles for peace, justice and human and womens rights in Latin America culminate in annual IWD celebrations.

Women in Latin America are aware that progress toward justice is hard won, and that there is much work left to be done. Latin America has some of the worlds highest rates of femicide. The epidemic of gender-based killing of women has inspired its own social movement, #NiUnaMas.

In Canada and the U.S., these problems may not be seen as acute, which sometimes results in a tendency to view progress toward gender justice uncritically and to believe the myth of equal status.

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But women everywhere have low status relative to men. This is a global phenomenon and there are no exceptions. There are, of course, individual women who defy this gender subordination, but women as a social category do not.

The problems that serve as evidence of womens low status in Canada include the gender pay gap, the double burden of paid employment and household work, lack of affordable child care, sexual harassment and sexual assault. They extend to intimate partner violence, femicide, and missing and murdered Indigenous women.

There is much work to be done in Canada. There is much work to be done everywhere.

The time is now.

Candace Johnson is a professor of political science at the University of Guelph.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Editorial

As of today, Viola Desmond is the newly minted face on our money.

The much-discussed new $10 bill featuring the portrait of Ms. Desmond, a Nova Scotian civil rights champion and businesswoman, will be unveiled today  International Womens Day  by the Bank of Canada at the Halifax Central Library. Ms. Desmond will be the first Canadian woman to grace the front of a regularly circulating Canadian banknote.

Communications Nova Scotia / The Canadian Press files Viola Desmond banknotes will be in circulation this year.

The new bill, which will be in circulation later this year, is the result of the 2016s #bankNOTEable campaign, during which Canadians were asked to nominate prominent, accomplished Canadian women, mostly from history. Living women were not eligible.

Other finalists included poet E. Pauline Johnson, Quebec suffragette Idola Saint-Jean, 1928 Olympic track and field gold medallist Fanny Rosenfeld, and the first woman to earn a bachelors degree in electrical engineering, Elsie MacGill.

Of course, theres rich irony in making women, yet again, compete for one available spot. But, Ms. Desmond is certainly deserving of her place on the $10 bill. In 1945, she refused to give up her seat in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow, N.S. She was forcibly removed and jailed overnight. She subsequently launched the first known legal challenge against racial segregation brought forth by a black woman in Canada.

When it was announced Ms. Desmonds portrait would be replacing Sir John A. Macdonalds  which has been on the $10 note since 1971  there were many complaints, just as there were in the U.S. when it was announced that abolitionist Harriet Tubman would be replacing former president Andrew Jackson on that countrys $20 bill.

Some objected to the Canadian banknote change because they believed it was disrespectful to the former prime minister; some felt threatened, perhaps fearing that having a womans face on money might set things on a slippery slope toward equal pay.

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To that end, Ms. Desmonds presence on the $10 banknote isnt a panacea for the inequality that too many Canadian women still face. Yes, its a symbolic gesture  but its a symbol of the pursuit of equality. It is a symbol of how much representation matters. So many of our institutions are named after men; we have monuments and holidays and rural municipalities named after men.

For our nations little girls, being exposed to the names and faces of pioneering Canadian women is important. And hearing their stories is even more so.

Through this exercise, the name Viola Desmond is starting to get the profile it deserves. The public is more familiar with her story. And the promise of her image having a constant presence in our wallets has sparked conversations about other great Canadian females who blazed trails and tore down obstacles so that the women who followed in their footsteps would be able to build on the trailblazers early successes  women such as Jennie Trout, the first female physician in Canada. And Nellie McClung, who was instrumental in securing the vote for Manitobas women. And Lucy Maud Montgomery, who created one of the most inspiring and beloved little girls in literature.

These are women whose accomplishments need to be highlighted, and not just on International Womens Day. An Ipsos survey, conducted on behalf of Historica Canada, found that only 16 per cent of respondents had even heard of McClung.

Perceptions need to change. What Canadians know about the inspiring women who helped shape our history needs to change. And it will take a lot more than $10 worth of inspiration to make it happen.
Thursday marks the fifth day of a strike by over 1,400 Frontier telecommunication workers in Virginia and West Virginia. Frontier has eliminated over 500 jobs in West Virginia since 2010 and is threatening to eliminate 15 percent of its current workforce. Lorraine, a Frontier worker in Ashburn, Virginia told the WSWS that Frontier is paying scabs 98 dollars an hour and up, with bonuses in order to continue operations.

When the strike began, 33,000 teachers and public school workers in West Virginia were also on strike. On Monday, thousands of teachers flooded the capitol building in Charleston, which is within eyesight of the picket line at Frontier headquarters, just across the Kanawha river. The Communication Workers of America union (CWA) made no attempt to unite the struggle of Frontier workers with the teachers.

Frontier picketers in Charleston

Yesterday, after nine days on strike, the teachers were sent back to work when their unions concluded a sell-out agreement with Republican governor Jim Justice and the Republican-controlled state legislature that provides state employees with a meager five percent pay raise and no resolution of their main demand: guaranteed funding for their underfunded health insurance fund, the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA). A "task force", to be composed of Democratic and Republican legislators, as well as union leaders, has promised to look into the issue, although many teachers expressed skepticism about the deal.

Furthermore, Governor Justice and state legislators have indicated that the teacher's raise will be funded not by taxing the billion-dollar energy companies which rule the state, but through cuts to social spending, including to Medicaid, the health care program for the poor that one-third of West Virginians rely upon.

Yesterday, WSWS reporters spoke to picketing Frontier workers in Charleston about their strike and the recently concluded teachers strike.

Chris, with nine years at Frontier

Chris, a worker with nine years, said, Every worker, whether it be the teachers that were fighting in the capitol, or our communication workers, we all have the right to affordable, high-quality health care. I have two kids in public school, and my sister's a teacher in Lincoln County. Her PEIA premiums were going to raise from 80 to 600 dollars, which is astronomical. And a five percent raise doesn't really offset that.

He was upset about the threats made to Medicaid in order to pay public employees raises. There's got to be a better alternative, like implementing a tax on the billion dollar corporations. That's not going to hurt them at all, but if you take the funding from Medicaid, people are going to suffer.

Chris noted that the picketing Frontier workers had received encouragement from striking school employees, We had teachers come here and drop off food to us and offer their support.

WSWS reporters asked Chris what he thought about the support for the teachers strike from teachers across the country and around the world. I think it's fantastic, he said. If all the teachers band together, and the same for us, if all the communication workers band together, there's no fight we can't win. All we want here is to take care of our families, and provide them with great, affordable health care.

Jenny, with eight years at Frontier

Jenny has a Master's degree in education but works at Frontier because she can't earn a good wage as a teacher. There are a lot of educators at Frontier, she said, who couldn't make enough money to provide for their families as teachers. The guy who works across from me has a degree in education. My supervisor has both a nursing degree and a teaching degree, and she works here.

Nicki, Frontier customer service rep with two years

Nicki, a customer service rep with two years, reported that younger Frontier workers face precarious working conditions, The company says they'll keep 85 percent of the jobs, but the other 15 percent, the newer hires like myself, we do not have job security. And the newer reps were hired in at a lower pay rate. We also make a five percent commission, but they recently doubled our quotas and began routing our calls to third party vendors so that it's impossible for us to meet the quotas and get our commission pay. I think the higher paid and lower paid reps need to stick together. They have their job security, and they don't have to be out here fighting for us, but they are. That means a lot.

Justin and Ashley

Justin, a sales rep with 2 years, said, We're fighting for job security and to keep the health benefits that we have. I think that [in the teachers strike] social media played a big role in getting the word out to the world. It's different than it was in the 1990s. We all want for our families to have good lives. I think all workers, anybody that's in the working class, no matter your color or your origin should be fighting together.
In another milestone in the growing integration between the military-intelligence complex and Silicon Valley, Googles parent company Alphabet has confirmed that it has provided software to identify targets used in the illegal US government drone murder program.

Since initiating its drone assassination program in 2009, the United States claims to have killed close to 3,000 combatants in drone strikes. Internal military documents show that for every one person targeted by a drone strike, nine bystanders are killed, meaning that the true toll of the US militarys airborne terrorism campaign in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq potentially rises to the tens of thousands.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law, under which lethal force may be used outside armed conflict zones only as a last resort.

Googles complicity with the drone murder program implicates the company in the criminal activities of the US military, sparking outrage among employees after executives admitted the collaboration in an internal memo last week, according to a report by Gizmodo.

Sensitive to both the potential legal ramifications of its actions and to the hostility to Americas criminal wars both inside and outside the company, Google stressed in a statement that its collaboration is for non-offensive uses only, saying the technology flags images for human review.

But this absurd and unserious pretense, aimed to provide talking points to an uncritical, state-controlled media, is the equivalent of a Mafia getaway driver claiming he is not an accomplice to murder because he did not pull the trigger.

The US government has claimed the right to use drones to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world, including within the borders of the United States. In 2011, the Obama administration assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, with a Predator drone strike in Yemen, then murdered his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, in another drone strike two weeks later.

Googles partnership in such nefarious operations threatens it not only with legal sanction around the world, but also with serious commercial repercussions. The companys decision to proceed despite these dangers points to the increasingly vital role of military contracts in the business operations of the major technology giants.

The Defense Department spent at least $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence programs last year, and is expected to spend even more this year, with much of that amount flowing to corporations like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Nvidia, whose artificial intelligence capacities reportedly outstrip those of in-house Pentagon programs.

Over the past year, Google, Facebook and Twitter have all announced measures to censor the information their services present to users, promoting authoritative and trusted news outlets over alternative viewpoints, which include news outlets that expose and denounce US war crimes. Facebook, which of all the technology companies has been the most unabashed in its determination to censor its platform, has explicitly said it expects user engagement to drop as a result of its demotion of viral videos and promotion of trusted news sources, such as the New York Times.

As these companies expect some drop-off in consumer demand as they impose increasingly restrictive censorship measures, lucrative defense contracts are a means to pad their bottom line and align their financial interests ever more closely with the war-making and repressive operations of the American state.

The technology giants have moved to impose censorship measures at the same time that the Pentagon has concluded that it has found itself in an AI arms race, as the Wall Street Journal put it this month. Facing the rapid economic rise of substantial military powers, such as Russia and China, who are able to develop and implement new technologies without the massive logistical burden of the countless wars, overseas deployments, and destabilization operations engaged in by the United States. US military planners have come to the conclusion that the only way to retain the American military advantage in future conflicts is to integrate Silicon Valley into the warfighting machine.

The Pentagon has devised the so-called Third offset strategy to defeat the pacing threat from China by focusing on autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, assisted human operations, advanced manned-unmanned systems operations, and networked autonomous weapons as the Economist recently put it in the cover story of an issue titled The next war.

This strategy revolves around the recruitment of the US private technology sector, which remains the most developed in the world. As the Economist put it, the United States continues to dominate commercial AI funding and has more firms working in the field than any other country.

Speaking at a conference last year, Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, the head of the so-called Project Maven in which Google is a key collaborator, declared the US in the midst of an AI arms race, adding, Many of you will have noted that Eric Schmidt is calling Google an AI company now, not a data company.

He added, There is no black box that delivers the AI system the government needs... Key elements have to be put together  and the only way to do that is with commercial partners alongside us.

In order to streamline the reciprocal exchange between the technology giants vast computational power, artificial intelligence capabilities, and massive database of sensitive user data and the US militarys virtually limitless budget, the Pentagon has set up a series of partnerships with Silicon Valley. In 2015, the Pentagon set up a private-public funding vehicle known as the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), headquartered just minutes from Googles main campus in Mountain View, California.

In 2016, the Pentagon set up an entity called the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, aiming to bring the technological innovation and best practice of Silicon Valley to the US Military, chaired by none other than former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

Last fall, Schmidt complained about the reluctance of those working in the technology sector to collaborate with the Pentagon, bemoaning the fact, Theres a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly.

But beyond leveraging the tech giants artificial intelligence capabilities for guiding missiles and selecting victims, the open secret of the Pentagons collaboration with Silicon Valley is that, behind the scenes, vast quantities of sensitive, personal user data is likely being funneled to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies for the purposes of surveillance and targeting.

As Lt. Gen. John Shanahan, who is closely involved in Project Maven put it at a conference last year, On the far end of the scale, you see Google. They dont tell us what they have, unless anyone from Google wants to whisper in my ear later.

The integration of companies like Google into what had previously been known as the military-intelligence apparatus is creating a vast system of state repression previously unknown in human history. Preparing for great-power conflict requires, as the Pentagons recently-released National Defense Strategy puts it, the seamless integration of multiple elements of national powerdiplomacy, information, economics, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and military.

Censorship and surveillance are the linchpin of this emerging military-technology-intelligence nexus. As the United States prepares to wage hot wars against peer militaries such as Russia and China, the growth of domestic anti-war sentiment will be combatted through the use of mass censorship, aided by artificial intelligence, with political profiling on the basis of social media communications.

The World Socialist Web Site is leading the fight against this drive to censorship and war. In August 2017, we published an open letter demanding that Google end its political censorship of search results, which have led to a massive fall in search traffic to left-wing and anti-war web sites. In January, the WSWS published a call for all socialist, anti-war, left-wing and progressive websites, organizations and activists to join an international coalition to fight Internet censorship. We call on all workers and young people seeking to defend democratic rights to contact the WSWS and join its struggle for socialism.
The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Tuesday evening against the state of California, seeking to have a legislative package establishing California as a sanctuary state declared unconstitutional. The suit was filed in a federal district court in Sacramento, the California state capital.

Despite the sanctuary claim made by both supporters and opponents, the laws targeted in the suit do not actually provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. They merely require that federal immigration agents meet due process requirements before California police or employers assist them.

US Attorney General Jefferson Sessions defended the lawsuit and condemned the conduct of state and local officials in California in a fascistic speech to the annual legislative meeting of the California Peace Officers Association, held in Sacramento Wednesday, the day after the suit was filed.

The attorney general singled out the mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf, for condemnation, because she issued a statement last week warning of impending raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout the San Francisco Bay area. He claimed that because of this warning, 800 of the nearly 1,000 people targeted for seizure by ICE had escaped detention.

Those are 800 wanted aliens that are now at large in that communitymost are wanted criminals that ICE will now have to pursue with more difficulty in more dangerous situations, all because of one mayors irresponsible action, he said, adding that [Shaffs] actions support those who flout our laws and boldly validate the illegality.

Sessions claimed that Schaafs warning had put at risk the lives of ICE agents when they conducted their Gestapo-style raids in immigrant neighborhoods and at workplaces, since their victims had advance notice. In reality, there was no significant resistance to the ICE agents and not a single injury has been reported.

The Trump administration is targeting three laws enacted by the state legislature last fall and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown, which took effect January 1, 2018.

Assembly Bill 450 forbids businesses from providing information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the principal federal agency for detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants outside the border zone, unless ICE agents obtain a warrant. Assembly Bill 103 provides for state inspections of immigration detention facilities operated under contract to the federal Department of Homeland Security. And Senate Bill 54 limits what information state and local police and prison officials can share with ICE and makes it more difficult to transfer prisoners directly from state and local jails to ICE facilities.

The provisions of state law at issue have the purpose and effect of making it more difficult for federal immigration officers to carry out their responsibilities in California, Justice Department lawyers wrote. The Supremacy Clause does not allow California to obstruct the United States ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution.

California state officials, for their part, say that the laws only prevent the federal government from drafting state and local police into the service of ICE, effectively forcing state and local governments to bear the cost of enforcement of federal immigration laws. This argument is pitched to the right-wing majority of the US Supreme Court, which has ruled that the federal government may not sequester state resources for such purposes as providing medical care for the poor.

The Justice Department suit claims that the California laws are unconstitutional because the Constitution reserves power over immigration to the federal government. This is the same claim made by the Obama administration when it sued the state of Arizona for enacting more restrictive rules against undocumented immigrants, including requiring local police to check immigration status when they made arrests or even stopped people for traffic violations.

The legal roles are reversed. In the Arizona case, the more openly anti-democratic faction, which controlled the state government, claimed that it was merely assisting and supplementing federal immigration enforcement, not usurping it. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down parts of the Arizona law as unconstitutional usurpation of federal authority.

Those who howled for states rights in the Arizona case are now beating the drums for federal authority and the supremacy of federal agencies over state agencies, since the California state government has adopted a more permissive rather than a more restrictive approach to undocumented immigrants.

The issues in the California case differ from those in Arizona, however, since the state laws do not bar federal immigration officials from taking any action, they merely require a higher procedural standard before state and local officials or employers provide information or access to federal agents.

Sessionss remarks follow a series of bullying threats delivered by ICE Director Thomas Homan, who said state officials who passed sanctuary laws should be jailed, and intensified and highly publicized raids of workplaces and public areas, as well as hundreds of homes, in both northern and southern California.

State Democratic politicians like Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Xavier Becerra denounced the federal lawsuit and the stepped-up ICE enforcement actions throughout the state. The Democrats welcome a confrontation in which they can posture as friends of immigrants, in a majority-minority state whose largest single population group is Hispanics.

The Democrats posture of sympathy for immigrants targeted for detention and deportation is entirely cynical. Neither Brown, Becerra or any other Democratic Party officeholder raised objections when the Obama administration deported more undocumented immigrants than any other administration in US history.

Congressional Democratic leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, as well as leading liberals like senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have repeatedly declared their support for border security measures, up to and including the functional equivalent of Trumps wall on the US-Mexico border, as long as other terminology is used.

The author also recommends:

Trumps reign of terror on California immigrants

[27 February 2018]
The incoming grand coalition government is preparing a massive expansion of Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan. No sooner had the membership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) voted for the continuation of the government alliance with the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) than the expansion plans were announced.

On Wednesday the caretaker government decided to increase the previous upper troop limit in Afghanistan by about one-third, and send up to 1,300 soldiers to the central Asian country in future. According to reports, the Bundestag (parliament) should agree to this by the end of March.

The CDU/CSU and SPD are swiftly implementing the militarist plans they have concocted in recent weeks and months. The coalition agreement states, We want to continue our involvement in the Resolute Support Mission (RSM) mandate in Afghanistan, with an unchanged mandate. As part of the multilaterally agreed concept of protection for northern Afghanistan, we will increase the number of soldiers deployed to protect trainers.

The Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan is not about concepts of protection but about the geo-strategic and economic interests of German imperialism. Asias unbroken dynamic continues to offer great opportunities for Germany and Europe. At the same time, massive changes in the international order are emerging in the region, the coalition agreement states. Asia harbours great potential for conflict through a multitude of unresolved conflicts. We are therefore dedicated to a strong German and European economic, social and security policy commitment in Asia.

The SPD and CDU/CSU had already agreed on the extension of German intervention in the resource-rich Middle East in the coalition agreement. In the section on current foreign missions they explain, The Bundeswehr mission in northern Iraq was successful, IS [Islamic State] has been largely pushed back there militarily. Therefore, we can phase out and end the training mandate in northern Iraq ... In a further step, we want to further develop this mandate for the comprehensive stabilization and sustainable fight against IS terror, in particular through capacity building.

By capacity building the government means comprehensive and long-term military engagement throughout Iraq. The new draft mandate, which initially foresees a maximum of 800 soldiers and was also approved by the federal cabinet on Wednesday, states, On the basis of requests from the international anti-IS coalition and the Iraqi government, NATO is currently reviewing a transformation and possible intensification of its previous involvement in training and consulting in Iraq into a training mission.

Specifically, this concerns the training of the Iraqi army as a proxy army and lackey for imperialist interests. The regular Iraqi armed forces and security forces need to be empowered to respond to the changing threat and thus ensure the security necessary for successful stabilization, reads the mandate. The planned actions serve to strengthen structures and capabilities, through the training of trainers and also to ensure effective political control over the security forces.

A particularly perfidious aim of the grand coalition is the preparation of mass deportations of refugees to Iraq. The mission also contributes to creating the basis for the return of internally displaced persons and refugees, write the CDU/CSU and SPD in the draft mandate. At the same time, they undertake to continue the Wests brutal air warfare in Syria, which has turned hundreds of thousands into refugees.

In addition to the new Bundeswehr mission in Iraq, the German war effort in Syria should continue. This includes reconnaissance flights by German Tornados from Jordan, the refuelling of jet fighters of the so-called anti-IS coalition and the surveillance of the region using AWACS reconnaissance aircraft. Germany supports the international coalition in the fight against IS directly by the provision of reconnaissance means, and by doing so, contributes to the fact that air reconnaissance over the area of operation of IS becomes all the more important the more IS operates in a concealed manner, the mandate reads.

The governments attempt to portray the deployment of the Bundeswehr as an anti-terrorist operation is pure propaganda. It is well known that the US invasion under George W. Bush in 2003 initiated the destruction of Iraq, and that IS itself was the product of the countrys subsequent occupation and of Western cooperation with Islamist militias in the regime-change wars in Libya and Syria.

While Germany had held back during the wars against Iraq and Libya, it was fully involved in the Syria war from the outset. The Bundeswehr is directly or indirectly using terrorist methods. The Peshmerga units and Iraqi forces it has trained and armed have killed tens of thousands of civilians in the so-called liberation of Mosul from ISIS, and the German Air Force supplies target coordinates for the massacres of the US-led anti-IS coalition in Syria.

Although the grand coalition is now planning to intensify the brutal and unpopular war effort, there is virtually no opposition in the Bundestag. Representatives of all parties backed the new government on Sunday and have already voted in favour of foreign deployments of the Bundeswehr in the past. If there is any criticism from the so-called opposition parties, it focuses on the orientation and concrete implementation of the new mandates.

For example, in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Green Party foreign policy spokesman Omid Nouripour said that while it was right to want to help Iraq, the mandate was so imprecise that it is unclear how it should succeed and how parliamentary control is possible. Tobias Pfluger, Defence Policy Spokesman of the Left Party, also complained that the mandate was unclear. The previous cabinet draft leaves open how many soldiers should be transferred to Iraq, including the relationship of trainers and other soldiers, said Pfluger. With such a vague submission, the Defence Minister leaves everything open and will have to answer questions in the Defence Committee.
The nine-day strike by more than 33,000 West Virginia teachers and other public school employees ended on Wednesday morning. Teachers returned to work in districts throughout the state, amidst growing anger over the terms of the union-backed agreement rushed through the state legislature and signed by Governor Jim Justice on Tuesday.

The determined struggle in West Virginia has captured the attention of workers throughout the United States and the world who supported and identified with the fight by teachers for decent wages and an end to soaring health care costs. The struggle was a powerful demonstration of the growing militancy of workers in the United States and internationally, which revealed that the basic division in society is not race or gender, but class.

Contrary to the proclamations of the unions, however, the deal reached to end the strike is not a victory for teachers. It does nothing to address teachers central demandan end to escalating health care costs through the Public Employee Insurance Agency (PEIA) that effectively wipe out any pay raises. Moreover, the one-time five percent raise for public workers will be funded by deep cuts to social programs.

The attitude of the giant corporations that control the state to the settlement of the strike was articulated by an editorial in the right-wing Charleston Daily Mail, which last week attacked teachers for refusing to follow the orders of the unions and return to work. Three cheers for Republicans in the Senate of West Virginia, the newspaper enthused, for not caving to the demands of an unruly crowd by passing higher taxes.

Instead of taxing the wealthy and the energy corporations that dominate the state and control both the Democrats and Republicans, any additional funding for meager pay increases will come from the cancelation of a free community college tuition program, a $10 million reduction in the Medicaid health care program for low-income residents, the elimination of new funding for free health care clinics, and other cuts.

The Daily Mail gleefully added that perhaps the biggest opportunity for savings is the state and county education bureaucracythat is, the elimination of public employee jobs.

The framework of the agreement is a provocation. Teachers did not strike to see health care and essential services for other workers ripped away. They did not fight to have meager pay increases financed by the further impoverishment of their students.

The struggle in West Virginia is not over. The more teachers learn about the deal that was used to force them back to work, the angrier will be the response. Moreover, the strike heralds a growing resurgence of the class struggle throughout the United States and internationally.

This makes all the more necessary a conscious assimilation of the lessons of the West Virginia teachers strike.

The suppression of the strike is the result of the systematic, conscious and deliberate treachery of the trade unionsthe American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA) and their state affiliates, along with the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the other AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions.

From the very beginning, the struggle demonstrated the chasm that separates the working class from the organizations calling themselves unions, which take workers dues money and do the bidding of the corporations and the state. The strike was initiated by discussions in school cafeterias and meeting rooms, and on social media, by teachers in the southern coalfield counties, not in the offices of the WVEA and AFT-WV.

As sentiment for a struggle erupted throughout the state, the unions called a limited two-day statewide strike in an effort to contain workers militancy, followed by a two-day extension. Then, on February 27, the unions suddenly announced a deal with Governor Justice and ordered teachers back to work on March 1.

Teachers, however, rebelled. They organized meetings on the picket lines, in the capitol and online where they rejected arguments by union functionaries who tried to cow workers with threats that a continuing strike would alienate the parents and result in injunctions and punishing fines. In county after county, school workers voted to defy the strikebreaking orders by the WVEA, AFT-WV and the school service workers union, and continued their battle.

By revolting, the striking workers had, at least temporarily, broken through the straitjacket imposed by the unions, and this incipient working class movement became a powerful pole of attraction for workers and youth throughout the state, the country and the world.

The response of the unions was to redouble their efforts to shut down the strike at the very point it was gathering strength and inspiring other sections of the working class to take similar action. The walkout by 1,400 Frontier Communications workers in West Virginia and Virginia last weekend made the end of the strike, from the standpoint of the union executives, all the more necessary.

The last thing the unions wanted to see was an escalating working class movement, which would undermine everything they have done to suppress the class struggle since 1981, when the breaking of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike set in motion an unbroken string of betrayals. With the Janus vs. AFSCME case on the constitutionality of agency fees paid to public employee unions pending before the Supreme Court, the unions were eager to demonstrate their usefulness to the ruling elite, as expressed by a union lawyer in oral arguments last month: Union security is the tradeoff for no strikes.

The new agreement on Tuesdayessentially a repackaging of the same deal that teachers had rejectedwas rammed through without allowing teachers an opportunity to discuss it and vote on a return to work. All the auxiliary organizations of the Democratic Partythe Democratic Socialists of America, Jacobin Magazine, the International Socialist Organization, and many otherswere mobilized to declare the strike a victory.

The strike-breaking operation of the unions is bound up with their essential function. They are not working-class organizations, but agencies of the corporations and the state. The teachers unions are no different from the United Auto Workers, which was revealed to have taken direct bribes from the auto companies in exchange for pushing through pro-company agreements.

The West Virginia teachers strike indicates the trajectory of the developing movement. The resurgence of class struggle will bring workers into ever more direct and open conflict with the trade unions. Wherever a struggle begins, workers must be armed with an understanding of the role that the unions will play. They exist to defend capitalism and police the working class.

Throughout the strike, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party called on teachers to form independent rank-and-file committees, to unite teachers with the entire working class. In West Virginia, the formation of such committees is necessary to prepare for the next stage in the fight against the attack on wages and health care. The formation of factory and workplace committees throughout the country and internationally will provide the framework for unifying the struggles of the entire working class in a political movement against the state apparatus, the Democratic and Republican Parties, and the capitalist system.

The critical question, not only for teachers, but all sections of the working class, is the building of a socialist leadership, which will encourage the independent organization and initiative of the workers, raise their class consciousness, clarify the fundamental political issues posed by every separate struggle, and direct the growing movement of the working class against capitalism and for socialism, in the United States and throughout the world.
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March 8, 2018

Highlighting that registries are not only for sex offenders in many states

This new Marshall Project piece, headlined "Convicted of a Drug Crime, Registered with Sex Offenders," focuses on the broad reach of the offender registry employed in Kansas and debate over its reform. I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts from the piece:

Lawmakers have long justified sex offender registries as a way to notify people about potentially dangerous neighbors or acquaintances, while critics say they fail to prevent crime and create a class of social outcasts. Over the years, several states have expanded their registries to add perpetrators of other crimes, including kidnapping, assault, and murder. Tennessee added animal abuse. Utah added white collar crimes. A few states considered but abandoned plans for hate crime and domestic abuse registries. At least five states publicly display methamphetamine producers. But Kansas went furthest, adding an array of lesser drug crimes; roughly 4,600 people in the state are now registered as drug offenders. As deaths from opioids rise, some public officials have focused on addiction as a public health issue. Kansas offers a different approach, as law enforcement officials argue that the registry helps keep track of people who may commit new offenses and cautions the public to avoid potentially dangerous areas and individuals. At the same time, many registrants say it can be hard to move on when their pasts are just a click away for anyone to see. The Kansas legislature is currently considering a bill proposed by the states sentencing commission that would remove drug offenders from the registry. It is a drain on resources with no science, studies, or data to justify it, defense lawyer Jennifer Roth told lawmakers at an early February hearing. The Kansas law, first passed in 2007, now requires anyone convicted of manufacturing, distributing, or possessing with intent to distribute drugs other than marijuana to remain on the registry for a minimum of 15 years (and a maximum of life, for multiple convictions.) During that time, they must appear at their county sheriffs office four times a year, as well as any time they move, get a new job, email address, vehicle, or tattoo. Most of this information is online, searchable by name or neighborhood, and members of the public can sign up to be emailed when an offender moves in or starts work near them. (In 2013, when businesses expressed fear of vigilantes targeting registrants at work, lawmakers removed employment addresses from the website.) During the quarterly sheriff visits, they must pay $20 and have their picture retaken; if they work or go to school in another county, they must register there as well. Any time I get a new job, I have to say, Sorry, I need time off in the first 72 hours, said Juston Kerns, 35, arrested for involvement in the sale of methamphetamine in 2014. A few years ago, Wesley Harden  convicted in 2008 of selling methamphetamine after he led police on a high-speed chase  was arrested and charged with failure to register. Harden, 35, showed up as required, but hed recently failed to report a jet ski as a new vehicle. He doesnt know for sure how the authorities discovered the jet ski, but thinks it has to do with pictures he posted on Facebook. Harden received three years of probation, but the punishment for failing to register can include prison time, even if the original conviction was handled without incarceration. Last year, 38 people were sent to prison over their failure to register for drug crimes, and the Kansas Sentencing Commission estimates that removing drug crimes would save the state roughly a million dollars each year.... Many law enforcement officials support the registry on public safety grounds. People who sell drugs, there tends to be dangerous activity that takes place around their residence, said Ed Klumpp, a retired Topeka police chief who lobbies for law enforcement at the legislature and opposes the current bill. If youre raising children in the neighborhood, its good to know there is someone down the street convicted of selling or manufacturing, so maybe they wont send the kids to get candy there on Halloween. In recent years, lawyers around the country have argued to increasing success that registration requirements are unconstitutional. One county in Colorado recently took its registry offline after a judge found it to be cruel and unusual punishment. California recently passed a law allowing sex offenders to be removed from the registry after 10 to 20 years if they have not committed another serious or violent felony or sex crime. But beyond the legal questions are practical ones. Little is known about whether registries prevent crime, and University of Michigan law professor J.J. Prescott has speculated that they may even facilitate crimes that involve buyers and sellers. Imagine I move to a new city and I don't know where to find drugs, he said. Oh, I can just look up people on the registry! Evidence to support this theory is scant  and law enforcement leaders in Kansas say they have not encountered the problem  but at the February legislative hearing, Scott Schultz, the executive director of the Kansas Sentencing Commission, said he had learned of one registrant who found people at her door, looking to buy drugs. Theyd seen her address online. Ive called it, tongue in cheek, state-sponsored drug-dealing, Schultz said, describing the registry as an online shopping portal for meth and other drugs.

March 8, 2018 at 11:11 AM | Permalink

Comments

I have proposed a registry of lawyers proposing registries. They should be boycotted by all product and service providers.

On the other had, these registry quacks need to get in gear. China has a jaywalking registry, putting faces and personal information on huge screens in the street.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 8, 2018 1:03:29 PM

Drug registries. Brilliant idea. If I am new in town, and I need illegal drugs, I know exactly where to go and whom to ask for. Nice referral source.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 8, 2018 1:27:58 PM

At least the drug registrants have the option of moving to another state, where no such registration schemas exist. Sex offenders have SORNA to deal with as well, and usually when they move to other states their treatment becomes harsher than the previous state.

I'm not saying that drug registration isn't wrong; it is despicable. But the pragmatic consequences are comparatively easy to alleviate compared to sex offender registrants.

Posted by: Eric Knight | Mar 8, 2018 5:32:59 PM

Well, what do I say about these particular states? At least they are no longer singling out former sex offenders for forced registration.

This requirement, however, that sex offenders still have to register could explode in the face of law-enforcement personnel. Suppose a huge concentration of ex-sex offenders and other registration-eligible offenders decide to band together to resort either to civil disobedience in mass numbers where many of them simultaneously refuse to register in several localities across the U.S.? Will law-enforcement have enough personnel to enforce such compliance without seriously compromising their ability to protect the general public from far more serious crimes like drunk driving, selling drugs to little children, drive-by shooters, home-invasions, domestic violence, etc.? If they could do so, could they still avoid raising our already astronomically high taxes to still even higher levels, thereby causing a possible tax-payers' revolt. If one has to raise the sales tax on food and other essentials for human survival just to pay for a stupid registry, will the American people be dumb enough to stand for this?

Would we have to open up all the cells in our city/county jails and state/federal prisons to make room for these non-registrants? Who will pay for the judges and extra prosecutors who will be saddled with the duty of tracking down all these non-registrants? Who will compensate the jurors called to extra duty for those defendants who refuse to plea-bargain their non-registrant offenses? This will be both time-consuming and money-consuming. Who pays the bill especially when most former offenders are indigent? Nothing is free and money does not grow on trees.

What about violent backlashes by former offenders, especially by former sex offenders, who are fed up with double jeopardy. Many of these former offenders may now feel they have nothing to lose by resorting to violent resistance against these laws by targeting either law-enforcement or other innocent bystanders while venting their frustrations.

This is something to think about.

Posted by: william r. delzell | Mar 9, 2018 9:31:20 AM

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 Via executive order, Prez Trump creates new Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry | Main | Highlighting that registries are not only for sex offenders in many states 

March 8, 2018

"Turn Prisons Into Colleges" ... and urging colleges to invest in prisoner education

The quoted portion title of this post is the headline of this recent New York Times commentary authored by Elizabeth Hinton. Here are excerpts (with a little commentary at the end from me):

Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry  just like college students. Or even with them. This would be a boon to prisoners across the country, a vast majority of whom do not have a high school diploma. And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race. The idea is rooted in history. In the 1920s, Howard Belding Gill, a criminologist and a Harvard alumnus, developed a college-like community at the Norfolk State Prison Colony in Massachusetts, where he was the superintendent. Prisoners wore normal clothing, participated in cooperative self-government with staff, and took academic courses with instructors from Emerson, Boston University and Harvard. They ran a newspaper, radio show and jazz orchestra, and they had access to an extensive library.... Researchers from the Bureau of Prisons emulated this model when they created a prison college project in the 1960s. It allowed incarcerated people throughout the country to serve their sentences at a single site, designed like a college campus, and take classes full-time. Although the project was never completed, San Quentin State Prison in California created a scaled-down version with support from the Ford Foundation, and it was one of the few prisons then that offered higher education classes. Today, only a third of all prisons provide ways for incarcerated people to continue their educations beyond high school. But the San Quentin Prison University Project remains one of the countrys most vibrant educational programs for inmates, so much so President Barack Obama awarded it a National Humanities Medal in 2015 for the quality of its courses. The idea of expanding educational opportunities to prisoners as a way to reduce recidivism and government spending has again gained momentum. Thats partly because of a study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showing that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison. Lawmakers have rightly recognized the wisdom in turning prisons into colleges. In 2015, Mr. Obama created the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, which has enrolled more than 12,000 incarcerated students in higher education programs at 67 different schools. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is considering permanently reinstating Pell Grants for incarcerated students, who lost access to federal scholarships under the 1994 crime bill. Even Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls providing prisoners with the chance to earn a degree a very good and interesting possibility.... Mass incarceration is inextricably linked to mass undereducation in America. Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Georgetown, Wesleyan and New York University are among a handful of institutions that realize this and have begun to create ways for incarcerated people to take college classes. These universities recognize that they have a moral responsibility to pursue educational justice for prisoners, a group that has disproportionately attended under-resourced public schools. College presidents across the country emphasize the importance of diversity, inclusion and belonging, and they are reckoning with their institutions ties to slavery. Expanding prison education programs would link those two ventures in a forward-thinking way. Its clear that education will continue to be a central part of criminal justice reform. The question we should ask ourselves is not Will incarcerated students transform the university? The better question is, Will colleges begin to address and reflect the world around them?

I very much like that this commentary is not merely suggesting prisons ought to foster educational opportunities, but also that it calls upon "college presidents across the country" to commit to "expanding prison education programs." I blogged here last month about the new program in New York through which the company JPay will provide all New York state prison inmates with a electronic tablet, through which prisoners can purchase programming. I know many colleges and universities have a range of on-line degree programs and ample on-line education content. I would love to see some higher education institutions partnering with JPay or other like companies to provide education content to prisons for free or at the lowest possible cost.

As I see it, lots of the needed infrastructure and substantive content already exists to make college-level educational opportunities available to more prisons, if university administrators and prison official are truly committed to making a difference in this way. In other words, I think there already is a way, the only question is whether there is the will.

March 8, 2018 at 10:57 AM | Permalink

Comments

Totally agree. Too many State correctional authorities are obsessed with totally segregating the prison population from the real world, families and the benefits of educational and creative programs ... without regard for the health of inmates, their families, and the difference educational achievement can have on future behaviours and future employments within and beyond prison walls.

Posted by: peter | Mar 8, 2018 12:05:21 PM

Love it. Prisoners vs enforcers of political correctness. If I were a prisoner, I would major in Women's Studies.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 8, 2018 1:42:59 PM

For most, technical training gets the most bang for the bucks. Able to get a job and cintinue to groe in their job area. College is turning into bib bucks and lots of them dont make much more than factory workers, at least around here.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Mar 8, 2018 5:06:02 PM

Say, I go to college in prison. I am brilliant in some field, accounting. I take my diploma, and show my straight A's to an interviewer. Can they hire me after I reveal I have been to prison? If not, that would add to my frustration. Even if there is a Ban the Box law in the state, even if the job has to be relevant to the offense to bar me, my employer will always have a negligent hiring claim to face from the vicious tort predators. A straight fender bender now turns into the trial of the century for the employer. I am facing gross negligence consequences because I hired the felon with knowledge.

You pro-criminal lawyers have to curb your tort colleagues before collateral consequences can be attenuated.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 8, 2018 6:20:09 PM

So David, according to you, no inmate should expect to be employable ever again but seek to survive on the streets from handouts. How is it surprising then that recidivism is so high? You are happy for the State to fund a revolving door prison policy - effectively a life sentence? And for the taxpayer to pick up the tab? Of course, as usual, it will be the poor who suffer most since they have no reserve resources of their own, and very often not the skills to set up a business of their own. For someone who presumably regards himself as well educated, that attitude is remarkably unintelligent. When you help people to help themselves the benefits can actually be stunningly positive.

Posted by: peter | Mar 9, 2018 8:49:50 AM

Peter. I want to restrain the tort bar. It is deterring the employment of felons, even those with good skills and licenses. Employers do not want to risk a negligent hiring claim.

That will require tort reform, and not just Ban the Box, or relevance of the job to the conviction. I support good re-entry.

I even refer released felons to the Wired article of Feb 2015 on dumpster diving into the dumpster of dry good stores. They dump all returned items. Many items have tags or are in boxes. They guy in the article made $250,000 a year. I am gratified to hear that this practice is spreading in the Philadelphia area.

Yet, again, a manager of a store left a Comment after the article. He does not mind people taking things from the dumpster. So, why does he send guards to chase them away. He is afraid they will get injured in the dumpster and sue the store. Again with the tort bar and its goal of deterrence.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 10, 2018 12:05:11 AM

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The ministry is among six winners of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control, which were announced at a ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa on March 7, as part of the 17th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.

Receiving the award at the ceremony, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien delivered thanks to the World Health Organisation, the Bloomberg Philanthropies and domestic and international organisations for their support of Vietnam during the fight to control tobacco harms in particular and non-communicable diseases in general.

The five other winners came from El Salvador, Mexico, Senegal, Uganda and Argentina.

The Vietnamese Health Ministry actively worked with other ministries, agencies and socio-political organisations to draft a law on the prevention of tobaccos harms. The law, which has been adopted by the National Assembly, bans all smoking in indoor public space along with tobacco advertisement, promotion and sponsorship, among other stipulations.

The ministry also helped with the establishment of the Vietnam Tobacco Control Fund with mandatory contributions from tobacco production and trading companies.

A global survey revealed that the smoking rate among adult men has dropped to 45.3 percent from the previous 47.4 percent. The rate of passive smoking in working places also reduced to 42.6 percent from 55.9 percent, while passive smoking at home declined to 59.9 percent from the previous 73.1 percent.

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Becca Kufrin had something to say -- and she finally got to say it on Tuesday night's The Bachelor: After the Final Rose.

Viewers watched in horror on Monday's finale as Arie Luyendyk Jr. ended his engagement with the 27-year-old publicist just weeks after proposing, explaining that he had second thoughts about their relationship and wanted to pursue one with his runner-up, Lauren Burnham. The whole thing played out in an hour of unedited, uncut television, which Kufrin admitted was "brutal" to watch.

As Kufrin explained to host Chris Harrison on Monday, she hadn't "heard anything" from Luyendyk since being blindsided by their on-camera split, which was filmed in mid-January. "I have a ton of questions," she confessed. "But at this point, it's like, anything I ask him, will I get a true answer?" she added.

Luyendyk couldn't escape Tuesday's ATFR, however, and his and Kufrin's cold face off.

As Kufrin revealed on the episode, she Luyendyk didn't tell her that he had communicated with Burnham until a week after he reached out. "Why did you hide that from me for so long?" she asked.

"I didn't want to be rash," he explained. "I knew there was all these feelings and I wanted to be certain in my decision before I came to you. That wasn't easy for me."

"I think from the time we got back from Peru, there was this emptiness that I felt and I feel like I expressed that to you.... I think that for the people who haven't gone through this, it's like you go through this intense breakup and you go through a proposal and there's nothing normal about that," he continued. "I had that conversation with her, and that's when I really had to sort my feelings out."

That's when Kufrin zoned in, accusing Luyendyk of lacking respect for her as his fiancee.

"I do regret proposing that day, because I wasn't fully ready," Luyendyk admitted. "I think the pressure of this, the pressure of being the Bachelor, knowing there is a timeline, and having to make that decision on that day. That is totally on me. I have no excuse for that."

Story continues

"[Getting engaged] is something that people dream of, and you robbed me of that. I'll never have that first engagement, first proposal again. I just wish you would have thought through that more on that day," Kufrin expressed, before saying that she does accept Luyendyk's apology.

"I forgive you. The entire situation, it's hard, but you learn from everything, and it just adds to my story," she said. "I hope Lauren is your one, and you have found that happiness with her. I just want you to be honest with her. Hold her heart high, have the most respect for her. Be committed to her."

Bachelor Nation definitely has Kufrin's back, Ben Higgins included. During an interview with ET on Monday, the former Bachelor slammed the way Luyendyk handled his finale, explaining that he shouldn't have proposed in the first place.

"My one issue with Arie after watching the finale [is] why would you take that step [and propose] if you're so torn?" Higgins asked.

"Don't feel like you have to get engaged. Don't put that pressure on yourself, because it's going to ruin the whole experience," he continued. "I don't know why, if you're torn, you would get down on one knee and make a commitment like that."

See more in the video below.

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Iron Man, Captain America, and Star-Lord. (Disney)

Captain America  nil, Captain Britain  one.

Disney has restored balance to the universe by bringing the release date of Avengers: Infinity War forward in the UK.

The third Avengers movie will officially open in UK cinemas on 26 April, 2018  thats one day earlier than previously announced. The unexpected move follows Disneys decision last week to bring the US release date for Infinity War forward  by a week  from 4 May to 27 April, which had previously brought it in line with the original UK release date.

Marvel Studios shared last weeks news through a jokey Twitter exchange with Robert Downey Jr. stating that Avengers: Infinity War would be in cinemas everywhere on 27 April. Although still technically true, the Twitter exchange is now seemingly a bit out of date.

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The release date change seems to have been a last-minute move, as just yesterday the Twitter account for Marvel UK had still been pushing the 27 April release date.

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Historically, Disney has opened its Marvel Cinematic Universe movies earlier in the UK, although it will buck the trend with Ant-Man and the Wasp later this year. The sequel to 2015s Ant-Man hits UK cinemas on 3 August, a month later than the US release date of 6 July.

Despite the earlier release date for us, other parts of the world will still get Avengers: Infinity War before the UK. According to IMDb, Infinity War opens on 25 April in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Philippines, and Sweden.

Official synopsis for Avengers: Infinity War: An unprecedented cinematic journey ten years in the making and spanning the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios Avengers: Infinity War brings to the screen the ultimate, deadliest showdown of all time. The Avengers and their Super Hero allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.

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Anthony and Joe Russo direct the film, which is produced by Kevin Feige. Louis DEsposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo and Stan Lee are the executive producers. Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely wrote the screenplay. Avengers: Infinity War releases in the UK and Ireland on the 26th April 2018.





Read more

Everything you need to know about Infinity War

Iron Mans Infinity War armour revealed

Why you shouldnt underestimate Thanos
WARNING: This post contains Bachelor spoilers.

Arie Luyendyk Jr. is ready to leave his Bachelor days behind.

After breaking off his engagement with Becca Kufrin on Monday evenings dramatic season 22 Bachelor finale, the former race car drive proposed to runner-up Lauren Burnham on Tuesdays After the Final Rose special  and she said yes!

In the final minutes of their sit-down interview with host Chris Harrison, Luyendyk Jr. got down on one knee and asked the 26-year-old sales executive to spend forever with him.

Ive made some bad decisions but the best decision was running back to you, he said. I cant imagine a life without you.  I truly believe you are my soulmate. Im ready to face this life with you, and all that comes with it. The good, and the bad. I love you so much. I wanted to do this in front everyone because I want to show you that I should have done this a long time ago. Lauren Elizabeth Burnham, will you marry me?

Arie and Lauren

Luyendyk Jr.s proposal to Burnham follows his shocking split from Kufrin, 27.

During his last rose ceremony in Peru, Luyendyk Jr. ended things with Burnham and proposed to Kufrin. But upon returning home to the U.S., Luyendyk Jr. still had feelings for Burnham  and decided to break up with Kufrin (in unedited footage that aired on national TV) during a couples weekend away to Los Angeles.

Arie and Lauren

Theres been a lot of guilt and a lot of shame, Luyendyk Jr., 36, tells PEOPLE exclusively in this weeks issue, on stands Friday. I know it must have been extremely difficult for Becca. But I only had one foot in that relationship, and that wasnt fair to her.

So why did he pop the question in Peru if he felt so conflicted about his final choice?

From left: Chris Harrison, Lauren and Arie

I didnt want to let anyone down. But I needed more time to make that decision. I made a huge mistake, he says. I went with my head, and I shut down those feelings for Lauren. The relationship with Becca was great, but my heart wasnt with her.

Confused about his emotions, Luyendyk Jr. sought the advice of people whod been in his position before.

Story continues

Immediately after the proposal, I just had this hole in my heart. I tried to concentrate on my relationship with Becca, and I really made a push to make it work.But I wasnt getting over Lauren, he says. I leaned on former Bachelors and Bachelorettes, like Rachel [Lindsay], JoJo [Fletcher], Sean [Lowe], and asked them, Is this normal? Everyone was like, Yes, give it some time. I was very open with Becca about how I was feeling. It must not have been easy for her. But I knew that it was more than just missing someone. I had to take this risk.

Though Kufrin says she doesnt regret the experience, in retrospect, she wishes her former beau hadnt popped the question to her.

I wish he hadnt proposed. At that point I loved him and I wanted to be with him. Even if on that last day, he said, Im still uncertain, this is a big move, I dont want to get down on one knee unless Im 1000 percent sure, but I still want to be with you, I would have been fine with that. I would have been like, I love you, I still want to be with you. I even asked him a couple times if he felt like he was certain like that was the right move at that point and every time he said, Im happy with the decision and I feel confident in us,  Kufrin says. From what he was telling me and from even that grand gesture, I thought nobody would do that unless they did feel 100 percent confident.

Despite her heartbreak over the situation, Kufrin has no ill will towards Burnham and only wants the best for Luyendyk Jr.

At the end of the day, we both just fell in love with the same guy and she cant help that. The only person that I can fault in this is Arie and the way he handled it, says Kufrin.

She adds: Im still going to feel a sense of compassion for him because I did love him but at this point, I want him to be happy, I want to be done and not have to worry about them anymore.
WARNING: This post contains Bachelor spoilers.

Arie Luyendyk Jr. was a ball of nerves before coming face-to-face with Lauren Burnham for the first time since saying goodbye to her in Peru.

On Tuesdays episode of the The Bachelors After the Final Rose special, Luyendyk Jr. traveled to Virginia Beach, where he declared his love to Bachelor runner-up Burnham at her familys home following his dramatic split from ex-fiancee Becca Kufrin, which aired on Monday evenings finale.

I broke her heart and now I really want to marry Lauren, Luyendyk Jr., 36, said after calling off his engagement with Kufrin. Im terrified. My biggest fear is that I go to Lauren and it doesnt work out, and that I risked it all  I risked everything for nothing.

Upon pulling up to her parents house, Luyendyk Jr. admitted that he was freaking out and having a panic attack before knocking on the door.

But when Burnham, 26, opened up the door and faced her ex, he was greeted with a smile and a warm embrace.

This is a huge moment and Im nervous.  I talked to Lauren on the phone and she knows that Becca and I broke up, said Luyendyk Jr. I want her to know that I made a mistake and Im willing to make it up to her every day for as long as shell have me.

Ahead of their filmed sit-down discussion, Luynedyk Jr. had reached out to Burnham.

When Arie first reached out, I was a little angry honestly. While Im happy to see him, I definitely have a bunch of questions, said Burnham.

Its been the hardest month and a half without you, he told her. I know that youve gone through hell  but I came here today because I want a second chance and I want a shot at this.

After Burnham returned to her hometown of Virginia Beach, she told the Bachelor that she felt extremely alone, admitting that she couldnt talk to anyone about it.  The fact that I lost you the same day that you got engaged, it was really tough for me to accept that.

It kind of was crushing me, she said. It was really hard for me to readjust and not focus on that and focus on work.

Story continues

When Burnham asked if Luyendyk Jr. felt he had a strong relationship with Kufrin, the former race car driver said that he felt confidence coming from her.

He explained that he felt like I was making a safe decision for my future.  I think I just let the logic side of myself take over the emotional side of myself, when Burnham asked why he chose to propose to Kufrin.

Theres no denying that I love you so much, he told Burnham.

But before Burnham extended her forgiveness to the Bachelor, she wanted to make sure that he had completely moved on from Kufrin.

Yes, 1,000 percent, he assured her. My hearts with you and will always be with you.

I love you very much and I want you back, he told Burnham, who sealed her forgiveness with a kiss.

After exchanging I love yous, Burnahm shared her hope that an engagement wouldnt be far off.
Betsy Devos spoke at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the first full day of classes since the Feb. 14 mass shooting that killed 17 people.

However, the Education Secretarys visit to the Parkland, Florida, campus on Wednesday was not welcomed by students and survivors, according to the only firsthand account of her appearance.

DeVos hour-stay was closed to the press as only a small group of student journalist and yearbook staff were granted access to follow the Trump Cabinet member as she met with Broward County School representatives, a therapy dog, grief counselors and students.

Instead of choosing to speak in front of all students, she slowly made her way around to different groups of students, The Eagle Eye, Stoneman Douglas student newspaper, reported.

In her speech, DeVos said she wanted to ensure that the students of our country are able to pursue their learning in a safe environment. I am going to make sure that we bring forward solutions that communities can put in place that will be appropriate for their surroundings and will ensure that they can care for their students.

Although she offered her condolences, attendees said her words were not enough.

Betsy DeVos

She wasnt informative or helpful at all. Its nice that she came to give us condolences, but we are so done with thoughts and prayers. We want action, said senior student Kyra Parrow. She didnt come to inform us or talk about how we are going to fix this issue; she just came to say that she came. That disappoints me.

DeVos spoke with reporters at a nearby hotel following her brief visit, saying, I was just there to be there, to be with them, according to USA Today. I would love to come back sometime, in an appropriate amount of time, and just sit down and talk to them.

She also defended the presidents proposal to arm teachers, referring to them as those who are expert in being able to defend and having lots and lots of training to do so.

RELATED: Teen Shot Multiple Times in Florida School Massacre Tearfully Says Im So Grateful to Be Here

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English teacher Melissa Falkowski, who advises the student newspaper, also had some choice words about DeVos visit, telling TIME: Im not really sure what the purpose of her visit was because she didnt meet formally with any teachers or students. Her being here, I dont think is going to result in any help or change.

Betsy DeVos

RELATED: Students, Staff, Heroes: Here Are the Victims of the Florida High School Mass Shooting

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MSD students also expressed outrage over DeVos visit on Twitter.

It was a publicity stunt, really. There was no point to it, Alyson Sheehy, a yearbook editor who was part of the student press pool, told TIME. I kind of expected that to happen, but its still frustrating that she made the trip out here and made it a big deal but didnt do anything. [She] didnt meet specifically with anyone. She was kind of just walking around the school and not talking to anybody. We just kind of followed her around.

WATCH: Voices of Parkland Survivors

U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Liz Hill released a statement about DeVos Parkland appearance.

Secretary DeVos visit was designed to lend support to the community during a difficult time, but also to minimize disruption on students first full day back at school, the statement said.

Last January, during her confirmation hearing, DeVos infamously answered a question about gun-free zones in Wyoming schools with the response: I would imagine that theres probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.

Also on Wednesday, an accidental shooting was reported at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. Investigators said two 17-year-old students were shot. The female victim died en route to the hospital while the male victim remains in critical condition.
Chrissy Teigen may be ready to take on China like the Real Housewives, but husband John Legend and 22-month-old daughter Luna are catching some zs first.

The model shared adorable photos of Legend fast asleep in a chair with their little girl, clad in just a diaper, also snoozing on his chest after their arrival in Asia.

How cute is this? Teigen, 32, said in a video shared to her Instagram story showing the sweet father-daughter scene.

The cuteness was also worth a post that lasts longer than 24 hours, so she shared another shot of the sleepyheads to her account on the social media site.

Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter

The cookbook author captioned the image, My babies are [jet lagged].

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John Legend and daughter Luna

John Legend and daughter Luna

Teigen and her family arrived in Shenzhen on Monday before heading to Hong Kong, and the Lip Sync Battle host had to give a shout out on social media to parents who travel with multiple children.

Hi China!! One more flight! she tweeted. Oh man how do people do this with two babies or more. True heroes.

RELATED VIDEO: Chrissy Teigen Shares an Ultrasound of Soon-To-Be-Born Son

Shell soon become one of those true heroes herself: Teigen and Legend, 39, are currently expecting their second child, a boy.

RELATED: Chrissy Teigen Admits That Shes Worried About Experiencing Postpartum Depression Again

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend

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For more coverage, follow our babies magazine on Flipboard.

And while Luna is a star on Teigens Twitter, her son has already made his debut on the social media site.

Hello Im a bebe boy kinda, she captioned an ultrasound photo shared on Saturday.
Outside of the standard drama inside the Trump Administration, the big news on Tuesday was Kim Jong Uns meeting with South Korean leaders, a first since Kim took power in North Korea in 2011. Reports say that North Korea wants to also talk with the U.S.  which of course meant Donald Trump would tweet his views in response. Stephen Colbert was baffled and addressed it during his Late Show monologue on Tuesday night.

He started by rejoicing at the news that maybe we wont end up in a nuclear war with North Korea after all and discussed how Trump and Kim could bond.

If you normalize, then Kim Jong Un and Trump can sit down and talk about the things they have in common, like military parades and ridiculous haircuts, Colbert joked.

Also Read: Seth Meyers Gets Surprise Visit from Ersatz Sam Nunberg (Video)

But then, of course, came the topic of Trumps Twitter response to all this, which came on Tuesday morning: Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned. The World is watching and waiting! Maybe false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!

The part Colbert was confused by was the concept of going hard in either direction.

Either way? Go hard in either direction? Thats leadership. Whos with me? And where am I?' Colbert said. How do you go hard on peace? Were gonna peace you back to the stone age, motherfer! Were gonna rain reconciliation down on you! Were gonna obliterate you with friendship! You will never recover from the relentless bombardment of hugs! Heed my words: your children will sleep at night.'

Also Read: Jimmy Kimmel Says Trump Would Love 'Shape of Water': 'It's About a Monster That Has Sex with a Woman Who Can't Talk About It' (Video)

Afterward, Colbert talked a little bit more about the Sam Nunberg situation. Because of how late in the day Nunbergs numerous cable news appearances were on Monday, Colbert was the only late-night host to talk about him that night and even then, he didnt know the full story just yet, which also meant that Colbert missed the news that CNNs Erin Burnett told Nunberg that she smelled alcohol on his breath.

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I dont know whats more disturbing, Colbert said, him going on the news drunk, or me having to watch the news sober.

You can watch this portion of Colberts monologue from Mondays Late Show in the embedded video at the top of the post.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Jimmy Kimmel Says Trump Would Love 'Shape of Water': 'It's About a Monster That Has Sex with a Woman Who Can't Talk About It' (Video)

'Daily Show' Host Trevor Noah: Sam Nunberg Just The Latest Male Gossiper in Trump Administration (Video)

Seth Meyers Gets Surprise Visit from Ersatz Sam Nunberg (Video)
Meghan Markle is making the most of her new life in London.

Though the Suits actress has lost nearly all of the anonymity she may have had before she and Prince Harry announced their engagement in November, that hasn't stopped her from exploring her new city. A source tells ET that while "it's not as easy for Meghan to sneak out" of the cozy home she shares with Harry, she's been able to make the rounds at a few of her favorite places.

"Meghan is settling into a routine and has a few regular places she frequents to keep looking fresh and relaxed," the source says. "Like every other woman, she wants to look her best."

For primping needs like manicures and eyebrow shaping, Markle has been stopping by Nails and Brows in the upscale neighborhood of Mayfair in London. To "relax," ET's source says she goes to London beauty gurus Nichola Joss and Sarah Chapman for facials.

When she's in the mood for a meetup with friends, the source says she does it "under the radar" at Little House Mayfair and Dean Street Townhouse, which is part of the Soho House brand. "It gives Meghan and Harry a place to dine and catch up with their inner circle in a more private setting," the source explains.

Markle has also been known to dine with friends at the hip restaurant, Berners Tavern, inside London Edition Hotel, where George and Amal Clooney have also been spotted. "One of their go-to favorites is the Brown Cow pub owned by Harry's longtime mentor and pal, Mark Dyer, in Chelsea. Its one of the secret hideaways where the couple can meet friends and Dyer always makes sure theyre well taken care of," the source says.

The soon-to-be royal spends her more casual outings closer to her Kensington Palace digs, often popping over to the local Whole Foods, and heading across the street to the flower stand to pick up her favorite peonies, just a stone's throw from the Palace, ET's source reveals.

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Markle had quite the outing over the weekend, as a source tells ET that her friends threw her a spa-themed bridal shower at the Soho Farmhouse in London, ahead of her royal wedding on May 19.

See more on Markle in the video below.

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Meghan Markle Enjoys a Spa-Themed Bridal Shower With Friends Ahead of Royal Wedding

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Can you believe the Marvel Cinematic Universe will turn 10 this year? In the past decade, the Disney-owned studio has effortlessly redefined Iron Man and Captain America; turned New York into a goofy euphemism after bringing six heroes together to fight an alien invasion; paid Vin Diesel to say the same three words over and over again; taken us to the Afrofuturistic world of Wakanda, which is now a thing with which even non-comic readers are obsessed; and so much more. Marvel is celebrating this anniversary with Avengers: Infinity War, the long-awaited team-up that brings together almost every corner of its vast world for an expectedly epic story.

In preparation for this movie, EWs Marvel Movie Club is revisiting the 18 that came before it. Chancellor Agard (and the occasional guest-star) will revisit one Marvel movie a week to reassess its strengths and reflect on how it fits into the universe. For your convenience, weve collected every entry in this series so far below and will update this page every week:

Iron Man was the movie that started it all. Rewatching it 10 years later, its hard not to be impressed by how much the film accomplished. Robert Downey Jr., director Jon Favreau, and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige turned a hero who was lesser known to mainstream audiences into a household name  and spawned an entire cinematic universe in the process. Read it here.

One of Marvels weakest films also happens to be one of its most interesting. Directed by Favreau, Iron Man 2 has the unfortunate task of trying to expand the then-nascent Marvel Cinematic Universe (hello, S.H.I.E.L.D. problem and Black Widow) while also furthering Tony Starks journey (hello, daddy issues!). Read more here.

Director Kenneth Branagh looked to the stars in Thor, which expanded the still-nascent Marvel universe and marked the first appearance of fan-favorite villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Read more here.

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Human Torch, who? Chris Evans is Captain America from the first moment he steps on-screen; however, Evan isnt the only star of the endearingly retro movie. Captain America: The First Avenger has a stacked cast of familiar faces in roles that range from impressively forgettable and thankless (Aunt Hailey as a nameless S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent) to instantly iconic (Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter) (#JusticeForAgentCarter). Read it here.

EWs Chancellor Agard and Christian Holub joined forces to reflect on first time Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, the Hulk, Thor, and Hawkeye assembled on screen. Read it here.

We took a break from our regularly scheduled programming to check in with Black Panther, which opened in February. The film featured two end-credit scenes that not only teased future developments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but also reinforced what made Ryan Cooglers movie so great. Read it here.

Directed by Shane Black, the threequel is an irreverent film that seems uninterested in the Avengers world, doesnt care about serving any greater universe scheme, or superheroics really in general. Read it here.

EWs Christian Holub revisits the much maligned Thor sequel and discovers that it may contain more inklings of the glorious Thor: Ragnarok than you may have assumed. Read it here.

EWs Chancellor Agard and Devan Coggan dive into the second Captain America movie and discuss everything from Steve and Buckys relationship, which is at the heart of the movie, to how Winter Soldier changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Read it here.

Chancellor and EW correspondent Dana Schwartz make a valiant attempt to rank the titular heroes James Gunns colorful space adventure. Read it here.

Chancellor and Christian Holub join forces once again to tackle Joss Whedons messy, sad, and thought-provoking Marvel Universe swan-song, and grapple with the fact that Ultron may have a point. Read it here.

Clunky world building and the frustrating treatment of Evangeline Lillys Hope van Dyne detract from Peyton Reed and Paul Rudds pretty pleasant Ant-Man. Read it here.

Chancellor and EWs Marvel-Netflix expert Shirley Li push EW toward the brink of civil war as they debate whether or not Daniel Bruls Helmut Zemo is an effective villain and so much more. Read it here.

The most recent example of the Marvel Studios formula, Doctor Strange also introduced several interesting elements to the MCU, including another Infinity Stone and some mind-bending visuals. Read it here.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 manages to be both bigger and smaller than the original in the best ways possible (most of the time). Read it here.
Kate Middleton is making the most of her maternity wardrobe!

The royal mom, who is eight months pregnant, recycled a blue lace $255 dress by Seraphine for a royal outing on Wednesday, just weeks after debuting the maternity dress during her royal tour in Norway.

Kate was glowing in the blue Marlene dress from Seraphine, which has been a go-to brand for her during this pregnancy. The dress features a delicate lace top, fluted sleeves and a loose-fitting skirt with a velvet waistband. She paired the look with black suede sky-high pumps.

Kate Middleton on March 7

The royal looked lovely when she originally wore the dress to lunch at Oslos royal palace on February 1 with Norways Crown Princess Mette Marit, Crown Prince Haakon, King Harald and Queen Sonja.

Norway's Crown Princess Mette Marit and Crown Prince Haakon, Princess Kate, Prince William, King Harald and Queen Sonja at the royal palace in Oslo on February 1.

Kate wears the dress in February (left) and again in March

Though Kates exact dress is now sold out, you can find similar (non-maternity) styles here and here.

She gave us another major pregnancy flashback on Tuesday, recycling one of her most memorable maternity looks from pregnancy with Princess Charlotte.

RELATED VIDEO: Kate Middleton Secretly Donated Her 7 Inches of Hair to Kids Cancer Charity

Kate, whose third child is due in April, opened the new headquarters of one of her key charities, Place2Be in London on Wednesday morning.

In my years of working with all of you at Place2Be, I have seen at first hand the leadership you provide: you are at the forefront of efforts to give every child the very best start in life, she said during a speech. Thats why this new Centre of Excellence is so crucial, not only for Place2Be to continue their outstanding work, but for all the school leaders, teachers and children it helps now, and undoubtedly will help in the future years to come.
Younes Bendjima and Kourtney Kardashian take a stroll around Paris in September 2017. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Whats going on with Kourtney Kardashian and Younes Bendjima? The pair hinted at relationship trouble after pulling some confusing antics on social media.

On Monday, the 38-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star deactivated her Instagram account shortly after unfollowing her model boyfriend. Bendjima, 24, briefly deleted his account, then reactivated it, but made it private. He also stopped following Kardashian. If that wasnt enough of a head scratcher, by Tuesday they were following each other again.

Kardashians Instagram is now up and running, with her page featuring photos from her trip to Japan with sisters Kim and Khloe.

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Just last week, E! News reported Kardashian and Bendjima were very happy and in love. Its something that the outlet claims still irks Scott Disick, with whom the reality star shares three kids.

Scott is still insanely jealous of Younes, an insider tells E!. He just cant come to terms with the fact that Kourtney has found true happiness with someone else.

Disick, who is dating 19-year-old Sofia Richie, apparently didnt think Kourtney would become so serious with her boyfriend.

Kourtney and Bendjima have been dating for over a year. They met in Paris in October 2016, the same trip where Kim Kardashian was robbed and held at gunpoint. The reality star has kept her relationship quite private, compared to her sisters. Bendjima just made his first appearance on Keeping Up With the Kardashians on Sundays finale but has been referenced throughout this season.

Two weeks ago, Kourtney revealed she was thinking about freezing her eggs. I should just do it so I dont have to think, Is this what I want, to have kids? she said on the show. Its, like, putting too much pressure.

Who would you have a kid with? Kim asked.

I dont know, Kourtney responded, Im saying if I am, like, in love and the person wants to have a kid.

Khloe jumped in, So youre thinking about a younger guy!

Maybe that was enough to spook the young model? Or maybe Disick got his hands on Kourtneys Instagram password and wreaked havoc? Time will tell, but were sure Lord Disick was enjoying yesterdays brief drama.

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Just hours after she was spotted cuddling up to Travis Scott on a boat in Miami on Sunday, Kylie Jenner was seen leaving her hotel, trying to keep a low profile

The 20-year-old, wearing black spandex bike shorts and a grey hoodie, covered the lower half of her face with a jacket, but a dark mark was visible under her eye. Scott, 25, was following close behind, wearing the black Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt Jenner was seen wearing earlier that day.

A source close to the new parents tells PEOPLE of their weekend getaway, They were loving and affectionate the whole time. As for the mark, it was probably just from being tired, the source says.

Kylie Jenner leaving her Miami Beach hotel on Sunday

The Miami trip came on the heels of Scotts performance at hot spot Story Nightclub on Saturday night. On Sunday, the stars  who welcomed daughter Stormi on Feb. 1  enjoyed lunch at waterfront eatery Seaspice. The couple was photographed snuggling as they arrived at the restaurant by boat, aboard hospitality guru David Grutmans SS Groot. They kept a low profile upon arrival, holding hands as they snuck past guests to get to the private terrace, AIR. The couple and their group of friends enjoyed the seafood tower, pizzettas and pasta, washed down by sparkling water for Jenner and Rose Piscine and champagne for the rest.

Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott in Miami on Sunday

RELATED VIDEO: Kendall Jenner Was Reportedly Hospitalized Before Attending Vanity Fair Oscars Party

By Monday, it appeared Jenner had returned to Los Angeles, where she shared a glimpse at her daughters pink butterfly-adorned nursery on social media.

A source recently revealed to PEOPLE that Jenner and Scott are a good team when it comes to taking care of their newborn daughter.

Travis is able to do his own thing during the day as well, but he helps Kylie out at night, the insider explained. He has cut down on work.

RELATED: My Pretty Girl! Kylie Jenner Shares First Look at 1-Month-Old Daughter Stormis Face

And while the couple are committed to one another, another source told PEOPLE theyre in no rush to speed their relationship along, opting to keep separate homes.

Despite being new parents, Kylie and Travis are still in a new relationship too, the source said. Kylie is happy with their living situation. Travis is a great dad. When he wants to work, Kylie is supportive.

For being so young, Kylie is very chilled out about her relationship with Travis, the source added. She isnt making any huge plans for the future.
Prince Harry has marked a new beginning for a motor racing course that holds a special place in his heart. The royal visited Silverstone Circuit on Wednesday, March 7 to help kick off the official start of construction on a new educational center. The 33-year-old is a patron of the legendary British race track and has made several trips there in the past. One of his most memorable visits was in 1994, when he was only 9-years-old and accompanied by his later mother Princess Diana. Then, the pair was on hand to present the trophy at the Grand Prix.

Scroll down for video

CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM HARRY'S VISIT







Princess Diana and Prince Harry at Silverstone Circuit in 1994 Photo: Twitter/@kensingtonroyal

The official Kensington Palace twitter account, shared a sweet throwback photo of Harry with his beloved mom Diana at the track. They posted several other pictures during his recent visit to the organization as well, prefacing them all with: Today The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry will carry out three separate engagements across the UK. First, the palace published a photo of Harry at Silverstone, writing: As Patron of the Silverstone Experience, Prince Harry is visiting @SilverstoneUK today to officially mark the start of the construction of the new educational centre.

Prince Harry met with Silverstone UTC students Photo: Twitter/@kensingtonroyal

Soon after, they tweeted: Prince Harry first met @SilverstoneUTC students, a college located on the side of the famous racing track, which helps 18-14 year olds into careers in High Performance Engineering and Business & Technical Events. The Prince gave a stirring speech while at the event, which Kensington Palace shared a video of.

MORE: Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle make a difference on first official engagement together

Prince Harry helped kicked off Silverstone's new construction project Photo: Twitter/@kensingtonroyal

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Harry said: It is well known that Great Britain is a world leader in high performance engineering and motor racing engineering in particular - as well as having some great drivers as well but it is no exaggeration to say that, unless we encourage more young people to study science, technology, engineering and maths it will be impossible for us to continue to lead in this field.

HRH made a short speech before pressing the green light on the start of the construction of the new centre, which will use the latest technology to tell the story of @SilverstoneUK & British motor racing. pic.twitter.com/Obag77apsj  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 7, 2018

Following his speech, the Prince literally gave the green light for construction to begin on the exciting project. The crowd cheered as he pressed a button which turned race lights from red to green. While Meghan Markles love hit the raceways, his family members were also out and about. His sister-in-law Kate Middleton promoted childrens mental health at the Place2Be headquarters in London, while Prince William met with trainee typhoon pilots at the Royal Air Force.
Photo credit: Getty

From Esquire

Another player in the drama has appeared on the scene, and his presence in the ensemble is another measure of how widely Robert Mueller is spreading his nets to trawl through the muck and slime that composes the business empire of the current President* of the United States. From CNN:

George Nader, a low-profile diplomatic go-between who has forged close ties to the Emirates, was stopped and questioned by the FBI at Dulles International Airport in January as he returned from an overseas trip, these sources say. Since then, he has been talking to Mueller's investigators and providing information to the grand jury.

Nader attended a December 2016 meeting in New York between Emirati officials and members of Trump's inner circle, and another in January 2017 in the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, a Trump associate. Nader was also in the Seychelles when Prince met with a Russian banker, the sources said.

Ah, were back in the Seychelles again with Erik Prince, mercenary, money-grubber, and brother of the current Secretary of Education. This episode had faded from my mind until the news about Muellers interviews with Nader brought things back around to it again.

Photo credit: Getty

Here, from The Intercept, is a reminder of what that was all about.

The Washington Post reported in April that the FBI was looking into the Seychelles meeting as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Prince is scheduled to testify on November 30 before the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation. During the same period in January when Dmitriev and Prince were in the Seychelles, Alexander Mashkevich, a Kazakh businessman linked to a shady Trump investment vehicle known as Bayrock, also arrived to meet with Zayed, who was holding court at his mansion on the island, a source familiar with the meetings said. Abdulrahman Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire whose grandfather founded the first Saudi private bank and whose father allegedly helped Al Qaeda, was also present. The meetings came several weeks after Zayed flew to New York to meet with Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser who is now a subject in the federal Russia probe.

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Once more, its clear that the working assumption of the Mueller investigation is that the entire Trump presidency*, and the Trump campaign that preceded it, is a vast corrupt empire, and that the roots of that empire are to be found in the Trump Organization, which was a slightly less vast, but no less corrupt, empire built on deceit and incompetence, bailed out by its lawyers.

To understand the corruption of the administration*, Mueller is teaching the nation, you have to understand the corruption of the businesses. And to understand the corruption of the businesses, you have to understand the ability of the man to corrupt everything and everyone he touches.

This, of course, includes the country that elected him. Mueller is teaching an awful lesson, but one that is no less important for the view it gives us of our republic and ourselves.

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From Esquire

The Court rejects petitioner's contention that this case - as well as the potential additional litigation that an affirmance of the Eighth Circuit's judgment might spawn - may place unacceptable burdens on the President that will hamper the performance of his official duties... The Court is not persuaded of the seriousness of the alleged risks that this decision will generate a large volume of politically motivated harassing and frivolous litigation and that national security concerns might prevent the President from explaining a legitimate need for a continuance, and has confidence in the ability of federal judges to deal with both concerns... In the more than 200-year history of the Republic, only three sitting presidents have been subjected to suits for their private actions, If the past is any indicator, it seems unlikely that a deluge of such litigation will ever engulf the presidency.

- Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the Court, Clinton v. Jones, May 27, 1997

The above presumption - that allowing Paula Jones lawsuit against President Bill Clinton would not unduly occupy his time - ultimately was proven to be ... ah ... less than prescient. More relevant to our current moment, Justice Stevens plainly failed to anticipate that, one day, the country would elect a career grifter and deadbeat who, upon taking office, still would be the defendant in at least 75 of the 4,000 lawsuits that had been lodged against him and his various businesses, at least according to reporting done by USA Today. And he certainly didnt anticipate a supporting role for a porn star named Stormy Daniels, but here we are. From The New York Times:

The suit, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, alleges that Mr. Trump purposely did not sign the agreement so he could later, if need be, publicly disavow any knowledge of the Hush Agreement and Ms. Clifford. Despite not having a nondisclosure agreement in place, the lawsuit says Mr. Cohen proceeded to wire $130,000 to a trust account held by a lawyer for Ms. Clifford. The court documents filed on Tuesday do not make clear when that payment was made.

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In this, Ms. Daniels - a.k.a. Stephanie Clifford - is standing in for all the contractors, craftsfolk, tradespeople, and artisans who have been stiffed by this president* and his businesses over the past four decades. She is standing in for all those people on whom the president* sicced his lawyers in order to get out of paying them full price for their work. (As Fortune pointed out before the election, not only did the president* stiff the people who did work for him, but he also got a nice tax break for doing so.) Shes standing in for all the people who provided services to this giant of American business and then found that he would dive through whatever loophole, however small, to keep from being responsible for anything hes done.

Photo credit: Getty

In a sense, shes also standing in for all the people who fell for the con in November of 2016, who believed that the president* was up to the job, or that he had their interests at heart, or that he gave the tiniest of damns about them whatsoever. In a small way, shes even standing in for Gary Cohn, the now-departed economic adviser, who leaves the administration as one of biggest suckers on Gods green earth.

Stormy Daniels is now the symbol of a very specific America, the ultimate mark on the president*s endless list of them. And, thanks to Justice Stevens, it will not be considered an undue burden to depose a president* on the topic of whether or not he tried to finagle his way out of the responsibility of having canoodled with a porn star shortly after the birth of his youngest child.

Go for it, Stormy. Do it for your country.

Get it while you can.

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It may only be Wednesday, but Kensington Palace has gifted royal fans with the ultimate Thursday-worthy throwback in honor of Prince Harry's latest royal visit. The prince stopped by England's Silverstone Circuit, home to British motor racing, almost 25 years after he paid the same visit alongside his late mom, Princess Diana.

The mother-son duo set out to the circuit in 1994 to present a trophy at the Grand Prix, so for Harry's latest trip, the palace released pictures of their experience.

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Of course, Prince Harry is no longer 9 years old, but the familial throwback feels even more special in the countdown to when he marries Meghan Markle on May 19. His solo trip to Silverstone had him marking the start of construction for a new educational center.

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In recent years, Prince Harry has been more open about discussing the loss of his mother with the public following her untimely death when he was 12 years old.

I think what happened to my mum probably put me a step back, thinking, how could someone who did so much for the world and did so much for everyone else be treated like that by a certain institution? he said back in November. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you understand the privileged position that youre in, you go to spend the rest of your life giving back, and gaining the trust and respect of the general public.

With his continuation of the charity work at Silverstone, it looks like her legacy of giving back is living on in him.
More than 80 years later, the disappearance of world-famous aviator Amelia Earhart has remained one of American historys biggest mysteries.

Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, ventured on a trip around the world in 1937 alongside navigator Fred Noonan. On her way from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island, Earharts signal was lost. Public and private search parties combed the surrounding areas for Noonan and Earharts remains, but no evidence was found. On Jan. 5, 1939, Amelia was declared dead in absentia.

A number of theories have plagued historians since Earharts disappearance. The most prominent among them is that the aircraft crashed in the water and sank, but there are several more experimental ideas as well.

Another popular theory maintains that Earhart and Noonan made it to the nearby Gardner Island (now known as Nikumaroro). Signs of habitation were found on the island in October 1937, but neither missing person nor plane was found. However, in 1940, a human skull and bones were found buried on the island. In addition to the remains, part of a womans show, a box made to hold a navigational tool, and a bottle of herbal liqueur (Benedictine).

VIDEO: Story Behind the Story: Does This Photo Prove Amelia Earhart Survived Her Final Flight?

Forensic analysis conducted in 1941 indicated that the bones belonged to a male; however, a recent study has given us reason to believe that the sexual-identification was a mistake.

University of Tennessee professor Richard Jantz explained that the study of human bones was in its infancy at the time, and that the bones in question likely did belong to Earhart.

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After developing a computer program that evaluates sex based on precise skeletal measurements, Jantzs study concluded that Earharts bones were more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99 [percent] of individuals in a large reference sample.

Jantz was left with little doubt, writing: The only documented person to whom [the bones] may belong is Amelia Earhart."

Well, there you have it. Americas long-debated cold case may finally be closed.
Karin Agness Lips. (Photo: Courtesy of Karin Agness Lips/Quinn Lemmers for Yahoo Lifestyle)

To mark the International Day of the Woman on March 8 and Womens History Month, Yahoo Lifestyle is exploring notions of feminism and the womens movement through a diverse series of profiles  from transgender activist Ashlee Marie Preston to conservative campus leader Karin Agness Lips  that aim to reach across many aisles.

When Karin Agness Lips founded the Network of Enlightened Women, a conservative group focused on amplifying intellectually diverse opinions, at the University of Virginia in 2004, she did so as a way to protect free speech and encourage policy discussions on notoriously liberal college campuses.

Despite her aims, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle her group was quickly met with derision on campus.

At our second meeting, a feminist magazine on campus came, and we were thrilled to have them there since we had a professor speaking. There were disagreements, but it was great, Lips recalls about the meeting. Soon thereafter, the feminist magazine writer whod attended put a caricature of a conservative woman on their cover, she says. She had this colored shirt and apron, with a recipe book in one hand while stirring cookie batter in the other. To them, conservative women were just baby-making machines.

Nearly a decade and a half later, Lips sees the contempt toward conservative women at a level thats just as strong, thanks in part to Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential election loss, she says, as well as the fractionalized womens movement.

If you would gather a group of leaders in the womens empowerment movement, their definitions would vary dramatically, Lips says. The problem with modern-day feminism is that it lacks a universally agreed-upon definition and that its been co-opted by political liberals and progressives as a vehicle to pass their political agenda.

Lips, who is also a senior fellow at the Independent Womens Forum, believes in what she calls opportunity feminism, which seeks to maximize womens opportunities to build fulfilling and meaningful lives they want to build.

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She also advocates for free markets, free speech, and strong national security. Lipss brand of feminism focuses on deregulating the economy and getting government out of business so people can negotiate their own work arrangements. Hinting at entitlements, she thinks Americans need to stop shifting the burden to the next generation, and she believes inner-city education programs need serious reform. She admires how Carly Fiorina talks about feminism, she says, and how she handled herself in the face of sexist attacks during primary season.

As for Lipss take on the womens movement as prescribed by the leaders of the #MeToo campaign, she thinks we need more gentlemen to combat sexual harassment; Democrats and liberals need to stop infantilizing Republican and conservative women; and that the womens workplace strike in 2017 was progressive, but not feminist.

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How Lips feels about the current sociopolitical climate reflects how Americans disagree about what the womens movement should fight for and, on a more fundamental level, whether the movement is necessary or beneficial in the first place.

According to a 2016 Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation survey, six in 10 women and one-third of men call themselves a feminist or strong feminist, with roughly seven in 10 of each saying the movement is empowering. Yet more than four in 10 Americans see the movement as angry, and a similar portion say it unfairly blames men for womens challenges.

More recently, the Pew Research Center found that only about four in 10 U.S. women said they personally experienced gender discrimination or had been unfairly treated because of their gender, while nearly six in 10 women said the country hasnt gone far enough when it comes to giving women equal rights with men.

Those differences, of course, only skim the surface of the complex, deep disagreements over what being a feminist means today. And while some feminists might abide by fixed principles (e.g., you cant be a feminist and be pro-life, you cant be a minority and believe in a border wall) and maintain that the existential root of feminism means your political leanings are progressive, Lips says that kind of ideological rigidness leaves conservative women out of the larger pro-women movement and ultimately weakens womens advancement.

Too often, in my experience, and for a lot of women on campus, once you speak out as a conservative, you turn in your woman card and you dont count anymore, Lips says. [Liberals] attack conservative women, often with a vitriol expressed more for conservative women than men. Indeed, there are those left-of-center talking heads who guard their political beliefs as viciously as some on the right.

At this point, Ive seen the Womens March co-opted by left to the point where I dont pay as much attention to it as I should, she says.

Still, Lips notes, she believes there are those with moderate or more centered views who might be open to hearing what she and the network of conservative women across America believe in. Its tough when you wanted someone to win, referring to Clintons 2016 election loss, but [liberals] co-opted the Womens March label and turned it political when it didnt have to be. There is room for unity, but we should have a new brand of feminism.

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To date, the most remarkable aspect of the Stormy Daniels story is that when it does bob to the surfaceas it has, off and on, for monthsit seems to leave Donald Trump relatively unscathed. Though Melania Trump may have taken the narrative to heart, the political world seems largely ready to accept that the president (allegedly) initiated an affair with a porn star just months after the birth of his youngest child. If anyone has been damaged by the Stormy news cycle it has been Michael Cohen, Trumps longtime family lawyer, who created an entire shell company to transfer $130,000 of his own money to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, shortly before the electionand who told my colleague Emily Jane Fox, he would do it again for him tomorrow.

Stormy, meanwhile, isnt going away. On Tuesday, Cliffords lawyer filed a civil suit in Los Angeles arguing that, because Trump did not personally sign the non-disclosure agreement she was presented with in 2016 at the time of payment, their hush agreement is null and void. And though the suit ostensibly takes aim at Trump, with Clifford threatening to tell all, its Cohen, yet again, who is caught in the crossfire. Among other things, the suit claims that Cohen used intimidation and coercive tactics to force Clifford to sign a statement denying she had an affair with the president when the story broke in January. According to the suit, a month later Cohen issued a public statement denying the existence of a hush agreement without Danielss consent, which her lawyers argue broke the terms of the agreement, anyway.

In the suit, Clifford alleges that Cohen has continued to attempt to keep her quiet, and claims that as recently as February 27, he filed a bogus arbitration proceeding against her, without providing her with notice of the proceeding, or basic due process. Later, it notes that Trump had to know what was going onif not, Cohen had flagrantly violated his ethical obligations and most basic rules governing his license to practice law.

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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered an odd non-denial Wednesday, claiming both that she doesnt know anything about the $130,000 payment but also that the case has already been won in arbitrationtwo statements that seem to be in conflict. She reiterated that the president has denied the allegations against him, another curious turn of phrase.

Cohen, who has previously declined to comment on the Daniels saga, except to acknowledge that the payment was made, to deny that Trump had an affair, and to assert that he did absolutely nothing wrong, directed The Hive to a new statement Wednesday from his own personal lawyer: The Settlement Agreement contained an arbitration clause that permitted EC, LLC. to seek an injunction in the event of a breach or threatened breach of the agreement, writes Lawrence Rosen, referring to the shell company Cohen reportedly created to pay Daniels. The designated judge from the arbitration tribunal found that Ms. Clifford had violated the agreement and enjoined her from, among other things, filing this lawsuit. We intend to pursue our recourse in the context of the arbitration as agreed to by the parties and continue to categorically refute the claims alleged by Ms. Clifford and her counsel.

The suit also creates other legal headaches for Cohen. According to Cliffords version of events, she began shopping her story to various media outlets shortly after the Access Hollywood tape was leaked; Trump and Cohen subsequently aggressively sought to silence Ms. Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the presidential election. If the payment was, in fact, related to Trumps presidential campaign, it could constitute a violation of campaign finance law. While the Federal Election Commission would be unlikely to charge Cohen, the $130,000 payment could constitute an in-kind campaign contribution well beyond the individual contribution limit, which was then $2,700. Cohen has said he was not reimbursed by the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization, but has not publicly mentioned Trump himself. According to The Wall Street Journal, Cohen missed two payments to pay Daniels because he could not get in contact with Trump, and later complained to friends that he had not been reimbursed, presumably as promised. (Cohen responded that the report was Fake News.)

More bombshells may yet to be revealed. Language in the lawsuit refers to a clause focused on certain still images and/or text messages which were authored by or related to Trump, who is referred to as DD throughout the filings, short for David Dennison. (Clifford is Peggy Peterson, or PP). PP, according to the agreement, had allegedly threatened Trump with selling, transferring, licensing, publicly disseminating and/or exploiting the Images and/or Property and/or other Confidential Information, and was therefore required to hand over any of DDs tangible property and permanently delete any electronic copies that cannot be transferred. Each time Clifford breached this term, the agreement said, she would be liable for $1 million, a measure presumably designed to ensure that shed be disinclined to circulate any documentation of the alleged affair.

Its not clear whether any such documentationX-rated or otherwiseexists, or if this is merely boilerplate language. The suit, for instance, also refers to Trumps right to create derivative works from the material Daniels turned over. Its hard to imagine that language was written specifically for this case, as opposed to copied and pasted from a template. Either way, it suggests once again that the president of the United States is uniquely susceptible to blackmail. The seediest, unverified allegations in the Steele dossier refer to evidence of sexual trysts in Moscow that the Russian government may be using as leverage over Trump. The Stormy Daniels saga suggests that the dirt on Trump may be closer to home.
Three weeks ago, 17 people died at the hands of a teenage gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, and ever since, the nation has been embroiled in a debate about how to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

And while the president has been pontificating before the cameras about hardening schools and arming faculty, a group of leading experts in the field of school violence have been putting together a proposal: Call for Action to Prevent Gun Violence in The United States of America.

The document has been signed by more than 2,300 experts as well as 200 universities, national education and mental health groups and school districts, reports NPR. Instead of hardening schools, the proposal suggests an approach that gets guns out of the hands of potentially dangerous individuals, and works to help those same individuals instead of ostracising them.

The document these experts have created takes a public health approach to the problem  prevention as treatment. This means that instead of waiting for an outbreak, a public health approach would see that children are vaccinated in an appropriate manner. In the case of gun violence, it means that before the next mass school shooting, holistic preventative measures are put in place.

The document lays out an eight-point plan broken down into three levels.

In the first, experts call for a national requirement that all schools are assessed to ensure students and adults are protected from bullying, discrimination, harassment, and assault. They also suggest a ban on assault-style weapons and products that modify semi-automatic weapons to make them automatic.

On the second level, signatories suggest adequate staffing in mental health services, changes to school disciplinary practices to make students feel included rather than excluded, and universal background checks to screen out violent offenders.

On the third level, experts suggest a national training program focused on threat assessment, the removal of legal barriers preventing sharing safety-related information, and new laws allowing courts to temporarily confiscate guns when there is evidence an individual plan to carry out an attack.

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The call to action is clear, straightforward, and specific. It is also different than other policy proposals in that it is not focused exclusively on gun control, but instead takes a wider approach to the problem. It aims to change the climate in schools, so that students feel comfortable talking to staff about potentially violent students, and that these potentially troubled students are not suspended or expelled, but are instead kept within the system and given the help they need.

The authors are hopeful that their suggestions, already supported by thousands, can break through the politics and noise to affect actual change at this critical moment in the national conversation on school violence. Those interested in signing the document can do so here.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty)

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The Duchess of Cambridge recently joked that her husband was in denial about the impending birth of their third child, but Kate has been busily planning for the imminent arrival.

With just weeks to go until her April due date, Kate has decided that she will have her third baby at the Lindo Wing at St. Marys Paddington, where both Prince George and Princess Charlotte were born. There had been speculation that the duchess was considering a home birth, but royal sources say that she has opted for a hospital delivery and that a suite is all ready and sealed off ahead of the royal birth.

Kate has been busily clocking up engagements ahead of her maternity leave. On Tuesday, she visited a primary school in Oxford, and Wednesday morning, she opened up the new headquarters of her charity, Place2Be, resplendent in a recycled maternity dress by French label Seraphine. Royal sources say the duchess will remain busy for the rest of March but plans to slow down her official duties next month.

While the exact due date is not known, Kate is expected to give birth in late April with the Sun newspaper reporting that Kate and Prince William are working towards an April 23 date, which happens to be St. Georges Day. It is understood that Kate will be under the care of obstetrician Guy Thorpe-Beeston who helped her deliver Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

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Says a source: She has decided that she will be having the baby at the Lindo Wing. The room is all booked, the team are ready and everyone is just waiting for the baby to come. They have had two very positive experiences at the Lindo Wing so its the No. 1 choice. She knows the team and she feels like shes in very safe hands.

The couple have a team of doctors on call, now that the duchess is well into her third trimester of her pregnancy. According to Professor Tiong Ghee Teoh, a consultant obstetrician and gynecologist at St. Marys Hospital, Paddington, the duchess had a backup team of more than 20 doctors and nurses on call for her previous two births which included two obstetricians, three midwives, three anesthetists, four theatre staff, two special-care baby unit staff, four pediatricians, one laboratory technician to check blood samples, and four senior managers.

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While her labor with George was a long one, Kate was in and out of hospital within a day when she had Charlotte and she is hoping for a similarly straightforward and swift birth this third time around. Sources say that the couples staff have been overseeing a redesign of the nursery at Kensington Palace to accommodate their third baby and that the couple do not know the sex of their third child. Given how high Kate is carrying, the smart money is on her having a girl.

Kate Middletons Most Striking Looks in Her Third Pregnancy

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Kate Middletons secret to great pregnancy style isnt shapeless caftans or stretchy pantsits a statement coat. The Duchess of Cambridge has taken her third pregnancy in stride, thanks to outerwear that not only works on its own, but will stay in rotation long after the birth of the new royal. Today, Middleton paid a visit to the Pegasus Primary School in Oxford, England, to learn about the work of the childrens charity Family Links. She chose an eggshell JoJo Maman Bebe maternity coat that she first wore while expecting Princess Charlotte in March of 2015. Its pale hue felt like a breath of fresh air, and appropriate given how the piece promises to work as well in the spring.

Middletons coat had oversize buttons, but it was the clever tailored detailsnamely, an Empire waist and fit-and-flare pleatsthat lent the outer layer its figure-flattering shape (no doubt ideal for accommodating a growing baby bump). While basic black accessories would have been an obvious choice, Middleton deserves points for choosing the more unexpected chocolate brown: pointed pumps and a coordinating velvet clutch by Emmy. Her sapphire engagement ring provided another pop of color, while Annoushka drop pearl earrings completed the ensemble.

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10 Best Dressed: Week of March 5, 2018

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For an expectant mother, Kate Middletons social schedule seems packed. After traveling with Prince William on a four-day tour of Scandinavia in February, the Duchess also attended the BAFTA awards and presided over the first Royal Foundation Forum (alongside future sister-in-law Meghan Markle). And earlier today, Middleton traveled to open the new offices of Place2B, a childrens mental health charity of which the Duchess is a patron, donning a daytime dress from go-to maternity label Seraphine that retails for just $255 (and is already sold out).

The midnight-blue dress, with its high-necked lace top, empire waist, and pleated skirt, could almost have been a more casual version of a straight-off-the-runway style by Erdem that Middleton wore last month to a cocktail reception in Stockholm. Exaggerated sleeves with a ruffle detail had an elongating effect similar to the Erdem's bell-like silhouette. Black Stuart Weitzman pumps played off the ribbon detail at the waist, neck, and sleeves, finishing the look with a classic, elegant, and quintessentially Middleton touch.

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10 Best Dressed: Week of March 5, 2018

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Inside the Vanity Fair Oscar Party with Hailey Baldwin
Meghan Markle was baptized, and then confirmed, into the Church of England during a secret ceremony, according to reports.

Changing ones religion for marriage may seem like an old-fashioned idealbut with the British royal family, old-fashioned is, well, what makes them what they are. After The Sunday Times reported that Meghan Markle was to be baptized into the Church of England by Archbishop Canterbury, multiple outlets reported today that the top secret ceremony had already taken place. She was then confirmed immediately after.

Reportedly in attendance were husband-to-be Prince Harry, Prince Charles, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and a few close friends.

The fact that Meghan Markle planned to join the church isnt newKensington Palace confirmed it back in November. But why the need to do so?

Markle, who was raised Protestant and went to Catholic school, technically did not have to become a patron of the Church of England to marry Harry. (But if this was a few years ago, and she was a Roman Catholic, that would be a different story: Members of the royal family werent allowed to have spouses of that religion until 2013, due to an ancient law dating back to the English Reformation.) Neither did Kate Middleton, who was confirmed weeks before her 2011 wedding to Prince William. Yet both allegedly did so out of respect to one very important person: the Queen.

The Queen of England is the head of the Church of Englandor, more officially, the Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, a role British monarchs have held since the 16th century. That duty, its said, is one that she takes very seriously. She attends church every Sundaythe one time of the week she carries cash. She described her faith as the anchor in my life, in her 2014 Christmas speech. (Thats not to say that she takes issue with any other faith. According to Buckingham Palace, the Queen acknowledges and celebrates religious diversity and tolerance in the U.K. and the Commonwealth.)

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Middletons stakes were admittedly much higher than Marklesas wife to the future King of England and future head of the Church of England, she had a constitutional duty to raise her son, Prince George, as an Anglican, as he one day would take on Williams responsibility. And, unlike Markle, Middleton was already baptized; she just hadnt completed the sacrament of confirmation.

Even though her role is lower-profile, Markle still decided to follow in Middletons footsteps. At the time of their engagement last November she made clear she had chosen to be baptized and confirmed out of respect for the Queens role as the head of the Church of England, writes veteran royalDaily Mail columnist Richard Kay.

Its true that as a member of the Church of England, Markle can fully participate in important Windsor moments, like the Sandringham church service on Christmas. But as religious diversity and secularization continues to grow in England, perhaps the next generation of royal spouses wont feel the same.

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From Town & Country

On International Women's Day, Meghan Markle is wearing the pants. The soon-to-be royal just arrived in Birmingham with Prince Harry, where the royal couple will attend an event with Stemettes, a group encouraging young women to pursue careers in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math).

For the occasion, Markle chose to wear a (relatively) affordable, $300 navy blue topcoat from J.Crew. Unfortunately it was an older style and almost entirely sold out even before today's appearance. That said, there are still a few available on Net-a-Porter.

Photo credit: Getty

Markle paired the coat with a skinny black trousers by Alexander Wang and a white turtleneck sweater from British brand All Saints. She carried a sleek black leather handbag from Altuzarra. See more photos of Meghan's outfit below.

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Markle and Prince Harry's wedding is fast approaching. They'll be married on May 19 at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.

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After the school shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine's Day, many of the survivors called for greater gun control. But in the time since, Florida has failed to pass an assault rifle ban and Donald Trump has continued to blame gun violence on mental health and insist it's not related to the availability of guns.

Secretary of education Betsy DeVoss visit to Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday could have been a chance for the students to get through to politicians. But many students were disappointed with her visit, BuzzFeed reports.

DeVos did not disclose much of what happened during the visit, except to tell reporters at a press conference afterward, "I told the student newspaper reporters that I would love to come back in an appropriate amount of time and just sit down and talk with them."

She also addressed Trump's call to arm teachers by saying it wouldn't have "to be required or mandated for every community." When asked about Stoneman Douglas students' proposal of an assault rifle ban, she simply responded, "The president has advanced a number of issues that Congress will have to consider." Then, when pressed about what else might be done, she said, "We'll have more on that in the future."

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Students' tweets suggest DeVos was just as vague during the school visit. They describe her dodging their questions and volunteering very little information. One student tweeted that DeVos only met with three people and a dog.

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Politicians' seeming lack of concern for the issue of gun control has not stopped the Parkland survivors from mobilizing and calling for change. One hundred students traveled to Tallahassee to meet with lawmakers the week after the shooting, and several planned the March For Our Lives, a protest for increased gun control and school safety to take place in Washington, D.C., on March 24.

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Related: How to Help the Victims of the Parkland Shooting

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Pregnant Kate Middleton Glows in Blue Again as She Promotes Childrens Mental Health: Pics! The Duchess of Cambridge is eight months pregnant with her third child.

What are you trying to tell us, Duchess?

Kate Middleton stepped out in London on Wednesday sporting a recycled blue maternity dress from Seraphine Marlene. The 36-year-old Duchess of Cambridge previously wore the look on the Royal Tour of Sweden and Norway just last month. Kate has worn blue maternity clothes quite a bit during her third pregnancy, prompting many to speculate whether she might be having another little boy.

Kate wore the long-sleeved look to the new headquarters of the childrens mental health charity Place2Be. While there, she spoke with volunteers and students about the work theyve done and the support theyve received through Place2Be.



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Prince Williams wife also gave a speech about the importance of mental health awareness in schools.

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We know that schools have a vital role to play in creating an emotionally healthy culture for children, she said. Schools, however, cannot and should not have to manage all this alone. School leaders and teachers need expert guidanceand training to develop their own approaches to supporting childrens mental wellbeing.

The Royals had a full day of engagements on Wednesday. In addition to Kates work, Prince Harry also visited the home of British motor racing, Silverstone, to mark the construction of their new education center. And Prince William will visit the Royal Air Force Coningsby.

Kate has kept a full schedule in her third trimester.

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Former adult actress Stormy Daniels is suing President Donald Trump, alleging that the "hush money" agreement arranged by his lawyer during the 2016 presidential election was never signed by the Trump himself. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claims that the non-disclosure agreement she entered in exchange for her silence about their alleged extramarital affair is therefore invalid.

In October 2016, soon after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen paid $130,ooo to Daniels so she would keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump a decade before. The agreement she signed precluded her from disclosing information about the affair, which she had extensively discussed in a 2011 InTouch interview. It also banned her from disclosing texts, photos or any information about Trump or his sexual partners to anyone beyond the few individuals that she'd already told about the affair.

Cohen confirmed to the New York Times that he paid Daniels out of his own pocket, denying he was reimbursed by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign for the payment. (However, he also complained to friends that he was not reimbursed, according to The Wall Street Journal.)

According to the legal complaint Daniels filed in California state court on Tuesday, Cohen was the one to sign the agreement  not President Trump.

"Despite Mr. Trump's failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Mr. Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000.00 to be wired to the trust account of Ms. Clifford's attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Ms. Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Mr. Trump," the document states.

The lawsuit also alleges that Cohen tried to intimidate Clifford in order to stop her from talking about the affair as recently as late last month.

"To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms. Clifford into silence and 'shut her up' in order to 'protect Mr. Trump' continue unabated," says the suit. "On or about February 27, 2018, Mr. Trump's attorney Mr. Cohen surreptitiously initiated a bogus arbitration proceeding against Ms. Clifford in Los Angeles." Binding arbitration is specified as a means of dispute resolution.

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In an interview on NBC's Today show Wednesday, Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti confirmed she has had a sexual relationship with the president. At one time, Daniels had denied the affair. Avenatti said that she did so because she was being pressured to keep silent. He added that he believes Trump knew about the $130,000 payment Daniels received on October 2016.

"There's no question the president knew about it at the time," Avenatti said. "The idea that an attorney would go off on his own, without his client's knowledge and engage in this type of negotiation and enter into this type of agreement, quite honestly I think is ludicrous."

When asked why Daniels was bringing on a legal challenge, her lawyer said that she wanted "tell her story." This is something her manager Gina Rodriguez also said in mid-February.

"She believes it's important that the public learn the truth about what happened," Avenatti said. "I think it's time for her to tell her story and for the public to decide who is telling the truth."

In mid-February, The New Yorker detailed how Trump allegedly had yet another extramarital relationship around the same period he was involved Daniels. At the time, he had just married first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron was just a few months old.

According to The New Yorker, Trump was involved with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal for about nine months. And like with Daniels, his close associates allegedly went to extreme lengths to conceal the affair during the 2016 presidential election.

The president, who has been known as a well-known philanderer most of his life, denies the affairs.

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Womens March co-founder Tamika Mallory has come under fire this week. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Womens March organization  decried from the start for being non-inclusive by a variety of critics, including some trans women, women of color, sex workers, and even anti-abortion activists  can now add another rapidly growing group of people to that list: Jewish feminists. Or, more broadly, those who oppose anti-Semitism in general.

The latest controversy stems from Womens March cofounder Tamika Mallory and her recent attendance at a speech given by the incendiary Nation of Islam leader and noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

Satan is going down. Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew, and Im here to say your time is up, your world is through, the controversial leader said in what was reportedly a three-hour speech given in Chicago on Feb. 26 in honor of Saviours Day, a Nation of Islam holiday celebrating the birth of its founder. You good Jews better separate, because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them, because thats where they are headed.

Mallory posted a quick Instagram video from the event, plus photos, and was mentioned on the stage by Farrakhan, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League.

He even mentioned the Womens March, saying that while he thought the event was a good thing, women need to learn how to cook, so their husbands dont become obese, the ADL reported. Tamika Mallory, one of the March organizers, was in the audience, and got a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Mallory posted two Instagram photos from the event, which Carmen Perez, another Womens March organizer, commented on with raise the roof emojis.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam (Photo: Getty Images)

This is far from the first public calling-out of Mallorys association with Farrakhan (not to mention repeated charges of anti-Semitism aimed at co-founder and pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour), but this one  stoked by Jake Tapper of CNN  appears to be a churning storm that just keeps gaining power, and from which, for many people, there may be no turning back.

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Tamika Mallory has not just gone to see a man oozing of such hatred speak. She has publicly endorsed him, noted Elad Nehorai in an opinion piece for the Forward. She has refused to back down for her attendance. She has refused to denounce his words. She has composed her own anti-Semitic dog-whistling comment. And she has thanked others for supporting her attendance.

Much of the increasing blowback has indeed been related to Mallorys response tweets (which she chose to do rather than release an official statement immediately). Many critics have criticized the official Womens March response as being too little, too late.

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The statement, provided to Yahoo Lifestyle and posted on social media by the Womens March, reads in part: Anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and white supremacy are and always will be indefensible. Womens March is committed to fighting all forms of oppression as outlined in our Unity Principles. We will not tolerate anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia and we condemn these expressions of hatred in all forms.

The statement continues: Womens March is an intersectional movement made up of organizers with different backgrounds, who work in different communities. Within the Womens March movement, we are very conscious of the conversations that must be had across the intersections of race, religion and gender. We love and value our sister and co-President Tamika Mallory, who has played a key role in shaping these conversations. Neither we nor she shy away from the fact that intersectional movement building is difficult and often painful.

Womens March co-founders Tamika Mallory, right, and Linda Sarsour, at the Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas. (Photo: Getty Images)

It concludes: Minister Farrakhans statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Womens March Unity Principles, which were created by women of color leaders and are grounded in Kingian Nonviolence. Womens March is holding conversations with queer, trans, Jewish and Black members of both our team and larger movement to create space for understanding and healing.

[UPDATE: On Wednesday, Mallory addressed the controversy through an op-ed she wrote for Newsone, a news source for Blacks in America, in which she said, in part: I have heard the pain and concerns of my LGBTQAI siblings, my Jewish friends and Black women (including those who do and those who dont check off either of those other boxes.) I affirm the validity of those feelings, and as I continue to grow and learn as both an activist and as a woman, I will continue to grapple with the complicated nature of working across ideological lines and the question of how to do so without causing harm to vulnerable people.]

Mallory had addressed questions regarding her support of Farrakhan (already known by many who have been following the issue) in a Canadian public television interview on Feb. 16, before she spoke at a New Democratic Party (NDP) Convention in Ottawa.

I think people have to ask Mr. Farrakhan about his views. Im not responsible for Mr. Farrakhan, nor am I a spokesperson for him, Mallory said. What I do know is that Ive worked with him for many years to address some of the ills in the black community where weve transformed lives. Under his guidance, there have been many people who have turned away from drugs, away from crime, to get themselves cleaned up. Many black men have reentered their homes to take care of their families. In those areas, weve been able to work together.

When further pressed by the interviewer about how her support could be troubling to many Womens March supporters, she said, I would be afraid to go into your families and check to see all the people that you have dinner with and break bread with during holidays.  So when we start this moral purity question, it really is a pretty dangerous road to travel.

Mallory then attempted to shift attention to her own activism. If we just look at the Womens March, the most recent action that I was involved with, and something that I led, it was truly intersectional.  Thats the work that we need to be focused on.

As part of that work, at the Womens March Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, Mallory gave a rousing speech, calling out many of the white women in the audience. Dont come to this rally today and sit here with your pink hat on, saying that youre with us and youre nowhere to be found when black people ask you to show up in the streets and defend our lives.  Stand up for me, white woman. Come to my aid.

She spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle about that powerful moment recently. It is always very uncomfortable to be the one or to be among the few who are willing to speak truth to power  even when you happen to be speaking to people who are considered to be friends  and no one wants to be that girl, if you will, Mallory said. That youre the one who is constantly removing the veil from some of these really deep, hurtful, and confrontational discussions is not a popular position.  But Im able to sleep better at night with myself, knowing that I am not just sort of existing within the space without being a part of the voices that actually transform the space.

Now, the fact that Mallory has not personally denounced Farrakhans bigoted beliefs has put many other women in that same position of removing the veil, some believing that her silence in this instance makes her  and the other March co-founders  complicit in them.

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Some Jewish feminists, in particular, expressed feelings of abandonment and disappointment.

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Mallory still has plenty of prominent activists in her corner, including Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and writer and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, who both tweeted support.

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But a pointed essay in the Medium, An Open Letter to Tamika Mallory, takes the activist to task over a particular phrase  enemies of Jesus  used in one of Mallorys tweets.

Perhaps you truly do not know that the phrase enemies of Jesus is an anti-Semitic dog whistle, writes Ariela Bee, that goes back to when the Romans converted to Christianity and they needed a religious narrative that would suit the political demands of the empire. But in any case, she continues, she is hurt.

Let me be very clear: I am not hurt because you are a black woman who is tweeting these words.  I am hurt because you are a leader who is tweeting these words, Bee writes. You have influence. You have visibility. You do not force anyone involved in the Womens March to follow you. People follow you because you have power. Because you have power, your words have the power to hurt.

Adding to that growing chorus this week was Lily Herman, writing for Refinery 29 and laying out not only the recent Farrakhan situation but past evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of Sarsour and another Womens March co-founder, Carmen Perez.

Understandably, the Jewish community  particularly people who have supported the Womens March and other social justice causes  wanted answers. We also wanted something that most thought would be pretty simple for a bunch of women who spend their days parading around their intersectionality: We wanted them to denounce anti-Semitism and the words Farrakhan said against Jews. This isnt a new thing; after all, we ask public figures to denounce awful people and hate speech all the time, she wrote. To say we didnt get that is an understatement.

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In his first major act as White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner set out to repair relations between Donald Trump and Mexico, which his father-in-law had spent the better part of two years assailing on the campaign trail as a seedbed of rapists, drug dealers, and other criminal types. Within the first days of the administration, Kushner had dedicated 24 hours to brokering peace between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, and had even considered flying to Mexico City to convince Pena Nieto to take a meeting in the White House. As my colleague Emily Jane Fox reported last year, the Mexican president ultimately agreed, giving Kushner his first diplomatic victory as a government official. Less than 12 hours later, however, Trump was exploding at Pena Nieto online, threatening to call off the meeting unless Mexico agreed to pay for his border wall. Kushner was fucking furious, a source familiar with the situation told Fox, after the negotiations collapsed. Id never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign. But he was furious.

The episode was an early lesson for Kushner in the vicissitudes of life in the West Wing, and the limitations of his newly acquired authority under the tutelage of Donald Trump. Since then, however, Kushner has seen his powers diminished even further. His high-flying role as shadow secretary of state was curtailed with the arrival of Chief of Staff John Kelly, and his international profile has been blackened by the spotlight of the Mueller probe. More recently, he lost his close ally Josh Raffel, his personal media flack and crisis manager, and was stripped of the interim security clearance that had allowed him to pursue his farcically expansive White House portfolio, which has included overhauling the governments information technology; reforming the criminal-justice system; fixing the V.A.; addressing the opioid crisis; leading Trumps infrastructure plan; and securing peace in the Middle East. A series of recent reports about the Mueller investigation suggests that federal investigators are interested in whether Kushner has been a target of foreign intelligence, and whether his business ties had influenced his decisions during the transition and in the White House. In Mar-a-Lago last weekend, Trump reportedly surveyed his guests on how all of Kushners bad press was playing out.

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It is no surprise, then, that Kushners Wednesday goodwill trip to Mexico appears to have been even less well received than usual. He is very weakened, and he is going to get weaker, Agustin Basave, a senior lawmaker in the Party of the Democratic Revolution, told Reuters. More than anything, what he comes to say here will be contradicted by Trump the next day. A senior U.S. official explained that the trip was meant to smooth tensions between the two countries after a dyspeptic Trump-Pena Nieto phone call had derailed yet another planned summit. But while Kushner apparently had a good meeting with Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, with whom he has a good relationship, the First Son-in-Laws presence rankled other Mexican officials. As The New York Times reports, the trip was announced with only one days warning, and without any public disclosure about what would be discussed. One senior diplomat told Reuters that officials were taken by surprise by the visit and frustrated they were not informed.

Kushners meeting raised eyebrows in the U.S., too. Several observers noted that the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Roberta S. Jacobson, who has decades of experience in the country, was not invited to attend. Though Jacobson recently announced she would be resigning from her post, and does not share the Trump administrations ad-hoc protectionist positions, it would have been prudent to have someone in the room with knowledge of Latin American politics, said Christopher Sabatini, a lecturer at Columbia University. This is not the way foreign policy normally is, or should be, conducted, he told the The New York Times. The sending of the presidents son-in-lawsomeone with no experience in Mexican-U.S. relationsis another example of the de-professionalization and personalization of diplomacy that will hurt U.S. interests and leverage in the region. Raul Benitez Manaut, a professor of international relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told the Times, This visit is just a reminder that this is a new, unstable bilateral relationship, with ups and downs, slaps, blows, talks and recovery.

The stakes of the Kushner-Videgaray relationship for the two nations couldnt be higher. After decades of diplomatic work to forge a tighter bond between the U.S. and Mexico, Trump has quickly driven a wedge between the two with his unorthodox views on trade, and particularly his repeated demands that Mexico pay for a massive border wall from the Pacific to the Gulf. In the past week alone, Trump changed his mind repeatedly over global tariffs he has threatened to impose on steel and aluminum. While recent reports have suggested that the president may ultimately exempt Mexico and Canada from the tariffs, Trump has also intimated that he will demand changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in exchange.

Its not clear, however, what good Kushner can accomplish, on any of those fronts, without being seen to have any authority. In Trumps White House, after all, nobody speaks for the president except the president himself. Trump has been all over the place on Mexico from day one of his campaign, when he said Mexico was sending the U.S. both rapists and good people. He has rescinded DACA, called on lawmakers to fix DACA, rejected proposals to fix DACA, and then blamed lawmakers for not doing more, all while hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrantsmany of them of Mexican originwait to see if they will be deported. Kushner, who no longer has the security clearance necessary to share in high-level government secrets, is hardly the ideal emissary to resolve those issues, even under the best circumstances.
Schools have received 756 copycat threats since the Feb. 14 deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, according to a watchdog group.

Educators School Safety Network has tracked an average of 73 threats and other incidents each day at schools across the country in the three weeks after a gunman killed 17 students and educators. The Educators Safety Network is a nonprofit group focused on safety training for teachers and staff who work in schools.

At least seven students have been arrested.

Texas reported the most threats, with 55, followed by Ohio, California, Florida and Pennsylvania, USA Today reports. Between Feb. 15 and Feb. 27, 638 threats were reported.

Educators School Safety Network reports that there have been a total of 810 threats and other violent incidents at 1,005 schools since Feb. 14.

In addition to the hundreds of threats, many of the incidents counted at schools involve guns being found, which has happened 29 times so far, according to the network. Other incidents have involved knives and hoaxes.
Donna Ali, mother of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Arianna Ali, holds a candle at a vigil mourning those who died. (Photo: Johanne Rahaman for HuffPost)

The Broward County Sheriffs Office released 10 of 81 phone calls on Thursday related to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, revealing parents desperation as they sought information about the safety of their children.

Shes afraid to talk, theyre hiding right now, the mother of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student told a 911 operator the day a gunman opened fire, killing 17 and wounding dozens more. Shes too afraid.

Tell her to be quiet, the operator said. Be quiet. Keep the phone line open ... everyone needs to be quiet in that room. If they can put their phones on silent that would be good, just in case someone tries to call them.

I love you, I love you, I love you, the mother could be heard telling her daughter on another line. Can you hide somewhere? Can you play dead? You need to do it. If he shoots, you need to play dead.

In a phone call from inside the school, a male voice whispered to an operator that a shooting was taking place. Then the line went quiet for a moment.

Hello? Hello? the operator asked.

The person on the other end was breathing heavily and crying.

Stoneman Douglas High School is being shot up, he whispered again. Seconds later, the line disconnected.

In another recording, an officer said he heard what sounded like firecrackers.

I think we got shots fired, the officer said. Possible shots fired, 1200 building.

Moments later, he asked for backup.

Make sure we get some units over here, I need to shut down Stoneman Douglas, he said.

Authorities decision to release the calls, police audio and police records for the suspected shooter comes as student activists at the high school and across the country fight for stronger gun control measures.

Protesters gathered at the Fort Lauderdale federal courthouse on Feb. 17, 2018 to demand gun control. (Photo: Johanne Rahaman for HuffPost)

Its unbelievable that a 19-year-old was able to purchase this type of gun, 42-year-old Patricia Jacomini told HuffPost a day after the shooting at a vigil in Florida, referring to the assault-style rifle the shooter reportedly used. My daughter, she was all night trying to contact [her friend] since yesterday afternoon. And now she found out he was dead.

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Another parent, Donna Ali, said she and her children had been unable to sleep after the shooting.

The calls show the frantic situation as it played out in real time. One man said his fiancees sister, a student at the school, had been texting him. A 911 dispatcher asked the man for the room number the student was hiding in.

Please help me, the student replied when the man asked. Frustrated and struggling to find answers, he cursed aloud: Give me a fucking room number, please.

In another call, a distraught mother discovered that her daughter was hiding in a room the shooter had fired into.

My daughter just texted me from school ... says theres an active shooter, the mother said in a call to police. Her daughter, huddled in a classroom, said the gunman had shot out the glass in the door.

Its her birthday today, the girls mother told police. Shes 17.

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By Stephanie Nebehay and Simon Lewis GENEVA/YANGON (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday he strongly suspected that "acts of genocide" may have taken place against Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state since August. His comments come as Myanmar's military published a lengthy response to widespread allegations over its campaign in Rakhine and said its investigations had cleared troops of almost all alleged abuses. Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council that reports of bulldozing of alleged mass graves showed a "deliberate attempt by the authorities to destroy evidence of potential international crimes, including possible crimes against humanity." The United Nations defines genocide as acts meant to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. Such a designation is rare under international law, but has been used in contexts including Bosnia, Sudan and an Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi communities in Iraq and Syria. Zeid said last December that Myanmar's security forces may be guilty of committing genocide.. "This Council is aware that my office has strong suspicions that acts of genocide may have taken place in Rakhine State since August," he said, noting that his office said on Tuesday that it believes ethnic cleansing is still underway in Rakhine. Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine into Bangladesh since insurgent attacks sparked a security crackdown in August, joining 200,000 refugees from a previous exodus. Rohingya are still fleeing because of "systematic" if lower-intensity persecution and violence there, Zeid said. "Victims have reported killings, rape, torture and abductions by the security forces and local militia, as well as apparently deliberate attempts to force the Rohingya to leave the area through starvation, with officials blocking their access to crops and food supplies," he said. The True News Information Team said in a Facebook post containing the army's position that the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) armed group had "threatened, coerced and persuaded other villagers to flee to Bangladesh". The post addressed a letter last month from British lawmakers to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson calling for Myanmar to be referred to the International Criminal Court  which it said was based on "one-sided accusations" and ignored attacks on civilians by the ARSA - and a European Union decision to prepare sanctions targeted at Myanmar generals. Zeid said his office had received reports of land inhabited by Rohingya being appropriated and members of other ethnic groups replacing them. "A recent announcement that seven soldiers and three police officers will be brought to justice for the alleged extra-judicial killing of ten Rohingya men is grossly insufficient," he added. Myanmar's government must take steps to provide real accountability for violations and respect the rights of Rohingya, including to citizenship, Zeid said. A fact-finding mission set up by the Council, headed by former Indonesian Attorney-General Marzuki Darusman, is due to report on Monday on its initial findings based on interviews with victims and survivors in Bangladesh and other countries. (Writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon says now is the right time to meet with Vice President Mike Pence.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday morning, the bronze medalist said he would be willing to accept the vice presidents invitation to sit down and have a conversation.

I agree with so many people that you dont get to make any sort of change if you dont try to at least reach across and have the opportunity to speak, Rippon said. Im making it clear that I would really like to have that conversation because I still have that Olympics platform and Id like to use it.

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Rippon had previously said that he has nothing personally to say to Pence, who has pushed an aggressive anti-LGBTQ agenda during his political career. But now it seems Rippon is set on using the meeting as a way to represent those whose lives have been personally affected by legislation Pence has supported.

I felt the responsibility to speak up for people who may not feel like they have a voice, Rippon said. The conversation isnt for me. Its for people whose lives have been changed by legislation that hes pushed.

Rippon, the first openly gay U.S. Winter Olympian, made headlines just before the 2018 Games when he called out Pence for leading the U.S. delegation at the Pyeongchang, South Korea, opening ceremony while simultaneously opposing equality for LGBTQ Americans.

Pences office reached out to the figure skater to set up a meeting, which the Olympian declined as he was preparing for competition.

Pence tweeted his support for Rippon and all the athletes competing, which the figure skater labeled at the time as disingenuous.

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When asked about it Wednesday, Rippon said of Pences Feb. 7 tweet: I dont believe it. When I go home, are you still for me? Are you still for other LGBTQ Americans? Are you still for that trans man or woman that wants to join the military? Are you still for that lesbian couple who wants to get married?

Take a look at Rippons interview in the video above.

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Also on HuffPost

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Loena Hendrickx

Belgium's Hendrickx was one of a handful of women who chose to wear a unitard for competition. The skater wore this number for her short program during the ladies single event, and while we love the idea of it, the mesh panels on the front are a little much.

Carolina Kostner

Kostner, of Italy, was one of the most stunning skaters to watch on the ice -- she is an Olympic vet, after all. She wore this funky cutout costume for her free skate during the ladies single event.

Elizabet Tursynbayeva

The Kazakh skater wore this pretty pink costume for her free skate during the ladies single event.

Kailani Craine

Craine, of Australia, kind of took sparkle to a new level with this costume, which she wore for her free skate during the ladies single competition. There's a lot going on with that bodice, but she looked so confident and happy wearing it, which makes us love it.

Larkyn Austman

Austman, of Canada, wore this little black dress for her short program during the ladies single event, proving that sometimes, less can be more. We're especially fans of the embellished choker -- a nice touch of drama in an otherwise simple costume.

Gabrielle Daleman

The Canadian skater's sparkly blue number, which she wore for her free skate during the single and team events, really was striking, but can we just take a minute to appreciate her full-on glam beauty look?

Diana Nikitina

Nikitina, of Latvia, was another woman who chose a unitard, and hers was definitely the most subtle. We think it worked in her favor -- the rhinestoned sides add sparkle, and the dark mesh V-neck panel keeps it from looking too simple.

Karen Chen

Chen, of the U.S., brought the drama in this lovely black costume with red accent sparkles, which she wore for her free skate. Bonus points for the flower in the hair.

Aiza Mambekova

The skater representing Kazakhstan wore this striking black costume for her free skate. The full body cutout is pretty sexy, but the rest of the outfit keeps things from being too much. Her headpiece is the star of the show.

Kim Hanul

The South Korean skater wore this white ensemble for the women's single free skating portion of the games, and it's just plain pretty.

Anna Khnychenkova

As far as figure skating costumes go, the Ukrainian athlete's is quite conservative. But that's what we love about it -- it's classy and dramatic (but not over-the-top), and the red glove is a nice touch.

Maria Sotskova

The skater from Russia was pretty in pink for her ladies short program. It's the embellished neckline and cuffs that really make this costume pop, though.

Kaori Sakamoto

Japan's Sakamoto wore this lovely blue costume for the ladies single short program earlier this week. It's giving us some Rodarte vibes, and we're here for it.

Ivett Toth

The Hungarian skater comes in a close second for this ensemble, which she wore for her women's short program. The biker-inspired look was perfect for her routine to a collection of AC/DC classics.

Emmi Peltonen

The Finnish athlete pulled out all the stops with this gorgeous, glittering costume, which she wore for her short program during the women's single event.

Mirai Nagasu

Nagasu, of the U.S., wore this costume for her free skate in the women's single event, and earlier at the team event, where she became the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics. Because of that, this bold red ensemble seems destined to become one of the sport's most iconic.

Evgenia Medvedeva

Medvedeva, of Russia, wore this beautiful costume (which is also giving us Rodarte vibes) for her free skate. The color and embellishments are beautiful, and the gloves add that extra special touch.

Kaetlyn Osmond

This costume, worn by the Canadian athlete for her short program, was one of our favorites of the competition. It looked beautiful on Osmond and definitely conveyed the Parisian aesthetic -- she performed to music by Edith Piaf -- she was going for.

Alina Zagitova

The Russian athlete took home the gold for ladies figure skating, and she definitely deserved it. Not only was her skating phenomenal, her ballet-inspired costumes (like this one, worn for her free skate) were stunning.

Mae Berenice Meite

France's Meite wore this unitard to perform her short program (in both the team and women's single events) to a medley of Beyonce songs. The statement-making ensemble had to be our favorite of the games (though Meite almost outdid herself with these bedazzled hot shorts). Queen Bey would definitely approve.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
New Delhi (AFP) - India's state-run carrier Wednesday confirmed the launch of flights between New Delhi and Tel Aviv later this month which are expected to use Saudi airspace.

The move would effectively end a decades-long Saudi ban on the use of its airspace for flights to Israel.

The new route was announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last July, with Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu first suggesting in January the route could pass over Saudi Arabia.

An Air India spokesman told AFP Wednesday the airline had received permission and a timetable for the route from India's regulator, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA), which appeared to confirm that route.

"The route time given by the DGCA to us is seven hours and five minutes, and looking at that schedule we believe it must be flying over the Saudi airspace," the spokesman said.

Saudi Arabia's civil aviation authority did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

Saudi Arabia has no official ties with Israel, with Israel's national carrier El Al currently taking a detour over the Red Sea on its India service to avoid flying over Saudi Arabia as well as Iran.

Netanyahu told reporters in Washington earlier this week that Air India had reached an agreement with Saudi Arabia to use their airspace.

But Wednesday's statement was the first official confirmation by the airline about operationalising the new air route, after weeks of speculation and reports in local media.

Flying over Saudi Arabia significantly shortens the route's flight time.

The thrice-a-week flight to Tel Aviv from Delhi will begin March 22, the company said in its statement to the media.

Riyadh has maintained its public silence on Israeli hints of covert ties with the Sunni-ruled kingdom.
Sanaa (AFP) - A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia Thursday rejected allegations over an air raid in Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa, which witnesses said left six members of the same family dead.

Neighbours told AFP the strike on the two-storey house took place at around 9:00 pm local time on Wednesday.

"Following our review of this alleged incident, we find all these allegations to be unfounded," coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said in a statement to AFP.

Ahmed Hazem al-Samri told AFP an air strike on his house killed his father, two women and three children.

"There was an air strike on the house. My father and rest of the family were inside," said Samri, adding he had been out for the evening at the time of the attack in the Shamlan district, northwest Sanaa.

"Six of them were killed and seven wounded.

The coalition is the only force known to carry out air strikes on Huthi rebel-held territory and has previously admitted to "erroneous" strikes that caused civilian casualties.

But Maliki insisted the coalition was committed to preventing civilian casualties.

"I would like to reiterate that coalition forces adhere to rules of engagement and international humanitarian law to avoid loss of civilian lives," he said.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a military intervention in Yemen in 2015 with the aim of rolling back Huthi rebels who had seized the capital and restoring the government to power.

More than 9,300 people have been killed in the war since and more than 50,000 wounded, according to latest figures from the World Health Organization.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country is a main buyer of British arms, on Wednesday started a controversial three-day visit to Britain.

The Save the Children charity protested the visit by installing a statue of a child near parliament in London "to draw attention to the violence that is being fuelled, in part, by British-made bombs".
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Wednesday it was expanding its discounted Prime membership offer to Medicaid members, the U.S. government's health insurance program for the poor.

The move from the e-commerce giant comes nine months after it said it would offer a discount on its popular Prime subscription service for shoppers who receive U.S. government aid.

To qualify for the discounted $5.99 monthly Prime membership, customers must have a valid Electronic Benefits Transfer or Medicaid card and can renew it annually for up to four years, the company said.

The $12.99-per month or $99-per-year prime service offers users added perks like low prices and faster delivery for certain purchases and shipped over 5 billion items worldwide last year.

Any push by Amazon into poorer demographics comes at a time when traditional brick-and-mortar suppliers like Walmart Inc have been fighting the online shopping giant's arrival by seeking to attract more high-spending shoppers.

The Medicaid connection may also stir more nerves among healthcare companies worried about tentative moves by Amazon to sell and distribute some medical supplies and drugs.

(Reporting by Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)
A mysterious January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between a close associate of President Donald Trump and a Russian banker with alleged ties to Vladimir Putin has come under renewed scrutiny this week.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has been gathering evidence about the rendezvous, which took place less than two weeks before Trumps inauguration. Mueller is reportedly looking to see if the meeting was meant to set up a secret back channel between Trump and Putin, the Russian president. George Nader, an adviser to the United Arab Emirates who was at the meeting, has been cooperating with Muellers probe, and it appears his testimony could help unlock several major questions about the affair.

Heres what you should know about the Seychelles meeting.

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and a close associate of President Donald Trump, reportedly met with a Russian linked to the Kremlin during a secret meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017. (Photo: Justin Chin/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Why was there a secret meeting in the Seychelles?

The UAE arranged the meeting in the Seychelles Islands in January 2017, just days before Trump assumed office, The Washington Post first reported last April. The location may have been chosen for its relative discretion.

The Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time away from the eyes of the media, the countrys secretary of state for foreign affairs told the Post at the time.

Erik Prince, a longtime supporter of Trumps campaign and the founder of the Blackwater private security firm, met with a Russian official linked to Putin, although Prince has described the meeting as an unplanned chance encounter.

Its not clear what Prince and the official talked about. But according to The New York Times, Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, eventual national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak discussed the possibility of setting up the communications channel in a December 2016 meeting.

The Washington Post also received an anonymous letter claiming that Kushner, Kislyak and Flynn talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a Russian contact in an unidentified third country. The Posts Adam Entous told MSNBC that the letter said Flynn was deemed too high-profile to do the trip.

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Kushner has denied that the request took place.

Who else was there?

Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker who manages a government-controlled wealth fund and is also thought to be close to Putin.

The meeting was set up by the UAE and the countrys de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Nader served as a representative for the Middle Eastern nation and had met Prince before, serving as a consultant for Blackwater.

Prince has said he went to the Seychelles as a private businessman, and has denied the original report by the Post. He told the House Intelligence Committee in November that he had no plans to meet with Dmitriev, but Emirati officials convinced him to go to the bar at the hotel he was staying in to have a drink.

One of the entourage says, Hey, by the way, theres this Russian guy that weve dealt with in the past, Prince told lawmakers. Hes here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, hed be an interesting guy for you to know, since youre doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space.

He claimed they only spoke about oil prices and how much the UAE wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the USA.

What is Mueller investigating?

Nader has been cooperating with Muellers probe since mid-January and recently gave testimony about his knowledge of the meeting in front of a grand jury, according to a report in the Times this week. He allegedly served as a representative of the crown prince, and the Times notes that Emirati officials believed Prince was serving as a representative of the Trump transition team and Dmitriev as an envoy from the Kremlin.

In an earlier story, the Times noted that Mueller has widened the scope of his probe and is also investigating whether the Emiratis were attempting to buy influence with Trump.

Naders recent testimony could contradict Princes statements over the past year and shed light on the true reasons for the meeting.

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May 4 cant come soon enough.

The official trailer for the critically acclaimed documentary film on Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appropriately titled RBG, was released on Wednesday  just in time for International Womens Day.

In the sneak peek, Ginsburg reflects on her barrier-breaking career as a lawyer and her rise to the nations highest court.

I did see myself as kind of a kindergarten teacher in those days, because the judges didnt think sex discrimination existed, she says in the documentary, describing her early legal advocacy for womens rights in front of skeptical male judges.

Bader also speaks candidly about her marriage to her late husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, who died in 2010. And adding to her impressive feats, there are a few delightful shots of Ginsburgs notoriously challenging workout routine  planks and all.

Get ready to watch the trailer, above, on repeat for the next few months.

Also on HuffPost

On women serving on the Supreme Court: "People ask me sometimes... When will there be enough women on the Court? And my answer is: When there are nine."

On perceptions of gender balance: So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when Im sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But thered been nine men, and nobodys ever raised a question about that.

On the Notorious RBG meme, parodying the name of rapper Notorious BIG: "I think a law clerk told me about this Tumblr and also explained to me what Notorious RBG was a parody on. And now my grandchildren love it and I try to keep abreast of the latest thats on the Tumblr.  [I]n fact I think I gave you a Notorious RBG [T-shirts]. I have quite a large supply."

On Supreme Court dissents: "Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow."

On the gay rights movement: In recent years, people have said, This is the way I am. And others looked around, and we discovered its our next-door neighbor -- were very fond of them or its our childs best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out [as gay] and said that this is who I am, the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.

On social change for women: "The women of my generation and my daughters generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women. One thing that concerns me is that todays young women dont seem to care that we have a fundamental instrument of government that makes no express statement about the equal citizenship stature of men and women. They know there are no closed doors anymore, and they may take for granted the rights that they have."

On women's liberation: "It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation."

On the evolution of legal opinions: "Justices continue to think and can change. They have wives. They have daughters. By the way, I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers. I am ever hopeful that if the Court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow."

Explaining why she fell asleep at the 2015 State of the Union: "I vowed this year just sparkling water -- stay away from the wine -- but the dinner was so delicious it needed wine."

On major portions of the Voting Rights Act being getting overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013: "Throwing out [the Voting Rights Act] when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."

On trying to have it all in life: "Who -- man or woman -- has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it."

On women's equality: "Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation."

On having children: "The decision of whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, her well-being, and her dignity."

On her dream job: "People ask me, 'If you could be whatever you wanted to be, what would you be?' My first answer is not 'a great lawyer.' It is, 'I would be a great diva.' But I totally lacked that talent, so the next best thing is the law."

On feminism: "Feminism  I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl -- doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if youre a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, thats OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers -- manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent."

On marriage: "In every good marriage, it pays sometimes to be a little deaf."

On a 2014 Supreme Court decision ruling that businesses such as Hobby Lobby have the right to withhold birth control from their employees' health insurance: "I should emphasize that none of us questioned the genuineness of the Hobby Lobby owners belief. That was a given. But no one who is in business for profit can foist his or her beliefs on a workforce that includes many people who do not share those beliefs."

On Citizens United and campaign finance: "If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be. So thats number one on my list."

On same-sex marriage: "All of the incentives, all of the benefits that marriage affords would still be available. So you're not taking away anything from heterosexual couples. They would have the very same incentive to marry, all the benefits that come with marriage that they do now."

On generational differences: My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the 40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S.

On her Supreme Court colleague and frequent ideological opponent Antonin Scalia: "So there we are on a very elegant elephant. My feminist friends say, Why are you riding on the back of the elephant? and I said, Because of the distribution of weight, we needed to have Scalia in the front.

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Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy in "Thoroughbreds." (Photo: Focus Features)

The female psychodrama is one of cinemas great traditions.

This horror-adjacent genre often provides the richest and thorniest portraits of womens interior lives: the creeping familial resentment in Cries and Whispers (1972), the haunting sexual trauma in Repulsion (1965), the disintegration of identity in Persona (1966) and Mulholland Drive (2001), the perilous hunt for perfection in Black Swan (2010), the emotional erosion in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), the performative dance of fame in Jackie (2016), the paranoia in Rosemarys Baby (1968), the terror of an unfamiliar place in Suspiria (1977).

Societal sanctions burden these films protagonists, so much so that each reaches a breaking point, even if she struggles to externalize it.

The new movie Thoroughbreds, opening in theaters Friday, transposes the psychodramas hallmarks onto two teen girls choked by the open air of suburbia, where the rumor mill is a villain and the houses are so grand they envelop anyone who dares to enter.

Cory Finleys humorous directorial debut, adapted from a play he wrote, looks at suburbia the way David Lynch did in 1986s Blue Velvet  enigmatic, maddening  but he sprinkles in enough of the popular-girl pastiche seen in 1988s Heathers to create a monument that treats cold-blooded calculations as a savory antidote to the worlds ills.

Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker and Winona Ryder in "Heathers." (Photo: Archive Photos via Getty Images)

Anya Taylor-Joy, the magnetic actress best known for The Witch and Split, plays Lily, a Connecticut queen bee whos been recruited to spend time with her estranged classmate Amanda, portrayed by Olivia Cooke of Bates Motel and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl fame. Awaiting trial for killing her familys horse, Amanda is a card-carrying social pariah and possible sociopath who delivers expert tutorials on fake-crying.

Lily is determined to maintain a polished facade, and Amanda is determined to shatter it, especially after Lily reveals how much she loathes her stepfather (Paul Sparks), a surly prick who flaunts his wealth so as to remind Lily and her mother (Kaili Vernoff) that they are beholden to his patriarchy.

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When Amanda and Lily reunite at the start of Thoroughbreds, they are positioned as foils. The scores soft booms and ominous rattles graft onto them an unspoken conflict, as if their stratified social standings make them enemies maintaining face. But the girls were friends circa sixth grade, so theres a kinship buried in Lilys plastic smile and Amandas placid confrontations. The latter knows her mom is paying Lily to hang out with her under the guise of studying for standardized tests, so Amanda already has ammo to wield over her manicured pal, who is still processing her fathers death and mothers remarriage.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke in "Thoroughbreds." (Photo: Focus Features)

But once Amanda reveals she knows Lily was never really looking to reconnect, the wall between them crumbles: Lily assumes some of Amandas candor, and Amanda takes on an inkling of Lilys sympathy. As is often seen in teenagers, who are prone to mimicking their peers, Amanda and Lilys personalities slowly merge  not entirely, but just enough to help them hatch a plan to murder Lilys stepfather with the help of a low-rent drug dealer who owns a gun (a manic Anton Yelchin, nailing his final screen role).

When I first saw Thoroughbreds at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017  back when it was titled Thoroughbred, singular  I called it Heathers meets Persona. Having again devoured its slick dark comedy recently, those parallels are even more apparent. (As is a touch of Double Indemnity.) Both of those movies adopt a more heightened reality than Thoroughbreds, teetering somewhere between satire and low fantasy. And yet they share distinct DNA.

In Persona, Ingmar Bergmans cryptic avant-garde experiment, a stage actress (Liv Ullmann) becomes physically and emotionally indistinguishable from her vulnerable nurse (Bibi Andersson) who has always felt unheard. The actress has stopped speaking, giving her ample time to listen. In Heathers, Michael Lehmanns satire, murder and suicide are pastimes for the wealthy, exploited as a means of securing schoolyard popularity  a biting critique of capitalism.

Amanda and Lilys murder plot isnt designed to earn them social points, but it is a way of escaping their realities. Lily can flee the torment of her wicked stepfather, and Amanda can escape the tedium of a life where no one thinks she has much worth. The camera remains fixed on the girls, following them as they move through Lilys lavish home and cutting to sudden close-ups to expose their inner machinations. Watching them, murder feels like justifiable vengeance, a way out of being undervalued and misunderstood. Finleys knack for black humor adds a deliciousness to the proceedings.

Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in "Persona." (Photo: Archive Photos via Getty Images)

Thoroughbreds further departs from psychodramas of yore by avoiding the hysterics that sometimes define these movies protagonists. Its telling that all of the aforementioned titles are directed by men, as are 1962s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Carnival of Souls, the genres installments that most portray their women as fanciful basket cases. (Hysteria wont solve anything, a man tells Candace Hilligoss distraught character in Carnival of Souls.)

As Emily Yoshida wrote last year in a sharp Vulture essay about psychodramas, A scene without a man will never matter as much as a scene with one; a scene without a man isnt as real as a scene between two women  hence the unreality that so many of these films exist in. Interestingly, Finley is more generous to his characters than some of the other fellas responsible for female-fronted psychodramas: In a way, the core structure of the movie is a romantic comedy, he recently said. For me, thats the one genre that really doesnt have a hero and a villain. Hes able to pay homage to Lynch and Bergman and Roman Polanski and Billy Wilder while still modernizing the tropes he borrows.

By the time Thoroughbreds ends  no spoilers  everything we know about Amanda and Lily has shifted. But its not as if they become foreign versions of the girls we first met. To Finleys point about this being a rom-com of sorts, Amanda and Lily are unconventional soulmates. Like any great couple, they invoke in each other qualities they didnt know they possessed. Some of those qualities are dark, brooding and bitter, giving Thoroughbreds a certain self-aware camp. Dark occurrences in picture-perfect suburbia begs for irony.

And like its predecessors, the movie leaves a sense of horror in its bloodstained wake: the horror of murderous intrigue and impulsive adolescence. The key difference? It convinces us that its characters oddities shouldnt invite fear. In fact, they might be sort of brilliant.

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Related...

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas were not impressed with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who visited the high school in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 17 students and staff members last month.

Ms DeVos visited the school on the first full day of classes since the massacre, saying she wanted to hear from students about improving school safety. But the secretary clashed with a number of the student survivors, who have mobilised in support of stricter gun control measures since the shooting.

Aly Sheehy, a senior at the high school, said Ms DeVos spoke little to the students, aside from offering her condolences.

We were kind of following her around and asking her questions, but she kind of just circumvented the actual point that we were trying to ask here, she told The Independent. That was very, very frustrating.

The students wanted to know how the Education Department would prevent school shootings in the future, Ms Sheehy said, but the secretary was not forthcoming.

She kinda just said that it wasnt the time to ask these kinds of questions to her, and that [the issue] was very important and that she was working on it hard, she said. That wasnt what we were asking her to do. We were asking her what her ideas were.

Ms DeVos offered little more in the way of details at a press conference after the visit, where she answered just five questions from reporters. Asked if she had any specific ideas for improving school safety, she responded: The President has advanced a number of issues that Congress will have to consider.

There is an opportunity to take practical steps that many, many people agree on to continue pushing forward on things that have broad support, she added.

Ms DeVos also dodged a question about President Donald Trumps proposal to arm teachers, calling the question an oversimplification. She suggested arming only highly trained school officials, and noted that the policy was not something that should be required for every community.

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Asked if she had made any promises to the students, Ms DeVos said only that she told school newspaper reporters that she would return at a later date. Ms Sheehy, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas senior, said she would welcome another visit from the secretary, but didnt think it would happen.

If it does happen, well have more questions, well be more prepared, well have done our research, she said. And if she continues to answer questions in the way that she did, well probably walk out.

Other students had proposed boycotting Ms DeVoss initial visit in the days beforehand. The students have already helped organise several national demonstrations, including a school walkout on 14 March and a gun-control march for 24 March.

The suggestion to boycott Ms DeVoss visit provoked a spirited debate between students on Twitter. One student who ultimately decided to attend the event later tweeted her disappointment.

I thought [Ms DeVos] would at least give us her thoughts and prayers, but she refused to even meet/speak with students, wrote student Carly Novell. I dont understand the point of her being here.

Ms DeVos announced shortly after her visit that the Education Department would award a $1m grant to Broward County Schools  the district where the shooting occurred. The grant, known as a Project School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) grant, is intended to bolster services for grieving members of the community.

I have had the honour to meet several members of the Parkland community over the past days, Ms DeVos said in a statement announcing the grant. The strength shown by these students, family members and educators is an inspiration to us all.
A Syrian army tank rolls in the former rebel-held area of Beit Nayem in the Eastern Ghouta - AFP

Rebels in besieged Eastern Ghouta have begun negotiating possible surrender in the face of a ferocious new ground offensive by Bashar al-Assads troops.

Tthe governments two-starred flag was sseen flying in Hammouriyehs central square and claimed residents had welcomed their arrival.

The pocket - one of the rebels last remaining strongholds - is now close to being sliced in half, leaving thousands on the western side cut off from the east.

The government claimed somewhere between 30-40 per cent has been retaken since they began their operation in earnest in mid-February. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the regime forces now control more than 50 per cent of Ghouta.

Wounded Syrian children are seen at a field hospital after an attacks on Jesrin town in Eastern Ghouta Credit: Getty

As the fighting escalated, hundreds of pro-regime fighters were reported to have been redeployed to the front lines in Ghouta from elsewhere in Syria.

"At least 700 Afghan, Palestinian, and Syrian loyalist militiamen came from Aleppo and were sent late Tuesday to Ghouta," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The offensive appears to have followed the tactics the regime and his allies have used at other key points in the war: laying siege to rebel-held areas, subjecting them to bombardment, launching a ground assault and offering passage out to civilians who flee and fighters who withdraw.

Eastern Ghouta is of particular importance due to its proximity to Assads seat of power in Damascus.

Some 810 civilians have been killed since the offensive started, at least 250 of which since the UN agreed a ceasefire which never came into effect.

Syrian government forces are seen in the former rebel-held area of Beit Nayem in the Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus Credit: AFP

Air strikes and mortars continued mercilessly pounding heavily populated areas of the suburb on Wednesday, leaving a further 45 dead and dozens injured.

The situation is catastrophic, said a doctor speaking from the rebel pocket. Right now there is a huge escalation in Ghouta. Seventeen Russian and Syrian warplanes have been rotating in the skies, dropping cluster bomb after bomb.

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The UN humanitarian coordinator in Syria appealed to the government to commit to a ceasefire on Thursday to let in an aid convoy containing medical supplies that were stripped from a delivery on Monday.

An aid convoy reached the Damascus suburb for the first time since mid-February.

It was only the second convoy so far in 2018 to reach the area, where the UN says 400,000 residents were already running out of food and medicine even before the bombing campaign began.

Aid workers who gained access told the Telegraph they saw a destroyed town with desperate and hungry families who had been living in their basements.

Zeid al-Hussein, UN human rights chief, said the conflict had entered a "new phase of horror" and denounced claims by Syria's government that it was doing all it can to protect civilians as "frankly ridiculous".
Devotees parade a portrait of Oscar Romero in San Salvador on Friday: EPA

Almost 40 years after he was assassinated  shot as performed mass and was speaking about sacrifice  Archbishop Oscar Romero is to be named a saint, the Vatican has announced.

The Vatican said in a statement Pope Francis had given final approval to several sainthoods, including for Romero, and the late Pope Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978. The Pope personally announced Pope Pauls canonisation last month.

Romero, who was known as a champion of El Salvadors poor and whose name has become intertwined with liberation theology, was shot on the evening of 24 March 1980 in San Salvadors Chapel of Divine Providence.

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Those who surrender to the service of the poor through the love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies, he had told those who were gathered.

It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies.

Shortly after Romero had completed his sermon, a single shot echoed in the chapel and the 63-year-old priest fell to the floor, blood seeping from a small hole in his chest. Outside, a man armed with a .223 high-velocity weapon, sped from the scene in a four-door Volkswagen.

Romero had spoken out against repression by the army at the beginning of El Salvadors 1980-1992 civil war between the right-wing government, and leftist rebels. He also often criticised the US, which supported the government of El Salvador and those of other Latin American countries in their so-called dirty wars.

The day before his assassination, he had delivered a now famous speech in which he told the governments soldiers and police officers that they were not required to obey an order that was against the law of God.

In the name of God, and in the name of this suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God  stop the repression, he said.

Reuters said Romeros path to sainthood had stalled under two previous popes, reflecting concerns by some that he was overly political. It was revived by Francis who is also from Latin America.

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The long delay in recognising the obvious fact that Romero was obviously a martyr was shameful, Father James Martin, a US author and editor-at-large of the Jesuit magazine America, said on Twitter.

Mr Martin called the popes decision an immense step forward for the Church.

Romeros murder was one of the most shocking in the long conflict between a series of US-backed governments and leftist rebels in which thousands were killed by right-wing and military death squads.

El Salvadors government, headed by a former leader of the leftist guerrillas, said in a statement that Romero had left an invaluable legacy of work for the neediest and that the canonisation was a tribute to his devotion and sacrifice.

The civil war claimed some 75,000 lives before it ended with a peace agreement in 1992.

No one was ever brought to justice for his killing but last year a Salvadoran judge reopened the case. The main suspect is a former soldier whose case was reopened after the countrys constitutional court repealed a previous amnesty.

An investigation by a UN Truth Commission concluded in 1993 that Romeros assassination had been ordered by the late Major Roberto DAubuisson, an El Salvador army officer who had studied at the notorious School of the Americas, a US military college in Fort Benning, Georgia, which was renamed in 2001 after a series of scandals. Mr DAubuisson had also been the founder of the El Salvadors right-wing Republican Nationalist Alliance.

In 2004, a court in California found Mr DAubuissons former right-hand man, Alvaro Rafael Saravia, a retired El Salvadoran air force captain, who had lived in the US for more than 20 years, responsible for organising the killing and ordered him to pay $10m in damages.

The case, which relied on the 1991 Torture Victim Protection Act which allows suits to be brought against foreign nationals accused of summary killings and torture, was brought by the California-based Centre for San Francisco-based Centre for Justice and Accountability.

Romero was beatified, or declared a blessed of the Church, in 2015 after a ruling that he was a martyr killed in hatred of the faith. That ceremony in San Salvador brought together former Marxist guerrillas and their former enemies.

Francis ruled that Romero could be declared a saint after a Vatican theological and medical commission approved a miracle attributed to him, Reuters said.

The Church teaches that only God performs miracles but that saints who are believed to be with God in heaven intercede on behalf of people who pray to them. A miracle is usually the medically inexplicable healing of a person.

No date was given for the sainthood ceremony, which is expected to take place this year, most likely at the Vatican.
Today in 5 Lines

During a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, President Trump said Russia had no impact on our vote in the 2016 election. Trump also told reporters that progress had been made with North Korea after Pyongyang suggested it'd be open to ending its nuclear weapons program. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly examined incidents involving Michael Cohen, Trumps longtime lawyer. The Office of Special Counsel, a federal ethics agency, found that White House aide Kellyanne Conway violated the Hatch Act by advocating for and against candidates in last years Alabama Senate special election. Texans head to the polls for the first primary election of 2018.

Today on The Atlantic

I Pulled a Roger Stone!: Sam Nunberg, the former Trump campaign aide who had a public meltdown on Monday, has been pulling stunts like this for years. (McKay Coppins)

Blocking Trump: Congressional Republicans are trying to talk the president out of his plan to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, but they cant stop his trade war. (Russell Berman)

Kim Jong Uns Extraordinary Moves: Uri Friedman explains how the North Korean leader tempered the threat of nuclear war.

Follow stories throughout the day with our Politics & Policy portal.

Recommended: The U.S. Teeters on the Edge of Another Catastrophic War

Snapshot

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry walks to the podium to announce her resignation, after pleading guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from the city while carrying on an extramarital affair with her bodyguard. Mark Humphrey / AP

What Were Reading

Will Texas Turn Blue?: Keep an eye on these three districts as Tuesdays primary results come in. (Gideon Resnick, Daily Beast)

Recommended: Conservatives Have Only Themselves to Blame for Trump's Tariffs

Dismantling Dodd-Frank: Heres why some Democratic senators are supporting a Republican bill to ease regulations on banks. (Ezra Klein, Vox)

The Governors Announcement: West Virginia lawmakers reached a deal to increase pay for state employees by 5 percent, moving the statewide teachers strike toward a resolution. (John Bacon, USA Today)

Story continues

The Time After Trump: If the United States follows Italys political trajectory, David Brooks argues that the country will look back on Trumps presidency as a period of relative normalcy. (The New York Times)

Why Did the Oscars Have Record-Low Viewership?: Conservatives are blaming it on politics. (Marwa Eltagouri, The Washington Post)

Visualized

They Like Him, They Like Him Not: See how Trumps approval rating has changed over time across the United States. (Morning Consult)

Question of the Week

A number of local and state primaries will happen in the coming months. The Atlantics Russell Berman recently wrote about Marie Newman, the progressive activist challenging Democratic Representative Dan Lipinski in Illinois. Today, I reported on the upcoming special election in Pennsylvanias 18th congressional district, where Republican Rick Saccone is running against Democrat Conor Lamb to fill Republican Tim Murphys seat. And on Tuesday, voters head to the polls for the countrys first primary of the 2018 midterm cycle.

What races are you keeping an eye on this springand why?

Share your response here, and well feature a few in Fridays Politics & Policy Daily.

-Written by Elaine Godfrey (@elainejgodfrey)

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Addis Ababa (AFP) - Washington's top diplomat began his first Africa tour Thursday by meeting with the African Union chief, who said the continent had moved on from a reported insult by President Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and AU commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed security and counter-terrorism, trade and development, corruption and conflict in an hour-long meeting at the continental body's headquarters in the Ethiopian capital.

However looming over the meeting was Trump's alleged description of Africa as a "shithole" in January, which forced the president to pen a letter reaffirming his commitment to the continent and dispatch his top diplomat to try to heal rifts.

Faki, however, insisted the slur was now in the past.

"I received a letter written by President Trump to myself and I shared that with other African leaders. I believe this incident is in the past," he said.

Tillerson's five-nation Africa tour -- to include Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria -- has been described by analysts as a "listening tour", with no deals or initiatives due to be announced.

"The purpose of my trip is to listen to what the priorities of the countries here on the continent are and see where there is good alignment," said Tillerson.

Tillerson praised the AU as a "force for good".

He and Faki discussed continued US support to African counter-terrorism forces in Somalia and the Sahel but no new concrete commitments were given.

Tillerson said the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is "clearly an example of countries coming together to counter terrorism, promote stability and enable the delivery of much-needed aid."

"We have not yet won that battle in Somalia and we must stay at it," he said.

Tillerson also warned against blind acceptance of Chinese investment, warning African countries to "consider the terms of those investments" lest they "forfeit sovereignty".

He also solicited African support in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

"African nations can contribute to this goal," he said.
The mobile billboards outside the office of Australia's minister for women. (Photo: Australian Council of Trade Unions)

Drawing inspiration from the American movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Australian trade unions parked their version outside the office of the minister for women Thursday to call on the federal government to mandate paid domestic violence leave for all workers.

As International Womens Day was being marked, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which represents more than 2 million workers, parked three red signs outside the Melbourne office of Kelly ODwyer, the minister for women, whose responsibilities include strengthening womens economic security, helping women attain leadership roles and keeping women and children safe from violence.

The billboards stated, Women are being killed, Paid domestic leave can save lives and Why no action, Kelly ODwyer?

The ACTU is calling on the government to make 10 days of paid domestic violence leave available to all workers. Australian trade unions have been pushing for paid domestic violence leave to be inserted into government-mandated minimum working conditions for all workers nationwide for some time.

Statistics collated by Our Watch, a nonprofit that aims to raise awareness about violence against women and children, show that 1 in 3 Australian women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and 1 in 4 has experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. Our Watch says that, on average, one woman in Australia is killed each week by a current or former partner. Another monitoring project, Destroy the Joint, reported that, as of March 4, at least 11 women had been killed in domestic violence situations so far in 2018.

Domestic violence leave is an uncommon yet growing workplace condition in Australia. Paid time off for workers to deal with domestic violence situations  such as being forced to leave home, resettle children or pets, get their finances in order or seek medical or psychological help  is available to about 1 million workers in Australia, according to the ACTU, but is provided only on a voluntary basis by forward-thinking employers.

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ODwyer said it was absolutely disgraceful that... the ACTU would play politics with domestic violence in an attempt to score cheap political points, to which the union answered on Twitter:

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Were going to do whatever is necessary to bring this issue into the open, ACTU secretary Sally McManus said. [Workers] are going to be more productive, and theyre going to stay in their jobs.

Unions have claimed that such a nationwide program of domestic violence leave would cost as little as five cents per employee, and they have appealed to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), Australias industrial umpire, for the condition to become a standard work entitlement. However, the reform was opposed by the former minister for women, Michaelia Cash, and ODwyer has not yet expressed support for the change.

Last year, the FWC ruled that 10 days of unpaid leave should be available under standard work agreements, but unions are pushing for the 10 days to be paid leave so that domestic violence victims do not have to choose between earning money or making emergency arrangements. Unions celebrated it as a minor win at the time, claiming it would be the first such system of its type in the world, but committed to continuing the fight to secure paid leave.

We need to change our current workplace laws because they are failing women, said Gerard Dwyer, national secretary of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, at the time of the decision. One way to do that is by providing access to the time off they need to escape an abusive or violent situation, including attending court hearings or looking for a safe home to relocate children and pets.

The billboards will be driven around Melbourne for the next few days.

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The Secretary of Education is slated to visit Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Wednesday morningthree weeks after a mass shooting that left 17 deadbut not everyone there is looking forward to the visit.

Betsy DeVos's meeting with teachers and students comes on the first full day of classes since the school reopened following the tragedy that rocked the nation and rocketed several teens to the frontline of gun control activism. Many of those nascent activists have focused their criticism on the National Rifle Association and politicians, but DeVos hasn't escaped their notice.

Several took to Twitter on Tuesday to express their thoughts on the controversial education official.

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"Literally no one asked for this," wrote Sarah Chadwick, whose many posts excoriating President Donald Trump and lawmakers like Florida Senator Marco Rubio's responses to the February 14 shooting have gone viral.

"Good thing I was already planning on sleeping in tomorrow," tweeted Emma Gonzalez. Gonzalez became a nationally recognized face for Stoneman Douglas's grassroots activism after delivering an emotional speech calling "B.S." on Congress's inaction on gun control.

"Betsy DeVos hasn't done anything to improve our country's education system, I don't want to be given false sympathy as she walks through our school tomorrow," another student named Carly who goes by the Twitter name @car_nove posted.

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Carly later wrote that rather than protest DeVos's visit by blocking her entrance to the school or walking out in defiance, students should educate the secretary.

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"I've decided that I don't think we should walk out, ignore her, or block her from entering," she said. "I want to talk to her. I want her to understand what we're feeling. However, I doubt we'll be able to discuss anything with her. She'll probably give us her sympathies and leave."

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The students have also organized a school walkout on March 14, the one-month anniversary of the tragedy, and the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., on March 24 to protest sales of semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15, which confessed shooter Nikolas Cruz used in Parkland. Some 400 other March for Our Lives protests will also be held in cities in all 50 states that day, according to Politico.

DeVos's meeting is closed to the press "out of respect for the students and faculty," the Education Department said in a media advisory. She is scheduled to speak with reporters shortly after the visit, at 10:15 a.m.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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Last week, my younger sister accompanied our father to the doctor, and sent me a picture of his medical intake form. She captioned it: When your dad realizes hes Black. In the picture, I could see two sections she had marked in red: ethnicity and race. Our dad, a medium-dark skin Dominican man, had selected Black as his race and Hispanic or Latino as his ethnicity.

My father has been black his whole life, but like 97.5 percent of Latinos, he didnt call himself black when it came time to fill out the 2010 census. This time around I hope that he, and lots of other black Latinos, will.

For almost 40 years, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked people like my father two questions about their race and ethnicity. The two-question format first asks respondents to identify if they are Hispanic or Latino, and then prompts them to select their race: American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, White, or some other race.

Many scholars and other experts had hoped that in the 2020 census, the bureau would change the format to one question by eliminating the ethnicity category and making Hispanic/Latino a new racial category. The advantage of this change, experts argued, would be to decrease the number of Latinos who select some other race, therefore capturing more accurate data about Latinos as a group.

Instead, in January, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that it would keep the two-part race and ethnicity question; in the 2020 Census, Latinos will once again be asked to identify their race as separate from their Latino ethnicity.

There are obvious problems with this format. Those who oppose it are correct to note that in the 2010 census, about one third of Latinos selected the some other race category and wrote in ethnicity terms like Hispanic/Latino or nationality origins like Puerto Rican or Colombian. Initially, the census created the some other race option to allow for a small number of respondents who dont fit existing official race categories. However, it is now the third-largest race group counted by the census, which suggests that we are undercounting Latinos in the United States.

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But there are good reasons to keep the two-part format, especially if Latinos like my father can be convinced to answer the question in a way that rejects internalized anti-blackness, and reflects their experiences as black Latinos.

Latino is not a race, it is an ethnicity. Ethnicity describes a persons culture, language, heritage and geography. Race, on the other hand, is about how others see us. And although most social scientists agree that race is a social construct, they also contend that it does matter; our experiences are undeniably shaped by our race.

Latinos can be of any race, and while they are all the same ethnicity, racial differences predict vastly unequal life experiences. Black Latinos have lower health outcomes, live in poorer neighborhoods and have higher depressive symptoms than white Latinos. In fact, black Latinos in the U.S. have health outcomes that are closer to those of African-Americans than to those of their white Latino counterparts.

These kinds of inequities among Latinos extend throughout Latin America. Research in various Latin American countries  including Bolivia, Mexico and Colombia  shows that the lightest Latinos achieve the highest educational outcomes, and black Latinos the lowest. The underrepresentation of black Latinos in Spanish-language and English TV is particularly staggering. Youll have a very difficult time finding an Afro-Latino in a magazine, and although shows like Jane the Virgin and One Day at Time represent some aspects of Latinidad, they dont have any prominent Latino characters who are black.

Its clear that race shapes nearly every part of a Latino persons life. As a result, combining the census question would obscure large racial differences within a vast ethnic group, and would mask the severe inequalities black Latinos face.

Some of those inequalities are reinforced by anti-blackness that lives in the Latino community, as well as outside of it. Racism is a defining aspect in the lives of many Afro-Latinos, who are often ridiculed by their families and friends for having pelo malo (bad hair) and are encouraged to marry whiter or lighter skinned partners in favor of improving the race. Many Latinos have a family member or neighbor who identifies as indio or mestizo but could pass for African-American walking down the street. My dad is one of those people.

It is not surprising, then, that in the 2010 census, only 2.5 percent of Latinos selected black as their race. For many Latinos, selecting white or some other race in the census is aspirational. It is an attempt to join a category that they are often excluded from. Latinos of all races carry with them the anti-black baggage that colonialism and slavery imposed upon them. Self-identification, however, tells us little about how others see and treat Latinos. The data we collect should reflect these social outcomes.

One way for the U.S. Census Bureau to more accurately measure racial inequality among Latinos would be to also ask about ascribed race  what other people think you are. Scholar Nancy Lopez describes this as street race, or the race a person is most often taken for when walking down the street. When my dad goes to the hospital or to the bank he is often mistaken for African-American, until he begins to speak Spanish. As a result, his experiences are more like those of his African-American neighbors than those of his light-skin sister.

Of course, how we see ourselves is an important aspect of our identity, as it allows us to form friendships and join groups based on shared cultural traits. But if were interested in combating social inequalities, we need data about how others see us  our ascribed race. How people mark their race in the census and other government forms has tremendous implications for our ability to track and combat the effects of discrimination.

Afro-Latinos like Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Miriam Jimenez Roman and Piri Thomas have long shown us that blackness and Latinidad can and do coexist. Today, we are seeing an important resurgence of black pride in Latino communities, driven in part by public figures like Amara La Negra, Miss Rizos, and beauty blogger MonicaStyleMuse. Instead of advocating for a change in the two-part race and ethnicity question, we should encourage more Afro-Latinos to identify as black, and to mark that as their race on the census.

Young people like my sister and I are talking to our immigrant parents about Afro-Latinidad. We should continue to fight anti-blackness in and outside of our communities, and do what it takes to ensure that the census collects accurate data about racial inequality among Latinos.

Jomaira Salas Pujols is a sociology Ph.D. student at Rutgers University and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program fellow. She studies race, education and student resistance.

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That blue wave or surge of Democrats taking back Congress in this years midterm elections does not appear to include Democratic senators trying to preserve their seats in states carried by Trump in 2016.

Related: Trump Approval Ratings Show These States Still Love the President

Indeed, five of the 10 Democrats facing that scenario this fall would lose to a Republican candidate if their races were held today, according to Axios/Survey Monkey polls from the 10 states released Thursday morning.

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Many of the seats were previously considered the toughest for Democrats to keep hold of, something viewed as a prerequisite if the party is to have a shot at winning back the Senate. Senator Jon Tester, of Montana, was the most vulnerable, according to the poll, with a 42 percent to 55 percent projected loss to any generic Republican candidate.

Moderate West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin would suffer a projected nine-point loss, while Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, would be knocked out by an eight-point margin by Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawleyone of the few confirmed Republican opponents. The losses would not end there for the Democrats. Single-term Senator Joe Donnelly, of Indiana, and North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp would also find themselves without a job come next year, according to the poll.

The polls were conducted between February 12 and March 5 and drew results from 17,289 registered voters from Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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The survey found that President Donald Trumps approval rating was higher than the incumbent Democratic senator in six of the 10 states polled, suggesting more than a note of caution for Democratic plans to storm to victory across the country in November off the back of the president's historic unpopularity and difficult first-year in office.

Trump has appeared to lose support across the country but, in many of the contested Senate seats, his support remains strong. The Republican had a positive net approval rating in 38 states when he entered office almost 14 months ago, according to Morning Consult, although that total has since slipped to 26.

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Still, Trump has maintained a positive net approval in Montana, North and South Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia. Potentially taking five more Senate seats would greatly tip the chamber in the GOPs favor. Republicans currently have a 51-49 advantage, including two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Talk of a major Democratic tidal wave overtaking the polls in 2018 has flourished since encouraging victories in Alabama and Virginia late last year. However, Texass primaries earlier this week showed Republicans still greatly outnumbered Democrats at the polls. Roughly 1.5 million GOP supporters turned out compared to one million Democrats, results that largely reflected elections past.

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Boa Vista (Brazil) (AFP) - As soon as the traffic lights turn red, a swarm of young Venezuelans with sponges and plastic bottles of detergent surround cars offering to clean the windshield for a bit of spare change.

Others fleeing economic hardship at home and trying to get by in this city in Brazil's north stand on corners and wield signs advertising their workplace skills.

More discretely, and at night, Venezuelan women work street corners to sell sex in this capital city of the state of Roraima, which borders the crisis-stricken Venezuela.

There are Venezuelans everywhere -- in plazas, in parks, you name it. Those capable pool their money and rent a place to live.

City hall in Boa Vista estimates there are some 40,000 Venezuelans in this city of 330,000 -- but nobody knows for sure.

"We are facing a humanitarian crisis," Mayor Teresa Surita told AFP.

She said the Brazilian central government has been slow to deal with the massive influx over the past three years of Venezuelans fleeing shortages of food, medicine and work back home.

"There have been a lot of meetings and not much action," she said. "We are always in crisis mode because of the lack of planning."

The government in Brasilia recently announced measures to confront the crisis. But you would never know that in the streets of Boa Vista, where it is hard to walk without tripping over somebody from Venezuela, desperately trying to survive.

Three makeshift shelters were set up last year, but they only have room to accommodate some 1,500 people, a third of those deemed to be in absolutely desperate conditions.

- Right to work -

The government estimates between 500 and 1,200 Venezuelans cross the border -- situated about 215 kilometers from Boa Vista -- into Brazil every day.

Many obtain legal status by declaring themselves refugees or receive temporary residence. Then they move on to Boa Vista in search of work. But few find anything.

Rene Santos, 42, left his wife and three children back home in Ciudad Bolivar, nearly 1,000 kilometers away.

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He has no work. For months he has been living under a tarp on -- go figure -- Venezuela Avenue.

"There are a lot of professionals in this plaza," said Santos, who worked in the steel industry back home.

"What we need is help from someone who defends human rights," said Santos, tears filling his eyes. He insists that the right to work is a universally recognized human right.

- 'Like a criminal' -

In that square, hundreds of Venezuelans have been sleeping on the ground for months, appearing totally abandoned in a place where signs in various languages proclaim "Welcome to Boa Vista."

The Venezuelans use the restroom of a nearby gas station or a bus station. They eat thanks to the charity of people like Leila Bezerra, who prepares them meals when she receives donated food a couple times a month.

"We must help. They are not here because they want to be. They are here because they are hungry," said Bezerra as she stirred a huge pot of beans and sausage.

Some Brazilians may be trying to help but xenophobia is on the rise, as expressed in discrimination and a lack of political will to help these people, said France Rodrigues, a professor at the Federal University of Roraima.

"What we need is action from those who rule. But what we see are politicians who want to close the border or clean out the city because they do not want Venezuelans here," said Rodrigues.

Her comments stand in stark contrast to those of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, who several weeks ago praised the government of Brazil as "a human rights champion."

Victor Lira, 27, traveled nearly 1,500 km from Caracas to get here. That was three months ago. He still has no work, and lives under a makeshift tarp fashioned from black plastic bags.

"I managed to get two reais ($0.60) and went to the market to buy bananas. They thought I was out to steal something. Do you know what it is like to be treated like a criminal when all you want to do is buy food?," he said, crying.

Brazil has promised to digest all the migration from Venezuela, but little has been done.

To fill the first 530 residency openings in two other states, only 20 Venezuelans will be able to travel there because of sanitary and other requirements, said mayor Surita.

"What we are doing does not resolve the situation," she said.

"Events are moving forward while we debate," said the sociologist Rodrigues.
Portsmouth (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Dressed in a white protective suit, British astronaut Tim Peake listened attentively as technicians explained details of their new satellite -- a European project in Brexit Britain.

While the Union Jacks on the wall indicate they are firmly on British soil, at an Airbus cleanroom in Portsmouth, the Eutelsat Quantum satellite is very much a European endeavour.

Parts for the European Space Agency-led venture come from Spain, it is built in Britain and will be taken to France for testing ahead of next year's launch.

"The thing about space is that in order to succeed and achieve, really, you have to be part of international partnerships and cooperation," Peake told AFP.

The agency is not part of the European Union -- it has 22 members plus cooperating states -- but they are closely aligned and Brexit has cast doubt on Britain's role in regional collaboration.

Graham Turnock, chief executive of the UK Space Agency, is confident Britain will keep its place in ESA but is less certain about the country's broader EU ties after Brexit in March 2019.

"A lot will depend on what happens over the next few months in the negotiations, but we have said that we want to look forward to continue cooperating on science, research and technology including space," he told AFP.

"In many ways, the ball's in the EU's court as to whether that's reciprocated or not."

Talks between Brussels and London on their future relationship are due to start within weeks.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to continue contributing to the space programme for the current EU budget period, which runs until 2020, as part of a transition period.

"We will continue to participate in programmes that are funded by that (budget), and that includes space," she told MPs on February 28.

"But we will also be discussing with the EU how we can build on our successful co-operation on space as the negotiations proceed."

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- A 'bright future' -

Brexit is already having an impact on Britain's role in the European space industry, with the decision to move the back-up site of Galileo, the EU's Global Satellite Navigation System, to Spain.

EU commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said in January that relocating the Galileo Security Monitoring Centre was a "necessary operational step to ensure business continuity and preserve the security of the Galileo system".

Britain's role in a second flagship European Union project, the Earth Observation Programme -- known as Copernicus -- is also uncertain.

"As part of the (Brexit) negotiations there are some programmes that are going to be very carefully negotiated, two in particular are Galileo and Copernicus, which the UK is heavily involved in and hopefully will continue to be so," said Peake.

While ESA is separate from the EU, the agency implements the two programmes as well as others by Brussels, and as a result sources around 20 percent of its 5.6 billion euro ($6.9 billion) budget directly from the European Commission.

Simon Henley, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, spelled out the challenges of such a set-up for British companies.

"Many of the (ESA) contracts, including Galileo, are EU funded and it is a requirement that the companies who participate and get funding and bid for contracts are part of an EU country," he told a parliamentary committee in November.

"We are already seeing contracts being turned away from UK industry because of the uncertainty."

Airbus is keen to stay involved in European programmes in the long term, but UK managing director Colin Paynter said "we all have doubts and we all want to know what's going to happen for certainty".

Looking beyond Brexit, however, he pointed to increasing government funding -- the UK Space Agency budget this year is A387 million (434 million euros, $537 million) -- as a sign that the space sector would survive the EU divorce.

"I think the UK is going to have a pretty bright future, actually, in space," he told AFP.
The older brother of a Michigan teen accused of fatally shooting his parents last week in his Central Michigan University dorm room expressed sympathy for his sibling while grieving his parents loss.

Im in shock and even in denial its a hard pill to swallow, a heavy load to bear. I cant wrap my mind around this, nor make any sense of this, Russell Matthew Davis wrote in a post announcing his parents deaths Saturday.

I STILL LOVE MY BOTHER!, Russell Davis wrote. I want him safe, supported and prayed for just like my sister [and] I.

James Davis Sr. and wife Diva Janeen Davis were killed Friday morning after their 19-year-old son James Davis Jr. allegedly shot them in his dorm room. The couple had gone to Central Michigan University, where Davis Jr. is a sophomore, to pick him up for spring break, according to the Detroit News.

I LOVE my Mama/Ma/MaDea and my Dad!! Im going to MISS THEM!!, Russell Davis wrote on Facebook. The coming days will be hard very hard but continue to pray for us.

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Davis Jr. has been charged with two counts of murder and a weapons charge. CMU police have not yet released a motive for the alleged murders. On Tuesday, bond for Davis Jr. was set for $3 million, according to WGNTV. It is unclear whether he has obtained an attorney and he has not yet entered a plea.

Speaking to the Detroit News, Jordan Murphy, a former coworker of James Davis Sr., said, From knowing the family  something out-of-character occurred. Something external affected the situation that caused this unfortunate tragedy to occur.

University police announced the shooting in a tweet Friday morning and launched a search for Davis Jr., who allegedly fled the scene. On Saturday, shortly after midnight, Davis was arrested after someone spotted him standing near train tracks and called police, according to a police press conference Saturday.

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Security footage recovered as part of the investigation allegedly shows Davis left his dorm and headed for the parking lot. He allegedly returned from the parking lot, and was carrying the murder weapon.

The day before the alleged shooting, Davis had allegedly been exhibiting unusual behavior, police said Saturday.

He has since been hospitalized for treatment of hypothermia and the effects of a drug overdose, police said Saturday.

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Russell Davis, who is currently earning a doctorate of divinity and a member of the Church of God, shared a message to the media and public in his status.

To the media and opinionated people Please dont make a villain of my brother that is NOT who he is and despite the circumstances, he also lost a mother and father And I LOVE him. Consider that!

PEOPLE could not reach Russell Davis for comment.
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In a blistering response to the Department of Justice challenging his states immigration laws, California Governor Jerry Brown has dismissed the lawsuit as an act of political theatre from an administration in disarray.

The Trump administration has challenged a set of California laws that limit cooperation with federal law enforcement, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions called a rejection of law that creates an open border system.

In response, Mr Brown said the lawsuit embodied the mendacity of Washington and suggested that the administration was discredited by Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination with the Trump campaign, which has already produced guilty pleas from multiple former campaign aides.

We know the Trump administration is full of liars. Theyve pled guilty already to the special counsel, Mr Brown told reporters.

The Trump White House is under siege. Mueller is closing in. There are more indictments coming, he added.

Former Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn - who also served briefly as Mr Trumps National Security Adviser - have admitted to lying about contacts with Russian emissaries. Former campaign chair Paul Manafort has pleaded not guilty to allegations of concealing money from the federal government, while his former associate Rick Gates has pleaded guilty to fraud. Mr Mueller has not publicly said more indictments are forthcoming.

The Governor suggested that the lawsuit represented an effort at political preservation by Mr Sessions in the face of public criticism from Mr Trump, saying Mr Sessions has been caught up in the whirlwind of Trumpism.

I assume Jeff thinks Donald will be happier with him, and Im sure Donald will be tweeting his joy at this particular performance, Mr Brown said, calling the remark speculation.

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Mr Brown objected to the notion that California has embraced lawlessness or protects dangerous criminals. The so-called sanctuary state law targeted by the federal government allows local law enforcement to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the cases of people convicted of violent crimes.

Both Mr Brown and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra predicted the state would prevail in what could be a protracted legal fight.

This lawsuit, Mr Brown said, is going to last a lot longer than the Trump administration.
Libreville (AFP) - A cartoonist who was held in custody for more than five months in Equatorial Guinea was released on Wednesday, an NGO said.

Ramon Esono Ebale, who works under the pseudonym "Ham and Cheese", was arrested for works "that regularly criticise the government of Equatorial Guinea", the African Union previously said.

Confirming his release, director of the US-based rights group EG Justice, Tutu Alicante, said in a statement: "The release of Ramon is proof of the power of the collective work of hundreds of artists, concerned citizens and NGOs."

On February 27 at the start of his trial in capital Malabo public prosecutor Rafael Ondo Nguema asked for the release of Ebale, saying there was a "lack of clear evidence".

Ebale was arrested in mid-September with the government announcing his detention was for "money laundering and forgery". They alleged a million CFA francs in counterfeit money (1,500 euros) was found at his home.

"They stuck on this motive... so that I spent five months in jail," said Ebale at the time.

"I do not know anything about money, but I know they arrested me for my cartoons," he said.

Originally from Equatorial Guinea, Ebale had been living in Paraguay before he returned to renew his passport and was arrested.

According to EG Justice, the arrest of Ebale was linked to the publication of a graphic novel in May 2016 called "Obi's nightmare" after President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

The publication portrays Obiang as an ordinary Guinean citizen, and highlights the lack of access to electricity, healthcare and education and restriction of freedom of expression in Equatorial Guinea.

Obiang has ruled the oil-rich central African nation since he seized power in 1979.

Despite the discovery of considerable oil reserves in 1996, most of Equatorial Guinea's 1.2 million inhabitants still live in poverty.
Asia Times

Security, Asia

Beijing reminded Vietnam that it could militarize the disputed Spratly Islands overnight if it opted to do so.

China Says U.S. Carrier's Vietnam Visit Was a 'Waste of Money'

US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson has been in Vietnamese waters off the port city of Da Nang since Monday, marking the first port call by a US carrier to the Southeast Asian nation since the Vietnam War.

Da Nang was a major US staging area during the war.

Also in the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carriers strike group are two escort ships, cruiser USS Lake Champlain and destroyer USS Wayne E Meyer.

Top leaders from the United States and Vietnam discussed the possibility of an aircraft-carrier visit last year as part of an effort to further defense relations, the US Third Fleets command and control said in a statement.

Hanoi and Washington have been careful not to link the symbolic visit, part of a scheduled deployment in the Indo-Pacific region, to Beijings adamant claims of sovereignty over islets and atolls in the South China Sea, but ironically it is disapproving Chinese media that have been tracking the slew of exchanges taking place throughout the carriers five-day visit.

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Beijings displeasure was inevitable, but its official response has been that the trip is unlikely to stir up trouble in the South China Sea.

The South China Sea may be a good place to flex muscles, but it is primarily comprehensive strength that shapes the geopolitics there. The US is free to send warships to the South China Sea, like the ongoing visit by Carl Vinson, which will only waste money, said an op-ed in the party mouthpiece Peoples Daily on Wednesday.

Even as US-Vietnamese military cooperation is being lifted to a new level, it wont embolden Hanoi to act as a US outpost to confront Beijing, said the article, as it has long been Hanois strategic vision to simultaneously develop ties with Beijing and Washington.

Story continues

Chinas Foreign Ministry said no country wanted geopolitical turbulence and the region had gradually sorted out its thoughts in handling disputes after an international arbitration initiated by Manila ruled in favor of the Philippines, which Beijing shunned at the outset.

That said, China Daily acknowledged the concern that Hanoi may be tempted to use its amicable ties with Washington as leverage to drum up resistance to Beijings increasing sway in the South China Sea, now that the ideological camaraderie between the two communist regimes has become thinner than ever and now that Hanoi has been fighting a lone battle after Manila became reconciled with Beijing last year.

Still, the strain is more at the psychological level and will not have any effect if Beijing ignores it, said the op-ed, adding that Beijing has the capability of militarizing the cays, reefs and shoals of the Nansha Islands overnight.

The Nansha archipelago is more commonly known as the Spratly Islands, which are subject to conflicting claims by Hanoi and Beijing.

Carl Vinsons crew will share with their Vietnamese counterparts technical expertise in water and electricity supply, response to disasters, and personnel training on aircraft and in several local venues before leaving Vietnam on Friday, according to VietNamNet Online.

This article originally appeared on Asia Times.

Image: Reuters

Read full article
Wallace C. Gregson

Security, Asia

A B-2 Spirit proceeds to an undisclosed location after flying a mission over Iraq, March 27, 2003. A U.S. B-2 bomber on Friday dropped two earth-shattering 4,600-pound (2,086 kg)

America must immediately enhance its regional missile and air defenses and those of its allies.

Confront the North Korea Threat with Increased Deterrence

Kim Jong-un achieved a master stroke through his Olympic diplomacy. After successfully inviting himself to the Olympics without completing any of the Initial Operational Capability requirements for participation, he skillfully exploited the celebrity-besotted with the deployment of his sister Kim Yo-jong along with a massive Stepford-like cheerleader force to Seoul. Her travelling companion, the general responsible for the 2010 sinking of the ROK corvette Cheonan with a loss of forty-six lives and the subsequent fatal shelling of Yeonpyeongdo Island, garnered much less coverage than her enigmatic visage in the VIP stand.

Another master stroke was the invitation extended to President Moon to visit Pyongyang for talks. North Korea, the author of frequent deadly provocations against South Korea and a deadly VX nerve gas attack in the Kuala Lumpur airport, the proud owner of very aggressive missile- and nuclear-weapons-development programs, and the warden of a vast national gulag, somehow convinced observers around the world that they were interested in peace. Breathless commentators call this a new chapter. Perhaps an apt metaphor is the movie Groundhog Day. Weve been trying to restrain North Koreas nuclear-weapons program since at least 1994 when they made it obvious to us. Our options menu features preemptive attack, negotiations, agreements and sanctions. Its not enough.

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President Moon of the Republic of Korea has a divided electorate. The younger generations are far less enthusiastic about unification, the older generations much more so. All worry about U.S. unilateral action. Rumors of preventive war and preemptive attack by the United States create worries among our allies of abandonment and entanglement in the absence of convincing leadership and compelling strategies. Kim is skillfully exploiting all these fissures. A Korean summit looks to be on the cards for April. Kim promises not to test weapons or missiles while the talks are active. This gives him the initiative and makes his negotiating partner or partners supplicants. If we dont keep him happy, then he will walk out of the talks, and the provocation-response cycle starts again from a higher level of North Korean capabilityand a higher level of doubt among our allies and friends. Where do we go from here?

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History affects actions today. Since 1994, when North Korea made its nuclear program manifest, we pressured and engaged with North Korea to restrain their weapons programs. In 1994 a preemptive attack was immediately on the table. It remains the first response considered to answer North Korean tests. These tests often seem timed to interrupt our political cycle. That timing allows the Kim family to test new officeholders when we are getting reorganized.

After some time, preemptive attack loses favor as the threat of collateral damage to our allies becomes obvious. Negotiations, aid agreements, even the provision of light water nuclear reactors have been tried, only to find North Korea cheating. A final option chosen has always been sanctions, always with the promise that this time they will bite. But we have never applied the required energy, forces, resources and attention needed for success.

There are reasons sanctions fail. The awkwardness of disturbing the financial interests of others profiting from North Koreas family business is one thing. We salve our doubts by saying we have other relationships at stake. Another is the conundrum that truly effective sanctions threaten regime stability by destroying the standard of living enjoyed by the million or so core supporters of the Kim regime. Keeping the family happy is a requirementeven dictators need to keep the base satisfied. Lately these bases are doing well in Asia and elsewhere. Authoritarianism is very much on the rise, perhaps taking advantage of liberal democracys retreat, or at the least taking advantage of the lack of attention and action.

North Korean nuclear weapons are one thing, but not the worst thing. Worse is allowing North Korea to damage our alliances and destroy the foundation for our policy, strategy and presence in Asia. This would mean the end of the postwar liberal order and global operating system that did so much to end the Cold Wardespite its many hot campaignswithout yet another twentieth-century great-power conflict. This same order and system energized the rapid rise of Asias incredible economy and lifted hundreds of millions from poverty to improved standards of living.

We won the Cold War through providing this better global operating system (now under threat), strong deterrence, and vigorous diplomacy to create and maintain a system of allies and friends. Our new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy recognize the emergence of great-power competition. This is the same frameworkrobust diplomatic and economic containment backed by strong, allied deterrencethat is needed to contain this latest threat.

Deterring North Korean coercion is necessary for the Free and Open Indo-Pacific called for in our new national strategies. We must be able to accept some risk, but the risks of our other available alternativesremaining passive or launching a preventive warare greater. The really big things here are strengthening our alliances and meeting the challenge of rising Chinese power and ambition.

There is a number of active measures we can take. Sanctions will never be perfect, but just as naval blockades from decades past, they dont have to be 100 percent effective to work. They have to raise the cost to North Korea. A collapse of the central government authority in North Korea will have dire consequences. We cant favor effective sanctions and oppose regime change at the same time. But we can state that we oppose forcible regime change.

Effective sanctions are worth the risk. Maritime Interdiction Operations involving federated and integrated intelligence, law enforcement and the military forces of many nations must be strengthened. Our intelligence capabilities and the intelligence capabilities of our allies must be engaged to track the cheating vessels we know about, and to find others.

Our regional missile and air defenses and those of our allies must be enhanced immediately. New technologies must be moved from the lab to deployment as a high priority. Maintaining the confidence of the Koreans and the Japanese in our collective ability to protect them is most important. Declaring a new capability that will be operational after only four more years is not an effective deterrent now. Overall, combined allied and U.S. military capabilities must be reinforced by developing the ability to integrate maneuver, fires and effects among all allied forcesfighting as one force and not multiple forces in coordination or cooperation. This means some command-and-control equipment changes. More important, it requires vigorous, continuous exercises and training among allies.

Eyes on the prize, please. North Korea is a part of the challenge, but not the main part. The prize is the system created by our second set of founding fathers, those Present at the Creation of the postWorld War II order. We will prevail only with our allies and friends.

Wallace C. Gregson, a retired Marine and former assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (200911), is currently senior advisor at Avascent International and senior director for China and the Pacific at the Center for the National Interest.

Image: A B-2 Spirit proceeds to an undisclosed location after flying a mission over Iraq, March 27, 2003. A U.S. B-2 bomber on Friday dropped two earth-shattering 4,600-pound (2,086 kg) "bunker-buster" bombs on a downtown Baghdad communications tower, defense officials said. it was the first use of the big bombs in a week-long pounding of the Iraqi capital. U.S.-led jets and ships have used more than 5,000 bombs and missiles against Baghdad and across Iraq in a war to depose President Saddam Hussein. REUTERS/Cherie A. Thurlby/U.S. Air Force

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By Emil Gjerding Nielson COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish inventor Peter Madsen denied murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homebuilt submarine in August, telling a court on Thursday he disposed of her body after she died breathing in exhaust fumes. On the first day of his trial, Madsen, 47, said he had had to dismember the corpse to get it out of the submarine. He intended to dispose of the body parts at sea to restore a "normal" condition on board, he said, admitting he was not thinking rationally at the time. Madsen is accused of murdering and dismembering Wall, a 30-year-old Swedish journalist who was researching a story on the man who was already well known in Denmark for his submarines and his plan to send a human into space in a home-made rocket. Wall disappeared after Madsen took her out to sea in his 17-metre (56-ft) submarine in August last year. Later that month, police identified a torso washed ashore in Copenhagen as Wall's. He is also accused of "sexual assault without intercourse, of a particularly dangerous nature" in relation to the 14 interior and exterior stab wounds investigators found to Wall's genitals, prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen told the court. Prosecutors said Wall died either by strangulation or having her throat cut. Madsen faces up to life in prison if convicted. "I plead not guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of Kim Wall," Madsen told the court. Under the Danish penal code, manslaughter is used to describe the deliberate killing of a person and there is no distinction between manslaughter and murder. Madsen, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, told the court that Wall had died from breathing exhaust gases that had leaked into the submarine due to a technical error, while he was on the deck of the vessel preparing for to submerge. "When I turn to open the hatch cover, the most terrible minutes of my life begin. I cannot open the hatch, because the engine is sucking air from the cabin," he said. "Then I hear Kim calling." After eventually opening the hatch, he said: "I crawl down and find Kim Wall lifeless. I kneel beside her and pat her on the cheeks." He has previously admitted to dismembering her body and dumping the body parts at sea. Prosecutor Buch-Jepsen said Madsen had searched the internet for "beheading girl" just hours before the trip, and had videos of real killings of women on his computer. Investigators had found Madsen's semen on the clothes he was wearing during the trip, Buch-Jepsen said. Madsen denied in court having had any sexual relations with Wall. The trial is scheduled over twelve court hearings, with a verdict expected on April 25. (Reporting by Emil Gjerding Nielson, editing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and Robin Pomeroy)
Lambb, a creative collective, released a short film celebrating black hair and the power of women. (Photo: Azeez Bello @creativeindivisuals)

Enough is enough: In a world where reality stars are giving credit to Bo Derek for Fulani braids (a style that was originally worn by women from the African Diaspora) and renaming cornrows boxer braids, credit should be given where it is rightfully due. A creative collective based in London recognized this upswing of cultural appropriation when it comes to hairstyles originated by women of color, and it decided to make a responsive short film thats empowering black women all over the world.

Lambb, short for Look at My Black Beauty, was founded by two sisters, Naomi and Cauline Grant, with a mission to redefine images of people of color in media. Future First is their latest short video, serving as a direct response to the exploitation of black hair. Cultural appropriation has been topical for the past few years, with celebrities continually claiming elements of black culture but denying the originators, says Naomi. I wanted to explore this, but from a different angle. I didnt want to paint black girls as victims who are being robbed and silent; I wanted to paint them as past, present, and future leaders.

The roughly five-minute video begins by showing gorgeous imagery of women of color with natural-hair textures, and its narration is like that of a love letter to black women and their hair. Dear beautiful brown girl, I remember when you would sit for hours, head resting on your mothers lap as she braided one strand over, one strand under, the narrator says. Your neck would ache and at times the comb would get tangled in your full head of curls, but youd smile anyway. As the clip continues, she speaks elegantly about the familiar experiences many black women have with their hair and closes by saluting women of color as being leaders.

The film encourages black girls to reclaim their time, as society often tries to steal from us, then decline us, says Naomi. It shows how our hair is deeper than just hair  it is a common thread that unites women across the world and is deep-rooted in our culture.

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Reflect back to Marc Jacobss Spring 2017 fashion show, which featured models parading down the runway with colorful dreadlocks, a style deep-seated in Rastafarian culture. Yet the show featured only three models of color, further proving why films such as Future First are much needed and hold so much significance.

Future First is a direct response to cornrows being renamed boxer braids. (Photo: Joshua Grant / @kaoeart)

Cornrows and braids are anchored in every black girls upbringing, says Naomi. No matter how curly or coarse your hair is, every black girl must remember the time they sat on the floor, resting on their mothers knee while getting their hair braided. I wanted to start with that universal image, an image that reminds us of our childhood, an image that brings us home.

Just in time for International Womens Day, the release of this short film couldnt have been any better. Its powerful and reminds black women that they are pioneers. Black women have throughout history been silent leaders, leaders who built mansions from bricks but were denied credit, says Naomi. Today though, women are no longer asking for a seat at the table, we are demanding it.

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WASHINGTON  The Trump administration will ramp up its fight against so-called sanctuary policies by filing a lawsuit on Tuesday against the state of California over its laws meant to protect undocumented immigrants.

The lawsuit, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions will formally announce on Wednesday, is the latest in a string of moves by the White House, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to combat local efforts to limit police cooperation with deportation. Thus far, this has largely involved condemnations and threats, including the withholding of federal funds and prosecuting public officials.

Now, the administration is seeking to block three California laws by arguing that they violate the Constitution and federal law.

The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you, Sessions is expected to tell law enforcement officers during a speech on Wednesday, according to prepared remarks. We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. And I believe that we are going to win.

To make its case, the DOJ is in part pointing to a ruling on a very different state-level immigration law: Arizonas SB 1070, which was meant to expand local police efforts to find and arrest undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration by striking down major provisions of that law in 2012.

The Trump administration plans to argue that California is similarly overstepping its authority, senior DOJ officials said Tuesday. The lawsuit will challenge three laws that DOJ officials say hurt the governments ability to carry out immigration enforcement.

Supporters of the California laws and sanctuary policies in general argue that they make communities safer by allowing local police to work better with immigrant communities and focus time and resources on duties other than immigration matters. (Sanctuary policies differ widely from place to place and there is no set definition for the term.)

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California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) responded to Sessions suit Tuesday evening, calling it a political stunt.

At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America, he said in a statement. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they dont work here. SAD!!!

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) also defended his states policies.

In California, our state laws work in concert with federal law, Becerra said in a call with reporters Tuesday evening. Our state officials work in concert with federal officials every day. We have no intention changing that here in California. But what we wont do is stop being focused on public safety. Were in the business of public safety, not deportation.

The most prominent of the three California laws is SB 54, which Brown signed in October and went into effect Jan. 1 in spite of criticism from Sessions and other Trump officials. The Trump administration is seeking to block provisions of the law that stop local law enforcement from telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they will release certain individuals and from facilitating their transfer unless theyve committed certain crimes.

The DOJ suit will argue that state policy violates a statute known as Section 1373, which broadly states that jurisdictions cannot bar local law enforcement from sharing information with federal officials about individuals immigration status. Proponents of laws like the one in California argue that by sharing arrest information with the federal government, theyre in compliance; but the DOJ plans to argue that Section 1373 also requires them to share things like when an individual is set to be released. The DOJ does not plan to argue that Section 1373 requires local law enforcement to hold people solely based on ICE requests  known as detainers  which many jurisdictions have rejected based on cost and constitutionality concerns.

The DOJ suit will also target a law called AB 450 that went into effect Jan. 1 and restricts private employers ability to cooperate with federal immigration officials, including by requiring a subpoena or warrant to enter workplaces and by notifying workers about reviews of employment documentation. The third law the DOJ is targeting is AB 103, a provision of a budget bill approved last year that allows the state to review federal immigrant detention of immigrants inside the state. The DOJ will argue that those laws violate the Constitutions Supremacy Clause by attempting to preempt federal authority.

The pending DOJ lawsuit is a separate legal matter from challenges against the Trump administrations threats to withhold federal grants from jurisdictions over sanctuary policies, which are playing out in courts in California and Illinois.

This story has been updated with statements from Jerry Brown and Xavier Becerra.

Also on HuffPost

April 2015

At an event hosted by Texas Patriots PAC: Everythings coming across the border: the illegals, the cars, the whole thing. Its like a big mess. Blah. Its like vomit.

June 2015

At a speech announcing his campaign: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

August 2015

On NBC's "Meet the Press": Were going to keep the families together, we have to keep the families together, but they have to go."

September 2015

On CBS's "60 Minutes": Were rounding em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And theyre going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesnt sound nice. But not everything is nice.

November 2015

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe": You are going to have a deportation force, and you are going to do it humanely."

February 2016

At a GOP primary debate: We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. They will come back  some will come back, the best, through a process.

March 2016

At a press conference when asked if he would consider allowing undocumented immigrants to stay: "We either have a country or we dont. We either have a country or we dont. We have borders or we dont have borders. And at this moment, the answer is absolutely not.

April 2016

At an event hosted by NBC's "Today Show": Theyre going to go, and were going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally, OK? But it has to be done legally. ... Theyre going to go, and then come back and come back legally.

July 2016

At the Republican National Convention: "Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied  and every politician who has denied them  to listen very closely to the words I am about to say. On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced."

September 2016

At a rally: Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we dont have a country.

September 2016

On "The Dr. Oz Show": Well, under my plan the undocumented or, as you would say, illegal immigrant wouldnt be in the country. They only come in the country legally.

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Donald Trump has insisted he was proved to be right last year when he spoke about terror attacks in Sweden being linked to an influx of refugees and migrants.

Asked about immigration at a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Mr Trump said: Certainly you have a problem with the immigration. Its caused problems in Sweden.

I was one of the first ones to say it. I took a little heat, but that was okay, because I proved to be right.

During a rally in Florida in February last year, Mr Trump referred to a number of countries that had taken in large numbers of refugees and were targeted by terrorists.

Weve got to keep our country safe. You look at whats happening in Germany. You look at whats happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Mr Trump asked.

He went on to mention Nice, France, and Brussels, where terrorist attacks had taken place in recent years.

The comments baffled Swedish officials at the time, who said they were not aware of any terror-linked major incidents in Sweden on the night to which Mr Trump referred.

Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter at the time: Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound.

The US President later said in a Twitter post said he had been referring to a Fox News report about crime by immigrants in Sweden.

He said he was referring to a segment by Tucker Carlson, which featured an interview with filmmaker Ami Horowitz.

She had recently made a documentary about the refugee policy in Sweden, but the segment did not contain any breaking news about an attack.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general and not referring to a specific incident.

Around a month later, Mr Trump told Time magazine his comments were correct because two days afterwards there was a rally in Sweden.

I talked about Sweden, and may have been somewhat different, but the following day, two days later, they had a massive riot in Sweden, exactly what I was talking about. I was right about that, he said.

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When the Time journalist pointed out he referred specifically to an event the night before his speech, he said: Im talking about what Sweden has done to themselves is very sad, that is what I am talking about.

That is what I am talking about. You can phrase it any way you want. A day later they had a horrible, horrible riot in Sweden, and you saw what happened.

The riot broke out in a Stockholm suburb with large immigrant population.
As Betsy DeVos made her way around Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman killed 17 students and teachers last month, a small group of student journalists grew increasingly frustrated at each question they say the controversial U.S. Secretary of Education seemed to dodge.

For about an hour on Wednesday morning, at least three student journalists from the schools newspaper, TV production and yearbook staff followed DeVos around campus, where they say she pet comfort dogs, shook hands with the schools faculty and offered generic answers to their specific questions about how concrete changes can be made.

It was a publicity stunt, really. There was no point to it, said Alyson Sheehy, an 18-year-old yearbook editor who was part of the small student press pool. I kind of expected that to happen, but its still frustrating that she made the trip out here and made it a big deal but didnt do anything.

Sheehy said DeVos didnt meet specifically with anyone during her high-profile visit on the students first full day back at school. She was kind of just walking around the school and not talking to anybody, the high school senior said. We just kind of followed her around.

When the student journalists asked DeVos questions about her goals and how she plans to stop school shootings, they said DeVos demurred. She kind of gave us simple answers and didnt really answer the questions we asked, Sheehy said.

When the students pressed DeVos with questions about policy changes, Sheehy said she told them officials were working really hard on things and that she didnt think this is the time to really ask those types of questions.

That did little to move or convince the students and even some adults, including English teacher Melissa Falkowski, who advises dozens of students on the schools newspaper, The Eagle Eye.

She didnt come to answer questions, Falkowski said. I feel like a lot of people have used what happened for their own personal agenda and that sort of felt like that.

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Im not really sure what the purpose of her visit was because she didnt meet formally with any teachers or students, she added. Her being here, I dont think is going to result in any help or change.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. on March 7, 2018.

In a statement, U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Liz Hill said DeVos visit was designed to lend support to the community during a difficult time, but also to minimize disruption on students first full day back at school. Last week, DeVos gave Broward County Public Schools a $1 million grant to use toward recovery efforts.

The Secretary has said the students of MSD have shown tremendous strength and that their voice are extremely important as we work to find solutions to keep students safe, Hill added. She had some conversations with students today, but wants to sit down with more students from MSD in the near future.

DeVos made the same remark during a brief news conference Wednesday after her visit, which she said was very sobering and very inspiring.

DeVos said a number of student newspaper reporters walked around the building with her. Theyre obviously very, very interested in seeing what adults are going to do about this whole situation and what were going to do to find common ground and common solutions to carry forward, she said. I told them that I am very interested in hearing from them.

The Education Secretary also said she was willing to return to Stoneman Douglas for longer talks with the young journalists. I told the student newspaper reporters that I would love to come back sometime, in an appropriate amount of time, and just sit down and talk to them, she said. We are committed not only to listening but to action.

Many students balked at the idea or approached it with caution. We would welcome it, Sheehy said, but if she pulls the same thing she did today, were not going to take it.

During her confirmation hearing last January, when asked about gun-free zones around schools, DeVos infamously said she would imagine that theres probably a gun in the school [in Wyoming] to protect from potential grizzlies.

Carly Novell, a 17-year-old student journalist on the newspaper staff, who was not part of the student press pool Wednesday, said shed rather be visited by people openly committed to ending gun violence.

Id rather her not come at all, Novell said.
Eat Your Own Dog Food is an aphorism referring to the Microsoft tradition of using its own software products, but it applies equally well to the first production cargo trip of Teslas all-electric truck  which carried battery packs from Teslas Gigafactory in Nevada to its car assembly plant in Fremont, Calif.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk spotlighted the start of the 260-mile journey on Instagram:

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Actually, Teslas Semis have been riding the roads for a while. Highway sightings of the trucks going about their business started popping up last month, just a little more than three months after Musk unveiled the prototype at a glitzy Southern California shindig.

The Semis maximum range for recharging is listed as 500 miles with an 80,000-pound load, which doesnt quite match the requirements for a round trip between the Gigafactory and Fremont. But Tesla will surely take the opportunity to test its Megacharger system, which is meant to provide enough juice for 400 miles in just 30 minutes.

By the time you are done with your break, the truck is ready to go, Musk said back in November.

The $200,000 Semi is due to go into mass production next year, and several big-name freight operators  including UPS, Walmart and Sysco  have already put in pre-orders. The data acquired during Teslas trips will probably be used not only to fine-tune the Semis electric-drive and autonomous-driving systems, but to beef up Teslas sales pitch as well.

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Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump's team played down talk of a trade war Wednesday as it fought to limit a financial market sell-off, promising a quick decision on contentious tariffs that prompted a popular economic advisor to the president to quit.

Administration big guns Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin rushed to the cameras to calm market jitters over proposed steel and aluminum duties, which they indicated were still negotiable and would not hurt growth.

Trump is set to formalize the tariffs at a signing ceremony Thursday afternoon, and Canada and Mexico will be exempt initially, Peter Navarro, a top trade advisor, told Fox Business Network Wednesday night.

As markets fell on news that Wall Street favorite Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, had resigned from the White House in protest at Trump's trade decision and global partners vowed retaliation, Ross tried to calm fears of a trade war.

"We're going to have sensible relations with our allies," he told CNBC, claiming that Trump's policy was well "thought through. We're not looking for a trade war."

Mnuchin joined the effort, claiming that the tariffs, which are not yet finalized, would not hurt the administration's projections for three percent growth.

"We're comfortable that we're going to manage through this so that it is not detrimental to our growth projections," he told Fox Business.

As stocks fell off on Wall Street, a fierce battle over Trump's proposals raged behind the scenes in Washington.

Trump surprised and angered Republican lawmakers with his impromptu tariff announcement last week.

Congress is now starting to contemplate legislation that would block the measures from taking effect.

"We are still trying to work with POTUS to avoid that outcome," a congressional source told AFP.

- Announcement this week -

Even Trump's most accommodating allies have begun to speak out against what amounts to a major break with Republican orthodoxy.

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"There is a lot of concern among Republican senators that this could sort of metastasize into a larger trade war," Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.

"Many of our members are discussing with the administration just how broad, how sweeping this might be," he added. "There's a high level of concern about interfering with what appears to be an economy that's taking off in every respect."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders also tried to soothe unease, projecting calm and saying a decision would come soon.

"We are still on pace for an announcement on that at the end of this week," she said, adding that Trump would also quickly move to replace Cohn with a mainstream pick.

"The president's got a number of people that could potentially fill that role," she said.

"What I can assure you obviously is he's going to make a good pick that can help him continue to further building a strong economy and continue creating jobs and continue focusing on long-term economic success."

Despite Republican agitation, it is far from clear that Trump will back down.

Cohn's departure has given the president's "nationalist" advisors like arch China skeptic Peter Navarro and Commerce boss Ross the whip hand.

Cohn, a 57-year-old former Goldman Sachs executive, had lobbied passionately against the tariffs before losing out.

Ross offered an olive branch, claiming, contrary to the statements of his White House colleagues earlier in the week, that Trump could agree to tariff carve outs for Canada, Mexico and perhaps others.

Data released Wednesday showed the US foreign trade deficit widened in January to its highest level in nine years, heaping pressure on Trump, who had campaigned on a promise to reverse that trend.

Trump took to Twitter to blame the deficit on "bad policies & leadership" from his White House predecessors.

He also took aim at perennial trade bogeyman, Beijing.

"China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States," he tweeted.

"Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!"

China warned Thursday it was ready to respond to US tariffs if they materialize.

"Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription, in the end you will only hurt others and yourself," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, adding that "China will certainly make an appropriate and necessary response."
Bogota (AFP) - Colombia's FARC said Thursday it is pulling out of the country's presidential race after its candidate, 59-year-old ex-guerrilla leader Rodrigo "Timochenko" Londono, suffered a heart attack.

Ivan Marquez, a senate candidate and senior member of the political party formed by the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels, told reporters that party members decided not to field a candidate after Londono underwent open heart surgery on Wednesday.

Since the peace deal struck with the government of outgoing President Juan Manuel Santos in late 2016, the FARC gave up its half-century armed struggle and became a political party keeping the same acronym.

Colombia's presidential election is scheduled for May 27, with a possible runoff vote set for mid-June.

Surveys showed that Londono -- candidate for the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force -- had just one percent voter support.

Marquez however said his party is not dropping out of the legislative elections set for Sunday.

Under the peace accord the former rebels are guaranteed at least 10 of the 268 congressional seats up for grabs in the March 11 election. They can gain more, but they must campaign for them.

- Conservative ahead in polls -

Londono suffered a heart attack last week at the end of his daily exercise routine. He has had serious health scares before: in 2015 he had a heart attack in Cuba while negotiating the peace deal, and in July 2017 he suffered a minor stroke.

Doctors this week also found that Londono suffers from "a chronic pulmonary disease," as well as arterial brain blockage.

"His recovery will take several weeks," FARC Senate candidate Carlos Antonio Lozada said.

The ex-rebel leader however is undergoing a "satisfactory" recovery from heart surgery, Marquez said.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said FARC's withdrawal was "understandable."

"It is understandable, among other things because open heart surgery -- which I am very happy went well -- is a major procedure," he said.

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Marquez did not say who -- if anyone -- the FARC could support in the presidential election.

An endorsement could be a kiss of death, given the FARC's abysmal approval rating due to crimes committed during the long internal conflict.

Marquez reiterated his party's call for a "government of transition" that would guarantee the implementation of the peace agreement.

"Not participating directly in the presidential race does not mean that we will refrain from voicing our opinion of the other candidates," Marquez said.

Londono's vice-presidential candidate, Imelda Daza, said that since the peace agreement was signed more than 50 ex-rebels or ex-rebel relatives have been murdered.

Under the peace accord, the FARC -- once the most powerful rebel army in Latin America -- disarmed its 7,000 fighters in order to join the legal political process, agreed to confess to wartime crimes and pay reparations to victims.

This infuriates many Colombians, in particular the right wing, which is vowing to win the presidential election and amend the peace deal.

Current polls show conservative Ivan Duque of the Centro Democratico party leading the presidential race. His party is led by former president Alvaro Uribe, a fierce opponent of the FARC peace deal.

Duque is followed by leftist Gustavo Petro, and former Medellin mayor Sergio Fajardo.
Miami (AFP) - Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz was indicted Wednesday on 17 counts of murder and 17 more of attempted murder, the state attorney's office said.

On February 14 Cruz entered the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, just north of Miami, and opened fire with a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle, killing 14 students and three staff members.

A Broward County grand jury charged Cruz -- who has confessed to the killings -- with 17 counts of first degree premeditated murder and 17 counts of first degree attempted murder.

The attempted murder charges relate to those wounded in the attack, state attorney Michael Satz said in a statement.

After the shooting, police said that 19 year-old Cruz, a former Stoneman Douglas student, stopped at a Walmart and then McDonald's before officers detained him 40 minutes after the rampage.

After the shooting the Parkland students launched a movement dubbed "Never Again" to pressure politicians to address the issues of gun violence and mass shootings in the United States.

Florida alone has seen three mass shootings in under two years -- 49 were killed at an Orlando nightclub in 2016, five at Fort Lauderdale's international airport in 2017, and now 17 in Parkland.

On Wednesday Florida's House of Representatives debated a measure that proposes some restrictions on access to firearms and arming teachers to defend students in the event of an attack.
Bill headed to governors desk would raise gun-buying age to 21 and increase funding for school security and mental health support

Students went to the Florida governors office with boxes of petitions for gun control reform last month. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Floridas lawmakers narrowly passed a controversial gun bill late on Wednesday that would allow armed teachers in the states classrooms, three weeks to the day after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school massacre in which 17 people were killed.

The new legislation, which must now be approved by the Florida governor, Rick Scott, also raises the age at which weapons can be purchased to 21 and provides extra money for school security and mental health support.

The package was backed by families of the Parkland victims, but strongly opposed by many Democrats, who failed to block its passage in a 67-50 vote.

It is unclear if Scott, who has also spoken out against putting guns in classrooms, will veto the bill.

Im going to take the time to read the bill, Scott told reporters. I have been clear. I dont believe we should be arming teachers.

Earlier on Wednesday, students at Stoneman Douglas clashed with Betsy DeVos after the US education secretary toured the school. According to at least two teenagers who were present when DeVos arrived, no students were allowed to ask her questions. One claimed DeVos refused to meet or even speak with them.

You came to our school just for the publicity and avoided our questions for the 90 minutes you were actually here, Aly Sheehy, a 12th-grade student and survivor of the shooting, said in a tweet. How about you actually do your job?

Another student, Carly Novell, the editor of the schools newspaper, Eagle Eye, said she was allowed to photograph DeVos but not accompany her on the campus tour.

I thought she would at least give us her thoughts and prayers, but she refused to even meet/speak with students, Novell said in a tweet. I dont understand the point of her being here.

DeVoss visit to the Parkland school was closed to the press, and came on the first full day of lessons for students since the 14 February massacre that claimed the lives of three teachers and 14 of their classmates.

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The final vote in Floridas house of representatives late on Wednesday followed hours of intense debate, and marks the first time in 22 years that the state legislature has approved any kind of gun control measure.

The measure would outlaw the sale of so-called bump stocks, which give semi-automatic weapons firepower similar to automatics and will allow certain school personnel, including librarians, administrators and other support staff, to be armed, following Donald Trumps repeated calls for some teachers to carry guns.

However, a ban on assault weapons such as the AR-15 used by the Parkland shooter, one of the main demands of the #neveragain movement set up by Stoneman Douglas students in the aftermath of the massacre, was missing from the proposed legislation.

A final vote in Floridas house of representatives was expected later on Wednesday.

DeVos spoke briefly with reporters after what she said was a very sobering and very inspiring visit and contradicted the students account of the meeting.

There were a number of student newspaper reporters who walked around with me and they are obviously very interested in seeing what adults are going to do about this whole situation, she said.

I give a lot of credit to the students here who have found their voices and encouraged them to continue to speak out about finding these solutions and having adults pay attention.

DeVos also addressed the controversial issue of allowing teachers to carry weapons. As a concession by state lawmakers to Scotts stance, the legislation does not put guns in the hands of teachers whose sole responsibilities lie in the classroom, but permits those who have additional or separate non-teaching roles to carry a concealed weapon. It also leaves the final decision of allowing armed staff up to the school board in each of Floridas 67 counties.

To say arming teachers is an oversimplification and a mischaracterisation, really, DeVos said. The concept is for those schools and those communities that opt to do this, as they have in Texas, as they have in Polk county and other places around the country, to have people who are expert in being able to defend and having lots and lots of training in order to do so.

Thats a model that can be adopted and should be an option, but certainly not one that needs to be required and mandated.

DeVos was referring to a sentinel programme set up in Floridas Polk county by Sheriff Grady Judd, in which volunteers in private educational establishments can carry weapons after extensive training.

The families of the Parkland victims wrote a joint letter to Floridas lawmakers on Tuesday urging them to pass the $400m legislation.

You must act to prevent mass murder from ever occurring again at any school, they wrote in a letter signed by at least one relative from all 17 families. This issue cannot wait. The moment to pass this bill is now. We must be the last families to suffer the loss of a loved one due to a mass shooting at a school.

Prosecutors announced on Wednesday that Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student, had been indicted on 34 charges related to the shooting, 17 each of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

Cruz, who is being held in solitary confinement in the Broward county jail, had already been charged with murder but the formal grand jury indictments allow state attorneys to progress the case against him and potentially seek the death penalty.

Cruzs public defender has said Cruz will plead guilty and avoid a trial if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, an offer to which they have yet to respond.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Thursday pressed Russia and Iran to use their influence over Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to ensure Damascus respects a U.N. resolution calling for a 30-day ceasfire.

Le Drian also reiterated that France will respond if it is proven chemical weapons have been used and killed people.

French President Emmanuel Macron and his government have in recent weeks repeatedly called for a truce in Syria to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to trapped civilians, but the fighting continues.

(Reporting by Richard Lough; Editing by Brian Love)
Beyond all the televised moments of the 2018 Oscars, it was the unscripted drama involving Frances McDormands briefly stolen Oscar that might have been the most compelling story line. The Best Actress winner for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had her statuette heisted while she partied at the Governors Ball, shortly after the ceremony ended.

Frances McDormand accepts the Oscar for Best Actress at the Academy Awards on March 4, 2018. (Photo: Craig Sjodin via Getty Images)

McDormands trophy was returned to her before the night was over. Suspect Terry Bryant was nabbed and, within 48 hours, charged with Oscar-napping. (Technically it was felony grand theft, and Bryants lawyer told the Associated Press that his client plans to forcefully and aggressively resist the charges against him. Bryant has pleaded not guilty.)

But McDormand isnt the only Academy Award winner who has had their statuette swiped. In fact, shes one of the lucky ones. Other Oscars have been jacked over the years, and those cases didnt wrap up quite as neatly. The award Hattie McDaniel won for 1939s Gone With the Wind disappeared from Howard University, where she had donated it, decades ago. In 2000, a man named Willie Fullgear found 52 stolen Oscars near a trash bin while looked for moving boxes, just days before the trophies were to be given out.

Here are a few other cases of stolen Oscars:

Whoopi Goldbergs 1991 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Ghost

Whoopi Goldberg holds her Oscar on the night she won it. (Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage)

Goldberg was able to hold on to her Best Supporting Actress award for 1990s Ghost much longer than McDormand. Almost 11 years after winning it, she gave it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to have it cleaned and replated. The academy boxed up the trophy and sent it via UPS to the Chicago company that manufactured the statues at the time, R.S. Owens and Company, where the package arrived  empty.

Several days after it was supposed to have been shipped, a security guard at the Ontario, Calif., airport found the trophy  in, of all places, the trash. Apparently, someone had unsealed the box and taken the Oscar, before resealing the empty box and sending it on its way. The thief obviously hadnt realized that each Oscar has a serial number, as well as the nameplate, which would make selling it tough.

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UPS then hand-delivered that statue back to the academy, where it was locked in a vault until Goldberg picked it up. She decided not to have it refurbished after all.

Oscar will never leave my house again, she vowed in a statement.

Olympia Dukakiss 1988 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Moonstruck

A thief tried to sell Olympia Dukakis the Oscar she won. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

Dukakis never let her Oscar leave her house  in fact, she kept it on display in her kitchen  but it was still swiped while she was away filming. A thief broke into her home in Montclair, N.J., taking the Oscar and nothing else, on May 19, 1989.

The perpetrator decided to hold the statuette for ransom; he called the stars son and tried to sell the statue back! Dukakiss son tried to set up a sting operation, but the thief didnt fall for it, the actress revealed on the Employee of the Month podcast in 2015.

What they did was, they took the little thing on it that said who it was for  they left that, interestingly enough, Dukakis said. She joked, it was out of respect for my work, I am assuming.

And then I told the Academy what had happened  of course it was in the news and everything  and they sold me another one, the Steel Magnolias star said.

Asked how much she had to pay for the replacement Oscar, Dukakis said it was about $75.

Margaret OBriens 1945 Juvenile Award for Meet Me in St. Louis

Margaret OBrien accepts her Oscar from Bob Hope in 1944. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

The 8-year-old actress who played Judy Garlands baby sister in the holiday classic received special recognition that was occasionally given to outstanding child actors. (Fun fact: The last such award was given in 1960, to a 14-year-old Hayley Mills for her turn in Pollyanna.)

OBrien added the Oscar to the room in her L.A. home where she displayed all her honors. Years later, the maid took it and two other awards home with her to polish, as she had done before, while OBriens mother was sick. The maid was fired after she didnt return to work, and she never returned the Oscar, the Los Angeles Times recounted in March 1995.

Years passed, and OBriens mother died without realizing the Oscar had gone missing. The actress, now 17, attempted to reach the maid over the phone, but she was unsuccessful.

Every time Id go to an antique shop or flea market, Id look around, OBrien told the Los Angeles Times. Id tell myself, If I dont lose hope, itll come around.

But it didnt, for decades.

Then, in December 1994, antiquer Steve Neimand spotted the Oscar at the Pasadena City College flea market. Hed noticed it at another flea market two years earlier, but this time, he decided to buy it. He thought it might be worth something, and another antique collector agreed to split with him the $500 cost.

To be honest, I thought she was the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street, Neimand said, referring to Natalie Wood. I dont know that I have ever seen any of the films Margaret OBrien was in.

The buyers decided to sell the Oscar at an upcoming auction, and a friend of academy executive director Bruce Davis spotted the news that it would soon be for sale. Davis expected the Oscar was the replacement the academy had given OBrien, but, no, it was the original.

Davis called a friend, who called the auction, who reached out to the Oscars new owners, and they generously agreed to return the award to OBrien. The only payment Neimand requested was a photo.

Margaret OBrien thanks Mark Nash, left, and Steve Neimand for returning her Oscar on Feb. 7, 1995. (Photo: Vince Bucci/AFP/Getty Images)

Can I get a picture of me handing the Oscar to OBrien so I can tell friends I once presented an Academy Award? he remembered asking.

The pair was also given two tickets to the 1995 Academy Awards and recognition in a news conference.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
Paris (AFP) - France's ailing Socialist Party lost another heavyweight on Thursday after Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced he was quitting the party which was chased from power last year by centrist President Emmanuel Macron.

Le Drian's membership of the party had come into question in recent days.

A number of senior Socialists had called on the 70-year-old political veteran to choose between the opposition benches and the government.

Le Drian, who served as defence minister under former Socialist president Francois Hollande before switching his loyalties to Macron, told Cnews television he had heard their calls.

"I am leaving the Socialist Party with a great deal of emotion, as a member for 44 years, and also with a lot of pride, having been involved in the campaigns of (former president) Francois Mitterrand, (former premier) Lionel Jospin and Francois Hollande with whom I am still close friends," he said.

Le Drian's departure is another blow to one of France's oldest parties which voters deserted en masse last year after five years of lacklustre rule by the unpopular Hollande.

Le Drian faulted the party for what he called a "sectarian, sterile" approach in failing to back Macron for president over the Socialists' own leftist candidate, contrasting their stance with that of Germany's Social Democrats who have agreed to form another coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.

He however ruled out joining Macron's Republic on the Move (LREM) party, which has attracted a slew of defectors from both the Socialists and right-wing Republicans.

His announcement came a day after four candidates for the leadership of the Socialists faced off in a TV debate.

The favourite is Olivier Faure, who heads the Socialist group in the lower house of parliament.
National economic adviser Gary Cohns departure reportedly signals disaster for the White House when it comes to making and enacting policies in the future, according to one Trump administration official.

Cohn, who still heads up President Donald Trumps National Economic Council until he leaves in the coming weeks, announced his resignation Tuesday amid the presidents pending trade war over tariffs for aluminum and steel products.

The former Goldman Sachs executive reportedly pushed back on the idea and had tried to convince Trump to drop the plan, but the president went ahead despite not consulting with other top agencies like the State, Treasury or Defense Departments.

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The impending departure of Cohn could mean more policy snafus for the Trump administration.

The number of bad ideas that have come through this White House that were thankfully killed dead, there are too many to count, a White House official said for Politicos report Tuesday. With Gary gone, I just think, from a policy perspective, it means disaster.

GettyImages-909379686

Getty Images/Mark Wilson

Cohns expected departure is just the latest for the Trump administration. Last week, White House Communications Director, and close confidant of the president, Hope Hicks announced she too was leaving, a significant blow to Trump. Staff secretary and policy coordinator Rob Porter, a Harvard law graduate, also recently resigned amid allegations of domestic abuse. Forty-three percent of top White House officials have now departed less than 14 months since Trump took office, according to the Brookings Institution.

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Porter and Cohn join the growing list of administration officials with specific policy expertise to have left their roles, leaving vacancies aplenty and fewer checks on Trump's decision making.

The financial markets reacted overwhelmingly negatively to Cohn's announcement, with the Dow opening down more than 300 points Wednesday.

Of all the Trump administration resignations, this will be the one most meaningful for markets," Michael ORourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading Institutional Services, told Fortune. Cohn was the administration official financial markets had the most confidence in. This opens the environment up to whole new wave of uncertainty. The likelihood of a trade war just jumped dramatically.

The Democrat Cohn was well known as pro-free-trade and stood against Trumps more nationalist economic policies, which helped him win the 2016 election.

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Indeed, Cohn may have felt he wasnt being tapped enough for his expertise. He reportedly told Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that he was only using 20 percent of his abilities and wanted to be in a position to use up to 80 to 90 percent, according to Axios.

The White House stated Cohn was not specifically leaving over one issue, according to The New York Times, and Trump himself praised Cohns work in a statement.

Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again, Trump said in a statement to The Times. He is a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.

Cohn, who is Jewish, also reportedly mulled leaving his post last year following the presidents both sides response to the violent and racially charged protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. In an interview, Cohn called out Trump's comments but ultimately stayed on for several more months.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh welcomed US Defence Secretary James Mattis and U.S. Marine Corps General Thomas Waldhauser at the Presidential Palace on 23 April 2017 in Djibouti: Jonathan Ernst-Pool/Getty Images

The top US general for Africa Command (Africom) said the military could face a significant ramifications if China takes control of a port in Djibouti.

Marine General Thomas Waldhauser explained during a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the port was important for re-supplying the US base in the country as well as a fuelling stop for Navy ships.

However, the Doraleh Container Terminal, along the Red Sea, may have been nationalised following a government dispute with the Dubai-based company which ran it in order to give control to China.

China has already built a military base in the small east African nation because of its geographic importance as a route to the Suez Canal.

Djibouti also hosts approximately 4,000 American personnel, including special operations forces. It also serves a launch pad for operations in Yemen and Somalia.

While "China has been on the African continent for quite some time...we as a combatant command have not dealt with it in terms of a strategic interest," Mr Waldhauser noted, adding that China could place limits or burdens on US supplies that come through the port.

"We are taking baby steps in that regard," he said, adding that he is in the process of re-writing US military strategy in order to take Chinas growing muscle on the continent into consideration.

Part of the issue was brought up by Republican Representative Bradley Byrne in a letter to Defence Secretary James Mattis.

Mr Byrne wrote about how the government Djibouti may have conducted an illegal seizure of the port from the Dubai-based company DP World, which is pursuing the matter in the London Court of International Arbitration.

What is to say that government wouldn't illegally terminate our lease before its term is up," Mr Byrne wrote.

Mr Waldhauser said China may be looking for more locations and ports to control in the near future.

China has made strides on the continent by providing aid in the form of infrastructure investment and, to a certain degree job creation, rather than traditional forms of food, medical, and economic aid many African nations have had to take from Western countries.

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The government also pledged a $124bn investment to connect Africa, Asia, and other ports through its Silk Road initiative.

As a result, it has boosted African oil and mining sectors and China is a destination for 15 to 16 percent of sub-Saharan Africas exports and the source of 14 to 21 percent of the regions imports, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

They have also constructed shopping malls, stadiums, and host nation government buildings, prompting Mr Waldhauser to say that the US will never outspend China on the continent.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US will give more than $533m in humanitarian aid for victims of conflicts and drought in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and countries bordering Lake Chad.

However, he said he thought Chinas investments on the continent encouraged dependency versus the US aid, which promotes sustainable growth.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing he did not know anything about the port situation, but China's cooperation with Africa was neither aimed at any third party nor aimed at excluding anyone.

"We hope that the US side can objectively and fairly view China's development and China-Africa cooperation," he told a daily news briefing.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- The Florida House passed a school safety bill Wednesday that includes new restrictions on rifle sales and a program to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the governor for his signature.

The vote of 67-50 reflected a mix of Republicans and Democrats in support and opposition. The measure, a response to the shootings at a Parkland high school that left 17 dead, is supported by the victims' families.

Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina, said there was enough good in the bill that it should pass.

"More needs to be done, and it's important for the country to be united in the same way the 17 families united in support of this bill," Pollack said after the vote. "My precious daughter Meadow's life was taken, and there's nothing I can do to change that, but make no mistake, I'm a father and I'm on a mission. I'm on a mission to make sure I'm the last dad to ever read a statement of this kind."

Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a former Parkland city commissioner, ended the eight hours of debate with an emotional account of seeing the high school after the shooting, attending victims' funerals and working with students and families while the House was forming the legislation. He broke down in tears after talking about how his 4-year-old son's writing teacher lost her daughter in the attack.

"You don't need to stand with me. I don't need you to stand with me. I need you to stand with the families," Moskowitz said.

Democratic Rep. Kristin Jacobs said she did not like the idea of arming teachers, but she voted yes. Republican Rep. Jay Fant said raising the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21 was unconstitutional, and he voted no.

"There is a cultural divide in this room, in this state and across the country. And there's a bill before us that is not perfect," said Jacobs, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

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The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons. It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools; establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.

Fant, who is running for attorney general, said the gun restrictions violated the constitution.

"I just can't imagine that Nikolas Cruz can commit such a heinous crime and then as a result we tell, potentially, a 20-year-old single mother living alone that she cannot purchase a firearm to defend herself," Fant said.

The Florida Senate narrowly passed the bill Monday. Gov. Rick Scott declined to say Wednesday whether he would sign the legislation.

Scott has repeatedly said he doesn't support arming teachers and pushed lawmakers adopt his proposal, which called for at least one law enforcement officer in every school and one for every thousand students who attend a school.

"I'm going to take the time and I'm going to read the bill and I'm going to talk to families," Scott told reporters.

Shooting suspect Cruz was formally charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder Wednesday, which could mean a death sentence if he is convicted.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale also charges the 19-year-old with 17 counts of attempted murder for the Valentine's Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in which 17 people died and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Cruz's public defender has said he will plead guilty if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, which would mean a life prison sentence. Prosecutors have 45 days to decide whether they want to seek the death penalty.

James and Kimberly Snead, the couple who gave Cruz a home after his mother died late last year, testified before the grand jury. James Snead and the couple's attorney, Jim Lewis, wore silver "17" pins to honor the victims of the shooting.

"We'll let justice take its course at this point," Lewis said. "They still don't know what happened, why this happened. They don't have any answers. They feel very badly for everybody."

___

Anderson reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Replogle reported from Parkland, Florida. Associated Press writers Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida, and Freida Frisaro, David Fischer and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP's complete coverage of the Florida school shooting here: https://apnews.com/tag/Floridaschoolshooting
At the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show, Hyundai unveiled its 'Le Fil Rouge (HDC-1)' concept, which the South Korean automaker says represents a new era for its design philosophy and provides a glimpse of what its future design cues will be. The name 'Le Fil Rouge' translates as 'common thread,' which the company claims is a reflection of its belief that the past, present and future designs of the brand are all intrinsically connected.

This new concept revealed to the world in Geneva is therefore an introduction to Hyundai's latest approach to design, which gets the grandiose title of 'Sensuous Sportiness.' This new design theme will be adopted by all future Hyundai vehicles, including everything from compact hatches to sedans and SUVs. The aim of the intriguing new theme is to bring instinctive beauty and to create emotional value and desirability in Hyundai's future vehicles.

One of the big challenges for the team behind the concept was to come up with a design that was new, fresh and achingly modern, but at the same time to also be instantly recognizable as a Hyundai in a crowd. They believe they have achieved this through a through a blend of layered crisp lines and pure volumes, and with a series of concave and convex forms that have been carefully orchestrated to provide what could even be described as an unashamedly sexy character.

Luc Donckerwolke, the Executive Vice President and Head of Hyundai Design Center, explains: "Le Fil Rouge' is a reinterpretation of Hyundai's design DNA that originated from the brand's historical Hyundai Coupe Concept in 1974. Building on our long history of creating distinctive and sporty character in vehicles, we will open a new era for Hyundai design."

Although Hyundai is keen to emphasize technology being a core principle of its philosophy, details about what the HDC-1 concept has going on beneath its sleek bodywork are almost non-existent at this point. The press release mentions the aircraft-inspired two-way air ventilation system and a panoramic floating display. But as for what the designers see as powering the car in the future, that remains a mystery at this point. What isn't in doubt though, is that this really is an incredibly stunning-looking car.
Jakarta (AFP) - A luxury yacht linked to allegations that $4.5 billion was looted from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB is being handed over to the FBI, which is probing the scandal, Indonesian police said Thursday.

US and Indonesian authorities last week searched the Cayman Island-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some $250 million, which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

"(The handing over) is in the process of being done," national police senior detective Daniel Silitonga told AFP.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB -- set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak -- in a campaign of fraud and money-laundering. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The suits list $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with the stolen funds, which US officials are seeking to recover.

Those assets include the 300-foot (90-metre) yacht which US officials said was purchased by Malaysian financier known as Jho Low, an unofficial adviser to 1MDB.

The ship's captain and about three dozen crew had been questioned but no one has been arrested so far, Silitonga said.

"Regarding the crew, we are still discussing it," he said, when asked if they would be taken into the FBI's custody.

Built in 2013, the Netherlands-made yacht has nine bedrooms, including a master suite with a hot tub, a helipad, a gym and spa, and a movie theatre, according to yachtcharterfleet.com.

Low, whose full is name Low Taek Jho, was said to have made key financial decisions linked to 1MDB, although he did not hold any official positions in Malaysia.

He has denied any wrongdoing and his current whereabouts are unknown.

After the boat seizure, a spokesman for Low noted that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had officially delayed its efforts to seize assets last year.

A US court reportedly granted a stay after a request from authorities, as they believed the civil proceedings could affect a criminal probe they are also conducting.

Low's spokesman said last week that the DoJ had "still not taken any steps to prove that any impropriety has occurred".

"It is therefore disappointing that, rather than reflecting on the deeply flawed and politically-motivated allegations, the DoJ is continuing with its pattern of global overreach -- all based on entirely unsupported claims of wrongdoing," he said.
By Jonathan Barrett and Henning Gloystein

SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A deadly earthquake that struck ExxonMobil's $19 billion gas project in the mountains of Papua New Guinea is sparking a backlash against the U.S. energy giant that could prove harder to fix than buried roads and broken pipes.

Some spooked locals blame Exxon <XOM.N> and its project partners of causing, or at least magnifying, the 7.5 magnitude quake on Feb. 26 and a series of intense aftershocks that continue to pound the impoverished and isolated region.

While firmly denied by Exxon and debunked by geologists, the accusations suggest that the project known as PNG LNG, one of the most successful liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments in the world, is sorely lacking goodwill from at least parts of the local population.

The concerns about the project  the countrys biggest revenue earner - are even being expressed at senior levels in the Papua New Guinea government.

PNG's Vice Minister for Petroleum and Energy, Manasseh Makiba, told Reuters in a phone interview there should be an inquiry to respond to local concerns that mother nature had reacted after the ground was disturbed by drilling.

"It could be man-made but that cannot be confirmed until a proper scientific inquiry can be done," said Makiba, who represents parts of the quake-hit area. "We need to resolve that."

PNGs Minister for Finance James Marape has also demanded answers from the company.

"In a world of science and knowledge, I now demand answer(s) from Exxon and my own government as to the cause of this unusual trend in my Hela," wrote Marape on his private feed on Facebook, referring to the quake-struck province.

He is among many who have lit up social media in PNG, with blogs and Facebook posts pointing the finger at the oil and gas sector's alleged contribution to the disaster.

Around Exxon's operation, communities remain fearful as the death toll climbs, with 18 more killed by a 6.7 magnitude aftershock on Wednesday.

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Papua New Guinea straddles the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

Chris McKee, acting director of the Geohazards Management Division in Port Moresby, said there was no link between the project and seismic activity, which has included more than 120 quakes of magnitude 4.5 and greater in the week after the initial hit.

"Earthquake activity has been going on much longer than the oil and gas industry presence in the region - there is no connection at all," McKee said.

Scientific evidence strongly suggests the earthquake was "naturally occurring and consistent with prior events", an Exxon spokeswoman said in a statement.

CORPORATE SUPPORT

Led by Exxon, with a one-third stake, and its Australian partners Oil Search <OSH.AX> and Santos <STO.AX>, PNG LNG could be shut for months as it inspects pipelines, the processing plant and the gas field for damage.

Exxon said it was giving $1 million to assist communities affected by the earthquake and was providing on-the-ground support to relief agencies so that resources could reach areas in greatest need.

"Logistics remains a challenge with roads cut and communication with remote communities difficult," a company spokeswoman said. "We are continuing to provide logistics and human resources to help aid agencies to deliver support to our communities for the long term as they recover from this event."

Oil Search Managing Director Peter Botten said he had not witnessed any local animosity towards the LNG project. Oil Search was constantly balancing the need for relief aid and keeping the community-sustaining business going when allocating post-quake resources, he said.

"There's a lot of concern the gods have been offended and specifically this is about education, and what earthquakes are about," Botten told Reuters in a phone interview from PNG's capital Port Moresby. "This is a communication issue."

Most of the nation's 8 million inhabitants live in remote communities where traditional beliefs remain strongly held.

SHAKY GROUND

Exxon has previously faced resentment in PNG, which contains vast natural resources but remains desperately poor.

Martyn Namorong, national coordinator for landowner rights and governance lobby group PNG Resource Governance Coalition, said the quake had reawakened concerns raised in 2012 when a landslide tore through a quarry used by Exxon, killing at least 25 people. (http://reut.rs/2D48Ggo)

"It's not just a localised thing or an ignorant thing. People are wondering what might be the contributing factor of oil and gas extraction," said Namorong, referring to the quake.

Exxon said at the time it had closed the Tumbi quarry five months before the landslide.

"Tumbi was a tragic event that had its own unique set of circumstances," Exxon told Reuters in an email, without elaborating.

Concerns flared again last year when the oil major had to evacuate staff due to unrest in Hela province, where the project's Hides Gas processing unit is located.

The trouble was linked to national elections and disputes over royalties from the PNG LNG project, which generates around $3 billion in sales per year at current LNG prices <LNG-AS>.

"PEOPLE ARE TERRIFIED"

The earthquake forced a closure of the Hides Gas processing facility which feeds a 700-km (435 miles) pipeline snaking through the jungle to the LNG plant and export terminal near Port Moresby.

The disruption in Papua New Guinea comes shortly after Exxon reported disappointing results, with PNG LNG a rare bright spot. Its shares have underperformed compared with its main competitors Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L>, Chevron <CVX>, BP <BP.L> and Total <TOTF.PA>.

"PNG LNG had reportedly been running at a very healthy 20 percent above nameplate capacity... There will be some hit to the PNG industry," said Readul Islam, research analyst at consultancy Rystad Energy.

If repairs take long, the quakes could even delay plans with France's Total to double output to around 16 million tonnes per annum at an estimated cost of $13 billion.

The companies plan to add three new LNG units, or trains, with two underpinned by gas from the Elk-Antelope fields, run by Total, and one underpinned by existing fields and a new Exxon-run field.

Repairs have been complicated by landslides blocking roads and the closure of the Komo airfield, which is the main lifeline of the region to the outside world.

Oil Search's Botten said, importantly, the integrity of the gas facilities had been maintained and there were no leaks.

Still, the aftershocks have kept the local population on edge.

"The people are terrified," said Australian Sally Lloyd, from near the quake zone in Mount Hagen. "They think the world is coming to an end."

(Reporting by Jonathan Barrett in SYDNEY and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; additional reporting by Gary McWilliams in HOUSTON and Tom Westbrook in SYDNEY; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
Tehran (AFP) - A woman who publicly removed her veil in protest against Iran's compulsory headscarf law has been sentenced to 24 months in prison, three months without parole, the judiciary said Wednesday.

Tehran's chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, who announced the sentence, did not give the woman's identity but said she intended to appeal the verdict, the judiciary's Mizan Online news agency reported.

The woman "encouraged moral corruption" in public, he said, criticising the light nature of the sentence and saying he would push for the full two-year penalty.

More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested since the end of December for publically removing their veils in defiance of the law.

Most have been released, but many are being prosecuted.

Iranian law in place since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 stipulates that all women, Iranian or foreign, Muslim or non-Muslim, must be fully veiled in public at all times.

But the zeal of the country's morality police has declined in the past two decades, and a growing number of Iranian women in Tehran and other large cities often wear loose veils that reveal their hair.

In some areas of the capital, women are regularly seen driving cars with veils draped over their shoulders.

Dolatabadi said he would no longer accept such behaviour, and had ordered the impound of vehicles driven by socially rebellious women.

The prosecutor said some "tolerance" was possible when it came to women who wear the veil loosely, "but we must act with force against people who deliberately question the rules on the Islamic veil", according to Mizan Online.
By Steven Scheer TEL AVIV (Reuters) - El Al Israel Airlines has appealed to the United Nations over a bid to reroute its services between Tel Aviv and India through Saudi Arabian airspace. Air India said on Wednesday it planned to begin thrice-weekly non-stop flights from Delhi to Tel Aviv this month via Saudi airspace. This route, shorter than the alternatives, has so far been off limits to all Israel-bound commercial planes. The Israeli flag carrier's CEO Gonen Usishkin said in a letter to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a U.N. body, it would be discriminatory for the Saudis to allow Air India to enter its airspace and not El Al. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel and lifting the airspace ban for El Al would offer further evidence of what appears to be thawing of ties. Both are U.S. allies with a shared concern over Iranian influence in the region. Flying through Saudi airspace will cut the Delhi-Tel Aviv journey time by about two hours, an Air India spokesman said. In his letter, Usishkin told ICAO head Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu that would give Air India "a significant and unfair advantage" over El Al that would clearly violate equality in aviation. El Al flies to Mumbai four times a week, along a route over Ethiopia and then east to India that, by avoiding Saudi airspace, has a journey time of seven hours rather than five. Usishkin said giving Air India preference would also violate the Chicago Convention, under which countries may not impose restrictions on flying over their territory or discriminate against airlines based on nationality. Israel, Saudi Arabia and India are parties to the convention. "I am requesting that the ICAO, which has the power to enforce the provisions of the Chicago Convention, take action ...to procure equal permission for El Al to fly above Saudi Arabia," Usishkin said. Last week, El Al sought help over the issue from industry lobby group the International Air Transport Association. (Reporting by Steven Scheer, Editing by Ori Lewis and John Stonestreet)
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's inconclusive parliamentary election leaves open a wide range of possible alliances, putting the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in the driver's seat as the largest party. The election is a political sea change for Italy, with voters shunning the parties that have governed the country in recent years, including the center-left Democratic Party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia (Go Italy!). The actual seats in parliament have yet to be definitively assigned, but results show 5-Star emerged as by far the biggest party with about 32 percent of the national vote. Preliminary seat allocations for the 630-seat lower house give 5-Star 222-224 seats. A four-party conservative coalition led by the far-right League gets 267, and the center-left bloc dominated by the PD 123-125. Italy has a long history of finding a way out of political stalemates. It will be up to President Sergio Mattarella to guide talks and name a potential prime minister, but that will not happen before April. Here are some of the possible scenarios: 5-STAR AND THE LEAGUE The solution feared most by markets is a marriage between 5-Star and the League. The two would have a parliamentary majority and there are some overlaps in their manifestos, with both calling for tax cuts, greater spending on welfare and a rejection of EU budget rules. Both used to call for Italy to quit the euro, but while 5-Star says the moment has passed, the League says it still wants to leave the single currency at the earliest politically feasible time. League leader Matteo Salvini last year said he was open to hooking up with 5-Star, but has since said he will not abandon his rightist bloc. 5-STAR AND PD Five-Star in combination with the PD is another possibility, and one more reassuring for the markets. The PD, which has governed since 2013, has however been the main target of 5-Star's vitriol and there is deep mutual hostility between the two parties. The PD's leader Matteo Renzi, who said he would resign after its dismal election showing, ruled out the PD supporting 5-Star and said it would go into opposition. But the party is in such disarray that it is not clear if it will follow its outgoing leader's bidding. CENTRE RIGHT WITH SOME OPPONENTS League leader Salvini says the center right, as the largest coalition, will seek to govern, and claims leadership of the bloc that Berlusconi has steered since 1994. The League took some 17 percent of the overall vote, compared to 14 percent for Berlusconi's Forza Italia. The center right as a bloc drew 37 percent of the vote promising to loosen the state's purse strings by passing a "flat tax" of 23 percent for all households. The center right would need about half the PD's lawmakers to swing to their side in order to have a majority in parliament, and the center-left party may think twice before backing a government led by the far-right League. ALL IN The idea of 5-Star, the PD and the main center-right parties all joining together is another option. This would give 5-Star, as the biggest party, a major stake in government, with all parties agreeing before its formation what the government should do while in power. The lifespan of such an administration would be about a year, in theory, though it could end up lasting longer. During the campaign, 5-Star appeared open to such a solution in the case of electoral deadlock, as long as others accepted its conditions. NEW ELECTIONS President Mattarella is the man pulling the strings in the post-vote period. He will choose someone to try to form a government as he tried to persuade former rivals to get over the rancor of the campaign. If he fails, he may have no choice but to dissolve parliament and repeat the vote. That is the option the president most wants to avoid, sources told Reuters before the election. (Reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Steve Scherer and Gavin Jones; editing by Andrew Roche)
President Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City on Wednesdaydespite last weeks White House announcement that he had his security clearance downgraded.

Related: Jared Kushner's Temporary Security Clearance Sets Dangerous Precedent and Should Be Revoked, Watchdog Tells White House

The meeting will center on immigration, trade, security and economics, a Trump administration official told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. It comes 10 days after the U.S. and Mexico canceled a meeting due to disagreements on funding Trumps promised border wall.

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Kushners Mexico trip is the first true indication that he will continue to play an integral role in the administration's foreign policy, even though his downgrade has barred him from accessing classified information that is presumably key to doing his job. That includes the presidents daily briefing featuring the most pressing information that U.S. intelligence agencies collect from around the world.

Chief of staff John Kelly, who made the decision to downgrade Kushners security clearance, said in a statement last week, I have full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico.

However, Kelly did not elaborate on how Kushners downgrade would affect his work, which includes leading relations with Mexico and China and creating a Middle East peace plan.

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A White House spokesman for Kushner did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek on Wednesday.

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It is not the first time Trump has deployed a member of his administration without permanent security clearance to take on foreign affairs issues.

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Last month, Kushners wife and fellow senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump briefed South Korean President Moon Jae-in before the Winter Olympics closing ceremony on her fathers new North Korea sanctions despite reportedly only having temporary a security clearance.

Asked if the first daughter had the appropriate security clearance to administer such a talk, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin dodged the core of the question and said, she has the appropriate access to brief the president.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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After the Trump administration filed suit against California over three of its sanctuary state laws, Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech in Sacramento on Wednesday, saying, California, we have a problem.

A series of actions and events has occurred that directly and adversely impact the work of our federal officers, Sessions said in his speech to a group of several hundred law enforcement officers. Singling out Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for tipping off undocumented immigrants about upcoming ICE raids in and around the sanctuary city, Sessions said, A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law and creates an open-borders system. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted.

I understand that we have a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration, Sessions continued in his Sacramento speech. But the law is in the books, and its purpose is clear. There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is the supreme law of the land.'

California Governor Jerry Brown denounced Sessions on Wednesday, saying in a press conference, This is really unprecedented for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to come out to California and act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer  This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy. Its not wise, its not right, and it will not stand.

Sessions visit to Sacramento drew protesters out in great number on Wednesday, congregating outside the hotel where Sessions was speaking to show their opposition to the lawsuit and support for immigrants.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has a message for Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf: "How dare you."

Sessions has claimed that the "radical" Schaaf let "800 wanted criminals" off the hook when she warned residents of an incoming immigration raid across the Bay Area on February 24 via her official Twitter account.

"Those are 800 wanted criminals that are now at large in that community...that ICE will now have to pursue with more difficulty in more dangerous situations, all because of one mayors irresponsible action," Sessions said on Wednesday in Sacramento at a law enforcement symposium hosted by a correctional officers' union.

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Sessions was quoting acting ICE director Tomas Homan, who told him that, because of Schaff's tweet, the agency "failed to make 800 arrests"more than three times the number of immigrants that ICE says it detained during a four-day raid across Northern California that ended on Saturday.



ICE did not respond to Newsweek's repeated requests to substantiate claims that Schaaf's warning directly led to 800 criminals escaping justice. Instead, it provided a copy of a previous press release in which Homan says he "believes" Schaaf is responsible for "many" of the failed arrests.

In a statement issued Wednesday afternoon, Schaaf responded to Sessions in kind, saying the Trump administration's agenda is based on "bigotry and petty vindictiveness."

Schaaf also pushed back against Sessions' characterization of immigrants as criminals. "How dare you vilify members of our community by trying to frighten the American public into thinking that all undocumented residents are dangerous criminals," she said.



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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Last week, Homan said the Justice Department is "reviewing" Schaaf's warning tweets and public statements days prior to the raid for possible obstructions of justice; the Justice Department told Newsweek it does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.

Schaaf has so far defended her actions.

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"Everything that Ive done has been legal, Schaaf said, as reported by KPIX 5.



Sessions made the accusations less than a day after the Department of Justice filed suit against California, its Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Xavier Becerra for interfering with federal immigration enforcement through legislation that blocks city officials and employers in the state from actively assisting in federal immigration enforcement when not forced to do so via a federal court order.



According to the federal government, so-called "sanctuary policies" break federal law and put immigration officers at risk as they are not able to arrest immigrants with the help of local police. California disagrees, arguing that state governments are not required under the Constitution to enforce federal immigration laws.

In January, the Oakland City Council strengthened the cities' sanctuary policies, voting unanimously to bar any branch of city government from cooperating with ICE in any capacity before, during, or after planned ICE raids within the city limits. The vote came a day after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that ICE planned to arrest upwards of 1,500 immigrants in the Bay Area within a matter of days.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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People are stupefied by how Jennifer Lawrence goes from dark hair to platinum blond with just one box of color in Red Sparrow. (Photo: 20th Century Fox)

Going to a professional colorist is always best, but sometimes people still take a shot at dyeing their own hair. And the way Jennifer Lawrence does it in the new thriller Red Sparrow has many people thinking that her at-home hair-coloring efforts were completely inaccurate.

Many have called out a specific moment in Red Sparrow when Lawrence dyes her hair from dark brown to platinum blond. The baffling issue with this scene is that she miraculously gets the dye job done with only one box of dye and without wearing any gloves. To make matters worse, she then goes swimming in a chlorinated pool.

One reviewer, who also happens to be a digital beauty editor at Allure, took to Twitter in a post that has gained hundreds of likes and lots of retweets:

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The chatter surrounding Lawrences odd dye job didnt stop at one post. Others joined in on the conversation, posting about how dissatisfying the stunt was with commentary such as, the most unrealistic thing about red sparrow was when jennifer lawrences character went from brunette to blonde in one sitting.

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Yahoo Lifestyle caught up with hair colorist Raluca Dobos of Butterly Studio in New York to find out just how unusual Lawrences hair-coloring scene was. When asked if one box of color would be enough to get the job done, Dobos responded, Absolutely not; the process involves lightener, followed by toner, gloss, or color. Its called a double process and cannot be achieved with one box of color.

Another New York-based hairstylist, Monae Everett, advises that the first step has a lot to do with decolorizing or bleaching the hair to remove all of the brown and warmth from the strands. In order to go blond, the hair must be lightened through brown, red, orange, and yellow stages, she explains. Normally this takes one or two bleaching sessions, and at least three to four hours before you can add the platinum blond color.

In essence, to go from dark brown to platinum blond is actually a rather lengthy process and can take hours to complete. This is definitely an in-salon process that could take a few applications, Dobos explains to Yahoo Lifestyle. The process can be damaging if the technician is not careful. You have to make sure you have a strong consultation with your tech ensuring you fully understand the process.

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Additionally, the chances of Lawrence swimming in chlorine right after having her hair dyed and having the hue last are slim to none in real life. Because hair is porous, it can become a green tone when submerged in a chlorinated pool, says Dobos. The chlorine buildup will also leave the hair dry and brittle.

In a nutshell, Lawrences hair-coloring scene could have been reworked a little, or maybe a lot  but hey, anything goes on the big screen, right?

As previously pointed out by Vogue, Lawrence has had many hair transformations. In The Hunger Games, she had braided dark brown hair, and in Serena, her character wore a sultry blond 60s wave. Its safe to say, this leading lady sure knows how to get into character, but maybe film writers need a better lesson in beauty?

What hair look do you think we will see her in next? Sound off below.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden is campaigning for Pennsylvania Democratic candidate Conor Lamb: Getty Images

Former Vice President Joe Biden has compared Democratic candidate Conor Lamb to his late son Beau while campaigning for the Democratic nominee in a tight congressional race in Pennsylvania.

Mr Bidens appearance on the campaign trail shows that Democrats are pulling out all the stops in their mission to recapture majorities in Congress. The special election on March 13 is being widely watched to see if its another sign that Democrats may sweep the midterm elections in November.

He has the capacity to do what Ive spent my whole life doing, and that is getting back working-class people supporting us again, because he cares about them, Mr Biden said of Mr Lamb as he and the 33-year-old candidate shook hands at a union apprenticeship shop in the Pittsburgh suburbs, according to the Washington Post.

The ex-Vice President also paid Mr Lamb the ultimate compliment: He reminds me of my son Beau.

Beau Biden, an Iraq War veteran who served as Attorney General of Delaware, died of cancer in 2015, when his father was serving as Vice President to former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Mr Lamb is a Marine veteran and former prosecutor.

I hope the Republicans find some candidates - even if it means we lose some races - who are cut from the same cloth, Mr Biden said at an afternoon rally.

Mr Lamb was once considered a long-shot Democratic candidate. But a new poll this week showed him holding a slight lead over his Republican competitor, Rick Saccone, an ally of President Donald Trump.

Mr Saccone both outspent and out-polled his Mr Lamb in the first months of the race. However, Mr Lamb in February reported raising $3.3m in the latest filing period, compared to Mr Saccones $700,000.

The special election is being held to fill Pennsylvanias 18th congressional district seat, which was left vacant by former Republican Representative Tim Murphy, who resigned in October.

Mr Trump won the southwestern Pennsylvania district by double digits in 2016. But the Presidents antics and controversial policies, such as proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, appear to have Republicans concerned about the results of next weeks election.

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Within hours of Mr Bidens appearance, the National Republican Campaign Committee threw another $619,664 into the race, bringing its total ad buy to more than $3.5m, the Post reported.

On Saturday, Mr Trump will hold a rally for Mr Saccone, a state representative and former military intelligence officer.


Last month, Star Wars actor Oscar Isaac gave Finn and Poe shippers a new hope.

After signing a fans poster that read FINNPOE IS ENDGAME, Isaac incited a million more fan theories by adding the words fully endorsed below his signature. The stamp of approval was all the shipping community needed  theyd been rooting for the two franchise characters, Isaacs Poe Dameron and John Boyegas Finn, to get together since Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted in 2015.

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So, could a Finn and Poe relationship actually be the endgame? Will they get together in future films? According to Finn himself, the answer is probably... no.

During an interview with Boyega about his role in the upcoming Pacific Rim Uprising, HuffPost asked about the possible Star Wars ship that fans so badly want to see: a queer love story between a former stormtrooper and a revered resistance pilot.

I dont know if thats going to happen, Boyega told HuffPost. I think we already established a love between Finn and Rey, and now a sneaky kiss from Rose. I mean, just so many. They need to all leave me alone, man. Im trying to just be handsome and sexy on my own, and theyre interrupting.

Jokes aside, the actor continued:

Theres too many options, man. But I dont know. I really, really dont know. I dont know whats going on with that. I feel like weve already established a connect and to not hold firm on that, I dont know how that would work. But thats up to [film director J.J. Abrams].

Boyega previously told Mashable that fans would know exactly which way Poe and Finns possible romance was headed after Last Jedi. In other words, he seems to believe Finns kiss with Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) was a kiss of death for #FinnPoe shippers.

(Photo: Lucasfilm)

But maybe that kiss wasnt the be-all and end-all of fanfic dreams.

Last year, io9 uncovered a detail in Star Wars the Last Jedi the Visual Dictionary that further fuels the #FinnPoe flames, pointing out that Poe wears a ring from his mother and that hes waiting to share it someday with the right partner.

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Yes, partner.

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Poe was also apparently the one who patched up the damage to Finns jacket after the lightsaber fight with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver).

If thats not love, just blast me out into space with Admiral Ackbar.

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Its also interesting that Boyega mentioned Rey as a possible love interest, since both he and Rey actress Daisy Ridley previously described their characters relationship as more brother-sister.

Perhaps well just have to wait until Star Wars IX arrives and, hopefully, answers our questions. As Boyega would later tell HuffPost, he wants to know what the heck is going on with Finns story, too. Why did he defect from the First Order anyway? Could he help others do the same?

In the meantime, the actor talked about Uprising, in which he both produces the film and plays the role of Jake Pentecost, the son of Idris Elbas gone-but-not-forgotten character Stacker Pentecost  aka the guy who canceled the apocalypse in 2013s original Pacific Rim. With Stacker gone, it seems up to Jake to save the world from giant monsters this time around.

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Whats it like being Idris Elbas son?

I mean, lord knows if I experienced that, Id have loads of stories for you. But it was nice to get a congratulations message [from him] before filming. So yeah, hes a cool dude, man.

In the trailer, it looked like you say a line about the apocalypse in a speech you give, but that line wasnt in the movie. Why not?

In the real world, you wouldnt say the exact same thing your dad said when you werent even there, so thats not even something that Jake thinks about. Hes just giving the kids a speech about their circumstances. Its a different time now. Dad made the epic speech saying he was going to cancel the apocalypse, and he did it! [Laughs] So now Ive got to make another speech, just to clarify.

In the movie, you fight inside giant robots called Jaegers. What weapons would be on your own John Boy-jaeger?

A grill. And an inside kitchen with movie and cinema facilities and just a big massive AK-47  I think Ill just go classic with it.

I love Adventure Time, and I saw you tweet about this, but in Star Wars youre Finn. In this movie, youre Jake. Was that an intentional Adventure Time reference?

No, it was a coincidence. I didnt plan for Finn to be called Finn in Star Wars and Jake to be called Jake in Pacific Rim. It was a coincidence actually. And yeah, I love Adventure Time. Why wouldnt they have a special? They should do a special. Ill do it. Ill play a cat.

Speaking of other roles, in your recent Reddit AMA someone threw out the idea of you playing Blade, and you seemed into it. Is that something youre thinking about or would want to do?

You guys cant write off our guy Snipes, man. Snipes needs to come back for at least one movie, man. Cmon, dude. Yeah, I mean, Im a Wesley Snipes advocate, so I think we should keep it that way. I dont think hes done yet.

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Like your dad Idris Elba, Ive seen your name thrown out for James Bond. What do you think about that possibility?

Ive heard about it in interviews, but thats about it. Thats an interesting one. Yeah, thats an interesting one. I think Daniel Craig is still holding the flag. Lets let him do what he needs to do.

Have you already had ideas for Pacific Rim 3?

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean ideas are going all over the place and right now Im basically jotting down things. Id like to see the way the story would go, [it] would be cool, and maybe if we could build up a certain specific trend in making each film have a tone. I think that would be creatively exciting. The first movie was obviously Guillermo del Toros specific tone, and this one was kind of like a live action anime. And to see the possibilities of where a third one would go would be very interesting.

In a New York Times interview, Harrison Ford said youre not really replacing Han Solo because you have bigger and better ideas. What are these big ideas? Where do you want to see Finn go?

To be honest with you, I would love to get much more of a layered Finn and insight to his backstory and why he wanted to defect. For me, its so strange in the Star Wars universe to have a stormtrooper breakout of years and years of conditioning. Perhaps he could transfer that same kind of energy and power to other stormtroopers. You dont know. But I think theres an opportunity to do something unique with all the characters, including Rey and Poe, and well see how that goes.

Pacific Rim Uprising hits theaters March 23, 2018.

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Supreme Leader Snoke

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Paris (AFP) - Jupiter's tempestuous, gassy atmosphere stretches some 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) deep and comprises a hundredth of the planet's mass, studies based on observations by NASA's Juno spacecraft revealed Wednesday.

The measurements shed the first light on what goes on beneath the surface of the largest planet in the Solar System, which from a distance resembles a colourful, striped glass marble.

"Galileo viewed the stripes on Jupiter more than 400 years ago. Until now, we only had a superficial understanding of them," said Yohai Kaspi from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, an author of one of four studies published in Nature.

Up to a depth of about 3,000 km, Juno's data showed, Jupiter comprises a psychedelic swirl of cloud bands and jet streams blown by powerful winds, in opposite directions and at different speeds.

But underneath, the planet's liquid core of hydrogen and helium rotates uniformly, behaving almost like a solid body, researchers found.

"The result is a surprise because this indicates that the atmosphere of Jupiter is massive and extends much deeper than we previously expected," Kaspi told AFP.

Earth's atmosphere, by comparison, holds less than a millionth of the planet's total mass.

"It's an almost 50-year puzzle in planetary science that is solved," said another study author, Tristan Guillot from the Universite Cote d'Azur in France.

- Understanding our past -

"We didn't know whether a gaseous planet like Jupiter rotates with zones and belts all the way to the centre, or whether on the contrary the atmospheric patterns are skin-deep."

The findings were the result of unparallelled measurements of Jupiter's gravity field by Juno, in orbit around the closest gas giant to Earth since July 2016.

Other observations included a rash of massive cyclones at the planet's poles, the likes of which have not been observed on any other Solar System planet.

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It is not known how the cyclones are formed, or how they persist without merging into one.

"The first and most important question that Juno aims to answer is how our Solar System was formed and consequently (to) understand more about its evolution," another study author, Alberto Adriani from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics, told AFP.

"Any piece of knowledge we can add in understanding Jupiter, which is very probably the first planet formed (around the Sun), is a step towards that direction."
By Ana Isabel Martinez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Senior adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, will visit Mexico on Wednesday and meet President Enrique Pena Nieto, amid strained relations over trade and Trump's demands that Mexico pay for a border wall. The visit by Trump's son-in-law comes after Trump and Pena Nieto late last month postponed plans for the Mexican leader's first visit to the White House. The Mexican foreign ministry announced Kushner's trip in a statement late on Tuesday. A senior U.S. administration official confirmed the visit, adding that meetings will focus on security, immigration and trade, among other issues. Trump wants Mexico to pay for the wall he wants built to keep out illegal immigrants. Mexico's leaders have consistently rejected the demand, and the planned White House summit was postponed following a telephone call between the two leaders that turned sour over Trump's insistence. On Monday, as the latest round of the negotiations over a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were wrapping up, Trump repeated that the trade deal was bad for the United States and that Mexico was not doing enough to stop drugs flowing into the country. Kushner is a top foreign policy adviser, but has recently lost access to the most valued U.S. intelligence report, U.S. officials told Reuters last week. Some analysts in Mexico view the visit as a chance to repair a key U.S. relationship and for Kushner to prove his usefulness to the White House. "I see it as one of the few things of consequence that he can do that don't require security clearance," said Agustin Barrios Gomez, a former federal congressman and head of the working group on the future of U.S.-Mexico relations at the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. Mexican officials did not say whether the plans for a Trump-Pena Nieto summit was on the agenda. CLOSE TIES Accompanied on his visit by other U.S. diplomats and security officials, the foreign ministry statement said Kushner will also meet Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray. Among Pena Nieto's closest advisers, Videgaray helped orchestrate then-candidate Trump's visit to Mexico in 2016, a trip that was widely panned in Mexico as the Mexican president failed to confront the New York businessman and reality TV star over his anti-Mexican rhetoric on the campaign trail. Videgaray lost his job as finance minister over the trip's fallout, but was later appointed foreign minister after Trump's surprise win in the U.S. presidential election. Videgaray has maintained close ties with Kushner ever since, including several visits to the White House, most recently an unsuccessful effort to try to broker a Trump-Pena Nieto meeting. Despite Trump's sharp criticism of Mexico and its migrants, Videgaray said last month during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that ties between the two countries were closer than during the previous U.S. administration. The bilateral relationship was again rocked last weekend as Trump announced plans for tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum that he later said served as an incentive to reach a favorable NAFTA re-negotiation. Trump has repeatedly blamed the pact for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs and has threatened to ditch it unless it can be reworked to better suit U.S. interests. Trump's remarks on trade have unsettled financial markets, often causing the Mexico's peso currency to shed value. (Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Simon Cameron-Moore)
NBC was incredibly inappropriate to ask first daughter Ivanka Trump if she believed her fathers sexual misconduct and assault accusers during an interview in South Korea last month, Lara Trump said Thursday. The interview was the latest sign that the media is out "to get" the Trump family, the president's daughter-in-law added during an appearance on Fox Business Network.

If it wasnt for a double standard the media would have no standard at all in this country, said Lara Trump, who is married to the presidents son, Eric. Its shocking, it is ridiculous, its sad, I could give you a million words to describe this but its not surprising, because the people who are in charge of the mainstream media are out to get the president and our entire family at every turn.

Lara Trump also praised her sister-in-law and said NBC had not been very kind to the president. I give her a lot of credit for going on NBC quite frankly because they havent been very kind to the president, she said of Ivanka Trump. And I thought this was incredibly inappropriate to ask Ivanka and she handled with such class, such grace.

Trending: Trump's Threat of Nuclear War With North Korea Is Making a Lot of Money for These Weapons Companies

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Ivanka Trump, a senior adviser in her fathers administration, spoke with NBC for a wide-ranging interview that aired February 26 during which she defended President Donald Trump from his accusers but also deemed the question inappropriate. I believe my father, she said. I know my father. So I think I have that right as a daughter to believe my father."

President Trump has long been critical of the mainstream media for reporting on his business failures, links to Russia, perceived mismanagement of the White House and sexual history, among other controversies. Before he was elected, the Republican business mogul was accused by at least 19 women of sexual harassment and assault. The president has denied his accusers claims.

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Lara Trump has for months been part of the presidents efforts to circumvent the mainstream media. In August, she started hosting an online program called Real News on the presidents official Facebook page. She highlighted stories that were more positive toward the president and stated she bet[s] you havent heard about because theres so much fake news out there.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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The most pervasive human fear is the fear of the unknown. One of the things we know very little about, unfortunately, is what lies inside the frozen layer of the tundra known as the permafrost. Long thought to be permanently frozen, its now melting much more rapidly than we ever thought, reported NASA scientists in a study in The Cryosphere on Tuesday. A lot of the stuff that lies within it, they warn, will be released within the next few decades.

Of course, theyre not completely clueless about whats trapped there. Their paper concerns the massive stores of carbon that they know lurk deep in the frozen layers of the tundra, trapped there years ago as leaves and other organic material that never decayed. The tundra covers some 5.5 percent of the Earths surface, and at the rate the permafrost is thawing due to climate change, they write, the amount of atmospheric carbon that gets released over the the next 300 years will be ten times the amount of carbon we put into the air in 2016. This, of course, will only make climate change worse.

There is one small, encouraging caveat: Not all of the worlds permafrost will release carbon at the same rate. The permafrost in southern Alaska and southern Siberia may already be melting, the researchers write, but the model they created for the study showed that this region wont really start releasing its carbon until the end of the 2100s. Even more unexpectedly, the permafrost even farther north  where its much colder  is expected to release its carbon sooner, even though it is still mostly frozen now.

Permafrost melting on Alaska's North Slope, which is expected to become a permanent source of carbon before 2100.

In a statement released on Tuesday, lead author Nicholas Parazoo of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted his teams surprise at this finding: Some of the very cold, stable permafrost in the highest latitudes in Alaska and Siberia appeared to be sheltered from extreme climate change, and we didnt expect much impact over the next couple hundred years. But sure enough, its this permafrost in the frigid northern Arctic that scientists will be most worried about in our lifetimes. They note that the peak transition  when its northerly position on the globe ceases to protect it from the Earths rising temperature  could occur in the next 40 to 60 years.

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NASA's Earth Observatory captured this image of Alaska's rapidly thawing North Slope in 2010.

Their unexpected finding that warmer, more southerly regions of permafrost will release carbon more quickly than the north can be explained by its relative closeness to plant growth in more temperate regions. Plants are key to limiting the effects of climate change because they sop up carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis, and as the planet warms, the one small upside will be that plants will be able to grow further north than before. The plants are expected to be able to stave off the worst effects of carbon release from the permafrost until the late 2100s.

Carbon seems like it will be the biggest of the problems to be released from deep within the Earth as climate change worsens, but its not the only thing lurking in the permafrost. Nuclear waste, ancient viruses, and dead bodies will all likely emerge over time, though none are quite as scary as the carbon dioxide and methane that we cant see.

Photos via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Charles Miller, NASA Earth Observatory, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Charles Miller

Photos via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Charles Miller, NASA Earth Observatory, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Charles Miller

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The Hollywood agent accused of groping Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast member Terry Crews wont be prosecuted for the alleged crime.

Both the Los Angeles city attorney and the Los Angeles County district attorney reportedly will not prosecute Adam Venit, who Crews accused of groping him at a Hollywood party in February 2016.

TMZ is reporting that the district attorney rejected a felony filing and sent the case to the city attorney, who determined that the alleged misdemeanor couldnt be prosecuted after a one-year statute of limitations expired. The alleged assault took place nearly 21 months before Crews filed a complaint.

If the DA had decided the alleged assault was a felony rather than a misdemeanor, the statute of limitations would not have applied.

Crews first publicly discussed the incident last November, and said it happened when he was with his wife at a party the previous year.

Venit, a high-ranking executive at William Morris Endeavor, the agency that represented Crews, allegedly began making crude gestures at the actor with his tongue.

Im looking and Im like, is this a joke? Crews said last year. And he comes over to me, I stick my hand out and he literally takes his hand and puts it and squeezes my genitals.

Crews agent at the time, Brad Slater, assured him the company would handle the matter. Venit did apologize to Crews, but suffered no penalty until the story broke in November.

Venit was briefly suspended but is back at work.

Although Venit will not face criminal charges, Crews is still suing him in civil court.

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Tarana Burke (center), originator of the #MeToo campaign, leads marchers.

Protesters hold up signs denouncing sexual misconduct.

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Protesters hold up signs denouncing sexual misconduct.

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A protester covered her body in messages condemning sexual assault.

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Protesters hold signs as they march through Hollywood.

One woman holds a sign echoing the #MeToo social media campaign.

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After leading by example for quite a while, Snap is going to start putting AR lenses built by third-party creators front-and-center in the Snapchat app.

The move, first reported by Mashable, will bring creator content to the main stage.

While third-party filters have been a hallmark of the app for quite a while, Snapchat has generally stuck to its own guns when it comes to its lenses. That's previously been the case largely because there just hadn't been a way for creators to build them. Then late last year, Snap launched Lens Studio, which gave creators the ability to sprinkle some of the startup's AR magic onto their work.

Things won't be all that different for users, though there will be a little "i" icon on third-party lenses that can be tapped to reveal details about who created it. These lenses seem to fall in the "do it for exposure" arena right now as creators aren't being compensated and they aren't allowed to brand the lenses because they aren't "promoted lenses."

Creators building stuff on Lens Studios need to opt-in to potentially have their creations selected. This rollout will start popping up in users' feeds later this month.
Women all over the world are celebrating International Womens Day, including some of your favorite celebrities. Future royal Meghan Markle, along with her fiance Prince Harry, made an appearance in Birmingham to talk about womens issues with the locals. Markle, whos long been an advocate for womens rights, and Prince Harry visited Millennium Point, an organization that helps inspire female scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Upon arriving to Birmingham, Prince Harry met 10-year-old Sophia, Richards who expressed her desire to be an actress like Markle. Prince Harry brought her over to meet his fiance directly where they shared a sweet embrace. Other celebrities celebrated International Womens Day on social media. Several companies got involved too, like Legos who celebrated the women in Nasa, and Cartoon Network, who shared their many empowering female characters.But women werent the only ones celebrating International Womens Day. Men also took the time to honor the women in their lives.
By Dave Graham and Frank Jack Daniel MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - White House advisor Jared Kushner left Mexico City on Wednesday with prospects no nearer for a summit between his father-in-law President Donald Trump and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, as both sides said progress on joint policy concerns was needed first. Kushner met with Pena Nieto and other top Mexican officials in a bid to soothe recent tensions after it emerged that a phone call between the two presidents had gone badly due to Trump's insistence that Mexico pay for a border wall he wants to build to stop illegal immigrants. During the past week, Trump delivered several barbs against Mexico, whose leaders were dismayed by the U.S. president's decision to announce protectionist tariffs during complex talks to rework the NAFTA trade pact. After Kushner left, Mexico's foreign ministry said officials from both nations agreed that any possible meeting between Trump and Pena Nieto would depend on progress made on areas of mutual concern such as revamping NAFTA, security and migration. The ministry issued a short statement saying that Kushner, who came with other U.S. officials, had discussed issues such as the fight against drug trafficking, border security, migration, jobs and Central America with his Mexican counterparts. It made no mention of the border wall or how progress might be measured. Pena Nieto was accompanied by Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, who earlier held a separate meeting with Kushner at his ministry. Spirits briefly improved during Kushner's trip when the White House said it might exempt Mexico and Canada from Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminum, an idea he has floated as a trade-off in return for progress on NAFTA. Mexican diplomats and opposition leaders had been skeptical about how much Kushner could achieve on his visit, despite the close relationship he has forged with Videgaray. They also doubted his presence would change Trump's attitude to Mexico. "I don't doubt that Kushner will say positive things, because he's not Trump," said Agustin Basave, a senior opposition lawmaker in the Party of the Democratic Revolution. "But it doesn't mean a thing if the next day - or even the same night - Trump sends a tweet saying the opposite." Many officials in Mexico argue Pena Nieto has little to gain from meeting Trump and are doubtful it will happen soon given the American's unpopularity south of the border and penchant for blaming Mexicans for the United States' problems. A senior U.S. official said one goal of Kushner's trip was to reduce tensions after the testy phone call between the two leaders, that U.S. officials said led to the postponement of a planned summit. The call also dampened the mood at the outset of a seventh round of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The talks ended on Monday in Mexico City. Talks between Kushner and Economy Minister Guajardo is Mexico's top NAFTA negotiator, broached the subject of working towards a "speedy" renegotiation of the deal, Mexico's government said. (Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Michael O'Boyle in Mexico City and Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Miami Heat shooting guard Dwyane Wade on March 7 spoke with students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students were killed by a gunman on February 14.

Wade told the students he was inspired by them and thanked them, before saying, MSD strong, am I right?, prompting cheers.

This video was shared by Ryan Deitsch, who has become one of the more prominent and politically active Stoneman Douglas students in the wake of the shooting.

The welcome Wade received appears to contrast with that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who visited hours earlier. According to reports, DeVos visit was closed to media, and students complained she had not spoken to many of them or answered their questions. Credit: Ryan Deitsch via Storyful
Michelle Obama speaks during the second day of the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago on Nov. 1, 2017. (Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski / Reuters)

Michelle Obama is back with more great life advice.

The former first lady recently interviewed four young women from around the world for an International Womens Day feature for Refinery29. In partnership with the Obama Foundation, Refinery29s feature spotlighted the four teenagers from Nepal, Ghana, Guatemala and Chicago to highlight the important of empowering girls with education.

Alejandra Teleguario Santizo, a 17-year-old from Guatemala who has organized her community to rally against sexual violence, asked Michelle Obama what advice she would give to young women like herself who are looking to blaze their own paths and become leaders.

My best advice to girls, including my own daughters, is do not be afraid to fail. So often, our own fear of failure is the thing that keeps us back, Obama said. We think we have to be perfect, that if we make even the tiniest mistake, its a catastrophe. Thats simply not true!

She added that the only way to succeed is life is by failing and failing well.

You cannot let your failures eat you up or make you want to quit, Obama said. You have to learn from them, let them challenge and inspire you to do more  to take some risks and to step outside of your comfort zone.

Obama also told Santizo another important key to success: Be kind to other women.

I also advise girls to be supportive of each other. I cannot say this enough! Too often were taught that we have to compete, or that someone elses failure is our success, she said. But we can all rise together; we can all win. We have to be a team of women and girls who love each other and value each other and cherish one another. Because if we dont cherish each other, no one else will.

Obama and her husband, former President Barack Obama, have been working to educate more girls around the world since they launched the Let Girls Learn initiative in 2015. The program brings together several international organizations to address the variety of challenges preventing girls from getting an education.

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Eva Lewis, a 19-year-old activist and artist from the South Side of Chicago (where Obama also grew up), asked her how education can be liberating for everyone, but especially girls. Her answer did not disappoint.

I always tell students that if you focus on school right now, you will have all kinds of freedom later on in your life, Obama said. Youll have the freedom to choose a career you enjoy and to earn a living that supports your family. That is truly liberating. And thats not just true here in America.

When girls get an education, their whole world changes, Obama noted.

Right now, millions of adolescent girls around the world actually dont have the chance to go to school. Imagine if, at the age of 10 or 11 or 12, someone came to you and said, Sorry, youre a girl, youre finished with your education. Forget about all your dreams. Instead youll marry a man twice your age and start having babies, she said.

When we give girls an education, it can help liberate them from that kind of life. Educated girls marry later, have lower rates of infant and maternal mortality, and are more likely to immunize their children and less likely to contract malaria and HIV. Studies also show that girls who are educated earn higher salaries, and sending more girls to school and into the workforce can boost an entire countrys GDP, Obama continued. So education can liberate individuals, families, and even nations.

Head over to Refinery29s feature and make sure to click through to read each individual interview.

CORRECTION: The headline and text in a previous version of this story misattributed a quote from Eva Lewis to Michelle Obama. That quote has been removed.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks at The National Museum of American History. (Photo: Bill Clark via Getty Images)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday honored Womens History Month by donating to the Smithsonian Institution the gavel she received upon becoming the first woman to serve as the chambers speaker in 2007.

As a young girl, I was drawn to the Smithsonian as a source of creativity, discovery and innovation, Pelosi, a native of Baltimore, said in a tweet. Little did I know that I would be returning here to share moments from my time as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

In addition the gavel, Pelosi gave the Smithsonian the dress suit she wore during her swearing-in ceremony, the vote tally of the speakers election, her copy of the first speech she gave in the job, and a copy of the Congressional Record from that day.

This is a wonderful donation for Womens History Month, one that will be both part of the National Museum of American Historys longstanding effort to document the history of women in America and the first in our expanded curatorial effort to document women in American politics, Lisa Kathleen Graddy, a curator of political history at the museum, said in a statement.

The gavel used by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi when she became the first female speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Photo: Brian Snyder / Reuters)

Pelosi, 77, served four years as speaker, relinquishing the post after Republicans captured the House majority in the 2010 elections. She remains the only woman to have held the job.

At her swearing-in as speaker, Pelosi celebrated the occasion as a win for womens rights.

For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling, she said at the time. For our daughters and our granddaughters, now the sky is the limit. Anything is possible for them.

Pelosi echoed those sentiments in at The National Museum of American History on Wednesday, flanked by both the objects she was donating and an array of other artifacts celebrating female trailblazers.

We need the voices of all women, she said in her remarks. We need their courage and their strength because when women succeed, America succeeds.

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Pelosi initially won her San Francisco-based House seat in a 1987 special election, and her career has been full of firsts. In 2001, she became the first woman elected to be House minority whip. A year later, she was elected the House minority leader and thus became the highest-ranking woman in congressional history. As speaker, Pelosi was second in the presidential line of succession, making her the highest-ranking woman politician in U.S. history.

She also made history in February when she spoke for more than eight hours on the House floor about the need to protect young undocumented immigrants. With her remarks she set the record for the longest continuous speech in the chamber.

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The Juno spacecraft has now completed 10 of its 12 currently planned science orbits around Jupiterand astronomers are finally starting to share what they're learning about the largest planet in our solar system.

So far, we've mostly just enjoyed breathtaking photographs sent back from the JunoCam instrument, a crowd-guided camera designed primarily to fill our never-ending thirst for the beauty of the universe. But the spacecraft is carrying a host of scientific instruments that are gathering precious data about Jupiter, trying to solve some of its longstanding mysteries.

We've already learned that the aurora that circle Jupiter's poles don't work the way we expected. They're incredibly bright, so scientists had assumed they were caused by basically the same natural mechanism that causes the brightest aurora we have on Earth. But Juno findings suggest that the phenomenon is actually caused by what makes Earth's very faintest light shows.

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

That realization has come thanks to a pair of instruments: the Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument, nicknamed JEDI, and the Jupiter Auroral Distribution Experiment, or JADE. But the duo is just one of seven different sets of instruments and experiments on board Juno.

One of those instruments studies the same region of Jupiter, the polesand because Juno orbits from pole to pole rather than around the planet's middle, this tool is uniquely poised to make new discoveries about what's happening there. That's the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper, or JIRAM, which studies the polar atmosphere, trying to learn more about the mysterious "hot spots" that mark the planet.

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Read more: Stunning NASA Juno Image Captures Sunrise and Sunset on Jupiter in One Shot

Or consider the gravity detector, which is using a radio signal beamed back and forth between Earth and Juno in order to pick up tiny changes in the spacecraft's orbit (marked by the signal traveling a tiny bit more or less distant than expected). Those minute changes are caused by patches of Jupiter that have slightly higher or lower gravity. Measuring the fluctuations can tell scientists about the planet's inner structure.

That's one of the biggest mysteries about Jupiter right now: We aren't sure if the planet is gas and liquid through and through or if there's something solid buried deep within it. We've spent so long only being able to see the striped glory of the very top layer of its atmosphere that it's hard to think Juno and its suite of instruments won't learn something we never even imagined.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty

At this time seven years ago, what came to be known as the Arab Spring was blossoming across the Middle East, spreading the ideal of reform. It was possible to think then that what the conservative theorist Francis Fukuyama had predicted at the end of the Cold War, in a book called The End of History and the Last Man, was actually coming to pass  that eons of autocracy were ending, and a global age of democratic self-determinism had dawned.

As it turns out, though: not really. And not just because Egypt is back to military rule, while Syria and Yemen and Libya are each engaged in all-out civil war.

What you might have missed over the last week or so  with all this mesmerizing spectacle about coming tariffs and an exodus of White House aides and a guy who briefly worked for the campaign publicly melting down on a string of cable shows  is a rush back toward the repression and militarism of the 20th century in some of the worlds most powerful nations.

In China, Xi Jinping just woke up one morning and made himself president for life. In Russia, Vladimir Putin, on the verge of achieving the same status, threatened last week to unleash a new generation of nukes on Florida. In North Korea, the strongman Kim Jong Un has managed to reopen talks with the South by menacing the region with missiles.

It really is stupefying, as others have pointed out, that the American government, currently administered by the party of Ronald Reagan, offers zero response to any of this. (You would think President Trump would at least rise to defend the territorial integrity of Mar-a-Lago, considering what nuclear annihilation might mean for property values.)

But theres a deeper, more vexing question here about where this president fits into the moment. Is Trumps presidency causing this sharp turn in the historical current, or is he merely a product of it?

If youre not quite old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall or Boris Yeltsin standing on the tank (or, for that matter, Boris Yeltsin), then lets very roughly revisit the sweep of recent history. The end of the Cold War between East and West, after nearly 50 years of proxy wars and client states around the world, unleashed a series of forces that are only now coming into focus.

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First came the sudden release of nationalist and religious tensions that had been bottled up during the long conflict between capitalism and communism. This led to wars, persecution and waves of immigration. And all of that was exacerbated by the revolution in digital technology, which displaced whole industries and created the tools for both spreading ideologies and organizing movements.

At the same time, though, as all of these modern forces were destabilizing communities and causing people everywhere to seek solidarity in national or religious identity, elites in the industrialized nations were talking about something completely different: integration, open borders, global markets. They were exhorting citizens to abandon old identities, rather than cling to them.

Part of the internationalization effort was to say that cultures arent different, that we are all the same, the Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis told me this week. That, I think, was a mistake.

I called Gaddis because hes one of the nations preeminent scholars of the Cold War period, and I wondered if he thought we were now headed back to something more like the period he had studied.

But Gaddis told me that he now looks at the Cold War as a kind of brief intermission in the longer drama of world events, which is driven less by heady ideology than by nationalist identity and absolutism.

What were actually moving toward, in other words, is a continuation of exactly where we had been heading for centuries before the advent of nuclear weapons forced the world to temporarily divide between ideological spheres of influence. Were going back to the time of czars and kings ensconced behind walls of ethnic pride.

Whats happening now, Gaddis said, is a pretty widespread, fast-moving backlash against internationalism.

So, to get back to my initial question, whats Trumps role in all of this re-entrenchment and creeping authoritarianism  cause or effect?

The answer, I think, is some of both.

You could make an argument, certainly, that Trumpism is a close cousin of the nationalist movements in Europe and Russia, which preceded it. The backlash against internationalism that Gaddis talks about, the simmering outrage at cultural and economic integration, is exactly why a lot of white, working-class Americans so resented Barack Obama by the end of his presidency, more than simple racism or political ideology.

In his rhetoric and policies, and even more so in his personal journey, Obama symbolized the blurring of lines, the mashing together of cultures and countries and economic fortunes into one big pile of haves and have-nots.

But if Obama personified internationalism, then Trump came to personify the inevitable response  America First. Trump didnt create the anti-internationalist wave. He was enveloped and carried along by it, no less than Putin or the far-right nationalist parties in Europe.

But that doesnt mean Trump isnt also helping to embolden repressive nationalist rulers to tighten their grips  or that hes helpless to stop it. Trump leaves the impression that his administration isnt interested in checking the brazen power of dictators, mainly because its true.

By now, Putin, Xi and all the rest of them have seen enough to know that Trump isnt like other American presidents  that he doesnt really aspire to safeguard the world or champion ideals of liberty. Not only can you seize and abuse power with impunity, but you can even threaten to obliterate Guam or Florida without much fear of conflict, as long as youre only really upsetting the media commentators who worry about that kind of thing.

The real danger here isnt that Trump will decide that he too wants to suspend free speech or become president for life, as he joked last week. The flashing neon danger sign is that at some point  bank on it  one of these nuclear-armed strongmen is going to overshoot and do something we cant actually afford to ignore. Someone is going to mistake our temporary self-absorption for indifference to our own national interest.

And in a world of tweets and bots, the kind of confrontation that used to move in slow motion  in the form of naval embargoes or Security Council resolutions  might get out of control very quickly.

No one has time to back off and reflect now, Gaddis told me. It seems to me the potential for misinterpretation or misunderstanding is greater than it was in the past.

Which is why the sooner Trump starts standing up to nationalist dictators and letting them know where the line is, the safer well all be. As Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy or George W. Bush could testify, presidents dont get to decide when its time to confront aggression.

History does, and it hasnt ended yet.

Read more from Yahoo News:
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday went to the United Nations to open an exhibit on Jerusalem, sending a message of defiance after the world body rejected US recognition of the city as Israel's capital.

The exhibit of artifacts on Jews in Jerusalem "represents the truth" about the city that "is being denied by those seeking to erase the history of our people," Netanyahu said.

"We are changing Israel's position in the world and above all, we are making it clear that we fight for the truth and our rights," he said.

The prime minister's remarks followed a vote in the General Assembly in December to reject US recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and urge all countries to refrain from following the United States's lead and move their embassies to the city.

President Donald Trump's decision broke with the international consensus that the status of the Holy City is to be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

The move infuriated the Palestinians, who see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state and are now pushing for broader international mediation to replace the US-led peace process.

The exhibit set up in a UN hallway featured a sign posted by the United Nations stating that the content of the exhibit does not reflect the UN's view.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said this was standard practice for all exhibits at the United Nations.

After touring the exhibit, Netanyahu pointed to the UN disclaimer saying "of course it doesn't represent the United Nations. It represents the truth."

The prime minister earlier met with US Ambassador Nikki Haley, a strong supporter of Israel at the United Nations, and with US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin while in New York.

In Washington, he met with Trump and was cheered at a conference of the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby even as he faced corruption allegations at home.

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Netanyahu said he spent most of the week talking about the threat from Iran and renewed his call to "either fully fix the Iran (nuclear) deal or fully nix it."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has strongly appealed for the 2015 landmark deal on curbing Iran's nuclear program to be salvaged and that concerns about Tehran's regional role be addressed separately.

Netanyahu is working to enlist allies in his anti-Iran campaign, saying there was a "newfound alliance in the Middle East between all those who recognize that the greatest threat we face is a nuclear Iran and an aggressive Iran."
The New York Times published a correction after opinion writer Bari Weiss cited a fake Twitter account to bolster her criticism of liberals. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton / Reuters)

New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss found herself at the center of another firestorm after her most recent column cites a fake Twitter account to justify her criticism of the political left.

Weiss argues in her essay that liberals have become intolerant of alternative views and  in a deeply cliched straw-man argument  says theyre more offended by the American right than by global tyranny. She promoted the piece on Twitter as a look at when liberals get tossed into the slop bucket with the likes of Richard Spencer, but didnt mention shes actually the one whos making that comparison in the first place.

Leftists ... seem to believe that the real cause for concern are the secret authoritarians passing as liberals and conservatives in our midst, Weiss writes. The main effect is that these endless accusations of fascism or misogyny or alt-right dull the effects of the words themselves. As they are stripped of meaning, they strip us of our sharpness  of our ability to react forcefully to real fascists and misogynists or members of the alt-right.

As proof, she cites progressive commentator Dave Rubin, who she claims liberals have denounced as an Anti-L.G.B.T. fascist and a fascist lieutenant for criticizing identity politics.

The problem with that example? The criticism she cites comes from a hoax Twitter account, OfficialAntifa, which BuzzFeed exposed last year.

The accounts are being set up as a way to mock Antifa, and to discredit it by tweeting out hoaxes and offensive comments, wrote BuzzFeeds Craig Silverman.

Twitter users took Weiss to task, both for the mistake and for the column in general.

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The New York Times published a correction later on Wednesday, and Weiss apologized for the fallacious link.

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Weiss, a former Wall Street Journal writer who joined The New York Times last year, has inspired plenty of controversy before. She was resoundingly criticized during the Winter Olympics last month, when she paraphrased a quote from the musical Hamilton immigrants, we get the job done in reference to U.S. figure skater Mirai Nagasu.

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When social media users pointed out that Nagasu was born in California, Weiss doubled down, and noted that Nagasus parents are immigrants. Not even Weiss co-workers had her back on that one.

Weiss, a frequent critic of the modern feminist movement, also recently claimed that the Me Too movement actually disempowers women.

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A Cincinnati man accused of raping his daughter for 15 years was indicted on more than 40 charges of rape and sexual battery, according to Hamilton County Court records.

Jammey Willenbrink, 53, is accused of raping his daughter from the time she was 10 years old until she was 25, and impregnating her twice. He was indicted Friday on 41 felonies, including 23 counts of rape and 18 counts of sexual battery.

Police said that Willenbrink began assaulting the victim multiple times a month when she was 10, then began raping her when she was 13. The victim told police that Willenbrink raped her two to three times a month until she left home when she was 25.

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Court documents reveal the victim has had two children, ages two and seven. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, police launched an investigation into the incest after another investigation was started regarding the well-being of the two minor children.

Prosecutors said that genetic testing performed by Cincinnati Childrens Hospital confirmed Willenbrink was a close relative. According to FOX19, the victim told police that Willenbrink was the father of her children and about the years of sexual assault.

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Authorities said that the sexual assaults occurred at two different residences in Whitewater Township and in Riverside, Ohio.

Willenbrink was arrested on February 20, 2018. His wife, Brenda Willenbrink, was arrested on March 2 and charged with two counts of felony complicity, court documents said.

The couple is being held at the Hamilton County Justice Center. Willenbrink and his wife are being arraigned in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on March 9, 2018.

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This article was first written by Newsweek

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The former Russian double agent authorities believe was poisoned with a nerve agent in the U.K. reportedly has links to the former British intelligence officer who authored the infamous Donald TrumpRussia dossier that has plagued the U.S. president throughout his time in office.

Sergei Skripalthe 66-year-old who, along with his daughter Yulia, was discovered unconscious Sunday at a Salisbury shopping center in Englandhad a close relationship with an unnamed security consultant who worked for Christopher Steeles Orbis Business Intelligence, The Telegraph reported Wednesday.

Both Skripal and his daughter remain in intensive care. The pair were attacked with an as-yet-unidentified nerve agent that also left the first police officer to respond in a serious condition.

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The report withheld the security consultants name but stated he knew Skripal for some time and lived near him in Salisbury, while citing a LinkedIn account as confirmation that the consultant worked for Orbis. Steeles Orbis was hired by Fusion GPS in 2016 to research Trump.

The timing of the alleged attack on Skripal reportedly perplexed British counterterrorism police and MI5 officials. Skripal has lived in Salisbury since 2010, after he was released from a Russian penal colony following a spy swap between Russia and the U.K. Russia originally imprisoned Skripal for treason, and he was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of ordering the deaths of many of his public dissidents, with poisoning serving as one method of execution.

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A Russian former construction mogul claimed Skripal was still working with Russias intelligence apparatus, though it remains unclear what connection, if any, Skripal had with the security consultant.

If you have a military intelligence officer working in the Russian diplomatic service, living after retirement in the U.K., working in cybersecurity and every month going to the embassy to meet military intelligence officersfor me, being a political refugee, it is either a certain danger or, frankly speaking, I thought that this contact might not be very good for me because it can bring some questions from British officials, Valery Morozov told British television outlet Channel 4 .

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Steele has found himself under intense scrutiny ever since his 35-page dossier detailing Trumps links to Russia and accusations of possible collusion to win the White House in 2016. The dossier has yet to be completely verified but has dogged Trump and only intensified accusations of deeper ties to Russia than he has explained.

Steele reportedly wrote another, different memo, which has not reached the public. It details how Russia believed it was able to stop Trump from naming former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romneya noted hawk on Russia hawkas secretary of state in favor of a more pro-Russia representative. Trump eventually went with former ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson, who has a long-running relationship with Putin.

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Baghdad (AFP) - The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Iraq on Wednesday of resentment among relatives of detainees suspected of fighting for the Islamic State group.

The ICRC's Peter Maurer called for reconciliation in the country three months after the Iraqi government declared victory over the IS jihadists.

"This is a critical moment in Iraq and Iraqi politics," Maurer told a news conference in Baghdad after visiting the country's Sunni Muslim heartland of Anbar province.

The ICRC president cautioned against depriving the families of suspected jihadists of "regular access to brothers, fathers, husbands".

Many were worried about "where they are detained and by who, what is the future of their bread-giver," he told journalists.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in December declared victory over the Sunni extremist group after a years-long battle in which Shiite-dominated paramilitaries played a central role.

Pro-government forces detained some 20,000 suspected IS fighters, researchers say, but Iraqi authorities have not confirmed how many prisoners they are holding.

Maurer said some suspected jihadists' relatives had been confined to camps and were barred from moving freely.

Hundreds of women and children, both Iraqi and foreign, had been detained in Iraq, he added.

"The issue of foreign fighters is particularly complex," he said, adding the ICRC had been able to deliver assistance to some families in need.

Less than a month after world powers pledged $30 billion (24 billion euros) at a donors' conference on Iraq's reconstruction, Maurer said there were "still a lot of humanitarian needs".

Iraq remains the ICRC's second most important theatre of operations, he said, after war-ravaged Syria.
Ricky Martinsays hell definitely connect withGus Kenworthy, after a post-Oscars meetup between the two led to a seriously flirtatious Instagram post.

On Monday, Kenworthy recalled a conversation he and his boyfriend,Matthew Wilkas, had with Martin and his husband,Jwan Yosef, at the Academy Awards Sunday night.

The Olympic freeskier posted a photo of himself and Wilkas at Vanity Fairs Oscar party. His caption was written as a parody of a Craigslist Missed Connections entry.

He called Martin and Yosef gorgeous and said that he and Wilkas searched for you both for the rest of the night but never found you again.

In town for a week, he wrote. Lets connect.

A post shared by gus kenworthy (@guskenworthy)on Mar 5, 2018 at 5:02pm PST

Appearing on CBS The Talk Tuesday, Martin said he and Yosef were flattered by Kenworthys compliments.

That is so cute  and clever, the Latin pop superstar said, as seen in the video above. I mean, hes a national hero. Give me a break!

Martin said the four would definitely connect, and, addressing Kenworthy directly, slyly added, I love you, brother.

Not one to miss a beat, Kenworthy tweeted:

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Though its unclear exactly what Kenworthys intentions are, Martinmade headlinesin February after he implied that he was using his role on The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story to normalize another kind of realityfor open relationships.

Were just two very self-secure men that are completely in love with each other, that trust each other to the maximum level,he told Vulture Feb. 14, and here we are.

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West Virginia lawmakers at last reached a deal on Tuesday to raise teachers salaries by 5 percent. The agreementalong with the prospect of policy solutions to the educators other demandsbrought to a close a teachers strike that had kept K12 classrooms across all the states 55 counties closed for nine school days. Even though the West Virginia walkout is over, however, observers suspect that it has jump-started a national movement that could have lasting implications for countrys schools.

Evidence that the success of West Virginias roughly 20,000 K-12 classroom teachers is intensifying educator unrest nationally can already by seen. In Oklahoma, where the average teachers salary is even lower than that in West Virginia, educators are poised to stage a similar walkout, potentially in early April, to demand higher pay from the state legislature. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Oklahoma Education Association on Thursday plans to unveil a school-shutdown strategy; the teachers union said the vast majority of the 10,000 educators who responded to a survey supported shuttering campuses so they could strike. In Kentucky, a battle over educators pension benefits has raised the possibility of a teachers strike there, too. And other teachers unions throughout the country (and the world) have voiced their solidarity with their West Virginia counterparts through public statements, #55strong tweets, and pizza donations.

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Were getting support from teachers all overAlaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma. ... These places are saying, We know that if theyve done it in West Virginia, we can do it here too, so I think [this strike] is going to start spurring some action in other states, Annette Jordan, a teacher at Hedgesville High School in West Virginias Berkeley County, says.

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The strike in West Virginia, which in 2016 ranked 48th in the nation for teacher pay, wasnt aimed only at securing higher salaries; it also sought to raise awareness about the countless burdens teachers shoulder, and at demonstrating that kids learning and long-term outcomes suffer when educators are stretched too thin. Teachers in other places in the country are looking to West Virginia teachers because they are taking a stand and asking for a livable wage and for better benefits, Karla Hilliard, an English teacher at Spring Mills High in Berkeley County, told me last week when I visited the picket near her school. What teaching encompasses today [anywhere in the country] is so different than what it did 20, 25 years ago; with every continued mass shooting, with the tragedy of Parkland, theres more recognition of ... all of the different parts and facets of our job.

As I reported last week, teachers demand for a 5 percent pay increase was secondary relative to their calls for better health-care benefits through the states beleaguered Public Employee Insurance Agency. Those demands were accompanied by concerns that the state is devaluing the teaching profession with legislation that would lower educator qualifications and eliminate seniority protections. In fact, despite an indication last Tuesday from Governor Jim Justice that the strike would end after he agreed to the 5 percent pay raise, the states Republican senators initially refused to sign off on the proposal, and teachers insisted that they wouldnt back down without a stronger guarantee that their demands would be met. The walkout continued for another week.

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The likelihood that the demands will be met beyond better pay remains unclear. For starters, an agreement hasnt yet been reached on PEIA. Justice, a Republican, has promised to convene a task force as early as this week to figure out a way to resuscitate the insurance agency, whose severe funding shortfalls have resulted in rising co-pays and other health-care costs not only for public-school teachers but also for state employees across the board. Compounding the uncertainty around PEIA is teachers perhaps deeper dissatisfaction with how much West Virginias political and judicial branches value the quality of their work, and in turn the long-term prospects for the states young peopleconcerns that resonate with educators across the United States.

Joshua Weishart, an associate professor of law and policy at West Virginia University whose research centers on education law, believes that the strikes may represent a new dynamic in the fight over what right children have to an education. Historically, when courts have found that such a right existedsomething that varies state by statethey have ordered schools to undertake certain equitable and adequate financing measures, Weishart said. But after nearly five decades of litigation, the judiciary was accused of overreach, and unequal funding (and desegregation) is still pervasive. The courts have since retreated from that responsibility, he continued, and judges today are more hesitant to order specific integration remedies or stipulate how much money state legislatures should appropriate for education.

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So what do the people do when the courts are reluctant to intervene and the other branches of government have failed them for so long? Weishart asks. They either quietly accept their fate or they publicly resist and demand change. The teachers in West Virginiaand potentially their counterparts in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and other states where educator grievances are nearing a tipping pointhave taken the latter route. And as teachers relatively victorious outcome in West Virginia suggests, that route is proving to be fruitful.

Teachers make for strong advocatesperhaps better ones than lawyers, Weishart says. A political or social movement can oftentimes accomplish more than any lawsuit, and it can certainly do so more quickly. After all, he pointed out, some school-finance cases have dragged on for years and even decades before seeing results. What we have here is an opportunity for the people to vindicate the constitutional rights of children not in a court of law but in a political arena.

Its debatable as to why exactly West Virginia was the state to precipitate this fledgling national teachers movement, but experts tend to agree it comprised, in the words of Paul Reville, a professor of education policy and administration at Harvards Graduate School of Education, a perfect storm of factors.

For one, unlike most other states, West Virginia doesnt allow for collective bargaining at the local level; the same is true of Oklahoma. When that limitation corresponds with a notably low salary, a statewide strike is more likely. Meanwhile, a sizable chunk of West Virginias 55 counties is contiguous to other states, where average salaries are sometimes as much as $20,000 more than they are locally. That results in a double whammy, contributing to an exodus of quality teachers to districts right across the borders and making it difficult for West Virginia to attract qualified, experienced teachers to its own schools.

Educators in West Virginia have told me they worry about the impact this phenomenon has on the quality of childrens learning and on the health of the states economy; a struggle to retain and attract quality teachers translates into a struggle to uphold the quality of schools, which ultimately makes it hard to convince corporations to set up shop in the state and contribute to its tax base. Thats in part because itll suggest to those corporations that there arent enough well-educated people in the state to fill the necessary positions and enough qualified teachers to teach employees children. If we dont continue to support our teachers, theyre going to continue to flee the state, Tony McDonald, a health-education teacher at Warm Springs Middle School in Morgan County and the president of the countys American Federation of Teachers chapter, told me last week as he was picketing. I'm born and raised in West VirginiaI love this state through and through but at some point [being able to financially support] my kids matters more than what I want. In a similar vein, educators feel that state policymakers underestimate the importance of the education system to efforts to stimulate the economy, pointing to the states corporate tax cuts, which often result in less funding for schools.

As much as the demands of West Virginia teachers were about their own pay and benefits, the underlying message was about what teacher compensation means for the quality of the education being provided and, ultimately, the well-being of the states kids. What teachers are told every day is , This kid cant read but he has to read by the end of the year; figure it out, so we do. These kids are never going to pass this test but he has to pass this test, so figure it out and we do it. Well, there are only 25 books and you have 35 kids; figure it out, and so we do. So when [politicians] ... look at us and say, I'm sorry, theres nothing we can do, that is not acceptable, said Jessica Salfia, an English teacher at Spring Mills High School. Because what we have done for the last dozens of years the things that we have needed to do to make it workwe have made it work in our classrooms and they have got to make it work for us now.

The grievances expressed by West Virginia teachers like Salfia are emblematic of those felt by public-school educators across the country, many of whom have struggled for years with demanding and often growing workloads despite relatively low pay. Concerns about the governments disinvestment in traditional public education in favor of private and charter schoolswhich have become more acute since the appointment of the pro-school-choice Education Secretary Betsy DeVoshave helped fuel the uptick in teacher unrest. A lot of it is building up in teachers  and its not just the uncertainty about whether were going to shift now and invest in school-choice programs, Weishart said, alluding to speculation that lawmakers in West Virginia, which currently doesnt have a charter-school law, might introduce such legislation. Its also now about whether were going to arm them with weapons.  They live day by day now in crisis mode, and I think all of this is just starting to take its toll on teachers.

Harvards Reville, who previously served as Massachusettss education secretary, suggested that this pressure, combined with the feeling that theyre not being heard, is starting to push things over the edge for K-12 educators. I think its people in the field of education saying, Dont forget about us. Were still here; were still doing the hard work of preparing the next generation so that you can have a functioning economy and democracy.

The West Virginia teachers strike may also be gaining national traction because it is proof that organized labor can still have clout despite political efforts to undermine such movements, Reville said, pointing to a forthcoming ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court thats expected to outlaw mandatory public-sector union fees and therefore weaken such labor organizations. Unions elsewhere, including those representing educators and other public-sector workers, may find it inspiring that a group of teachers [across the state] came together largely on their own, stood up, took a position, and then held fast when they felt like they werent receiving the proper support from state officials, Reville said.

In that sense, the West Virginia teachers strike is symbolically important, according to Reville: People will take faith in thisthey will feel emboldened and empowered to act, he said. The fact that [West Virginias teachers] made some headway and came out victorious, I think, is a real shot in the arm for the labor movement.

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By Dahlia Nehme MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Russian military has offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the insurgents surrender their last major stronghold near Damascus to President Bashar al-Assad, which fighters have so far rejected. The Russian defense ministry said rebels could leave with their families and personal weapons through a secure corridor out of eastern Ghouta, where Moscow-backed government forces have made rapid gains in a fierce assault. The Russian proposal did not specify where the rebels would go, but the terms echo previous evacuation deals under which insurgents have ceded ground to Assad and departed to opposition-held territory in the north near the Turkish border. "The Russian Reconciliation Centre guarantees the immunity of all rebel fighters who take the decision to leave eastern Ghouta with personal weapons and together with their families, said the defense ministry statement. Vehicles would "be provided, and the entire route will be guarded", it added. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a statement issued by a spokesman on Tuesday, voiced concern about attacks in eastern Ghouta which "reportedly claimed the lives of more than 100 people" on Monday, as well as reports of shelling of Damascus. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the besieged enclave of satellite towns and rural areas on the outskirts of Damascus in one of the fiercest bombing campaigns of the seven-year-old war. The United Nations believes 400,000 people are trapped inside the enclave where food and medical supplies were already running out before the assault began with intense air strikes two weeks ago. Damascus and Moscow have pressed on with the campaign despite a U.N. Security Council demand for a ceasefire, arguing that the rebel fighters they are targeting are members of banned terrorist groups who are unprotected by the truce. The Security Council will meet on Wednesday to discuss the failed ceasefire. The offensive appears to have followed the tactics Assad and his allies have used at other key points in the war: laying siege to rebel-held areas, subjecting them to bombardment, launching a ground assault and offering passage out to civilians who flee and fighters who withdraw. Wael Alwan, the spokesman for one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, Failaq al-Rahman, said Russia was "insisting on military escalation and imposing forced displacement" on the people of eastern Ghouta, which he called "a crime". Alwan, who is based in Istanbul, also told Reuters there had been no contact with Russia about the proposal. The Syrian army has captured more than a third of the enclave in recent days, threatening to slice it in two. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says government bombardment of the area has killed 800 people since Feb. 18, including 80 people killed on Monday alone. Assad said on Sunday the Syrian army would continue the push into eastern Ghouta, which government forces and allied militia have encircled since 2013. On Tuesday, Syria's SANA state news agency said troops captured the village of Muhamadiya at the edge of the enclave. PLANE CRASHES A Russian military transport plane crashed in Syria on Tuesday, killing all 39 people on board, Russian news agencies quoted the defense ministry as saying, sharply raising the death toll from the Kremlin's intervention in the Syrian war. Initial information suggested a technical fault may have been to blame, the ministry was cited as saying. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families and colleagues of the dead. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and more than 11 million have been made homeless by the Syrian conflict, which has drawn in neighbors and global powers. A report by U.N. war crimes investigators covering the six months until Jan. 15 said both Russia and the United States had been responsible for large-scale killings of civilians in air strikes. Russian forces had killed at least 84 civilians in an air strike in November near Aleppo, while a U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State had bombed a school in March 2017, killing around 150 displaced people sheltering there. The report also found that Syrian government forces had used chemical weapons. It called for war crimes to be punished. For the rebels fighting to oust Assad, the loss of eastern Ghouta would mark their worst defeat since the battle of Aleppo in late 2016. Rebel shelling on Damascus has killed dozens of people during the last two weeks, state-run media has said. Russia has organized daily, five-hour long "humanitarian ceasefires" with the stated aim of allowing civilians to leave and to permit aid deliveries. It has accused rebels of preventing people from leaving the enclave, which rebels deny. Aid trucks reached eastern Ghouta on Monday for the first time since the start of the latest offensive. But the government had stripped some medical supplies from the convoy. The convoy of more than 40 trucks pulled out of Douma in darkness after shelling on the town, without fully unloading supplies during a nine-hour stay. All staff were safe and heading back to the capital Damascus, aid officials said. Guterres said nearly half of the food could not be delivered, the U.N. statement said, and he called on all parties to allow the delivery of medical and other supplies for 70,000 people in Douma planned for Thursday, as agreed with Syrian authorities, the U.N. statement added. The health directorate in rebel-held Ghouta said on Tuesday it had received reports of people suffering from breathing problems in the Ghouta village of Hammourieh on Monday. A missile hit a basement and released an irritating substance that led to mild symptoms, including coughing, red eyes, and sore throats among 29 people, it said. The Syrian foreign ministry dismissed reports of a suspected gas attack as lies, state media said. Western countries and local rescue workers have accused the Syria government of gas attacks in eastern Ghouta, which the government has strongly denied. (Reporting by Katya Golubkova in Moscow, Tom Perry and Dahlia Nehme in Beirut; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by John Stonestreet, Peter Graff, William Maclean and Lisa Shumaker)
Geneva (AFP) - Russian forces were behind a deadly strike on a crowded market in Syria late last year, UN investigators said Tuesday, warning that the attack could amount to a "war crime".

The air strikes on a market in rebel-held Atareb in northern Syria last November 13 killed at least 84 people, including five children, and injured around 150 others, the UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in Syria said in its latest report.

"The commission confirmed the use of unguided blast weapons by Russian aircraft in a civilian populated area," commission chief Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva.

He pointed to a "large body of evidence", including interviews with witnesses and forensic analysis of photos, videos and images of weapons remnants, satellite images and impact analysis, to support the commission's findings.

The war crimes investigators acknowledged there was "no evidence to indicate that the ... attack deliberately targeted civilians or the Atareb market."

But they stressed that "the use of unguided bombs, including blast weapons, in a densely civilian populated area may amount to the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks."

The UN's Syria commission, set up in 2011 shortly after the civil war began, has repeatedly accused the various sides of war crimes and in some cases crimes against humanity.

- Coalition strike killed 150 -

In their 15th report, published Tuesday, the investigators also accused a US-led coalition of breaching international humanitarian law with a deadly strike a year ago on a school near the Islamic State group's former stronghold of Raqa.

In that case however, they stopped short of evoking war crimes.

The coalition air raid last March 21, which hit a school being used as a temporary shelter for displaced families, killed at least 150 people, including more than 20 children.

The coalition claimed it was targeting IS jihadists, saying it believed there had been 30 fighters in the school, but Tuesday's report stressed there was no evidence that was the case.

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"Information gathered by the commission does not support the claim that 30 ISIL fighters were in the school at the time of the strike, nor that the school was otherwise being used by ISIL," the report said, using another acronym for IS.

On the other hand, the investigators said "information that residents of the school were internally displaced families, including a large number of women and children ... should have been readily available to the coalition's targeting team."

The report therefore concluded that the coalition had "failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid or minimise incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects, in violation of international humanitarian law."

It also slammed the "increasingly cynical" warfare used in the besieged rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, with Pinheiro accusing Damascus of "using starvation as a method of warfare" against the some 400,000 people trapped inside.

The investigators also spoke of allegations of chemical weapons use in the enclave, saying they had "reasonable grounds to believe that government forces used chemical weapons" in an attack on Harasta on November 18.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions driven from their homes in Syria's seven-year war, with no diplomatic solution in sight.
Nick Bailey was one of the first people to come to the aid of the Skripals

Police Sergeant Nick Bailey has been named as the officer who was injured with a nerve agent as he attended the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned.

He was hospitalised after attending to the pair and is now thought to be awake and engaging with medical staff, although he remains in a serious condition.

Sgt Bailey was highly commended in 2016 for his work in putting a serial rapist behind bars.

He worked tirelessly for two years in order to build a case against Arthur Bonner, who sexually assaulted multiple victims over four decades between the early 1970s and 2014.

Sgt Bailey received the Chief Constables Certificate of Excellence for his work at the time.

Kier Pritchard, temporary chief constable of Wiltshire Police, said: "I did go and see Nick today and I met Nick and his wife at the hospital in the intensive care unit.

"I've known Nick for many years, he's a great character, he's a huge presence in Wiltshire Police - well liked, well loved, a massively dedicated officer. He's clearly receiving high specialist treatment.

"He's well, he's sat up. He is not the Nick that I know but of course he's receiving a high level of treatment. He's in the safe hands of the medical professionals working in Salisbury District so I'm very confident he's getting the best professional support that he can.

"Of course he's very anxious, he's very concerned. He did his very best on that night.

"All of our staff that attended the incident in Salisbury in the Maltings, they performed the role that police officers and police staff do every day up and down the country. Limited information, responded to try and protect people and safeguard people who we knew were ill.

"I'm massively proud of what Nick did and all of my staff on that night, they did a first-class job."

Sgt Bailey was one of the first to go to the aid of the Skripals, who were found slumped on a bench on Sunday afternoon.

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He is much-loved by colleagues, many of whom have paid tribute to their "courageous" friend.

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This morning, Amber Rudd, Home Secretary, said he was "talking and engaging".

She said: "I'm more optimistic for him, but it's too early to say. This is a nerve agent.

"You know, we are still treating it as very serious."

Part of a cemetery where the wife of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is buried has been cordoned off by police.

Officers were guarding London Road cemetery in Salisbury, Wilts, on Tuesday morning, when it was partly closed to the public and seal off with police tape. The cordon around the spy's house, some two miles away, has also been widened.

Questions have been raised about the deaths of both Col Skripal's wife, Luidmila, and his son, Alexander, following the attempted murder of the former double agent.

Mrs Skripal died of cancer in 2012 aged 59.

His son, who was 43, died in St Petersburg last July and is commemorated with a plaque at the cemetery.

It has been reported that both Col Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, who are now both fighting for their lives in hospital, visited the site last week, leaving flowers to mark what would have been Mr Skripal's 44th birthday.

A cemetery worker told The Mirror: "I recognised him. He regularly came to visit the grave and also his wife's grave. It's so sad."

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who are seriously ill in hospital, in a restaurant believed to be in Salisbury

Meanwhile, Amber Rudd has promised to bring those behind the attempted murder of Col Skripal to justice whoever they are and wherever they may be as MPs accuse the Kremlin of a brazen act of war.

The Home Secretary described the poisoning of Col Skripal and his daughter as a reckless crime, adding that it was conducted in the most cruel and public way.

It came as former minister Sir Edward Leigh said the circumstantial evidence against Russia was "very strong", warning that if the Kremlin were implicated it would be an act of war aimed at humiliating our country.

Ms Rudd told MPs: There will come a time for attribution and there will be, then, consequences and there will be further information that follows."

"The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account.

"But if we are to be rigorous in this investigation, we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation.

"We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be.

"The investigation is moving at pace and this Government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer."

It comes after the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said Britain must put up a stronger front against Russian military aggression as he warned that "we are being pushed around" by the Kremlin.

As suspicions deepen over Russia's potential involvement in the poisoning, Gavin Williamson said that Vladimir Putin's regime posed an "ever-greater threat".

His warning comes after a police officer poisoned by a "very rare" nerve agent in Salisbury while going to the aid of Col Skripal and his daughter was said to be "talking and engaging" in hospital, according to the Home Secretary.

The targets of the attempted murder - Col Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia - remain in a serious condition in intensive care. They are understood to both be in comas.

He was among the first to go to the aid of the pair, who were found slumped on a bench on Sunday afternoon.

The disclosure of the officers poisoning will add to growing pressure on the Government to take a hardline approach against Russia if state involvement is confirmed.

Emergency workers wear protective equipment in Salisbury at one of the scenes of investigation of the nerve agent attack Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

Listing examples of Russian aggression in eastern Europe and its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, Mr Williamson added that there was an urgent need to counter the Kremlin's "increasingly aggressive stance".

"Russia's changing the way they actually fight and raise the level of conflict," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "We are seeing this in the north Atlantic as well - the amount of submarines that are operating, there's a 10-fold increase in the last seven years.

"Russia's being assertive, Russia's being more aggressive, and we have to change the way that we deal with it because we can't be in a situation in these areas of conflict where we are being pushed around by another nation."

Investigators continue to work at ones of the scenes in Salisbury on Wednesday Credit: Paul Grover for The Telegraph

While Mr Williamson refused to say if he held Russia responsible for the attack in Salisbury, he described the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter as "absolutely disgusting".

Police on Wednesday said government scientists had identified the nerve agent used by would-be assassins at a shopping arcade in the Wiltshire city centre. The chemical used is "likely to be rarer than Sarin or VX nerve agents", a source told the BBC.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain in a serious condition in intensive care after being poisoned in Salisbury

Ms Rudd said more details about the nerve agent would not yet be made public, but told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "very rare".

PM: Poisoning is appalling and reckless crime

Downing Street said Theresa May was being kept updated by officials on developments in the Salisbury case.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "It's clear that this was an appalling and reckless crime and the public will rightly want those responsible to be identified and held to account.

"But it is important that we avoid speculation and allow police and others to rigorously establish the full facts.

"As the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary have made clear, our response to those found to be responsible will be robust."

The spokesman said Mrs May sent her personal thanks to police and emergency workers for their courage in responding to the incident, and also wished to thank the people of Salisbury.

Video: Amber Rudd gives update on poison victims

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, earlier described the events as very troubling. He said: If this does turn out to be in any way the result of hostile activity by another government, or directed, led, by another government, then the people of this country can be absolutely sure that the UK will respond robustly.

Ms Rudd declined to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible for the Salisbury attack, but said the Government will put a plan in place to respond when the culprit is identified.

Investigators outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury, where the pair are believed to have dined before falling ill Credit: Eddie Mulholland For The Telegraph

"When we have all the evidence of what took place, we will - if it is appropriate - attribute it to somebody," the Home Secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"If that is the case then we will have a plan in place. We need to be very methodical, keep a cool head and be based on the facts, not rumour."

Video: Sergei Skripal days before he was poisoned

Ms Rudd added: "Let me be clear, we are absolutely robust about any crimes committed on these streets of the UK. There is nothing soft about the UK's response to any sort of state activity in this country.

"You may not hear about it all, but when we do see that there is action to be taken, we will take it."

Nerve agent 'rarer than Sarin or VX'

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

A key focus will be working to uncover the origin of the nerve agent.

The BBC reported that a source familiar with the investigation said it was "likely to be rarer than Sarin or VX nerve agents".

Nerve agents, which are chemical weapons, have been used in assassinations and attacks in war zones in recent years.

Kim Jong-un's half-brother Kim Jong-nam was killed at an international airport in Malaysia last year in an attack using a nerve agent known as VX.

Another well-known nerve agent, Sarin gas, killed more than 90 people in a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, drawing international condemnation of the Bashar Assad regime.

Deadly toxins

Access to such toxins are tightly regulated, meaning the Salisbury plot would have taken considerable planning to execute.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of Britain's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, told The Times: "This is not the stuff you can knock up in your back shed.

"It is quite challenging to make. The inference is that this has probably come from a major laboratory, probably state-run."

Police: Spy and daughter 'targeted specifically'

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been "targeted specifically".

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

Mr Rowley said: "Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

"Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act."

Video: Mark Rowley's statement outside Scotland Yard

Mr Rowley reiterated his appeal for anyone who was in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward to help with the "missing pieces" in the case.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the incident posed a "low risk" to the public and advised that all the sites the pair were known to have visited had been "secured".

Skripal poisoning - Salisbury map

Russia denies responsibility for Salisbury attack

Russia has denied responsibility for the attack, which comes seven years after Mr Skripal was released from the country as part of a spy swap with the US.

He had been convicted in his home country in 2006 for passing state secrets to MI6.

Sergei Skrpial profile

The investigation has triggered a diplomatic row and prompted crisis talks in Whitehall, but Ms Rudd said police must respond to "evidence, not to rumour".
By Patricia Zengerle and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Venezuelan state governor made an unusual visit to Washington this week, seeking meetings in Congress to discuss the fate of a U.S. citizen imprisoned in the South American nation, U.S. sources said on Wednesday. As the threat of fresh U.S. sanctions on socialist Venezuela loomed, Rafael Lacava, governor of Venezuela's Carabobo state, requested meetings to discuss Josh Holt, a Mormon missionary from Utah. He and his Venezuelan wife, Thamara Caleno, have been held since they were arrested in 2016 on weapons charges after Holt traveled to Venezuela for their wedding. "We are aware that (Lacava) is here. There are suspicions that the Venezuela government is using the illegitimate detention of Mr Holt as a bargaining chip to talk about U.S. sanctions," a U.S. official said. "We continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Holt and until he is released we continue to insist on regular ongoing consular contacts with him as called for under international law," the official said. It is unusual for an official allied with Venezuela's socialist government, a U.S. adversary, to visit Washington for such meetings. President Donald Trump's administration is considering new sanctions targeting Venezuela's oil sector to increase pressure on President Nicolas Maduro ahead of an election Washington and its allies consider a sham. Maduro confirmed Lacava's visit during a speech in Caracas, saying: "He's gone to Washington for some peace efforts." Another U.S. source familiar with the situation confirmed Lacava was visiting to discuss Holt, but did not believe sanctions would be discussed in Congress since lawmakers would defer to the administration on any such matter. "While I am not able to speculate on what else might be on Mr Lacava's agenda, I want to make very clear that the sole purpose of such meetings would be to encourage the release of Mr Holt and his wife," the source said. "There would be no negotiation, and any claim to the contrary is simply false," the source said. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and other lawmakers are working for Holt's release. "While Senator Hatch prefers to not share details of sensitive meetings related to his nearly two year effort to have Josh Holt released on humanitarian grounds, he is optimistic he is making progress and will continue to work with the State Department and colleagues in the Congress to identify those to meet and work with who can get it done," Hatch spokesman Matt Whitlock said. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth and Vivian Sequera in Caracas; writing by Patricia Zengerle Editing by Alistair Bell and Rosalba O'Brien)
By Patricia Zengerle and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Venezuelan state governor made an unusual visit to Washington this week seeking meetings in Congress to discuss the fate of an American imprisoned in the South American nation, U.S. sources said on Wednesday, as the country faces a possible new round of sanctions. Rafael Lacava, governor of Venezuela's Carabobo state, requested meetings to discuss Josh Holt, a Mormon missionary from Utah. He and his Venezuelan wife, Thamara Caleno, have been held since they were arrested in 2016 on weapons charges after Holt traveled to Venezuela for their wedding. "We are aware that he is here. There are suspicions that the Venezuela government is using the illegitimate detention of Mr. Holt as a bargaining chip to talk about U.S. sanctions," a U.S. official said. "We continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Holt and until he is released we continue to insist on regular ongoing consular contacts with him as called for under international law," the official said. It is unusual for an official allied with Venezuela's socialist government, a U.S. adversary, to visit Washington for such meetings. President Donald Trump's administration is considering new sanctions targeting Venezuela's oil sector to increase pressure on President Nicolas Maduro ahead of an election Washington and its allies consider a sham. Another U.S. source familiar with the situation confirmed Lacava was in Washington to discuss Holt, but did not believe sanctions would be discussed in Congress since lawmakers would defer to the administration on any such matter. "While I am not able to speculate on what else might be on Mr. Lacava's agenda, I want to make very clear that the sole purpose of such meetings would be to encourage the release of Mr. Holt and his wife," the source said. "There would be no negotiation, and any claim to the contrary is simply false," the source said. Venezuela's information ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and other lawmakers are working for Holt's release. "While Senator Hatch prefers to not share details of sensitive meetings related to his nearly two year effort to have Josh Holt released on humanitarian grounds, he is optimistic he is making progress and will continue to work with the State Department and colleagues in the Congress to identify those to meet and work with who can get it done," Hatch spokesman Matt Whitlock said. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth in Caracas; writing by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Alistair Bell)
A police officer remains seriously ill in intensive care after being poisoned by a nerve agent when he came to the aid of a Russian spy targeted in Salisbury.

The unnamed officer was one of the first on the scene on Sunday when double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were attacked by would-be assassins in shopping arcade in the city centre.

He was initially treated in hospital as a precaution and then discharged, but his condition soon deteriorated and he was readmitted on Tuesday and taken into intensive care.

The disclosure that a police officer is seriously ill following the nerve agent attack will add to growing pressure on the British government to take a hardline approach against Russia if state involvement is confirmed.

Last night Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary described the events in Salisbury as "very troubling".

He said: "If this does turn out to be in any way the result of hostile activity by another government, or directed, led, by another government, then the people of this country can be absolutely sure that the UK will respond robustly."

CCTV dated approximately one week before the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal shows the former Russian spy purchasing goods in a Salisbury convenience store.

Security sources said the substance was something that was only held in a "very small number of places" around the world, making it easier to identify where it might have come from.

Mr Skripal, who spied for Britain in the 1990s, before moving here in 2010 as part of a prisoner exchange, remained in a critical condition in hospital last night, alongside his 33-year-old daughter.

Investigators outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury Credit: Eddie Mulholland For The Telegraph

In a statement Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of national Counter Terrorism Policing, said: "This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by the administration of a nerve agent.

We believe the two people who originally became unwell were the specific targets and are focused on identifying and finding those responsible.

Hundreds of detectives from the Counter Terrorism Policing Network have been deployed in relation to this investigation.

Story continues

Video: Home Secretary gives update after crisis talks

He added: "A police officer who was among the first responders also remains in hospital in a serious condition and is continuing to receive intensive care. We are keeping the Chief Constable in Wiltshire regularly updated in relation to our investigation."

While detectives continued to hunt for the would be assassins, Whitehall sources said the fact a police officer had been injured ramped up the seriousness of the situation, with some directly laying the blame at Russia's door.

One Whitehall source told the Telegraph there was now a widespread feeling in Government that "Putin's hands are all over this".

A police officer in a protective suit and gas mask in Salisbury on Tuesday evening Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

The source said: "It's one thing to for a former Russian spy to be struck down by this, but when it starts filtering out and affecting normal British people going about their day to day jobs, there's going to be tough questions asked of the Government in terms of its response.

"There's an appetite among some of the cabinet that Britain can't just do nothing. A stand has to be taken."

The incident has echoes of the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot dead in 1984 while standing outside the Libyan embassy in London.

Colonel Sergei Skripal was given refuge in the UK as part of a spy swap

Her murder led to a complete breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Sir Andrew Wood, who was Britain's Ambassador to Russia between 1995 and 2000, said the fact a police officer had been injured intensified matters.

He told the Telegraph: "This makes the assassination attempt even more serious. If it is true that this is, in some fashion the Russian State, it obviously makes it even harder to believe the Russian State is worth anything or is to be trusted.

"The fact they targeted his daughter, and that a policeman is seriously ill, makes it emotionally difficult, but it does not alter the fact that this was an attempted assassination on British soil."

Police outside the Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on Wednesday morning Credit: Andrew Matthews /PA

Sir Andrew said the options diplomatically could involve expelling the Russian Ambassador to Britain.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the murdered Russian dissident, Alexander, said: "It is awful. It is absolutely shocking. If the British authorities had taken my husband's case more seriously when it happened then maybe this would not have taken place. I didn't want this to happen again on British soil and now it has."

Mr Skripal was convicted of spying for Britain in 2006 and was sentenced to 13-years in prison.

But he was pardoned by the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010 and granted asylum in the UK as part of a prisoner exchange, which included the glamorous agent, Anna Chapman being returned to Moscow.

Police outside the home of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury Credit: Eddie Mulholland for The Telegraph

Experts initially cast doubt on whether the Russians could have been behind the attack, because protocols signed during the prisoner exchange would have meant he was off limits.

But one fellow political refugee claimed that Mr Skripal was still working in cyber security and was in regular contact with military intelligence officials at the Russian embassy.

Valery Morozov, a former construction magnate who fled Russia after revealing corruption, said he had decided to steer clear of Mr Skripal because of his activities.

He told Channel 4 News: Frankly speaking I thought that this contact may be not very good for me because it could bring some questions from British officials.

It also emerged that the British agent who recruited Mr Skripal to work for MI6 in the 1990s has links to Christopher Steel, the intelligence agent who helped compile the infamous Donald Trump dossier.

The agent now lives in Salisbury and that is why Mr Skripal moved to the Wiltshire city when he defected to Britain in 2010.

As the police investigation widened locals in Salisbury were warned to seek immediate medical advice if they started to feel ill.

Two women working in an office close to a restaurant where Mr Skripal had eaten shortly before taking ill, were rushed to hospital after becoming unwell yesterday lunchtime.

Sergei Skrpial profile

The Russian Embassy said it was "completely untrue" to suggest the country's special services were involved and criticised Mr Johnson for speaking "in such a manner as if the investigation was already over".

A later statement added: "The Foreign Secretarys strongly anti-Russian statement in Parliament yesterday looks more like an attempt to send the investigation upon a political track.

"Although absolutely no facts were provided to the public, we see the issue being translated into the domain of Russia-UK relations, with an active support by the media."

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in nearby Porton Down, which has state-of-the-art equipment to look for trace amounts of substances, is believed to have been involved in examining what could have caused Mr Skripal and his daughter to fall ill.

Mr Skripal was found along with his daughter on a bench in The Maltings in Salisbury after police were called by a concerned member of the public at around 4.15pm on Sunday.

The pair did not have any visible injuries and were taken to Salisbury District Hospital, where they are being treated in intensive care.

Officers subsequently "secured" a number of scenes - including the Zizzi restaurant on Castle Street and the Bishop's Mill pub in The Maltings.

Police cordon in Salisbury on Tuesday Credit: Paul Grover for the Telegraph

At least two people left a contamination tent inside the cordon wearing protective suits and gas masks on Tuesday night.

People could also be seen inside Zizzi's restaurant wearing protective gear and masks.

Two police vans were parked outside Zizzi's restaurant on Castle Street early on Wednesday, blocking the windows, but the lights inside the Italian chain pizzeria were lit.

Was deadly VX nerve agent used in Salisbury?

Scientists from the government's chemical defence laboratory at Porton Down, just six miles from where Sergei Skripal was targeted in Salisbury, have been analysing the substance at the centre of the Russian spy attack.

One theory being explored was that the substance could be the deadly nerve agent, VX, which was used last year in the murder of Kim Jong-nam - the estranged half brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Police have not confirmed which nerve agent was used in the attack.

The chemical was first developed by the British firm, ICI, in the 1950s, but was put to deadly use by Saddam Hussein in an attack against the Kurds in 1988.

Kim Jong-nam was killed last February at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, when two women approached him and smeared cloths soaked with VX nerve agent across his face.

Deadly toxins

The fast acting toxin began to attack his nervous system and despite being able to alert officials, he was dead within 20 minutes.

The United States formally concluded on Tuesday that North Korea ordered the murder of Kim Jong-nam with the VX nerve agent.

VX, which is the most deadly of all nerve agents, was first developed in the 1950s and is a tasteless and odorless liquid, which can be fatal for humans on skin contact.

It penetrates the skin and disrupts the transmission of nerve impulses, leading to a loss of consciousness, paralysis and eventually fatal respiratory failure.

Alexander Perepilichnyy, who died in mysterious circumstances Credit: PA

Counter terror police, who are now leading the investigation into the Salisbury poisonings, will also be examining the 2012 death of Russian whistleblower, Alexander Perepilichnyy, who died in mysterious circumstances.

He was initially thought to have died of natural causes while out jogging but traces of a deadly chemical was later found in his stomach.

'Traitors will kick the bucket': How Putin threatened Russians double agents

Vladimir Putin threatened that Russians who betrayed secrets to the West would die, during a television interview at the time of the Col Skripal spy swap.

The Russian Presidents threats came after a Russian spy ring was broken up in the US in 2010, leading to the exchange of agents held by Moscow, including Mr Skripal who had been convicted in 2006 of spying for the British.

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued the threat on television Credit: Mikhail Svetlov /Getty

Asked on Russian television at the time who might have betrayed the US spy ring, Mr Putin said: Traitors will kick the bucket. Trust me.

These people betrayed their friends, their brothers in arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them.

Col Skripal was living under own name in Salisbury after pardon

Mr Skripal had not adopted a new identity and was living under his own name in Salisbury after being released in the 2010 spy swap, reports Ben Farmer.

Another Russian, Igor Sutyagin, who came to Britain in the same exchange also retains his identity. Both had been pardoned after the swap by the then president, Dmitry Medvedev.

Kier Giles, a Russia expert at the Chatham House think tank, said: In the context of this particular spy swap, that does seem to be the norm.

They were living openly under their own names. They reached the conclusion, with or without advice from the British government, that it was safe to do so. They possibly thought the state pardon that they received under the president Medvedev was an additional indication that no one would be coming after them.

How the FSB deals with Russia's enemies with absolute impunity

But he said the Medvedev pardon would not hold much water when it comes to the FSB deciding what it wants to do about things.

In earlier Cold War incidents, Russian spies who defected to Britain were given entirely new identities and lived in hiding.
By Christopher Johnson

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone voters queued for hours in steamy humidity on Wednesday to elect a new leader they hope will bring an end to years of economic crisis caused by the twin shocks of a commodities slump and an Ebola epidemic.

President Ernest Bai Koroma is stepping aside after his maximum two terms in office, and sixteen candidates are vying to replace him, of whom four are seen as having a realistic chance.

Despite the high turnout on a steamy day, voting generally went smoothly before the polls closed and the counting process began.

National Election Watch, a coalition of independent election monitors, said in a mid-day report that most polling places opened on time and reported few problems.

Adama Sesay, a widow with six children, was so anxious to get to the polling station that she left her house at five.

"I am a single parent and things are not easy for me economically," she told Reuters at a polling station in Waterloo, a village nestled in palm trees and forest on the outskirts of the capital Freetown.

"In Sierra Leone we are far behind some other countries in Africa, which are making progress," Sesay said.

The Ebola crisis in 2014 and 2015 and the global commodities downturn dragged Sierra Leone's economy into the doldrums. It shrank by a fifth in 2015, after years of double-digit growth during its rebound from a ruinous 1990s civil war in which child soldiers fought and tens of thousands died.

Since then, growth has been sluggish and many hope Koroma's 10-year stint will be followed by a leader who can do more to improve the lives of citizens on the poverty line.

"I see out there people responding to calls we have made, people behaving in a manner that is democratic and I see our people are transforming the country," Koroma said, casting his vote in Freetown's Goderich district.

At one polling station in Freetown, police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd after rumours of voting irregularities circulated, a Reuters witness said, but the incident appeared to be an isolated one.

Story continues

Politics has been dominated by two parties since independence from Britain in 1961: the ruling All People's Congress, now fielding ex-foreign minister Samura Kamara, and the Sierra Leone People's Party behind Julius Maada Bio, who briefly ruled as head of a military junta in 1996.

But two candidates from younger parties - former United Nations Under-Secretary Kandeh Yumkella and Samuel Sam-Sumana - are seen as having a strong chance if they can garner enough votes from disaffected younger people tired of the status quo.

(Writing by Tim Cocks and Aaron Ross; Editing by Mark Potter and Hugh Lawson)
Some people are willing to wait for even simple clothing items like T-shirts. (Photo: Getty Images)

We can totally understand saving up for a good pair of jeans or joining a waitlist for a limited-edition leather bag from a renowned European designer. But all that for a plain white T-shirt? Were not sold. At least 2,000 people feel differently, however.

Retailer AYR, which stands for All Year Round, is making its first foray into knits and T-shirts, and theyre starting with plain white tees. The supersimple staple looks like your average white tee: short sleeves, loose fit, crew neck. They also have a sleeveless version, and both come in white and black. You can get the same T-shirts from Target, J.Crew, Gap, or Duane Reade. The most notable difference is the price. The cap-sleeved tee, named Supercool, will cost you $65, and the sleeveless Fizz is a slightly more reasonable $55.

Were not sure how AYR is getting away with charging $65 for a plain shirt  it could be that its made of 100 percent Peruvian cotton  but their fans dont seem to mind. Although they announced the new line on Feb. 20, it didnt go on sale until today, online and at AYRs Los Angeles pop-up shop. That didnt stop customers from staking their claim early, though, by joining a waitlist for the tops that the company set up on its website.

According to the Daily Mail, the waitlist accrued more than 250 entries in its first hour. And Well+Good reported that the waitlist grew to 2,000 that same day.

Thanks to that early interest, Supercool is now sold out in sizes small and medium.

This isnt the first time that throngs of shoppers have gotten in line just to spent a lot of money on what some would consider a rather unexciting item. In between seasons, Reformations basic flared Mid Crop Jean racked up a waitlist 3,000 admirers long. And its not because they were insanely innovative or inexpensive  they were a pair of $128 blue jeans that some might say looked like they had gotten shrunk in the wash. French brand Sezane once had a 30,000-person waiting list for a $117 cardigan. Sure, it was designed to be worn backwards as well, but who says you cant wear your $30 Old Navy cardie backwards?

Story continues

So why such high demand for high-cost everyday clothing? Market researcher and luxury expert Pamela Danziger, who founded Unity Marketing and Retail Rescue, says its all about the cult following. This is the only way to explain this phenomenon, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Its not even remotely about the garment, according to Danziger. It isnt the product, but the experience of being in the know about a brand that is cool, hip, she says. And AYR is definitely cool, known for their breezy, effortlessly chic minimalist designs.

The feeling of being an insider is what drove 2,000 people to sign up for the waitlist. The element of discovery is key here too, she insists, discovery of something new and different. People need a little excitement in their lives, and since people know just what to expect and what theyll get when they purchase a $5 T-shirt at Kmart, joining a waitlist for a beloved brands first T-shirt is much more appealing. And then there are the bragging rights that come with being that discoverer, she continues. The experience of that discovery is what is so special. The experience, not the T-shirt itself.

Bob Phibbs, retail expert and CEO of the Retail Doctor, agrees. It could be as simple as wanting those bragging rights. But he also points out that just because hundreds or thousands of people join a waiting list doesnt mean theyre buying anything. Keep in mind that we dont know that these are sales either.

So, it could just be about being in the know and feeling like an insider in that moment, not so much about owning the shirt.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

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By Steve Holland and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korea will make a "major announcement" on North Korea at 7 p.m. (0000 GMT) on Thursday, after South Korean envoys who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week briefed U.S. officials at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters.

Trump made the comments to reporters in the White House briefing room but he gave no other details.

South Korea's National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon flew to Washington to explain North Korea's stance on possible future talks with Washington and the prospect of Pyongyang suspending nuclear tests if the security of the North's government is assured.

CNN quoted a foreign diplomatic source as saying that South Korean officials had delivered a letter to Trump from Kim.

Fox News quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that Chung would announce an invitation from Kim to meet Trump, no change to planned U.S.-South Korea military exercises in April, and a North Korean commitment to stop nuclear and missile testing.

Reuters could not immediately verify these media reports.

A South Korean presidential official said he was not aware of any physical letter.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said only that Chung would make the announcement on North Korea.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that though "talks about talks" might be possible with Pyongyang, denuclearization negotiations were likely a long way off.

But at the White House, there was a growing recognition that the North Korean offer for talks and South Korean desire to have them had put the United States under pressure to talk to the North, and that unless North Korea resumed aggressive activity like missile launches, Washington would likely take up the offer, a senior U.S. official said.

However, it was unclear at what level or how soon.

Story continues

The South Korean officials, who met Kim on Monday in Pyongyang, met a large group of U.S. administration officials, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and officials of the U.S. Treasury.

A South Korean Presidential spokesman said the delegation would also meet Trump.

The growing focus on diplomacy has helped ease fears of war in a standoff over North Korea's development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

As U.S.-South Korean talks got under way, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters: "We will see what comes out of that meeting today and we may have announcements at some point."

Monday's talks with Kim were the culmination of a series of North-South contacts since the beginning of the year.

Tensions over North Korea rose to their highest in years in 2017, and the Trump administration has warned that all options are on the table, including military ones, in dealing with Pyongyang, which has pursued its weapons programs in defiance of ever tougher U.N. sanctions.

Signs of a thaw emerged this year, with North and South Korea resuming talks and North Korea attending the Winter Olympics. During the Pyongyang talks this week, the two Koreas agreed to hold their first summit since 2007 in late April.

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(Reporting David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick in WASHINGTON and Christine Kim in SEOUL, additional reporting by Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Aaron Maasho and Kumerra Gemechu in ADDIS ABABA; Editing by Will Dunham, James Dalgleish, Grant McCool)
Madrid (AFP) - Spain marked International Women's Day Thursday with an unprecedented strike in defence of their rights that saw hundreds of trains cancelled and massive protests held in Madrid and Barcelona.

Called by 10 unions to demand gender equality, particularly where salaries are concerned, the 24-hour strike dominated headlines with famous female presenters noticeably absent from radio or television shows.

"This should be a starting point to change things. We are far from real equality," Maria Angels Pina, a teacher in her 60s, told AFP at an evening march in Barcelona attended by around 200,000 people according to municipal police.

In Madrid tens of thousands of people, many wearing purple or holding up purple balloons -- a colour long associated with gender equality -- marched along the central Gran Via boulevard, chanting and holding signs that read "Justice!" and "Revolution".

Smaller protests were held in dozens of cities across the country as women hung aprons on their balconies in a pre-arranged sign they were ditching domestic chores for the day.

Feminist groups also called on women not to spend money, particularly on items such as deodorant whose versions created for women often cost more.

Spain's two main unions -- the CCOO and UGT -- were not part of the grouping that called the 24-hour strike but asked their members to stop work for just two hours on Thursday.

They estimated that 5.9 million men and women had observed the short stoppage.

- 'Change the culture' -

The strike was attempting to emulate Iceland's 1975 work shutdown, when women took a day off in October to demonstrate their vital contribution to the country's economy and society.

Pilar Lahoz, a 35-year-old office worker who carried a sign that read "Without us the world stops" at the protest in Madrid, said she has struggled to change jobs because potential employers rule her out when she says she is planning on having children.

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"While we have advanced a great deal there is still much to do," she told AFP.

The strike comes as countries around the world mobilised for #InternationalWomensDay, a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and comes hot on the heels of #MeToo and #Timesup campaigns that went global with allegations of sexual misconduct in Hollywood.

Belen Ramiro, 40, who wore stickers that read "feminist strike" on her jacket at the march in Madrid, said she did not cook or do any other housework as part of the strike and her daughter did not go to school.

"We want to change the culture that it is women who are caretakers," she told AFP.

Countless sarcastic memes circulated on social media and mobile messaging apps, with one video showing a man desperately trying to start a vacuum cleaner, pulling at the retractable plug cable like he would power up a lawnmower.

- Spain fights hard -

Spain is a leading country in the fight for women's rights and against gender violence, even though much remains to be done.

In 2004, for instance, the then Socialist government approved a law on violence against women that the European Council has upheld as an example to follow.

The groundbreaking legislation set up a hotline that would not appear on users' phone bills, offered free legal aid and established special courts for victims.

Last year, though, 49 women died at the hands of their partners or ex-partners, an increase on 2016 when 44 were killed, official statistics show.

Women earn 14.9 percent less than men in Spain, slightly better than the EU average of 16.2 percent, according to the bloc's statistics agency Eurostat.

It was not yet clear how many Spaniards went on the 24-hour strike, but trains on the Madrid and Barcelona undergrounds were less frequent than usual.

Meanwhile, more than 300 intercity and long-distance trains were cancelled throughout Spain.

- Deputy PM speaks out -

High-profile women politicians and business leaders also spoke out strongly against inequalities.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria on Wednesday spoke of the discrimination she has suffered: "There are still many things that need changing because even as deputy prime minister you experience unacceptable sexist behaviour."

Famous actresses such as Penelope Cruz and Rossy de Palma were also striking, with Cruz cancelling planned events and letting her partner Javier Bardem take care of their two children.

Ana Botin, the head of Santander, Spain's largest bank, tweeted that "the motherhood penalty is not a myth".

"After a first child, a women's income drops sharply, and never fully recover," she added.
By Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal COLOMBO (Reuters) - A grenade blast killed one person in further violence between majority Buddhist Sinhalese and minority Muslims in Sri Lanka on Wednesday as the government moved to block social messaging networks in an effort to halt the bloodshed. The South Asian country has been rocked by communal clashes in its central highlands since Sunday following attacks on Muslims by nationalist Sinhalese crowds. Communal tensions have grown over the past year with some hardline Buddhist groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert to Islam and vandalizing Buddhist archaeological sites. Muslim groups deny these allegations. Some Buddhist nationalists have also protested against the presence in Sri Lanka of Muslim Rohingya asylum seekers from mostly Buddhist Myanmar, where Buddhist nationalism has also been on the rise. Police declared a curfew until 4 p.m. (1130 GMT) Thursday in the central highlands district of Kandy, epicenter of the violence following the death of a Buddhist youth after an altercation with a group of Muslims. Buddhist mobs attacked mosques and businesses belonging to Muslims overnight, residents told Reuters on Wednesday, even after President Maithripala Sirisena decreed an emergency for seven days to curb the violence. Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said there had been several disturbances throughout Tuesday night in the Kandy area, renowned for its tea plantations and scenic hills. "One person was killed and three were injured during the day after a hand grenade exploded," Gunasekara told Reuters, without elaborating. Police have arrested seven people and three police officers were injured in the incidents, he said. The severed head of a youth was found in a mainly Muslim area in the capital Colombo, adding to tensions, residents said. Police said they were investigating. Some of the violence has been instigated by Facebook postings that threatened more attacks on Muslims, the government said. On Wednesday, it said Facebook, Viber and WhatsApp would be blocked across Sri Lanka for three days. Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, said it was working to identify and remove incitements to violence, and was in contact with the government and private organizations. "We have clear rules against hate speech and incitement to violence and work hard to keep it off our platform," the social network said in a statement. The crisis spurred opposition parties to shelve a no- confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for alleged mismanagement of the economy that was originally set to be filed on Monday. On a visit to Kandy, President Maithripala Sirisena urged religious leaders to do more to rebuild inter-communal peace. FACEBOOK POSTINGS Muslims in Colombo said they fear for the safety of relatives living in Kandy. Mohamed Khan, a 71-year-old worker in a soap factory in Colombo, said his relatives in Kandy were in hiding. "They say the police and military are...not taking any action," he said. Analysts said Muslim-owned businesses were being targeted as many Sinhalese believe that the minority group holds disproportionate economic power. Sri Lanka is still healing from a 26-year civil war with Tamil separatist rebels that was plagued by atrocities and ended in 2009. Sinhalese comprise around 70 percent of the South Asian nation's 21 million population, ethnic Tamils - who are mainly Hindu - about 13 percent, and Muslims around 9 percent. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said he was alarmed by recurring episodes of violence against ethnic and religious minorities in Sri Lanka and wanted accountability. "There should be no impunity, either for the incitement that led to the attacks, or the attacks themselves," he said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. The U.S. State Department issued a security alert warning of the possibility of further unrest in Kandy. Tourism, one of the foreign exchange mainstays of Sri Lanka's $81 billion economy, could take a serious hit from the violence as Kandy is a prime destination for foreign travelers. Kandy is located in the heart of the Indian Ocean island nation's tea-growing region but an Indian trader said the crisis was unlikely to affect global tea markets in the near term. "This will delay shipments, but won't have any impact on global prices, as Kenya and India have ample supplies to substitute. If supplies remain disrupted for more than a month, then prices could go up," said a tea broker in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata. Sri Lanka is the world's third biggest tea exporter. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva, Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai and David Ingram in San Francisco; writing by Sanjeev Miglani; editing by Mark Heinrich and Tom Brown)
President Trump is talking trade and tariffs at the White House right now  well have the latest. Plus  Warren Buffett wades into the trade debate  and talks to Yahoo Finance exclusively. Thats coming up. And  Samsungs S9 is almost here  but does it have the goods to take on the iPhone TEN? Plus a look ahead to everything you need to know about tomorrow  which will be a big one for economic data. Catch The Final Round at 3:55 ET p.m. with Jen Rogers, Yahoo Finance markets correspondent Myles Udland, and columnist Rick Newman.

Winners and losers

Stocks in the red include Tronc as the Chicago Tribune and NY Daily News parent missed badly on earnings, VBL Therapeutics after the biotech firms glioblastoma treatment trial did not meet its primary endpoint, and Kroger  shares dropping, the grocer announced 4th quarter earnings that were in-line with street estimates, but its 2018 profit outlook disappointed investors.

Stocks in the green include Wynn Resorts, the casino operator reported strong preliminary results for the current quarter, and upped its dividend, Burlington Stores as the retailer reported a huge earnings beat, and Express Scripts  Shares soaring with Cigna announcing a deal to buy the pharmacy benefits manager for a whopping $67 billion. This follows Aetnas deal for CVS Health announced in December.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels is suing Donald Trump over a nondisclosure agreement on their alleged affair, adding to a long list of civil cases the president is already facing.

In a civil lawsuit filed recently in Los Angeles County Superior Court, lawyers for Stephanie Clifford (Daniels real name) argue that the nondisclosure agreement she signed before the 2016 election is not valid because Trump never signed it.

Trump is also facing a lawsuit from former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos for defamation, and hes been sued more than 100 times in federal court, on issues ranging from his actions on immigration to the Constitutions Emoluments Clause.

In the meantime, special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian meddling has already tripped up several of Trumps associates, leading some to wonder whether he would try to indict the president as well if he had strong evidence of wrongdoing.

All of these cases have raised a straightforward question with complicated legal ramifications: Can you sue the president? Does it matter if its state or federal court? And can you indict the president?

Heres a look at what we know.

Civil cases

Both the Daniels and Zervos suits raise a serious legal question: can someone bring a civil suit against a sitting president in state court? Trumps lawyers say no. State court cant exercise any control over the president under any circumstances, Trumps lawyer Marc Kasowitz argued in New York state court in early December. The motion to dismiss Zervos case, Kasowitz continued, is about protecting the ability of the president to do his constitutionally mandated job.

In court filings, Trumps team has cited the Supreme Courts 1982 decision in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which held that the president has absolute immunity from being held liable for damages in civil lawsuits for conduct within the outer perimeter of his official presidential duties. Because of the singular importance of the Presidents duties, the decision reads, diversion of his energies by concern with private lawsuits would raise unique risks to the effective functioning of government.

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This is a key element of Trumps lawyers argument around the Zervos case for why he cant be sued in state court. But there are limits to the holding in Nixon v. Fitzgerald: the case only applied to civil suits in federal court, not state court, and only to civil suits related to official actions as president, not personal conduct.

Its a later Supreme Court case, 1997s Clinton v. Jones, that introduces private acts to the patchwork of laws on presidents and civil lawsuits. This time, facing a case in which former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones accused President Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, the Supreme Court said the Nixon v. Fitzgerald ruling on immunity from civil damages did not apply to unofficial conduct by the president.

We have never suggested that the President, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity, the Court held. The litigation of questions that relate entirely to the unofficial conduct of the individual who happens to be the President poses no perceptible risk of misallocation of either judicial power or executive power.

This decision is good for those on the side of Zervos and Daniels, ruling definitively that presidents can be sued while in office for private conduct.

Clinton v. Jones makes clear that this Defendant is not entitled to qualified immunity  or any other species of official acts [of] immunity  because this case involved unofficial conduct by Defendant before he assumed office, Zervos lawyers said in a court filing earlier this year. Precisely because Defendants underlying tortious behavior has nothing to do with his current duties or office, and because it occurred before he took that office, he does not have immunity from suit.

But again, theres a critical unanswered question in the Clinton v. Jones opinion: that case only applies to litigation in federal court, and did not decide the issue of whether a civil suit can be brought against a sitting president in state court.

In fact, the Supreme Court explicitly decided not to decide that question, explaining that state court suits could raise different legal questions than the ones decided in Clinton v. Jones. Because the Supremacy Clause makes federal law the supreme Law of the Land, any direct control by a state court over the President, who has principal responsibility to ensure that those laws are faithfully executed, may implicate concerns that are quite different from the interbranch separation of powers questions addressed here, the majority opinion notes in a footnote.

The power difference between state and federal court arises in part from the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which establishes that federal law bars states from interfering in federal functions. There would still be limits, however. In civil suits, theres no absolute immunity from being sued in state court for a president, explains Samuel Issacharoff, constitutional law professor at New York University Law School. He gives the example of if a president and his or her spouse wanted to get a divorce while in office  which would have to be handled in state court.

Divorce matrimonial matters are not actionable in federal court, and it is inconceivable that we would make [the spouse] wait four or eight years [to get a divorce], Issacharoff says. The ordinary conduct of the life of the president as an individual may give rise to legal issues, and weve never said that theres immunity from that.

And some legal experts think that footnote was merely standard practice by the Supreme Court to limit the scope of its ruling on a constitutional issue, and that theres no reason to think the Court wouldnt have decided the case the same way had it been a state court in question.

Theres nothing in the opinion that would militate heavily against the same type of process in state court, says George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley. Indeed, one could argue that the federal system has a greater likelihood to recognize a form of immunity than the state system. Under federalism principles, these are two different systems, and the state system has its own independent authority and right to pursue defendants.

As it stands now, Trump cannot be held liable for civil damages in conduct related to his presidential powers, but he can be held liable in federal court for civil damages related to his personal conduct before he became president. And if any presidency will lead to a clear decision on whether he can be subject to a civil suit on personal conduct in state court, theres good reason to think it might be Trumps.

President Trump came to office dragging a long chain of existing civil lawsuits, says Turley. No president has come to office with as much experience as a litigant as President Trump.

Criminal cases

Theres also a constitutional question about whether a sitting president can be criminally prosecuted, and there isnt a clear answer. It has never happened before, and no court has definitively ruled on the issue. (The Supreme Court heard arguments about it in 1974 about President Richard Nixon, but never resolved the question.)

Heres what the Constitution says in Article 1 Section 3: Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.

The text of the Constitution doesnt explicitly state whether a president can be prosecuted while in office, so arguments are based on structure and inference. The official view of the executive branch is that it cant be done. The Office of Legal Counsel wrote in a 2000 memo arguing a president cant be indicted, The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions, though it acknowledged, neither the text nor the history of the Constitution ultimately provided dispositive guidance in determining whether a president is amenable to indictment or criminal prosecution while in office.

Other legal experts disagree. I fail to see the compelling basis for reading a sweeping immunity into the Constitution that was not mentioned in the constitutional convention, let alone in the text of the Constitution, says Turley. The danger of having an immunized felon in the Oval Office is greater than the danger of having an indicted president.

In Muellers position as special counsel, he is bound by Justice Department policies, but its an unresolved question how much deference he must give to the Office of Legal Counsels previous legal analyses on this issue. Under the interpretation that the president cannot be indicted in office, Trump would have to resign or be impeached first, and then could be criminally charged afterwards.

In that case, if Muellers investigation finds what he believes merits an indictment, historically that means he would bring his findings to the House, which would decide if it warrants high crimes and misdemeanors to impeach and proceed from there. The basic idea behind this precedent is that if youre going to undo an election, it should be by a body that is subject to the will of the people.
Juno has been circling our largest neighbor Jupiter for a year and a half now, snapping incredible photos to share with its creators here on Earthand on its most recent orbit, the spacecraft delivered the goods once again.

On February 7, the camera on board the spacecraft captured this incredible image taken very near the planet's south poleat 84.9 degrees south latitude. On Earth, that's solidly within Antarctica, more southerly than any bit of ocean. When it captured the image, the spacecraft was flying almost 75,000 miles above the clouds that swirl around the planet.

03_06_juno_jupiter_twilight

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt

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The image itself is a collation of several different photographs, with the camera using a slightly different exposure level for each. Stitching those images together offers a better view of the region where day and night meet, NASA explained in a caption accompanying the image.

(Terrestrial photographers will recognize the phenomenonit's the same challenge they face trying to capture details of a relatively dark landscape or building when the image frame also includes a very bright sky.)

Read more: NASA releases treasure trove of incredible new images of Jupiter from its Juno mission

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At the time the camera captured the image, Juno was on its eleventh trip skimming over the gas giant's surface. Each loop the spacecraft makes is incredibly lopsided: Juno swings in, grazes the planet from near the north pole to the south pole, then ducks far away to avoid the punishing magnetic field around the planet.

Right now, Juno has two more of these loops scheduled. Then, NASA will have to decide what to do nextwhether it's worth it to try to do more science with the spacecraft, or if it's a better use of resources to let Juno go and move on to another project. So these images are worth treasuring while the spacecraft is still chugging away.

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This article was first written by Newsweek

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Beirut (AFP) - Syrian and allied forces have retaken half of the territory rebels held in Eastern Ghouta since they launched a blistering offensive in mid-February, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

"Regime forces control more than 50 percent of Ghouta," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organisation.

The symbolic mark was reached "after forces retook Al-Ashaari and Beit Sawa towns as well as farmland in the centre and north of Eastern Ghouta," he told AFP.

After attacking mostly from the air -- in a campaign that involved Russian warplanes and saw Syria aircraft using barrel bombs -- pro-government forces launched a ground offensive.

They have moved rapidly from the east, taking mostly farmland and punching westward down the middle of the enclave in a bid to split it in two.

Regime forces have yet to take on the two main towns of Douma and Hammuriyeh or any of the most populated areas of the enclave on the capital Damascus' outskirts.

Syrian troops and allied militia fighters supporting the operation have faced limited resistance so far from the Islamist and jihadist groups who had been controlling Eastern Ghouta.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Thursday it was in the best interests of self-ruled Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic allies to recognize an "irresistible trend" and ditch Taipei in favor "one China" ruled by Beijing. Taiwan, which China claims as its own, has formal relations with only 20 countries, many of them poor nations in Central America and the Pacific. China says Taiwan is simply a wayward province with no right to state-to-state ties. China and Taiwan have tried to poach each other's allies over the years, often dangling generous aid packages in front of developing nations, although Taipei struggles to compete with an increasingly powerful China. Panama severed its long-standing relationship with Taiwan last year in a major diplomatic victory for China. The Vatican is likely next on the list, as the Holy See and China edge closer to an accord on the appointment of bishops. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said there was only one China and Taiwan was an inalienable part of it, something he said was already the long-standing consensus of the international community. "Upholding the 'one China' principle and not having official contacts with Taiwan has already become one of the international norms for countries to follow," he said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of parliament in Beijing. "Establishing diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, the only legal representative of the entire Chinese people, and having normal cooperation is obviously the correct choice that conforms to the times," Wang said. This is "the general and irresistible trend" and is in the long-term interests of those countries, he added. Speaking in Taipei, Chiu Chui-cheng, deputy minister of Taiwan's China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council, said the Republic of China, Taiwan's official name, was a sovereign country with the right to develop relations with other countries. "Mainland China should fully respect our rights to maintain diplomatic ties with our allies," he told reporters. "During the past two years, mainland China has continued to maliciously manipulate its 'one China' policy in the international community and squeeze Taiwan's international space with its zero-sum thinking. That has hurt the feelings of the Taiwanese people." China's hostility toward Taiwan has risen since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in 2016. It suspects Tsai wants to push for formal independence, a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing, although Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in TAIPEI; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie)
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CNNs Chris Cuomo pressed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to explain on Wednesday why his campaign is attacking an opponents nickname when Cruz uses one himself.

Following the Texas primary race on Tuesday, Cruzs re-election campaign released a new ad mocking Rep. Beto ORourke, the Democratic challenger for Cruzs Senate seat, for his name.

ORourkes given name is Robert, but he goes by Beto, a childhood nickname that stuck. Cruzs campaign ad, which features a short country music jingle, claims ORourke chose the nickname to fit in.

I remember reading stories, liberal Robert wanted to fit in, so he changed his name to Beto, and hid it with a grin. Beto wants those open borders, and he wants to take our guns. Not a chance on earth hell get a vote from millions of Texans.

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So Cuomo asked Cruz  whose given name is Rafael Edward  about his own nickname.

You know, look, your name is Rafael. You go by Ted. Your middle name is Edward  thats an anglicized version of it. He went the other way, and has a more ethnic version of his name, Cuomo pointed out.

Why go after it? Youre both doing the same thing, he added.

Youre absolutely right. My name is Rafael Edward Cruz, the senator said, before launching into a story about his father, who was an immigrant from Cuba.

Earlier this week, Cruz appeared on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitts program and warned listeners that Republicans could lose the U.S. Senate and the House in Novembers midterm elections.

If conservatives are complacent  and mark my words, we are going to see historic turnout from the extreme left in November  which means if conservatives stay home, we have the potential, we could lose both houses of Congress, Cruz said.

ORourke, who won 61.8 percent of the vote Tuesday night in Texas Democratic primary race, is still considered a long shot, though it seems Cruz is in for a fight that may be more competitive this year. Texas has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

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ORourke made headlines this time last year when he and his Republican colleague, Rep. Will Hurd, went on a bipartisan road trip from San Antonio, Texas, to Washington, D.C. The two spent most of the road trip on Facebook Live, speaking with colleagues and answering questions from constituents.

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(Photo: HuffPost)

(Photo: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)

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Thursday, March 8

Hi there! Eliot Nelson here filling in for Lauren Weber while shes on vacation. Lauren will be back next Monday!

CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS PREPARING DO-NOTHING AGENDA FOR 2018 Some GOP members of Congress are expressing frustration with the agenda laid out by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), which consists mostly of required spending bills and show votes like the introduction of a balanced budget amendment and implausible IRS reform. [HuffPost] [Tweet | Share on Facebook]

TRUMP TO ENACT TARIFFS TODAY The barriers on foreign steel and aluminum will not be applied at first to imports from Canada and Mexico. Over 100 Republican members of Congress have urged President Donald Trump to not enact the measures. [NYT]

TRUMPS LAWYER GOT RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST STORMY DANIELS Michael Cohen requested the order to block Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) from disclosing confidential information, according to the nondisclosure agreement she signed shortly before the 2016 presidential election. [HuffPost]

FLORIDA LEGISLATURE PASSES BILL ALLOWING GUNS IN SCHOOLS The legislation passed the Florida House 67-50 and would allow certain school officials to carry concealed firearms. Gov. Rick Scott (R) has not said whether he will veto the bill. [HuffPost]

WHATS BREWING

LOOKING BACK AT THE WEST VIRGINIA TEACHERS STRIKE Their success came despite being in a state with very few protections for unions. [HuffPost]

BEST BUY GEEK SQUAD ACTED AS FBI INFORMANTS While the employees only handed over customer information when they found child pornography, the news raises Fourth Amendment concerns. [HuffPost]

TRUMP CAMPAIGN PAYING TRUMP TOWER MILLIONS FOR BARELY-USED OFFICES The getting is good for President Trump. [HuffPost]

FLORIDA LAWMAKERS SAYS MANY SCHOOL SHOOTERS ARE DEMOCRATS Its interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats. But the media doesnt talk about that either, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) said during a radio interview. [HuffPost]

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WHY STEEL TARIFFS FAILED LAST TIME They hurt more industries than they helped. [Politico]

BEFORE YOU GO

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A rogue Chinese space station is hurtling through space on a collision course with Earth. The Tiangong-1 station has been making headlines since China ceased communications with the spacecraft back in 2016. With re-entry predicted just a few weeks from now, should we be worried?

Probably not, is the short answer.

The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research and development company, predicts the chance of being hit by a piece of falling Tiangong-1 debris is about a million times smaller than winning the lottery. And thats if youre in the most likely region that parts of Tiangong-1 will land.

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3_7_Tiangong-1

Petar Kudjundzic/Reuters

Big Planet, Small Station

In 2001, the 140-ton Russian Mir space station fell through the skies above Fiji, its charred remains landing in the South Pacific Ocean. The re-entry harmed no one.

Like the Russian station, much of Tiangong-1 will burn up in the atmosphere, reports Chinese news agency Xinhua. At just 8.5 tons, the spacecraft is far smaller than Mir.

Some parts of the station may survive the fall, however. Wired reports that pieces as heavy as 100 kilograms (220 pounds) might make it down to the ground.

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These might seem big, but even large chunks of the craft will pale in comparison to the size of the Earths surface. According to a map produced by the Aerospace Corporation, re-entry could occur across about two-thirds of the planets surface, in line with the spacecrafts flight path.

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The zone of greatest risk cuts right through the heart of mainland U.S. from Northern California and Oregon all the way to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

But even in this higher-risk region, the chance of being hit by debris is about a million times smaller than the chance of winning the Powerball jackpot, the Aerospace Corporation reports.

Because most of Earths surface is covered by waterincluding the regions most likely to be hit by falling debrisand because vast swaths of land are uninhabited or barely inhabited, the likelihood of a person being hit by falling space debris of any kind is tiny, Wired reports.

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A Dubious Jackpot

Lottie Williams from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has the dubious honor of being the only known person ever hit by a piece of space junk. In 1997, she was struck by a piece of charred mesh believed to have come from a returning Delta II rocket. Luckily the mesh was not heavy and just tapped her shoulder, leaving her unharmed but incredibly surprised.

If youre still not conviced you'll be safe, you have about three weeks to take cover. Tiangong-1 is due to re-enter some time between March 29 and April 9, ESA reports.

While it probably wont be dangerous, the re-entry should be spectacular. A team from NASA and other space organizations filmed the Japanese Hayabusas 2010 reentry over central Australia. They captured, exploding streaks of light like shooting stars over the skies from NASAs DC-8 airborne laboratory.

Watch the footage here:

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WASHINGTON  President Donald Trumps decision to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports drew rare bipartisan criticism from lawmakers, who warned the move could trigger a transatlantic trade war and hurt U.S. companies.

Trump signed proclamations Thursday allowing tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum to take effect later this month.

The American aluminum and steel industry has been ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices. Its really an assault on our country, Trump said during a hastily arranged event at the White House.

Surrounded by a group of steelworkers, Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Trump approvingly cited President William McKinley, a champion of protectionist economic policy, to support his trade decision.

Many of the countries that treat us the worst on trade are our allies, Trump added.

Administration officials said the tariffs would apply to every country in the world except Canada and Mexico, two key U.S. allies. During the event at the White House, however, Trump said that the two countries would be indefinitely exempted while negotiations continue regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In imposing the tariffs, Trump broke with many members of his own party, none of whom joined him for the event at the White House.

A group of seven Republican senators, led by Joni Ernst of Iowa, warned in a letter Thursday that the administration risked alienating key international partners that contribute to our ability to defend our nation and maintain international stability. Many others argued this week the tariffs could lead to higher prices for other products, such as cars, planes, boats, soup and beer.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a frequent Trump critic, said he would introduce legislation to nullify the tariffs.

Trade wars are not won, they are only lost. Congress cannot be complicit as the administration courts economic disaster, Flake said in a statement.

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If youre our allies, trading partners, youve got to be pulling your hair out right now, he later told reporters.

Flake noted that when President Jimmy Carter imposed a tariff on oil imports in the 1970s, Congress voted to nullify them and even overrode a subsequent presidential veto to do so. A veto override, however, would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber  a tall order for this Congress.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday he disagreed with the decision, but he did not go so far as to suggest action to undo the tariffs.

I am pleased that the president has listened to those who share my concerns and included an exemption for some American allies, but it should go further, Ryan said in a statement. We will continue to urge the administration to narrow this policy so that it is focused only on those countries and practices that violate trade law.

Most Democrats were equally critical of the tariffs. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), for example, likened the move to dropping a bomb on a flea.

Conservatives and free-trade groups also panned the decision.

Tariffs are a tax increase on American workers and their families. The presidents decision today to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports is disappointing, economically regressive and counterproductive, Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James said in a statement.

Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers affiliate, also said he was disappointed by the tariffs. These tariffs will raise prices on so many products that Americans buy every day. Tariffs can tank our economy.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump lashed out at European Union trade rules Tuesday, saying the bloc has made life near "impossible" for US firms, and threatening to ramp up tariffs on imports into the US.

"The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States," Trump said as he hosted Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven at the White House.

"They make it almost impossible for us to do business with them, and yet they send their cars and everything else back into the United States."

Meanwhile, the US is "subsidizing" Europe militarily, he said.

"The European Union has not treated us well. And it's been a very, very unfair trade situation."

Trump, who has threatened to institute 25 percent import duties on steel from all foreign producers and 10 percent on aluminum, said he was not afraid of sparking a conflict over trade.

"When we're behind on every single country, trade wars aren't so bad," he said.

"The trade war hurts them. It doesn't hurt us. So we'll see what happens."

He warned that he was ready to ramp up import duties on European cars in the US, most of which come from Germany.

"They can do whatever they'd like. But if they do that, then we put a big tax of 25 percent on their cars and believe me, they won't be doing it very long."

Speaking after bilateral meetings in the White House, Lofven cautioned that open and free trade is "crucially important" for Sweden and the EU.

He noted that it is "very, very complicated to see" how global supply chains meld materials and inputs from many countries into a final product like a car or airplane.

"I know for example, when we start our aircraft, a very good aircraft, the content is American," Lofven said.

He also pointed out that tariffs would come down hard on European factories even though they produce only about 10 percent of the steel in the world, while China produces about 50 percent, he said.

"I am convinced that increased tariffs will hurt us all in the long run," he said.

"I of course support the efforts of the European Union to achieve trade with fewer obstacles and as few as possible."
By Doina Chiacu

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the Oakland, California, mayor on Thursday for alerting her community to a pending immigration raid, saying her actions prompted federal scrutiny.

"What the mayor of Oakland did the other day was a disgrace," Trump told reporters before a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

"Where they had close to 1,000 people ready to be gotten, ready to be taken off the streets," he said. "And the mayor of Oakland went out and she warned them all: 'Scatter.'"

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Feb. 25 made a televised statement telling residents she had heard from multiple sources of a pending Immigration and Customs Enforcement action in the San Francisco Bay area.

"My priority is to keep this community safe. It is not my wish to panic people but to ensure that they're prepared with information. That they know their rights as well as their responsibilities and know about the resources that this community offers," she said.

"Residents should know that they do not have an obligation to open their doors if an ICE official knocks."

The comments drew a storm of criticism from Trump administration officials including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the acting ICE director, Thomas Honan. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said a week ago that the Justice Department was reviewing Schaaf's actions.

Trump weighed in on Thursday, accusing Schaaf of warning criminals away and endangering enforcement officers. He said it was "certainly something that we're looking at with respect to her individually."

"We're looking at that situation very carefully," he said.

The Republican president's comments followed a Justice Department lawsuit on Tuesday against the state of California over so-called "sanctuary" policies that try to protect illegal immigrants against deportation.

Justin Berton, a spokesman for the mayor, said Schaaf was among a large number of elected California officials who believe sanctuary cities are legal.

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"Her intention was for our residents to become familiar with their constitutional rights and legal obligations, and that is a perfectly legal message to share," he said.

In her announcement, Schaaf said she did not learn of the raid in any official capacity and said it was her "ethical obligation" to share the information.

ICE arrested more than 200 people in a four-day sweep last month in the San Francisco area. Honan told Fox News after the raids that 800 others remained at large because of Schaaf's action.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan recently said "powerful Jews" are his "enemy." (Photo: Mark Wilson via Getty Images)

A prominent feminist activist and a Democratic lawmaker have resisted calls to condemn notorious Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for his anti-Semitic views.

Tamika Mallory, the co-founder of last years Womens March, attended an event last month at which Farrakhan, during a three-hour speech, said the powerful Jews are his enemy. She later posted a video of herself at the event and an Instagram photo with a caption praising Farrakhan.

White folks are going down, Farrakhan said during his annual Saviours Day address in Chicago. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by Gods grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and Im here to say your time is up, your world is through.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) called Farrakhan an outstanding human being last month. Pressed by the Daily Caller to explain Farrakhans anti-Semitic beliefs, the lawmaker skirted the issue.

So I know Farrakhan, I know the Middle East question, I know the Jews and Farrakhan  I know all that, but thats not what I spend all my time focused on, Davis, a member of Congress Progressive Caucus, told the conservative news outlet last week. Thats just one segment of what goes on in our world. The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth. For those heavy into it, thats their thing, but it aint my thing.

Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have denounced Farrakhans harsh anti-Semitic rhetoric. He has previously accused Jewish people of having a stranglehold on Congress, blames them for black oppression, and has also attacked the LGBTQ community.

As the leader of the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan has the support of one of the largest black organizations in America that often hosts service events and programs in impoverished communities. But as the SPLC points out, the organization also has a theology of innate black superiority over whites ... and deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT rhetoric.

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These reasons should all be enough to denounce Farrakhan, but during his February speech in Chicago, Farrakhan found a seemingly unlikely supporter in Mallory, who posted an Instagram photo of herself with him.

Thank God this man is still alive and doing well, Mallory wrote. He is definitely the GOAT [greatest of all time].

After being called out on social media, Mallory denounced anti-Semitism and homophobia in a series of tweets without ever directly denouncing the man who promotes those positions.

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She defended herself again on Wednesday in an editorial for News One.

I go into difficult spaces, she wrote. I attend meetings with police and legislators  the very folks so much of my protest has been directed towards. Ive partnered and sat with countless groups, activists, religious leaders and institutions over the past 20 years. Ive worked in prisons as well as with present and former gang members.

Farrakhan, who once called Adolf Hitler a very great man, is not mentioned in her editorial.

Anthony Clark, a progressive activist challenging Davis in Illinois March 20 primary, said the veteran congressmans ties to Farrakhan are extremely deep.

Davis has always gotten away with his missteps, just because hes been entrenched in our district, Clark told Tablet, a Jewish online magazine.

I would be hypocritical to yell against [President Donald] Trump and point fingers at someone because of racism and yet ignore anti-Semitism or homophobia or Islamophobia or classism or agism, Clark said. You have to literally fight to hold accountable any and everybody. Because if not, were not going to change anything.

In a March 6 pinned tweet, Farrakhan posted video of himself speaking at the Saviours Day event.

The caption for the tweet reads, What have I done to make Jewish people hate me?

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has rescinded its top award to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi because of her failure to condemn and stop military attacks on her country's minority Rohingya Muslims, the museum said on Wednesday.

The Washington museum's rescission of its Elie Wiesel Award to Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the latest honor to be retracted over her silence about widespread abuses against the Rohingya.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy have refused to cooperate with United Nations investigators, fed hate attacks on the Rohingya and denied reporters access to areas where alleged abuses have taken place, the museum said in a letter to Suu Kyi that was posted on its website.

"It is with great regret that we are now rescinding that award. We did not take this decision likely," it said in the letter dated March 6.

The Myanmar Embassy in Washington said it regretted that the museum had been "misled and exploited by people who failed to see the true situation" in the western state of Rakhine.

The decision to rescind the award would "have no bearing on the determination of the Myanmar people in supporting the leadership" of Suu Kyi, the embassy said in a statement dated March 7.

The government would "redouble its efforts in finding a lasting solution" for Rakhine State, it said.

The United Nations and human rights organizations have collected evidence of widespread abuses by the Myanmar military against the largely stateless Rohingya, including murder, rape and arson. The attacks have prompted nearly 700,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar denies the abuse charges and says its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against "terrorists" it blames for attacks on security forces.

The plight of the Rohingya has sparked outrage around the world. There have been calls for Suu Kyi to be stripped of her Nobel prize, won for her pro-democracy fight, for not speaking out to condemn the Myanmar military's actions.

Suu Kyi is Myanmar's state counselor and foreign minister. She has had other honors rescinded, including the freedoms of the cities of Dublin and Oxford, England. Last month, three Nobel peace laureates urged Suu Kyi and the military to end the "genocide" of Rohingya Muslims now or face prosecution.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis in YANGON; Editing by Dan Grebler, Robert Birsel)
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has issued a travel warning for a popular tourist hotspot, following a security threat alert and an explosion aboard a ferry last month.

The embassy is barring U.S. government employees from traveling to Playa del Carmen, in the state of in Quintana Roo. The U.S. Consular Agency in the popular resort town will also be closed until further notice, the embassy reported in an alert.

The embassy added in the alert post on its website that it received information about a security threat concerning the city on Wednesday. The explosion aboard a ferry last month injured 26 people, according to the Associated Press. An alert posted last week barred employees from taking ferries between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel Island.

Police forces are working day and night to maintain the calmness of the residents and visitors of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquin, state governor, said in a statement, according to the El Universal newspaper.

On March 1, an further explosive device was found on a different ferry, following the first explosion in February. Both incidents are under investigation.

The State Department issued aLevel 2: Exercise increased caution alert status for Mexico earlier this year, and currently advises U.S. travellers to avoid five states in Mexico: Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas.
By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has agreed to provide congressional investigators confidential records on a failed gun-trafficking operation during the Obama administration known as "Fast and Furious" that long has been criticized by Republican lawmakers. In a statement issued on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department would hand over documents to the Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that had been withheld by Democratic former President Barack Obama's administration. The agreement reached by Republican President Donald Trump's administration will effectively end a six-year long legal battle in which the committee had gone to federal court to try to enforce a subpoena it had issued to obtain the records. Congressional Republicans have been pressing the Justice Department for years about the operation. Named after a movie about car racing, the operation sought to curb gun-trafficking criminals who were selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels. In June 2012, the Republican-led House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder, an Obama appointee, in contempt for failing to turn over documents about the operation. The committee sued Holder for access to the documents in August 2012. Obama asserted executive privilege to block the disclosure of the documents. Democrats at the time accused Republicans of engaging in a partisan witch hunt. In an effort to build bigger cases against major gun traffickers who were selling arms to Mexican cartels, U.S. law enforcement officials elected not to prosecute lower-level offenders transporting more than 2,000 illegal guns. The operation and its flaws became public after two of those firearms were found in Arizona at the scene of a fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. In September 2012, the Justice Department's inspector general released a report faulting 12 department employees for failures related to the operation. The report vindicated Holder, concluding he neither conceived the operation nor attempted a cover-up. Holder, now a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling LLP, could not be immediately reached at his office on Wednesday. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that crimes against humanity may have been committed by state forces in Venezuela and voiced alarm at "the erosion of democratic institutions" in the Andean nation.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said his office had received credible reports of "hundreds of extra-judicial killings in recent years, both during protests and security operations".

"I encourage the Council to consider mandating a Commission of Inquiry to investigate human rights violations in Venezuela," Zeid told the U.N. Human Rights Council, holding its main annual four-week session through March 23.

Venezuela is among the 47 member states of the Geneva forum, where it enjoys support from allies led by Cuba, but it has been criticised by the United States and other Latin American countries for shrinking democracy and a food and health crisis.

Venezuela last week postponed its upcoming presidential vote to May 20 in a move cementing an opposition split as socialist incumbent Nicolas Maduro seeks re-election despite an economic crisis and global censure.

The main opposition coalition is boycotting the poll, saying it is a farce intended to legitimize a "dictatorship."

The context for the presidential poll "does not in any way fulfil minimal conditions for free and credible elections", Zeid said.

"I am deeply disturbed by the growing exodus of Venezuelans from their country, many of them in search of access to food and basic services," he added.

A Reuters Special Report published last week followed a group of migrants as they fled Venezuela on a bus ride through five South American countries in a quest for a better life.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
By Yasmeen Abutaleb WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. government agency on Thursday said Idaho could not allow health insurers to sell plans that do not comply with Obamacare, a sign that the Trump administration will enforce the law even as it takes regulatory actions to weaken it. Idaho last month told health insurers they could sell plans that did not comply with all of the rules in the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement commonly called Obamacare. Those rules include charging sick and healthy people the same rates and requiring that insurers cover a certain set of benefits, such as maternity and newborn care and prescription drugs. Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in a letter on Thursday said that based on a review, the agency determined that Idaho was failing to enforce the law. "If a state fails to substantially enforce the law, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has a responsibility to enforce these provisions on behalf of the State," Verma wrote. The administration is working to offer alternatives outside of Obamacare and to provide states more flexibility to experiment with Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled, and their health insurance markets. Yet Thursday's letter is one of the first signals that the administration will not allow states to violate the law, even though it opposes the healthcare program. Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, repeatedly tried and failed last year to repeal and replace Obamacare. Congress last year repealed the individual mandate, the requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance or else pay a fine, as part of an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. The Trump administration has instead pursued regulatory rules and actions to weaken the law, such as a proposed measure that would expand the availability of skimpy health plans that do not comply with Obamacare. Those plans are now allowed for three months or less, but the administration has proposed extending their availability for up to 12 months. It is still determining whether these plans could be renewable. Verma proposed Idaho pursue other avenues to find ways to offer more affordable health insurance, including through the use of short-duration plans. (Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Aaron Maasho ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that African countries should be careful not to forfeit their sovereignty when they accept loans from China, the continent's biggest trading partner. Tillerson is using his first diplomatic trip to the continent to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade. He may also seek to smooth relations after U.S. President Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as "shithole countries" in January. Trump later denied making the comment. "We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa," Tillerson told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital. "It is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty." The United States is the leading aid donor to Africa but China surpassed it as a trade partner in 2009. Beijing has pumped billions into infrastructure projects, though critics say the use of Chinese firms and labor undermines their value. Tillerson said Chinese investments "do not bring significant job creation locally" and criticized how Beijing structures loans to African government. If a government accepts a Chinese loan and "gets into trouble", he said, it can "lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default." He did not give examples. The growing Chinese lending to the continent has also attracted criticism from some Africans, who say China's agenda is to feed its appetite for African raw materials like oil, timber and minerals, and secure contracts for its firms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting Zimbabwe on Thursday, told reporters it was inappropriate for Tillerson to criticize China's relationship with African countries. "It was not appropriate to criticize the relations of his hosts -- when he was a guest there -- with another country," he said. Many African governments enjoy close ties with both Washington and Beijing. Kenya, for example, inaugurated a $3.2 billion railway funded by China last year. For the last three years, Kenya has received more than $100 million annually in U.S. security assistance. Asked about Tillerson's criticism of China's approach on the continent, Kenya's foreign affairs minister Monica Juma said: "This country is engaging with partners from across the world driven by our own interests and for our own value." "OPAQUE CONTRACTS" Tillerson arrived in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous nation, on Wednesday and visited the African Union headquarters on Thursday. The complex was funded and built by China and is seen as a symbol of Beijing's thrust for influence and access to the continent's natural resources. Ethiopia is home to some of Beijing's biggest investments, from a railway to Djibouti that opened last year to factories and industrial parks. Earlier this week, Tillerson criticized "China's approach" to Africa which he said encouraged dependency through "opaque contracts" and "predatory loan practices". Ethiopia's prime minister resigned suddenly last month and a state of emergency was imposed but protests in the restive Oromia region have continued. The secretary of state met Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned as prime minister but is still acting in the post awaiting a replacement. Details of their discussions were not released. Tillerson said after meeting his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu that the answer to political turmoil in Ethiopia was greater freedoms. "It is important that the country moves on past the state of emergency as quickly as possible," he said. Tillerson reiterated previous calls for African states to cut ties with North Korea. North Korea has more than a dozen embassies on the continent. The Trump administration has said that Pyongyang earns hard currency from arms deals with African government and the trafficking of wildlife parts from Africa. Tillerson is due to fly to Djibouti, host to military bases owned by the U.S., China, Japan, France, and Italy. He will then visit Kenya, a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia, before traveling to Chad and Nigeria, which are also battling to contain Islamist insurgents. Analysts say Trump has focused mainly on security concerns in Africa at a time when China, Turkey and other nations are ramping up diplomatic and business links. "When you look at the set of countries that are being visited I think it kind of reinforces the perception that security, indeed, is the overwhelming focus," said Brahima Coulibaly, the director of the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution. (Additional reporting by Kumerra Gemechu in Addis Ababa and Omar Mohammed in Nairobi; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. special counsel investigating possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017 was an attempt to set up a back-channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

Erik Prince, founder of military contractor Blackwater and a supporter of President Donald Trump, told U.S. lawmakers last year he had discussed U.S.-Russia relations during a meeting in the Seychelles with a Russian business executive with ties to the Kremlin.

The Post, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, said a witness cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller told investigators that the meeting was held so that a representative of Trump's transition team could "meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries."

The newspaper's report said that George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman it said helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, testified before a grand jury as investigators look into discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin.

Representatives of Prince had no immediate comment on the Post story, and had declined to comment on previous reports about Nader and the Seychelles meeting.

Prince, whose sister Betsy DeVos is Trump's education secretary, said last year he and Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, met for about half an hour in a bar in the Indian Ocean country at the suggestion of officials from the United Arab Emirates.

The Post said Nader has been cooperating with Mueller and has met numerous times with investigators since he was stopped and questioned by the FBI after he arrived at Washington's Dulles International Airport in January.

U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump, a Republican, defeat Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton. Mueller is investigating Russia's role and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Russia denies the allegations. Trump says there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign and calls the investigation a witch hunt.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Mark Hosenball; editing by Grant McCool)
American sailors from the U.S. Navy supercarrier, the USS Carl Vinson, visited a Vietnamese shelter on Wednesday to meet people suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, a toxic chemical the U.S. dumped on Vietnam during the war there.

Sailors made incense sticks and plastic flowers and danced with the children in the shelter, many of whom have severe disabilities as a result of the chemical. The Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange, an organization based in Hanoi, estimates that almost 5 million people were exposed to the chemical, which the U.S. army used to burn foliage used by the enemies to take cover. Of the 4.8 million affected, nearly 3 million people in the country of almost 93 million inhabitants are suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, according to the organization.

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LINH PHAM/AFP/Getty Images

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The U.S. forces sprayed over 20 million gallons of chemicals like Agent Orange, which was originally designed as an herbicide, on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from the early 1960s to early 1970s. It was later discovered that it causes serious health problems, including birth defects in children whose parents had been exposed. The chemicals can also cause long-term psychological and neurological problems.

Almost 60,000 Americans died fighting the war. Vietnam, meanwhile, lost almost 3 million people, around 2 million of whom were civilians.

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In the years since the war, the U.S. relationship with Vietnamwhich is still ruled by an ostensibly communist governmenthas improved greatly, especially in the realms of trade and security. Chinas incursions into the South China Sea have motivated Hanoi to seek more security cooperation with the U.S., which works to temper Beijings claims over the disputed waters.

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On Monday, the U.S. aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson landed in Danang, Vietnam, marking the largest U.S. military presence in the country since the war ended. The vessel has a crew of around 6,700 people and is sometimes described as a floating city.

The show of U.S. naval power in the region will demonstrate to China that Washington and Hanoi are looking to boost their military cooperation in the South China Sea, experts noted.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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London (AFP) - Britain vowed Thursday to act "without hesitation" if a state is found responsible for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian double agent, as police said 21 people in total had received medical treatment following the incident.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain unconscious in a critical but stable condition following the attack on Sunday in the sleepy south-western English city of Salisbury.

Sergeant Nick Bailey, one of first officers to find the pair slumped on a bench outside a shopping centre and who was later hospitalised in intensive care, was sitting up and talking on Thursday, according to police.

"There's been around 21 people (treated)," said Kier Pritchard, chief constable for Wiltshire Police, noting that included "multiple officers".

"A number of those have been through the hospital treatment process, they're having blood tests, they're having treatment in terms of support and advice," he added.

Pritchard said he had spoken to Bailey and his wife in hospital, adding that "he's well, he's sat up" but was "very anxious".

Authorities are racing to identify the nerve agent used against the 66-year-old Skripal, who came to Britain in a spy swap in 2010, as politicians warned it showed the hallmarks of an attack by Russia.

Interior minister Amber Rudd told MPs that the "brazen and reckless" attack was "attempted murder in the most cruel and public way" but declined to single any perpetrator out.

- Russia suspected -

Noting it was "highly likely" that the officer, Bailey, was exposed to the same nerve agent as the Russian pair, she said Britain "will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer".

The Russian embassy in London, which earlier in the week criticised Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for blaming Moscow, welcomed Rudd's "responsible practical approach".

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Prime Minister Theresa May said that "if action needs to be taken then the government will do that", but urged "time and space" for the police to conduct their investigation.

National counter-terrorism police have taken over the case, and on Wednesday confirmed that a nerve agent was used, adding they were treating the attack as attempted murder.

"Scientific tests by government experts have identified the specific nerve agent used which will help identify the source," they said.

Police have cordoned off the bench where the pair were found, as well as an Italian restaurant and a pub they visited before their collapse.

They also sealed off the grave of Skripal's wife, Liudmila, who died in 2012 from cancer, as well as the memorial stone of his son, Alexander, who was cremated last year after reportedly dying of liver problems.

As officers in biohazard suits worked inside secure tents, residents expressed shock at the attack in their midst.

"You could be walking by and you could be involved in it, you know, it's quite shocking and worrying," Salisbury local Jackie Tothill told AFP.

The Times reported that police are probing whether Skripal's daughter, who arrived in Britain from Moscow last week, may have inadvertently brought in the nerve agent as a gift.

- Ever greater threat -

Foreign Secretary Johnson has noted the "echoes" with the 2006 poisoning in London of former Russian spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, which Britain has blamed on Russia.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said Thursday that Russia was "becoming an ever-greater threat".

Fellow Conservative MP Nick Boles tweeted that "I do not see how we can maintain diplomatic relations with a country that tries to murder people on British soil".

Moscow accused British politicians and journalists of whipping up anti-Russian sentiment.

Kremlin foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters the story "was straight away used to boost an anti-Russian campaign in the media".

The embassy added Thursday that when other Russians had died in Britain in suspicious circumstances, the authorities never released the findings, adding: "Same happening now."

It cited Boris Berezovsky, a friend of Litvinenko found hanging in his bathroom in 2013, and Alexander Perepilichny, a businessman found dead in front of his home. No cause of death was determined in either case.

Skripal was a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who was jailed in his country for betraying agents to Britain's MI6 secret service.

He was pardoned before being flown to Britain as part of a high-profile spy swap involving Russia and the United States in 2010.
London (AFP) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday at the start of a controversial state visit where he faces questions over Riyadh's involvement in the Yemen war.

The crown prince lunched with the queen at Buckingham Palace ahead of talks with Prime Minister Theresa May, but his arrival drew protests on the streets of London over the brutal Yemen conflict.

May defended the invitation when she was grilled in parliament over why Prince Mohammed was being afforded the red carpet treatment during his three-day visit.

"The link with Saudi Arabia we have is historic, it is an important one and it has saved the lives of potentially hundreds of people in this country" due to anti-terrorism cooperation, she told MPs.

"Their involvement in Yemen came at the request of the legitimate government of the Yemen, it is backed by the UN Security Council and as such we support it."

The three-year conflict, which began with the Saudi-led intervention to fight Iran-backed Huthi rebels, has left 22.2 million people dependent on food aid, according to UN figures.

The Save the Children charity protested the visit by installing a statue of a child near parliament "to draw attention to the violence that is being fuelled, in part, by British-made bombs".

Around 200 demonstrators also lined up outside Downing Street, where the crown prince visited May.

"He's not welcome here and they shouldn't be rolling out the red carpet to people like him while people of Yemen suffer a brutal siege," said Mayer Wakefield, of the Stop the War Coalition which organised the protest.

- UK 'collusion' in war crimes -

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused May's government of "colluding" in war crimes by selling arms to Saudi Arabia, and even suggested that British military advisers were "directing the war".

May responded that her relationship with Prince Mohammed had already helped alleviate the humanitarian crisis by convincing him to ease Saudi blockades of ports in Yemen during a meeting in December.

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"This vindicates the engagement that we have with Saudi Arabia, to be able to sit down with them," she said.

The pair met at Downing Street for talks on reforms in Saudi Arabia, trade and investment relations and defence and security cooperation.

The crown prince noted there were now "huge opportunities" to boost trade ties post-Brexit.

"I have no doubt that it's a very deep relationship," he added. "And it's different and it's not only about politics, or military, or intelligence, but also socially and economically."

Following the talks, a Downing Street spokeswoman said May "welcomed recent reforms in Saudi Arabia, including on women" and had raised Britain's "deep concerns" at the humanitarian situation in Yemen.

"The prime minister and crown prince agreed on the importance of full and unfettered humanitarian and commercial access, including through the ports, and that a political solution was ultimately the only way to end the conflict and humanitarian suffering in Yemen."

The spokeswoman said the summit yielded "a landmark ambition" for around 65 billion (73 billion euros, $90 billion) of mutual trade and investment opportunities in coming years in areas ranging from education to defence.

She added this would include direct investment in Britain and "new Saudi public procurement with UK companies."

- Courting investors -

Later Wednesday Prince Mohammed was due to be hosted for dinner by heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, with Prince William among the guests.

Earlier, junior foreign minister Alistair Burt responded to an emergency question in parliament about the visit by defending Britain's arms deals with Saudi, saying the regulations were "as strict as anywhere in the world".

He also praised the crown prince's reform measures, saying: "The engagement of women in business and government makes a real difference.

"In a Saudi context, these changes have immense significance."

The crown prince's trips to Egypt, Britain and later this month the United States are aimed partly at courting investors.

They follow a tumultuous period that saw a major military shake-up and a royal purge, part of a sweeping power play by the prince.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump may yet skip this year's Summit of the Americas in Peru, officials said Wednesday, amid sour US relations with southern neighbors.

"Summit attendance has not been confirmed" a White House official told AFP, after Trump spoke by phone with the host, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

An official White House statement on the call was mute on whether Trump would make the journey for the April 13-14 event, which brings together leaders from the Western Hemisphere.

"The two leaders discussed the upcoming Summit of the Americas, which Peru will host next month," the statement read. "They agreed to continue to work together on issues of mutual interest."

If Trump does eventually travel to Lima, he is likely to encounter protests and a hesitant welcome from fellow heads of state and government.

Throughout his election campaign and his presidency, Trump has maligned Hispanic migrants and attacked Latin American nations over drugs, trade and the movement of people.

He has promised to build a wall on the US border with Mexico and threatened to tear up a trade deal with Mexico and Canada.

The first Summit of the Americas took place in Miami in 1994, and it has long been a forum for the United States to influence events across in the Western Hemisphere.

Then president Barack Obama used the last summit, in 2015 in Panama, to meet Cuban leader Raul Castro for the first time and to try and isolate the Venezuelan regime.
The Daily Beast

Natalie Behring/GettyInvestigators say they believe they have found the body of Gabby Petito. Now they have to figure out how the 22-year-old diedwhich could be complicated by the amount of time that has gone by, experts say.Human remains discovered in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming are consistent with the description of the van-life blogger, authorities announced Sunday. Although Petitos parents have been notified, a full forensic examination of the body has not yet been compl
Kim Jong-nam and his brother Kim Jong-un - AP

The United States formally concluded on Tuesday that North Korea ordered the murder of a half-brother and potential rival to ruler Kim Jong-un with the VX nerve agent.

The North Korean leader's estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, was killed at the airport in Kuala Lumpur in February last year when two women smeared his face with the banned chemical weapons agent VX.

Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement the US government made the determination on February 22 under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991. Additional sanctions on Pyongyang went into effect on March 5 after the finding was formally published, she said.

"This public display of contempt for universal norms against chemical weapons use further demonstrates the reckless nature of North Korea and underscores that we cannot afford to tolerate a North Korean WMD programme of any kind," Ms Nauert said on Tuesday.

The fresh layer of US economic sanctions against Pyongyang came just as South Korea reported that the regime is ready for talks to end a nuclear standoff.

Malaysian police have long said Mr Kim was killed as a result of being exposed to the VX nerve agent.

It was reveled in December that Mr Kim was carrying vials of the antidote to the toxin but he didn't use it.

Testifying before a high court in the city, a Malaysian government toxicologist said Mr Kim had 12 doses of atropine in his carry-on luggage when he was approached by two women who smeared the nerve agent onto his face.

Kim Jong-un | A history of executions - family, allies and rivals

Doan Thi Huong, a 29-year-old Vietnamese national, and Siti Aisyah, 25, from Indonesia, have pleaded not guilty of the murder of Mr Kim, who was returning to his home in Macau and travelling on a passport in the name of Kim Chol.

North Korea has denied arranging the killing of Mr Kim.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said the White House is getting hollowed out as top-level officials continue to leave President Donald Trumps administration.

The number of people capable of doing things - doing real things, whether you agree or disagree ideologically - is getting smaller and smaller, Mr Schumer told reporters at a news conference.

And the White House seems unable to recruit new people to take these jobs, he added.

The Presidents top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, announced on Wednesday that he planned to resign, the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the White House.

During a White House briefing, reporters grilled Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about why so many people are leaving the administration.

This is an intense place, as is every White House, Ms Sanders said. And its not abnormal that you would have people come and go.

While every administration suffers from a revolving door of personnel, Mr Trumps White House has a staff turnover rate of 34 per cent  a level that has not been seen for decades, according to the Brookings Institution think tank.

No administration in recent history has had this much turnover, ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega told Ms Sanders. If this is not the definition of chaotic, how would you describe whats happening in these recent weeks?

Ms Sanders responded by declaring that if the White House was as chaotic as reports say, then I dont think we would have been able to accomplish all that weve done.

The economy is stronger than its been in ages, Ms Sanders said. Isis is on the run. Making of the judiciary jobs are coming in at record numbers. There are historic things that have taken place in the first year. Sounds like a very functioning place of business to me.

Mr Trump said on Tuesday that everybody wants to work in the White House.

They all want a piece of that Oval Office; they want a piece of the West Wing, he added during a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

Earlier, the President had dismissed reports of chaos in the White House while hinting that the staff shakeup will continue.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump can choose from a pool of people to succeed the White House's top economic adviser Gary Cohn, who is expected to leave soon, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News Channel on Wednesday. "He's got a number of people that he can choose from. But in the meantime, Gary will still be here as a voice for the next several weeks and we've got some great people from the economic community that help guide on this," she said in an interview in front of the White House, saying that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross "help lead the president" on making decisions about the economy. (Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Meghan Markle is about to take the plunge into Anglican Communion. Prince Harrys fiance is expected to convert to Catholicism ahead of her upcoming nuptials by undergoing a baptism confirming her into the Church of England, according to a Sunday report by Londons Sunday Times.

The baptism, to happen later this month, signifies the beginning stages of Markles transition to U.K. citizenship. It's unclear if Markle will retain dual citizenship in the U.K. and U.S. following the wedding.

The exact time and date of Markles baptism has not been released. However Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was reportedly requested to conduct the private ceremony at Kensington Palace. Welby will also serve as the couples marriage officiant at St. Georges Chapel in Windsor Castle on May 19.

Trending: Saudi Arabia Calls Iran, Turkey and Islamic Militants the 'New Axis of Evil,' Egypt Reports

Meghan Markle to be Baptized Before Wedding to Prince Harry

Chris Jackson - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Details of the baptism guest list are limited, but the Sunday Times said Markles parents, Doria Ragland, who lives in California, and Thomas Markle, a Mexico resident, are expected to attend the event.

There were rumors that Meghan Markle was practicing Judaism, based on her first marriage to Trevor Engelson, a Jewish film producer. Her first wedding in Jamaica did follow Jewish traditions. However, Meghan Markle is not of Jewish decent.

Don't miss: O.J. Simpson Interview: First Look at 'Lost Confession' of Nicole Brown Simpson's Murder

Meghan Markles mother is an African-American and her father has Dutch, English, Irish and Scottish roots. She was raised Protestant, a sect of western Christianity separate from the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church. She did, however, attend Catholic school while growing up in California.

Story continues

Although it is not required for Meghan Markle to be baptized into the Anglican Communion to marry into the monarchy, its said the 36-year-old agreed to it before their wedding out of respect for Harrys grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who is the head of the Church of England.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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In the end, it all comes down to a small error. An insult, which seems like a marginal, trivial issue, but is later revealed as the critical moment in which a man who has maintained his silence turns into a states witness.

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Thats what happened with Ehud Olmerts bureau chief, Shula Zaken, who was deeply offended by a few degrading words uttered by the former prime ministers lawyer in a television interview.

And thats what happened with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former media advisor, Nir Hefetz, who was offended by Netanyahu's attempts to postpone his questioning by the police as much as possible, leaving Hefetz to keep sleeping with fleas. A person who goes to sleep with fleas wakes up as a states witness.

Hefetz and Netanyahu. All because of an insult (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

This disregard of Hefetzs condition was likely the final straw. The indifference and lack of concern from the family he had provided services to for years, which turned its back on him at the most difficult time of his life. The way he was abandoned on the side of the road, like other Netanyahu loyalists in the past, turned Hefetz into the gravedigger of the person who seemed like nothing could bring him down.

Nir Hefetz protected the prime minister until the moment he realized that, as far as Netanyahu is concerned, he no longer exists. While he is rotting in a prolonged detention, Netanyahu keeps traveling around the world.

Hefetz compared his difficult detention conditions to the pleasures Blair House has to offer to Sara and Benjamin Netanyahu. And if the reports are true, Hefetz knew how to hit not just Netanyahu, but his voters too, straight in their soft underbelly.

Because if Hefetz did tell his investigators about two security-related affairs in which Netanyahu acted against the recommendations of the defense establishment heads and under the influence of harmful advice offered to him by his wife and son, that would likely be a watershed among his many supporters.

Even his blindest loyalists would have trouble remaining indifferent to stories involving damage to state security. And these stories, I assume, arent the only one for which Hefetz received full immunity from the policeno jail time, no fine and no community service.

The media, and the public, have been moving in recent weeks from one climax to another in the Netanyahu investigations. It has become increasingly hard to take seriously the exclamations and then be shocked that we produce one states witness to another, one exciting revelation to an even more exciting revelation. But now that Hefetz has turned states witness, I believe weve reached the top.

There cant be and wont be anyone who knows more about the Netanyahu family members than Hefetz, apart from maybe Netanyahu's ex-chief of staff, Natan Eshel. For years, Hefetz was the fly on the wall, the family members spokesman, their negotiator with the media, perhaps even the psy-cho-lo-gists personal psychologist.

They told him everything, and what they didnt tell him, he knew thanks to the close relationship, the scheming, the manipulations and the ties. Nir Hefetz is the man who knew too much. We may never know how much he knew.

But one person who knows how much Hefetz knows, and understands the meaning of his new position as states witness, is the man who sat in the Oval Office with US President Donald Trump on Monday. Trump did a good job, providing his Israeli friend with a setting he could only dream off.

Netanyahu and Trump at the White House, Monday, Hollywood should have given him the 2018 Oscar for best actor (: MCT)

And Netanyahu? There are no words. Hollywood, which handed out the 2018 Oscar for best actor on Sunday, missed out on the greatest talent of all: The man who sat in the Oval Office on Monday, acting as if the earth isnt moving under his feet, as if he hasnt gotten his bowels in an uproar, and as if he couldnt care less about the reports arriving from Israel. But that may be exactly what rulers looks like before falling from powerelegant, calm, arrogant and self-confident.

One things for sure: Netanyahu's coalition allies came to their senses on Monday. They realized they were handing the next term to Netanyahu on a silver platter, that they were leading the State of Israel to elections for his own interest, and going completely against their own interest.

Members of the coalition, including Likud ministers, have been reiterating in the past few months that they wont let Netanyahu lead them to elections. Thats enough, they have been saying. If he wants, he can go home and well find someone to replace him until the elections, but we wont let him dissolve the Knesset.

And now, under the pretext of a coalition crisis, on the most explosive issue of state and religion, which was allegedly initiated by someone else rather than himself, Netanyahu has managed to manipulate experienced people like Zeev Elkin, Yisrael Katz, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Kahlon into believing that there is no escape from calling early elections. All the promises about not letting Netanyahu drag the country to elections have faded away.

What can we do? a senior minister told me. Its a coalition crisis.

Well, its not. Its not a crisis, its a trick. Theres no crisis here that cant be solved within minutes, especially in light of the fact that none of the parties are interested in elections.

Only a successful solution of the draft law crisis during Netanyahu absence, and determination not to play into the prime ministers hands and drag the country to elections, will prove that they are not a bunch of rag dolls.
The passionate public discourse that has been taking place recently over the incorporation of women in the IDFs Armored Corps is important because of its effect on the creation of equal opportunities for women, and it is definitely appropriate as a principle allowing the implementation of the human resource potential without a gender barrier preventing women from reaching any role in the army.

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But while the public debate focuses on the nature of joint service and on womens ability to serve alongside men in operational roles, we are missing the larger debate that should be heldthe rate of women who dont enlist at all.

The existing law grants women a comprehensive exemption from military service on religious grounds, regardless of their lifestyle. A young woman interested in receiving an exemption based on a declaration of religious observance isnt required to prove that she is religious. The current rate of women who dont enlist in the IDF is 42 percent, while the rate of men who dont enlist is about 27 percent.

Our aspiration in Israel 2018 should be universal service for both men and women (Photo: IDF)

The debate taking place these days on the importance of drafting men points to the difference between a womans place in Israeli society and a mans place. If that werent the case, how would one explain the fact that the number of exemptions granted to women is significantly higher than the number of exemptions granted to men? Nevertheless, this issue has failed to raise questions or a lead to a demand for equality by those who are demanding a universal draft for men.

There is no question here regarding the religious girls ability to serve in the army, as the number of religious girls joining the IDF has only increased in recent years. The enlistment of thousands of religious women proves that a meaningful service can be combined with religious faith.

The exclusion of women, who make up about 50 percent of the population, both from the public discourse and from their potential impact on state security and on their integration in different systems as citizens upon completing their military service, proves that equality for women hasnt been fully implemented yet, despite the public occupation with the incorporation of women in the Armored Corps.

The change in the nature of the high-technology battlefield creates additional diverse opportunities for female soldiers to integrate into advanced technological settings. Indeed, we are seeing that women who join technological units have a direct impact on the IDFs operational efficiency.

Surely, the fact that so many young women arent drafted affects the level of integration and development of women in the local and global world of hi-tech and in their professional career.

Why is the number of exemptions granted to women significantly higher than the number of exemptions granted to men? (Photo: Haim Hornstein)

Our aspiration in Israel 2018 should be universal service for both men and women. We should come up with a model securing a clear preference for IDF service to maintain a quantitative and a qualitative advantage that would allow us to address the security challenges. Women and men who dont join the army for some reason, including men and women from the ultra-Orthodox and Arab sectors, must be required to complete civil service parallel to the military service.

Such a decision is important not only for those who dont serve the state in a meaningful way, but mainly for IDF recruits who are willing to become part of a human chain of women and men securing our existence here.

A comprehensive enlistment of women in the IDF will naturally make it possible to move towards an equally long service for men and women, unlike the current gender differences in most military professions. And later on, it will make it possible to cut the service short for both men and women.

International Womens Day is an excellent opportunity to ask why we are willing to give up half of the female human potential and work to change this trend. The phrase every boy is good with a gun, from the Palmach anthem, should be update to reflect the norm we would like to implement in womens journey towards full equality.
El Al Israel Airlines has appealed to the United Nations over a bid to reroute its services between Tel Aviv and India through Saudi Arabian airspace.

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Air India said on Wednesday it planned to begin thrice-weekly non-stop flights from Delhi to Tel Aviv this month via Saudi airspace. This route, shorter than the alternatives, has so far been off limits to all Israel-bound commercial planes.

The Israeli flag carrier's CEO Gonen Usishkin said in a letter to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN body, it would be discriminatory for the Saudis to allow Air India to enter its airspace and not El Al.

El Al plane (Photo: Shaul Golan)

Flying through Saudi airspace will cut the Delhi-Tel Aviv journey time by about two hours, an Air India spokesman said.

In his letter, Usishkin told ICAO head Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu that would give Air India "a significant and unfair advantage" over El Al that would clearly violate equality in aviation.

El Al flies to Mumbai four times a week, along a route over Ethiopia and then east to India that, by avoiding Saudi airspace, has a journey time of seven hours rather than five.

Air India plane (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Usishkin said giving Air India preference would also violate the Chicago Convention, under which countries may not impose restrictions on flying over their territory or discriminate against airlines based on nationality.

Israel, Saudi Arabia and India are parties to the convention.

"I am requesting that the ICAO, which has the power to enforce the provisions of the Chicago Convention, take action ...to procure equal permission for El Al to fly above Saudi Arabia," Usishkin said.

Last week, El Al sought help over the issue from industry lobby group the International Air Transport Association.
Member of the radical Jerusalem Faction of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox sect have announced their intention to return to the streets of Jerusalem on Thursday and stage protests against the IDF conscription law for the first time since their leader, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, passed away two weeks ago

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The sects followers intend to pour into the streets en mass in the afternoon in Jerusalem in a bid to demonstrate that their presence and strength has not diminished with the passing of their ardently anti-conscription 86-year-old chief.

The official reason offered by the zealots for the renewed demonstrations is the incidental arrest of a military draft dodger student from the prestigious Kol Torah yeshiva in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood of the capital, who is also the grandson of a senior rabbi there, during a routine check carried out by a traffic policeman.

Protest staged by Jerusalem Faction (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

The man was was handed over to the military police, sparking an outrage among the faction that is being pounced upon as a pretext to exhibit its continued determination to resist conscription.

The protests exact location has not yet been publicized but its intensity is expected to justify road closures.

Organizers of the protest said that members of Council of Torah Sagesa forum of rabbis who have stepped in to fill the factions vacant leadership after Rabbi Auerbachs passinginstructed that the crowds make a noise that the world will hear due to the arrest of the yeshiva student.

They also decreed that the obligation at the moment is imposed on every single person to go out and participate in the mass protests.

Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg)

Member of the Committee for Saving the World of Torahthe group responsible for orchestrating the protestsclaim that hundreds of students who, on the instructions of their religious masters, refused to show up at the IDF recruitment offices, intend to participate in the protest and disrupt public order until they are arrested, labelled as deserters and sent to prison.

If that is what is needed in order to annul the recruitment decree, we will sit in military prison on the Passover seder as well, the committee said.

The Haredi public will continue the uncompromising struggle of our rabbis with full force against the recruitment decree, which has brought down and continues to bring down many fallen Torah scholars to the spiritual destruction of the army.

At Rabbi Auerbach's funeral, Rabbi Tzvi Friedman, a prominent rabbi associated with the Jerusalem Faction, dedicated his eulogy to the public struggles waged by the former leader.

We are in a war of destruction. No man should turn up (to the IDF recruitment office). Dont be scared of the police. Go to prison happily. They can fill the prisons. It wont help them. He single-handedly directed the struggle while facing ridicule from others, Friedman told the rabbi's disciples.

"All the haters from all sides should not delude themselves into thinking that the battle is lost. It will continue with full rigor. All the chatter of the politicians is all nonsense. He was able to stand up to the drafting of men, but drafting women broke him, he added.
A heated debate that has split French intellectual circles over whether to publish anti-Semitic pamphlets of a renowned writer will reach French President Emmanuel Macron when he addresses a leading Jewish group Wednesday.

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Macron will be the guest of honor at Wednesday's annual dinner by the group CRIF, whose leaders plan to question the president about fighting anti-Semitism online and recent attacks on French Jews or Jewish sites.





French President Emmanuel Macron (Photo: Reuters)

Macron has pledged to fight persistent anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Jewish community in the world after Israel and the United States.

Leaders of the French Jewish community also want to take advantage of the president's presence and media coverage of Wednesday's dinner to call broader attention to a controversy that has inflamed the French publishing, cultural and academic circles for three months.

Gallimard, one of the largest, most influential and most prestigious French publishing houses, said in December it planned to republish a series of three fiercely anti-Semitic lampoons written between 1937 and 1941 by noted French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine, for the first time since World War II.

Macron with PM Netanyahu (Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)

Born Louis Ferdinand Destouches, Celine opposed reprinting them until his death in 1961. Celine was convicted as a collaborator and declared a national disgrace in France after the war, before being granted amnesty.

The writer is best known for "Journey to the End of the Night," his much-acclaimed 1932 first novel written in a groundbreaking style, still frequently studied by French high school students.

A heated controversy erupted in literary circles over the publication, between those who advocate total freedom of speech and those who warn against the dangers of such texts in the context of rising anti-Semitism.

Antoine Gallimard, president of the publishing house, recently decided to suspend publication, while insisting he hasn't given up on the project.

Proponents of reprinting argue that the texts already are easily accessible on the internet, that it is preferable that they be published with historical comments explaining their danger, and that this would no longer hide the darkest face of the writer.

Serge and Beatte Klarsfeld (Photo: AP)

Opponents note that anti-Semitism is considered a legal offense in France.

Famous Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld demanded that the publication plans be abandoned and, if not, threatened to ask a court to decide on a "preventive ban."

CRIF, the Jewish group, expressed its "deepest concern," saying Celine's texts were an "unbearable incitement to anti-Semitic and racist hatred."

At Wednesday's dinner, CRIF intends to distribute a booklet written by two recognized specialists of Celine's work to hundreds of guests present -- including Macron.

"Celine was not a socialite anti-Semite, but a pro-Hitler anti-Semite," Marc Knobel, the CRIF's director of studies who came up with the idea of ordering the booklet, told The Associated Press. "His pamphlets are appalling, they are crime-inducing. With them, Celine expressed his execration for the Jews, called for putting the Jews to death."

Macron hasn't taken a stance on the issue yet. But Frederic Potier, head of a government racism and anti-Semitism watchdog, met Antoine Gallimard and asked him for "guarantees" on the historical quality of the edition being prepared.

The latest official figures show that anti-Semitic violence increased by 26 percent last year in France and that criminal damage to Jewish places of worship and burials increased by 22 percent.

Two attacks were particularly deadly. In 2012, three children and a teacher from a Jewish school were killed by Islamic extremist Mohammed Merah in Toulouse. In 2015, four customers of a Paris kosher supermarket were killed by another Islamic extremist, Amedy Coulibaly.
French President Emmanuel Macron pledged Wednesday to fight firmly against anti-Semitism wherever it surfaces, whether in the street or online, and to protect the nation's Jews amid growing concerns about intolerance.

In a speech to France's leading Jewish group, he insisted there is no reason for Jews to flee the country, which is home to the world's largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States.

"There are hatreds that are rising again, there are the worse kinds of crimes," Macron said at the annual dinner of the CRIF umbrella organization.

"We have understood, with horror, that anti-Semitism is still alive. And on this issue our response must be unforgiving. France would not be itself if Jewish citizens had to leave because they were afraid," he said.

He pledged continued protection for Jewish schools and synagogues and other sites as well as a new government plan to fight racism and anti-Semitism online, which is notably spreading among young people.

Macron also called for a Europe-wide effort to force internet platforms to remove content that feeds extremism.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former media advisor-turned state's witness, Nir Hefetz, has given police evidence against four senior members of the Likud party, including two incumbent ministers, of alleged criminal misconduct, Ynet learned Wednesday.

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Hefetz claimed that the work he conducted with those senior officials, as part of a larger framework of projects at the Ministries of Health and Environmental Protection, was carried out with a substantive conflict of interests, abuse of authority and nepotism.

Nir Hefetz (Photo: Reuters)

The issues relate to real estate, regulation in the health system and a volatile issue concerning environmental protection, which is still at the center of the public agenda.

Investigators are now compiling and examining the entirety of Hefetz's testimony on the matter before handing it over to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who will then decide whether a criminal investigation should be opened against the officials.

Hefetz gave investigators the information as part of the state's witness deal he signed after being detained in the Bezeq affair , also known as Case 4000.

Officials and analysts alike were caught off guard by the agreement, with many becomng suspicious of the reasons behind the police's decision to grant Hefetz full immunity, as well as Mandelblit's decision to approve the agreement, especially since they already flipped suspended Communications Ministry Director-General Shlomo Filber as a state's witness in the case.

While investigators were mainly interested in information that could incriminate Netanyahu, they wanted to know if Hefetz had knowledge of other issues related to his past work as Netanyahu's media advisor.

The information Hefetz had on the aforementioned Likud officials surprised investigators, and became one of the main reasons for the lenient deal he was offered.

Netanyahu slams false 'state's witness industry'

Earlier Wednesday, Netanyahu accused authorities heading a series of graft probes against him of employing intimidatory techniques to compel suspects into slandering him, regardless of the veracity of the claims.

PM Netanyahu (Photo: Amit Shabi)

I read about a man who was taken for investigation, on whom they exerted masses of pressure and told him, Lie, be a states witness and he refuses. It is difficult to believe that in the State of Israel, in our 2018 democracy, such things occur, Netanyahu said in a video uploaded on his Facebook page as he was flying from Washington to New York.

So I want to say a few words about the industry of states witnesses. They take people who claim that they carried out some offence, place them under arrest, terrify them and say to them: Your life is over. Your familys lives are over. Were taking practically everything from you, including your freedom. Do you want to be free of this? There is one way outslander Netanyahu. It doesnt matter if you tell hallucinatory lies. The main thing is that you slander Netanyahu, the prime ministers post continued.

When there is something real, you dont need a single states witness, and when there isnt anything, even one thousands states witnesses wont help. This obsessive hunt for one states witness and then another and another is the best proof that there is nothing, he added, sticking to the mantra that has escorted him throughout his public defense since the investigations erupted.
PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron declared Wednesday that France would one day in the future recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, marking the first time his country has signaled a willingness at the right moment to emulate US President Donald Trumps December declaration

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The day will come and France will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the right time during peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Macron said at the annual dinner hosted by the CRIF, an umbrella group of French Jewish organizations, whose leaders questioned the president about fighting anti-Semitism online and recent attacks on French Jews or Jewish sites.

The statements came after the head of the CRIF asked Macron to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital.

French President Emmanuel Macron (Photo: EPA)

It would not be honest on my part to make you happy for one evening with such a declaration, he retorted.

I told my friend Donald Trump that he made a mistake when he made this unilateral declaration about recognition of Jerusalem. It doesnt help for a solution to the conflict, he insisted, much to the disappointment of some of his listeners.

Following the example of the Trump administration on the matter, he argued, would only result in France relinquishing our status as a fair mediator, the only status that benefits the region in the current situation.

This status, Macron said, was not one that the United States could any longer profess to possess, adding that his country still supported the concept of two states for two peoples to end the intractable conflict.

Only dialogue will bring about a solution, not decisions in Washington or Paris, he concluded on the matter before shifting his focus to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

There are some people who try to use the Israel-Palestinian conflict to justify anti-Semitism, Macron told the diners.

The boycotting of Israel and Jewish goods is not legal in France and we will prosecute and punish anyone who violates the law, he promised.

Regarding Iran and its continued development of ballistic missiles, Macron assured his audience that he was taking action to put a stop to it.

France is taking action against ballistic (missile) activities by Iran in the region together with its partners, the UK and the US. I hold long conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said.

He also emphasized that the security of Israel is not a subject of negotiation and stressed that he favors dialogue with everyone, including with Iran.

The spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the country was also a key subject of discussion. We realized that traditional anti-Semitism is still alive and exists in France and need to admit that this constitutes a failure for us, he went on.

On this matter our response has to be unforgiving. France will not be itself if Jewish citizens are required to leave because they are scared.

He also promised to continue to protect Jewish schools, kindergartens and community institutions and to formulate a new government-backed program to expunge anti-Semitism from the internet.

In a bid to counter the incidents, he said that legislation would be promoted in the European parliament that would force online companies to remove anti-Semitic and racist expressions from the web.
President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman expressed his desire that his country would transfer its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and that it is a "top priority" for him.

The decision, he noted, is in the hands of the government and according to a newspaper report in the country "the subject is not currently on the agenda."

Israel's ambassador to the Czech Republic, Daniel Meron, said that "the Czech Republic is one of Israel's closest allies in Europe and President Zeman himself is a true friend of the Jewish people."
Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon appointed the director of wages and labor agreements at the Finance Ministry, Eran Yaakov, to head the Israel Tax Authority.

A committee headed by Finance Ministry Director-General Shai Babad recommended him for the position.
Ultra-Orthodox demonstrators will block roads and highways in Jerusalem Thursday, starting at 16:30 at the intersection of Yirmiyahu and Magen David Streets.

The string bridge at the entrance to the city will be blocked at rush hour.

This comes in the heels of an arrest of a yeshiva student who was arrested for draft-dodging earlier this week.
Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, days after the visiting French foreign minister sought to discuss Tehrans role in regional conflicts.

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Jean-Yves Le Drian traveled to Tehran on Monday with a brief to reaffirm Europes support for a nuclear deal that opened Irans economy while echoing US concern about Tehrans missile program and its influence in the region.

European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It is none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here? Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Photo: AFP)

Khamenei said Iran would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.

We will negotiate with America, when we wanted to be present in America, he added.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the nuclear deal unless three European signatories help fix the accord by forcing Iran to limit its sway in the Middle East and rein in its missile program.

French President Emmanuel Macron has criticized the program and raised the possibility of new sanctions.

Tehran supports Syrias President Bashar al-Assad in the governments war against rebel forces, including groups backed by the West, and is an ally of Israels enemy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The president of the Czech Republic announced Thursday that he wants his country to follow in US President Donald Trumps footsteps to transfer its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

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President Milos Zeman, who in January was elected to serve a second term, marked the move as a number one priority for his foreign policy, according to a front-page story in the Lidove noviny newspaper.

Zeman would be the third political domino to fall behind Trump, with Guatemala announcing almost immediately after the US president that it would follow suit. On Sunday, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said at a conference in Washington that his country plans to move its embassy in May, two days after the US embassy makes the same move.

President Milos Zeman with PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)

Despite his stated intentions, Zemans policy could come up against crippling stumbling blocks since such decisions in the central European state require the support of the government, and not merely the presidents word.

The government has yet to take a decision on the matter, and Prime Minister Andrej Babis vocalized his opposition to the transfer to Jerusalem shortly after he was elected to his post.

It is unlikely, moreover, that the Czech Republic is ready to break ranks with the European Union (EU), which has stated its unequivocal opposition to Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, let alone his transfer of the embassy.

President Milos Zeman (Photo: AFP)

Hopes in Israel should also be measured after Czech Foreign Minister Martin Stropnicky announced that the subject was not currently under discussion. However, he did not rule out the possibility of another kind of symbolic gesture.

President Zeman is considered to be a staunch supporter of the State of Israel and was one of the first European leaders to publicly support Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital.

Lidove noviny newspaper report

Additionally, he condemned the EUs concerted attack against the decision, denouncing its leaders as cowards.

The EU is composed on cowardly people who do all within their power in order for a pro-Palestinian terror movement to gain supremacy over a pro-Israel movement, Zeman said at the time.

By contrast, he boasted in December that he was a defender of Israel.

During my visit to Israel four years ago I said I support the transfer of the Czech Embassy to Jerusalem. Perhaps we will follow the US sooner or later. Every state has the right to decide which city is its capital.

The Czech Foreign Ministry also published in December a statement declaring that it recognized the western half of Jerusalem as Israels capital, but insisted that final status of the easter half would have to be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
A new report providing a comprehensive picture of women's representation in Israeli society, their presence and status in different sectors, and the distribution of resources between them and men was published Thursday on the occasion of the International Women's Day.

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While the data marks a positive trend, it remains clear that while the glass ceiling has been cracked, it is definitely unbroken.

'Warning! Glass ceiling'

Employment and work hours

The rate of women's participation in the labor market has increased significantly, and gaps in participation between men and women have narrowed considerably, from a gap of about 20 percent in the early 1990s to less than 9% in 2017.

Men work an average of nine hours more than women per week, though that is due to the fact women remain the primary caregivers of childrenexpected to pick them up from school, to be at home with them in the afternoon and to get out of work early to do so.

When paid work hours and hours of unpaid work (housework and child care) are added up, it appears women work much more than menabout 76 cumulative hours a week, compared with 64 cumulative hours for men.

Wage differentials

Recent data by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) shows the average wage gap between men and women stands at 35%.

This is an increase of 3% compared with 2015. The average monthly income of a male salaried employee is NIS 11,664, while for women, that average stands at NIS 7,633.

Among those with higher education, the gap becomes even wider, reaching 39%.

Wage gaps also exist in the hi-tech sector, where young women make 7% less than young men, while women over the age of 40 make 18% less than men.

There are high wage gaps in the public sector as well, with the state as an employer creating gender wage gaps.

The 2016 data from the Ministry of Public Security, for example, indicate that the median annual wage for women was NIS 10,000 lower than that of men.

According to the median wage data, in the Israel Police, at all ranks aside from major general, women earn less than men of the same rank. In the Israel Prison Service, the situation is even worse, and wage gaps are evident at all levels.

Academia

According to data from the Council for Higher Education for the years 2015-2016, 30% of the academic staff in Israel are women, but only 17% of academic professors are women.

And at the highest level? Of nine universities in Israel, there is only one president is a womanProf. Rivka Carmi of Ben Gurion University.

Integration of female soldiers in the IDF

Despite the opening of many roles to women in the army and their integration into the combat roles in recent years, there are still processes that impede the integration of female soldiers into a variety of positions, both junior and senior, in the military.

Female soldiers also suffer from exclusion and sometimes from discrimination.

(Photo: Ofer Meir)

Today, women constitute 33% of all IDF soldiers and 36% of officers, while only 8% of all female IDF soldiers serve in combat roles.

Only two women have ever reached the rank of major general since the IDF was established.

The public sector

The number of women serving in the Knesset is rising steadily, and in the current Knesset, the 20th, it reached a record 34 Knesset members. Thus Israel rose from the 70th place in the world in regards to the proportion of women serving in parliament to 57th.

The number of female ministers in the current government is also the highest since the establishment of the state, and stands at four out of 21 (including the prime minister).

Since the establishment of the state, only a total of 17 women have served as ministers in the Israeli government. None have served as president of the state, nor was one IDF chief of staff.

Only one woman ever served as prime ministerGolda Meir, between 1969 and 1974.

(Photo: Noam Moskovich)

The Supreme Court currently has four female justices out of 15. The record number was five justices in the previous decade.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, 11 female justices have served in the Supreme Court, compared with 59 male judges.

In most government ministries, women are a minority of senior employeeswomen constitute only 27% of employees in the Ministry of Economy, 26% in the Ministry of Public Security, 18% in the Israel Land Authority, 28% in the Tax Authority and 33% in the Prime Minister's Office.

The percentage of female directors in government offices has been on the decline in recent years, and currently stands at 36%. The peak was reached at the beginning of this decade, when it stood at 44%.

The most conspicuous decline in female representation comes from local governments, where, out of 257 heads of local authorities serving in Israel, only six are womenabout 2%.

A low percentage of women is also held in other senior positions in local governments, with women constituting only 13% of all council members in Israel.
Members of the radical Jerusalem Faction of the Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox sect returned to the streets of the capital on Thursday afternoon to protest the IDF draft law, less than two weeks after their leader Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach passed away

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Hundreds of protests brought traffic to a grinding halt for two hours during the evening commute when they blocked the major junction at Yermiyahu-HaMem Gimel and prevented buses from entering or exiting the Central Bus Station in the city. They also blocked the Chords Bridge at the entry to the capital. The roads have all since been reopened.

Several of the protesters sat down at the center of the main highway leading into the capital and yelled out "Gevalt! We will die and not enlist."

Haredi protesters in Jerusalem (:  ,  )

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Passersby, including soldiers in uniform who were on their way home for the weekend, confronted with the protesters and broke anti-draft signs prepared for the demonstration. A fight broke out, prompting the police to intervene and separate the two sides.

Protest organizers urged the demonstrators not to get dragged into such violent confrontations and steered them away from the points of friction.

Some two hours after the demonstration began, police was able to disperse the protesters with the help of water cannons and mounted police.

Police trying to disperse the protesters (:  ) X

The official reason offered by the zealots for the renewed demonstrations is the incidental arrest of a military draft dodger student from the prestigious Kol Torah yeshiva in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood of the capital, who is also the grandson of a senior rabbi there, during a routine check carried out by a traffic policeman.

The man was was handed over to the military police, sparking an outrage among the faction that is being pounced upon as a pretext to exhibit its continued determination to resist conscription.

The sects followers are pouring into the streets en mass in a bid to demonstrate that their presence and strength has not diminished with the passing of their ardently anti-conscription 86-year-old rabbi.

On his orders over the past year, thousands of Haredi men would mob intersections, stopping traffic and scuffling with the public and police.

(Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)



Organizers of the protest said that members of Council of Torah Sagesa forum of rabbis who have stepped in to fill the factions vacant leadership after Rabbi Auerbachs passinginstructed that the crowds make a noise that the world will hear due to the arrest of the yeshiva student.





(Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)

They also decreed that the obligation at the moment is imposed on every single person to go out and participate in the mass protests.

(Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)

The Committee for Saving the World of Torah, which organizes the protesters, said Thursday's demonstrations "were only the beginning of a determined struggle that masses from the Haredi public are launching following the arrest of the prisoner of the Torah world Meir Bordiansky, who refused to show up at the recruiting office as his rabbis instructed. The struggle will continue at full force until the reinstatement of the law that exempts yeshiva students from enlistment, without conditions or recruitment goals."

(Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)

The arrests of yeshiva students from time to time are not done because of their refusal to enlist to the IDF, as the existing draft law already allows them to continue their studies. They are branded as deserters because they refuse to show up at the recruiting office to receive their exemption from service or postponement.

Furthermore, the IDF's policy is not to initiate arrests of these deserters. Those who were arrested were first detained for other matters, such as traffic offenses or disturbing the peace in protests. They were then found to be draft dodgers. In such a situation, the civilian police had no choice but to turn them in to the military.

This is what causes the repeat outbreaks of demonstrations: Some protesters are arrested and found to be deserters, the demonstrations grow bigger, the arrests increase accordingly, and so the situation just continues escalating.
Poland's president made an emotional plea for forgiveness on Thursday to the 13,000 Poles of Jewish origin expelled from Poland 50 years ago, and decried the loss the country suffered with their departure.

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President Andrzej Duda delivered a speech to mark the 1968 mass student protests against the Moscow-backed communist regime of the time that were in turn exploited by the communist party to purge Jews from the party and from Poland.

Among those who were forced out were Holocaust survivors and prominent intellectuals including sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, as well as some notable non-Jewish critics of the regime, like the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski.

PresidentAndrzej Duda (Photo: EPA)

"I want to ask forgiveness of those who were expelled," Duda said. "Through my lips Poland is asking forgiveness, asking them to be willing to forget, to be willing to accept that Poland regrets very much that they are not in Poland today."

He said the expulsions were a "shameful act" and the departures a "loss" for Poland.

He spoke at the Warsaw University campus that was the site of the 1968 protests. A group of the current government's opponents, many holding white rosesa symbol of their protestchanted "disgrace," ''hypocrite," and "go away from the campus."

Duda is allied with the ruling Law and Justice party which is blamed by critics for nationalist polices that have sparked a rise in xenophobia and a recent dispute with Israel.

In March 1968, students staged protests against censorship and in support of academic freedom that were brutally quashed by the regime.

Duda apologizing to an expelee (Photo: EPA)

They protested a ban on a play by the Polish Romantic-era poet Adam Mickiewicz which was seen as having an anti-Russian message. Two of the students were expelled from Warsaw University, prompting others to hold a demonstration on March 8 in their defense, which grew nationwide.

Rival factions in the ruling communist party exploited the protests in their pursuit of party control, with the crisis climaxing in the purge of Jews from the party and jobs. Many lost their careers and were forced to renounce their possessions, their Polish citizenship and to leave the country.

The purge came amid the broader background of the Soviet Union cutting ties with Israel following the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Earlier Thursday, Duda laid flowers beneath a plaque at a railway station in Warsaw that was the departure point for some of the Jews who were expelled 50 years ago. The Israeli and US ambassadors attended observances there.

Memorial wreath (Photo: EPA)

Many other events were being held across the country to mark the anniversary, including lectures on the dramatic past and meetings with some of the expelled, now freely visiting democratic Poland.

Lydia Bauman, the daughter of the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, was in Warsaw to mark the events but said she did so with mixed feelings given that the recent expressions of anti-Jewish feelings seemed similar to 1968.

However, many Polish officials are working to tamp down the emotions of the past weeks. The lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution Tuesday that condemned the anti-Semitic campaign and honored the anti-communist protests.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday denounced anti-Semitism. While claiming the legacy of the student protests for Poland, he also sought to shift the blame for the anti-Semitic purge onto Moscow, which controlled Poland during the decades of the Cold War.

"Today we often hear that March '68 should be a reason for shame for us," Morawiecki said. "I believe that March '68 should be a reason for pride" drawn from the pro-freedom protests.
HATZOR AIR BASE, Israel -- Some 5,000 American and Israeli troops are participating in a joint missile-defense exercise, preparing for the threat of attacks from across the region.

The "Juniper Cobra" exercise began March 4 and is taking place in Israel over several weeks. It includes field exercises, computer simulations and live-fire drills.

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Lebanon and Israel have been holding talks nearly every day over a border dispute that has raised tensions between the two enemy states, according to the UN peacekeeping force on the frontier that is mediating their discussions.

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"There is a full engagement from all the sides and there have been meetings almost on a daily basis. The dialogue is open. No one has ever walked out from these meetings," said Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

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Tensions have spiked recently over an Israeli border wall, Lebanese offshore energy exploration, and the growing arsenal of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group, which Israel sees as the biggest threat on its frontier.

Lebanon, Israel and UNIFIL were already holding three-way talks every few weeks in a building on the border near the peacekeepers' base at Naqoura in southern Lebanon. They are now being held more often, Tenenti said, along with indirect talks conducted through UNIFIL.





The border wall Israel is building on the Blue Line

Israel is building a border wall near the Blue Line, as the frontier demarcation between the two countries in lieu of a formal border agreement is known.

Lebanon has described the wall as an "aggression," saying it intrudes into Lebanese territory. Israel says the wall will be entirely on its side of the Blue Line and in Israeli territory.

UNIFIL peacekeepers on the Israel-Lebanon border (Photo: Reuters)

At the same time, Lebanon has begun oil and gas exploration in a block that includes a small area of sea along the maritime frontier that is claimed by Israel.

"There is a will to keep this dialogue open ... I think now, beside the heightened rhetoric, the reality on the ground is different and there is no appetite for instability or for war," Tenenti said.

Blue Line

Reuters footage from a recent trip to the border area showed construction work in areas along the Blue Line, including cranes erecting concrete blocks and bulldozers working at a fence.

Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000 and in 2006 it waged a month-long war against Hezbollah there. Israel says the Shi'ite Muslim group has grown stronger due to its role in the Syrian civil war, and has attacked it there.

The border wall Israel is building on the Blue Line (Photo: Reuters)

"The last 12 years have seen the quietest period the south of Lebanon has witnessed in over 30 years," Tenenti said.

"But it is important to keep in mind that things along the Blue Line are in general very sensitive. Anything could, if it is not addressed immediately, potentially spark into something bigger and increase tension."
Soldiers from the Netz Company of the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps' Nitzan Field Intelligence Battalion captured a 17-year-old Bethlehem resident on Monday after he threw Molotov cocktails at a West Bank road used by tens of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

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Video released by the IDF shows the Palestinian suspect arriving with a terror cell from the village of al-Khader, which is north of the settlement of Efrat, and then throwing fire bombs at a road connecting to Highway 60.

Footage of Palestinians throwing firebombs at road (:  ")

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The troops ambushed the terrorists, identifying them in real time while they were hurling the Molotov cocktails at passing vehicles using a thermal drone made by Matrix.

IDF observers from the Etzion Territorial Brigade directed the soldiers, who chased the terror cell members and caught the one seen throwing the firebombs. The terrorist was taken in for questioning by the Shin Bet.

The terrorists fleeing (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)

The troops also used helmet cameras that helped them locate the terrorists from the ambush location.

IDF officials said that over the past year, Nitzan Battalion soldiers conducted 90 successful ambushes, thwarting stone- and firebomb-throwing at Israeli vehicles and arresting suspects.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman attacked the ultra-Orthodox parties on Thursday evening over a crisis of their making that is threatening the stability of the coalition, calling them a "group of extremist elements."

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United Torah Judaism has threatened not to support the 2019 state budget unless an IDF conscription bill, which would solicit state recognition of Torah studies to being equal to military service, is brought for a vote and passed in the Knesset first.

"In recent days, the people of Israel have been taken hostage by a group of extremist elements. They're threatening to drag all of us to unnecessary elections, in a complex security reality, and demand that we give in to their extortion, or they would dismantle the right-wing government. We must not and we will not allow that to happen," Lieberman said.

Defense Minister Lieberman (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Coalition ministers have begun drawing up a possible compromise deal in a bid to resolve the ongoing crisis. The ministers are hoping that Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman (UTJ) would bring the compromise to the party's Council of Torah Sages for approval.

"The one who set the 'three readings' ultimatum to begin with (Litzman), he's the one responsible for the dismantling of the right-wing government! We did not start this crisis," Lieberman accused. "Yisrael Beytenu is a loyal partner in the right-wing government, but we will not give up on our guiding principles: Security and responsibility. We won't negotiate with a gun to our heads."

He went on to say that "when it comes to enlistment, the defense establishment and the IDF are the one who would determine (what happens), not the Haredi parties. It is inconceivable for such a significant bill proposal, which deals with the very heart of the people's army and Israeli society, is dependent on the Council of Torah Sages alone, and the IDF is not even being asked about it. It is absurd. It is a national irresponsibility."

The defense minister spoke about the special team his ministry established to prepare the amendment to the draft law. "This is the best thing for the IDF and the people of Israel, let the team work! It's right for the IDF, it's right for the Haredim, it's right for Israeli society," he said.

Deputy Health Minister Litzman (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Lieberman noted his Yisrael Beytenu party "has foregone its agenda in advance and has committed to accept the plan being formulated by the Defense Ministry's team."

"A disagreement that has been accompanying the State of Israel from the day of its establishment will not be resolved with coercion and extortion, in one week," he added.

He stressed that he "doesn't want elections. It's important for governments in Israel to serve until the end of the term, but I have a responsibility to Israel's security and to the IDF, and I'm not willing to compromise on these principles."

In response, Shas MK Yaakov Margi criticized Lieberman, saying "The head of the smallest party in the coalition, who got the defense minister's role with no justification with regards to the size and importance of his party, launches an attack bordering on anti-Semitism on the Haredi parties in an effort to gather votes. Sad and disturbing!"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected on Thursday the claims and reports being made about the different investigations against him, complaining that he and his wife "were under attack all the time, every hour and every minute."

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"A prime minister is allowed to seek justice. I won't remain silent, I am telling the truth," Netanyahu told Israeli reporters after a visit to the United Nations headquarters in New York.

"I will tell you a truth that is perhaps inconvenient for people to hear: There is sympathy in the public for me and my wife and family. Sympathy the likes of which I can't remember," the prime minister asserted.

Netanyahu with wife Sara after a visit to the UN (Photo: Reuters)

"Listen to the citizens of Israel. The citizens of Israel en massenot all, but en masseare giving me and my wife support. They want justice," he added.

Speaking about International Women's Day, Netanyahu went on to say, "I want to express appreciation and special love to my wife Sara, and to the many people in the world and many many of Israel's citizens, who support her and us these days."

Netanyahu tells Haley: 'You're making everything better'

Earlier, Netanyahu met with US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, flattering her when she asked him how things were. "Everything is fine, and you're making it better," he said.

The two spoke about US President Donald Trump's fight against the Iranian threat, with Netanyahu telling Haley, "I think he's completely focused on the danger of Iran and the nuclear deal and Iran's aggression in the region. He's focused on the right thing. As you well know, this is what animates everyone lately, not only Israel and America, but just about everybody else in the Middle East. It certainly doesn't pass you by, I'm sure."

Netanyahu meets with Haley at the UN (: ")

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The prime minister also thanked the American ambassador for her support of Israel. "I wanted to tell you how much we appreciate the defense of Israel and the truth that the president and you bring into these cloistered halls that are so damp with anti-Israel venom. It's not a breath of fresh air, it's like a tsunami of fresh air," he said.

Haley echoed Netanyahu's sentiments, saying "It's amazing. I mean, really, it was just abusive before, and I think I've told you that before. I feel bad for Danny (Danon, Israel's ambassador to the UN), and what he's had to put up with... but it's actually starting to get a little bit better. They don't want to get yelled up."

"Well, continue yelling," Netanyahu said with a chuckle.

Haley and Netanyahu meet at the UN (Photo: Haim Zach/GPO)

Haley moved on to speaking about Iran, saying it was a big focus at the UN. "We're very concerned. I'm very concerned for Israel. I think that they (the Iranians) are feeling more and more threatened, and I think that they're going to have to end up making some decisions, and I'm concerned that they won't make the right ones. That's something we're very focused on," she said.

"We see what's happening in Syriaand I'd love your thoughts on that, in terms of where we're going there," Haley added.

3,000 years of Jerusalem history exhibition

While at the UN headquarters in New York City, Netanyahu opened an exhibition on Jerusalem, which traces Jews in the city back centuries before the Christian era. The prime minister said it clearly shows the city's long history "cherished" by Israelis and friends of the Jewish people and "friends of truth."

This "is being denied by those seeking to erase the history of our people, our connection to our lands, and our connection to our eternal capital Jerusalem," he said.





Israeli Ambassador Danon gives Netanyahu, his wife, and Minister Ze'ev Elkin a tour of the exhibition (Photo: Nir Arieli)

The Palestinian delegation to the UN has already complained to the UN Secretariat about the exhibition, claiming its displays are controversial and contradicts UN resolutions. The UN, however, rejected the Palestinians' request to shut down the exhibition, instead putting a disclaimer sign at its entrance that says: "The content of this exhibit is solely the responsibility of the sponsors. The holding of the exhibit in UN premises does not imply endorsement by the United Nations. Please direct any queries to the organizers."

Hitting back at the UN, Netenyahu responded: "Of course it doesn't represent the United Nations. It represents the truth, and we'll continue to tell the truth and speak the truth everywhere, including the United Nations."

Prime Minister Netanyahu, center, with his wife Sara, left, and Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon (Photo: AP)

"This exhibit would not have been possible 10 years ago," he added. "And this exhibit will be unnecessary 10 years from now. We are changing the world. We are changing Israel's position in the world, and above all we are making it clear that we fight for the truth and for our rights. We also fight for security."

The exhibition showcases archeological findings that demonstrate the continuous, historical connection between the Jewish people and Israel and Jerusalem.

Among the items in the exhibition are the Tel Dan Stela from 8-9th century BC, which has the first known historical evidence of King David from the Bible, and a seal with the Hebrew inscription "To Netanyahu son of Yaush" from the 7th century BC.
UNITED NATIONS -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opened an exhibition on Jerusalem to reinforce Israel's claim to the historic city as the Jewish people's "eternal capital" -- and rebuke over 125 countries that support Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

Netanyahu's UN visit Thursday follows President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December. The UN General Assembly voted soon after that denouncing the US leader's announcement and declaring Trump's action "null and void."

The exhibition traces Jews in Jerusalem back centuries before the Christian era. Netanyahu said that Jews' place in the city "is being denied by those seeking to erase the history of our people, our connection to our lands, and our connection to our eternal capital, Jerusalem."
Some 5,000 IDF and American troops have been training together in Israel against the threat of massive missile and rocket barrages on Israel coming from Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and even Iran in a future Middle East war.

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The joint US-Israel Juniper Cobra exercise, which has been taking place every two years since the early 2000s, includes field training, computer simulations and live-fire drills of sophisticated missile-defense systems.

This year's exercise, which began on March 4 and will run through the end of the month, is the largest one yet, 2,500 service members participating from each country.

Joint exercise US and Israel (:  ,  ")

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"We will practice, train shoulder to shoulder, the same as we will fight in crisis times," Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, chief of Israel's Aerial Defense, told reporters at a briefing at the Hatzor Airbase in southern Israel.

Israel has made missile defense a priority since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bombarded the country with 39 Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.

Today, the threat is far more formidable. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is now believed to possess well over 100,000 rockets and missiles capable of striking virtually anywhere in Israel.

Hezbollah and Iranian forces are also active in neighboring Syria, backing President Bashar Assad. Gaza's Hamas rulers have a vast arsenal of rockets, and Iran has developed long-range missiles that can reach Israel.

(Photo: US Air Force Tech Sergeant Matthew Plew)

These threats are concrete. Hezbollah rained some 4,000 rockets into Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, while Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets into Israel from the south.

Last month, Israel intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria during a clash that caused an Israeli F-16 warplane to crash, and Israel shot down a Syrian anti-aircraft missile last year.

Air defense weapons (Photo: AFP)

Haimovich said Juniper Cobra is not aimed at any particular adversary. Instead, it is meant to simulate "very complex scenarios" that include simultaneous attacks from enemy countries and militant groups. "We practice that because this is a real scenario," he said.

He said the threats include multiple salvos, more accurate rockets and missiles and a "multidirectional threat."

"Those are our main assumptions," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's from south, north, east or others."

Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, commander of the US troops, said American forces are ready to deploy in Israel at Israel's request. Once Israel gives the green light, he said American forces could start moving from Europe within two or three days.

Juniper Cobra has taken place every two years since 2001, adjusting each time to cope with ever-shifting battlefield.

Juniper Cobra exercise (Photo: EPA)

With literally "thousands of threats" to prepare for, Clark said the drill is an opportunity for the two allies to improve communication and coordination.

"The ballistic missile defense mission is a very difficult one, very technical one, and it requires precise integrated effort to make it work, and that's what we're developing here," he said.

Gen Richard Clark (Photo: AFP)

Israel, in cooperation with the US, has developed a multilayer system of missile defense. This includes the Arrow system, which can intercept long-range missiles before they enter the atmosphere, the David's Sling system for medium-range threats, which will be participating in the drill for the first time, and the Iron Dome, which has been successful at intercepting short-range rocket fire. Israel also uses the American-made Patriot system.

US and Israeli officers talk

The American Sixth Fleet aircraft carrier USS Mount Whitney arrived at the Haifa Port Thursday, and its 500 troops will participate in the joint drill.

The Americans deployed defense and communications systems throughout Israel including the Pac-3 Patriot anti-ballistic missile.

USS Mt. Whitney near Haifa (Photo: IDF Spokesmans unit)

During the 2006 Second Lebanon War and 2014 Operation Protective Edge, Israel did not seek American assistance, but it seems that if the scenarios being prepared for are in fact realized, the defensive measures being practiced will be put into action.

While Israel takes pride in its ability to defend itself, Haimovich said the cooperation with the Americans provides additional depth to its "tool box."

Haimovich pointed out that 2017 was a relatively quiet year and nevertheless there were three interceptions of hostile aircraft by the Patriot system in the north and ten Iron Dome rocket interceptions in the Gaza and Eilat areas.

The enemy will fire more rockets in the opening barrage of the next war, as we have seen with the 26 rockets that were fired simultaneously at the beginning of Operation Protective Edge," Brig. Gen. Haimovitch said.

"We are coordinating with the American forces, and we have the final say in the process of defending Israel. In most cases, we reach agreements and an understanding, and where there is no agreement, Israel's right of defense is greater. The American defenses will not be hermetic either, there are some missiles that we do not wish to intercept, because they will land in open fields.

He also spoke about the relatively large amount of false alarms that were heard in the last year in the Gaza region. The last thing we want is for people to be complacent when they hear an alarm. During Protective Edge, there were 4,700 separate launchings from Gaza over a period of 51 days, and there were only four false alarms, he said.

Speaking about the Iranian drone that infiltrated Israeli airspace last month and was shot down by a helicopter rather than a Patriot missile, Haimovich said: We have three options: Patriot, fighter jets and combat helicopters. The decision to use an Apache Helicopter was wise and correct. We did not want the drone to shatter into many pieces, so that we could analyze its parts.

In honor of International Womens Day, the general announced the appointment of Maj. Revital as deputy commander of a battalion in an Air Defense unit.



Gen. Richard Clark said the two sides enjoyed an excellent relationship and that the drill comes after 18 months of preparation.

We are prepared to defend Israel and if conflict breaks out, we take into account that we might suffer losses as well. We bring defense capabilities that are different from those of Israel, and the key is to integrate the abilities of the two militaries, he said.

The Arrow 3 missile defense system, which is intended to intercept exoatmospheric advanced Iranian missiles, recently became operational. This summer, its newest version will undergo an extensive test against a ballistic target in the skies over Alaska, where it can utilize its full potential without the safety precautions necessary when conducting testing in Israel.
- The government says some Ghanaians are selling each other in a human trafficking ring in Libya

- Foreign affairs minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, says efforts are being made to help Ghanaian immigrants willing to return

- Human trafficking remains one of the major crisis in Libya

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, has revealed that Ghanaians are actively involved in human trafficking in the war-torn zone of Libya.

Yen.com.gh is gathering that this revelation was made after a 5-member team from the Foreign Affairs Ministry revealed how some Ghanaian immigrants in Libya are setting up camps along some secret routes across the Libyan desert.

READ ALSO: The 7 wild, clear photos we captured from Ghana's 61st Independence parade

Answering questions in Parliament Wednesday on the status of Ghanaians in Libya, Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway said when a migrant is handed to a ghetto leader, the migrant is directed to call family members back home in Ghana to pay for the indebtedness through an agent/partner.

The world was thrown into a state of shock when a documentary by CNN revealed how human traffickers in Libya sold Africans for as low as 400 dollars.

The Africans, according to the International Migration Organisation (IMO), are mostly from the sub-region, mostly West Africa.

READ ALSO: 7 firm warnings, orders, Nana Addo voiced out in crucial 6th March speech

Also, the foreign minister has hinted that about 115 Ghanaian immigrants in Libya are escaping to Ghana following high cases of crime in Libya.

This batch of Ghanaians follows an earlier batch at the beginning of the year.

Star Gist on YEN.com.gh brings you emerging music artiste, Kobla Jnr:

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Source: Yen
- Former President Mahama saved a dire situation in Sierra Leone after Wednesday's election

- There had been a near altercation between the police and the main opposition party over issues of hacking

- But Mr Mahama intervened and had the matter resolved, according to a BBC correspondent

Former President John Mahama has defused what could have ended up as a chaotic situation in Sierra Leone on Wednesday.

The West African country held its general elections and Former President Mahama was there as the leader of the Commonwealth observer mission.

But as the results started trickling in, the police stormed the office of the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), led by Julius Maada Bio, while they were monitoring the elections.

READ ALSO: 5 times John Dumelo challenged Nana Addo for the 'King of African print' title

Their mission was to search the premises over allegations that the SLPP was hacking the results coming in.

Bio and his team brushed off the claims saying the police was trying to intimidate them.

The situation nearly turned chaotic but for the timely intervention of former President Mahama.

According to the BBC's Umaru Fofana, "Mr. Mahama visited the place and the standoff ended after [the] matter was resolved."

READ ALSO: Zylofon boss made his money from occultism - Top 'man of God' claims

"Former Ghanaian President and head of the Commonwealth election observer mission to #SierraLeone John Mahama has defused a volatile situation. Police had surrounded the office of the main opposition leader, Julius Maada Bio, where he and his team were monitoring the elections across the country. Mahama visited the place and the standoff ended after matter was resolved.

The head of the police criminal investigations department, Mohamed Kamara told me that theyd gone to search the premises on allegations that there was some hacking of the election results underway. Bio and his team shrugged off the allegations saying the move was an intimidation antic. The electoral commission say their system cannot be hacked because it is basic and manual," Fofana posted on Facebook.

READ ALSO: I am being haunted by Ebonys spirit  Eagle Prophet

Former President Mahama has been in Sierra Leone since Monday and was not able to attend the 61st Independence Anniversary celebrations.

YEN.com.gh samples a number of potential top pastors in Ghana:

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Source: Yen
- Captain planet has congratulated Owusu Bempah's new wife for choosing 'apketeshie' as her drink

- The Ghanaian musician says 'akpeteshie' is a proud Ghana Made Product that can be promoted

Popular Ghanaian musician, Captain Planet has applauded the new wife of Rev. Owusu Bempah for making local brewed gin, akpeteshie her preferred alcoholic beverage.

According to the musician, akpeteshie is a perfect Ghana Made Product, therefore he finds nothing strange about her drinking it.

READ ALSO: Owusu Bempahs new wife caught on camera drinking 'akpeteshie'

A video of the newly wedded wife of the popular Ghanaian Prophet, Abena Animah, has been leaked on social media just a week after her marriage ceremony.

In the 14 seconds video, Osofo Maame Abena Animah was captured on camera consuming what is believed to be an alcoholic drink.

Although it is not clear the kind of alcoholic drink the wife of the preacher was enjoying, there are speculations she was taking shots of akpeteshie.

The leaked video which has sparked some controversy on social media, shows the wife of the Prophet asking another lady to pour her the drink after the lady had already had her own share.

READ ALSO: King Promise, Kuami Eugene and Kidi 'storm' BBC for first interview

The said lady whose identity is yet to be known, brought out a cup and poured some drink purported to be akpeteshie and asked the pastors wife, if one shot will be okay for her

But she retorted, No add some more to the amazement of other women who were helping her dress up for her wedding.

However, speaking exclusively to Razzonline.com, Captain Planet who is currently promoting his new song titled, Akpeteshie congratulated Abena Animah for choosing local gin over all alcoholic beverages.

Im proud of the womanOh yes Im really proud of her for consuming made in Ghana Product, the musician said.

Prophet Isaac Owusu Bempah got married to Abena Animah at a private ceremony in Accra a week ago.

READ ALSO: MzVee reveals why death prophesies won't get close to her

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As the world mark and celebrate women today, YEN.com.gh is acknowledging all Ghanaian women.

On International Women's Day in 2018 we want to celebrate the achievement and impact of 10 Ghanaian women who have impacted their various sectors meaningfully.

International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8 every year. It commemorates the movement for women's rights.

This year the theme for the celebration is #PressforProgress. A strong call to motivate and unite friends, colleagues and whole communities to think, act and be gender inclusive.

READ ALSO: What celebrities wore to Stonebwoys birthday party

Here are YEN's 10 exceptional women who have made tremendous impact in their communities.

1. Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright and academic. She was also a Minister of Education in Ghana under the Jerry Rawlings administration. She established the Mbaasem Foundation to promote and support the work of African women writers.

Ama Ata Aidoo

2. Estelle Sowah

Estelle Akofio-Sowah is a Scottish born, Ghanaian businesswoman and the current Google Ghana country manager. Estelle was once the managing director of BusyInternet, a very popular internet cafe located in Accra used by 1,000's of Ghanaians to access the Internet daily.

Estelle Sowah

3. Hanna Serwa Tetteh

She is one of the best politicians Ghana has had in the past few years. She served in different portfolios when her party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was in power.

Hanna Serwa Tetteh

READ ALSO: Young lady in Bekwai appeals for funds to undergo brain surgery

4. Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings

Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (born November 17, 1948) was the First Lady of Ghana from 4 June 1979 to 24 September 1979 and 31 December 1981 to 7 January 2001, both times under President Jerry John Rawlings. In 2016 she became the first woman to run for President of Ghana.

Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings

5. Dzigbordi K. Dosoo

She is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Allure Africa Group an award-winning premier spa & Lifestyle Business headquartered in Accra Ghana with an office in Washington DC USA.

Dzigbordi K. Dosoo

6. Joyce Ababio

Joyce Ababio is an award-winning Ghanaian fashion designer and founder of the Joyce Ababio College of Creative Design.

Joyce Ababio school college of has natured lots of these big fashion brands we see today. Most Ghanaian fashion designers passed through her hands, from Akotua Gh, BVENAJ designs and a whole lot.

Joyce Ababio

READ ALSO: Stonebwoy celebrates birthday with Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital

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Source: Yen
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The U.S. has closed its consular agency in a popular Mexican tourist spot and is barring its employees from traveling there over a "security threat."



The embassy in Mexico City issued the alert Wednesday night for Playa del Carmen, a coastal resort town near Cancun and Cozumel on the Caribbean.



The warnings come after a bomb exploded on a ferry that runs between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel in February and an unexploded ordinance was found on another ferry a week later.



The State Department provided few details on what the threat was -- saying only that one was received by the embassy in Mexico City on Wednesday.



"We take our obligation to provide information to U.S. citizens seriously as evidenced by the clear, timely, and reliable safety and security information we release worldwide," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement to ABC News, adding that the agency will provide "important updates when information becomes available."



Both the closure of the consular agency and the restrictions on personnel travel are in place "until further notice," according to Nauert.



Still, Americans were not told to avoid travel to Playa del Carmen. The State Department's alert system puts it at a "Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution."



"In Mexico alone, weve issued a number of recent security alerts as soon as we received information that travelers should know. We encourage travelers to be aware of surroundings and exercise caution," Nauert said Wednesday night.



It was just two weeks ago an explosion rocked the ferry from Playa del Carmen, injuring 25 people, including two Americans.



One week later, an "apparent explosive device" was found on a Barcos Caribe ferry in Cozumel, Mexico, according to the Playa del Carmen state prosecutor. The State Department confirmed "undetonated explosive devices" were found on the ferry by Mexican law enforcement, warned Americans to "exercise caution" and prohibited employees from traveling on that ferry route.



Princess Cruises, which sails to Cozumel, sent out a warning to passengers as well.



"As the safety and security of our guests and crew is our highest priority, our security department remains in close contact with government and private sources as well as our local agents and tour operators and continues to monitor the situation," Princess Cruises said in a statement last Friday.



The first explosion took place as passengers disembarked the ferry, according to the municipality of Solidaridad, which includes Playa del Carmen.



Both incidents are still under investigation.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
In the wake of the murder of 17 people during the Stoneman Douglas shooting on Valentines Day, Wilton Manors commissioners are trying to figure out how to respond.

At the beginning of their Feb. 27 commission meeting, commissioners read the names of the victims who were murdered in Parkland. After previous incidents of mass gun violence, such as when Pulse occurred, commissioners have done the same.

Its a tradition that Mayor Gary Resnick said has gone on for far too long. Enough is enough. I am very much in favor of taking a stand to do something, said Commissioner Julie Carson, who said the city needs to make a change or proactively change the laws in Florida in regard to gun regulation.

Local elected officials are barred by the state from passing ordinances, rules, or any kind of regulation that deals with guns and ammunition. Anyone who violates the statute can be fined up to $5,000 and removed from office by the governor. Any regulations passed can also be declared null and void. We need to have control, not Tallahassee, urged Father Jamie Forsythe, pastor at

Holy Angels Catholic Church in Wilton Manors.

Commissioners are also weighing whether to join a lawsuit brought by city officials in Weston challenging that statute. Vice Mayor Justin Flippen said the city should challenge the law, but not break it. Something has to be done, said Commissioner Scott Newton.

In addition to passing a resolution urging the state and federal government to do more to cut down on the availability of weapons like the AR-15, which was used in Parkland and in other mass shootings around the country, the commission also approved spending $2,000 to send one of the Stoneman Douglas students to Washington, D.C. to take part in the March for Our Lives gun-control rally on March 24.

Chief Paul OConnell honored the members of the Wilton Manors Police Department who responded to the shooting  Det. Bonnie Owens, Det. David Turner, Det. Patrick Newton, Det. Frantz Petitpapa, and Officer Matthew Rowles. Victim Advocate Alberto Carrillo attended the CNN town hall to assist with multi-agency victims advocate efforts. Despite what you hear in the media, these men and women answered the call, and they didnt shy down. And for that, I am very grateful and very proud, said OConnell.
Plans to build 88 residential units on the former Center for Spiritual Living site in Wilton Manors have been cancelled.

Right now, were going back to the drawing board, said Larry Baum, founder of Stellar Homes Group, the company developing the site, located at Northeast 15 Avenue and Northeast 26 Street.

Baum said his company plans to attempt some kind of business or commercial-related venture on the 4.9-acre site. Nothing has been decided yet, he said, but possible ideas include a hotel or shopping center. Weve had so many different offers and calls because its such a great site.

Baum said it was decided that the land was too valuable for residential condos and more money could be made in some other kind of use. The market for condos has softened up.

He added that Stellar will go out to the community first before officially proposing anything to the city. Theres no time frame yet. Its still very up in the air. Were big believers in Wilton Manors.

The project was approved by the Broward County Planning Council in June of 2017. The city commission gave tentative approval to the project in December of 2016, but told developers they needed to reduce the number of units further if they wanted final commission approval. Before that December meeting, developers had proposed 100 units. By the end, they dropped further to 88. I will not vote for a site plan that has the same footprint, said Mayor Gary Resnick at the time.

When Baum was trying to build residential units, the project received support from some residents and rejection from others.

Previously, John Fiore, a former mayor and the vice president of the East Neighborhood Association, suggested 50 to 60 units. Resident Randy Comer wanted developers to only build 40 units. Those against the project said it would ruin the character of the neighborhood. Those in favor cited the tax benefits and commended the aesthetics of the project, which was designed by Miami architect Rene Gonzalez. Resident Karl Lentzer said the project would be great for the neighborhood.

In a new interview, Fiore stated hed like to see Class A office space built there for doctors, attorneys and other professionals. If something like that was built there, I dont think wed have a real problem with that. An office complex would be compatible with the neighborhood . . . Its a good site for it. Fiore said hes less sure that a hotel would be a good fit for the site, or Wilton Manors. It would have to be small, and its just not cost effective.

Resident Laura Comer, who was against building 88 units, said shed like to move forward. She and some other residents were also against the G Resort hotel project that was proposed for the site in 2010. This should be interesting. I hope they come up with something decent so we can just move on from all this fighting.
This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth.

It combines a mosaic of millimetre-wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the upper-left is the Trapezium Cluster -- made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old.

The wispy, fibre-like structures seen in this large image are long filaments of cold gas, only visible to telescopes working in the millimetre wavelength range. They are invisible at both optical and infrared wavelengths, making ALMA one of the only instruments available for astronomers to study them. This gas gives rise to newborn stars -- it gradually collapses under the force of its own gravity until it is sufficiently compressed to form a protostar -- the precursor to a star.

The scientists who gathered the data from which this image was created were studying these filaments to learn more about their structure and make-up. They used ALMA to look for signatures of diazenylium gas, which makes up part of these structures. Through doing this study, the team managed to identify a network of 55 filaments.

The Orion Nebula is the nearest region of massive star formation to Earth, and is therefore studied in great detail by astronomers seeking to better understand how stars form and evolve in their first few million years. ESO's telescopes have observed this interesting region multiple times, and you can learn more about previous discoveries here, here, and here.

This image combines a total of 296 separate individual datasets from the ALMA and IRAM telescopes, making it one of the largest high-resolution mosaics of a star formation region produced so far at millimetre wavelengths [1].

Notes

[1] Earlier mosaics of Orion at millimetre wavelengths had used single-dish telescopes, such as APEX. The new observations from ALMA and IRAM use interferometry to combine the signals from multiple, widely-separated antennas to create images showing much finer detail.

More information

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and by Australia as a strategic partner. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".

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The same satellites that identify severe weather can help save you from it.





The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA's) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) constellation monitors Earth's environment, helping meteorologists observe and predict the weather. GOES observations have tracked thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes and flash floods. They've even proven useful in monitoring dust storms, forest fires and volcanic activity.

The recently launched GOES-S (planned to replace the current GOES-West later this year) and other GOES series satellites carry a payload supported by NASA's Search and Rescue (SAR) office, which researches and develops technologies to help first responders locate people in distress worldwide, whether from a plane crash, a boating accident or other emergencies.

Over its history, the SAR office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has developed emergency beacons for personal, nautical and aeronautical use, along with ground station receivers that detect beacon activation. Space segment SAR instruments fly on many spacecraft in various orbits around the Earth. The GOES SAR transponders are geostationary, meaning that they appear "fixed" relative to a user on the surface due to their location over the equator and orbital period of 24 hours.

"The SAR space segment isn't just one instrument in one orbit," said Tony Foster, SAR's deputy mission manager. "Rather it's a series of instruments aboard diverse satellites in various orbits, each working together to provide first responders with highly accurate locations."

The GOES search and rescue transponders, unlike SAR instruments in other orbits, are only able to detect the beacon signals, not help to determine location. This detection rapidly alerts the global SAR network, Cospas-Sarsat, of a distress beacon's activation. This gives the system valuable time to prepare before the signal's origin can be determined by SAR instruments on low-Earth-orbiting satellites.

Additionally, beacons with integrated GPS technology can send their location data through GOES to the SAR network. The network can then alert local first responders to the location of the emergency without the aid of the low-Earth-orbiting constellation of search and rescue instruments.

NASA's SAR team provides on-orbit testing, support and maintenance of the search and rescue instrument on GOES. The GOES satellites and SAR instruments are funded by NOAA.

"We are proud to support the Cospas-Sarsat program by hosting a search and rescue transponder aboard our satellites," said Tim Walsh, GOES-R series program acting system program director. "SAR is one of the many NOAA-NASA collaborations that translate into life-saving technology."

In the future, first responders will rely on a new constellation of instruments on GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems currently in medium-Earth orbit, an orbit that views larger swathes of the Earth than low-Earth orbit due to higher altitudes. These new instruments will enable the SAR network to locate a distress signal more quickly than the current system and calculate their position with accuracy an order of magnitude better, from one kilometer (0.6 miles) to approximately 100 meters (328 feet).

In the meantime, the SAR transponders aboard GOES cover the time between the activation of a distress signal and detection by SAR instruments in low-Earth orbit.

"NASA's SAR office dedicates itself to speed and accuracy," said Lisa Mazzuca, SAR mission manager. "The instruments and technologies we develop endeavor to alert first responders to a beacon's activation as soon as possible. The GOES search and rescue transponders are crucial to this goal, providing near-instantaneous detection in the fields of view of the Earth."

###

NASA's SAR office is a project of Goddard's Exploration and Space Communications projects division. Programmatic oversight is provided by NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. GOES-S was successfully launched on March 1, 2018, aboard an Atlas V launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

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The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) meeting scheduled for March 22 at Golden Gate Fields has been canceled. The next regular meeting of the Board is scheduled for Thursday, April 19, at Santa Anita Park.

The CHRB Special Committee on Northern California Racing will meet March 22 at Golden Gate Fields beginning at 10:30 a.m.

To view the agenda for the Committee meeting, visit this link.
Winbak Farm of Ontario is happy to announce that Archangels 2018 book is full and closed.

Archangel, 2, 1:58.2s; 3, 1:53.1s; 1:50 ($1,141,831), is standing his fourth season in Ontario. His first Ontario crop sold at yearling sales in 2017.

With the year that Archangel had last year it is no surprise that he is booked full and closed, said Larry Drysdale, Winbak Farm of Ontario Manager. Plus the training reports on his two-year-olds have been very optimistic.

According to the USTA, Archangel was No. 1 for all North American stallions in 2017 for all-age average earnings per starter (this was from a limited crop in New York). This crop included 2017 Yonkers Trot Winner, Top Flight Angel, 3, 1:54.3h -'17 ($456,336).

We would like to thank each of the breeders who have supported Archangel, said Archangels owner, Alan Hainsworth of Legendary Standardbred Farm. His co-owner, Clare Semer, and I are very happy with the way that he has been received and look forward to seeing his first Ontario crop compete in two-year-old stakes action in 2018.

For more information on Winbak Farm, please visit www.winbakfarm.com. For questions related to Winbak Farm of Ontario, please call 905-838-2145.

(Winbak Farm)
St. Polycarp Publishing House Announces New Book Which Examines the Origins of The Book of Mormon

Contact: Aaron Simms, 470-326-6578SUWANEE, Ga., March 8, 2018 / Standard Newswire / -- St. Polycarp Publishing House is pleased to announce the upcoming release of "The Spalding Enigma: Investigating the Mysterious Origin of The Book of Mormon" by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Arthur Vanick, and Howard A. Davis. It also features a Foreword by Dr. Gene Edward Veith who says, "'The Spalding Enigma' makes important contributions to the history of Mormonism... [and] American history as a whole."The book will be published on May 15th, 2018 and is available for pre-order now.Where did "The Book of Mormon" come from? Who was Solomon Spalding and what connection did his manuscript have with Joseph Smith? To answer these questions, this book critically examines key historical documents, personal testimonies, and records of 19th-century Mormon history to examine this "Spalding Enigma."The authors have spent decades collecting and analyzing evidence to conclude that "The Book of Mormon" is an "adaptation of an obscure historical novel" written by Revolutionary War veteran Solomon Spalding during the War of 1812. They assert that Mormon founders Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, and Joseph Smith Jr. adapted and embellished the Spalding manuscript to create "The Book of Mormon."Follow along with Wayne Cowdrey (a relative of Oliver Cowdrey's family), Arthur Vanick, and Howard Davis as they pursue this enigma and present the evidence for you to draw your own conclusion.The book is available in two editions:Readers' Edition: Presents the authors' research and findings in a concise manner. Great for most readers who want the main points in an accessible format. Available as a 248 page paperback as well as an ebook (Kindle, iBook, Nook).Scholars' Edition: Provides additional material, references, and appendices. Perfect for scholars and researches who are interested in the detailed sources available in the book. Available as a 620 page hardcover as well as an ebook (Kindle, iBook, Nook).Additional information and details are available at thespaldingenigma.com
WCC Welcomes 'Powerful Sign of Hope' on Korean Peninsula

Contact: Media Office, World Council of Churches, +41 79 507 6363



GENEVE, March 8, 2018 /Standard Newswire/ -- The World Council of Churches (WCC) welcomed historic meetings on 5-6 March between a South Korean special envoy delegation and North Korean leadership in Pyongyang, the first high-level direct talks between the two Koreas in more than a decade.



Photo: Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope conference. Photo: Kim Minji/NCCK

As a result of agreements reached in the meetings, the two Koreas will hold a summit at the border village of Panmunjeom at the end of April, and a hotline for communication between the two sides' leaders will be established.

It is also reported that North Korea will cease nuclear and missile tests while dialogue takes place.

"The reported outcomes of those meetings are powerful signs of hope compared to dangerously escalating tensions and military confrontation of the recent past, and provide major encouragement to President Moon Jae-ins diplomatic engagement with the North," said a WCC statement released 7 March.

These developments took place while representatives of Korean churches and international partners  including the WCC  were gathered in a conference organized by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) in Seoul on the 30th anniversary of the NCCK 1988 Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace.

"The WCC joins the participants in the NCCK conference in calling for the international community, and especially the United States of America, to respond affirmatively to these signs of hope, with reciprocal tension-reducing and trust-building measures," said the WCC statement.

Participants of the NCCK conference issued a communique entitled "Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope," that welcomes the new steps toward dialogue as an historic opportunity.

Related links:

Communique by NCCK conference participants: "Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope"

WCC statement of 7 March

WCC member churches in South Korea

"Solidarity more powerful than darkness" (WCC press release of 11 December 2017)


There is not only an elevated risk of large earthquakes in the San Francisco area. Nope! The ground around San Francisco Bay is sinking and is set to meet the rising sea in about 80 years. Now, a new scientific study adds up to this already growing fear of drowning, reporting that this land subsidence will increase the potential reach and damage of flooding in the Bay Area, submerging a larger portion of the region by the year 2100 than previously estimated. Yes, Bay Area residents you should start to worry about your home and protect your next generations from the Big Drowning.

The authors of the report have combined land elevation data with rising sea level projections. And they are now challenging the current flood threat projections as too conservative and hope that their new findings will help cities and agencies produce more accurate hazard maps, updating the extent of affected areas.

Under the new projections, San Francisco International Airport could see half of its runways submerged by the year 2100. Original estimates that did not include land subsidence were much lower. Other areas around the Bay that have been built on engineered landfill, like parts of Foster City and Treasure Island, are particularly vulnerable to the dual impact of subsidence and sea level rise.

The combination of rising sea levels and sinking ground increases estimates of the total amount of endangered areas to a range of 48 to 166 square miles. The rate of sink plays a role in the severity of the estimate: While most areas around the Bay are sinking at less than two millimeters per year, some have been found to be sinking at a rate as high as 10 millimeters per year.

Its a very well-known problem, but we really dont know how fast its going to be in the second half of the 21st century. This is a projection. Hopefully a wrong one for California!

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Science advances, By NY Times
Fiesta Hermosa will be back for Labor Day weekend, but with a new local look, slightly different name
SITA is the communications and IT solution provider that transforms air travel through technology for airlines, at airports and on aircraft. The companys portfolio covers everything from managed global communications and infrastructure services, to eAircraft, passenger management, baggage, self-service, airport and border management solutions. Sita showcases innovative technologies that will shape the future of aviation industry at India Air Transport it Summit 2018.

The civil aviation industry in India is growing rapidly and has emerged as one of the fastest growing industries in the country in the last three years. In fact, India is currently on a path to become the third-largest aviation market by 2020.

With such growth, the air transport industry will witness a major shift in the use of innovative technologies to meet fast evolving needs and opportunities. Airlines, airports and other stakeholders are transforming rapidly, enabled by new technology trends that is evolving air travel through digital transformation

In such dynamic scenario, forums like India Air Transport IT Summit help to transform the intent into a decisive roadmap. The INDIA AIR TRANSPORT IT SUMMIT, in its fifth year, will take place on 22-23 MARCH, 2018 at the FAIRMONT HOTEL, JAIPUR. SITA will be showcasing cutting-edge technologies that will help shape the future of travel technology in India and meet the challenge of growing passenger numbers. These innovations will include biometrics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, mixed reality and robotics.

This leading pan-industry forum will bring together top executives from Air India, Airports Authority of India, Spicejet, Go Air, Hyderabad Airport, Cochin International Airport, Mumbai International Airport, Chandigarh International Airport, Ras Al Khaimah Airport, Ethopian Airlines, Jet Airways, AERA, KPMG, CAPA, SITA and SITA Lab.

@Technuter.com News Service
ZOOOK was conceptualized in the early 2000s in France. Zoook India came into existence in 2014 with a vision that life is too short to be boring. They are game-changers in the world of technology and have the power to give any personal space an instant makeover. They are already on their way to break stereotypes, open doors and explore the fantastic. The company has a strong brand presence across online and at offline trade channels  retail stores, direct dealer channels and e-commerce websites across the world.

Zoook has launched ZM-Rocker Symphony in-ear headphones under its premium range. Now feel every note and enjoy every beat of your favorite music. These stunning earphones come with three different cushion sizes that offer passive noise isolation and provide the users with a perfect grip as per their convenience. Find your ideal fit and immerse yourself in high-quality audio experience with Zoooks Symphony earphones.

Made for music enthusiasts looking for an exceptional audio performance, these earphones are an ideal travel and pastime companion. They have built-in microphones that enable you to take calls hands-free with just one click, ensuring that you can juggle between your calls and music with ease. Zoooks ZM-Rocker Symphony earphones have a lightweight cable design that minimizes tangled wires. The earphones have an amazing feature to balance out the sound in left and right earphones and give you a balanced-out 3D experience.

Commenting on the launch of Zoooks Symphony earphones, Mr. Achin Gupta, Asia Head at Zoook said, Zoooks premium ZM-Rocker Symphony earphones are a perfect amalgamation of dynamic audio sound and stylish design. These earphones are  sleek, chic, quality-sound oriented, user-friendly, comfortable, and affordable. These factors will make Symphony in-ear headphones an instant hit in the Indian market specially with the youth and daily commuters  who are hooked to their music.

These boldly designed dual chamber earphones provide a well-balanced sound of high-range, high-clarity, and sub-woofer like with powerful bass. It has powerful 10 mm drivers with 1.2 meter cord length and is compatible with all smartphones, tablets, and computers using 3.5 mm connector. Symphony earphones are designed to make sure you enjoy all genres of music  pop, rock, country, jazz, and hip-hop in supreme quality. So whatever your preference in music, enjoy higher sensitivity and a better listening experience with these unmatched earphones. These premium earphones are a perfect combination of technology and luxury. It also makes for a great gifting option to be given to family and friends and comes in a beautiful metal box packaging. Symphony earphones are competitively priced at Rs. 629 and are available at all leading online and offline stores.

@Technuter.com News Service
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Great poet Mirza Ghalib

Poet Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghalib (27 December 1797- 15 February 1869), was a prominent Urdu and Persian poet during the last years of the Mughal empire. He used his pen-names of Ghalib (Urdu: Ghalib means 'dominant') and Asad (Urdu: Asad means 'lion'). His honorific was Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula. During his lifetime the Mughals were eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of the Indian rebellion of 1857, events that he described. Most notably, he wrote several ghazals, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. Ghalib, the last great poet of the Mughal era, is considered to be one of the most popular and influential poets of the Urdu language. Today Ghalib remains popular not only in India and Pakistan but also in other countries around the world.

Mirza Ghalib was born in Kala Mahal, Agra into a family descended from Aibak Turks who moved to Samarkand (in modern-day Uzbekistan) after the downfall of the Seljuk kings. His paternal grandfather, Mirza Qoqan Baig Khan, was a Saljuq Turk who had immigrated to India from Samarkand during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748-54). He worked at Lahore, Delhi and Jaipur, was awarded the subdistrict of Pahasu (Bulandshahr, UP) and he finally settled in Agra, UP, India. He had four sons and three daughters. Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan and Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan were two of his sons.

Mirza Abdullah Baig Khan (Ghalib's father) married Izzat-ut-Nisa Begum, an ethnic Kashmiri, and then lived at the house of his father-in-law. He was employed first by the Nawab of Lucknow and then the Nizam of Hyderabad, Deccan. He died in a battle in 1803 in Alwar and was buried at Rajgarh (Alwar, Rajasthan). Then Ghalib was a little boy over 5 years of age. He was raised first by his uncle Mirza Nasrullah Baig Khan.

At the age of thirteen, Ghalib married Umrao Begum, daughter of Nawab Ilahi Bakhsh (brother of the Nawab of Ferozepur Jhirka). He soon moved to Delhi, along with his younger brother, Mirza Yousuf Khan, who had developed schizophrenia at a young age and later died in Delhi during the rebellion of 1857.

In accordance with upper class Muslim tradition, he had an arranged marriage at the age of 13. After his marriage he settled in Delhi. In one of his letters he describes his marriage as the second imprisonment after the initial confinement that was life itself. The idea that life is one continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends, is a recurring theme in his poetry. One of his couplets puts it in a nutshell:

Translation in English.

The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same

Before the onset of death, why should man expect to be free of grief?

Mirza Ghalib's view of world as he sees world is like a playground where everyone is busy in some mundane activity and merrymaking rather than something of greater value as he wrote:

Just like a child's play this world appears to me

Every single night and day, this spectacle I see

At the age of thirty he had seven children, none of whom survived. This pain has found its echo in some of Ghalib's ghazals. There are conflicting reports regarding his relationship with his wife. She was considered to be pious, conservative and God-fearing.

He died in Delhi on 15 February 1869. The house where he lived in Gali Qasim Jaan, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk, in Old Delhi known as the 'Ghalib ki Haveli' has now been turned into 'Ghalib Memorial' and houses a permanent Ghalib exhibition.

In 1850, emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II bestowed upon Mirza Ghalib the title of 'Dabir-ul-Mulk'. The emperor also added to it the additional title of 'Najm-ud-daula'.The conferment of these titles was symbolic of Mirza Ghalib's incorporation into the nobility of Delhi. He also received the title of 'Mirza Nosha' from the emperor, thus adding Mirza as his first name. He was also an important courtier of the Royal court of the emperor. As the emperor was himself a poet, Mirza Ghalib was appointed as his poet tutor in 1854. He was also appointed as tutor of Prince Fakhr-ud Din Mirza, eldest son of Bahadur Shah II,(d. 10 July 1856). He was also appointed by the emperor as the Royal historian of Mughal Court.

Being a member of declining Mughal nobility and old landed aristocracy, he never worked for a livelihood, lived on either royal patronage of Mughal emperors, credit or the generosity of his friends. His fame came to him posthumously. He had himself remarked during his lifetime that he would be recognized by later generations. After the decline of the Mughal empire and the rise of the British rule, despite his many attempts, Ghalib could never get the full pension restored.

Ghalib started composing poetry at the age of 11. His first language was Urdu, but Persian and Turkish were also spoken at home. He received an education in Persian and Arabic at a young age. When Ghalib was in his early teens, a newly converted Muslim tourist from Iran (Abdus Samad, originally named Hormuzd, a Zoroastrian) came to Agra. He stayed at Ghalib's home for two years and taught him Persian, Arabic, Philosophy, and Logic.

Although Ghalib himself was far prouder of his poetic achievements in Persian, he is today more famous for his Urdu ghazals. Numerous elucidations of Ghalib's ghazal compilations have been written by Urdu scholars. The first such elucidation or Sharh was written by Ali Haider Nazm Tabatabai of Hyderabad during the rule of the last Nizam of Hyderabad. Before Ghalib, the ghazal was primarily an expression of anguished love; but Ghalib expressed philosophy, the travails and mysteries of life and wrote ghazals on many other subjects, vastly expanding the scope of the ghazal.

In keeping with the conventions of the classical ghazal, in most of Ghalib's verses, the identity and the gender of the beloved is indeterminate. The critic/poet/writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqui explains that the convention of having the 'idea' of a lover or beloved instead of an actual lover/beloved freed the poet-protagonist-lover from the demands of realism. Love poetry in Urdu from the last quarter of the Seventeenth century onwards consists mostly of 'poems about love' and not 'love poems' in the Western sense of the term.

The first complete English translation of Ghalib's ghazals was Love Sonnets of Ghalib, written by Sarfaraz K. Niazi and published by Rupa & Co in India and Ferozsons in Pakistan. It contains complete Roman transliteration, explication and an extensive lexicon.

Mirza Ghalib was a gifted letter writer. Not only Urdu poetry but also prose is indebted to Mirza Ghalib. His letters gave foundation to easy and popular Urdu. Before Ghalib, letter writing in Urdu was highly ornamental. He made his letters 'talk' by using words and sentences as if he were conversing with the reader. He was very humorous and wrote very interesting letters. In one letter he wrote, "Main koshish karta hoon ke koi aisi baat likhoon jo padhe khush ho jaaye'" (I want to write lines such that whoever reads them would enjoy them). Some scholars say that Ghalib would have the same place in Urdu literature on the basis of his letters only. They have been translated into English by Ralph Russell in The Oxford Ghalib.

Ghalib was a chronicler of a turbulent period. One by one, Ghalib saw the bazaars - Khas Bazaar, Urdu Bazaar, Kharam-ka Bazaar, disappear, and whole mohallas (localities) and katras (lanes) vanish. The havelis (mansions) of his friends were razed to the ground. Ghalib wrote that Delhi had become a desert. Water was scarce. Delhi was 'a military camp'. It was the end of the feudal elite to which Ghalib had belonged. He wrote:

"An ocean of blood churns around me

Alas! Were this all!

The future will show

What more remains for me to see."

His original Takhallus (pen-name) was Asad, drawn from his given name, Asadullah Khan. At some point early in his poetic career he also decided to adopt the pen-name of Ghalib (meaning all conquering, superior, most excellent). At some places in his poetry Ghalib also used the pen name of Asad Ullah Khan. n -Wikepedia
True Colour of Humanity

Arpana Marma :

People like me who live away from the hills at present, got really amazed to see compassion in many in the hill tracts in recent days. These people have extended solidarity and expressed sympathy in whatever way they could for the two sisters who are now 'under treatment' or according to some, 'confined' in Rangamati Sadar Hospital.

Many of these people are forming human chain, standing beside road with placards, giving speeches, posting notes and comments online, all for the sake of that humanity. Several influential figures of the hills have remained standby every day in the last couple of days for the sake of the recovery of the two girls whom they considered as their own daughters. Any of the efforts deserves a lot of thank and gratitude, whereas they did a lot more than that.

Thanks to those who volunteered to accompany the girls in hospital, stayed beside the hospital beds, showing them the movies or playing the songs they like in order to make them feel better, supplying the daily essentials they need. In fact, thanking is not enough for what they are doing for them. Or what else could be said at this?

So, sensitivity to women is respectable, and compassion that still exists is considered heroic. However, I don't know why I always find something else in their acts other than the sensitivity or compassion, and I find that in a considerable degree, which are in fact disgraceful. I know it is me who is thinking like this, but I feel that these people also have roles to make me think like this. As it is difficult to see one's own fault, better I leave it to the readers to judge into. I just explain the context of my realization.

Certainly we haven't forgotten the tragic landslide in Rangamati. Particularly those who keep an eye on the hill tracts have no reason to forget that. However, many might not forget the landslide and aftermath, but forgot the death toll which was 120, of who 61 were Tribals. Over night nearly 1500 families including both Tribals and Bengalis were forced to take shelter in different camps, losing everything they had, following the disaster. We who took shelter in the camps haven't forgotten those people who stood by those affected people, despite many may have forgotten.

We know many hill people personally extended a lot of relief, and tried to bring relief for the affected. However, what makes us regret and sad that many whom we respect as our leaders or know as respectable according to our rituals didn't have proper role in that time. If we had seen the efforts that we see in Ranimata (the matriarch of the community) or others today, then there would have no hesitation to commit any sacrifice for these respectable people.

Let us not forget also that only few of the volunteers who worked all day and night for the affected at the camps were hill people, rest of who were Bangalees. Of them many were students. Many were even not from Rangamati, who went there responding to the call of the humanity, to stand beside the distressed during the Ramadan holidays. Out of the compassion felt in themselves, they spend the Eid holidays working for the affected leaving the celebration with friends and families. They didn't do it for any publicity, but they were truly dedicated for the humanity that is why there was no lack of cordiality, enthusiasm and efforts among themselves while working for particularly those sheltered in the Buddhist temple. But for unknown reasons the volunteers or humanitarians who are visible today didn't have any activity in those days after the landslide, which prompt the question if their compassion has a certain direction, biased, or just for show-up or politically motivated?

Whatever the reason may be, that their compassion or this sensitivity for women is not entirely motivated by the pure love for people or inspired by humanity didn't take too long to be clear. If it were really out of that love, we would see these people always, everywhere in the same way.

Unfortunately the fact is that it didn't happen. These people didn't protest many of the incidents of torture on women that took place in the hill areas. There was no such speech or protest even after some of the most horrible incidents of sexual torture were revealed. It feels, don't know why, the compassion doesn't apply irrespective of party and ideology. I think, you would get it more clearly if I give you some examples.

Shouldn't we expect that those protesters would come forward when a teenage girl is assaulted in broad day light, abducted and gang raped, and the video of the rape is spread? Would there be any protest if the victim is a Chakma girl, and Pahari Chhatra Parishad activists are involved?

The protest indeed took place, following the incident. Pahari Chhatra Parishad itself called hartal and agitated demanding the release of their leaders arrested in connection of the incident. I know you won't believe it. But I would request you look into the incident that happened to Ayna Chakma back in 2016. The fault of that girl was that she went to a shop owned by a Bengali to fill up an online application for college admission. There is no question of humanity, because hill people themselves were involved, condoned of any offence in the hills.

Another incident happened with a 6th grader, daughter of a Bengali day laborer in 2015, when a youth from the hill community attempted to rape her when she went to fetch cattle home. Hearing her scream, locals rescued her as wounded and blooded. We haven't heard of anyone who held a placard with protest against the incident. The question is no more valid how many went to hospital to visit her at the hospital, let alone asking if any women's organization held a press conference in condemnation. None felt urge of wearing black badge or forming a human chain or placing a memorandum anywhere, perhaps the rights doesn't apply for the Bengalis living in the hills whom we call settlers.

In January last year, a victim shared a nerve-wracking account of torture carried out on her, when she was chained and physically and mentally tortured for two months. Do you know who did this to Josna Chakma? It was the UPDF activists who did that. It was the same Rangamati where this took place, but there was no volunteer or nobody around her. Let alone the big leaders of the hill, not even a local leader came forward to show sympathy. None protested that. As if, there can be no protest when someone from the same community commits the crime, as if protest would be according to the identity of the victim, not against the crime.

Dipa Tripura, daughter of Kshetralal Tripura of Dighinala in Khagrachhari loved a Bangalee. The consequences were known to all, so she attempted to elope. But a group of Pahari Chhatra Parishad activists kidnapped the girl along with her boyfriend. The follow-up of the incidents were no different, the Bangalee boy was assaulted after he was taken inside a forest, and the girl was gang raped, which was also taped. It is not an incident of long ago. Took place only in June of 2015. None dared to protest that incident too. Possibly the definition of right for women is different in the hills. Here, whether there will be a protest depends on who are the criminals, instead of what crimes have been committed. Ayna Chakma or Dipu Tripura had no volunteers around her like those who have been there for the two girls of Bilaichhari.

Colleagues turned hostile at Shaikat Bhadra for marrying Retina Chakma, both of who belonged to Jatiya Mukti Council. The Chakma members of the party now listed him as an enemy from Bangalee community. Because, it is a great sin for any Tribal to marry a Bengalee. Even his own party didn't come up to resolve the situation with the excuse of its 'special interest.' Surprisingly, the Daily Prothom Alo which is known as vocal for the rights of the ethnic minorities, sacked him as staff photographers even after knowing his innocence, being pressurized by certain quarters.

It may sound unbelievable to many, the fact is Shaikat requested the humanitarian organization and others to come forward to save his wife from auction through a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity on 23 February 2015. To our utter shock and surprise, he told us, "women can be subject to auction like in the medieval age" in Chittagong Hill Tracts. I won't be surprised if you don't know these incidents that took place in 2015 due to media downplay.

Most of the feminists belong to some organization, where the interest of organization may deserve priority over some individual issues in their eyes. Therefore, it is not unusual to many that some incidents can go unnoticed by the feminists, it also may seem quite normal that they would be vocal only in some special cases and not in many others.

I can't remember how many wrote Facebook posts after trafficking of 11 Marma girls to Myanmar. I doubt if anybody protested, despite a medical team of five members were detailed to find evidence of their rape at Bandarban Sadar Hospital. The rescued Marma girls told police that Buddhist monk Usiri regularly tortured them physically. How many in Dhaka took to street in protest of that incident? How may national dailies ran the story with due importance? Did anybody organize a protest in Chittagong or Rajshahi? How many intellectual went to Shahbagh, Dhaka to protest this incident or issued a statement?

As a Buddhist monk was arrested in the incident among three, possibly no so-called protesters, feminists or intellectuals felt the urge to press a protest against that incident of rape. The way the incident with this two Marma girls have been addressed, the same didn't happen to the case of this 11 girls. I have no way other than leaving it to the readers to find out the reason behind this.

This is why it feels all the protests, press conferences, social media posts following Bilaichhari incident were premeditated, carried out to demean someone specific, not out of sensitivity to women. And when we came to learn that no semen was found in the body of the two girls, then I lose all respect to those whom I once had enormous respect to.

It is hard to believe how they could use the sufferings of the girls for their interest. Many incidents including the ones of Kulsum Akter of Matiranga, Pakhi Akhter of Seltipara in Alikadam, Shaheda Begum of Maischhari in Mohalchhar or Jannatul Ferdous who was gang raped in a restaurant in Alutila, Khagrachhari have lost in oblivion.

And I know there are more to the incidents I mentioned here, which the readers are not aware of, because when people from the same community commit a crime to other women it is covered up, there is no movement in demand of the rape, no procession is brought out, now news published in the newspaper. As most local correspondents of the media houses are Tribals, these incidents have no news value in their consideration. Because in these cases, the girls are victimized for love affairs with Bengali men, or Bengalis are not connected to these incidents, the rather terrorists of hill organization are involved. Particularly none dare to talk about the incidents in which members of the terrorist organizations of the hills have involvement, which happened in case of Retina Chakma, Ayna Chakma or Dipa Tripura or Josna Chakma.

From 'Dumurer Phul', a book written by Rokeya Lita out of her experience in Chittagong Hill Tracts, many of us may already be knowing that when a Tribal man is found guilty of raping a Tribal woman, he is fined with a pig by the Headman of the area. Then, slaughtering the pig, its blood is sprinkled over locality to purify the area and the meat is eaten by the local elites. Moreover, referring the local customs and rituals, the victim is refrained from seeking justice according to the laws of the land. Hundreds of NGOs working on women's rights never even paid attention to this. Have they or the Tribal leaders ever pondered how much humiliation this so called customs and rituals are causing to their women?

Time will come, when it would be known what actually happened in Bilaichhari. But one thing that has been clear already was that the activities we see around the two Marma girls by the people whom we had never found in disasters, and similar incident or even heinous sexual harassment, were not actually out of their compassion or sensitivity to women. It is just a matter of time what was actually behind the crocodile tears would be revealed.

There would be no benefit in the efforts to agitate people in politically motivated or premeditated way. It won't be possible to fool the hill people for long. The ulterior motives behind the moves over specific incidents and masks of the players would be once unveiled. Let us not paint any incident with any color other than the natural ones. Let us not be humanist for the sake of political interest, let us be true human inside for all irrespective of party or ideology.

Let us be equally sympathetic to all the victims, not misuse the issue to realize personal interest. Instead of blaming anybody grossly, we should help arresting the real culprit and ensuring their punishment.


BD-KfW sign $40m deal to support climate resilient infrastructure

Economic Reporter :

A financing agreement worth $40 million was signed on Thursday between Bangladesh and KfW, Development Bank on behalf of the German Federal Government, to support implementation of the 'Climate Resilient Infrastructure Mainstreaming (CRIM)' project in Bangladesh.

Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Kazi Shofiqul Azam and member of the management committee, Europe and Asia, KfW Development Bank, Germany, Roland Siller signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides at the ERD in city's Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith and other high officials from the

German Embassy in Dhaka, KfW and the government of Bangladesh witnessed the signing ceremony.

Out of the total project cost of $82.75 million, a grant element of $40 million has been approved by the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

The German Federal Government provides parallel co-financing of $15 million through KfW, while the government of Bangladesh will provide $27.75 million as part of supporting the initiative in areas of climate change adaptation.

The purpose of CRIM project is to construct and renovate cyclone shelters and critical access road to protect lives in a rural coastal region of Bangladesh; developing urban infrastructure and safeguarding vulnerable city-dwellers from climate risk; and also to establish a national "Center of Excellence for Climate Resilience Infrastructure" to inform and guide future infrastructure development throughout the country.

The Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) under the Local Government Division (LGD) will implement the project. The implementation period of the project is six years.

The GCF is a new multilateral, multi-billion dollar fund which was established by 194 countries as the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in COP (conference of parties) 2010. It is intended to operate at a larger scale to promote the paradigm shift towards low-mission and climate-resilient development pathways. The CRIM project in Bangladesh is the first project approved by the GCF for Bangladesh.
Gender equality for women

Md. Sazedul Islam

International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated across the world on March 8 every year. The aim of IWD is to achieve gender equality for women. According to a report of World Economic Forum in 2017, it could still take another 100 years before the global equality gap between men and women disappears entirely.

On the occasion of IWD, women across the world come together to force the world to recognise these inequalities and celebrate the achievements of women who have overcome these barriers.

The theme of this year's IWD is 'Press for Progress'.

This year, IWD comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for women's rights, equality and justice. Sexual harassment, violence and discrimination against women has captured headlines and public discourse, propelled by a rising determination for change.

IWD is an opportunity to transform this momentum into action, to empower women in all settings, rural and urban, and celebrate the activists who are working relentlessly to claim women's rights and realize their full potential.

According to United Nations, IWD is also an opportunity to consider how to accelerate the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially goal number 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; and number 4: Ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning.

According to documents, the earliest observance of Woman's Day was held in New York on February 28, 1909, and was organised by the Socialist Party of America. A year later, at the International Women's Conference in Copenhagen, Socialist representatives proposed that there should be an International Women's Day, inspired by the demonstration in New York. The delegates agreed that an international day should be formed as part of a strategy to promote equal rights for women and women's suffrage. It was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19, 1911. Two years later, in 1913, it was proposed to shift the date on March 8 and since then the day has been celebrated as International Women's Day.

Though a hundred years have passed since the declaration of IWD, the condition of women in Bangladesh leaves much space for improvement. Violence against women is still prevailing in the country especially against those who come from the impoverished sections of the society. Dowry related violence, rape, acid throwing, domestic violence, sexual harassment, wage discrimination and social discrimination are widespread occurrences, which are also prevailing here.

According to UNICEF, socio-cultural environment of Bangladesh contains pervasive gender discrimination, so girls and women face many obstacles to their development. Girls are often considered to be financial burdens on their family, and from the time of birth, they receive less investment in their health, care and education.

The rate of child marriage and adolescent motherhood in the country is among the highest in the world. About 48 per cent of Bangladeshi women say that their husbands alone make decisions about their health, while 35 per cent say that their husbands alone make decisions regarding visits to family and friends. Violence against women is a major impediment to women's development here, says the UN body.

Taking into consideration the plights of the women, who comprise half of the country's total population, the government took a number of initiatives for their welfare.

Education is essential in reducing discrimination and violence against girls and women and Bangladesh has made great progress in this area. The country has already achieved gender parity in primary and secondary education.

Over the recent decades Bangladesh has brought major improvements in the lives of children, adolescents and women in a relatively short time span. Thus the country has done well to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targets on underweight children and hunger, gender parity in primary and secondary education, child and maternal mortality.

Women and Children Affairs Ministry is working ensuring women's participation in all development relating to capacity development of women by 2021. In the present decade Bangladesh has achieved considerable progress on women development, especially women education and political empowerment.

According to World Economic Forum's 'Gender Gap Index Report' Bangladesh stood 72nd position among 144 nations in the world in 2016, and stands as the top country consecutively 2nd times among South Asian countries. The Ministry is working for mainstreaming women in the overall development through establishment of rights of women and children and women empowerment. The present government has taken different initiatives on women and children development for the implementation of Vision 2021.

Bangladesh is committed to achieve comprehensive development of women according to Constitution. This commitment is expressed through Article 27, 28, 29 and 65(3) of Bangladesh Constitution. Article 28(4) of the Constitution provides for making specific law for women emancipation.

Apart from this, Bangladesh is a signatory to almost all international conventions and covenants for women development. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is worth mentioning.

Driven by the constitutional obligations and commitment to the international legal instruments, the government has accorded special emphasis on the programmes to promote women's development in the 7th Five year Plan, Sustainable Development Goals and National Women's Policy, 2011.

The National Women's Policy has set 22 targets. The overall activities of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs are closely associated with the implementation of these goals.

The Ministry has formulated Domestic Violence (Protection and Preservation) Rules, 2013 under Domestic Violence (Protection and Preservation) Act 2010 to ensure equal rights and prevent all forms of discrimination in all spheres of public life and state.

In order to ensure overall development of women and children, the government has formulated 'National Women Development Policy, 2011; National Children Policy, 2011; Early Childhood Care and Development Policy, 2013; Deoxyribonucleric Acid (DNA) Act, 2014 and Early Marriage Protection Act,2017.

'National Plan of Action' has been formulated to implement National Women Development Policy and prevention of violence against women and children. All these instruments are targeted to transform women into a capable human capital through their political, social, administrative and economic empowerment.

(The author is a journalist. Email: sissabuj@yahoo.com. PID-Feature)
News in brief

US veterans join forces for gun reform

AFP, Washington

Dave Baril has served in the US Marine Corps for over 18 years, deployed twice to Iraq, and is a gun owner. But after a teenager killed 17 people in Florida last month-the deadliest school shooting to hit the country over five years-he took his personal AR-15 rifle to a local police station and turned it in for destruction.



Macron vows cyber hate crackdown

AFP, Paris

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed Wednesday to crack down on cyber hate, telling Jewish leaders that a recent law in Germany punishing web platforms which fail to delete hateful content could be a blueprint to follow.
Christians emerge as key patrons for Jews moving to Israel

New Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine arrive on a flight funded by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews at the Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel.

AP, Tel Aviv :

Israel's founding fathers, who etched a commitment to encouraging Jewish immigration into the declaration of independence, might be surprised to find that, seven decades later, the state is relying on Christians to fulfill that promise.

What was once a strictly Jewish-funded mission is increasingly being bankrolled by evangelical Christians. Israel's Christian allies now fund about a third of all immigrants moving to the country, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

The figures reflect the ever tightening relationship between Israel and its evangelical Christian allies, whom Israel has come to count on for everything from political support to tourism dollars.

"After 2000 years of oppression and persecution, today you have Christians who are helping Jews," said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group that raises money from evangelical Christians for Jewish causes. "This is an amazing thing."

Israel has long depended on diaspora Jewish communities, especially in the United States, for donations and to lobby their local governments on its behalf. But evangelical communities have become increasingly important.

Israeli charities raise millions of dollars from Christians around the world, and evangelical Christians make up 13 percent of all tourists to Israel. A parliamentary caucus works with evangelical legislators around the world to foster support for Israel.

Israelis can also thank white evangelicals for helping to put President Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of Israel's nationalist government, in the White House.

"Israel has no better friends, I mean that, no better friends in the world than the Christian communities around the world," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Christian media summit in Jerusalem last year.

European and American Jewish philanthropists championed immigration to Israel, known as "Aliyah," or ascending, even before the creation of the state in 1948, by working to settle Jews in what was then Ottoman and British Palestine. In the decades after independence, the government partnered with Jewish groups to organize dramatic airlifts of Jews from troubled countries.
Aspirant MP candidates lobbying to get nominations in Feni-3 constituency

Yeasin Rony, Dagonbhuiyan (Feni ) :

At least 12 candidates are expecting nominations from the Awami League in Feni-3 parliamentary constituency comprising of Dagonbhuiyan and Sonagazi upazilas of the district.

There are more than one candidates from the BNP in this seat but they are still almost silent . Voting winds in this seat have already started . Awami League and BNP are lobbying to get nomination and candidates are participating in social events in their area, telling them their position.

On the other hand, who are getting Awami League and BNP tickets , it is in the discussion among the people .

The potential candidates of the other allies, including the Jatiya Party, are still watching the situation. Many former central leaders of Jubo League and BCL have been active in the field after getting the glimpse that the young leaders from Awami League will win the next election.

As a possible candidate from Awami League, the names are discussed in the parliamentary elections are - Senior Joint General Secretary of United States Awami League and NRB Global Bank Chairman Nizam Chowdhury Jubo League Presidium Member Abul Bashar, Feni District Awami League Vice President and industrialist Akram Hossain Humayun, former BCL Vice-president Jahir Uddin Mahmud Lipton, Cultural Secretary of Central Women's Awami League Rokeya Prachy, Jubo League's Central Joint Secretary Manjurul Alam Shahin, District Jubo League President and Dagonbhuiyan Upazila Chairman Didarul Kabir Ratan, Dagonbhuiya Upazila Awami League General Secretary and Vice Chairman Joynal Abedin Mamun, Japan Awami League President Shamsul Alam Bhutto and Dhaka Metropolitan Northern Jubo League Organizing Secretary Shahadat Hossain Selim may be the candidate, said his followers.

Besides, the former military officer Masud Uddin Chowdhury can also get Awami League's party ticket. The current independent MP Haji Rahim Ullah is running lobbying to get party support as Awami League candidate. Meanwhile, the names of several potential candidates from the BNP are also discussed.

Senior Joint General Secretary of United States Awami League and NRB Global Bank Chairman Nizam Chowdhury has a lot of contributions in organizing Awami League among the expatriate Bangladeshis particularly in the USA and he is an efficient organiser. Local elites said, the Prime Minister may consider him for this constituency.

They are : BNP Vice Chairman Abdul Awal Mintoo, former BNP office secretary Abdul Latif Jony, central BNP leader Brigadier General (Retd.) Nasir Uddin Ahmed, Joint Secretary of Swechchhasebak Dal Central Committee Sadaraj Zaman, executive committee member Sahna Akhter Shanu.

Meanwhile, BNP Vice Chairman Abdul Awal Mintoo will not choose whether to contest from the capital or not. Mintu's younger brother Dagonbhuiya BNP President Akbar Hossain may also seek nomination for the seat. Akbar Hossain said that he and his family were victimized in jail for the family. She is hopeful that Begum Zia will nominate her family from this seat. Besides, One Bank Chairman Sayed Hossain Chowdhury, Chairman of Green Idea Group Anwar Hossain and Dagonbhuiyan's businessman Abdul Mannan (Hira Mannan) are also being heard in the party's leaders and workers. On the other hand, Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Maqbool Ahmad and former president of Shibir Dr Fakhruddin Manik's own village house is located at Dagonbhuiya, as his name is also considered as possible candidate.

On the other hand, Ershad's Advisor and District Jatiya Party Convenor Rintu Anwar is presently present in the field.

Apart from Jasad (Rob) Central Joint General Secretary Shahid Uddin Mahmud Swapan, Mayen Uddin from the Islamic Front Bangladesh and Dr. Haradhan Chakraborty are also on the field as a possible candidate. The candidates of Awami League and Jatiya Party are participating in various meetings and seminars locally as well as in social and religious ceremonies in their respective areas and relief distribution among the flood victims.

BNP-Jamaat candidates are not publicly campaigning, but they are also active in monitoring the situation and getting party nomination. Jubo League Presidium Member Abul Bashar on the race to get nomination . AL leader said, in the last two elections, AL gave me ticket. In the last election, I withdrew the nomination at the request of the Prime Minister. I hope the Prime Minister will give me nomination again. Former student leader Zahir Uddin Mahmud Lipton said, "I was nominated for the last two elections. I want to nominate this year.

District Jubo League President and Dagonbhuiyan Upazila Chairman Didarul Kabir Ratan said, Our family is Awami family. My eldest brother was killed due to cause politics . I also got involved in BCL politics with the ideology of Bangabandhu from our student life.

And twice elected Dagonbhuiyan Upazila chairman for Awami League nomination. So we will seek nomination for the next parliamentary election. If you nominate the party, you will participate in the election. But I will work for the team who nominates them.

Rokeya Prachy, cultural activist of the Central Women's Awami League, said, "My party is in Awami League family. At the direction of the party chief Sheikh Hasina, I have already done a lot of work in my constituency. I would like to nominate the leader, but I will work for the party who will nominate.

Dagonbhuiya Upazila Awami League General Secretary and Vice Chairman Joynal Abdin Mamun said, "Our family is the Awami family. My father took part in the war of liberation in the call of Bangabandhu. I am the freedom fighter's son.

Moreover, in our family politics, our paths in Awami politics. Being nominated as Awami League candidate, I was twice elected Vice Chairman. We will seek the nomination of the AL in the next parliamentary elections.

The team will consider who will nominate them. I will work for the party nomination. However, the Honorable Prime Minister will request the grassroots leaders to evaluate the right candidate in the process.

Japan A'lig president Shamsul Alam Bhutto said, Japan is a genuine friend of Bangladesh. Always cooperate with Bangladesh, the country is cooperating with Bangladesh. If I am elected MP, then I can get more support from Japan.

About the nomination of the party, Abdul Latif Jony said, I have been with the party for any disaster ever since my student life. If someone is nominated for the honesty and integrity of the party, then BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and Senior Vice Chairman Tareque Rahman will nominate me.

Central BNP leader Brigadier General (Retd.) Nasir Uddin Ahmed said, That if BNP is involved in the next election, then I would like to nominate the party's nomination. If the team gives a nomination then we will choose. I will work on behalf of someone else.
Vow to materialise dreams of Bangabandhu

National Desk :

The historic 7th March, a red letter day in the history of the Bangalees' long arduous freedom struggle was observed in different districts on Wednesday in a befitting manner amid much enthusiasm. Different social , cultural and political organisations arranged various programmes to mark the Day. Our correspondents and agencies report:

Netrakona Correspondent says: The historic 7th March was observed here on Wednesday with much enthusiasm commemorating the historic speech delivered by father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at Race Course Maidan now Suhrawardy Udyan in Dhaka on March 7, 1971.

In observance of the day, different socio-cultural and political organizations and professional groups chalked out various programs. The programs included placing of floral wreaths at the portrait of father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, bringing out colourful rallies and holding of discussion meetings.

To mark the day, the leaders of Awami League (AL) Netrakona district unit and it's front organizations formally placed floral wreaths at the portrait of father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh mujibur Rahman at the district AL office here in the morning.

The party and it's front organizations also brought out a colorful rally in the district town here. Apart from the party leaders local people from all walks of life also joined the rally that started from the district AL office and ended there after parading the man roads of the town.

Before ending, it was addresed, among others, by president of AL Netrakona district unit Motiur Rahman Khan, general secretary Ashraf Ali Khan Khasru, chairman of Netrakona zila parishad Prasanta Kumar Ray and Mayor of Netrakona pourasava Nazrul Islam Khan.

The speakers recalled the outstanding contributions including bold leadership, courageous role and right directions of the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to achieve the independence of Bangladesh.

BSS from Rangpur reports: Speakers at separate discussions on Wednesday termed the historic March 7 speech of Bangabandhu as the factual proclamation of independence containing clear direction for launching ultimate struggle for national freedom.

They expressed the view at the discussions organised by district administration, Awami League (AL) and its associate bodies, different socio- cultural and professional organisations as parts of daylong programmes in observance of the historic March 7.

The observance of the day got special significance this year as the historic March 7 speech of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was included in the Memory of World International Register maintained by UNESCO last year.

The other programmes include hoisting of the national and party flags, placing wreaths at the portrait and mural of Bangabandhu, colourful rally and discussions.

The epoch-making historic speech of Bangabandhu on this day at the Race Course Maidan (now Suhrawardy Udyan) in 1971 was played in the city, upazila headquarters and important places in the district.

The district and upazila units of AL, its associate bodies including Chhatra League, Jubo League, Swechchasebak League (SSL), Krishak League, Sramik League, socio-cultural and professional organisations observed the day in befitting manners.

The district administration organised the main discussion at conference room of the Deputy Commissioner and heads of different government departments and educational institutions, politicians, civil society members and professionals attended the event.

Deputy Commissioner Enamul Habib addressed the main discussion as the chief guest with Additional Deputy Commissioner (general) Rabiul Islam in the chair.

Similarly, leaders of the district and city units of AL and its associate bodies addressed separate discussions arranged on different venues in the city.

Acting President of district AL Mamtaz Uddin Ahmed, its General Secretary Advocate Rezaul Karim Raju, city AL President Shafiur Rahman Shafi, its General Secretary Tushar Kanti Mandal, addressed the programme, among others.

The speakers highlighted the significance of Bangabandhu's historic March 7 speech that got the recognition of UNESCO and gave the Bengali Nation concrete direction to launch struggle for achieving ultimate national independence.

BSS from Rajshahi reports: Local units of Bangladesh Awami League and its front organisations observed the historic March 7 in a befitting manner with a vow to materialise the dream of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on Wednesday.

Different socio-cultural organisations and professional bodies also chalked out elaborate programmes to mark the day.

The day's programmes began with the hoisting of national and party flags atop of the party office buildings and placing wreaths at the portraits of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and four other national leaders in the morning.

City unit Awami League President AHM Khairuzzaman Liton and its General Secretary Dablu Sarker joined the programmes. Other local leaders including Bazlur Rahman, Meer Iqbal, Shafiqur Rahman, Dr Sheikh Tabibur Rahman and Habibur Rahman were present on the occasion.

Marking the day, most of the city offices of the party played the historic 7th March speech of Bangabandhu throughout the day alongside holding discussions.

AL city unit held discussion at its office this noon highlighting significance of the historic speech with its President AHM KhairuzzamanLiton in the chair. Front ranking leaders of the unit also spoke at the discussion.

The discussants said the tantalising speech of Bangabandhu literally had a sparkling effect on the entire population in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and they became united under his capable and farsighted leadership to bravely fight for liberating the motherland from Pakistani rule.

BSS from Khulna says: The historic 7th March, a red letter day in the history of the Bangalees' long arduous freedom struggle, was observed in Khulna on Wednesday in a befitting manner amid much enthusiasm.

On this day in 1971, the great leader Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman delivered his epoch-making speech of independence at the Race Course Maidan, now Suhrawardy Udyan, in Dhaka.

Khulna City and District Unit Awami League (AL) has chalked out elaborate programmes to observe the day.

The day was begun through hoisting of National and Party flags atop of the AL office around 7am. Leaders and activists of AL and its front organisations placed floral wreaths on the portrait of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The historic speech of Bangabandhu was played in loud speaker at all wards, thana offices in the city and district.

President of District AL unit Sheikh Harun-ur-Rashid addressed a discussion as the chief guest held at the party office with AL city unit President Talukder Abdul Khaleque in the chair.

Among others, City Unit AL General Secretary Mizanur Rahman Mizan, AL leader advocate Chisty Sohrab Hossain, advocate Sarder Rajob Ali, Mahbub Alam Sohag and Md A Babul Rana were present, among others, on the occasion.

The speakers discussed about the importance of the day in building an independent and prosperous Bangladesh.

They also hailed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for the achievement as historic 7th March speech of Bangabandhu got UNESCO recognition.

Meanwhile, Khulna District Information Office chalked out various programme to mark the day.

BSS from Gaibandha adds: The historic 7th March was celebrated in the district as elsewhere of the country on Wednesday in a befitting manner with a vow to materialize the dream of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Marking the Day, Awami League (AL) district unit and its front organizations chalked out elaborate programmes all the day.

AL leaders and its associate organizations placed floral wreaths on the portrait of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

In the afternoon, a mass congregation was held on the premises of Central Shahid Minar of the town here. President of Poura Awami Leauge and mayor of Gaibandha Municipality Advocate Shah Masud Zahangir Kabir Milon presided over the meeting.

Deputy Speaker of the Jatiya Sangshad Advocate Fazle Rabbi Miah addressed the meeting as the chief guest and president of district AL Advocate Syed Shams-ul-Alam Hiru and general secretary Abu Bakar Siddique were present at the event as special guests.

Moderated by general secretary of Poura AL Imarul Islam Sabin, the function was also addressed, among others, by organizing secretary freedom fighter Mojammel Haque, office secretary Saiful Alam Saka, and AL leaders Shah Sarwar Kabir, Tanjimul Islam Jamil, Aminur Zaman Rinku, and Sarder M. Shahid Hasan Loton.

Deputy speaker Advocate Fazle Rabbi Miah said the 7th March speech of Bangabandhu had a sparkling effect on the entire population in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, and they became united under his efficient leadership to bravely fight for liberating the motherland.
Trade Assoc withdraws indefinite strike at CU

CU Correspondent :



The Trade Association of Chittagong University yesterday has withdrawn its indefinite strike called demanding punishment of people who beaten up a employee at CU.

Confirming the withdrawal of indefinite strike the Trade Association's general secretary Akter Hossain said that we put a memorandum to CU proctor getting justice. Reassuring us he said that he will take proper action after investigation. , considering the sufferings of the students, we opened the shops with the assurance of speaking to the proctor Sir.

According to sources, Sirajul Islam , a businessman of CU ,was beaten up by a group of CU BCL activists. Later, the injured Siraj was rescued and taken to the university's medical center. After the initial treatment there, he was sent to Chittagong Medical College (CMCH) hospital for better treatment.

The BCL activists were known as activist of a group named "CFC" and follower of Rezaul Haque Rubel, former vice president of CU BCL.

Meanwhile, demanding the punishment of those activists involved in the incident, The Trade Association`s leaders wanted to hold a human chain and it was obstructed by police at around 10:30 am on Thursday at the university's Bangabandhu Chattar.

Later, business leaders gave a memorandum to the proctor office demanding their demands and the punishment of the involved people.

University Business Owners Association General Secretary Akhter Homen said on the change, considering the sufferings of the students, we opened the shops with the assurance of speaking to the proctor Sir.

University proctor Mohammad Ali Ajgar Chowdhury said considering the sufferings of students, we talked to them (business association). The traders told us to open the shop.




President off to India

President M Abdul Hamid on Thursday left Dhaka for Indian northeastern state Assam as part of a four-day visit to attend the "Founding Conference of the International Solar Alliance (ISA)and Solar Summit - 2018" in New Delhi.

A VVIP flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, carrying the President and his entourage members, took off from Hazrat Shahjalal (R) International Airport for Guwahati International Airport of Assam at 1:32 pm.

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, Agriculture Minister Begum Matia Chowdhury, Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, dean of the diplomatic corps, cabinet secretary, principle secretary of Prime Minister's Office, chiefs of the three services, foreign secretary, inspector general of police (IGP) and high civil and military officials concerned saw him off at the airport.

President's spouse Rashida Khanam, son Rejwan Ahammad Taufiq, MP, and concerned officials to the Bangabhaban are accompanying him during the tour.

As part of the tour, the President will also visit Assam and Meghalaya, where he stayed for days during the 1971 Liberation War. He was a subsector commander of Bangladesh Liberation Forces (Mujib Bahini) then.
Remembering the heat of March 1971

Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :

The nation observes March as a month of great historical significance in remembrance of a series of seminal events that set the final stage of Bangladesh movement that started from language movement (1952). Bangabandhu demonstrated statesmanship in giving a sense of direction to the angry masses as soon as the postponement of the date of National Assembly was broadcast over radio. Public opinion became extremely agitated.

Bangabondhu in consultation with some elected members of the National Assembly, who were veteran politicians and among top few in leadership position, masterminded the strategic plan to prove equal to the task. . His plan was a two-way traffic-negotiation efforts and preparation for the armed struggle. He uttered "hope for the best, prepare for the worst."

The spirit of Bengali nationalism inspired the angry masses to stand united under his charismatic leadership to give tough resistance against any military action.

The sullen, bitter and hating Bangalees were ready for fight for liberation. The military forces were building up for a murderous strike with negotiation dialogue as a mere prevention. On the other hand mass mobilization was going on with spontaneous support of public officials, technocrats, intellectuals, peasants and industrial labour for building up countervailing forces against army atrocities.

Racial hatred is a basic element in the development of Bengali nationalism. The two wings of Pakistan were separated by nearly 2000 km. of Indian territory. The people of the two wings were racially different. . The only thing they have in common were religion-the only factor behind for 'the creation of the improbable two-part nation in 1947, when British rule ended on the sub-continent.'

The domineering attitude of the Punjabi, the race that exhibited a strong superiority complex, caused differentiation, alienation and confrontation so far as Bangalees were concerned. . Even other ethnic groups were badly affected by Punjabi domination. There was gap between the two wings as for the benefits of development. This gap was honed razor-sharp by the Punjabi's systematic exploitation of East Pakistan politically, economically and militarily.

The East Pakistan was the majority wing with 75 million people compared to 61 million people in the west wing which had the advantage that the national capital was situated over there that received 'the overwhelming proportion of development funds, factories, public work projects, foreign aid, imports and defense facilities.'

The accentuation of the sense of alienation eventually turned into confrontation. The military bureaucracy nexus of Pakistan was exposed to the antagonism of vernacular elite as it committed acts of vengeance one after another to relegate the majority to a state of powerlessness. It denied Mujib the seat of power despite his party's landslide victory in 1970's parliamentary election. Yahiya Khan seemed to be puppet acting like a hypocrite at the instigation of the men behind the scene maneuver. Absolutely ill motivated the dialogue initiative of Yahiya was a mere pretension with the 'charade of negotiation' mobilizing military forces surreptitiously for the immortal strike. The danger was imminent.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutta refuse to attend the Dhaka session set for March3, 1971 which was supposed to prepare a new constitution for Pakistan. Yahya yielded to Bhutto's pressure and postponed Dhaka session. 'Protests and rioting erupted in East Pakistan, the army fired on Bengalis, killing many, and the Bengalis then answered.' Bangabandhu reacted immediately organizing a parliamentary party meeting at Hotel Purbani. While talking to the pressmen Bangabandhu thundered "Only for the sake of a minority party's disagreement the democratic process of constitution making has been obstructed and the National Assembly session has been postponed sin die."

He issued directives to the people such as: observance of hartal in a peaceful manner from 3rd March to the 6th March from 6 A.M to 2 P.M., observing 3rd March as a day of national mourning, asking all Bangalees staff serving in radio, T.V. to refuse to cooperate if the authority failed to cover the statements of the straggling leaders and their version of events, addressing a mass rally on 7th March to issue further directives and continuing struggle in a peaceful and disciplined manner.

On 23rd March Mujib rejected the invitation of Yahiya Khan to attend the meeting of the leaders of the parliamentary groups in the National Assembly in the wake of widespread killing of unarmed civilians in some important places (Bangladesh Documents vol. I 1999)

While Bangabondhu demanded withdrawal of Martial law to harness the process of transition to democracy notification issued by the cabinet division on 6th March, 1971 to appoint Tikka Khan as the Governor of East Pakistan replacing extremely gentleman vice Admiral S.M. Ahsan was a great Provocation. The chief justice of the Supreme Court did not administer the oath of Tikka Khan.

At the public meeting on March 7, 1971 at the race course maidan attended by million Bangabondhu in a historic speech thundered: Ebarer sangram amader muktir sangram, ebarer sangram sadhinatar sangram (our struggle this time is the struggle for emancipation, the struggle is the struggle for independence).

This was the clarion call of Bangabondhu. He categorically made it clear that he would attend the assembly if 4 point-demand was accepted. The 4 points were: 'the withdrawal of martial law', returning army to barracks, 'inquiry into the killings' and 'transfer of power to the elected representatives'. In the speech he 'called upon the people to turn every home into fortresses.

Bangabandhu called for a non-co-operation movement in defiance of the military junta. . Mujib issued 10 point directives to the people in the full sewing civil disobedience movement on March 7, 1971. The points were: no tax to continue, all government, semi-government and autonomous bodies and judicial institutions to observe hartal; appropriate exemption to be announced from time to time, the transports like mail, air to continue to function but should not be used for mobilizing forces, Banglaees working in electronic and print media should not co-operate otherwise if complete version of the statement of the leaders is not given, only local and inter-district telephone communication should continue, all educational institutions shall remain closed, banks shall not effect remittances to the western wing either through the state Bank or otherwise, black flag shall be hoisted on all buildings, hartal to be withdrawn in all other places but complete or partial hartal may be declared at any moment depending on the situation and a sangram parishad to be organized in each union, mahallah, thana (sub-distric), subdivision and district under the leadership of the local Awami league units.

Non -co-operation movement 'eventually evolved into the creation of a kind of Awami league government.' The junta went out to fly troop reinforcement into East Pakistan at night. From March 10 and onwards leaders of minority party groups visited East Pakistan to meet Shaikh Mujib. They exchanged views with him slating Bhutto's provocative attitude.

Mujib in an announcement (15th March) expressed his determination to continue non-cooperation movement with 'fresh action programme' in 3rd week of March. In a statement given by Mujib on 18 March, he 'rejected the commission of enquiry' set up by ML Administrator, zone B as it would serve no purpose.

At the crucial stage of the non cooperation movement Dacca talk between Bangabondhu and Yahya progressed on March 19. All efforts failing and unnecessary delay in political solution Yahya imposed military solution.

In the fateful night of 25 March the soldiers started going on rampage killing of unarmed civilians at Dhaka with unprecedented brutality in the name of operation search light.

Bangabondhu in a clandestine broadcast transmitted the call for declaration of independence on 26th March 1971. Mujib also 'declared the 75 million people of East Pakistan as citizens of the sovereign independent Bangladesh'. Since then people were fighting gallantly with the occupation force across the country. The official proclamation of independence issued on 10 April 1971 confirmed the declaration of independence by Bangabandhu.
17-year-old student killed in shooting at Alabama high school

AP :

A shooting at an Alabama high school Wednesday afternoon has left a 17-year-old female student dead and a 17-year-old male student injured, according to police. The shooting occurred around 3:40 p.m. inside Birmingham's Huffman High School, the largest of seven high schools in the Birmingham City School System, police said. "School Resource and East Precinct Officers were dispatched to Huffman High School on the report of an individual shot inside the school," police said in a statement. "Officers immediately responded and found that two individuals had been shot." Both students were transported to UAB Hospital, where the female student was pronounced deceased, police said. Initially, police described the incident as an "accidental shooting," but they later ceased to describe it as such and said it is a "death investigation."

The scene at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama, on March 7, 2018, following a shooting there that was deemed "accidental" by police. One student was killed, another injured.

"Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal today at Huffman High School," the school system said in a statement. "The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene. Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting."

"Birmingham detectives are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation which will include many interviews and processing of video," police said in a statement later Wednesday night. "The gun involved in the incident has been recovered as evidence."

A "saddened" Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey took to Twitter Wednesday night, writing, "I'm saddened to learn of the death of the Huffman student. I'm praying for the family of this young lady who tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and even though this was an accident it reaffirms there's no place for students to have firearms on campus." At a press conference Wednesday night, officials said the deceased student was a senior, who had plans to become a nurse, WBMA reported. Parents were allowed to pick up their children from the school around 5 p.m. The school will be open on Thursday, officials said. No arrests have been made.


Mosquito menace grips Dhaka city

No respite from fear of dengu, chikunguniya

City dwellers faces a mosquito breeding ground as Dhaka South City Corporation remain unheeded to control the menace. This photo was taken from Matuail-Demra areas on Thursday.

Reza Mahmud :

The Dhaka city dwellers from almost every ward have been suffering from serious mosquito menace due to the alleged lack of timely measures taken by the two city corporations.

They are not getting respite from fear of the mosquito borne diseases like dengu and chikunguniya, though the city corporations earlier announced tougher actions to eliminate the issue.

The city dwellers blamed that the employees are only spraying mosquito repellent along the main roads ignoring lanes and stagnant water bodies. There are also allegation of spraying low quality medicines. So, the mosquito coil, aerosol spray and electric bat are failing to give relief to the dwellers from the menace.

"There are huge mosquitoes in the whole area of Gendaria. We cannot get respite from mosquito menace, though the city corporation earlier announced serious actions to eliminate it. The employees have seen to spray mosquito repellent along the main roads, but they did not spray that in the lanes and by-lanes where most of the residents are resided. This caused sharp increase of mosquitoes," said Abul Hossain, the Proprietor of Medicine Point, at Satish Sarkar Road, Gendaria in the city.

Residents from different other areas said the stagnant water bodies like ponds, drains, canals and lakes remain unclean for months. Those also stay out of spraying mosquito repellent, which made the problem more serious.

According to corporation sources, the authorities of both the Dhaka North and South City Corporations are taking measures to eliminate mosquitoes from their jurisdictions.

According to official data, the DSCC has allocated Tk 16.80 crore and the DNCC Tk 20 crore for the current fiscal (2017-18) to eliminate mosquito.

DSCC Mayor Muhammad Sayeed Khokon has recently launched an elaborate programme to kill mosquitoes under his corporation's jurisdiction. He formally launched the programme using a fogger machine and sprayed mosquito repellents from the Institute of Fine Arts.

The Mayor said, "We cautioned citizens to remain alert against chikungunya and urged them to clean bushes and water containers from their surrounding areas where Aedes mosquitoes breed.

Apart from this, DNCC have also started mosquito elimination crash programme from Gulshan. The officials of the DNCC led by panel Mayor Osman Gani formally launched the programme on Tuesday.

The both city corporations have opened hotlines to help eliminate mosquitoes. But the citizens alleged that they have no information about those hotlines.

"We do not no about the hotlines. No one informed us about that," said Shafiul Alam, a resident of Syedabad.

Citizens alleged that the employees liable to spray mosquito repellents are not taking the initiatives honestly, which is causing unbearable mosquito menace in the city.

Sources said the aedes mosquitoes are found in the city before the rainy season. The aedes are carrier of chikunguniya and dengue diseases. That is why the citizens are panicked as they have been experiencing horrific situation during the last few years from those mosquito borne diseases.

The city residents are sufferings everywhere - at home, schools, offices, business places and markets because of mosquito menace.

"There are unbearable situation due to huge numbers of mosquitoes in Elephant Road, Hatir pool, Free School Street and Bhuter Goli areas and made the lives of people of the area measurable," said Mosharraf Hossain, a private job holder from the area.

Meanwhile, leaders and workers of different organizations formed a human chain in front of the Jatiya Press Club on Saturday demanding elimination of mosquitoes from the city.

Ashraf Ali, Chairman of Gonotantrik Mukti Andolon and Moshiur Rahman, President of Nagorik Unnoyan Forum, spoke to the occasion.


Female house owner stabbed to death in city

Staff Reporter :

An elderly female house owner was stabbed to death by an unidentified youth in the city's Nakhalpara area on Thursday afternoon.

The deceased has been identified as Amena Begum, 65, Police said.

Quoting locals, Mazharul Islam, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Teajgaon Police Station, said, "An youth entered the deceased's house saying that he would rent a flat effective from next month (April) and visited the ground floor with Amena around 2:00am. At one stage, the youth stabbed the woman's head, neck, chest and stomach and fled from the house instantly."

Locals rushed to the house No 288, West Nakhalpara, of Tejgaon after hearing the screaming of Amena Begum and they found her dead in a pool of blood on the ground floor, the police official said.

He also said that the incident took place in a short time as no tenant was on the ground floor at that time.

Police have collected crime scene and other sample from the house and its adjacent buildings to investigate the murder, the OC said. "The member of law enforcing agencies are trying to nab the killer and his suspected cohorts," he said.

The body was sent to the Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital (ShSMC) morgue for an autopsy.


Police swoop on BNP`s sit-in program

JCD North unit chief, two others picked up: Protest prog on Saturday

Police swooped on the BNP\'s sit-in programme in front of the Jatiya Press Club on Thursday, demanding release of Khaleda Zia from jail. Some senior leaders including Party Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir (inset) being panicky started to lea

Staff Reporter :

Police on Thursday foiled BNP's sit-in programme in front of the National Press Club in the capital. Protesting this the party announced staging of demonstration in every thana of the city on Saturday.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir demanded resignation of the government for obstructing the party's peaceful programme.

As part of the nationwide sit in programme in demand of BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia's unconditional release from jail, the party leaders and activists joined the peaceful assembly in front of the National Press Club around 10:40am.

The programme was scheduled to end by 12 midday. But police chased the demonstrating activists at 11:45am to disperse.

Police detained Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal Dhaka North City unit President Mizanur Rahman Raj and two others from the programme.

Raj tried to escape arrest by hugging Mirza Fakhrul, but plainclothes police was undaunted.

In a press briefing at the party's Naya Paltan office around 1:00pm, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir announced the new protest programme at each thana of Dhaka metropolitan on Saturday to protest the police attack on their peaceful sit-in programme.

"They arrested sorting out those who are in leading position in the party. What kind of democracy is that?" Mirza Fakhrul questioned, saying the government is pushing the political environment towards a vulnerable situation.

Mirza Fakhrul said, "The ruling party yesterday staged its rally blocking almost all streets in the city. But they cannot bear our simple programme which we staged totally in peaceful manner."

The Secretary General said also that their chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia on Wednesday directed them to continue movements peacefully avoiding all kinds of provocations.

"The directions must be abided by," he said.

Khaleda Zia gave such directions while the leaders met her in jail.

The party have programmed rally in each divisional headquarters. As part thereof, the party planned to hold a rally in Khulna on March 10, and another in Dhaka on March 12.


ACC quizzes Bachchu again, he falls sick

Staff Reporter :

Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigators on Thursday grilled former BASIC Bank chairman Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu for the fourth time in connection with 57 cases filed over the embezzlement of Tk 4,500 crore from the bank.

Bacchu entered the ACC headquarters at 9:30am and left at 5.30pm.

He appeared before a team of ACC at around 9.45am to face the interrogation, sources said.

The team led by ACC Director Syed Iqbal Hossain questioned Bacchu for over five hours.

According to ACC officials, Bachchu fell sick during the question-answer session. At one stage, a physician was called to check his physical conditions. When he felt better, the officials resumed interrogation.

Bachchu came out after the interrogation was over around 5:30pm and left the ACC premises without talking to newsmen.

Bachchu faced the ACC grilling last time on January 8.

Earlier on December 4 last year, ACC for the first time interviewed Bachchu years about the loan scam of the bank.

During the quizzing, Bachchu denied his involvement.

According to a Bangladesh Bank enquiry, about Tk 4,500 crore was siphoned of from BASIC Bank between 2010 and 2013 when Bacchu chaired its board.

In between April 2012 and March 2013, the board of directors led by Abdul Hye Bachchu disbursed Tk 4,500 crore through unprecedented irregularities.

On July 14, 2014, the central bank sent a report on the scam to the ACC, detailing how people embezzled money from the bank through shell companies and dubious accounts.

The BB found that Bachchu illegally influenced all the activities of the bank, leaving the once-sound institution in a grave state.

The ACC moved for interrogating Bacchu in the wake of strong criticisms from civil-society as well as Supreme Court order for investigating his alleged complicity in the wrongdoings.

On August 18 last year, a three-member Supreme Court bench, while holding hearing in two loan scam cases expressed discontent at the ACC for not naming Bacchu and the bank's ex-board members on the suspects.

"We don't want the Anti-Corruption Commission to maintain any 'pick and choose' policy in implicating accused in such cases, as nobody is above the law. All the allegations must be investigated with importance," said the court.

The ACC has so far grilled 10 people, including nine former directors of the state-run bank, on the loan scam.

At the end of 2015, ACC filed 56 cases with Motijheel, Paltan and Gulshan police stations in connection with the BASIC bank loan scam, accusing 156 persons. However, Bacchu was not accused in any of the cases.
Women`s valour

11,767 join police force: 77 now in UN missions

Staff reporter :

The incumbent government of Bangladesh has given priority to appointment of women in different services, including police.

According to the statistics of past nine years, out of a total of 11,767 women in police service, 9,247 (around 80 percent) were recruited in the two consecutive tenures of the Awami League-led government.

"Women have also been encouraged to work in police force which is followed by the increasing of number of women in the force day by day. The number of women police surged to 11,676 in March this year from only 2,520 in 2008," AKM Shahidul Haque, former Inspector General of Police (IGP) told the media on Wednesday.

The women police, however, still represent only 6.66 per cent of the total police force that consists of 198, 653 personnel, he said.

Of the total women police, two are now deputy inspector general (DIG), four additional DIG, 37 police supers, 93 additional police supers, 126 assistant police supers, 110 inspectors (unarmed), 646 sub inspectors, 55 police sergeants, 928 assistant sub- inspectors, 28 nayeks and 9,338 constables, the statistics revealed.

Asked about the challenges of women in joining the police force, DIG Rowshan Ara Begum told that the society was not accommodating enough police like now-a-days when she joined the force 30 years ago.

"People even could not think of seeing a woman police. But, the mindset of the people has changed as days go by, encouraging women in taking the job," she said.

The high police official said that becoming police is a challenge for all; and both the men and women police face similar challenges while performing their professional duties.

"I had gone through many experiences in my over three decades of career in the police force when enjoyed mostly to make someone smile by giving his or her desired service," she said.

Rowshan Ara said the female police also equally take the challenges like their male colleagues to deal with any critical case, operation or any other professional duty.

Talking about the challenges and prospect of the women for working in police force, additional deputy commissioner (traffic east) Nazmun Naher happily said that the working environment in the police force is very good and inspiring for women.

"The behaviour of the male colleagues towards us is also very pleasant, which is very important for working in a condition where maintaining law and order and security is the prime duty," she said.

Nazmun Naher said the training that a female police got also works as the driving force in performing our professional duties with similar commitment and efficiency like their male colleagues.

She said currently two female sergeants, two female assistant sub-inspectors and four female constables have been working successfully likewise their male colleagues in the traffic east division.

The police official pointed out a problem that the women in other professions also face in their everyday family life.

"Unlike male, we have to do our household jobs besides performing professional duties," she said, advising that male should share their household jobs so more women can get in their choice of professions.

Besides in regular police force, Women Police Battalion with 258 members has been successfully performing its duties such as patrolling at airports and security check-points since its inception in 2011.

Apart from working as police in the country, many women have long been working as peacekeepers in different UN missions. Currently, 77 women police are assigned to different UN missions while 1109 female police completed the similar assignments.

Establish in 2008, Bangladesh Police Women Network (BPWN) has been working for years to make female police capable of giving leadership in the country and overseas.


Buddhist mobs attack more Muslim-owned shops in Lanka

A timber depot burns in Mullegama village in Kandy, Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

AP, Kandy, Sri Lanka :

Buddhist mobs swept through Muslim neighborhoods in Sri Lanka's central hills, destroying stores and restaurants despite a curfew, a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of security forces, residents said Thursday.

About 50 people broke into Mohamed Ramzeen's small restaurant in the town of Pilimathalawa on Wednesday night while the curfew was in effect, destroying nearly everything they found, he said.

"The security in town is inadequate," Ramzeen said. "We fear for our lives."

Others in the area around Kandy, the main hill town, described similar attacks since the violence began early this week. The streets of most towns were all but empty Thursday except for police and soldiers.

In suburban Pallekele, four houses were burned by mobs using petrol bombs during the curfew Wednesday night. Mohamed Nazar said only he and his 64-year-old father remained in their house after they sent other family members to a relative's house for safety after the violence started.

"Around 8 p.m., rocks started hitting the house with a mob shouting outside and we put the lights off. Then a large flame came and the house caught fire," Nazar said.

He said his father hid under a sofa, but he grabbed him and they ran out.

Police came and put out the fire, but much of his family's belongings were destroyed, he said.

The government ordered a state of emergency Tuesday and shut down popular social media networks, saying they were being used to spread false rumors that led to the attacks. "Technology created to bring people together is being used to pull people apart," technology minister Harin Fernando was quoted as saying by the Sri Lanka Mirror newspaper. "Social media websites such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Viber ... have been used to destroy families, lives and private property."

Sri Lanka has long faced a bitter ethnic divide between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, fueling a decades-long civil war as Tamil militants tried to carve out their own homeland.
Pak Taliban chief's son among 20 killed in 'US drone strike'

Al Jazeera News, Islamabad, Pakistan :

At least 20 members of the Pakistani Taliban, including the son of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah, have been killed in a US drone strike in the northeastern Afghan province of Kunar, according to a Taliban statement.

The fighters, including Abdullah, were killed in a strike on a TTP camp, the group said in a statement texted to local journalists in Pakistan's Bajaur district, which borders Kunar, on Wednesday.

According to the statement, 20 fidayeen, or suicide bombers, were killed, while another six fighters were wounded in the strike. Prominent TTP commander Gul Muhammad and fidayeen trainer Yaseen were also killed in the strike, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported.

Pakistan has often accused US and Afghan forces of not doing enough to target TTP forces resident on the Afghan side of the volatile Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where they fled following a series of military operations by Pakistan. While violence has dropped in recent years, the TTP and its affiliates continue to carry out sporadic large-scale attacks targeting Pakistani security forces and civilians.

At least 748 civilians and security forces were killed in violence perpetrated by the TTP and other armed groups, included armed Baloch separatists, in 2017, down from a peak of at least 3,739 in 2012, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi based research organisation. Pakistan's military says that it has killed at least 4,000 fighters working for the TTP and its allies since 2013.

Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify that number, as access to the conflict areas is strictly controlled, and the identities of those killed are seldom revealed.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua is in Washington DC this week for talks with the US aimed at lowering tensions between the two erstwhile allies.

In January, US President Donald Trump cut more than $1.1bn in military assistance to Pakistan over allegations that it was providing safe haven to members of the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network.

Pakistan denies the charges, alleging that it is being scapegoated for the failure of US-led coalition forces to secure Afghanistan after more than 16 years of war.

Recent diplomatic contacts appear to be softening the divide between the two countries.
Khaleda spending time in jail reading newspapers, saying prayers

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, sent to old Dhaka central jail just a month back after conviction in a graft case, has been spending her most time reading newspapers, books and saying prayers, said party leaders met her on Wednesday.

Talking to UNB, two party standing committee members said Khaleda, during their meeting, highly appreciated them for carrying out peaceful programmes and keeping the party united in her absence. The two leaders said they talked various issues, mainly the party's organisational ones, during the meeting. But there was no discussion on the upcoming national election as the BNP chief is very confident that she will be released from jail through a legal battle much ahead of the election. She, however, is a little bit worried that the government may try to prolong her stay in jail. They said the BNP chief repeatedly suggested them to keep the party rank and file in an upbeat mood and mobilise more public support through various peaceful programmes, rallies in divisional cities and visiting different districts. The BNP leaders said Khaleda told them to let people know that her health condition is fine as she has an apprehension that the government may circulate false information that she is sick with an ulterior motive. "We first got emotional seeing our leader in the jail, but she was very cool and normal," said a BNP standing committee member wishing anonymity. He said Khaleda did not say anything about her difficulties and sufferings inside the jail. "She said she's fine and taking food regularly."

At one stage of the conversation, the BNP leader said, "Madam said she knew everything about BNP's peaceful movement as she passes her time reading newspapers and books." Khaleda also says prayers and recites from verses from the holy Quran. "Madam doesn't watch TV as there's no cable connection," he added.

Another standing committee member, preferring not to be named, said Khaleda is happy as the party leaders and activists are demonstrating their unity and their participation in the peaceful programme is increasing gradually. "Madam has directed us to talk to inactive leaders and remain alert so that no can create any rift in the party." Contacted, BNP standing committee member Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said, "We found her in a good mood. She was seen very confident as jail is nothing new to her. She's worried for people, not for the adverse situation she's facing in jail." Replying to a question, the BNP leader said their chairperson is happy over the way the party is run and the movement is being carried out in a peaceful manner in her absence.

There was a gossip and apprehension about a rift in BNP after jailing of Khaleda, he said adding, "We've proved those wrong as our party is now very united than before. We're running the party through joint leadership. We hope our leader (Khaleda) will be released very soon." He said their chairperson is now more popular than she was before going to jail. "Our party has gained many things with her jailing in a false case. People are with us and they've profound sympathy for our leader." BNP standing committee member Moudud Ahmed said they were very worried over Khaleda's health condition before meeting her. "But, we found her in a good health condition with strong morale." Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said their chairperson is facing all the adversities in jail with courage and confidence. "She's physically fine and mentally very strong." Sources at the jail said the BNP leaders talked to Khaleda at the guestroom in presence of two government officials concerned.


The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
Written by Ken Tanaka

One of the worlds little ironies, at least to me, is that while were unarguably living in the golden age for photographic technology, were also in the late twilight of the golden age of great photography. The people who propelled the medium to great heights during the last century are either gone or long retired and there is no true wave of replacements. Whats more, their bodies of works have been almost thoroughly picked clean, like old carcasses in the wild. Cartier-Bresson, Frank, Winogrand, Kertesz, Doisneau, et al. have all been most thoroughly analyzed, exhibited, and retrospected. Weve seen it all.

Well, almost. Yes, the masterpiece images and strongest bodies of work are all well-known. But there still are a few worthwhile as-yet unseen pickins on those carcasses. Here are two recent books that offer proof.



One, Two, Three, More

Helen Levitt

PowerHouse Books, 2017, Brooklyn, NY (UK link)

Helen Levitts name has been synonymous with street photography as long as the genre has existed. In fact, she almost defined it. While she has not had quite the number of publications and exhibitions that buoyed many of her contemporaries to fame her work became firmly established among the twentieth centurys greats well before her death in 2009.

Designed by Levitts long-time assistant and friend, Marvin Hoshino, One, Two, Three, More represents a deeper dive into some of Levitts early (1934 to 1946) street work. While some of the books approximately 150 B&W photos will be familiar to fans most have never been published. According to an LFI interview with Hoshino, he gathered the images entirely from prints, some of which were work prints and others signed.

As with all of Levitts books the formatting and presentation of One, Two, Three, More is simple and unpretentious. One image per page, with both a recto and verso image. No double-trucking. No full bleeds. No captions. No dates or other references. Just the images. I was puzzled by the books title and corresponding section organization until reading that Hoshino organized the images according to the number of people in them. I would not have picked up that puzzle for a long time.

Although One, Two, Three, More could introduce someone to Levitts work its probably going to be most compelling to long-time fans. Its almost like looking at a long-form contact sheet. Some images look like they required heavy preparation. Most of the frames feature Levitts characteristically masterful framing and timing but there are plenty that dont quite meet her normal standards. And for me those imperfect frames are what make One, Two, Three, More a treasure to review. They make Levitt mortal and her work even more special.

I thank Marvin Hoshino and PowerHouse for making the investment in giving us (at least) one last helping of Helen Levitts work that we might not have otherwise seen.

Addendum: I recently learned that there is another 2017 book of Helen Levitts work, much of it also published for the first time. Manhattan Transit: The Subway Photographs of Helen Levitt, published by Walther Konig, looks even more intriguing! A copy is on its way to me. (Here's the UK link.)

Pittsburgh 1950

Elliot Erwitt

Gost, 2017, London (UK link)

There have been enough volumes of Elliot Erwitts photography published to fill a bookstore. Could anything possibly be left unseen? Well, it turns out there is.

National Geographic photo editor Vaughn Wallace was doing research for his thesis at the University of Pittsburgh when he came upon this forgotten, very early body of Erwitts documentary work at the Pittsburgh Photographic Library. It seems that Erwitt, who was just starting his career, had met renowned photo editor Roy Stryker in 1948. In 1950 Stryker enlisted a group of photographers, including Erwitt, to help document Pittsburgh at mid-century. Unusually, Stryker gave Erwitt no particular coverage mandates; he was free to shoot whatever caught his eye. And thats exactly what he did. Perhaps predictably, Stryker rejected most (maybe all) the images in this book, banishing them to a Kill file. Fortunately for us Stryker did not destroy the negatives with a paper punch, as was his tendency.

Like Levitts book, some of these early Erwitt images are a bit rough and far from Erwitts best. But many seem wonderfully un-self-conscious, rather like the images many of us made before we understood photography. But you can already see the talent and form that Erwitt would hone so keenly over the coming decades of his career. His timings and frame constructions, the deadpan humor, the ironic juxtapositionstheyre distinctly Erwitt.

Beyond the actual images, this book features a genuine co-star: the gorgeous B&W gravure printing. I had no idea that such lush gravure printing was even possible today. The deep blacks are so deep you feel you can fall into them. Some pages have so much ink that theyre almost reliefs that could be read with your fingers as well as your eyes. I have found no notes on the books production, so I cannot say with certainty that it employed photogravure. But the look, the feel, and the scent of the pages seems unmistakable to me. Having such a lovely graphic arts product is alone worth the price of the book. My hats off to Gost and its production team!



Will these books really represent the last we see published of Levitts and Erwitts works? Certainly not. Endless retrospection is at the core of every curators / historians very being. But, just as certainly, the images in these books must represent nearly the last Levitt and Erwitt works that are truly new to the public eye. And thats what makes them worth seeing.

Ken

2018 by Kenneth Tanaka, all rights reserved

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Non-oil trade between the UAE and Japan has reached Dh53.5 billion ($14.6 billion) said Minister of Economy Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, highlighting the privileged relations established by the two nations across the past decades.



Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri made the remarks during his participation in the UAE-Japan Strategic Business Forum, in the presence of Japan's State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Kosaburo Nishime, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



He noted that Japan's technology-oriented investments in UAE have significantly contributed to the country's developmental drive, especially in areas of advanced technology, renewable energy and healthcare.



He pointed in this regard to the presence of more than 100 Japanese firms operating in the UAE in addition to 200 agencies, and 10,000 Japanese trademarks registered nationwide.



The UAE is a key strategic partner for Japan," said Nishime, affirming his government's keenness to buttress partnerships ties to yet a higher level.



On the sidelines of the forum, Al Mansouri attended the signing of three memos of understanding by Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) with the Department of Economic Development-Abu Dhabi, the Ras Al Khaimah Department of Economic Development and Department of Industry and Economy- Fujairah.



Saeed Mubarak Kharbash, head of Strategy & Planning at Dubai Islamic Economy Development Centre, said the conference was a good opportunity to present Dubai's successful Sharia'-compliant finance model, while reviewing prospects of joint cooperation in furtherance of the sustainable development goals in the two countries, one main objective of which is to build a knowledge-based economy.
Bank ABC, a leading international bank headquartered in Bahrain, is planning to launch a neobank early 2019 and is working to get all the approvals from the Central bank of Bahrain (CBB), writes Abdulaziz Khattak.

Speaking to TradeArabia on the sidelines of the 2nd Middle East and Africa FinTech Forum at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manama, Bahrain, Dr Khaled Kawan, CEO of Bank ABC, said they will provide banking services via a mobile phone app, without the need for brick and mortar branches as in traditional banking.

We will produce a customer experience based totally on a FinTech solution whereby we will replicate our retail experience to our customer.

Kawan said the neobank will be separate from Bank ABC and will run independently, adding it will leverage the strength of ABC and its core systems, and IT services through its subsidiary Arab Financial Services (AFS) to provide the best services to customers.

He said they aim to leverage the FinTech experience that is disrupting everything and integrate that disruption so that it becomes a momentum.

Neobanks are banks that don't have their own bank licence, but use partners to offer bank-licensed services. They make use of apps that facilitate, for e.g., the administration of accounts and credit cards.

Neobanks rely on customers having an account with an underlying bank with a corresponding bank licence, but offer a user- friendly interface. The extent to which customers are aware of the underlying bank relationship day to day may vary.

Sael Al Waary, chairman of AFS and deputy group CEO of Bank ABC, urged banks to take advantage of the current financial disruption and collaborate with FinTech companies to sustain and expand their business.

He said the way people bank has changed; they now no longer want to visit a branch. Customer satisfaction through digitisation is the way forward and big banks are responding by creating neobanks, he added.

About FinTech, Kawan said: We are on the brink of a historic moment where we are looking an entirely new market for banks and which will change the face of banking forever. Therefore, banks need to be better equipped to embrace this change.

He said we had seen banks adjusting in different parts of the world. Some examples are challenger banks like Atom Bank of the UK and Bank Zero of South Africa. So in a way we are behind. And we need to catch up.

Bank ABC, he said, was leading this change in the region. One of the immediate projects by Bank ABC is integrating FinTech into banking in Bahrain through AFS.

He said the environment in Bahrain is conducive for FinTech as the Bahrain government had already taken significant steps toward this end by investing heavily in electronic platforms.

In fact, Bahrain FinTech Bay (BFB) was established in the beginning of March under the auspices of the Economic Development Board as the largest FinTech hub in the Middle East and Africa.

Also, the CBB last year introduced the Regulatory Sandbox  a virtual space for both CBB-licensed financial institutions and other firms to test their technology-based innovative solutions.

About Bahrains readiness for FinTech, Kawan said if a country like India can convert its society into a cashless one, Bahrain is readier because of the extremely high mobile penetration, high internet usage and high literacy rate.

To a question about the acceptability of virtual banks by customers in the region, Al Waary said they had done an independent survey, in which 63 per cent respondents were all for virtual banks.

Overall, the banking industry in the Gulf region is moving to keep pace with the historic changes in the FinTech industry, said Kawan.

We have excellent examples in the Gulf that have already launched neobanks, like Mashreq Bank and Emirates NBD of the UAE that have adopted digital platforms to increase productivity and improve customer services. Its all about agility or adjustment, or else you will become fossils.

Kawan said conferences like MEA FinTech are a way to communicate with the community and educate them about the change and its importance, and encourage banks to think about it.

In terms of cybersecurity, he said billions of dollars were being invested in it and customers need not worry. The top priority of ABC Bank itself was cybersecurity.

Adding to that, Kawan said the No 1 threat to a FinTechk bank is technology itself, and for that, you need to be on the cutting edge of IT security to prevent any mishaps.

Al Waary said investment in FinTech last year alone was $27 billion, while it was a total of $100 billion in the eight years before that. Transactions worth $95 billion would be done in 2018 through digital channels.

Al Waary said Fintech will accelerate financial inclusion. Today there are more than 2 billion unbanked people in the world. And through FinTech we can reach to the underserved, underprivileged and unsatisfied people.

ABC is already in South Africa and is bidding for a project in Ghana. TradeArabia News Service
UAE-based NMC Healthcare has posted a net profit of $209.2 million for the year 2017 as against $151.4 million in the previous year, marking an increase of 38.2 per cent.



Total revenues rose from $1,220.8 million in 2016 to $1,603.4 million last year, up by 31.3 per cent, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



Adjusted net profit rose by 43 per cent from $165.2 million to $236.6 million. A dividend of 13 UK pence per share, up from 10.6 UK pence per share in 2016, is proposed, equivalent to 20 per cent of profit after tax.



Growth in its key healthcare division, covering its hospitals across 13 countries, saw revenues rise by 41.1 per cent from $823.3 million to $1,161.6 million, a rise of 41.1 per cent, with net profit from healthcare rising by 49.2 per cent from $192.9 million to $287.8 million.



For the distribution division, there was an increase of 12.7 per cent in revenues, from $431.9 million to $486.8 million, with net profit for the division rising from US 43.6 million to $48 million.



During 2017, the number of patients handled by the healthcare division rose by 33.5 per cent to 5.8 million as the number of operational beds rose by 101 per cent over 2016, from 679 beds to 1,365 beds.



NMC Healthcare, which listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2012 and which is now a component of the FTSE100 Index, currently operates or manages over 125 assets in 13 countries and is ranked as one of the top 3 in-vitro fertilisation, IVF, operators globally.



"2017 proved to be a year of tremendous achievements for NMC, enhancing further the successful track record already achieved by the Group in previous years," said Group CEO Prasanth Manghat.



"Qualification for the FTSE100 Index, consolidation of previous organic and inorganic expansions, extension of our geographic footprint and strengthening and deepening of the management structure all marked a very active year for NMC. In short, we see 2017 as setting the stage for many more years of growth for the Company and we begin 2018 with confidence."



An aggressive programme of expansion, launched by the company in 2016, has seen major progress in Saudi Arabia, which now accounts for over 35 per cent of its licenced bed capacity. It is also a leading UAE supplier of products and consumables across several key market segments, with healthcare related products providing the major contribution.



Major growth in assets during 2017 included the acquisition of facilities in Oman, where the company now has a 20 per cent share of the private sector in beds, the acquisition of two facilities in the Saudi cities of Hail and Najran, and the acquisition of Al Zahra Hospital in Sharjah. Several new management contracts were announced, including a UAE government hospital in Yemen.
RATP Dev Middle East, the regional business unit of RATP Dev  Frances leading international urban mobility company has become a signatory to the Womens Empowerment Principles (WEPs) in the UAE.



The move comes as part of an initiative led by UNGC with the support of the Embassy of France and the French business community in the UAE.



RATP Dev Middle East signed the CEO Statement of Support for the WEPs at a signing ceremony organised to coincide with International Womens Day 2018 (March 8) by the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) UAE Network in Dubai, where the company has its Mena regional headquarters.



The CEO Statement of Support for the Women's Empowerment Principles was signed on behalf of RATP Dev Middle East by Olivier Badard, CEO Asia, Mena, demonstrating the companys voluntary support to gender equality, empowering women and specifically the seven WEPs principles, as a corporate priority. The CEO Statement of Support has been signed by over 550 chief executives of companies around the world.



The seven Womens Empowerment Principles (WEPs)



1. Establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality

2. Treat all women and men fairly at work  respect and support human rights and non-discrimination

3. Ensure the health, safety and well-being of all women and men workers

4. Promote education, training and professional development for women

5. Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women

6. Promote equality through community initiatives and advocacy

7. Measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality



Olivier Badard, CEO of RATP Dev Asia, Mena, said: "The men and women who make up our Group are our greatest asset and the drivers of our growth. No matter the line of work (operations, maintenance, or specialized functions such as support) or the mode of transportation (metro, rail, tram or bus), everyone contributes to the groups momentum all around the world.



Recruitment, integration, training, mobility, etc.at every stage of working life, RATP Dev is committed to promoting equality, respect and equity between men and women. This is an invaluable asset to building teams that are open-minded, responsive, and agile, Badard added.  TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia-based Bahri, a global leader in transportation and logistics, has accepted the delivery of Qamran, a Very Large Crude-oil Carrier (VLCC), bringing the total number of Bahris fleet to 91 vessels including 44 VLCCs.



The 300,000-DWT carrier is the third VLCC to join Bahris fleet this year, following the delivery of Kassab in January and Lawhah in February.



The new vessel has reinforced the companys position as the largest VLCC owner and operator worldwide. Built by Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries (HSHI), the worlds largest shipbuilding company based in South Korea, the new VLCC features a length of 330 meters and a width of 60 meters.



Bahri took the delivery of Qamran at a ceremony held at the HSHIs Mokpo shipyard in South Jeolla Province, South Korea. The carrier is part of the 10 VLCCs Bahri signed with the South Korean company in May 2015 in line with the Saudi conglomerates strategic long-term maritime growth and expansion plan.



The addition of Qamran to our already strong fleet is a new milestone in our growth journey and a true testament to the robustness of Bahris long-term expansion plans, said Abdullah Aldubaikhi, CEO of Bahri.



In addition to providing a significant boost to our efforts to deliver unprecedented growth and productivity in 2018, the new vessel will further enhance our maritime offering and enable us to expand our customer base by catering to the increased demand for crude-oil transportation across local and international markets. Further, Qamran has solidified our position as a leader in the global maritime sector.



Qamran has renewed our resolve to revolutionize the maritime industry through diversified and innovative solutions designed to meet various needs in the market. More importantly, it has further bolstered Bahris capability to continue our support to the Kingdoms ambitious initiatives such as the Saudi Vision 2030, and contribute to the countrys efforts to reinforce its pre-eminent position as a strategic regional hub and logistics gateway across continents, added Aldubaikhi.  TradeArabia News Service
According to the latest results of the Long-Haul Travel Sentiment Survey and Index, Chinese willingness to travel overseas remains positive in the first months of 2018, with 93 per cent of respondents looking to visit Europe in the first four months.



Nearly 3 in 5 (58 per cent) Chinese respondents plan to travel internationally between January-April 2018, suggesting that demand from this market is likely to sustain in the near future.



The strong interest for travel to Europe reflects the increasing affluence of Chinese citizens, improved air connectivity, competitive airfares, and the opening of many new visa application centres across China. Additionally, public-private initiatives aimed at strengthening the presence of European tourism in China e.g. '2018 EU-China Tourism Year' and 'Partnerships in European Tourism' are expected to support the surge in Chinese travel flows to Europe for the foreseeable future.



Chinese travellers keen on exploring multiple destinations in one single trip



The majority (67 per cent) of Chinese respondents expect their next holiday to Europe to last approximately one week and consist of visits to multiple European countries. Besides the most popular destinations, such as France, Germany and Italy; other destinations like the Netherlands and the Czech Republic are gaining popularity among Chinese.



In line with the global travel trends, 60 per cent of Chinese respondents expressed interest in heading into the great outdoors for more nature-related experiences. Simultaneously, Europe's culture, history and famous landmarks continue to attract many visitors and make a big mark on Chinese travel in Europe. - TradeArabia News Service
Middle East carriers registered the slowest year-over-year traffic growth in January, recording a 0.5 per cent rise in demand compared to January 2017 - the slowest pace since September 2008.



According to figures released by the International Air Transport Association (Iata), capacity rose 4.6 per cent and load factor fell 3.1 percentage points to 76.8 per cent.



The market to/from North America has been especially hard hit owing to factors including the temporary ban on large portable electronic devices as well as the proposed travel bans to the US from some countries in the region.



Latin America airlines led the traffic growth across all regions in January, with a 7.3 per cent year-over-year increase, followed by European and carriers (up 6 per cent) African airlines (up 4.9 per cent), Asia-Pacific airlines (4.6 per cent), North American airlines (3.5 per cent) and lastly Middle East carriers.



International passenger demand growth slowed to 4.4 per cent in January, from 6.1 per cent in December. Total capacity climbed 5.3 per cent and load factor dipped 0.7 percentage point to 79.6 per cent.



Domestic travel demand climbed 5.1 per cent in January, down from 7 per cent growth recorded in December. The slowdown is entirely attributable to the later Lunar New Year holiday period in 2018. All markets showed growth, led by India, which experienced its 41st consecutive month of double-digit traffic increases. Domestic capacity increased 5.3 per cent and load factor slid 0.2 percentage point to 79.8 per cent.



The global passenger traffic results for January showed that traffic/total revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) rose 4.6 per cent compared to January 2017. This was the slowest year-over-year increase in nearly four years, but results were affected by temporary factors including the later timing of the Lunar New Year in 2018 as well as less favourable comparisons with the strong upward trend in traffic seen in late 2016-early 2017.



Iata estimates the impact of the later Lunar New Year-related travel period holiday represented around two-fifths of the slowdown in year-over-year growth for the month. January capacity (available seat kilometres or ASKs) rose 5.3 per cent, and load factor slipped half a percentage point to 79.6 per cent.



"Despite the slower start, economic momentum is supporting rising passenger demand in 2018. That said, concerns over a possible trade war involving the US could have a serious dampening effect on global market confidence, spilling over into demand for air travel," said Alexandre de Juniac, Iatas director general and CEO.



"Aviation is the business of freedom. It liberates us from the constraints of geography, distance and time, enabling us to lead better lives; and it makes the world a better place. For the business of freedom to grow the benefits it generates, we need borders that are open to trade and travel, and infrastructure to support the demand for connectivity. Governments have the main role to play in these areas by preserving the benefits of global commerce and ensuring adequate airport and airspace capacity to cope with an expected doubling of demand by 2036," said de Juniac. - TradeArabia News Service
Hailing from Syria, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, they attend the same integration class in their new home. Despite different backgrounds, these high school students all have one thing in common: motivation to succeed.





"I have been in Germany for two years. I took off on foot, then someone gave me a ride in their car, after that I continued by bus and train and then finally on foot again. In Austria, a friend and I simply boarded a train to Munich. I couldn't speak any German." The events that Aziz Ahmad Noori is referring to took place two years ago. He was 15 at the time. He fled Afghanistan  fled violence  without his parents.





Aziz is typical of the kind of young people enrolled in

at Bertha von Suttner High School. Most have fled difficult circumstances on their own and managed to get through it all. Aziz currently lives in a boarding house. He feels lucky to have the opportunity to attend school. His aim is to earn his diploma and graduate.




By TCN News

Students and the staff of Indo-US Public School in Hafiz Baba Nagar, Hyderabad run by Sahayata Trust celebrated International Womens Day with full zeal and organised speeches, poems, Naat- e-Shareef along with participating in a quiz show, fancy dress competition and short skits depicting the roles and values of women in our society.

The celebrations were meant to help the children, especially boys, understand the importance of women that too in the present era, and respect all the women in their lives.

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[March 08, 2018] Vonage Redefines Business Communications with Launch of Next-Generation Cloud-Native Platform

HOLMDEL, N.J., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage (NYSE: VG), a business cloud communications leader, has announced Vonage Business Cloud, the Company's new cloud-native platform that culminates a three-year software development effort. Vonage Business Cloud was designed to cater to the unique needs of mid-market businesses, and replaces Vonage Essentials, which has been retired. Vonage Business Cloud leverages unified communications and communications APIs, empowering users to be more productive than ever before. Integrating seamlessly with tools for rich messaging, increased mobility, network optimization, and video collaboration, Vonage has completely transformed the way employees communicate and businesses operate. The new platform was specifically designed and developed around a public cloud-based architecture, enabling faster innovation and accelerating global expansion. "We are in a strong position to address the needs of larger businesses with the launch of the Vonage Business Cloud," said Alan Masarek, Vonage Chief Executive Officer. "Vonage is redefining how businesses communicate and our new platform will enable us to deliver innovative solutions to drive better business outcomes for our customers." Developed for Enhanced Usability, Reliability, Flexibility & Scalability Vonage Business Cloud leverages the latest advances in software design and cloud-based technologies, including micro-services, auto-scaling, server-less functions, containers, managed databases, infrastructure-as-code and machine learning. The new platform is designed to operate in a public cloud with native support for high-availability and cross-region failover, ensuring high-levels of reliability. In addition, Vonage's SmartWAN SD-WAN technology is now available with Vonage Business Cloud, offering Quality of Service (QoS) and unprecedented service level agreements. A highly-elastic platform, Vonage Business Cloud allows for unlimited customer growth and the ability to scale on-demand to address unforeseen traffic spikes from any location, at any time - whether from a phone, mbile device, web client or API.



Seamless Integration with Mission-Critical Business Applications Vonage Business Cloud helps employees collaborate and stay seamlessly connected across multiple locations through a robust unified communications solution. Providing tools for advanced productivity, the platform integrates with enterprise software solutions that businesses use every day, including Salesforce, G Suite, Zoho, Clio, Connectwise, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and more, as well as conferencing and collaboration tools.

New Developments Enhance Productivity and Optimize the Customer Experience Vonage Business Cloud includes a redesigned Desktop Application with enhanced messaging capabilities such as delivery confirmation and read receipts. The platform also offers a new Unified Portal for a streamlined user experience through a single app that enables customers to set up, maintain and manage account and web applications. In addition, Vonage Business Cloud includes a new Business Inbox to send and receive text messages from a main company number via virtual receptionist, and Spam Shield, which automatically detects and warns users in real-time of unwanted phone spam. Upgraded Mobile Interface Delivers Powerful, Intuitive Experience The new Vonage Business Cloud features a complete redesign of the Mobile App's user interface, along with enhanced messaging capabilities and rich media and document sharing, empowering users to be more productive. With new cutting-edge features, the mobile app delivers a powerful and intuitive experience, ensuring users are able to have important conversations with customers from anywhere, resulting in increased productivity, collaboration and connections. Additional mobile updates include video calling, Call Log Management, Call Block and search features to streamline interactions with contacts, customers and prospects. "With an eye on the future, we've ensured that the ever-evolving and real-time nature of our next-gen mobile app provides customers with the latest features and best user experience," said Omar Javaid, Chief Product Officer. "The Vonage Business Cloud app puts the power of advanced business communications in the palm of your hand." The majority of Vonage Business customers already run on Vonage Business Cloud and are benefiting from the new platform after a seamless migration from Vonage Essentials. About Vonage

Vonage (NYSE:VG) is redefining business communications. True to our roots as a technology disruptor, we've embraced technology to transform how companies communicate to create better business outcomes. Our unique cloud communications platform brings together a robust unified communications solution with the agility of embedded, contextual communications APIs. This powerful combination enables businesses to collaborate more productively and engage their customers more effectively across messaging, chat, social media, video and voice. The Company also provides a robust suite of feature-rich residential communication solutions. Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and Israel. Vonage is a registered trademark of Vonage Marketing LLC, owned by Vonage America Inc. (vg-a) View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vonage-redefines-business-communications-with-launch-of-next-generation-cloud-native-platform-300610374.html SOURCE Vonage

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Azerbaijan and Germany held talks on attracting funds for the Shah Deniz-2 and TANAP projects, sections of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). During the meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee an agreement on provision of guarantees for 1.5 billion dollars was reached. APA recalls that the Southern Gas Corridor projects are being financed by the company-shareholders. The Azerbaijani side participates in all segments of the Southern Gas Corridor, and therefore, in addition to profit from this agreement, it will receive additional revenue from production and transportation. Total volume of obligations of the Azerbaijani side in all segments of the SGC is one quarter of the total investments. Earlier, there were reports that the German government would provide a large loan to finance the SGC gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Europe. Loan amount is 1.5 billion dollars.

As Euractiv writes in an article "Germany provides 1.2 billion loan for Southern Gas Corridor", the German Ministry of Finance will provide 1.2 billion to help Azerbaijan finance its part of the Southern Gas Corridor project. Deutsche Welle announced the news quoting a letter from Finance Secretary Jens Spahn (CDU) to the chairman of the budget committee of the Bundestag, Peter Boehringer (AfD). The money is intended for the Closed Joint Stock company Southern Gas Corridor (SJCC). CJSC was founded in 2014 by a decree signed by Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan. Its purpose is to consolidate, manage, and finance the countrys interests in the development of the Shah Deniz offshore gas field in the Caspian Sea, the expansion of the South Caucasus Pipeline, the construction of the Trans Anatolian pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). CJSC has undertaken the project financing aspect while operational management is provided by SOCAR, the Azeri state energy company.

These gas deliveries should make a significant contribution to securing the supply of gas to Europe and Germany, says the letter. The loan should be repaid from proceeds generated by the project, with backing from Azerbaijan in the form of a state guarantee, Spahns letter further says. Specifically, the money will be used to refinance CJSCs stake in Shah Deniz and Turkeys TANAP gas pipeline. In addition, an application for an export credit guarantee for a further 500 million will be examined to finance German supplies and services intended for TAP transmission between the Turkish-Greek border and Italy.

In the special interest of Germany

TANAP and TAP are respectively the Turkish and the European sections of the Southern Gas Corridor. The German government can secure so-called Unbound Financial Loans upon request. These are intended to finance projects abroad that are in the special state interest of the Federal Republic of Germany. This applies in particular to projects which ensure the supply of oil and gas to the Federal Republic of Germany by guaranteeing long-term supply contracts for the benefit of German customers.

Deutsche Welle reminds that even Chancellor Angela Merkel had welcomed the construction of the Southern Gas Corridor. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) approved a loan of 500 million for TANAP in October 2017. Financial support also came from the World Bank. And in February, the European Investment Bank approved its largest ever single loan to an energy project: 1.5 billion for the the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
The strength of oil consumption took analysts by surprise last year, and played a big role in crudes recovery to a three-year high in January. Demand this year could even turn out to be way in excess of 2017s exuberant levels, Khalid al-Falih, the normally cautious energy minister of Saudi Arabia predicts. Data from industries like aviation, shipping and trucking suggest he might be right.

As Bloomberg writes in an article "Planes, Trains and Trucks: Global Trade Boom Fires Up Oil Demand", oil demand growth hasnt been this strong in decades: even the gloomiest estimates from three heavyweights of global forecasting -- the International Energy Agency in Paris, the U.S. Energy Information Information, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries -- show consumption expanding by a minimum of 1.4 million barrels a day every year from 2015 to 2018. For part of that time, OPEC and allied producer states have been cutting crude supplies to eradicate a global glut. The market has certainly come very far in terms of rebalancing, said Bassam Fattouh, director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. OPEC and non-OPEC have taken much credit for that, but stronger-than-expected demand was a key contributor.

While a lot of that growth is being driven by consumers in emerging markets taking to the roads for the first time, the strongest run in global trade expansion for several years is also boosting demand as planes, trucks and ships move more goods around the world.

Though it may yet be at risk from the protectionist talk coming from Washington, the International Monetary Funds most recent estimates for world trade growth are that it will exceed 4 percent for three consecutive years through 2019, a feat last achieved when oil prices were surging to all-time records a decade ago.

Global synchronized economic growth -- across developed and emerging markets -- is driving a notable uptick in manufacturing and trade, boosting construction and freight movements which look to be behind renewed growth in diesel demand, after several years in the doldrums, said Eric Lee, an analyst at Citigroup Inc.

Heres a run-through of some additional data points that support the idea of 2018 being a stronger year for oil demand than some expect:

Magic manufacturing

The industry of making stuff hasnt been this strong in eight years, according to the JPMorgan Global Purchasing Managers Index. Meanwhile, industrial production in China grew last year at the fastest pace since 2014, economist estimates compiled by Bloomberg show.

Chinas flying, sos the world

All that economic activity is making Chinese citizens richer and encouraging travel. The countrys airline passenger traffic surged 15 percent in 2017, the fastest rate of annual growth since 2009. Fuel consumption by commercial airlines globally is set to increaseby 5 percent to the highest level on record, according to the International Air Transport Association. It also estimates air freight surged the most in seven years in 2017 and cargo growth will remain above the trend in 2018.

Full steam ahead

Next look whats happening at sea. The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of freight costs heavily influenced by Chinas unstoppable demand for coal and iron ore, is about 25 percent higher than where it was a year ago. As well as building the countrys domestic economy, much of those raw materials help Chinese manufacturers to make finished goods for export. At the other end of the countrys maritime supply chain are the ships that take goods to consumers in the U.S. and Europe. Last year, global growth in containerized goods grew at the fastest rate since 2013 -- fired by China.

Keeping on trucking

Once all those goodies get shipped across oceans, they still need final delivery by road. The Cass Shipments Index, measuring total freight volume in the U.S., surged 12.5 percent year-on-year in January, according to Cass Information Systems Inc. Thats yet another data point confirming that the U.S. economy, still by far the worlds largest, is strong and getting stronger.

Final destination

Road freight volumes in the U.S. are another indicator of strong fuel demand. In the U.S., truck tonnage rates, another indicator of the transport of goods, are at their highest seasonal level in at least 20 years, data from the American Trucking Associations show. Rates surged by almost 8 percent last year and have declined only once annually since 2013. A increase in vehicle freight indicates more consumption of diesel. Little wonder theres some optimism from those who sell oil. Al-Falih, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, said at an event in India in late February that people are already talking about 2018 demand being way in excess of the 1.5 million-to-1.6 million barrels a day of 2017 -- even if he subsequently cautioned that only time will tell. At the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston this week, OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said demand is the strongest its been since the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009.

Official IEA and EIA forecasts are overly optimistic about demand destruction in oil, said Robert McNally, founder of the Rapidan Energy Group consultancy and a former adviser in President George W. Bushs White House. Growing demand, along with delays or cancellations in upstream projects will combine to propel crude prices in a new boom phase early in the next decade.
Turkey and the European Union will try again to revive their dormant relationship later this month in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Varna. Prospects for a positive outcome, however, appear slim as the issues clouding ties continue to mount. As Al-Monitor writes in an article "Upcoming summit unlikely to restart Turkeys EU progress", As matters stand, the Varna summit that Ankara called for a year ago may not even be held because of the latest standoff between Turkey and EU member Cyprus over gas exploration rights. If it goes forward, the summit scheduled for March 26 will bring together Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, European Council President Donald Tusk, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Bulgarian President Boyko Borissov in his capacity as EU term president.

Borissov is already pessimistic, telling reporters on Feb. 23 before an informal meeting of EU leaders in Brussels that the Varna meeting would be a heavy experience  loaded with expectations and tensions. He said he did not expect agreement on the questions raised there.

The latest Turkey-EU crisis erupted in mid-February, after Ankara sent warships to prevent a drillship contracted by the Greek Cypriot administration hired from the Italian oil company ENI from reaching a gas exploration well located southeast of Cyprus. Ankara does not recognize the exclusive economic zone the Greek Cypriot administration unilaterally declared in the region, saying that Turkish Cypriots have a stake too in the islands natural resources, which cant be exploited until the Cyprus problem is settled.

The EU is backing Cyprus against Turkey in the dispute. These actions contradict Turkeys commitments to good neighborly relations and their normalization with all member states, Tusk said after the EUs informal summit on Feb. 23. We are ready to cooperate with Turkey and will assess at our March European Council whether the conditions are there to hold the leaders meeting with Turkey in Varna on 26 March, he added.

Other issues clouding ties include the deterioration of democracy and human rights in Turkey and the imprisonment by Turkey of EU citizens  along with a large number of Turks  on terrorism charges, which the European side says are trumped up.

Despite Tusks warning, diplomatic sources contacted by Al-Monitor believe that the Varna summit will go ahead because both sides need to maintain dialogue on crucial issues. The most prominent of them is preventing the uncontrolled flow of refugees and migrants from the East to Europe, combating terrorism, securing energy routes, maintaining vast economic interests and ultimately retaining NATO member Turkey as a bulwark against regional uncertainties.

Efforts by Turkey and Germany to overcome a year of highly strained ties, capped with Prime Minister Binali Yildirims recent visit to Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, also reflect a recognition of the need to maintain dialogue between Ankara and European capitals. Turkey, however, wants this dialogue to be based on the core issue of its EU membership bid, which it says is vital for Europe too.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu made this perspective clear in an article for The Telegraph last week. Let us set our optics right: Without Turkey, Europe will be left exposed and vulnerable, Cavusoglu maintained. He said the sides should prepare their populations for the positive eventuality of Turkish membership rather than caving in to extremists that threaten to redefine the political center in too many European countries.

He was clearly referring to European politicians who claim that predominantly Islamic Turkey has no place in Europe. Cavusoglu went on to underline one of Ankaras key expectations from the EU, saying a visa liberalization regime for Turks would be a step forward. Turks were offered the option of visa-free travel to Europe in the migration deal agreed on between Ankara and the EU in March 2016, provided Turkey met 72 criteria.

Ankara says it has met the bulk of them, but refuses to change its terrorism law in line with the EUs demand. The EU wants Turkey to exclude acts from its current law that in Europe fall under freedom of speech.

Ankara says complying with the EUs demand would weaken its hand against terrorism, and has turned the visa liberalization issue into a litmus test of European sincerity. The outlook for Turkey getting what it wants, however, is poor under the prevailing conditions. Turkeys current terrorism law has been used to incarcerate thousands of people  including EU citizens  since the failed coup attempt against Erdogan in July 2016 and the flareup in Ankaras ongoing war with the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Ankara says complying with the EUs demand would weaken its hand against terrorism, and has turned the visa liberalization issue into a litmus test of European sincerity. The outlook for Turkey getting what it wants, however, is poor under the prevailing conditions.

Meanwhile, the terror question has also become a divisive issue between Turkey and the EU, even though the sides continue to cooperate against Islamic terrorism. Europes lenient approach to PKK supporters and the objections it is raising to Turkeys operation in Syria against the People's Protection Units  which Ankara says is an extension of the PKK  are seen in Ankara as European support for Kurdish terrorism. Many Turks believe that the EU is using the visa issue against Turkey to ensure that PKK supporters and members the group Ankara accuses of being behind the coup attempt escape punishment.

Most Turks today also believe that the EU was never sincere about granting Turkey membership, even if Ankara had enacted all the required reforms.

The Sharq Forum's Galip Dalay, who is also a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, underlined that Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party enacted major reforms during 2002-2007, which were rewarded by the EU with the start of membership talks in 2005. But joy for a new phase in relations soon fizzled out after German Chancellor Merkel and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy came to power, Dalay argued in a Feb. 15 article for the German Marshall Fund. Instead of focusing on the objective criteria Turkey had still to fulfill for membership, both Merkel and Sarkozy rejected the prospect of Turkeys EU membership from an identity-centric perspective, Dalay stated.

The Merkozy approach, as it came to be known, offered Ankara a special partnership instead of full membership to keep Turkey anchored in Europe for the sake of pragmatic considerations. Ankara rejected this idea from the start, but the Merkozy argument is gaining traction again in Europe as Turkeys democracy deteriorates and Europe becomes increasingly inward-looking.

French President Emmanuel Macron made this shift evident after meeting Erdogan in Paris in January. "We should  see if we cannot rethink this relationship, not in the framework of the [EU] integration process, but perhaps a cooperation, a partnership," Macron told reporters after his talks with Erdogan. He added that the main goal must be to keep NATO member Turkey "anchored" in Europe.

Retired senior Turkish diplomat Unal Cevikoz, who is a member of the main opposition Republican People's Partys parliamentary assembly, does not expect much to come out of Varna. It will provide an opportunity for some nice photographs, which Erdogan, Tusk and Juncker need to show that dialogue has not been severed, Cevikoz told Al-Monitor. He also believes that the question of Turkeys membership bid has effectively dropped from the agenda due to the political situation in Turkey. Tusk and Juncker may, however, bring up the issue of a new arrangement between Turkey and the EU that does not entail membership but keeps Turkey tethered to Europe, Cevikoz said.

As to whether the Varna summit will be canceled over the Cyprus issue, Cevikoz said this would mean a serious breakup between Turkey and the EU that he believes neither side wants.
The United States want to participate in an international conference on peace and security in Afghanistan, which is organized in Tashkent by the Uzbek government at the end of March. AS Reuters writes in an article "Uzbekistan seeks bigger role in Afghan peace process", Uzbekistan wants to establish a new venue for peace talks between the government of neighboring Afghanistan and the Taliban, it said on Tuesday, having invited the worlds top diplomats to a conference later this month. The Tashkent government hopes the March 26-27 conference will jumpstart the Afghan-owned, Afghan-led process for national reconciliation, its foreign ministry said in a statement.

It is unclear, however, whether any Taliban representatives will be present at the meeting where Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is set to deliver a keynote speech.

The meeting will be the first such event to be hosted by Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who came to power in 2016 and has pledged to open up the resource-rich nation of 32 million to the outside world. Tashkent has invited UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and his Special Representative for Afghanistan, Tadamichi Yamamoto, to the conference, as well as EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, and her counterparts from China, Russia, the United States, Britain and many other countries. It is, however, uncertain whether all of them will attend.

The Uzbek foreign ministry said it expected the meeting to adopt the resolution calling for guaranteed integration of the armed opposition into the political life of Afghanistan while condemning all forms and manifestations of terrorism.

Initiating the Tashkent Conference, Uzbekistan by no means intends to confine itself to arranging it as a one-off event, but to continue with vigorous efforts  both bilaterally and multilaterally  to promote a peaceful political process in Afghanistan, it said.

Mirziyoyev took over the predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic after the death of President Islam Karimov who had run it for more than a quarter of a century. Mirziyoyev has promised to liberalize the resource-rich nation and has embarked on a diplomatic campaign to bring in much-needed foreign investment.
Now Armenia has a new president. Not hundreds of thousands, but 90 people voted for him. There's an opinion that he will remain president of these 90 people, since public reaction to these elections without alternative was pretty mild. Most residents of the country don't understand who new president is and what should he do. They don't have any new expectations with the appearance of a new person in power, which creates indifference. In this sense, Armen Sarkissian becomes president that has a post, but has no country. Or, more precisely, the country doesn't view him as its leader.

There were some blank spots in the parliamentary vote too. The Hraparak newspaper writes: "Despite the fact that members of the Counting Commission of the Parliament swore that they wouldn't disclose content of the ballots, recognized invalid during voting on the candidature of Armen Sarkissian, publication managed to find out that name and surname of Gagik Tsarukyan as president of Armenia were written there.

101 deputies who took part in secret voting. 90 voted for Armen Sarkisyan, and 10 against. And since two deputies from the Yelk faction were absent, this means that three deputies who didn't support Armen Sarkissian were from the Tsarukyan bloc," the newspaper writes.

The same newspaper noted: "Inauguration of the new president of Armenia will take place on April 9 at a special meeting of the National Assembly (parliament) of the country." The ceremony won't take place in the parliament: right now options holding it in the Opera or Matenadaran are being discussed. Final decision will be made by chairman of the parliament.

Sources close to the authorities, when asked whether foreign guests will attend the ceremony, answered that they absolutely will. Aswering whether Prince Charles will be among the guests, source said he's not sure, but it's possible, but that the Queen definetely won't participate. Answering whether prime minister's inauguration will also take place, source said: "It will be held, but not as you imagine it: inauguration will take place at a special session of the parliament. Not inauguration of prime minister, but of the government," the newspaper writes.

"Zhamanak" newspaper writes that even before becoming president, Armen Sarkissian already plans his first foreign visit.

"Newly-elected president of Armenia Armen Sarkissian, even before officially becoming president, is going to visit Los Angeles, the US, on March 5, where he will hold a meeting with the Armenian community.

Most likely, Sarkissian wants to realize the goal he declared - become president of all Armenians. However, when he comes to the US, unpleasant surprise awaits Sarkissian, since Armenians of Los Angeles will ask him to use his constitutional right and pardon "Sasna Tsrer." Of course, Sarkissian can say that he can't do this without Serzh Sargsyan, since the right of pardon belongs to prime minister.

In any case, it's unclear why he organizes such meetings, when all issues can't be resolved without other people. He doesn't have authority, and his answer is always clear: "I don't decide anything," the newspaper writes.

Editor of the Aravot newspaper also raised issue of diaspora: "Remember when the new constitution was discussed there was an idea that representatives of diaspora structures will also participate in the election of the fourth president? Despite the fact that importance of diaspora is discussed for 26 years, we, I mean 10 million Armenians scattered all over the world, haven't found algorithm of cooperation. I don't think that everything will change tommorow, but perhaps Armen Sarkissian will at least search for this algorithm," he writes.

However, there are also uncertainties in the biography of Armenia's new president. Editor of the Hraparak newspaper writes: "I understand feelings of those people who say that you're harrasing Armen Sarkissian, that it doesn't matter when he gave up on his British citizenship - in 2014 or in 2012. But we must reach common position on one issue: should the laws be respected, or were they written just so we could violate them. If our goal is to use diaspora to its full potential and some articles of the constitution don't allow us to do it, maybe we should abandon those articles? And if they are already written and it's impossible to abandon them, then we should observe them.It will help everyone to fight temptation of breaking the law."

Head of the Yelk parliamentary faction Nikol Pashinyan decided he can't leave this matter without attention: he wrote letter to Armenia's police chief Vladimir Gasparyan, demanding to show document that confirms that Armen Sarkissian wasn't a citizen of the UK after 2011, he told correspondent of the Zhamanak newspaper. According to Pashinyan, during the meeting with the Yelk bloc, Sarkissian said that he was no longer British citizen.

"Yelk respectfully accepted this statement, but at the same time demanded to present document that confirms this fact," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

It seems that new president is also burdened by certain attributes of presidential power. For example, as the Irates newspaper writes, he's not happy that from now on he will be accompanied by security officers and motorcade - this matter was discussed and resolved minutes after his election.

"During the entire pre-election period he rejected all such proposals and went to meetings alone. During his visit to Gyumri he asked governor, mayor and other officials who greeted him to not accompany him. During his visit to one of the schools in Gyumri, Sarkissian was very surprised to see police officers guarding him.

By the way, it's still unclear where will new president live: at the government dacha or in his comfortable mansion in the Kosern quarter?" the newspaper writes.
Discriminatory policy of the US and its allies, "green energy", excessive financial burden on fuel and energy sector and decline in quality of new fields are key threats to the Russian energy security, highlighted by the Energy Ministry experts in the new Energy Security Doctrine. President of the Union of Oil and Gas Producers Gennady Shmal discussed magnitude of risks created by these threats to the Russian oil and gas industry in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.

- How serious is the threat from the West today?

- Basically, our energy industry in general and oil and gas complex in particular don't really depend on foreign companies, despite sanctions that will last 4 years in March. Our oil and gas complex works steadily, even with certain growth in production. Of course, we remain at the same level as in 2016 because of last year's OPEC+ agreement, but in all previous years we had increase in oil production, as well as in gas production. By the way, recently we can see that nature is obviously on our side: both last year's and this year's winter in Europe is quite tough, demand for gas is high there, and that's why Europeans realized that they can't live without the Russian gas. That's why last year we had record for gas export to Europe - 193 billion cubic meters, and this year the winter period set a new record. All those politicians who constantly oppose Russia and the Russian gas, as soon as they felt the cold, immediately lifted restrictions on the OPAL gas pipeline - if previously Gazprom was allowed to load only 50% of the pipe, now it's allowed to load 90%. Cold made these people make not only political, but also social and economic decisions. I belive that situation will remain approximately the same, Europe will still need our gas.

- What inconvenience does the Russian energy industry feel today due to limited contacts with the West?

- First of all, lack of access to technologies related to extraction of hard-to-recover reserves on the shelf. Right now our production on the shelf is quite low, and there's still no urgent need for it, but nevertheless, it's necessary to engage explore more fields, and sanctions prevent us from doing so. But the key problem is lack of access to relatively cheap and long money of European banks. Current situation doesn't worry us, it doesn't affect us yet, but we can't see sources of long money in the long term. Even during our best years, when oil and gas dollars basically fell from the sky, unfortunately, we couldn't create normally functioning, good banking system. Now Russian banks offer loans to our organizations for 2-3 years at 15% interest, but it's very expensive.

Industry needs cheap, long money, and their absence due to the Western sanctions means that right now we don't drill oil and gas fields that will be profitable in a few years. You can't sit idly by, you have to look for ways out of this situation and find investments. We're doing it, and many foreign companies understand our interest and are looking for ways to pass sanctions by. Everyone's working on it, and I believe that it's not even an issue. Current problem is that finances are not efficiently managed in the country: financing of many facilities is delayed or goes wrong, and many issues are resolved very slowly and badly - when something can be resolved in a month, Russia resolves it for years. The State Duma adopts absolutely unreasonable laws, and this often hinders our work more than any foreign opponents.

- How can "green energy" harm the Russian energy security?

- I can see only one threat - sudden interest in new, expensive and untested "green" technologies, and abandonment of traditional ones. So far these exotic types of energy are very expensive, and only rich countries like Germany and the US can afford to spend 1.5-2 times more on them than on energy from coal and gas. I belive that gas, oil and coal will be the main sources of energy until the end of the 21th century, and "green energy" will reach a share of 12-15%. Hydropower and nuclear energy, of course, will still develop, but oil and gas will remain in demand, and demand for them will continue to grow.

When we talk about where should we invest money, we recognize that it's necessary to work on "green energy", it has some prospects, but doing it at the expense of traditional sources of energy is wrong. We recently discussed issues related to thermal energy in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and came to the conclusion that if we can't solve issues related to reconstruction of our heating networks, then Russia's thermal power engineering can face certain problems. Fans of exotic things can work on wind and sun energy, but right now it's necessary to work on more important problems on the all-Russian scale.
Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday, a few days after Frances visiting foreign minister sought to raise Tehrans role in regional conflicts, Reuters reported.

Jean-Yves Le Drian flew to Tehran on Monday with a brief to reaffirm European support for a 2015 nuclear deal that opened up Irans economy while echoing U.S. concern about Tehrans missile program and its influence in the region.

European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It is none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here? Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Khamenei said the Islamic Republic would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region. He described the presence of U.S. military forces in various regions of the world as malicious and seditious and said Iran would not ask for permission from Washington to be active in the Middle East.

We will negotiate with America when we want to be present in America, he said.
Nagorno-Karabakh is not a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member, and therefore the organization will not provide military assistance to Khankendi, said Anatoly Sidorov, Chief of the CSTO Joint Staff, APA reported citing news.am.

He noted that a CSTO agreement is signed with Armenia, and, correspondingly, the CSTO has certain commitments to Yerevan.

In addition, Anatoly Sidorov stressed that the CSTO does not have the authority to intervene in a conflict without a respective request by the organizations member country which a party to this conflict.
The influential Dutch Diplomat Magazine has published an article devoted to Azerbaijani women. Azerbaijan recently hosted its first Global Startup Weekend Women in Baku attracting 50 entrepreneurs leading the countrys fast-growing startup ecosystem. Two women from a human resources and job-seeker startup called TalentPort won this competition and represented Azerbaijan at the Global Startup Weekend Women in Paris, wrote the author of the article Geovanny Vicente Romero, founder of the Dominican Republic Center of Public Policy, Leadership and Development (CPDL-RD, international consultant), AzerNews reported.

The author writes that TalentPort is described as the first Azerbaijani corporate social responsible company aimed to provide students and disabled people with temporary jobs to build their skills and provide a reliable, cost-effective source of labor. This company is an excellent example of the valuable contributions women leaders make in Azerbaijans modern society with a strong track record of womens empowerment reflected in the countrys political leadership and educational attainment, Romero notes.

The author asks: How has Azerbaijans human development set itself apart from its neighbors? A small Muslim-majority nation squeezed between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan is no different from its Muslim neighbors, yet the progressive government of the short-lived republic in 1918-1920 ensured that women became full members of the liberal and secular society, said the article.

Romero pointed out that a renowned Polish-American historian Tadeusz Swietochowski wrote in his seminal book Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920 that the National Councils law on Constituent Assembly providing proportional representation to minorities and political groups, and universal suffrage effectively made Azerbaijan the first state in the Muslim world to grant women their political rights.

Thus, Azerbaijani women were enfranchised even ahead of many developed nations of Europe and the United States of America, wrote the author. Romero noted that the US passed the 19th Amendment to its Constitution giving American women their voting rights in 1920. Since 1918, women have become a sign of progress in Azerbaijan. This tradition continues into the 21st Century, he added.

In March 2000, Azerbaijans President Heydar Aliyev signed an executive order on a new State Policy on Women, instructing the administration to ensure proportional representation of women in government based on the principles of equality; make sure women have their deserved place in business and economics, and consistently check the progress of women in the society, recalled the author.

The new law may have solidified the path that was already leading women in Azerbaijan to new heights, according to the article. At present, Azerbaijan has a female cabinet member and 16 percent of its 125-member National Assembly are women. According to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Womens report on Azerbaijan, the poverty rate among women decreased from 49 percent in earlier years to 5.9 percent in 2014, a statistic that can be attributed both to the overall economic development of the country with equal participation and benefit to its women, Romero wrote.

The author pointed out that Azerbaijan society values education, with 90 percent of women graduating from secondary school education. Since enforcing the 2000 law on the state policy on women, women by 2015 made up 18 percent of Azerbaijan entrepreneurs. Azerbaijani women are also serving in the military, with an estimated 1,000 women in active military duty alongside men. The power of women in Azerbaijan also extends to minorities. Such is the case of Tatyana Goldman Alexander, an Azerbaijani Jew holding a seat in the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan, a testament to the countrys special attention to ethnic minorities and women, said the article.

Romero pointed out that some modern-day inspiration for women in Azerbaijan is coming from the influential First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva. In her tenure as the First Lady, she has served as the Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO and ISESCO, taking her philanthropic work beyond Azerbaijan, said the article. Heydar Aliyev Foundation that shes led since its formation in 2004, has made substantial contribution to enhancing cultural and economic development, especially when it comes to young women, noted the author.
The Georgian and Serbian foreign ministers signed a visa free deal between the two countries, Agenda.ge reports.

The agreement will enable Georgian citizens holding ordinary passports to travel visa free to Serbia.

The Foreign Minister of Serbia Ivica Dacic announced that the agreement would come into effect before parliaments completion of certain administrative procedures.

"Today we signed the visa free agreement and tomorrow the government of Serbia will make an exception and activate the deal before parliament completes its procedures over the issue. Consequently, the citizens of Georgia will have the right to travel visa free to Serbia before the parliamentary procedures are finalized, Dacic stated during the press conference with Mikheil Janelidze.
Yuval Steinitz, Israels Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources, said they continue negotiations with Turkey regarding the construction of a pipeline to supply natural gas to Turkey and the European Union (EU), and the respective final agreement is not signed yet, News.am reported citing RIA Novosti news agency.

But in July 2017, Steinitz had informed that Israel and Turkey agreed to sign the final agreement by the end of last year.

We still have no agreement with Turkey, the Israeli official said speaking at CERAWeek energy conference. There is no pipeline from Israel to Turkey; negotiations on this issue are still underway. So far, the discussions are very friendly. But you know, sometimes it takes some time for a dialogue between the business sector and the government.
Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected as untrue the allegations of the US Department of State that no discussions of his possible meeting with US State Secretary Rex Tillerson in Ethiopia were held, TASS reports.

"I wouldnt like to comment on this issue but today I have learnt that no discussion of the possibility of our meeting was held," Lavrov said. "Considering that they deemed it appropriate [to make such statements], I want to say that this is untrue."

"In actual fact, everything was as follows. In January, the UN Security Council held a session chaired by the president of Kazakhstan, to which Tillerson had been unable to come. Three days later, when I returned to Moscow, Rex Tillerson called me up and said: Let us hold a meeting and let us think about the time and the place suitable for both of us," the Russian foreign minister said.

As Lavrov pointed out, during the phone call they agreed to meet if they found themselves at the same place and time. "When it turned out that both of us would be in Ethiopia this evening, we delivered the relevant proposal to the Americans. They said they would think over that," Lavrov pointed out.

"But when they were asked yesterday about whether or not the meeting would take place, they replied that the encounter had not been discussed. I am now telling you the truth and I wouldnt like to go into details but considering that they publicly refute obvious facts, I have had to speak on that," Russias top diplomat said.
Britains Prime Minister Theresa May broached the subject of human rights in a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, amid domestic scrutiny over the U.Ks backing of a Saudi-led coalition battling rebels in Yemen, TIME reports.

Prince Mohammed is on a three-day visit to Britain, during which the two countries hope to hash out up to 65billion ($90billion) in trade and investment deals, the BBC reports.

In a statement issued Wednesday, a Downing Street spokesperson said that during their meeting May welcomed recent reforms in Saudi Arabia, including on women attending sporting events and the cinema, and being legally able to drive from June.

The Prime Minister and Crown Prince had agreed to work together to intensify reforms, particularly on womens rights and on universal human rights, the spokesperson said.
The Turkish military and Free Syrian Army captured Jinderes town in Syria's northwestern Afrin district from Peoples Protection Units (YPG) militants on March 8, the Turkish army has announced, Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 along with elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to clear Afrin of the YPG.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terror group for its ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is listed as a terror group by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union.
US Navy aircraft carrier strike groups are spending more time in the Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, and the Baltic attending to the "Russian presence problem," Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said during testimony before the US Congress, Sputnik reported.

"We are spending a lot more time in the European theater," Richardson told members of the Hosue Appropriations Committee. "Carrier strike groups, for instance, that would just transit through the Mediterranean at maximum speed to get to the Middle East are spending much more time in the Mediterranean, not only contributing to Inherent Resolve, but also working the Russian presence problem in the Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, the Baltic, etc."

Richardson also noted that a "resurgent" Russia has ensured that its maritime forces, particularly in the field of anti-submarine warfare, remain robust.

"They [Russians] really have never taken their eye off the development and deployment of their undersea forces but they have really stepped on the gas and stepped that up both in technology and the capacity in the amount of time they are spending deployed," Richardson said. "That's exactly why are investments there are focused on anti-submarine warfare problem both enhancing our undersea sensors and infrastructure for our anti-submarine aircraft the P-8."
The Security Council on Thursday renewed the mandate of the United Nations political mission in Afghanistan for another year to continue providing assistance to the Government and the people of the conflict-plagued country.





We have important tasks ahead of us this year, Tadamichi Yamamoto, the Secretary-Generals Special Representative and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (

), told the 15-member Council, which voted unanimously to extend the operations mandate until 17 March 2019.





Looking ahead, he noted that the Mission also focus on peace efforts, the upcoming elections and the Ministerial Conference on Afghanistan which the UN would host with the Afghan Government in Geneva on 28 November. He also noted that the Missions critical work covers human rights and reforms, including anti-corruption.





On the political front, Mr. Yamamoto said that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered peace to the Taliban without preconditions, and laid out a path for negotiations with a series of concrete proposals to create space for the opening of talks.





The offer of negotiation is on the table. It is now incumbent upon the Taliban to come forward with an offer of their own, and start direct talks with the Government to put an end to the suffering of the Afghan people, he said.




HA NOI  The Department of Cooperatives and Rural Development (DCRD) under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and non-government organisation Good Neighbors International (GNI) signed a cooperation agreement yesterday, hoping to introduce new farming methods and the agricultural products value chain to remote areas.

A development assistance programme is underway to support the establishment, organisation and operation of new agricultural cooperatives and agro-food value chains in areas supported by the GNI.

Key beneficiaries include poor people in mountainous and ethnic minority areas.

The assistance programmes first phase during the 2018-2020 period includes jointly developed new cooperatives, aiming at efficient production and income generation.

The ultimate goal is forming an appropriate link between agricultural production, distribution and marketing towards sustainable agri-food chains.

An Yong Sic, Chief Representative of GNI in Viet Nam, said that within their supporting programme, GNI has cooperated with over 1,000 farmers in three provinces of Thanh Hoa, Hoa Binh and Tuyen Quang.

GNI cooperates with a number of supermarkets and convenience stores in Ha Noi to assist these farmers in finding a distributor. So far, a number of their products have been sold at Kmart, Lotte Mart and Vinmart.

GNI and the DCRD will conduct surveys and research on current agricultural products consumption demand, so they can interpret suitable market linkages between new cooperative groups and implement communication activities to support product sustainability.

Ma Quang Trung, DCRDs Director General, said at the signing that though Viet Nam had about 12,000 cooperatives as of 2017, only about 38 per cent of them have reported any positive result.

Generally, cooperative members income is still low, since they are mostly small and very small groups struggling to get their products to the market.

In the coming years, GNI will continue their support programmes and connect farmers with agricultural products distributors, as well as maintain up to 12 existing revolving funds for cooperatives, worth VN12.4 billion (US$550,000) in total.  VNS
HCM CITY  The packaging industry is expected to grow at a minimum of 10 per cent on average in the coming years, according to experts.

Demand for food packaging would continue to increase driven by growing demand for food and beverages processed and packaged for domestic consumption and export, BT Tee, general manager of SES Vietnam Exhibition Services (UBM VES), said.

Processing and packaging is one of the emerging industries with massive growth potential and whose development has greatly impacted other sectors and industries, he said.

Many international food manufacturers and packaging producers have come to Viet Nam to invest, he told a press conference held in HCM City on Tuesday to introduce the Propak Vietnam exhibition.

Prof Dr Luu Duan, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Food Science and Technology, said the countrys packaging industry has seen rapid changes in recent years due to the strong development of the food processing industry.

Consumers are increasingly focused on food hygiene and quality, with more opting for packaged products, he said.

The domestic food production sector, though diverse in terms of variety, has low yields, quality and value-addition and high post-harvest losses, mainly because it follows traditional preservation and processing methods.

Therefore, besides improving farming methods, Viet Nam also needs to pay attention to harvesting, improving processing technology and rational use of advanced packaging to improve product quality and ensure food safety and hygiene.

Packaging costs are currently high, accounting for more than 50 per cent of cost for certain products, and food processors are looking for ways to cut packaging costs, including through the use of automation, he said.

Most machines as well as materials used in the packaging industry are imported, he said.

PROPAK Vietnam, a major annual processing and packaging technology exhibition, would help businesses discover new production technologies and strengthen business links, he said.

2018 PROPAK Vietnam

Lee said PROPAK Vietnam, to be held in HCM City from March 20 to 22, would showcase many cutting-edge processing and packaging machines, technologies and services for the food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, bottling and beverages, barcoding, printing and labelling industries.

Organised by UBM VES, the exhibition has attracted more than 420 exhibitors from 29 countries and territories, including 11 international group pavilions from India, Denmark, Italy, Germany, mainland China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

Conferences and seminars will be held on the sidelines of the expo, including technical seminars hosted by the Viet Nam Association of Food Science and Technology and Lean Six Sigma Network, with topics areas ranging from food safety control and risk management to emerging trends in industrial water treatment.

The opportunities offered by the event are enhanced by the joint staging of the Plastics and Rubber Vietnam, a trade event for plastics and rubber manufacturing technologies and materials.

Propak Vietnam will be held at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Centre in District 7, and is expected to attract more than 8,200 trade visitors.  VNS
HCM CITY  A wide range of furniture, handicrafts, interior decor products and support services are on display at the Viet Nam International Furniture and Home Accessories Fair, VIFA Expo 2018, which opened in HCM City yesterday.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Nguyen Quoc Khanh, chairman of the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of HCM City (Hawa), one of the organisers, said the event has attracted 450 local and foreign enterprises, 29 per cent and 43 per cent more than last year.

Foreign exhibitors account for a third of all booths, he said.

They are from Singapore, Taiwan, the US, Australia, Russia, Canada, mainland China, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, and New Zealand.

To serve an estimated 4,000 international visitors, the association has signed an agreement with the HCM City Tourism Association to assist them with hotels, transport, visas, travel, and other arrangements, Khanh said.

Permanent Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Ha Cong Tuan said the wood industry has enjoyed average growth of more than 10 per cent in recent years and still has a lot of steam left.

The National Assembly amended the Forestry Law last year, supplementing articles on wood processing and recognising the wood industrys role, he said.

The Government has promised consistent policies and support for businesses in the wood processing, handicrafts and supporting industries, he added.

After growing at 10.2 per cent last year exports of wood and wood products were worth US$7.66 billion, the target figure for 2020.

The forestry industry is aiming for $9 billion this year, with wood and wooden products accounting for $8.5-8.7 billion.

To achieve the target, enterprises need to focus on technological innovation, especially automation, invest in improving human resources and management, and expand export markets, Tuan said.

Organised by the HCM City Department of Industry and Trade, Hawa, and Hawa Corporation, the fair, being held at the Sai Gon Exhibition and Convention Centre, will go on until March 10.

Hoa Mai Prizes

At the opening ceremony Hawa announced the winners of its Hoa Mai Prize for furniture design for 2017-18.

Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang, a student at HCM City University of Architecture, won the first prize for her Giao thoa (interference) desk.

Le inh Chung of Ton uc Thang University and Ngo Nhu Quynh of Van Lang University won the first and second runner-up prizes for their roly light and modern desk.

Hawa also gave away six consolation prizes for the best functional, marketable, aesthetic, creative and unique, eco-friendly, and technical designs.

The winning works are on display at the VIFA EXPO.

Launched last year, the 15th edition of the competition, which seeks to discover and foster talented designers to develop the furniture industry, attracted 191 entries from 179 contestants.  VNS
HCM City  The HCM City Peoples Committee has unveiled a programme called Talent attraction that will seek to attract experts and scientists to public offices and departments and high-tech parks by offering them financial and other incentives.

On being hired, they will receive a grant of VN80  100 million (US$3,500  4,400) depending on their previous accomplishments. They could then get an additional income equivalent to 1 per cent of the government outlay for their research, which could range from VN50 million ($2,200) to VN1 billion ($44,000) in case of an individual expert or scientist and up to VN1.5 billion ($66,000) in case of a group.

They will also get subsidized accommodation and a 50 per cent income tax waiver as well as other benefits when their product is commercialised.

But the programme has already come in for criticism as impractical.

The project has a lot of conditions that leading experts and scientists dare not apply, Prof Dr Nguyen Ngoc Giao, chairman of the HCM City Union of Sciences and Technology Associations, told a meeting held yesterday by the Viet Nam Fatherland Front to review the programme.

It looks like hiring rather than inviting talent because candidates must apply and go through two rounds.

The local government should discuss with experts and scientists what the city needs and how they can meet the citys requirements.

We said we will give talented people the red carpet treatment, but beneath the carpet are a lot of challenges in terms of administration.

Prof Dr Phan Thi Tuoi, former principal of the HCM City Polytechnic University, criticised the proposed duration of the contracts of only 18 months.

Leading experts and scientists will already have stable positions. Now they will have to sign a contract for just 18 months without knowing what will happen next. Thats impossible.

Assoc Prof Dr ang Van Phan of Cuu Long University wondered: It seems the city only needs talent when it has projects. Will the scientists have a role in formulating projects or merely execute them?

He suggested instead that the city should invite experts to create effective projects.

Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen uc Loc of Thu Dau Mot University said: Authorities must consider taking advantage of existing experts to avoid creating rivalry between them and the new ones.

Giao said no distinction should be made between foreign and local scientists.

Payment should be based on capability. Support [for foreign experts] should be provided in the form of accommodation and travelling subsidies, not salary.

The small difference between proposed salary levels for senior and young scientists was criticised by Tuoi.

Paying veterans a salary of just VN1 million ($44) more is not fair.

Prof Dr Nguyen Ky Phung, deputy director of the city Science and Technology Department, said: The most important aspect that could attract leading experts and scientists to work is a proper working environment where they can devote themselves fully.

Most delegates agreed that the programme does not invite experts to work for the city, but merely seeks to hire them.

They also suggested that the Peoples Committee should delegate the authority of signing up the experts to departments and invest more in identifying and nurturing young talent.  VNS
HA NOI  An introductory session for elected officials on Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) was held on Tuesday by the National Assemblys Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children, in partnership with the Ministry of Labour Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) and UNICEF.

The session aimed to increase awareness among National Assembly (NA) members on the importance of IECD and obtain their commitment to promote IECD in the work of elected bodies.

Having the IECD programme in place is important. Equally important is to ensure it is put into operation on the ground. Effective implementation of IECD will require the strong attention and engagement of elected officials in reinforcing their oversight and ensuring the programme is fully financed, well-coordinated and scaled up at a national level, said Ngo Thi Minh, Deputy Chairwoman of the NAs Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Children.

IECD refers to a comprehensive care and development approach for children from birth to eight years of age. It enables families to access multiple services for their young children and themselves in a cohesive way.

The integration of the services seeks to maximise the impact of different early childhood disciplines with a clear focus on the child, within the context of their family and community.

In Viet Nam, major gaps remain in supporting the cognitive and emotional development of girls and boys, especially for those under eight years of age. Close to 25 per cent of children under five years of age suffer from stunted emotional and educational growth.

Approximately 72 per cent of preschool age children (aged from three to five) and 9.4 per cent of kindergarten age children (aged under three) do not attend any formal pre-learning programme.

Every year, about 2,000 children experience violence and abuse; 170,000 children are without parental care; and many are injured, including drowning, one of the leading cause of death in children.

The importance of investing in early childhood development has been increasingly recognised by Viet Nam, with the passage of Party Resolutions regarding the care, protection, education and health and nutrition of children, the approval of the Law on Children in 2016, which is the primary piece of legislation for the protection, care and education for children including infants, and the passage of the Law on Health Insurance offering free healthcare for children under six years of age.

The National Assembly of Viet Nam has a vital role in promoting the nationwide implementation of Integrated Early Childhood Development, bringing together different agencies that play a critical role in the life of a child. Failing to have a strong commitment to invest in and implement IECD would come at a great cost with poor learning, slow physical growth, lower wages, higher unemployment, and increased dependence on public assistance that weigh down economic and social progress for everyone, said Yoshimi Nishino, Acting Deputy Representative of UNICEF Viet Nam.  VNS
A NANG  Four years ago, oan Viet Ha and Pham Thi Trang of Hai Chau District, central city of a Nang had their first son thanks to in vitro fertilization (IFV) treatment.

The baby born on December 25, 2014 is one of the very first babies born thanks to IVF at the a Nang Hospital for Women and Children after the hospital established its Infertility Department in March, 2014.

Ha said that his family was desperate: he and Trang could not have a baby for years despite three rounds of IVF treatment at other hospitals.

Trang said that as soon as the a Nang Hospital for Women and Children opened Infertility Department, the couple became the first clients.

The treatment results were over our expectations, Trang said.

The moment when I first saw my son was the happiest moment of my life, Ha said.

Two other couples in a Nang City also had children thanks to IVF at the a Nang Hospital for Women and Children at that time.

They had all been hoping to have babies for years and had experienced a range of feelings along the way, including anxiety, happiness, disappointment and hope.

Director of the hospital Tran inh Vinh is the surgeon who delivered the three IVF babies, all via caesarean section.

He warned that after IVF treatment, it can be a long path couples until the babies are born, and sometimes the procedure does not work.

As an obstetric doctor, I feel happiest when helping a baby get out of the mothers abdomen and uterus and then clean the babys mouth and nose, Vinh said, adding that the feeling remained unchanged no matter how many babies he delivers.

He said that before the hospitals Infertility Department was opened, couples in central regions, particularly in a Nang City, had to travel to Ha Noi, HCM City or went abroad to take IVF.

Besides medical costs, changes in daily routines also greatly affect the mentality and treatment process, Vinh said.

As of today, 370 babies have been born through IVF at the hospital. Nearly 100 women who became pregnant after IVF treatment are waiting to give birth.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Le, head of the hospitals Infertility Department, said that the success rate for IVF at the hospital was 35-45 per cent, quite good when compared with other hospitals in Viet Nam .

However, the rate also meant that failure is more likely than success, which creates pressure on both medical staff and infertile couples, Le said.

Having a baby is a journey that no one can exactly know and say when it ends. It can be one month, ten years or more. Meanwhile, giving birth to a baby requires efforts every minute, Le said.

Infertility treatment depends on factors including physical and mental conditions, age, time of starting medical treatment and treatment history.

IVF was usually considered the last hope for many infertile couples, Le said. The process required strict conditions of darkness, temperature, humidity and oxygen concentration to create a fertilization environment like that in the mothers uterus.

Fertilization occurs when the nucleus of both a sperm and an egg fuse to form a diploid cell, known as zygote. The successful fusion of gametes forms a new organism.

Hundreds of techniques are used to raise the organism and transfer it into the mothers body. All moves must be done exactly and carefully as much as possible to increase the chances of success, Le said.

The birth of every baby creates fresh happiness for us just like the first IFV baby did, Le said.

In difficult cases, both doctors and patients burst into tears when informed that the IFV was successful and a baby will come to life, Le said, because they are out of our expectations or we didnt dare to think about such fruitful results.

Arriving at the Infertility Department, people usually find it very quiet. No noisy talks or laughs of pregnant women sharing experiences giving birth or raising children. No anxious or expectant faces of fathers-to-be.

Alongside the quietness is the unspoken desire of the couples to become parents. They seemingly step in silence as they are afraid that any noise or loud voice could break the vulnerable opportunity to have a child.

Doctor Le said that as long as there is a hope and couples want to continue the journey, the doctors would be with them.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has urged the organising board of the 6th Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS-6) Summit and 10th Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam (CLV-10) Development Triangle Summit to prepare for these events.  VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has urged the organising board of the 6th Greater Mekong Sub-Region (GMS-6) Summit and 10th Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam (CLV-10) Development Triangle Summit to prepare for these events.

Speaking at a meeting yesterday, the PM highlighted that the summits, which are scheduled from March 29 to March 31 in Ha Noi, are among the three largest multilateral events to be held in Viet Nam this year as they offer opportunities to State leaders to discuss measures to boost trade and investment and ensure security and sustainable use of the Mekong water resources.

Meticulous preparations for the events are significant to affirm Viet Nams increasing role and prestige in the region, he said, emphasising media work to raise public awareness of the importance of co-operation in the GMS and the Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam Development Triangle.

The GMS co-operation was initiated in 1992, encompassing Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam, and Chinas provinces of Guangxi and Yunnan. Over the years, the co-operation has been expanded to cover various fields with the aim of making it easy for co-operation for development among the members.

Meanwhile, the CLV Development Triangle co-operation was set up in 1999 to spur the development of border provinces of the three neighbouring countries. The co-operation has been stepped up over the past years, thus promoting economic-trade ties and contributing to shifting economic structures and boosting connectivity among the three economies.

Following the success of the APEC Viet Nam 2017, the hosting of the GMS-6 and the CLV-10 will continue to affirm the countrys rising position in the international arena as well as its more active contributions to the co-operation mechanisms in the region.  VNS
QUANG NINH  Police in the northern province of Quang Ninh, in co-ordination with Hai Duong Province, arrested a man for rape, after nearly 20 years on the run.

Nguyen Van Hai, 37, from Hai Duong Provinces Chi Linh Township, was wanted after he raped a 4-year-old girl in 1999 and then escaped.

When he was in hiding, Hai used the identity card of his friend Pham Van Thuong.

In 2011, taking advantage of the loopholes in paperwork management of the authorities, Hai made a new passport and fled to Russia.

He returned home in early 2015 and lived with a woman in Hai Duong Provinces Thanh Mien District.

However, due to his difficult economic situation, he went to Quang Yen town in Quang Ninh Province to work as an onboard mechanic.

After a long period of investigation, police arrested Hai on Wednesday while he was working on board a cruise ship, putting an end to his hiding of nearly 20 years.  VNS
ONG NAI  A dialogue has been held between a working group of the southern ongNai Provinces Peoples Committee and hundreds of workers of a company whose managers have fled the country.

Unemployment insurance, maternity period for pregnant women and the timeframe in which the workers of KL Texwell Vina will receive the remaining 50 per cent of their salary for January were some of the problems discussed.

Issues related to closing of social insurance books and solutions of competent agencies to help old and pregnant workers find new jobs were also discussed on Wednesday.

Representatives of ong Nai Province Social Insurance told the workers that the maternity period has been solved for 20 pregnant workers of the company, with a total amount of social premium of over VN630 million (US$27,700).

KL Texwell Vina is a South Korea-invested textile and garment manufacturer in the Bau Xeo Industrial Park, Trang Bom District.

Earlier, on February 9, workers of KL Texwell Vina gathered to demand the payment of their January salary, which amounts to a total of some VN13.7 billion ($604,170). However, the concerned departments at the company said late on February 8, their director-general, together with 11 executives, had left for South Korea.

Over the past few days, officials from the insurance sector have been visiting the workers of the company to address problems relating to social insurance to ensure the legitimate rights of the remaining labourers.

According to Nguyen Thi Nhu Y, vice chairman of ong Nai Provinces Confederation of Labour, workers of KL Texwell Vina are facing a lot of difficulties.

She said the confederation was keeping a count of the number of pregnant and old workers and was trying to convince enterprises in the province to take them in. So far, 15 enterprises have agreed to employ the workers with a stable income, she said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the working group visited the company to solve the problems of employees.

The group asked the workers to compile designation letters and gave advice on how to terminate labour contracts and close social insurance books.

The Trade Union Legal Consultancy Centre under the ongNai Provinces Labour Confederation has initiated proceedings to file lawsuits against KL Texwell Vina so that its machinery and other assets could be sold off to pay for the workers salaries and supporting polices.

Previously, the Peoples Committee of ong Nai province has decided to use its own budget to pay for the salary of 2,000 workers.

On February 12, each worker received 50 per cent of their January salary that KL Texwell Vina owes. They also received another VN600,000 (US$26.4) as support from the Viet Nam General Labour Confederation, the provincial labour confederation and Fatherland Front Committee.

KL Texwell Vina is a 100 per cent South Korean-owned company. It registered with Vietnamese authorities in December 2015, with a charter capital of VN100 billion ($4.4 billion), and hired 1,928 employees.

Aside from the late payment of salary, the company has also reportedly failed to pay social insurance for its employees since August last year, which amounts to more than VN17.5 billion ($771,750).  VNS
Friends of Land Between the Lakes to hold clean up project Saturday
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For the past few days, Kajal Aggarwal has been shooting in Azerbaijan, where some songs from her upcoming film MLA are being shot. Kalyanram is the lead actor in this action entertainer and its being directed by Upendra Madhav.

While Kajal was accompanied by her mother in the beginning of the shoot, she was thrilled to see her sister Nisha Aggarwal and nephew Ishaan too joining her to spend some quality time with the family. No wonder, she shared a picture of her nephew saying, Cannot get better than this  #obsessedmasi.

Meanwhile, the team is expected to wrap up the shoot in Azerbaijan sometime next week after which theyll begin promoting the film. MLA is slated for release on March 23.









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ST. LOUIS, MO, March 08, 2018 /24-7PressRelease/ -- William K. Busch Brewing Co. took part in the 7th Annual New York International Beer Competition (NYIBC) on February 11, winning a bronze medal in the American Style Premium Lager category for its Kraftig brand. The brewery also received an individual state award as the Missouri Lager Brewery of the Year.



Kraftig Lagers were among over 600 beers submitted to this year's competition, with a total of 14 countries represented across 50 categories. A trade-buyer-only panel judged the beers based on both category and actual price.



"We're proud to receive recognition from major beer competitions like the New York International because it serves as a testament to the quality and craftsmanship of our beers," said William K. "Billy" Busch, president and CEO of the St. Louis-based company that bears his name. "There are hundreds of breweries in Missouri, so being named the top lager brewery in the state is a true honor for us."



Kraftig's bronze medal marks the 34th medal won by Kraftig and Kraftig Light over the past six years. Last year's NYIBC saw Kraftig Light winning a silver medal in the Lager Beer Styles--North American Origin category and the brewery being named the Missouri Brewery of the Year.



"Brewers work hard to make beers that they think people will enjoy. Winning a medal from a prestigious competition is second only to having a customer tell you they like your product," said Marc Gottfried, Brewmaster at the William K. Busch Brewing Company. "We are fortunate to have had our hard work rewarded by both a strong customer following and being recognized at the New York International Beer Competition."



William K. Busch Brewing Co. looks forward to competing in future beer competitions this season, but for now, Busch feels nothing but pride after the recognition.



"Talk about proud: proud of our beers, proud of our Brewmaster, Marc Gottfried, and proud of my family for continuing the Busch brewing legacy," Busch said. "I think my father would be proud of the work we're doing."



About William K. Busch Brewing Co.: William K. Busch Brewing Co. represents a new chapter for both the Busch family legacy and the American brewing industry. Founded in 2011, William K. Busch Brewing Company produces two premium American lagers - Kraftig and Kraftig Light. The lagers are brewed with only the finest, all-natural ingredients - pure water, Hallertau hops, malt from two- and six-row barley, and proprietary yeast. The Kraftig brands are available throughout Missouri, Western Illinois, and Eastern Kansas.



For more information, contact Kylene Herr, (314) 621-8265, ext. 109, or [email protected]



# # #
Mar 8, 2018 | By Benedict

Physicians and biomedical engineers at Ohio State University have been 3D printing patient aortas in flexible materials using CT scan data. These 3D printed aorta models can be tested in heart simulators to determine the best course of treatment for a patient.

Testing a 3D printed aorta in a heart simulator

There are many reasons why a patient might need an aortic valve replacement. One of the most common reasons, however, is aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the valve opening. This stenosis can occur when valve leaflets become stiff from calcification, which prevents the left ventricle from pumping a sufficient amount of blood into the aorta.

Once the valve is diseased in this way, doctors need to decide on the appropriate course of action, which is generally one of two things: either they replace the diseased valve entirely with risky open heart surgery (which requires opening up the chest) or they use the safer transcatheter method to deploy a bioprosthetic tissue valve through a blood vessel in the leg.

But which method to choose? For doctors at Ohio States Wexner Medical Center, a 3D printing trick is helping them make that difficult decision in a more informed way.

A 3D printed aorta in a heart simulator with artificial blood

It involves obtaining a 3D image of a patients aorta with a CT scanner, before 3D printing a replica aorta in a kind of flexible 3D printing filament. These 3D printed aortic valves can then be fitted to a physical heart simulator, which gives insight into how a patient might respond to either a new aortic valve or a transcatheter procedure.

For most patients, available valves work comparably, says Dr. Scott Lilly, interventional cardiologist and co-director of the structural heart program at Ohio State Ross Heart Hospital. However, in some cases the anatomy of the patient may create additional considerations. For example, the patient may have calcified nodules on the valve leaflets, or coronary arteries that arise in close proximity to the valve. The ability to reconstruct the areas where the valve is going to rest is important.

Lilly works with a team led by Lakshmi Prasad Dasi, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and surgery in Ohio States Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute, to obtain these 3D printed models, which are then loaded into the heart simulator and pumped with fake blood, which is, surprisingly, totally transparent!

Dr. Scott Lilly performing transcatheter aortic valve replacement

(Images: Ohio State University)

With this heart simulator rigged up, the medical team can then use a laser and high-speed camera to measure blood flow velocity and vortex patterns both with and without a replacement valve.

We can model various therapies, positions, and types of valves to better understand problems such as leakage, clotting, or coronary obstruction, Dasi says. We can observe how different valves not only relieve the stenosis but also minimize the likelihood of blood clots forming on the leaflets, which is the goal of the treatment.

Computer models are also used to analyze blood flow, as well as interaction between a transcatheter valve and the patients anatomy.

Using 3D modeling we can determine whether or not to protectblood vessels during deployment, or even whether to proceed with valve replacement at all, explains Lilly. These discussions have directly informed how we approach many valve replacement procedures.

Dasis team now plans to improve its own bioprosthetic valves, which currently have limited durability. Future synthetic versions could be enhanced with biomolecules, making future transcatheter heart valves cheaper and more durable.

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

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Mar 8, 2018 | By Tess

Today is International Womens Day. A day for women all over the world and from all walks of life to not only celebrate the massive strides in womens rights and freedoms over the past century, but to acknowledge and recognize the ongoing equality struggles that exist across the globe and in all sectors of society.

I feel this Womens Day will hold a particular significance, as certain aspect of womens inequality have been brought to the fore over the past year with the #MeToo campaign. Not only have women loudly announced things that make a womans existence unique and challenging, but in voicing these issues, we have been united and determined.

The technology field, still mostly dominated by men, has undergone criticisms over the past year as well for a trend of gender-based discrimination. This past November, The New Yorkers Sheelah Kolhatkar wrote an illuminating piece on the problem, and wed be remiss if we didnt mention engineer Susan Fowlers account of working for Uber.

In light of these ongoing struggles for women in tech, we at 3Ders want to highlight and celebrate some of the women who have made and are making an impact in the 3D printing industry. These are women who have not only contributed to the advancement of the technology and its applications but who have helped to challenge and begin to break down barriers in the field.

From scientists to company founders, makers, engineers, and designers, women have played a crucial role in the proliferation of 3D printing across a number of industries. To recognize some of these inspiring women, we've compiled a (non-exhaustive) list of influential women in the industry:

Iris van Herpen

Of course we had to include Iris van Herpen on our list of innovative women within the field of 3D printing as the Dutch designer was the first to ever send a 3D printed fashion piece down the runway in 2010. Since the debut of that first piece, Crystallization, van Herpen has forged on into the world of 3D printed fashion, making some of the most conceptually intricate and physically beautiful 3D printed garments weve ever seen. A pioneer of 3D printed fashion, van Herpen has been an inspiration to innovative fashion designers everywhere.

Neri Oxman

Israeli designer and architect Neri Oxman has been responsible for some amazing advancements within the field of ecological architecture. Oxman, who is a professor at the MIT Media Lab, has been using 3D printing to usher in a new architectural philosophy that is inspired by nature and material ecology. At the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxman even predicted that 3D printing would be responsible for a fourth industrial revolution not focused on exploitation and profit, but on humanity and ecological creation.

Nora Toure

Not only has Nora Toure had a successful career in the 3D printing industry working as General Manager for online 3D printing service Sculpteo but she is also the founder of Women in 3D Printing a progressive blog that highlights influential women within the 3D printing world all year round. Along with a team of four other women, Toure conducts interviews and writes profiles on women within the industry, effectively showcasing how crucial women are to the continued development of 3D printing technologies.

Jessica Rosenkrantz

Jessica Rosenkrantz is one half of generative design studio Nervous System, which you may know from its amazing Kinematic designs. Along with her partner Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, Rosenkrantz has been integrating new technologies such as 3D printing, generative systems, and webGL into unconventional design projects since 2007. Nervous Systems 3D printed kinematic flowing dress design and its more recent 3D printed petal dress have provided a unique model for 3D printing a whole garment on a relatively small 3D printer. Rosenkrantz, a graduate in architecture and biology from MIT, never ceases to inspire us through her uncanny ability to combine generative design, innovative materials, and 3D printing to create stunning works of fashion art. In fact, Nervous Systems 3D printed dresses are even featured at renowned art museums such as the MoMA and the MFA Boston.

Naomi Wu

Naomi SexyCyborg Wu is a Shenzhen-based maker who has gained immense popularity within the 3D printing community for her provocative and creative 3D printed wearables. Her creations include a 3D printed underlit LED skirt, 3D printed shoes equipped with a penetration test kit, a 3D printed nano drone wrist mount, a wearable 3D printer, and more.

Wu is also an outspoken woman in the field of technology and is continually seeking to not only increase and improve female representation within 3D printing, but also to break down any conceptions of what a woman in tech should be. We recently interviewed Naomi Wu and gained insight into the makers inspirations, drives, and goals.

Jennifer A. Lewis

Dr. Jennifer A. Lewis, a professor at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, is also the co-founder of Voxel8, a startup that has begun to commercialize the 3D printing of functional materials, such as wires, embedded conductors, and batteries into the normal matrix materials of 3D printing. Lewis and her team of researchers have been responsible for making some big advancements in the field of multi-material 3D printing, having successfully 3D printed conductive inks, lightweight composites, lithium ion microbatteries, and embedded sensors in stretchable matrices. Lewis has also worked within the field of 4D printed structures, and has helped to develop quick changing multi-material printheads.

Grace Choi

Grace Choi, a graduate from Harvard Business School and the founder of the worlds first makeup 3D printer Mink, is another inspiring and successful female figure in the world of 3D printing. Her makeup 3D printer was first presented at Techcrunch Disrupt in 2014 and provoked much interest in both the maker community and mainstream news. Mink, which is capable of 3D printing custom colored makeup from colors selected by you on a desktop computer, even shocked the makeup industry through its capability to create any color on demand.

Caroline Walerud

Caroline Walerud was recently added to Forbes renowned 30 under 30 for her innovative work developing 3D foot scanners and has also made it onto our list of inspiring women for her dedication to 3D scanning technologies and innovations. Walerud is the co-founder of Stockholm-based startup Volumental, which is using 3D scanning technologies to find the perfect fit for shoe-shoppers. Excitingly, the company recently made a deal with U.S. retailer Nordstrom to implement its 3D foot scanning system, and will soon branch out into its second phase of 3D facial scanning for opticians and eyewear brands.

Ann Marie Shillito

In 2007, contemporary designer/maker Ann Marie Shillito co-founded the Scotland-based 3D software development company Anarkik3D. Since then, Anarkik3D has been a useful platform for designers unaccustomed to using CAD technologies to work with 3D modeling. Created by and for designers, Shillitos company has incorporated touch and tactility into 3D modeling through its signature haptic 3D mouse, making for a unique and innovative 3D design experience.

Kerry Hogarth

In 2012, Kerry Hogarth founded 3D Printshow with the aim of showcasing innovation within the 3D printing world and introducing the technology to other industries such as healthcare, aerospace, and automotive. Since its founding, Hogarths 3D Printshow has been recognized as the worlds first fully interactive 3D printing show and has gone on to host some of the most renowned events in the 3D printing world. Though Hogarth sold part of her company to Tarsus PLC in 2014, she continues to work on spreading the potential of 3D printing with 3D Printshow.

Cherie Stamm

Cherie Stamm, another influential woman in 3D printing, is the co-founder of Norwegian 3D software development company Uformia. With a background in IT technologies and digital processes and with a special interest in 3D modeling and printing, Stamm and her team have successfully created a volumetric 3D modeling software that is built to prioritize parametric 3D fabrication instead of just visualization. Not only that, Stamm has built her company around a humanitarian and ecological ethos focused on community development and open source innovation.

Stefanie Mueller

Stefanie Mueller was sure to make it onto our list of influential women in the industry as we have followed her various engineering projects over the last few years. Mueller is a PhD student in the Human Computer Interaction Group at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Germany, and has helped to create a number of notable projects in her time there, such at the LaserStacker, a 3D laser cutter; the Protopiper, a sort of large-scale 3D printing pen; a 3D patching system; Scotty, a conceptual teleporting 3D printer; Platener, a 3D software that uses both 3D printing and laser cutting; WirePrint, a generative software that speeds up prototyping; and faBrickator, a software that legofies your design.

Danit Peleg

Israeli fashion designer Danit Peleg has also been a big inspiration to us at 3Ders, and we are sure many other designers and makers out there can say the same. The fashion design student made a name for herself in 2016 when she designed and created an entire ready-to-wear collection on a desktop 3D printer. Now, after the success of her stylish and accessible 3D printed garments, Peleg works as a technology advisor for designers and fashion houses.

Megumi Igarashi

Sometimes the most innovative and inspirational people are those who cause some controversy, which is exactly the case with Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi who 3D scanned and printed a sculpture of her own vagina. While the piece may have provoked interest almost anywhere, Igarashi was actually arrested for her 3D printed vagina as Japanese officials claimed she was illegally spreading obscenity. Now, several years after her initial arrest, Igarashi is still entangled in court processes and is being fined thousands of dollars, but has continued to create her progressive 3D printed artworks despite this. You go, Rokude Nashiko! (Japanese for bad girl...)

Anouk Wipprecht

Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht is one of the leading forces in the field of Fashion-Tech, which seeks to combine fashion with engineering, science, and interactive user experience. The designer has not only forged an impressive path into the future of smart wearables, but has consistently used 3D printing technologies to do so. From her 3D printed Smoke Dress which was unveiled in 2013, to her 3D printed robotic Spider Dress, Anouk Wipprecht has truly brought fashion into the future with wearables that not only look amazing, but respond and react to their wearer and their environment.

Viola Acoff

Viola Acoff is a metallurgical and materials engineer who has been working to promote STEM education for over two decades. Currently acting as associate dean for undergraduate and graduate programs at the University of Alabama, Acoff holds a doctoral degree in materials engineering and has expertise in additive manufacturing, materials characterization using electron microscopy, welding metallurgy, and more.

It is not only her own accolades which have landed Acoff on our list, however, as the well established engineer has done a great deal to promote and encourage STEM education at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) across the U.S.

Notably, Acoff has played an integral role in establishing materials engineering courses and programs at HBCUs by developing a program geared towards helping faculty integrate the discipline into science and math courses.

Ping Fu

Ping Fu is the definition of a powerful tech entrepreneur, and is definitely one of the most inspirational women in 3D printing today. Fu is the co-founder of 3D software development company Geomagic, where she served as CEO until the company was acquired by 3D Systems in 2013. At that point, Fu rose to the occasion, and became Vice President and Chief Entrepreneur Officer at 3D Systems, one of the leading 3D printer companies in the world. Fu has been honored with several awards, including being named Inc. magazine's 2005 "Entrepreneur of the Year."

What's even more incredible is that Ping Fu's massive influence in the tech world goes beyond 3D printing: In the early 1990s, while working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), she helped initiate Mosaican early web browser that helped popularize the World Wide Web as we know it today.

Heather Goodrum

Last July, Heather Goodrum was appointed as the UKs first ever biomedical 3D technician. In the position, Goodrum is responsible for designing and 3D printing surgical models, implants, and cutting guides at the Morriston Hospital in Swansea, Wales.

The first appointment of its kind in the UKs National Heath Service (NHS), the 3D technician job occupied by Goodrum is a notable one. What is particularly interesting about Goodrum and her professional trajectory, is that she was not originally a medical student. Rather, she completed an undergraduate degree in theater design. During her studies, she became particularly skilled at 3D design, which ultimately led her to study facial forensic art and be qualified to become the UKs first biomedical 3D technician.

Cathy Lewis

3D Systems is one of the leading industrial 3D printer manufacturers in the world, thanks in large part to the business savvy of our next influential woman in 3D printing: Cathy Lewis. As Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Lewis is responsible for all marketing strategies and functions, including global branding, multi-channel marketing, and the positioning and marketing of the company's leadership and product services. Before joining 3D Systems, Lewis spent more than ten years at Xerox in a number of executive marketing and sales management positions. She then became CEO of Desktop Factory, a 3D printer startup that was acquired by 3D Systems in 2009. The rest, as they say, is history.

Marleen Vogelaar

Way back in 2007, Marleen Vogelaar, Peter Weijmarshausen, and Robert Schouwenburg founded a small spin-off of Royal Philips Electronics, called Shapeways. Flash-forward a decade, and Shapeways is one of the leading 3D printing services and marketplaces worldwide. As COO/CFO of the company, Vogelaar was in charge of overseeing production both in New York City and the Netherlands, and although she resigned in 2014 to pursue new areas of work, her overarching vision as one of the lead founders had a lasting effect on Shapeways and the 3D printing industry as a whole.

Suz Somersall

Suz Somersall is notable for her passion for promoting STEAM educationthat is, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, incredibly important areas of study that, unfortunately, young girls are often discouraged from pursuing. Recently, we wrote about Suz Somersall and her project KiraKira, which is using 3D printing and jewelry design tutorials to get young girls interested in engineering and new technologies. Somersall, an industrial designer herself, saw the importance of shrinking the gender gap in such fields as engineering, and is working to inspire the next generation of women to become active makers and innovators.

Barbara Hanna

Barbara Hanna has a PhD in Computer Vision and is co-founder of both Neuromatters and 3D printing startup Cyant. Hanna is passionate about fostering engagement, creativity, and real-world problem solving using both Arts and Technology. Lately, that passion has turned towards 3D printing technology. Cyant is a creative project that teaches children STEAM concepts by allowing them to turn their drawings into 3D printed objects. It's a fun and hands-on experience that combines creativity with the technological skills they'll need for the future.

Gina Hauge

As the creator of OctoPrint, one of the most versatile and popular 3D printer hosts, Gina Hauge is undoubtedly on our list of influential women in the 3D printing industry. The German developer created the 3D printer host web interface in 2012 and has since maintained OctoPrint as a free and open source tool for makers everywhere. OctoPrint, for those unfamiliar, allows makers to wirelessly connect their 3D printers through a Raspberry Pi in order to easily monitor and control their prints remotely. According to Hauge, the monthly download rates for OctoPrint are in the thousands.

Mary Huang

In 2011, NY-based designer and technologist Mary Huang founded Continuum, a design studio that has become known for its innovative and stunning tech fashion pieces, including the N12 3D printed bikini, as well as ShoeKit, an open source DIY shoe-making kit that uses 3D printing. In founding and running Continuum, Huang, who studied design and media arts at UCLA and interaction design at CIID, has established herself as a pioneer of tech oriented fashion, and as a notable woman within the field of additive manufacturing.

Kegan Schouwenburg

Kegan Schouwenburg made her debut in the 3D printing world at 3D printing company Shapeways, where she worked for many years. Since then, the young entrepreneur has gone on to found her very own company, SOLS, which our readers may already know as a manufacturer of custom 3D printed insoles. Schouwenburg currently sits as CEO of the New York based 3D printing startup and is an inspiration to young industrial designers everywhere. What we particularly appreciate about Kegan Schouwenburg is not only her achievements within the field of 3D printing, but also her candidness about what is it like to run a business in the industry as a woman.

On February 22, 2017, footwear specialist Aetrex acuqired SOLS Systems.

Joan Horvath

Joan Horvath, aka the 3D Printing Evangelist, is the co-founder of Nonscriptum LLC, a 3D printing consulting firm that has helped many businesses and educational institutions to integrate additive manufacturing technologies in a strategic and beneficial way. Not only that, however, Horvath also has 16 years' experience under her belt, working for NASAs Jet Propulsion Lab on such programs as the Magellan spacecraft to Venus, and the TOPEX/Poseidon oceanography spacecraft. Clearly an asset to the aerospace and 3D printing industries, Joan Horvath has also made her knowledge and experiences accessible to makers everywhere through her many 3D printing books, as well as her blog, which is self-described as being made up of Occasional musings about the intersection of education, science, and the maker movement.

Karolina Boadz

Karolina Boadz is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Zortrax, the Polish 3D printing company responsible for such systems as the M200 3D printer and the M300 3D printer. Boadz, who has held her position at Zortrax since 2014, has seen the company through significant growth and has been a crucial player in keeping Zortraxs brand reliable and trusted amongst its clientele.

Julielynn Wong

Harvard-educated public health physician Julielynn Wong is on our list of influential women in 3D printing because of her company 3D4MD, which she founded in 2011. The company, which manufactures and develops 3D printed medical devices and supplies, is specially aimed at helping remote and marginalized locations. As the company states on its website, 3D4MD is committed to bringing quality healthcare services to people regardless of their race, national origin, religion, or political affiliation. For instance, Julielynn is responsible for designing a solar-powered mobile 3D printing system which is meant to be deployed in remote areas for the on site manufacturing of supplies. In addition to her duties for 3D4MD, Wong has contributed to the 3D printing community extensively through lectures.

Limor LadyAda Fried

While many makers will know and likely have used Adafruit hardware, most will also know that the prolific open source hardware company was founded by a woman, Limor Fried, also known by her moniker ladyada. Fried, an electrical engineer, is highly accomplished in the field of open source hardware, being recognized for a number of achievements, including being the first female engineer to be featured on Wireds cover page, being awarded the Pioneer Award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2009, the Most Influential Women in Technology award by Fast Company magazine in 2011, and the Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur in 2012. Under Limor Fried ownership, Adafruit has been proudly maintained as a 100% woman-owned company.

Melissa Ng

Many of our readers will be familiar with 3D designer Melissa Ng, whose awesome cosplay designs for her design studio Lumecluster have wowed the maker community. Not only is Melissa a creative fantasy 3D designer, but she has also dedicated much of her work to supporting females within 3D design and cosplaying communities. For instance, she 3D printed some stunning Dream Regalia armor for female geek activist Felicia Day, and proved to skeptics that womens cosplay armor could be practical as well as beautiful with her 3D printed Sovereign Armor. Melissa Ng is a self-taught New York based artist. In addition to 3D printed armor, she also makes intricately designed 3D printed masks, jewelry, and art.

Eva Wolf

Eva Wolf is the co-founder of Airwolf 3D, a California-based 3D printer, software, and 3D printing materials manufacturer. Eva, who founded the well established company in 2012 with her husband Erick Wolf, has helped the company to expand its reach by reaching out to new investors and partners, as well as by building on Airwolf 3Ds internal infrastructure and external distribution. Notably, Airwolf 3D has taken a particularly inspiring approach towards STEM education, by developing specialized drone building kits for schools, as well as by donating a number of their AXIOM 3D printers to schools (despite a number of them being stolen).

Maryam Al-Kuwaiti

Maryam Al-Kuwaiti holds a special position on our list of influential women in 3D printing. The 25-year-old engineer played an important and integral role in the development and realization of the United Arab Emirates first 3D printed aircraft interior components. The female engineer has been recognized as a pioneer in the UAEs additive manufacturing aerospace initiative.

More specifically, Al-Kiwaiti works for Strata Manufacturing PJSCs joint initiative with Siemens and Etihad Airways which is aimed at producing 3D printed aircraft parts. Her background includes a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from the UAE University, internships at the University of Oxford, California-based GlobalFoundries, and at the Airbus base in Toulouse, France.

As a prominent female engineer in the UAEs aerospace industry, Al-Kiwaiti is hoping to inspire more women in the country, as well as across the Middle East to take on positions in engineering, 3D printing, and aerospace.

Virginia San Fratello

Virginia San Fratello is one of the co-founders of Rael San Fratello, an innovative architecture design studio, and Emerging Objects, which has explored the use of some truly boundary pushing 3D printing building materials, such as salt, tea, and even rubber tire. San Fratello, who currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in Art & Design at the San Jose State University, has focused her inspiring work on the intersection of the digital, ecological, and design in architecture. Both Rael San Fratello and Emerging Objects were also co-founded by Ronald Rael, San Fratellos partner.

Sherry Huss

The co-creator of Maker Faire, one of the largest show-and-tell events for the maker community, Sherry Huss just had to be on our list of influential women in the 3D printing industry. Not only the co-creator of the event series, Huss is also the Vice President of Maker Media, which many makers will know is one of the leading global platforms dedicated to connecting makers with each other.

Michelle Mihevc

MIchelle Mihevc is the co-founder and CEO of California-based advanced technology company FATHOM. The company, which has many 3D printing and digital manufacturing systems (including the U.S.s first Nano Dimension DragonFly 2020 3D printer) uses its expertise in additive manufacturing technologies to help business integrate them more efficiently into their processes. Mihevc was notably recognized as one of the Bay Areas 2016 Most Influential Women in Business by the San Francisco Business Times.

Xinhua Wu

Xinhua Wu has an illustrious career within the field of additive manufacturing: she not only serves as Director for the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing at the University of Monash in Australia, but also teaches there as a professor in Materials Science and Engineering. Notably, Wu led a team of researchers from the Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing that successfully 3D printed a jet engine. The 3D printed engine will reportedly undergo tests within the next couple years. Wu has also dedicated much of her own research to the advancement of laser additive manufacturing.

Katie Weimer

Katie Weimar is another woman who plays a crucial role in the 3D printing industry as she currently holds the position of Vice President of Medical Devices Healthcare at 3D printing giant 3D Systems. Weimer got her start in the industry working as senior manager of Medical Modeling, a manufacturer of custom 3D printed medical devices. When Medical Modeling was acquired by 3D Systems in 2013, Weimer was brought on, and has since used her expertise in 3D printing and medical devices to further research and advancements in the field.

Bathsheba Grossman

Sculptor Bathsheba Grossman is on our list of influential women in the industry as she was a pioneer for the use of 3D modeling and 3D printing in sculpture and jewelry design. Her pieces, often inspired by mathematical patterns and made from 3D printed steel, are internationally renowned and have been featured in a number of gallery exhibitions, as well as in the New York Times. Grossman also sells her smaller pieces, such as the stunning Borromean Rings Pendant, or the Klein Bottle pendant on her Shapeways page.

Julia Koerner

Austria-born designer and architect Julia Koerner, founder of JK Design GmbH, is another pioneer in the 3D printed fashion world. Leveraging additive manufacturing and digital design for the production of nature and architecture-inspired wearables, the designer has collaborated with a number of Haute Couture fashion houses and Iris van Herpen, another name on this list.

Most recently, Koerner worked alongside Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter to design and 3D print stunning costume props for the film, including Queen Ramondas stunning crown and shoulder mantle.

Koerner, who also teaches Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California Los Angeles, caught our attention in 2015 for her stunning 3D printed Sporophyte Collection, whose designs were inspired by sea creatures.

Liza Wallach Kloski

Liza Wallach Kloski is the co-founder of HoneyPoint3D, an online platform geared towards 3D printing education. The business, which started out in 2013 as a small 3D printing retail brand in Oakland Hills, California, has since organically transitioned into a predominantly web-based business that offers a number of classes and workshops for 3D printing. Liza, who runs the business with her husband Nick, previously ran her own jewelry company, before being introduced to 3D printing technologies. With HoneyPoint3D, she is aiming to educate people about the potential of additive manufacturing.

Lisa Federici

San Francisco-based Lisa Federici has been acting CEO of Scansite3D, one of the leading 3D scanning services, since 1994. The business, which has grown immeasurably under Federicis leadership, has a loyal and established clientele which include such organizations and companies as Boeing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NASA, Richard MacDonald Studio, NIKE, Hyundai, Warner Bros, and the Smithsonian. For over two decades, Scansite3D has served as a reliable 3D scanning service, which keeps up with the most state-of-the-art scanning equipment. Notably, Federici has also been a strong proponent for the idea that women can be moms, entrepreneurs, wives, employees, and more all at once.

Njideka Harry

Njideka Harry is the founder, president, and CEO of Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), an international non-profit organization geared towards introducing young people from low income communities in the United States (and from rural areas in developing nations) to new technologies such as 3D printing. Notably, Njideka Harry has led forward 3D Africa, a YTF effort that offers software development, mobile application, and 3D modeling training to young unemployed engineers in African nations so that they can monetize their skills more efficiently. Harry was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and obtained her BBA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She was also accepted as a postgraduate fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship at Stanford University.

Vaiva Kalnikaite

Vaiva Kalnikaite is the founder and creative director of Cambridge, UK design studio Dovetailed. If the name sounds familiar, it is because Dovetailed has introduced some truly innovative projects, such as the Nufood 3D food printer, which is capable of 3D printing edibles out of liquid flavor drops. Other projects developed by Dovetailed include the Canary Hat, which was commissioned by the V&A, and which through a special 3D printed feather sensor is capable of telling the wearer when they are in proximity to a CCTV camera, as well as a 3D printed milk carton equipped with a camera that broadcasts your fridge to your neighbours (to encourage sharing food and reducing waste). As the 3D printing innovator has said, she is continually interested in creating technologies for self-quantification, behavioural change, internet of things, wearables, and creative dining.

Leila Ladani

While you may not have heard of Leila Ladani, the Iranian-American woman is certainly a force to reckoned with in the field of 3D printing. An expert in additive manufacturing and nanomaterial and micro/nanoelectronics, Ladani has worked and researched for such illustrious agencies as NASA, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Research Institute. Currently, Leila Ladani also holds the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, itself one of the leading educational investors in 3D printing research and equipment.

Louise Driggers

While Louise Driggers, aka Loubie has not founded her own company, she has made it onto our list for an equally notable reason. The talented 3D designer, whose 3D models on Thingiverse have been immensely popular, was embroiled in a 3D printing scandal which rallied the maker community together and ultimately drew attention to intellectual property rights surrounding 3D models. In short, Driggers posted a symbolic sad face 3D model to protest an eBay store that was selling peoples free designs, including her own, as 3D printed models. In the end, the makers won, as the eBay store removed the open-source models, and the event marked a milestone for the discourse surrounding intellectual property rights for digital 3D models.

Alice Taylor

Alice Taylor is the founder and CEO of MakieLab, an online toy platform that allows customers to design their very own 3D printed dolls. The UK based company, one of the first companies to retail 3D printed toys, has seen immense success over the past couple years, with partnerships with Disney and an upcoming expansion into the United States. Not only are Makie dolls awesome because they are 3D printed, but Alice Taylor has introduced a new level of customization to dolls and toys as clients can decide on their dolls look and features, from eye color, hair style, and even such distinguishing features as birthmarks, disabilities, etc. In this sense, Taylor is an inspiration as well as influential as she has used 3D printing to make toys more inclusive to all. In Feb, 2017, MakieLab was acquired by Disney.

Jenny Wu

Jenny Wu, the founder of architecture and design firm Oyler Wu Collaborative, is also the founder of one of our favorite 3D printed jewelry lines, LACE. Wus jewelry is inspired by her architectural expertise, and reflects the increasing intersections between design and technology in wearables. The pieces, available through LACEs online shop, often feature complex interlocking shapes, which, while stunning to observe, are also a testament to the designers talent and artistry. In this way, Jenny Wu is another woman who is pushing the boundaries of what 3D printing can do and what it can mean in our lives.

Shami Oshun

Perhaps the youngest woman on this list is 18-year-old fashion designer Shami Oshun. Based in Bay Area, California, Oshun founded her own fashion brand in 2015 to fulfill her passion for designing and fabricating garments.



Recently, Oshun began exploring 3D printing in her fashion designs, which has allowed her to create avant-garde, abstract wearables. The young designer, who has largely been learning the ins and outs of 3D design and additive manufacturing herself, says the technology is opening up vast possibilities for her fashion creations.

Laura Taalman

Laura Taalman, also known as [mathgrrl] on Thingiverse, is simultaneously a prolific maker and a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at James Madison University. As a self-professed math geek, Taalmans 3D printing projects are inspired and informed by mathematics. Her original makes include a 3D printed snowflake generator that automatically designs unique snowflake models for 3D printing, a pentagonal tessellation 3D printed bracelet, and a 3D printed impossible screw which could not be fabricated using anything but 3D printing

Netia McCray

Netia McCray is founder and CEO of Mbadika, a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving young people across the globeand especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin Americathe tools and guidance to become their own community leaders and entrepreneurs. Through educational workshops, DIY projects, and STEM-focused activities, McCrays organization strikes to equip youth with critical information and skills required in the modern, tech-oriented world.

Recently, McCray and her colleague Erica Nwankwo leveraged the excitement surrounding Black Panther to release a series of 3D design and 3D printing tutorials aimed at young potential makers. The goal of the 3D printing initiative is to teach children that they can become creators and product designers by using accessible technologies such as Tinkercad and desktop 3D printing.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of women in 3D printing. Almost everyday we hear about inspiring and innovative projects within the 3D printing industry which are led and spearheaded by creative and ambitious women. We cant wait to see what is next for the women weve highlighted and for the thousands of other females in the 3D printing world.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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Me wrote at 3/9/2018 9:35:05 PM:Not to mention Katharina Kreitz who founded VectoFlow, a startup printing multi hole probes for fluid flow measurements. This kind of probes are e.g. used for instrumentation of formula one cars. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/karriere/plan-w-schneller-als-die-formel-1.3799047 (german)Ann Marie Shillito wrote at 3/9/2018 1:57:47 AM:Absolutely well done, to you all and to the many other women who are beavering away in the 3D print sectors, bringing fresh perspectives and innovation to solving big and small issues. So very proud to be counted amongst you all.




Ed Yong in The Atlantic:

Last November was a pivotal moment for the Democrats, who scored a surprisingly large slew of electoral victories in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere. But it was also somewhat of a victory for science, as at least 17 candidates with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) also won. Ralph Northam, who became Virginias governor, is a pediatric neurologist. Cheryl Turpin and Hala Ayala, who were both elected to the Virginia State House of Delegates, are respectively a science teacher and a cybersecurity expert. The so-called blue wave was also, at least partly, a nerdy one.

Shaughnessy Naughton, a chemist by training and a former breast-cancer researcher, wants a similar wave to crest in this years midterms. A year ago, Naughton founded 314 Actiona political-action committee that supports scientists running for office by helping them to find staff, plan campaigns, and connect with potential donors.

When I first wrote about 314 Action in January 2017, more than 400 people had filled out their recruitment form. At the time Naughton predicted that theyd attract a thousand potential candidates. In fact, we had over 7,000, she now tells me. There was a spike in interest after Trumps inauguration, and another when Trump decided to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Theres been one thing after another with this administration thats engaged our community, Naughton says.

Beyond stoking outrage, Trump may have motivated stem professionals in a different way. For better or worse, Trump has changed the perceived necessities about running for office, says the political consultant Kelly Gibson. You dont need to be elected at local or state levels, or even understand how politics works, to be elected. It opened things up for people in education, the arts, and the sciences. Thats why theres been this surge in nontraditional political candidates.

More here.
Natalie Haynes in The Guardian:

In Sophocless play Antigone a teenage girl is forced to choose between obeying the law of the land (her uncle, the king of Thebes, has forbidden the burial of a traitor) and religious law (the traitor is Antigones brother, Polynices, who has declared war on his city, and killed his own brother, Eteocles, along the way). Antigones good brother gets a funeral, the bad one is left to rot. Leaving a relative unburied is profoundly taboo in ancient Greece, so Antigone must decide: does she obey her conscience and bury Polynices  the punishment for which is the death penalty  or does she obey the law and leave her brother to be picked apart by dogs?

And this, essentially, is the dilemma faced by Aneeka, the beating heart of Home Fire, Kamila Shamsies Man Booker-longlisted loose contemporary reworking of Antigone. Her twin brother, Parvaiz, has left London to work for the media arm of Isis, after discovering that his absent father died en route to Guantanamo. Her sister Isma tells the police where he has gone and Aneeka is appalled: You betrayed us, both of us. And then you tried to hide it from me. Dont call, dont text, dont send the pictures, dont fly across the ocean and expect me to ever agree to see your face again. We have no sister. It is a beautifully Sophoclean touch that Aneeka is far angrier with her sister for betraying their brother than she is with her brother for betraying them both.

The build-up to disaster is told with an ever-increasing tension. We begin with Isma, the older sister to the twins, the voice of compromise and accommodation. Her wry cleverness is so compelling that it is difficult not to pine for her in the later stages of the novel, from which she is largely absent (Ismene, in Sophocless version of the myth, has only a paltry 60 lines). When Isma first meets Eamonn, the non-religious son of an authoritarian British home secretary who has sought to put his Muslim faith behind him, she is studying in the US and he is there on holiday. Is that a style thing or a Muslim thing? he asks, about the turban she wears. You know, she replies, the only two people in Massachusetts who have ever asked me about it both wanted to know if its a style thing or a chemo thing.

More here.
In Jadaliyya:

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Suzanne Schneider (SS): Ive always been fascinated by the history of what are often assumed to be timeless constellations of religious belief or practice. There is a widespread tendency to project onto religions a stability and historical consistency that they lack, and I think the appropriate scholarly response is work that highlights religion as a site of change and contestation. However, I found that many histories of the Middle East took religion for granted as something that meant the same thing in, for example, the mid-nineteenth century, as it does now. Consequently, in Mandatory Separation I wanted to explore what exactly made something religious within Jewish and Islamic circles in late Ottoman and early twentieth century Palestine, and how that designation came to matter in material terms. In good dialectical fashion, I also wanted to attend to how material conditionssay, the need to rationalize Palestinian agriculturecontributed to the re-definition of what types of human behaviors and activities were counted among the religious. I found this all the more necessary in light of the common assumption that Zionist and Palestinian nationalist movements were largely secular in makeup. In fact, my research has shown that educators and leaders within these movements were interested in constructing new forms of political identity that consciously blurred the religious/secular divide.

What drew me to religious education in particular were the parallel lines of thinking about old-fashioned forms of religious learning I found within the writings of Jewish and Arab-Muslim reformers active in the Haskalah and Nahda, respectively. Jewish and Muslims educators in Palestine were heirs to these modernist traditions, though they did not accept their positions across the board.

More here.
Advantage Lithium (CVE:AAL) (OTCMKTS:AVLIF) (FRA:14D) is a lithium explorer and developer with top tier management and an international portfolio of quality assets. The Company has a partnership with Orocobre - one of Argentinas leading lithium producers - to develop its Cauchari asset, which hosts an inferred resource and includes a large exploration target. Orocobre is the largest single shareholder of Advantage Lithium.

The Advantage Lithium team has a track record of making discoveries and building companies and, having launched in July 2016, the Company has hit a series of major milestones in a very short space of time. Advantage Lithium is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol AAL.


Disclosure Document

------------------------------------------------------------------- Action Date ------------------------------------------------------------------- Lodgement of Prospectus with ASIC and ASX 7 March 2018 Opening Date 8 March 2018 Closing Date 9 March 2018 Expected Date of Official Quotation 12 March 2018 -------------------------------------------------------------------

Sydney, Mar 8, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - YPB Group Ltd ( ASX:YPB ) provides Prospectus for the conditional offer of up to 285,714 Shares at an issue price of $0.035 per Share to raise approximately $10,000 (before expenses).This Prospectus has been prepared primarily for the purpose of Section 708A(11) of the Corporations Act to remove any trading restrictions on the sale of Shares issued by the Company prior to the Closing Date.The Offer is not underwritten.Timetable and important dates** The above dates are indicative only and may be subject to change. The Directors reserve the right to vary these dates, including the Closing Date, without prior notice but subject to any applicable requirements of the Corporations Act or the ASX Listing Rules. This may include extending the Offer or accepting late acceptances, either generally or in particular cases.To view the full Prospectus, please visit:About YPB Group Ltd

DEACTIVATED


Another Record Month of Gold Production for Blackham

Perth, Mar 8, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Blackham Resources Limited ( ASX:BLK ) ( OTCMKTS:BKHRF ) ("Blackham" or "the Company") is pleased to present an operational update for the month of February 2018 at its Matilda-Wiluna Gold Operation ("the Operation"). Access to high grade zones in the M4 and Galaxy pits was achieved late in the Dec'17 quarter, enabling record monthly gold production in both Jan'18 and Feb'18 of 6,498oz and 6,713oz, respectively.Highlights- Operations continued to generate strong cash flows in February- New record monthly gold production in Feb'18 of 6,713oz (Jan'18: 6,498oz)- 150kt milled for the month at an average rate of 5,347tpd or 1.95Mtpa annualised (2% higher than Jan'18)- Mill feed grade improved to 1.5g/t, a 13% improvement on prior month- High grade stockpiles were 144kt @ 1.7g/t Au at 28 Feb 2018 and expected to grow during Mar'18- All in sustaining costs reduced to A$912/oz in Feb'18, a 21% decrease on Jan'18 (A$1,158/oz)- Average realised gold price during the month of A$1,670/oz- Cash and bullion of $31.4 million and secured debt of $43.8 million at 28 Feb 2018February's open pit mining stripping ratio was a low 1.5:1 (waste:ore) (Jan'18: 3.6:1). The low stripping ratio and increased gold production resulted in Blackham achieving a record low monthly AISC in Feb'18 of A$912/oz (A$1,158/oz - Jan'18), in comparison to an average realised gold price during the month of A$1,670/oz, continuing its high margin production for the quarter to date.Despite significant rainfall and lightning events during the month, which restricted mining operations, the Operation has increased the high grade stockpiles, which currently total 144kt @ 1.7g/t Au. Milled grade and gold production are expected to continue to improve during Mar'18 with the increasing grade of the mill feed stockpiles.Blackham's Executive Chairman, Mr Milan Jerkovic, said:"February's operational results demonstrate a continued improvement of the turnaround that commenced in December 2017. Record production and further reduced costs from the Operation underpinned another month of strong cashflow, whilst maintaining stockpiles with increased grades. We remain confident that 2018 will be a transformational year that will generate significant cash flows and value for Blackham and its shareholders."To view tables and figures, please visit:About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd

Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential.


Clarification to Chilean Media Release

Sydney, Mar 8, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Lithium Power International Limited ( ASX:LPI ) ( OTCMKTS:LTHHF ) (LPI or the Company) provides clarification from the Maricunga JV Company, Minera Salar Blanco (MSB), on a recent press release featured this week in the Chilean media, along with statements made by the outgoing Chilean Mining Minister at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto earlier this week.These comments were in connection with the publication of Decree No. 64, which approves a future lithium special operation agreement (CEOL) between the Ministry of Mining in Chile and a subsidiary of a Chilean state-owned copper company Codelco.Decree No. 64 authorizes the promotion, development and operation of lithium in certain areas of the Maricunga Salar brine until year 2057, setting the framework, minimum requirements and regulations for a CEOL to be executed.It is noted that such agreement is yet to be executed between the Ministry of Mining and Codelco.It is further noted that Decree No. 64 explicitly states that any future CEOL will not affect, in any manner whatsoever, any lithium concessions granted prior to 1979, under the "Old Code" mining regulations.A significant proportion of MSB's properties, namely: Cocina, Salamina, Despreciada and San Francisco tenements are "Old Code" tenements, with only the Litio tenement classified as post 1979 "New Code". Refer to Figure 1 (see link below).It is also advised that exploration has been conducted on all MSB tenements, with the results issued in the JORC and NI 43-101 complainant Resource Estimate and the Preliminary Economic Assessment remain a true reflection of the overall project.MSB is confident that the Chilean government and all its entities will respect the rights of private entities, such as MSB, to participate in equitable conditions in the exploration and exploitation of lithium in the Maricunga Salar, within the in terms and conditions set forth in the Chilean Constitution, laws and applicable regulations.MSB is confident that the new administration coming into office on 11 March 2018, will create all the required conditions to attract new investments in order to contribute to the progress and welfare of the country and all its people.The judicial and social environment is what currently makes Chile an attractive jurisdiction for foreign investors.Maricunga JV BackgroundThe Maricunga JV is 50%-owned by Lithium Power International Limited. The project is regarded as one of the highest quality pre-production lithium brine project globally, with very high grades and exceptional porosity essential for high flow rates. The company released a Preliminary Economic Assessment for the project on 4 January 2018, which confirmed strong economic returns for production of 20,000t/a of lithium carbonate with production of 74,000t/a of potassium chloride from year 3 of the project.To view figures, please visit:About Lithium Power International Ltd

Lithium Power International Limited (ASX:LPI) is a pure-play lithium explorer and developer, focusing on developing and fast-tracking to production the high-grade Maricunga lithium brine project in Chile.

LPI has a well-known performing technical team with the experience to take the Maricunga project all the way through the development stages to production.

The regions that LPI is currently focused on are:

1. Maricunga JV (Chile) - Located within the "Lithium Triangle", Maricunga is Chile's highest grade and most advanced lithium project outside the Salar de Atacama. The project lies 170 km northeast of Copiapo and 250 km from the port of Caldera.

2. Pilbara (Western Australia) - LPI has three granted exploration tenements covering 203 km2 in the Pilbara region of northern Western Australia. The largest granted exploration tenement is the Pilgangoora tenement which is 2-3 km west of the Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) and Altura Mining (ASX:AJM) lithium deposits.

3. Greenbushes (Western Australia) - LPI has two granted exploration tenements covering 400 km2 in the Greenbushes area of southern Western Australia. The tenements are adjacent to the world's largest hard rock lithium mine owned and operated by Tianqi/Talison.

4. Centenario (Argentina) - Through its Argentinian subsidiary, Lithium Power holds a total of seven granted tenements in the Centenario lithium brine salar within the Salta province of the Puna Plateau. In total, the seven granted tenements cover an area of 68.46 km2.

With the exception of the Maricunga JV, all tenements are 100% owned by LPI or LPSA (including rights to the Centenario tenements).


Big Un Limited Board Changes

Sydney, Mar 8, 2018 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Big Un Limited ( ASX:BIG ) ( OTCMKTS:BGGNF ) (or 'the Company') is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr William Knowles to the board of directors.Appointment of Mr William KnowlesThe board welcomes the appointment of William Knowles as an independent, non-executive director of Big Un Limited. Mr Knowles brings a wealth of experience having operated in London, New York, Buenos Aries and Moscow financial markets for over 30 years for financial institutions that include: Swiss Bank Corporation, Moscow Narodny Bank Ltd, Compagnie Financiere Tradition, Scandinavian Bank Group, BGC Partners Switzerland and Mint Equities Ltd.During his tenure as Director of Emerging Market Debt for one of the world's top broking firms Compagnie Financiere Tradition (CFT), Mr Knowles was responsible for establishing the first International broking company in Moscow. He established the international market for trading of Russian hard currency denominated debt instruments, maintaining Tradition as the leading broker in this sector.In his role as independent non-executive director, Mr Knowles' management skills and intimate knowledge of, and experience in global financial markets will provide the board of BIG with invaluable expertise and insight as the company continues with its plans to expand into the US and the UK.In line with its growth, the Company intends to continue to add strength and experience to the Board, as well as establish additional committees to monitor compliance and governance. The Company also confirms that that all necessary criminal and background checks were undertaken for members of its board and senior management, including Mr Richard Evertz, as required by the ASX Listing Rules. Mr Evertz does not have a criminal record and all relevant disclosures were made to the market in the prospectus published by the Company as part of its re-compliance listing in 2014.Resignation of Mr Hugh MassieThe board has accepted the resignation of non-executive Chairman Mr Hugh Massie.OutlookThe Company continues with its international roll-out, tech development and to deliver product and services to meet demand from Australia, USA and UK and will update the market as soon as it is able.About Big Un Ltd

Big Un Ltd (ASX:BIG) is the parent company of Big Review TV Ltd. Big Review TV are innovative disruptors in the online video space delivering subscription based video technology products and services. The Company has operations across Australia and in New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vancouver and was listed on the ASX in December 2014.
UPDATE - Two students were shot, one of them fatally, in an accidental shooting at Huffman High School in Birmingham Wednesday afternoon.

The police chief says there are still a lot of unanswered questions, and he's calling both students "victims."

Police say the girl and boy, both 17 years old, were accidentally shot just after classes were dismissed.

The girl died and the boy remains hospitalized in critical condition.

The school was briefly put on lockdown after the incident.

A school worker was also hurt in the incident, but was treated at the scene and released.

___________________

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Authorities say two students have been hurt in an accidental shooting during afternoon dismissal at a high school in Alabama's largest city.

Birmingham Police Sgt. Bryan Shelton told local media organizations that one of the students suffered life-threatening injuries in the shooting Wednesday afternoon. Shelton called it an "accidental shooting" but details weren't immediately available.

The Birmingham City school system said in a statement that the shooting at Huffman High School prompted a brief lockdown and police were called. It says students were subsequently let go and police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
President Donald Trump is suggesting that Australia and "other countries" may be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs, along with Mexico and Canada.

Trump says he's sticking with his initial plan for import tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. But the president says, "We're going to be very flexible."

His comments in a Cabinet meeting Thursday come hours before a 3:30 p.m. meeting to formalize the tariffs amid uncertainty in the West Wing over which countries will be exempted from the protectionist measure.

Trump is expected to delay the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico to turn up the pressure in negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
If Trends Hold, There May Be More Assyrians in US and Mexico Than in Iraq

To catch a glimpse of just how ancient--and strong--our Christian faith truly is, take a drive up the Jersey turnpike. Say what? How cool would it be to walk into a church filled with worshipers all speaking the same language that Jesus and his apostles spoke? You might think that you need a time machine. You don't. You don't even need to go to the Middle East. New Jersey will do. A recent article in America magazine told the story of an Aramaic-speaking Christian community fifteen minutes west of Manhattan in Paramus, New Jersey. They are known variously as Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Syriac Christians (Syriac being a dialect of Aramaic). You may be thinking "Aramaic?" Well, Aramaic, not Hebrew, was the language of everyday life in first-century Palestine. We see evidence of this in the Bible. Parts of the Old Testament, most notably the book of Daniel, are written in Aramaic. When Mary Magdalene encounters the risen Jesus, she calls him "rabboni." And on the cross, Jesus recited Psalm 22 in Aramaic. As the names "Chaldean" and "Assyrian" suggest, they are an ancient people from what the Bible calls "Assyria" and "Babylon," the part of Iraq known as the "Nineveh Plain," as well as southern Turkey and Syria. Ad Feedback Their ancestors lived in the area long before the Arab invasions and the coming of Islam. They are probably our closest living link to the patriarchs of the Old Testament. In Genesis 12, we are told that Abraham, on his way to the promised land, settled for a time in Haran, which became a "centre of Assyrian Christianity" before the fourth century. Deuteronomy 26 instructs the Israelites to say, "A wandering Aramean was my father," when offering their first fruits. To quote the psalmist, these Christians have a "goodly heritage." But it's one that has been passed down at a very high cost. The Islamic conquest in the seventh and eighth centuries reduced them to second-class status. But despite hardships, they made enormous contributions to what is called "Islamic civilization" in the fields of philosophy, science and medicine. The works of Greek philosophers that Arab Muslims are credited with preserving were first translated into Syriac and then into Arabic by Syriac-speaking Christians. If life under Islamic rule was hard from the seventh through nineteenth centuries, it turned lethal in the early twentieth, in what came to be known as the Sayfo--the Syriac for "sword." Between 1914 and 1920, some 150 to 300 thousand Syriac Christians were murdered by the Turks. d Feedback Most recently, there was the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As Lawrence Kaplan wrote in the New Republic at the time, "Sunni, Shia, and Kurd may agree on little else, but all have made sport of brutalizing their Christian neighbors." Then, of course, there was ISIS. Two years ago, when then-Secretary of State Kerry said that ISIS was guilty of genocide against Christians, he was talking about Syriac Christians. The "infidels" in Mindy Belz's book "They Say We Are Infidels," are mostly Syriac Christians. And that brings me to New Jersey. The group profiled in America magazine is part of the Syriac diaspora created by the persecutions of the past century. More Syriac Christians live outside their ancestral homelands than in them. It's possible that if present trends hold, there will be more Syriac Christians in the United States and Mexico than in Iraq. These are the people we have been praying for when we pray for the persecuted--and they have a lot to teach us, not the least of which is how to remain faithful in the face of unimaginable oppression and persecution. It's a lesson that might even be worth a trip to New Jersey.
Pizza Hut has relocated to 2,840 square feet of space in The Shops on Montevallo on Montevallo Road.

The restaurant has signed a lease with Continental Realty Corporation (CRC) of Baltimore for the space, relocating from their former location at 5388 Oporto Madrid Blvd.

CRC, a real estate investment and management company, acquired the shopping center in summer 2016. The Shops on Montevallo services Mountain Brook and also draws traffic from the adjacent Crestwood and Crestline neighborhoods. The center is anchored by Planet Fitness and features Bedzzz Express, Cumberland Dental and Subway.

"Since acquiring this center nearly two years ago, our team has focused on improving the operational efficiencies of the center, while also elevating the tenant mix to better serve the needs of the local community," David Donato, senior vice president of Continental Realty's commercial division said.

Cherene Keenan, Leasing Associate for Continental Realty Corporation and David Ashford and Alex Benson of Southpace Properties represented the landlord and Allen Garstecki of JLL represented the tenant.
Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe is 20 years old, and looks to expand this spring into new locations in Ohio, Oklahoma, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida this spring.

The Birmingham-based franchise has 82 restaurants in 16 states, but its birthday was a down-home affair.

At the chain's very first restaurant on Wednesday, the first 200 guests in line received a free signature pasta, while others won chances at free signature pasta for a year.

It was during a 1997 trip to Greece with his wife Amy that founder Keith Richards got the inspiration that led to their first restaurant at the Colonnade in Birmingham.

Richards said the anniversary celebration was an "extraordinary day."

"We are planning for the next 20 years," said Richards. "That includes adding more menu items and opening more restaurants across the U.S."

There have been several milestones for the franchise. The fast-casual chain's was recently ranked by Restaurant Business as 17th on their Future 50 List.

It was also the first national franchise to achieve REAL certification from the United States Healthful Food Council (USHFC), a national standard for food service nutrition and sustainability. Taziki's is also now the largest chain restaurant to complete the certification process.

One cause Richards is championing is special needs students, as he has made hiring them a priority within the company-owned locations. Taziki's also buys herbs grown by schools and special needs students around the country. The program, HOPE (Herbs Offering Personal Enrichment), is in the process of receiving its 501c(3) status.

Several students from the HOPE Program in Shelby County attended celebration.
A UAB physician who died after he was reportedly assaulted while vacationing in Mexico is being remembered for his dedication to his patients' care and for the importance he placed on each person in his life.

"For him, the word 'family' meant his people back in Oneonta; it meant the myriad of colleagues who had the blessing to work beside him; it meant the students he mentored; it meant the friends he held close and loved dearly; it meant every patient he treated,'' according to his obituary published Wednesday in AL.com. "Bill's 'family' was large, and it was his life."

William Thomas O'Byrne III, 54, died Feb. 28 at UAB Hospital where he had been on life support after he was flown back to the United States from Mexico. Friends say the UAB anesthesiologist who specialized in critical care, took a vacation with friends to Puerto Vallarta when he was severely beaten and left for dead in a ditch. His friends found him at a hospital where he was hooked up to a ventilator. He was later returned to UAB via life flight, where he eventually died in the hospital's Center for Palliative and Supportive Care.

Authorities in Mexico released this statement last week: "We are aware of reports regarding a U.S. citizen injured in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Out of respect for the family, we decline further comment at this time."

The Puerto Vallarta Dailey News reported on March 3 that authorities there say no assault report was made but confirmed the doctor received treatment at Regional Hospital and was removed by family. "Authorities in the U.S. and Mexico are unable to confirm reports that the doctor was assaulted,'' the publication wrote. "The doctor was rushed out of the country with his friends before he was stabilized and an investigation could be conducted."

The family has not responded to a request for comment but wrote this in his obituary: "William Thomas O'Byrne's life was cut tragically short by a senseless act of violence while abroad. One can easily get caught up in the tragedy and anger surrounding Bill's death. But the 'family' will not lose sight of the kind of man he was, the kind of doctor he was, and the kind of life he led."

O'Byrne, the son of an Army lieutenant colonel and a nurse anesthetist, was raised in the Royal community just outside of Oneonta. He was the valedictorian at Susan Moore High School, graduated at the top of his class at UAB and, in 1997, was president of his graduating medical school class at University of South Alabama.

"By all accounts, Bill was a kind, generous, and caring man, and a brilliant, gifted, and caring doctor. Bill had a quick and biting wit. He was fiercely loyal,'' according to the obituary. "He was brilliant. His work was his life. His patients were his purpose. One can become overwhelmed trying to describe such a man,'' according to his obituary.

During his medical career, O'Byrne served as medical director in the Birmingham VA Emergency Department and medical director for some of UAB's intensive care units. He also was an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care at Vanderbilt. In 2012, O'Byrne moved to UAB. "At each, he helped people, saved lives and made a difference"
Aziz Sayyed, a former Huntsville college student, pleaded guilty today in federal court to a charge related to obtaining bomb making materials to blow up a police building on behalf of ISIS.

Federal prosecutors said the former Calhoun Community College student met with an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation who he thought was a member of ISIS last year and expressed his desire to assist the terrorist organization.

Terrorism case in north Alabama: The FBI, Huntsville police and prosecutors are giving an update after Aziz Sayyeds guilty plea in federal court today Posted by The Huntsville Times on Thursday, March 8, 2018

As part of a plea agreement, Sayyed, 23, pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Under the terms of the deal, federal prosecutors recommended Sayyed be sentenced to 15 years in prison and be placed on supervised probation for the rest of his life.

Sayyed's attorney Bruce Gardner said the state agreed to drop its charges as a part of the deal.

Those charges, however, haven't been officially dropped yet.

U.S. District Judge Abdul K. Kallon set Sayyed's sentencing hearing for 3 p.m. on June 20 in Huntsville. The judge isn't bound by the plea agreement and can sentence Sayyed to up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Sayyed is accused of obtaining materials to make a triacetone triperoxide (TATP) bomb for use in a terror attack. He was arrested in June 2017, two days after he met with the FBI agent.

According to the facts presented in the plea deal, Sayyed obtained and viewed propaganda videos from terrorist organizations. These videos showed ISIS forces committing bombings, executions and beheadings.

Sayyed showed his support for the terrorist organization by singing ISIS chants, possessing an ISIS flag and saying the group was on the "right path," according to the 13-page plea deal.

When asked if he would ever participate in beheadings, Sayyed allegedly responded "is there any higher honor?"

In the deal, Sayyed admitted to discussing his aspirations to carry out an attack on Redstone Arsenal or on police stations with two different people. He went to a shooting range in northern Alabama to learn how to operate certain firearms and practice shooting them.

Speaking to reporters following today's hearing, Gardner called Sayyed "very intelligent. He is also very immature. He is young and impressionable. I would call him a, sort of, social misfit."

"In my heart of hearts, I don't think he ever would have ever really done it," the attorney said. "What he did far exceeded breaking the law, don't get me wrong."

Sayyed is an American citizen and was born in Raleigh, N.C. He was living in Huntsville to attend Calhoun Community College. Sayyed's parents live in Kuwait, Gardner said, adding that the young man's uncle lives in Huntsville and works for NASA.

Gardner said Sayyed's family in Kuwait is saddened that the young man went down this path.

Sayyed is being housed in the Cullman County Jail until his sentencing hearing. He is held on $250,000 cash bond.

Gardner said he will recommend Sayyed serve his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega.
Charles Todd Henderson, the man elected Jefferson County's district attorney in 2016 but never served, was sentenced today to serve six months in jail for his conviction on a perjury charge.

Henderson, who was found guilty by a jury of first degree perjury in October 2017, was sentenced by Chilton County Circuit Judge Sibley Reynolds, who was specially appointed to preside over the case. The judge ordered Henderson to serve two-year split sentence, but suspended it with six months to serve in the county jail, followed by 12 months supervised probation. The judge also ordered Henderson to pay a $10,000 fine and another $1,000 to the state crime victims fund.

Henderson's attorneys say he will appeal his conviction. But the judge ordered him to jail pending an order to allow him to post an appeal bond. As of 10 p.m. Thursday, Henderson was being held in the jail with no bail set.

Henderson was indicted on the perjury charge and suspended the week before he was to take office in early January 2017. The charge relates to his testimony in a divorce case in 2016 when he was questioned about his role as guardian ad litem and whether he had a romantic relationship with the mother in the case.

Joe Espy, one of Henderson's attorneys, told the judge that the event that led to the charge is inconsistent with Henderson's life. He worked his way through college and law school, was an Eagle Scout, he said.

A number of people submitted letters in support of Henderson, including local attorney Martin Weinberg. "Charles is a good man. The whole chain of events that lead to today's outcome is extremely unfortunate. Our prayers are with him and his family at this time," said Weinberg, who attended today's sentencing.

A few of those at the hearing in support of Henderson said the conviction was political because Henderson had defeated the long-time Republican who had held the office, Brandon Falls. Henderson never held the office and Deputy District Attorney Danny Carr was named district attorney pro-tem while the case was pending.

Deputy District Attorney Mike Anderton was then appointed to serve as district attorney by Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey after Henderson was convicted.

Henderson also has already been punished, Espy told the judge. He has lost his job as D.A. and his law license and is now working at a school for $27,000 a year, Espy said. He also has to live the notoriety the conviction has brought on him, he said.

The events Henderson was charged with happened before he was elected in November 2016 so there was no crime as a public servant and Espy questioned whether Henderson would have ever been charged had he not won the election.

In the nearly 200-year history of Jefferson County there has never been a perjury charge our of a domestic case, Espy told the judge.

After the sentencing Espy said while he respected the judge's ruling, he was disappointed with it.

Assistant Attorney General Sara Margaret Rossmanith told the judge that Henderson has shown a lack of remorse nor has taken any responsibility for his actions. She showed the judge some social media posts and statements he made on an account to raise money for his post-conviction defense.

Prior to the sentencing both prosecutors and Henderson's attorneys filed briefs on their positions.

The prosecutors with the Alabama Attorney General's Office said in its brief that Henderson should serve at least six months in prison for his conviction on a first-degree perjury charge.

Henderson, according to his brief, "submits that incarceration serves no end that our system of justice has identified as primary to support its function. It is worth mentioning that the defendant has no prior criminal history and has honorably held several positions of public trust."

"As a result of this conviction, Defendant was removed from a very hard-earned, prestigious position; removed entirely from his chosen profession, his future employability has been severely impacted because he is now and will forever be a felon; and Defendant's reputation has been irreparably damaged," Henderson's brief states. "Put simply, he has been severely punished already. The only remaining question is whether the taxpayers must suffer along with the Defendant when they are forced to subsidize a period of incarceration. Therefore, the Defendant requests this court to suspend any sentence of incarceration and place the Defendant on probation."

In its memorandum the Attorney General's Office states that Henderson was found guilty of perjury beyond a reasonable doubt. "The evidence showed that Henderson testified in an official proceeding -- a divorce trial before Circuit Court Judge Patricia Stephens of the Jefferson County Domestic Relations Court. The evidence showed that Henderson testified falsely when he denied staying the night at Yareima Akl's apartment since she began campaigning for him. And the evidence showed that Henderson's false statement was material to the proceeding in which it was made. For these three reasons, Henderson was properly found guilty by a jury of his peers," according to the Attorney General's memorandum.

The Attorney General's Office spelled out what it believes the evidence showed:

"More broadly, the evidence at trial showed that Henderson's perjury was the culmination of a nearly year-long scheme that benefited himself and his girlfriend, concealed a conflict of interest from the court in violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct, and disregarded the harm that his conduct posed to a child and a judicial system that parents and children depend on in particularly difficult times. Henderson acted as the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing by offering himself as a neutral guardian to a child who very much needed one, when in fact, .... Henderson intended to do whatever it took to help the child's mother--his girlfriend--regardless of the child's best interests.

Henderson countered in his brief that "There is nothing in the evidence presented in the instant case, nor in the domestic case, that supports this statement. The relationship between the Defendant and Ms. Akl was one that changed over time."

"Indeed, Facebook postings of the parties at campaign events were offered to prove the relationship existed before the time Defendant was appointed as GAL. To purposely post pictures on social media for all the world to see would be perhaps the most ill-conceived way to conceal a relationship that one could devise," Henderson's brief states. "In truth, what began as nothing more than assistance in a political campaign evolved into a much more personal relationship between the parties. No evidence has ever been presented that the relationship either began, or continued, as a "scheme" to benefit anyone at the expense of a minor child. Such an assertion is preposterous, offensive, and not supportable by the evidence.
A Huffman High School student is in custody in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Courtlin Arrington inside the east Birmingham school.

Police have not identified the student but issued this statement Thursday morning: "Detectives of the Birmingham Police Department have been working through the night reviewing evidence, video and statements on the tragic incident that took place at Huffman High School yesterday. Due to their diligent work a person of interest has been taken into custody. Charges are pending a review of the case by the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office. Because the charges are pending we will not be releasing any information on the individual in custody. Further information will be released as it becomes available."

Initially Birmingham police officials said the deadly shooting, which happened inside a classroom as school was dismissing for the day, appeared to be accidental. The shooting, however, was captured on video and led authorities to pursue the charges against the student.

There was a bit of confusion on police radios at first with reports of an active shooter. An officer then clarified the situation. "Listen. We've had an accidental shooting, not an active shooter. We have the gun, we have the one who had the gun. We just need two paramedic vehicles to get these two kids out."

The shooting happened at 3:45 p.m. Arrington was given CPR at the scene and en route to UAB Hospital but was pronounced dead upon arrival at 4:16 p.m.. The other teen suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the leg. He was treated in the emergency room and quickly released into police custody where he was questioned and held overnight in the Birmingham City Jail.

A woman at the police station who said she was the boy's mother, said she had not been told his condition, but she did not believe he had a gun. She and other family members gathered there declined further comment. Friends of the student said he had been robbed on campus the previous day, and that likely is why he had a gun at school.

Arrington was going to graduate in May, had already been accepted into college and had dreams to become a nurse. "We're not just talking about some person, we're talking about losing a part of our future,'' said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. "Our hearts are heavy."

On Thursday, the mayor asked that all flags at city facilities be flown at half-staff. "My thoughts and prayers remain with this young lady's family, friends, Huffman family, and community,'' he said via Twitter.

School officials announced late Wednesday night that school will be closed on Thursday. The delay will provide an opportunity for the system to conduct a thorough safety sweep of the school, and also allow the system to collaborate with organizations in the community to provide counseling support to both students and staff, said Superintendent Lisa Herring.

"The magnitude of this event causes us to pause," Herring said. "However, we want to assure our parents, students, staff and community that safety and security are a top priority for Birmingham City Schools."

On Thursday, Herring met with Acting Police Chief Orlando Wilson and his staff to come up with a safety plan for heightened security when students return to school on Friday. In addition to the school resource officers already assigned to the school, additional officers will patrol both the inside and outside of the school. A number of other undisclosed safety measures also will be put into place, she said.

The superintendent also said school district administrators are meeting with United Way, area pastors, local teacher association representatives, mental health counselors and others to devise a counseling plan for students and staff.

"We recognize that as the students return on Friday, that will not be an instructional day,'' Herring said. "We recognize that this is a time of crisis and students are processing emotions that many have never dealt with. It is important to understand that Friday, and the coming days, will be a day of comfort and support."

Many have questioned the use of metal detectors at the school, and whether they were in use Wednesday. Herring said she wouldn't comment on any part of the ongoing investigation, but said there are working metal detectors at the school.

Herring said she knows there are many tough days and tough questions ahead.

"Our goal is to reassure our parents that, as much as we can, we will work to keep our schools safe. But our hearts and our minds are on the families tonight,'' she said. "How do we tell parents that their school is safe after an event like this and how do we reassure our children? That is the work we will take on every single day."

Herring said Huffman High School does have working metal detectors in use but declined to comment further as it is part of the ongoing investigation. In addition to increased security at the school Thursday, the superintendent said said there will be a full crisis team on hand to help students and faculty.

She praised the school officials on hand during Wednesday's shooting. "For as much as they've had to tackle on a very difficult day, they have done an exceptional job of trying to provide care and concern for those who were in the building and for those who had exited out,'' she said.

"We had two victims today, regardless of the circumstances,'' Herring said of both students. "We are most concerned about our families and the child who is no longer with us. We will not only pledge every effort to support the family, but we will do that for every child in Birmingham City Schools."

"I think it's really important we find a way to mourn with the family. That we wrap our arms around the Huffman High School community,'' Woodfin said. "Our entire Birmingham community is in mourning and grief right now. While there are many questions ...we need to take to the time realize that a life was lost. "

Dozens of police officers gathered at the school Thursday morning, as the investigation into yesterday's fatal shooting continues. A small memorial of red balloons and flowers were placed on the fence, near the school's driveway.

Birmingham City Councilor Lashunda Scales, who represents the Huffman area, was also present Thursday. She commented on what she thinks the school can do to increase security, and said Arrington had a "beautiful, radiant smile."

Denise Kendricks, who lives in Huffman, stopped by the school Thursday morning to voice her concerns about security measures in place. "These kids are out here crying for our help," she said through tears. "Something has to happen. Somebody's got to be held accountable."

Kendricks has a son, who serves in the military and lives in Florida, a daughter who recently graduated from Auburn University, and a six-year-old who goes to school nearby. None of her children went to Huffman High. "I expect my child to come home [from school]. I never expect my child to not make it home," she said. "I can't even wrap my brain around that."

The woman also said she's frustrated with others offering prayers and setting up vigils. She said, "We're past candlelight vigils. It's too late for that. Where were you yesterday? Where were you the day before yesterday?"

"These are the things [students] are seeing every single day.... I'm tired of people waking up and losing their lives over something that could be handled," Kendricks said. "If it's affecting our community, it's affecting me."
One man was killed and three others injured today when a gunman entered a restaurant in the small Alabama town of Hurtsboro. If Sheriff Heath Taylor had his wish, the name of the suspect would be omitted from stories about the slaying.

"I have said for a period of time now that my opinion -- and it's just my opinion -- that these shootings involving mentally disturbed individuals are occurring more and more because of the media attention that they receive when they get it, when they do something, and they see whatever attention that the offender gets on TV," the sheriff said during a news conference.

"I'm not talking about him, I'm not saying his name, I'm not saying anything other than he's in custody," he added.

The gunman in the shooting, identified as Walker Frank Thomas, 64, was arrested at his home after fleeing the City Grill Cafe Wednesday morning. He faces one count of murder in the shooting death of restaurant owner Donald Wayne Hughes, 69, and three counts of attempted murder for wounding others at the popular eatery.

Thomas allegedly entered the restaurant around 6:30 a.m. EST and shouted Hughes' name before opening fire. According to the Opelika-Auburn News, about 10 people were in the restaurant when the shootings occurred.

Injured were John Carroll Williams, 74; Roy Donald Johnson, 70; and John William Harden, 74, all of Hurtsboro.

None the wounded are believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries.

'Not mentioned by me'

Taylor, who has previously been critical of media coverage of police shootings, later added to his statements via a Facebook message.

"Let me be very clear, the offender in the incident that occurred today in Hurtsboro will not be mentioned by me in the press," Taylor wrote. "Please understand that once he was arrested and incarcerated in jail, his personal information and photo becomes public information, and all media sources are aware of this. If the public sees his photo in the media it's because the media chose to put it there. We are required by law to provide this information upon request. Please keep Hurtsboro and all involved in your prayers."

Hurtsboro, population 590, is located about 30 miles south of Opelika in Russell County.
Alabama is in store for a second straight night of cold temperatures.

The National Weather Service has issued a new batch of freeze warnings for north, central and even parts of south Alabama in anticipation of temperatures falling to near or below freezing for several hours overnight. A frost advisory will be in effect closer to the coast.

Why the warnings?

February's unseasonably warm weather has spurred early plant growth, which could be harmed or even killed by tonight's freezing temperatures.

Here's a look at the warnings in effect for tonight:

North Alabama

A freeze warning will be in place for the second straight night for all of north Alabama.

The weather service in Huntsville said temperatures on Thursday morning proved a widespread freeze occurred, with lows falling to between 28 and 31 degrees across north Alabama.

Expect more of the same tonight, forecasters said. A freeze warning will be in effect from 2 a.m. until 8 a.m. Friday.

Temperatures are forecast to fall to between 26 and 32 degrees for several hours overnight.

Central Alabama

A freeze warning also will cover all of central Alabama overnight, according to the weather service in Birmingham.

It will be in effect from midnight until 8 a.m. Friday.

Lows will fall to between 26 and 32 degrees overnight, and the weather service said a widespread, heavy frost is possible areawide.

South Alabama

Freezing temperatures will be possible all the way into south Alabama as well, according to the weather service in Mobile.

A freeze warning has been expanded southward and now covers all of south Alabama except parts of Mobile and Baldwin counties. It will go into effect at midnight and last until 8 a.m. Friday.

Temperatures in the northern part of the forecast area will fall to between 30 and 32 degrees overnight, forecasters said.

Frost will also be possible in some areas, the weather service said. A frost advisory was issued Thursday afternoon for central Baldwin and Mobile counties. It will also be in effect from midnight until 8 a.m. Friday.

A freeze warning was issued for southeast Alabama on Thursday afternoon and includes Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Houston and Henry counties, according to the weather service in Tallahassee. It will be in effect from 2 a.m. CST to 8 a.m. CST Friday.

This might not be the last brush with freezing temperatures for some of the state.

The weather service said another shot of cold air is expected next week.

That could again bring temperatures close to the freezing mark on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.
March 8 is International Women's Day - a time to celebrate the accomplishment of women and highlight the need for gender equality.

The holiday traces it roots back to 1908, when more than 15,000 women marched in New York demanding better pay, improved working conditions and voting rights. The first "National Woman's Day" was held Feb. 29, 1909 in New York City, with the international celebration starting in 1910 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The United Nations first celebrated the holiday in 1975, which was also designated as International Women's Year.

Here are some of the best quotes and inspirational messages to celebrate International Women's Day 2018:

"In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less." - - Carrie Chapman Catt

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." - - Amelia Earhart

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives." - - Jane Austen

"You must make women count as much as men; you must have an equal standard of morals; and the only way to enforce that is through giving women political power so that you can get that equal moral standard registered in the laws of the country. It is the only way." - - Emmeline Pankhurst

"My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone." - - Mary Wollstonecraft

"I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights; human rights are all that I recognize." - - Sarah M. Grimke

"Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us." - - Wilma Rudolph

"It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I cannot afford the luxury of a closed mind." - - -Clara Barton

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - - Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." - - Maya Angelou

"I raise up my voice-not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard...we cannot succeed when half of us are held back." - - Malala Yousafzai

"Silencing women silences justice." - - DaShanne Stokes

"Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism." - Oprah Winfrey

"Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less." - - Susan B. Anthony
Two law enforcement officials said Wednesday they are opposing a state bill to compile statistics and study racial profiling because it would create too much paperwork.

Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham

The rationalization drew the ire of black lawmakers on the state House Judiciary Committee, where a public hearing on the bill sponsored by state Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, was being held Wednesday in Montgomery.

Smitherman's bill would provide stats on traffic stops, allow for complaints and provide data collection on injuries to state and local law enforcement. The data would help the state prevent racial profiling in the future, he said.

"I've been racially profiled five times," Smitherman said. "Not one time it was stated that I made violations."

Bobby Timmons, head of the Alabama Sheriff's Association, said all of the state's counties have policy procedure manuals against racial profiling and law enforcement officers are reprimanded if they're engaged in the practice. He said the bill would also strain law enforcement resources.

"This bill adds a whole lot of paperwork to officers now that we don't have personnel to do it," he said. "Making these reports ... it's a process bill that we've never seen before."

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said the bill is "worth the effort."

"We're not exactly asking an officer to spend inordinate amounts of time filling out personal characteristics on the person that they're just talking to," he said. "The way to end this sort of profiling is to compile the statistics to indicate whether its occurring or not."

Bill Hammer, president of the Alabama Peace Officers Association and a Dallas County sheriff's deputy, agreed with Timmons and said the bill has the effect of "putting a burden" on officers.

"The spirit behind [the bill], we agree with totally," he said. "This is not the way to do it though."

Rep. Paul Beckman, R-Prattville, said the paperwork argument was not a valid excuse, saying that occupations like school teachers and principals are also bombarded with paperwork.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs and the wants of the few," he said.

Rep. David Faulkner, R-Birmingham, suggested a middle ground between Smitherman and the opposition, such as amending the bill to only include traffic stops that lead to arrest.

But Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Birmingham, said that would defeat the purpose of the racial profiling legislation.

"Every person of color in this room ... understands what it feels like to be stopped for no reason except for the color of their skin," she said. "How do we identify the bad actors if we're not compiling that data somewhere?"

Coleman noted that racial profiling is suggested when a person of color is stopped when they are obeying the law.

"I wish every last one of you can walk a mile in our shoes to understand how it feels to follow the letter of the law and still be stopped because of the color of our skin," she said. "Unfortunately we've all seen the videos. We all read the reports of unarmed people on traffic stops who end up not going home to their family."

Hammer suggested that the legislature consider increase in pay for law enforcement who would have to work overtime to comply with the bill.

"People's lives are worth more than a piece of paper," Coleman said.
A year and a half after a clash between Mobile police and unruly McGill-Toolen students made headlines, a judge may be close to ruling on whether police have to release body camera footage of the incident.

A top city official suggested that an unfavorable ruling could lead the Mobile Police Department to simply abandon its use of body cameras.

WALA-TV10, a Fox affiliate, has requested the footage. Meredith Corp., the station's owner, filed suit in June 2017 demanding the city release it.

The case goes back to early September 2016, when McGill-Toolen faced Murphy in a storied Midtown rivalry game played at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Over the years, it's become traditional for the winning side to paint its colors on the cannon a few blocks away at the intersection of Government Boulevard, Old Government Street and Houston Street.

What started as an outlaw activity has become a quasi-official tradition, with police sometimes blocking traffic while students congregate. But McGill won the 2016 game in a blowout, and a large group of students arrived at the cannon earlier than expected, overwhelming officers on the scene. One officer fired pepper spray over the crowd, causing complaints of an overreaction.

James Barber, then police chief and now the city's director of public safety, said afterward that three officers had been trying to manage a crowd of 80 to 100 students, some of whom were impeding traffic. But he also said the officer had not followed proper procedure in using pepper spray and had been disciplined. Barber issued a public apology.

Broadly speaking, WALA's argument is that aside from a few caveats -- for example if it's evidence in an ongoing criminal case -- police body camera video should be considered a public document, available to media outlets and the public under open records laws.

The city has vigorously opposed any argument that it is obligated to release body cam video. It has also questioned Meredith's and WALA's standing to demand the video, suggested WALA never filed a proper request for the video, and twice made motions to have the case dismissed. Circuit Court Judge Rick Stout denied both requests.

At a three-hour evidentiary hearing on Wednesday, Stout repeatedly referred to the "balancing act" such a case demanded, between the public's right to know what public agencies were doing and a police department's ability to conduct business. Concerns aired by the city included the manpower demands of answering video requests; the possibility that video often showed victims and witnesses, potentially exposing them to trauma or retaliation; that exposure of witnesses might have a dramatic chilling effect on people's willingness to speak to investigators; and that the cannon video showed the faces of some juveniles who were being unruly, but also others who weren't.

Barber went so far as to suggest that if Stout ruled the department generally had to grant requests for body camera video, the Mobile Police Department might simply have to abandon the cameras altogether. "It would have to be shut down," he said.

In the end, Stout granted city attorney Ricardo Wood's request to file a pre-trial brief within the next 10 days. The matter is set for a bench trial, not a jury trial, so that may be the last step before Stout makes a ruling.

As of Wednesday, no timetable had been set for that ruling. An attorney for Meredith Corp. said he expected it would come within the next month or less.
A bill that would allow Alabama school systems to use money from an education savings fund for school security is on the move in the state Senate.

The Senate Finance and Taxation Education Committee approved the bill, which came in response to the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school.

Under the bill, by Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, school systems could use the money from the Advancement and Technology Fund to put police officers in schools, make school entrances more secure or take other steps to make schools safer.

A separate bill that has passed the House appropriates $58 million from the Advancement and Technology Fund to school systems for next year.

Pittman's bill would add school security to the list of allowed uses of that money.

The committee approval moves Pittman's bill to the Senate.

Gov. Kay Ivey and Interim Superintendent Ed Richardson endorsed the proposal when Ivey spoke about her school security initiative on Tuesday.

This story was edited at 10:01 a.m. to correct the name of the interim school superintendent.
A U.S. consular agency in Mexico has been closed and cruise lines are canceling excursions to a popular tourist destination in the wake of reported security threats.

An alert issued Wednesday prohibits U.S. government employees from traveling to the coastal resort town of Playa del Carmen near Cancun and Cozumel.

The consular agency there will be closed "until further notice" due to an unspecified security threat.

"We take our obligation to provide information to U.S. citizens seriously as evidenced by the clear, timely, and reliable safety and security information we release worldwide," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told ABC News, adding that updates will be provided when more information is available.

Visitors are not being told to avoid all travel to Playa del Carmen, placing it in the Level 2 category calling for "increased caution."

Earlier in the week, several cruise lines, including Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Disney, canceled all shore excursions involving ferries between Cozumel and Playa del Carmen. The cancellations came after an undetonated explosive device was found March 1 on a tourist ferry that linked the popular spots. On Feb. 21, an explosive device detonated on a tourist ferry in Playa del Carmen, injuring several people, including U.S. citizens.

Both incidents are under investigation.

The ferry ride between Cozumel and Playa del Carmen takes about 45 minutes and both are among the most popular stops for cruise lines in the Caribbean. Carnival's cruise out of Mobile routinely makes stops in Cozumel.

Last year the State Department warned citizens to use caution when traveling to tourist hotspots such as Cancun, Cozumel and Playa del Carmen due to an increase in violent crimes such as homicides, kidnappings, carjackings and robberies.
Mobile is receiving nearly $40 million in money related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, money that will help pay for watershed restoration, a cross-city greenway, a new Africatown welcome center and other projects.

Other project approved in the region include four in Fairhope with a value of $18 million.

The Alabama Gulf Coast Recovery Council voted Wednesday on projects that would receive money from RESTORE Act funds. The money comes from a trust fund created with civil penalties from the oil release, and generally is meant to "restore and protect the natural resources, ecosystems, fisheries, marine and wildlife habitats, beaches, coastal wetlands, and economy of the Gulf Coast region."

According to information released late Wednesday by the city of Mobile, awards announced by the council include:

Historic Africatown Welcome Center -- $3.58 for a collaboration between the Africatown Community Development Corporation and the Mobile County Commission. The center and a related tourism program will preserve and celebrate the unique history of the Africatown community.

Innovating St. Louis Street: Mobile's Technology Corridor -- $5.9 million to redesign and reconstruct infrastructure on St. Louis St. a downtown corridor undergoing rapid redevelopment.

Mobile Greenway Initiative -- $9.7 million for a multi-use path along Three Mile Creek, connecting downtown to Langan Municipal Park and the University of South Alabama campus for walkers, runners and cyclists. The city has already build the first section of the trail and has engineered much of the remainder.

Three Mile Creek Watershed Restoration -- $11.8 million that will restore the lake in Langan Park, stabilize sections of Twelve Mile Creek, and improve water quality in Three Mile Creek.

One Mobile: Reconnecting People, Work and Play through Complete Streets -- $1.25 million to improve the road bed and utilities along the corridor formed by Beauregard Street, Broad Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. This grant supplements a federal TIGER grant funding major improvements along Broad Street.

Mobile Area Storm Water Mapping & Resiliency Planning -- $3 million for a city-county collaboration intended to improve resiliency "in the face of flooding, extreme weather events, climate hazards and changing ocean conditions."

Perch Creek Area Sanitary Sewer Trunk Line -- $3.5 million for a collaboration with the Mobile Area Water and Sewer Service that will reduce sewer overflows and improve water quality in the Perch Creek area off Dauphin Island Parkway near Dog River.

Fairhope projects:

Working Waterfront and Greenspace Restoration -- $6.2 million.

Fairhope Area Community-Based Comprehensive Land Use Plan -- $650,000

Fairhope Sewer Upgrade Phase I -- $10,000,000

Eastern Shore Sanitary Sewer Overflow Prevention Plan -- $1 million.

"I applaud my colleagues on the Alabama Council for championing these transformational projects," Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson said in a statement about the funding. "Mobile is a city closely connected to the water, and as one of the largest ports in the country, we were devastated by the BP oil disasters. Citizens lost their jobs, entire industries suffered and many felt hopeless for the future. These projects will ultimately connect citizens to our waterways, stimulate economic activity and revive historically significant areas in our community."

"We are thrilled that the entire RESTORE Act Council saw it fit to approve the Fairhope-sponsored projects," Mayor Karin Wilson said in a statement on Facebook. "The Deepwater Horizon oil spill sent a shock wave through the relationship between our quality of life, our ecosystem, and our economy. These projects, as well as those presented and approved by our counterparts across Baldwin and Mobile counties, will make incredible strides to restore the balance of our fragile ecosystem while also sustaining our region as we experience more and more growth and increased tourism."
Placing full-time certified school resource officers at all of Baldwin County's 46 public school campuses and tightening security at each school's front-door entrance highlighted a security plan that officials announced Thursday.

The plan came one day after an "unprecedented" meeting of all Baldwin County law enforcement, public school, county and municipal leaders to discuss school safety measures in the aftermath of the Feb. 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead.

It also comes one day after a school shooting at Huffman High School in east Birmingham in which a 17-year-old girl was killed.

"This is a new day and time that we are in," said Baldwin County School Superintendent Eddie Tyler during a news conference at Daphne High School. Baldwin County Public Schools is Alabama's fourth largest public school system.

"There will be parents and some (residents) who are upset," he said. "My mission is to make sure our students and employees are safe."

The changes at Baldwin County come as Alabama schools contemplate their own school safety programs. Hoover, on Tuesday, held a community meeting to discuss school safety and ideas such as additional security cameras to requiring students to wear badges.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, also on Tuesday, announced the formation of a school safety task force. The group is required to provide recommendations by April 30.

Ivey also endorsed legislation that would allow the $41 million in the state's advancement and technology fund for school safety needs.

Tyler said in Baldwin County, school officials were examining their budgets as county officials embark on a two-prong approach toward securing the public schools.

They include:

Conducting an evaluation of security needs at all 46 campuses, and install security cameras and an intercom system requiring visitors to identify themselves before entering a school's front entrance. Tyler said the process is underway, and that all schools will have a security system in place by the time the 2018-2019 school year begins in August.

Dedicating a full-time and nationally certified school resource officer (SRO) at every school building. Baldwin County has SRO's at each of its high schools, but 22 schools in total have a part-time officer.

"I will be blunt: My goal is to make sure there is a school resource officer at every school in Baldwin County," Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack said. "We'll achieve that."

Baldwin County Commissioner Chris Elliott said that government leaders on Wednesday committed to providing the funds to place a SRO in every school building. It's unclear how much that might cost. There was also no rough estimate to how much the new security systems will cost, though Tyler said the money is available.

Mack said each SRO placed at each school will come with at least "three to five years" of "street-level" police experience. He said each SRO will be "easily identified" and will be required to wear a uniform while at school. He said they will also be charged with interacting with students, teachers, and staff.

"They have a passion working with kids," said Mack.

Tyler said that parents might find some problems with the new policy as it pertains to tightening front-entrance security. He said the days of parents walking into a school building to deliver something to their children "are over."

Parents and visitors, instead, will have to identify themselves at a front-door intercom. They will also be required to possess identification before meeting with their child.

All schools will also only have one "point of entry," meaning other entrances into the school buildings will be locked.

Tyler said he anticipates criticism about schools resembling "Fort Knox," which is a reference to an overly protected building.

"I've been in education for 42 years and I don't think anyone envisioned the day that our schools might be turned into fortresses," Tyler said. "It's a new day and if a campus might look like it's as secure as Fort Knox, then I'll take the heat. Our employees want to go home to their families. That is what this is about."

The Baldwin County efforts, which officials called "progressive" for Alabama schools, also come after the school system and law enforcement have been involved in at least eight separate incidences of school threats following the Parkland massacre.

The most alarming incident occurred on Feb. 15, when a middle school student was arrested for bringing a stolen handgun onto school property in Fairhope.

In Daphne, a student was initially suspended on Feb. 16 after he called 911 from a school bus to report a concern he overheard about the potential for gun violence. Tyler later reversed the suspension, and acknowledged that the student called emergency officials after hearing a "flippant" remark prompting police to surround the bus and cause "needless chaos and panic."

Tyler said school officials were not going to tolerate any comments about violence, and that offenders would face discipline.

The Baldwin County plan did not include any proposals to add metal detectors or to arm teachers, both ideas that Tyler and Elliott both said they would like to avoid.

Ivey has said that adding metal detectors at schools could be one way to secure them. And legislation in Montgomery could allow some teachers to carry concealed weapons while on campus.

"Law enforcement has to be front and center in driving this train with legislators," said Tyler, referring to arming teachers, which is idea that has had the initial backing of President Donald Trump following the Parkland shooting.
If Roy Moore wanted to make a memorable return to the political area, he could turn to an unlikely source for inspiration: Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

In 1998, as a third-party candidate, Ventura defeated two well-honed political establishment candidates to wrestle away the Minnesota governor's race in one of the most unlikely outcomes in recent political history.

"He only got around 30 percent of the vote and that became a plurality and he was able to bump off the Democrat and Republican nominees," said Waymon Burke, a history and political science instructor at Calhoun Community College in Huntsville. "That could be a perfect storm for an independent."

Jesse Ventura, a former professional wrestler and actor, "shocked the world" when he won the 1998 Minnesota governor's race while running as a third-party candidate. Running as an independent or as a write-in candidate are the only two options for Roy Moore if he decided to jump into the 2018 Alabama elections. (file photo)

Said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas: "That (Minnesota) race was very unusual in a sense that the vote split three ways, almost evenly and Ventura, as an independent, squeaked through between the two-party candidates. It's not inconceivable."

For Moore, Alabama's most recognizable political figure, an independent run remains one of only two options in 2018. The former Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice has until June 5 to qualify with the Alabama Secretary of State's Office as an independent candidate. He could also run as a write-in candidate during the general election, of which there is no deadline.

'Thick of it'

Moore, who has not hinted at any run for political office in 2018, remains on the sidelines after a setback to Democrat Doug Jones during the Dec. 12 special election.

But most political science professors and observers believe the ex-judge will return and run again for office. Which office and when, remains a point of speculation.

"I don't think he's the type of guy who is just going to sit on the porch," said Derryn Moten, a professor of history and political sciences at Alabama State University. "I think he wants to be in thick of it."

Another intriguing prospect is that Moore, who butted heads with the GOP establishment throughout the Senate campaign, would entertain a third-party candidacy. Ventura, in 1998, won the Minnesota governor's race as a member of the Reform Party.

Moore has flirted with the concept before. In 2006, the Constitution Party urged voters to write-in Moore's name during that year's governor's race. Two years before that, the party tried to get his name on the presidential ballot.

Rich Hobson, Moore's campaign manager last year who is running for a congressional seat this year, said he's not sure which path the former judge may take.

"There are some rumblings about him running a write-in campaign, but I don't see him doing that," said Hobson, who is currently seeking the Republican nomination in the race for Alabama's 2nd Congressional district seat, currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Martha Roby. "I hope he would continue doing something."

Moore would automatically be thrust as the center of attention in any political race if he decided to run. He's just three months removed from an election in which he got 650,436 votes, finishing 20,715 votes behind Jones. White voters, even among the college-educated, overwhelmingly backed Moore's candidacy, and he's still considered a darling among evangelical Christian-right voters.

"There are 650,000 people who would vote for his man for whatever reason ... that is a lot of voters," said Burke.

For now, Moore has shied away from the Alabama political limelight opting not to run as a Republican for any of the statewide races contested this year. The deadline to qualify as a Republican or Democrat for this year's elections was Feb. 9.

Instead, the ex-judge's focus appears to be on legal matters left over from a controversy that erupted ahead of the Senate election. Moore was accused by multiple women of inappropriate sexual conduct decades ago while he was an attorney in Etowah County. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Steve Flowers, a former Republican legislator who now writes a political column about state politics which appears in about 60 newspapers, said the scandal would linger into any campaign Moore may jump into.

"I think that last race, the way it ended, he's really a bit tainted," said Flowers. "I don't think his hardcore supporters, where it may have been 20 percent (in the past), is no more than 10 percent to 12 percent."

The scandal would linger through 2018. One of his accusers, Leigh Corfman, filed a lawsuit after the election claiming that Moore and his campaign defamed her by saying she was a liar and immoral. Moore, in a Facebook message, recently pleaded with supporters to help him raise $250,00 for a legal defense fund.

Federal campaign records showed he raised over $6 million during the Senate campaign, but only had about $49,000 in the bank.

But money might not be an issue if Moore decided to run.

"He does have a loyal niche following and therefore he doesn't need a lot of money to get folks out there to vote for him," said Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University. "He already has name recognition. A lot of other folks (running for office) need the first few hundred thousand dollars to get their names out there."

'Bid for governor'

Wayne Flynt, a respected Alabama historian, said the atmosphere could be ripe for a splashy Moore run. The ex-judge, Flynt said, has spent a majority of his political career in the headlines and in front of adoring evangelical crowds.

"The worst thing for him is what's happening (right now)," Flynt said. "The only thing worse than bad news is no news at all for someone like him. And defeated politicians will often amaze and provoke people like (the media) because they seem to come back from the dead even when it's perceived they have no chance at winning."

Flynt said that Moore would likely run for one of the few high-profile contests, such as governor. Moore is not qualified to run as a state judge again. State law prohibits judges from serving over the age of 70, and Moore turned 71 last month.

Moore, as a Republican, unsuccessfully pursued the governor's office in 2006 and 2010.

In 2016 - long before the special Senate election campaign began -- the conservative-leaning Alabama Forestry Association conducted a survey of 600 likely Republican primary voters and found Moore's name atop a list of 10 possible gubernatorial candidates for this year.

"Moore certainly has the sort of name recognition and following that might help him make a credible independent bid for a state office," said Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, who provided analysis during the 2017 campaign. "Considering the closeness of his Senate race and his position in state politics, I would suspect he would only consider a bid for governor at this point."

Jillson, of SMU, said he thinks Moore's flair for political showmanship is more suited for state politics than the U.S. Senate seat he unsuccessfully sought.

"When you think about that campaign, and riding a horse to the polling place ... he's such a showman and often times that sort of showmanship works much better in a state race than it does when you are asking people to send you to the nation's Capitol," said Jillson. "Those sort of antics in the halls of the Senate are generally rejected. But that has a much more comfortable place in state politics."

The GOP field for governor consists of current Gov. Kay Ivey, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, Birmingham youth pastor Scott Dawson and state Sen. Bill Hightower of Mobile.

Some political science professors have been critical of the race, saying the candidates have been lacking in bold policies. Brown, of Athens State University, called it "boring." Moore would, undoubtedly, stir things up.

Six independents or third-party candidates have won gubernatorial races since 1990. Aside from Ventura's 1998 win, they include:

- Wally Hickel, a former Republican governor, won the 1990 Alaska governor's race as a nominee of the Alaska Independence Party. He later switched back to the GOP.

- Lowell Weicker, a former GOP senator, won the Connecticut governor's race in 1990 as a member of "A Connecticut Party."

- Angus King, a current U.S. Senator, won the 1994 Maine governor's race as an independent.

- Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican Senator, won the 2010 Rhode Island governor's race as an independent. He later switch parties to the Democrats in 2013.

- Bill Walker, a former Republican, won the 2014 Alaska governor's race as an independent against a Republican incumbent.

The only independent to win an Alabama's governor race was Joshua Martin in 1845.

'Nadering'

Skelley, like most political pundits, believes a Moore run for statewide office in 2018 would put him in the role as spoiler. It could also damage Alabama Republicans, who stuck by the former judge after allegations about his past misconduct surfaced in November.

"Were he to run and win 10-15 percent of the vote, that could open the door for Democrats to win the Alabama governorship as most of those votes would come from voters who would otherwise vote Republican," said Skelley.

Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota - who tracked Ventura's political career - refers to this as "Nadering," named after former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader whose campaign in 2000 arguably cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency.

"In this case, the third party candidate does not win but does play King Maker," said Jacobs.

Flynt, the historian from Auburn University, said a Moore independent party run at this point in the campaign - three months ahead of the June 5 deadline - "sounds to me like Democratic wishful thinking."

Republican leaders also don't see it happening. Among them is Michael Hoyt, the chairman of the Baldwin County Republican Party. Moore won nearly 60 percent of the vote in Baldwin County in December.

"That would, in fact, be an opening for a Democrat to be elected governor if he would be willing to do that," said Hoyt. "To pull from the conservative base, I think, it would be detrimental to the people of Alabama. And it would be a terrible choice on his part."

Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University, said he thinks Moore could make a bigger impact in the attorney general's race.

Brown said he believes the crowded GOP primary for attorney general could be more cut-throat than the governor's race. He said whoever wins the GOP's nomination for attorney general could be wounded ahead of the general election.

In the field are: incumbent Steve Marshall, who was appointed to the position in February 2017 by scandal-plagued former Gov. Robert Bentley; Alice Martin, a former top federal prosecutor who served as chief of staff to Marshall's predecessor, Luther Strange; Troy King, the state's attorney general from 2004-11 who was beaten by Strange when he tried for a third term; and Chess Bedsole, the 2016 campaign chairman in Alabama for President Donald Trump.

The race has some intriguing historical side stories, such as Martin's role in investigating King's office for alleged connections to gambling interests.

"We are not there yet, but the Republican AG race has the potential of being a back-alley street brawl," said Brown. "That AG race could be a ripe environment for him to run as an independent if he goes that route."

But Brown also notes that Alabama, unlike Minnesota where Ventura reigned 20 years ago, doesn't offer the political climate that supports independent candidates.

"When you get to a Minnesota or a Wisconsin, and the political cultures of those places, the nature of party loyalty is different," he said. "It's, frankly, not as rigid and fierce as it is in the South, in my view."
On International Womens Day, the chief executive of the Mothers Union, Bev Jullien, looks ahead to the meeting of the UNs Commission for the Status of Women (UNCSW), which begins next week in New York.

In the week of 12 March 2018, representatives will gather from across the world in New York for the 62nd Annual Meeting of the United Nations Commission for the Status of Women (UNCSW), for which Mothers Union has accredited status. I am delighted that I will be attending, with a delegation of members from both the Global North and the Global South (the USA, Canada, Ghana and Zambia).

Each of our delegates has experience of advocating for the rights of women and girls in their own countries, for example with a focus on widows, single mothers, or young women from deprived areas, and all plan to continue their campaigns following the meeting.

In preparation, we surveyed our membership worldwide to gain an understanding of the issues facing them  and received responses from a wide range of countries. What surprised us was that the underlying issues were similar everywhere, with the rural context magnifying common challenges faced by women.

As one of our members in South Africa stated: poverty . . . bears the face of a woman.

Isolation and limited access to health and education services remain a key challenge, leading, for example, in developing countries to higher rates of maternal mortality, and in developed countries to difficulties for the elderly and women with young families.

Attitudes to gender remain a particular challenge in rural areas. One member from the UK stated: In some rural communities the traditional background of male dominance by the nobility, the village squire and farmers can restrict women being able to play their full part in rural communities. Additionally one member from South Africa stated that: Patriarchal society still confines women to the background and their issues are not considered important.

Womens participation in peace-building, whilst invaluable, is seriously limited, with less than four per cent of signatories to peace agreements, between 1992 and 2011 being women. Women on the whole are uniquely affected by violence and conflict, and rural women in particular, who are unprotected, isolated and vulnerable bear the brunt of this.

So we are advocating for reform on a range of key issues, for example:

Investment in womens economic empowerment, through safe access to quality education, skills training, and decent paid work; and ensuring that gender-based violence and discrimination within these settings is addressed.





Creation and implementation of laws and policies which give women equal rights within the law, including ownership of land and property; inheritance rights, including for widows; and access to financial capital and institutions.





Creation and implementation of laws and policies which ensure investment in infrastructure and essential services in rural communities, including adequate maternal, neonatal and healthcare; roads and transport links which reduce isolation.





Ensuring the meaningful participation of women and girls in rural areas, in decision making processes and political life at all levels, particularly in the planning of rural infrastructure and development processes, and in mechanisms around peace-building and conflict resolution.

To read our statement in full, and to follow the delegates at UNCSW, please go to our website: mothersunion.org.
A resident member of the Community of St Anselm, Katy Hirst, is surprised by a biblical view of the ideal women.

Today, for many people across the globe, the word woman will be significant. Its International Womens day, the UN Commission of the Status of Women is about to start in New York and the Diocese of London is today celebrating the confirmation of its new Bishop, who is in fact  for the first time  a woman. The existence of the first two events, and the noteworthiness of the third, tell us that there is work to be done about how the world, the church and individuals think about and interact with what it means to be a woman.

Its old news now to point out that the media, cosmetic industry, Disney and the majority of all marketing campaigns have contributed to the idea that being successful at being a Woman (at least in the West) means to be attractive, to be desired by men, to be delicate. Unfortunately a lot of Christian culture can often add to this list: be a wife, be attracted to childrens ministry, be adept at making bunting (or insert other domestic-craft item here). Both lists could go on and I havent met a woman inside or outside of the church who doesnt in some way feel like she has fallen short of this ideal of success, including myself.

During a moment when I was feeling this shortcoming more keenly than usual, I decided to turn to the Bible (perhaps not the place a lot of people would think an unmarried, childless feminist would turn to in this particular hour of need). And, against my better judgement, I turned to Proverbs chapter 31 and the famous Ode to a capable wife. This particular chapter tends to get women sighing and eye-rolling: How can we ever be like this woman?! Shes up before dawn, she makes clothes all day, looks after the kids and is HAPPY about it all! This mythical woman has consistently and incorrectly been use as a measuring stick to emotionally beat women with. But, to my surprise, as I read through the 21 verses I found that the ideal of this woman is far more liberating than the ones we get given today:

She is a woman of good character (v 11, 12, 25, 27, 28)





She excels as a business woman (v 13, 16, 18, 19, 24)





She has a social conscience (v 20)





She is a provider for her family (v 15, 21)





She is looked to for wisdom (v26)





She fears the Lord (v 30)





She is strong (v 17)





She is a leader (v 15, 26)

This woman is no wallflower or trophy wife. The woman described is strong, independent, skilled and good company. She is described as more precious than jewels (v 10) and surpassing excellence (v 29) and none of that is to do with her looks, her submissiveness or whatever else you find emulated on the front cover of most womens magazines.

For me, the message of this passage isnt that I have to stop conforming to one brand of woman and conform to this one instead. It isnt simply that I have a different, longer list of ideals to live up to. Rather, this passage tells me that it is more precious than jewels to be who God has created and calls me to be, regardless of whether it fits the culture-shaped mould for my gender. It tells me that some stereotypically male qualities belong to me too in a way that doesnt diminish my femininity. I can (if created and called to it) be strong, excel in my career and lead, confident that this contributes to my womanhood.

So, on this day where the world pauses to consider the idea of Woman lets celebrate, emulate, protect and nurture the strength we see in the Women around us. Lets partner with God in calling out of women the people they have created to be. Lets break the moulds we werent designed to fit.

Before joining the Community of St Anselm, Katy Hirst was chief executive of a charitable social enterprise working with people with dementia, as well as working for a domestic violence charity. She blogs at katyhirst.com.
Posted on: March 8, 2018 5:05 PM

Anglican bishops from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola took part in a round-table discussion with health ministers, scientists and field-staff to discuss ways of curbing malaria, a preventable disease which kills more than 400,000 people a year. The two-day meeting in Victoria Falls was organised by the Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative, which has been working for almost a decade to support malaria control and elimination programs in last mile communities.

Its co-founder, J C Flowers, the US-based investment manager and philanthropist, stressed the important role of Anglican Churches in eliminating malaria from hard to reach communities, saying: There is still much work to do, but the extensive focus on community engagement and ownership by the Anglican Church here in sub-Saharan Africa has contributed to significant advances in the fight against malaria.

The Director of Zimbabwes National Malaria Control Programme, Dr Joseph Mberikunashi, urged the round-table participants to curb the recent resurgence of malaria in the region. There is great need to develop new tools and more importantly make use of the new technologies as they becomes available, he said.

Bishops from Central and Southern Africa at the anti-malaria round table in Zimbabwe.

Photo: Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative

The Bishop of Lusaka, David Njovu, said that the Church was able to mobilise people around malaria prevention and treatment because of its active presence in communities most affected by the disease. Anglican Churches have been effective in engaging thousands of malaria volunteers who are responsible for delivering malaria education, testing, and treatment services, he said, adding: The Church is found in most communities of Zambia. This gives it a comparative advantage in the fight against malaria in the sense that people who volunteer to participate in the fight do so because they are motivated by love but also to protect their own community.

The round table was attended by Bev Jullien, chief executive of the Mothers Union, and Rachel Carnegie, co-executive director of the Anglican Alliance. After the meeting, Rachel Carnegie said: It was profoundly impressive to see how the volunteers in this malaria programme were extending the reach of the health services to eradicate malaria.

The Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative focuses its efforts on border communities in Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe and Zambia in partnership with community and traditional leaders, Anglican Churches and faith-based communities, national governments, and multilateral donors.
Posted on: March 8, 2018 4:47 PM

[Anglican Journal, by Tali Folkins] The Anglican Church of Canada will continue to have some sort of a relationship with the church in Cuba even if  as appears likely  it becomes a diocese of the US-based Episcopal Church (TEC), says Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

TECs General Convention is expected to vote this July on a resolution to reintegrate the Episcopal Church in Cuba after the Cuban church voted to return to TEC three years ago. The resolution, drafted by a task force on reintegration set up by TEC and composed of members both of the Episcopal and the Cuban church, seems likely to pass, Hiltz said in an interview on Monday (5 March).

I think all the indicators are that the task force . . . are supporting  and wholeheartedly supporting  the reintegration, and the resolution that theyve drafted, which has several parts, speaks very clearly of wanting to move ahead with this, said Hiltz, who attended the Cuban churchs annual synod in February. Like any resolution, theres never a guarantee that its going to pass; Im anticipating it will pass.

In the meantime, TEC has already been taking measures to prepare for the possible return to it of the Cuban church, Hiltz said. Theres discussion, for example, within TEC on providing financial assistance to the Cuban church in the form of block grants, which the US-based church provides to dioceses in need. TEC is also planning to put together a working group tasked with seeing the transition through as smoothly and effectively as possible, he said.

The Cuban church was founded as a missionary diocese of TEC in 1901, but relations between Cuba and the United States worsened after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and travel and communication between the two countries became difficult. In 1967, the Cuban diocese became extra-provincial, outside of the structure of TEC. A new body, the Metropolitan Council of Cuba  consisting of the primate of the West Indies, the presiding bishop of TEC and the primate of Canada, the councils chairperson  was set up to the guide the Cuban church in matters of faith and order.

The Anglican Church of Canada has continued to have a close relationship with the Episcopal Church in Cuba ever since; the Cuban churchs diocesan council has said the Anglican Church of Canada was like a mother who held the church in Cuba in her arms, Hiltz said.

In financial terms, the Canadian churchs support for the Episcopal Church in Cuba has a core budget of $65,000 [CAD, approximately 36,300 GBP] each year, said Andrea Mann, the Anglican Church of Canadas director of global relations. The money is used for a number of purposes, including topping up stipends to Cuban clergy; helping the Cuban church support an ecumenical seminary in Matanzas; the distance education of theological students; and youth Christian education, she said.

The Canadian church also provides funding in response to special requests, such as urgently-needed church repair, said Mann.

If the Episcopal Church in Cuba becomes once more a diocese of TEC, responsibility for supporting this type of work would pass from the Anglican Church of Canada to TEC, Hiltz said.

Discussions now going on within TEC about future block grants to the Cuban church, Hiltz said, are a sign of TECs commitment to support it if it becomes once more a diocese of the US-based church. Nevertheless, theres some anxiety amongst members of the Cuban church about how the change will affect its relationship with the Canadian church.

Theres a kind of a mix of emotion  theres a great sense of anticipation about being reintegrated into TEC, and they can see some of the advantages of that, he said. At the same time, he said, many members of the Cuban church are a little anxious about this relationship with the Anglican Church of Canada because, as they will say themselves, the Anglican Church of Canada accompanied them for so long.

Still, Hiltz said, no matter what decision is made about the Episcopal Church in Cuba this summer, some connection with the Anglican Church of Canada will remain.

There will always be a relationship between our church and Cuba, he said.

The Canadian church, Mann said, is in the process of working out precisely how it will collaborate with the Cuban church in the future. The question is complicated, she said, by the fact that if the Cuban church rejoins TEC, it will be a diocese that is part of a province, and normally provinces of the Anglican Communion deal with other provinces, not with dioceses. But its possible that the Anglican Church of Canada will continue to partner with a future diocese of Cuba in areas such as eradicating human trafficking and slavery, and in providing theological formation and continuing education for Cuban clergy, Mann said.

As the Anglican Church of Canada prepares for this change in its relationship with the Cuban church, its relationship with the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil is continuing to develop, Hiltz and Mann said. This spring, she said, she and Linda Nicholls, the Bishop of Huron, will be travelling to Brazil to attend the synod of the Brazilian church, with the goal of learning more about the ministries that the two churches could partner on. Nicholls will also be visiting Brazil in April to attend the consecration of Canon Marinez Santos Bassotto as bishop of Amazonia  the Brazilian churchs first female bishop.

Hiltz also said he had begun to do some preparation work for a meeting he will be hosting of primates from the Americas and the Caribbean, scheduled for November 2018. The meeting, announced in a reflection released last October, is one of a series of regional meetings of primates that will take place across the Anglican Communion in advance of the 2020 Lambeth Conference. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is expected to attend the meeting, which will take place in Toronto, Hiltz said.
Posted on: March 8, 2018 9:54 AM

The Primate of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (IEAB)  the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil  Francisco de Assis da Silva, has called on men and women in the Church to work together in the fight for gender equality. Bishop Francisco, who leads the Diocese of South-Western Brazil in addition to his role as Primate of the Province, said in an open letter that We live in a time of setbacks sponsored by those who hold power in the Brazilian state. Violence against women has widened. The exclusion of social rights has become systematic against the most vulnerable segments of society and, of course, women are the biggest victims.

He said that the National Congress, Brazils Parliament, had pushed issues of womens interests to the background, while pursuing conservative stances, including measures to repeal or diminish the Disarmament Statute, which limits the ownership of guns and ammunition. It is good to remember that if this easing happens the statistics of femicide will only tend to increase, he said.

Statistics published today by local news website G1 show that violence against women in the country continues to rise, with killings of women rising by 6.5 per cent in 2017 in comparison with 2016. The website highlights figures showing that of the 126 women killed in a single week six months ago, only one resulted in a trial.

Separately, the Brazilian Public Security Forum (BPSF) released figures showing that women were murdered at a rate of 4.3 per 100,000 in Brazil last year. And that almost a quarter of the violent deaths of women that occurred in Brazil last year  946 out of 4,473  were caused by femicide: the gender-motivated killing of women. Brazils former President, Dilma Rousseff, pushed through a law in 2015 that introduced tougher penalties for people convicted of femicide. Despite this, there has been an increase in the number of cases, the BPSF reported.

We have much to explore on this journey to gender equality, Bishop Francisco said. We must continue fighting and this fight is for all people of good will. Men and women are called to commit to a new look, a new way and to build another possible world.

This new look comes from a liberating hermeneutics, and from the eyes of people who know the oppression.

Thus, we challenge our dioceses, parishes and missions to support or make visible actions in favour of the rights of our women, whether in the liturgical spaces or in other spaces of Brazilian society.

As episcopal people, let us join efforts to make the nuclei of the Union of Episcopal Women of Anglican Brazil (UMEAB) the beacons of hope and presence of the Kingdom of God in their neighbourhoods, in their regions and in their cities, every day of the year.

We are people called to renew our understanding and our commitment to the Gospel that rises against all forms of discrimination.

Summarising his message, he quoted the Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Youzafzai, who said: I raise my voice not to scream but to make sure that all people who have no voice are heard. We cannot have justice while half of us are silenced.

In his letter, Bishop Francisco reference the forthcoming 62nd meeting of the UNs Commission on the Status of Women, to which a number of representatives from the Anglican Communion, Mothers Union and the US-based Episcopal Church will attend as accredited observers, and said: the sad note this year is that our Province will not be represented for the first time in many years. He revealed that his chosen representative for the IEAB, the Revd Elineide Ferreira, had been twice denied a visa to attend  something he blamed on the xenophobic and sexist prejudice of the Trump government.
Posted on: March 8, 2018 11:18 AM

[WCC] Christian Aid and Side by Side Scotland are staging an exhibition on Faith in Gender Justice at the Scottish Parliament. The exhibition is being staged this evening (8 March) for International Womens Day. It showcases inspirational women from around the world who are working to challenge gender inequality across eight themes including climate change, violence against women, refugees and women in leadership.

Side by Side Scotland is part of a faith movement for gender justice. The opening is being sponsored by Kate Elizabeth Forbes, member of the Scottish parliament, and will be attended by other members of the Scottish parliament as well as faith leaders.

Miriam Weibye, church relations officer at the Scottish Episcopal Church and World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee member from the [Presbyterian] Church of Scotland, said many churches in Scotland are actively engaged with Side by Side, and the ecumenical steering group has been working to promote gender justice across the churches in Scotland, and in wider society

Being supported by organisations such as Christian Aid, rather than by any one denomination, has enabled the group to be wide-reaching and proactive, and it is able to engage with events and materials in the different churches as well as organising things on its own, said Weibye. Were aware that we cannot work in isolation on this issue, so we work together whenever possible, and since gender inequality is a global issue, the group works with international partners such as the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil and the All India Council of Christian Women.

This is why we were keen for the exhibition to feature women of faith both from Scotland and from around the world, said Weibye. They have been tireless workers in their fields, and we are very happy to highlight and share their work here in Scotland.

Churches in Scotland also support the longstanding global campaign Thursdays In Black to combat violence against women.

WCC deputy general secretary Isabel Apawo Phiri is one of the featured women in the exhibit, with her contribution to gender justice explained via text and a photograph. Phiri is quoted as saying, Prophetic theology has turned me into an activist for gender justice.

But her route has been costly, explains the exhibit text: Isabel was introduced to gender justice discourse through the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. In 1995, she experienced violent attacks from male and female students at the University of Malawi after presenting research findings on sexual harassment and rape on campus.

In the same year she was threatened with excommunication from the Blantyre Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian for apparently inciting church women to seek gender justice in the church.

However, the text concluded, she was voted Woman of the Year 1995 by the Nation Newspaper for breaking the silence in Malawi and bringing gender justice into public debate. A Centre for Gender Studies has since been established at the University of Malawi.

In addition to Isabel Apawo Phiri, the women featuring in the exhibition include Roxana Anez from Bolivia, Maggie Birley and Dr Alison Elliot from Scotland, Major Maria Konti-Galinou from the Salvation Army in Greece, Lesley Orr and Professor Alison Phipps from Scotland, Sarah de Roure from Christian Aid in Brazil and Sister Isabel Smyth from Scotland.

From the Provinces of the Anglican Communion, the exhibition includes the Revd Marion Chatterley from the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Revd Elineide Ferreira from the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (the Anglican Episcopal Church in Brazil), Rachael Fraser from the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Revd Nosheen Khan from the Church of Pakistan and the Revd Dr Lydia Mwaniki from the Anglican Church of Kenya.

The 16 women who feature in the Christian Aid / Side-by-Side Faith in Gender Justice exhibition at the Scottish Parliament.

Photo: Christian Aid

Rachael Fraser has been an Anglican Communion representative to previous meetings of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The Revd Elineide Ferreira had been nominated by the Primate of Brazil to attend this years meeting, but her visa application was rejected by US authorities.

The Anglican Communions Director for Women in Church and Society, the Revd Canon Terrie Robinson, is co-chair of the steering group of the international Side by Side faith movement for gender justice, and will be speaking at tonights event at the Scottish Parliament.

We are delighted to be celebrating International Womens Day by sharing the stories of inspirational women who have worked tirelessly, often under very difficult circumstances, to challenge some of the narratives around gender that prevent equal access to rights, resources and power, the chair of Side by Side Scotland, Kathy Galloway, said. We hope that our work raises awareness of the importance of decision makers and faith organisations working together to create gender equality, and our vision is that Side by Side as a movement can be a valuable tool for this happening in Scotland.
ROME - The Louvre in Abu Dhabi has launched a project in which 10 billboards display works of art along the E 11 Sheikh Zayed road that connects Dubai to Abu Dhabi.

The project, known as the Radio-Guided Highway Art Gallery, is how the museum has chosen to celebrate UAE Innovation Month.

As motorists approach the billboards, which measure 8 by 6 metres, explanations of the artwork are provided via radio by the UAE's three main radio networks.

The explanations last 30 seconds and are broadcast on stations Radio 1 FM (100.5 FM), Classic FM (91.6 FM) and Emarat FM (95.8 FM). "This exhibition puts Abu Dhabi on the map of global innovation to support its heritage, represented by art, culture, and information," said UAE Culture Minister Noura Al Kaabi.

"The ancient masterpieces on display include the Mari-Cha Lion, an important Islamic work from the Mediterranean region; the exceptional Egyptian sarcophagus of Princess Henuttawy; a coin inspired by Alexander the Great and discovered in the United Arab Emirates, on loan from the Al Ain Museum; and an 8,000-year-old two-headed statue, one of the oldest monumental statues in the history of mankind, on loan from Jordan's Department of Antiquities. Paintings from the Renaissance to modern times will also go on display. Among these, Leonardo Da Vinci's 'La Belle Ferronniere', on loan from the Musee du Louvre; and Van Gogh's Self-Portrait from 1887 and The Fifer by Edouard Manet, both on loan from the Musee d'Orsay".

Abu Dhabi's president of the Department of Culture and Tourism, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, said the exhibition "makes art and culture accessible to people, beyond the walls of the museum" by "highlighting some of the museum's iconic masterpieces through a unique audiovisual experience".

The Highway Gallery will be on display through March 15, along the 100 km between Seih Shuaib and Rahba City.

The first universal museum in the Arab world, the Louvre Abu Dhabi was inaugurated on November 11, 2017.

Alongside its collection of artworks and objects spanning the prehistoric to the modern age, the museum will present four special exhibitions per year, organised by its French museum partners and the Agence France-Museums, as part of a 15-year agreement between the governments of Abu Dhabi and France.
Jordan inaugurates dam to harness water resources Al Lajjoun to assist agriculture in Kerak governorate

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 8 - Al Lajjoun dam in Kerak governorate, southern Jordan, was officially opened on Thursday in the presence of water and irrigation minister Ali Al-Ghezawi and the Italian ambassador to Jordan Giovanni Brauzzi. The project aims to exploit water resources to the benefit of agriculture and animal farming in the area. The dam has a capacity of 1 million cubic metres and measures 27.7 m in height. It was built within the framework of Italy's support to Jordan in improving its water and sanitation system and financed under a 16-million-euro debt swap agreement signed by the two governments on May 22, 2011. The agreement aims to promote the transfer of skills and technology in key sectors such as water management and public health. The Al Lajjoun project cost in the region of 7.2 million euros and the remainder is being used to co-finance the expansion of an existing dam in Al Waleh in the Madaba governorate from 9 million to 25 million cubic metres. A second phase of the programme foresees an additional 50-million-euro investment in debt-swap agreements to be negotiated on a bilateral level between Italy, Jordan and Lebanon. (ANSAmed).




BEIRUT/NEW YORK/ MOSCOW - An additional 62 civilians, including eight children and teens, were reported killed Thursday in government bombardments on the rebel-held eastern Ghouta area of Syria, the monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has reported. The ground offensive carried out by Damascus and its allied Syrian and foreign militias over the past few days has retaken over 50% of the territory in the region, according to the NGO.



Witnesses quoted by the Observatory said that the most intense bombings occurred until late last night on the areas of Harasta, Saqba, Hamouriya and Ein Tarma. The same NGO said that since the escalation of raids started on February 18, at least 867 civilians have been killed, including 186 minors. A reported 335 victims, including 45 minors, were killed after a resolution on February 24 issued by the UN Security Council demanded a 30-day-long humanitarian truce across Syria.



Yesterday, the UN Security council urged all sides in Syria to implement a ceasefire, expressing concern for the humanitarian crisis in the country. The failure of the truce decided with resolution 2401 led France and Great Britain to demand a new meeting of the 15 members.



International humanitarian organizations have decided to postpone the humanitarian convoy towards eastern Ghouta originally scheduled on Thursday due to increasing attacks from militants, General Yury Yevtushenko, head of the Russian center for reconciliation in Syria, announced Thursday.
Claims of Qatari support to Muslim Brotherhood 'unfounded' Doha works in the open, ambassador Al-Malki says

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 8 - "Each State evaluates and describes the Muslim Brotherhood as it sees fit. For some it is a peaceful movement, for others it is a terrorist one. The State of Qatar is very clear on this issue: we work with all state and non-state organisations in the open," said Qatari ambassador to Italy Abdulaziz Bin Ahmed Al Malki at the conference on 'Fighting terrorism and its Financing Sources' in Rome on Thursday. "Qatar negotiates with governments and works above the board and now below board," added Al-Malki. (ANSAmed).




Egypt rejects 'unfounded' UN charges ahead of poll Human rights chief denounces 'climate of intimidation'

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 8 - The Egyptian foreign minister has rejected "in the strongest terms" the accusation made by the head of the UN human rights agency Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein that this month's presidential elections is taking place in a "pervasive climate of intimidation" with potential candidates being forced to withdraw under pressure or arrested. In a statement published on the internet, the ministry said the accusations are "unfounded" and "reflect total ignorance" of what has been achieved in Egypt concerning the strengthening of these rights. The report contains incorrect information that "damages the credibility and integrity of the upcoming elections", it adds. The presidential elections are due to take place on March 26-28 and the incumbent head of state Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is certain of victory seeing as his only 'opponent' is a little-known supporter, Moussa Moustafa. (ANSAmed).




GB, S. Arabia to invest 90 bn in bilateral trade Initiative discussed during visit by crown prince

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 8 - Great Britain and Saudi Arabia are ready to invest 90,2 billion dollars in bilateral trade over the next few years, Arab News reports. The investment was discussed during a meeting at Downing Street between the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman and the British Premier Theresa May against the backdrop of plans to sell shares in the kingdom's oil company Aramco on international markets. Prince Salman was also received by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles.



However during question time on Wednesday Labour opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked the Conservative premier for Britain's alleged "collusion" with Riyadh, which he accuses of indiscriminate bombing in Yemen. Corbyn asked May to suspend the massive arms supplies to Saudi Arabia and raise the matter with the prince. (ANSAmed).




Italy should be proud of Minniti - Avramopoulos 'He has done an excellent job' says Commissioner

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MARCH 8 - European Migrantion and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Thursday that Italy should be proud of outgoing Interior Minister Marco Minniti. The minister is credited with bringing about a big reduction in the number of migrants arriving in Italy from North Africa with the help of a cooperation agreement with the authorities in Libya. "Minister Minniti has done an excellent job and Italy can be proud of it," Avramopoulos said. (ANSAmed).




BELGRADE - A debate is ongoing in the Serbian Orthodox Church to change its constitution to reflect a closer connection to Kosovo's Orthodox church, which is seen as the birthplace of Serbian culture and spirituality.



Media in Belgrade reported that one of the possible changes could concern the name that would become Serbian Orthodox Church - Patriarchate of Pec (Peja in Albanian), a city in western Kosovo hosting an important institution of the Serbian Patriarchate.



The procedure to elect the Patriarch would also be changed and would not take place with an 'apostolic raffle' among the closed envelopes with the names of candidates but with a normal, secret election in the General Assembly of the Church with a two-third majority.



The official name of the head of the Orthodox church would also change and would become the archbishop of Pec, metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovici and Patriarch of Serbs.



The adoption of the new constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church, according to media reports, would probably take place in the general assembly - the leading body of the Church - scheduled in mid-May. Serbian patriarch Irinej said he agrees in particular with changing the Church's name, connecting it to Pec, but that he believes that it should be based in Belgrade as the main administrative center.
Dassault Aviation has announced its financial results for 2017.

2017 was an intense year for Dassault Aviation, with mainly two highlights: the signing of an agreement with Qatar to exercise the option for 12 additional Rafale (which will come into force upon receipt of the first down-payment) plus an agreement on a future cooperation (option for another 36 Rafale) and the initiation of the termination process of the Silvercrest contract leading to the end of the Falcon 5X program.

Eric Trappier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dassault Aviation said : 2017 was eventful in many ways, with the installation of new government and administration in France and the United States, the upheavals of Brexit, the will to relaunch a common European defense policy, tensions between the United States and Russia, conflicts in the Middle East and, in the economic field, the good health of the US economy in a context of a decrease of the euro/dollar rate and of oil prices instability.

Given the remaining need of customers for an aircraft of the category of the Falcon 5X, Dassault Aviation has launched the Falcon 6X, featuring the same cross section as the 5X, with a range of 5,500 NM and powered by Pratt & Whitney PW812 engines; its entry into service is scheduled in 2022.

In addition to these major events, Eric trapier has pointed out in the military sector for MENA region, the delivery of 8 Rafale to Egypt (bringing up to 14 units Rafales fleet in service in this country), the support of the Mirage 2000 fleets in all countries, including main checks in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates intention to add new capabilities to their Mirage 2000-9.

In the field of business aviation, Dassault Aviation has mentioned the recovery of the pre-owned aircraft market, but at low prices, in a very competitive new aircraft market environment, despite signs of recovery in North America at the end of the year. 2017 Falcon orders totaled EUR 2,401 million versus EUR 1,419 million in 2016. 41 Falcon were ordered (33 in 2016)and 3 Falcon 5X orders were cancelled compared to 12 in 2016.

In 2018, the Group forecasts to deliver 40 Falcon, the company having reacted to the past years market weakness with a conservative management leading to a production rate ramp-down, and 12 Rafale (9 Export and 3 France). Net sales for 2018 should be close to 2017.
Etihad Aviation Group has marked the 2018 International Womens Day with a week of engaging activities featuring a number of leading women from across the UAE.

The highlight of the activities was a panel discussion with HE Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, President of Zayed University, and HE Mrs Rachel Ruto EGH, the Wife of the Deputy President of Kenya William Ruto.



Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi highlighted the need for women and men to work alongside one another: At work, you have female and male colleagues and just the same in school. Take it as a partnership, take it as that everybody has a role to play in society and in life. Respect the man as they contribute a lot and support us women.



Rachel Ruto, also founder of the Joyful Women Organization, said: I advise every woman to go for their dream. I advise you to be whatever you have desired to be, to be whom you dreamt to be. Just know that you can attain that potential and that nothing should be able to prevent you from getting whatever you want in life.



Amina Taher, Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Etihad Aviation Group, added: At Etihad Aviation Group, we are privileged to have many inspiring women working here, and we are delighted to have hosted these activities to spotlight their extraordinary stories, as well as the impressive achievements of women from across the UAE.
For more than a quarter-of-a-century Egyptian Aviation Services (EAS) has been playing a vital ground-handling role at Egypts major airports.

Today it serves Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Sharm-el-Sheik and now the new airport at Marsa Alam, in which it holds a 50% shareholding along with Kuwaits Kharafi Group.

We have an impressive list of customers and have a good relationship with them, said chairman and managing director, General Mohamed Kamel Mostafa.

EAS has won gold awards from British Airways as best performing station and best information provider, and reached the five crown awards for KLM for three consecutive years.

General Kamel said the company had also been developing its capabilities with private aviation as well.

We manage two VIP lounges at Cairo Terminal Two and have been working with Saudi Arabian private aviation companies as well. We have a three-pronged approach to what we do  security, safety and quality.

Kamel said that security remained a major priority in Egyptian airports, adding that the systems were solid. However, he urged that investment should continue. It affects everyone in our industry, he said.

EAS owns more than 2,000 ground-handling equipment pieces and has its own maintenance workshops, a contributor to the impressive on-time performances achieved by the company, according to its chairman.

Holding the International Air Transport Association (IATA) safety audit of ground operations (ISAGO) certification, EAS is also training others and intends to raise the levels of expertise both within the company and externally.

We plan to open up job opportunities in the new and military airports being used for civil aviation through our Marsa Alam partnership, said General Kamel We will also open areas of the security service training in the light of increasing demand for security procedures applied at airports.


Emirates has appointed Richard Jewsbury as the new divisional vice president of the UK from 1 April 2018. He will take over from Laurie Berryman, who retires from the airline on 31 March.

In his role Jewsbury will oversee Emirates entire sales and service functions across its commercial, customer and cargo operations in the market. He will report directly to Hubert Frach, Emirates Divisional Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations West.



We thank Laurie for his amazing contribution and commitment to our business, and wish him the very best for his retirement. We also welcome Richard to the UK team, where his experience from across various functions in the airline will stand him in good stead as we continue to grow our business in the market. We wish him every success in the UK, said Hubert.



Jewsbury said: To lead Emirates in one of our biggest and most important markets is an exciting opportunity, and my immediate priority will be to ensure the successful launch of our new service between Dubai and Stansted in June. Im looking forward to working with our local teams in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle, to build on the successes achieved to date.
Neither Priyanka Chopra nor Deepika Padukone, a new girl will be launched in SRKs much anticipated Don 3.

Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khan and director Farhan Akhtar will be coming together for Don 3 in 2018. Work on the script has already begun and it will be narrated to SRK in the coming months. A much has been speculated about the leading actress in the film, since no official announcement about the casting is made yet.

Earlier rumours surfaced that Deepika Padukone will replace Priyanka Chopra in the sequel but Producer Ritesh Sidhwani made it clear that Deepika will not be a part of Don 3.

According to the tweet posted by noted trade analyst Ramesh Bala, SRK's Don 3 will go on floors in 2019. The film will reportedly be shot extensively in Dubai and Abudhabi and will feature a new actress as the leading lady. He wrote, "@iamsrk's #Don3 will be shot extensively in #Dubai and #Abudhabi.. The movie is expected to go on the floors sometime in 2019.. A New Actress will play the leading lady role.."

. @iamsrk 's #Don3 will be shot extensively in #Dubai and #Abudhabi.. The movie is expected to go on the floors sometime in 2019..



A New Actress will play the leading lady role.. pic.twitter.com/l2IPPjT45Z  Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) March 7, 2018

Audiences have been waiting for Don 3 with baited breath, speaking of which Farhan Akhtar, director and producer of Don and Don 2, had earlier told in the interview, "I am surprised at how much the Don series matters to moviegoers. The interest level has not diminished."

Well, we must say, this latest news will make fans all the more excited about the film.

Shah Rukh Khan is currently busy filming for Aanand L Rai's 'Zero' alongside Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif. The film is slated to release on December 21.
A leading multiplex chain is screening some of the special actress' most popular films on the special occasion.

Mumbai: Sridevi is rightly called a legend of the film industry and her 300 films in multiple languages, beauty, impeccable acting skills and countless number of fans worldwide are just some of the reasons for it.

The legend breathed her last on February 24, only to remain in the hearts of her fans and in the form of her films and the memories associated with them.

Die-hard fans of the actress have been watching re-runs of the tributes to her on news channels, watching her films on TV, DVDs and even video cassettes, and getting mesmerised by her dance, charm, expressions and much more.

But for fans who fell in love with the actress watching her on the big screen in 70 mm, heres your chance to revisit the actress charm on Thursday on the occasion of Womens Day.

Multiplex chain PVR is screening her iconic films like Chandni (1989), Chaalbaaz (1989), Lamhe (1991) and her last two Bollywood films English Vinglish (2012) and Mom (2017) at their theatres across the country, according to report in Mid-day.

Sridevis husband Boney is also delighted with the news.

"I am honoured that someone has taken this initiative. It feels good to know that some of Sridevi's best works is going to be celebrated. I can't think of a better way to honour her. It will be a treat for her fans to revisit her films," the producer told the tabloid.

Grab your tickets soon as the fans queuing up at the ticket windows won't be in small numbers.
BJP ministers who resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet are Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao.

Amaravati: In a reciprocal move, two BJP ministers in Andhra Pradesh government submitted their resignations on Thursday in the Chief Minister's Office at Amaravati after the late evening announcement of Chandrababu Naidu that two of TDP lawmakers will pull out from the Centre over the government's refusal to give the state central funding under a "special status".

The two BJP ministers who resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet are Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao. Srinivas was the minister for health and Rao was the endowments minister.

According to news agency ANI, BJP state legislator PVN Madhav said, Decided that our ministers will resign from TDP Cabinet. We will be going to the people and telling them all the things Centre has done for the state. Since independence till date, no state has received as many favours as that were given to Andhra Pradesh."

Hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, at a press conference, said the Centre was committed to offer the monetary equivalent of special status to the state, which will be presented as a 'special package', Chandrababu Naidu announced the decision that two of his ministers will pull out from the government.

Also read: Hours after Arun Jaitley snub, TDP pulls out of Cabinet

Arun Jaitley said the special package that has been announced by the Centre is better than special status and there is no difference between the two. He said funds will be allotted according to the Finance Commissions recommendations but not on the basis of regional sentiments.

Also read: No special status but will give equivalent monetary benefit to Andhra: Jaitley

Chandrababu Naidu took the decision after holding a meeting with party MLAs.

Naidu said, "It was with a specific purpose that we joined the government.... When that purpose is not being fulfilled, there is no use continuing in the cabinet."

TDP leaders have been protesting in the Parliament after the Union Budget 2018 was presented in the House in February which disappointed them as Jaitleys speech neglected Andhra Pradesh.

The party faces extreme pressure in Andhra Pradesh ahead of Assembly elections and the general election in 2019, with opposition parties accusing Chandrababu Naidu of failing Andhra Pradesh by not ensuring special status for it as a partner at the Centre.

The TD had carried out an impromptu poll during the TDLP meet on Tuesday in which 95 per cent of the MLAs voted against the continuation of the alliance with the BJP, while 5 per cent of the MLAs wanted to wait and watch for some more time.

Addressing the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday, Chandrababu Naidu made an emotional appeal. "Why won't you give us special status, it is our right, respect people's feeling," said the chief minister, adding that the "onus is on the Centre to clarify its position. We are not angry, we are asking for our rights." Naidu said he had visited Delhi 29 times over the demand.

According to reports, Chandrababu Naidu spoke to TDP ministers via teleconference and lashed out at the Centre saying it was "insulting the sentiments" of the people of the state by not honouring the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, and also in Parliament when the state was bifurcated to carve out a separate Telangana state. He said there would be "no compromise in protecting the state's interests. Let us bear whatever difficulty, but we will take a right decision at the right time."
The incidents come day after PM Modi strongly condemned acts of vandalism and spoke to Rajnath Singh over the issue.

A statue of Mahatma Gandhi was defaced by an unidentified person in Kerala, while unidentified miscreants poured paint on the bust of Dr BR Ambedkar in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

Kochi/Chennai: Prime Minister Narendra Modis strong condemnation over incidents of vandalism of statues in various parts of the country seems to have no deterring effect on miscreants. According to latest reports, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was defaced by an unidentified person in Kerala on Thursday morning, while unidentified miscreants poured paint on the bust of Dr BR Ambedkar in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai on Wednesday night.

According to reports, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at taluk office in Taliparamba in Kannur district of Kerala was defaced at around 7am on Thursday. Unidentified miscreant broke the spectacles, damaged the garland and hurled stones at the statue.

The police have launched an investigation into the case.

The incidents come a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned such acts of vandalism and spoke to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the issue.

Also read: PM Modi condemns vandalism of statues in WB, Tripura, TN

There have been numerous incidents of statues being vandalised in various parts of the country. It started with the pulling down of a statue of Vladimir Lenin with the help of a bulldozer in Tripura after Left Fronts debacle in the state assembly polls, the results of which was declared on Saturday. Another statue of Lenin was vandalised in the state as well.

Also read: Not 1, but 2 Lenin statues razed after Tripura poll results; CPI(M), TMC blame BJP

Following this, a statue of Dravidian ideologue Periyar EV Ramasamy was damaged in Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. Two people  one from BJP and the other from CPI  were arrested in connection with the incident.

Also read: Periyar statue vandalised, 2 held

On Wednesday, a statue of Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in West Bengal and one of Dr BR Ambedkar in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh were also vandalised.
Naidu explained to the PM about reasons leading to central ministers resignation and the TDP withdrawing from the Union Govt.

New Delhi: Amid rising tensions in the BJP-TDP alliance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu.

Naidu explained to the PM about reasons leading to central ministers resignation and the TDP withdrawing from the Union Government, TDP sources were quoted as saying by ANI.

The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet will meet Modi at 6 pm on Thursday.

Earlier on Thursday, Naidu claimed that he had tried to get in touch with the Prime Minister to inform about his decision of pulling out two TDP ministers from the Union Cabinet, but was unavailable.

"As a courtesy and being a responsible senior politician, I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform about our decision. He was unavailable," he said.

Also Read: TDP to snap ties with BJP? AP CM says will take 'right call at right time'

The decision was announced by Chandrababu Naidu at a press conference in Amaravati late on Wednesday after a meeting with his party ministers.

The decision came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley suggested that grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh, a key demand made by Naidu, may not be possible.
The CBI told the apex court that Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have been wrongly cleared of charges.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found dead on May 16, 2008 in her house in Noida with her throat slit and head bludgeoned. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging clean chit to Aarushi Talwar's parents by the Allahabad High Court in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case.

The CBI told the apex court that Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have been wrongly cleared of charges.

The Allahabad High Court in October, in 2017, ruled that dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar from Delhi were not guilty of the murder of their daughter Aarushi, 14, and domestic help Hemraj in 2008.

The Allahabad High Court ended the couple's nine-year ordeal by saying that neither the circumstances nor the evidence were enough to hold them guilty.

The court also castigated the CBI for its theory on the murder case, saying it is an "impossible hypothesis" and "patently absurd".

In November 2013, a special CBI court in Ghaziabad had convicted the Talwars for murdering daughter Aarushi and Hemraj and sentenced them to life. The CBI court said they had killed Aarushi in a fit of rage because they suspected her of having an affair with Hemraj.

Nupur and Rajesh Talwar were kept in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail for four years before being given clean chit by the high court in 2017.

The CBI after the verdict had said that it would study the high court order and decide its future course of action.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found dead on May 16, 2008 in her house in Noida with her throat slit and head bludgeoned. The Talwar family's domestic help Hemraj was found dead the next day on the terrace of the house.

Hemrajs throat was also slit and there were wounds on his head. There were wounds all over his body and the door to the terrace was found locked from inside.
The bench directed the ED to place before it the sequence in which it has initiated proceedings in the matter.

New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Wednesday sought response of the Enforcement Directorate on a petition by Nirav Modis firm, Firestar Diamond, against a money laundering case lodged by the agency in connection with the Rs 11,000 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

A two-judge bench of Justices S. Muralidhar and I.S. Mehta issued notice to the ED on Firestar Diamond International Private Ltds plea seeking direction to the agency to supply it several documents, including a copy of the search warrants. The bench, however, refrained itself from staying the proceedings against the company saying it wants to consider the stay part after the agency files their response.

The bench directed the ED to place before it the sequence in which it has initiated proceedings in the matter. The relevant records involved in the matter should be placed before the court on the next date of the hearing, March 19. The officer conversant with the present case should also remain present in the court to answer all queries.

Lawyer Vijay Aggrawal, appearing for the firm, has sought quashing of the ED action of taking away the movable property and depositing the same with the PNB. He told the court that the agency be directed to supply copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) registered by it, pursuant to which the search and seizure was conducted by the ED on its premises.

Additional Solicitor-General Sandeep Sethi and advocate Amit Mahajan, appearing for the ED contended that the firms plea was premature and the challenge was misconceived.

Billionaire Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and others are being investigated by multiple probe agencies after the scam recently came to light following a complaint by the PNB that they had allegedly cheated the nationalised bank to the tune of Rs 11,400 crore, with the purported involvement of a few employees of the bank.
SC said Hadiya is free to live with her husband and 'pursue her endeavours', stating that Kerala HC shouldn't have intervened.

Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala HC in 2017 after her parents alleged that she had been brainwashed, forced to convert to Islam. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday cancelled a Kerala High Court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya, a 24-year-old Kerala woman who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man.

The apex court said Hadiya is free to live with her husband Shafin Jahan and "pursue her endeavours," mentioning that the Kerala High Court should not have intervened.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, however, said probe by National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the criminal dimension into the case, if any, would continue.

The Kerala High Court had cancelled Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan on a complaint by her father, who alleged that his daughter was a victim of love jihad, the term used by right wing groups for accusing Muslim men of drawing Hindu women into relationships, converting them and eventually recruiting them for terrorism.

Also Read: Kerala 'love jihad': The curious case of Hadiya aka Akhila

Hadiya, a homeopathy student, was born Hindu and was named Akhila Ashokan by birth before she converted to Islam and changed her name.

Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala High Court in 2017 after her parents alleged that their daughter had been brainwashed and forced to convert to Islam in a plan by terror group ISIS to indoctrinate and take her to Syria.

Hadiya had met Shafin Jahan, who was working in Oman. Jahan had returned to India recently, through a matrimonial website affiliated to an organisation which the NIA says it is probing for links to terror.
The Supreme Court has cancelled a Kerala High Court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya.

Hadiya, the 24-year-old woman who was born to a Hindu couple in Kerala, made headlines after she converted to Islam and married a Muslim man against wishes of her parents. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday announced the perfect Women's Day present by scrapping the Kerala high court order that had annulled alleged 'love jihad' victim Hadiya aka Akhila's marriage with her husband Shafin Jahan.

While restoring her marriage, the apex court said Hadiya was free to live with her husband Shafin Jahan and "pursue her endeavours", also mentioning that the Kerala High Court should not have intervened.

Hadiya, the 24-year-old woman who was born to a Hindu couple in Kerala, made headlines after she converted to Islam and married a Muslim man against wishes of her parents.

Timeline of events in Hadiya case:

May 2017: Kerala HC annuls Hadiya's marriage

The Kerala High on May 24 annulled the marriage on a complaint by her father terming it as an instance of 'love jihad'. The high court, while declaring the marriage as "null and void", had described the case as an instance of 'love jihad' and ordered the state police to conduct probe into such cases. It then handed her to the custody of her parents in Kerala's Kottayam district.

September 2017: Shafin Jahan moves SC

Following this, Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan challenged the HC order and moved the apex court. Jahan on September 20 approached the apex court seeking recall of its order directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of Hadiya.

Shafin urged the Supreme Court to call off its order saying, "NIA isn't being fair".

The NIA submitted to the court that Hadiya's is an example of "psychological kidnapping", there is evidence of nearly 90 "similar cases" of indoctrination and radicalisation in Kerala, that the court should not go by her statement. Evidence adduced by the NIA showed that claims that Hadiya met Shafin Jehan through matrimony website 'waytonikah.com' was "totally false and entirely bogus".

October 2017: SC says father cannot hold custody of Hadiya

The Supreme Court indicated that it would re-consider its earlier decision to order a probe by the NIA into the 'love jihad' controversy and said prima facie it was of the view that the father cannot hold custody of his 24-year-old girl.

Giving this indication a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Kanwilkar and DY Chandrachud also disapproved the Kerala High Courts order nullifying the marriage.

November 2017: SC allows Hadiya out of father's custody to resume studies in Tamil Nadu

The Supreme Court allowed Hadiya alias Akhila, to be freed from her father's custody and resume her studies at a Salem-based homeopathic college after she repeatedly pleaded that she wanted the freedom to make her own choices.

January 2018: SC says NIA cannot investigate the marital status of Hadiya and Shafin

The Supreme Court said the NIA could continue with its probe into the alleged love jihad case of Kerala but it cannot investigate the marital status of the man and the woman.

February 2018: Hadiya says she is a Muslim, wants to remain as Shafin's wife

Hadiya filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that she is a Muslim and wanted to remain as a Muslim. She also stated that she wanted to remain as the wife of Shafin Jahan, the Muslim man who married her.
TDP was demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh while AIADMK sought immediate setting up of Cauvery River Management Board.

The Lok Sabha failed to transact any legislative business for the fourth consecutive day as members from parties, including NDA ally TDP, AIADMK and TMC, continued their protests on various issues. (Photo: File/PTI)

New Delhi: The Lok Sabha failed to transact any legislative business for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday as members from parties, including NDA ally TDP, AIADMK and TMC, continued their protests on various issues.

Members from the TDP, AIADMK, TRS and TMC trooped into the Well, with many holding placards and raising slogans.

While the TDP was demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh, the AIADMK sought immediate setting up of Cauvery River Management Board.

AIADMK members were also seen holding placards of Dravidian movement founder Thanthai Periyar. Members from the TRS were demanding an increase in quota.

Amid the din, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the Supplementary Demands for Grants seeking Parliament nod for additional cash spending of Rs 85,315 crore.

As the House met for the day, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan extended greetings on International Women's Day being celebrated on Thursday and also read out a message.

Soon after members from TMC, TDP, TRS, YSR Congress and AIADMK trooped into the Well raising slogans.

Members from opposition Congress, who have been protesting vociferously over the Rs 12,700 crore fraud at PNB (Punjab National Bank), were also on their feet.

TMC members also continued to press the government to respond on the fraud case in which Letters of Undertaking (LoU) were allegedly fraudulently issued by one branch of PNB to diamantaire Nirav Modi.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar requested the Speaker to continue with the Question Hour.

"We are ready to discuss irregularities in the banking (sector)," the minister said.

Under Rule 193, a discussion on alleged systemic irregularities in banking sector over the years and its impact on Indian economy was scheduled for today in the House.

As the protests continued, Mahajan adjourned the proceedings till noon and thereafter for the entire day.

TDP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju was not present in the House even though it was the question day of the ministry. However, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was present.

Disappointed over the Centre not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh, the TDP had late last night announced that the party's two ministers -- Raju and YS Chowdary  would resign from the central government.

The protesting members were wearing stoles of their party colours. While TDP members were sporting yellow stoles and T-shirts with picture of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, those from TRS donned pink scarves. AIADMK members were wearing stoles in hues of white, black and red.
Mamata mocked BJP over its 'dream' of capturing power in Bengal and said it should first concentrate on retaining power at the Centre.

Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out,'Mamata said.

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday called upon all regional parties to come together to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to pull out its ministers from the Union government.

Banerjee also mocked the BJP over its "dream" of capturing power in West Bengal, and said it should first concentrate on retaining power at the Centre as the "alarm bells have already started ringing".

"All the regional parties should come together to defeat the BJP in 2019 (Lok Sabha poll)," she told an International Women's Day rally organized by the Trinamool Congress in Kolkata.

"Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out," she said.

Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday decided to pull out the two TDP ministers in the Modi government, saying the party took the "painful decision in the interest of the state" as it was left with "no other option".

The ruling TDP has been demanding special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

"The BJP will be defeated in 2019. Instead of dreaming about capturing power in Bengal, they should look at themselves and see whether they can retain power at the Centre," she said.

Banerjee said the BJP should not be elated over the victory in Tripura and alleged it won the Assembly polls there through "misuse of central forces and money power".

The BJP, she said, won in Tripura because the ruling CPI(M) could not put up a fight and surrendered before the saffron brigade.

She, however, noted that the Left party, which was in power for 25 years, secured over 45 per cent of the votes polled.

The TMC supremo also criticised vandalisation of statutes of political icons and social reformers.

Referring to the defiling of the bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookherjee in Kolkata by activists of a left-wing organisation, she said a few people are trying to sully the reputation of the state by engaging in such activities.

Banerjee alleged that the BJP was trying to instigate riots in the state and said "We should go all out to protect communal harmony".

She said women needed to take the initiative to protect communal harmony.
SC requests Delhi HC to set up an appropriate bench to adjudicate the matter concerning Karti on Friday or Saturday.

Karti Chidambaram is accused of allegedly receiving Rs 3.5 crore from the Mumbai-based INX Media for helping it get FIPB clearance in 2007. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Karti Chidambaram, who is in CBI custody in connection with the INX Media case, to approach Delhi High Court for interim relief in INX Media money laundering case.

The apex court directed Karti to move Delhi HC on Thursday itself and also requested acting chief justice to set up an appropriate bench to adjudicate the matter concerning Karti on Friday or Saturday.

The Supreme Court also allowed Karti to withdraw his plea related to money laundering case.

A Delhi court on Tuesday ordered extended of Karti Chidambaram's custody by three more days after the Central Bureau of Investigation underlined that it had "concrete credible evidence collected recently" against him.

Also read: INX Media case: After 'new facts' claim, Karti sent to 3 more days of CBI custody

Karti's name had cropped up in the case which relates to Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) approval granted in 2007 for receipt of funds by INX Media when his father and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram was the Union finance minister during the previous UPA regime.

The ED had alleged that INX Media had deliberately and in violation of the conditions of the approval made a downstream investment of 26 per cent in the capital of INX News Pvt Ltd without specific approval of FIPB, which included indirect foreign investment by some foreign investors, and generated Rs 305 crore foreign direct investment in INX Media Pvt Ltd against the approved foreign inflow of Rs 4.62 crore.

To wriggle out of the situation without any punitive action, INX Media entered into a criminal conspiracy with Karti, the ED has alleged. The FIPB unit of the finance ministry had not only granted illegal approval but also misinformed the investigation wing of Income Tax Department, it had alleged.

(With inputs from agencies)
As his passport has been suspended by the Government, he also demanded to know the reason behind the action.

"I had a cardiac procedure which was conducted in the first week of February 2018 and there is still pending work to be done on the same," Choksi said. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: In a strongly worded letter, Mehul Choksi, the main accused along with Nirav Modi in the PNB fraud case and promoter of Gitanjali Group told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that it was "impossible" for him to return to India due to his "persistent health problem".

As his passport has been suspended by the Government, he also demanded to know the reason behind the action.

"As my passport stands suspended, I further wish to point out that the RPO Mumbai has not given me any explanation as to why my passport has been suspended and as to how I am a security threat to India," Choksi told the CBI.

He further stated that he was also not in a position to travel due to his persisting health problem.

"I had a cardiac procedure which was conducted in the first week of February 2018 and there is still pending work to be done on the same," he said.

Millionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi are accused in the fraudulent issuance of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) and Letters of Credit (LCs) worth USD 2 billion (approximately Rs 12,636 crore) by the Punjab National Bank.

Earlier, in a letter, the CBI had asked Nirav Modi to join the investigation mandatorily to which he replied that he could not as he had business committments abroad.

A special PMLA court in Mumbai last week issued non-bailable warrants against Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in connection with the fraud.

The CBI had filed the first FIR in the scam on February 14 against Nirav Modi, his wife Ami, brother Nishal, Mehul Choksi and his firms Diamond R US, Solar Exports and Stellar Diamond.

Since then the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have conducted several raids and searches at the houses and offices of Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi.

Nirav along with his wife Ami, brother Neeshal and Mehul Choksi left India in the first week of January before the Punjab National Bank accused them of committing the fraud. They have not returned to India since then.
The PM also spoke to Union home minister Rajnath Singh over the issue and expressed his strong disapproval of such incidents.

New Delhi: After registering an ideological victory in Tripura, which was under Communist rule for 25 years, the BJP on Wednesday had to assert that it believed a wide range of ideas and ideologies can coexist in India after incidents of statue vandalism, which began in Tripura on Monday, came too close to home on Wednesday. In a strongly worded statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned incidents of vandalism of statues and warned of stern action against those found guilty. The PM also spoke to Union home minister Rajnath Singh over the issue and expressed his strong disapproval of such incidents.

The home ministry reached out to state governments saying they must take all necessary measures to prevent such incidents and that district magistrates and superintendents of police will be held personally responsible for such incidents. On Monday, two days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the Tripura elections with two-thirds majority, ending the 25-year-old rule of the Left in the state, the first incident of vandalism was reported. In Belonia, South Tripura, a statue of Vladimir Lenin was destroyed by some people chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai. The next day, a statue of E.V. Ramasamy Periyar, social reformer and founder of Dravidian movement, was vandalised in Tamil Nadus Vellore district.

And on Wednesday, a bust of Parivar ideologue Syama Prasad Mookherjee was desecrated in West Bengal, and in Meerut, UP, miscreants vandalised B.R. Ambedkars statue which led to protests and deployment of police force. The protests ended only after the district officials assured that the statue would be replaced at the earliest. As Opposition parties lashed out at the ruling BJP saying vandalising statues is a reflection of a new kind of politics and that hatred and division is the face of the BJP, BJP president Amit Shah termed the desecration of Communist icon Lenins statue in Tripura and Dravidian icon Periyars in Tamil Nadu as extremely unfortunate.

Condemning the incidents, Mr Shah distanced the saffron party from the vandalism, but also said that no action will be taken against BJP national secretary H. Raja, whose social media post was blamed for the desecration of Periyars statue in Vellore.

In a series of tweets, Mr Shah asserted that any person associated with the BJP found to be involved with destroying any statue will face severe action from the party.

As a party, we in the BJP believe that a wide range of ideas and ideologies can coexist in India. This is exactly how the makers of our Constitution envisioned our great nation to be. Indias diversity and the vibrant spirit of debate and discussion is what strengthens us... The BJP will always remain committed to ideals of openness and constructive politics through which we can positively impact peoples lives as well as build a New India, Mr Shah tweeted.

On his part, Mr Raja deleted the controversial post and issued a clarification saying it was published without his permission, and the Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP expelled a party worker who was arrested on Tuesday for damaging Periyars bust. But it wasnt enough to pacify Dravidians.

In what was seen as a retaliatory action, a petrol bomb was thrown at a BJP office in Coimbatore. After realising the repercussion of his post, Mr Raja asserted, We should contest ideas with ideas, not with violence. It was not my intention to hurt anyones feelings or sentiments. And if it did, I regret.

According to a senior home ministry official, Mr Singh spoke to Tripura governor Tathagata Roy after he appeared to justify the toppling of Lenins statue in Tripura. What one democratically elected government can do another democratically elected government can undo. And vice versa, the governor had tweeted.

Later on Tuesday, Mr Roy tweeted, I am advised that pulling down statues (Lenins or anyone elses) unless done by lawfully empowered authorities, qualify as Mischief under Indian Penal Code. They are bailable and non-cognizable offences. Trying to blow them up to something like rioting or murder is unwarranted.

In Kolkata, in what was seen as retaliation to vandalism of statues of non-Sangh Parivar ideologues, members of an ultra-Left student outfit vandalised and defaced a statue of BJP ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerrjee on Wednesday.

Police arrested six members of the Radical, believed to be a pro-Maoist students body formed in Jadavpur University four years ago, over the incident at South Kolkatas Tollygunge.

Reacting to the incidents of vandalism, the home ministry issued two separate advisories to states clearly saying that district magistrates and superintendents of police will be held personally responsible for such incidents. Mr Rajnath Singh also appealed to everyone, all parties, that anyone indulging in such acts should be dealt with strictly. These incidents can never be justified.

In the first advisory issued on Wednesday morning, the Centre asked the states and Union Territories to immediately check incidents of toppling and damaging of statues and take tough action to ensure such developments are stopped.

In the second advisory, which came within hours of the first one, the ministry further clarified, DMs and SPs will be personally held responsible for any such incidents of vandalism of statues.

The ministry asked the states to direct all concerned DMs and SPs to initiate all possible action to maintain law and order. It also asked that all DMs and SPs be directed to maintain strict vigil on anti-social elements, social media and rumour-mongers and immediately take action against those indulging in acts of violence or inciting violence.
The SP and BSP had once come together in 1993, the results for which were for all to see, the Union minister said.

New Delhi: The Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Partys decision to support Samajwadi Party in two crucial bypolls in Uttar Pradesh is giving headaches not only to the Congress and the BJP but also the dalit alliance partners in the NDA government.

Two prominent dalit faces in the Union Cabinet Lok Janashakti Partys Ramvilas Paswan and Republican Party of India(A)s Ramdas Athawale said the SP-BSP alliance was opportunistic and sought to remind Ms Mayawati of the past acrimonious relationship between the two parties.

Union food and consumer affairs minister Ramvilas Paswan said it was an opportunistic alliance and reminded Ms Mayawati of how the SP had blocked a Bill which sought to provide reservation in promotion for government jobs.

This alliance will not affect the BJPs prospects in any way, Mr Paswan told this newspaper.

He added that in India there was no one single dalit leader and in fact dalits and minorities in the country thought that he (Paswan) is their well wisher and that he is the national leader.

The SP and BSP had once come together in 1993, the results for which were for all to see, the Union minister said.

On similar lines, Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athavale said: Mayawati has not taken the correct decision. He further went on to say that dalits in the country were not happy with the decision taken by Ms Mayawati.

Alliances being made by Ms Mayawati are being watched with keen eyes by both Opposition and ruling parties as Dalit votes are seen to be crucial in the 2019 battle. Though she suffered a rout in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Ms Mayawatis vote share has been intact.

The BSP has already announced a tie-up with the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka effectively making it a three-cornered fight between the ruling Congress, the BJP and the JD(S)-BSP in the state.

The Congress which had been in alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls was caught off guard when the SP did not accept its offer of contesting one seat each in the byelections to Phulpur and Gorakhpur and instead decided to go with BSP.
Special status category to Bihar has been a key issue for Bihar Chief Minister who had raised it on various platforms earlier.

Nitish Kumar has repeatedly demanded special status for Bihar and has also appealed directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard. (Photo: PTI/File)

Patna/New Delhi: Hours after TDP pulled out of the NDA government at the Centre over the denial of special status category to Andhra Pradesh, another NDA ally the JD(U) and the Opposition RJD revived it in the interests of Bihar.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had made a dramatic turnaround last year and quit the RJD-Congress grand alliance which had catapulted him to power in 2015. Among the many reasons he had cited for joining the NDA was the need for greater funds for his state from the Central government.

Mr Kumar has repeatedly demanded special status for Bihar and has also appealed directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard.

On Thursday, JD(U) national spokesperson K.C. Tyagi said: Bihar cannot progress without special status. We support Andhra Pradeshs demand. Today Andhra Pradesh is at the same place where Bihar was after its bifurcation. All the resources have gone to Telangana.

Tejashwi Yadav, leader of Opposition in the Assembly, took to Twitter in blaming Nitish for forgetting the issue to fulfil his political ambitions.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar had forgotten his long-standing demand for special status for personal gains after he allied with BJP. He has mortgaged the rightful demand of special status to Bihar in lieu of special bungalow in Delhi and Z-plus security cover for himself. Nitish Kumar must apologise to people of Bihar, Tejashwi said.

The RJD leader also urged the Bihar chief minister to listen to his inner voice and take a decision like Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandra Babu Naidu.

RJD leaders also referred to a letter which Tejashwi had sent to Bihar CM urging him to raise the issue with Prime Minister. They said that the chief minister ignored the plea and didnt bother to reply.

Reacting to the special status demand, Union minister and Lok Janashakti Party chief Ramvilas Paswan said that the state has already got a special package, which is monetarily as beneficial as special status. But, despite this some people arent satisfied and to them, I will just say that India can only grow in NDAs regime.

People will not forgive Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who had promised special status to Bihar in March 2014 Lok Sabha rally at Muzaffarpur. Nitish Kumar must play the recording in front of Prime Minister. For personal gains Nitish Kumar surrendered Bihars benefit, A message was found circulating on the twitter account of RJD Chief Lalu Yadav who is languishing in Jail after being convicted in fodder scam cases.

The issue is likely to snowball further into a political agenda against the JD (U) in Bihar during the campaign for by-elections which is slated for March 11.

Special status category to Bihar has been a key issue for Bihar Chief Minister who had raised it on various platforms earlier. In one of the rallies in 2009 Bihar Chief Minister had created a flutter in the political circle by announcing his support to any party which grants special status category to Bihar.

The opposition party leaders say that Nitish Kumar went silent after Centre rejected his demands for the special status category in 2017, barely two months after he left the Grand Secular Alliance and returned to NDA fold.

They also raised questions over the genuineness of the special package of Rs. 1.25 Lakh Crore in central funds for Bihar which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi before 2015 assembly elections.

Nitish Kumar must inform people how much from that package which was announced by PM was sent for the development of Bihar. RJD leaders said on Thursday in Patna.
SC said Hadiya is free to live with her husband and 'pursue her endeavours', stating that Kerala HC shouldn't have intervened.

Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala HC in 2017 after her parents alleged that she had been brainwashed, forced to convert to Islam. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: In a perfect happy-ending to a tumultuous and often tragic love story, the Supreme Court on Thursday restored the marriage of Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan, 25, with Shafin Jahan, 28. Since January 2016, when Hadiyas father filed a complaint against her allegedly forced conversion, they have been at the centre of what has come to be known as the Kerala love jihad case.

Saying that a court can act as a parent to adults in certain circumstances, the Kerala high court had annulled their inter-faith wedlock on May 24 last year terming it as an instance of love jihad, following which Mr Jahan had approached the apex court.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra set aside the order cancelling their marriage, saying the high court ought not to have gone into the aspect of marriage.

We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between Hadiya and Shafin Jahan in a habeas corpus petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. We say so because in the present appeal, we had directed the personal presence of Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan; she appeared before this court on November 27, 2017, and admitted her marriage with Shafin Jahan, said the apex court.

The fact that Hadiya was married or not was irrelevant to decide the habeas corpus petition, the apex court said, adding that the NIA cannot go into the legality of consent for marriage.

Referring to allegations of Hadiyas father that Mr Jahan planned to take his daughter to Syria to join the ISIS, the apex court said, If they are planning to travel to Syria, there are ways to prevent them from travelling. You cant see a crime in a marriage.

The apex courts landmark judgment said, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at However, the apex court refused to stop NIAs probe into other criminal matters being investigation Mr Jahan.

We clarify that the investigations by the NIA in respect of any matter of criminality may continue in accordance with law, said the bench, which included Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud.

Love jihad is a controversial term coined by Hindutva outfits to harass interfaith couples by claiming that these are forced marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women where the motive is conversion.

The apex court had, on February 22, questioned whether the Kerala high court could nullify a marriage between vulnerable adults.

Reacting to the Supreme Courts order, Hadiyas father Asokan said that he was pained to let his daughter go with a terrorist and that he will continue his legal battle.

He claimed that the NIA was continuing with its probe because it was convinced Mr Jahan was a terrorist.

Last month, Hadiya filed an affidavit in the apex court saying, I embraced the faith/religion of Islam on my choice as per my conscience and on my own free will after studying about Islam and, thereafter, I married Shafin Jahan. I pray that this court may be kind enough to appoint my husband as guardian.

After being confined in her parents home in Kottayam for months, the apex court in November last year had allowed Hadiya to resume her medical studies at Sivaraj Homeopathy Medical College in Tamil Nadus Salem and lifted restrictions on her meeting her husband whom she married in December 2016.

Counsel Shyam Divan, appearing for Hadiyas father, said on Thursday that as she has been indoctrinated, her consent for marriage should not be treated as absolute.

He argued that Hadiya was a pawn in a huge organisational apparatus to radicalise young persons in Kerala. He said two criminal cases had been registered against Mr Jahan.

Mr Divan also alleged that Mr Jahan is a member of the core committee of a radical group. Appearing for Mr Jahan, senior counsel Kapil Sibal said that there was no reason to disbelieve Haiyas claim that she had married Mr Jahan of her free will.
Dave insisted that the court should direct the four judges to file an affidavit in support of their statements given to the police.

New Delhi: The fact that BJP President Amit Shah was discharged within 15 days of the new judge taking over after the death of former sessions judge H.B. Loya gives rise to grave suspicion in the death of Loya, warranting an independent probe, asserted senior counsel Dushyant Dave in the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Making this submission before a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, Mr Dave, appearing for Bombay Lawyers Association made a fervent plea for a probe in public interest.

Pointing out that the report of the commissioner of intelligence had completely relied on the statement of four district judges (two of whom have been elevated as high court judges) to treat it as a case of heart attack.

Mr Dave insisted that the court should direct the four judges to file an affidavit in support of their statements given to the police, which he alleged was given under pressure. It does not mean that merely because they held high positions, their statements should be accepted as it is and they must be subjected to cross-examination.

Mr Dave reiterated that the circumstances of discharge of Amit Shah, BJP president, from the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case and the fact that the CBI had not filed any appeal against this order gave rise to suspicion. He wondered why the Maharashtra government was shy of ordering an inquiry and why they want to protect one man.

The apex court should suo motu direct the CBI to file an appeal against the discharge of Amit Shah, he added.When Mr Dave pointed out that the entire report of the Maharashtra government was prepared in a hurry and does not inspire confidence, Justice Chandrachud said, Sometimes even acting swiftly is questioned. When counsel asked the court as to why it was asking questions to him and not to Maharashtra government, which has rushed through the enquiry, Justice Chandrachud said, Justice lies in our heart, conscience and mind. There is no denial of justice. We dont need a certificate from anyone.
For the same job, women are estimated to be paid nine percent less.

In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn less than men. (Photo:Pixabay)

Male readers of leftwing French daily Liberation were asked to pay 25 percent more for their paper on Thursday, to make up for the gender pay gap on International Women's Day.

The paper published two versions with different cover pages, one marked "for women, 2 euros, normal price" with a pictogram of a woman, the other marked "for men, 2.50 euros" with a pictogram of a man.

In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay for equal work being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn on average 25.7 percent less than men, according to a 2017 report from an inequality watchdog.

"To highlight this injustice Liberation has decided to apply the same difference to its sale price for a day, meaning 50 cents more for men," it said, adding that profits from the operation would be donated to France's non-governmental Equality Observatory.

Liberation said it was inspired by Canadian monthly Maclean's, which charged men more for its March edition -- also to denounce the wage gap.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced plans to get tough on companies that pay women less.

Under a package of workplace reforms to be finalised next month, wage gap screening software will be rolled out in all companies with more than 250

employees from 2019, and in all companies with over 50 employees by 2022,Philippe said.

Companies with "unjustified" disparities will have three years to rectify the situation or face fines of up to 1 percent of their wage bill, he said.

Drawing on 2012 statistics, the Equality Observatory said last year that women earned 25.7 percent less than men.

A 2014 report by national statistics agency INSEE put the gap slightly lower, at 23.8 percent.

When adjustments for part-time work were factored in, women were still paid on average 17.4 percent less, the report found.

For the same job, women are estimated to be paid nine percent less.
Google got in contact with 12 female artists from all manner of backgrounds to share their personal stories for International Women's Day.

Google got in contact with 12 female artists from all manner of backgrounds to share their personal stories for International Women's Day. (Photo: Google)

This year Google has taken the opportunity to mark International Womens Day on March 8 by showcasing the work of female artists with a series of commemorative Doodle designs.

Google got in contact with 12 female artists from all manner of backgrounds to share their personal stories for International Women's Day.

The 12 eye-catching stories can be enjoyed by clicking the play button at the centre of the Doodle at the top of the Google homepage.

According to the search engine, Each story represents a moment, person, or event that has impacted their lives as women. While each artist tells a unique story, the themes are universal, reminding us of how much we often have in common.

Google further added, "We hope that the combined power of words and images help bring these stories to life in a way that invokes feelings of understanding, empathy, and spirit of the day."

The artists represented include:

Anna Haifisch  Nov 1989

Chihiro Takeuchi  Ages and Stages

Esteli Meza  My Aunt Blossoms

Francesca Sanna  The Box

Isuri  Aarthi the Amazing

Karabo Poppy Moletsane  Ntsoakis Victory

Kaveri Gopalakrishnan  Up on the Roof

Laerte  Love

Philippa Rice  Trust

Saffa Khan  Homeland

Tillie Walden  Minutes

Tunalaya Dunn  Inwards

International Women's Day brings together global governments, women's organisations, businesses and charities under the shared.

With recent scandals hitting Hollywood and the World Economic Forums' Global Gender Gap Report showing that it will take 217 years to close the gender parity gap, it's more important than ever that aim for progress.

The theme of this year's International Women's Day is #PressforProgress.

The International Womens Day website opines, "We can't be complacent. Now, more than ever, there's a strong call-to-action to press forward and progress gender parity.

They further add, A strong call to #PressforProgress. A strong call to motivate and unite friends, colleagues and whole communities to think, act and be gender inclusive.
The bust, placed by Syama Prasad Mookerjee Memorial Samity at the park run by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, was unveiled on June 23, 1986.

A police official along with a group of people clean the bust of Dr Syama Prasad Mukherjee after it was vandalised at Keoratola Mohasoshan in Kolkata. (Photo: Abhijit Mykherjee)

Kolkata: Close on the heels of the toppling of Communist revolutionary Lenins statue in Tripura and vandalism of rationalist Periyars statue in Tamil Nadu, bust of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, which later led to the formation of the BJP, was desecrated by a group of seven young members of an ultra Left outfit on Wednesday morning in south Kolkata. The accused, being members of RADICAL, were arrested by the police.

They have been remanded in two days police custody by the court. At around 8 am, the group entered Chittaranjan Das Park on Keoratala crematorium premises on Tollygunge Road near the Kalighat Metro station dodging the security guard. One of them scaled the bust, as another stood guard on the ground. The man who had climbed up the statue started hitting its temple with a hammer and a chisel. Others shouted slogans against the razing of statues of Lenin and Periyar and left a poster revealing the outfits identity. After damaging the bust they defaced it with black ink.

The entire attack  which took place hours before the state BJPs law violation programme to the city police headquarters at Lalbazar  was videographed. Some local residents rushed to the spot and caught the accused, including a woman, who were trying flee. The accused were handed over to the Tollygunge police.

Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar said on Twitter, Six male and one female (age 22-29 years) who tried to deface the bust of Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee have been arrested from the spot by Kolkata police and strong legal action initiated. No vandalism would be tolerated.

The video of the vandalism of less than a minute went viral. Some BJP leaders went to the park to garland their icon to pay respects. A scuffle broke as Trinamul Congress workers resisted them.

State power minister and Trinamul MLA from Rashbehari Sovandeb Chattopadhyay visited the park. Condemning the incident, he said, Our chief minister has already made it clear that we will not tolerate vandalism of statues of luminaries. It is a shameful act. We are satisfied that the miscreants were arrested. It was the locals who informed the police. We will not allow such things to happen here. It is not our culture.

State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said, This is not the first time such an incident took place here. The Naxals earlier blackened the statues of many luminaries including freedom fighter Khudiram Bose. Some of them were broken even. Some anti-nationals desecrated the bust of Syama Prasad, a great nationalist. But we will purify it with milk on Thursday.

The bust, placed by Syama Prasad Mookerjee Memorial Samity at the park run by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, was unveiled on June 23, 1986.

One of the arrested, Abhishek Mukherjee, is allegedly a Maoist leader and ex-student of Jadavpur University, and had led the attack. Deb Chakraborty, a student of Economics, Jubi Saha, an M.Tech student, Bishwarup Pramanik, a PhD student and Debjit Bhattacharya are JU students, Surajit Das is a student at an open university and Subrata Ghosh of Chapdani.

We broke and blackened Syama Prasads bust to protest the toppling of Lenins statue by the BJP-RSS combine,  Abhishek said justifying the attack.

In September of 2012, Abhishek, alias Aranya, who was allegedly the CPI(Maoist) Kolkata city committee secretary, was arrested by the special task force (STF) of the city police. The Maoists had earlier declared him dead to mislead the police. In March of 2014, the Calcutta high court, however, granted bail to Abhishek after the STF had failed to get sanction from the Centre to charge him on UAPA charges.
Students of TISS have been protesting against the withdrawal of financial aid provided to them.

A section of students has been on strike since February 21 after the TISS administration asked many of them, who have been chosen for government scholarships but are yet to get the money, to clear their dues related to tuitions, dining and hostel fees. (Photo: Instagram/ injus_tiss)

Mumbai: Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar has come out in support of students of the city-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), who have been protesting against the withdrawal of financial aid provided to them.

Ambedkar demanded that the Maharashtra government release funds for the distribution of scholarships to students across the state, and said the issue will also be raised in the ongoing session of the Legislature.

A section of students has been on strike since February 21 after the TISS administration asked many of them, who have been chosen for government scholarships but are yet to get the money, to clear their dues related to tuitions, dining and hostel fees.

The students of the research institute have also been protesting against the withdrawal of financial aid provided to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) scholars.

On March 5, the TISS students' union announced its decision to end the strike, but a section of students continued with the agitation.

"The fight for educational rights has been going on since long, but it is worth appreciating that you people (students) have been fighting not only for your own rights but for the upcoming generations too," Ambedkar said addressing the agitating students on the TISS campus on Wednesday.

The situation at colleges in small towns is even worse where students have been not paid scholarships for more than three years, the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh chief said.

This has led to several students discontinuing their studies, he added.

Ambedkar also criticised a recent Government Resolution, according to which the state will only fund 30 per cent of scholarships of the OBCs (other backward classes).

"We have decided to raise this issue by taking out processions before the social justice departments in every district," said the former MP and grandson of B R Ambedkar.

TISS students' union general secretary Fahad Ahmed said they were trying to hold talks with the institute's administration to resolve the issue.

He threatened that students may even go on a hunger strike if their demands were not met.

The union's charter of demands include the rollback of the notification asking students from the 2016-18 and 2017-19 batches eligible for the Post-Matric Scholarships to pay their dues and the scrapping of a new rule which stipulates that these students pay their fees upfront.

Asked about the students' agitation, P K Shahjahan, the dean, students affairs, TISS, said an empowered committee of the institute will look into the matter and meet later during the day, and he is hopeful for a positive outcome.

The institute had earlier claimed that despite the agitation, admissions and examinations were continuing, as per the regular, schedule on all its campuses. The TISS had in a statement said that it was also financially impacted by these dues.
Over 30,000 farmers gathered in Nashik to take part in the Nashik to Mumbai protest march.

Mumbai: The Communist Partys Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha (ABKS)s move to organise a long march from Nashik to Mumbai on Tuesday is an example of the booming farmers agitations across the country and the fact that mass mobilization of the farming community has become the talking point in national politics.

The bigwigs of the opposition parties are seemingly trying to tap into widespread rural distress. Almost 30,000 farmers are walking from Nasik to Mumbai for six days with various demands. Its organizer ABKS is connected with the Communist Party of India  Marxist (CPM). The agitation has gathered supports of all likeminded organizations of Maharashtra.

This is the third such protest, which Maharashtra is witnessing in the past one year. Recently, BJP leader Yashwant Sinha held a protest for the farmers issues in Akola, Vidarbha. He was even arrested by the local police during the agitation. Before him, Swaraj Indias Yogendra Yadav had organized a march and his organization has reached out to farmers in Vidarbha and Marath-wada regions particularly.

The mainstream political parties of the state have been raising the issue of community since the last two years. Congress and Nationalist Congress Partys Sangharsha Yatra in March  April 2017 created pressure on the government. Both the parties are organizing rallies and programs independently in the rural area.

Political observers believe that the recent elections in the country have pushed the opposition parties to focus on the rural part.

You see results of Gujarat or the by-elections of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan or Punjab. It clearly indicates that the agriculture distress is taking a political toll on the ruling party BJP. So, to mobilize the farmers against BJP governments, opposition parties being united is the best bet for them. This is happening now, said Anant Dikshit, a senior journalist.

Maharashtra has 288 assembly seats. Though this state is one of the most highly urbanized states in the country, almost 175 constituencies are known as rural or semi-rural constituencies. In such a case, rural issues have decided the political narrative over the years. This makes political parties dwell on farming issues.

Another expert Atul Deulgaonkar believes that the issues of farmers will definitely alter the political course of India. In 2004, rural India was under stress. So despite the advertisements blitzkrieg by the then government, people voted them out. That was the proof of how this community votes in the big elections. So, if something similar happens in 2019, I wont be surprised, he said.

Rs 13,782 cr disbursed to farmers acc

The state government has approved a loan waiver or incentive to the 55 lakh farmers and Rs 13,782 crore has been deposited in the bank accounts of 35.68 lakh farmers, told co- operation minister Subhash Deshmukh in the legislative assembly on Wednesday.

Opposition has slammed the government over problems in loan waiver scheme and online system and also alleged that farmers have not received any benefit. Opposition also demanded the list of the farmers.

Mr Deshmukh assured that the CDs of lists of farmers who have received the benefits will be tabled in the assembly within a week and lists documents are more than 75,000 pages and hence it is not possible to provide hard copies to all MLAs.

Mr Deshmukh also informed that, Rs 13,782 crore has been deposited in the bank accounts of 35.68 lakh farmers. Banks are working on the process.
CG rushes to rescue as crew abandons container.

Mumbai: The Indian Coast Guards launched a rescue operation near Lakshadweep island after a container ship reported an explosion late on Tuesday. The container ship with Singapore flag had 23 crew members on board, including 13 Indians. The CG rushed its vessel for rescue and even pressed a Dornier into service. Four crew members, including an Indian, are missing while the others have been rescued.

Coast Guard officials said that the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Mumbai received a distress message at 9.45 pm on Tuesday from a Singaporean container ship, Maersk Honam, stating there was an explosion onboard. The 330 meters long ship had left Singapore on March 1 with 27 crew members. Besides Indians, the motley crew consisted of Romanians, British, Thai and Filipinos.

The vessel reported an explosion and fire onboard and requested immediate assistance while being located 570 km (340 nautical miles) from Agatti in Lakshwadeep Islands, said Avinandan Mitra, PRO Coast Guards. The MRCC alerted all the merchant ships nearby through the satellite based communication network, International Safety Net (ISN).

The Indian Coast Guard Ship (ICGS) Shoor, equipped with specialised fire-fighting equipment, which was patrolling near Lakshadweep islands, has also been diverted for assisting the distressed vessel. IG KR Nautiyal, Coast Guard Commander (West) said, Search Operations are on and Coast Guard assets have been pressed into action to salvage the vessel with assistance of specialised vessels, which is being arranged in co-ordination with the ship agency, he said.

Nearby merchant vessels have also rushed to the spot. The crew has abandoned the ship as the fire is beyond control. The search operation is in progress by merchant vessels Als Cicero, Seaspan Zambezi, Navigator Centauri and Al Jasrah supervised by the

Indian Coast Guard Regional HQ (West) and MRCC.
Narendra accepted the award given by the land acquisition officer but other farmers refused.

Mumbai: Energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Wednesday announced a judicial probe into the controversial death of Dhule farmer, Dharma Patil, and land compensations in the legislative assembly.

A retired high court judge will decide whether Mr Patils family got less compensation than the others, and the probe will be conducted in three months, said Mr Bawankule.

Mr Patil, in protest of getting less compensation for his land given for an energy project, consumed a poisonous chemical on January 22 and died seven days later at J.J. Hospital in Mumbai.

Senior officials said that the government has ordered a judicial probe to retaliate to the allegations leveled by the opposition and put the blame on the former Congress-NCP government.

Mr Patils grievance was that his neighbour, Shankar Girase, got a compensation of Rs 1.89 crore which was more than what he got but no one considered it.

After an enquiry by the collector, the government revised the compensation and paid Mr Patils legal heirs and his son, Narendra Patil, said Mr Bawankule in the assembly while replying to the objections raised by the opposition.

Mr Bawankule further said that 476 hectare land had been acquired for the power project at Dhule by the Maharashtra Electricity Generation company.

When Ajit Pawar was the energy minister, he offered a compensation of Rs 10 lakh per hectare in 2013. However, farmers who owned 199 hectare land - including Mr Patil and his son, Mr Narendra - did not give their consent.

When the government acquired the land by compulsory acquisition, Mr Patil and Mr Narendra accepted the award given by the land acquisition officer but other farmers refused.

Now, the government had sanctioned Mr Patil an ex-gratia amount that was deposited in his sons bank account, said Mr Bawankule.
The CBI arrested and produced Takla before court.

Takla is alleged to be the key person to send the co-accused to Pakistan via Dubai.

Mumbai: Seven months after a special TADA court passed judgment on the second phase of the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blast case, the CBI arrested and produced before the court one more accused, Mohammed Farooq Yasin Mansoor, alias Farooq Takla, believed to be an aide of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim, in this case.

CBI counsel Deepak Salvi requested special judge G. A. Sanap to remand Farooq to CBI custody as it wanted to carry out further investigation and collect evidence against him. He is one of the key conspirators, said Salvi, adding that he had dealt with plane tickets of other accused. According to the CBI, he was the key person to send the co-accused to Pakistan via Dubai, so that they could undergo arms training.

The CBI prosecutor also said that the CBI had already chargesheeted him on November 4, 1993 as Takla was absconding accused number 196 in list of accused. According to the CBI, he participated in the criminal conspiracy of the blast as an active conspirator, perpetrator along with other accused like Dawood Ibrahim.

He gave logistic support like arranging air tickets. He also received accused Salim Bismillah Khan, alias Salim Kurla, Mohd Hanif Mohd Usman Shaikh, Shaikh Ibrahim Shaikh Hussain, Usman Man Khan Shaikh and Mohd Sayed Mohd Isaaq in Dubai and arranged for their accommodation during their stay in Dubai. These accused were to travel to Pakistan to receive arms, ammunition and handling of explosives training.

The CBI has claimed that Takla also provided for their expenses while in Dubai and apprised them about the next step of sending them to Pakistan from Dubai to receive training.

The TADA court had issued non-bailable warrants against him in February 1995, then in June 1995, later in August 2017, but they returned unexecuted. The CBI than sent those NBWs to the competent authority of UAE, along with request for his extradition in August 2017.

Advocate Salvi said that during the earlier trial against other set of accused, including gangster Abu Salem, the prosecution had already examined 786 witnesses and some of them have implicated Taklas role in their confession. The said accused is deeply involved in the criminal conspiracy to commit terrorist act, including serial blast in 1993, said advocate Salvi while seeking Taklas custody for fourteen days.

On behalf of Takla, advocate Farhana Shah and Sultan Khan opposed the CBIs plea seeking his custody. After hearing arguments the judge held that a fair chance of investigation could not be denied to the CBI and hence accused is remanded to CBI custody till March 19.

Court seeks CBIs reply on 5 applications

The judge allowed advocate Farhana Shaha and Sultan Khan to meet and talk to Takla in the courtroom. The court, however, sought CBIs reply on their other five applications. In these applications Taklas lawyers sought medicines for him as he is suffering from high blood pressure, home food, permission to meet family members, legal consultation and that he would not be made to confess.

Farooqs brother Ahmed Langda met him in the courtroom. Ahmed was also one of the accused in the blast case facing almost similar charges but he was acquitted from the case.

The judge warned Ahmed not to intervene in the court proceedings. While the hearing was going on, Ahmed fell unconscious. He was helped by the police, journalists and Taklas lawyer and taken out.
Although Krishna Kumari Kohli was a child bride, her husband encouraged her to continue studying.

Kohli married at the age of 15, which is not unusual in Pakistan, where one in five girls marry before the age of 18, according to the United Nations. (Photo: File)

Karachi: As the first woman senator from Pakistan's lowest Dalit caste, Krishna Kumari Kohli has an ambitious to-do list, from tackling honour killings to kidnappings and child marriage.

But for the former child bride from a poor Hindu family, the need to improve women and girls' health and education in the conservative Muslim-majority nation is closest to her heart.

"Never in my wildest of dreams did I think I'd ever become a senator," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If I can make a dent in these two areas, I'd have made a difference for times to come and my candidature would all have been worth it."

Kohli's election on Saturday marks a milestone in Pakistan both as a woman - who hold about one in five parliamentary seats - and as a member of the Dalit caste - a term she rejects as derogatory.

Dalits, formerly known as untouchables in the Hindu caste system, are at the bottom of the social hierarchy in neighbouring India and face widespread discrimination.

Most of Pakistan's Hindu minority live in southern Sindh province, where 39-year-old Kohli is from, one of its poorest regions with high rates of child marriage and poverty.

Kohli married at the age of 15, which is not unusual in Pakistan, where one in five girls marry before the age of 18, according to the United Nations.

Violence against women and girls is a serious problem and religious minorities are particularly vulnerable, according to Human Rights Watch, with some 1,000 Hindu and Christian girls forced to convert and marry Muslim men each year.

After her surprise victory on an opposition Pakistan People's Party ticket, Kohli said she wants to reduce honour killings, usually meted out by family members on women for bringing "shame" on the community and forcible conversions.

"There are a lot of laws in place - for honour killing, for abolition of bonded labour, for protection of girls and boys against underage marriage," said Kohli, a mother of four.

"What is needed is implementation and I want to be able to do that."

Although Kohli was a child bride, her husband Lal Chand encouraged her to continue studying and she went on to earn a master's degree in sociology.

"She has been working for the rights of the people, especially women, for quite some time," he said.

"She was often reprimanded by her own relatives in her village for having abandoned the purdah and for coming out on the streets and joining protest rallies," he said, referring to women being secluded from men and wearing veils in public.

"But the very same people are now calling me up and congratulating me," added Kohli, seated beside him and smiling.
The Industrial Cadets annual awards ceremony was held Wednesday in London.

Gupta is doing so much to apply real imagination, innovative thinking and sustainable rejuvenation to our nations heavy industries, said the 68-year-old Prince of Wales. (Photo: File)

London: Indian-origin steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has been appointed by Britains Prince Charles as an official ambassador for the Industrial Cadets programme designed to nurture manufacturing skills.

Gupta was appointment to the flagship programme to give children and young people direct structured experience of industry while still at school or college.

The Industrial Cadets annual awards ceremony was held Wednesday in London.

Gupta is doing so much to apply real imagination, innovative thinking and sustainable rejuvenation to our nations heavy industries and Im thrilled that he, through his GFG Alliance, has so enthusiastically become involved with Industrial Cadets as well, said the 68-year-old Prince of Wales.

Creating jobs

As the Executive Chairman of UK-based GFG Alliance, Gupta has been on an acquisition spree in the steel industry over the past few months which has helped secure hundreds of jobs.

The Industrial Cadets programme, which currently involves more than 15,000 youngsters across the UK, was set up at the behest of the Prince of Wales seven years ago after he visited steel plants at Teesside in north-east England and heard how the manufacturing and engineering sectors were struggling to recruit young people to their ranks.

Coming from a family of industrialists, I had the opportunity while growing up to spend time in steel works and engineering plants. That left a lasting impression on me and really inspired me to pursue an active career in industry. I see Industrial Cadets fulfilling the same function and am very excited about the impact it is facing, Gupta said.

Cadets programme

His GFG Foundation is actively involved in funding and promoting the Industrial Cadets programme, through a partnership with the Engineering Development Trust.

GFG Alliance companies, including Liberty House and SIMEC, currently support 1,300 cadets from 26 schools across Britain to participate in the scheme, with a target of 5,000 students by next year.

Around 26 GFG executives located at 13 industrial sites in the UK are regularly engaged in organising work placements at their respective plants, helping the youngsters to maximise the benefit they the get from time spent in the groups steelmaking, engineering, power generation and manufacturing facilities.

GFG also has an active apprenticeship training programme currently involving more than 100 young people in the UK.

Skill training

Gupta said that the task of ensuring the next generation has the motivation and skills to enable the UK to remain competitive and successful on the world stage in manufacturing as one of the most important tasks facing modern society.

As part of his role as ambassador, the 46-year-old businessman has also been tasked with establishing Industrial Cadets in Australia, where the GFG Alliance already employs 6,000 people in its integrated mining, steel and energy businesses.

The GFG Alliance is a London-headquartered international group of businesses, founded and owned by the UK-based Gupta family.

The vision of GFG Alliance is to promote industrial revival based on low-carbon and sustainable production methods through its GreenAluminium and GreenSteel strategies.

In February, the groups Liberty Speciality Steels reignited one of the arc furnaces mothballed by Tata Steel in 2015 at the height of the steel crisis in northern England.

Liberty, as part of the wider GFG Alliance, has created and safeguarded hundreds of jobs in the steel sector across the UK as a result of a series of acquisitions.
Meghan was not expected or required to be baptized into the Anglican Communion to marry into British monarchy.

Meghan agreed to do get baptised before her wedding to Harry out of respect for the Queen, who is the head of the Church of England. (Photo: DC File)

The world can't wait for the wedding of the year, the British Royal wedding of American actress Meghan Markle to Prince Harry on May 19 this year.

And in preparation for the same, Meghan got baptised secretly into the Church of England.

The Archbishop of Canterbury conducted the 45-minute-long intimate service at the Chapel Royal on Tuesday evening.

Meghan was not expected or required to be baptized into the Anglican Communion to marry into British monarchy.

However, reports said she agreed to do it before her wedding to 33-year-old Harry out of respect for Queen Elizabeth, who is the head of the Church of England.

As per Daily Mail reportage, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were present while Prince William and the Queen did not attend.

The baptism was followed by Meghan's confirmation, which means she can now join her fiance Harry at Holly Communion.
They drove up to a Lufthansa plane as employees were loading bags of money into an armoured vehicle and drove off with the cash.

The heist on Sunday is rare in so far as the amount is concerned, however it points toward the rise of organized crime which has become a national problem for Brazil. (Representational Image)

Brazil: Amid rising criminality in Brazil, Sunday saw five gang members armed with rifles wage through the Viracopos international airport and with seeming ease drive off with USD 5 million in cash.

Using cars that were re-painted to resemble airport security, the gang rushed through the gates and into the cargo section of the airport where they attacked two security guards and stuffed them into a van, the Washington Post reported.

They then drove up to a Lufthansa plane as employees were loading bags of money into an armoured vehicle and drove off with the cash even before the police could arrive. No one has been arrested.

"Everyone who passes through the Viracopos Airport is at the mercy of thugs," Alberto Carvalho, a director at the National Union of Airport Workers said.

He further reiterated several instances of abductions and muggings, adding that the airport along with the nearby highway and its surroundings in general, remain particularly unsafe. "The airport is completely unprepared to deal with these risks," Carvalho said.

Transporting goods in Brazil has become increasingly dangerous in lieu of an impending crime wave which stands at an astonishing 10, 500 cargo thefts in 2017 in Sao Paolo according to state figures. This has led to companies sending shipments by plane.

The heist on Sunday is rare in so far as the amount is concerned, however it points toward the rise of organized crime which has become a national problem for Brazil.
Macron will spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi, a source in the French presidency said.

Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris 2017. (Photo: File)

Paris: Two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned from a blunder-struck trip to India, Emmanuel Macron arrives in New Delhi hoping to avoid the missteps of his ally.

Trudeau and Macron are often compared internationally because of their broadly similar political views, as well as youth and good looks. But the French leader will be eager to make a different impression on his Indian hosts.

Trudeau, already facing suspicions in India that Canada was too soft on Sikh separatists back home, was seriously embarrassed when a former militant was invited to a dinner with him in Mumbai.

Even before this revelation, India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris 2017.

Macron will "spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi," a source in the French presidency said, adding that they had "formed a close relationship" during Macron's first nine months in power.

They will meet Saturday for talks before Macron attends a solar power summit on Sunday designed to showcase India and France's commitment to fighting climate change, which both leaders have made a priority.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, France's 40-year-old president is set to make the almost obligatory visit to the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a few hours drive from the Indian capital on Sunday.

On Monday, he heads to the chaotic Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the river Ganges, which the Indian premier has promised to modernise and clean up.

Having seen Trudeau pilloried on social media and in the Canadian press for donning traditional Indian clothing at every opportunity, Macron is likely to be far more conservative in his dress-sense.

Arms and reactors

As well as discussing climate change and ways to build closer diplomatic ties, the two biggest issues between the countries in recent years -- defence and nuclear energy sales -- will also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the world's biggest arms buyer.

Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron has travelled widely since his election in May 2017, presenting himself as the dynamic new face in the European Union who is driving reform efforts in the 28-member bloc.

The centrist has invested time and energy in building relationships with the world's nationalist strongmen, including US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the world's biggest democracy and its huge yet still untapped business potential.

The United States and leading European Union members have spent years wooing successive governments in New Delhi, seeing the country as a counter-weight to China in the region.

Macron is set to announce plans to allow Indian navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.
by Melani Manel Perera

The country is under a state of emergency. Social media have been blocked to prevent the spread of fake news. The countrys Catholic bishops urge people "not let no one add fuel to fire. Sri Lankans must learn from the past to avoid plunging the country into a new conflict.

Colombo (AsiaNews)  Various rights groups and Christian associations have called on the Sri Lankan government to restore public order as quickly as possible.

At present, the country is on the verge of a new civil war, after serious sectarian violence broke out in Kandy following the death of a Buddhist Sinhalese. This triggered revenge attacks by some Sinhalese, who began setting fire to Muslim shops and homes.

As a result, police have arrested Amith Jeewan Weerasingha (picture 3), the main suspect in sparking the violence, and nine accomplices. Meanwhile, in the capital Colombo, civil society groups staged a protest against racism, calling for a return to peace.

The groups include the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (NHRCSL), the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka (NCCSL), National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL) and the Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka (CBCSL).

Two days ago, the authorities declared a state of emergency across the island and imposed a curfew in Kandy district. This gives security forces the power to arrest and detain people for a long period of time.

Yesterday, the government blocked the Internet and social media to prevent the spread of fake news.

In a statement, Sri Lankas Catholic bishops call on all political and civic leaders to cooperate in a spirit of dialogue and understanding to prevent a disastrous conflict.

It is destructive to give religious twists to isolated incidents, their statement reads. Otherwise, this leaves room to extremists to create a conflagration. Let no one add fuel to fire.

Such acts, the statement says, will not protect the country, religions or race but rather insult, discredit and betray them.

Considering that this country has a multi ethnic and multi religious co composition, we need to promote and foster harmony to live in peace.

Having learnt from our past experiences, we should look at all incidents as having potential to unleash violence. Therefore, let us be realistic, humane and compassionate in dealing with events of this nature.

In a similar statement, the NCEASL urges the different communities to abstain from taking the law into their own hands whilst expressing its solidarity with the victims of violence.

It also reminds the President, the Prime Minister and the government of their commitment to peace and harmony and its zero-tolerance policy against hate speech and religious violence.

We call upon all communities to come together in defence of communal harmony, pluralism, and justice, and urge all political parties to desist from exploiting the current situation for undue political gain.
by Sumon Corraya

Bertha Gity Baroi heads CORR-The Jute Works, an organisation set up by Caritas to help women widowed during the countrys War of Independence. It works with more than 6,000 people, mostly Muslims and Hindus.

Dhaka (AsiaNews)  Bertha Gity Baroi, a Catholic woman, received an award for best businesswoman in jute products in Bangladesh. She was not alone. Ten other business executives received awards.

Ms Gity Baroi received the prize directly from Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who addressed the laureates, to thank them for using locally grown material. In Bangladesh, jute is known as the countrys golden fibre.

The award ceremony was held on National Jute Day at this years Diversified Jute Fair in Dhaka. The three-day gathering showcased everything related to jute, from the cultivation of the plant from which jute is derived to the research associated with it, as well as the marketing of jute products.

"Jute is one of the valuable assets of Bangladesh, the Prime Minister said. It offers diversified exportable goods with a huge potential.

Bertha Gity Baroi is the director of CORR-The Jute Works (CJW), which is linked to Caritas Bangladesh.

Speaking to AsiaNews, she said that more than 6,000 people are involved with the organisation, mostly of them Muslims and Hindus.

The initiative, she explained, "has helped thousands of people to change their socio-economic situation.

With some 50 developed countries importing CJW products, I am very happy for this recognition. It will inspire me and our co-workers."

The CJW was founded in 1971 by the Christian Organisation for Relief and Rehabilitation (CORR), which later became Caritas Bangladesh.

Its purpose was to support and help war widows and victims as well as marginalised rural women become independent following the countrys war of independence.
by Loula Lahham

Without a permit, the buildings were outside the law. A 1934 law prevented the construction of new Christian buildings. Under a new law adopted in 2016, Egyptian governors must justify whenever they reject an application. According to a local NGO, Egypts three main denominations (Orthodox, Evangelical, Catholic) have submitted in total 3,730 applications for regularised status.

Cairo (AsiaNews)  Rev Refaat Fathi, secretary general of the Council of Churches of Egypt, said earlier this week that the implementation of the law on the regularisation of the status of churches in Egypt is a very important step "so that every citizen can have his or her legal rights recognised and know how to act in light of this".

"We got the approval of the ministerial committee, chaired by the Prime Minister himself, which is charged with regularising the legal status of churches and buildings erected without permits. The situation touches 53 Christian buildings.

In fact, Law 80 on building and restoring churches and religious buildings was approved by the Egyptian Parliament in August 2016. Some 53 churches and Christian buildings in a number of Egyptian towns and villages now have the right papers and legal status.

"I know that the authorities are serious about trying to find solutions to the current crisis, and the Presidency of the Republic has proved that it really wants to solve all the problems concerning the construction and restoration of churches."

At the same time, Rev Fathi noted that, although many problems are now finding solutions, several governors continue to enforce the old law on churches of 1934, because the regulations to implement the new law of 2016 have not yet been adopted.

For its part, the Egyptian government had said that following a meeting in late February with the ministers of Housing, Interior, Justice, Parliamentary Affairs, Antiquities, Local Development and Social Solidarity, 53 churches were able to change their legal status.

At the end of this meeting, the spokesman for the Council of Ministers, Ashraf Sultan, told a television station that the regularisation of these churches reflects the governments desire to implement the principle of common citizenship for all Egyptians.

It should be noted that the churches and Christian religious buildings in question, which are used by Church bodies, charities and welfare organisations, were built in violation of the existing building rules.

Moreover, like thousands of buildings on state or farm land, the 53 buildings were given a non-residential purpose so as to be hooked up to the necessary utilities (electricity, water, sewage), after the government was paid the value of the land on which they were built.

An Egyptian activist, Samuel Tadros, wrote on twitter that Egyptian authorities had received 3,730 applications to regularise churches and Christian buildings in Egypts 27 governorates.

A local NGO, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, confirmed this, noting that Egypts three main Churches (Orthodox, Evangelical and Catholic) submitted three months ago a list of 3,730 unauthorised churches and buildings to the Egyptian government.

For other local NGOs, red tape and security concerns related to church building in Egypt have contributed to escalating sectarian tensions in Egypt, caused mainly by extremist anti-Christian Islamist groups, an issue the authorities have not addressed so far. The violence usually takes place in rural areas, mostly in Upper Egypt,

Under the 2016 law on building and restoring churches, "the competent governor is obliged to rule on the application after ensuring that all the conditions required by law are fulfilled. Any rejection must be motivated."

It must also be noted that the old law of 1934 banned, among other things, the building of new churches near schools, water channels, government buildings, railways and residential areas. In many cases, the strict application of the law prevented not only the construction of churches in Christian-inhabited towns and villages, but also the restoration or upgrading of existing churches.
For experts, the economic and financial impact of the stand-off between Qatar and Saudi Arabia is "weakening", but there are still factors of uncertainty. Liquidity flow and the intervention of the Central Bank offset the 40 billion dollar hole. The possible drop in hydrocarbon prices is worrying.

Doha (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The economic and financial impact of the more than nine month Saudi Arabian blockade on Doha "are weakening"; however, there are still "certain elements of risk" for the Gulf emirate. This is what the experts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) say, according to which the Doha leaders have been able to open new avenues to trade and the growth indices remain always positive.

For months Qatar has been at the center of a serious political, diplomatic and economic crisis that pits it against the other Gulf countries, led by Riyadh. According to some, the clash between Qatar and Saudi Arabia originates from the ties between Doha and Tehran, the number one enemy of the Saudis in the region, and the supposed support for terrorist groups. In fact behind the controversy - which also involved the Qatar Al Jazeera satellite channel, which Riyadh wants shut down - there would be a counterattack within Sunni Islam and, in particular, between Doha and Abu Dhabi.

An IMF report released in recent days shows that the effects of the economic blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt - which cut off all diplomatic and commercial relations with Doha last June  have been "transitory" . If, on the one hand, foreign financing and private deposits decreased by about 40 billion dollars, on the other hand the decline was offset by injections of liquidity by the Central Bank and the Qatar investment authority.

Like other Gulf nations that base their wealth on energy production, Qatar has suffered the backlash caused by the global collapse in oil and natural gas prices. This has imposed the introduction of austerity measures based to guarantee the state budget, in the face of a series of economic indicators that show a negative balance: in the non-hydrocarbons, 2017 showed a growth of 4%, down from at 5.6% of the previous year. Last year's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stood at 2.1%, a slight decline compared to 2.2% in 2016. The budget deficit fell to 6.0% of GDP, compared to 9, 2% of the previous year.

The great crisis that was feared due to the blockade of the Gulf countries did not materialize, but according to IMF experts, elements of risk remain. The main ones, they explain, "concern the possibility of a fall in oil prices, the application of fiscal measures and the uncertainties linked to the persistence of the diplomatic controversy".

In the past, Qatar depended largely on imports from neighbouring Saudi Arabia for food stocks, including milk and other dairy products. Hence the need for 2.7 million inhabitants to find alternative sources for food supplies [read Turkey, Iran and Morocco], while strengthening domestic production.
Receiving the International Catholic Commission for Migration, Francis stated that "we must encourage countries to coordinate more suitable and effective responses to the challenges posed by issues of migration; and we can do this on the basis of the essential principles of the Churchs social teaching".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - We need a "sincere and open" dialogue with those who govern to respond to the challenges posed by migration, which see millions of people subjected to harassment of all kinds, said Pope Francis in his greeting to the members of the Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), received on the occasion of the Plenary Council (in the photo).

Francis defined the conditions in which millions of migrants and refugees subsist as inhumane. Those who are forced to leave their homeland is too often a victim of "deception, violence and abuse of all kinds". "Just as he did at the time of Israels enslavement in Egypt, so too the Lord hears their cry and sees their sufferings (cf. Ex 3:7). Today as in the past, liberating the poor, the oppressed and the persecuted is an integral part of the mission entrusted by God to the Church. The work of your Commission represents a tangible expression of this important missionary commitment. Much has changed since your establishment in 1951. Needs have grown ever more complex, tools for responding ever more sophisticated, and your service increasingly professional. Thanks be to God, none of these changes has lessened the Commissions fidelity to its mission".

The Lord, he continued, sent Moses "to his oppressed people to wipe away their tears and give back hope". Today another people, made up of millions of oppressed people, is waiting to be freed. "In order to set free those who today are oppressed, rejected and enslaved, it is essential to promote open and sincere dialogue with government leaders, a dialogue that takes into account peoples actual experiences, sufferings and aspirations, in order to remind everyone once more of his or her responsibilities. The processes set in motion by the international community for a global agreement on refugees, and another for safe, orderly and regulated migration, represent a privileged forum for implementing such dialogue".

"The work is not over. Together we must encourage countries to coordinate more suitable and effective responses to the challenges posed by issues of migration; and we can do this on the basis of the essential principles of the Churchs social teaching. We must likewise commit ourselves to ensuring that, as a sign of shared global responsibility, concrete engagement follows from the words already codified in the aforementioned two agreements. Yet the Commissions commitment goes even further. I ask the Holy Spirit to continue to enlighten all of you, as you carry out your vital mission of showing forth Gods merciful love to our migrant brothers and sisters. I assure you of my closeness and my prayers; and I ask you, please, not to forget to pray for me".
Assad forces are said to have also retaken Beit Sawa and Al-Ashaari. Their next target is Douma and the areas west of the rebel enclave. Some sources say 800 people have died since the start of the offensive, but there has been no independent confirmation. Claims that the area was hit by a chemical attack on Sunday have been denied.

Damascus (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Syrian forces have retaken more than half of Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held enclave near Damascus, since they launched their offensive on 18 February, this according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), citing local anti-Assad sources. However, no further details about the operation underway are available.

Regime forces control more than 50 per cent of Ghouta," said SOHR chief Rami Abdel Rahman, "after forces retook Al-Ashaari and Beit Sawa towns.

With Russian support, the goal now is to retake the whole area. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are expected to turn their attention to the city of Douma and places west of the rebel enclave, where jihadist groups also operate.

The Observatory reported that 45 civilians were killed yesterday, including four children. Thus far, some 800 civilians are said to have been killed, but the figure has not been independently confirmed.

On several occasions, the Observatory has accused Russia of causing the death of civilians in air raids in support of government forces, a claim that Russia ha always denied.

Conversely, rebel shelling and rocket attacks have hit parts of the capital from Eastern Ghouta causing death injuries, including Christians, as Apostolic Nuncio Card Mario Zenari and Trappist nuns pointed out in a harsh letter accusing the West and international media.

For now, some doctors working in Eastern Ghouta have denied claims that chlorine was used in Sundays air raid.

The apparent rumour spread after civilians seeking medical attention after the attack by government forces came in with respiratory problems.

"Findings show that a basement was targeted by a rocket . . . whose impact caused a minor explosion sound," Syria's opposition directorate of health for Damascus said in a statement, adding that the substances emitted caused "coughing, red eyes and throat congestion".

The use of chemical weapons in Syrias civil war is a recurrent issue with anti-Assad groups and the West accusing the government, and the latter, backed by Russia, denying such claims.
He has been accused of sedition. As of November, judges can no longer accept evidence obtained through coercion. Activists: positive turn.

Tashkent (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Tashkent Court will investigate allegations of torture by a reporter against the secret services. The trial of journalist Bobomurod Abdullayev is considered by human rights activists as a "litmus test" for President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's reforms.

Yesterday, during the first hearing of the trial that sees him indicted with sedition, the journalist took off his shirt to show the remaining signs of the violence he suffered. The journalist was arrested by the secret services (SNB) in late September on charges of having produced seditious material in order to overthrow the government.

Abdullayev claims to have been subjected to brutal treatment in the period immediately following his arrest. "They hit him on the back, legs and on the left arm with a plastic tube a meter long. The worst torture was when they forced him to spend six days without sleep ... they did not allow him to sit or lie down ", writes his lawyer, Sergei Mayorov. "The third form of torture was the beatings on the back and the head with a computer cable". The violence lasted until November 5, and they were such that yesterday the journalist still carried signs on his left arm.

The request for medical evaluation and examination of Abdullayev's statements was made by his attorney, supported by the attorney general and approved by Judge Zafar Nurmatov. The magistrate accepted the request by recalling a Mirziyoyev decree last November, which prevents the courts from relying on evidence extracted by torture.

Abdurahmon Tashanov, human rights activist of the Ezgulik group, applauded the decision, saying it was a "positive turn" and that "as a rule, the court does not consider the demands of the defendant or lawyers on the use of torture".

Recently, President Mirziyoyev lashed out at the secret services, calling them "crazy dogs" and announcing that he wanted to put an end to their power by bringing those who were stained with torture to justice.
by Paul Nguyen Hung

Ordinary Vietnamese welcomed the visit by the USS Carl Vinson. US and Vietnamese naval officers discussed basic natural disaster interventions. For experts, the US presence is a counterweight to Chinas expansionism in the South China Sea.

a Nang (AsiaNews)  The USS Carl Vinson, the first US warship to dock in a Vietnamese port since 1975, ended its three-day visit to Vietnam today.

The presence of the aircraft carrier off a Nang marked a new beginning in US-Vietnamese relations, and reaffirmed the US role and interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

Today is a historic day, said Admiral John Fuller, commander of the US Navy combat aircraft group, at the welcoming ceremony in a Nang.

We are very honoured to receive this warm welcome, he added. We also would like to thank Vietnam for its excellent logistical support. This makes this visit a reality. The United and Vietnam are working more closely than ever.

The Vietnamese side was also pleased. The visit, said Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang, will continue to promote bilateral relations within the framework of the two countries comprehensive partnership and contribute to maintaining peace, stability, security, cooperation and development in the region.

During their stay in a Nang, US officers and sailors took part in many activities in the port city, such as outdoor musical performances, sporting events, visits and exchanges with five social support centres for children and the disabled, including the Victim Protection Centre, which treats victims of Agent Orange, a defoliant used by the United States from 1961 and 1971 over much of southern Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The US Navy delegation also discussed with its Vietnamese counterpart power and water technologies, helping local authorities and Vietnamese students to cope with natural disasters, as well as fire prevention and health care training.

Most Vietnamese welcomed the visit of the US warship to a Nang, especially local residents.

"We live near the sea, Mr Nvh told AsiaNews, but in the recent past, we have not had the courage to go out fishing. Many of our fishing boats have been sabotaged by Tau La (unknown boats, presumed to be Chinese). Our fishermen have been killed by 'para-military ships'. Now the 'right people' are backing us, people who come to protect us. In the meantime, our government does not care about us."

Ms Nguyen Ngoc H. is more sceptical. "Vietnam has welcomed many heads of state, such as US President Obama, she said. A few months ago, his successor Donald Trump visited the country, but the future of Vietnam cannot be based on an American aircraft carrier alone. It depends on the Vietnamese."

For some geopolitical experts, the visit by the USS Carl Vinson is not an isolated event but will see Vietnamese ports open to other US ships. This will have important implications for US military strategy in the region.

The US Navy gives Washington the means to maintain a long-term presence in the worlds seas, and the arrival of a US air carrier in Vietnam is particularly important in view of China's increasingly aggressive moves in the South China Sea.

The US-Vietnam relationship does not stop at the visit of the air carrier USS Carl Vinson, but the latter is of great significance in view of the regional context, said Prof Nmh, an American-Vietnamese political scientist.

Many Asia-Pacific nations are facing China's provocative behaviour, he explained. Chinese warships and para-military ships have occupied vast portions of the sea, coral reefs and small islands like 'silkworms eating strawberries'. As a result, US involvement is extremely necessary to restrain Beijings ambitions.

For Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, the visit is a message to Vietnam, about how much we care about that relationship; it's a message to China, about what they're doing in the region; but it's also a broader message to everyone in the Pacific region, that the United States is here and we're here to stay.
Hello! My tourism visa got refused today because for the officer I have not provided enough evidence that I will be leaving Australia.



Anyone knows after how long I can re apply again with more information? If anyone can recommend a good agent that can assist me with this would be great.



Thanks in advance



Estefanie
Brisbane-based family print shop Clark & Mackay is celebrating 90 years in operation, now having four generations of printers running the business.

Since opening the company has operated across wooden type, letterpress, which current director Neil Mackay was originally trained in, offset, and now, digital, specialising in self-published books.

Starting in 1928 in premises in Adelaide Street in the heart of Brisbane, Bert Clark and John Mackay opened a printing business using wooden type, each word being composed one letter at a time using hand fed and foot powered printing presses.

In 1945, following the end of World War Two, John Mackays son Ian joined the firm, along with his brother Garth. The company operated as letterpress printers until 1960, when Ian Mackays son Neil Mackay, the current director, joined the firm as an apprentice letterpress/offset printing machinist.

Neil Mackay says, When I started with Clark & Mackay we were doing letterpress printing, the raised type. Probably five years later offset printing was taught at the college, so I did a course in lithographic printing, to keep up with the latest.

In the 60s Clark & Mackay moved premises to a larger factory at 386 Montague Road West End. This era consisted of five letterpress and one offset press  with no bindery equipment except for a stapler and punch machine. The purchase of Coronation Press produced a rapidly growing firm.

Ians other son Ross Mackay joined the firm in 1969 as an apprentice compositor which led Clark & Mackay to the transition of hand set type and hot metal composition to computers and digital printing. To accommodate expansion West End was extended twice between 1969 and 1994.

In 1994 the move to Rocklea, owing to the evolving fashion industry in West End, quadrupled the size of Clark & Mackay.

In 1997 Neils son Paul Mackay joined the firm as an apprentice machinist making the fourth generation of Mackays. During this time the purchase and integration of Leader Press, which at the time was the printing arm of the Catholic Church, further developed Clark & Mackay.

The new digital press was introduced in 2002 and further enhanced the capabilities of printing in a new era for Clark & Mackay, and introduced the evolution of digital technology.

2008 brought a change as Ross Mackay retired to take up his vocation of a Minister in the Uniting Church.

So in 2014 Neil relocated the business from Rocklea to a more modern establishment at Colebard St East Acacia Ridge. These premises with the upgrading of machinery and technology has kept Clark & Mackay at the forefront of all facets of print media, including digital printing and variable data also the state of the art in producing self published books.

Neil Mackay says, Now we run two Fuji Xerox digital presses, a Komori five-colour offset press, and a two colour, and one colour Heidelberg press.

Early on we were Heidelberg orientated, due to their superior equipment at the time.

We have 10 employees, we are lucky to have loyal staff, which have been with me for many years.

A lot of our equipment now is more automated than it used to be. If that was not the case we probably would have hired more people.

One of our specialities now is self-published books, which becomes more important to us as time goes on. Printers are not surviving, and the ones that are only doing offset would not be very healthy. You have to do various things, and have a niche. Self-published books has become an important niche for us.

We are family oriented, and service orientated. We believe in the old fashion belief in service, and they deserve a quality product for the money they spend.

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Photo of 2018 Chevrolet Bolt EV courtesy of GM.

General Motors will increase production of its Chevrolet Bolt EV this year at its Orion Assembly Plant in Oakland County, Mich., as part of the company's "path to an all-electric future," chief executive Mary Barra told attendees at an energy conference.

Barra made the announcement during a March 7 speech at CERAWeek, a Houston energy conference. General Motors has set a goal to reach zero emissions by boosting sales of electrified vehicles, she said.

The automaker plans to introduce 20 new battery-electric vehicles by 2023. In 2017, all automakers sold 1.2 million battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles globally.

"In December 2012, the Chevrolet Volt was GM's flagship electrified vehicle and its owners hit a milestone 100 million all-electric miles just two years after it went on sale," Barra said. "By December 2017, drivers of five electrified models, including the Bolt EV, racked up more than 2.6 billion EV miles."

Company leadership is "encouraged by this momentum," she said.

In 2017, the company sold 26,000 Bolt EVs globally. In February, the company sold 1,424 units.

General Motors has also been testing Bolt EVs with autonomous driving technology through its Cruise Automation unit.
The QTA at Portland International. Photo courtesy of Portland International Airport

Oregons Portland International Airport (PDX) celebrated the grand opening of its new quick turnaround (QTA) facility Tuesday. The facility is a $67 million project sponsored by the Port of Portland.

The 316,000-square-foot QTA has the capacity to store 840 vehicles on its second-floor deck, and comes with 16 car wash bays and 72 fueling stations.

The previous QTA was built in 1989 by the rental car industry and featured five car washing spaces and 24 fueling spaces, according to Shane Andreason, senior manager for Concessions Development. The new QTA is about three times the size of the previous facility, and at peak shifts can hold 220 rental car employees working to clean and fuel 430 cars per hour.

Due to Oregons frequent rain, airport officials designed the QTA to collect and harvest rainwater for its car wash operations. Its estimated the facility will capture more than 2 million gallons of harvested rainwater, allowing the QTAs car washes to operate without the use of any municipal water.

The rainwater is significant, says Kama Simonds, media relations manager for the airport. [In] Portland, there can be no shortage of rain

Furthering its sustainability efforts, LED lighting is used throughout the building. Additionally, an adaptive monitoring system is installed to help manage and monitor energy usage based on the time of day and time of year.

Airport officials hope to have the QTA certified under the Envision rating system, a program that recognizes sustainable designs for infrastructure projects, construction, and operation. If certified, the building will become the largest Envision-certified project in Oregon.

The project was completed under PDXNext, a collection of capital projects aimed at improving the airport for both passengers and employees. PDXNext projects, which are occurring now through 2025 and have a budget of $2 billion, focus on modernizing infrastructure to meet the growing needs of the airport.

Several projects under the groups purview are in the works, including a consolidated rental facility (CONRAC). The proposed CONRAC, budgeted at $268 million, is slated to open in 2021.

PDXs Quick Turn Around Facility by the numbers:
A collection of photos from The Californian's archives of various neons signs from around Bakersfield  some still standing, some not.
'We can't prevent it. We just want to help': Bakersfield High seniors launch baby supply drive to benefit teen moms
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A parent who dropped his student off at Safety Harbor Elementary is accused of taking a pen to his child caretakers throat and making a slicing motion, according to the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office.

Jack Quick II, 46, arrested March 5

Action caught on surveillance video

Quick denied allegations, released on bail

Jack Quick II, 46, was arrested on Monday, March 5 and subsequently charged with felony battery on a school board employee.

Deputies said on Feb. 20, the victim was working in the cafeteria where students are dropped off and Quick signed his child in using a pen. The victim was seated at a table when Quick walked over, placed his left hand on top of her head, took the pen and dragged it across her throat in a slicing motion, according to the report.

The victim told deputies the pen made contact with her skin and Quick stated he left a pen mark across her throat and began laughing. According to the report, Quick stepped away and then re-approached the victim stating, The tip wasnt out, Im not that mean.

Deputies said the victim is the director of a YMCA program that is run out of the school, and the caretaker of Quicks child.

Despite the incident being caught on surveillance video, deputies said Quick denied the allegations. Quick was released from the Pinellas Jail on a $1,000 bond.

We were unable to reach Quick over the phone or at his Safety Harbor home for comment on this story.
Teamed up with two pro drivers for the Firestone Grand Prix media karting challenge, the Spectrum Bay News 9 team took home a trophy at the annual kick-off event for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Annual Mayor's Race part of event

Marco Andretti, Sabastien Bourdais among pro racers at event

Firestone Grand Prix weekend starts Friday, March 9

Indy Car star Marco Andretti and Sebastien Bourdais, last year's Firestone Grand Prix of St. Pete champ, along with rookie drivers Brian Horne and Kim Leoffler (yours truly) made for a combination of experience and skill that the other teams couldn't top.

"No sliding," Bourdais said when asked what advice he had for the rookies. "Those things are metal karts and they're pretty heavy, and not too too much power."

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, who won the mayor's race right before the BN9 team hit the tracks, had some advice for rookie Kim.

"I would tell her, 'Get out of the way!' because we'll pass her," Kriesman said.

Talk is cheap, Mr. Mayor. What happens on the track is what counts.

I'm ready to go! Determined to win a trophy. @BN9 pic.twitter.com/OQnz1wJ0LT  Kim Leoffler (@kimleoffler) March 7, 2018

Andretti hit the course first and built a very nice lead. Then it was up to Brian and Kim to keep it going in the second leg.

Their goal: don't spin out and don't crash. That simple yet effective approach allowed the rookies to keep the lead intact for the ringer to finish the job.

When it was his turn, Bourdais quickly pulled ahead on the last leg and secured the victory.

Winner's trophy for the Karting Challenge in hand, Bourdais said he's ready to hit the track in the real cars this weekend.

"Pretty comfortable with where we're at," he said. "We've done a lot of work and hopefully it pays off, and we get a good shot at trying to repeat what we did last year."

Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg weekend starts Friday, March 9. Drivers hit the track for the big race on Sunday.
The Florida House passed a gun violence prevention package that already passed in the State Senate Wednesday evening.

One provision will allow certain school staff to be armed

Florida House passed the measure 67-50

Gov. Scott will now decide whether to sign it

RELATED: Florida House debates gun restrictions bill

What's in the bill? READ THE DETAILS

After an eight-hour debate Wednesday, the House passed the bill 67-50, with a mix of Republicans and Democrats voting for it and against it.

Andrew Pollack, father of Meadow Pollack, one of the victims in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, gave a standing ovation to lawmakers as the bill's vote came down.

What's in the bill?

The bill that's being sent to the Florida House would do the following:

MENTAL HEALTH

Creates a process to allow law enforcement to petition a court for a risk protection order to stop someone from accessing firearms if there is a danger that they will harm themselves or others. Orders can be issued for up to 12 months.

Allow law enforcement to seize firearms or ammunition for someone taken into custody under the Baker Act for 24 hours after that person has been released, provided there is no risk protection order against them

Prohibits a person with a mental illness or has been committed to a mental institution from owning a gun unless a court says otherwise

FIREARMS

Raises the age a person may buy a long gun, shotgun or modern sporting rifle such as the AR-15 from 18 to 21 unless they are a member of the military or law enforcement

Prohibits bump-fire stocks from being bought or sold in the state

SCHOOL SAFETY

Establishes a public safety commission to investigate the mass violence incidents and make recommendations

Allows a county sheriff to set up a program to train certain school staff members to carry firearms. Excludes classroom teachers who only teach.

Requires school districts to work with law enforcement in placing officers in school facilities and designating a school safety specialist

Provides funding for mental health care programs in schools

The bill also prohibits a person from making or posting threats about a mass shooting or act of terror, and orders FDLE to create a mobile app to allow the community to relay information about threats.

The cost of the package is $400 million. READ THE DETAILS.

Who voted for the bill?

To get the bill through the Florida House, a mix of Democrats and Republicans were needed.

On Tuesday, House Democrats tried and failed to take the so-called "Marshal Program" out of the package.

The plan would allow highly-qualified school personnel to carry guns, which caused some Democrats to reject the bill.

Meanwhile, some pro-gun Republicans thought the bill went too far in restricting access to guns.

Here is how state lawmakers from the Tampa and Central Florida areas voted on this bill:

FLORIDA HOUSE VOTES

Name Party Counties Vote Rep. Larry Ahern R Pinellas Yes Rep. Ben Albritton R Polk Yes Rep. Thad Altman R Brevard Yes Rep. Bruce Antone D Orange No Rep. Jim Boyd R Manatee, Sarasota Yes Rep. Jason Brodeur R Seminole Yes Rep. Kamia Brown D Orange No Rep. Daniel Wright Burgess Jr. R Pasco Yes Rep. Colleen Burton R Polk Yes Rep. Richard Corcoran R Pasco Yes Rep. Bob Cortes R Orange, Seminole Yes Rep. John Cortes D Osceola No Rep. Janet Cruz D Hillsborough No Rep. Ben Diamond D Pinellas No Rep. Randy Fine R Brevard Yes Rep. Tom Goodson R Brevard Yes Rep. Jame Grant R Hillsborough, Pinellas No Rep. Joe Gruters R Manatee Yes Rep. Shawn Harrison R Hillsborough Yes Rep. Patrick Henry D Volusia No Rep. Blaise Ingoglia R Hernando No Rep. Sam Killebrew R Polk Yes Rep. Mike La Rosa D Osceola, Polk Yes Rep. Chris Latvala R Pinellas Yes Rep. Thomas Leek R Volusia Yes Rep. Amber Mariano R Pasco Yes Rep. Ralph Massullo R Citrus, Hernando Yes Rep. Stan McClain R Marion No Rep. Lawrence McClure R Hillsborough Yes Rep. Amy Mercado D Orange Yes Rep. Larry Metz R Lake Yes Rep. Mike Miller R Orange No Rep. Wengay Newton D Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas, Sarasota No Rep. Robert Olszewski R Orange Yes Rep. Kathleen Peters R Pinellas Yes Rep. Scott Plakon R Seminole Yes Rep. Rene Plasencia R Brevard, Orange Yes Rep. Jake Raburn R Hillsborough Yes Rep. Paul Renner R Flagler, Volusia Yes Rep. David Santiago R Volusia Yes Rep. Sean Shaw D Hillsborough No Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith D Orange No Rep. Ross Spano R Hillsborough No Rep. Chris Sprowls R Pinellas Yes Rep. Charlie Stone R Marion No Rep. Jennifer Sullivan R Lake, Orange Yes Rep. Jackie Toledo D Hillsborough Yes Rep. Clovis Watson D Marion No

FLORIDA SENATE VOTES
Bradenton Police are investigating an alleged incident between two Manatee County School Board members.

Scott Hopes, Dave Miner at odds over what happened after meeting

Police confirm they are looking into Feb. 27 surveillance video

Formal report was filed Wednesday in Manatee County



The board's chairman, Scott Hopes, claims that a fellow board member, Dave Miner, tried to hit him with his car following a school board meeting on Feb. 27.

It was all caught on video.

Both Hopes and Miner admit they got into a disagreement during the school board meeting earlier that evening. Following the meeting, the two exchanged harsh words in the parking lot.

Moments later, the video shows Miner getting into his vehicle and backing away. The two continue speaking through Miner's drivers side window.

But it's when Miner drives his car forward that the two see the situation differently.

&nbsp;

"He proceeded to attempt to run me over, and I ran away from the front of his car," Hopes said.

But Miner said: "I welcome a police investigation, which I think when it all is looked at carefully will reveal that I didn't do anything criminal. I didn't do anything wrong."



Hopes says an officer was on site in the parking lot of the school support center at the time of the incident. He says he spoke with that officer on the night of Feb. 27, though no formal report was filed until the afternoon of March 7.



Police confirm they're reviewing the video and speaking with all parties involved.



The school district is not commenting on the matter.
Polk County Public Schools Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd both agree there needs to be a multi-layered approach to improving school campus security, but they disagree on some aspects of how to go about it.

Polk sheriff, schools superintendent at impasse on school safety

Grady Judd, Jacqueline Byrd disagree on school safety approach

Main disagreement is on arming teachers, staff on campus

Their main disagreement is allowing teachers and staff to be trained to carry concealed guns on campus.

"I have also weighed carefully the proposition of arming teachers and as superintendent of the seventh largest school district in the state, I want to be very clear on where I stand. This is absolutely not the answer, said Byrd, during a recorded video posted to the districts Facebook and YouTube pages.

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She said she doesn't support arming school staff members either. It's not what Judd wanted to hear.

"It's up to the school board. It's their responsibility to keep the children safe on the campus. It's my responsibility to help them. I can only do what they want me to do on campus, said Judd.

Judd is the founder of the Sentinel program, which currently trains select college professors at Webber International University and Southeastern University to conceal carry guns on campuses. Judd has been pushing the legislature to allow for the program to happen in all schools.

Instead, Byrd wants one school resource officer at each school, and more on high school campuses. She said the district would need an additional five million dollars a year to make that happen.

"I can't do it without adequate funding from the state, said Byrd.

Sheriff Judd said even that amount isn't enough.

"That is not even close to being sufficient, Judd said. The cost is staggering.

According to Judd, it would cost between $100,000 to $120,000 to provide a first year law enforcement officer. That includes the officers salary, benefit package, equipment, training, and recruitment.

The district has more than 150 schools, and only 45 school resource officers.

It would need at least 100 more.

In comparison, Judd said his sentinel program costs between $10,000 to $15,000 total to train five teachers, professors, or staff during the first year.

Superintendent Byrd said she'd like more mental health counselors and enhanced security features such as surveillance cameras, fences, and metal detectors.

She said she needed more funding for that as well.

The Polk County School Board will discuss how to improve school safety during its work session on March 13, around 2 p.m. Public comment will be heard on the topic during the school board meeting that evening.

Judd said he planned to present his recommendations and cost analysis. Both meetings will take place at the Polk County Public Schools Administrative Offices, located at 1915 S. Floral Avenue in Bartow, Florida.
U.S. regulators have approved the first direct-to-consumer breast cancer gene test.

FDA approves first at-home beast cancer gene test

Test not substitute for regular medical checkups, says FDA

But the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it will require warnings about the limitations of the genetic information from California-based 23andMe.

The test, which analyzes DNA from saliva, can only detect three out of more than 1,000 known inherited BRCA gene mutations. It cannot determine a persons overall risk of developing cancer.

The FDA says the test is not a substitute for regular medical checkups and should not be used to make any medical decisions. Most cancers are not caused by genetic mutations, and the ones tracked by the test arent the most common BRCA mutations.

The FDA blocked 23andMe from offering genetic health information in 2013. The company has gradually won clearance to reintroduce some testing services.
High Wind Warning for Oregon Coast; Monster Waves Thursday

Published 03/07/2018 at 4:55 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff





(Oregon Coast)  A high wind warning and some monster waves are in store for the Oregon coast on Thursday, and even the Portland area will get higher-than-usual winds.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a high wind warning for the north and central Oregon coasts, especially along beaches and headlands. The warning is in effect from 8 a.m. Thursday to 3 p.m., with gusts up to 60 mph  mostly from Manzanita southward. Towns north of there  such as Cannon Beach, Seaside and Astoria  will not get hit quite as much.

The NWS said the impacts could be damaged trees, downed power lines, and some power outages.

That system will also bring a short period of gusty winds mainly to the central coast, the NWS said. Concerns for Thursday are winds across the beaches and headlands and snow across the higher Cascades, most notably the South Washington Cascades.

Portland will get gusts as high as 35 mph.

There may be enough of a pressure rise behind the front to bring gusts around 60 mph to the headlands and exposed beaches, the NWS said. The main threat will be from around Garibaldi and southward where the greatest frontal focus occurs. The warning was issued for a conservative time frame but in reality, the gusts of 50-60 mph may not occur until about mid-day.

Wave height will greatly increase overnight, heading up to a whopping 20 feet high on Thursday, making for some awesome storm-watching conditions along rocky areas like those at Yachats, Cannon Beach, Oceanside, and Depoe Bay.

Expect seas to build rapidly in response to the winds, likely reaching the mid teens late tonight/early Thursday before peaking in the upper teens to near 20 ft during the day, the NWS said.

Waves quickly mellow out on Friday to about 10 feet, and then stay just slightly below that over the weekend. Oregon Coast Hotels for stormwatching - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours

Oregon coast weekend weather looks fairly good, with mostly sunny to partly sunny over Saturday and Sunday. Some amounts of clouds and rain return to the beaches over the early week. Full Oregon Coast Weather here.





















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For Immediate Release, March 8, 2018 Contacts: Patrick Donnelly, Center for Biological Diversity, (702) 483-0449, pdonnelly@biologicaldiversity.org

Jose Witt, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, (702) 203-1720, jose@nevadawilderness.org

Haley McKey, Defenders of Wildlife, 202-772-0247, hmckey@defenders.org

Christian Gerlach, Sierra Club, (702) 271-6485, christian.gerlach@sierraclub.org Thousands Oppose Trump Administration's Attempted Seizure of Nevada's Desert National Wildlife Refuge for Expanded Bombing Range LAS VEGAS More than 32,000 people have submitted comments opposing a military takeover of most of Nevadas Desert National Wildlife Refuge ahead of a deadline today. The refuge was created more than 80 years ago to protect the largest herd of desert bighorn sheep in the United States. The Air Force wants to assume control of nearly 70 percent of the 1.6 million acre refuge to expand the vast Nevada Test and Training Range. Handing more than two-thirds of the refuge over to the military would strip protections for wildlife and wildlands and cut off public access. Desert National Wildlife Refuge, the largest national wildlife refuge in the lower 48 states, was designated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 to protect the desert bighorn sheep, Nevadas state mammal. It also provides vital habitat for a variety of vulnerable species, including the imperiled Mojave desert tortoise. People from Nevada and across the United States are urging the Air Force not to take this destructive step, said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director at the Center for Biological Diversity. They love this wildlife refuge and they want bighorn sheep to remain protected. Not one acre of the refuge should be handed over for military industrialization. The Air Forces proposal would harm bighorn and other wildlife by expanding military combat operations on the refuge. Plans call for industrializing the largely untouched wildlands with dozens of miles of new roads, constructing more than 100 miles of fencing, bulldozing two air strips and building radio signal emitters. Desert National Wildlife Refuge holds Nevadas most important unprotected wilderness quality lands, said Jose Witt, Southern Nevada director at Friends of Nevada Wilderness. It is imperative that the Air Force not be allowed to irreparably destroy those wilderness qualities by expanding their bombing range. These lands need permanent protection. Our national wildlife refuges, from Izembek and Arctic in Alaska to Desert in Nevada, are under attack, said Jenny Keatinge, senior policy analyst for Defenders of Wildlife. The Air Forces bid to take over a huge swath of wildlife habitat within Desert Refuge sets a dangerous precedent for the National Wildlife Refuge System. These lands were specifically designated to protect wildlife, and they are part of our national heritage. The Air Force should heed the thousands of people who oppose its heavy-handed attempt to seize control of Desert Refuge, and continue the collaborative approach to managing refuge resources that balances wildlife conservation, cultural resource protection and military use of these lands.



The strong public opposition follows public meetings held by the Air Force in January, where hundreds turned out to oppose the plan. More than 200 people attended a Las Vegas meeting, and everyone who spoke opposed the land seizure. Many joined together chanting, Dont bomb the bighorn! From Native American tribes to rural counties to horsemen to wildlife watchers, the people are united: The military should not expand into this beloved national wildlife refuge, said Christian Gerlach, national organizer with the Sierra Club. The wildlife, culture and history at stake here are far too valuable to sacrifice for unnecessary militarization on our public lands. The Air Force is required to respond to the public comments in a final environmental impact statement, expected next autumn. Congress will ultimately decide the fate of Desert National Wildlife Refuge when it takes action on the Air Forces final recommendation.
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Detroit's Iraqi Assyrians Voted For Trump Then Faced Deportation

Wisam Naoum participates in a June 2017 protest against deportation in Detroit. ( Matthew Elia) Over the last century, Assyrians have experienced waves of persecution and genocide followed by worldwide migration, with a large population of these Iraqi Christians settling in Michigan. People in this religious and socially conservative group have made a home for themselves among Metro Detroit's diverse immigrant community and often align themselves with Republican Party values and candidates. While some have escaped the hardships from their homelands, finding comfort and stability in the United States, many Assyrians in Detroit recently faced another threat: deportation. Wisam Naoum, a Chaldean Catholic Assyrian, is one of the main organizers working to protect the hundreds of Assyrians in Michigan facing deportation. The 29-year-old has been a key voice for Detroit's Assyrians detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the summer of 2017. Assyrian is a term used to represent the now nationless people's ethnicity, and the term Chaldean commonly represents the group's affiliation with the Catholic Church. They are sometimes grouped with Arabs, but that's a distinction Assyrians try to make. While many Assyrians learn to speak Arabic at a young age, their mother tongue is Aramaic, which is similar in sound to Hebrew with its "khh's" and other difficult throaty tones. The ICE detainments of Assyrians began June 11, 2017, but Naoum saw warning signs much earlier. "I rang the alarm bell in May, and people laughed at me," Naoum says. He noticed Arab immigrants were becoming a larger focus for the Trump administration, which was enacting the immigration ban for majority-Muslim countries; he also noticed Iraq was left off the second ban list and wondered what bargaining chip was used to remove it. Naoum began receiving phone calls and texts early on that June day, while he was at a family barbecue, and it wasn't long before Naoum took action. With a group of fellow organizers that included lawyers and educators, Naoum met and began collecting information from the detainees' family members. "Through our experience over the years dealing with the crisis in the homeland, we had the toolkit to handle this and priority number one was to organize," Naoum says. People speak out against deportation in Detroit in June 2017. ( Matthew Elia) The group worked tirelessly to gather all of the information they could, both from the detainees and from organizations like the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Naoum was tasked with convincing the Assyrian community, a very conservative group whose members mostly voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, to work with and trust the ACLU, a historically liberal organization that already has taken over 100 legal actions against the Trump administration. In addition to finding legal aid for the Assyrian detainees, the group has secured therapists and trauma counselors for the families of detainees. "They were trying to deport everyone the first week, so as far as we were concerned, as long as we could delay all of that, we were doing something right," Naoum says. Naoum and his fellow organizers not only delayed the deportations, they eventually won a stay for all of the detainees, meaning no one would have to leave until their legal case was resolved. This was a huge victory for the organizers, and Naoum, with the ACLU, continued the battle to extend the stay on a national level, protecting all Assyrians throughout the United States. "We found out from the ACLU that if we didn't get that national stay, ICE would have deported 80 people the next day," Naoum explains. Of the 1,400 Assyrians in danger of deportation, roughly 300 were detained in the weeks after June 11. While some have since been released, Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan and litigator working with the ACLU on the case, estimates 130 people were either denied bond or could not afford their bond and were still being detained. An additional 20 have yet to reach the six-month mark and will receive a bond hearing at that time. Naoum's awakening to political activism emerged from tragedy and consequence. In 2007, two Assyrians were riding a bus from Baqubah to Baghdad when they were stopped by militia and pulled off the bus. Because the men were carrying Christian identification cards, they were immediately assassinated and left behind on a dusty road. One of their neighbors happened to be on the bus at the time and notified the family. Naoum recounts this story to me, pausing periodically, still in disbelief 11 years later. The men were his cousins, and Naoum had just started college at Wayne State University in Detroit. "After that, we struggled hard to get the rest of the family to the United States," Naoum says. "That was a turning point for me." Naoum addresses a crowd in Detroit. ( Flora Marrugi) Had the neighbor not been on the bus, it's unclear whether his family would ever have been notified or if Naoum would have ended up as the activist and organizer he is today. Similar to the story about his cousins, Naoum speaks about other events that have cumulatively shaped his understanding of politics and fueled his desire to activate his community. There was a time in his high school cafeteria when he spoke out against the war in Iraq only to be reprimanded by a teacher and threatened with suspension. When he was a sixth-grader, a bus driver had difficulty pronouncing his name, so he started going by the name "Peter." These stories may otherwise seem unremarkable, but for Naoum, they were turning points and signifiers of his ability to go between the two worlds in which he lived: one world, where he was an active participant in his community -- attending Chaldean Catholic Church every weekend with his family -- and the other, where he was a child growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood. "I can handle different environments no matter what I'm walking into," Naoum says. "I have two ways to approach a problem; the way my family would approach a problem or the way everyone around me at school would solve a problem." Naoum's most recent social effort is the co-founding of SurayeSwipe, a dating app launched in May 2017 and designed with Assyrian values and rituals in mind. While his social and political pursuits may appear disparate, Naoum seems to place an equal importance on ethnic preservation and social assimilation. Children of immigrants often have to perform a delicate balancing act between assimilating to American culture and staying connected to their heritage. This can lead to feelings of otherness and not belonging, but Naoum seems to have excelled as an intermediary. While studying political science at Wayne State University, Naoum cofounded an organization with a friend to help other immigrants and children of immigrants living in the Detroit area reconnect with their heritage. The group, E'rootha, offered Aramaic language classes for college credit as well as dance classes and organized art shows for the Assyrian community. It offered Naoum a chance to begin making a name for himself in the community. "The older community members started to invite me to events where diplomats and politicians were coming in," Naoum says, "that gave me the opportunity to start dealing with our issues in the homeland, in terms of fighting for a province for our people in Nineveh." After completing law school at the University of Michigan, Naoum went to work in finance law, a surprising shift for a grassroots organizer. The move allowed Naoum focus completely on his career and pay back student loans. In 2014, while living in Chicago, Naoum was invited to speak for the Assyrian Genocide Remembrance Day in Michigan. He had a speech prepared to commemorate that day and its history but began receiving frantic phone calls from friends and acquaintances about an ISIS attack on Assyrian villages in Iraq. To Naoum, the timing of the attack was no coincidence; he saw this as a warning sign by ISIS to deplete the Assyrian villages and the Christian people who lived in them. "We had been fighting to get protective police force for Assyrians forever ... it's not a coincidence that ISIS struck on genocide remembrance day," he says. The attack was a wake-up call for Naoum, who began working on moving back to Sterling Heights, the Detroit suburb where he had grown up. Naoum made the move in early 2017, initially thinking he'd find work in finance law similar to what he was doing in Chicago. But the deportation crisis turned him into a voice for the Assyrians in need and for left-leaning members of that community. In an effort to continue representing his people, Naoum announced his run as a Michigan State representative in February 2018. When asked why he is so willing to fight for the underdog, Naoum seemed taken aback, but he wrote me a short while after with another detailed account of a time when, as a freshman in high school, he was being bullied when an upperclassman "put his arm around me and told everyone to back off," Naoum says. "I was so grateful. He didn't have to do it, but he saw how sad I was and did something about it. Objectively, it wasn't a heroic act by any normal measure, but to me it was. No one picked on me after that. That showed me that all it takes to save someone is to step in and do or say something. The rest will fall into place."
Back 20 years ago the nation was shocked and horrified by the most deadly terrorist attack in our history. As we still grieve the loss of nearly 3,000 American lives, we also know that the choices made by our nation after 9/11 came at a great cost to America's moral standing.The war on terror has killed nearly 1 million people around the world, and cost US taxpayers $21 trillion dollars.Osama bin Ladin didn't have the power to destroy America. Our response to the violence of al Qaeda, however, did weaken and diminish our nation.Today America's most dangerous enemy is not al Qaeda or ISIS terrorism, it's domestic terrorism from extremist white supremacist groups that identify Donald Trump as their leader, and the Republican Party as their political home.The GOP and the insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our democracy on January 6th, continue their violence through many different methods and tactics.The pro-trump groups that will gather at the capitol on September 18th for a new rally, this one dubbed Justice for J6 that advocates for the release of the jailed insurrectionists, who they call political prisoners. This group, arrested after attempting to stop President Biden from rightfully taking office after winning the 2020 election, are essentially traitors.Violent groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Three Percenters and other militia groups constitute the armed wing of the Republican Party. But they're just one element of a broader, ongoing insurrection whose goal is to topple democracy and propagate hate and fear.Republicans in suits and ties are every day working to undermine democracy and civil society through voter suppression laws, election subversion legislation, gerrymandering, deliberate sabotage of the federal and state government's #coronavirus response that has needlessly killed hundreds of thousand Americans, #climatechange denial, support for #WhiteSupremacy , blocking universal health insurance, Deregulation of #guns #polluters ; torturing immigrants and their children, shredding our nation's social safety net, criminalizing protest in many Republican controlled states -- and most recently outlawing abortion in Texas through a perverse misogynist bounty system -- with the full complicity of the amoral conservative majority on the US Supreme Court.Twenty years after 9/11 it's clear that Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their racist allies across the U.S. pose the most serious existential threat to our nation and the U.S. Constitution since the Civil War.
Acheson + Glover (AG) is to increase its focus on the professional market with the appointment of a new Head of Specification Sales.

Rodney it is a return to the company after a seven year stint working in Kenya as a missionary charity worker.

Rodney, who worked for the company for 18 years returns to Northern Ireland after spending 7 years living in Kenya with his family, where they devoted their time to charity work. Alongside his wife Alma and their four children, Jordan, Amy, Calvin and Grace, the family lived on an 18 acre orphanage among the Wakamba tribe with FAME Mission.

Stephen Acheson, the company's Commercial Director said that he is delighted to see Rodney return to AG. He said: "For many years Rodney was a great asset to AG, and he's one of the key people who have helped build the company to the point where it's at today.

We are very proud to have Rodney back on board after his time in Africa - he brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge and is a fantastic example of career progression through hard work and determination coupled with enthusiasm and loyalty.
NBG has once again expanded its membership base with the addition of new partner Millbrook Distribution.

It was an existing Partner who recommended to Graham Slim, Millbrooks MD, that the company should join NBG.

We had been a member of another buying group, but an existing NBG Partner insisted I should look at NBGs deals because their buying was so competitive, he says. When I investigated more closely I was very impressed with the NBG rebate system and the impressive deals that the group has on key products - so joining was a no brainer.

In addition, Graham Slim is looking forward to utilising NBGs famed networking and business associations. Business is good at the moment, but it is always a good idea to learn and develop better working practices through talking to like-minded businesses, says Graham Sim. I know that NBG Partners have many centuries of experience between them and Im anticipating learning a lot from them.

Millbrook has been trading in south east London for over thirty years with a single branch in Sydenham selling bathrooms, plumbing and heating products and boiler spares. In addition, the site houses a bathroom showroom and an extensive warehouse. The company is well-known locally amongst the plumbing trade for its extremely extensive stock holding and the expertise and experience of its staff.
BLANCO UK has appointed Darren McCrellis as Regional Sales Manager for Northern Ireland.

He has replaced Joe Cleland who was BLANCOs previous Regional Sales manager in Northern Ireland for over 12 years.

Darren has joined BLANCO from Potter Cowan in Belfast where he was Showroom Manager. Prior to that, he was Sales and Design Consultant with Orrlee Kitchens for ten years.

As a Regional Sales Manager, Darren is responsible for developing effective sales strategies, whilst delivering high customer satisfaction within Northern Ireland.

I am delighted to be joining such a prestigious brand, and I am excited about my new role promoting BLANCO products in Northern Ireland Darren commented.
ArcelorMittal will scale up the capacity of Essar Steel plant to 18 million tonnes (mt), making it a significant player in the growing Indian steel market. It is now operating at 5 mt and can be ramped up to 8.5 mt. The aspiration is to take the capacity to 18 mt, sources in ArcelorMittal said.

The plan for Essar Steel submitted by ArcelorMittal is likely to have laid out the road map for the company. All the ongoing projects will also be completed. Essar Steel was the companys Plan A and Plan B right now, indicated sources, as it provided ArcelorMittal ...
Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

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As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



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Homegrown e-commerce giant Flipkart is planning to set up an integrated logistics park on the outskirts of Bengaluru. This will be the largest and one-of-its-kind facility in the country.

The facility, for which the company is in the process of acquiring 100 acres of land, will house multiple massive warehouses that will rival in size those set up by Amazon and Alibaba in the US and China, respectively. The unit, which will help Flipkart consolidate all its warehouses in and around Bengaluru, will also act as the nerve centre or the logistics hub across the four southern states of ...
The reason: The firm has lost close to 65,000 tenancies due to the closure of multiple wireless service providers in the past few months. According to a source, the company is estimated to have lost close to Rs 20 billion of revenue and at least Rs 10 billlion of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda). The decline in the valuation of the company will be another $2 billion, as it paid close to Rs 2.5 million per ...

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.



As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.



Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.



Digital Editor
For three months, members of the Payments Council of India (PCI), heads of mobile wallet companies and other major fence hitters of the financial technology world have been meeting policy makers and officials to try and change the Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance rules.

Now, their hopes are pinned on the steering committee in this regard set up by the finance ministry. With transactions down to a fifth of the earlier peak at many mobile and online transaction players, these entities are pleading for less stringent KYC norms, at least for transactions less than ...
Fugitive mob boss Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla, an accused of 1993 serial bomb blasts, sent to CBI custody till March 19 by a TADA court in Mumbai. Farooq Takla was a facilitator for those key accused who left the country before and after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, officials said on Thursday.

They also said Takla used to facilitate the travel of men from Dubai to Karachi without immigration checks, for their training in making bombs and use of sophisticated weapons.

Takla, 57, was arrested in Delhi by the CBI today upon his arrival from Dubai.

He was a hawala operator in the Gulf since early 1990s and had not taken shelter in Pakistan, like his mentor Dawood, a security official said.

The gangster had left Mumbai after a bitter rivalry with the Arun Gawli gang.

In September 1992, Shailesh Haldankar of the Gawli gang was killed by the Dawood group while he was recuperating in JJ hospital.

It was allegedly done to revenge the killing of Dawood's brother-in-law Ibrahim Parkar, who was killed near his residence in 1992 allegedly by two members of the Gawli gang.

Takla was a key facilitator for stay and opening businesses for all the accused, who had left India before and after the attacks in the metropolis, the official said.

While Dawood and his family, another Mumbai blasts accused Tiger Memon and his family had left Dubai after a few years and taken shelter in Pakistan, Takla continued to live in the Gulf with his ever increasing 'hawala' trading, another official said.

Takla has been mostly operating from Dubai and a few other places in the Gulf with an assumed name.

The CBI had got the Interpol to issue a Red Corner Notice against Takla in 1995.

Mohammed Farooq, better known as Farooq Takla, arrived in Delhi from Dubai and was arrested by the CBI when he was at an immigration counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport this morning.

While the CBI declined to comment on how he reached Delhi as an Interpol Red Corner notice was pending against him, officials said Farooq was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi.

Officials said India's engagements with the West Asia have increased in last few years and the results were showing with the deportation of several gangsters and wanted terrorists in recent past.

Police officials in Mumbai who investigated the 1993 serial blasts case said Farooq was a big catch for the probe agencies as he was among those who were aware of the serial blasts conspiracy.

Dawood and Tiger Memon had sent some people to Dubai from India much before the serial blasts, to provide logistical support to those who were to be trained for executing the blasts.

Farooq used to send men from Dubai to Karachi and back, without immigration checks with the help of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, claimed Suresh Walishetty, a retired assistant commissioner of police, who was one of the investigating officers in the serial blasts case.

Farooq, who was camping in Dubai, used to take men to Karachi and from there to the training centres, he claimed.

These men were then provided training by the ISI about planting a bomb, mixing RDX (an explosive) and firing with sophisticated weapons, Walishetty said.

After completion of the training, it was Farooq's responsibility to take them to the Karachi airport and bring them to Dubai without any stamp on their passports, he said.

Because of this, investigators of Mumbai police were not able collect evidence of the movement of men from Dubai to Karachi for the training purpose, he said.

Farooq would be produced before the designated court hearing the case of 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai.

The blasts shook the financial capital of the country, leaving 257 dead and damaging property to the tune of Rs 82 crore.

Immediately after the blasts, Dawood, who was the main accused in the case, and others escaped to Dubai and later to Pakistan.

India's sustained campaign against Dawood was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US Treasury department declared him a global terrorist having links with al-Qaeda. He also faces sanctions from the United Nations under its anti-terror resolution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the treasury department had said he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.
It is midnight and south Delhi's Amar Colony is abuzz with activities, except it is not business as usual.

A large number of garment shops in the market, famed for selling salwar suits and other women wear, have still not downed their shutters and workers can be seen packing stuff into boxes for transportation.

"The authorities, conducting the sealing drive in the city, came today. They have told that there will be sealing in Amar Colony Market tomorrow. So, people are removing extra stuff from their shops so that everything looks compliant," a trader from the market, who did not wish to be identified, said.

The street leading to the Amar Colony Market from the Ring Road was lined up with cars and mini trucks till late night, as shopkeepers bundled out their wares, even as neighbouring local residents peeped out of windows from upstairs and passers-by wore quizzical look.

One shopkeeper, who earlier had displayed his wares and mannequins on the first floor, was seen removing them, as a few curious onlookers gathered around.

The Amar Colony is also home to a number of eateries, frequented by youth.

At the instance of a Supreme Court-appointed Monitoring Committee sealing actions have been taken by civic bodies across Delhi. The drive had begun late December with sealing of major shops and eateries in the posh Defence Colony.

The actions are being taken if any violation of civic norms or Master Plan of Delhi 2021 is found, including misuse or encroachment of property, or use of a residential property or unit for commercial purposes.

Several local businessmen led by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) have been protesting against the drive, saying it was "unfair" to them.

The CAIT has been alleging that the municipal corporations are sealing properties in "utter violation" of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, which was passed by Parliament as a statutory Act.
India has banned Tibetans from holding a rally with the Dalai Lama in New Delhi this month to mark the 60th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, officials said on Wednesday, as it tries to improve fraught ties with China. Relations between China and India have been tense in recent months after their troops faced off on a disputed part of their border. China was also angered by Prime Minister Narendra Modis February visit to Arunachal Pradesh, also claimed by China. Senior officials in the foreign and interior ministries said exiled Tibetans would not be ...
The Supreme Court on Thursday took umbrage against a senior lawyer for casting aspersions on judges that they were only asking "searching questions" to those who brought the B H Loya death case before it, and not to the Maharashtra government.

Disapproving such remarks, a bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said that judges were guided by their "conscience and heart" in delivering justice and they do not need any certificate from anyone.

"We will ask questions what we want to satisfy our conscience. We don't have to show a veneer of justice to you. Justice is in our hearts and minds. We don't want a certificate, least of all from an arguing counsel," the bench said.

The strong remarks came when senior advocate Dushyant Dave said the court was not asking questions to another senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Maharashtra, when he was arguing and he had to face all the queries.

Justice Chandrachud replied that "fortunately, in our judicial system, the judges have to agree with the lawyers and not vice versa".

"Unfortunately in our system, you don't have to agree with us but we have to agree with you, sometimes a person is so involved in the arguments that he forgets who is a judge and who is a lawyer," he said.

Dave replied that there are always two ways to look at something and one should stand for the cause.

To this, Justice Chandrachud said, "No leniency to justice is being imparted. Justice lies in our conscience."



During the hearing, the bench also clarified that it cannot direct the state to file affidavit and the documents once produced by the Maharashtra government can be equally good.

"We will not allow the state to correct the anomaly if any by way of affidavit. If there is anything wrong, it will be dealt according to the law," it said.

Dave then said that he can't file contempt or seek perjury proceedings against the state, as the documents are not filed on affidavit.

The bench said that he (Dave) can still file contempt and seek initiation of perjury proceedings against the state in case of any false documents.

While referring to Ravi Bhavan, where judge Loya was staying the night before he died, Dave said that it was just at a five-minutes distance from the chief justice's bungalow and questioned why his car could not be called to take him to the hospital.

"If the chief justice cannot take care of his judiciary, then he is not fit to be chief justice," the senior advocate said.

This statement led to heated exchange between Dave and Rohatgi who objected to the statement of the former saying he cannot accuse everybody.

"This case is mala fide based on an article in media. The article was a case of yellow journalism. The article was never published for three years but once a petition challenging the discharge of accused in Sohrabuddin Sheikh case was dismissed by the apex court, the article surfaces," Rohatgi said.

Dave questioned why did the CBI then not file the appeal against the discharge of BJP president Amit Shah in the case.

Rohatgi replied these are all absurd allegations and the CBI had filed the appeals against some of the accused in the case.

Dave then moved on and argued that the report of intelligence commissioner has to be rejected and does not inspire confidence due to various anomaly.

At the fag end of the hearing, advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, said two reports (histopathology and the ECG) of judge Loya, were not filed by the State in the documents filed before the court.

Bhushan said he had personally met many cardiologists who had seen these reports and had ruled out that judge Loya had died of a heart attack.

He pointed out the expert opinion of Dr. Upendra Kaul, former professor of cardiology at AIIMS and Padma Shri awardee, who had virtually ruled out a heart attack as the cause of death, on the basis of the histopathology and ECG reports.

Bhushan further pointed out that the doctor at Dande Hospital and Meditrina Hospital in Nagpur had noted tall T-waves in the ECG, in their statements filed with the State.

The arguments remained inconclusive and would continue tomorrow.

On March 5, the apex court had said questions should not be raised over the change in the judge hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case in Bombay High Court, as the change in the roster was a "routine" affair which is in accordance with the established tradition there.

Loya, who was hearing the high-profile Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, had allegedly died of cardiac arrest in Nagpur on December 1, 2014 when he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleague's daughter.

The bench is hearing batch of pleas including those filed by Congress leader Tehseen Poonawala and Maharashtra-based B S Lone seeking an independent probe into Loya's death.
A Chinese naval combat force that entered the Indian Ocean for the first time in four years may have helped deter an Indian intervention in the Maldives after its pro-China president imposed a state of emergency, according to military and diplomatic sources and analysts. India has traditionally been the biggest player in the tiny island chain 400 km (250 miles) to its south, and faced calls from Maldives opposition leaders last month to use force against President Abdulla Yameen to restore democracy. After the state of emergency was declared India - which sent troops to ...
Indian architect and reputed urban planner has been named this year's winner of Pritzker Prize for being able to interpret and transform it into buildings that respect Eastern culture.

He became the first Indian to win architecture's highest honour.

Long considered to be one of India's foremost living architects and urban planners, Doshi is widely known for designing extensive low-cost housing projects and public institutions. His designs include the IIM-Bangalore; Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad; cultural spaces in Ahmedabad such as Tagore Memorial Hall, the Institute of Indology, and Premabhai Hall; and private residence Kamala House (Ahmedabad), among many others.

The architect also designed Aranya Low-Cost Housing (Indore, 1989), which currently accommodates over 80,000 individuals through a system of houses, courtyards and a labyrinth of internal pathways.

Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation that sponsors the award made the announcement in Chicago, selecting Doshi as the 2018 Pritzker Prize Laureate.

The award ceremony will take place at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto this May.

Influenced by masters of 20th-century architecture, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn, Doshi has been able to interpret and transform it into built works that respect eastern culture while enhancing the quality of living in India.

His ethical and personal approach to architecture has touched lives of every socio-economic class across a broad spectrum of genres since the 1950s.

"My works are an extension of my life, philosophy and dreams trying to create treasury of the architectural spirit. I owe this prestigious prize to my guru, Le Corbusier. His teachings led me to question identity and compelled me to discover new regionally adopted contemporary expression for a sustainable holistic habitat," Doshi said.

He added the award reaffirmed his belief that life celebrates when lifestyle and architecture fuse.

"The work of truly underscores the mission of the Prize - demonstrating the art of architecture and an invaluable service to humanity," Pritzker said.

"I am honoured to present the award to an architect who has contributed more than 60 years of service to us all," he said.

Doshi was born in Pune in 1927 and began his studies in architecture in the year 1927. According to Arch Daily, Doshi worked for a period in London and then moved to France to work under Le Corbusier. He then returned to India to oversee work on Le Corbusiers plans for Chandigarh, and projects in Ahmedabad such as the Mill Owners Association Building (1954) and Shodhan House (1956). Later in 1962, Doshi worked with Louis Kahn on the IIM in Ahmedabad.

Apart from the high-end projects, he also worked on a number of low-cost housing developments. The Aranya Low Cost Housing development in Indore is one of his finest work in this segment. Th project provided housing for over 80,000 people ranging from low to Middle-income families.

(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.)
Asserting that no metro rail service in the world makes profit, Metroman E Sreedharan on Thursday slammed the Kerala government for its failure to sign an agreement with the DMRC even 14 months after it was awarded a project.

Sreedharan expressed his displeasure over the manner in which the Pinarayi Vijayan government had failed to sign the turnkey consultancy agreement for the preparatory works of the Light Metro project in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode.

Vijayan, while replying to a submission in the state assembly, had said it was not his government but the DMRC which had withdrawn from the project.

"Moreover, before Kochi Metro came, it was only DMRC that was there, but with the Kochi Metro running at a loss, the Financial Department is studying the new proposed Light Metro projects in detail....

"Only after proper studies will the report be taken up and would be sent to the Centre for approval. At no cost will we shelve the Light Metro projects," Vijayan said.

Replying to the Chief Minister's statement, Sreedharan told media persons in Kochi that "no metro rail in the world makes profit".

"The best word what can be said is metros make only operational surplus or, in other words, it can be termed as financial viability when the expenses are met with the revenue generated.

"The Kochi Metro is still not complete. Once complete, it would be different," said Sreedharan, who is an advisor to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

Sreedharan informed the media that the DMRC has decided to exit from the proposed Light Metro for the 35.12km stretch in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode and has decided to close down its offices there.

"Since 2014, we have had these offices and every month we are now spending Rs 16 lakh, which has now become a big burden.

"We are just safeguarding our interests as we can't go forward spending Rs 16 lakh every month without getting a job," said Sreedharan.

Sreedharan had written to the government to see that they sign the agreement before February 15, and if this is not done they would have to take tough decisions.

"We were waiting for the government to give us the work to go ahead, but it never came. We did a lot of work for this and now we cannot go on like this... spending money when we do not have the work in our hand.

"In the past, whenever I wanted to meet the Chief Minister, I could do it but now it's not like that. I do not know why he is not meeting me," added Sreedharan.

He also pointed out that due to the heavy workload he is unable to be advisor to other state governments.

"Today, I am advisor to Uttar Pradesh and Kerala governments. I resigned as advisor to Andhra Pradesh and refused to accept the role offered by Maharashtra, as it is physically impossible and is a big strain," said Sreedharan.

Of late, Sreedharan has come under attack from the Kerala government.

Although Sreedharan had refused to be drawn into any controversy, he added, "there is no other agency other than the DMRC who are qualified and competent to handle metro jobs in the country".

--IANS

sg/in/dg
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that African countries should be careful not to forfeit their sovereignty when they accept loans from China, the continent's biggest trading partner. Tillerson is using his first diplomatic trip to the continent to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade. He may also seek to smooth relations after US President Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as "shithole countries" in January. Trump later denied making the comment. "We are not in any way ...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday indirectly accused the US of stirring trouble in the with its repeated military incursions.

"Some outside forces are not in line with the prevailing calm and are trying to stir up trouble in the waters with their frequent show of force with fully armed aircraft and vessels," Efe news quoted Wang as saying at a press conference while reviewing the main challenges that China's foreign policy faced over the past year.

"Militarisation is the most destabilising factor in the region," Wang pointed out.

He stressed that despite the ongoing disputes that China maintains with other countries of the region - Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan - over the sovereignty of waters and islands, progress is being made in negotiating a code of conduct in the region.

"Last week officials held a round of consultation on the code of conduct and made encouraging progress. At least three more rounds have been organized for the rest of the year," said Wang.

"China and the Asean countries will speed up the code of conduct consultations, explore cooperation among coastal states and promote peace and cooperation in the South China Sea," he concluded.
Eleven countries are expected to sign a landmark Asia-Pacific trade agreement in Santiago on Thursday, as an antidote to the increasingly protectionist bent of the United States, which last year pulled out of the pact. The signing ceremony comes the day after Europe and the International Monetary Fund urged U.S. President Donald Trump to step back from the brink of a trade war sparked by plans to slap duties on steel and aluminum imports. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to ...
Weaker foreign demand drove a bigger-than-expected drop in German industrial orders in January, suggesting that busy factories in Europe's largest economy could shift into a lower gear in the coming months. Christmas and New Year factory closures that extended well into January played a part, and commentators warned against reading too much into one month's data. Contracts for German-made goods fell by 3.9 percent on the month in January after a downwardly revised leap of 3.0 percent in December, the Federal Statistics Office said on Thursday. The reading was the ...
Grab, the dominant ride-hailing service in Southeast Asia, is close to finalizing a deal to acquire Uber Technologies Inc.s business in the region and may sign a deal this week or next, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under terms of the proposed agreement, Grab would buy out Ubers operations in certain markets in Southeast Asia and Uber will take a stake in Grab, the people said, asking not to be named because the talks are private. The structure would be similar to the deal Uber struck with Didi Chuxing in China in 2016, when the San Francisco-based ...
China's foreign minister urged the United States and North Korea on Thursday to start talks as soon as possible, stressing that "the sincerity" of all parties to solve the nuclear crisis would be tested.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi cautiously welcomed Seoul's announcement that Pyongyang had offered to hold denuclearisation talks with the United States in return for security guarantees.

The North also agreed to hold a historic summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April.

"The Korean peninsula issue has finally taken an important step in the right direction," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of annual parliamentary session.

"These initial steps must be followed up by corresponding and concerted efforts by the parties. We call on the parties, particularly the United States and the DPRK, to engage in dialogue sooner rather than later," he said.

But Wang issued a word of caution, noting that breakthroughs on the North Korean nuclear issue had collapsed in the past.

"Of course it takes more than one cold day to freeze three feet of ice," he said.

"Despite light at the end of the tunnel, the journey ahead won't be smooth. History has reminded us time and again that whenever tensions subsided on the peninsula the situation would be clouded by various interferences," he said.

"Now is the crucial moment to test the sincerity of the parties to solve the nuclear issue.
South Korea will investigate allegations that ousted president planned to send military troops to quash the candle-lit protests that culminated in her impeachment last year, the defence ministry said today.

Activist group the Centre for Military Human Rights Korea (CMHRK), citing multiple leaks, said top military leaders had studied plans to crack down on demonstrators calling for Park's resignation over a corruption scandal.

South Korea was ruled by military dictators for decades -- one of them Park's own father Park Chung-hee -- and only fully embraced democracy in the 1990s, making such issues highly sensitive.

"The defence ministry will immediately launch a probe," the ministry said in a statement.

"We will announce the results of the investigation in a transparent manner and take follow-up measures", it added.

According to the CMHRK the plans were only set aside after the country's top court endorsed the National Assembly's decision to impeach Park.

The former president has been in custody since May and is awaiting a verdict after prosecutors called for 30 years in prison.

"The presidential Blue House, the military and judicial authorities were planning a pro-Park coup," the CMHRK said in a statement.

It would have been "another bloody crackdown on protestors", it said, after the 1980 Gwangju massacre in which some 200 pro-democracy protestors were killed by martial law troops.

The CMHRK called for a thorough investigation and punishment for those responsible, including the then defence minister Han Min-koo and a former commander of the capital's defence garrison.
The number of arrests made for terror offences in Britain hit a new record of 412 in 2017, according to latest UK government figures released today.

This marks a rise of more than 58 per cent over the previous year, when there were 216 arrests.

"This was the highest number of arrests in a year since the data collection began," the UK Home Office data notes.

The arrests include 61 women, accounting for 15 per cent of total arrests, and a record number of suspects of white ethnic appearance, and 66 per cent who considered themselves to be British or dual citizens.

The year 2017 witnessed 36 victims killed and hundreds injured in high-profile terrorist attacks in the country, including attacks on Parliament, Manchester Arena, London Bridge and Finsbury Park. Part of the increase in arrests was accounted for by large-scale police operations in the wake of the terror attacks.

A third of the arrests resulted in a criminal charge, but not all for terror-related offences, with some people detained released without further action, on bail or under alternative measures, the figures reveal.

"Of the 110 persons charged with a terrorism-related offence in the year ending 31 December 2017, 29 had been prosecuted (as at 15 January 2018, the time of data provision to the Home Office), all of which were convicted. A further 76 were awaiting prosecution, four were not proceeded against, and one case was pending, the Home Office said.

As at December 31, 2017, there were 224 persons in custody in Britain for terrorism-related offences, an increase of 24 per cent on the 181 persons in custody in the previous year, continuing the upward trend seen in terrorist prisoners over the last few years. Of those in custody last year, the majority (86 per cent) held Islamist extremist views, a further 9 per cent held far right-wing ideologies and 5 per cent other ideologies.

Police revealed the use of a variety of legal powers to investigate terror suspects, including 767 stop and searches under the UKs Terrorism Act which resulted in 61 arrests and more than 16,000 checks at land, sea and airports.

There were increases in the number of arrests across all ethnic groups in Britain last year, with the largest for those of white ethnic appearance 61 per cent, from 90 to a record 145 arrests.

There was also a 37 per cent increase in the number of arrests of Asian people (from 124 to 170), the report stated.
More than 100 Republican lawmakers implored President Trump to drop plans for stiff and sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs as the White House prepared to formalize the measures on Thursday afternoon. Officials said late Wednesday that the plan would initially exempt Canada and Mexico and could ultimately exclude other allies. Peter Navarro, a top White House trade adviser, said on Wednesday night that the president would hold a signing ceremony on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. He said the tariffs would go into effect in 15 to 30 days. The proclamation will have ...
Amid the ongoing political tiff between the Centre and Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.

This comes a day after the Chief Minister directed two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers - Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y. S. Chowdary to resign from the Union Cabinet.

Meanwhile, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y. S. Chowdary will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 6 PM today.

Naidu asked his party members to resign from the Union Cabinet after the Centre allegedly neglected their demands including 'special status' to the state.

"As a courtesy and being a responsible senior politician, I tried reaching out to Prime Minister to inform about our decision. He was unavailable," he added.

The BJP and its Andhra ally TDP have been sharing a sour relationship following the announcement of the Union Budget 2018-19.

While the latter has been alleging that the Centre neglected the state in the budget, the BJP rejected the charges and said that the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations, but also went out of its way to help the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Women's day announced 'Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh' scheme under which women who aren't married and are above the age of 50 will be given pension.

Chouhan also took the occasion to assert that any person who will misbehave with women will be hanged in public.

"I've setup a scheme 'Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh', in which the women who aren't married and are above the age of 50 will be given pension. Any person who misbehaves with women will be hanged in public," Chouhan said.

Appreciating the contribution of women in day-to-day life, the Chief Minister said that there shouldn't be only one day to celebrate women.

"Why's there only 1 day for women? Is it possible to run a household, country or world without women for a day? No! In India we've been worshiping and respecting women since forever. Today, women hold so many important posts," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The way we look at women and treat them in our country has always been a paradox.

On one hand we venerate them and worship them. Look around us - we see goddesses being worshiped; we call our nation - 'mother' India; the sages say, take advice from your 'mother'; more often than not, when we are in danger, the words on our lips are 'my mother'; Christians have a special place for Mother Mary. Yet what puzzles me is this - we are not averse to killing those little ones who would have one day grown up to become mothers.

The Census of 2011 has revealed a declining trend in Child Sex Ratio (CSR) between zero to six years with an all-time low of 919.

If a woman bears a girl child, she is blamed while scientifically the blame lies with the father!

Widows are looked upon as a curse as if they brought up the misfortune upon the family; wives are abused, tortured and killed for lack of dowry and if you are a woman from the lower caste, you are a prime target for rape, murder and mistreatment.

I wish change would be as easy as 'pressing' a button; but it goes much deeper. Part of the problem is that attitudes are slow to change. Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO regional director for south-east Asia noted last year, "Gender inequality is at the root of violence against women. Beliefs and practices that value women less than men are normalized, excused and tolerated-a substantial proportion of adolescent girls and boys believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife for at least one reason."

So what is the solution? We need to change the way we look at women in our society. The Bible says that women are "precious" which is a reminder that women need to be valued.

Change is in the air and the 'button' is being pressed harder by many more than ever before!

The Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP) scheme launched on 22nd January 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to raise awareness and address the issue of the declining child sex ratio.

As part of empowering women project of our Believers Eastern Church, women's groups from villages have actively taken part in healthcare education across hundreds of rural villages in India - where simple yet powerful health and hygiene practices have been taught and impressed upon more than 80,000 women. We also conduct vocational training for women across the country and so far more than 35,000 women have been empowered with these trainings.

"I have been deceived many times because of my illiteracy," said a 40 year old women, one among the 100,000 who have completed her adult literacy program conducted by the social workers of Believers Eastern Church. "When I used to go for shopping, bad shopkeepers deceived me, taking more money and not returning the balance amount. But now I can calculate myself. They cannot deceive me. I am very happy now."

Learning to read has not only enabled her and others to provide and care for their families better, but it has also raised standing in their communities.

In a University of California, Berkeley paper, The Rural-Urban Divide in India, Tathagato Chakraborty writes that lack of educational opportunities for girls "increases the fertility rate, maternal and infant mortality, and malnutrition in the family."

With little education, basic hygiene practices may remain unknown.

Furthermore, because the rights of women to land and property are rarely recognized, "This increases the risk of poverty to women and their families and increases poverty overall as women and children make up two-thirds of the population."

Realising that millions of women in India become exposed to sexual assaults each year, simply because of lack of toilets, the Government of India has taken up the task of building toilets and latrines in the rural parts of India.

Construction of toilets under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream project, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has gained momentum, with many NGO's joining the movement. Believers Eastern Church too, has already built and handed more than 28,000 such sanitation facilities to those in need.

The hashtag #SelfieWithDaughter promoted on social media in June 2015, has garnered worldwide fame.

Although I didn't take a selfie with my daughter or grand daughters, I always carry with me the an old black and white picture of my mother; she's the one who prayed for me, year after year. It's her tears and hard work which has been the single most important influence in my life.

I can go on citing positive examples of change. But the message is clear - "women are precious".

Let's take care of them. Let's "press" for change together.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Werner Hoyer, the President of the European Investment Bank, that is the public bank of the European Union, will be participating in the first summit of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) in Delhi on December 11.

In parallel on March 10, President Hoyer will be signing a new loan for large and small clean energy projects all over India.

This is part of a EUR 800m EIB investment in renewables in India, most of which will be solar, announced last year.

This is the initiative from PM Modi and President Macron to spread solar and provide affordable energy to the 121 countries in the ISA by improving financing, sharing technology and crowding in the private sector.

The EIB is the world's biggest financier of climate action and clean energy projects - In 2017 the EIB financed EUR 19.6bn of climate action projects .About 28 percent of its total financing.

Last year the EIB signed a partnership with the International Solar Alliance aimed at supporting the initiative with EIB financing and expertise - in particular the experience of crowding in the private sector.

Werner Hoyer is in Delhi at the summit on March 11 to lay out how that support can work and pledge the EU Bank's commitment.

In parallel on March 10, in the presence of President Hoyer, the EIB will be signing a new loan for large and small clean energy projects all over India. This is part of a EUR 800m EIB investment in renewables in India, most of which will be solar, announced last year.

On March 9, an all women roundtable of Delhi-based gender campaigners, environmentalists and finance experts will join the head of the EIB's Global Partners Division - Maria Shaw Barragan for online live debate in Delhi with a live audience to debate how to Make Climate Action Count.

EU Bank support for solar energy:

- Around 6.35 billion euros for solar projects around the world since 2002, in the last seven years half of this has been countries outside the EU (in developing and emerging economies.)

- 640 million euros of EIB investment in solar investment has been approved for in India. These solar projects will be providing nearly four million households with around 4,000 gigawatt hours of clean and affordable energy, saving nearly 4 million tonnes of harmful CO2.

Last year 800 million euros was announced by EIB for signed and approved renewable energy projects in India - a record renewables loan for Asia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Launching a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said "an extremely nasty form of politics" is taking root in India and his party will "defeat the BJP in the next election".

While addressing students at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, the University of Singapore, Gandhi said, "We have been fighting the BJP and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) since the beginning. An extremely nasty form of is currently taking root in India. We will fight this nasty form of and we will defeat the BJP in the next election."

He alleged the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir for taking the bad political decision of policymaking.

"Our Kashmir policy under Dr. Manmohan Singh was about building bridges with people. When UPA came to power in 2004, we were handed a J-K that was burning. We made a plan and worked on it for nine years. In 2014 when I went to J-K, I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can to do years and years of policy-making," he said.

Rahul also blamed the ruling BJP for being "less concerned about peace and tranquility".

"We see society as a system that has to be kept in balance. The BJP, on the other hand, is less concerned about peace and tranquility," he said.

Talking about India's relationship with neighbouring country China, the Congress President said, "India has to have a peaceful and cooperative relationship with China."

"I don't buy the idea that India can't challenge and compete with China in manufacturing," he added.

Rahul is on a three-day visit to Singapore and Malaysia where he will meet the Indian community, business leaders and members of the Indian Overseas Congress.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a reconstruction bid for earthquake-ravaged Nepal, the Government of India has sealed an agreement with United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to build 50, 000 homes for quake victims.

The agreement signed will provide socio- technical facilitation to the earthquake victims of Gorkha, the epicenter of 2015's earthquake and the Nuwakot district of Nepal.

Sanjay Mathur, Regional Director, UNOPS, said, "It is significant that the Indian Government has decided to partner with the United Nations in this effort between UNOPS and UNDP. We have covered every districts affected by the earthquake. We have strong partnerships and have strong relation with local governments and communities. The close collaboration with the Government of India, Government of Nepal, Provincial and Local Government and with our UNDP partners it is an essential part of this essence of this program."

As per the agreement sealed on Thursday the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will build 26, 912 home owners in Gorkha and 23, 088 home owners in Nuwakot Districts of Nepal.

Yuvraj Bhusal, CEO, National Reconstruction Authority, Nepal, said, "The Government of India is the largest donor in this regard, our near, next door neighbor and we are very much grateful to the Government of India and People of India for extending support to the cause of Nepal and Nepalese particularly for the earthquake victims."

As per the agreement, New Delhi will give 8.41 million dollars to the UNOPS and 7.41 Million dollars to the UNDP for the reconstruction of the 50,000 homes.

Manjeev Singh Puri, Ambassador of India to Nepal, said, "The God, nature and our forefathers have bound us together in a manner perhaps this is not applicable to any other in the We all of us do not consider all of this even use the expression which is often claimed today as co-operation, we say this is partnership we must have side by side solidarity. We must do what we can do for each other and your (Nepal's) prosperity lies gains for me and if I do well you have the right to pick and choose that from me and I think this brings whole life model for the people of India and people in Nepal. So we are very proud of this partnership and we are very very comfortable with this partnership let it be strengthen and let it be nurtured."

With the implementation of the agreement signed on Thursday a total of 16, 912 households in Gorkha and 23,088 households in Nuwakot will be benefitted.

The earthquake of 2015's April created havoc in Nepal which took the lives of about 10,000 people and 22,300 injuries. Gorkha and the Nuwakot were the districts which had the highest tolls and were enlisted as the "Crisis hit" 14 districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Thursday pledged 15.82 million dollars in assistance to quake-ravaged Nepal for its massive reconstruction programme.

New Delhi signed an agreement in this regard with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) to build 50000 homes for the quake victims.

As per the agreement, the Indian Government will give 8.41 million US dollars to the UNOPS and 7.41 Million US dollar to the UNDP.

Sanjay Mathur, Regional Director, UNOPS, said, "It is significant that the Indian Government has decided to partner with the United Nations in this effort between UNOPS and UNDP. We have covered every district affected by the earthquake. We have strong partnerships and have strong relation with local governments and communities. The close collaboration with the Government of India, Government of Nepal, Provincial and Local Government and with our UNDP partners is an essential part of this programme."

As per the agreement, the UNDP will build 26, 912 homes in Gorkha and 23,088 homes in Nuwakot districts of Nepal.

Yuvraj Bhusal, CEO of Nepal's Reconstruction Authority, said, "The Government of India is the largest donor in this regard. We are very grateful to the Government of India and people of India for extending support to the cause of Nepal, and particularly for the earthquake victims."

Manjeev Singh Puri, the Indian Ambassador to Nepal, said that the God, nature and our forefathers have bound India and Nepal together.

"We must do what we can do for each other, and your (Nepal's) prosperity is a gain for India. We are very proud of this partnership, " said Puri.

The earthquake of 2015's April created havoc in Nepal, which claimed the lives of about 10,000 people and left 22,300 injured.

Gorkha and the Nuwakot were the districts which had the highest tolls and were enlisted as the "Crisis-hit" 14 districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Islamabad High Court on Thursday issued an order to the election commission here to allow the registration of the Milli Muslim League (MML), the political party created by 26/11 mastermind and one of the world's most wanted terrorist Hafiz Saeed.

According to reports, the Pakistan Election Commission had been refusing to allow the MML to get itself registered as a political party to contest the 2018 general elections.

Media reports claim that the MML is a sub-branch of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), both founded and nurtured by Hafiz saeed.

Both of these outfits have long been accused of spearheading terror attacks in India, the most notable of which was the December 13, 2001 terror strike on the Indian Parliament and the November 26-29, 2008 terror strikes in several locations across Mumbai.

After the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, the United Nations Security Council banned the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Many countries, including India and the United States, have banned the Lashkar-e-Taiba as well.

In the last year, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had canceled the application for registering the Milli Muslim League. The MML had wanted its approval as a political party to participate in the elections this year. The Interior Ministry, however, wrote to the ECP and told it not to register any banned terror outfit having links to the MML.

In December, Saeed opened his political office in former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's parliamentary constituency. In August, a decision was taken by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa to form a political party.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The man who allegedly stabbed Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Vishwanath Shetty was sent to five-day police custody on Thursday.

The state's Lokayukta was stabbed thrice inside his office premises in Bengaluru on Wednesday by an alleged contractor from Tumakuru over complaints regarding some tenders.

Terming the incident as 'unfortunate', Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy said that the Joint Commission is looking into the matter.

"Joint Commission is looking into the matter and it will let me know if there were any security lapses. We will come to know about it by evening," Reddy said.

Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Prakash Javadekar along with former Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar visited Lokayukta Shetty in the hospital, where he is being treated.

The judge is out of danger now and undergoing treatment at the Mallaya Hospital.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New age recruitment solutions provider HireXP on Thursday announced raising an undisclosed amount from Knowlarity CEO Ambarish Gupta.

A British entrepreneur, Marina Zoltoverkh also invested in the venture.

The startup plans to use the capital to assemble a new product line, CamXP - Campus hiring and Inject AI in the existing platform.

The funding will also boost product sales in existing markets and will be used to open new markets by the end of 2018.

"We are happy to support HireXP. It's an idea with immense potential. With a huge population out there waiting to be rightly recruited, it's a mammoth task for companies to search, find, sort and hire the right talent. The platform simply makes the entire process seamless and is way ahead of the outdated options available. The future is certainly bright and promising," said founder and CEO Knowlarity, Ambarish Gupta.

"We solve all the recruitment related issues faced by any size organisation and startups. The platform is already a success story with 50+ reputed clients on board. All we need to focus on now is its market reach, extension and expansion. Thanks to the support from Ambarish and other investors, we'll be growing manifold for sure," said founder HireXP, Vikas Kakkar.

According to an estimate, by the year 2021, HR Tech will be a USD 34 billion industry globally.

US market that currently forms approximately 60 percent of the market will have only 50 percent share by 2021 with Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) expected to contribute nearly one-third of the total international HCM It amounts to about USD 6.7 billion.

As per industry experts, Japan and China together will be at USD 2.4 billion and MEA at USD 0.7 billion.

The rest of APAC is estimated to be close to USD 3.6 billion of which India would be a billion-dollar market and the remaining USD 2.6 billion would be the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) market.

This data implies that India's HR Tech market will double up in the next few years.

HireXP aims to tap into this billion-dollar pot of gold and emerge as the industry leader.

With the new funds and backing, the startup is all set to step beyond the boundaries and make a mark for itself.

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Women today are dominating every sector. International Women's day is marked not only to celebrate the gender equality but also to talk about performances, rallies, networking events and marches throughout the world.

When the world is busy celebrating achievements, efforts and struggles of women, firms are using this day to thank every women and empower them in every way possible. Here are the few initiatives by companies to empower the ladies in their own unique way.

91springboard: 'Free Coworking Week for Women'

91springboard - India's largest Coworking community is organising a 'Free Coworking Week for Women', between 5th to the 10th of March across all the 15 hubs. By this initiative the company wants to open its doors to women entrepreneurs, freelancers, and owners who can avail every service offered by 91springboard without any charge. They also plan to host events under the 'Women Entrepreneur League', which aims to create a community where women entrepreneurs can learn, motivate and inspire one another to achieve their ambitions.

Google: 'Celebrating women who inspire us'

On the occassion of women's day, Companies like Google are using their mobile platform to feature games and apps by women developers. The page of Google play states celebrating women who inspire us. The firms wants to highlight the work done by their female app developers, games created by women, and games with strong female lead. Apart from this they will also leverage YouTube to give a behind-the-scenes look at their channel with a selected group of women creators.

Air India: 'All female crew flight'

Recently Air India flagged off a all women crew flight between Kolkata and Dimapur to celebrate Women's Day. This is an annual initiative done by Air India every year to celebrate this day dedicated to women. The airline also states that it created a world record in 2017 by operating the longest ever all female crew flight between Delhi and San Francisco. They also plan to organise creative and cultural events to celebrate this day.

Goomo: 'Join the Sisterhood'

This year travel companies like Goomo have come up with a unique initiative called 'Join the Sisterhood' whereby they are organizing specially curated tours to the villages of Jodhpur and Pondichersecan where travelers can meet and enable the cause of rural women entrepreneurs in these areas. It has also joined hands with several leading local businesses that have been working towards empowering women and generating employment and micro-entrepreneurship opportunities in these areas.

Travkart: 'Dignity Kits'

Travkart, the comprehensive travel service portal from Holidays by Sahibji Private Limited one of the fastest growing online travel companies in India, marked the occasion of International Women's Day by distributing 'Dignity Kits' to underprivileged women in New Delhi. The initiative, conducted in partnership with Uday Foundation, involved the distribution of Dignity Kits - containing sanitary and hygiene products for women - to the underprivileged women who come to AIIMS for treatments and were residing in the dharamshalas near the hospital.

Avanse: 'Special Loan'

Avanse one of the leading finance company took a initiative to offer discount in their existing loan for girl students. This initiative is to inspire girls who aspire to pursue higher education and build a strong future. The discount includes the benefit in the repayment tenure with 25 percent discount on processing fee and a one percent reduction on Rate of Interest. Their main objective is to provide quality education affordable to deserving students who can avail this discount from March 8' 2018 till the end of the month.

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Rare diseases, which are often referred to as orphan diseases, are estimated to have impacted 72-96 million people in India. The Indian government has now put a National Rare Disease Policy in place and Rs 100 crore funds have been allocated towards genetic disorders.

Under the policy, the Central government will contribute 60 percent towards spending on treatment, while state governments will have to bear the remaining 40 percent of the cost. The government's effort to improve diagnosis and bring better treatment and care to patients is already in progress, building on existing capabilities.

Disorders such as Thalassemia, Hemophilia, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Fragile X, Inborn Errors of Metabolism, and Lysosomal Storage Disorders are just some frequently encountered genetic disorders, informed Dr. Ratna Dua Puri, Senior Consultant, Institute of Genetics and Genomics, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi.

Approximately 7,000 rare diseases have been identified so far, with about 80 percent of these are genetic in origin and predominantly affect children. Even though these diseases are rare, collectively they contribute to a significant burden and affect 06-08 percent of the population. Rare diseases impose a significant societal, medical and economic burden on patients, communities and healthcare systems.

Commenting on World Rare Disease Day, Dr. Puri said, "The exact burden of rare disorders in India is not known due to the lack of epidemiological data. Currently, we do not have a standard definition for rare disorders but can extrapolate one from the current existing definitions to estimate that disorders that affect less than one in 2500 individuals are rare disorders".

The symptoms of the rare disease vary based on the disorder. For example, in Thalassemia there is chronic anemia with Hepatosplenomegaly. Rare disorders also affect the central nervous system and some have multi-systemic involvement.

"If we really want to bring change for rare disease patients and make the National Rare Disease Policy effective, the country should explore the possibility of setting up a technical body within the Ministry of and Family Welfare in order to effectively monitor corpus fund spending at a central and regional level, as well as taking steps to ensure the states are implementing the policy so that patients start benefitting from this great government initiative", commented Dr. Puri on the policy.

In addition, attention to generating awareness, early diagnosis and prevention are paramount for appropriate management of genetic disorders, she further noted.

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Newly-appointed Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on Thursday said that he and his cabinet will work hard for the development of the state.

"We want development in Nagaland. We will work hard to facilitate the Naga political issue at the earliest," Chief Minister Rio told the media here.

Further, Nagaland Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton said that the focus of the new government would be on providing good governance in the state.

"We want to give good governance to the people of Nagaland. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got six ministers in the cabinet," Patton told media.

Earlier in the day, Nagaland Governor P B Acharya administered the oath of office and secrecy to Rio and his 11 Council of Ministers.

In a first, the Chief Minister and Council of Ministers of a newly-elected government in Nagaland took oath in full public view at the Kohima Local Ground.

The venue held significance as the announcement of Nagaland's statehood on December 01, 1963 was made from there by the then president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

The swearing-in ceremonies in Nagaland have so far been high-profile shows at the Darbar Hall of Raj Bhavan, with VVIPs, VIPs and top bureaucrats in attendance.

However, this time common people were also invited to the ceremony through newspaper advertisements issued by the State Department of Information and Public Relations.

The Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), in alliance with the BJP, took over the reins of the north-eastern state with the support of 32 MLAs.

The NDPP- BJP alliance government is being formed in the state under the banner of People's Democratic Alliance.

The Governor has asked the newly-elected Chief Minister to prove his majority on the House floor on or before March 16.

Quitting its 15-year-old alliance with the ruling Naga People's Front (NPF), the BJP contested 2018 Nagaland assembly elections in alliance with the NDPP.

The BJP won 11 seats, NDPP 16 seats, Naga People's Front (NPF) 27 seats and others four seats in the election, paving way for the Rio-led party to form a government in India's oldest insurgency-hit state.

Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP chief Amit Shah were among those who attended the swearing-in ceremony.

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The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) today reaffirmed its commitment to become a role model of gender parity in the corporate world, as the company celebrated International Women's Day across all its workcenters.

ONGC's lady officers are working across the country and abroad in difficult terrains very successfully to ensure the nation's quest for energy independence.

Shashi Shanker, CMD-ONGC reiterated the organisation's commitment towards creating an inclusive environment to foster gender parity.

He said that ONGC is committed to be a change leader in the corporate realm to ensure gender parity. He also lauded the role of lady officers for contributing in a big way towards ONGC's success story, and breaching the barriers of remoteness and geography.

D D Misra, Director (Human Resources), spoke about the management's vision to become an Equal Opportunity Employer in all its endeavours.

"Last year, ONGC became the first corporate to scale the Everest. Two lady officers were integral part of the success of this expedition and this speaks volumes of the leadership abilities of our women employees", he said.

Misra added that ONGC is committed to become the Best Place to Work for Women in India and that several benchmark initiatives have been taken in this direction.

Rajesh Kakkar, Director (Offshore), said ONGC has been at the forefront in encouraging women to move forward without fear or discrimination and the lady officers working in offshore platforms are testimony to ONGC's resolve.

He also added that the company is committed to bringing about gender diversity in teams, supporting women in their dual roles at home and work and nurturing a culture of respect and inclusivity in ONGC.

A K Dwivedi, Director (Exploration), exhorted the need for reducing the gender gap to enhance the pace of progress.

He also added that as industry leader, ONGC is conscious of its responsibility in setting a benchmark in gender equality, with positive steps being taken in the organization to empower women energy soldiers as they march alongside their male counterparts in the quest for energy security of the country.

Women have made a mark in scripting success stories at ONGC, which has become a benchmark in the industry.

ONGCian Harshini Kanhekar became the first woman fire fighter of the country. Lt Shilpy Gargmukh became India's first lady Territorial Army officer in 2016. Another ONGCian Monty Rajkhowa, who was part of the first corporate expedition to the Mount Everest scaled to a height of 8000m till the Camp 4.

Many ONGC lady officers have broken the glass ceiling and are working in offshore platforms and difficult terrains successfully.

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ISLAMABAD

"Militants of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were running the camp in the mountainous Shaltan area of Kunar, bordering Pakistan," the website quoted its Taliban sources as saying.

The U.S. drone reportedly fired five missiles on the training camp near Afghanistan-Pakistan border at the time when the terrorists were there for routine training.

According to some reports, Abdullah, son of TTP chief Fazalullah, might be among the dead.

The sources have described the strike as disastrous for the TTP, as their group might have lost some important members.

In addition to Abdullah, a senior TTP commander Yasin may have also died in the attack.

This, according to the Daily Times, is the second such attack in less than a month when the TTP militants came under drone attack.

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The possible arrest of Hafiz Saeed, co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the chief of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JuD), was further stayed on Wednesday.

According to the Dawn, the Lahore High Court extended stay against the possible arrest of Saeed as law officers of the federal and provincial governments sought time to file their replies.

The court passed the stay order while hearing a petition filed by Saeed, in which he expressed fear of being arrested by the Pakistani government at the behest of the United States and India.

Justice Aminuddin Khan had on Jan 24 restrained the Ministry of Interior and the Punjab home department from taking any illegal action against Saeed.

The next hearing in the case will be on April 4.

Saeed's lawyer A.K. Dogar told the court that his client is an eminent social worker, who founded JuD and Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) and established 142 schools and three universities.

Dogar also informed the court that the Punjab Government had recently detained Saeed under the Maintenance of Public Order for 90 days, but was forced to free him after a review board comprising judges of the high court denied an application of the government to further extend the period of the JuD leader, said the Dawn report.

The report quoted lawyer as alleging that all the actions taken by the government against the petitioner had been on the pressure of the US and Indian lobby who for the last many years had been harbouring an unfounded assumption that Hafiz Saeed was somehow involved in Mumbai attacks.

He asked the court to restrain the government from taking any illegal action against the JuD leader.

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In a treason case against former president general (retired) Pervez Musharraf, a special court on Thursday ordered his arrest and the confiscation of his properties.

Hearing of the treason case resumed today after nine months.

According to Geo TV, Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Yahya Afridi is heading the bench which includes Lahore High Court Chief Justice Yawar Ali and Balochistan High Court Justice Tahira Safdar.

The bench, formed in 2013, is hearing the case of imposition of extra-constitutional emergency by Musharraf in November 2007.

As the hearing went under way, the Interior Ministry submitted in court a report on Musharraf's properties, stating that four of the seven properties are owned by the former president and army chief.

Ten years ago, Musharraf imposed an emergency. Prosecutor Akram Sheikh, presenting arguments, pressed the court to order Musharraf's arrest and production in court.

The court inquired from the Federal Investigation Agency officials what the procedure is to bring back an absconder from abroad. The officials replied that the Interior Ministry sends them a request in this regard after which action is taken.

Chief Justice Afridi remarked that the court is ordering the arrest and seizure of Musharraf's properties. Musharraf's counsel, Akhtar Shah, pleaded the court not to order confiscation of Musharraf's properties until March 21, but Justice Afridi remarked that this court procedure and cannot be curtailed.

The hearing was then adjourned until March 21.

The former army chief was indicted in the case in March 2014 after he appeared before the court and rejected all charges.

On March 18, 2016, the former president left Pakistan for Dubai for medical treatment after his name was removed from the Exit Control List (ECL) on the orders of the Supreme Court.

A few months later, the special court had declared him a proclaimed offender and ordered the confiscation of his property owing to his no-show.

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Police in Pakistan's Mardan District on Thursday confirmed the arrest of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Councillor Mohammad Arif for his role in the lynching of Mashal Khan, a student of the Abdul Wali Khan University in April last year.

Geo TV quoted police, as saying that Arif was arrested near Chamtar on the Ring Road. They said that he is one of the three accused of murdering Mashal Khan.

Arif was serving as the tehsil councillor of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Mashal Khan was brutally beaten and shot dead at the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan over allegations of blasphemy in April 2017. The allegations of blasphemy were later proved to be false by a joint investigation team.

Hailing the police action, PTI Chairman Imran Khan shared a message on Twitter:

He said, "I want to commend the KP police for succeeding in arresting the main accused in the Mashal Khan murder case, Arif Rangi, a PTI councillor. This is how a professional and depoliticised police force works, in contrast to the politicised police forces of Punjab and Sindh."

The punishment for the rest of the accused who were arrested was announced by an anti-terrorism court in Haripur on February 7 this year.

According to the verdict, one person was awarded death sentence, five life imprisonment, 25 were jailed for four years each, while 26 were acquitted over lack of evidence.

The 26 suspects released by the court received a 'hero's welcome' in their native towns of Swabi and Mardan after their release.

Later, Mashal's family challenged their acquittal as did the provincial government.

In an appeal filed with the Peshawar High Court, Mashal's brother Aimal Khan expressed reservations over the verdict, stating those who have been acquitted can be seen in the video of the incident when Mashal was tortured to death.

On February 27, a PHC division bench ordered the release on bail of the 25 accused who had been awarded three to four-year sentences in the case.

The 25 accused had pleaded that there was a provision in the law under which those sentenced to less than five years in jail could be released on bail while their appeal was being heard.

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Reacting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tweet over late Kuwar Bai on International Woman's Day, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Thursday said the mascot for 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' will live forever in our hearts.

Singh took to Twitter and said "Indeed PM @ narendramodi ji, Maa Kuwar Bai will live forever in our hearts inspiring us for all times Her life was the living example of the proverb "where there is a will there is a way"! (sic)

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Modi, paid tribute to Chhattisgarh's social activist, late Kunwar Bai, who was chosen as a mascot for the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'.

Prime Minister Modi took to Twitter and shared his experience of meeting Kunwar Bai, "I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bai's blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapu's dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe", (sic)

The icon, who passed away at the age of 106, became an inspiration for India in 2016, when the story of how she sold her goats to build a toilet at home got nationwide publicity.

Inspired by the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, she had sold off eight to ten of her goats, her only assets, to raise Rs 22,000 to build toilets at her house, in her village of Kotabharri, in Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh.

It was during his visit to Chhattisgarh that PM Modi met Kunwar Bai.

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in has told North Korea to give up nuclear weapons at a National Prayer Group meeting on Thursday.

Amidst a gathering of 5,000 people Moon praised the role of the United States processes for the inter-Korean agreement to make the North Korea promise to suspend nuclear provocations during the North-South Korea dialogue.

According to the Yonhap news agency, Moon was quoted saying, "We have overcome one obstacle, while there exists many before we can reach lasting peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula".

Earlier the, the South Korea's foreign ministry said, "Negotiations have kicked-off this week on renewing their existing arrangement which expires at the end of 2018".

North Korea has justified its nuclear strategy citing the presence of nearly 30,000 US military personnel in the South Korea.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday questioned Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s silence over the 'needs of its alliance partner Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

While asking BJP to deliver its promise of giving 'special category status' to the state, Naidu said Congress president Rahul Gandhi has also offered to do the same if they come to power.

In his address at the Andhra Pradesh Assembly session, Naidu said, "Rahul Gandhi is saying they will give 'Special Category status' to Andhra Pradesh if they come to power. Why are you (BJP) not responding to the needs of your alliance partner?"

Earlier on Tuesday, the Congress president said if the party emerges victorious in 2019, the first thing he would do is grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

The BJP and its Andhra ally TDP have been sharing a sour relationship following the announcement of the Union Budget 2018-19.

The TDP has been alleging that the Centre has not allotted 'enough fund' to the state in the budget.

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One civilian got injured in an attack by the People's Protection Unit (YPG)/Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) terrorist group in northwestern Syria on Thursday.

A group of terrorists attacked a car carrying a Syrian family of three, including a child, near Jinderes in Afrin.

The family was travelling to a village named Deir Ballut, which was cleared of terrorists during Turkey's ongoing, as per Anadolu Agency.

A woman got injured in the attack who was later treated at a city named Hatay in Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Turkish military group Free Syrian Army captured Jinderes town from the terrorists.

The Operation Olive Branch launched on January 20 has been able to neutralise 3,055 terrorists till Thursday.

The Turkish military is further conducting military search air-land operations across Afrin border in Syria.

The PKK and YPG are militant groups which claim to protect the Kurdish-inhabited areas in northern Syria.

The PKK has been listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, European Union and the United States.

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The Tibetan Government in Exile on Thursday criticised Chinese government, a day after a Tibetan self-immolated himself in China's Sichuan province.

Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) President Dr Lobsang Sangay said another self-immolation incident was a disturbing news and it showed that the Tibetans denounce the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

"As you know Ngaba (a county in Sichuan) had the most number of self-immolators, so it's sad to learn that one more person has committed self-immolation; from what I know he was in his 40s, has a wife and two daughters," Dr Sangay told ANI here.

Adding to one of the many incidents of self-immolation in Tibet, a middle-aged man from the Ngaba county of the province set himself ablaze on Wednesday, in protest against China's policies.

Tsekho, popularly known as Tsekho Tugchak, hailed from a nomadic village in Meuruma township of the county. He is survived by his mother, wife and two daughters.

With Tsekho's self-immolation, 152 Tibetans have self-immolated, of which 130 have succumbed to their burn injuries.

The incident comes three days ahead of Tibetan Uprising Day that is observed every year on March 10 to commemorate the rebellion against Chinese occupation of Tibet.

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Uzbekistan has always been an advocate for the peaceful political settlement of the situation in Afghanistan.

Keeping this in mind, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has taken up the initiative of organising a global conference on Afghanistan on March 26 and 27 in capital Tashkent.

The them of the conference will be "Peace Process, Security Cooperation and Regional Connectivity".

President Mirziyoyev said, "Our country has been an active party to almost all international forums addressing the Afghan crisis, including the Kabul Process, the Moscow Format, the Heart of Asia - Istanbul Process, the International Contact Group on Afghanistan, the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA).

During a UN Security Council session in New York on January 19, 2018, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan delivered a joint presentation of the forthcoming Tashkent forum.

The Tashkent conference will take place almost a month after the second meeting of the Kabul Process.

President Mirziyoyev and President Ashraf Ghani will deliver keynote speeches at the opening ceremony of the conference.

Among those invited to the Tashkent meeting are UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Special Representative of the Organisation for Afghanistan Tadamichi Yamamoto, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, as well as the foreign ministers of China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It is expected that participants will convey the need for direct talks between the Government of Afghanistan and the Taliban without preconditions.

According to a statement issued by the Uzbek foreign ministry, The Tashkent Declaration is anticipated to reflect the following key points:

. The peace process ought to be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned and in accordance with the provisions of resolutions and decisions of the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

. The guaranteed integration of the armed opposition into the political life of Afghanistan and its recognition as a legitimate political force is instrumental in the success of the peace process;

. The international community strongly opposes all forms and manifestations of terrorism without any distinction, and recognizes that the threats of transnational terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime are common challenges to stability and sustainable development both for Afghanistan, the region and the as a whole.

The activity of this format will contribute to Afghanistan's successful integration into the system of trade, economic and infrastructural relations with the states of Central Asia, the effective implementation of projects and programs of regional scale.

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YSR Congress Party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday said that the party will support whoever promises 'Special Category Status' to Andhra Pradesh.

"Whosoever is ready to give 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, It will have YSRCP's support," Reddy told media.

The YSRCP chief further said that all options are open from the party and Andhra Pradesh "comes first for us and is above all the other issues."

Yesterday, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, at a press conference, said that the Centre was committed to offering the monetary equivalent of special status to the state, which would be presented as a 'special package', following which Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced the decision that two of his ministers would pull out from the government.

Jaitley said the special package that was announced by the Centre was better than special status and there was no difference between the two. He said that the funds would be allotted according to the Finance Commission's recommendations, but not on the basis of regional sentiments.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leaders have been protesting in the Parliament after the Union Budget 2018 was presented in the House in February which disappointed them as Jaitley's speech neglected Andhra Pradesh.

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On the occasion of International Women's Day on March 8, ladies who personify 'women power' spoke about the need to #PressForProgress at the INKHer initiative launch by JobsForHer and INK.

They stressed the need for the sisterhood to stick together and inspire each other.

JobsForHer, an online platform accelerating female participation in the workforce for women re-starting their careers, launched a not-for-profit foundation with the sole objective of bridging the gender gap within Corporate India.

Under the INKHer banner, the JobsForHer Foundation commemorated International Women's Day, and their third anniversary, with women in prominent positions sending out a strong message on their need to #PressForProgress.

Being a firm believer in choosing the right battles, founder and CEO, INK, Lakshmi Pratury asserted that every woman goes through four stages in her life.

"The first stage is where a woman is eager, anxious and full of energy just trying to figure everything out and finding her place in the environment around her. The second stage is when the woman knows when to say what, and the transition to know which battles to fight and which to let go. Here, she carves a niche for her within the society. The third is that of being benevolent and sharing the knowledge you have gained to lead the younger ones and to help them take it further. The fourth and the last, is that of retirement. As for this year's theme #PressForProgress, let the women think about what they want, to start with in order to progress and take care of themselves - their needs, their wants, their ambitions," said Lakshmi Pratury.

Founder and CEO, JobsForHer, Neha Bagaria, shared the importance of having a family that does not implicitly discriminate against women.

"Such expectations is what hinders women's entry into the corporate field which therefore witnesses only a 27 percent female participation in the workforce from the 40 percent women who graduate every year," she said.

Keeping the #PressForProgress theme in mind, Bagaria intends to inspire women to become role models for each other.

"We need increasing participation from women in the Indian workforce, and it's time we press for it," she added.

Being a renowned self-made woman billionaire, founder and CMD, Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, conveyed the strong message that women must embrace their failures.

"Success is about managing failures. Gender inclusion is pressing for progress and without that we cannot progress. Giving women equal opportunities, recognition and respect is what we must press for," Mazumdar Shaw said.

Founder, Nirvana Films, Sneha Ipye, has always been keen on the aspect of "choosing one's own ways" as she was quite the impulsive, compassionate and creative child.

Sneha believes that learning should never stop, and no one needs to "allow" anybody to dictate terms to women for her journey has taken her down a path of true learning.

Film making is physically, mentally and emotionally challenging and hence she made it with the conviction of "it's not about who is going to let me, it's about who is going to stop me," she quipped.

"The time has come now to champion the cause of our sisterhood. Representation and inclusion must be pushed forward," she said.

MD, Kalaari Capital, Vani Kola, said, "Women being themselves, fulfilling their dreams and not being afraid of saying this is what I want".

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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the continuation of Swatantra Sainik Samman Yojana (SSSY) during 2017-2020 beyond the 12th Five Year Plan whichended on 31/03/2017.

The approval provides for a monthly Samman Pension to freedom fighters, as a token of respect for their contribution in the national freedom struggle and on their demise, to their eligible dependents viz. spouses and thereafter, unmarried and unemployed daughters and dependent parents, as per prescribed eligibility norms and procedure.

Financial Implications:

The financial implication for continuation of SSSY during 2017-2020 would be Rs. 2552.93 crore. Year-wise outgo of funds on account of recurring expenditure would be follows:

(Rupees in crores)

SI.

No.

Year wise Projections of expenditure 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 Total of 3 years1.

SwatantrataSainikSamman Pension 750 825 907 24822.

Free Railway Passes to Freedom Fighters 10 30 30 703.

Permanent Home for Freedom Fighters 0.31 0.31 0.31 0.93

760.31 855.31 937.31 2552.93

Background:

Government of India introduced the 'Ex-Andaman Political Prisoners Pension Scheme'in 1969 to honour the freedom fighters who had been incarcerated in the Cellular Jail at Port Blair. In 1972, to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Independence, a regular scheme for grant of freedom fighters' pension was introduced. Thereafter, with effect from 01.08.1980, a liberalized scheme, namely the 'SwatantrataSainikSamman Pension Scheme, 1980' is being implemented. From the financial year 2017-18 onwards, the nomenclature of the Scheme has been changed as 'SwatantrataSainikSammanYojana'. Total 1,71,617 freedom fighters and their eligible dependents have been sanctioned the central samman pension so far.

At present 37,356 freedom fighters and their eligible dependent pensioners are covered under this scheme which includes 12,657 freedom fighters and 23,127 dependent spouses and 1572 daughters. The amount of pension was initially Rs.200/- per month and has been revised from time to time.

With effect from 15.08.2016 the amount of pension for all categories of pensioners has been enhanced and the Dearness Relief system based on All India Consumer Price Index for Industrial workers hitherto applied to freedom fighter pensioners, had been discontinued and replaced by the Dearness Allowance system applicable to Central Government employees twice a year. The allowance for pensioners has been termed as "Dearness Relief". The present amount of pension for various categories of Central freedom fighter pensioners is as follows:

No.

1. Ex-Andaman prisoners/ spouses Political 30,000/- 30,900/-2. Freedom fighters who suffered outside British India/spouses 28,000/- 28,840/-3. Other Freedom Fighters/ spouses including INA 26,000/- 26,780/-4. Dependent parents/eligible daughters (maximum 3 daughters at any point of time) 50% of the sum that would have been admissible to the Freedom Fighter i.e. in the range of Rs. 13,000/- to Rs. 15,000/- 50% of the sum that would have been admissible to the Freedom Fighter i.e. in the range of Rs. 13,390/- to Rs. 15,450/-

Bank accounts of 73% freedom fighter pensioners have been seeded with Aadhaar and it is expected that 100% Aadhaar seeding will be achieved within this financial year.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and Public Service Commission of Mauritius.

The MoU will strengthen the existing relationship between UPSC and Public Service Commission of Mauritius. It will facilitate sharing of experience and expertise of both the parties in the area of recruitment.

The MoU will develop institutionalized linkage between the Public Service Commissions of two countries. It defines the scope of cooperation between the PSC, Mauritius and the UPSC and sets out the areas of cooperation and obligations of the Parties. The areas of co-operation include the following-

i. exchange of experience on modern approach to public service recruitment and selection, particularly the functions of the UPSC and the PSC;

ii. exchange of information and expertise including books, manuals and other documents which are not of a confidential nature;

iii. sharing of expertise in the use of Information Technology (IT) in the preparation of written examinations and holding of Computer Based Recruitment Tests and Online Examinations;

iv. sharing of experience in Single Window System for expeditious scrutiny and speedy disposal of applications;

v. sharing of experience and expertise on the various processes involved in the examination system which are routine in nature;

vi. organizing training sessions for officials, including through short attachments to the Parties secretariat/headquarters on air matters concerned by the respective mandate of the Parties.

(vii) sharing of experience on the modalities adopted on audit of processes and procedures followed by various Government Agencies in recruitment of posts under the delegated powers.

Background:

In the past, UPSC had signed MoU with Public Service Commission of Canada and Bhutan.

The MoU with Canada was in existence during 15.03.2011 to 14.03.2014. The MoU with the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC), Bhutan was signed by UPSC on 10th November, 2005 for a period of three years. It was renewed on 9th September, 2011 for a period of three years which expired by 8th September, 2014. In pursuance of these MoUs, UPSC had conducted attachments and training programmes for the officers of RCSC, Bhutan. Recently, an MoU was signed between UPSC and RCSC, Bhutan for the third time on 29.05.2017 valid for a period of 3 years.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved two key measures in telecom sector to facilitate investments, consolidation in the sector and enhancing ease of doing business. These include restructuring the deferred payment liabilities of spectrum auction of telecom service providers and revising the limit of the cap for spectrum holding for telecom service providers.

Details:

1. Restructuring of Deferred Payment Liabilities of telecom Service providers for spectrum

By giving one-time opportunity to opt for higher number of instalment (max. 16 instalment) apart from currently permitted 10 instalments. The increased instalment is based upon the principle that the Net Present Value (NPV) of the Payment Due is protected as per respective notice inviting application for auction of spectrum from 2012.

The total amount received will be higher by Rs. 74446.01 crore till 2034-35.

2. Revision of limits of cap for spectrum holding

Based upon the recommendations of TRAI and Telecom Commission, the Cabinet also approved the revision of limits of cap for spectrum holding as follows:-

The overall spectrum cap is revised from the current limit of 25% to 35%.

The current intra-band cap is removed. Instead, there is a cap of 50% on the combined spectrum holding in the sub-1 GHz bands (700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz bands).

There will be no cap for individual or combined spectrum holding in above 1 GHz band.

The revised spectrum caps limits may be revisited after Final Acts of World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) 2019.

TRAI had recommended revision in the existing limits of cap for spectrum holding taking into consideration the technological advancement, efficient use of spectrum, measures to facilitate consolidation etc.

Impact:

With the restructuring of the deferred payment liability, the cash flow for the telecom service providers will increase in the immediate timeframe providing them some relief. Revising the limit for the spectrum cap holding will facilitate consolidation of telecom licensees and may encourage the participation in the future auction.

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The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) Bill, 2018 for introduction in the Parliament.

The Bill seeks to achieve the following objectives:

The Bill brings down the specified value of a commercial dispute to 3 Lakhs from the present one Crore: Therefore, commercial disputes of a reasonable value can be decided by commercial courts. This would bring down the time taken (presently 1445 days) in resolution of commercial disputes of lesser value and thus further improve India's ranking in the Ease of Doing Business.

The amendment provides for establishment of Commercial Courts at district Judge level for the territories over which respective High Courts have ordinary original civil jurisdiction i.e in the cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and State of Himachal Pradesh. The State Governments, in such territories may by notification specify such pecuniary value of commercial disputes to be adjudicated at the district level, which shall 'not be less than three lakhs rupees and not more than the pecuniary jurisdiction of the district court. In the jurisdiction of High Courts other than those exercising ordinary original jurisdiction a forum of Appeal in commercial dispute decided by commercial courts below the level of District judge is being provided, in the form of Commercial Appellate Courts to be at district judge level.

The introduction of the Pre-Institution Mediation process in cases where no urgent, interim relief is contemplated will provide an opportunity to the parties to resolve the commercial disputes outside the ambit of the courts through the authorities constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987.will also help in reinforcing investor's confidence in the resolution of commercial disputes.

Insertion of new section of 21A which enables the Central Government to make rules and procedures for PIM.

To give prospective effect to the amendment so as not to disturb the authority of the judicial forum presently adjudicating the commercial disputes as per the extant provisions of the Act.

Background:

With the rapid economic development there has been considerable increase in commercial activities and consequent steep rise in number of commercial disputes at domestic and international level. Increase of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and overseas commercial transactions have further contributed to a significant increase of commercial disputes.

With a view to address the issue faster resolution of matters relating to commercial disputes and to create a positive image particularly among the foreign investors about the independent and responsive Indian legal system, the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Act, 2015 was enacted and commercial courts were established at District Levels in all jurisdictions, except in the territories over which the High Courts have original ordinary civil jurisdiction. These five High Courts i.e. the High Courts of Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras and of Himachal Pradesh, exercise ordinary original civil jurisdiction in regard to territories of cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and the territory of the State of Himachal Pradesh respectively.

In such territories of these High Courts as per proviso to sub-section (1) of section 3 there are no commercial courts at district level and instead Commercial Divisions have been constituted in each of these High Courts. The specified value of such commercial disputes to be adjudicated by the Commercial Courts or the Commercial Division of High Court, as the case may be is presently Rs. one Crore.

Ease of Doing Business is an index of World Bank which inter alia refers to the dispute resolution environment in a country which facilitates the investors in deciding for setting up of and operation of a business. This index has been created by the World Bank Group and since 2002, it has been evaluating almost all the countries of the world. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of the business. On 31st October, 2017, World Bank released its latest annual 'Ease of Doing Business' report for the year 2018 in which India has emerged out as one among top ten improvers and for the first time ever, India has jumped 30 positions and reached 100th ranked country in terms of 'Ease of Doing Business' amongst 190 countries. This manifests that India is fast adopting the best practices in regulatory framework for Ease of Doing Business at all fronts.

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After trimming gains in morning trade, key benchmark indices came off session's lows in the mid-morning trade. At 11:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex rose 80.57 points or 0.24% at 33,113.66. The Nifty 50 index advanced 25.85 points or 0.25% at 10,180.05. Cement stocks dropped. Realty stocks were mixed.

Key indices started the session on a strong footing on positive Asian stocks as worries surrounding trade war eased on reports US President Donald Trump's import tariff plan may spare select countries from much of the impact. Indices trimmed gains in morning trade.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index fell 0.27%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index declined 0.54%. Both these indices underperformed the Sensex.

The breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was negative. On the BSE, 1,705 shares declined and 653 shares advanced. A total of 109 shares were unchanged.

Cement stocks dropped. ACC (down 1.53%), Grasim Industries (down 1.03%), UltraTech Cement (down 0.71%), Ambuja Cements (down 0.28%) and Shree Cement (down 0.13%) declined.

Realty stocks were mixed. HDIL (down 4.22%), Unitech (down 1.39%), Godrej Properties (down 1.15%) and DLF (down 0.67%) edged lower. Oberoi Realty (up 1.11%), Sobha (up 1.07%) and Indiabulls Real Estate (up 0.23%) edged higher.

KEC International rose 0.64% after the company said it secured new orders worth Rs 1378 crore across its businesses. The announcement was made before trading hours today, 8 March 2018.

Overseas, Asian stocks edged higher on news of potential US tariff exemptions. US stocks closed well off session lows yesterday, 7 March 2018 after the White House hinted Canada and Mexico could be exempt from tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump.

In Europe, the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy statement is due later today, 8 March 2018. The central bank is expected to be cautious to prevent any unwanted tightening of financing conditions amid mounting global insecurities, especially in the wake of recent tariffs announcement by the US President.

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Lupin rose 0.97% to Rs 768 at 14:48 IST on BSE after the company signed an agreement with CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory and Department of Science and Technology for conducting research.

The announcement was made during market hours today, 8 March 2018.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 329.59 points, or 1% to 33,362.68

On the BSE, 88,000 shares were traded in the counter so far, compared with average daily volumes of 1.06 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a high of Rs 770 and hit a low of Rs 750 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 1,498.40 on 23 March 2017. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 756.50 on 7 March 2018.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 90.42 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

Lupin today announced the signing of an agreement with CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL, Pune) and Department of Science and Technology, (DST, Delhi) for conducting research on a continuous purification process development of a biosimilar monoclonal antibody therapeutic.

Monoclonal antibodies represent the most important biopharmaceutical product class, serving the highdemand treatment area of immuno-oncology diseases. With an increasing demand for biosimilar therapeutics and an ever-increasing pressure for manufacturing cost reduction with quality maintenance, the biopharmaceutical industry is showing keen interest in the development of continuous manufacturing processes.

Through this research collaboration, CSIR-NCL and Lupin would collaboratively work towards the development of a novel continuous purification process for manufacturing a biosimilar monoclonal antibody therapeutic (mAb).

Lupin's consolidated net profit plunged 64.98% to Rs 221.73 crore on 12.73% decline in total income to Rs 4004.63 crore in Q3 December 2017 over Q3 December 2016.

Lupin is a transnational pharmaceutical company developing and delivering a wide range of branded & generic formulations, biotechnology products and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) globally.

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Key benchmark indices registered modest gains on bargain hunting after a sell-off in the last six sessions. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex rose 318.48 points or 0.96% at 33,351.57, as per the provisional closing data. The Nifty 50 index advanced 82 points or 0.81% at 10,236.20, as per the provisional closing data. Gains in Asian stocks amid news of potential US tariff exemptions boosted sentiment on the domestic bourses.

Key indices started the session on a strong footing on positive Asian stocks as worries surrounding trade war eased on reports US President Donald Trump's import tariff plan may spare select countries from much of the impact. Indices trimmed gains in morning trade. Later, indices came off the day's low and traded with modest gains till afternoon trade. Key indices rebounded sharply in mid-afternoon trade. Indices closed the session with modest gains, albeit giving up some of their intraday gains in late trade.

The Sensex surged 406.88 points, or 1.23%, at the day's high of 33,439.97 in late trade, its highest level since 6 March 2018. The index rose 4.39 points, or 0.01%, at the day's low of 33,037.48 in morning trade.

The Nifty jumped 116.15 points, or 1.14%, at the day's high of 10,270.35 in late trade, its highest level since 6 March 2018. The index fell 7.80 points, or 0.08%, at the day's low of 10,146.40 in morning trade.

Among secondary indices, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index provisionally rose 0.56%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index provisionally advanced 0.5%. Both these indices underperformed the Sensex.

The breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was negative. On the BSE, 1,507 shares declined and 1,203 shares advanced. A total of 156 shares were unchanged.

The total turnover on BSE amounted to Rs 3987.59 crore, compared with the turnover of Rs 3448.81 crore registered during the previous trading session.

Most realty stocks advanced. Oberoi Realty (up 3.46%), Sobha (up 1.96%), DLF (up 1.7%), Godrej Properties (up 0.62%) and Unitech (up 0.31%) gained. HDIL (down 3.77%) and Prestige Estates Projects (down 0.6%) dropped. Indiabulls Real Estate was unchanged at Rs 197.45.

State-run lending major State Bank of India (SBI) was the biggest gainer from the 30-share Sensex pack. The stock surged 4.16% at Rs 256.90, even as it shrugged off the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) penalty of Rs 40 lakh on the bank for non-compliance with the directions issued by the central bank on detection and impounding of counterfeit notes.

Private sector lender ICICI Bank also advanced 3.75% at Rs 297.45.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries jumped 2.24% at Rs 911.50.

Index heavyweight and housing finance major HDFC rose 1.97% at Rs 1,796.50 after the company said it would sell 5.1% of the equity of Computer Age Management Services (CAMS) to Great Terrain Investment, Mauritius, an affiliate of Warburg Pincus group, at a total consideration of Rs 169.52 crore. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 March 2018. The company had approved selling 6.3% stake of CAMS to Great Terrain Investment, Mauritius, in December 2017.

Overseas, European stocks traded mixed ahead of the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy statement is due later today, 8 March 2018. The central bank is expected to be cautious to prevent any unwanted tightening of financing conditions amid mounting global insecurities, especially in the wake of recent tariffs announcement by the US President.

Asian stocks edged higher amid news of potential US tariff exemptions. US stocks closed well off session lows yesterday, 7 March 2018 after the White House hinted Canada and Mexico could be exempt from tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump.

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Key benchmark indices trimmed gains in the morning trade after a strong opening on higher Asian stocks. At 10:22 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex rose 85.89 points or 0.26% at 33,118.98. The Nifty 50 index advanced 18.80 points or 0.19% at 10,173.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index fell 0.52%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index declined 0.57%. Both these indices underperformed the Sensex.

Overseas, Asian stocks edged higher on news of potential US tariff exemptions. US stocks closed well off session lows yesterday, 7 March 2018 after the White House hinted Canada and Mexico could be exempt from tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump.

In Europe, the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy statement is due later today, 8 March 2018. The central bank is expected to be cautious to prevent any unwanted tightening of financing conditions amid mounting global insecurities, especially in the wake of recent tariffs announcement by the US President.

Closer home, the breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, turned negative from positive. On the BSE, 1,427 shares declined and 727 shares advanced. A total of 102 shares were unchanged.

Key telecom stocks were mixed after the Union Cabinet yesterday, 7 March 2018 approved two key measures in telecom sector to facilitate investments, consolidation in the sector and enhancing ease of doing business. Idea Cellular was up 0.38% while Reliance Communications dropped 0.99%.

The measures include restructuring the deferred payment liabilities of spectrum auction of telecom service providers and revising the limit of the cap for spectrum holding for telecom service providers. The overall spectrum cap is revised from the current limit of 25% to 35%. The current intra-band cap is removed. Instead, there is a cap of 50% on the combined spectrum holding in the sub-1 GHz bands (700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz bands). There will be no cap for individual or combined spectrum holding in above 1 GHz band.

Bharti Airtel advanced 1.05% after the company scheduled a board meeting on 12 March 2018, to consider enablement from board to opportunistically raise funds through various debt instruments including issuance of non-convertible debentures (NCDs). The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 March 2018.

Auto stocks also witnessed a mixed trend. Ashok Leyland (up 2.2%), Eicher Motors (up 0.29%) and Maruti Suzuki India (up 0.09%) edged higher. Tata Motors (down 1.09%) and Bajaj Auto (down 0.26%) declined.

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) rose 0.06% after the company launched an all new tractor platform in the high power category, ranging from 60 HP to 75 HP tractors. Tractors based on this platform will be introduced over a period of time, beginning with the launch of the Swaraj 963FE. The Swaraj 963FE will be available across Swaraj's wide network of 875 dealers, at a starting price of Rs 7.40 lakh ex-showroom. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 March 2018.

Hero MotoCorp dropped 0.37%. The company introduced the new 'Super Splendor' across markets in the country. Aimed at further bolstering its dominant leadership in the domestic motorcycle market, the new Super Splendor is priced at Rs 57,190 (Ex-Showroom Delhi). Targeted at young professionals, the new Super Splendor offers best-in-class performance and convenience. This is in addition to the trust, reliability and fuel efficiency that are distinct to the Splendor brand, the company said. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 March 2018.

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Held on 08 March 2018

The Board of Morganite Crucible (India) at its meeting held on 08 March 2018 has approved the following -

Adoption of National Company Law Tribunal in matter of approval of Scheme of Amalgamation of Diamond Crucible Company with Morganite Crucible (India).

The company has signed Union Wage Agreement for a period of 3 years effective 01 January 2018 units 31 December 2020.

The company is evaluating to start trading business for selling of De-gassing machine to the end customers whose Morgan's Degassing Rotor is being used. In this connection, the company has signed Purchase Framework Agreement with Febtech Industries initially for a period of 2 years to diversify the product in Indian and overseas market.

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Twenty-five years after his escape, the CBI has arrested absconder Farookh Takla, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and a close aide of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, from Dubai, official sources said on Thursday.

He was brought to Mumbai earlier on Thursday and whisked off to the CBI offices for questioning. He will be produced before a Special TADA Court later in the day for remand.

Takla, against whom the Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice in 1995 was finally tracked to Dubai where he was believed to be holed up, and later extradited to India to face the law.

At least 257 people were killed, over 700 injured and properties worth crores destroyed in the March 12, 1993, blasts.

Takla's arrest comes just two days after wellknown criminal lawyer Shyam Keswani reiterated in Thane that Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was reportedly willing to return to India and face trial, but the Indian government had rejected some of his preconditions.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy on Thursday congratulated National Security Advisor Ajit Doval for the success in getting Takla back to face trial.

"We need to compliment NSA Doval for Farooq Takla coming in the CBI kitty. Dawood not far off?" Swamy tweeted.

--IANS

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Two students were shot on Wednesday in an reportedly accidental shooting at a high school in the southern US state of Alabama.

One of the students died on the way to hospital, CBS affiliate WIAT-TV reported. The other was critically injured, but is in stable condition. A third person was evaluated from Huffman High School in Birmingham.

"Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal at Huffman High School," Birmingham City School system said in a statement, Xinhua reported.

"The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene. Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting," said the statement.

Birmingham Police Sgt. Bryan Shelton told WIAT that investigators believed the incident was accidental.

It's not clear if a suspect was in custody.

--IANS

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Violent husbands or partners faced being electronically tagged under new measures announced in the UK on Thursday to tackle domestic abuse which currently affects 2 million people across the country.

Prime Minister Theresa May, Interior Minister Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Justice Secretary David Gauke put forward proposals for a new Domestic Abuse Bill to transform the government approach to what they described as a terrible crime.

The tough new approach includes protection orders to better shield victims against further abuse by enabling courts to impose a range of conditions on abusers, Xinhua news agency reported.

These could include compulsory alcohol treatment, attending a programme to address their underlying attitudes or addictions, and using electronic tagging to monitor them.

Under the proposals, breaching any court order would become a criminal offence.

May said: "While we have made great strides towards equality and opportunities for women, the fact there are still thousands of people suffering from domestic abuse shows how much work we still have to do."

She said the new proposals will have the potential to completely transform the way Britain tackles domestic abuse, providing better protection to victims and bringing more perpetrators to justice.

May added: "I hope as many people as possible will come forward to give us their views and share their experiences, as we seek to put an end to this abhorrent crime for good."

--IANS

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European plane-manufacturer Airbus, along with its subsidiary Navblue, has signed contracts with two Indian start-ups -- Neewee and Eflight -- to provide solutions in aerospace, a company statement said on Thursday.

"Neewee and Eflight, two start-ups accelerated at Airbus Bizlab India, have signed their first contracts with Airbus and subsidiary Navblue to bring to life their unique innovative ideas in aerospace that are in line with the Indian government's 'Make in India' and 'Startup India' initiatives," Airbus said in a statement.

According to the company, the two Bengaluru-based start-ups were part of five start-ups chosen a year back from the second season of the Airbus Bizlab technology acceleration programme that attracted 137 applications from nine countries.

"Neewee's solution, called procuSense, will enhance certainty to manufacturing supply chain and procurement operations at Airbus, using advanced analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence," the Airbus statement said.

"Eflight's trip support solution will offer a comprehensive suite of services that allows business jet pilots to optimise plans for fuel, time, route and weather," it said.

The start-up has also signed an exclusive partnership with an Airbus subsidiary to jointly address some opportunities in India, the statement added.

"Both Neewee and Eflight are unique solutions that have the potential to provide significant and long-term benefits to not only Airbus but other big and small businesses on a global scale. The roadmap for the future includes implementing Neewee's analytics solution in other Airbus functions globally," said Siddharth Balachandran, Airbus BizLab Leader - India.

Bizlab is a part of Airbus' innovative strategy to bring together start-ups and Airbus "intrapreneurs" to work and speed up the transformation of their innovative ideas into valuable businesses.

--IANS

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Amnesty International on Thursday hailed the Supreme Court decision to restore the marriage of Hadiya Jahan to a Muslim man, describing it as "a fitting recognition" of women's rights on International Women's Day.

Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, embraced Islam and married Shafin Jahan. The marriage was annulled by the Kerala High Court.

Amnesty International India's Programmes Director Asmita Basu said in a statement: "The Supreme Court's order restoring Hadiya's marriage is a fitting recognition - on International Women's Day - of the right of every adult woman to choose her religion and partner. This decision was long overdue, and it is a victory for Hadiya Jahan's courage and perseverance.

"By setting aside the Kerala High Court's decision that described the marriage as a 'sham', the order also marks an important course correction.

"It must now spur state governments into doing more to bring to justice people who harass and attack Hindu-Muslim couples."

Hadiya Jahan, 24, who was born Akhila Ashokan, converted to Islam from Hinduism and married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim man, in December 2016.

Following this, her father approached the Kerala High Court, alleging that she had been forcibly converted. The High Court annulled the marriage in May 2017 and ordered her to be sent back to her parents' home.

In August, the Supreme Court ordered a probe by the National Investigation Agency into Hadiya Jahan's conversion and marriage but subsequently raised questions about the High Court order annulling the marriage.

--IANS

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Google has released the first developer preview of its next version of operating system "Android P" which the company says is mostly focused on the changes that will affect developers and might not have significant user interface (UI) adjustments.

Developers with a Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices can now download the Android P (Android 9.0) developer preview 1. Unfortunately, support has been dropped for the Google Pixel C, Google Nexus 5X and Google Nexus 6P.

Dave Burke, Google Vice President of Engineering, said this is "an early baseline build for developers only", The Verge reported, adding that it was unclear how big the user-facing changes would be.

Google has added a built-in support for a notch cutting into the display at the top of the screen, called "display cutout support".

With this, developers would be able to test how full-screen apps would work with phones that have iPhone X-like notches, with the new tools that Google has released.

The company also tweaked the look for the "Quick Settings" panel and the notification drawer with rounded corners.

The new look for notifications also includes a refreshed appearance for messaging apps. With this change, users could reply to texts right from the notification itself.

The messaging apps would support the inclusion of "Smart replies", images and stickers directly in the notification.

Android P would also have a standard dialog box user interface for when apps want to verify a user's identity with a fingerprint.

As far as the notable changes for developers are concerned, "Android P restricts access to mic, camera and all SensorManager sensors from apps that are idle".

If an app is in the background and not active, it won't be able to access your microphone.

The new OS would also have built-in support for more video and image codecs, including HDR VP9 Profile 2 and HEIF (heic).

Google promised more information "later this year" on "enhancing and refactoring the media APIs to make them easier to develop and integrate with".

As smartphone makers are shifting to two-camera setup, a multi-camera API is included so an Android app can individually request the data from more than one camera sensor at once.

"Better Autofill" is added to make it easier for password managers to enter passcodes for users essentially striking out the need of "switch-apps-and-copy-and-switch-apps-and-paste" process.

For improved performance, Google has added small changes that control power efficiency in Android, including Doze, Standby and Background Limits.

The Job Scheduler is getting smarter and would understand the device's network state and batching apps network requests together.

The company would release more details in May and release Android P in autumn. It would release an Android Beta version before unveiling the "final product".

--IANS

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Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid will arrive in Meghalaya on Friday and visit Balat, a border town near the India-Bangladesh border, an official said on Thursday.

Hamid is on a five-day visit to India. He will later visit New Delhi to attend the International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit to be held on March 11.

"President Hamid will visit Balat area where he set up a camp for Bangladeshi youths taking part in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971," Peter S. Dkhar, the District Magistrate of East Khasi Hills, told IANS.

Balat is 74 km by road from Meghalaya's capital Shillong.

"Two helicopters of Indian Air Force will take President Hamid and his entourage to Balat and then to Shillong," the official said.

After his arrival in Shillong, Hamid is scheduled to visit the bungalow of Bidhan Chandra Roy (Bengal Chief Minister between 1948 and 1962) and Sidli House, where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore stayed during his third visit in 1927.

Hamid will spend the night at Meghalaya Raj Bhavan, wherein Governor Ganga Prasad will host dinner for the visiting guest.

Chief Minister Conrad Sangma will meet the Bangladesh President and hold discussions on business trade relation between Meghalaya and Bangladesh.

--IANS

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The CBI has approached the Supreme Court against the Allahabad High Court acquittal of doctor couple Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar in the murder of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

On October 12 last year, a High Court bench of Justice B.K. Narayana and Justice A.K. Mishra acquitted the couple by giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Aarushi, 14, and Hemraj were found murdered at their Jalvayu Vihar home in Noida on May 16, 2008.

The High Court's order came on an appeal by the Talwars against a Ghaziabad CBI court order that handed them life imprisonment on November 26, 2013, bringing an end to a nine-year ordeal of the couple.

Earlier, Hemraj's wife had approached the top court against the High Court acquittal of the couple.

After Aarushi was found murdered in her bedroom, Hemraj was initially considered a suspect. However, his body too was found in a pool of blood a day later on the terrace of the house.

The High Court, while acquitting the Talwar couple, had made comments on the CBI trial court presiding officer, saying he had adopted a "partial and parochial approach" in his 2013 judgment to convict the parents for the double murder.

The court said the trial court's judgment was based on "creation of fanciful reasoning" and "presuming facts with indomitable obstinacy and taking things for granted, and thus basing the conclusion on unfounded evidence".

The Uttar Pradesh Police had accused Rajesh Talwar of killing his daughter in a fit of rage. Rajesh Talwar was arrested on May 23, 2008.

On May 31, 2008, the CBI took over the case and initially absolved the parents but later held them responsible for the two murders.

On June 13, 2008, Rajesh Talwar's compounder Krishna was arrested by the CBI. Ten days later, Raj Kumar, a servant of a doctor friend of the Talwars, and Vijay Mandal, the domestic help of the Talwars' neighbour, were also arrested.

The three were later freed after no evidence was found against them.

--IANS

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A mural painted by artist Alexander Tadlock on a wall in Chicago urges Mexican immigrants living in the US to exercise their right to vote from abroad in this year's general elections.

"Mexico is where you are," the mural in La Villita neighbourhood says.

The 27-year-old Tadlock was commissioned by the Mexican National Electoral Institute (INE) to travel to the Windy City and paint the mural, Efe reported.

"It's a mural intended to remind Mexican immigrants that they can vote from abroad, to inform them about the proposals and who the candidates are," Tadlock said on his tenth day of work in Chicago.

"We want to have people informed, aware that the immigrants themselves can make a difference, that they, with their vote, can change life in their own country," Tadlock, a Mexico City resident, said.

The mural, 8-meter-long and four meters tall depicts four hands raised, two of them with the thumbs up sign, another with a clenched fist and the last holding an open book.

"The hands mean to send the message that only education and arts can change a society," Tadlock said of his mural, which is part of an INE project that has also covered walls in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

--IANS

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday said that China and India should be "free of mental inhibition" and build mutual trust, which is a "precious commodity" in their ties.

Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the Chinese parliament session, Wang said that both countries, which nearly came to war over a two-month military stand-off along their border last year, should replace suspicion with trust.

Sounding positive on bilateral ties in the coming year, the minister said: "The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other."

Sino-India ties took a nosedive after their militaries faced-off each other in their worst stand-off at Doklam in the Sikkim section of their boundary.

China's opposition to a UN ban on Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar and India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group has also tested their relationship.

"Despite some tests and difficulties, the China-India relationship continues to grow. In the process, China has both upheld its legitimate rights and interests and taken care to preserve the relationship.

"Chinese and Indian leaders have developed a strategic vision for the future of our relations. The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other," Wang said.

He emphasised that mutual trust was a key factor between India and China.

"China and India must do everything to empathise with and support each other and avoid mutual suspicion and attrition.

"In this, mutual trust is the most precious commodity in China-India relations. With political trust, not even Himalayas can stop from friendly exchanges. Without it, even level land cannot bring us together," Wang said.

"Let me put this to our Indian friends, our shared understanding far outstrips our differences and our far outweigh our frictions. China is willing and ready to inherit and forward traditional friendship and be a friend and partner of the Indian people."

"I hope the two sides will be free of the mental inhibition and meet each other halfway. Let us replace suspicion with trust, manage differences with dialogue and build a future with cooperation," the Foreign Minister added.

After resolving the Doklam crisis last year, both countries have attempted to repair their relationships and have shown willingness to engage in more dialogue.

Last month, India's Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale quietly visited Beijing and met Wang and China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi.

The visit by the former ambassador to China was seen as a key development in the ties. Gokhale is understood to have set the tone for more talks between both countries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in China in June.

--IANS

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Amid fears of a potential ecological disaster, a container ship continued to burn on Thursday off Agatti island in the Arabian Sea, with Indian officials revealing that its cargo was of dangerous class.

The ship is laden with containers classified as "dangerous" and "very hazardous to human beings", capable of emitting poisons that can kill humans within a short time, besides being corrosive in nature.

However, the officials ruled out the possibility of any environment issues at the moment and pointed out that "the hull of the ship is not affected by the fire and only the containers are seen burning".

"We are hopeful of dousing the fire within another day or so and assess the situation after that," said an official declining to be identified.

The tragedy has occurred at the doorstep of the eco-sensitive Lakshadweep Islands, off the south-west coast of India.

The officials could not confirm whether the fire and the intense heat it has generated, which has already melted many containers, may have weakened the ship's hull and other critical metallic parts.

Meanwhile, the Indian Coast Guard said the condition of three rescued sailors was critical as they may have inhaled the toxic fumes after the fire erupted late on Tuesday.

Working round-the-clock, the Coast Guard has deployed a high speed interceptor boat from Vizhinjam Port to pick up the trio from a foreign vessel, MV ALS Ceres, and rush them to a hospital in Thiruvananthapuram.

The remaining 19 rescued crewmen are being taken to Kochi, also in Kerala. The Coast Guard suspects the toxic fumes may have affected all the sailors, four of whom remain missing.

The three whose condition is critical Deepu Jayan of India, Sukun Suwannapeng of Thailand and Alan Rey Palce Gabunilas of the Philippines.

Presently, the fire-fighting operations are being carried out from a safe distance by the Coast Guard Shoor to avoid coming in contact with the toxic fumes and flames.

According to preliminary information, the blaze erupted in one of the decks carrying the chemicals.

Late on Tuesday, following a massive explosion, a fire broke out on the Singapore-flagged vessel Maersk Honam, carrying a cargo of chemicals en route to Suez in Egypt.

While 23 sailors were rescued, four others, including an Indian, are still missing and a maritime and aerial search with helicopters and an aircraft has been undertaken to trace them.

The intensity of the blaze, with flames leaping more than 25 metres into the air, was so strong that the sizzling temperature melted many containers on board.

The Coast Guard found some empty lifeboats floating in the vicinity but there was no sign of the missing crewmen.

--IANS

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An Australian farmer found six cows lying dead in a row in what experts have attributed to a lightning strike, the media reported on Thursday.

The animals were discovered next to a barbed-wire fence on a paddock in Queensland last week, a few days after a heavy storm, reports the BBC.

The cows' owner, Derek Shirley, said he was "stunned".

Sabrina Lomax, a livestock expert from Sydney University, said she believed all six animals had been touching the fence when they died.

"In these sort of freak accidents, it was just an inconvenient placement of the animals in regards to the (lightning) strike," the BBC quoted Lomax, an animal behaviour and welfare researcher, as saying on Thursday.

"They would have died instantly from a massive heart attack."

Shirley, whose farm is about 70 km south of Brisbane, said he initially thought the cows had been poisoned.

In 2016, more than 300 reindeer were killed in a lightning storm in Norway.

--IANS

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Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Thursday said it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiative which led to the improvement of girl child ratio in the country.

"In 2014, the Prime Minister had called my Ministry (WCD) and expressed his concern over the prevailing situation of women in the country.

"There were many states and districts which were suffering from low child sex ratio. The Prime Minister had then asked us to select those districts which have the worst CSR and work at improving their status," Gandhi said while addressing an event here.

The Minister was speaking on the occasion of International Women's Day which was also attended by Modi to launch the pan expansion of his flagship programme "Beti Bachao Beti Padhao" scheme in 640 districts.

The 2011 census had shown significant declining trend in the child sex ratio (CSR), with 918 girls per 1,000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years. The CSR had declined from 976 in 1961 to 918 in 2011.

Out of the 640 districts, CSR had declined in 429 districts while 244 districts were below the national average of 918.

"It was not an easy task. For achieving the target we had to change the approach and perception of people. We started off work with the District Magistrates and Collectors and got the people in the area involved," she added.

The scheme which is a tri-ministerial, convergent effort of Ministries of Women and Child Development, Health and Family Welfare and Human Resource Development was initially launched in selected 161 districts which were low on CSR.

"We had to keep a check on the hospitals and nursing institutes over illegal ultra-sonography. The ratio started improving simultaneously. Within three years, these districts have shown remarkable improvement and the ratio is now more than 900," the minister said.

In Phase-1 (2014-15), the scheme was started with 100 districts and got expanded to 61 additional districts in Phase-II (2015-16).

"The scheme has been received well and has been successful in establishing the improvement in Child Sex Ratio as a national agenda. It has resulted in increased awareness, sensitisation and conscious building around the issue of declining CSR in the public domain," the WCD ministry said in a statement.

--IANS

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Actor Terry Crews' sexual assault case against WME agent Adam Venit has been rejected by The Los Angeles County District Attorney and the Los Angeles City Attorney.

According to court documents obtained by eonline.com, the District Attorney argued that Venit's conduct did not rise to the level of a felony.

"Given that the suspect did not make contact with the victim's skin when he grabbed the victim's genitals and there is no restraint involved, a felony filing is declined," the document stated.

As for the city attorney, they had to reject the case due to statute of limitations. The incident occurred in February 2016 and the statute for a misdemeanour is one year.

In October 2017, Crews initially came forward with sexual assault allegations against an unnamed Hollywood executive.

Two months later, the actor filed a lawsuit against Venit claiming the agent sexually assaulted him at a February 2016 party.

While Venit was suspended from WME following an internal investigation into the matter, he returned to work after 30 days.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The European Union (EU) is planning "a whole arsenal" of counter-measures if US President Donald Trump goes ahead with imposing new tariffs on imported steel and aluminium amid global opposition, an official said on Thursday.

"Donald Trump is wrong. All war is bad and in trade war there would be only losers ... The Commission is preparing a riposte," European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a French television news channel.

"If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal," Xinhua quoted Moscovici as saying.

The former French Economy Minister said that "immediate" retaliatory measures would include European tariffs on US exported oranges, tobacco and bourbon, and goods which he said were mainly produced in constituencies held by Trump's Republican party.

Europe would also take measures to limit eventual excess of imported steel and aluminium into Europe in line with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules while filing a complaint before the WTO, he added.

Moscovici said Europe "wants to avoid escalation" but "must keep the multilateral framework" because "protectionism is never the answer: protectionism is nationalism, nationalism is war and the war only makes losers."

Trump announced on March 1, that the US was set to impose a 25 per cent tariff on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminium imports.

Trump is expected to sign the text on new duties later Thursday.

--IANS

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Delhi Police on Thursday launched five all-women PCR vans on International Women's Day to ensure women's safety in the capital.

"Women feel easier in communicating with women police and narrate their grievances without hesitation," Special Commissioner of Police (Women Safety and Operations) Sanjay Baniwal said in a statement.

Twenty-seven women police personnel, trained in firing and unarmed combat, will be deployed at Vishwavidyalaya, Delhi University, Rajeev Chowk, LSR College, and Sri Venkateswara College.

"These PCR vans will instil a sense of confidence in persons who approach them in distress," he added.

--IANS

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Delhi High Court on Thursday expressed unhappiness over non-payment of salaries to municipal school teachers and issued contempt notice to the Chief Secretary and Commissioners of the East and North Delhi Municipal Corporations.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar said doctors, nurses and others working in Delhi's Municipal Corporations were also facing a similar situation.

The court asked the Delhi government to apprise it as to who was responsible for releasing funds to the three corporations, and also explain why Pay Commission recommendations had not been implemented.

The court fixed April 11 for hearing in the matter.

The court was hearing NGO Social Jurist's plea, seeking contempt of court action against the two MCs for not following the High Court's January 5 order to clear arrears of teachers within a month.

--IANS

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India's envoy to China, Gautam Bambawale, on Thursday met a top official of a Chinese think tank and candidly discussed bilateral ties and ways to enhance mutual exchanges.

India-China relations, hit hard by a 73-day military stand-off at Doklam along their border, seem to be limping back to normal as both sides have been trying to have more talks.

Bambawale had a candid discussion with Wu Hailong, President of Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, on bilateral ties and enhancing mutual exchanges, said an official.

The ambassador has met several Chinese government officials and scholars of influential think tanks over the past few months. In the meetings, ways to increase mutual dialogue is understood have come up.

Both sides have signalled their willingness to talk more.

While high-level ministerial visits are expected in this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in China in June.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent claims that the Islamic republic is a "threat" to the region.

Israel cannot call Iran a threat to the Middle East, as Israel has driven the region to the brink of destruction, Press TV quoted Rouhani as saying during a cabinet session on Wednesday.

"Those who have over the past 70 years created tension, launched wars and caused destruction in the region and have committed genocide and caused Sabra and Shatila (massacre) are in no position to portray Iran as a threat," said Rouhani.

"Iran is no threat to anyone. Iran is (the pillar) of stability and security for the entire region," Rouhani said.

Also, he maintained that the development of Iran's missile program is aimed at safeguarding peace and security in the region, and "it will strongly defend its rights."

On Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Iran was responsible for "darkness descending" on the Middle East.

Netanyahu also said that "Iran is building an aggressive empire."

He made the remarks in Washington addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands had been disastrous to the Middle East region.

"Despite Netanyahu's claims, the fact is that illegal occupation lies at the heart of most of the calamities in our region," Zarif tweeted on Tuesday.

"Historically, occupying another's land has never been sustainable. This occupation, too - and the apartheid system that perpetuates it - will not last long," Zarif said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a jolt to the BJP, the TDP on Thursday quit the Modi government with its two ministers - Ashok Gajapati Raju (Civil Aviation) and Y.S. Chowdhry (MoS Science and Technology) - tendering their resignation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who made a last-ditch attempt to stave off the development by talking to Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu over telephone for 10 minutes.

However, the two ministers said the party was still part of the ruling Democratic Alliance and it was hopeful that the promises made to at the time of its bifurcation like grant of special category status to the residual state and other financial demands would be met.

"The party took a decision last night that we should resign. We have resigned now. It was a matter of courtesy that we met the Prime Minister and presented our resignation," Raju and Chowdhry told the media after meeting Modi at his residence.

Their resignation came shortly after Modi spoke to Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu over telephone and reportedly urged him to reconsider pulling out of the NDA government. But Naidu apparently told him of his compulsions.

In a related development, the BJP pulled out its two ministers from the Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday morning.

The action by the TDP, which has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in Rajya Sabha, will have no impact on the stability of the Modi government which has sufficient numbers in parliament but will be seen as a big political setback because TDP is the first pre-poll ally to pull out of the Centre in nearly four years.

"We are continuing as part of the NDA. The problems are well known and we are hopeful that the committments made by the parties at the time of bifurcation will be met. Everyone in Andhra Pradesh wants that the promises should be implemented. Solutions are being attempted. We are trying to get solutions. We hope solutions will come. We have resigned in a cordial atmosphere," Chowdhry said.

Both ministers said they know that the clock cannot be put back on the bifurcation but there are sentiments and emotions in the state which are to be addressed.

Asked what was the Prime Minister's response, they quoted him as saying it was unfortunate but he understood that it was a party decision. "I am with the state of Andhra Pradesh and for the people of Andhra Pradesh," Modi told them.

Chowdhry said it was wrong for the media to expect that they went to negotiate with the Prime Minister. "It is for various departments of the Centre to work for fulfilling the demands of Andhra Pradesh.

"The major sentimental issue has not been addressed well in time. At least the special package should have been implemented by putting time-lines. People of Andhra Pradesh are very emotional. One party has deceived us and the other has cheated us," he said.

Asked about the deadline for the Centre to meet the TDP demands, he said, "16th Lok Sabha."

He also said the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act should not have been passed amid din in Parliament.

Chowdhry conceded that the Centre did meet some demands but Andhra Pradesh needed a lot of hand-holding because demands like special category status were major emotional and sentimental issues.

In his resignation letter, Raju expressed his gratitude for the cooperation extended to him as a member of council of ministers. Chowdhry, in his letter, said he had enjoyed working with Modi and appreciated the suppport given to him.

"However, with due respect to the prevailing public sentiment in my constituency as well as the circumstances that led to that situation, and in adherence to the decision taken by my party (TDP) president, I am hereby tendering my resignation as Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences," Chowdhry said.
Considering the gender insensitive remarks often made by Parliamentarians, Congress MP Sushmita Dev on Thursday urged Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to organise a Gender Sensitisation Workshop for all the MPs.

"Public representatives are role models and yet there are several instances of gender insensitive comments by them inside Parliament and outside in the public domain," said the Lok Sabha MP from Silchar in Assam in a letter to Mahajan.

Dev said gender sensitisation is a challenge for all and it is an issue that needs to be addressed vis-a-vis the public representatives.

Listing some of the harsh statements from MPs like "Hindu women should have between four and ten children" and "stay indoors to prevent rape", Dev said, "Being lawmakers, it is necessary to understand gender equality and the conversation around it to make better policy for women".

Dev, also the President of the All India Mahila Congress, requested Mahajan to organise the workshop as a part of the Speakers' Research Initiative for all MPs, members of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister.

"This will also help and serve as a consensus building measure on the Women's Reservation Bill and other women related policies," said the law graduate.

Dev said the number of crimes against women have increased and the recent atrocities against women in Haryana and the rape of a 8-month-old baby in Delhi have highlighted the need for widespread gender sensitisation.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday condemned the acts of vandalism on the statues of prominent personalities including Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee's bust here.

"Some may support Lenin, some may support Ho Chi Minh, some may support Karl Marx, some may support Syama Prasad Mookerjee. One may not agree with them but no one should show disrespect or destroy the statues," Banerjee said at a public meeting here.

"I condemn those who attacked Syama Prasad Mookerjee's statue here. I also condemn those who razed the Lanin statue in Tripura or vandalised the statue of Periyar in Tamil Nadu. This is not our culture," she said on the occasion of International Women's Day.

Banerjee asked people not to defame entire Bengal for an act by Maoist elements.

"Entire Bengal cannot be held responsible for what five or six Maoist boys have done. I deplore their attack on Mookherji's statue. They are not our pride, they are the shame of Bengal," she said.

Lashing out at the new BJP government in Tripura, Banerjee said she had no knowledge about anyone being arrested in that state for the vandalism while the police had arrested all seven vandals here.

She claimed that the BJP would be "finished" in the 2019 general elections.

"Can you (BJP) hear what Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra or Rajasthan is saying? Weren't the TDP, Shiv Sena your partners?" she asked.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress party on Thursday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "deliberately and intentionally" blocking the Women's Reservation Bill in the Parliament, despite having a "brute" majority.

It also threatened to protest outside Prime Minister and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar's residence if the bill is not passed in Parliament.

"When it comes to the Women's Reservation Bill the lame excuse of consensus building is handed out to stall women's representation in the Parliament which stands at a dismal figure of 11.80 per cent in Lok Sabha. This is a big lie," said All India Mahila Congress President Sushmita Dev.

"Did they build consensus when demonetisation was announced or Triple Talaq bill was passed," she asked.

"The Prime Minister embarks on another rhetoric filled campaign ignoring the demand for 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament," Dev further added.

Dev said that women in the legislature was the most significant social reform that India needed and "yet the Women's Reservation Bill, which has seen a tumultuous journey for decades, remains pending".

"Modi government constantly brags about forming a government of majority after decades, however, a prime minister with such brute majority behind him has not mustered the courage or shown the conviction to introduce a bill that he promised in his 2014 election manifesto," she said.

"Empowering women economically, politically and socially by the government is a hoax and the hypocrisy of this government is exposed by the fact that the triple talaq bill was introduced and debated in a hurry without consultations with any stakeholders," Dev added.

She also said that Congress party protested outside Parliament as neither the Parliamentary Affairs Minister nor the Prime Minister was willing to hear or engage with either any political or non-political women groups.

"Giving a women defence minister and an external affairs minister (portfolio) cannot compensate for dismal representation of 49 per cent percent population of India in the Lok Sabha and the assembly," she said adding if need be the party will protest outside Sushma Swaraj and Nirmala Sitharaman's residence as well.

"We do not need the 'consensus building', what we need now is a decision," she added.

--IANS

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Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was shown black flags at a public event here on Thursday, leading to some embarrassing moments for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

A section of the audience started waving black flags as soon as the Chief Minister took the stage to address the audience.

The protestors drew the attention of the media and others present on the occasion, though it was not known immediately who the protestors were and what they were demanding.

Asked about the protest, Raje told IANS that it was not a big issue.

"We have our priorities set on bigger goals. We have Communist Party of India-Marxist workers here; we have Congress workers; we have opposition leaders who can do anything to play spoilsport."

Asked about the farmers' protest in the state, she said there was no reason for them to stage the protests in the first place. "We have tried to break the ice with the protestors. However, it seems even they are clueless and have no answers," she said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched a new programme aimed to reduce malnutrition and low-birth weight among women and adolescent girls and children from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cutting across party lines, members in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday raised the long pending demand of Women's Reservation Bill and asked for its passage, with Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu suggesting that the government accord it top priority for rapid growth of the country.

On the occasion of International Women's Day, Naidu provided an opportunity to the members to speak on the issue and urged the political parties to refrain from politicising the issue.

Soon after the House met in the morning, Naidu greeted the women members and through them all the women across the country and allowed members to speak on issues concerning women.

Raising concerns over issues of gender equality, safety of women and discrimination against the girl child, Naidu expressed hope that the government will respect the sentiments of the House and take care of the unfulfilled agenda of women empowerment.

"With women constituting about 50 per cent of our population, social, economic and political empowerment of women, including providing reservation in Parliament and state legislatures, has to be accorded top priority to achieve rapid progress," Naidu said.

Congress member Ambika Soni urged the House to pass a resolution to provide 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies.

She was supported by fellow women members including Renuka Chowdhury, Kumari Selja, Rajni Patil and K. Kanimozhi.

Patil questioned the government's intention over passage of the Bill, while Kanimozhi said the entire House is with the government on it.

"Pass the bill. We are with you," she said.

When some women members, including Rajni Patil and Chhaya Verma of the Congress, questioned the government's intention with regard to the Women's Reservation Bill and Sampatiya Uike and Rupa Ganguly of the BJP tried to counter them, Naidu urged the members to refrain from the blame game over the women's cause.

"Don't make the issue of reservation controversial. Let's focus our attention on the issue. The moment you get into politics, the real issue is gone," he remarked.

He said a mere bill is not sufficient. "What is needed is political will and administrative skill to kill the evils."

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj mentioned the achievements of women in different fields and urged the members and the people of the country to take a pledge for ensuring women safety and providing justice to them.

"Women's Reservation Bill is important. But there are achievements by women even without reservation."

The Minister said India is a country where women have become President, Prime Minister and twice the Speaker of a House.

"Today, women are doing combat duty in the Army and flying planes in the Air Force. But there are crimes against women which bring shame to us. Which is why this day is one on which we should take a pledge to end such crimes," she said.

Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad supported the long pending demand of women reservation and sought stringent action against those who commit crimes like rape.

Speaking for the government, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel said the Narendra Modi government has taken up many programmes for women empowerment. But he gave no assurance on Women's Reservation Bill.

The Bill seeks to reserve one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies.

Introduced during the UPA-I government in May 2008, it also provides that a third of the total number of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes shall be reserved for women of those groups.

Similar Bills had been introduced thrice earlier -- in the late 90s, but lapsed with the dissolution of respective Lok Sabha.

Since 1996, the Bill has lapsed each time the House was dissolved and was later reintroduced by the next government.

In 2010, the then UPA government adopted it in the Rajya Sabha to keep it alive on the legislative agenda as the bills introduced and passed by the upper House do not lapse.

--IANS

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Rome, March 9 (IANS/AKI) Italy's Democratic Party secretary Matteo Renzi, who resigned his post earlier this week after the party's crushing electoral defeat, will not run in another leadership contest, a senior party member said on Thursday.

"Renzi has said clearly that he will not stand for re-election in the party primaries. He no longer wants to be secretary and has done his bit," said MP Ettore Rosato, who leads the Democratic Party in Italy's lower house of parliament.

"He said I am resigning and there will be a party congress," Rosato told La7 television channel's Omnibus programme.

"Otherwise he would have said I am resigning and will stand for re-election at the congress," Rosato said.

Renzi has made no public statement on whether he will try and return to the helm of the Democratic Party, which is in disarray after winning less than 20 of votes in Sunday's national elections - its worst-ever result.

Asked whether a possible successor to Renzi could be industrial development minister Carlo Calenda, who this week joined the Democratic Party, Rosato said: "He is an intelligent person but how can you expect him to become party secretary when he just become a member?"

In his resignation speech on Monday, Renzi, who was elected party leader in April 2013, said the Democratic Party should now go into opposition and should not enter any coalition "with extremists".

Renzi was referring to the anti-migrant League and the populist Five-Star Movement, who have laid claim to form a government after coming out on top in Sunday's inconclusive polls.

Neither party has enough seats in the Italian parliament to govern alone but Five Star is the largest single party after the vote and the League is the leader of the winning centre-right coalition.

--IANS

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
UK counter-terrorism officers on Thursday started investigations to uncover the origin of the nerve agent used in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury.

The police said government scientists had identified the nerve agent used, but would not make that information public at this stage.

A source familiar with the investigation told the BBC that it was likely to be rarer than the Sarin gas thought to have been used in Syria and in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

It was not even VX - the nerve agent used to kill the half brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia last year, the source added.

Skripal, 66, was convicted of passing secrets to the British intelligence service MI6, but was given refuge in the UK in 2010 as part of a "spy swap".

He and his 33-year-old daughter had visited the Bishop's Mill pub and Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury on Sunday before they were found collapsed on a bench near the Maltings shopping centre.

The police were yet to say if they knew how and where the poison was administered, the BBC reported.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said: "This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder, by administration of a nerve agent.

"Having established that a nerve agent is the cause of the symptoms... I can also confirm that we believe that the two people who became unwell were targeted specifically."

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers, analysts and intelligence officers are working on the case, which has drawn comparison with the killing of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium-210 in London in 2006.

A public inquiry concluded that his killing was probably carried out with the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

--IANS

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South Korean President Moon Jae-in's envoys who had visited North Korea earlier this week, left for Washington on Thursday to explain the outcome of their visit.

Chung Eui-yong, head of the National Security Office, has quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying that Pyongyang was willing to suspend all its military provocations, including ballistic missile tests, as long as US-North Korea dialogue was in progress, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Suh Hoon, the chief of South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service is also accompanying Chung on the trip.

Chung will directly explain the outcome of his Pyongyang trip to the highest U.S. officials during his three-day visit to Washington, according to an official from the presidential office.

He is expected to meet US National Security Advisor Herbert McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The two envoys will also visit China, Japan and Russia to inform them of the outcome of their North Korea trip.

Both Washington and Pyongyang have expressed their willingness to talk, but the US is still seen to be sceptical about the North's intentions.

Following the two-day trip by the special envoys to North Korea, US President Donald Trump said the North appeared to be "sincere".

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the controversial marriage of Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, with Shafin Jahan, setting aside a Kerala High Court order annulling their wedding.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said: "Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law."

But the court said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) would continue its probe into the criminal dimension of the case, if any.

"We clarify that the investigation by the NIA in respect of any matter of criminality may continue in accordance with law," the court said.

Pronouncing a brief operative order after lunch, Chief Justice Misra said the High Court should not have annulled the marriage between the two, following a Habeas Corpus petition, by exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Misra said: "We hold that the High Court should not have annulled the marriage between Shafin Jahan and Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan."

The order also referred to Hadiya personally appearing before the Supreme Court on November 27 and admitting to her marriage with Shafin Jahan, who had challenged the High Court order that nullified the marriage.

On October 3, the Supreme Court had said it would examine whether the High Court could annul the marriage following a petition by her parents.

Hadiya, 24, earlier Akhila Ashokan, embraced Islam and married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim. Hadiya's father alleged that she was forcibly converted by groups with links to terrorist outfits.

Reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on Thursday, Hadiya's father Ashokan said he "respects the court order but will seek legal recourse on the verdict".

"The verdict has only cleared that her marriage is in order. The court has asked for the NIA probe to continue as the larger question we raised is that Shafin Jahan is a terrorist," he told the media at his house near Kottayam in Kerala.

"We accept the apex court's order as the law has to be respected. A father is in pain to hear that his daughter has gone with a terrorist. We still maintain the marriage was stage-managed... We will seek legal recourse," Ashokan added.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the controversial marriage of Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, with Shafin Jahan, setting aside a Kerala High Court order annulling their wedding.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said: "Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law."

But the court said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) would continue its probe into the criminal dimension of the case, if any.

"We clarify that the investigation by the NIA in respect of any matter of criminality may continue in accordance with law," the court said.

Pronouncing a brief operative order after lunch, Chief Justice Misra said the high court should not have annulled the marriage, following a Habeas Corpus petition, by exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Misra said: "We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between Shafin Jahan and Hadiya."

The order also referred to Hadiya personally appearing before the Supreme Court on November 27 and admitting to her marriage with Shafin Jahan, who had challenged the High Court order that nullified the marriage.

Hadiya, 24, embraced Islam and married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim. Hadiya's father alleged that she was forcibly converted by groups with links to terrorist outfits.

In the course of the arguments on Thursday, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, appearing for Shafin Jahan, submitted nine propositions of law to be addressed before looking into the case on facts.

He said that the right to choose a life partner is part of right to life and the marriage can only be dissolved by any one of the two in wedlock.

Asserting that in certain cases the high court can annul a marriage, senior counsel Shyam Divan, appearing for Hadiya's father Asokan K.M., said "Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan was to defeat the proceedings before the high court".

He said that all this was backed by well-oiled machinery which was alluring and trafficking people to Syria.

Observing that they (the couple) can't go without the passport and the government had powers to prevent them from leaving the country, the court asked if NIA investigation has found any offence against the couple.

The court made it clear that the NIA could continue with its investigation but without interfering in their married life.

On October 3, the Supreme Court had said it would examine whether the high court could annul the marriage following a petition by her parents.

Reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on Thursday, Hadiya's father said he "respects the court order but will seek legal recourse on the verdict".

"The verdict has only cleared that her marriage is in order. The court has asked for the NIA probe to continue as the larger question we raised is that Shafin Jahan is a terrorist," he told the media at his house near Kottayam in Kerala.

"We accept the apex court's order as the law has to be respected. A father is in pain to hear that his daughter has gone with a terrorist. We still maintain the marriage was stage-managed... We will seek legal recourse," Asokan said.

--IANS

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The crew searching for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Thursday said that they "remain optimistic" of finding the missing plane.

Two Malaysian navy officers aboard the search ship, Azmi Rosedee and Adbul Halim Ahmad Nordin, told the New Straits Times they were "doing their utmost", even as the search was slowed by bad weather and tricky underwater terrain in the Indian Ocean, reports the Guardian.

The renewed search for the MH370 began in January after the US-based company Ocean Infinity was hired by the Malaysian government.

A previous three-year search coordinated by Australia was called off in 2017 after it failed to find the plane.

After 43 days of searching, Ocean Infinity's ship, Seabed Constructor, is yet to find anything.

"We have gone through a number of rough days," Rosedee and Nordin said.

"Operations continue even when the sea is rough but it makes it difficult for us to deploy and recover the AUVs (search vehicles). This slows us down.

"Aside from that, the seabed of the search areas is hilly and uneven. This also disrupts the AUV's capability to thoroughly sweep the areas."

In February, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that the presence of Malaysian military on board Seabed Constructor had sparked a "power struggle", with concerns the Malaysian government wanted stricter oversight and military control over the search, the Guardian reported..

On Thursday the Malaysian navy chief, Admiral Tan Sri Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin, defended the presence of the naval officers, Rosedee and Nordin.

"Since the cost of this search will be borne by the government, it is necessary to have our representatives on board to observe the operation," he said.

The MH370 disappeared four years ago on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board, sparking the largest search in aviation history.

--IANS

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Actor Sidharth Malhotra has been signed up as the ambassador of denim wear brand Pepe Jeans.

He features in the brand's spring summer 2018 campaign #MadeToCreate, which is all about acting on your passion to create art and bring to life something remarkable that is driven by creative expression.

The actor is happy to be associated with the "cool and iconic casual wear brand".

According to Pepe Jeans India Managing Director Kavindra Mishra, Sidharth's popularity, expressed affinity for the brand, powerful persona and youth connect brings a compelling energy to their brand.

With this collaboration, Sidharth joins a star-studded global line-up including Ashton Kutcher, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Cara Delevigne all of whom have modelled for the brand over the years.

--IANS

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DMK leader M.K. Stalin on Thursday said the official team from Tamil Nadu that will be participating in the talks on the Cauvery river water issue should stick to the decision taken at the all-party meeting held here.

In a Facebook post, Stalin said the official team participating in the talks on the Cauvery river water issue should stress on setting up of the Cauvery Management Board within six weeks of the Supreme Court order delivered last month.

He said the official team should not agree with any other interim arrangement without the consent of the all political parties and the farmer associations.

On February 22, at a meeting of leaders of all political parties and representatives of farmer associations here, it was decided that Chief Minister K. Palaniswami would lead a delegation to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urge him to set up Cauvery Management Board and Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee.

However, Modi had suggested the Tamil Nadu delegation to meet the Union Minister for Water Resources first, which all the political parties in Tamil Nadu -- barring the ruling AIADMK -- said was an insult to the people of the state.

Later the central government decided to call a meeting of Chief Secretaries of four states -- Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry -- to discuss the Caurvery water issue on Friday.

The apex court on February 16 had ordered the central government to set up the Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee within six weeks.

The Supreme Court had reduced Tamil Nadu's share in the Cauvery water to 177.25 thousand million cubic feet (TMC), down from 192 TMC allocated by a tribunal in 2007.

--IANS

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At least five Taliban militants, including their local commander, were killed and three others wounded during an operation by Afghan intelligence special forces in Nangarhar province, an official said.

"Special Operations Forces of National Directorate of Security (NDS) raided to a hideout of Taliban militants in Sorkh Road district on Wednesday night, as a result five insurgents including their local commander were killed and three others wounded," Ataullah Khogiani, spokesman for provincial governor, told Xinhua news agency.

During the operation, 12 suspected militants were also arrested, he said, adding the security personnel also eliminated a vehicle, four motorbikes and an ammunition cache.

--IANS

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Tiger Shroff is an "amazing performer" and is a choreographer's actor, says choreographer Rahul Shetty.

Shetty worked with Tiger on the song "Beat pe booty" and this year's track "Mundiyan" from the forthcoming film "Baaghi 2".

On collaborating with the "Baaghi" actor, Shetty told IANS: "Tiger is a choreographer's actor. You can make him do anything. He will follow you and make your work look even more superior."

The audience loves Tiger's dancing skills. But what are his shortcomings?

"Yes, Tiger is an amazing performer. As far as his shortcomings are concerned, I know that he works really hard for everything, and that is how all his shortcomings become his power points," said the choreographer who has also worked with actors like Akshay Kumar and Varun Dhawan.

"Baaghi 2" is directed by Ahmed Khan, who is also a popular choreographer. Did he give suggestions to Shetty?

"Yes, he is the captain of the ship. He is an inspiration to me. So, it was like an examination for me to choreograph this song ('Mundiyan'). I tried my best to do justice to it," he said.

When he is not working on films, reality shows like "Nach Baliye" keep him busy.

"I am the child of reality shows. That is why I still choreograph reality shows and keep myself updated with the new styles and techniques. But yes, I have plans to do my own reality shows in future," said the choreographer, who became popular after participating in "Dance India Dance Doubles".

What about directing a dance film?

"I am just following in footsteps of my mentors, Ahmed Khan and Remo D'souza. So, I am going to direct a film in the near future for sure," said Shetty, who also acted in D'souza's 2013 film "ABCD: Any Body Can Dance".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The election defeat in Tripura "is a major setback" for the CPI-M and the Left, the Communist Party of India-Marxist has said.

"This is the first time the Left Front had to fight the BJP as its main opponent," said an editorial in the CPI-M journal "People's Democracy".

"The electoral loss must lead to a critical evaluation of our political, ideological and organisational work to counter the offensive of the BJP-RSS combine. The coming Party Congress should help us to equip the party to face the forthcoming battles effectively."

While blaming the BJP for many electoral ills, the CPI-M said that the BJP campaigned on a slogan of change.

"It looks like this has struck a chord with the young generation of voters, particularly the urban and tribal youth.

"Despite the all-round positive performance of the Left Front government, the fact remains that generating jobs for the educated youth posed a big challenge."

Saying the Tripura Assembly election had delivered "an unexpected verdict", the editorial said the BJP-IPFT alliance won a two-third majority of the seats polling 50.5 per cent (BJP- 43 per cent and IPFT 7.5 per cent).

The Left Front, which had been in office for 25 long years, got only 16 seats though it polled 45 per cent of the vote.

The editorial said the Congress saw a wholesale defection to the BJP. This resulted in the Congress vote share of 36.54 per cent in 2013 plunging to 1.8 per cent now.

It said the scale of the money pumped into Tripura before the elections was unprecedented.

"Well before the elections, a huge amount of money was deployed to win over the candidates of the other bourgeois parties. Mobile phone and motorcycles were distributed and various allurements provided to the ordinary people in selected areas. The bourgeois media in the state was suborned to project the BJP and mount a negative campaign against the Left Front government."

The CPI-M said it would have to examine carefully what has caused the alienation of sections of the tribal people.

"There has to be a critical examination of the work of the Left Front government and the functioning of the local bodies and panchayats to find out if links with the people were weakened in some sectors.

"Such an examination is also required for the Party organisation and work of the mass organisations."

--IANS

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BJP President Amit Shah and senior party leaders arrived here on Thursday ahead of formation of a BJP-led government in Tripura on Friday in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, informed party sources said here.

Apart from Modi, a host of Central ministers and leaders and Chief Ministers of several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled states would attend the swearing-in-ceremony of Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb and his Council of Ministers.

BJP's Tripura Pradesh Vice President Subal Bhowmik told IANS that Amit Shah, BJP's General Secretary Ram Madhav, General Secretary (Organisation) Ajay Jamwal and Assam minister and Tripura election-in-charge Himanta Biswa Sarma, among other leaders, "held a series of meetings with the state leaders to select the ministers, assembly Speaker, Deputy Speaker and other important functionaries".

He said that Sarma, who is the convenor of the BJP-led anti-Congress alliance, North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), on Wednesday held a meeting here with the saffron party's electoral ally IPFT (Indigenous People's Front of Tripura) and returned to Guwahati.

IPFT President Narendra Chandra Debbarma said the party has demanded four ministerial berths from the BJP and "we have discussed with Sarma and other leaders accordingly".

"We are yet to confirm how many ministerial berths would be offered to us. Discussions are still on," Debbarma told IANS.

Chief Minister-designate Deb announced on Tuesday that the party's tribal leader Jishnu Debbarma will be Deputy Chief Minister.

Tripura's royal family scion Jishnu Debbarma is the BJP nominee for Charilam assembly constituency (reserved for tribals), where election was countermanded following the death of the Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate and it would be held on Monday.

The BJP and the IPFT swept the February 18 polls, winning 43 of the 59 seats.

The BJP secured 35 seats in the 60-member Assembly and the IPFT, a tribal-based party, eight. The CPI-M got 16 seats while the Left Front partners -- Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party -- besides once main opposition Congress drew blank.

A non-Left government would assume office on Friday for the first time in a quarter of a century.

BJP's Bhowmik also said that in the Deb-led government there would be representation of woman, youth, leaders of tribals and Scheduled Castes and other backward communities.

Meanwhile, all the outgoing ministers, including Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, are leaving their official residences and checking into MLA hostel, party offices and rented houses.

West Tripura District Magistrate Milind Ramteke and West District Police chief Abhijit Saptarshi are supervising the administrative and security arrangements for the swearing-in-ceremony of the new BJP government at the Assam Rifles ground.

"People would attend the swearing-in-ceremony from all across the state. In view of the possible arrival of the Prime Minister and other VVIPs in Friday's swearing-in-ceremony, elaborate security arrangements are being put in place," Saptarshi told the media.
The attorney representing a porn star who is suing Donald Trump has said that the US President's personal lawyer had a restraining order issued against her and continues to pressurize her to keep silent, a media report said.

Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, has filed a lawsuit against Trump in which she cites multiple instances of the President's legal counsel, Michael Cohen, working to keep her from speaking out about an alleged sexual encounter, the CNN report said.

Clifford's attorney Michael Avenatti said a private mediator issued the temporary restraining order against her on behalf of Cohen on February 27, and has cautioned Clifford to keep quiet as recently as Wednesday.

"Earlier today (Wednesday), Cohen through his attorney, (Lawrence) Rosen, further threatened my client in an effort to prevent her from telling the truth about what really happened," Avenatti told CNN on Wednesday night.

"We do not take kindly to these threats, nor will we be intimidated."

According to the legal complaint filed in California state court, Clifford is claiming that a non-disclosure agreement is void because Trump never signed it himself.

The "hush" agreement allegedly regards an affair involving the two several years before Trump was in office.

Just weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen paid Clifford $130,000, an admission he made in a statement last month.

"Despite Trump's failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000.00 to be wired to the trust account of Clifford's attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Trump," the document stated.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders fielded questions about the payment and said Trump did not know about it, reports CNN.

"Not that I'm aware of," Sanders responded when pressed on whether Trump knew about the payment.

"Anything beyond what I've already given you, I would refer you to the President's outside counsel."

Sanders also said that "the arbitration was won in the President's favour", admitting for the first time that a non-disclosure agreement did exist, and that the President is involved.

When asked about the comments Sanders made regarding the arbitration, Avenatti told CNN: "President Trump hasn't won anything relating to Clifford."

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday presented the "Nari Shakti Puraskar" here to 39 individual and institutional awardees from fields as diverse as sport, art, social work, science, conservation, agriculture, education, security, handicrafts and defence.

Many of the awardees have themselves faced severe discrimination and tragedies in their lives, but have risen above these hardships to empower themselves and help others along their journeys of empowerment.

They received certificates and cash prize of Rs 1 lakh each.

The awardees include Jayamma Bhandari, K. Syamalakumari, Sindhutai Sapkal, Raipur, Urmila Balawant Apte, Purnima Barman, Justice Gita Mittal among individuals and Beti Zindabad Bakery, AVANI Organization, One Stop Centre, Raipur among the organisations.

Jayamma Bhandari has been working for over 20 years to rehabilitate sex workers. She has rehabilitated over 1,000 sex workers and supports around 3,500 other sex workers.

Over 3,500 children of sex workers have been provided vocational training through her efforts.

K. Syamalakumari is the first known female temple Mural Artist in Kerala. Traditionally, painting on temple walls is dominated by males. Syamalakumari has painted, preserved and restored traditional Mural Art in the temples of Kerala.

Sindhutai Sapkal has set up five large homes across Maharashtra for orphans by raising money through public lectures and private donation, the largest of which in Hadapsar Pune has 300 orphans in it. She also helps widows who are thrown out of their families.

Urmila Balawant Apte is an advocate of women's rights and has spent decades working for the cause of gender equality. She founded the BhartiyaStree Shakti in 1988 where she worked to eradicate discrimination at all levels and recognise women's contribution to the family and nation-building.

Purnima Barman is a wildlife biologist who has been making tremendous efforts to protect an endangered stork called 'Hargilla'. Around 1,200 of these birds remain today and about 800 of them reside in Assam.

To address these procedural bottlenecks and institutional barriers, Justice Mittal as a judge of the Delhi High Court spearheaded the Vulnerable Witness Project.

It emerged as an unparalleled example of jurisprudential intervention and judicial leadership in which the legal and institutional barriers for access to justice to women were removed.

In first of its kind, Chhattisgarh government has come up with a unique initiative of setting-up a bakery unit for survivors of human trafficking, as its pilot project under flagship of "Beti Zindabad" campaign in Jashpur.

Started by Rashmi Bharati and Rajneesh Jain in 1997, AVANI in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, is a community built on the principles of sustainability and community-centric rural development programmes.

One Stop Centre (OSC) -- "Sakhi" -- in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, provides 24/7 integrated services to women affected by violence, under one roof.

About 1,840 women have availed services at the centre, till date.

--IANS

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This refers to Don't waste the bank scam crisis by Somasekhar Sundaresan. The author makes very pertinent observations on the most relevant and contemporary topic of the day.

The blessing in disguise is that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could wake up and act swiftly to combat the threatening maladies of the public sector banks (PSB). We do not know how many such malice driven episodes were swept under the carpet for long during the earlier regime. A separate holding company, may be under the Banks Board Bureau by amending the law, should be set ...
Do not miss Older people love to gripe about the younger lot. And their gripes are remarkably similar.

As two lawyers began negotiating the next date of hearing with the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), one of the jury members spoke about his experience as a practising advocate. When the lawyers pointed out it would be difficult for them to appear before the tribunal on certain days because they would be attending other cases in other cities, the NCLT jury member described how he would regularly take an evening Shatabdi Express to Delhi from another city where he would be arguing ...
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth on Thursday slammed as "barbaric" the controversial comment of H Raja on Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar, but said with the BJP leader expressing regret, the issue need not be "magnified" further.

"Raja's comment indicating that Periyar's statue be removed and the subsequent vandalism were a barbaric act. I strongly condemn it," he said.

"It is my humble view that the issue need not be magnified further as Raja has expressed regret," Rajinikanth, who is all set to launch his political party, said.

His comments come in the background of continuing incidents of defacing of statues of various leaders in the country.

On March 6, a statue of Periyar was defiled in Tirupattur in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu after Raja posted a comment on Facebook that the rationalist leader's statue would meet the same fate of Communist leader Lenin's statue in Tripura.

However, facing flak from political parties in the state, the BJP leader later deleted the post and blamed his social media administrator for the lapse.

The state unit of BJP has distanced itself from the post, saying it was a personal view.

Raja in his deleted post had said: "Who is Lenin and what is the connection between Lenin and India? What connection India has with Communists? Today Lenin's statue removed in Tripura, tomorrow it will be the statue of E V Ramasamy in Tamil Nadu".

Rajinikanth is the latest to condemn the BJP leader.

Ruling AIADMK, DMK, MDMK and several other parties had strongly condemned Raja's remarks with most demanding his arrest.

Rajinikanth's contemporary and Makkal Neethi Maiam founder, Kamal Haasan had also hit out Raja's comments.

Rajinikanth had earlier this week made his first major speech wherein he emphasized that he would provide good administration like late chief minister and AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran.

(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.)
Tripura's outgoing chief minister will be on Thursday shifting to his new residence - the CPI(M) state committee office.

Sarkar, who has ruled the state for 20 years, is in the process of checking out of his official residence on Marx-Engels Sarani, about 500 metres from his new home, CPI(M) state party secretary Bijan Dhar told reporters.

"He would be moving in to the party office in a few hours. Sarkar would be living in one room of the party office guest house with his wife Panchali Bhattacharya," he said.

CPI(M) Office Secretary Haripada Das said the veteran leader had asserted that he would "eat what is cooked in the party office kitchen".

"He has already sent packets of books and clothes and some CDs to the party office. Sarkar might shift to a government quarter if he is allocated one by the new government," Das said.

Sarkar's wife had earlier told PTI that she would be donating Marxist literature and books to the party office library and the Birchandra Central library here.

The couple has no children.

The BJP had demolished the Left citadel in the recently concluded Assembly election in Tripura, ending 25 years of uninterrupted rule of the CPI(M)-led Left Front and the 20-year reign of Sarkar.
The CBI's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) here has registered an FIR against 11 clerks of the Income Tax office in Nagpur and one posted in Rajasthan for allegedly securing jobs through fraudulent means.

The bureau has also charged some unidentified officials of the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) with issuing letters of appointment to the accused without verifying discrepancies in their admit cards issued for the examination for the posts, as per a copy of the FIR filed on March 6.

The copy of the FIR has been posted by the CBI on its website.

The selection process, which included a written exam and skill test, was conducted by the SSC between 2012 and 2014.

The fraud came to light when differences were found in signatures of these employees on their admit cards for the written exam and the cards issued to them for the skill tests.

According to the FIR, the employees allegedly deceived the invigilators by bringing in dummy candidates for their exam.

The accused allegedly inter-posed and mixed their photographs with those of the dummy candidates who appeared in their exam.

The accused also signed on their admit cards in a simplified way so that the dummy candidates could easily copy their signatures and appear in the exams in their place, said the FIR.

Some officials of the SSC issued appointment letters to these candidates without verifying the discrepancies in the signatures on the admit cards, it said.

The FIR has been filed against two stenographers and nine multi-tasking staff members at the Income Tax office in Nagpur and a clerk posted at the I-T office in Jhunjhunu city of Rajasthan.

The 12 clerks and the unidentified SSC officials have been booked under IPC sections pertaining to forgery, cheating by impersonation, making false documents, and other relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

When contacted, a senior police official of the CBI's ACB here said the case was under investigation and refused to divulge any further details.

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Two men were arrested for allegedly planning to kill a woman, who was a witness in the murder case of her brother, police said today.

The accused, Rovin alias Mohan and Kartik alias Lokesh Kalyan, were arrested in Rohini yesterday by a team of Delhi Polices Special Cell, said P S Kushwah, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell). Two .315 bore pistols and four live cartridges were recovered from their possession, he added.

In the last few months, incidents of firing between rival gang members and at witnesses have been reported from near Rohini Court and its premises. Following such incidents, a team was formed to identify and trace the accused, said Kushwah.

In 2008, Munna Singh was killed by Robin Sharma. The accused was making advances towards a family friend of Singh and when Singh resented it, he was allegedly killed by Sharma, the police said. The woman's brother Chintan was a witness in the murder of Munna Singh and was killed.

Yesterday, Sharma, who is lodged in jail, was to be produced in Rohini Court for a hearing in the Chintan murder case.

The Special Cell sleuths learnt that the gangster was planning to killed Chintans sister since she is a witness in the case. Since the proceedings could not take place yesterday, the two accused planned to kill her while she was on her way back home, the police said.

The duo were arrested from near the court, they said.

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Heads of the states from 23 nations including France, Australia and Sri Lanka will attend the first International Solar Alliance Summit on March 11 here.

The event is being co-hosted by India and France to promote solar energy.

"Besides 23 heads of states senior country representatives including deputy prime ministers and energy ministries have confirmed their participation so far in the day lone Ist ISA Summit on March 11, 2018," an official said.

He said several global bankers have confirmed their participation at the event including Werner Hoyer, President & Chairman, European Investment Bank, K V Kamath, President, BRICS Development Bank, Nandita Parshad, Managing Director, Energy & Natural Resources, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Banbang Susantono, Vice President, ASIAN Development Bank.

President Ram Nath Kovind will co-host the summit with French President Emmanuel Macron. It will focus on various aspects of promoting solar energy in 121 countries associated with International Solar Alliance (ISA) like credit mechanism, crowd funding and sharing of technology breakthroughs.

The summit will be held at Rashtrapati Bhavan's Cultural Centre.

ISA is a treaty-based international body for promotion of solar energy in alliance with 121 countries, which are fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

The Summit will discuss various projects being prepared by different countries in areas including rural electrification, off grid solar, water supply and irrigation.

India has set an ambitious target of having 100 GW of solar energy capacities by 2022. It is close to achieving 20 GW in the current fiscal itself and plans to auction 30 GW solar projects each in 2018-19 and 2019-20.

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In a major success for Chhattisgarh police, 29 naxals, including 11 women, surrendered today in insurgency-hit Sukma district.

The 29 ultras, mostly lower-rung cadres, turned themselves in before Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police Shalabh Sinhaciting disappointment with the "hollowideology" of Maoists and violence, Sukma SP Abhishek Meena told PTI.

The ultras were accompanied by local villagers who expressed their anger against the "anti-development and anti-tribal attitude of naxals", he said.

The surrendered Maoists were working for different sub-groups and frontal outfits of outlawed CPI (Maoist), including Jantana Sarkar (peoples government), jan militia, sangham member, in Konta area located in southern part of Sukma, the SP said.

As per the policy of the Chhattisgarh government, necessary assistance will be provided to them, he added.

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As many as 54 cases of violations of air safety norms by Air India and private airlines were reported this year till February, the government said today.

"There were 352 safety violations by Air India and private airlines in the year 2016 whereas the number of violations in the year 2017 was 269," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha told the Lok Sabha.

In a written reply, he said the number of such cases was 54 this year till February.

According to the minister, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has taken various measures to maintain the safe operation of aircraft and high international standard.

To a query on whether there have been cases of involvement of airport personnel in foul play and smuggling in cargo at airports, Sinha replied in the affirmative.

Citing information from the Central Board of Excise and Customs (Anti-Smuggling Unit), he said a total of 13 cases of foul play and smuggling involving 31 officials were taken up in 2014-15.

In 2015-16, there were 15 such cases involving 21 officials and 9 cases involving 13 officials in 2016-17, he added.

"... action against those found to be guilty of involvement has been taken in accordance with the applicable rules in this regard," Sinha said in a separate written reply.

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Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid is scheduled to visit tomorrow a small hamlet in East Khasi Hills district, where he had facilitated the setting up of a refugee camp during his country's liberation war, a govt official said here today.

His wife, Rashida Khanam, and other dignitaries from the neighbouring country will be accompanying him, East Khasi Hills district deputy commissioner P S Dkhar said.

"The President is set to visit Balat village tomorrow. Balat is special for him as he was involved in setting up a refugee camp there 47 yeeas ago," Dkhar told PTI.

Hamid had once undergone training with the Indian Army in the East Khasi Hills district, a Bangladesh High Commission official said.

The Bangladesh President will also visit Laban Bidhan House in the state capital and the bungalow, where Tagore had stayed during his visit to Shillong, the official said.

Governor Ganga Prasad will host a state dinner for the president at the Raj Bhavan, where he will spend the night before leaving for Delhi the next day to attend the International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit.

District authorities have beefed up security in and around the village to ensure that no untoward incident occurs during the Bangladesh President's visit.

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The CBI today moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

The move by the agency came months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of October 12 last year acquitting the couple.

The CBI filed an appeal challenging the high court order acquitting the Talwar couple, CBI's spokesperson said.

The high court had freed them of the charges on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

A CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013 in connection with the case.

Before the high court's order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars' Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over a shoddy probe into the case which was making national headlines, the case was handed over to the CBI on a recommendation by the then chief minister Mayawati.

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Activists from NGOs and mass organisations working on gender issues today staged a march in the heart of the national capital to mark International Women's Day.

Led by the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), the groups walked to Parliament Street from Mandi House.

"We have come together to celebrate our solidarity and our resistance to the brazen patriarchal, casteist, communal and regressive forces that are operating with utter impunity in the country," an activist said, addressing a public meeting at Jantar Mantar.

The participants shouted slogans such as "Nari mukti zindabad" and "Nari ekta zindabad" as they pledged to continue working on women's issues.

"Together we reaffirm our commitment to a violence-free, just society," the activist said at Jantar Mantar.

March 8 is celebrated across the world as International Women's Day.

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Leading stock exchange NSE today said markets regulator Sebi has returned its consent application in a high-profile probe into the co-location issue due to ongoing investigations in the case.

The exchange had filed the settlement application with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in July last year.

It had sought a settlement with the regulator in connection with a probe relating to allegations of unfair access to its high frequency trading systems to some brokers.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) said it can file the consent application after the completion of the investigations and it intends to do the same in due course.

The bourse said it is committed to resolving the regulatory issues expeditiously.

A consent settlement allows entities to settle charges by paying a penalty without admission or denial of guilt.

According to regulatory sources, Sebi has returned NSE's settlement plea as the probe is at critical position with regard to brokers and former senior executives of the exchange.

The exchange's Rs 10,000 crore initial public offer has been delayed because of probe in the co-location matter and the regulator had earlier issued show cause notices to several individuals and the exchange, while the role of some brokers is also being probed.

"The timeline for the IPO is dependent on the resolution of the regulatory matters with Sebi and we are hopeful we will be able to do the IPO in fiscal 2019," NSE said.

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Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar has come out in support of students of the city-based Tata Institute Of Social Sciences (TISS), who have been protesting against the withdrawal of financial aid provided to them.

Ambedkar demanded that the Maharashtra government release funds for the distribution of scholarships to students across the state, and said the issue will also be raised in the ongoing session of the Legislature.

A section of students has been on strike since February 21 after the TISS administration asked many of them, who have been chosen for government scholarships but are yet to get the money, to clear their dues related to tuitions, dining and hostel fees.

The students of the research institute have also been protesting against the withdrawal of financial aid provided to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) scholars.

On March 5, the TISS students' union announced its decision to end the strike, but a section of students continued with the agitation.

"The fight for educational rights has been going on since long, but it is worth appreciating that you people (students) have been fighting not only for your own rights but for the upcoming generations too," Ambedkar said addressing the agitating students on the TISS campus yesterday.

The situation at colleges in small towns is even worse where students have been not paid scholarships for more than three years, the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh chief said.

This has led to several students discontinuing their studies, he added.

Ambedkar also criticised a recent Government Resolution, according to which the state will only fund 30 per cent of scholarships of the OBCs (other backward classes).

"We have decided to raise this issue by taking out processions before the social justice departments in every district," said the former MP and grandson of B R Ambedkar.

TISS students' union general secretary Fahad Ahmed said they were trying to hold talks with the institute's administration to resolve the issue.

He threatened that students may even go on a hunger strike if their demands were not met.

The union's charter of demands include the rollback of the notification asking students from the 2016-18 and 2017-19 batches eligible for the Post-Matric Scholarships to pay their dues and the scrapping of a new rule which stipulates that these students pay their fees upfront.

Asked about the students' agitation, P K Shahjahan, the dean, students affairs, TISS, said an empowered committee of the institute will look into the matter and meet later during the day, and he is hopeful for a positive outcome.

The institute had earlier claimed that despite the agitation, admissions and examinations were continuing, as per the regular, schedule on all its campuses.

The TISS had in a statement said that it was also financially impacted by these dues.

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Adding to the list of statues of leaders being vandalised in various parts of the country, a bust of Dalit leader B R Ambedkar in a residential locality here was found defaced today, triggering a protest by locals, police said



The bust, placed inside a structure covered with a grill in a residential neighbourhood in Tiruvotriyur, was splattered with paint.

As of the defacement spread, people in the north Chennai area staged a protest. A police team led by Deputy Police Commissioner (DCP) G Shashank Sai visited the spot and assured action against the culprits.

"Based on a complaint from the local people, we have registered an FIR and two special teams have been formed to trace the culprits," the DCP said.

More police pickets have been posted in the area for maintenance of law and order, he said.

A series of incidents of desecration of statues of various leaders, including Ambedkar, rationalist E V Ramasamy "Periyar" and Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, have been reported from different parts of the country. The incidents began after statues of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin were pulled down in Tripura following the BJP's victory in the Assembly elections, ending 25 years of Communist rule.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly condemned the vandalism and said stern action would be taken against those found guilty.

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The quantum of fraud at Punjab National Bank, allegedly carried out by diamantaire Nirav Modi, is not likely to increase from Rs 127 billion, economic affairs secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said here on Thursday.

Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi have been accused of defrauding PNB through the use of fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) to get credit from overseas branches of Indian

"We have not seen any more evidence," Garg said when asked if the funds involved in the fraud could go up further.

PNB had initially reported that the amount involved in the fraud was about $1.77 billion, but later revised it upwards by another $204.25 million.

While talking to reporters on the sidelines of an IVCA event here, Garg further said the Department of Financial Services in the ministry has asked to screen all NPA or bad loan accounts.

"...those are being screened by the respective If something emerges we will know but at this stage we don't see anything coming up or anything having come up," he said.

The ministry has instructed public sector banks to scan all Non Performing Asset (NPA) accounts of more than Rs 50 crore for possible fraud. Banks have been asked to report all cases of fraud to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Congress cadres from Andhra Pradesh today held a protest march here for special status for their state and were detained by the Delhi Police when they tried to move towards the Parliament complex.

Led by Rajya Sabha MP KVP Ramachandra Rao the scores of Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee cadres staged a demonstration on Parliament Street raising their demand for special status category for the state.

During the protest, Rao told PTI, "According to the information I have received, the prime minister has not received the resignation letters.

"If they really submit the letters, it means the TDP has recognised the three-year-long fight of the Congress. They will be appreciated for taking an initiative to question Modi," he said.

The 69-year-old MP, who was also detained, said , "If an Act of Parliament is not implemented by the Centre it is shame to the country. We are not asking for something more, but just the provision which has been mentioned in the Act."



The Left parties - the CPI and CPI(M) - too held a protest march from Andhra Pradesh Bhavan to Shastri Bhawan demanding the special status for the southern state.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) had last night decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government for their demand of special status for Andhra Pradesh and asked two of its ministers in the Union Cabinet to tender their resignations.

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Two Indian authors are among 16 from around the world to make the cut for the UKs annual Womens Prize for Fiction longlist released in London today to coincide with the International Women's Day.

Arundhati Roy's second work of fiction, 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness', and Meena Kandasamys tale of a violent marriage, 'When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife', are in the running for the 30,000-pound prize set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English throughout the world.

"What is striking about the list, apart from the wealth of talent, is that women writers refuse to be pigeon-holed. We have searing social realism, adventure, comedy, poetic truths, ingenious plots and unforgettable characters. Women of the world are a literary force to be reckoned with," said Sarah Sands, a BBC editor and chair of the judges.

Others on this year's list include British Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie for 'Home Fire'; Nicola Barker for H(A)PPY; Elif Batuman for 'The Idiot'; Joanna Cannon for 'Three Things About Elsie'; Charmaine Craig for 'Miss Burma'; Jennifer Egan for 'Manhattan Beach' and Imogen Hermes Gowar for 'The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock'.

The list also includes Jessie Greengrass for 'Sight'; Gail Honeyman for 'Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine'; Fiona Mozley for 'Elmet'; Sarah Schmidt for 'See What I Have Done'; Rachel Seiffert for 'A Boy in Winter'; Kit de Waal for 'The Trick to Time'; and Jesmyn Ward for 'Sing, Unburied, Sing'.

This years longlist covers both new and well-established writers, like Booker Prize-winning Roy, and a range of genres.

There are six first novels on the list and four nationalities are represented including India the UK, US and Australia.

Roy, 56, who won the Booker Prize for her debut novel 'The God of Small Things' in 1997, had been longlisted for the 2017 Booker for 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness' but missed out being shortlisted.

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote international fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible, the Womens Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK between April 2017 and March 2018.

Any woman writing in English whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter is eligible.

Sands leads this year's team of judges that include British Indian journalist and broadcaster Anita Anand, comedian Katie Brand, Womens Equality Party co-founder Catherine Mayer and actor Imogen Stubbs.

The 2018 Womens Prize for Fiction will be awarded on June 6 at an awards ceremony in central London.

The winner, who will join the likes of previous winners Lionel Shriver, Naomi Alderman and Zadie Smith, will receive an anonymously endowed cheque for 30,000 pounds and a limited-edition bronze figurine known as a Bessie, created and donated by English artist Grizel Niven.

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The opposition led by the Congress and the NCP came down heavily on the BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra today over the Bhima-Koregaon caste violence, calling it an act of "state-sponsored terrorism".

They also raised the issue of the demolition of a statue of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin in Tripura, where the BJP recently swept to power.

Raising a short duration debate in the Legislative Council on the Bhima-Koregaon riots, Sharad Ranpise (Congress) wanted to know why the government has appointed the Chief Secretary to the probe probe panel headed by a retired High Court judge.

He claimed this was done to influence the probe into the January clashes in Bhima-Koregaon village in Pune district and alleged the Fadnavis government is trying to divide communities.

"A political party with communal ideology was behind the oppression of the downtrodden castes. The pulling down of a Lenin's statue in Tripura was lauded by a secretary of that party," he said.

Ranpise urged the government not to create disharmony among different castes and refrain from practicing the British -era divide and rule policy.

"Why the police did nothing to stop a large mob of 500 to 700 people armed with stones when they were charging at the war memorial (near Bhima-Koregaon). This was because the riots were an act of state-sponsored terrorism," he said.

The Congress legislator said the incident was a fallout of two-and-a-half thousand years of oppression of the downtrodden castes by the upper castes.

"Communal harmony is being disturbed by raking up issues like cow protection, love jihad, ghar wapsi," he said.

Referring to the commemoration of the 200 years of Bhima-Koregaon war of January 1, 1818 in which the British forces defeated the Peshwa army, he wanted to know as to why senior ministers visited the venue on December 31 when they knew the event was scheduled the next day.

Jaidev Gaikwad (NCP) alleged the work on disturbing communal harmony was going on for the last 10 to 15 years.

He argued the trouble in Bhima-Koregaon was fomented by "outsiders".

Vijay Girkar (BJP), however, said heavy deployment of police personnel prevented escalation of violence.

Jogendra Kawade (Peoples Republican Party) alleged the riots were an organised attack on the Dalit community.

The violence had erupted when Dalit groups were celebrating the bicentenary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle in which the forces of the British East India Company defeated the Peshwas army.

Dalit leaders commemorate the British victory, as it is believed soldiers from the Mahar community then considered untouchable were part of the East India Companys forces. The Peshwas were Brahmins, and the victory is seen as a symbol of assertiveness by Dalits.

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Bihar Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar today said the state government will compensate farmers who suffered losses due to poor maize crop.

Replying to a question by BJP member Tara Kishore Prasad in the state Assembly, Kumar said Bihar government will compensate all such maize farmers who incurred losses owing to maize plants not yielding grains.

The state government has decided to give compensation to farmers in Seemanchal, Kosi and other districts after carrying out a proper inquiry, he said.

The minister said that the inquiry showed that farmers who sowed seeds in October, could get 50 per cent of grains in maize plant, while those who sowed in the first week of November, had 100 per cent grains.

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Bank of Baroda and Bank of India together have an exposure of Rs 174.58 crore to the South Africa based scam tainted Gupta family of companies, the state-owned lenders in separate stock exchange filings said.

Bank of Baroda said it has a "credit exposure" equivalent of Rs 147 crore in four accounts of the Gupta family group and is confident of recovering the due amount.

Bank of India said it has an exposure of Rs 27.58 crore to the companies and has a back up of over 100 per cent security against the loan.

In its filing, Bank of Baroda said the two of the group borrowers are under business rescue operations and "we are adequately secured and are confident of the recovery of our dues".

Further, in the accounts not covered by business rescue, the borrowers have proposed a plan for full repayment of the dues.

"Bank will make provisions as required by the regulators on the reclassification of the accounts.

The bank's provision coverage ratio at 68.03 per cent is one of the highest in the industry," it added.

The other public sector lender said the bank has sanctioned certain credit facilities to Gupta family group in the past as per laid down norms.

"The present outstanding is Rs 27.58 crore and it is backed by more than 100 per cent security," it said.

The two lenders were responding to clarifications sought by the stock exchanges.

Bank of Baroda earlier on on February 7 had informed exchanges that the South African Reserve Bank was investigating allegations regarding compliance lapses at the banks branch there and it is cooperating in the matter.

The stock exchanges had sought clarification from the bank regarding a report citing its involvement with a particular Indian origin family in South Africa extending to a political scandal there.

The report referred to the bank's dealings with Uttar Pradesh hailed Gupta family, now settled in South Africa and follows information furnished by the bank to exchanges in August 2017 about paying Rs 54.5 million as penalty that was imposed on its South Africa branch by the local regulator.

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The Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) Chief Hagrama Mohilary has assured the leaders of the All Assam Gorkha Students Union (AAGSU) and other organisations that the land rights of the Gorkha people of Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD) will remain intact.

Regarding the ongoing controversy over the new land policy of the BTC which governs BTAD comprising four districts, Hagrama told reporters yesterday that all the land rights of the protected class of the people as defined in Chapter X of Assam Land Revenue Regulation, 1886 would be applicable in the BTC area like other parts of Assam.

Mohilary made the statement after meeting delegates of the AAGSU, the Assam Nepali Sahitya Sabha and the Gorkha Sanmiloni among others.

AAGSU president Prem Tamang told reporters that the discussion with the BTC Chief "was very positive as they have realised their mistakes and clarified the matter in details".

Lakhi Sedai, General Secretary of Assam Gorkha Sammilon, said if the Council failed to fulfil their commitments than the organisation would again be compelled to launch agitation against the BTC.

A 24-hour BTAD bandh on March 6 had turned violent forcing police to open fire to control protesters in Chirang district where two persons were critically injured and another person sustained severe burn injuries in neighbouring Kokrajhaar district.

The bandh was called by the United Organisation Coordination Committee comprising non-Bodo organisations in Kokrajhar, including the All Koch-Rajbonshi Students Union (AKRSU), All Bodo Minority Students Union (ABMSU), All Assam Santhal Students Association, All Assam Gorkha Students Union, Nath Jugi Sanmilan among others.

They opposed the land rights policy of the BTC barring people living in the Council area from selling their land to non-tribals and demanding land and political rights for non Bodos in the BTAD.

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A bus veered off course and plunged 100 meters down a gorge in Peru's southeastern Andean region of Ayacucho, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring more than 20, police said.

The bus, which had more than 50 people on board, tumbled off the road in the early hours of the morning on the Interoceanic Highway, which connects Peru with Brazil.

"We have so far recorded 10 deaths after a bus fell into a 100 metre (325 feet) gorge," said Jose Ramirez, an police official in Puquio, the closest town to where the accident took place.

The bus was traveling from the capital Lima to Querobamba, Sucre province, which is located over 3,500 metres above sea level.

Over 20 injured passengers were taken to hospital in Puquio and Huanta, another nearby town.

There were two other deadly bus crashes in Peru in January and February, which killed 97 people in total.

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A District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawan was today injured in an encounter with naxals in a dense forest in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, police said.

The skirmish took place in forests between Mudvendi and Karka villages under Gangaloor police station limits when a team of DRGwas out on a search operation, Deputy Inspector General of Police (south Bastar range) Sundarraj P told PTI.

The patrolling team came under heavy firing from ultras between Mudvendi and Karka, around 450 kms away from here, that led to exchange of fire.

Security forces retaliated strongly following which naxalites fled from the spot, he said.

"Head Constable Shyam Durgam sustainedminor injuries on his left knee and right eye in the incident," said the DIG.

After receiving information about the encounter, reinforcement was rushed to the place and the injured jawan was shifted to district hospital where his condition was said to be normal, he said.

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Campaigning will end tomorrow for the high stakes bye-elections to the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats, with political parties leaving no stone unturned to drum up support for their candidates ahead of polling on Sunday.

The bypolls were necessitated after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya vacated the Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats respectively, following their election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.

For the BJP, Gorakhpur is significant as it is the bastion of the chief minister, who has represented the seat in the Lok Sabha five times. Prior to Yogi Adityanath, the seat was thrice represented in Parliament by his mentor Yogi Avaidyanath.

Phulpur, once the bastion of the Congress and represented by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, witnessed a saffron surge in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when Maurya won the seat.

The bye-elections are expected to witness a triangular contest between the ruling BJP, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress.

The saffron party has fielded Kaushalendra Singh Patel from Phulpur and Upendra Dutt Shukla from Gorakhpur against the SP's Pravin Nishad and Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel respectively. Sureetha Kareem is the Congress candidate from Gorakhpur. The party has fielded Manish Mishra from Phulpur.

There are ten candidates in the fray from Gorakhpur, while there are 22 candidates contesting from Phulpur.

"The lotus (BJP's poll symbol) will bloom in both the seats. I have no doubt. The very fact that people are talking mostly about BJP's victory margin is itself an indicator that the party is going to win. You can rest assured that we are going to improve our margin in both the seats," Deputy Chief Minister Maurya told PTI.

Maurya said that as far as the vote-share was concerned, "60 per cent is ours and the rest is for others to share".

Adityanath has termed the bye-elections a rehearsal for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Speaking at a public meeting in Pipraich, he said, "The bypolls are a rehearsal for the 2019 parliamentary election. Work for the present election and also work for 2019 (Lok Sabha election) and win all 80 seats of the state for Prime Minister Narendra Modi."



According to the Election Commission, there 19.61 lakh voters in Phulpur parliamentary constituency, while there are 19.49 lakh voters in Gorakhpur parliamentary.

The ruling BJP did not only win both the seats in the 2014 general elections but also swept the state Assembly polls last year.

However, this time the party faces a new challenge as the SP contestants have the backing of BSP.

BSP chief Mayawati had recently said that while her party had not fielded any candidate from Phulpur or Gorakhpur, but this did not mean that party workers will not cast their votes.

"They will in fact exercise their voting rights appropriately... As per my earlier directives, the BSP workers will vote for a candidate who will be in a position to defeat the BJP, and there is nothing wrong in it," Mayawati had said.

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Actor David Oyelowo has said he was surprised to find out that his "Gringo" co-star Charlize Theron swears like a sailor.

The 41-year-old actor also said she is one of the bravest people he knows.

"She's pretty foul-mouthed. That's something from day one I was like, 'Wow!' Especially because she's so debonair and elegant, and then she has the mouth of the sailor.

"But I love her for the fact that she's always 100 per cent herself. She's one of the bravest people I know," Oyelowo told E!



When Theron was asked if her co-actor was right, she agreed but said she did not curse in front of her children.

"There are variations of it, mother f--ker, f--k you. There are many variations you can go with.

"I tend to say it under my breath. I know what my responsibilities are as a parent. It's not like the truck driver comes home. I've definitely stubbed my toe and said s--t or something like that and my kids are like, 'Mom!'" she said.

Theron shares son Jackson and daughter August with former partner Stuart Townsend.

The actor recalled telling the film's team, "Listen, we don't have a swear jar. This is how adults speak sometimes. One day when you're an adult, you'll get to speak like this. But not now.

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A parliamentary panel has asked the home ministry to check the "disturbing" trend of local youths in Jammu and Kashmir joining militancy and "choke" the financing and supply of arms to terrorist outfits.

The parliamentary standing committee on home affairs, headed by senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, also observed that there is a "sinister and complex connection" between the simultaneous rise in stone-pelting incidents and 'fidayeen' (suicide) attacks on the establishments of security forces.

The committee, in its report submitted to Parliament, said it was aware of the disturbing trend of recruiting and training of local youths by the militants in the light of the numerous attempts foiled by the security forces.

"There has been a rise in the number of law and order incidents, particularly incidents of stone pelting which seems to have become a regular feature in some parts of Kashmir. Numerous incidents of picketing of police stations and snatching of rifles from police and paramilitary personnel point towards local sourcing of arms," it said.

The panel said while the law and order incidents have kept the security forces busy, the militants, meanwhile, have found time to reorganise themselves and perpetrate terrorist attacks on the forces.

"The committee recommends that the ministry must work towards comprehensively breaking this nexus through a multi-pronged strategy that encompasses preventing the youth from joining the militant ranks, choking the financing and supply of arms to terrorist outfits and simultaneously launching counter insurgency operations throughout the Kashmir region to identify and capture the existing militants," it said.

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Following is the chronology of events of a case in which the Supreme Court today granted relief to Kerala-based Hadiya, a Muslim convert, and set aside the state High Court order annulling her marriage to a Muslim man, Shafin Jahan:



* May 24, 2017: Kerala HC declares "null and void" the marriage of 24-year-old Hadiya, a Muslim convert, allegedly performed after she was abducted and wrongfully confined in an "illegal Islamic conversion centre" in Malappuram district.

* Aug 4: SC seeks reply of National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Kerala govt on a plea of Shafin Jahan challenging HC order annulling his marriage with Hadiya.

* Aug 10: NIA moves SC seeking an order to probe various aspects of Jahan's plea. SC orders Kerala Police to share with NIA the probe details of the case described by the HC as an instance of "love jihad".

* Aug 16: SC orders NIA to probe the case of conversion and marriage of Hadiya to Jahan, as the agency claims a "pattern" was emerging in Kerala.

* Sep 20: Plea in SC seeking recall of its order directing the NIA to investigate the case.

* Oct 3: SC says it would examine whether HC can exercise its power under writ jurisdiction to annul the marriage of a Muslim man with a Hindu woman who had converted to Islam before tying the nuptial knot.

* Oct 7: Kerala govt tells SC that Muslim marriage case didn't warrant NIA probe.

* Oct 30: SC asks Hadiya's father to produce her on November 27.

* Nov 21: Hadiya's father moves SC for in-camera proceedings.

* Nov 22: SC refuses urgent hearing for in-camera proceedings.

* Nov 23: NIA files status report of probe in SC.

* Nov 27: SC frees Hadiya from her parents' custody, sends her to college to pursue her studies, even as she pleaded that she should be allowed to go with her husband.

* Jan 23, 2018: SC says it was concerned about the choice of an adult to marry someone and made it clear that the NIA cannot probe the marital status of the couple.

* Feb 20: Hadiya files affidavit in SC saying she had willingly converted to Islam and wanted to remain a Muslim. She also sought for permission to live as Jahan's wife.

* Feb 22: SC questions whether the HC could nullify a marriage and if a roving inquiry could be ordered into the issue of consent between two adults to marry.

* Mar 7: Hadiya's father files affidavit in SC claiming that his efforts prevented his daughter from being transported to "extremist-controlled territories" of Syria to be used as a "sex slave or a human bomb".

* Mar 8: SC restores Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan, sets aside Kerala HC's annulment order. SC also allows NIA to continue its probe in the matter.

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Amid a political crisis in the Maldives, India today said it is closely watching the evolving situation in the island nation which was a "close and friendly" neighbour.

Responding to a question in the Rajya Sabha on whether the Maldives' closeness to Beijing and socio-political clout of Islamic radicals in that country could jeopardise India's interests in the region, Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh said, "The government keeps a constant watch on all developments having a bearing on India's security."



In a written reply, the minister said, "The government has been closely monitoring the evolving situation in Maldives. As a close and friendly neighbour, India wishes to see a stable, peaceful and prosperous Maldives that meets the aspirations of the Maldivian people."



India is close touch with its "key partners", including the United States, on the recent developments in the Maldives, Singh added.

President Abdulla Yameen declared emergency on February 5 after the Supreme Court ordered the release of a group of opposition leaders, who had been convicted in widely-criticised trials.

Among them was exiled ex-president Mohamed Nasheed. The court said his trial was unconstitutional.

The emergency was extended for another 30 days on February 20. India had expressed "deep dismay" over the Maldivian parliament accepting President Yameen's recommendation to extend the state of emergency by another 30 days.

There has been international condemnation of the Maldivian government's moves, including the imposition of emergency.

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Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President G Parameshwara has not ruled out induction of a few more members from other parties to fight the upcoming assembly polls, days after three MLAs joined the party fold.

At the same time, he said the winning potential of the candidates who want to join the party will be the key factor for gaining entry.

Three MLAs -- B S Anand Singh (BJP MLA representing Vijayanagar), B Nagendra (independent MLA representing Kudligi) and Ashok Kheny (Karnataka Makkala Paksha MLA from Bidar) -- were inducted in recent weeks, sparking criticism from the opposition that the Congress was roping in all "tainted" leaders as a desperate measure.

Parameshwara, however, rejected the possibility of inducting mining baron and former minister from the BJP, G Janardhan Reddy.

In an interview to PTI, Parameshwara said that the party is all geared up for the polls and its candidates are likely to be announced by end of the month.

"Winning each seat is crucial for the party and therefore tickets will be distributed to those who have the potential and acceptability at the ground level," he said



Asked if more members will be inducted, he said, "There are few people. Earlier I had made a statement that a large number of BJP and JDS members are wanting to join. But we are very selective."



"If there is a strong candidate in a particular constituency from our own party, I don't think we need anyone. If there is a weak candidate and fits into our scheme of things, then we may consider," he added.

Defending induction of the three MLAs, he said they were taken into the party purely on the basis of a "political decision and there was no other pressure or consideration".

"The party hopes to gain from their seats in Bidar, Kudligi and Vijayanagar. They have been inducted without any condition. Whether to offer them tickets or not will be decided by the Congress President Rahul Gandhi."



Kheny "is a winning candidate", the KPCC chief said, adding that "when he expressed the wish to join the Congress, we thought if we are winning one seat, why not."



There are allegation of irregularities against Kheny's company Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE), which built a ring-road in Bengaluru.

"And the law will take its own course. The reason is it is taking too long a time, almost 14-15 years now. It is going on and nobody knows the actual position. There is no pressure to take him and it was purely and the Congress wanted to win that seat."



Similarly, Anand Singh is a strong candidate, Parameshwara said and added, "We tried to win that seat (Vijayanagar) for two terms, we could not win. He is still very strong and he will definitely win that seat with any party ticket. We did not go to him. He approached us."



Parameshwara, a dalit and who has also served as Home Minister of Karnataka from 2015 to 2017, said the party will win the assembly polls on the issue of development.

Asked why the chief minister is targeting BJP on communal issues in his rallies instead talking about development, he said, "When the prime minister comes to the state and talks about 10 per cent commission government, we cannot keep quiet. We only have to give them a befitting reply."



He exuded confidence that the party will get enough seats to form a government. "We will form a government on our own. There will not be a hung assembly," he said.

On the reported infighting between Parameshwara and Siddaramaiah camps, he said, "We are a one strong united party. We have absolutely no differences. Yes, when there is an issue, we may have different opinions but we don't differ against the opponent. We are a well-prepared party compared to even 2013."



He said there is no 'Modi wave' and there won't be any impact in the state after the BJP's victory in the north east. "It is totally a different scenario in Karnataka because we have a pro-active government. There is no anti-incumbency factor," the Congress leader said.

Asked if there would be a dalit chief minister, he said, "It is purely left to the party High Command and Congress Legislative Party (CLP). We are fine if it is Siddaramaiah or somebody else."



Noting that the party is not polarising voters, he said: "We are empowering and giving them their share. If you look at the Sachar Committee report, the status of minorities is pathetic. So, we need to give them opportunity."



Asked why the government has not implemented the Sadashiva Commission report that suggested reclassification of Scheduled Castes (SCs) to provide reservation, he said: "We don't know what is in the report. Unofficially, people are talking about it. There is no official acceptance of the report."



"The report has been placed before the House. A cabinet sub-committee has been set up and it has not yet given its recommendations."



With the election campaign gaining momentum, he said that Rahul Gandhi will tour Mysore on March 20-21 and 24-25, and will later visit Bengaluru.

"The party workers have been trained to face elections for the first time in Karnataka Congress' history. Around 54,000 booths have been established with 6.5 lakh booth workers, he added.

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The resolution plan for debt-laden Jyoti Structures, which is in power transmission, distribution and EPC projects businesses, has been submitted to the creditors committee which will take a final call on it within a couple of weeks, a source said.

"A group of high net worth investors led by Netmagic founder Sharad Sanghi has finally negotiated the resolution plan with the Committee of Creditors on March 5 at Mumbai," said the source privy to the development.

"The final resolution plan is being circulated to the lenders for their approval and tentatively the Committee of Creditors (CoC) will take a final call on the resolution plan by the third week of March,"



Under the resolution plan, the investors will pay 50 per cent of the total debt over 15 years, the source said, adding that the total dues by the company to the lenders amount to around Rs 7,000 crore.

"Investors have given deep resolution plan for Jyoti Structures to the lenders," the source said.

The net present value of the Jyoti Structures has been worked out at about Rs 1,750 crore, said the source, adding that the investors will pay Rs 200 crore upfront, and change the top management of the company.

Lenders will also be compensated by way of equity with less than 26 per cent, the source said.

Another source said that the "CoC meeting happened on March 5 and lenders discussed the plan.... In the third week (of March) a meeting for final voting of resolution plan has been scheduled."



After the CoC approval the resolution plan will be filed for NCLT approval, the source said.

When contacted Vandana Garg, the interim resolution professional (IRP) of Jyoti Structures refused to comment on the development.

The company was in the first list of 12 firms referred by the Reserve Bank for debt resolution under India's new Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

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(Light) The Light Phone 2 is a good phone choice for someone who wants to spend less time on their phone. (NEW YORK) -- All around the nation parents are grappling with the question of what age is too young for a phone? But in reality, it's not the actual phone that's the problem -- it's the social media that surely comes with it.



On Monday, a widely-shared article called "Porn is not the worst thing on Musical.ly" terrified parents who let their kids use the lip-synching app. It also furthered the conversation about safe cell phone alternatives for kids to stay connected to their parents without exposure to the dark side of social media.



A Brooklyn-based startup called Light has come up with a solution for parents. The Light Phone 2 is a call-and-text-only phone that could be a viable option for parents who want their kids to own a phone, but do not want them using social media apps.



The sleek phone is an alternative to the dated-looking flip phones with the same capabilities that make teens and tweens recoil in horror.



"Clearly, there are some safety reasons for wanting [a cell phone], but the fear of the smartphone effects on children is also incredibly concerning," Joe Hollier, co-founder of Light, told ABC's Good Morning America. "The Light Phone 2 is a great alternative in that it is a fully functioning phone, but it is not going to induce one to keep playing with it. The lack of internet browser and social media alleviates a lot of fears in parents. Unlike a flip phone, however, to children the Light Phone is still seen as 'cool' amongst their peers. We have been working with parents on the idea of a parental app to support their childs Light Phone 2 as well."



While the Light Phone 2 may be just the phone parents want for their kids, the phone wasn't necessarily created for kids.



"There are smartphone users who will use the Light Phone 2 as a casual second phone for unplugging for a few hours here and there," Hollier said. "There are users who are ready to ditch the smartphone for good, or have been dealing with crappy flip phones for years, and will use this as their only phone, offsetting some of those other smartphone features like email or photos to better-suited devices like their computer or a real camera."



Simultaneously, a movement called "Wait Till 8th," which encourages no smartphone for kids before eighth grade and was covered by ABC News continues to gain traction, with pledges signed in all 50 states since the story published.



Wait Till 8th has compiled a Pinterest page of phones and watches that just make two-way calls.



The Light Phone 2 will ship in April 2019, and it has almost 3,000 phones orders already. Prices for the Light Phone 2 start at $250.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A crucial triennial meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will begin here tomorrow and will chalk out its agenda and course of action for the next three years.

The Akhil Bhartiya Pratinidhi Sabha will also elect the next Sarkaryawah (General Secretary), the executive head of the organisation who looks after its day-to-day activities, on March 10.

According to reports, there might be a change in the leadership in the RSS, the ideological parent of the ruling BJP.

Bhaiyyaji Joshi is currently the Sarkaryawah, effectively the number two after Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat.

Addressing a press conference ahead of the three-day meet, RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya said that elected representatives will take part in the election of 'Sarkaryawah'.

Vaidya, the publicity in-charge of the organisation, said around 1,500 delegates are expected to attend the meeting.

"The main focus of the meeting will be on charting out the course of action and efforts to be made for the next three years," he said.

BJP president Amit Shah, general secretary Ram Madhav and other senior party leaders are expected to attend the meeting on March 9.

Replying to a query on statues of leaders being vandalised in various parts of the country, Vaidya said, "All these incidents are very unfortunate.

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The nodal agency for central government's advertisements, DAVP, had suspended the empanelment of 51 newspaper in September for two months, most of them for publishing paid news, Parliament was informed today.

As many as 37 newspapers were suspended from September 13, 2017 to November 12, 2017 for indulging in paid news, according to a list provided by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore in the Lok Sabha.

The other reasons for suspension included publishing false news, obscene photograph and 'inaccurate and disrespectful reports'.

The Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP)initiative came after the Press Council of India (PCI) censured these newspapers for indulging in paid or for violation of various norms of journalistic conduct, the minister said.

He said the 51 newspapers were suspended on September 13, 2017, disqualifying them from getting government advertisement for two months from September 13, 2017 to November 12, 2017.

To another query, Rathore said Grievance Against Misleading Advertisements (GAMA), a portal launched by Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) to handle complaints regarding misleading advertisements, has received 3,302 complaints in 2017.

The portal had received 2,032 complaints against misleading advertisements in 2016 and 641 in 2015.

DCA, a department under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory body on advertisement industry, to process the complaints received on GAMA portal.

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Opposition parties AAP and BJP today stepped up attack on Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh over illegal mining in the state, asking him to name those found to be involved in the illegal activity during a recent crackdown in Nawanshahr and Jalandhar districts.

The opposition also sought formation of an all party Vidhan Sabha Committee to check illegal mining in the state.

Congress led government has been under fire from opposition which had alleged that illegal mining was rampant in the state at the behest of some ruling party MLAs.

"Punjab CM should reveal the names of those who were involved in illegal mining during a crackdown launched in Nawanshahr and Jalandhar districts," Aam Aadmi Party MLA and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, said today.

Notably, Amarinder had spotted illegal mining on the Sutlej river bed while flying over the area in a chopper on way to Kartarpur on March 6 and ordered a through probe.

The Nawanshahr authorities had seized some heavy earth moving machines along with two Forklifts and 30 Tippers (Trucks) from village Malikpur following his directive.

"Two day have passed since CM spotted illegal mining and till now, we have not been able to come to know that who were engaged into illegal mining," said Khaira.

"It is not the truck drivers who were carrying out illegal mining. There must be some influential persons behind this whole nexus which needs to be exposed," Khaira said.

Punjab BJP described the crackdown by the state government against illegal mining as "eyewash".

"The CM took one year to act against illegal mining despite the media highlighted several cases of illegal mining. It is just an eyewash," said BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh.

"The government must disclose the names of persons involved in the illegal mining," demanded Chugh.

Notably, Punjab CM today held a meeting with the DCs and SSPs of 14 districts to discuss the issue of illegal mining as well as the state's mining policy.

The cabinet yesterday set up a sub-committee to review the mining policy and suggest ways of making it more effective and stringent.

The sub-committee consisted of Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, Finance Minister Manpreet Badal and Rural Development & Panchayats Minister Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa.

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The Delhi High Court today said it was the judicial duty of all trial court judges to undertake a review of the reasons of non-release of undertrial prisoners who have been unable to come out from jail, even after being granted of bail.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar further said it should be the responsibility of the trial court judge who issues an order of bail, to monitor its execution and enforcement.

It noted that the importance of the rights of prisoners under Article 21 of the Constitution, who have been accused even of serious crimes, cannot be overlooked under any circumstance. The Article says that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty.

"Inasmuch as we are concerned with inability of an undertrial prisoner to comply with the conditions of the bail, we see no reason as to why the trial courts do not suo motu examine the cases of such persons and to conduct an inquiry into the reasons thereof.

"The trial courts should be not only sensitive but extremely vigilant in cases where they are recording orders of bail to ascertain the compliance thereof. In case of inability of a prisoner to seek release despite an order of bail, in our view it is the judicial duty of all trial courts to undertake a review for the reasons thereof," the bench said.

The court's observation came during the hearing of a PIL by advocate Ajay Verma contending that a large number of undertrial prisoners were languishing in Tihar Jail here, despite bail orders having been passed in their favour.

Acting on it, the high court had issued a slew of directions to be followed by trial courts to ensure that such people get relief.

The high court had directed the trial courts to be more sensitive and vigilant about such cases and undertake a review of the reasons as to why an undertrial could not be released on bail.

The bench had said the trial court can then carry out a risk assessment of the undertrial and thereafter, modify the bail conditions, if required.

It had directed the judges of each district court who visit the Tihar Jail to ensure that a list of undertrials, who have been granted bail but not been released, is brought to the notice of the trial judge concerned.

The district judges were also directed to submit a report of the risk assessments carried out by the trial courts apart from verifying the list of 253 undertrials given by the Delhi government and review any other pending cases of prisoners who could not secure release despite grant of bail. The list of 253 undertrials were placed before the bench by Delhi Police standing counsel Rahul Mehra.

The jail authorities were also directed by the high court to promptly bring such cases to the attention of the trial courts and the Delhi State Legal Services Authority (DSLSA).

The PIL blamed the lower courts for not exercising the option of personal bond for financially unstable prisoners and said it was misuse of discretionary powers by the judicial system. The court fixed the matter for further hearing on May 1.

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An elderly man died after he was run over by a police vehicle in north Kashmirs Baramulla district when policemen had gone to arrest his son for allegedly staging demonstration in the area.

A police team last night went to the house of Abdul Aziz Ahangar at Delina in Baramulla district to pick up his son who was allegedly involved in enforcing a shutdown in the north Kashmir town yesterday, police officials said.

The shutdown was called by separatist groups to protest killings of civilians in Shopian of South Kashmir on Sunday.

As the policemen where taking away the boy, whose identity could not be ascertained, Ahangar pleaded with them to release him claiming him to be innocent, the officials said.

While the 60-year-old father was pleading with vehicle-borne policemen for release of his son, the driver of the vehicle started driving the vehicle in the reverse direction, they said.

Ahangar was injured as he was hit by the vehicle. He was taken to district hospital Baramulla where he succumbed to injuries, the officials said.

They said a case under section 304 A has been registered against the driver constable Abdul Ahad.

The driver has been arrested and the police vehicle has also been seized, the officials said, adding further investigation into the matter is on.

There was anger in the area against Ahangar's death and protests were expected this morning. However, senior police officials defused the situation by holding talks with local elders and Ahangar was laid to rest, the officials said.

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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today directed district police chiefs to ensure security of statues of known figures, following Dalit icon B R Ambedkar's statue being vandalised in Meerut.

The chief minister's directions comes amid a spate of incidents targeting statues and busts of icons in the country.

"Maintaining law and order is the priority of the state and the government will take strict action against those involved in vitiating it. District police chiefs should remain alert and ensure security of statues of icons," he said here.

Strict action should be taken against those involved in the Meerut incident and measures should be taken to ensure that such incidents do not recur, Adityanath said.

The statue of the Dalit icon was vandalised on Tuesday and replaced yesterday by the administration.

In Kolkata, a bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged yesterday following the razing of statues of Soviet icon Vladimir Illyich Lenin in Tripura.

The bust of Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadu's Vellore was also desecrated triggering widespread protests across the state.

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An Irish government plan to address population growth isn't an outline for "nation-destruction" that will bring in 1 million immigrants from Muslim countries, as claimed by several false stories circulating online.

The plan to address growth doesn't specify countries where immigrants would come from, nor their religions.

Several websites tie all projected increases in the Ireland 2040 plan to immigrants, "likely Muslims", from Afghanistan, Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan and claim the prime minister, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, is an "ethnic Indian." The prime minister is the son of a Hindu doctor from India and an Irish nurse.

The sites said Varadkar was talking about the migration of more than a million people when he said, "It's our big vision for how we want to reshape Ireland." The plan describes projected growth of around 1.1 million over 22 years. The leading nationalities of people moving to Ireland in the year before the country's most recent census in 2016 were returning Irish citizens, followed by people from the United Kingdom and those from Brazil.

The quote attributed to Varadkar is accurate, but he did not say it in speaking of immigration. Varadkar tweeted that remark February 16 about the plan as a whole, just before the government released it.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that female foeticide was a matter of "deep shame" and mothers-in-law should take the lead to protect the girl child.

The prime minister was in Rajasthan to launch the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) and announce the expansion of the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme.

Everyone is equal. It is important that girls get access to quality education, just like boys. A daughter is not a burden. Look around us, see how girls are bringing pride and glory to our nation, Modi said on International Women's Day.

The prime minister also pitched for treating daughters and sons equally.

There is no question of discrimination against daughters. Beti bojh nahi, poore parivaar ki aan, baan aur shaan hai (daughters are not a burden, but the pride of a family), and it is equally important to provide proper nutrition to children, he said here.

Modi asked the people of India to pledge to create an atmosphere of equality for the girl child and to end gender-based discrimination in the country.

He highlighted the vitality of proper nutrition among children and also spoke on how Mission Indradhanush, a national immunisation programme, had brought about positive change in the lives of children and women.

The 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme was expanded from the existing 161 to 640 districts of the country.

Modi said that there was a need to transform the lives of women and harness 'nari shakti (women power)' to create a New India.

From classroom to sports, they shine everywhere. Today, let us pledge to create an atmosphere of equality for the girl child. There is no question of any discrimination based on gender, the prime minister said.

He also called for eradication of female foeticide from the country.

Female foeticide is a matter of deep shame and a cause of great concern. Let us work together to remove this menace from society, Modi said.

"We have no right to call ourselves 21st century citizens as long as we have an 18th century mindset," he said.

Calling for an end to discrimination between sons and daughters, Modi said this was key to ending female foeticide.

Each one of us has a collective responsibility towards this end, otherwise we would not only be harming the current generation, but also inviting a "terrible crisis for future generations", he said.

Modi said that mere government budget is insufficient to address the problems such as foeticide and nutrition.

Proper education and mass movement are required to bring about a change. Criticise the PM as much as you want but when you think of the PM, think of Poshan Mission (PM), Modi said.

The prime minister said it takes ages to eliminate evils from the society and problems of five generations cannot be solved in a short span.

But, if we act effectively now then "we can solve the problem in a timely manner", he said.

Modi also called upon mothers-in-law to take the lead in protecting the girl child and urged them as well as state governments to make it a mass movement.

Earlier, the prime minister interacted with Collectors and gave certificates to "best performing" districts under the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said that there was need to connect people to bring about a change in society.

The government is committed to create a New India with fresh ideas and energy, she said.

With the efforts of the government child marriages in the country has reduced from 47 per cent to 20 per cent. We have also written to states for implementing 33 per cent reservation for women in police recruitment, Gandhi said, adding that the country will progress when women are empowered.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje highlighted the state government's schemes to empower women.

Empowered Rajasthan is not leaving any stone unturned to support the idea of an empowered nation and new India, she said.

Raje said that her government had launched several awareness programmes pertaining to the girl child.

The prime minister awarded Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu and Sikar districts along with 10 other districts of the country for the work done by them in improving the child sex ratio (CSR) under the BBBBP.

Districts from Karnataka, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Sikkim, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, and Jammu and Kashmir were also awarded.

The Centre, in December last year, had approved the NNM to tackle malnutrition, low birth weight and stunting, with a budget of Rs 9,046 crore for three years.

The mission has a target to reduce malnutrition and low birth weight by 2 per cent each year.

More than 10 crore people are expected to benefit from the programme. In the first phase in 2017-18, NNM will be launched in 315 districts, including 24 in Rajasthan.

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Final shape is being given to a proposed new legislation that will replace the existing two laws related to construction, operation and maintenance of metro networks across the country, a top official today said.

Urban Affairs Secretary D S Mishra said the new law has been warranted because the paradigm in the field has changed.

"The two existing laws related to operation and maintenance, and construction, have become very old, and they were formulated when the scenario was completely different. Now the situation has changed. And, the new law would seek to address all the issues faced by metro networks," he said.

Mishra said, the issue of land acquisition and public-private-partnership model has evolved, and the legislation that will replace the existing laws will "create an ecosystem that will further the growth story of the metros".

He was interacting with reporters on the sidelines of the launch of 'I-Metros' or Indian Metros Rail Organisations Society, an association of all Indian metro rail companies, at a conference on 'Indian Metros: Collaborating for Excellence' held at Metro Bhawan here.

"We have been working on it for the last two years. And. the legislative department (of the Law Ministry) is giving final shape, after which it will go to Cabinet as per the due procedure," he said.

The Metro Railway (Operations and Maintenance) Act, 2002, is an Act of the Parliament that governs the operations of metro rail systems in India.

Mishra also said that currently the span of all metro networks operational in the country stands at 425 km. And, another 700 kms are under construction in 13 cities, he said.

"By the end of this year, 600 km will become operational," he added.

Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha, in his address said this new platform (I-Metros) "will go a long way, if things progress in the right spirt by adopting the best practices and the latest technologies".

Mishra said, this new platform will allow them to share experiences, challenges, and learn from each other for the better.

"The MDs, directors, would be connected. And, new technologies, new innovations can be shared. Also, we will bring in our Institute of Urban Transport, so that it can be shared in electronic mode," the Urban Affairs secretary said.

Sinha said revenues from passengers segment will always be a challenge, so metros should "look at other innovative ways whereby they can raise revenues and make it self-sustaining ventures".

Sinha also released 'The Operators Story', a publication by the World Bank and Railway and Transport Strategy Centre (RTSC), Imperial College, London, on the findings of the research on what makes metros successful.

The study analysed metros of various countries, including of Hong Kong, Barcelona, London and Kuala Lampur, an offcial from the Imperial College said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A fire broke out at a tea stall near Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here today, said an official from Delhi Fire Services.

A call was received at 9:10 am and three fire tenders were rushed to the spot, the official said, adding that the fire was doused by 9:30 am.

According to the official, no injuries were reported.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Thai national, who was among the 23 seamen rescued from the container ship of Maersk Line that caught fire in the Arabian Sea off the Lakshadweep coast, has died, officials said today.

The fire continued for the second consecutive day today, and hopes of finding four missing crew members, including an Indian, "faded", officials said.

The deceased crew member breathed his last while being taken to Colombo in the merchant ship which rescued them.

The death and deteriorating health of two others led the company to divert the merchant ship to Kochi, where it is expected to anchor late tonight, Maersk chief operating officer Soren Toft told PTI over phone from its headquarters in Copenhagen.

The huge fire continued on the 330-metre stationary vessel located in the Arabian Sea, about 340 nautical miles off Lakshadweep's Agatti island.

Videos showed huge smoke billowing out from a part of the vessel and efforts by an Indian Coast Guard (ICG) ship, "Shoor", to douse the flames.

Toft said the ICG is coordinating both the fire fighting as well as search and rescue efforts, and has called out for more help from merchant vessels passing through the busy shipping route.

The company has also commissioned a heavy duty ship specialising in fire fighting to help extinguish the blaze, he said.

Toft said the company will keep on searching for the missing crew members but conceded that the "hope is fading".

Two of the rescued crew members, whose condition deteriorated, disembarked from the container ship ALS Ceres, which helped in the rescue, and taken to a hospital in Thiruvanantapuram by the ICG, he said, adding they are accompanied by a fit crew member well versed in Malayalam.

An ICG spokesperson said the ship is spewing out toxic smoke and the duo are showing signs of toxic gas inhalation.

ALS Ceres will be docking at Kochi late tonight with 19 crew members, including 11 Indians, who will be immediately given necessary medical and psychological help, he said.

Asked about the cause of the fire, Toft said it is too early to "speculate" on that. The fire started from cargo hold number 3 on the vessel located close to the crew accommodation, he said.

The crew decided to jump ship after multiple efforts at containing the flames failed, he said.

Without specifying the quantity, Toft said a few of the over 7,800 containers on board had cargo classified as "dangerous".

He, however, said it is premature to blame them for the fire and added that shipping lines regularly carry such cargo in the containers.

The ship has a capacity to carry 15,000 standard 20-foot equivalent (TEUs) containers and was carrying over 12,000 TEUs on the voyage from Singapore to Suez when the incident occurred on Tuesday.

The company's efforts are directed towards saving the ship commissioned only last year, he said.

"The fire is still blazing, the situation is still critical...very, very seldom that we have incidents of this severity," Toft said.

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A truck collided with a container trailer on the Mumbai-Goa Highway in the wee hours today in which five persons were killed, police said.

While four of them were charred to death in the fire caused after the collision of the two vehicles, another man died after his motorcycle hit the truck from behind, said a police official.

The incident occurred around 5 AM near Goregaon village in Raigad district when the driver of the truck, headed towards Mumbai, lost control over the vehicle which collided with the container trailer coming from opposite direction, a police official said.

After receiving information, police and fire brigade officials rushed to the spot.

All the five persons were rushed to a hospital where they all were declared dead before admission, he said, adding that the exact cause of the fire is not known immediately.

Further investigation is underway.

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A former Sikh militant apologised on Thursday for causing embarrassment to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his trip to India.

Jaspal Atwal, who was part of a movement that supported an independent Sikh nation in the 1980s and went to prison for the attempted murder of a visiting Indian minister in 1986, was invited to a dinner with Trudeau in New Delhi causing consternation among his hosts.

Trudeau's visit to India had already been dogged by suspicions that Canada was soft on Sikh separatists.

"I am sorry for any embarrassment this matter has caused to Canada, India, my community and my family," the 62-year-old told a news conference.

"I renounce any form of terrorism," he said. "I do not advocate for an independent Sikh nation. I, like the vast majority of Sikhs who once advocated for this cause, have reconciled with the nation of India."



Since his parole, Atwal said he has engaged broadly in politics on behalf of the Indo-Canadian community, and visited India numerous times including three visits over the past year, each time "with the full permission of the Indian government."



"There were also no restrictions placed on me by Canada so that I could not travel," he added.

Before his latest trip, Atwal said he reached out to his local member of Parliament, Randeep Sarai, to ask if he could attend a reception with

"I had assumed there would be no problems. No one had at any point indicated there would be any issues," he said.

The controversy has continued to hound Trudeau since his return to Canada, with opposition parties and editorialists heaping scorn on the prime minister over the misstep.

Sarai, meanwhile, has been stripped of his responsibilities within the Liberal caucus.
Fresh violence today erupted in Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lanka's hilly central district where communal clashes have destroyed shops and homes, on a day when President Maithripala Sirisena divested the law and order portfolio from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Indian Ocean island nation has not subsided despite a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of troops in riot-hit Kandy district.

Anti-Muslim riots, since Monday, have damaged several homes, businesses and mosques. The violence erupted after the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week.

To rein in communal violence, a state of emergency has been imposed by the Sirisena government after seven years.

The government ordered the internet blackout, blocking of social media websites including Facebook and instant messaging app Whatsapp, after police discovered mobs of Sinhalese rioters were using social media to coordinate attacks on Muslim establishments.

According to media reports, petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque even as armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops fortified the troubled district, where anti-Muslim violence has left two people dead.

Eighty one people, including the main suspect, who had led anti-Muslim violence were arrested, police said.

"A man, named Vidanapathiranage Amith Jeewan Weerasinghe, who is believed to be the main suspect and nine others were arrested today," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters.

They were arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) in a special operation.

"They were arrested for inciting communal violence and hate speech," he said.

He said since March 4, there have been two deaths due to clashes. "One of them died of suffocation due to an arson attack while the other had died due to a grenade explosion", he added.

During the period, there have been 45 attacks against Muslim properties throughout the Kandy district and at least four religious sites had been attacked, the spokesperson said.

The arrests of main suspects came after the police came under increasing public criticism over its alleged inaction to prevent violence in spite of the imposition of curfew.

Earlier in the day, President Sirisena replaced Prime Minister Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister to curb the ongoing violence.

Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) was sworn in as the new minister in charge of the police.

Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the law and order minister 11 days ago.

Yesterday, the President toured Kandy and ordered security forces to use the full force of the law against troublemakers.

More reinforcements were sent to the area last night to assist police.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned the violence and urged Colombo "to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas".

The Kandy region is about 115 kilometres from Colombo. It is popular tourist as well as Buddhist pilgrimage destination.

The Sinhalese Buddhists are about 75 per cent of Sri Lanka's 21 million population while Muslims are 10 percent of the population.

Tensions between Muslim groups and the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community in the country have escalated since the end of the civil war in May 2009.

In 2014, violence directed against Muslim minority groups broke out in the southwestern town of Aluthgama, following a rally by hardline Buddhist nationalist monks, resulting in the death of at least three Muslims.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fresh violence today erupted in Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lanka's hilly central district where communal clashes destroyed more shops and homes, as a worried President Maithripala Sirisena divested the law and order portfolio from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Indian Ocean island nation has not subsided despite a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of troops in riot-hit Kandy district.

Anti-Muslim riots, since Monday, have damaged several homes, businesses and mosques. The violence erupted after the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week.

To rein in communal violence, a state of emergency has been imposed by the Sirisena government.

The government ordered the internet blackout, blocking of social media websites including Facebook and instant messaging app Whatsapp, after police discovered mobs of Sinhalese rioters were using social media to coordinate attacks on Muslim establishments.

According to media reports, petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque even as armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops fortified the troubled district, where anti-Muslim violence has left two people dead.

A total of 81 people, including the main suspect, who had led anti-Muslim violence were arrested, police said.

"A man, named Vidanapathiranage Amith Jeewan Weerasinghe, who is believed to be the main suspect and nine were arrested today," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters.

They were arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) in a special operation.

"They were arrested for inciting communal violence and hate speech," he said.

He said since March 4, there have been two deaths due to clashes. "One of them died of suffocation due to an arson attack while the other had died due to a grenade explosion", he added.

During the period, there have been 45 attacks against Muslim properties throughout the Kandy district and at least four religious sites had been attacked, the spokesperson said.

The arrests of main suspects came after the police came under increasing public criticism over its alleged inaction to prevent violence in spite of the imposition of curfew.

Earlier in the day, President Sirisena, under attack for alleged police inaction, replaced Prime Minister Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister.

Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) was sworn in as the new minister in charge of the police.

Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the law and order minister just 11 days ago.

Yesterday, the President visited riot-hit Kandy and ordered security forces to use the full force of the law against troublemakers.

Sirisena discussed with religious leaders the situation in Kandy and the leadership they can provide to bring it under control and to avoid spreading of the misunderstandings among people.

Former president and MP Mahinda Rajapaksa has rejected the reports of a political conspiracy in the violence and said the incident reflects the inaction of the UNP.

"This is not a political conspiracy. It reflects the inaction of the UNP. They are not keen on resolving the matter and the government has deviated from its responsibilities. There is no one to turn to," Rajapaksa said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has condemned the violence and urged Colombo "to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas".

The Kandy region is about 115 kilometres from Colombo. It is popular tourist as well as Buddhist pilgrimage destination.

The Sinhalese Buddhists are about 75 per cent of Sri Lanka's 21 million population while Muslims are 10 percent of the population.

Tensions between Muslim groups and the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community in the country have escalated since the end of the civil war in May 2009.

In 2014, violence directed against Muslim minority groups broke out in the southwestern town of Aluthgama, following a rally by hardline Buddhist nationalist monks, resulting in the death of at least three Muslims.

(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.)
Students and professors of the G B Pant Government Engineering College here today went on an indefinite hunger strike demanding a new campus for the institute from the Delhi government.

They alleged that though Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had met students and teachers, and promised a new campus during their protest in April last year, the matter was still pending with the government.

The campus is proposed to be set up in 23 acres land, the protesters said.

In November last year, the All India Council for Technical (AICTE) had barred the college from admitting students for the academic year 2017-18 due to lack of basic infrastructure.

"Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal did not act on the promise of giving us a new campus, but he did send a new officiating principal to handle the protest in the college. The new principal has threatened students and faculty against protesting," Joshil K Abraham, a professor of the college, alleged.

Last year, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had visited Abraham at AIIMS when the latter's his health deteriorated during the protest.

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A Chinese general says China needs to build defensive structures on islands in the South China Sea to display its claim to sovereignty over virtually the entire crucial waterway.

However, the vice president of China's Academy of Military Sciences, Lt Gen. He Lei, also declined to comment on aircraft deployments on artificial islands Chinese has built in the area, saying those were entirely China's domestic affair.

He met with Chinese and foreign journalists today on the sidelines of the annual session of China's ceremonial legislature, of which he is a member.

Earlier today, Foreign Minister Wang Yi blamed "some outside forces" for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, which is claimed in all or in part by China and five other governments.

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Goa ministers can sanction expenditure proposals up to Rs one crore in the absence of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who has gone to the US for his medical treatment.

While leaving for Mumbai for his treatment earlier this week, Parrikar had allowed ministers to sanction expenditure up to Rs 50 lakh during the current fiscal.

"The proposals involving expenditure sanctions up to Rs one crore shall be disposed of by ministers of respective departments," as per the office memorandum of the Financial department.

The memorandum mentions that the proposals shall be processed by Finance department.

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The government has changed rules which are expected to help e-commerce companies in smooth transportation of goods and ease the method of calculating the value of goods.

The government has notified changes in rules of which includes permitting even job workers to generate the electronic receipt for movement of goods.

Electronic way or will be required from April 1 for transporting goods valued over Rs 50,000 between states.

In a major relief to FMCG companies, the government has allowed businesses to consider only the value of taxable supply for the purpose of generating e-way bill in cases where sales invoice includes both exempted and taxable supply of goods.

This would mean that if food products which are subject to GST are being sent along with items which are exempt from the tax, say milk, then only the value of food products shall be considered for e-way bill.

Besides, to help smaller businesses operate within a particular state, it has said that vehicle details will not be required in case of movement of goods up to 50 kms (between the consignor/ consignee and transporter place). The limit was 10 km earlier, said tax consultancy firm PWC.

Also, it has done away with the requirement to produce e-way bill for intra-state movement of goods by road in cases where value of each consignment is less than Rs 50,000 but aggregate consignment value in the vehicle is more than Rs 50,000.

"This is a major relief for courier, e-commerce companies etc. and will reduce the paper work substantially. The Government should consider extending this relief to inter-state consignments as well," PWC said.

As per the amendments, the validity of e-way bill will now be till the midnight of the day immediately following the date of generation of e-way bill, instead of 24 hours earlier.

For example, if an e-way bill is generated at 3 pm on March 8th, 2018 for a movement within 100 kms., the validity period of one day shall be counted till midnight of March 9th, 2018. Earlier, the e-way bill would have been valid till 3 pm of March 9th, 2018.

"Therefore, in most cases, the industry will get more than 24 hours for the first 100 kms of shipment," PwC said.

As per the changes in the rules, in addition to principal manufacturer/ brand owner, the job worker can also generate e-way bill in case of inter-state movement of goods to job worker irrespective of the consignment value.

Earlier only the ?principal manufacturer could only issue the e-way bill.

"With these changes, E way bill Rules have become much simpler than earlier. The timing of these changes suggests that Government is keen to implement the e way system from April 1, 2018, as indicated recently," said Pratik Jain, Partner and Leader Indirect Tax, PwC.

AMRG & Associates Partner Rajat Mohan said one of the finest changes brought about by the government is an option given to taxpayers, who can now authorize transporters to generate Eway bills on their behalf.

"This provision will be a win-win situation, as first this would promote ease of doing business for taxpayers," he said.
Opposition National Conference working president Omar Abdullah today accused the Jammu and Kashmir government of putting the Shopian firing incident, involving a senior Army officer, into cold storage.

The former chief minister claimed that the state government has come under pressure on the issue of filing an FIR against Army officer in the incident.

Omar's remarks has come days after the Supreme Court halted further investigation in the January 27 Shopian firing incident involving a senior Army officer, in which three persons were killed.

We have said that this incident should be probed thoroughly because there is a difference between what the army has said and the statement which came from the government. People want (to know) the truth and that is our demand. If there is some mistake, it should be accounted for, Omar told reporters at Anantnag in south Kashmir.

The state government, which has registered a case against the Army convoy allegedly led by Major Aditya Kumar, had told the apex court that the FIR does not mention the officer's name.

Reacting to the government's submission in the top court, Omar said he was surprised over what the state government has said in the Supreme Court.

FIR copy is there to see. It is not something which is a secret. We live in an age of social media, everyone knows what is mentioned there," the former J-K chief minister said.

Omar also questioned state's Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's commitment on the issue.

What about the chief minister's commitment in the assembly because she made commitments not once but twice, saying the FIR will be taken to its logical conclusion, but they said a different thing in the Supreme Court. So, I think the state government has come under pressure and it is trying to put this issue in cold storage, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kerala's first ever National level hardware startup conclave here will be conducted here on March 10.

More than 1200 participants, including hardware start-ups, officials from Centre and state governments, industries and technology firms, will take part in the event, organised by one of India's largest hardware electronic incubator 'Maker Village'.

Major companies like Lockheed Martin , Siemens , Dassault Systems , Qualcomm India, Intel , ARM , Imec , Bosch, Tejas Networks, Invecas, Rambus, Texas Instruments India will also participate, a Maker Village release said.

Prasad Balakrishnan Nair, CEO, Maker Village, said there was a time when Kerala's electronics industry thrived and set an example for other states in the country.

"But owing to several unfavourable circumstances, we could not tap its potential.Now the environment has become favourable again," he said.

"With both the governments giving key thrust on building a robust hardware electronic manufacturing industry, this event is of high significance," he added.

Hardware Startups from all parts of the country are expected to attend the event.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Madras High Court today granted bail to suspended Bharathiar University Vice Chancellor A Ganapathy who was arrested on graft charges.

When the bail plea came up, Justice AD Jagadish Chandira directed him to surrender his passport before the trial court.

The judge further directed him not to leave Coimbatore and to appear before the investigating officer daily till further orders.

Ganapathy was arrested by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption in Coimbatore on February 3 on charges of demanding and accepting Rs 30 lakh as bribe from an assistant professor aspirant.

He is lodged in the central jail there along with chemistry professor Dharmaraj who allegedly brokered the deal.

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The Madras High Court directed its Registry to issue bailable warrant against Bhoopathy, Executive Engineer, Tamil Nadu Housing Board and instructed to secure and produce him before the Court on March 16.

Justice M S Ramesh, while issuing the order on a contempt petition, also directed the Registry to send the copy of the order to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Anna Nagar here.

The matter relates to an order passed by the High Court on the allotment of a plot in Anna Nagar to S Chellaiah, following which he had paid Rs 14,050 towards the one third cost of the plot as demanded by the Housing Board on December five, 1998.

Subsequently the Housing board cancelled 139 allotments in the area citing some public purpose.

The allotters then moved the high court and got a favourable order from it.

When Chellaiah approached the board for getting the same benefit given to others, the board rejected it stating that he was not a party to the High Court order, following which he filed a separate writ petition.

The court on November 10, 2016 said that Chellaiah was also entitled for the benefit as granted by it for the other allottees and directed the Chairman of the board to inform the him about the balance of sale consideration payable for the allotment of the plot within two weeks.

As the authorities failed to obey the order, he filed a contempt petition following which the court had in last year issued statutory notice to Boopathy for his appearance before the court.

As he did not appear before the Court, the Judge ordered issuance of bailable warrant against the official.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Karti Chidambaram case today saw heated arguments in the Supreme Court with the Enforcement Directorate strongly opposing the green signal given to him to withdraw his plea against the probe agency's summons and to approach the Delhi High Court for seeking relief.

The ED said allowing Karti, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, to approach the high court in the money laundering case arising out of the INX Media graft case, would set a "bad precedent" for others.

During a nearly two-hour hearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED and Karti's senior counsel Kapil Sibal, traded a volley of charges.

However, the bench, also comprising justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, acceded to Karti's plea and asked the acting chief justice of the high court to allocate it before an appropriate bench for hearing tomorrow.

Hours after the apex court order, Karti's lawyers -- Dayan Krishnan and Mohit Mathur -- approached the high court where Justice S Ravindra Bhat dealt with the petition in his chamber and posted the matter for hearing tomorrow.

Karti, who is in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation in the INX Media bribery case, will be produced before a trial court tomorrow on expiry of his three-day custodial interrogation.

He has been in CBI custody since his arrest on February 28. The agency can seek his police custody for six more days under the law in addition to nine days already granted.

Special Judge Sunil Rana will also hear the bail plea of Karti and the CBI's application to conduct a narco analysis test on him.

The agency, during previous hearings, alleged that he was not cooperating in the probe and was evasive in responding even to routine questions by parroting that the case against him was politically motivated to target his father during whose tenure as the Union finance minister, the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance was granted to the INX Media group.

The ED opposed Sibal's contention that Karti should be allowed to withdraw the petition and approach the high court.

Sibal also sought one week's interim protection from arrest by the ED in the case.

However, Mehta opposed Sibal's submission, saying by "allowing the petitioner to withdraw and approach the high court by the Supreme Court will send a wrong signal to all those who are facing money laundering cases. There will be 50 petitions next day. What message we will be sending to others".

He said it will set a bad precedent for others who would first approach the apex court by way of petitions seeking interim protection and then seek permission to move high court.

The bench asked Mehta "What if Karti is arrested by the ED as soon as he is released by the CBI from its custody?"



"He himself says he is not a 'common criminal'. But I ask myself what do common criminals do when released in one case and fear arrest in the other case. They apply for anticipatory bail. It is his constitutional right," Mehta said, adding that the court may quash the proceedings if it so wished, but it should not allow him to withdraw the petition.

The bench said it will pass orders directing the high court to entertain the petition of Karti and pass the interim order once a proper application was moved.

"Now is this what the Supreme Court is going to do? Would it be appropriate for the Supreme Court to direct the high court to entertain the petition and pass the orders. It's like the high court does not know what to do. Let it be open for the high court. It will decide according to the law," Mehta argued.

Sibal objected to the statements of Mehta asking "will now law officers dictate the court as to what order it should pass..."



"What is this going on. This is the chief justice's court. This is a constitutional court and no one should be allowed to be dictated," Sibal, along with other senior lawyer A M Singhvi, said.

Mehta retorted, "This statement of my learned friend (Sibal) was in bad taste and should not have been made. The court should not entertain this type of petition. The law officers are responsible persons and we know our responsibilities".

The CJI intervened and said, "Both of you (Sibal and Mehta) are today at a different level. A lot of statements are being made which are not according to the law. Nobody can dictate to the court what to do and what not to do."



Sibal later apologised for his remarks but said he was not happy with the way things were going.

He said the ED case was out of "political vendetta" and "witch hunting". So far, Karti has not been given the enforcement case information report (ECIR) giving details of the case, he said.

Mehta said the ECIR was an internal document and need not be necessarily given to the accused but if the court insists, then he can give it.

"If he is to seek anticipatory bail under section 438 CrPC, then he has to first approach the high court or the special court, but he can't seek remedy under Article 32 before Supreme Court or Article 226 from high court," Mehta said.

Karti had approached the apex court seeking direction to declare that the ED had no jurisdiction to conduct any investigation unrelated to the allegations in the FIR lodged by the CBI on May 15, 2017.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US consulate, in association with Kutchina Foundation, has decided to honour two activists on the occasion of Women's Day in recognition of their role in transforming the lives of sex workers and underprivileged children, a statement by the American Center said.

The US government is observing 'Women's History Month' in March to celebrate women achievers and Tumpa Adikary and Saswati Arora have been chosen for the 'Krittika' award as part of this initiative, it said.

Adhikary, a woman in her early 30s, runs a shelter for the "rescued and reformed" sex workers in the Kalighat area of the city.

"We counsel reformed sex workers and motivate them to choose an alternate livelihood, depending on their skills. The fellowship that we will be receiving from this initiative will be used to upgrade facilities at the shelter," she said at a programme at the American Center yesterday.

Arora, on the other hand, raises funds to provide necessary healthcare and education to the children of domestic workers, the statement said.

"My NGO 'Basha' imparts education to around 60 children of domestic workers. These children are as talented and promising as those hailing from economically privileged families," she said.

Bappaditya Mukherjee, a member of Kutchina Foundation, said the award was aimed at empowering young women and social entrepreneurs.

"These women who have made their marks after fighting extreme hardships and conservative mindsets are the true role models of our society," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India shares very strong political and economic ties with Egypt and the time has come for the two countries to renew their "bonds of tea", India's ambassador here said today.

Speaking at a seminar at the mega annual cultural festival 'India by the Nile', Ambassador Sanjay Bhattacharyya said India was the largest producer of black tea and can be the largest possible provider to Egypt is one of its large consumers.

He said though the volume of Indian tea sold in Egypt had grown to 9 million kgs last year, it was still short of 2008's figure of 13 million kgs.

"We are today the largest producer of black tea. And Egypt is a large consumer of black tea. So we are your largest possible provider," Bhattacharyya said, adding that India offers a variety of flavours of the tea.

"We have very strong political and economic ties overall. There is a historical relationship between Indian tea and the Egyptian market. In fact, tea came to Egypt from India. So its time to renew our bonds of tea, he said.

India is world's second largest tea producer while Egypt is one of the top consumers with an annual consumption of over 1 kg per person. India can offer a wide variety of tea as per Egyptian taste and preferences at a very competitive price, he added.

"My objective is to see India become the leading supplier of tea in the Egyptian market. We need to be number one in this market, the ambassador said.

Shyamal Misra, Joint Secretary Department of Commerce, Government of India & Deputy Chairman of Tea Board of India said that Egypt was an important market that is showing growth.

Misra is in Egypt as part of a 23-member tea delegation led by him.

The delegation's visit is aimed at exploring avenues to increase the bilateral trade between India and Egypt in tea sector.

"We came with a strong Indian tea delegation and people here have shown a lot of interest. So, thats a good sign," he told PTI on the sidelines of a seminar entitled "India Tea Promotion Seminar and Buyer Seller Meet (BSM),which was held in Cairo yesterday as part of 'India by the Nile" festival.

"The Egyptian economy seems to be on a recovery path. The exchange rate seems to have stabilised and new vat implosion has also helped in improving the market. In the coming months it should strengthen and that will be good for the tea industry, Misra said.

Misra also added that people have seen a shift in consumer preference especially among the youngsters towards green tea or other healthier forms like fruit and herbal teas.

"We came to have face to face interaction so I think its a step in the right direction towards further cooperation," he said.

During the seminar, which was attended by the Egyptian businessmen, traders and other major players in the industry, Misra showed a presentation on the history and the variety of tea types and flavours in India.

Alaa Fahmy, chairman of food industries holding company, who attended the seminar, said that the historical relations and keenness between the two countries in achieving more cooperation offer a strong base for a new economic ties.

The exports of Indian tea to Egypt increased considerably during 2017 to 9.8 7 million kilogrammes (mkg) from 3.71 mkg in 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Ram Nath Kovind said today that India looks forward to South Korea's participation in flagship projects like Make in India and as a "key partner" towards rapid industrialisation.

Kovind said this while meeting a Korean parliamentary delegation led by the Speaker of the National Assembly Chung Sye Kyun, who called on him at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The President said India sees South Korea as a key partner in its efforts towards rapid industrialisation.

"We look forward to South Koreas participation in our flagship projects such as Make in India, Clean India and Digital India," he said.

Kovind said both the countries share democratic values and a common economic vision.

"There is also a unique convergence of strategic interests," he told the delegation.

"We admire achievements of South Korea despite the difficult economic and political situation in its early days,"the President said as he lauded the determination with which both the country worked for development.

Kovind said he felt happy that South Korean investors were looking at India as an investment destination. The large participation of top Korean companies in the 2nd India-South Korea business summit, held last week in India, was a testimony to this, he said.

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If war breaks out in the Middle East, US and Israeli forces are preparing to one day fight alongside one another to defend Israel against missile attacks from across the region.

Nearly 5,000 Israeli and American troops have been training together in Israel for that very scenario. The "Juniper Cobra" exercise includes field training, computer simulations and live-fire drills of sophisticated missile-defence systems.

"We will practice, train shoulder to shoulder, the same as we will fight in crisis times," Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, chief of Israel's air defence command, told reporters at a briefing at the dusty Hatzor air base in southern Israel.

Israel has made missile defence a priority since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bombarded the country with 39 Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.

Today, the threat is far more formidable. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is now believed to possess well over 100,000 rockets and missiles capable of striking virtually anywhere in Israel.

Hezbollah and Iranian forces are also active in neighbouring Syria, backing President Bashar Assad. Gaza's Hamas rulers have a vast arsenal of rockets, and Iran has developed long-range missiles that can reach Israel.

These threats are concrete. Hezbollah rained some 4,000 rockets into Israel during a month-long war in 2006, while Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rockets into Israel from the south.

Last month, Israel intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria during a clash that caused an Israeli F-16 warplane to crash, and Israel shot down a Syrian anti-aircraft missile last year.

Haimovich said Juniper Cobra is not aimed at any particular adversary. Instead, it is meant to simulate "very complex scenarios" that include simultaneous attacks from enemy countries and militant groups.

"We practice that because this is a real scenario," he said.

He said the threats include multiple salvos, more accurate rockets and missiles and a "multi-directional threat." "Those are our main assumptions," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's from south, north, east or others."



Israel, in cooperation with the US, has developed a multilayer system of missile defence. This includes the "Arrow" system, which can intercept long-range missiles before they enter the atmosphere, the "David's Sling" system for medium-range threats and the "Iron Dome," which has been successful at intercepting short-range rocket fire. Israel also uses the American-made "Patriot" system.

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A new literary prize, billed as the country's richest with an award amount of Rs 2.5 million, has been announced with an aim to discover and celebrate distinguished works of fiction by Indian writers and also to break the barriers separating literature in different Indian languages.

Award-winning novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta has been roped in as literary director of the JCB Prize for Literature.

The prize, funded by earthmoving and construction equipment manufacturer Ltd, and administered by the JCB Literature Foundation, is open for entries until May 31.

Publishers have entry quotas for works in English, and separately, for works translated into English from any other language. If the winning book is translated, the translator will be awarded Rs 500,000.

"By recognising the full range of India's literary traditions, the JCB Prize for Literature hopes to encourage future translations (both into English and between Indian languages) and therefore open up a truly Indian literature to readers," a statement read.

Each year, the literary director will appoint a jury. A longlist will be selected in September, a shortlist in October and the winner will be announced in November.

This year's jury consists of award-winning director Deepa Mehta (Chair); founder of the Murty Classical Library of India, Rohan Murty; Yale University astrophysicist and writer Priyamvada Natarajan; novelist Vivek Shanbhag and author and translator Arshia Sattar.

Books selected by the jury will be promoted in a visionary publicity campaign aimed not only at gaining many more readers for these important works, but also at raising the prestige and visibility of great literature itself. All shortlisted authors will win Rs 1 lakh each.

Talking about the prize, JCB chairman Lord Bamford says, "As JCB approaches an important milestone of 40 years of manufacturing in India, there is no better time to launch the JCB Prize for Literature. I hope this prize will encourage more and more people to read and also be of benefit to writers and publishers in this extraordinary country."



According to Dasgupta, "In a multilingual country like India, where there are many distinct literary traditions, no one can say they know 'Indian literature' if they read only books written in their own language.

"With this prize we hope to stimulate far more translation between Indian languages, and so to give people a far deeper sense of what other people are talking and thinking about in the country," he added.

Dasgupta will be supported by an advisory council of the JCB Literature Foundation which is chaired by former chief mentor of the Confederation of Indian Industry Tarun Das, and has members like author Amitav Ghosh, Delhi University professor Harish Trivedi and art historian and environmentalist Pheroza Godrej.
Police today baton-charged and tear-gassed protesters during a march taken out by the Dogra community demanding a CBI probe into the rape-and-murder case of an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district.

Several people were injured in the police action and the clashes that followed on Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Chadwal area. One person was reported critical after he was hit by a bus during the protest.

Thousands of Dogra community members had taken out "Ekta Yatra" demanding a CBI investigation into the matter and to protest the mass detention of youngsters by the police. The protesters allege that crime branch officials were harassing members of a particular community in connection with the case.

The minor girl's body was recovered from a forest area on January 17, a week after she had gone missing. On January 23, the government handed over the case to the crime branch of the police, which arrested two Special Police Officers for their alleged involvement in the abduction and killing of the girl.

A special investigation team later also arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the case.

Today, a large number of police personnel were deployed in the area fearing trouble during the protest. The protesters raised slogans against Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, the BJP, and the police and the crime branch.

When the protesters disrupted traffic on the highway, the police resorted to teargas shelling and baton charge to disperse them, leading to clashes between them.

"The protest rally has been dispersed and the traffic has been restored," a police officer told PTI. He said the injured have been admitted to Government Medical College hospital in Jammu.

The officer said one person was hit by a vehicle and was critically injured. The vehicle's driver has been detained.

The police said they had to baton charge the protesters to clear the highway. However, the protesters alleged that the policemen there pushed a person and he came under the vehicle.

Meanwhile, more than 70 activists of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party were detained by the police before they could join the "Ekta Yatra".

JKNPP state chief Balwant Singh Mankotia told reporters that the people of Jammu area want a CBI probe. He claimed the crime branch officers belong to a particular community and expressed fears of harassment.

"These crime branch officers have harassed Hindus in the area in the name of probe, resulting in a large migration of Hindus from the area last week. It cannot be tolerated. We all want a probe by the CBI to arrest and punish the culprits.

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Several occupants of the commercial tower of luxury hotel Le Meridien today sought quashing of an NDMC eviction notice before the Delhi High Court, saying they were not informed about the reasons.

The counsel for the occupants argued before Justice Rekha Palii that the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has not told them their fault and it was mala fide on their part.

"They issued a notice on January 10 without giving the grounds for eviction. The case has not been put to me by the NDMC," senior advocate Amit Sibal, appearing for some of the occupants, said.

Rajan Kapoor, one of the sub licensees, has filed a writ petition in the court seeking to quash the NDMC's January 10 notice which had asked the occupants to stop using the premises at the commercial tower for any purpose and said that they were liable to be removed with immediate effect.

The NDMC had granted seven days time to vacate the premises.

While there were 98 occupants of the tower, only some of them approached the high court. The then Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain, appearing for NDMC, had assured the court that no action would be taken against them till pendency of the petition.

The notice signed by an NDMC official had stated, "The occupants are therefore liable to be stopped from using the premises at the commercial tower for any purpose and are further liable to be removed from the above premises with immediate effect, for which purpose, I, with the approval of the competent authority, hereby direct you to vacate the premises within seven working days, failing which the premises will be dealt with in accordance with the law All such sub licenses or any other arrangements with CJ International (hotel) are per se illegal having no sanction from NDMC.

The high court fixed the matter for hearing on March 22, when the counsel for some other occupants will advance the submissions.

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The Supreme Court today restored the marriage of Hadiya, a Hindu woman who had converted to Islam and entered into wedlock with a Muslim man, setting aside a Kerala High Court order, and ruling that no court can interfere in the marriage of two consulting adults.

Pulling up the Kerala High Court for annulling Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan, the apex court observed that Article 226 gives the extraordinary power to high courts to protect the constitutional rights and not to scuttle them.

The high-profile case of alleged 'love jihad', a term used for Muslim men allegedly seducing and marrying Hindu women after making them convert to Islam, was being probed by anti-terror agency NIA.

The court instructed NIA to go ahead with its probe into alleged instances of love jihad without "touching the marriage".

In Kochi, Hadiya's father K M Asokan, who had claimed her daughter was "brainwashed" to convert, said he would consider moving a review petition in the Supreme Court against its judgement.

He maintained that his daughter's marriage with Shafin Jahan was an act of "adjustment" done by a group.

The bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra said that the high court should not have annulled the marriage by its May 24 order last year in a habeas corpus petition filed by Asokan after his daughter had gone missing.

"We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between appellant No.1, Shafin Jahan and respondent No.9, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan, in a habeas corpus petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India," the bench also comprising justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.

A habeas corpus petition is a writ petition requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or to court for securing the person's release.

The Supreme Court said it had ordered personal presence of Hadiya on November 27 last year and she had admitted she married Jahan of her own free will.

"In view of the aforesaid, the appeal stands allowed. The judgement and order passed by the high court is set aside. Respondent No.9, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law," it said



The Kerala High Court had on May 24 last year termed Hadiya's marriage a "sham" and annulled it, directing her to return to the custody of her Hindu parents.

However, when she told the apex court on November 27 that she wanted "freedom" to live with her husband, it had directed the 24-year-old to return to the homeopathy college she was studying in Salem in Tamil Nadu.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Jahan, said as a matter of law no third party can interfere in the marriage between two consenting adults. He said marriage was a fundamental right.

Sibal contended that the Kerala High Court had no jurisdiction to annul a marriage, which can be challenged only by the party to the marriage. He said no third party can interfere in it.

"The jurisdiction of marriage is not in the marriage of consenting adults and no investigating agency can interfere in the marriage. Even the father of girl can't interfere," Sibal argued.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for Asokan, insisted the high court was right in annulling the marriage, and claimed it had inherent jurisdiction under Article 226 of Constitution.

To this, Justice Chandrachud said, "There has to be some exceptional circumstances which warrant court's interference in the marriage--like of a girl with a 65 year old man, out of poverty or illiteracy, where there was no free consent or the marriage should not have taken place in the first place."



Divan said the high court had found there was a well oiled machinery working to use the marriage of Hadiya as a guise to put the matter out of the court's reach.

Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the NIA, said its investigation in the case was over and look out circulars have been issued against two people accused of promoting love jihad who were suspected to have gone out of the country.

"You (NIA) can carry out the investigation with regard to the offences but you cannot touch the marriage. Investigate anything but marriage," the bench said.

The apex court had in August last year asked the NIA to probe the case of conversion and marriage of Hadiya, after the agency claimed a "pattern" was emerging in Kerala with instances of alleged love jihad being reported.

The matter came to light when Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan challenged the Kerala High Court order annulling his marriage and sending her to her parents' custody.

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Pharma major Lupin has signed an agreement with CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL, Pune) and Department of Science and Technology, (DST, Delhi) for conducting research on a continuous purification process development of a biosimilar monoclonal antibody therapeutic (mAb).

Through this research collaboration, CSIR-NCL and Lupin would together work towards the development of a novel continuous purification process for manufacturing mAb therapeutics.

Biopharmaceuticals, biologics and monoclonal antibodies are the next wave of discovery and innovation in new pharmaceuticals.

This early research collaboration between industry and CSIR institute is expected to yield rich dividends for the country, a company statement said here.

With an increasing demand for biosimilar therapeutics and an ever-increasing pressure for manufacturing cost reduction with quality maintenance, the biopharmaceutical industry is showing keen interest in the development of continuous manufacturing processes.

All unit operations in existing manufacturing processes are currently performed in a batch mode with an overall process recovery limited to 40-50 per cent. Existing purification platforms for biosimilar mAb therapeutics involve an integration of two to three offline controlled chromatography processes which severely limits the throughput and yield of the target therapeutic product.

Additionally, in comparison to the innovators drug manufacturing processes, biosimilar manufacturers also have the compulsion to match the purity profile to innovator drug molecule thereby limiting the performance of the conventional batch manufacturing processes.

"Biotech is one of Lupin's key growth drivers and we are committed to advancing our biotech R&D capabilities through strategic partnerships. Our collaboration with a premier institution like CSIR is an exemplary industry-academia collaboration that can further the development and commercialisation of biologics and biosimilars for a better and more affordable healthcare to customers across the globe," Lupin senior vice president Rustom Mody said.

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A super luxury yacht owned by embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya has been seized by authorities in Malta over unpaid wages amounting to USD 1 million to its crew, including some Indians, according to an international traders union.

Nautilus International said the 95-metre vessel named 'Indian Empress' was "arrested" to recover over USD 330,000



unpaid wages and other costs on behalf of its members.

Mallya, who is facing an extradition trial in London on fraud and money laundering charges involving his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines' default of bank loans amounting to nearly Rs 9,000 crores, had "effectively abandoned" the vessel in September last year leaving the crew with unpaid wages amounting to nearly USD 1 million.

"Our members onboard gave their employer and the shipowner multiple opportunities to pay monthly wages, displaying a loyalty and restraint greater than many would show in such situations. These opportunities were regularly ignored by the owner, leaving us with no option but to take the case to the courts," said Nautilus International strategic organiser Danny McGowan.

The union said it had been successful in securing a "milestone" payment for crew members via the insurers using a safety net provision in the international Maritime Labour Convention (MLC).

While around USD 615,000 amounting to four months' overdue salary has been recovered, there are more than 40 crew on the yacht and other associated individuals who are owed anything between USD 6,250 to more than USD 92,000.

The crew members, many of whom remain on board, include some Indians and a mixture of other nationalities including British and east Europeans.

"The superyacht sector is seen as one of glamour and glitz, but the sad reality is that crew members can experience exploitation and abuse and that is why Nautilus has become increasingly involved in such justice cases," said Charles Boyle, Nautilus International's director of legal services.

He said that the union's success in enforcing the financial security provisions of the MLC for the first time in the superyacht industry marked a significant development for the sector.

In line with the "safety net" financial security provisions of the convention, the union ensured the initial payments for the crew by the Norwegian protection and indemnity insurance specialists Skuld last week, he said.

The detaining of the 'Indian Empress' in Malta is aimed at enforcing a "maritime lien", seeking the payment of further outstanding wages and other costs over and above the amounts covered by the MLC.

The Isle of Man-flagged superyacht will remain docked at Malta until all the remaining unpaid wages and costs are recovered. Mallya had bought the yacht in 2006 and spent millions on refitting it in 2016.

The luxury vessel can accommodate up to 12 guests across 17 cabins and boasts an entire deck dedicated to the master suite that includes a gym, sauna and steam room.

Most of the 62-year-old businessman's international assets remain frozen or under litigation, with a UK high court order last month allowing him an increase in his "ordinary living expenses allowance" to a maximum of 18,325.31 pounds a week.

Meanwhile, the Indian government's extradition case against Mallya is set to return for one of its final hearings before Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on March 16, with a judgment expected in May.

The businessman remains on a 650,000-pound bail bond, extended until April 2 at the last hearing in the trial in January.

Mallya had been arrested on an extradition warrant by Scotland Yard in April last year and has since been appearing in the extradition trial which opened on December 4 to establish if he can be forced to return to India to face fraud and money laundering allegations.

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today said the upcoming two-day Darjeeling Business Summit from March 13 would open a window of new opportunities for trade and employment.

Talking to reporters at state secretariat 'Nabanna', Banerjee said the hills have the potential for development of business and commerce.

She said apart from promoting tourism and tea industry, horticulture and floriculture, there was a lot of scope for cinchona cultivation in the region.

"The hills will prosper only through development in business, economic growth, employment generation and peace," the CM said.

Banerjee said she would leave for Darjeeling on March 12 to attend the summit, along with some of her Cabinet colleagues, senior officials and a business delegation.

The CII will partner the state government and Gorkha Territorial Administration in organising the first such event in the hills.

GTA Chairman Benoy Tamang had recently interacted with CII Eastern Region Council members in Kolkata ahead of the summit.

"Darjeeling is a land of abundant natural and human resources," Tamang had said.

Apart from focusing on eco-tourism and adventure tourism, GTA is in the process of identifying some heritage sites which can be converted into effective tourism products, he said.

He also expressed hope that the industry body would extend cooperation in setting up high-end hotels in the region.

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Maxxis Rubber India, a unit Taiwan-based Maxxis Group, today launched its first manufacturing plant at Sanand, Gujarat with an investment of around Rs 2,640 crore.

Of the entire investment of USD 400 million (around Rs 2,640 crore), the company has invested USD 320 million initially for its first phase, which will have a production capacity of 20,000 two-wheeler tyres and 40,000 tubes a day, according to company spokesperson Jia-Ciao Liou.

The plant, spread across 106 acre, was inaugurated by chief minister Vijay Rupani today.

The company plans to increase its capacity to manufacture 60,000 two-wheeler and 12,000 four-wheeler tyres under the second and third phases, according to Liou.

"India is an exciting market. If the market allows us, we have vigorous and ambitious plans in India. Our target is to complete all investments at the Sanand plant by 2021," Liou said, adding, Maxxis India is targeting to capture 15 per cent of the country's two-wheeler market in the coming five years.

The company currently serves as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) tyre supplier to Honda, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra, Tata and Jeep.

The India production will at present meet the demands of the domestic market for which the company has so far been importing from Thailand.

However, Liou said the company plans to eventually explore exporting from India.

"We have a presence in 180 countries. Over the years we will shift our Taiwan production to India and will explore the possibility to export the products from here," he said.

Liou said that considering the quality and other concerns, 98 per cent of raw materials will be imported from south east and east Asian markets. "We will gradually localise supply from India," he added.

The company had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the Vibrant Gujarat Investors' Summit in 2015.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi was promoting Make In India and suggested us to come and set up a plant in Gujarat. He assured us full support from the state government and things progressed very fast as we were able to set up the plant within one year," Liou said.

Meanwhile, Rupani said that Gujarat now accounts for 15 per cent of total foreign investment in the automobile sector, and the Maxxis' decision to set up a plant in Gujarat will strengthen India-Taiwan tie and create job opportunity for the locals with over 2,000 people getting employment here.

"In Gujarat, Sanand, Mandal, Becharaji, Halol and Rajkot have emerged as automotive manufacturing clusters. Entry of Maxxis here will put Gujarat on the map of tyre manufacturing centres of the country," he said.

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Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today turned down the BJPs demand for a CBI probe into the rape-and-murder case of an eight-year-old girl.

Mufti said that 95 per cent of the probe has been completed in the case, Minister for Health Bali Bhagat told reporters at a press conference here.

"The chief minister told us (a delegation of BJP ministers) that the investigation into the case has been completed by over 95 per cent. She said in a day or two the crime branch will submit the chargesheet and then the court will accordingly take a view of it," Bhagat said.

Meanwhile, police resorted to lathi-charge and used force to disperse the crowd demanding a CBI probe into the case, officials said.

On January 23, six days after the minor girl's body was recovered, the Jammu and Kashmir government had handed over the case to the crime branch of the state police. The crime branch arrested a Special Police Officer (SPO) for his alleged involvement in the abduction and killing of the girl.

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The White House today said that some countries, including Mexico and Canada, may get exemption from Donald Trump's new aluminium and steel tariffs on national security grounds.

These exception, could be based on America's national security interest, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, days after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross insisted that there was going to be no country specific exemptions.

Last week, Trump told that he has decided to impose a 25 per cent import duty on steel and another 10 per cent on aluminium.

This drew sharp reaction from the European Union and countries like China.

Trump insisted that steps like this is necessary and the US would overcome any trade war as a result of this because it has a USD800 billion trade deficit.

Canada has said that such an import tariff is unacceptable.

However, White House said that its northern neighbour would be exempted from such a new import tariff.

"We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carveouts for Mexico and Canada based on national security and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," Sanders told reporters.

"That would be case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption," she asserted.

The president, she said, has been very clear that he wants to address the trade imbalance that the US has with a number of countries.

He feels that the US has been taken advantage for far too long and he's not going to allow that to continue under his watch, she said.

In a tweet, Trump said that China has been asked to develop a plan for the year for a USD 1 billion reduction in the trade deficit.

Sanders said the administration had conversations with officials last week.

"We're going to continue those conversations with them," she said.

Responding to a question on global reaction, she said Trump has been talking about this for a long time.

"It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Other countries have created unfair trade policies for decades that have harmed our national and economic security," she said.

"The president wants a strong economy and a strong national security, and a strong US economy benefits all Americans, particularly by helping us maintain a strong military and defend US national security interests. And he's going to continue every day to fight for making sure that we have strong, both national and economic security," Sanders said.

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Microsoft has partnered healthcare major Apollo Hospitals to create an artificial intelligence-focused network in cardiology.

The partnership between Microsoft and Apollo will work to develop and deploy new machine learning models to predict patient risk for heart disease and assist doctors on treatment plans, the companies said in a joint statement.

Commenting on the development, Microsoft AI and Research Corporate Vice President Peter Lee said: "Our unique partnership with Apollo brings together our learnings in artificial intelligence and machine learning areas and Apollo's experience and expertise in cardiology."



Artificial Intelligence (AI) Network for healthcare aims to democratise artificial intelligence by empowering healthcare providers with faster, intuitive and predictable solutions and reducing the disease burden, he added.

"This collaboration with Microsoft's path-breaking technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will help better predict, prevent and manage heart disease in the country," Apollo Hospitals Joint MD Sangita Reddy said.

While we commence this in India, we will validate the algorithms and work towards creating a global consortium to tackle multiple conditions in cardiovascular disease, she added.

"Cardiac disease is amongst Indias leading causes of mortality and morbidity, which is exacting a toll on the health and well-being of our citizens," Reddy said.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said several women had left an "indelible mark in the history of mankind" through their "exemplary deeds" and paid tribute to the late Kunwar Bai, the mascot of his flagship Clean India mission.

In a series of posts on Twitter, the prime minister also urged people to write about women who had inspired them and use the hash tag #SheInspiresMe.

Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind. They continue to inspire generations. I urge you to write about some women who inspire you. #SheInspiresMe, Modi tweeted on International Women's Day.

Lauding Kunwar Bai, who passed away at the age of 106 earlier this year, the prime minister said she sold her goats, reportedly her only asset, to build two toilets at her home in Chhattisgarh's Kotabharri village.

Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat (Clean India) cannot be forgotten, he said and added that he was deeply inspired by her noble gesture.

I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bais blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapus dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe, Modi added.

The prime minister also shared photographs and a video clip of him felicitating Kunwar Bai during a programme in the state two years ago.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said mothers-in-law should take the lead to protect the girl child and called upon them as well as state governments to create a mass movement.

The prime minister was in Rajasthan to launch the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) and announced the expansion of the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' programme.

"Mistakes committed by generations against the girl child has resulted in a kind of imbalance in society, and this needs to be corrected by new generations," Modi said on International Women's Day.

He also encouraged people to take up the task of protecting the girl child and treating them equally.

"Daughters are neglected and killed, and it results in imbalance in society. Improvement does not come in just one generation, it takes time, but now we should decide that equal importance will be given to the girl child," he said.

It is "painful" that requests have to be made for protecting daughters and the girl child, Modi said.

"I request all state governments to make it a mass movement," the prime minister said, calling upon mothers-in-law to take the lead in families to protect the girl child.

He said the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' programme was launched two years ago from Haryana.

The situation of the girl child was alarming in Haryana but now significant improvement has been noted under the programme, Modi said.

'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' is a social campaign of the Centre that aims to generate awareness and improve the efficiency of welfare services intended for girls.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi said the Centre had taken several initiatives for the welfare of women.

She said that a "historic" Bill would be introduced in Parliament to check trafficking of women and children.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje highlighted the state government's schemes and programmes, including the Rajshree Yojna for girls.

Before his address, the prime minister gave awards to Collectors of various districts for their performance under the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' programme.

The prime minister also interacted with women and their children.

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Handset maker Motorola today said it will set up 1,000 'Moto Hubs' across 100 cities, as the "first milestone" of strengthening offline presence.

The hubs could push revenue from offline channels to 50 per cent of total sales over a period of time, Motorola Mobility India Managing Director Sudhin Mathur said.

Motorola, however, did not give a definite timeline on reaching the 1,000 count.

"The next level of growth will come from the offline channel and the company does not want to be left out. The 1,000 hubs are our first milestone," Mathur said.

He said as per industry standards, two-third of sales come from offline channels, "while for us it is just reverse".

"Ideally, I think revenue from offline and e-commerce should be equal," Mathur said.

The company today opened 25 'Moto Hubs' in Kolkata.

"We are not going for any fixed target (to reach 1,000 'Moto Hubs') but it can be as soon as in the next six months," Mathur, who is also the executive director for Lenovo India, said.

All the hubs will house handsets, along with Motorola accessories like on-ear and in-ear headphones, Moto shells and covers.

Mathur said both Motorola and Lenovo brands were doing well in India with double-digit growth figures.

The eastern region contributes 15 per cent of total smartphone retail sales, he added.

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Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today told the Assembly the proposal to set up a nuclear power plant in Bhavnagar district has been scrapped owing to a movement by panic-stricken locals following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

The project was proposed to be set up at Mithivirdi village in Bhavnagar district, said Energy Minister Saurabh Patel.

He was speaking during a debate on the issue during Question Hour of the Assembly which is having its budget session.

Taking part in the debate, Rupani said though the state government had signed an MoU with Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) in 2007, the project was eventually scrapped by the PSU after villagers raised apprehensions about their safety in the wake of radioactive "leak" from the Fukushima nuclear plant following a tsunami.

Rupani was replying to a question by Imran Khedawala (Congress) about the status of the proposed 6,000 MW nuclear power plant, for which the state had signed agreements with NPCIL in 2007 during the Vibrant Gujarat Summit.

"This project has been scrapped permanently by NPCIL. During the UPA rule, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had signed a nuclear deal with the USA. After that, a total of six nuclear plants were planned across the country and this plant in Bhavnagar was one of them," he said.

"However, locals turned against this project after tsunami waves caused (radioactive) leak in Japan (in 2011). After that incident, panicked locals here started a movement against the project, as they felt that the project would prove dangerous for them. As the movement and negative sentiment gained momentum, the project was scrapped," he said.

Patel said some locals were not ready to give land for the project.

"NPCIL officials tried their best to convince locals, but they are not ready to give their land for the project. In addition, some environmentalists and local leaders such as (former BJP MLA) Kanubhai Kalsariya instigated villagers against the project. Some people did this for political gains," said Patel.

Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani alleged that most of the MoUs in energy sector remained only "on paper" as "neither public sector nor private sector firms have set up their power plants in Gujarat even after signing MoUs in Vibrant Summits several years back".

He cited some cases wherein major corporate houses have not set up their gas or coal-based power plants in Gujarat despite signing MoUs in this regard in Vibrant Summits held in 2007 and 2009.

In his response, Patel said the main reason for this is non-availability of cheap fuel such as coal and gas.

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In more bad for parched Gujarat, the water storage in the Sardar Sarovar dam has fallen to almost one-third of its total capacity, the Legislative Assembly was told today.

As per the figures provided by the government during Question Hour in the ongoing Budget session, the water storage in the dam stood at 3,916 million cubic meter (MCM) in January 2018, almost one-third of its total holding capacity of 9,460 MCM, a fall of 763 MCM since December last.

Many villages in Gujarat are staring at an acute water crisis this summer due to depleted water stock in the Narmada dam.

As per the data, the 3916 MCM level is the lowest since February 2016 as the water level never fell below the 4,000 MCM mark.

The data was presented in the House by Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, who handles Narmada portfolio, in his reply to a query raised by Congress MLA Lakha Bharwad who had sought the status report of the dam water storage.

Though the water storage in the dam stood at 7,069 MCM in September 2017, the highest since February 2016, it fell to 3,916 MCM in January this year, which is a decrease of 3,153 MCM in just four months.

Responding to a query on the Narmada project-based 'Sauni Yojna', the government admitted that out of the total 115 dams in 11 districts under parched Saurashtra region, only 21 dams and reservoirs have been filled as on December 2017.

Under the ambitious Sauni scheme, the government plans to fill 115 dams of Saurashtra region with one million acre feet (MAFT) of excess water of the Sardar Sarovar dam.

Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani (Congress) told reporters that the BJP government "wasted" precious Narmada water for its publicity ahead of the Assembly polls in December last year.

Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "Precious water was wasted by the ruling BJP so that their leaders can land on the Sabarmati river in a seaplane. Rajkot's Aji dam was filled under Sauni scheme for publicity. In Botad too, water was wasted because they wanted to inaugurate the Sauni scheme ahead of the election," he alleged.

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The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Thursday approved the proposed merger of Telenor India with Bharti Airtel.

The bench approved the scheme with certain conditions.

Airtel and Telenor had signed the agreement for merger on February 2017 under which Airtel will acquire Telenor Indias running operations in seven circles Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West) and Assam.

The proposed acquisition has already been cleared by Competition Commission of India (CCI), the market regulator Sebi and stock exchanges BSE and NSE, and it is awaiting telecom department's nod.

The deal will include transfer of all of Telenor Indias assets and customers and is aimed at augmenting Airtels overall customer base and network.

It will also enable Airtel to bolster its spectrum footprint in these seven circles, with the addition of 43.4 MHz spectrum in the 1800 MHz band.
Nearly half of the senior posts at the apex child right's body, NCPCR, have been vacant for the past three years because a suitable candidate could not be selected, the Centre told Parliament today.

In February, the Delhi High Court pulled up the Women and Child Development Ministry and asked it to fill up vacancies in the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) within 90 days.

The panel should have six members and a chairperson as per the Act of Parliament under which it was created. But, three positions of members have been lying vacant since 2015, when the current commission was appointed.

"No suitable candidate could be selected for the post of Members in National Commission of Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR)," Dr Virendra Kumar, Minister of State for Women and Child Development, told Rajya Sabha today in response to a question on why there was a delay in appointing officials.

Earlier this week, the ministry advertised the vacancies and invited applications for the three posts that have been unoccupied since 2015, as well as for the remaining three positions of members, whose three-year term will expire in November.

The government will also be inviting applications for the post of NCPCR chairperson as the term of the incumbent ends in September.

The NCPCR is a statutory body set up in March, 2007 under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights (CPCR) Act, 2005.

The role of the body is to protect, promote and defend child rights in the country.

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Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik today called for a change in attitude and mindset for reducing incidents of rape in which the accused is known to the victim.

According to the statistics shared by the Delhi Police, out of the 2,155 rape cases reported in 2016, only 3.57 per cent involved strangers. This percentage saw a slight decline in 2017 with 3.36 per cent of the 2146 cases involving strangers as accused.

Between January 1 and February 28 this year, 309 rape cases have been reported and 2.27 per cent of those involve strangers.

"We have been taking a number of measures. The percentage of strangers committing crimes like rape going down is a welcome change. It's a trend which is indicative of women safety measures taken by the police making an impact on the ground," he told PTI on the occasion of the International Women's Day.

He expressed concern about the fact that in most of the cases, the crimes are happening either inside the home or in the neighbourhood.

"To reduce such incidents (where accused is known to the victim), one needs more of attitudinal change and a change in the mindset," he said.

The officer also stressed that they were making efforts to increase the presence of women police personnel in areas where the footfall of women is higher. He also said that are working on a project to induct women into the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, that is involved in anti-terror operations.

"That is also a project which we are working on and we will ensure that it sees a logical end," he said.

Dependra Pathak, chief spokesperson, Delhi Police, said that efforts were made to increase the interface between the women police personnel and the public.

There were women beat officers, women on bikes, women on bicycles and 10 all-women PCR vans.

"What the Delhi Police has done in the last one year is that we have increased the women police boots on ground. We have also given a vibrant IT platform for women to contact police," Pathak said.

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A plea alleging destruction of mangroves by the Deen Dayal Port Trust in Gujarat's Kutch district has prompted the National Green Tribunal to seek responses from the Centre and the state government.

A bench headed by Justice Jawad Rahim issued notices to the Ministry of and Forests (MoEF), Gujarat government, Gujarat State Coastal Zone Management Authority, Deen Dayal Port Trust and others while seeking their replies within a week.

"Issue Notice to the respondents," the bench said while posting the matter for hearing on March 19.

The tribunal was hearing a plea by Gujarat based Kachch Camel Breeders Association alleging rampant clearing of the mangroves in Nani Chirai and Moti Chirai areas of Bhachau Taluka in Kutch district by the Deen Dayal Port Trust.

"The destruction of mangroves not only violates the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and Coastal Regulatory Zone Notification, 2011, but also deprives the indigenous Kharai camel species of its major food source, thereby affecting the livelihoods of several hundred camel breeders of the region," the petition said.

The petition, filed through advocates Sanjay Upadhyay and Upama Bhattacharjee, claimed that the "incessant destruction activities" of the respondents have diminished the cover of sparse mangroves found at the site and destroyed the habitat of the indigenous Kharai camels which has affected the livelihood of villagers dependent on the mangroves.

It said these activities carried out by the Deen Dayal Trust Port were without any CRZ or Forest clearance which was causing irreversible loss of mangroves.

The association has sought directions for the rehabilitation and restitution of the mangroves already destroyed and payment of a environmental compensation charge for the destruction.

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There is no proposal under consideration of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for expanding Doordarshans round-the-clock broadcast to around 100 countries, Parliament was informed today.

At present, there is no such proposal under consideration, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

The minister said Doordarshan India/Doordarshan was available in a number of countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China (partly), Ukraine, Armenia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq and Turkey (partly).

To a query on steps taken by the government to popularise Doordarshan in the country and compete with private channels, Rathore said that as the public service broadcaster, Doordarshans programming was focused on issues of public interest like health, education, empowerment and social justice.

Thus Doordarshans programmes cannot be compared with private channels as both are totally different in their objectives and programming formats. However, Doordarshan is striving to provide impactful and compelling programmes to become the preferred channel of people, the minister said.

He said it was constant endeavour of Doordarshan to modernise its infrastructure and improve the quality of programmes.

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A day after the TDP decided to quit the Union Cabinet, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar today claimed that YSR Congress and other parties were creating "political pressure" with "false propaganda" on the issue of special status to Andhra Pradesh, which may have forced Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu to take such a step.

Yesterday, Naidu, who is the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief, announced that Y S Chowdary and Ashok Gajapathi Raju will quit the Union cabinet. He, however, had said the party would continue to be part of NDA.

"The TDP has demanded special status. We are discussing with them....Unfortunately, YSR Congress and other parties are indulging in all sorts of false propaganda, spoiling the political atmosphere in the state and putting pressure on Chandrababu Naidu," Kumar told reporters.

The YSR Congress is "falsely propagating" that the Centre has not done anything for Andhra Pradesh. Amid this political pressure, Naidu has taken certain decisions, he said, and added, "Otherwise, Naidu and the TDP have always been with the BJP."



On TDP's demand of special status, he said, the category of 'special status' does not exist after the implementation of 14th Finance Commission. "Still, we gave a special package of Rs 14,500 crore to the state... additional Rs 5,000 crore aid has been given to AP."



The Modi government is taking care of the interest of Andhra Pradesh people, he added.

The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet have not yet offered their resignation as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is out of Delhi.

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An anti-graft court in Pakistan today rejected a plea of the anti-corruption watchdog to include the report of Panama Papers Joint Investigation Team as a part of the Avenfield case record, in which ousted premier Nawaz Sharif and his family members are accused.

In its July 28, 2017 ruling in the Panama Papers case, the Supreme Court had given the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) six months to complete its proceedings on the corruption cases against members of the Sharif family.

Acting on the apex court's order, NAB had initially filed four cases against the Sharifs and former finance minister Ishaq Dar.

Three cases were registered on September 8 against Sharif, 68, and his family and one case against Dar.

The request was made by Additional Director of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and JIT head, Wajid Zia, who also appeared before the court to record his statement against Sharifs during a hearing.

The former prime minister, along with his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar, appeared before Judge Muhammad Bashir but he was allowed to leave early due to his bad health.

Zia recorded his statement as the NAB's main persecution witness, and with his testimony, the Avenfield flats case, on Sharif's properties in London, has entered in the final phase.

Maryam and Safdar are co-accused in the case and were present during testimony.

It was for the second time in two days that the former prime minister was allowed to leave early during the hearing for not being well.

Apart from Sharif, his two sons -- Hassan and Hussain --are also accused in three cases which include the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment, Flagship Investment Ltd and Avenfield properties of London.

Maryam and Safdar are co-accused only in Avenfield case and are facing trial along with Sharif, but his sons never appeared in the court and were declared absconders.

The court also observed that their trial would be held separately.

Meanwhile, the government today gave an extension of three years to Justice Bashir.

President Mamnoon Hussain approved extension in the judge's tenure, a day after the government assured the Supreme Court that the tenure of Justice Bashir would be extended.

The judge was appointed in 2012 and the government on the suggestion of the Islamabad High Court extended his tenure for three years in 2015. He was to retire on March 13.

Yesterday, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court gave two more months to the accountability court to conclude its hearing in cases against Sharif and three month to wrap up cases against Dar.

The initial six-month deadline given by the apex court was to expire on March 13.

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The proceedings in the two Houses of Parliament were disrupted for the fourth straight day today, but both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha were united in promising to strive for women's rights on the International Women's Day.

As members in the Upper House sought an early passage of the Women's Reservation Bill to provide 33 per cent reservation to women in Parliament and the state assemblies, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan extended greetings to the people on the occasion and exhorted the women to move forward with renewed vigour and confidence.

Soon after it assembled for the day, the Rajya Sabha held an hour-long discussion on women's issues in which members, cutting across party lines, voiced concern over the growing incidents of crimes against women, and made a strong case for early passage of the women's quota bill.

It was a rare occasion in the Upper House, which has been experiencing a washout of its proceedings due to protests over various issues since Monday, as members put their political affiliations behind to speak unitedly on the women's cause.

But as soon as this debate was over, members of some opposition parties, the TDP and others, trooped into the Well, carrying placards and raising slogans protesting over various issues like the banking scam and the Cauvery river water dispute.

This provoked Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to make some angry remarks, which could not be heard in the din, and then adjourning the House till 2 PM.

Earlier, the scenario was completely different as the House assembled at 11 AM and Naidu said the International Women's Day was being observed all over the world to celebrate the achievements of women as well as to renew the commitment to empowering them and ending gender biases.

"With women constituting about 50 per cent of our population, social, economic and political empowerment of women, including providing reservation in Parliament and state legislatures, has to be accorded top priority for the country to achieve rapid progress," Naidu said.

He stressed the need to renew focus on gender equality and women's safety, besides efforts to educate and empower them.

After his remarks, women MPs from different parties began discussion on the issue and pressed for early passage of the women's quota bill. The bill has already been passed by the Rajya Sabha and is pending approval of the Lok Sabha.

Veteran Congress leader Ambika Soni said a resolution should be passed by the House to support the legislation providing reservation to women in Parliament and assemblies.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad expressed concern over rising incidents of sexual assault against the girl child. "The government, together with the opposition, should create an atmosphere to ensure the safety of women," he said, and agreed with the others on the early passage of the bill.

External Affair Minister Sushma Swaraj said she favoured women's quota and continued to support it. Although women have excelled in many fields and entered areas so far dominated by men, but were still "continued to face injustice, which is shameful", she said and called for a mass movement to usher in a change of the mindset of the people towards women.

Naidu also agreed to a suggestion by some members to have a woman member in the panel for Vice Chairman panel.

However, the amiable atmosphere in the House was short- lived as slogan shouting members from the opposition Congress as well some from the AIADMK trooped into the Well. Amid disruptions, the House could not take up the Question Hour and the Chairman adjourned the proceedings till 1400 hours.

When the House reassembled, Minister of State for Finance Pon Radhakrishnan tabled the supplementary demands for grants for 2017-18.

Almost immediately thereafter, opposition members again stormed the Well raising slogans and displaying placards.

While the TDP was demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh, the AIADMK sought immediate setting up of Cauvery River Management Board. The Congress and Trinamool Congress members were demanding a discussion on the banking scam and a response from the Prime Minister on it.

Amid the din, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy (Trinamool Cong) wanted to raise a point of order but the members continued to raise slogans in the Well. The pandemonium led Deputy Chairman P J Kurien, who was in the Chair at that time, to adjourn the House for the day.

The Lok Sabha too failed to transact any legislative business for the fourth consecutive day, as members from several opposition parties, including NDA ally TDP, AIADMK and TMC, continued their protests on various issues.

However when the House met for the day and before the disruptions began, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan extended greetings on the International Women's Day and said women's empowerment was the need of the hour as well as a big challenge.

She emphasised the need to work together for all-round development of women for positive change. "If you consider man and woman as two wings of humanity, their empowerment is absolutely necessary for it to fly high," she said and also recited a few lines she has penned on women's empowerment.

Mahajan said "If we all work for the all round development of women for positive change, then I am sure that India will shine in the global stage."



But soon after she ended her speech, members of the TDP, AIADMK, TRS and TMC trooped into the Well, with many holding placards and raising slogans.

Amid the din, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the Supplementary Demands for Grants seeking Parliament nod for additional cash spending of Rs 85,315 crore.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar urged the Speaker to continue with the listed business and said "We are ready to discuss irregularities in the banking sector."



He also said that a debate under Rule 193, which does not entail voting, was listed on today's agenda on the alleged systemic irregularities in banking sector over the years and its impact on Indian economy.

However, as the noisy protests continued, Mahajan adjourned the proceedings first till noon and thereafter for the entire day.

TDP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju was not present in the House even though it was the question day of his ministry. However, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was present.

Disappointed over the Centre not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh, the TDP had late last night announced that the party's two ministers -- Raju and Y S Chowdary -- would resign from the central government.

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Delhi is expected to witness its highest ever peak power demand of 7000 MW this summer, but the availability of electricity is more than this anticipated demand, Delhi Power minister Satyendar Jain said today.

Announcing the action plan for electricity supply arrangements in summer months, Jain said last year Delhi recorded the lowest percentage of power cuts (0.6) and the Power Department was determined to bring it down further.

"We have enough backhand arrangements to meet the power demand that is expected to soar up to a historic 7000 MW level in June this year. Besides, we have capacity to provide 700-800 MW extra power in case of emergency need," Jain told reporters.

The peak power demand had breached the 6000 MW mark last year, settling at the highest ever level of 6526 MW in June.

With the weatherman forecasting average temperatures to soar in North India from March to May the demand for electricity supply is expected to go up.

The Met office has said that average temperatures in Delhi, along with neighbouring states can soar over 1.5 degrees Celsius above normal levels.

The power demand for summer months is expected to be 6000 MW, April, 6450, May, 7000 MW, June, 6500 MW, July, 6400 MW, August, and 6000 MW in September, Jain said.

The arrangements for summer months include drawing up more power from Bawana plant and running the closed Badarpur thermal power plant for three months after March.

The three power distribution companies in Delhi -- BYPL, BRPL and TPDDL -- have also made arrangements to prevent power outages due to local faults. Control rooms with multiple phone lines have been set up to address complaints of consumers, he said.

The government has also ensured supply of enough electricity for the national capital by purchasing 1000 MW green power that would be available within next one year, the power minister said.

The government has purchased 750 MW of solar power at the rate of Rs 2.44 per unit, and wind power at the rate of Rs 2.50, he said.

Jain reiterated the AAP government's stand that the power tariff should not be hiked for next ten years.

"There is availability of cheaper power but we are not able to buy it due to long duration power purchase agreements. If the Centre allows us, we can bring the electricity rates to half of the existing tariff," he claimed.

The minister also said the proposal for penalising discoms for unscheduled outages would be sent to the Lt Governor for his approval.

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A photojournalist working with a Hindi daily was allegedly manhandled by police personnel during a sealing drive in southeast Delhi's Lajpat Nagar today.

Locals alleged that the photographer was detained and forced to delete the pictures he had clicked. There were also allegations that a senior police officer manhandled a shopkeeper and it was captured by the photojournalist.

Another photojournalist also alleged that he was manhandled. The two were allegedly detained at the Amar Colony Police Station.

The police, however, said, an inquiry will take place in the matter.

"The local police had to assist the Supreme Court managing committee in the sealing drive. They had to ensure that there is no loss of property and life," said Dependra Pathak, chief spokesperson, Delhi Police.

The officer said that they (photojournalists) had become a part of the crowd.

"There was a law and order situation. They had to contain the crowd and in that they were restrained. An inquiry will take place in the matter," he said.

Meanwhile, over 100 traders protested against the sealing drive and some police personnel and businessmen were injured. The police had to use mild force in containing the businessmen who tried to stop traffic on the Ring Road, another officer said.

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One month has passed after Suhail Ajjaz, a Kashmiri student of the AIIMS-Bhubaneswar, disappeared but there was no breakthrough in the case yet.

A team of Odisha Police has left for Gurgaon in search of Suhail, who has been missing since February 9.

The three-member team left Bhubaneswar yesterday following a tip off about his presence in Gurgaon, Commissioner of Police Y B Khurania told reporters here today.

Suhail's father Ajjaz Ahmed Kataria told the state police that he had received a call from a PCO in Gurgaon area on Wednesday informing him that some people had seen his son, Bhubaneswar DCP Satyabrata Bhoi said.

He said the team will first talk to the local police and locate the public call office (PCO) from where Suhail's father had received the call.

"If there is any CCTV in the area, the police will verify the footages," Bhoi said.

This apart, the team will also meet the people of Jammu and Kashmir living in Gurgaon to elicit more details about the missing AIIMS student, he added.

Earlier, a police team had gone to West Bengal in search of Suhail but returned empty handed on March 3. Suhail's mobile was last traced in Howrah area of West Bengal.

The police of three states - Odisha, West Bengal and Jammu & Kashmir - along with the Central Intelligence Bureau have been working in tandem to trace the missing Kashmiri boy.

A second-year MBBS student and a native of Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir, Suhail left the hostel here on February 9 telling his friends that he was leaving for a wedding ceremony in Chandigarh and would return in a week.

However, he did not return even after nine days following which a missing report was lodged at Khandagiri Police Station in the state capital.

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Indian-origin steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has been appointed by Britain's Prince Charles as an official ambassador for the Industrial Cadets programme designed to nurture manufacturing skills.

Gupta was appointment to the flagship programme to give children and young people direct structured experience of industry while still at school or college.

The Industrial Cadets annual awards ceremony was held yesterday in London.

"Gupta is doing so much to apply real imagination, innovative thinking and sustainable rejuvenation to our nation's heavy industries and I'm thrilled that he, through his GFG Alliance, has so enthusiastically become involved with Industrial Cadets as well, said the 68-year-old Prince of Wales.

As the Executive Chairman of UK-based GFG Alliance, Gupta has been on an acquisition spree in the steel industry over the past few months which has helped secure hundreds of jobs.

The Industrial Cadets programme, which currently involves more than 15,000 youngsters across the UK, was set up at the behest of the Prince of Wales seven years ago after he visited steel plants at Teesside in north-east England and heard how the manufacturing and engineering sectors were struggling to recruit young people to their ranks.

"Coming from a family of industrialists, I had the opportunity while growing up to spend time in steel works and engineering plants. That left a lasting impression on me and really inspired me to pursue an active career in industry. I see Industrial Cadets fulfilling the same function and am very excited about the impact it is facing," Gupta said.

His GFG Foundation is actively involved in funding and promoting the Industrial Cadets programme, through a partnership with the Engineering Development Trust.

GFG Alliance companies, including Liberty House and SIMEC, currently support 1,300 cadets from 26 schools across Britain to participate in the scheme, with a target of 5,000 students by next year.

Around 26 GFG executives located at 13 industrial sites in the UK are regularly engaged in organising work placements at their respective plants, helping the youngsters to maximise the benefit they the get from time spent in the group's steelmaking, engineering, power generation and manufacturing facilities.

GFG also has an active apprenticeship training programme currently involving more than 100 young people in the UK.

Gupta said that the task of ensuring the next generation has the motivation and skills to enable the UK to remain competitive and successful on the world stage in manufacturing as one of the most important tasks facing modern society.

As part of his role as ambassador, the 46-year-old businessman has also been tasked with establishing Industrial Cadets in Australia, where the GFG Alliance already employs 6,000 people in its integrated mining, steel and energy businesses.

The GFG Alliance is a London-headquartered international group of businesses, founded and owned by the UK-based Gupta family.

The vision of GFG Alliance is to promote industrial revival based on low-carbon and sustainable production methods through its GreenAluminium and GreenSteel strategies.

Last month, the group's Liberty Speciality Steels reignited one of the arc furnaces mothballed by Tata Steel in 2015 at the height of the steel crisis in northern England. Liberty, as part of the wider GFG Alliance, has created and safeguarded hundreds of jobs in the steel sector across the UK as a result of a series of acquisitions.

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The managing director of a private company here was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing and stalking a woman employee, a police official said today.

The industrial firm's top official, aged 58, was arrested on March 6 after the 34-year-old employee alleged in her police complaint that he was sending her "objectionable" text and voice messages on her phone and also stalking her, Mundhwa police station's senior inspector Anil Patrudkar said.

However, the managing director was later released on bail.

Before approaching the police, the woman had complained to the firm's internal sexual harassment committee but she claimed that no action was taken, Patrudkar said.

"The complainant, while registering the case, had furnished all the evidence including the text and voice messages sent by the accused and recorded conversations, which have sexual overtones," he said.

"On the basis of the complaint, we registered a case against him under Indian Penal Code sections 354-A (sexual harassment) and 354-D (stalking)," he added.

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Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and British High Commissioner Dominic Asquith today stressed on the need to crack down on rogue travel agents who were instrumental in facilitating illegal immigration, generally leading to immense problems for innocent people, an official spokesman said.

Industrial modernisation was also on the agenda for the talks held here. They discussed about focusing on the use of robotics and artificial intelligence as a tool to boost the development of industries in the state, he said.

The meeting focused on promotion of clean energy in the development of cold chain facilities, as well as through replacement of petrol and diesel vehicles with electric vehicles, the spokesman said.

They also agreed on further cooperation in the areas of agriculture and food processing, he said.

The chief minister expressed concern over the plight of the farming community in the state and sought investment support from the UK for creating more avenues for farmers.

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The Pakistan's Supreme Court today ordered Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to deposit Rs 5.5 million to the national exchequer for spending "extravagantly" the taxpayer's money on advertisments to highlight the acheivements of the provincial government.

Hearing the case suo motu, a three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice (CJP) Saqib Nisar, took exception to the alleged hefty annual expenditure on advertisements by the state government.

Appearing before the court on behalf of the PML(N)-led Punjab government, when the provincial information secretary said that Rs 120 million was being spent on advertisements in one month.

Observing that annually, it comes to Rs 1.5 billion, the CJP was critical of the money being spent on the advertisments by the governments and asked if the country was someone's kingdom.

When a clipping of newspaper advertisment with the picture of the Punjab chief minister was produced before the court, Justice Nisar asked about the purpose and cost of the advertisement.

When the court was informed by the Punjab chief secretary that the purpose of the advertisement in question was to show the development work done by the provincial government and that Rs 5.5 million was spent on it, the judge ordered Sharif to reimburse the amount to the national exchequer.

The Chief Justice also wondered if projection of development work was equal to "pre-poll rigging".

The court also ordered the Punjab government and All Pakistan Newspapers Society to submit detailed replies in the case.

Earlier, the apex court last month took the case suo moto following reports that the provincial governments of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Punjab were spending hefty amounts on advertisements ahead of election later this year.

Hearing the case, the CJP had said that taxpayers money was being used for self-promotion and big advertisements were awarded at the nation's expense.

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China today reacted sharply to the quadrilateral coalition between the US, Japan, Australia and India and its Indo-Pacific concept, saying it was a "headline grabbing" idea which will "dissipate like sea foam".

The recently revived regional grouping known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) describes Asia-Pacific region as the 'Indo-Pacific'.

Asked if theIndo-Pacific strategy being furthered by the four-nation grouping will affect China's multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said it was a "headline grabbing" exercise.

There was "no shortage of headline grabbing ideas" but they were "like the foam on the sea" that "gets attention but will soon dissipate", he told a press conference on the sidelines of parliament, the National Peoples Congress (NPC).

Wang said contrary to the claims made by some academics and media outlets that the strategy was aimed at containing China, the four countries have made it clear that it targets no one.

"I hope they mean what they say," he said.

While the US officials have been highlighting Indo-Pacific including the Indian Ocean as well as the South China Sea in the Pacific, officials of India, China, Japan and Australia held a working level meeting of the "quad" last year in Manila.

"Let us not forget the BRI has received the support of over 100 countries. Nowadays stroking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting confrontation will find no market," Wang said.

Touted as Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious project, the BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe.

It also includes the USD 50 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which India opposes as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Wang also said it was time the "China threat theory" was laid to rest,asserting that Beijing's contribution to the global economic growth was bigger than the US, Japan and the European Union combined.

Those who do not have bias or practice double standards will see China's development as an opportunity instead of a threat, Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the national legislature's annual session.

Noting that for decades the West has made all kinds of assessment and predictions about China, Wang said to some Westerners China was either collapsing or threatening.

"As China grows, the China collapse theory has collapsed and become an international laughing stock. The China threat theory with its various sensational versions is losing market," he said.

Wang said for years China had been the leading contributor to global economic growth at more than 30 per cent.

"Chinas contribution is bigger than that of the United States, Japan and euro zone combined," he said.

China accounts for more than 70 per cent of poverty reduction worldwide, a miracle in human history, he said.

In the past five years, with its Belt and Road Initiative and other major proposals, China has come to the fore in championing global governance, free trade and an open global economy, besides contributing to the UN Peace Keeping Force, Wang said.

He also said China was on a long march to modernisation and has no need or intention to replace the US' international role.

"Some Americans allege that China will replace America's role in the world. This conclusion is fundamentally wrong," Wang said.

Responding to question on US President Donald Trump's move to raise tariffs on steel and aluminium, Wang said trade war was never the right solution as it will harm both the initiator as well as the target country in a globalised world.

"In the event of a trade war, China will make a justified and necessary response," Wang said.

"We hope China and the US will have a calm and constructive dialogue as equals, and find a win-win solution," he said.

Despite elements of competition, China-US ties are defined more by partnership than rivalry, he added.

Wang lauded Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is set to become Chinese leader for life as NPC is expected to ratify a constitutional proposal to remove the term limits for President.

Xi, who is in his second five-year term, is regarded as the most powerful leader as he heads the ruling Communist Party and the military.

He has visited 57 countries and received more than 110 foreign heads of state since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, deepening the world's understanding of China, enhancing China's profile and influence, and facilitating the solution to many global problems, Wang said.

Apart from hosting the four major events in China, Xi will attend the BRICS Summit in South Africa, the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Papua New Guinea and the G20 Summit in Argentina this year, he said.

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Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress President Rahul Gandhi today said there is a general atmosphere of "intimidation" in India where "nasty form of politics" of dividing people are being played to win elections.

Speaking at a panel discussion at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Gandhi also said that there is a challenge to the institutional structure of India.

"If you ask me what am I proud about my country...it is the idea of plurality. It's the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they won't face any problem and that is being challenged...," he said.

"There is a particular type of politics that's not only happening in India but in a number of places - of dividing people, of using (their) anger to win elections and that's what is happening in India," he told the audience at the school, which is part of the National University of Singapore.

Commenting on the recent controversy of four senior Supreme Court judges holding an unprecedented press conference, Gandhi said, "They actually went out to the press and said listen we need the people to hear our voice because there is something fundamentally wrong."



"I don't know if you know the details about the comments they (judges) were making but the centre of the issue is the case of (BJP president) Amit Shah. So, there is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country," he said, apparently referring to the issue of alleged mysterious death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

Shah was discharged as an accused in the case.

Gandhi alleged that there is a "very very aggressive and organised attack on the system and on the judiciary. If you speak to the press, if you talk to business people, they will also tell you that we feel intimidated. so there is a general atmosphere of intimidation."



The Congress president said that the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned was that an India where everybody is comfortable regardless of religion, community, regardless of state.

"The idea that anybody coming to India, even the foreigner coming to India, feel comfortable in the country...that idea is being challenged now," he asserted.

"Where we are running into trouble now is the levels of violence and anger that you are seeing in India and this to me is a syndrome," he said, adding that "I'm proud to say that our vision is bringing people together."



Responding to a question, Gandhi accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in anti-minorities politics.

"Mahatma Gandhi died protecting minorities. We, the Congress party, have been protecting minority people for the last 70 years. We don't like an India where people are persecuted, where people are being beaten up for what they eat, what they say and what they wear," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi controls the law making, he controls the UP police, he controls the Haryana police, he controls these things. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India," Gandhi said, without elaborating.

Asserting that "we will fight him and we will defeat him" in the election, he said "very soon you will see India where everybody is respected and everybody is loved."



He also criticised BJP's Kashmir policy, saying the UPA government had curbed terrorism by 2012 but it resurfaced after the BJP came to power in 2014.

"In 2014 when I went to Jammu and Kashmir I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can do to years and years of policy-making," he said.

The BJP has lost the touch with the people and created a strategic problem in Jammu and Kashmir, he said and underlined the need to engage people and win their trust.

He also slammed the BJP government over its "bad record" of creating jobs, saying "our record is better".

Responding to a question on International Women's Day today, Gandhi said the Congress party had sought to pass the Women's Reservation Bill but it was opposed by other parties.

On India's foreign policy, he said India has to have peaceful relations with China, the US, Europe, Asean and others. He said India and China should have a peaceful and co-operative relationship.

"One complaint I have of the BJP foreign policy in general... is that it is very tactical and episode," he said.

Answering a wide range of questions from the panel and audience, Gandhi spoke of India's advantage in connecting its skilled people through IT and manufacturing sector.

He noted Chinese manufacturing capabilities of having factory operation based on large workforce, some running into 50,000 to 100,000 which, however, was not applicable to India due to different culture of working.

He also spoke of India's potential of developing a health care for the global markets.

Gandhi is on a two-day visit to Singapore and will meet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tomorrow. He will then travel to Malaysia where he will meet Prime Minister Najib Razak and members of the Indian community.

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Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was shown black flags by some youths today during her address at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's public event here leaving the authorities red-faced.

A video of the protest soon went viral on the internet.

As soon as Raje began her speech highlighting the steps taken by her government under the 'Beti Bachao and Beti Padhao' scheme, a group of youngsters created an uproar and waved black flags.

Security personnel prevented the protestors from moving towards the stage.

A few BJP leaders were also seen trying to pacify the agitators.

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Reserve Bank has imposed Rs 10 lakh fine on Equitas Small Finance Bank (SFB) as the company was selling mutual fund, pension and insurance products without taking approval from the regulator.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed, on March 1, 2018, a monetary penalty of Rs 1 million on Equitas Small Finance Bank Limited for non-compliance with one of the licensing conditions stipulated by RBI, the apex bank said in a notification.

"This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers," the RBI said.

The RBI said Equitas had undertaken the activities of rolling out mutual fund units, pension products, insurance products and portfolio management services without obtaining its prior approval.

Based on the information received and other relevant documents, a notice, dated January 18, 2018, was issued to the bank advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed on it for non-compliance with the licensing conditions stipulated by the Reserve Bank of India at the time of issuing banking license to the bank, it said further.

After considering the banks reply and oral submissions during the personal hearing, RBI came to the conclusion that the charge of non-compliance with one of the licensing conditions stipulated by RBI was substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty, RBI gave as a background information about levy of this penalty on the bank.

Equitas Small Finance Bank (ESFBL) had started its banking operations from Chennai in September 2016.

The RBI had issued licenses to ten entities in September 2015 to provide basic banking services like accepting deposits and lending to unserved and underserved, including small business units, small and marginal farmers, micro and small industries and unorganised sector entities.

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JSW Steel chairman Sajjan Jindal has lauded the Supreme Court verdict cancelling the iron ore mining leases in Goa and said instead of putting pressure on the Centre the apex court judgement should be respected.

The Supreme Court had last month quashed the second renewal of iron ore mining leases given to 88 companies in Goa in 2015.

"Instead of putting pressure on Delhi, it will be much better to respect Hon. #SupremeCourt judgement. @goacm must act on time based auction of the mines," Jindal has said in a tweet.

An all-party delegation from Goa had on Monday met Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal in Delhi and urged them to help the iron ore mining industry, which is staring at a crisis in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling.

"@goacm must act on time based auction of the mines," Jindal has tweeted.

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had last month said that there was no other option than auctioning mining leases to resume iron ore extraction in the state, which is set to stop from March due to a Supreme Court order.

"Mine auctions through a transparent process will give additional revenue to the #Goa exchequer. Delaying the act wont help anyone @goacm @MinesMinIndia @nstomar," Jindal has tweeted.

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South Korea's president said today that many "critical moments" still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Korea's recent outreach to Seoul and Washington.

Moon Jae-in spoke before two senior Seoul officials left for the United States to brief officials about the outcome of their recent visit to North Korea.

The Seoul officials said North Korea offered talks with the United States over normalising ties and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul said the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks.

Some experts question how sincere North Korea is about its reported offers, citing what they call its track record of using past disarmament talks to wrest aid and concessions while covertly continuing its bomb programme.

According to the South Korean officials, North Korea said it has no reason to possess nuclear weapons as long as military threats against the country are removed and its security is guaranteed.

That's the same position North Korea has long maintained to justify its nuclear programme or call for the withdrawal of 28,500 US troops and a halt to annual US-South Korean military drills as a condition for scrapping its nuclear programme. The North sees the allies' drills as an invasion rehearsal.

Choi Hyunsoo, spokeswoman of Seoul's Defence Ministry, said the military will announce the schedule for the joint drills after the Pyeongchang Paralympics, which start Friday and run through March 18.

"We've overcome one critical moment. But there are many critical moments that we still have to go through before reaching the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a permanent peace," Moon said in a meeting with church leaders.

Moon still described the outcome of his envoys' North Korea trip "a big step toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" that was possible with "a strong support" by the US government.

It's unclear whether the United States would accept the North's reported offer for talks. President Donald Trump expressed both hope and skepticism, calling the North's move "possible progress" that also "may be false hope."



Seoul and Washington plan to kick off their delayed springtime drills next month, and how sensitively the North reacts will affect the reconciliation mood revived by the North's participation in last month's Winter Olympics held in the South.

The North responded to past joint drills by the allies with its own weapons tests and fiery rhetoric.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan's policy of pressuring North Korea does not change just because its leadership is now open to dialogue.

"We should not ease our stance, for instance relax sanctions, just because North Korea agreed to have a dialogue," Abe told a parliamentary session. "We should not give North Korea a reward in exchange for a dialogue."



China, the North's most important ally, encouraged follow-up measures while noting the progress was in part due to the suspension of both North Korean nuclear tests and US-South Korean military exercises during the Olympics.

"This proves that China's proposal of suspension for suspension was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations," Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. Wang said Pyongyang's security concerns should be addressed in return for denuclearization.

Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are to meet at a border village in late April, when the South Korea-US drills would likely be still under way. If realized, the Moon-Kim meeting would mark the rivals' third-ever summit talks since their 1945 division, according to Moon's office.

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The opposition RJD in Bihar today challenged Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to take a cue from his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Chandrababu Naidu and "speak up" on the issue of special status for the state.

Accusing Kumar of remaining silent on issues such as vandalism of statues and alleged insult to women leaders like Mayawati and Renuka Chowdhury, the opposition party has warned the government of launching an agitation, if the chief minister failed to raise his voice on the issue of special status.

"We salute Chandrababu Naidu for showing the courage to stick to the stand he took on the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh. The effect of creation of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh is similar to the impact carving out of Jharkhand had on Bihar. But there appears to be a big difference between the chief ministers of the two states", RJD national spokesman Manoj Jha told reporters here.

Notably, in the past, Kumar, too, had been demanding a special status for Bihar and even made it his poll plank in the state elections.

Jha, who blamed the chief minister of not being consistent between his words and deeds, said he is living in the "mortal fear of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah".

"Ever since Kumar betrayed the mandate of 2015 Assembly polls, ditched the RJD-Congress combine and joined the NDA, he has been living in mortal fear of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah", Jha alleged.

Not ready to accept the chief minister's silence on the vital issue of "special status", Jha has warned the government of his party taking to the streets for the demand of special status.

"He has kept mum on vandalisation of statues of Periyar and Lenin. He claims to support women's empowerment, but when disparaging remarks were made against BSP supremo Mayawati some time ago and Rajya Sabha member Renuka Chowdhury recently, he did not utter a word in condemnation.

We moved an adjournment motion in the Assembly on the issue today and we request the chief minister to raise his voice on this vital matter. If he fails to do so, the RJD will hit the streets," he said.

When asked a question on the decline of their alliance partner Congress on the national scene, Jha said it is a false assumption and argued that the Congress has been faring well than the BJP in all the by-elections.

"Congress had emerged as the single largest party in Meghalaya. It had the same status in Goa and Manipur where the BJP formed the government through underhand tactics," he added.

On the other hand, he questioned the BJP's position and said that the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was not the only alliance partner unhappy with their "arrogance".

He further said that a massive coalition of parties would fights against the BJP in the next Lok Sabha elections.

"The revolt of Naidu, who is also the TDP chief, is not an isolated event. NDA allies like the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal have shown their discomfiture with the BJP's arrogance. So have people like HAM president Jitan Ram Manjhi who recently quit the NDA and joined the Congress-RJD combine.

By the time the next Lok Sabha polls are announced, a massive coalition of parties across the country, which are opposed to the BJP, would take shape", he claimed.

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The Supreme Court has asked Karti Chidambaram, the son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, to approach the Delhi High Court today for seeking any interim relief in the INX Media money laundering case.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra requested the acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court to allocate Karti's matter to an appropriate bench so that it can be taken up for hearing tomorrow.

The bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, also allowed Karti to withdraw his plea pending with the apex court related to the money laundering case.

The top court had on March 6 refused to grant any interim protection to the son of the former Union finance minister.

Karti had approached the apex court seeking direction to declare that the Enforcement Directorate had no jurisdiction to conduct any investigation unrelated to the allegations in the FIR lodged by CBI on May 15, 2017.

He had also sought the quashing of summons and all the proceedings initiated by the ED, terming it "unreasonable, without jurisdiction, without authority of law, in colourable exercise of power and vitiated by malafides".

Karti was arrested on February 28 in Chennai immediately after he returned from abroad.

He had also sought direction to the ED to forbear him from investigation under the PMLA, the commission of a predicate offence or the existence of proceeds of crime in the M/s INX Media case and investigate the alleged offence of money laundering only if and after the proceeds of crime arising out of a predicate offence are identified by the CBI.

The apex court had on February 23 refused to stay the summons issued by the ED against Karti Chidambaram -- who is presently in CBI custody in the INX Media case.

The ED had registered a case against him and others in May last year. It had registered an ECIR, against the accused named in a CBI complaint. These included Karti Chidambaram, INX Media and its directors, Peter and Indrani Mukerjea.

An FIR, filed on May 15 last year, had alleged irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving Rs 305 crore in overseas funds in 2007 when P Chidambaram was Union finance minister.

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The Supreme Court today restored the marriage of Kerala-based Hadiya, an alleged victim of love jihad, setting aside a nine-month-old order of the Kerala High Court.

The top court, however, clarified that the National Investigating Agency (NIA) may go ahead with the investigation in respect to any criminality.

In Kochi, Hadiya's father K M Asokan said he would consider moving a review petition in the Supreme Court against its judgement.

He maintained that his daughter's marriage with Shafin Jahan was an act of "adjustment" done by a group.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra said that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan and Shafin Jahan by its order dated May 24, 2017 in a habeas corpus petition.

"We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between appellant No.1, Shafin Jahan and respondent No.9, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan, in a habeas corpus petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India," a bench also comprising justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.

The top court said it had directed the personal appearance of Hadiya on November 27, last year and she had admitted her marriage with Jahan.

"In view of the aforesaid, the appeal stands allowed. The judgement and order passed by the high court is set aside. Respondent No.9, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law," it said and added that NIA can continue its investigation.

On May 24 last year, a division bench of the high court had termed her marriage a "sham" and had annulled it, directing her return to the custody of her Hindu parents.

Earlier during the day, the apex court clarified that a court cannot interfere in the marriage of two consenting adult and cannot annul the marriage in a habeas corpus (a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, for securing the person's release) petition.

It had said that Article 226 gives the extraordinary power to the high courts to protect the constitutional right not to scuttle it.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Jahan, said that as a matter of law no third party can interfere in the marriage between two consenting adults which is a fundamental right.

He said that high court had no jurisdiction to annul the marriage and it can be challenged only by the party to the marriage but no third party can interfere in it.

"The jurisdiction of marriage is not in the marriage of consenting adults and no investigating agency can interfere in the marriage. Even the father of girl can't interfere," Sibal argued.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for Asokan, said that the high court was right in annulling the marriage and it has inherent jurisdiction under Article 226 of Constitution.

To this, Justice Chandrachud said, "There has to be some exception circumstances which warrant courts interference in the marriage like of a girl with a 65 year old man, out of poverty or illiteracy, where there was no free consent or the marriage should not have taken at the first place."



The bench said that a court cannot interfere where there is free consent between the adults and it has called Hadiya and talked to her.

Divan said that this marriage of Hadiya was in an exceptional circumstances and the court was right in interfering in it as it can't loose the oversight of a 'vulnerable adult'.

The bench said that there was an habeas corpus petition before the high court and if there was no wrongful confinement, the matter ends there.

Divan added that high court found that there was a well oiled machinery working to use the marriage of Hadiya as a guise to put the matter out of the court's reach.

Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the NIA, said that its investigation in the case is over and look out circular has been issued against two persons who are suspected to have gone out of the country.

"You (NIA) can carry out the investigation with regard to the offences but you cannot touch the marriage. Investigate anything but marriage", the bench said.

Singh said that marriage was just a ploy to get rid of the court's jurisdiction but the court should not be handicapped to deal with the situation as there are ample evidences.

The apex court said that it will pass detailed verdict in the petition at a later stage.

The apex court had in August last year asked the NIA to probe the case of conversion and marriage of Hadiya, as the agency claimed a "pattern" was emerging in Kerala.

The matter came to the fore when Hadiya's husband Shafin Jahan challenged a Kerala High Court order annulling his marriage and sending her to her parents' custody.

On November 27 last year, the apex court had freed Hadiya from her parents' custody and sent her to college to pursue her studies, even as she had pleaded that she should be allowed to go with her husband.

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Scientists from Scotlands University of Strathclyde have teamed up with colleagues at Aligarh Muslim University to study the impact of industrialisation on rivers.

Researchers will analyse samples of indigenous bacteria taken from the River Clyde in Scotland and the Yamuna River in India, a tributary of the Ganges, to understand more about how they respond to industrial pollutants.

The two-year study, aimed at learning more about the impact on waterways from heavy industrialisation in the past and present, is being funded by a 38,810-pound research grant distributed by the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the government of Indias Department of Science and Technology.

"Industrial activity, whether contemporary or historical, tends to occur along major watercourses. Adverse impacts include impaired water quality, habitat loss and diminished resources with resultant risks to human and aquaculture health," said Charles Knapp, the senior lecturer in Civil and Environmental Engineering involved in the project.

"Heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have enriched sediment in the Clyde and its estuary and affected ecosystems. The same thing is happening to the Yamuna today which, despite being one of the most important rivers in India, is steadily deteriorating as industrial towns discharge significant amounts of PAH and metals wastes into the river," he said.

Indigenous bacterial microbes in soil and sediments in rivers have been found to transform heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) by-products from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

However, PAHs and metals stress the river bacteria and could cause could them to genetically change and become resistant to chemicals, and thus emerge as superbugs that can also resist antibiotics.

The joint UK-India project ultimately aims to develop strategies to monitor and prevent the spreading of contaminants, understand how bacteria respond to pollution



including their remediation of toxic compounds and the potential impacts on health.

The River Clyde, once the epicentre of the worlds ship- building industry with steel-mills and factories lining its banks, was heavily contaminated during the industrial revolution, with fish such as salmon and sea trout absent from its waters for more than 100 years until recently.

Today, researchers fear the Yamuna is suffering much as the Clyde did.

Though it springs from the crystal-clear waters of the Yamunotri Glacier in the Himalayas, the river becomes one of the most polluted in the world after passing through Delhi where vast amounts of untreated sewage, industrial waste and agricultural chemicals pour into it.

Strathclydes collaboration with Aligarh Muslim University builds on existing link Professor Knapp has with colleagues in India, including IIT-Bombay.

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The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) today questioned debt-ridden Bhushan Steel's Chairman Brij Bhushan Singal with regard to alleged siphoning of funds worth over Rs 1,000 crore, a source said.

The agency, which comes under the Corporate Affairs Ministry, has been probing allegations of fund diversions at the company since last year.

According to the source, Singal was questioned by the SFIO in the national capital in the matter related to alleged siphoning of huge amount of funds.

The diversion of funds is estimated to be more than Rs 1,000 crore, the source added.

Calls made to Bhushan Steel officials for seeking comments remained unanswered.

Debt-laden Bhushan Steel is one of the 12 non-performing accounts referred by the Reserve Bank of India to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for insolvency proceedings. The company owes more than Rs 44,000 crore to its lenders.

In recent weeks, the SFIO has been asked to investigate a significant number of companies for fraudulent activities, especially those related to diamond merchants Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in the Rs 12,700 crore Punjab National Bank fraud.

Last month, the ministry ordered the SFIO to probe around 110 companies and about 10 limited liability partnerships related to Modi and Choksi.

Besides, the white collar crime investigation agency has already questioned various bank officials with regard to the scam.

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China today presented an upbeat picture of its ties with India and said that both countries should shed suspicion and manage differences by meeting half way, toning down its tough posture against New Delhi after the tense Dokalam standoff.

As China's political picture is set for a major change this week with its Parliament expected to ratify the proposal to remove term limits for President Xi Jinping, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addressed over a two-hour-long press conference outlining Beijing's foreign policy perspectives in what is called a "new era".

Last year, Wang skirted to take a question on ties with India amid growing discord over a host issues including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), China blocking efforts at the UN to list Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist as well as India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Later in the two militaries were locked in the 73-day standoff at Dokalam, the longest in recent years.

Wang, who is widely expected to be promoted as State Councillor, a top diplomatic position, took a question on India today in the carefully choreographed media event telecast live on the sidelines of the annual session of legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC).

Asked how China views relations with India this year after turbulence in ties in 2017 due to a number of issues including the Dokalam standoff, Wang sought to strike a chord with India, calling for both the countries to shed confrontationist stance on issues of differences.

"The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other," he said, adding "if China and India are united, one plus one is not equal to two but eleven".

"Despite some tests and difficulties, the China-India relationship continues to grow," Wang said.

In an apparent reference to concerns in India over forays being made by Beijing in India's close neighbourhood, Wang said, "China is upholding its rights and legitimate interests and taking care to preserve its relationship with India".

"Chinese and Indian leaders have developed a strategic vision for the future of our relations," he said.

"The international situation is experiencing its biggest change in a century....China and India must do everything to emphasise this and support each other and avoid mutual suspicion and attrition," he said.

"Mutual trust is the most precious commodity in China-India relations. With political trust, not even the Himalayas can stop us from friendly exchanges. Without it not even levelled land can bring us together," he said.

He also sought to convey a message to people of India in general to improve China's image.

"A shared understanding far outstrips our differences. Our common interests far outweigh our frictions. China is willing and ready to inherit and take foreword our traditional friendship and be a friend and partner of Indian people," he said.

"I hope the two sides will be free from mental inhibitions and meet each other halfway. Let us replace suspicion with trust, manage differences with dialogue and build a future with cooperation," he said.

Beijing is also pressing New Delhi not to allow the Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama to engage in high-profile activities aimed at "splitting" Tibet from China.

Wang, however, reacted strongly to a question whether the Indo-Pacific strategy being furthered by India, the US, Japan and Australia will affect China's multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

He said there was "no shortage of headline grabbing ideas" but they were "like the foam on the sea" that "gets attention but will soon dissipate".

Contrary to claims made by some academics and media outlets that the strategy is aimed at containing China, the four countries have made it clear that it targets no one, Wang said.

"I hope they mean what they say," he said.

"Let us not forget the BRI has received the support of over 100 countries. Nowadays stroking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting confrontation will find no market," he said.

Touted as Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious project, the BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe.

The BRI also includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which India opposed as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

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BJP president Yeddyurappa today lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over deteriorating law and order in Karnataka and said the chief minister was running the state like 'Tughlaq darbar" ahead of the state assembly polls.

His remarks come a day after the state's most senior anti-corruption officer P Vishwanatha Shetty was hospitalised after he was stabbed repeatedly at his office in Bengaluru.

"By God's grace, he (Shetty) is still alive. I dont know how Siddaramaiah reacts to such incidents. When there is no safety for high-rank officers, will there be for ordinary people? The law and order has completely collapsed," Yeddyurappa told reporters.

He said the chief minister claimed that his government was number one. But it seems the government is number one is in terms of atrocities on women and breakdown of law and order in the state, the BJP leader said.

"It seems Siddaramaiah is running the government like a Tughlaq darbar. We have to bear it for two months," he said.

Yeddyurappa, BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls, exuded confidence that his party would win more than 150 seats and form the government.

He also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to visit Raichur on March 13 for the inauguration of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

Yeddyurappa was in the national capital to meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to request for inclusion of Talavara and Parivara tribal communities in the list of the Scheduled Tribes (STs). He also met Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda on the arecanut issue.

"On April 19, 1991, the Centre had incuded Nayak, Weda and Valmiki communities in the ST list but not Parivara and Talavara tribes. We met the home minister and asked him to include these two communities in the ST list," he said.

The home minister has assured that the issue will be resolved at the earliest, he added.

On the areca nut issue, the state BJP chief said the central government has been asked to clear concerns over quality of areca nut and protect the interest of farmers.

"Areca nut (supari) is being grown and consumed for ages. Some concerns were raised by Congress on its quality in Lok Sabha and that has affected farmers. There is no such content in areca nut which is harmful to health," he added.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar among other party members were part of the two meetings.

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Flagging off the "Kannadiga pride" ahead of the assembly polls, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today unveiled the proposed official state flag for Karnataka.

The 'Naada Dwaja' (state's flag) in hues of yellow, white and red, has the state's emblem 'Gandaberunda' or the two-headed mythological bird, at its centre.

A committee formed by thestate government last year had recommended the separate flag for Karnataka,discounting any constitutional or legal hurdles for it.

Siddaramaiah unveiled the flag after chairing a meeting of pro-Kannada organisations, activists and literary personalities, where they unanimously approved the design.

It was decided to have a flag for thestate as a symbol of pride of Kannada speaking people, he said,adding "it was the intention, opinion and voice of Kannadigas."



"We have done it today. All (Kannada organisations) have given their approval for it," he said.

Calling the state flag a "sign of Kannadiga pride" and a "historic decision", he said it would be sent to the central government for approval.

Pointing out that the state cannot declare its flag by itself and it requires approval from the Centre,Siddaramaiah said, "So we will immediately send it to the centralgovernment. We will also try and impress upon the Centre to give its approval".

Asked whether the Centre will give its approval, he said "theConstitution does not say that the state should not have itsflag, so I believe they will agree.

As a country has a flag, in the same way in a federal system, there is no bar in the constitution for the state to have its own flag, he said.

Also in the federal system the national flag is always supreme and will be above the state flag, he added.

A nine-member committee formed by the government had submitted its report on designing a separate flag for the state and providing a legal standing for it on February 5.

The government's move to form the panel had drawn criticism from some quarters, with some comparing it to Jammu Kashmir,which enjoys a special status under Article 370 of the constitution.

Pointing that for a long time a discussion about having a state flag was on, Siddaramaiah said the committee after a thorough examination and discussions about legal, historical and constitutional aspects finally came to a decision on the matter.

The committee, headed by the principal secretary, Department of Kannada and Culture, was set up in June last year after a representation from noted Kannada writer and journalist Patil Puttappa and social worker Bheemappa Gundappa Gadada.

In their representation, the two hadrequested the government to design a separate flag for 'Kannada Naadu' and accord it legal standing.

Detailing about the flag design, Siddaramaiah saidthe tricolour flag has white colour at the middle of yellow and the red flag that "we unofficially use now."



It also has the state's emblem 'Gandaberunda' at the centre, but will not have the inscription 'Satyameva Jayate, he said'.

The unofficial but widely regarded yellow and red 'Kannada flag' that is hoisted in the state on November one every year to commemorate the state formation day and used in theform of a scarf by Kannada activists, was designed in the 1960s.

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Those disturbing peace and harmony by vandalising statues should be booked under the sedition law, BSP chief Mayawati today demanded, a day after a statue of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar was damaged in Meerut yesterday.

There have also been several other instances of statues of prominent leaders being vandalised from across the country in recent days.

"Such acts are not in the interest of the country as they weaken the democratic and secular fabric as well as harm communal harmony," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a statement here.

Now even in Uttar Pradesh, in Meerut, the statue of Baba Saheb Ambedkar was vandalised, she added.

She urged followers of the leaders, whose statues were vandalised, to exercise restraint while demanding "prompt and strict action" against those harming harmony in the society.

"Mere tall claims and rhetoric by the central and state governments against such forces will not serve any purpose. Action needs to be taken against them under the sedition law," the BSP chief stressed.

Demanding proper security to the memorials, statues and parks set up in the memory of Dalit and other ideologues, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati alleged if no action was taken, it would mean these incidents were part of a BJP-RSS conspiracy.

On the occassion of International Women's Day today, the BSP president asked the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh to implement the schemes meant for the welfare, progress and security of women, with a special focus on those belonging to the Dalit and deprived sections.

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Allowing employees to stab voodoo dolls of their boss could help them feel less resentful and improve the quality of their work, a study claims.

A study of 229 workers in the US and Canada found that engaging in 'symbolic retaliation' lowered feelings of injustice by one third.

Although revenge is often viewed negatively, the findings highlight 'the largely overlooked benefit of retaliation from the victim's perspective.'



"We found a simple and harmless symbolic act of retaliation can make people feel like they're getting even and restoring their sense of fairness," said Lindie Liang, from University in Ontario in Canada.

"It may not have to be a voodoo doll per se: theoretically anything that serves as a symbolic act of retaliation, like throwing darts at a picture of your boss, might work," she was quoted as saying by 'The Telegraph'.

"Symbolically retaliating against an abusive boss can benefit employees psychologically by allowing them to restore their sense of justice in the workplace," she said.

The participants in the study, published in the journal The Leadership Quarterly, used an online voodoo doll programme, which allows users to name the effigy after their boss, and sticking it with pins, burn it with a candle, and pinch it with pliers.

For the study, the participants were asked to recall and visualise a workplace interaction which had involved abuse from a supervisor.

Some were then asked to retaliate using a voodoo doll, before all completed a task to fill in the blanks to complete words.

Those who had been allowed to stick pins in their virtual boss were far less likely to still feel bitter, and were also better at completing the word exercise.

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A "sudden turn" by the American warship USS John S McCain led to a collision with a tanker last year off Singapore that left 10 sailors dead, a report by the city-state's government said.

Singapore's transport ministry, releasing the results of its investigation into the incident, said a "series of missteps" by the destroyer's crew and insufficient action by those of the tanker, the Alnic MC, contributed to the accident.

The vessels smashed into each other in the predawn hours of August 21, 2017 in the busy shipping lanes around the Strait of Malacca. There were no casualties among the tanker's crew.

The commander of the John S McCain is facing charges including negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, the US Navy said in January, after its own investigation into the incident found "multiple failures" by the ship's crew.

Singapore said its 35-page report did not blame any organisation or individual for the fatal crash, but found the warship made an abrupt turn after a transfer of controls caused confusion among the crew.

"The collision... happened because of a sudden turn to port (left) by JSM (John S McCain), which caused it to head into the path of the (tanker)," the report said.

It also noted that several sailors on watch at the John S. McCain during the collision had been assigned from another warship with steering control systems that were "significantly different".

"These differences were not compensated for. Inadequacies in training and familiarisation before the task allocation may have contributed to the actions on John S. McCain," it said.

The collision took place within three minutes of the warship's sudden turn, it said, adding however that the actions taken by the tanker's crew "were insufficient to avoid" the smashup.

"When the bridge team of Alnic MC saw the USS John S. McCain turning, it presumed that the (warship) would be able to safely pass ahead," it said.

The incident came after another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, smashed into a Philippine-flagged cargo ship off Japan in June 2017, leaving seven sailors dead.

In a report on the two separate collisions, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said both were "preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents".

The US Navy said in November that the John S. McCain collision "resulted primarily from complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance".

"In particular, McCain's commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion," it said.

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The principal of Swami Shraddhanand College was today attacked by a few unidentified motorcycle-borne youths while he was on his way to his home in Narela, police said.

The incident occurred around 2.30 pm when 60-year-old PV Khatrai was driving towards Narela.

Some motorcyclists hit the front window of his car with a stone, they said, adding that Khatrai has sustained a minor injury on his forehead.

He is yet to record his statement with the police.

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Roger Federer, who regained the world Number One ranking last month, is on a quest to make history in the California desert by winning an unprecedented sixth Indian Wells title.

The 36-year-old Swiss marvel continues to defy the aging process, claiming his 20th Grand Slam title and sixth Australian Open crown in January.

He has enjoyed a perfect start to 2018 by winning both events he has competed in and taking his career singles title tally to 97.

"He shows there is no limit," said third-seeded Grigor Dimitrov on Wednesday.

"He keeps on proving it every year on the tour."



Federer opens the defence of his Indian Wells title by playing a second-round match against either American Ryan Harrison or Federico Delbonis of Argentina.

He also won this tournament three straight years beginning in 2004, and in 2012 as well as last year.

Federer comes into the elite event as the oldest ATP Number One in history. In the Open era, only American Jimmy Connors has won more titles than Federer, with 109.

Federer has played two tournaments this year and won both -- the other being the Rotterdam Open.

"For me to stand right here as world Number One in San Jose is very, very special for me," Federer said at a charity event in San Jose, California on Monday.

Federer is not alone in his hunt for a sixth Indian Wells crown when the men's draw kicks off today.

Serbian Novak Djokovic, who is making his first return to the Tour since the Australian Open, is also a five-time Indian Wells champion and would like nothing more than to announce his return from an elbow injury by going all the way.

Both players are in opposite halves of the draw so they would not meet each other until the final.

Djokovic won Indian Wells in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Djokovic, who is seeded 10th, has a bye and will face the winner of a first- round match between two qualifiers in his opener.

He is in the same half of the draw as Argentina's Juan Martin del Potro, who is fresh off a win in the Mexican Open in Acapulco last weekend.

Del Potro, who made the Indian Wells final in 2013, said Wednesday he is healthier than he has been in years and full of confidence from his Mexico success.

- Del Potro confident -



=======================Del Potro defeated the hard-serving Kevin Anderson 6-4, 6-4 in the final to claim his first title of 2018 and post his seventh-straight career victory over Anderson.

The 29-year-old del Potro recorded his 21st career ATP title but this is one of his biggest in years and the earliest he has hoisted a trophy since the 2014 season.

"I had a lot of tough opponents during Acapulco," said del Potro. "I got a lot of confidence."



His tough draw in Acapulco should serve him well this week.

If del Potro gets through his opening second-round match as expected, he will likely face Spaniard David Ferrer, whom he also had to beat in Acapulco. Besides Djokovic, that quarter of the draw includes Japan's Kei Nishikori, second seeded Marin Cilic and American favourite John Isner.

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Amid a spate of incidents targeting statues and busts of known figures across the country, National Conference president Farooq Abdullah today asked the government to take stern action against those indulging in such acts.

The statues of Russian communist icon Vladimir Illyich Lenin and rationalist leader from Tamil Nadu EV Ramasamy, popularly known as Periyar, were damaged in Tripura and Tamil Nadu respectively earlier this week.

A statue of Dalit icon B R Ambedkar was also vandalised and replaced later in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh.

I think it is a big challenge for India that the statues of leaders who made big contributions are being damaged. It is wrong.

The government should find out who are destructing the statues. It must take stern action against those doing so, Abdullah told reporters outside Parliament.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yesterday strongly disapproved of incidents of vandalism reported from certain parts of the country.

Modi had also spoken with Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the matter, following which the ministry said it has taken serious note of the incidents and directed state governments to take strong action.

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Tata Power today said it has registered the highest ever gross power generation at 4,647 million units (MU) in February 2018.

"Tata Power registered the highest ever gross electricity generation of February 2018 at 4647 Million Units. Tata Power has demonstrated a 3 per cent increase in gross generation capacity when compared to the same month last year where it generated 4,518 million units," a company statement said.

Tata Power along with its subsidiaries registered strong operational performances across its plants to achieve this remarkable feat. All of its power generation stations, including Trombay, Jojobera, Haldia, Maithon, IEL, CGPL, TPREL, WREL, Cennergi, ITPC, Dagachu, Hydro, and TPCL Wind witnessed higher plant availability, it added.

We are confident that our efforts in implementing world class technologies and processes in this direction will benefit the company in the years to come and enable us to achieve better generation consistently, Tata Power MD & CEO Anil Sardana said.

Tata Power has been focusing on building a healthy energy mix within its portfolio as well as augmenting its operational processes to ensure a sustainable future for the company and the nation.

In line with this commitment, Tata Power will continue to work towards ensuring its renewable business maintains its position of being India's largest renewable energy company, while also implementing cutting edge technologies to improve its operational efficiency, it added.

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Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh today resigned after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government.

Health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations.

They thanked him for having inducted them into the state Cabinet.

The chief minister, in turn, complimented the BJP members, saying they had discharged their duties well.

Later, speaking in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, Srinivas said that his political career began in the TDP in 1982.

"My party membership registration number was 80. After serving the party for a few years, I stayed away from for close to three decades. I joined the BJP in 2014 on the invitation of Venkaiah Naidu (now Vice President) and became an MLA," Srinivas, who is a doctor by profession, said.

He expressed satisfaction that he had discharged his duties as a minister without a single complaint.

"I felt very happy when the chief minister told me there was not a single complaint against me," he said.

Earlier in the day, several ministers met the two BJP members in their chambers and had a friendly chat with them.

Last night, the TDP decided to exit the NDA government at the Centre, peeved over Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's stance on the state's demand for grant of special category status.

TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, however, did not announce snapping of ties with the BJP and said he would take a call on this later.

The BJP also decided to pull out of the coalition government in Andhra Pradesh after two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet -- Civil Aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary -- decided to quit.

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Under relentless opposition attack over its failure to secure special category state status for Andhra Pradesh, the state's ruling TDP today pulled out of the Modi government but kept a window open for rapprochement by deciding to remain part of the NDA.

The two TDP ministers in the government--Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Rahu and Y S Chowdary--met Prime Minister Narendra Modi this evening and handed over their resignation letters.

However, there was no official word yet on whether the letters were forwarded to the President for acceptance, setting off speculation that back channel talks might still be on to thrash out a compromise formula.

The resignation by the Union ministers followed a 20-minute talk between Telugu Desam Party boss and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the prime minister which apparently failed to remove irritants plaguing the TDP's ties with the government.

In a tit-for-tat action, the two BJP ministers in the Naidu government--K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao--too quit.

The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and is the third largest constituent of the NDA in the House after Shiv Sena, which has 18 MPs. The Sena has also been at loggerheads with the BJP, and often cried neglect by the senior partner. It, however, continues to share power with the BJP both at the Centre and in Maharashtra.

Naidu had late yesterday night announced his ministers will pull out of the NDA government, a decision he termed as "painful but in the interest of the state".

The announcement came amid widening rift between the TDP and the Modi government over special category status for the state.

Naidu himself described Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's press conference in the national capital yesterday where he said funds equivalent to what a special category state receives would be extended to Andhra Pradesh but rejected the TDP's demand for special category status as the proverbial "last straw".

Addressing reporters after tendering their resignation, Raju said the TDP will continue to be a part of the Centre's ruling alliance.

Chowdary said the issue of special category status was very emotive for the state but the Centre did not address it, and added that even the special package was not adequate.

Reacting to the development, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar claimed in New Delhi "political pressure" and "false propaganda" by the main opposition YSR Congress and other parties on the issue of special status might have forced Naidu's hand.

"The TDP has demanded special status. We are discussing with them.... Unfortunately, YSR Congress and other parties are indulging in all sorts of false propaganda, spoiling the political atmosphere in the state and putting pressure on Chandrababu Naidu," Kumar told reporters.

The BJP sees the resignation of the two TDP ministers as an inevitable outcome of the regional party's "political compulsions" ahead of the Assembly polls next year which will take place with general elections.

The BJP, which has two Lok Sabha members from the state that sends 25 MPs to the House, is not overly worried about the prospect of contesting elections without an ally, and even hopes to emerge as a "significant political force".

"The BJP has the potential to emerge as a third viable alternative in Andhra Pradesh and our track record in different states testify to this. We will continue to work for the people there to become a significant political force," its spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said.

Some BJP leaders said, in the event of the TDP finally walking out of the NDA, the saffron party may find an ally in the YSR Congress, which has been a friendly party in Parliament.

Jaitley had said yesterday that giving special category status, as demanded by Naidu, to any state apart from those in the North-East and three hill provinces was not constitutionally possible after the implementation of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

For special category status category states, the Centre meets 90 per cent of the funds required in a centrally sponsored scheme as against 60 per cent in case of normal category states. The remaining funds are provided by the state governments.

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Thousands of Pakistanis imprisoned in Saudi Arabia and dozens sentenced to death in the ultra-conservative kingdom have been denied their legal rights to a defence, a report in Islamabad has warned.

Saudi Arabia executes more Pakistanis than any other foreign nationality annually, nearly all for heroin smuggling, according to the study by Justice Project Pakistan and Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Sixty-six Pakistanis were beheaded in the country between 2014 and 2017 alone, the report entitled "Caught in a Web" said.

"You not only have the death sentence, but you have it without due process or elementary fair trial," Saroop Ijaz, an HRW researcher, told AFP.

Pakistani migrants are "exceptionally disempowered and marginalised," Ijaz told AFP, adding that the group faces a "premodern discriminatory" criminal justice system in Saudi Arabia.

With 1.6 million nationals, Pakistanis constitute the second largest foreign community in Saudi Arabia, and most are members of a low-skilled workforce with few rights.

Some 2,795 Pakistanis are currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, the study says.

According to Saudi media reports, a Pakistani man was executed on Tuesday in Mecca, convicted of drug trafficking.

Four others were sentenced last month for raping and killing a woman and raping her teenage daughter, according to the Saudi interior ministry.

Detained Pakistanis "have braved a system that puts them in periods of detention without charge or trial, no access to legal assistance, pressure on detainees from the authorities to sign confessions and accept predetermined prison sentences to avoid prolonged arbitrary detention," said Sarah Belal, executive director for JPP.

The report also criticised inefficient translation services, which can "make Pakistanis sign a confession without even knowing it," said Ijaz, who also blamed Islamabad for not doing enough to help.

"The Pakistani government has not shown either the willingness or the capacity to defend its citizens who are facing a harsh and discriminatory justice system."



Under the "kafala" system in force in Saudi Arabia, which regulates the status of migrant workers, many are prohibited from changing jobs before the end of their contract if their employer objects to it -- a restriction which NGOs call forced labour or even slavery.

Since the beginning of the year, 31 people of all nationalities have been executed in Saudi Arabia, according to an AFP count.

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The Bihar government has said that three agriculture colleges will be set up in the state to boost the development of the farm sector.

Three colleges - Agriculture Business Management College at Patna, Agriculture Engineering College and Community Science/Food Technology College at Gaya and Biotechnology College at Ara will be set up, Agriculture Minister Prem Kumar said in the Assembly yesterday.

"These institutes will be set up in the state under the Bihar Agriculture University as enshrined in the third Agriculture Road Map (2017-22) which was launched in November 2017 to boost the all round development of the farm sector," Kumar said.

A scholarship scheme will also be launched at the post-graduate level to prepare trained manpower for the development of agriculture education and research in the state, Kumar said.

Kumar made the statements while giving reply after the conclusion of the debate in the state Assembly on his department's Rs 2749.77 crore budget demand for 2018-19.

The House later passed the budget with voice vote amid boycott by the RJD and the Congress members expressing dissatisfaction over the minister's reply.

The Agriculture Road Map was first implemented in 2008 which was again implemented for a period of five years in 2012, the minister said and added that "the third Agriculture Roadmap of Rs 1.54 lakh crore was launched by President Ramn Nath Kovind on November 9, 2017 for another five year term from 2017-2022.

The year 2017 has been the year of achievements for agriculture sector, he said adding that the state witnessed a record food grains production of 185.6 lakh tonne.

Besides, the state has witnessed record maize production of 38 lakh tonne in 2017, he said and added the state was chosen for Centre's Krishi Karman Award for record maize production. The award will be given by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 17, 2018, he said.

With a view to providing benefits of government's schemes meant to farmers at their door steps, the minister said the government had decided to open 'agriculture offices' at panchayat level instead of at block levels from next fiscal.

Telemetric weather stations at block level will be set up to provide timely information to farmers about weather, rain, humidity among others, he said adding that rain measurement unit would be set up at the panchayat level.

These stations will be set up in five districts- East Champaran, Supaul, Nalanda, Gaya and Arwal- at pilot project in 2017-18 and will be expanded in all the districts in next phase.

In order to promote organic farming, the government has decided to carry out organic farming on 25,000 acres of land in villages situated along the national highway in the next fiscal, the minister said.

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The Madras High Court has said that traffic stoppage in case of movement of dignitaries, including the state's governor, chief minister and chief justice, should not be more than five to ten minutes.

First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose, also said exceptions may only be made in the case of visits of high-level dignitaries such as the President and the Prime Minister, who occasionally visit and whose visits were intimated and publicised in advance.

"As far as possible, traffic should not be stopped for more than 5 to 10 minutes or so for the purpose of the movement of vehicles of high dignitaries, be it the governor, the chief minister, the chief justice (for whom the traffic need not at all be kept waiting) or anyone else," it said.

The bench gave the directions in its order while disposing of a public interest litigation (PIL) petition by S Doraisamy, an advocate of the high court, seeking appropriate action against top citytraffic police officials for allegedly restraining him wrongfully on a main road near the high court on March 22 last year following a

"No action is warranted.The petition is disposed of by directing the respondent police authorities to ensure proper traffic regulation and free flow of traffic to the extent possible," the bench said.

It, however, made it clear that the directions will not prevent the police authorities from diverting traffic from certain roads in case of a visit to the city of high dignitaries such as the president and the prime minister or in other exigencies.

The petitioner submitted that he missed an appointment with his doctor on that day due to the

He further alleged that on an enquiry with the police, he came to know that the chief minister was supposed to go to RK Nagar in North Chennai for a political meeting, but the meeting had got delayed for some reason.

The court said it appeared that in this case there was a traffic jam, which certain traffic policemen could not control.

No case was made out in the PIL for penal action against the commissioner of police or the deputy commissioners of police, impleaded as respondents.

It was nobody's case that these officers were present at the spot or were even aware of the traffic dislocation.

In any case, no case of misconduct has been made out against them, the bench ruled.
The recent visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to India has deepened and strengthened bilateral relations, Union Minister for Mines Narendra Singh Tomar has said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a joint statement have reaffirmed their commitment to the ongoing diversification and growth of the strategic partnership, based on shared values of democracy, diversity, pluralism and the rule of law," Tomar said here.

"The joint statement shows that both countries resolve to realise the full potential of bilateral trade and investment, expand and diversify bilateral economic and commercial relations, and enhancing people to people contacts," Tomar said.

He was addressing an event organised by the Consulate General of India, at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) 2018 Conference in Toronto yesterday.

More than 25,000 mining executives, investors, prospectors, government officials and analysts from 125 countries attended the six-day long global conference, according to PDAC President, Glenn Mullan.

Describing India as a land of opportunity, Tomar said the government has taken several steps, including e-auctions for allotment of mining blocks lease for 50 years.

He also said that steps have been taken for stronger legal provisions for illegal mining, establishment of National Mineral Exploration Trust, and District Mineral Foundation for welfare of local population affected by mining.

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President Donald Trump has denied allegations that he had an affair with an adult film star, the White House said, a day after the woman sued him to invalidate a deal that prevented her from discussing the alleged relationship.

Stephanie Clifford, who is known as Stormy Daniels in the adult film industry, filed a lawsuit in a California State court on Tuesday.

Running into 28 pages, the lawsuit alleges that she was paid $130,000 by Michael Cohen, personal lawyer of Trump, to not to go public with her alleged sexual encounters with Trump when he was the then Republican-presidential candidate.

"The president has denied the allegations against him and again this case has already been won in arbitration," the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference.

She alleged that Trump's lawyer Cohen forced her to sign a false statement and that she never signed a hush agreement regarding an alleged sexual encounter with him.

"Despite Trump's failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000 to be wired to the trust account of Clifford's attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Trump," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit says that Clifford began an intimate relationship with Trump in the summer of 2006 in Lake Tahoe, which continues till 2007.

"This relationship included, among other things, at least one "meeting" with Trump in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel located within Los Angeles County," the complaint said



Responding to questions, Sanders said she is not aware that Trump was aware that his lawyer has made any payment to the adult film star at that time, which was made days before the 2016 presidential elections.

"I can share that arbitration was won in the president's favour, and I would refer you to the president's outside counsel on any details beyond that," Sanders said.

"This case had already been won in arbitration, and that there was no knowledge of any payments from the president and he's denied all of these allegations," she reiterated in response to another question.

"The President denied these allegations. We've addressed this. The American people were aware of this, voted for the President. I don't have anything more to add," she said.

Reached for comment yesterday, Clifford's current attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Cohen, through his own attorney, Lawrence Rosen, has made further attempts to enforce the order and caution Clifford that she is subject to damages if she talks about Trump, NBC reported.

"We do not take kindly to these threats, nor will we be intimidated," Avenatti said.

In a statement Rosen said, an arbitration judge found that Daniels' "had violated the agreement and enjoined her from, among other things, filing this lawsuit... We intend to pursue our recourse in the arbitration as agreed to by both parties and continue to categorically refute the claims alleged by (Daniels) and her counsel."



Avenatti soon issued another statement. "First of all, it does not appears as if (Trump) was even a party to the arbitrations (Daniels) is referring to. How can you win something you're not even a part of? Secondly, claiming that Trump 'won' at arbitration when there has been no hearing, no notice to (Daniels), no opportunity given to her to respond, and no decision on the merits, is completely bogus," he said.

The New York Times and NBC news reported late last night that Trump's lawyer secretly obtained a temporary restraining order last week to prevent Daniels from speaking out about her alleged affair with him.

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Two persons were arrested this morning in connection with the killing of a 21-year-old youth on March 2, police said.

Thokchom Jagat was shot dead at Nagamapal locality in the state capital around 1.30 am, said a senior police officer.

A CCTV camera installed near the scene of crime had recorded the killing, the officer said, adding that the video clip went viral on the social media.

"The available footages show that the shooter got down from the car and shot Jagat even as he tried to flee the scene," he added.

Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh today lauded the state police for arresting two suspects in the case.

Biren, on his official Facebook page, maintained that H Dilip, a former member of the banned militant outfit Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP), and the driver of the car, Sandam Tombi, have been arrested from Langol Lai Manai in Imphal West district.

"Jagat had received multiple wounds on his back after being hit by pellets fired from a double barrel gun," the officer said, adding that a car and a weapon have been seized from the duo.

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Britain's top domestic security official today described the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter with a rare chemical agent as a "brazen and reckless act" that will be answered without hesitation when the facts become clear.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd told the House of Commons that enormous resources are being directed at trying to figure out who might be responsible for poisoning Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33.

The pair was found unconscious on a bench in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on Sunday, triggering a police investigation led by counter-terrorism detectives.

"The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act," she said.

"This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account. But if we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation."



The Skripal case is reminiscent of the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210. The banned VX nerve agent was used to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader last year in Malaysia.

Skripal and his daughter are in critical but stable condition, Rudd said. A police officer who came to their aid is also in a serious but stable condition, though he is not in intensive care. Police have declined to speculate on who might be behind the attack.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attempted killing of Skripal, a former Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.

But Rudd said the "government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer." The rarity of the poisoning material drew attention to the potential of a state actor being involved.

Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie of research project CBW Events said the highly public murder attempt appeared to be "an expression of power" intended to send a message.

"There's echoes of Litvinenko you are doing it in a way that makes it obvious you're doing it," he said.

Griffiths said that Russia was "obviously a clear candidate," but it was too soon to say who was behind the attack. "It's also possible there could be some troublemaker out there who wants to make it look like it was Russia," he said.

Nerve agents are chemicals that disrupt the messages sent by the nerves to the body's organs. They can be administered in gas or liquid form, causing symptoms including vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis and often death.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said there was a low risk to the public, but experts on the chemical said it was highly dangerous and needed specialized care to process.

"Nerve agents are not materials that can be made at home," said Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at University College, London.

"Their level of toxicity is such that they are only to be manufactured in specialized facilities." Authorities will be looking to find impurities and residues that might provide clues as to the precise chemical process used to manufacture the material, Sella said.

"There is no question that the authorities will be looking for the container used to deliver the material, as the chemical contents would be a goldmine," Sella said.

"With this information it might well be possible to trace the origin of the substance." Police and forensics officers are focusing on three sites in Salisbury, a medieval city known for its towering cathedral located 145 kilometres southwest of London.

Rudd said the sites are Skripal's home, a pub and a restaurant.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned. He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicised spy swap in which the US agreed to hand over 10 members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

Those who knew him in the community were shocked, describing him as friendly and outgoing hardly a man hiding out.

The owner of a local convenience shop frequented by Skripal described him as one of her favourite customers. Ebru Ozturk, from Kahramanmaras, Turkey, said she made sure to stock the food that he liked to eat, particularly smoked bacon and Polish salami.

Ozturk, 41, painted an image of an educated man enjoying his retirement fond of playing the lottery and chatting with the locals.

"Usually he plays lottery and scratch cards," she said. "Plus a few weeks he was lucky as well and laughed about it.

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A British police official today updated the number of people who sought treatment after a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, saying "around 21" had been given medical help and support.

Only three people remain hospitalised after the poisoning Sunday in the southern English city of Salisbury, ex-spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a British police officer who tried to help them. Health officials insist there has only been a low risk to the public.

Authorities haven't said who launched the attack, but UK officials have warned of a strong response if the Russian government is found to be responsible.

"Multiple people have been treated, around 21 people, including the man and the woman found on the bench," Wiltshire acting police chief Kier Pritchard told Sky News, referring to Skripal and his daughter, who were found unconscious.

Pritchard said that of the new total, "a number" of them got hospital treatment including blood tests, support and advice. Previously, authorities had said only that "several" people had sought treatment.

Police haven't provided details on the nerve agent that was used, and the ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said whoever is behind the attack is guilty of a "brazen and reckless act." She said Britain would respond strongly when it is clear who's to blame.

She said that enormous resources were being used to determine who poisoned Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia. They were found unconscious on a bench, triggering a police inquiry headed by counterterrorism detectives.

A police officer who came to their aid is hospitalised in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, Rudd said. He was identified today as Sgt. Nick Bailey.

"The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act," Rudd told Parliament. "This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way."



The Russian Embassy in London, which has mocked other British politicians for suggesting Russian involvement, tweeted that it agreed with Rudd: "First evidence then conclusions on Mr. Skripal's case. Responsible political approach."



Police have refused to publicly speculate on who is behind the attack, but many experts have focused on Russia because of the similarity to the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.

A public inquiry found that Russia was responsible for killing Alexander Litvinenko, and that President Vladimir Putin probably approved it.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the Litvinenko killing or the attempted killing of Skripal, a former Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.

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The UN envoy for the Democratic Republic of Congo has warned of a risk of violence as the country heads toward elections in December.

DR Congo is in the grip of a "shocking" humanitarian crisis with 4.5 million people in need of aid, the highest number in Africa, Leila Zerrougui told the Security Council.

President Joseph Kabila agreed to free political prisoners and respect the rights of the opposition under a political deal reached in 2016, but Zerrougui said the government had fallen short of those commitments.

"A failure to generate confidence in the full and faithful implementation of the December 31 agreement will only serve to heighten political tensions, and to fuel the risks of inciting violence for political ends," said Zerrougui.

After much delay, authorities in the vast mineral-rich African country set a date of December 23 for elections that are expected to pave the way to a historic transfer of power.

But Kabila, who took over from his father Laurent after he was assassinated in 2001, has not yet clearly stated whether he will step aside.

Anti-government protests have turned deadly over the past months, despite UN appeals to Kabila to rein in his security forces.

Zerrougui said the "disproportionate use of force by security services" during protests in December and January were a "major concern" after 16 people were killed, more than 100 were wounded and dozens more arrested.

Security has deteriorated in eastern DR Congo, where rebel groups have attacked Congolese forces and UN peacekeepers, while militias in the Kasai region are increasing their activities, said Zerrougui.

The Security Council was meeting as it prepares to renew the mandate of its 17,500-strong peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, known as MONUSCO.

Zerrougui urged the top UN body to ensure that MONUSCO supports the political and electoral process in the country and help stabilize the security situation.

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The head of the UN agency promoting equality for women says the global spotlight on sexual harassment and abuse and the punishment of some powerful men who had been "untouchable" is an important moment but it's just "a tip of an iceberg."



Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said yesterday that is because the number of women who have "come out" is small and the number of perpetrators who have been "brought to book" is limited compared to the number who haven't been exposed.

But in an interview with The Associated Press on the eve of International Women's Day, she said that in the immediate future at the very least there is a possibility of reducing and halting the continuation of abuse because perpetrators now know "there is actually a possibility that your victim might tell."



"This is a tipping point and a critical time for everyone," said Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women.

"And what we need to be guarding is that the pendulum must not swing backwards."



"This is the same thing we are fighting in India, in South Africa, in the U.S.," she said. "So all of these countries do not value women the way they value men."



She said the follow-up that is needed is for all institutions to communicate with their employees what their rights are, so they know how to report any violations and can be assured "that they will be believed and that they will not end up being on trial themselves."



Mlambo-Ngcuka stressed that while the spotlight has been on powerful male offenders in Hollywood, business and the high echelons of society, sexual harassment and abuse is prevalent around the world from factories and farms to buses, trains and homes.

And not a single country has achieved gender equality, she said.

Even in Iceland, which comes closest and has the "highest levels of consciousness about gender equality, violence against women is a problem, and unequal pay is a fact, and underrepresentation of women in decision-making is a fact," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

And 150 countries have at least one law that discriminates against women, she added.

The theme of International Women's Day is "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women's lives." To keep the global spotlight on the #MeToo movement, Mlambo-Ngcuka said #MeToo activists have been invited to participate in today's events at UN headquarters.

"It's about talking about the globalization of sisterhood," she said, "and ensuring that when you are saying MeToo, MeToo have been harassed in Hollywood and MeToo have been harassed in a train in Bombay. And we both felt the pain."



The aim of bringing the #MeToo participants is for them "to get the feel of the woman who is not from Hollywood, who, however, is just as concerned about the issues," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

"When a perpetrator stands in front of you and attacks you, whether you are a celebrity or an ordinary woman in a village, the violation and the humiliation that you feel is the same," she said.

"The one thing we have in common, when a perpetrator attacks me, or attacks someone who is a queen, or a woman who is sitting in a shantytown, in front of the perpetrators we are all equal."



"And what we need to be fighting for is a society and a generation of men, of all sorts, of all classes, of all countries, not to be violators," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

She expressed hope that "the millennials who are rising up in the companies and are destined for the corner office, they will know that the corner office doesn't come with a girl, that you will get it trouble ... that the boards of organizations cannot afford these cases and the stigma, and the public will punish you."



Mlambo-Ngcuka, who is from South Africa, said addressing sexual harassment and abuse and achieving equality for women will take years, and there is a lot of work to do in all countries.

Some women have been encouraged by sexual abusers and harassers losing jobs and facing criminal proceedings, she said, but it takes a long time "for women to actually master the courage to speak for themselves."



Mlambo-Ngcuka said UN Women is also working with men and boys who are key to changing norms, attitudes and cultural practices from engaging in child marriage and beating wives to accepting that they can be a partner to a woman.

UN Women also is working with the European Union on changing discriminatory laws, increasing the number of women decision-makers, and getting police to prosecute crimes against women.

Next week, the Commission on the Status of Women will be meeting at UN headquarters with the theme: "Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls."



Mlambo-Ngcuka said she expects sexual harassment and abuse to be a hot topic at side events.

"It is the beginning of a conversation that maybe is going to take us five years or so before maybe we see a critical mass of countries that are actually getting it the right way," she said, "but we cannot afford to waste this moment, which we've all created.

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A statue of Lord Hanuman was desecrated in Uttar Pradesh's Kharuav village, triggering tension in the area, police said today.

The incident comes amid an ongoing spate of incidents targeting statues and busts of known figures across the country.

Station House Officer, Nagra, Ram Dinesh Tiwari, said the statue was damaged yesterday and a poster was also found pasted on it.

The police have lodged a case against unidentified persons on a complaint by Kharuav village chief Dushyant Singh, he said.

The officer said that the matter is being investigated. No arrests have been made, Tiwari, said.

The vandalisation of the Hanuman statue comes after a series of incidents targeting statues and busts across the country.

In Kolkata, a bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged yesterday following the razing of statues of Soviet icon Vladimir Illyich Lenin in Tripura.

The bust of Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadu's Vellore was also desecrated triggering widespread protests across the state.

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Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson today said the United States was "a long way from negotiations" with North Korea, which this week made a shock offer to discuss denuclearisation.

Tillerson, who is in Ethiopia on his first-ever Africa tour, said the signals from Pyongyang may be positive but stressed negotiations with Kim Jong Un's regime were not going to happen soon.

"I think as President Trump has indicated, (there are) potentially positive signals coming from North Korea by way of their intra-Korean dialogue with South Korea," he told journalists.

But "in terms of direct talks... we're a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it," he said.

He said a first step would be "talks about talks" to see if "conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations."





South Korean National Security Advisor Chung Eui-Yong briefs reporters outside the West Wing of the White House after meeting with the US President Donald Trump, in Washington. Photo: PTI

The North is open to "frank" talks with the United States on denuclearisation and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, the South's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with Kim.

President Donald Trump welcomed the offer as "very positive".

However his Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he was "quite skeptical" and Vice President Mike Pence said the US position towards North Korea would not change "until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearisation."



China today urged the United States and North Korea to start negotiations as soon as possible, while Japan has warned it could be a ploy to play for time, and urged "concrete" steps from Pyongyang.
Women entrepreneurs in Bihar are likely to receive a boost to their prospects through a US-funded initiative that seeks to unleash value creation among aspiring young women in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India.

As many as 30 aspiring entrepreneurs will get an opportunity to learn from experts based in India and the US at a four-day workshop to be held here under the aegis of Project AIRSWEEE (All India Road Show on Women's Economic Empowerment through Entrepreneurship), a statement of the US Consulate General at Kolkata said today.

Those attending the workshop from March 14 will be selected through a rigorous screening process and they will receive guidance from mentors of the TiE Global - "a non-profit venture devoted to entrepreneurs in all industries, at all stages," it said.

The schedule was finalised on February 28 last when Jamie Dragon, Public Affairs Officer of the US Consulate General in Kolkata and Director of the American Centre visited Patna, the statement said.

Besides the Bihar capital, similar workshops will be held at Lucknow, Hubli, Bhubaneswar and Vadodara - each of these to be attended by 30 young women entrepreneurs from the respective regions.

"After these workshops, five participants from each city will receive intensive mentoring for another six months to develop some of their ideas into sustainable businesses" it said.

The project is funded by the US State Department through the Consulate General at Kolkata, which has been associated in other social welfare programmes in Bihar like the English Access Micro-scholarship as part of which English language skill is imparted to bright students from economically disadvantaged background, the statement said.

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President Donald Trump today said the US has to take steps to protect and build its steel and aluminium industries as he hinted that he might sign the much-awaited executive action on it later in the day, notwithstanding global criticism.

Trump's plan for stiff and sweeping steel and aluminium import tariffs would face retaliation from America's top trading partners, the European Union and China.

"Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House," Trump tweeted, in an indication that he might sign the executive order to impose a 25 per cent duty on import of steel and 10 per cent on aluminium.

"We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminium Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military," he tweeted.

On March 1, Trump had announced that he would impose 25 per cent import tariff on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium to protect US producers, a move that invited criticism from China and the Europe which said it could trigger a trade war.

The American Iron and Steel Institute reported today that steel import permit applications for the month of February totalled 2,428,000 net tonnes (NT). This was a 21.2 per cent decrease from the 3,081,000 permit tons recorded in January and a 15.6 per cent decrease from the January preliminary imports total of 2,875,000 NT.

In February, the largest finished steel import permit applications for offshore countries were for South Korea (252,000 NT, down 26 per cent from January preliminary), Germany (111,000 NT, up 23 per cent), Japan (110,000 NT, down 22 per cent), China (85,000 NT, up 18 per cent) and Taiwan (68,000 NT, down 42 per cent).

Through the first two months of 2018, the largest offshore suppliers were South Korea (591,000 NT, up three per cent), Japan (251,000 NT, up two per cent) and Germany (201,000 NT, up 50 per cent).

More than 100 Republican lawmakers implored President Trump to drop his plan and urged him to focus on unfair trading policies of China.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business late last night that Trump would sign the executive order later in the day.

The new tariffs would go into effect in 15-30 days, he said.

"The proclamation will have a clause that does not impose these tariffs immediately on Canada and Mexico, and it's going to give us an opportunity and one of the best guys in this administration, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer the opportunity to negotiate a great deal for this country," Navarro said.

"And if we get that, then all is good with Canada and Mexico," he added. "We're going to open this up for our allies to just see if we can work through this problem," he said.

Yesterday, 107 Republican members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the president expressing concern about broad tariffs and calling for him to focus any action on unfair trading partners, like China.

"We are writing to express deep concern about the prospect of broad, global tariffs on aluminium and steel imports. Because tariffs are taxes that make US businesses less competitive and US consumers poorer, any tariffs that are imposed should be designed to address specific distortions caused by unfair trade practices in a targeted way while minimising negative consequences on American businesses and consumers," the lawmakers said.

"We support your resolve to address distortions caused by China's unfair practices, and we are committed to acting with you and our trading partners on meaningful and effective action. But we urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the US economy and its workers. We are eager to work with you in pursuing a workable, targeted approach that achieves our shared goal," they wrote.

In the letter, Republican lawmakers outlined several recommendations to hold countries accountable without disrupting the flow of fairly traded products that American manufacturers rely on.

However, according to The Wall Street Journal, at the White House yesterday, aides began preparations for the ceremony ushering in a turn in trade policy that could recalibrate relations between the US and its allies and trading partners.

"We are definitely going to end up with these tariffs," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox Business and "we're going to roll this out very, very quickly."



"The president understands the economy. He understands business. He is looking out for American companies and American workers with trade deals that are just not fair," he said.

The prospect of approaching tariffs has set off furious lobbying from governments around the world, who have tried to sway the administration with offers of friendship and threats of retaliation, The New York Times reported.

Yesterday, the European Union released a list of American-made goods it would penalise if the tariffs went through.

China, which ranks 11 among the largest sources of US steel imports, cautioned that it was prepared to "make an appropriate and necessary response" should the United States impose the tariffs.

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The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has said it was stripping Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a prestigious human rights award, accusing her of doing little to halt the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her long campaign against the country's military dictatorship, was awarded the Holocaust Museum's Elie Wiesel award six years ago "for her courageous leadership and great personal sacrifice in resisting tyranny and advancing the freedom and dignity of the Burmese people."



But the Museum said it was rescinding the award due to her inaction over what it called "mounting evidence of genocide" committed by the Myanmar military against civilians from the Rohingya minority.

"As the military's attacks against the Rohingya unfolded in 2016 and 2017, we had hoped that you -- as someone we and many have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights -- would have done something to condemn and stop the military's brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population," the museum said in a letter to Suu Kyi.

Instead, it said, her political party, the National League for Democracy, has refused to cooperate with UN investigators and added to the anti-Rohingya rhetoric.

The party has also obstructed journalists trying to report on the mass murder and expulsion to Bangladesh of the Rohingya.

"The military's orchestration of the crimes against Rohingya and the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation," they said.

In November a joint report by the Museum and Southeast Asia-based watchdog Fortify Rights -- based on testimony they gathered in the field -- documented "widespread and systematic attacks" on Rohingya civilians.

The award was named after Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi genocide against Jews who spent much of his life campaigning for human rights, himself winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

Suu Kyi, the country's symbol of democracy for decades, has come under heavy criticism for her refusal to stand up for the Rohingya.

In January US diplomat Bill Richardson resigned from a Suu Kyi-appointed panel set up to ease tensions with the Rohingya, assailing her for an "absence of moral leadership."



About 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since August, with the horrifying testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs.

In Geneva on Wednesday, the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called for a new body tasked with preparing criminal indictments over the Myanmar atrocities.
They could have run into each other sipping coffee in the lobby, perhaps at the bar at Ethiopia's finest hotel. But US Secretary of State and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov didn't meet, and now both countries are trading accusations about who's to blame.

The top American and Russian diplomats warily circled each other in Africa, where both are paying official visits this week.

As their two countries trade accusations over Syria, Ukraine and even the Oscars, their governments are trolling each other with barbs on social media.

Russia said that both Tillerson and Lavrov were staying at the lush Sheraton Addis resort while in Ethiopia, where Tillerson met today with the country's outgoing prime minister and with the African Union Commission's chairman.

It was unclear how long the two overlapped in the Ethiopian capital. Tillerson arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Lavrov departed sometime yesterday and arrived late at night at his next stop in Harare, Zimbabwe.

So whose decision was it to forego a tete-a-tete? In an illustration of how just how prickly US-Russia relations have become, even that seemingly bureaucratic issue became a matter of fierce disagreement.

Russia for days had been calling publicly for a meeting, and accused Washington of failing to respond to its request. Not so, the United States insisted.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this week that the U.S. had received no request from Russia's government for a meeting with Tillerson and had "no meeting to announce at this time."



That prompted Lavrov to dispute her directly. From Zimbabwe, Lavrov said he'd preferred not weigh in, but felt compelled after learning that the State Department claimed no meeting was ever discussed.

"I want to say that this is untrue," Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency Tass.

Tillerson, for his part, pleaded ignorance to the fact that the Russian diplomat had sought a meeting. He told reporters that he didn't know Lavrov would be even be in Ethiopia until "a couple of days ago" and didn't learn Moscow had reached out about a meeting until he was already on his way to Africa.

"My schedule is largely set," Tillerson said. Not to worry, he added: "If it doesn't work out here, he and I see each other often."



There's plenty for the two world powers to discuss. Nauert and the State Department have been publicly deploring Russia's actions in Syria and accusing Moscow of "bombing civilians" in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.

And President Donald Trump remains under intense scrutiny over his reluctance to challenge Russia over alleged interference in the US election.

Russia's Embassy in Washington, taunting the US in a Facebook post, said Nauert's insistence that Russia never requested a meeting showed that "something seems to have broken in her department.
Indian Steel Association has raised concerns that the US move to raise import tariffs will encourage surplus nations to divert their steel exports to consuming nations like India affecting the local markets.

ISA represents major public and private sector steel players in the country.

US President Donald Trump said on March 1 that he would impose 25 per cent import tariff on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium to protect US producers.

The apex industry body has raised concerns that imposition of steep tariffs on import by the US will adversely affect the domestic steel industry.

"Tariffs by the US will inevitably encourage steel-surplus nations to divert their exports to vibrant consumption centres like India and distort our domestic markets considerably," ISA said.

Its Secretary General Bhaskar Chatterjee said clubbing India with other steel surplus countries is "not appropriate". Inclusion of India among several others is not desirable as a policy. This adversely dents the growth prospects of a developing country like India whose production and consumption is inward-looking.

He further said that despite being the third largest producer of steel in world, with 12 per cent share of global non-Chinese production, India has only a 2.7 per cent share in US imports.

"A total of 16 trade remedies are already in place in the US against Indian steel companies, which include 10 anti-dumping duties and 6 countervailing duties. This includes a variety of steel products such as corrosion-resistant steel, cold-rolled steel flat products, certain hot-rolled carbon steel flat products...," he said.

It is understandable that steel is an important material used for manufacturing military's combat vehicles, a country would like protect its industry from the threat to national security, Chatterjee said.

"However, Indian steel companies exporting to the US have always done so legitimately in line with global trade regulations and WTO framework. It is for a reason that in December 2016, the US bestowed the privileged status of 'Major Defence Partner' on India, which is a position unique to India," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
plans to start international services in the second half of this year with a fleet of 22 aircraft and the first overseas flight will be to South East Asia, a top airline official said today.

The full service carrier, which currently has 19 planes, would be getting the 20th aircraft this month, according to its CEO Leslie Thng.

A joint venture between Tatas and Singapore Airlines, the airline is discussing plans for raising funds with its promoters.

"Right now, we have 19 aircraft. We are going to get 20th aircraft by this month. Then we have leased another two A320 Neos, which will be delivered in May and June. So all together, we will have 22 aircraft when we go international," Leslie Thng told reporters here.

Speaking on the sidelines of the 'Wings India 2018' event, he said the likely destinations for international operations would be regional having duration of 3-5 hours, adding that the first flight would be to South East Asia.

"Within 1-2 years of our international operations, we expect to start medium haul destinations. In my perspective, it (medium haul) is 5-9 hours. Of course, is interested to go long haul... So long haul India to USA is something which we are interested in but we will do it at the right time," the chief said.

He also emphasised that at this moment, the airline does not have a fixed time-line for flying long-haul flights.

While noting that Vistara does not have any intention to join any alliance at the moment, Leslie Thng said the airline is working on having bilateral relationship with other carriers.

"We are definitely working very hard get more codeshares," he added.
The United States today said it respects Sri Lanka's national security, but asked Colombo to ensure the freedom of expression of its citizens.

The Indian Ocean island nation has witnessed anti-Muslim riots in Kandy, in which several homes, businesses and mosques were damaged during three days of violence. The violence erupted after the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week.

To rein in communal violence, a state of emergency has been imposed by the President Maithripala Sirisena government. Internet access was also restricted in Kandy and social media websites including Facebook and instant messaging app Whatsapp blocked.

"While we respect Sri Lanka's national security, the US supports an open, reliable and secure Internet where the rights that all persons have offline are also protected online, such as freedom of expression," a State Department spokesperson told PTI.

"The United States values freedom of expression and access to information as a key component of democratic governance," the spokesperson said while responding to a question on blocking of social media sites and imposition of emergency in Sri Lanka.

Earlier, the US Embassy in Colombo said it is important that the Government of Sri Lanka act quickly against perpetrators of sectarian violence, protect religious minorities and their places of worship, and conclude the State of Emergency swiftly, while protecting human rights and basic freedoms for all.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Wholesale defection" of Congress leaders and cadres to the BJP in Tripura was one of the factors behind the saffron outfit's emphatic win in the recent assembly polls, the CPI(M) has said.

The BJP-IPFT alliance handed out a crushing defeat to the CPI(M)-led Left Front after its 25-year uninterrupted rule, winning 43 seats in the 60-member assembly.

In the latest edition of the CPI(M) organ 'People's Democracy', former general secretary Prakash Karat argued that the BJP and its alliance partner Indigenous People Front of Tripura (IPFT) took over the Congress base.

"The major political feature has been the shift in the alignments in the state...The Congress, the main opposition, saw a wholesale defection to the BJP. In the past two years from top to bottom, its leadership and cadres were appropriated by the BJP. This resulted in the Congress vote share of 36.54 per cent in 2013 assembly election plunging to 1.8 per cent in the current election.

"The INPT, which was allied to the Congress in the last election, saw its vote dropping from 8.1 per cent to 0.7 per cent. The BJP was able to consolidate the anti-Left vote behind it. Similarly, its ally the IPFT was able to neutralise the other tribal party the INPT, the former ally of the Congress, and take over its base," Karat said.

Terming the election results as an "unexpected verdict", Karat also accused the BJP of pumping in "unprecedented" amount of money before the election to win over the candidates of other "bourgeois" parties.

The entire media in the state was "suborned" to project the BJP and mounted a negative campaign against the Left Front government, he said.

The Left leader has admitted that the BJP's campaign slogan of change did strike a chord with the young generation of voters particularly the urban and tribal youths.

"Despite the all-round positive performance of the Left Front government, the fact remains that generating jobs for the educated youth posed a big challenge," he wrote.

He added that the party would take stock of this serious setback and take appropriate political and organisational measures to remove any negative trends and weaknesses.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Women across Europe and Asia shouted their demands for equality, respect and empowerment today to mark International Women's Day, with protesters in Spain launching a 24-hour strike and crowds of demonstrators filling the streets of Manila, Seoul and New Delhi.

Spanish women were staging dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence. In Barcelona, protesters disrupting traffic into the city center were pushed back by riot police.

In Madrid, hundreds of women gathered in its central square to demand change. Teresa Sonsur, a 38-year-old social services agency worker, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination.

"What we see in our job in social services is that the women are doing all the hard work, dealing with the customers, but in the positions of management it is always men," she said.

In some countries, protests were more muted. International Women's Day is a public holiday in Russia, but opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak was one of the few demonstrators in Moscow.

In a protest reminiscent of the #MeToo movement, which aims to hold those involved in sexual misconduct, and those who cover it up, accountable, Sobchak staged a solo picket outside the lower house of the Russian parliament to demand the resignation of a prominent lawmaker whom several female journalists accuse of sexual harassment.

On a lighter note, a leading French newspaper found a witty way of making its point about discrimination and the gender pay gap by upping its price for men. The left-leaning daily Liberation said that for one day only, men would pay 50 euro cents more than women, in a reflection of the 25 percent less that women in France are paid, on average.

French President Emmanuel Macron said vowed to name and shame companies that don't respect the law on gender equality.

Across Asia, women came out to mark the day. In China, students at Tsinghua University used the day to make light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the country's president. One banner joked that a boyfriend's term should also have no limits, while another said, "A country cannot exist without a constitution, as we cannot exist without you!" But photos of the students' banners, like other content about the proposed amendment, were quickly censored on social media.

At rallies in the Pakistan capital Islamabad, its largest city Karachi, and the cultural capital of Lahore, women denounced violence against them in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives each year in so-called honor killings. Pakistani women have largely been deprived of their rights since the country gained independence in 1947.

Hundreds of activists in pink and purple shirts protested in downtown Manila against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, calling him among the worst violators of women's rights in Asia. Protest leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in Plaza Miranda, handing red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of drug suspects slain under Duterte's crackdown on illegal drugs.

Human rights groups have condemned Duterte's sexist remarks, including one in which he asked troops to shoot female communist rebels in the genitals.

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women, who would have been afraid to leave their homes during Taliban rule, gathered in the capital to commemorate the day.

Hundreds of South Koreans, many wearing black and holding black #MeToo signs, rallied in central Seoul. South Korea's #MeToo movement has gained significant traction since January, when a female prosecutor began speaking openly about workplace mistreatment and sexual misconduct.

Several high-profile South Korean men have resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his female secretary.

In India, hundreds of women, including students, teachers and sex workers, marched through the capital to bring attention to domestic violence, sexual attacks and discrimination in jobs and wages.

"Unite against violence against women," one placard urged. "Man enough to say no to domestic abuse," said another. "My body, My choice." India had its first female leader in 1966 when Indira Gandhi became prime minister, but Indian women are still often relegated to second-class citizenship.

In Africa, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged men to stop physically abusing their wives. Domestic violence is common in Uganda, although victims rarely report perpetrators to the police for fear of being stigmatized or thrown out of their homes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Donald Trump today said his administration is working on "common-sense measures" to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners while keeping guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat.

In his first Cabinet meeting after the deadly shooting at a high school in Florida that killed 17 people, Trump said it is not enough to secure only the schools.

"We must secure the communities where our kids are growing, and wherever they go, we have to secure -- and wherever anybody goes, not just the kids. And that's why we're committed to reducing violent crime like, no other administration, he said.

"We're working on common-sense measures to protect the rights of law-abiding gun owners, while keeping guns out of the hands of those who pose a violent threat, or even a threat," he said.

"Background checks are moving along in Congress, pretty well...making them tougher. It's never that easy, but it's moving along, and a lot of great things are being done. We're making them much tougher. But a lot of things are happening right now, he said.

Trump said a lot of states are doing things that go along with the federal government.

A lot of this can be done by states, as was the case over the last few days with Florida. And really, some tremendous legislation is happening with states, and having to do with school safety, said the president.

"The US is fighting the deadly gangs, the MS-13, and the gangs. They are vicious. They're horrible. There is just no excuse for allowing them to flourish as they were. We've taken thousands of them out of circulation. Got them out, and we've got them out of the country, or they're in jail. And we're tackling this deadly scourge like nobody's ever tackled it before, he said.

The Trump administration he said is working very hard on sanctuaries cities. The Justice Department has done fantastic job, he added.

I do think we should have legislation where we put an extra line in the money that we give them. You want the money? You can't have the sanctuary cities. That way, we avoid the court battles all the time, which we probably will win, but who needs it? They want the money? They should give up on the sanctuary cities. It harbors horrible criminals, Trump said.

He said he is establishing the Federal Inter-agency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry, to help former inmates re-enter society as productive citizens.

"We have people that have been in jail, they made a mistake, they get out and they can't get a job, no matter what they do. Now, the thing I think I'm doing best for them is making the economy so strong, but we need them in the whole system, he said.

"Many of them go into there phenomenal employees, phenomenal. We're doing studies on that. In fact, we're going to be putting out some information. But they go into the system, and when they can get a job, they really take advantage of it. They do a great job, and it's very important, Trump said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The chief executive of the World Bank urged US President Donald Trump today to be "careful" before imposing controversial steel and aluminium tariffs, warning that they could affect global trade.

Kristalina Georgieva said Trump should "assess the implications" before going ahead with a plan that has sparked fears of a trade war with China and Europe and spooked world markets.

The Bulgarian former EU commissioner said that her message to Trump, who is expected to sign off on the tariffs later today, was to make a "careful assessment before taking any further step".

"If you take a step for a reason then you need to project on a couple of steps for the implications," Georgieva told a small group of media outlets including AFP in Brussels. "Assess what are the implications and then advise about these implications."



The EU has vowed to retaliate against the tariffs with its own measures targeting not only US steel but also products such as bourbon whiskey, jeans, motorcycles, orange juice and cranberries.

Georgieva, whose organisation specialises in lending money to poor countries, added that Trump should take a "carefully calibrated approach to what happens in world trade".

"When trade shrinks it has implications for the poorest populations in rich countries. The goods are more expensive and poor people spend more of their money buying these goods," she said.

Trump himself appeared to hint at carve-outs on Thursday, vowing that the tariffs which he says are aimed at saving the US steel industry and cutting its deficit would show "great flexibility" to "real friends."



European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen said during the same interview that Trump's actions risked causing a shock to the global economy.

"There are no winners in this trade war," he said.

"The rest of the world must adapt to the situation and try to influence the US administration's behaviour.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Dave Sherwood and Felipe IturrietaSANTIAGO (Reuters) - Eleven countries including Japan and Canada signed a landmark Asia-Pacific trade agreement without the United States on Thursday in what one minister called a powerful signal against protectionism and trade wars.The deal came as U.S. President Donald Trump vowed earlier in the day to press ahead with a plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a move that other nations and the International Monetary Fund said could start a global trade war. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) ...
The Bombay High Court has dismissed Reliance Communications Ltd's (RCom) plea against an arbitration court order that barred the telecom operator from selling or transferring its assets without the tribunal's permission. The company intends to file an appeal against the interim order of the court, an RCom spokesman said in an emailed statement to Reuters. The court threw out three appeals from Rcom and its two companies, the Economic Times reported earlier. Debt-laden Rcom had appealed against the interim order in a case filed by Ericsson seeking payment of ...
After years of opposing France's influence on its partnership with Renault SA, Nissan Motor Co may finally have a chance to deepen ties with its French counterpart if the government agrees to sell its 15 percent stake in Renault. The carmakers are in talks with government officials over proposals by Renault-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn for Nissan to buy the bulk of France's equity stake in Renault, people close to the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. That would see Paris give up influence at Renault and the French carmaker relinquish control over Nissan. France sold a ...
US health insurer Cigna Corp said on Thursday it would buy pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Holding Co for about $54 billion, the latest deal in the sector aimed at tackling soaring healthcare costs. The move follows the $69 billion merger of insurer Aetna Inc and drugstore chain CVS Health Corp announced last December, and highlights a sector-wide trend toward deals between companies that do not have directly overlapping operations. The deals seek to lower healthcare costs by bringing under one roof pharmacy and medical claims, and give the combined entities greater ...
Rice prices rose in top exporter India this week on healthy demand amid lower supplies, while gains in the local currency and prospects of a deal with the Philippines pushed up rates for the staple grain in Thailand. India's 5 percent broken parboiled rice prices rose by $3 per tonne to $422-$426, the second straight week of gains. "Inquiries are rising from African countries. Asian buyers are also showing interest," said an exporter based in Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Supplies are falling, forcing exporters to quote higher prices, said ...
India will invite initial bids for a stake sale in state-run carrier Air India in the next couple of weeks, Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Choubey said on Thursday during an airshow in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet gave the go-ahead last year to sell the flagship carrier after successive governments spent billions of dollars in recent years to keep it solvent. However, the government has yet to decide on what to do with the carrier's debt burden of $8.5 billion. Companies including low-cost Indian carrier IndiGo, owned by ...
By Amanda CooperLONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices were broadly steady on Thursday but still set to slip over the week for the second time in a row against a backdrop of rising U.S. crude production and an increase in inventories.Brent crude futures were down 19 cents at $64.15 per barrel by 1254 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 5 cents at $61.11 a barrel.Brent was on track for a drop of around 0.1 percent this week, after last week's 4.4 percent slide.A build in U.S. crude inventory reported the previous day was not as large as expected, given that stocks tend to ...
By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen(Reuters) - A crew member died and four others went missing after fire broke out on a new Maersk Line container vessel in the Arabian Sea, the company said.The vessel caught fire at around 1520 GMT on Tuesday, about 900 nautical miles southeast of Salalah, Oman, the world's biggest container shipping company said in a statement.Twenty-three crew members were rescued but one of them, a Thai national, died on Wednesday, added Maersk."His health condition drastically deteriorated ... due to the injuries sustained in connection to the fire," said Maersk, a unit of Danish ...
By Jeff Mason, Antonio De la Jara and Dave Sherwood WASHINGTON/SANTIAGO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump was set to press ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, although he said on Thursday he was willing to strike a deal that could exempt Canada and Mexico.Trump has offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that "treat us fairly on trade," a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which appear to be stalled.The ...
President Donald Trump pressed ahead with the imposition of 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminum on Thursday but exempted Canada and Mexico, backtracking from earlier pledges of tariffs on all countries. Trump has offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that "treat us fairly on trade," a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which appear to be stalled. Trump has also demanded concession from the European Union, complaining ...
By Jeff Mason, Antonio De la Jara and Dave Sherwood WASHINGTON/SANTIAGO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump was set to press ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, although he said on Thursday he was willing to strike a deal that could exempt Canada and Mexico.Trump has offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that "treat us fairly on trade," a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which appear to be stalled.Mexico ...
By Jeff Mason, Richard Lough and Ben BlanchardWASHINGTON/PARIS/BEIJING (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is to press ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, although he said on Thursday he was willing to strike a deal that could exempt Canada and Mexico.Washington has repeatedly offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that "treat us fairly on trade" a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks, which appear to be stalled."I'm ...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Firefighters have been battling dozens of wildfires in Kansas and Nebraska that erupted since the weekend, but calmer winds on Wednesday helped crews extinguish nearly all of them.

In Nebraska, a burned man was found crawling in a McCook farm field Tuesday afternoon as 50 mph wind gusts whipped flames down a ravine toward the Red Willow County community of 7,500 people. The man, who had camped out in the area, has been transferred to a burn center.

Kansas authorities said 50 fires have burned about 40 square miles (103.6 square kilometers). Improving weather conditions Wednesday left crews in 13 Kansas counties fighting blazes that were contained or almost out. But by late afternoon, Kansas had just two fires burning in Wabaunsee and Greeley counties.

Things are looking pretty good, said Katie Horner, spokeswoman for the Kansas Adjutant Generals Office.

A blaze that broke out earlier Wednesday near Hamilton in Greenwood County prompted the Kansas Army National Guard to send Black Hawk helicopters to assist with the firefighting operations, helping to bring extinguish that blaze. By late Wednesday afternoon, two Black Hawks were still deployed to Wabaunsee County to help with tamp down that blaze.

This years wildfire outbreak in Kansas pales in comparison to March 2017 when some 2,000 firefighters battled a series of blazes that consumed more than 1,000 square miles, killed a truck driver, forced thousands to evacuate, and damaged or destroyed dozens of structures. Thousands of cattle also died.

Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer said the state has learned a lot in the last couple years.

This is something that can get out of control very easily, so were quite concerned still, Colyer said. But were dealing with it.

The governor attributed the successful efforts this year to improvements in coordination between state and local emergency responders.

Theyve experienced a lot together after the last couple of years, Colyer said. They know each other by name now. Theyre closer.

In southwest Nebraska, crews were dispatched to eliminate dangerous hot spots left by a wildfire that destroyed a house and blackened hundreds of acres as it threatened McCook.

As officials called for evacuations, students and staff at McCook Elementary School were taken to McCook Senior High School several blocks away.

People at the state prisons Work Ethic Camp spotted the fire and reported it to local officials around 1:20 p.m. Tuesday, but camp spokeswoman Cristy Schwartz said the 189 inmates and nearly 50 staffers didnt have to leave the grounds.

Chief Bill Elliott of the Red Willow Western Rural Fire Department said wind gusts knocked a power line into a shed about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from town, and sparks from the resulting short ignited dry brush below.

The blaze never entered the city proper, but the flames did destroy a house on the edge of town while the residents werent home, Elliott said.

The house right beside it  only 30 feet away  was not damaged, he said.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Utah legislators will wrap up their 45-day annual session Thursday while trying to strike an agreement on controversial measures to delay ballot initiatives and ban abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.

Lawmakers have already passed more than 400 bills and are expected to churn through about 100 others before adjourning at midnight.

Heres a look at where key issues landed as the Legislature wraps up its business:

DEATH PENALTY

A push to repeal the death penalty failed for the second time in recent years, despite the backing this year of the powerful House speaker. Republican Rep. Gage Froerer pulled his bill without putting it up for a vote in the House, saying the tally would have been close but he didnt have enough support to debate it in the waning days of the session.



GUNS

Lawmakers rejected a bill that would have allowed police to temporarily confiscate guns of those deemed to be a threat, a proposal that came after a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month that killed 17. Republican lawmakers defeated the so-called red flag bill in committee after raising concerns it went too far in violating a persons constitutional rights without doing enough to address mental health issues. A gun-rights bill strengthening the states stand-your-ground self-defense law was awaiting a final vote Thursday. Republican Rep. Cory Maloys proposal says a person doesnt need to back away before using deadly force.



FREE-RANGE PARENTING

Utah lawmakers passed a measure explicitly saying that parents arent breaking the law if they let allow kids to do things alone like travel to school, explore a playground or stay in the car, as long as they are mature enough to take on those things without hurting themselves. The measure doesnt give specific ages, which lawmakers say would allow police and prosecutors to handle issues on a case-by-case basis.

Utah appears to the first state in the country to pass such a measure. Supporters like sponsor Republican Sen. Lincoln Fillmore say allowing kids to make their own way helps keep the joy in childhood and prepare them for the future.



MEDIA ACCESS

Utahs House of Representatives passed a proposal to ban reporters from the floor of the House before lawmakers meet there for floor sessions, but eventually softened it to require journalists to leave after conducting interviews. Journalists are still allowed to access the area after floor sessions.



ABORTION-DOWN SYNDROME

A ban on abortions sought because a fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome was stalled in the Senate heading into Thursday. Lawmakers in the House passed the bill despite warnings from legislative lawyers that theres a high likelihood that a court will find the measure unconstitutional if its challenged in court.



SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Lobbyists and journalists working at the Utah Capitol will be required to undergo annual anti-harassment training under two separate proposals that came amid a wave of sexual harassment allegations nationally. Officials say the bills werent prompted by any reports of problems with journalists or lobbyists but say its needed to cover the states legal liability. Lawmakers and staff already undergo similar training. The Senate on Thursday cast a final vote approving the training for journalists, but the lobbyist rule was stalled.



BALLOT INITIATIVES

Facing the possibility that voters could change laws on medical marijuana and other hot-button issues, lawmakers are looking to give themselves the option to change any new measures before they go into effect. One bill would create a six-month delay after the passage of any ballot initiative, which legislators say will allow them to make practical tweaks. Opponents argue the bill, awaiting Senate approval, could undercut the will of the people.



TRUMP HIGHWAY

Lawmakers backed away Wednesday from a proposal to rename a scenic highway after President Donald Trump. Several Republicans supported naming the southern Utah road that connects several well-known national parks after Trump to recognize his move to shrink two national monuments that were fiercely opposed by state leaders. Democrats pushing back against the idea suggested naming a ramp for porn actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.



POLYGAMY

Senators on Thursday night gave final approval to a proposal giving teenagers who leave polygamous communities more legal protection from parents who could expose them to sexual abuse or forced marriage.

Supporters said the measure would help in cases where runaway-notification laws have allowed adults to take teenagers back home even if they didnt want to go, though polygamists said they were concerned it could focus on a single religious group and have unintended consequences.



MEDICAID EXPANSION

Lawmakers passed a plan to expand Medicaid in Utah even as backers of a bigger expansion gear up to put the question before voters. The legislative proposal would cover about 70,000 people living just under the poverty line. It would include a spending cap and work requirement. That hasnt traditionally been allowed in Medicaid, but President Donald Trumps administration has offered to be more flexible with states.

The ballot initiative in the works would likely expand coverage to about twice as many people.



ALCOHOL

Utah restaurant owners will likely be able to take down state-mandated signs near their doors clarifying their establishments are not bars. Lawmakers said the signs that were part of a massive liquor-reform bill last year didnt seem to be make a difference. Restaurants are elated about the change, which was passed Thursday. Bars will still have to post signs saying people under 21 are not allowed in, but they will no longer need to declare theyre not restaurants.



DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Utah lawmakers have approved a proposal to fix gaps in a domestic violence law that was exposed after a man killed his ex-girlfriend and her son by opening fire on a car full of children after school.

Despite a previous stalking report, the woman could not have gotten a protective order because the couple had not been married or lived together. The measure allows victims in dating relationships to get the orders.



SPECIAL SESSIONS

Utah lawmakers passed a bill that would allow them to call themselves into a special session, instead of relying on the governor, but voters still need to approve the idea. Rep. Brad Wilsons proposal would allow lawmakers to meet in a session if two-thirds of the House and Senate feel its necessary because of persistent fiscal crisis, war, natural disaster or emergency. Lawmakers spoke about amending their power after the governor refused to call a special session last year to allow them to pass new rules for a for a special election to replace Republican Jason Chaffetz in Congress.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A condemned Ohio killer scheduled to die next month should be spared because of uncertainty about the case, including questions about when one of the victims was slain, his attorney told the states parole board Thursday.

At issue before the board is the conviction and death sentence of William Montgomery for the fatal shooting of Debra Ogle in 1986 in the Toledo area. Montgomery also was convicted of murder but not sentenced to death for the shooting of Cynthia Tincher, Ogles roommate.

Montgomery, 52, is set to die on April 11. Republican Gov. John Kasich has the final say.

Ogle was shot as part of a robbery, and Tincher was killed because she could identify Montgomery and his co-defendant, Glover Heard, according to the Lucas County prosecutor.

Tinchers body was found in her car the day prosecutors say the women were killed, and Ogles body was found in woods five days later.

Heard and Montgomery each blamed the other for the killings. Heard pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Montgomery in exchange for prosecutors dropping death penalty charges and a child molesting charge.

Prosecutors say evidence points to Montgomery as the killer, including his gun being used in both killings and eyewitnesses who saw him near Tinchers car, where she was found dead.

Montgomery went to a dry cleaner the day of the killings and dropped off a jacket responsible for putting a yellowish brown, brownish dripping mess on the floor, according to prosecutors.

The evidence against Montgomery, including his own version of events, points to him as the killer of both women, Stephen Maher, an assistant Ohio attorney general, told the board.

Montgomerys attorney says an examination of Ogles autopsy casts doubt on the states version of the killings, which then calls into question the entire case against Montgomery.

Ogles body lacked signs of decomposition natural for a body left outside for several days and the pooling of blood indicated she died within six to 12 hours before she was found on March 13, 1986, and not a few days earlier on March 8, according to the review by Colorado-based Independent Forensic Services.

Adding to the confusion over Ogles death, a police report was never presented to the defense in which witnesses said they saw Ogle alive after March 8, Montgomerys attorney argued to the parole board.

Theres just too much doubt. Too much uncertainty, Jon Oebker, Montgomerys attorney, told the board Thursday.

A federal judge and a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Montgomery deserved a new trial based in part on the missing report. The full 6th Circuit rejected that argument. The witnesses later said they mistook Ogles sister for the missing woman.

Evy Jarrett, of the Lucas County Prosecutors Office, questioned how likely it was in the cold temperatures that week in March 1986 that decomposition would have occurred, contrary to the forensic examinations conclusion.

Oebker also argues:

 The state withheld information at trial about other suspects, including jealous boyfriends and a drug cartel hit man.

 A juror who recommended death for Montgomery said in an affidavit last month he would not have done so based on the new autopsy evidence, including discrepancies about Ogles time of death.

 Another juror should not have been allowed to stay on the case after telling the trial judge she was a psychiatric patient who claimed to have seen a psychiatrist testifying on behalf of Montgomery in a dream 22 years earlier.

Some board members seemed bothered Thursday that the police report of Ogle being seen alive after March 8 was never provided at trial, despite the fact witnesses were mistaken.

Fair is fair. Rules are rules. It should have been turned over, said board member Ellen Venters. Board chairman Andre Imbrogno questioned whether Montgomery lost an opportunity because of the missing report.

The reports importance is undercut by the fact it was wrong, said Maher, of the attorney generals office.

Ultimately it would go nowhere because it wasnt ever true, he said.



Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
BOSTON (AP)  The Latest on the recovery from a second powerful storm that rumbled through the Northeast (all times local):

7:10 p.m.

A barge that supports the Harvard Sailing Center is sinking.

The Boston Globe <a target=blank href=https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/03/08/the-harvard-sailing-center-partially-sinking-into-charles-river/O1Z50FBsgVeQPuR26zkioN/story.html>reports</a> it began partially sinking into the Charles River during the powerful noreaster. Firefighters are working to secure the building.

The two-story sailing center sits on top of a barge.

Harvard Athletics Director Bob Scalise says the center was compromised due to an apparent failure of the flotation device.

The center is used by the Crimson Sailing Academy at Harvard University to store boats and equipment. It also houses a classroom, locker rooms and a kitchenette.



2 p.m.

Authorities say a man died in New Jersey after he drove his car around some traffic cones meant to warn motorists to stay away from a downed live wire.

Police in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, say it appears the vehicle hit the wire, which sparked a fire that engulfed the car at about 9 a.m. Thursday.

The victims name was not immediately made public.

The area received about 2 feet of snow during this weeks storm.

A police spokesman says the department doesnt have the personnel to post an officer at every hazard, and in the case of a downed wire it blocks off the area and alerts the power company.



1:10 p.m.

Electric utility Eversource says it could be several days before it can restore power to every home and business it serves that lost it during the latest winter storm to hit the Northeast.

Eversource has more than 3.5 million electric and natural gas customers in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire.

The company said on Twitter on Thursday: Please plan to be without power for multiple days as we work through this significant restoration.

Eversource spokesman Mike Durand told WBZ-AM its challenges include fallen trees, poles and other debris, and in some cases rebuilding entire systems.

National Grid, which serves Massachusetts and Rhode Island, also is preparing customers for long waits to get their power back. The utility says it has more than 300 crews from 16 states and Canada working on the problem.



12:30 p.m.

Police say an 88-year-old woman has been killed by a tree that fell and crushed her as she shoveled snow in the New York City suburbs.

Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn <a target=blank href=https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/rockland/ramapo/2018/03/08/noreaster-tree-kills-suffern-woman/406049002/>tells the Journal News</a> that Barbara Suleski was injured around 5 p.m. Wednesday and died at a hospital.

Neighbors were trying to help her when police arrived. Live wires wrapped around the tree made the rescue more difficult.

Another large branch broke off a tree and fell near emergency workers along with wires.



12:15 p.m.

A noreaster thats sweeping across the Northeast has dumped as much as 19 inches of snow and caused more than 20,000 power outages in Maine.

The National Weather Service reports that several York County communities were getting pummeled with wet, heavy snow. Meteorologist Tom Hawley said that as of 10 a.m. there were reports of 19 inches in Sanford, 16 inches in Saco and 14 inches in Berwick.

Central Maine Power, meanwhile, reported that the bulk of its power outages were in York County.

Together, CMP and Emera Maine reported more than 20,000 homes and businesses were in the dark.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage ordered state offices closed, and hundreds of schools and businesses were closed. Many morning flights were canceled at the airports in Portland and Bangor.



11:40 a.m.

The late-season snowstorm that is dumping up to 3 feet of fluffy snow in the mountains of southern Vermont is being welcomed by skiers who are taking advantage of conditions more common in Colorado than at Eastern resorts.

By 9 a.m. Thursday, the Mount Snow ski area in Dover had received 31 inches of fluffy snow, and more is expected before the storm winds down later in the day.

Mount Snow Communications Manager Jamie Storrs says the heavy, wet snow last week provided a solid base and this storm should set the resort up for solid skiing through the middle of April.

Mark Broderick, from Rockville Center, New York, says its the biggest one-day snowfall hes seen in the 21 years hes skied at Mount Snow.



11:10 a.m.

A tree limb weighed down by snow that snapped off and became wedged in a switch is the likely cause of a commuter train derailment in Massachusetts.

There were about 100 passengers on board but no one was hurt when the Boston-bound train derailed in Wilmington at about 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

A spokesman for Keolis Commuter Services, which runs the system for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, called it a low-speed derailment.

Tory Mazzola says it appears the train struck a tree branch that had come down during the storm, dragged it several hundred feet until it snapped and became wedged in the switch.

The National Weather Service reports that Wilmington got more than 10 inches of snow.

The derailment remains under investigation.

The MBTA reported multiple storm-related delays.



10:05 a.m.

Ice-covered roadways and blowing snow have led to numerous accidents and some fatalities on interstates in southwest Ohio.

The state Highway Patrol says two people were killed in a chain reaction crash Thursday morning that shut down northbound Interstate 75 in Butler Countys West Chester Township, about 23 miles (37 kilometers) north of Cincinnati.

Accidents caused lane closures in the southbound lanes of the interstate, too.

Roads are being described Thursday morning as sheets of ice.

The Dayton Daily News reports there are closures of roads, freeway ramps and interstates throughout the region. The Highway Patrol says a passenger in a semi-trailer that collided with another semi early Thursday during whiteout conditions on I-75 has died. That accident occurred near Tipp City, 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Dayton



9:25 a.m.

Authorities say a commuter train with more than 100 passengers derailed in Massachusetts during the latest winter storm to hit the region. No injuries have been reported.

A spokesman for Keolis Commuter Services, which runs the system for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, says the train headed to Boston derailed in Wilmington at about 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

The very low-speed derailment is under investigation to determine if it was weather-related.

The National Weather Service reports that Wilmington got more than 10 inches of snow.

The spokesman says crews had to clear about 30 fallen tree limbs from tracks as a result of the storm, and seven trains were damaged and repaired.

There are multiple storm-related delays on the MBTAs commuter rail, light rail and bus lines.



8:55 a.m.

Nearly 75,000 power outages in New Yorks Lower Hudson Valley are being reported by various utilities. There also are thousands of outages in upstate New York.

Con Edison has about 6,500 customers who are still without power from last Fridays noreaster. Theyre now expected to get their power back by 11 p.m. this Friday.

Snow totals vary wildly in the metropolitan New York City area. Some suburbs saw 2 feet of snow or more.

National Weather Service meteorologist Adrienne Leptich says the big winner is New Fairfield, Connecticut, with a whopping 26.8 inches.

New York Citys biggest total was 4.7 inches, recorded in Little Neck, Queens.



7:50 a.m.

Pennsylvania utility companies say more than 110,000 customers are without power following the states second major snowstorm in less than a week.

More than a foot of snow fell in parts of Pennsylvania Wednesday, causing treacherous travel in some areas. Many schools and businesses remained closed Thursday or were holding delayed openings.

The most outages are reported by Peco, which said about 55,500 customers were without service Thursday morning. About 47,000 of those customers are in the Philadelphia suburb of Bucks County.

Utility crews were also still dealing with tens of thousands of outages remaining from a weekend storm that raked the state last Friday, when high winds downed transmission lines from Erie to Philadelphia.



7:30 a.m.

Residents across New England are waking up to cars caked in heavy wet snow, a messy commute and widespread power outages.

The National Weather Service says some areas got more than 2 feet of snow in a storm that started late Wednesday and pummeled the region through the night.

The small western Connecticut town of Warren got 28 inches of snow, while Adams in western Massachusetts received 26 inches as of 6:30 a.m. Thursday. Thats according to unofficial reports made to the weather service.

The western and central portions of both states were hardest hit.

Burrillville, Rhode Island, got 15 inches.

Connecticuts two major utilities were reporting more than 125,000 power outages Thursday morning. Massachusetts utilities reported more than 320,000 outages and New Hampshire had about 50,000.



This item has been corrected to show that Massachusetts had more than 320,000 outages Thursday morning, not 45,000.



7:30 a.m.

Snowfall amounts varied wildly in the metropolitan New York City area.

National Weather Service meteorologist Adrienne Leptich says the big winner was New Fairfield, Connecticut, with a whopping 26.8 inches.

Some other areas north and west of the city also got two feet or more.

Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, got 24 inches.

In New Yorks Rockland County, Sloatsburg got 26 inches.

Mahopac, in Putnam County, got 18.8 inches.

On Long Island, she says the sky dumped buckets of snow from around 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The accumulations ranged from around 3 to 9 inches.

Leptich says New York City wasnt as exciting. The biggest reported accumulation was 4.7 inches in Little Neck, Queens.



6:55 a.m.

Hundreds of thousands of utility customers are without power in New Jersey following a second major storm in less than a week.

More than 2 feet of snow fell in parts of northern Jersey on Wednesday, while some central areas had a foot or more of accumulation. Many schools and businesses remained closed Thursday as the cleanup continued.

The states major utilities reported more than 247,000 customers without power Thursday morning. Some customers have been without service since last Fridays destructive noreaster.

Travel remains treacherous in many areas, and residents were being urged to avoid travel, if possible.

New Jersey Transit had resumed bus service and most of its train service was running on a regular schedule Thursday. The agency continued to cross-honor tickets.



12:15 a.m.

The second major storm in less than a week is moving up the East Coast, dumping heavy snow and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from Pennsylvania to New England.

Some places saw more than 2 feet of snow by late Wednesday. Montville, New Jersey, got more than 26 inches. North Adams, Massachusetts, registered 24 inches and Sloatsburg, New York, got 26 inches.

Major cities along the Interstate 95 corridor saw much less. Philadelphia International Airport recorded about 6 inches, while New York Citys Central Park saw less than 3 inches.

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning through Thursday for most of New England as the storm continues to make its way through.

.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP)  They could have run into each other sipping coffee in the lobby, perhaps at the bar at Ethiopias finest hotel. But U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dont plan to meet, and now both countries are trading accusations about whos to blame.

The top American and Russian diplomats warily circled each other in Africa, where both are paying official visits this week. As their two countries trade accusations over Syria, Ukraine and even the Oscars, their governments are trolling each other with barbs on social media.

Russia said that both Tillerson and Lavrov were staying at the lush Sheraton Addis resort while in Ethiopia, where Tillerson met Thursday with the countrys outgoing prime minister and with the African Union Commissions chairman.

It was unclear how long the two were overlapping in the Ethiopian capital. Tillerson arrived Wednesday and planned to leave early Friday for Djibouti. Lavrov, speaking Thursday in Zimbabwe, said he would be in Addis Ababa this evening, but didnt specify the time.

So whose decision was it to forego a tete-a-tete? In an illustration of how just how prickly U.S.-Russia relations have become, even that seemingly bureaucratic issue became a matter of fierce disagreement.

Russia for days had been calling publicly for a meeting, and accused Washington of failing to respond to its request.

Not so, the United States insisted. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this week that the U.S. had received no request from Russias government for a meeting with Tillerson and had no meeting to announce at this time.

That prompted Lavrov to dispute her directly. From Zimbabwe, Lavrov said hed preferred not weigh in, but felt compelled after learning that the State Department claimed no meeting was ever discussed.

I want to say that this is untrue, Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency Tass.

Tillerson, for his part, pleaded ignorance to the fact that the Russian diplomat had sought a meeting. He told reporters that he didnt know Lavrov would be even be in Ethiopia until a couple of days ago and didnt learn Moscow had reached out about a meeting until he was already on his way to Africa.

My schedule is largely set, Tillerson said. Not to worry, he added: If it doesnt work out here, he and I see each other often.

Theres plenty for the two world powers to discuss. Nauert and the State Department have been publicly deploring Russias actions in Syria and accusing Moscow of bombing civilians in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta. And President Donald Trump remains under intense scrutiny over his reluctance to challenge Russia over alleged interference in the U.S. election.

Russias embassy in Washington, taunting the U.S. in a Facebook post, said Nauerts insistence that Russia never requested a meeting showed that something seems to have broken in her department.

In any case, we congratulate Heather Nauert and, of course, all female employees of the State Department on International Womens Day! the embassy wrote.



Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.



This story has been corrected to show that Lavrov is expected in Ethiopia on Thursday, not Wednesday.
BEIRUT (AP)  A top U.N. aid official appealed to the Syrian government and its Russian backers for a cessation of hostilities in eastern Ghouta on Thursday when a second convoy with desperately needed aid was postponed after government forces split the enclave in two, creating an evolving, unpredictable situation on the ground.

Jan Egeland said it is impossible to deliver aid to the rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus amid the current fighting, which he described as the worst ever.

Im very worried for a repeat of very many of the bad things we saw in the final days of the battle of Aleppo but to some extent this is worse, he told The Associated Press in an interview from Oslo, Norway.

Recapturing eastern Ghouta, a short drive away from the Syrian capital, would mark the biggest victory yet for President Bashar Assad in the seven year war. It would also be the worst setback for rebels since the opposition was ousted from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar siege and bombing campaign.

Eastern Ghouta is larger and more populated, with some 400,000 people believed to be living there, trapped under a relentless air and ground bombardment and a crippling years-long siege. More than 800 people have been killed just in the past three weeks.

In rapid advances overnight, troops and allied militiamen seized more than half of the area, including a stretch of farmland, isolating the northern and southern parts of the territory, cutting links between the rebels and further squeezing opposition fighters and civilians trapped inside, state media and a war monitor reported.

Videos released by the oppositions volunteer rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, captured the inferno in eastern Ghouta, including a shell exploding as an ambulance sped through the street after loading in an apparently wounded person.

The government forces advanced from the east and were only about a mile away from linking with forces on the western side of eastern Ghouta. The military gains have caused wide-scale internal displacement as civilians flee government advances toward areas in the territory still held by the rebels.

The most densely populated areas in eastern Ghouta are still under rebel control, including the towns of Douma, Harasta, Kfar Batna, Saqba and Hammouriyeh. As government troops bombed their way into the town of Beit Sawa on Wednesday, many terrorized civilians fled east to the towns of Arbeen and Hammouriyeh.

The fact is we have seen possibly the worst fighting ever in eastern Ghouta in these last 24 hours and in that kind of situation you cannot deliver anything, Egeland said. It is impossible to cross into the frontline and to go in to help desperate civilians, women and children that we know are on the starvation point.

Egeland said there are intensive diplomatic efforts for a humanitarian pause that would lead to the evacuation of 1,000 priority cases for medical treatment and expressed hope that another convoy would be able to make its way there Friday. He called on the Syrian government and Russia as the stronger parties, but also on countries that have influence over the armed rebel groups, to secure a period of calm.

Egeland also confirmed there are talks between the parties on the possible evacuation of fighters and civilians which he said aid workers are not party to.

The government, determined to wrest the eastern Ghouta suburbs from rebel control after seven years of war, has intensified the shelling and bombardment to clear the way for its troops to advance on the ground.

Doctors and residents reported intense shelling and cases of suffocation and breathing difficulties, accusing the government of using chlorine gas Wednesday night. Hamza Hassan, a surgeon working at one of the hospitals in eastern Ghouta, said staff was overwhelmed with chlorine odor and that he treated 29 children with breathing problems.

Such reports, which have been recurrent in the past weeks, could not be independently confirmed. The government has repeatedly denied using chlorine gas.

Syrian state TV said dozens of families gathered in the town of Saqba in an attempt to use a humanitarian corridor to leave eastern Ghouta, adding that terrorist groups threatened and prevented them from getting out.

Ingy Sedky, the ICRC spokeswoman in Syria, said Thursdays aid convoy was postponed, and had no confirmation when it would take place.

The situation is evolving rapidly on the ground, which doesnt allow us to carry out the operation in such conditions, she said.

Earlier this week, the first convoy in weeks made it into the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta, but 14 of the 46 trucks were not able to fully offload critical humanitarian supplies because of stepped-up violence.

Civilians are not safe anywhere in eastern Ghouta, and aid workers who entered briefly on Monday said some residents had not seen sunlight for two weeks because they were sheltering underground.

Russias military has said it is playing a key role supporting the assault on eastern Ghouta to combat terrorists hiding there and threatening Damascus.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in the north between Turkish troops and allied militiamen and Syrian Kurdish forces in the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin.

Turkeys foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his government hopes that the cross-border military offensive in Afrin will end before May. He spoke during a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart in Vienna.

Turkeys military said meanwhile that Turkish troops and their allies had taken control of the town of Jinderes, in the enclaves southwest, after engaging in street clashes with Syrian Kurdish forces.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that a siege of Afrins main city would begin after Jinderes is taken.



Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed reporting.
The Latest on International Womens Day:

Black Panther star Danai Gurira says the hit movie is showing the world that women and men can work shoulder to shoulder and their abilities are equally valued in a society.

Gurira spoke at an event marking International Womens Day on Thursday at U.N. headquarters in New York.

She says the movie has made a massive splash because such a representation of powerful women is rarely seen.

The Zimbabwean-American actress and Tony Award-winning playwright says she was thankful to be handed the role of Okoye, who had nobility and put the needs of her country and people first.

She says she wants Okoye to remind the world that those women already exist.



Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon says the Times Up campaign launched by women in Hollywood to combat sexual harassment raised $20 million in 10 days and has helped 1,500 women with harassment suits against their employers.

Witherspoon spoke at an event marking International Womens Day on Thursday at U.N. headquarters.

She says the response to the Times Up Legal Defense Fund is incredible and shows how many more people are going to need these services.

The Big Little Lies star, who told the audience that she was assaulted by a director when she was 16-years-old, says that women deserve 50 percent of the representation and 50 percent of the salaries. She says women will no longer continue to do work without being paid properly for it.



Tens of thousands of people marched in Argentinas capital on International Womens Day to condemn violence against women and to demand equal rights and legalized abortion.

The demonstrators Thursday banged on drums, chanted slogans and carried flags and banners along the streets of Buenos Aires, marching in front of the Congress building. Many women wore green handkerchiefs symbolizing the abortion rights movement.

Argentina allows abortion only in cases of rape or risk to a womans health. But dozens of Argentine lawmakers from several political parties presented a bill Tuesday that would legalize elective abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Some demonstrators lay on the streets motionless while wearing white shirts stained with red paint to look like blood. The banners next to them read: While you debate, we die.



Hundreds of Brazilian women are marching to demand equal rights and protest gender-based violence to mark International Womens Day.

Marchers in Sao Paulo on Thursday were drawing attention to issues as varied as the wage gap, abortion rights, sexual harassment in the workplace and sexual assault on the streets. Groups are also marching in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has one of the worlds highest homicide rates for women, and stories of sexual assault against women on public transport frequently made news in the past year.

Christiane Correia de Souza derided the fact that many stores were handing out flowers to their female customers on Thursday. The 31-year-old factory worker said the practice glossed over the serious issues facing women, like unequal salaries and sexual assault on buses.



Google is highlighting 12 female artists in its doodle to commemorate International Womens Day, and the online search leader launched a new tool that makes it easier to find local businesses that are owned, led or founded by women.

The new tool will be a permanent feature, and is also available for people who want to find businesses friendly to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning and/or queer (LGBTQ) community.

The company also hosted a <a target=blank href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDLn45rREXE>discussion</a> with Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, the actresses Storm Reid and Gugu Mbatha-Raw and director Ava DuVernay to talk about their new film, Disneys A Wrinkle in Time, on YouTube.

That said, Google, like other tech companies, has been criticized for hiring too few women, especially in technical roles, and is the subject of a <a target=blank href=https://apnews.com/379b1a47e8454ae6abc10d79d1bb05c4>lawsuit</a> alleging that it underpaid women compared with their male counterparts.



New York Citys Fearless Girl statue, a tourist attraction for the last year, is donning a new outfit Thursday: a cape of blue flowers.

The cape, courtesy of retailer Old Navy, is part of the worldwide events for International Womens Day.

Meanwhile, a replica of Fearless Girl was installed in Oslo, Norway. The statues creator, Kristen Visbal, says shes excited we have a piece on the other side of the world.

The New York statue is staying put for now while city officials figure out where its going next to spread its message of female empowerment.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that she expects to announce (the) next steps very soon.

The statues owner, investment firm State Street Global Advisors, says the company is working with the mayors office to determine a permanent solution.



U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the world is at a pivotal moment for womens rights and is urging men and boys to join in making gender equality a reality for all.

The U.N. chief told a start-studded event at U.N. headquarters marking International Womens Day on Thursday that for decades, women have been calling for the equality that is their right.

Today, they are shaking the pillars of patriarchy, Gutteres said. They are insisting on lasting change. This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want.

And to loud applause, he declared: It is what every sensible man and boy should want.



The White House used International Womens Day to announce that first lady Melania Trump will present State Department courage awards to women from around the world at a March 21 ceremony.

The award recognizes women who have shown courage and leadership in pressing for womens rights worldwide.

Their courage only furthers my belief in the powerful impact women can make through solidarity and support of one another, Mrs. Trump said. Our strength is something to be celebrated.

Rallies and other events were being held around the world Thursday to mark International Womens Day.



Thousands of women are taking over the central arteries of cities across Spain for evening marches to protest against wage gaps and gender violence and to demand an end to glass ceilings for female workers.

If we stop, the world stops has become the slogan opening more than 300 protests.

They come after a full day of striking on Thursday to mark International Womens Day. Some 5.3 million people participated, according to two of the countrys main workers unions.

The March 8 Commission, a platform of feminist organizations that organized the marches across the country, said that women working at home, unpaid caretakers and students were a main focus of this years protests.

Strikes were especially noticeable in media, with prominent female anchors and journalists absent from television screens and radio programs. Nearly 7,500 female journalists have signed a manifesto calling for equal pay and opportunities.



Chanting Women power! and We are defending womens lives! a few thousand women marched through downtown Warsaw on Thursday to mark International Womens Day.

The demonstrators were protesting violence against women and demanding equal pay with men. Some carried black umbrellas, a symbol of their successful, massive protest in 2016 that blocked plans by the right-wing government to further tighten Polands strict anti-abortion law.

Similar marches were held in other cities across predominantly Catholic Poland, as well as around the world.



Kroger says it will light up its Cincinnati headquarters for International Womens Day, another example of how corporations are honoring the day.

The supermarket operator, which also owns the Ralphs, Owens and Roundys chains, says the 25-story building will be illuminated with the female Venus symbol Thursday night.

Many companies are trying to spotlight women for the day. McDonalds, for example, flipped its Golden Arches logo on its website to look like a W.



Black glasses covering part of her badly burned face, a victim of an acid attack joined hundreds of activists who rallied in Pakistans port city of Karachi on Thursday to denounce violence against women and mark International Womens Day.

Acid attacks are not uncommon in Pakistan, where men sometimes assault women for refusing to marry them.

At Karachis rally, held amid tight security, hundreds of Muslims and minority Christian women stood up as a sign of respect when the acid attack victim joined them.

Victims of acid attacks tend to avoid public gatherings. They are often treated at hospitals with financial assistance from non-governmental organizations.



McDonalds has temporarily flipped its famous Golden Arches to look like a W  a move it says it made to recognize International Womens Day.

The upside-down logo appeared Thursday on the fast-food giants website and social media accounts. It also flipped the arches at one restaurant in Lynwood, California. McDonalds says that at about 100 of its 14,000 restaurants, packaging and worker uniforms will have the flipped logo.

McDonalds also says six out of 10 of its restaurant managers are women and it wanted to honor their accomplishments.

The Oak Brook, Illinois-based company says its the first time it has flipped its Golden Arches logo since they debuted at a restaurant six decades ago.



Hundreds of women have protested in Kosovos capital to commemorate International Womens Day.

Some posters held up during the demonstration in Pristina said We march, we do not celebrate and Job for me.

Luljeta Aliu of the nonprofit Justice and Equality organization says that we fight for our rights as women. We want our rights at the workplace. We dont want to be sexually harassed.

Kosovos ombudsman has acknowledged that women are still discriminated against in the property and job markets.



Three current and former French ministers have performed in a play about womens sexual experiences amid the French governments push to highlight gender inequality.

The state secretary for womens rights, Marlene Schiappa, performed in the Vagina Monologues alongside Roselyne Bachelot, health minister under conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, and Myriam El Khomri, labor minister under Socialist president Francois Hollande.

Schiappa is currently championing a new bill targeting sexual violence and harassment.

Theater producer Jean-Marc Dumontet, who organized Wednesdays performance in Paris, stressed the three politicians took a risk.

Dumontet told The Associated Press that it brings womens issues to a very prominent position. They are really speaking out.

Bachelot said she agreed to perform the play with Schiappa because the fight for gender equality goes beyond political divides.



Catholic women are challenging Pope Francis to give women a greater voice in Catholic Church decision-making, warning that they are leaving the church in droves because its all-male leadership refuses to change their entrenched second-class status.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese, an outspoken advocate for womens ordination and gay rights, was the keynote speaker Thursday at an International Womens Day conference that was moved off Vatican territory this year because a cardinal declined to sponsor it due to McAleeses participation.

In her speech, delivered at the Rome headquarters of Francis Jesuit order, McAleese said The Catholic Church has long since been a primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny. Its leadership has never sought a cure for that virus though the cure is freely available: Its name is equality.



French President Emmanuel Macron says his government is going to name and shame companies that dont respect the law on gender equality.

For International Womens Day, Macron has visited a property company awarded for its efforts toward gender equality.

He said that pointing the finger at companies that dont comply with the law will make them change, because no one wants to be the worst student in the class.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe unveiled Wednesday a government plan to push for gender equality in the workplace.

One measure would sanction companies with more than 50 employees, if there is an unjustified gender wage gap, with a substantial financial penalty.

Statistics show at the same age and equivalent job, there is a 9 percent gap between the wages of men and women in France



Asia Argento, an Italian actress who helped launch the #MeToo movement, is launching a new movement, #WeToo, which aims to unite women against the power imbalance in favor of men.

Argento told Radio 24 on Thursday that her aim was to finally change the patriarchal system so rooted in our culture, not just in Italy. She called on women to join her at a womens march in Rome later in the day, and participate in a strike to illustrate the contributions of women at home and in the workplace.

Argento helped give strength to other women to report sexual assault and harassment when she accused Harvey Weinstein of rape in an expose by The New Yorker. The accusations drew a backlash in Italy for having waited 20 years to come forward.



Hundreds of women have marched in Pakistans capital and elsewhere on International Womens Day, demanding more rights and denouncing harassment, which is common at homes and in work places.

Chanting slogans, they rallied in the capital Islamabad, Pakistans largest city Karachi, and in the cultural capital of Lahore.

At Thursdays rallies, women denounced violence against them in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives each year in so-called honor killings.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi earlier addressed a gathering of women and assured them full protection.

Women in Pakistan have a reasonable presence in the parliament but they have to rely on fellow male lawmakers to amend discriminatory or flawed laws.

Pakistani women have largely been deprived of their rights since the country gained independence in 1947.



Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle have met female students studying science, technology, engineering and math as part of celebrations marking International Womens Day.

Some 90 students met the royal couple on Thursday at Millennium Point in Birmingham as part of an event to inspire young people to take part in science and tech careers.

Markle seemed impressed by the aspirations of the students, many of whom wanted to be doctors or surgeons.

Harry and Markle are touring the country to introduce the American actress to the people of Britain before their marriage at Windsor Castle on May 19.



South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africans must work together to improve the status of women who face discrimination and disadvantages at home and in the workplace.

Ramaphosa, who took office last month, said Thursday that his compatriots should use International Womens Day to decide what they can do to advance gender equality.

Ramaphosa says South Africa has made progress toward equality since the end of apartheid in 1994 in building an equal society. He said patriarchy has no place in the South Africa we are building today.

South Africa has a high rate of violent crime, including rape.



German Chancellor Angela Merkel says on International Womens Day that while much has been achieved, the struggle for more equality for women in Germany and worldwide must continue.

Merkel, considered one of the worlds most powerful women, said Thursday in a video message that many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights  but theres still a lot to do.

The chancellor said that, there are also new tasks for men  but she didnt elaborate further.

Merkel added, Therefore today is not only a day to look back at what has been achieved, but also a day on which we say  the struggle for equal rights of women continues.



Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is urging men to stop physically abusing their wives, in official remarks Thursday while marking International Womens Day.

Domestic violence is common across in Uganda, although victims rarely report perpetrators to the police for fear of being stigmatized or thrown out of their homes.

If you want to fight, why dont you look for a fellow man and fight? Museveni said, calling domestic abusers cowards.

Museveni said lifting women up economically, through education and entrepreneurship, can help bring an end to rampant domestic violence.

He said: If the girls are not economically empowered, they will remain vulnerable to these bully men.



A leading French newspaper has found a novel way to mark International Womens Day  by upping its price for men, to mimic the pay gap.

The all-red front page of Thursdays edition of the left-leaning daily Liberation wrote in bold letters For Women 2 euros, normal price.

The paper added that for one day only, men would pay 50 cents more, a reflection of the 25 percent less that women in France are paid than men, on average.

Liberation said it wants to highlight this injustice with its price increase for men.

A punishment? No. A contribution! the paper wrote on the front page, saying the extra money recovered from men on Thursday would go to the Laboratory of Equality, which has long fought for gender equality.



U.S. national soccer team striker Alex Morgan and Brazil forward Marta are among the players chosen for the FIFPro Womens World XI. The team was announced Thursday to coincide with International Womens Day.

Goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl of Sweden is joined by defenders Nilla Fischer of Sweden, Lucy Bronze of England, Irene Paredes of Spain and Wendie Renard of France. Midfielder Dzsenifer Maroszan of Germany, Camille Abily of France, Pernille Harder of Denmark and Lieke Martens of the Netherlands round out the 11.

Morgan says having a Womens World XI team helps female footballers recognize the talent among their peers and Im really happy to encourage and be a part of that.



Opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak has conducted a solo picket outside the lower house of the Russian parliament to demand the resignation of a prominent lawmaker whom several female journalists accuse of sexual harassment.

The allegations against Leonid Slutsky, head of the Dumas foreign affairs committee, include sexual groping and making demeaning comments. Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has dismissed the complaints, saying that journalists who feel unsafe covering the Duma should get other jobs.

Sobchak held her demonstration on Thursday, International Womens Day, which is observed as a public holiday in Russia. She held a placard reading Deputies  we dont want you.

President Vladimir Putin, with approval ratings of some 80 percent, is seeking a fourth term in the March 18 election.



Spanish women are marking International Womens Day with the first-ever full day strike and dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence.

Under the slogan If we stop, the world stops, women working both in and outside their homes, unpaid caretakers and students are called to join the 24-hour strike by the March 8 Commission, a platform of feminist organizations that also demands equal opportunities for working women.

CCOO and UGT, two of the main workers unions in Spain have called for morning and afternoon 2-hour work stoppages. In Madrid, a massive demonstration was expected later in the evening.

In Barcelona, protesters who disrupted traffic into the city center were seen in social media videos being pushed by anti-riot police agents.



During Taliban rule many would have been afraid to leave their homes, but hundreds of women gathered in the Afghan capital Kabul on Thursday to commemorate International Womens Day  and to remind their leaders that plenty of work remains to be done to give Afghan woman a voice, ensure their education and protect them from increasing violence.

The head of the Independent Human Rights Commission, Sima Samar, directed some comments at women in Afghanistans security forces.

Your safety represents the safety of all Afghan women, she said, reminding women in uniform to report any abuse by superiors to the rights commission. She said no one has the right to comment on their physical appearance or to speak to them disrespectfully.



This item has been corrected to show that the women gathered in Kabul but did not march.



Hundreds of women have held street plays and marched in the Indian capital to highlight domestic violence, sexual attacks and discrimination in jobs and wages on International Womens Day.

They carried placards reading, Unite against violence against Women, Man enough to say no to domestic abuse, and My body, My choice.

Violent crime against women has been on the rise in India despite tough laws enacted by the government.

Office workers, school teachers and sex workers were among those participating in the 2-kilometer (1.25 mile) march, which ended near Parliament.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: India is moving from women development to women-led development. Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind.



Hundreds of South Koreans are staging a protest in support of the #MeToo movement on International Womens Day.

Protesters, many wearing black and holding black signs reading #MeToo, gathered in central Seoul. They called for bringing alleged sexual offenders to justice, as well as action on other issues such as closing a gender pay gap.

Since a female prosecutors revelation in January of workplace mistreatment and sexual misconduct, South Koreas #MeToo movement has gained major traction. The list of women who speak out is growing daily.

Several high-profile men have resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his secretary.



Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi says peaceful democracies make good use of womens strength in political, economic and social fields.

In a speech marking International Womens Day, she said, A countrys human rights values will be enhanced when women are granted their rights.

Thursday was the third year the annual event was celebrated under a civilian government in Myanmar, where the military that long ruled the country is still powerful.

Suu Kyi leads the political party that won by a landslide in 2015 elections but the constitution bars her from becoming the president.

Though Myanmar has a woman leading its civilian government, a profound gender gap remains in the country of 52 million people.



Students at Chinas prestigious Tsinghua University are celebrating International Womens Day with banners making light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the countrys president.

One banner joked that a boyfriends term should also have no limits, while another said, A country cannot exist without a constitution, as we cannot exist without you!

Photos of the banners were shared on Chinese social media Wednesday night before they were scrubbed by censors. Several online commenters also said the posters appeared to have been swiftly removed.

Chinas ceremonial legislature is poised to pass a constitutional amendment that will allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely during its ongoing annual session.

Despite heavy censorship, the move has been criticized by liberal intellectuals as a return to dictatorship and satirized online.



Marches and demonstrations in Asia are kicking off rallies around the world to mark International Womens Day.

Hundreds of women activists in pink and purple shirts protested Thursday in the Philippines against President Rodrigo Duterte, who they said is among the worst violators of womens rights in Asia.

Protest leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in downtown Manilas Plaza Miranda. They handed red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of several drug suspects slain under Dutertes deadly crackdown on illegal drugs.

A rally for the rights of female workers was scheduled for later Thursday in central Seoul in South Korea, where a rapidly spreading #Metoo movement is galvanizing support for womens issues.

Other events are planned across Asia, the Mideast, Europe and the Americas.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  The United States special representative for Ukraine voiced optimism Wednesday that Russia will still choose to make peace and withdraw from eastern Ukraine and said that if it does, Washington stands ready to play a role in the transition.

Kurt Volker said the United States has suggested to Russia that a United Nations-mandated force could provide security following a Russian withdrawal of troops, and is waiting to hear Moscows response.

If Russia chooses to do that, we are prepared to help, Volker told a small group of reporters in Warsaw ahead of a speech he gave to diplomats and politicians at the German Marshall Fund for the United States, a think tank focused on trans-Atlantic cooperation.

Volker said his hope comes from the fact that Russia is now paying a huge price for its military involvement in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass. He cited Russias military costs, casualties, frozen ties with the U.S. and the European Union, and unprecedented anti-Russian feelings growing among young Ukrainians.

I think what Russia was hoping for was to see a Russian-friendly government come back in Kiev, Volker said, referring to Russias incursions into Ukraine in 2014. What they have done has produced the opposite effect. They have produced a Ukraine that is more nationalist, more unified, more Western-oriented, more anti-Russian, frankly, than has ever existed before.

Last week, the Trump administration told Congress that it plans to sell Ukraine 210 anti-tank missiles to help it defend its territory from Russia, in a major escalation of U.S. lethal assistance to Ukraines military.

Volker said there were talks with Ukraine to provide further aid, including anti-sniper systems, noting that snipers are one of the leading causes of casualties among Ukrainian soldiers. The conflict has claimed 10,000 lives to date.

This is very much a hot war, not a frozen conflict, Volker said. The fighting continues every night. Every week a couple of Ukrainian soldiers are killed.

We think that Russia needs to make a fundamental decision that it wants to withdraw from eastern Ukraine, the Donbass and establish peace. Peace is really in Russias hands here.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP)  Several hundred opposition supporters staged a protest in Bangladeshs capital on Thursday demanding the release of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is serving a five-year prison sentence in a corruption case.

The protesters accused police of obstructing their sit-in, and a brief clash occurred when the authorities attempted to arrest a student opposition leader. No injuries were reported in the one-hour demonstration in downtown Dhaka.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary general of Zias Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said they would demonstrate in Dhaka and in small towns across the country on Saturday to protest the police action.

He said police have been interfering with a series of opposition protests since last months jailing of Zia. Authorities have denied the allegation and said no arrests have been made without specific charges.

Also on Thursday, a team of defense lawyers met 72-year-old Zia in jail and discussed legal issues involving her bail request.

Zainul Abedin, one of the lawyers, told reporters after meeting Zia that they were hopeful the former prime minister would be released on bail. Zias lawyers have said the case is politically motivated.

Abedin said the High Court where Zia has appealed her conviction will rule on Sunday whether she will be released. The court can grant bail while an appeal is pending.

Zias party has been trying to build up an opposition movement since her jailing but so far has failed to gain momentum. Violent street protests are common in Bangladesh during political upheavals. The opposition says authorities are arresting its supporters and harassing many to apply pressure ahead of December national elections.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, meanwhile, said people should vote for her party in the election to continue the countrys development and reject corruption. Critics acknowledge that development has been taking place but say corruption remains a major concern.

A court convicted Zia on Feb. 8 on charges of misusing her power and embezzling about $250,000. The conviction means that Zia, the archrival of Hasina, can be barred from running in the elections.

The court also sentenced Zias son, Tarique Rahman, and four others to 10 years in prison for involvement in the case.

Bangladesh law says anyone imprisoned for more than two years cannot run for office for the next five years, but Law Minister Anisul Huq has said the final decision rests with the courts.

Zia faces more than 30 other charges, ranging from corruption to sedition. Rahman, her son and heir-apparent, lives in London. He was tried in absentia.

Bangladesh politics are deeply fractious, with rivals Hasina and Zia ruling the country alternately since 1991, when democracy was restored.

Both women came from political dynasties. Zia is the widow of Ziaur Rahman, a general-turned-president who was assassinated in 1981. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the countrys independence leader and first president who was assassinated in 1975 along with most of his family members.

In the last election in 2014, Zias party and its political allies boycotted the race, allowing Hasina to return to power with a landslide victory.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body strongly denied killing her, asserting at his trial Thursday that she died accidentally because of a pressure problem in the submarine.

Peter Madsen, who is accused of torturing Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine, also denied he was sexually attracted to her.

Sitting on his hands as he testified at the opening of his trial in Copenhagen City Court, Madsen appeared irritated at times as he brushed off any suggestion of sexual activity with Wall before or after her death.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen read from a psychiatric report describing Madsen as an intelligent man with psychopathic tendencies. Madsen himself told the court Thursday that he was a promiscuous person.

Madsen has admitted to dismembering Walls body before he buried her at sea, saying he could not lift her up the submarine tower in one piece to throw her overboard so he had to cut her up.

Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsens submarine on Aug. 10 to interview the 47-year-old co-founder of a company that develops and builds manned spacecraft. Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times.

Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Walls body parts were found on the ocean bed. He said Madsen has no empathy or feelings of guilt, citing the court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

If found guilty, Madsen faces between five years and life in prison  which in this case means 16 years that could be extended as long as Madsen is deemed dangerous  or he could be locked up in a secure mental facility if deemed necessary by psychiatrists, for as long as hes considered sick and a danger to others.

Madsen, wearing glasses, a dark shirt and jeans, listened quietly with his fists closed. Walls parents were also present Thursday at the trial.

Testifying, Madsen repeated his claim that Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck. He said Wall had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident.

Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Walls death prior to the trial. He initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on a Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head.

On Thursday, he described how he found Wall lifeless after a sudden pressure problem in the submarine.

I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good, he said. He added that he tried to give her first aid when he finally reached her, but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths, he told the court.

The prosecution claims Walls murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didnt take when sailing.

Buch-Jepsen said the cause of Walls death has not yet been established. He said Walls blood was found on Madsens nose and his bodysuit, and that detectives found violent videos and texts about killing women on Madsens laptop and an external hard drive.

Members of the court were shown a drawing of the multiple stab wounds to Walls torso. An audio file of a radio exchange between Madsen and maritime officials on Aug. 11  the day after Madsen and Wall embarked on their submarine trip was also played. In the recording, Madsen said he had let Wall on an island, and that there were no injured persons aboard but only technical problems.

The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen reported man overboard over the radio and was then picked up alone.

Wall, who had previously reported on topics including tourism in post-earthquake Haiti, studied at Paris Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York.

Caterina Clerici, a friend from Columbia, said Wall had a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform.

Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium that developed and constructed manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a 30-foot (nine-meter) rocket five miles (eight kilometers) into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space.

In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day hoped to have a criminal career, adding he didnt want to rob a bank because no one must be hurt.

Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and later found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.

The next court session is scheduled for March 21. The trial ends April. 25. A verdict is expected that day.



On the net:

https://www.rememberingkimwall.com/

www.facebook.com/kimwallmemorialfund/
BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP)  More than 2,500 Burundian refugees in Congo are seeking shelter in Rwanda because of fears they could be forcibly repatriated back home by Congolese authorities, according to a Rwandan official.

Most of the refugees had lived in Congo since 2015, when political violence erupted in Burundi over the presidents decision to seek a disputed third term, Jean Claude Rwahama, a refugee official in Rwanda, said Thursday.

We are still verifying the exact number of refugees but as we speak at least 2,579 of refugees have arrived in Rwanda, he said, adding that Rwanda is temporarily sheltering them at Bugarama refugee center near the Burundi border.

Francoise Ndayisenga, a leader among the refugees, said they were seeking asylum in Rwanda because they dont want to be forcibly sent back to Burundi. Nearly all the refugees are followers of a self-styled Catholic prophetess named Zebiya Ngendakumana, who is believed to be among the refugees seeking asylum in Rwanda. Citing their religious beliefs, the refugees have refused to have their fingerprints taken by refugee officials.

Roughly 44,000 refugees from Burundi are sheltering in Congo.

In September 2017, 36 Burundian refugees were killed by Congolese troops while protesting the expulsion of four of their countrymen from Congo. The U.N. called for a swift investigation into the killings and urged Congos security forces to use force as a last resort.

The refugees arrival in Rwanda coincides with a rise in militia violence in Congos restive east.

Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who has ruled since 2001, was due to step down at the end of his second term in December 2016 but the vote was postponed while he remains in office. The election has sparked regular protests in which the security forces are accused of killing dozens of people.



Ssuuna reported from Kigali, Rwanda.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)  At least seven policemen and two protesters were hurt Thursday in a clash after villagers in northeastern Cambodia blocked a national highway to protest being forced off land they have occupied for at least two years.

Officials and NGO workers said about 200 villagers in Kratie province who have been living on land that was given to a concessionaire to develop into a rubber plantation blocked the road for two hours.

Land disputes became a critical issue in Cambodia in the early part of last decade, as great blocs of land were granted as concessions for logging, rubber and other economic development projects. Violent and sometimes fatal conflicts between villagers, who rarely held formal land titles, and the authorities, acting on behalf of the concession holders, became common to the point that they were considered to be a threat to political stability.

In 2012, Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a directive suspending new land concessions to private companies and ordering a review of existing ones, though it is not clear the order was effectively implemented.

He also spearheaded a massive land redistribution program which critics characterized as unfair, open to corruption and politically motivated. The program crested ahead of a general election.

In recent years, large violent confrontations over land have become less frequent.

The chief of Snuol district, where Thursdays confrontation occurred, Kong Kimny, said the protesters were wounded by police bullets, and the police officers were hurt by villagers using slingshots and rocks. He said police opened fire with warning shots when they were attacked, accidently wounding the villagers. Seven villagers considered the protests leaders were arrested, he added.

He and a staff member of the human rights group ADHOC, Bei Vanny, both denied reports of any deaths.

Bei Vanny said the protesters were demanding that authorities provide them land for housing and farming before kicking them off of the land on which they had been squatting.

District chief Kong Kimny said the authorities had held talks with the villagers six times since 2015, but they continued to refuse to get off the privately held land. He said villagers often attacked the concession companys tractor when it tried to clear forest land near their homes.

A 53-year-old villager contacted by phone said the protest occurred because the company holding the concession kept clearing land where the villagers had planted bananas, rice and mangos while refusing to talk to the villagers. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his safety.

The identity of the company holding the concession could not immediately be determined.



This story has been corrected to fix spelling of districts name to Snuol instead of Chhnoul.
Russian feminists battle with gender stereotypes for International Womens Day

Published on March 8, 2018

Story by Lidia Kleshchenko

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In Russia, a country where traditional gender stereotypes are becoming part of the national identity, feminists pulled out their wild cards for International Womens Day. Instead of depicting women as tender and delicate flowers, the group of young people decided it was time for women to be appreciated for what they truly are.

In Russia, March 8th isnt exactly an empowering holiday for women. For a country whose population is mostly female (78 million compared to 66 million men), its a moment to celebrate the day of spring and femininity as its widely called. March 8th in Russia is not unlike mothers day, except that it targets all traditional domestic roles that women can embody: the girlfriend, the sister, the daughter, the mother, the grandmother. Its a moment for the country to hail this flowery day celebrating the lovely ladies, for boys in kindergartens to recite verses about beauty and for men in office settings to chip in for cosmetics gift certificates. Not to mention the tidal wave of flowers and gift cards.

When typing in the key words March 8 wishes in Yandex (The most popular search engine in Russian, ed.), hundreds of poems for women appear. In these poems, women are called tender, kind, lovely and beautiful creatures. They wish for women to bloom, always be young, loved and desired. Russian media echo these messages, reminding men to spoil the beautiful half of humankind, which has become a phrase synonymous for women in general. Articles urge men to shower women with expensive gifts, do some housekeeping chores for the occasion and pay compliments to the guardians of the hearth and home. Unsurprisingly, men proudly get to carry the label of the strong half of humankind.

This year, however, the tables have turned. For a week now, social media users across the country have been passionately discussing a resonant attempt by six young people to challenge the reiteration of traditional gender roles in Russia. The online campaign came just in time for International Womens Day.

Feminist wild cards

On March 1st, sociologist Asya Senicheva from Saint Petersburg shared seven neatly designed cards on social media that analysed the typical wishes and proposed alternative ones that were a better fit for [celebrating] womens emancipation. Within the span of a few hours, these digital gift cards created by Asya and her friends Liubov Chernysheva, Daria Holodova, Ksenia Chapkevich, Anastasia Golovneva, and Jenia Sofronov became the topic of discussion on a Russian social media site as well as Facebook. The post received more than 150,000 views and 4,000 likes on VK (the Russian equivalent of Facebook, ed.) and almost 2,000 shares and 1,000 comments on Facebook. While key figures of Russian feminism endorsed the messages, others criticised the campaign for being too radical and ruining the tradition.

Asyas digital gift cards are symbolic retaliations against the notion that women are synonymously known as the beautiful half of humankind. One of the cards titled being beautiful states that: A woman is not obliged to be a feast for someone elses eyes and comply with beauty standards; she is free to look the way she wants. Instead, you can wish for her to love herself and be comfortable with her appearance. Other cards reject the image of a woman being a kind and tender creature, or her role as a mother and wife. Some address the fact that a womans sexuality is not something that currently belongs to her, as is the case with the being desired card, which reads: This is as good as wishing her to be a good object of sexual satisfaction for men. Instead, you can wish her healthy and consensual sexual relations.

Here are some other examples:

'Being tender' means to not express rigidity and leadership qualities, to be accommodating and flexible. This is an advantage for others and not for women themselves. Instead, you can wish her to be self-confident and persevering.

'Guarding the hearth and home': Housekeeping is both a male and female duty, and both men and women are able to do it equally as well. Instead, you can wish for her to be in an empowering environment, one in which she can attain self-realization, regardless of what she chooses.

Asya says the idea for the campaign came when she thought about the shower of wishes that were about to pour down on March 8th. I thought these cards could be a good way to remind people about the original meaning and goal behind the celebration; to explain why wishing love, femininity and beauty on a day where women find solidarity in their struggle for rights and freedom is just not appropriate. It was a quick and concise way of bringing awareness to gender inequalities and the struggles women face on a day-to-day basis. Our goal was not to change minds or create [social] guidelines, but to challenge the status quo and make people reflect on the meaning of the International Womens Day. Cards, unlike long theoretical texts full of gender terminology, are easy to digest and publicly react to. What we wanted was to provoke a discussion. There is no doubt that the cards provoked a heated debate and comments  both supportive and spiteful  keep appearing on Asyas Facebook page today.

Our men are becoming spineless wet rags

International Womens Day is an official public holiday in Russia. However, it was not always reputed as a commercialised celebration of femininity. On March 8th 1917 (according to the Gregorian calendar, ed.), thousands of textile factory workers led by Alexandra Kollontai  a Russian feminist  took to the streets, protesting World War I in what was called womens demonstration for bread and peace. That protest eventually led to the provisional government granting women the right to vote. Later, during World War II, the male population of the Soviet Union fell drastically and in 1959, there were 81.9 men for every 100 women. This meant that a lot of women took charge of the workforce and were often given red roses from the state as a way of thanking them for their hard work. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of capitalism, Russias International Womens Day has become detached from its feminist roots.

Still, traditional gender roles have always been engrained in Russian society, and the recent insistence from the Russian government to reinforce traditional family values over the course of the past years has resulted in a dramatic resurgence of these roles.

The position of women in Russian society today is paradoxical: a woman should be lavishly decorated and serve her man while, at the same time, a womans weakness and fragility are depicted as being near-magical powers that women use to manipulate men. The result? A woman can be reproached for almost anything (something that often happens on Russian TV). Not being the household breadwinner makes her inferior to her male counterpart, but if she is the breadwinner, then she is seen as hurting her husband and destroying the marriage.

One of the women commenting on Asyas digital gift cards alluded to this oxymoron when she wrote: Its exactly because of women who lose their femininity and sensuality that our men are becoming spineless wet rags. But these negative comments dont bother Asya: Its a controversial topic, so I expected all kinds of comments. There were some people who said we were spoiling the celebration, others called us radical feminists, some criticised the messages but there were others who thanked us for the idea and who asked whether it would be possible to buy the cards, or have them translated.

A good cause

Russias historic past with International Womens Day is often used to conceal current problems. Politician Tamara Pletnyova, who is a member of the Duma State Committee on Women, Family and Children, recently intended to discredit a harassment scandal in Duma by saying that: In Russia, men and women are legally equal since 1917 [] no one will harass a woman if she does not want it. Women in Russia today are, however, frequently exposed to physical and sexual abuses, victim blaming, intense wage inequalities and live in the only European country that doesnt have a clear legislation on domestic violence.

So when Asya and other feminists are told to take it easy and just enjoy the nice wishes for International Womens Day, they are not surprised. For now, Asyas digital gift cards will continue to spoil the fun for this joyous springtime celebration. And all for a good cause: womens rights.

Story by Lidia Kleshchenko
| BY Ricki Green |

An independent short film by a majority-female crew is turning gender stereotyping on its head, celebrating the inclusive message of #BesideNotBehind.

Written, shot, edited and released all within two weeks in time for International Womens Day today, Beside Not Behind plays on the old saying that Behind every great man is a great woman and promotes the message that support can, and should, go both ways. It follows three women in everyday situations where gender bias, presumption and misconception exist in sometimes the most subtle ways.

The film is also hosted on the Beside Not Behind Facebook page.

Its portrayal of women excelling in fields perceived to be male-dominated takes its cue from this years IWD theme of #PressforProgress  a strong call to motivate and unite friends, colleagues and whole communities to think, act and be gender inclusive.

Olivia Cheung (far left), integrated producer at The Royals, and Cassie De Colling (left), award-winning director with The Otto Empire, came together after hearing too many stories about discrimination and gender bias in the film and advertising workplace. They wrote the script over a weekend with three weeks lead-time in order to make the film in time for International Womens Day.

In the Australian film industry, women make up 32% of producers and just 16% of directors and 23% of writers.

Says Cheung: It was an ambitious goal to begin with; typically a social campaign of this size would be planned for at least six months, and we managed to get this together from concept to delivery in three weeks, with the support of so many people willing to donate their time and skills.

It just goes to show how many people connected with the #BesideNotBehind message  to make things truly equal and not about gender, its about supporting each other. Theres a lot of mixed feelings around the gender equality and feminist movement that can divide men and women, and thats why we felt it was important to share a message that its about supporting each other, which I think is the unique thing about our campaign.

Says De Colling: Weve made a lot of progress in removing gender bias, differences in pay gap, creating more opportunities for women and men to stand shoulder to shoulder. I was keen to make a piece people would watch and feel like they could acknowledge the subtle differences of the current gender divide but more so be a part of the message of acknowledging and supporting each other.

The thing that made this job so magic for me was looking around on set and seeing such a passionate crew of women and men championing the message #BesideNotBehind  it was incredibly fulfilling. Everyone involved has worked around the clock to create the best film possible given the resources and time. #BesideNotBehind gave us all an opportunity to expand our networks, learn from each other and have a truly iconic piece to show at the end.

Written by Cassie De Colling & Olivia Cheung

Directed by Cassie De Colling

Produced by Olivia Cheung

Talent

THE CREATOR

Mum: Rebecca Bastiaensz

Dad: Carey Carter

Daughter: Lara Darwish

THE UNDERDOG

Female AFL Player: Siobhan Barnes

Male AFL Player: Chad OBrien

Physio: Madeleine French

THE LEADER

Politician: Sally Cheng

Male Secretary: Jamie Hansen

PROBLEM SOLVER

Girlfriend: Heather Burridge

Boyfriend: Andrew Eggleton

P-Plater: Dean Smyth

Crew

Director: Cassie De Colling

Producer: Olivia Cheung

Director of Photography: Ashley Barron

Production Managers: Olivia Cheung, Justine Pitcher, Ema Thornell

Associate Producer: Michelle Lloyd

Location Scout: Francesca DOrazio and Michelle Jones

Location Manager (Melb Water): Peter Kissonergis

Casting Agency: 2 Divas

Casting & Production Coordinator: Jessica To

Casting Support: Lauren Bailey & Jenna Eriksen

1st Assistant Director: Astrid Dominguez

1st Assistant Camera (Day 1): Karina Davies

1st Assistant Camera (Day 2): Vanessa Cox

2nd Assistant Camera: Felicia Smith

Gaffer: Daniel Carr

Best Boy: Tommi Hacker

Electrics: Markus Hilgert

Production Designer: Oosah Kerr

Art Dept Assistant: Lauren Bailey

Art Dept Assistant: Kerri Mould

Wardrobe: Lenna Boord

MUA (Day 1): Eve Flight

MUA (Day 2): Kate Radford

Production Assistant: Kean Szczur

Production Assistant: Lauren Merritt

BTS Videographer: Amelia Mullooly

BTS Stills Photographer (Day 1): Jackson Gallagher

BTS Stills Photographer (Day 2): Dijana Risteska

Catering: Gail Bailey

PR & Marketing: Michelle Lloyd and Andrea Sophocleous

Post Production

Offline Editors: Grace Eyre and Max Miller

Online Editors: Wilfred Patriarca

Colour Grade: Edel Rafferty

Sound Design: Kathleen Burros

Music Composer: Ned Beckley

Voice Over: Natalie Bond

Recording Studio: Gusto Studio

Content Producer: Hossein Khodabandehloo

Support from:

The Royals

The Otto Empire

Panavision

2 Divas

The Editors

The Refinery

Studio Pancho

Equate Studios

Noise International

Australian Cinematographers Society

Melbourne Water

Film Victoria

Special thanks to:
| BY Ricki Green |

The Liberal Party of Australia (Federal Secretariat) is calling for expressions of interest from creative teams to be part of its campaign for the next federal election, due in 2019.

The Liberal Party is looking for a creative team to help it highlight the positive achievements and plans of the Turnbull Government and the risks posed by the alternative.

The Liberal Party Federal Secretariat has worked with some outstanding advertising professionals in recent years, but the party feels that the time is right to review its options. The Liberal Party is open to working with a new agency, or a hybrid team, as it has in past campaigns.

The creative team will need to understand political advertising is different to product advertising. They will need to work collaboratively in a high-pressure campaign environment and share the Liberal Partys determination to ensure the re-election of the Turnbull Government.

Interested advertisers are asked to submit a credentials document and a brief statement explaining why they might be the right partner and how they might approach this assignment. There will be a subsequent pitch process for those suitably qualified.
| BY Ricki Green |

Queensland Youngbloods has kicked off a new year with the appointment of Ogilvys Nicole Klinakis (top left) and Liquid Interactives Rubini Gunaratnam (bottom left) as the committees co-chairs for 2018.

This announcement marks a new and exciting chapter for the Queensland division of Youngbloods with the co-chairs promising to shake things up in 2018.

Says Klinakis: Im really excited to see how 2018 plays out for Youngbloods. We have already started planning some completely new events to shake things up from previous years.

To help them bring these fresh events to life, Klinakis and Gunaratnam have brought together a brand new team of young people from across the industry.

Gunaratnam described the new YB committee as a really close-knit, energetic team.

Youngbloods regulars and newcomers alike can look forward to an exciting year of events that will aim to help uni students and industry professionals make connections and have fun.

Tonight the team is kicking off the year with A Night on the Green, at The Boo Barefoot Bowls Club in Newstead.

Its something completely different from the usual pilot panel night.

This is your chance to mingle with the industrys best and brightest, ask those burning questions, and bowl them over with your mad skills.

More information on the event can be found on the QLD Youngbloods Facebook.

This years committee:

Co-Chair  Rubini Gunaratnam (Liquid Interactive)

Co-Chair  Nicole Klinakis (Ogilvy)

Sponsorship Manager  Lihn Diep (PublicisQ)

Communications Manager  Arabella Anderson (Merge Digital)

Graphic Designer  Edward King (Rumble Creative & Media)

Events Manager  Georgia Power (Carat Australia)

Industry Representative  Georgia Klinakis (BCM Partnership)

Industry Representative  Elias Savvakis (Reload Media)

Industry Representative  Angus Whitton (Ogilvy)

Industry Representative  Michael Rubio (SevenTwenty)

QUT Representative  Emerson Domingo
| BY Lynchy |

Today on International Womens Day, the changing role of women in the creative industry has been celebrated with Smith & Westerns one-off Special Edition of The Creative Relay podcast featuring Jane Caro. Podcast Showrunner Dan Higson says Caro was the ideal person to reflect on the changing role of women in the creative arena.

Caro, today a respected writer, broadcaster and speaker, was one of a few Aussie trailblazers for female creatives throughout her advertising career. Most famous within the industry for her campaigns for Drive laundry detergent and the NRMA, Caro forged her career in a predominantly male domain, at a time when few challenged the gender status quo.

When I started out, men could do work aimed at women, but as soon as there was a brief for beer or sport it was unthinkable to give it to a female creative, Caro recalls.

Today Caro observes an industry still with its gender challenges, but one with a more inclusive attitude and recognition of the importance of diversity.

Theres a consciousness now that its really no longer okay to not have diverse voices, she says.

The podcast also examines Caros pioneering transition from agency creative to a broader role within the media landscape. She has since worked as a commentator on the ABC and the Seven Network, has written over ten books and is in constant demand on the speakers circuit.

And with some sage advice for younger creatives  regardless of gender  Caro sets out to inspire the industrys next generation.

Youre better than you think you are, she says.

As a staunch feminist, and self-confessed mouthy creative, we couldnt have asked for a more insightful, more inspiring or funnier special guest, says regular podcast host Paul Dunne.

Following on from this one-off Special Edition, a new series of The Creative Relay  where each episode features inspiring creatives talking to the creative that most inspires them  recommences soon.

The successful podcast series is recorded at Smith & Westerns purpose-built podcast studios in Sydney.
| BY Ricki Green |

Australias St Vincent de Paul Society has launched its new website and fundraising platform for the Vinnies CEO Sleepout event created by Melbourne independent digital agency Inlight.

The Vinnies CEO Sleepout event attracts over 1,000 participating business leaders in Australia and last year generated over $5.8 Million in aid for the 105,000+ Australians experiencing homelessness. Inlight, together with Funraisin, partnered with the St Vincent de Paul Society to redesign their website to drive engagement with the event and encourage more donations to the cause while leveraging a donation platform that catered to every technical requirement.

The new website featured an entirely user centric design, addressing key needs and removing friction points in order to provide a seamless user experience. CEOs now have greater engagement opportunities with the communities in which they are engaging to raise much needed funds. Similarly the donor experience has been completely revitalised to make the entire user journey look, and feel, world-class.

Says Harley Donaldson, creative director, Inlight: Building on our past insights from a group of super busy CEOs, we worked with the Vinnies team to redefine and simplify the entire fundraising process  setting up this years event to be the most successful yet.

As homelessness is often portrayed to the public in terms of statistics, it was a key consideration that the idea of stories was prominent in the new website. These stories serve to raise awareness around the people experiencing the extreme isolation and desperation of homelessness. This represents a key feature on the new website with great attention given to providing an engaging, storytelling design.

Says Anneloes de Graeff, national manager strategic marketing, St Vincent de Paul Society National Council of Australia: Inlight has been a great partner who has assisted us with the review of our existing website and translated the insights into a product that is user friendly for the Vinnies CEO Sleepout participants, donors and the Vinnies CEO Sleepout administrative staff. The professionalism, dedication and enthusiasm of Inlight in finding solutions for all our wishes resulted in a positive co- creation of an outstanding website.
| BY Lynchy |

Iris Singapore has partnered with Where Are The Boss Ladies.com to launch a social campaign that asks the industry to name check females in advertising that they have benefitted from and why.

The truth is we often say the most complimentary things about the people we work with behind their backs, we were inspired by Mara Lecocqs call to the industry to shower their praises and so asked them to partner with us to further push their mission forward, says Sorcha John, MD of Iris Singapore.

WhereAreTheBossLadies is an online database which collects the names of women in leadership from all facets all the industry. Started by Mara Lecocq, a freelance creative director, the idea started as a personal passion project to find her first female boss after 13 years in advertising in 3 different countries and in response to issues such as CES being unable to find women in executive roles to speak at conferences.

Inspired by the compliment function on the site, Iris has invited people from within the network and the wider industry to use International Womens Day to spread positivity to any female who has inspired or supported them through their career.

Sorcha continues: Its pretty simple, we want to use this day to spread positivity and optimism to females across the industry, so we asked the team at Iris Singapore to namecheck the brilliant women in the industry that they have worked with and let them know.
| BY Lynchy |

In cooperation with MullenLowe Group China, Unilevers Knorr has launched a new CNY campaign to showcase the love through cooking for your family. Chinese consumers traditionally buy their parents gifts to show appreciation and respect during Lunar New Year, but for many in this reserved culture, they have trouble expressing their real love and gratitude to their mom and dad.

To resolve this, MullenLowe Group China created a commercial for Knorr, under the new brand campaign slogan of, Great Taste is a Universal Love Language reminding Chinese

consumers that the best gift in life is spending time together with family and loved ones.

The campaign aims to strengthen the bonding between the brand and its customers through conveying an emotionally powerful message from a heartwarming TVC in China during this special family season, said Joyce Zhou, Marketing Director of Unilever China.

For many Chinese, family reunion is the most important aspect during Chinese New Year. It is a time for coming together and strengthening relationships with loved ones. But in the Chinese world, love towards parents is deep and rich, yet restrained. Adults express their love by visiting their parents or buying them gifts, but few will express real love. This Chinese New

Year, we together with Knorr, decided to go in search for a new meaning of family, presented through a warm story of a reunion. Actually, connecting consumers to what matters most has always been at the centre of what we do at MullenLowe Group, added Richard Tan, CEO of MullenLowe Group China.

Credits 

Account Management: Fanny Yum

Chief Creative Officer: Cheelip Ong

Creative Director: Diana Tang

Group Head: Keith Wang

Senior Designer: Frank Ren

Copywriter: Sun Yanli

Copywriter: Joey Wu

Junior Copywriter: Daniel Lu

Unilever Business Director: Dixi Chern

Associate Account Director: Nora Lin

Senior Account Manager: Rechal Ye

Account Manager: Rox Wang

Planner: Anna Bao

Producer: Elsa Mo

Production Company: Godmother Productions

Director: Jiang Shan

Director of Photography: Xin Wei
Tuesday, December 8, 2015 at 1:00PM

Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The 10.2-inch Pixel C is a device of many firsts. It is the first Google designed and built Android device, it is a bona fide Android-powered 2-in-1 tablet that professes to work as a notebook thanks to an accessory keyboard, and it is also the first device to carry the Pixel brand that isnt a ChromeBook.

Pixel C is available in Canada and globally via the Google Play Store starting at $649 for the 32GB version, $799 for the 64GB version and the Pixel C Keyboard will set users back $199. These prices make the Pixel C one of the most expensive Android tablets ever sold, but you only need to spend some time with this device to realize its high end fit and finish.

The Pixel C is a remarkable device. It has a premium aluminum and glass design, a drop-dead gorgeous 10.2-inch display with a super bright 2560 x 1800 resolution and a pixel packed 308 ppi density.

Showcasing Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the Pixel C has a powerful NVDIA Tegra X1 processor with a Maxwell GPU as its wingman. This is effectively a powerful, yet efficient processor thats designed for such high-spec tasks as mobile gaming and powering 4K video. The Pixel C has 3GB of RAM, internal storage capacity of either 32GB or 64GB and features a singular USB Type-C port for charging and I/O plus a 3.5mm audio jack.

Form and function

The Pixel C is a gorgeous device. It carries over a lot of the impressive design touches that were hinted at with the rare and expensive Chromebook Pixel line. Seamless construction, high-density display, as well as various intuitive touches. The tablet is 7mm thin and quite light at 0.517 kg.

Pixel C has four microphones, stereo speakers and features an 8-megapixel rear camera plus a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for Google Hangouts, Skype or other forms of video messaging.

Theres no logos or badges on the Pixel C save for a coloured light strip at the rear to signify when the Pixel C is on or when it is charging.

The Pixel Cs display is the best feature of this device, even at the absolute lowest brightness setting, I found it to be readable and clear. I compared the Pixel C to my 12-inch Retina MacBook's laminated display (my favourite display to use), and found the Pixel C to be brighter and crisper than the larger retina display.

The Pixel C seems to have been designed primarily for landscape mode. The volume rocker is on the left hand side while the power button is above. It seems to be an evolution of the idea put forward with the Nexus 9 earlier this year but further refined for a more unified keyboard experience. The thing is, if you want to take a video call in portrait mode, the camera will be on the right-hand side.

The Pixel C has personality. The strip of coloured lights at the back of the tablet give it character and also indicate charging status. They also light up whenever you pick up the device, which makes you feel that it is cognizant of your presence. Very cool.

In terms of performance, the Pixel C felt faster and more responsive than the Nexus 9 (still running Lollipop, that one, since Marshmallow updates never showed up). I don't place much importance in Geekbench scores, preferring real world use experiences, but they seemed impressive, specially the multi-core performance.

Using the Pixel C to work on Microsoft Office documents, update blogs and websites, do some image editing as well as play a few games showed that it is built for performance and the 3GB of RAM does make multitasking feel buttery smooth. It will be interesting to see how it performs with apps and games that are tweaked to take full advantage of its multi-core architecture.

Pixel C Keyboard

The Pixel C keyboard is a revelation and seems to have solved a problem that neither the Microsoft Surface and the iPad Pro have been able to tackle. Like those other tablet-first 2-in-1s, the Pixel Cs keyboard is magnetic and is powered by the tablet when connected but Google's execution deserves notice.

The Pixel Cs keyboard also enables adjustable screen angles from 100 to 135 degrees. The keyboard makes the Pixel C eminently lappable and enables it to be used in various places (in a couch, in bed) where few 2-in-1s have gone before. The magnet holding everything together is very powerful and makes me feel confident that I can pick it up from any end without the other part falling off.

The magnetic solution, which also charges the keyboard inductively, is even more elegant than Microsofts Dynamic Fulcrum hinge for their grossly overpriced Surface Book.

Being magnetic, the Pixel C keyboard can be used in keyboard/stand mode, on top of the Pixel C like a laptop cover and even plugged behind the tablet.

They keyboard itself feels like a high-end and almost full-sized laptop keyboard found in Dell or Lenovo notebooks but without the function keys.

It usually takes me a long time to get used to non standard keyboards, specially the ones designed around smaller tablets. It only took me a few minutes to bond with my Pixel C keyboard and I could type accurately with my eyes closed in less than an hour. This is definitely a writer's tablet and keyboard combo worth considering if you ply your trade between Panera and Starbucks.

The Pixel C's keyboard is one of the best accessory keyboards Ive tested and really brings the Pixel C full-circle as a complete ultra-portable Android computing solution.

I was an early proponent of the first few generations of Chromebooks but I realized that because of their limitations, they weren't a computing solution. I think the Pixel C is even more powerful and has more potential than the expensive Chromebook Pixel notebooks, given it is cheaper, more portable, and can run real apps.

Android tablets have historically been a mixed bag and mostly compromised devices that felt lacking. The Nexus 9 was the first device that felt like it could transcend these limitations even if its small size was far from ideal, it was designed to rock a keyboard. Pixel C takes Androids functionality to another level and possibly to places where even Chromebooks may never get to go.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow

New emoji are the key feature offerings of Android Marshmallow version 6.0.1

The Pixel C showcases Marshmallow version 6.0.1 which brings many refinements including new emojis. Pixel C and is the first tablet to ship with the newest version of Android. The history of Android on tablets has been fraught with a lot of issues including the lack of tablet-specific apps, poor scaling of smartphone-focused feature to larger screens and a generally lacklustre user experience.

There are notable changes in the UI in the Pixel C. The three navigation bars at the bottom (back, home and multitasking) are spaced at opposite ends of the display in a more intuitive and reachable position.

It's shocking to still see pages rendered like smartphone versions on a tablet that can handle full resolution scaling.

An old Android problem where tablets accessing websites tend to get the smartphone or mobile versions of those websites, persists with the Pixel C and Chrome on Marshmallow. Even Googles own websites, like Google Plus and Google search, render pages oddly on the Pixel C, and you get small images and text plus weird formatting. If Google really wants to position this device against notebooks, and professional tablets, they need to make the user experience more tablet friendly.

Both Microsoft and Apple have realized that a multi-window option for true desktop-like multitasking is essential, but Android doesn't seem to acknowledge this, or hasn't yet found a way to enable a creative windowing solution for Android.

I don't see what is so hard about this, specially since Samsung and other OEM's have had this feature for years now. If Android for Work is a real objective for Google, the software has to reflect this by going way beyond its smartphone OS limitations. Android on tablets still feels like a blown up smartphone and until the software can scale to better run on larger screens, it makes little sense to force the issue.

Google's 2-in-1 play





The Pixel C is the latest device in the emerging 2-in-1 tablets for productivity and enterprise. It joins the Microsoft Surface and the iPad Pro as a flagship multi-touch device thats trying to make its place in education, enterprise and content creation situations.

Android can now run various desktop-class applications like Microsoft Office, Adobe apps and with a full-featured keyboard (plus the ability to add a mouse via Bluetooth), the Pixel C has the potential of being a functional ultraportable notebook replacement for anyone that understands its limitations and is okay with spending $850 or more for a tablet with a keyboard accessory.

Evolution: Last year's Nexus 9 flirted with the idea of a dedicated keyboard for a 2-in-1, this year's Pixel C makes the concept far more cohesive

With the Pixel C, it seems clear that Google sees its computing future with Android rather than with ChromeOS, and why not? Android is far more capable, less reliant on a constant Internet connection, and will be an easier fit for enterprise, education and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) markets which may already be accustomed to Android handsets. The thing is, there needs to be as much focus on the software as there has been on the hardware if Google is to achieve a cohesive product category, specially at this price point.

Conclusion

As a device thats geared towards content creation and more serious use cases, the Pixel C does have some shortcomings in the area of storage and expandability. 32GB may seem the absolute minimum for smartphones these days, so starting with this on a tablet and going up to 64GB may seem lacking, specially since theres no microSD expansion option.

Google does offer a lot of free storage in Google Drive and if youre an Office 365 subscriber, your OneDrive subscription should be able to cover your storage needs as well. I paired my Pixel C with a Sandisk USB streaming stick which has an additional 64GB of storage for music, movies and podcasts while travelling. Problem solved.

USB Type-C seems to be the de facto charging standard for Google devices moving forward, and it seems to work well with the Pixel C, enabling relatively fast charging as well as the ability to make use of existing dongles and adaptors.

A revelation that Google can develop and build stunning and attractive hardware, the Pixel C is a powerful, capable and eminently portable device that deftly manages the balance of being a stellar tablet as well as a useful and generally compromise-free notebook replacement.

While priced higher than what most Android tablets are going for, the Pixel C is very much a premium solution that may be worth considering, provided you can justify the expense.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 9:44AM

Googles machine learning-powered image analyzer Lens is a useful feature that helps bring more information to you about the images you scan. Its limitation was it was first only available through Pixel devices. Now, Google just announced itll be bring the feature to all English-language users on both Android and iOS. And it should be coming out in the next few days as long as you have the latest version of Google Photos. At the same time, Lens in Assistant will be coming to compatible flagship devices in the coming weeks. On top of this, Lens will soon be able to recognize common animals and plants, including specific dog breeds and flowers.

Source: Android Police
Thursday, March 8, 2018 at 8:59AM

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Roughly two years since they came to market as the flagship products bearing the Android OS, the Nexus 6P, 5X as well as the unusual yet overpriced Pixel C convertible will be rendered obsolete when the next version of Android rolls around. Android P is set to be released this year but it will not work on any Nexus phone or on the last tablet Google has released.

Nexus devices were sold by Google on the premise that they would receive OS updates faster and longer than third-party devices. It seems that is not the case anymore. Once the new OS does not support the hardware, it is a matter of time before apps and services stop working on them as well. If you encounter any issues or problems, then you're on your own.

While this can be blamed on Google focusing on its new Pixel devices (which failed to move the sales needle with only 4.5 million units sold over two years), part of the blame is the limitations built into the Qualcomm Snapdragon processors which don't get updated driver support to run newer software.

If you're wondering why Android Wear, Google's wearable and smart watch platform has fallen off the radar, it is the Qualcomm chipsets in these devices that have also failed to be refreshed, thereby limiting the development of the platform.

What is clear from this unfortunate story is that companies who make hardware to fit their software, have a better chance of supporting it for a longer period. Apple famously creates custome silicon for its devices and also controls the hardware to an exacting degree. That's why we still have iPad 2s and iPhone 5's continuing to work with the latest iOS updates.

The bad news for Nexus and Pixel C owners is that support for their devices is going to end soon. The question remains are they willing to trust Google devices again, which still supply processor component from Qualcomm, with very little guarantee that theyir flagship devices will get continued support beyond the apparent 48-month window.

Source: AppleInsider
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ACTION bus maintenance staff resorted to industrial pressure after 10-month-long negotiations for a new workplace agreement reached an impasse over allowances last week. Eighty workers represented by the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union decided on a weekend overtime ban that threatened to throw ACTION's bus timetable into disarray last Monday when bosses refused to back down from a move to scrap an allowance awarded for productivity gains. Staff frustrated with the protracted negotiations over an enterprise agreement, replacing a previous deal that expired in mid-2017, also opposed a push for a trial that would expand workshop hours from 6am to 5am that the AMWU believed would not see workers fairly paid in return. A paperwork ban, and restrictions on where panel beaters could move in their workshop, formed part of the protected industrial action from Wednesday to Friday last week. After the government agreed to make their allowance permanent and withdrew its push for shift changes, workers stopped the action on Friday, but the Fair Work Commission on Wednesday this week granted an AMWU application to extend a 30-day period for protected industrial action. Despite the Fair Work decision, the ACT government says workers have agreed not to take any further industrial action against Transport Canberra. AMWU NSW secretary Steve Murphy said negotiations were progressing and described last week's industrial action as minor. "It was lawful, and we believe it was effective," he said. "The negotiations at ACTION Buses highlights the importance of the right to take industrial action, and its role in a constructive industrial relations process." It is understood the AMWU met with ACT Transport Minister Meegan Fitzharris about the negotiations on Tuesday last week, however a spokeswoman for the minister would not detail what was discussed. "The government was pleased to receive a commitment from maintenance staff to continue to work through the remaining issues of their EA without further industrial action, saving bus commuters from unnecessary disruption," she said. "The final agreement will see a previous temporary industry allowance made permanent. The minister believes this is fair for workers. "A proposal of an expansion of workshop hours from 6am to 5am was discussed as part of negotiations, but at this point in time it was agreed changes to shift arrangements were not warranted." While Ms Fitzharris' spokeswoman could only say the new EA would be finalised in "coming months", the AMWU hopes it will be ready in up to six weeks.

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Almost 30 per cent of inmates at the Alexander Maconochie Centre reported using heroin inside the prison in 2016, amid an ongoing culture of detainee drug-seeking and seeming easy access to the centre's methadone program. The findings are part of an investigation into the prison's opioid replacement therapy program by ACT Health Services Commissioner Karen Toohey, sparked by Phillip Moss' independent inquiry into the death in custody of Steven Freeman in 2016. It is one of a series of Legislative Assembly committee inquiries, Auditor-General investigations and reports by independent consultants that raised similar concerns about the prison's methadone program over several years. The commissioner's investigation did not look at the specific circumstances surrounding Mr Freeman's death, or the death in custody of Mark O'Connor in the prison last year, both of which are currently the subject of coronial inquests. Ms Toohey's inquiry found that while "significant improvements" had been made to the opioid replacement therapy program in the AMC since Mr Freeman's death, more needed to be done and some existing policies were not being fully enforced. It also found inmates and staff maintained the view there was a "culture of drug seeking" among inmates and that it was relatively easy for some to get on the methadone program, which some were doing for "recreation". The commissioner made 16 key recommendations to improve the rigour and consistency of decision-making on induction and assessment to reduce the chances of inmates been prescribed methadone when not genuinely opioid-addicted. "Further action is needed to minimise risks of diversion of methadone, and to ensuring that the particular needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees are met in the provision of health services at the AMC," she said. The recommendations also included better assessment of inmates before putting them on methadone, more staff training and strengthening efforts to prevent diversion of drugs to non-prescribed inmates. The investigation reviewed clinical files for 20 inmates inducted on the program from April to October last year, none of which had any evidence urine testing was undertaken to corroborate inmates' claims of opioid-dependency. It also found little evidence justice health workers tried to corroborate such claims with inmates' community general practitioners or the Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health Service. The commissioner also found no evidence of any individual case plans for indigenous inmates, as required by the ACT's opioid treatment guidelines, or cultural supports being sought for those detainees It also found that despite new electronic iris-scanning "idose" machines operating at the prison since last August - which would make for safer dosing practices - one inmate overdosed on the drug as recently as February this year. That inmate had sought out a dose of methadone outside of the usual dosing period, and while the machine was off, staff instead gave the inmate a manual dosing, leading to an overdose which the inmate later recovered from. The commissioner also recommended improving Throughcare practices for opioid-dependant inmates leaving the prison, ensure all indigenous inmates are offered annual health check ups and that the justice directorate work harder to progress a needle syringe program at the prison. The report also cited the latest ACT Health Detainee Health and Wellbeing Survey, which was completed in 2016 but not publicly released, which found 29 per cent of inmates at the prison had used heroin while in the prison. That survey also found 55 per cent of detainees reported having ever used heroin, with 35 per cent reporting injecting illicit drugs once a day or more in the four weeks prior to incarceration. The survey, the commissioner's report shows, also found 19 per cent of detainees had used other opiates while in prison and up 19 per cent reported injecting drugs in the AMC. Ms Toohey's report also cited the high rate of inmates on the official methadone program, at 30 per cent compared to the national rate of five per cent, though comparisons are difficult given varied practices from one jurisdiction to another. The report also showed existing policies for preventing of 'diversion' - when a prescribed inmate passes the drug on to another - were not being followed rigorously, including allowing inmates to take a dose while wearing coverings such as hoods or items that could have obscured containers. Ms Toohey recommended the existing policy be enforced and staff be provided more training to ensure it was adhered to. The commissioner will be working with justice health and corrective services to ensure changes implemented are maintained and continue to improve health services at the AMC.

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Australian National University will now offer 26 weeks of parental leave to new parents, regardless of whether they are the birth parent or if they are the primary carer. The move was announced on Thursday to coincide with International Women's Day and means that if a couple were both employees at the university they would be entitled to 52 weeks of leave between them. Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt said the announcement, while a surprise to staff today, had been two years in the making. Professor Schmidt said there would be "no little tricky bits" with the policy, but that there would be a time limit after the birth of a child for parents to use the leave. "Care-giving is not just a female responsibility, so providing parents 26 weeks of paid parental leave, no matter what the circumstances," was important to the university Professor Schmidt said, noting that the policy acknowledged diversity in family structures. "It essentially means partners if they work here can get time off for these 26 weeks as well," he said. The new policy expands on what was agreed in the most recent enterprise bargaining agreement at the university, which included 26 weeks only for the mother of a child. "I think we are close to world best practice at this point," Professor Schmidt said. "I'm trying to make sure that when I talk to my colleagues in the University of Copenhagen that we're providing something similar to what, for example, Scandinavian countries do." The new policy comes just weeks after former ANU academic Sophie Lewis revealed that she had faced homophobia and sexism in her bid to access parental leave at the university. Dr Lewis wrote on Twitter that she had been denied maternity leave by her funding body, the Australian Research Council, because she had not given birth to her child. Professor Schmidt said that announcing the new policy was not a response to the publicity around Dr Lewis' situation, but that she clearly would have benefited from the new policy. "This has been something, literally on my first day of work two years ago I said I want it. I'm rather sad that it wasn't in place last year so that she could have benefited from it. So it's not a reaction but certainly, she would have benefited from it" he said. "It has been in the works here for several months and I'm therefore particularly disappointed that she had as much trouble as she did." National Tertiary Education Union ACT Division Secretary Rachael Bahl said the union welcomed the announcement, but that more could be done to improve conditions for women at the university. "We'd like to see them do more - including achieving Employer of Choice accreditation from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) as many other universities have," she said. "We've launched a campaign this morning to coincide with International Women's Day because we know there is a lot more ANU can do to support women and we're determined to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities."

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We told you earlier this week about Canberra mum and businesswoman Mikaela Jade winning the New Generation Award presented by Veuve Clicquot. Mikaela has developed a free app - Indigital Storytelling - which uses augmented reality, to bring alive ancient indigenous stories. She was announced the winner on Tuesday at a lunch in Sydney attended by the likes of Hollywood actress Freida Pinto and Channel Nine's Sylvia Jeffreys. Thomas Bouleuc, the international director of Veuve Clicquot, also travelled from Paris to Sydney for the event. The awards ceremony was held on the 28th floor of the Bloomberg building, overlooking Sydney Harbour. "It was incredible," Mikaela said. "I wasn't prepared to be the winner so I was quite shocked. I did feel the blood drain from my face. "My dad was there so it was so nice to be able to share it with him." Pinto, who gave a speech before the awards, was apparently very impressed by Mikaela, calling her a deserving and humble winner. "She told me to enjoy the moment," Mikaela said. But did she get any champagne? "I got one bottle," she said, with a laugh. Ever better than that, Mikaela, as part of her prize, will visit the famous champagne house in France. And she will even have a row in the famous vineyard, named in her honour, along with the other global winners of the award, from 15 different countries across the world. "I'm just so excited to be part of the alumni of new generation award winners," she said. And happy birthday to Mikaela who turns 39 on Friday. "It's been such an incredible week," she said.

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She is one of Canberra's quiet achievers. Modest, accomplished, doing good work behind the scenes for years without fanfare or fuss. But community advocate and philanthropist Diane Kargas Bray was recognised for all her hard work in the most public way possible on Thursday when she was announced the 2018 Canberra Citizen of the Year. Chief Minister Andrew Barr bestowed the honour upon Ms Kargas Bray for "outstanding contribution to the Canberra community through her social enterprise and philanthropic work". "Our 2018 winner gives her time freely and is a mentor and role model to those who meet and work with her," Mr Barr said. "She joins a long list of deserving recipients who act for the good of our community without expectation of remuneration or reward." Ms Kargas Bray has been a long-time contributor to the local community, from her work as the ACT public trustee administering the Canberra Bushfire Recovery Appeal to her efforts helping people access affordable housing through Common Ground. Her work with Hands Across Canberra has been instrumental in bringing together businesses, government and individuals to channel donations to local charities. Now 70, Ms Kargas Bray could be forgiven for taking a step back. But she's not about to do that, reinvigorated by being named Citizen of the Year. "When I got the phone call, I'm often not short for words, I actually couldn't say anything. My mind had to take it all in. So, it was overwhelming," she said. "And then to have a couple of weeks to think about it, it's just such a huge responsibility. To actually use that recognition to do good work, to do more good work. So I think the time to slow down has just gone down the radar." Born in Adelaide to enterprising parents - her dad was an automotive engineer and her mum had a health food shop - a young Diane left school at 15 to go nursing, training at Victor Harbour. Her mum gave her advice that set her up for a life of giving back. "My mother always said you shouldn't be idle. If you had time and you had nothing to do with that time, than you give it to the community," she said. "So as a young girl I would visit an aged care facility which was near us in north Adelaide, take flowers and just sit with residents and talk to them." She came to Canberra in 1965 as a newly-married woman with a child on the way. Her husband worked with the Army Office in Adelaide and was transferred to Canberra as Defence was setting up in Russell. The young family moved first to a house in Torrens Street, Braddon which is still there today. She raised two children on her own when her husband was posted to the Vietnam War. "I thought this would be for two years and I'd be back home in Adelaide, safe again," she said. "But Canberra actually taught me if you didn't go out and meet people you would be in your house and nobody would know and nobody would care. "So I'm very grateful to this community for letting me get involved. And I've had some fabulous jobs." An early one was setting up for the Belconnen community service the first childcare centre at the Belconnen shopping centre, eventually also introducing Legal Aid there as well for struggling parents. "It was a lovely way to meet the community and see that there was a need," she said. Ms Kargas Bray's work has also extended to roles with GreaterGood, Boundless, the ACT committee for the Fundraising Institute of Australia, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and as chair of the social enterprise taskforce at the Canberra Business Chamber. She says her work with charities has convinced her that anyone can be a philanthropist. She said government assistance was not always enough to meet the ongoing need of the vulnerable in Canberra. "I think a responsible, mature community can help and, indeed, should help," she said. "If I can raise that awareness that you don't need to be Bill Gates to be a philanthropist. You just need to use well your time, your treasure and your talent wherever you can make a difference. "It actually doesn't hurt and it feels really good to help somebody else." A mother of three, Ms Kargas Bray was remarried to Adrian Bray 16 years ago. They have six children between them as well as 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. "And I love them all to bits," she said.

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Handmade Canberra's founder and owner Julie Nichols reckons the markets are "as Canberran as a roundabout". And now they are officially a "Canberra institution". Chief Minister Andrew Barr recently bestowed the honour on the markets, now celebrating their 10th year. "It's a great place to shop and a great place to take visitors," the chief reckoned. The Handmade Market attracts 120,000 visitors and generates an estimated $15 million in sales per year. It outgrew Albert Hall, the Yarralumla Woolshed and the Kamberra Wine Company, before finding a home at the National Convention Centre. It is now based at Exhibition Park in Canberra, offering 260 stalls across two halls. More than a quarter of the stalls are brand-new to the market and more than half are exclusive to Handmade Canberra. Julie says this was designed to "keep it fresh and interesting for repeat and long-term customers, as well as providing the latest in design and food trends to attract new customers". The Handmade Canberra's Autumn market will be at EPIC on March 17 and 18 from 10am to 4pm.

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Fewer than three per cent of children in Canberra are indigenous but they make up about a quarter of kids in the child protection system. That's the alarming picture painted by the latest report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, as Canberra once again records the nation's second highest rate of indigenous children in state care. Chief executive of Canberra Winnunga Aboriginal Health Service Julie Tongs said the crisis was now "out of control", a year after 2016 figures sparked community outrage and a government review. "[It feels like] we've got more kids in out of home care now than what we did during the Stolen Generation," Ms Tongs said. "Nothing's been done. It's outrageous." Last year, the total number of ACT kids in care jumped to 803, up from 748 in the 2016 financial year. Over the past five years, that number has climbed by more than 40 per cent, though in 2017 the amount of substantiated child abuse reports as well as the overall number of kids receiving protection services fell for the first time since 2014. Indigenous children continue to be over-represented in those numbers. In 2017, the ACT had the nation's highest rate of indigenous child care and protection reports as well as the second-highest rate of indigenous children on protection orders. Canberra's overall number of children in the system is still a little below the national average. "It's distressing for our community because Canberra is such a wealthy place," Ms Tongs said. "It seems like since the minister announced the review there's more kids in care." She said it was disappointing to see the chair of the government's review into high indigenous rates had only recently been appointed this year, more than six months after it was announced. ACT Minister for Community Services and Aboriginal Affairs Rachel Stephen-Smith said the over-representation of Indigenous kids in ACT care was "unacceptable", but was a "challenge faced by all jurisdictions". Following questions from Fairfax Media on Thursday, the government announced that the review, now known as 'Our Booris, Our Way' would be led by a former public servant, Barbara Causon. It is understood the process had initially been slowed down to set up a partnership and "co-design" with a number of Aboriginal organisations, who will oversee the review. It is expected to run until September 2019 but will deliver a preliminary report later this year. Ms Stephen Smith said the review's findings would be communicated through its life "so that any changes that do not need to await the final report can be implemented earlier". Ms Causon described the review as an important opportunity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to "have a real say in how to improve outcomes" and address the "alarming number of our kids involved in the child protection system". Louise York, a spokeswoman for AIHW, said the rising numbers in the capital mirrored similar trends seen around Australia. "The national picture is that the number of children known to child protection is going up, but indigenous children are having higher rates of contact with services and those rates are increasing at a much faster rate," Ms York said. "All of the states are trying to look at intervening earlier and trying to improve their services and the safety of children but the general direction of access to the services is up." It was difficult to determine if the surge in numbers was driven by an increase in abuse or increased awareness about child protection and issues such as domestic violence, she said, but was likely a combination of the two. Almost half of all kids in care in the capital were placed with a kinship carer, usually a grandparent, while another 35 per cent were in foster care, and about 5 per cent in group homes or residential care. In 2015, the ACT government threw an extra $16 million behind the roll out of the territory's new out-of-home care strategy, which places more focus on early intervention services to limit the number of children entering care. While it was "still too early" to say if the strategy was working, Ms Stephen-Smith said the 2017 report showed lower rates of children entering care than in 2016. Ms Tongs backed efforts "to keep families together" but said all the service contracts went to large organisations, leaving no room for Aboriginal providers. "They're just throwing money at mainstream services and it doesn't work for Aboriginal clients," she said. The government is currently undertaking a review of the new out of home care strategy.

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They are brothers and sisters from a litter of six Easter Quolls born at Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary in Canberra - testing the waters of being out of the den and away from mum. The rare images of the baby quolls at play were taken by wildlife photographer Charles Davis at Mulligans Flat, next to Forde in Gungahlin, in a shoot organised by the Woodlands and Wetlands Trust. Belinda Wilson, a PhD candidate from the Australian National University, has been driving the project after the release of the first 16 Eastern Quolls into the sanctuary in 2016. Ms Wilson said after the quolls becoming extinct on mainland Australia 50 years ago, there were now about 40 to 50 in the Mulligans Flat reserve. With the removal of the threats of foxes and cats, due to innovative predator-proof fences, the Eastern Quoll has been given a fighting chance to re-establish itself once again. Ms Wilson introduced Mr Davis to a den site she was monitoring for her research, and he quietly waited for them to emerge. The result was images of the playful and boisterous pups enjoying some time outside the den. "It's extremely rare to seem them like this," she said. "And we were quite surprised how calm they were around the photographer Ms Wilson said the pups were probably three to four months old and within a matter of weeks would leave their mother, named Donna, for good, becoming solitary, night-time hunters. "They need to learn how to hunt, how to creep up on prey, and what better way to practice than on your brother or sister," she said, adding that while they might also look like were attempting mating in some of the photographs, that was not the case. They were too young for that. The carnivorous marsupial eats "anything smaller than it", according to Ms Wilson. Mice, reptiles, eggs, but mostly insects. Ms Wilson said the quolls were thriving in the sanctuary, an insurance against total extinction of the animal, which was under threat in Tasmania where it existed in thr wild but was under threat from deforestation and climate change. "Last year's release saw a staggering survival rate of 92 per cent, with at least 10 females (from that release and the year before) giving birth to up to 60 'quollets'. Through our most recent round of monitoring we caught over 40 animals, which is amazing given eastern quolls are so hard to catch," she said. Visitors to Mulligans Flat can also take a twilight tour to try to see the quolls. Ms Wilson is also a guide on the tours. "Each tour, I reckon there is about a 50-50 chance of seeing them because we've got so many now," she said. "And they are the easiest to distinguish because they have the brightest eye shine of any of the animals there." The Eastern Quoll reintroduction is a partnership between the ACT Government, the Australian National University (supported by the Australian Research Council), Mt Rothwell Conservation and Research Centre and the Woodlands and Wetlands Trust.

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Sceptics of Canberra's CTP citizens' jury will have the chance to see the process for themselves with the final session to be open to the public. Jurors are set to select their preferred model of compulsory third party insurance when they meet for the last time on March 24 and 25. The models have been developed by an actuary, designer and stakeholder reference group that included lawyers, insurance brokers and healthcare representatives. Democracy Co co-chief executive Emma Lawson, who's running the exercise, said it was a chance to see "democracy in action". "We've never run a process like this before, where the community has been trusted to come up with the right answer for them," Ms Lawson said. However the jury has come under fire amid claims the design of the pilot gave stakeholders too much of a say and didn't allow jurors enough time to become familiar with the topic. CTP lawyers even commissioned their own deliberative democracy workshop because of their reservations about the government's citizens' jury. But Ms Lawson said that workshop was more of a "consultation" because it did not have an "evidence-based education component". Countering criticism of the timeline, she said the jurors would be given the models next week so they could absorb them, and talk them over with their friends and family before voting at the end of the month. She said people already had the "skillsets" to determine what the CTP scheme needed and which of the four models best fit the jury's priorities. "They're not making a decision if they like the model, they're deciding if it meets the jury's objectives," Ms Lawson said. On the influence of stakeholders, Ms Lawson said jurors were taught to think critically as part of the process. While stakeholders will also be in attendance at the jury's final session to provide advice, Ms Lawson said there were strict rules governing their interactions with jurors, such as only providing advice if approached. "We've designed this process so it enables all perspectives to be debated. That's the point of a citizen's jury - not to hide anything, or to say one view is right or one view is wrong. Our job is to make sure the jury gets all perspectives so they can make that decision for themselves. "The jurors and the citizens of Canberra are smart, they're able to assess where people's perceptions come from. "It's very clear what's driving certain views and they're able to weigh those up to come to a conclusion about what's right for Canberra and Canberrans, that's the most important thing." Those who want to watch the citizens' jury in action can RSVP at: yoursay.act.gov.au/ctp. Places are limited.

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Jakarta: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is no doubt hoping claims his son was sidelined by Goldman Sachs for blowing the whistle on controversial Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB will not distract from the upcoming summit of South East Asian leaders. But Alex Turnbull says his role in exposing the 1MDB scandal is likely to appear in soon-to-be published book by two Wall Street Journal reporters. In an interview with Fairfax Media, Alex Turnbull would not comment on an article in The Australian which quoted him saying he was "b-tracked" by Goldman Sachs for raising concerns about 1MDB and claimed "whistleblowing is a shit business". Alex Turnbull said he was misquoted by The Australian newspaper although his complaint is similar to comment he appears to have made on a Malaysian blog, realpolitikasia, earlier this month. "I called out the insane pricing and bizarre structure at [Goldman Sachs] when the deal was done and got yelled at by compliance for casting doubt on the integrity of PFI, the group that did the deal," a user claiming to be Alex Turnbull wrote. "As a result I was 'b-tracked' and resigned. This will all come out in a book in September by Tom Wright at the WSJ." Mr Wright's book is called the Billion Dollar Whale and is co-authored with Wall Street Journal journalist Bradley Hope. Alex Turnbull would not comment on the blog or whether he would take legal action against The Australian or the blog. According to the blog and The Australian, Alex Turnbull raised concerns while working on a deal for Goldman Sachs that raised $US6 billion for 1MDB and made the Wall Street bank $US590 million in fees and commissions. His comments ricocheted throughout the region on Thursday and were widely reported by other news organisations. Malaysia's Prime Minster Najib Razak helped set up the scandal-ridden 1MDB in 2009. A lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice has accused him of receiving $US681 million in stolen funds from 1MDB. Mr Najib has denied these charges and claimed the money in his personal accounts was a gift from an unnamed Saudi prince. Prime Minister Turnbull shut down all questions about his son's comments on the 1MDB-Goldman deal when asked about it on Thursday. "No. No. No. I'm not going to, I'm not going to comment on it," he said when questioned. Alex Turnbull's comments about 1MDB come as his father prepares to welcome Mr Najib and other world leaders to Australia for the ASEAN-Australia summit in just over a week. If the Malaysian prime minister were to pull out of the summit it would be a bitter blow to the Australian government. Mr Najib has been a close ally of successive of Australian governments in the fight against extremism and in co-operating on counter-terrorism matters; he faces a tough re-election fight in a matter of months against opposition groups led by 92-year-old former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has already pulled out of the summit, citing commitments at home that will see him attend a graduation ceremony at the Philippine Military Academy instead. And there are fears that Cambodia's strongman leader Hun Sen may also pull out of the summit, with possible criticism of his human rights record looming in the background. Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the allegations made by Alex Turnbull. He ran Goldman Sachs' special situations group, which had nothing to do with the controversial Malaysian transactions in question. The company did not refute claims that Mr Turnbull communicated with colleagues over his misgivings about the debt funding being raised for 1MDB. Mr Najib's office did not respond to requests for comment from Fairfax Media on Thursday.

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The Senate recently announced its two-year budget deal. It contains a healthcare provision that many are touting as a victory for American seniors. The reform aims to close the so-called donut hole coverage gap in the Medicare Part D drug benefit by shifting more of the programs costs to drug companies.

But that provision is a gift to insurers  not to patients. The policy could end up raising costs for seniors on Part D, some of our most vulnerable patients. It must be eliminated from the deal.

First implemented in 2006, Part D allows Medicare seniors to buy subsidized prescription drug coverage from private insurers. Beneficiaries can choose from a variety of different coverage offerings suited to their particular prescription needs. But all plans follow the same structure: After hitting a deductible, patients pay a coinsurance on the price of prescription drugs. If a drug costs $100 a month, and a patients coinsurance is 25 percent, he or she would pay $25.

After total drug spending reaches a specific limit  $3,700 in 2017  patients fall into a coverage gap or donut hole as it has become known. In this phase, seniors generally pay 40 percent of the cost of brand-name drugs. That gap ends once out-of-pocket costs reach a certain level -$4,950 in 2017  after which catastrophic coverage takes over.

The donut hole was always supposed to be temporary. Under current law, the gap gradually phases out so that seniors will be responsible for only 25 percent of a brand-name drugs price in the donut hole starting in 2020. Of the remaining 75 percent, drug manufacturers will cover half, while insurers will pay 25 percent.

Unless the Senates budget deal becomes law. It would change this formula by forcing drug companies to shoulder the full 75 percent of a drugs cost in 2020, letting insurers off the hook entirely.

Its hard to see this change as anything but a giveaway to the insurance industry. One thing is for sure  the new formula wont help seniors afford their drugs. Once fully implemented, the policy will encourage insurance companies to accelerate drug spending for patients with already high costs.

Once a beneficiarys drug spending passes the donut-hole limit, after all, insurers share of the costs will drop to zero. So from the point of view of Part D plan providers, the faster an individuals drug costs rise, the better.

This unintended consequence likely will affect seniors with chronic diseases the most, as their drug costs are already high.

In other words, the Senate just struck a deal that benefits insurance companies at the expense of Americas sickest seniors.

-Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her next book The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care will be published by Encounter in March 2018. Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.
Southwest Florida Professional Fire Fighters and Paramedics Local 1826 will host its annual Fill the Boot drive starting on March 9 to help raise funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

From Friday and through the weekend, members of the Sanibel Fire and Rescue District and the Captiva Island Fire Control District will be accepting donations as part of the fundraising campaign.

Starting on Friday, the drive will run through the weekend.

Its been a tradition for the fire service to take part, John DiMaria, the coordinator for the Sanibel team, said. Its well worth the money to donate, for sure  the more who donate, the better.

Sanibel fire crews will be set up from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day at the entrance to Jerrys Foods, at 1700 Periwinkle Way, and at the entrances and exits to Baileys General Store, at 2477 Periwinkle Way. On March 11, they will also be at the Farmers Market at City Hall, at 800 Dunlop Road, Sanibel.

The Captiva fire crew will be set up at the intersection of Andy Rosse and Captiva Drive.

This is always a great fundraiser for MDA and the children that benefit directly from the event, Captiva Fire Chief Jeff Pawul said.

Last year, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1826 raised over $170,000 for local families battling muscle disease and ALS, making it No. 1 in the state of Florida and No. 12 in the country.

The goal this year is to raise $200,000.

For more than 60 years, firefighters have stood on the front lines with MDA in the fight to free individuals, and the families who love them, from the harm of these life-threatening muscle diseases, Erin Randall, executive director of the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Southwest Florida, said in a prepared statement. Each year, Local 1826 firefighters dedicate countless hours of their time participating in Fill the Boot drives and at MDA Summer Camp. Were grateful for their steadfast drive and uncommon caring toward the kids and adults we serve and look forward to working together once again to make this Fill the Boot season a huge success.

As its largest national partner, the IAFF fuels MDAs mission to find research breakthroughs across diseases, care for youth and adults from day one, and provide families with services and support.

In addition to Fill the Boot, firefighter contributions from year-round events help support MDAs efforts to raise awareness and provide professional and public education on neuromuscular diseases.

Contributions also help to fund research and programs, such as support groups and Care Centers, including the MDA Care Center at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. They also help send more than 30 local children to an MDA summer camp at Florida Elks Youth Camp in Umatilla, at no cost to families.

In 2015, more than 100,000 firefighters participated in Fill the Boot drives around the country and raised $25.5 million. To date, the IAFF has raised approximately $583 million for the MDA.

For more information about the MDA, visit: www.mda.org/. For more about the Southwest Florida MDA office, visit on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/MDASouthwestFlorida.
Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved. This photo provided by Laurent Errera taken Dec. 26, 2011, shows the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that disappeared from air traffic control screens Saturday, taking off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. (AP Photo/Laurent Errera)

Vietnamese air force planes on Saturday spotted two large oil slicks close to where a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went missing earlier in the day, the first sign that the aircraft carrying 239 people  including two Canadians  had crashed.

The air force planes were part of a multinational search operation launched after Flight MH370 fell off radar screens less than an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday morning.

The oil slicks were spotted late Saturday off the southern tip of Vietnam and were each between 10 kilometres and 15 kilometres long, the Vietnamese government said in a statement. There was no confirmation that the slicks were related to the missing plane, but the statement said they were consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the two fuel tanks of a crashed jetliner.

Two-thirds of the missing plane's passengers were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

The flight manifest identifies the two Canadians as Xiaomo Bai, 37, and Muktesh Mukherjee, 42.

An airline spokeswoman says company officials are not able to get in touch with their families but have contacted the Canadian embassy in Malaysia.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted his condolences over the missing plane.

"Our thoughts & deepest prayers are with those affected by the disappearance of the plane in Malaysia," Harper said.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said there was no indication that the pilots had sent a distress signal, suggesting that whatever happened to the plane occurred quickly and possibly catastrophically.

Asked whether terrorism was suspected, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said, "We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks."

Foreign ministry officials in Italy and Austria said the names of two nationals from those countries listed on the flight's manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand.

Italy's Foreign Ministry said the Italian man who was listed as being a passenger, Luigi Maraldi, was travelling in Thailand and was not aboard the plane. It said he reported his passport stolen last August.

Austria's Foreign Ministry confirmed that a name listed on the manifest matched an Austrian passport reported stolen two years ago in Thailand. It said the Austrian was not on the plane, but would not confirm the person's identity.

At Beijing's airport, authorities posted a notice asking relatives and friends of passengers to gather at a nearby hotel to wait for further information, and provided a shuttle bus service. A woman wept aboard the bus while saying on a mobile phone, "They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good."

Relatives and friends of passengers were escorted into a private area at the hotel, but reporters were kept away. A man in a grey hooded sweatshirt later stormed out complaining about a lack of information. The man, who said he was a Beijing resident but declined to give his name, said he was anxious because his mother was on board the flight with a group of 10 tourists.

"We have been waiting for hours and there is still no verification," he said.

The plane was last detected on radar at 1:30 a.m. (1730 GMT Friday) around where the South China Sea meets the Gulf of Thailand, authorities in Malaysia and Vietnam said.

Lai Xuan Thanh, director of Vietnam's civil aviation authority, said air traffic officials in the country never made contact with the plane.

The plane "lost all contact and radar signal one minute before it entered Vietnam's air traffic control," Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese army, said in a statement.

The South China Sea is a tense region with competing territorial claims that have led to several low-level conflicts, particularly between China and the Philippines. That antipathy briefly faded Saturday as China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia all sent ships and planes to the region.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia had dispatched 15 planes and nine ships to the area, and that the U.S. Navy was sending some planes as well. Singapore, China and Vietnam also were sending aircraft.

It's not uncommon for it to take several days to find the wreckage of aircraft floating on the ocean. Locating and then recovering the flight data recorders, vital to any investigation, can take months or even years.

"In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues," said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military's Western Command.

After the oil slick was spotted, the air search was suspended for the night and was to resume Sunday morning, while the sea search was ongoing, Malaysia Airlines said.

The plane was carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew members, the airline said. It said there were 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, three from the U.S., two from Canada and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

In Kuala Lumpur, family members gathered at the airport, but were kept away from reporters.

"Our team is currently calling the next of kin of passengers and crew. Focus of the airline is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilize its full support," said Yahya, the airline CEO. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members."

Fuad Sharuji, Malaysia Airlines' vice-president of operations control, told CNN that the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,670 metres when it disappeared and that the pilots had reported no problem with the aircraft.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed in San Francisco in July 2013, killing three passengers, all teenagers from China.

Airliner "black boxes"  the flight data and cockpit voice recorders  are equipped with "pingers" that emit ultrasonic signals that can be detected underwater. Under good conditions, the signals can be detected from several hundred miles away, said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. If the boxes are trapped inside the wreckage, the sound may not travel as far, he said. If the boxes are at the bottom of an underwater trench, that also hinders how far the sound can travel. The signals also weaken over time.

Air France Flight 447, with 228 people on board, disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009. Some wreckage and bodies were recovered over the next two weeks, but it took nearly two years for the main wreckage of the Airbus 330 and its black boxes to be located and recovered.

Malaysia Airlines said the 53-year-old pilot of Flight MH370, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, has more than 18,000 flying hours and has been flying for the airline since 1981. The first officer, 27-year-old Fariq Hamid, has about 2,800 hours of experience and has flown for the airline since 2007.

The tip of the wing of the same Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200 broke off Aug. 9, 2012, as it was taxiing at Pudong International Airport outside Shanghai. The wingtip collided with the tail of a China Eastern Airlines A340 plane. No one was injured.

Malaysia Airlines' last fatal incident was in 1995, when one its planes crashed near the Malaysian city of Tawau, killing 34 people. The deadliest crash in its history occurred in 1977, when a domestic Malaysian flight crashed after being hijacked, killing 100 people.

In August 2005, a Malaysian Airlines 777 flying from Perth, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur suddenly shot up 900 metres (3,000 feet) before the pilot disengaged the autopilot and landed safely. The plane's software had incorrectly measured speed and acceleration, and the software was quickly updated on planes around the world.

Malaysia Airlines has 15 Boeing 777-200s in its fleet of about 100 planes. The state-owned carrier last month reported its fourth straight quarterly loss and warned of tougher times.
Photo: pexels.com

By Genesa M. Greening

Today is International Womens Day, and as I consider the seismic shifts that have occurred of late in business, the arts, and politics I am buoyed by the belief that womens voices are finally being heard, inequity is being called out, and that change is coming.

Once untouchable icons are falling, industries are being reshaped, and a new era has begun  except in my universe:

the health sector.

Ive experienced first-hand, the feelings of not being believed by a physician, of feeling disrespected and being infantilized.

In each instance, I found myself deliberating; is it just me?

However, amidst this emerging conversation that #metoo and #timesup have inspired, a fascinating separate dialogue is gaining prominence as more and more women share their stories of discrimination, inequitable treatment, and frustration at not being able to receive timely, appropriate and respectful access to health care.

What had begun as self-wondering organically spilled over into conversations with my friends and colleagues as media worldwide gradually started to report on stories similar to my own experiences  and judging by the overwhelming response, these issues resonate on a scale that was once hard for me to believe.

Whether its the patient whose unimaginably miserable hyperemesis gravidarum symptoms are diminished as general morning sickness. Or the one-in-10 women suffering from painful endometriosis made to endure wait times ranging from 7-10 years to receive a diagnosis.

Or the countless number of women worldwide who are dismissed as hysterical when seeking help for their severe, chronic pain symptoms  that it is all, in your head" and who are more likely to have their doctor refer them to a therapist rather than a pain clinic.

The examples are innumerable, and once youve become awakened to the phenomenon, you start to notice how pervasive it is.

To understand part of what got us here, one only needs to appreciate that just 30 years ago, women weren't included in most healthcare and research studies. Or that even though women and men are physiologically different, many prescription drug therapies and treatments still in use today were disproportionally studied on men.

But historical inequities aside, what is especially problematic is that there is currently no funding body for womens health research. Combine that fact with the grossly disproportionate level of investment in women's health research funding versus men, and it is pretty easy to see how women have been systemically set up to receive the short end of the stick.

We know that when women are healthy, all society benefits. That there is undisputed evidence that healthy women mean healthy communities, not just in regard to overall wellness, but socially and economically too.

On this International Womens Day, while Im pleased to see fractures in the current status quo emerging, I recognize there is a significant distance to go in the pursuit of respect, equity and access in womens health.

We need to be reactive to womens health needs as identified by patients, supported by research, and put into action by health care practitioners and government. This ongoing awakening as to the gender disparities within health will only change if brought to light.

Ask more questions

Share what you learn

Educate your allies and demand more

It neednt be an exercise in physician-shaming, male-bashing or levying historical judgment; rather it is the recognition of unconscious biases and how this moment in time, which is growing into a movement; has room for everyone to participate within it because the benefits unequivocally serve us all.

For all the women in your life, be they partners, mothers, sisters, cousins, friends or daughters; the door has finally been cracked open, and by being ruthless about communicating the facts on womens health, regardless of the barriers, together, we can kick it wide open.

This is how movements get started, and its time to ensure women have access to the highest quality healthcare when, where, and how they need it.

Genesa M. Greening is president and CEO of BC Womens Hospital and Health Centre Foundation.
Photo: RCMP

RCMP and YLW have a message for amateur drone pilots  stay clear of YLW!



The message comes after a potentially hazardous drone flight last month near Kelowna International Airport, which prompted a police search.

RCMP were made aware of a remotely piloted aircraft system, commonly referred to as a drone, being flown in the vicinity of YLW. Police responded to the area, but were unable to locate the drone or its operator.

The incident has now prompted a warning from YLW and the RCMP around the dangers remotely piloted aircraft systems pose to commercial and non-commercial aircraft.

"Flying a (drone) in the vicinity of an airport not only poses a significant safety risk to the passengers and crew members on board all incoming and outgoing flights, but also to the members of the general public," says Neil Drachenberg, manager of airport safety and security at YLW.

"Kelowna RCMP encourage you to call the police immediately if you notice suspicious activity or witness the dangerous operation of a remotely piloted aircraft towards persons, properties, other aircrafts, or within 5.5 kilometres of any airport," adds Cpl. Jesse ODonaghey, spokesperson for Kelowna Regional RCMP.

Police recognize that guidelines and regulations around the use of drones continue to evolve, and they ask operators to respect the safety tips and guidelines as outlined by Transport Canada.
Photo: Contributed

Celebrating multiculturalism and diversity strengthens our community.

That is the message from the Social Planning Council for the North Okanagan.

Our community is rich with people from indigenous cultures as well as people from around the world contributing to the fabric of our society," says executive director Annette Sharkey.

For the third year, Vernon will be honouring and acknowledging multicultural community champions through a nomination process highlighting the contributions of local residents.

"We are looking for nominees that have a diverse cultural background, contribute back to our community through entrepreneurship, career, stewardship, mentorship or volunteerism, and would be comfortable being celebrated, sharing their culture and having their story told publicly," says Sharkey.

The nomination process will be open until the end of March.

Up to 10 nominations will be selected at Community Champions and will have their story professionally written and shared in the community. They will also be honoured at a reception in June and receive a keepsake copy of their feature story.

Sharkey adds, Under the banner Respect Works Here these stories inspire and captivate readers. Respect comes from understanding each other better and this simple initiative shows the strength our community gains from embracing and celebrating diversity.

The Social Planning Council is the host agency for the Vernon Local Immigration Partnership Council as well as the Thompson Okanagan Respect Network.

The funding for this initiative was provided by the Province of BC.

You can nominate a Community Champion by filling out a form before March 31. The forms can be found on the Social Planning Council for the North Okanagan website.
Photo: Paul Cousins This file photo shows the Kin Race Track grandstand burning.

A North Okanagan man who is facing numerous arson charges will have his day in court this fall.

William Munton, 56, is facing 19 charges of arson in connection with fires targeting dumpsters, vehicles, boats and structures that were set between May and November of 2014.

Munton is also a suspect in a blaze that destroyed the grandstands at Kin Race Track in July 2014.

The spectacular blaze lit up the night sky as the aged wood quickly burned.

The trial is expected to take 14 days is scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

Munton has chosen to be tried by judge and jury.

In September 2017, Munton was acquitted of child pornography.

Charges against Munton were dropped when the judge threw out two warrants used to gather the evidence.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Hope Hyslop said she found both warrants invalid, except for evidence gathered for the arson case against Munton.

Hyslop said "the omission of material facts" put before the judge who granted the warrants was the reason for her decision.
Photo: Twitter

A couple's charter rights were violated when a children's aid society closed the pair's foster home over their refusal to tell two young girls the Easter Bunny is real, an Ontario court has ruled.

Frances and Derek Baars, who describe themselves as a Christian couple with "strong religious faith," took the Children's Aid Society of Hamilton to court in April 2017, about a year after the girls in their care  aged three and five  were taken away and their foster home was closed.

The couple said the Easter Bunny was at the core of the dispute and argued telling children in their care the character was real was a violation of their religious beliefs  a position Superior Court Judge A.J. Goodman agreed with.

"There is ample evidence to support the fact that the children were removed because the Baars refused to either tell or imply that the Easter Bunny was delivering chocolate to the Baars' home," Goodman wrote in a decision released Tuesday. "I am more than satisfied that the society's actions interfered substantially with the Baars' religious beliefs."

Court heard that CAS support worker Tracey Lindsay had visited the Baars and acknowledged that the girls looked well cared for in all respects.

However, the Baars argued Lindsay told them it was part of their duty as foster parents to teach the girls about the Easter Bunny, court documents show.

The Baars told Lindsay they intended to hide chocolate eggs and have the girls find them on Easter and play other games, but didn't plan to speak to the children about the Easter Bunny, unless the girls specifically asked questions about the character, documents said.

The CAS contended Lindsay "never asked (the Baars) to lie or betray their faith."

Goodman found the Baars did try to have the children enjoy holidays such as Easter and Christmas.

"There is sufficient evidence to assert that the Baars did, indeed, attempt to preserve the children's enjoyment of the holidays, even of they were not able, pursuant to their religious beliefs, to positively perpetuate the existence of the fictitious characters that are associated with those holidays," Goodman wrote.

Reached at the couple's Edmonton home, Derek Baars said they are "very thankful" for the judge's decision.

"Many Christians have been praying for us and so behind the actions of the judge, for which we're very thankful, we see the hand of God to direct him in the judgment," Baars said, adding they hope the decision will be helpful for other Christians hoping to foster or adopt children.

Baars said they are trying to adopt a child and hope the ruling will aid in that process.
Photo: @OfficialTaylorHickson Taylor Hickson

A Canadian actress whose face was badly cut while shooting a horror film in Winnipeg is suing its producers over an injury she says has derailed her burgeoning career and jeopardized future earnings.

Taylor Hickson, whose credits include "Deadpool" and the Space TV series "Aftermath," alleges in a lawsuit filed March 1 with the Court of Queen's Bench that the Winnipeg-based Incident Productions Inc. was negligent in taking reasonable steps to ensure her safety.

The suit claims she suffered a facial injury when she crashed through a glass door while filming the indie project "Ghostland," also known as "Incident in a Ghost Land," and details a brutal cut to the left side of her face that required about 70 stitches in hospital.

"Prior to the injury she was an up-and-coming actor with a bright future in the movie industry," says the statement of claim.

"Due to the injury, post incident, the plaintiff has struggled to find work as an actor and states that ... she has and will continue to suffer future financial losses in an amount to be proven at or before trial."

The allegations have not been proven in court.

The 20-year-old, who lives in Kelowna, B.C., is seeking damages for lost income and future loss of income, as well as damages for mental distress and legal costs.

The suit says she was performing "an emotionally charged scene" in December 2016 when the director asked her to place her face next to a pane of glass in a door while pounding on the glass with her fists.

At one point, she asked one of the producers and the director if it was safe to do so.

"That producer and the director both replied in the affirmative," the court documents say.

But while filming another take, the suit says the glass shattered, causing Hickson's head and upper body to fall through the door and shards of glass.

One of the Canadian producers reached Wednesday said there would be no comment on the case. Requests for comment from other producers were not immediately returned.

Hickson's lawyer Jason Harvey said Incident Productions Inc. has yet to respond to the allegations.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A Edmonton homeless man whose spontaneous piano performance was viewed on the internet by millions of people has died.

Ryan Arcand, 46, died last weekend in a supportive housing complex where he had been living for a few months, said Jared Tkachuk, an outreach manager at Boyle Street Community Services.

He said Arcand struggled with a developmental disability, trauma and mental illness and used alcohol, drugs and the piano to cope.

"He was quite proud of his talent and I think he was happy that it got acknowledged because that's so rare for people who are marginalized," said Tkachuk.

Arcand had been living on the streets when a woman recorded him playing a battered outdoor piano near city hall in 2014.

Roslyn Polard said she was struck by his beautiful music and others who also stopped to watch the performance had tears in their eyes.

She posted the video on YouTube and it quickly went viral.

The video raised enough money to buy Arcand a keyboard, although Tkachuk said he's not sure if Arcand still had it when he died. Arcand ended up in and out of housing and different social programs over the years.

"Our journeys don't go in straight lines sometimes," said Tkachuk.

"Things weren't easy for Ryan and that's how it often went."

But music was always important to Arcand and before he died he was still writing his own songs, Tkachuk added.

Arcand was originally from the Alexander First Nation, northwest of Edmonton, and his funeral is to be held there Saturday.
Photo: Contributed

A Kamloops group says its efforts to do away with daylight time may be paying off.

Bob Dieno, co-founder of a local group against the time change, says he recently met with Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth and was told the NDP government may hold a public consultation on the issue.

Dieno says his group has started a Facebook campaign to call for a referendum in the municipal election in October.

He says the time change was originally started during wartime so people could work longer at night, but it's been shown to have negative effects on health and safety.
Photo: Josh Winquist Police are investigating a hit and run accident on 39th Avenue.

Emergency crews were called to 39th Avenue near 36A Street Wednesday afternoon following a report of a hit-and-run accident.

Witnesses tell Castanet a silver van struck a car, causing the car to hit a tree.

The van then continued down 39th Avenue for a few hundred yards before the driver lost control and ended up in a snowbank on the side of the road.

According to witnesses, two men were seen physically fighting in the van before the accident.

After the van came to a stop, the witnesses said the two men jumped into a white Pontiac and left the scene.

Two people in the car received minor injuries.

- with files from Josh Winquist
Chantelle Deacon

"Oh my god, got to save him, got to save him, got to save him," were the thoughts going through a big brother's mind when he watched his little brother fall through an ice-covered pool.

Damien Corson, who is now 10-years-old, saved his little brother last March.

"That memory is never going away," says Brady Corson, 7, after nearly drowning in a Vernon pool.

Damien remembers the day like it was yesterday.

"Some of our friends were hanging out with us and they asked us if we wanted to go down to neighbourhood clubhouse pool," Damien said. "We asked mom if we could go and she said, 'yes as long as we're with an adult."

But things quickly spiralled downhill from there.

"My friends younger brother tapped the ice with his foot and then Brady goes and steps right in," Damien said. "I freaked out and started yelling, 'grab my hand, grab my hand and reach in and pull him out, it was a really scary experience."

Like most big brothers being protective is an instinct, that's why Damien wasn't too happy with Brady after pulling him out of the pool.

"I was upset with him because it scared me really bad when he fell in and I was really worried about him," he said.

But like most younger siblings, Brady was hoping for a little more sympathy from his big brother than he received.

"When I came out I was crying and Damien, when he yelled at me, I got really scared," Brady said. "That's why I walked all the way back home, with my wet clothes... by myself."

Damien will be honoured for saving his little brother's life on Saturday in Vancouver at the 106th Annual Commonwealth Honour and Rescue Awards Ceremony, held at the Fairmont Hotel.

British Columbia's Lieutenant-Governor Judith Guichon will be presenting the award.
Photo: Dave Ogilvie

An SUV and car collided into each other on Wednesday night in West Kelowna.

The collision occurred just before 7 p.m. on Boucherie Road and Ogden Road.

No one was injured in the collision but both vehicles were damaged. Firefighters and paramedics were on scene.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Viola Desmond's trailblazing act of defiance  overlooked for decades by most Canadians  will be honoured in a Halifax ceremony this afternoon that cements her new status as a civil rights icon.

At about 12:30 p.m. AT today, a new $10 bill featuring Desmond will be unveiled by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz.

Desmond will be the first black person  and the first non-royal woman  on a regularly circulating Canadian bank note.

"It's a long-awaited sense of belonging for the African Canadian community," said Russell Grosse, executive director of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia.

"The launch of the bill sends people of African descent the message that Canada is finally accepting us. We belong."

The bill marks a growing recognition of Desmond's refusal to leave the whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theatre on Nov. 8, 1946  nearly a decade before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama  and the seminal role it played in Canada's civil rights movement.

While her civil disobedience was remarkable, Grosse said racial segregation and systemic discrimination was once commonplace in Nova Scotia.

That's what makes the new $10 bill such a powerful act of acceptance, he said.

"It's a remarkable story. It really shows the progression of society, and that's one of the reasons why it seems to have gained this groundswell of interest over the last couple years," Grosse said.

Her story went largely untold for a half-century, but in recent years Desmond has been featured on a stamp, and her name has graced a Halifax harbour ferry since 2016. There are plans for a park in Toronto and streets in Montreal and Halifax to bear her name.

"Viola Desmond carried out a singular act of courage. There was no movement behind her, she was ahead of the times," said Isaac Saney, a senior instructor of black studies at Dalhousie University.

She was dragged out of the theatre by police, arrested, thrown in jail for 12 hours and fined.

It would take 63 years for Nova Scotia to issue Desmond, who died in 1965, a posthumous apology and pardon.
Photo: CTV

A teen boy who helped savagely beat a 63-year-old youth home worker has been sentenced to two years for aggravated assault.

The youth, who is 16, had been found not guilty of attempted murder last month but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge for the Feb. 4, 2017, attack on Heather Vanderzee at Elk Island Child and Youth Ranch, northeast of Edmonton.

Many of the bones in Vanderzees face were shattered and she suffered cuts to her cheek and neck.

She is living with permanent brain injuries and has undergone numerous surgeries, including 92 titanium screws to keep her facial bones in place, and has more surgeries to come.

The judge described the attack as "brutal", but decided not to impose the maximum three year youth sentence.

The judge says he took into account the teen's significant cognitive deficiencies, his aboriginal heritage and his history in the child welfare system.

Court heard Vanderzee was working alone at the time and the teen pretended he wanted a hug before attacking her.

Elk Island Child and Youth Ranch says on its website that it offers an intensive treatment program for children and youth who are covered under Alberta's Child, Youth and Family Enhancement Act.
Photo: City of Kelowna

It may seem like summer is a long way off when you look out the window today but the City of Kelownas deadline to register for pesticide notification is March 12. The annual registry is for Kelowna residents who wish to be informed when pesticide spraying occurs on residential properties adjacent to their own.

Residents can register online or by phone if they want to be notified.

Those residents who want to be notified by phone can call the Commercial Pesticide Notification Registry Hotline at 250-469-8556.

Registrants will be notified by commercial spray operators the day before or the same day as the pesticide is applied to abutting residential properties. The registry notification does not cover pesticide application on agricultural properties.

Residents must sign up each year for the registry to be kept accurate and up to date. Those included in previous years registry must register again if they wish to be included in 2018s notification program.

The city has also provided information on the best way to get a lush lawn without using pesticides. The website recommends using a compost like OgoGrow or GlenGrow. More tips for a pesticide free yard can be found on the Pesticide Free page on the Citys website.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Police say they will be present at three schools in Halifax today after unspecified threats were made against them.

Officers say they will be at Caledonia Junior High School, Rocky Lake Junior High School and Ian Forsyth Elementary as a precaution.

A police statement says they were notified of the threats at about 10 a.m. Wednesday and are investigating.

They say they do not believe students are at risk and school closures were not necessary.

In a message sent to parents, Caledonia principal Lisa Vaughan says the school contacted police after learning about a threat and that "the safety of students and staff is priority."

Police are asking anyone with information about the alleged threats to contact them or Crime Stoppers, but have not said what the threat was or how it was made.
Photo: Google Maps Dilworth Shopping Centre

Vancouver real estate investors are bullish on the Okanagan.

Peterson Group and Premise Properties have ponied up a combined $85 million to purchase the Dilworth Shopping Centre in Kelowna and Vernon Square retail development.

RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust sold the shopping centres as part of a sell-off of 100 properties in smaller and secondary markets across the country.

Dilworth Centre sits on 14 acres along Highway 97, just past Orchard Park. Among the higher-profile tenants are Safeway, Jysk, Staples, Boston Pizza and TD Bank.

Vernon Square is also situated along Highway 97, just below Kal Tire Place. It includes London Drugs, Prospera Credit Union and White Spot. A Safeway store in the shopping centre is owned separately and is not part of the sale.

The assets just fit well into who we are, and what our strategy has always been, which is looking for value and opportunities, said Darren Wong, Peterson Groups director of investments.

We were able to purchase the properties and get value, said Justin Pollard, Premise Properties vice-president.

In Vancouver, you are typically overpaying for development ... which makes the returns really skinny and the costs really high.

The Kelowna property is also positioned for future redevelopment into a mixed-use site, Pollard said.

That was another one of the solid reasons why we bought the property, its 14 acres, he said. There is a lot of opportunity there, we feel, to have a good mix.

He said Vernon Square would likely remain strictly a shopping centre for the foreseeable future.
If you've noticed a lot of blue on the downtown skyline after dark lately, there's a good reason: this month, several buildings including Liberty Tower, Baker Donelson/Republic Centre, the Westin Chattanooga and The Block are lit in support of colon cancer awareness.



We appreciate our local business communitys support of this observance, said Dr. Shauna Lorenzo-Rivero, colorectal surgeon and chair of the Greater Chattanooga Colon Cancer Foundation. Colon cancer affects many Chattanooga families and is one of the most common cancers in our area  but if its caught early, its treatable and beatable.



Other colon cancer awareness activities this month include Saturdays Rump Run at Enterprise South Nature Park.

The community is invited to join hundreds of area runners, walkers and colon cancer survivors for a morning of family-friendly physical activity including a road race, kids activities and a fun walk.Online registration for the Rump Run is open until noon on Friday at rumprun.com . In-person registration will be available the morning of the race beginning at 7:30 a.m. at the Enterprise South Nature Park visitor center. A survivor recognition will take place at 8:50 a.m. followed by the timed 5K at 9 a.m. and the Fun Walk at 9:30 a.m. Pre-registration is $30 online, and the day-of registration fee will be $40. Children 10 and under are $10.All proceeds from the event support the Greater Chattanooga Colon Cancer Foundations work to increase awareness of colorectal cancer, improve access to screenings and offer support to those impacted by the disease.The Greater Chattanooga Rump Run is presented by University Surgical Associates, Erlanger Health System, Memorial Health Care System and Parkridge Health System. Sponsors include Galen Digestive Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Brewer Media, Chattanooga Endoscopy Center, Diagnostic Pathology Services, Digestive Care and Management, Digestive Disease Consultants, First Tennessee, Genentech, Groome Transportation, HHM Wealth Advisors, Merrill Lynch, Myriad Labs, PathGroup, Puckett EMS and Tennessee Oncology.

Individuals or groups interested in volunteering at Saturdays event may call 423-757-0730 or go to www.rumprun.com to sign up.






"The selection process can be an overwhelming experience but we take the process in small steps and make it fun and exciting," says Diane Durpetti, Design Center manager for Shodeen Homes. "Buyers often bring pictures of what they would like their dream kitchen or bath to mimic and we work to make that happen. It's our job to help them coordinate finishes to complement each room of the home and be mindful of each individual's budget when doing so."
"Barrington is one of Chicago's top suburbs and is known for its beautiful homes, so we're incredibly proud to be showcasing our M/I Homes designs here as we bring a terrific new residential offering to the area," says Curt VanHyfte, area president of M/I Homes. "With the opening of this new model, we will be shifting sales into full swing now that buyers can see for themselves the benefits they'll enjoy with a new-construction home at Brentwood  including the latest features and finishes plus the ease of low-maintenance townhome living. And they'll also have access to everything that makes Barrington such a sought-after suburb, from its quaint downtown area and plentiful shopping and dining, to easy access to the Metra line, major transportation arteries and recreational areas."
Boeing may have to reconsider the design of its new jet, dubbed the 797, to win over Asian customers. (Jason Redmond / AFP/Getty Images)
The about-face on bonuses comes as United is rolling out a new training program for customer-facing employees, starting with the airlines hubs, that emphasizes safe, caring, dependable and efficient service. It is part of a shift away from strict policies and rules that could make it difficult for employees to do the right thing for passengers, United said.
Thus, I continued the egg roll quest, heading to Mee Mah in North Park, open since 1982 and known for its classic yet also supersized egg rolls ($4 for two). Owners Sandy and William Wong are related not only to the Kow Kow family  he was the brother of the late Helen Moy who died in 2006 at 69, but also another sister among their five siblings owned the big Three Happiness restaurant in Chinatown at the corner of Wentworth and Cermak, closed now, with the building gone.
1) Before hitting up the South Side Irish Parade, get your pre-game on at Wild Blossom Meadery, Winery and Brewery. Located directly off the Rock Island Metra stop, this South Side mead producer is hosting a breakfast of bangers, eggs, corned beef and hash. Taps will flow 9-11 a.m., plus there will be transportation to and from the parade route. After the parade, Wild Blossom will host an afternoon of Celtic games. $50, from 8 a.m. Sunday. 9030 S. Hermitage Ave., wildblossommeadery.com
Katsumura will contribute what she calls funfetti oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. These are my mom's favorite cookies, she said. She is my inspiration because after 35 years of owning and operating a restaurant, while raising kids and now grandkids, she is still holding down the fort at 65 years old and doing it better than ever."
Corgan invited the public to come party with us on the 18th as we say goodbye. There will be free tea that day for everyone who comes by, and special last-day sales. (And as far as @madamezuzus 2.0 goes, we hope to open a new location very soon, remaining in Highland Park if possible).
In deep winter, the home barkeep tends to stockpile high-alcohol spirits in various shades of brown, from amber rum to tawny bourbon and rye, liquors that tend to warm the toes but can also tire the palate.

Time to wake up and try the best aperitif you've never heard of: Pineau des Charentes. Invented accidentally in the 16th century when some unfermented wine must spilled into a cognac barrel and the concoction was allowed to age, the resulting honey-toned beverage  soft and deep like cognac, bright and richly sweet  became so beloved that the French smacked an A.O.C. on it and continue to enjoy it regularly, keeping most of the production on home turf.

Freddy Brown of Fine Vines, a Chicago distributor that imports pineau from Charente, in western France, describes the spirit's flavor as "essentially grape juice and cognac." He recommends serving it at cellar (or cool room) temperature as an aperitif or, even better, with cold-weather desserts such as apple tarte Tatin. Says Brown, "The vivid fruit is really wonderful with dessert  it's just so fresh tasting."

We asked Charles Joly, chief mixologist at Chicago's Drawing Room, how he would incorporate pineau into a cocktail recipe. "I would substitute it in any cocktail where you might use cognac. It has an interesting nutty, sherry finish and is lower in alcohol (about 17 percent). Perhaps a French 75 with fresh citrus and Champagne, or a lower octane sidecar would be fun."

Joly's Valentine's Day offerings include a cocktail featuring Pineau des Charentes as the romantic lead. A variation on a cognac and cava rose drink from his repertoire, the rosy coupe shows off the pineau's lower alcohol and its fruity aromas in combination with two other grape-based spirits  hence the name.

A Trois

Charles Joly advises gently shaking when making this drink; "This is not a cocktail to crush in the shaker, as the notes are fairly delicate." Look for verjus (or verjuice), made from unripe grapes, in specialty stores or sub with 1/2 ounce red wine with 3/4 teaspoon red wine vinegar.

1 1/2 ounces Pineau des Charentes

 ounce verjus rouge

 ounce fresh lemon juice

 ounce simple syrup

1 ounce brut Champagne

3 dashes orange bitters

Combine pineau, verjus, lemon juice and simple syrup in shaker. Add ice, shake lightly to chill and dilute a bit. Add Champagne; gently stir. Strain into chilled coupe. Dash with bitters.
Everything about "Gringo," from the storytelling to the comedy to the cinematography is incredibly lackluster. The film is dark and dim, like everything's covered in a layer of dust. Oyelowo is quite endearing and funny as Harold, but he's given very little to work with. The film just feels like it's missing crucial connecting tissue storywise. The drug that their company manufactures  a cannabis product called Cannabax  isn't explained until halfway through, and we don't even know what it does or why anyone wants it.
But with The Golden Section, Twyla Tharps 1983 jazz dance panorama (complete with tiny, mustard-hued body suits and slouchy leg warmers), the Ailey dancers seem out of their element. Its not that they arent up to the technical challenge (and a challenge it is, with The Golden Sections demanding volume of forced-arch pirouettes and cheap tricks). Theyve mastered the material, but not the mood. When youre putting a dated, ersatz exercise tape (complete with David Byrnes kitschy, new-wave score) onto an otherwise superb program, bringing the sass and inherent goofiness of the 80s is germane to pulling it off. The dancers seemed to progressively enjoy themselves as the piece went on, but the beginning was all pasted-on, disingenuous smiles. Im just not confident they were all that into it. I wasnt either, honestly, which raises the question: Why is anybody still doing this work? Hubbard Street resurrected it last season as part of their 40th anniversary concert, fine as a throwback to their 1992 company premiere, but Ailey acquired the rights in 2006, and is touring it now because  why, exactly?
"There might a course in your neighborhood on the 31st, but there might be one on the 28th or the 2nd," said Dr. Mark Gestring, a trauma surgeon who has been involved in Stop the Bleed for the past two years. Gestring also expects more courses to be scheduled in the next few weeks.
The alderman said at one point he and his husband were facing down eight to 10 men who appeared drunk or high on illicit drugs, one of whom confronted him and another who put him in a headlock.
It sucks having him gone for a week, but we both sat down and said, Its not really about us and our feelings, said Garcia, who is a stay-at-home mom to their 4-year-old son during her week and is in school studying to be a clinical massage therapist. His dad is very much a part of his life, and thats kind of how we wanted to keep it.
Other favorites include the duck bop hash ($12.50) and breakfast sandwiches ($7.50-$10.50). The menu offers "day drinks," and its most popular, I'm told, is the peach sparkling wine mimosa ($8), which is as light as midday. Afterward, stop in at Bon Bon Bon, just across the lobby, for a nationally acclaimed chocolate ($3 ) made just minutes away. Then, work off the calories with a stroll down the block to the Guardian Building, a National Historic Landmark with a stunning art deco interior.
More recently, Blair has been forced to deny allegations contained in Michael Wolffs book about President Donald Trumps administration that he had tried sucking up to Jared Kushner for an appointment as a Middle East peace envoy. Asked by Inc. if he would accept such a position if Trump offered it, he said, First of all, he hasnt and he wont, and secondly, I dont want to go back into an official position.
The two sides had been gridlocked most intently on the issue of tuition waivers. The union demanded guaranteed waivers for themselves and for future classes, saying they are crucial for the affordability of graduate work and research. The university sought contract language allowing leaders to modify the waivers program in later years to meet budgeting and programming needs, but said currently enrolled students would keep the waivers in effect at the time they began their studies.
Alejandro Segura, 49, said he left El Salvador in 1999 and came to the U.S. on a religious worker visa. He applied for the TPS program in 2001 and settled in Joliet with his wife and sons, who were 4 and 7 at the time. Segura had worked as a teacher in El Salvador and left to do missionary work in the U.S. He and his wife decided to stay so that their children would have a shot at a better life.
As soon as Garcia got out of the back door of the apartment, he raised his gun and began shooting as (Cathery) ran across the back porch of the apartment building with his back to Garcia, the lawsuit says. One of Garcias shots went through a neighbors living room window at the end of the upper walkway of the porch. Garcia continued shooting as (Cathery) ran down the stairs of the back porch, and (he) tumbled down to the ground at the bottom of the stairs, mortally wounded.
In a North Side shooting, a 21-year-old student at Truman Middle College was wounded around 12:10 p.m. in the 4500 block of North Magnolia Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood. Police said the victim and the shooter, who belonged to rival gangs, got into a dispute earlier in the day inside the building housing the school, then argued again on the street just west of the campus, police said.
Donnie Rudd, 76, said he was destitute after posting the bond in 2016 and has no other source of funds to pay for the $25,000 witness, according to the motion filed by his attorney, Timothy Grace.
As in the trial, Hogan described a struggle in which Rita barged in, pulled her hair and threatened to rape her. She said that when she ran to the bathroom, he chased her and then pulled her to the floor. I dont know what happened that made him stop and leave, Hogan said. But he did.
"Getting unjust discriminatory property tax bills out on time that hurt working class people, that hurt the poor  well, should we applaud that? No," said Fioretti, who contended Berrios and Preckwinkle knew about the problem when they first came into office nearly eight years ago. "All of the sudden, it's an election year and they decided, 'Well, we found out we've got a problem here.' " (Hal Dardick)
"I will say one thing: We are constantly under attack, but we will stand up for justice and tell the truth," Netanyahu said in Hebrew, responding to Israeli journalists. "I am telling the truth and, more than that, I will tell you something you may not like: We have received more support from the public, for me, for my wife and for my family, than I ever remember."
"Russia does seem like the most likely story, given what we know both of the background of this case ... given the track record in the state of the relationship, the fact that we have seen things like this before," Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London, told Sky News.
"At the end, one of the entourage says, 'Hey, by the way, there's this Russian guy that we've dealt with in the past. He's here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, he'd be an interesting guy for you to know, since you're doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space,' " Prince told lawmakers.
Smoke comes out of a chimney on Feb. 2, 2012, in Seclin, France. A federal climate change lawsuit brought by children and teenagers likely will go to trial in Oregon after a recent appellate court ruling. (Philippe Huguen / AFP/Getty Images)
Perhaps because the national security excuse is so flimsy, those defending the tariffs offer another one: that China is overproducing steel and unloading it at cut-rate prices on the U.S. market. Trump has made this claim many times, and Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., echoed it in an interview with NPR: When you have a country like China that is dumping steel ... that is not sustainable.
Nunberg told the Post that he planned to tear up his subpoena on Bloomberg TV and would let Mueller arrest me, all of which misses the point a little bit. Nunberg and his lawyer are free to petition Mueller to narrow the scope of the subpoena. They can also seek to quash it. But if Nunberg simply ignores the subpoena, Mueller will ask a court to intervene. After a review, the court is likely to cite Nunberg for contempt  which would probably mean that a judge, not Mueller, would then send Nunberg off to prison.
Just before World War I, Platkowski traveled from Chicago to a Polish-speaking district of the German empire. Hed gone to see his aging and ill father, but to the local authorities, he was cannon fodder. Impressed into the German army, he served for two years on the Russian front, the site of massive artillery duels. I was buried by shells three times, Platkowski told the Tribune. Several times I was picked up unconscious on the field and taken to hospitals.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the answer: "Where did one-person, one-vote come from?" The courts that interpret the Constitution have long overseen the process of drawing district maps. In the 1930s and 1940s, legislative districts were wildly unequal in population; some had 900,000 people, others as few as 10,000. That gave certain voters a much bigger say than others in deciding who was elected. At first, the Supreme Court refused to touch the issue. But in 1962, Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority in Baker v. Carr that "judicial standards under the Equal Protection Clause are well developed and familiar, and it has been open to courts since the enactment of the 14th Amendment." That led to the "one person, one vote" cases of the 1960s, which mandated that districts be roughly equal in population and, as a consequence, more fair. The Supreme Court has the same power to strike down partisan gerrymandering today.
So why do I want Hollywood to go for it? Because Hollywood rarely practices what it preaches. We get lots of nice award ceremony speeches about the superior values of Hollywood and how evil big business and Republicans are. We get lots of movies indicting capitalism and glorifying organized labor. The upshot of much of this stuff is that its easy to do the right thing, so when society does the wrong thing, it must be because evil people wish it so. Well, heres Hollywoods chance to put its money where its biggest mouths are. And not just the amorphous entity called Hollywood, but the individual actors and directors who just love to preen about their enlightened views. Lets see them prove they have the courage of their convictions.
Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed  late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss their connecting flights  most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.
First, Trump deserves praise  especially from the media  for opening up the process and changing how politics is covered. He occasionally invites television cameras into what were once closed-door meetings. It used to be that the president and lawmakers could say whatever they wanted in private with no way to hold them accountable. Then, later, they could say something different to the media. But when the proceedings are televised, everyone is on notice that what they say matters.
Theres a lot of truth-bending in political campaigns. Remember then-presidential candidate Donald Trumps false assertion in 2015 that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks? Or how about Hillary Clintons tall tale in her 2008 campaign that on a trip to Bosnia, I remember landing under sniper fire.  We just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. That, too, didnt happen.
8th subcircuit, Fabri vacancy: We endorsed Judge Robin Denise Shoffner with reservations in 2016. She lost that race and was appointed to fill this vacancy. The CBA says she is working to address concerns about her legal knowledge and temperament. A better choice is James Jamie Shapiro, who was a circuit judge from 2007 to 2012 and now has a private practice that focuses mainly on state and federal criminal defense. Also on the ballot are Stephen J. Feldman and John Christopher Benson, both private practitioners, and Bonnie C. McGrath, who skipped the evaluations. Shapiro is endorsed.
But given that the mother followed all appropriate steps for seeking asylum, passed an initial asylum screening showing she has a strong case, was not accused of any form of abuse or neglect and then had her daughter taken away without explanation while she could hear the child screaming, Im going to just go ahead and say this was a mistake.
Kennedy knows that the reason state pension funds hold gun manufacturers in their portfolios is because the states pension managers have been increasing their investments in index funds, which are funds that, rather than pick and choose stocks, attempt to mimic the performance of the overall market. By their very nature, index funds will hold gun and ammunition manufacturers if those companies are represented in the overall market. To insist that the index funds in which the state invests divest themselves of particular companies is to insist that those index funds abandon their very character  and thus the low costs and elimination of manager risk that have made index funds such an attractive investment.
This plan departs from past practice. In 2013, CPSs Commission on School Utilization recommended that the district not close any Level 1 schools because Chicago needs to preserve and nurture every high-performing school, and that the district not close any school with more than 600 students or that is efficiently utilized. Notably, this Commission was led by Frank Clark, the current president of Chicagos Board of Education. If CPS executes its plan for NTA, this will be the first time that a Level 1 school is closed.
The really cold air will stay for the most part in Canada, while here we should experience high temperatures averaging some 5 degrees below normal into at least the first part of next week. The main storm track will be well to our south, so aside from periodic cloudiness and snow flurries, no significant precipitation is expected across the Chicago area during this period.
Aurora Fire Chief Gary Krienitz said food trucks often are using hot grease in confined situations, and also might be storing propane tanks. He wanted the fire department to be able to inspect things like ventilation, storage and if the trucks had the proper fire extinguishers.
Clark then entered the home of a known gang member, police said. The investigator a few minutes later saw Clark come out of the home again holding his waistband, and then get back in the car. The investigator also witnessed the driver of the car pull away from the curb without using a turn signal, so he radioed ahead and his partner stopped the vehicle at Union and Seventh, police said.
"The mission of Creative Souls is to empower people with disabilities to earn an income while gaining an amazing learning experience, where they can feel values and show their unique personalities through their work as an artist or as a member of the team," he said. "For the past year, I've worked with seven artists with disabilities in the Champaign area. They have hand painted on canvas shoes, which are sold to the public in order to provide them with an opportunity to make money; however, I am moving in a different direction."
A: I try to stay away from politics, and instead, ask my students to view a current event from the perspective of, "How would a society look at it?" In the case of the recent school shootings in Parkland, Fla., it was truly horrific. But we try to talk about it from the perspective of legislation and if stricter laws would lead to fewer gun deaths. I also try to make the case that in many ways, it is a safe time to be in American schools, and while these shootings are horrific, you need to look at the data.
The FBI warrant notes Letke, who is not referred to in the documents by name but as a confidential human source, was cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of city corruption. The Tribune is identifying that source as Letke because the affidavit refers to his former position as comptroller and his 2016 suicide.
What to do about school shootings is once again the topic of the day. The debate might have more staying power these days than in the past because the most recent victims in Florida are high school students who aren't going to take it anymore.
He said the restaurant is considering following its customer base to more tax-friendly areas in Will County. He also reminded customers checking out new restaurants in the area not to forget about Tin Fish and other south suburban pioneers.
McKinney said the foundations money came from selling personalized bricks around the flagpole at Schrum Memorial Middle School. The foundation has halted its fundraising efforts, McKinney said, not wanting to ask anyone for money until the case is resolved.
Residents Dave and Tammy Nelson said more drivers recently have been using 143rd Street to avoid the road construction along 159th Street, which is currently being widened by the Illinois Department of Transportation . Once the 159th Street project is complete, then traffic should become lighter on 143rd Street, they said.
"We had the Palos Woman's Club in here recently. They ranged in age from 60 to 80, and they were concerned about the technology and not being able to use something like that. We taught them step by step and now they rave about it because it's so easy," he said.
The Teamsters union was willing to work it out with Sellers, "all he had to do was call them," but then he started the protest, he told the Southtown. "There is not much I can do if he doesn't do it the way everyone else has to do it."
"Why do we refuse to do the same thing about people shooting up our schools," he said. "Even the Stanley Cup  Lord Stanley  is protected by individuals with guns when it is walked into a stadium, yet we do not afford our children the same protections."
Michael J. Larkin, 20, of Chicago, was charged with felony domestic battery and obstruction of justice March 1, police said. Deerfield Police were dispatched to the 1700 block of Lake Cook Road to assist another police department. The victim had left Deerfield and returned home. Police in that jurisdiction said the individual had wounds consistent with a physical dispute. Larkin gave a false name to Deerfield police. The alleged events took place in Deerfield. Larkin is free after posting the cash portion of a $75,000 bond. He is next scheduled to appear in Lake County Court April 19 in Waukegan.
Volunteers have become experts at sorting and labeling the dresses, Kinser said. As donated gowns come in, a volunteer sorts through them, checking for tears and other wear, tagging them by size and marking them by the date they were received. If a dress doesn't sell after three years, it's donated to other organizations, including school costume departments.
The computers are an integral part of the new math curriculum, under which most textbooks used for algebra and geometry will be online and home assignments can be done offline to be uploaded later at school, officials said. Materials can be accessed in English or Spanish.
"That is why we go to insects and plants when we are looking for diseases, because certain things have been trying to (give) them diseases for thousands of years and they have been successful in fighting that off," he said. "There is DNA there that is just incredibly important in terms of surviving in this world where everything is trying to eat you."
At the regular board meeting last month, John McGovern, president of Hoffman Estates-based WT Group Accessibility Practice, presented park board commissioners and staff with a series of proposals on how the park district could enhance its beaches, fields, trails and ice rinks to be more in line with current ADA standards. In his presentation and an accompanying report, McGovern advocated for more accessible trails, bathrooms and parking facilities  among other ideas, according to an audio presentation of the meeting.
The best the village can do is make sure the public knows the house is for sale to be preserved and it's marketed that way for a significant period of time, but there has to be some point that ends, he said.
About the owner: Lederer has been in the restaurant business for more than 30 years. He got the bug early. "Growing up, I threw parties in my backyard," he recalled. "I always enjoyed entertaining and the idea always was at some point I would open my own restaurant by the time I was 40." He apprenticed with Stouffer's, the Lettuce Entertain You empire, legendary restaurateur Don Roth, and Jim Lovell of the former Lovell's of Lake Forest. When he turned 39, he told himself, "I've got to get this thing going." He was 41 when Bluegrass opened.
"The chili gets better every year," said CLC arts student Corrine Kukulski of Grayslake as she wandered a room with nearly 1,000 pieces of ceramic made by art students. Bowls, plates and and other items of earth tones and bright colors  using different glazes and decorated with designs and flowers  were set up on four large tables and against the walls in insets where lights shone down to capture their beauty.
As of Wednesday, there were 65 children from Zion to North Chicago registered to see the movie. McLemore said people from out in the western part of the county, in the Round Lake area, said they would like to be part of the effort, and so a second date has now been scheduled: March 26, during spring break.
A: We started out as a Chinese school, and it is essential for children to learn their cultural identity. The dance troupe and two choirs play a large role in forming a community's bonding and unity, we think. We also offer activities for volunteers who help older adults learn English, and we have a speech-making class for children 8 to 12 years old run by Chinese high school students.
We dont have that ability, Weppler said. Everybody in town knows we need to do some work on our storm sewers, thats not an issue, its how do we pay for it? Unfortunately our infrastructure is really old. We could be talking some big bucks once the study is done.
Organized by a Chicago-based group that works as a labor advocate for immigrants, Acevedo and her mother, Balbina Ortiz, took part in a protest on Feb. 28 that started outside of the Lincolnwood Town Center mall and continued  minus some supporting participants  inside. A letter regarding the workplace dispute was delivered to the restaurant.
The case was one of two Lollapalooza ticket robberies to occur in Naperville last summer. The other involved an Aurora woman who arranged to meet a man at Portillo's Hot Dogs on Route 59 so she could buy his tickets, according to police reports. The suspects instead pulled out a stun gun and robbed her of $280.
"But it also drives down the point that we're trying to make. We want to offer sympathy to the students of Parkland and also respect the fact that they are young adults and they do have the right to speak up on their own behalf," Fielden said.
"We are celebrating our Young Artist  now  and Roman history  then  as the foundation of Western civilization with composers that have connections to France and Italy," explained Teresa Muir, secretary of the orchestra's board of directors. "This concert should be very special, with two famous composers' lesser known works as well as an extremely gifted young artist performing a virtuosic solo."
"We very much want to be a partner in the community of Norridge and want to serve this community," he said. "We had the old branch on Forest Preserve Drive (at the back end of a shopping center, near Laser Quest), and this is a much better location."
"She advised she opened the front door and yelled at the male subject to stop hurting the dogs. She advised the male looked up at her with a 'very angry look' and threw the same canine he was beating into the water" before speeding away in a car, the documents state.
The second fire was discovered at 10 a.m. when smoke was located in a second restroom on a different level of the building. A garbage can and the trash in it were burning. Staff members put out the fire but the plastic garbage can was badly damaged; the fire did not cause any additional damage, police have said.
Highland Historical Society president Sue Douthett, who also offered pictures to the authors, said that the type of history books her organization has put together are of a different kind  more just facts and figures. "This new book expands on that, such as adding a special touch in describing photo captions and adding anecdotes."
"Georgette Mosbacher of Florida, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Poland. Mosbacher is President of Georgette Mosbacher Enterprises, Inc., an international business and marketing consulting firm she founded in 1992. She also sits on the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, to which President Barack Obama appointed her in 2016. From 2001 to 2015, Ms. Mosbacher served as CEO of Borghese Inc., a global cosmetics manufacturer. Prior to that, she was CEO of La Prairie Worldwide from 1988 to 1992, and was Marketing Director at Fabrege from 1976 to 1980. In 1995, she founded the New York Center for Children, which assists children and families in need across New York City. She sits on the boards of the Atlantic Council, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which supports veterans and military families, and Business Executives for National Security. Mosbacher also previously served as a co-chair of the Republican National Committee's Finance Committee, and was the first woman to serve as the General Chairman of the Republican Governors Association. A published author, she has written two books on female empowerment. . Mosbacher earned a BS from Indiana University Bloomington."
The EPA said the 440-acre facility, at 5215 Kennedy Ave. in East Chicago, will focus on removing contaminated material from a solid waste landfill, open or filled land and other industrial property at the site, and treating groundwater. The EPA said the industrial land and water is contaminated with arsenic, lead, zinc and cadmium.
"I thought at first my son was telling me he spilled water," said Carlos Rodriguez. Instead, his son was standing in water. "Soon, it was coming up to my knee," he said. At its peak, Rodriguez said the house took on 5 feet of water. "We still can't go in," he said.
I've been listening to XRT since 1979. That station has educated me as well as entertained me since my teenage years. Although I can pull up any song I want at any time through Spotify or other online venues, I still tune in to XRT. Why? For the deejays. Their familiar voices. Their on-air banter. Their experience. They add context to a rapidly changing music scene and how we access it.
I voted for Donald Trump because I wanted someone with integrity to go in there and clean up the corruption from the last regime. So far, he is doing just what he promised when we elected him. Sure he has many minefields that we never predicted that are slowing down the nation's progress, but the important thing is that the nation is getting better and moving forward. I think we are all overwhelmed by these witch hunts and other obstacles created by the sore losers that add no value to America, but people with integrity are seeing these witch hunts for just what they are  tools to slow down the progress of the nation.
"The village is saddened that Keystone Montessori has chosen to file a lawsuit against the village for an agreement that it signed and executed 20 years ago," Village President Cathy Adduci said. "Through this lawsuit, Keystone Montessori has made it clear they want the residents of River Forest to pay their property tax bill, and the village board and I cannot consciously agree to that. The village is always willing to work with its businesses and partners in the community, but we also have a greater responsibility to protect the interests of all taxpayers in River Forest."
A: I do not have pets  I have children. I had pets growing up  cats, dogs, goldfish, birds, everything. My daughter wanted a dog so bad but I knew I would be the one cleaning it and picking up the poop. I took her to Toys R Us and I bought her the most beautiful Chocolate lab stuffed animal you could ever find. That pet has gone on cruises and has flown across the United States  Vegas to Florida. Now my daughter has a real dog.
What looks like some hills in southern Illinois is actually a treasure trove of societal development, right in our own state. It really expands the focus of early civilizations beyond the spots we typically admire. It also reminds that just because someone like Christopher Columbus crashed a boat on unidentified land, that doesnt mean it was unknown to everyone.
"I can't tell you how many people are going to be in the emergency room at [John H.] Stroger [Hospital] tonight. I can't tell you how many cases will be filed on Monday in our court system," the commissioner said. "I think what we're going to have to do is reevaluate our taxes, figure out how to take advantage of any loophole the feds give us, and go forward from there."
The performing rights organization says in a statement Tuesday that Residente will be the first act to receive the honor in the 25-year history of its Latin Awards. The event takes place March 20 in Beverly Hills, California.
Tribe breaks ground for new Wellness Center in Ada

This article appeared in the March 2018 edition of the Chickasaw Times

ADA, Okla. - Governor Bill Anoatubby was joined by a host of dignitaries, Chickasaw citizens and community members Feb. 8 for a groundbreaking ceremony to begin construction on a state-of-the-art Chickasaw Nation Wellness Center.

Located at 228 Seabrook Road in Ada, the new Wellness Center will rise adjacent to the Chickasaw Nation Family Life Center. The new facility is designed to meet the needs of Chickasaws and other community members for wellness facilities and services centered on improved health.

The new facility will be almost double the size of the existing center, which was built in 2004.

Gov. Anoatubby said both facilities represented an investment in the health of Chickasaw citizens and the community.

We invested in this wellness center because we are committed to an awareness and emphasis on a healthy lifestyle, Gov. Anoatubby said. Perhaps more importantly, Chickasaws and others in our community are increasingly making the decision to invest in a healthy lifestyle.

These people are taking the time and making the effort to live more active lifestyles. They are also investing in better nutrition because they understand these investments offer great returns, from more energy and healthier weight to better sleep. A more active lifestyle and better nutrition may even reduce the chance of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and chronic illness.

The 25,350-square-foot Wellness Center will feature a free weight area, aerobic studio, large cardio room, separate exercise areas for adults and children, a hydration area, mens and womens locker rooms, an elevated walking track, a conference room and office space.

In addition, a state-of-the-art interactive Prama studio  a cutting edge element in the health and fitness industry - will be featured in the new Wellness Center.

This interactive system, created by Pavigym, combines light and music to create an immersive and fun experience.

Interactive workouts can be programmed for beginners to elite athletes.

Only two other facilities in the U.S. feature this system, and the Ada Wellness Center will be the first in Oklahoma.

We believe this is another way to motivate and excite people to exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle, Gov. Anoatubby said.

The Wellness Center exercise areas will be fully-equipped with treadmills, elliptical and rowing machines, free weights and strength equipment. In addition, the facility will continue to offer numerous exercise classes.

The new Wellness Center will be located across the street from the Family Life Center, which serves as the current Ada Wellness Center. Opened in 2004, the Family Life Center marked a major milestone in the tribes efforts to promote healthy lifestyles and preventive health care services.

Also located in Ardmore, Purcell and Tishomingo, Chickasaw Nation Wellness Centers provide education, mentoring, monitoring, incentives and access to activities to promote exercise, nutrition and overall improved health.

By providing access to equipment and services offered at the three wellness centers, the Chickasaw Nation helps build a healthier community and reduce the health disparities faced by many Indian citizens.

Membership to the facilities is free for tribal citizens and employees and is also open to community members at a small fee.

For more information, please visit chickasaw.net/wellnesscenters.
Central's CATique offers luxuries styles at an affordable price

Both Pueblo school district students can find affordable dresses, shoes, sport coats and other formal wear at the school's CATique.
By I-Ting Shelly Lin

In late 2017, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce announced several new temporary regulation adjustments aimed at loosening restrictions on foreign investment in the city. The adjustments, which are effective from December 22, 2017 to May 5, 2018, are designed to further open Beijings service sector to international investment.

The adjustments lower qualification standards for foreign investors and broaden the scope of permitted business activities in several service industries, including culture and education, business and tourism, science and technology, healthcare, and finance. After the May 5 deadline, authorities will study the pilot program and determine whether to keep or amend the measures.

The adjustments follow other recent policies aimed at bolstering Beijings service sector, namely June 2017s Pilot Plan of Deepening Reform of Advancing Opening up of Beijings Service Industry (Guo Han [2017] No.86) and May 2015s General Plan of Expanding Opening up of Beijings Service Industry (Guo Han [2015] No.81).

RELATED: Foreign Investment in Guangdong: New Incentives Announced

The latest adjustments are a legal guarantee for the 10 guidelines introduced in the 2017 Pilot Plan, and amend some of the Pilot Plans contents by further liberalizing the service sector. The latest measures include:

Permitting foreign investors to establish exclusively foreign-funded performance groups, business entities, and entertainment venues with no restriction on the investment proportion of Chinese parties in certain commercial areas;

Permitting foreign-owned banks to apply to conduct business in RMB and to open a business in China at the same time; foreign-owned banks no longer have to meet the requirement of having operated a business in China for more than a year;

Permitting foreign investment in civil aviation sales agencies;

sales agencies; Permitting foreign investment in audiovisual business production;

Lifting the restriction on the proportion of foreign technicians employed in foreign-invested construction and design enterprises ;

enterprises ; Lifting barriers for foreign investors to enter the human resources industry;

Reducing the threshold of foreign investment access to investment companies and talent agencies;

Encouraging collaborations between law firms in Hong Kong , Macau , Taiwan, and foreign countries; and

, , Taiwan, and foreign countries; and Authorizing drug makers to perform clinical trials of foreign-developed drugs.

In addition to the above measures, in January Beijing committed to greater promotion of its service sector by issuing the Suggestions for Further Promoting the Innovation and Development of the Exhibition Industry (the Suggestions). Municipal authorities issued the Suggestions to further establish the four centers concept, which seeks to promote Beijing as a center for politics, culture, international relations, and technology innovation.

Furthermore, Beijing has emphasized six aspects to strengthen the four centers. Namely, the six aspects consist of optimizing spatial layout and environment development, strengthening Beijing citys brand building, cultivating market subjects, innovating development models, and promoting globalization.

A key consideration of the new measures is also aimed at improving citizens daily lives and encouraging consumption, such as in the culture and healthcare industries. Dragon Legend, for instance, has capitalized on recent liberalizations in Beijings service sector to become Beijings first exclusively foreign-owned performing arts company.

Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory Services from Dezan Shira & Associates

Official statistics show that during the first three quarters of 2017, service industries value added represented 82 percent of Beijings total GDP. This trend is not limited to Beijing: the service sector is driving foreign investment throughout China. From January to November last year, total actual use of foreign investment in China totaled more than US$24 billion, up 87 percent from the previous year, primarily on the back of service industries.

Analysts believe that Beijings service sector restrictions will gradually continue to be lifted, as the city deepens its transition into a post-industrial economy. The serial measures announced recently are signals that Beijing is further promoting its service sector, as the citys industrial functions are being shifted to neighboring areas such as Xiongan and Hebei province. Beijings service industry  especially internet-based businesses  are poised to continue to outperform other sectors in 2018, representing the majority of the citys GDP growth.




Gu Jianping, 48, has spent the past 28 years caring for elephants, pandas, zebras, ibex and other animals at Shanghai Zoo.

"They are just like my own sons and daughters, and each of them is very important to me," she said.

Fifty-five of the 150 zookeepers at Shanghai Zoo are women. Often they are assigned less dangerous animals, like birds and amphibious reptiles.

"Animals that are timid prefer female keepers, while male keepers are better with fiercer creatures," said Gu, who is among the few female zookeepers caring big and dangerous animals.

Her current "clients" may not be particularly ferocious, but many of them are large. She is in charge of five red pandas, two giant anteaters and one maned wolf.

Just preparing their meals is a complicated business. The menu for anteaters goes beyond ants. Gu prepares a feed of milk, eggs, grapes, apples, bananas, honey, kiwifruit, yoghurt, dried shrimp meat and vitamin tablets. She even peels the grapes and removes the seeds, and grinds fruit slices into a paste because anteaters have no teeth.

It takes her nearly half an hour to prepare feed for just one animal.

"Being observant, careful and patient are the most important traits of a good zookeeper," Gu said, noting that even the size of window cracks have to be monitored for temperature control.

She arrives at the zoo at 7:30am. First task: examine the feces of the maned wolf. Task two: check the environment of the red pandas. Third: see if the anteaters are awake.

"We observe the volume, color and shape of animal feces to look for signs of diarrhea or parasites," Gu said.

When animals do get sick, Gu worries like a mother. She lives on Hami Road, near the zoo, and often returns to facility after dinner just to check on a sick animal's condition. Veterinarians are called out in emergencies.

Gu started working at the zoo when she was 20. She applied for the job because it sounded interesting, she said. Along the way, she has learned much about animal science.

"I am more careful taking care of animals than even my own child because they can't speak," she said. "I need to observe every slight change in their behavior. I read their body language. They tell me what they need through their eyes and behavior."

Taking care of pandas is among the most demanding of Gu's work.

In summer, she ushers them out into the open air at 6am, when the weather is cooler and more bearable for the animals. She flicks on the air conditioning in their enclosure so that it's cool when they return inside after two hours.

It's hard not to form a special bond with animals cared for over many years. Gu was heartbroken when Chuan Chuan, a giant panda she tended for 15 years, died in 2010 at the age of 30.

Chuan Chuan used to hug Gu when she appeared every morning. But as an old giant panda, he was suffering from senility and organ deterioration in his later years. His appetite diminished, and he couldn't chew bamboo leaves because of poor teeth.

Gu would slice steamed cornbread and apples into thin pieces, and pick the freshest, most tender bamboo leaves for the panda. Then she fed him, piece by piece, which could take hours.

"When he died, I cried for many days," Gu said, wiping a tear from her eye. "I miss him very much."

Gu gives nicknames to animals in her care. One red panda is called Da Bai, or Baymax, an inflatable robot in "Big Hero 6," because of his mild temperament. The wolf is called Lao Gan, or Old Liver, because his liver isn't very healthy. Zookeepers learn to recognize each animal, no matter how similar they look, based on their behavior and features, Gu said.

"You You, a red panda, is very nimble and is in a rebellious period, while female Cheng Cheng does not like to move about much and prefers to rest in the trees," said Gu.

Gu chats with the animals as if they were neighborhood friends. As panda Pang Pang watched Gu wiping clean the glass of her enclosure, she nattered away in Shanghai dialect, asking her how her apples tasted that day and what she's thinking about.

"It may sound ridiculous, but I believe the animals sometimes understand what I am saying," Gu said. "The facial expression of animals is very rich. They smile and they show fear. Through careful observation, I know all their joy, sorrow and anger."

It took Gu two months to establish trust with the red pandas when they first arrived. At first, they hid in a corner when she appeared. Now, when she calls them, they come quickly.

"The way you treat animals is the way they treat you," she explained.

The arrival of the South American giant anteaters last year required staff to learn about an animal the zoo had never raised in the past. The animals were nicknamed Lai Lai and Fu Fu, meaning "good luck is coming" in Chinese. "When they first arrived, they feared us, and we were also afraid of them because we had never seen such animals before," Gu said. "Now, they are very friendly with me."

Support from family has enabled Gu to handle her career so ably. Her husband, who does a lot of the housework, understands when she's too tired to talk or go out after a strenuous day at work.

In two years, Gu will retire, but that won't end her trips to the zoo. She said she plans to visit every day, and may even plan a trip to the Ya'an Giant Panda Reserve in Sichuan Province to visit two giant pandas there that she once raised.
The average income of Chinese women is 22 percent lower than that of men, according to a report based on a sampling survey among labor forces of different industries and age groups in 31 Chinese provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

The 2018 Report on the Current Situation of Chinese Women in the Workplace was released at the Summit on Chinese Female Leadership in Beijing on March 6. The survey, conducted during the first two months of 2018, is sponsored by UN Women and Zhaopin.com, a Chinese job search website.

The report findings show that the income disparity correlates with a lesser presence of women in management posts. Chinese women are found in around 15 percent more basic posts compared to men, while men take up a significantly higher proportion than women do in management positions, according to the report.

The report suggests that the biggest obstacle for women to gain promotions at the workplace is the loss of opportunities due to maternity leaves, which is also the most difficult issue to address.

Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin.com, said in his introduction of the report that because of maternity leaves, women enjoy a relatively shorter period of golden years for career development compared to men.

However, Guo said that data suggests positive changes have been taking place. A similar survey conducted by Zhaopin.com in 2017 showed an income gap of around 30 percent between women and men. Guo added that the trend has continued from previous years.

Entrepreneur Yang Ning said he has witnessed the healthy trend in the increasing presence of women in management posts, especially the increasing number of Chinese women who started up their own companies.

"I only knew a few female CEOs who started up their own companies in 1999, but now, CEOs of many AI, AR, IOT companies are female as far as I know, like the ImageNet," Yang said.

Guo said women should continue to build on the momentum and break through glass ceilings, echoing the report that also calls for companies and the society to work together.

The report lists a number of suggestions for securing women's rights in the workplace.

To address the obstacles brought by maternity leaves, the report calls for companies to provide benefits that are more considerate to pregnant women and parents of newborns, such as installing baby-feeding rooms and providing paternity leave to fathers.

Julie Broussard, country program manager for the UN Women China Office, said at the summit that she hopes the annual event, now in its third year, can enhance public awareness of gender equality, and help to create a fair environment and promote equal opportunities for women's career development.

Broussard also acknowledged the role of women from a broad perspective of economic growth and sustainable development.

She said that research has proven that women's increasing presence in leadership roles has a positive correlation with the growth of gross domestic product (GDP), and that if the gender inequality at the workplace decreased by 25 percent by 2025, China's GDP could increase by US$2.5 trillion, and the worlds GDP could increase by US$5.3 trillion.

Broussard added that elevating more women to leadership positions is important to both the U.N.s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the world's economy.
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Iran's missile production has increased three-fold over the past years, said a senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Wednesday.

The Commander of the Aerospace Division of the IRGC Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that the enemy's attempts to hinder the progress of Iran's defense capabilities have been in vain.

"Despite the hostilities by the enemies, the pace of defense development in the country has increased," Hajizadeh said.

Besides, the institutions of the Islamic establishments, including the government and the parliament, are united against pressures from the West regarding the missile issue, he said.

Hence, "our missile production has increased three-fold over the past years," he added.

The Iranian commander criticized what he called the "U.S. double standards" over the arms programs, saying that while the United States boosts its atomic weapons on a daily basis, it pressed Iran to give up defensive missile program.

He said that the Islamic republic will resist the enmity of Washington which "has opened a front against us."

Pushed by the U.S., Europe has stepped up its pressure on Iran to start negotiations on the country's developing missile program.

Iran has reiterated that its military forces will continue boosting the country's defense capabilities and deterrent power.
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The U.S. State Department announced Tuesday it has imposed sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over its alleged killing of top leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother with what authorities said was a nerve agent last year in Malaysia.

The United States determined on Feb. 22 that Pyongyang "used the chemical warfare agent VX to assassinate Kim Jong Nam, in the Kuala Lumpur airport," said Heather Nauert, the U.S. State Department spokesperson, in a statement.

Nauert said the determination was made under the U.S. Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991.

Effective since Monday after the finding was formally published, the sanctions build on existing U.S. sanctions to curb the DPRK's missile and nuclear weapons programs and restrict U.S. foreign aid and financial and military assistance, according to media reports.

That aid and assistance by the United States, however, never went to the DPRK, so the sanctions, which came on the same day when Kim Jong Un said was willing to talk to Washington and engage in denuclearization, were largely seen as symbolic.

A DPRK man was killed in the Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia, on Feb. 13, 2017. Malaysian police later confirmed that the victim, who was killed by VX nerve agent, a lethal chemical weapon, was Kim Jong Nam.
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China has donated mobility aids to a Syrian hospital in Damascus, as part of its ongoing humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country, the Chinese embassy said Wednesday.



The recent donation included 100 wheelchairs, 100 walkers and 200 pairs of crutches delivered to the Assad University Hospital, one of the biggest government-run medical facilities in Damascus, the embassy said.

It is the latest in a series of medical aid supplies to Syria provided by China, which last month funded the renovation of the emergency department of the al-Muwasat University Hospital in Damascus.

During the delivery ceremony held on Wednesday, China's Ambassador to Syria Qi Qianjin underlined the Chinese government's commitment to delivering more aid to the Syrian people and government in 2018.

"We want this aid to mitigate the suffering of the Syrian people, and we will continue to implement projects to deliver humanitarian and economic aid this year to the Syrian people," the Chinese envoy said.

Jaber Ibrahim, head of the Assad University Hospital, said he was appreciative of the help offered by China.

"In the Assad University Hospital, we are satisfied with all the help we get from friendly countries," he said.

In January 2017, the Chinese government donated US$1 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) to fund a humanitarian project addressing the health issue of Syrians.

The project included providing health care services for Syrian refugees and improving primary health care and outreaching health services in Syria.
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. [Photo/China.org.cn]

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of China's 13th National People's Congress (NPC), the country's national legislature, in Beijing on Thursday.

He started by highlighting four international events which will be hosted by China in 2018: The Boao Forum for Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Qingdao summit, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the first China International Import Expo.

On Korean Peninsula issues

Wang Yi said China's "suspension for suspension" proposal on Korean Peninsula issues is the right prescription for the problem and has created the basic conditions for the improvement in inter-Korean relations.

On Xi's diplomacy

President Xi Jinping, as the chief architect of China's major-country diplomacy, has been personally involved in planning and conducting "brilliant" head-of-state diplomacy, Wang Yi said.

Xi will host the four major diplomatic events in China, and will attend the BRICS Summit in South Africa, the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Papua New Guinea and the G20 Summit in Argentina this year, Wang said.

On China-U.S. relations

China-U.S. relations have gone through a lot in recent decades and there can be no alternative to the policies of dialogue and cooperation, Wang made the remark at the press conference.

"History teaches that a trade war is never the right solution, particularly in a globalized world" Wang said, saying China will make a justified and necessary response in the event of a trade war.

On China-Russia relations

China has great confidence in its relationship with Russia, but there is always room to make ties even better, Wang said.

On China-Africa cooperation

China will step up mediation in African flashpoints and will boost cooperation with African countries on strategic threats such as terrorism and piracy, Wang said.

Africa is an integral part of the efforts to build a community with shared future for mankind, he said.

On China-ASEAN cooperation

Noting this year marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the strategic partnership between China and the ASEAN, Wang said China looks to build a closer community with a shared future with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"Over the last 15 years, China-ASEAN cooperation has yielded fruitful results. For nine consecutive years, China has been ASEAN's largest trade partner. Last year, the trade volume between the two reached US$500 billion," Wang said.

China will continue to upgrade its strategic partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and broaden cooperation with the bloc in more projects, the foreign minister added.
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Americans' favorable views of China jumped above 50 percent for the first time in almost three decades, U.S. public opinion polls conductor Gallup said.

Gallup reported Tuesday that China's positive rating reached 53 percent, the third time in the poll's four-decade record that a majority of U.S. adults have a positive view of the Asian country.

Views toward China differ significantly by age, Gallup said, with 67 percent of people aged 18-34 rating positively, compared with favorable ratings of 54 percent from people aged 35-54, and 39 percent from those above 55.

Democrats have a more favorable view than Republicans, as 59 percent of Democrats held a favorable view compared with 42 percent of Republicans in the past two years.

The previous two high ratings occurred in 1979, with 64 percent of people having a favorable view when the United States established diplomatic relations with China, and in early 1989, with a positive rating of 72 percent when former U.S. President George H. W. Bush visited the country.




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Former Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter are in a coma after exposure to a suspected nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury, local media Sky News reported on Wednesday.

Skeipal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping center on Monday and still in a coma. They were believed to be hurt by a highly toxic chemical, according to Mark Rowley, an assistant commissioner who heads a counter-terrorism policing unit.

The Russian Embassy in Britain made a statement on Wednesday saying that Russia still has not received any further information on the incident from Britain, which is "rather worrying."

The statement also said that British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's recent speech is strongly anti-Russian and "looks more like an attempt to send the investigation upon a political track."

Johnson made a speech earlier this week, saying Britain "will respond robustly "if the attack is found to be the result of hostile activity by another government."

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no information on the cause of the incident and that Moscow was open to cooperation.

Skripal, now 66, was sentenced in Russia in 2006 to 13 years in prison for cooperating with the British Secret Intelligence Service MI-6 and releasing names of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe. In 2010, Skripal was pardoned by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and then moved to Britain.
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Other countries will not be able to create a rival to Russia's Iskander-M mobile short-range ballistic missile systems before 2025, a Russian military official said Wednesday.

"According to the forecasts of the developers, the creation of its analogue by foreign states will not be earlier than in 2025," Russian Ground Force Commander-in-Chief Oleg Salyukov said in an interview with Krasnaya Zvezda, literally Red Star, the official newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The rearmament of the Russian missile formations with Iskander-M missile systems continues as scheduled, said Salyukov.

The Iskander-M, also known as SS-26 Stone, is a highly mobile ballistic missile system capable of hitting targets at a range of up to 500 km with several conventional warhead options weighing between 480 to 700 kg. It can also be capped with a nuclear warhead.

The system is designed to engage moving and stationary targets such as critical infrastructure facilities, missile and long-range artillery systems, air and anti-missile defense weapons, as well as command and communication posts.

The Iskander-M is set to replace the Soviet-made Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles, which were referred to by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as SS-21 Scarab B.

It was reported that Russia's missile and artillery forces will be fully equipped with the Iskander-M missile systems by 2020.
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Russia on Wednesday called the recent U.S. sanctions on Pyongyang over its alleged assassination of top leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother "illegitimate."





Russia believes that sanctions should not bypass the United Nations Security Council, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.





The U.S. State Department announced Tuesday that it has imposed sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for the alleged killing of Kim Jong Nam with a nerve agent in Malaysia last year.





The new U.S. sanctions came after the DPRK showed a willingness to hold denuclearization talks with the United States and agreed to a third summit meeting with South Korea next month.





Zakharova said Russia welcomes the positive moves in intra-Korean dialogue.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea's mountainous Southern Highlands on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, an official said, a week after a larger quake flattened villages and killed at least 55 people.

Wednesday's quake was the most severe of a series of aftershocks that have rattled the resource-rich region, about 600 kilometers northwest of the capital Port Moresby.

William Bando, the administrator of Hela Province, said initial reports put the death toll from the aftershock at 18.

"It appears Hides was hardest hit. We haven't heard about potential casualties there yet, but it is a big village with many people," he added.

Southern Highlands Governor William Powi said people were feeling traumatized from the disaster and ongoing aftershocks.

It was the strongest shake since the Feb 26 deadly magnitude 7.5 quake that destroyed homes, triggered landslides and halted work at four oil and gas fields.

The central region where last week's quake struck is remote and undeveloped, and assessments about the scale of the damage and injuries have been slow to filter out.

Powi said he didn't know if the latest aftershock had caused more injuries or damage, but he said it had added to the distress people were feeling.

"It is beyond the capacity of the provincial government to cope with the magnitude of destruction and devastation," he said. "Our people are traumatized and finding it difficult to cope."

Among the 55 dead in the powerful earthquake last week, Powi said 39 people died in his province after families were crushed by their collapsing homes or buried by landslides. He said death reports were still coming in from remote places, and he feared the death toll would rise to more than 100.

The US Geological Survey said Wednesday's quake was centered 112 kilometers southwest of Porgera at a shallow depth of 10 km. Ten aftershocks in the hours since ranged between magnitude 4.7 and 5.2.

Aid efforts hampered

Australia and New Zealand said on Wednesday they would increase aid to Papua New Guinea.

Australia will deploy three helicopters this week to deliver aid, while New Zealand will send a second military plane to distribute medical equipment, hygiene kits and tarpaulins.

But aid efforts are being hampered as rescue workers struggle to reach the highlands area as many roads are either badly damaged or blocked.

The International Red Cross warned the situation could deteriorate if heavy rains hit the region.

The Red Cross said its initial assessments indicate that as many as 143,000 people could have been affected, with an estimated 500 people injured and 17,000 people displaced from their homes.

Papua New Guinea is home to 7 million people on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, to the east of Indonesia. It sits on the Pacific's "Ring of Fire", the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes and volcanic activity occur.

AP - Reuters

(China Daily 03/08/2018 page11)
Robin Li seeks support for AI open platform at two sessions

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2018-03-06

Robin Li, chairman and CEO of China's internet giant Baidu and member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), gave press interviews in Beijing on March 2.

Li brought four proposals to this year's National Committee of the CPPCC, including national policies to encourage an artificial intelligence (AI) open platform, accelerating related legislation on autonomous driving, and offering preferential policies for companies in Xiong'an New Area.

Robin Li, chairman and CEO of China's internet giant Baidu, talks about his proposals to the 13th National Committee of CPPCC in Beijing on March 2. [Photo/bjnews.com.cn]

Li said, "It's my second time to attend the National Committee of the CPPCC and in past five years my proposals mainly focused on some specific questions. And in the next five years I will find topics in fields other than IT and the internet."

Li believes that the impact of open platforms will grow bigger and bigger in the AI era and he hopes that the country will encourage more companies to open up the technologies through policy guidance. "It would be a good thing to enhance China's AI technology capabilities and its applications in other industries."

Robin Li thought that the infrastructure for the domestic autopilot industry is not yet perfect.

Robin Li attends a meeting of the CPPCC National Committee annual session in 2017. [Photo/bjnews.com.cn]

"The US does unmanned operations in Arizona because of the relevant policies provided there. The United States already has more than 20 states that have introduced autonomous driving laws and regulations, but in China only Beijing and Shanghai have introduced the relevant test provisions. "

He also called for the government to give more preferential policies to the enterprises in Xiong'an New Area. "The success of Shenzhen and Pudong New Area is still largely related to national policies and I hope that Xiong'an will have more flexibility on personal income tax and corporate income tax."
Youve heard the buzz: A Wrinkle in Time, based on the classic childrens book by Madeleine LEngle (19182007), hits theaters this week as a $100 million Disney movie.

A lot more than money is riding on the films success. Not only is the sci-fi novel beloved by millions of readerssince winning the 1963 Newbery Medal, it has sold upwards of 16 million copiesbut its author was one of the most adored writers of Christian faith in recent history.

As Ive learned while writing her spiritual biography (A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine LEngle, which releases in August), her fans among millennials and my own Generation X, in particular, are as vast as the cosmos she so loved. For many who struggle with faith and doubt, LEngle has become a kind of patron saint for the wavering, the wondering, and the wounded.

No pressure, Hollywood.

This new adaptation of Wrinkle, directed by the irrepressible Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th, Queen Sugar), stars no less than Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and Chris Pine. Frozens Jennifer Lee adapted the storyline for the screen, and along the way the main characters have been creatively recast as a multiracial family. DuVernay herself is the first female director of color to oversee a budget this size.

Newcomer Storm Reid plays Meg Murry, the storys teen protagonist, who is sent by a triad of angelic beings (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) on a quest to find her missing scientist-father trapped behind a dark force in the universe. The Mrs trio teaches Meg and her companions how to fold, or wrinkle, the space-time continuum so they can skip from galaxy to galaxy, planet to planeta concept called tessering.

I think you have to prepare yourself that the movie will look different than the book, producer Catherine Hand told me. I hope people who love the book dont just focus on the trees and not see the forest. Hand first sat down with LEngle in 1979 to discuss bringing the story to the big screen and now, nearly 40 years later, is seeing her dream become reality. The movie is going to look different because it had to look different, Hand explained. Too many filmmakers, writers, directors, all sorts of creative talent have been influenced by Wrinkle for 50 years. Some of the visuals that we hold dear in Wrinkle weve already seen on film. We had to take the essence of the emotional storye.g., why did this happen in the book?and explore how to give it a new look but with the same meaning.

The question many are wondering is whether the essence and meaning will include the spiritual themes that were vital to LEngles Christian faith.

Asking Cosmic Questions

During the 1950s, as a 30-something transplant from New York City to rural Connecticut, LEngle struggled to balance writing, child-rearing, and small-town life. She also wrestled with what she called cosmic questions: Does God exist? Why are we here? Do we exist after death? Well-meaning pastors encouraged her to read German theologians (she rarely ever named which ones, exactly, although philosopher Immanuel Kant is a strong contender). But she found no solace there. Such theology, for LEngle, emphasized a limited God definable by human categories, a concept wholly at odds with the awe-inspiring, star-strewn universe she saw at night while walking her dogs.

By contrast, it was the wonder and humility of scientists, especially theoretical physicists like Max Planck and Albert Einstein, who eventually convinced her to become a Christian. If the Creator of a vast and surprising cosmos could love this small planet enough to become one of us, thendespite her ongoing questionsthat was a faith worth clinging to. As LEngle said in a 1979 interview with Christianity Today, I believe that we can understand cosmic questions only through particulars. I can understand God only through one specific particular, the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth.

Thus, A Wrinkle in Time was my rebuttal to the German theologians, LEngle wrote in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (1980). Her protagonistangry, nerdy Meg Murry, in many ways a portrait of LEngle herself as a girlis unwilling and unable to conform to cultural expectations, to the usual categories by which we define human worth. By the end of her story, Meg must confront the source of the darkness thats at war with the light: a pulsing, disembodied brain that threatens to absorb everything into the pattern of itself. Its goal is to annihilate the created particularity of each unique thing, down to the smallest particle.

For anyone whos ever fallen asleep reading German theology (raises hand), this is a stirring concept. If faith can be reduced to an intellectual exercise, to mere agreement with certain principles and precepts, then all you have left is knowledge without agency, without mercy or compassion. All you have is a disembodied mind, out there in the universe, coldly detached from human suffering. And a thing without a body could never, ever love you the way God in Christ does.

Translating a Core Story

One could argue that Wrinkle is a core story in American literature: one of those seminal classics that takes on the status of myth. Myths essential nature is to articulate truths about the human experience that are universal, that are beyond mere human invention, pointing to a pattern of meaning that undergirds our existence. For literary-minded Christians like C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), myths offer partial glimpses of a foundational Story written by the Author of all authors, a Story that became historical fact in Jesus. Myths may not be about what literally happened, but they are most certainly about what happens: birth, joy, passion, longing, loss, death, redemption.

Megs journey to fight not only the darkness out there but to fight it within herself is one such story. Indeed, I would argue that Wrinkle qualifies as mythopoeic: a term Lewis and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) used to describe a created thing that is somehow more than itself, whose spiritual and theological underpinnings are able to transcend the original storyteller and context.

Lisa Ann Cockrel, director of Calvin Colleges Festival of Faith and Writing, was a college student when she saw Wrinkle performed as a stage play at the Lifeline Theatre on Chicagos North Side. It was my first really powerful, personal engagement with Madeleines work, she said. I cant even describe it to you, the stagecraft of how they managed to pull off a tesser. It was magic, magic, from what I can tell. Just one example of how the truly mythopoeic can transcend even the medium by which it comes to us, whether childrens book, stage performance, opera, graphic novel, or, one hopes, a blockbuster movie.

During a Q&A at the 1996 writing festival, LEngle was asked about a possible film version of Wrinkle. She claimed she had told Catherine Hand, I cant sign the average Hollywood contract because I cannot sign that clause giving the producer freedom to change character and theme. LEngle explained that she eventually got the clause reversed, but the contract also included language granting the producers the rights to the movie in perpetuity throughout the universe. So, she said, she took a red pen and made an asterisk, noting, With the exception of Sagittarius and the Andromeda Galaxy. As the festival audience erupted in laughter, LEngle joked, They had a serious meeting of their lawyers before they would accept this, in case I knew something they didnt know.

Then, in a more earnest tone, she continued: I would like it to be made into a movie, but a good movie, not a bad one. I believe my books, and so I cant sign that clause. And Id rather not have them done than have them come out and say something Im not saying, which is very easy in the world of Hollywood.

Only after various fits and starts, a low-budget, made-for-TV movie finally aired in 2004 that was panned by reviewers for its clunky special effects and slow pace. It also notably left out both a key biblical text (John 1:5) and a direct reference to Jesus that together distill a vital spiritual theme in the book: the source of the light by which the darkness is overcome is not we ourselvesthough were invited to join it. Yes, Jesus told his followers you are the light of the world (Matt. 5:14), but only because they participate in the light of Christ that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5). (For the record, this particular viewer wept openly when Mrs. Whatsit, before taking leave of the Murrys in the final scene, told Meg, Well done. Three out of five stars.) But anyone who loves the book was left wanting more.

Despite ongoing obstacles, Hand didnt give up her quest to bring the film to the silver screen. Its a big story, after allgalaxy-jumping is no trifle and deserves big effects. But its themes are also, as Hand is well aware, cosmic. My curiosity about a spiritual life absolutely was one of the driving forces behind why I did what I did for 30 years, she told me. When I was a young girl, my mother said, I used to wake her up in the morning around five to make sure we werent late for church. So there mustve been something in me that was always drawn to faith. She went on to say, I think I had an understanding of what God was from a 10-year-old point of view, which deepened when I got to know Madeleine, who expanded my views.

The two developed a friendship over the decades, one that Hand treasures. There is no one on this planet that loves A Wrinkle in Time more than I, she said. However, we had to make a movie of the book, which meant we had to rethink the story. Jennifer Lee, Ava DuVernay, the creative team at Disney, and Jim Whitaker, the other producer, were essential in finding a fresh approach to the material. We all loved the themes, the charactersthe essence of the story. And I hope audiences will agree that we stayed true to that essence.

Entertaining Possibilities

Of course, insert Oprah into any story, and it will mean whatever Oprah wants it to mean. But does it retain its mythopoeic nature as a story with theological underpinnings? And does that matter?

When it was announced that Ava DuVernay was going to do the adaptation, I was so excited, YA author Sara Zarr told me, because I felt that Selma [DuVernays film about the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama] had a really strong directorial point of view. And thats what you need when youre taking on a story thats so well known. Because if you dont have your own strong point of view and confidence in executing it, youre going to try to make it into something that everyone will like or approve of, maybe in a tepid way, and no one will criticize.

Zarrs own Story of a Girl was made into a television movie starring Kevin Bacon and Ryann Shane, and the process of watching her own book become film was a fascinating one. When Im writing a book, she said, I may or may not have an idea in my head of what a character looks like, and I may or may not do a decent job of describing that. Then the reader gets a hold of the book, and theyre recreating the image in their head, and its going to come together differently than in someone elses head. So when were reading a novel, were recreating a story. When it comes to a film adaptation, we have to go in realizing not every single person in the world sees or experiences things in the same way we do. And I think thats really cool.

Film critic and novelist Jeffrey Overstreet (Auralias Colors) agrees: I hope that theres still that sense of expansiveness in all the story means, he told me. Anytime you adapt a story like this from one medium to another, from one translation to another, youre going to end up entertaining possibilities that were just suggested in the original and thus also inevitably minimizing things that are emphasized in the original. Thats just the nature of adaptation. Its sort of like an illustrated manuscript among many illustrated versions of the same thing.

Zarr added, If an adaptation is not how they imagined it, fans can feel its a defilement of the original thing. But the original thing will always still exist. And its not going away anytime soon: As of this writing, LEngles book is sitting at number one on Amazons current bestsellers list.

Madeleine would want us to go to the movie with an open mind and a willing heart, Hand told me, because thats how she saw the universe.

It remains to be seen whether the film will qualify as mythopoeic, theologically speaking. It may not address all our cosmic questions. But it can still be darn good fun.

Sarah Arthur is the author of a dozen books about the intersection of faith and literature, including the forthcoming A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine LEngle (Zondervan).
C. J. Mahaney announced today that he will back out of next months Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference to keep the controversy over Sovereign Grace Churches (SGC) away from the event.

Given the recent, renewed controversy surrounding Sovereign Grace Churches and me individually, I have decided to withdraw from the 2018 T4G conference, Mahaney wrote.

Over the past several weeks, Rachael Denhollander, the former gymnast whose Larry Nassar testimony went viral, has used her platform to address abuse in the church, particularly years-old allegations of abuse at Covenant Life Church, where Mahaneythe former president of Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM)had served as senior pastor.

Though the 2012 case against SGM was dismissed in court, Denhollander has repeatedly challenged the church networks claims, most recently in a 7,800-word statement posted on Facebook last Thursday.

Currently the pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, Mahaney has continued to state that he is innocent of the claims made against him and that the ongoing characterizations of Sovereign Grace are untrue.

I categorically reject the suggestion that I have ever conspired to cover up sexual abuse or other wrong-doing, he wrote on Wednesday.

Mahaney did not participate in the 2014 T4G conference due to the lawsuits against the ministry at that time, and he opted to once again step away from the event he has put on for over a decade with fellow Reformed leaders Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, and Albert Mohler.

This conference exists to serve pastors with the gospel and exalt the Lord Jesus. I want to do all I can to promote that purpose, his statement said. Mark, Lig, Al and the other speakers should also be able to devote themselves to that purpose without the distraction of having to defend me or answer questions about Sovereign Grace Churches.

The sold-out conference is scheduled to take place April 1113 in Louisville, Kentucky, and will be livestreamed for free. Mahaney had been scheduled to offer a plenary talk at the conference, but now the title of his remarks has been replaced with a link to his withdrawal letter.

I do not want this wonderful conference to become a context where questions about me or Sovereign Grace distract from the exaltation of Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2), he stated.

Denhollander said she was deeply grieved by Mahaneys announcement that he would be stepping away. She stated that if SGM has sufficiently shown the allegations to be false, Mahaneys decision would be unnecessary, and if the allegation were true, it wouldnt be a solution to the bigger problem.

As a result of Denhollanders claims in a series of interviews and Facebook posts, SGC has addressed the matter with more detail than ever before. Its leadership team responded to allegations of cover-ups by pastors by pointing to the results of the 2012 case and emphasizing that abuse has not been widespread among its churches and that no policy directed leaders to not report abuse.

Current SGC leadership said characterizations including hers are ultimately uninformed, irresponsible, and have severely damaged the reputations of innocent pastors and churches.

Denhollander has trained as an attorney and spent seven years looking into the SGM case, partially a result of seeing her former congregation in Louisville defend and help restore Mahaney in its aftermath. She has specifically called for SGC to undergo a thorough, independent third-party investigation.

When it is not important enough to listen, to find out the facts, to require accountability and transparency, that sends a message about how much Reformed evangelicals care about sexual assault, the 33-year-old wrote last week. It sends a message about what the gospel says about sexual assault.

Covenant Life Church no longer belongs to SGC, so current ministry leaders have not had full access to the investigations commissioned by that congregation, SGC wrote.

A statement posted in mid-February defends the network against Denhollanders earlier claims while emphasizing its growing awareness around abuse:

With respect to caring for victims, we readily acknowledge that we have learned much over the last 30+ years. There have been times when we simply did not do it well. We do not believe these instances were common, and they were by no means ill-intentioned. But in hindsight, we regret this and wish that we had done it better.

The leaders concluded, For everyone reading this, we hope you realize that SGC, its pastors, and its members share a hatred of the sin of sexual abuse and a commitment to protecting against it.
Creation Care Gathering Aims to Close Gap Between Evangelism and Environmentalism Frontier Ventures conference to address 'overlooked need' for Evangelicals' involvement in taking better care of the planet



Contact: Barbara Weldon,

540-905-2558



PASADENA, Calif., March 7, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- A gathering of missions leaders aims to help close the long-standing gap between evangelism and environmentalism by calling the church to greater involvement in caring for the planet. Clean air, health, environmental, ethnic and economic justice in polluted environments are some of the topics evangelicals will be discussing.



Bringing the two important emphases together April 6-7 will have two benefits, organizers say: In striving for the wholeness caring for creation brings, God will be honored and people will be drawn to the good news of Jesus.



The two-day event is attracting university professors and students, as well as environmentalists, missionaries, organizational leaders, and American pastors. The Creation Care at the Frontiers of Mission conference (www.creationcaremissions.org) is being held in collaboration with William Carey International University (www.WCIU.edu), and Care of Creation (careofcreation.net), and will be hosted by Frontier Ventures (www.frontierventures.org) on WCIU's Pasadena, Calif., campus.



"With this conference we hope to help awaken evangelicals to the opportunities Creation Care as Mission offers," said Paul Dzubinski, director of innovation for Frontier Ventures. "Caring for creation is our spiritual obligation. Coupling it with missions is an opportunity to share Jesus' love at the borders of world Christianity."



"Environmental stewardship has largely been overlooked in the missions world because we have tended to see missions as being focused primarily on people's spiritual needs," said Ed Brown, Care of Creation CEO. "However, as Christians, we are called not only to go into all the world with the gospel, but to care for the world God created."



Founded in 1976 as the U.S. Center for World Mission and renamed two years ago, Frontier Ventures has a long history of promoting critical thought and creative action in missions efforts among the world's unreached people groups.



The Creation Care at the Frontiers of Mission conference will feature presentations and workshops addressing environmental trends and issues, examples of missions projects that focus on environmental needs and concerns, and ideas for better creation care practices in American churches and overseas.



Keynote speakers will include leading Christian thinkers, such as Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and associate professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center; Ed Brown, director and ceo of Care of Creation and Lausanne Catalyst for Creation Care for the world missions Lausanne Movement; and Ruth Padilla DeBorst, provost of the Centro de Estudios Teologicos Interdisciplinarios in Costa Rica.



Other speakers will include Peter Harris, co-founder of A Rocha International, based in London, England, which promotes community-based conservation projects, and Lowell Bliss founder of Eden Vigil.



"Even when mission organizations began to take poverty and problems like HIV/Aids seriously, they often failed to understand that many of the underlying causes of things like poverty are environmental in nature," said Brown.



"We want to explore how a biblical understanding of the gospel leads to a holistic approach to individuals and communities, and will both improve their lives and create multiple opportunities to share the love of Jesus with people who might otherwise not listen," he added.



More information about Creation Care at the Frontiers of Mission is available at www.creationcaremissions.org.



Frontier Ventures

Based in Pasadena, Calif., Frontier Ventures (www.frontierventures.org) promotes the cause of mission among the world's unreached people groups through research, education, and mobilization. Founded in 1976 as the U.S. Center for World Mission by the late missionary statesman, Dr. Ralph D. Winter, its subsidiary ministries include the acclaimed Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course.



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AKRON, Ohio - Soon visitors to Akron will be welcomed by four, large locally created 3-D sculptures positioned at strategic entrances to the city.

The initiative, launched by the city and ArtsNow, features two designs by artist John Comunale and two by Michael Marras. Both Akron artists have large-scale sculptures around Akron, and share a passion for their art and a commitment to repurposing "scrap" into striking sculptures.

The new welcome signs, which will be publicly revealed March 16, will replace current welcome signs at four of the city's highest traffic areas including:

875 Canton Road

620 West Ave. /Tallmadge Ave.

2602 West Market St.

Parcel 0218507 State Road

"These sculptures will leave a lasting impression on residents and visitors--that Akron is a vibrant community that takes pride in its diverse arts and culture scene," said Mayor Dan Horrigan in a news release. "Art isn't just 'a good thing if you can get it,' it is essential fuel for a diverse, vibrant and engaged citizenry.

ArtsNow Executive Director Nicole Mullet said Akron was made of creative innovation.

"And as we move into the future, we can now welcome a spirit of creativity and entrepreneurship with a physical reminder of our artful vibrancy and cultural uniqueness," she said in the release.

Comunale's previous work includes "The Catfish" near Northside Marketplace, the large metal arches downtown at the Ohio & Erie Canalway, and the cement sun bears at the Akron Zoo.

His mentee and fellow public art designer, Michael Marras, specializes in creating 2D and 3D mixed-media art out of discarded metals, like recycled and scrap steel. His art is featured on the exterior of Hazel Tree Design Studio as well as a commemorative sculpture for Leadership Akron honoring Judith A. Read in Cascade Lock Park.

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AKRON, Ohio - Stark State College Akron is putting the finishing touches on its new facility, set to open for classes this fall in the heart of Akron.

Designed to eventually house 5,000 students seeking associate degrees and certificates in 230 programs, Stark State Akron is in line to receive more than $3.4 million from Ohio's proposed capital budget.

About 1,000 students, the school's capacity, are currently enrolled at the college's temporary site at White Pond in West Akron. The entire operation is expected to move to the new site off Perkins Street within 12-18 months, said Stark State President Para Jones.

About $2.9 million of the state funds will go toward completing the top and bottom floors of the college. Science and health labs will be housed above while lower level labs will be equipped to give students hands-on experience in such areas as electrical and mechanical engineering, and computer numerical control (CNC) programming for precision machining.

The 60,000-square-foot facility also will offer 21 classrooms, advising and instructors' offices, a book store, study nooks, and a vending and lounging area.

Officials waited to complete the top and bottom floors to allow student demand to determine what educational tracks would be offered.

"The temporary location at White Pond, which has been operating for a year, gave us some ideas for programs of the greatest interest for our Akron students," Jones said. "We wanted to gauge the interest and the need in the community."

The college is situated at a high elevation off Perkins Street and in close proximity to Route 8, an ideal location that took months to find, Jones said.

"It all came down to proximate sufficient parking and that was a tall order for us" Jones said. "We're very delighted with the Perkins location and our 11-acre site."

The Knight Foundation will help the college create a sense of place by adding outdoor amenities and creating a walkable connection from the college into downtown. And, a few blocks south is the university, where most Stark State students who wish to continue their education will transfer.

"This offers students more opportunities and really facilitates that student experience," she said.

Stark State officials regularly meet with employers around the region, and watch state and national trends, to understand what fields are most in demand at any given time.

In healthcare alone, always a high demand field, Stark State offers 41 degrees and certificates. Currently state-tested nurse assistant, phlebotomy and dental hygienist are at the top of the list.

For Stark's dental hygienist program, started 24 years ago, the college received support from the Akron Dental Society, the GAR Foundation and individual dentists to construct the school's dental hygienist clinic.

"With the aging population especially in our region, we expect the demand to continue for these programs if not increase dramatically," Jones said.

Another high-demand field, ranking No. 2 nationally , is commercial truck driving, for which the state budget allocated $350,000.

Stark State worked with the city of Akron and Summit County to identify a site in East Akron that's appropriate for training students who want to earn their commercial driver's licenses.

The 217,000 square-foot property, a former lumber yard off Crosier Street, is large enough for semi-trucks and offers both gravel and paved surfaces. Eventually, the college will erect a building there for students to do classwork, she said. With the number of trucking firms in the region, the program is expected to draw students from across the region.

The state also allocated $200,000 for expansion of the Barberton Head Start program. Stark State offers degrees and certificates in early childhood education and has partnered for years with Head Start's parent organization, Akron Summit Community Action Inc.

Barberton is also the headquarters for the college's mobile welding unit, which houses 17 welding stations and will be making regular stops in Akron for training.

For student who want guidance in determining the right field to pursue for their interests, the college will offer career services, which includes resources on in-demand fields as well as access to career specialists.

For more information about Stark State College Akron or to apply, visit the website or call 330-494-6170, ext. 4670.

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BEREA, Ohio -- The Berea Board of Education took an official stand against gun violence at its March 6 meeting.

Board members passed unanimously a school safety resolution that will be sent to the Ohio General Assembly, Gov. John Kasich, President Donald Trump and Ohio's U.S. senators.

The resolution lists by national location "mass shooting incidents involving assault style weapons and high-volume magazines once banned by the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013."

The board resolution asks officials to fund and enact legislation to enhance mental health and substance abuse services; enable schools to have the means to employ police as school resource officers; provide appropriate training for school personnel when an active shooter situation arises; and to preserve "the balance between the right to own firearms and the protection of students and school employees."

The school board urges the Ohio General Assembly to enact immediately a law similar to the 2013 assault weapons ban.

"School safety has been on all of our minds very tragically for the past three weeks," said Board President Ana Chapman. "We do as much as we can. We need help in other areas, as do most school districts."

Opposition to Department of Learning and Achievement

Board members later passed unanimously a separate resolution that opposes Ohio House Bill 512, which would consolidate the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Department of Higher Education and the Governor's Office of Workforce Transformation into a new Department of Learning and Achievement.

The resolution indicates that the bill "transfers nearly all the duties and authority of the State Board of Education and the superintendent of public instruction to the new state agency."

"This legislation creates an environment in which the unique needs of students, educators, parents and school districts will be lost within an expanded bureaucracy," the resolution reads, adding that decisions about state funding and other critical topics "will be made by politically appointed, unelected staff with little to no accountability."

"This is an idea that just has not been well thought through," Superintendent Mike Sheppard said about of the bill. "There is a lack of checks and balances. When you have the ability for a governor to be able to appoint somebody, you know you're going to have changes and adjustments based on maybe political viewpoints. We've had enough adjustments over the past seven years."
BEREA, Ohio -- Theft, Front Street: A Berea man, 33, was arrested at about 4:45 p.m. March 2 after he stole a bottle of Stoli Crushed Pineapple Vodka from Valero, 827 Front.

A Valero worker called police after seeing the man steal the vodka. When police arrived, the worker told them the man had just crossed the street and was walking on Riveredge Parkway.

Police drove to Riveredge and stopped the man, who said he had purchased a can of Red Bull energy drink at Valero and didn't have any other merchandise. Officers searched the man and found the vodka in his pants.

Animal noises, Paddock Circle: A Paddock resident called police at about 4:55 p.m. March 7 regarding a dog that had been outside barking all day.

When police arrived, the dog was still barking in the back yard of a home. Police knocked on the door to the home, but no one answered. Officers looked through a fence that kept the dog in the back yard and noticed the animal did not have food, water or shelter.

Police called the dog's owner, who said the animal was an "outside dog" and he didn't see a problem leaving the dog outside all day. Police told the man it was a problem. The man said he would arrive home at about 6:30 p.m. to take care of the situation.

One neighbor didn't believe officers should wait that long to take action and asked to speak to a police sergeant. The city's animal control officer will follow up.

Suspicion, Front Street-Second Avenue: Someone called police at about 9:35 a.m. March 5 after finding two bicycles abandoned in a grassy field at Front and Second.

The caller believed the bikes might have been stolen. Officers took the bikes to the police station and entered them into evidence.

To comment on this story, please visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- FirstEnergy's congressional supporters are pressing the Trump administration to intervene and save the company's coal and nuclear power plants -- even as the energy corporation talks of restructuring itself as a fully regulated power delivery company without competitive power plants.

The effort began a little over two weeks ago when some Ohio members of Congress sent letters to the president and to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Plain Dealer has obtained copies of those letters, which while separate both argue that large old power plants cannot be allowed to disappear just because they cannot compete in today's competitive wholesale markets.

This time the argument is more than economics, jobs or fuel diversity which the coal industry and FirstEnergy relied on last fall when they convinced President Trump to ask the U.S. Department of Energy to invoke emergency powers to keep the old uncompetitive power plants operating, though ultimately without success.

The new arguments for federal intervention are about national security. Also, one argument links the nation's current competitive edge in nuclear weapons to the health of its commercial atomic energy industry.

FirstEnergy insists it has not been involved in either of these new lobbying campaigns.

"We appreciate their efforts," said spokesman Todd Schneider. "We agree with the facts outlined in the letters. But we did not write either letter."

In fact, the congressional efforts have occurred as the company prepares for closing its power plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania or selling them off, probably in a bankruptcy proceeding, and becoming a delivery-only company with a predictable income. The company in January accepted $2.5 billion from hedge funds whose representatives now confer with FirstEnergy executives about restructuring.

If successful, the two last-minute congressional efforts could help FirstEnergy by making its power plants more attractive to buyers by creating new funding for its three remaining large coal plants on the Ohio River and three nuclear plants, including Davis-Besse in Ottawa County and Perry in Lake County and Beaver Valley near Pittsburgh.

The argument that nuclear power plants are important to nuclear defense is one developed by four northern Ohio congressional members -- Democrats Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, Marcia Fudge of Warrensville Heights and Tim Ryan of Youngstown, along with Republican David Joyce of Bainbridge.

They laid out an outline of their thinking in a Feb. 15 letter to FERC.

"Our commercial nuclear energy industry and the United States' nuclear weapons complex complement each other...," they argued.

"Without a commitment to nuclear power, nuclear technology development will decline and the nation's technical advantage in this sector will rapidly erode.

"We ask that you work with Ohio and other states with nuclear power facilities in financial distress to harmonize federal and state policies affecting the design of organized electricity markets,"

"We believe that these markets should appropriately value attributes including reliability, supply diversity, greenhouse gas omissions, and relative national security importance."

FERC has not yet responded to the letter.

Kaptur said she initiated the nuclear argument.

"I led this bipartisan letter with a deep concern for the potential job losses in our communities and because the nuclear industry is vital to national security," she wrote in an email in response to questions about her position.

"These issues -- coupled with the emissions-free energy production the plants provide -- support America's nuclear capacity which is of critical importance to Ohio and our nation."

Rep. Marcia Fudge agreed with Kaptur's national security argument and also stressed jobs and the economic impact of large nuclear plants.

"Nuclear energy is not only a national security issue, but has economic implications for communities across the nation, including Ohio," she responded. "I will always advocate for policies that support good-paying jobs for Ohioans, support America's energy independence, and promote cleaner energy options."

In an interview, Rep. Joyce, whose congressional district includes Lake County and the Perry plant, said FirstEnergy did not request the letter.

His interest in keeping the nuclear plants open is a collaborative effort among his congressional colleagues and his constituents, he said.

"The potential loss of revenue and jobs and the potential for economic development are the things that are important to me," he said.

Joyce was also one of 20 members of Congress, including six others from Ohio, who signed a Feb. 21

urging him to direct Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to invoke emergency powers under the Federal Power Act in order to keep the old plants operating as vital to national security.

On the same day, Feb. 21, Charles Jones, FirstEnergy's CEO, told Wall Street analysts during a public teleconference that he doubted the power plants would survive.

FirstEnergy's subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, owns the plants and is widely expected to seek bankruptcy protection before major debt payments are due in April. The subsidiary has a bond rating of "likely to default."

"It is common knowledge that we were very actively involved in a multitude of efforts at both the state and federal levels, to support our generation assets in a way that would have benefited our communities, employees, and FES creditors," Jones told analysts.

"I am personally disappointed that these endeavors haven't resulted in any meaningful legislative or regulatory support, given the importance of these plants to grid resiliency, reliable and affordable power, and the region's economy."

The letter to the President was organized by U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus, a Republican from suburban Pittsburgh about 35 miles from FirstEnergy's Beaver Valley nuclear power plant. His office had no immediate comment.

Other members of Ohio's GOP congressional delegation on the letter were Warren Davidson of Miami County in southwest Ohio, Bob Gibbs of Holmes County, Bill Johnson of Marietta, Jim Jordan of Champaign County, Robert Latta of Bowling Green and Steve Stivers of the Columbus area.

Thirteen other members of Congress from Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia Kentucky, Virginia and Indiana also signed the letter to the president. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and West Virginia's two U.S. senators were also signatories.

The letter re-hashed issues that last fall convinced the president to have Energy Secretary Perry ask the FERC to order managers of wholesale markets to find a way to subsidize the coal and nuclear plants unable to compete with gas turbines and wind. Customers would have seen higher rates to fund the subsidies had FERC not dismissed the idea.

The FERC tabled Perry's request in January and opened a new proceeding aimed at defining resiliency as well as developing new pricing mechanisms that do not ignore the stability that the old power plants may bring to the grid. Initial comments are due this week.

The essential argument then and now is that unlike modern ultra-efficient gas turbine plants, coal and nuclear plants have their fuel stored on-site, making them less vulnerable to fuel disruptions and therefore more "resilient," though not the least expensive.

"As a matter of both national and economic security, the electric grid must have the resiliency to respond to extreme circumstances," the February congressional letter argued.

The White House referred questions about the letter to the Department of Energy press office, which did not answer emails or a phone call seeking comment.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A former employee of the Geauga County Health District says the county's health commissioner, board members and the board's attorney retaliated against her for reporting what she saw as wrongdoing, and forced her resignation.

Rebecca Buddenberg, the health district's former fiscal coordinator, says in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that Commissioner Robert Weisdack and others took adverse actions against her when she spoke out on issues related to a contract and discriminatory pay practice that favored men.

Buddenberg, of Montville, says Weisdack awarded himself a no-bid contract for a tire removal project and performed the work along with two health district sanitarian workers. She also says he did not seek approval by the Geauga County Prosecutor's Office, as required when conflicts of interest may exist.

Buddenberg also complained to the health district board about discriminatory pay, alleging a man made more than a woman for the same work, according to the lawsuit and a news release sent by her attorneys at The Chandra Law Firm.

In response, lawsuit says Weisdack stopped talking to Buddenberg and spoke ill of her to her co-workers. He also changed her hours, requiring her to come into work an hour later, which forced her to stop taking college classes.

Buddenberg filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in February 2017, and Weisdack and board attorney James Budzik then charged her with a series of baseless infractions, according to the suit.

The board also eliminated her position and reassigned her to a clerical job. Her pay was also slashed nearly in half and she was suspended for three days, the suit says. She claims the move forced to resign.

The lawsuit, which names Weisdack, board members and Budzik as defendants, alleges that Buddenberg was retaliated against for exercising her free-speech rights.

She is asking for an unnamed amount in damages.

The secretary for the health commissioner referred a reporter to Kate Jacob at the Prosecutor's Office for comment. She did not immediately return a phone call.

Budzik also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Dan Polster.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Two women filed a federal lawsuit that claims a Euclid police officer assaulted them and violated their rights when one of them was arrested in March 2017.

Shanell Gist and Melissa Highsmith said officer Dan Ferritto and other officers barged into Gist's apartment on East 233rd Street and accused them of running away after they were outside looking at Highsmith's new car.

The lawsuit does not say why officers were there, though Ferritto's police report says officers received a complaint at the about two women drinking alcohol, arguing and using racial slurs in the apartment complex's parking lot.

After Highsmith demanded to know why the officers were in the apartment, Ferritto grabbed her by her collar, "body-slamming her on the concrete floor of Plaintiff Gist's apartment entrance," the lawsuit says. Highsmith's head smashed on the ground and the impact shattered a bottle of champagne she was holding, according to the suit.

Highsmith did not resist arrest, according to the suit. Feritto then noticed Gist's infant daughter in the living room, as well as a bottle of Hennessey. He called Children's Services over Gist's pleas to let her grandmother to take the child, but Ferritto did not oblige, the lawsuit says.

Gist was ticketed for child endangerment. Highsmith was arrested and charged with obstructing official business, resisting arrest and an open container violation.

The lawsuit says Ferritto and other officers were overheard talking about their body cameras and "conspiring to give a false, misleading, and incomplete version of the events to their superiors, prosecutors, and the public, in order to cover up their own misconduct." They agreed that none of their body cameras had been on, according to the suit.

When Ferritto brought Highsmith to jail, he told staff there to "have fun with this one, she's a drunk b---h," the lawsuit states.

Charges against both women were later dropped.

Claims in the lawsuit include unconstitutional search and seizure and malicious prosecution. It also says Euclid police has a pattern and practice of violating people's civil rights.

The women are asking for an unspecified amount in damages.

Police Lt. Mitch Houser said the department will not comment on pending litigation.

Ferritto's report says officers saw Gist pull her car into the apartment complex's parking lot. It says Highsmith got out of the car with a half-full champagne bottle.

The officer wrote that he yelled at the pair to stop but they did not follow his order. He used a knife to forcefully open the apartment building's door and, when he arrived at Gist's door, Ferritto "used my foot to force open the door," he wrote.

The officer did this "due to being in hot pursuit of Shanell and Melissa," he wrote. Ferritto told Highsmith she was under arrest, and Highsmith took a step back, the report states.

Ferritto grabbed Highsmith's shirt but she tried to pull away. He then "pulled Melissa by her shirt out of the apartment unit and on to the ground," the report states. Highsmith appeared very drunk and she never requested medical attention, the officer wrote, adding that she didn't appear to be injured.

The officer also said he called the Cuyahoga County Child Abuse Hotline after the incident regarding Gist's daughter.

Euclid police has faced public scrutiny in the past year, in large part because of a controversial video of a traffic stop in which patrolman Michael Amiott was seen hitting motorist Richard Hubbard III in August.

The city fired Amiott in October. Criminal investigators are looking into the incident.

Gist and Highsmith's lawsuit mentions that Ferritto was caught on police radio traffic in August saying "it wasn't supposed to be that much fun" following Hubbard's arrest.

Ferritto's comment was first reported in September by Fox 8. The officer received a written reprimand.

The case is assigned to Senior U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent.

Updated after receiving records from the city of Euclid.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section.
LYNDHURST, Ohio -- Driving under suspension, Richmond Road: At 2:35 p.m. March 1, police made a traffic stop of a woman who was stopped at a green light while talking on her cell phone.

It was found that the woman, 23, of Cleveland, was driving with a suspended license and was wanted on both Eastlake and Richmond Heights police warrants. The woman was arrested and turned over to Richmond Heights police.

Theft, Cedar Road: At 1:55 p.m. March 2, loss prevention at Giant Eagle, 25105 Cedar Road, reported that a woman who had been shoplifting was in custody.

The woman, 73, of Mayfield Heights, was not cooperative with loss prevention. She was cited for theft and issued a criminal trespass warning before being released. The amount of merchandise found on her person totaled $25.

Assist person, Cedar Road: At 11:20 a.m. March 2, a female Giant Eagle employee reported that a customer had become irate three days earlier and threw a stapler at her. The woman wasn't hurt.

Theft, Brainard Road: At 11:05 a.m. March 2, a woman residing at Kindred Transitional Care, 1575 Brainard Road, reported $300 was missing from her room.

Furnishing false information, Mayfield Road: At 9:45 a.m. March 2, a Columbus woman called Police Chief Rick Porrello's office to state that her cousin had used her ID on four Lyndhurst police reports concerning incidents in which the cousin was involved.

The cousin used the false ID on reports of burglary, receiving stolen property, an overdose and not having a driver's license while driving.

Suspicion, Eastover Road: At 8:35 a.m. March 2, a woman reported that a car she didn't recognize was parked on her street. Police spoke with the car's driver and found that she suspected her boyfriend of cheating on her and was there watching a house where she believed her boyfriend was present.

Police sent the woman on her way.

OVI, Mayfield Road: At 3 a.m. March 2, police came upon a car stopped in the road. Officers found a Euclid man, 41, asleep behind the wheel.

It was determined that the man was intoxicated. He was charged with OVI and his car was towed.

Noise complaint, Greens of Lyndhurst: At 9:45 a.m. March 1, a caller reported that a Kimble trash collection truck had been slamming containers while collecting garbage at 4:30 a.m.

Mayor Patrick Ward spoke with a Kimble representative who agreed to abide by the city's noise ordinance by adjusting collection hours.

Marijuana possession, Richmond Road: At 10:55 p.m. Feb. 28, police made a traffic stop on a car driven by a Richmond Heights woman, 27. The woman's car showed expired plates.

The woman was found to be in possession of marijuana. She was cited for the two offenses and released.

Aggravated menacing, Glenlyn Road: At 6:50 a.m. Feb. 28, the principal of Brush High School, 1875 Glenlyn Road, informed police that a message had been left in a boy's restroom stating that someone would be "shooting up" the school on March 2.

If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
MEDINA, Ohio -- Judge Dale Chase served on the bench of Medina Municipal Court for 30 years, hearing more than 500,000 cases -- 23,000 of them involving driving under the influence.

But that hectic workload doesn't hold a candle to retirement.

"I'm so busy, I don't know how I had time to work," said the judge, who retired at the end of 2017.

Judge Dale Chase, who recently retired after 30 years on the bench of Medina Municipal Court, is shown here on his horse, Maggie Mae. (Photo Courtesy of Dale Chase)

Chase was born and reared in Medina and graduated from Medina High School in 1968. After earning a Bachelor's Degree in International Studies at American University, he was determined to leave Medina and never come back.

While waiting to apply for the Foreign Service, he took the LSAT - a pre-law school aptitude test - and scored so well that he was offered a full ride to the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

While studying in the law library in 1973, he met his future wife, Barb, who was earning her Master's Degree in Library Science.

During his time in D.C., he volunteered in Sen. Ted Kennedy's office, where he opened mail, sometimes fetched the senator's soup at lunch time, and attended the ceremony for the dedication of Robert Kennedy's eternal flame in Arlington Cemetery.

In 1974, Chase attended a summer session at the University of Exeter, England, where he studied European Common Law. When he returned to the United States, he served as a law clerk for the firm that represented one of the Watergate defendants.

He and Barb married in 1974. He graduated from law school in 1975 and received an offer from John Oberholtzer to come to Medina and join his firm.

His intention to leave Medina forever flew out the window.

The firm practiced law as Oberholtzer, Filous, Chase and Young until Chase left to establish a solo firm in April 1985.

While practicing law, Chase was elected to the Medina City Schools Board of Education in 1977, when he was just 27 years old. He served on both the Medina and the Vocational school boards for 10 years.

He was first elected Municipal Court judge in 1988. Gary Werner was elected this past November to succeed him.

Since his retirement, Chase says: "I'm finding my way. I'm enjoying being a private citizen."

He decided against being a visiting judge; he thinks it's important to make a clean break.

"I'm learning how to regulate my time," he said.

Chase meets friends every morning at a local coffee shop. He works out with a personal trainer at the Medina Community Recreation Center five or six days a week. He listens to podcasts that keep him interested in an eclectic mix of history, current events, literature, and language.

He owns a horse - an 11-year-old Haflinger mare named Maggie May that he describes as a "stocky thing that can go anywhere."

One of the places they have gone for the past four years is fox hunting with the Chagrin Valley Hunt.

Chase started riding at age 60 when he decided, "A man ought to know how to ride a horse."

He was having so much fun that Barb decided to join him and bought her own horse.

When he's not pursuing his other interests, he works as an Uber driver.

"It's fun; I get to talk to people."

During one drive, a young woman commented that she had heard that Medina County judges were tough on drunken drivers. He told her, "I've heard that, too."

In 2012, he took a trip to South Africa, where he worked on an Elephant and Rhino Conservation project recording interactions among animals. The volunteer tourism program took place on a 40,000-acre game preserve. He plans to go back in 2019.

If all those activities don't occupy enough time, he's an avid reader of nonfiction and biographies and he follows the activities of his three children and his four grandsons. Daughter Martha is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Arizona, son Nick is the owner of a custom butcher shop in Fort Collins, Colorado, and daughter Elizabeth teaches social studies right here at Medina High School.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Emily McNeeley, one of two Cuyahoga County administrators named in a subpoena from corruption investigators, has exchanged dozens of emails with a county contractor that employs her spouse in contract procurement, records show.

Some of those emails between McNeeley and Westlake-based Hyland Software pertain to work the company is doing for the county, which began ramping up its reliance on Hyland software in 2016 under County IT Director Scot Rourke.

Rourke, the other administrator named in the subpoena, also exchanged emails with Hyland employees, but to a much lesser extent than McNeeley, the records show. One email from a Hyland manager on June 7, 2017, is addressed to Rourke and mentions the "updated proposal for the OCSS discovery project." OCSS stands for Office of Child Support Services.

The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office served the subpoena on the county earlier this year. Investigators have not publicly stated what they suspect. But their subpoena sought email exchanges that Rourke and McNeeley had with Hyland and with broadband provider OneCommunity, where Rourke worked for 10 years.

Along with the emails, the subpoena sought evidence that McNeeley and Rourke had electronic access to contracts with Hyland, OneCommunity and OneCommunity's offshoots since Jan. 1, 2016. Investigators also requested records of any ethics and legal opinions provided for Rourke and McNeeley "concerning their relationship" with Hyland and OneCommunity.

Rourke, who left OneCommunity in 2013, came to work for the county in December of 2015. McNeeley started with the county near the end of 2014, first as an assistant law director and later as the general counsel and director of special initiatives for the IT Department.

Both Rourke and McNeeley have been placed on paid administrative leave. They did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Cleveland.com used a public records request to obtain copies of hundreds of emails and other records named in the subpoena.

Those records show that McNeeley was included on emails related to Hyland Software on dates before and after the company was awarded county contracts. She was either the direct recipient or sender of some of the messages.

The Hyland-related emails raise questions without offering answers. Most of the messages had multiple recipients and lacked the context needed to suggest why investigators might be interested in them.

Here are some examples:

Emily McNeeley participated in email chains on a variety of subjects, including one that referred to a "hyland change order" and another exchange with Hyland officials regarding "Upgrade proposal - updated version."

An email sent on Oct. 23, 2017 and addressed directly to McNeeley and another county official lists as its subject, "Hyland Global Services: Migration Strategy Acceptance: CSEA Merge to CCIS." CSEA stands for Child Support Enforcement Agency, also known as the Office of Child Support Services. CCIS stand for Cuyahoga County Information Systems.

McNeeley and a second person received an email from an assistant project manager at Hyland on Oct. 25, 2017, with the subject, "Hyland Global Services: Migration Strategy Acceptance: CFS Merge to CCIS." CFS stands for Children and Family Services. A long chain of responses to the email culminate with a Nov. 30, 2017 message from a Hyland employee that includes draft documents.

The text of that message directly addresses "Marc" and "Mike," who are two county employees, and states, "Feel free to review and make comments or suggestions. Once we determine if the project is a new Statement of Work, or Change Order to an existing contract, I'll update some of the details. "

Another email, sent on Dec. 4, 2017 from a Hyland administrator to McNeeley and to Michael Young, the county's chief technology officer, states, "Here's the fully executed Change Order for the Upgrade. Please contact me or Lori if you have any questions."

The extent of Emily McNeeley's involvement with Hyland contracts is unclear from the records, although as an assistant law director she asked County Inspector General Mark Griffin if working directly on Hyland Software contracts was okay given that her spouse worked at Hyland, but not on county contracts.

Griffin determined McNeeley had a conflict and recommended another assistant law director be assigned to Hyland contracts. But Griffin also said McNeeley could work on Hyland assignments after contracts were approved.

McNeeley exchanged at least a half-dozen emails with her spouse, Lisa McNeeley, in 2017, though none appear related to Hyland's business with the county. Most were sent when Lisa McNeeley, who joined Hyland in October of 2014, was a public procurement administrator. She became "Team Lead" for government contracts in August of 2017, according to her LinkedIn profile, and became manager for proposal services and government contracts in January of 2018.

Shortly after Griffin made his recommendation in June of 2016, Emily McNeeley became general counsel for the county's IT Department as well as its director of special initiatives. At about the same time, records show, Rourke was proposing to expand the county's use of Hyland software and to contract directly with the company rather than through OneLink Technical Services, a local firm that resold Hyland products to the county.

Since McNeeley became general counsel for the IT Department in 2015, Hyland has received two county contracts totaling nearly $1.3 million.

The first was approved by the County Board of Control on Dec. 5, 2016, for $371,570. The Board of Control includes members of the administration, though not McNeeley, and County Council members. The board can approve contracts of less than $500,000 without a vote by the full council.

At the same meeting, the Board of Control approved a $370,975 contract for OneCommunity for work that already had been completed relating to the transition from OneCommunity to AT&T for voice and data services.

The Hyland contract states that the county had terminated a contract with OneLink Technical Services "and now desires to purchase software maintenance services of Hyland OnBase Software Products directly from" the provider. An attachment to the contract cites four project areas.

A second contract with Hyland was approved by the Cuyahoga County Council on Nov. 14, 2017, for no more than $660,245. It was for upgrades that would allow for more efficient collection of child-support payments.

In December 2017, the Board of Control approved a $243,255 amendment to the $371,570 contract, with the additional money to be used for maintenance on the countywide Hyland software system and to expand the system to add health and human service operations, said county spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan.

Records show Rourke communicated during 2016 with OneCommunity representatives, including then-CEO Lev Gonick. The emails pertain to various subjects, including a request to Rourke from Gonick for the county's support for something called the "Mozilla Gigabit Hive."

A Feb. 22, 2016, email from Gonick to Rourke said "OneCommunity Proposed Scope of work for the County" in the subject field. A draft scope-of-work document was attached.

Kauzer Razv, director of community and developer relations at OneCommunity, emailed Michael Young, the county's chief technology officer, and Rourke on March 7, 2016, under the subject of "Meeting with the County team."

The email included an attached scope-of-work document and addressed Young and Rourke separately in the text.

"Scot - please advise when you want to schedule the focus group meetings with the department teams . . . ," began the message to Rourke.

Gonick and Razv did not return calls seeking comment.

OneCommunity was spun off into a for-profit company, Everstream, and the nonprofit DigitalC in 2016. Brett Lindsey, CEO of Everstream, said recently that his firm was served subpoenas seeking Rourke's employment records at OneCommunity and billing records related to the $370,975 contract.

Madigan said the county has a contract with Everstream to provide fiber-optic maintenance and internet services to the county for about $4,000 a month, which is a fraction of the business the county used to do with OneCommunity.

Around the time of the OneCommunity contract, Rourke sent a message to County Inspector General Mark Griffin denying what he described as rumors "flying around" that he was benefiting financially from a "recent contract resolutions [sic] with OneCommunity, where I previously worked."

Hyland and the county have said they are cooperating with the investigation.
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio - A Cuyahoga Falls police officer shot a man who is accused of pointing a gun at officers during an investigation into a domestic violence incident, police said.

Robert Horn-Epling, 39, suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the shooting that happened just after 7:15 a.m. on Cook Street near Tallmadge Road, police said in a news release.

Horn-Epling is charged with aggravated menacing and domestic violence in the incident, police said.

Investigators have not released the name of the officer who shot Horn-Epling.

Officers were investigating a report of domestic violence when they arrived at the house and met an injured woman, police said. They also removed a child from the house, police said.

An update on the woman's condition was not immediately available.

The officers found and confronted Horn-Epling, who was holding a gun, police said. Horn-Epling refused to put the gun down and pointed it at the officers, police said.

One officer fired a shot that struck Horn-Epling, police said. Cuyahoga Falls police Lt. Michael Heinl could not say where on Horn-Epling's body he was shot.

Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department paramedics took Horn-Epling to a hospital for treatment.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is assisting in the investigation, police said.

Heinl could not say if the officer involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure for many Northeast Ohio police departments during officer-involved shooting investigations.

To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page.
LEE COUNTY, Virginia -- An 8-day-old baby died at a hospital Wednesday after she was mauled by her family's dog, according to reports.

The dog, which authorities believe is a mixed breed, is now in custody of Lee County Animal Control and likely will be euthanized, Sheriff Gary Parsons tells WJHL Channel 11.

Authorities were called to a home at 11:40 a.m. Wednesday after dog attacked the baby.

The girl was taken to a hospital and transferred to two other hospitals before dying of extensive injuries to her upper torso, CBS North Carolina reports.

The incident remains under investigation.

To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
FAIRBORN, Ohio -- An employee of a Hampton Inn died Wednesday night after being shot while working behind the lobby counter, reports say.

The unidentified victim was shot around 7:20 p.m., according to the Dayton Daily News. When police arrived, he was found behind the counter with a gunshot wound, WDTN Channel 2 reports.

The victim was taken to the Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek, Ohio, but died of his injuries.

The motive for the shooting is unknown.

Police are now searching for two young male suspects who were wearing dark clothing, ABC 22 reports. The two males drove away in a white, late 1990s Buick-style sedan, police say.

Fairborn is a suburb of Dayton.

To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
ANDERSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- Four women are facing charges after raids Wednesday on Cincinnati-area massage parlors.

Pel Chin, 45, Zhang Cuimin, 46, Chunye Jiao, 49, and Cao Haiyan, 44, all are charged with prostitution and solicitation, WLWT Channel 5 reports.

The women worked at different massage parlors in southwest Ohio, according to investigators.

Deputies with the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department made the arrests Wednesday, but the Cincinnati Police Department, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security assisted in the investigation, WKRC Channel 12 reports.

Reports say the investigation is continuing, although there are no indications if more arrests are expected.

To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday unveiled a 119-page action plan to stop algal blooms that jeopardize Lake Erie's drinking water, fishing and tourism.

The plan boils down to cutting the amount of phosphorous that seeps into the smallest and shallowest Great Lake from farm fields, with a goal of a 40 percent reduction from tributaries including Ohio's Maumee, Portage, Sandusky and Huron rivers.

It identifies the Maumee River as the"biggest challenge" for change, as it has the largest watershed of any Great Lakes river, 72 percent of which is used to grow crops. It says farmers along the river will need to more widely adopt phosphorous runoff reduction practices to meet and sustain the 40 percent reduction goal.

"In some areas, success will be seen sooner than others, but it won't be until the largest sources make a dent in their contribution that we will see lasting impacts in the Lake," the plan says.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer said her agency is still reviewing the federal plan, but said it seems to mesh with steps Ohio has already put in place to control the algal blooms that rendered Toledo's water undrinkable for three days in 2014.

After that incident, Griesmer said OEPA created more stringent source water testing rules for public water systems to prevent future problems. She said the state installed a water monitoring system last year, but it's too early to tell whether phosphorous levels are down.

"Our plan is based on adaptive management," she said. "As we get data, if the data shows what we are doing is not working, we will adjust it. We think it will always be an evolving plan."

Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur said the state welcomes the U.S. EPA's support in the fight against harmful algal blooms. But she said the plan must be followed by state and federal actions to meet the plan's reduction targets, which would be hindered by a recent Trump administration's request to cut funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative by 90 percent. Kaptur and other members of Congress from Ohio have pledged to keep its funding at current levels.

"We cannot settle for the U.S. EPA having its budget slashed and hands tied leaving the Great Lakes and the millions of Americans who rely on them for water and commerce in the lurch," said a statement from Kaptur.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Wednesday night's lively debate of Democratic governor candidates shows there are real policy differences between the people seeking Ohio's highest elected office. It also serves as a reminder that there has been no similar event on the Republican side of the race.

Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor has been agitating for months for a debate with Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine -- including arranging for a costumed duck, as in "ducking debates," to show up at Republican events -- but with no success. The state Republican Party, before Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted dropped out to become DeWine's running mate, in October proposed hosting four debates, but none have come to fruition. Last August, DeWine's derailed a debate planned by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy organization, by declining to participate. His campaign said at the time that he wanted to wait until after that year's November election, so voters could be less distracted by other elections.

DeWine, who enjoys a comfortable lead over Taylor in fundraising, endorsements and polling in the Republican governor primary, likely is taking a page from Ohio Gov. John Kasich's playbook in the 2014 campaign, said Tom Sutton, a political scientist with Baldwin Wallace University.

That year, Kasich made it through the entire election without acknowledging Democratic nominee Ed FitzGerald, more or less, much less debating him.

"I think DeWine is following the conventional wisdom that says, if you know you're ahead and it looks like you're almost certain to win the primary, you don't offer debates, because it's an opportunity to get one-upped and look bad," Sutton said.

"I think she wants to show how old he is, how he's been in politics for too long, the same kind of messaging she's been talking about throughout the campaign," Sutton added. "I think it's not surprising, and I think if I were advising DeWine, I'd say it's smart to just avoid debates altogether."

In an email, Taylor said DeWine refuses to debate her for "one simple reason: he knows that on that stage under those lights he can't hide from his liberal record." She went on to criticize DeWine for his past positions as a U.S. Senator on gun rights, immigration and judicial appointments during President George W. Bush's administration.

In an email, DeWine campaign spokesman Ryan Stubenrauch said DeWine has shared the stage with Taylor numerous times at Republican events. But those events were not debates.

"We will continue to stand in front of Ohio Republicans, answer their questions and explain Mike DeWine and Jon Husted's vision for Ohio's future," Stubenrauch said.

He did not say whether DeWine will debate Taylor, however.

The Republican Governor's Association, the GOP campaign arm, tried to make hay on Wednesday out of a remark from Bill O'Neill, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice and longshot candidate for governor, during the Democratic gubernatorial debate.

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper had a quick retort:

Richard Cordray, a leading Democratic candidate for governor and former Ohio attorney general who lost to DeWine in the 2010 race, also got in on the action.

The primary election is in May.
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- Democratic candidate for governor Dennis Kucinich wants to fully legalize marijuana, a move he said would have positive implications for criminal justice, agriculture and even the state's ongoing opioid crisis.

Kucinich unveiled a sweeping marijuana plan on Wednesday, calling for allowing medical-marijuana patients to grow their own plants, fully legalizing recreational marijuana for adults, as well as legalizing the production of hemp, the less-potent cannabis strain with industrial and commercial applications.

He said expanding medical marijuana research could help develop alternatives for opioid painkillers, which have played a central role in the state's drug-addiction crisis. Medical research has suggested marijuana holds promise both as a way to manage pain and to help limit opioid use.

He also criticized the state for mishandling setting up the medical marijuana program approved by state lawmakers and Gov. John Kasich in 2016.

"Every day that Ohioans go without access to medical cannabis, the state adds to its body count of opioid overdose deaths, many of which started with a legal prescription for painkillers," Kucinich said.

Kucinich's plan closely hues to the wish-list of activists who have tried, and failed, to legalize marijuana and help in Ohio for years. It also puts him at odds with Richard Cordray, his main opponent in the Democratic race for governor. Cordray has said he is in favor of the state's medical marijuana program, but believes that voters should decide whether the state should fully legalize the drug. The other leading Democratic candidates for governor, Bill O'Neill, the former Ohio Supreme Court justice and State Sen. Joe Schiavoni both support legalizing recreational marijuana.

But in a phone interview, Schiavoni said Kucinich is over-promising, which he said is a common feature of his campaign.

"I think we need to get this medical system established, and move into recreational in the future," Schiavoni said. "... I don't think the Republicans in the General Assembly are ready or willing to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes. I'm for it, and as governor, I would work with both sides to move the ball forward."

Kucinich announced his plan in front of 50 or so activists who filled a classroom for the Cleveland School of Cannabis in Independence, a recently opened state-certified school that trains people for careers related to Ohio's fledgling medical-marijuana industry. Kucinich, a former congressman and Cleveland mayor, has long supported legalizing marijuana, and was a keynote speaker at the 2011 Seattle Hempfest.

Asked what makes his proposal different from the one Ohio voters rejected in 2015, Kucinich said his is "the most comprehensive plan" ever offered by an Ohio candidate. He also threw in a subtle dig at Cordray for good measure.



"Granted, the people here are supportive, but in the broader public, this is an idea whose time has come and in some ways, it's long overdue," Kucinich said. "For those who say whatever the people say, let the people decide, this is a time for leadership. People are looking for a leader to step forward and say, let's lead with compassion. Let's lead with common sense. Let's lead with integrity. Let's lead with courage. And that's who I am."



Click here to see Kucinich's full plan.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A state legislator from Central Ohio has rescinded his endorsement of Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor for governor because of her campaign's increasing criticism of her fellow Republicans as the GOP primary has played out.

State Rep. Gary Scherer said he informed Taylor's campaign last week, and asked it to remove him from their list of endorsed candidates. Taylor had touted Scherer's endorsement, one of relatively few Taylor has received, in a December 2017 tweet. Scherer hosted a meet and greet for Taylor the same day in Pickaway County.

BREAKING: Representative Gary Scherer endorsed my campaign for Governor tonight at our Pickaway County Meet and Greet! pic.twitter.com/sQ98jB8Qhh  Mary Taylor (@MaryTaylorOH) December 18, 2017

Scherer, who lives in Circleville and represents a rural district south of Columbus, said he plans to announce a new endorsement for state Attorney General Mike DeWine at Thursday's Pickaway County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner.

"I have been very disappointed in the past month or so with some of her campaign's comments and actions, and as such, I am no longer comfortable supporting that ticket," Scherer said.

Scherer specifically cited comments from Taylor's campaign surrounding the Feb. 9 Ohio Republican Party meeting during which members of the state party's central committee voted to endorse DeWine, the front-runner in the GOP primary for governor. Taylor addressed committee members before the vote, derisively referring to the conference room where the meeting took place as "Mike DeWine's kitchen" and calling DeWine a "shill" for special interests and lobbyists. The speech upset committee members and some other Republicans who were present.

The day before the meeting, Taylor said during a radio appearance that she wouldn't support DeWine's ticket if she were to lose the nomination. She later walked back her comments.

Scherer also said he disagrees with Taylor's campaign's decision to increasingly criticize Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Following Kasich's State of the State speech this week, Taylor tweeted a simple one-word reaction: "Huh."

"I campaigned for him in four states during his presidential run, and while there are things he has said and done that I"m not crazy about," Scherer said, "I'm in general still supportive, and disappointed that her campaign decided that it's best to criticize the governor."

In an email, Taylor spokesman Michael Duchesne said: "'Taking on the Establishment is tough. It's not for everyone."
Ohio's public university presidents are exceedingly well-compensated as a rule. Ohio State's Michael Drake leads the way with $832,000 in base pay. Cleveland State University's newly hired president, Harlan Sands, will make $455,000 in base salary not counting generous bonuses, fringe benefits and other allowances once he starts later this year.

Universities like CSU argue, not without reason, that, at a time of constrained state spending, they need to attract those best able to raise money and deploy those resources wisely.

But with Ohio grossly lagging the nation in higher-education attainment, it's no time for the state's public universities to be looking for extra ways to enrich their presidents.

In particular, the state's public universities need to draw the line at reimbursing presidents for the lawyers and financial advisers they hire to help them craft compensation packages aimed at wringing as much money from the institution as possible.

CSU's Sands, for example, is entitled to get up to $7,500 toward his contract-negotiating legal fees, although a university spokesman said Sands planned to ask for $5,000. Departing CSU President Ron Berkman received $10,000.

"Ohio is the most generous state in terms of providing reimbursements to university presidents for legal fees and financial advisors," James Finkelstein, professor emeritus at George Mason University and an expert on university presidents' contracts, said in an email in response to questions from the editorial board.

Along with CSU, Kent State, the University of Cincinnati and Wright State University all paid their presidents' legal fees, said Finkelstein after reviewing their contracts. Wright State also paid for its presidents' financial adviser fees, he said.

Among those state universities who did not reimburse presidents for legal or financial advising fees were Bowling Green State University, the University of Akron, Ohio State University and the University of Toledo.

We have no argument with presidents being paid what they are worth. It's a tough job, with a lot at stake.

But when a president will be earning $455,000 annually in base salary, with tens of thousands of extras on top of that, as Sands will be doing, he should pay for the lawyer he hired to help him get that generous contract.

The ridiculous practice of reimbursing successful Ohio public university presidents for the legal and financial advising fees they personally incurred should end. Now.

Editor's Note: This editorial was updated on March 9 to clarify that Ohio University did not pay for any legal or financial adviser fees that the current Ohio University president might have incurred in negotiating his current contract.

About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.

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CLEVELAND -- In moments of historic change, politicians are always the last to see it coming.

They were late to embrace civil rights. Some still haven't.

They were late to embrace gay rights. Many still haven't.

And because so many are easily bought and lack even an ounce of courage, they will be late to embrace the enactment of restrictions on access to guns.

The only way to bring sensible gun law reform to Ohio is to take the issue directly to voters, to place on the ballot a sweeping measure that would outlaw the sale of assault weapons and restrict the sale of others.

Doing this the right way could make Ohio a leader in the effort to stop the senseless slaughter of children.

Any notion that elected officials can be counted on to save young lives is pure fantasy.

Across the country, students have figured it out. They're afraid, angry and - above all - tired of their friends and classmates being slaughtered. What's more, they've had it with officeholders everywhere acting as unindicted co-conspirators in the murder of their friends.

Courageous corporations are beginning to figure it out. A partial list of companies willing to incur the gun lobby's wrath includes Delta Air Lines, Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Allied Van Lines, North American Van Lines, MetLife, Chubb, First National Bank of Omaha and car rental firms Hertz, Avis, Budget, Alamo, Enterprise and National.

And, of course, voters have figured it out.

A Quinnipiac University poll of 1,249 registered voters, taken Feb. 16-19, found 67 percent of American voters support a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons. Only 29 percent oppose an assault weapon ban, with four percent undecided.

But the will of the people means nothing to the gun-lobby types who run Congress.

Pressured by the public to bring a sense of sanity to gun laws, congressmen will do nothing more than apply a touch of lipstick to the pig.

And President Donald Trump -- erratic, unstable and untrustworthy -- is always susceptible to changing his mind, vulnerable to the views of the last person to whisper in his ear.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich is the state's chameleon-in-chief when it comes to guns.

For more than seven years, Kasich has signed into law every outrageous bill the gun lobby, disguised as members of the legislature, has sent his way.

Kasich's position on guns is better than the frightening views held by many of his fellow Republicans. But it is still one of embracing laws that bring guns into day care centers, saloons, school safety zones and college campuses.

As is often the case with Kasich, the rhetoric doesn't match the record.

Now, with calls from the Sunday talk shows ringing in his ears and dreams of the presidency dancing in his head, Kasich wants the nation to believe he's a leader on this issue.

He's not.

The governor's response to the Feb. 14 slaughter of 17 people at a south Florida high school was to promote a bundle of ideas that do not expand background checks or raise the minimum age for purchasing specific guns.

Gun lobbyists must have laughed themselves to sleep over Kasich's idea of reform.

But here's an idea they would find no laughing matter: A 2019 or 2020 ballot issue in Ohio that would totally ban the sale of assault weapons, raise the age of purchasing guns and expand background checks.

If well-meaning gun control groups, civic leaders, and politicians want to make a real difference on this issue, they will begin an initiative process that will give the Ohio General Assembly one of three options: Pass the exact bill presented them; negotiate an acceptable alternative; or schedule a statewide vote on the proposed law.

The process of forcing such a vote is time-consuming and potentially costly - requiring either about $1.5 million or a small and well-coordinated army of signature gatherers.

But it is hardly insurmountable. The same process is now being used by a broad-based coalition of community leaders to stop payday lenders from gouging working-class Ohioans with the highest short-term loan rates in the country. If legislators don't enact a rigorous bill curbing payday loan abuses, voters will do it for them. Chances are, the legislature will soon roll out a sham giveaway to a handful of payday and auto tilte lenders who dominate Ohio's market - a bill crafted behind closed doors by industry lobbyists.

Working-class Ohioans desperately need a public intervention by Kasich, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, or the Ohio Senate.

Meanwhile, a statewide vote on banning assault weapons would be the gun lobby's worst nightmare.

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet," Abraham Lincoln told a group of Illinois Republicans in 1856.

Ohioans deserve a chance to prove him right.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer's editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com

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PARMA, Ohio -- Drug abuse, Chevrolet Boulevard: During a Feb. 28 traffic stop, police discovered a Cleveland man was in possession of suspected felony drugs. He was arrested for drug abuse.

Fraud, West Pleasant Valley Road: On March 1, police were dispatched to Normandy High School regarding a woman accused of fraud. An arriving officer arrested the suspect. Police are investigating.

Fraud, Hetzel Drive: On March 1, police were dispatched to a Hetzel Drive residence after a man discovered he had been scammed. Police are investigating.

Disorderly conduct, Ridge Road: On March 1, police were dispatched to a Ridge Road location to assist the Fire Department with a man who had passed out. After the Parma resident was revived using Narcan, he was cited for disorderly conduct.

Theft, State Road: On March 1, a State Road resident discovered someone went into his car and took various items. There are no suspects. Police are investigating.

Theft, Broadview Road: On Feb. 25, police were dispatched to the Valero gas station after an employee discovered a woman had removed items from the store. Police are investigating.

Theft, Brookview Boulevard: On Feb. 26, police were dispatched to a Brookview Boulevard residence regarding two men suspected of stealing checks. Police are investigating.

Fraud, Westminster Drive: On Feb. 23, police were dispatched to a Westminster Drive home after a man attempted to cash their checks. Police are investigating.

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CLIFTON PARK, N.Y.  The Town Board last week approved a request from the owners of a historic Jonesville home that acknowledges their renovation efforts and helps maintain the historic character of the larger community.

The board granted a request from Alice and Robert Burr that their home at 933 Main Street, Jonesville be included in the towns Conservation Easement Historic Preservation Program.

The designation will help to reduce the Burrs property taxes. The conservation easement program was created as a way for the town to maintain its history and agricultural heritage through financial incentives for historic structures and open space.

With respect to historic structures, the town code states: Once a site or structure has been listed on the Town Register of Historic Places, the site or structure becomes eligible for tax relief under the Historic Preservation Easement Law.

The Burrs 1889 home is listed on the towns register of historic homes and last week it was approved for the conservation easement program.

Alice and Robert Burr were from the Buffalo area when they moved to southern Saratoga County in 1983. Robert Burr was an engineer with a number of rail companies for 43 years.

In a phone interview last week, Alice Burr described how the couple bought the Clark and Mary McClenthen House.

My whole family has always been interested in history and historic homes, she said. When we came to the area I told the realtor I wanted to look at some older homes and we were taken to Jonesville. I liked the look.

According to town historian John Scherer, the home was built on a lot purchased in 1889 for $50 by Mrs. Mary J. Weatherill McClenthen. By 1892 she was living at that location with husband Harvey Clark McClenthen.

The McClenthens and their four children shared the home with Mary McClenthens brother Frank, his wife Alice, and Marys mother Jane Weatherill, a native of England.

In 1898 Mary and Harvey McClenthen sold the home to Harveys father, the Rev. Thomas H. McClenthen, a veteran of the Civil War and a Methodist minister.

After Thomas McClenthens death, the 1915 New York State census has the home once again occupied by Mary and Harvey McClenthen and their oldest daughter Mary, an employee of General Electric.

According to Scherer, the original lot buyer, Mary McClenthen lived in the house until her death in 1952 when it was sold by her son. After several purchases and sales, the Burrs bought the property.

Scherer said the late Victorian style home is structurally in good shape, has its original stairway, room configuration, entryway, and tin ceiling in an upstairs bedroom.

Alice Burr agreed the home is structurally sound. She said when the couple was originally looking at it in 1983 both she and her husband knew, even though it was old and might be expensive to renovate and maintain, the quality of the wood was better than what is used today and it would last.

When I saw that tin ceiling in the bedroom I went, ooooh, thatll go good with my furniture, she said. We didnt remove any historical parts, we enhanced them.

Burr said she is proud to have the home listed on the Clifton Park Register of Historic Homes and happy to be part of the conservation easement historic preservation program.

The kids loved growing up here and they love coming back with their kids, she said. This is our oasis from life.
Business Korea reports that the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has announced that it will form a new council of ASEAN member countries by 2019. The goal is to establish uniform cosmetic industry regulations in the region, so that South Korean companies can fare better in the ASEAN market.

To this end, the ministry is going to sign agreements with the countries for compatible Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, compatible customs clearance procedure, regulatory unification, etc., states the publication.

Related: South Korea Trending Up in Beauty with New Mintel Reporting

The ministry also plans on enhancing the role of One Asia Cosmetics and Beauty Forum, and, in the long term, to pursue the same goal with Japan and China (talks with Vietnam and Indonesia are already underway). The ministry will also provide consulting and training for halal certification, which would open up South Korean opportunities in the Middle East.

Although China still accounts for the largest portion of South Koreas cosmetic exports, an increasing number of South Korean cosmetic companies are turning their eyes toward the regions including Southeast Asia in the wake of Chinas THAAD retaliation that began last year, the ministry said, adding that, The new council to be led by South Korea will be a boon to the companies.
The settlement agreement includes an arbitration clause, which should prompt some reflection about the use of arbitration to silence victims of sexual assault (a topic that has attracted attention in the wake of revelations about Harvey Weinstein ). On the other hand, people are often too quick to blame arbitration for unrelated problems, so I hope this (long-ish) post can offer a bit of clarity. The short version: Whoever drafted the agreement between Clifford and "David Dennison" gets an A for cynicism, but would have to beg for a C in my arbitration class. (Im guessing the draftsperson would fail professional responsibility...)

For readers who haven't been following along: Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, is an adult film star who allegedly had a sexual relationship with Donald Trump in the mid-2000s. She recently sued Trump and other defendants, seeking to invalidate a settlement agreement in which she was paid to keep silent about the details of the alleged relationship. Here is her complaint , which includes the settlement agreement as an exhibit. And here is some coverage of background details.

The settlement agreement uses pseudonyms, Peggy Peterson and David Dennison. In exchange for a payment of $130,000, Peterson agrees among other things not to disclose confidential information about Dennison, their alleged sexual conduct, and other matters. She also agrees to arbitrate any and all claims or controversies arising between her and Dennison. The agreement designates two potential institutions to administer the arbitration: JAMS and Action Dispute Resolution Services.

Peterson (i.e., Clifford) signed the contract (through her lawyer), but Dennison did not. Instead, the contract was signed by Michael Cohen (a lawyer for Trump), on behalf of an entity named Essential Consultants, which allegedly was formed to hide the source of the hush money. There is a blank for Dennisons signature, but it is empty.

The settlement agreement requires all parties to keep the alleged relationship confidential. Formally, this has nothing to do with the arbitration agreement. Parties to an arbitration agreement do not have confidentiality obligations (unlike the arbitrator and any administering institution, which do). The arbitration hearing will be private; unlike a court hearing, members of the public cannot attend. But the parties can tell whatever they want to whomever they want, unless they have separately agreed to maintain confidentiality. Thus, Clifford's confidentiality obligations, if she has any, stem from the non-disclosure provisions of the agreement, not from the arbitration clause.

In the event of a breach of the non-disclosure provisions, the agreement allows either party to obtain an injunction forbidding further disclosure without notice (!!) to the party alleged to have made the disclosure.

It has been reported that Cohen recently obtained such an injunction from an arbitrator in a proceeding administered by ADRS. And in fact, here is a copy of what appears to be the arbitrators interim award. (I must say, this is not exactly a high water mark in the history of arbitration)

First, some factual background:

Cliffords complaint alleges that, because Donald Trump did not sign the agreement, she has no contract with him. She also alleges that any contract is unconscionable and/or void as against public policy. Some of these arguments target the confidentiality provisions. There are indeed potent arguments against enforcement of non-disclosure agreements in such cases. However, there is a problem with these arguments (from Cliffords perspective). If Donald Trump is entitled to invoke the benefits of the arbitration clause, then the arguments must be resolved by the arbitrator (in a private hearing). Put differently, Clifford needs to do more than come up with legally sound arguments against enforcement of the contract and its non-disclosure provisions. If she wants to put pressure on Trump, she needs to come up with legally sound arguments that dont have to be resolved in arbitration.

From Dennisons perspective, by contrast, a well-drafted arbitration agreement will send as much of the dispute as possible to arbitration. There, Dennison can count on a private hearing. And if the arbitrator rules that the non-disclosure portions of the agreement are enforceable, courts will probably enforce that ruling. Here, then, is the link between arbitration and confidentiality. Although arbitration itself imposes no confidentiality obligations, it can help parties who value confidentiality maintain it, at least if they expect arbitrators to enforce non-disclosure agreements.

Its here that Dennisons lawyers may have dropped the ball. Courts always decide whether an arbitration agreement exists. Thus, the court hearing Cliffords lawsuit against Trump should not refer it to arbitration before deciding, at minimum, whether Clifford is a party to an arbitration agreement. Unfortunately for her, that seems to be a pretty easy call. She is clearly a party to an arbitration agreement; it is just that the identity of the other party or parties is unclear.

But heres where things get complicated. Even if not a party to the agreement, Donald Trump can invoke the benefits of the arbitration clause if the parties intended to let him do so. Based on my quick read, this seems an entirely plausible interpretation (assuming Trump is David Dennison). But Trump hardly wants to litigate his entitlement to invoke the arbitration clause in public court proceedings. In his ideal world, this issue, too, would be resolved in arbitration. So, too, would disputes over the validity of the arbitration agreement itselffor instance, disputes over whether the arbitration agreement is part of an invalid scheme to circumvent public policy, and disputes over whether the arbitration agreement imposes impermissibly high costs on Clifford (as it arguably does).

Arbitration law allows parties to refer such questions to arbitration. Put differently: if Clifford is a party to an arbitration agreement (as she surely is), then that agreement, if properly drafted, can force her to arbitrate virtually every other issue in dispute. To accomplish this, however, the agreement must provide clear and unmistakable evidence of the intent to arbitrate issues that would normally be assigned to a judge. A good way to do that is to include language providing that the arbitrator will have exclusive authority to resolve any disputes over the validity, scope, or enforceability of this arbitration clause. But you wont find language like this anywhere in the settlement agreement. At best, Dennison can point to language in the rules of the designated arbitration institutions (like Rule 11 of the JAMS Comprehensive Arbitration Rules [edit: and Rule 8 of the ADR Services rules). But there are good arguments against treating such language as clear and unmistakable evidence of the intent to arbitrate challenges to the validity or scope of the arbitration agreement itself. For one thing, these institutional rules are intended to permit, but not necessarily to require, arbitration of such issues. For another, in such a complicated contractseemingly created largely for the purpose of obfuscationits not clear that incorporation by reference satisfies the clear and unmistakable standard.

Bottom line: Ethics aside, this is a sloppily drafted arbitration clause. The court should decide whether Clifford is party to an arbitration agreement. The court should decide whether Trump is entitled to the benefits of that agreement. And the court should decide whether that agreement is enforceable or is an invalid scheme to circumvent public policy--for instance, by obscuring the fact that a party to (or beneficiary of) the agreement is now President of the United States.
Over the years, Michael OLeary has won a reputation for running a low-cost airline  Ryanair  which seems to delight in treating its passengers and staff as badly as possible.

Last year, for example, it cancelled more than 20,000 flights over a roster mix-up, ruining the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of people.

Only when the Civil Aviation Authority stepped in did OLeary, a billionaire, agree to compensate passengers forced to make alternative travel arrangements on more expensive airlines.

At the same time, Ryanair fought a battle with its underpaid cabin crew, many of whom have had to endure appalling terms and conditions, including being required to pay training fees of at least 2,000 and taking up to three months unpaid leave a year.

Over the years, Michael OLeary has won a reputation for running a low-cost airline  Ryanair  which seems to delight in treating its passengers and staff as badly as possible

But OLeary has now surpassed his companys high-handed past behaviour with his latest threat. In Brussels on Tuesday, he pledged to ruin family holidays by grounding flights in an attempt to thwart Brexit.

OLeary said: Its in our interests, not for a long period of time, that the aircraft are grounded...when you begin to realise that youre no longer going to have cheap holidays in Portugal or Spain or Italy, youve got to drive to Scotland or get a ferry to Ireland as your only holiday options, maybe well begin to rethink the whole Brexit debate.

Sinister

In other words, OLeary is contemplating punishing passengers  who as usual he apparently holds in contempt  because a majority of voters had the temerity to back Brexit. Even worse, he envisages blackmailing them into changing their minds.

Youd think such a naked piece of intimidation would have been met with cries of Shame! Apparently not.

Carsten Spohr, head of the German carrier Lufthansa, chipped in: If we could use this industry to prove to the British how wrong the decision was, that might be a good thing.

OLeary is contemplating punishing passengers  who as usual he apparently holds in contempt  because a majority of voters had the temerity to back Brexit

Sinister, no? Long ago I vowed never again to put myself at the mercy of Ryanair after a disagreeable experience at its hands when I was 30 seconds late checking in.

Many of you will have your own horror stories about Ryanair. As a fairly frequent visitor to Venice, I would rather never set eyes again on that incomparably magnificent city than be forced to fly to it on OLearys airline.

Now, following the bullying remarks of Carsten Spohr, I shall write another memo to myself. I am hereby extending my boycott to Lufthansa.

What is really cynical is that OLeary and Spohr know they are issuing baseless threats, and Ill wager a case of whiskey that no aircraft of either company will be grounded for a single second.

Nonetheless, the episode offers a fascinating insight into the mindset of those who wish to reverse Brexit.

OLeary was, of course, a vocal Remainer before the referendum, and since the result has been merrily prophesying fire and brimstone. Last year he opined that Brexit will be one of the great economic suicide notes in history.

He also urged Ireland and the EU to make Brexit as difficult as possible for Britain in the hope that the country pulls back and decides not to leave after all.

Such voluble contributions are particularly misplaced given his nationality. For the self-publicising (though obviously talented) OLeary is a citizen of a foreign country  the Republic of Ireland  and the boss of a company registered there.

Imagine if a British-born chief executive had involved himself noisily in the internal affairs of Ireland before that countrys 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage. I think many Irish people would have been cheesed off by such interference, and rightly so.

OLeary is entitled to hold strong views on Brexit, but as an Irish citizen it was presumptuous of him to play such a high-profile role in the referendum campaign.

OLeary is entitled to hold strong views on Brexit, but as an Irish citizen it was presumptuous of him to play such a high-profile role in the referendum campaign

It is even more out of order for him to have complained so vociferously since the outcome of a democratic vote.

Sovereign

Then to threaten the citizens of a foreign country, and promise to punish them for exercising their sovereign right in a way that ran contrary to his wishes  well, that is utterly preposterous even by the standards of Michael OLearys controversial career.

Its true, of course, that Britain needs to come to an agreement with the EU so that, post-Brexit, UK and European airlines can continue to operate in one anothers countries.

Most observers think such a deal is highly likely because it is in the interests of all parties to make one.

After all, tens of millions of Britons go on holiday every year to Europe, bringing huge benefits to local economies. For example, 17.8 million people from this country visited Spain in 2016, and most of them travelled by air.

Tourism is extremely important to the Spanish economy  accounting for 10 or 11 per cent of gross domestic product  and Britons make up about a quarter of all the countrys tourists.

In a sane world, the Madrid government is going to move heaven and earth to keep the planes flying.

The same is true of France, Spain and Italy, which receive enormous numbers of British tourists every year, and make billions of euros out of them.

Equally, millions of Poles, Italians, French and other Europeans come to this country by air, either to work or to enjoy holidays here.

Unless the governments of their countries are bonkers, they are going to ensure their citizens can continue to fly to Britain without let or hindrance after Brexit.

The great majority of airlines assume an agreement will be made. But OLeary continues to deliver apocalyptic warnings, and Ryanair alone intends to issue a Brexit clause warning travellers their tickets wont be valid if there is no new aviation agreement.

When Brexit has happened, the aircraft belonging to Ryanair will continue to criss-cross the skies above Britain and the EU, leaving this bumptious Irishman with a greater-than-usual amount of egg on his face

Instead of issuing implausible threats, why doesnt OLeary work like other airline chief executives towards making a sensible deal? And why produce the outrageous spectacle of grounding passengers in order to teach them a lesson?

As I say, the Armageddon he invokes wont happen, and OLeary is simply grandstanding. But lets pretend for a moment that he went ahead, and grounded his planes in order to penalise his passengers.

The main victims would be the not-very-well-off people who voted for Brexit in such large numbers.

For almost no one flies Ryanair out of choice. They do so because, despite many disadvantages and some inconvenience, it is usually so cheap. Thats why the airline has been such a commercial success.

Futile

But hard-pressed Brexiteers obliged to fly Ryanair wouldnt forgive OLeary if he left his aircraft on the Tarmac, and rendered their tickets unusable. Many would defect to other airlines.

He would also lose a lot of money (he is the companys third largest shareholder) in making such a futile gesture.

No, it is an idle threat from a garrulous man who once said he would rather cut off his own hands than recognise cabin-crew trade unions at Ryanair  and then proceeded last year to do exactly that.

Its hard to believe that someone who believes in little other than making money can be acting out of principle.

Presumably he has persuaded himself  mistakenly, I would argue  that there is some financial advantage to him in having Brexit reversed.

It wont be. When it has happened, the aircraft belonging to Ryanair will continue to criss-cross the skies above Britain and the EU, leaving this bumptious Irishman with a greater-than-usual amount of egg on his face.
She played the talented and bisexual doctor Callie Torres on the hit ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy.

But in Coming out Stories, a new video series from People, Sara Ramirez, 42, admitted that as a queer and bisexual woman, she didn't know if she was ready to come out publicly.

She said: 'I have been coming out to my friends and family since I was 18 years old. When my career shifted from theater to television, I felt ready to portray a bisexual person's journey that I had never seen on television before.'

Scroll down for video

Not ready: Sara Ramirez, 42, said she didn't know if she would be ready to come out publicly

She added: 'But I really grappled with the potential bi-antagonism and discrimination that I knew I would face within the LGBTQ community as well as outside of it.'

Sara confessed that coming out publicly was a decision she was afraid of because she didn't want it to 'impact her career in a negative way'.

She said: 'I was afraid of the discrimination I may face not just outside of Hollywood but within.'

But she had a change of heart two years ago as the political climate intensified and she continued to hear and read about 'the countless forms of violence perpetrated against us' such as the 2016 shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub.

She said she had an 'organic incremental urgency' to use her platform to empower the people in the LGBTQ community that came over her in way that she had never experienced before.

Urgency: She had a change of heart two years ago after seeing 'the countless forms of violence perpetrated against us'

Character: As her career shifted from theater to TV, she was ready to portray a bisexual person - namely her Grey's Anatomy character Callie Torres

So, at the 40 to None Summit, an event named after the 40 per cent of youth experiencing homelessness who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, she came out as bisexual publicly for the first time.

She said: 'And because of the intersections that exist in my own life: Woman, multiracial woman, woman of color, queer, bisexual, Mexican-Irish American, immigrant and raised in families heavily rooted in Catholicism on both my Mexican and Irish sides, I am deeply deeply invested in projects that allow our youth's voices to be heard.'

She said that LGBTQ youth often have to deny who they are to 'fit in or survive'.

So by sharing her many layers, Sara hoped that it would empower youth to own their identities and not be ashamed of who they are.

Lucky: Sara said that she feels lucky to have family 'who will never leave my side'

All new: Sara now stars on the CBS series Madam Secretary

But before she shared the news with the world, she wanted to let friends know of her plan beforehand so during a movie night at her house, she 'shared her truth' and was welcomed with support and happiness.

'There are so many people out there who face rejection, exclusions, various forms of violence and in some cases death,' she said. 'So I feel very privileged and lucky to have a roof over my head, a job, healthcare, family and chosen family who will never leave my side.'

She added: 'To myself I would say you're good enough just the way you are, your voice matters, your feelings matter, you belong here and I love you.'

The actress currently stars on CBS's Madam Secretary and is married to her husband of six years, Ryan DeBolt.
Michael Jackson's daughter Paris has issued a plea to her fans, asking them to stop editing images of her in order to change the color of her skin.

The 19-year-old shared a message on Twitter on Tuesday asking fans to stop trying to make her skin look 'more white' or 'more mixed', insisting that she has finally learned to embrace her natural looks - and is eager for others to do the same.

Paris is just the latest victim in a bizarre social media trend that sees users tweaking images of their favorite celebrities in order to make their skin darker or lighter, however she is one of the first to address it so publicly.

Edit: Paris Jackson took to Twitter on Tuesday to ask her fans to stop editing images of her to make her skin color look lighter or darker

Message: The 19-year-old tweeted out this message telling people to stop making her skin white or black and to just leave her pictures normal

Edited: Images shared on Twitter, such as these, reveal how people have used editing tools and filters in order to make Paris's skin tone look lighter

Not happy: She noted that it has taken her a while to come to terms with her own appearance, but she is finally happy to embrace her looks

In one of the photos she came across, an account completely changed her skin tone and made her stark white.

She immediately addressed the issue and wrote a heartfelt message to her millions of followers.

'I appreciate everything y'all make for me, I enjoy every single edit I see,' she began the message.

'But please stop lightening my skin to make me look more white and please stop darkening my skin to make me look more mixed.

'I am what I am. I'm aware of what I look like and I'm finally happy with it...'

In response to the sincere post, Paris received an outpouring of support from fans who shared that they love her and respect her wishes.

One user explained why the editing may have happened in the first place, 'We all love you for who you are. I think sometimes it's not intentionally done.

'Sometimes after a lot of editing it may or may not affect the skin tone. But sorry about it. Again we love you for being you and nothing about that will change.'

'I'm so sorry Paris. I have never understood why someone would want to change some else's skin color. It's really upsetting that you even have to point this out,' another user wrote.

Support: Many fans had her back and showed that they love her and think she is beautiful

Sorry: One user even apologized on behalf of all social media saying how upsetting it is

Love: Most fans told her that they love her no matter what and they respect her for being who she is

One user wrote, 'Maximum respect,' while someone else shared, 'You're beautiful the way you were made!'

Meanwhile, in reply to her original tweet one user questioned, 'Mixed though?' to which Paris responded, 'Sometimes peeps say I don't look mixed enough to be bi-racial.'

While this would affect anyone it is an especially sensitive topic for Paris whose late father Michael Jackson, faced an unending series of questions and criticisms about his skin color throughout his life.

Michael was born black and faced much backlash regarding the color of his skin, after he began lightening it with bleach, and using makeup to change its tone, as well as undergoing numerous surgeries to alter the shape of his face

Paris's mother Debbie Rowe, however, is white, and the mother-daughter duo have faced much speculation over the teenager's parenthood, with Oliver! actor Mark Lester insisting in 2017 that he is actually Paris's real father, having donated his sperm to his friend Michael almost 20 years ago.

The truth about her paternity has come under further scrutiny thanks to Paris's pale features - particularly her blue eyes.

Insane: Despite Paris's plea for people to stop changing her skin tone one user painted her black and posted this mean photo in reply

Horrible: This isn't the first time that social media accounts edited celebrity photos and distorted their faces and skin color, they did it to Beyonce, 36

Whoa: They also completely whitewashed photos of Rihanna, 30, and she looks completely unrecognizable

'It's so sad we live in a society where people have to edit things to satisfy their description of what is acceptable to fit into society or what they think society wants to see. Never change, stand strong! You're Beautiful!' said one user.

'Tell them Paris. You are who you are. People need to accept,' another person shared.

Although the edited photos have since been taken down, more people continue to edit her skin tone in photos and one person even painted her skin black.

This isn't the first time that people got out of hand with editing photos on social media and it actually happens quite often.

Back in September 2017 users were completely whitewashing photos of Rihanna, 30, and Beyonce, 36.

The edited photos made both women look completely unrecognizable and they even changed around their eye colors in the spooky photos.
A student who was sexually assaulted aged 15 at her upscale New Hampshire prep school has penned a memoir, hoping to change how people view those who have been attacked.

Chessy Prout, now 19, was a junior at St Paul's boarding school, a $58,000-a-year, 162-year-old Concord institution, when she accepted an invitation from an 18-year-old senior, Owen Labrie, in 2014.

During the encounter, he took Chessy to a remote room on campus and sexually assaulted her. He was later convicted of misdemeanor sexual assault and child endangerment, as well as using a computer to lure the girl for sex, a felony requiring him to register as a sex offender for life.

Speaking out: Chessy Prout, 19, was sexually assaulted when she was a junior at St Paul's boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire. She has now written a memoir

Strong: The student (pictured with her parents) said coming forward publicly and penning a book were important steps as she sought to rebuild her identity

Owen, who was acquitted of raping his 15-year-old classmate, was denied a new trial by a judge and has appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

At the time of the trial, Chessy delivered a gut-wrenching, anonymous testimony in court.

'I was raped. I was violated in so many ways,' she said at the time, her voice distorted to protect her anonymity. She also told the court: 'I didn't say anything. I felt like I was frozen.'

Later on, Chessy chose to reveal her identity, and first went public during an interview with Savannah Guthrie on the Today show in 2016.

The student, who is headed to Barnard College in New York City, returned to Today to discuss her memoir, which hit the shelves on Tuesday.

She named it I Have The Right To, after the social media campaign for sexual assault awareness that she launched after coming forward.

Chessy told Hoda Kotb in her newest interview that when she decided to reveal her identity, she felt as though she didn't really have a choice.

Looking back: Chessy told Hoda Kotb in her newest interview that when she decided to reveal her identity, she felt as though she didn't really have a choice

Message: In her memoir, Chessy makes the point that 'rape is not a punishment for poor judgement', which she hopes will change how people view survivors of sexual assault

Filing: St Paul's (pictured) meanwhile, settled a civil lawsuit brought by Chessy's parents in January, accusing the institution of failing to protect her

'I wasn't given the luxury of staying quiet,' she told the anchor. 'My name was blasted on the internet. There were hate sites written about me. So I decided to reclaim my name.'

Speaking out publicly and writing a book were important steps for Chessy as she sought to rebuild her identity.

'I wanted to reclaim my name, reclaim my story,' she added. 'Because it is difficult for a survivor to come forward like this. And I had the support of a family and the support of a community to return home to, which not a lot of survivors have.'

In her memoir, Chessy makes the point that 'rape is not a punishment for poor judgement', which she hopes prompt people who expect from survivors of sexual assault to behave in certain ways to reconsider their standpoint.

'I just want to emphasize that there is no such thing as a perfect victim,' she said.

'People can be able to pull us apart, tear us apart, tears us down, try to poke holes in our stories, but at the same time we are human, we make mistakes, and we're not perfect.

'That's what I wanted to show through writing this book  show my vulnerabilities, show my weaknesses, and be able to say you can be strong through those.'

Advocate: Chessy previously came up with a campaign named I Have The Right To, designed to help other young people to claim their rights

Charges: Owen Labrie (pictured in court in 2015) was convicted of misdemeanor sexual assault and child endangerment, as well as using a computer to lure the girl for sex

Going public: Chessy first shed her anonymity in 2016 (pictured) during an interview with Savannah Guthrie on the Today show

Back when Chessy first spoke publicly about her attack, she told Savannah on Today: 'I want everyone to know that I am not afraid or ashamed anymore, and I never should have been.'

The student told the host at the time that she sometimes suffered from panic attacks after the assault, which would cause her to hide in her closet, rock on the floor, and punch her legs.

She reiterated that standing up for herself and shedding her anonymity felt like the right thing to do, stating: 'Although it was scary and although it was pretty difficult, I wouldn't be where I am today without having been able to speak up for myself during that time.'

St Paul's meanwhile, settled a civil lawsuit brought by Chessy's parents in January, accusing the institution of failing to protect her. The terms of the settlement have not been made public.

Movement: The student's memoir is named after her empowering social media campaign

Chessy said she hopes the settlement motivates the school to create a culture where student well-being comes first.

The school, which denied the lawsuit's claims, called the settlement a 'welcomed outcome'.

At the time of the trial in 2015, details of a sordid practice authorities said was called the 'Senior Salute' were spelled out in stark terms by Owen.

On a campus where upperclassmen studiously avoid their younger peers in most settings, Owen told a detective some students took 'great pride' in having sex with younger students before they left school.

He also told the detective of a contest where boys competed to 'score' with the most girls, keeping a running tally written in indelible marker on a wall behind washing machines.

The school kept painting over the scoreboard so it eventually was moved online.

Owen acknowledged to the detective he was 'trying to be number one,' the detective wrote.
As the Easter weekend approaches, families are preparing for big family lunches, Easter hat parades and egg hunts.

And while many are organised, others require a little inspiration to ensure their celebrations go off without a hitch.

So to help families out this Easter, Pinterest has revealed some of the top trends in food, decor, hats, DIY ideas and hunts for Australians and the most pinned posts on the site so far.

To help families out this Easter, Pinterest revealed some of the top trends in food, decor, hats, DIY ideas and hunts for Australians (pictured is a trick for hiding chocolate eggs from kids)

FOOD

Pinners across Australia are swapping the classic Easter lamb for healthier alternatives, with saves for 'healthy Easter food' increasing by 170 per cent over the past 12 months.

Australians are also looking for healthy dessert ideas, with dairy-free, sugar-free and egg-free options all rising significantly in popularity over the past few months.

Some of the most popular Easter food ideas include 'bunny bread' filled with spinach bread, Easter cucumber sandwiches and a 'one hour dinner' shared by Chelsea's Messy Apron.

Some of the most popular Easter food ideas include 'bunny bread' filled with spinach

These cucumber bunny treats are a simple way to keep food healthier this Easter

Using just two sheet pans, the clever blogger created a tasty dinner for four including roasted parmesan asparagus, honey-butter roasted carrots, pineapple brown sugar ham, cheesy au gratin potatoes, and a toasted baguette - all in just one hour.

Healthy dessert options include Easter fruit pizzas, Paleo creme eggs, no sugar eggs and vegan choc and nut Easter cups.

The no sugar eggs were made by Oh My Goodness and included ingredients like cashews, gelatin, rice malt syrup, coconut oil, raw cacao and vanilla extract.

This one hour dinner was shared by Chelsea's Messy Apron - she used just two sheet pans

Easter fruit pizzas have been used as an alternative to chocolate eggs

Sugar-free and vegan eggs are a popular alternative to regular chocolate eggs

DIY IDEAS

There has been a 145 per cent increase in saves for 'Easter DIY ideas' over the past 12 months as Australians get crafty with gift ideas, cooking recipes, and home decorations.

Some of the most popular ideas include Easter egg wreaths made with balloons and string, mason jar Easter baskets as gifts that take minutes to make and fun DIY bunny bath bombs.

One clever idea from Stylizmo saw her make cut out Easter bunny shapes to place on the napkins around her Easter table.

'I focused on natural hues and used elements like eggs, twigs and bunnies instead of colors like yellow and green, which is very normal for Easter,' she said.

One clever idea from Stylizmo saw her make cut out Easter bunny shapes to place on the napkins around her Easter table

Some of the most popular ideas include Easter egg wreaths made with balloons and string, mason jar Easter baskets as gifts that take minutes to make and fun DIY bunny bath bombs

EASTER DECORATIONS

When it comes to decorations, the platform has been flooded with snaps of centerpieces, bunny banners and all kinds of creative egg hunt ideas.

One of the most unique ideas came from Celebrations At Home, who described her hunt idea as the 'best for people with toddlers'.

The clever mother filled a number of balloons with helium, tied eggs to them and scattered them throughout the yard.

'As you can see from our adorable little model, the floating balloons draw toddlers in like a moth to a flame. It doesn't take much coaxing from the parents either, because children naturally love balloon,' she said.

One of the most unique ideas came from Celebrations At Home , who described her hunt idea as the 'best for people with toddlers'

The Organised Housewife also gets creative at Easter and puffs talcum powder spots all over the lawn 'like rabbit foot prints so the kids follow the trail to find the hidden eggs'

Aussie families are also stepping up their craft game at the local Easter parade with fun and easy ideas such as Easter parade hats

The Organised Housewife also gets creative at Easter and puffs talcum powder spots all over the lawn 'like rabbit foot prints so the kids follow the trail to find the hidden eggs'.

Aussie families are also stepping up their craft game at the local Easter parade with fun and easy ideas such as Easter parade hats.

Some of the most creative ideas have included bunny headbands, carrot bonnets and an elaborate creation by Bright Star Kids which had a stuffed rabbit popping out of the top of the hat as it would popping out of a rabbit hole.
There's a new buzzword with soon-to-become pet owners who consider getting a new pet akin to having a newborn baby.

In fact, so seriously do they take their newfound parenthood, they are requesting paw-ternity leave from work.

Just as a new parent takes maternity or paternity leave to look after their newborn babies, pet owners are requesting a couple of weeks to settle and home their pet.

Monique Gibbons has just moved in with her long-term partner and is about to welcome a toy poodle puppy to her household in Sydney, has requested PAW-ternity leave from her employer

One such example is 27-year-old Monique Gibbons who has just moved in with her long-term partner and is about to welcome a toy poodle puppy to her household in Sydney.

'I've decided to take paw-ternity leave because, in my mind, welcoming a puppy into the family is akin to welcoming a newborn,' Monique told FEMAIL.

'As someone who doesn't have kids, I want to make the most of this experience,' she added.

'I've decided to take PAW-ternity leave because, in my mind, welcoming a puppy into the family is akin to welcoming a newborn,' Monique told FEMAIL

'My dog will be like a surrogate child for me, so I don't see why I shouldn't treat the dog's arrival as if it were my own baby.

'It may sound weird and creepy, but I can't deny my dogternal instincts.'

Meanwhile 42-year-old Nicole from Adelaide, took three weeks off to look after her dog Jet when he was first welcomed to the family.

42-year-old Nicole from Adelaide, took three weeks off to look after her dog Jet when he was first welcomed to the family

'Jet is my baby, so I wanted to look after him like I would my own son,' she told FEMAIL.

'At first my employer was a bit shocked when I asked, but they eventually understood and told me to take annual leave.'

'I later went on to have my another son (an actual baby!) and took proper maternity leave and I really wish Australian HR laws allowed for PAW-ternity leave as well. It's the same thing, pets and babies!'

In Australia Paw-ternity leave is not considered akin to maternity or paternity leave so those wishing to take it will be asked to take annual leave

In Australia Paw-ternity leave is not considered akin to maternity or paternity leave so those wishing to take it will be asked to take annual leave.

In the UK some companies such as Scottish beer company Brewdog and tech company BitSol Solutions allow for such leave.

According to HRM Greg Buchanan, CEO of BitSol, says 'the leave is managed on a case-by-case basis. One employee was awarded leave to adjust to a new dog after a family bereavement. However taking care of a goldfish, he said, is not on the cards.'

In the UK some companies such as Scottish beer company Brewdog and tech company BitSol Solutions allow for such leave

As expected, Buchanan has his own dogs to look after.

'We have Raphael, who's named after a Ninja turtle, he's a Chinese hairless crested, and we also have Margo, a standard poodle.'

Brewdog on the otherhand extends paw-ternity leave to those doing a good deed and adopting a rescue dog.
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Two of Harvey Weinstein's accusers lead the way at a demonstration in Rome on Thursday as to mark International Women's Day.

Actresses Asia Argento and Rose McGowan were two of the first to come forward and accuse the Hollywood director of sexual misconduct in 2017 and early 2018.

Asia Argento, an Italian actress who helped launch the #MeToo movement, is launching a new movement, #WeToo, which aims to unite women against the power imbalance in favor of men.

Argento helped give strength to other women to report sexual assault and harassment when she accused Harvey Weinstein of rape in an expose by The New Yorker.

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Actresses Asia Argento and Rose McGowan lead a demonstration to mark International Women's Day in Rome

Asia Argento, an Italian actress who helped launch the #MeToo movement, is launching a new movement, #WeToo, which aims to unite women against the power imbalance in favor of men

Rose McGowan detailed stories of the alleged abuse in her memoir Brave, which echoed the rapereported by Asia Argento. Weinstein denied the accusation.

Despite their traumatic stories, the pair marched in strength and unity as they lead thousands of women through the Italian capital on Thursday.

Events were held across the globe to mark International Women's Day which occurs on March 8 every year.

From street plays to highlight domestic violence to hundreds of male and female protesters wearing black masks and brandishing #MeToo placards, people around the world have taken to the streets to make their voices heard.

Marches and demonstrations in Asia kicked off rallies around the world with other events are planned across Asia, the Mideast, Europe and the Americas.

Their banner was branded we the #WeToo movements slogan as they lead their way through the Italain capital

The two actresses, who accused Harvey Weinstein of rape in 2017, were flanked by thousands of female supporters

HOW THE HARVEY WEINSTEIN SCANDAL CHANGED HOLLYWOOD In early October 2017, The New Yorker and the New York Times reported that more than a dozen women had accused director Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment going back more than 30 years. More than 80 women would proceed to come forward with allegations against the movie moghul. Weinstein denied them but was dismissed from his film production company, expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and suspended from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Harvey Weinstein pictured before his downfall, with (from left to right) Taylor Swift, Este Haim, Jaime King and Lorde at a 2015 party The allegations against Weinstein subsequently triggered similar allegations against other influential men worldwide, including other Hollywood stars like Kevin Spacey, and sparked the #MeToo movement on social media, designed to bring attention to sexual harassment and misconduct suffered throughout the world. Stars who have made allegations against Weinstein include Uma Thurman, Salma Hayek and Rose McGowan. A spokesperson for Harvey Weinstein has previously said that any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied. A statement released to Channel 4 said: 'Mr Weinstein has apologized for boorish behavior in certain situations in the past, Mr Weinstein unequivocally denies he ever engaged in criminal misconduct of any kind.' Advertisement

Hundreds of women activists in pink and purple shirts were protesting in the Philippines against President Rodrigo Duterte, who they said is among the worst violators of women's rights in Asia.

Meanwhile, the French newspaper Liberation is charging men 25 per cent more for their daily edition today, to underscore the gender pay gap in the country.

The paper published two versions with different cover pages, one marked 'for women, 2 euros, normal price' with a silhoutte of a woman, the other marked 'for men, 2.50 euros' with a silhoutte of a man.

Protest leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in downtown Manila's Plaza Miranda. They handed red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of several drug suspects slain under Duterte's deadly crackdown on illegal drugs.

Demonstrators supporting the MeToo movement in black stage a rally to mark the International Women's Day in Seoul, South Korea

People take part in a rally to celebrate International Women's Day at the State Library in Melbourne, Australia

A Filipino woman holds a placard during a rally marking International Women's Day in Manila, Philippine to protest against the gender pay gap

Women taking part in a 24-hour strike - both at work and at home - took to the streets to protest in Madrid early on Thursday

Marches took place across Spain with women taking to the streets with homemade banners

Women came together carrying purple balloons and flags as they marched through the streets of Madrid

French newspaper Liberation is charging men 25 per cent more for their daily edition today (left), to underscore the gender pay gap in the country

Protesters, many wearing black and holding black signs reading #MeToo, gathered in central Seoul, South Korea to call for tougher action to bring alleged sexual offenders to justice, as well as action on other issues such as closing a gender pay gap.

Since a female prosecutor's revelation in January of workplace mistreatment and sexual misconduct, South Korea's #MeToo movement has gained major traction with the list of women speaking out growing daily.

Several high-profile men have resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his secretary.

Myanmar's Embattled leader Aung San Suu Kyi said that peaceful democracies make good use of women's strength in political, economic and social fields.

Eni Lestari, chairperson of the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) speaks during a protest against the working conditions of foreign domestic helpers on International Women's Day in Hong

Women band members of Armed Police Force (APF) take part during a rally to mark International Women's Day in Kathmandu, Nepal

Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (C-R), Myanamr's first lady Su Su Lwin (C-L), Khan Thet Htay (R), wife of Myanmar Vice-President Myint Swe, and Shwe Lwan (L), wife of Myanmar Vice-President Henry Van Hti Yu, pose of group photo after the International Women's Day ceremony at the Myanmar International Convention Center 2 in Naypyitaw

Myanmar's Embattled leader Aung San Suu Kyi said that peaceful democracies make good use of women's strength in political, economic and social fields

In a speech marking International Women's Day, she said, 'A country's human rights values will be enhanced when women are granted their rights.'

Thursday was the third year the annual event was celebrated under a civilian government in Myanmar, where the military that long ruled the country is still powerful.

Suu Kyi leads the political party that won by a landslide in 2015 elections but the constitution bars her from becoming the president.

Though Myanmar has a woman leading its civilian government, a profound gender gap remains in the country of 52 million people.

Meanwhile in Spain women have called for a 24-hour feminist strike in their workplaces and also stop doing duties at home during the International Women's Day.

Women bang pots and pans as shooting slogans during a protest marking the beginning of a 24-hour women strike at the Sol square in Madrid

Women in Spain have been called for a 24-hour feminist strike in their workplaces and also stop doing duties at home

People take part in a rally to celebrate International Women's Day at the State Library in Melbourne, Australia which kicked off a day of worldwide protests

An activist from the Asian Migrants Coordinating Body holds a placard that reads 'End Modern Day Slavery in HK' during a protest

Men and women came together to protest in Seoul , South Korea, donning black clothing and masks
Inspired by Dame Helen Mirren, the 58-year-TV presenter Lorraine Kelly has shared a flawless make-up free selfie with fans.

The Lorraine host encouraged her viewers to follow in the footsteps of the Hollywood star, 72, who posted a bare-faced snap on Instagram before her glam-squad got to work ahead of the Oscars on Sunday night.

Dame Helen recently confessed she has experienced insecurity all of her life, despite her stellar acting career.

An impressed Lorraine decided to follow suit on her show on Thursday, to mark International Women's Day, and a before and after shot of her in the hair and make-up chair flashed up on the screen.

She said: 'No filter, no make-up. There's me afterwards, it just shows you that no-one is camera ready until we are.

'We all look like that when we wake up in the morning,' Lorraine said before asking those watching at home to share their own make-up free selfies.

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Looking flawless wearing no make-up, the TV presenter shared a before and after while making herself make-up ready

Wow: Age-defying Helen Mirren, 72, was unrecognisable as she unveiled her Oscars transformation on Tuesday after she claimed to suffer 'insecurities all her life'

Lorraine Kelly said she felt inspired by Dame Helen Mirren and decided to take a snap of how she looked this morning

The 58-year-old looked fresh faced in the before shot, smiling for the camera and with her un-styled hair scraped back from her face ahead of her make-up being applied.

It was contrasted with Lorraine's groomed appearance in the after shot, with immaculate base, defined eyes, and an artfully coiffed blow dry.

TV presenter Lorraine showed the picture Dame Helen had shared on her Instagram of her clad in her dressing gown and displaying her very smooth complexion without make-up.

The actress then underwent a glamorous transformation as her beauty team enhanced her flawless face with heavy strokes of blush and eyeshadow.

Glamorous Helen also had her loosely-tousled pixie crop styled to add the finishing touches to her red carpet look.

At the Oscars on Sunday, the A-list star wowed when she stepped out in a bodycon blue dress which caressed every inch of her fabulous figure.

She's so stylish: The actress underwent a glamorous transformation (L) as artists enhanced her ageless beauty with heavy strokes of make-up (R)

What a woman! The A-list star flattered her fabulous figure in a bodycon blue dress which caressed every inch of her hourglass figure at the Oscars on Sunday

Revealed: Despite her sky-rocketing career on the showbiz circuit, the gorgeous actress divulged she has been plagued with insecurities all of her life

Despite her sky-rocketing career on the showbiz circuit, the gorgeous actress divulged she has been plagued with insecurities all of her life.

She told The Daily Telegraph: 'I have experienced insecurity all my life, and I still do on a daily basis. I remember having these panic attacks but not at the obvious moments.'

The Woman in Gold star confessed were 'so many things' she didn't like about her body when she was propelled into the limelight as an actress in the late 1960's.

She explained: 'Because I have never felt beautiful. There are people who are beautiful and I'm objective enough to know that I don't fit into that category.

'For me, still now, it's to do with wit and intelligence rather than the way I look. I don't feel clever or funny enough.'

The Oscar winner scooped Best Actress for her 2006 performance of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen.
She's been sticking to a uniform of smart coats and trousers for her royal engagements, but today Meghan Markle did mix things up with a subtle change to her hair.

The bride-to-be usually wears wear her long, dark hair parted in the centre with very gentle waves.

But today she switched things up by moving her parting a little to the side and sporting bigger, more defined curls as she visited Birmingham with Prince Harry.

Celebrity hairdresser Jay Birmingham who owns an eponymous salon in the city she's visiting said that the effect of the simple tweak shouldn't be underestimated as it suits her face shape perfectly.

He told Femail: 'Meghan has changed her parting from the middle to the side that frames her symmetrical face, shows off her cheekbones and diffuses her jaw line.

Meghan Markle, 36, switched things up by moving her parting a little to the side and sporting bigger, more defined curls as she visited Birmingham with Prince Harry

The bride to be usually wears her hair with a centre parting and styles it in soft, subtle waves

'This is a great look on Meghan. It is a subtle change and holds focus on one side of her face, rather than the width of her whole face.

'It creates a classic, elegant look and perfectly balances her stunning facial features.'

The former Suits star also switched her loose waves for bigger curls for a much more 'princess' style.

According to Jason, her stylist most likely achieved the look by using a wider barrel hair tongs.

According to Jason, her stylist most likely achieved Meghan's more defined curls by using a wider barrel hair tongs

Celebrity hairdresser Jay Birmingham said a centre parting suits Meghan's symmetrical face perfectly

'She pulls off these bigger curls magnificently as they draw attention to her eyes and cheekbones when paired up with her side-sweeping parting,' he said.

'The wider curls minimise the length of her face keeping focus on her killer cheekbones and leaves weight in the hair to balance proportions of her face.'

The bride-to-be arrived in Birmingham this morning wearing a $298 navy Italian stadium-cloth wool coat by J Crew teamed with an unstructured 168 jumper from AllSaints and black cropped trousers by Alexander Wang.

While she looks suitably chic on royal engagements the former Suits star is sticking to a formula that guarantees her outfits don't steal the show - especially as a committed feminist on International Women's Day.

She accessorised with Manolo Blahnik heels and a Ghianda leather shoulder bag by Altuzarra, but chanelled the queen by ditching the long strap and carrying it by the handle.
Ivanka Trump might love high-fashion labels, but on Thursday morning she headed out to work donning one of her favorite mainstream brands: Zara.

The first daughter, 36, left her home in the luxurious neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. a little after 8, wearing a $89.90 coat from the Spanish company, featuring pearl embellishments on the collar and pockets.

While the coat seems to have sold out, it was recently available for just $22.99, a particularly low price tag in Ivanka's wardrobe.

Beloved brand: Ivanka Trump headed to work on Thursday morning wearing a coat from Zara

Start of the day: The first daughter, 36, left her home in the luxurious neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. a little after 8

Bundled up: She wore a $89.90 coat from the Spanish company, featuring pearl embellishments on the collar and pockets

Bargain: While the coat seems to have sold out, it was recently available for just $22.99, a particularly low price tag in Ivanka's wardrobe

Monochrome: Ivanka paired the Zara coat with tailored back pants for an all-black look

Belongings: She finished off her outfit with a black purse, which she held in her right hand as she walked down the stairs of her home to the sidewalk

Ivanka paired the Zara coat with tailored back pants as well as pointy slingback shoes in the same hue.

She finished off her outfit with a black purse, which she held in her right hand as she walked down the stairs of her home to the sidewalk, heading towards the parked Secret Service vehicle waiting for her.

The White House adviser added a pop of color to her all-black silhouette thanks to a touch of bright red lipstick, and wore her hair in a simple blowout.

Her husband and colleague Jared Kushner, 37, was also seen leaving for work, departing a little before 8 in a dark suit and red tie.

Jared flashed a bright smile at the cameras as he walked towards his own Secret Service car.

The pair were later seen standing side by side next to the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.

Also on Thursday, Ivanka shared a tweet to mark International Women's Day, writing: 'Today we come together in recognition of women at home & around the globe. We celebrate womens achievements, past & present, & pledge to empower women to reach their full economic potential for generations to come. When women thrive, we ALL succeed.'

Shoe choices: Ivanka donned pointy slingback shoes to complete her all-black silhouette

Scarlet: The White House adviser added a pop of color to her all-black silhouette thanks to a touch of bright red lipstick

Relaxed: Ivanka opted to wear her hair in a simple blowout parted in the middle

Accessories: On Thursday, Ivanka shielded her eyes behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses, a look she has favored throughout the week

Altitude: Ivanka left from a different entrance than usual and had to go down the flight of stairs to hop on the vehicle waiting for her

Coordinated: She wore a pair of pearl earrings matching the embellishments on her coat

Trademark: Ivanka has been seen in Zara clothes before, and has been known to enjoy pearls

Greeting: The first daughter smiled and waved at the cameras as she made her way down

Repeat: Ivanka was seen on Monday wearing the same pair of black sunglasses she wore on Thursday morning while leaving her house

In high spirits: The first daughter smiled as she started her work day a little after 8

Hello: She made sure to raise her hands in acknowledgement of the cameras outside

Dark hues: It's the second time this week Ivanka has donned black from head to toes

Heading out: Her husband and colleague Jared Kushner, 37, was also seen leaving for work, departing a little before 8 in a dark suit and red tie

Gathering: Ivanka and Jared were later seen standing next to the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House

Tuning in: The pair listened on as the president held a meeting with members of his cabinet

Message: Ivanka made sure to mark International Women's Day with this tweet

On Thursday, Ivanka shielded her eyes behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses as she left her home, a look she has favored throughout the week.

She donned the same glasses as she headed out on Monday morning wearing all black once again, and on Tuesday, Ivanka sported a pair of aviator shades while leaving her home with her six-year-old daughter Arabella.

The first daughter and her eldest were seen leaving their D.C. home a little after 8 to hop on a Secret Service vehicle, with Ivanka smiling as she started the day with her daughter.

She kept her hand on the back of Arabella's hood as both of them made their way out in the cool in the cool D.C. morning.

Ivanka was wearing a checked top and matching flare pants during the outing, and had opted to mix prints by finishing off her outfit with a pair of high heels with a houndstooth pattern.

She shielded her eyes behind a pair of aviator sunglasses and kept her hair in a simple blowout, carrying her belongings in a black purse.

Arabella, meanwhile, carried a multicolored bag as she and her mother walked to the Secret Service vehicle waiting for them.

Ivanka appears to be quite fond of the checked outfit. She was photographed wearing it in November last year, this time paired with black shoes and a matching purse.

On that occasion, Ivanka wore her hair in a low ponytail and completed her look with a bright red lipstick, as well as a pair of dangling earrings.

Duo: The White House adviser got to spend a little bit of extra time with her daughter Arabella on Tuesday morning as both of them headed out together

Safe: She kept her hand on the back of Arabella's hood as both of them made their way out

On Monday, Ivanka was spotted heading to work a little before 8, bundled up in a black turtleneck paired with a matching black jacket, as well as coordinated tailored pants.

The first daughter had a black purse slung over her left shoulder as she departed from her house.

She finished off her outfit with pointy, striped black and white shoes with a low heel.

As for accessories, she opted for a pair of discreet pearl earrings and kept her eyes shielded behind the same large black sunglasses she wore on Thursday.

Her husband Jared, 37, was also seen heading out to work on Monday morning, leaving a little before 7 and flashing a bright smile at the cameras.

Dress code: Ivanka cut a somber silhouette as she stepped out in an all-black outfit on Monday, wearing the same sunglasses she donned on Thursday

Mother-daughter: Ivanka seemed in high spirits this weekend as she got ready for the Gridiron dinner with Arabella

The couple's departures on Monday came a few days after it was initially revealed that Ivanka and Jared, who are both senior White House advisers, might be at risk of losing their jobs.

Some White House aides have become frustrated that Jared and Ivanka have been able to stay at the White House, even though the president, Ivanka's father, has said they should leave and should never have been hired in the first place, the New York Times reported on Friday.

President Trump has told his daughter and son-in-law that they should remain at their current jobs, but he has also asked chief of staff John F. Kelly to help oust them, aides told the newspaper.

Jared has been stripped of his top security clearance and has been downgraded to a secret level.

This has prompted questions on how he can successfully advance his ambitious agendaincluding achieving Mideast peace, a goal that has eluded presidents for generations.

Meanwhile, the president's son-in-law remains under the shadow of the Russia probe and has seen his business dealings come under renewed scrutiny.

Thus, a frustrated Trump has griped about the wave of bad headlines generated by probes into Jared's business dealings and the status of his security clearance, according to two people familiar with the president's thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

The president also has wondered aloud if the couple would be better off returning home to New York.
Presenter Myleene Klass has praised art supplies giant Crayola over its range of 'multicultural color' pens.

The mother-of-two revealed a friend told her about the collection after she had posted on social media about 'struggling to find mixed race colours' for her daughters, Ava, 10, and Hero, six.

The former pop star, who is half Austrian, half Filipino, shared her discovery with her 223,000 Instagram followers on Thursday.

Mylene Klass (pictured with daughter Ava) has praised stationary company Crayola for their multicultural colours pen set

The presenter had complained just a day earlier of her struggle to find 'mixed race colours' for her daughters

The post, which was uploaded as part of her Story, featured a picture of the washable markers with a clapping hand emoji and a pink heart.

She wrote: 'No way!!!! After my post yesterday on struggling to find #mixedrace colours! @mimiandbaby sent me this [sic]'.

Myleene, 39, shares her daughters with her ex-husband, Graham Quinn, whom she divorced in 2013 after two years of marriage.

Myleene, 39, shares her daughters with her ex-husband, Graham Quinn, whom she divorced in 2013 after two years of marriage

The star hosts a weekly show on Smooth Radio and is an ambassador and model for Littlewoods.

She is also a popular presence on social media, where she keeps fans entertained with posts about motherhood and her daily goings-on.

Crayola introduced its 'multicultural color' range in 1992 following feedback from customers, according to its website.

It is now available in products including crayons and washable markers.
Ivanka Trump has come under fire on Twitter for sharing a special tweet marking International Women's Day, which many have billed as tone-deaf.

The first daughter, 36, sent out the message on Thursday morning, at the start of the day celebrating the movement for women's rights around the world.

'Today we come together in recognition of women at home & around the globe,' she wrote. 'We celebrate women's achievements, past & present, & pledge to empower women to reach their full economic potential for generations to come. When women thrive, we ALL succeed.'

Backlash: Ivanka Trump has come under fire on Twitter for sharing a special tweet marking International Women's Day, which many have billed as tone-deaf

Statement: The first daughter, 36, sent out the message on Thursday morning, at the start of the day celebrating the movement for women's rights around the world

Despite Ivanka's upbeat tone, many Twitter users did not take the message well, and bashed the first daughter saying her tweet was hypocritical.

'Ivanka, your hypocrisy and lack of awareness are pitiful,' one person wrote in response to her tweet. 'Save yourself and go back to New York. You just make a fool of yourself with every fake tweet about caring for women, or anybody but your money.'

Several people said that, after being born in an ultra wealthy family and getting handed a White House position by her father, Ivanka had little idea of the struggles many women face on a daily basis.

'What would you know about empowerment?' someone asked her. 'You were handed everything on a gold platter. You have no understanding of what women go thru everyday just to survive, let alone stand up to a society that denigrates their every accomplishment. Go back to your tower.'

'The entire clan lacks self-awareness,' another Twitter user added, presumably about the Trump family. 'That's what happens when you believe you are special and superior.'

Not convinced: Despite Ivanka's upbeat tone, many Twitter users did not take the message well, and bashed the first daughter saying her tweet was hypocritical

Questions: Some brought up complaints from employees who work at factories where Ivanka's brand's clothing and shoes, describing low wages and poor working conditions

Taking her to task: Several people referenced accusations of sexual misconduct against Ivanka's father, President Donald Trump

'Sorry Ivanka, I can't find inspiration from you. I'd suggest you get as far away from the WH ASAP and save what little dignity you still have. Dada's bringing you down. Way down,' someone else wrote.

One person said they failed to see exactly what Ivanka has done to advance women's rights, and tweeted: 'Thanks for all you do for women (extreme sarcasm).'

'Hey Ivanka... There is no way humanly possible for you to know or understand the real achievements of real women. You have lived in a gilded cage and have been given everything. You only have knowledge of the 1% kind of world #youknownothing,' someone else added.

Others brought up complaints from employees who work at factories where Ivanka's brand's clothing and shoes, describing low wages and poor working conditions.

'Do your overseas factories pay girls and women enough to achieve their own economic potential? Or do you pay them as little to try and achieve your own?' one Twitter user asked.

Several referenced accusations of sexual misconduct against Ivanka's father, President Donald Trump.

When asked by NBC News last week if she believes her father's accusers, Ivanka refused to answer, saying the question was an 'inappropriate' one to ask a daughter.

'How 'bout we start by just believing them when they say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted by men like your father?' someone suggested.

'Let's also recognize porn stars for their professionalism especially #StormyDaniels,' another person wrote in reference to the actress with whom President Trump is accused of having an extra-marital affair.

TWITTER USERS RESPOND TO IVANKA TRUMP'S MESSAGE FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY Advertisement

After she sent out her tweet, Ivanka was spotted on Thursday morning heading out work donning one of her favorite mainstream brands: Zara.

The first daughter left her home in the luxurious neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. a little after 8, wearing a $89.90 coat from the Spanish company, featuring pearl embellishments on the collar and pockets.

While the coat seems to have sold out, it was recently available for just $22.99, a particularly low price tag in Ivanka's wardrobe.

Ivanka paired the Zara coat with tailored back pants as well as pointy slingback shoes in the same hue.

She finished off her outfit with a black purse, which she held in her right hand as she walked down the stairs of her home to the sidewalk, heading towards the parked Secret Service vehicle waiting for her.

Beloved brand: Ivanka headed to work on Thursday morning wearing a coat from Zara

Start of the day: The first daughter left her home in the luxurious neighborhood of Kalorama in Washington, D.C. a little after 8

Bundled up: She wore a $89.90 coat from the Spanish company, featuring pearl embellishments on the collar and pockets

Bargain: While the coat seems to have sold out, it was recently available for just $22.99, a particularly low price tag in Ivanka's wardrobe

Monochrome: Ivanka paired the Zara coat with tailored back pants for an all-black look

Belongings: She finished off her outfit with a black purse, which she held in her right hand as she walked down the stairs of her home to the sidewalk

The White House adviser added a pop of color to her all-black silhouette thanks to a touch of bright red lipstick, and wore her hair in a simple blowout.

Her husband and colleague Jared Kushner, 37, was also seen leaving for work, departing a little before 8 in a dark suit and red tie.

Jared flashed a bright smile at the cameras as he walked towards his own Secret Service car.

The pair were later seen standing side by side next to the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.

Shoe choices: Ivanka donned pointy slingback shoes to complete her all-black silhouette

Scarlet: The White House adviser added a pop of color to her all-black silhouette thanks to a touch of bright red lipstick

Relaxed: Ivanka opted to wear her hair in a simple blowout parted in the middle

Accessories: On Thursday, Ivanka shielded her eyes behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses, a look she has favored throughout the week

Altitude: Ivanka left from a different entrance than usual and had to go down the flight of stairs to hop on the vehicle waiting for her

Coordinated: She wore a pair of pearl earrings matching the embellishments on her coat

Trademark: Ivanka has been seen in Zara clothes before, and has been known to enjoy pearls

Greeting: The first daughter smiled and waved at the cameras as she made her way down

Repeat: Ivanka was seen on Monday wearing the same pair of black sunglasses she wore on Thursday morning while leaving her house

In high spirits: The first daughter smiled as she started her work day a little after 8

Hello: She made sure to raise her hands in acknowledgement of the cameras outside

Dark hues: It's the second time this week Ivanka has donned black from head to toes

Heading out: Her husband and colleague Jared Kushner, 37, was also seen leaving for work, departing a little before 8 in a dark suit and red tie

Gathering: Ivanka and Jared were later seen standing next to the White House Chief of Staff John Kelly during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House

Tuning in: The pair listened on as the president held a meeting with members of his cabinet

On Thursday, Ivanka shielded her eyes behind a pair of oversized black sunglasses as she left her home, a look she has favored throughout the week.

She donned the same glasses as she headed out on Monday morning wearing all black once again, and on Tuesday, Ivanka sported a pair of aviator shades while leaving her home with her six-year-old daughter Arabella.

The first daughter and her eldest were seen leaving their D.C. home a little after 8 to hop on a Secret Service vehicle, with Ivanka smiling as she started the day with her daughter.

She kept her hand on the back of Arabella's hood as both of them made their way out in the cool in the cool D.C. morning.

Ivanka was wearing a checked top and matching flare pants during the outing, and had opted to mix prints by finishing off her outfit with a pair of high heels with a houndstooth pattern.

She shielded her eyes behind a pair of aviator sunglasses and kept her hair in a simple blowout, carrying her belongings in a black purse.

Arabella, meanwhile, carried a multicolored bag as she and her mother walked to the Secret Service vehicle waiting for them.

Ivanka appears to be quite fond of the checked outfit. She was photographed wearing it in November last year, this time paired with black shoes and a matching purse.

On that occasion, Ivanka wore her hair in a low ponytail and completed her look with a bright red lipstick, as well as a pair of dangling earrings.

Duo: The White House adviser got to spend a little bit of extra time with her daughter Arabella on Tuesday morning as both of them headed out together

Safe: She kept her hand on the back of Arabella's hood as both of them made their way out

On Monday, Ivanka was spotted heading to work a little before 8, bundled up in a black turtleneck paired with a matching black jacket, as well as coordinated tailored pants.

The first daughter had a black purse slung over her left shoulder as she departed from her house.

She finished off her outfit with pointy, striped black and white shoes with a low heel.

As for accessories, she opted for a pair of discreet pearl earrings and kept her eyes shielded behind the same large black sunglasses she wore on Thursday.

Her husband Jared, 37, was also seen heading out to work on Monday morning, leaving a little before 7 and flashing a bright smile at the cameras.

Dress code: Ivanka cut a somber silhouette as she stepped out in an all-black outfit on Monday, wearing the same sunglasses she donned on Thursday

Mother-daughter: Ivanka seemed in high spirits this weekend as she got ready for the Gridiron dinner with Arabella

The couple's departures on Monday came a few days after it was initially revealed that Ivanka and Jared, who are both senior White House advisers, might be at risk of losing their jobs.

Some White House aides have become frustrated that Jared and Ivanka have been able to stay at the White House, even though the president, Ivanka's father, has said they should leave and should never have been hired in the first place, the New York Times reported on Friday.

President Trump has told his daughter and son-in-law that they should remain at their current jobs, but he has also asked chief of staff John F. Kelly to help oust them, aides told the newspaper.

Jared has been stripped of his top security clearance and has been downgraded to a secret level.

This has prompted questions on how he can successfully advance his ambitious agendaincluding achieving Mideast peace, a goal that has eluded presidents for generations.

Meanwhile, the president's son-in-law remains under the shadow of the Russia probe and has seen his business dealings come under renewed scrutiny.

Thus, a frustrated Trump has griped about the wave of bad headlines generated by probes into Jared's business dealings and the status of his security clearance, according to two people familiar with the president's thinking but not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

The president also has wondered aloud if the couple would be better off returning home to New York.
A brave woman has begged teens not to drink and drive after she was thrown from her car in an alcohol-fueled crash and left paralyzed below the neck.

Melissa Ann was 18-years-old when she decided to drink four or five beers with pals before getting behind the wheel of her pickup with her friend in the passenger side.

She slammed on the breaks to avoid an accident and was thrown 75 feet through the open window while her truck flipped five times.

Horrible: Melissa Ann was 18-years-old when she decided to drink four or five beers with pals before getting behind the wheel of her pickup with her friend in the passenger side

Accident: Melissa from Tallahassee, Florida slammed on the breaks to avoid an accident and was thrown 75 feet through the open window while her truck flipped five times

Spine: Melissa was rushed to the hospital in a coma where she later found out she broke her neck in five places, cutting into her spinal cord and leaving her quadriplegic

Today: Ten years later, Melissa is now 27-years-old and still has no feeling below the neck

Horrified locals who heard the crash from a mile away discovered her face down with her neck so twisted that her chin was resting on her shoulder.

Melissa broke her neck in five places, cutting into her spinal cord and leaving her quadriplegic.

Ten years later, Melissa is now 27-years-old and still has no feeling below the neck.

She has regained some movement in her arms but remains in a wheelchair and doctors have said she has a one to two per cent chance of recovery.

Brave Melissa from Tallahassee, Florida now gives talks to school children and drunk drivers imploring them, 'Don't make the same mistake as me.'

She said, 'I want to make sure someone else doesn't have to go through this and doesn't make a bad decision.

'People can see me and see right in front of them the impact of drunk driving.

'Most people think they will end up with a DUI or even end up dead. People don't think they could end up alive but trapped inside their body.

'The other message I hope to convey is of hope, which is my favorite word.

'I have been given a one to two per cent chance of recovery, but that is not a zero chance of recovery.

'That gives me the strength to hope.

'Knowing that I made the decision, that I did this to myself is a bitter pill to swallow.

'Yes I thought I had ruined my life, yes my life didn't turn out exactly how I expected, but what if it saved me from something much worse? I don't know where I might have ended up.'

Party: Melissa, pictured the night of the crash in August 2008, was going through a breakup and wasn't planning on drinking but ended up playing beer pong at a party before driving

Drunk: She called her parents ahead of her one a.m. curfew to tell them she was staying at a friend's but changed her mind and started to drive home at three a.m.

Melissa had just experienced a break up and had been out with a friend the night before so she wasn't planning on drinking.

However, she ended up joining in a game of beer pong at a house party in August 2008.

She called her parents ahead of her one a.m. curfew to tell them she was staying at a friend's but changed her mind and started to drive home at three a.m.

'I wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed and I didn't know some of the guys at the party,' said Melissa.

'I felt tipsy-ish but I wasn't stumbling or slurring my words.'

She said she pulled up next to a car on a merging lane which 'cut me off at the last second.'

'I was aggravated,' she said.

'I wasn't too close behind him but I wasn't the distance I should have been.

'There was a little bend in the road, he put his brakes on really hard, I hit my brakes and at that point the back end of my truck started to slide off the road.

'Neither of us, me or my friend, had seat belts on and the windows were rolled down when my truck flipped and we both got thrown out of the windows.'

Therapy: She spent two months in the hospital where she regained movement but failed to regain feeling in a single muscle in her arm

Trying: Ten years later she still can't feel anything below the shoulder but also now has some movement in both arms

Brave: Although she's been given a one to two per cent chance of recovery she still has hope and keeps pushing

Two men heard the crash and rushed to help, finding Melissa's friend, who escaped with a broken pelvis and tail bone.

Melissa was rushed to hospital in a coma as a 'Jane Doe' and her parents were called three hours later.

Scans revealed she has smashed her C3-C7 vertebrae, damaging her spinal cord and medics inserted pins in her neck in a bid to fix the damage.

'They couldn't tell my parents if I would make it - if I would still be alive,' recalled Melissa.

'They said if I did live there was a better chance I would be paralyzed from the neck down and not be able to breathe on my own.'

She was in a coma on a ventilator for ten days before she was transferred to the Shepherd Center Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Rehabilitation in Atlanta, Georgia.

She spent two months in the hospital where she regained movement but failed to regain feeling in a single muscle in her arm.

'That was ten years ago and I still can't feel anything below the shoulder,' said Melissa, who also now has some movement in both arms.

Brave: She now gives talks to school children and drunk drivers imploring them, 'Don't make the same mistake as me'

Hope: Melissa has gone on to gain a bachelor's degree in human communications and uses an electronic wheelchair to get around to her speaking engagements with school children

She admits she experienced some 'dark days' before she was able to start speaking to large groups of people about her ordeal.

'A big thing for me to understand was why I had to go through something like this,' she said.

'The decision I made to drink and drive, almost everyone I knew had made that decision once in their life.

'I wasn't dong anything worse than everyone else and I was like 'why me?'

'It was my mom and dad who said "Melissa, you need to start picking up your life again."

'I want to now reach as many people as I can to help them so they don't end up in my position.'

Melissa, who has gone on to gain a bachelor's degree in human communications, uses an electronic wheelchair to get around.

She lives with her parents and is supported by caregivers who help her get to speaking engagements with school children and people who have been caught drunk driving.
We are used to seeing Her Majesty in a uniform of conservative suits, but tonight she delighted royal fans as she slipped into a dazzling ballgown.

The Queen welcomed dignitaries to Windsor Castle for a glittering reception on Wednesday evening, and did so in a hot pink dress.

The 91-year-old monarch looked elegant in a floor-length gown silk gown complete with gold motifs as she welcomed guests to the White Drawing Room.

The Queen (pictured with the Duchess of Cornwall and Princess Zahra Khan) dazzled in a fuchsia pink ballgown as she welcomed guests to a glittering reception at Windsor Castle on Thursday

The event was held in celebration of the diamond jubilee of the the Aga Khan's leadership as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslim Community.

Following the drinks reception the monarch will host the royal at a private dinner at the castle.

As well as her eye-catching dress the Queen also opted for another unusual fashion choice this evening.

The royal abandoned her traditional black leather Launer handbag, which she carries on almost every occasion, in favour of a metallic gold take on the designer piece.

She coordinated the quirky accessory with a pair of matching gold court shoes which could be seen peeking from the hem of her dress.

The event was held in celebration of the diamond jubilee of the the Aga Khan's (pictured) leadership as Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslim Community

Princess Salwa Aga (pictured), the Aga Khan's daughter-in-law also demanded attention in a stunning dove grey satin gown

Guests at this evening's reception included the Duchess of Cornwall and the Prince of Wales.

Camilla looked her elegant best in a floor-length black velvet dress as she spent time chatting with the Queen and her guests.

Her daughter Princess Anne could also be seen in attendance, dressed in a glamorous green ensemble.

Princess Salwa, Aga Khan's daughter-in-law also demanded attention in a stunning dove grey satin gown with bejeweled embellishment.

In a surprising fashion choice the Queen opted for a gold version of her beloved Launer bag

Camilla looked her elegant best in a floor-length black velvet dress as she spent time chatting with the Queen and her guests

The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismaili branch of Shiite Islam, opened a yearlong jubilee to mark his 60th anniversary in July last year.

Among Muslim leaders, the Aga Khan holds a unique position. The community he leads as 'imam' is not large - around 20 million adherents, compared to the estimates of several hundred million followers of Shiism's main branch, known as the 'Twelvers.' Sunnis make up the majority of the approximately 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.

Throughout the Diamond Jubilee year, the Aga Khan will travel to countries where the Aga Khan Development Network operates to launch new programs to alleviate poverty and increase access to financing for housing, education and childhood development.
When it comes to buggy rides, the royals are well seasoned with the Duke of Edinburgh a regular on the horse and cart.

However, he doesn't put quite as glamorous a display as Norway's Queen Sonja who headed out on a pony and trap on Thursday.

The Queen, 80, looked her elegant best, if a little impractically dressed, as she boarded the cart in a white pant suit.

Joining her was husband King Harald, 81, who looked his dapper best in a navy blue suit, shirt and tie as he joined his wife for a ride.

Queen Sonja and King Harald enjoyed a ride aboard a pony and trap during their third day in Buenos Aires

The couple are currently on their third day of their visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After their ride aboard the buggy the royal couple enjoyed a visit to the 'Villa Maria' country house and hotel.

Much to their delight the couple were treated to a traditional music and dance show, with Queen Sonja even recording the performance on her mobile phone.

After their ride aboard the buggy the royal couple enjoyed a visit to the 'Villa Maria' country house and hotel

The couple were treated to a glass of wine from a local vineyard during the performance

The couple were treated to a glass of wine from a local vineyard during the performance, which they clearly enjoyed as they were seen applauding the dancers.

Their afternoon engagement was took a lighter tone from the more somber visit they had conducted earlier.

The King and the Queen participated in a tribute to the victims of the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) celebrated in the Remembrance park.

The pair could be seen tossing white flowers into the ocean after meeting with representatives of Argentinian human rights organizations and visiting the memorial for the victims.

Earlier the couple performed a more somber engagement as they participated in a tribute to the victims of the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983) celebrated in the Remembrance park

Later Queen Sonja opened a business seminar which aims to expand the trade between Norway and Argentina

Afterwards, Queen Sonja opened a business seminar called 'Norway-Argentina, A New Partnership for Value Creation' which aims to expand the trade between Norway and Argentina.

Elsewhere, the couple's son Crown Prince Haakon, 44, celebrated International Women's Day during a visit to Stovner, Oslo.

The visit aimed to highlight the great commitment that is found in Stovner among women who want to influence society.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit was absent due to a visit to New York.

Meanwhile their son Prince Haakon celebrated International Women's Day in Stovner, Oslo
Flu has been so severe this year that many patients have needed treatment with artificial lungs to keep them alive.

Otherwise healthy adults have needed the highest level of intensive care after being hospitalised with the virus this winter, MPs were told yesterday.

Many had been given the flu jab  which is only effective in half of patients.

This is combined with the worst norovirus levels in five years, which has seen 75,000 beds taken out of service as a result.

Otherwise healthy adults have needed the highest level of intensive care after being hospitalised with the virus this winter, MPs were told yesterday

Dr Sue Crossland, president elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, told the Science and Technology Committee, that she had seen a near seven-fold increase in flu patients this year.

Some needed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation treatment  used to pump and oxygenate blood outside the body so the heart and lungs can rest.

A King's Fund report warned that some of the sickest patients were being failed when it came to A&E waiting times despite 'heroic efforts of NHS staff'.

Experts also described the 'lag time' between flu vaccine manufacture and when it is given to patients.

The Committee was told that 'we are hostages to virological fortune' as there is little scope for changing the vaccine once a decision has been made about the make-up of the flu jab for the next season - which occurs months ahead of time.

This is combined with the worst norovirus levels in five years, which has seen 75,000 beds taken out of service as a result

The news comes after the head of the NHS said that the number of patients with flu or norovirus could fill 10 hospitals.

The worst flu season in the last seven years, along with high rates of norovirus, have meant that 5,000 beds a day have been needed to care for people with these conditions - the equivalent of 10 acute hospitals, Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England said on Monday.

Dr Sue Crossland, president elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, told the Science and Technology Committee that some flu patients had needed ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) as part of their treatment.

An ECMO can be used when patients are in a critical condition and uses an artificial lung to oxygenate the blood outside the body.

She said: 'From our point of view we have seen a lot more flu this year than last year and certainly probably more than we have seen since the outbreak in 2009.

'It seems to me that the people we are seeing, a very large proportion of them have been vaccinated this year.

'A lot of them are elderly but we are also seeing a significant proportion of young people, like we did in 2009, though not as bad.

Many had been given the flu jab  which is only effective in half of patients. This is combined with the worst norovirus levels in five years, which has seen 75,000 beds taken out of service as a result

'Patients requiring intensive care treatment tend to be the younger patients - the 20, 30, 40-year-old patients who are normally fit and well.

'And we have seen quite a few transfers out of the really strong intensive care support to ECMO - really as high as you can go on the intensive care level.'

Professor Paul Cosford, medical director at Public Health England, added: 'What we are seeing this season is a very high rate of hospitalisation compared with previous years so the pressures on NHS colleagues have been very, very real.

'If we look at flu circulating in the community it would be a moderate flu season, whereas if you look at hospitalisation it has been very high for several weeks.

'It peaked at the end of January/early February but it has been coming down remarkably slowly this season.'

Dr Paul Cosford, medical director at Public Health England, added: 'What we are seeing this season is a very high rate of hospitalisation compared with previous years so the pressures on NHS colleagues have been very, very real'

Meanwhile, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical Officer for England, told MPs: 'One of the scientific problems that we face is the big lag time in terms of flu vaccine manufacture and the point of use.

'So for the Northern Hemisphere, manufacturers begin manufacturing the flu vaccine in early March, possibly late February - as soon as the World Health Organisation (WHO) announces which strain should go in.

'From that point onwards there is no opportunity to change what is in the vaccine that will be available in October.'

He added: 'That decision has already been made for next winter.

'It does illustrate one of the big problems in the management of influenza that the moment late February comes, and the WHO says 'this is what we think should go into the vaccine' and the manufacturers say 'this is what we will start to manufacture for you ready for use in October' we are hostages to virological fortune in terms of anything that might change between March and October.

'The volumes of hundreds of millions of doses required for the Northern Hemisphere alone make it impossible to make a late decision - a snap decision in July - that something needs to change so we have to live with the decision that our experts hand to us in February.'
Taxpayers are funding an estimated 25million of NHS acupuncture every year despite a lack of evidence it works, experts have warned.

Doctors should stop recommending acupuncture for pain because there is insufficient evidence it is clinically worthwhile, two scientists wrote in the British Medical Journal.

Even in China  the country that invented the practice, which usually involves putting needles in the skin  it was considered irrational and superstitious as far back as 1700, they said.

Doctors should stop recommending acupuncture for pain because there is insufficient evidence it is clinically worthwhile, two scientists wrote in the British Medical Journal (stock image)

Professor Edzard Ernst, of the University of Exeter, last night called for the NHS to stop funding the practice.

Health services should use their limited resources for interventions that have been proved effective, he said.

With Asbjorn Hrobjartsson, of the University of Southern Denmark, he wrote: After decades of research and hundreds of acupuncture pain trials, we still have no clear mechanism of action, insufficient evidence for clinically worthwhile benefit, and possible harms.

But Mike Cummings, of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, said it is a safe alternative to drugs which improves health-related quality of life for those who respond well to it.
A one-day-old baby who turned blue and stopped breathing after battling a trio of life-threatening illnesses was saved by an off-duty midwife.

Single mother-of-two Nicole Tierney, 27, who was discharged just one day after giving birth in hospital, messaged midwife Nicky Hennell, 47, after becoming increasingly concerned by her son Austin's, now one, blood and mucus-streaked vomit.

Rushing over in her free time, Ms Hennell, who now lives in Cheltenham, managed to get Austin breathing again after performing CPR on the newborn for 10 minutes.

After being taken to hospital, where he stayed for six weeks, the youngster was diagnosed with meningitis, sepsis and a severe Group B Strep infection.

Despite spending five days in intensive care, with Ms Tierney, from Gloucester, being told Austin had a 50 per cent chance of developing a disability, the healthy baby is now home.

Now a firm family friend, Ms Hennell, who baked a birthday cake for Austin and even read a poem at his naming ceremony, credits Ms Tierney's fast-acting maternal instincts for saving her son's life.

Ms Tierney, who is studying advertising at the University of Gloucestershire, is speaking out to raise awareness of Group B Strep in newborns and encourage the NHS to routinely test pregnant women for the bacteria.

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Austin Tierney, now one, who turned blue and stopped breathing at just one-day-old after battling a trio of life-threatening illnesses was saved by the off-duty midwife Nicky Hennell (left), 47, who his panicked mother Nicole Tierney (right), 27, messaged for help

Ms Tierney was concerned when her newborn was discharged despite vomiting blood

WHAT IS A GROUP STREP B INFECTION? Group B streptococcus (GBS) is a bacteria that is carried by up to 40 per cent of adults, usually in the gut, and 25 per cent of women in their vaginas, without typically causing symptoms. One in every 2,000 babies is diagnosed with the infection, according to figures from the NHS. It kills in around 10 per cent of cases. The rate of GBS infection in newborn babies in the UK is 2.5x that of the US. GBS infections usually affect newborns, occasionally adults and very rarely babies during pregnancy and before labour. Infants can suffer early-onset GBS infections, which are much more common and occur when the infant is up to six days old, if they come into contact with the bacteria in the womb or during birth. This causes them to develop rapid breathing problems and blood poisoning. Late-onset GBS infections, which occur between seven days and up to three months, usually cause sepsis and meningitis. Babies' symptoms include: Fever

Bluish-coloured skin

Seizures

Limpness or stiffness

Vomiting

Poor feeding

Diarrhoea

Fussing Adults may experience infections of the: Skin and soft tissues

Bones and joints

Lungs

Urinary tract GBS infections are linked to stillbirths, premature deliveries and maternal infections. The treatment for sufferers of any age is IV antibiotics. Source: Group B Strep Support Advertisement

'If I hadn't turned up, it would have been a very different story'

Ms Tierney, who described the moment Austin stopped breathing as the worst of her life, felt something was not right when doctors discharged her from hospital just one day after giving birth.

Speaking of calling on Ms Hennell for help, Ms Tierney said: 'I messaged Nicky and she came over right away in her free time, even though it is not really her job.

'As she arrived he stopped breathing.

'I was screaming and running round the room. It was terrifying. I had to turn away.'

Ms Hennell, who also helped deliver Ms Tierney's daughter Mia two years ago, managed to get the youngster breathing, saying: 'It was the first time I had to do CPR on a baby in someone's home and without another midwife there.

'The training kicked in, and I knew what I had to do. I was trying to reassure Nicole as much as I could.

'He is very lucky. If hadn't turned up when I did, it would have been a very different story.'

Ms Tierney credits the 'extraordinary' Ms Hennell for staying calm and taking control of the situation.

However, the midwife argued: 'The fact he is alive today isn't just down to me.

'Nicole's instincts as a mum were amazing, realising something wasn't right.'

Rushing over in her free time, Ms Hennell managed to get Austin breathing again after performing CPR on the newborn for 10 minutes. He was suffering from multiple infections

While the youngster recovered in intensive care for five days and spent a total of six weeks in hospital, Ms Tierney says she was not living but merely existing

Now the pair are friends for life, with Ms Hennell even speaking at Austin's naming ceremony

Friends for life

While enduring the weeks of Austin's recovery, Ms Tierney said she was not living, but merely existing in a world that was reduced to the hospital.

Throughout Austin's traumatic recovery, Ms Tierney claims Ms Hennell was always checking in to make sure everything was alright.

Ms Hennell was also often on hand to have a cup of tea and a chat with Ms Tierney, who used to battle loneliness after moving to Gloucestershire from Oxfordshire by herself.

She said: 'It was lovely to have her support through that time.

'She is a very patient person about what she does. She cares over and above.'

Difficult pregnancy

Although the majority of Ms Tierney's pregnancy went to plan, she became extremely unwell during her 34th week.

Despite thinking she was going to give birth prematurely, she managed to recover and have a normal, full-term labour.

Austin was born at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on February 5 2017.
A six-year-old boy born without eyes is one of only 60 cases in the world and is subjected to cruel taunts from strangers

Christian Buchanan, from Woodbury, Tennessee, suffers from a Tessier facial cleft with microphthalmia, which has just 60 known cases in medical history.

Since being born with large gaps in his face, Christian has required a feeding tube since he was just four days old and has endured seven reconstruction operations.

Despite the condition leaving the youngster unable to see, as well as affecting his learning and speech, his mother Lacey insists the disorder has not stopped Christian from living a full life.

She said: 'Christian is a very typical little boy. He's learning to read, he likes to wrestle with his little brother - all the things that any six-year-old would enjoy.'

Although the youngster, who is learning to play the violin and working towards an orange belt in karate, manages to get the most out of his life, he still endures cruel comments from strangers.

Lacey said: 'I was unaware before Christian was born that there is this huge social stigma about being different, looking different, and most people didn't know how to handle somebody with that type of difference.'

She is speaking out to raise awareness of disabilities in the hope of making people more accepting of those who look different.

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Christian Buchanan was born with no eyes due to a condition that has just 60 known cases

His mother Lacey (pictured), who was shocked at the reactions to her son, is speaking out to raise awareness of disabilities in the hope of making others more accepting of people's looks

Christian (pictured with his father Chris) has never seen after being born with the disorder

WHAT IS A TESSIER FACIAL CLEFT? Tessier facial clefts involve the mouth, cheeks, eyes, ears forehead and hairline. There are just 60 known cases in medical history. Its cause is often unknown but may be genetic or due to traumatic injury during prenatal development. Sufferers may experience underdeveloped eyes, abnormal skull development or an unusually small jaw. Treatment varies according to severity. Immediate therapy to aid with feeding and breathing issues is usually required. If the eyes are affected, sufferers often require lubrication to prevent more serious conditions. Surgery can help to repair clefts. Source: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Advertisement

'He has to navigate the world in the dark'

Speaking of her son's disorder, Lacey told Barcroft TV: 'Christian's condition is called Tessier Cleft Lip and Palate, he has classifications three, four and five which include microphthalmia.

'His condition was caused by amniotic banding syndrome.

'Fibrous bands can form in the womb and if they attach to the baby they cut off blood flow, so Christian's banding happened to attach to his face.

'The biggest way Christian's condition affects his daily life is his vision impairment.

'Because he is completely blind, he has to learn to navigate the world in the dark.

She said: 'Our world is made for sighted people and he has to learn to live in it without the benefit of sight; we have to do things a little differently sometimes but its totally doable and he is doing it.'

'Christian will have more surgeries in the future, that's just the nature of this beast.'

Having never been able to see anything, Christian is forced to 'navigate the world in the dark'

Lacey insists the disorder has not stopped her son from living the normal life of a six-year-old

She adds she was unaware of the stigma around disabilities until after Christian was born

WHAT IS MICROPHTHALMIA? Microphthalmia is an eye abnormality that arises before birth and affects around one in 10,000 people. It causes one or both eyeballs to be abnormally small. They may be so tiny they appear to be missing. Microphthalmia often occurs due to missing tissue that forms the eyes' structures. Sufferers usually have severe vision impairment. Microphthalmia may be caused by genetic changes or environmental factors during early development, such as radiation or a lack of vitamins during pregnancy. Surgery and visual aids are usually required. Source: US National Library of Medicine Advertisement

'That's how I was born and I was born awesome'

Speaking of how people react to Christian, Lacey said: 'Just recently we had an issue, we were in a store and Christian was playing with a little toy in the shelf and a lady walked by and said, "eww".

'He has heard people making certain comments. He hears kids say things like "Why does he look like that? What's wrong with his eyes?"

'I have always answered children in a very, positive, upbeat tone and I will say things like, "Oh, that's just how Christian was born".

'And they will say, "Why does he have red eyes?" I will say, "That's just how he was made. Yeah, he has got red eyes, you know, it's cool".

'He's learnt over the course of a couple of weeks to say, "Oh, that's just how god made me" [and] "That's how I was born and I was born awesome". I give him some scripts to say.'

Lacey, who wishes to raise awareness of disabilities, added: 'I want to share my family's story to raise awareness for disabilities in general and specifically facial differences.

'I want do away with those preconceived notions that people have about what it means to have a disability, what it means to have a facial difference and I hope that I'm fostering an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding and respect for differences so that the world will just be a better place for Christian one day.'

Christian, who has already endured seven surgeries, will require more operations in the future

Although Christian has to live his life differently to others, Lacey says he is very confident

Christian (pictured at a graduation ceremony) attends a special learning centre once a week

Like any six-year-old, Christian enjoys wrestling with his younger brother Chandler (pictured)

WHAT IS AMNIOTIC BAND SYNDROME? Amniotic band syndrome (ABS) occurs when an unborn baby becomes entangled in fibrous string-like tissue that restricts its blood flow. It affects around one in 1,200 live births worldwide and is believed to be the cause of 178 in 10,000 miscarriages. If the bands wrap around a limb, it may become amputated in the womb. If across the face, it can cause clefts. Miscarriages can occur if the band wraps around the umbilical cord. Up to 31.5 per cent of clubfoots are associated with ABS. It can also cause webbed digits, nail deformities and stunted bone growth. ABS occurs randomly and is not genetic or a result of the mothers' actions. Surgery can free babies of such bands in the womb. Procedures can also help to rectify webbed digits, while prosthetics can aid amputations. Source: Amnioticbandsyndrome.com Advertisement

'He's curious and he wants to explore the world'

Christian is home-schooled and attends Special Kids Therapy & Nursing Centre, in Murfreesboro, once a week where he learns a variety of everyday skills.

Lacey said: 'In occupational therapy right now he is dressing himself. He just mastered taking shoes off and on.

'[He is also] doing a Lego class, US geography class and creative writing.

'And he is with peers his age and they are all good friends and it has really boosted him socially to help him interact with his peers a lot better.

'I would definitely describe Christian as independent. I remember a few years ago he started saying, "I want to do it all by myself mummy".

'He's curious and he wants to explore the world and he's not afraid to do it.'

For years, Christian has been telling his mother he wants to be able to do things by himself

Lacey (pictured with her husband and sons) says adapting around Christian is 'totally doable'
Toddler Ronnie Kerman has lost his sight after undergoing a string of painful life-saving operations on a brain tumour caused by an almost fatal stroke.

Parents Phil and Louise Kerman have been left devastated after doctors explained their 20-month-old boy is now blind and is unlikely to ever see again.

'I'm keeping all my fingers crossed that he will regain a bit of sight once the tumour has gone,' his father said.

A Bransholme toddler undergoing painful operations in hospital after suffering a stroke caused by a brain tumour has gone blind

Ronnie Kerman, who is thought to be one of Britain's youngest stroke victims, has had shunts placed into his head to drain the fluid from one of the cysts in his brain

WHAT IS A STROKE? Like all organs, the brain needs the oxygen and nutrients provided by blood to function properly. If the supply of blood is restricted or stopped, brain cells begin to die. This can lead to brain injury, disability and possibly death. There are two main causes of strokes: ischaemic  where the blood supply is stopped because of a blood clot, accounting for 85% of all cases

haemorrhagic  where a weakened blood vessel supplying the brain bursts There's also a related condition known as a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), where the blood supply to the brain is temporarily interrupted. This causes what's known as a mini-stroke, often lasting between a few minutes and several hours. TIAs should be treated urgently, as they're often a warning sign you're at risk of having a full stroke in the near future. Seek medical advice as soon as possible, even if your symptoms resolve. Certain conditions increase the risk of having a stroke, including: high blood pressure (hypertension)

high cholesterol

atrial fibrillation

diabetes

Read about the causes of strokes. Source: NHS Advertisement

'I want to take the pain away'

Ronnie's parents rushed him into hospital in February after he became floppy and lifeless. They have remained by his side ever since.

They were devastated when doctors told them that Ronnie had gone blind.

'He can't see anything at all,' Mr Kerman said.

'I found that really heartbreaking. He will potentially never see again.

'I can deal with the brain tumour and him going through chemo, but the thought of him not having his sight is just heartbreaking.

'I want to take all the pain away and I would love to give him my sight.

'Me and my wife have broken down crying a few times and we both just want to cuddle him and do everything a parent should do with their child.'

The Kermans have been told Ronnie's sight could come back. However, it is very unlikely.

'I'm keeping all my fingers crossed that he will regain a bit of sight once the tumour has gone,' Mr Kerman said.

'They have said it is unlikely his sight will come back at all but miracles do happen.'

Disfiguring scars

Robbie had to have excruciating shunts fitted in his skull, which has left a tremendous scar over his had.

His parents were horrified. 'We only got to see his scars in the last couple of days when they took the bandages off and I was amazed how big the scar was,' Mr Kerman, 39, said.

'To see that on a 20-month-old baby was scary.

'But we've been reassured that his hair will grow back and as he grows the scar will reduce.'

Ronnie started his chemotherapy treatment at Leeds General Infirmary yesterday with his family, including parents and four-year-old sister Emily, by his side.

Ronnie's grandparents have been looking after Ronnie's twin brother Robert at the family home in Bransholme.

The youngster's grandparents have been looking after Ronnie's twin brother Robert (pictured left and right, respectively) at the family home in Bransholme

Ronnie with brother Robert, sister Emily and father Phil at the beach

Doctors say Ronnie will need chemotherapy every week for a year and the Kermans hope he may soon be able to return home to continue his treatment at Hull Royal Infirmary.

Proud of their boy

Although the toddler's future remains uncertain, his parents are taking every day as it comes.

They have been bowled over by the continued support they have received on social media and from their friends and family, and are amazed at how Ronnie is fighting his condition.

'We are so proud of him,' Mr Kerman said. 'I can't believe that a 20-month-old baby is able to go through all this pain and I am just lost for words.

'We want to thank family and friends who have visited us all and all our friends who have sent us best wishes on Facebook.

'We don't know what happens next but he is being observed every hour and is receiving the best possible care at a fantastic hospital.'
There are many sex-related questions women never find out the answer to because they are too embarrassed to raise them.

Topics like masturbation, 'unexpected noises' and male partners faking orgasms can be intimidating topics to discuss, but sex experts can offer reassuring advice.

In an article for Women's Health, clinical sexologists offer insight into six issues often dismissed.



Some 'problems' are in fact non-issues - but you can never know that unless you ask

1. Is it normal that my partner fakes orgasms?

YES

We get so hung up on the degree to which women fake orgasms that we may forget men do it too. This can make their partners feel concerned they've done something horribly wrong.

In fact, quite a number of men admit to occasionally faking the big 'O'.

A 2016 study published in the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy found 30 per cent of North American men said they'd faked it at one time or another.

Clinical sexologist Dr Kat van Kirk told Women's Health magazine that the issues that cause men to fake it are similar to those of women.

'Its a similar story to women. Ability to orgasm can be affected by alcohol, tiredness, stress and some medication,' she said.

However, that doesn't mean the sex wasn't any good.

'With his anticipation and the release of bonding hormones like oxytocin, the journey can be just as intense as the orgasm', Dr Van Kirk says.

If the issues persists, it may be worth having a discussion and discovering how you can both reach the finish line.

2. Is it normal that I prefer anal to vaginal sex?

YES

Perhaps surprisingly, women who've had some form of anal play say they have more frequent orgasms than those who don't.

This is because that part of the body is loaded with sensitive nerve endings, according to sexologist Jessica O'Reilly.

'The area is actually anatomically configured for mind-blowing orgasms, so if youve experienced that, theres no surprise you want to go back for more,' she says.

'The super-sensitive nerve endings make it a responsive erogenous zone.'

Actual penetration is not necessary for those who are concerned about hygiene.

'Start off with a small butt plug,' OReilly advises. 'Or use a vibrator around the entrance to really up the anal fun ante.'

3. Is it normal that my vagina makes noises?

YES

Sudden noises, sometimes called 'fanny farts', are a normal, some might say unavoidable, part of vaginal sex.

Sometimes air is pushed into the vagina during sex, says GP Philippa Kaye, and is forcibly pushed out by thrusting or changing position, which causes the sound.

There's nothing to worry or feel embarrassed about in this, she adds.

Masturbation, 'weird noises' and male partners faking orgasms all make up our common concerns about sex

4. Is it normal that my partner can feel my coil during sex?

YES

There is no danger to you or your partner, says Kaye, although for your comfort you can ask your doctor to refit it.

If a partner is complaining that they can feel the coil. it is likely the coil was not fitted properly, she says.

It may also be that your partner's penis is particularly sensitive.

5. Is it normal that I masturbate five times a week?

YES

Women in general report masturbating less often than men - but that doesn't mean it's unhealthy.

The 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) from Indiana University found only three per cent of women masturbated more than four times a week, for example.

The reasons why women do it less then men (17 per cent of whom reported masturbating the same) are unknown, but it's been said to improve mood and vaginal strength.

Regardless, 'masturbation is a common sexual practice among women,' Dr. Kelly Suschinsky said.

'Women masturbate for a variety of reasons - to feel sexual pleasure, cope with stress, help them fall asleep, or to have a sexual outlet while their partner is unavailable.

'As long as its not causing a problem in your relationship or interfering with your wider life, then just enjoy it.'

6. Is it normal that I'm straight but when it comes to porn, I only get turned on by girl-on-girl?

YES

Research has shown that porn viewing habits are not reflective of secret sexual lusts in women.

A study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto found that, while male arousal matched their sexual orientation, women showed little preference between different types of porn.

In other word, women were equally aroused by watching heterosexual sex as by female-only sex, regardless of their sexuality.

'In fact, the research found that both women who were attracted to men and women who were attracted to other women reported that they were most sexually aroused by the videos that showed women-only sexual activities,' the researchers say.
Over-stretched hospitals are still buckling under the unprecedented pressure this winter, shock new NHS figures reveal.

A&E waiting times have spiraled to record lows and last week bed occupancy rates soared to the joint highest levels so far this winter.

Concerned medics have warned 'there is no more to give' and the cash-strapped NHS is working at the limits of its capacity'.

Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt has already been pushed to admit that the NHS is battling it's 'worst ever winter' this year.

A series of official performance figures released today by health chiefs from across every trust in England back-up his claims.

A&E waiting times have spiraled to record lows and last week bed occupancy rates soared to the highest levels so far this winter

Just 85 per cent of patients were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival in casualty units across England in February.

It tops the 85.1 per cent recorded in December and January 2018, when the Red Cross were drafted in to help combat the 'humanitarian crisis' in hospitals.

NHS England figures released today also show bed occupancies last week reached their highest levels recorded all winter.

Some 95.2 per cent of beds were full across the 137 trusts during the week ending March 4.

Occupancy levels should never exceed the 85 per cent safe level, as above this can have serious health risks, officials warn.

But an analysis revealed four out of five hospitals are breaching this safe limit.

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: 'Our health and social care system is working at the limits of its capacity  there is no more to give.

'Another winter like this could spell disaster for our health and social care services and the patients who rely on it.

'Safe staffing levels are key to patient safety, and immediate investment is required to train and retain staff.

WHAT ARE THE BED OCCUPANCY RATES THIS WINTER? NHS England data, collected from all 137 trusts across the country, show the overall bed occupancy rates for each week this winter. February 26-4 February 19-25 February 12-18 February 5-11 January 29-4 January 22-28 January 15-21 January 8-14 January 1-7 December 25-31 December 18-24 December 11-17 December 4-10 November 27-3 95.2% 95.2% 94.9% 95.0% 95.1% 95.1% 94.8% 94.9% 95.0% 91.7% 90.8% 95.1% 94.5% 94.5% Advertisement

HOW MANY TIMES HAVE AMBULANCES BEEN TURNED AWAY? NHS England data, collected from all 137 trusts across the country, show the amount of times ambulances have been turned away this winter. February 26-4 February 19-25 February 12-18 February 5-11 January 29-4 January 22-28 January 15-21 January 8-14 January 1-7 December 25-31 December 18-24 December 11-17 December 4-10 November 27-3 33 13 23 30 36 43 20 6 32 39 6 30 25 11 Advertisement



'The warning signs are plain to see, and ministers should be under no illusion that failure to act now could be catastrophic.'

The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has called on patients to write to their local MP asking for action to address the serious challenges facing A&E units.

It said the 'unprecedented move' was in response to the figures, which also showed the worst ever performance at major emergency departments.

Our health and social care system is working at the limits of its capacity  there is no more to give Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing

Dr Taj Hassan, president of the RCEM, argued that there is nothing to blame this winter crisis on - and that is was 'wholly predictable'.

He said: 'Performance that once would have been regarded as utterly unacceptable has now become normal and things are seemingly only getting worse for patients.

'Let's be very clear - the current crisis in our emergency departments and in the wider NHS is not the fault of patients.

'It is not because staff aren't working hard enough, not because of the actions of individual trusts, not because of the weather or norovirus, not purely because of influenza, immigration or inefficiencies and not because performance targets are unfeasible.

'The current crisis was wholly predictable and is due to a failure to prioritise the need to increase healthcare funding on an urgent basis.'

HOW MANY CALLS HAVE BEEN MADE TO NHS 111 THIS WINTER? NHS England data, collected from all 137 trusts across the country, show the overall number of calls made to NHS 111 for each week this winter. February 26-4 February 19-25 February 12-18 February 5-11 January 29-4 January 22-28 January 15-21 January 8-14 January 1-7 December 25-31 December 18-24 December 11-17 December 4-10 November 27-3 332,050 334,904 248,855 335,918 324,301 328,412 324,853 322,073 395,704 480,371 396,262 325,042 267,374 300,644 Advertisement

HOW MANY HAVE BEEN STUCK OUTSIDE IN AMBULANCES? NHS England data show the overall number of patients who were stuck in ambulances outside A&E units for more than half an hour this winter. February 26-4 February 19-25 February 12-18 February 5-11 January 29-4 January 22-28 January 15-21 January 8-14 January 1-7 December 25-31 December 18-24 December 11-17 December 4-10 November 27-3 11,499 12,310 13,302 10,751 11,694 11,061 11,019 12,559 16,690 16,893 11,852 14,323 11,852 10,184 Advertisement



Richard Murray, director of policy for The Kings Fund, said: 'While we have seen bad winter months in previous years, this winter has proved exceptional in that we have seen three awful months in a row.

'The impact on patients and staff involved cannot be overstated  NHS staff have been working under intense pressure for a long period, and many thousands of patients have had to endure long waits for treatment.

Coming in the midst of the longest funding squeeze in the history of the NHS and growing staffing shortages, the crisis we are seeing in our A&Es was sadly predictable.

'Unless the government finds significantly more money for the NHS, we face an inexorable drift back to the long waiting times we saw in the 1990s.

'The NHS cannot continue to rely on the motivation and goodwill of staff to paper over the cracks.'

Ruth Thorlby, assistant director of policy at the Health Foundation, argued for the NHS to keep releasing its weekly statistics until the end of March.

A spokesperson for NHS England confirmed this set of weekly performance statistics would be the last to be released this winter.

Commenting on the statistics, Ms Thorlby said: NHS Englands latest figures reveal that winter is far from over for the health service.'

NHS England said staff had been faced with working in a 'perfect storm' of appalling weather, persistently high hospital admissions due to flu, and a renewed spike in norovirus.

A spokesman added that, despite the challenging conditions, the NHS treated 160,000 more A&E patients within four hours this winter compared with the previous year.
A new way to treat deadly sepsis infections that works by revving up a patient's immune system could be on the horizon.

The drug interleukin-7 (IL-7) - is often called 'the maestro of the immune system', because it recruits immune cells to help beat infections.

By supercharging the immune system the drug gave patients' bodies' the boost needed to prevent organ failure following a sepsis infection, according to a study published in JCI Insight.

The trial, carried out by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is especially unusual, because previous research has focused on antibiotic treatments for sepsis infections.

A new way to treat deadly sepsis infections could be on the horizon by revving up a patient's immune system

The deadly toll of sepsis

Each year there are around 123,000 cases of sepsis in England and it kills around 37,000.

Anyone can develop sepsis after an injury or minor infection but people with weakened immune systems, hospitalised for a long time, recovering from surgery or wounds, or are very young or old are most at risk.

Sepsis and its more severe form called septic shock are among the deadliest problems facing patients in intensive care units.

The conditions occur when the body has an extreme response to infection triggering an overwhelming immune response, ultimately wreaking havoc on the immune system.

Until now patients are given high doses of antibiotics to fight the infection but they often don't work well and fail to boost the body's immune defences, leaving patients vulnerable to new infections.

Statistics obtained by MailOnline show that deaths from sepsis are not proportionally even across the UK.

In fact, patients are twice as likely to die from sepsis in some hospitals as they are in others.

Sepsis death rates at Tameside and Glossop NHS Foundation Trust in Ashton-under-Lyne are 55 per cent higher than expected.

At the other end of the scale, sepsis has claimed 39 per cent fewer lives than officials predicted at the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust.

When compared, it means the chance of dying from sepsis in Tameside is about twice that of a similar patient treated at the Staffordshire site.

WHAT IS SEPSIS? Sepsis occurs when the body reacts to an infection by attacking its own organs and tissues. Some 44,000 people die from sepsis every year in the UK. Worldwide, someone dies from the condition every 3.5 seconds. Sepsis has similar symptoms to flu, gastroenteritis and a chest infection. These include: S lurred speech or confusion

lurred speech or confusion E xtreme shivering or muscle pain

xtreme shivering or muscle pain P assing no urine in a day

assing no urine in a day S evere breathlessness

evere breathlessness I t feels like you are dying

t feels like you are dying S kin mottled or discoloured Symptoms in children are: Fast breathing

Fits or convulsions

Mottled, bluish or pale skin

Rashes that do not fade when pressed

Lethargy

Feeling abnormally cold Under fives may be vomiting repeatedly, not feeding or not urinating for 12 hours. Anyone can develop sepsis but it is most common in people who have recently had surgery, have a urinary catheter or have stayed in hospital for a long time. Other at-risk people include those with weak immune systems, chemotherapy patients, pregnant women, the elderly and the very young. Treatment varies depending on the site of the infection but involves antibiotics, IV fluids and oxygen, if necessary. Source: UK Sepsis Trust and NHS Choices Advertisement

The results, which came from Professor Sir Brian Jarman, who helped expose the Mid-Staffordshire hospitals scandal, was behind the analysis.

His findings, disputed by the NHS, suggest a 'postcode lottery' of care is consigning hundreds, or even thousands, of patients to an early grave.

Small clinical trial involving drug interleukin-7 (IL-7)

A small clinical trial led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows revealed drug interleukin-7 (IL-7) drug holds promise.

The drug's approach, to rev up the immune system, goes against the grain of earlier strategies that have relied on antibiotics and inflammatory medications to tamp down the immune system.

Senior investigator Professor Dr Richard Hotchkiss at Washington University explained: 'Mortality rates from sepsis have remained essentially the same over the last 50 years.

'Hundreds of drugs have been tried and have failed.

'It may sound counterintuitive when inflammation is such a problem early in sepsis, but our approach is to stimulate certain immune cells to help the patient's system take control of the infection.'

The trial involved 27 patients aged 33 to 82 severely ill with septic shock at two hospitals in the US and two in France.

Of theses 17 were given a drug made of interleukin-7 (IL-7) called 'the maestro of the immune system' because it enhances the proliferation and survival of two types of immune cells CD4 and CD8.

These cells are important because they recruit other immune cells to fight severe infections that can lead to organ failure and death.

The drug interleukin-7 (IL-7) - called 'the maestro of the immune system', because it recruits immune cells - could kill beat infections by supercharging the immune system

The other ten patients received the standard treatment.

Co-investigator Professor Dr Edward Sherwood of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville where some were treated said: 'Patients who develop the most serious form of sepsis, called septic shock, often have very low counts of these key immune cells

'We believe that could play a role in the development and course of sepsis because without those cells, patients aren't able to clear as much harmful bacteria.'

Those who received the drug experienced a threefold to fourfold increase in CD4 and CD8 counts.

IL-7 boosted the adaptive immunity, in which CD4 and CD8 T cells help recruit other immune cells - called macrophages, monocytes, neutrophils and dendritic cells - to kill bacteria that cause infections.

'Hundreds of drugs have failed'

Prof Hotchkiss said traditional sepsis treatments do not address the critical problem of patients' severely compromised immune systems.

Without restoring immune function, many patients develop lingering infections and are helpless to fight any new infections.

He added: 'We know that 40 per cent of patients die in the 30 to 90-day period after the initial septic infection.

'Their bodies can't fight secondary infections, such as the blood infections and staph infections that can develop later on because their immune systems are shot.

'By strengthening adaptive immunity with IL-7 and increasing the numbers of CD4 and CD8 cells available to help fight infections, we think this approach can make a big difference.'

The new strategy of using IL-7 to boost the immune system is being tested in cancer patients and other critically ill patients to boost their survival rates.

A larger clinical trial is planned for sepsis patients.
A moving documentary has revealed the final moments of a besotted couple, married for 66 years, who chose to die by assisted suicide after both being diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

Charlie and Francie Emerick, parents-of-three who lived in Portland, Oregon, died together in bed in April 2017 using medication legal under the Death with Dignity Act, a state law that allows terminally ill adults to request a medical death.

Francie, 88, had spent years battling heart disease and several heart attacks; Charlie, 87, also suffered from heart disease, as well as Parkinson's and prostate cancer.

After two different doctors determined each one had fewer than six months to live - as the law stipulates - they were granted permission to go together.

Now, nearly a year after their death, their three adult daughters have shared a 45-minute documentary that captures the couples' last moments, in which they smiled at each other, reminisced with their family, and held hands as they swallowed the drugs that would end their lives.

They went together: Charlie and Francie, who were married for 66 years (pictured here in May 2016) chose to die by assisted dying after they were each diagnosed with a terminal illness

Francie and Charlie met while they were freshmen at York College and got married during their senior year in 1951

On April 20, 2017, the couple took lethal doses of medication to end their lives.

Francie died within 15 minutes of swallowing the pill, while Charlie died an hour later.

'They were each others best friend,' Jerilyn Marler, their eldest daughter, told Daily Mail Online. 'In their last years, Dad was Moms eyes and Mom was Dads ears. It was natural for them to want to die together.'

'Their choice was much easier for me than to see them suffer through their final months,' she added.

Francie and Charlie met in 1947 during their freshman year in York College and got married during their senior year.

Nine months later, their first daughter Jerilyn was born.

Charlie served as a Navy doctor in San Diego, California and Bremerton, Washington from 1956 to 1963, while Francie was a homemaker.

In 1964, their family moved to Central India, where Charlie set up an ear, nose and throat (ENT) department in a local hospital and Francie worked in the public relations and marketing department for the medical institution.

When they moved back to the US in 1972, their father served as chief of ENT at Kaiser Permanente in Portland until he retired in 1990.

Francie and Charlie, who got married in 1951, became members of the now-defunct organization The Hemlock Society, an American right-to-die and assisted suicide advocacy organization that ended in 2003, in the 1980s.

In 1997, Oregon became the first state to legalize medical aid-in-dying when they passed the Death With Dignity Act.

WHERE ASSISTED SUICIDE IS LEGAL Medically assisted suicide is legal in some five states in the US and a few countries. They are: Washington state, US

Oregon, US

California, US

Vermont, US

New Mexico, US

Montana, US

Switzerland

the Netherlands

Albania

Colombia

Japan Advertisement

'They have always supported [this movement] even before Oregon made it legal,' one of their daughters Jerilyn, 66, told Daily Mail Online. 'They never wanted to have a lingering, painful, agonizing death.'

In the documentary Living & Dying: A Love Story, Francie told another one of her daughters, 62-year-old Sher Safran, that she wanted death with dignity after Charlie's health was declining and he was told he had six months to live.

After Charlie was given six months to live in early 2017, Francie, 88, went to a few doctors to see if she was eligible to use the Death with Dignity Act.

Two doctors told her she also had about six months to live.

'Dad was the first to be given that prognosis,' Jerilyn said. 'But we knew mom was in ill health too... and as it turned out, she was.'

In the documentary, Francie, who had a weakened heart, acknowledged that she could have survived longer than her husband, but said she didn't want to.

'After [my] dad's death... [my mom] lived a very fruitful life after dad died,' Francie explained in the documentary. 'But he was in his early 70s and she lived to be 93. Until the last three years she was quite healthy.'

From 1964 to 1972, the couple lived in central India where they served as a medical missionaries

Francie was a homemaker and she worked in the public relations and marketing department at a local hospital in Central India

'However I'm 88 and I know that from here on...' said Francie, signaling with her hand that it goes downhill from there. 'And Charlie and I have a rather unique relationship that we have done and been so much for each other for 70 years.'

Francie and Charlie are both cancer survivors.

Jerlilyn said her mother was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2009, the year she also had her first heart attack. Francie was treated with chemotherapy and the disease went into remission. However, her heart condition was worsening over the years.

Charlie was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006. He underwent treatment and survived.

In 2012, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement and causes tremors, after suffering symptoms of the illness for years.

Charlie and Francie (pictured here in 1952) had three daughters together, including their eldest Jerilyn

The couple (pictured in April 2017 ) took lethal doses of medication to end their lives

He described his thoughts as he pondered whether to use aid-in-dying.

'You keep going, Charlie, you're going to get worse and worse and worse,' he remembered telling himself. 'The other can't be worse than this.'

Jerilyn said her father's health was becoming precarious due to Parkinson's disease.

The illness even made it difficult for Charlie to swallow - which would've disqualified him from using the Death With Dignity Act since it requires patients to have the ability to ingest the drugs themselves.

'He was getting close to the point where he wouldn't have been able to participate in the program,' Jerilyn said.

The pair knew they had a small window of time for both of them to die together through the Death With Dignity Act.

Since Francie and Charlie were in such poor health, many of their family members supported the couple's decision to use the state's Death With Dignity law.

'They were both struggling,' Jerilyn said. 'When they made the decision to pursue this option... it was understandable. I mean it was difficult, but it was something I decided to support.'

Jerilyn said Charlie and Francie were each other's best friend for nearly 70 years

'She did not want to live without dad and dad did not want to live without her,' she added.

They are hardly the first in Oregon to use the Death with Dignity Act.

Since it's inception 11 years ago, nearly 1,300 people have died in Oregon under this act, as of February 9, 2018.

Brittany Maynard, a terminally ill woman who was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, brought national attention to the act in 2014 when she decided to die at 29 years old.

A study by the University Health Network in Toronto examined medically assisted death in Canada and determined that it was 'existential distress' that led people to choose this option, not the pain of the disease itself.

They were suffering more mentally than physically, with several worried about the strain they cause on their families.

However, Jerilyn said Charlie and Francie have always wanted to have a say in how they died and they knew they wanted to go together.

'They had control,' she said. 'And I'm in favor of that.'
An unprecedented outbreak of yellow fever in Brazil continues to spiral, official figures show.

Health chiefs in the South American nation have announced the killer disease's death toll has now reached 260.

And 846 people are known to have been infected with yellow fever, which causes yellowing of the skin and is spread by mosquitos.

Aid workers warn this is Brazil's largest outbreak of the deadly disease in 18 years - topping last year's mammoth 777 cases.

Brazil's Health Ministry is now aiming to vaccinate more than 23 million people across the country, with major cities being hit hard.

Health chiefs in the South American nation have announced the killer disease's death toll has now reached 260. Yellow fever is spread by mosquitos

Thousands of foreign travellers were advised in February to get immunised against yellow fever in the run-up to the annual Carnival celebrations.

Yellow fever is commonly found in tropical and subtropical areas. The mosquito-borne virus usually kills up to eight per cent of people it strikes.

Nearly 200,000 cases and 30,000 deaths of the deadly disease are reported worldwide each year.

The World Health Organization last month declared that yellow fever was a 'major' threat to humanity - but not an 'urgent' one.

Symptoms include fever, severe headaches, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. But they can quickly progress.

WHAT IS YELLOW FEVER? Yellow fever is commonly found in tropical and subtropical areas. The mosquito-borne virus usually kills up to eight per cent of people it strikes. Nearly 200,000 cases and 30,000 deaths of the deadly disease are reported worldwide each year. The World Health Organization last month declared that yellow fever was a 'major' threat to humanity - but not an 'urgent' one. Symptoms include fever, severe headaches, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. But they can quickly progress. Advertisement

The new figures, released yesterday, come after locals were last month blamed for killing scores of monkeys in Rio de Janeiro.

Officials claimed at the time they were under the false impression that the animals could spread yellow fever to humans.

The state of Rio, which includes the city that is famous for its Christ the Redeemer stature and Copacabana beach, has been hit hard by the outbreak this year.

And a fifth of the deaths have occurred in Sao Paulo state, according to a previous death count.

UK Government officials recommend those travelling to certain parts of the Brazil receive a jab to protect them against yellow fever.

They warned there is a risk of infection for anyone visiting Sao Paulo, Rio and the capital - Brasilia. Concerns have also been raised in 13 other states.

More than 200,000 British nationals visited Brazil in 2016 - the year the country hosted the Olympic and Paralympic games.
The NHS wants to help you kick your smoking habit on National No Smoking Day 2018.

The annual health awareness day, celebrated in the United Kingdom, provides smokers with the resources they need to quit once and for all. An accompanying social media campaign, as well as a handy support line to answer any and call questions you may have, can provide additional support.

National No Smoking day aims to provide smokers with the resources needed to quit for good

So what do you need to know about National No Smoking Day 2018?

What is National No Smoking Day?

National No Smoking Day began on Ash Wednesday, March 7, 1984. It has since been moved to the second Wednesday in March and occurs annually in the United Kingdom.

The campaign's main goal is to help smokers quit by providing resources and, in more recent years, a sense of community through social media.

Each year National No Smoking Day has a theme. In 2010 is was 'Break Free', encouraging longtime smokers to cut the proverbial chains they were bound in through cigarette addiction. The theme for 2018 is '#TellUsYourWay', which encourages smokers to share how they curbed their addiction.

How to quit smoking

There are a number of ways to quit smoking. The British Heart Foundation recommends starting by picking a quit date. That date should be one on which you're certain stress will be minimal.

After you've decided on a date, you should write down all the reasons you want to quit. This will come in handy when the cravings kick in and you're ready to light up a cigarette. Instead, read through your reasoning for giving up the dangerous habit.

This #NoSmokingDay, we're encouraging people to #TellUsYourWay of how they stopped smoking. Watch our new video, and join in using the hashtag https://t.co/R9mOo0aFXr @LANDEDPeer  ASH Scotland (@ASHScotland) March 8, 2018

Third, the British Heart Foundation recommends quitting with a friend. Support is an important part of giving up cigarettes. Partners can keep one another accountable throughout the trying process.

Those hoping to quit smoking are encouraged to rid their lives of reminders of cigarette smoking. This means tossing ashtrays, lighters, matches and old packs of cigarettes in the bin.

You may also want to lean on available services. The NHS Stop Smoking Service has trained specialists available to help get you through the hardest bits of your journey.

THE AREAS OF ENGLAND THAT WERE LEAST SUCCESSFUL IN THEIR ATTEMPTS TO GIVE UP SMOKING BETWEEN APRIL AND SEPTEMBER 2017 AREA OF ENGLAND SETTING A QUIT DATE SUCCESSFUL QUITTERS % OF SUCCESS Cumbria 1,589 367 23.08 Swindon 2,255 630 27.96 Trafford 137 38 28.13 Herefordshire 575 163 28.35 Birmingham 1,153 329 28.51 South Gloucestershire 2,747 814 29.64 Bournemouth 2,190 696 31.80 Bristol, city of 2,035 652 32.06 Blackburn with Darwen 3,193 1,086 34.00 Lambeth 2,996 1,046 34.90

Another way to help during the quitting process is to look to nicotine replacements; e-cigarettes, nicotine gums and patches are all options.

14 March 2018 is No Smoking Day. If you smoke but would like to quit, there will be an information stand in the foyer of Dundee House between 12.30pm and 2.30pm where you can receive advice and support from the Community Health Team #TellUsYourWay pic.twitter.com/aOQMaT1UuS  Dundee City Council (@DundeeCouncil) March 7, 2018

Staying active may also help when you're trying to quit smoking. According to the British Heart Foundation, exercise has been proven to curb urges to light up a cigarette. This may also come in handy in triggering situations.

If you're a person who smokes after a heavy meal, consider replacing that post-supper smoke with a short walk.

It's important that when stopping smoking, you don't give into temptation. One cigarette often leads to more. Say no.

Have you thought about quitting in time for #NoSmokingDay on March 14? #TellUsYourWay and share your experience with us.   EBPCOOH (@ebpcooh) March 6, 2018

Lastly, people quitting cigarettes are encouraged to celebrate their milestones along the way. Put away the money you'd normally spend on cigarettes, then treat yourself to something special. You'll have earned it.

Dangers of cigarette smoking

Smoking has been proven to be hazardous to smokers health. Quitting improves heart health, decreasing the likelihood of contracting heart disease later in life. It also reduces the risk of stroke, cancer and lung disease, among other things.

Cigarette smoke can damage the lining of your arteries, causing a build up of fatty material. This can lead to angina or stroke, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke limits the amount of oxygen reaching your blood stream. This forces your heart to kick into overdrive, pumping harder than a non-smokers would, to provide your body with the oxygen it needs.

The nicotine in cigarettes also puts strain on your heart, forcing it to work harder. This increases blood pressure, which can be dangerous.

Smokers are also more susceptible to blood clots and cardiovascular diseases.

National No Smoking Day statistics

According to a 2009 study by GfK NOP, one in every 10 smokers quit smoking on National No Smoking Day. In 2011, they found that a total of 225,000 smokers in London and the South East had quit smoking on No Smoking Day.

Here our track "Alive" on the new @NHSEngland advert for the benefits of stopping smoking.https://t.co/6pgPCZNQjd  Morain (@morainmusic) June 26, 2014

When is National No Smoking Day 2018?

National No Smoking Day 2018 will be observed on Wednesday, March 14, 2018.
Centers in California that offer free or low-cost marijuana to patients with pain conditions are being forced out of business by high taxes.

New regulations implemented on January 1 that legalized the recreational use of marijuana included a taxation policy that requires all businesses, including charities, to pay taxes on the market value of the cannabis they sell.

The law has been particularly harmful to 'compassionate care' programs, privately-funded organizations that provide free and low-cost cannabis to low-income patients with conditions such as cancer and nerve pain.

The high taxes threaten to close the doors of these operations, making it difficult and expensive for the medical marijuana patients that started the legalization movement in the first place to get the medical marijuana they need.

California's new regulations that legalized recreational marijuana have imposed unsustainable taxes on centers that have provided cannabis to patients for more than 30 years

Compassionate care programs have been around for decades, beginning when medical marijuana was first legalized in 1996.

Under the new regulations in the Medicinal And Adult-Use Cannabis Regulatory Safety Act (MAUCRSA) that legalized marijuana for recreational use, these programs are forced to pay roughly $50,000 in taxes per 100lbs of cannabis they sell for little to no cost.

The average price for a gram of marijuana in California is $14.50. Most compassionate care programs provide the same amount for a fraction of that price, if not for free.

Sweetleaf Collective is a donation-based organization that had been treating people in the Bay Area with AIDS and cancer for more than three decades before it had to halt business in January.

Last year, the organization gave away an estimated 120lbs of cannabis.

If it does the same this year, Sweetleaf's founder Josef Airone estimates the company will have to pay $200,000 in taxes.

About $60,000 of that total is from products the organization didn't make any money on, thanks to the new legislation.

'People are going to die because of this,' Sweetleaf founder Josef Airone told Forbes. 'It keeps me up at night and it's the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.

'This compassion program is saving so many sick people's lives. Sometimes when we make deliveries, the patient cries and says: "I would be dead already if it wasn't for you."

'These patients need Sweetleaf. I truly didn't see this happening with legalization,' he said.

The California Compassion Coalition was formed recently with the mission of amending the regulations for the benefit of medical marijuana users.

Members of the coalition have said compassionate care programs across the state have closed, stopped providing cannabis or gone underground since the new regulations were implemented.

Many of these centers were already struggling to afford the costs of state and local permits to source cannabis from legal growers.

One of California's oldest programs, Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, has said financial burden may force the center to close after three decades of serving patients.

Weed for Warriors, which provides cannabis to military veterans across the state, is also feeling the impact.

'Cannabis gave my vets hope back,' Sean Kiernan of Weed for Warriors told the Sacremento Bee.

'The state of California has taken that hope away.'

For veterans, medical marijuana can be used to help with post-traumatic stress disorder, pain and other conditions as an alternative to highly-addictive opioids.

Cannabis gave my vets hope back. The state of California has taken that hope away. Sean Kiernan of Weed For Warriors

In addition to reducing the availability of low-cost marijuana, MAUCRSA increased taxes on each link in the cannabis market chain, raising prices across the board.

Initial reports suggested that under the new taxes, legal cannabis buyers pay about eight dollars in state and local taxes on a typical $50 eighth-ounce of top-shelf product.

The combined state and local tax rates vary from county to county but typically fall between seven and 10 percent.

The California Compassion Coalition met with a subcommittee for an advisory board for the state's three cannabis regulatory agencies last week.

In the meeting, Shirley Stewart, who treats her cancer with cannabis, told subcommittee members that people like her need help desperately.

'People with serious medical needs are being pushed aside,' she said. 'We need your help and we need it now.'

The coalition asked that taxes be charged on the actual cost of goods rather than the market value, or waived altogether.

The subcommittee members responded by saying that taxation changes are handled by the legislature, not the agencies.

WHERE MARIJUANA IS LEGAL IN THE US Medical marijuana states: Arizona

Arkansas

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Hawaii

Illinois

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New Jersey

New York

North Dakota

Ohio

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

Washington DC

West Virginia Recreational marijuana states: Alaska

California

Colorado

Maine

Massachusetts

Nevada

Oregon

Vermont

Washington Advertisement

The coalition has also advocated for the creation of an affordable license for compassionate care programs, because as of right now cannabis donations can only be made by holders of business licenses that cost thousands of dollars.

Current Bureau of Cannabis Control regulations require patients who receive free pot to have a state-issued medical marijuana card, which is difficult to obtain because of long waits at county health departments.

The cards get patients a break on sales taxes but can cost as much as $100.

Many in the compassionate care community have suggested that the policy be changed to allow for cards to be issued with only a doctor recommendation.

Some dispensaries such as A Therapeutic Alternative in Sacramento have in-house compassionate care programs that are facing the same taxation problems.

Figuring out a way to make donating pot economically feasible 'needs to be a top priority,' Kimberly Cargile of A Therapeutic Alternative told the Bee. 'We need to take care of this right now.'

Medical marijuana was first legalized in California in 1996 as part of the Compassionate Use Act.

California became the first state in the US legalize medical in marijuana in 1996 when it passed the Compassionate Use Act.

The act provides people with serious illnesses access to use marijuana for the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraines and other illnesses.

Medical marijuana is now legal in 29 states and Washington, DC.

In the 2016 election, California became one of nine states to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

This year at least 12 more states are considering legalizing marijuana for recreational use after reports revealed that the governments in Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize in 2012, are pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue.
RIGHTEOUS by Joe Ide (W&N 14.99)

RIGHTEOUS

by Joe Ide (W&N 14.99)

A welcome second outing for Isaiah Quintabe  IQ to his friends  the funky, funny, fast-talking LA private detective whose debut was one of the most memorable I read all year.

Created by a Japanese-American with a love of Sherlock Holmes, this more than lives up to its predecessor, and sees IQ confront the full might of the Chinese Triads, a deadly loan shark and assorted lowlifes in the casinos and massage parlours of Las Vegas, with a humour and originality thats exhilarating.

Along the way, he recruits his Watson, a hard-boiled partner named Dodson, who does far more than merely come along for the ride. The two then encounter a criminal mastermind who may know something about the death of IQs beloved elder brother, Marcus, eight years earlier in what appeared to be a hit-and-run accident. Ides superb ear for dialogue and sharp observational eye make this hum with life.

SPLINTER IN THE BLOOD

by Ashley Dyer (Corsair 16.99)

SPLINTER IN THE BLOOD by Ashley Dyer (Corsair 16.99)

In Liverpool, DS Ruth Lake and her boss, DCI Greg Carver, are hunting a serial killer who imprisons young women before killing them slowly and painfully by etching intricate tattoos into their naked bodies with different thorns  making him the Thorn Killer.

They appear to be making progress  until the killer murders a student who looks uncannily like Carvers estranged wife and the DCI is shot in the chest while hes at home studying the case files. Did the Thorn Killer attack him directly?

Both detectives have private secrets that they keep from one another.

The novel is packed with police and forensic detail because its author is a pseudonym for two women with impressive pedigrees in both: Margaret Murphy was chair of the Crime Writers Association and Helen Pepper was a forensic scientist who now lectures on policing. They make a formidable combination.

THE LIARS GIRL by Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus 12.99)

THE LIARS GIRL

by Catherine Ryan Howard (Corvus 12.99)

In this second novel, Howards emerging talent could not be clearer.

When she was 19, Alisons boyfriend, Will, confessed to killing five young women while they were both undergraduates in Dublin.

He dumped the bodies in the Grand Canal  earning the nickname the Canal Killer. Horrified by his confession and life sentence, Alison moves to Amsterdam. Now, ten years later, another murdered young woman is fished out of the Dublin canal.

Inevitably, the police question Will. Is it a copycat or did he have an accomplice who has been lying low for a decade? Will knows something, but will speak only to Alison.

The detectives fly to Holland to persuade her to come home. She agrees  only to discover Will now insists he was coerced into his original confession and is innocent.

Dare she believe him? This is expertly plotted, with a series of stunning twists.
HISTORY

LLOYD GEORGE: STATESMAN OR SCOUNDREL

by Richard Wilkinson (I. B. Tauris 25)

Hosting a dinner where the guests included several women of dubious repute, David Lloyd George was warned: This will lift the roof if it gets out.

Unabashed, he told a friend: If everything I have done in this hotel during the last 40 years had got out, you have no idea how many times I would have had to retire from politics.

Not for nothing was the Welsh political wizard known as the goat.

Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, a pioneer of the welfare state, a wartime leader to rival Churchill and a brilliant speaker whose emotional eloquence could hold any audience, Lloyd George had all the qualities of a great leader  except self-restraint.

Voice of a nation: David Lloyd George (pictured) reigned as Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922. In a new book Richard Wilkinson uncovers the flaws that could've damaged his career

In this short, invigorating study of a flawed political giant, Richard Wilkinson lets rip on the excesses of a voracious sexual appetite which, in todays climate of sexual harrassment and #MeToo, would surely have seen him hounded out of politics.

Brought up by a doting uncle who encouraged him as a public speaker and gave him his start in Liberal politics, Lloyd George found another support when he married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a prosperous Welsh farmer who warned her that the ambitious young man of her choice was not to be trusted.

How right he was. When Maggie, as Lloyd George called her, was pregnant with their first child, the proud father-to-be was chasing after a Caernarfon widow who had to be bought off when she too became pregnant.

For the best part of their marriage, while bearing him five children, long-suffering Maggie had to share Lloyd George with his secretary and mistress.

Twenty-five years his junior, Frances Stevenson was intelligent and attractive and met Lloyd George when he interviewed her to tutor his young daughter, Megan.

They began an affair and Pussie, as he called her, was besotted with her employer, who made her go through two abortions to protect his public image. He did not return her loyalty.

While professing his undying love for Frances (he eventually married her after Maggie had died in 1941), he embarked on a string of affairs and casual encounters with colleagues wives, secretaries, housemaids and land girls who worked at Churt, his Surrey estate. Among his conquests were his daughter-in-law, married to his eldest son.

David Lloyd (pictured) ruined his reputation after he was caught selling honours for cash contributions

Jean Barker, later Baroness Trumpington, who was a Land Girl at Churt at the start of World War II, recalls how the old goat would stand me up against a wall, take out a tape measure and try to take all my measurements.

He was said to mentally undress every woman in the room. In his last years, he ran Churt almost as a private brothel.

How did he get away with it? Wilkinson blames a supine press with proprietors who themselves had no claim to moral rectitude.

But Lloyd George was also protected by a devoted following in awe of a magnetic personality, a master of the political machine and, at a time of sharp class distinctions, an unstinting champion of the underdog.

How much was the first ever weekly pension? 28 The first ever weekly old age pension, in todays money Advertisement

Much could be forgiven a campaigner who took on the establishment within and beyond his own party to bring in health and unemployment insurance for the least privileged, along with old age pensions paid for by taxes on the rich.

Lloyd George had succeeded the tired and uninspiring Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister at the height of the Great War.

With the outcome still to be decided, but with Britain up against what many believed to be adverse odds, Lloyd George galvanised the country into supporting a massive push for a breakthrough on the Western Front.

Taking a large part of the blame for the thousands of lives sacrificed in the mud of Passchendaele, he stands accused of failing to put more pressure on the military to come up with fresh ideas.

But, though radical by nature, Lloyd George was a prisoner of convention. Opinion in high places favoured the generals, however narrow their vision.

Wilkinson argues that Lloyd George was culpable without telling us what, if any, alternatives were open to him.

LLOYD GEORGE: STATESMAN OR SCOUNDREL by Richard Wilkinson (I. B. Tauris 25)

Returning triumphantly to 10 Downing Street in 1918 as head of a Tory-dominated coalition, the arch-manipulator soon had to contend with younger and sharper talents who were not prepared to submit to his charm or to his bullying.

When he was caught out selling honours for cash contributions to his personal political fund, his reputation took a knock from which he never recovered. It was the same in his love life.

Angered and depressed by his infidelities, Frances found consolation with someone closer to her own age. Colonel Thomas Tweed was a gallant soldier who also happened to be the Liberal Partys chief organiser. Made pregnant, Frances had no idea which of her two lovers was the father of her daughter, Jennifer.

When Lloyd George married Frances, he did not have long to live. A cancer was killing him.

After his death, Frances became a devout Anglican while serving as chair of the Guildford Diocesan Moral Welfare Committee.

She told a television interviewer that she disapproved of the permissive society. Her late husband would have enjoyed the joke.

The question posed by the book has still to be answered: statesman or scoundrel? A bit of both, concludes Wilkinson, with the balance tipped in favour of the consummate politician.
Guitar man: Barclays Chairman John McFarlane

Trigger-happy Barclays boss John McFarlane is hosting his annual chairman's dinner in May at edgy London members' club The Ned. The jovial Scot, 70, enjoys a good party.

Colleagues at Aussie bank ANZ called him 'Johnny Cash' due to his fondness for breaking out his guitar.

Perhaps he'll croon a tune for his embattled 3.9million-a-year chief Jes Staley, 61, whose fate, following an investigation into his attempt to uncover a whistleblower, may well have been decided by then.

The Bank of England's gangly chief economist Andy Haldane, 50, claims his colleagues are more engaged with the public than ever before.

He says: 'Seventy years ago, the Bank published precisely one speech a year. It uttered publicly fewer than 5,000 words a year.

Last year, it uttered in excess of four and half million.' And all of it simply riveting, without a doubt. Aren't we blessed to be living in these times?

The temporary closure of Salisbury's Zizzi restaurant in connection to the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal needn't spell disaster for secretive owners Bridgepoint Capital.

When Itsu's Piccadilly branch was temporarily shut after poisoned spook Alexander Litvinenko lunched there, smooth old Harrovian owner Julian Metcalfe, 58, assumed his sushi chain was kaput.

But the ensuing publicity worked in its favour. Business has boomed ever since.

The dissatisfaction of Remoaner bosses with the Prime Minister prompts an uppity FTSE 100 chief to remark over breakfast: 'If Theresa May were in business, she might possibly make it to chief financial officer.

'But she's certainly not chief executive material.'

Chatham House rules sadly forbid me revealing the sour booby's identity. Let's just say if the PM clamps down on excessive pay, the blighter will be first against the wall.

Eternally chipper City spinner and seasoned trencherman Peter Bingle, 58 (age not waist size!) fondly describes his time at now defunct public relations giant Bell Pottinger as 'like living in ancient Rome under Nero'.

Sans incest, matricide and multiple castrations, we must hope.
Incentive: Melrose boss Simon Peckham is set for a bumper payday if they win GKN

Britains institutional investors forever boast about how lucky we are to have the best corporate governance in the world.

Stakeholders in Carillion and shareholders taken for fools by Jeff Fairburns obscene greed at subsidised housebuilder Persimmon might disagree.

As the battle for UK engineer GKN rages on, there has been deadly silence from most long-term shareholders. Melroses offer may have been a gift to fund managers seeking a sugar rush of higher performance, but its governance leaves a lot to be desired.

Its board is dominated by an executive chairman Chris Miller and vice-chairman David Roper, so the stewardship checks and balances are virtually non-existent.

The payouts to top brass of 458million so far, with another prospective payday of 284million if they win GKN, makes Persimmons rapacious behaviour look reasonable.

There are important reasons why GKNs British shareholders should be speaking out against a bid which threatens the UKs industrial base, R&D, innovation and the pensions covenant.

Settling the 7.4billion Melrose bid should not be left to get-rich-quick hedge funds.

Many executives running the UKs biggest savings companies talk the talk about investing in UK infrastructure. But when we questioned them there was a stunning silence or unwillingness to speak out.

Only one said Melrose was biting off more than it could chew and the rewards for its top brass would be an embarrassment.

Cowardice in the face of hostile takeovers has cost the UK dearly. Yes, free markets must have their say and GKN has responded with its own break-up. That doesnt mean anyone has to take the Melrose shilling.

Lift-off

These are watershed moments for the twin pillars of British engineering.

After enormous turbulence which saw Rolls-Royce weather a string of profit warnings and confess to a bribery scandal, chief executive Warren East has been able to restore stability.

At BAE Systems the visit to London of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has huge significance if Britain is to keep building fighter jets.

BAE has been waiting for the go-ahead from Riyadh for a new order for 48 Typhoon fighters for many months.

It is in a battle with Frances Rafale which beat BAE to the punch in India.

Campaigners rightly abhor Saudi Arabias bombing of Houthi rebels and civilian carnage in the Yemen.

But it is not helpful to British jobs, technology and engineering when Labours Emily Thornberry rants against the Saudi visitor. Perhaps she should visit Preston and explain to redundant aerospace workers the integrity of her position.

At Rolls-Royce, challenges have been of a different order. East has been struggling with multiple layers of bureaucracy, too much capacity and diabolical accounting. Finally, there looks to be some light.

Underlying profits rose to over 1billion in 2017.

Free cash flow more than doubled to 273million putting Easts target of 1billion by 2020 within grasp.

This was enough indeed to lift the aero-engine makers shares by 11pc and raise hopes of an improved dividend. All is not entirely well.

Rolls may remarkably be a dominant force in the market for long-haul engines. But problems with turbine and compressor blades on the Trent 1000 engine are set to cost it 300million this year alone in repairs and compensation, and could make it harder to keep the order book filled.

East has also cautioned that the groups plans for small nuclear power plants may have to be mothballed unless the Government comes up with the necessary support.

The return to the pre-eminence of Rolls as an engineering titan is terrific.

If BAE were to get the Typhoon order it would be the icing on the cake.

Cohn jolt

If you are going to resign, better to do so as President Trumps chief economic adviser Gary Cohn has done, on a point of principle: the desirability of free trade.

But no one should forget that the former Goldman Sachs chieftain has been at odds with Trump since the Charlottesville riots in August.

The differences cost Cohn a shot at being the next Federal Reserve chairman. His moderation has been a calming influence on the White House and markets.

But his departure became inevitable months ago.
Some things from the 1990s would be welcomed back with open arms by most people - and other things not so much.

Rush-hour tube trains that weren't packed like sardine cans on one hand, and the Spice Girls on the other, for example.

Something that falls into the first category is the benefit of diversifying your investments geographically.

Spreading your investments around the world has become much more beneficial.

While the mantra of 'you must diversify' is consistently repeated by investment advisers and financial journalists, when it comes to geographic diversification it has not really been a huge help in much of the past 18 years.

As globalisation accelerated since the turn of the millennium and central bank's rescue measures kicked in following the 2008 crash, the stock markets of major nations gradually moved more and more in sync with each other.

This meant distributing money between a number of different countries' stock markets offered less and less benefit over investing in just one or two.

But that has changed over the past two years, and as we hit choppier times for world stock markets this year, a more thorough spreading of your investments around the world could be just the ticket to protect your money.

The chart below from investment firm Charles Schwab shows how closely correlated the stock markets in different countries around the world have been since 1970. In other words, to what degree they move in the same direction at the same time.

World stock markets are now back to being as uncorrelated as they were in the 1990's

Up until around the year 2000 correlation between the world's various stock markets fluctuated around the 0.3 level.

With a lower number meaning less correlation and therefore more benefit to be gleaned from diversifying, things were pretty good for investors who spread out cash around the world's different countries.

Low average correlation across stock markets means diversified investors potentially benefit from less risk and volatility, without hampering returns. Higher correlation is the opposite, and when the number reaches 1 markets are said to be in 'perfect correlation.'

'Perfect' sounds like something you would want, but it isn't in this case. It means two or more markets move in exactly the same way as each other.

Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab, explained: 'Diversification has made a comeback.

'Measured statistically, the correlation between stock markets of the group of 20 nations plus Spain, that together make up 80 per cent of world GDP, peaked in 2011 and has subsequently fallen in recent years to levels not seen since 1997, a time before the tech bubble had fully inflated.'

'The bulls aren't running in a herd,' Kleintop continued. 'Bull markets can be found in the stocks of countries around the world, but their movements are less correlated with each other than they have been in the past 20 years.

'The change brings the return of an important diversification benefit for holders of globally diversified portfolios.'

Isa season is upon us and as you consider options to use up your allowance before the deadline, a closer look at how many countries you have exposure to would be more worthwhile than has been the case for many years.
Victoria Beckham's fashion empire has seen losses almost double to 8.5m

Victoria Beckham has appointed fashion industry veteran Ralph Toledano as chairman of her clothing company as she battles to turn it around.

Father-of-three Toledano, 66, spent more than ten years as chief executive at luxury French fashion house Chloe.

He joins Beckhams company from the governing body for the French fashion industry, where he served as president from 2014.

His appointment comes after the former Spice Girls fashion empire saw losses for the year to December 2016 almost double to 8.5million.

Sales were relatively flat at 36.4million compared with 36.9million a year earlier.

Husband David Beckham dipped into his own companys earnings to help the business, injecting 19.3million, up from 3million a year earlier.

Victoria Beckham has stores in London and Hong Kong and is stocked by Harvey Nichols and Selfridges in the UK.

Coats sell for around 2,250 with handbags retailing for up to 1,500 online.
Shop Direct has poached gambling firm Rank Group's boss Henry Birch

CHIEF POACHED Littlewoods and Very owner Shop Direct has poached gambling firm Rank Groups boss Henry Birch to head the company.

Birch, 49, will join as chief executive after almost four years at the helm of the FTSE 250- listed firm.

TOXIC TOLL Bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed a 360million penalty with New York state after mis-selling toxic mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis.

GOING WELL Packaging maker DS Smith says that its business has progressed well during the three months since the start of November, helped by the recent increases in paper prices.

HEADING OFF Derek Mapp is stepping down as chairman of international healthcare and communications group Huntsworth. It is now looking for his successor.

TEAMING UP Department store Debenhams has partnered with furniture and interiors firm Maisons du Monde to sell its products in store, in a bid to attract more customers.

BIG BOND Pharmacy chain CVS Health has raised 28.9billion in the third-largest corporate bond sale ever, to fund its acquisition of insurer Aetna.

PROFITS RISE Profits at car and home insurer Esure jumped 36 per cent to 98.6million last year as customers boosted its total number of policies by 9 per cent to 2.4million.

BANK BACKED An online-only bank seeking to challenge the major High Street players has raised 149million from investors.

Atom now has 1.3billion in customer deposits and a 1.2billion loan book.

FLOAT PLAN Corporate law firm Rosenblatt is reportedly mulling a stock market float later this year. It had revenues of 16million last year.

LONDON CALLING London is the worlds second-best city for the super-rich - coming just behind New York, says estate agent Knight Frank. Next-best European capital is Paris, in seventh.

LICENCE BID Lawsuit funding firm Burford Capital has asked for a licence to set up an insurance arm, to give cover to clients who face major losses if they lose a case.

TECH CASH Financial technology firm Capitolis has raised 21million, to improve the systems used for trading in capital markets.
Sixty-three head office jobs at Maplin have been axed just over a week after the electronics retailer collapsed into the hands of the administrators.

Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers warned they have yet to find a buyer for the stricken retailer, meaning more staff - and parts of the branch network - could face the chop.

Around 2,500 jobs hang in the balance, with today's head office culls affecting Maplin's offices in London and Rotherham.

Job cuts: Sixty-three head office jobs at Maplin have been axed just over a week after the electronics retailer collapsed

Fifty-five of the job cuts are being made in London, with the remainder in Rotherham.

'All staff affected have been informed and will be paid up to and including their last day of employment', PwC said.

Toby Underwood, joint administrator and PwC partner, said: 'It is with real regret that we have made this decision.

'We are grateful for the support of the employees during this difficult period and we will make every effort to help the affected staff, working with the Maplin HR team over the coming days.

'The company is continuing to trade but due to a lack of interest we may be required to initiate a controlled closure programme.'

He added: 'We still believe there is strong value in the company and we remain focused on doing all we can to preserve the business while we continue trying to achieve a sale.'

Last week, Maplin's boss, Graham Harris, said the group had been struggling to mitigate the impact of the pound's devaluation since June 2016's Brexit vote, the withdrawal of credit insurance and a weak consumer environment.

The group, which has 217 stores across the UK, is remaining open for business and continuing to trade for the time being.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill, run by retail billionaire Philip Day, had been touted as a potential rescuer for Maplin.

But talks are thought to have broken down, leaving Maplin's owner, private equity firm Rutland Partners, no alternative but to call in administrators.

On the same day Maplin collapsed, Toys R Us fell into the hands of administrators. Fashion group New Look announced plans to close a string of stores on Wednesday, putting nearly 1,000 jobs at risk.

Adding to an ever-growing list of high-street retailers with financial woes, John Lewis posted a 77 per cent drop in annual profits today, while announcing a 1 per cent cut to staff bonuses.

In the restaurant sector, Byron, Prezzo and chains owned by Jamie Oliver are also undergoing restructurings as they face sluggish sales and rising costs.
It is the world's top banking job.

Now, a British single mother is on the verge of making history as Wall Street titan JP Morgan's first female boss.

Marianne Lake, 48, has been tipped to take over from long-serving chief executive Jamie Dimon, a married father of three daughters.

First lady: Marianne Lake, 48, has been tipped to take over from JP Morgan's long-serving chief executive Jamie Dimon

Lake, who has been at JP Morgan for 19 years, has been dubbed 'the first lady of Wall Street' for her tough demeanour and her British, self-deprecating humour.

She once joked that her position as Dimon's deputy allowed her to 'sit down and drink through the speeches'  a reference to her reputation for liking a tipple, which has raised eyebrows on largely teetotal Wall Street.

If she wins the race to succeed Dimon, she will be handed the keys to the West's largest bank  a 292billion empire with 240,000 staff in more than 60 countries, a global leader in everything from stock trading to High Street lending.

Lake was born in Maryland in the US to a British father and American mother.

The family moved to the UK when she was two, and she studied physics at the University of Reading before getting into the banking industry.

She once joked that her first hope had been to become a film star, quipping at an awards evening that it was still a cherished ambition and the speech could be her 'breakthrough moment'.

She went to New York with JP Morgan in 2004 and rose rapidly, impressing Dimon as controller of the investment bank before holding top finance jobs on the retail side.

Lake was promoted to the bank's chief financial officer in 2012 and has since become respected as a close confidante of the chief executive, with an office next to his and meetings every Friday to discuss the business.

This glittering career has made her enormously wealthy, with earnings of more than 30million in the past five years and a JP Morgan shareholding worth up to 53million.

MARIANNE LAKE JP Morgan finance chief who is tipped to succeed the boss, Jamie Dimon

Brought up in England by British and American parents, and studied at University of Reading

Single mother-of-three who had less than three months off work after having twins

On having children without a partner, she says: I never worried about raising a kid on my own. Im not 20 with my eyes closed. The circumstances arent traditional, but I didnt hesitate to do it.

She once dreamed of being a film star

Has joked that she likes banking dinners where you can drink through the speeches  in contrast to many strait-laced Wall Street bosses

She had her first child at 42, and then twins when she was 45, deciding on both occasions to do it without a partner.

Asked about this for an interview with Marie Claire, she said: 'I never worried about raising a kid on my own. I'm 42, not 20 with my eyes closed. The circumstances aren't traditional, but I didn't hesitate to do it.'

Dimon has been married since 1983 to wife Judith and has three daughters. In 2014, he revealed that he had curable throat cancer in a memo and was treated for it.

Lake believes women can succeed in the notoriously male-dominated world of the boardroom.

She has spoken of the importance of diversity in high finance, calling on executives to sit down for half an hour every week with talented female staff and give them advice.

Four years ago, when her oldest child was 18 months old, she was frank about the balancing act she faced.

'I rely on a small circle of friends and my great nanny,' she said. 'In the mornings, I try to spend anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes with my son. Failing that, I try for 30 to 60 minutes together at the end of the day. I try to make that work, but if I can't, I just move on.'

Jamie Dimon has been one of the world's top bankers during his time at JP Morgan

The banker, who is thought to have had less than three months' maternity leave after her twins were born, added that she saw raising children as an opportunity to learn and grow.

'There are always phases in life when things get intense or difficult, whether it's the sheer volume of work or personal circumstances,' she said.

'And I've definitely had tough moments. The way I approach them is just to tell myself that this too will pass, and take it one day at a time.

Soon enough, you look back and see the forest for the trees again.' Despite this hard-headed approach, Miss Lake still shows off her children like any proud mother  once displaying pictures of them in a slideshow after telling fellow bankers to prepare for 'an overdose of super cuteness'.

Dimon is not expected to retire yet but senior executives are jockeying for position and Lake's name is frequently mentioned.

Other candidates are likely to include Mary Callahan Erdoes, 50, head of the wealth management arm, and commercial bank leader Doug Petno, 52.

Daniel Pinto and British-born Gordon Smith, promoted to be Dimon's deputies in January, will both be in their 60s when he quits and may be seen as too old.
Guilty plea: Alex Hope with Desperate Scousewives star Layla Flaherty

A rogue trader infamous for his hard-partying antics has admitted perverting the course of justice.

Foreign currency dealer Alex Hope, 29, pleaded guilty to trying to hide money from the authorities as they sought to confiscate his ill-gotten gains.

The former Wembley Stadium catering manager persuaded 100 people to invest 5.5million in a bogus trading scheme  then blew 2million of it on his own expensive tastes.

He spent more than 1million in a casino, over 200,000 on designer watches and shoes, 60,000 on foreign travel and 600,000 in bars and nightclubs in London, Miami and New York.

On one occasion, he racked up a 200,000 bar bill in a single night.

Hope, pictured partying with Desperate Scousewives star Layla Flaherty, was jailed for fraud in 2015 and ordered to repay 2.7million to investors the following year.

Judge Deborah Taylor said his behaviour had significantly impacted investors and he had not accepted his dishonesty.

Hopes latest conviction relates to attempts to keep cash secret using five hidden bank accounts, and lying about whether he had the money to pay the order. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Schools closed, hospitals nearing their capacity, people stuck at home and thousands sadly dying each day. This was the shocking reality of the global Covid pandemic we faced in 2020. This year, though, is different. Our freedom, our way of life, is being restored. People are slowly and carefully regaining the confidence to reclaim their lives. We are learning to live with Covid. While of course we need to be vigilant, we can start restoring what makes life worth living. Families are once again able to reunite with their loved ones. Weddings, christenings and family celebrations are back on. Businesses can open up again with more confidence. In fact, by some measures, Britain has the fastest economic recovery of all the major Western nations. The reason we can do this and, in truth, the only real difference between this year and last, are the vaccines. Almost 90 per cent of those over 16 have had one dose. More than four in five have had two doses.
Michael Bloomberg has announced a plan to spend $20million to launch a watchdog to detect and expose deceptive practices by the tobacco industry.

The monitor, to be called Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products (STOP), will seek to counter the industry's influence by publishing reports detailing pro-smoking activities and tactics.

It will also support non-profit organizations and government to resist interference from the tobacco industry.

Speaking on Wednesday, Bloomberg, an ambassador for the World Health Organization (WHO) on noncommunicable diseases, said: 'Over the last decade tobacco control measures have saved nearly 35 million lives, but as more cities and countries take action, the tobacco industry is pushing to find new users, particularly among young people.

'We cannot stand by as the industry misleads the public in an effort to get more people hooked on its products - and this global watchdog will help us hold the industry accountable.'

Philanthropist Michael Bloomberg (seen above at UN headquarters in New York on March 5) announced on Wednesday that he will spend $20million to launch a watchdog to detect and expose deceptive practices by the tobacco industry

Bloomberg's charitable giving organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, accuses the tobacco industry of seeking to legitimize itself in the eyes of policy makers, of marketing to children, and pushing cigarette alternatives for which the health case remains inconclusive.

Bloomberg, who made his fortune selling financial data, has given more than a billion dollars since 2007 to curb global tobacco use, which claims nearly seven million lives every year.

Along with WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, Bloomberg will on Wednesday launch the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Cape Town.

Research on the tobacco industry, published in peer-reviewed journals, has portrayed a decades-long strategy to defend the industry against health campaigners.

Bloomberg's charitable giving organization accuses the tobacco industry of seeking to legitimize itself in the eyes of policy makers, of marketing to children, and pushing cigarette alternatives for which the health case remains inconclusive. An anti-smoking ad is seen above

Investigators say tactics have included casting doubt on the scientific evidence of the perils of smoking, promoting brands through product placement in movies and aggressively marketing tobacco in low- and middle-income countries where smoking laws are weak.

Bloomberg has long been a proponent of placing limits on consumer goods that are hazardous to people's health.

In 2014, New York State's highest court struck down a proposal first initiated by then-New York City Mayor Bloomberg to ban sugary soft drinks that come in bottles that hold more than 16 ounces.

The courts ruled that New York City had exceeded its authority and violated the principle of separation of powers in instituting the ban.

The court's decision was hailed by soda makers and beverage manufacturers who pledged to reduce the amount of sugar and calories that are in their products.
After years without the drugs to do lethal injections, the South Carolina Senate has agreed to require condemned inmates go to the electric chair instead.

South Carolina law has empowered residents of death row to make a choice between lethal injection and the electric chair since 1995, so the lack of drugs enabled them to stay alive by choosing injections. Capital punishment essentially ended in 2011 in South Carolina, a state that had been averaging close to two executions a year.

'He picks out the option that can't be carried out, extending his life indefinitely,' complained a sponsor of the bill, state Sen. William Timmons.

South Carolina Senate has agreed to require condemned inmates go to the electric chair since the state has run out of lethal injection drugs

The proposal passed 26-12 on Tuesday and was given a final procedural vote Wednesday. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to face even less opposition.

South Carolina is one of only nine states that allow electrocutions, and just 14 of the 871 inmates executed in the United States since 2000 have been killed in the electric chair, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The last electrocution in the U.S. took place in Virginia in January 2013.

Senator William Timmons complained that inmates were able to pick the method that they wanted, cheating the system

The electric chair's legal position is also less clear. State Supreme Courts in Georgia and Nebraska have ruled that electrocution is unconstitutionally cruel. The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't taken up the issue.

South Carolina has electrocuted more than 200 inmates since first installing the electric chair in 1912, according to the Death Penalty Information Center , including 14-year-old George Stinney in 1944, who remained the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. A judge finally vacated the black teen's conviction in 2014, saying he didn't get a fair trial in the deaths of two white girls.

The drugs South Carolina uses to perform lethal injections expired a few years ago, and pharmacies have refused to sell the state new drugs, either because they are ethically against their use in executions, or because they don't want their names made public if they do sell them.

Another execution bill that would shield the names of drug companies from the public has been introduced in the Legislature, but isn't as far along.

Some opponents said South Carolina could use the lack of execution drugs to show that the state truly cherishes life, by protecting fetuses in their mothers' wombs as well as inmates on death row.

South Carolina has electrocuted more than 200 inmates since first installing the electric chair in 1912, according to the Death Penalty Information Center , including 14-year-old George Stinney in 1944, who remained the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. A judge finally vacated the black teen's conviction in 2014, saying he didn't get a fair trial in the deaths of two white girls

'An unborn child is innocent,' responded Timmons, a Republican from Greenville. A murderer who has committed heinous crimes is guilty.'

State Sen. Gerald Malloy said he opposed the bill both on moral grounds and for practical reasons. The Hartsville Democrat said he expects lawsuits from inmates who were sentenced to death when the execution method was up to them. He also predicted a higher taxpayer burden for public defenders as prosecutors become more likely to seek the death penalty, knowing it can be carried out.

'I think we are going to spend a lot of money proving a point,' Malloy said.

The Senate rejected an amendment from Democratic state Sen. Brad Hutto from Orangeburg, who proposed bringing back the firing squad. He said it's a more humane execution method, and South Carolina will never run out of guns or bullets.

Currently 35 inmates are on South Carolina's death row. The state has executed 39 inmates since lethal injection became an option 23 years ago, and only three of them chose the electric chair.
An Arizona State University physics professor, known for his work with the Doomsday Clock, has been suspended following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Professor Lawrence Krauss was put on paid leave pending a review of allegations first reported by Buzzfeed last month, the university said on Wednesday.

He is also prohibited during the probe from being present on the school's Phoenix-area campus.

Kraus issued a blistering denial of the allegations after the university disclosed his suspension.

Arizona State University physics professor, Lawrence Krauss (pictured), known for his work with scientific exploration and the Doomsday Clock, has been suspended from his university job following allegations of sexual misconduct

Krauss was put on paid leave pending a review of allegations that he pinned a woman to a Washington, DC hotel room bed and forcibly kissed her in 2006, and that he groped a woman's leg at a bar in Iowa in 2011

In a nine-page written statement, he said Buzzfeed 'ignored counter-evidence, distorted the facts, and made absurd claims about me'.

But the fallout of the allegations led Krauss to give up one position on Tuesday, when he resigned as chairman from the Board of Sponsors at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which manages the Doomsday Clock.

The clock is a visual representation of how close the Bulletin believes the world is to catastrophe brought on by nuclear weapons, climate change and new technologies.

The allegations reported by Buzzfeed include misconduct allegations from before Krauss' hiring by ASU in 2008.

They include pinning a woman to a Washington, D.C. hotel room bed and forcibly kissing her in 2006 and groping a woman's leg at a bar in Iowa in 2011.

Four ex-ASU employees told Buzzfeed of instances in 2015 and 2016 where Krauss made sexist remarks such as offering to buy birth control for a female colleague so he would not be inconvenienced by maternity leave.

The unnamed accusers worked with him at the Origins Project, an initiative Krauss started to research issues related to the origin of the universe and human life.

Krauss in his response said the physical encounters reported in the article either did not happen or were consensual.

Kraus issued a blistering denial of the allegations after the university disclosed his suspension

He described the 2006 hotel room interaction as 'playful' before he and the woman mutually decided not to have sex.

Addressing the 2011 incident, Krauss said a witness was willing to back up his claim that the accuser openly flirted with him and invited him into a hot tub.

Krauss acknowledged that he could be 'brash and outspoken, sometimes obnoxious.'

'My intentions have never been to demean anyone, objectify them, diminish their sense of self-worth, or discourage them from expressing themselves,' Krauss wrote.

'For any occasion where my friendly and open demeanor caused discomfort, I apologize for my lack of sensitivity. It was certainly not my intention.'

He also denied ever denouncing maternity leave for women, saying his ASU executive assistant took maternity leave twice.
A man with a hunting knife has been arrested for entering the Wyoming governor's residence and setting off a fire alarm.

Antoine Lewis, 35, entered the home of Republican Governor Matt Mead in Cheyenne at 1.30am on Tuesday.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol said Lewis set off the fire alarm before hiding inside a bathroom until authorities found him.

Lewis was taken into custody and will be charged with aggravated burglary and criminal entry, police say.

Antoine Lewis, 35, (left) entered Wyoming Governor Matt Mead's (right) home on Tuesday morning with a hunting knife

The governor's family was in the home at the time but no one was injured, police say

The police say firefighters and police arrived and found Lewis hiding in the bathroom.

He is accused of pointing his knife at officers before being taken to Laramie County jail.

Lewis told investigators he was chased onto the property and intentionally set off the fire alarm to get help, but surveillance footage does not support that claim.

The arrest affidavit also says he allegedly told his employer the day before that if he were to steal from people, he would target the rich because they have insurance.

Lewis reportedly set off a fire alarm in the home before hiding in a bathroom. He was arrested when authorities arrived

The 35-year-old is being charged with aggravated burglary and criminal entry. Officials say security will be heightened at the governor's residence

Mead and his family were in the home at the time, but no one was hurt.

'When something like this happens, I am reminded how thankful I am Wyoming has great first responders,' the governor wrote in an emailed statement to the Casper Star-Tribune.

The Highway Patrol is responsible for the personal security for the governor, and officials say this will be heightened after the incident.
A 14-year-old California boy accused of pretending to be a deputy sheriff was arrested, authorities said on Wednesday.

The unidentified teen was taken into custody on Tuesday after deputies found counterfeit money, fake guns, ballistic vests and other law enforcement-related items in his home, San Bernardino County sheriff's officials said.

He allegedly posed as a sheriff in several incidents in San Bernardino County, including one in which he allegedly initiated a traffic stop on an unsuspecting drive.

The teen is also said to have driven in a white Ford Explorer equipped with flashing blue and red lights, reported the San Bernardino Sun.

A 14-year-old boy from Victorville, California, was arrested on Tuesday for pretending to be a deputy sheriff and driving around in a white Ford Explorer equipped with flashing blue and red lights (pictured)

He allegedly posed as a sheriff in several incidents in San Bernardino County in two incidents, where he approached homes and said he was investigating a domestic disturbance call (pictured)

The probe was launched a day earlier when the boy pulled into a driveway in the 13600 block of Mica Avenue in Victorville, according to a news release from the Victorville Police Department.

The teen told residents of the home he was there to investigate a report of a domestic disturbance.

Authorities said he was dressed in a San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department uniform, complete with a belt holster that contained a firearm.

The homeowner told him that no one in the residence had placed the call and closed the door. The teen tried to open it, but it was locked.

A further investigation revealed two additional incidents on Monday night when the teen allegedly impersonated a law enforcement officer, including one where police say he pulled over a female motorist in the area of Amethyst Road.

The suspect was able to get the drivers information and he let her go with a warning, according to the release.

In one case, he allegedly initiated a traffic stop on an unsuspecting female driver and let her off 'with a warning'. He was dressed in a San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department uniform, complete with a belt holster that contained a firearm (pictured)

During a search of the boys home, detectives found the uniform worn during the three incidents as well as counterfeit money, fake guns, ballistic vests and other law enforcement-related items (pictured)

The unidentified boy, who was on probation at the time of his arrest, was arrested and booked at the High Desert Juvenile Detention Center

In another case, the teen activated his emergency lights in the area of Cobalt Road, prompting a 16-year-old boy to come out of his home.

Like in the first case, the teen said he was responding to the residence to investigate a domestic disturbance call. He left upon being told there was no disturbance at the location, according to the release.

Authorities learned the teen was the great-grandson of the vehicles registered owner, with whom he lived, Victorville sheriffs station spokeswoman Maria Rodriguez told the Sun.

During a search of the boys home, detectives found the uniform worn during the three incidents as well as other various items including the ballistic vests and fake firearms.

The boy, who was on probation at the time of his arrest, was arrested and booked at the High Desert Juvenile Detention Center.
Radio host Kate Langbroek has described the moment a crazed man tried to break in to her family home where her four young children, aged between eight and 12, live.

Langbroek and husband Peter were putting 'the little ones to bed' when there babysitter came back, banging on their door saying a man tried to get in her car.

The personality emotionally recalled the violent ordeal on the Today show, claiming the man tried to break into her house when the pair went out to investigate.

'He was on us, like violent, raving, tried to open the front gate and I was behind the gate, Peter was out on the street and so we got into this tussle over the gate,' Langbroek said almost a week after the incident.

'Then I realised I had left the front door open ... so I ran back into the house, I slammed the door shut, I didn't know if he was behind me or not.

Radio host Kate Langbroek (pictured) has described the moment a crazed man tried to break in to her family home where her four young children, aged between eight and 12, live

Langbroek (pictured) suffered severe bruising after a 'crazed' person attempted to break into her family home last Friday evening

'I braced the door with my leg ... a couple of seconds later he tried to kick the front door in,' she said on Thursday

'I braced the door with my leg ... a couple of seconds later he tried to kick the front door in.

'I was yelling at Annabelle to call Triple-0.'

Langbroek said her husband Peter was outside with the man for a 'terrifying period' where the man was trying to lure him away from the house like the 'Pied Piper of violent idiots.'

The co-host of the top rating Melbourne radio show 'Hughesy & Kate' said their neighbours called the police who arrived within three or four minutes.

The 52-year-old took to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon to post an image of her badly bruised right arm.

St Kilda has long had a history of rampant drug use and Langbroek told The Age that problems have only increased since the notorious Gatwick Hotel was shut down

As she went to investigate the 'deranged' man turned on Langbroek and attempted to push past her and into where her children - aged from eight to 12 - were sleeping

The incident led the radio star to call on the Victorian government to clean up the area which has a long history of drug overdoses and sex use.

'Martin Foley thanks for your call yesterday,' Langbroek wrote to her local member on Twitter.

'This is the bruise I sustained trying to keep that "vulnerable" resident from kicking our front door in on Friday night.

'Children inside. The real vulnerable are the decent citizens of St Kilda. We await your action.'

The man responsible for the attack has reportedly been charged by police.

St Kilda has long had a history of rampant drug use and Langbroek told The Age that problems have only increased since the notorious Gatwick Hotel was shut down.

'Our children walk to school and [the other day] we saw a guy get a Glasgow kiss,' TV and radio star Langbroek said.

'He was walking around the corner with his headphones in and he got headbutted in broad daylight. It's crazy.'

Despite St Kilda, the area where Langbroek lives (pictured), being among the most expensive in Melbourne it has long had history of drug use and sex work

The 52-year-old and her husband were able to keep the man at bay, but the incident has led the radio star to call on the Victorian government to clean up the area

'It's really not nice to be here with kids right now... my mother lives out in a much-maligned suburb and they never get this kind of stuff,' wrote one Twitter user

Another complained that they couldn't walk down the street in St Kilda and surrounding areas 'without getting screamed at'

Those who called The Gatwick hotel home were forced out into public housing after it was taken over by Channel Nine for the upcoming season of The Block.

Residents in the St Kilda area have reported an increasing number of incidents to the police in recent months, with many angry locals commenting on Langbroek's post.

'The Walking Dead are alive and well in St Kilda (and) Balaclava, can't walk down Carlisle St without getting screamed at,' wrote one local.

'It's really not nice to be here with kids right now... my mother lives out in a much-maligned suburb and they never get this kind of stuff,' said another Twitter user

While it has long had a reputation for sex work and drugs, the area is also among the most expensive in Melbourne being just minutes from the beach and trendy eateries.
A university academic has been sacked after he tried to shake a Muslim female student's hand and accused her of sexual discrimination after she refused.

The University of Auckland described his behaviour as 'serious misconduct' and terminated his employment late last year following an investigation.

Vice-Chancellor Stuart McCutcheon told staff in a newsletter the unnamed academic from New Zealand had engaged in unacceptable conduct.

A university academic has been sacked after he tried to shake a Muslim female student's hand and accused her of sexual discrimination after she refused (stock image)

The University of Auckland described his behaviour as 'serious misconduct' and terminated his employment late last year following an investigation

'It is important for all members of our community to understand such behaviours have no place in the university, and that if they do occur I will not hesitate to authorise appropriate investigatory and disciplinary procedures,' he said on Tuesday in the bulletin cited by Stuff.

The vice-chancellor said the academic had acted knowing it was culturally and religiously inappropriate, considering that some Muslims regard it as a sin to shake hands with someone of the opposite sex who isn't a close relative or a spouse.

The university declined to confirm the story.

'The university isn't commenting further on this,' a spokeswoman said.

Sunni Muslims follow the Hadith, which outlines the actions of the Prophet Mohammad during the seventh century, and incorporate this into their adhere to Sharia law.

The university said the academic had acted knowing it was culturally and religiously inappropriate, considering some Muslims don't shake hands with strangers of the opposite sex

New Zealand Greens MP Golriz Ghahraman in February defended an Iranian agricultural delegation's refusal to shake hands with a female Labour MP

They regard it as the second most important holy book after the Quran and often abide by a code which says: 'It is better to be stabbed in the head with an iron needle than to touch the hand of a woman who is not permissible to you.'

New Zealand Greens MP Golriz Ghahraman in February defended an Iranian agricultural delegation's refusal to shake hands with a female Labour MP.

'So while in western culture refusing to shake hands is a huge sign of disrespect, in the Muslim world touching strangers of the opposite sex is hugely disrespectful and a breach of Islamic law,' said Ms Ghahraman, who moved to New Zealand from Iran as a child refugee.

In Australia last year, Muslim students at the Hurstville Boys Campus of Georges River College, in Sydney's south, were given permission to put their hand on the heart as a greeting at ceremonies with female teachers.

Flinders University in Adelaide, Perth's Curtin University and the University of Western of Australia advise their students to be aware that some Muslims refuse to shake hand with strangers of the opposite sex.
Police are searching for Jacob Gonzales, 34 (pictured), after he was named a person of interest in the death of Katherine Cunningham, 26, on Camano Island in Washington State

Police are on a manhunt after a woman was found decapitated near a hillside bunker in northwest Washington State.

Katherine Cunningham, 26, was found dead on Saturday around 2.30pm on Camano Island, a rural island north of Seattle, on an undeveloped property.

Investigators are now searching for person of interest Jacob Gonzales, a 34-year-old man believed to be driving a green 1990 Mitsubishi Montero with Washington license plate AYE2639.

He is described as a Hispanic man standing at 5'9" who weighs 150 pounds and has black hair with hazel eyes.

Deputies think he may be heading to central or southern California and consider him armed and dangerous.

Gonzales's relationship to Cunningham or the woman's death was not described by police.

'We're working on that,' Island County Sheriff Mark Brown said, according to The Daily Herald. 'We're asking for leads.'

Investigators believe he is driving a green 1990 Mitsubishi Montero with Washington license plate AYE2639 (pictured). Deputies think he may be heading to central or southern California and consider him armed and dangerous

Detectives who responded to a 911 call found Cunningham's body on Saturday afternoon on an undeveloped parcel of land on the south part of the island on Tamarack Lane (pictured). They said she appeared to have been dead for several days

Investigators obtained warrants to search the property and found a hillside bunker (pictured) containing 'a cache of supplies, firearms and ammunition', which were seized by deputies

Brown declined to provided further details on the case.

The Island County Coroner's Office performed an autopsy on Tuesday and confirmed Cunningham was a victim of homicidal violence with decapitation.

Detectives who responded to a 911 call found Cunningham's body on Saturday afternoon on an undeveloped parcel of land on the south part of the island on Tamarack Lane. They said she appeared to have been dead for several days.

Gonzales had rented a trailer on the Camano Island property (pictured), but its not clear when he had last been there, Island County Sheriff Mark Brown said

Gonzales's relationship to Cunningham or the woman's death was not described by police but they said they believe Cunningham was specifically targeted

Investigators served several search warrants on the property and discovered a bunker dug into the hillside containing 'a cache of supplies, firearms and ammunition', which were seized by deputies. They said they believe Cunningham was specifically targeted.

Gonzales had rented a trailer on the Camano Island property, but its not clear when he had last been there, the sheriff said

Anyone with information is asked to contact your local law enforcement agency, or Detective Ed Wallace at 360-679-9567. You can also send an email to Tips@co.island.wa.us.
A 13-year-old boy has been charged with attempted armed robbery after he entered a service station armed with scissors.

Police say the teenager entered a Caltex service station on Main Road in Moonah, Tasmania about 10.30 on Wednesday night.

A Caltex staff member said the boy attempted to jump over the shop counter and demanded cash.

Police say the teenager entered a Caltex service station on Main Road in Moonah, Tasmania about 10.30 on Wednesday nigh

'He had a small pair of scissors,' the staff member told Daily Mail Australia.

'We have things and barriers in place to stop people from jumping over the counter.'

The staff member said the boy then 'got scared' and ran away from the scene.

Police caught the boy a short time later and he was charged with attempted armed robbery.

A Caltex staff member said the boy attempted to jump over the shop counter and demanded cash (stock image)

He is due to appear in court in Hobart on Thursday afternoon.

The service station attendant was not harmed during the alleged attempted robbery.

Tasmania Police said CCTV footage of the incident would not be released due to laws regarding the protection of minors.
One Nation staffer James Ashby is being investigated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority over allegations he flew the political party's light plane without the appropriate licence.

On Wednesday, CASA seized recordings of a 2015 ABC interview from the broadcaster regarding his role as party leader Pauline Hanson's pilot.

He told ABC Sunshine Coast he would fly Ms Hanson 'wherever she wants to go' and the pair were flying together 'every weekend at the very least'.

'It's a Jabiru J230  we've got it licensed as a light sport aircraft, it's two seats,' he said.

The One Nation plane (pictured) has caused controversy again, as staffer James Ashby faces allegations he was not correctly licensed to fly it

Ashby is being investigated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, but claims the investigation is nothing but a 'political witch hunt'

A spokesman for CASA told Daily Mail Australia they were unable to comment on 'ongoing investigations', but confirmed the recordings had been acquired on Wednesday.

Mr Ashby told Daily Mail Australia he was complying with the Authority's request for documents, but believed the investigation was a 'political witch hunt'.

'This matter has already been investigated by RA-Aus where they found no case to answer,' he said.

'I will comply with CASA's request for documents, however this is just a further waste of taxpayers money where their findings will result in the same outcome as previous investigations.

'I do question whether this is another political witch hunt instigated by Labor who have had a lot to say over this matter.'

Mr Ashby noted One Nation had questioned the permanent appointment of CASA's current CEO, Shane Carmody, in June 2017.

Ashby told Daily Mail Australia the Authority may be going hard on him because of a letter Senator and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson sent to then-Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Darren Chester

The letter, sent to then-Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Darren Chester, highlighted Mr Carmody's 'lack of genuine [aviation] industry experience'.

The plane, which is still the subject of an ongoing investigation by the AEC, was donated to Ashby by businessman Bill McNee. It is registered in Ashby's name.

Senator Hanson insists the Jabiru aircraft, which once bore One Nation signage and has been serviced at least once using party funds, has 'nothing to do with the party'.

She confirmed last year Victorian businessman Bill McNee had 'got the plane for (her chief of staff) James Ashby' and it had never come through the party office as a donation.

In the letter, Ms Hanson questioned the qualifications of CASA's now-CEO, claiming the man had 'a lack of genuine industry experience'

She told Sky News on Thursday the issue was around how the plane, which cost $106,000, had been declared.

'The electoral commission solicitor, through someone associated with the party, said there is no issue here,' she said.

However, she added the probe had not concluded.

'For an organisation as big as the AEC, who have not come to a decision for more than a year, it's pathetic,' she said.
An enormous fish has been found washed up on the shore on Tuesday at Moore Park Beach, located on the central Queensland coast north of Bundaberg.

'I've never seen a fish that big before, let alone one that big wash up on the beach,' said John Lindhom who, along with his wife Riley, found the creature while strolling along the shore.

'It would have to be 150kg - it was huge,' he told the Bundaberg News Mail.

The fish, found washed ashore on the central Queensland coast, appears to dwarf a man in comparison

The fish showed no visible injuries and some have said it could be a groper or triple tail that reached it's use by date

An image of a triple tail fish that has been speculated could be the same species as the one that washed ashore

Mr Lindhom assumed the gigantic fish was a groper but other commenters on the Moore Park Beach Community Facebook page said it could be an unusually large triple tail.

There were no visible signs of injury and, according Mr Lindhom, the fish may have just reached its use by date.

The couple, who are from Victoria and were holidaying in the area, stumbled across the fish while walking along the sandy beach halfway between the high and low tide mark.

The said it must have been left by the high tide as they were walking the same area a day earlier and did not come across it.

The creature was found between the high and low tide marks on Tuesday
A sick electrician caught sharing vile images of children and babies being sexually abused has been spared jail.

The Gold Coast man, 32, walked free from Southport District Court despite pleading guilty to sharing almost 40 child exploitation images online.

Judge David Kent sentenced the man, who cannot be named, to two years in jail but released him on payment of a $1000 good behaviour bond.

A sick electrician caught sharing vile images of children and babies being sexually abused has been spared jail (stock image)

'The material is serious in nature and some of the victims are babies,' Judge Kent said, but decided the man was not likely to reoffend, The Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

The court heard the electrician was caught by police sharing the images in Skype conversations.

He pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to share and access child exploitation material and one count of possessing child pornography.

The man had previous been caught by police with almost 1500 child porn images on his laptop.

Judge Kent viewed the man's medical records, and heard he had been getting physiological treatment for the past year.

The man was sexually abused as a child, and it was not alleged he made a profit from sharing the images, which were in the two highest categories of child porn.
Labour was engulfed in a new anti-Semitism row last night after it emerged that Jeremy Corbyn was in a Facebook group riddled with prejudice against Jews and Israel.

Screenshots show he was a member of the Palestine Live group until around the time he became Labour leader in 2015.

The secret page included links to material produced by neo-Nazi groups and messages suggesting Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks, reports say.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said last night that an investigation into the group had begun and disciplinary action would be taken against any Labour members found to be involved.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn (pictured in London on November 6) said there was no suggestion he had made any anti-Semitic postings, and that he had been unaware of the alleged comments

Members are said to have included Labour MPs Clive Lewis and Chris Williamson and former Channel 4 reporter and Corbynite Paul Mason.

Mr Corbyns son, Seb, chief of staff to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and Jack Bond, a member of his team, are also thought to be members.

Among the posts on the group, members discuss whether they prefer the term ZioNazi to JewNazi, according to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA).

One member said he was reading Adolf Hitlers book Mein Kampf, adding: Everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked.

The Labour logo is also displayed in the group, alongside appeals to join the party.

Some users are said to have shared articles by conspiracy theorist David Icke, and David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK. There are also said to be links to articles from far-Right websites.

A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said there was no suggestion he had made any anti-Semitic postings, and that he had been unaware of the alleged comments.

He is said to have been added to the group, as opposed to joining it himself, but did post on the page.

Members are said to have included Labour MPs Clive Lewis (left) as well as Chris Williamson (right)

However, the CAA said there was no conceivable justification for Mr Corbyns involvement in the group and that it would be filing a complaint against him to Labour. Last night, it complained about the page after it was discovered by blogger David Collier.

Mr Corbyns spokesman said: Jeremy and the Labour Party are implacably opposed to all forms of anti-Semitism and will take whatever necessary action to stamp it out in the party.

I dont think anyone is suggesting anything that Jeremy has written in any Facebook group or anywhere else constitutes anti-Semitic comments.

There were thousands of members of this group. In social media all sorts of things are posted which often others participating arent even aware of.

It is repugnant if there are anti-Semitic posts  and I gather there are. If they involve anyone to do with the Labour Party then investigation and disciplinary action will be taken.

The CAA accuses Mr Corbyn of posting comments in threads that include the term Zio  which refers to Zionism.

In a report into anti-Semitism in Labour, Baroness Chakrabarti said Zio should have no place in party discourse.

Joseph D. Glasman, of the CAA, said: There is no conceivable justification for Jeremy Corbyns participation in this group. One of Mr Corbyns slogans is standing up, not standing by, but in this case he has not stood up ,but instead he actively joined in.

 Last night, the Government pledged 13.4million for security at Jewish schools, synagogues and community buildings amid fears over anti-Semitic hate crime and terrorist threats. Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the cash, which follows 38.5million since 2015.
Departing White House Communications Director Hope Hicks told lawmakers last week that one of her email accounts had been hacked, according to NBC News.

Hicks, who announced her resignation last Thursday, had voluntarily appeared the day before to answer nine hours-worth of questions from members of the House Intelligence Committee.

When answering questions posed to her by Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat from Connecticut, Hicks said she no longer had access to two of her email accounts  one personal and one campaign  noting that one had been hacked, according to two of NBC's sources.

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Hope Hicks, leaving Capitol Hill after spending the day speaking to lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, told them that one of her email accounts had been hacked, NBC News first learned

Hope Hicks waves to cameras as she arrives on Capitol Hill to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on February 27, the day before she announced her resignation

It was unclear which of of Hicks' accounts had been breached.

The hack raises questions about who might have tried to access the aide's account and what information her emails may have contained.

Hicks didn't specify when the hack happened, though a number of Hillary Clinton's aides had their email accounts targeted through the course of the 2016 election.

The most famous breaches were that of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.

As for Hicks, she is one of the president's longest-servingpolitical aides, having worked for Ivanka Trump's brand before transitioning to Trump's campaign at its beginning, serving as his press secretary despite never having worked in politics.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is heading a separate Russia investigation from the House Intelligence Committee's on Capitol Hill, has been interested in correspondence, including emails, between Trump aides.

In a subpoena given to ex-campaign aide Sam Nunberg, who handed it over to the media during his bevvy of interviews on Monday, the special counsel requested correspondence Nunberg had with a number of campaign associates.

Hicks was on that list, along with eight other campaign aides, as well as the president himself.

Nunberg, who first said he planned to defy the subpoena, now says he will cooperate with the Mueller probe.

Next up at bat at the House Intelligence Committee is Trump's original campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Lewandowski is slated to speak to the panel's lawmakers on Thursday.
The NYPD is readying to arrest Harvey Weinstein for felony sexual assault, after investigating five different allegations against the disgraced producer in the New York area.

'We're ready to go with an arrest,' an NYPD official told The Daily Beast. While Chief Robert Boyce says they have gathered considerable evidence in the investigation into Weinstein.

It is now up to the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to decide whether the disgraced media mogul gets indicted.

'It's his case right now,' Chief Boyce said of Vance, 'I would ask you to ask him ... his schedule ... where it goes forward.'

Paz de la Huerta (left) and Lucia Evans (right) have worked with the NYPD's Special Victims Unit regarding their allegations of rape and sexual assault by Harvey Weinstein, and the NYPD says they are ready to make an arrest

The district attorney's office had no comment.

Boyce said investigators have been working diligently with women who have alleged Weinstein raped them.

The probe stems in part from a report in October by 'Boardwalk Empire' actress Paz de la Huerta, who said she Weinstein raped her twice in 2010. She also spoke publicly.

The NYPD says they have gathered considerable evidence against Harvey Weinstein, and that it is now up to the Manhattan DA to move towards an indictment

In another incident in New York, Lucia Evans' account was detailed in Ronan Farrow's bombshell New Yorker expose in 2017.

Evans said she was a college student interested in an acting career when she met Weinstein at the Cipriani Upstairs nightspot in 2004.

She told Farrow, and the NYPD's Special Victims Unit, that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting at his office.

'I said, over and over, 'I don't want to do this, stop, don't,' she told Farrow. 'He's a big guy. He overpowered me.'

SVU has also been speaking to de la Huerta.

Evans' case is apparently the stronger of the two cases being pursued, however detectives found both women believable.

Detectives have since traveled to Paris and Los Angeles to interview de la Huerta and others.

They have sought cellphone, business and medical records. Witnesses were prepared to testify before a grand jury, which would determine whether Weinstein is indicted, Boyce said. The proceeding is secret.

'We've accumulated quite a bit of evidence,' Boyce said.

Prosecutors have said they are taking the investigation seriously.

In a previous case in New York, the District Attorney declined to prosecute Weinstein despite model and actress Ambra Battilana Gutierrez in 2015 wearing a wire tap to meet with him.

She accused Weinstein of groping her during a meeting.

'I won't do it again,' Weinstein can be heard telling Battilana, admitting he had done it to her before.

It appears that despite both de la Huerta's case and Evans (above) being credible- it will be Evans' case that would more likely seal Weinstein's fate if arrested

Vance ultimately decided there wasn't enough proof and didn't bring a case. Following criticism over the decision last year, prosecutors said police arranged the sting without their knowledge and there were other proof issues, but police pushed back saying they'd presented enough evidence.

Meanwhile the other three cases in New York against Weinstein are still developing.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office is also reviewing five cases against Weinstein, two brought by the Beverly Hills Police Department and three from Los Angeles police.

Weinstein's attorneys have said he denies any claim of non-consensual sex, and that they would respond in any 'appropriate legal forum, where necessary.'

They had no additional comment Wednesday.

Piling onto the producer's endless legal troubles, in February, New York state sued the Weinstein Company.

The New York state attorney's office said that despite multiple complaints to the human resources department, there was no meaningful investigation or relief for victims, or consequences for Weinstein.

The NYPD says they are ready to arrest Weinstein, but that it is now in the hands of Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance (pictured) as it is up to him to indict the disgraced producer

It said the company's toxic work environment was shrouded in secrecy because of a practice of reaching non-disclosure agreements -- a policy that has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of the sexual harassment watershed that has followed Weinstein's downfall.

State attorney general Eric Schneiderman said the lawsuit, filed in the State Supreme Court in New York, included new allegations about Weinstein's 'vicious and exploitative mistreatment' of employees.

'As alleged in our complaint, The Weinstein Company repeatedly broke New York law by failing to protect its employees from pervasive sexual harassment, intimidation and discrimination,' said Schneiderman.

'Any sale of The Weinstein Company must ensure that victims will be compensated, employees will be protected going forward and that neither perpetrators nor enablers will be unjustly enriched.'




Multiple police cars have been spotted outside Tori Spelling's home again less than a week after officers were called following reports she had suffered a nervous breakdown.

At least two police cars showed up on Wednesday at the Los Angeles home where Spelling lives with her husband Dean McDermott and their five children.

It is not clear why police were at the home but several officers were seen talking with McDermott outside.

Blue balloons were spotted at the property following their son Beau's first birthday on March 2.

Multiple police cars showed up on Wednesday at the Los Angeles home where Tori Spelling lives with her husband Dean McDermott and their five children

The police visit on Wednesday comes less than a week after officers rushed to the couple's home after McDermott reportedly called 911 to report that Spelling was having a breakdown

The police visit comes just days after officers rushed to the couple's home after McDermott reportedly called 911 to report that his 44-year-old wife was having a breakdown.

According to the dispatch message, authorities responded to a 'female mental illness' call at the house.

Officers took a domestic violence incident report but Spelling was not arrested or taken to hospital.

The incident happened a day before Beau's birthday and was reportedly brought on by the stress of juggling her five children, work and her marriage to McDermott who had an affair back in 2013.

It is not clear why police were at the home but several officers were seen talking with McDermott outside

Blue balloons were spotted at the property following their son Beau's first birthday on March 2

Multiple officers were spotted inside the family's property on Wednesday. It happened less than a week after police rushed to the home following a 911 call

Spelling has not addressed the police activity outside her home but did take to social media to post a video of her son for his birthday.

Insiders say they fear the Beverly Hills 90210 actress is on the brink of a breakdown.

'Her friends and family are all very, very worried,' a source told Us Weekly.

'You would think the cheating, money problems and constant arguing would be enough for Tori to decide to divorce Dean, but she refuses to even discuss it.

'Tori believes a divorce would label her as a failure.'

Spelling has not addressed the police activity outside her home but did take to social media to post a video of her son Beau for his birthday (pictured above)

Sources say Tori's breakdown was reportedly brought on by the stress of juggling her five children, work and her marriage to McDermott who had an affair back in 2013

The majority of the couple's arguments come down to money, according to the insider.

In 2016, Tori was sued by American Express for $87,000 in credit card debt, after having already faced a lawsuit for an unpaid $38,000 bill from the credit card company.

She was ordered to pay in full along with $855 in court fees earlier that year, and sources have previously claimed the pressure of her debts had taken its toll on the star.

Sources say the couple are 'heavily in debt'.
Ministers are open to trading away access to Britains fishing grounds in return for a better Brexit deal, Philip Hammond said yesterday.

In a frank admission, the Chancellor suggested that British fishermen might have to accept foreign trawlers having significant access even after the UK has regained control of its traditional fishing grounds.

Asked whether it would be acceptable to trade off fishing rights in return for a better deal for lucrative sectors of the economy such as the City, Mr Hammond said: Fishing is an iconically important British industry and we are very clear that we are taking control of our waters.

But of course we would be open to discussing with our EU partners about the appropriate arrangements for reciprocal access for our fishermen to EU waters and for EU fishermen to our waters.

In a frank admission, the Chancellor suggested that British fishermen might have to accept foreign trawlers having significant access even after the UK has regained control of its traditional fishing grounds

'We would have to negotiate the basis on which such an arrangement could be fair and appropriate for us.

Mr Hammonds comments appeared to put him at odds with Brexit Secretary David Davis, who told MPs on Tuesday: We are not going to be trading away fishing rights for other things, that is for sure.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove pledged last year to take back control of Britains fishing grounds out to the historic 200-mile limit, allowing the UK to dramatically increase the amount of fish we catch.

Asked if the Government could trade fishing rights for access for financial services, the spokesman said: No. David Davis dealt with that yesterday

Downing Street last said Theresa May wanted to work together with the EU to manage fishing stocks after Brexit.

Her spokesman said this could include reciprocal access to waters, but would have to involve fairer allocation of fishing opportunities for the UK fishing industry.

Asked if the Government could trade fishing rights for access for financial services, the spokesman said: No. David Davis dealt with that yesterday.

Despite the EUs insistence that any trade deal cannot involve cherry picking, the sector was singled out yesterday by EU Council President Donald Tusk as he set out the blocs Brexit negotiating aims.

Mr Hammonds comments appeared to put him at odds with Brexit Secretary David Davis, who told MPs on Tuesday: We are not going to be trading away fishing rights for other things, that is for sure

Mr Hammond said: Fishing is an iconically important British industry and we are very clear that we are taking control of our waters'

As the EU published six pages of details of its vision of a future relationship agreement with the UK, Mr Tusk said Britain could not expect to benefit from a pick and mix approach.

But he added: In fisheries, reciprocal access to fishing waters and resources should be maintained.

But Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, said it was an extraordinary comment from Mr Tusk, describing him as the cherry pickers cherry picker.

He added: Fisheries are one of our most important cards, to be sold very dearly indeed. Without a deal, we have it in our power to wreck the fishing industries of several EU countries.

It came as Brussels delivered a provocative rebuke to Mrs Mays vision of a Brexit trade deal, claiming her plan would create economic chaos in the UK.

Dismissing her demands as implausible, the bloc called for the Prime Minister to rip up her red lines to get a better deal that might avoid the negative economic consequences of leaving.

Mr Tusk said Mrs Mays approach would have an inevitable cost, adding: Our agreement will not make trade between the EU and the UK frictionless or smoother.

It will make it more complicated and costly than today for all of us. That is the essence of Brexit.

Mr Tusk yesterday warned Donald Trump that he could lose a transatlantic trade war.

After the President said the US economy could boom by hiking tariffs on imported aluminium and steel, Mr Tusk said: President Trump has said, Trade wars are good and easy to win.

'But the truth is the opposite: Trade wars are bad and easy to lose.
Sid James and Benny Hill might have been banged up longer than the Yorkshire Ripper, if Melanie Onn had her way. Mrs Onn (Lab, Great Grimsby) yesterday proposed criminalising misogyny (ie discrimination against women).

She and other MPs demanded appropriate sentencing for culprits of street harassment such as wolf-whistling and the sort of hello-darlin pavement ogling that can occur outside pubs on balmy evenings.

Welcome to liberal Britain. Blow up a British Cabinet with a terrorist bomb and you will walk free. But if you and your mates are outside the Pig & Whistle and compliment a lass on her summer frock, you could face clink. Wed better start building an awful lot of prisons.

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The SNP's Mhairi Black (pictured in Westminster Hall) became the first MP to use the C-word in Parliament - and read it out five times as she revealed the scale of online abuse against her

Labour MP Melanie Onn: Only nine MPs were present and only one was a man when she opened a debate on misogyny as a hate crime'

Mrs Onn (majority 2,565) opened a debate on misogyny as a hate crime. Only nine MPs were present and only one was a man. Tut tut. Worse, he was Philip Davies (Con, Shipley), serial skewer of political correctness. He was there long enough to ask two awkward questions.

Did Mrs Onn think there should also be a law against misandry (ie discrimination against men)? She did not. There is a power imbalance in society that disproportionately affects women negatively, so I think misogyny should be an exclusive strand of hate crime, she averred. Glowering.

And did Mrs Onn think it had been misogynistic (and thus equal to hate crime) for a man to allegedly say Tory minister Esther McVey should be lynched? When Mr Davies asked this he did not disclose that he and Miss McVey share a toothbrush mug.

Nor did he explain that the brute who reportedly wanted to lynch Miss McVey was Labours Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell.

Mrs Onn, who would perhaps not be everyones first choice for University Challenge, did not seem to spot the danger. Yes, she gaily said, such a remark was unnecessarily aggressive and had no place in political debate. Mr McDonnells Momentum thugs will be interested to hear this.

Labour frontbencher Carolyn Harris disclosed that some people tease her because she is on the chunky side and wears garish clothes

Sid James (left) and Benny Hill (right) might have been banged up longer than the Yorkshire Ripper if Melanie Onn had her way

If Mrs Onn thought the debate was going to give her untrammelled publicity, others had their own ideas. Stella Creasy (Lab, Walthamstow) and Mhairi Black (SNP, Paisley & Renfrewshire S) made unsisterly bids to grab the limelight. Was that oneupwomanship? Miss Black made a speech which contained numerous instances of the C-word. This may well be a parliamentary first. They came while she described some of the nasty things that have been said about her by the public.

Happily, Miss Black has such a formidably strong accent that the dreadful words she uttered were almost completely incomprehensible to your sketchwriters softy-southerner ear.

Intellectually, did Miss Black nail down the argument that attacks on her were misogynistic? Perhaps not. I know plenty of male MPs who have been called similar names. And I have sometimes been called the same  by MPs. Last time I had a squint below decks, I was a chap.

As for Miss Creasy, she said she had been pestered by a man on a London street and that just showed there was a culture of power that needed changing. She spoke with eloquence, the words pouring forth in a grammatically-correct torrent. All very impressive. But as can happen with Miss Creasy, a lot of it seemed to be about her rather than the strict, legislative argument.

Labour frontbencher Carolyn Harris disclosed that some people tease her because she is on the chunky side and wears garish clothes. With admirable nonchalance she said, thats their problem, not mine. And yet she wanted misogynistic acts to be treated as the serious crimes they actually are. Like others who spoke, she saw prejudice as only a bad thing. I am prejudiced against dictators and arms dealers. Is that hate crime?

Victoria Atkins, for the Government, mewed in a sympathetic way but made no commitment to alter the law.

In other news, the Government seems to be flirting with the idea of letting the EU continue to plunder our fishing waters. Might that not be of rather greater interest to Melanie Onns voters?
Jarryd Hayne's heavily-intoxicated alleged rape victim claims she passed out in the back of an Uber before waking in his home beside a 'pool of blood' and in 'significant vaginal pain,' according to court documents.

The rugby league superstar, who will make is return to the NRL with the Parramatta Eels this week, has denied allegations he raped an American virgin three years ago during his brief stint in the NFL.

The anonymous woman, who filed under the pseudonym 'J.V.' last year, alleges she passed out during a car ride to Hayne's San Jose home 'due to her extreme level of intoxication' after a drunken night out a bar in 2015.

The woman claims she has no recollection of how she got into his home, but vaguely remembers being in his bedroom and hearing Hayne say 'no kissing' before feeling a sharp pain in her vagina.

She woke the next morning naked, next to a 'pool of blood' while 'in significant vaginal pain,' that she continues to suffer from today, her filing states.

Jarryd Hayne has denied allegations that he raped a virgin woman in 2015 during his brief stint in the NFL

Hayne, who will make is return to the NRL with the Parramatta Eels this week, has denied allegations he raped an American virgin

She also claimed that she had never had vaginal intercourse prior to the date of the alleged rape.

In a response filed last week, Hayne denied all allegations of wrongdoing and said he was not aware that the woman objected to any of the acts alleged against him.

New court documents obtained by MailOnline reveal the athlete alleges the woman 'consented to all actions that took place, including all actions she now claims were non-consensual'.

The 30-year-old is demanding the sexual battery suit be tossed, alleging that the woman was 'not injured at all' and even claims she ordered the Uber to take them back to his home.

New court documents reveal Hayne alleges the woman 'consented to all actions that took place, including all actions she now claims were non-consensual'

Hayne denied all allegations of wrongdoing and said he was not aware that the woman objected to any of the acts alleged against him

'The Plaintiff followed Defendant out of a bar on the night of the alleged incident, ordered an Uber using the Defendant's phone to take them both to where the Defendant was staying, and willingly engaged in sexual interaction that did not include sexual intercourse,' court papers state.

Hayne also argues that the woman even had a 'cordial conversation' with his friend in his apartment the morning after.

She left his 'apartment of her own volition, and did not report, show or claim any injuries to anyone after the alleged incident,' documents read.

Hayne claims he was not aware that the woman objected to any of the acts alleged against him and argues any injuries she claims to have suffered were caused by other 'persons, entities and/or forces.'

A month after the alleged incident, the woman reported the matter to police, but the Santa Clara County district attorney's office told the her 'there was not enough evidence to prove the crime of rape beyond a reasonable doubt'.

In the statement of complaint, the plaintiff said she didn't immediately report the incident to authorities because she feared being discredited or blamed.

Hayne, who is set to return to the NRL this weekend when the Parramatta Eels take on Penrith, has argued that all sexual interaction between the two was consensual

J.V. filed the suit for sexual battery, battery, gender violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence arising from the alleged rape.

She is also seeking monetary compensation for 'emotional pain, anguish and severe distress'.

Hayne has argued that she has 'suffered no economic loss or emotional distress damages for which recovery would be available from Defendant'.

The cross-code star sensationally left the Parramatta Eels and rugby league to join the San Francisco 49ers in 2015, playing eight games for the team.

He returned to the NRL last year and joined the Gold Coast Titans, before he was released from his record $1.2 million contract to return to Parramatta for the 2018 season.

Hayne was accused of taking a drunk woman home from a San Jose bar and raping her in December 2015
Jeremy Corbyn was last night accused of putting thousands of defence industry jobs at risk by demanding an end to Saudi Arabian arms sales.

A furious row broke out as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began his three-day visit to the UK with talks at No 10 and lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Ministers are using the visit to try to nail down a deal with the Saudis to buy 48 Typhoon fighters from BAE Systems, which assembles the jets at the Warton and Samlesbury plants in Lancashire, where about 5,000 people are employed.

Britain is Saudi Arabia's second-biggest defence equipment supplier.

The Government is also hoping to secure for the City of London a multi- billion-pound Saudi oil flotation.

A furious row broke out as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (pictured outside Downing Street yesterday) began his three-day visit to the UK with talks at No 10 and lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace

But going on the offensive, the Labour leader yesterday said ministers should halt all arms sales in response to the desert kingdom's involvement in the war in Yemen, which he said had created a 'humanitarian disaster'.

At Prime Minister's Questions, he said: 'It cannot be right that the Government is colluding in what the UN says is evidence of war crimes.

'Will the Prime Minister use her meeting today with the Crown Prince to halt the arms supplies and demand an immediate ceasefire in Yemen?'

Labour's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Emily Thornberry, also said arms sales were 'shameful', argued that Bin Salman shouldn't be given the 'red carpet' treatment and accused ministers of 'bowing and scraping' to the Saudi ruler.

Several Labour frontbenchers even joined protests against the visit outside Downing Street.

But last night Tory MPs said that Mr Corbyn's 'carping' could damage the defence industry and put thousands of people out of work.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (pictured) said ministers should halt all arms sales in response to the desert kingdom's involvement in the war in Yemen, which he said had created a 'humanitarian disaster' at PMQs yesterday

Aldershot MP Leo Docherty, a former Scots Guards officer, said: 'The defence industry is critical to our economy. Jeremy Corbyn is clueless about that, and he's happy to put thousands of jobs at risk.

He's also clueless about the importance of the domestic defence industry to our safety.

'Saudi Arabia is a critical defence ally. Jeremy Corbyn has no clue about defence and that's very dangerous.'

Crispin Blunt, a member of the Conservative Middle East Council, said: 'Corbyn is a clear threat to Britain's economic and security interests. Saudi Arabia is on the cusp of the most exciting economic and social changes in its history.

'It's trying to do the right thing in the Yemen and needs the help of its friends. To sit back and carp at an important British ally moving in a positive direction is absolutely the wrong approach.'

In the Commons, Mr Corbyn also accused the Government of 'colluding' in war crimes by selling arms to Riyadh and claimed British military advisers are 'directing war' in Yemen.

That sparked a furious backlash from No 10, which said Mr Corbyn had got it wrong.

Last night Tory MPs said that Mr Corbyn's 'carping' could damage the defence industry and put thousands of people out of work. Pictured: Mohammed bin Salman greets Theresa May outside Downing Street

Mrs May's spokesman said: 'The suggestion that the British military advisers are directing the war is simply not true.

'The UK is not a member of the Saudi-led coalition operating in Yemen, British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen, and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process.'

A Downing Street source added: 'It's now clear that Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to twist the facts about the work our dedicated troops are doing overseas in order to score political points  and that's totally unacceptable. He should correct the record at the earliest opportunity.'

In her response to Mr Corbyn, Mrs May defended Britain's security relationship with the Middle Eastern kingdom.

'It is an important one and it has saved the lives of potentially hundreds of people in this country,' she said.

She added that everyone was 'concerned' about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and insisted that she would raise human rights issues  and the conflict  with the Crown Prince.

A royal visit: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets his UK counterpart HRH the Queen

Following talks last night, officials said the two countries agreed to potential deals worth 65 billion, calling them a 'significant boost for UK prosperity'.

The UK will also send British experts to help modernise the Saudi education system and help improve gender equality.

Ministers are also attempting to push British claims to host the world's biggest stock market flotation.

The London Stock Exchange hopes to secure the listing of the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil company when it sells off a five per cent stake worth an estimated 72 billion.

The Crown Prince had lunch at Buckingham Palace with the Queen and the Duke of York. Last night he dined with the Prince of Wales and Prince William at Clarence House.

In a statement, Bin Salman said there were 'huge opportunities' to boost trade between the UK and Saudi Arabia.

He said: 'I have no doubt that it's a very deep relationship. And it's different and it's not only about politics or military or intelligence, but also socially and economically.'

Seen as a reformer, the 32-year-old prince is relaxing some of the strict Islamic social laws and is to lift the long-standing ban on women driving.

Speaking alongside his Saudi counterpart, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: 'I am delighted that we have reached an agreement that should lead to new Saudi investment in, and through, Britain, and procurement from new companies, worth up to 65 billion . . . over the next ten years, providing a vote of confidence in London as the leading financial centre in the world.'
A 17-year-old girl is dead and two others have been injured during a shooting at an Alabama high school.

Authorities are reporting that the incident at Huffman High School on Wednesday afternoon was accidental.

The 17-year-old girl, who friends have identified at Courtlin Arrington, died during transport to the hospital.

Sources say the shooting occurred when a 17-year-old boy showed off a gun to girls in the school before it discharged, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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A 17-year-old girl, Courtlin Arrington, who friends have identified as an aspiring nurse, was killed during what police said was an 'accidental' shooting at Huffman High School

Two others were also injured at Huffman High School (pictured) in Birmingham, Alabama

It has been reported that the boy then shot himself in the abdomen while putting the gun back in his pants after accidentally shooting Arrington.

Hospital officials revealed the boy had been shot in the leg and was released from the hospital before 7.30pm that night.

The boy was later questioned at police headquarters, detectives confirmed to WBMA.

A school employee was also wounded during the incident. They were treated at the scene and released.

Birmingham City Schools has confirmed that two students 'were involved in a shooting during dismissal'.

'The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene,' the statement read.

'Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.'

The gun has since been recovered by Birmingham Police.

Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson offered his condolences to the victims' families during a press conference following the shooting.

Arrington died during transport to the hospital. She was just 30 days away from turning 18

Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson said the shooting would be considered accidental 'until the investigation takes us elsewhere'

'Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions,' he said.

Wilson said the shooting would be considered accidental 'until the investigation takes us elsewhere'.

He would not confirm who fired the shots but said there were cameras inside the school and that police planned to review the footage.

'We are not saying he shot her or did not shoot her. We are saying shots were fired,' he said during the conference, according to WDAM.

The police chief also said that students were being questioned. He did not know if there had been a struggle for the gun before it went off.

Friend Randrika Tate told DailyMail.com that Arrington was a 'sweet girl' who was smiling all the time.

'Every time you saw her, she was walking down the hall with books in one hand and her phone in the other walking to her nursing class,' Tate said.

Tate said Arrington just thought the boy was 'trying to show her the gun'.

'It just went off,' she added. 'He didn't try to shoot her. Now she's flying.'

Superintendent Lisa Herring said she considered both of the students to be victims.

School officials said Huffman High School would be closed on Thursday.

Tributes have begun to pour in on social media for Arrington, who was excitedly counting down the days until her senior prom

The school went on lockdown (pictured) after shots rang out during dismissal on Wednesday

Sources say the shooting occurred when a 17-year-old boy showed off a gun to girls in the school before it discharged and then shot himself in the abdomen while putting it in his pants

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin gave a tribute to the young woman who was killed, saying she was just '30 days away from being 18.

'We lost a person, not just a person, but a student,' he said. 'Someone's daughter, someone's best friend.'

'She was 30 days away from being 18 and had been accepted into college. We need to wrap our arms around Huffman High School.'

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said the accident reaffirmed that students should not be allowed to have guns at school.

'I'm saddened to learn of the death of the Huffman student,' she said in a statement.

'I'm praying for the family of this young lady who tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and even though it was an accident it reaffirms there's no place for students to have firearms on campus.'

Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell also gave her condolences to the family and said it was time for Congress to stop settling for 'symbolic gestures'.

'My heart is breaking for those hurt and killed in the shooting at Huffman High School,' the Democratic congresswoman said in a statement.

'I cannot imagine the grief of the parents who lost their little girl today to gun violence. She was part of our community's future.'

'We have a responsibility to protect our schools from gun violence, accidental or otherwise.'

'Every year more students and teachers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters are killed in school shootings  we need to do everything in our power to make this incident the last.'

Birmingham City Schools has confirmed that two students 'were involved in a shooting during dismissal' on Wednesday

The shooting occurred just hours after Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' controversial visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

DeVos visited the high school on the first full day of classes after 17 students were killed on Valentine's Day.

She laid a wreath outside the fence of the building, in a tightly-scripted appearance that had her accompanied by a trio of students from the school paper, a broadcast student, and one from the school yearbook.

Numerous students revealed on Twitter that DeVos refused to meet or speak with them during the visit, which was also closed to the press.

The visit came on the same day the Florida House passed a school safety bill that includes new restrictions on rifle sales and a program to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the governor for his signature.

The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons.

It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools, establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.
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Without a sword or petticoat you might feel out of place at this medieval-themed property but the house possesses plenty of contemporary comforts to keep a modern Lord or Lady happy.

Looking more suited to the set of Game of Thrones than the Australian bush, this homestead boasts its own lair, stone fire-pit and cathedral ceilings.

For $1.6million any wannabe-king or queen can call this rural retreat theirs, realestate.com.au has reported.

Where medieval decor meets nightclub lighting, perfect for entertaining ladies of the court and knights of the round table

Impress your family and friends with olden-day BBQ, with this the perfect party setup that spares no details - just check out the cupboard knobs

Share your best remedies for the plague or fight off the great famine with roasted marshmallows around this open fire-pit

Nestled among a 16.25ha of bush-land,No.772 Putty Road, East Kurrajong, is where the medieval world meets the modern.

The more contemporary features of the six-bedroom home include a pool, gym, studio and a sweeping veranda.

You can take a relaxing dip, surrounded by murals showcasing indigenous artwork or swig from a tankard while partying in the underground bar.

While the quirky interiors may not be to everyone tastes, potential buyers are travelling from as far as Frenchs Forest and Bondi to see this eccentric homestead.

'It has a lot of different aspects of the block, with some dense bush-land and massive rock formations, so you could set up an abseiling business,' Danny Acosta from Harcourts Excellence said.

'Or there is also the potential of running a wellness retreat as it has a yoga deck  and that appeals to the out-of-area buyers.'

One of the main features this homestead boasts is this 'pioneer shack.' Fitted with horse shoes and dear antlers this room transports you to a different time

Paying homage to the beautiful bush-land that surrounds the property, the pool is surrounded by a mural made up of indigenous artworks

The interior of the homestead is fitted with wooden paneling and the cathedral ceilings were handcrafted by the sellers themselves

'Another great feature is the cave  it is the perfect place for people to host a Halloween party.'

The sellers, who have lived at the property for 20 years, handcrafted the medieval features themselves.

It's been their family home as they raised their children on the property but are putting it on the market due to downsizing.

While this quirky home might not be to everyone's taste, it has attracted interest from across the state with people from Bondi to Frenchs Forest driving out to view the property

From the air this medieval wonderland looks like a regular outback property. The large block is perfect for motocross, bush walks and larping
A killer's mother has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for helping her son conceal the murder and burial of his partner.

Neil Archer strangled 20-year-old Jody Meyers after a heated argument sparked by his concerns her family was trying to break them up.

In helping her son, Margaret Archer, 57, used Ms Meyers' bank card to withdraw $250 from her account to buy concrete to cover the dead woman's grave.

A killer's mother has been jailed for six-and-a-half years for helping her son conceal the murder and burial of his partner (pictured is victim Jody Meyers)

Margaret Archer (pictured), 57, was sentenced in the Adelaide District Court on Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to assisting her son Neil Archer, 32, cover up the crime

Neil (pictured) strangled 20-year-old Jody Meyers after a heated argument sparked by his concerns her family was trying to break them up

The pair then appeared in public appeals for assistance, and the court heard last month Margaret cried 'crocodile tears' in a television interview.

She stood in front of the camera and begged her missing daughter-in-law to come home, even though she knew Ms Meyers was buried in her backyard.

The court earlier heard Ms Meyers and Neil Archer's two-year-old son would have been in the house while his mother's body was lying unburied in the backyard.

Judge Paul Muscat, who set a non-parole period of four years, said her offending was at the higher end of the scale for the offence of assisting in a crime.

In helping her son, Margaret Archer used Ms Meyers' bank card to withdraw $250 from her account to buy concrete to cover the dead woman's grave (pictured is Ms Meyers)

In helping her son, Margaret Archer (pictured) used Ms Meyers' bank card to withdraw $250 from her account to buy concrete to cover the dead woman's grave

'Plainly all of your actions were considered, calculated and deliberate,' Judge Muscat told the 57-year-old in sentencing.

He said Archer was 'deceitful in the cruellest of ways' in giving the family of Ms Meyers false hope that she was still alive.

Ms Meyers' body was found under a concrete slab in a shed in the backyard of Margaret Archer's home a month after she went missing in August 2015.

Ms Meyers' (pictured, left, right) body was found under a concrete slab in a shed in the backyard of Margaret Archer's home a month after she went missing in August 2015

Neil Archer took the body to his parents' home near Mannum, east of Adelaide, and buried it under the floor of a toolshed.

He returned the next day to cover the grave with fresh concrete made with the bags of cement bought by his mother.

After his arrest, he pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for life with a 22-year non-parole period.

Neil Archer's sentencing hearing was told he was both abusive and controlling in his relationship.

Supreme Court Justice Trish Kelly said his attitude and behaviour was 'all too common' among men who ended up killing their partners.
A Connecticut college student has been charged with assault for allegedly punching her boyfriend in the face when he suggested they should break up.

Kathryn A. Mahoney, 19, a student at Fairfield University, was arrested last Thursday for attacking the man after he mentioned they should stop seeing each other.

The Nashua, New Hampshire, native, who is model and is on the university's swim team, hit her lover in the stomach and gave him a bloody nose.

Kathryn A. Mahoney, 19, (mugshot left and right) was arrested last Thursday for punching her boyfriend in the face after he mentioned that they should stop seeing each other

The victim grabbed Mahoney's shoulders to get her to stop.

But he failed, so ran into a friend's dorm and asked for help.

The man was said to have taken himself to St. Vincent hospital for a swollen and bloody nose, the Fairfield Citizen reported.

Mahoney (left) also hit the victim in the stomach and nose, causing the latter to become swollen and bloody

The Nashua, New Hampshire, native, who is on the university's swim team hit her lover in the stomach and gave him a bloody nose

Mahoney was being held on bond for $1500.

She was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly charges.

It is unknown whether the couple called it quits.

The school is a small private university with approximately 5,100 students.

DailyMail.com has contacted Mahoney for comment

The Fairfield University student was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly charges




Care home operators are to be banned from forcing grieving families to pay accommodation charges for weeks after their relative dies.

Ministers have told firms they must remove the hidden fees  which can reach thousands of pounds  with the threat of legislation if they fail to ditch unscrupulous practices.

The Daily Mail has repeatedly highlighted the issue of families being fleeced by care home chains.

The warning that they must overhaul their contracts comes after the Government's market regulator revealed that they may be breaking the law by failing to tell families they could have to pay so-called death fees for up to a month.

Caroline Dinenage MP, the care minister, said last night: 'While there are lots of great businesses out there, far too many care home residents have been subject to hidden fees, and I am grateful to the Daily Mail for highlighting these issues.

Care home operators are to be banned from forcing grieving families to pay accommodation charges for weeks after their relative dies. File image used

'The measures we announced will put the power back into the hands of residents and their families.

'However, if improvements are not seen we won't hesitate to change the law to strengthen protections so people can be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.'

The Department of Health and Social Care's package of measures to improve consumer protections includes ensuring that contracts are fair, easily accessible and that residents and their families understand all of the terms.

In January, one major care home firm dropped death fees after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which carried out a study into the industry's sharp practices last year, threatened to take action.

Maria Mallaband Care Group, which runs 64 care homes, said in future it would charge for rooms only up to the date of death.

Miss Dinenage also wants to end the situation where some elderly and vulnerable residents are hit with up-front charges of up to 5,000 before they can even move in.

Last week a report by consumer watchdog Which? found that fewer than one in ten homes contacted on the premise of looking for care for an elderly relative were happy to send over their contracts in advance.

It said there was a danger that firms were breaking the law by neglecting to tell residents about expensive hidden terms and conditions.

'IT'S GRAVE ROBBERY' SAYS SON OF LATE DEMENTIA PATIENT After struggling to care for his mother Elsie as she battled dementia, Mick Carr put her in Breton Court care home in Tenterden, Kent. Mr Carr, 73, a retired printer from Ashford, Kent, said: 'It was the worst day of my life. I cried my eyes out having done it. I didn't go through the small print. I was in a lot of distress.' After Mrs Carr died two years later, aged 98, her son and his family cleared her room the following day. Pictured: Elsie Carr was put in a home as her dementia battle got more painful He expected to be refunded the vast majority of that month's 3,776 payment, but owners A Better Carehome kept 2,731, which included a 14-day notice period. Mr Carr said: 'To me it is grave robbery. I could understand paying for one or two extra days  but not 14.' Breton Court care home declined to comment. Advertisement

One person, who paid around 3,500 a month, told Which?: 'After Dad's death, I asked the home owner about the fees for that month and whether we would get any money back.

'I was told that we would not, as the contract that we signed said that at whatever point in the month a resident dies, there will be no refund for the rest of that month.

'Even though we were prepared to fully clear his room that day, we never received a penny back. Upset from just losing Dad, I was not in a fit state to challenge this.

'I or Dad must have signed a contract for his admission into the home, though I don't remember doing so as the time of crisis that had led to us finding him a place in a home he could afford was so stressful and we were so desperate.'

Another person told Which?: 'They charged for the room at full rates for 30 days after someone dies. I had previously asked if there were any exit/vacation charges and had been told no.'

The Government is also considering introducing a kitemark accreditation scheme so families know if a residential care home has met the new standards and offers a fair and clear contract.

The CMA has previously warned that middle-class care home residents are being fleeced with over-the-top fees because town halls refuse to pay the market rate for poorer people's care.
Businesswomen in Manly are calling for the area to be renamed 'Womanly' for International Women's Day.

A group of women who are part of a business networking group called the Womanly Community are pushing for the suburb on Sydney's picturesque Northern Beaches to be renamed, the Manly Daily reported.

The group's founder Luisa Manfredini said they want the council to change the name for 24 hours to draw attention to International Women's Day.

The group claims the council rejected their request - but mayor Michael Regan told Daily Mail Australia he thinks it's a 'great idea'.

A group of women who are part of a business networking group called the Womanly Community are pushing for the suburb on Sydney's picturesque Northern Beaches to be renamed

They have been taking photos in front of signs with 'Manly' in them and adding the prefix 'Wo', and then sharing the images on social media

A Northern Beaches Council spokeswoman said they have no record of an official request to have Manly temporarily renamed.

Mayor Michael Regan said he would support the request if it was made.

'I think it's a great idea. A lovely recognition of the contribution so many women make in our community and recognition of how far we still need to go to achieve gender equality,' he said.

'I look forward to seeing an application in time for next year's International Women's Day.'

Womanly Community are hoping to raise money for the Northern Beaches Women's Shelter.

Ms Manfredini said the group has more than 300 members since it was formed in 2013.

They have been taking photos in front of signs with 'Manly' in them and adding the prefix 'Wo', and then sharing the images on social media.

Ms Manfredini said they asked the council if they could hang 'Womanly' banners around the area but the response was 'sort of... no'.

Group founder Luisa Manfredini said they asked the council if they could hang 'Womanly' banners around the area but the response was 'sort of... no'

'The idea of the temporary name change is to help raise awareness for International Women's Day,' she said.

'There is also another theme running this year - "leave no woman behind" - not just in business. That's where we bring in the women's shelter as well.'

Ms Manfredini believes the temporary name change will bring attention to the need to support gender parity.
The man accused of stealing Frances McDormand's Oscar pleaded not guilty in his first court appearance on Wednesday.

Terry Bryant, 47, appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court charged with felony grand theft of property.

He allegedly swiped McDormand's best actress Academy Award as she celebrated at the Governors Ball on Sunday night.

Bryant then posted his own video kissing the Oscar on Sunday night, but was caught leaving the ballroom with the statuette in hand as he posed for cameras.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said he faces up to three years in jail if convicted.

However, Judge Deborah S Brazil ruled Bryant could be released without posting bail because he does not pose a threat to the community.

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Terry Bryant, 47, the man accused of stealing Frances McDormand's best actress Oscar, pleaded not guilty to felony grand theft of property in his first court appearance on Wednesday (pictured, left, with his attorney on Wednesday)

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said Bryant (left and right, Wednesday) faces up to three years in jail if convicted. Judge Deborah S Brazil ruled Bryant could be released without posting bail because he does not pose a threat to the community

A since-removed video on Bryant's Facebook appeared to show him dressed in a tuxedo while clutching the award (left and right). He claimed he had won the award for 'Best Producer' - a category that doesn't exist

A since-removed video on Bryant's Facebook appeared to show him having praise lavished on him after courting congratulations while clutching the award and dressed in a tuxedo.

'Look it, baby. My team got this tonight. This is mine,' he said, before planting a kiss on the Oscar's head.

He claimed he had won the award for 'Best Producer' - a category that doesn't exist.

Bryant was also captured on video leaving the ball while brandishing the award to photographers, one of whom confronted him after not recognizing him as a winner.

It's been revealed that Bryant has a long criminal history. Oregon jailhouse records show that, between 1999 and 2002, he was arrested at least seven times.

Bryant's past includes arrests for theft, assault and criminal mischief, according to Inside Edition.

All of the arrests were logged by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, which covers Portland and some of the surrounding area.

McDormand had taken the award to be engraved and left it on a table while she mingled at the Governors Ball when Bryant (pictured, Sunday) swiped it

Photos show her making her way through the room with security looking for the golden man, who was later found and returned to her before she headed off to the Vanity Fair party (Pictured, McDormand, left, walking into the Governors Ball next to Bryant)

Bryant (pictured, Sunday), who is a resident of Los Angeles, handed over the trophy without resistance per an incident report filed in the investigation and was turned over to police

McDormand, 60, won her second best actress Oscar with Martin McDonagh's 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'.

She had taken the award to be engraved and left it on a table while she mingled at the Governors Ball when Bryant swiped it.

Photos show her making her way through the room with security looking for the golden man, who was later found and returned to her before she headed off to the Vanity Fair party.

McDormand, 60 (left and right), won her second best actress Oscar with Martin McDonagh's 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'. McDormand's publicist said she celebrated being 'happily reunited' with the bronze statuette with a double cheeseburger from California's In-N-Out Burger chain

Bryant, who is a resident of Los Angeles, handed over the trophy without resistance per an incident report filed in the investigation and was turned over to police.

It is unclear why he was in attendance at the event, though his social media accounts make it clear that he has a fascination with celebrities.

McDormand's publicist said she celebrated being 'happily reunited' with the bronze statuette with a double cheeseburger from California's In-N-Out Burger chain.
President Donald Trump has reportedly had conversations with two witnesses who have testified before special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators about the Russia election meddling probe.

Mueller's team are aware that Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus about matters discussed with investigators, the New York Times reports.

In one instance, Trump told an aide that McGahn should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January that said the White House counsel told investigators the president had once asked him to fire Mueller.

President Trump reportedly had conversations with witnesses who have testified before Robert Mueller's investigators about the Russia election meddling probe

McGahn did not issue an statement.

Sources told the NYT that McGahn had to remind Trump that he had asked for the special counsel to be sacked.

Trump also asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview with the special counsel investigators had gone and whether they had been 'nice.'

Mueller's investigation arose in part from the findings of US intelligence agencies that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election and that its goals eventually included aiding Trump who won a surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Russia denies the allegations and Trump says there was no collusion between Moscow and his campaign.

Mueller has charged several Trump associates and more than a dozen Russians.

Robert Mueller's (above) team are reportedly aware that Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn and Reince Priebus about matters discussed with investigators

Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen is among those now being probed for the president's Russia dealings.

Ex-campaign aide Sam Nunberg's subpoena named Cohen as one of the individuals investigators want correspondence from.

It comes after Trump said Tuesday at the White House that Russians did interfere in America's last presidential election - and other countries probably did too - but cautioned that the US will counteract any attempt at meddling in the November 2018 midterms.

'The Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever, but certainly there was meddling and probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals,' Trump said at a joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stephan Lofven.

'We're doing a very, very deep study. And we're coming out with some, I think, very strong suggestions on the '18 election,' he said, adding that 'we'll counteract whatever they do. We'll counteract it very strongly.'
Colin Firths wife has accused an Italian journalist of stalking her.

Livia Giuggioli, 48, alleges Marco Brancaccia threatened her through telephone calls and texts.

He is also accused of emailing photographs to Firth, which prompted the actor to alert Italian prosecutors.

Colin Firth and his wife Livia Giuggioli at Chateau Marmont on February 27, 2011 in Los Angeles, California

Police have seized Mr Brancaccias computer and phone, according to the Times.

Mr Brancaccia, 55, is a childhood friend of Miss Giuggioli, who owns a house with her husband near the town of Citta della Pieve in Umbria.

Mr Brancaccia, a journalist with the Italian news agency Ansa, was reported to have begun stalking Miss Giuggioli in September 2016 because he could not face being cut out of her life.

He threatened to write compromising articles about her and Firth, according to La Repubblica.

In the complaint, Miss Giuggioli said she was living in terror and thought he might be following her, the newspaper said.

A spokesman for the Carabinieri police confirmed a complaint had been made by the couple and that officers were investigating. Prosecutors have put in a request to judges in Rome to take the case to trial.

Livia Giuggioli, 48, alleges Marco Brancaccia threatened her through telephone calls and texts

A spokesman for Firth, 57, said: There is an ongoing criminal prosecution and it would be inappropriate to comment in this circumstance.

Firth married Miss Giuggioli, a producer in 1997. The couple have two sons, Luca, 16, and Matteo, 13. Firth, who won a lead actor Oscar for his role in The Kings Speech, secured Italian citizenship last year.

Mr Brancaccias lawyers said the accusations were false. Mr Brancaccia has absolutely nothing to do with the events described and has already filed a legal complaint to protect his good name and his honour, and to be able to supply his version of the truth of what happened, they said.

The reconstruction of the events by La Repubblica does not correspond to what really happened.

Rosita Vallone, a lawyer for Mr Brancaccia, told the Times: The first we heard about a request for trial being made was from the Italian Press.

Ansa said Mr Brancaccia remained an employee. He works in Brazil as bureau chief, according to colleagues.
Some 41 allegations have been made about Lady Judge, the chairman of the Institute of Directors

A senior business leader has been accused of making racist and sexist comments about staff and allegedly said blacks can get aggressive.

Some 41 allegations have been made about Lady Judge, the chairman of the Institute of Directors.

Last night the 71-year-old announced she was temporarily stepping down after a draft legal investigation into her conduct was leaked to The Times.

The American-British lawyer told the newspaper she had voluntarily decided to step aside temporarily and contest these allegations and the flawed process conducted so far.

She also said the probe had not given her the opportunity to respond. According to complainants, Lady Judge told the IoDs secretary general: The problem is we have one black and we have one pregnant woman [on IoD leadership team] and that is the worst combination we could possibly have.

Lady Judge, who has held a number of executive positions in industries from banking to energy, is also accused of asking employees to perform unreasonable tasks, allegedly pressuring others into helping her organise a fashion show.

An assistant was also reported to have spent an hour standing on a staircase so a painter could find the best light to complete a portrait of her.

The probe, drafted by lawyer Caroline Prosser, also found Lady Judge regularly gave people gifts to win their favour.

Last night the 71-year-old announced she was temporarily stepping down after a draft legal investigation into her conduct was leaked to The Times

Miss Prosser said the IoD may also look into the behaviour of Sir Kenneth Olisa, Lady Judges deputy, as she claims other board members may have enabled her.

In an email to the IoD, Sir Kenneth said the report fails to comply with the principles of natural justice. He declined to make any further comment to The Times.

A spokesman for the IoD said: Our HR department was made aware of a number of allegations... concerning the conduct of non-executive members of our board.

The spokesman said the probe was carried out by Hill Dickinson law firm and the findings will be considered today.
Bin collections, libraries and social care have been slashed as town hall cuts begin to bite.

The number of households enjoying weekly bin collections has plummeted by a third since 2010, it emerged last night.

A report by the Government's spending watchdog revealed that 10 per cent of libraries have closed since the Tories took power.

And the adult social care crisis has deepened, with town halls spending 3 per cent less on the sector despite an increase of 14 per cent of people who need care.

The cuts have occurred despite huge rises in council tax. Last week, it emerged that the average Band D household faces another 5 per cent increase next month.

The number of households enjoying weekly bin collections has plummeted by a third since 2010, it emerged last night

The National Audit Office said cash-strapped councils were 'raiding their rainy day funds' to cope with growing demand on social care.

But if town halls continue to dip into their reserves at the same rate, one in ten large authorities will run out of reserves within three years.

The NAO said government funding for local authorities had fallen by an estimated 50 per cent since April 2011.

Road maintenance budgets have been cut, and the number of miles covered by subsidised buses outside London has halved since 2010.

NAO head Amyas Morse said: 'Current funding for local authorities is characterised by one-off and short-term fixes, many of which come with centrally driven conditions.

'This restricts the capacity of local authorities and yet the weight of responsibility to respond to increased demand and maintain services remains very much on their shoulders.

'The Government risks sleepwalking into a centralised local authority financial system where the scope for local discretion is being slowly eroded.'

A report by the Government's spending watchdog revealed that 10 per cent of libraries have closed since the Tories took power

The report found authorities' financial positions have 'worsened markedly', particularly for those councils which have social services departments, with several authorities struggling to balance their books.

Although social services departments have been cut, other departments have faced much larger reductions.

It meant local authorities' financial support for social care rose from 45.3 per cent of its total service spend to 54.4 per cent during that period.

There was 52.8 per cent less for planning and development, 45.6 per cent on housing services, 37 per cent on highways and transport, and 35 per cent on cultural and related services.

The report said: 'We noted in 2014 that the sector had coped well financially with funding reductions, but our current work has identified signs of real financial pressure.

'A combination of reduced funding and higher demand has meant that a growing number of single-tier and county authorities have not managed within their service budgets and have relied on reserves to balance their books.

And the adult social care crisis has deepened, with town halls spending 3 per cent less on the sector despite an increase of 14 per cent of people who need care. File image used

These trends are not financially sustainable over the medium term.'

Labour MP Meg Hillier, who chairs the Commons' public accounts committee said, councils 'have had to make stark choices about which services they continue to provide'.

She added: 'Many councils are raiding their rainy day funds to pay for social care. Councils need to know what their long-term future is, but instead of sorting this out, Whitehall has used a series of short-term fixes to paper over the cracks.'

Lord Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: 'The Government needs to urgently address this cliff-edge and the growing funding gaps facing local services.'

A Government spokesman said: 'Last month, Parliament approved a funding settlement which strikes a balance between relieving growing pressure on local government and ensuring hard-pressed taxpayers do not face excessive bills.'
A man has admitted punching a Muslim worshipper in the face at a mosque - but claims it was because he was drunk, not racist.

David Phillip Bryan Anderson said he was trying to talk to the man about relations between the United States, Israel and Islamic people when the punch occurred.

He appeared in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to assault causing harm, the Advertiser reported.

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A man has admitted punching a Muslim worshipper in the face at a mosque - but claims it was because he was drunk, not racist

David Phillip Bryan Anderson said he was trying to talk to the man about relations between the United States, Israel and Islamic people when the punch occurred

He admitted to the attack at the mosque at Park Holme in south-west Adelaide, which happened on December 22 last year.

The court heard the victim of the attack suffered a deviated septum.

Defence barrister Craig Caldicott said Anderson was 'very embarrassed and so, so sorry'.

'If we had been able to proceed with the matter today there was a written apology which he was wanting to have given to the victim of this matter.'

Mr Caldicott said Anderson had been 'drinking for an incredibly long period of time on this day, he started at midday and this incident occurred at 9.30pm at night'.

Mr Caldicott said Anderson reacted negatively after trying to spark a discussion with the victim, and then 'for some reason it got into my client's head to hit him'.

He admitted to the attack at the mosque at Park Holme in south-west Adelaide which happened on December 22

'He doesn't really remember it... it was a little bit of madness.'

Anderson faces a jail term after pleading guilty, but his lawyer is hoping for the court to consider a suspended sentence.

Anderson refused to answer questions as he left court, only saying: 'I am not a racist'.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has issued a new travel alert for the Caribbean resort city of Playa del Carmen, where an explosion on a tourist ferry injured 26 people last month.

The embassy says in an alert posted on its website that it received information Wednesday about a 'security threat' in that city and U.S. government employees are prohibited from going there.

It adds that the U.S. consular agency in Playa del Carmen 'will be closed until further notice.'

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has closed its consular agency in Playa del Carmen and is prohibiting employees from traveling to the resort town due to a threat. The warning comes a month after 26 people were killed in a ferry explosion (above)

Two Americans were among the 26 people injured in the February 21 explosion caused by a bomb

The above video grab shows the moment the ferry exploded as passengers were disembarking

The embassy did not specify the threat or say if it was related to the February 21 blast or the subsequent discovery of apparent explosives attached to another vessel.

In a previous alert last week, it had only barred employees from taking ferries between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel Island.

'We take our obligation to provide information to U.S. citizens seriously as evidenced by the clear, timely, and reliable safety and security information we release worldwide,' State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement to ABC News.

It should be noted that the State Department is not telling American tourists to stay away from Playa del Carmen, it's just prohibiting its own employees from traveling there or taking ferries to and from Cozumel.

Blooded victims were seen being treated at the scene after the explosion

It's still unclear who planted the bomb on the ferry. It was initially thought to be an accident caused by a gas leak

The current threat warning for Playa del Carmen is 'Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution'.

Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise Line have since cancelled all shore excursions involving ferries in Cozumel after the State Department issued their warning.

The explosion last month happened as passengers were disembarking in Playa del Carmen. Twenty-six people were injured including two Americans.

At first the explosion was thought to be a gas leak, but the U.S. Embassy says it's now believed to have been caused by explosive devices.

About a week later, exploded ordinances were found on another ferry.

In the past year alone, Americans have been told to remain alert while traveling to certain parts of Mexico.

Last summer, the State Department issued a warning about travelers possibly being served tainted alcohol that was making some tourists seriously ill.

A report form the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also found that tourists were being 'sexually assaulted, beaten, robbed, taken to jail and mistreated at local hospitals'.

Just last week, an Alabama doctor died after being found beaten and left for dead in a ditch in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Ronnie Gorton, 39, was indicted on 47 charges related to sexual abuse of minors on Monday. At least one of his alleged victims was under the age of 13 at the time or the reported abuse

A Tennessee pastor has been indicted on 47 charges related to sexual abuse of minors.

Ronnie Gorton, 39, the former youth pastor of Awakening Church in Atoka, Tennessee, was accused of sexual abuse by three people, including one person under the age of 13, the Tipton County Sheriff's Office told WREG.

Gorton's 47 charges against the three alleged male victims include one count of rape, 16 counts of statutory rape by an authority figure, 17 counts of sexual battery by an authority figure and five counts of aggravated sexual battery.

'The nature of these charges clearly indicate the victims, at some point, were under the age of 13. The age of consent in Tennessee is 18,' Tipton County Sheriffs Office Chief Deputy Billy Daugherty told The Leader.

A grand jury indicted Gorton, on the charges on Monday and he was booked into jail on Tuesday.

The sexual abuse allegations against Gorton first became public knowledge when Tipon County deputies responded to a report of a suicidal man at his home on January 31.

Gorton was indicted by a grand jury, then booked into jail on Tuesday (pictured with officer as he was being booked into jail) and is being held on a $500,000 bond

The first allegation against him was said to have made Gorton suicidal in January. After the police investigation went public, two additional alleged victims came forward

During the course of their investigation, Gorton was given a psychiatric evaluation and taken in for questioning.

Meanwhile, deputies learned that Atoka police were investigating an underage boy's accusation that Gorton had raped and sexually assaulted him multiple times at Gorton's home earlier in the month  the accusation was said to have made Gorton suicidal.

Following the initial investigation, two additional alleged victims came forward with accusations against Gorton.

Authorities suspect that there could be additional potential abuse victims and encouraged them to come forward.

Gorton was the youth pastor of Awakening Church in Atoka, Tennessee. Authorities do not believe that the abused took place on church grounds, but the church has since closed down

Gorton's wife, Rhonda, (pictured together) said that she filed for divorce from Gorton in December. She cited marital abuse and claimed that she was unaware of his alleged sexual abuse of minors

Police do not believe that the sexual abuse took place on Awakening church grounds. The church has since closed itself down, reports Local Memphis.

Neighbors told FOX13 that they saw a teenage boy living with Gorton inside his home and that boys could frequently be seen exercising in his garage.

Gorton's wife of 15 years, Rhonda, filed for divorce in December, citing marital abuse and claiming she was unaware of Gorton's alleged sexual abuse of minors at the time, according to The Christian Post.

Online jail records indicate Gorton remained in jail Wednesday night. He is currently being held under a $500,000 bond.
This is the moment a teenager makes an unbelievable escape from the back of a police van after untangling himself from handcuffs and bolting.



Donovan Kenyon, 19, was arrested on the April 8 after going on a crime spree in his home town of Geelong, near Melbourne, including stealing 11 cars and $15,000 worth of cigarettes.

Footage taken from inside the back of the van shows Kenyon twisting his body so his cuffed hands come to his front, 9News has reported.

Donovan Kenyon, 19, is pictured twisting his body and escaping from the back of a police van

After getting his arms to the front the teenager kicks the door open and makes a run for it

He then takes a quick look out of the back window before making his break for freedom.

He kicks the door open and sprints down the road but he was captured by police just 500 metres down the road.

He was jailed for three-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to driving dangerously, stealing 11 cars and $15,000 worth of cigarettes from an IGA supermarket.

Magistrate Michael Coghlan described Kenyon's crime spree as one of the worst he had seen in his career.

This is not the first time Kenyon's criminal activity has been caught on camera.

In April last year he was filmed driving dangerously through the streets of Geelong in an attempt to avoid police.

The footage, taken from a police helicopter, shows him speeding and swerving through traffic.

Other drivers are forced to quickly veer out of the way as he drives on the wrong side of the road and crosses lanes at random.
An out-of-control space station put in orbit by China will come crashing back to Earth within weeks and could hit Australia.

The Tiangong-1 space station, which is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical', will likely hit sometime between March 24 and April 19.

Chunks full of toxic chemicals from the space station could hit Tasmania, Seven News reported.

The satellite contains chemicals used in rocket fuel, which could rain down on Australia.

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The Tiangong-1 space station (artist's impression), which is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical', will likely hit sometime between 24th March and 19th April

Chunks full of toxic chemicals from the space station could hit Tasmania

Aerospace predicts that a 'small amount of debris' could hit the Earth, which would fall 'within a region that is a few hundred kilometres in size'.

People are being advised to avoid touching any debris or inhaling vapors, as chunks of the satellite could contain the highly toxic chemical hydrazine.

Agencies around the world have been monitoring the doomed 8.5-tonne craft, which is believed to contain dangerous hydrazine, as it falls toward the planet.

However, it will only be during the final week that experts will know with full confidence when it would land and where the debris will fall.

According to Aerospace, a research organisation that advises government and private enterprise on space flight, the space station will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in the first week of April.

Exactly where it will hit is slightly harder to predict, although experts agree it will be somewhere between latitudes of 43 north and 43 south.

The chances of re-entry are slightly higher in northern states in the US, central Italy, northern Spain, northern China, New Zealand, the Middle East and parts of South Africa and southern Africa.

Scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA), based in Paris, are among those tracking Tiangong-1, which means 'heavenly palace'.

'Every couple of years something like this happens, but Tiangong-1 is big and dense so we need to keep an eye on it', Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard University told the Guardian.

While a precise landing location remains unclear, ESA has provided the latitudes between which Tiangong-1 is likely to land  and countries at risk include Spain, Italy, Turkey, India and parts of the US. ESA says no fragments will fall higher than 43N or further south than 43S

While most of it will burn up during re-entry, around 10 to 40 per cent of the satellite is expected to survive as debris, and some parts may contain dangerous hydrazine.

However, due to changing conditions in space, it is not possible to accurately predict where the module will land.

In recent months, the spacecraft has been speeding up and it is now falling by around 6km (3.7 miles) a week. In October it was falling at 1.5km (0.9 miles) a week.

ESA issued an updated prediction of its re-entry date on January 12, giving a current estimated window between March 17 and April 21.

Agencies around the world have been monitoring the doomed craft's descent, with three separate predictions issued in recent days. Experts from the European Space Agency give a current estimated re-entry window of between March 17 and April 21

'It is only in the final week or so that we are going to be able to start speaking about it with more confidence,' said Dr McDowell.

'I would guess that a few pieces will survive re-entry. But we will only know where they are going to land after after the fact.'

Website Satflare, which provides online 3D tracking of more than 15,000 satellites, has calculated what it thinks are the chances of the space station entering the atmosphere during the next three months.

According to its analysis of orbital elements gathered during the last months, the re-enter may occur in March (20 per cent), in April (60 per cent) or in May 2018 (20 per cent).

These predictions may also change as new orbital measurements will be available.

Website Satflare has calculated odds of re-entry in March (20 per cent), in April (60 per cent) and in May 2018 (20 per cent)

Aerospace Corp has also issued its own forecast.

In a written statement, a company spokesman said: 'When considering the worst-case locations, the probability that a specific person will be struck by Tiangong-1 debris is about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.

'In the history of spaceflight, no known person has ever been harmed by reentering space debris.

'Only one person has ever been recorded as being hit by a piece of space debris and, fortunately, she was not injured.'

On September 14, 2016, China made an official statement predicting Tiangong-1 would reenter the atmosphere in the latter half of 2017.

Experts from Aerospace's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (Cords) have been studying the space station and in November updated their predictions for its uncontrolled re-entry.

WHAT IS THE 'HIGHLY TOXIC' CHEMICAL ONBOARD CHINA'S TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could land on Earth when parts of an out-of-control Chinese space station crash into our planet. The chemical, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and long-term exposure is believed to cause cancer in humans. It is being carried aboard the Tiangong-1 space station which is hurtling towards Earth. The warning over exposure to the chemical came from Aerospace Corp, a non-profit corporation based in El Segundo, California, which provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions. Hydrazine is a colourless, oily liquid or sometimes white crystalline compound with a very highly reactive base. A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could be spread over the planet when a Chinese space station crashes to Earth, experts have warned. The substance, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and is believed to cause cancer in humans (stock image) It has a number of industrial, agricultural and military uses, including in rocket fuel. Symptoms of short-term exposure to high levels of hydrazine include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures, and coma, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Long-term exposure can also damage the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system in humans. The liquid is corrosive and may produce dermatitis from skin contact in humans and animals. Increased incidences of lung, nasal cavity, and liver tumours have been observed in rodents exposed to hydrazine. The EPA has classified hydrazine as a Group B2, a probable human carcinogen. Advertisement

The Tiangong-1 spacecraft launched in 2011, with the aim of using the craft to set up a larger space station.

The craft is now at an altitude of less than 300 kilometres (186 miles) in an orbit that is decaying, forcing it to make an uncontrolled re-entry.

Holger Krag, head of ESA's Space Debris Office, said: 'Owing to the geometry of the station's orbit, we can already exclude the possibility that any fragments will fall over any spot further north than 43N or further south than 43S.

'This means that re-entry may take place over any spot on Earth between these latitudes, which includes several European countries, for example.

'The date, time and geographic footprint of the re-entry can only be predicted with large uncertainties.

Aerospace Corp, a US non-profit corporation which provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions, says Tiangong-1 will re-enter the planet's atmosphere in mid to late March, with wiggle room of two weeks either side of this timeframe

WHAT IS THE TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurised volume Tiangong-1 is China's first Space Station Module. The vehicle was the nation's first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space Station as a permanent human presence in Low Earth Orbit. The module was launched on September 29, 2012. Tiangong-1 features flight-proven components of Chinese Shenzhou Spacecraft as well as new technology. The module consists of three sections: the aft service module, a transition section and the habitable orbital module. The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurized volume. Advertisement

'Even shortly before re-entry, only a very large time and geographical window can be estimated.'

Much of the spacecraft is expected to burn up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.

But owing to the station's mass and construction materials, there is a possibility that some portions of it will survive and reach the surface.

In the history of spaceflight, no casualties due to falling space debris have ever been confirmed.

The Chinese space agency has been tracking the space station (pictured before it was launched in 2011), and vowed to issue warnings if there are any potential collisions imminent. But not everyone is convinced by this
A 35-pound monitor lizard is on the run after it escaped from its cage over the weekend in San Diego.

The four-legged fugitive known as Bubbles was last seen on Sunday around 1.20pm at Mike's Pets reptile store in Spring Valley, which is owned by Mike Estevez.

'Baby Bubbles still missing!' Estevez wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.

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A 35-pound, 5.5-foot-long monitor lizard (pictured) is missing after it wriggled out of its cage over the weekend in San Diego

On the run: The four-legged fugitive known as Bubbles is owned by Mike Estevez

Bubbles was last seen on Sunday around 1.20pm at Mike's Pets store in Spring Valley. Surveillance footage captured the moment the reptile made his way to rear of the store

Courtesy of KGTV

Estevez said his 5.5-foot lizard pal probably managed to escape through a tiny crevice at the bottom of its cage.

Security camera footage shows Bubbles sauntering toward the rear of the store.

Estevez and others searched the nearby neighborhood for the beloved lizard but have not been able to find Bubbles.

Estevez posted photos and a video of Bubbles on the pet store's Facebook and Instagram. In the video the lizard is seen playing with a pair of Nike shoes

Residents near San Diego have been warned to watch out for the carnivorous critter.

Estevez told KGTV Bubbles is good around people and often roams the store while customers are around.

But he's advised anyone who sees the six-year-old reptile not to try grabbing him.

San Diego County's Animal Services department is also assisting in the search.

Estevez (pictured) said Bubbles is good around people and often roams the store while customers are around

Prison break: Surveillance video shows the beloved lizard getting closer back entrance

Freedom: This photo shows Bubbles right before he escaped the store. Estevez is asking the public to call his store immediately at 619-730-3852 if Bubbles is spotted

Estevez posted several photos of his missing companion on Instagram and Facebook.

'Our beloved #pet and #animalambassador bubbles has gone missing [sic] Bubbles is a #blackthroatmonitor that is very use to people. If you have any information pleeeeease call the store!' he wrote.

He also posted a cute video of Bubbles on Facebook that shows the large lizard playing with a pair of Nike shoes.

Estevez is asking the public to call his store immediately at 619-730-3852 if Bubbles is spotted.
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A Melbourne street plagued by violence, brazen drug use and prostitution is now considered so dangerous even garbage men are refusing to drive down it.

Locals say Little Grey Street in St Kilda has turned into a 'vile manifestation of humanity that's abandoned itself' since the closure of the nearby Gatwick - a notorious half-way house dubbed the 'Hell Hotel'.

A maintenance company which had been placing bins out for collection on the street for the past decade has now deemed the area too dangerous to service.

The contractor told the Herald Sun the 'last straw' came when one of his staff members was abused by 'a nutter running up and down with a syringe in his arm'.

Locals say Little Grey Street in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda has turned into a 'vile manifestation of humanity that's abandoned itself'

A maintenance company which had been placing bins out for collection on Little Grey Street for the past decade has now deemed the area too dangerous to service. A used syringe is pictured on the street

Locals say the situation on Little Grey Street has worsened since the closure of the nearby Gatwick - a notorious half-way house dubbed the 'Hell Hotel'

'We do a lot of work in and around the city... but we've never had an issue, ever - but we did in Little Grey St. They're just off their nut and running out of control,' he said.

'I've seen almost every little back nook and cranny around the city during my job but I've never seen anything like this... The violence is really troubling and my drivers feel physically unsafe there.'

Radio personality Kate Langbroek, who was allegedly violently attacked at her St Kilda home last Friday, blamed the spiraling crime on the notorious boarding house The Regal.

'There's drug dealing blatantly in the street. There's a trail of zombies going up there to get their drugs or whatever,' Ms Langbroek, who lives a street from the boarding house, told Nine's Today program on Thursday.

Langbroek said she was recently walking her children to school when a man attacked another with a 'Glasgow kiss'.

'He was walking around the corner with his headphones in and he got headbutted in broad daylight. It's crazy,' she told The Age.

Radio personality Kate Langbroek (pictured showing her injuries) was allegedly violently attacked outside her St Kilda home last Friday

There's a trail of zombies going up there to get their drugs or whatever,' Langbroek said of the street (a man is seen walking down it)

A woman is pictured giving a two-finger solute on Melbourne's notorious Little Grey Street on Thursday afternoon

The rising crime rate has prompted calls for tougher policing and the closure of the 49-room boarding house.

Langbroek said the government has been unable to solve the problem.

'As I said to our local member Martin Foley, the vulnerable now are normal people who are trying to walk their kids to school through this hell hole that is of your creation,' she said.

'You have done this to our neighbourhood where people are trying to live lives.'

'My taxes are supporting this guy who is trying to kick my front door in, and my taxes are paying for the cops to come to try and sort him out, and then my taxes are paying judges and magistrates who are letting them out. It is not right.'

One Little Grey Street resident previously reported being told by a drug addict injecting herself 'I'll squirt blood on you'. A man is seen throwing a bucket of water over an unknown substance

Langbroek said she was recently walking her children to school when she saw a man attack another (neither is pictured) with a 'Glasgow kiss'

One Little Grey Street (pictured) resident previously reported a sex worker exposing herself to a 12-year-old boy

On Wednesday she tweeted to Mr Foley: 'Thanks for your call yesterday. This is the bruise I sustained trying to keep that 'vulnerable' resident from kicking our front door in on Friday night.

Just hours later, Mr Foley announced the boarding house would be shut down and would make way for a women's refuge.

'Today I was pleased to announce that we will fund an application to close the Little Grey St boarding house. New CCTV will also help boost community safety,' he tweeted.

'We will refit the Little Grey St premises to house older women facing housing and homelessness stress in our community.'

One Little Grey Street resident previously reported being told by a drug addict injecting herself 'I'll squirt blood on you', while another reported a sex worker exposing herself to a 12-year-old boy, according to the Herald Sun.

'As I said to our local member Martin Foley, the vulnerable now are normal people who are trying to walk their kids to school through this hell hole that is of your creation,' Langbroek said

Mr Foley announced on Thursday the boarding house would be shut down and would make way for a women's refuge

Local resident Asher Wolf, who has lived in the area for almost a decade, blamed housing issues on the increased trouble in a suburb she admits has always been 'sketchy'.

'People who have lived here a long time knew to avoid Grey Street and other areas, but now we have an increased number of tourists and Airbnb's,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'For me, I think it really boils down to the amount of housing available. I see more homeless people than ever on the streets and a queue out the door of the housing office every morning.

'People were pretty easy for social workers to access when they were in The Gatwick, but now you'll find them in the side streets living next to houses like Kate's and we'll see more incidents like that.

'Children inside. The real vulnerable are the decent citizens of St Kilda. We await your action.'

Langbroek said the government had so far been unable to solve the voilence and drug problems plaguing St Kilda

The maintainance contractor who put bins out on the street said he stopped working in the area out of fear for the saftey of his staff

Many locals has blamed the violence and rampant drug use on the street's notorious boarding house, The Regal (pictured)

The 'last straw' came when one of the bin contractor's staff members was abused by 'a nutter running up and down with a syringe in his arm'

The rising crime rate has prompted calls for tougher policing and the closure of the 49-room boarding house at number 3

A man is scene walking down Little Grey Street in St Kilda on Thursday afternoon
A woman has been charged with the murder of her mother-in-law almost 18 months ago.

Police allege the 26-year-old from Mount Gambier, south-east of Adelaide, lied about witnessing a violent home invasion.

Grandmother Myrna Nilsson, who was born in the Philippines, was found dead in the laundry of her Valley View home in September 2016.

A woman has been charged with the murder of her mother-in-law (pictured) almost 18 months ago

Police allege the 26-year-old from Mount Gambier, south-east of Adelaide, lied about witnessing a violent home invasion (pictured is the scene)

Her daughter-in-law, who was found bound, gagged and extremely distressed in the street, allegedly told police two men had killed the 57-year-old.

She allegedly said the intruders tied her up and stole property after forcing their way into the house and killing her mother-in-law.

Mrs Nilsson's three grandchildren - all aged under five - were found unharmed in the home in Bunbury Terrace.

Mrs Nilsson's son, who lived at the home with his three children, was at work at the time of the incident.

Her daughter-in-law, who was found bound, gagged and extremely distressed in the street, allegedly told police two men had killed the 57-year-old (pictured is Mrs Nilsson)

Superintendent Des Bray said police will now allege the claims related to the home invasion were fabricated.

'Police would like to reassure the community that this was not a random incident and not a home invasion,' Superintendent Bray said.

The accused is due to appear in the Mount Gambier Magistrates Court via video link later on Thursday.
A police officer who became known across San Francisco as the 'Hot Cop of the Castro' claims that his good looks caused him to flee the scene of a hit and run.

Christopher Kohrs, 40, was charged with two felony counts of hit and run in connection to the morning wreck that occurred on November 29, 2015, in North Beach, California.

And while prosecutors looked to convict the officer on a felony, his attorneys claim that the studly Kohrs grew intimidated by a 'very aggressive' crowd that recognized his chiseled looks from online.

Christopher Kohrs, 40, was charged with two felony counts of hit and run in connection to the morning wreck that occurred on November 29, 2015

Kohrs had been driving his orange 2009 Dodge Charger when he hit two men on the street

His lawyers are claiming that a 'very aggressive' crowd began to gather at the scene, prompting him to flee the North Beach, California, area

'Thousands and thousands of people knew him,' defense attorney Peter Furst said in an opening statement, according to SF Gate.

'It was a good thing in the beginning, but in the context of this case, not so much.'

Kohrs had been driving his orange 2009 Dodge Charger and had his brother, Nathan, sitting in the back seat while pal, 45-year-old Norman Banks, sat in the front.

After leaving the Fort One Bar and Lounge at approximately 2am in the morning. Kohrs hit two men as they crossed the street, injuring both severely.

Instead of stopping to see if victims Victor Perez and Frank Vilches were fine, Kohrs ditched his car (pictured) and friends and ran away, on foot

It would be eight hours before the officer turned himself over to police

And instead of stopping to see if victims Victor Perez and Frank Vilches were fine, Kohrs ditched his car and friends and ran away, on foot.

Prosecutors added that he did technically have the green light but the grievance was that he took off.

Because of the time, prosecutors were unable to determine whether Korhs had been intoxicated when he was driver

Vilches suffered permanent disabling injuries and had medical bills well above $600,000, his lawyer attested.

His lawsuit was not only against Korhs but the city as well.

It would be eight hours before the officer turned himself over to police.

Because of the time, prosecutors were unable to determine whether Korhs had been intoxicated when he was driver.

Having sustained a knee injury, prior to the incident, the hunky cop had been placed on medical leave.

Kohrs was charged with both a hit and run causing injury and hit and run causing serious permanent injury.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges but is currently on unpaid administrative leave.

According to Furst, 'more than 100' people began to recognize the easy-on-the-eyes officer as they rushed to look at the commotion from the incident.

'This is a dangerous neighborhood,' Furst said. 'Crowds form and all types of things happen.'

Kohrs was dubbed the 'Hot Cop of the Castro' during his time with the force as people would rush to take pictures of the chiseled officer

He asserts that the crowd was captivated by the officer simply because he was known as the 'Hot Cop of the Castro.'

'They said, 'It's the Hot Cop! F the police!' Furst claims the crowd began chanting.

Kohrs had worked at the Park Station of the department for seven years. His muscles gained attention over the years as people rushed to take photos with the officer.

The officer used the gained popularity to pose shirtless for charity and in a calendar.
President Donald Trump is planning to offer Canada and Mexico a temporary exemption from new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

It's a reversal of the president's original insistence that the measures apply to US allies as well as nations like China, administration officials said Wednesday.

One version of the plan, which will be announced on Thursday, would give Canada and Mexico a 30-day exemption from the tariffs, the officials said.

The exemptions could be extended based on progress in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

President Donald Trump (pictured, Wednesday) is planning to offer Canada and Mexico a temporary exemption from new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports

One version of the plan, which will be announced on Thursday, would give Canada and Mexico a 30-day exemption from the tariffs, the officials said. The exemptions could be extended based on progress in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (Pictured, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto)

The shift came after a number of top officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, made a last-minute appeal for flexibility, saying that overly broad tariffs would damage key security ties with US allies.

On Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a 'case by case' and 'country by country' basis.

The announcement came as congressional Republicans and business groups braced for the impact of expected tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

The looming departure of White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed the promised tariffs, set off anxiety among business leaders and investors worried about a potential trade war.

While Trump spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday, his son-in-law Jared Kushner will be meeting with President of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday amid heightened tensions over the border wall and trade.

The shift came after a number of top officials made a last-minute appeal for flexibility, saying that overly broad tariffs would damage key security ties with US allies (Pictured, Trump on Wednesday)

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (pictured, Wednesday) hinted at 'carve-outs' on Wednesday and said exemptions will be considered on a 'country by country' basis

The White House said Trump was expected to make a final announcement by the end of the week and officials were working to include language in the tariffs that would give Trump the flexibility to approve exemptions for certain countries.

'He's already indicated a degree of flexibility, I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility,' Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC. 'We're not trying to blow up the world.'

Trump signaled other trade actions could be in the works. In a tweet, he said the 'US is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft.'

A White House official said Trump was referencing an ongoing investigation of China in which the US trade representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are 'unreasonable or discriminatory' to American business.

The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said an announcement on the findings of the report - and possible retaliatory actions  was expected within the next three weeks.

Business leaders, meanwhile, continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce raising the specter of a global trade war.

That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump's rollback of regulations.

'We urge the administration to take this risk seriously,' Donohue said.

Trump has 'already indicated a degree of flexibility,' Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC, adding that 'we're not trying to blow up the world'

Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner (pictured, July 2017) was in Mexico on Wednesday for high-level meetings that almost certainly included talk of the coming tariffs

President Donald Trump is seen walking to the Oval Office after speaking at the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit on Wednesday in Washington

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security.

He has tried to use the tariffs as leverage in ongoing talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggesting Canada and Mexico might be exempted from tariffs if they offer more favorable terms under NAFTA.

Lawmakers opposed to the tariffs, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have suggested more narrowly focused approaches to target Chinese imports.

But members of Congress have few tools at their disposal to counter the president, who has vowed to fulfill his campaign pledge.

'I don't think the president is going to be easily deterred,' said Se. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who has suggested hearings on the tariffs.
A television actress has been found dead in a boarding house, a week after she mysteriously disappeared.

New Zealand Police confirmed missing woman Tania Ellwood, 39, was found dead at Dryden Lodge in the leafy suburb of Grey Lynn in Auckland.

She was one of two dead people found in the house. The body of 36-year-old man Timothy Kerr Hamilton was also found, the New Zealand Herald reported.

New Zealand Police confirmed missing woman Tania Ellwood, 39, was found dead in a house in the leafy suburb of Grey Lynn in Auckland

Police say the pair were known to each other, and they are investigating the deaths.

Ms Ellwood played Mandy Timmins on long-running television soap opera Shortland Street.

The deaths will be referred to the coroner at the end of the investigation.

Police were called to Dryden Lodge at 3.15pm on Tuesday. The lodge acts as a halfway house for people with drug and alcohol problems.

When they arrived, police found two people dead. The downstairs level of the property has been cordoned off.

Resident James Davidson said he has been living in the lodge for two years.

He said he was awoken from a nap to find police had swarmed the lodge.

He did not know Ms Ellwood or Mr Hamilton, but said a lot of the residents of the lodge suffered with drug and alcohol issues.

Ms Ellwood and Timothy Hamilton were found dead at Dryden Lodge in Grey Lynn, Auckland

A room at the lodge costs between $200 and $400 a week he said.

Ms Ellwood was last seen in the central Auckland suburb of Newmarket about 9.30am on February 28.

She had last been in contact with her family at 6pm on February 27.

Family members had posted to Facebook expressing their love for Ms Ellwood.

'We love you Tania and we will find you,' the post read.
His staff are dropping like flies, Stormy Daniels is amping up her crusade, and Robert Mueller's Special Counsel continues to beat on.

And yet it seems Donald Trump is far more focused on the future than his increasingly chaotic present.

The president spent a rare Wednesday night outside of the White House to dine with some of his top donors at a private Georgetown residence.

Donald Trump spent a rare Wednesday night outside of the White House to dine with some of his top donors at a private Georgetown residence (pictured)

C Boyden Gray, who served as special counsel under President George HW Bush, hosted the dinner at his home (pictured)

It is a surprising move for Trump who, unlike former president Barack Obama, avoids eating at Washington DC establishments entirely - unless it's his own nearby hotel.

Deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters revealed that Trump was having dinner with 'a small group of supporters at a private residence in town', she told CNN.

Sources said Vice President Mike Pence and First Lady Melania Trump are not slated to attend.

Walters added that there would be 'no fundraising' involved.

Deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters revealed Trump was having dinner with 'a small group of supporters at a private residence in town'

Walters added that there would be 'no fundraising' involved, despite the fact that the guest list had a number of known supporters

Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm (right), who has been friends with Trump since 2012, was in attendance, among others who were members of pro-Trump group America First Policies

But, according to sources, a number of the attendees have donated money and publicly supported Trump in the past.

Gray (pictured), who also served under President George W Bush, has spoken in support of Trump in the past

C Boyden Gray, who served as former US Ambassador to the European Union under President George W Bush and special counsel under President George HW Bush, hosted the dinner at his home.

Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm, who has been friends with Trump since 2012, and Brian Walsh, president of pro-Trump group America First Policies, were also in attendance.

Hamm endorsed Trump's presidential bid in April 2016 and served as the future commander-in-chief's unofficial energy adviser.

He is also a major political donor for the Republican party, donating hundreds of thousands in the last year.

Past donations included a whopping $985,000 to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney when he was the Republican presidential candidate in 2012.

The dinner was listed on Trump's public schedule but included no details on the purpose of the dinner or who would be in attendance.

The dinner was listed on Trump's public schedule but included no details on the purpose of the dinner or who would be in attendance

An unidentified blonde was seen entering the house among the night's numerous guests

Trump's rare dinner venture outside the White House comes just days after it was revealed he had hired Brad Parscale to run his re-election campaign.

It was a promotion for Parscale, who was the digital media director for Trump's 2016 campaign.

Trump filed for re-election the day of his inauguration in 2017. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders also confirmed his intentions in June.

'Of course he's running for re-election,' she told reporters.

The dinner comes just days after Trump revealed he had hired Brad Parscale (pictured) to run his re-election campaign

The dinner occurred just hours after it was revealed that Trump reportedly had conversations with two witnesses who have testified before Mueller's investigators about the Russia election meddling probe.

Mueller's team are aware that Trump asked White House counsel Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus about matters discussed with investigators, the New York Times reports.

On Wednesday it was also revealed that Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had obtained a secret restraining order in a private arbitration meeting that barred porn star Stormy Daniels from disclosing 'confidential information' related to a nondisclosure agreement she signed in October 2016.

On Wednesday NBC News reported on the legal maneuver, which happened in late February, hours after White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed that the president's lawyers had already won a case against Daniels in arbitration.

In the same breath she told reporters that 'there was no knowledge of any payments made from the president and he's denied all of these allegations.'

The president has been accused of having an affair in 2006 and 2007 with the porn star, with sources telling the Wall Street Journal that Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels so that she'd sign a non-disclosure agreement and keep quiet.

Trump has never spoken publicly of the alleged affair or the hush money, though has denied the former through counsel and his spokespeople.

On Tuesday, Daniels sued the president, pointing out that he never signed the contract, and thus it should be 'null and void.'
Sydney's city centre is in lockdown after a man fell from Centrepoint Tower.

Witnesses working in nearby office buildings told Daily Mail Australia they were told to 'get away from the windows and to the centre of the building'.

The man, who was on the Sky Walk, reportedly took off his harness and fell off the building to his death.

Scroll down for video

A man fell from Centrepoint Tower on Thursday afternoon after removing his safety harness

Sydney Tower have reported they are closed 'until further notice following an incident'

Paramedics joined a huge number of police on the scene to treat witnesses for shock

A spokesman for NSW Police told Daily Mail Australia there was a police operation underway after the death of a person in the Sydney CBD.

'Officers were called to a building on Castlereagh Street about 2.40pm on Thursday.

Sydney Tower Eye have confirmed 'following an incident, the attraction is closed until further notice'.

Tourists arriving to complete the SkyWalk were turned away just before 5pm, with staff telling them there had been an 'incident'.

An employee was heard saying 'we can't say what happened, if you can reschedule'.

Emergency services are understood to be retrieving the man's body from a canopy on the tower

There are reports of a heavy police presence around Centrepoint Tower.

Witnesses have said there are two police helicopters hovering, one over Hyde Park and one further east but in line with Market Street.

The heavy presence is also understood to include about six police cars and a rescue vehicle.

A heavy police presence has taken over the area, with rescue vehicles and police helicopters in the area

NSW Ambulance are on the scene providing treatment to witnesses who are reportedly in shock.

A report will be prepared for the coroner.

Pitt Street Mall remains open.

If you are in need of support please contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or BeyondBlue on 1300 224 636.
A natural gas pipeline leak in San Diego caused thousands of homes and business within a half-mile radius to be evacuated.

A construction worker accidentally caused the commotion after he drilled into a 20-inch diameter pipeline around 10.35am near the Fashion Valley mall in Mission Valley, California, on Wednesday.

San Diego Gas and Electric crews worked to stop the gas from flowing from the pipe and were able to cap the line at approximately 6.15pm, spokeswoman Colleen Windsor claimed, according to San Diego Union Tribune.

A construction worker accidentally caused the commotion after he drilled into a 20-inch diameter pipeline in Mission Valley, California, on Wednesday

Repairs will begin once the gas is able to 'bleed out' from the pipe. But there is no estimate on when that will occur.

Five miles of Route 163 in Mission Valley were closed for several hours, adding to the chaos and creating an intense traffic mess.

Consequently, more than 1,000 customers will not have gas, including the Fashion Valley mall and four apartment complexes in the area.

3,300 people had to be evacuated as a result, with more than 1,000 homes being affected

More than 1,000 customers will not have gas, including the Fashion Valley mall and four apartment complexes in the area

A nearby PF Chang's China Bistro and Container Store were among some of the first businesses to be evacuated by responding fire and police personnel.

Door-to-door evacuations and 911 reverse calls had to be implemented soon as residents were alerted that they had to leave the area.

It is estimated that 1,100 homes were in the evacuated area, with 3,300 people throughout the region also having to leave.

Two temporary evacuation shelters were set up by the Red Cross.

At approximately 2pm, CHP Officer Jake Sanchez claimed to still see gas coming from the rupture. He added that while he was only 500 yards from the pipe, he couldn't smell any odor
Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg says he has now turned over everything to Robert Mueller just days after promising to defy a subpoena from the special counsel.

Nunberg went on a wild media blitz earlier this week when he insisted he would not cooperate with Mueller's Russia probe and even threw down the challenge to 'arrest me'.

He later backtracked on the comments and will now appear before a federal grand jury on Friday.

'I'm not holding anything back,' Nunberg said in an interview with WABC Radio on Wednesday. '(Complying with the subpoena) was much easier to do than I initially thought.'

Former Trump campaign aide is photographed leaving CNN's headquarters in New York City Monday night after appearing on Out Front with broadcaster Erin Burnett

Nunberg said he had given Mueller's investigators copies of requested communications, including texts and emails with 10 campaign associates.

He said he met the Wednesday night deadline imposed by the subpoena.

'I'm not going to take the fifth on anything, because I don't need to take the fifth on anything,' Nunberg said.

'I'm not going to give them the excuse to throw me into jail because I won't respond to a question... I'm going to answer every single question.'

Nunberg also insisted he wasn't drunk during a series of car crash interviews when he threatened to defy the subpoena.

It comes after he revealed he was considering alcohol abuse treatment after attacking everyone from Mueller to the president himself on Monday night.

'I'm a little worried about me,' Nunberg told the New York Daily News, before promising to reveal more 'next week'.

Sam Nunberg is seen leaving CNN's New York studios after a marathon day of interviews in which he said he would not cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe

Nunberg said on Wednesday that he had given Mueller's investigators copies of requested communications, including texts and emails with 10 campaign associates

'I got carried away,' he said. 'I'm trying to just get this over with.'

'I made my point, I got my venting out. Let me just give them what they want because there's nothing there anyway.'

Nunberg repeatedly complained during the interviews that he had been asked to comb through emails to top campaign officials for Mueller's probe.

'They wanted every email I had with Roger Stone and with Steve Bannon,' he said, referencing longtime informal adviser Stone and Trump's former chief White House strategist.

'Why should I hand them e-mails from November 1, 2015?' Nunberg added, revealing the timeline Mueller imposed.

'I'm not going to cooperate when they want me to have  when they want me to come in to a grand jury, for them to insinuate that Roger Stone was colluding with Julian Assange. Roger is my mentor. Roger is like family to me. I'm not going to do it.'

Nunberg's defiance could have led to contempt of court charges or jail time, but the former aide said multiple times that he doubted he would ever be sent to prison.

President Trump's ex-political aide Sam Nunberg went on a media blitz yesterday suggesting he planned to ignore Special Counsel Robert Mueller's subpoena to have him testify before a grand jury

Sam Nunberg (pictured) later changed his tune and suggested he would comply with the subpoena, but not before he attacked the White House Press Secretary and suggested that Trump associate Carter Page had 'colluded' with the Russians

But now, Nunberg said he will 'tell the truth' when he appears before Mueller's grand jury on Friday.

Fox Business Network's Charlie Gasparino confirmed Trump's former aide will cooperate with Mueller and then 'seek treatment for what ails him'.

Gasparino, who described Nunberg as a 'friend', said he believes 'drinking...is a big part of it and that's what happened [Monday]'.

The news will come as little surprise to many who had been following Nunberg's outbursts, which even prompted CNN's Erin Burnett to tell the aide on live television that she could smell alcohol on his breath.

Nunberg denied that he had been drinking and, even after admitting he may seek treatment, has still not confirmed whether he was drunk during the interviews.

But the former communications adviser seemed to hint that he has been troubled since getting fired from Trump's campaign in August 2015 for racially-charged Facebook posts.

One of the most eyebrow raising interviews of Sam Nunberg's (left) media blitz happened on the CNN show Erin Burnett (right) Out Front

NOT DRUNK: While CNN's Erin Burnett (right) confronted Sam Nunberg (left) and said she could smell alcohol on his breath, the former Trump aide said he hadn't had a drink on Monday

'I was very close to Donald Trump,' Nunberg told New York Daily News.

'I was heavily invested in that campaign. I wasn't very good after getting fired.'

And it seems those old wounds have hardly healed, as Nunberg told MSNBC's Katy Tur he was 'not a fan' of Trump.

'He treated Roger and me very badly and he screwed us over during the campaign,' Nunberg said.

And while Nunberg said he doesn't believe Trump colluded with the Russians, he does believe the president may indeed have 'done something'.

'I think he may have done something during the election. But I don't know that for sure,' he told Tur.

Watch: Ex-Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg says he's refusing comply with Mueller subpoena:



"I'm not going to cooperate when they want me to come into a grand jury for them to insinuate that Roger Stone was colluding with Julian Assange. Roger is my mentor. Roger is like family." pic.twitter.com/jUtBCPNiDe  MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 5, 2018

Investigators are also interested in longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone's communications with WikiLeaks and his role advising Trump

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators have been asking witnesses whether Donald Trump knew about the theft of Democratic emails that rocked the 2016 presidential campaign

When pressed, Nunberg only said: 'I can't explain it unless you were in there.'

Nunberg also revisited the issue of whether Mueller has obtained information that Trump did something wrong.

'They know something on him,' Nunberg told Jake Tapper. 'Perhaps I'm wrong, but he did something.'

Even as he trashed the request for his information, Nunberg said Mueller was an honorable man  and slammed Trump for hosting Russia's former ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office.

'I shouldn't have to go back down to a grand jury. I'm spending a lot of money on legal fees. A lot of other people are. And granted, because [Trump] decided to give an interview to Lester Holt the day after he fired James Comey, and then he decided to have the Russians in the Oval Office. You'll have to explain that one to me. I'll never understand it,' he said.

Nunberg also said he believed former foreign policy adviser Carter Page 'colluded with the Russians', but said he was just a minor figure in the campaign and is a 'weird dude' and a 'scumbag.'

The former aide also said he spoke to Bannon, who recently met with Mueller's team.

'By the way, Steve Bannon - I spoke to Steve Bannon for the first time last week after I went in there and...Steve and I were discussing about how we both feel, Katy, like I'm telling you, that Trump may have very well done something during the election. I don't know what it is. I could be wrong by the way,' Nunberg said.

In between his complaints, Nunberg revealed the extent of Mueller's inquiries, which ranged from all communications he had with Trump's former campaign manager, press secretary, and Page, who Nunberg said he considered to be a 'moron.'

'They asked for communications with Carter Page. Are you giving me a break? Do you think I would ever talk to that moron?' Nunberg told CNN.

Nunberg's comments seem to comport with an Axios report from Sunday that revealed all the email communications Mueller was seeking from an unnamed official.

It contained the same names of people as subjects of communications that were of interest.

Judges are not known to recognize the personal preferences of witnesses in deciding if they must appear, nor the inconvenience  however substantial  of complying.
Malcolm Turnbull's government spent almost $10 million of taxpayers' money monitoring what journalists were saying about them in just one year.

It's been a decade since Australia last had a federal budget surplus but this hasn't stopped his government from spending big on 44 contracts with media monitoring agencies.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's office has quietly revealed taxpayers forked out $9.9 million for newspaper clippings, radio and TV transcripts.

Malcolm Turnbull (pictured with Cher at Sydney's Mardi Gras) leads a government that has spent $9.9 million on media monitoring in just one year

That equates to $190,400 a week or $27,100 a day that was spent by the government to get alerts whenever there was a media report about him, his ministers and senior public servants.

Major media monitoring companies, including iSentia, are paid by the federal government for their services, by getting a contract through the Aus Tender agency.

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching asked about the spending on media monitoring services during a budget estimates hearing in May last year.

However, the answer on the millions spent on media transcripts in the 2015/16 financial year hasn't been revealed until now, after Daily Mail Australia exclusively uncovered an answer to a Question on Notice.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's office has quietly revealed taxpayers spent big on 44 contacts with media monitoring agencies

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching asked about the spending on media monitoring during a budget estimates hearing in May last year

The period includes the last three months of the Abbott government and covers the amount spent by all the commonwealth government departments.

In another period, the Turnbull Government spent $5.86 million in the first nine months of 2016 monitoring coverage of their departments, with Health the biggest spender on $907,500 followed by Defence on $831,000.

The prime minister's senior media advisers and their counterparts in other ministerial offices receive the clips before dawn and circulate them to their colleagues as part of a daily media management cycle.

Malcolm Turnbull and his ministers then read the clips early in the morning to anticipate questions from journalists at upcoming media conferences.

As Opposition Leader in October 2009, Mr Turnbull accused Labor of squandering taxpayer funds and running up debt which Australia's 'children and grandchildren' would be paying off.

Since coming to power in September 2015, when he overthrew Tony Abbott, Mr Turnbull has led a government which has failed to deliver one budget surplus.

However, his minister's spending habits have raised eyebrows.

The prime minister's Liberal deputy Julie Bishop claimed $32,000 from the taxpayer for her boyfriend to travel across Australia to visit her - despite claiming they are not in a 'de facto relationship' so he doesn't have to declare his financial interests.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop claimed $32,000 from taxpayers for her boyfriend David Panton to travel across Australia to visit her - despite claiming they are not in a 'de facto relationship'

The Foreign Minister named property developer David Panton as her designated family member in 2015, meaning he became entitled to free domestic flights and Comcar rides as part of MPs' family reunification allowance.

But because she does not classify Mr Panton as her spouse, Ms Bishop has never declared any claims for him on the parliamentary register of interests on the grounds he is not a 'de facto' partner.

The Perth-based minister has claimed $32,000 for her Sydney-based boyfriend to fly across Australia and visit her and travel with her on domestic trips from 2015 to 2017.

Media monitoring services would have also been busy last month after Jobs Minister Michaelia Cash threatened to reveal sexual rumours about female staffers in Labor leader Bill Shorten's office and after former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce's affair with his former media adviser Vikki Campion was revealed.

The Labor Opposition and the minor parties also spend money on media monitoring, with the Greens paying $150,000 to the Meltwater group for summaries as part of their taxpayer-funded parliamentary entitlements.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Turnbull and Senator Cormann for comment.

Media monitoring services would have also been busy last month as Jobs Minister Michaelia Cash threatened to reveal sexual rumours about female staffers in Bill Shorten's office

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce's affair with his former media adviser Vikki Campion would have also kept media monitoring agencies very busy

The government's big spending on media monitoring was the subject of a May 2017 hearing
Mick Hawi's wife may not be allowed to have a child with sperm salvaged from his corpse if she can't find his will, it has emerged.

Carolina Gonzales is locked in a legal battle to have the former Comancheros boss' child after he was gunned down outside his Sydney gym last month.

Ms Gonzales has to wait for Hawi's will, if there is one, to be found before making a formal submission to a court.

Furious: Carolina Gonzales is locked in a legal battle to have the former Comancheros boss' child after he was gunned down outside his Sydney gym last month

Nine tubes of sperm were collected from Hawi's body at the city morgue are are being held at a medical centre until his will is clarified, reported The Daily Telegraph.

Barrister Evan James told a court today that his client had to discuss the issue with relatives and clear up the 'degree of confusion' around the will.

But he said Ms Gonzales was determined to start the IVF process.

'We would like to at least take some preliminary steps towards using the sample and put those steps in place where necessary but nothing of course will be done without the court's permission,' he said.

Hawi was was gunned down outside a Rockdale gym in Sydney's south on February 15 by two masked men. No one has been arrested over the crime.

A urologist was authorised to perform a 'posthumous sperm retrieval' after Hawi's wife Carolina Gonzales made an urgent application in the NSW Supreme Court the day after he was killed.

Sperm extracted from the body of murdered former bikie boss Mick Hawi (left) is being stored at an IVF facility until a court rules on his widow's (right) pending application to use it

Court documents obtained by Daily Mail Australia revealed the sperm procedure could only be performed with investigators examining his murder present.

'The Coroner... advised ... that the deceased is situated in a locked zipped bag and that the bag cannot be unzipped without the presence of detectives,' said affidavit written by Ms Gonzalez's lawyer.

Gang squad detectives had no objection to the procedure being performed.

The court approved the operation - but Ms Gonzalez will need the court's sign off to use the sperm to get pregnant via IVF.

Ms Gonzales already has two children with her childhood sweetheart Hawi.
Temporary alcohol restrictions placed on the town of Tennant Creek following the alleged rape of a toddler are already having a positive impact according to Alba Brockie, the coordinator of the Barkly Regional Council's after-hours youth centre.

The restrictions, put in place by the Northern Territory Director General of Licensing, are currently in their second week and involve limiting takeaway alcohol sales to between 3-6pm on Monday to Saturday and limiting the amount of alcohol an individual can purchase.

In the first week of restrictions, the number of children the youth centre needed to feed each evening dropped from 70 to 50, Ms Brockie explained to the ABC.

Temporary alcohol restrictions placed on the town of Tennant Creek following the alleged rape of a toddler are already having a positive impact according to ayouth worker in the town

'We suspect it was because homes became a safer place to be and there was money available for food,' she said.

The alcohol restrictions follow the alleged rape of a two-year-old girl on February 15 in the town.

A 24-year-old man has been remanded in custody after being charged with sexually assaulting the child and is due to appear in the Alice Springs Local Court via video link from jail on April 19.

The restrictions are currently in their second week and involve limiting takeaway alcohol sales to between 3-6pm on Monday to Saturday

Barkly Regional Council Mayor Steve Edgington told Daily Mail Australia that he supports the alcohol restrictions and deployment of 11 extra police in the town but that the Director General of Licensing "over the longer term needs to have more consultation with the larger community."

The Northern Territory Government confirmed that in the months leading up to the assault there had been multiple substantiated notifications made to Territory Families about the child.

Minister for Children Nicole Manison announced an immediate investigation into the department's handling of the case and that all files where children have had multiple notifications in the system would be reviewed.

'We will look at this situation and what happened in this particular case and why we failed this child, and what we must do to make sure we don't fail any more children the same way,' she said.

Daily Mail Australia contacted the Office of the Children's Commissioner Northern Territory but was told it was too early for them to evaluate the effectiveness of the alcohol restrictions.

The alcohol restrictions follow the alleged rape of a two-year-old girl on February 15 in the town and Minister for Children Nicole Manison has announced a departmental investigation




The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into a white North Carolina police officer shown on body camera footage beating a black man accused of jaywalking.

State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Patty McQuillan said in an email Wednesday that an FBI criminal investigation was launched into the actions of Asheville police officer Christopher Hickman on Aug. 25, 2017. She said the state agency is assisting.

Hickman was shown on body camera footage subduing and punching 33-year-old Johnnie Jermaine Rush after officers accused Rush of crossing outside of a crosswalk. Hickman resigned in January.

The case became public after The Citizen-Times newspaper published footage last week. On Wednesday night, angry residents questioned the police chief at a community meeting about why the case was kept from public view for so long.

Officer Hickman resigned and may face criminal charges after he was seen tasering and punching Johnnie Jermaine Rush, 33, in the head repeatedly, in the video.

Now federal agents have joined the Asheville city police brutality probe, suggesting a federal civil rights investigation could follow.

Bodycam fotoage shows Johnnie Jermaine Rush speaksing to officer Verino Ruggiero

The incident occurred on August 24 when Rush, who is black, was walking home from a 13-hour shift at CrackerBarrel in Asheville, North Carolina.

He had just cut through the parking lot of a business that was closed for the day when he was stopped by Verino Ruggiero, then an officer in training, and officer Hickman, for jaywalking.

Police body cam footage, obtained and published by the Citizen Times last week, shows Ruggiero telling Rush, who'd just visited a local store, that he'd already warned him about jaywalking.

'All I'm trying to do is go home, man. I'm tired. I just got off work,' Rush explained.

Ruggiero told him: 'I've got two options: I can either arrest you or write you a ticket.'

Hickman was seen punching Johnnie Jermaine Rush, 33, in the head repeatedly (pictured)

Rush was also tasered as he lay on the ground with his hands behind his back, surrounded by cops

Rush was left with burn marks on his legs where the taser hit, and swelling around his head, around the same location he was repeatedly punched during the arrest

'It doesn't matter to me, man,' Rush replied.

'Do what you have got to do, besides keep harassing me.'

Rush then curses, to which Hickman responds by ordering him to put his hands behind his back.

The 33-year-old then tried to run.

Video shows the officers take off in pursuit and Hickman yelled after him: 'You know what's funny is you're going to get f**ked up hardcore'.

Rush appears to slow down and stops to confront the officers, who pushed him to the ground.

What followed was a brutal beating, as Hickman was seen repeatedly punching Rush in the head, while yelling at him to put his hands behind his back.

Rush was then tasered twice as he's held on the ground and is choked as he breathlessly tells the cops, 'I can't breathe'.

Hickman (left) has resigned over allegatios he brutaly beat Rush (right) after he was stopped for jaywalking

The charges against Rush, which included assaulting a government official and traffic offenses, have since been dropped

'All this over you getting a ticket,' Hickman, who is white, could be heard telling Rush. 'Now it's serious, bro.'

He then goes on to taunt Rush, who remained prone on the ground, surrounded by cops.

His comment can't be heard, but Hickman responds: 'Oh it's a 'Please' now is it?' Hickman says.

'After all that? It was a ticket! And you wanted to act like this? What's wrong with you? What the f**k is wrong with you?'

While putting Rush in the back of the police car, Hickman is heard complaining that he 'got blood all over me from his face.'

He boasted to an emergency responder called to the scene that he had 'beat the s**t out of his head, I'm not going to lie about that.'

The charges against Rush, which included assaulting a government official and traffic offenses, have since been dropped.

Photos of Rush, taken after the incident, show burn marks on his legs where the taser hit, and swelling around his head, around the same location he was repeatedly punched during the arrest.

Police Chief Tammy Hooper publicly apologized to Rush on Thursday after the Citizen Times released the video, calling his treatment unacceptable.

Hooper said, after reviewing the video, that she and District Attorney Todd Williams asked the State Bureau of Investigation to initiate a criminal investigation, but they declined.

The chief said that she still felt a criminal investigation was necessary so reached out to another agency.

Hickman was suspected of simple assault, according to police records. Ruggiero is not under investigation.

Hickman resigned on January 5 and Asheville police opened a criminal investigation into his behavior on January 18.

The FBI are now investigating the incident. The agency generally only step into matters involving police officers if it involves a civil rights matter.

Agents have since interviewed Rush as part of the preliminary investigation and will decide whether to launch a full investigation.
The same cruise ship which was forced back to shore after a massive brawl broke out between two bucks parties has hit trouble again after heading towards the eye of a rapidly intensifying cyclone.

Crew members on the P&O cruise ship Pacific Explorer were left scrambling after they were caught off guard by Cyclone Hola in the South Pacific on Thursday, News.com.au reported.

Troubled waters from the 'severe' tropical cyclone meant the cruise ship was re-routed at the last minute to Noumea, New Caledonia, instead of docking in the Isle of Pines.

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Crew members on the P&O cruise ship Pacific Explorer were left scrambling after they were caught off guard by Cyclone Hola in the South Pacific on Thursday (P&O cruise ship pictured)

Troubled waters from the 'severe' tropical cyclone (pictured) meant the cruise ship was re-routed at the last minute to Noumea, New Caledonia

The disaster was narrowly avoided just weeks after passengers were returned to Sydney following a massive brawl which broke out between rival bucks parties. Pictured: Three of the men allegedly involved

The disaster was narrowly avoided just weeks after passengers on the same ship were returned to Sydney following a massive brawl which broke out between rival bucks parties.

A total of six men and one woman were kicked off the cruise after the brawl reportedly erupted last month over a queue for the toilet.

The 37-year-old woman - who is a Russian national - was later charged for allegedly smashing an empty wine bottle over the head of one of the men.

Witnesses said the boozy brawl, involving the woman's husband, broke out at a bar on the ship in front of 100 people.

'It was just a very good bucks party,' one of the men later told 7 News.

Cyclone Hola caught meteorologists off-guard overnight as it rapidly intensified into a category four cyclone and formed a 'pinhole eye'.

The tropical storm is expected to pass through Vanuatu and New Caledonia over the next 24 hours before heading straight towards Auckland.

A total of six men and one woman were kicked off the cruise after the brawl reportedly erupted last month over a queue for the toilet. Pictured: Five of the men who were kicked off the ship were later seen at a pub in Balmain, in Sydney's inner-west

The 37-year-old woman (pictured) was later charged for allegedly smashing an empty wine bottle over the head of one of the men

The Russian woman allegedly smashed a wine bottle over a 21-year-old man's head

Police officers were seen arriving on board the ship at Bradley's Head, Sydney, last month where the passengers

The Vanuatu Meteorology and Geo-Hazards Department told the publication that seas in the South Pacific will remain rough with 'heavy to phenomenal swells'.

Now residents in Vanuatu, New Caledonia and New Zealand have been told to monitor the storm as it threatens to leave a path of destruction.

A spokesman for Carnival Cruises said: 'Our marine operations people have been tracking the development of this weather system for several days.

'As a general principle our ships sail away from severe weather systems and this one is no exception.

'Pacific Explorer is alongside at Noumea today instead of making a scheduled call to Isle of Pines. We will continue to monitor conditions and respond accordingly on the basis that safety is, as always, the first priority.'

The cruise ship was intended for the Isle of Pines before it was re-routed at the last minute
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A woman fell 268 metres to her death from the top of Sydney's iconic Centrepoint Tower today after unstrapping her harness in front of shocked tourists.

The woman was taking part in the city's Skywalk where tourists walk around a platform at the top of the tower to enjoy 360-degree views.

She started the walk with her harness attaching her to the building but soon became agitated and somehow removed it after threatening to self harm, witnesses say.

The woman then allegedly fell off the platform in front of a young girl and an elderly couple who were left 'frozen' in shock.

Police were called to a 'self-harm' incident at 2.40pm and began to retrieve the body from beneath the tower.

This photo shows the woman's body covered by tarpaulin after workers retrieved it after the tragedy on Thursday afternoon

This image, taken through the glass floor of the walkway on the tower, shows the place (at the bottom of the photo) where the woman landed after she fell

Staff working at the tower said the building was closed 'until further notice following an incident'. Pictured: The tower and the walkway around it where the skywalks take place

One witness named Chris, who was inside the fourth-floor observation deck at the time, described chaotic scenes inside the tower after the woman fell.

He said: 'I was inside when I heard a worker start running and yelling back at his co-workers to "call downstairs".

'At first, I thought there was a fire but there were no fire alarms so I really didn't know what was going on.

'I walked over to my friends who seemed pretty grim and asked them what happened.

'They said they had just seen a woman fall. One of my friends said she saw her falling right in front of her face. I asked if she had a parachute and she said "no".

'We could not see where the woman landed because our view directly downwards was cut off at a certain point. My friend said she had a clear view of the woman's face as he was falling because he was turned towards the sky.

'She said that she looked to be middle aged.'

The witness added: 'Nothing was happening in the observation deck for a little while afterwards, most people had no idea what happened.

The woman is thought to have taken off her harness and climbed over the railings. Seen here are a group of visitors on a Skywalk tour on a separate occasion

Long walk: The Skywalk tour of the Sydney Tower sees daredevils take a 45-minute tour on a glass-bottomed walkway around the tower while hooked up to safety harnesses

The woman allegedly fell off the edge in front of a young girl and an elderly couple who were left in shock. Pictured: Police at the scene

The woman who plunged to her death from Sydney's Centrepoint Tower today fell right past office workers who saw her face as she plummeted, a witness has told Daily Mail Australia. Pictured: The place where the woman landed

Tourists (pictured inside the tower) were asked to leave the building and offered refunds after the tragedy at 2.40pm today

Paramedics joined a huge number of police on the scene to treat witnesses for shock

'I started seeing some people in suits come up to the deck - I am assuming they were managers or supervisors. Then the group that was up there with her on the Skywalk came down to the observation deck.

'They were an old couple, a little girl, and a few other people. The little girl was crying, and the rest of the people seemed to be in shock.

'It seemed like nobody knew the woman. We decided to leave because we were feeling a bit uncomfortable, and as we got off the elevator there were a few police officers.'

It was originally reported that the person who died was a man but sources later confirmed it was a woman. Police said the woman is yet to be formally identified. Her nationality is not known.

Office workers in skyscrapers near the tower were told to stay away from the windows to avoid seeing the woman's body.

Tourists were asked to leave the building and offered refunds while those arriving were turned away, with staff telling them there had been an 'incident'.

NSW Ambulance workers were providing counselling to disturbed witnesses.

A spokesman for NSW Police said there was a police operation underway after a 'self-harm-related incident' in the Sydney CBD.

A spokesman for Sydney Tower Eye said: 'An incident took place on the Sydney Tower Eye this afternoon.

A spokesman for Sydney Tower Eye said: 'An incident took place on the Sydney Tower Eye this afternoon'

'We are working closely with the police on this matter and it is being investigated accordingly. At this stage the Sydney Tower Eye Observation Deck and SKYWALK are closed.'

An employee was heard saying 'we can't say what happened, if you can reschedule'.

Despite the tragedy, the building's swish revolving restaurant and cocktail bar, 360 Bar and Dining, kept its doors open on Thursday night.

A staff member told Daily Mail Australia the self-described 'culinary experience', which includes a six-course degustation menu, was 'fully booked' this evening.

Visitors were seen cramming through metal detectors for the first sitting just after 5pm, with mains including pressed lamb neck and roasted black kingfish.

The Skywalk is described as a 'breath-taking 45 minute guided tour around the outside of Sydney's highest building.'

A report is being prepared for the coroner.

If you are in need of support please contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14 or BeyondBlue on 1300 224 636.

Tourists were asked to leave the building and offered refunds. Pictured: The tower from above
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The Archbishop of Canterbury today challenged the Saudi Crown Prince over the persecution of Christians in the kingdom and voiced his grave 'distress' at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen as they met for talks.

The Saudi leader is getting the red carpet treatment for his visit to Britain and was given the rare honour of a private lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace and a dinner with Prince Charles last night.

And today he arrived at Lambeth Palace for a tour, but Justin Welby used the visit to press the prince on his country's human rights record at home and abroad.

A Lambeth Palace spokesman said: 'The Archbishop shared his concern about limits placed on Christian worship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and highlighted the importance for leaders of all faiths to support freedom of religion or belief, drawing on the experience of the UK.

'In a cordial and honest conversation, the Archbishop voiced his distress at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and asked that all that is possible be done to alleviate the suffering of civilian populations and to seek an end to the conflict.'

The Saudi Crown Prince made a 'strong commitment to promote the flourishing of those of different faith traditions' the spokesman added.

Saudi Arabia 's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived at Lambeth palace today and met with the Archbishop of Canterbury today as British officials continue to treat him to he full red carpet treatment

Saudi Arabia 's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman today met with the Archbishop of Canterbury (pictured together) after agreeing a huge 65billion trade and investment package with the UK

The Saudi leader arrived at Lambeth Palace this morning where he spoke with the Right Reverend Justin Welby and other church officials.

The meeting came amid continued protests at the Saudi leader's visit by critics who accuse the regime of war crimes in Yemen and the persecution of political opponents at home.

How are Christians treated in Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country which does not officially recognise the Christian faith. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is punishable by death and churches are banned . This means that Christians wanting to practice their faith are driven underground and have to meet in secret in houses. But these are frequently raided by police and the Christians inside arrested, imprisoned, tortured and deported for their faith. Some 1.25 million Christians are estimated to live in the country out of a total population of 30 million. Most of them are understood to be immigrants working in the country - many originally from the Philippines. Advertisement

But the crown Prince and Theresa May defied the angry demonstrators who descended onto Whitehall last night by agreeing a huge 65billion trade and investment package with the UK.

The two leaders made the pledge for long-term trade links as protesters - including several members of the Labour Party's shadow Cabinet - gathered outside the gates of Downing Street to protest at the visit.

Angry protests have threatened to overshadow the three-day visit, but British officials have continued to roll out the red carpet for the Saudi leader.

The PM also took the opportunity yesterday to raise 'deep concerns at the humanitarian situation in Yemen' where Saudi led forces are raging a bloody war and have been accused of breaching internal humanitarian law.

They met for talks together with senior officials on both sides at the first ever UK-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council - a high-powered meeting will be repeated annually to build ties.

Earlier yesterday the Saudi ruler lunched with the Queen and Duke of York at Buckingham Palace as Britain treats the Crown Prince to pomp and ceremony during his three-day visit to Britain.

But the trip looks set to be overshadowed by protests which began yesterday as angry demonstrators descended on Whitehall carrying placards and chanting.

Among the crowd which gathered outside the gates of Downing Street Labour's shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon and Labour's shadow business minister Laura Pidcock joined the protest.

Mrs May has vowed to raise concerns over the conduct of Saudi's war in Yemen during yesterday's talks amid growing anger at the roll of British personnel in advising the Saudi airforce

Theresa May (pictured left with ministers including Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Education Secretary Damian Hinds and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt) sat face to face Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the inaugural UK-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and International Trade secretary Liam Fox were among the PM's ministers who attended the talks with Saudi Arabia's leaders today

The Prince of Wales with Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed bin Salman before they had dinner at Clarence House

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with the Queen at Buckingham Palace earlier (pictured) to kick off a three-day trip set to be dominated by protests

Critics have slammed the Government for inviting the royal while his kingdom is accused of war crimes and millions of Yemenis are at risk of famine

Labour's shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon and Labour's shadow business minister Laura Pidcock joined the protest

Mr Burgon posted a pictured of the pair at a demonstration opposite Downing Street with the message: 'This evening myself, @LauraPidcockMP and other Labour MPs joined the demonstration outside 10 Downing Street protesting against the Government's red carpet for Saudi Arabia's ruler and bomb buyer in chief.'

Critics have slammed the Government for inviting the royal while his kingdom is accused of war crimes and millions of Yemenis are at risk of famine.

Why is Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen going to trigger protests? What is Saudi Arabia's role in the war in Yemen? Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014 when Houthi rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa. Saudi Arabia feared the rise of the group it says is backed by Iran, the region's key Shia power. Riyadh formed a coalition with other mainly Sunni Arab states to restore the ousted Yemeni government. What action has Saudi Arabia taken? As well as bombing campaigns, the kingdom hit Yemen with naval blockades after a missile was fired towards Riyadh. The ports of Hodeidah and Salif were blocked off for weeks, stopping crucial aid and supplies from reaching the country. How has the conflict affected Yemenis? The UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, says the country is suffering the "world's worst humanitarian crisis". Some 22.2 million people, 75 per cent of the population, are in need of aid as they battle conflict, famine and disease, and thousands have died. Advertisement

Human rights demonstrators dressed as Mrs May and the Crown Prince descended on Westminster while red double-decker buses carried protesters through Westminster.

And Kate Osamor, Labour's shadow international development secretary, branded tore into the Government for signing 'grubby deals' with the regime.

She wrote on PoliticsHome: 'Tory spokespeople say that the Crown Prince is not the architect of Yemens war, but a progressive reformer we should work with, and that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is a price worth paying because it will help us fight terrorism. Absolute nonsense.

'For the Government and for Saudi Arabia, this visit is about sealing grubby business deals and about salvaging reputations...

'We should be outraged that the UK is putting business deals ahead of the lives of millions of people in Yemen, and turning a blind eye to humanitarian disaster and to human rights.

'It makes a mockery too of our countrys important commitment to international development: we will have sent almost 200m in taxpayer-funded aid to Yemen in the last year, even as British-made bombs continue to rain down.

'It is private firms  not even the taxpayer  that will recoup billions in profit from these sales. It is giving to Yemenis with one hand, and taking away with the other.'

But the PM yesterday defended Britain's close ties with the country as she was challenged over it during PMQs in the Commons.

Mrs May said: 'The link that we have with Saudi Arabia is historic, it is an important one and it has saved the lives of potentially hundreds of people in this country.'

She added: 'I will be raising concerns abut human rights with the Crown Prince when I meet him.'

Her remarks came after Jeremy Corbyn accused her Government of 'colluding' with war crimes by selling arms to Riyadh while it stands accused of breaching human rights laws in Yemen.

The Labour leader said: 'Germany has suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia but British arms sales have sharply increased and British military advisers are directing war.

'It cannot be right that her government is colluding in what the United Nations says is evidence of war crimes.

'Will the Prime Minister use her meeting today with the crown prince to halt the arms supplies and demand an immediate ceasefire in Yemen?'

Mr Corbyn's spokesman then told reporters: 'British military personnel are in the operations room where these bombing campaigns are being conducted. They are advising directly on the targeting of infrastructure and operations in Yemen.

'If they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, it has been a disastrous failure since the civilian casualties have been extremely high and the targeting of schools and hospitals in Yemen by the Saudi air force is on a very large scale.

'There is clearly evidence of war crimes having been carried out in Yemen by the Saudi air force.

'Targeting of civilian infrastructure, hospitals and schools - which has happened on a large scale in Yemen - is a war crime.

'It is essential that stops.'

Hitting back at Mr Corbyn's comments in PMQs, Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'The suggestion that the British military advisers are directing the war is simply not true.

'The United Kingdom is not a member of the Saudi-led coalition operating in Yemen, British personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen, and are not involved in the Saudi targeting decision making process.'

The Crown Prince was followed by his huge delegation as he arrived at Downing Street for talks with Theresa May yesterday

Theresa May defended Britain's close ties with Saudi Arabia as she was challenged over the Crown Prince's visit during today's PMQs in the Commons

Mrs May and the Crown Prince (pictured today on the steps of Downing Street) will meet again tomorrow at Chequers

Theresa May's spokesman said that in the talks she will also 'stress the importance of full and unfettered humanitarian and commercial access' through the ports of Hodeidah and Salif, which have previously been hit by coalition blockades (pictured, Saudi ministers leaving the meeting)

Detailing the discussions at No10 yesterday, the PM's spokesman said the pair had talked about investment, pushing women's rights in Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen.

Who is in the Saudi delegation? Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman Saudi Ambassador to the UK, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud Minister of Commerce and Investment, Dr Majed Bin Abdullah Al Kassabi Minister of Health, Tawfiq bin Fawzan Al Rabiah Foreign Minister, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Falih Minister of Education, Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Issa Minister of Economy and Planning, Mohammed al-Tuwaijri Head of General Intelligence Presidency, Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan Advertisement

He said: 'The meeting agreed a landmark ambition for around 65bn of mutual trade and investment opportunities over the coming years, including direct investment in the UK and new Saudi public procurement with UK companies.

'This is a significant boost for UK prosperity and a clear demonstration of the strong international confidence in our economy as we prepare to leave the European Union.'

He added: 'The Prime Minister raised our deep concerns at the humanitarian situation in Yemen.

'The Prime Minister and Crown Prince agreed on the importance of full and unfettered humanitarian and commercial access, including through the ports, and that a political solution was ultimately the only way to end the conflict and humanitarian suffering in Yemen.'

The Crown Prince also had dinner with Prince Charles and Prince William last night.

He will also see Mrs May again at her country retreat of Chequers later today and hold talks with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson on Friday.

Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014 when rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia is the main player in a coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis in a war which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

Britain has been criticised in some quarters for arms sales to the kingdom during the war.

Commuters along Aspen Way, near Canary Wharf, were tonight met with electronic billboards displaying the Crown Prince's face, captioned: 'He is bringing change to Saudi Arabia'

Metropolitan Police officers were on standby outside Downing Street tonight as protesters gathered to condemn the visit of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

The Crown Prince has been the driving force behind a modernisation programme, Vision 2030, in Saudi Arabia, but the reforms have been dismissed as a 'mirage' by campaigners.

It is hoped today's Downing Street summit could lead to Saudi investment in and through the UK of up to 100 billion over the next 10 years.

The Crown Prince has also been granted rare access to a briefing on foreign policy issues, including Yemen, by national security officials.

The Government has faced criticism over its arms sales to the kingdom but Downing Street insists it 'operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world'.

According to analysis by human rights charity Reprieve, executions have doubled under the Crown Prince.

The organisation said since his appointment in July 2017, 133 people had been executed compared with 67 in the previous eight months.

Amnesty International said reforms in Saudi Arabia were 'largely a mirage', with 'peaceful critics' of the government thrown in jail and women reliant on permission from men if they want to travel, be educated or get a job.

UK director Kate Allen said: 'We'd like to see Theresa May finally showing some backbone in the UK's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

'Mrs May and her ministers should challenge the Saudi authorities over their atrocious human rights record, not swallow the unconvincing spin from Riyadh.'

Rob Williams, chief executive at War Child UK, a charity for children affected by conflict, said: 'Britain is complicit in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen through providing diplomatic support to Saudi Arabia, as well as selling our most high tech and deadly weapons to a coalition that the United Nations has verified as committing grave violations against children.

'I urge Theresa May to now stand for values that Britain can be proud of, a nation that sets an example to the world, that is principled and compassionate and prioritises children's lives over trade deals.'
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Snow still lay on the ground in parts of Britain today as the country braced itself for a mixed outlook on the weekend.

The Beast from the East gave way to the Pest from the West for much of northern England this morning, bringing in up to four inches of snow on higher ground.

The low pressure system coming up across the Atlantic Ocean from the South West will lead to thunder on the south coast on Saturday, gales at exposed spots in the south west and up to 30mm of rain.

But the south-east of England based in temperatures of around 15C - one degree warmer than in Nice on the French Riviera.

And the scene in Wisley, Surrey, could not have seemed further away than the wintry landscapes up north as thousands of Crocuses basked in golden sunlight.

Police on the scene in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, after a car overturned and the area was hit by heavy snow this morning

A scene of thousands of crocuses bloomed in all their glory at Wisley, Surrey, couldn't seem further away than the wintry landscape up north

A group of adults and children help to push a car up a snowy hill in Leeds this morning as the city is hit by severe weather

Police respond to an overturned car on a road in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, today as snow causes chaos in the region

People go sledging at Camp Hill in Woolton, Liverpool, as weather warnings of snow and ice are in effect for many areas today

But the south-east of England based in temperatures of around 15C - one degree warmer than in Nice on the French Riviera. Pictured: People enjoy a sunny afternoon in the grounds of Guildford Castle, Surrey

While much of the north endures wintry conditions and snow, spring really did seem to have sprung forward in Surrey. Pictured: Daffodils bloom in the grounds of Guildford Castle

Forecasters warned of sleet and snow for upland areas and some lower ground overnight into today in central and northern England and Wales. But there was no sign of winter whatsoever in sunny Surrey

Daffodils in the sunshine in Guildford Castle in Surrey

Frankie Wooley, three, and his sister Heidi (both left), one, go sledging at Camp Hill, where another man holds a sledge (right)

Commuters across Leeds have woken up to heavy snowfall today with the area under a Met Office weather warning

Heavy snowfall is seen in Flintshire, North Wales, today as the UK continues to face severe conditions in some areas

Heavy snow showers make driving conditions difficult for vehicles today in Preston, Lancashire, including a Stagecoach bus

Pedestrians walk across a bridge in Leeds in the snow this morning as the white stuff causes disruption on roads

Commuters struggle through the heavy snow in Leeds which has brought severe conditions to northern England today

People walk through the snow in Leeds this morning, after the Met Office said up to four inches could fall in Britain today

Cars are seen in a ditch on the side of a road in East Lancashire this morning, one of the areas badly hit by the heavy snow

Forecasters warned of sleet and snow for upland areas and some lower ground overnight into today in central and northern England and Wales. The Met Office said up to 4in (10cm) of snow could fall on higher ground.

The Met Office snow warning, covering the East Midlands, North West England, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber and Wales came into force just after midnight and ran until late this morning.

A yellow ice warning is in place for Northern Ireland and a swathe of Scotland until 9am, with forecasters advising slippery patches are likely to form on some untreated roads, pavements and cycle paths.

There were several reports of slow-related bus accidents in West Yorkshire, with one in Wakefield where a bus skidded on ice and hit a wall, and another bus crash on Churwell Hill in South Leeds.

Abs Rose, 22, from Leeds, warned on Facebook: 'Please do not go out in cars and please only go out if where you have to go is within walking distance. Very dangerous and not worth it.'

Jamie Crane, 26, from York, said on Facebook: 'This snow is an absolute joke, even worse than last week, I had to abandon my car.' And Jason Stanley, a bus driver from Leeds, apologised for not being able to carry out his route.

He posted on Facebook: 'Sorry to the good patient folks of Leeds I've tried my best but got stuck after two hours of trying, and thanks to the gent that brought myself and the other driver a hot coffee.'

In Merseyside, a man is in a critical condition after he was run over by his own car. Police said the man, in his 30s, was left trapped between a lamppost and his Ford Focus after it 'appeared to roll back on him'.

Heavy snow on the A19 in North Yorkshire, as weather warnings of snow and ice are in effect for many parts of the country

A girl walks through snow in Liverpool as many parts of northern England are hit by severe weather this morning

A gritter drives through heavy snow on the A19 in North Yorkshire today in an attempt to keep the local roads moving

Heavy snow blankets roads across Leeds this morning as motorists face difficult conditions on their way to work

A man wheels his daughter through the snow on a bicycle this morning in Wallasey on the Wirral in Merseyside

Cars struggle in the snow in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, this morning as roads are left with thick cover of the white stuff

A man and his dog walk next to a car in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, today as parts of the country are hit by severe weather

A car is pushed on icy roads in Leeds, as weather warnings of snow and ice are in effect for many parts of the country today

It is understood he was trying to move his car in the snowy conditions in West Kirby, Wirral, this morning. Police said a call was received at around 6.25am that a man had become trapped between a vehicle and a lamppost.

She said: 'Emergency services attended and the man was taken to hospital, where his condition is described as critical. Road closures were put in place on Grange Road between Blackhorse Hill and Gerard Road.'

Scotrail services have been disrupted today between Glasgow Queen Street and Croy and Motherwell and Cumbernauld due to signalling problems, and Glasgow Queen Street and Falkirk Grahamston due to a fallen tree.

Meanwhile there were problems reported on Merseyrail between Ormskirk and Liverpool Central due to a power supply issue, and London Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria due to a person being taken ill on a train.

Further issues were reported around Wokingham due to emergency engineering works, and between London Waterloo and Clapham Junction thanks to a speed restriction over defective track at Vauxhall.

Drivers make their way along a snowy road in Leeds this morning as West Yorkshire is hit by severe weather conditions

A man cleans snow from the steps of the University of Leeds as West Yorkshire is hit by severe weather this morning

A cyclist makes his way through the heavy snow towards Wakefield city centre in West Yorkshire this morning

Heavy snowfall in Derbyshire this morning as forecasters predict further snow and freezing temperatures over the weekend

Sheep look at a photographer in the Derbyshire countryside this morning as severe weather conditions move in over Britain

Snowy fields in the South Yorkshire village of Loxley in north west Sheffield this morning as the UK faces weather warnings

Motorcylists and drivers make their way along snowy roads in Leeds today as the area faces further severe weather

Pedestrians and cyclists make their way through the snow this morning in Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Drivers make their way along snowy roads around Wakefield this morning, including this one leading on the M1 motorway

A view from Sandal Castle overlooking Wakefield in West Yorkshire this morning, which has been left covered in snow

A car crashes onto the pavement outside a branch of Pizza Hut on Edgware Road in Central London this morning

Motorways were also reporting problems today, with severe delays on the M1 at junction nine near Luton in Bedfordshire due to a broken down vehicle and junction 42 near Wakefield in West Yorkshire due to the snow.

It comes as the country recovers from the impact of the Beast from the East and Storm Emma which brought a deep cold snap and snow and ice last week.

Water companies said they have restored supplies to most customers after days of weather-related problems, which left thousands of homes in southern England without their supply.

UK government ministers have announced a review into how water firms handled last week's bad weather.

Now that's an ice cold beer! MailOnline readers share their snow pictures and videos (including one of a VERY upbeat motorist belting out Frozen song Let It Go)

From enjoying an outdoor pint to watching their children play in the snow, MailOnline readers are making the most of the severe weather conditions that have once again swept over the country today.

Readers have been sharing their snow pictures and videos with us today, including one of an upbeat motorist belting out the song Let It Go from the Disney film Frozen while stuck in traffic.

It comes as driving conditions got 'rapidly worse' today as parts of Britain are hit by up to four inches of snow, with swathes of central England and Wales under a weather warning this morning.

Today's severe conditions will be followed by a low pressure system coming up across the Atlantic Ocean from the South West and heading towards Britain for the weekend, which has been dubbed the 'Pest from the West'.

** Have you taken photos of the snow in Britain today? Please email them to: pictures@mailonline.co.uk **

MailOnline reader Michelle Holmes sent in this picture of her holding a pint of beer at Roundhay Park in Leeds, West Yorkshire

MailOnline reader James Beale sent in this picture of a girl enjoying the snow this morning in Preston, Lancashire

Cars and houses are covered in snow that has fallen this morning in Halifax, West Yorkshire

Trees have been left in a covering of snow in St Helens, Merseyside, as the country is hit by extreme weather

Snowfall has affected Headingley in Leeds, West Yorkshire, this morning as the North faces weather warnings

A red postbox is covered in snow in the Starbeck area of Harrogate in North Yorkshire this morning

A road is covered in snow in Gorsedd, Holywell, in North Wales today as severe weather conditions sweep in again

MailOnline reader Tracey Leigh sent in this picture of the Wirral in Merseyside covered in a layer of snow this morning

MailOnline reader Michelle Gifford sent in this picture of her garden in Leeds, West Yorkshire, at 8am this morning

Another reader sent in this picture of snow in Bradford at about 6am, adding that nothing had fallen just an hour earlier

MailOnline reader Andrew Guise sent in this photograph of a snowy garden in the Starbeck area of Harrogate, North Yorkshire
These are the two retired British businessmen charged with molesting teenage boys at their house in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Leslie Peter Henman, 63, and David Malcolm Brock, 65, alleged promised local teens money and school books, and invited them to swim in their pool where they abused them.

As many as 12 Cambodian boys aged between 13 and 15 had made complaints about the pair before they were arrested in the resort town of Siem Reap on February 21.

Arrested: As many as 12 boys under 15 had made complaints about retired British businessmen David Malcolm Brock, 65, left, and Leslie Peter Henman, 63, right

Henman, originally from Kingston, Surrey, has previously been arrested for similar offences in Thailand.

Aged 44, he was found naked in bed with two boys aged 13 and 14 at a hotel in the tourist resort of Pattaya.

According to a local news report from the time of his arrest, Thai police also found video footage of children being sexually abused in his hotelroom.

A picture of Henman shows him sat with his hands behind his back while two young boys wearing only a towel point fingers of blame at him.

Henman was listed as director of S.J.S Publishing Services Ltd in 1991 and Fleet Paper Ltd in 1994 until the position was resigned in 1998.

The two Brits were charged with molesting teenage boys in the resort town of Siem Reap, pictured at night

Henman and Brock were remanded in custody and charged on February 23 at Siem Reap provincial court for 'indecent acts against minors under the age of 15'.

Police chief Chea Heng said as many as 12 Cambodian boys had made complaints against the two men, who had been living in the South East Asian country on retirement visas.

He said: 'David Malcolm Brock, 65 and Leslie Peter Henman, 63, are both British nationals.

'Twelve Cambodian boys aged under 15 said they had been molested inside a property where David and Leslie were living, in Kouk Chak district, Siem Reap City, Siem Reap province.'

Duong Thavary, an anti-trafficking officer, said the men were arrested on February 21, adding: 'The man had been living in Siem Reap province under retirement visas for about two years.

'They were later sent to the provincial court on February 23 and charged with indecent acts against minors under the age of 15.'

The pair will be held on remand until a trial which is expected to take place later this year.

If convicted, they face between one and three years in prison and a fine of between 362 and 1,086.
This is the terrifying moment passengers fled for their lives as a 'Mother of Satan' bomb tore through a packed commuter train.

Heart-stopping footage, released by the Met Police, shows the blast engulf the London Underground train at Parsons Green station last year.

Panic erupts as injured commuters run for their lives in the moments after the explosion.

The harrowing video was released as commuters today relived the terrifying moment a bomb detonated inside their carriage.

Disturbing footage released by London's Met Police shows the moment the 'Mother of Satan' bomb partially detonated on the packed tube train

Terrified passengers flee for their lives as a fireball engulfs part of the tube train at Parsons Green Station

Panic erupts as injured commuters run for their lives in the moments after the explosion

The harrowing video was released as commuters today relived the terrifying moment a bomb detonated inside their carriage

The most seriously injured victim, who had been standing beside the bucket, sobbed as she told the court she had been thrown to her knees by the blast and needed ongoing treatment for her injuries.

The traumatised woman, identified as Miss S, said: 'My clothes, my knees, and my face was all burned. My coat was burned and my tights melted, that's how I got my injuries.'

Miss S recalled seeing Hassan, who appeared to stare at her as he dumped the Lidl bag containing the bomb on the carriage floor beside her.

He then left the train, two minutes before the explosion. She said: 'I looked at the bag. It looked odd and I assumed it belonged to that person.'

Stephen Nash told jurors at the trial of suspected bomber, Ahmed Hassan, that he was reading a newspaper, 'oblivious' to what was going on before he reached the west London stop.

He told the court: 'At Parsons Green there was a loud bang. There was a blinding flash to my left and I was engulfed in flames. I was thrown to the ground. The flames were overwhelming.'

Mr Nash said his head and back were caught by the flames. He said: 'It was intense heat. I thought I had lost my ears. I thought my head was on fire.'

Iraqi Hassan, 18, is accused of building a deadly explosive device, packed with 5lbs of knives, screwdrivers and nails for 'maximum carnage', at the foster home where he was given refuge.

Victoria Holloway (left, at court today), who suffered a flash burn to her face (right), said the smell after the explosion reminded her of the lingering smell in science class

The bomb contained 14oz of the explosive TATP, commonly known as 'Mother of Satan', and sent a fireball through a District Line carriage packed with rush-hour commuters  injuring 30  at Parsons Green station in West London on September 15 last year.

He told the court he smelled burning hair and bleach. Mr Nash said he woke up after a couple seconds to find he was the only person left on the train.

'I was knocked out so I woke up on the carriage floor and it was a matter of seconds,' he said.

'I called out to the Tube. Just as I got to the doors, the doors started to close.

Hassan leaving toilets at Wimbledon station before the Parsons Green bomb was detonated

The teenage asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan is seen walking at Wimbledon station

'It was a little bit scary and I called out onto the platform.'

Mr Nash was taken to an emergency triage centre in a local pub. He had severe burns to his head and ears which were treated by a plastic surgeon as well as blisters to his mouth and nose.

He added: 'My hair was burnt off at the back. I lost my hair in clumps at the top.'

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave asked: 'Was there a moment when you were the last person left in the carriage?'

Mr Nash replied: 'That's my recollection.'

Victoria Holloway, who suffered a flash burn to her face, said the smell after the explosion reminded her of the lingering smell in science class.

Hassan allegedly made the bomb using the explosive triacetate triperoxide (TATP) which was packed into a Tupperware container and glass vase inside the white bucket

Bucket bomb witnesses, Aimee Colville (left), and Stephen Nash (right) at the Old Bailey today

She said: 'It was a loud bang, I had headphones in and I still heard, it was extremely loud.

'I heard this whoosh of things kind of similar to if you turned on a Bunsen Burner and lit a match. I saw these bright orange flames... they were touching my legs, I could see them wrapping around my knees.

'The air was full of dust and debris and like a powdery substance which smelled quite strongly of chemicals.

'It made me think of when you were in science class and could smell lingering smells.'

Iraqi Ahmed Hassan (pictured), 18, is accused of building a deadly explosive device, packed with 5lbs of knives, screwdrivers and nails to inflict 'maximum carnage' on a District Line Tube train at Parsons Green, London on September 15 last year

Aimee Colville, whose hair caught fire in the blast, said: 'I was standing in the middle of the tube I was holding the centre pole with my arm and I was facing down the tube and I heard a loud bang, like a cracking bang.'

She said she first thought the train had broken down until she saw a 'wall of glass' flying past her' and a man in front of her 'jolt forward'.

'I don't know how I came to be on the floor.

'That morning I had curled my hair and I had put hairspray in my hair so when the flames came over me my hair caught fire.'

Another passenger Lucinda Glazebrook wept as she entered the witness box to give evidence from behind a curtain.

She said: 'All I saw was a fireball above a man's head in front of the doors. I felt the heat on my face.

'I heard people screaming and I held the pole and then I turned around and I saw the doors were open.

'I kept touching my face and my hair was coming out in chunks and I asked somebody if my face was burnt.

'I felt the heat from the fireball, I was scared of what it had done to my face.'

Hassan is captured on CCTV collecting chemicals to make his 'Mother of Satan' bomb

Ms Glazebrook was treated in a restaurant opposite the station before being taken to St Thomas' Hospital.

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave thanked her for giving her evidence as she left the witness box in tears.

Craig Palmer, a serving Army officer, heard the blast and rushed to investigate, the court heard.

He said: 'Just moments really from arriving I seem to recall there was to my right towards the end of the train there was an event which was a flash in my peripheral vision, it sounded like a woof to me.'

Jurors shown the device which exploded Jurors in the trial of the alleged Parsons Green bomber have been shown a replica of the home-made device. Explosives officer Andrew Gee, who was responsible for examining and dismantling the device in-situ, gave evidence at the Old Bailey. He explained that he used a handheld device called a Trudefender to check what was left of the bomb for explosives. The jury heard that depending on the quality of the sample the device could take up to five minutes to identify a substance. But Mr Gee said: 'In this instance we had a hit basically in 10-15 seconds. 'I think it was an 87% hit for TATP.' Mr Gee arrived at the scene at 8.50am, by which time emergency services were already there. On examination, he ascertained the bomb had partially functioned. The officer explained that as he worked on the device, the plastic bucket and bag continued to melt, while the glass vase cracked from the heat. Jurors were then shown a replica of the bomb Ahmed Hassan allegedly planted on the train. It was made of a silver Lidl frozen goods bag and contained a white bucket, a tupperware container wrapped in foil and a glass vase. Sugar was used in the replica as a substitute for the explosive substance. The court also saw an example of the 14oz of shrapnel that was packed into the home-made device. Jurors were told that Hassan's fingerprints were found on the Tube carriage, on the white plastic bucket, and on a pair of trousers covering the bucket. His DNA was also found at the scene. Advertisement

Mr Palmer said passengers were screaming and then there was 'a wall of people coming through the train'.

'I turned to face that carriage - that's my training; that's my instinct' he said.

'I had seen the wall of faces in terror rushing past me'.

He stopped off onto the platform and went to investigate the empty carriage full of debris and decided it was a bomb attack.

The Old Bailey heard that it was a 'matter of luck' the bomb did not fully detonate and no-one was killed.

Explosives officer Andrew Gee, who was responsible for examining and dismantling the device in-situ, gave evidence at the Old Bailey.

He explained that he used a handheld device called a Trudefender to check what was left of the bomb for explosives.

The jury heard that depending on the quality of the sample the device could take up to five minutes to identify a substance.

But Mr Gee said: 'In this instance we had a hit basically in 10-15 seconds.

'I think it was an 87% hit for TATP.'

Mr Gee arrived at the scene at 8.50am, by which time emergency services were already there.

On examination, he ascertained the bomb had partially functioned.

The officer explained that as he worked on the device, the plastic bucket and bag continued to melt, while the glass vase cracked from the heat.

Jurors were then shown a replica of the bomb Ahmed Hassan allegedly planted on the train.

It was made of a silver Lidl frozen goods bag and contained a white bucket, a tupperware container wrapped in foil and a glass vase.

Sugar was used in the replica as a substitute for the explosive substance.

The court also saw an example of the 2.2kg of shrapnel that was packed into the home-made device.

Jurors were told that Hassan's fingerprints were found on the Tube carriage, on the white plastic bucket, and on a pair of trousers covering the bucket.

His DNA was also found at the scene.

Hassan, from Sunbury-on-Thames in Surrey, denies attempted murder and using the chemical compound TATP to cause an explosion that was likely to endanger life on September 15 last year.

Yesterday, jurors were also told that:

Hassan sneaked into Britain through the Channel Tunnel aged 15

He openly declared his links to IS when he applied to the Home Office for asylum

The teenager was allegedly seen by staff at a charity-run shelter looking at an IS video and listening to jihadi songs, yet no-one raised the alarm;

While his foster parents were on holiday, Hassan ordered bomb ingredients on Amazon using a 20 gift voucher he won after being named 'student of the year';

He loaded his bucket bomb with shrapnel, including screwdrivers and drill bits bought from Asda and Aldi.

The alleged bomber openly declared his links to IS when he applied for asylum after arriving in Britain as a lone child refugee, the court was told.

In his first interview with immigration officials on January 18, 2016, Hassan said he had been trained to kill by jihadis with 1,000 other people, adding: 'They trained us on how to kill. It was all religious-based.'

But he claimed he went along with it only because he feared the fanatics could kill his family, and said he was claiming asylum in Britain because he was 'in fear of Islamic State', the court heard.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan described what Hassan  who had no identity documents to verify his name or age  said to immigration officials.

She said: 'He was forced to go on his own otherwise they would kill his family and he shared training with 1,000 people and they would spend three to four hours a day in the mosque.'

Ahmed Hassan being given a 'Student of the Year' award at Brooklands College. He used the 20 Amazon token prize to buy hydrogen peroxide for the Parsons Green bomb, the Old Bailey heard

The 15-year-old denied being a sleeper IS fighter sent to Europe and claimed he fled to Britain after being freed by Iraqi soldiers.

But shortly after his arrival in the UK, Hassan was seen by staff at a shelter in Horley, Surrey, run by children's charity Barnados secretly watching a video featuring masked men with machine guns bearing an IS flag, it was said.

He was also allegedly caught listening to a 'call to arms' song, with the lyrics: 'We are coming with you to the slaughter in your home and country.'

Despite this worrying behaviour, the teenager was referred by social services to Brooklands College, where he was given a mentor who helped him find a foster home in Sunbury, Surrey.

At the college, where he studied media, the jury heard the teenager made a film as part of his course showing a mobile phone being destroyed, in an apparent rehearsal of his efforts to hide his tracks following the bombing.

He also kept on a memory stick a series of disturbing songs known as 'nasheeds' encouraging 'violent military action' in support of IS, it was said.

Barely 18 months after his admission to the Home Office, Hassan shopped for bomb ingredients on Amazon, and at Aldi and Asda, jurors heard.

He allegedly ordered a five-litre bottle of hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid from Amazon in August before assembling the bomb while his foster parents were on holiday for a week.

The day before the Parsons Green bombing, Hassan was caught on CCTV in an Asda supermarket shopping for batteries and a screwdriver set before buying drill bits from an Aldi store to add to the bomb, the court was told.

On September 15, Hassan allegedly carried his bomb in a bucket hidden in an Aldi shopping bag through Wimbledon station, calmly walking past school children and commuters.

The Old Bailey heard the teenager loaded his bucket bomb with shrapnel, including screwdrivers and drill bits bought from Asda and Aldi. Pictured: acid Hassan bought

In a toilet on the concourse, Hassan set the modified kitchen timer on the device before boarding the train, the jury heard.

He got off at Putney Bridge station, two minutes before the bomb went off at just before 8.20am  shortly after the train arrived at Parsons Green, the court heard.

The bomb caused a stampede as hundreds rushed to get out of the station.

Miss Morgan said: 'It was rush hour and the train was crowded. There were approximately 93 people in the carriage when the device detonated. The partial explosion created a large fireball.

'Some in the carriage were caught by the flames and sustained significant burns. Many ran in fear and panic. They were fortunate.

'Had the device fully detonated, it is inevitable that serious injury and significant damage would have been caused within the carriage. Those in close proximity to the device may well have been killed.

'It was a matter of luck that the device did not function as intended... The defendant intended to kill people.'

She added: 'He never intended to be injured by the device himself. Instead he had created a timer system to ensure that it detonated in his absence.'

Hassan, wearing a navy jumper, stared at the ground as the jury were shown the chilling footage of commuters standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a packed train sipping from coffee flasks and reading newspapers, when the carriage was suddenly engulfed in a wall of flame.

Hassan was captured on CCTV walking away from Putney Bridge station without a backward glance, before boarding a bus travelling past his target to see the carnage unfold, Miss Morgan said.

When the bus drove past Parsons Green station, he glanced out of the window before coolly removing the memory card from his mobile phone, chewing it and stuffing it down the side of the seat, she said.

In a bid to avoid detection, Hassan changed his clothes several times and bought a new mobile phone to check BBC News coverage of the blast as he took a series of trains to Richmond, Brighton and finally Ashford in Kent.

He was arrested the next day at 7.52am at the Port of Dover. He was carrying 2,320 in cash, it was said.

The court heard that the defendant's asylum claim was unresolved at the time of his arrest.

Hassan, from Sunbury, denies attempted murder and causing an explosion likely to endanger life or damage property.

The trial continues.
Robert Jones who was jailed for 18 months after admitting assault occasioning actual bodily harm

A boyfriend branded a 'Jekyll and Hyde' has been jailed after his ex was arrested by police for drink driving as she fled his violent temper tantrums.

Robert Jones, 32, left Debbie Minogue with cuts to her face and two black eyes after attacking her during a drunken argument.

But he was only arrested by police after 35-year-old Miss Minogue faced court herself for being twice the alcohol limit at the wheel of her VW Beetle.

She admitted drink driving, but was spared a road ban because she said she was trying to escape a beating from Jones.

She claimed he had punched her in the face and behaved like 'pure evil.'

Jones, from Blackley, Manchester, was not charged over the beating linked to the drink driving incident, but was accused of three other offences of assault against Miss Minogue and criminal damage to her bedrrom wall over a six month period.

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, he was jailed for 18 months after admitting one of the beatings.

He was also banned from contacting Miss Minogue when he was issued with a lifetime restraining order.

It also emerged he had previous history of violence against two other former partners.

Debbie Minogue branded Jones a 'Jekyll and Hyde' character and spared a road ban after telling the court that she got in her car to try and escape one of his beatings

Jones and Miss Minogue began dating last year but split up after Jones being violent towards her.

Last November she faced magistrates after being spotted reversing her VW Beetle whilst drunk in a pub car park following a birthday party.

At the time she claimed she has been seeking refuge in her car and reversed out of a parking space after Jones jumped on the bonnet and left her 'in fear of her life.'

They accepted her explanation and gave her nine penalty points.

Police then investigated Jones and he was then arrested and charged the following month.

The criminal damage charge and two of the assault allegations he faced were later dismissed, but he was convicted of a third charge of assaulting Miss Minogue at her home in Ashton-under-Lyme, Greater Manchester, in May last year.

Prosecutor Duncan Wilcock said: 'Both the complainant and defendant had been drinking at the time and were both drunk.

'An argument broke out and he began punching her to the face over and over again.

'After a struggle she managed to get out of the house and went over the road to her neighbours house.

Miss Minouge, who avoided a driving ban, arriving at court

'An ambulance was called and she went to hospital.. She received cuts and bruises to her face and two black eyes.

'She has asked for a restraining order and asked for her to not be contacted by any means.

'This is the third partner he has assaulted in a domestic environment.

'There was no serious harm but injuries were sustained. This happened in the complainants own home and she said she was vulnerable at the time.'

Jones who admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm, had 33 previous offences on his record including affray, drug possession and GBH.

Judge Stuart Driver QC said: 'This was a sustained assault and you have shown little remorse of sympathy.

'You have a vast criminal record and have shown violence to previous partners. There has been more than one restraining order passed against you. This victim is the third partner subject to your violence.'

Michael McKeown, for the defence, said: 'He feels quite upset and is remorseful - he accepts what he has done, he accepts he punched her over and over again. He accepts there were cuts and bruises to her face and two black eyes.

'He doesn't accept he was in a relationship with her at the time because he says he was in a relationship with another person at the time. She was a friend. He does not oppose the restraining order, in fact he welcomes it. He doesn't want contact with her.

Mr McKeown added: 'He has an undiagnosed mental health condition and has seen his GP who has given him medication for this.'

At her drink driving trial, Miss Minogue said she had been in a relationship with Jones for a 'few months.'

She said: 'But he has a short temper and is sort of Jekyll and Hyde.

'The police have been called around eight times because of how he's been.

'That night he drinking quite fast and he punched me right on the cheekbone without warning. I was in total shock, he was like pure evil. I just wanted to get away from him, I was terrified. He was putting me in fear for my life, I just wanted to be safe.

'I got into the car and locked the doors but he came up to my car and started banging on the windscreen and climbed onto the bonnet.

' I was only going to drive to a safe location and order a taxi. It all happened so fast. I was worried about myself. I just wanted to be safe.'
The father of a severely disabled child at the centre of a life-support dispute has paid an emotional tribute to his son after he died just hours after doctors withdrew treatment.

The parents of one-year-old Isaiah Haastrup had fought against an application by King's College Hospital in London to move him to palliative care.

Isaiah's father, Lanre Haastrup and his mother Takesha Thomas' 'last resort' appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, was dismissed on Tuesday.

Severely disabled Isaiah Haastrup, who was at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute has died, his father said. These pictures were taken just hours before he died

The child's life support machine was switched off after his parents lost a legal battle. Mr Haastrup posted updates as Isaiah's fight for life continued

Mr Haastrup confirmed his son's death on Facebook last night

Isaiah died at 7.50pm on Wednesday, hours after being removed from life-support, Mr Haastrup said on Facebook.

And the grieving father posted a series of tributes to his son.

He said: 'Im am proud to have been your father and Im sorry I couldnt protect you. I am proud of you son.'

And alongside a picture of him cradling the child in a hospital room, he said: 'Lord!! We thank you for Isaiahs life.'

He had earlier posted heartbreaking updates on his son's desperate fight for life, counting down each hour the child breathed without life-support machines.

Mr Haastrup then posted: 'Isaiah died at 7.50pm. Thanks for the support.'

The parents asked the ECHR to intervene after losing two legal battles in England.

A High Court judge had given doctors permission to provide only palliative care to Isaiah against the wishes of Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas.

Mr Justice MacDonald analysed evidence at hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in January.

The heartbroken parents were pictured caring for their son in hospital yesterday

Severely disabled Isaiah Haastrup, who was at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute, died on Wednesday

Isaiah's father, Lanre Haastrup and his mother Takesha Thomas' 'last resort' appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, was dismissed on Tuesday

The couple, pictured here leaving court last month, said on Wednesday that judges had not listened to their arguments

Specialists at King's College Hospital in London had said providing further intensive care treatment was futile and not in Isaiah's best interests.

Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas, who are both in their 30s and from Peckham, south-east London, subsequently failed to persuade Court of Appeal judges to overturn Mr Justice MacDonald's decision.

They then made a written application to the ECHR as a 'last resort', which was declared 'inadmissible'.

Mr Haastrup said on Wednesday that judges had not listened to their arguments.

He slammed the judge's decision, telling The Guardian: 'Surely, this is not sufficient to say our goodbyes to our son; we would require a reasonable period to spend with Isaiah.'

He added: 'The ECHR decided to abandon justice and instead prioritised the fierce urgency of killing Isaiah.

'We were not given the opportunity to present our case which we were entitled.'

He said the ECHR had 'demonstrated' that it was 'little more than a figurehead'.

'No thorough reasons for their decision [were given], which suggested that the court was not fair-minded and going by its judgment, does not need to hear us before dismissing our case,' he added.

'Therefore, we are disappointed with the ECHR not for the dismissal but for the failure to hear our argument before the dismissal, particularly as the ECHR is the court of last resort.'
The Pentagon is building a $250million hangar to house the new Air Force One fleet.

The new facility at Joint Base Andrews was announced less than two weeks after President Trump penned a $3.9billion deal with Boeing for two new planes.

When he took office, the President said the costs of Air Force One were 'out of control', and vowed to dramatically cut the government investment in the scheme.

Boeing's mock-up of the two 747-8s. The new aircraft will need new hangers, the Air Force has said

President Trump and the current Air Force One. The White House claimed the new deal saved $1.4 billion but an analyst said there was no evidence of any money saved

The current hanger (above) which houses the two Air Force One planes will have to be replaced at a cost of $250 million

When it announced the new deal, the White House said the contract will save taxpayers more than $1.4 billion, but those savings could not be independently confirmed.

Lt. Gen. Arnie Bunch, the Air Force's top uniformed acquisition official said the current facility at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland, is not large enough to enough to accommodate the new aircraft, which will be a modified civilian Boeing 747-8.

He told Aviation Week the 'new aircraft is wider, longer and weighs more' so will need at new hangar.

Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg met multiple times with Trump to discuss the Air Force One contract before the deal was finalized.

The agreement includes two 747-8 aircraft, and the cost of modifying the commercial planes with the equipment needed to support the president, including external stair, large galleys and a secure communications suite.

In 2011, Boeing agreed to a $4.9 billion fixed-price contract with the Air Force for a refueling tanker, the KC-46.

Through late last year, cost overruns had reached about $2.9 billion in pretax costs.

The Boeing 747-8s are designed to be an airborne White House able to fly in worst-case security scenarios, such as nuclear war, and are modified with military avionics, advanced communications and a self-defense system.
The fancy dress costume appeared online as a Red Foxhunter Jacket Children's Fancy Dress Costume with a young boy pictured modelling the clothes available for 10.41

Tesco has pulled its 'appalling' fox hunter fancy dress costume for children after hunt saboteurs complained it was 'encouraging youngsters to become animal abusers'.

Shoppers complained to the British supermarket giant after spotting the outfit on sale, for seven-year-olds and older, on its website.

Tesco quickly pulled the costume last night following the outrage and admitted it had been placed on the site by a third party vendor.

The fancy dress costume appeared online as a Red Foxhunter Jacket Children's Fancy Dress Costume with a young boy pictured modelling the clothes available for 10.41.

On the site, it stated: 'This costume includes a long sleeved red tailcoat style jacket with a single black button at the front.

'Fantastic for World Book Day, school shows or just dressing up fun. Please note White T-shirt, Trousers & Shoes not included.'

Hunt groups also attacked the supermarket for selling the 'disgusting' costume and branded it as 'poor judgement'.

Lee Moon, a spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association, stated: 'This appears to be remarkably poor judgement form Tesco.

'Fox hunting is an illegal, archaic pastime that's abhorred by the majority of the population.

'Why Tesco would think it's an appropriate fancy dress costume for children is quite beyond us. We look forward to seeing their badger baiting or dog fighting outfit in the near future!'

Hertfordshire Hunt Saboteurs posted on Facebook: 'This is just disgusting! Every little hurts. Encouraging children to become animal abusers! (sic)'

Customer John Crabb said: 'Dear Tesco I am appalled at how you are selling fancy Redcoat fox hunters fancy dress clothes for kids.

'Are you really trying to encourage them to take up a highly cruel animal bloodsport? I demand an explanation and would like this complaint to be forwarded to your head office.

'You look on the news there's new generations of fox hunters trying to bring back this horrendous sport.'

On the site, it stated: 'This costume includes a long sleeved red tailcoat style jacket with a single black button at the front

Tesco quickly pulled the costume last night following the outrage and admitted it had been placed on the site by a third party vendor

Lee Wicks wrote: 'Ffs! Tesco evenby your standards this is sick! Every little hurts! Dressing up your kid as a fox hunter wtf!?'

Ann Blake said: 'Unbelievable, just as well it has been removed. Hope I do not see any for sale.'

Susan Webb said: 'Hope it has gone!!!!! Expected better from Tesco!!..I have Boycotted Sainsbury's over the shooting of a fox for months now!! Would never go back!! So sort it TESCO!!'

A spokesperson for Tesco said: 'We've listened to customers and have immediately removed this product from sale.'
Shocking video footage seems to show a man pleasuring himself under a blanket while sitting in his seat on a flight.

The footage was caught by a stunned fellow passenger and appears to show the man masturbating under a blanket as his eyes are fixed on his phone.

The bemused passenger can be heard laughing throughout the 39-second video as he catches the unmistakable hand movements from the row behind.

He then directs the camera closer towards the man, who then seems to stop and looking uncomfortable, shifts in his seat while scrolling through his phone.

The man appeared to be smartly dressed wearing a business suit as he sat in the empty row on the plane reportedly travelling from Brazil in February.

Caught out! The shocking footage shows a man wearing a business suit appearing to be masturbating while sitting in his seat on a plane

The shocking incident comes after another passenger was arrested after reportedly stripping naked to watch porn before attacking a stewardess on a flight from Malaysia.

The 20-year-old Bangladeshi took his clothes off and started watching pornography on his laptop, local media reported.

The student initially put his clothes back on at the request of cabin crew but then became aggressive towards staff and attacked a stewardess.

Cabin crew and passengers managed to him to his seat with a piece of cloth for the rest of the flight.

The man reportedly also masturbated and urinated on his seat.

The student initially put his clothes back on at the request of cabin crew but then became aggressive towards staff and attacked a stewardess

The airline, a Malaysian subsidiary of an Indonesian company, declined to confirm all the details but said in a statement that a 'disruptive passenger' was tied up on the flight to Dhaka, and was arrested on arrival.

It explained: 'The crew on board has followed the standard operating procedure in restraining the passenger from causing further disruption onboard the flight.

'The disruptive passenger was accompanied by Dhaka security team upon arrival and he has been put to jail by the authorities there.
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This is the moment volunteer medics in eastern Ghouta tried in vain to extinguish a burning motorbike rider after he was hit by a government airstrike on Wednesday.

Despite the efforts of the White Helmets the man died - just one of 91 people killed in the rebel-held enclave near Damascus on Wednesday bringing the total number of civilian dead to more than 900 in just 19 days, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another 60 were left struggling to breathe after a suspected chlorine gas attack in the Hammuriyeh area.

Meanwhile doctors from The Syrian American Medical Society said they also treated injuries consistent with cluster bombs and napalm, both banned weapons.

Volunteers from the White Helmets try to extinguish a burning motorbike rider after he was hit by a bomb in eastern Ghouta, spraying him with fuel which subsequently set alight. The man was later pronounced dead, just one of at least 91 people killed in the rebel-held enclave on Wednesday

At least 60 people were left struggling to breathe after a suspected chlorine gas attack in eastern Ghouta on Wednesday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

Around 40 people in the Hammuriyeh district were found hiding on a rooftop in order to get fresh air and children screamed 'I'm going to suffocate' as medics brought them down

Doctors also reported seeing injuries from cluster bombs and napalm on Wednesday, both of which are banned weapons

Children and the elderly were worst affected by the alleged gas attack according to posts on social media which accused the government of throwing 'everything it's got' at Ghouta

Syrian government forces, which are backed by Iran and Russia, have repeatedly been accused of using chlorine gas against civilian areas as they fight to retake eastern Ghouta from rebel groups - allegations they deny

A baby is treated for suspected gas exposure after an alleged chlorine attack on the districts of Sakba and Hammuriyeh

Children had to be helped from the roof of one building by medics as they screamed 'I'm going to suffocate' following the attack, according to AfP.

Up to 40 people were sheltering on the roof having climbed up there in order to get fresh air, it is reported.

Chlorine gas is heavier than air, meaning it settles in the streets and basements where people have been hiding away from the bombing.

Women, children and the elderly appeared to be the worst affected by yesterday's attack, according to posts on social media.

As a result of the violence a Red Cross convoy due to carry aid into the besieged district on Thursday was cancelled, with aid workers unable to say when it would get through.

Ingy Sedky, the ICRC's spokeswoman in Syria, said that 'the situation is evolving rapidly on the ground, which doesn't allow us to carry out the operation in such conditions'.

The Syrian Arab Army, which is loyal to Assad, and allied militias are currently in the midst of an offensive to retake eastern Ghouta, which is on the outskirts of Damascus, from rebel groups

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 91 people were killed in bombings on Wednesday

The Red Cross said an escalation in violence on Wednesday had forced it to cancel an aid convoy that was due to move into Ghouta on Thursday, with no idea when it might get through

Ghouta has been under siege for years by government forces and civilians were running low on food and medical supplies even before the offensive started last month (pictured, a baby is treated for suspected gas exposure)

Air strikes continued to fall on Ghouta on Thursday after children were sickened in a potential chlorine gas attack

Syrian children receive first aid after what locals say was an attack by forces loyal to Syrian President Assad with chlorine gas

Chlorine gas is heavier than air, so sinks into basements where people have been hiding from the bombings. The elderly and children are especially vulnerable (pictured, a man is treated for suspected exposure to chlorine)

An affected man receives a medical treatment after Assad regime forces conduct alleged poisonous gas attack in Syria

Earlier this week, the first convoy in weeks made it into eastern Ghouta, but 14 of the 46 trucks were not able to fully offload critical humanitarian supplies because of stepped-up violence.

The Syrian Arab Army, which is loyal to Bashar al-Assad and backed by Russia, launched an intensive bombing campaign in Ghouta in recent weeks in an attempt to drive rebels from the outskirts of Damascus.

Regime forces have been repeatedly accused of using chlorine on Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks, which both the government and its ally Russia have staunchly denied.

On Thursday a pro-Damascus commander said the army is poised to slice Ghouta in two as forces advancing from the east link up with troops at the enclave's western edge.

That would put the zone effectively under Syrian government control as the remaining strip of rebel territory would be within weapons range.

The United Nations says 400,000 people are trapped in the towns and villages of eastern Ghouta. They have been under government siege for years and were already running out of food and medicine before the assault.

A young girl wounded in a government airstrike on eastern Ghouta is treated at a hospital in the rebel-held enclave

A Syrian boy covered in blood after being wounded in a government airstrike lies in a hospital in eastern Ghouta

Wounded Syrians await treatment at a clinic in the rebel-held town of Hamouria, in the besieged eastern Ghouta region

A Syrian girl cries as she waits for treatment as victims of reported regime air strikes on Hamouria, Saqba and Kafr Batna are brought to a make-shift hospital in eastern Ghouta

Dozens of people were treated for breathing difficulties after air strikes slammed into eastern Ghouta on Wednesday

A wounded Syrian man is brought into a clinic in Syria's eastern Ghouta following airstrikes by forces loyal to the regime

Syria Civil Defense, a volunteer organisation commonly known as The White Helmets, tweeted that the situation in Ghouta at the moment defies description.

'Over 68 civilians were killed so far, cities are being terminated, the white helmets teams can't run on the streets because of the huge destruction and airstrikes holes in everywhere,' the organisation said on Wednesday.

United Nations investigators say government forces used chlorine as a weapon at least three times between 2014 and 2015, as well as sarin gas in 2016.

The latest assault on Eastern Ghouta began with an intense bombing campaign on February 18, followed by a ground offensive.

Air strikes continued to hit the remaining rebel-controlled parts of Ghouta on Thursday.

A convoy of humanitarian assistance expected to enter the enclave was postponed, the International Committee of the Red Cross told AFP.

It marks the second time this week that aid operations to Eastern Ghouta have been disrupted by military developments, with food deliveries cut short on Monday due to heavy bombardment.
A 22-year-old college student has pleaded guilty to causing the deaths of a man and his unborn child after crashing into their car while driving drunk in 2016.

Texas State University public relations student Shana Elliot was charged with two counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle and intoxication assault with a vehicle after the crash on August 2.

Father-to-be Fabian Guerrero Moreno, 23, died in the crash and his five-months pregnant wife Kristian Nicole was injured, leading to the unborn child's death.

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Texas State University public relations student Shana Elliot (right) was charged with two counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle and intoxication assault with a vehicle after the crash on August 2. Father-to-be Fabian Guerrero Moreno (left with his wife), 23, died in the crash and his five-months pregnant wife Kristian Nicole was injured, leading to the unborn child's death

Mrs Guerrero was driving the vehicle at the time, with her husband was sitting in the passenger seat. Pictured: Their car after the crash

The newlywed couple had been arguing about their baby's middle name, with the husband pushing for Fabian James, if it was a boy, and the wife giving preference to Fabian Michael

Elliot's blood alcohol level was .199 when she was taken to hospital after the crash, KXAN reports. The legal limit in Texas is 0.08.

The trial, which started on Tuesday, will still go ahead - but because of Elliot's plea, it will only be to determine her sentence.

Elliot, still wearing her bikini, was arrested after the crash, footage shown to the jury and seen by KXAN shows.

She reportedly repeatedly asked cops how the couple was doing after the crash, saying: 'Kill me now. Please. I just want them to be okay.'

She admitted to police that she had been drinking beer and liquor while floating down the river at Texas State Tubes with friends just before the car crash that killed Moreno and injured his wife at around 6pm.

Moreno died at the scene and his wife was taken to hospital in a serious condition.

Doctors then tried to save Guerrero's baby by inducing labor - but, tragically, the child was stillborn.

'The baby was just perfect,' Guerrero's aunt, Diane Castillo told People Magazine at the time. Kristian got to hold his hand for a while, and his paternal grandmother got to hold him as well.'

The happy couple had been planning to host a gender-reveal party for their baby before the crash

She added that Moreno had always wanted to have a son and died not knowing his wife had been expecting a boy.

The newlywed couple had been arguing about their baby's middle name, with the husband pushing for Fabian James, if it was a boy, and the wife giving preference to Fabian Michael.

In the end, the young widow named her stillborn son Fabian James, like her husband wanted.

Police said that the couple were driving in the opposite direction down Highway 21 in San Marcos when the public relations senior, driving a Chevy Impala, drifted into oncoming traffic and collided with their car head-on.

Mrs Guerrero was driving the vehicle at the time, with her husband was sitting in the passenger seat.

Her aunt said that a short time after the crash, doctors performed an ultrasound and detected the baby's heartbeat.

'Kristian was so relieved that she would still have part of her husband after finding out he had passed,' the aunt explained.

Elliott is a senior at Texas State University, majoring in public relations and mass communications

Just a day before the deadly crash, Mrs Guerrero proudly shared this photo of their unborn child

But a repeat ultrasound showed that the baby had died in the womb.

Elliott was taken to Central Texas Medical Center for minor injuries before she was booked on the charges.

Just hours before the crash, the couple checked into a Joe's Crab Shack in San Antonio, celebrating Fabian's new US residency status.
Ministers are guaranteeing Gibraltar that Spain will not be allowed to exclude it from any post-Brexit deal struck with the EU.

The commitment comes amid fears that Madrid is seeking to exploit its leverage over Brexit to reopen the question of the Rock's sovereignty.

The European Council sparked anger by granting Spain a veto over the territory's fate after Brexit.

The move raised the prospect of the UK being forced to choose between the Rock and a potential deal with the EU.

Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo is in London for talks with ministers over the negotiations today.

There have been fears that Spain is seeking to exploit Brexit to reopen the question of Gibraltar's (pictured) sovereignty

Mr Picardo said that Gibraltar's parliament holds its own veto, with the power to decide which parts of the final Brexit agreement will apply to the 30,000 inhabitants of the Mediterranean outpost.

But he said there was no question of reopening discussions on its future status, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Sovereignty is something which is settled. It was settled in the Helsinki accords and in Utrecht that the sovereignty of Gibraltar belongs to the UK and the people of Gibraltar.

'We don't barter with sovereignty today as if we were in the 17th century, with kings passing around sovereignty of pieces of land.

'What we do is look at the interests of the people. What we do is talk to people and ask them what matters.

'We are very linked to the UK, we see the world through British eyes and we don't want to change that.'

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable urged the Government to be firmer in its defence of Gibraltar's links to the UK after Brexit.

Sir Vince told the BBC: 'It is an issue of fundamental principle. This has been attached to the UK for two centuries.

'We have seen off repeated demands by Spain to have control over the Rock, which has been a fundamental part of British interests.

Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said its parliament can decide which parts of the final Brexit agreement will apply to the 30,000 inhabitants of the Mediterranean outpost

'We shouldn't allow Brexit to be used as a cloak for giving away what is a substantial British commitment. 'Let's not forget that all of these people want to remain in the UK just as much as the majority of people in Northern Ireland.'

The EU insists that Spain can stop a transitional deal or future trade relationship applying to Gibraltar unless there is a Spain-UK agreement.

A UK government spokesman said: 'The EU's guidelines are a matter for the EU and the other member states.

'The prime minister has said that as we negotiate these matters we will be negotiating to ensure that the relationships are there for Gibraltar as well.

'We are not going to exclude Gibraltar from our negotiations for either the implementation period or the future agreement.'
An uninvited wedding guest has stolen $10,000 from a young couple's wishing well after he casually walked into the venue and 'chatted to guests' before brazenly pocketing the cash and walking out.

The well-dressed man strolled into the Jack Rabbit Winery on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula last Saturday, CCTV footage released by Geelong Police has revealed.

The man then reached into the padlocked wishing well in the venue's foyer sometime before 11pm and pocketed the cash.

It is believed he used a set of tools to open the padlocked box.

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A well-dressed middle-aged man (pictured) strolled into the Jack Rabbit Winery on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula last Saturday, CCTV footage released by Geelong Police has revealed

An uninvited wedding guest (pictured) has stolen $10,000 from a young couple's wishing well after he casually walked into the venue and 'chatted to guests' before brazenly pocketing the cash and walking out

It was only at the end of the night when the bride and groom realised they had been robbed of close to $10,000.

'He was as cool as a cucumber. He walked in, he even chatted to the guests,' Lyndsay Sharp owner of Jack Rabbit Vineyard told Nine News.

'We're pretty confident he's gone to the wrong wedding reception and realised he was at the wrong one and thought while he was there he might as well take some cash,' Senior Constable Bradley Johnson said.

The man then reached into the padlocked wishing well (pictured) in the venue's foyer sometime before 11pm and pocketed the cash. It is believe he used a set of tools to open the padlocked box

'It was like a scene out of Wedding Crashers ... It was pretty brazen. I think alcohol gave him the confidence to do it.'

The man is pictured sporting black slacks, with suspenders and a white shirt, with sunglasses on his head.

The man is pictured sporting black slacks, with suspenders and a white shirt, with sunglasses on his head

Geelong police have said they are investigating whether the same man attended another wedding at Terindah Estate on the same night.

A white ute seen in the car park while the offence took place is also being investigated.

It was only at the end of the night when the bride and groom (pictured) realised they had been robbed of close to $10,000

Geelong police have said they are investigating whether the same man attended another wedding at Terindah Estate on the same night
The video was shot at the Nakuru region of Kenya, an area popular with tourists

The rhino manages to fend off the animals allowing her baby to escape to safety

Footage shows a pack of hyenas attacking a mother rhino and her calf

Most mothers will go to any lengths to make sure their kids are kept safe from harm.

But not all mum's are faced with the headache of protecting their offspring from a ravenous pack of hyenas.

That was the heart-stopping scenario faced by one mother rhino in Kenya who was forced to come between a pack of hunters and her child.

Dramatic footage shows her battle with two, and then four, hyenas frantically trying to prey on her calf.

The pack of hyenas encircles the mother and her offspring patiently circling while waiting for a chance to strike

In the incredible video, she and her calf become surrounded by the beasts who are circling them waiting to pounce.

The mother places her own body between the hyenas and her child, hitting out at them with her sharp horn.

The pests try to sneak behind her and ambush her calf, but she is too quick and she is able to block their attacks.

Eventually she decides to make a break for it and sprints off, keeping her child close and leaving the hyenas in tow.

The clip shows the mother blocking the hyena's advances by placing herself between them and her baby

Eventually the mother is able to flee with her child running in front of her and the hyenas still chasing across the Savannah

The footage was shot at the Nakuru National Park in Kenya - a very famous holiday destination for wildlife enthusiasts.

The magnificent clip was filmed on November 18, 2017 by French photographer Nicolas Urlacher.

Nicolas, who has been living in Nairobi since, 2013, often travels around the bush in search of remarkable wildlife videos.
The Russian double agent attacked with a nerve agent in Salisbury was close to a consultant who worked with the firm of former British spy Christopher Steele, it was reported today.

Sergei Skripal, who is fighting for his life in hospital after the incident on Sunday, is said to have been close to an unnamed intelligence expert who carried out work for independent security firm Orbis Business Intelligence.

Orbis was founded by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was behind a notorious and controversial dossier on Donald Trump, which claimed Moscow had compromising information on the US President.

Russian double agent Sergei Skripal (left) was close to a consultant who had worked for Orbis Business Intelligence, the firm of former British spy Christopher Steele (right), it was reported

Police remain in the park in Salisbury where Mr Skripal and has daughter were found after being attacked with a powerful nerve agent on Sunday

Mr Skripal and the Orbis consultant had become close and were both based in the south of England, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The paper suggested that Skripal's association with Orbis and, indirectly, the Trump dossier could have been a motivation behind the attack on him.

There are conflicting reports about whether Skripal was retired from the world of espionage.

From his time in Russia's military intelligence apparatus, he would have excellent knowledge of the country's tactics and potential contacts.

Who is ex-British agent Christopher Steele? Christopher Steele was one of MI6's top Russia experts, having spent a number of years working in Moscow. During his years in the Russian capital, he had established personal contacts with KGB agents, and operatives of its successor agency the FSB. Mr Steele quit MI6 in 2009 to set up his own so-called 'spies-for-hire' firm, Orbis Business Intelligence. It was through this firm that he is understood to have worked on a dossier on President's Trump alleged links to Russia, which included explosive allegations including lurid sex claims and claims the Kremlin had sought to 'cultivate' Mr Trump. It is likely that during his time working in Russia, Steele would have got to know Skripal, it was claimed this week. It was reported that Mr Steele may be helping police with their investigation. Advertisement

The Times reported this week that he was still giving lectures on KGB tactics.

And another Russian exile, Valery Morozov, told Channel 4 News last night that Skripal remained in contact with military intelligence officers at the Russian Embassy.

A spokesman for the Russian Embassy said they are not aware of communication between Skripal and staff.

Skripal is a former colonel in Russian military intelligence and was responsible for unmasking dozens of Russian secret agents undercover in Europe.

In 2006, he was sentenced to 13 years in a Russian labour camp after being convicted of passing invaluable Russian secrets to the UK.

In July 2010, he was one of four spies exchanged for ten Russian agents deported from the US in an historic swap involving red-headed 'femme fatale' Anna Chapman.

Since then, he has moved to Salisbury and lived an apparently unremarkable life in Wiltshire cathedral city, joining a 10-a-year Railway Social Club, drinking in local pubs and spending a reported 40-a-week on lottery scratchcards.

Police yesterday revealed he and his daughter Yulia, who was visiting from Moscow, were attacked with a nerve agent on Sunday. Both remain in the critical condition.

Yulia Skripal is understood to be a businesswoman who has worked for Nike and Pepsico

Russian exile Valery Morozov told Channel 4 News he met Sergei Skripal several times and claims he was in regular contact with military intelligence officers at the Russian Embassy

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been 'targeted specifically'.

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

He said: 'Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

'Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act.'

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

Police seen putting on protective suits and gas masks in preparation to carry out further investigation work, in Salisbury
Britain could expel the Russian ambassador from the UK in retaliation after the poisoning of a former spy left three battling for their life in hospital, an ex diplomat has said.

Sir Andrew Wood, Britain's former ambassador to Russia, said ministers could make the move if Moscow was shown to be behind the Cold War-style attack.

And Sir Christopher Meyer, former ambassador to the United States, said the poison plot threatens to plunge UK-Russian relations into the 'deep freeze'.

He said: 'You cannot tolerate a government assassination on British soil - it is absolutely beyond the pale and needs a reaction.'

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are both in a critical condition in after being poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury town centre on Sunday afternoon.

Sir Andrew Wood (pictured left) Britain's former ambassador to Russia, said ministers could banish the Russian ambassador if Moscow was shown to be behind the Cold War-style attack. While Sir Christopher Meyer, a former diplomat, said the UK could round up and expel suspected spies and slap sanctions on Russia if they are behind the attack

A police officer who came to their aid is also in hospital after being contaminated by the poison.

What action could Britain take against Russia if the Kremlin is shown to be behind the poison spy plot? Expel diplomats: Britain could expel Russia's ambassador and other diplomats based at the embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens - round the corner from where Prince William and Kate live. If MI5 have tabs on a Russian spy ring in the UK, Britain could take this poison plot as a reason to expel them. Impose sanctions: Britain already has an extensive range of sanctions against Russia as a result of the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but we could extend them. The UK could also impose sanctions on named individuals if they are linked to the murder attempt. Britain could pass the 'Magnitsky List' mirroring US laws imposing travel bans on senior Kremlin officials responsible for the death of Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky in a prison in 2009. Britain could enact the Magnitsky amendment, imposed conditions on Putin's cronies. The act is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in custody after exposing corruption World Cup boycott Official representation could be withdrawn from the World Cup in Russia if Kremlin links are proven. Prime Minister Theresa May told MPs last week that the Government would look at whether ministers and other dignitaries should attend the tournament in that event. The Duke of Cambridge has already said he has no plans to attend. There have been calls for the England team to boycott the tournament but their withdrawal would probably have little impact. A coordinated protest, involving the withdrawal of multiple countries, would be far more effective in damaging Vladimir Putins showcase international event. However, experts say the nerve agent poisoning is unlikely to create enough international momentum to trigger a wider boycott. Statement of condemnation Britain may call on the support its closest allies if there is evidence of a Russian murder attempt on UK soil. A joint statement of international condemnation could be issued from leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Germanys Angela Merkel, warning Russia that such actions will not be tolerated. Advertisement

Experts said the fact a British police officer has been caught in the attack ratcheted up the seriousness of the attack.

And they said the British government will hit back if the Kremlin, or any other government, is found to be behind the sophisticated poison plot.

Sir Andrew told The Daily Telegraph: 'This makes the assassination attempt even more serious.

'If it is true that this is, in some fashion, the Russian state, it obviously makes it even harder to believe the Russian state is worth anything or is to be trusted.

'The fact they targeted his daughter, and that a policeman is seriously ill, makes it emotionally difficult, but it does not alter the fact that this was an attempted assassination on British soil.'

Sir Andrew said the diplomatic options of response could involve expelling the Russian ambassador.

Sir Christopher said Britain cannot hit back until it was proven Moscow was behind the attack.

But he said that if it is then the UK could expel diplomats, impose sanctions and could, if they have identifies a Russian spy ring in Britain, 'drain the swamp' and kick them out of the country too.

He told Sky News: 'It is a question of whether you expel the ambassador and embassy staff, pr ratchet up sanctions against Russia and identified individuals.

'You could not only expel the ambassador but drain the swamp of all these guys that MI5 are tracking around London or wherever.'

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of Alexander Litvinenko - the former Russian agent and arch Putin critic murdered in London by polonium - said the UK's weak response to her husband's death may have paved the way for the murder attempt.

Yulia Skripal, 33, (pictured) is fighting for her life in hospital where her father, ex spy Sergei Skripal, is also in a critical condition. the pair were both poisoned by nerve gas in a Cold War-style attack in Salisbury at the weekend

She said: 'It is awful. It is absolutely shocking. If the British authorities had taken my husband's case more seriously when it happened, then maybe this would not have taken place.

'I didn't want this to happen again on British soil and now it has.'

And Sir Christopher said that while the UK tried to bring Litvinenko's killers back to face justice he thinks 'the reaction was probably too weak'.

As speculation mounts about how ministers my retaliate, counter terror officers are scouring for clues to find out how the nerve agent was smuggled into Britain and who carried out the attack

Colonel Skirpal (pictured in a Russian court where he was tried for treason) worked a double agent for MI6 - handing over Russian military information to his British spymasters. he was caught in 2006 and jailed but was taken to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap

Investigators are said to be probing whether Yulia could have unwittingly brought the toxin with her from Russia as a present from friends for her father.

She could have then opened it when the pair were out together in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon - at either a pub, Zizzi restaurant or the city's shopping centre.

Colonel Skirpal worked a double agent for MI6 - handing over Russian military information to his British spymasters.

He was nicknamed 'the spy with the Louis Vuitton bag' after grainy pictures showed him carrying a bag at an airport en route to a meeting with his handlers.

He may finally have been snared by the FSB after passing his intelligence to MI6's infamous James Bond-style 'spy rock'  a fake stone packed with receiving equipment in a Moscow park.

Russian secret services exposed the ploy in 2006, revealing how British agents transmitted their data to the rock via a hidden hand-held device while walking past it.

He was thrown into prison in Russia but came to Britain in 2010 after being handed over as part of a spy swap.

And his attempted murder on the streets of the UK after the swap flouts traditional norms of spycraft.
A two-year-old girl is in hospital with an injured left eye after she was bitten by a dog in New South Wales.

The distressed girl was pictured being transported on a stretcher to the ambulance with her mother with blood on her face.

Police confirmed the attack took place at 4.45pm at Sawtell on the Mid North Coast.

She is in a stable condition at the Coffs Harbour hospital, Nine News reported.

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The two-year-old girl (pictured) was taken to hospital on a stretcher on Thursday afternoon

The hospital had 'no comment' to make on her condition when contacted by Daily Mail Australia.

The attack is the fourth of its kind on little children in six days including one fatal attack on a baby.

Tom Higgins, three, was mauled by a Great Dane has undergone surgery to reattach his ear after it was torn off by the animal on Tuesday night.

Three year-old Tom Higgins (pictured right) who was mauled by a Great Dane, has undergone surgery to have his ear reattached.

Tom Higgins was rushed to hospital on a stretcher where he underwent surgery on his ear

The boy was riding a bike with his mother and older sister in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield on Tuesday evening when the dog escaped from a nearby property and charged on to the street.

The animal bit the back of the boy's neck and ear, which was partially ripped off during the horrific attack.

Newcastle Council have since put-down the dog after it was voluntarily suspended.

Tuesday evening's attack came just days after a 12-month-old girl was mauled to death by a Rottweiler.

Kamillah Jones (pictured left) was mauled to death by an Rottweiler (pictured stock) in Inverell, northern New South Wales on Saturday

The infant, Kamillah, was attacked by the dog at a home in Inverell on Saturday afternoon.

She died on the way to hospital despite the desperate efforts of paramedics to save her.

The dog was seized by council rangers and a NSW Police spokeswoman on Tuesday confirmed it had been put down.

On Sunday, a three-year-old girl was left with shocking injuries after a South African Boerboel attacked her in the Melbourne suburb of Berwick.

She was rushed to hospital and is lucky to be alive, according to neighbours who helped saved her.
This is the moment a Yodel delivery driver damages a customer's parked car by scraping his van against it and failing to report it.

The employee was caught on CCTV and shows the white van pulling up beside the parked car and scraping against it it's side causing it to scratch and take the cover off the car's wheel.

The video then shows the panicked employee turning the vehicle around and driving back to park his vehicle further down the road on the opposite side, seemingly to avoid being caught.

He then rushes up the driveway of the home to deliver the package of flowers and leaves in a haste without informing the customer that he'd damaged the car.

The Lancaster resident explained that she was very annoyed as it was the first day of her holidays and was supposed to be visiting her daughter on the day but couldn't because she had to 'sort out the damage which is estimated to cost her 820 to repair.

The shocking footage shows the delivery driver pull up beside the customer's parked car and scrape the side in the process

The panicked employee rushes from the driveway after delivering the package without informing the customer

The Yodel employee then drives further up the road and parks on the opposite side to avoid being caught and then delivers the package

The damage to the side of the parked car and right, the scraped wheel cover. The delivery driver was seen on CCTV

Yodel sent the customer flowers,which are estimated to cost between 35 to 50, by way of an apology for the damage

The incident happened on the 24th of February as the customer, who wished to be anonymous, had made an order of flowers to be delivered on Valentine's day.

The original order was sent to the wrong address and the customer didn't receive them until almost two weeks later.

She contacted the company to complain and to explain that she'd caught their employee's mishap on CCTV.

The incident was reported to police and pictures of the damage were taken after the incident happened.

She was told that the employee had been removed from the company and Yodel sent her flowers as an apology for the damage caused by the delivery man.

Speaking to Mail Online the customer said that the whole thing was ridiculous and that 'a big company like Yodel should treat their customers a lot better'.

'I work damn hard for the money I get. I'm an ordinary housewife earning minimum wage in my job and for this to happen is really unfair', she said.

The company is one of the UK's largest courier services and markets itself as being simple and easy with 'an amazing team of drivers to make the millions of deliveries every week'.

A Yodel spokesperson said: 'This behaviour clearly does not meet the high standards we expect from our colleagues and we are very disappointed to see this driver breaking our strict protocols. The driver implicated was immediately removed from our business.

'We have apologised to the customer for the distress caused and sent flowers as a gesture of goodwill.'
A British woman working for the United Nations was in custody in France today after allegedly repeatedly stabbing her husband in the face.

The couple, who have not been named, were involved in a 'very serious fight' in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Both are officials with the British Mission at the United Nations Office at Geneva, the second largest UN office after New York.

Police said they found the husband covered in blood and in a state of fear with a number of wounds to his face (file photo)

The couple live in the village of Crozet, located just across the French border from Geneva 10 miles away from their workplace

They live in the French village of Crozet, which is less than ten miles from the Swiss city where they work.

It was in Crozet that the woman is said to have launched a frenzied attack on her husband 'just after 1am,' according to an investigating source.

She was said to be extremely drunk at the time, and caused her husband to run outside their house to hide in the family car.

When police arrived they found him covered in blood, and in a state of considerable fear, before rushing him to hospital.

'His wife was arrested and she was also taken to the hospital,' the source told Europe 1 radio station.

'She will be interrogated when her state of health allows her to be heard in custody,' the source added.

Both the husband and wife were injured in the exchange. Police in Crozet (pictured) have detained the woman for questioning (file photo)

Both the husband and wife were revealed to be workers within the British Mission at the United Nations office in Geneva (pictured)

Both of those involved were injured - the husband by far the worst, with wounds all over the face - but neither is in a life threatening condition.

The UN's British Mission in Geneva represents UK interests in a range of international organisations, dealing with subjects including human rights and trade.
A Chinese grandfather has been reunited with his grandson after the boy was secretly sold to another family by his own father.

The 15-month-old boy, Zheng Zheng, was sold through the internet at a price of 37,000 yuan (4,200) by his 22-year-old father, according to Jinan Times.

An emotional footage released by the local news site captured the heart-breaking moment the elderly man broke down in tears when police handed Zheng Zheng back to him on February 23 after the separation.

Emotional reunion: Mr Qian cries uncontrollably after being told his grandson had been saved

According to the report, the grandfather, known by his surname Qian, has two grandsons, who are four years old and 15 months old respectively.

Initially, Mr Qian, his son and his son's wife worked in Shanghai while Mr Qian's wife lived in their hometown Tengzhou to look after the two children.

The report said Mr Qian's wife was last year diagnosed with uremia - a condition that gradually leads to kidney failure - and needed around-the-clock care.

She was advised by her doctor to undergo a kidney transplant as soon as possible because the operation is the only hope of a cure.

Mr Qian's son had to quite his job and go back to his hometown in order to look after his mother and two children. At the same time, Mr Qian and his daughter-in-law remained in Shanghai to keep earning money in order to pay for the medical bills.

Mr Qian's son reportedly became overwhelmed after having to take care of his two sons at home. It's also said he became angry for the fact that he wasn't making money.

As such, the man sold his younger child Zheng Zheng on February 1 after posting an advertisement online.

Zheng Zheng was brought by his father to Jinan, the provincial capital about 124 miles from Tengzhou, to his new family who paid 37,000 yuan for him.

Finally together: Zheng Zheng reaches out to his grandfather while being held by police

Mr Qian and Zheng Zheng are reunited after police officers found the boy 124 miles from home

Mr Qian realised one of his grandsons had gone missing in mid-February after returning to Tengzhou to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

He found out the truth that Zheng Zheng had been sold after questioning his son. He reported the case to the police at the Liuliqiao Police Station on February 21.

The police quickly tracked down the boy and brought him back to Tengzhou during the wee hours of February 23. They immediately informed Mr Qian to pick up his grandson. The pair have returned home safely.

Mr Qian's son and three members from the Liu family, the boy's buyer, are currently on bail awaiting trial on suspicion of child trafficking.

According to the police, the Liu family have a daughter but were desperate for a son, so they decided to purchase a boy.

In rural China, families prefer sons to daughters, a major factor that propels child trafficking

Child trafficking has been a major social problem in China, the world's most populous country.

This is due to a variety of reasons, including families' preference of a son to a daughter and general ignorance of the law, especially in the rural areas.

William Nee, Amnesty International's China Researcher, said the Chinese government seems to be taking more actions in fighting child trafficking than before.

Mr Nee said Beijing has changed the law to criminalise the buying of children, however many of China's social issues which have contributed to the problem remain unresolved.

According to China's Xinhua News Agency, Beijing solved 3,713 child trafficking cases from 2013 to 2016.

Zeng Haiyan, an official at the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, said to Xinhua: 'Child trafficking cases have decreased but have yet to be eradicated.'

However, according to the Trafficking in Persons Report 2017 released by the US Department of State, China was downgraded into the Tier 3 countries whose governments 'do not fully meet the minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and are not making significant efforts to do so'.

The same report said the exact number of trafficking offenses the Chinese government investigated, prosecuted, and convicted was unclear due China's vague definition of human trafficking.
Rebel Wilson is fighting to have the majority of the $1.5 million she spent in legal costs suing Bauer Media for defamation to be repaid by the publisher.

The Hollywood star, 38, was last year awarded $4.5 million in the highest defamation payout in Australian history.

It was revealed in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Thursday that she spent a seven-figure sum over the 22-day trial, including her barrister Matthew Collins' fees of $9,900 a day, including tax.

The Pitch Perfect star now wants the majority of her costs repaid by Bauer, which defamed her in a series of magazine articles published in 2015.

Rebel Wilson (pictured) is fighting to have the majority of the $1.5 million she spent in legal costs suing Bauer Media for defamation to be repaid by the publisher

Wilson's seven-figure legal costs spent over the 22-day landmark defamation trial were revealed in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Thursday

It is expected she will have at least 80 per cent of those costs - or $1.123 million - repaid, but Wilson's legal team is arguing she should get at least $1.3 million back.

Her barrister Renee Enbom argued that Justice John Dixon made an order on costs rather than have the matter go to a dedicated costs court.

She said Wilson and Bauer Media were arguing over a difference of between $100,000 and $200,000.

Justice Dixon previously found Bauer relied on 'hopeless', or unwinnable defences during the trial, purely to keep Wilson 'worried all the way to verdict'.

Ms Enbom argued that was an 'improper motivation', and the matter of costs should be decided by the trial judge as a result.

However, Justice Dixon said he had already dealt with the matter by awarding Wilson aggravated damages and didn't want to arbitrarily decide on costs.

The Hollywood star, 38, was last year awarded $4.5 million in the highest defamation payout in Australian history

It is expected she will have at least 80 per cent of her costs - or $1.123 million - repaid, but Wilson's legal team is arguing she should get at least $1.3 million back

'I don't see why I should interfere with the standard processes ... for dealing with the issue of costs,' he said.

'It might be efficient and timely, but in the sense it becomes arbitrary, it ceases to be just.'

Ms Enbom also argued Wilson may have to wait until the end of 2018 before recovering her fees if the matter went to a costs court, costing more than another $100,000 to finalise.

She said Wilson had offered to settle the defamation matter - for $200,000 - before it went to trial, but Bauer knocked back the offer.

Bauer Media plans to appeal against the $4.5 million payout to Wilson, with the matter listed for mid-April

'She went on to incur an enormous amount of money,' Ms Enbom said.

Wilson's lawyers successfully proved to an all-woman jury that Bauer branded the screen star as a 'serial liar' who fabricated untruths about her age, real name and childhood in order to make it in Hollywood.

Bauer Media plans to appeal against the $4.5 million payout, with the matter listed for mid-April.

On Thursday, Bauer's barrister Sarah Cherry argued if Justice Dixon determined costs, it would be prejudicial to the publisher.

Justice Dixon adjourned the costs matter for a date to be determined.
This is the distressing moment a young boy cries in pain after getting his hand stuck in a tiny gap of a restaurant's door in south-east China.

The shocking footage shows rescuers trying to expand the gap and freeing his hand.

The mother urged the firefighters as she said her son could not feel his fingers after getting them trapped in the gap more than 10 minutes.

A young boy fails to get his hand out after putting it in between a glass door's hinges

Firemen use a crowbar to expand the space between the doors to free the boy's hand

The unnamed boy had his right hand stuck in the door at a restaurant in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province.

Mobile phone footage, taken on March 7, shows the mother hugging her son and covering his eyes to comfort him as she urges the rescuers to act fast.

'Be quick, it's more than 10 minutes already! His fingers are getting numb,' said the mother.

At least four firemen were called to the scene. They had to use a crowbar to expand the space and push the two doors to the side.

The mother, in striped hoodie, reminded the rescuers to be careful not to touch her son's hand

After three minutes of attempt, firefighters told the boy to take his hand out from the door gap

The mother inspected her son's hand carefully but it's not sure if the boy sustained any injuries

The boy can be heard crying in pain. Horrified onlookers watched on from side until the rescue.

The worried mother warned the firefighters not to touch her son's hand.

Three minutes later, the boy managed to pull his hand out slowly as told by the firefighters.

But it was unclear if the boy sustained any injuries.
A paralysed teenager and his family have won 1,500 compensation after their dream Disney holiday to the US ended in disaster.

Quadriplegic Leon Mason, 15, was forced to sleep across seats in an airport terminal lounge after the flight home from Florida was turned around when crew and passengers fell ill.

The family of eight say their 'once-in-a-lifetime' holiday to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando was 'horrific' because of their the 24-hour airport ordeal.

Leon's father, David, said: 'It was a terrible experience. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for my son. He'll never be able to go again.'

Quadriplegic Leon Mason, 15, has won 1,500 compensation after he was forced to sleep across seats in an airport lounge when his flight home from Florida turned back

The family of eight - including Leon's father, David, and his step-mother, Angela - say their 'once-in-a-lifetime' holiday to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando was ruined

Their flight home was turned back when passengers and crew fell ill. Leon was left with just a pillow to support his head while sleeping in the airport terminal waiting for another flight

Leon - who is also epileptic and suffers from a lung condition - was forced to lay across the airport's seats for 24 hours with only a pillow to support his head while they waited for the next flight home.

Mr Mason is furious at holiday company TUI and claims they initially refused to offer compensation.

He said TUI refused to take responsibility for not accommodating his disabled son in a room overnight.

The 65-year-old said: 'They just didn't want to know - when we were in America and back home.

'I called them after we made it back to the UK to say we had been delayed for 24 hours.

'They just said it was an act of God.'

Solicitors for the family, from Pontypool, South Wales, threatened the airline with legal action and TUI has now agree to compensate the 1,500 to cover the cost of the flights.

But Mr Mason said: 'That is just the cost of the flights. That does not cover the level of discomfort and dismay that we have experienced.'

The flight was turned back when passengers and crew fell ill. The family then had to wait 24 hours for another flight

Mr Mason is furious at holiday company TUI and claims they initially refused to offer compensation. Pictured: Staff at the airport when the family's flight turned back

Coby Benson, a flight delay solicitor at Bott & Co, said TUI 'flouted' rules which meant it was obliged to special care to Leon, as well as give the family food, drink and overnight accomodation.

Mr Benson said: 'The Mason family underwent a horrific ordeal whilst on holiday, only then to face further turmoil on their flight home.

'Under EU Regulations the airline was obliged to provide food, drink and overnight accommodation to all the passengers involved, and pay particular attention to any passengers with reduced mobility.

Leon and his step-mother, Angela Mason. TUI has apologised to the family

'The airline flouted these rules, forcing the family to sleep in awful conditions at the airport and fend for themselves.

'In addition to the obligatory care and assistance, the airline should also have provided each family member with compensation of 600 euros for the long delay they experienced.

'Thomson continuously ignored correspondence and only finally paid out once specialist solicitors were instructed to issue court proceedings against the airline.'

A TUI UK spokeswoman said: 'We would like to apologise for any inconvenience as a result of a flight diversion for customers including Mr Mason who travelled on TOM375 back in May 2017.

'This was as a precautionary measure due to two crew members and a small number of customers who reported feeling unwell.

'A full investigation was carried out, however, there was no evidence to support that the symptoms were caused by the aircraft.

'At all times the safety of our customers and crew, which is always our top priority, was maintained.

'We are unable to comment on any specific cases, however, we can confirm that in this instance due to an administrative error the situation with Mr Mason has been resolved and payment raised.'
A Danish inventor accused of murdering a journalist on his submarine has admitted sleeping next to her corpse before dismembering her and burying her at sea.

But Peter Madsen, 47, today told a court that Kim Wall, 30, died after a sudden air pressure fall.

Madsen said that he was on deck and Miss Wall was inside the vessel when a vacuum effect meant that he was unable to open the hatch door to get to her as exhaust fumes filled the craft.

He admitted that he had lied to investigators and changed his account of what actually happened to Wall several times, but said that he had done so to spare her family.

Last message: Miss Wall sent her boyfriend several text messages during her interview with Madsen, which took place on the submarine

He said: 'I wanted to spare her family and the world the details ... about what actually happened when she died, because it is gruesome.'

Miss Wall disappeared after meeting Madsen for an interview on his submarine Nautilus and her body-parts were later found in plastic bags in the water off the coast of Copenhagen.

The defendant told the court that Miss Wall had a 'very, very lovely night' until the moment she died.

A psychiatric report of the 47-year-old Dane has concluded that he is an intelligent man 'with psychopathic tendencies' who has 'no empathy or feelings of guilt'.

Madsen said in his testimony that he had tried to use a rope to hoist Wall's body out of the submarine, but that she was too heavy.

Although he admitted cutting her body up to perform what he described as a sea burial, he told the court he took no sexual gratification from it, as was put to him by the prosecution.

Miss Wall, 30, disappeared after meeting Madsen for an interview on his submarine Nautilus and her body-parts were later found in plastic bags off the coast of Copenhagen

Trial: Peter Madsen is accused of the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall in August last year, and has admitted to mutilating her body and 'burying her at sea'

He denied any sexual activity with the journalist.

Earlier today, the prosecutor showed the court the heartbreaking final texts Miss Wall sent to her partner.

'I'm still alive btw (by the way),' she wrote, adding 'But going down now!' and 'I love you!!!!!!'

A minute later, she added: 'He brought coffee and cookies tho.'

Madsen, 47, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Miss Wall's body.

Madsen denies killing the 30-year-old but admits to cutting her body up before he 'buried her at sea'.

Madsen's lawyer Betina Hald Engmark said he denied the murder charge and maintained his position that the reporter died accidentally on board his submarine.

Evidence: Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, pictured today arriving in Copenhagen, showed the court the heartbreaking final texts Miss Wall sent to her partner before she died

The press and hearers line up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark

Wearing a black t-shirt, jeans and black eyeglasses, Madsen appeared calm in court, his gaze often looking downwards.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen says Madsen's submarine was submerged for several hours on the night when Miss Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didn't immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact.

When reached over radio - the audio file was played to the Copenhagen City Court Thursday - Madsen said he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.

Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported 'man overboard' over the radio. He was picked up alone.

After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsen's nose, 'blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall,' said Buch-Jepsen.

Buch-Jepsen said Wall's blood was found on the military-style bodysuit that Madsen wore when he was arrested, and he also said that detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive.

Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhoses - both damaged - and pieces of hair.

On August 10, Miss Wall and her Danish boyfriend, Ole Stobbe Nielsen, threw a goodbye party before moving to China.

That evening, she received a text message from Madsen saying an interview was possible. For months, she had been trying to speak with him and she left the party to join the now 47-year-old Dane.

After Wall left to meet Madsen, her boyfriend received several text messages from her.

Police technicians board Peter Madsen's submarine UC3 Nautilus on a pier in Copenhagen three days after Kim Wall's disappearance

He started worrying when the messages stopped coming and eventually alerted authorities, who launched a search for the submarine, which didn't have a satellite tracking system.

The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen was picked up unharmed. Initially, he told police he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.

Investigators found dried blood inside the submarine, and divers eventually found Wall's body parts in plastic bags held down on the Baltic Sea bed by metal pieces. Her torso had been stabbed multiple times.

Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen claims Madsen tied up and tortured Walls before killing her, either by cutting her throat or strangling her. The murder has been called premeditated because he had brought along tools he normally wouldn't take with him on the submarine.

This is one of the last images of Kim Wall, as she and Madsen prepared to set off from Copenhagen harbour aboard Nautilus on August 11, 2017

Kim Wall grew up in southern Sweden, just across a narrow waterway from Copenhagen. She studied at Paris' Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York, from where she graduated with a master's degree in journalism in 2013.

She wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, reporting on topics such as tourism in post-earthquake Haiti and nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.

Shortly after her death, the Columbia Journalism School graduate's family and friends set up a fund in her name to help women journalists reporting on similar issues.

'This will be a way for everyone to focus on the future instead of it all ending that night on the submarine,' her mother Ingrid Wall told Swedish TT news agency ahead of the trial.

'This means her legacy will live on.'
A mother has been charged with murder after her eight-year-old child was found dead inside the seaside home they were renting while it was up for sale.

The boy's body was found at the market-listed home on Alma Street in Tootgarook, 80kms south of Melbourne, about 1.30pm on Thursday.

Police arrived shortly after and arrested the boy's 41-year-old mother, before she was charged with murder on Thursday night.

Police are now investigating whether the 'happy child' may have been suffocated, according to 9 News.

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A mother has been charged with murder after her eight-year-old child was found dead at their rented home (pictured) on Alma Street in Tootgarook, 80kms south of Melbourne, about 1.30pm on Thursday

Police arrived shortly after and arrested the boy's 41-year-old mother, who charged Thursday night

The family had been renting the home (pictured) - which was listed for sale last month - for more than a year

She appeared at an out of sessions court hearing and has been remanded to appear at Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Friday.

Prospective buyers were due to walk through the family's home - which they had been renting for more than a year - this Saturday morning at an open inspection.

The three-bedroom, seaside house was listed last month with a buyer's guide of $550,000 to $600,000.

Meanwhile, locals have described the arrested mother as a friendly resident who would go out of her way to say hello to her neighbours.

Alma Street resident Tina Wallace said she was 'horrified' to learn of the child's death, Herald Sun reported.

She added: 'It's absolutely tragic, I've got a ten-year-old son myself and it scared the hell out of me to hear what had happened.'

Prospective buyers were due to walk through the family's home (pictured) this Saturday morning at an open inspection

The house has been described by real estate agents as an 'ideal holiday getaway or an excellent investment' property

Paramedics were initially called to the property on Alma Street, responding to reports that someone had been suffocated, 7 News reported

'He was always a happy child,' a separate neighbour told 9 News.

'We'd wave hello as we were collecting the bins. They'd always say hello back.'

Nearby residents said no commotion was heard in the afternoon and they couldn't recall any previous trouble at the home, which has children's play equipment surrounding it.

Paramedics were initially called to the property, responding to reports that someone had been suffocated, 7 News reported.
A woman has been found guilty of beheading a Scottish grandmother at her home in South Africa.

Sandra Malcolm had been planning to return to Scotland to visit family in her native Dundee when she was hacked to death.

Sheree Prince, 22, who admitted to the brutal attack, was convicted of breaking into the 74-year-old's Cape Town home and murdering her.

The killer broke into the house by climbing over a gate and through a window, waking up Mrs Malcolm when she turned on the light.

Prince asked her for help because she had earlier burned her foot, so the kind elderly woman cleaned her wound and made her some toast and tea.

Scottish grandmother Sandra Malcolm, 74, (pictured with her granddaughter) was stabbed 24 times then dismembered in her Cape Town home

Mrs Malcolm said she wanted to call an ambulance, but Prince refused and stabbed her several times in the chest with a knife to stop her.

'I started cutting her body to break it apart,' Prince said in her plea statement, before using the victim's phone to text her uncle saying: 'I'm in a hurry, help.'

'I then cut her arms and tried to cut her legs but did not get it right. I then used an axe to cut her legs off,' Prince admitted.

The young woman then put Mrs Malcolm's limbs in a bin and black plastic container outside the house and was taken back to Citrusdal by her uncle.

Prosecutor Advocate Liezl Herbst argued the murder was premeditated.

Prince's defence lawyer, advocate Leandra Adams, disagreed and said it had 'happened on the spur of the moment'.

Judge Bruce Langa said the 'horrifying' way in which Prince killed Sandra would count heavily against her.

At a hearing the judge said: 'I accept the report by the forensic pathologist that the deceased was stabbed 24 times.

'This does not alter the accused's guilt, but will be relevant for sentencing.'

He added: 'The accused totally dismembered the deceased. She removed her head and all the main limbs: legs, arms and knees completely.

'An attempt to cut both her thighs in half was unsuccessful. An attempt to cut the upper torso in half was also unsuccessful.

'There is no justification to kill the deceased unless she planned it. It was planned and she wanted to dispose of the body.'

In her plea statement, Prince said that after breaking into Mrs Malcolm's house in 2015, the pensioner gave her food and treated her injured foot.

Prince said Mrs Malcolm fed her tea and toast, but when she offered to call an ambulance, Prince became suspicious and stabbed her.

She said she killed Mrs Malcolm because she was afraid she would call police.

Prince beheaded the pensioner with a knife and cut off her arms using an axe before throwing her body into a wheelie bin.

Police arrested Prince in Citrusdal, 100 miles north of Cape Town, a few days after the grandmother's death.

Sheree Prince, 22, admitted to the brutal attack and will be sentenced on April 19

They linked her to the scene via fingerprints, mobile phone records and stolen goods they found at her father's house. After her first court appearance in 2015, Prince was admitted to a psychiatric centre.

She was found fit to stand trial at Western Cape High Court, in Cape Town, after years of legal wrangling.

Mrs Malcolm's body was discovered after her grandson reportedly climbed in through a window when she failed to answer the door.

She was found on a Sunday morning at her cottage in Lakeside, near Muizenberg, a suburb of the city.

The grandmother had lived in South Africa for 35 years and was survived by two daughters, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Mrs Malcolm's nephew, Colin Chalmers, of Monifieth, Angus, said in 2015 the family had been left 'distraught' by the violent killing.

He added: 'I've never had to deal with anything like this before, it's shocking.'

Prince said she had left her home in Citrusdal in April 2015 due to her 'poor relationship' with her mother.

She was also found guilty of two charges of housebreaking and one of theft at a property on April 14, 2015.

Prince had broken into a house in Mitchells Plain, near Cape Town, where she stole items worth 1,100.

She admitted robbing a house then going to Muizenberg, where she hid stolen goods in her father's house.

The case was adjourned until April 19 for sentencing.
A leading member of the Clarks shoe family who created the iconic 'Wallabee' design has died aged 81.

Lance Clark was part of the sixth generation of the Clarks family and was regarded as the head of the family, as the single largest shareholder of the business which is based in Street, Somerset.

He was credited with creating the iconic Clarks Wallabee style in the 1960s which remained popular for more than 30 years.

Lance Clark, pictured, of the Clark shoes dynasty has died aged 81

Mr Clark was responsible for designing the iconic Wallabee shoe, pictured, in the 1960s

Mr Clark remained active in the industry even after he stepped down as managing director in 1994.

He was also behind social enterprise project Soul of Africa, formed in 2004, which helped provide employment to South Africans in need through shoe manufacturing.

Mr Clark, who was born and spent most of his life in Street, Somerset, died on Tuesday, February 27.

Clarks CEO Mike Shearwood described Mr Clark as 'an immense character' who played 'a very significant role' in the company.

Mr Shearwood said: 'Lance played a very significant role in Clarks throughout his career, most notably as managing director of Clarks.

'We have lost an immense character who will be forever prominent in our company's history.

'All our thoughts and best wishes are with his family, and especially his wife, children and grandchildren, at this difficult time.'

Clarks is still a privately owned company with shares held by employees, family members and family trusts. The firm turned down several attempts to take it over and bids to float it on the stock market.

Mr Clark stood down from the family business in 1994 although he continued to work in the shoe industry along with his son, Galahad

After leaving the famous family business in 1994, Mr Clark later acquired footwear brands Terra Plana and Edward Green.

He served as managing director of British men's shoe brand Barkers from 1997 to 2000, and was chairman of his son Galahad's company, VivoBarefoot.

Richard Kottler, master of Pattenmakers' Company and former CEO of British Footwear Association, described Clark as 'a complete one off'.

He said: 'He had immense knowledge of the footwear industry worldwide combined with an eye for finding the next opportunity - always in an unconventional way, such as Soul of Africa.

'He was clearly hugely responsible for the amazing growth of Clarks in the late 20th and early 21st century.

'He had colossal wisdom and he freely shared it. His enthusiasm and personality drew people to him. As I always say, the trade needs personalities.'

Footwear veteran Ken Bartle, who worked with Clark at Jones Bootmaker, described him as 'a very good friend'.

'He was a very great man, far-sighted and an absolute gem for footwear. His knowledge was extremely good,' said Mr Bartle.

'The legacy he leaves the footwear industry is Clarks, firstly, and his eldest son Galahad [who runs VivoBarefoot, which makes ultra-thin shoes that mimic skin].'

Martin Ingram, managing director of footwear brand Josef Seibel, added: 'He was an influencer, not only in the UK but the international footwear market over many, many years.

'The end of an era, a true shoe man and a great loss to the shoe world.'
Theresa May branded an attempt to kill a Russian double agent with a nerve agent an 'appalling and reckless crime'.

The Prime Minister said she would do 'what is right' if it was proven the Kremlin was responsible for the attempt on Sergei Skripal's life.

Mrs May hinted at support for expelling the Russian ambassador if the case was proven.

She also said her thoughts were with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the police officer hospitalised after he responded to the incident in Salisbury city centre.

Mrs May said: 'The events of Sunday are a stark reminder, if ever one was needed, of the dangerous situations our emergency services face and the dedication and courage they display every day in order to keep us safe.'

Her new intervention came after the police confirmed a rare nerve agent was used in the attempted assassination in Salisbury on Sunday.

The attack has been widely condemned with Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh saying it would amount to an 'act of war' if Russia is proved responsible.

Theresa May (pictured yesterday in London) branded an attempt to kill a Russian double agent with a nerve agent an 'appalling and reckless crime'

Home Secretary Amber Rudd updated MPs on the latest steps in the investigation in the Commons yesterday (pictured)

Counter-terror police are working to unravel what is now feared to be a sophisticated chemical weapon plot targeting Sergei Skripal (left), 66, and his daughter Yulia (right), 33

Home Secretary Amber Rudd warned Russia will face 'robust' consequences if it is found to be behind the nerve agent attack.

Foreign Office officials are thought to be going through a list of Russian diplomats to identify potential candidates for expulsion.

The Home Secretary declined to comment on possible Russian involvement in what she described as an 'outrageous crime'.

But she revealed ministers were already working on reprisals if the link to Moscow is proved, saying: 'There will come a time for attribution, and there will be further consequences to follow.'

She added: 'The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account.

'But, if we are to be rigorous in this investigation, we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation.'

Privately, Whitehall sources believe it may be days before detectives can show a clear trail leading from Moscow to the park bench where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found this week.

Miss Rudd indicated that new 'Unexplained Wealth Orders', which allow for the confiscation of criminal assets, could be used against cronies of Vladimir Putin.

Ministers also faced calls to approve a so-called Magnitsky Law, which would introduce sweeping powers to freeze the assets of Russian officials accused of human rights abuses.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister told ITV News: 'First of all the police are still investigating, obviously, we need to let the police have the space and time to conduct their investigating so that we get the best possible evidence of what has happened in this particular case.

'Of course if action needs to be taken then the government will do that. We'll do that properly, at the right time, and on the basis on the best evidence.'

Asked if she would expel the ambassador, Mrs May said: 'We will do what is appropriate, we will do what is right, if it is proved to be the case that this is State sponsored.

'But let's give the police the time and space to actually conduct their investigation.'

Mrs May's spokesman said earlier: 'It's clear that this was an appalling and reckless crime and the public will rightly want those responsible to be held to account.'

The spokesman added: 'The Prime Minister wishes to again send her personal thanks to the police and emergency services for their courage in responding to the attack, and thank the people of Salisbury for their help and support.'

In the Commons Tory Sir Edward Leigh said if Russia was responsible it would be a 'brazen act of war' while Labour's Yvette Cooper suggested taking the case to the UN

Conservative MP Sir Edward Leigh said if Russia was behind the attack it was a 'brazen act of war' that was an effort at 'humiliating our country'.

The Home Secretary replied to him: 'There will come a time for attribution, and further consequences will then follow'.

Former minister Sir Des Swayne used Ms Rudd's statement on the attack to demand higher defence spending to confront Britain's enemies.

Yvette Cooper, the Labour chairwoman of the Home Affairs Committee, called for a review of 14 other murders suspected to be linked to Russia.

She suggested Britain go to the UN Security Council with the case to call for an international declaration on extradition of suspects.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd spoke to ITV's Good Morning Britain yesterday after it emerged one of the first police officers to arrive at the bench where the pair were slumped is seriously ill

Earlier, the Home Secretary revealed that a police officer hospitalised after responding to the attack is now 'talking and engaging'.

Ms Rudd told ITV's Good Morning Britain that Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were still in a 'very serious condition' following the plot on Sunday.

Ms Rudd said: 'I've spoken to Mark Rowley (Scotland Yard's head of counter-terrorism policing) this morning. The two targets are still in very serious condition.

'The policeman is talking and is engaging, so I'm more optimistic for him, but it's too early to say. This is a nerve agent. You know, we are still treating it as very serious.'

She added that she was 'hopeful' that the police officer would make a recovery.

Former Tory minister Sir Edward Leigh said yesterday: 'The circumstantial evidence against Russia is strong. Who else would have the motive and the means?

'Those of us who seek to understand Russia know that the only way to preserve peace is through strength. If Russia is behind this, it is a brazen act of war and humiliates our country.'

Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said evidence of a Russian link would have to be met by a package of 'extremely stiff sanctions'.

He urged ministers to deploy the Unexplained Wealth Orders, saying: 'We need to use the type of laws we use against criminals around the world  why shouldn't we use the same measures we use against drug runners against this different type of criminal?'

Labour's Yvette Cooper urged Miss Rudd to review 14 deaths in the UK that, according to BuzzFeed news website, have been linked to Russia by US intelligence agencies.

Miss Cooper, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, also suggested Miss Rudd consider going to the UN Security Council and asking for a statement from all nations to provide assistance.

But the Home Secretary insisted: 'Now is not the time to investigate what is actually only, at the moment, rumour and speculation.'
A massive door to door search by police and volunteers saved a terrified 11-year-old girl from being killed with a crossbow then dismembered by a twisted grandfather who kidnapped her, Russian police said.

Sergey Vikhlyantsev, 59, posed as a policeman with a fake ID and told Anya Vypretskaya she was under arrest after snaring her as she walked to school.

He handcuffed her and bundled her into his car before taking her to his flat where he bound her with rope and covered her mouth with sticky tape.

Anya Vypretskaya, 11, was kidnapped and held in the Russian city of Kamyshin for ransom for five days

Sergey Vikhlyantsev, 59, posed as a policeman with a fake ID to kidnap her, planning to etort 4,000 from her rich parents, or kill her with a crossbow and dismember her body

The retired shop loader's evil plan was to take her to Moscow from her city of Kamyshin, near Volgograd, and demand a ransom from the girl's wealthy parents.

But police say after interrogating him that his back-up scheme if things went wrong was to kill her with his crossbow and chop up her body with a hatchet - both weapons were found in his flat.

Volunteer searches for Anya got underway and 1,340 police flooded onto the streets to search every home in the 120,000 population city.

Posters were issued saying she looked more like 13 or 14.

Anya Vypretskaya is reunited with her parents in the police station after being rescued

Anya managed to use her mobile, which until then had been switched off, to make a brief call to her mother telling her she was held by a man close to a market in Kamyshin

Posters of Anya were put up around the city saying she looked more like 13 or 14

Her parents Alexander, 48, and Galina, 43, issued an emotional social media appeal saying: 'We're are in despair, we are ready to meet all your conditions.

'We cannot sleep, do not eat, and keep crying Please, hear us. We pray for you and our child. We are an honest family, we will keep our word.'

The man untied her when he was in the flat and on her second day as a captive she managed to use her mobile, which until then had been switched off, to make a brief call to her mother telling her she was held by a man close to a market in Kamyshin.

He had targeted her because he used to work at a shop owned by her parents and believed them to have money, police said.

Vikhlyantsev wanted money to cover his 4,000 debt - but he stalled after the public outcry over missing Anya and failed to make the ransom demand.

Volunteer searches for Anya got underway and 1,340 police (pictured) flooded onto the streets to search every home in the 120,000 population city

The door to door searches reached Vikhlyantsev after five days - and he tried to stop police entering his flat (pictured)

The kidnapper being dragged away by police after Anya was freed

He 'got scared' by the huge campaign to locate Anya - and 'planned to quietly kill the child and dismember her body', head of Volgograd region police Alexander Kravchenko said.

The door to door searches reached Vikhlyantsev after five days - and he tried to stop police entering his flat.

Then officers heard the girl shout from inside: 'You must be looking for me.' They broke in an freed the girl, who was quickly reunited with her parents.

Police said there was no sexual violence against the child.

Then officers heard the girl shout from inside: 'You must be looking for me.' They broke in an freed the girl (Anya pictured just after she was rescued about to go to the police station)

Vikhlyantsev wanted money to cover his 4,000 debt - but he stalled after the public outcry over missing Anya and failed to make the ransom demand.

Vikhlyantsev was arrested and faces up to 12 years in jail if convicted of kidnapping the child.

Alexander said: 'When we met him in the street, he always said hello.

'From time to time he came to our shop and talked to our workers who he knew. He is the last person we suspected of being a kidnapper.

'I could never imagine so many people would support us.

'People from many towns in Russia sent me messages, and offered money to pay kidnapper. Now I know that people will help when you are in trouble.'
The oil painting of St John the Evangelist has sold for 540,000

A couple, who hung an old painting they didn't like out of the way in a spare room, were stunned when it sold for a whopping 540,000 after it turned out to be an Old Master.

The anonymous owners, from Oxfordshire, had been told the oil painting of St John the Evangelist might be worth 600 by an auctioneer called to value some furniture at their house.

Expert James Lees didn't have the chance to properly research the 3ft 6ins by 2ft 6ins painting before the sale and so wrongly listed it as being 19th century.

It turned out the unsigned work was an Old Master painting, possibly by a student of Renaissance great Anthony van Dyck, and dated to the 17th century.

Mr Lees realised he may have undervalued the painting when his auction house was inundated with calls.

Bidding for it started at 2,000 and soon went up in increments of 5,000 until the hammer fell at a staggering 440,000.

With fees added on the total price paid by the buyer in the room was around 540,000.

The vendors watched the auction via their smartphone as they were out driving at the time and 'nearly swerved off the road' when the hammer fell.

They own a farmhouse in the Oxfordshire area and needed to raise some quick money to pay for some urgent repairs.

Jasper Marsh, of auctioneers Holloway's of Banbury, described the Old Master painting as a 'good old fashioned sleeper' - an antique that's true value goes unrecognised for years.

He said: 'The painting had been in the family for generations, since before the 1890s.

'The owners didn't like it which is why they put it out of the way in a spare bedroom.

'I think they needed to raise funds for repairs on their farmhouse and James went to have a look at some items they had.

'They directed him to the painting and I think he just said 'OK, we'll take it as well.' They would have been happy to have received our original estimated price for it.

'We don't have a resident picture expert here and we were working close to the deadline for the sale so it slipped us by.

Jasper Marsh, of auctioneers Holloway's of Banbury, described the Old Master painting as a 'good old fashioned sleeper' - an antique that's true value goes unrecognised for years

'We had viewings for three days before the sale and we took it down off the wall a couple of dozen times for people to look at. We also sent many images of it to people by request via email.

'We started the bidding at 2,000 and it was between a bidder in the room and a phone bidder who dropped out at 28,000.

'It then came down to two bidders in the room and when the bidding reached 200,000 it went up in 5,000 increments.

'A picture expert looked at it after the sale and he said it was an Old Master connected to van Dyke, possibly a follower of or school of.

'James called the vendors after the sale. They had been watching online while they were driving. They got very excited and nearly swerved off the road.

'They are very nice people and are very happy if a little bit in shock. It was a nice surprise for everyone.'

The painting depicts St John the Evangelist and the poison chalice and is similar to a painting that sold in 2000 in Amsterdam to Rubens, who van Dyck was a student of.

Van Dyck, who was born in Antwerp, became the leading court painter in England and his most famous work is his portrait of Charles I which is in the National Gallery in London.
Washington's top diplomat began his first Africa tour Thursday by meeting with the African Union chief, who said the continent had moved on from a reported insult by President Donald Trump.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and AU commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed security and counter-terrorism, trade and development, corruption and conflict in an hour-long meeting at the continental body's headquarters in the Ethiopian capital.

But looming over the meeting was Trump's alleged description of African nations as 's***hole countries' in during a January Oval Office discussion about immigration  which forced the president to pen a letter reaffirming his commitment to the continent.

Faki insisted the slur was now in Africa's rear-view mirror.

'I received a letter written by President Trump to myself and I shared that with other African leaders. I believe this incident is of the past,' he said.

Turn the page: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a press conference with the African Union's Moussa Faki, who said Donald Trump's infamous 's***hole countries' slur is in 'the past'

President Trump spoke to the Latino Coalition on Wednesday; he also referred to Central American countries as 's***holes' during an infamous Oval Office meeting in January about immigration

Rwanda has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa; the new hotels, shopping malls and gated communities are being constructed around Kigali  next to slums  indicate changing public images of the continent

Tillerson's five-nation Africa tour -- to include Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria, all key allies in fighting Islamic extremism  has been described as a 'listening tour', with no deals or initiatives due to be announced.

'The purpose of my trip is to listen to what the priorities of the countries here on the continent are and see where there is good alignment,' said Tillerson.

The diplomat met Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu as well as Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who resigned earlier this month amid a political crisis in Africa's fastest growing economy.

Tillerson urged Ethiopia to move on from a state of emergency 'as quickly as possible' and called for citizens in the tightly-run country to be given 'greater freedoms.'

Analysts highlight the choice of countries visited by Tillerson as a sign of the United States' focus on security issues on the continent.

N'Djamena, the capital of Chad (Mahamat's home country) is a study in contrasts, with marketplaces (left) looking like much of the Third World and downtown seeming far more developed

Tillerson and Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed security and counter-terrorism, trade and development, corruption and conflict in an hour-long meeting

Trump reportedly criticized African nations (Somalia is pictured above) during the January immigration meeting, angering the African Union

The State Department is grappling with the impact of Trump's 'America First' policy , Tillerson's maiden trip to Africa is seen as shoring up America's commitment to the continent

Chad, Kenya and Nigeria are all battling Islamic extremism, with help from the United States, while Djibouti hosts the only permanent US military base on the continent.

Tillerson and Faki discussed continued US support to African counter-terrorism forces in the Sahel and Somalia but no new concrete commitments were given.

'We have not yet won that battle in Somalia and we must stay at it,' Tillerson said.

His visit is also a bid to counter the mounting perception that the continent is a low priority for the Trump administration, with US-Africa policy ill-defined and key ambassadorial and State Department posts unfilled.

Tillerson's department, meanwhile, submitted a 2019 budget request that would cut US health programs in Africa by a fifth and diplomatic programs by more than a third.

NATO PARADISE: Trump told senators in January that instead of importing immigrants from the Third World, America should seek out people from countries like Norway

However he said his visit was 'an indication of the importance the continent plays in the future of the US, both in security and from the economic standpoint.'

Also looming over the journey is the rise of China as an economic and diplomatic power to rival the West.

Tillerson warned against blind acceptance of booming Chinese investment in Africa.

He said the US was 'not in any way attempting to keep Chinese investment dollars out of Africa' but urged governments to 'carefully consider the terms of those investments' so they do 'not forfeit any elements of your sovereignty'.

He also solicited African support in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Tillerson said the US was 'a long way from negotiations' with North Korea, which this week made a shock offer to discuss denuclearization in return for security guarantees.

Tillerson's trip to Ethiopia is scheduled to briefly overlap with a visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said he had requested a meeting. Washington denied receiving an invitation to talks.

'We sent proposals to the Americans and they said they will think about that but later. As you know, they announced that there will be no meeting and that no discussions (about it) have taken place at all,' Lavrov said in Zimbabwe.

Tillerson, in Addis Ababa, called the idea that he had rejected a meeting with Lavrov 'silly.'

'If it doesn't work out here, he and I see each other often around the world and we have each other's telephone numbers and we do use them.'

Tillerson heads to Djibouti and Kenya on Friday.
A British tourist has told how he and his brother 'miraculously' survived after being both shot at point blank range by gangsters while on holiday in Brazil.

James Ledsham described how he saved his younger brother William's life by throwing his body between him and the gunman, who had been holding the gun to William's head, just as he was pulling the trigger.

The bullets instead shattered the bones in James' upper arm, 'turning it to jelly' during the terrifying incident in the early hours of last Friday in the idyllic beachside resort of Porto Seguro.

But James still managed to grab his terrified brother from the assailants and flee with him across a road, while the gangsters carried on shooting, firing eight bullets and hitting the brothers five times.

James (right) saved younger brother William (left) after throwing himself in front of the gunman to stop him being shot in the head

Close up photos reveal the extent of the damage to William's arm which he said 'turned to jelly' after the bullets shattered his bones

Amazingly the shots missed their arteries and vital organs, and one bullet which was fired into James' back as he fled was later found lodged next to his spine.

After two weeks with their relatives James and William decided to have some brother time together, and booked a hotel in the popular resort of Porto Seguro, in the neighbouring state of Bahia.

But after taking an overnight bus to the Atlantic coast beauty spot, the brothers had no idea that their first day there would end in terror.

James said: 'We'd taken the ferry over to a beautiful place called Arraial d'Ajuda, with beautiful historic buildings and great beaches, and spent the day there. It was midnight when we got the ferry back.

'We decided to walk back to the hotel along the coastal road. We were both tired but keen to get back to our beds. William was lagging a few metres behind me.'

It was around 1am when two men on a scooter sped past them, then turned round and drove straight at William, who was carrying the pair's rucksack. The passenger grabbed him with one hand on the back of his neck and thrust a revolver into his forehead.

James remembered: 'I looked back and could see William struggling as they tried to remove his rucksack. Somehow I knew they were going to kill him. I could see him squeezing the trigger and I just thought, 'I need to protect my brother, otherwise he's dead.

'I ran over and grabbed William by his shirt and forearm, shielding him from the gun with my body.

'As soon as I grabbed him the gunman started shooting, at point blank range, hitting William in the hand and me twice in the arm. Bullets that were meant for William's head. It all happened in a matter of seconds.

James is now on powerful painkillers and has been told he won't be able to move his arm upwards for at least six months

Other injuries sustained by the pair included bullet holes through the hands and upper body

'I felt my arm turn to jelly, I couldn't move it at all. I saw a hotel over the road with lights on, and ran towards it, taking William with me. I don't know how I managed to hold onto him with my arm shot to pieces.

'The robbers carried on shooting at us as we ran across the road. They were still just metres away and one bullet hit William in the back. We thought they were coming after us but they appeared to give up and the shooting stopped.'

The brothers arrived in a state of panic at the locked hotel lobby, but according to James four members of staff initially refused to open the door to help them.

He said: 'We were banging on the door and screaming for them to let us in, but they refused to open the door for about three minutes. It was terrifying. I knew I was so close to death, but at the same time I was doing everything to try not to think that I was going to die. I was praying, and something inside of me telling myself to not let my life end like that.

'Eventually they let us in and we collapsed on the floor. The staff still didn't do anything to help us, and it was still nearly ten minutes before they decided to call the police.

'By now I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I was lying in a pool of blood, it was like an extremely violent pulp fiction movie. I took off my belt and wrapped it tightly around my biceps, I'd seen that done so many times in films, I kind of knew that's what you had to do. And all the time making myself think of anything but death.

'William was freaking out but was also saying positive things and trying to be strong.'

The brothers held out until an ambulance arrived around 30 minutes later, which took them to a local hospital. James claims they languished in the 'brutal' public hospital for six hours until they were finally taken for surgery, when he had a metal bar fitted from his shoulder to his arm.

One bullet, fired into James' back was lodged in his spine and not taken out during the initial surgery. It needed to be removed by doctors on another visit

James said that he and his brother have not talked about how he literally took a bullet for him

After being discharged on Monday and returning to stay with their relatives, specialists yesterday found that surgeons had missed one of the bullets which was lodged in William's back, between his shoulder blade and his spine.

Police investigating the incident are no closer to identifying or capturing the suspects, who ended up fleeing the scene empty-handed.

James believes it is a 'miracle' that he and his brother escaped the ambush with their lives.

He said: 'I can't stress enough how much of a miracle it was. We were shot at point blank range, we were hit five times. Those men were shooting to kill us, it wasn't an attempted robbery, it was an attempted murder. If those bullets had hit us in any other part of our bodies than where they did we would probably be dead.

'That bullet that hit my brother in the back could have killed him or left him paralysed, but stopped in one of the only places in his back that didn't cause any harm at all. We're still trying to get over it.

'I know someone was watching over us that night. I'm a pretty grounded person, but I'd like to think that my mother was there protecting us. It's a nice thought anyway.'

James added that he and his brother have not talked about how he literally took a bullet for him.

He said: 'We probably won't talk about it. It's just what brothers are for, and we've always been extremely close, I don't think we could be much closer. We're just happy to be alive.'

It was a terrifying end to what was supposed to be an emotional trip for James, 26, and William, 20, as they travelled to Brazil for the first time together since their Brazilian mother died when they were still children.

James, from Camden, London, was just eight when mum Ana Maria, a teacher, passed away suddenly aged just 36 after becoming ill with a mystery virus and dying just a day later.

The brothers had taken the trip in memory of their Brazilian mother and had visited their grandmother just days before they were shot

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, he told how for years following her death he shut out recollections of his mother, and avoided anything that would remind him of her homeland, because the memories were too painful.

But this year the brothers finally found the courage to make the sentimental trip to visit their mother's family, and especially their grandmother, who live in the southeastern state of Espirito Santo.

James, whose British father Paul met Ana Maria after she moved to London, said: 'The last memory I have of my mother is of her throwing up in the toilet.

'Within hours her organs had shut down. To this day doctors can't explain it, I've never had an answer.

'Her death totally destroyed us. It was very difficult for me growing up without a mother, and for my dad too bringing us up alone.

'I had to be strong for my younger brother. But anything about Brazil reminded me of her and would set me off and make me angry, so I tried to avoid them.

'When she died I spoke fluent Portuguese, but after her death I didn't speak it again and eventually forgot how to. It took me a long time until I was strong enough to rediscover my Brazilian heritage.'

James and William arrived in Brazil on February 1, spending a week in Rio de Janeiro before travelling up country to the towns of Nova Venecia and Sao Mateus, where their mother grew up and where most of their relatives still live.

He said: 'We spent the week before carnival in Rio and the city was tense and on edge. There had been a lot of gang violence and the army were about to move in to try to restore order. We were happy to leave there and go to a place we knew was safer.

'It was great to meet up with out grandmother, aunt, uncles and cousins. It was like we'd never been apart and everything came flooding back, even the Portuguese.

'It was also very emotional as we retraced mum's steps, the school she studied at and other schools where she'd worked as a teacher. Everybody spoke fondly of her and we got to see photos of her we'd never seen before. It was really special for William who was a baby when she died.

'We didn't feel sad though. We'd decided that the trip was a time to be happy and to celebrate her life.'

Although William, who is undergoing further surgery today the remove the bullet, will be returning to the UK within a week, James says he wants to stay in Brazil for longer - despite the traumatic experience.

James, who is on powerful painkillers and has been told he won't be able to move his arm upwards for at least six months, explained: 'I don't want my time in Brazil to end like this, even though part of me would love to see Heathrow right now.

'I was planning on staying for some months, and if I cut it short because of this I would be going back with a very heavy heart. It would be as if this trip, which was to celebrate my mother's life, has been ruined.

'My dad is incredibly worried about us and wants to back, I think he's actually a bit worse off than us with all this. But I'm not ready yet. I want to leave Brazil on feeling happier and more fulfilled, for her sake.'
Liam Fox today slammed the European Union for approaching the Brexit negotiations like a 'gang'.

The International Trade Secretary said threats to punish Britain for voting to leave the bloc were uncalled for and unnecessary.

The leading Brexiteer insisted Brussels should cool its comments and work toward a mutually beneficial deal.

Dr Fox's comments will anger EU officials who insist Britain cannot have the benefits of being a member without the obligations.

Liam Fox (pictured today at the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London) slammed the European Union for approaching the Brexit negotiations like a 'gang'.

Boris Johnson, pictured today sporting a t-shirt to mark international women's day, has also previously called for the EU to be more optimistic about Brexit and the prospects for trade to thrive aferwards

EU Council President Donald Tusk, who is visiting Ireland later, repeated the warning yesterday that Brexit would inevitably cut UK-EU trade.

Dr Fox, who made his comments at the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London today, said: 'The idea of punishing Britain is not the language of a club, it's the language of a gang.'

He denied Britain was heading into an 'economic black hole' but acknowledged that firms would need to look beyond the EU for future export growth.

'There are great prizes for our economy as we leave the EU in this era of globalisation if we have the courage to grasp them.

'We cannot let the patterns of the past constrain the opportunities of the future ,' he told the conference.

EU Council President Donald Tusk (pictured in Luxembourg), who is visiting Ireland later, repeated the warning yesterday that Brexit would inevitably cut UK-EU trade

'In just 10 years the proportion of our exports that go the European Union has dropped by 11 per cent and this is unlikely to be a one-off change.

'The IMF predict that over the next 10 years or so 90 per cent, of global growth will be outside the European Union.'

Best for Britain spokesman Tom Brake said: 'Liam Fox is once again demonstrating his knack for losing friends and alienating people.

'The UK's best chance of securing a good deal with the EU is for the discussions to be conducted cordially, accusing the other side of being a 'gang' only turns up the heat.'
Chemical weapons experts are today continuing the painstaking process of working out where the nerve agent used in the Russian spy attack came from.

Investigators have ruled out the two best known nerve agents, sarin and VX, sources have suggested. The Home Secretary has meanwhile described the chemical as 'very rare'.

Detectives are understood to be moving away from the theory that the nerve agent was sprayed directly at Skripal, a source told MailOnline.

They are instead believed to be focusing more on the possibility that poison was added to his food or drink at some point before he collapsed.

Investigators hope that by working out exactly which nerve agent was used in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia (pictured in Salisbury two years ago), they can determine where it came from

Police seen putting on protective suits and gas masks in preparation to carry out further investigation work in Salisbury

It is hoped the composition of the substance will help investigators work out where the agent was manufactured.

Experts say the clear liquids can be made at only 'a few laboratories in the world', mostly government-controlled.

The first modern nerve agents, including sarin, which was released by a Japanese doomsday cult onto the Tokyo subway in 1995, were first devised by the Germans during World War II.

A new generation of the chemical weapons, including VX, were later invented by the British during the Cold War. VX is up to 150 times more deadly than sarin.

The fact that investigators appear to have ruled out those two suggests the nerve agent used last weekend could be a so-called 'fourth generation' agent.

They were developed by the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s and are said to be even more toxic than VX, which has been classed as a weapon of mass destruction by the UN.

These Novichoks, meaning 'newcomer' in Russian, are said to be binary weapons, which mean they contain two harmless chemicals which only become toxic when mixed together in an aerosol or missile. This makes them easier to make, store and transport safely, but may also render conventional anecdotes ineffective.

Photos emerged today of the immediate aftermath of the nerve agent attack in Salisbury

Police in protective suits and gas masks working near Salisbury earlier this week

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, said: 'Symptoms of exposure to nerve agents may include respiratory arrest, heart failure, twitching or spasms - anything where the nerve control is degraded.'

Scientists do not want to say how nerve agents are created, for fear of copycat attacks, but the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain, although it takes proper equipment to mix the substances safely.

The chemicals can kill within minutes, by disrupting electrical signals through the nervous system which makes it hard to breathe.

People cough and foam at the mouth as their lungs fill with mucus, they vomit, sweat, become incontinent and their eyes run. It is described by experts as 'turning on all the taps'.

Dr Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham, said: 'If you have ever seen a fly sprayed it drops on its back and lies with its legs in leg in the air, twitching, this is the result of nerve agents taking hold.'

After a police officer was hospitalised while helping the spy and his daughter, investigations have taken extra precautions when examining the scene

Scientists at the Porton Down Research establishment are trying to work out where the nerve agent used came from

The Korean leader's half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died within 20 minutes after his face was smeared with VX at an airport in Malaysia last February. The Ministry of Defence has since admitted carrying out animal experiments using the nerve agent, to try to develop an antidote.

VX is one of five main nerve agents and, with another called GF, is a 'G-series' agent usually inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Just a fraction of a drop, absorbed through the skin, can take effect within seconds and 'fatally disrupt the nervous system', according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The other three 'V-series' agents are sarin, tabun and soman, which are primarily designed to kill their victims through inhalation and were devised by the Germans but never used during World War II.

All five colourless chemicals are sometimes called nerve gas, but this is incorrect, as they are liquid at room temperature.
Theodore Johnson, pictured, has had his minimum jail term for murdering his partner Angela Best increased from 26 to 30 years

Theodore Johnson brutally murdered 51-year-old Angela Best at his north London home after she ended their 20-year relationship and met another man.

He beat her with a claw hammer and strangled her with a dressing gown cord after she went to his flat to help him with a passport application in December 2016.

The 64-year-old had two previous manslaughter convictions after killing his wife in 1981 and another former partner in 1992.

He was jailed for life at the Old Bailey in January and ordered to serve at least 26 years behind bars for Miss Best's murder.

But three senior judges ruled on Thursday that the sentence was 'unduly lenient' and increased his tariff to 30 years following an application by Solicitor General Robert Buckland.

Lord Justice Holroyde said: 'We accept the submission of the Solicitor General that the sentencing of Mr Johnson was unduly lenient.'

The mother-of-four and grandmother only found out he had killed before when she came across letters at his home and confronted him.

When she left him for another man, he attacked the 51-year-old, beating her over the head with a claw hammer and throttling her with the belt from her leopard print dressing gown.

He then jumped in front of an express train at Cheshunt station in Hertfordshire, but survived.

Wheelchair-bound Johnson pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to murdering Ms Best on December 15 2016, and was jailed for life in January with a minimum term of 26 years. However, that sentence was increased today on appeal as being 'unduly lenient'.

Judge Richard Marks QC said: 'The attack by you on Angela Best was sustained, vicious and utterly brutal. She suffered an unimaginably terrible death.'

'His crime was aggravated by the fact it was his third killing of a female partner and that he repeatedly lied to authorities who were monitoring him in the community.

Judge Marks said: 'Such repeated offending, resulting in three separate court cases, must be almost unprecedented.'

Johnson murdered Angela Best, pictured, after she left him having discovered he had killed two previous partners in the 1980s and 1990s and served two jail terms for manslaughter

Afterwards, Ms Best's sister Lorraine Jones accused Johnson of attempting to 'play the system' to get away with murder.

She said: 'This convicted murderer tried to play the system as he has successfully done before.

'He used diminished responsibility as the cause for his murderous actions.

'This time, however, he has eventually pleaded guilty to murder after 12 months since his arrest and subjecting our family to unnecessary additional trauma.

'He has shown in all cases he was clearly of sound mind. He knew what he was doing when he planned and executed the horrific murder of our beloved Angela.'

Ms Best's sisters Valerie Archibold, left, and Lorraine Jones, right, speaking after his conviction in January, accused the triple killer of attempting to 'play the system'

Prosecutor Mark Heywood QC had told how Johnson had a violent history towards the women in his life, having been convicted of manslaughter twice before.

In 1981, he was was found guilty by reason of 'provocation' of killing his wife Yvonne Johnson by pushing her off the ninth-floor balcony of their home in Wolverhampton.

Then, in 1993, a couple of years before meeting Ms Best, he was convicted of strangling his common law wife Yvonne Bennett with a belt at their home in London before trying to hang himself.

The prosecution accepted his responsibility was diminished due to depression and a personality disorder and he was handed a hospital order with restrictions at the Old Bailey.

In September 1994, Johnson was allowed out of his psychiatric unit for the first time on escorted community parole.

In mid-1995, he was given unescorted leave to spend two days a week at a City and Guilds course on furniture restoration.

It was there in 1996 that he met Ms Best, who had moved to Tottenham, north London, from Manchester.

Mitigating for Johnson, Annette Henry QC said her client was likely to die behind bars.

She said: 'He does not wish to be alive. He hates himself for what happened. We recognise the devastation felt by the family members.'

After being sentenced, Johnson made to stand up to leave the dock, but became shaky, sat down again and was wheeled out of court.

Camden and Islington NHS Trust, which was responsible for Johnson's care in the community since 2004, said in a statement: 'We would like to offer our heartfelt condolences once again to the family of Ms Best for their appalling loss.

'We will be inviting them to meet us, should they wish to do so, to discuss the findings of the Trust's own independently-chaired incident report'.
These are the mugshots of Britain First's leader and deputy leader after they were jailed for 18 and 36 weeks respectively on charges of religiously-aggravated harassment.

Paul Golding, 36, was found guilty of one charge of religiously-aggravated harassment and Jayda Fransen three counts of the same offence in relation to an incident in Kent.

They were arrested last May as part of a probe into the distribution of leaflets and online videos posted during a trial at Canterbury Crown Court during the trial of three Muslim men and a teenager later jailed for raping a 16-year-old in a flat above a takeaway.

Police released these mugshots of Jayda Fransen (left) and Paul Golding (right) after they were jailed

Britain First leader Paul Golding (front right), and deputy leader Jayda Fransen (left) at Folkestone Magistrates' Court in Kent today

Restaurant owner Tamin Rahmani, 38, of Northwood Road in Ramsgate, takeaway workers Shershah Muslimyar, 21, of Hovenden Close in Canterbury, Raffiullah Hamid,24 of no fixed abode and a boy from Ashfield who cannot be named for legal reasons were later found guilty and jailed for a total of 49 years in prison for the crime.

Both Fransen and Golding were convicted on a joint charge of religiously aggravated harassment after an incident on May 5 at 555 Pizza takeaway in Ramsgate, Kent, last year.

On May 9 Fransen visited an address in Gwynn Road in Ramsgate, on the understanding Tamin Rahmani lived there.

Kelli Best, who lived there, told the court she heard banging, rattling of the door handle and recognised Fransen.

She said Fransen was making racist remarks directed to Tamin and it made her feel very anxious and her children were scared.

Judge Justin Barron said the duo's words and actions 'demonstrated hostility' towards Muslims and the faith of Islam.

Fransen shot into the international media spotlight last November when US president Donald Trump retweeted anti-Islamic posts from her Twitter page.

Golding and Fransen, of Penge, South East London, stood trial in January charged with three and four counts respectively of the hate crime.

The judge at Folkestone Magistrates' Court in Kent found Fransen guilty of three charges and Golding guilty of one - but dismissed the other counts against them.

He said: 'I have no doubt it was their joint intention to use the facts of the case (in Canterbury) for their own political ends. It was a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.'

Fransen and Golding pose with their supporters outside Folkestone Crown Court today

Fransen and Golding, pictured at a rally in Ramsgate, Kent, have now both been found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment

Fransen banged on the windows and doors of the shop and screamed 'paedophile' and 'foreigner' while two children were playing in the middle of the shop and Jamshed Khesrow, a friend of the owners, was inside.

Detective Inspector Bill Thornton of Kent Police said today: 'The crimes committed by Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen were abhorrent and motivated by religious insensitivities.

They claimed to be exposing the men who had been accused of rape when in reality they knew little about the case in question and could have put the trial at risk due to their reckless actions.

It was the bravery of the female who was attacked and the tireless work of Kent Police detectives who ensured the men responsible are now serving a significant period of time behind bars, not because of any misguided attempt by Golding and Fransen to claim credit for their conviction by bringing religion into the equation.

The fact that completely innocent members of the public were accused of being rapists, making them fear for their own safety, shows how little regard they have for the consequences of their actions.

Kent Police simply will not tolerate any offences that are motivated by prejudice and hate, and will investigate all such incidents thoroughly in order to bring those responsible in front of the courts.

Judge Barron dismissed a second charge against the pair alleged to have taken place outside Canterbury Crown Court later that day.

Fransen was accused of telling defendant Tamin Rahmani's brother Faiz that 'Muslims are b******s and rapists'.

Judge Barron said that section of the conversation was not recorded and the video that was played to the court did not amount to threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

Fransen and Golding were arrested over alleged campaigning around an ongoing trial of three Muslim men and a teenager

Fransen was convicted of abuse after visiting a house she wrongly believed to be the current address of another defendant, Sershah Muslimyar. But Golding was cleared of uploading a video of this incident.

Fransen was also convicted of visiting the Kent home of Tamin Rahmani, and shouting racist abuse through the front door while his pregnant partner Kelli Best was there.

Jamshed Khesrow told the court about the incident on May 5 last year when he was visiting 555 Pizza takeaway, which his friend owns in Ramsgate.

He said at the time that two children were playing in the middle of the shop, and he went to investigate when he heard banging on the front doors and window.

Mr Khesrow told how he heard Fransen 'screaming' and shouting: 'Come out you paedophile. You're a rapist. Come outside, I want to talk to you.'

He said: 'She was swearing. I was so scared, I thought she was going to start fighting with me. She was very aggressive and angry. I didn't know what was going on.'

There were sniggers from the public gallery - which was packed full of the group's supporters - as Mr Khesrow gave his evidence from behind a screen. Mr Khesrow told the owner to dial 999 and said Golding was filming at the time.

Then he told the court he heard Fransen shouting in the street, saying: 'I'm not scared of the police. I don't care about the police.' Mr Khesrow added: 'I've lived in England for 17 years and I've never been scared like this.'

The judge found Fransen (left) guilty of three charges and Golding (right, both pictured today) guilty of one charge but dismissed the other counts against them

When questioned as to why he had not previously mentioned the specific comments she made, he said: 'Nobody asked me. If nobody asks me, how can I say it?

'You're asking me now and I'm answering you. I don't need to lie to you. You know and I know that she is swearing my religion all the time.'

Fransen and Golding were arrested on May 10 over alleged campaigning around the then-ongoing trial of three Muslim men and a teenager, who were later convicted and jailed for raping a 16-year-old girl in a flat above the takeaway.

The charges against Britain First leaders: How Fransen was guilty of three counts of religiously-aggravated harassment and Golding one Britain First leader Paul Golding, 36, was found guilty of one count of religiously-aggravated harassment.

His deputy, Jayda Fransen, 32, was found guilty of three counts of the same offence. The convictions relate to three incidents last year.

On May 5, Fransen and Golding banged on the windows and doors of a pizza takeaway in Ramsgate, Kent, with Fransen shouting 'paedophile' and 'foreigner'.

Fransen was convicted of abuse after visiting a house she wrongly believed to be the current address of another defendant, Sershah Muslimyar. But Golding was cleared of uploading a video of this incident.

Fransen was also convicted of visiting the Kent home of Tamin Rahmani, and shouting racist abuse through the front door while his pregnant partner Kelli Best was there.

Judge Barron dismissed a second charge against the pair alleged to have taken place outside Canterbury Crown Court later that day. Advertisement

When they were questioned by police over the distribution of leaflets and online videos posted during the trial, they did not comment.

Earlier in the trial, the court watched video footage entitled 'Muslim rapists 2' which showed Faiz Rahmani standing with his brother Tamin Rahmani - one of the defendants - and his barrister outside by the door to Canterbury Crown Court.

Fransen was seen walking up the steps towards the group, asking if they were Muslim and 'what they were in for'.

Giving evidence in court, Mr Rahmani claimed she called Muslims 'b******s' and 'rapists' - comments which did not appear on the footage shown - and branded her 'aggressive and loud'.

The court heard in January, that the two 12 and 13-year-old daughters of Rahmani, one of the men who was convicted of the rape, were at 555 Pizza when Golding and Fransen arrived.

Footage shown to the court saw Fransen banging on the windows of the restaurant and saying the words: 'Using these restaurant to trap young girls, English girls and rape them.

'You dirty monsters. You are all going to be exposed. Come outside and face me.'

One of the children started filming Fransen and Golding when the banging on the door and shouting had started.

The mother of Tamin Rahmani's children told the court that she heard Fransen knocking at the door and said the shop was closed.

She said: 'She was banging and saying 'come out, come out,' it was like someone was attacking you, really, really aggressive. Then I called the police I didn't know who they were.'

The witness said her daughters were left in a worried state by the incident. She said: 'They were crying. They were worried about them coming back.'

A second witness, PC Nicholas Mayo, said the two girls were his main concern when he attended the premises after the police were called.

He said: 'They were very distressed, very shaken up' and that one of the girls 'was clearly in tears.'

Kevin Smallcombe, defending, in examining the mother of Rahmani's children, said: 'The confrontation was very brief. Would you agree with that?'

She disagreed but when asked said it lasted 'a couple of minutes, a maximum of five minutes'.

Fransen (left, pictured with Golding) shot into the international media spotlight last year when Donald Trump retweeted some anti-Islamic posts on her social media page

Protesters hold placards and Union flags during a protest titled 'London march against terrorism' in response to the March 22 Westminster terror attack on April 1, 2017 in London

How Donald Trump was blasted for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen on Twitter Jayda Fransen hit the headlines in November last year when Donald Trump shared anti-Muslim videos she posted on Twitter. The President's decision sparked an immediate backlash, with Theresa May condemning the move and the widow of murdered MP Jo Cox accusing him of 'spreading hatred'. The first video retweeted by Mr Trump was claimed to show a 'Muslim migrant' beating up a Dutch boy on crutches. Donald Trump (pictured on March 7) was blasted for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen on Twitter But Dutch media said the video was 'fake news'. The video features a born and raised Dutch man and no reports have detailed the suspect's religion. Mr Trump also retweeted a video of a Muslim man 'destroy(ing) a statue of Virgin Mary', and another where Ms Fransen wrote: 'Islamist mob pushed teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!' The provenance of the footage is unknown. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Britain First sought to divide communities through its use of 'hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions'. 'It is wrong for the president to have done this,' the spokesman said. Labour politician Mrs Cox was stabbed and shot outside her constituency office in Birstall, West Yorkshire, in June 2016 by a man who shouted 'Britain First'. Advertisement

Jamshed Khesrow, a friend of the family, was at the restaurant at the time. Giving testimony behind a screen, he said that Fransen shouted at him, calling him a paedophile and told him to come outside.

He said that, out of fear, he hid in the back of the shop. Mr Khesrow said: 'I was so scared, I was worried she was about to start fighting me. She was very angry. I was so afraid and so scared, I did not know what was going to happen.'

Another witness, Ikram Safai, told how he found a video on the Britain First website of Fransen knocking on his door, but identifying it as the home of Sershah Muslimyar - another defendant in the trial who used to live there before him.

Mr Safai, who is originally from Afghanistan, has lived in the UK since 2013 and in that house for around two-and-a-half years, told the court in the video Fransen said: 'Come out dirty Muslim. Rapist Muslim. Come out and speak to me face to face if you're man enough.'

He said a social worker advised him to move house, adding: 'I was upset, scared, angry.'

Leaflets the group allegedly distributed in the street, which were shown in court, purported to feature a picture of Muslimyar. But Mr Safai, who had met him, said this was not him.

The prosecution say Faiz Rahmani was wrongly identified as Muslimyar in these leaflets.

Prosecuting, Madeleine Wolf, said: 'Golding and Fransen demonstrated hostility towards individuals because of their membership of what they viewed as the Muslim faith.

'The defence to the allegations seems to be that they did not intend to cause alarm and distress. They argue they were entitled to act the way they did.'

In one of the videos shown to the court, Paul Golding, addressing the camera talked about being targeted by the police.

In it, he said: 'People like me and Jayda do not have breaking points.'

He added: 'We are in this to the death. We are in this all the way.'

After today's hearing, Jaswant Narwal, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'The prosecution case demonstrated these defendants were not merely exercising their right to free speech but were instead aiming religiously-aggravated abuse at innocent members of the public.

'The victims suffered the distress of the abuse followed by additional stress when the footage was uploaded to the internet. This offending also related to an ongoing criminal trial and the actions taken by Fransen and Golding could easily have derailed the justice process.'

In summarising his findings Judge Barron said: 'This was a deliberate campaign against targeted victims.

He added: 'I have no doubt it was their joint intention to use the facts of the case for their own political ends....this was a campaign not to highlight a terrible rape but a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.'

On hearing the sentence Fransen said: 'I think this is a very sad day for British justice...

She is then cut off by Judge Barron who said he did not want to hear a political slogan.

She added: 'Everything I have done is for the children and they are worth it.'

Upon saying this the public gallery- that was packed with Britain First supporters- erupted in applause.

The supporters then left the court abusing the judge and the press saying they were 'disgraceful' and also shouting 'no surrender'

Golding and Fransen were led down to the cells.
Jeffrey Litteral, 52, was arrested Wednesday in Maryland on child porn charges

A married Secret Service employee in Maryland has been arrested on child pornography charges.

Jeffrey Litteral, 52, was arrested at his home in Denton on Wednesday night.

Last year, police were given a tip about child pornography being uploaded to the internet which involved him.

As they arrested him on Wednesday night, Maryland State Police officers confiscated computer equipment from his home.

The 52-year-old is now being held without bond on four charges; possession of child pornography, distribution of child pornography, possession of obscene material, and distribution of obscene material.

According to sources cited by Fox News, Litteral works as a uniformed division office in Washington DC.

The division provides security at the White House, the Naval Observatory and the Treasury Department building.

It is not known which of these Litteral was assigned to.

After his arrest on Wednesday night, he had his security clearance suspended and is now on administrative leave.

The agency did not say whether or not he would continue to be paid.

In a press release issued late on Wednesday night, a spokesman said: 'The Secret Service is aware of the allegations resulting in the arrest of an employee.

Litteral is pictured with his wife Annette. They are understood to have two daughters

Litteral was arrested at his home in Denton, Maryland, on Wednesday night. His computer equipment was confiscated

'We take allegations of potential criminal activity seriously.

'The employees security clearance has been suspended and the employee has been placed on administrative leave.

'All Secret Service issued equipment has been retrieved and the employees access to all Secret Service facilities is terminated.'

Litteral is married and has at least two daughters who are understood to be teenagers.

The investigation into him began in 2017 when the Maryland State Police Criminal Enforcement Division received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about child porn being uploaded online.

Additional charges are possible and the investigation is ongoing.

Litteral (seen above with his wife) was not given bond. He is being held on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography
A married couple were stunned to find their paths had unknowingly crossed more than a decade before they met.

Mr Ye, 35, found himself in an old holiday photo of his wife, Ms Xue, taken in Qingdao of east China in 2000.

It was a vacation trip to both of them when Mr Ye travelled to Qingdao with a tour group and Ms Xue visited the city with her mother.

Mr Ye is surprised when he found himself appeared in a secret photobomb in his wife's snap 18 years ago (left). He later confirmed to his wife with a solo picture taken in Qingdao (right)

The couple could not believe their eyes when Mr Ye's clothes matched in the boy in Ms Xue's photo (left). The couple visited the port city in east China when they got married in 2012 (right)

The pair told Chengdu Business Daily that they made the discovery when Mr Ye was tidying the study room at his mother-in-law's house on March 4.

'I was looking at the picture where my wife was sitting in front of the May Four Square, there's also a man standing at far back. My reaction was: "Oh wait, that was me!"' exclaimed Mr Ye.

He went back home and found his holiday picture, taken on July 28, 2000, showing the 17-year-old Mr Ye posing in front of the same landmark in Qingdao.

The couple were shocked when they saw a young boy, wearing blue T-shirt and black trousers, appeared in both pictures in the same pose.

The couple, both from Chengdu, central China, met each other through their friends in 2011

Mr Ye, the father of two, said he would visit Qingdao again when his daughters gets older

Ms Xue felt it was a miracle and stunned by the power of fate.

They shared the pictures to their friends and most of them believed the two were destined to be together.

Mr Ye first met his wife through his friends in 2011 when he returned to Chengdu, his hometown, after graduating from university in Suzhou, according to the report.

They married a year later and even took their wedding photo in Qingdao.

The couple planned to visit the port city again when their twin daughters get older. They told the reporters they would keep the two pictures safely and cherished it as unforgettable memories.
Fascinating photographs of some of the women responsible for leading the drive for rights for women in the early 20th century in the US have resurfaced today on the 109th annual International Women's Day.

Images show several marches undertaken by American women protesting for their right to vote in the years between 1900 and 1919, with banners and placards chastising the government for not doing enough to give equal rights to women.

As was the case in several western so-called democracies at the turn of the century, American women found themselves fighting for their right to vote throughout the early 1900s.

In 1890 the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed, with the goal of achieving equal rights for women and 30 years later women were finally given the right to vote in a US election.

Suffragettes riding a float during the New York Fair in Yonkers, 1913, with a banner which reads: 'Woman cause is man's. They rise or fall together'

Suffragette Mrs Sophia Loebinger speaking before City Hall, New York with an American Suffragette sash draped over her right shoulder

A suffragette posed in police uniform (left) to illustrate woman police concept, Cincinnati, Ohio in circa 1908 and others around five years later gather in Washington, DC for the opening of Congress

An enormous crowd gather in the street to hear Suffragettes talk on October 28, 1908

From 1900 onwards the group led many campaigns and protests across the country, demanding the attention of politicians and the public through relentless lobbying, clever publicity stunts, civil disobedience and nonviolent confrontation.

In the pictures, one banner reads 'How long must women wait for liberty' while another says 'Women's cause is man's cause. They rise or fall together'.

Further images from the collection shows a handful of suffragettes burning a fire outside of the White House in protest, with another showing a woman dressed up in a police officer's uniform 'to illustrate the concept of women in the police force'.

The suffragettes constantly lobbied the government, organizing marches and protests to gain maximum attention and put pressure on lawmakers to make an amendment to the constitution to allow women the right to vote.

NAWSA's first President was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with one if its leading and most famous figureheads being Susan B Anthony.

The Harding suffragette group pictured outside a public building in gowns, coats, suits and hats in 1920

Suffragettes Mrs J Hardy Stubbs, Miss Ida Craft, Miss Rosalie Jones with the American flag in a picture taken between 1910 and 1915

Three women stand in the street with a banner which reads: 'How long must women wait for liberty'

Photos of some of the women responsible for leading the drive for civil rights for women in the early 20th century in the USA have resurfaced today, on the 109th annual International Womenis Day

Two suffragettes flank a placard which reads: 'To the envoys of Russia. President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. They say, "we are a democracy. Help us win a world was so that democracies may survive." We, the Women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million American Women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement. Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government that it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally'

Suffragettes at Long Beach, New York , in 1912. These are just some of the women who lobbied for women to get the vote

Suffragettes Audre Osborne and Mrs James S Stevens, with several others in background, pictured carrying a banner reading 'Signatures of NY State women who want the vote' in 1917

Three suited men and a boy trail a carriage emblazoned with 'woman's suffragettes' messages pulled by a horse

The group drew their inspiration from other civil rights groups from around the world, such as the British women's suffrage movement and the antislavery campaigns of the pre-civil war era.

Cady Stanton and Anthony said in a statement in 1856: 'The true woman will not be exponent of another, or allow another to be such for her.

'She will be her own individual self, - do her own individual work - stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength stand or fall by her own individual wisdom and strength,.

'She will proclaim the "glad tidings of good news" to all women, that woman equally with man was made for her own individual happiness, to develop every power of her three fold-nature, to use, worthily every talent given to her by God, in the great work of life.'

One of the most notable things about the women marching for equal rights in the early 1900s was their willingness to be arrested for the cause, portraying themselves as political prisoners rather than criminals.

Their approach worked, too, with the White House unhappy with the level of negative publicity being created by the protesters constant lobbying of the government.

America's involvement in the First World War was instrumental in women winning the right to vote.

With the men overseas in Europe fighting, women were left to do many of the jobs which it was commonly assumed they were unable to do, such as working in manufacturing and engineering professions.

Mrs Alice Burke and Nell Richardson in the suffrage automobile Golden Flyer in which they drove from New York to San Francisco in back in April 1916

Suffragettes parading with banner President Wilson favors votes for women in New York City circa 1916

From left to right, Mrs Charles D Isabella Blaney, Mrs Willmarth and Miss Adams - delegates from California to the Republican Convention 1912

Four women in long, dark coats on a protest march carrying flags and a banner reading, 'Jailed! Why? Released! Why?'

A suffragette called Sarah sits in a rocking chair smoking a cigarette in a long coat, gown and boots

In 1915 a suffrage bill was brought to floor of the House of Representatives but was defeated, lacking any real support from the President or the Democratic Party.

The bill was voted on again in 1918, where it was defeated in the Senate by just two votes, and once more in February 1919, when it was defeated by a single vote in the Senate.

President Wilson was determined to have the vote passed, though, with many other western countries having already given women the right to vote.

The issue was again put to a vote in May 1919, this time one called especially by the President, was finally passed as the 19th amendment to the United States constitution.

It was then finally ratified in August 1919, making the 1920 election the first in which women were able to vote.
Footage has emerged showing the shocking moment raiders reverse a truck into a store before making off with an ATM.

Cops said they are still searching for the thieves after they smashed through the 7-Eleven near Takoma Metro station in Washington DC at 1.55 in the morning.

Two suspects, all wearing black clothes and masks, ran inside the store after driving the blue Ford pickup through the glass on January 19.

They tried to lift the ATM but struggled with the weight, forcing a third suspect to assist and help them place it on the back of the vehicle.

Cops said they are still searching for the thieves after they smashed through the 7-Eleven near Takoma Metro station in Washington DC at 1.55 in the morning

Two suspects, all wearing black clothes and masks, ran inside the store after driving the blue Ford pickup through the glass on January 19

They tried to lift the ATM but struggled with the weight, forcing a third suspect to assist and help them place it on the back of the vehicle

The raiders then fled with their loot, ditching the truck and parts of the ATM nearby.

Store manager Jasjeet Khanuja said one of his staff members had to go to hospital after the shocking ordeal.

Speaking at the time, he told Fox5: 'The last four days, we have filed four shoplifting incidents, and a month-and-a-half ago, we got robbed at gunpoint here.

'So it is not surprising. We have been asking for increased police presence and hopefully now with this incident, we can actually get it.'

Police Commander Will Manplaza, however, said ATM thefts are happening 'all over the region'.

He added: 'I think those ATM machines are easier to steal because they are not connected to the wall like a traditional bank. They are kind of by themselves.

Store manager Jasjeet Khanuja said one of his staff members had to go to hospital after the shocking ordeal. Pictured: A still showing the suspects making their getaway

Police Commander Will Manplaza, however, said ATM thefts are happening 'all over the region'

'They are not that heavy. So as you can see, a few people can actually pick it up and take it.'

A month after the 7-Eleven robbery, police say, a similar raid was conducted - but the suspects did not succeed in taking the ATM.

Cops are now asking for help finding the suspects. Anyone with knowledge of the incidents is asked to call (202) 727-9099 or text 50411.
The head of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt is resigning after provoking outrage by calling Turks 'camel drivers' who should return to their 'mud huts and polygamy'.

Andre Poggenburg, 42, made the comments on Ash Wednesday, when German politicians traditionally deliver fiery speeches. He also called Turks living in Germany an 'unpatriotic rabble'.

He said in a statement on Thursday he would step down on March 31 after 'enormous media pressure' in the wake of his speech on Feb 14.

He accused media of putting some words in his mouth that he had not used, but did not specifically deny the most controversial comments, which were widely reported.

Andre Poggenburg was forced to stand down after invoking what he called 'enormous media pressure'

'It's no problem for me to deal with this pressure myself but I want to deflect it from members, colleagues in the parliamentary group and party colleagues,' Poggenburg said in his statement.

'The AfD's success is always more important than the individual's success or feelings so I think it's right for me to take a step back at the moment.'

In June the AfD reprimanded Poggenburg for using the slogan 'Germany for the Germans', often used by the ultra-right National Democratic Party, on a messaging service.

The AfD has become the largest opposition party in the national parliament, after winning 12.6 per cent of votes in September elections. In its campaign it capitalised on concerns about Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy toward migrants.
Donald Trump said Thursday that Australia and 'other countries' may be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs, along with Mexico and Canada.

The other countries were not named but Trump said he was sticking with his initial plan for import tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

But the president says, 'We're going to be very flexible.'

His comments in a Cabinet meeting Thursday come hours before a 3:30 p.m. event where is expected to formalize the tariffs amid uncertainty in the West Wing over which countries will be exempted from the protectionist measure.

Trump is expected to delay the imposition of tariffs on Canada and Mexico to turn up the pressure in negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The White House had punted Wednesday on the timetable, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders telling reporters that he was expected to 'sign something by the end of the week.'

Trump tweeted a non-commital message early on Thursday, writing that he was '[l]ooking forward to [a] 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House.'

New move: Trump used a cabinet meeting Thursday to announce that Australia and 'other countries' may be exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs, along with Mexico and Canada

Trump downgraded the signing to a 'meeting' in a cryptic tweet on Thursday morning

'We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.'

He also told reporters late in the morning: 'I call it an economic meeting.'

'We're going to be very fair. We're going to be very flexible, but we're going to protect the American worker,' he pledged.

Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday on the Fox News Channel that 'the president has called a meeting today at 3:30. He has invited in steel an aluminum workers.'

But she didn't say if he would sign anything.

Confusion reigned in Washington overnight, with contradictory reports sparking a 'will he or won't he' guessing game as Trump's leanings seemed to change by the hour.

CNN reported at dinnertime that the Thursday signing was definitely on.

An MSNBC anchor tweeted late into the evening that the it was 'not going to happen' because the president was 'undecided after a day of heavy pushback from Republicans.'

The Wall Street Journal reported nearly two hours later that Trump was still expected to sign his tariff order, but only sometime 'this week.'

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hinted at 'carve-outs' for Mexico and Canada on Wednesday and said exemptions will be considered on a 'country by country' basis

On Thursday morning an NBC reporter tweeted that details were 'still being finalized' and 'if a proclamation is signed it will be largely "symbolic".'

Sanders said Wednesday that there might be 'carve-outs'  exemptions  'for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well.'

The prospect of across-the-board tariffs that would affect both America's allies and nations with massive U.S. trade surpluses made some in the White House uneasy, especially chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who announced his resignation this week.

Other top officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also made last-minute appeals for flexibility, saying that overly broad tariffs would damage key security ties with U.S. allies.

One possible plan would give Canada and Mexico 30-day exemptions, officials said Wednesday, a status whose continuation would depend on progress in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

On Wednesday, Sanders told reporters that exemptions to the 25 per cent steel tariffs and 10 per cent aluminum tariffs would be made on a 'case by case' and 'country by country' basis.

One possible outcome would be a 30-day tariff exemption for Mexico and Canada, contingent on a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement

Business leaders in the steel and aluminum sectors were reportedly flying to Washington Wednesday night in anticipation of a tariff signing designed to protect them against foreign competition.

But despite industry support, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raised the specter of a global trade war.

That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump's rollback of regulations.

'We urge the administration to take this risk seriously,' Donohue said.
Paedophile hunter Cheyenne O'Connor, who has now caught four sex offenders

A female paedophile hunter has caught her fourth sex offender by posing as a gay schoolboy on a dating app.

Mum-of-two Cheyenne O'Connor, 25, snared Richard Wavell, 32, after pretending to be a 14-year-old youngster on Grindr.

Wavell, 32, has been jailed for 11 months after the sting by Miss O'Connor, of Jersey.

He started the conversation with the 'boy' and it soon became explicitly sexual, Jersey Magistrates Court heard yesterday.

When he was told the boy was only 14, and given the opportunity to end the chat, the court heard Wavell continued to stay in contact.

He arranged to meet the 'boy' outside the General Hospital on January 21 this year, and Miss O'Connor took a picture of him while he waited. She then contacted the police.

In sentencing, Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris said that Wavell posed a 'very significant risk' of re-offending as he had four previous convictions for assault that were described as 'contact offences' involving teenage boys, but were not sexually motivated.

Richard Wavell (left) who has been jailed for 11 months after being caught talking to what he thought was a 14-year-old schoolboy on Grindr, and Jason Sutton (right) who was caught by Miss O'Connor last year and jailed for 10 months for trying to meet a teenage boy for sex

After the case Miss O'Connor said: 'I was fairly happy with the sentence although it should have been far longer considering his background and lack of remorse shown.'

Wavell, who admitted a charge of attempting to meet a child through sexual grooming, was also made the subject of a five year restraining order preventing him from having any unsupervised contact with any boy aged under 16, as well as having his name placed on the sex offenders register for five years.

He became the fourth person to be convicted as a result of Miss O'Connor's actions.

Joao Manuel Mendonca Gomes, 27, was jailed for six months after he admitted trying to arrange a late-night meeting with an underage boy for a sexual encounter in November last year but was caught by Miss O'Connor.

Her actions have previously seen Jason Sutton, 48, of Jersey, jailed for ten months last year after he was caught by Miss O'Connor trying to meet a teenage boy for sex.

A few months earlier she posed online as a teenage girl to catch another sex offender on the island - which led to a 19-year-old youth being sentenced to 180 hours' community service after admitting attempting to groom a teenage 'girl'.

She said: 'I thought the publicity would make a few think twice about contacting me but it seems to have just got worse, nothing will stop them.

'Child abuse is a massive issue in Jersey and there is no one else doing this but me.

'I decided to carry on based on how rubbish our justice system was and how many victims were being let down.

'The justice system is shocking when it comes to this.'
A 'semi-experienced' pornographer is urgently seeking Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion lookalikes for an upcoming production.

The pornographer's job advertisement surfaced this week on Melbourne's Craigslist, as new photos of the pair frolicking in a thermal pool emerged.

Between $8,000 and $12,000 is being offered to any lookalikes willing to take part in the raunchy production.

A 'semi-experienced' pornographer's job advertisement for Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion (pictured) lookalikes surfaced this week on Melbourne's Craigslist

Between $8,000 and $12,000 is being offered to any lookalikes willing to take part in the raunchy production (pictured is the job advert)

The pornographer's job advertisement surfaced as new photos of the pair frolicking in a thermal pool emerged

'Semi-experienced pornographer looking for lookalikes. Looking to get this made ASAP - while the story's hot,' the job advert reads.

Those who are interested are told to e-mail the anonymous pornographer for the contract's specifics.

The casting call caused a stir on Thursday among people on Reddit, who started suggesting titles for the porno.

Among the title suggestions were 'Cabinet Reshuffle', 'Member for Parliament' and 'National Lampoon'.

'Semi-experienced pornographer looking for lookalikes. Looking to get this made ASAP - while the story's hot,' the job advert reads

The real-life couple were seen this week putting on a loved-up display inside a thermal pool near the Yarrangobilly Caves - in a remote part of Kosciuszko National Park - in pictures exclusively revealed by Daily Mail Australia

One Reddit user said: 'I would totally watch this, for the [laughs]. Those industrious and inventive porn people never stop being good comedy.'

But another user was less enthusiastic about the production, saying: 'Dear god WHY?! Being forced to think about it was bad enough, why film a re-enactment?'

The real-life couple were seen this week putting on a loved-up display inside a thermal pool near the Yarrangobilly Caves - in a remote part of Kosciuszko National Park - in pictures exclusively revealed by Daily Mail Australia.

The pair's getaway came on a hot January day, weeks before news of their affair and upcoming child was exposed

The biggest political scandal of the year ensued, and resulted in Joyce resigning as deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals

The pair's getaway came on a hot January day, weeks before news of their affair and upcoming child was exposed.

The biggest political scandal of the year ensued, and resulted in Joyce resigning as deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals.

'I saw he (Mr Joyce) was with a pregnant woman and a younger guy,' the member of the public who took the photos said.

'I just assumed it was his daughter and her partnerso I didn't give it a whole lot of thought.

'But when she started climbing on Barnaby's back and then I saw her kissing his neck, I realised that was not his daughter.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the pornographer for further comment.
A Dominos Pizza branch in Western Australia has refused to make night-time deliveries to ten Bunbury streets, saying youths in the area throw rocks at their delivery cars.

The store said they needed to consider driver safety in light of recent 'anti social' behaviour from residents in the southern Bunbury suburb of Withers, WA Today reported.

Delivery drivers said they had been targeted by youth in the area who threw rocks at their delivery cars, breaking one team member's car window.

A Dominos Pizza branch in Bunbury Western Australia (pictured) has refused to make night-time deliveries to ten Bunbury streets, saying youths in the area throw rocks at their delivery cars

'The safety of our team members is our highest priority and after several incidents of anti-social behaviour in which cars were damaged, Domino's Bunbury has temporarily stopped deliveries to some areas of Withers,' a Dominos spokesperson said.

'Domino's understands this decision is disappointing to our local customers and we thank them for their understanding.

'Domino's will work closely with the local police and looks forward to recommencing deliveries in the near future'.

The store said the decision has come in light of several other incidents over the past year but will offer discounted pick-up meals for Withers residents who will be affected by the delivery ban.

The store said they will offer discounted pick-up meals for Withers residents who will be affected by the delivery ban

Other food delivery chains in Western Australia have worked with WA Police in helping to keep their workers safe.

Concerns over crime within Withers has sparked recent plans to gentrify the suburb.

'Progress within the suburb of Withers is visible with the installation of closed-circuit TV cameras, the closure of alleyways, increased footpath networks, park upgrades and bus shelters,' the Bunbury Mail reported.

Dominos Bunbury was contacted by Daily Mail Australia but declined to comment.
Immigrants working at a Kansas cattle ranch have described the horrific working conditions which they say are 'like slavery'.

Workers at Fullmer Cattle Co., which raises calves for dairies in four states, claim they were forced to work for as little as a dollar an hour until they paid off their 'debt' after the company arranged for them to be illegally smuggled into the country.

There are no holidays, health insurance benefits or overtime pay for the immigrants who must also shell out for their own safety gear such as goggles, they claim.

'It is like slavery what they do to those poor people,' said Rachel Tovar, another former worker who spoke to The Associated Press.

Immigrants working at a Fullmer cattle ranch (pictured in a promotional video) have described the horrific working conditions which they say are 'like slavery'

Workers at Fullmer Cattle Co., which raises calves for dairies in four states, claim they were forced to work for as little as a dollar an hour until they paid off their 'debt' after the company arranged for them to be illegally smuggled into the country (pictured is an unidentified employee in a promotional video)

One worker spent eight months cleaning out calf pens, laying down cement and doing other construction work.

Esteban Cornejo, a Mexican citizen who is in the US illegally, left Kansas in November after paying off debt, which he figures was nearly $7,000.

The pay stub Cornejo shared with The Associated Press shows he worked 182.5 hours at $10 an hour over two weeks  an average of 15 hours a day with Sundays off. His pay was $1,828.34 before taxes.

But the a $1,300 'cash advance repayment' was also deducted, which he said was a company loan for bringing him into the country.

His eventual take-home pay was just $207.46, the pay stub shows, or just over $1 an hour working at Fullmer Auto Co. Texas LLC, which does business as Fullmer Cattle.

Rachel Tovar said she was interviewed recently by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who asked about the company's Kansas employment practices, but ICE declined to say if it is investigating.

Rachel Tovar, right, and husband Arturo Tovar, are both former workers of the Fullmer Cattle Co., a western Kansas calf ranch. They said the ranch forces immigrants to toil long days to work off loans for the cost of smuggling them into the country

Dean Ryan, the company's attorney, said in an email that the allegations 'are simply not true.'

'There was no smuggler's fee and has never been,' Ryan wrote, adding that there are 'plenty of people willing to work in western Kansas without having to 'import' them.'

Ryan said company policy is to give pay advances to workers who have no credit. He said those loans are made so employees can purchase a vehicle or put a down payment on a home.

President Donald Trump's administration has cracked down on immigrants living in the country illegally. But it has said less about the companies that employ them, let alone a company accused of using smugglers to bring workers to the United States.

The plight of the Kansas workers also highlights the exploitation that immigrants face when a company forces them to pay off debt with work, a practice called 'debt peonage.'

Under federal law, employers do not have to pay overtime to agricultural workers.

Immigrants working at Fullmer Cattle Company in Kansas (pictured) said that when the firm needed more workers, they would contact a Mexican smuggler to bring more in from across the border

One worker spent eight months cleaning out calf pens, laying down cement and doing other construction work at the huge cattle ranch (pictured)

Aerial footage shows the cattle ranch appearing to stretch on for acres

Erik Nicholson, national vice president for the United Farm Workers union, said it is not unusual for employers to recruit immigrant farmworkers. Some employers use kickback schemes, although deducting from paychecks is 'pretty brazen.'

Arturo Tovar is Rachel's husband and a Mexican citizen who lived illegally in the U.S. and was a Fullmer manager for 11 years.

He said the smuggling process worked like this: When the company needed workers, Arturo asked employees if they knew someone who wanted to work in the United States. The company gave him the phone number of the 'coyote,' or smuggler, in Piedras Niegras, Mexico, to make the arrangements.

The company would give Arturo Tovar a check, which he would cash. A partial payment was made to the smuggler upfront and the rest when the immigrant reached San Antonio or Houston, where the immigrant would be picked up.

Workers also said there were no holidays, health insurance benefits or overtime pay for the immigrants who must also shell out for their own safety gear such as goggles (pictured are unnamed employees in the company's promotional video)

Some claimed they were paid just a dollar an hour for hard, physically demanding work on the ranch

If law enforcement asked questions about the cash, the employee was instructed to say it was for used cars the company bought at Texas auctions, he says.

Rachel Tovar, a US-born citizen, said that once the loan to bring an immigrant into the country was almost paid, the company often sold used vehicles to employees in what she believes was an effort to keep them in debt.

Arturo Tovar voluntarily left the country in lieu of deportation after pleading guilty last year to misdemeanor theft stemming from what the couple says was a false company accusation after he was hurt on the job. The company contends the Tovars have an agenda and lack credibility.

But another former employee told AP that Fullmer also loaned him money for the coyote to smuggle someone. AP is not naming the ex-worker out of concern for that person's safety.

A fifth ex-worker confirmed the general accounts of those who allowed their names to be used but asked for anonymity because that person also has safety concerns.
The new Bachelorette says her heart is open and she is ready to find love even as she recovers from a very public break-up.

Becca Kufrin spoke with Matt Gutman on Good morning America after the finale of The Bachelor on Tuesday, which ended with a shocking twist as Arie Luyendyk Jr proposed to runner-up Lauren Burnham after breaking off his engagement with the 27-year-old publicist.

Kufrin, who has had a few weeks to deal with the shock of being brutally dumped on national television during what she thought would be a romantic weekend, said she is now ready to move on, and forgives her ex.

'He had to do what he had to do and don't fault him for that. I would always want him to follow his heart and not be trapped in a relationship with me,' said Becca.

'At the end of the day, if it had to happen then it had to happen. And I don't want to say everything happens for a reason but I truly think it does.'

Scroll down for video

Laid-back lady: Becca Kufrin said in an interview with Good Morning America (above) that she has forgiven her ex Arie Luyendyk after he broke off engagement on The Bachelor

Happy Madison: 'He had to do what he had to do and don't fault him for that. I would always want him to follow his heart and not be trapped in a relationship with me,' said Becca (above being told by Arie the relationship is over)

Good thing she got a manicure: Becca will now set out on her own quest for love as the star of the fourteenth season of The Bachelorette (Becca during her nationally televised break-up)

"My heart is in the right place, I know what I want, I'm ready for it."@BacheloretteABC Becca opens up to @mattgutmanABC about that bombshell breakup with Arie: https://t.co/7gRO06RmPO #TheBachelorette @thebkoof pic.twitter.com/SNrN5zpKF4  Good Morning America (@GMA) March 8, 2018

Becca also said she was glad she got the chance to speak with Arie during the finale and have some closure.

'I asked what I wanted to ask,' Becca said of her conversation with Arie.

'And just to wish him the best and let him know that I forgive him for everything. He followed his heart and I understand that.'

She also said that she hopes his new relationships works out, with Arie and fiancee Lauren heading off on vacation before they return o start planning their wedding.

'I hope, after everything, that he just holds her heart in the highest regard and takes everything in the situation aside and just focuses on her and that relationship and puts it all out there for her,' said Becca.

The newly-single Becca wasted no time getting back on the horse after that conversation, as she met her first five suitors for the next season of The Bachelorette - and an actual horse.

'My heart is in the right place. I know what I want. I'm ready for it. And so, I mean, even just meeting the guys tonight just gives me so much hope for what's to come,' she told Guttman.

'And so I'm ready, I'm excited. I know all of the love I have to give..

Becca also noted: 'I've been in love in the past. I was in love with Arie. I know I'll find it again.'

Bring on the boys: 'My heart is in the right place. I know what I want ... I mean, even just meeting the guys tonight just gives me so much hope for what's to come,' she said (Becca and a suitor above)

Kissing the ring: 'I'll celebrate my 15th wedding anniversary with the love of my life Ryan in December, and I have no doubt that you will find your man just as I found mine on The Bachelorette,' said Trista Rehn (above) to Becca

Other takes: 'I wish you better success than I had,' joked Ali Fedotowsky (right) while Corrine Olympios (right) said: 'Your strength is truly an inspiration to all the women across America and the whole world'

Advice for @BacheloretteABC Becca as she embarks on her new search for love. Plus, @chrisbharrison stands by the show's decision to air the breakup unedited: https://t.co/J1b7s1XWU8#TheBachelorette @thebkoof pic.twitter.com/rj0J3WbwH8  Good Morning America (@GMA) March 8, 2018

She is getting some support in her quest for love from some past contestants as well, with the star of season one Trista Rehn and season six Ali Fedotowsky sending Becca video messages.

'I'll celebrate my 15th wedding anniversary with the love of my life Ryan in December, and I have no doubt that you will find your man just as I found mine on The Bachelorette,' said Trista.

That message was filmed in extreme close-up and gave viewers a very good look at the reality star's wedding band and engagement ring.

Ali, who has enjoyed much professional success and found love after breaking off her made-for-TV engagement, joked: 'I wish you better success than I had.'

Andi Dorfman, whose engagement also ended before a trip down the aisle, said: 'Hope you find love. Go get your man, girl.'

And the always polarizing Corrine Olympios stated: 'Your strength is truly an inspiration to all the women across America and the whole world.'

True love: Arie and his new fiancee Lauren share a kiss on Tuesday (above)

Desperately seeking producer: Becca meets a fella with a banjo on Tuesday (above)

Hot to trot: The program ended with Becca getting atop a horse (above) that was gifted to her by a lavender-loving suitor. She has not been heard from since

Becca was not as zen about the split when she sat down for an interview with People ahead of the finale.

'I never thought he would throw in the towel. And there was a more tactful way to do it,' she said in her interview.

'I was blindsided,' she added of the on-camera split where a camera crew followed her every move as she reacted to Arie breaking the news that he no longer wanted to marry her.

Becca confessed that there were 'red flags' ahead of the show's premiere after she noticed Arie had been liking Lauren's Instagram photos and had texted the runner-up on New Year's Eve.

'He told me he wanted to talk to her. I loved him and wanted to support him. But I felt betrayed. No one wants to be engaged and know their partner has feelings for someone else,' said Becca.

She then explained that while she does not fault Arie for following his heart, she was hurt that 'he lied to me about his true feelings.'

In that interview too however, she said her focus was moving on with her life.

'I'm ready for the Arie chapter to be over,' said Becca.
The former girlfriend of Demoratic congressional candidate Benjamin Thomas Wolf is accusing the 'cannabis candidate' of physical and emotional abuse.

Wolf, who is is challenging incumbent Rep. Mike Quigley in a Chicago district and highlighting his push for legalization of marijuana, is accused by his ex Katarina Coates, of grabbing her and throwing her.

Coates didn't file a police report with the claims of abuse, but she did contact university officials where she was a student.

'He actually hit me, threw me to the ground, put his foot on my chest,' Coates told Politico.

Benjamin Thomas Wolf is a Democrat that is running for Congress in the Illinois 5th district

'He was really angry. He grabbed my face,' she said, detailing six incidents of abuse.

'I thought it was normal. I cannot explain the logic. It seemed like he cared about me when he did that,' she said

Then she described unusual efforts to try to make things up with her. 'After that time he stood on my chest, he went and took me for chocolate cake. I kind of associated it with his caring,' she said.

'There were times I would ask him, Do you ever regret hitting me?' He would say: 'No, but I'm relieved when you put your head down so I don't have to do it again.''

The news follows the resignation of White House staff secretary Rob Porter following claims of abuse by two ex-wives, as revealed by DailyMail.com.

Wolf has become known as the 'cannabis candidate' after he smoked a joint in a campaign ad. He has also come under scrutiny for how his resume has been used. He did work for several years as an investigator for the FBI, but is not in fact an FBI agent.

The Chicago Tribune looked into his resume and noted his campaign office has framed articles by Vice and Newsweek that refer to him as an 'Former FBI agent.' A campaign release also called him a 'former FBI agent.'

Pornhub has pulled Wolf's ads from its site after claims of abuse emerged.

Another ex, Kari Fitzgerald, who dated Wolf several years ago, said he had an 'abusive' personality, though made no allegations of physical abuse.

"When he thinks he's been wronged or threatened in any way he lashes out ... It's definitely a situation where he's escalating. There's abusive, escalating behavior he's demonstrating," she told Politico.

Wolf adamantly denied claims of abuse in an interview with the publication, and said Coates had harassed him, and that he filed police reports against her.

Benjamin Thomas Wolf, a pro-marijuana legalization Democrat who is running for Congress in the Illinois 5th district, came to prominence in early March 2018 when ads for his campaign appeared on Pornhub.

According to the Observer, Benjamin Thomas Wolf is the first politician to advertise on a porn website.

Pornhub has already been in the news recently, following its UK AgeID age verification tool and offer of lubricant to the city of Philadelphia.

In a tweet referring to the ad, Wolf wrote: 'I am communicating directly with young voters in Chicago and Illinois. Vote March 20th'.

Coates didn't file a police report with her abuse claim. But according to Politico, she complained to DePaul campus security, where she was a student, and Roosevelt University, Wolf says he taught.

After she wrote DePaul, an official emailed, indicating Wolf was barred from campus.

'Ben is not allowed in campus. He does know that as I told him that personally,' wrote Michael Dohm, deputy director of public safety at the school wrote Coates in an email she shared with the publication.

The congressional candidate has positioned himself as the 'cannabis candidate' and the ad shows Wolf holding a marijuana joint in front of a multi-coloured painting of the US flag with the message: 'Wolf For Congress. Legalize it March 20.'

He told the Observer that the Pornhub ad is 'worth the risk. I have nothing to lose here'.

However, it ultimately turns out he may have spoken too soon. Just one day after the interview and subsequent attention, Politico published disturbing allegations of physical and emotional abuse and highlighted Wolf's 'troubled past'.

The website went on to outline how Wolf ended up actually being banned from DePaul University, where Coates was a student, over a completely separate complaint by a professor, Jason Hill, after another student told them about an 'upsetting incident' with Wolf.

Hill said that Wolf learned of the complaint and ended up telling him to 'just commit suicide'.

Wolf denied the abuse claims and said that the allegations are 'politically motivated'.

'I walk around this city with a black leather jacket and leather boots and this city is scared of me,' Wolf told Politico.

'We are talking about sex and drugs, we have no corporate donors.'

However, following the abuse allegations, Pornhub decided to pull Wolf's ad from its site.

'We have instructed our ad network, TrafficJunky, to pull all of his ads in light of these allegations,' Pornhub Vice President Corey Price told Gizmodo in an email.

Who is Benjamin Thomas Wolf?

According to Benjamin Thomas Wolf's congressional campaign website, he was born in Ohio, completed an internship in Washington DC and went on to be recruited by the FBI, after which he worked for years 'within the National Security Division on the highest priority terrorism'.

On the website's 'Recognition' page, there are many links to articles referring to Wolf as a 'former FBI Agent', and a news release has the Wolf campaign describing him as a 'former FBI agent'.

He then transferred to the US State Department as worked as an 'American diplomat who 'loyally served four Secretaries of State and advised dozens of US ambassadors. His site also says he has 'served multiple times in Iraq'.

What are Benjamin Thomas Wolf's policies?

Benjamin Thomas Wolf is running on a platform that includes legalizing cannabis and hemp, universal healthcare and free higher education, as well as an 'immediate and indefinite banning of all assault weapons'.

Nope. I just use cannabis. Regularly. We have noticed that the system is slow and tedious to get medical cards. Lets just legalize it. Im formally reminding everyone that the March 20th primary in cook county IL has a referendum to legalize cannabis. Help me spread the word.  Benjamin Thomas Wolf (@benjaminwolfBTW) February 27, 2018

In February 2018, in the wake of the Florida school shooting, Wolf uploaded a video of him holding an AR-15, saying: 'There is no place in modern American society for assault weapons. As a U.S. Congressman, I will ensure they are banned immediately and indefinitely.'

It has been three weeks since the most recent school shooting involving an assault weapon and Congress has NOT addressed the issue. I will #BanAssaultWeapons #WolfForCongress https://t.co/WlXbgiKwB2  Benjamin Thomas Wolf (@benjaminwolfBTW) March 3, 2018

Benjamin Thomas Wolf's role in the FBI and Iraq

Several publications have uncovered inconsistencies in Wolf's account of his background. The Chicago Tribune spoke to the FBI, which confirmed that Wolf was never an FBI agent, but rather a 'non-special agent professional support employee'.

The paper goes on to say how even though Wolf never explicitly claims to have served in the military, phrases used by his campaign such as 'multiple tours in Iraq' imply that he did.

In the letter announcing his candidacy, Wolf is described as an 'Iraq veteran'.

Wolf denies claiming to be either an FBI agent or a former soldier and told the Tribune: 'People are caught up in minor details. I don't care.'

When asked why Wolf shared a 2017 article that described him as a 'former FBI agent', he said; 'It's a great article' and that the inaccurate description didn't bother him.

'It's not a big enough deal.'

He also told Politico that he did not lie about his Iraq credentials: 'People in the military get upset when I say I served in Iraq. The military doesn't have a patent on the word 'served'.'
Wives in China are most likely to have an extramarital affair compared to their counterparts around the world, a high-profile Chinese sex expert has claimed.

Pan Suiming, a professor of social sexology, said in a recent interview with a Chinese magazine that one in every 7.5 wives from the country has cheated on their partner, and the rate is the highest in the world.

Prof Pan, 67, explained that the phenomenon is partially caused by the fact that Chinese cultural discourages couples from divorcing even they no longer love each other.

One in 7.5 wives in China have had an affair, the highest rate in the world, said a sex expert

Prof Pan is one of the pioneers in researching and teaching sexology in China and a published author.

He founded the Institute for Research on Sexuality and Gender at the Renmin University in 1991 and has taught sexology at the distinguished university in Beijing for more than 30 years.

Prof Pan told state-run Portrait Magazine that the rate of married people cheating on their spouse has increased dramatically in recent years.

While some 13.3 per cent wives have had one or more affairs, the rate for husbands is more than twice higher, according to Prof Pan, who claimed that one in three men in China has cheated on their wife at least once.

Prof Pan said wives would usually looked for an extramarital affair when they couldn't get sexual satisfaction from their marriage; while husbands would keep mistresses even if they are perfectly happy with their marriage life - to show they could 'conquer 'multiple women.

Ming Li, who works for a mistress-dispelling agency in Shanghai, however disagrees with Prof Pan's opinions.

Referring to herself as Master Ming, the chief consultant at Weiqing Marriage Hospital told MailOnline that she doesn't believe so many wives are cheating on their husband in China.

'In general, Chinese women are still relatively conservative and repressed in terms of sex,' Master Ming said.

Sexologist Pan Suiming said Chinese culture has discouraged couple from divorcing even if they no longer have feelings for each other resulting in a high percentage of cheating

The marriage consultant also said that Chinese men are 20 times more likely to cheat on their wives than the other way around.

'Among all the cases I have handled, many more men have had affairs. The percentage of wives cheating on their husbands is less than one-twentieth of husbands cheating on their wives.'

The marital culture in China remains conservative, and couples would rather choose to 'get along with each other' than call it quit when their intimacy and love diminish, or when one of them is caught cheating.

This is particularly common among Chinese women who face immense pressure from their family to find a husband before the age of 28.

In addition, a divorced woman could be looked down upon especially in less developed cities and rural areas, a factor which prompts many wives to choose to put up with their lesser-than-ideal marriage.

Since 2000, Prof Pan and his team have conducted three nationwide surveys - once every five years - to understand modern Chinese people's sexual relationships.

The expert also told the Portrait Magazine that his surveys revealed that in 2000 only nine per cent of Chinese women have had more than one sexual partner in their life.

However, the figure jumped to 30.5 per cent in 2015.
President Donald Trump boasted Wednesday that his administration has tasked the Chinese government with reducing its U.S. trade surplus by $1 billion this year.

Whether that was a typo or a presidential mental lapse, he missed the mark by $99 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that when Trump administration officials met with China's top economic architect last week, they asked for a $100 billion reduction in the trade imbalance between the two countries.

After Chinese officials briefed economist Eswar Prasad about the meetings between American officials and Liu He, the Cornell University expert said he was told America's goal was to reduce its bilateral trade deficit by about one-third.

That gap stood at $375.2 billion last year. Trump's tweet on Wednesday drew head-scratches because a $1 billion improvement would represent just a small fraction of 1 per cent of that.

President Trump boasted Wednesday that he aimed to persuade China to pare down its U.S. trade surplus by $1 billion  but the real number turned out to be 100 times bigger

Trump's ask of Beijing would have amounted to a trade deficit reduction of barely one-quarter of 1 per cent, instead of the more massive change his administration is actually seeking; he also tweeted a warning about lax enforcement of intellectual property agreements

'China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States,' the president wrote then. 'Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!'

White House spokespersons did not respond on Wednesday to a question about the president's apparently weak, drop-in-the-bucket strategy.

TOP TRADE DEFICITS America's top five trading partners also represented its biggest trade deficits in 2017: China: $375 billion Mexico: $71 billion Japan: $69 billion Germany: $65 billion Canada: $18 billion Advertisement

The United States has had the world's largest trade deficit in every year since 1975. The combined deficit in goods and services was $566 billion in 2017. Measuring goods alone, as Trump frequently does in public, the deficit stands at $810 billion.

Trump is expected to formally roll out import tariffs on steel and aluminum this week, a move that could hit China and Russia the hardest.

Separately, he tweeted a signal that his administration is also ready to clamp down on nations that flout the World Trade Organization's global agreement on protecting patents and other intellectual property, like commercial brands and computer technology innovations.

'The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!' the president wrote in a second tweet.

A Politico reporter tweeted Wednesday that the administration may be 'eyeing tariffs on more than 100 Chinese products as well as investment restrictions.'

Trump built up his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping with a state visit to Beijing in November, but trade tensions have overshadowed their rapport this year

In this 2016 photo, laborers work in the steel market in Yichang in central China's Hubei province; China has expressed 'grave concern' about a U.S. trade policy report that pledges to pressure Beijing

Liu told U.S. business leaders late last week that President Xi Jinping is ready to revive high-level talks on economic disputes, and would name a new liaison to defuse trade tensions with America.

He said he wanted a list of things the administration wanted China to do in order to defuse trade tensions.

Instead of his olive branch making international news, it was overshadowed by Trump's announcement last Thursday of the new tariffs.

After proposing tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum from China and elsewhere, Trump warned in a tweet that 'trade wars are good, and easy to win.'

China's Commerce Ministry shot back on Friday, saying his plan would 'seriously damage multilateral trade mechanisms represented by the World Trade Organization and will surely have huge impact on normal international trade order.'
Brian Jordan sneaked out of the Casino Queen hotel while the guard slept after letting him use the shower

A prisoner has escaped after the driver taking him to jail went on a detour of several hundred miles and allowed him to shower in a casino hotel but then fell asleep.

Brian Jordan was charged with unauthorized use of a car in January of 2018 in Oklahoma and was also wanted in Texas for a parole violation for possessing methamphetamine.

A driver working for Guard Force International was transporting the 33-year-old Jordan and another prisoner to Texas when he made a stop in East St. Louis, Illinois, KMOV reported.

The driver stopped at Lumiere Casino and left the two prisoners inside the van and then took them to visit some of his family in the area.

According to police, the escort driver made a stop at the Casino Queen in East St. Louis late on Sunday.

While waiting to hear from his manager, the prisoner transport driver allowed the two men to take a shower in his room at the hotel.

While the second man was in the shower, the guard reportedly fell asleep.

Police say the driver did not have the fugitives properly restrained when he went to sleep.

After between 30-45 minutes of sleep at around 1:30 a.m, police say the driver noticed Jordan was missing along with $5,200 in cash.

http://www.kmov.com/story/37661849/wanted-inmate-escapes-when-driver-stops-at-casino-queen-which-is-300-miles-off-route

The Casino Queen was the second casino visited by the driver, who also found time to go and visit family in East St Louis

Hotel security cameras caught Jordan walking into the parking lot around 1:30 a.m on Monday.

He took a cellphone and clothing from the transport van and then walked in the direction of the Eads Bridge.

Jordan remains missing as of Wednesday morning as police continue their search.

Gordon Brooks, CEO of Guard Force International, said he believes they went to the hotel at the Casino Queen and were not there to gamble.

Brooks said the driver violated protocol by staying at the hotel with inmates, which he said was 'not normal.'

According to reports he has been fired but not charged with any offence.

The van was in St. Louis after the driver dropped off inmates in St. Joseph, Missouri, Brooks explained.

Brooks said the said he came to St. Louis to 'meet up with another team' but that never happened.
Former Scotland Yard poster girl Carol Howard, 39, is seeking 144,000 in compensation from a police watchdog for racial discrimination. She is pictured here in 2014

A former Met poster girl is seeking 144,000 in compensation from a police watchdog for racial discrimination.

Whistleblower Carol Howard, 39, has accused the Independent Police Complaints Commission of being 'institutionally racist and corrupt'.

She told an employment tribunal that the watchdog frustrated inquiries in order to protect accused officers and the reputation of forces.

Ms Howard is a former firearms officer, who famously appeared as a Scotland Yard poster girl - complete with Heckler & Koch semi-automatic rifle - promoting efforts to protect London during the 2012 Olympics.

The black officer quit the Met in 2015 after winning a 37,000 tribunal payout in a high-profile race discrimination case and went on to join the IPCC as an investigator the following year.

Ms Howard, of Coulsdon, Surrey, is now seeking a further 144,000 payout for alleged racial discrimination and victimisation during her six-month stint at the IPCC.

She told Central London Employment Tribunal that the IPCC, while probing misconduct and racism, was itself riddled with corruption and discriminatory practices.

She alleged that some IPCC investigators secretly supported the racist police officers whom they were investigating.

Ms Howard has accused the Independent Police Complaints Commission of being 'institutionally racist and corrupt'

She told the tribunal: 'The white managers I worked with are not independent and believe that their duty is not to investigate wrongdoing officers but to protect the reputation of the police force concerned and its senior officers in particular.

'They are corrupt.'

Giving evidence, Ms Howard told how her initial application to work at the IPCC was rejected without interview.

But the single mother was successful in October 2016 after re-applying under her married name Carol McCabe.

She told how she threw her new employer into a panic when she changed her name back to Carol Howard on the police system.

Ms Howard said her bosses were fearful that hiring her 'could be regarded by the Met as an act of "revenge" against the police.'

She said: 'I was treated as an embarrassment to them as my presence would annoy the Met and my visible presence may cause a meltdown.'

The IPCC banned her from working on any cases investigating the Met, she claimed.

The black officer quit the Met in 2015 after winning a 37,000 tribunal payout in a high-profile race discrimination case and went on to join the IPCC as an investigator the following year

She said: 'I am a diligent and professional person. I had done nothing wrong. Moreover, I was the victim. I was discriminated against and victimised by the Met. I won my claims.

'I believe that the IPCC moved to restrict me and hide me away. I was therefore undermined in my role even before I walked in through the front door on day one.

'Rather than believe in me, they believed in their own need to protect their reputation by not upsetting the Met.'

She said that she was later also sidelined from other major investigations.

In 2014, a tribunal found Ms Howard had been bullied, harassed and victimised while serving as one of only two black officers in the 700-strong Diplomatic Protection Group

She claimed that other black and ethnic minority IPCC officers told her they were also 'treated differently' from their white colleagues and suffered from a 'hostile working environment'.

She said: 'In my view, the IPCC is an institutionally racist employer. It is therefore unfit to investigate claims of race discrimination against the police.

'It is corrupt and not fit for purpose. It is neither independent nor impartial. It protects senior white police officers.'

Ms Howard accused the IPCC of 'covering up' the racism of a senior police officer in another force whom she was tasked to investigate.

She left the IPCC after it decided against renewing her contract in March 2017.

The IPCC was replaced in January by a tougher police complaints organisation, the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

It strongly refutes all the allegations made by Ms Howard and is vigorously contesting her tribunal claim.

She is seeking 144,000 in damages for loss of earnings and injury to feelings.

In 2014, a tribunal found Ms Howard had been bullied, harassed and victimised while serving as one of only two black officers in the 700-strong Diplomatic Protection Group.

Her 37,000 award included aggravated damages over distress she suffered at the hands of one colleague, who had been 'malicious, vindictive and spiteful'.

She quit the Met after 14 years' police experience.

Her latest tribunal, expected to last two weeks, continues.
A man brutally murdered a teenage prostitute after arguing over the price of sex before walking into a police station and confessing the very next day.

John Gillum, 29, told officers he committed a homicide at his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Saturday before turning himself in the next day.

He allegedly killed Morgan Huennekens, 19, with a knife and pipe before dragging her body into a shed behind his home.

Her body was discovered by police wrapped in blankets in the shed with two belts wrapped around her.

Morgan Huennekens, 19, went to John Gillum's home on Saturday. She was raped and murdered by the man after they had a disagreement over price

Gillum, 29, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, confessed to killing a teenage prostitute after they allegedly fought over how much he would pay her

Gillum said he wrapped her body in a blanket and moved it into the shed behind his home after he murdered her

Gillum told investigators that he met Huennekens 'a few days ago' where they exchanged numbers and began messaging about exchanging sex for money, according to KTLA.

The 19-year-old met Gillum at his home on Saturday, and she said she would leave if he didn't pay her more for sex.

Gillum said Hueenekens asked him to stop after he tied her up

Gillum told authorities that made him angry so he punched her in the mouth, tied her up and then raped her.

He then 'took a knife and stabbed her in the neck' and said he 'remembered from watching movies how to stab someone,' according to court documents about the case.

His initial reasoning for committing the murder was because 'he sensed something in his head that he had to kill the victim.'

Gillum noticed the victim was 'suffering' so he then hit her over the head with a metal pipe so 'she no longer had to suffer'.

An argument initially started between the pair after he agreed to pay $160 for sex and gave her $200, but she refused to give him change.

He then tied Huennekens to his bed post to prevent her from leaving the house.

Gillum now faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide and another count of second-degree sexual assault for the rape and murder of the 19-year-old

An autopsy revealed that Huennekens died of multiple stab wound and blunt trauma

Gillum admitted that Huennekens asked him to stop and 'begged for her life' before he stabbed her 'five or six times'.

An autopsy revealed that the victim died of multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma.

The 29-year-old faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of second-degree sexual assault for the attack and murder of Huennekens.
NEWS EDITOR | Books + Publishing

MELBOURNE  Neil McDonald, the author of two popular books on the Kokoda Track in wartime, has died in Sydney at the age of 77.

Mr McDonald published several books including 200 Shots, a pictorial account of Australians fighting on the Kokoda Track and Kokoda Front Line: The Amazing Story of Legendary Australian War Cameraman Damien Parer.

His most recent book, Valiant for Truth: The Life of Chester Wilmot, War Correspondent, was shortlisted for the 2017 NIB Waverley Military History Prize and the 2017 Prime Ministers Award for Australian History, where judges commended the book for shedding] new light on the career and experiences of one of Australias most renowned war correspondents.

All of us at NewSouth Publishing were saddened to learn of the death of our author Neil McDonald in Sydney last weekend, said publisher Phillipa McGuinness. Coincidentally, it was the same day that journalist Paul Kelly, in the pages of The Australian, praised Neil McDonalds biography of Chester Wilmot that we were so proud to publish in 2016.
Three men have been jailed for two and a half years after admitting the manslaughter of a Brit found dead on a Malaga Airport bench with ham on his buttocks and his genitals shoved inside an empty tuna can.

Irishman James O'Byrne, 59, from Cork, was one of three men convicted of killing Steven Allford, 51.

Two Finns - named as Jussi Petteri Munck, 41, and Mika Tapio Soininem, 48, also confessed to the Londoner's manslaughter after striking a plea bargain with prosecutors.

Steven Allford, 51, a homeless man, was found dead at Malaga Airport in October, tied to a bench and stripped from the waist with ham on his buttocks and his genitals in a tuna can

State prosecutors were seeking jail sentences of three years for manslaughter for each of the three men ahead of trial.

They were also seeking a further one-year prison term on a charge of submitting Mr Allford to degrading treatment.

The trio were handed prison sentences of two years for the first crime and six months for the second as part of the plea bargain deal.

Vagrant Mr Allford was discovered lying face down on a bench outside Malaga Airport early on October 21, 2016.

He had been tied to the bench in a landscaped area near the arrivals lounge and a busy train stop and his trousers had been pulled down round his ankles.

A slice of ham had been left on each of his exposed buttock and his genitals placed inside an empty tuna can.

A post-mortem revealed he choked to death on his own vomit after a heavy drinking session.

Initial fears Mr Allford's death could be a hate crime based on the fact he might have been homeless, but that gave way to a new theory as the investigation advanced which shows he was targeted in a row over food.

Police were told he had fallouts with other men sleeping rough at Malaga Airport because he was mean about sharing food and drink with them but always expected a portion of theirs.

O'Byrne, who like the other suspects slept rough in Spain, was arrested in the port city of Algeciras an hour and a half's drive from Malaga after Spanish police were handed an incriminating video recorded by one of the suspects and posted on Facebook.

Fellow rough sleepers Jussi Petteri Munck, Mika Tapio Soininem and James O'Byrne have admitted his manslaughter

Santiago Calvo Cervera, the judge who sentenced the men at a criminal court in Malaga, said in a three-page ruling that it had been proved the accused had tied Mr Allford to the bench despite his drunkenness.

He added: 'They didn't just tie him to the bench, something which Mr Munck checked had been done, but they filmed Mr Allford and were also laughing about his temporary helplessness.

'They ended up putting a lit cigarette in his mouth after having put it in his buttocks and introduced his naked testicles into an empty tuna can.

'They acted as if they were narrating a news report and posted the video on to the Facebook of Soininem, the person who filmed what was happening.

'When they had had a good laugh, they left Mr Allford to his fate.

'Because of his drunkenness, and because of the fact it was almost impossible for him to move because of the plastic ties, he would end up dying after choking on his own vomit, something the accused could have easily avoided with a call to make sure Mr Allford received medical attention.'

Little is known about Mr Allford's life and why he ended up sleeping at one of Spain's busiest holiday airports, although it is believed he was adopted as a youngster and had served time in prison in France and Spain.

He had only been in Spain for about a week before he died after a brief spell in the UK and was thought to be trying to sort out proper accommodation away from Malaga Airport.

A source close to the case said before his killers were sentenced: 'The images show the victim was alive when the humiliation began.

'Steven was tied up and in the same position he was found in hours later in the footage, lying face-down on the bench, but he could be seen moving his head slightly.

'The video was posted briefly on Facebook and shared by a Finnish user who later took it down, but only after police in Finland had got hold of it and downloaded it so they could pass it on to counterparts in Spain.

'It was bombshell stuff and key to the investigation and prosecution.'
A Georgia mother-of-two frustrated with her ex-husband decided to vent to her friends on Facebook, but never thought the post would land her behind bars.

Anne King's eight-year-old son came down with the flu in early 2015 so she asked her ex-husband, Washington County sheriff's deputy Capt. Corey King, if he could pick up ibuprofen and drop it in her mailbox on his way to work.

Anne said he refused telling her that he was too busy, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Fed up, Anne posted about the situation on her Facebook page and was arrested shortly afterwards. Now, Anne and Corey are battling it out in court after she filed a federal lawsuit saying her civil rights were violated.

A judge will decide on Thursday if the case will move to a trial.

Anne King was jailed after she vented on Facebook about her ex-husband, who is a sheriff's deputy captain, refusing to pick up medicine for their sick son

Anne said the Facebook post above is what landed her and a friend in jail

'That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kid's dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses,' Anne wrote on Facebook, adding that she was 'feeling overwhelmed'.

Anne's friend, Susan Hines, commented on the post, calling Corey a 'POS', which typically means 'piece of s***', and told Anne to 'pick up the slack' by getting the medicine herself.

According to the AJC, Corey caught wind of the Facebook post and demanded Anne remove it, which she eventually did.

A few days later, Hines and Anne were charged with criminal defamation of character and were jailed.

Anne said she spent about four hours behind bars before she posted her $1,000 bond.

She told Fox5 that Corey, who runs the Washington County jail she was held at, even stopped by her cell.

'I had a bad feeling to be in his jail with his jailers processing me,' she said. 'And he walks by and looks me dead in the face in his jail and I can't tell you how intimidated I felt.'

During a deposition, Corey, who is now re-married, said his wife's comment about his fatherhood were inaccurate and he filed the arrest warrant to prevent other such postings.

'I don't feel as though the portrayal of my fatherhood was truthful as what I do for my children and what I have done for my children as long as they have been alive,' the police deputy said in the deposition.

Anne filed a federal lawsuit against Corey in January 2017, accusing him of using his position of power to violate her civil rights.

Washington County sheriff's deputy Capt. Corey King demanded Anne take down the Facebook post and then filed an arrest warrant to have her and her friend arrested

Anne filed a federal lawsuit against her ex accusing him of using his position of power to violate her civil rights

His colleague and friend Capt. Trey Burgamy is also named in the suit for helping Corey file the paperwork to have Anne and Hines thrown in jail. She's also seeking unspecified monetary damages.

'It was a classic good ole boy system at work,' her attorney Ken Hodges told AJC. 'What she said on Facebook wasn't that offensive. It was her friend that posted the derogatory message.'

A federal judge on Thursday is expected to rule if Corey and Burgamy violated Anne's constitutional rights, and if the case should continue to trial.

Washington County sheriff Thomas Smith told AJC that both deputies are in 'good standing' with the department and blames Magistrate judge Ralph Todd for Anne and Hines' arrests.

According to Smith, Todd changed the charge on the arrest warrant from 'harassing phone calls' to 'criminal defamation of character', which is considered unconstitutional and resulted in the women being jailed.
A Sydney removalist failed to deliver furniture to at least three address in New South Wales as he accumulated $45,000 worth of goods and allegedly blackmailed residents a court has heard.

Dione Trevor Blisset, 40, faced the Penrith Local Court on Thursday after his arrest on Wednesday when residents at three addresses complained, the Daily Telegraph reported.

He was charged with 'three counts of larceny' as a bailee, having previously been convicted of 'very similar' offences, according to police.

He allegedly blackmailed residents by demanding more money before he released their contents back to them.

His defence lawyer Stephanie Fowler said Mr Blisset strongly denied the charges.

Dione Trevor Blisset (pictured), 40, faced the Penrith Local Court on Thursday after his arrest on Wednesday after residents at three addresses complained

He is the director of Rise Transport and Logistics in Schofields, NSW.

He was denied bail due to his 'recent' history for fraud and 'unacceptable risk' to the community, Magistrate Stephen Corry told the court, according to the Daily Telegraph.

'The offences are serious and part of the offending involves effectively attemption to extract from some of the people he was dealing with,' he said.

The three victims lived at Panania, Dee Why and Glenmore Park in New South Wales.

Police believe more residents may still come forward as they continue to investigate.
Hospital staff gave the dog food and water and eventually found him a new home

His owner was killed in a brutal stabbing attack in Sao Paolo state, Brazil

The dog, who has no name, sits in front of the hospital every day and waits

Heartbreaking photos show the incredibly loyal dog who turns up outside a hospital every day to wait for his owner, four months after he was killed.

The dog, who has no name, first arrived at the Santa Casa de Novo Horizonte hospital in Sao Paolo state, Brazil in October.

On that night he chased the ambulance carrying his stricken owner for miles until he finally got to the hospital doors.

The animal belonged to a 59-year-old homeless man who was stabbed in a brutal street fight in Novo Horizonte and rushed to the hospital where he died - according to local media reports.

The dog's owner was a homeless man who was killed in a brutal street fight stabbing in the town of Novo Horizonte in October last year

He found his way to the hospital by following his owner's ambulance several miles from the scene of the crime to outside the hospital doors

Two months on from his terrible death, the homeless man's dog continued to wait for him in front of the hospital, Brazil's O Globo newspaper reported.

Staff at the hospital have taken the dog under their wing, giving him everything he needs to survive.

He is regularly given dog food and water, and the staff even managed to find a local kennels, 3km from the hospital, willing to take him in.

Workers from the kennels eventually showed up to take the dog away.

But with a new owner lined up to take him, hospital workers were shocked to see the dog turn up back to the hospital not long afterwards, having escaped the kennels.

Staff at the hospital looked after the dog, giving him food and water and even finding him a new home

The staff were left astounded when the dog escaped from the kennels and returned to the hospital to wait for his owner

The animal's story went viral on social media after a local woman, Cristine Sardella, shared photos of him to Facebook.

'We have a lot to learn from animals,' her post on Facebook read.

'This dog stays every day at the door of the Santa Casa de novo horizonte hospital waiting for its owner who unfortunately passed away.

'He may be waiting in vain, but the love he feels for his owner is eternal.'
The head of the U.S. Forest Service stepped down from his post on Wednesday amid accusations of sexual harassment against him and claims of an entrenched pattern of misconduct within his agency towards women.

The resignation of Tony Tooke came after a PBS report citing widespread misconduct, after interviews with 34 women in 13 states who described a pattern of misconduct ranging from discrimination to harassment.

Three women said they were raped after hours by firefighters while deployed by the Forest Service in its fire containment efforts. Women who raised complaints said they frequently faced reprisal.

Tooke, who became chief of the Forest Service in September after four decades with the agency, wrote in an email to fellow employees: '

The resignation of Tony Tooke, head of the Forest Service, came after a PBS report citing widespread misconduct at the agency

In some of these news reports, you may have seen references to my own behavior in the past. This naturally raised questions about my record and prompted an investigation, which I requested and fully support, and with which I have cooperated. I have been forthright during the review, but I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media.

"What I can control, however, are decisions I make today and the choice of a path for the future that is best for our employees, the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I must also think about what is best for my family. Therefore, I have decided that what is needed right now is for me to step down as Forest Service Chief and make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE: Women at the agency recounted discrimination, retaliation, and even rape. A fast-moving brushfire caused by an engine backfire along Highway 101 puts residents of this Central Coast wine and equestrian community on edge on August 16, 2015, near Buellton, California

Darla Bush said after she became pregnant with twins, her career spiraled downward

Battalion chief Abby Bolt was raped by a firefighter who was not with the Forest Service during a 2012 assignment in Colorado

The agency had brought in an independent investigator to evaluate Tooke, who was said to have engaged in relationships with subordinates before he got elevated to his post.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Tooke's promotion in August.

The March 1 PBS report catalogued scores of accusations of misconduct.

Michaela Myers said she got groped by a supervisor at an after-work pizza party in Oregon. She says the harassment persisted for months, but when she finally complained about, no misconduct was found.

California firefighter Darla Bush said she had become accustomed to bullying, like other firefighters putting rocks in her backpack. But after she said she was pregnant with twins, she said her career spiraled downward.

Bush, 40, says her supervisor told her she was 'useless' because she could only work light duty. 'I had a lot to contribute to the district, she said. [But] after I got there and reported that I was pregnant, is when my career spiraled downhill. And its been nonstop ever since,' according to the report.

Battalion chief Abby Bolt was raped by a firefighter who was not with the Forest Service during a 2012 assignment in Colorado

Darla Bush said after she became pregnant with twins, her career spiraled downward

Battalion chief Abby Bolt was raped by a firefighter who was not with the Forest Service during a 2012 assignment in Colorado. She reported it to police, but not to the Forest Service higher-ups, fearing retaliation.

At one point, someone wrote 'Quit' on the dust on the back windshield of her car.

Perdue said in a statement: 'In my experience, in order to effectively lead any organization, you must have the moral authority to inspire its members to work toward the goal of continuous improvement. Chief Tooke has determined that it is best for the Forest Service, its future and its employees that he step aside. I thank him for his decades of service to this nation and to the conservation of its natural resources.'
Children rescued from the ISIS fanatics who brainwashed them into committing atrocities for the group are being 'deradicalised' in a camp in Iraq.

Part of their treatment includes talking through their experiences - and drawing them on paper with coloured pencils.

But some of the stories and pictures are horrifying and deal with rape, murders and vicious combat.

One newly arrived boy, aged 14, draws suicide belts, car bombs and various other explosives - weapons of war he once built himself for use by ISIS murderers in Iraq and Syria.

Part of their treatment includes talking through their experiences - and drawing them on paper with coloured pencils

But some of the stories and pictures are horrifying and deal with rape, murders and vicious combat. Pictured: A child's drawing is seen at the psychotherapy centre in the Rawanga camp

One newly arrived boy, aged 14, draws suicide belts, car bombs and various other explosives - weapons of war he once built himself for use by ISIS murderers in Iraq and Syria

Kidnapped from his Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq, he said he got used to the sound of bombs falling on ISIS's de facto capital, Raqqa, in Syria, as government troops closed in last year. Pictured: Yazidi students play at the psychotherapy centre in Iraq

'Here's where I got shot fighting the SDF,' said the boy, not named to protect him from retribution, referring to the US-backed rebel Syrian Defence Forces and pointing out a bullet wound on his shin. Pictured: Some of the drawings at the camp

One image depicted him killing a man with a spray of bullets, something he said he did during three years as a child fighter forcibly conscripted by ISIS.

Kidnapped from his Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq, he said he got used to the sound of bombs falling on ISIS's de facto capital, Raqqa, in Syria, as government troops closed in last year.

'Here's where I got shot fighting the SDF,' said the boy, not named to protect him from retribution, referring to the US-backed rebel Syrian Defence Forces and pointing out a bullet wound on his shin.

Giving him time to draw and talk about his experience is part of a treatment programme to help him move on and protect both him and others from lasting damage.

Hundreds of children are estimated to have been used as fighters by ISIS, including boys who joined with their families or were given up by them and the offspring of foreign fighters groomed from birth to perpetuate its ideology

Giving the 14-year-old boy and others like him time to draw and talk about his experience is part of a treatment programme to help him move on and protect both him and others from lasting damage

Naif Jardo Qassim, a psychotherapist treating children at Rawanga refugee camp near Dohuk, emphasised that they are 'victims and not criminals,' and should be treated as such. Pictured: A young Yazidi boy at the centre

The government has detained and prosecuted dozens of children for their suspected ISIS affiliation, according to a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch. Pictured: Yazidi students wait for the therapist at the psychotherapy centre in the Rawanga camp

Hundreds of children are estimated to have been used as fighters by ISIS, including boys who joined with their families or were given up by them and the offspring of foreign fighters groomed from birth to perpetuate its ideology.

Experts have warned that indoctrinated children, who began escaping the clutches of ISIS as its territory fractured last year, could pose an ongoing threat to security, both regionally and in the West, if they are not rehabilitated.

Treating Yazidi children, who were separated from their families and in many cases orphaned, holds particular challenges.

There is little in the way of specialized care for them in Iraq, where the minimum age of criminal responsibility is nine.

The government has detained and prosecuted dozens of children for their suspected ISIS affiliation, according to a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Naif Jardo Qassim, a psychotherapist treating children at Rawanga refugee camp near Dohuk, emphasised that they are 'victims and not criminals,' and should be treated as such.

Highlighting the scale of the task, Yazidi teacher Hoshyar Khodeida Suleiman recounts the story of one of his students, a young boy reunited with his family in the autumn.

A few days later, the boy's father woke up in the middle of the night to find his son wielding a knife to his throat, confused about whether he should kill his parents or himself.

Highlighting the scale of the task, Yazidi teacher Hoshyar Khodeida Suleiman recounts the story of one of his students, a young boy reunited with his family in the autumn. A few days later, the boy's father woke up in the middle of the night to find his son wielding a knife to his throat, confused about whether he should kill his parents or himself. Pictured: Volleyball at the camp

ISIS sold girls and women into slavery, marrying some off to fighters, and trained many boys to join the ranks of what it called the Cubs of the Caliphate, posting videos of them committing atrocities in the name of its self-declared state

When the Islamists overran Yazidi towns and villages in 2014, they killed or enslaved more than 9,000 adults and children in what the United Nations has called a genocidal campaign against a religious minority labelled heretics

'He was screaming that they were infidels and that he would rather die than be one of them,' Suleiman said.

When the Islamists overran Yazidi towns and villages in 2014, they killed or enslaved more than 9,000 adults and children in what the United Nations has called a genocidal campaign against a religious minority labelled heretics.

ISIS sold girls and women into slavery, marrying some off to fighters, and trained many boys to join the ranks of what it called the Cubs of the Caliphate, posting videos of them committing atrocities in the name of its self-declared state.

Most of the children returned, not home, but to displacement camps in northern Iraq, where they live with relatives - their parents either missing or killed by the militants.

Most of the children returned, not home, but to displacement camps in northern Iraq, where they live with relatives - their parents either missing or killed by the militants. Pictured: Yazidi students play during break at school in the Sharya camp

Qassim works for Yahad In-Unum, one of a handful of international NGOs which has set up a children's centre in the camp, where children can receive psychological treatment, ranging from talk to art therapy

Laila Ali, spokesperson for UNICEF in Iraq which supports such services, says rehabilitation is 'absolutely possible'

'Everything changed while they were gone,' said Qassim. 'That's if they even remember anything from their lives before.'

Adding to that instability is the weight of the traumas they have endured.

'These children have seen their families killed, or were kidnapped, beaten and brainwashed,' he said. 'In some cases, they witnessed executions, were forced to kill or were raped, multiple times, for years.'

Qassim works for Yahad In-Unum, one of a handful of international NGOs which has set up a children's centre in the camp, where children can receive psychological treatment, ranging from talk to art therapy.

They also come to play, said Qassim, 'and remember how to be children again'.

Qassim's six-month-old centre is currently treating 123 children, a mix of girls and boys all under the age of 18, recently returned from ISIS territory.

'When they first come back from captivity, the children can often be aggressive, violent, confused and angry,' he said, adding that many of the children were forced to forget their native Kurdish.

'That quickly dissolves into anxiety and deep depression, as the trauma begins to settle in.'

The centre devises a treatment programme for each child, which involves both individual and group therapy sessions.

'We slowly work to undo the years of brainwashing they were subjected to,' said Qassim. 'We want them to forget the last few years and start again.'

He said all the children he has treated were successfully 'de-indoctrinated', adding, 'no child is beyond saving'.

The relative novelty of so-called deradicalisation programmes means opinion is divided over their effectiveness.

Laila Ali, spokesperson for UNICEF in Iraq which supports such services, says rehabilitation is 'absolutely possible'.

Some children are harder to reach than others, particularly those who have forgotten life before ISIS.

One 10-year-old boy was smuggled out of Syria just three and a half weeks ago and has since been living with his uncle in the camp.

Shy at first, he became animated when describing his 'accomplishments' during his fighter training in Deir Ezzor, Syria and said he is not sure his current life is better.

Qassim says he exhibits confusion about whether he should denounce ISIS's teachings.

He and other children sneak off to pray in the toilets, unconvinced they will not get in trouble with ISIS for shirking religious obligations.

Qassim says he is hopeful he will be back to normal soon.

Some face new humiliations on their return.

'I had to move in with my relatives because my parents said they would never accept me back because of what I did,' said one former fighter, now aged 15.

Qassim is the only psychotherapist at his centre and the work takes its toll.

'It's very difficult to hear children tell you these stories - of rape, of combat, of killings... In my life, I'd never heard such horrors.'

With little in the way of funds or a roadmap, some community members have pitched in to help in their own ways.

Suleiman aims to rehabilitate Yazidi children at Sharya refugee camp near Dohuk by 'reconnecting them with their Yazidi faith', with an emphasis on 'humanity and human decency'.

On a rainy afternoon in late February, they came to class in traditional clothes he had given them: white dresses and scarves with black and gold headbands for the girls; trousers, matching waistcoat and red and white keffiyeh scarf for the boys.

'It's a simple thing,' he said. 'But the clothes are a reminder of who they are and where they come from.'
Factory workers donated 3,300 hours of overtime so their colleague could be with his young son as he battled leukaemia.

Andreas Graf's son Julius was three when he was diagnosed with the deadly blood cancer and was stuck in hospital for nine weeks.

Just as the little boy was about to return home to Fronhausen in the central German state of Hesse, his mother died suddenly of heart disease.

Factory workers donated 3,300 hours of overtime so their colleague Andreas Graf, 36, could be with his young son Julius (pictured together) as he battled leukaemia

Andreas Graf and son Julius with colleagues who donated 3,264.5 hours of overtime, allowing Mr Graf to take more than a year off work

The 36-year-old took all his annual leave from his job as an assembly worker with a design company in the nearby town of Marburg to be with his son.

But his few weeks off were not enough and, struggling to cope with his son's illness and the death of his wife, he was afraid of losing his job.

HR manager Pia Meier appealed to the factory's workers to donate overtime and all 650 immediately signed up - even those who had never met him.

Within two weeks of the appeal, they had raised 3,264.5 hours which the company allowed Mr Graf to take as paid leave.

The astonishing total was equal to 81.6 weeks or more than 18 months of overtime at an average of about five hours per generous worker.

'Without this tremendous help, I would've been out of a job by now,' a tearful Mr Graf said.

After chemotherapy, Julius, who turned five at the end of February, was feeling well enough to be released home and hoped to return to nursery school soon

HR manager Pia Meier (pictured) appealed to the factory's workers to donate overtime and all 650 immediately signed up - even those who had never met him

Ms Meier said she had also been overwhelmed by the response, pointing out that there wasn't a single person who hadn't donated.

Thanks to the generosity of his colleagues, Mr Graf was able take more than a year off to take care of his son.

After chemotherapy, Julius, who turned five at the end of February, was feeling well enough to be released home and hoped to return to nursery school soon.

Mr Graf said he would be eternally grateful to his colleagues and the company.
Dallas Rose Lott, 64, was arrested on Wednesday for vandalizing her neighbor Rodrigo Camus' townhouse in Tomball, Texas

A 64-year-old woman found herself in court this week after her neighbor recorded her vandalizing his townhouse in Tomball, Texas.

Rodrigo Camus says he bought a property in the Retreat at Lakewood Forest in October with plans to flip it.

But he says that neighbor Dallas Rose Lott, 64, has been sabotaging his plans to sell the home by taking down 'for sale' signs and gluing his locks shut so that no one can get into the house.

'The Realtor would call me and say we had a showing, but the neighbor scares off everyone who comes to see the home,' Camus told the Houston Chronicle. 'She put crazy glue inside of the doorknob so I had to replace the doorknobs. It was noted, but the police didn't do anything about it. She then did it again and then spray painted my windows.'

Lott believes that Camus has stolen square footage from her home. Camus doesn't know how she got that idea. Lott is seen above swinging a bat-like object at Camus when he tried to talk to her recently

Camus set up security cameras outside his home that caught Lott taking down a for sale sign

Lott is also seen taking down an open house sign. Camus bought the home with the intention of flipping it but has been having trouble selling it because of Lott's antics

Lott is seen above covering up the security camera with pieces of duct tape

Lott also covered his door knobs with spray paint and duct tape to prevent others from getting in to show the home

It all stems from a bizarre property dispute, Camus says.

'She claims that her house should be bigger, and that there's some square feet missing, so obviously it's in mine. Makes sense,' Camus told KHOU.

Camus says Lott started vandalizing his home in November, shoving pins in the locks, covering the door knobs in duct tape and even spray painting his windows - causing $3,500 in damage.

He says he complained to the police several times but they said there was nothing he could do until he had evidence that Lott was the perpetrator.

So Camus installed some security cameras and caught Lott on camera in the act.

Camus (pictured) says Lott has caused about $3,500 in damage to his home, which he bought in October

That gave police enough evidence to arrest Lott on Wednesday on misdemeanor and felony charges of criminal mischief.

She was released on personal bond on Thursday and ordered not to have contact with Camus and to stay away from his home.

Other neighbors say Lott has been in trouble before for damaging lights in the courtyard.

In a desperate case, Lott's attorney refused to continue representing her in court because she stopped cooperating with him.

On another recent occasion, Camus filmed himself trying to approach Lott in their community and she came running at him with a bat-like object, yelling at him to 'get off my property'.

Camus says he's tried to get in contact with the woman's relatives.
Donald Tusk today warned Britain all 27 EU nations are united in their determination to secure a deal for Ireland before trade talks.

Standing alongside the Irish premier Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk demanded an 'explicit, specific' solution to the border.

The EU's fall back position is keeping Northern Ireland inside EU rules - something considered impossible by London and Belfast despite a political agreement in December with Theresa May.

Britain has long insisted working out rules on trade after Brexit is essential to clarifying how the open border between the Republic and Northern Ireland will function.

In his press conference, Mr Tusk also rejected calls from Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday for the Brexit trade deal to be the first ever to include financial services.

The hard-hitting message risks chilling British optimism of a breakthrough at an EU summit later this month.

Donald Tusk (pictured in Dublin today) warned Britain all 27 EU nations are united in their determination to secure a deal for Ireland before trade talks

Standing alongside the Irish premier Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk demanded an 'explicit, specific' solution to the border

Irish Premier Leo Varadkar (pictured at today's event) said that his preference was 'to avoid a hard border through a wider future relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union'

Donald Tusk today doubled down on his demand that the Irish border be resolved before Brexit can move on to trade issues

Mr Tusk said: 'We have to be clear that any backsliding on the commitments made so far would create a risk to further progress in Brexit negotiations. This applies also to the question of avoiding a hard border.

'When I was in London last week, I heard very critical comments by Prime Minister May and others about the way the Irish border issue was presented in the draft withdrawal agreement.

'We know today that the UK Government rejects a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, the EU single market and the customs union.

DUP leader Arlene Foster tears into Tony Blair and Sir John Major over the Troubles Arlene Foster today tore into Tony Blair and Sir John Major over their bid to use the threat of violence returning to Northern Ireland as a 'bargaining chip' in Brexit talks. The DUP leader said the warnings that quitting the EU could reignite the Troubles was an 'insult' to people who live in Northern Ireland. Her comments are a fiery rebuke to the two former Prime Minsters who have both claimed Brexit will endanger the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process. Mrs Foster said the EU must sign up to a sensible plan which would see no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or the rest of the UK. She told the British Chambers of Commerce's conference in London today: 'I want to see an optimistic, sensible and pragmatic approach to Brexit,' she said. 'I object in the strongest possible terms to people who have limited experience of the Troubles in Northern Ireland throwing threats of violence around as some kind of bargaining chip in this negotiating process. 'To do so is an insult to the people of Northern Ireland who worked so hard to bring peace to our country.' Advertisement

'While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border.

'As long as the UK doesn't present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations. If in London someone assumes that the negotiations can deal with other issues first before the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first.'

Mr Varadkar said that his preference was 'to avoid a hard border through a wider future relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union'.

He said: 'We are committed to playing our part in exploring this option or alternative specific solutions in a way that respects the structure of these negotiations.

'That will of course require further detailed progress to be put forward by the UK Government.

'However, we must have certainty that if a better option proves unachievable, the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland with the rules of the single market will apply, in order to protect the North's co-operation and avoid a hard border.'

Mr Tusk's visit comes before the European Council meeting of EU leaders on March 22-23 on Brexit and economic affairs.

It is his second visit to Ireland in three months and he told reporters in between he had spoken to every other EU leader about the Irish border questions.

Donald Tusk (pictured right in Dublin today with Leo Varadkar) has warned Britain all 27 EU nations are united in their determination to secure a deal for Ireland before trade talks

Today is Mr Tusk's second visit to Ireland in three months and he told reporters in between he had spoken to every other EU leader about the Irish border questions.

Turning to Mr Hammond's call for a services trade deal yesterday, Mr Tusk said: 'I heard the Chancellor's words about financial services being very much in the mutual interest of the UK and the EU.

'I fully respect his competence in what is defining what is in the UK's interests, however he'll have to let us define what is in the EU's interest.'

Ireland's foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has suggested the EU could block Theresa May's plans to maintain a soft Irish border while leaving the customs union.

One fallback option is the UK would have to accept keeping Northern Ireland in an effective customs union with the EU.

This is Mr Tusk's second visit to Ireland in three months.

He has already pledged that the EU will stand with the Republic on the Irish border issue and Dublin's efforts to ensure frictionless passage of people and goods.

Mr Tusk also rejected calls from Chancellor Philip Hammond (pictured speaking in London yesterday) for the Brexit trade deal to be the first ever to include financial services

Northern Ireland's position post-Brexit is holding up agreement on Britain's exit terms and a transition deal.

Mrs May's supporters in Government, the Democratic Unionists, are adamantly opposed to any settlement distinguishing Northern Ireland's EU trading relationship from the rest of the UK's post-Brexit, what some have termed a border in the Irish Sea.

On Thursday Mr Varadkar will also hold a separate meeting with the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria.

Discussions will cover the OECD's latest economic survey of Ireland and the potential for deeper Ireland-OECD co-operation.

Meanwhile, Department for Exiting the EU minister Robin Walker is due to meet Gibraltar chief minister Fabian Picardo on Thursday, and Cabinet Office minister David Lidington is hosting a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee with representatives of the devolved administrations.
When a group of baby pandas play together, funny things usually happen, such as these cubs which became twisted together like a ball of fluff.

A heart-melting footage has been released by China's iPanda channel which shows four tiny pandas trying to untangle themselves from each other.

An even funnier comment was given by the moderator in yesterday's post which read: 'Yes, this is what your clothes are like every time you open the washing machine.'

The short clip was filmed at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base, the world's largest artificial breeding population of captive pandas which currently looks after 184 giant pandas.

A total of 11 cubs were born at the base last year, and three sets of them are twins.

The sweet video came one day after the authority of Sichuan announced it would build a new Giant Panda National Park by 2023.

Have a ball: Four playful cubs find it hard to move after getting twisted in their enclosure

Too cute to bear: A video has emerged showing them trying to free themselves from the group

According to Xinhua News Agency, the massive panda park will be funded by The Bank of China.

The bank has pledged at least 10 billion yuan (1.1 billion) for the project in Sichuan, commonly believed to be the place of origin of pandas.

The report said the park will measure 2 million hectares (5 million acres), making it more than two times the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

The authority of Sichuan Province in China plans to build a new panda national park by 2023. Pictured, the world's longest-living panda triplets Meng Meng, Shuai Shuai, and Ku Ku, eat food at a zoo in Guangzhou on Feburary 8, 2018

The new panda park will be funded by the Bank of China and will be twice the size of the Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Pictured, staff members hold some 23 pandas born in 2016 at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Base in Chengdu

Sichuan is already home to the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries.

Occupying 924,500 hectares (2.3 million acres), the sanctuaries are home to more than 30 per cent of the world's pandas.

The giant panda, a symbol of China, was shifted off the endangered species list in 2016 after years of intensive conservation efforts.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a report that the animal was classified as a 'vulnerable' instead of 'endangered' species, reflecting its growing numbers in the wild in southern China.
In February 2009, the economic consulting firm Acil Tasman (now Acil Allen) produced a report for ExxonMobil about the projects impact.

Construction for the project began in 2010, and the first gas shipment was made in May 2014.

The project extracts natural gas from the Papua New Guinea highlands where it is processed before being sent via some 700km of pipeline to a plant near the nations capital, Port Moresby. The gas is then liquefied and transferred into ships for sale offshore.

CANBERRA - The Papua New Guinea liquefied natural gas (LNG) project is the largest resource extraction project in the Asia-Pacific region. Constructed at a stated cost of US$19 billion, its operated by ExxonMobil in joint venture with Oil Search and four other partners.

The purpose of the study, which was posted on ExxonMobils website but has now been removed, was to provide an analysis of the likely impacts of the project on Papua New Guineas economy.

ExxonMobil did not respond to questions about the removal of the report or the impact of the project on local communities.

The report said the project has the potential to transform the countrys economy by boosting GDP and money from exports. These would increase government revenue and provide royalty payments to landowners.

It claims the project could potentially improve the quality of life of locals by providing services and enhancing productivity. Workers and suppliers would reap rewards, as would landowners who would also benefit from social and economic infrastructure.

But six years on, none of this has come to pass.

In the years since construction began, PNGs ranking on the United Nations Development Programs human development index has fallen by two places to 158, having been overtaken by Zimbabwe and Cameroon. Far from enhancing development indicators, the largest development project in PNGs history has coincided with an unprecedented downgrade in the countrys development status.

In this period, there has been a stream of articles published that highlight the alarming state of PNGs economy and criticise the lack of positive economic and development impacts from the LNG project.

But very little is known about the actual impact of the project on local landowners. This is largely due to the remote location of the gas field in the mountainous Hela Province. The dire security situation in that part of png also makes any investigation a highly dangerous undertaking.

I first visited Hela Province in 2009 shortly before the project was to begin construction. I encountered a population that was bristling with anticipation and enthusiasm for a development that promised to transform their lives.

In 2016, I returned and spent seven months with the landowners of the LNG project as part of my doctoral research. What I encountered was abject poverty situated alongside one of the largest natural gas extraction operations in the world. Combined with this was immense frustration, anger, corruption, mounting violence and widespread proliferation of weapons.

Like other such projects in Papua New Guinea, the LNG project was able to begin operations after agreement was reached with landowners on the benefits that were to be delivered via the extraction and sale of the resource that exists beneath their land. After much negotiation, the PNG LNG Project Umbrella Benefits Sharing Agreement (UBSA) was signed in May 2009.

On its website, ExxonMobil describes the agreement as ensuring a fair distribution of the benefits, but neither ExxonMobil, Oil Search nor any of the other joint venture partners are signatories to the UBSA. Rather, the agreement is between the Papua New Guinea state, various levels of government and the landowners themselves.

The agreement outlines a variety of income streams to be generated by the project, as well as specific development promises, such as road sealing and township development. Its upshot is that landowners can expect the LNG project to deliver tangible improvements to their lives and to the lives of their children.

But the reality  after four years of operation and windfall profits for the projects joint venture partners  is that the project has delivered almost nothing of benefit to landowners. In fact, it has, in important ways, made life worse for the majority of people living in the project area.

During my fieldwork with project area landowners, I saw a life of immense frustration, disappointment and palpable anger at the absence of benefits. The township of Komo, which is at the centre of operations, contained a newly built hospital that stood empty with no beds, no staff and no fuel for its generator.

The most terrifying aspect of life in Hela province has been the proliferation of weapons. The Huli-speaking population comprises a complex society of hundreds of individual clans with a history of disputes over land and possessions that can be traced back over many generations.

This pre-existing context of intense inter-clan rivalry has been made worse by the frustrations of a population hammered by the broken promises of the nations largest resource development project.

The governor of Hela Province has now declared a gun amnesty to be unsuccessful, with few weapons being surrendered.

The next stage is for the police and army to attempt to forcibly remove thousands of military weapons from hundreds of clans throughout the province. All this is a far cry from the excitement and optimism that characterised the mood of the landowners when the LNG project began construction in 2010.

Papua New Guinea now faces a situation where its compelled to send its army to an area where a major resource extraction project has failed to deliver on its promises to landowners. It may be time for all parties involved  both state and corporate  to consider development as a more effective path to peace.
Dong-Hyun Huh, who teaches anthropology at Grace Mission University in Fulllerton, has been accused of pulling his pants down and exposing himself to two women on September 15

A professor at a Korean Theology university in California is being investigated for indecent exposure after pulling his pants down on at least two unsuspecting women.

Dong-Hyun Huh, who teaches anthropology at Grace Mission University in Fullerton, has been accused of pulling his pants down and exposing himself to two women on September 15.

And now Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies are reaching out to the public to see if anyone else was victim of his alleged indecent exposure, KTLA reported.

The first alleged incident happened in Cerritos as the victim, a 34-year-old woman, was walking along the road and Huh called out to her.

She said he was sitting in his car, a white Lexus SUV, when he yelled to get her attention and then said he was lost and needed directions.

The first alleged incident happened in Cerritos as the victim, a 34-year-old woman, was walking along the road and Huh called out to her and asked for directions before exposing himself. The second allegedly happened within hours of the first when he asked a second woman for directions and masturbated in front of her

Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies are reaching out to the public to see if anyone else was victim of his alleged indecent exposure, KTLA reported

The woman said she stopped and walked over to him, at which time she claims Huh had his pants down and his genitals fully exposed.

The victims said she immediately ran off.

Within a few hours Huh allegedly exposed himself to a second woman, 19, and masturbated in front of her, deputies said.

In both incidents the 46-year-old was sitting inside his white 2017 Lexus NX 200t, police said.

'He lured two victims to his car and asked for a certain direction,' Captain Joseph Nunez told KTLA.

Grace Mission University's website lists Huh as a full-time member who teaches church planting, evangelism, music and intercultural studies

'That's when he exposed himself to them.'

The professor was arrested Tuesday and is awaiting arraignment on two counts of indecent exposure. He is currently out on a $30,000 bond.

Authorities are now looking for potential additional victims, which they said is likely because he works at a school.

Nunez said he is concerned Huh became more bold over time as 'he was allowed to continue down this pathway.'

'The fact that he works in a school profession, they need to know if there was anything similar to this that they report it,' he explained.

Grace Mission University's website lists Huh as a full-time member who teaches church planting, evangelism, music and intercultural studies.

A staffer at the college told CBS Los Angeles Huh quit on Wednesday morning, but said they did not believe the allegations against him because he is a 'good christian.'

Anyone with information is asked to contact the department at 562-860-0044 or Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477
Shocked locals have discovered a bag containing 27 pairs of severed human hands in far eastern Russia.

The shocking find was made close to the city of Khabarovsk in Siberia, close to the border with China.

A local found one of the hands lying on the shore of a river, leading officers to a bag with the other hands inside.

Locals in Khabarovsk, in far east Siberia, discovered one hand sitting close to a popular fishing spot which led officers to the remaining 53 appendages

While nobody knows where the hands came from, one theory is that they were removed by body part dealers to stop police identifying the remains they were trying to sell

The hands were found near a popular fishing spot, but despite this locals said they had seen nothing suspicious.

There is 'mystery over who the sinister hands belonged to, when they were chopped off - and why', reported The Siberian Times.

Fingerprints were found on one hand, and the others are being checked.

One gruesome theory is that the hands could have been axed off as a punishment for theft.

The hands were discovered close to the Amur River which runs through the city of Khabarovsk

Another is that the hands were severed from dead bodies in a hospital - but it is unclear why this would happen.

One fear is that the corpses were illegally used for stealing body parts and the hands were cut to prevent bodies being identified afterwards.

Local media reported that next to the remains were found medical bandages and hospital-style plastic shoe covers.

'It is a sickening sight,' said a local source. Police have refused to comment.
A Thai man has died and four people are still missing after a ferocious fire erupted on a cargo ship in the Arabian Sea.

The vessel, which belongs to the world's biggest container shipping company Danish group AP Moller-Maersk, burst into flames late on Tuesday, but firefighters hundreds of miles from any land have been unable to extinguish the blaze.

Twenty-three members of a multi-national crew were rescued from the flames on board the ship, called Maersk Honam, but sadly one has now passed away from his injuries.

Denmark's TV2 said the ship was transporting 'dangerous cargo' without giving further details.

The ship, called Maersk Honam, is pictured from above, throwing up an enormous plume of thick, black smoke

Containers can be seen collapsing under the heat of the fire on board the ship belonging to the world's biggest

The cargo ship continues to spew out smoke after a fire erupted on board, killing one of its crew

A water cannon fails to extinguish the flames on the Danish ship, which was carrying almost 8,000 containers

Soren Toft, the chief operating officer of AP Moller-Maersk, said the fire continues and that the situation of the vessel is 'very critical'.

He said a search was continuing for four members of the crew who were still missing.

'We are doing our utmost in this tragic situation to care for all evacuated colleagues and continue the intense search and rescue operations ongoing for the four crew members currently reported missing,' he said.

The rescued crew have been taken to Sri Lanka on a rescue vessel and the burning ship is still stranded almost a thousand miles from southeastern Oman.

She was travelling from Singapore to the Suez, passing Southern India.

An Indian coastguard representative said the Maersk Honam caught fire near Agatti Island, about 650 nautical miles (1,200 kilometers) from Kochi in India.

The ship is now 900 nautical miles (1,670 kilometers) southeast of Salalah, Oman.

She was carrying 13 Indians, nine Filipinos, two Thai nationals, a Romanian, a South African and a Brit.

The ship continues to burn today as a water cannon sprays the side of the ship without much impact

The skyline is lit up with the orange glow of the flames coming from the enormous fire on board the ship

The cause of the fire - which started in one of the cargo holds - is not known, but a Danish media outlet reported 'dangerous materials' were being transported.

The vessel, built in 2017 at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in South Korea, is carrying 7,860 containers.

The Maersk Honam has a nominal capacity of 15,262 TEU (20-foot equivalent units).
Thousands of US troops are taking part in war games with Israeli soldiers in a simulation of an attack on the country by Iran.

US and Israeli commanders overseeing the major joint air defence exercise spoke Thursday of preparing for evolving threats in the Middle East during the drill.

The Juniper Cobra exercise, held every two years since 2001, comes as Israel is increasingly concerned by what it says is a growing Iranian military presence in neighbouring Syria and Lebanon.

It runs from March 4 to March 15 this year and involves more than 2,500 US troops and 2,000 Israeli Aerial Defense troops.

US Air Force personnel next to a Patriot missile Defense system, at the Israeli Air Force Base of Hatzor, in central Israel

A US Patriot missile defence system is seen during a joint military drill in Israel on March 8, 2018

A missile defense system looks poised in the background as US and Israeli personnel discuss the war games

A US soldier reaches up into the cabin of a huge military truck which has a water bottle perched on the front bumper

Last month, an Israeli fighter jet was shot down while carrying out air strikes in Syria in response to what Israel said was an incursion into its airspace by an Iranian drone from there.

While refraining from specifying the threats the exercise simulated, Brigadier General Zvika Haimovich, head of the Israeli air defence command, mentioned 'changes' in the region by 'state and non-state actors'.

'We will practise all the directions,' he told reporters at the Hatzor air force base in central Israel.

'South, north, east, all of them together - and it will be very complex scenarios that emphasise the changes of the last two years.'

According to Haimovich, Israel could call on US forces in a future conflict if the need arose.

'In our toolbox we have an additional element if necessary, and that is the presence of the American partner, here together with us,' he said.

Lieutenant General Richard Clark, commanding US forces in the drill, reflected the same sentiment.

'Our senior leaders have committed that when requested by the Israeli government we'll be ready to execute and be here,' he said while standing near various short, medium and long-range aerial defence systems used by the Israeli army.

Clark noted Juniper Cobra was the biggest and most important exercise for the US European Command, with some 2,500 US soldiers participating alongside a similar number of Israelis.

A US Air Force soldier carries a big back pack towards a line of barbed wire as a comrade climbs into a lorry

The ninth 'uniper Cobra exercise in action. It runs from March 4 to March 15 this year and involves more than 2,500 US troops and 2,000 Israeli Aerial Defense troops

US forces had prepared for the drill over 18 months, which for Clark was not only an opportunity to enhance his soldiers' skills, but also 'a symbol of our commitment to the safety and security of Israel'.

To Haimovich, the exercise 'reflects the strategic, professional and operational bond between the state of Israel and the United States' and their militaries, he said.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of 'seeking to build permanent military bases in Syria,' as well as to 'build precision guided missile factories in Syria and Lebanon against Israel.'

Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah is believed by Israel to be in possession of tens of thousands of rockets that could be used against the Jewish state, and Palestinian militants in Gaza occasionally fire shorter range projectiles at southern Israel.
TripAdvisor has pulled down a spoof review of the restaurant where poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal ate before he collapsed in a park.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia are fighting for their lives in hospital after they were given a dose of nerve agent in a suspected assassination attempt.

A police officer who was part of the investigation is also ill in hospital following suspected exposure to the nerve agent.

But while doctors battle to save the former spy and his daughter, an internet troll went on TripAdvisor to make fun of the incident.

A spoof post of TripAdvisor making fun of the poisoning of a Russian spy has been pulled down

The restaurant is at the centre of a huge investigation after Sergei Skripal's poisoning

The vulgar post, signed off 'S. Skripal', said the reviewer had ordered 'Uncle Vlad's Atomic Sausage' and stated the waiter 'refused to come within two metres of us after our meal'.

The review was later removed by TripAdvisor. A spokesman said: 'The review in question was reported to us and removed within 24 hours of submission, after being checked by a member of our content team.

'We receive over 270 new contributions a minute to the site, so we rely on a combination of sophisticated automated technology, a team of manual specialists working 24/7, and reporting tools that anyone can use, in order to promptly identify and remove spoof reviews like this one.'

The website had previously come in for criticism over its lack of regulation.

Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia (pictured on a previous visit to the restaurant) are fighting for their lives in hospital after they were hit with a nerve agent on Sunday

The Zizzi restaurant in the centre Salisbury has been taped off since the incident on Sunday

Earlier this year, the head chef at a Yorkshire pub, once voted the world's best restaurant, said customers often threatened to leave bad reviews on the site when the venue tried to charge last-minute cancellations fees.

And last year, the co-founder of a Scottish restaurant said customers would threaten 'one-star' reviews if they didn't get a discount.

The Zizzi restaurant in the centre Salisbury has been taped off since the incident on Sunday.

A spokesman for the restaurant said: 'The restaurant has been closed as a precaution and we are helping in any way that we can. While an investigation is ongoing, any enquiries should be directed to the police.'
A woman is facing charges after she allegedly ran over a family acquaintance with her car and then fired off rounds from her handgun as she drove off.

The victim reportedly encountered Irish-Rose B. Willett, who she described as a family acquaintance with whom she has had problems with in the past, in a parking lot in Bay City, Michigan.

As the 25-year-old was walking to her car after a party at around 11.35pm, she got into an argument with Willett, 21, and they both swung at each other.

Irish Rose B. Willett is alleged to have been involved in a parking lot bust up with another woman

The victim told police Willett then entered her car and reversed into her, pinning her against another parked vehicle.

Willett then drove forward, briefly dragging the other woman, mlive.com reported.

She drove onto 10th Street, turned north onto North Sheridan, stopped the car, then fired four to five shots from a handgun before driving away, the woman told police.

Police searched the area and found two .380-caliber casings, court records show.

Officers later learned Willett had called 911 and claimed she had been struck in the head with a gun and that someone had shot at her.

But officers spoke with witnesses, whose accounts largely matched the victim's.

'She's kind of crazy and she pulled out this little black pistol,' one man told police.

According to the victim, Willett was a family acquaintance with whom she has had trouble

Willett reportedly reportedly drove off, pausing to fire five shots into the air

'She fired one shot up into the air for no reason at all. I got into her car and told her that was stupid and immature. She said she can do whatever she wants.'

Willett appeared in Bay County District Court for arraignment on two counts each of assault with a dangerous weapon and felony firearm and single counts of carrying concealed weapon and misdemeanor assault and battery.

The initial incident took place in July and a warrant was issued for her arrest then though she has only now been arraigned.

Chief District Judge Dawn A. Klida, who arraigned Willett, set bond at $25,000 cash-surety.

Assault with a dangerous weapon is a four-year felony, carrying a concealed weapon is a five-year felony, and felony firearm comes with a mandatory minimum two-year prison sentence, to be served before any other sentence.
A woman who strangled an elderly ex-Gurkha to death before attacking his wife with a traditional Nepalese kukri knife and a rolling pin has been jailed for eight years.

Sun Tamang, 51, throttled Man Limbu, 75, with his neck warmer after an argument at her home in Aldershot, Hampshire, on March 10 last year.

While he lay dying on the floor, she dragged him to the kitchen and slipped a plastic bag under his head to stop any blood seeping into her carpet.

Tamang then went to Mr Limbu's home nearby armed with a kukri knife and a rolling pin, and let herself in with his keys.

She confronted his wife, Gavatri Devi Limbu, 48, and threatened to 'bite her to death' before biting at the woman's cheek.

Sun Tamang (left) throttled Man Limbu (right) with his neck warmer after an argument at her home in Aldershot, Hampshire, on March 10 last year

Mr Limbu, who served with the British Gurkhas as part of the 7th Gurkha Rifles, was found dead by Tamang's children.

Tamang left a Post-It note near his body claiming Mr Limbu had come to her home and assaulted her and stated her children 'were not to blame.'

Prosecutor Stephen Harvey, QC, said the reasons why she committed the crimes may never become absolutely clear but that she did was 'beyond any doubt.'

Her barrister, Bernard Richmond, QC, told the court they were 'probably no nearer to understanding what on Earth was going on that night now.'

'What is quite clear though, is there is a good deal about the deceased which is not entirely known,' he added.

'But we may have had an insight into that from his wife when she told us about his temperament and his controlling nature.'

Tamang then went to Mr Limbu's home nearby armed with a kukri knife (pictured, file photo) and a rolling pin, and let herself in with his keys

Mr Richmond said Tamang was to be sentenced on the basis she used 'excessive self-defence', meaning when Mr Limbu went to Tamang's house 'he became aggressive.'

Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender, QC, jailed Tamang for eight years at the Old Bailey on Thursday as friends of Mr Limbu looked down from the public gallery.

'You claimed that you were acting in lawful self-defence, the jury were sure that you were not,' he told her.

'You deprived him of his life and you have caused suffering and misery to his family.

'Your conduct after his death is also something which I need to take into account. It is an aggravating feature.

'You described how at the end of your struggle he made a noise from his throat, then he slumped to the ground.

'You knew at this stage that he might be dying but you did not seek any help for him. You saw blood coming from his ears.

'You were concerned that his blood would stain your carpet, so you pulled him into the kitchen where the floor was tiled.

'You put a black plastic bag under his head to catch the blood. You covered him, but you still took no steps to obtain any assistance for this man who was dying on your floor.

'What you did next was curious. You took his keys and his mobile phone. You went into a cupboard and took out a bag containing a kukri knife and a rolling pin.

What is a kukri knife? Traditional Nepalese blade carried by Gurkhas The origins of the kukri knife - the national knife of Nepal - go back to ancient times. It is also a symbol of Gurkha soldiers - Nepalese fighters who have been part of the British Army for nearly 200 years and have the motto: 'Better to die than be a coward.' To this day, they carry the kukri knife, an 18-inch long weapon with an inwardly curved blade, into battle. It was said that once a kukri was drawn in battle, it had to 'taste the blood of an enemy' before it could be returned to its sheath. Nowadays, Gurkhas use them mainly for cooking. Advertisement

'Then you left your flat and went to his flat. You let yourself in and confronted his widow, Gavatri Limbu, when she came home.

'The two of you were together in her flat for some hours, from about 3.40pm until the police arrived at about 11pm.

'Despite that, you did not tell her that you had been in a fight with her husband or that you had left him injured in your flat. What you did do was to bite her on the cheek.'

Mr Harvey told jurors during Tamang's trial that the victim was found on the kitchen floor by her daughter when she arrived home from work.

Tamang left a note saying: 'This person came to the door, knocked on the door and this person attacked me and then I retaliated. My children are not to blame.'

The prosecutor said Tamang accepted the victim died as a result of strangulation and that no other person was involved in his death.

Tamang's motive was unclear as she answered 'no comment' in interview, he added.

After the killing Tamang left her home and waited for the dead man's wife at her flat in Grove Road after letting herself in.

'In doing so, her intentions appear clear because she took with her a kukri knife - a Nepalese knife, she also took a rolling pin.'

Tamang grabbed her victim from behind and pulled her by the hair into the kitchen.

She took out the blade and pointed it at her victim who 'very bravely' managed to disarm her.

Tamang then hit he with the rolling pin and the victim managed to disarm her again.

The victim was thrown to the floor and Tamang threatened to bite her to death.

When police went to Mr Limbu's home to break the news of his death to his wife, it was Tamang who answered the door and she was immediately arrested.

Tamang claimed Mr Limbu grabbed her hair after they had a row over her children and she was 'able to reach out and grab his snood.'

She said he got angry and he did not let go.

In a statement, Mr Limbu's (pictured) family said: 'Man was a man of his word. He took care of all family members, both financially and with practical help'

'First, I reached for his face and he avoided it,' she said.

'When he avoided it, my hand landed on his neck and neck warmer. I had asked him to let go of me but he avoided it.

'When he avoided it, my hand landed on his neck and his neck warmer.'

She claimed she was in 'serious pain' during the altercation.

Mr Limbu had served with distinction in the Gurkas and his wife said he was a 'healthy looking man' who did yoga every morning despite suffering from diabetes and high cholesterol.

In a statement, his family said: 'Man was a man of his word. He took care of all family members, both financially and with practical help

'He was a caring father, a good husband and a helpful person with the community. He took his family responsibility seriously.

'He took care of problems that were faced by his immediate family and extended family members.

'He was not very emotional like a lot of people from his generation but we knew that he cared.

'He was a pragmatic person too and always tried to resolve issues.

'He had zealously served the Queen and county after joining the Gurkha Regiment and he was proud of that.

'He was a big part of the Gurkha community in England. He was well-known within the Nepalese community for being obliging where help and support was needed.

'He will be very much missed by his wife, children, grandchildren and colleagues.

'His untimely death has left a big hole in their lives. They mourn his death to this day.

'They are still struggling to understand the motive behind taking Man's life. Man's death has left them with more questions than answers.

'The person responsible for his death should reflect on their action and repent for it accordingly.'

Tamang, of Victoria Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter and causing actual bodily harm to Mrs Limbu.
Katiria Tirado, 34, who was arrested last year after her malnourished 17-year-old autistic son died at the hospital, pleaded guilty to manslaughter

A Connecticut mother whose autistic teenage son died after being taken to a hospital with what authorities said was severe malnutrition has pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Katiria Tirado pleaded guilty Tuesday under the Alford doctrine, meaning while she doesnt agree with the states case, she acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction.

The 34-year-old Hartford woman faces 11 years in prison at sentencing scheduled for June 5.

Tirado called 911 in February 2017 because her son, Matthew, who was autistic and non-verbal, had been vomiting and had abdominal pain.

He was taken to the hospital, where he died hours later.

Authorities say he was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 84 pounds and was suffering from severe malnourishment and dehydration.

He also had cuts and bruises on his face, torso and arms, as well as three broken ribs that appeared to be an old injury, a cut to his head and bed sores.

Tirado was first charged with cruelty to persons in connection with her son's death.

In April, the medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.

Matthew Tirado was autistic and nonverbal, was five-foot-nine and weighed 84 pounds at the time of his death

Matthew's mother, left, Katiria, said she noticed her son, right, was losing weight

A spokesman for the chief medical examiner told the Hartford Courant last year that the boy's cause of death was 'fatal child abuse syndrome with dehydration and malnutrition'.

During a 911 call police released in March, Tirado can be heard saying: 'My 17-year-old son  I don't know what it is  but he might have gall-gall stones because he's been vomiting for the past 24 hours. Now his belly is bulging. But he hasn't urinated anything. I mean, I used to have gall stones before and I know what it feels like and how it looks like.'

The teen was taken to Hartford Hospital where he was pronounced dead hours later.

Tirado pleaded guilty Tuesday under the Alford doctrine, meaning while she doesnt agree with the states case, she acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction. She is seen above in a Hartford, Connecticut court in March 2017

Tirado said she noticed her son losing weight and, instead of seeking medical help, began giving him protein powder, according to court documents.

Matthew Tirado's father, Pedro Gomez, said he had not seen his son since August.

'I don't know what happened, why she did it. I want to know what happened, why she did this if she did,' Gomez said.

Family and friends said Katiria Tirado prevented them from seeing Matthew and that they did not know he was being abused.

'I'm still in shock to be honest. I had no clue what was going on. No clue,' family friend Eric Mendez told WFSB.

Matthew, who was autistic and nonverbal, was a student at Oak Hill School in Bristol, which serves students with severe disabilities, but had not attended classes there for more than a year, according to the Hartford Courant.

His mother had been on Connecticut's child-abuse registry for physically abusing and neglecting her son since he was in first grade, said Sarah Egan, the state's child advocate.

Tirado also has a 10-year-old daughter. After her arrest, she was placed in the care of the Department of Children and Families.
The sister and brother-in-law of Indian Head ranch victim Jacob Millison failed police-issued polygraph tests about their role in his killing, DailyMail.com has learned.

Stephanie and David Jackson were separately asked if they played any part in Millison's death and both said no. But the lie detector test revealed that neither was telling the truth.

It was only after being told of the results that the couple admitted they were involved in the sensational case that has only come to light now nearly three years after Millison's cancer-ridden 68-year-old mother Deborah Rudibaugh allegedly shot him dead as he slept.

And when Stephanie found that police were convinced she was involved, she called her mother and urged her to kill herself to prevent the case going to trial.

Stephanie Jackson (left) and her husband, David Jackson (right), failed police-issued polygraph tests about their roles in the death of Indian Head ranch victim Jacob Millison. It was only after being told of the results that the couple admitted they were involved in the sensational case, and they have both since been arrested

Jacob Millison, 29, was shot and killed while he slept at the family ranch in Parlin, Colorado in 2015

Millison's mother, Deborah Rudibaugh, 68, who was arrested on Friday, confessed to police that she killed her own son, dragged his body through the house, and then dumped it in a pile of manure. She said she planned to leave a note in a lock box explaining how she had killed her son, so it could be discovered after her death

'I'm going to jail because of you,' she allegedly screamed down the phone. 'I want you to curl up and die. Why don't you commit suicide?'

The family claims Millison was violent and regularly abused his frail mother whose weight has plummeted to just 70lb.

But investigators in Colorado's rural Gunnison County, high in the Rocky Mountains, a four-hour drive southwest of Denver, are convinced the killing was connected to who would inherit the 700-acre ranch worth millions of dollars after Rudibaugh's death.

Shortly before Millison was shot, his mother cut him out of her will, leaving most of her property to her daughter.

Rudibaugh and Stephanie Jackson, 33, are both charged with first degree murder.

David Jackson, 34, is charged with being an accessory to murder. All three face a host of other charges including tampering with a body and abusing a corpse.

They are all being held in Gunnison County Jail.

Gruesome court documents obtained by DailyMail.com show that Millison's body was discovered buried beneath a corral on the family ranch in tiny Parlin, Colorado in July last year, more than two years after he went missing.

The ranch is famous locally as it contains Indian Head Rock, a natural formation that resembles the head of a Native American.

After learning that he had failed the polygraph David Jackson told police that last summer he was working on a pile of manure on the ranch when he discovered Millison's skeletal remains.

He confronted his mother-in-law who told him it was a bear that her son had killed illegally.

'I didn't think it looked right. It didn't look like an animal to me,' he said. 'All I saw was bones, like part of a rib cage and I was told it was an animal and bury it.'

Rudibaugh, who was seriously ill, 5ft tall weighed only 97lb at the time of the murder, claims she dragged her son's body through the house and dumped it in a pile of manure. She has since dropped down to 70lb

Rudibaugh claimed she suffered years of abuse at the hands of her son but police believe fights about who would inherit the 700-acre ranch worth millions of dollars were behind the killing

Rudibaugh inherited the ranch when her second husband Rudy Rudibaugh died in 2009. In her will she planned to leave the ranch to her son and stepson Shane Rudibaugh after her daughter and son-in-law moved away to live in Denver

'I didn't think it looked right and it kinda freaked me out,' he continued. 'I just wanted to think it was an animal.'

But he admitted that deep in his heart he knew it was his brother-in-law.

'I had that really strong gut feeling it was him, yes, but I didn't know if it was 'cause all I saw was part of a rib cage and plastic. I thought it was kinda weird that they would wrap an animal in plastic and put it in the manure pile, but I left it at that.'

Jackson told police that his wife Stephanie had fired a gun at him during an argument in January 2016. Ever since he had been 'terrified' of her.

He said he was not paid for work he did on the ranch and both his wife and mother-in-law treated him 'like a slave.'

When asked if his wife had been involved in the killing he said: 'That's the one thing that scares the s**t out of me 'cause if it's the woman I've been sleeping with every night, it f***ing terrifies me.

'HonestlyI have a strong feeling it could have been Steph.'

Over last July 4 weekend Jackson dug a hole to bury some dead animals and a barrel of goat skulls. He later discovered that the body from the manure pile had been dumped in the hole as well. Rudibaugh told police she put it there along with a dead lamb and a turkey.

Two weeks later police with five cadaver dogs raided the property and dug up the body, which was dressed only in boxer shorts. It was missing its left arm, which they believe had been eaten by animals.

Rudibaugh - who is suffering from Stage IV breast cancer and believes she only has a short time to live - admitted to police that she shot her son and dragged his 170lb body to a manure pile where she hid it.

Gunnison County Sheriff said the case had taken so long to come to court because of problems identifying Millison's body they discovered buried seven feet deep beneath a corral close to the ranch house. He is pictured above

Millison's friend Max Matheny (left) told DailyMail.com that it is 'completely absurd' to suggest that Millison (pictured center) took drugs or was violent

At the time she weighed 97lb, but because of her advancing cancer her weight has now dropped nearly 30 more pounds, the court papers reveal. Just nine days before Millison's death she had had gallbladder surgery.

Police believe that she must have had help disposing of her son's body because she would not have been strong enough to drag it out herself.

Her surgeon, Dr Stephania Timothy, told police that after the surgery, patients are limited with their movement and in severe discomfort.

Timothy said she would not clear Rudibaugh to go back to work at an assisted living center because of the heavy lifting required in the job.

She said she 'could not imagine' Rudibaugh being able to wrap, roll and drag the body.'

In interviews with police, Rudibaugh claimed she had thrown the murder weapon, a .357 Ladysmith revolver into the Blue Mesa Reservoir - but police actually found it in her bedroom. They also found 37 other weapons in the house.

Stephanie Jackson was arrested on Wednesday last week, her mother on Friday as she drove to Grand Junction, Colorado, and David Jackson on Tuesday.

Gunnison County Sheriff Rick Besecker told DailyMail.com they had arrested them separately in a strategic move.

He said the case has taken so long to come to court because of problems identifying the body they discovered buried 7 feet deep beneath a corral close to the ranch house.

Police found evidence of friction in the family, particularly between Millison and his sister Stephanie (pictured) who claimed her younger brother was 'trying to ruin my life'

Stephanie said in her blog post that for two years the whole family all lived at the ranch and she and her brother 'never spoke'

The reason was that Millison had apparently never been to a dentist in his entire life and so they could not check dental records, Besecker revealed exclusively to DailyMail.com.

Police checked not only throughout Colorado but also in New Mexico where his father Ray Millison now lives.

'It was months before we could get a positive identification,' Besecker said. 'We did not anticipate that.'

Rudibaugh inherited the ranch when her second husband Rudy Rudibaugh died in 2009.

County Sheriff Rick Besecker told DailyMail.com the case took so long to come to court because of problems identifying the body since Millison had no dental records

In her original will she planned to leave the ranch to her son and stepson Shane Rudibaugh because the Jacksons had moved away to live in Denver, and her husband had given them $30,000 to buy a house.

But later amended the will to include Stephanie and cut out her son shortly before her surgery because she was worried she might die on the operating table.

The family did not report Millison missing until August 2015, three months after his disappearance, but friends, including a local police officer who trained with him at a gym, had alerted cops earlier.

The family claimed they thought he had gone on a trip to Nevada and California.

When Millison disappeared, Rudibaugh initially told police her son used cocaine and magic mushrooms and grew marijuana before it was legal in Colorado.

'I figure he got in over his head with something and is either in witness protection or in hiding or dead,' she said.

But in police interviews, 13 of Millison's friends insisted he hardly drunk and was usually the designated driver.

They said he had tried marijuana but did not like it, but they admitted he grew pot and mushrooms to sell but not consume.

As the noose began to tighten, Rudibaugh's claimed her son was violent toward her.

She said when he found her amended will 'he hit me and held me under water in the irrigation ditch and then he told me I was going to change the will and he was going to get everything and then he didn't come home for a couple of daysand I thought, yeah, I hope he never, never comes back'.

When she finally admitted to shooting him as he slept at 2am, she added: 'But if I shot him in self-defense while he was asleep because I was afraid what would happen when he woke up again, that's not self-defense.'

Rudibaugh and daughter Jackson are both charged with first degree murder in the case that has rocked remote Gunnison County, high up in the Rockies, a four-hour drive southwest of Denver

The mother admitted to shooting her son at the family ranch  which contains the locally famous Indian Head Rock, a natural formation that resembles the head of a native American  early in the morning of May 16, 2015

Indian Head Rock can be seen along Quartz Creek Valley, between Parlin and Ohio City in Gunnison County, Colorado

She said her son had changed when he started doing mixed martial arts. He 'was becoming extremely aggressive towards me. He wanted the ranch. He wanted the ranch himself, only his ranch.

'He did not want to share anything with anybody else, not with Shane, not with Stephanie. He hated Stephanie. Sibling rivalry had gone beyond everything. He went berserk and there's a hole in the wall where he put his fist through it.'

Two days before she allegedly killed him, Rudibaugh claimed her son had again sat on her until she passed out.

'And then I woke up, he was sitting there with a club, a stick, a piece of wood. It was for the fire. He said that nobody would ever miss me,' she said.

Rudibaugh said she planned to leave a note in a lock box explaining how she had killed her son, so it could be discovered after her death.

Police found evidence of friction in the family. In 2013 Millison took out a restraining order against David Jackson after a fight about where he had dumped a pile of snow.

'He threatened to kill me,' Millison said at the time.

Millison's friend Max Matheny told DailyMail.com that initially local cops did not appear to take the case too seriously

The following year Stephanie Jackson posted online a short essay entitled 'My younger brother is trying to ruin my life'.

In it, she wrote: 'My younger brother and I have never really gotten along. We fought like crazy people as children and have kept our distance from each other in adulthood.'

She said that for two years they all lived at the ranch and she and her brother 'never spoke'.

'Every now and then he would mess with one of my vehicles or do something to intentionally make my husband angry,' she said.

And then in 2015 she sent an instant message to a friend saying her brother had threatened to burn her possessions.

Two days after her brother was killed, Jackson posted on Facebook: 'Big things are happening for the Jackson family this year.'

When a friend asked her if she was expecting a second child, she replied: 'I'm going to go ahead and say much better things than being pregnant.'

The following day she posted: 'Have you ever been woken up with such awesome news you wanted to run out screaming.'

Her closest friend Sheane Sparks replied: 'No more jake??? Only news wirth (sic) screaming.'

Millison's friend Max Matheny told DailyMail.com that it is 'completely absurd' to suggest that Millison took drugs or was violent.

'He looked after himself. He would go to the gym regularly and then come round to my house and hang out,' Matheny said.

'He did not have a temper,' added Matheny, 28. 'The Jake I knew was very calm and collected, a very nice guy. He was not a violent person at all and never was.'

Matheny was one of a group of friends who got concerned when Millison went missing.

He said: 'He suddenly wasn't showing up any more. For the first few days it wasn't a huge concern but then it started to become pretty out of the ordinary and we thought maybe something was up.'

'He had told me that if anything ever happened to him it would be his family that did it. I know he wasn't fond of any of them.'

Eventually the friends went to the police to report their suspicions.

Matheny said initially local cops did not appear to take the case too seriously and believes it has taken too long for arrests to be made.

'I realize nothing can bring Jake back, but I certainly hope justice is done,' he said.
Police say a 45-year-old man and the 16-year-old girl he signed out of her Pennsylvania school 10 times in the last few months are now missing.

Authorities issued a missing person alert for Kevin Esterly, 45, and Amy Yu, 16, of Allentown, Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

In the Facebook alert, police in Allentown, Pennsylvania, said that the pair might be traveling together in a two-door, 1999 Red Honda Accord  Pennsylvania license plate KLT 0529  and were last seen Monday at 7.09am near Amy's home.

Pennsylvania police issued a missing persons alert for Amy Yu, 16, and Kevin Esterly, 45. The pair are said to have a 'secretive relationship' and authorities say they could be 'endangered'

Police described Kevin, a married man said to be a concrete contractor, as being white, 5'9" tall and weighing 185 pounds. Amy, a student at Lehigh Valley Academy Charter School in Hanover Township, was described as being an Asian female, who stands 4'11" and weighs about 90 pounds.

Police said Kevin and Amy could be 'endangered'  a term that authorities use to denote that a person could be in serious trouble, according to The Morning Call.

In court documents, police said Kevin and Amy had a 'secretive relationship.'

Allentown police filed a warrant for Kevin's arrest on a single count of interference with the custody of a child, based on the fact that he allegedly, repeatedly managed to sign Amy out of her school, without obtaining her parents' permission to do so.

Allentown police released this missing person poster on Wednesday morning

Kevin (pictured with his wife, Stacey) is said to have signed Amy out of her school 10 times, without her parents' consent, between November and February

Court documents revealed Kevin and Stacey were at Amy's home on February 15, when Amy's mother called police. Upon arrival, police told the Esterlys to stay away from Amy's home

Stacey told police that she last saw Kevin on Monday morning and that he had taken personal documents and $4,000 from her bank account before he left. Amy's mother said that she had also taken personal documents, as well as her jewelry, before leaving her home on Monday

According to the warrant, Kevin signed Amy out of school 10 times between November 13 and February 9.

Court documents, reviewed by The Morning Call, stated that Amy's mother, Miu Luu, called police on February 9 to report that Kevin had signed Amy out of school that day. Kevin did not have parental permission to sign her out.

Luu then called police again on February 15. When police arrived at Amy's home, they told Kevin and his wife, Stacey Esterly, not to go near Amy's home again. It was not clear why the Esterlys were at her home that day.

When interviewed by police, Amy admitted that Kevin had signed her out of school multiple times, according to the court documents.

Luu reported that her daughter ran away on Monday and that she had taken her personal documents and jewelry with her when she left.

When contacted by police, Stacey said that she last saw her husband at 6.05am Monday and that his personal documents were missing. She also said that Kevin had taken $4,000 from her bank account.

Kevin and Stacey have been married since 2005 and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2013, according to The Morning Call. Kevin is said to have had several minor criminal charges dismissed over the years.

Anyone who has seen Kevin or Amy is asked to call 911 or the Allentown Police Communications Center at 610-437-7751.
A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy.

***

If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?

***

If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic?

***

Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
A Texas mom who was wrongfully convicted of murdering her foster son will now receive nearly $600,000 in compensation from the state for the seven years she spent in jail.

In May 2017, the Nueces County District Attorney's office officially declared that Hannah Overton, of Corpus Christi, Texas, was innocent in the death of Andrew Burd, the four-year-old foster son she hoped to adopt.

This gave her access to state funds earmarked for the wrongfully convicted, ABC News reported.

Hannah  who had four other children and was pregnant with a fifth at the time  was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison after prosecutors accused her of forcing Burd to drink cajun seasoning mixed with water as punishment, an act which they said resulted in his death by sodium poisoning in 2006.

Hannah Overton, of Corpus Christi, Texas, is due to receive more than $573,000 in compensation money after being wrongfully incarcerated for seven years on overturned capital murder charges

Hannah (pictured with husband Larry) was convicted of murdering her adopted son, Andrew Burd, and given a life sentence. During her 2007 trial, prosecutors said she force-fed Burd a mix of seasoning and water which led to his death by sodium poisoning

Hannah's defense team said that Burd's (pictured) death was accidental and that he likely suffered from the medical condition, pica

During the trial, Hannah's defense team said the boy's death was accidental and was likely due to a medical condition, pica, which can cause a person to crave non-edible, non-nutritional salty items like clay, sand or dirt.

Hannah's husband, Larry Overton, had also been charged with murder, but was offered a plea deal after Hannah's conviction. After completing his probation, the murder charge against him was dismissed.

Hannah, who hadn't had any prior legal problems, had maintained her innocence throughout the seven years she was imprisoned.

In December 2014, a Texas appellate court overturned her conviction and life sentence on the grounds that she deserved a retrial due to having received ineffective counsel the first time around, and she was released on a $50,000 bond.

In 2014, a Texas appellate court overturned Hannah's (right, with her son and daughter in 2015) conviction on the grounds of ineffective counsel. She was released on a $50,000 bond

After reviewing the evidence, the DA's office decided it would not retry Hannah (second from right, with her family) on the murder charges

In addition to the nearly $600,000 in wrongful incarceration compensation money, Hannah will be eligible for insurance and education benefits, as well as receive an annuity

WHAT IS PICA? Pica is an eating disorder that is characterized by the desire to eat items with little or no nutritional value. These can include anything from stones, sand, paint and dirt to talcum powder. It is most common in people with learning disabilities and during pregnancy. It can cause a range of serious complications if the person is eating something that is poisonous or indigestible. These include being poisoned by toxic ingredients and having a part of the body obstructed (which is often seen in people who eat hair). It can also lead to excessive calorie intake, but also nutritional deprivation if the person eats a substance with no nutritional value instead of nutritious foods. The person can also damage their teeth and be infected with parasites. Advertisement

In response, the Nueces County DA said that he planned to retry Hannah, but in 2015, he said that he would not retry the case after reexamining the evidence.

Now, 10 months after being declared innocent in Burd's death, Hannah is expected to receive a check for $573,333.33 in compensation money from the state of Texas for having been wrongfully incarcerated for seven years, her lawyer told ABC News.

In addition, she will be eligible to receive insurance and education benefits, along with an annuity beginning in 2019.

'Im very thankful that this compensation is finally coming through,' Hannah, who is pregnant with her sixth child, told ABC News.

'No amount of money will ever bring back the years that were taken away, and the seven years of freedom I lost.'

Being officially declared innocent in Burd's death means that Hannah cannot be tried again for causing his death.

Since her own release, Hannah and Larry have been housing and supporting newly-released prisoners through their non-profit organization, Syndeo Ministries.
Caroline Hadley was targeted by primary school head Anupe Hanch (pictured) - who was branded a 'blatant bully' by Judge Heather Baucher

A teacher who endured years of 'horrendous' bullying at the hands of a headmistress from hell is now suing for more than 700,000 in damages.

Caroline Hadley was targeted by primary school head Anupe Hanch - who was branded a 'blatant bully' by Judge Heather Baucher.

Miss Hadley, now 40, suffered repeated acts of humiliation at Mrs Hanch's hands, said her barrister Andrew Buchan.

She was assistant head of Gearies Primary School, in Ilford, but felt as if she was 'at war' with her superior.

Mr Buchan said she was at one point suspended for insubordination and the 'malicious nature' of the bullying was highlighted by episodes in which Mrs Hanch 'sent her to Coventry'.

She left Ms Hadley's name off the invitation list for the school's Christmas lunch and, when she went off sick, Mrs Hanch posted the medical reasons for her absence on the staff notice board, Central London County Court heard.

She told the school's finance officer that Miss Hadley 'could not be trusted' - and even removed her name from the school's headed notepaper.

Mrs Hanch 'spread malicious gossip about her' and 'asked the caretaker to lie about her behaviour', said Mr Buchan.

And she repeatedly dropped hints by showing Miss Hadley the job section of the Times Educational Supplement, he added.

The head was dismissed from her post and, in June 2015, she was barred from 'ever teaching again' by the Secretary of State for Education. Pictured: Gearies Primary School, in Ilford

The 53-year-old head was eventually herself suspended and faced disciplinary action for misconduct.

In May 2015 she was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, said Mr Buchan.

The disciplinary panel found that Mrs Hanch told a colleague she 'looked like a Polish slapper', and said she'd like to 'chop off' another's head.

She also stunned a pupil by asking, 'do you want to become a paedophile?', and locked a teacher inside an office for three hours.

The head was dismissed from her post and, in June 2015, she was barred from 'ever teaching again' by the Secretary of State for Education.

Judge Baucher said Miss Hadley suffered 'prolonged and sustained bullying from an individual who was found to be dishonest and a blatant bully, and who will never be allowed to darken the doors of her profession again'.

Miss Hadley has since returned to her native Lancashire and lives in (Salisbury Avenue) Heywood, where she cares for her sick mother

She is now suing the London Borough of Redbridge, which runs the school, over the bullying and harassment she endured.

The council has admitted breach of duty but is disputing the amount of compensation due to her.

Miss Hadley was 'exposed to a hostile working environment' over a four-year period, said Mr Buchan, although the actual bullying lasted between June 2010 to July 2012.

She became 'a direct target' after successfully steering the school through an OFSTED inspection, with Mrs Hanch 'undermining her career' by branding her a 'rogue member of staff', the barrister claimed.

Although Miss Hadley was elated when the overbearing headmistress finally departed, she failed to flourish under the school's new leadership and transferred out of the borough to a new primary school.

In May 2015 she was appointed head of a school in Camden, but even then she could not get over chronic symptoms of trauma and depression and eventually quit the profession, the court heard.

Mr Buchan said Mrs Hadley would have reached the top of her profession, but her bullying nightmare 'sensitised' her to 'potentially hostile working environments,' making a return to the classroom impossible.

Describing the impact of her ordeal, the barrister added: 'The bullying was horrendous and rightly resulted in the suspension and dismissal of the bully. Miss Hadley felt that when she was at work she was at 'war'.'

Miss Hadley has since returned to her native Lancashire and lives in Heywood, where she cares for her sick mother.

Visibly distressed, she told the court: 'Teaching was my life...I more than enjoyed it.

'I tried going back several times and fought so hard for my career. But desire doesn't have anything to do with it, there's no way I could ever go back to teaching now.

'I desperately wanted to and fought to stay in it. But I could never go back because it's just too corrupt.'

After the hearing Miss Hadley described her treatment by Mrs Hanch as 'simply unspeakable'.

She added outside court: 'This has dominated my life since I started working for Redbridge in 2008. It's been such an ordeal for my family as well as for myself.

'I would not advise anyone I loved or cared about to go into teaching.'

Mrs Hanch played no part in the case and was neither present nor legally repesented in court.

After hearing all the evidence over two days, Judge Baucher highlighted problems in the preparation of the case and directed a re-hearing of the claim.

She told Miss Hadley: 'It's not a decision which a trial judge takes lightly. I know it's very distressing for you, but it's the right way forward.'
Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP leader who pretended she was black only to be unmasked as a white woman in 2015, is appearing in a new Netflix documentary against her son's wishes.

Dolezal, 40, from Spokane, Washington, sparked outrage when her parents revealed she was posing as a black woman.

Netflix released the documentary's trailer on Wednesday and was criticized for spending money to promote someone who is 'fraudulent and problematic'.

Dolezal's teenage son Franklin, who is biracial, is featured in the trailer where he implores his mother to stop publicizing her beliefs.

'I resent some of her choices and I resent some of the words she has spoken in interviews,' Franklin said during the documentary's trailer.

Rachel Dolezal, 40, is featured in a new Netflix documentary titled 'A Rachel Divided'. The former NAACP leader considers herself black even though she is a white woman

Her son Franklin appears in the trailer and does not understand why his mother has to make the documentary. He tells a producer that he 'resents some of her choices'

Dolezal explained to her son that she is trying to 'rebuild' something that was destroyed

A Twitter user on Wednesday called Dolzale 'fraudulent and problematic' after it was revealed that Netflix produced a documentary about her life

Dolezal is a former civil rights activist and African studies instructor.

In June 2015, her parents revealed her actual heritage and said their daughter was misrepresenting her race posed as a black woman.

In a BBC interview last year, Dolezal claimed ethnicity is not biological and compared being 'transracial' to being transgender.

She then released a book titled 'In Full Color' and people said she was using her 'white privilege' to make her arguments.

The new film, which Netflix describes as an 'intimate documentary', is titled 'The Rachel Divide' and features interviews with her son.

'I really do not want to focus on this for the rest of my life,' son Franklin said at the beginning of the trailer.

'When something gets destroyed, you have to rebuild it,' Dolezal said. 'You can't just pretend that it didn't happen and everything gets fixed.'

Dolezal was outed as a white woman by her parents in June 2015 after she lied about being of African-American descent

Dolezal then appeared on multiple talk shows talking about why she believed she was black. One of her most famous interviews was with BBC where she called herself 'transracial' and compared her situation to someone who is transgender. Pictured is her with her adopted brother, Izaiah Dolezal, (left) and her son Franklin Moore (right) in June 2015

Dolezal is also a mother of a two-year-old son named Langston Attickus. He's named after a famous black poet, author and activist. This is her with her son in March 2017

But her son appeared unhappy during the trailer as he realized the news about his controversial mom was only going to continue.

'This book coming out and this documentary might just backfire like everything else has backfired,' Franklin said.

'Trust me, it is going to bite me in the a**.'

Rachel claims she is worried about how this documentary could affect her family, but she doesn't stop the filming.

She is a mother of two sons, one of whom she had just two years ago after the controversy started.

Her youngest son is two years old and named Langston Attickus. He is named after the famous black poet, author and activist Langston Hughes.

'I'm putting my kids out there,' she said during the trailer. 'It's hard.'

Dolezal was born to European-American parents. She is a former African studies instructor and civil rights activist

Netflix responded to someone on Twitter who claimed the streaming site paid Dolezal for the documentary. It said she received no payment from the project

The documentary will first premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival before it is released on Netflix on April 27.

But already people have taken to Twitter in outrage that Netflix chose to create the documentary.

One user claims Netflix allowed Dolezal to sell her story to them.

The streaming site clarified that Dolezal was not paid for the project.

The statement on Twitter said: Like all subjects for our documentaries, Rachel Dolezal did not receive any payment for this project.'

It claims that filmmakers Laura Brownson and Roger Ross Williams were the ones would wanted to cover Dolezal's story because of the larger issues it brings up.

'The film is focused not just on her life but on the larger conversation, including people who see her actions as the ultimate expression of white privileged,' the statement said.

The backlash the documentary has already received since the trailer was revealed only confirms Franklin's fears about the new publicity.

'She can identify whatever she wants to be, 'cause it's her business,' Franklin said in the trailer.

'But when it's put in the limelight, I don't think you should be pissing people off more than they already are unless you want to be bit in the ass from it.

'And she did not choose her words carefully. And it affected me. It affected my brother.'

Many took to Twitter to ask why Dolezal was chosen to tell her story over other people

Some people have said they will 'hate watch' the documentary while other say they will stay far away from it when it is released on April 27

People on Twitter were disappointed in Netflix for using money to promote Dolezal's story.

One user said: 'There are millions of black femmes and non-binary people in the world that deserve to be heard...and the fact that I have to see her name on my screen makes me so so so angry.'

Others are preparing to 'hate watch' the documentary when it is released next month.
A teenage girl pretended to hang herself in her school toilets as part of a prank video inspired by a controversial Netflix series - a day before she took her own life.

Lily Mae Sharp had talked about the series, 13 Reasons Why - a show about a US teenage high school student who commits suicide - before she hanged herself at her family home on May 18 last year, an inquest into her death heard.

A day before her death, while in the toilets at Sandbach High School for Girls, the 13-year-old was chosen by the other girls and filmed as she wore a noose made out of toilet roll, apparently related to the Netflix show.

At the hearing at Crewe Coroner's Court, her mother said: 'I do wonder about that video.

'She was watching a Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, where I think that does bear some similarities.

Lily Mae Sharp had talked about the series, 13 Reasons Why - a show about a US teenage high school student who commits suicide - before she hanged herself at her family home on May 18 last year, an inquest into her death heard

'She had mentioned it a couple of times. She had her own Netflix log in.

'I don't know for sure whether she did watch it or not but I know she had been discussing it amongst her friends.

'I think she asked had I seen it and I said, "No".'

Ms Noblet admitted that her family were going through a 'tough time' following her split from her ex-husband, whom she married when Lily was five, but said her daughter was 'always happy and bubbly'.

Lily's father, David Pearson, arranged counselling sessions for his daughter after she talked of feeling 'worried' and 'scared' about the future.

Ms Noblet had left the family home in Bradwell, Chehire at around 6.45pm on May 18 last year, with Lily left in charge to look after her younger daughter.

Lily's mother called 26 times between 7.34pm and 9.17pm, and when she returned home at midnight, she found that Lily had hanged herself.

The head teacher at Lily's school, John Leigh, said she was not a pupil of concern at the school and that while there had been 'speculation' about bullying, there was no evidence provided. Mr Leigh did admit he was aware of the fake hanging incident in the toilets.

Mr Leigh said: 'As I understand it the incident was a prank related to the TV programme Lily had been watching, or possibly some of the other girls, Thirteen Steps or something similar.'

Lily's mother and father, Victoria Noblet (left) and David Pearson (right) at the inquest into the death of their 13-year-old daughter Lily Mae Sharp

A JustGiving account has been created in honour of Lily, with 6,246.31 raised so far

The head teacher added on the day of Lily's death, the 13-year-old had been called a 's***' during a Snapchat or Instagram 'live' story by a group of girls, although he claimed this had no bearing on her death.

Some of Lily's friend had told teachers at the school that she was 'expressing dark thoughts' and her mother was advised to make an appointment with the family GP.

Six days before her death, Lily had a meeting with the school counselor where she claimed she was happy.

Alan Moore, a senior coroner for Cheshire, concluded Lily had committed suicide.

He said: 'There was no obvious pattern of troubling behaviour, no red flags appear, to alert family, friends, school to issues.

'There was one or two episodes we have heard about, but not that would knit together to form a pattern to alert those who loved Lily that something was wrong.

'This was an impulsive act on Lily's part which, although deliberate, was a spur of the moment decision rather than something she had been planning for any length of time, but no less heart-breaking for her family and friends.'

A JustGiving account has been created in honour of Lily, with 6,246.31 raised so far.

For confidential support in the UK, call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see samaritans.org for details.
The therapist who saw a Manhattan nanny just days before she stabbed two young children in her charge to death, said she hadn't appeared suicidal or murderous during their session.

Dr. Thomas Caffrey said Yoselyn Ortega had booked her first and only appointment with him on October 22, 2012, to discuss a variety of different issues including anxiety, depression, and guilt.

The appointment was just three days before she snapped and killed six-year-old Lulu and two-year-old Leo Krim in their Upper West Side apartment.

The nanny has since pleaded not guilty on the grounds of insanity, claiming she heard voices and was 'touched by the devil' which drove her to kill the young children.

Dr. Thomas Caffrey (pictured in court) the therapist who saw a Manhattan nanny just days before she stabbed two young children in her charge to death, testified in court on Thursday that she hadn't appeared suicidal or murderous during their session

But Caffrey said there was 'no evidence' that the 50-year-old suffered from delusions or hallucinations.

'She didn't tell me about any concerns about voices or visions, smells, tactile. No indication of hallucinations,' Caffrey testified in Manhattan Supreme Court, according to the New York Post.

'Her concerns seemed to be about her heart, her anxiety, her son, her sister, her money. She impressed me as a worried, anxious, frightened person.'

During his testimony, Ortega sat in court, shaking her head, and pursed her lips and told her lawyer: 'No, no.'

The court heard that Ortega, who made the appointment with Caffrey under the name Yoselyn Perez, was concerned about her son Jesus' recent move from the Dominican Republic to New York.

Caffrey said that Yoselyn Ortega (pictured in court on Friday) had come to see him for a variety of different issues including anxiety, depression, and guilt

Three days later she went on a killing spree. The bodies of Lulu (left) and Leo (right) were found with their eyes open after Ortega stabbed them to death

The move was expensive and Caffrey said it made her feel inadequate as a mother.

During the hour-long session at his Columbus Circle office, she explained that her heart had been racing with anxiety as a result of the move.

'For an as-yet-unexplained reason, patient has been feeling racing heart anxiety as result of the moves and son's being here, with her only voicing that she's not done well by him in these matters,' Caffrey testified, adding that she appeared to feel guilty over having done so little for her son over the past 12 years.

Ortega didn't make a follow-up appointment.

Three days later, went on the killing spree.

Prosecutors have challenged Ortega's claims she was suffering from mental health issues and believe she was jealous of the children's mother Marina Krim who had offered her more money, if she did some housework.

On Tuesday, the jury were shown pictures of the blood smearing the walls, floor and toilet of the bathroom where the bodies of Leo and Lucia were found with their eyes open. The bottom of the tub was almost entirely red.

Marina Krim (right) leaving court clutching her husband Kevin Krim's (left) hand. Marina erupted at Ortega on Friday after six hours of heart-wrenching testimony. She screamed at the former nanny: 'You're evil!' and yelled: 'Get me out of here!'

Marina Krim (pictured with Leo) showed up to the dance studio where Lulu was supposed to be shortly before 5pm, and panicked when Lulu wasn't there. In less than an hour, Krim would find Lulu and Leo, dead in the bathroom of her apartment

One bloody knife sat in the sink, inches away from a pink child's toothbrush. Another sat wrapped in a towel atop a toy refrigerator in the hallway.

At least two jurors wiped away tears as they saw the horror images, while others gasped and held their faces. By the afternoon, one juror told the judge that he could no longer be fair and impartial and was excused from the case, the New York Times reported.

Leo was stabbed five times, and Lucia, who fought back, was stabbed 30 times, according to prosecutors.

Also on Tuesday, several more first responders were called to testify.

'That's the worst crime scene I've ever seen, other than September 11,' said paramedic Eugene Nicholas.

'I saw blood everywhere,' said Kevin Orr, a second paramedic.

'Mrs. Krim was stunned and hysterical, saying, how am I going to get this out of my head?' said paramedic Reuben Shelton.

Another EMT said that Marina Krim, who was with her three-year-old daughter Nessie when she discovered the gruesome scene, pleaded with paramedics to shield her from photographers as they left the building.

Nessie was spared from seeing the horror scene and didn't seem to understand what had happened, the court heard.

The last time time Caffrey (pictured, right) saw Ortega was just three days before she snapped and stabbed six-year-old Lulu and two-year-old Leo Krim to death in the bathroom of their Upper West Side apartment

Ortega (pictured, Friday) faces a minimum of 20 years imprisonment if she is convicted and could be jailed for life without parole

Earlier in the week, building superintendent Michael Minihan offered a chilling account of when Ortega's eyes bulged out as she gasped for air and bled from a self-inflicted knife wound in her neck.

Minihan lived directly below the Krim family and remembered rushing to apartment in October 2012 after hearing mom Marina Krim's blood-curdling cries.

Krim was on the mezzanine 'holding her middle child, Nessie, screaming incoherently,' Minihan said.

When Minihan entered the apartment, he said he first saw Ortega, 'staring... the eyes of the devil in my face,' he said. 'Her eyes were bulging.'

Ortega had stabbed herself in the neck in an attempted suicide after killing the two young children.

Minihan told the court that he avoided looking in the direction of the bathroom where the mutilated bodies of Lulu and Leo were lying.

'I could see the tub and I could see a body or something. I tried as best as I could not to take my eyes off Ms Ortega but I could see there was a mess,' he said, fighting back tears. 'I just saw red, I just saw red.'

Ortega (pictured with Lulu) said she was angry that the Krims had asked her to clean the house in addition to looking after the children

Prosecutors say Ortega grabbed two kitchen knives and butchered the two children while their mother was blocks away at the dance studio where Lulu was supposed to be.

They added that Ortega waited until Marina Krim found the children dead in the bathroom before plunging a knife into her own neck so that she could relish in the devastated woman's pain and horror.

Prosecutors suggested that Ortega was jealous of Krim because she was financially stable and had a good relationship with her children.

Ortega is also alleged to have felt she deserved to work less and be paid more, but they have said there isn't a clear motive for the crime.

Ortega said she was angry that the Krims had asked her to clean the house in addition to looking after the children.

The nanny's attorney, Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg, said Ortega heard voices and saw hallucinations in unchecked disorders.

New York has a high bar for the insanity defense, and it is rarely successful. To win, Ortega's lawyers will have to prove she didn't understand the consequences of her actions and didn't know right from wrong at the time.

Ortega, 55, allegedly stabbed six-year-old Lulu and two-year-old Leo to death in the the bathroom of their Upper West Side apartment in October 2012 (Pictured, from left to right: Nessie, Lulu and Leo)

The Krims use a Facebook page to post updates on how they are doing, writing about the arrival of two new children, Felix (left) born in 2013 and Linus (right) in 2016.

The couple started the Lulu and Leo Fund, which aims to support innovative art programs for children. Their daughter, Nessie (pictured), was three at the time of the killings. She is now seven or eight

On Friday, in court, Marina Krim stormed out of the courtroom, screaming at Ortega following a harrowing six hours of testifying over two days in.

'You're evil and you love this! You like this!' she screamed, wailing: 'Get me out of here. Please, get me out of here. Get me out!' as she was escorted out of the courtroom by court officers for a short break.

The judge told jurors to disregard the outburst.

Jurors on Friday watched on surveillance footage as mom Krim stood in the lobby of a dance studio discovering her six-year-old daughter, Lulu, was not at class.

Ortega was supposed to pick up Lulu from kindergarten and walk her to dance class then go home to put Leo down for nap. Krim would go to swimming with her other daughter, three-year-old Nessie, then and head home to meet Leo and Ortega.

Krim showed up to the studio shortly before 5pm, and panicked when Lulu wasn't there.

As she bends over her phone in the footage, Nessie plays in a bright pink coat in the lobby before Krim grabs her hand and walks out.

She frantically texted Ortega: 'Where's Lulu... Donde Estas... Where are you' but Ortega never answered.

In less than an hour, Krim would find Lulu and Leo, dead in the bathroom of her apartment.

The children's father, Kevin Krim (above with Leo and Nessie), was working as a CNBC executive at the time of the murders. He now works at a start up

Krim testified that Ortega had just been kicked out of her Bronx apartment at the time of the murders, according to the New York Post.

'I would say she was distracted. She was more arrogant... She had that smug look to her, like she has right now. It's disgusting,' she recalled, leading up to her children's brutal murders.

Ortega's defense attorney asked Krim if she ever considered firing Ortega.

'There was nothing to fire her about at that point,' Krim testified. 'I was aware of her strange behaviors but nothing to fire her over.'

Krim finished her heart-wrenching testimony after about six hours between Thursday and Friday on the stand in the murder trial.

Jurors also saw a booklet of photos Marina Krim made for Ortega after a trip they all took to see Ortega's family in the Dominican Republic.

The three children are beaming. In one photo, Ortega holds them, smiling.

Jurors also heard a doorman place a 911 call, and Krim's anguished screams in the background.

Ortega faces a minimum of 20 years imprisonment if she is convicted and could be jailed for life without parole.

Krim's husband, Kevin, was a CNBC executive at the time of the murders and now works at a startup.

The Krims use a Facebook page to post updates on how they are doing, writing about the arrival of two new children, Felix born in 2013 and Linus in 2016.

The couple started the Lulu and Leo Fund, which aims to support innovative art programs for children.

They recently posted a video message on Facebook asking that people mention the fund as their case becomes news again.
The presenter of a Russian government-controlled TV news programme has made what appears to be a veiled threat to anyone thinking of being a double agent for Britain.

'I don't wish death on anyone, but for purely educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career,' Kirill Kleimenov, presenter of Channel One's flagship Vremya news programme said.

'The profession of a traitor is one of the most dangerous in the world,' Kleimenov was reported by the BBC as saying, pointing out that the few who had chosen it had lived to a ripe old age.

Kirill Kleimenov, presenter of Channel One's flagship Vremya news programme, said few traitors lived to old age and that it was not a good idea for them to go to Britain

Sergey and Yulia Skripa are both in a critical condition in hospital

An intensive police investigation is continuing in Britain into the circumstances of the attack on Mr Skripa and his daughter

The presenter said that excessive drinking, drug addiction, stress and depression leading to heart attacks and even suicide were the 'professional illnesses of a traitor'.

He also had what appeared to be a threatening piece of advice for 'traitors or those who simply hate their country in their free time'.

'Don't choose Britain as a place to live,' he warned.

One Russian-based London correspondent was strongly critical of Boris Johnson's response to the crisis,accusing him of behaving like 'an infant in a man's suit'

'Something is wrong there. Maybe it's the climate, but in recent years there have been too many strange incidents with grave outcomes there.'

The remarks were noticeably different from the rest of the evening's coverage, which mirrored the denials and bemusement of Russian state media.

On NTV - ultimately controlled by state gas company Gazprom - a presenter said the Western media were accusing Russia of poisoning Mr Skripal despite the absence of any evidence, the BBC reported.

Its London correspondent, Liza Gerson, alluded to Britain's Porton Down research facility in the investigation, pointing out that it tested chemicals used against German soldiers in World War One.

The journalist was also critical of Boris Johnson's warning to Russia this week, saying the Foreign Secretary was known for his 'unpredictable antics' and was 'an infant in a man's suit'.

Meanwhile a presenter of state channel Rossiya 1 accused the British authorities of not even trying to seek Russia's co-operation in the investigation, 'but have already discovered a Russian trace in the case', the BBC said.

On Thursday the British investigation into the poisoning of Sergei Skirpal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, continued with police extending the cordon around his Salisbury home and the surrounding street to 150 yards.

Officers have now confirmed 21 people, including Mr Skirpal, his daughter, and Sgt Bailey, were treated in hospital in relation to the attack, after previously claiming the number was 'fewer than 10'.
Donald Trump said Thursday that the federal government is considering whether to take action against Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf for warning illegal immigrants in her city about impending federal immigration raids.

And he came down squarely on the side of Jeff Sessions the day after the attorney general sued the state of California for harboring them with 'sanctuary city' policies.

Trump suggested that federal grants to states, counties and municipalities should obligate those governments to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal authorities.

'I do think we should have legislation where we put an extra line in the money that we give them. You want the money? You can't have the sanctuary cities,' he said.

'That way we avoid the court battles all the time  which we probably will win, but who needs it?'

Donald Trump blasted Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf on Thursday for warning illegal immigrants ahead of an ICE sweep last month, an action that he says helped 85 per cent of the operation's targets escape custody

Trump also backed up the Justice Department's immigration lawsuit against California, suggesting that grants to state and local governments should obligate them to cooperate with federal immigration authorities

Trump said openly defiant public officials 'harbor dangerous criminals' by standing in the way of arrests and deportations.

So-called 'sanctuary cities' refuse to honor federal detention orders for illegal immigrants whom ICE wants held instead of released on bond or at the end of their sentences.

Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegal immigrants last month about potential ICE raids in her city, drawing a 'How dare you?' from Sessions and a presidential statement that it was 'a disgrace'

Schaaf issued a press release on February 24 to warn of an expected ICE operation.

'Oakland police officers are prohibited from participating in ICE activities,' she said, adding that she wanted city residents 'to prepare, not panic.'

She said she was trying to give immigrant families subject to 'arrest and deportation' a 'fair warning.'

Trump lashed out on Thursday, saying her action 'was a disgrace.'

ICE was preparing to scoop up nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants, he said during a Cabinet meeting, but Schaaf's heads-up scared away all but 150.

'Many of them, they say 85 per cent of them, were criminals and had criminal records,' the president said.

'This was long in the planning, and she said, "Get out of here." And she's telling that to criminals. And it's certainly something that we're looking at, with respect to her individually,' Trump added.

Trump said during a cabinet meeting that defiant public officials 'harbor dangerous criminals' by standing in the way of arrests and deportations

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday that his new lawsuit will stop California governments from standing in the way of federal immigration enforcement by challenging 'sanctuary state' and 'sanctuary city' laws

Schaaf said Tuesday that Oakland would 'continue to inform all residents about their constitutional rights.'

Sessions unveiled the Justice Department's lawsuit on Wednesday, firing his own barb at Schaaf  who he said 'has been actively seeking to help illegal aliens avoid apprehension.'

'Her actions support those who flout the law and boldly validate illegality,' he said. 'There's no other way to interpret those remarks.'

'Here's my message to Mayor Schaaf: How dare you? How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement officers to promote your radical open borders agenda?'

Sessions told the California Peace Officers Association that he won't back down.

'Immigration law is the province of the federal government. It's in the Constitution,' he said.

'I don't want to be in this position of having to challenge these laws. It wasn't something I chose to do, but I can't sit by idly while the lawful authorities of federal officers are being blocked by legislative actions and politicians.'

California 's Democratic governor Jerry Brown attacked Sessions in Sacramento while protesters accused the AG of racism for his threat to use legal powers to stop sanctuary laws

California's Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Wednesday that sanctuary policies increase public safety by promoting trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, while allowing local police resources to be used to fight other crimes.

'Our track record so far when it comes to any dispute with the federal government has been pretty good,' said Becerra, who is up for re-election in November.

'We're in the business of public safety, not deportation,' he insisted.

Meanwhile Governor Jerry Brown accused the Trump administration of 'going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy.'

'It's not wise, it's not right, and it will not stand,' a visibly angry Brown declared in a press conference.

Brown was visibly angry after Sessions, speaking in Sacramento, accused the state of deliberately obstructing enforcement of federal law by offering undocumented immigrants sanctuary protections to dodge arrest and deportation by immigration agents.

The attorney general is challenging three California laws that, among other things, bar police from asking people about their citizenship status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities.

The suit filed in federal court in Sacramento says the laws are unconstitutional and have kept federal agents from doing their jobs.

Sessions said Wednesday that California can't practice 'nullification' or legal 'secession' by choosing which federal laws to obey.

'Federal law is the supreme law of the land. ... This matter has been settled,' he said.

The Supreme Court reinforced the federal government's primacy in enforcing immigration law when it blocked much of Arizona's tough 2010 immigration law on similar grounds.

The high court found several key provisions undermined federal immigration law, though it upheld a provision requiring officers, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally.
A New York gallery owner has been accused of failing to pay a penny in child support for his ten-month-old daughter and suing the girl's mother for telling people she was pregnant.

Karina Magruder, 33, claims she's been left homeless and 'broke' after her ex-boyfriend, wealthy art dealer Robert Blumenthal, 36, who has art galleries in Long Island and Manhattan, allegedly refused to pay anything towards the care of his baby.

Magruder said that while Blumenthal lives the high life; jet-setting round the world, she and his daughter are on government assistance.

Karina Magruder, 33, (left, with their daughter) claims she's been left homeless and 'broke' after wealthy art dealer Robert Blumenthal, 36 (right) sued her

'I'm broke,' she told Page Six. 'I'm couch-surfing with a baby. We're on government assistance.'

Blumenthal's family made a fortune in Miami real estate, and he personally owns 'numerous houses' and 'numerous cars', according to Magruder.

'And he won't pay child support. It's unbelievable,' she said.

Last month, Magruder revealed in a Facebook post that Blumenthal had filed a lawsuit against her in April, 2017, for reportedly interfering in his business because she had told his colleagues about her pregnancy.

'My daughter's father decided he would file a civil lawsuit against me,' she wrote. 'If anyone reading this knows of any man that has sued his child's mother while she was pregnant with the child please let me know. It still blows my mind to this day and as far as I know it is still ongoing.'

Robert Blumenthal, 36, (pictured at a White Castle) allegedly refused to pay anything towards the care of his baby

Magruder (pictured while pregnant) said her ex had filed a lawsuit against her just a month before she gave birth, because she told his colleagues she was pregnant

Magruder said to this day, her ex has never visited his daughter (pictured with her) or paid a penny in child support

Blumenthal argued in the lawsuit Magruder didn't deal with the breakup well and had been making 'salacious claims' about him.

'Magruder has not reacted well to the end of this personal relationship and in turn has begun contacting business contacts of Blumenthal,' the lawsuit reads. 'Magruder has been making salacious claims in an attempt to harm the business dealings of Blumenthal.'

A month after the lawsuit, Magruder gave birth. She says she invited the art dealer to the birth of his daughter, and had asked him to see his daughter, but to this date, he'd never met his little girl.

She said not only is she struggling to pay to raise her daughter on her own, but to pay legal fees to fight her ex in court.

'He has not paid a penny in support and everyday that goes by is a struggle, albeit a joyous struggle,' she wrote.

'He has now chosen to create the most difficult and expensive process for his daughter to receive the financial support she needs.

'At one point in this process I thought to myself "why am I wasting all of my money in attorneys for her" and then I was quickly scolded and told I would be doing a disservice to my child by not pursuing justice and that as her only advocate in his world I had a duty and obligation to her.

Blumenthal, made a splash in the art world when he opened two art galleries in Long Island and Manhattan, in 2013

'I have now cleared out my 401k and sold every asset to my name to not only provide for my daughter on my own (with serious help from my parents), but to pay exorbitant attorney fees her father seems to enjoy to rack up. The very definition of gaslighting.'

She said she has also sold her jewelry.

Blumenthal's lawyer, Donald Schuck, told Page Six: 'Mr. Blumenthal is complying with all his obligations.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to Schuck for further comment.

Magruder and Blumental are due in court in New York on March 29.

Blumenthal, from Miami, made a big splash in the art world after moving to New York in 2013 to open his two art galleries. But he faced controversy after allegedly failing to pay the artists and was sued by acclaimed painter Dean Levin in 2015 over claims he hadn't received payment for $200,000 worth of art sold at the gallery.




A teenage boy is in critical condition after he was shot by his own mother, police say.

The 17-year-old boy's mother is in custody after allegedly shooting her son at their Inkster, Michigan, home on Thursday morning.

Police say the mother began shooting after the boy refused to go to school.

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A mother allegedly shot her 17-year-old in Inkster, Michigan, after he refused to go to school on Thursday morning (pictured is their neighborhood)

According to local reports, the mother shot her son through a glass door (pictured) as he tried to run from her

According to CickOnDetroit, an 'intense argument' broke out before the teen walked out of the home.

When he returned, he saw his mom carrying a gun and turned and ran away.

But the mom still fired at least one shot at him through a glass door, hitting him once in the back.

She was immediately taken into custody at the scene and the boy was taken to the hospital, where he remains in critical but stable condition.

Michigan State Police tweeted: 'Mother and 17 year old son were involved in an argument when son left the apartment.

'Son returns and mom fires one shot striking the male in the body. Son at local hospital in critical condition. Mother in custody. No danger exists to the community.'

The mother and son have not yet been identified by police.
An American Airlines pilot has been arrested in Brazil, accused of assaulting a colleague minutes before a flight from Sao Paulo to Miami was due to take off in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The flight, which was immediately cancelled, leaving passengers stranded, was scheduled to depart at 1am from Sao Paulo International airport in Guarulhos.

The pilot, who has not been named, is alleged to have pushed a operations agent and grabbed her around her neck following a disagreement over the alignment of the finger - a tunnel used by passengers that connects the terminal to the plane.

An American Airlines pilot was arrested Thursday morning after assaulting a ground agent at Sao Paulo International Airport in Brazil. Above, a picture of an American Airlines plane at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas

The 59-year-old captain, who is believed to have worked for the airline for 32 years, has had his passport withheld by police and has been charged under Brazils penal code, article 129 with 'offending the bodily integrity or health of another'.

If found guilty the aviator could face a prison sentence of between three months to one year.

Passengers reacted angrily to the delay and were seen complaining furiously to airline staff over the lack of information.

American Airlines said travelers have been put up in hotels and given meal vouchers as the airline tries to rearrange and accommodate them on other flights throughout the day.

According to federal police, just before passengers boarded the jet, the co-pilot on flight AA 930 went to adjust the alignment of the tunnel entrance when the pilot apparently intervened to say the fixture was in the wrong position.

The operations agent, aged 41, whose name has not been released, and who has worked for American Airlines for 14 years, allegedly responded that the connection was 'correctly aligned'.

Eyewitnesses reported that the pilot went to speak to the airline worker who 'inadvertently' stepped on the his foot.

The captain allegedly said to the agent 'do not to touch me', to which the employee reportedly responded that she had 'not touched him'.

Witnesses claimed the pilot then pushed the victim and grabbed her by the neck. An airport maintenance worker who was on the scene at the time saw the altercation and intervened.

In his defense, the captain claimed the airport attendant tried to punch him. However, the co-pilot has not confirmed this version of events.

In a statement to police, the victim said the 'pilot had pushed her and grabbed her around the neck'.

American Airlines refused to comment on the specifics of the case but said they were 'taking this incident extremely seriously'.

In a statement the company apologized for the problem and said: 'Last night, before boarding AA 930 American Airlines flight from Sao Paulo (GRU) to Miami (MIA), two crew members were engaged in a discussion in the tunnel that connects a platform to the plane.

'The authorities are now in charge of the case and providing support to staff members.

'This is a legal investigation and we are cooperating fully with the authorities

'Passengers are being accommodated on other flights throughout the day. American Airlines has provided hotel accommodations and meal vouchers. We apologize to our customers for the problem.'

The pilot has been released and is due to appear at a special criminal court in Guarulhos before the end of this week.
Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro hasn't formally launched his campaign for governor, but he is the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Molinaro rolled out endorsements Wednesday from eight Republican county chairs, including Dutchess GOP Chairman Michael McCormack and Suffolk County GOP Chairman John Jay LaValle.

One of the chairs who supports Molinaro is Rodney Strange, who leads the Chemung County Republican Committee. Strange initially supported state Sen. John DeFrancisco for governor. But he flipped from DeFrancisco, R-DeWitt, to Molinaro.

"I have long known that Marc Molinaro would be the right person to be our governor," Strange said. "He will return honor, respect and dignity to the governor's office and I am proud to endorse him."

Molinaro was also endorsed by Monroe County Republican Chairman Bill Reilich. They are former state Assembly colleagues. Reilich previously endorsed Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb for governor. But after Kolb exited the race in February, he didn't throw his support behind either DeFrancisco or attorney Joe Holland, another declared GOP candidate.

With Molinaro's entry, Reilich found another candidate to endorse.
Patton Oswalt couldn't be happier that his late wife's nonfiction crime novel has debuted at the number one spot on the New York Times Best Seller's list.

The actor made the happy announcement in a tweet on Thursday, sharing a photo of the New York Times Best Sellers list which shows Michelle McNamara's novel, I'll Be Gone In The Dark, sitting at No 1.

'I hope you know, sweetie. I feel like you know. And I hope you know it when your work leads to his capture,' he posted. '#IllBeGoneInTheDark debuts at #1 on the @nytimes bestseller list. Im so proud of you.'

Patton Oswalt praised his late wife Michelle McNamara after her posthumous crime novel debuted at No 1 on the New York Times Best Seller's list

'I hope you know, sweetie. I feel like you know. And I hope you know it when your work leads to his capture,' Oswalt wrote in a tweet

The book details McNamara's hunt to identify The Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and killer accused of more than murders and at least 45 sexual assaults

The Golden State Killer terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s but was never identified or apprehended. The FBI released these two sketches of what the killer may look like

McNamara, a journalist and author known for her blog True Crime Diary, died suddenly in her sleep at the age of 46 in April 2016.

Up until her death she had been working on a book about California serial rapist and killer The Golden State Killer, who is believed to have murdered at least 12 people and committed more than 45 sexual assaults in the 1970s and '80s.

He has never been identified or apprehended.

Oswald wrote the afterword for the book and her friends helped finish the crime novel.

I'll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer was inspired by an article McNamara wrote for Los Angeles magazine called In the Footsteps of a Killer, in which she described her hunt to identify The Golden State Killer.

The book was published on February 27 by HarperCollins. Oswalt also commemorated that moment with a tweet about how excited he was.

'You did it, baby. The book is excellent, the writing brilliant. You tried to bring kindness to chaos, which was your way', Oswalt captioned a photo of the book sitting on McNamara's gravestone.

McNamara died as the result of a previously undiagnosed heart condition that caused blockage in her arteries combined with prescription pills she had been taking, the 49-year-old actor said in a statement to the Associated Press last year.

He said she had been taking Adderall, Xanax and the pain medication fentanyl.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark was released on February 27. Oswalt, who helped finish writing the book, announced the news on Twitter

McNamara, pictured above with Oswalt, died in her sleep in April 2016 at the age of 46. Her cause of death was a combination of a previously undiagnosed medical condition and medication she was taking

Oswalt got engaged to actress Meredith Salenger 15 months after McNamara's death. The couple, pictured above, married in November 2017

McNamara and Oswalt, who married in 2005, had a daughter together, Alice Oswalt, who is now eight.

Oswalt announced his engagement to actress Meredith Salenger 15 months after McNamara's death.

The actor defended his relationship on social media after critics lashed out at him for moving on too quickly.

'I expected some bitter grub worms to weigh in (anonymously, always always always) with their much-needed opinions when I announced my engagement,' Oswalt wrote thanking blogger Erica Roman, also a widower, for coming to his and Salenger's defense.

Oawalt went on to marry Salenger, 47, in November 2017.
A dying Missouri officer said over police radio that he had been shot multiple times and didn't think he could make it through the window of a home from which two other wounded officers managed to escape.

Clinton Officer Christopher Ryan Morton is heard saying 'I don't know if I can move my feet' after gunfire erupted Tuesday night.

He was hit when he and and two other officers were sent to the wrong address while responding to a 911 call made from another town, according to police scanner communications.

The suspected gunman, 37-year-old James Waters, barricaded himself inside the home after the initial hail of gunfire.

He then fired at the dozens of officers who rushed to the scene, refusing to let them tend to Morton, The Kansas City Star reported.

Police in Missouri say James Waters (right) opened fire on officers responding to a disturbance at a wrong address Tuesday, killing officer Christopher Ryan Morton and injuring two others

After Morton stopped responding, an officer pleaded, 'Morton, stay with us. Stay with us, Morton.'

The bullet-ridden officer can be heard on the recordings telling his fellow officers over the radio: 'I'm hit multiple times. One left arm, both legs. The chest, the vest.'

At one point, an officer asks Morton if he can climb out of the window.: 'I don't think so,' he replies, then adds that he is 'stuck.' '

By the time law enforcement made it back into the home hours later, both Morton and Waters were dead.

Investigators were still trying to determine if Waters shot himself or was killed by police, Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe said. The wounded officers were Nathan Bettencourt, who was in stable condition on Thursday, and Nicholas Kasper, who was treated for gunshot wounds and released.

Sheryl Long, one of the neighbors who witnessed the gun battle, said the officers begged Waters during the standoff to let them tend to their fallen colleague.

Law enforcement officials respond to the scene of a shooting where officer Morton was killed and others wounded as they responded to a 911 call on Tuesday evening in Clinton, Missouri

Veteran: Morton joined the Army National Guard in November 2005 and was twice deployed, returning in May 2014 from Afghanistan (pictured during his Army days)

After taking a break from full-time policing, Morton resumed his duties after Clinton officer Gary Michael was shot in August 2017

'Please let us get our wounded officer out. There is no need for anyone else to get hurt. There's been enough damage,' Long recounted the officers pleading with the shooter.

'They kept calling his name,' she said. 'It was very sad, so senseless.'

Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe said no one spoke when the 911 call came in Tuesday night but two women could be heard arguing in the background.

For reasons that authorities still are trying to determine, the officers were sent to a wrong address in Clinton where they were shot. The home that officers should have responded to was in Windsor, about 15 miles away, authorities said Wednesday.

The three Clinton officers went inside the home to determine if criminal activity was occurring and James Waters was in the residence and shot them, Lowe said.

After the officers were shot, a SWAT team entered the house and found Waters dead. Investigators have not determined if he shot himself or was killed by the officers, Lowe said.

Scanner audio captured the shootout. According to The Kansas City Star, Morton can be heard saying: 'I'm hit multiple times. One left arm. Both legs. The chest, the vest.'

Another officer can hear saying: 'Morton, stay with us. Stay with us Morton.'

A woman who lived at the home, Tammy Widger, 37, was charged Wednesday with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and maintaining a public nuisance, Henry County Prosecuting Attorney Richard Shields said.

Her bond was set at $25,000. In a probable cause statement, Patrol Sgt. Brian Hagerty wrote that Widger told a fellow investigator that she helped Waters deal meth in exchange for him paying her bills.

Widger met the officers outside the home and said nothing was going on at the residence. The officers decided to check inside the home anyway to make sure no one was in danger, Lowe said. Waters was the only person in the home. His relationship to Widger was not immediately clear.

'It is a coincidence they were called to that specific address,' Lowe said. 'It is tragic that happened. But the fact is they were in the act of committing crimes within that house. When (the officers) entered that house they were doing what they needed to ensure no one was hurt and there wasn't any other problems.'

The two women heard arguing in the 911 call were not in any way connected to the Clinton home, Lowe said.

Shields said officers had been searching for Waters in connection with a rape case but that it wasn't clear how he was involved.

Waters' cousin, John Rudolph, told KCTV that Waters was troubled and 'mental issues,' and that despite his criminal history, he managed to get guns.

'My cousin was a convicted felon that had no my right to any weapons, but at the same time he could get them. ... Something has to change. Something has to give.'

He also expressed his condolences to the slain officer's family.

'We are sorry that you lost your loved one,' Rudolph said. 'We are sorry that we lost our loved one. We are sorry it went down the way this went down.'

Court records show Waters had convictions for drugs and resisting arrest. He served stints in prison from October 2000 through November 2002, May 2003 through April 2008, July 2008 through October 2012, and May 2014 through last July, according to Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Garry Brix.

Waters was charged in November in Cass County with unlawful possession of a firearm and drug possession, court records show. He pleaded not guilty, and the case was pending when he died.

This undated photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Waters, who had been in and out of prison since 2000, mostly on drug charges

Morton is the second Clinton police officer in the past year to be killed in the line of duty. In August, Officer Gary Michael was killed during a traffic stop. Ian McCarthy was arrested after a two-day manhunt and has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting. Prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty.

Morton, who joined the Army National Guard in November 2005 and was twice deployed, returned in May 2014 from Afghanistan, where he served as a bridge crew member and radio communications manager, The Kansas City Star reported.

The Missouri Highway Patrol said Morton was a full-time Clinton officer from February 2015 through January 2017, when he temporarily became a reserve officer while working with Veterans Affairs in the Kansas City area. The break ended after a gunman fatally shot Michael, prompting Morton to resume his full-time duties as a police officer in Clinton.

Morton said in a social media exchange with is friend, Aiza Evans, that Michael 'fought til (sic) the end.' Morton, who replaced Michael on the force, said he was 'Just trying to help the PD heal now.'
A Great Dane that ripped a three-year-old boy's ear off in a savage mauling while he was riding his bike has been put down.

Tom Higgins was collecting cans to recycle with his mother and sister in Newcastle on Tuesday when the dog named Rossco escaped from a nearby house.

The huge canine standing twice the little boy's height charged on to the street and grabbed Tom by the neck and bit him multiple times.

A Great Dane that ripped a three-year-old boy's ear off in a savage mauling while he was riding his bike has been put down

Tom Higgins was rushed to John Hunter Children's Hospital with injuries to his neck, back, and ear, which was partially torn off and had to be reattached

When asked about the attack, Rossco's owner told Seven News the dog just didn't like bikes.

The Great Dane was voluntarily surrendered to Newcastle Council on Wednesday and put down the next day.

Tom was rushed to John Hunter Children's Hospital with injuries to his neck, back, and ear, which was partially torn off.

The toddler had surgery to reattach his ear on Wednesday morning and was expected to make a full recovery but faced a long and painful recovery.

The huge canine standing twice the little boy's height charged on to the street and grabbed Tom by the neck and bit him multiple times

When asked about the attack, Rossco's owner told Seven News the dog just didn't like bikes

Doctors were concerned bacteria from the dog's mouth may have made its way into the wounds and could cause infection.

'I'd say everybody is lucky in this circumstance because it hasn't ended up worse,' Detective Acting Inspector Jeffrey Little said.

Tom was one of four toddlers to be badly hurt in dog attacks this week including a fatal attack on a baby.

A two-year-old girl was rushed to hospital with an injured left eye after she was bitten by a dog in Coffs Harbour on the NSW Mid North Coast on Thursday.

The distressed girl was pictured being transported on a stretcher to the ambulance with her mother with blood on her face.

She was in a stable condition at the Coffs Harbour Hospital.

Tom Higgins was rushed to hospital on a stretcher where he underwent surgery on his ear

The toddler had surgery to reattach his ear on Wednesday morning and was expected to make a full recovery but faced a long and painful recovery

Kamillah Jones (pictured left) was mauled to death by an Rottweiler (pictured stock) in Inverell, northern New South Wales on Saturday

Earlier on Saturday afternoon one-year-old Kamillah Jones was mauled to death by a Rottweiler at a home in Inverell.

She died on the way to hospital despite the desperate efforts of paramedics to save her.

The dog was seized by council rangers and a NSW Police spokeswoman on Tuesday confirmed it had been put down.

On Sunday, a three-year-old girl was left with shocking injuries after a South African Boerboel attacked her in the Melbourne suburb of Berwick.

She was rushed to hospital and is lucky to be alive, according to neighbours who helped saved her.

A two-year-old girl was rushed to hospital with an injured left eye after she was bitten by a dog in Coffs Harbour on the NSW Mid North Coast on Thursday
A Boston Internal Revenue Service agent handcuffed a 21-year-old college student in his government-issued car, put a gun into her mouth, choked her, and raped her, it has been alleged.

James Clarke, 44, was indicted by the Suffolk County district attorneys office on Wednesday after the incident allegedly took place last July.

A married father of three children, Clarke faces charges of aggravated rape, rape, strangulation, indecent assault and battery, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, according to The Boston Globe.

Clarke, who was not arrested, is scheduled to appear in court for arraignment on April 5.

His lawyer, Michael Doolin, said Clarke adamantly denies these allegations.

The allegations against Clarke were first made months ago, which raises questions as to why he was allowed to remain on the job by the IRS.

The alleged rape took place at the Government Center parking garage (seen in the above stock image) near the IRS offices at the JFK Federal Building in Boston

On July 26, Clarke allegedly invited the woman, who was working at the IRS as an unpaid intern, for drinks after work.

They met at Kinsale, an Irish pub located just across the street from the IRS offices in the JFK Federal Building in downtown, The Globe reported.

Prosecutors are alleging that Clarke offered the woman a ride to the train station.

Once they got into his car, which was parked at the Government Center Garage, Clarke allegedly handcuffed her.

He then is alleged to have pulled out his work-issued gun and subjected her to sexual acts against her will, the district attorneys office said.

Clarke then allegedly drove the woman to nearby South Station and assaulted her again.

She called police immediately afterward and was treated at a hospital, the district attorneys office said.

Hes cooperated with the investigation from the moment he was notified of it, and he looks forward to taking this case to court and being vindicated, Clarkes lawyer, Doolin, said.

Minutes after the alleged assault, the woman called 911 to report Clarke at around 10:30pm.

Caller is a female, says he put a gun in her mouth and sexually assaulted her, the 911 dispatcher says over the Boston police radio system, a recording of which was obtained by Broadcastify.

James Clarke, 44, allegedly raped the woman after they met up for drinks at Kinsale (above), an Irish pub just across the street from the JFK Federal Building

A Boston police officer radioed back that he had located the woman at South Station.

Weve got the victim, the officer said.

I got the suspects name. Its Jamie Clarke . . . hes an investigator with the IRS.

According to Boston police, Clarke was interviewed the next day, but was not arrested.

Officers confiscated his gun and his car.

A spokesperson for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley said: The joint investigation by Boston police and Suffolk prosecutors entailed multiple interviews, forensic testing, a review of medical records, and an exhaustive grand jury presentation to build the strongest case possible.

Clarke is also alleged to have assaulted the woman at the South Station train terminal (seen above)

The spokesperson told the Globe it was common to not arrest a suspect and instead rely on him or her to appear in court.

Its not unusual for a defendant to be summonsed in for arraignment when he or she is aware of the investigation and the likelihood of charges and makes no move to flee those charges, the spokesperson said.

As an IRS agent, Clarke investigated financial crimes, including money laundering, identity theft, and tax evasion.

At the time of the alleged rape, he was assigned to a task force with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

After news of the alleged rape was reported in November, the DEA removed him from the task force.
Donald Trump signed an order on Thursday imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, after days of guessing games and internal White House battles over whether daring China to enter a trade war is sound policy.

The president appeared in the Oval Office, flanked by senior officials on one side and a group of steelworkers on the other.

'You are truly the backbone of America, you know that? You are very special people,' he told the blue collar contingent.

'We want a lot of steel coming into our country, but we want it to be fair and we want our workers to be protected.'

The president said his promises to factory workers were a big reason for his 2016 victory, complaining that American steel and aluminum workers have been betrayed  but 'that betrayal is now over.'

Far from being the ironclad, no-compromises national security measures Trump has telegraphed in the past week, the Associated Press reported that every nation in the world will be able to petition the United States for exemptions.

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Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday imposing new tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminum, a move that will take effect in 15 days

The president greeted foundry and mill workers in the Oval Office, promising that his brand of protectionism will result in better jobs and higher production levels in their communities

Trump invited the workers to take photos of the Oval Office, forgetting to actually sign the proclamation until Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (3rd from right) reminded him to

A senior administration official said the national security underpinnings of the new policy were 'unassailable,' and clarified that the offer of loopholes would be somewhat limited

Trump will 'allow any country with which we have a security relationship to discuss with the United States and the president alternate ways' of protecting America's interests, the official said, while cautioning that petitioning countries would have to prove that their steel and aluminum exports aren't harming America's national security capabilities.

And 'it doesn't just refer to national defense. It's national security, broadly defined,' the official added.

That measuring stick could encompass anything from protecting domestic steel mills and foundries to guaranteeing the availability of affordable materials for the automotive and aerospace industries.

Rapid responses from Trump critics in Congress were forceful and unyielding.

'These so-called "flexible tariffs" are a marriage of two lethal poisons to economic growth  protectionism and uncertainty. Trade wars are not won, they are only lost,' said Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a persistent thorn in Trump's side who will retire in less than a year.

'Congress cannot be complicit as the administration courts disaster. I will immediately draft and introduce legislation to nullify these tariffs,' Flake said in a statement.

Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, a close Trump ally, was equally sour on the new policy.

The new tariffs will go into effect on March 23  except for Canadians and Mexicans, who will get a carve-out exemption

Moderate Republican Senator Jeff Flake (left) and Conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (right) both blasted the new tariffs  and said they would employ varying tactics to undo them

'This is a tax hike on American manufacturers, workers and consumers. Slapping aluminum and steel imports with tariffs of this magnitude is misguided,' Hatch said. 'It undermines the benefits that the new tax law provides and runs counter to our goal of advancing pro-growth trade policies that will keep America competitive.'

Hatch said he would 'continue to work with the administration to revisit this decision and hopefully mitigate the damage it will cause to our nation's economic growth.'

In a conference call with reporters, the senior Trump administration official downplayed the production cost increases that will likely come along with hikes in the net price of raw materials, saying it would add just a few cents to the cost of food cans, and $25,000 to the price of steel to build a Boeing jet that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

The official waved off mounting evidence that steel and aluminum tariffs will raise retail prices, declaring: 'This is simply fake news.'

Trump invited his guests to take photos in the Oval Office, forgetting to sign the proclamation itself on Thursday, and heading toward a small table only when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin reminded him to.

'Yes, I'm going to do that,' Trump told him, changing course.

President Donald Trump used a cabinet meeting Thursday to announce that Mexico and Canada will be exempted from new steel and aluminum tariffs,and Australia may also get a carve-out  but it later emerged that nearly every nation on earth would be allowed to petition for special treatment

Trump had already said earlier in the day that Mexico and Canada would likely be spared  provided a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement progresses to his liking.

'We're going to cancel NAFTA' if negotiations fail, he said Thursday.

During a Cabinet meeting, Trump raised the possibility that Australia, too, could be exempt from the new tariffs covered under his proclamation.

'We're going to be very flexible,' the president said, while pledging to 'protect the American worker.'

Trump insisted, however, that countries forced to pay the import duties would be charged a 25 per cent premium on steel and 10 per cent on aluminum.

His tariffs will go into effect on March 23.

A senior administration official called the plan both 'a wonderfully flexible document' and a vehicle to 'ensure an ironclad way that we preserve our aluminum and steel industry.'

On Thursday morning it wasn't clear whether the president would have anything to sign by day's end.

The White House had punted Wednesday on the timetable, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders telling reporters that he was expected to 'sign something by the end of the week.'

Trump tweeted a non-committal message early on Thursday, writing that he was '[l]ooking forward to [a] 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House.'

Trump downgraded the signing to a 'meeting' in a cryptic tweet on Thursday morning but the White House later confirmed that he would indeed sign the tariff order

'We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.'

He also told reporters late in the morning: 'I call it an economic meeting.'

'We're going to be very fair. We're going to be very flexible, but we're going to protect the American worker,' he pledged.

Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday on the Fox News Channel that 'the president has called a meeting today at 3:30. He has invited in steel an aluminum workers.'

But she didn't say if he would sign anything.

Confusion reigned in Washington overnight, with contradictory reports sparking a 'will he or won't he' guessing game as Trump's leanings seemed to change by the hour.

CNN reported at dinnertime that the Thursday signing was definitely on.

An MSNBC anchor tweeted late into the evening that the it was 'not going to happen' because the president was 'undecided after a day of heavy pushback from Republicans.'

The Wall Street Journal reported nearly two hours later that Trump was still expected to sign his tariff order, but only sometime 'this week.'

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hinted at 'carve-outs' for Mexico and Canada on Wednesday and said exemptions will be considered on a 'country by country' basis

On Thursday morning an NBC reporter tweeted that details were 'still being finalized' and 'if a proclamation is signed it will be largely "symbolic".'

Sanders said Wednesday that there might be 'carve-outs'  exemptions  'for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well.'

The prospect of across-the-board tariffs that would affect both America's allies and nations with massive U.S. trade surpluses made some in the White House uneasy, especially chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who announced his resignation this week.

Other top officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, also made last-minute appeals for flexibility, saying that overly broad tariffs would damage key security ties with U.S. allies.

One possible plan would give Canada and Mexico 30-day exemptions, officials said Wednesday, a status whose continuation would depend on progress in renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

On Wednesday, Sanders told reporters that exemptions to the 25 per cent steel tariffs and 10 per cent aluminum tariffs would be made on a 'case by case' and 'country by country' basis.

One possible outcome would be a 30-day tariff exemption for Mexico and Canada, contingent on a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement

Business leaders in the steel and aluminum sectors were reportedly flying to Washington Wednesday night in anticipation of a tariff signing designed to protect them against foreign competition.

But despite industry support, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raised the specter of a global trade war.

That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump's rollback of regulations.

'We urge the administration to take this risk seriously,' Donohue said.
Marylou Sarkissian, 50, was beaten and strangled to death. Ex-boyfriend Jason Becher, 43, (pictured) is currently awaiting trial for the murder

Recently filed court documents revealed just how hard a 50-year-old mother-of-three tried to protect herself and her kids from her ex-boyfriend before she was brutally murdered.

Jason Becher, 43, is currently awaiting trial for the murder of Marylou Sarkissian, who was found beaten and strangled to death in her Huntington Beach, California home in December 2016.

Previously, very little had been released about the crime. But recently, the Huntington Beach police investigation and arrest report were filed in court, giving new details on the murder.

According to the reports, Sarkissian had a restraining order out against her ex at the time, and installed a security system on her house just the day before her murder.

Police found Sarkissian's dead body the afternoon of December 2, after Becher's relative called police and informed them that Becher had told him that he killed his ex.

His brother said that Becher staked out the house and waited for Sarkissian to let her dog out, then forced his way in when she let the dog back in.

In new court papers, it was revealed that Sarkissian had a restraining order against her ex, and had a security system installed the day before her death. Sarkissian is pictured second right, with her children from a previous relationship

When police arrived at the home, Sarkissian's teen son answered the door, and said he got back to an empty house and figured his mother was out. He led police into her bathroom where the boy screamed when he found his mother's dead body in a pool of blood.

'The female appeared to be badly bruised and beaten about her face and was lying in a pool of blood,' officers wrote in their report.

Police later went through the surveillance footage, and discovered that Becher forced his way into the home at 2.22am.

He is heard on the recording telling Sarkissian: 'So you got a new surveillance system; how'd that work out for you?'

About 30 minutes later, he is seen carrying a garbage bag out of the house and appears to have changed clothes.

Police found a bag of bloody clothes in the home, as well as a black plastic hanger and nylon rope they believe were used in the murder.

While it's still unclear what motivated Becher to allegedly kill his ex, family members say that in the lead up to the murder, he complained about Sarkissian's restraining order and said she owed him money.

Her restraining order was granted after an incident in August 2016, in which he dragged her into a bathroom and tried to choke her with a bath towel before she sprayed him with pepper spray. In that incident, he told authorities that Sarkissian owed him $100,000.

Becher fled to Oregon in the aftermath of the murder, but was taken into custody the next day.

He continues to await trail while being held at an Orange County jail. He has pleaded not guilty to murder.

If convicted prosecutors may ask for a sentencing enhancement, based on the report that he staked out the home before allegedly killing Sarkissian. With a sentencing enhancement, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Becher is due back in court in May to determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial.
A pair of royal knickers have been found at an auction in Adelaide in a pile of lace.

Undergarments believed to belong to Queen Victoria were incredibly discovered by Ben Pike who was initially going to throw them out.

'They were just massive and they looked old and they looked pretty revolting,' Mr Pike told 9News.

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A pair of royal knickers believed to belong to Queen Victoria (pictured) have been found at an auction in Adelaide in a pile of lace

The undergarments were incredibly discovered by Ben Pike, who was initially going to throw them out, until he spotted the hand stitched royal emblem (pictured)

Experts believe the hand stitched undergarment dated back to the 19th century from later in Queen Victoria's (pictured) life, who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901.

The South Australian man noticed Queen Victoria's emblem embroidered on the linen knickers, which had a 137cm waist band.

The number 36 is embroidered under the royal emblem, believed to be the batch number.

The Queen was hygenic and reportedly only wore a pair of drawers once before never wearing them again.

Similar undergarments, known as 'split drawers', had an open crotch so heavy dresses didn't have to be taken off when going to the toilet.

A newspaper clipping from 1987 was pinned to the back of the knickers found by Mr Pike noted they were previously sold at an auction in Canada for $3000.

Experts believe the hand stitched undergarment dated back to the 19th century from later in Queen Victoria's life, who reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901.

A newspaper clipping from 1987 (pictured) was pinned to the back of the knickers found by Mr Pike noted they were previously sold at an auction in Canada for $3000

Queen Victoria married husband Prince Albert, who also happened to be her cousin, who went on to have nine children together.

In 2016, a pair of Queen Victoria's knickers sold for a record breaking $29,000 in the UK, after being expected to sell for $5,000.

Mr Pike is also hoping to cash in the monarch's undergarments for a tidy price.
Hundreds of sex offenders are on the loose after police forces in England and Wales lost track of them.

At least 372 criminals who were convicted of crimes including rape, indecent assault and grooming cannot be found.

Figures reveal a huge increase in the number that vanished last year and the year before, suggesting the problem is getting worse.

Some of those who have gone missing have convictions for rape, adding to the trauma of their victims

Some sex offenders such Kieran Creavan (centre, outside Leeds Crown Court in December 2017) have been caught by paedophile hunters rather than the police

In London, the Met Police force is unable to find at least 227 sex offenders

The revelations will raise fears that the worst sex offenders, such as black cab rapist John Worboys who is appealing to be released from jail, could slip through the net after they are let out.

Already this year, 15 convicted sex offenders have disappeared, with officers unable to track them down as of last month. In a number of cases the criminals are thought to have fled overseas.

At least 13 of those missing have been wanted for more than a decade, and at least one has dodged officers since 2005.

Of the 29 out of 45 police forces that responded to Freedom of Information requests by the Daily Mail, most refused to give details of the offences.

John Worboys, 60, was jailed in 2009 for drugging and sexually assaulting women passengers

Tory MP Priti Patel described the figures as shocking', and called for more to be done to to round missing sex offenders up

Of the forces that provided the dates when the sex criminals went missing, most show a significant jump in instances last year. Police lost track of 114 sex offenders in 2017  more than twice the 2016 figure of 53 which in itself was more than twice the 25 lost in 2015.

The alarming increase suggests that far more needs to be done to prevent sex offenders escaping police supervision.

In London, the Met Police force is unable to find at least 227 sex offenders. Eleven have been lost this year and 79 disappeared in 2017  nearly double the year before at 38.

Lancashire Constabulary lost track of 12 sex offenders, while there were ten in South Yorkshire. In Kent, there were nine criminals convicted of assaults including intercourse with a girl under 16 and gross indecency who are wanted or missing.

Humberside Police admitted losing nine, with four of those in 2017, up from just one in 2016. South Wales lost track of eight.

In Lincolnshire, one sex offender who had a foreign conviction for rape went missing.

North Wales Police had lost track of two offenders. The figures are accurate as of the end of February and early March.

The public will be questioning how we will be kept safe from him when hundreds of offenders have already disappeared.

Under the Sex Offenders Act, all convicted sex offenders must register with the police within three days of their conviction or release from prison. Failure to register can carry a jail term.

Offenders must inform the police within three days if they change their name or address, and disclose if they are spending seven days or more away from their home. Sex offenders must register with their local police every year.

Last night Tory MP Priti Patel described the figures as shocking. The former minister said: We need urgent assurances that the police and Home Office are doing everything possible to round sex offenders up.

Worboys, 60, was jailed in 2009 for drugging and sexually assaulting women passengers. In January the Parole Board ruled that he no longer posed a threat and should be released from a top-security prison.

He is still in jail, pending a High Court appeal next Tuesday which will decide whether he should be released.

Miss Patel said: With the vile John Worboys set to be released, the public will be questioning how we will be kept safe from him when hundreds of offenders have already disappeared.

Last year it was announced that low-risk sex offenders and paedophiles would have fewer home visits by police under cost-cutting plans.

Reports suggested the changes would see as many as 16,000 convicts free from regular meetings with officers. Charities said they were concerned the move would allow offenders to slip through the net.
President Donald Trump told a steelworker at his tariff-signing event that the man's father is 'looking down' and 'he's proud of you.'

There was only one problem, the man's father is not dead.

'Then he's even more proud of you,' Trump said to laughter after Scott Sauritch, president of United Steelworkers Union 2227, corrected him. 'Then he's even more proud,' the president repeated.

President Donald Trump told a steel worker at his tariffs signing event that the man's father is 'looking down' and 'he's proud of you.' Scott Sauritch, president of United Steelworkers Union 2227, had to explain that his father, Herman, is not dead

Union boss Scott Sauritch inadvertently suggested that his dad had passed away in remarks at the mic in the White House by talking in the past tense. But Herman Sauritch was alive and well and speaking on Fox News later in the day

Trump had to be reminded by his Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, that he needed to sign two proclamations enforcing his actions before he exited

Sauritch said in brief remarks in support of the president's newly announced tariffs that his father lost his job in the '80s due to dumping.

'What that does to a man with six kids is devastating, so I never forgot that, looking into his eyes, in my household, what that does to a family,' he said. 'You hear about it, but when you're actually involved and it impacts you, it'll never leave you.'

The union boss inadvertently planted the idea that his dad had passed away by speaking about him in the past tens.

'For Herman Sauritch your story didn't end. And for all the people that I represent at my union, I never want to see it again,' he stated. 'And for these workers and these folks, I appreciate the opportunity, I'm very humbled by this.'

Taking the mic back, Trump asked him to confirm that Herman is his father.

'Well, your father Herman is looking down. He's proud of you right now,' the president told him.

Sauritch set off laughter in the room of steelworkers and Cabinet officials when he shot back, 'Oh, he's still alive.'

'Your signing these?' Mnuchin asked Trump over a hot mic, pointing to the proclomations

Not missing a beat, Trump moved on to the next gentleman, a buff, t-shirt wearing steelworker in blue jeans, who the president approached with his arm extended and invited to wrestle.

The man, Ron Davis, said the plant he works at provided the majority of the armor for Humvees, but its workers will have dwindled to fewer than 100 employees by September. Trump's protectionist measures will hopefully save other manufacturing plants from enduring the same fate.

'Anybody else?' Trump asked when Davis had finished. 'You're just going to accept great jobs, right? You're going to be very happy. You're going to see things changing very rapidly.'

The president said, 'We looked forward to having lots of mills opening up, lots of plants opening up, both steel and aluminum and other things. We'll be doing other things, very positive things but you are great people.

'Would you like to take a picture in the Oval Office?' he suddenly asked. 'I assume you've all been many times into the Oval Office. Come on, let's go and do that.'

Trump had to be reminded by his Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, that he needed to sign two proclamations enforcing his actions before he exited.

'Your signing these?' he asked him over a hot mic.

Trump waved him off, and said, 'Yes, I'm gonna do.'

'We'll go into the Oval Office, we're gonna sign this up, we'll go into the Oval Office, we'll have a picture, OK?' he told the workers as he moved toward the table that bore the documents.

He ultimately signed both and passed around the signing pens before departing.
The 16-year-old accused of killing two classmates when he opened fire at his Kentucky high school in January reportedly viewed his actions as a 'science experiment'.

Police said Gabriel Ross Parker showed no remorse when talking about the January shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton that took the lives of 15-year-old Bailey Holt and Preston Cope, 15.

Marshall County Sheriff's Capt Matt Hilbrecht testified that Parker told police he was interested in science and wanted to see how people would react.

He said Parker showed no emotion during the interview and described him as 'cold, callous'.

Gabriel Ross Parker (left in court), 16, who is accused of killing two classmates and wounding several others when he opened fire at his Kentucky high school, reportedly viewed his actions as a 'science experiment'

Marshall County Sheriff's Capt Matt Hilbrecht (pictured) testified that Parker told police he was interested in science and wanted to see how people would react. He said Parker showed no emotion during the interview and described him as 'cold, callous'

Victims: Bailey Holt (left) died at the scene, while Preston Ryan Cope (right) was declared dead at a hospital

Parker told Hilbrecht that he had thought about the shooting for a week, but only decided to do it the night before, according to WPSD.

Parker reportedly used a Ruger 9mm pistol that was owned by his stepfather during the shooting.

Hilbrecht said during his testimony that investigators showed Parker a picture of Holt who died at the scene.

Parker (pictured) reportedly used a Ruger 9mm pistol that was owned by his step-father during the January 23 shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton

'[He] said "I don't know her." [He] had no response to that,' Hilbrecht said in court.

Cope died later at a hospital and 14 other students were injured.

According to Hilbrecht, Parker took the gun, two magazines and a hunting knife to the school that day.

'He said that he feared that when he ran out of bullets that the children might attack him and he needed a way to defend himself,' Hilbrecht said.

Parker, who turned 16 after the shooting, has been charged as an adult.

Last week, Parker reportedly confessed and led police to the gun he used, according to court documents.

He was arrested shortly after and has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and 14 counts of assault, per court records.

Parker was recorded on video as he unleashed the massacre, according to an affidavit requesting a search warrant from Kentucky State Police detective David Dick cited by the Courier Journal.

Although the affidavit said Parker admitted to being the gunman and gave up the gun's location to police, it doesn't reveal where the gun was found.

A two-page indictment released last month said Parker fired a handgun into a crowd of people in the commons area of the high school.

The murder charges against Parker carry a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison upon conviction, and the assault charges a minimum of 10 years.

Parker's case will proceed in the courts as an ordinary criminal trial since he has been charged as an adult.

But the law requires that he remain at a juvenile jail, not in the general population of a county facility. No motive for the shooting has been given by investigators.

The sophomore (pictured in police custody) reportedly admitted to being the gunman and led police to the gun last week

Parker's friends said he'd been 'snappy' since returning to Marshall County High School (pictured) in Benton from Christmas break

Parker is the son of Mary Garrison Minyard, the editor of the Marshall County Online.

But friends and others who knew Parker, a sophomore at Marshall County High School, told the Courier Journal he was a 'grandma's boy'.

They said the red-head went fishing with his grandparents and that 'anything grandma needed, he would get'.

Gage Smock, from Gilbertsville, Kentucky, is one of the 14 who were injured in the shooting

Students are pictured embracing after a prayer vigil at a nearby high school on Wednesday.

'His grandma was his best friend,' his neighbor Allyn Hornick told the paper last month.

Gage Smock, from Gilbertsville, Kentucky, is one of the 14 who were injured in the shooting

Students are pictured embracing after a prayer vigil shortly after the shooting

He also said he spoke to Parker two months ago, and that the boy seemed anxious and down.

Ashley Collie told the paper in February that she was baffled when she saw the photo of Parker being taken into custody on Tuesday.

The 15-year-old, said she was in Parker's math class and described him as 'a really good kid'.

She said he was quiet, and that he kept to himself, according to the Journal.

Collie also said that after the shooting, some of Parker's friends said he'd been 'snappy' since returning from Christmas break.

Friends also told her he talked about violence and said he was interested in joining the Mafia, according to the Journal.
IRA  Town of Ira board members discussed over $200,000 worth of repairs planned for Ira's roads during a regular town board meeting on Wednesday.

Michael Hesse, Ira's highway superintendent, explained that 1.5 miles of Watkins Road will be repaved from Mott Road to Ira Station Road, and the portion of Watkins Road that was repaved last year from Mott Road to Route 34 is going to be rechipped. The nearly 3 mile road was split into two phases for budgeting purposes, Hesse said.

The estimated cost to repave Watkins Road is $156,520, Hesse said. "This is a little higher of an estimate," so the project should come in under that price. Rechipping the other half of Watkins Road is estimated to cost the town $28,500, Hesse said.

Fortunately, this year paving oil is 10 cents cheaper per gallon than it was last year when the first installment of Watkins Road was paved, Hesse said. In contrast, "with chip stone there is a huge increase." The price on the stone goes up on April 1, so Hesse is "hoping to have all stone hauled this month."

Sunnyside Road, Misty Meadows Drive, and Regan Lee Lane will also be rechipped, Hesse said. To reseal the 1.5 miles in the Misty Meadows housing development will cost an estimated $19,968.
A group of Montreal residents protesting the use of school buses by the Jewish community in their neighborhood has sparked outrage by wearing yellow badges to a council meeting hearing the issue.

Accusations of anti-Semitism were leveled this week at Ginette Chartre and other residents of the Montreal borough of Outremont who are upset over what they claim to be excessive use of buses by Orthodox Jews.

The local Jewish community uses yellow school buses to transport their children to school and around the neighborhood, according to the National Post.

Chartre and other residents have complained for years, saying that the buses block the streets during the summer.

They say that the buses run at odd hours of the day and night.

On just one residential, one-way street, there are 14 buses in one hour! she said.

Thats not reasonable.

A group of Montreal residents, among them Ginette Chartre (above), protesting the use of school buses by the Jewish community in their neighborhood has sparked outrage by wearing yellow badges to a council meeting hearing the issue in the borough of Outremont on Monday

On Monday, Chartre and several other Outremont residents attached yellow badges to their clothing while attending a local council meeting.

The yellow symbols are reminiscent of the yellow Stars of David that the Jews of Europe were forced to wear while under Nazi occupation.

Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Chartre was defiant in refusing to take off the yellow badge  even when she was told it reminded others of past trauma.

[The Jews] always bring up their painful past, she said. They do it to muzzle us. Were wearing the yellow square because the school buses are yellow.

Well march down the street wearing them, banging pots and pans if we have to.

We are living an injustice. We are being persecuted by them.

The yellow badges outraged local Jewish residents.

Should we just go away? Just vanish? Alex Werzberger, a Hasidic resident of Outremont said.

The yellow symbols are reminiscent of the yellow Stars of David that the Jews of Europe were forced to wear during the Holocaust. The image above shows a Dutch Jewish family being deported to Poland during the Nazi occupation

The Jewish people for millennia have been exposed to this stuff, some worse, some better, and its almost part of our existence, part of our being, he said.

Outremont has seen an increase in the size of its Jewish population in recent years.

This has apparently led to tensions within the community.

In November 2016, Outremont residents voted to ban the establishment of additional houses of worship on one of the boroughs main streets  a move that specifically targeted synagogues.

Jewish community members slammed the vote, saying this was motivated by anti-Semitism.

Residents, however, said the ban was aimed at helping businesses that they claimed would be hurt by allowing more synagogues to be built.

Montreals mayor, Valerie Plante, denounced the campaign to bar the buses.

Living together as a community is sometimes challenging, the mayor said in a statement.

However, I find it unacceptable to launch a political action against children.

They should never be a target.
North Dakota is the 'drunkest state in America', a new study has claimed.

Researchers reviewed reports of heavy drinking or binge drinking from men and women over the age of 18 in all 50 states.

According to the study, conducted by 24/7 Wall St, the highest rates of drinking to excess were primarily located in the Midwest while adults in the south were less likely to over-indulge in alcoholic beverages.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that nearly 30 people die every day in the United States from a motor vehicle crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver. Overall, 30 per cent of all traffic fatalities across the nation involve alcohol.

The numbers are shocking, which prompted 24/7 Wall St to compile a list of the drunkest states in the country.

At the top of the list, ranking in at number one, is North Dakota, with nearly 25 per cent of all adults reporting binge drinking or heavy drinking. The state with the lowest number of adults who binge drink or drink heavily is Tennessee, with 11 per cent of adults drinking alcohol in excess.

North Dakota is said to be the 'drunkest state in America', according to a new study

According to the outlet, the list was put together by reviewing data from the CDC to identify the states that report the highest numbers of adults who drink in excess.

Information was also gathered from County Health Rankings and Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program.

Binge drinking, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, is defined as a pattern of drinking that brings a blood alcohol concentration levels to .08. This typically happens when women consume four drinks in a two-hour period, or five drinks in a two-hour period for men.

The institute defines heavy drinking as binge drinking on five or more days in the past month.

According to 24/7 Wall St, North Dakota not only has the highest drinking rate but also the highest rate of alcohol-related driving deaths.

A total of 46.7 per cent of all roadway fatalities in the state involve alcohol consumption. The national average is 37 per cent.

In Wisconsin, which ranks at number two on the list, some 24.5 per cent of adults have reported excessive drinking compared to the national average of 18 per cent. 37 per cent of all driving fatalities in the state are alcohol-related, the data reveals.

Other high-ranking states were Wisconsin, Alaska, Montana and Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa and Hawaii

Alaska, Montana and Illinois round out the top five drunkest states in the country.

Alaska, coming in at number three, sees roughly 22 per cent of its adult population reporting excessive drinking with nearly 34 per cent of driving fatalities stemming from alcohol-related incidents.

The data also reveals that Alaska has a higher than average median household income of $76, 440.

27/7 Wall St. reports that out of the 25 states with the highest excessive drinking rates, 14 have median household incomes that exceed the national average of $57,617.

This can be contributed to the high cost of alcohol, the site suggests.

Montana, which lands at number four on the list of drunkest states, has the second highest number of alcohol-related driving deaths. The data finds over 46 per cent of roadway fatalities in the state involved alcohol. Nearly 22 per cent of people over the age of 18 report binge drinking or heavy drinking.

In Illinois, which ranks at the number five, a little over 21 per cent of adults report drinking to excess. 34 per cent of driving fatalities are the result of alcohol, the data states.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tennessee, which ranks at number 50, is said to be the least affected by adults who excessively drink alcohol. Only 11 per cent of adults have reported doing so and 28 per cent of roadway fatalities are alcohol-related. The national average for driving fatalities involving alcohol is 37 per cent.

West Virginia, number 49 on the list, is the second state the survey found to be the least effected by heavy drinking and binge drinking. According to the findings, 11 per cent of adults drink to excess and 32 per cent of driving fatalities involve alcohol.

Utah, Alabama and Mississippi are also low ranking on the list. Utah, number 48, sees 12 per cent of adults reporting drinking to excess. Alabama and Mississippi, numbers 47 and 46, respectively, both see 13 per cent of adults reporting binge drinking and heavy drinking. All three states also have below-average alcohol-related roadway deaths.

New York, came in at number 20 and is 'roughly in line with that of the national share'. 18 per cent of adults in New York report drinking to excess and 23 per cent of the state's driving deaths are the cause of alcohol.

According to 24/7 Wall St, the data revealed that the states with the highest rates of excessive drinking are in the Midwest and the lowest are predominately in the South.

See the full list below.
Police in New York City have identified a person of interest who was caught on camera last week brutally beating a commuter at a busy Manhattan subway station during the evening rush hour.

According to the NYPD, 24-year-old Jose Hasing is wanted in connection to the random attack that took place at the 42nd Street-Times Square station on February 27 at around 6.30pm.

The beating was caught on video, which showed a young man sporting a suit and tie lunging at a 22-year-old student standing on the platform and repeatedly punching him in the face and body.

Named: The attacker (seen right in a coat, shirt and striped tie), has been named by police as 24-year-old Jose 'Golden Boy' Hasing

The victim suffered a black eye and several chipped teeth, his father told ABC7.

Police said Hasings, who goes by the nickname 'Golden Boy,' lives in Queens and has a long criminal history that includes a dozen prior arrests, reported the New York Daily News.

NYPD Chief Robert Boyce told NY1 that in addition to being a person of interest in last month's' assault, Hasings also has been indicted in a weapons case in Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, NYPD detectives released footage of the subway attack to try to catch the assailant.

Police sources said the attacker thought the victim gave him a funny look on the train and that is what prompted the beatdown.

Out of nowhere, he attacked the 22-year-old victim who was standing behind another commuter waiting to get on the train. Police sources said it was because the victim 'gave him a funny look'

The man hit the victim in the face repeatedly as other commuters watched on in shock and walked past

He was filmed suddenly lunging at the victim and hitting him repeatedly in the head as he cowered on the platform.

The commuter was on the train and had just gotten off when he launched the attack.

Surveillance footage of the incident begins with the victim already on the platform.

After hitting the student in the head several times, the attacker kicked him while he cowered on the ground.

He then calmly walked away as others watched on in shock, adjusting his overcoat as he looked around.

After bringing the man to the floor, the attacker carried on the assault and kicked him several times

He then stood over his victim after beating him before turning to walk away

The attacker was dressed in a shirt, tie and suit. He was calm as he walked away from the scene.

The victim was treated for facial bruises at the scene.

NYPD officials are asking anyone with information on Jose Hasing's whereabouts to contact Crime Stoppers on 1-800-577-8477.
First time Ive seen Northern Irish leader Arlene Foster speak in the flesh. Impressed.

She was at the British Chambers of Commerce conference. The morning had dribbled by without much to note.

But when Mrs Foster arrived at the lectern just before lunch she made an obvious impact. The business audience stopped toying with their mobiles.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was given 20 minutes to rattle through a speech which tried to assure this capitalist audience that his socialism would not wreck the economy

You could sense them thinking hmmn, this ones at least a grown-up, and tough.

The BCC represents small businesses and is more entrepreneurial than the Confederation of British Industry.

CBI conferences are infested by sharp-suited careerists haloed by eau de cologne. The BCC lot are older, mouldier, less corporate.

An initially breathless Liam Fox, arriving with seconds to spare, had been the mornings first guest.

He gave a breezy, can-do speech which argued that the gloomsters saying Britain was heading for a black hole were wrong.

Foreign investment was at a record high, as were tech start-ups and employment, with manufacturing booming.

You could sense them thinking hmmn, this ones at least a grown-up, and tough. She is pictured in Brussels on Tuesday

Some black hole! said Dr Fox. Eurocrat briefings about how Britain would be punished for Brexit were not the language of a club but the language of a gang.

After Fox, the turkey: Rebecca Long-Bailey, 38, Labours trade spokesman. For ten minutes she shouted at these hardened business leaders, lecturing them on how to run their firms.

When, in her Mrs Merton voice, she started talking of her mission-orientated industrial strategy, a businesswoman in front of me laughed in contempt.

Ms Wrong-Daily sounded unfamiliar with both numbers and her text  she managed to turn scourge into two syllables.

Its been an absolute pleasure, she yacked as she ended. The feeling was not exactly mutual and she departed for her Salford & Eccles constituency without any pause for questions.

Relief (of a sort) was provided by a suit from the Drax energy group, one of the days sponsors.

He gave a marvellously leaden speech which included the American jargon pro-sumers.

Conference organiser Adam Marshall later said it was a word we all need to come to terms with. But not use, please.

An initially breathless Liam Fox, arriving with seconds to spare, had been the mornings first guest. He gave a breezy, can-do speech which argued that the gloomsters saying Britain was heading for a black hole were wrong

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was given 20 minutes to rattle through a speech which tried to assure this capitalist audience that his socialism would not wreck the economy.

It included the phrase rentiers and speculators, a term generally used only by hard-Left political theorists.

Mr McDonnell did at least earn a laugh when he turned to International Womens Day and tried to talk about the glass ceiling  and it came out as the glass seagull.

And then Mrs Foster. She is not an MP but she leads the Democratic Unionist Party and is therefore vital to Theresa May, whose government depends on the DUP for parliamentary numbers.

She took to the stage within a few seconds of IRA-admirer McDonnells departure.

She drily observed that it was at least unlikely that she would be repeating anything he had said.

Though the audience had heard Mr McDonnell with respect, it warmed to her. She spoke in an unhurried, positive way about Brexit and what it could bring.

There was something unshowy, grounded, adult about her. She sounded about 40 years older than Ms Long-Bailey, even though there are only nine years between them.

She explained how she had been brought up on a farm in County Fermanagh, and how her Daddy, a policeman, had one evening crawled into the kitchen at her home on all fours, stained in blood, having been shot by the IRA.

As a girl she was also in a bus attacked by the Provos. A child near her was badly hurt.

I dont want to see a hard border, she growled, but it angered her, and it was an insult to the people of Northern Ireland, to hear the border issue being used as some kind of bargaining chip by people who had hardly ever stepped foot on the island of Ireland.

Utter silence in the hall. A powerful moment.
A Perth childcare worker has been stripped of her accreditation after smacking and shoving soap in a six-year-old autistic boy's mouth.

Kathleen Burton was charged with aggravated common assault on December 14 last year.

Burton pleaded guilty to a charge of aggravated common assault in the Joondalip Magistrates Court on February 28, the ABC reported.

A Perth childcare worker has been stripped of her accreditation after smacking and shoving soap in a six-year-old autistic boy's mouth

Kathleen Burton was charged with aggravated common assault on December 14 last year

She was also fined $700, and was ordered to pay court costs of $100.

Another two childcare workers who were involved in the assault also had their accreditation cancelled.

According to the Department of Communities, a second childcare worker, Tammie Bell, held the six-year-old boy while Ms Burton shoved soap in his mouth.

However, before the incident, Ms Bell knew the child had been hit but failed to report the incident to the regulatory authority, the ABC reported.

Another two childcare workers who were involved in the assault also had their accreditation cancelled. Tammie Bell, a second childcare worker, held the six-year-old boy while Ms Burton shoved soap in his mouth

The third childcare worker, Jessica Peters, witnessed the incident and failed to intervene

The third childcare worker, Jessica Peters, witnessed the incident and was stripped of her accreditation after failing to intervene and prevent the incident.

The CEO of Autism Associated of WA Joan McKenna-Kerr condemened the women's behaviour and said there needed to be improved training for childcare workers.

'Kiddies with autism often process the world in a different way, and often have their behaviour misinterpreted, but it's just their way of trying to communicate a need,' she told the ABC.

The ABC reported that the department has no further investigations under way as the matter has been dealt with.

All three childcare workers will be able to apply to have their accreditation reinstated at a later date.
The artist allegedly at the centre of a Mexican drug cartel's attempt to import 24 kilograms of ice into Australia was planning a return to her Mexican homeland.

A month before her arrest, suspected drug trafficker, Norma Zuniga Frias, posted to Facebook: 'Hello again, I'm going to need a bridge house to my return in gdl (Guadalajara) this June 2018 (get ready) for a few months, who will rent me a room? Or a house or a great space (come friends with moi)'

'I know it's missing a lot but I'm excited, any info or hint plz inbox... #shortstay'

Rose Thomas (left) and Norma Zuniga Frias (right), both 25, were arrested last Thursday after police intercepted a $21million shipment of ice allegedly on its way to a Sydney address

The pair (pictured) had spent the years before their arrest travelling together to Disneyland, Berlin and Tasmania

The ice shipment was intercepted by the Australian boarder-force and has a street value of $2.1million

Zungia an emerging artist, was arrested with Rose Thomas, both 25, last Thursday IN Marrickville after police intercepted the $21million shipment.

Frias faces charges of possession and supply of a commercial amount of ice. Thomas, faces a charge of attempting to posses a commercial quantity of the drug.

The drugs were allegedly on their way to a Sydney address concealed inside eight home speakers.

Neither applied for bail or entered pleas to the charges when their matters were heard at Central Local Court last week.

Frias will return to court on May 9 and Thomas will apply for bail on March 23.

An acquaintance who went to high school with Thomas has said she was shocked to learn of the arrest.

'Shes a normal girl, smart, into clubbing and partying but certainly didnt seem to be interested in drugs. She seemed super normal,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

Thomas (left) and Frias (right) owned Chicken Sox, where they sold brightly colored socks for $10

Frias (pictured) was preparing for her first major art exhibition but was arrested the day before its opening night

'She was a very normal leftie inner west homo, worked full time in web design, or development and then about three to six months ago started the sock business.'

Thomas had started a business with Frias selling brightly covered socks and had a strong interest in all things Mexican.

'She was super into Mexico. She talked about living there and that she wanted to go back. She mentioned a girl she met there, I don't know if that was Norma, and some great parties she went to,' she said.

The pair were both romantically interested in girls but it is not clear if they were together.

Thomas has been described as a normal, smart girl with an obsession for all things Mexican

The shipment (pictured) was allegedly hidden in eight speakers. Police reportedly replaced the drugs with an inert substance before delivery went ahead.

Neither Frias or Thomas have entered please to the charges but Thomas will apply for bail on March 23

'I don't know if they were together, maybe they were just friends but could have been in an open relationship or something? Defiantly both were interested in girls ' she said.

Neither Frias or Thomas have entered pleas to the charges.

The pair had spent the years before their arrest travelling together to Disneyland, Berlin and Tasmania.

She moved in April last year from Guadalajara, in western Mexico, to Sydney where she was reunited with Thomas, who she has known for several years.

Frias was preparing for her first major art exhibition at the AIRspace gallery in Marrickville, but she was arrested the day before its opening night during police raids of the share house, and another property in nearby Rozelle.

Australian Border Force officers on February 21 intercepted the shipment of ice, removed the drugs from the speakers and replaced it with an inert substance before the delivery went ahead.
A psychopathic sex offender who attended sex parties as a child has been locked up indefinitely for raping a 14-year-old girl and indecently treating two young boys.

The 22-year-old Fraser Coast man, committed three separate sex offences by the time he turned 19, the Brisbane Supreme Court.

One of his convictions was grooming a child under the age of 16, the court heard.

The Fraser Coast man was due to be released on March 10, but after his matter was discussed in the Brisbane Supreme Court on Thursday, the judge ordered his continued detention.

The Fraser Coast man was due to be released on March 10, but after his matter was discussed in the Brisbane Supreme Court (pictured) on Thursday, the judge ordered his continued detention

Justice Ann Lyons said the man, who cannot be named, previously underwent treatment with various psychologists but 'his engagement was deemed to be superficial'.

One psychologist concluded the 22-year-old lacked insight into his crimes and their impact on his victims, the Fraser Coast Chronicle reported.

Three other psychiatrists deemed the man was psychopathic, a sexual deviant, and had anti-social personality disorder.

They disagreed about whether he had 'paedophile urges'.

The psychiatrists also deviated on whether or not he had sadism and masochism tendencies.

Justice Lyons said the psychiatrists suggested the 22-year-old undergo a high intensity sexual offending program in Brisbane.

Speaking in court on Thursday, the judge ordered he undergo psychopathy treatment and be detained indefinitely, the publication reported

The offender said he was willing to move from Capricornia jail, where he was behind bars, to a Brisbane jail for the course.

'In my view the current risk is unacceptable and on the evidence currently before me it cannot be reduced to a lower, manageable level without completing the courses,' Justice Lyons said.

She ordered he undergo psychopathy treatment and be detained indefinitely, the publication reported.
A sunny Sunday, September 12, 1965. Once again, the neo-fascist Union Movement (UM) was planning to hold a provocative rally in an old Jewish quarter of Londons East End.

This, however, would prove to be an historic occasion: the last time party founder and leader Sir Oswald Mosley  who had spoken of the stink of the Jew would make a major open-air speech.

His movement had fizzled out in the face of widespread public apathy and violent opposition from Jewish anti-fascist groups.

A number of photographs of Sir Oswalds swansong can be found in the archive of his personal papers at Birmingham University.

Bringing up the rear of the group in this photo is a smartly-dressed young man with distinctive blond hair. He was identified yesterday, by Sir Oswalds former chauffeur, as Max Mosley

One of them is particularly intriguing, given statements made by his youngest son, the ex-Formula 1 tycoon Max Mosley, in recent days.

When Mosley Junior was confronted last week with evidence of his own shameful racist past, uncovered by the Mail in an investigative series entitled The Man With A Genius For Forgetting, he was quick to cast it as an historical irrelevance.

Asked in a live Channel 4 News interview when he had stopped endorsing racist views, Max Mosley snapped back: Nineteen sixty-three.

The tycoon rigidly stuck to the 1963 claim as the Mail forensically exposed his thuggish and racially bigoted conduct as an important figure in the UM.

As an election agent, Max had published a repulsive pamphlet accusing coloured immigrants of spreading terrible diseases such as TB, VD and leprosy  the existence of which he denied under oath at a 2008 privacy trial.

Today, the Mail publishes a new photograph, taken on that red letter day in 1965. It raises troubling questions about whether Mr Mosleys memory might be playing tricks on him again.

The black-and-white picture captures Sir Oswald Mosley swaggering through the East End of London with a group of sharp-suited men. Neo-fascist supporters marched with him under heavy-duty cotton banners bearing his fascist emblem which, we have learned, were stitched in Nazi Germany before the war.

A sunny Sunday, September 12, 1965. Once again, the neo-fascist Union Movement (UM) was planning to hold a provocative rally in an old Jewish quarter of Londons East End. This, however, would prove to be an historic occasion: the last time party founder and leader Sir Oswald Mosley  who had spoken of the stink of the Jew would make a major open-air speech

(The flash-and-circle symbol has now been adopted by the banned British neo-Nazi group National Action, which took its inspiration from Mosleys movement. A senior police officer, Met Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, last week warned of the threat posed by the home-grown far-Right as it built international networks.)

Bringing up the rear of the group in this photo is a smartly-dressed young man with distinctive blond hair. He was identified yesterday, by Sir Oswalds former chauffeur, as Max Mosley. At the time, Oxford graduate Max, 25, was a qualified barrister at Grays Inn. This was two years, remember, after he insists that my work for my fathers party ended.

This week, Walter Merricks, chairman of the controversial State-approved Press regulator Impress  an organisation to which no national newspaper will sign up but which has received 3.8 million of Mr Mosleys money via a Mosley family trust and another charity family trust  tried to downplay the extent of Mosleys fascist past by suggesting that it happened when he was 19 years old.

By Mosleys own admission he was an active supporter both of his fathers UM party and South African apartheid through university and well into early adulthood.

The 1965 rally in Cheshire Street  now a part of the multi-cultural Brick Lane market  is still remembered today.

It was held to upstage a meeting of Jewish anti-fascists, and is recalled wistfully by Mosley loyalists as his last great speech.

The tycoon rigidly stuck to the 1963 claim as the Mail forensically exposed his thuggish and racially bigoted conduct as an important figure in the UM. As an election agent, Max had published a repulsive pamphlet (pictured) accusing coloured immigrants of spreading terrible diseases such as TB, VD and leprosy  the existence of which he denied under oath at a 2008 privacy trial

The neo-fascist leader had planned to use a Tannoy system, set up on the back of a van, to address the faithful.

Technical problems meant he soon resorted to a handheld loudhailer to preach his well- worn tirade against coloured immigrants to the people of Bethnal Green  who were becoming very Asian in appearance, according to one Mosleyite.

Pictures from that day still provoke a jolt of shock at those sinister banners  with lightning bolt emblems and threatening points like something from a Nuremberg rally  being paraded through Londons streets.

The warm-up act that day was delivered courtesy of convicted Holocaust-denier Keith Gibson, a Mosley disciple jailed in 1952 for a public order offence for telling a meeting: Hitler had the right idea about Jews. The Jewish Chronicle newspaper stated that six million Jews were exterminated. That is all lies but even this figure would not have been enough.

This nasty piece of work had accompanied Max Mosley to the Dachau former Nazi concentration camp in 1962  quipping grotesquely good try, but not good enough  and who had named his bullmastiff guard-dog Maximilian Rufus, after Sir Oswalds loyal son.

A report on the 1965 East End rally, to be found on a current Mosley fan website, recalls: Just after ten oclock that morning, UM organising secretary Keith Gibson turned up in his Austin Mini van in order to set up the Tannoy address system and to begin the warm-up speeches.

Over the past week, Mr Mosley has strenuously denied ever being a racist. He says he has no recollection of the leprosy leaflet of 1961

The Mosley men faced opposition from members of the Yellow Star Movement  a predominantly Jewish group of anti-fascist protesters  but they were no match for Mosley, a master manipulator of hecklers, the admiring review says.

The fascists marched down Cheshire Street carrying aloft their cherished banners bearing the insignia that served both Sir Oswalds Blackshirts  the pre-war British Union of Fascists (BUF)  and his post-war UM.

Barry Ayres, his former chauffeur, yesterday described unearthing the banners in late 1961 or early 1962, in an old coal cellar that was part of the basement office of Hector McKechnie, who was Sir Oswalds personal secretary.

Mr Ayres recalled: McKechnie said, would I have a look in there, and I found the banners wrapped up in paper in a brown box.

He said: Im amazed they are still there  you know they were made in Germany. They were beautifully made, from heavy-duty cotton. We dragged them out, and got the banner bits dry-cleaned.

Sir Oswald loved it that we had found them. He had kept the flash-and-circle that was the symbol of the BUF and it became the symbol of the Union Movement. He said, Well, well use them, and we did.

The banners feature in many of the Cheshire Street photographs. The images are preserved in the Oswald Mosley archive, originally a family collection, now held at Birmingham University.

The Mail has sent the photographs from that day in 1965 to Max Mosleys lawyers and asked him what he was doing at the rally, given his insistence he gave up supporting his fathers movement two years earlier. Mr Mosley had nothing to say in response.

In the past, Mr Mosley told MPs at a parliamentary select committee in 2009 that he had supported his father until I was 21 or 22, which was 1961 to 1962.

Last Thursday, he reiterated that my work for my fathers party . . . ended in 1963. But there is strong evidence Mr Mosley was involved with his fathers racist party throughout 1964.

In the Daily Express of September 4, 1964, it was reported that Max Mosley said last night he was seeking to stand as a parliamentary candidate in Salford East, but first he aimed to ask for the approval of his father. The following week, The Times reported the candidacy had been withdrawn.

After the narrow Labour Party victory in October 1964, documents show that the following month Sir Oswald Mosley announced his son would be parliamentary candidate at a widely anticipated re-run election. (In fact, Prime Minister Harold Wilson increased his majority 17 months later in 1966.)

According to Action, the UMs own virulently racist newspaper, Mosley Senior told a meeting at St Stephens Restaurant in Westminster, on November 21, that Max and three other candidates would fight for a complete stop to coloured immigration, and the return of present immigrants in a fair and decent way to their own country.

In a follow-up press release, Sir Oswald said his son would stand in Birmingham, which is next-door to the present-day constituency of West Bromwich East, whose MP Tom Watson is under pressure to return the 540,000 of funding he has received from Max Mosley.

In January 1964, the Jewish Chronicle reported the proposed visit of Max Mosley to speak on the policy of the British Union Movement in a debate in Glasgow on February 12, which he eventually withdrew from.

When Max Mosley was called to the Bar, in June 1964, the London Evening Standard described him as an active supporter of his fathers Union Movement, and reported that other law students at the graduation event had barracked him with cries of Heil Hitler and started singing Land Of Hope And Glory. It added: Mosley took it calmly.

Over the past week, Mr Mosley has strenuously denied ever being a racist. He says he has no recollection of the leprosy leaflet of 1961.

Interviewed by Channel 4 News, he at first argued that the hideous pamphlet  warning that coloured immigration threatens your childrens health  was merely offensive, before being driven to accept that it was racist.

He has repeatedly refused to issue an apology, despite West Indian immigrants in Moss Side, Manchester, where he published the vile leaflet, saying they were terrified by its repulsive and incendiary claims.

Additional reporting: Simon Trump
Agenda: Actor Steve Coogan with Hacked Off founder Professor Brian Cathcart

A university employing the founder of the anti-Press body Hacked Off was at the centre of a racism row last night over donations worth tens of thousands of pounds from unrepentant former neo-fascist tycoon Max Mosley through a family trust.

Kingston University said it had received one donation of 45,000 from the Mosley family trust to fund historical research for Brian Cathcart, a professor of journalism, to write a book on the Battle of Waterloo.

Last night, the university admitted it had also received further donations from the Mosley trust for a new project led by the same academic.

The total amount given by the 77-year-old ex-Formula One (F1) tycoon Mosley  whose racist and thuggish past was exposed last week by the Mail  is unclear.

When asked how much the further donations from the family trust of Mr Mosley  the son of fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley  were in total, the university spokesman said: We have nothing further to add.

But a student anti-racism group at the university  whose Chancellor is leading black writer and commentator Bonnie Greer  said last night that it was unacceptable for the institution to accept the Mosley money given his vile fascist past.

At his 2008 privacy trial, brought against the News Of The World for reporting his participation in what the newspaper alleged was a Nazi-themed orgy, Mr Mosley denied the existence of a racist by-election pamphlet  which the Mail has now obtained.

The leaflet was written for a 1961 campaign during which Mr Mosley acted as agent for his fathers post-war political party the Union Movement (UM).

Last night, the university admitted it had also received further donations from the Mosley trust for a new project led by the same academic

The pamphlet said that coloured immigrants to Britain brought diseases such as tuberculosis, VD and leprosy. At the bottom of the front page it said: Published by Max Mosley.

Scotland Yard is examining a file from the Mail on whether Mr Mosley committed perjury at the trial. It has yet to announce whether it will launch a full-scale investigation into the tycoon.

The Mail revealed how, as a prominent figure in the UM, Max Mosley had called for black immigrants to be sent home, taken part in violent demonstrations in Jewish districts, consorted with Holocaust deniers and met former members of the Waffen-SS.

In an interview with the Guardian on Saturday, Mr Mosley attracted further outrage by defending his views on repatriation, saying: It is perfectly legitimate to offer immigrants financial inducements to go home.

The Mail investigation also reported how he was convicted of obstruction while taking part in a neo-fascist counter-demonstration against a peaceful Trafalgar Square vigil marking the Sharpeville massacre of unarmed black civilians in South Africa by apartheid regime security forces.

As a young man, Mr Mosley openly advocated a total apartheid of the races across Africa. In the 1970s and 1980s, he did business with the apartheid regime and lent it prestige as he helped build a 6 billion F1 empire.

A student anti-racism group at the university  whose Chancellor is leading black writer and commentator Bonnie Greer (pictured)  said last night that it was unacceptable for the institution to accept the Mosley money given his vile fascist past

Neither Mr Mosley nor the considerable donation from his family trust are acknowledged by Professor Cathcart in any edition of the resulting book, The News From Waterloo, which tells how word of Wellingtons 1815 victory reached London.

Prof Cathcart does, however, thank more than 20 other individuals or organisations for their unstinting support.

This omission calls to mind criticism of the lack of transparency in the funding of Hacked Off, which Prof Cathcart founded in 2011, with high-profile support from actor Hugh Grant and comedian Steve Coogan, and whose goals Mr Mosley supports.

Critics of Hacked Off have long wondered how Prof Cathcart could find the time to combine his academic work with his campaigning for tougher Press regulation.

In 2015, Mr Mosley said in an interview: I can afford to cause trouble . . . if I want to be friends with the Prime Minister and I give 1 million, I will get access and invitations. It may be wrong, but it is not illegal.

Prof Cathcart is not the only public figure with a disdain for the popular media who has benefited from Mr Mosleys largesse.

He handed Labour Party deputy leader Tom Watson 540,000 over 18 months in 2015-17.

With Mr Mosley refusing to apologise for his past, Mr Watson is under pressure to hand that tainted money back. Labour has said it will no longer accept cash from Max.

Now Kingston University faces similar scrutiny.

Last night, neither the university nor its Chancellor, Ms Greer, had responded to a series of questions about the donation and its relationship with Mr Mosley, other than to issue a one-line statement which confirmed more Mosley funding.

It said: The University has received further donations from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust to part-fund work led by Professor Brian Cathcart developing a major new online educational and research resource for the public, due to be launched later this year.

However, Richard Donnelly, of the Kingston University branch of campaigning group Stand Up To Racism, said: We were not previously aware of the donation made by Mr Mosley.

We are shocked that the university management chose to accept a donation from a man who has been so clearly tied up in fascist politics.

Even prior to these new revelations, Max Mosley has made little attempt to distance himself from his past as an active fascist.

The tycoon rigidly stuck to the 1963 claim as the Mail forensically exposed his thuggish and racially bigoted conduct as an important figure in the UM. As an election agent, Max had published a repulsive pamphlet (pictured) accusing coloured immigrants of spreading terrible diseases such as TB, VD and leprosy  the existence of which he denied under oath at a 2008 privacy trial

Kingston University is a multi-cultural institution in which more than half of students are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Any connections between the university and people involved in fascist politics are a scandal that shames the management of the university.

Mr Donnelly added: Mr Mosley has failed to distance himself from, or show remorse for, his vile fascist past, and on this basis, we believe that it was unacceptable for Kingston University to receive donations from him. We face the rise of fascist political forces across Europe.

A spokesperson for Kingston University said: The University received a donation from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust for a fellowship to support historical research by Professor Brian Cathcart. This led to the publication of The News From Waterloo, released to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the battle.

Royalties from sales of around 2,500 copies of Prof Cathcarts Waterloo book are likely to have earned the author little more than 3,000. It is unclear how many copies were sold digitally, but typically it is around 10 per cent of the print total.

Max Mosley uses the same trust which made donations to Kingston and Prof Cathcart as a vehicle for pledging via another charity almost 4 million to the controversial State-approved Press regulator Impress  a regulator to which no national newspaper will sign up.

Last month, Mr Mosley launched a controversial legal case seeking to use the Data Protection Act to prevent the media from reporting not only his sadomasochistic orgy with prostitutes, but his role as major financial backer of Impress, which is supported by Prof Cathcarts Hacked Off.

When Prof Cathcart took a sabbatical with Hacked Off in 2013, questions were asked about who was paying his salary.

At the time, Kingston University said the Data Protection Act prevented it from discussing Prof Cathcarts absence.

A prolific user of social media and a prominent critic of racism, the academic has been strangely silent on Twitter on the subject of the Mails bombshell revelations.

And despite having been asked more than a week ago a series of questions about the Mosley family trust donation, the journalism professor has failed to respond.

The university confirmed that the questions had been passed to him. Kingston Chancellor Ms Greer is advertised to attend the forthcoming Byline Festival in August. Byline is a website with close links to Hacked Off.

Mr Mosley is a shareholder in Byline. Others due to attend the festival include actor and Hacked Off director Hugh Grant and Mosley beneficiary Tom Watson.
One of the three people claiming Charles Manson is their father has told DailyMail.com he wants the serial killer cremated before definitive paternity tests are concluded.

Matthew Roberts is one of two 'sons' and a 'daughter' who have all come forward to try to claim Manson's body and estate.

But on Wednesday a judge ruled that the two disputes can be dealt with separately, opening the way for a cremation within days.

After the ruling, Roberts, 49, told DailyMail.com that all he now wants is for blood and DNA samples to be taken from Manson's corpse so he can prove they are related.

He is one of five litigants in the case brought in the aftermath of the death of one of Americas's most notorious figures. Manson's body has now been in cold storage since November 19, 2017.

Matthew Roberts, 49, who claims to be one of Manson's biological sons, was the only person at the hearing who claimed to be a descendant. He has joined forces with one, Michael Brunner, but the other two - Rebecca Evans and purported grandson Jason Freeman are all at odds with each other

Reclusive: Michael Brunner, 49, whose birth certificate lists Manson and cult member Mary Brunner as his parents, has joined forces with Roberts to properly dispose of their father's body. Born Valentine Manson in 1968, he has stayed out of the public eye after giving a 1993 interview about his infamous father

Claims: Part-time actress Rebecca Evans, 48, was rescued as a baby from Manson's Los Angeles County ranch and told at 15 she was his daughter, while former MMA fighter Jason Freeman 41, of Bradenton, Florrida, has also filed a claim for the remains alleging he is the grandson of Manson and his first wife Rosalie Willis

The notorious cult leader died at the age of 83 on November 19, 2017, but because multiple parties have attempted to claim his remains, his body has been on ice with the Kern County Coroner ever since

The other four are alleged son Michel Brunner, 49, who has Manson's name on his birth certificate but no DNA proof; Rebecca Evans, 48, was rescued as a baby from Manson's Los Angeles County ranch and told at 15 she was his daughter, but who has no proof; alleged grandson Jason Freeman, 41, who has been told his father was Charles Manson Jr; and Manson friend and memorabilia collector Michael Channels, who claims to have his signed will.

Roberts and Brunner have joined forces to urge a rapid cremation of their alleged father, which a judge said on Wednesday she was minded to approve.

An attorney for the coroner overseeing the case said he was 'willing to co-operate' with taking DNA and blood samples .

Now Roberts - real name Matthew Robert Lentz - has told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview: 'I want my father to be cremated - just so long as we can get some blood and DNA samples from his body first - so it looks like the coroner and are on the same side.

Mary Brunner, now 74, lived with her son and the rest of the Manson Family in Topanga Canyon, California but was later arrested for credit card fraud in August 1969. She told her son Manson was his father and put it on his birth certificate

'It's important to have the opportunity to prove I am Charles Manson's son so getting the DNA is all important.'

Roberts added: 'So long as my father's ashes can be buried in a grave with a headstone, I'll be happy. People, family or otherwise - have the right to visit his grave.'

The creation of a grave site, however, is likely to prove highly contentious and could be opposed by the families of Manson's victims.

Manson's status as a twisted fixture in pop culture means that his body and his estate are both valuable.

Whoever gains control of his remains could use them in a 'museum' to his crimes and charge entry - and whoever wins the fight over his will would be able to exploit his likeness, artworks and recordings.

Manson was personally unable to profit from his crime under so-called Son of Sam laws, but he sold music, paintings, dolls, wigs, signed photos and other memorabilia from behind bars.

In 1993, he signed a licensing agreement for allowing his likeness to be printed on T-shirts, the New York Times revealed at the time.

The cult leader was able to exploit the fact that he had a public profile before the killing spree to prevent litigation to have the cash taken from him.

The Californian authorities would have to have shown his profits were solely made because of his crimes made him notorious - a high bar which they chose never to test in court, and a loophole which makes his estate a prize with fighting over.

Kern County Superior Court Commissioner Alisa Knight said Wednesday that she would leave the estate battle to Los Angeles County Superior Court to deal with, and decide only on who deals with the body, saying she was minded to move rapidly to cremation.

Manson's last home was his hippie commune at Spahn Ranch in LA when he was was convicted of being involved in the brutal 1969 murders of seven people, including heavily pregnant Hollywood actress Sharon Tate.

Mason's alleged grandson Freeman was the first to stake a claim by filing birth certificates and death certificates he says prove he is family.

He says that he learned about his relationship to Manson when he was eleven but his grandmother, Rosalie Willis, who was apparently married to Manson in the 1950s, never spoke about his grandfather.

Freeman - a Mixed Martial Arts fighter - says his father was Charles Manson Jr. who couldn't live with his shameful name so changed it to Charles White, and eventually blew his own brains out in 1993.

Musician Roberts claims to have a will from 2017, which proves he is Manson's son and heir.

Roberts says he was adopted as an infant but tracked down his birth mother who told him she got pregnant by Manson at an orgy in 1967.

Michael Channels, 51, a memorabilia fanatic and Manson's pen pal of 30 years, is named as a beneficiary in a 2002 will purportedly signed by the cult leader. Roberts has argued against his claim, stating that Channels is intending to 'profit from the body of my father'

Venue: Commissioner Alisa Knight ruled on Wednesday that she would decide what to do with Manson's body and let the Los Angeles Superior Court determine how his will is dealt with

Spot the differences: There are now two wills in front of the court which both claim to be authentic. A judge in Los Angeles will have to decide.

Brunner also claims to be Manson's son. He has filed a birth certificate that he claims proves he's the product of a relationship between Manson and follower Mary Brunner a year before the killings. It names Manson as his father.

But Brunner has said that if he is shown by DNA testing not to be his son, he will walk away from the case.

Finally, part-time actress Rebecca Evans was rescued as a baby in 1969 from Spahn Ranch and placed in foster care. At the age of 15, she claims, she discovered that Manson was her biological father.

Memorabilia collector Channels says he was friends with Manson for 30 years and claims to have a document written by him in 2002 which leaves his remains and estate to Channels and reads: 'I have disinherited both known sons and any unknown children in the present and in the future.'

Channels, 51, is named as a beneficiary in a 2002 will which also purportedly carries Manson's signature. Other parties in the case say the signature is not genuine.

Roberts states: 'I have strong doubts of the authenticity of the will proffered by Mr Channels, and I do not believe my father wished Mr Channels to control disposition of his remains.

He added: 'Mr Channels is an unrelated memorabilia collector who intends to try to profit from the body of my father.'

Roberts and Freeman were the subject of a DNA test conducted on CNN years ago which reported no relation between the two. Crucially it did not have any of Manson's own genetic material to decide if either man as related to hi,.

Freeman has claimed in the past that Channels 'always used my grandfather for a paycheck', and accused Roberts of making up a 'fraudulent will'.

Unlike the others, Freeman doesn't possess any kind of signed will leaving him the estate.

Roberts is relying on a 2017 will which was purportedly signed by Manson and left everything to Roberts.

Long time Manson confidante Ben Gurecki says he was sent it in January 2017. It names him and Roberts as co-executors.

Manson orchestrated the murders of seven people in the 1960s by his devoted followers in a bid to start a race war.

On August 8, 1969, he sent Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles 'Tex' Watson  to the Beverly Hills address of movie actress Sharon Tate with the instruction to kill everyone inside.

Less than 24 hours later, the followers  plus Leslie Van Houten and Steve 'Clem' Grogan  savagely tortured, murdered and mutilated wealthy LA couple Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.
The violence and failures of Parkland should never be forgotten. While the media plays people's emotions and they jump on the emotional bandwagon brandishing their hanging ropes for the NRA, another killer marches on claiming 27 lives per day  drugs! Most of which are courtesy of big drug companies.

In 2016 we had 38,000 deaths due to firearms and nearly 60,000 deaths due to drugs. But, people rail against the NRA and its affiliates accusing them of having "blood on their hands." People and politicians are screaming for more laws to prevent this from happening again. If laws worked then the SAFE Act would be working in Syracuse, reducing gun crime, but it's not. Criminals and deranged people do not heed the law; if they did we would not have the need for most laws.

In 2015 Hillary Clinton accepted $336,416 from Big Pharma for her campaign. In 2016 $152 million was spent by Big Pharma to influence legislation. Big Pharma has two lobbyists for every member of Congress! In 2017 over $250 million was spent by Big Pharma in political contributions.
Gruesome photos have emerged of inside the bloodied crime scene where a New York nanny allegedly stabbed to death two young children in her care.

Yoselyn Ortega, 55, is currently on trial charged with murdering siblings Leo and Lucia Krim in their Upper West Side apartment back in October 2012.

Jurors were shown the horrific photos of evidence from the crime scene in court this week before they were released by the New York District Attorney on Thursday.

Ortega, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, refused to look and stared straight ahead when the photos were shown to the court.

Photos of a bloodied knife wrapped in a towel in the hallway and blood spattered on the floor and walls were among the images shown.

Gruesome photos have emerged of inside the bloodied crime scene where New York nanny Yoselyn Ortega allegedly stabbed to death two young children in her care

Photos of two bloodied knives were shown to jurors in court this week before the evidence photos were released by the New York District Attorney on Thursday

Other images, which have not been released publicly, showed a bloody knife in the bathroom sink just inches from a pink child's toothbrush.

Jurors were also shown photos of the blood-spattered bathroom where the bodies of the children were found with their eyes open.

The bottom of the bathtub was almost entirely red.

At least two jurors wiped away tears as they took in the horror images, while others gasped and held their faces.

The photos were taken roughly seven hours after mother Marina Krim found her children's bodies and saw Ortega stabbing herself in the neck.

Prosecutors say two-year-old Leo was stabbed five times and his six-year-old sister Lucia, also known as Lulu, was stabbed 30 times after she fought back.

Ortega had allegedly grabbed the two kitchen knives and butchered the children while their mother was blocks away at a dance studio where Lulu was supposed to be.

Yoselyn Ortega, 55, is currently on trial (above in court on Friday) charged with murdering siblings Leo and Lucia Krim in their Upper West Side apartment back in October 2012

Oretega stabbed six-year-old Lulu (left) and two-year-old Leo (right) multiple times in the neck and torso in the bathroom of their apartment

One knife used in the stabbing murders was found in the bathroom sink just inches from a pink child's toothbrush

Prosecutors say that Ortega waited until Marina had found her children dead in the bathroom before plunging a knife into her own neck so that she could relish in the devastated woman's pain and horror.

Ortega was supposed to pick up Lulu from kindergarten and walk her to dance class before going home to put Leo down for nap. The children's mother had taken her other daughter, three-year-old Nessie, to a swimming class.

Marina had shown up to the dance studio to pick up LuLu and panicked when she noticed her daughter wasn't there.

She frantically texted Ortega: 'Where's Lulu... Donde Estas... Where are you' but Oretga never answered.

Ortega faces a minimum of 20 years imprisonment if she is convicted and could be jailed for life without parole.

One bloodied knife was found wrapped in a towel in the hallway on top of a toy refrigerator

Photos of a bloodied knife wrapped in a towel in the hallway (top of image) and blood spattered on the floor and walls were among the images shown

Two kitchen knives were used in the stabbing attack. The images were taken inside the apartment roughly seven hours after mother Marina Krim found her children's bodies

A therapist who saw Ortega days before the stabbing occurred testified on Thursday that the nanny hadn't appeared suicidal or murderous during their session.

Dr Thomas Caffrey told the court Ortega had booked her first and only appointment with him on October 22, 2012, to discuss a variety of different issues including anxiety, depression, and guilt.

Ortega has claimed she heard voices and was 'touched by the devil', which drove her to kill the young children.

But Caffrey said there was 'no evidence' that the nanny suffered from delusions or hallucinations.

Prosecutors have challenged Ortega's claims she was suffering from mental health issues and believe she was jealous of the children's mother who had offered her more money if she did some housework.

In her first statement to police following the murders, Ortega allegedly complained about the children's mother, the New York Post reports.

'I had to do everything and take care of the kids,' she said when she woke up in hospital two days after the attack.

'I worked as babysitter only and she (Krim) wanted me to do everything so wanted 5 hours of cleaning every week.

'When I got things wrong she would make a grunting, gargling sound. She would tap on the railing. She would show frustration. Even small facial expressions, she would make.'

A police sketch showing where the bodies were found (left) and a text message exchange from Marina Krim and Joselyn Ortega (right) were also shown to the couty

Ortega, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, refused to look and stared straight ahead when the photos taken inside the apartment were shown to the court
Helicopters and lifeboats are desperately scouring the sea after an elderly man disappeared from a ferry.

The man was travelling on a DFDS ferry from Amsterdam to North Shields, north east England, but never arrived when the boat docked at 9.45am.

Police and the coastguard were called at 12.15pm after a search of the boat and port terminal failed to find him.

He is believed to be in his 60s and not from the UK. A huge operation is now underway in a bid to rescue him.

Coastguard and police are pictured scouring the sea off the north coast of England after a man disappeared from a ferry sailing from Amsterdam to North Tyneside

The man was travelling on a DFDS ferry from Amsterdam to North Shields, north east England, but never arrived when the boat docked at 9.45am

The HM Coastguard search and rescue helicopter based at Humberside was sent to the area and was searching with lifeboats from RNLI stations including Filey, Scarborough, Whitby, Hartlepool, Tynemouth and Blyth.

All vessels in the area have been alerted and Northumbria Police have been informed.

A police spokesman said: 'The passenger, a foreign national aged in his 60s, was travelling on board the ferry but did not depart the vessel upon arrival in North Shields and cannot be found on board.

'Enquiries are ongoing to trace the man, contact his next of kin and establish the circumstances around his disappearance.

'Anyone with any information is asked to call police on 101, quoting log 413 08/03/18.'

Police and the coastguard were called at 12.15pm after a search of the boat and port terminal failed to find him
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out a series of provocative tweets about China's trade policies  and immediately got a response from President Trump as he rolled out new tariffs.

Trump, who unveiled a new 25 per cent tariff on foreign-made steel on Thursday, is also pushing China to trim $100 billion off the U.S. trade deficit with that country (although the president erroneously demanded only $1 billion in a tweet on the subject).

Musk, who is also the CEO of SpaceX, tweeted back at Trump about the unfair playing field.

'I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. Its like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes,' Musk complained on Twitter.

'For example, an American car going to China pays 25% import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5%, a tenfold difference,' he wrote.

'I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult,' Tesla founder Elon Musk wrote on Twitter

He also tweeted about China's policy of forcing multinationals who want to manufacture there to partner with local firms  a strategy that imbues Chinese firms with know-how.

Trump read from Musk's tweets during his steel announcement.

'That's from Elon, but everybody knows it,' Trump said. 'They've known if for years, they never did anything about it. It's got to change.'

'Were going to be doing a reciprocal tax at some point ... Its a mirror tax,' said Trump, explaining that the tax would try to replicate the taxes other nations put on U.S. products.

Musk served on a Trump White House advisory council early in the administration, but bolted when Trump backed away from the Paris climate deal.

Trump signed an order on Thursday imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, after days of guessing games and internal White House battles over whether daring China to enter a trade war is sound policy.

Trump signed an order on Thursday imposing steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, after days of guessing games and internal White House battles over whether daring China to enter a trade war is sound policy.

Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday imposing new tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on aluminum, a move that will take effect in 15 days. He quoted from Musk during his announcement

The president appeared in the Oval Office, flanked by senior officials on one side and a group of steelworkers on the other.

'You are truly the backbone of America, you know that? You are very special people,' he told the blue collar contingent.

'We want a lot of steel coming into our country, but we want it to be fair and we want our workers to be protected.'

Earlier Thursday, Trump praised Musk and SpaceX as he hailed the private space industry.

'I don't know if you saw last with Elon  with the rocket boosters where they're coming back down,' Trump said.

'To me, that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up because I've never seen that before. Nobody has seen it before, where they're saving the boosters. They came back without wings or without anything, they landed so beautifully.'

The president greeted foundry and mill workers in the Oval Office, promising that his brand of protectionism will result in better jobs and higher production levels in their communities

Trump referenced the SpaceX launch last month that brought home two of the rocket's boosters, getting them to land within miles of the launch pads where they had launched  and touted the benefits of further private investments in space.

'They love rockets, and they're rich,' Trump said. 'Rich guys, they love rocket ships,'

On trade, Musk, in a series of tweets aimed at the president, said he was 'against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. Its like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.'

Tesla 'raised this with the prior administration and nothing happened. Just want a fair outcome, ideally where tariffs/rules are equally moderate. Nothing more. Hope this does not seem unreasonable,' Musk wrote.

Tesla has sought to build a factory in China, and last November Musk said he hoped the plant would be operating within three years. However, Tesla and Chinese authorities have yet to announce an agreement.

In a tweet, Musk said no 'US auto company is allowed to own even 50% of their own factory in China, but there are five 100% China-owned EV auto companies in the US.'

Earlier, Trump held a cabinet meeting where model rockets were on display. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, left, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, center, listen as Trump speaks

China, the worlds largest auto market, has required foreign automakers to build factories in 50-50 joint ventures with domestic Chinese automakers and not allowed them to establish wholly owned factories.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump told Reuters in an interview in January that 'we have helped to build China because they have taken out so much money in terms of trade deficits with this country.'

He added that 'when China or another country charges us 50 percent tariffs - more than that in some cases - and we charge them nothing, thats not fair. Thats not fair.'

China levies a 25 percent duty on sales of imported vehicles. Those are problems for Tesla, which wants to expand its presence in Chinas growing electric vehicle market without compromising its independence or intellectual property.

China said last year it would gradually reduce its auto import tariffs.

Musk noted that a U.S. car 'going to China pays 25% import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5%, a tenfold difference.'

He asked Trump: 'Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors.'

Musk has met with Trump on several occasions since his election in November 2016. In June 2017, Musk withdrew from a pair of White House advisory councils after Trump said he would withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
A Queensland family got the shock of their lives when a surprise intruder slithered into their home last week.

Gillian Blacket couldn't believe her eyes when her husband sent her a horrifying video of a snake that had hitched a ride on a bedroom ceiling fan in Samford Valley in Queensland's Moreton Bay region.

Believed to be a harmless brown tree snake, it headed inside to escape the heat.

This unwelcome intruder took a ride on a ceiling fan in Queensland's Moreton Bay region

'The electrician had only been up in the ceiling last week, so I sent him that video and said 'the fan's not working',' Gillian Blacket said

After climbing up onto the ceiling fan, the snake wrapped its body around the blades and held on for dear life before it slithered back into the ceiling where it had been hiding.

'I'd be scared if I woke up and saw that,' one person commented on YouTube.

Mrs Blacket said not many people wanted to live in their home after the video went viral online.

'We'd just had a fan moved in that room so it left a hole. The snake came out of the ceiling onto the fan,' Mrs Blacket told Quest Newspapers.

'I said 'I'm not coming home until that snake is out of the room'.'

The family say they haven't seen a snake in six years.

'The electrician had only been up in the ceiling last week, so I sent him that video and said 'the fan's not working',' Mrs Blacket said.

The brown tree snake grows up to two metres and can be found in forested and urban areas on rock faces, in tree hollows or the ground.

'Some are even found on rafters in buildings,' the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection website states.

Mrs Blacket told her husband she wasn't coming home until the brown tree snake was gone

'It is a skilled climber of trees, rock faces and buildings. While the brown tree snake does have venom, they don't normally harm humans. However it can strike aggressively at its prey, launching itself into a series of s-shaped loops when threatened.'

Summer may be over but that doesn't mean the snake danger has passed.

Experts have warned the public to be on the lookout as baby snakes begin hatching in droves.

Humid conditions at the start of autumn will see a baby snake boom across Australia, as hatching season for the deadly eastern brown snake reaches its peak.

'For the last eight weeks, we've been getting a 60 calls a day,' Snake Catchers Adelaide's Rolly Burrell recently told Daily Mail Australia.

'We've been working 12 hour days, seven days a week since last August. With the way things are going with the weather, it doesn't look like it's going to drop off anytime soon.'
Police arrested two ex-Iowa nursing assistants who were allegedly sexually involved with mentally ill patients.

Megan Marie Penney, 26, and Paige Lynn Johanningmeier, 23, who are both former employees at Prairie View Management Facility in Fayette County, were charged Tuesday with sexual exploitation by a counselor, therapist or school employee.

The Fayette County Sheriff's Office had been informed about two missing patients late last month when the investigation first started.

The investigation revealed Penney and Johanningmeier had been seeing the two patients, according to the Des Moines Register.

Megan Marie Penney, 26, (left) and Paige Lynn Johanningmeier, 23, (right) were arrested and charged Tuesday for allegedly having sex with two mentally ill patients

Penney and Johanningmeier are both former employees at Prairie View Management Facility in Fayette County where they met the two patients

Police said the nursing assistants started relationships with the two patients at work.

The relationships allegedly turned sexual when the women stopped working at the facility.

Both women were jailed this week but have since been released on $2,000 bond.

Prairie View is a facility that provides 'supportive and skill building services to adults with functional limitations caused by chronic mental illness, intellectual disability, or medical conditions,' the center's official website states.

The services offered are '24 hour staffing, medication management, on site visits by medical doctor and psychiatrist, transportation to local medical appointments, activities and leisure skill planning and skill building services.'

Penny is pictured on her Facebook page. She was jailed this week but since released on $2,000 bond

Penney is pictured on her Facebook page smiling in a profile photo posted on January 19.

She is also seen embracing her son in photos, and her intro statement reads: 'Keaton Dean is my main focus! I am rocking this single Momma thing!!'

Johanningmeier is also pictured with her two young children, while her Facebook intro reads: 'Momma of 2 beautiful souls.'

Aside from working as a nursing assistant, Johanningmeier worked as a bartender at Turkey River Saloon in Clermont.
Hospital worker Karen Anvil tweeted a picture of Meghan after speaking to the royal couple in Birmingham this morning

The single mother who took a now-famous picture of the royals on Christmas Day said she was today told by Prince Harry: 'I hope you made lots of money from it.'

Karen Anvil, 39, of Watlington, Norfolk, said she met Harry and Meghan Markle on their walkabout in Birmingham and shook the prince's hand before asking him if he liked the photograph she took last December.

The hospital worker tweeted a picture of Meghan, saying: 'Got to speak to Meghan today! Also shook Prince Harry's hand and asked him if he liked the Xmas photo! He said he hoped I made lots of money from it! I'm absolutely buzzing!'

She added: 'I did speak to her - she is absolutely stunning! Unfortunately someone dropped their photo lens and she picked it up for them so she got a little distracted. Was so, so cool though!'

Ms Anvil added that Harry's words mean 'more to me than anything', before tweeting a love heart emoji.

The mother shot to fame after getting a candid shot of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Harry and Meghan as they walked to St Mary Magdalene Church, on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on December 25.

After 'screaming like a fan-girl' to get their attention, she managed to take a close-up that ended up on front pages around the world  and later said the photo had changed her and daughter's lives forever.

The picture Ms Anvil took ended up on the front of nearly every British newspaper and more than 50 publications worldwide then contacted her asking to use the photograph after she posted it on social media.

Ms Anvil shot to fame after getting this candid shot of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Harry and Meghan as they walked to St Mary Magdalene Church, on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk on December 25 last year

Ms Anvil says she was using the royalties she gets from the image to pay for her 17-year-old daughter Rachel's university fees. She wants to study nursing, which will cost them 27,000 in tuition, plus maintenance.

The mother-of-one told the Eastern Daily Press at the time: 'Rachel wants to go to work for the NHS in some capacity. I want to save money for my daughter for uni and if I can get that opportunity that's amazing.

'I'm just someone who takes photos on their iPhone, I'm not a photographer by any means. I don't know how much I'm expecting to get. It's all going to go to my daughter and her education.'
Areas of San Francisco Bay are sinking faster than the sea is rising.

That's according to a new study that has fuelled concerns that up to 270 square miles (430 square kilometres) of Silicon Valley could be underwater by 2100.

The land is sinking because large parts of it are built on natural mud deposits or landfill sites that are still in the process of compacting.

This sinking or subsidence, coupled with sea level rise, doubles the territory at risk of flooding, researchers found by looking at satellite data from 2007 to 2010.

Until now, official government flood maps and projections have been based solely on estimates of sea level rise.

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The San Francisco Bay shoreline, where yellow indicates areas where a projected rise in sea level (SLR) will result in flooding by 2100. Red shows where local land subsidence (LLS) will combine with SLR to increase the flood-prone areas

'The ground goes down, sea level comes up, and flood waters go much farther inland than either change would produce by itself,' said lead author Manoochehr Shirzaei, assistant professor in Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Most of the San Francisco Bay shoreline is sinking by less than two millimetres a year, but 'in several areas we discovered subsidence rates of 10 millimetres (half an inch) a year and more,' said the study, published in the journal Science Advances.

For comparison, seas are rising at 0.12 inches (3mm) per year and accelerating.

Previous studies, which did not take sinking land into account, estimated that at a minimum, 20 square miles (51 square kilometres) of San Francisco Bay shoreline will face a risk of flooding by the year 2100.

Adding the effects of sinking ground along the shoreline, scientists found that the area threatened by rising seawater rose to at least 48 square miles (125 square kilometres).

The upper level, or worst case scenarios in which sea levels accelerate due to glacial melting, predict around 160 square miles (413 square kilometres) at risk of flooding by century's end.

However, during high tides and storm surges this rises to between 80 to 270 square miles (130 to 430 square kilometres), writes New Scientist.

Foster City and San Francisco International Airport have both high economic value combined with heightened risk from flooding by 2100. Areas in dark blue indicate where the local land is sinking (LLS), yellow shows what is at risk from sea-level rise (SLR), and areas in red show the impact of both processes combined

At particular risk are structures built mostly on landfill, such as the San Francisco International Airport which handles more than 200,000 annual landings and sees 56 million passengers passing through each year.

'When land subsidence is combined with projected rising sea levels, water will cover nearly half the airport's runways and taxiways by the year 2100,' said the study.

Another trouble spot is Foster City, also built on reclaimed land between San Francisco and San Jose.

Since real estate is costly and hard to come by, an increasing number of companies have established themselves where 'significant parts of the city will be at risk of flooding by 2100,' said the report.

Areas of San Francisco Bay shoreline (pictured) are sinking at rates of nearly half an inch (10mm) a year, fuelling concern that up to 270 square miles (430 square kilometres) of Silicon Valley could be underwater by 2100

Treasure Island, located between San Francisco and Oakland, is also sinking fast, at a rate of one-half to three-quarters of an inch (12 to 20 millimetres) per year.

The new findings are based on state-of-the-art satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), collected from 2007 to 2011.

While InSAR has been used to map landscapes worldwide - for example to map landslides in Berkeley and land subsidence in Santa Clara County - this may be the first time someone has combined such data with future sea level estimates.

Two radar images of the same area can be collected at different times from similar vantage points.

Any movement of the ground surface toward or away from the satellite can be measured and portrayed as a 'picture'.

The team used continuous GPS monitoring of the Bay Area to link the InSAR data to sea level estimates.

This sinking or subsidence, coupled with sea level rise, doubles the territory at risk of flooding, researchers found by looking at satellite data from 2007 to 2010. San Francisco International Airport is among the structures built mostly on landfill

'There are many estimates and models for sea-level rise,' said Dr Shirzaei.

'But they all fall short because they don't take into account land elevation changes.'

Not all endangered areas are landfill.

Areas where streams and rivers have deposited mud as they flow into the Bay are also subsiding, partly because of compaction and partly because they are drying out.

Other areas are subsiding because of groundwater pumping, which depletes the aquifer and allows the land to sink.

The data will help state and local agencies plan for the future and provide improved hazard maps for cities and emergency response agencies.

'Accurately measuring vertical land motion is an essential component for developing robust projections of flooding exposure for coastal communities worldwide,' said Patrick Barnard, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

'This work is an important step forward in providing coastal managers with increasingly more detailed information on the impacts of climate change, and therefore directly supports informed decision-making that can mitigate future impacts.'
People are terrified of the prospect of robots replacing humans in the workforce.

But apparently they're not so scared that they fear a robot may be coming for their own job.

That's according to a recent Gallup survey, which found that roughly 75% of U.S. adults think AI will 'eliminate more jobs than it creates.'

However, only 23% of American workers fear they will lose their own job to technology.

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A new Gallup survey finds that people believe robots are going to replace more and more human jobs, just not their own. That echoes similar findings from a 2017 survey by Quartz

There is no research that can definitively predict just how many or what kinds of jobs will be lost as a result of continued automation and advanced technologies like artificial intelligence.

That said, most experts suggest that the industries hit hardest as a result of automation and AI will be low-skilled jobs like customer support, food-preparation workers, dishwashers and general mechanics.

So it's no surprise, then, that Gallup respondents' answers differed based on their level of education.

About 28% of respondents with less than a four-year college degree said they were worried they'd lose their job to new technology.

Meanwhile, for respondents with a bachelor's degree or more education, about 15% of them expressed concerns about automation and AI coming for their job.

The Gallup survey isn't the first study to reach these conclusions, as a Quartz survey in 2017 found that among 1,600 respondents, about 90% of them thought that half of jobs would be lost to automation in as little as five years.

A respondent's education level may also have some say over their beliefs. Those with less than a college education were more likely to believe that they'd lose their job to new technology

Still, 91% didn't think there was any risk to their job, while 94% didn't think they would be working for an AI boss.

What's more, the results also illustrated that respondents views differed based on education.

People with high salaries said they believed they may have AI employees, while people with low salaries thought they would have an AI boss, Quartz noted.

The studies shed a greater light into how average people feel about the rise of AI, but there is little conclusive data about how fast the AI apocalypse is expected to occur.

MIT Technology Review recently compiled the results of various studies on what automation will do to jobs.

They found that estimates for how many jobs will be eliminated by AI and robots varied wildly.

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO WORRIED ABOUT AI? It is an issue troubling some of the greatest minds in the world at the moment, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described AI as our 'biggest existential threat' and likened its development as 'summoning the demon'. He believes super intelligent machines could use humans as pets. Professor Stephen Hawking said it is a 'near certainty' that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity in the next 1,000 to 10,000 years. They could steal jobs More than 60 percent of people fear that robots will lead to there being fewer jobs in the next ten years, according to a 2016 YouGov survey. And 27 percent predict that it will decrease the number of jobs 'a lot' with previous research suggesting admin and service sector workers will be the hardest hit. As well as posing a threat to our jobs, other experts believe AI could 'go rogue' and become too complex for scientists to understand. A quarter of the respondents predicted robots will become part of everyday life in just 11 to 20 years, with 18 percent predicting this will happen within the next decade. They could 'go rogue' Computer scientist Professor Michael Wooldridge said AI machines could become so intricate that engineers don't fully understand how they work. If experts don't understand how AI algorithms function, they won't be able to predict when they fail. This means driverless cars or intelligent robots could make unpredictable 'out of character' decisions during critical moments, which could put people in danger. For instance, the AI behind a driverless car could choose to swerve into pedestrians or crash into barriers instead of deciding to drive sensibly. They could wipe out humanity Some people believe AI will wipe out humans completely. 'Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,' DeepMind's Shane Legg said in a recent interview. He singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the 'number one risk for this century'. Musk warned that AI poses more of a threat to humanity than North Korea. 'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,' the 46-year-old wrote on Twitter. 'Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.' Musk has consistently advocated for governments and private institutions to apply regulations on AI technology. He has argued that controls are necessary in order protect machines from advancing out of human control Advertisement

One study suggested that two billion jobs will be destroyed by 2030, while another concluded that 7.1 million jobs could be eliminated by 2020.

It comes as robots and AI are being introduced into more and more industries.

A burger-flipping robot is being piloted at a California restaurant chain, while, on the other end of the spectrum, artificial intelligence is being used in the form of a contract-reviewing algorithm for lawyers.



The Gallup study also discovered that while many people are afraid of the prospect that AI will one day steal their job, many have embraced AI in their daily lives.

'Whether they know it or not, AI has moved into a big percent of Americans' lives in one way or another already,' Frank Newport, the editor in chief of Gallup, told the New York Times.

The study found that nearly nine in 10 Americans, or 85%, say they use products with AI elements.

While people are afraid that AI will take their job, many are using AI in their daily lives. The Gallup study found that about 85% of Americans have embraced AI via new technologies

These include navigation apps, video or music streaming devices, a digital assistant on a smartphone or home personal assistants, among other things.

The most commonly used form of AI-infused technology was navigation apps like Google Maps, Waze or Apple Maps.

Among those using these technologies, they were most commonly utilized by younger people and those with at least a bachelor's degree.

Leaders in Silicon Valley have also butted heads over the broad effects of AI and robots.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has described AI as our 'biggest existential threat' and likened its development as 'summoning the demon.'

But others, such as Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt, said he's an 'AI denier,' describing himself as having the position of 'job elimination denier.'

Schmidt argues that while some jobs will be lost as a result of of artificial intelligence, many will be created at the same time, as a result of shifting trends in certain industries.
An out-of-control Chinese space station with 'highly toxic' chemicals onboard could hit the Earth in 21 days, revised re-entry dates have revealed.

China's first prototype station, Tiangong-1, will come crashing back to the planet between March 29 and April 9, experts say.

The doomed 8.5-tonne craft, which has been hurtling towards Earth since control was lost in 2016, is believed to contain dangerous hydrazine.

Agencies around the world who have been monitoring its descent believe it has a higher chance of hitting Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand.

They will only know the precise date it will impact and exactly where debris will fall during the finals weeks of its decline.

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While a precise landing location remains unclear, ESA has provided the latitudes between which Tiangong-1 is likely to land  and countries at risk include Spain, Italy, Turkey, India and parts of the US. ESA says no fragments will fall higher than 43N or further south than 43S

Experts from the European Space Agency (ESA), based in Paris, are among those tracking Tiangong-1, which means 'heavenly palace'.

Their Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany, made the prediction earlier this week.

This narrows down from their previous estimate of March 17 to April 21.

In recent days Aerospace, a US research organisation that advises government and private enterprise on space flight, also updated its re-entry window.

It said the space station will enter the Earth's atmosphere on April 3, give or take a week.

Exactly where it will hit is slightly harder to predict, although experts agree it will be somewhere between latitudes of 43 north and 43 south.

The chances of re-entry are slightly higher in northern states in the US, central Italy, northern Spain, northern China, New Zealand, the Middle East and parts of South Africa and southern Africa.

'Every couple of years something like this happens, but Tiangong-1 is big and dense so we need to keep an eye on it', Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist from Harvard University told the Guardian.

While most of it will burn up during re-entry, around 10 to 40 per cent of the satellite is expected to survive as debris, and some parts may contain dangerous hydrazine.

However, due to changing conditions in space, it is not possible to accurately predict where the module will land.

Agencies around the world have been monitoring the doomed craft's descent. Experts from the European Space Agency give a current estimate of between March 29 and April 9 for re-entry. This narrows down from their previous estimate of March 17 to April 21

In recent months, the spacecraft has been speeding up and it is now falling by around 6km (3.7 miles) a week. In October it was falling at 1.5km (0.9 miles) a week.

'It is only in the final week or so that we are going to be able to start speaking about it with more confidence,' said Dr McDowell.

'I would guess that a few pieces will survive re-entry. But we will only know where they are going to land after after the fact.'

Website Satflare, which provides online 3D tracking of more than 15,000 satellites, has calculated what it thinks are the chances of the space station entering the atmosphere during the next three months.

According to its analysis of orbital elements gathered during the last months, the re-enter may occur in March (20 per cent), in April (60 per cent) or in May 2018 (20 per cent).

These predictions may also change as new orbital measurements will be available.

The Tiangong-1 space station (artist's impression), which is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical', will likely hit sometime between March 29 and April 9, revised estimates say

Aerospace Corp, a US non-profit corporation which provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions, says Tiangong-1 will re-enter the planet's atmosphere on April 3, give or take a week

Aerospace Corp has also issued its own forecast over the likelihood of being hit by falling debris.

In a written statement, a company spokesman said: 'When considering the worst-case locations, the probability that a specific person will be struck by Tiangong-1 debris is about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.

'In the history of spaceflight, no known person has ever been harmed by reentering space debris.

'Only one person has ever been recorded as being hit by a piece of space debris and, fortunately, she was not injured.'

On September 14, 2016, China made an official statement predicting Tiangong-1 would reenter the atmosphere in the latter half of 2017.

Experts from Aerospace's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (Cords) have been studying the space station and in November updated their predictions for its uncontrolled re-entry.

WHAT IS THE 'HIGHLY TOXIC' CHEMICAL ONBOARD CHINA'S TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could land on Earth when parts of an out-of-control Chinese space station crash into our planet. The chemical, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and long-term exposure is believed to cause cancer in humans. It is being carried aboard the Tiangong-1 space station which is hurtling towards Earth. The warning over exposure to the chemical came from Aerospace Corp, a non-profit corporation based in El Segundo, California, which provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions. Hydrazine is a colourless, oily liquid or sometimes white crystalline compound with a very highly reactive base. A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could be spread over the planet when a Chinese space station crashes to Earth, experts have warned. The substance, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and is believed to cause cancer in humans (stock image) It has a number of industrial, agricultural and military uses, including in rocket fuel. Symptoms of short-term exposure to high levels of hydrazine include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures, and coma, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Long-term exposure can also damage the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system in humans. The liquid is corrosive and may produce dermatitis from skin contact in humans and animals. Increased incidences of lung, nasal cavity, and liver tumours have been observed in rodents exposed to hydrazine. The EPA has classified hydrazine as a Group B2, a probable human carcinogen. Advertisement

The Tiangong-1 spacecraft launched in 2011, with the aim of using the craft to set up a larger space station.

The craft is now at an altitude of less than 300 kilometres (186 miles) in an orbit that is decaying, forcing it to make an uncontrolled re-entry.

Holger Krag, head of ESA's Space Debris Office, said: 'Owing to the geometry of the station's orbit, we can already exclude the possibility that any fragments will fall over any spot further north than 43N or further south than 43S.

'This means that re-entry may take place over any spot on Earth between these latitudes, which includes several European countries, for example.

'The date, time and geographic footprint of the re-entry can only be predicted with large uncertainties.

Website Satflare has calculated odds of re-entry in March (20 per cent), in April (60 per cent) and in May 2018 (20 per cent)

WHAT IS THE TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurised volume Tiangong-1 is China's first Space Station Module. The vehicle was the nation's first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space Station as a permanent human presence in Low Earth Orbit. The module was launched on September 29, 2012. Tiangong-1 features flight-proven components of Chinese Shenzhou Spacecraft as well as new technology. The module consists of three sections: the aft service module, a transition section and the habitable orbital module. The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurized volume. Advertisement

'Even shortly before re-entry, only a very large time and geographical window can be estimated.'

Much of the spacecraft is expected to burn up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.

But owing to the station's mass and construction materials, there is a possibility that some portions of it will survive and reach the surface.

In the history of spaceflight, no casualties due to falling space debris have ever been confirmed.

The Chinese space agency has been tracking the space station (pictured before it was launched in 2011), and vowed to issue warnings if there are any potential collisions imminent. But not everyone is convinced by this
Microsoft's digital assistant Cortana could help hackers infect a computer running Windows 10 with a virus.

A pair of independent Israeli security researchers found the major security flaw this week.

By giving simple voice commands, they found they could install malware and launch websites from computer's lock screen.

The hack works because Windows 10 allows a device to connect to a different network while it is still locked.

This means an attacker can connect a USB with a network adapter and ask Cortana to open an unencrypted and potentially dangerous websites.

Microsoft has since resolved the issue, but researchers say Cortana still responds to other commands when locked.

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The two Israeli researchers, Tal Be'ery and Amichai Shulman, found that Cortana responds to some voice commands even when the computer is in sleep mode and locked. Microsoft has since resolved the problem, however the researchers say Cortana still responds to other commands when locked

The two Israeli researchers, Tal Be'ery and Amichai Shulman, found that Cortana responds to some voice commands even when the computer is in sleep mode and locked.

The researchers told Vice Motherboard that this could allow someone to plug a USB with a network adapter into a computer and command Cortana to open the device's web browser and go to a specific web address, even ones that don't use https, meaning that the traffic between the user's device and the website is not encrypted.

The malicious network adapter can then intercept the web sessions to send the device to a malicious website, where malware can be downloaded to the machine.

'We still have this bad habit of introducing new interfaces into machines without fully analyzing the security implications of it,' says Be'ery.

'Every new machine interface that we introduce creates new types of vehicles to carry an attack vector into your computer.'

The attacker could also connect the computer to a Wi-Fi network controlled by the attacker by clicking on a specific network, even when the computer it locked.

The researchers are set to present their findings this Friday at the Kaspersky Analyst Security Summit in Cancun, Mexico.

While AI voice assistants such as Cortana, Alexa and Siri provide a convenient, hands-free way to issue commands to a computer or mobile device, they are also herald a new kind of security threat.

The default setting in Windows 10 tells Cortana to respond to any voice calling which includes 'Hey Cortana,' even when the computer is locked.

However, a different setting tries to limit this ability to just the computer owner by telling Cortana to 'try to respond only to me.'

This setting requires the user to provide voice-recording samples in order to help Cortana recognize the voice.

Attackers could also force a Cortana session on other computers by playing a sound fiule on the infected computer's speakers which tells the Cortana on the other computers to launch their browsers and visit a specific website.

While AI voice assistants such as Cortana, Alexa and Siri provide a convenient, hands-free way to issue commands to a computer or mobile device, they are also herald a new kind of security threat

The two researchers even created a proof-of-concept tool called Newspeak, or 'Fake News' Cortana, which monitor Cortana requests and responses on all machines in a network.

Microsoft has since fixed the issue by forcing all browsing done through Cortana and a locked machine to go it its Bing search engine, as opposed to directly to a web page.

However, the researchers say Cortana still responds to other commands when locked, and they're looking at what else they could get Cortana to do while a computer is locked.
Didi, BAIC Group sign strategic agreement to promote carsharing operation

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On March 7th, Didi, a China's ride-hailing giant, announced that it signs a strategic cooperation agreement with the state-owned automaker BAIC Group to jointly extend businesses in such areas as operation of new energy vehicle (NEV), application of big data, mobility service and tailored vehicle and electric charging, etc.

Didi will wield its technology and big data advantages in mobile travelling realm to help automakers obtain large-scale and refined operation capabilities in ridesharing area. Besides, it joins hands with its partners to boost the popularization and development of NEV.

Cheng Wei, the founder and CEO of Didi, stated that electric vehicle is going to play a core role in ridesharing area. Didi, in cooperation with BAIC Group, wishes to accelerate the building of operational system and providing supporting services like electric charging. Besides, the ride-hailing company would love to co-build the ridesharing ecology together with its automaker partners and promote the upgrading of auto industry taking advantage of Internet technologies and its operational experiences.

Xu Heyi, Party Secretary and Chairman of BAIC Group showed that the teamwork between BAIC Group and Didi is conducive to the industrial transformation and upgrading of BAIC Group. Focusing on new energy intelligent-connected vehicle, both parties shall work together to build NEV ecosphere.

On February 7, Didi announced that the company had reached a cooperation to jointly build new energy sharing vehicle service system with 12 automakers including BAIC BJEV, BYD, Changan Auto, Geely Auto and Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, etc. Didi will offer automakers its intelligent vehicle rental business management capabilities, drivers, fleet operations and management capabilities, and provide personnel training, financial solutions and other system operations programs.
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Sprawling ruins of the 2,000-year-old luxury villa of a Roman military commander have been unearthed during work to expand the Italian capital's subway system.

Archaeologists working on Rome's Metro C line uncovered the second century AD residence, or domus, adjoining a military barracks excavated in 2016.

The richly decorated dwelling is complete with a well-preserved geometric design mosaic, marble floors and frescoed walls.

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Sprawling ruins of the second-century home of a Roman military commander have been unearthed during work to expand the Italian capital's subway system. The residence, or domus, was found 40 feet (12 metres) below the city's surface. It includes at least 14 rooms and a fountain in a central courtyard. One of the rooms appears to have been heated

Government official have described the find as 'an 'astounding archaeological construction site.' The richly decorated dwelling is complete with a well-preserved geometric design mosaic, marble floors and frescoed walls

Government official Francesco Prosperetti, special superintendent for the Colosseum, the National Roman Museum and the archaeological area of Rome, described the find as an 'astounding archaeological construction site.'

The domus, found 40 feet (12 metres) below the city's surface, includes at least 14 rooms and a fountain in a central courtyard. One of the rooms appears to have been heated.

Foundations for a separate structure of around the same size but with a more spartan interior were uncovered at around the same depth. Experts think it was probably used as a warehouse.

Archaeologists at the site say they were surprised by the find, as well as how well it had been preserved.

Speaking to the New York Times, Simona Morretta said: 'We didnt imagine that wed find a house with a central courtyard.

'The decorations were mainly intact, both the patterned mosaic floors and the frescoed walls.

'We have four more metres to excavate. We have no idea what we will find.'

The walls of the domus were around five feet (1.5 metres) tall and the rooms were found filled with dirt.

Archaeologists at the site say they were surprised by the find, as well as how well it had been preserved. They have four more metres to excavate and have no idea what else they will uncover

The walls of the domus were around five feet (1.5 metres) tall and the rooms were found filled with dirt. Researchers believe the home was intentionally buried in the third century, just prior to Roman Emperor Aurelian started construction work on walls build to protect the city in 271 AD

Researchers believe the home was intentionally buried in the third century, just prior to Roman Emperor Aurelian started construction work on walls build to protect the city in 271 AD.

The excavation work also unearthed rare wooden artefacts. This included wooden forms of a type similar to those used to this day to lay and build foundations, as well as wooden beams.

Experts says that the unique finds were uncovered thanks to the unusually deep digging taking place for the Metro system

The ruins and the buried treasures they contained will now be moved elsewhere, and temporarily preserved in special containers, so tunnelling can continue.

The excavation work also unearthed rare wooden artefacts. This included wooden forms of a type similar to those used to this day to lay and build foundations, as well as wooden beams.

Experts says that the unique finds were uncovered thanks to the unusually deep digging taking place for the Metro system. The ruins and the buried treasures they contained will now be moved elsewhere, and temporarily preserved in special containers, so tunnelling can continue

They will be returned to their former glory on the site to form the centrepiece of the Amba Aradam station, scheduled to open in 2022

WHAT HAVE EXCAVATIONS FOR ROME'S METRO C LINE SUBWAY UNCOVERED SO FAR? Work to build new stops on Rome's Metro C line is running years behind schedule, with interruptions to excavate ancient ruins behind some of the setbacks. Currently 21 of 24 stations along the new route, which links the city centre to an area east of Rome, are operational. Among the finds made so far is the luxurious second century AD villa, or domus, of a Roman military commander, uncovered in March, 2018. The richly decorated dwelling is complete with a well-preserved geometric design mosaic, marble floors and frescoed walls. In May, 2016, culture ministry officials showed reporters where work on the city's third subway line unearthed barracks for Roman Praetorian guards dating back to the period of Emperor Hadrian, in the second century AD. The barracks, which adjoin the military commander's residence, was discovered around 30 feet (nine metres) below street level and cover 9,600 square feet (900 square metres). They include a long hallway and 39 rooms decorated with black-and-white mosaics on the floors and frescoed walls. Researchers also found a collective grave at the barracks, where they have so far discovered 13 adult skeletons along with a bronze coin and a bronze bracelet. In 2014, archaeologists found the remains of an ancient commercial farm near St. John in Lateran Basilica during work on the subway. The dig revealed a three-pronged pitchfork, storage baskets, leather fragments that may have been from a farmhand's glove or shoe, and tracks carved into stone from the repeated turning of a waterwheel. This agricultural business dated back to the first-century, the researchers estimated. They also found peach pits, along with well-preserved vestiges of willow and other tree roots and stumps. Advertisement

They will be returned to their former glory on the site to form the centrepiece of the Amba Aradam station, scheduled to open in 2022.

Work to build new stops on Rome's Metro C line is running years behind schedule, with interruptions to excavate ancient ruins behind some of the setbacks. Bureaucracy and construction scandals have also caused long delays.

Currently 21 of 24 stations along the new route, which links the city centre to an area east of Rome, are operational.

In May, 2016, culture ministry officials showed reporters where work on the city's third subway line unearthed barracks for Roman Praetorian guards dating back to the period of Emperor Hadrian, in the second century AD.

The barracks, discovered around 30 feet (nine metres) below street level, cover 9,600 square feet (900 square metres) and include a long hallway and 39 rooms decorated with black-and-white mosaics on the floors and frescoed walls.

Archaeologists working on Rome's Metro C line uncovered the second century AD residence, or domus, adjoining a military barracks excavated in 2016

Work to build new stops on Rome's Metro C line is running years behind schedule, with interruptions to excavate ancient ruins behind some of the setbacks

Bureaucracy and construction scandals have also caused long delays. Currently 21 of 24 stations along the new route, which links the city centre to an area east of Rome, are operational

Archaeologists also found a collective grave at the barracks, where they have so far discovered 13 adult skeletons along with a bronze coin and a bronze bracelet.

The Praetorian Guard, who are thought to have once lived among these barracks, were prestigious military troops established by the second century BC.

They were household troops of the Roman emperors and acted as bodyguards to generals. Praetorian Guards served notable figures including Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Over the years, the legion evolved greatly to one day become a powerful political force. In the year 312 AD, the Praetorian Guard was disbanded by Constantine I.

In May, 2016, culture ministry officials showed reporters where work on the city's third subway line unearthed barracks for Roman Praetorian guards dating back to the period of Emperor Hadrian, in the second century AD. Pictured above, an archaeologist checks human bones at the barracks on Monday, May 16, 2016

The barracks, discovered around 30 feet (nine metres) below street level, cover 9,600 square feet (900 square metres) and include a long hallway and 39 rooms decorated with black-and-white mosaics on the floors and frescoed walls

Archaeologists also found a collective grave at the barracks, where they have so far discovered 13 adult skeletons along with a bronze coin and a bronze bracelet

The discovery isn't the only instance in which construction on the city's public transit ran into this kind of obstacle.

In 2014, archaeologists found the remainders of an ancient commercial farm near St. John in Lateran Basilica during work on the subway.

The dig revealed a three-pronged pitchfork, storage baskets, leather fragments that may have been from a farmhand's glove or shoe, and tracks carved into stone from the repeated turning of a waterwheel.

This agricultural business dated back to the first-century, the researchers estimated. They also found peach pits, along with well-preserved vestiges of willow and other tree roots and stumps.

The Praetorian Guard, who are thought to have once lived among these barracks, were prestigious military troops established by the second century BC. They were household troops of the Roman emperors and acted as bodyguards to generals. Praetorian Guards served notable figures including Julius Caesar and Mark Antony
Our future offspring may be part-human, part-chimp.

At least that's the nightmarish vision of self-proclaimed expert, David Barash, a professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Washington.

Dr Barash says that not only is the creation of 'humanzees' possible using gene editing, but producing such creatures would be a 'terrific idea'.

He believes it would force humans to acknowledge we are no different to animals and help stop the 'grotesque abuse' of the planet's creatures.

Dr Barash's remarkable comments - which could lead to a situation resembling Planet of the Apes - were made in his new book titled: 'Through a glass brightly: Using science to see our species as it really is'.

They follow recent claims by evolutionary psychologist, Gordon Gallup, that a 'humanzee' was born in an American lab nearly 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors.

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Dr Gallup claims that humans can be crossbred with other apes and not just chimpanzees. Above is a file image of the 1968 movie Planet Of The Apes showing two members of the species kissing one another

In an extract from his book which appears in the magazine Nautilus, Dr Barash describes the belief that we are discontinuous from the natural world as possibly 'the most hurtful theologically-driven myth of all times'.

Dr Barash believes CRISPR technology could be used to add or delete targeted genes as desired.

This means it might be possible to make precise edits in DNA and 'silence' certain genes that are different between the species.

'It is unclear whether my own imagined chimphuman will be a hybrid (produced by cross-fertilising human and non-human gametes), or a chimera, created in a laboratory via techniques of genetic manipulation. Im betting on the latter', wrote Dr Barash.

Creating a hybrid animal would stop people thinking of themselves as apart from the natural world, Dr Barash argues.

'Such an individual would not be an exact equal-parts-of-each combination, but would be neither human nor chimp: rather, something in between', he said.

HAS A HUMAN-CHIMP HYBRID ALREADY BEEN CREATED? Earlier this year, a scientist claimed that a 'humanzee' was born in an American lab nearly 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors. Renowned evolutionary psychologist, Gordon Gallup, said that the creature was born in a lab in Orange Park, Florida. He said that his former university professor claimed the humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work. Dr Gallup, who is also a University of Albany professor said the professor worked at Yerkes before the research centre moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1930. 'They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full-term and resulted in a live birth. 'But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanized,' Dr Gallup said. Dr Gallups term humanzee became well known in the 1970s after the emergence of a chimp known as Oliver, a bald chimp who walked on his hind legs. Despite claims that Oliver was a human-chimp hybrid, tests later proved that the animal was not a humanzee. Russia biologist Ilya Ivanov, in the 1920s, tried and failed to create a Soviet super-soldier using human sperm and female chimps. Another reported case happened in China in 1967 where a female primate became pregnant with a human-hybrid, but died from neglect after the lab's scientists were forced to abandon the project. Advertisement

Creating a hybrid animal would stop people thinking of themselves as apart from the natural world, Dr Barash argues. Pictured is a clip from the 2011 film Rise of the Planet Of The Apes

Humans and chimps have a huge amount in common, such as making tools, developing strong mother-offspring bonds, grieving and reconciling after conflicts.

The also share 99 per cent of the same DNA.

In his book, the eminent psychologist argues that despite our perceived similarities with chimps - as well as other animals - we still claim to have an essence that makes us unique.

However, this rigid distinction between the two is no longer tenable and creating a fusion could be a 'real mind expander and paradigm buster.'

'It is at least arguable that the ultimate benefit of teaching human beings their true nature would be worth the sacrifice paid by a few unfortunates', Dr Barash writes.

'For every chimphuman or humanzee frustrated by her inability to write a poem or program a computer, there could equally be one delighted by her ability to do so while swinging from a tree branch.'

Earlier this year, evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup claimed that a 'humanzee' was born in an American lab nearly 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors. Pictured is Oliver, a bald chimp who walked on his hind legs back in the 1970s

This would not be the first fusion between species - mallards and pintail ducks often interbreed, grizzlies and polar bears do occasionally.

A recent study found ravens are actually two separate species that recombined several hundred thousand years ago, the professor points out.

Tigrons have also occasionally been generated by hybridising lions and tigers and mules made from crossing horses and donkeys.

If a human-chimpanzee hybrid is ever created, it might not be the first.

WHAT IS CRISPR-CAS9? Crispr-Cas9 is a tool for making precise edits in DNA, discovered in bacteria. The acronym stands for 'Clustered Regularly Inter-Spaced Palindromic Repeats'. The technique involves a DNA cutting enzyme and a small tag which tells the enzyme where to cut. The CRISPR/Cas9 technique uses tags which identify the location of the mutation, and an enzyme, which acts as tiny scissors, to cut DNA in a precise place, allowing small portions of a gene to be removed By editing this tag, scientists are able to target the enzyme to specific regions of DNA and make precise cuts, wherever they like. It has been used to 'silence' genes - effectively switching them off. When cellular machinery repairs the DNA break, it removes a small snip of DNA. In this way, researchers can precisely turn off specific genes in the genome. The approach has been used previously to edit the HBB gene responsible for a condition called -thalassaemia. Advertisement

Earlier this year, a scientist claimed that a 'humanzee' was born in an American lab nearly 100 years ago before being killed by panicked doctors.

Renowned evolutionary psychologist, Gordon Gallup, told The Sun that the creature was born in a lab in Orange Park,Florida.

He said that his former university professor claimed the humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work.

Dr Gallup, who is also a University of Albany professor said the professor worked at Yerkes before the research centre moved to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1930.

Dr Gallup, who developed the famous mirror 'self-recognition' test which proved primates could acknowledge their own reflection, coined the term 'humanzee' which refers to a human-chimp crossbreed. Pictured is Oliver the chipanzee in 1976

'One of the most interesting cases involved an attempt which was made back in the 1920s in what was the first primate research center established in the US in Orange Park, Florida,' Dr Gallup said.

'They inseminated a female chimpanzee with human semen from an undisclosed donor and claimed not only that pregnancy occurred but the pregnancy went full-term and resulted in a live birth.

'But in the matter of days, or a few weeks, they began to consider the moral and ethical considerations and the infant was euthanized,' Dr Gallup said.

Lots of scientists and campaign groups have previously raised concerns about the ethical and practical considerations of promoting gene editing.

Josephine Quintaville of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics has previously warned that scientists in the future might use gene editing to alter embroyos to ensure they are intelligent or attractive.

'This is the inevitability of it, a whole kind of eugentic approach to human life'.

Dr Gallups term humanzee became well known in the 1970s after the emergence of a chimp known as Oliver, a bald chimp who walked on his hind legs.

Dr Gallup (left) said his former university professor claimed the humanzee baby was born at a research facility where he used to work. Russia biologist Ilya Ivanov (right), in the 1920s, tried and failed to create a Soviet super-soldier using human sperm and female chimps

Despite claims that Oliver was a human-chimp hybrid, tests later proved that the animal was not a humanzee.

Russia biologist Ilya Ivanov, in the 1920s, tried and failed to create a Soviet super-soldier using human sperm and female chimps.

Another reported case happened in China in 1967 where a female primate became pregnant with a human-hybrid, but died from neglect after the lab's scientists were forced to abandon the project.

Dr Gallup claims that humans can be crossbred with other apes and not just chimpanzees.

'All of the available evidence both fossil, palaeontological and biochemical, including DNA itself, suggests that humans can also breed with gorillas and orang-utans,' he added.

A spokeswoman for Yerkes National Primate Research Center, said: 'We have not been involved with any "humanzee" experiments, but rather conduct and enable peer-reviewed research studies to help fight disease and improve human health.'
Asia is home to paradise islands, lush forests and golden temples.

And nowhere introduces you to the excitement of the East better than Hong Kong, the doorway to one of the most amazingly diverse continents on Earth.

Explore the iconic sights of Asia's World City in style with a Cruise & Stay package from Royal Caribbean.

Nowhere introduces you to the excitement of the East better than Hong Kong, the doorway to one of the most amazingly diverse continents on Earth

A destination like no other

Hong Kong is where East meets West in the most fabulous way; you can enjoy world class cuisine and authentic street food or browse designer shopping districts while spotting historic landmarks.

On a Royal Caribbean Cruise & Stay holiday, you will be able to immerse yourself in the culture and traditions of the Orient, without compromising on modern-day sophistication.

Their expertly planned excursions allow you to take in the breathtaking views from The Peak - the highest point in Hong Kong - before enjoying a brew at a 1960's teahouse.

From being awestruck by its iconic skyscrapers to being moved by the majestic sight of the Tian Tan Buddha  the largest outdoor seated Buddha in the world - Hong Kong will have you at hello!

Hong Kong is where East meets West in the most fabulous way; you can enjoy world class cuisine and authentic street food or browse designer shopping districts while spotting historic landmarks

Explore, experience, enjoy

Royal Caribbean offers holidaymakers 'Cruise & Stay' packages, which allow you to visit multiple locations onboard a luxury liner as well as staying right in the midst of things on land - cleverly letting you have the best of both worlds.

Why not start your journey of a lifetime in Hong Kong with an escorted tour of the city over three days while staying right in its heart? The holiday offers a full day tour of Lantau Island, renowned for its amazing sunrises, as well as half a day taking in the beauty of Hong Kong Island, before you leave land behind and set sail for Singapore.

Not only will you be able to delve into the culture organically on shore, but the cruises are hugely popular with Chinese travellers, meaning you'll get to learn more about the local heritage onboard.

Make sure you have your comfy shoes at the ready - Hong Kong is the place to shop up a storm

Shop 'till you drop

Make sure you have your comfy shoes at the ready - Hong Kong is the place to shop up a storm.

During your three-night stay in the city, make sure you visit Causeway Bay, the dream place to indulge in some retail therapy.

Jam-packed with malls and lit up with neon signs, you'll be blown away by the amount on offer - and even if you're not a fashion fan, the late-night buzz will set your pulse racing.

But don't put away your wallet just yet - back onboard your Royal Caribbean cruise you'll be able to snap up more goodies from boutiques including Cartier, Michael Kors and Kate Spade.

A Royal Caribbean Cruise & Stay package allows you to experience the luxury of a cruise alongside the authenticity of a stay over in top destinations

All aboard for an adventure

On Voyager of the Seas you'll be able to be as active as you like, whether you fancy yoga, running or even rock climbing.

Fancy having a go on the waves without leaving the ship? No problem! The FlowRider surf simulator pushes through 60,000 gallons of water a minute meaning you'll have a whale of a time whether you're a pro or a novice.

On Voyager of the Seas you'll be able to be as active as you like, whether you fancy yoga, running or even rock climbing - while having an unbeatable view of the ocean

Taste sensation

When it comes to wining and dining, Royal Caribbean offers a variety of sensational restaurants serving cuisine from around the globe.

On Voyager of the Seas you can enjoy fresh, handmade sushi at Izumi, or take your taste buds on a trip to Tuscany, with rustic Italian fare at Giovannis.

Why not tuck into a melt-in-the mouth steak at Chops Grille, or venture down the rabbit hole with experimental dishes at the Wonderland Imaginative Cuisine eatery.

If youre feeling exhausted after a day of discovery, there's 24-hour room service available onboard all of the ships, so you can enjoy something delicious whenever you fancy it, all in the comfort of your stateroom.
Whether youre a committed urbanite or a dedicated gallery-hopper, a visit to Rome will satisfy all your cultural cravings. But when things get hectic, consider a seaside day trip away from the bustle of the Eternal City. There are several great options to choose from, and you reach them all easily on public transport.

Sabaudia resort

Santa Marinella

Santa Marinellas coastline is dotted with Art Nouveau-style summer houses, and its sheltered position below the Monti della Tolfa mountains results in a generally mild climate. The main bathing beach is a pale crescent of sand just to the west of the towns marina, and is set against the backdrop of a charming maritime village. When you need a break from the unrelenting sunshine, head to a shady al fresco cafe in Piazza Trieste for a seafood lunch. The town still has a fairly busy vibe, so its best for those who arent seeking total seclusion.

How to get there: Take a direct train to Santa Marinella from either Roma Termini, Ostiense, Trastevere or Roma San Pietro stations (trains leave every half an hour; journey time approximately 3555 minutes depending on departure station). From the station its about a three-minute walk to the beach.

Summer holiday on coastal stones of Santa Marinella

Anzio

South of the city, the Roman port of Anzio is one of Lazios most popular coastal destinations and known as the site of an Allied landing in 1944. Today its a favoured fishing town, full of colourful holiday villas and seaside restaurants, many of which line the road above the seafront. The beach is wide and clean, with shallow water and gently shelving sands, making it a great option for families. Whether youre a history buff wishing to learn more about the Battle of Anzio, or simply in search of sea and sand, this pretty port comes up trumps.

How to get there: Get to Anzio via the FL8 regional direct train from Roma Termini, where its the penultimate stop on the Nettuno line. Journey time is 1 hour 6 minutes, and trains depart hourly (half-hourly at certain times).

Panoramic views of the coast of Anzio

Sperlonga

Lying about halfway between Rome and Naples, under-the-radar Sperlonga is slightly more complicated to get to than other beach towns on our list. But the pay-off is well worth it, as this is one of the most attractive destinations on the Lazio coast. Lovely as they are, the golden Blue Flag beaches here are only one highlight. Equally delightful is the evocative old town, which lies at the southern end of town. Occupying a steep headland, a jumble of tall whitewashed buildings is interweaved with narrow streets, which every so often reveal unexpected glimpses of the strikingly blue Tyrrhenian Sea. Adjacent to the port below is one of the most pleasant beaches for miles around, lined with rows of sorbet-striped umbrellas and cabanas.

How to get there: Take the RomeNaples train from Roma Termini and alight at Fondi-Sperlonga station. Trains leave roughly hourly and the journey time is around 1 hour 15 minutes. On arrival at Fondi, youll then need to take a bus for the six-mile journey to Sperlonga, but these are timed to coincide with the train so you shouldnt need to wait long.

Ostia Lido

While Ostia cant match Sperlonga in terms of beauty, it does win hands-down on proximity to Rome. Across the River Tiber from Fiumicino airport, Lido di Ostia is the only district of Rome located on the coast, and the dark-sand beach is a popular spot for frazzled locals looking to decompress under one of the many ombrellone (umbrellas). Many tourists combine the beach with a visit to Ostia Antica, an archaeological site a couple of miles inland. This ancient port town, which evolved under the influence of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, is known for its Forum, Roman baths complex, and magnificent mosaics.

How to get there: Take the B metro line to the Piramide stop in Rome, then the Ostia-Lido train, all on the same ticket. Journey time from Piramide is around 30 minutes.

View of the Ostia coast

Sabaudia

Built on reclaimed land of the Pontine Marshes, the coastal town of Sabaudia lies about halfway between Anzio and Sperlonga and is known for its well-preserved rationalist architecture. Its Blue Flag beaches are often far less crowded than other options near Rome, which is probably why they attract the odd celebrity or two, as well as those seeking privacy and quiet. Backed with sand dunes, the beaches are accessed by a series of wooden boardwalks

How to get there: Take a train from Roma Termini to Priverno-Fossanova station, which takes around one hour, followed by the Cotral bus into town. You can walk to the beach in around 15 minutes, or you can take a second bus if youre pushed for time. Alternatively, you could take the Cotral bus from Laurentina metro station in Rome direct to Piazza Oberdan in Sabaudia.
Cosmopolitan Edinburgh has something for everyone. Whether youre wandering the cobbles of the Old Town or exploring the waterside cafes of Leith, youll find everything from exotic power breakfasts to traditional fry ups to help you start your day.

Enjoy a bottomless Bloody Mary Brunch at Hemma

Hemma

Hemma is Swedish for at home and this welcoming Holyrood Road cafe-bar offers Scandinavian treats alongside more traditional Scottish dishes. Try cardamom buns or toast with lingonberry jam, washed down with a Bloody Boda, a Swedish take on a Bloody Mary. Separate vegan and gluten-free menus are available, so everyone can enjoy some Scandinavian hospitality in the heart of the Scottish capital.

Bus: 23, 27, 41, 42, 67

Urban Angel

Looking for somewhere chic and healthy to grab a bite in, right in the heart of the city? Urban Angel is the answer. Breakfast and brunch are served until 1700, so you can enjoy a lie-in before heading to Hanover Street to sit and watch the crowds from the terrace at the front of the cafe. The menu is small but enticing, offering light brunch staples including Eggs Benedict and French Toast, with plenty of add-ons (avocado, bacon, black pudding) to customise your choice. The stand out dish is Baked Eggs, which comes with a selection of toppings, including chorizo and hot smoked salmon.

Bus: 23, 27, 61

Loudons

All bread and cakes served in Loudons cafe and artisan bakery are made on site. Porridge comes with three types of toppings, including Moroccan spiced seeds and nuts, or try French toast with peanut butter and butterscotch sauce. The tasty Country House sandwich offers pulled pork and red cabbage on a toasted soda bread muffin with turmeric poached eggs and plum and honey jam. Gluten- and dairy free options are available. Weekday breakfast is served 07301200, and weekend brunch is available Saturday and Sunday 08001600.

Bus: 1, 34, 47, Skylink 300

Southern Cross Cafe

Situated in Cockburn Street, a busy cut through between Waverley Station and the Royal Mile, Edinburghs very own Tardis looks tiny from the street, but theres a surprising number of tables packed into the Southern Cross Cafes two floors. Enjoy a full Scottish breakfast with haggis, or a generous helping of pancakes with blueberries and cream. Open 08001700.

Train: Edinburgh Waverley

Roseleaf

The Port of Leith offers a huge array of bars, restaurants and cafes for those keen to escape the bustle of central Edinburgh to spend some time by the water. Roseleafs quirky retro interiors and excellent, good value food has established it as a firm favourite with locals and tourists alike. Everything is baked in-house, including the bread, using seasonal and sustainable ingredients. Youll find Cullen skink (a hearty smoked haddock soup) alongside The Roseleafer full breakfast, complete with a home-made tattie scone and theres also a separate vegan menu. Brunch is served 10001700.

Bus: 16, 22, 36, Skylink 300

Hula Juice bar

Five minutes from the thoroughly modern building housing the National Museum of Scotland, youll find the very contemporary Hula Juice cafe. Breakfast is served until 1200 every day and is unashamedly healthy, using fresh ingredients that are full of flavour. Dishes include organic porridge with blueberries and honey, and a sourdough sandwich with caramelised onion hummus and roasted aubergine. Theres also a selection of green and super juices, or try a turmeric latte, made with almond milk, black pepper and cinnamon.

Bus: 2

Procaffeination

This small, independent cafe can be found on St Marys Street, just off the Royal Mile, and offers a cosy, modern vibe alongside some excellent, good value food and drink. The menu includes porridge, bacon rolls and gluten-free brownies, along with a selection of frappes (try the honeycomb and mocha) and some of the best coffee in Edinburgh. The cafe is open 08001900.

Bus: 6

Peruse our list of the best brunch in Dublin

Breakfast, Brunch & Lunch

If hearty food is your thing, head to Breakfast, Brunch & Lunch on The Pleasance, just outside the Old Town. BBL specialises in locally sourced food, with much of the menu made in-house, including its square Scottish beef steak Lorne sausage. Meat not your thing? Try the vegetarian or vegan versions. Theres also a full gluten-free breakfast, too. Open 08001500 (August 08001700).

Bus: 14

Smokestack

If youre craving waffles, Smokestack is the place for you. The cafe, based on busy Broughton Street, has a weekend brunch menu (09001600) offering a selection of sweet and savoury options, including bacon and maple syrup, huevos rancheros and summer berries with cream. If, however, waffles are not your thing, there are plenty of other brunch options, including steak and eggs, and a vegetarian breakfast, which comes with veggie haggis and mushroom toast.

Bus: 8
Dating rules are constantly evolving - and often differ between cultures.

But, fortunately, new research has revealed the most appropriate ways to behave according to your geographical location.

Covering 11 different countries around the world, language experts have detailed the places where you'll need to split the bill, kiss on both cheeks and order a full bottle of wine for maximum success.

L'amour: In France it's generally expected that you'll avoid discussing ex-partners, but feel free to playfully debate money, politics and religion

The study was conducted by language-learning app Babbel and offers fresh guidance for romance-seekers.

So what are the rules? Here are the answers determined by country.

France

Be it Paris, Nice or Marseilles, romance in France has certain expectations.

Firstly, it's good manners to kiss your potential suitor on both cheeks, going from left-side to right. Do this instead of hugging.

Then, while wooing over dinner, it's generally expected that you'll avoid discussing ex-partners, but feel free to playfully debate money, politics and religion.

Oh, and when you're done, split the bill.

Poland

In Poland, most people embrace each other with a hug - so no need to navigate any awkward cheek-kissing.

Opt for a glass of wine, rather than a bottle, and be sure to pay equal halves.

Acceptable topics of conversation can vary depending on who you're with, so play this one by ear.

Russia

Good manners: The initiator should accompany the invited person home or make sure they get home safely by ordering a taxi

Here, whoever initiated the date usually pays for it - regardless of gender.

During this time, both parties can discuss anything that interests them as there are no frowned-upon subject matters.

That said, the initiator should accompany the invited person home or make sure they get home safely by ordering a taxi.

Italy

It's considered Europe's most passionate place, but Italians also follow certain rules for romance-hunting.

These include no talking about your ex-partners, but it's also advisable to steer clear about discussing health-related issues.

In terms of where you go on your date, that's pretty casual and can be decided on a whim.

The Netherlands

Here, three cheek-bump-kisses are expected if you've met the person before.

However, if you're meeting a stranger, then it could be any greeting ranging from a hoi (hi), an awkward hug or the three kisses.

Again, they don't like talk of ex partners, and they tend to split the cost of the date.

Australia

Relaxed: Although the Aussies produce some impressive wine, it's perfectly acceptable to order beers on your first date

Given that Australia is partly defined by its wide open spaces, it's perhaps not surprising that most dates happen outside of busy bars and restaurants.

So, feel free to suggest an alfresco experience such as a parkland walk or sunshine stroll.

And, although the Aussies produce some impressive wine, it's perfectly acceptable to order beers on your first date - then split the resulting bill 50/50.

Brazil

Here, old-fashioned manners rule on a meet-up. Specifically, men are expected to pick-up the tab no matter what.

Ironically, when it comes to conversation, there's only one real taboo: money.

Preferred greetings also vary depending on region. In Rio, you kiss twice. In general, always kiss and never go for the handshake as this would be considered rude.

Germany

Given its relative proximity to Italy, it's perhaps not surprising that Germans have similar boundaries for dates.

This means you'll need to avoid discussing ex-partners, money, politics, health and religion until things get more familiar.

Fortunately, you can drink as much as you like and meet anywhere you fancy.

Spain

Careful! Spanish suitors will be unimpressed if you mention your finances, faith or political allegiance, so try to avoid...

Unlike their French counterparts, the Spanish prefer a single kiss on the cheek.

They'll also be potentially unimpressed if you mention your finances, faith or political allegiance, so try to avoid.

That said, ordering a full bottle of wine (rather than a glass) is preferred and 'going dutch' is preferred.

Sweden

Here, its not common to go to a restaurant for a first date. Instead, you would invite them for a coffee or a beer first.

Once there, the only thing to avoid is discussing your previous romances, which most consider bad manners.

Oh, and because they're obsessed with equal outcome, it's politically correct to divide the bill equally.

Norway

You probably wouldnt go for dinner on the first date in Norway.

A verbal greeting is preferred if you havent met the person before, otherwise go in for a brief hug.

Opt for a glass of wine, rather than a bottle, and always offer to split the bill evenly.
Married At First Sight star Telv Williams has revealed heartbreaking details of his tough childhood.

The father of two revealed he was beaten by his mother's boyfriend when he was a young boy, after he tried to stop him from hitting her.

He also divulged how his mother turned to alcoholism and had a string of abusive relationships.

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'He threw me through a window': MAFS' Telv Williams reveals heartbreaking details of his childhood and says he was beaten by his mother's boyfriend when he was a young boy and when he tried to stop him hitting her

'I jumped on his back to try and stop him - he just grabbed me and threw me through the window,' Telv said during an emotional interview with WHO.

Telv's mother Tracey was just 15 years old when she had her first son and he didn't meet his father until he was 22 years old.

The family lived in housing commission in Victoria.

Familiar face: Telv is seen on MAFS with wife Sarah

'It was this concrete jungle flat and coming home from school as you walked up the stairs you've got a junkie with a needle hanging out, an alcoholic in the hallway spewing everywhere, that's the surroundings you had to put up with,' Telv said.

Speaking about his mother's alcoholism, he said: 'She was a confused young kid who obviously found alcohol as an outlet.'

By age 12, his mother had found his stepfather Russell, who Telv looked up to as a 'father figure.'

Sweet: By age 12, his mother had found his stepfather, Russell, who Telv looked up to as a 'father figure'

The family soon moved to country Victoria.

The interview comes after Daily Mail Australia recently revealed Telv pleaded guilty to assaulting a man during a violent street brawl in Portland, Victoria, when he was just 18.

And just recently shocking footage emerged of Telv seemingly snorting white powder off a stripper's backside was published.

Claims: Meanwhile, Telv's former girlfriend, Amy, 32, said he is only on the show for 'fame'

According to Woman's Day, the machinery technician's alleged behaviour in the video was apparently 'nothing out of the ordinary' as he 'loves partying'.

Meanwhile, Telv's former girlfriend, Amy, 32, said he is only on the show for 'fame.'

In response, Telv told OK! this week: 'I'll always have love and respect for (her).'

'Her words are her words and I wish her all the happiness in the world. I just hope one day she could wish the same for me,' he added.
She revealed she completed three workouts in a day on Tuesday.

And Jessica Alba was back at it the following day as she headed to the gym once again, showing off her stylish attire as she was photographed outside a fitness studio in Los Angeles.

The Dark Angel star went makeup-free, wore calf-length black leggings and an oversize grey jacket layered over a black hoodie.

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Active mom: Jessica Alba is seen getting another workout in on Wednesday after revealing she did three gym sessions on Tuesday

She carried her essentials in a Herschel hip pack.

Keeping her fans up-to-date with her progress the 36-year-old star shared snippets of her routine to Instagram as she worked up a sweat.

'It ain't cute but it gets those legs burning' Jessica captioned a clip of her on one of the machines.

The actress appears to be determined to shed her baby weight after welcoming son Hayes two months ago, as well as get in tip-top shape for her new role on the Bad Boys spinoff.

Working out alongside Jessica on Wednesday was Gabrielle Union, her co-star in the upcoming project.

Ready to sweat: The 36-year-old actress looked great as she headed to a Los Angeles gym in leggings and a grey jacket

Glowing: Alba looked great as she shared videos from inside the gym

Working those quads: The Into The Blue star used a rubber band to work out her thighs

Jessica filmed the 45-year-old actress on a bike - and despite looking flawless herself - gushed: 'I was feeling really good about myself until I saw this hottie come in here with all her fashions, and her abs and her dimples'.

The previous night Jessica filmed herself leaving her third workout that day and shared a clip of her walking with a pal saying: 'Really proud of us today, I did three workouts, you did two'

The 36-year-old mother-of-three looked flawless makeup-free in a ponytail.

'Get it girl!': Jessica was joined by Gabrielle Union who she will soon be starring with in a new Bad Boys TV reboot

'I was feeling really good about myself until I saw this hottie': Jessica said of her pal

Mama is tired: The actress revealed on Tuesday that she did three workouts in one day as she documented it to Instagram

'Ponytail's a mess, I'm hot,' the Sin City star added.

She also shared a couple of group photos to her Instagram after her last workout.

'3rd workout of the day for me -man it was hard, but oh so good- thanks @nichelle for the motivation and for my friends #teamworkmakesthedreamwork @kellysawyer @derekblasberg @casdelta love you guys!' Jessica captioned a group photo.

'Ponytail's a mess': The 36-year-old mother-of-three looked flawless makeup-free in a ponytail

'Really proud of us today, I did three workouts,' Jessica revealed in an Instagram story

'Man it was hard, but oh so good': The actress shared two group photos after her last workout man it was hard, but oh so good

Earlier in the day Jessica shared an adorable photo of baby Hayes captioning: 'Someone is getting real big!'

The Into The Blue actress and her husband, Pair of Thieves sock designer Cash Warren, are also proud parents of nine-year-old daughter Honor and six-year-old daughter Haven.

The married couple of nine years originally met on the set of Fantastic Four way back in 2004.

Sweaty betty: The mother-of-three gave it some attitude as she posed alongside pals

Meanwhile Jessica announced last week that she is going to be on a TV adaptation of the film Bad Boys alongside her friend Gabrielle Union, who appeared alongside Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in 2003's Bad Boys 2 as DEA agent Syd Burnett.

TV Line reports that Jessica is set to play Army veteran-turned-investigator Nancy McKenna, who has two stepchildren.

She will also be an executive producer on the program alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, who was an executive producer on the original films with the late Don Simpson
His social media activity has raised eyebrows before.

And on Thursday, Telv Williams was once again caught out 'liking' racy bikini snaps on Instagram.

Early in the morning, the 33-year-old double-tapped the raunchy photo of Bendigo-based tattoo artist Stacey Lee, who had shared a cleavage-baring snap.

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He just cant help himself! On Thursday, Married At First Sight's Telv Williams was once again caught out 'liking' racy bikini snaps on Instagram

Telv's other recent 'like' went to aspiring social media influencer Jordan Storm, who flaunted her pert posterior in a G-string.

Although he left no comments, it would appear the young ladies' scintillating photos were enough to pique Telv's interest.

It comes after the FIFO worker recently 'liked' a busty photo Melbourne model Kyra Rayne within an hour of her posting it.

He'd (double) tap that! Early in the morning, the 33-year-old 'liked' raunchy photos posted by tattoo artist Stacey Lee (left) and aspiring social media influencer Jordan Storm (right)

Like what you see, Telv? It comes after the FIFO worker recently 'liked' a busty photo Melbourne model Kyra Rayne within an hour of her posting it

Does Sarah know?Just days earlier, he was busted 'liking' former Bachelor star Zilda Williams' sizzling lingerie photos

Just days earlier, he was busted 'liking' former Bachelor star Zilda Williams' sizzling lingerie photos.

But appears Telv later had a change of heart and pressed 'unlike'.

Meanwhile, MAFS fans saw Sarah and Telv fight to save their marriage this week following a string of explosive rows.

Is this what made Sarah so angry? Meanwhile, MAFS fans saw Sarah and Telv fight to save their marriage this week following a string of explosive rows

'I'd rather be single than feel like this,' Sarah said in front of a shocked Telv as the pair engaged in a couples counselling session.

The twosome have clashed multiple times, with their 'first fight' supposedly being over Telv's use of Snapchat.

'We were in the taxi and I was trying to tell you what's wrong and you were paying attention to Snapchat,' Sarah said tearfully.

Crisis talks: 'I'd rather be single than feel like this,' Sarah said in front of a shocked Telv as the pair engaged in a couples counselling session

A defensive Telv responded: 'You said something to me and I didn't hear what you said because I was laughing out loud.'

'I was telling you about how I feel!' wept Sarah. 'And instead of being attentive to me, you thought it was more important to have a laugh and watch funny videos.'

The pair continued to bicker back and forth until Sarah snapped and said: 'You're so engrossed in what you're doing, you're not engrossed in what's happening with us!'
He's as equally appreciated for his acting talents as he is for his chiselled body.

But Chris Hemsworth has revealed he's envious of somebody else's abs, stating that he wishes he had his 12 Strong co-star's six pack.

Filming alongside Calvin Klein model Trevante Rhodes, the Australian-famed Thor star revealed: 'Trevante had his shirt off getting changed and I was like, 'Can I touch that?'

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Chiselled! Chris Hemsworth has revealed he's envious of his co-star's six pack in new Afghanistan war film, 12 Strong, acting alongside Calvin Klein model Trevante Rhodes

The film is set in Afghanistan, with the US Army's Special Forces attacking the country just days after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

With the film demanded rigorous fitness training, the cast spent time between sets at the gym on the New Mexico-based set location.

Speaking of his co-star, Chris said: 'We were all kind of in the gym training together and one day we were standing there and I said 'What the f**k?''

Ab-solutely shredded! Speaking of his co-star, Chris said: 'We were all kind of in the gym training together and one day we were standing there and I said 'What the f**k?''

Adding: 'I poked him in the stomach and said, 'What the hell is that?' He is one of the fittest humans I have ever met.'

The Hollywood flick is set to feature the famed Marvel character's wife, Spanish model Elsa Pataky, in a heart-rending scene.

Ahead of being deported from the US to complete an operation against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the happily married couple of three feature in a traumatic parting scene.

Real romance! The Hollywood flick is set to feature the famed Marvel character's wife, Spanish model Elsa Pataky, in a heart-rending scene

Tear jerker! Ahead of being deported from the US to complete an operation against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the happily married couple of three feature in a traumatic parting scene

But the real-life couple continue to prove that family comes first, having recently spent quality time during a family camping trip.

Taking to Instagram on Monday, Elsa shared a shirtless picture of Chris while the couple bonded with their three-year-old twin sons Tristan and Sasha and their five-year-old daughter India Rose while toasting marshmallows.

Just last week, the Thor hunk recently juggled his toddlers during a Father-son outing at their local park and beach.
BAIC to build 3,000 battery swapping stations by 2020

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- The battery swapping service can alleviate the difficulties brought by the construction of charging piles, Xu Heyi, chairman of BAIC Group said in an interview on the sidelines of the two sessions in 2018.

As to the shortage of charging infrastructure, the chairman previously put forward the idea of battery swapping service. In the past several years, BAIC has made striking progress and breakthrough in this technology.

Xu Heyi pointed out that the core of the swapping service lies in the swapping and sharing. At the business mode level, the battery swapping means the separation of battery from the vehicle. For example, if consumers buy a new energy vehicle without batteries, they can rent batteries. When batteries run out of electricity, they can change another fully charged battery. All consumers need to pay is just for the electricity. For current products, it only takes 2.5 minutes to swap batteries.

The chairman revealed that BAIC Group has gradually promoted the popularization of new energy vehicles with swapping mode in Beijing, Guangzhou, Lanzhou and Xiamen. We have made Optimus Prime Plan, under which we will invest RMB 10 billion to build over 3,000 swapping stations in 100 cities nationwide by 2020. The battery electric vehicles with swapping mode can be up to 500,000 units, the chairman added.
He admitted to feeling an instant attraction to his Married At First Sight co-star Carly Bowyer and boasted that he sometimes feels a 'vibe' from her.

And Tracey Jewel has lashed out at her 'husband' Dean Wells' explosive comments, venting that her good friend Carly doesn't 'deserve' to be talked about in that way.

The 34-year-old dating expert said she'd reached her 'limit' with Dean's behaviour in a telling hint that she might dump him at Sunday's commitment ceremony.

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'Carly doesn't deserve that!' Furious MAFS' star Tracey Jewel slammed Dean Wells for boasting that he feels a 'vibe' with their co-star Carly Bowyer

Dean left his co-stars shocked after confessing Justin's bride Carly, 32, is his type and suggested they have chemistry, during a boozy 'boys' night' on Tuesday.

'I would say Carly. Judging solely on looks. I don't know her that well as a person. At times I felt a bit of a vibe,' he admitted.

And discussing his comments - especially in the wake of his secret 'affair' with their other co-star Davina Rankin, Tracey was less then impressed.

'I love Carly and Carly doesn't deserve that,' she fumed on Today Extra on Thursday.

Confession: He admitted to feeling an instant attraction to Carly (pictured) and boasted that he sometimes feels a 'vibe' from her

'It just goes from bad to worse. Is it Carly, is it Davina? We entered this as a marriage and it's unacceptable - it's unacceptable for the other boys to be doing it as well.

'I do feel disrespected. Especially with the whole Davina thing behind us, wanting to swap me out again. It was completely unnecessary and disrespectful.'

Tracey also touched on Dean's outrageous move of offering her up to the other contestants to 'bang'.

'What about Tracey, guys? She's hot,' he had asked. 'Could someone just say they want to bang Tracey? Please!

Not happy: And discussing his comments, Tracey was less then impressed. 'I love Carly and Carly doesn't deserve that,' she fumed on Today Extra on Thursday

Furious: 'It just goes from bad to worse. Is it Carly, is it Davina? We entered this as a marriage and it's unacceptable - it's unacceptable for the other boys to be doing it as well', Tracey said

Tracey said on Thursday: 'It really shocked me. I was like "Are you kidding me? Are we dealing with this again?" Even more drama. The drama just doesn't stop when Dean's around.

She added that Dean told her a lot of 'half truths' and she was confused by what really happened that night due to everyone's version of events.

'Obviously I was just going off what Dean was telling me, he sat there and denied it the whole dinner party. I wasn't at boys' night - there's Charlene's version, Patrick's version, Dean's version.'

Paired up: Carly is currently still partnered up with millionaire Justin Fischer on the show - and was spotted passionately kissing her co-star Troy Delmege last month

'It just becomes Chinese whispers and I just have to try to make the right decision for myself which is really hard to do with so many opinions flying around that dinner party.'

The mother-of-one from Perth then hinted that she had reached the end of her tether and could opt to leave the experiment during Sunday's commitment ceremony.

'It's turning into my character flaw being as forgiving as I am, and there's certainly a limit as to how much I can put up with,' she warned.

Tracey continued: 'It's a lot to process. I'm pretty gutted at this point. I have to have some conversations with dean not in front of the group about what really happened.'
Reese Witherspoon braved New York's snowy weather Wednesday to head to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

The actress, 41, who resides in balmy Southern California, fortunately brought some good winter clothing with her for her trip to the Big Apple.

She bundled up for the nor'easter in a warm black coat decorated with blue flowers and pulled a black knit beanie down over her long blonde hair.

White out: Reese Witherspoon braved New York's snowy weather Wednesday to head to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

The Big Little Liars star added a pair of black snow boots and had a little help from a male assistant who held an umbrella over her as she headed into the CBS studios.

Her hair peaked out from under her hat in loose curls and the star clutched her smart phone as she walked.

Reese was made up with a little black mascara, a touch of rosy blusher and some light red lip color.

Still stylish: The actress, 41, bundled up for the nor'easter in a warm black coat decorated with blue flowers and pulled a black knit beanie down over her long blonde hair

Bundled up: The Big Little Liars star added a pair of black snow boots and had a little help from a male assistant who held an umbrella over her as she headed into the CBS studios

Reese is busy promoting her new movie A Wrinkle In Time in which she stars opposite Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah did an interview with Colbert on Tuesday evening.

The big screen adaptation of Madeleine LEngle's beloved book is directed by Ava DuVernay and also stars Chris Pine, Mindy Kaling, Zach Galifianakis. It opens in theatres on Friday.

Doing the rounds: Reese is busy promoting her new movie A Wrinkle In Time in which she stars opposite Oprah Winfrey

On The Late Show: Oprah made an appearance with Colbert on Tuesday night to talk about the big screen adaptation of Madeleine LEngle's beloved book

Meanwhile, Reese is also busy promoting her new size-inclusive Draper James collaboration with Eloquii.

She told Glamour magazine she fully immersed herself in the process of coming up with clothing above size 12 and made sure to find the proper help and expertise with the venture.

The 30 piece Draper James x Eloquii collection can soon be available at 'three female-led companies' Eloquii, Rent The Runway, and Draper James.
Jessica Wright debuted a new blonde wig on Tuesday - and fans were quick to point out that she looked exactly like Chloe Sims.

And to make matters more confusing, Chloe has now undergone a makeover of her own, showing off her long, brunette curls on her Instagram page - a style reminiscent of Jess' trademark locks.

The star shared a sultry selfie of herself modelling perfectly coiffed waves and full face of make-up, including heavily highlighted cheekbones.

New look: Chloe Sims has undergone a makeover of her own, debuting long brunette curls on Wednesday, a style reminiscent of Jessica Wright's trademark locks... one day after Jess showcased a new blonde hairdo

The Essex beauty captioned her snap: 'NEW HAIR Back to my roots literally... hair by the amazing @joel_mag21 @chloesbeautybaressex he matched @beauty_worksonline tapes to my natural root colour'.

Chloe's fans were quick to comment, calling her new hair 'gorgeous' and saying, 'looks much better darker', with one fan joking 'I think Chloe and Jess are swapping hair styles.'

In snapshots unveiled on her Instagram account on Tuesday evening, Jess, 32, is the spitting image of her 35-year-old pal Chloe as she poses up a storm while showing off her new platinum look.

Sims a tad familiar! Jessica Wright, left, unveiled a snapshot of herself wearing a blonde wig on Tuesday evening, and fans remarked that she was spitting image of her pal Chloe, right

Swap: Chloe's fans were quick to comment, calling her new hair 'gorgeous' and saying, 'looks much better darker', with one fan joking 'I think Chloe and Jess are swapping hair styles'

And fans were quick to point out the visual similarities between the two, with one writing: 'OMG, thought it was Chloe Sims,' followed by another who challenged a tagged friend: 'Tell me thats not Chloe Sims.'

Bringing a third TOWIE name into the mix, another fan wrote: 'Is this Chloe Sims, Chloe Lewis or Jess Wright?'

After unveiling her initial snapshot of her hair, fans believed that Chloe had dyed her tresses, until she revealed in the caption of a follow-up full-length image that she was sporting a custom-made wig.

Outfit: She rounded out her radical new look with a black jumpsuit with a sweetheart neckline

Seeing double: The former TOWIE star's followers flooded her comments section with remarks about how much she reminded them of 35-year-old Chloe

Jess's new look comes weeks after it was confirmed that she'd embarked on a new romance with Strictly Come Dancing heartthrob Giovanni Pernice, 27.

In the romantic social media snap, the Italian dancer was seen stealing a smooch off his ladylove, and wrote in the caption: 'Buon San Valentino'

Jess went on to share a cosy throwback snap of the pair kissing on New Year's Eve the following day.

They were first romantically linked in December when they were spotted on a cosy date by eagle-eyed onlookers.
He's been having trouble getting the pink dye out of his hair since dressing up for the Mardi Gras alongside his KIIS FM colleagues and girlfriend Imogen Anthony.

And with no home remedies seeming to work, Kyle Sandilands turned to the professionals on Wednesday as he was spotted arriving at a Kings Cross hair salon.

Dressed in his signature all-black ensemble, the 46-year-old shock jock was all smiles as he stepped out of his Rolls-Royce holding a magazine and a can of Coke.

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Pink hair... he cares! With no home remedies seeming to work, Kyle Sandilands turned to the professionals on Wednesday as he was spotted arriving at a Kings Cross hair salon

Kyle wore a black T-shirt and kept warm with a Ralph Lauren hoodie.

He accessorised his casual look with dark sunglasses.

His silver fox 'do was stylishly cropped while his beard still had a noticeably pink hue following his attendance at the Sydney Mardi Gras.

Oh, dear! Kyle has been having trouble getting the pink dye out of his hair since dressing up for the Sydney Mardi Gras alongside his KIIS FM colleagues and girlfriend Imogen Anthony

Pretty in pink! Dressed in his signature all-black ensemble, the 46-year-old shock jock was all smiles as he stepped out of his Rolls-Royce holding a magazine and a can of Coke

First things first: Kyle was seen filling up his prized Rolls-Royce with fuel in Sydney's Wooloomooloo before heading to the Kings Cross barber shop

Kyle was seen filling up his prized Rolls-Royce with fuel in Sydney's Wooloomooloo before heading to the Kings Cross barber shop.

Ensuring he was prepared for his hair treatment, he picked up a car magazine and a refreshing can of Coke.

The former Australian Idol judge looked perfectly relaxed as he sat in the chair inside the hairdressers.

Expensive taste: Kyle wrapped up in a Ralph Lauren hoodie and wore designer sneakers

Which car should I buy next? The former Australian Idol judge looked perfectly relaxed as he sat in the chair inside the hairdressers

All hands on deck! It didn't look like an easy task for Kyle's barber, who had rather a lot of pink-coloured head and facial hair to contend with

It didn't look like an easy task for Kyle's barber, who had rather a lot of pink-coloured head and facial hair to contend with.

Enjoying the full service, the radio star's visit to the salon finished with a blow-dry.

Interestingly, Kyle didn't show up to work on Thursday, with KIIS FM's breakfast show replaying old interviews instead.

Pampering: Enjoying the full service, the radio star's visit to the salon finished with a blow-dry
Kourtney Kardashian looked ready to rave at the Electric Daisy Carnival in her wide-leg cargo khakis while dropping son Mason and daughter Penelope off at art class in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The KUWTK reality star - turning 39 next month - paired her eye-catching trousers resembling JNCO Jeans with a white shrug over a matching tank top, and white-framed sunglasses.

JNCO Jeans - founded in 1985 - were favored by hip-hop, skater, hardcore, and raver subcultures in the mid-nineties.

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Wow! Kourtney Kardashian looked ready to rave at EDC in her wide-leg cargo khakis while dropping son Mason and daughter Penelope off at art class in Los Angeles on Wednesday

The Los Angeles clothing company relaunched in 2014, but announced the shut down and closing of their brand on February 15.

Curiously, the 'newly-single' mother-of-three - who relies on stylist Dani Michelle - opted to wear black pointy-toed heels rather than traditional sneakers with her nostalgic streetwear.

Meanwhile, eight-year-old Mason sported a Marvel Comics-print T-shirt with grey sweatpants and five-year-old Penelope opted for blue bunny-print track pants.

Missing from the outing was Kardashian's youngest child - three-year-old son Reign - from her nine-year on/off relationship with Scott Disick, whom she split with in 2015.

Who wore it better? The KUWTK reality star - turning 39 next month - paired her eye-catching trousers resembling JNCO Jeans (L) with a white shrug over a matching tank top, and white-framed sunglasses

Everything must go! JNCO Jeans - founded in 1985 - were favored by hip-hop, skater, hardcore, and raver subcultures in the mid-nineties, but the company closed February 15

Relies on stylist Dani Michelle: Curiously, the 'newly-single' mother-of-three opted to wear black pointy-toed heels rather than traditional sneakers with her nostalgic streetwear

Mom duties: Meanwhile, eight-year-old Mason sported a Marvel Comics-print T-shirt with grey sweatpants and five-year-old Penelope opted for blue bunny-print track pants

Side view: Missing was Kardashian's youngest child - three-year-old son Reign - from her nine-year on/off relationship with Scott Disick, whom she split with in 2015

Strike a pose: Little Penelope ran ahead of her mother who kept close the the hulking bodyguard

'First time to the market': Kourtney later shared an Insta-story of herself leaping in a grocery store

Her sighting came after her younger sister Kim complained at the MDNA x KKW Beauty event about having to leave an Oscar bash early so she would be up in time for carpool and Kourtney could sleep in.

'I had to do carpool,' the 37-year-old wife of Kanye West lamented to Madonna - according to People.

'On Sunday, we just went out, and Kourtney stayed out until almost 6AM and I'm just like, "A**hole, I have to take all the kids to school," while shes partying it up. I took one for the team and left early.'

The half-Armenian beauty recently reactivated her Instagram account after fans noticed she unfollowed her toy boy boyfriend Younes Bendjima on Saturday, prompting break-up rumors.

'I had to do carpool': Her sighting came after her sister Kim (L) complained at the MDNA x KKW Beauty event about having to leave an Oscar bash early so Kourtney could sleep in

The 37-year-old wife of Kanye West lamented to Madonna: 'On Sunday, we just went out, and Kourtney stayed out until almost 6AM and I'm just like, "A**hole, I have to take all the kids to school," while shes partying it up. I took one for the team and left early'

The 24-year-old boxer-turned-model changed his own account from public to private then back to public on Tuesday, and mysteriously posted Wednesday: 'Take the mask off when you speak to me.'

The May-December couple were last pictured together February 5, having first started their romance back in October 2016 when they met in Paris.

Filming on the 15th season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians officially kicked off in August as part of the family's massive $100M deal with the E! Network through 2020 - according to Variety.

'Take the mask off when you speak to me': The half-Armenian beauty recently reactivated her Instagram account after fans noticed she unfollowed her toy boy boyfriend Younes Bendjima on Saturday, prompting break-up rumors

Split? She and the 24-year-old boxer-turned-model were last pictured together February 5, having first started their romance back in October 2016 when they met in Paris
His relationship with Tracey Jewel is at breaking point on Married At First Sight, as rumours of a real-life split continue to swirl.

But Dean Wells doesn't appear to have let his marital woes prevent him from mingling with the opposite sex.

From his 'affair' with Davina Rankin to his late-night mystery blonde companion, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at the women Dean has been spotted with during his time on the show.

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A way with women? Though he is currently in a TV 'marriage' with Tracey Jewel, Dean Wells (pictured) has been spotted in the company of several different ladies recently

In one of Married At First Sight's most dramatic storylines this season, Dean and Davina sneakily met up behind their respective partners' backs.

After exchanging flirty texts and going for drinks, the controversial couple looked set to dump their spouses and kickstart a relationship together.

But things spectacularly backfired for Davina when Dean had a change of heart and announced in a commitment ceremony that he had decided to stay with Tracey.

However, it seems Davina isn't the only 'wife' on MAFS that Dean had eyes for, with the 'alpha male' more than once expressing his attraction to Carly Bowyer.

Married At First Sight's biggest scandal! While 'married' to Tracey, Dean planned to start a new relationship with fellow contestant Davina Rankin (left)

Catching Dean's eye? The 'alpha male' has also expressed his attraction for another Married At First Sight star, Carly Bowyer (pictured)

And with speculation rife that Dean and Tracey have called it quits after filming the social experiment, the rumour mill went into overdrive this week.

In photos published on Wednesday, the 'married man' was spotted in the company of a mystery blonde.

The unknown woman was seen leaving Dean's Manly apartment building in the early hours of Friday morning, while he held open the door.

Who's that girl? In photos published on Wednesday, Dean was spotted in the company of a mystery blonde as she departed his apartment in the early hours of Friday morning

The sighting comes after Dean was spotted last month in the midst of an affectionate embrace with another gorgeous blonde.

Dean was photographed being given a very warm greeting from the woman outside Sydney's Belgrave Hotel in February.

Eagle-eyed fans later identified the woman as Michelle, Dean's 'friend' who appeared on Married At First Sight and met Tracey over dinner.

Pals: Last month, Dean was photographed being given a VERY affectionate greeting from a blonde woman, who later popped up on the show as his 'friend' Michelle (pictured)




She is one of the most controversial contestants in Married At First Sight history.

And Davina Rankin revealed on Thursday that she even received 'death threats' following her affair with fellow contestant Dean Wells.

The 26-year-old told the ABC that viewers would flood her social media accounts with 'every slander word you can imagine'.

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'I barely got out alive': Married At First Sight's Davina Rankin told the ABC on Thursday that she received 'death threats' following her affair with fellow contestant Dean Wells

The online backlash began after Davina and Dean made a secret pact to leave their respective spouses - Ryan Gallagher and Tracey Jewel - for each other.

But their affair ended in tears after Dean had second thoughts and chose to return to his wife Tracey. Davina and Ryan later both voted to leave the experiment.

Davina told the ABC she found it 'crazy people believe so much'.

Traumatic: The 26-year-old said that MAFS viewers would flood her social media accounts with 'every slander word you can imagine'. Pictured with Dean Wells

'They genuinely believe I had an affair on my husband. This was a guy I'd only known for a week, we're not boyfriend and girlfriend, let alone husband and wife,' she said.

Davina also claimed that people had actually threatened to 'punch' her if they saw her in the street.

The former Zoo model said that it was other women who were the most 'cruel'.

'I'd only known him for a week': Davina downplayed her betrayal, saying that her relationship with Ryan Gallagher (left) was not like 'husband and wife' when she began pursuing Dean

Admitting she 'barely got out of this alive', Davina confessed she felt 'betrayed' by the show.

'They were looking for a specific person to fill my character's role,' she said. 'They already knew what they wanted from my character before they even met me.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.
He's become a Bachelor villain after dumping fiancee Becca Kufrin on camera and asking for a second shot with runner-up, Lauren Burnham.

And now one of the women who competed for Arie Luyendyk Jr. during his current season of the Bachelor is weighing in on his controversial decision to reconcile with Lauren - revealing she doesn't believe he will remain faithful to her during their relationship.

Fan favorite contestant Bekah Martinez, 23, told Access Hollywood: 'I just think that even if they were to stay together for the rest of their lives, I think he would certainly cheat on her  without a doubt.'

Piece of her mind! Fan favorite contestant Bekah M., 23, told Access Hollywood : 'I just think that even if they were to stay together for the rest of their lives, I think he would certainly cheat on her  without a doubt' (pictured arriving to Jimmy Kimmel Live in February 2018)

The way they were: Bekah and Arie soaked in a hot tub during their romantic date in South Lake Tahoe

It seems Bekah has had a major change of heart since appearing on Arie's season, which saw her make it to his top five before she was sent home during a group date.

The reality star admitted she didn't think Arie had the capability of sustaining a long-term, committed relationship.

'I can't speak for Lauren, but I don't that Arie is capable of having a monogamous, serious relationship,' she explained. 'I really don't think that he's mature enough to handle a real, committed relationship. I don't. He's impulsive and he doesn't think through his actions.'

Bekah also addressed a tweet sent out by Arie's ex-girlfriend, Sydney Stempfley, who joked on Twitter before his season started filming, 'The show would be perfect for @ariejr up until it comes to choosing just one.'

'He's impulsive': The reality star admitted she didn't think Arie had the capability of sustaining a long-term, committed relationship

Brutal: Fans watched Monday night Arie propose to Becca in Peru before dumping her during a weekend in Los Angeles, with cameras capturing the whole thing

Bekah couldn't believe how accurate Sydney ended up being.

'I think she couldn't have been more spot on!' a delighted Bekah exclaimed. 'She said that before filming even started, so clearly he has a track record of being a manipulative a**hole.'

Fans watched Monday night Arie propose to Becca in Peru before dumping her during a weekend in Los Angeles, with cameras capturing the whole thing.

The show has come under fire for filming the heart-wrenching break-up, and Becca has been sent a wave of support from admiring fans since the split aired on television.

Following the break-up, Arie reconciled with his runner-up, Lauren, and the couple became engaged during Tuesday's episode of After The Final Rose, where Becca was also announced as the next Bachelorette.

Back together: Luyendyk Jr. asked for a second chance with his runner-up, Lauren, and they got engaged during Tuesday night's After The Final Rose
In her show she is dark, brooding, and ready to kick butt at a moments notice.

But Krysten Ritter was none of these things as she dazzled in a metallic silver gown on Wednesday night.

The 36-year-old lead the stars on the purple-red carpet for the premiere of Jessica Jones season two in New York.

Something to Marvel at! Krysten Ritter dazzled in a metallic silver gown on Wednesday night

The actress flashed lots of leg through the thigh-high split, and plenty of cleavage besides in the gorgeous off-the-shoulder ensemble.

She accessorized in silver dangling earrings, rings, and matching ankle-strap heels.

She was joined at the screening by her on-screen boss Carrie-Anne Moss, who put on a daring display in a sheer top coupled with a smart black suit.

Rachael Taylor meanwhile, who plays Jessica's adopted sister and BFF Trish Walker, also looked gorgeous in a short maroon dress draped in gold strand detailing.

Gorgeous: The actress flashed lots of leg through the thigh-high split, and plenty of cleavage besides in the gorgeous off-the-shoulder ensemble

Matching: She accessorized in silver dangling earrings, rings, and matching ankle-strap heels

On-screen father and son duo J.R. Ramirez and Kevin Chacon looked razor sharp in suits.

The day before Krysten and Rachael swung by the Build Series in NY to chat about the upcoming season.

'What I try to do with Jessica Jones,' said Krysten, who plays the traumatized superhero titled character, 'is be, like, really funny in between takes, to get like - have some fun and add some levity, because this is a really dark headspace to live in.

Trinity: She was joined at the screening by her on-screen boss Carrie-Anne Moss, who put on a daring display in a sheer top coupled with a smart black suit

Fab: Rachael Taylor meanwhile, who plays Jessica's adopted sister and BFF Trish Walker, also looked gorgeous in a short maroon dress draped in gold strand detailing

Woerk mates: She posed with co-star Eka Darville

In Charge: Rebecca De Mornay puy on a powerful display in a pin stripe jumpsuit

'But I love both. Jessica - there's - it's so fun to play a character that's that cool and that powerful. It's a real thrill, but of course I love to be, like, silly and goofy too, so both,' she explained.

Krysten added that 'she's, like, mean, mean funny. Like, dry, sarcastic.'

Season one of Marvel's Jessica Jones dropped on Netflix in 2015, and in the interim, Krysten and Rachael reprised their roles for the streaming site's crossover series, The Defenders.

All 13 episodes of Jessica Jones season 2 stream on Netflix from Thursday.

Wow: Leah Gibson but on a very busty display

Family: On-screen father and son duo J.R. Ramirez and Kevin Chacon looked razor sharp in suits
As a former Bachelor, he is known for sweeping ladies off their feet.

But on Wednesday, Tim Robards showed off his own gravity-defying skills as he took to Instagram to share his on-the-road fitness routine.

In a photo shared to Instagram, Tim showed off his impressive physique while performing a horizontal plank and balancing off the side of his Jeep.

Gravity-defying! On Wednesday, The Bachelor's Tim Robards took to Instagram to share a photo of himself performing a horizontal plank while balancing off the side of his Jeep

He wrote in the caption: 'Have you ever been in a storm so strong it blows your car on its side and you have to go all superman and roll it back over?'

He added the hash tags, 'The Robards Method', 'Get your plank on' and 'Superman', while tagging Jeep Australia's Instagram account.

Fans were quick to comment on his jaw-dropping fitness, with one writing: 'You are just everywhere cars, playgrounds! No excuses for not working out.'

Sweet moments! Tim recently shared a throwback photo of himself and fiancee Anna Heinrich, which was taken when they first fell in love back in 2013

Another Instagram follower wrote: 'I hope you got life insurance!'

Whether it be his fitness regimen or his relationship with fiancee Anna Heinrich, Tim has continued to prove he's a man of dedication.

Ahead of the lovebirds' wedding this year, the 34-year-old posted a throwback photo of the couple kissing when they first met back 2013.

Wedding bells! Tim and Anna are expected to get married late this year

He captioned the photo: 'Throwback to almost five years ago to the day after I first told you I loved you.

'I was full of jittery excitement for what the future held and the adventures that awaited us, while ignoring the naysayers and allowing ourselves to just be us and true to ourselves.

He concluded: 'Nothing's really changed, except life keeps getting better with you.'
Great Wall Motor to invest RMB 20 billion for EV development by 2020

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Wang Fengying, president of Great Wall Motor, was quoted as saying that Great Wall Motor aims to sell 2 million vehicles in 2025, and 700,000 units of the total volume are expected to be electric vehicles.

The president also added that her company would like to invest RMB 20 billion by 2020 to develop electric vehicles, aiming to gain leading advantages in electric vehicle technology and hydrogen fuel cell technology. Great Wall plans to introduce three new electric vehicle models this year and two electric vehicle models next year.

Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, claimed last year that the Haval brand will surpass Jeep and Land Rover with expected annual sales of over 2 million vehicles in 2020. And the Haval also plans major foray into the American market.

However, the target seems much more ambitious to industry analysts. Even though its annual sales have exceeded 1 million units, the product structure and the development roadmap still need improvement.

In 2017, Great Wall Motor sold a total of 1,070,161 vehicles, down 0.4 percent compared with the previous year. Out of the total volume, the Haval-branded SUV sales reached 851,855 units.

To industry analysts, the automakers battery electric vehicles, like C30 EV, have little technology advantage and competitiveness over other similar products. Besides, high fuel consumption is an acknowledged feature of Great Walls products. Last year, both the new energy vehicle credit and the CAFC credit are negative for the automaker. If the situation is not improved, the Baoding-based automaker will be under great pressure from the dual-credit scheme.

Actually, Great Wall has been stepping up efforts in new energy vehicle segment. Last year, Great Wall gained 25 percent stake of Hebei Yogomo Automobile Manufacturing Limited Company to meet its own demands in developing new energy vehicles. Yogomos products cover pure electric car series and van logistics car series.

Last month, Great Wall announced it was in advanced talks with BMW Group to manufacture a battery-powered Mini in the largest auto market. The Chinese automaker takes this as an opportunity to upgrade its technology level and improve its brand premium.




The contestants on My Kitchen Rules get to eat and cook a variety of dishes as the battle for the $250,000 prize money rages on.

And on the show on Thursday, 'Botox sisters' Jess and Emma weren't too impressed that they got to eat offal at the elimination cookoff.

Emma said she hated the thought of eating chicken liver and tripe - the stomach of a cow - when Jess cracked a dirty joke at the dinner table.

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'She likes her organs on the outside!' MKR's 'Botox sisters' Jess (L) and Emma (R) make a dirty joke at the dinner table as they're served offal...before having a showdown with Russian villains Olga and Valeria

'I'm an offal-tarian. I don't eat offal,' Emma said, with a disgusted look on her face.

But she burst out laughing when Jess declared to the dinner table: 'She likes her organs on the outside!'

'Oh yes, I do,' Emma said with a laugh.

Not happy: Emma said she hated the thought of eating chicken liver and tripe

Would you eat it? Seen is the tripe dish

She added about the night's menus: 'They better have a good main and dessert because I'm already heaving!'

Also during the night, the sisters clashed with Russian villains Olga and Valeria.

Olga thought it was 'disrespectful' Emma said she hated offal, when it was being served by the cook-off teams.

At one point, Olga and Valeria talked about Jess and Emma in Russian, calling them 'ugly ducklings' and 'freaks.'

Olga and Jess had a fiery exchange after dessert, and had a stare-off, when Olga said she didn't like either dish.

Rivals: Also during the night, the sisters clashed with Russian villains Olga (seen) and Valeria

'I don't know what's going to impress Olga, you don't seem to be impressed by much,' Jess said.

Olga hit back: 'Cook something that impresses me, I'm happy to be impressed.'

'Do you want a stare-off?,' Jess said.

Olga then took a swipe to camera, saying: 'I don't know how Jess and Emma can scare anyone, except from their own reflection in the mirror.'

Showdown: Group one's Josh and Nic went head-to-head with group two's 'defence force foodies' Matt and Aly (seen)

The teams went to elimination house as group one's Josh and Nic went head-to-head with group two's 'defence force foodies' Matt and Aly.

The boys served an Italian menu, making tripe for entree, a mushroom pasta for main and tiramisu for dessert.

Matt and Aly made chicken liver parfait for entree, a lamb rack for dessert and a chocolate, fig and hazelnut cake for dessert.

Matt and Aly were eliminated after failing to impress, scoring 83 points on the night, while Nic and Josh scored 141 points.
He's been embroiled in a storm of controversy after cheating on 'wife' Tracey Jewel, offering her up for other guys to 'bang' and admitting his attraction to other women.

But Married At First Sight's Dean Wells seemed keen to wipe the slate clean on Thursday, as he shared a tribute to his female co-stars in honour of International Women's Day.

The 'alpha male feminist', 39, hailed Tracey, 34, as 'one of the strongest people I've ever met' and swallowed his pride as he claimed he had a 'lot of respect' for Charlene Perera.

Oh, no he didnt! Married At First Sights alpha male feminist Dean Wells wished his Instagram followers a happy International Womens Day

Sharing the logo for International Women's Day on Instagram, he wrote: 'Happy international womens day. There are some very strong women in the mafs crew this year.'

Addressing Charlene - who he clashed furiously with on Wednesday over 'gender equality - he continued: 'We may have had our differences but I have a lot of respect for you.'

Moving on to his wife and mum-of-one Tracey, he added: 'You are one of the strongest people I have ever met.'

His co-star Ashley Irvin seemed amused by the post, commenting underneath: 'You are truly the biggest feminist I have ever met. You really do crack me up!'

Hmm: Sharing the logo for International Women's Day on Instagram, he wrote: 'Happy international womens day. There are some very strong women in the mafs crew this year'

Ok then: His co-star Ashley Irvin seemed amused by the post, commenting underneath: 'You are truly the biggest feminist I have ever met. You really do crack me up!'

Dean was plagued by more drama this week, after confessing he finds his co-star Carly Bowyer - who is Justin's bride - attractive and claiming they have a 'vibe'.

'I would say Carly. Judging solely on looks. I don't know her that well as a person. At times I felt a bit of a vibe,' he admitted during a boozy 'boys' night' on Tuesday.

He then left viewers open-mouthed by jokily offering her up to the other male contestants to 'bang'.

Gushing: Discussing his TV bride and mum-of-one Tracey, he added: 'You are one of the strongest people I have ever met'

Awkward: Addressing Charlene - who branded him a 'douchebag' on Wednesday, he wrote: 'We may have had our differences but I have a lot of respect for you'

'What about Tracey, guys? She's hot,' he had asked. 'Could someone just say they want to bang Tracey? Please!'

His explosive comments turned him into a target at the dinner party on Wednesday -causing him to protest that he was indeed a feminist and never said 'disrespectful' things about women.

Charlene labeled Dean a 'douchebag' and said the way he talks about women is 'not okay'.

'I'm about gender equality,' Dean insisted. 'I'm all about gender equality.'

Oh dear: Dean was plagued by more drama this week, after confessing he finds his co-star Carly Bowyer (pictured) attractive - before appearing to offer up his bride Tracey to the other grooms to 'bang'

He continued: 'I think everyone needs to be treated completely equally, and I've said nothing disrespectful about women.'

Charlene shot back: 'That might just be a very big difference in what I think is okay to talk about, and what you think is okay to talk about.'

Dean then responded by saying: 'I've been a feminist my whole life.

'But I'm also a man, and I don't apologise for being a man. I don't apologise for being attracted to women. Why is that a bad thing?'

Explosive dinner party: Dean protested that he was a 'feminist' who believes in 'gender equality' after facing furious backlash for his comments about Carly and Tracey

Speaking privately to the camera, Dean explained: 'All the men in this experiment, we're all sexual beings.

'We have feelings, we're attracted to some women, we're attracted to other women, there's nothing wrong with that.'

Charlene continued to challenge Dean, saying that the way he and the other men spoke about the women at the boys' night was 'not okay.'

Dean also faced backlash last month, when he cheated on Tracey with his bikini model co-star Davina Rankin.

The pair canoodled and met up for secret dates, with Dean insisting he would leave Tracey for her - before choosing to stay with Tracey in a shock twist.
She rarely looks anything short of extraordinary.

And Ashley Graham brought the flower power as she attended the The O Magazine's screening of A Wrinkle In Time in New York City on Wednesday.

The model, 30, wowed in a skin-clinging dress with red rose print that showed off her amazing physique.

Roses are red! Ashley Graham was as pretty as a petal as she attended the The O Magazine's screening of A Wrinkle In Time in New York City on Wednesday

Ashley sizzled in the form-hugging ensemble that also showcased her ample cleavage.

She had her brunette tresses slicked back into a sophisticated and chic updo that put her stunning facial features on show.

The star brought out her naturally beautiful features with some mascara, bronze blush, and shimmering pink lipstick.

And to give her dazzling ensemble another touch of glam, Ashley accessorized with a pair of edgy, dangling silver earrings.

Sending temperatures soaring! Ashley sizzled in the form-hugging ensemble that also showcased her ample cleavage

Going glam: And to give her dazzling ensemble another touch of glam, Ashley accessorized with a pair of edgy, dangling silver earrings

She stood tall in her glossy black high heels, perfecting the head-turning look.

Ashley doesn't star in the upcoming sci-fi film A Wrinkle In Time, but she does currently appear as a judge on the current season of America's Next Top Model.

The model has appeared as a judge on the Tyra Banks created reality show since 2016.

America's Next Top Model airs on VH1 on Tuesdays.

Star-studded! Graham posed with A Wrinkle In Time star, Mindy Kaling
She's one of Australia's most well-respected female journalists.

Now, the Today show's Sylvia Jeffreys has thanked the women in her life who helped 'shape her'.

'Forever grateful for the women who've shaped me,' the 31-year-old wrote on Instagram beside a photo of herself with her mother and sister. 'My safe harbour'.

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'Forever grateful to the women who shaped me': Today show newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys posts touching message to her mother and sister for International Women's Day

Sylvia ended the post with a #IWD hashtag to mark International Women's Day.

In the image, Sylvia can be seen smiling broadly as she stands sandwiched between her sister, Claire, and her mother, Janine.

All three women bear a striking resemblance to one another in the shot - all sporting the same blonde hair and sunkissed skin.

Sylvia, who is married to fellow journalist Peter Stefanovic, also thanked her 'big sister' Claire for 'leading the way since Day 1'.

In an interview with 9Honey last year, Sylvia credited her mother with shaping her into the woman she is today.

Peas in a pod: Sylvia has credited her mother with shaping her into the woman she is today

Inspiration: 'I feel as though all of my good qualities, all of my success even, are due to my upbringing,' Sylvia has said of her mother

'I feel as though all of my good qualities, all of my success even, are due to my upbringing,' she told the publication.

Last year Sylvia also honoured her former co-host Lisa Wilkinson calling her a 'powerful' woman after her defection from Channel Nine to Channel Ten over an alleged pay dispute with her co-host Karl Stefanovic.

In love: Sylvia poses with her husband Peter Stefanovic whom she married in 2017

The morning after Lisa's resignation, Sylvia praised the long-standing host in a heartfelt speech on-air.

'Here is the thing, seeing is believing for young girls and for young women. And what they see in Lisa is a strong, influential, fun and compassionate woman at the very, very top of her game and that is a very powerful thing,' she said.
She was selected to represent Australian feminism as part of US toymaker Mattel's 'Shero' female hero range.

And Bindi Irwin says she's 'honoured' to have been included in the exclusive 17-doll Barbie collection released this week.

The 19-year-old Wildlife Warrior told her followers on Instagram: 'I am truly honoured to be part of the Barbie family, celebrating International Womens Day.'

'This is such a special recognition': Wildlife warrior Bindi Irwin, 19, is 'honoured' to feature in Barbie's exclusive 'Shero' range for International Women's Day

Bindi shared a picture of her one-of-a-kind doll, which is dressed in her signature khaki look, with a friendly koala on her arm.

Bindi continued the post: 'This day encourages us all to reflect on the impact women have had on shaping the world we live in today.'

Gushing about her inclusion in the exclusive range, she continued: 'This is such a special recognition of women and girls who are making a difference.'

Bindi the Barbie! Bindi shared a picture of her one-of-a-kind doll, which is dressed in her signature khaki look, with a friendly koala on her arm

'It is so important to empower girls': Bindi also told the Herald-Sun she was pleased to be recognised and wanted more women to 'believe in their strength to make positive change in the world'

Bindi told the Herald-Sun in a statement on Wednesday: 'It is so important to empower girls and women to believe in their strength to make positive change in the world.'

'Together we can make a difference.'

Bindi has been featured in Barbie collections before, however her latest inclusion as part of the 'Shero' female hero range, which represents Australian feminism, is her most significant.

Parents: Bindi is the daughter of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, who tragically died when a stringray barb pierced his heart in 2006

Keeping his legacy going: Since his death Bindi, her brother Robert and their mother Terri have remained dedicated to animal conservation

Bindi is the daughter of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, who tragically died when a stringray barb pierced his heart in 2006.

Since his death Bindi, her brother Robert and their mother Terri have remained dedicated to animal conservation.

Also featured in the 17-doll collection for International Women's Day are Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, Winter Olympian Chloe Kim and Spanish fashion designer Vicky Martin.

Released: Also featured in the 17-doll collection for International Women's Day are Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, Winter Olympian Chloe Kim and Spanish fashion designer Vicky Martin




His beloved sister Connie left him a bucket list before her tragic death in September following a seven-year battle with terminal breast cancer.

And Samuel Johnson has revealed he's channeling his grief into creating 'ambitious' new plans to honour his inspirational sibling's 'legacy'.

The Secret Life Of Us actor, 40, said he has taken Connie's list and is 'shooting way higher', in an emotional Facebook post dedicated to her on Wednesday.

'I'm hatching something so ambitious she would gasp': Samuel Johnson hinted at big plans to honour his beloved sister Connie's 'legacy' six months after her death from breast cancer

The ardent campaigner shared a selfie of himself eating at their favourite Chinese restaurant as he revealed his ideas.

'Me and Con used to love coming to this restaurant for their eggplant chips. It's weird, I didn't intend to come here, I was just walking and I ended up here without meaning to,' he wrote.

'Feels weird without Con but the eggplant chips are very yumbo still. Sorry for being out of touch.'

Samuel, who set up the cancer charity Love Your Sister with Connie, continued: 'I'm finally starting to harness the enormity that is Con's legacy and I'll have more details for you soon.

Sister: The actor, 40, said he has taken Connie's list and is 'shooting way higher', in an emotional Facebook post dedicated to her on Wednesday

'Put it this way - I've taken her list that she left for me and I'm shooting way higher. I'm hatching something so ambitious even she would gasp. More soon.'

Connie was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was just 11 years old. She was diagnosed again at 22, this time with uterine cancer and then at with breast cancer at 33.

She launched Love Your Sister with Samuel after her terminal breast cancer diagnosis and has raised more than $7million so far.

'I think I did most of my grieving before she died,' Samuel recently told ABC's 7.30 Report after her death in September.

Legacy: Samuel, who set up the cancer charity Love Your Sister with Connie, wrote: 'I'm finally starting to harness the enormity that is Con's legacy and I'll have more details for you soon

'I've been grieving for years, since I found out that she was terminal. And she still has her fingerprint all over nearly everything that I do professionally and I pretty much live to work.'

'It's a weird one in a sense, that I don't feel like she's gone yet. So I suppose I'm not grieving typically,' he said.

He added: 'She's in here,' he said, pointing to his head and his heart.

'And - you know, we packed a hell l of a lot into our four stunning decades together and she taught me a lot. So I don't know, I kind of feel like half her still anyway.'

Talking about their charity, Love Your Sister, he said they are hoping to raise $10 million.

Tragic: Connie was diagnosed with bone cancer when she was just 11 years old. She was diagnosed again at 22, this time with uterine cancer and then at with breast cancer at 33

He admitted however that trying to raise money as she was sick, was hard for him to come to terms with.

'Monetising her death was the trickiest part. I have always struggled to monetise her illness let alone her passing. You know, at that point you don't really want to shake the tin, but it was very important that we do that. That was what Connie wanted.'

In May, Connie organised for millions of five-cent coins to be made into a big silver heart for her final cancer fundraiser.
They're starring in the one of Disney's biggest releases this year.

And Reese Witherspoon, 41, Oprah Winfrey, 64, and Mindy Kaling, 38, looked every inch the movies stars as they were spotted in New York City together on Wednesday.

The gorgeous trio commanded attention on the red carpet for the special screening of A Wrinkle In Time hosted by O, The Oprah Magazine.

Terrific trio: Reese Witherspoon, 41, Oprah Winfrey, 64, and Mindy Kaling, 38, looked every inch the movies stars as they were spotted in New York City together on Wednesday

Daring to impress, Reese looked pretty as a petal in a black and white floral patterned dress.

Her delicate decolletage was thrust on center stage as the couture dress boasted a plunging neckline.

She stomped the red carpet in a pair of silver high heels as she went with nary an accessory albeit a few rings were spotted.

Her trademark golden tresses were left long and loose as she swept them to the side allowing her youthful face to shine.

Flower power: Daring to impress, Reese looked pretty as a petal in a black and white floral patterned dress

Delicate: Her delicate decolletage was thrust on center stage as the couture dress boasted a plunging neckline

Bust a move: Reese danced with co-star Storm Reid on the red carpet

Arrival: Reese arrived wearing a big black overcoat to shield herself from the rain

Throwing caution to the wind, the Sweet Home Alabama star went virtually makeup free with just a dab of berry lip.

Business mogul Oprah chose a black, grey, and white striped sweater to top the sophisticated look.

She sauntered around the glamorous event in a breezy black skirt that pooled about the floor with a slight train.

Boss: Business mogul Oprah chose a black, grey, and white striped sweater to top the sophisticated look

Hair story: She tied her classic raven locks back in a chic ponytail as a set of retro reading glasses framed her lovely face

Red hot! Mindy was ravishing in red as she swathed her enviable figure in a long sleeved couture gown

Complimenting her natural beauty, the television personality added a slight smokey eye with a punch of purple lip.

She tied her classic raven locks back in a chic ponytail as a set of retro reading glasses framed her lovely face.

Mindy was ravishing in red as she swathed her enviable figure in a long sleeved couture gown.

Star power: Storm Reid and Ava DuVernay joined the gals

Secrets: The ladies conversed with laughs and surprises

A fashion forward set of tan high heels set off the classic look as she added a pair of dangle drop earrings.

The Office star and The Mindy Project creator rocked a classic soft side part for her sensational hairstyle.

A Wrinkle in Time is based on the fantasy novel written by Madeleine L'Engle.

Glamour girls: Ashley Graham was stunning as well

Rock it: Alysia Reiner from Orange Is The New Black showcased her fabulous figure in a black lingerie bodice number

The Disney film also stars Michael Pena, Chris Pine, Bellamy Young, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis and Levi Miller.

In the movie, a young girl named Meg gets sent to space to look for her father by three peculiar beings. Meg is played by Storm Reid and the three beings are played by Mindy, Oprah, and Reese.

Meanwhile, the celebrities came out for the star-studded affair as Colin Kaepernick and Nessa Diab tackled the red carpet.

Floral delight: Storm was adorable in a simple floral dress

Gangs all here! Ashley, Gayle King, Rachael Ray and Adam Glassman were a gorgeous foursome as they posed together

Storm Reid was adorable in a simple floral dress.

The director of the film, Ava DuVernay, was a vision in white as she donned a simply yet chic embroidered gown.

Alysia Reiner from Orange Is The New Black showcased her fabulous figure in a black lingerie bodice number.

Ashley Graham, Gayle King, Rachael Ray and Adam Glassman were a gorgeous foursome as they posed together.

Back in black: Gugu Mbatha-Raw stunned in a black dress

Star-studded: Everyone looked on point

Promo tour: Oprah was spotted en route to GMA earlier in the day
She just revealed a new ring on her wedding finger bearing her boyfriend's initials.

But conveniently for Kylie Jenner, her best friend just so happens to use the same letters.

The 20-year-old killed the marriage rumors as soon as she started them on Snapchat on Wednesday when she shared a picture of the JW jewelry.

'Jacques Webster & Jordyn Woods': Kylie Jenner has revealed the new JW ring on her wedding finger is dedicated to her BFF and not just her beau

'Jacques Webster & Jordyn Woods. Real Ones, Ok...' she captioned the post.

Jacques Webster is name her babbydaddy Travis Scott was born under.

Kylie and Travis were spotted on a handful of dates in Miami over the weekend, their first outings since the birth of their daughter Stormi last month.

It wasn't all pleasure for the young couple though; the rapper had some business to attend to also in the form of a couple of gigs.

Mom: Kylie and Travis were spotted on a handful of dates in Miami over the weekend, their first outings since the birth of their daughter Stormi last month

Real name: Jacques Webster is name her babbydaddy Travis Scott was born under

The JW crew was in full force in Florida, as pal Jordyn was also there hanging out.

After welcoming their first child last month Travis gifted Kylie a push present of a $1.4 million Ferrari.

The couple are not rumored to be planning a wedding however, as a source told People: 'Despite being new parents, Kylie and Travis are still in a new relationship too. Kylie is happy with their living situation,

'Travis is a great dad. When he wants to work, Kylie is supportive.'

Mom Kris Jenner is expecting a total of three new grandbabies in a cluster, with Kim Kardashian having recently given birth to daughter Chicago, ad Khloe expecting yet another girl any day now.
He's the radio shock jock whose style of comedy often raise eyebrows.

And on Wednesday Kyle Sandilands was at it again when he stopped a news segment to do his impersonation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The 44-year-old had co-host Jackie O and the rest of the studio in stitches as he put on a voice and pretended to be the supreme leader of the communist state.

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'Hello, it Kim Jung-un!' Shock jock Kyle Sandilands interrupts news segment for an eyebrow-raising impersonation of the North Korean leader

As news reader Brooklyn read a bulletin item about North Korea willing to go into talks with the US in regards to nuclear weapons, Kyle saw the opportunity to show off his impersonation.

He was quick to jump into his read with a a crackling sound effect in the background, pretending to be an international call from the leader.

'Hello, hello, it Kim Jung-un. I give all nuclear weapon to the round eye. I sorry I didn't mean to. Silly round I think we give all of them we only give five, we got fifty (sic.)'

Kyle's acquired comedy style: The 44-year-old had co-host Jackie O and the rest of the studio in fits of laughter as he put on a voice and pretended to be the supreme leader of the communist state (pictured)

'That big red-headed orange-faced idiot he believe everything we say (sic),' he added, referring to US President Donald Trump.

With the crackling fading in and out, Kyle continued to do the voice, joking that had couldn't talk for long because adoring crowds outside waiting to do a parade for him.

'Like Kyle and Jackie O. Now you know what I feel like why I have parade all the time. Cause it feel good, everyone waving and dancing for you (sic),' he continued.

Meanwhile, Jackie chimed in saying: 'Yeah, we experienced that on the Mardi Gras float.'

In fits of laughter: The blonde beauty cackled in the background as her co-host showed off his hilarious impression

'Yeh I loved it. I even said to Jackie now I know how Kim Jung-un feels,' Kyle quipped.

Fans of the radio veteran loved the hilarious clip, including one who wrote: '[This] made me laugh this morning... and still now when I hear it again.'

'I seriously end up crying with laughter whenever he does this impression, its soooo funny,'

Meanwhile a parent shared: 'Pmsl. Driving the kids to school and we didn't stop laughing. Thank you Kyle you are a classic.'
She's no stranger to sharing a throwback snap or two capturing her idyllic upbringing in New South Wales' Snowy Mountains.

And Samantha Armytage was up to her old tricks on Thursday, as she posted a snap with a group of girlfriends to celebrate International Women's Day.

The Sunrise host, 41, showed off her glowing complexion as she posed in a white vest top and skirt with five of her closest school mates.

Throwing it back: Samantha Armytage glows in throwback snap to celebrate International Women's Day snap as she reflects on past 'bad hairdos and fashion choices' (pictured, right, in 2017)

Boasting a glowing tan, the presenter still rocked her trademark perfectly coiffed blonde blow dry.

She captioned the sweet snap: 'A school mate sent me this flashback this morning as a on #internationalwomensday.

'Heres to female friendships that last through the decades!!! And survive bad hairdos, fashion choices, many secrets & photo trains #loveyougirls.'

And perhaps relating to her questionable fashion choices, she previously shared a snap of herself in baggy 'mom' jeans and a bright red Western shirt.

Cute: In tribute to International Women's Day, she wrote: 'Heres to female friendships that last through the decades!!! And survive bad hairdos, fashion choices, many secrets & photo trains #loveyougirls'

Oh dear! And perhaps relating to her questionable fashion choices, she previously shared a snap of herself in baggy 'mom' jeans and a bright red Western shirt from 1994 when she was 16

In the image, which was taken in 1994 when Sam was just 16, the now successful TV host also rocked a heavy belt around her waist and a bandana tied around her neck.

'(Ugly) blast from the past... Riss, Jane & I before an exeat from boarding school (#1994) to go to the Garth Brooks concert. Nb the kerchiefs & the 90's jeans,' she wrote in an accompanying caption.

The bubbly blonde makes no secret of being a country girl at heart, having grown up on a sheep & cattle property near Adaminaby in the NSW Snowy Mountains.

Her father was the manager of the estate named Bolaro Station and even though her parents have moved to Wagga Wagga since, Sam still has fond memories of growing up there.

The breakfast host previously spoke fondly of growing up in the country-side during an interview with The Canberra Times.

'My first love': In another snap, she was seen feeding her horse Cinnamon who she won in a raffle while growing up on a sheep property in New South Wales' Snowy Mountains

'We lived there for 25 years, so my whole childhood was Adaminaby and then I did year 7 and 8 in Cooma and then I went away to boarding school in Sydney in year 9.'

She then confessed: 'But Bolaro, I know every inch of that property, it was my home. And I love it, I miss it.'

Sam's flair for fashion has certainly evolved over the years, with the star's regular stunning red carpet appearances.
There are plenty of feuds and rivalries on My Kitchen Rules this season.

And on Thursday's show, Suong stormed off set in tears, after a clash with Georgie and Alicia.

Suong accused the girls of strategic judging during the elimination cook-off, with the women having a fight at the dinner table.

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'I don't want to be on this table anymore!' My Kitchen Rules star Suong (seen) STORMS OFF set in tears after a fiery clash with rivals Georgie and Alicia

'I don't want to be on this table anymore,' Suong said, as she stormed off after the exchange.

It happened after the main dishes of lamb and pasta were served.

Group one's Josh and Nic went head-to-head with group two's 'defence force foodies' Matt and Aly, in the cook-off.

Strategic? Alicia and Georgie (seen) - who are in group two - claimed the pasta of the boys was unimpressive and needed salt, yet ate the whole dish, but said they loved the lamb of Matt and Aly, which many thought wasn't enjoyable

Over it! 'Seriously, the plate is all gone and you are saying they didn't do the pasta well?,' Suong - of group one - said to the girls

Alicia and Georgie - who are in group two - claimed the pasta of the boys was unimpressive and needed salt, yet ate the whole dish, but said they loved the lamb of Matt and Aly, which many thought wasn't enjoyable.

'Seriously, the plate is all gone and you are saying they didn't do the pasta well?,' Suong - of group one - said to the girls.

Alicia hit back, saying: 'Just because we ate it all doesn't mean we think it was a good dish. We ate it because we were hungry!'

Tasty: Seen is the pasta dish

Showdown: Group one's Josh and Nic went head-to-head with group two's 'defence force foodies' Matt and Aly (seen)

'I definitely think there is a lot of strategies going around. I'm really disappointed,' Suong said, about the division between the two MKR groups.

The boys served an Italian menu, making tripe for entree, a mushroom pasta for main and tiramisu for dessert.

Matt and Aly made chicken liver parfait for entree, a lamb rack for dessert and a chocolate, fig and hazelnut cake for dessert.

Matt and Aly were eliminated after failing to impress, scoring 83 points on the night, while Nic and Josh scored 141 points.
She promoted her MDNA beauty line alongside Kim Kardashian the night before.

And Madonna teased a skincare collaboration with the reality star's KKW brand via a racy Instagram video on Wednesday.

The 59-year-old pop legend posted a black and white clip flashing risque images as she captioned it: 'When Worlds Collide.

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Big business: Madonna, 59, teased a skincare collaboration with Kim Kardashian's KKW brand via a racy Instagram video on Wednesday

The video opens on the back of the Like A Virgin songstress' head as she walks down a hallway.

Suddenly a flash of the queen of pop in a racy lingerie ensemble writhing around the floor appears as she is joined by what appears to be Kim.

Then a white title of #MDNAmeetsKKW appears over the images of the two lovely ladies continuing down a hallway.

The quick teaser ends with another flash of the Material Girl wearing a bondage wardrobe as 'Coming Soon' flashes on screen.

Colliding: The pop legend posted a black and white clip flashing risque images as she captioned it: 'When Worlds Collide

Autuer: The video opens on the Like A Virgin songstress as she walks down a hallway

The two powerhouses joined forces on Tuesday night at YouTube Space in Los Angeles to promote their respective beauty lines, MDNA Skin and KKW Beauty.

During the 30-minute Q & A, Madonna detailed the ingredients for her four-in-one product, the Reinvention Cream.

'Weve been able to extract the stem cells from this plant and put them in this all-in-one cream,' she explained.

Writhing: Suddenly a flash of the queen of pop in a racy lingerie ensemble writhing around the floor appears as she is joined by what appears to be Kim

Tease: The quick teaser ends with another flash of the Material Girl wearing a bondage wardrobe as 'Coming Soon' flashes on screen

Afterwards, they snapped several selfies and posted them online.

Madonnas skincare line has been available in Asia since 2014, but can now be found in the United States exclusively at Barney's.

There are six main products along with a few accessories - including rose water cleanser - as prices range from $50 to $600.

Renowned dermatologist Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank was a consultant on the line and gabbed a bit to W about his superstar client.

'Madonna is dedicated to skincare and her routine of sun avoidance, her own products, regular oxygen and LED light facials, and, most importantly, staying positive and happy. All of these things have a dramatic effect on the aging process.'

Powerhouses: The two powerhouses joined forces on Tuesday night at YouTube Space in Los Angeles to promote their respective beauty lines, MDNA Skin and KKW Beauty
He emerged last month as an unlikely candidate for Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

And Sam Newman didn't take too kindly to being questioned about a run for office on Thursday.

During an appearance on KIIS 101.1's Jase & PJ, The Footy Show host told host Jase Hawkins to 'f**k off' when he raised the subject, much to the shock of his co-host, PJ Harding.

'Don't speak again to me!' Sam Newman tells radio host to 'f**k off' after he questioned The Footy Show star's plan to become mayor of Melbourne ... but is it all as it seems?

Sam and Jase had decided to prank PJ by pretending to fight during the TV personality's interview on their radio show.

Sam appeared convincingly tense as Jase began questioning him about his experience for the mayor role.

'Do you think that is a concern you becoming mayor when you don't know actually how it works to become mayor?' Jase inquired.

Playing the part: Sam and Jase had decided to prank PJ by pretending to fight during the TV personality's interview on their radio show

'Do you think that is a concern you becoming mayor when you don't know actually how it works to become mayor?' Jase began questioning him about his experience for the mayor role

Sniffing, Sam replied: 'Well mate, I haven't been to the moon either, but I know it is there, so what has that got to do with it?'

'I just meant, ah ...' Jase tried to explain before Sam interrupted: 'Well what did you mean?'

Raising his voice, Sam questioned whether Jase had been trying to make him look bad on purpose.

'I am just amused by, is this a hacket [job], have you got me in here to ... ' The Footy Show host asked.

Not happy! Sam questioned whether Jase had been trying to make him look bad on purpose

What happened? Jase's co-host PJ had sat there in shock, surprised at Sam's fiery response to her colleague

Trying to reason with him, Jase assured him it wasn't the case and said he would happily support Sam's political run.

'I'd vote for you Sam, do you want my vote?' He asked timidly.

'No,' Sam fired back. 'As a matter of fact don't speak again to me alight?'

'Is it the mayor thing?' Jase replied.

'No it's you, you've ticked me off,' Sam shot back.

'[Sam] is frightening': Jase said he had been intimidated by Sam's pretend fighting

'Would you like me to wait outside Sam?' Jase awkwardly suggested, to which Sam replied: 'I would ... F**k off!'

During the exchange Jase's co-host PJ had sat there in shock, surprised at Sam's fiery response to her colleague.

But her response turned to laughter when Jase and Sam revealed it had all been a very convincing prank.

'Thank you very much for coming in, sorry it has gone very awkward - it is a stitch up, he is in on it,' Jase confessed.

'[Sam] is frightening.'
She spent the first two years of marriage separated from husband Luke Hunt while he was in prison.

And on Thursday, Samantha Harris celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary, in a sweet post shared to Instagram.

The 27-year-old uploaded an image of herself embracing her man, captioned in part: 'Love you.'

'Love you': Model Samantha Harris, 27, celebrated four years of marriage with husband Luke Hunt in an Instagram post on Thursday, after sharing the couple's baby plans

Samantha's photo saw the model embracing Luke in front of a stunning beach view.

Both wearing winter layers, the couple beamed for the picture-perfect snap.

Samantha captioned the post: 'Celebrating 4yrs of marriage today with this cutie Love you @luke_hunt can't wait to see you tomorrow.'

'I'm very happy!' The sweet sentiment comes after the beauty revealed to Daily Mail Australia in January this year, that her future with Luke looks bright

The sweet sentiment comes after the beauty revealed to Daily Mail Australia that her future with Luke looks bright.

While promoting her role as Priceline sister in January this year, Sam gushed: 'I'm very happy!'

Samantha opened up on her marriage to Luke, saying: 'No [plans for] babies at the moment, but things are going really well, so [I'm] very happy.'

The Indigenous star secretly married Luke in 2014, two months before he began serving a a prison sentence for his involvement in a fatal car crash that killed a 78-year-old man.

Luke was behind the wheel in a tragic accident that killed grandfather Kenneth Lay in May 2012.

Content: Samantha opened up on her marriage to Luke, telling Daily Mail Australia: 'No [plans for] babies at the moment, but things are going really well, so [I'm] very happy'

The couple's Commodore crashed into Kenneth's Hyundai Lantra in Narraweena, on the Northern Beaches, when Luke was driving above the speed limit and changing lanes.

Samantha only revealed they were wed in April 2016, after her husband had finished serving his term out of respect for the crash victim's family.

Samantha rose to fame after placing second in Girlfriend magazine's model search in 2004.

She has since gone on to feature in campaigns for David Jones and Miu Miu, along with her ambassador role for Priceline Pharmacy.
Kate Bosworth has confirmed she will star as Manson Family victim Sharon Tate in yet another movie about the slain actress.

Kate, 35, who is ten years older than Sharon was when she was murdered, will be directed in the movie Tate by her husband Michael Polish.

Unlike a film starring Hilary Duff as Sharon and Quentin Tarantino's planned movie about Manson with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, Kate's project has the blessing of the star's sister Debra Tate.

Planning a biopic: Kate Bosworth has confirmed she will star as Manson Family victim Sharon Tate in yet another movie about the slain actress who was killed in 1969

Kate confirmed the news in a tweet on Wednesday, announcing: 'It is my honor to play Sharon Tate in our next film TATE.'

'This picture will only celebrate her life. We will not violate her or exploit her death. It's her time. Thank you Debra Tate for joining us in sharing your sister's life.'

She added in a follow-up tweet: 'I will never be her, but I will give everything I have to honor her.'

Sharon, who was married to director Roman Polanski, was eight months pregnant when she was slain by members of Manson's cult in 1969.

'This picture will only celebrate her life. We will not violate her or exploit her death,' Kate said on social media about her film abut Sharon

Confirmation: Kate, 35, took to Twitter to announce the news and share that Sharon's sister Debra Tate is serving as a producer and has given her blessing to the film

Respectful: She promised that her movie will only 'honor' Sharon who was 26 and eight months pregnant when she was murdered

Collaboration: The film titled Tate is to be directed by Kate's husband Michael Polish, 47. The couple are seen in New York on Tuesday night

Debra Tate, who was 16 when her sister was killed, will serve as a producer on Kate's movie.

The 65-year-old told People that she approves of the film because 'it has nothing to do with Sharons death.'

'Theyre telling her story as a woman aside from the murders. Kate is going to capture Sharons heart, feeling and attitude,' she explained.

Devastating: Sharon was married to film director Roman Polanski and was slain along with several others by followers of cult leader Charles Manson

Debra Tate has previously criticized a film about Sharon starring Hilary Duff and plans by Quentin Tarantino to make a movie about Manson, calling the projects 'horrible and crass'

Debra owns the licensing rights to her late sister's image and previously had blasted films seeking to capitalize on the 50th anniversary of her death next year.

'These people are taking horrific situations and making them even more graphic than they were without any concern for the living victims of these crimes and I think thats horrible and crass,' she previously told People.

Sharon's friend Jay Sebring along with Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent were also stabbed at the home of the actress, whose blood was used to write on the walls.

Manson died last November at the age of 83 after being convicted in 1971. His death sentence was commuted to nine lifer sentences after California abolished the death penalty.

Timeline: Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the Manson murders in Los Angeles. He died last November age 83 after being sentenced to nine life sentences after California abolished the death penalty in 1972, a year after his conviction

Meanwhile, Kate and Michael were spotted braving the snow in New York City on Wednesday.

The couple, who wed in 2013, were each dressed for the wintry weather caused by a nor'easter.

And they even managed a change of wardrobe between events as they enjoyed a night out together in the Big Apple.

Big Apple night out: Meanwhile, Kate and Michael were spotted braving the snow in New York City on Wednesday

Wintry weather: The pair were dressed for the nor'easter with Michael, 47, donning dark jeans and a black leather jacket along with a gray woolen scarf wrapped around his neck

Laughing it off: Kate didn't seem to mind the cold and wet as she got a helping hand from a man with an umbrella

Stylish: The Blue Crush star stepped out in skinny jeans tucked into over-the-knee black boots and a pale green bomber jacket over a pale pink sweater

'Twas a dark and stormy night...': The celebrity couple carefully made their way through the slush

Kate started out in skinny jeans tucked into black boots along with a pale pink sweater and a light green bomber jacket.

Michael, 47, was dressed in dark jeans with a black leather biker jacket and a long gray woolen scarf wrapped several times aorund his neck.

Later, the Blue Crush star was seen in a stylish plush brown coat belted at the waist giving herself more protection against the snow.

Bundled up: Later, Kate was seen in a stylish plush brown coat belted at the waist giving herself more protection against the snow
She is famed for her outspoken persona, both on and off screen.

And Laverne Cox injected a hint of glamour to the front row as she attended the Opening Ceremony showcase at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on Wednesday evening.

The Orange Is The New Black star, 45, showcased her toned pins in her form-fitting mini dress, teamed with a chic varsity jacket.

Ruling the FROW: Laverne Cox injected a hint of glamour to the front row at the Opening Ceremony showcase at Disneyland in Anaheim, California on Wednesday evening

The event marked only the second-ever fashion show to take place in the theme park's 53-year history.

Commanding attention in her sizzling attire, the actress flashed a glimpse at her busty cleavage in the low-cut number.

The LGBT activist added to her height in a pair of lace-up boots as she gave her best smoldering gaze to the cameras.

Looking every inch the vixen, Laverne styled her platinum locks into voluminous waves and enhanced her beauty with neutral-toned make-up.

Style savvy: The Orange Is The New Black star, 45, showcased her toned pins in her form-fitting mini dress, teamed with a chic varsity jacket

Wow-factor! The LGBT activist added to her height in a pair of lace-up boots as she gave her best smoldering gaze to the cameras

Star-studded: Laverne was joined by artist Chance The Rapper, who beamed in a sporty Letterman jacket and denim jeans

The leggy star was joined by artist Chance The Rapper at the star-studded event.

Sporting his trademark cap, the Angels hitmaker beamed in a comfy Letterman jacket and denim jeans.

Chance - real name Chancelor Jonathan Bennett, - adhered to his lively personality as he struck an animated pose with Mickey Mouse.

In high spirits: Chance - real name Chancelor Jonathan Bennett, - adhered to his lively personality as he struck an animated pose with Mickey Mouse

Excited: The Angels hitmaker was all smiles as he took a cosy snap with sister duo Chloe X Halle

Tallulah Willis also occupied a front row seat at the southern California theme park's show.

The daughter of Hollywood veterans Bruce Willis and Demi Moore showed off her signature style in a fluffy white jumper and ankle grazing jeans.

Proving to be in the merry spirit, the actress donned Mickey Mouse ears, which she paired with eccentric silver boots.

Laverne recently recalled how important cosmetics were for her self-discovery as a bullied, suicidal boy growing up in the South of America.

Starry: Tallulah Willis also occupied a front row seat at the southern California theme park's show

Chic: The daughter of Hollywood veterans Bruce Willis and Demi Moore showed off her signature style in a fluffy white jumper and ankle grazing jeans

Stand-out! Disney Channel star Olivia Holt stunned in a red cropped jumper and leather trousers

Stylish: The Kickin' It star posed up a storm with singer Sabrina Carpenter

Causal: DJ Diplo went low-key in a paisley-print top and moss green trousers

Style maven: Actress Jamie Chung showcased her chic style in a striped ensemble

The starlet was promoting her new beauty competition Glam Masters at AOL's Build Series Studio in Manhattan last Tuesday.

The Alabama School of Fine Arts grad explained: 'When I started wearing make-up in high school, it was a way for me to announce to the world that I wasn't who they thought I was.'

'This is really who I am and I'm able to express that through make-up, so it's never been a superficial thing. Make-up has always been about self-expression. It's been about integrating my insides and outsides.'

Happy: Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen looked joyful as they posed with Mickey Mouse

Stunning siblings: Model Lucky Blue Smith looked handsome as he attended the event with sister and Instagram star Pyper America Smith

Laverne continued: 'Make-up is not just something that makes you pretty, but it's an art. It's like going to a museum and seeing incredible work at the museum, seeing some of the work inspired by some of the challenges we give our artists.'

The Opening Ceremony presentation was only the second fashion show to take place in the park's 53-year history and kicked off a year-long celebration of Mickey Mouse's 90th birthday.

The Happiest Show On Earth featured the spring collection designed by southern California natives Humberto Leon and Carol Lim.

Leon said: 'Doing something at Disneyland weve dreamed of for years. Growing up, I even made my own Mickey Mouse bow tie and cummerbund for my prom.'

Cosy: Sisters Margaret Qualley and Rainy Qualley looked comfortable as they cuddled on the front row at the show

Eclectic collection: The Opening Ceremony presentation featured a wide range of ensembles and marked only the second time a fashion show has taken place in the park's history
She took the focus off the models on stage earlier in the week, as she graced the FROW at the Louis Vuitton Paris Fashion Week show on Tuesday evening.

But it was back to the States for Chloe Grace Moretz on Wednesday, as she jetted out of France and back to Los Angeles.

The actress, 21, kept it super simple but uber chic as she strutted through the airport all in black.

Got a souvenir? Chloe Grace Moretz wore all-black but stood out from the crowd by toting a 2k Louis Vuitton bag... as she jetted in to LAX after the designer's Paris Fashion Week show

The Carrie star wore a high-necked black sweater, slacks and a trench coat, and black plimsoles - clearly wanting to make a low-key, comfy yet classic appearance on her flight home from Europe.

She injected colour into the look elsewhere, however.

She wore round rose sunglasses and matched this on her lips with a splash of pink gloss.

But the stand out star of the outfit was the iconic Louis Vuitton canvas bag she toted.

Chic: The Carrie star wore a high-necked black sweater, slacks and a trench coat, and black plimsoles - clearly wanting to make a low-key, comfy yet classic appearance on her flight home from Europe

Masters Piece: The Gauguin-inspired bag featured gold Monogram serti, flower shapes, reflective metallic letters and coloured trimmings

From the designer's Masters Collection, the Gauguin-inspired bag featured gold Monogram serti, flower shapes, reflective metallic letters and coloured trimmings.

Chloe wore a statement silver coat when she attended the LV show the evening before in the city of lights.

The metallic garment was embroidered with floral detailing and the elegant attire featured stylish flared sleeves and was set off with a golden, box-shaped clutch bag.

The blonde added a tomboy twist to her attire thanks to a pair of lace-up ankle boots.

Glamorous: The star had jetted off to France just in time to catch the end of Paris Fashion Week, putting in a stylish appearance at the Louis Vuitton show on Tuesday evening

Striking: Chloe ensured she stood out from the crowd thanks to a statement silver coat, the metallic garment embroidered with floral detailing

Natural beauty: Chloe pulled her hair back from her face, showing off her incredible bone structure

She wore her blonde locks pulled back in a braided bun and kept her make-up fresh with winged eyeliner and rosy cheeks.

Chloe has been upping her fashion game of late, no doubt thanks to her boyfriend Brooklyn's famous designer mum Victoria.

Chloe was seen wearing five garments from international fashion designer Victoria's eponymous fashion label at the end of January.

Tomboy twist: The star pulled her look together with a pair of lace-up ankle boots

Pop of colour: Chloe added a slick of blue shadow to make her eyes stand out

Making an exit: Later that night, Chloe was spotted making an exit from the fashion festivities

She noticeably shares Victoria's love of sharp tailoring and feminine details.

Chloe and Brooklyn's love story goes back to 2014 when the couple first set their sights on each other and sparks flew between the lovebirds.

They went onto date again in the summer of 2016 before finally rekindling the flames of their romance in September 2017.

Since announcing they are firmly back together, the pair often pay gushing tributes to one another on social media.
They will be celebrating five years of marital bliss in August.

And Kate Bosworth and husband Michael Polish still looked like they were still in the throes of an early romance as they enjoyed a night out in New York on Wednesday.

Braving the biting and snowy climes, the American actress, 35, showed off her winter style in an oversized brown faux fur jacket as she walked hand-in-hand with her other half.

Kate Bosworth, 35, and husband Michael Polish still looked like they were in the throes of an early romance as they enjoyed a night out in New York on Wednesday

Kate lived up to her style icon status in the statement outerwear which shielded her from the freezing temperatures.

The on-screen star teamed the look with a pair of quirky black heeled boots which boasted golden lining.

She relied on her naturally striking features with a simple coat of make-up, complementing her casually styled blonde locks.

Winter chic: Braving the biting and snowy climes, the American actress showed off her winter style in an oversized brown faux fur jacket as she walked hand-in-hand with her other half

Joining her was husband Michael who put on a super cool display in an edgy biker jacket, which he paired with a black hoodie and dark wash denims.

Keen on switching up her look later on in the evening, Kate traded in her coat for a khaki satin bomber jacket.

The number also offered a glimpse of her lean legs, which were clad in a pair of skinny jeans.

The loved-up pair looked to be in great spirits - despite the snowy weather - as they arrived at the Rag and Bone store in New York.

Quick change: Keen on switching up her look later on in the evening, Kate traded in her coat for a khaki satin bomber jacket

Pins on parade: The number also offered a glimpse of her lean legs, which were clad in a pair of skinny jeans

Last week, the Time's Up activist - who boasts 773K social media followers - shared a behind-the-scenes snap from the set of Edward James Olmos' dark comedy The Devil Has A Name.

'You'll probably see it in 2019,' Bosworth told Boise Weekly on February 28.

'It's a spectacular experience. I'm co-starring with Pablo Schreiber, Alfred Molina, David Strathairn and Martin Sheen. It's a bit of a master class.'

According to Deadline, Kate portrays 'ambitious, arrogant' Shore Oil and Gas regional director Gigi Cutler, whose 'failure to cover up the pollution of the farm has curbed her climb up the corporate ranks.'

Date night: Joining her was husband Michael who put on a super cool display in an edgy biker jacket, which he paired with a black hoodie and dark wash denims

Walking the walk: The on-screen star teamed the look with a pair of quirky black heeled boots which boasted golden lining

The Blue Crush alum will next receive the Pioneer Award at the Sun Valley Film Festival on March 16 for her work producing and starring in Polish's sex-trafficking drama Nona.

Nona marks the showbiz couple's sixth film collaboration together.

'My husband and I heard a story on NPR that spoke to the number of known sex houses in the Los Angeles area,' Kate said of the inspiration.

'It was shocking because some were not so far from our house...It's one of the world's biggest epidemics. For Michael and me, it was important to make a movie that is first and foremost about humanity.'
She famously underwent a breast augmentation after shooting to fame on The Bachelor.

And Keira Maguire recently flaunted the results of her expensive surgery in a raunchy vlogging video for online retailer Showpo.

The 30-year-old, who recently found love with The Bachelorette's Jarrod Woodgate, lifted the lid on her racy wardrobe and talked about wearing lingerie.

Nobody's looking at the dress! The Bachelor's Keira Maguire recently flaunted the results of her expensive surgery in a raunchy vlogging video for online retailer Showpo

In the video, the surgically-enhanced socialite showcased her curves in some plunging outfits and gave viewers a brief tour of the Showpo dressing room.

'You cannot go wrong with a bodysuit and this bodysuit is SO cute,' she exclaims in one scene.

'I'm obsessed with it!' she adds.

Leggy lady: In the video, the surgically-enhanced socialite showcased her curves in some plunging outfits and gave viewers a brief tour of the Showpo dressing room

At one point in the video, a camera with a flattering bright light attached cuts into frame.

Keira later shows off some skimpy lingerie, which includes a sheer bra and a G-string.

'Girls, you've gotta put a little bit of effort in the bedroom,' she says. 'It doesn't matter what day it is, lingerie never goes astray.'

'You cannot go wrong with a bodysuit and this bodysuit is SO cute,' she exclaims in one scene

Is this for Jarrod? Keira later shows off some skimpy lingerie, which includes a sheer bra and matching G-string

The raunchy reality star is currently dating Jarrod Woodgate.

The pair met while filming Channel Ten's upcoming Bachelor spin-off, Bachelor in Paradise, and have been photographed out and about together several times since.

Bachelor in Paradise, which sticks former contestants from the series on an island together, is set to air in the first half of this year.

'Girls, you've gotta put a little bit of effort in the bedroom,' she says. 'It doesn't matter what day it is, lingerie never goes astray'

That's awkward: At one point in the video, a camera with a flattering bright light attached cuts into frame

In the meantime, Keira is working hard on launching her own official website and YouTube channel.

The starlet has previously admitted to having a nose job as well as getting Botox, facials, lip fillers and tattooed eyebrows.

She's estimated to have spent around $35,000 transforming her body and face with multiple surgeries and procedures.
Quite appositely, Veronica, dubbed Netflixs scariest movie ever, came out of nowhere.

The 2017 Spanish film, which is supposedly based on the true events from the 'Vallecas case' in Madrid, received no promotion or fanfare when it was released on the streaming platform at the end of February 2018, but started to get traction after Twitter word-of-mouth.

The Twittersphere is currently full of people saying Veronica was so scary, they couldnt even finish it or are now terrified of being home alone.

But what is Netflixs Veronica movie, whos in it and is it really a true story?

Netflix's Veronica is based on the true story of a police report in the 'Vallecas case' in Madrid

What is Netflixs Veronica movie?

Veronica is a Spanish movie directed by Paco Plaza, a Spanish director who made the [REC] zombie horror movies. Veronica was released in Spain on August 25, 2017 and on Netflix on February 26, 2018.

The movie is set in 1991 Madrid and is based on a true story of teenager Estefania Gutierrez Lazaro, who conducted an Ouija board seance at school and subsequently died after experiencing hallucinations and seizures.

In Veronica, the eponymous heroine is a teenage schoolgirl who takes care of her three younger siblings, while her widowed mother works at a bar.

On the day of the solar eclipse, purportedly a special time for the occult, Veronica and a friend conduct an Ouija board seance in the hope of summoning their dead father and boyfriend respectively.

Unsurprisingly, things dont go according to plan and something other than Veronicas father reaches out and enters her world. Things only escalate from there.

Is Veronica really a true story?

The basis for the movie is a 1991 Spanish police report, in which detectives actually mention experiencing paranormal activity. The case became known as the Vallecas case, due to the neighbourhood in which Lazaro reportedly performed the seance.

The police report is actually real, according to Newsweek, and does mention how police attended Lazaros familys house and witnessed doors and armoires opening inexplicably and the figure of Jesus Christ separating from his crucifix.

However, while the report is real, Newsweek points out that Lazaros family only called the police one year after her death. Lazaro died in hospital in August 1991 and references to ghosts and demonic possessions only began popping up later.

Newsweek concludes that the actual basis for the plot of Veronica is little more than an anecdote.

In an Q&A session at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, which screened Veronica, the director Paco Plaza admitted that the story of the Vallecas case is hugely popular in Spain, but not exactly consistent: In Spain its very popular, this story, because it is, as we say in the film, the only time a police officer has said he has witnessed something paranormal, and its written in a report with an official police stamp.

But I think when we tell something, it becomes a story, even if its in the news. You only have to read the different newspapers to know how different reality is, depending on whos telling it. So I knew we were going to betray the real events. I just wanted to make a whole vision.

Is Veronica Netflixs scariest movie?

Unfortunately, those of you hankering for the fright of your life, it doesnt look like theres a consensus on whether Veronica is the scariest movie right now.

Some say its scary as hell and so terrifying they had to switch it off:

This Veronica movie on Netflix scary as hell  bre (@noigbre2) March 8, 2018

Apparently this Veronica movie that just got added to Netflix is so scary that people arent finishing it. Lovely.  This display name is a Jazze Fizzle Productshizzle (@tryna_be_famous) March 1, 2018

Started watching Veronica on Netflix (huge REC fan so interested in anything Paco Plaza is involved in) but the demon walking down the hallway scene freaked me out so much I had to turn it off... #SuchAWuss pic.twitter.com/4oCcjQUJST  Matt (@weyland76) February 25, 2018

However, others are less affected:

the new veronica movie on netflix was supposedly SO scary that people couldn't even finish watching it? must've been some real weak people cause that movie was defs avg    ciao  (@juvoch) March 1, 2018

That new Veronica movie on Netflix is complete garbage, idk why people are hyping it up  lexi musson (@leximusson) March 8, 2018

Been seeing all the hype about this #Veronica movie on Netflix so Ive decided to give it a shot and I havent been scared once. Am I numb to horror movies at this point?! Why is it so scary to people?  pic.twitter.com/8HiOBtdr3J  Chris (@CdotDeanne) March 3, 2018

Everyone that is dubbing Veronica as "the scariest movie of all time" have definitely never seen any other horror movie ever  lolo (@fleshpillow) March 8, 2018

Veronica movie cast

Sandra Escacena plays Veronica in what is her first feature role. Bruna Gonzalez and Claudia Placer play Veronicas twin siblings and Ivan Chavero plays her brother Antonito.

Consuelo Trujillo plays Sister Death, a blind nun who knows what Veronica did, while Carla Campra plays Veronicas friend Diana.

Veronica trailer

The BFI uploaded a trailer for Veronica in September 2017, and the video has been viewed over a million times.
Having split with Stu Laundy, she's been seen trying to prove that she's just fine on her own.

And other than tripping up a set of yacht steps earlier in the evening, Sophie Monk showed Stu what he's missing as she attended the Virgin Australia Grand Showcase in Melbourne on Thursday night.

The Bachelorette starlet, 37, showcased her trim pins in a colourful, patterned mini-dress, displaying her lean tanned limbs.

Ready to mingle! Sophie Monk showed off her trim pins in a tiny patterned mini-dress... proving the single life suits her well at the Virgin Australia Grand Showcase

The shoulder-less number allowed her to showcase her physique as she posed on her way into the event, before later joining Dannii Minogue for a cuddle and a catch up.

Sophie looked happy and confident as she sauntered into the Showcase on her own, completing the look with a pair of metallic gold pumps.

She swept her blonde mane atop her head and accentuated her look with dangling gold earrings.

She looked naturally bronzed, but added make-up to the look, plumping her pout with a touche of pink lipstick.

Flying solo: Having split with Stu Laundy, she's been seen trying to prove that she's just fine on her own

Confident: Sophie showed Stu what he's missing as she attended the Virgin Australia Grand Showcase in Melbourne on Thursday night

Look who's back: The Bachelorette starlet, 37, showcased her trim pins in a colourful, patterned mini-dress, displaying her lean tanned limbs

The aforementioned yacht incident was documented in an Instagram video captioned 'When you think you own it but you stack' as she de-boarded the boat, dolled up for the event.

The reality star was witnessed narrowly avoiding disaster while exiting a yacht via a set of stairs.

Catastrophe nearly struck when she attempted to cross the gap between the ship and the dock.

Sophie's large stiletto heels couldn't maintain their grip on the slippery boat, causing her to lunge forward dramatically.

Sitting pretty: Sophie looked happy and confident, completing the look with a pair of metallic gold pumps

Golden girl: She swept her blonde mane atop her head and accentuated her look with dangling gold earrings

Luckily, The Bachelorette star landed feet first on the cement jetty below, keeping her balance despite her accelerated entry speed.

It's the second time Sophie has narrowly avoided disaster this month.

The 37-year-old narrowly avoided a wardrobe malfunction in a pair of thigh-skimming shorts at Pedestrian TV's inaugural Pezzys in Sydney last week.

Pals: The shoulderless number allowed her to showcase her physique as she posed on her way into the event, before later joining Dannii Minogue for a cuddle and a catch up.

Secrets: She looked naturally bronzed, but added make-up to the look, plumping her pout with a touche of pink lipstick

Catch up: The ladies were seen speaking animatedly to one another at the party

When called up to accept an award, the newly-single beauty had trouble navigating the stage in her tight outfit.

The outspoken blonde hilariously confessed to the crowd: 'I almost flashed by undies just then, but I think I did well.'

Sophie went on to thank everyone for the award, claiming it meant so much because 'I have never won an Oscar, Logie or ARIA!'

Sadly, one disaster she couldn't avoid was her seemingly inevitable split with Bachelorette winner Stu. The pair confirmed their breakup in January.
Georgia Love put on a very amorous display with her boyfriend Lee Elliott at the VAMFF runway show in Melbourne on Thursday night.

The Bachelorette star, 29, donned a plunging white embellished blouse that offered a glimpse of her cleavage.

She tucked her top into a grey plaid skirt with a very daring thigh split.

Loved up: Georgia Love packed on the PDA with boyfriend Lee Elliott in a plunging white embellished blouse at the VAMFF runway show

The skirt featured a dove grey and pale rose pink checked pattern.

Black ankle boots elongated her frame, while relaxed tresses and an elegant makeup palette finished off the look.

Plumber Lee coordinated with his girlfriend in a white dress shirt, a tailored grey suit jacket and trousers and pristine white sneakers.

Channel 10 roving reporter Georgia had a slightly awkward day on Tuesday, as her former love interest Matty J, who she dumped for Lee on the show finale, went to the same event with his partner Laura Byrne.

Taking the plunge: The brunette journalist wore a plunging white embellished blouse that offered a glimpse of her cleavage

Get a room, guys! Georgia only had eyes for her man, later locking lips

Last month Lee and Georgia made the most of the scorching Sydney sunshine with a sizzling beach date.

Georgia appeared to have dozed off during the outing to Bondi Beach, and her handsome boyfriend didn't waste the opportunity to poke fun at her.

Sharing a selfie where Georgia looked asleep on a towel in the background, a shirtless Lee wrote: 'You snooze you lose.'

Valentine's Day 2018 was a decadent affair for the couple.

Going strong: Georgia gazed affectionately at Lee whom she chose on the grand finale episode of The Bachelorette

Looking good: Georgia accessorised with black ankle boots and a satin clutch

'I had a beautiful Valentine's Day. I planned everything for Lee this year,' Georgia explained previously on her TV news show.

'There's this really cool place in Melbourne. It's a hotel but it's glamping tents on a rooftop in the city.'

The former reality star also admitted that she gifted Lee a weekend away at a winery for Valentine's Day.

Swept away: Georgia tucked her locks behind her ears, drawing attention to an elegant makeup palette

Meanwhile, Lee has taken to Instagram to gush about his other half over the past month.

'Everyone says you only fall in love once but that's not true because every time I see you, I fall in love all over again,' Lee wrote.

Lee even hinted at a more permanent union with Georgia by adding the hashtag #herestothenextfiftyorsixtyyears.

The photo showed the happy couple sitting on a sandstone step in the romantic Italian city of Florence.
Gemma Arterton put on another sartorially astute display as she made an entrance at the Harpers Bazaar lunch at 34 Mayfair to celebrate International Womens Day on Tuesday afternoon.

The British actress, 32, looked typically stylish in a sophisticated black blouse and matching cropped trousers while mingling with guests at the Grosvenor Square event.

Polished dress shoes completed the ensemble, while a distinct lack of accessories served to highlight its simple, understated look.

Looking good: Gemma Arterton put on another sartorially astute display as she made an entrance at the Harpers bazaar lunch to celebrate International Womens Day on Tuesday afternoon

In keeping with its effortless nature, the actress selected her make-up for a soft, natural colour palette that served to accentuate her delicately proportioned features.

Gemma was stepping out after confirming her relationship with Peaky Blinders star Rory Keenan, but she was unaccompanied while attending the event on Thursday.

The former Bond girl is currently working on the TV series of Watership Down and is also getting ready to star in films My Zoe and Summerland in 2018.

Effortless: The British actress, 32, looked typically stylish in a sophisticated black blouse and matching cropped trousers while mingling with guests at the Grosvenor Square event

Say cheese: Gemma was in high spirits as she posed with guests including Anne Jones

But even with the demanding programme the British beauty was not going to miss the premiere of her new film.

Speaking about her time in Hollywood last August, the actress shamed an obese Hollywood producer who previously ordered her to lose weight on a few films.

Gemma revealed that producers flew a personal trainer out to Morocco to ensure she lost weight - and had her filmed in the gym to prove she was exercising - during production of an unnamed title.

Tasteful: The actress selected her make-up for a soft, natural colour palette that served to accentuate her delicately proportioned features (pictured with Justine Picardie)

Happy couple: Gemma was stepping out after confirming her relationship with Peaky Blinders star Rory Keenan (pictured), but she was unaccompanied while attending the event on Thursday

Incredibly, the actress - size 10 at the time - said she was even told she couldnt eat dried apricots by the weighty Hollywood boss.

Gemma revealed: There was one film that I was on and we were out in Morocco and a couple of weeks went past and they literally were like We need a personal trainer - stat.

And they flew someone out overnight that gave up their whole life to be with me and be my personal trainer.

'You know when its like - Is it that f****** bad that I need an emergency... [it was as if they were] like on speed dial - Get that trainer out here now. It was so traumatic at the time.

In good company: (L-R) Caroline Michel, Baroness Martha Lane Fox, Yana Peel, Justine Picardie and Sydney Ingle-Finch also attended the Harper's Bazaar lunch on Thursday afternoon

In attendance: Jessica McCormack and Lucy Beresford (R) and Molly Goddard and Emilia Wickstead (R) let their hair down at the Grosvenor Square event
She celebrated her one year anniversary with boyfriend Levi Meaden in November.

And four months later, Ariel Winter and her actor beau, 30, stepped out to grab supplies from a pet supply shop in Studio City, California.

The 20-year-old actress covered up in black leggings with a Rolling Stones sweater and a Saint Laurent handbag.

Keeping casual: Ariel Winter and her actor beau Levi Meaden stepped out to grab supplies from a pet supply shop in Studio City, California

The Modern Family star kept her ensemble low key, opting simple black bottoms with her gray, red and white Rolling Stones sweater.

She slung her $1,650 Saint Laurent Monogram Chain Wallet in black and gold across her body.

The brunette finished off her casual ensemble with studded earrings and a pair of Yeezy Boost 350 sneakers.

Ariel styled her long brunette tresses loose with a center part, opting for sheer red glossed lips and a touch of shimmer on her lids.

Staying close: The 20-year-old actress covered up in black leggings with a Rolling Stones sweater and a Saint Laurent handbag while out with her 30-year-old actor beau

Heaidng home: The Modern Family star kept her ensemble low key, opting simple black bottoms with her gray, red and white Rolling Stones sweater

Ariel carried a box of pet supplies as well as her Smart phone while Levi held tight to a water and their Subway lunch.

Their outing comes one day after spending time in Arizona on a ATV tour.

The star showed off her derriere - which featured a large hand print - while posing on the Desert Wolf Tour Tomcar.

She was joined by her boyfriend and two pals for the tour, which took place in the Sonoran Desert in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Sultry: Their outing comes one day after spending time in Arizona on a ATV tour

Strike a pose: She was joined by her boyfriend and two pals for the tour, which took place in the Sonoran Desert in Scottsdale, Arizona.

On November 11, Ariel celebrated her one year anniversary with Levi with a heartfelt post on her Instagram account.

The TV actress gushed in the lengthy caption: 'I'm the luckiest girl in the entire world. Thank you for being the incredible man you are, and for making me the happiest I could've ever imagined. Here's to many, many more.'

Ariel added a photo of her holding her beau's face while dress in a revealing black bodysuit with a sheer skirt.

Happy duo: On November 11, Ariel celebrated her one year anniversary with Levi with a heartfelt post on her Instagram account
He has previously referenced his teen daughter Sofia's romance with much older Scott Disick, 34, as 'just a phase.'

And it has now been claimed Lionel Richie, 68, banned the American reality star from joining his 19-year-old other half in attending his Hand and Footprint Ceremony in Hollywood on Wednesday.

'It's no secret how Lionel feels about Scott, he doesn't like that they are together,' a source told The Sun, before reportedly confessing that bad boy Disick wasn't someone he envisioned for his daughter.

He doesn't approve! It's been claimed Lionel Richie, 68, banned his daughter Sofia's boyfriend Scott Disick, 34, in attending his Hand and Footprint Ceremony in Hollywood on Wednesday

Speaking to the publication, it was claimed by the source that Lionel didn't approve of Sofia's romance with the father-of-three.

'Scott has so much baggage AND went to rehab. Who wants that for their teen daughter?

'He banned her from bringing him with her to the hand and footprint ceremony,' it was continued.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Lionel and Scott for further comment.

Not happy: Lionel also reportedly confessed that bad boy Disick wasn't someone he envisioned for his daughter

'He has so much baggage AND went to rehab': It was also claimed by the source that Lionel didn't approve of Sofia's romance with the father-of-three

Not happy: This comes after Lionel dismissed his daughter Sofia's relationship with Scott as 'just a phase' during an interview with The Daily Telegraph

This comes after Lionel dismissed his daughter Sofia's relationship with Scott as 'just a phase' during an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile, while there may have been tension brewing behind the scenes, on the surface everything looked to be spectacular as Lionel left his imprints in cement outside of the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood surrounded by family on Wednesday.

Sat beside Sofia was her father's girlfriend Lisa Parisa, her brother Miles, 23 and sister Nicole, 36.

Nicole also brought musician husband Joel Madden, 38, along to the event.

Lionel said of the honour: 'Oh my God, this is absolutely incredible! This is my Hollywood dream come true. Of all the Hollywood awards, this is the one I can share with the public forever.'

Family time: Despite her beau allegedly being banned, Sofia supported dad Lionel at his Hand and Footprint Ceremony in Hollywood along with her sister Nicole on Wednesday

Family affair: Sofia sat beside Lionel's girlfriend Lisa Parisa, brother Miles, 23 and sister Nicole, 36

Significant other: A super stylish Nicole was joined by husband Joel, 38 at the event

Lionel said of the honour: 'This is my Hollywood dream come true. Of all the Hollywood awards, this is the one I can share with the public forever'

The handprints ceremony is a Hollywood tradition that has seen the likes of Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Quentin Tarantino, Jennifer Lawrence and Jane Fonda leave their mark on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, it was reported last week that Scott is still insanely jealous of ex-girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian's boyfriend Younes Bendjima, 24.

'He just can't come to terms with the fact that Kourtney has found true happiness with someone else.' a source told E!.

'Kourtney never knows when he is going to fly off the handle or go nuts about something,' the source said.

Cool couple: Nicole donned a floral maxi dress and fur jacket for the occasion while Joel was dressed in all black

Loved up: Lisa looked chic in a white jumpsuit with gold detail

By his side: The music icon was surrounded by family at the ceremony

'Scott just never thought it would last this long with Younes or become so serious. Nobody really did.'

The insider claimed it was difficult for Scott to keep his emotions in check regarding the matter.

'He can't control his emotions about it and lets it all out.'

Kourtney and Scott were together for nine years and have sons Mason, eight, Reign, three, and daughter Penelope, five, together.

Cheering: Sofia declared her pride via Instagram




She filmed the last episode in season nine of Modern Family on Wednesday.

So Sofia Vergara and her husband Joe Manganiello may have been having their own private wrap party that evening when they were spotted leaving celebrity haunt Mastro's in Beverly Hills.

The couple were very casually dressed as they made their way out of the restaurant to their car.

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Out on the town: Sofia Vergara held husband Joe Manganiello's hand as they left celebrity haunt Mastro's in Beverly Hills on Wednesday night

The 45-year-old Colombian star donned a grey satin wrap jacket tied tightly to accentuate her tiny waist, which she paired with very ripped, cropped jeans.

She held her hunky husband's hand as she tottered along on terrifyingly high platform sandals in co-ordinating cream.

The beautiful brunette's hair cascaded over her shoulders and she slung a light brown padded handbag over one arm.

Joe, 41, was equally dressed down in a brown leather jacket, pale blue collarless shirt, dark blue distressed jeans and well-worn brown boots.

Their own private party: The 45-year-old Modern Family star may have been celebrating the wrap of season 9 of the hit ABC sitcom

Keeping it low key: The beautiful brunette and her hunky 41-year-old husband were both casually dressed for their dinner

The True Blood star, who also appears as Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, in the DC Comics film franchise, looked handsome with his dark hair closely cropped and his beard and mustache neatly trimmed.

Sofia is evidently missing her Modern Family cast already as she shared two snaps and a 15-second video clip on Instagram on Wednesday.

The first shows her onscreen son Joe, played by six-year-old Jeremy Maguire, hugging a green plush dinosaur that's nearly as big as he is.

Sharing the news: Earlier in the day Sofia, who plays Gloria, posted this cute snap of her TV son Joe, played by Jeremy Maguire, six, captioned, 'Last episode!! Modern Family season 9!!'

'Just another day at work'! Sofia smiled in the second snap sshowing cantily clad male fairy tale characters dancing on tables at what appears, strangely, to be a children's party

Sofia, who plays Gloria, captioned the cute snap: 'Last episode!! Modern Family season 9!!'

In the second snap, scantily clad male fairy tale characters dance on tables at what appears, strangely, to be a children's party.

Smiling at the camera as she sat at a table, Sofia captioned the snap: 'Just another day at work #modernfamily.'

The actress also shared an Instagram video taken by co-star Eric Stonestreet of the Modern Family cast having their hair and make-up done with the Brooks & Dunn hit You're Gonna Miss Me playing in the background.

She captioned it: 'We r going to miss u Modern Familyyyyy last episode season9!!!! @ericstonestreet' with hearts and sad face emojis.

Modern Family has seven more shows to air before returning for season 10 later this year, which will likely be its last co-creator Steven Levitan dished in August.
She wowed the audience with her nimble moves on Strictly Come Dancing - and Caroline Flack proved she's still got what it takes when it comes to flexibility.

Hanging around behind the scenes of a fashion shoot on Thursday, the TV presenter, 38, gave Victoria Beckham a run for her money by sticking her leg up in the air.

Looking like it was the easiest thing in the world, Caroline captioned the image simply, with the words: 'Flexi friend by @mrvermaak.'

Behind the scenes: Caroline Flack shared a picture of herself posing with her leg up in the air on Instagram on Thursday, showing her flexibility

The health and fitness fanatic looked incredible, following her recent trip to the Body Camp in Osea Island.

She wore a pair of tiny denim hotpants with a spangly gold knitted halter neck top.

With her hair styled into pretty curls and perfectly applied make-up, Caroline was more than ready for her close-up.

'Right back at you!' Victoria Beckham, 43, originally posed in such a manner on Instagram and it's become rather iconic

'Victoria I'll call you back': Kourtney Kardashian, 38, appeared to 'mock' Posh Spice as she recreated Victoria's signature leg pose in a cheeky Instagram post

Seen that before! Victoria is known for showcasing the yoga move, having done so in a slew of hilarious posts shared to her own Instagram page in the last year

Showing her sense of humour: Throwing her leg high into the air while supposedly chilling, Victoria previously joked last year that her flexibility was all had been thanks to ballet classes

She also wore a pair of pastel-coloured platform heels which added some height to her petite frame.

Caroline shared an Instagram story of some other moments behind the scenes, writing: 'Big shoot today. Feeling nervous/excited/weird.'

However, she didn't give too much else away.

Blossoming romance: Caroline and her new boyfriend, CBB star Andrew Brady have been sharing a slew of loved-up snaps on social media

She did share a short video of herself wearing her denim cut-offs with a simple grey T-shirt, writing the word: 'Basic' over the top.

Caroline has lots to smile about at the moment after revealing she is romancing CBB star Andrew Brady.

The couple have shared pictures of themselves kissing on social media, with Caroline even changing her profile picture to that on her Facebook profile.
She was slammed on social media after Crackin' On viewers branded her romance with Chris Hughes as 'toxic'.

But Olivia Attwood put the drama behind her when she made an incredibly trendy appearance in Leicester Square, London on Thursday, attending the Alex Silver PR's Annual Mothers Day Pamper Party at Cafe de Paris.

The Love Island star, 26, brushed off the bitter remarks as she put the focus on her tremendous pins in her thigh-grazing dress and thigh-high stiletto boots.

Love (Island) the drama: Olivia Attwood showed off her lengthy legs in a tiny dress and thigh-high boots when she stepped out in London on Thursday after facing backlash for her new show Crackin' On

Olivia pulled off an incredibly sexy look in the little black number which featured a shirt-style collar and cuffs for a classic look.

Recognised for her golden mane on Love Island's 2017 series, the reality star let her blonde locks tumble down her shoulders to draw attention to her slender frame.

The Crackin' On star brought a pop of colour to her all-black ensemble with a soft pink handbag which she slung over her right shoulder.

Pin-credible looks: It is no surprise the blonde bombshell led the glamour at the glitzy Annual Mothers Day Pamper Party at Cafe de Paris as she is a regular on the showbiz circuit

Moving on: The Love Island star, 26, brushed off the bitter remarks as she put the focus on her tremendous pins in her thigh-grazing dress and thigh-high boots

It is no surprise the blonde bombshell led the glamour at the glitzy Annual Mothers Day Pamper Party at Cafe de Paris as she is a regular on the showbiz circuit.

Olivia was flying solo on her outing which comes just three weeks after her split from her Love Island ex Chris Hughes, before their reality show even had a chance to air.

Despite having a passionate romance and frequent fiery spats, the exes are said to have remained friendly and watched the first episode of the show together.

She's so stylish: Olivia pulled off an incredibly sexy look in the little black number which featured a shirt-style collar and cuffs for a classic look

Gorgeous girl: Recognised for her golden mane on Love Island's 2017 series, the reality star let her blonde locks tumble down her shoulders to draw attention to her slender frame

Hot on arrival! Olivia shunned public transport when she touched down at the glitzy event in style thanks to her black taxi

Insiders: A source close to Chris told The Sun : 'They really wanted to watch the first episode together as it was their show as a couple

Close:A source close to Chris told The Sun : 'They really wanted to watch the first episode together as it was their show as a couple

A source close to Chris told The Sun: 'They really wanted to watch the first episode together as it was their show as a couple.

'Theyre still very close and although they chose not to promote the series together they have remained friends.

'Their relationship is still over  though friends predict they will get back together at some point.'

Posing up a storm: Feeling the summer vibe, she stripped off her trendy jacket and carried it when she headed out into the streets of London

Cheeky! The stunning reality star posed up a storm in the swanky venue, which is no surprise as she proved she was a natural poser while filming the reality series Love Island in 2017

Riding solo: Olivia was flying solo on her outing which comes just three weeks after her split from her Love Island ex Chris Hughes, before their reality show even had a chance to air

The former flames were joined by their Love Island pals Amber Davies and Montana Brown so that the arguing scenes weren't tense, according to the insider.

But fans witnessed Olivia and Chris' dysfunctional relationship first hand on Wednesday, during the debut of their now-shortened series Crackin' On.

Viewers immediately took to Twitter to blast their 'bitter' and 'horrible' romance after the couple endured a string of arguments during the hour-long episode.

Ladies day out! Olivia was delighted to rub shoulders with the great and the good of the showbiz world including Kristina Rihanoff

Glamorous as ever: Olivia and Kristina worked their best angles when they posed up a storm on the carpet at the event

The first installment of the series saw the cracks in their relationship begin to form - with Chris and Olivia endlessly bickering over the decor for their new house.

The blonde was then seen lashing out at Chris for attending a house party, and accusing him of flirting with other girls.

The hunk tried to reason: 'If I went to a house party with a load of birds there and I stayed the night, I think you'd be absolutely livid.'

Dazzling diva: The former Strictly Come Dancing waltzed into the venue in her dazzling shoes which drew attention to her sparkling belt wrapped around her tiny waist

Scarlet siren! The ballroom dancer looked red hot in her form-fitting dress which caressed every inch of her phenomenal curves

She's back! Lizzie Cundy put on a very daring display as she flaunted her nude lingerie underneath her sheer crocheted dress at the event

Sheer delight darling! The former WAG drew attention to her eye-popping cleavage thanks to her very revealing garment

All together now: (L-R) Kristina Rihanoff, Skylar McKeith, Sam Fox, Lizzie Cundy, Gillian McKeith and Afton McKeith looked as though they were having fun at the event

Seeing double: Chloe Meadows and Courtney Green cuddled up to one another

Looking good: Chloe (left) and Courtney (right) were showing off their long legs

Olivia fired back: 'No boys stayed', causing Chris to retort: 'It doesn't matter, you would be livid. It's double standards. Self-respect, it's f***ing self-respect.'

However, the bombshell didn't take his commentary well and let rip on his flirty behaviour - branding him 'shady as f***.'

With a number of other spats occurring, fans took to Twitter to express their horror at their incredibly 'incompatible' natures.

Joking around: Kristina was in her element as she joked around at the event

Great fun! Sam Fox was delighted to join a whole host of stars for the star-studded occasion in London

Hitting all the right style notes! The singer teased a glimpse of her ample cleavage in the plunging neckline of her black blouse

Pin-credible dress: Gillian McKeith put her lengthy pins on parade in her thigh-skimming dress and boots when she attended the showbiz party

At war: Fans witnessed Olivia Attwood and Chris Hughes' dysfunctional relationship first hand on Wednesday, during the debut of their now-shortened series Crackin' On

Furious: The blonde was then seen lashing out at Chris for attending a house party, and accusing him of flirting with other girls

Standing his ground: The hunk tried to reason: 'If I went to a house party with a load of birds there and I stayed the night, I think you'd be absolutely livid'

Fed up: However, the bombshell didn't take his commentary well and let rip on his flirty behaviour - branding him 'shady as f***'

Many vented their dislike for Olivia, writing: 'Im trying so much to warm to Olivia but she is acting like a d*** already' and '4 minutes in and I cant stand Olivia, who does she think she is, shes horrible to him!!'

Another passionate fan wrote: 'Pls say Im not the only one whos watching Chris and Olivias new show and thinking shes so emotionally abusive to him?? He literally cant say anything without her being horrible'

While others agreed, writing: 'She is a control freak and i'm embarrassed for her, Chris lets her walk all over him' and 'Cracking on ??? She cant even crack a smile.'

Tense: With a number of other spats occurring, fans took to Twitter to express their horror at their incredibly 'incompatible' natures

'She's horrible': Many vented their dislike for Olivia on Twitter

However several other fans were in her corner, and claimed Chris was playing the 'nice guy' to win viewers over.

One wrote: 'No Ill be honest I couldnt stand Olivia, but actually I can relate to her. Men dont have any common sense and its frustrating i dont blame her at all. Chris acts like a baby so Olivia looks bad but shes not his mum.'

While another added furiously: 'Utterly despise Chris, why is everyone so fooled by him?! He's an immature jackass doing everything he can to get a rise from Liv, manipulating people so they're on his side, appearing innocent just to look like the 'good guy''

'He's immature': However several other fans were in her corner, and claimed Chris was playing the 'nice guy' to win viewers over

Grow up: Fans claimed Chris was 'irritating and immature', causing Olivia to have to 'baby' him

Others chimed in: 'idk I feel like chris is playing the nice guy so olivia looks psycho' and 'Are you all blind, Chris is so irritating and immature it's no wonder @oliviajade_att has to baby him #dontbefooled.'

While further fans blasted the romance as a whole, writing: 'This is just an hour long video of 'signs of a bad relationship' and 'People saying theyre so cute together are we watching the same programme??'

Yet, a number of other fans found the show hilarious, and admitted their excitement for the next episode.

One wrote: 'Ok I have been watching #chrisandolivia's show for like 5 minutes and its the most I had laughed in ages its just so funny I cant even deal'

Incompatible: Further fans blasted the romance as a whole, and urged the pair to break up

'So bitter': They questioned why the pair had even stayed together for so long

Sweet: Yet, a number of other fans found the show hilarious, and admitted their excitement for the next episode

Loving it: Many fans deemed the show 'hilarious' and couldn't wait for more

While another added: 'Chris and Olivia are cracking me up, the most incompatible but hilarious couple.'

In February, Olivia confirmed on Loose Women that Chris had pulled the plug on their relationship on the phone, in the midst of filming their new show.

She explained: 'Im not going to be able to watch it. It was horrendous to live it.

'I wanted to wait until cameras had gone and be with Chris on my own. We had a conversation later on after but its kind of, it went on for ages. It was done then. He said I am serious. Im going to remember that forever.'
She has starred in projects like Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman, Tomorrow Never Dies and Desperate Housewives.

And Terri Hatcher spoke out on Thursday against Star magazine's claim that she's broke, homeless and living in her van, calling it 'totally absurd.'

The 53-year-old actress told KTLA 5 'It's categorically false. I am not broke. I have done very well investing my money. I'm not homeless. And I'm not living out of my van.'

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Standing up: Terri Hatcher spoke out on Thursday against Star magazine's claim that she's broke, homeless and living in her van; pictured on KTLA 5 denying the claims

She continued: 'I am shooting my YouTube series Van Therapy in my van.'

Her interview with KTLA 5's reporter Sam Rubin took place in London on Thursday, which is International Women's Day.

Teri said that this was the perfect time to talk about it, with International Women's Day as well as the Time's Up and #MeToo movement.

The TV star said on KTLA 5: 'The voice of women collectively is saying "We're not just going to take it and accept it and be quiet about it all, because we have for decades."'

Truth: The 53-year-old actress told KTLA 5 'It's categorically false. I am not broke. I have done very well investing my money. I'm not homeless. And I'm not living out of my van;' pictured on a road trip with her daughter on March 27, 2016

Adding: 'I just felt like even not for me, someone has to say "you can't do this. you can't egregiously lie, hurtfully, with such a ridiculous story that it's a kind of harassment and bullying that we can't take anymore.'

Sam reported that Terry is speaking with her lawyer about possibly seeking legal action.

Teri has owned the green 1978 VW bus camper for many years but has never lived in it.

Not holding back: Adding: 'I just felt like even not for me, someone has to say "you can't do this. you can't egregiously lie, hurtfully, with such a ridiculous story that it's a kind of harassment and bullying that we can't take anymore'

Teri and her daughter Emerson Tenney, 20, most recently went on a road trip in March 2016 in California; she shared a picture of herself posing besides the van for her Instagram page.

She has used it for previous road trips and currently uses it for her YouTube series, Van Therapy, where she talks to people about specific topics while sitting inside the van.

Teri took to Instagram sharing a photo from the interview with the caption: 'Getting the last laugh on #InternationalWomensDay. We all deserve a society where women of all ages are respected, and that can start with not accepting lies on the cover of a magazine.'

The actress has a YouTube channel called 'Hatching Change' which includes her show Van Therapy and her cooking series Don't Eat "IT" Out Of A Box.

True to herself: Teri took to Instagram sharing a photo from the interview with the caption

Gorgeous: The actress has a YouTube channel called 'Hatching Change' which includes her show Van Therapy and her cooking series Don't Eat "IT" Out Of A Box

The mother of one posed with her green van for a feature article last month in Haute Living.

One image had Teri seated in a floral dress by a pool and another photo showed her posing in a eye-catching gown next to her van.

In the interview, she said her show Van Therapy is about 'connecting with people' on topics both big and small.

Incredible: The mother of one posed with her green van for a feature article last month in Haute Living

She drives around in her van and finds people on the streets to talk to about any issues they are going through and to tell her their story.

Teri told Haute Living: 'Even with all our technology, I think many of us feel more alone than ever, which is ironic.'

Adding that as she interviews people she's 'learning that I'm not alone in my struggles and neither are they.'

Beaming: One image had Teri seated in a floral dress by a pool and another photo showed her posing in a eye catching gown next to her van

Last month, Teri put her stunning three bedroom, five bathroom Studio City on the renter's market for $25,000 a month.

The star originally bought the home in 2000 at the price of $1.49 million.

The property, built in 1962, is 4,106 square feet with a mid-century modern style.

The gorgeous house, where she's lived in for nearly 20 years, features a huge pool and spa, a koi pond, a waterfall, a gym, and expansive views of greenery.

Home sweet home: Last month, Teri put her stunning three bedroom, five bathroom Studio City on the renter's market for $25,000 a month
Police checked in on Tori Spelling at her doctor's office on Wednesday after her husband, Dean McDermott, contacted officials regarding his wife.

McDermott, 51, called officers to check on Tori, 44, after she left their home with at least one of their children, according to TMZ.

The website captured three Ventura County Sheriff's units outside of the building Tori was at in Thousand Oaks, California as Dean stood outside, holding their one-year-old son Beau, at around 9:45 in the morning.

Worried: Police checked in on Tori Spelling at her doctor's office on Wednesday after her husband, Dean McDermott, contacted officials regarding his wife

Checking in: McDermott, 51, called officers to check on Tori, 44, after she left their home with at least one of their children, according to TMZ (pictured August 2017 in Los Angeles)

It's uncertain why Dean was concerned about his wife, but after deputies spoke with Tori inside the doctor's office and determined she and the children were fine, 'everyone went on their way' as no crime had been committed, according to the site.

Later that day Dean visited a lawyer's office, according to People.

Multiple police cars were also spotted outside of Tori's home on Wednesday, less than a week after officers were called following reports she had suffered a nervous breakdown.

At least two police cars showed up on Wednesday at the Los Angeles home where Spelling lives with her husband Dean McDermott and their five children.

It is not clear why police were at the home but several officers were seen talking with McDermott outside.

All's well: It's uncertain why Dean was concerned about his wife; after the police call he visited a lawyer, as seen here

Summoned: Multiple police cars showed up on Wednesday at the Los Angeles home where the couple live with their five children

Blue balloons were spotted at the property following their son Beau's first birthday on March 2.

The police visit comes just days after officers rushed to the couple's home after McDermott reportedly called 911 to report that his 44-year-old wife was having a breakdown.

According to the dispatch message, authorities responded to a 'female mental illness' call at the house.

Officers took a domestic violence incident report but Spelling was not arrested or taken to hospital.

The incident happened a day before Beau's birthday and was reportedly brought on by the stress of juggling her five children, work and her marriage to McDermott who had an affair back in 2013.

It is not clear why police were at the home but several officers were seen talking with McDermott outside

Blue balloons were spotted at the property following their son Beau's first birthday on March 2

Multiple officers were spotted inside the family's property on Wednesday. It happened less than a week after police rushed to the home following a 911 call

Spelling has not addressed the police activity outside her home but did take to social media to post a video of her son for his birthday.

Insiders say they fear the Beverly Hills 90210 actress is on the brink of a breakdown.

'Her friends and family are all very, very worried,' a source told Us Weekly.

'You would think the cheating, money problems and constant arguing would be enough for Tori to decide to divorce Dean, but she refuses to even discuss it.

'Tori believes a divorce would label her as a failure.'

Spelling has not addressed the police activity outside her home but did take to social media to post a video of her son Beau for his birthday (pictured above)

Sources say Tori's breakdown was reportedly brought on by the stress of juggling her five children, work and her marriage to McDermott who had an affair back in 2013

The majority of the couple's arguments come down to money, according to the insider.

In 2016, Tori was sued by American Express for $87,000 in credit card debt, after having already faced a lawsuit for an unpaid $38,000 bill from the credit card company.

She was ordered to pay in full along with $855 in court fees earlier that year, and sources have previously claimed the pressure of her debts had taken its toll on the star.

Sources say the couple are 'heavily in debt'.
The new Tomb Raider flick, fronted by Alicia Vikander, is set for worldwide release next week.

And Kimberly Garner attempted to emulate Lara Croft on Thursday night, as she slipped into two sizzling ensembles for the launch of the film's new escape room in London.

The 27-year-old channeled the action hero in the classic khaki trousers, teamed with a slinky white bodysuit and later a green crop top, as she joined Tallia Storm at the bash in Spitalfields.

Action hero: Kimberly Garner attempted to emulate Lara Croft on Thursday night, as she slipped into two sizzling ensembles for the launch of the film's new escape room in London

Girl power: She joined an equally glamorous Tallia Storm at the event, held in London's Spitalfields

The former Made In Chelsea star first showed off her famously leggy figure in the green trousers - similar to that of the famous character's with cargo-style pockets and zips on the ankles.

Upping the sex appeal however, Kimberly teamed the strides with a tight-fitting white bodysuit, which plunged at the neck to give a flash of cleavage to all.

Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe she accessorised with white ankle boots, which added further height to her statuesque frame with their stiletto heel.

Leading lady: The former Made In Chelsea star showed off her famously leggy figure in the green trousers - similar to that of the famous character's with cargo-style pockets

Saucy: Upping the sex appeal however, Kimberly teamed the strides with a tight-fitting white bodysuit, which plunged at the neck to give a flash of cleavage

Best foot forward: Keeping co-ordinated from head to toe she accessorised with white ankle boots, which added further height to her statuesque frame

Natural: She styled her hair into loose, tousled waves and sported minimal make-up as she posed seductively for cameras

She styled her hair into loose, tousled waves and sported minimal make-up as she posed seductively for cameras.

Truly embodying the action hero later on, Kimberley later swapped her leotard for a green vest, which she tied up to reveal her impressively toned abs underneath.

Proving she meant business for the evening of activity, she also changed her heels for sports trainers, and layered a matching green jacket on top.

Sensational: Truly embodying the action hero later on, Kimberley later swapped her leotard for a green vest, which she tied up to reveal her impressively toned abs underneath

Let's do this: Proving she meant business for the evening of activity, she also changed her heels for sports trainers

Ready to go: Sporting a number of cuts and bruises on her face and body, the reality star certainly looked the part as she prepared to escape from the room, Lara Croft-style

Effortless: Kimberley looked seriously cool as she zoomed through the attraction on the zip wire

Sporting a number of cuts and bruises on her face and body, the reality star certainly looked the part as she prepared to escape from the room, Lara Croft-style.

The reality star was joined by Tallia Storm, who commanded attention in a daringly plunging black top and monochrome checked mini skirt.

Layering a classically chic leather jacket on top, the Glasgow native then tied her look together with trendy thigh-high boots of soft black suede.

Check her out: The reality star was joined by Tallia Storm, who commanded attention in a daringly plunging black top and monochrome checked mini skirt

Stylish: She layered a classically chic leather jacket on top

She's the heel deal: The Glasgow native tied her look together with trendy thigh-high boots of soft black suede

Cheeky: Sporting a contoured make-up look and deep bronzed tan, Tallia exuded confidence as she posed playfully for cameras

Strike a pose: Tallia smouldered for cameras as she posed with her back to the camera

Sporting a contoured make-up look and deep bronzed tan, Tallia exuded confidence as she posed playfully for cameras on the event's carpet.

While the pair first posed glamorously for cameras, they were then seen getting stuck in to the escape room's highlights.

Kimberly was seen giggling as she tried her hand at archery, while Tallia soon changed into more practical clothing to enjoy a ride on the attraction's zip wire.

Another string to her bow: The girls were then seen getting stuck in to the escape room's highlights - with Kimberly giggling as she tried her hand at archery

Off she goes: Meanwhile Tallia soon changed into more practical clothing to enjoy a ride on the attraction's zip wire

The thrill of it: Tallia shrieked with delight as she soared through the air on the wire

Hilarious: She later burst into laughter as the ride came to an end

Getting involved: Tallia followed Kimberley's lead and also changed into grungier clothing, involving cargo pants and a camouflage jacket

Fierce: She later posed inside the tomb

The girls were attending the launch of the new Tomb Raider Escape - the world's first escape room using film sets.

The experience, which is open for a limited time in Spitalfields, London, challenges fans to tackle ancient puzzles, physical obstacles and interact with the film sets and over 50 props from the film.

Nine female celebrities from the showbiz world attended, in honour of Thursday's International Women's Day.

Abs-olutely fabulous: Nicola Hughes also attended the event in a Gothic lace crop top and animal print mini skirt

Easy to spot: She teamed the look with polka dot tights and chic studded ankle boots

Dressing down: Jade Avia (L) and Yasmin Evans (R) also attended the event in grungier ensembles

Kimberley has been back on the social scene recently, after recovering from a nasty car crash over in Los Angeles.

The reality starlet posted a photo from her hospital bed on Instagram of her wearing a hospital gown, with bruises visible on her arms.

The beauty said: 'In a car accident in Los Angeles. Was thrown through the car, feeling so lucky to be OK in bed with concussion.'

She wrote 'A&E' alongside an unhappy emoji, adding: 'Thank you all who messaged me or been kind. Really means so much to me, x.'

Ready for action: Nicola also had a go on the speedy zip wire, which sent her curled hairstyle flying in all directions
Audrina Patridge has filed an emergency request for a restraining order against estranged husband Corey Bohan.

The former Hills star also wants to strip her ex of his visitation rights with their one-year-old daughter Kirra, and says she is 'more afraid of him than ever', according to The Blast.

In court documents filed Wednesday Audrina, 32, states she's 'frightened by Coreys escalation of his anger and threats' and 'no longer feels safe' with face-to-face interactions.

Back to court: Audrina Patridge has accused her ex Corey Bohan of stalking and is requesting he be denied access to their one-year-old daughter

She goes on to say things have got worse in recent weeks, including an incident where Corey threatened her when picking up Kirra at a police station, telling her 'You better start f***ing playing nice, Im f***ing warning you,'

Audrina recorded the alleged encounter and also claims Corey has been 'stalking' her on social media, despite her attempts to block him.

'Corey, during our exchanges, will comment about who I was with last week or where I might have been. This tells me that he is watching me on social media,' Audrina says in the filing.

'He then uses this information to make attacks on me as a person and a mother, which comments I believe violate the DVRO.'

After she posted some church notes on Instagram Corey apparently ranted on Snapchat: 'ONE THING I CANNOT STAND IS THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE PURE EVIL PUSHING THE "I LOVE CHURCH" BEHAVIOR,'

Audrina alleges that Corey threatened her when picking up Kirra at a police station, telling her 'You better start f***ing playing nice, Im f***ing warning you,'

'I fear for the safety of our daughter,': The reality star also accuses Corey of being aggressive and emotionally abusive towards their one-year-old

Audrina also lists other examples of alleged aggressive behavior from her ex including him swerving his car 'dangerously close' to her sister Kasey.

She also accuses him of being emotionally abusive towards their daughter, claiming he's told the child, 'Mommy doesnt pick you up anymore because shes an L.A. party girl'

The reality star also notes in the documents that Corey's attorney told her he's taking anger management and parenting courses.

'I am more afraid of him now than ever, and fear for the safety of our daughter,' Audrina said in the documents.

'I do not believe, under the current circumstance, that visitation is in Kirras best interest until Corey obtains professional individual therapy for an extended period of time.'

Audrina filed for divorce in September after an alleged domestic violence incident and then filed for a restraining order the following month

The Blast reports that Corey has denied stalking his ex and believes she is using the courts as way of 'purposely sabotaging' his parenting time with their daughter.

He claims there has been 'no domestic violence to justify' Audrinas request and that their daughter is in no immediate harm or danger.

Corey denied Audrina's initial allegations of abuse in September and accused the reality star and her family of harassing him.

In September Corey filed his response to the divorce papers which showed the professional BMX dirt bike rider is seeking spousal support along with joint legal and physical custody of the couple's daughter.

He is also demanding his legal fees are paid by his reality star ex.

Audrina filed for divorce from her husband of just 10 months and obtained a temporary restraining order in September amid allegations he was 'emotionally abusive.'

Bumpy marriage: Audrina and Corey (pictured March 2016) married in November 2016 after eight years of dating. They welcomed Kirra in June that year

A court in Orange County, California, ruled that Kirra and the couple's Yorkshire Terrier Lady should remain in the reality star's care, and gave Corey restricted visitation rights.

Although the court did not find that Corey was abusive, the restraining order was reissued with modifications.

The biker is only allowed to meet with his child at the Irvine Police Department.

It comes after Corey agreed to move out of the couple's marital home in Irvine, California, which is owned by Audrina.

He had been living in the house and refusing to leave, but eventually complied with moving out and Audrina and her baby girl moved back in.

Audrina and Corey married in November 2016 after eight years of dating.
International Womens Day commemorates the womens rights movement and continues to recognize the struggle and triumphs that women face today all around the world.

In Hollywood, many top-earning actresses have called attention to womens issues in the modern age, especially in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the ensuing #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

But just what is International Womens Day? Who are the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood? Heres all you need to know.

La La Land star Emma Stone ranked as the highest-paid actress in Hollywood in 2017

What is International Womens Day?

International Womens Day is a global event that commemorates the womens rights movement and brings attention to issues such as sexism and discrimination against women.

The origins of the observance date back to February 28, 1909 in New York City when the Socialist Party of America organized a National Womans Day to bring attention to gender equality issues in the United States.

At the 1910 International Socialist Womens Conference in Copenhagen, March 8 was suggested as an international day to bring attention to womens rights. The day was soon embraced by socialists throughout the world and recognized by many communist countries, including the Soviet Union in 1917.

The day was officially recognized by the United Nations in 1975 and has since been embraced by many countries around the world as a way to both honor the womens rights movement and call attention to the current inequalities that women face throughout the world.

When is International Womens Day?

International Womens Day is held annually on March 8.

#happywomensday #internationalwomensday #celebrate  A post shared by Dmitry (@mescalitodm) on Mar 7, 2016 at 10:56pm PST

Hollywood's Highest-paid actresses

Although the Hollywood pay gap between male and female actors has been the subject of much well-deserved attention recently, especially in the wake of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, a number of top actresses have established themselves as some of the highest-earners in Hollywood, according to Newsweek.

5. Mila Kunis

Mila Kunis ranks as the fifth-highest earning actress in Hollywood, raking in $15.5 million (11.2 million) in 2017 due to her hit comedy Bad Moms and the seuqle Bad Moms 2.

4. Melissa McCarthy

Comedian Melissa McCarthy also ranked as one of Hollywoods top earning actresses last year, bringing in $18 million (13 million) for her work in films like The Boss and Ghostbusters.

#tbt Oscars 2013 #jenniferlawrence A post shared by Jennifer Lawrence (@jenniferlawrencepx) on Mar 2, 2018 at 2:22pm PST

3. Jennifer Lawrence

The Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence placed third on the list with $24 million (17.3 million) in earnings. Lawrence has been extra busy the past few years, appearing in X-Men: Apocalypse and Passengers in 2016 alone.

2. Jennifer Aniston

Film and TV veteran Jennifer Aniston also ranked as one of Hollywoods top earning actresses, bringing in $25.5 million (18.4 million) just last year. Aniston, however, narrowly missed out on being named as the highest-paid actress in Hollywood.

1. Emma Stone

Emma Stone, who earned $26 million (18.8 million) in 2017, is Hollywood's highest-paid actress. The star, whos been honored with Academy Awards, BAFTA Awards and Golden Globe Awards over the course of her career, earned a huge payday thanks in large to the commercial success of La La Land and her Oscar for best actress for her role as Mia.
She is no strange to skimpy ensembles thanks to her days on stage performing for pop group Liberty X.

So Michelle Heaton, 38, was confident when she pulled off a risque gown at the Pride Of Birmingham Awards 2018 at University of Birmingham on Thursday.

The songstress put her lithe legs on display in the sexy semi-sheer skirt of her floor-length lace embellished dress.

Heaton up the red carpet! Michelle flaunted her sensational legs in a semi-sheer lace embellished gown at star-studded Pride Of Birmingham awards in Birmingham on Thursday

Keen to show off her best assets, the pop princess elongated her limbs with her towering high heels which added to her height.

For the finishing touches of glamour, the former Liberty X star wore her brunette tresses in curls that tumbled down her shoulders to highlight her slender frame.

Back at home, Michelle raises five-year-old Faith as well as three-year-old Aaron with her husband and their father Hugh.

Standing tall: Keen to show off her best assets, the pop princess elongated her limbs with her towering high heels which added to her height

The pop princess pledged to spend the rest of her life with the businessman in a sun-drenched wedding in the Bahamas in July 2010.

Michelle gave birth to her first child, daughter Faith, via emergency C-section to prevent going into labour after her waters broke two weeks early in January 2012.

She welcomed little Aaron into the world via C-section after which she was left with a flap of skin in place of her scar which left her 'uncomfortable' in February 2014.

Glamorous: The former Liberty X star wore her brunette tresses in curls that tumbled down her shoulders to highlight her slender frame

In May 2017, the songstress appeared on Loose Women wearing a bikini to publicly display her hysterectomy and C-section scars for the first time.

Michelle has undergone two C-sections, a double mastectomy, breast reconstructive surgery, a hysterectomy and oophorectomy.

She also underwent extensive work as a preventive measure when she discovered she possessed a mutated BRCA2 gene causing a high risk of cancer.
He played arguably the most famous film character of all time.

And on Thursday Mark Hamill  finally  got his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

The 66-year-old, who most famously portrayed Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, was joined by several of his saga co-stars as he unveiled his plaque on the famed boulevard.

Scroll down for video

At last! Mark Hamill finally got his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame on Thursday

Felt her presence: Carrie Fisher was represented at the ceremony by her daughter Billie Lourde, who got to star with Hamill alongside her mother one last time in The Last Jedi just before Christmas

His oldest friend from the franchise Harrison Ford, who played Han Solo alongside him in the original 1977 film, spoke at the ceremony, giving a poignant nod to the late Carrie Fisher who would have certainly been front and center, had she not sadly passed away in 2016.

'Thinking about today, I was really sorry we didn't have the other member of our trio here to celebrate with us, he said to huge cheers from the massive crowd that had gathered, as Hamill solemnly placed his hand on his heart.

'But I feel her presence,' the 75-year-old added with the smuggler's trademark smirk.

The late actress was represented at the ceremony by her daughter Billie Lourde, who got to star with Hamill alongside her mother one last time in The Last Jedi just before Christmas.

OG crew: Harrison Ford and George Lucas were on hand to honor the 66-year-old

Jedi: He most famously portrayed Luke Skywalker in five Star Wars films so far

Let's blow this thing and go home: His oldest friend from the franchise Harrison Ford, who played Han Solo alongside him in the original 1977 film, spoke at the ceremony

Missed: He gave a poignant nod to the late Carrie Fisher who would have certainly been front and center, had she not sadly passed away in 2016

Hug it out: 'Thinking about today, I was really sorry we didn't have the other member of our trio here to celebrate with us, he said to huge cheers from the massive crowd that had gathered

Quip: 'But I feel her presence,' the 75-year-old added with the smuggler's trademark smirk

Impressive... most impressive: Ford said he prepared himself for this ceremony 'by going back and looking at the screen tests that I did with Mark and I was surprised, actually how good he was

The creator of the Star Wars universe George Lucas himself was also there, as was Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, and Rian Johnson, writer and director of the latest installment that seen Skywalker become one with the Force at its climax.

The new guard was also represented by Kelly Marie Tran, who played fan favourite newcomer Rose Tico.

There were a couple of Stormtroopers for security of course, and R2-D2 even made the trip.

New hope: The new guard was also represented by Kelly Marie Tran, who played fan favourite newcomer Rose Tico

Partner: R2-D2 even made the trip to honor his old pal

Safety: There were a couple of Stormtroopers for security of course

Plays the joker too: Eternal jokester Hamill made sure to supply him with some bunny ears while he posed for photos with his old astromech droid

You are beaten: Hamill has appeared in five Star Wars films, but Artoo has been in all eight

Eternal jokester Hamill made sure to supply him with some bunny ears while he posed for photos with his old astromech droid.

Mark's family also came out to support him, including wife of 40 years Marilou, their daughter Chelsea, sons Nathan and Griffin, and even their two pet dogs.

Taking to the podium, Lucas said: 'Mark Hamill is a character that cant be written.

'Hes extremely enthusiastic about everything he does,' he said. 'Im very proud of Mark for getting this star.'

Behind every good man: Mark's family also came out to support him, including wife Marilou

Just as soon kiss a Wookie: The besotted couple shared a kiss on the red carpet

Longevity: Their marriage is almost as old as Star Wars itself  40 years

Family affair: Their daughter Chelsea, sons Nathan and Griffin, and even their two pet dogs were also on hand

In and out: Kelly starred in the latest installment, which seen Skywalker become one with the Force at its climax

Ford agreed: 'I prepared myself for this experience by going back and looking at the screen tests that I did with Mark and I was surprised, actually how good he was he had just the right blend of youthfulness and enthusiasm.'

He described his friend as 'quiet, sincere, and honest' adding: 'I think he has found comfort and utility and control of his destiny and Im happy for you, pal. Congratulations.'

The night before, Hamill did a skit with Jimmy Kimmell, in which he dug up the hosts star with a jackhammer in claiming a spot for his own.

Kimmell managed to get rid of him by pointing out where Donald Trump's star was instead.

Old guard: Lucas handed over the reigns of Star Wars to Disney for $4billion, while both Ford and Hamill have now been killed off

Star wars: The night before, Hamill did a skit with Jimmy Kimmell, in which he dug up the hosts star with a jackhammer in claiming a spot for his own

Bowed out: Hamill played the Jedi for the final time  in physical form anyway  in Episode VIII
She is the mother of Kim, Khloe, Kourtney Kardashian and Kendall and Kylie Jenner.

And Kris Jenner celebrated her daughters on International Women's Day with a gushing tribute on her Instagram page.

The 62-year-old wrote: 'I'm so proud of my girls and their hearts and what amazing moms they are and their work ethic.'

Proud: Kris Jenner raved about her famous daughters in honor of International Women's Day. She posted her message alongside a photo shoot taken for The Hollywood Reporter in August

'My path to womanhood was very different': Caitynn was asked about gender equality by CNN on International Women's Day

She continued: 'And how they get up and do their best every single day... they share, they give back, they care...they are my best friends and my angels!'

Kris, who added a group shot with them from their Hollywood Reporter shoot from last fall, added: 'Thank you girls for teaching me how to be better every single moment we share.'

The mother of six finished off her tribute with: 'You give me life and I love you (of course I love Rob the same but it's International Women's Day #MYSQUAD.'

She posted a message along with a photo shoot taken for The Hollywood Reporter in August.

So sweet: The 62-year-old wrote: 'I'm so proud of my girls and their hearts and what amazing moms they are and their work ethic; pictured on Wednesday shopping with Khloe in LA

Her girls: She continued: 'And how they get up and do their best every single day... they share, they give back, they care...they are my best friends and my angels!'; her kids Khloe, Kendall, Kourtney, Kim and Kylie at the Yeezy Season 3 show in NYC in February 2016

Kris' only son is Rob Kardashian, 30.

The Kardashian/Jenner matriarch has eight grandchildren.

Daughters Kim and Kourtney have three children each; Kim and husband Kanye are parents to North, four, Saint, two and Chicago, born January 15.

Kourtney, 38 and her ex Scott Disick's kids are Mason, nine, Penelope, five, and Reign, three.

Rob is dad to daughter Dream with ex fiancee Blac Chyna; Dream was born November 10, 2016.

Wisdom: Kris also shared a quote to her Instagram page

Kylie, 20, is mom to daughter Stormi, who she welcomed on February 1.

Khloe, 33, is eight months pregnant with her first child; she is set to welcome a girl with her boyfriend Tristan Thompson.

Meanwhile, Kris made no mention of her ex husband, Caitlyn Jenner, on International Women's Day.

Caitlyn reposted a CNN video of herself for International Women's Day.

CNN asked activists, artists and entertainers the question: 'What single thing would you change to improve gender equality where you are?'

Caitlynn replied: 'My path to womanhood was very different and through that process I think I learned a lot about women,' the reality TV star said. 'Women are kind of brought up to be kind of a second-class citizen. Emotionally weaker. Physically weaker. I've always been inspired by strong women.'

Family is everything: The mother of six finished off her tribute with: 'You give me life and I love you (of course I love Rob the same but it's International Women's Day #MYSQUAD'
Cassandra Thorburn has denied rumours that she is planning to sell her $8million waterfront mansion for a humble suburban abode in Sydney's inner west.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia this Friday, the former wife of Karl Stefanovic confirmed that she and her three children have no plans to vacate their current residences, saying: 'We love our home and are very happy there.'

'False reports are not helpful to the children and I,' she said.

'We love our home': Cassandra Thorburn has denied rumours that she is planning to sell her $8million waterfront mansion for a humble suburban abode in Sydney's inner west.

'I was visiting that property it just happens to be for sale': Cassandra clarified that she had indeed visited the Annandale property in question (pictured), but not for any reason relating to a land purchase

Cassandra clarified that she had indeed visited the Annandale property in question, but not for any reason relating to a land purchase.

'I was visiting that property it just happens to be for sale,' she clarified.

Cassandra also denied previous reports claiming that her Cremorne home had become almost unlivable due to loud noise and a rat infestation due to neighbouring construction work in October last year.

'No rats. Never seen one!' Cassandra also denied previous reports claiming that her Cremorne home had become almost unlivable due to loud noise and a rat infestation due to neighbouring construction work in October last year

'No rats. Never seen one. And always knew house behind would be built after we moved in the developer is building it and we have not had to endure anything. Its beautiful here. We love it.'

Cassandra's statements relate to reports published by RealEstate.com.au and News.com.au this week.

According to these reports, Cassandra was rumoured to be looking at purchasing a historic medical consultancy clinic in Annandale with hopes to turn the property into a five-bedroom home.

Opulent: With a bird's-eye view across Middle Harbour and Northbridge Golf Course, the home spans over 650sqm of contemporary living space and designer finishes

The property is currently for sale, with an asking price of $2.6 million.

Meanwhile, Cassandra and her three children are enjoying life in their Cremorne mansion, which boasts a bird's-eye view across Middle Harbour and Northbridge Golf Course.

The home spans over 650sqm of contemporary living space and designer finishes, including a state-of-the-art kitchen and indoor pool.

Lavish: It also boasts an indoor swimming pool, steam room, wine cellar and private boat shed

Sleek: Residents can enjoy two gourmet kitchens equipped with the latest appliances
Donya Fiorentino, a model-turned-photographer, garnered international attention after rehashing abuse allegations against ex-husband Gary Oldman.

Although his eldest son, Gulliver, has spoken out in his defense, Donya maintains that she was choked by the Oscar-winning Darkest Hour actor during their marriage. She claimed that the Academy responsible for awarding both Oldman and Kobe Bryant  who has been accused of sexual assault  during the 2018 Oscars was a set back for the #MeToo movement.

'Congratulations, Gary, and congratulations to the Academy for awarding not one, but two abusers with Oscars,' Donya told TMZ on Tuesday.

Donya Fiorentino has once again brought up abuse allegation against her ex, Gary Oldman

'I thought we had evolved. What happened to the #MeToo movement?'

So what do you need to know about Donya Fiorentino?

Who is Donya Fiorentino?

Donya Fiorentino is a model who later became a photographer. She's also appeared in television shows and film. She hails from Key Largo, Florida.

Donya Fiorentino and Gary Oldman relationship

Donya Fiorentino and Gary Oldman met in 1996 during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They began dating and within four months Donya was pregnant with their first child, Gulliver. Not long after, they welcomed another son, called Charlie.

The couple married in 1997 and remained married for about four years. Prior to his marriage to Donya, Gary was married to Uma Thurman for two years in the 90s and Lesley Manville from 1987 to 1990.

After their sons were born, Donya was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. She became addicted to painkillers, which spiraled out of control. Eventually she began drinking again, which then evolved into a cocaine addiction, according to The Sun.

When they divorced in 2001, Gary was awarded full custody of Gulliver and Charlie. During their nasty custody battle, the actor claimed his estranged wife's daughter found her unconscious due to a drug overdose, Newsweek reported.

Gary remarried seven years after the divorce. He and Alexandra Edenborough were husband and wife from 2008 to 2015. Since then he's married a women called Gisele Schmidt, who he is still with.

Gary Oldman abuse allegations

Donya Fiorentino accused Gary Oldman of hitting her with a phone handset during a 2001 incident. She alleged that she was holding the younger of her two sons when the abuse occurred. She also said that during the incident, she tried to call 911, at which time Gary grabbed the phone and hit her with it.

Per a report from the time, Donya also alleged that she was choked by her then-husband.

'As I picked up the phone to call the police, Gary put his hand on my neck and squeezed,' she said.

'I backed away, with the phone receiver in my hand. I tried to dial 911. Gary grabbed the phone receiver from my hand, and hit me in the face with the telephone receiver three or four times. Both of the children were crying.'

Gary has vehemently denied this claim. No charges were filed against him.

Donya Fiorentino and Gary Oldman's children

Donya Fiorentino and Gary Oldman's eldest son, Gulliver, has spoken out in his defense. In an open letter, Gulliver said that if the allegations against his father were true, he wouldn't have been granted custody of him and his brother.

'Custody of children is not given to a wife beater, and under most circumstances, hardly ever a man. My having lived, full-time with my father should be in itself, proof enough,' the 20-year-old said.

Their son Charlie has not commented on the matter.

Gary Oldman net worth

Gary Oldman's net worth is an estimated $50 million (36.1m).

Who is Gary Oldman's sister?

Gary Oldman's sister is Laila Morse, known best for playing Big Mo on the hit show EastEnders.
A Liberal MP has asked the charities regulator to investigate Bill Shorten's trip to the Great Barrier Reef which was funded by environmental campaigners.

The opposition leader updated his register of interests last month to reveal the Australian Conservation Foundation paid for his flight to the proposed Adani coal mine site, and a tour of the reef.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission confirmed it has received a letter from WA backbencher Ben Morton regarding the ACF.

It is believed the letter raises concerns and requests clarification about governance surrounding gifts from charities, The Australian reports.

"The ACNC takes all concerns raised regarding registered charities seriously," an ACNC spokesperson said on Thursday.

The ACNC has the power to revoke charity status, suspend or remove board members and give directions and enforce undertakings.

Former ACF president and anti-Adani campaigner Geoff Cousins said last week Mr Shorten told him during the trip he would revoke the licence for the Adani coal mine if the environmental evidence didn't stack up.

The register of interests shows the foundation paid for Mr Shorten to take a tour of the reef on January 23, and a charter flight from Cairns to Carmichael River and Doongmabulla Springs the next day.
A South Australian woman who helped her son conceal the murder and burial of his partner has been jailed for six-and-a-half years.

Margaret Archer appeared in the District Court on Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to helping her son Neil Archer conceal the murder of 20-year-old Jody Meyers.

Ms Meyers' body was found under a concrete slab in a shed in the backyard of Margaret Archer's home a month after she went missing in 2015.

Neil Archer strangled Ms Meyers following a heated argument sparked by his concerns her family was trying to break them up.

He took her body to his parents' home near Mannum, east of Adelaide, and buried it under the floor of a toolshed before returning the next day to cover the grave with fresh concrete.

After his arrest, he pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for a minimum of 22 years.

In helping her son, Margaret Archer used Ms Meyers' bank card to withdraw $250 from her account to buy concrete to cover the dead woman's grave.

Judge Paul Muscat said her offending was at the higher end of the scale for the offence of assisting in a crime.

"Plainly all of your actions were considered, calculated and deliberate," Judge Muscat told the 57-year-old in sentencing.

He said Archer was "deceitful in the cruellest of ways" in giving the family of Ms Meyers false hope that she was still alive.

The judge set a non-parole period of four years
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A Victorian detective has been charged with multiple offences, including having prohibited weapons and leaking secret police information.

Corruption watchdog IBAC charged the detective senior constable on Thursday with offences including seven counts of improperly taking advantage of a regulated person's position, two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon, and one count of unlawful disclosure of police information.

The alleged offending, dating back to 2015, follows an IBAC investigation and the matter is due before the Dromana Magistrates' Court on April 5.
Malcolm Turnbull's son has been praised for calling out dodgy conduct when he worked for Goldman Sachs.

Alex Turnbull, who worked for the investment bank in Singapore in 2012 and 2013, raised questions about the high price of bonds he wasn't involved in organising.

"When the 1MDB deal was done with Goldman I sent an email to some of my colleagues saying, 'What is going on with this? The pricing is nuts, what is the use of funds?" he told The Australian newspaper, adding being a whistleblower was "s--t business".

"I got a talking-to by compliance."

He later resigned.

The Wall Street bank's work with a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB, has been under the spotlight.

The US government alleged that billions of dollars earmarked for investments were diverted for the personal use of Malaysian elites including Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Nick Xenophon Team senator Rex Patrick praised the young Mr Turnbull's courage.

Senator Patrick said whistleblower draft laws before parliament need confusing and ambiguous language tightened up.

"Without doing that, we will end up seeing poorly resourced whistleblowers battling it out in the courts against highly resourced companies over the meaning and intent. If lawyers and judges are needed to sort out the interpretation, we haven't done our job properly," Senator Patrick said in a statement.

Asked whether the issue could affect his relationship with Mr Najib, the prime minister said "no".

"I'm not going to comment on that," Mr Turnbull said.

Mr Najib is expected to attend a special summit of south-east Asian leaders in Sydney late next week.

He previously denied any wrongdoing.
A fighting century from Charlie Hemphrey in bowler-friendly conditions has saved Queensland on yet another rain-affected day's play in their Sheffield Shield match against Western Australia in Brisbane.

Shield leaders Queensland commenced day three at the Gabba looking shaky at 8-146, only for No.4 Hemphrey to hit an unbeaten 103.

The English-born Hemphrey, who brought up his ton off 219 balls, enjoyed unlikely assistance from batting bunny Luke Feldman to bring up his third first-class century.

In contrast to a low-key approach from Queensland throughout their innings, Feldman came out swinging.

The fast bowler hit three sixes in scoring his maiden half century, before being dismissed for 52 off 38 balls, with an invaluable 87 added for the final wicket.

For the third day in a row, rain again forced the players off the field several times in a match WA must win to stay in the hunt for the Shield final.
The Australian Mines and Minerals Association has lodged an appeal against the creation of a super-union.

The appeal to the full bench of the Fair Work Commission was lodged by association lawyers on Thursday, objecting to a merger of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Textile Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia and the Maritime Union of Australia.

The AMMA and the Master Builders Association previously tried to stop the merger, but the creation of the new CFMMEU on March 27 was approved by the commission this week.
A Queensland farmer says the death of six cattle found lying in a row along a fence line on his property is a warning about the dangers of lightning strikes.

Derek Shirley discovered the dead animals two days after a storm at his mother's property in Beaudesert last month.

Three calves and three cows, worth approximately $10,000, were all dead following a lightning strike.

Mr Shirley said it was the first time he'd encountered a lethal lightning strike.

"The storm was on the Monday afternoon and at about 6pm there was one hell of a bang," Mr Shirley told AAP.

"We're lucky there weren't 50 of them there. It hopefully gives everyone a bit of a wake up call about the dangers of being outside in a storm."

Mr Shirley said he only investigated the site two days later because he'd seen one of the dead animals.

The property normally runs 80 cows and calves, he said.

It is suspected standing water on the already-saturated ground near the fence where the cows died contributed to the strike's deadliness.
Lion director Garth Davis' sensitive portrayal of Mary Magdalene has hit a roadblock because of Harvey Weinstein.

Barely a month after he wrapped on the Oscar-nominated film Lion, the Australian director began the intense work telling one of the oldest stories of all time.

The ambitious film rewrites history to position Mary Magdalene as an apostle of Jesus.

But the film has been left without a distributor in the US after the recent bankruptcy of The Weinstein Company following the countless abuse allegations against the studio's head, Harvey Weinstein.

"Look at the movie's poster, 'her story will be told', how's the irony?" Davis told AAP in Sydney while promoting the film.

Mary Magdalene, produced by See-Saw Films, will be released in Australia and across Europe but a North American release is still uncertain.

"I mean we can't lose this battle. I would hate this film not to be shown in North America because of Harvey. I think that's a tragedy," Davis said.

"The producers are working at it. I think two days ago we thought the sale was going ahead but overnight, Emile (Sherman.- producer) told me the sale has fallen over. It's a very tricky situation. It's a nightmare but they're working hard at it."

The film covers a weighty subject and Davis approached it with the utmost sensitivity and care. With actress Rooney Mara in the starring role as Magdalene and Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus Christ, Davis made the focus of the movie the spirituality within.

"I wanted to make sure the film was very human and relatable and in some ways, what we're saying is, divinity is within us, we have to go inside to find God, not up to a temple or a church. It's in us," he said.

Having been brought up without a religion, Davis had his own cross to bear.

"Trepidations set in because people are going to think I'm a fake. I'm not religious myself," he said.

"I had to go through a process of understanding what the writers had been through in terms of their research and their collaborations with religious people and Jewish experts, and I realised the wealth of support they had from academics, experts supporting us through all the process," he said.

He says it feels like the right time to tell Magdalene's story, a time when he says the "patriarchy is shivering".

"When we were making it all these things started to unravel, it was weird. Like Pope Francis acknowledged Mary, created a feast day in her name, and then Harvey's whole thing played out and the #MeToo campaign and it did feel a little bit like divine intervention," he said.

"In some ways I've got to be like Mary and have faith and not waiver. But I do believe this film will have a long life and be appreciated for a long time."

*Mary Magdalene releases in Australia on March 22
NSW Labor has reiterated its opposition to Gladys Berejiklian's multi-billion dollar stadiums plan after the government tried to argue Luke Foley had softened his stance during a radio interview.

The state Labor leader on Thursday uploaded a statement to Facebook making clear the opposition thought the $2.7 billion program to knock down and rebuild ANZ, Allianz and Parramatta stadiums was "scandalous".

"As I have said since November when this outlandish policy was announced the money should be spent on schools and hospitals before stadiums," Mr Foley said in the post.

The opposition leader was accused by the government of softening his stance during a Wednesday radio interview when he backed ANZ and Parramatta being upgraded.

Mr Foley went on to say he was "happy to look at all options" when it came to Allianz Stadium but made clear he couldn't justify knocking it down.

"I don't support a knockdown rebuild of a stadium that is simply not big enough to host our major events," Mr Foley told 2GB.

Sports Minister Stuart Ayres jumped on Mr Foley's comments telling parliament: "Members opposite have been circulating across NSW little cards saying 'schools and hospitals before stadiums,' the problem is, they support the ANZ and Parramatta stadiums."

But the opposition leader on Thursday insisted it was "scandalous" the government was going to spend billions of dollars on the three stadiums.

"What I can rule out is a Labor government knocking down existing stadiums and building entirely new ones in their place - in Moore Park or in Sydney Olympic Park," Mr Foley said in the Facebook post.
The world's best batsman had been a bit "lazy" in Durban but Steve Smith insists he doesn't have a problem with left-arm spin.

Smith, fresh from man-of-the-series honours in the Ashes and averaging more than 75 as captain, produced scores of 56 and 38 in Australia's first Test against South Africa.

The classy right-hander fell victim to South Africa's frontline spinner Keshav Maharaj in his first dig and part-timer Dean Elgar on day three, extending a poor run against left-arm spinners.

Smith's Test average against left-arm orthodox is 21.92 since 2016, according to CricViz, while against all other bowlers, he averages 107.33.

"Somebody has to get you out," Smith said.

"I usually go OK outside of Rangana Herath and (Ravindra) Jedeja, those guys have probably got me the most.

"I'm comfortable how I'm playing spin at the moment. I feel like I'm a good player of spin and it doesn't give me too many worries.

"Perhaps, I got a little bit lazy at times and didn't have the same concentration levels that I had in India at the start of last year."

Smith scored three centuries during Australia's 2017 tour of India, including a stunning second-innings effort on Pune's raging turner that was rated poor by the match referee.

Kingsmead's pitch offered a different sort of challenge, with local Maharaj delighting in the slow-and-low deck to claim career-best match figures of 9-225.

Port Elizabeth, where the second Test starts on Friday, is also renowned for being a spin-friendly venue.

"When you're playing outside of the subcontinent, playing spin is a lot easier," Smith said.

"Maybe you can relax a little bit and perhaps not get that big stride ... or think the ball isn't going to spin as much and get a bit lazy."

Former Proteas spinner Paul Harris suggested Maharaj would be a major threat in the second Test.

"If he has a few runs to play with, he can be be quite dangerous," Harris said.

"He's so accurate ... and he'll have a bit to say in PE because that wicket is generally quite slow and spins a bit."

Tim Paine, who fell to Maharaj during Australia's second innings in Durban, suggested his side gifted the tweaker too many wickets.

"It's just about being a little bit more disciplined for a bit longer against him," Paine said.
Today's birthday, March 9: French actress Juliette Binoche (1964 - ).

Actress Juliette Binoche may be intensely private about her love life, but there is an undeniable "love story between her and the camera" she's never been able to hide.

Today one of France's most successful actors the incomparable Binoche has refused to be boxed in to a single persona and her long and successful career shows no signs of letting up.

Born in Paris on March 9, 1964, to mother Monique Yvette Stalens and father Jean-Marie Binoche, her parents separated when she was just a toddler and she and her sister Marion were sent to boarding school in the suburbs of Paris when she was just four.

As young women the sisters moved to Paris, where Binoche attended drama school.

The young actress made her big screen debut in the 1983 film Liberty Belle but critical acclaim would come when she was offered a role in Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary.

From there she appeared in films Family Life and Rendez-Vous in 1985 - which continued to propel her into the limelight and bring her to the attention of international criticis.

In her first foreign film Binoche starred opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in 1988's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

She would go on to star in other Hollywood films, including 1992's Wuthering Heights with Ralph Fiennes, but famously turned down a number of roles in high-profile Hollywood blockbusters.

She even turned down the iconic Steven Spielberg.

Despite her refusal to be seduced by the bright lights of Hollywood Binoche returned to the foreign screen in 1996 as a Franco-Canadian nurse caring for a mysterious wounded man in The English Patient.

The role saw her take home the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance. Binoche would go on to win Hollywood's top gong - Best Actress - in 2001 for her role in Chocolat.

Binoche has also won Best Actress Awards at Cannes, Berlin and Venice.

Her success was summed up by director Louis Malle: "There is a love story between her and the camera, her presence and intensity are astounding," he told AFP in 1997.

Binoche has two children, a son Raphael and a daughter Hana.
Penalties for dumping cheap overseas steel and other products in Australia will be tripled if Labor wins the next federal election.

The dumping watchdog would also be beefed up with an extra $3.5 million a year to make sure countries aren't pouring below-cost steel into Australia.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the United States' proposed tariff hike on steel poses a real risk to the Australian industry.

"Labor will not let Australia become a dumping ground for cheap foreign goods sent here by trade cheats," he will announce on Friday.

The Anti-Dumping Commission will be given 30 extra staff and the new responsibility for monitoring sudden and large increases in imports.

"Labor strongly believes in free trade, but we also believe that it needs to be conducted on a level playing field," Mr Shorten says.

Mr Shorten says Australia is lagging behind other countries, imposing just 24 per cent duties on dumped steel in 2015 while the US imposed 256 per cent.

"Australia rarely imposes anti-dumping penalties in excess of 30 per cent," he said.

Labor will triple the penalties, and the increased revenue will be invested back into the anti-dumping system.

The Anti-Dumping Commission will become a one-stop shop for monitoring of dumping, taking over the Productivity Commission's role of safeguards investigations.

Mr Shorten says dumping is a particular problem for Australia's steel industry, in which more than 60 per cent of current anti-dumping measures are in force.

Labor says the United States' proposed 25 per cent tariff on imported steel will increase the threat of more below-cost steel being dumped in Australia, putting further pressure on an industry already feeling the impact of a glut of Chinese steel production.
In confusing news from France, a couple are being dragged to court as authorities have deemed their baby girls name inappropriate.

Risk of gender confusion

The little girl was to be called Liam, but in February the public prosecutor stepped in asserting that this name would be likely to create a risk of gender confusion and would be therefore contrary to the interest of the child and could harm her in her social relations. Hm.

France seems to have some pretty bonkers ideas about gender (and LGBTIQ rights and consent and body image), and this case serves to highlight some Frenchy misunderstandings about gender.

Liam is usually used as a boys name, and is the Irish short form of William. That said, its actually a very pretty name, and its not a stretch to apply it to any cute baby. There are plenty of examples of names that dont obviously denote gender and are still lovely: Sean, Bailey, Cameron, Drew, Dylan, Reese, Shannon, Sydney, Taylor  and thats just for starters.

The case against Liam

It seems this mum and dad  who are from Morbihan in the north west region of Brittany  had already been flagged by the powers-that-be when they tried to register their third childs name the day after her birth. The mother in question was advised to give her daughter a more feminine middle name then (which has not been revealed publicly). Things have now escalated to a formal legal stoush over her first name, too.

Interestingly, the prosecutor has used the likes of Liam Gallagher (of Oasis) and Liam Neeson as arguments against the wee girls name. Hes requested the judge ban the first name  Liam  and force the parents to give the child another name chosen by the parents and, failing that, by the judge.

The parents have engaged a lawyer and postponed their babys baptism as they await a trial date.

The French are pretty serious about baby names and whats acceptable. Up until 1993, mums and dads had to choose from an official list of acceptable baby names. Then President Francois Mitterand scrapped the list, but the French authorities still keep a watchful eye on what parents are naming their tots  and continue to step in.

French rules

Officially, the baby naming rules in France include the following: 1. The first name must be written in French and only the Roman alphabet can be used and that the only accepted accents are the dots, umlauts (), accents and cedillas belonging to the vowels and consonants authorized by the French language.

Recently a family wanted to call their baby Fanch and that was overruled. Same deal with Derchen which was said to court intolerable linguistic discrimination.

2. The first name must not be contrary to the best interests of the child.

This meant that Megane Renault, Nutella, Manhattan, Strawberry, Zigzag, Deamon, MJ and Joyeaux were all nixed by the authorities. A child with the last name of one parent cant have the other parents last name as a first name. #confusing

Well be following Liams story with interest.
Six people have been arrested following investigations into an alleged drug syndicate in the NSW central west.

Police have been investigating drug supply in the Bathurst area since August and will allege more than half a kilogram of methamphetamine has been seized since then.

On Thursday morning a 22-year-old man, a 20-year-old woman, a 25-year-old man and a 31-year-old man, who then allegedly assaulted officers, were arrested.

Later a 24-year-old, who was later released, and 61-year-old man were also arrested.

The four men held were charged with drug offences and refused bail to appear in Bathurst Local Court on Friday.

The woman was charged with participating in a criminal group and was granted conditional bail to appear on Monday April 9.
Former Tasmania attorney-general Vanessa Goodwin will be farewelled at a state funeral on Friday.

Dr Goodwin died on Saturday, the day of the state election, at 48 after a battle with brain cancer.

Re-elected premier Will Hodgman paid tribute to his former cabinet colleague and close friend during an emotional victory speech and in the days following.

"She will be carried in our hearts and will continue to motivate and inspire us," he said on Tuesday.

Dr Goodwin was diagnosed with cancer in March last year and withdrew from parliament and public life soon after.

The state service will be held from 2pm at St David's Cathedral in Hobart.
New Queensland tree-clearing legislation has been hailed by green groups, but farmers say the laws are too restrictive.

The laws were reintroduced to parliament on Thursday after lapsing late last year when the state election was called.

A key difference in the new bill was the omission of the reverse onus of proof clause, which would have forced landholders to prove they hadn't been illegally clearing.

AgForce president Grant Maudsley said they welcomed the removal, but overall felt the laws were still too restrictive.

"If you want to grow extra food in this state you need to set aside agricultural land for that development, this actually puts a cap that stops agricultural development going forward," Mr Maudsley said.

The laws have been universally applauded by environmental groups.

Queensland Conservation Council head Tim Seelig said the changes would bolster habitats for native wildlife.

"Land clearing is catastrophic for our vulnerable wildlife and their woodland homes, bad for the Great Barrier Reef because of the sediment run-off it causes, and bad for climate change," Dr Seelig said in a statement.

The bill will now go through the committee process, with a report due back in parliament by April 23.
Melbourne's Metropolitan Fire Bridge firefighters will vote on a controversial proposed pay deal after its $150 million price tag and perks came under fire earlier this week.

The enterprise bargaining agreement made headlines after some media outlets and politicians calculated firies could take almost 200 days leave a year.

United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall rejected the figure saying workers were eligible for a maximum of 99 leave days in the agreement.

Mr Marshall said firefighters would get 65 days' annual leave, and 15 days' personal and sick leave in the "modest" and "industry standard" deal.

Among the perks in the proposed deal is a 19 per cent pay rise over four years.

It is due to go to a vote on Friday and if passed will be sent to the Fair Work Commission.

If endorsed, the agreement will expire in 2019.
A Sydney neurologist faces disciplinary orders after a tribunal found him guilty of inappropriately touching a patient during a physical examination.

Mohammed Shareef-Ud Dowla saw the woman once in 2015 after GPs couldn't find any physical cause for pain she was suffering and examined a caesarean scar on her stomach.

The NSW Civil and Administration Tribunal on Thursday found Dowla placed his hands and fingers under her pants and underpants and touched her inappropriately.

A further complaint that he performed a sex act under his desk while asking her questions was not proven.

Dowla, who was also found to have asked inappropriate personal questions and given her his mobile number for no medical reason, will face another hearing to determine disciplinary orders.
Jeremy the lamb is on a mission to support Animal Justice Party candidate Miranda Smith in the upcoming by-election in the federal Melbourne seat of Batman.

Ms Smith said Jeremy would attend today's pre-poll to encourage residents in Batman to vote for a party standing up in parliament for animals.

"One of our campaigns is to create awareness of factory farms and conditions they (animals) go through when off to slaughter or are exported," she told AAP.

"We want people to make the connection that they are not a commodity. They are inquisitive, friendly ... and deserve to live."

Jeremy will help Ms Smith strike up conversations about the party and encourage voters to send a strong message to stamp out battery hen cages and live export.

When Jeremy isn't on the campaign trail, he lives at a rescue farm in the Macedon ranges and will never be eaten or sold.

The duo will be at the Salvation Army Hall on High Street in Thornbury from 10am.
South Australians are still waiting to hear promised announcements from the state's premier and opposition leader - eight days before voters head to the polls.

In February, Premier Jay Weatherill said there were "rumours about the place" that SA-BEST candidates would defect from the party following the election.

"We already know members of Nick Xenophon's team are saying they will be resigning from his party within months of being elected and becoming independents," Mr Weatherill said.

He said he would release more information on the potential defections further down the track, but on Thursday remained tight-lipped.

When asked when he would release the names of the candidates, the premier replied only with "soon" and would not clarify whether the release would come before or after the election.

During a press conference on Thursday, Opposition Leader Steven Marshall withheld details of his party's public transport plan.

Mr Marshall and opposition spokesman David Pisoni announced a right-hand turn would be added to Adelaide's controversial east end tramline extension, at a cost of $37 million, if the Liberals win government.

He said the turn - at the intersection of King William St and North Terrace - should have been included in works currently under way, to take the line past the Art Gallery and to the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital.

But Mr Pisoni could not say whether the intersection would become a grand junction under the Liberals' policy.

"That will be clarified when we release the plan," he said.

"Today what we're saying is that we're putting a right-hand turn in, and you'll see more of what we're doing with public transport and trams when we release the full policy."
Despite withdrawing the US from the free trade pact, President Donald Trump is set to steal some of the spotlight from the Trans-Pacific Partnership just hours after it's signed in Chile.

Trade Minister Steve Ciobo will join his counterparts from 10 Pacific countries for the signing ceremony on Friday at 5am (AEDT).

The deal had been on life support after the United States' withdrawal but was resuscitated in January following lobbying from Japan and Australia.

Mr Trump is expected to sign a presidential proclamation setting up 25 per cent tariff on steel and 10 per cent tariff on aluminium imports at 7.30am Friday (AEDT), with the measures taking effect two weeks later.

Australia is among the countries hoping to secure an exemption and the White House opened up the prospect of some wiggle room on Thursday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who had been lobbying for an exemption, argued the TPP signing was an important statement in the cause of trade liberalisation.

"A huge demonstration of our relentless commitment to getting every export opportunity made available for Australian businesses," Mr Turnbull said.

The deal will eliminate 98 per cent of tariffs in a marketplace worth close to $14 trillion.

Mr Ciobo said Australian farmers, manufacturers, service providers and small businesses would be the big winners.

"It sends an important message to the world that prosperity is achieved through breaking down trade barriers not building them," he said.

Australian exporters would benefit from new trade agreements with Canada and Mexico and greater market access to Japan, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

There is also a better deal for Australian cheese and beef exports to Japan, and new quotas for rice and wheat.

Australian sugar would also have better access to Japan, Canada and Mexico's markets.

The TPP deal covers Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
To anyone who's read news articles about Matthew Leveson for the past decade, the Sydney man's name likely conjures up dark images of the decade-long search for his body.

But his parents, Mark and Faye, are determined they'll shine a light on the real "Matty" on Friday when they finally lay him to rest.

The bright, vibrant, creative 20-year-old would happily give you the shirt off his back, Ms Leveson says.

"He was a very caring kid who put thought into presents he bought you and made his own cards," she told AAP.

"He was just a lovely kid and we want people to see that side of him, not what's been put in the paper."

Matt was last seen leaving Darlinghurst's Arq nightclub in September 2007 with his then partner Michael Atkins who was later acquitted of murder.

Atkins led police to the location of Matt's remains in the Royal National Park after complex legal agreements were struck and his remains were found in mid-2017.

Mark and Faye have asked guests at Friday's ceremony, which will take place at the Woronora chapels in Sutherland, to wear bright colours and a splash of Matt's favourite colour purple.

"It's meant to be a celebration of his life, being grateful for the 20 years that he was alive," Mark Leveson says. "It's a fun day."

The service will include Matt's favourite songs, photographs and stories to show guests what he was like through his childhood, schooling and early adulthood.

Deputy state coroner Elaine Truscott in December wasn't able to rule on the cause of Matt's death, despite a lengthy inquest, but said Atkins' lies were suspicious.

But on Friday there'll be no mention of the manner in which the 20-year-old's life was cut short, nor the subsequent court cases, inquests and searches.

"We just want to remember Matt," Ms Leveson says.

Detectives finally found Matt's body in May 2017 beneath a cabbage-tree palm that has since been relocated to Mark and Faye's backyard.

The Levesons had long promised Matt they would give him a proper farewell.

"All those years of searching, we finally achieved our goal and it's made it all so real," Mr Leveson says. "This will be our final goodbye to him."
Australian researchers have identified unique molecular characteristics of an aggressive, hard-to-treat type of lung cancer known as adenocarcinoma that could help identify patients most likely to respond to immunotherapies.

The researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne also identified a possible blood biomarker produced by the deadly disease, raising hope of an early detection test.

Adenocarcinoma accounts for around 40 per cent of lung cancers and is often associated with a history of smoking, but is also the most commonly diagnosed lung cancer in non-smokers.

It occurs more frequently in females and in young people than other types of lung cancer.

"These cancers are very aggressive, are resistant to standard therapies and have a poor prognosis, so new therapies are urgently needed," said Dr Sarah Best at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

Working with colleagues at Metabolomics Australia, Dr Best and Dr Kate Sutherland focused on the role of two cell signalling pathways - KEAP1/NRF2 and PI3K - which are known to be involved in adenocarcinomas.

The study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, found more than one in five lung adenocarcinomas had specific alterations in the KEAP1/NRF2 pathway, which provided an environment that allowed the cancer to thrive and grow.

"This is a quite significant proportion of these tumours," said Dr Sutherland.

Importantly, the researchers showed in mouse models these tumours responded to anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 immunotherapies.

"When we used these therapies in our pre-clinical models we were able to show that the tumours did regress following treatment," said Dr Sutherland.

The research also showed these cancers make a "metabolic by-product" that was detected in the blood.

"We believe this offers great hope for being able to provide a simple blood test that could be used to detect these tumours at an early stage but also to possibly detect the patients that may respond to immunotherapy," explained Dr Sutherland.

The next step is to analyse human samples to prove the same is true in lung adenocarcinoma patients.

Cancer Council Australia CEO, Professor Sanchia Aranda praised the research and said it could "absolutely" be life-saving in the future.

"Lung cancer is the most commonest cause of cancer deaths in Australia for both men and for women, it overtook breast cancer a while ago now, and there are very few effective treatments but particularly no effective early detection tools," said Professor Aranda.

"A nano-diagnostic or a blood test diagnostic would mark a major advance for high risk individuals," said Professor Aranda.

"Even though it's early days these are the sorts of studies that will actually get into practice pretty quickly because the treatments are there," she said.
A Cairns woman has been reunited with a haul of diamonds given to her by her late father after a scrupulously honest renter handed them in.

The renter found the diamonds during a cleaning frenzy while preparing to move out of the unit, where the tenant had lived for five years.

Police have been working to return them to their rightful owner since they were handed to them in December, and finally did just that on Thursday.

The woman, who doesn't want to be named, has told The Cairns Post she last saw the precious stones 18 years ago, and had presumed them stolen.

"I'm just so incredibly grateful to the person who found them and handed them into the police. This has been absolutely life-changing for me, and I'm certain that my late father has guided them back," she said.

Police have praised the honesty of the renter, who would have been allowed to keep the precious haul had the owner not been found.

"It's certainly refreshing to know that there are people out there who are as honest and thoroughly decent as the person who found these diamonds," Cairns Senior Constable Jeremy Carter said.
People protest outside a speech by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions March 7, 2018, in Sacramento, California; the progressive state is battling the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown

California Governor Jerry Brown accused the Trump administration Wednesday of launching a war over the state's protections for illegal immigrants, after the Justice Department sued to block its sanctuary laws.

"This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy. It's not wise, it's not right, and it will not stand," said Governor Jerry Brown.

Brown was visibly angry after Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speaking in Sacramento, accused the state of deliberately obstructing enforcement of federal law by offering undocumented immigrants sanctuary protections to dodge arrest and deportation by immigration agents.

"California is using every power it has -- and some it doesn't -- to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I'm going to use every power I have to stop them," Sessions told a group of law enforcement officials.

Late Tuesday the Justice Department sued to overturn three California statutes that render it more difficult for officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to obtain the cooperation of local officials and private employers to make arrests.

"Immigration law is the province of the federal government," Sessions said.

"A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law.... And it creates an open borders system. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted."

- 'Sanctuary state' -

Californians protest outside a speech by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions in Sacramento, California; Sessions accuses the state of deliberately obstructing enforcement of federal law by offering undocumented immigrants sanctuary protections

The lawsuit, filed in the federal court in Sacramento, steps up President Donald Trump's battle to cut back legal immigration and step up deportation of people without immigration papers.

That threatens millions of people who, though without legal papers, have built lives, families and companies across the country, many over decades.

California, one of the country's largest, wealthiest and most progressive states, has battled with the administration since Trump took office in January 2017 over his immigration crackdown.

California is home to the largest number of undocumented immigrants, nearly one-quarter of the estimated 11 million in total across the United States.

Last October Brown declared all of California a "sanctuary state" in an open challenge to the Trump administration.

Many localities have also declared themselves sanctuaries, fettering their cooperation with ICE and CBP.

On February 24 Libby Schaaf, the mayor of Oakland, California issued an open warning to cities in the San Francisco Bay area that ICE was preparing a soon to be launched operation to round up vulnerable immigrants.

Sessions said Wednesday that the raid would have netted some 800 arrests if Schaaf had not issued her warning.

"The mayor of Oakland has been actively seeking to help illegal aliens avoid apprehension by ICE. Her actions support those who flout our laws and boldly validate the illegality," he said.

"Here's my message to Mayor Schaaf: how dare you? How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement officials just to promote a radical open borders agenda?"

- 'Discord and division' -

Defiant: California Governor Jerry Brown (L) accuses the Trump administration of launching a "war" with the state over its sanctuary protections for illegal immigrants. At right is state Attorney General Xavier Becerra

Brown lashed back defiantly after Sessions spoke not far from the governor's offices.

"This is really unprecedented for the chief law enforcement officer of the United States to come out to California and act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer. This is a political stunt," he said.

"What Jeff Sessions said is simply not true. And I call upon him to apologize to the people of California (for) bringing the mendacity of Washington to California, and trying to insert discord and division, and I might add, dysfunctionality, in a state that is really working."
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas attends a meeting of his ruling Fatah party in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in this file picture taken on March 1, 2018

The Palestinian congress will meet next month for the first time in years, official media announced Wednesday, as president Mahmud Abbas plans a response to US policies.

The Palestinian National Council, a congress representing those in the Palestinian territories and the diaspora, has not met in regular session since 1996 amid political infighting between Abbas's secular Fatah party and Islamist movement Hamas.

An emergency session of the body was held in 2009.

But it will gather on April 30, the Wafa official news agency said, after a decision by the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee.

The more than 700-member PNC serves as the parliament of the PLO.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, an adviser to Abbas, told journalists Tuesday that among the tasks for the meeting was a "new political programme".

The Palestinians have grown increasingly frustrated with the US administration, accusing it of a pro-Israel bias after President Donald Trump's controversial December recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

They have called for an end to US mediation between the two sides, instead calling for a multilateral approach.

The meeting could also include members of Hamas, despite reconciliation attempts with Fatah failing.

All members of the largely defunct Palestinian parliament are automatic members of the congress even though Hamas is not part of the PLO.

Hamas won the last legislative elections in 2006 and thus has 74 members in parliament who are in theory able to attend.

But Hamas rejected the timing of the meeting, saying it represented "a blatant departure from the national consensus" and implying its delegates would not attend.
Parents of children killed or injured at school shootings including the one in Parkland, Florida last month brought their stories of tragedy to the US Capitol, where they urged lawmakers to take action to reduce gun violence

Parents of American children killed in gun violence implored Congress to seize the moment Wednesday and enact far-reaching gun reform, as the momentum for taking action stalls in politically divided Washington.

With no lawmakers from the controlling Republican Party present, a group of Senate Democrats held a makeshift hearing in the US Capitol to hear testimony from grieving relatives, a survivor of last month's Parkland, Florida school shooting, teachers and police officers demanding change to the nation's laws.

"How many more children are going to need to be slaughtered?" 17-year-old David Hogg asked the senators.

"We've come to this point where we say we're going to do things... and nothing happens," said Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 14 of his classmates and three staff members were murdered by a gunman.

"Now is the time we need to take action."

President Donald Trump had met with survivors and consoled relatives of those killed, and discussed paths forward with a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the White House.

But despite the public grief and a surge of political activism, there has been little concrete action on Capitol Hill, where attention has shifted to fears of a trade war triggered by Trump's call for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

"Congress has been complicit by its inaction," Senator Richard Blumenthal said.

Some lawmakers have stepped up to introduce minor bipartisan gun safety measures in Congress, but it remained unclear when or if the bills would reach the floor for debates and votes.

- 'Six years old forever' -

Democrats have called for several moves, including expanding the background check system to include sales of weapons online and at gun shows, empowering authorities to seize guns from people deemed a danger to society, and curbing sales of assault-style rifles.

"We are going to push and push and push until we get them done," top Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer assured the group.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime, 14, was murdered in the February 14 Parkland shooting, expressed shock that Republican leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan have failed to hold official hearings on gun violence, and he called on the assembled lawmakers to not let the momentum for change slip away.

"I have to hold all of you accountable, to make sure this is seen as a real moment, not a political moment," Guttenberg said, slapping a table for emphasis.

For Francine Wheeler, the constant tragedy heaped on American families was reason enough to act.

"My argument lies in the Earth, a few miles from my front door, in the town cemetery, six years old forever," said Wheeler, whose son Ben was slain at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.

"I'm just one, one mom, in the expanding congregation of grief," she noted. "Please do something meaningful and serious."
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron met in Paris last year

Two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned from a blunder-struck trip to India, Emmanuel Macron arrives in New Delhi hoping to avoid the missteps of his ally.

Trudeau and Macron are often compared internationally because of their broadly similar political views, as well as youth and good looks. But the French leader will be eager to make a different impression on his Indian hosts.

Trudeau, already facing suspicions in India that Canada was too soft on Sikh separatists back home, was seriously embarrassed when a former militant was invited to a dinner with him in Mumbai.

Even before this revelation, India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris last year.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who visited India in February, faced accusations that Sikh separatists were treated softly in Canada

Macron will "spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi," a source in the French presidency said, adding that they had "formed a close relationship" during Macron's first nine months in power.

They will meet Saturday for talks before Macron attends a solar power summit on Sunday designed to showcase India and France's commitment to fighting climate change, which both leaders have made a priority.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, France's 40-year-old president is set to make the almost obligatory visit to the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a few hours drive from the Indian capital on Sunday.

On Monday, he heads to the chaotic Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the river Ganges, which the Indian premier has promised to modernise and clean up.

Having seen Trudeau pilloried on social media and in the Canadian press for donning traditional Indian clothing at every opportunity, Macron is likely to be far more conservative in his dress-sense.

- Arms and reactors -

Macron and Trudeau are often compared because of their broadly similar political views, youth and good looks

As well as discussing climate change and ways to build closer diplomatic ties, the two biggest issues between the countries in recent years -- defence and nuclear energy sales -- will also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the world's biggest arms buyer.

Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron has travelled widely since his election last May, presenting himself as the dynamic new face in the European Union who is driving reform efforts in the 28-member bloc.

The centrist has invested time and energy in building relationships with the world's nationalist strongmen, including US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the world's biggest democracy and its huge yet still untapped business potential.

Modi and Macron have been close since the French president took office

The United States and leading European Union members have spent years wooing successive governments in New Delhi, seeing the country as a counter-weight to China in the region.

Macron is set to announce plans to allow Indian navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.
Sameh al-Madhoun (L), a 40-year-old Palestinian businessman, speaks to AFP during an interview at a Hamas jail in Gaza City on February 20, 2018

Sameh al-Madhoun's eyes fill with tears as he recalls his fall from successful businessman to prisoner in a Hamas jail in Gaza.

Once the owner of a flourishing car dealership, he is one of more than 40,000 Gazans charged in the last year with failing to keep up debt payments as the economy in the Palestinian enclave collapses.

Madhoun, a 40-year-old father of four, has sold most of his possessions, including his house and some of his cars, in a bid to pay back the $3 million (2.4 million euro) debt that dragged his business into bankruptcy.

"I have paid off half of it until now. I don't know how I will pay off the rest," he told AFP from his jail cell.

"I don't own anything else now except these debts."

A decade-long Israeli blockade and a dispute between Gaza's Islamist rulers and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authorities have brought the coastal territory's economy to its knees.

Some 42,500 people were arrested in the past year for failing to pay debtors, according to Hamas police.

At least 600 are currently in jail on similar charges.

Madhoun has been detained since September, but is allowed to leave two days a week to see his young children and search for the money to pay back his debtors.

AFP met him both in prison, after being granted access by Hamas, and during one of his leave days at his former company -- now just a few cars gathering dust.

"The market collapsed. Even though prices fell there were no customers," Madhoun said.

"If it continues all the businesses in Gaza will fail."

- Economy 'all but dead'-

The economy of Gaza, a Palestinian enclave of two million people sandwiched between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean, is "all but dead," said Maher Tabba, an official at the territory's Chamber of Commerce.

As Gazans' buying power has collapsed, the amount of goods being imported into the Strip has more than halved in just seven months, according to border officials.

Tabba said some $112 million-worth of cheques bounced in 2017, up from $62 million in 2016.

Palestinians jailed for defaulting on debts sit in a cell in a Hamas jail in Gaza City on February 20, 2018

That, he said, is "clear evidence of an economic collapse".

Tabba estimates that several hundred of those currently in prison are owners of struggling or failed businesses.

In an attempt to contain the crisis, the Public Prosecutor's Office in Gaza recently announced it would give people an extra month to find the money to service their debts.

Much of the world has dropped the policy of imprisoning debtors, but in Gaza it is still common.

Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza since 2007 which it says is necessary to isolate Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since 2008.

Rights groups and UN officials say it amounts to collective punishment and strangles the economy in the enclave, where unemployment is around 40 percent.

But the Palestinian Authority has also sought in recent months to harm Hamas by damaging Gaza's economy, including by cutting the salaries it still pays to civil servants there despite Hamas taking over the territory in 2007.

Hamas has also largely stopped paying civil servants after an attempted reconciliation with the Fatah movement of president Mahmud Abbas stalled.

- 'Market collapsed' -

The United Nations' top official for Israel and the Palestinian territories says Gaza is facing a "full collapse."

Even Israelis are publicly raising the alarm.

The head of the army reportedly warned Israel's cabinet recently that a conflict could break out if humanitarian conditions continue to worsen in the Strip.

Palestinian traders such as this man at the Fras market in Gaza City on January 21, 2018 have been battered by the enclave's economic downturn

Another trader jailed in November, who didn't want to be named, said 35 people had been laid off when his company went bust.

"Everything I have built since I set up the company in 2002 was lost in the last year. My debt reached more than a million and a half dollars," he said.

"I was selling property to service the debt, but I wasn't able to pay it fully."

The trader said Gaza's financial woes are a result of the political situation -- and that nothing less than a solution will enable the economy to recover.

"The market collapsed because of the siege and the crisis with PA salaries," he added.

"While there is no political stability, there will not be economic security here and the market will not rise again."
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged caution over North Korea's offer of talks

Japan's prime minister warned Thursday that North Korea's offer of denuclearisation talks with the United States could be a ploy to play for time and stressed the need for Pyongyang to take "concrete" steps.

In his first public comments since an apparent diplomatic breakthrough between North and South Korea, Shinzo Abe said that talking for the sake of talking was "meaningless."

"I've repeatedly said that we have to create a situation of putting maximum pressure on North Korea so that the North wants to have talks with us," Abe told MPs.

"However... it is true that the North has in the past earned time to develop nuclear capabilities and missiles" during periods of negotiation, Abe cautioned.

"Talks for the sake of talks are meaningless and we should never loosen sanctions just because North Korea is open to talks," added the hawkish prime minister.

In the latest chapter of a rapid Olympics-driven rapprochement on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang has said it would consider giving up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees.

However, analysts have warned that any path to a US-North Korea deal over nuclear weapons is fraught with danger and uncertainty.

Japan, a close US ally in the region, is in the direct firing line of North Korean missiles and saw two fly over its territory in 2017, sparking outrage and lifting tensions to fever pitch.

Despite the apparent recent detente, Abe said Japan's position was unchanged: "North Korea has to show concrete actions toward denuclearisation by committing to abandon its nuclear programme via complete, verifiable and irreversible means."

Abe said he was looking forward to a briefing from a South Korean envoy about his talks with the North when he visits Japan next week.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have proved very popular in Japan

Japanese authorities Thursday ordered two cryptocurrency exchanges to suspend operations as part of a clampdown following a massive hack that saw thieves steal hundreds of millions of dollars in virtual currency.

The Financial Services Agency (FSA) said in a statement it had ordered FSHO and Bit Station, exchanges based in Yokohama and Nagoya, to temporarily halt their operations for a month from Thursday.

The agency alleged that FSHO "does not have a proper system to monitor trading and has not given training to its employees," while an employee of Bit Station "diverted digital currency deposited by clients for his personal use."

Immediate comments from the two exchanges were not available.

Authorities also ordered five other exchanges, including Coincheck, to improve their business practices.

Coincheck was already slapped with sanctions in January following the hack.

The hack of Coincheck -- resulting in the disappearance of NEM cryptocurrency worth $530 million -- was one of the largest of its kind, and prompted authorities to search the firm's office last month.

The company has already pledged to reimburse about $400 million to all 260,000 customers who lost their holdings of NEM, then the 10th biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation.

But it is unclear how and when the money will be returned.

Following the fresh FSA order, Coincheck vowed to "thoroughly review its management" and take measures to protect its depositors and deal with money laundering and funds for terrorists.

"Once again we apologise to our customers and people concerned for causing a lot of trouble and worries," the company said in a statement, promising to "do its best" to regain confidence.

In February, seven plaintiffs -- two companies and five individuals -- filed a lawsuit against Coincheck.

They are seeking the reimbursement of 19.53 million yen ($184,000) in virtual currencies and further compensation for interest lost due to the hack.

Thieves syphoned away 523 million units of the cryptocurrency NEM from Coincheck during the January 26 hack, exceeding the $480 million in bitcoin stolen in 2014 from another Japanese exchange, MtGox.

That hack prompted Japan to issue new regulations, requiring exchanges to obtain a licence from the FSA, but Coincheck was allowed to continue operating while the agency was reviewing its application.

As many as 10,000 businesses in Japan are thought to accept bitcoin, and bitFlyer -- the country's main bitcoin exchange -- saw its user base grow beyond one million in November.
According to Seoul, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un said Pyongyang wanted to talk to the US and would not need nuclear weapons if the country's security was guaranteed

Two South Korean envoys left for Washington Thursday to brief US officials on their landmark visit to Pyongyang and the North's offer to talk about giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Chung Eui-yong, head of Seoul's National Security Office, will meet top US officials including National Security Advisor HR McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Yonhap news agency said.

"We have a separate message from North Korea for the US," Chung told journalists after revealing details of his meeting with the North's leader Kim Jong Un.

In a surprising turnaround, Kim said -- as relayed by Seoul -- that the North wanted to talk to the US and would not need nuclear weapons if the country's security was guaranteed.

The two Koreas also agreed to hold a third inter-Korean summit in late April at the southern side of the border truce village of Panmunjom.

Chung was accompanied Thursday by Suh Hoon, the chief of South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, who was also part of the delegation to Pyongyang.

After Washington, Chung will later visit China and Russia to brief officials, while Suh will travel to Japan.

The three countries, along with the US, are involved in six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear drive which have stalled since 2008.

US President Donald Trump welcomed this week's developments as "very positive" and said the North's talks offer appeared to be "sincere", adding: "We'll soon find out."

The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted an unidentified senior official of the presidential Blue House saying that Kim had not made any specific "give-and-take style" demands concerning dialogue with the US.

"He is apparently drawing a big picture," the official was quoted as saying.

"Kim has expressed his willingness to make his country a normal state" instead of a pariah state under sanctions, he added.

Analyst Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute said the landmark visit to Pyongyang had provided "key momentum" to contain the North's nuclear and missile threats, prevent conflict on the Korean peninsula and and start building trust.

"However, the path toward denuclearisation will be very rough," he said, forecasting that the North would continue missile production this year even if it stops nuclear and rocket tests.

And he added: "Even if an agreement is reached on freezing the North's nuclear programmes, complete verification would be next to impossible."
"Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription, in the end you will only hurt others and yourself," foreign minister Wang Yi said during a press conference, adding that "China will certainly make an appropriate and necessary response."

A trade war with the US will benefit no one, China warned Thursday, adding it was prepared to give as good as it gets if US President Donald Trump fires the first shots.

"Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription, in the end you will only hurt others and yourself," foreign minister Wang Yi said during a press conference, adding that "China will certainly make an appropriate and necessary response."

The Trump administration is expected to formally introduce previously announced tariffs on steel and aluminium imports on Thursday in the US.

US imports from China of these two goods make up a small proportion of its total imports from the world's second largest economy.

But the tariffs may be the first foray in an American trade war with Beijing.

In coming weeks, the Trump administration is expected to issue a report on intellectual property theft which may hammer China and possibly incite further tariffs on a wide range of Chinese imports.

Trump brought up the forthcoming moves on Wednesday, saying on Twitter that the US had asked China to develop a plan to reduce the deficit by one billion dollars.

The amount is a drop in the bucket compared with record $375.2 billion trade deficit with China the US racked up last year.

"The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!" the president also tweeted on Wednesday.
An Afghan Jogi man looks at an empty bird cage at his temporary home on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif

Afghanistan's Jogi tribe live on a knife edge: forced to abandon their nomadic lives after violence wrecked their traditional wandering grounds, they still face daily discrimination trying to carve a more sedentary existence in a country that does not recognise them as proper citizens.

Many from the ethnic minority opted to settle near Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of the relatively peaceful Balkh province, where they have built neat, mud-brick houses on rented land but their position is precarious.

Afghanistan's constitution does not explicitly recognise the Jogi as Afghans, making it difficult for them to obtain a tazkira, an identification document needed for any administrative procedure including buying the land they would need to settle permanently.

To obtain a tazkira the applicant's father or elder brother must already have one.

The community's leader Mullah Wural says they could be evicted at any time.

It is part of a pattern of discrimination and violence that the Jogi -- also called "Jat" in Dari, a name as pejorative as "Roma" in Europe -- have suffered since arriving in Afghanistan in the mid-nineteenth century from other parts of Central Asia.

These Sunni Muslims are distinguished from the rest of Afghanistan's conservative and ethnically diverse population by their social customs -- namely how women play an equal role to men in economically supporting their families.

Lightly veiled and wearing bright coloured dresses, they can be seen in Mazar's streets begging and reading palms, a striking sight in a gender-segregated country where most women are kept behind walls.

"The Jogi are the most open community in the country," boasts Wural.

-- Discrimination --

But, though the Jogi men work also, often as day-labourers or caring for livestock, many Afghans accuse them of prostituting their wives while they stay at home and do nothing.

"The prejudice is so strong, it's overwhelming," says German anthropologist Annika Schmeding, who documented discrimination against the Jogi community in a 2015 report for NGO People in Need (PIN).

Playful 12-year-old Fodar jumps from one courtyard to another as a cow's ear broth simmers in a pot and chickens busily peck at the ground.

He has managed to enrol in a public school because his family was able to secure him a tazkira owing to his father already holding one.

Because most Jogi are effectively stateless, they also have limited options to move beyond Afghanistan's borders.

Musician Haji Rangin says he has missed out on gigs abroad because he does not have an identity document.

Sitting on a carpet between his son on the drums and his brother on a type of violin, he takes his long-handled traditional Uzbek guitar and strikes the strings with a hand adorned with little bells.

Afghanistan's Jogi tribe live on a knife edge: forced to abandon their nomadic lives after violence wrecked their traditional wandering grounds, they now face daily discrimination trying to carve a more sedentary existance

The sound draws curious children from the street to listen.

"I get inspired by my community, by my roots. Sometimes when I start the music and specific poems the men start crying," Rangin tells AFP.

"I just wish sometimes to be counted as a citizen of this country... There is no discrimination when it comes to music," he smiles.

"The problem is, to get a tazkira you have to get registered with somebody of your family who already has a tazkira," says Schmeding, who believes that the tazkiras held by Jogi are often fake.

"It's very difficult to check if it's legal or not," she explains.

- 'Sensitive issue' -

Most Afghans do not consider the Jogis fellow citizens, no matter how long they have been in the country, she says.

Often politicians will not speak for the group for fear of upsetting the majority of the public.

"It's a sensitive issue," agrees Homayoun Mohtaat, director of the population bureau at the Ministry of the Interior.

An Afghan Jogi woman washes clothes outside her temporary home on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif

In 2006, he says, the Jogi petitioned Afghanistan's parliament for official legal recognition.

Official estimates put the total population at 20,000 to 30,000 people, mainly in northern Afghanistan. "So far, 1,300 tazkira have been issued, in Kunduz and Mazar," Mohtaat said.

But the presidential decree that would give them legal status across the country is still pending. In a country with so many problems the plight of the Jogi is not a priority.

And even if it is delivered, discrimination and social prejudice may be harder to root out.

Schoolboy Fodar says he is bullied by other children at school.

He reveals: "Every day I paint something for them and I offer them the painting to buy peace; if not they beat me."
A luxury yacht linked to allegations that $4.5 billion was looted from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB is being handed over to the FBI, which is probing the scandal, Indonesian police say

A luxury yacht linked to allegations that $4.5 billion was looted from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB is being handed over to the FBI, which is probing the scandal, Indonesian police said Thursday.

US and Indonesian authorities last week searched the Cayman Island-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some $250 million, which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

"(The handing over) is in the process of being done," national police senior detective Daniel Silitonga told AFP.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB -- set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak -- in a campaign of fraud and money-laundering. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The suits list $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with the stolen funds, which US officials are seeking to recover.

Those assets include the 300-foot (90-metre) yacht which US officials said was purchased by Malaysian financier known as Jho Low, an unofficial adviser to 1MDB.

The ship's captain and about three dozen crew had been questioned but no one has been arrested so far, Silitonga said.

"Regarding the crew, we are still discussing it," he said, when asked if they would be taken into the FBI's custody.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB -- set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak -- in a campaign of fraud and money-laundering. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing

Built in 2013, the Netherlands-made yacht has nine bedrooms, including a master suite with a hot tub, a helipad, a gym and spa, and a movie theatre, according to yachtcharterfleet.com.

Low, whose full is name Low Taek Jho, was said to have made key financial decisions linked to 1MDB, although he did not hold any official positions in Malaysia.

He has denied any wrongdoing and his current whereabouts are unknown.

After the boat seizure, a spokesman for Low noted that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had officially delayed its efforts to seize assets last year.

A US court reportedly granted a stay after a request from authorities, as they believed the civil proceedings could affect a criminal probe they are also conducting.

Low's spokesman said last week that the DoJ had "still not taken any steps to prove that any impropriety has occurred".

"It is therefore disappointing that, rather than reflecting on the deeply flawed and politically-motivated allegations, the DoJ is continuing with its pattern of global overreach -- all based on entirely unsupported claims of wrongdoing," he said.
Kyleanne Hunter, pictured during a deployment to Iraq, says Vets for Gun Reform, aims to be a "voice of reason" in the contentious debate over US firearms regulations

Dave Baril has served in the US Marine Corps for over 18 years, deployed twice to Iraq, and is a gun owner.

But after a teenager killed 17 people in Florida last month -- the deadliest school shooting to hit the country in over five years -- he took his personal AR-15 rifle to a local police station and turned it in for destruction.

Baril is one of a group of US military veterans calling for tighter firearms regulations in an effort to reduce gun violence in America, bringing their knowledge of weapons and war -- and accompanying credibility -- to the contentious debate.

Shootings at a Las Vegas concert last year and at the Parkland, Florida high school "really woke me up the most," he said.

The 42-year-old said he is "all for the 2nd Amendment" to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms.

"But that doesn't mean that... we should all be driving around in tanks just because... the military has tanks," he said.

And without changes to current gun laws, Baril believes the current pattern of mass shootings will continue -- or get worse.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," he said.

Both the Las Vegas and Parkland shootings were carried out with AR-15-style rifles, which are similar to military-issue M4s but lack a burst-fire mode.

"If I'm gonna say that... we shouldn't have these things out there, I can't have one myself and say, 'Well, I'm special,'" said Baril.

So he decided to turn in his rifle.

- 'Amplifying' survivors' voices -

After the Parkland shooting, Baril started the Twitter hashtag #VetsForGunReform and asked a few other veterans if it was something they would support.

They said yes, and it has since taken off, becoming a rallying point for like-minded veterans on social media.

"This has really coalesced the group, and the reach that it's gotten has been incredible," Kyleanne Hunter, one of the primary Vets for Gun Reform organizers, said of the hashtag.

"Right now, we're just sort of a little bit of a ragtag group of volunteers who also all have other jobs, and so we're getting this going as we can," said Hunter, a former Cobra helicopter pilot who served in the Marines for nearly 12 years, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and is a gun owner.

"What we really want to focus on right now is amplifying the voices of these students who are driving the movement," she said, referring to survivors of the Parkland shooting, some of whom have become prominent advocates for tighter firearms laws.

"We volunteered to go into harm's way, they didn't, and they shouldn't have to experience this," said Hunter.

She and fellow veterans aim to be "a voice of reason" in the debate on gun regulations and "bridge the gap between the left and the right," she said.

"We're keeping a close eye on the policy debates that are happening right now and being very deliberate as to how we want to proceed."

Pete Lucier, who served in the Marines from 2008 to 2013, deployed to Afghanistan and was a marksmanship instructor, said he was once a "pretty strong believer" in the idea of a "good guy with a gun" countering those who would do harm in the US.

Gun violence in America played a role in changing his views, but so did his time at war.

"Seeing the chaos of a real combat environment and the difficulties involved in gunplay and in real combat hedged a lot of my views about what was possible with a gun," said Lucier.

He no longer owns a gun but still shoots periodically, and said that veterans' knowledge of firearms is something important they bring to the conversation.

"A lot of us come from homes or backgrounds where we appreciate firearms. We don't necessarily villainize or demonize people who own guns. We understand guns," Lucier said.

"Our identity as veterans... informs our position," he said. "But it's not in any way trying to be a shield from criticism or... represent veterans as a monolith."

- 'They didn't sign up' -

Dennis Magnasco, shown treating a wounded boy in Afghanistan, saw "countless different types of injuries" as an army medic -- something that students at US schools "didn't sign up for," but have nonetheless been exposed to in repeated mass shootings

For Dennis Magnasco, who served in the US Army from 2006 to 2015, deployed to Afghanistan and is a gun owner, the shooting in Las Vegas -- where the gunman used a "bump stock" device to drastically increase the rate at which he could rain bullets down on concert-goers -- encouraged him to speak out.

"I saw the video of the shooting. When I heard the fire from that rifle with the bump stock on it, it sounded very similar to a machine gun. It sounded like combat," he said.

"I had this feeling of just, this isn't right, we've gotta make some changes."

As a medic in an infantry unit, Magnasco treated a wide variety of injuries, which is "something that I carry with me, and something that I remember."

"When I think about middle school students and high school students in the United States seeing these types of injuries in their schools to their friends, they didn't sign up for that," he said.

"That shouldn't be the way things are."
Armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops guard Kandy, the epicentre of the violence

Sri Lankan police said petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque on Thursday as hundreds of troops patrolled a troubled central district where anti-Muslim violence has left three people dead.

Muslim-owned businesses were set on fire and vandalised in several parts of Sri Lanka, police said, days after an island-wide state of emergency was imposed to curb riots in Kandy.

Police announced 85 people had been arrested for rioting in the hill district, including the leader of a radical Sinhalese Buddhist group known for agitating against Muslims.

"We have arrested 10 key suspects, including Amith Weerasinghe, who orchestrated and led these attacks," police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters in Colombo, adding that another 75 were detained.

Armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops guarded Kandy, the epicentre of the violence where internet services remain suspended and an evening curfew is in place.

The government ordered the internet blackout after police discovered mobs of Sinhalese rioters were using social media to coordinate attacks on Muslim establishments.

More than 200 homes, businesses and vehicles have been torched in three days of violence by mobs from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

A 24-hour curfew was imposed on Wednesday afternoon after a hand grenade exploded in the hands of an attacker, killing him and wounding 11 others, officials said.

The day-time curfew was eased following a calm night but schools were shuttered as tensions remain high in the tourist hotspot.

Schools remained closed as beefed-up security forces patrolled the streets

In Kuruvita, 125 kilometres (78 miles) south of Kandy, police said petrol bombs were lobbed at a mosque. Little damage was inflicted and three suspects are being pursued.

In Weligama, 240 kilometres south of Kandy, a Muslim-owned business was attacked, police said, while Muslim establishments were pelted with stones in at least two other locations outside Kandy.

Sri Lanka's telecoms regulator asked internet providers to block access to Facebook and other social media platforms to prevent the spread of anti-Muslim hate speech.

Police have already identified anti-Muslim messages being shared on social networks, including a video posted by a hardline Buddhist monk urging violence against Muslims.

Muslims in Kandy complained that security forces and police -- equipped with special powers to detain under the emergency provision -- were slow to react as the violence unfolded.

"The main junction is going up in flames. At the same time, the authorities are folding their arms and watching," said Muslim businessman M. Jaffer, as quoted in Thursday's DailyFT newspaper.

- Appeals for peace -

Former Sri Lankan cricket captain Kumar Sangakkara alluded to the island's history of ethnic violence in urging his countrymen "to say no to racism".

"We have to make sure that in Sri Lanka anyone and everyone feels safe, loved and accepted regardless of ethnicity or religion," he said in a video posted to Twitter.

President Maithripala Sirisena toured Kandy on Wednesday and ordered security forces to use the full force of the law against troublemakers.

Military officials said more reinforcements were sent to the area on Wednesday night to assist police who resorted to teargas to disperse rioters the previous evening.

The United Nations has condemned the violence and urged Colombo "to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas".

The Kandy region, 115 kilometres (72 miles) east of the capital Colombo, is popular with tourists as well as Buddhist pilgrims.

"Shops are opening, and more people can be seen on the roads since the curfew was lifted," a police official in the area said by telephone.

Holidaymakers have been urged to avoid the hill resort, which is home to Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine, the Temple of the Tooth Relic.

The chief custodian of the UNESCO-listed temple, Pradeep Nilanga Dela, said foreign tourists and pilgrims were flocking to the shrine despite the tensions.

The unrest began Monday after a Sinhalese man died following injuries sustained at the hands of a Muslim mob last week. Conflict escalated when a Muslim man was found dead in a burnt building on Tuesday.

Sinhalese Buddhists are the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, making up 75 percent of its 21 million people. Muslims make up 10 percent of the population.

Parliament on Tuesday issued an apology to the island's Muslim minority for the latest violence targeting them in the Indian Ocean island.

Mobs also set fire to Muslim-owned businesses and attacked a mosque in the east of the country last week. Last November riots in the south of the island left one man dead and homes and vehicles damaged.

In June 2014 riots between Buddhists, led by radical monks, and Muslims left four dead.
US imports from China of steel and aluminium make up a small proportion of its total imports from the world's second largest economy

China warned the United States on Thursday that everyone will be harmed if President Donald Trump launches a trade war, as official figures showed the Asian power maintained a robust trade surplus with the US.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued the stern message as the Trump administration geared up to formally introduce steel and aluminium tariffs as early as Thursday despite global concerns.

"Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription, in the end you will only hurt others and yourself," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

"China will certainly make an appropriate and necessary response," Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the Communist Party's annual parliamentary session.

On Wednesday, at the World Trade Organization, China led a group of 18 members urging Trump to scrap the planned tariffs, with its representative saying the levies would pose a systemic threat to the rules-based global trading system.

US imports from China of steel and aluminium make up a small proportion of its total imports from the world's second largest economy.

But the tariffs may be the first foray in the brewing American trade war with Beijing.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued the stern message as the Trump administration geared up to formally introduce steel and aluminium tariffs as early as Thursday despite global concerns

In coming weeks, the Trump administration plans to issue a report on China's intellectual property practices expected to hammer China and possibly bring about further tariffs on a wider range of Chinese imports.

"The US is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!" Trump tweeted hours before Wang took the stage in Beijing.

Trump also took to Twitter to say the US had asked China to "develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States."

"We look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!" Trump said.

The amount is a drop in the bucket when compared with the record $375.2 billion trade deficit the US racked up with China last year.

- Averting a trade war -

Trump's tweets follow China's moves to resolve the simmering trade tensions.

While Beijing has launched warning shots -- like trade investigations into US goods such as sorghum, and hinted it could even take on soybeans, its largest US import -- officials have worked to find a peaceful resolution.

President Xi Jinping sent his top economic aide, Liu He, to Washington to discuss trade issues last week on the heels of a similar visit by state councillor Yang Jiechi last month.

Tuesday's resignation of Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn -- who had held talks with President Xi Jinping's top economic aide, Liu He, during his recent visit -- also throws cold water on any possible negotiations

But Washington has shown little interest in negotiating, with Liu's visit resulting in few major breakthroughs beyond a commitment to further talks on trade issues.

Tuesday's resignation of Trump's top economic adviser Gary Cohn -- who had held talks with Liu during his visit -- also throws cold water on the negotiations.

His departure leaves "nationalist" advisors like arch China sceptic Peter Navarro, author of "Death by China", and Commerce boss Wilbur Ross with the president's ear.

Last week, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to win" when the US is losing billions on trade.

In Beijing, officials continue to search for a way out.

"The lessons of history show engaging in a trade war is never the right way to resolve problems," said foreign minister Wang.

- Ballooning trade surplus -

Trade data released by China's customs administration on Thursday shows its massive trade surplus with the US -- the root of Trump's ire -- far from finding a more even level.

"The bigger picture is that while China's trade surplus with most of the world has declined during the past year...its surplus with the US has continued to expand" said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China Economist at Capital Economics in a note

The surplus with the US stood at $21 billion in February, China's official data showed, more than double the $10.4 billion surplus registered in February of last year.

"The bigger picture is that while China's trade surplus with most of the world has declined during the past year...its surplus with the US has continued to expand" said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China Economist at Capital Economics in a note.

February's surplus did edge downwards from the $21.9 billion recorded in January and $25.6 billion from December.
A 'sudden turn' by the American warship USS John S. McCain led to a collision with a tanker last year off Singapore that left 10 sailors dead, a report by the city-state's government said Thursday.

Singapore's transport ministry, releasing the results of its investigation into the incident, said a 'series of missteps' by the destroyer's crew and insufficient action by those of the tanker, the Alnic MC, contributed to the accident.

The vessels smashed into each other in the predawn hours of August 21, 2017 in the busy shipping lanes around the Strait of Malacca. There were no casualties among the tanker's crew.

Singapore's transport ministry released a report on Thursday into the August 2017 collision between the USS John S. McCain and a tanker

The report found that a 'series of missteps' led the destroyer's crew to make a sudden turn - putting it on course to hit the Alnic MC

The commander of the John S. McCain is facing charges including negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, the US Navy said in January, after its own investigation into the incident found 'multiple failures' by the ship's crew.

Singapore said its 35-page report did not blame any organization or individual for the fatal crash, but found the warship made an abrupt turn after a transfer of controls caused confusion among the crew.

'The collision... happened because of a sudden turn to port (left) by JSM (John S. McCain), which caused it to head into the path of the (tanker),' the report said.

It also noted that several sailors on watch at the John S. McCain during the collision had been assigned from another warship with steering control systems that were 'significantly different'.

The Alnic MC is pictured after the collision with the American warship USS John S. McCain

'These differences were not compensated for. Inadequacies in training and familiarization before the task allocation may have contributed to the actions on John S. McCain,' it said.

The collision took place within three minutes of the warship's sudden turn, it said, adding however that the actions taken by the tanker's crew 'were insufficient to avoid' the smashup.

'When the bridge team of Alnic MC saw the USS John S. McCain turning, it presumed that the (warship) would be able to safely pass ahead,' it said.

The incident came after another destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, smashed into a Philippine-flagged cargo ship off Japan in June 2017, leaving seven sailors dead.

Rear Admiral Charles Williams (left) and Captain Jeffrey Bennett (right) were removed from their positions after the collision

Cmdrs. Alfredo J. Sanchez and Jessie L. Sanchez were both relived due to a loss of confidence

In a report on the two separate collisions, US Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said both were 'preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents'.

The US Navy said in November that the John S. McCain collision 'resulted primarily from complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance'.

'In particular, McCain's commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion,' it said.
Philippine news outlet Rappler is known for its extensive reportage of President Rodrigo Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign

Philippine authorities opened on Thursday a fresh line of attack against a news outlet that has angered President Rodrigo Duterte, after the website's investors moved to block a separate government effort to shut it down.

The nation's tax authority said it filed criminal charges against Rappler, which has been critical of Duterte's deadly war on drugs, alleging the site failed to pay taxes on bonds it sold in 2015.

The government's move comes just over a week after Silicon Valley investment firm Omidyar Network said it was transferring its roughly $1.5-million investment in Rappler to the site's local managers to stave off Duterte's effort to shut it down.

The investment is at the heart of a case that led to the Philippines' corporate watchdog to void the news site's corporate license in January, saying it violated a law against non-Filipinos owning any share of local media entities. Rappler has appealed.

A statement from the Philippine tax bureau on Thursday accused Rappler of failing to pay taxes on bond instruments -- called Philippine Depositary Receipts (PDRs) -- worth about 18.6 million pesos ($1.6 million) that the news site sold in 2015.

"It is clear there is motive that goes beyond a normal tax audit. Unless of course, the intent is to harass and intimidate Rappler," said the site's chief executive Maria Ressa.

The website is known for its extensive reportage of Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign, which police say has claimed over 4,100 lives but which rights monitors say has left 12,000 dead.

Duterte has banned a Rappler reporter from covering his official activities, saying its reports were "twisted".

"The government has vast resources and we are a very small company and we will continue to fight as long as we can," Ressa said.

Commenting on the tax case, Duterte spokesman Harry Roque told reporters: "The law must be enforced. If they have not paid taxes, then they must be called to account."

Duterte has also attacked other media outfits that criticise him, including top newspaper, The Philippine Daily Inquirer and major broadcaster ABS-CBN, threatening to also go after their owners over alleged unpaid taxes of loans.

A previous "cyber-libel" case filed against Rappler in January was dismissed a month later.
Although niqabs are common in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, they're rare in secular Indonesia

A pair of Indonesian Islamic universities are pushing female students to ditch niqab face veils -- with one threatening expulsion for non-compliance -- as concerns grow over rising fundamentalism in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation.

Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University said it issued the edict this week to more than three dozen niqab-wearing students, who will be booted from school if they refuse.

Although niqabs are common in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, they're rare in secular Indonesia, where around 90 percent of its 260 million people have traditionally followed a moderate form of Islam.

For many Indonesians, the niqab -- a full veil with a small slit for the eyes -- is an unwelcome Arab export and some associate it with radical Islam, which the country has wrestled with for years.

"We are a state university... we've been told to spread moderate Islam," the school's chancellor Yudian Wahyudi told a press briefing this week.

The school, based in Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta, has some 10,000 students.

Another Yogyakarta-based institution, Ahmad Dahlan University, has also introduced a new prohibition on the niqab out of fears it might stir up religious radicalism, which has seen a resurgence on many of the nation's university campuses.

There will be no penalty for those who refuse, it added.

"But during exams, they cannot wear it because officials have to match the photos on their exam ID with them, which is hard if one is wearing the niqab," university chancellor Kasiyarno, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told reporters Wednesday.

Indonesia's reputation as a bastion of progressiveness and religious tolerance has recently been tested by a government push to outlaw gay and pre-marital sex. The conservative lurch comes as once-fringe Islamic political parties move into the mainstream.

The niqab has been at the centre of a heated global debate over religious freedom and women's rights, with France the first European country to ban it in public spaces.

Backers of the schools' new rules said wearing a niqab is not a religious obligation.

"Education should be about dialogue -- open and progressive -- and if you wear a niqab it interferes in that dialogue and the teaching-learning process," said Zuhairi Misrawi, head of the Jakarta-based Muslim Moderate Society.

But others saw the anti-niqab appeal as trampling on individual rights.

It's "a matter of personal preference and the university has to respect that", said Fadlun Amin, a spokesman for the local chapter of the Forum Ukhuwah Islamiyah, part of top clerical body the Indonesian Ulema Council.

Several Indonesian universities have issued niqab bans in the past.

Last year, a private Islamic high school in Java was reprimanded by local officials after images went viral online that showed a classroom of sitting female students wearing niqab, violating a national regulation on acceptable school uniforms.
The US has signalled it could exempt certain countries from planned steel and aluminium tariffs

The EU warned US President Donald Trump on Thursday against letting individual states like Britain off global steel and aluminium tariffs, saying any such exemption would be viewed as applying to the whole bloc.

The White House signalled Wednesday it would water down plans for the contentious tariffs by exempting Mexico, Canada "and possibly other countries as well", in the face of jitters on world markets.

But European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said Brussels would not accept a carve-out for Washington's close ally Britain, which has voted to leave the European Union but remains a member until 2019.

"What I have read today is that they are probably considering some exemptions to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) countries... but also they have mentioned the UK and maybe some other countries," Katainen told reporters.

"So if they try to make (an) exemption for one of our member states it means the EU as a whole."

Finnish former prime minister Katainen said Brussels had contacted US authorities "intensively" in recent days "to try to convince them not to trigger any major damages to the US economy and the world economy".

The European Union sounded a stern warning Wednesday as it readied to retaliate with US-targeted tariffs of its own on everything from steel to peanut butter, orange juice, cranberries, bourbon and denim jeans.

"Trade wars are bad and easy to lose," EU President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday, directly rebuffing Trump's assertion last week that they were "good and easy to win".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks with US President Donald Trump in Washington on March 5, 2018 but now he returns home to what may be the most crucial stretch of his long career with corruption probes encircling him

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns Friday from the United States to face what may be the most crucial stretch of his long political career, with corruption probes encircling him and talk of elections building.

With no fewer than four investigations looking into his affairs and a possible indictment on the horizon, Netanyahu has been seeking to remind Israelis of what supporters view as his clout and leadership.

He sat alongside US President Donald Trump and spoke of the "historic" White House decision to designate the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a major diplomatic coup for Netanyahu that enraged the Palestinians.

Trump said he may attend the opening of the new embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of the creation of Israel.

A day later, receiving a warm welcome from some 18,000 people at a conference for pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, Netanyahu spoke of what he describes as his achievements at home and abroad while pledging to "stop" Israel's greatest enemy, Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen here with US President Donald Trump at the White House on March 5, 2018, has spoken repeatedly of his achievements abroad as he battles corruption investigations at home

But even as he prepared to meet Trump, a former aide who had been among his close allies was signing a state witness agreement with the police to testify against him.

He is the third Netanyahu associate to do so in a matter of months.

The attorney general is now weighing whether to follow a police recommendation to indict Netanyahu for bribery in two of the four cases, with investigations continuing into the others.

As the investigations close in, there has been widespread speculation that Netanyahu, prime minister for a total of 12 years, will opt for early elections to bolster his standing ahead of a decision on indictments.

Some accuse Netanyahu of allowing a political crisis to brew within his coalition to enable elections soon -- or to at least give himself options.

- 'Play this game' -

His right-wing coalition has been split over a bill to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious students from military service, with the issue threatening to pull apart the government.

"If he wants to solve it, he can solve it. There is no real crisis here," a source in the opposition said on condition of anonymity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells a conference in Tel Aviv on February 14, 2018 that his governing coalition is stable but some suspect him of allowing a crisis to brew to enable early elections -- or to at least give himself options

He said politicians were assuming the attorney general would reach a decision on indictments in the summer.

"It makes sense for him to go to elections before that," the source said of Netanyahu. "That's our working analysis."

Some polls suggest Netanyahu could remain in power after fresh elections even with the investigations hanging over him. He is not required to resign if indicted.

Netanyahu, a savvy campaigner with long experience in the raucous world of Israeli politics, says he wants his coalition to last its full term, due to expire in November 2019.

"If the coalition leaders agree, that is what will happen," Netanyahu told journalists in the United States on Wednesday.

"If they don't, then we'll have early elections."

He has publicly stuck by what many analysts see as a three-prong strategy.

He has sought to portray business as usual when it comes to his work while denigrating the investigations as a bid by enemies to force him out.

Meanwhile, he has sought to burnish his credentials to convince Israelis he is the best option for prime minister.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert leaves the Maasyahu prison in Ramla on July 2, 2017 after serving more than 16 months for corruption

"This is his approach and he must stick to it," said Gideon Rahat of Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the Israel Democracy Institute think tank.

"One option is to play this game and the other is what? To resign and to take the risk of going to jail like Ehud Olmert?" he added, referring to the former Israeli premier who served prison time for corruption.

- Huge gamble -

The graft probes are varied but amount to allegations Netanyahu granted financial or other benefits to businessmen in exchange for gifts or favours.

In one of the cases in which police have recommended his indictment, he and his family are accused of receiving gifts such as expensive cigars, jewellery and champagne from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer.

The other alleges he sought to negotiate a deal with the publisher of a top-selling newspaper for favourable coverage.

Two other cases still being probed also centre on allegations of bribery.

Israelis demonstrate against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on February 16, 2018 after police recommend he be indicted for bribery in two of the four cases against him

Further adding to the pressure facing him, there are two additional cases indirectly linked to Netanyahu -- accusations of corruption in the purchase of German submarines and alleged misuse of public funds by his wife.

Elections would be a huge gamble, Rahat said, though victory would cement his argument that he is being hounded by the country's elites but supported by the public.

"On the other hand, if he loses the elections, he loses this line of defence," he said.
An opinion from Texas' Fourth Court of Appeals allows the family of a slain college student to move ahead with a suit against the school.
Police say most of the drugs enter Bangladesh from Myanmar via Rohingya traffickers

A Rohingya man was shot dead Thursday as local gangs fired at each other in a crowded refugee camp in southern Bangladesh, police said.

Police said 32-year-old Hossain Ali was killed as he took part in a suspected turf war over drugs at Nayapara camp near Teknaf, an enormous settlement that is home to thousands of displaced Muslims from the persecuted minority.

Bangladesh says more than one million Rohingya refugees live in squalid camps in the region, having fled successive waves of violence in Myanmar's Rakhine district.

Another man, wanted by police since being released from prison last year, was also shot but managed to escape, officials said.

Refugees at the camp told AFP at least 10 gunshots were heard in the early morning.

Local police did not recover any weapons but Teknaf police chief Ranjit Kumar Barua confirmed Ali was "struck in the gun battle and died".

A Rohingya community leader, Mirza Ghalib, said it was believed the skirmish was over "yaba", the local name for the methamphetamine pills popular in Bangladesh.

Police say most of the drugs enter Bangladesh from Myanmar via Rohingya traffickers, sometimes hidden in false bottoms on fishing boats.

In recent weeks, police have arrested half a dozen Rohingya in possession of large quantities of the addictive stimulant.

Nurul Alam, a known criminal with alleged ties to Rohingya militants, was also shot "but fled after being struck by bullets", Barua said.

Myanmar blames Rohingya militants for an August 25 strike on security posts in Rakhine state that triggered a fierce army crackdown.

The UN and the US have said the retaliatory response by Myanmar security forces amounted to "ethnic cleansing". Nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine since August.

Police allege Alam organised a raid on a Bangladeshi security post near Nayapara in 2016, in which a commander was killed and 11 guns stolen. He was arrested and later released on bail in December pending a trial but quickly returned to crime, police said.

Local community leaders believe Alam has ties to Rohingya militants but Ruhul Amin, local commander of the elite Rapid Action Battalion police unit, told AFP it was not clear if this was the case.

Alam allegedly appeared in a video holding assault rifles that was distributed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

Myanmar last week bolstered security and artillery installations near along its border, saying it believed Rohingya militants were hiding in nearby camps.
Judges overturned a lower court's ruling that the December 2016 marriage between Akhila Ashokan and Shafin Jahan was illegal

India's Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a woman who converted to Islam should be allowed to live with her Muslim husband in a case that sparked debate about inter-religious relationships and women's rights.

Judges overturned a lower court's ruling that the December 2016 marriage between Akhila Ashokan and Shafin Jahan was illegal.

Ashokan's Hindu father won a court order last May to nullify the marriage and return the 25-year-old woman to her parents' home, alleging that she had been forced to wed and convert.

That ruling by the high court in southern Kerala state outraged women's rights campaigners.

Jahan challenged the order, and the Supreme Court said: "In this case, we feel that the high court shouldn't have annulled the marriage.

"Therefore we set aside the high court order. The girl is free to pursue her endeavours," it added.

The Supreme Court had already ordered Ashokan's removal from her father's custody last November, after the young woman told the judges: "I want my freedom."

Ashokan, who changed her name to Hadiya after converting to Islam, insists she was not forced to give up her faith -- a flashpoint issue for nationalists in Hindu-majority India.

Inter-religious relationships are frowned upon in India, particularly in rural areas.

In recent years, Hindu extremists have pushed fears of "love jihad" -- claims that young Muslim men were attempting to seduce Hindu women to make them convert.

India's federal investigations agency has said it is looking into alleged links between Shafin Jahan and extremist groups. He has not been convicted of any crime.

The Supreme Court said the federal agency was free to carry on the probe "in accordance with law."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gives a press conference at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa on March 8, 2018

Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson said Thursday the United States was "a long way from negotiations" with North Korea, which this week made a shock offer to discuss denuclearisation.

Tillerson, who is in Ethiopia on his first-ever Africa tour, said the signals from Pyongyang may be positive but stressed negotiations with Kim Jong Un's regime were not going to happen soon.

"I think as President Trump has indicated, (there are) potentially positive signals coming from North Korea by way of their intra-Korean dialogue with South Korea," he told journalists.

But "in terms of direct talks... we're a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it," he said.

He said a first step would be "talks about talks" to see if "conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations."

Details are still sketchy, but South Korea announced Tuesday that the North had stated there was "no reason" to hold on to its nuclear weapons "if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed".

The North is open to "frank" talks with the United States on denuclearisation and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, the South's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with Kim.

President Donald Trump welcomed the offer as "very positive".

However his Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he was "quite skeptical" and Vice President Mike Pence said the US position towards North Korea would not change "until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearisation."

China on Thursday urged the United States and North Korea to start negotiations as soon as possible, while Japan has warned it could be a ploy to play for time, and urged "concrete" steps from Pyongyang.
Turkish-backed Syrian rebels fight Kurdish forces on the outskirts of the town of Jandairis, on March 8, 2018 in Syria's Afrin region, near the Turkish border

Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels on Thursday took control of the key northern town of Jandairis from Kurdish militia, a monitor said.

"Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels took full control of Jandairis, in the southwest of the Afrin enclave, after heavy and sustained bombardment by Turkish aviation," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based monitoring organisation, said the town had suffered extensive destruction.

A local rebel commander from the Turkey-backed Faylaq al-Sham group told an AFP reporter in Jandairis that the town was under full control.

"The entire city of Jandairis was liberated from the secessionist gangs," said the commander, who goes by the name Abu Saleh, adding: "The fight will continue until the whole of Afrin is cleared of them."
A life-size statue of a child is pictured outside the Houses of Parliament in London on March 7, 2018, as part of a protest by Save The Children against the visit to the UK by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia Thursday rejected allegations over an air raid in Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa, which witnesses said left six members of the same family dead.

Neighbours told AFP the strike on the two-storey house took place at around 9:00 pm local time on Wednesday.

"Following our review of this alleged incident, we find all these allegations to be unfounded," coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said in a statement to AFP.

Ahmed Hazem al-Samri told AFP an air strike on his house killed his father, two women and three children.

"There was an air strike on the house. My father and rest of the family were inside," said Samri, adding he had been out for the evening at the time of the attack in the Shamlan district, northwest Sanaa.

"Six of them were killed and seven wounded."

The coalition is the only force known to carry out air strikes on Huthi rebel-held territory and has previously admitted to "erroneous" strikes that caused civilian casualties.

But Maliki insisted the coalition was committed to preventing civilian casualties.

"I would like to reiterate that coalition forces adhere to rules of engagement and international humanitarian law to avoid loss of civilian lives," he said.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a military intervention in Yemen in 2015 with the aim of rolling back Huthi rebels who had seized the capital and restoring the government to power.

More than 9,300 people have been killed in the war since and more than 50,000 wounded, according to latest figures from the World Health Organization.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country is a main buyer of British arms, on Wednesday started a controversial three-day visit to Britain.

The Save the Children charity protested the visit by installing a statue of a child near parliament in London "to draw attention to the violence that is being fuelled, in part, by British-made bombs".
Cobalt and copper mining is booming in DR Congo, although anti-corruption watchdogs are skeptical about transparency

DR Congo President Joseph Kabila has promised to have "constructive dialogue" with mining companies worried over plans to hike taxes on so-called strategic metals, a category expected to include the booming market for cobalt and copper.

Kabila on Tuesday held more than seven hours of talks with leading players in the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining sector over plans to change the country's 2002 mining code.

"The president reassures mining operators that they are economic partners in the DRC and that their concerns will be taken into account through a constructive dialgoue with the government after the new mining law is approved, with a view to finding compromise," Kabila's office said in a statement released late Wednesday.

In Tuesday's meeting, Kabila and the mining firms agreed to deal with problems on a "case-by-case" basis, officials said.

Mining Minister Martin Kabwelulu said there would be "implementation measures" that would "ease the toughness of the law."

The mining executives arrived "worried" but "left calm," he said.

The government last year signalled its intention to reform its 2002 mining code, which it considered to favour foreign investors at the expense of the economy.

A first version of the draft law -- examined by the lower house, the National Assembly, in December, and then by the Senate in January -- envisaged a tax takes on "strategic metals" of five percent.

This has been revised upward to 10 percent, under a new draft approved by a joint commission of the Senate and National Assembly on January 27.

At present, the state levies a tax of two percent on non-ferrous metals -- copper and cobalt -- which is based on the value of sales, from which some costs are deducted.

The draft law, which is now in Kabila's hands, would also scrap a clause in the 2002 code that gives a 10-year guarantee of no change to the terms of mining contracts.

There would also be a tax of 50 percent on windfall profits -- so-called super-profits that occur when prices go at least 25 percent above a given benchmark.

Shareholders in big mining corporations with interests in DRC, including Glencore and Rangold, had written to Kabila to express their concern, sources in the sector said ahead of the meeting.

The global boom for smartphones and electric cars has pushed up the price of cobalt to more than $80,000 (almost 63,000 euros) a tonne, compared with less than $23,000 a tonne two years ago.

DR Congo is also the top African producer of copper, which last year recovered from a slump that hit in 2014. Copper is currently trading at more than $6,800 a tonne, around 50 percent higher than at the trough of the downturn in February 2017.

According to the specialist firm Darton Commodities, the DRC exports around $10 billion in cobalt and copper each year.
US President Donald Trump signs off on tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum

Key US trading partners on Friday condemned President Donald Trump's decision to slap punitive tariffs on foreign steel and aluminium as "protectionism" and an affront to allies, as fears grew of a global trade war.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe's biggest economy and NATO ally, urged dialogue and warned that "no one can win in such a race to the bottom".

Berlin backs the European Union in "seeking dialogue with the United States, but also with countries that could be affected, like China," she said.

Earlier, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said: "This protectionism is an affront to close partners like the European Union and Germany and limits free trade."

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his "deep concerns" in a telephone call with Trump, saying the tariffs "risk triggering a trade war, in which all affected countries would be losers", his office said.

The EU has threatened retaliatory tariffs on items from steel to peanut butter, bourbon and denim -- most of which are produced in states that Trump needs to win to be re-elected.

"We are prepared and will be prepared if need be to use rebalancing measures," European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen told reporters in Brussels.

The top EU trade official Cecilia Malmstroem said the entire bloc, as a "close ally" of the US, "should be excluded" from the tariffs, and vowed to "seek more clarity" from Washington.

Condemnation also rained in from elsewhere, with the world's second-biggest economy China deriding the tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminium as "a serious attack on normal international trade order".

Close US ally Japan warned the levies "could have a grave impact on the economic relationship" between the world's top and third-largest economies.

- 'Real friends' -

Canada is the biggest supplier of steel to the US

In a sharp reversal from decades of a US-led drive towards more open trade, Trump declared on Thursday that America had been "ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices".

"It's really an assault on our country," he blasted, announcing the tariffs on the metals used in everything from cars to construction, roads to railways.

Trump said the tariffs -- which will come into effect after 15 days -- will not initially apply to Canada and Mexico, and that close partners on security and trade could negotiate exemptions.

Canada was the largest US source of steel last year, followed by Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Germany.

The US neighbour to the north was also by far the largest supplier of alumina and aluminium, followed by China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump had indicated he would be flexible towards "real friends," and during the signing confirmed Canada and Mexico would be exempted permanently if the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement is successful.

But both Mexico and Canada rejected Trump's linkage of the levies to ongoing NAFTA talks.

Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland termed the two things "separate issues" while Mexico's economy ministry said "the negotiation of the NAFTA should not be subject to conditions outside the process".

The US leader had also added Australia to a list of likely carve-outs, describing it as a "great country".

- 'All necessary steps' -

However, he took aim at Germany, reviving a longstanding gripe that European NATO allies do not pay their fair share.

"Many of the countries that treat us the worst on trade and on the military are our allies, as they call them," he complained, even as Merkel said Germany and the EU would seek exemption from the punitive tariffs.

Trump took special aim at Germany

Elsewhere, Brazil and Britain were also quick to launch broadsides against the tariffs, which are worth billions of dollars.

Britain blasted the tariffs as "not the right way" to tackle the problem of global overcapacity in steel while major producer Brazil immediately vowed to take "all necessary steps" in order to "protect its rights and interests".

South Korea said it would consider taking the case to the World Trade Organization if Washington refuses to exempt it from the tariffs.

But dispute cases can take three years to resolve, and there is nothing stopping countries from imposing tit-for-tat trade restrictions while the legal process plays out.

- Off the cuff -

Last week Trump stunned the world -- and his own aides -- with an off-the-cuff announcement of his plan, even before White House lawyers judged the legality of the tariffs.

Trump said he was merely fulfilling a campaign promise, saying he had been talking about perceived trade injustices "a long time, a lot longer than my political career".

While the full economic impact remains unknown, the political fallout at home was swift with the top Republican in Congress Paul Ryan publicly denouncing Trump's move, and top economic advisor Gary Cohn resigning in protest.

Even as Trump approved the tariffs, 11 partners in the Asia-Pacific were in Santiago, Chile, to sign a trade deal embraced by Barack Obama but rejected by Trump.

US steel imports

Global markets were buoyed by the news that Trump would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but uncertainty surrounding the trade row kept a lid on gains.
No caption

War crimes judges Thursday upheld an order that a former Congolese militia leader must pay $1 million in damages to his victims, after his forces rampaged through a village in 2003.

Germain Katanga, 39, a former militia commander from the restive northeastern Congolese Ituri province, had appealed against the compensation, arguing that it was excessive and did not reflect his role in the event.

But judges at the International Criminal Court disagreed.

Presiding judge Howard Morrison said the purpose of reparations "is to repair the harm that was inflicted on the victims" and where possible to try restore things to where they were before.

"That this amount may be high is simply a result of the extent of the harm caused by the crimes for which the person was convicted," Morrison added.

In its first-ever reparations, the ICC in March 2017 awarded a symbolic $250 each to 297 people caught up in the brutal attack by Katanga's militia on Bogoro village in Ituri province.

It also awarded collective compensation for projects to help victims with housing, education and "income-generating activities" as well as counselling.

Katanga is now behind bars in the Democratic Republic of Congo completing a 12-year sentence handed down by the ICC in 2014 on five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the attack.

He was convicted of supplying weapons to his militia, which went on the rampage in Bogoro, shooting and hacking to death with machetes some 200 people, out of a small close-knit community of about 800 people.

The ICC's judges assessed the total damage caused by the attack at some $3.7 million (three million euros).

But they also ruled that Katanga, despite being penniless, was "personally liable" for a million dollars in damages.

Katanga's lawyers had appealed against the award, saying it was excessive, and did not reflect his role in the event.

But Morrison said Thursday "the attack was particularly intense" and it was "not unreasonable" for the trial judges "to presume that psychological harm was experienced by the inhabitants of Bogoro resulting from the loss of their family members, near or distant."

The appeals judges also ruled that five children, born after the attack, who had applied for compensation must have their claims re-assessed after they were initially turned down.

- Two further appeals -

In a separate appeal Thursday, the ICC judges also mostly confirmed damages awarded against Malian jihadist Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi.

Islamist militants smashed the ancient tombs of Muslim saints in Timbuktu in July 2012. The shrines have been repaired and the key figure in their destruction, Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi, is serving a nine-year jail term

Mahdi was sentenced in September 2016 to nine years in jail after pleading guilty to destroying the fabled shrines at Timbuktu.

The ICC judges found in August that he was liable for 2.7 million euros in personal damages for the destruction of the site, committed as jihadists swept across northern Mali in 2012.

But the appeals court slightly amended the wording, to allow individual victims to appeal if their application for compensation is rejected, and to allow victims to keep their identities secret from Mahdi.

In a third ruling Thursday, judges threw out an appeal by former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba against a bribery conviction and one-year jail term and called instead for a new, likely tougher sentence to be imposed.
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President Donald Trump promised to be "very fair" in imposing planned tariffs on steel and aluminum

US President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to press ahead with 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel and 10 percent on aluminum -- singling out Germany for criticism while saying Mexico, Canada, Australia and "others" could be exempt.

"We are going to be very fair, we're going to be very flexible," Trump told his cabinet, while pointing to winners and losers from the contentious policy.

Trump said Mexico and Canada could get carve-outs if talks to renegotiate the trilateral NAFTA trade agreement go well.

"If we reach a deal it is most likely that we won't be charging those two countries the tariffs," he said, adding that Australia would also be spared.

"We have a very close relationship with Australia, we have a trade surplus with Australia, great country, long term partner, we'll be doing something with them," he said. "We'll be doing something with some other countries."

But Trump took aim at Germany -- the biggest economy in the EU trade bloc -- as a bad actor likely to face tariffs.

Railing against countries that had "taken advantage" of the United States, Trump accused Germany of behaving unfairly by contributing much less than the US towards the funding of NATO.

"We have some friends and some enemies where we have been tremendously taken advantage of over the years on trade and on military," he said.

"If you look at NATO, where Germany pays one percent and we are paying 4.2 percent of a much bigger GDP -- that's not fair," he said.

"So we view trade and we view the military, and to a certain extent, they go hand in hand."
Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, speaks during a press conference in Kabul in February 2017

The United Nations envoy to Afghanistan on Thursday urged the Taliban to take up an offer by the Afghan government of direct talks on peace.

"The offer of negotiation is on the table," said Tadamichi Yamamoto at a Security Council meeting to mark the annual renewal of the UN mission to the war-torn country.

"It is now incumbent upon the Taliban to come forward with an offer of their own, and start direct talks with the government to put an end to the suffering of the Afghan people," he said.

"Making peace and reaching out to opponents requires resolve, courage and above all national unity," he added. "Political leaders need to place the national interest above partisan agenda."

He said he hoped that parliamentary elections could be held in 2018 and a presidential vote in 2019.

He also expressed concern about the growing number of civilian casualties at the hands of the Islamic State group in Khorasan province.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was launched in March 2002 to help Afghans build a more stable and peaceful society, although 16 years later the country is still racked by violence and instability.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani recently unveiled a plan to open talks with the Taliban, including eventually recognizing them as a political party.

In return, Ghani said the militants should officially recognize the Afghan government and constitution, a perennial sticking point in past attempts to open talks.
According to doctor Raphael Pitti, missiles containing chlorine were fired in Syria

After dozens of people suffered breathing problems in the latest suspected chemical attack to hit Syria, AFP asked doctor Raphael Pitti about the medical effects of such a strike.

Pitti, whose Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM) provides medical care to civilians across Syria, said it was very likely that the use of toxic gases had killed people in the battered rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks.

A French anesthesiologist and former military doctor, Pitti has been to Syria several times and his NGO has a network of contacts there.

- How much do we know about the latest suspected chemical attacks in Eastern Ghouta? -

The fighting was very violent yesterday (Wednesday) evening. There was a real drive to make sure the rebels were not in a position to resist, and so they used chlorine because it is a weapon that is ideal for pushing them back.

I've been informed that missiles containing chlorine were fired, as well as major and sustained artillery fire and bombardments with napalm and phosphorous.

To our knowledge, 124 people suffered breathing problems in Saqba and Hammuriyeh and more than 100 civilians were killed by bombs.

- Could the suspected chlorine attacks in recent weeks have killed people, given that only cases of breathing problems have been reported? -

Absolutely. Most of the time, those most seriously injured die at the scene within an hour. They don't make it to hospital. They die of oxygen deprivation.

But no one takes stock of the dead; they are buried immediately. Nobody does an autopsy to determine what killed them.

- What are the medical effects of a chlorine attack and how are the injured treated? -

It causes lesions, a burn if you like, of the lung tissue.

The chlorine also damages the mucous membrane and so there will be an immediate burning sensation, a burning in the airways which will shrink the diameter of the bronchial tubes.

This makes it difficult to breathe, like you're having an asthma attack.

For those who are lightly injured, the only thing you can do is send them home, because the doctors do not have bottled oxygen.

They can give out inhalers which will make it easier to breathe eventually.

There is also a trend towards using steroids like cortisone, but these will certainly not reduce the burning sensation. It could even make it easier for the airways to become infected.

But unfortunately, they're making do with what they have.

For the most serious injuries, you have to put them to sleep, intubate them, put them on a respirator. You need access to intensive care facilities.
Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men block a road as they take part in a demonstration against army conscription on March 8, 2018 in Jerusalem

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested Thursday in Jerusalem against compulsory military service, clashing with security forces and paralysing traffic by blocking a major road.

The demonstrators blocked a major road linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv, before the security forces dispersed them and the artery was reopened, police said in a statement.

Thursday's protest came a day after the arrest of a young man who failed to show up to request an exemption after being conscripted.

Hardline Jews have staged a series of demonstrations in recent months spurred by arrests of young ultra-Orthodox men accused of dodging military service.

A hardcore group of seminary students have even refused to request exemptions from military service under the influence of Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, who died in February.

Israeli law requires men to serve two years and eight months in the military on reaching the age of 18, while women must serve for two.

Ultra-Orthodox men are exempt from military service if they are engaged in religious study, but must still report to the army to receive their exemption.

In September, a decision by Israel's supreme court struck down the law exempting them. But the court suspended its ruling for a year, giving the government time to pass new legislation.
Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (C) arrives with his wife Kathleen Manafort (R) at the federal courthouse in Alexandtria Virginia Thursday, where he pleaded not guilty to bank and tax fraud charges

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of bank and tax fraud in special prosecutor Robert Mueller's sprawling Russia meddling probe.

Answering the second set of charges brought against him by Mueller's team, Manafort asked the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia for a jury trial.

A trial date was set for July 10.

On February 28 Manafort, 68, also pleaded not guilty in a Washington court to charges of money laundering, illegal lobbying and lying, setting up the first trial to result from Mueller's investigation.

The charges in both cases relate to Manafort laundering some $75 million in relation to his work for Russia-backed former Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych between about 2006 and 2014.

Manafort's former aide in Ukraine and on the Trump campaign, Rick Gates, negotiated a plea deal last month with Mueller, accepting reduced charges in exchange for cooperation in the broader probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who interfered in the 2016 presidential race.

But Manafort, a veteran Washington Republican political consultant, has refused to do a deal and will go to trial instead.

The trial related to the charges set in the Washington court will begin on September 17.
Venezuelans in Miami protest against Caracas in May 2017 during a rally hosted by Florida Governor Rick Scott to express support for the release of Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez

Florida lawmakers on Thursday passed a law prohibiting the US state from investing in companies that have business ties with the Venezuelan government.

Citing the socialist government's "use of extreme violence and political persecution," the law will now appear before state governor Rick Scott, who has expressed backing for the measure in the past and is expected to sign the bill this week or next.

"Together, we will continue to shine a light on the unacceptable political tyranny and violence that is inflicted by Maduro and his ruthless thugs," Scott said in a statement.

The state Congress hopes the bill will go into effect by July 1 this year.

The law prohibits the State Board of Administration from investing in stocks or other securities with any company that has business links with Caracas.

Florida taxpayer money may also not be used to trade with financial institutions or companies that extend credit to the Venezuelan government or to buy bonds or services which might benefit President Nicolas Maduro's administration.

"This legislation strengthens Florida's opposition to Maduro's brutal and oppressive regime," said Republican representative Jeanette Nunez.

"I want to thank Governor Scott on his leadership and commitment to the Venezuelan people. Together, we will keep fighting to bring democracy to the people of Venezuela."

The bill was drawn up last July by Democratic Senator Jose Javier Rodriguez after the US investment giant bought up almost $3 billion in Venezuelan government bonds for around a third of their face value.

The deal sparked the fury of the Venezuelan opposition, who accused Goldman Sachs of supporting a "dictatorship."

Scott quickly expressed his backing for the legal measure, and met with Venezuelan community leaders in Florida.

"The Maduro regime is hurting and oppressing Venezuelan families more and more each day and I have been absolutely clear that the State of Florida will not stand for it," he said.

One of those leaders, Carlos Vecchio -- exiled political coordinator of the centrist Voluntad Popular party -- said he hopes the law will inspire other states to take similar action.
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (R) and his family pay their respects at the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar on February 21, 2018; the premier's visit was dogged by suspicions Canada was soft on Sikh separatists

A former Sikh militant apologized Thursday for causing embarrassment to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his trip to India.

Jaspal Atwal, who was part of a movement that supported an independent Sikh nation in the 1980s and went to prison for the attempted murder of a visiting Indian minister in 1986, was invited to a dinner with Trudeau in New Delhi causing consternation among his hosts.

Trudeau's visit to India had already been dogged by suspicions that Canada was soft on Sikh separatists.

"I am sorry for any embarrassment this matter has caused to Canada, India, my community and my family," the 62-year-old told a news conference.

"I renounce any form of terrorism," he said. "I do not advocate for an independent Sikh nation. I, like the vast majority of Sikhs who once advocated for this cause, have reconciled with the nation of India."

Since his parole, Atwal said he has engaged broadly in politics on behalf of the Indo-Canadian community, and visited India numerous times including three visits over the past year, each time "with the full permission of the Indian government."

"There were also no restrictions placed on me by Canada so that I could not travel," he added.

Before his latest trip, Atwal said he reached out to his local member of Parliament, Randeep Sarai, to ask if he could attend a reception with Trudeau in India.

"I had assumed there would be no problems. No one had at any point indicated there would be any issues," he said.

The controversy has continued to hound Trudeau since his return to Canada, with opposition parties and editorialists heaping scorn on the prime minister over the misstep.

Sarai, meanwhile, has been stripped of his responsibilities within the Liberal caucus.
A general view taken on February 14, 2018 shows destruction in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul

The fight against the Islamic State group is now more focused on stabilising captured areas and identifying returning foreign jihadis following the capture of Mosul and Raqqa, officials in the US-led coalition fighting the network said Thursday.

In the last year the Islamic State has lost a swathe of territory in Syria and Iraq that it had captured in 2014 and infamously then declared its "caliphate".

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from the global coalition expelled the group from Mosul last summer, while Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) took control of Raqqa in neighbouring Syria in October.

"Despite crushing the so-called caliphate and exposing Daesh (the Islamic State group) ideology for the lie it is, we mustn't let up in our pursuit of these apocalyptic terrorists," said Ryan Dillon, an American colonel and spokesman for the coalition, in London.

He pointed to four "high value" Islamic State leaders who had been "eliminated" recently as evidence that "we have and we will keep the pressure on."

However, in Iraq the coalition has already adjusted from supporting the country's security forces in major combat operations to "stability operations", according to Dillon.

"We will tailor our support based on Iraqi requirements, with a particular emphasis on holding and securing liberated areas," he said.

Meanwhile in Syria, it remains focused on removing the group from its remaining territory but is also now supporting the SDF "in pursuing and targeting foreign terrorist fighters attempting to escape through neighbouring countries," the colonel added.

That effort to prevent foreign fighters who travelled to the region from returning to the West to carry out attacks is now critical, Terry Wolff, Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the coalition, told reporters.

"The foreign terrorist fighter flow is really of great concern," he said.

Wolff added the coalition was trying to build global mechanisms for constantly assessing and updating the situation with returning fighters.

"We have tried... to encourage nations, and now obligate nations, to share information, to share biometrics information on foreign terrorist fighters," he said, referencing UN Security Council resolutions on the issue.

Wolff added the plan had extended to trying to put in place "watchlists that get shared internationally."

"That is the future of the global fight," the envoy said.

"The future of the coalition is trying to share -- radically share -- information and intelligence in a way that makes sense."
A Pakistani activist holds a placard bearing the image of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Maulana Fazlullah during a protest in Islamabad on January 16, 2015; the United States has placed a $5 million reward for help in locating him

The US State Department placed a $5 million reward for help locating the leader of the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday, linked to bloody attacks in Pakistan and the 2010 attempted Times Square car bombing in New York.

The State Department posted the reward for information leading to the identification or location of Maulana Fazlullah, the head of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militant group (TTP).

It also offered $3 million each for two other Islamic militants associated with the TTP: Abdul Wali, leader of Jamaat ul-Ahrar, and Mangal Bagh, the leader of Lashkar-e-Islam.

The State Department said the TTP has "demonstrated a close alliance with al-Qaeda" and the three pose a threat to the security of the United States.

According to US officials, TTP gave explosives training to Faisal Shahzad, who failed in his attempt to set off a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.

The group was behind the massacre of more than 150 people at a Peshawar school in December 2014, and nine dead in another attack in December 2017 in the same city.

It was also responsible for the October 2012 shooting of Malala Yousafzai, who became a global symbol of the fight for girls' rights to schooling.

In January a US drone strike killed Khalid Mehsood, the TTP deputy leader, the group said.

In a separate move, the State Department also added two members of the Kenya arm of the violent al-Shabaab extremist group to its list of "specially designated global terrorists": Ahmad Iman Ali and Abdifatah Abubakar Abdi.

Both are tied to deadly attacks in the country.
US President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with South Korea's President Moon Jae-In as they attend a joint press conference at the presidential Blue House in Seoul on November 7, 2017

South Korea's national security advisor is set to make a "major" announcement in the White House on Thursday, days after holding landmark talks with Kim Jong Un.

US President Donald Trump said the announcement would be made at 7:00 pm (0000 GMT), and that he had spoken to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, but did not give more detail.

A senior administration official said the announcement would be made by South Korean National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong at the White House, who will be joined by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.

The South Korean official is currently visiting Washington to brief US allies about his talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang.

South Korea announced Tuesday that the North had stated there was "no reason" to hold on to its nuclear weapons "if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed."

The North is open to "frank" talks with the United States on denuclearization and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, Chung said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with Kim.

Trump welcomed the offer as "very positive" and refused to rule out a historic meeting with Kim. "We have come a long way at least rhetorically with North Korea," Trump said.

However his Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he was "quite skeptical" and Vice President Mike Pence said the US position towards North Korea would not change "until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearization."

In the past North Korea has indicated that security guarantees mean US forces leave the Korean peninsula and break a mutual defense treaty with the South.

- Breakthrough or stalling? -

Seoul had earlier announced the two Koreas would hold a historic summit in the Demilitarized Zone next month -- and that the North's leader Kim Jong Un was ready to halt provocative missile and nuclear tests and sit down with its old enemies.

Although Trump's response was positive, his administration followed it up with another sharp rebuke when it declared that it had formally concluded that Kim's regime had last year murdered his half-brother in a Malaysian airport with the banned VX nerve agent.

Trump also sounded a note of warning, signaling the threat of military action remains on the table should talks fail to make headway, and his administration said it would press ahead with potentially provocative joint war games with South Korea.

The United States says Pyongyang is testing -- and will soon complete -- an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuke to the continental United States.

That ominous technological breakthrough would put cities like Los Angeles and even New York in striking distance of a hostile regime, something that is unthinkable to many in the West Wing.

The offer of talks, not yet publicly confirmed by North Korea, is a tantalizing one for the White House -- offering a possible off-ramp from the road to a bloody war. But it is also fraught with risks.

On multiple occasions, Kim's father Kim Jong Il dangled the prospect of talks and denuclearization as a means of buying time, easing sanctions and dividing South Korea from its allies.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. trade deficit rose in January to the highest level since October 2008, defying President Donald Trump's efforts to bring more balance to America's trade with the rest of the world.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the trade deficit rose to $56.6 billion in January, up 5 percent from $53.9 billion in December and the highest since October 2008's $60.2 billion trade gap. The trade deficit - the gap between what America sells and what it buys abroad - has risen for five straight months.

Trump rattled financial markets last week by promising to slap big tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. He blames persistent deficits on abusive practices by U.S. trading partners and on bad trade deals that put American companies at a disadvantage or encourage them to move factories overseas.

FILE- In this Jan. 30, 2018, file photo, a container ship waits to be unloaded at the Port of Oakland in Oakland, Calif. The Commerce Department reports on the U.S. trade gap for January, on Wednesday, March 7. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

Exports fell 1.3 percent to $200.9 billion in January, and imports were flat at $257.5 billion.

The United States ran a $76.5 billion deficit in the trade of goods, which was partially offset by a $19.9 billion surplus in services such as education and banking.

The $36 billion January deficit with China was the highest since September 2015. The trade gap with Mexico narrowed to $4.1 billion from $5.4 billion in December.

Trump upset America's allies last week by vowing to slap tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum. Europe has threatened to retaliate with sanctions on U.S. exports of blue jeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, raising the risk of a potentially destructive trade war.

"He is not afraid of getting into a trade war although that is not what we want," Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in an interview Wednesday on the Fox Business Network. "We are just looking for fair and reciprocal trade."

Trump is also demanding a rewrite of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada in an attempt to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and to shift more auto production north of the border.

The president views trade deficits as a sign of economic weakness and as the result of unfair practices by America's trading partners. Most economists say they are caused by bigger economic forces, mainly the fact that the United States consistently spends more than it produces.

The trade gap has continued to rise since Trump entered the White House partly because the U.S. economy is strong and American consumers have an appetite for imported products and the confidence to buy them.

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Martin Crutsinger contributed to this story.

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Follow Paul Wiseman on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PaulWisemanAP
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A private school in Rhode Island has alerted its alumni that a former student is alleging she was sexually molested in the 1970s by a tutor who previously was accused of molesting students at another school.

The Providence Journal reports that The Wheeler School said Tuesday a former student alleges she was abused by Andrew Cohen when he was hired to tutor her when she was 12.

Cohen was a teacher at the nearby private Gordon School at the time. That school announced last month that an investigation found that Cohen raped or sexually abused multiple girls.

The now-69-year-old Cohen did not return a telephone call to his Coventry home Tuesday. He previously said he had no desire to discuss the allegations. He was never criminally charged.

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Information from: The Providence Journal, http://www.providencejournal.com
CAIRO (AP) - Arab foreign ministers are insisting that Jerusalem must be the capital of a future Palestinian state, even as the U.S. prepares to move its embassy there in a step that has angered the Arab world.

A ministerial meeting held Wednesday in the Egyptian capital Cairo brought together foreign ministers from the Arab League member-states.

It comes amid a wave of anger at U.S. President Donald Trump's decision in December, which sparked protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the time. Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Trump's declaration departed from decades of U.S. policy and upended longstanding international assurances that the fate of the city would be determined in negotiations.

Most countries around the world have not recognized Israel's 1967 annexation of east Jerusalem. Under a long-standing international consensus, the fate of the city is to be determined in negotiations.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A federal appeals court has scheduled a hearing next week to review a judge's order that halted construction of a crude oil pipeline in a Louisiana swamp.

Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an "emergency stay" that would lift the suspension of construction work while it appeals the judge's ruling.

A three-judge panel from the court is scheduled to hear to arguments on that request next Tuesday.

FILE - In a Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 file photo, Scott Eustis, a community science director for the Gulf Restoration Network, speaks before a hearing in federal court in New Orleans, LA. A consortium of environmental groups sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to halt construction of a pipeline through a river swamp in South Louisiana. A federal appeals court has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday, March 13, 2018, to review a judge's order that halted construction of a crude oil pipeline in a Louisiana swamp. Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an "emergency stay" that would lift the suspension of construction work while it appeals the judge's ruling. (AP Photo/Michael Kunzelman, File)

On Feb. 23, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick sided with environmental groups and issued a preliminary injunction stopping all Bayou Bridge pipeline construction work in the Atchafalaya Basin until the groups' lawsuit is resolved.

In a court filing last Friday, company attorneys claimed Dick's ruling "fails the basic requirements" for issuing such an order.

Dick concluded the project's irreversible environmental damage outweighs the economic harm that a delay brings to the company. Her order only applies to the basin and doesn't prevent the company from working elsewhere along the pipeline's 162-mile-long (261-kilometer) path from Lake Charles to St. James Parish.

Sierra Club and other environmental groups sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in January, saying it violated the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws when it approved a permit for the project.

The groups and Bayou Bridge disagree on whether the company could immediately resume construction in the basin if the 5th Circuit lifts the preliminary injunction.

The groups' attorneys claim Bayou Bridge couldn't, because the Corps' permit prohibits the work when water levels reach a certain height.

"That height has already been reached, and river levels will likely remain high for months," they wrote in a court filing Monday.

But the company's lawyers say they would have at least a few weeks to make "significant uninterrupted construction progress" before rising water levels disrupt work in the basin.

Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman said the 5th Circuit's ruling will be a "very important decision."

"If they get the stay, construction could be completed before the appeal is resolved," he said.

The company said the work stoppage will cost it up to $500,000 per day in construction-related expenses and $6 million per month in lost revenue. The judge has said the company's estimated losses aren't supported by the "underlying data."

The judge said the project potentially threatens the hydrology of the basin and "poses the threat of destruction of already diminishing wetlands." She also agreed with environmental groups that centuries-old "legacy" trees can't be replaced once they're cut down.

Bayou Bridge lawyers claimed the sudden halt in construction work creates its own environmental risks. The company said Dick's order prevents it from implementing erosion-control measures to prevent rising waters from washing away mounts of dirt from the digging it has done.

Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC is a joint venture of Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66. Energy Transfer Partners built the Dakota Access pipeline, a project that sparked a string of violent clashes between protesters and police in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017. The Bayou Bridge pipeline is the last link in a pipeline network connecting the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota with Louisiana refineries and export terminals.
WASHINGTON (AP) - In the squabbling Trump White House, no insider is ever above rebuke and no one blacklisted beyond redemption. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, once barred from sending private emails and spotted skulking in West Wing hallways, has emerged from the chaos ascendant.

With his chief ideological rival, Gary Cohn, now headed for the exit, Navarro and his protectionist trade policies are taking center stage as President Donald Trump prepares to impose the steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that Navarro has long championed.

Navarro, a 68-year-old former economics professor whose ideas were once considered well outside the mainstream, joined the Trump campaign in 2016 after one of his books on China happened to catch the eye of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner during an internet search.

FILE - In this March 31, 2017, file photo, National Trade Council adviser Peter Navarro waits for President Donald Trump for an event in the Oval Office at the White House. Navarro signed on with the Trump campaign as a trade adviser, only to see his contrarian views marginalized when he arrived at the White House. Now Navarro and his protectionist trade policies are on the rise as his chief ideological rival, Gary Cohn, heads for the exit. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

From the presidential campaign, Navarro made the leap to the new administration to head a new White House National Trade Council. But he was quickly sidelined by chief of staff John Kelly and closely managed by former staff secretary Rob Porter.

As alliances shifted and staffers departed, though, Navarro made his move, encouraging Trump to embrace a plan that many economists, lawmakers and White House aides warn could lead to a trade war and imperil U.S. economic gains.

The president and the combative Navarro share the same hard-line views on trade that were a centerpiece of Trump's campaign. For decades, both men have accused China of unfair trade practices that have displaced American workers and hobbled the U.S. manufacturing base.

"Peter speaks the same language as Trump does on these issues," said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser who is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. "He and Trump agree on an America First policy when it comes to trade and other issues, so he has emerged as a policy force in this administration."

Like Stephen Miller on immigration, Navarro has now become the face of Trump's trade plan. In interviews since Trump's surprise promise to impose the sweeping tariffs, Navarro has forcefully defended his boss and minimized any potential negative impact on the U.S.

"There's negligible-to-nothing effects," he said dismissively on CBS, later accusing the media of hyping prospects of a trade war.

Navarro had limited contact with Trump world until early in the campaign, when Kushner was drawn to his book, "Death by China," while researching China policy. Kushner reached out and Navarro quickly became an economic adviser.

Despite his credentials as a Harvard Ph.D. and former professor at the University of California, Irvine, Navarro was less an academic focused on research than a master of controversy writing books such as "The Coming China Wars." He has professed views that go further even than academic peers who see China's emergence in the global economy as hurting many U.S. workers.

"Trump has unconventional views on many issues. And here was an economist of some acclaim who was validating those positions," Moore said.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, who has known Navarro for more than a decade, described him as "someone who certainly speaks his mind and is not afraid to present ideas and data that are contrarian. And I think way more often than not, he makes a very persuasive case."

Persuasive to like-minded Trump, perhaps, but not to many free-trade-loving Republicans.

"I think he's wrong on a lot of things," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, who opposes the tariffs.

"We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers," 107 House Republicans wrote in a letter to Trump on Wednesday.

A day away from the president's expected official action, his spokeswoman did say Mexico, Canada or other countries may be spared under national security "carve-outs," a possible move that could soften the tariff blow.

But Navarro is still riding high.

Early in Trump's term, Navarro at first was outmaneuvered by Cohn, the Goldman Sachs president-turned-Trump economic adviser.

Cohn-Navarro discussions sometimes turned into shouting matches, occasionally in front of Trump.

Navarro, excluded from Trump's trip to Asia last fall, was sometimes seen walking the West Wing halls at night. In an especially personal blow, he was required to copy in Cohn on all his emails after being accused of trying to circumvent West Wing processes, according to two people familiar with the policy. They spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration roles.

The White House regimen included a weekly trade policy meeting in the Roosevelt Room where aides with opposing views could talk through ideas to ensure recommendations brought to the president were fully vetted and legally sound. When Porter left, said one of the people, the process broke down and Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made their move.

Asked on Fox whether he'd conducted "guerrilla warfare," sneaking around the West Wing and trying to making an end-run around staffers, Navarro dismissed the narrative as a "cheap shot" spread by "all sorts of malicious" leakers.

Others said Navarro had bided his time, keeping his head down, persistently building his case. He waited as tariff decision deadlines set by Ross ticked closer, and the White House turned its attention back to trade after deciding to table the divisive issue while it worked on health care and taxes.

"For a long time, there were a lot of long knives out to get him," said Paul, who served as a member of the White House Manufacturing Jobs Initiative before resigning last summer.

In the end though, said Paul, "I think it's pretty clear that the president is siding with the economic nationalists."

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

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Follow Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - The Latest on the Iditarod (all times local):

2:30 p.m.

The head of the Iditarod's drug testing program, who is challenging his termination from a university over allegations of bullying, has been accused of threatening a musher just before the start of this year's race.

Iditarod officials are reviewing the allegations and will make a decision on the future role of Dr. Morrie Craig within the next few days.

Musher Wade Marrs said Craig threatened to reveal his dogs tested positive for a banned substance. Marrs felt it was out of retaliation for the musher being vocal about how race officials have handled dog doping.

The Iditarod says Marrs' dogs did have a small amount of lidocaine in their system but not enough to trigger a positive test.

Oregon State University terminated Craig after a faculty committee found the toxicology professor bullied two students and sexual harassed a student and faculty member. He's challenging his termination.

Attempts to reach Craig on Wednesday weren't successful.

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7:45 a.m.

A Norwegian musher has seized the lead early on the fourth day of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Official standings Wednesday show Joar Leifseth Ulsom as the first musher into Ophir (OH-fur).

The checkpoint 352 miles (566 kilometers) from the race start. Ulsom stayed for 10 minutes and left shortly before 5 a.m.

Ulsom is from Mo I Rana in Norway. He was the 2013 Iditarod Rookie of the Year.

Hugh Neff of Tok is in second place on the trail to Ophir and reigning champion Mitch Seavey is in third.

Sixty-seven teams began the race Sunday in Willow.

The winner will take about nine days to travel 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) over trails and frozen rivers to reach Nome on Alaska's west coast.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - The Latest on an intruder arrested inside the Wyoming governor's residence (all times local):

7:40 p.m.

Authorities say a man accused of breaking into the Wyoming governor's home in Cheyenne was armed with a hunting knife.

This photo shows the entrance to Wyoming Governor's Residence in Cheyenne, Wyo. on Wednesday, March 7, 2018. Authorities say they apprehended a man who broke into the residence around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 6. Gov. Matt Mead and his family were at home at the time but unhurt. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)

An arrest affidavit says officers found 35-year-old Antoine Lewis hiding in a bathroom after he broke in and set off a fire alarm at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. He is accused of pointing the knife at the officers before he was arrested.

Investigators say Lewis told them he was chased onto the property and intentionally set off the fire alarm to get help, but surveillance footage does not support that claim.

The arrest affidavit also says he allegedly told his employer the day before that if he were to steal from people, he would target the rich because they have insurance.

Republican Gov. Matt Mead says his family was inside the home at the time but not harmed.

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4:55 p.m.

Authorities have taken into custody a man they found inside the Wyoming governor's residence in Cheyenne.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol identified the man as 35-year-old Antoine Lewis, who had been living in a local motel.

It says the man entered the governor's residence around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, setting off a fire alarm.

The patrol says firefighters and police arrived and found the man hiding in the house.

Lewis was taken to the Laramie County jail where he was being held pending formal charges.

Republican Gov. Matt Mead said in a statement that his family was inside the residence at the time but not harmed.

The patrol is responsible for the governor's security.

Patrol spokesman Sgt. Kyle McKay declined to release any other details Wednesday.

___

2:41 p.m.

Police in Cheyenne say they have taken into custody a man they found inside the Wyoming governor's residence.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol says the man entered the governor's residence around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, setting off a fire alarm.

The patrol says firefighters and police arrived and found the man hiding in the house. The man was taken to the Laramie County jail.

The patrol says Gov. Matt Mead and his family weren't hurt. The patrol isn't saying whether the governor and family members were home at the time.

Patrol officials say security will be higher around the governor's residence.

This undated photo provided by the Laramie County Sheriff's office shows Antoine Lewis. Authorities took Lewis into custody after finding him hiding inside the Wyoming governor's residence Tuesday, March 6, 2018, in Cheyenne. Gov. Matt Mead said in a statement that his family was inside the residence at the time but not harmed. (Laramie County Sheriff's Office via AP)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - San Francisco police investigating an armed robbery shot and killed a man who was hiding in the trunk of a car where a gun was later found, authorities said Wednesday.

The shooting occurred after two people flagged down officers to report the holdup Tuesday night in the city's Mission district, the police department said in a statement.

A short time later, officers pulled over a black Honda Civic matching the description of a vehicle involved in the robbery, and the driver complied when asked to get out, the department said.

A shattered rear windshield appears on a vehicle as it is towed away in San Francisco, Wednesday, March 7, 2018. San Francisco police say officers who were investigating an armed robbery shot and killed a man who was hiding in the trunk of a car on Tuesday night. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Officers then saw the trunk was slightly open and a man was inside. Witnesses said police officers spent about 10 minutes urging the man to get out of the trunk.

In a bystander's cellphone video played by media, a woman speaking in Spanish through a bullhorn was heard asking the man to show officers his hands.

"Look, we will fire bullets at you," the woman is heard saying before a single shot is fired.

"The other hand, show your other hand. We're going to fire another (round). Show your left hand. Show your left hand, mister," the woman says before a volley of shots ring out.

Albert Balcazar, who lives on the street where the shooting happened, said officers talked to the suspect for at least 10 minutes before firing their weapons.

"They gave him a long time to get out," Balcazar told reporters. "They wanted him to live. It just didn't work out that way."

Officers gave medical aid to the man, but he died at the scene. The department said investigators found a handgun in the trunk.

Sgt. Michael Andraychak declined to provide other details, but said it's being investigated by multiple law enforcement agencies.

Andraychak also said the department declined to release video footage taken by officers' body-worn cameras.

"This just happened," Andraychak said. "There is a lot of work to do before we will consider release of (body-worn camera video)."

Andraychak said the department often shows body-worn camera footage during town-hall style meetings with the community after fatal police shootings. Department policy requires a scheduling of such a meeting within 10 days of a shooting, though one hasn't been scheduled yet.

Last month, officers fired 65 bullets at a killing suspect holed up in a recreational vehicle after the man allegedly fired two shots at them. No one was injured.

The department has been trying to implement dozens of reforms recommended in a federal review of the department following the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Mario Woods in the city's Bayview neighborhood.

The shooting of Woods, a black man suspected in a stabbing, was caught on video and sparked protests that led to the resignation of Police Chief Greg Suhr.

San Francisco police officers inspect a vehicle in San Francisco, Wednesday, March 7, 2018. San Francisco police say officers who were investigating an armed robbery shot and killed a man who was hiding in the trunk of a car on Tuesday night. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's president said Thursday that many "critical moments" still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Korea's recent outreach to Seoul and Washington.

Moon Jae-in spoke before two senior Seoul officials left for the United States to brief officials about the outcome of their recent visit to North Korea.

The Seoul officials said North Korea offered talks with the United States over normalizing ties and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul said the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks.

DELETED DISRELATED TRANSLATION - South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks during the Korea National Prayer Breakfast in Goyang, South Korea, Thursday, March 8, 2018. Moon said that many "critical moments" still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Korea's recent outreach to Seoul and Washington. (Hwang Kwang-mo/Yonhap via AP)

Some experts question how sincere North Korea is about its reported offers, citing what they call its track record of using past disarmament talks to wrest aid and concessions while covertly continuing its bomb program.

According to the South Korean officials, North Korea said it has no reason to possess nuclear weapons if military threats against the country are removed and its security is guaranteed. That's the same positon North Korea has long maintained to justify its nuclear program or call for the withdrawal of 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea and a halt to annual U.S.-South Korean military drills as conditions for scrapping its nuclear program. The North sees the allies' drills as an invasion rehearsal.

Choi Hyunsoo, spokeswoman for Seoul's Defense Ministry, said the military will announce the schedule for the joint drills after the Pyeongchang Paralympics, which start Friday and run through March 18.

"We've overcome one critical moment. But there are many critical moments that we still have to go through before reaching the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a permanent peace," Moon said in a meeting with church leaders.

Moon still described the outcome of his envoys' North Korea trip "a big step toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" that was possible with "a strong support" by the U.S. government.

It's unclear whether the United States will accept the North's reported offer for talks. President Donald Trump expressed both hope and skepticism, calling the North's move "possible progress" that also "may be false hope."

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking Thursday during a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said the United States has seen "potentially positive signals coming from North Korea" illustrated by its talks with South Korea.

"We've maintained very close communication with President Moon. They are keeping us well-informed of their meetings," he said. "We're providing them input as well."

He said the U.S. and North Korea were still "a long ways from negotiations," and the United States needed to remain "very clear-eyed and realistic."

The first step is to have talks about whether to hold negotiations - "to have talks about talks," Tillerson said.

South Korean and the U.S. plan to kick off their delayed springtime military drills next month, and how sensitively the North reacts will affect the mood of reconciliation that was revived by North Korea's participation in last month's Winter Olympics held in the South. The North has responded to past joint drills by the allies with fiery rhetoric and its own weapons tests.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan's policy of pressuring North Korea does not change just because its leadership is now open to dialogue.

"We should not ease our stance, for instance relax sanctions, just because North Korea agreed to have a dialogue," Abe told a parliamentary session on Thursday. "We should not give North Korea a reward in exchange for a dialogue."

China, the North's most important ally, encouraged follow-up measures while noting the progress was in part due to the suspension of both North Korean nuclear tests and U.S.-South Korean military exercises during the Olympics.

"This proves that China's proposal of suspension for suspension was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations," Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. He said North Korea's security concerns should be addressed in return for denuclearization.

Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are to meet at a border village in late April, when the South Korea-U.S. drills would likely be still under way. If realized, the Moon-Kim meeting would be the rivals' third-ever summit since their 1945 division.

___

Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Josh Lederman in Addis Ababa contributed to this report.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks during a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress at the media center in Beijing, Thursday, March 8, 2018. China says its proposal for a "dual suspension" of North Korean nuclear tests in return for a halt to war games by South Korea and the U.S. has proven successful. Wang on Thursday told reporters that the suspension of such activities during the recent Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea showed that China's approach "was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations." (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center, gestures to journalists during a press conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress at the media center in Beijing, Thursday, March 8, 2018. China says its proposal for a "dual suspension" of North Korean nuclear tests in return for a halt to war games by South Korea and the U.S. has proven successful. Wang on Thursday told reporters that the suspension of such activities during the recent Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea showed that China's approach "was the right prescription for the problem and created basic conditions for the improvement of inter-Korean relations." (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, left, and his wife Kim Jung-sook pray during the Korea National Prayer Breakfast in Goyang, South Korea, Thursday, March 8, 2018. Moon said Thursday that many "critical moments" still lie ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Korea's recent outreach to Seoul and Washington. (Hwang Kwang-mo/Yonhap via AP)
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Flames rookie goalie David Rittich cared little about missing out on his first career shutout bid with 18 seconds left.

The first 25 shots he stopped mattered more - and Calgary snapping a four-game skid to gain ground in a tightly contested Western Conference playoff race with a 5-1 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night.

"How we get the two points, that's more important right now," said Rittich, who bounced back after a six-game stretch during which he went 1-4-1 and allowed 24 goals.

Calgary Flames forward Sam Bennett (93) celebrates his goal during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Buffalo Sabres, Wednesday, March. 7, 2018, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)

"Yeah, it's big for me right now," he added. "I had a couple, I'm not sure if it was bad, but the scores were terrible. Yeah, it's a nice comeback."

Rittich's only blemish was allowing Casey Nelson's goal in the closing moments.

Otherwise, Sam Bennett, Mark Jankowski and Mark Giordano each had a goal and an assist, while Sean Monahan and Dougie Hamilton also scored for Calgary.

Coming off a 4-3 overtime loss at Pittsburgh on Monday, the Flames improved to 1-3-1 in their past five. With 76 points, Calgary jumped into 10th place, a point ahead of idle St. Louis, and within one of Los Angeles and Colorado.

The Flames won at Buffalo for just the second time in 14 trips (2-8-3 and a tie), and first time in regulation since a 3-1 win on March 15, 1996.

The way Calgary dominated a game it outshot Buffalo 41-26 had coach Glen Gulutzan believing the Flames might be heating up just in time to mount a late-season playoff push.

"You need traction," he said.

"Our team, when they get confident, they can get on a real good run. We've done it before," Gulutzan added. "Every little step is a big step for us."

The Flames took control in an opening period in which they outshot Buffalo 17-6.

Bennett scored 5:35 in after a Sabres breakdown in front of their own net. Bennett drove to the net to collect a loose puck and snapped it over goalie Chad Johnson, who was flat on his back.

Three minutes later, Bennett set up Jankowski's goal by driving up the left wing and entering the Sabres zone. He fed a pass into the middle, where Jankowski used Nelson as a screen and snapped a 40-footer that sneaked in under Johnson's left arm.

Calgary didn't let up during a three-goal second period.

Giordano and Monahan scored 61 seconds apart to put Calgary up 4-0 with 13:59 left and chase Johnson, who finished with 18 saves.

Hamilton then beat Robin Lehner with a shot inside the right post for a power-play goal with 1:21 left in the period.

Buffalo squandered a chance to win three straight at home for the first time since a 4-0 run in January 2017, and came out inexplicably flat two days after a 5-3 win over Toronto.

"It's difficult to swallow," coach Phil Housley said, by saying the Sabres failed to match the Flames intensity.

"We talked about their desperation. You know, they're saying these are their playoff lives, these next two games on the road," Housley said. "And I don't think we respected that."

Rittich was hardly tested, though his best save came three minutes into second period, when he got his left shoulder up to stop Jason Pominville's one-timer form the left circle during a Sabres power play.

NOTES: The Sabres called up C Danny O'Regan from AHL Rochester to fill in after Kyle Criscuolo sustained upper-body injury in a 5-3 win against Toronto on Monday. O'Regan was acquired in the trade that sent Evander Kane to San Jose last week. ... Flames LW Johnny Gaudreau had two assists in playing his 300th career game. ... Gaudreau's 56 assists this season are the most by a Flames player since Alex Tanguay had 59 in 2006-07. ... The Flames once went 0-11 and a tie in 12 straight trips to Buffalo from March 11, 1979, when they were still in Atlanta, to Nov. 10, 1985.

UP NEXT

Flames: Close three-game road trip at Ottawa Senators on Friday.

Sabres: At Ottawa on Thursday.

___

More NHL hockey: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey

Calgary Flames forward Sean Monahan (23) shoots the puck past Buffalo Sabres goalie Chad Johnson (31) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Wednesday, March. 7, 2018, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)

Buffalo Sabres goalie Robin Lehner (40) stops Calgary Flames forward Matt Stajan (18) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Wednesday, March. 7, 2018, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)

Buffalo Sabres defenseman Victor Antipin (93) is checked by Calgary Flames forward Curtis Lazar (20) during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Wednesday, March. 7, 2018, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)

Buffalo Sabres goalie Chad Johnson (31) makes a save during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Calgary Flames, Wednesday, March. 7, 2018, in Buffalo, N.Y. (AP Photo/Jeffrey T. Barnes)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Conor Sheary scored two goals, Sidney Crosby had three assists and the Pittsburgh Penguins moved into first place in the Metropolitan Division with a 5-2 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night.

Phil Kessel, Jamie Oleksiak and Evgeni Malkin also scored for the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions, who have won three straight. Pittsburgh (39-25-4, 82 points) moved one point ahead of idle Washington and three in front of third-place Philadelphia.

Travis Konecny and Jakub Voracek had goals for the Flyers, who lost their fourth in a row.

The teams combined for six goals in an electrifying second period.

FLAMES 5, SABRES 1

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Sam Bennett and Mark Jankowski scored three minutes apart in the first period and the Calgary Flames snapped a four-game skid.

Calgary improved to 1-3-1 in its last five games to gain ground in the tightly contested Western Conference playoff race. With 76 points, the Flames jumped into 10th place, a point ahead of idle St. Louis, and within one of Los Angeles and Colorado. Mark Giordano also had a goal and assist, while Sean Monahan and Dougie Hamilton also scored.

The Flames won at Buffalo for just the second time in 14 trips (2-8-3 and a tie), and first time in regulation since a 3-1 win on March 15, 1996.

Rookie David Rittich stopped 25 shots before having his first career shutout bid spoiled when Casey Nelson scored with 18 seconds remaining.
PITTSBURGH (AP) - In the first wave of the White House's new western Pennsylvania offensive, one of President Donald Trump's chief aides on Thursday attacked Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb on abortion while casting Republican Rick Saccone as "a reliable vote" for the president.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, the first of three Republican heavyweights set to campaign in the region before Tuesday's special election, charged that even a single vote could affect Trump's policy agenda on Capitol Hill.

"Every vote counts at the ballot box, but every vote counts in Washington right now too," she told a dozen campaign volunteers at an Allegheny County GOP office. She added later, "The president wants a reliable vote in Washington."

In this March 5, 2018, photo. Republican Rick Saccone, speaks at a campaign rally in Waynesburg, Pa. Saccone is running against Democrat Conor Lamb in a special election being held on March 13 for the PA 18th Congressional District vacated by Republican Tim Murphy. Fighting to stave off another special election embarrassment, the White House is strengthening its final-days offensive in western Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

Conway acknowledged she was the "warm-up band" for the White House's final-days push to preserve a Republican congressional seat in Pennsylvania's 18th district, a working-class region that stretches from the Pittsburgh suburbs to the West Virginia border. The president is scheduled to attend a local rally on Saturday followed by his son, Donald Trump Jr., on Monday.

The high-profile reinforcements from the president's orbit were welcomed by Saccone, a 60-year-old state representative, who has wholeheartedly embraced Trump throughout his campaign. Trump carried the region by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Yet with the election just days away, polls suggest that Saccone is essentially tied with Lamb, a 33-year-old Marine and former federal prosecutor who has never before run for office.

Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned on Lamb's behalf earlier in the week, but national Democrats were not expected to bring in additional high-profile surrogates in the campaign's waning days.

"We've got Donald Trump. We've got his son. We've had Ivanka. What does the other side have? They've have crazy uncle Joe Biden," Saccone said before Conway's visit.

"Everybody wants to help," the Republican candidate continued. "It's like President Trump with winning - there's so much help we're going to get tired of help."

The White House is not taking any chances in the latest Trump-era special election, knowing that the result will inevitably reflect upon the president.

Democrats have over-performed in virtually every contest across the country since Trump took the White House. And the sting of the GOP's embarrassing December defeat in Alabama's special Senate race, in which Trump lent his name and time to failed Republican nominee Roy Moore, is still fresh.

Trump's Saturday visit will be his second in two months. Daughter Ivanka Trump appeared with Saccone in a separate visit last month as well and praised him as "a champion" for Republican priorities.

Beyond surrogates, the Republican National Committee, which is the White House's political arm, has spent more than $1.1 million so far to support Saccone, said committee spokesman Rick Gorka. Other national groups allied with the GOP have spent nearly $8 million on advertising in the race, which is more than seven times the amount invested by national Democratic allies not affiliated with the Lamb campaign.

"The RNC is heavily focused on winning this race," Gorka said.

Conway lashed out at Lamb as "extreme" on abortion, seizing on his opposition to a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

"Most pro-choicers say they're for reasonable restrictions. But the Democratic Party platform is not. It essentially is abortion for anyone, anytime, anywhere," Conway said.

At a GOP dinner later in the day, she linked Lamb to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a common theme in the GOP's strategy against Democrats nationwide this year.

"Conor Lamb said he'll vote against Nancy Pelosi, but he sounds a lot like her most times," she said. "So I don't believe it."

Lamb has said he personally opposes abortion as a Catholic, but he supports a woman's right to choose as set in law.

Conway's appearance comes just days after a federal watchdog determined that she violated the federal law prohibiting government officials from using their positions to influence political campaigns.

The Office of Special Counsel, which is unrelated to Robert Mueller's office, said Conway violated the Hatch Act twice last year when she spoke out in support of Moore in Alabama's Senate race. The White House disputed the independent agency's findings.

She repeatedly noted Thursday that she was in Pennsylvania "in her personal capacity" and not on official White House business.

Lamb, meanwhile, shrugged off news of the White House's aggressive strategy when asked late Wednesday.

"This is the first I'm hearing about it," he told The Associated Press in a brief interview. "I think our ground game is just really strong. It's people that are from here talking to neighbors and going to their churches. I just think that's a lot stronger."

"We'll find out," Lamb said.

___

Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP) - Two missiles fired from a U.S. drone hit a militant facility in neighboring Afghanistan, killing 21 insurgents, including the son of the head of the Pakistani Taliban, two Pakistani intelligence officials and local Taliban commanders said Thursday.

The strike, which the officials said took place on Wednesday, targeted a compound frequented by Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

The intelligence officials said Fazlullah was apparently not there at the time of the strike in Afghanistan's Kunar province, miles away from Pakistani border, but his son was killed.

Three Pakistani Taliban commanders also confirmed the strike and militant casualties. Pakistani officials and the Taliban commanders spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The United States made no comment on the strike. There was also no immediate comment from NATO, Afghan authorities or the government in Pakistan where Afghan Ambassador Omar Zakhilwal met with Pakistan's army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday.

Zakhiwal tweeted that the two had a "comprehensive discussion on all key aspects" of Afghan-Pakistan relations, including existing challenges and "mutual misgivings."

Pakistan opposes American drone strikes inside its territory, saying they violate the country's sovereignty.

Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua is currently visiting Washington, where she is believed to have met with officials from the Trump administration in an effort to enhance cooperation between the two sides on combatting terror and other issues.

It was unclear whether the bodies of those killed in Wednesday's strike would be brought to Pakistan for burial.

Islamabad has for years has asked Washington and Kabul to take action against Fazlullah and other Pakistani Taliban believed to be hiding in neighboring Afghanistan and crossing the porous Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks inside Pakistan.

Kabul, for its part, has long complained that Islamabad is not taking enough action against militants who use Pakistani soil to launch attacks against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

In recent months, President Donald Trump's cranked up pressure on Pakistan to act against militants by suspending key security assistance to the country. Pakistan denies providing sanctuary to militants and says it has carried out several military operations in the country's tribal regions and elsewhere to kill or arrest militants.

Fazlullah's is the son-in-law of a Sufi Mohammad, a radical anti-U.S. cleric who was recently freed by Pakistan. The cleric, imprisoned in Pakistan in 2009, was released in January from a prison in the northwestern city of Peshawar, following a court order for his release on health grounds earlier that month.

___

Associated Press writers Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body strongly denied killing her, asserting at his trial Thursday that she died accidentally because of a pressure problem in the submarine.

Peter Madsen, who is accused of torturing Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine, also denied he was sexually attracted to her.

Sitting on his hands as he testified at the opening of his trial in Copenhagen City Court, Madsen appeared irritated at times as he brushed off any suggestion of sexual activity with Wall before or after her death.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen arrives at the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen read from a psychiatric report describing Madsen as an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies." Madsen himself told the court Thursday that he was "a promiscuous person."

Madsen has admitted to dismembering Wall's body before he "buried her at sea," saying he could not lift her up the submarine tower in one piece to throw her overboard so he had to cut her up.

Wall, a 30-year-old freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsen's submarine on Aug. 10 to interview the 47-year-old co-founder of a company that develops and builds manned spacecraft. Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times.

Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Wall's body parts were found on the ocean bed. He said Madsen has "no empathy or feelings of guilt," citing the court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

If found guilty, Madsen faces between five years and life in prison - which in this case means 16 years that could be extended as long as Madsen is deemed dangerous - or he could be locked up in a secure mental facility if deemed necessary by psychiatrists, for as long as he's considered sick and a danger to others.

Madsen, wearing glasses, a dark shirt and jeans, listened quietly with his fists closed. Wall's parents were also present Thursday at the trial.

Testifying, Madsen repeated his claim that Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck. He said Wall "had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident."

Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death prior to the trial. He initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on a Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head.

On Thursday, he described how he found Wall lifeless after a sudden pressure problem in the submarine.

"I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good," he said. He added that he tried to give her first aid when he finally reached her, but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he told the court.

The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing.

Buch-Jepsen said the cause of Wall's death has not yet been established. He said Wall's blood was found on Madsen's nose and his bodysuit, and that detectives found violent videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive.

Members of the court were shown a drawing of the multiple stab wounds to Wall's torso. An audio file of a radio exchange between Madsen and maritime officials on Aug. 11 - the day after Madsen and Wall embarked on their submarine trip- was also played. In the recording, Madsen said he had let Wall on an island, and that there were no injured persons aboard but only technical problems.

The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat. Madsen reported "man overboard" over the radio and was then picked up alone.

Wall, who had previously reported on topics including tourism in post-earthquake Haiti, studied at Paris' Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York.

Caterina Clerici, a friend from Columbia, said Wall had "a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform."

Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium that developed and constructed manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a 30-foot (nine-meter) rocket five miles (eight kilometers) into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space.

In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day "hoped to have a criminal career," adding he didn't want to rob a bank because "no one must be hurt."

Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and later found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar. He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.

The next court session is scheduled for March 21. The trial ends April. 25. A verdict is expected that day.

____

On the net:

https://www.rememberingkimwall.com/

www.facebook.com/kimwallmemorialfund/

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, centre, arrives at the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

Members of the media queue up in front of the courthouse in Copenhagen Denmark where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

FILE - This April 30, 2008 file photo shows a submarine and its owner Peter Madsen. Peter Madsen stands trial at Copenhagen's City Court on Thursday March 8, 2018, for the killing of Kim Wall, 30, in his submarine off the usually quiet northern European country. (Niels Hougaard/Ritzau via AP, File)

The Wednesday, March 7, 2018 photo shows the submarine UC3 Nautilus of Danish inventor Peter Madsen in Copenhagen, Denmark. Madsen goes on trial Thursday, March 8, for the killing of journalist Kim Wall in his submarine. (AP Photo/Dorothee Thiesing)

Defense attorney Betina Hald Engmark arrives at the courthouse, where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

Members of the media queue up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

Members of the media set up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - The Latest on the murder trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

The Danish inventor accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his private submarine has given a Copenhagen court an account of how she died in an accident.

Drawing by Anne Gyrite Schutt shows accused Peter Madsen, left, and the prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, standing right, on the first day of the trial at the courthouse in Copenhagen Denmark where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his privately made submarine, opened on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Peter Madsen described Thursday how he couldn't open the submarine's hatches to reach Wall amid a pressure problem inside the submarine during a trip the pair took in August. He said he found Wall "lifeless" when he finally managed to open the hatches.

He said he tried to give her first aid but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he told the court.

Madsen denies murdering the 30-year-old journalist, but has admitted to dismembering her body and disposing it at sea.

___

2:15 p.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen has testified to a court that Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who died during a trip on his submarine, "had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident," but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them.

Madsen was standing trial Thursday in Copenhagen for murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse. He denies murder but has admitted to dismembering the 30-year-old's body and disposing of it at sea.

Sporting a dark t-shirt, jeans and blue sneakers, Madsen was well-spoken and answered the questions of prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen thoroughly.

Wall's body parts were found on the shore of Copenhagen and at sea after she disappeared in August.

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1:40 p.m.

The Danish inventor accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his private submarine has reiterated to a court his claim that Wall died accidentally.

Questioned Thursday during the first day of his trial, Peter Madsen said he had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death because "I didn't wish to share with the whole world how Kim Wall died."

Madsen initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip in August. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine while he was on deck during the excursion - a claim he repeated Thursday. He did not elaborate.

He has admitted to dismembering Wall's body and throwing it into the sea.

Wall's torso was found on a southern Copenhagen shoreline in late August. Her head, legs and clothes were discovered in bags at sea in October and November, along with heavy metal objects designed to take them to the ocean floor.

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1:10 p.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen, accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on a private submarine trip in August, has told a court he was "in total denial of what had happened" when he told officials over the radio that he had let Swedish journalist Kim Wall disembark on a Copenhagen island.

Madsen, 47, is accused of torturing and murdering Wall and dismembering and disposing of her body during a submarine trip last summer. The inventor, who denies the murder charges but admitted to cutting up her body, had initially maintained that Wall disembarked from the submarine several hours into their trip.

His defense lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, urged the court to listen to the facts presented during his trial, not those presented in the media.

"What has been my client's intent? Did he intend to kill Kim Wall?" she asked. "We do not have a cause of death, making it pretty muddy."

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12 noon

Jakob Buch-Jepsen, the prosecutor in the Danish murder trial of inventor Peter Madsen, says a psychiatric report of the 47-year-old Dane has concluded that he is an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies" who has "no empathy or feelings of guilt."

Madsen is on trial Thursday in Copenhagen accused of tying up and torturing Swedish reporter Kim Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her during a trip on his private submarine in August.

The prosecutor said the cause of Wall's death has not been established. But he said Wall's blood was found on the military-style bodysuit that Madsen wore when he was arrested, and he also said that detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive.

Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhoses - both damaged - and pieces of hair.

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11:05 a.m.

Danish submarine builder Peter Madsen, who is accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall, has listened quietly with his fists closed as the prosecutor described in detail how her body parts of were found on the ocean bed.

Wall's parents were also present Thursday on the opening of the trial against Madsen at Copenhagen City Court as prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen explained the findings at the bottom of the Oresund waterway between Copenhagen and southern Sweden.

The court showed a drawing of the multiple stabs to Wall's torso to members of the court, but did not display them to other people present.

Madsen is accused of killing Wall on his home-made submarine, dismembering her and disposing of her body in the water during a trip on the sub in August last year.

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10:35 a.m.

The prosecutor in the Danish murder trial of inventor Peter Madsen says Madsen's submarine was submerged for several hours on the fatal night when journalist Kim Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didn't immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact.

When reached over radio - the audio file was played to the Copenhagen City Court Thursday - Madsen said he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.

Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported "man overboard" over the radio. He was picked up alone.

After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsen's nose, "blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall," said prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen.

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9:45 a.m.

The trial has started of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, accused of tying up, torturing and murdering Swedish reporter Kim Wall during a trip on his private submarine in August.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading the charges while Madsen, wearing glasses and a dark shirt, watched the prosecutor from his seat beside his defense lawyer.

The defense lawyer, Betaina Hald Engmark, then formally entered a not-guilty please to the murder charge.

Madsen claims Wall died accidentally inside the submarine while he was on deck during the excursion. He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing.

The trial at Copenhagen's City Court is due to run until April 25.

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9:15 a.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen stands accused of tying up and torturing Swedish reporter Kim Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her during a trip on his private submarine in August.

Madsen, 47, whose trial starts Thursday in Copenhagen, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Wall's body.

Madsen has denied murder. His defense lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told TV2 Thursday that he maintains she died accidentally inside the submarine. He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing.

The trial at Copenhagen's City Court ends April. 25.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, left, and deputy police director Jens Moeller, center, leave for a break at the courthouse in Copenhagen Denmark where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his privately made submarine, opened Thursday, March 8, 2018 .(Mads Claus Rasmussen/Scanpix via AP)

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, centre, arrives at the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

Members of the media set up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

The Wednesday, March 7, 2018 photo shows the submarine UC3 Nautilus of Danish inventor Peter Madsen in Copenhagen, Denmark. Madsen goes on trial Thursday, March 8, for the killing of journalist Kim Wall in his submarine. (AP Photo/Dorothee Thiesing)

Members of the media queue up in front of the courthouse where the trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, charged with murdering and dismembering Swedish journalist Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine begins, in Copenhagen, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)
BEIJING (AP) - The Bank of China has pledged at least 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) to create a massive giant panda conservation park in southwestern Sichuan province, the forestry ministry said Thursday.

The Sichuan branch of the central bank signed an agreement with the provincial government to finance the Giant Panda National Park's construction by 2023. The park aims to bolster the local economy while providing the endangered animals with an unbroken range in which they can meet and mate with other pandas in the interest of enriching their gene pool.

The ministry said the park will measure 2 million hectares (5 million acres), making it more than two times the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

In this Feb. 8, 2018, photo, the world's longest-living panda triplets Meng Meng, Shuai Shuai, and Ku Ku, eat food in their compound at a zoo in Guangzhou in southern China's Guangdong province. The Bank of China pledged at least 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) on Thursday, March 8, 2018, to create a massive giant panda conservation park in southwestern Sichuan province. (Chinatopix via AP)

Zhang Weichao, a Sichuan official involved in the park planning, told the state-run China Daily that the agreement will help alleviate poverty among the 170,000 people living within the project's proposed territory.

Plans for the park were initiated in January last year by the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee and the State Council, the China Daily reported.

Giant pandas are China's unofficial national mascot and live mainly in the Sichuan mountains, with some in neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. An estimated 1,864 live in the wild, where they are threatened chiefly by habitat loss. Another 300 live in captivity.
FLORENCE, Italy (AP) - Thousands of people gathered in one of Florence's main squares for the funeral of Fiorentina captain Davide Astori on Thursday.

Some arrived at 7 a.m., three hours before the start of the funeral at Basilica di Santa Croce.

The hearse carrying Astori's body was greeted by loud applause and shouts of his name and "grande capitano" (great captain).

The coffin is carried into the church during the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The square then fell silent for a few minutes, while many raised Fiorentina scarves and banners in the air.

Astori's family arrived along with the hearse, including his partner, Francesca Fioretti, and their 2-year-old daughter, Vittoria.

Earlier, the Fiorentina players were met by applause when they arrived on foot, led by midfielder Milan Badelj.

The Croatia international read out a message on behalf of the club during the service, which was broadcast to the crowd outside.

"You are the brother or the son that everyone would have wanted to have," Badelj said. "Your parents didn't make any mistake with you, not even the tiniest bit. You're not like others, you are football, the real one, the pure one of children.

"Our thoughts go out to your mother and your father, to your brothers, to Francesca and to Princess Vicky. You were a man with a capital M and we will tell her. You are the light for all of us."

Many other dignitaries and former teammates were also present, including Giuseppe Rossi, who plays for Genoa, and Borja Valero and Matias Vecino, who play for Inter Milan.

Juventus defender Giorgio Chiellini, who played with Astori for Italy, was in tears as he arrived with Gianluigi Buffon and other teammates. Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri also attended.

The delegation from Juventus had flown to Florence from London, where they beat Tottenham in the Champions League on Wednesday.

Players and officials from most Serie A teams were present, including former Roma captain Francesco Totti and former Italy coach Gian Piero Ventura.

Thousands of people were also gathered outside Fiorentina's stadium, where the funeral procession passed slowly on its way to the church.

The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before Fiorentina was to play an Italian league match at Udinese in northeast Italy.

The defender, who also played 14 times for Italy, was discovered by Fiorentina staff when he failed to show up for breakfast at the hotel in Udine.

Astori started in the Milan youth academy but never played a senior match for the Rossoneri, making his Serie A debut with Cagliari in 2008.

He spent six years at the Sardinian club before loan spells at Roma and Fiorentina, where he was signed on a permanent basis in 2016.

Fiorentina and Cagliari have retired Astori's No. 13 shirt.

Juventus' Gianluigi Buffon arrives for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

The coffin is carried into the church during the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Fiorentina players arrive for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Fiorentina fans attend the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

A moment of the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Francesco Totti, left, and other Roma players arrive for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Juventus players arrive for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Juventus' Gianluigi Buffon arrives for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Italy's former coach Gian Piero Ventura arrives for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Fiorentina fans attend the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Inter Milan players and their coach Luciano Spalletti arrive for the funeral ceremony of Italian player Davide Astori in Florence, Italy, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The 31-year-old Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday after a suspected cardiac arrest before his team was set to play an Italian league match at Udinese. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - The top U.S. diplomat and a top African official tried Thursday to move past President Donald Trump's slur about Africa, deeming it a closed matter that need not be revisited.

"I believe that this incident is of the past," African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki said at a news conference with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The two were questioned repeatedly by U.S. and international media about the January incident, in which Trump referred in a private meeting to "shithole countries" in Africa, triggering widespread outrage across the continent. Neither were eager to dwell on the topic.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, and Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Workneh Gebeyehu, right, depart after a news conference following their meeting, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

Faki and Tillerson both pointed to a letter Trump sent the AU officer and other African leaders shortly after the incident in which he affirmed his respect for Africa. He said Tillerson's visit was evidence of the close U.S.-Africa relationship.

Tillerson, who this week becomes the most senior Trump administration official to set foot in Africa, did not directly respond to several specific questions about Trump's remark and whether Africa deserves an apology from the United States.

"I think the US commitment to Africa is quite clear in terms of the importance we place on the relationship," Tillerson said.

Tillerson later met with his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu and at a press conference voiced his belief that Ethiopia's ongoing unrest should be solved with more freedom, not less. The top U.S. diplomat also raised alarm over a state of emergency Ethiopia has declared to deal with widespread anti- government protests that engulfed much of the restive Oromia region.

"We do firmly believe the answer is greater freedom for people, not less," said Tillerson. "We recognize the transition there is underway in Ethiopia, the first ever voluntary transfer of power. I view this as a very positive symbol of the strength of this burgeoning democracy in Ethiopia."

Anti-government protests calling for wider political freedoms have been raging in a number of regions in Ethiopia since November 2015, claiming the lives of several hundred people. A state of emergency was subsequently declared in October 2016 that led to the arrest of at least 22,000 people, the majority of whom released since. The government declared a second state of emergency in mid- February.

Tillerson repeated a recent U.S. Embassy statement expressing "concern" over the government's decision to impose a second state of emergency in two years. "This is because it puts restrictions on fundamental rights, like assembly expression," he said. "We also discussed in our exchanges the importance of ensuring that security forces remain disciplined in maintaining law and order and preventing violence."

On Thursday, Ethiopia unveiled a special investigative unit to deals with complaints regarding illegal detentions within the latest emergency rule.

Ethiopia's prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned amid the protests and a new leader is expected to be sworn in the coming few days.

Ethiopia is currently one of Africa's best performing economies and a strong U.S security ally but the government is often accused of stifling dissent and arresting journalist, activists and opposition figures.

A journalist records U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Workneh Gebeyehu's news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wafts the aroma of fire-roasted coffee beans, during a traditional coffee ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson receives a cup of brewed coffee during a traditional coffee ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson drinks from a cup of brewed coffee during a traditional coffee ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a cup of brewed coffee as he takes part in a traditional coffee ceremony at the U.S. embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson participates in a news conference with Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Workneh Gebeyehu, after their meeting, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson participates in a news conference with Ethiopia's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Workneh Gebeyehu, after their meeting, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, flanked by his chief of staff Margaret Peterlin, left, meets with Ethiopia Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shakes hands with African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, after their meeting at African Union headquarters, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, flanked by his chief of staff Margaret Peterlin, left, meets with Ethiopia Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, addresses the media after his meeting with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu at a joint press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The top U.S. diplomat and a top African official tried Thursday to move past President Donald Trump's slur about Africa, deeming it a closed matter that need not be revisited. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, addresses the media after his meeting with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu, at a joint press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The top U.S. diplomat and a top African official tried Thursday to move past President Donald Trump's slur about Africa, deeming it a closed matter that need not be revisited. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addresses the media after his meeting with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu, at a joint press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The top U.S. diplomat and a top African official tried Thursday to move past President Donald Trump's slur about Africa, deeming it a closed matter that need not be revisited. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, watches as Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr. Workneh Gebeyehu, addresses the media after their meeting at a joint press conference, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Thursday, March 8, 2018. The top U.S. diplomat and a top African official tried Thursday to move past President Donald Trump's slur about Africa, deeming it a closed matter that need not be revisited. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a news conference with African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, after their meeting at African Union headquarters, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a news conference with African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, after their meeting at African Union headquarters, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson holds a news conference with African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, after their meeting at African Union headquarters, Thursday, March 8, 2018 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)
BAGHDAD (AP) - A Baghdad court has convicted the sister of the former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was killed in 2010 and sentenced her to death on terrorism charges, a spokesman said Thursday.

The spokesman of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council, Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, said in a statement that Abu Omar al-Baghdadi's sister was found guilty for "offering logistic support and help to (the militants) in carrying out criminal acts."

The woman, whose name was not released, was also found guilty of "distributing money" among the militants in Mosul. He didn't give more details on the charges and what years she cooperated with al-Qaida in Iraq.

Bayrkdar said the woman's husband was earlier also sentenced to death as a member of the al-Qaida leadership.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in April 2010, along with Abu Ayyub al-Masri, another prominent al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, in a U.S.-Iraqi joint operation.

Thursday's statement by Bayrkdar initially said the convicted woman was the sister Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the reclusive leader of the Islamic State group, but the spokesman later issued a correction, saying she is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi's sister.

Al-Qaida in Iraq was the parent group from which IS emerged.

In mid-2014, IS controlled vast areas in northern and western Iraq, including Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, which was under the militants' rule for more than three years.

Iraq declared victory over IS last December, after driving the militants from northern and central Iraq. Hundreds of women, including foreigners, were arrested in the sweep. Since then, Iraq's Central Criminal Court has issued number of sentences against IS women, ranging from years in prison to death by hanging.

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's whereabouts remain unknown. Rumors have surfaced on several occasions of his death and injuries in airstrikes and fighting in both Iraq and Syria, territories where IS had declared an Islamic "caliphate," though there was never anything to back them up.

He is believed to be in his mid-40s, and was seen in public only once when he declared himself the leader of IS from a historic mosque in Mosul, just a few weeks after IS captured the city in the summer of 2014, along with entire swaths of northern and western Iraq.

Since then, he has only released audio messages to his followers from time to time, urging them to keep on fighting.

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This story has been corrected after Iraqi authorities issued a second statement saying the convicted woman is not IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's sister but the sister of al-Qaida leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Danish inventor Peter Madsen is on trial Thursday for the killing of journalist Kim Wall in his submarine. Madsen denies killing Wall and says she died accidentally inside his submarine while he was on deck. However, he has admitted cutting her up before he "buried her at sea."

A look at the key moments in the case:

- Aug 10, 2017: Kim Wall goes on submarine trip from Copenhagen with Peter Madsen. They are the only two people on the vessel, and it is the last time Wall is seen alive.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017 file photo, police and other authorities search a waterway for body remains related to the ongoing Kim Wall murder investigation at the west coast of Amager close to Copenhagen, Denmark. Peter Madsen stands trial at Copenhagen's City Court on Thursday March 8, 2018, for the killing of Kim Wall, 30, in his submarine off the usually quiet northern European country. (Jens Dresling/Ritzau via AP, File)

- Aug. 11: Major search for submarine after Wall's Danish boyfriend alerted authorities that sub did not return. Madsen is saved from sinking submarine south of Copenhagen. Wall is missing. Madsen is arrested. He claims Wall disembarked from the submarine at a Copenhagen island several hours into their trip.

- Aug. 12: Madsen appears before a pre-trial custody hearing. He faces preliminary manslaughter charges. In Denmark, preliminary charges are a step short of formal charges.

- Aug. 13: Submarine is raised and put onto land in northern Copenhagen.

- Aug. 21: Dismembered torso found at sea off Copenhagen.

- Aug. 23: Copenhagen police says DNA test confirms it was Wall's torso.

- Aug. 25: Madsen also faces preliminary charges of indecent handling of a corpse.

- Sept. 5: Madsen explains at a pre-trial hearing that Wall died accidentally when hit by a 70-kilogram (155-pound) hatch on the UC3 Nautilus submarine, after which he "buried" her at sea. He later changes that when Wall's head is found with no skull fractures.

- Oct. 4: Police say they have found 15 stab wounds on Wall's torso. They also find videos of women being tortured, decapitated and killed on Madsen's computer. The videos are not produced by Madsen.

- Oct. 7: Police say they have found a head, two legs and clothes in plastic bags a day earlier. Dental records help identify Wall.

- Nov. 22: Wall's left arm is found by divers in the sea south of Copenhagen.

- Nov. 29: Wall's right arm is found by divers in the sea south of the Danish capital.

- Jan. 12, 2018: Police stop searching for Wall's and Madsen's cell phones believed to have been thrown at sea.

- Jan. 16: Madsen is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse.

- March. 8: Trial against Madsen starts at the Copenhagen City Court where he faces two judges and two jurors.
LONDON (AP) - The Latest on the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain and his daughter (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

A Russia expert in Britain says that "Russia was the most likely story" for explaining who was behind a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter.

In this photo provided by Solent News & Photo Agency and taken on Sunday, March 4, 2018, a police officer without any protective gear crouches down next to the bench in the Maltings Shopping centre, where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in Salisbury, England. Skripal and his daughter are in critical but stable condition at a hospital in Salisbury. A police officer who came to their aid is in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking. He was identified Thursday as Sgt. Nick Bailey.(Thomas Belk/Solent News & Photo Agency via AP)

But Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London, cautioned against assuming it was the result of direct orders from the Kremlin.

Greene told Sky News that "Russia does seem like the most likely story" given "the fact that we have seen things like this before."

Greene also said that even if the attack was planned in Russia, it may not have been ordered by the Kremlin.

Greene said that "a lot of these things are being done by people operating at sort of an arm's length's distance from the command and control structure."

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6:55 p.m.

British police now say a total of roughly 21 people have sought treatment after a nerve agent was used to attack and ex-Russian spy and his daughter.

Wiltshire acting police chief Kier Pritchard told Sky News on Thursday that "a number" of those people got blood tests, support and hospital advice.

He says only three people remain hospitalized. They are former Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and police Sgt. Nick Bailey.

Officials say Bailey is making progress. The ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition.

Police say the roughly 21 people treated include the three still hospitalized.

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5 p.m.

The global chemical weapons watchdog says it is in touch with authorities in Britain about the use of a rare nerve agent in an attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter.

In a brief written statement, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says that "the recent report that two people became seriously ill in the United Kingdom as a result of exposure to a nerve agent is a source of great concern."

The organization based in The Hague did not immediately return a call Thursday seeking more detail on the nature of the contacts with Britain.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd has told the House of Commons that enormous resources are being used to determine who is responsible for poisoning Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33. The pair were found unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury on Sunday.

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11:45 a.m.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd says a former Russian spy and his daughter who were poisoned with a nerve agent are in a critical but stable condition.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury on Sunday.

Rudd says a police officer who treated them is in serious but stable condition and is "talking and engaging." She says it's highly likely the officer was exposed to the same nerve agent.

Rudd says the attack is an "outrageous crime" and a "brazen and reckless act" but cautions it is too early to say who was behind it.

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9:10 a.m.

Britain's Home Secretary says the investigation into the nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter is focusing on three sites - his home, a pub and a restaurant.

Amber Rudd told the BBC on Thursday that enormous resources are being directed at trying to figure out who might be responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

Rudd, who is in charge of public security issues, says the police officer also injured in the incident Sunday is also in serious condition but is conscious and talking.

Rudd declined to say if she believed Russia was behind the attack, but says Britain will "if it is appropriate, attribute it to somebody. If that is the case, then we will have a plan in place."

Personnel in hazmat suits walk away after securing the covering on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, England on Thursday March 8, 2018, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent on Sunday. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)

Police officers seal off a cul-de-sac in Salisbury, England, near to the home of former Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal as a nerve agent is believed to have been used to critically injure him and his daughter Yulia. Britain's Home Secretary says the investigation into the nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter is focusing on three sites - his home, a pub and a restaurant. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)

This undated handout photo provided by Wiltshire Police on Thursday, March 8, 2018 shows Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. Whoever attacked Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, with a rare nerve agent is guilty of a "brazen and reckless act," and Britain will respond without hesitation when it becomes clear who is responsible, the country's security minister said Thursday. Skripal and his daughter are in critical but stable condition at a hospital in Salisbury. A police officer who came to their aid is in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, Rudd said. He was identified Thursday as Sgt. Nick Bailey. (Wiltshire Police via AP)
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Serbia's president said Thursday that his country won't recognize Kosovo as an independent nation, but is open to discussing solutions to the contentious issue.

"If we recognize Kosovo ... Albanians will gain everything, and my question is - what will Serbs get?" said President Aleksandar Vucic, who was in Romania for talks with President Klaus Iohannis.

"You're going to get your monasteries protected, your churches protected. My counter question ... would be - and otherwise you would burn it, or what?" he said in English, echoing the emotions of many Serbs who view Kosovo as Serbia's historic heartland and refuse to give up claims to it.

He added, however, that Serbia is willing to discuss "all possible solutions," though part of the issue is "how to sell it to our public and how the Albanians sell it to their public."

Vucic said if both sides delivered a solution "it will mean that we do care about the future of our people and the future of our nation," although he acknowledged that failure was a more likely outcome.

Last month, during a visit to Belgrade, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told Serbia it had to solve its dispute with Kosovo and implement a series of reforms before it can join the European Union.

Vucic thanked Iohannis, who offered to help on the Kosovo issue. Romania traditionally has good relations with Serbia and supports its bid to join the European Union.

"If the solution is not fair.... and is not supported, it won't be a solution," Iohannis cautioned.

Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and is recognized by 115 countries. Serbia and Romania do not recognize Kosovo.

About 10,000 people were killed during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo which ended when NATO bombed Serbia to end its crackdown against independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poland's prime minister met with top European Union officials in Brussels on Thursday as part of efforts to avert potential unprecedented EU sanctions over a reform of Poland's judiciary.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki handed a document detailing changes in the judiciary to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The nearly 100-page document outlines the previous situation and says that Poland's judiciary is now shaped like those in some other EU members, including Spain and France. EU leaders, however, say the reforms infringe on the rule of law.

Following his talks with Juncker and his deputy Frans Timmermans, Morawiecki told a news conference that Poland expects the document to be studied "seriously and thoroughly" by EU leaders and members, because it lays down the reasons why the reform was necessary and made improvements on the previous system.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Morawiecki said he expects more talks on the subject in the near future.

European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said that "dialogue continues" and that time previously given Poland to meet the commission's recommendations is not yet up.

EU leaders argue that the changes introduced by the right-wing government give politicians influence over the judges, violating the fundamental principle of judicial independence and equality. They have triggered for the first time ever a sanctioning procedure, Article 7, which could lead to the stripping of Poland's voting rights.

The main sticking points are the changes that shorten current terms of judges in top courts and give lawmakers and government members the power to appoint members of the Supreme Court and the National Council of the Judiciary, a body which gives its opinions on the appointment and promotion of judges. Previously, they were appointed by judges.

Amid protests from outnumbered opposition, Poland's parliament voted on Tuesday to approve 15 new members of the judiciary council, all of them proposed by the ruling party and its ally.

Speaking later at the annual German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum, Morawiecki said he "truly" believes that under the new rules the judicial system "is going to be much better, much more independent" than before.

Morawiecki argued that the Supreme Court still includes about a dozen judges - out of nearly 90 - who were professionally active during the "very dark era" of communist rule.

He said he hopes that "slowly but surely" Poland will succeed in making the European Commission see its point of view.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, right, greets Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki prior to a meeting at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, March 8, 2018. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu says Turkey and Iraq could conduct a joint military operation against Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

Cavusoglu told reporters in Vienna during a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Thursday that the operation could start after Iraq holds its elections on May 12.

Turkey frequently launches cross-border operations into the northern Iraq in pursuit of militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, who maintain bases there.

The plans for a joint offensive follow a Turkish-Iraqi rapprochement stemming from both countries' strong opposition to a Sept. 25 referendum in Iraq's Kurdish region that resulted in a yes vote for separation from Baghdad.

Turkey is currently engaged in a cross-border offensive in Syria to drive out Kurdish fighters it considers to be an extension of the PKK.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews blocked the main entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday, bringing traffic to a grinding halt during the evening commute to protest the arrest of members of their community for refusing to register for the military draft.

Israel has compulsory military service for most Jewish men, but the ultra-Orthodox, whose political parties enjoy an outsized role in the country's coalition politics, have secured exemptions. Most ultra-Orthodox men have the option of receiving repeated deferrals, as long as they register with the military.

But the protesters refuse to even register. "We will die and not enlist," they chanted Thursday.

Ultra orthodox Jews block the entrance toJerusalem during a military draft protest, Thursday, March 8, 2018. Israel has compulsory military service for most Jewish men, but the ultra-Orthodox, whose political parties enjoy an outsized role in the country's coalition politics, have secured exemptions. Authorities still require ultra-Orthodox men to register for the draft, something to which the protesters gathered Thursday are opposed. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

It was the first such protest since the death last month of the group's leader, Shmuel Auerbach. On his orders over the past year, thousands of men in black hats and side-locks would mob intersections, stopping traffic and scuffling with the public and police.

The military exemptions have angered many secular and mainstream Jews, whose children are drafted after high school.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition partners are currently arguing about whether to extend the draft exemptions as part of a budget debate. A key non-religious party has threatened to bolt the coalition if the budget is not passed soon.

Draft privileges go back to when Israel's founders granted exemptions to a few hundred gifted students to help rebuild the schools of Jewish learning destroyed in the Holocaust. But the numbers have ballooned dramatically since then.

Ultra orthodox Jews block the entrance toJerusalem during a military draft protest, Thursday, March 8, 2018. Israel has compulsory military service for most Jewish men, but the ultra-Orthodox, whose political parties enjoy an outsized role in the country's coalition politics, have secured exemptions. Authorities still require ultra-Orthodox men to register for the draft, something to which the protesters gathered Thursday are opposed. Man in the middle hold a sign that reads: " Stop crushing Torah students." (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
MEXICO CITY (AP) - The U.S. Embassy in Mexico said Thursday that a security alert about the Caribbean resort of Playa del Carmen was not related to an explosion on a ferry that injured at least two dozen people.

The embassy did not specify what kind of security threat it had been informed of in the resort, which is near Cancun, Cozumel and Tulum.

But it did say that "we do not have information relating the ferry explosion to the security threat in Playa del Carmen."

Tourists and passengers disembark from a ferry on to the wharf on Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Friday, March 2, 2018. Undetonated explosives were found on another ferry that runs between the Caribbean resorts of Playa del Carmen and the island of Cozumel, authorities said, less than two weeks after a blast shook another ferry plying the same route. (AP Photo/Gabriel Alcocer)

That threatened to complicate matters for one of Mexico's key tourism sites, since the ferry threats had at least already been known and, according to Mexican officials, were related to "business issues" with the ferry company.

Now it appears a different threat also exists. The area has also been hit, albeit infrequently, by drug violence, and the violent Jalisco cartel has been seen moving into the area.

But it was not clear if that was in any way related to the security alert issued Wednesday by the Embassy.

The alert included an indefinite ban on travel to Playa del Carmen by U.S. government employees. It said the U.S. consular agency there "will be closed until further notice."

Mexican officials said the city is safe, despite the U.S. alert.

"All tourism and economic activity in Playa del Carmen continues in a normal manner," the government of Quintana Roo state said in a statement, noting that hotel occupancy at the resort was 80 percent.

It said President Enrique Pena Nieto attended an ocean conservation conference in Playa del Carmen on Thursday.

"We do not know why the U.S. government decided to emit this alert," the state government said.

A Feb. 21 explosion on a ferry that runs between Playa del Carmen and Cozumel injured 19 Mexicans and at least five U.S. citizens.

After that, the U.S. Embassy barred employees from taking the ferries to Cozumel, one of the world's busiest cruise ship ports of call.

And last week, undetonated explosive devices were found on another boat owned by the same ferry company.

State prosecutors say the ferry incidents are under investigation. Local media say officials are examining several possible motives, including the possibility the bombing may have been related to an insurance policy.

The ferry company has not responded to requests for comment. But on March 4, the company issued a statement saying that "referring to this as an attack from inside the company is a very low, morally unfounded act, which we categorically deny."

While the Caribbean coast - especially Cancun and the area south known as the "Riviera Maya" - has been largely spared the drug violence affecting other areas, there have been killings.

Last week four gunmen burst into a hospital in Cancun and shot to death a drug gang suspect and his wife.

In January 2017, gunmen attacked the state prosecutors' office in Cancun, killing four people. A day before that, a shooting at a music festival in Playa del Carmen left three foreigners and two Mexicans dead.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Storm Reid tried to play it cool when Ava DuVernay told her she'd gotten the lead role in Disney's "A Wrinkle in Time," but it wasn't long before the tears started flowing.

"I flipped out," says Reid, now 14 and in the ninth grade.

The Atlanta-native started acting at age 3 after she told her mother that she wanted to be a "stuperstar." She's had bit roles in television ("NCIS: Los Angeles," ''Chicago P.D.") and film ("12 Years a Slave," ''Sleight"), but nothing even close to something like "A Wrinkle in Time." As the heroine Meg Murry, she is in nearly every frame, navigating mean girls at school, the loss of her father and even interdimensional travel.

In this Feb. 25, 2018 photo, Storm Reid poses for a portrait at The W Hotel in Los Angeles to promote her film, "A Wrinkle in Time," which opens nationwide on Friday, March 9. (Photo by [Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

"It's such an important story to be told," says Reid, who had done a book report on the Madeleine L'Engle novel in the 6th grade. "She goes on this beautiful journey and finds herself and becomes more accepting and learns that she is worthy of being loved."

DuVernay saw Reid very early on in the casting process and said every girl after had to measure up to her. Eventually she trusted her initial impulse and went back to Reid.

"This whole thing doesn't work if you don't have a great Meg. She goes from completely depressed to defiant to exuberant to joyful to determined to fighting evil. It's every emotion," says DuVernay. "She has the whole thing on her shoulders. She's incredible."

The experience of filming "A Wrinkle in Time" was incredible, Reid says, not only because it meant acting alongside the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling and Chris Pine, but because of DuVernay's set.

"Our set was so inclusive with women and men and different races and sexualities. It was kind of like the United Nations," Reid says. "She has a beautiful vision and a beautiful mind."

Reid looks up to actors like Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman and loves movies like "Hidden Figures" that tell stories that aren't so widely known. She appreciated that all of her A-list co-stars were humble and down to earth and says that she is still just a normal teenager with a normal life outside of acting.

She says people keep telling her how much she's going to change with her new raised profile. But Winfrey disagrees.

"Miss Oprah told me those people are not right," Reid says. "She told me, 'You're going to stay the same but the people around you are going to change.' I feel like I'll be recognized more once the movie comes out but I'm still the same girl."

___

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

In this Feb. 25, 2018 photo, Storm Reid poses for a portrait at The W Hotel in Los Angeles to promote her film, "A Wrinkle in Time," which opens nationwide on Friday, March 9. (Photo by [Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

In this Feb. 25, 2018 photo, Storm Reid poses for a portrait at The W Hotel in Los Angeles to promote her film, "A Wrinkle in Time," which opens nationwide on Friday, March 9. (Photo by [Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)

In this Feb. 25, 2018 photo, Storm Reid poses for a portrait at The W Hotel in Los Angeles to promote her film, "A Wrinkle in Time," which opens nationwide on Friday, March 9. (Photo by [Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP)
TOWSON, Md. (AP) - A former Baltimore County schools superintendent pleaded guilty Thursday to perjury charges for failing to disclose nearly $147,000 he earned from private consulting jobs while running Maryland's third-largest district.

The Baltimore Sun reported that prosecutors are recommending that 37-year-old Dallas Dance spend 18 months in jail.

Thursday's plea marks the latest step in the charismatic leader's downward trajectory. Dance resigned his $287,000-a-year job in April, citing family concerns. It later became known that he was under investigation.

Speaking in Baltimore County Circuit Court on Thursday, Maryland State Prosecutor Emmet C. Davitt offered a detailed account of Dance's work outside the district and efforts to cover it up.

Davitt said that Dance sought consulting jobs shortly after he became superintendent in 2012. Dance had told a Chicago firm's executives that he wanted to make more money because of a divorce.

"Keep me as busy as you can," Dance reportedly told a SUPES Academy executive, Davitt said.

Dance also vowed to a SUPES official that he would fire a school district employee to secure a no-bid contract for SUPES, which the school board approved, Davitt said.

Dance lied to ethics officials about payments from his SUPES job and begged SUPES executives not to provide information to an ethics panel about his consulting work.

Davitt said Dance also provided false documents to the panel that showed that any income he had earned was going to the school system's education foundation. It was not, Davitt said.

As Davitt went through the charges, Dance sat with his two lawyers and read along with his own copy of the indictment. He declined to comment outside the hearing.

Sentencing is scheduled for April 20.

___

Information from: The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com
LONDON (AP) - European Council President Donald Tusk has warned that there can't be progress toward a post-Brexit trade deal until the issue of the Irish border is resolved.

Tusk says that until Britain presents a plan to keep the all-but-invisible border open, "it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations."

Britain and the EU agreed in December that there must be no customs posts or other impediments along the border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. But they have not agreed on how to do it.

EU Council president Donald Tusk, right, arrives for talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar at Government Buildings in Dublin Thursday March 8, 2018. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP)

Britain has rejected the EU's suggestion, which is to keep Northern Ireland inside the bloc's customs union.

Speaking Thursday alongside Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin, Tusk said Britain must propose "a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border."
PARIS (AP) - A third woman has filed a rape complaint against prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, jailed since last month on preliminary rape charges in France following two other women's allegations.

The Paris prosecutor's office said Thursday it was studying the new complaint and hasn't yet decided on opening a preliminary investigation.

Ramadan's lawyers didn't comment on the latest allegations but have said their client denied any wrongdoing in the two previous cases and filed a lawsuit claiming the allegations were false.

FILE - In this Feb.7, 2016 file photo, Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan delivers a speech during a French Muslim organizations meeting in Lille, northern France. A third woman has filed a rape complaint against prominent Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan who has been jailed on preliminary rape charges in France since last month following two other women's allegations. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File)

French media reported the third woman claimed in her complaint that Ramadan raped her nine times in 2013 and 2014.

Oxford University, where the 55-year-old renowned and influential Swiss scholar is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies, put him on a leave of absence while his legal situation remains unresolved.
LIMA, Peru (AP) - Opposition lawmakers in Peru are renewing their effort to oust embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski over his ties to the Brazilian construction giant implicated in Latin America's biggest corruption scandal.

Legislators introduced a measure Thursday calling for Kuczynski to be removed from his post on grounds of "moral incapacity."

Opposition leaders attempted to impeach Kuczynski last year after an investigation revealed Odebrecht had made $782,000 in payments to his private consulting firm more than a decade earlier.

Kuczynski narrowly avoided being voted out after a small opposition faction including the son of then jailed former President Alberto Fujimori abstained.

Days later Kuczynski pardoned Fujimori from a 25-year jail sentence for human rights abuses committed during his decade-long rule.

Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing and says he will not step down.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - The Latest on the reprimand of a state senator (all times local):

1:30 p.m.

A California state senator reprimanded for hugging colleagues is apologizing to anyone who felt his frequent embraces were unwelcome.

Sen. Bob Hertzberg, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area, said in a letter Thursday that he has greeted people with hugs all his life.

He says they were intended to demonstrate warmth and kindness along with his exuberance.

He also said the misconduct allegations against him were exploited by opponents as he proposed overhauling California's money bail system for offenders awaiting trial.

Hertzberg said the Legislature should do a better job of keeping harassment complaints confidential during investigations.

___

11:12 a.m.

A California state senator has been told to stop hugging people after a sexual misconduct investigation concluded his behavior made multiple colleagues uncomfortable.

The Senate Rules Committee formally reprimanded Sen. Bob Hertzberg on Tuesday. The Los Angeles-area Democrat says he'll respect the request not to hug people.

An investigation covered four complaints against Hertzberg dating to 2010 involving three female lawmakers and a male sergeant at arms. It found he hugged the three lawmakers in ways that made them uncomfortable and made the sergeant uncomfortable by "dancing briefly with his backside" against him.

Hertzberg is known for being gregarious and his frequent hugs of men and women earned him the nickname "Hugsberg." The investigation found the vast majority of Hertzberg's hugs were not unwelcome or meant to be sexual in nature.

It comes after three state lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct have resigned.
Trade between the EU and UK will be more complicated and costly under any outcome of upcoming negotiations, the president of the European Council has warned, adding: That is the essence of Brexit.

Donald Tusk was unveiling draft guidelines for the negotiations, due to be adopted at a summit later this month by the 27 remaining members of the EU.

The guidelines say that Brussels wants as close as possible a partnership with the UK after Brexit, but expects there will be negative economic consequences.

Speaking at a press conference in Luxembourg just hours after sending the guidelines to the EU27 capitals, Mr Tusk said Brussels hoped for an ambitious and advanced free trade agreement (FTA) with zero tariffs on goods but limited access for services.

But he added: This positive approach doesnt change the simple fact that because of Brexit we will be drifting apart.

Mr Tusk said: Our agreement will not make trade between the UK and EU frictionless or smoother.

It will make it more complicated and costly than today for all of us. This is the essence of Brexit.

(PA Graphics)

After Theresa May set out her vision for the future EU/UK relationship in her Mansion House speech on Friday, Mr Tusk said that the only option available in negotiations was an FTA of the type signed with Canada.And in a clear demonstration of Brusselss reluctance to deliver the kind of bespoke deal outlined by the Prime Minister last week, he said: I fully understand and of course I respect Theresa Mays political objective, to demonstrate at any price that Brexit could be a success and was the right choice.

But sorry, it is not our objective.

EU27 wants UK as close friend & partner and will enter talks on future with open, positive mind. But given UK red lines only an FTA is possible. It will be the first FTA in history to loosen, not strengthen economic ties. Drifting apart is essence of #Brexit.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) March 7, 2018

Mr Tusk was speaking shortly before a keynote speech from Philip Hammond, in which the Chancellor was due to make the case for preferential access for Britains financial services industry to the single market.

Rejecting the arguments of sceptics who claim there has never been an FTA including financial services, Mr Hammond was set to say: I am clear not only that it is possible to include financial services within a trade deal but that it is very much in our mutual interest to do so.

The draft European Council guidelines call for zero-tariff trade in goods but warn that access for services will be limited by the fact that Britain will be outside the EU and will no longer share a common regulatory and judiciary framework.

And they warn that there can be no cherry-picking of participation in the single market for particular sectors, such as financial services.

Existing reciprocal rights of access to fishing waters should be maintained, and there should be appropriate customs co-operation, the guidelines state.

Unless we take back full ownership and control of our waters, Brexit will have been betrayed. Our coastal fishing communities have this one last chance. https://t.co/l4i0VZ5Fud  Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) March 7, 2018

Speaking alongside Mr Tusk, Luxembourgs Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who will meet Mrs May in London next week, said that the goal of a post-Brexit FTA would be minimising the losses and limiting the negative impacts as much as possible.

But he added: There will be no winners after Brexit. Both sides will be losing.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: Unless we take back full ownership and control of our waters, Brexit will have been betrayed.
Pope Francis has cleared the way for murdered Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero to be made a saint, declaring that a churchman who stood up for the poorest of the poor in the face of right-wing oppression should be a model for Catholics today.

The Vatican announced on Wednesday that during Tuesdays meeting with the head of the Vaticans saint-making office, Francis had approved a decree confirming a miracle attributed to Mr Romeros intercession.

Also approved was the miracle attributed to Pope Paul VI, paving the way for his canonisation as well.

No date has been set for either ceremony, which Francis would be expected to celebrate.

Mr Romero was gunned down by right-wing death squads on March 24 1980, as he celebrated mass in a hospital chapel.

The countrys military dictatorship had vehemently opposed his preaching against the repression of the poor by the army at the start of the countrys 1980-1992 civil war.

Francis unblocked Mr Romeros stalled sainthood case at the start of his pontificate and declared him a martyr in 2015.

A sculpture of Oscar Romero at Westminster Abbey (John Stillwell/PA)

The case had been held up for years by the Vatican, primarily due to opposition from conservative Latin American churchmen who feared Mr Romeros perceived association with liberation theology would embolden the movement that holds that Jesus teachings require followers to fight for social and economic justice.

It was also delayed over related questions about whether Mr Romero was killed out of hatred for his faith or his politics.

If killed for his politics, it was argued, he could not be declared a martyr of the faith.

A miracle has also been attributed to Pope Paul VI (PA)

In the end, Pope Francis decreed in 2015 that Mr Romero was killed as a martyr out of hatred for the faith, or in odium fidei.

He was beatified in San Salvador on May 24 2015, before a quarter of a million jubilant Salvadorans, and held up as model of peace and forgiveness for Francis home continent.

Details of the miracle that paved the way for his canonisation were not revealed, but rumours have circulated for more than a year that a possible miracle was being studied.

When Francis declared Mr Romero a martyr, officials said the decree had confirmed the acceptance of a new understanding that martyrs can be killed, even by churchgoing Catholics, out of hatred for their Gospel-inspired work in favour of the poor and disenfranchised.

Salvadorans celebrated the news with the countrys President Salvador Sanchez Ceren saying in a tweet that the news fills us with immense joy.

The countrys Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez said: This is a day of glory for the country, of rejoicing and hope.

He called it an answer from God to the outcry of a people which has suffered so much.
Surging Rolls Royce shares helped nudge the FTSE 100 into positive territory, with investors celebrating news that the engine maker had swung to an annual profit.

Rolls Royce jumped 11.4% or 95p at 924p, topping Londons blue chip index which ended the day up 0.16% or 11.09p at 7,157.84p.

It came as the company reported a return to profit with a pre-tax surplus of 4.9 billion, thanks to a 2.6 billion accounting boost from recent strengthening of the Brexit-hit pound that helped it bounce back from a record loss of 4.6 billion in 2016.

David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: The swing to profit highlights how well the restructuring plan is going.

There is still more work to be done in relation to reorganising, as the company plans to reshape the business into three units, down from five at the moment.

Rolls Royce failed to comment on whether there will be a reduction in the head count. The stock hit its highest level since November today, and if the bullish move continues it could target 1,000p.

Across Europe, the French Cac 40 and German Dax were up 0.3% and 1.09%, respectively.

In currency markets, the pound was nearly flat against the US dollar at 1.388, and was up just 0.05% versus the euro at 1.120.

Brent crude prices tumbled 1.7% to 64.36 US dollars per barrel after the Energy Information Administration reported growing US oil stockpiles and a smaller than expected drop in gasoline inventories that raised concerns over a glut of global supplies.

In UK stocks, Paddy Power Betfair shares fell 280p to 7,940p despite reporting an 18% increase in full-year underlying earnings, as investors turned their attention to a spate of sporting upsets that benefited bookmakers but resulted in punters placing fewer bets themselves.

Paddy Power Betfair said it had seen a drop in placed bets (PA)

The betting industry is also facing a raft of regulatory changes aimed at cracking down on problem gambling, including curbs on fixed-odds betting terminals  though Paddy said it was well positioned to deal with any regulatory challenges.

Legal & General rose 2.5p to 260.3p after the insurer reported record annual profits  up 32% to 2.1 billion  helped by changes in life expectancy rates and a strong performance in its retirement division.

Customers are not living as long as expected, which helps life insurers such as L&G, who pay out bigger sums the longer an individual lives.

Shares in Restaurant Group jumped 17.2p to 254.6p after saying it was banking on healthier vegan and vegetarian dishes to boost its performance this year.

It seemed to soften the blow of a drop in adjusted pre-tax profits from 77.1 million to 56.7 million in 2017.

Debenhams edged lower by 0.12p to 27.76p amid news that it has struck a concession deal with French interiors brand Maisons du Monde in its latest move to revamp trading.

The group said it would include Maisons du Monde shop-in-shop concessions in three of its stores this spring  in Debenhams Westfield (London), Birmingham and Manchester.

The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Rolls Royce Holdings up 95p to 924p, Smurfit Kappa up 176p to 3,218p, Evraz up 15.4p to 455.1p, and Just Eat up 23.8p to 768.6p

The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were WPP down 49p to 1,210.5p, Paddy Power Betfair down 280p to 7,940p, NMC Health down 84p to 3,274p, and Intertek Group down 101p to 4,991p.
MSPs are to examine how to tackle the relentless decline of banks in Scotland as more than a third have closed since 2010.

Small businesses and consumers are being asked to speak out on the impact the closures have had on local communities and economic growth.

The rate of decline across Scotland varies, with official figures indicating Edinburgh has seen the steepest drop in bank numbers, falling 60%, while other areas such as Aberdeenshire and Moray saw lesser drops of around at least 20%.

MSPs have launched an inquiry into bank closures (Peter Byrne/PA)

Reasons behind the overall reduction across Scotland include increased use of electronic payments, falling demand for cheques, the impact of the financial crisis and new regulatory costs hitting banks profits.

Holyroods Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee has launched an inquiry into the closures with a survey and a call for views from business and personal banking customers.

Committee convener Gordon Lindhurst said: For Scotland to lose more than a third of its banks in just seven years seems a staggering statistic.

This inquiry will work to respond to significant public concern that the impact of closures is felt most in places where no viable alternative exists.

We are calling on small businesses and consumers to speak out on vital questions, such as: Will closures of local banks have an impact on your business? What is the impact of local ATMs closing or imposing charges for transactions? And how do bank closures impact on your local high street?

The committee wants to know what can be done to help remedy a seemingly relentless decline in Scotlands banks.

Crucially, what are the alternatives that can help support local businesses and communities, and enable them to thrive for the benefit of all?

The inquiry report is expected to be published in summer.
Frida Kahlos eyebrow pencil  which she used to emphasise her signature monobrow  will go on show in a new exhibition on the Mexican artist, famous for her self-portraits.

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is opening its show on Kahlo, one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, this summer.

It will feature more than 200 objects, including outfits, letters, jewellery, cosmetics, medical corsets and medicines, which husband Diego Rivera locked away in her home, the Blue House, following Kahlos death at the age of 47 in 1954.

The objects, which Diego stipulated could be opened after 50 years, were unsealed in 2004 and have never been seen outside Mexico City.

Guatemalan cotton coat (Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Archives, Banco de Mexico, Fiduciary of theTrust of the Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo Museums)

The show, on how Kahlo constructed her identity, features her Ebony eyebrow pencil, slightly used and still in its original packaging.

The painters monobrow was a defining feature of her striking self-portraits.

Claire Wilcox, exhibition co-curator, told the Press Association that the show was timely in an age when the subject of womens rights is once again at the fore.

She said that the focus on Kahlos wardrobe was important because her clothing was a political statement and she was not a slave to fashion.

Frida Kahlo was assertive, independent, intelligent and she created this carefully constructed identity which was completely independent of fashion at the time, Wilcox said.

Frida Kahlos make-up including her eyebrow pencil, photograph Javier Hinojosa (Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo Archives, Banco de Mexico, Fiduciary of the Trust of the Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo Museums)

She adopted indigenous Mexican clothing in her late teens/early 20s, as part of a movement to reappraise and revalue traditional Mexican culture, which had been under the influence of Spanish culture for centuries.

So, by dressing in traditional Mexican clothing, it was a political statement.

She added: Her clothing was constructed with great artistry, every morning, dressing up, putting fresh flowers in her hair. She even painted in those clothes.

She was very conscious of her appearance but she constructed it from her own set of political and aesthetic values. She wasnt a slave to fashion.

Her cosmetics were a part of her colourful approach to life.

She said: She described her face as part masculine, part feminine. It wasnt just her monobrow. She didnt do anything with her moustache either. Her paintings exaggerated these facial aspects.

She didnt abide by conventional norms of beauty.

Kahlo became bed-bound and immobilised after a near-fatal bus crash at the age of 18.

She began to paint using a mirror inset into the canopy of her four-poster bed.

Wilcox added: Her make-up was a form of self-defence because she was heavily injured. She spent most of her life in really poor health following the accident.

Frida Kahlo in blue satin blouse, 1939, photograph by Nickolas Muray (Nickolas Muray Photo Archives)

She was like a bird-of-paradise, distracting from her injuries with her appearance.

The exhibition will also reimagine Kahlos home, the Blue House, on the outskirts of Mexico City, where she was born, lived with Rivera, and where she died.

It will also explore her marriage to muralist Rivera, who was 20 years her senior and extremely famous when they wed.

They had a stormy, on and off relationship all their lives. But she held her own. It was turbulent, Wilcox said.

The exhibition will also feature self-portraits and photographs as well as the corsets Kahlo painted with religious symbolism and imagery relating to her miscarriages.

Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, sponsored by Grosvenor Britain and Ireland, runs at the V&A from June 16 to November 4.
Fresh talks are due to take place in a bid to break the deadlock between Westminster and Holyrood over crucial Brexit legislation.

Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington will meet senior figures from the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales to discuss their concerns that the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill represents a power grab by UK ministers.

Scottish Brexit Minister Mike Russell pledged to be constructive in the negotiations  but also made clear the Scottish Government would not sign up to any deal that they believe will undermine the devolution settlement.

David Lidington, second right, and Mike Russell, second left, will meet again in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock between Westminster and Holyrood (Jane Barlow/PA)

The row between the UK Government and the devolved administrations centres on where powers will lie once they are returned from Brussels post-Brexit.

As no deal on this has yet been agreed, the Scottish Government has controversially brought forward its own version of the EU Withdrawal Bill  which is designed to transpose European law into UK law in time for Brexit.

Very pleased that #ContinuityBill passed at Stage 1 in @ScotParl this afternoon by 94 votes to 30 - as with the motion classifying it as Emergency Legislation last week only the Tories opposed . Amendments for Stage 2 require to be tabled by 2.00pm on Friday.  Michael Russell (@Feorlean) March 7, 2018

But Mr Lidington has urged the devolved administrations to respond positively to proposals from the UK Government and reach an agreement which would allow Edinburgh and Cardiff to give their formal consent to the legislation.

Speaking ahead of the talks in London, Mr Russell said: We are going into this meeting seeking to reach an agreement on amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill.

But, in common with the Welsh Government, we simply cannot accept any proposal that would undermine the devolution settlement.

The fundamental principle at stake is that any proposed change to devolved powers simply must have the agreement of the Scottish Parliament, as must any future legislation in the areas where UK-wide frameworks are under discussion.

He continued: In the absence of an agreement to date, we are continuing to pursue our own Continuity Bill, which was approved overwhelmingly at Stage 1 by the Scottish Parliament yesterday.

This is not a course of action we wanted to take, but it is one we have been compelled to pursue in order to protect devolution.

We continue to believe, in line with the clear majority of people in Scotland, that continuing EU membership is in our best interests, but we will be constructive in todays meeting in seeking to show the UK Government that we can both protect devolution and prepare Scotlands and the UKs laws properly in the event of Brexit.

Meanwhile Mr Lidington stressed: The Government is committed to exiting the EU in a way that provides certainty for businesses and families in all parts of the UK.

We have been working hard to find an agreed way forward that fully respects and strengthens the devolution settlements and that also protects the UKs common market.

We have listened to the concerns of the devolved governments and have put forward a proposal that would achieve that.

It represents a considerable move by the UK Government that will see significantly more devolved powers.

We now urge the devolved administrations to respond positively and reach agreement on this basis.
The number of homes on estate agents books has dwindled to a new low, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics).

Average property stock levels per branch on agents books fell to a new record low of just under 42, as new buyer inquiries, new instructions from sellers and newly-agreed sales continued to drift lower in February, its report said.

New buyer inquiries fell for the eleventh month in a row while sales trends have remained similar over the past six months, Rics said.

The average number of homes on estate agents books has fallen to a new low, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said (PA)

Meanwhile, the number of fresh properties coming to market recorded its lowest reading since May 2017.

For the ninth month in a row, house prices remained broadly flat, with little change.

In what Rics said was another sign of the increasingly challenging market environment, the average time for a sale to complete from listing has increased by two weeks over the past year.

At the start of 2017 it took around 16 and-a-half weeks typically to sell a home. Now it takes around 18 and-a-half weeks.

There also continues to be significant regional variations, with new buyer inquiries increasing in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Yorkshire and Humberside in February.

Declining inquiries from new buyers were seen in London and the South East of England as well as the East Midlands, with the trend in most other regions broadly flat, according to the report.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Theresa May said her goal was getting the right homes in the right places as she set out a shake-up of planning laws.

Simon Rubinsohn, Rics chief economist, said: The consultation announced earlier this week on housing delivery put the onus squarely on developers and planning departments to up their game to lift the supply pipeline, but the feedback to the latest Rics residential market survey casts some doubt as to whether this will be sufficient to address the challenge.

Significantly, the longer term national house price indicator has begun to creep upwards once again in recent months despite the current somewhat mixed climate.

He said that, despite the subdued housing market activity, Rics findings point to house price increases of around 15% over the next five years.

He continued: Meanwhile, the divergent regional picture is becoming increasingly pronounced with key Rics indicators across huge swathes of the country still showing considerable resilience but data for London, the South East and East Anglia rather more subdued.


U.S. Asks China for Plan to Reduce Trade Deficit by $100 Billion

Trumps tweet says request was for a $1 billion cut annuallyless than 0.3% of the countries annual trade gap

BEIJINGThe Trump administration is asking Beijing for a plan to cut the annual U.S. trade deficit with China by $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that Washington had asked Beijing for a $1 billion reductionless than 0.3% of the countries annual trade gap or around one days worth of the trade imbalance. His tweet was off by $99 billion.

According to the people, Trump administration officials made the request to Liu He, the main architect of Chinas economic policy, last week when he was in Washington. Mr. Liu said in his Washington meetings that narrowing the vast bilateral trade deficit was in Chinas interest as China seeks to shift away from an export-led growth model. It is unclear how feasible the deficit-reduction goal is for Beijing and what kind of plan it could offer.

who was briefed by Chinese officials about the Liu visit, said they told him the U.S. was pressing for a reduction in the bilateral trade deficit by about one-third.

The tweet came at a time of rising global trade tensions, with the relationship between the worlds two largest economies at the center. Having set new solar-panel tariffs in January, mainly aimed at China, Mr. Trump now plans to impose stiff tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. The plan has stoked fears of a global trade spat and has drawn broad opposition from U.S. trading partners as well as U.S. lawmakers.

The impact of the proposed U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum makers is ultimately expected to be small. What could come in the coming months likely will be more damaging to China. The Trump administration is weighing broad trade and investment penalties against Beijing as it completes a probe into allegations of Chinese theft and expropriation of American intellectual property.

The wording of Mr. Trumps tweet was: China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States.

The tweet continued: Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!

Mr. Trump followed his tweet on the trade gap with one that said: The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!

U.S. technology companies have been preparing for administration actions, which they fear could come in weeks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-tweet-on-china-trade-understates-u-s-demand-officials-say-1520514514
Counter-terror police are working to unravel what is now feared to be a sophisticated chemical weapon plot targeting a Russian spy and his daughter.

A nerve agent is believed to have been used to critically injure Sergei Skripal, 66, and 33-year-old Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Sunday.

One of the first police officers to arrive at the bench where the pair were slumped is also seriously ill in hospital.

It remains unclear who is responsible for poisoning the pair, but the attack has stoked tensions between Britain and Russia amid suspicions of state responsibility.

Former British ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood told the Daily Telegraph that the assassination attempt was more serious given a policeman was among the injured.

However the former diplomat, who served in Moscow between 1995 and 2000, said the injuries suffered by the double agents daughter and the officer should not take attention away from the attempt on Mr Skripals life.

He told the paper: If it is true that this is, in some fashion, the Russian state, it obviously makes it even harder to believe the Russian state is worth anything or is to be trusted.

The fact they targeted his daughter, and that a policeman is seriously ill, makes it emotionally difficult, but it does not alter the fact that this was an attempted assassination on British soil.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons about the incident on Thursday.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been targeted specifically.

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

He said: Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act.

Head of counter-terrorism policing Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley and Englands chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

Nerve agents, which are chemical weapons, have been used in assassinations and attacks in war zones in recent years.

Kim Jong Uns half-brother Kim Jong Nam was killed at an international airport in Malaysia last year in an attack using a nerve agent known as VX.

Another well-known nerve agent, sarin gas, killed more than 90 people in a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, drawing international condemnation of the Bashar Assad regime.

Access to such toxins are tightly regulated, meaning the Salisbury plot would have taken considerable planning to execute.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of Britains Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, told the Times: This is not the stuff you can knock up in your back shed.

It is quite challenging to make. The inference is that this has probably come from a major laboratory, probably state-run.

Police activity in the cul-de-sac in Salisbury that contains the home of Sergei Skripal (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Mr Rowley reiterated his appeal for anyone who was in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward to help with the missing pieces in the case.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the incident posed a low risk to the public and advised that all the sites the pair were known to have visited had been secured.

Public Health England later confirmed it had contacted all first responders who had attended the scene.

Russia have denied responsibility for the attack, which comes seven years after Mr Skripal was released from the country as part of a spy swap with the US.

He had been convicted in his home country in 2006 for passing state secrets to MI6.

The investigation has triggered a diplomatic row and prompted crisis talks in Whitehall but Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police must respond to evidence, not to rumour.

It comes as police extended the cordons in Salisbury city centre, and also sealed off part of a business park in nearby Amesbury.

A sign for Porton Down, whose scientists are thought to have been helping police (Andrew Matthews/PA)

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in nearby Porton Down, which has state-of-the-art equipment to look for trace amounts of substances, is believed to have been involved in examining the substance.
Leading female politicians are backing a campaign to create a more equal future for girls and young women in Scotland.

The Citizen Girl initiative, launched by Girlguiding Scotland and Women 50:50, aims to empower girls of all ages to explore why their voice matters.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson are backing the campaign which also aims to encourage more girls and young women to consider becoming political leaders.

Emma Ritch of Women 50:50 (3rd from left) and Talat Yaqoob, Co-founder of Women 50:50 (2nd from right) with Girlguiding Scotland members (Girlguiding Scotland/PA)

It comes after recent research by Girlguiding across the UK found that girls continue to feel under-represented in politics, with more than one in two of those aged 11-21 saying politicians do not understand the issues facing girls and young women today.

As part of Citizen Girl, Girlguiding Scotland is calling for political parties to commit to gender equality by putting forward 50% female candidates in local, Scottish and UK elections, and for politicians at all levels to consult with young people on all of the decisions that impact on their lives.

Ms Sturgeon said: Citizen Girl is an initiative that I warmly welcome. It will create new opportunities for girls and young women to shine locally and nationally.

The Scottish Government is committed to tackling gender inequality and celebrating the many and valued contributions of young women and girls in Scotland.

Girlguiding Scotland is also calling for businesses, public bodies and voluntary organisations in Scotland to commit to increasing female representation in management and creating opportunities for the next generation of girls to take the lead.

The campaign is part of the charitys celebrations to mark Scotlands Year of Young People and the 100th anniversary since the first women gained the right to vote in the UK.

Guides from Girlguiding Scotland spread the word about Citizen Girl (Girlguiding Scotland/PA)

Labour MSP and Women 50:50 co-founder Ms Dugdale said: Im delighted to back the Citizen Girl initiative and I look forward to engaging with the next generation of female leaders and encouraging them to use their voices to speak up.

Ms Davidson said: I congratulate Girlguiding Scotland on the launch of Citizen Girl  every young woman should feel empowered to find her own voice and this campaign will help achieve that.

Girlguiding Scotland hopes its near 50,000 members aged five to 25 will take on the Citizen Girl challenge and explore themes of equality and representation through fun activities  from building their own edible parliament to holding their own Citizen Girl summit.

Hannah Brisbane, 21, Girlguiding Scotlands lead volunteer for voice, said: By empowering girls to use their voice we are creating a more equal future that is long overdue. Every girl deserves the right to have their voice heard and this is what Citizen Girl is all about.
Domestic abusers could be banned from drinking alcohol and electronically tagged under a Government crackdown.

New civil orders will expand the potential restrictions courts and police can impose on criminals who torment partners, spouses and other family members.

Perpetrators could be required to attend parenting programmes or drug and alcohol treatment to reduce the risk of them carrying out further abuse.

For the first time courts will be given express powers to impose electronic monitoring as a condition of the proposed Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs).

A Government consultation on the plans, to be published on Thursday, says tagging could be used as part of a perpetrators compliance with conditions such as an exclusion zone, or a prohibition on drinking alcohol.

The measure would also enable the monitoring of the subjects location to establish behaviour patterns or provide evidence of someones movements, which in turn could help prevent stalking or intimidation, according to the document.

It says electronic monitoring will only be used where it is proportionate and necessary to prevent further abuse.

DAPOs would bring together the strongest elements from existing protective orders, while giving courts the power to set a wider range of restrictions and for longer periods than the current 28 days.

The proposed orders could be imposed at the outset of a case, when abuse is suspected but before the subject has been found guilty of any crime.

Courts could issue an order during any ongoing proceedings, including on conviction or acquittal in any criminal proceedings, the consultation says.

Breaching any conditions attached to an order would be a criminal offence.

The details emerged as the Government launched a consultation to set out a host of proposed measures to be included in a draft Domestic Abuse Bill.

It will also introduce a new statutory definition of domestic abuse, which includes a reference to economic abuse for the first time.

Theresa May said the proposals have the potential to `completely transform the way we tackle domestic abuse (Steve Parsons/PA)

The existing definition recognises financial abuse but the consultation says this can be restrictive in circumstances where victims are denied access to basic resources such as food, clothing and transportation.

Cases where abusers force victims to take out loans could also fall under the economic strand.

Other measures being weighed up for inclusion in the new Bill include:

 The creation in law of an independent domestic abuse commissioner

 Tougher sentences for domestic abuse that affects children

 Enshrining in legislation the scheme known as Clares Law, under which police can disclose information about previous violent offending by a new or existing partner

 Giving domestic abuse victims the same status in court as those who have suffered modern slavery or sex offences.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the proposals have the potential to completely transform the way we tackle domestic abuse.

She said: Domestic abuse takes many forms, from physical and sexual abuse, to controlling and coercive behaviour that isolates victims from their families and has long-term, shattering impacts on their children.

An estimated 1.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the last 12 months, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending March 2017.

Figures also show 82 women and 13 men were killed by a partner or former partner in 2016/17.

We know that domestic abuse can have an enormous effect on your mental health. If you feel like you want to talk, we're here #TimetoTalk pic.twitter.com/K4MM6lzlWS  Women's Aid (@womensaid) February 1, 2018

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: It is appalling that in 21st-century Britain, nearly two million people every year  the majority of them women  suffer abuse at the hands of those closest to them.

Through this Bill I want to fundamentally change the way we as a country think about domestic abuse, recognising that it is a crime that comes in many forms  physical, emotional, economic.

Justice Secretary David Gauke said: The damage caused by domestic abuse can last a lifetime. We have a duty not only to support those affected but to prevent others falling victim in future.

Katie Ghose, chief executive of Womens Aid, welcomed the consultation.

She added: We want to see the Bill encompass and go beyond changes to the criminal justice system to include policies on housing, education, health, immigration and the welfare system to name but a few, to ensure that every survivor and her child can safely escape domestic abuse.
Stories which highlight the breadth of womens roles in the First World War are being revealed to mark International Womens Day.

Documents, photographs and paintings showing female activity from working in munitions factories to driving ambulances in France are being shared by the Imperial War Museums (IWM) in the final year of the centenary of the conflict.

They include material gathered for the Womens Work Collection from 1917 as part of the creation of the IWM, as well as accounts that give an insight into what life was like for women in the First World War.

A sister of Queen Alexandras Imperial Nursing Service and a matron of the Territorial Force Nursing Service taken by Horace Nicholls in December 1917 (IWM/PA)

As men left to fight, women stepped in to do their jobs, a situation which helped them secure the vote in 1918, although they were forced out of the workplace by men returning after the war.

Working women included Isabella Clarke, who described the tough conditions in a munitions factory and the death of her friend from TNT poisoning.

She said: We were coming home for our Easter holidays and my friend was stopped, and they noticed that both her eyes, and mine, the whites of our eyes were discoloured a little bit, but hers was badly.

I came home as usual on my Easter holidays, and then they come and inform me that she had died.

Women unloading the nitrating pans at HM Munitions Factory, Gretna, taken by Horace Nicholls (IWM/PA)

Another story is that of the Madonnas of Pervyse, Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm, who met at a motorcycle club in autumn 1913 and drove ambulances under fire from the front line to the hospital once war broke out.

They soon set up their own emergency treatment station north of Ypres, just 50 yards from the front line, nursing in the cellar to avoid shelling.

Other testimonies of the war collected by the IWM include those of Agnes Allen, from Dundee, who was able to become a nurse despite her fathers disapproval because he died before war broke out, and Mary Lees who drew attention as the first girl to work on the land in Devon.

Jane Cox, who worked at Schneiders Garment Factory in London, said the war taught women to stand on their own feet.

It was the turning point for women. Men became a little bit humbler. They werent the bosses anymore.

Because, years ago, once you were married, you stopped at home and the men could go to the pub, but a woman couldnt. But during the war the women learned and theyve been learning ever since.

A painting by Anna Airy of the `L Press forging the Jacket of an 18-inch Gun at Armstrong-Whitworth Works, Openshaw, 1918 (IWM/PA)

Details about womens role in the war was first gathered by the Womens Work Sub-Committee from 1917, including written accounts secured by writing to hundreds of organisations asking about wartime activities.

The committee wanted to acquire images of women working, and Norfolk woman Olive Edis, a member of the Royal Photographic Society was commissioned to take photographs of women in France and Belgium  producing 171 pictures during a gruelling tour in the wars aftermath.

The society artist Sir John Lavery produced paintings, for half his usual fee, of women in different roles, while official photographer of the Home Front, Horace Nicholls took pictures of many women in uniform and at work.

Ten female artists were also commissioned by the Womens Work Sub-Committee, including Olive Mudie-Cooke who served as an ambulance driver in France and Italy, and Anna Airy who produced pictures of munitions factories.

The stories and images are being shared as part of the IWMs WomensWork100, a programme of events, exhibitions and activities exploring the working lives of women during the First World War.
A man accused of stealing Frances McDormands Oscar from an after party has a long history of theft convictions, a court was told.

Terry Bryant, 47, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to swiping McDormands best actress Academy Award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as she celebrated at the Governors Ball on Sunday night.

Prosecutor Rena Durant told Los Angeles Foltz Criminal Justice Centre he has 13 primarily theft-related convictions from between 1994 and 2012.

However he was released from custody without having to pay bail after a judge heard testimony from his rabbi.

Bryants lawyer, Daniel Brookman, told a press conference they would forcefully resist the charges and defend him very aggressively.

He was flanked by Bryants rabbi, Naomi Levy, who described him as a sweet, gentle man of faith.

Judge Deborah Brazil said Ms Levys words and Bryants apparent lack of danger to the public had convinced her to free him without bail.

Prosecutors have said Bryant, an aspiring journalist, was witnessed taking the statuette before being detained near an exit.

Bryant wore prison-issue blue overalls in the dock as he was photographed and filmed by the press. The scene was a far cry from the tuxedo-wearing man who courted praise as he clutched the award at the exclusive ball.

Video appeared to show a man holding an Oscar (AP/Jeff Turner)

Look it, baby. My team got this tonight. This is mine, he said, before planting a kiss on the Oscars head in a since deleted video selfie posted to his Facebook.

Bryant was also captured on video leaving the ball while brandishing the award to photographers, one of whom confronted him after not recognising him as a winner.

In court, he only spoke to confirm he had understood the judges demands after his lawyer entered the not guilty plea to one charge of grand theft of property.

Along with the thefts, Ms Durant said Bryant has failed to appear in court nine times previously, but he was released on his own recognisance to return on March 28.

Outside court, Mr Brookman addressed the footage, saying: Theres a difference between holding an Oscar and what he is charged with, so that will play out in court.

The lawyer added that Bryants behaviour was out of character for anyone, but would not comment on his mental state.

Frances McDormand won the award for best performance an actress in a leading role for her turn in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Photo by Eric Jamison/Invision/AP)

Mr Brookman also said he would contact McDormand after she reportedly called for Bryant not to be prosecuted.

Ms Levy, who said she has known Bryant for seven years, added: I think we are living in an unusual time in America.

I believe that maybe perhaps his story is a commentary on our whole society and its obsession with its 15 minutes of fame.

Police said the Los Angeles resident handed the gold-plated bronze statuette back without a struggle and was arrested.

Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office said he faces up to three years in jail if convicted.

McDormand, 60, won her second best actress Oscar with Martin McDonaghs Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Her publicist said she celebrated being happily reunited with the award with a double cheeseburger from Californias In-N-Out Burger chain.
Seven pioneering female doctors are to be remembered at a special event on International Womens Day.

The women  Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson and Emily Bovell  were admitted to study medicine at Edinburgh University in 1869, making them the first females to be accepted on to a degree programme at any British university.

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSED) is to unveil a plaque commemorating the medics achievements at a ceremony in the city on Thursday.

A plaque will be unveiled to the `Edinburgh Seven (RCSED/PA)

At the time, the actions of the group known as the Edinburgh Seven were extraordinary enough to attract widespread criticism from across society, even inciting a riot on the streets of the Scottish capital.

Although they were admitted in 1869, they had to continue their campaign to be allowed to train and practice as doctors.

A defining moment in that campaign was The Surgeons Hall Riot of November 18, 1870, which attracted widespread publicity and created a groundswell of support for their fight.

Information on the University of Edinburghs website reveals the challenges faced by the women at the time.

The article states: The everyday jealousy the male students exhibited was vile.

The men made life as difficult as possible for the Edinburgh Seven, shutting doors in their faces, howling at them and behaving aggressively.

Events came to a head at their anatomy exam when several hundred male students pelted the women with mud and other objects as they arrived. The women struggled through the crowd until a supporter unbolted a door to hurry them inside.

During the exam, the rioters shoved a live sheep into the hall, causing further chaos.

The notice, part of Historic Environment Scotlands commemorative plaque scheme, will be officially revealed by Caroline Doig, a retired paediatric surgeon and the first woman to be elected to the RCSED Council in 1984 and the first female chair of the General Medical Council.

She said: Today, the college celebrates the role of women in all its committees and activities, and its growing female membership has reached over 5,000 surgical and dental professionals worldwide.

I am delighted there are now so many women pursuing a career in surgery and it is an honour to unveil this commemorative plaque on International Womens Day, in memory of the first seven women to be admitted on to a degree programme at any British university.
The Bank of China has pledged at least 10 billion yuan (1.1 billion) to create a massive giant panda conservation park in south-western Sichuan province.

Chinas forestry ministry announced on Thursday an agreement between the bank and the provincial government to finance the Giant Panda National Parks construction by 2023.

The park aims to bolster the local economy while improving breeding conditions for wild pandas living in the mountainous region.

Male panda Hua Bao rolls in snow during the official opening of the Ahtari Zoo Snowpanda Resort in Ahtari, Finland (Tommi Anttonen/Lehtikuva/AP)

The ministry said it will measure 5 million acres (2 million hectares), making it more than twice the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

Giant pandas are Chinas unofficial national mascot and live mainly in the Sichuan mountains.
Leading seafood companies need to do more to stop lost fishing nets killing huge numbers of fish and marine animals each year, campaigners said.

A report from World Animal Protection said an estimated 5% to 30% of the decline in some fish stocks can be attributed to abandoned, lost or discarded fishing gear, which can take up to 600 years to decompose.

The ghost gear also kills marine species such as whales, dolphins, seals and turtles.

Around 70% by weight of larger sized plastic waste in the oceans is fishing related, World Animal Protection said.

Fishing-related debris makes up 70% of the larger plastic waste in the oceans (World Animal Protection/Rachel Ceretto/PA)

In a ranking of the worlds 15 biggest seafood companies on how they are dealing with the issue, none make the top grade for best practice, or the second grade for putting responsible management and handling of their fishing gear at the heart of their business.

Leading the way on the issue are Youngs Seafood, John West owner Thai Union and tuna company Tri Marine, World Animal Protection said, but warned all companies needed to do more.

Steve McIvor, chief executive of World Animal Protection, said: Fishing gear is designed to catch and kill, and when it is left in the ocean it is the most harmful form of marine debris for animals.

Its heartbreaking to know that animals caught in this incredibly durable gear can suffer from debilitating wounds or suffocate or starve to death over a number of months.

We hope to see the companies at the bottom of the ranking working hard to improve and rise in the ranking in future years.

These companies must remember that consumers demonstrate they care about the welfare of animals when they are deciding what brands to put in the shopping baskets.

He called for companies to join the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, an alliance founded by World Animal Protection in 2015, to help cut the amount of fishing gear being lost in the oceans.
Hollywood actor Paul Newman once gave up a portion of his salary to top-up co-star Susan Sarandons lower fee, the actress has revealed.

The pair worked together on 1998 neo-noir thriller Twilight, which also starred Gene Hackman and Reese Witherspoon.

After the negotiation term Favoured Nation  which ensures each actor in a film is paid the same as their co-stars  was only applied to the two men in the film, Newman volunteered some of his fee.

Film star Paul Newman (Chris Bacon/PA)

Sarandon told BBC Radio 5 Live: Emma Stone once came forward and said she got equal pay because her male stars insisted upon it and gave up something of theirs. That happened to me with Paul Newman at one point, when I did a film with him ages ago.

She added Newman had stepped forward and said Well, Ill give you part of mine. So yeah  he was a gem.

The actress, 71, also said she believes there will always be a casting couch in Hollywood.

I think what will go away is the unwanted exchange, but I think that giving yourself sexually, or being drawn to power and wanting to have sex with someone thats in power is also a choice.

What we dont want to have is being exploited and to have the Harvey Weinsteins of the world holding it over your head and holding it over your project  that is the most despicable.

Newman died aged 83 in 2008.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle received a rapturous welcome from the people of Birmingham as they began a visit to the city.

Harry and Ms Markles trip to the Midlands is the latest leg of their tour of the country, which has seen them travel the length and breadth of the UK from Cardiff to Edinburgh.

Crowds had been gathering hours ahead and braved the rain waiting for the couple under a sea of umbrellas at Millennium Point.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham (Victoria Jones/PA)

But the sun came out a few minutes before the couple arrived.

Stephen McNally, 61, from Stourbridge, said he travelled with a group of friends, with many of them carrying bouquets for Ms Markle.

Commenting on Harrys engagement to the American actress, he said: I think hes been allowed to do, really, what he wants.

Josie Weeks, Carol Haywood and Stephen McNally (from left to right) brave cold and wet conditions waiting for the arrival of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in Birmingham. pic.twitter.com/SQxkC5VRBL  PA Royal Reporters (@PARoyal) March 8, 2018

He is old enough now and nobody can tell him what to do  not at his age  and I just hope they will be happy.

It will be different for her but I think theyve learnt a lot from the past and that is why Meghan is doing these walkabouts and going round the country before shes getting married. I think its really nice, rather than keeping things a secret like they used to do.

We hope to be going to Windsor for the wedding, on the streets or in the castle precinct.

Thank you to everyone (dogs included!) for the warm welcome to Birmingham this morning. pic.twitter.com/f6E3gbGfiP  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) March 8, 2018

The couple were greeted by John Crabtree, Lord-Lieutenant of the West Midlands, and Ms Markle wore a coat by J Crew, trousers by Alexander Wang and an AllSaints jumper.

Harry and Meghan went on a walkabout shaking hands and greeting around 300 well-wishers and school children who had waited patiently to meet them.

Student Charlotte Highsmith, from Oxford, was overcome with excitement after meeting Meghan and said: Oh my god, it was worth the wait  Ive missed my lecture.

The 20-year-old, who is studying criminology and policing at Birmingham City University, added: Meghan just thanked us for waiting in the rain for her, but it wasnt a problem.

Two elderly sisters, Irene Gould, 82, and her younger sibling June Dickinson, 78, were also ecstatic after meeting Harry and his fiancee.

Mrs Gould said: We were just so pleased to meet them, and how beautiful Meghan is. We thanked Harry for coming to see us and wished them all the best for their marriage.
Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster mistakenly deferred a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a judge said.

She erroneously believed the 150 million earmarked by the British Government as part of the Stormont House Agreement should await the outcome of an overall package dealing with all legacy issues, Belfast High Court judge Sir Paul Girvan added.

He said more work was needed before the Treasury could approve the proposal and cautioned unlimited public funds were not available.

Arlene Foster thought a bid for extra funding for inquests could wait, a judge said. (Yui Mok/PA)

The judge said the obligation on the state to investigate deaths during the conflict remained whether or not devolved Government was restored.

He said: She (Arlene Foster) was in error in concluding that it was legally proper to defer consideration of the funding issue because in the absence of an overall package the provision of additional funds to deal with the systemic delays in the legacy inquests would favour victims who were not innocent as against innocent victims of the Troubles.

He said Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley was responsible for overseeing the functioning of Government and added there was a political vacuum.

He said: The relevant parties must reconsider the question of the provision of additional funding in light of the fact that finding a resolution of the funding issue cannot be postponed until an outcome to a political agreement on other legacy issues.
Scottish goods exports have risen by nearly a fifth, with oil and gas the fastest rising, according to new figures.

Exports in 2017 rose to 28.8 billion  up 19% compared to the previous year. It was the highest rise out of any country in the UK and above the UK average of 13%.

Economy Secretary Keith Brown praised the strong growth revealed in the HMRC figures and said they show confidence is returning to the oil and gas industry.

Economy Secretary Keith Brown (Danny Lawson/PA)

Countries outside the European Union account for more than half of all Scottish goods exported (51%) but this has fallen by 2% since 2016. EU countries take up 49%.

The increase in exports to the EU of about a quarter (24%) outstripped the rise to non-EU countries by 9% as the Netherlands overtook the US to become Scotlands largest export partner in the year.

Exports to the Netherlands were among the largest value increase between 2016 and 2017, up 41% to 4,317 million followed by China, also up 41% by 2,228 million.

Norway and Saudi Arabia recorded the largest value decreases in Scottish goods exports in the same period, down 279 million (26%) and 131 million (30%) respectively.

Exports of petroleum, petroleum products and related materials grew fastest in the year, up by 46%  2,695 million.

Scottish goods exports (HMRC/PA)

Im sure many people in Scotland will be encouraged, as I was, by todays statistics, which clearly show that Scotlands exports industry is showing strong growth in spite of the looming shadow of Brexit, Mr Brown said.

These figures are positive  across a number of sectors and across a number of global markets.

He added: There was also welcome news for oil and gas, with the increase in exports clearly demonstrating that confidence is returning to that sector  which is, of course, one of Scotlands most important industries.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has met Saudi Arabias Crown Prince on the second day of his visit to the country.

Justin Welby saw Mohammed bin Salman at Lambeth Palace in London as concern over Saudi Arabias role in the war in Yemen continued to cause controversy.

Amnesty International UKs director Kate Allen said: We hope Justin Welby used the meeting as an opportunity to personally communicate the Churchs concerns over the thousands of Yemeni civilians killed and injured in reckless and indiscriminate Saudi-led coalition air strikes.

Director of Amnesty International UK Kate Allen spoke of her concerns about Saudi Arabia (Yui Mok/PA)

We also hope the Archbishop was able to express concern over the ongoing jailing of peaceful critics of the Saudi government, including the prisoner of conscience Raif Badawi.

The meeting with the Archbishop came after Prime Minister Theresa May and the Crown Prince used Downing Street talks to lay out plans for a 65 billion trade and investment package.

The Prime Minister also raised the situation in Yemen with the Saudi royal.

The Crown Prince is holding further talks with the PM at Chequers on Thursday, including a private dinner with Mrs May at her official country residence.

Foreign policy issues, including Yemen and Iran, are expected to feature in the talks.

The Prince of Wales with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Duke of Cambridge before they had dinner at Clarence House, London (Yui Mok/PA)

The first day of his visit saw the Crown Prince have an audience with the Queen, and dinner with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.

Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014 when rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia is the main player in a coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis in a war which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Crown Prince has been the driving force behind a modernisation programme, Vision 2030, in Saudi Arabia but the reforms have been dismissed as a mirage by human rights campaigners.
Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster unlawfully mistakenly deferred a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a judge said.

She erroneously believed 150 million earmarked by the British Government as part of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement to speed up coroners hearings should await the outcome of an overall package dealing with all legacy issues, Belfast High Court judge Sir Paul Girvan added.

The states obligation to speedily investigate deaths during the conflict remained whether or not devolved Government was restored, he said.

He said: She (Arlene Foster) was in error in concluding that it was legally proper to defer consideration of the funding issue because in the absence of an overall package the provision of additional funds to deal with the systemic delays in the legacy inquests would favour victims who were not innocent as against innocent victims of the Troubles.

In 2014 the Government announced 150 million to support legacy reform in Northern Ireland, as part of a wider package of measures to address the legacy of the countrys toxic past.

Disagreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP over issues relating to the past meant that was not implemented.

In 2016 Northern Irelands Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan requested the cash be released to address a major backlog. A total of 54 inquests involving 94 deaths were covered.

Sir Declan Morgan asked for the money to be released (Paul Failth/PA)

Mrs Foster refused to table a government paper for agreement by the powersharing administration to petition the Northern Ireland Secretary for the funding, failing to discuss it with then deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, the judge said.

Unionists held concerns about a focus on state killings by police and Army personnel when most deaths were caused by paramilitaries.

The judge said more work was needed before the Treasury could have approved the proposal and cautioned unlimited public funds were not available.

Powersharing collapsed in Northern Ireland more than a year ago and the inquest issue has not been resolved.

Sir Paul said finding a resolution of the funding issue cannot be postponed until an outcome to a political agreement on other legacy issues.

The longer the absence of a working devolved administration the longer the problem will continue and the greater it will become.

The judge said the law did not envisage a lengthy hiatus.

Undoubtedly a vacuum in which there are rudderless departments without ministers, the lack of a functioning Executive Committee and the absence of a sitting Assembly produces an essentially undemocratic system of unaccountable government provided effectively by senior civil servants who find themselves in an uncomfortable situation.

Without resolution the UK faces yet again the likelihood of being found to be in breach of its Article 2 obligations to protect life and hold a speedy investigation into deaths, Sir Paul said.

Brigid Hughes took the judicial review. Her husband Anthony Hughes died in May 1987 when he was innocently caught in the cross-fire between soldiers and the IRA at Loughgall Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station in Co Armagh.

Eight IRA men also died in the SAS ambush.

She said she was pleased with the outcome of the hearing but it had taken a long time.

Responding to the judgment, a UK Government spokeswoman said: We need to take time to consider the judgment. Our thoughts today remain with all of the families in Northern Ireland who have lost loved ones as a result of the Troubles.

The Secretary of State is very clear the current approach to addressing the legacy of the past is not working as it should. The UK Government is committed to working towards the full implementation of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement and the new bodies for addressing the legacy of the past.
Nicola Sturgeon has said she is concerned by the police detection rate for so-called revenge porn cases in Scotland.

She said there is still work to be done in tackling the crime, involving intimate pictures or video of a person being shared online without their consent, and said laws made must be able to be effectively used.

The police detection rate for cases is at 39% since a new law covering disclosing images without consent or threats to do so came into force last summer.

Images from a campaign on the new law (Scottish Government/PA)

The figures, obtained by the BBC through freedom of information, cover July to December 2017.

Police Scotland received 225 complaints in that time, with 89 classified as detected or ready to be referred to the courts.

SNP MP Christina McKelvie, who campaigned for the new law, raised the issue at First Ministers Questions.

She asked: Can the First Minister tell us how her government will respond to reports this week that less than half of revenge porn cases are actually passed to prosecutors?

Ms Sturgeon said: I, of course, like Christina McKelvie, was concerned at the statistics we saw this week.

The investigation of the offence, of course, is for Police Scotland and prosecution is for the Crown Office.

We know there are particular complexities for the police in prosecuting offences committed using internet services often hosted in foreign jurisdiction and the rate of prosecution for these offences in Scotland is broadly similar to that we see in England and Wales.

The message I took from these statistics that we saw this week  is while putting laws in place is important, making sure that these laws can effectively be used is what matters most and I think these statistics tell us that there is still work to be done on this important issue.

She added: The impact of sharing intimate images without consent can be hugely damaging and there is absolutely no place for that in our society.

Thats why we brought forward legislation for a specific offence of sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent and that offence has a maximum penalty on conviction of five years imprisonment.

Detective Superintendent Gordon McCreadie has said the force is content with the detection rate of 39% since it is in line with the UK average.

He stressed the investigations could be very complex.
A series of flights are being operated with all-female crews to mark International Womens Day (IWD).

Airlines want to encourage more women and girls to consider a career in aviation, with only around 3% of the global pilot workforce being female.

British Airways claimed a record for the most women involved in a single flight on Monday.

Captain Lucy Tardrew (centre left) with an all-female aircrew, before they prepare to fly from London Gatwick to Orlando on flight VS15 (John Nguyen/PA)

Sixty-two females  including crew, baggage handlers, check-in staff and security workers  contributed to the operation of flight BA1484 from London Heathrow to Glasgow on Monday.

We are so excited to be celebrating #IWD2018 with the first end-to-end all female flight, thanks to the amazing women across our operation! #proudtoBAwoman pic.twitter.com/D7qvevG2Tu  British Airways (@British_Airways) March 8, 2018

Six all-female crews will operate 16 easyJet flights on Thursday  consisting of a captain, first officer and four cabin crew  between London, Bologna, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Agadir.

Virgin Atlantic is celebrating IWD with three all-female crews on flights out of Manchester, London Gatwick and London Heathrow on Thursday.

We're celebrating International Women's Day with three special flights from Manchester, London Gatwick & Heathrow crewed by amazing inspirational women. Meet some more inspirational women from across our company at https://t.co/pY0qjoQ4OH #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/Yg3ut1gqe8  virginatlantic (@VirginAtlantic) March 8, 2018

Around 6% of BA and easyJets total pilot workforce is currently female.

BA captain Julie Levy, who flew the London to Glasgow flight, said most of the young women she meets tell her it never occurred to them to become a pilot.

Its still seen as a mans job and thats a real shame, she told the Press Association.

Anyone is capable of doing it if they put their head down and work hard enough.

Linda German, who oversaw the safe movement of the aircraft from the departure gate at London Heathrow, said passengers responded positively to the special service.

When we were pushing back we could see customers looking out of the windows, she said.

They were pointing, taking photos and waving. It was fascinating for them to see what was going on.

Its great for us to see them recognise that women are in these roles around the airport.

Recent research commissioned by easyJet found that a lack of female role models is a key reason why many girls and women do not consider a career as a pilot.

This #IWD2018 were celebrating an easyJet record, with 100 of our female pilots taking to the skies today! Meet some of our inspirational flight crew below  #SheFlies pic.twitter.com/w4EuJVFVIT  easyJet (@easyJet) March 8, 2018

More than 300 of its flights will be operated with women in the cockpit on Thursday.

The airlines director of flight operations, David Morgan, said: Having our female pilots out in force will provide visibility of female pilots and hopefully inspire some girls and women to take up this rewarding career.

EasyJet is aiming for one in five of its new entrant pilots to be female by 2020.

Aviation minister Baroness Sugg said the number of female pilots is too low.

She went on: We want to see more women flying and are working with industry to encourage more women to take up challenging and rewarding careers in the cockpit and across aviation.
A 51-year-old woman has been jailed for eight years for the manslaughter of an elderly ex-Gurkha who she strangled to death at her home.

Sun Tamang, of Victoria Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, was found not guilty of the murder of 75-year-old Man Limbu following a trial at Winchester Crown Court but the jury found her guilty of manslaughter.

She was also convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm against Mr Limbus wife, Gayatri Devi Limbu, but Tamang was cleared of a third charge of falsely imprisoning her.

Man Limbu, who was strangled to death by Sun Tamang (Hampshire Constabulary/PA)

Detective Inspector Simon Baker of Hampshire police said: I hope todays sentence gives some form of closure to the family of Man Limbu so that they can move on from the events of that day.

The trial was told Mr Limbu was found dead by Tamangs children on the kitchen floor of their home after their mother had killed him.

Stephen Harvey QC, prosecuting, told the jury: Precisely why she did so may never become absolutely clear, that she did so is beyond any doubt.

He was found there, where she left him, on the kitchen floor by her daughter and son when they arrived home from work.

Their mother had left a note which said in Nepalese: This person came to the door, knocked on the door and this person attacked me and then I retaliated. My children are not to be blamed.

Mr Harvey added: What is clear however from documents served by her solicitors is firstly she accepts that Mr Limbu died as a result of strangulation and secondly no other person was involved in his death.

He said that Tamang then went to the home of Mr Limbu armed with a traditional machete-like Nepalese khukuri knife and a rolling pin where she let herself in with his keys.

When Mr Limbus wife, Gayatri Devi Limbu, returned home she attacked her.

The jury acquitted Tamang of an allegation that she had then falsely imprisoned Mrs Limbu in her own home until police arrived.
The United States Holocaust Museum is revoking a major human rights award given to Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmas civilian leader.

The museum says she has failed to respond adequately to the mass killings of Burmas Muslim Rohingya minority.

The museum announced that the Elie Wiesel Award given to Ms Suu Kyi in 2012 would be rescinded.

The move is just the latest in a series of blows to Ms Suu Kyis international reputation, which has plummeted over the Rohingya massacres.

In response to the museums action, a spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi said the decision appeared to be based on the wrong information and that it made the Burmese government very disappointed and sad.

Ms Suu Kyi was a Mandela-like figure in Burma who spent years under house arrest for opposing the countrys military dictatorship.

She became an international rallying point and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Her party won a landslide victory in 2015 and she assumed the newly created post of state counsellor, although the military still retains significant political and economic power.

Hopes had been high for Ms Suu Kyi to make the transition from revered opposition figure to reformist political leader, given her long campaign for democracy.

Rohingya Muslims on a raft made with plastic containers (A.M. Ahad/AP)

Instead, human rights advocates consider her a disappointment, particularly in her response to the Rohingya killings.

The Holocaust Museum has embraced the plight of the Rohingya in recent years, and published a report in November that concluded there was mounting evidence of genocide committed by both the military and armed Buddhist extremists.

In a letter to Ms Suu Kyi, the museum accused her government of obstructing United Nations investigators and promoting hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya community, even as it acknowledged she has little influence over the military.

The museum had hoped Ms Suu Kyi would have done something to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population, the letter stated.

The severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation.

Ms Suu Kyi does not oversee her countrys military or its security operations that set off the exodus of Rohingya refugees, but three former fellow Nobel Peace laureates last month accused her and the army of committing genocide in northern Rakhine state.

They said that as the countrys leader she cannot avoid responsibility.

Her government has defended the military operation in the north and has embraced the prosecution of journalists along with other attempts to suppress and discredit the media.

Zaw Htay, Ms Suu Kyis spokesman said in response to a request for comment: Burma has always been supportive of the Holocaust Museums principles and activities and the purposes of the museum.

But now, now the latest situation in Rakhine state, we see that the museum has no balanced perceptions on us.

He added: We assume that the decision of revoking the award is also based on of the wrong information they have received.

The Burma government is very disappointed and sad on the decision made by the Museum.

And this decision will not have any effect on the support from Burmas people to the state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Film and TV producers have welcomed the news that Channel 4 will be increasing its spend outside London.

The move will see funding for nations and regions content boosted from 35% to 50% by 2023, amounting to an increase of more than 250 million.

The Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact) said: This is what Pact has campaigned for to help all companies secure more network commissions.

Channel 4 headquarters in Horseferry Road, London (Philip Toscano/PA)

Our members overwhelmingly see commissioning spend to be the most important way to achieve regional economic growth, build creative clusters and help serve audiences.

The certainty of business is what allows companies to invest in talent, grow businesses and attract the talent needed to make programmes.

Pact recognises the important role that Channel 4 plays in the UK television marketplace as a publicly owned public service broadcaster, with a unique remit to promote diversity and innovation both on and off screen.

The health of the UK TV production sector is closely interlinked with that of Channel 4.

Pact said it will be working with Channel 4s chief executive Alex Mahon and director of programmes Ian Katz to ensure that there is a higher volume of returning series from the nations and regions over the coming years.
A Labour MP has urged Piers Morgan to become an ally in the fight for female equality.

Stella Creasy raised the Good Morning Britain host in the Commons over a tweet he posted to mark International Womens Day.

In the tweet Mr Morgan highlighted six key posts held by women, adding that in Britain, women rule.

On #InternationalWomenDay, a reminder that in Britain, women rule...

Monarch: female

Prime Minister: female

Home Secretary: female

Scotland 1st Minister: female

Head of London fire service: female

Head of Met Police: female  Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 8, 2018

Walthamstow MP Ms Creasy said: We know this country continues to fail what Im now going to name the Piers Morgan test.

Because Piers Morgan this morning tweeted that because we had six women in positions of responsibility in this country, the country is run by women. Job done. We can all go home.

The point is these women are still too often the exception, rather than the rule. Thats why we can name them.

True equality will come because there are so many women from so many different backgrounds in our society that its just the norm, and the truth is that were not anywhere near the norm.

Ms Creasy said just 11% of surgeons and 17% of council leaders were female, as were 34% of senior members in the press.

Only 1,200 companies out of 9,000 had declared data on their gender pay gap, she added.

Lovely to celebrate the achievements to date of women in Britain but noticeable every single proposal to advance equality ignored by government ministers in debate on international womens day - just remember its deeds not words that actually help us #pressforchange   stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) March 8, 2018

She also raised issues such as low pay for women and period poverty, adding: All too often, women are trying to pick up the pieces of a failing economy in an institutionally unequal society.

What does that mean? It means that women themselves are often the ones trying to make the difference, and its the men who simply, like Piers Morgan, say Well Ive seen one of you, so come on, if one of you can do it, all of you can do it.

Ms Creasy went on to say she was proud to see male MPs in the chamber speaking on the subject as men had a vital role to play in addressing things such as violence against women.

She added: As weve all tried to remind Piers Morgan, this is not all men that we think are violent.

Its about standing up for the reputation of men and the better world that men and women working together as equals can create that we ask you now to be our allies and to show solidarity with.

Piers Morgan tweeted `in Britain, women rule (Jeff Overs/BBC/PA)

Ms Creasy also mentioned BBC presenter John Humphrys, as she said women should feel confident to speak out over equal pay.

We also as a House have got to speak up for the right to talk about equal pay, because as weve seen with the BBC, when women start asking questions, they get shut down, Ms Creasy said.

It is a fundamental human right for freedom of speech in your workplace. The legislation relies on the idea that we can start to have these conversations.

We must not give an inch on the idea that it is acceptable for managers to tell employees that if they start asking those questions, theyll be labelled difficult, that it might harm their chances of promotion.

What we might call the John Humphrys test.
Police have released pictures of the leaders of Britain First in custody after deeming it to be in the public interest.

Kent Police issued the images to the media on Thursday  the day after leader Paul Golding and his deputy Jayda Fransen were convicted of hate crimes.

The pair were jailed on Wednesday at Folkestone Magistrates Court for 18 weeks and 36 weeks respectively after standing trial for religiously-aggravated harassment which they carried out in Kent in May last year.

Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding (Kent Police/PA Wire)

The court heard the pair launched a political campaign in which they claimed to be trying to expose Muslim men who were the subject of a rape trial.

Instead they ended up branding innocent people who practised the faith as paedophiles and rapists.

When Fransen and Golding were being sentenced, members of the press requested the release of the pictures but were told force policy was only to release images if a defendant had been handed an immediate jail sentence of more than a year.

But on Thursday the pictures were released after the force said it believed it was in the public interest to do so due to the nature of the offences.

Detective Inspector Bill Thornton, of Kent Police, said the crimes were abhorrent and the force would not tolerate crimes motivated by prejudice and hate, adding: The fact that completely innocent members of the public were accused of

being rapists, making them fear for their own safety, shows how little regard they [Golding and Fransen] have for the consequences of their actions.

Requests for the release of footage depicting the crimes, which was played in open court, was denied due to concerns the videos could cause offence and because the files were not readily available.

Reporters were also told it would be dependent on what sentence was handed down.
Neighbours of hero police officer Nick Bailey have told of their shock after he was taken to hospital from a suspected nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy.

The Detective Sergeant is said to be very anxious as he recovers in hospital, having rushed to the aid of Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia.

On Thursday night neighbours in his village outside Salisbury described him as a very nice guy with a lovely family.

When I found out I get shocked and immediately worried for him and his family, said a 60-year-old neighbour, who did not want to be named.

I hope he makes a full recovery and he and his family can move on from this.

Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey rushed to the aid of the Russian ex-spy targeted with a nerve agent (Wiltshire Police/PA)

The neighbour told how he had socialised with DS Bailey at street barbecues and often saw him walking his dog or heading out on his mountain bike.

He said: I think whats actually happened is dreadful. Im shocked by it and when I found out it was one of my neighbours who I have spent time with and met socially I was even more shocked.

My first thoughts were for him and his family to recover and get back to normal.

He added: When you see something like this as close as your own back doorstep you feel for people and wish them well.
Harrison Ford paid tribute to Carrie Fisher, the late member of the original Star Wars trio, as Mark Hamill was honoured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Luke Skywalker actor was presented with a star on Hollywood Boulevard on Thursday in a ceremony attended by hundreds of fans and the franchises creator, George Lucas.

Han Solo actor Ford celebrated Hamill as a master of his own experience and noted the absence of the Princess Leia actress, who died aged 60 in 2016.

Mark Hamill sits by his star (Jordan Strauss/AP)

When thinking about today I was really sorry we dont have the other member of our trio here to celebrate with us, he said, to applause from fans.

But I feel her presence.

Hamill thanked his family for putting up with his acting as a child, and Lucas.

If it wasnt for the genius of George Lucas, I wouldnt be standing here today, Hamill, 66, said.

Hamill said the last time he had been so speechless was in a Star Wars episode noted for his lack of dialogue.

Carrie Fisher died in December 2016 (Ian West/PA)

Its hard to convey my gratitude, my joy, the exhilaration of being recognised this way  I havent been this speechless since Force Awakens, he said.

Lucas also addressed the audience, praising the chemistry formed between Hamill, Ford and Fisher in the early days of the franchise.

Fans, some clutching light sabres or dressed as jedis, lined the street and cheered as they saw Star Wars newcomer Kelly Marie Tran as well as producer Kathleen Kennedy and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson.

Stormtroopers also joined the ceremony, as did R2-D2.

Hamills star, outside the El Capitan Theatre, is the 2,630th in Hollywood.
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Minister Palitha Range Bandara told Parliament yesterday that he would bring the prevailing tense situation under control if he was given the Law and Order Ministry for two weeks.

Clause 89 to 96 of the penal code gives police the provision to open fire at those violating the law. I heard the Menikhinna Police had opened fire in the air to control the situation. The police should fire at lawbreakers and not at birds in the sky. If police are not aware of the penal code, then it is time they study it. If I were given charge of the police for a fortnight, I will show how to control this tense situation," he said.

On a different note, he said action should be taken against the officials attached to the State Intelligent Service as they have failed in their duty of providing information regarding any impending danger. (Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera)
The particles that were found in food at an eatery in Ampara, which was earlier rumoured to be sterilizing chemicals, were clumps of flour, the Government Analyst reported to Police.

They were contents of carbohydrates, Government Analyst A. Weliangage said.

Police sources said according to Government Analyst the particles could be considered as a made of carbohydrate.

Earlier, a person who had 'parata' at the said eatery had circulated the incident in social media claiming that it was a sterilizing chemical, following which several violent incidents had taken place in the area. (Indika Ramanayake and Tharindu Jayawardena)
The Canadian government said it was deeply concerned by the recent inter-communal violence in Sri Lanka and urged all sides to engage in inclusive dialogue and exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said;

Canada is deeply concerned by recent inter-communal violence in Sri Lanka, in which Muslims were targeted. Canada urges all sides to engage in inclusive dialogue and exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability. We call for an immediate end to hate and misinformation campaigns inciting sectarian violence.

Canada welcomes the Government of Sri Lankas condemnation of the violent acts. Canada calls on the government to ensure the safety and security of all minorities, to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms for all and to hold those responsible for the violence accountable. As we said at the United Nations Human Rights Council last month, frustrations persist among those trying to heal the wounds of Sri Lankas civil war. Ensuring that diversity and pluralism are valued is critical to the work of reconciliation in Sri Lanka.
The government has benefitted from the recent acts of violence in the country, the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) said yesterday.

PHU General Secretary and MP Udaya Gammanpila told a news conference that the pressure on political parties including the United National Party (UNP) to remove Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe from his post had now been suppressed due to the spree of terror attacks instigated by communal violence.

The joint opposition will not be benefitted from these incidents in any manner. We, as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), have won the majority of votes from the Sinhalese in the recent election. We now attempt to win the votes of the minority groups. The JO or SLPP does not need to attack any community."

"However, the UNP is having a huge benefit over these barbaric acts. If this uncivilized behaviour do not stop immediately, the country will face a huge crisis in future. I am requesting all Sinhalese to intervene and bring this situation under control, he said. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)

Video by Susantha
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka wishes to express its deep concern and dismay at the recent violent events that took place in the town of Theldeniya and its surroundings over the past couple of days.



We wish to express our deep sorrow at the loss of human life caused by this cycle of religious intolerance and hatred orchestrated by certain prejudiced and violent elements in the country.



According to preliminary investigations carried out by the Human Rights Commission, it is observed that the Muslim and Sinhala communities in Digana, the area in which the tragic death of a person occurred due to the incident on 22nd February, appear to co-exist amicably and peacefully. The violence appears to be instigated by external elements in an organized manner causing communal division, death and destruction of property.



The Commission notes that the most recent cycle of violence based on religious intolerance is symptomatic of a series of similar incidents of hatred based violence that we have witnessed since the Aluthgama riots that took place in 2014. The more recent examples of religious violence took place in Gintota (in the South) and Ampara (in the East). In such instances a random incident appears to spark off sectarian violence with the involvement of outside elements. So also in the current spate of violence in the Theldeniya Town and surrounding areas. These sporadic incidents of violence are also occurring in the backdrop of sustained hate campaigning against certain religious groups on social media.



Hence, we call on you to take decisive action under the law to bring to book elements which are responsible for instigating religious hatred and violence in the Kandy District and also in other areas. We emphasize the need to take action not only against those who directly participate in such violence, but in particular, against those who instigate and provide organizational strength for such violence.



In this regard we wish to urge the Government to take action against such elements under section 3 of the International Covenant, on Civil and Political Rights Act No. 56 of 2007 which recognizes that anyone who propagates war or advocates national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence or aids or abets such acts is guilty of an offence.



The Commission is firmly of the view that if swift and decisive action is not taken against those responsible for sectarian violence, such incidents will not only continue but will escalate.

- Dr. N. D. Udagama

Chairperson

Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) said today the situation in Kandy was fast returning to normal and tourists could resume their travel plans to Kandy.

It said in a statement that no violent incident was reported in the past 18 hours. The Police curfew has been lifted, the SLTDA said.

Members of the tourism and travel industries worked with the local Police authorities yesterday to facilitate the issuance of passes to tourists who chose to move out of Kandy during the curfew, it said.

It assured that the situation in Kandy had no impact on other parts of the country.
Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia RecordsThe music video for Chloe x Halle's song "Warrior" has finally arrived.

Making its debut Wednesday, the visual features the sisters performing in an elevator while scenes from Disney's upcoming Wrinkle in Time movie are interspersed throughout.

Wrinkle in Time stars Storm Reid and Rowan Blanchard also appear in in the video.

"Warrior" comes from both the Wrinkle in Time soundtrack and Chloe x Halle's debut album, The Kids Are Alright.

The Kids Are Alright will be released March 23 and is now available for pre-order.

The pair wrote all the songs for the project and also served as executive producers.

A Wrinkle in Time opens March 9 from Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Police Spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekera said today a 14-day detention order on the 10 suspects arrested on charges of inciting violence in Kandy, had been issued using emergency regulations that are in place at present.

The detention order was issued by the DIG of the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID). He said the suspects were brought to Colombo for questioning.
A 33-year-old man was killed in a mishap involving the elevator at the Gampaha General Hospital, Police today said.

The Police said the incident had happened when the elevator was stuck mid-way and when it opened mechanically and the rescuers were attempting to take the passengers out, this man had reportedly jumped out of the elevator some five feet above ground level and knocked his head on the floor.

They said there were five people inside the elevator at the time. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)
President Maithripala Sirisena held a special meeting yesterday at Presidents House in Kandy to discuss the current situation in the Kandy district.

Mahasangha led by Anunayaka Theros of Malwattha and Asgiriya chapters, and Islamic Moulavies and other religious leaders, ministers, government officers, and chiefs of security sections gathered in this discussion. Pix by Presidents Media
Security forces have been put on alert to face any situation in the wake of occurrences in Kandy, Prime Minister and Minister of Law and Order Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday.

The Prime Minister said this in a special statement made last evening.

He said Area Commander Central Province Major General Rukman Dias has been put in charge to coordinate defence activities in the province. Reinforcements have also been sent to these areas, he said.

The Prime Minister stressed that the government was compelled to block social media platforms temporarily as hate speeches were continuously being posted on them.

Let me stress that the rest of the country is relatively calm and I request the people not to get mislead by false information, I appeal to people of all ethnic groups to cooperate with the forces to ensure law and order in the country, he added.

The Prime Minister assured that the government would be able to control the situation and to bring in normalcy.

He added that curfew needed to be reinforced in Kandy following a grenade explosion last evening. Summarising what had occurred in Kandy, he said the violence had begun after a driver was assaulted and killed in Theldeniya.
Regional Development Minister Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka today said he was against the appointment of Minister Ranjith Madduma Bandara as the new Law and Order Minister by President Maithripala Sirisena this morning.

Minister Fonseka told the media in Colombo following an event, that this appointment was made without prior information to Minister Bandara.

Minister Bandara was unaware of this appointment. He was summoned to the Presidential Secretariat suddenly this morning and was appointed as the Law and Order Minister. I am feeling disgusted of these kinds of decisions and I strongly condemn them, he said.

Meanwhile, he said many of the Rajapaksas and their supporters were against the governments suggestion to appoint him as the Law and Order Minister since they knew that he would enforce the law in a perfect manner. He also said the corrupt parties attached to the Rajapaksas had considered him as a challenge to them.

He said the United National Party (UNP) was never against the suggestion to appoint him as the Law and Order Minister and added that members attached to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had also congratulated him in advance.

Only the people who are blessing the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) are afraid of the suggestion to appoint me as the Law and Order Minister, he said.

Video by Susantha, Lal S. Kumara
Singapore today

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongs recent visit to Sri Lanka enlightened us on several major issues affecting us. It was of significance that the signing of several trade agreements between the two countries took place during his visit. His visit to Sri Lanka could be viewed as an opportunity to strengthen bilateral trade and economic relations and goodwill between the two countries and also to open up vast new fields for trade and investments beneficial to Sri Lanka. The Singaporean Prime Minister met the business community and the investors in Sri Lanka and held talks on their future plans for development.



His visit was of great significance in that it was for the first time after 13 years that a Singaporean prime minister visited Sri Lanka. It would be more beneficial to Sri Lankan than to Singapore, because the two counties have a world of difference. This difference had been vice versa about 50 years ago and its the political lesson that we must learn from Singapore.

In Singapore the law is strictly enforced in every sphere, but the police arent deployed to discipline people. Offenders, in the case of a breach of the law, are detected through CCTV cameras



Its said that politics is an art in which truth and deceit are interwoven and they become powerful each in turn. Unless we do not distinguish between the real and the unreal, the future well-being of the society would be in jeopardy. The need to be free from this destructive political illusion and to have a people friendly political culture is being felt more than ever today. If we could see through this illusion and experience reality, it would be a political lesson well learned.



We must judge this interpretation in the light of a review of the much talked about old topic Singapore and Sri Lanka. Much has been talked and written about this popular theme in the economic and political history of Sri Lanka, particularly when referring to development. Economic development is a topic that has been subject to different interpretations of the rulers of successive Governments since independence. Our basic problem is that we take much time to realize the difference between their talk and the extent of their achievements. We realize that we have been suffering from an illusion only when we experience its consequences. The objectives of politicians and their limitations regarding development differ from the expectations of the people who voted them into power.

Its said that politics is an art in which truth and deceit are interwoven and they become powerful each in turn. Unless we do not distinguish between the real and the unreal



Lagging far behind



This popular theme of discussions namely Singapore and Sri Lanka can be used to distinguish between illusion and reality in the field of development. Former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has gone down in the annals of history as a great ruler who led Singapore along the right path to development. His statement in 1950 that he wished Singapore was a Sri Lanka would be of great significance to us islanders today. We can imagine from this statement the condition of Singapore at that time. Today we have a clear perspective of the progress achieved by Singapore which is beyond imagination. After 67 years, we are ashamed to find that Sri Lankas development has lagged far behind and today we have to take Singapore as an example when developing our country.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong



The total area of Singapore is 720 square kilometres and the population is 5.5 million. However, the per capita real income of the country today nearly exceeds that of the United Kingdom or the United States. How did Singapore, which had been a fisheries colony and a safe haven of robbers and thieves prior to 1950, revolutionize its socio economic conditions and achieve its present development? Its imperative that we have a clear perspective of it, to make a factual analysis of Sri Lankas development process.

Another factor of Singapores development is the measures against corruption and malpractices. It is a matter of serious concern that in Sri Lanka corruption and malpractice prevail from top to bottom and it has retarded the countrys development



Sri Lanka is a country rich in natural resources. Vast stretches of paddy fields, forest reserves and environmental zones rich in bio-diversity adorn the county. From the North to the South and from the West to the East the land is fertile and rich in water resources. A seed just thrown away would grow without any care or attention and bear fruit. However, Singapore, a country sans any natural resources or fertile land, made a pragmatic approach to development in a short time.



The historic statement of the outgoing Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was of great importance in any analysis of our development process. Replying to a query from the media whether he praised anyone for the miraculous development in the country, he quipped that he owed much to the leftist politicians in Sri Lanka. He said he was prompted to construct a harbour in Singapore to provide bunking facilities to ships sailing round the world when the Colombo habour was constantly crippled due to trade union actions led by leftist politicians and that it was the beginning of Singapores development.

Today we have a clear perspective of the progress achieved by Singapore which is beyond imagination. After 67 years, we are ashamed to find that Sri Lankas development has lagged far behind and today we have to take Singapore as an example when developing our country



Visionary leadership



The visionary leadership of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yu brought about that miraculous development in Singapore. The unstinted courage, determination and dedication of the Singaporean people were largely instrumental in his endeavour.



Its worthwhile to study the factors that raised Singapore to the rank of a developed country in the world and how Sri Lanka adopted them in its development process. With this in view, it is pertinent that we take an example from Singapore, when there is gathering momentum about the need of an effective development plan for Sri Lanka. The strict enforcement of laws and the peoples respect for the countrys legal system were major factors that led to the fast development in Singapore.

Singaporeans are extremely lawful. Its a matter of concern that we have to consider Sri Lankans as far behind when compared to the people of Singapore. Singaporeans take pleasure to abide by law and never resort to illegal activities. Law breaking is considered a shameful act that irks their conscience. It is sad that Sri Lankans uphold the law only in fear of a possible police action and not because it is their duty as law binding citizens. They use the Zebra crossing only if a police officer is on duty, or else they cross the road haphazardly at any point. In fact one must, like citizens in other developed countries, obey his or her conscience rather than the command of the police officer.

In Singapore the law is strictly enforced in every sphere, but the police arent deployed to discipline people. Offenders, in the case of a breach of the law, are detected through CCTV cameras. The offenders are subject to deterrent punishment. A smoker, smoking in a public place, is liable to a fine of SGD 1000. Whipping and the death sentence are still in force in Singapore. However, the people dont resort to campaigns against punishments.



Its of significance that in addition to the deterrent punishments, the Singapore Government has provided adequate facilities to citizens to uphold the law. In Sri Lanka drunken driving is a punishable offence, but no facilities are available for a man under the influence of liquor to transport himself. In Singapore taxi services are in operation round the clock.



Well maintained environment



Singapore is a country with a well maintained environment free of garbage. This has been largely possible due to the peoples respect for the law and the need to maintain discipline. It is important that a sense of responsibility should be inculcated in children from their formative years through the school curriculum.



Another factor of Singapores development is the measures against corruption and malpractices. It is a matter of serious concern that in Sri Lanka corruption and malpractice prevail from top to bottom and it has retarded the countrys development. One may resort to frauds for want of an adequate income to meet the bare needs. The Government of Singapore considers it a paramount duty to pay an adequate salary to everyone in the state administration, including the ministers.



Another glaring defect in the Sri Lankan administrative system is that any offender can make a plea against charges. For example the individuals who were accused of malpractice in issuing Sil Redi (Clothes to observe Sil) made a plea against the case stating that they only carried out the orders of the superiors. Its an international law that evens the President, as the senior most official in the state machinery, should not resort to irregularities. Newburg International Judiciary passed this law when those during Hitlers time who were engaged in war crimes took up the position that they carried out the orders of their leader. It is sad that a Presidential Secretary was ignorant about this international law. However the law has no place for ignorance.



Lack of consensus among institutions involved in decision making is another glaring defect in Sri Lankas development effort. Quite often decisions taken in parliament are declared null and void by court and vice versa the decisions of the judiciary by the President. All institutions involved in decision making should join hands and take undisputable decisions.



Its a turn of fate that Singapore that followed Sri Lanka and developed the country has offered to open up paths to development in Sri Lanka. Truth and illusion play different roles in politics and development. The value of local investments in Sri Lanka by last July was more than US$ 530 million. Singapore is the fourth largest investor in Sri Lanka with more than 100 investors.



It is a fact that we need a benevolent despot to give leadership to the forward march of the country. His decisions should be acceptable to the whole country and be free of communal, religious or political differences. He must not hesitate to take stern decisions in the interest of the country leaving it to the future generations to decide on their correctness.



I strongly believe that President J.R.Jayewardene was the only visionary leader the county has had since independence. It was during his time that the accelerated Mahaweli Development Programme, Mahapola Scholorship Programme and the open economy were implemented and the country was led along the right path to development. However, his failure to resolve the ethnic problem resulted in obstacles in implementing his development programmes. Despite his five sixth majorities in parliament, he faced obstacles due to his failure to create public awareness on the essence of his decisions.



Sri Lankas development has been stagnating for more than half a century for want of a benevolent despot of the calibre of Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir Mohamed, or Nelson Mandela who took stern decisions and passed hard-hearted laws and educated the masses to strictly adhere to them, but not burdening them with any kind of hardship. Nations which are struggling have no alternative, but to look at the developed countries and repent their errors.



The Prime Minister of Singapore has been destined to visit Sri Lanka and sign a free trade agreement between the two countries. It is imperative that as Sri Lankans, even of late, must be determined to change their attitudes and lay the foundation for a dynamic approach to development.
On the invitation extended by the National Chamber of Exporters (NCE), K. J. Weerasinghe Advisor to the Ministry of Strategy Development an International Trade, and Chief Negotiator of the Government, related to the free trade agreements (FTA) with Singapore, India and China, addressed the Council of the National Chamber of Exporters (NCE) of Sri Lanka at its last meeting, to elucidate the important aspects of these FTAs, and particularly the FTA with Singapore which was signed recently.

K. J. Weerasinghe is a former Director General of the Department of Commerce and a former Ambassador to the European Union, with substantial expertise and experience in the area of Trade, having represented Sri Lanka in many overseas Trade destinations. He served as a member of the trade negotiating team of the three FTAs negotiated with Singapore, India, and China from the inception of negotiations, and later replaced Dr. Saman Kelegama as the Head of the Government Negotiating Team, after his demise.

At the outset Weerasinghe outlined the current position related to the three FTAs. He stated that in regard to the proposed Economic and Technology Co-operation Agreement (ETCA) with India which seeks to expand the coverage of the existing FTA which is currently limited only to trade in goods.

So far seven rounds of negotiations have been completed while the eighth round will begin shortly. In regard to the FTA with China six rounds of negotiations have been completed. In the case of the FTA with Singapore negotiations commenced in August 2016 and the agreement was formally signed between the Governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore on 23rd January 2018, after eight rounds of negotiations conducted over a period of sixteen months.

Focusing on powerful markets

Tracing the background to the negotiations of the three FTAs, Weerasinghe stated that currently the main export destinations of Sri Lanka are the USA and EU countries, absorbing well over 50 percent of total exports.

In this background while the country needs to work to sustain and ensure growth in these traditional markets, it is imperative for the country to diversify her markets for long term economic growth, by focusing on economically developed and emerging strong Asian economies, which represents the shifting scenario of international trade.

Further, although the country recently gained a boost to her exports through the regaining of the GSP Plus facility of the EU countries, it has to be noted that the eligibility of the country for this facility will cease after Sri Lanka gains upper middle income status.

Thereafter, even allowing for the procedural grace period that is allowed, Sri Lanka will be able to benefit from the GSP Plus facility only for a maximum of five to six years. In this Scenario the country needs to plan well ahead to ensure sustain economic growth, to achieve future expectations of the country. The alternative therefore is to focus on the large and powerful Asian markets and economies of India, China, and ASEAN countries such as Singapore Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, extending to Korea and Japan etc.

Weerasinghe thereafter proceeded to highlight the important aspects of the concluded Sri Lanka Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SLSFTA) which are as follows:

Singapore being one of the most liberalized and efficient economies in the world, the priority given to and signing of the SLSFTA gives a strong message to the world regarding the liberal orientation of the Sri Lankan Economy related to Trade and Investments and future policy direction related to liberal trade.

Singapore is not a substantial two way trading partner of Sri Lanka at present. It is the 20th export destination for Sri Lanka with about US $ 120 million of exports in 2016, and the 3rd import country with imports of US $1.3biliion in 2016.

However, over half of the import value consists of petroleum and petroleum related products. Nevertheless, the main focus of the SLSFTA is on the investment in manufacturing and Services sectors, and as a gateway for Sri Lanka to exploit the vast opportunities to integrate with Production value chains of ASEAN countries, and over 30 countries with whom Singapore already has entered into FTAs.

The National Trade Policy (NTP) which has received Cabinet approval contains as one of its important elements the use of FTAs for market access given the nexus between Trade and Investments.

The current FTA with India covers only Trade in Goods with some reference to trade facilitation, but is not comprehensive to derive optimum benefits. In this sense the SLSFTA recognizes the fact that exports cannot be carried out effectively without investments, services, SPS/TBT, customs procedures and trade facilitation, logistics, trade remedies etc., and it is therefore more comprehensive. These areas are included in the ongoing negotiations in respect of the Trade Agreements with India and China, without specific chapters on telecommunication, e-commerce and government procurement.

On the process of negotiations, negotiations are done by a cabinet approved National Negotiating Team, and all three agreements have specialist committees covering the following:

1.Chapter on goods  The Committee is chaired by the Director General of Department of Fiscal Policy  Ministry of Finance

2.The Chapter on services - The Committee is chaired by. Deshan de Mel, Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance.

3.The Chapter on Investments  The Committee is chaired by Dr. Nihal Samarappully, Former Executive Director (Research) of the BOI, and includes Dr. Arittha Wickremanayake, member of National Negotiating Team, who is a Legal Specialist.

4.The Chapter on Trade Remedies - The Committee is chaired by Gothami Silva Director of the Department of Commerce .

5.Rules of origin- Chaired by Dhamapriya, Director DOC.

6.SPS/TBT- Chaired by Dr. Ravi Rathnayake, member of National Negotiating Team

7.Nirmalan Wigneswaran, Senior State Councel. And Rajiv Gunathilaka, from the Attorney Generals Department are members of the negotiation team serving in Investment, Services, and on legal Affairs.

In the case of the SLSFTA, in addition to the above there are separate Chapters on Telecommunications, (for which the negotiating team includes the Director of the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission), a Chapter on E-Commerce (for which the Negotiating Committee includes director of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), a Chapter on Financial Services, a section on Intellectual Property Rights and for the first time a Chapter on Government Procurements.

In regard to the Goods Chapter of the SLSFTA it is to be noted that Singapore being a free and open market, 99 percent of imports to Singapore is already duty-free. Hence, any gains on exports to Singapore will be related to investments, quality of goods, inputs at competitive prices, and degree of competitiveness. Further, in the case of Singapore all the tariff lines are not bound at WTO and therefore can be increased on a future date. However under the Agreement 99 percent tariff lines are bound at zero in respect of Sri Lanka, and a commitment has been given to Sri Lanka in this regard.

Further, under the SSLFTA, Sri Lanka has a negative list of 20 percent of tariff lines (comprising of around 1,400 tariff lines), the composition of which has been based on revenue implications to the government, for example; petroleum products, Hard Liquor, Tobacco etc., as well as protection of local interests such as Agriculture and other products such as footwear, confectionery sensitive local industries. Out of the balance 80 percent of tariff lines 50 percent will be zero rated with immediate effect (which are already at zero level), 15 percent will be zero rated over a six year period from the date of signing of the Agreement in equal installments, while the balance 15 percent will be zero rated over a period of 12 years in equal installments. Further 51 tariff lines will be reduced to zero from 11 to the 15th year. This excludes confectionary, leather and other products of interest to Sri Lanka.

In the case of the Chapter on Government Procurements Only International Competitive Bidding (ICB) are included in the Agreement, while ensuring transparency and clear procedures to ensure healthy competition. National procurements have been specifically excluded to protect the interests of local business. Further the 15 percent domestic preference accorded to local bidders covering International tenders will be retained for a period of 10 years.

In the case of the Trade in Services ,the sectors which have been liberalized under the SLSFTA Agreement by Singapore to create opportunities to the exporters of services from Sri Lanka to Singapore. In the case of Sri Lanka, limited liberalization has been undertaken. On professional services advisory services on architectural design services under cross border supply of services has been included, which will facilitate Singaporean investment projects undertaken in Sri Lanka. In this regard it is to be noted such cross border advisory services even happens now to a limited extent, over the internet.

Sri Lanka has also opened access to testing and laboratory services from Singapore which are considered specialist services which are lacking in Sri Lanka, to ensure recognition of the quality of Sri Lankan products in International markets.

Sri Lanka has also provided access to other very specialized services not provided by the government on environmental services such as sewerage for Industrial parks, waste disposal services for Industrial Parks, cleaning services of exhaust gas and noise abatement services.

It is to be specifically noted that services related to Mode 4, that is movement of independent professional service providers have been excluded from the agreement by both countries. However, corporate transferees linked to Mode 3 or investment has been included but will be limited only to Singapore nationals who are managers, executives and specialists. Therefore, access in the services sector will be limited to the other 3 modes, including project related contractual service providers, intra corporate transferees, and cross border service providers related to legal services on International law and third country domestic law excluding Sri Lankan domestic law.

In the case of investments which are a main focus under the SLSFTA, Sri Lanka will provide clear legal protection, transparency, and procedures to attract Singaporean investments related to hi-tech manufactured products and services of interest to Sri Lanka such as Information Technology related services and training, tourism related investments and services etc.

For Singapore, the attraction is expected to use Sri Lanka as a strategic hub to access other large Asian markets; for example, India and China by using the country as a manufacturing base. Further, it is also expected to attract Singaporean investments related to infrastructure development and real estate.

In the case of para tariffs, such as Cess, the indicated Policy of the Government is to remove Cess on all imports over the next three years. (The last budget has already removed Cess on 200 items). Accordingly negotiations related to FTAs will be conducted on the premise that Cess and PAL (Port and Airport Levy) will be phased out over the next 5 to 10 years. Whether the phasing out period is to be accelerated will be decided by the government. The commitment under FTA for removal of CESS and PAL will apply only to tariff liberalization programme and not to the negative list. However, support and assistance for required trade adjustment by local enterprises (which are hitherto protected) to be competitive by the end of the phasing out period is expected to be provided by the State.

The agreement also provides for specific trade remedies and clear dispute settlement mechanisms. Accordingly, anti-dumping, counter-vailing duties and safeguard measures will be put in place to protect local enterprises. The bills related to anti-dumping and counter-veiling measures have been already finalized, and is expected to be presented to Parliament for approval before the end of March. Concurrently, the current lacunae in the Immigration and Emigration Act is being look into by the relevant legal specialists to remedy short comings in order to effectively address the movement of people in to the country through a proper regulatory and monitoring mechanism.

The Department of Commerce will be entrusted to assess and take necessary remedial action related to local industry with anti-dumping and Counter-Veiling measures during the period of liberalization.

In regard to Rules of Origin (ROO) requirements, 35 percent value-addition or CTH (4 digit level) is required to establish the country of origin. Further no ASEAN accumulation is allowed. This counter the fears of ASEAN country products entering Sri Lanka through Singapore, since Singapore is basically a trading country. However certain product specific ROOs will apply to both countries in respect of 2000 tariff lines which are exceptions to the ROO.

The inclusion of remanufactured products under the preferential products list, requested by Singapore, was basically rejected by Sri Lanka, confining acceptance to only 7 tariff lines. For instance, inclusion of clutch plates under remanufactured products, requested by Singapore was not agreed to.

Explaining the reason for the delay in the formal release of the full SSLFTA including the schedules, Weerasinghe stated that after signing of the Agreement formal communication should be exchanged between the governments of the two countries, through Diplomatic Channels this should be completed before releasing the agreement to the public. This process is expected to be completed by mid-March. However, the procedural requirements will also enable passing of a vital bill on antidumping, countervailing and safe guards which will be for the benefit of

the industry.

Agreements with India and Bdesh

Before concluding his address, Weerasinghe revealed the current status of the ECTA with India, and the proposed FTA with Bangladesh.

In regard to the ECTA he stated that it was necessary to clearly understand the nature of the negative lists of both countries, wherein the Indian negative lists including Tariff Quota Items was bigger than the stated 496 tariff lines. In this context in order to facilitate request for removal of items from the Indian negative list, it is necessary that Sri Lankan exporters advice the negotiating team, as to what specific items in the negative list affects Sri Lankas exports to India.

With regard to implementation related issues is concerned a proper institutional mechanism to address grievances will be included in the ETCA which will provide time bound remedies to Sri Lankan exporters.

With regard to food processing industries and the need to enter in to a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) to recognize testing laboratories for certification of processed food products, a pilot project to recognize five existing laboratories for the purpose will be put in place.

In regard to the proposed FTA with Bangladesh, although Bangladesh wished to complete the feasibility study by end 2017, Sri Lanka expects it to be completed in 2018. This is due to the need to look in to the question on services liberalization and movement of natural persons. There is a committee working on this issue to frame regulations under the Immigration Act.

The responsibilities of both employers and employees will be clearly defined in the regulation and needed amendments to the Immigration and Emigration Act will be decided upon, before concluding the other FTAs. In this regard, it has to be also noted that, although there is a shortage of workers specially in the construction sector, FTAs not the means to resolve such problem.

During the question and answer session which followed the conclusion of the address; since there are both gains and losses for participating countries in FTAs, clarification was sought regarding the trade adjustment assistance for possible losses for Sri Lanka, especially in the identification of products under the trade liberalization programme.

In response it was stated that while experts are working on a Trade Adjustment Programme, the experience of the World Bank indicates that there is limited success on such programmes in other countries. However, the assistance of an expert in the field was expected. Nevertheless, the disadvantages that may accrue to a particular industry may not be due to liberalization alone, but may be due to competitiveness and other technical issues as well.

It was also pointed out that while Singapore has a well-structured immigration policy, Sri Lanka needs to improve on such policies. It was further pointed out that removal of CESS covering certain products needs to be done carefully. Further proper testing laboratories should be put in place to test certain specialized products coming in from Singapore.
Teldeniya Burning!  thats how one commentator puts it. Conclusions are being drawn, inferences are being made, and all the while the nation has been numbed. What we do know until now, beyond a doubt, is that the race card has been pulled up. Again. This time around, though, its not just a riot or a case of a few extremists pulling up that card. Its to do with an entire region going up. In flames. True, the assailants have been identified and justice has, to the best of the ability of its purveyors, been meted out. But Teldeniya is still burning, and irrationalism is still up and around and about.



This is not the first time that a race riot has cropped up in Sri Lanka and it will not be the last either. One of the most inscrutable facts about living in a multicultural country is that rifts between various sects is an inevitability we must be vigilant about. Its much worse in other countries  they have had their own share of July 83s and Aluthgamas on a scale that considerably dwarfs our own harrowing encounters with pogroms and riots  and much, much worse in countries which try to artificially conceal those rifts. The fissures that result from all these need an outlet. They find it eventually, sometimes through the smallest ripple on the surface. Its that outlet we need to protect, from the kind of irrationality which greeted Teldeniya earlier this week. If we arent vigilant enough, it can overwhelm the entire country.



But we already know this. Weve been told about this by our politicians, our clergymen (even the extremists), and pretty much everyone else. In that sense I think its apt to point out what a friend of mine posted on Facebook recently:



Were all Sri Lankan: a load of recycled crap coming from elite-nationalism, from liberal Anglophiles for whom the concept of a multi-ethnic nation was handed over by the British. Were all human: a load of recycled crap coming from old, failed humanism, which can only respond with slogans in face of violence, which can only reify majority-minority relations. Where should we turn to for a more radical humanism?

This is not the first time that a race riot has cropped up in Sri Lanka and it will not be the last either. One of the most inscrutable facts about living in a multicultural country is that rifts between various sects is an inevitability we must be vigilant about



The post is spot on, all the way, for two reasons: it repudiates the traditionalist liberalism which so often greets an Aluthgama or a Teldeniya, and it calls for a larger humanity that is not afraid of treading on radical territory. Radical humanism: is this what we need to prevent a race riot from cropping up again, then? The answer to that, I believe, can be found in the reasons for the discontent which keep on getting ignored by your typical liberal humanist.



In Sri Lanka, as in every other country, populism has tended to transform into chauvinism thanks to expedient politicians. This is not a golden rule, its an unfortunate fact that time and habit has turned into a golden rule. But the mistake committed by the typical liberal has been his confusion between addressing the concerns of the majority and repressing those concerns artificially. Both can be achieved through the law, but when the law is taken to repress, and not address, those concerns, they can turn out to be harmful in the long run, for both the (numerical and ethnic) majority and the minority.



The truth is that constitutional amendments, processes aimed at interethnic reconciliation, and tribunals whether domestic or foreign which purport to try out war criminals, cannot and will not affect the people of this country for whom economic issues are much, much more paramount. The truth is that these amendments and processes, while important, are regarded with suspicion by most if not many people for the simple reason that they tend to brush away the concerns of the grassroots. The grassroots, in other words, matters, and these processes often ignore them. In the long run, this is neither productive nor conducive to the outcomes they envision and try to achieve.



Were all Sri Lankan! and Were all human! are hence posters and slogans the meaning of which will be lost to a vast majority of the people until, and unless, they are communicated in a way that makes sense to the grassroots. The ordinary Sinhalese, Muslim, Tamil, and Burgher (not to mention other ethnicities and sects thereof) on the street are more concerned with finding their daily bread. Finding that daily bread is predicated on a legitimate assurance that the law recognises everyone as equal citizens, socially and economically. In the absence of a proper legal framework, the fight for survival over such matters takes on a chauvinist character, and in the absence of the economic backdrop to that legal framework, laws that try to ameliorate inter-racial rifts lose their legitimacy. Its a circle that goes around both ways.



After all, what is history but a series of conflicts and lengthy wars that have been fought over land, and what is land but the ultimate reason for the fight for survival between races and sects? We need a humanism that makes a Teldeniya impossible, but we insist, by habit perhaps, on transforming that humanism into a series of candle vigils and silent protests near Lipton Circus and at Independence Square. Such humanism at best is cut off from the people and at worst caters to its own interests and outcome-preferences, which again tend to be cut off from the people. Its an ivory tower humanism we are seeing here, and far from dousing the flames of racism (as the poets would deign to call them), they end up providing more fuel for the fire. Just like that.



The ultimate target of these campaigners, most of whom sincerely envision a country free of chauvinism and racism, then, is not the elitist Anglophile or the indifferent universalist, but the ordinary member of the majority community: the Sinhalese farmer, teacher, civil servant, clergy, and of course businessman. They are part and parcel of the petty bourgeoisie, and it is they, and not the proletariat, who end up becoming the worst purveyors of chauvinism in this country. But they are precisely the demographic that is missed out, sometimes intentionally, often not, by the harbingers of peace.

And why? I dont know. What I know, right now, is that for another Teldeniya to crop up, and enflame the country, all it takes is indifference and ignorance, by the humanists, the Anglophiles, the elitists, the intellectuals.



My friend has called for a radical humanism. Will we affirm, or will we deny?

UDAKDEV1@GMAIL.COM
UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, arrived in Sri Lanka on Thursday for a three-day visit, the UN Office in Sri Lanka said.

Mr. Feltman is expected to meet with a wide range of Sri Lankan leaders including President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and other senior officials of the government, political parties and civil society groups.

In a statement, the UN said the visit will take place in the context of ongoing UN engagement with Sri Lanka.

Earlier, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Mr. Feltman's visit was planned before the state of emergency was imposed. We are obviously concerned over reports of the ongoing communal violence and we welcome the governments commitment to addressing the tensions and achieve reconciliation, he said.
Vision Care Optical Services (Pvt) Ltd., is the proud sponsor of the upcoming Colombo Fashion Week (CFW) where it plans to launch the latest collection of RayBan Ferrari & Burberry eyewear. The leading optician has tied up with prominent designers @CFW, whose models will sport the eyewear as they walk the ramp during CFW. The RayBan, Ferrari eyewear collection will make its Sri Lankan debut on 22nd and 23rd March while Burberry branded eyewear will be unveiled on 24th and 25th March. These collections are eagerly awaited locally since their global launch at the MIDO international eyewear exhibition held in February 2018 at Milano, Italy.

Enthused by this partnership, Mr. Harsha Maduranga (General Manager - Vision Care Optical Services Pvt Ltd) says, We are excited to explore the possibilities of launching the RayBan Ferrari & Burberry designer eyewear in a novel manner at CFW for greater impact. We have carefully selected designers who we believe will best highlight the exclusive eyewear through their creative skill. Vision care will also have a stall at CFW displaying the new range and other leading eyewear brands. The event will provide an ideal opportunity for designer eyewear connoisseurs to try on these latest pieces.

Known for its years of trusted excellence and continuous adoption of the latest technology, Vision Care is the market leader in eye care and hearing solutions in the country today with fully qualified professionals who conduct comprehensive eye examinations using state-of- the-art equipment to establish ones eye sight and the health of the eye at our 47 outlets island wide.
The Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Earnest Hemingway in his famous book, For Whom the bell Tolls wrote an equally famous if not immortal truth that, I belong to humanity and every persons death diminishes me. The depth of this perception needs to be understood by people. Essentially we belong to humanity and the other identities or labels we carry end in the grave. These include labels of race, social status, professions, castes and others.



They all end in the grave and what remains is our character -- our integrity and honesty, the spirit of patience and kindness, sincere, selfless and sacrificial service to others, the spirit of love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness and related virtues.



These remain and the other identities or positions, power, popularity, privilege and wealth are transient or impermanent. Every major religion or liberative spirituality teaches us this truth but unfortunately many of us prefer to carry the impermanent identities or labels including cultural practices associated with them.

That is why the Nobel prize winning bard of Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore described the traditional Indian marriage as glorified prostitution because the women were put in the market -- one million for a medical doctor and similar amounts for engineers, lawyers, accountants and other professionals.



Besides, this dowry system, which still prevails widely in the East especially, impermanent identities such as race, caste and social status, carry a multitude of practices similar to the glorified prostitution that Rabindranath Tagore referred to.



As for social status, in the earlier centuries there were no modern toilets but only bucket toilets and the so-called toilet coolie would come every day to clean them. So-called respectable people avoided any contact or relationship with these coolies until Rabindranath Tagore reminded them in a famous book that if not for the work of the coolie the respectable people and social elites would soon suffer from diseases that would often end in death.



These spiritual and philosophical thoughts should come to mind as we go into the fourth day of the State of Emergency and curfew in some areas of Kandy. This came after a road incident in which a particular communitys member attacked a man from another community.



When this man died about a week later mobs attacked business premises owned by another community. A few incidents were reported yesterday while a police curfew continues in the Kandy district, schools are closed and Kandy big matches put off.



The Kandy violence came after the Ampara crisis where some people made a ridiculous complain that so-called sterility pills were put into food sold at a restaurant run by a certain community.

Medical science with its modern marvels has not shown the existence of such a pill but the story sparked off a riot where again business premises were burnt down and places of worship attacked.

The philosophers we quoted and others speak of idealism but there is also the self-centred reality. We need to admit that most of us are caught up in self-centredness and its related vices or transient identities because a selfish and wicked world most of the time focuses our attention on transient factors if not something worse.



President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe issued statements that with the declaration of state of emergency, the toughest action would be taken against those who indulged in racial violence and those who provoked the mobs. Life imprisonment is one of the penalties.

Along with this we hope that the major religions and schools will educate the people and especially the children to think over and beyond impermanent identities and focus on character building because the virtues such as sincerity, goodwill, non-violence and selflessness are subjects which last for life and promote humanity.
Airtel has closed trading window for dealing in the securities of the company from March 1 to 14, 2018 to prevent insider trading.

New Delhi: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Wednesday said its board of directors will meet on March 12 to consider fund raising opportunity for the company.

Airtel said that its board will meet to "consider inter-alia, enablement from board to opportunistically raise funds, including by issuance of secured/ unsecured, listed/unlisted, non-convertible debentures, bonds or such similar debt instrument (s) either denominated in Indian rupees or in foreign currency".

As on December 31, 2017, the company's consolidated net debt stood at Rs 91,714 crore higher than Rs 91,480 crore in the previous quarter.

Airtel has closed trading window for dealing in the securities of the company from March 1 to 14, 2018 to prevent insider trading, as per the statement.

Shares of Airtel on Wednesday closed at Rs 403.4 a unit, down by 2.53 per cent compared to previous close at BSE on Wednesday.
Penalties of Rs. 39.81 crore, Rs. 9.45 crore and Rs. 5.10 crore were imposed upon Jet Airways (India) Ltd, InterGlobe Aviation Limited and Spice Jet Limited respectively.

New Delhi: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) imposed penalties upon three airlines for concerted action in fixing and revising fuel surcharge (FSC) - a component of freight charges.

The order was passed based on information filed by Express Industry Council of India against Jet Airways (India) Ltd., InterGlobe Aviation Limited, Spice Jet Limited, Air India Limited and Go Airlines (India) Limited alleging cartelisation.

The CCI, in its order, noted that the aforementioned Airlines had acted in a concerted manner in fixing and revising the FSC rates and thereby contravened the provisions of Section 3 of the Act, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements including cartels.

Accordingly, penalties of Rs. 39.81 crore, Rs. 9.45 crore and Rs. 5.10 crore were imposed upon Jet Airways (India) Ltd., InterGlobe Aviation Limited and Spice Jet Limited respectively. Besides, a cease and desist order was also issued against the Airlines.

While imposing penalties, the Commission applied the principle of relevant turnover and based the penalties on the revenue generated by the Airlines from air cargo transport services only.

Considering the financial position of the Airlines at the relevant time and noting that FSC constitutes about 20-30 percent of cargo revenue, penalty was imposed by the Commission at three percent of their average relevant turnover of the last three financial years.

The CCI also deprecated the airlines for using FSC as a pricing tool which was essentially introduced to mitigate the fuel price volatility.
New Delhi: Larsen & Toubro on Thursday moved the NCLT seeking higher priority in getting its dues from debt-laden Bhushan Steel which is undergoing insolvency proceedings.

Counsels appearing for L&T submitted before the bench that the company owes it Rs 9 billion (Rs 900 crore) in dues for supply of capital goods.

The engineering and construction major has asked National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to acknowledge it as a secured creditor for Bhushan Steel. The NCLT bench has asked the resolution professionals to share their stand on the matter. The tribunal has listed L&T's plea in Bhushan Steel case on March 23.

Tata Steel on Wednesday said it has been identified as the highest bidder for acquiring controlling stake in the Bhushan Steel undergoing insolvency proceedings.

Besides, JSW Living Pvt Ltd (a joint venture between JSW and Piramal Enterprises), and a consortium of the Bhushan Steel's own employees had submitted bids to take over assets of the bankrupt firm.

The last day to submit bids was February 3, 2018. Tata Steel had said in Wednesday's statement that it "has received a formal communication from the resolution professional (RP) of Bhushan Steel Ltd that it has been identified as the highest evaluated compliant resolution applicant to acquire controlling stake of BSL under Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) of the IBC, as decided in the meeting of CoC of BSL on March 6".
In 2017, transactions on the platform increased by 25 per cent, from 2.4 million units sold in 2016 to 3 million units in 2017. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi: OLX, an online classifieds marketplace for auto, real estate and goods and services, extended its leadership position in the pre-owned cars category by doubling its business seller base in 2017.

The automobile category that includes cars and bikes is the largest section on the platform, with 45 per cent of the total user visits. 15,000 cars are listed for sale, every day on OLX. Each car listing on an average gets more than 1000 views, and almost 65 per cent of cars are sold within the first week.

In 2017, transactions on the platform increased by 25 per cent, from 2.4 million units sold in 2016 to 3 million units in 2017 (Jan- Dec).

On the business side, revenues from pre-owned cars category increased by three times for FY 17 -18, supported by an active base of business sellers, the launch of customised solutions and local sales support team of 200, operating across 50 cities.

In 2017, new dealer signups in automobile category doubled on the platform. To foster the community, OLX invested in dealer connect program- Driveathon, an initiative to assist dealers to come online.

In 2017, OLX ran the program across 20 cities touching over 3,000 dealers. Under this initiative, OLX educates car dealers about the emerging trends in the pre-owned automobile market, hosts workshop with experts from the industry and promotes knowledge sharing on regulatory developments in the automobile sector.

OLX aims to expand the reach of this property to 40 cities in 2018.

"We are focused on transforming the way consumers buy and sell pre-owned cars, using online. 2017 was a rewarding year for OLX in which we evolved our cars category by building robust revenue streams and demonstrating a sustainable business model. Our deep-rooted understanding of the online classifieds places us in a solid position to take the market to greater heights," said Sunny Kataria, Director, Auto Category, OLX India.

OLX registered a growth of 50 per cent in the number of buyers, while the seller base grew by 100 per cent in the pre-owned cars category, in 2017. A regional break-up of the car listings shows 55 per cent of them coming from tier one markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. The remaining 45 per cent of the listings come from tier two cities.
The stock of SBI on Wednesday dropped 3.84 per cent to close at Rs 246.65 on the BSE.

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank has slapped a penalty of Rs 40 lakh on SBI for not complying with its directions on detection and impounding of counterfeit notes.

"The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed, on March 01, 2018, a monetary penalty of Rs 4 million on State Bank of India for non-compliance with the directions issued by RBI on Detection and Impounding of Counterfeit Notes," the central bank said in a notification issued on Wednesday.

RBI said it found deficiencies on SBI's part in regulatory compliance with counterfeit notes regulations.

The penal action is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers, RBI added.

The regulator had carried out inspection of currency chests of two branches of the country's largest lender and noticed violation of its instructions issued on the detection and impounding of counterfeit notes.

"Based on the inspection report and other relevant documents, a notice, dated January 5, 2018, was issued to the bank advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed on it for non-compliance with directions issued by RBI," it said.

After considering the banks reply and oral submissions made in personal hearing, RBI came to the conclusion that the aforesaid charges of non-compliance with its directions/ guidelines were substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty, said the notification.

The stock of SBI on Wednesday dropped 3.84 per cent to close at Rs 246.65 on the BSE.

Earlier on Monday, RBI said it has imposed a Rs 3 crore penalty on Axis Bank for violation of non-performing asset classification norms, and a Rs 2 crore penalty on Indian Overseas Bank for not complying with the KYC regulations.
Govt offered some relief to financially-stressed telecom sector, allowing telcos to pay for spectrum over 16 years instead of 10 years.

New Delhi: The Idea-Vodafone combine will benefit the most among established players from the government's decision to allow a longer tenure to telcos to pay for spectrum bought in the auction, a Deutsche Bank report said on Thursday.

In its latest report on the relief package for telcos cleared by the Union Cabinet last evening, Deutsche Bank said: "Idea/Vodafone mergeco benefits the most among the larger players as the extension of tenor would lead to 30 per cent lower annual instalment on spectrum for the mergeco which has the highest leverage among the larger players."

The government, last evening, offered some relief to financially-stressed telecom sector, allowing telcos to pay for spectrum over 16 years instead of 10 years and also permitted them to hold more airwaves.

It has relaxed caps on holding spectrum -- a move that will help ongoing mergers like that of Vodafone and Idea as the combined entity would have breached the current limits in certain circles or telecom zones.

"Further, the mergeco was exceeding the older spectrum cap in a few key markets and hence the enhanced cap allows the mergco to retain all its spectrum," Deutsche Bank report said.

It noted that during the last three auctions, the government had allowed the payment of spectrum bids as a combination of upfront amount (25 to 33 per cent of bid) with the balance permitted via 10 annual instalments after a a two year moratorium. The new policy extends the instalments to 16 years.

"Idea/Vodafone mergecos annual instalment stands at around Rs 160 billion (Rs 16,000 crore) compared to a current annualised EBITDA of Rs 100 billion (Rs 10,000 crore). For Bharti, the instalment and annualised EBITDA for India operations stand at around Rs 90 billion (Rs 9,000 crore) and Rs 230 billion (Rs 23,000 crore), respectively," the report said.

Newcomer Reliance Jios annual instalment stands at around Rs 45 billion (Rs 4,500 crore), it noted. Morgan Stanley in a research note said that decision to give more time to telcos to pay for the spectrum they have bought, will provide some relief to the free cash flows of the operators in the near term.

"Airtel's annual spectrum payments would reduce by Rs 14-17 billion (Rs 1,400-1,700 crore), about 20 per cent over FY2019/20. We see about 15 per cent downside risk to the government's FY2019 budgeted revenue estimates from the sector," Morgan Stanley said.

Goldman Sachs observed that the spectrum cap increase to will aid consolidation and help Idea the most, and potentially also Jio.

"Idea and Vodafone, as per earlier regulations, had 45.4 MHz (2 x 22.7 MHz) of excess spectrum across all service areas put together (2.5 per cent of total spectrum), which they would have to surrender given the previous governments merger and acquisition guidelines," Goldman Sachs said.

The excess spectrum was in the bands of 900 MHz and 2500 MHz, and worth about USD 800 million at current market prices. With the increase in spectrum caps, such spectrum can now be retained by Idea, it added.

The Cabinet allowed companies to hold up to 35 per cent of all the available spectrum or airwave in a circle or telecom zone. The present limit for such holding is 25 per cent. It also removed the current intra-band cap.

Instead, an operator will be allowed to hold no more than 50 per cent of the total available spectrum in sub-1 GigaHertz bands of 700 MegaHertz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz.
New Delhi: The Centre is working on the portability of foodgrains entitlement under PDS and the eligible beneficiaries can get their quota of grains from any ration shops, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Wednesday said.

Addressing the first meeting of food commission chairmen from states/UTs, the minister said the "...centre is working on the portability of PDS entitlements and this will be progressively extended".

He said once the portability of PDS (public distribution system) implemented, beneficiaries will be free to receive their entitlements from any ration shops without being bound to a particular shop.

This is already underway in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, Gujarat and Delhi, an official statement said.

Under the food security law, government is providing highly subsidised foodgrains to over 80 crore people. It supplies 5 kg of wheat and rice per person per month at Rs 2-3 per kg.

Paswan said that across the country 82 per cent ration cards have been linked to Aadhaar and 2.95 lakh PoS (point of sales) machines have been installed at ration shops to streamline the rationing process and stop pilferage.

About 2.75 crore fake, duplicate and illegal ration cards have been deleted, which has resulted in annualised better targeting of food subsidy amounting to Rs 17,500 crore per year.

The minister said these funds will be utilized for the benefit of providing subsidies to new people.

He said he will write letters to the chief ministers of states/UTs where the State Food Commission has not been formed or partially formed.

He informed that so far such commission has been set up in 20 states/UTs.

Paswan said states should take responsibility to set up State Food Commission and give enough freedom for its functioning and assured the necessary cooperation to states/UTs if needed.

This was the first National level meeting between the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Chairmen of State/UTs Food Commission after its inception.

Paswan informed that the national/state level meeting of states/UTs Food Commission should be held every three months.
Mumbai: Deepika Padukone has been continuously doing action, first in her Hollywood debut stint xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage, and then her last release, the Bollywood period drama Padmaavat.

During the shooting of Padmaavat, the actress got herself injured, and a bandage can even be seen on her neck.

With Deepika taking a break from her shoots, she has the time to think and plan the wedding now. This could not have been possible, had she not developed a back issue and was shooting for Vishal Bharadwajs film, a trade source had earlier told us.

But apart from her wedding, Deepika is also making the most of her time professionally.

According to a report on Mid-Day, the actress has been reading as many scripts as possible during the time.

Deepika is set to work in Vishal Bhardwajs next untitled film, but if the news is to be believed, then she is finding work that looks at her as equivalent to her male counterparts.
It was touted to be Vishal Bhardawajs dream project. However, just a few days ago, the filmmaker-director announced on Twitter that Sapna Didi was being postponed owing to the ill health of both his lead actors  Irrfan Khan and Deepika Padukone.

Now there are rumours swirling that the film maybe shelved since the Life of Pi actor has apparently headed to the US for treatment. A source close to Vishal says, Irrfan was the most suited actor for the story of this film. There are bleak chances of the film being revived. We have been told that Irrfan will be heading to America for health treatment.

Vishal has now reluctantly taken up smaller projects. He has now started working on a small budget film and has already sorted out his crew. He is planning to take up this small budget movie ahead with some new and fresh faces. Once everything is finalised he will be announcing this film soon, maybe within a months time, says the source.
International Women's Day is celebrated across the world on March 8 to honour women, their struggles and triumphs.

Women, around the world are not only taking care of the kitchen and homes but are making huge strides in the world of science, economy, politics and all other spheres.

On this special day dedicated to women, why not do something for them instead?

We share 5 quick recipes for men to keep dinner ready on International Womens Day.

Mexican Bean Chilli (Veg) (shared by Freshmenu)

Chili con carne or Chili is a spicy American dish, that originates from Texas. It is a stew that contains chili peppers, tomatoes and/or beans. This relish comes with cheesy slow cooked assorted beans with tomatoes and chilies, served with slices of parsley garlic bread.

Ingredients

Chilli Bean Mix

Rajma - 60gm

Black eyed beans- 60gm

onion chopped - 10gm

tomato chopped - 40gm

tomato puree - 40gm

Capsicum chopped - 20gm

Garlic chopped - 5gm

Mint - 2gm

Coriander - 10gm

Cheddar cheese sauce

Butter -10gm

Garlic chopped -2gm

Parsley chopped - 1gm

Hot dog bun 6" - 2 nos

Preparation Method

Chilli Bean Mix

Pressure cook all the beans, tomato, onion, peppers until soft and mushy

In a pan saute onion, garlic and add the cooked bean mixture, add tomato puree and paprika. Cook until the raw taste disappears

Add cheddar cheese sauce and cream to finish the chilli bean. Check seasoning

The mixture should be of pav bhaji consistency.

On order transfer the chilli bean mix to a soup container, add a dollop of cheddar cheese sauce, place a mint sprig and pick up

Parsley garlic butter and Bread

Slice 2 hot dog buns 6 " diagonally as shown

Coarsely blend chopped garlic, parsley and butter, keep aside

Apply garlic butter on the sliced hot dog bun, flash it in the oven until golden brown

Pack in a lite bite box lined with butter paper

Paneer Burji sandwich (shared by Freshmenu)

Easy to assemble, filled with toothsome and hearty ingredients and customized to suit all palates-Sandwiches are one of the easiest and tastiest recipes that can be! This delicious sandwich is made with a filling of paneer bhurji layered in a hand-made bread with veggies and cheese.

Ingredients

Paneer burji

Paneer (small cubes) - 75gm

Onion (chopped) - 50gm

Tomato (chopped) - 30gm

Ginger garlic paste - 5gm

Chilli powder - 3gm

Turmeric powder -1gm

Jeera powder - 2gm

Dhaniya powder - 2gm

Salt - 3gm

Oil -5gm

Jeera whole - 2gm

Fresh coriander (chopped) - 4gm

Water - 500ml

Hot dog - 6buns

Lettuce leaf (washed) - 5gm

Butter - 5gm

Preparation Method

Paneer burji:

Heat oil in a pan, temper with jeera. Add chopped onion. Saute till onion is gonden brown. Add ginger garlic paste and saute till raw smell is gone. Add chopped tomatoes. Mix well. Add chilli powder, turmeric, jeera powder, dhaniya powder.

Mix well and cook this masala on simmer till its cooked and oil comes to surface.

Mix cubed paneer in this masala. Toss well. Season with salt and check seasoning. Finish with fresh chopped coriander and lemon juice.

Cut hot dog bun in half. Toast on a hot plate. Spread butter. Place cleaned lettuce leaf. Arrange paneer burji mixture on it.Close with top bread.

Moroccan Tajine Salad (shared by Freshmenu)

This North African salad comes with roast pumpkin, yogurt, Moroccan five spice seasoning, Moroccan mint seasoning, mint leaves, prunes, couscous, cherry tomatoes and rocket leaves for a herby note. Try it and you will be amazed.

Ingredients

Boiled Chickpeas - 50gm

Sliced Zucchini halves - 20gm

Sliced Carrot halves - 20gm

Couscous - 30gm

Cherry Tomato halves - 10gm

Pumpkin Slices - 50gm

Prunes - 5gm

Roasted Almond flakes - 5gm

Black Olive halves - 3gm

Chopped Coriander leaves - 2gm

Chopped Mint leaves - 2gm

Green Lettuce - 10gm

Rocket Leaves - 10gm

Lollo Rosso - 3gm

Chopped Parsley- 2gm

Salt - 5gm

Black Pepper Crushed - 1gm

Moroccan 7 spice powder - 5gm

Fresh Thyme - 1gm

Cucumber Mint Dressing - 50gm

Sumac Powder - 1gm

Cucumber Mint Dressing

Hung Curd - 350gm

Finely Chopped Garlic - 10gm

Grated Cucumber - 100gm

Moroccan Mint Seasoning- 30gm

Chopped Mint Leaves - 10gm

Black Pepper Crushed - 3gm

Lemon Juice - 10ml

Sugar - 5gm

Salt - 5gm

Couscous Mix

Couscous- 300gm

Mirepoix - 10gm

Chopped Mint Leaves - 10gm

Chopped Coriander Leaves - 10gm

Salt - 7gm

Black Pepper Crushed - 2gm

Lemon Rind - 2gm

Refined Oil - 5ml

Butter - 30gm

Brown Onion - 40gm

Water - 600ml

Preparation Method

Take pumpkin slices and marinate with fresh thyme, chopped garlic, salt, pepper and oil and keep in the oven for roasting.

Blanch carrot and keep aside.

Take little oil in a pan, add a pinch of chopped garlic and saute zucchini for two minutes.

Season with salt and pepper and remove

In a bowl, add chickpeas tossed zucchini, blanched carrots, roasted pumpkin, cherry tomatoes.

Add Moroccan 7 spice powder with chopped mint, coriander and parsley.

Put the salad greens on the base of the bowl and save few leaves to garnish on top.

Add half the quantity of the couscous and Moroccan spiced tossed veggies.

Add  cut prunes and roasted almond flakes. Garnish with some salad and mint leaves.

Drop 5 dollops of mint and cucumber dressing. Sprinkle Sumac powder and serve.

Couscous

Preparation Method

Put oil and saute mirepoix in a heavy bottom pan.Add water and let it boil.

Once the water starts boiling, add the remaining ingredients and check seasoning.

Cover the pan with a lid.

Turn off the flame and let it rest for 10 mins

Now remove lid from the pan and mix the couscous nicely. Check seasoning and keep aside.

Deep Fried Ice Cream (Shared by Chef Choong Chew Loon, Royal China, New Delhi)

Ingredients

1-litre good quality vanilla ice-cream

1 bought sponge cake, sliced into 1/2cm slices

2 litres vegetable oil, for deep frying

4 eggs

2 cups dried, fine breadcrumbs

Caramel sauce

23 cup cream

34 cup brown sugar

50g butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
The bomb didnt explode while the couple were having sex (Photo: YouTube)

Theres nothing wrong in getting a bit adventurous in sex and introduce accessories while doing so. But going overboard with sex toys can often lead to disastrous and tragic consequences.

A drunken man in Peru killed his wife while having sex when he decided to use a mortar bomb in bed. Ruben Valera Cornejo was arrested as he is believed to have inserted the explosive device inside his wife.

Authorities found the 16-inch-long inactive bomb with blood stains and pubic hair on it. Meanwhile the man says that he only remembers his wife telling him to use household objects as sex toys and later waking up to find her unresponsive.

The bomb didnt explode while the couple were having sex. Painkillers were also found on the scene.
In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn less than men. (Photo:Pixabay)

Male readers of leftwing French daily Liberation were asked to pay 25 percent more for their paper on Thursday, to make up for the gender pay gap on International Women's Day.

The paper published two versions with different cover pages, one marked "for women, 2 euros, normal price" with a pictogram of a woman, the other marked "for men, 2.50 euros" with a pictogram of a man.

In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay for equal work being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn on average 25.7 percent less than men, according to a 2017 report from an inequality watchdog.

"To highlight this injustice Liberation has decided to apply the same difference to its sale price for a day, meaning 50 cents more for men," it said, adding that profits from the operation would be donated to France's non-governmental Equality Observatory.

Liberation said it was inspired by Canadian monthly Maclean's, which charged men more for its March edition -- also to denounce the wage gap.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced plans to get tough on companies that pay women less.

Under a package of workplace reforms to be finalised next month, wage gap screening software will be rolled out in all companies with more than 250

employees from 2019, and in all companies with over 50 employees by 2022,Philippe said.

Companies with "unjustified" disparities will have three years to rectify the situation or face fines of up to 1 percent of their wage bill, he said.

Drawing on 2012 statistics, the Equality Observatory said last year that women earned 25.7 percent less than men.

A 2014 report by national statistics agency INSEE put the gap slightly lower, at 23.8 percent.

When adjustments for part-time work were factored in, women were still paid on average 17.4 percent less, the report found.

For the same job, women are estimated to be paid nine percent less.
Chennai: Footboard travel on a MTC bus proved fatal for a class 8 student returning home from school on Wednesday evening. The accident happened near Tondiarpet. The deceased boy was identified as S Vicky alias Vignesh (14), a resident of Ezhil Nagar, Tondiarpet.

Vicky was a class 8 student at a private school in Washermanpet. On Wednesday evening, he was traveling on the footboard of an MTC bus (route no.56 C) plying between Broadway and Thiruvottiyur when he met with the accident.

Police said that the bus was moving along Kunalamman Koil street in Tondiarpet when Vicky lost control of the hold and fell down.Police said that he was moved to a hospital nearby by onlookers where he succumbed to injuries later in the night.

The body was moved to Government Stanley Hospital for autopsy. There were fractures in the rib and internal organs were injured, a police officer quoted the doctors as saying. Police have registered a case under section 304 (2) (Culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and are investigating.
The Allahabad High Court in October, last year, ruled that dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar from Delhi were not guilty of the murder of their daughter Aarushi, 14, and domestic help Hemraj in 2008. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging clean chit to Aarushi Talwar's parents by the Allahabad High Court in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case.

The CBI told the apex court that Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have been wrongly cleared of charges.

The move by the agency came months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of October 12 last year acquitting the couple.

The Allahabad High Court in October, last year, ruled that dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar from Delhi were not guilty of the murder of their daughter Aarushi, 14, and domestic help Hemraj in 2008.

Also Read: Dentists Rajesh and Nupur Talwar cleared of daughter Aarushi's murder

The Allahabad High Court ended the couple's nine-year ordeal by saying that neither the circumstances nor the evidence were enough to hold them guilty.

The court also castigated the CBI for its theory on the murder case, saying it is an "impossible hypothesis" and "patently absurd".

In November 2013, a special CBI court in Ghaziabad had convicted the Talwars for murdering daughter Aarushi and Hemraj and sentenced them to life. The CBI court said they had killed Aarushi in a fit of rage because they suspected her of having an affair with Hemraj.

Nupur and Rajesh Talwar were kept in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail for four years before being given clean chit by the high court last year.

The CBI after the verdict had said that it would study the high court order and decide its future course of action.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found dead on May 16, 2008 in her house in Noida with her throat slit and head bludgeoned. The Talwar family's domestic help Hemraj was found dead the next day on the terrace of the house.

Hemrajs throat was also slit and there were wounds on his head. There were wounds all over his body and the door to the terrace was found locked from inside.

(With agency inputs)
Two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers -- Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdhary -- submitted their resignation on Thursday following their meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers -- Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdhary -- submitted their resignation on Thursday following their meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

TDP MP YS Choudhary addressing the media after resignation said that TDP will continue to be a part of the NDA but not take up any ministerial positions.

"I don't think it's fair on our part to expect PM to deal with these issues. It's for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed," he said.

TDP MP YS Choudhary's resignation letter to PM Modi

On being asked on the possibility of BJP-YSRCP alliance, Choudhary said that it is a decision between those two parties.

"We have nothing to say on that, you can ask them," he said.

TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju's resignation letter to PM Modi

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu amid rising tensions in the BJP-TDP alliance.

Naidu explained to the PM about reasons leading to central ministers resignation and the TDP withdrawing from the Union Government, TDP sources were quoted as saying by ANI.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology YS Chowdary later met the Prime Minister and handed over their resignations.

Earlier on Thursday, Naidu claimed that he had tried to get in touch with the Prime Minister to inform about his decision of pulling out two TDP ministers from the Union Cabinet, but was unavailable.

Also Read: PM didn't take call, would like to see BJP reaction now: Chandrababu Naidu

"As a courtesy and being a responsible senior politician, I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform about our decision. He was unavailable," he said.

The decision was announced by Chandrababu Naidu at a press conference in Amaravati late on Wednesday after a meeting with his party ministers.

The decision came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley suggested that grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh, a key demand made by Naidu, may not be possible.
Amaravati: In a reciprocal move, two BJP ministers in Andhra Pradesh government submitted their resignations on Thursday in the Chief Minister's Office at Amaravati after the late evening announcement of Chandrababu Naidu that two of TDP lawmakers will pull out from the Centre over the government's refusal to give the state central funding under a "special status".

The two BJP ministers who resigned from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet are Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao. Srinivas was the minister for health and Rao was the endowments minister.

According to news agency ANI, BJP state legislator PVN Madhav said, Decided that our ministers will resign from TDP Cabinet. We will be going to the people and telling them all the things Centre has done for the state. Since independence till date, no state has received as many favours as that were given to Andhra Pradesh."

Hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, at a press conference, said the Centre was committed to offer the monetary equivalent of special status to the state, which will be presented as a 'special package', Chandrababu Naidu announced the decision that two of his ministers will pull out from the government.

Also read: Refusal of special status to Andhra: TDP to pull out 2 ministers from Centre

Arun Jaitley said the special package that has been announced by the Centre is better than special status and there is no difference between the two. He said funds will be allotted according to the Finance Commissions recommendations but not on the basis of regional sentiments.

Also read: Special package better than status, says Arun Jaitley

Chandrababu Naidu took the decision after holding a meeting with party MLAs.

Naidu said, "It was with a specific purpose that we joined the government.... When that purpose is not being fulfilled, there is no use continuing in the cabinet."

TDP leaders have been protesting in the Parliament after the Union Budget 2018 was presented in the House in February which disappointed them as Jaitleys speech neglected Andhra Pradesh.

The party faces extreme pressure in Andhra Pradesh ahead of Assembly elections and the general election in 2019, with opposition parties accusing Chandrababu Naidu of failing Andhra Pradesh by not ensuring special status for it as a partner at the Centre.

The TD had carried out an impromptu poll during the TDLP meet on Tuesday in which 95 per cent of the MLAs voted against the continuation of the alliance with the BJP, while 5 per cent of the MLAs wanted to wait and watch for some more time.

Addressing the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday, Chandrababu Naidu made an emotional appeal. "Why won't you give us special status, it is our right, respect people's feeling," said the chief minister, adding that the "onus is on the Centre to clarify its position. We are not angry, we are asking for our rights." Naidu said he had visited Delhi 29 times over the demand.

According to reports, Chandrababu Naidu spoke to TDP ministers via teleconference and lashed out at the Centre saying it was "insulting the sentiments" of the people of the state by not honouring the promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, and also in Parliament when the state was bifurcated to carve out a separate Telangana state. He said there would be "no compromise in protecting the state's interests. Let us bear whatever difficulty, but we will take a right decision at the right time."
New Delhi: Two TDP ministers -- Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdhary --submitted their resignation on Thursday following their meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Aviation Minister and TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju's resignation letter to PM Narendra Modi pic.twitter.com/DXFbagSzWs  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu amid rising tensions in the BJP-TDP alliance.

Union Minister and TDP MP YS Choudhary's resignation letter to PM Narendra Modi pic.twitter.com/qDeS2yHOfA  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Naidu explained to the PM about reasons leading to central ministers resignation and the TDP withdrawing from the Union Government, TDP sources were quoted as saying by ANI.

Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology YS Chowdary later met the Prime Minister and handed over their resignations.

Earlier on Thursday, Naidu claimed that he had tried to get in touch with the Prime Minister to inform about his decision of pulling out two TDP ministers from the Union Cabinet, but was unavailable.

Also Read: PM didn't take call, would like to see BJP reaction now: Chandrababu Naidu

"As a courtesy and being a responsible senior politician, I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform about our decision. He was unavailable," he said.

The decision was announced by Chandrababu Naidu at a press conference in Amaravati late on Wednesday after a meeting with his party ministers.

The decision came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley suggested that grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh, a key demand made by Naidu, may not be possible.
Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla who was brought to Mumbai after being deported from Dubai, produced before TADA court. (Photo: ANI)

New Delhi/Mumbai: Fugitive mob boss Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla was a facilitator for those key accused who left the country before and after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, officials said on Thursday.

They also said Takla used to facilitate the travel of men from Dubai to Karachi without immigration checks, for their training in making bombs and use of sophisticated weapons.

Takla, 57, was arrested in Delhi by the CBI on Thursday upon his arrival from Dubai.

Also Read: Blow to D-gang: Dawood aide Farooq Takla extradited to India from Dubai

He was a hawala operator in the Gulf since early 1990s and had not taken shelter in Pakistan, like his mentor Dawood, a security official said.

The gangster had left Mumbai after a bitter rivalry with the Arun Gawli gang. In September 1992, Shailesh Haldankar of the Gawli gang was killed by the Dawood group while he was recuperating in JJ hospital.

It was allegedly done to revenge the killing of Dawood's brother-in-law Ibrahim Parkar, who was killed near his residence in 1992 allegedly by two members of the Gawli gang.

Takla was a key facilitator for stay and opening businesses for all the 1993 Mumbai blasts accused, who had left India before and after the attacks in the metropolis, the official said. While Dawood and his family, another Mumbai blasts accused Tiger Memon and his family had left Dubai after a few years and taken shelter in Pakistan, Takla continued to live in the Gulf with his ever increasing 'hawala' trading, another official said.

Takla has been mostly operating from Dubai and a few other places in the Gulf with an assumed name.

The CBI had got the Interpol to issue a Red Corner Notice against Takla in 1995.

Mohammed Farooq, better known as Farooq Takla, arrived in Delhi from Dubai and was arrested by the CBI when he was at an immigration counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport this morning.

While the CBI declined to comment on how he reached Delhi as an Interpol Red Corner notice was pending against him, officials said Farooq was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi.

Officials said India's engagements with the West Asia have increased in last few years and the results were showing with the deportation of several gangsters and wanted terrorists in recent past.

Police officials in Mumbai who investigated the 1993 serial blasts case said Farooq was a big catch for the probe agencies as he was among those who were aware of the serial blasts conspiracy.

Dawood and Tiger Memon had sent some people to Dubai from India much before the serial blasts, to provide logistical support to those who were to be trained for executing the blasts. Farooq used to send men from Dubai to Karachi and back, without immigration checks with the help of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, claimed Suresh Walishetty, a retired assistant commissioner of police, who was one of the investigating officers in the serial blasts case.

Farooq, who was camping in Dubai, used to take men to Karachi and from there to the training centres, he claimed. These men were then provided training by the ISI about planting a bomb, mixing RDX (an explosive) and firing with sophisticated weapons, Walishetty said. After completion of the training, it was Farooq's responsibility to take them to the Karachi airport and bring them to Dubai without any stamp on their passports, he said. Because of this, investigators of Mumbai police were not able collect evidence of the movement of men from Dubai to Karachi for the training purpose, he said.

Farooq would be produced before the designated court hearing the case of 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai.

The blasts shook the financial capital of the country, leaving 257 dead and damaging property to the tune of Rs 82 crore.

Immediately after the blasts, Dawood, who was the main accused in the case, and others escaped to Dubai and later to Pakistan.

India's sustained campaign against Dawood was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US Treasury department declared him a global terrorist having links with al-Qaeda. He also faces sanctions from the United Nations under its anti-terror resolution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the treasury department had said he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.
'He thrashed me in my chest, face and on the head,' Reshma said. (Photo: Facebook)

Hyderabad: As the world celebrates International Working Women's Day, a 30-year old woman was indiscriminately beaten up by her husband for disconnecting the Wifi past midnight to make him go to bed.

Reshma Sultana, the victim, is undergoing treatment at a corporate hospital.

Reshma switched the Wifi router as her husband, Omer Pasha was continuously surfing the internet beyond midnight.

The couple have been married for six years and have three daughters.

They live in Makhta area opposite Raj Bhavan in Somajiguda.

"He thrashed me in my chest, face and on the head," Reshma said.

Reshma's mother lodged a complaint with the Panjagutta police.

(Photo: Facebook)

Panjagutta police inspector S Ravinder said that since it is a case of marital dispute, the relatives are trying to patch things up. If it does not work out, it will be referred to the Women police station for counselling and a subsequent case will be registered if wanted.

Old-city-based organisation Majlis Bachao Tehreek (MBT) spokesperson Amjad Ullah Khan has been assisting the victim's family on legal and medical fronts.

He said that Omer has been harassing Reshma for a long time.

The Telangana government granted special casual leave for women employees on March 8 to enable them celebrate the Women's Day.
A statue of Mahatma Gandhi was defaced by an unidentified person in Kerala, while unidentified miscreants poured paint on the bust of Dr BR Ambedkar in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

Kochi/Chennai: Prime Minister Narendra Modis strong condemnation over incidents of vandalism of statues in various parts of the country seems have no deterring effect on miscreants. According to latest reports, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was defaced by an unidentified person in Kerala on Thursday morning, while unidentified miscreants poured paint on the bust of Dr BR Ambedkar in Tiruvottiyur, Chennai on Wednesday night.

According to reports, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at taluk office in Taliparamba in Kannur district of Kerala was defaced at around 7am on Thursday. Unidentified miscreant broke the spectacles, damaged the garland and hurled stones at the statue.

The police have launched an investigation into the case.

The incidents come a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned such acts of vandalism and spoke to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the issue.

Also Read: PM condemns vandalism of statues, Home asks states to take action

There have been numerous incidents of statues being vandalised in various parts of the country. It started with the pulling down of a statue of Vladimir Lenin with the help of a bulldozer in Tripura after Left Fronts debacle in the state assembly polls, the results of which was declared on Saturday. Another statue of Lenin was vandalised in the state as well.

Also Read: Not 1, but 2 Lenin statues demolished in Tripura; CPM, TMC blame BJP

Following this, a statue of Dravidian ideologue Periyar EV Ramasamy was damaged in Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. Two people  one from BJP and the other from CPI  were arrested in connection with the incident.

Also Read: Hours after BJP leader's Facebook post, Periyar statue vandalised in Vellore

On Wednesday, a statue of Bharatiya Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in West Bengal and one of Dr BR Ambedkar in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh were also vandalised.
Karti Chidambaram is accused of allegedly receiving Rs 3.5 crore from the Mumbai-based INX Media for helping it get FIPB clearance in 2007. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Karti Chidambaram, who is in CBI custody in connection with the INX Media case, to approach Delhi High Court for interim relief in INX Media money laundering case.

The apex court directed Karti to move Delhi HC on Thursday itself and also requested acting chief justice to set up an appropriate bench to adjudicate the matter concerning Karti on Friday or Saturday.

The Supreme Court also allowed Karti to withdraw his plea related to money laundering case.

A Delhi court on Tuesday ordered extended of Karti Chidambaram's custody by three more days after the Central Bureau of Investigation underlined that it had "concrete credible evidence collected recently" against him.

Arguments on Karti Chidambram's bail plea will now be held on March 9.

Karti, son of senior Congress leader and former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, is accused of allegedly receiving Rs 3.5 crore from the Mumbai-based INX Media for helping it get Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance in 2007 when it was run by Peter and Indrani Mukerjea - both accused in the Sheena Bora murder case.
The Lok Sabha failed to transact any legislative business for the fourth consecutive day as members from parties, including NDA ally TDP, AIADMK and TMC, continued their protests on various issues. (Photo: File/PTI)

New Delhi: The Lok Sabha failed to transact any legislative business for the fourth consecutive day on Thursday as members from parties, including NDA ally TDP, AIADMK and TMC, continued their protests on various issues.

Members from the TDP, AIADMK, TRS and TMC trooped into the Well, with many holding placards and raising slogans.

While the TDP was demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh, the AIADMK sought immediate setting up of Cauvery River Management Board.

AIADMK members were also seen holding placards of Dravidian movement founder Thanthai Periyar. Members from the TRS were demanding an increase in quota.

Amid the din, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the Supplementary Demands for Grants seeking Parliament nod for additional cash spending of Rs 85,315 crore.

As the House met for the day, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan extended greetings on International Women's Day being celebrated on Thursday and also read out a message.

Soon after members from TMC, TDP, TRS, YSR Congress and AIADMK trooped into the Well raising slogans.

Members from opposition Congress, who have been protesting vociferously over the Rs 12,700 crore fraud at PNB (Punjab National Bank), were also on their feet.

TMC members also continued to press the government to respond on the fraud case in which Letters of Undertaking (LoU) were allegedly fraudulently issued by one branch of PNB to diamantaire Nirav Modi.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar requested the Speaker to continue with the Question Hour.

"We are ready to discuss irregularities in the banking (sector)," the minister said.

Under Rule 193, a discussion on alleged systemic irregularities in banking sector over the years and its impact on Indian economy was scheduled for today in the House.

As the protests continued, Mahajan adjourned the proceedings till noon and thereafter for the entire day.

TDP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju was not present in the House even though it was the question day of the ministry. However, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was present.

Disappointed over the Centre not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh, the TDP had late last night announced that the party's two ministers -- Raju and YS Chowdary  would resign from the central government.

The protesting members were wearing stoles of their party colours. While TDP members were sporting yellow stoles and T-shirts with picture of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, those from TRS donned pink scarves. AIADMK members were wearing stoles in hues of white, black and red.
The victim has been identified as 30-year-old Usha, who was riding pillion with her husband. She was three months pregnant. (Photo: Twitter Screengrab/ @SirJadeja)

Chennai: A pregnant woman died late on Wednesday night after being run over by a van in Trichy district's Thiruverumbur when a policeman allegedly kicked the two-wheeler she was on.

According to reports, the policeman was chasing the two-wheeler to get hold of the rider, the victim's husband, as he was not wearing a helmet.

The victim has been identified as 30-year-old Usha, who was riding pillion with her husband. She was three months pregnant.

Her husband Dharmaraj was badly injured.

Police were carrying out helmet checks on Wednesday night, and Dharmaraj and Usha did not stop when they were asked to. A policeman, Kamaraj, chased them on his own vehicle, caught up with them and kicked their two-wheeler.

The couple lost balance and fell, and Usha was run over by a van travelling behind them.

According to reports, the cop, Kamaraj initially escaped but was arrested after people began to protest.

Raged by the incident, thousands of protesters gathered in protest near the Trichy-Thanjavur highway and blocked the roads. They alleged that the accused policeman, Kamaraj, was drunk and demanded immediate action against him.

The situation turned violent as some of the protesters started to pelt stones at police vehicles. The police too retaliated with lathicharge to clear the agitators, severely injuring many.

Deputy Commissioner Sakthi Ganesh, who arrived on the scene where the agitators were protesting, promised that necessary action will be taken.

According to reports, Trichy District collector Rajamani has also said that immediate action will be taken against the accused. But, the words were not heeded and more violence erupted as protesters clashed with the police.

Reports said many vehicles, including government buses were also vandalised during the protests.
The decision was announced by Chandrababu Naidu at a press conference in Amaravati late on Wednesday after a meeting with his party ministers. (Photo: ANI | File)

Mumbai: Taking a step forward by making an announcement of pulling out two TDP ministers from the Union Cabinet on Thursday morning, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, on Wednesday, said he would like to see how the BJP reacts.

Stating that the promises made by the Centre during the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh were not kept, TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu said, "Andhra Pradesh is not getting its due under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act. Would like to see how the Centre reacts to it, then plan further course of action."

The decision was announced by Chandrababu Naidu at a press conference in Amaravati late on Wednesday after a meeting with his party ministers.

Also Read: AP CM Chandrababu Naidu bites the bullet, pulls out of Modi Cabinet

The decision came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley suggested that grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh, a key demand made by Naidu, may not be possible.

"After the 14th Finance Commission there is no special category scheme, though some states like the north east and hill states get 90 per cent funding from the Centre...We decided that Andhra should be compensated after bifurcation for the amount a special status state gets and we have provided for those funds. We stand by that," Arun Jaitley said at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Also Read: Special package better than status, says Arun Jaitley

Chandrababu Naidu said the Centre did not take into account the "sentiments of the people of Andhra Pradesh." He added, "Only in the interests of the state, we went into alliance with BJP and became part of the union government. But for four years, nothing has been done despite making several efforts. That is why we took the decision of withdrawing our ministers."

Earlier on Wednesday evening, Jaitley had said, "sentiment does not increase the quantum of funds... We have to look at the country as a whole."

Chandrababu Naidu said he tried to get in touch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inform him about his decision. "As a courtesy and being a responsible senior politician, I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform about our decision. He was unavailable," he said.
BENGALURU: With the city in the midst of a scorching summer, the policemen have donned the role of Good Samaritans near Richmond Circle. They are providing free drinking water to motorists and pedestrians.

The man behind this drive is Nagesh Rao, an assistant sub-inspector attached to Ashok Nagar traffic police station and deployed at Richmond Circle.

He observed that several motorists, pedestrians and even the policemen on duty were finding it tough to quench their thirst. Most of them were forced to buy packaged drinking water from nearby shops.

Rao decided to do something about this and discussed the matter with his superior Inspector B.A. Vijee Kumar, who suggested that he come up with a plan to provide free drinking water.

Rao told Deccan Chronicle, I thought of various ideas but in the end decided that we can keep 25-litre mineral water bottles. I discussed the idea with the inspector and other staff and every one were ready to pool in money to buy the cans.

He also found help from a few local residents, who helped him build a small concrete slab to place the bottles. I discussed the idea with a few people who live nearby and a couple of shopkeepers, who readily agreed and helped us. We got the concrete slab ready and purchased the water bottles along with few glasses.

On Tuesday morning, Rao placed the water bottles along with the glasses and went for his duty. Rao noticed that several people were making use of the facility and they had to get four more bottles.

I saw that motorists would park their bikes at one side of the road and come to drink water. Even the pedestrians began using the facility. They were all curious about who had placed the water bottles and got to know that the traffic police were behind the initiative. Some of them stopped by and thanked us for the gesture, Rao added.

Inspector Kumar appreciated Rao for his initiative. He is known for his discipline and every day, without fail, he would turn up for duty at 7 am, as our jurisdiction sees heavy traffic due to the presence of various schools in the area and because it is part of the Central Business District. Rao is a good example for the young generation.

A senior traffic police officer also said that they are thinking of installing a water kiosk at the Richmond Circle to provide free drinking water to the public.
Hyderabad: To force Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept the resignations of the two Union Ministers from the Telegu Desam, AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has accepted the resignations of BJP ministers in the state cabinet, Kamineni Srinivas and P. Manikyala Rao, and forwarded them to Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan for approval as protocol demands. Acting on the recommendation of the Chief Minister, the Governor accepted the resignations and sent the communication to the Chief Ministers office on Thursday night.

Sources say that Prime Minister Modi is not willing to accept the resignations of the two TD ministers in his cabinet, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y.S. Chowdary. The two ministers resigned after being directed to do so by their party chief who is forcing the centre to accord special status to Andhra Pradesh. In his resignation letter submitted to the Prime Minister, Mr Gajapathi Raju said: I hereby tender my resignation from the union council of ministers with immediate effect. I request you to accept the same. I take this opportunity to convey my gratitude for the cooperation extended to me during my tenure as a member of the Council of Ministers.

Mr Y.S. Chowdarys resignation letter was slightly differently worded: With due respect to the prevailing public sentiment in my constituency as well as the circumstances that led to that situation and in adherence to the decision taken by my party president I am hereby tendering my resignation as union minister of the state. As of Thursday night Mr Modi had not forwarded the resignations of the two ministers to the President for his approval as required.
CHENNAI: With the massive delimitation of wards in the Greater Chennai Corporation nearing an end, the government and civic body have been mulling reclassification of zones. Currently, the Greater Chennai Corporation comprises 15 zones. The reclassification of divisions will be undertaken by the state government. The drive will commence after the conclusion of local body elections, D. Karthikeyan, commissioner, Greater Chennai Corporation, said in a delimitation consultative meeting held on Thursday.

During the consultative meeting, some residents of division 29 of Madavaram zone raised demands to add the division with Manali. Geographically, the division is located close to Manali. It will help residents to address their civic issues if the civic body adds the division to Manali zone, residents demanded. Replying to residents, Karthikeyan said the division would be appended with Manali during the reclassification of zones that would be carried out shortly.

The officials spilt 183, 184, 185 and 186 divisions to create whole new division. The authority should leave the division as it is, said some residents.

Explaining stakeholders on reservations, delimitation commissioner Malik Feroze Khan said reservations to women and scheduled caste would be assured according to the election commission of India (ECI) norms. After the delimitation drive, the number of reservation wards will remain same, he assured.

The top officials also rejected the demands of Sholinganallur zones to append Kannagi Nagar and Ezhil Nagar as a single division.

Due to large tenements in Kannagi Nagar, the population in the division already exceeds 80,000, which is 100 percent more than allowed number. When adding Ezhil Nagar, the population would go further up. So there is no feasibility of keeping both localities in a single division, Malik Feroze Khan said.
Hyderabad: Telanganas IT minister, K.T. Rama Rao, had no clue that he would end up as chief guest for the inaugural ceremony of the four-day aviation industry event, Wings India 2018, held in Begumpet on Thursday. Union civil aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, who was directed to resign from his ministerial post by Telugu Desam supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu late on Wednesday, was supposed to inaugurate the event.

Politics sometimes thrusts upon you responsibilities for which you are not prepared. Until this morning I had no clue that minister of civil aviation Shri Ashok Gajapathi Raju has put in his papers. So, as things would have it, I ended up as chief guest, Mr Rama Rao said. He complimented Mr Gajapathi Raju for increasing the number of airports and flights in the country.

Mr Rao said that the Telangana government is now exploring the feasibility of sea-plane projects to connect with other cities using Hussain Sagar Lake as the hub. Pointing out that Telangana is one of the most vibrant aviation and aerospace hubs in the country, Mr Rao said, Shamshabad airport is one of the fastest growing major airports in the country, handling around 18 million passengers and over 135,000 MT of cargo every year and is consistently ranked no. 1 in its category for the past several years.

He noted that while the airport is playing a crucial role in the expansion of the pharmaceutical and aerospace sector, it has an exclusive Pharma Zone with world class cargo infrastructure and modern handling methods, meeting global quality standards. The state is keen to make Warangal airport functional, to give a boost to the Mega Textile Park and IT hub launched in the city, he said.
New Delhi / Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modis effort to pacify the Telugu Desam (TD) failed with two TD ministers, P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y.S. Chowdary, on Thursday resigning from the Central government, a day after TD supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu indicated that his party was considering quitting the BJP-led NDA government. Two hours after Mr Modi spoke to Mr Naidu on the telephone on Thursday, TD MPs submitted their resignations to the Prime Minister. Mr Modi had called Mr Naidu at 4.30 pm, after he returned to Delhi from Rajasthan.

According to sources, the conversation lasted 15 minutes. Mr Naidu is said to have told the Prime Minister that he had tried to contact him the previous night to let him know that the ministers would resign but Mr Modi was unavailable. The PM is said to have replied that, When I was not available you should have waited for some more time, to which Mr Naidu said, No sir, this is the partys decision. We cannot go back. When the Prime Minister suggested, We can sit and discuss and sort out the issues, Mr Naidu replied that this is a sentimental issue. If the Centre wants, it can give special status to AP now. Without this we cannot withdraw the decision on resignations of TD ministers. Our MPs (ministers) will meet you and submit their resignations.

Accordingly, at about 6.30 pm both Mr Raju and Mr Chowdary went to the Prime Ministers residence in private vehicles and submitted their resignations. Speaking to the media afterwards, they said they had submitted their resignations on the directions of the party high command. Mr Chowdary said that Mr Modi assured them that he will extend all support to AP. He said that they are continuing in the National Democratic Alliance and will continue their fight on AP issues till they get justice. In his resignation, Mr Chowdary stated that, with due respect to the prevailing public sentiment in my constituency as well as the circumst-ances that led to that situation (not offering special status) and in adherence to the decision taken by my party president, I am hereby tendering my resignation.

Mr Raju merely wrote that I hereby tender my resignation from the Union Council of Ministers with immediate effect. Mr Chowdary, who later addressed the media along with Mr Raju, also blamed the UPA for preparing the most unscientific Bill (AP reorganisation Act, 2014) and said everyone knows how the Bill was passed in both Houses of Parliament in the din. To a query on whether the party was with the NDA, he said, We will continue to be a part of the NDA but not take up any ministerial positions. I dont think there is anything wrong in that. He also said that, We will be happy when marriages happen, not when divorces happen. It is not a good move, but unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances we had to take this move. We are stepping down as ministers, but our president has said we will be continuing as part of NDA.
Also 50 per cent of PG seats from Telugu states will be included in the national pool and top rankers from other states, will grab the seats.

HYDERABAD: Though Andhra Pradesh and Telangana recently entered the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (Neet)- national pool along with Jammu and Kashmir, there is an increasing demand from Telugu Neet- PG aspirants to withdraw the states from the Neet national pool.

Aspirants alleged that there are very few ranks from the Telugu states amidst in the top 6,000 ranks and if the national pool is applied, there will be a huge loss of seats. Also 50 per cent of PG seats from Telugu states will be included in the national pool and top rankers from other states, will grab the seats. Remaining 30 per cent is under service quota, so only 20 per cent will remain for state aspirants.

Dr Muneer Ahmed, a PG-Neet aspirant from TS said that most of the students scored marks between 450-600 and their ranks are between 9,000 to 20,000. If we need to get a seat of our choice through All-India counselling, then our rank should be within 1,500 to 2,000. There are about 50 students within 1,500 -2,000 ranks from TS and AP. Even those 50 students may not get seat in the All-India Pool because their ranks will be in top 50 in the state rank list, he said.

Mostly, around 10-20 people will be taking seats from the All-India pool. The remaining 50 per cent of state seats, 30 per cent are reserved for service candidates. So only 20 per cent seats are left for open competition. These seats include SC, ST, BC, PH and remaining reservations due to which students in general category of are the worst hit. It is better if we dont go into national pool because we need to give about 300-800 seats in national pool and in return only 10-20 students get benefitted, he said.

Dr V. Suneela, an aspirant from AP said after giving 50 per cent of seats to the national pool, our state will only get 50 per cent of the seats.

Regular students stand very less chances of getting a PG seat, she said.

 Even the private colleges have hiked the fees to 6.9 lakh per year and it is highly difficult for a middle class student to pay an amount of Rs 21 lakhs for three years due to which most of the people cannot take admissions in private colleges, she added.

However, Dr.B.Karunakar Reddy, Vice Chancellor- Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences said that we are only contributing 50 per cent of seats from the government colleges, not from convener quota which is very few.

Instead our students will be eligible for more number of seats.This is a Masters course. So students have to work hard to secure the seats, he said.

Counselling for exam to begin on March 12

The counselling schedule of Neet PG 2018 will begin from March 12 and end by May 15. The first round of counselling will begin from March 12 for all-India quota and deemed, along with Central institutes. State counselling will be from March 25 to April 5 and last date of joining for first counselling is April 3.

Second counselling will be held from April 6 to 12 for all-India quota and deemed, along with Central institutes and state counselling to be held from April 15 to 26.

Last date for joining is April 22. Mop up round will be conducted from May 12 to 22 and for state counselling from May 4 to 8. Last date of joining for mop up round is May 26 and May 12 for state counselling.

On May 27, the counselling authority is supposed to forward the list of students to the medical colleges in order of merit, equalling to ten times the number of vacant seats. The final date of joining is May 31 for all-India quota and deemed along with Central institutes and May 18 for the state counselling.

However, the Vice Chancellor Kaloji Narayana Health University said that in 2017, they got time up to May 31 to finish the admissions. However, this year, they are expected to finish the admissions by May 15 itself.
Hyderabad: Lord Venkateswara has been dragged into the ongoing debate regarding special category status for Andhra Pradesh. TD MPs carried idols of the Lord as they staged a dharna in front of Gandhi statue within the Parliament premises on Thursday. Maganti Venkateswara Rao, Avanthi Srinivas, J.C. Diwakar Reddy and N. Sivaprasad were among the protesting MPs. When the media asked them why they were carrying idols of Lord Venkateswara with them, Mr Venkateswar Rao said, Lord Venkateswara is a popular god in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made promises to AP, in front of Lord Venkateswara, during his election campaign in Tirupati. We have brought idols of the Lord here so that Mr Modi will remember his promises. Two days ago, Mr Sivaprasad came dressed as Lord Venkateswara to warn the Central government about the consequences of not fulfilling the promises made to AP in the AP Reorganisation Act.
The petitioner, during an earlier hearing, had complained to the court that some shopkeepers of the area had assaulted him with sticks and rods.

HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad High Court on Thursday cautioned that it would not tolerate attacks on the persons who had moved court for public causes.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan and Justice K. Vijaya Lakshmi, while dealing with a petition by Lakshmi Nivas Agarwal of the city, seeking the removal of encroachments in Siddiamber Bazaar, cautioned the people not to take the law into their hands.

The petitioner, during an earlier hearing, had complained to the court that some shopkeepers of the area had assaulted him with sticks and rods, for filing the PIL. Mr D. Prakash Reddy, Advocate-General, told the court that the police had taken one person into custody.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with Kannada Sahitya Parishat president Manu Baligar and Kannada Development Authority chairman Prof S.G Siddaramaiah among others with the proposed new Kannada Flag in Bengaluru on Thursday  DC

BENGALURU: The state governments move to woo the Lingayats on the question of separate religion tag for the latter came a cropper with a sharp divide within the cabinet coming in the way of a formal recommendation to the Union government on the controversial issue on Thursday.

A consensus eluded the cabinet though the issue was discussed for more than three hours. During a meeting of the cabinet, two ministers-Eshwar Khandre and S.S. Mallikarjun-not only stuck to their original stand of opposing such a move but also wondered how the cabinet could take a stand on this important issue without an opportunity for the ministers to read the report submitted by the seven member panel headed by Justice Nagamohan Das which dealt with the question of separate religion tag for Lingayats. The ministers urged CM not to take any hasty decision while other ministers  M.B. Patil, Dr Sharan Prakash Patil, Vinay Kulkarni and Basavaraj Rayareddy backed the CM.

Law minister T.B. Jayachandra said the cabinet decided to defer a decision on recommending the issue of separate religion tag for Lingayats to the next meeting on March 14.

... but with new Kannada flag, he may score, after all

Bengaluru: CM Siddaramaiah succeeded with his game plan to augment pro-Kannada sentiment ahead of Assembly polls by unveiling a new flag for the state on Thursday. The state tricolor-yellow, white and red-was supported by Kannada activists with Vatal Nagaraj of Kannada Chaluvali Vatal Paksha, the lone voice of dissent, objecting to inclusion of the white panel, and the speed of the decision.

The CM said the state government would approach Union government for formal approval of the new flag.
The Karnataka High Court on Thursday ordered issuance of notices to Union minister Anant Kumar Hegde and Chikkamagaluru MLA C.T. Ravi.

BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Thursday ordered issuance of notices to Union minister Anant Kumar Hegde and Chikkamagaluru MLA C.T. Ravi.

The court was hearing a petition alleging that the two BJP leaders made provocative speeches inciting communal violence during Tipu Jayanti celebrated by the State Government last November.

The petitioner, Alam Pasha, submitted the information against the two BJP leaders at the Indiranagar police station, but the police there refused to accept it.

He then filed a private complaint in the magistrate court which also was dismissed. He has now challenged the order of the magistrate court in the High Court.

The magistrate court had dismissed Pasha's private complaint (PCR) stating that prior sanction was required to register a case against them. Pasha in his petition before the High Court has stated that the magistrate even failed to give a number to the PCR and thus he was unable to obtain the copy of the magistrate's order.

The private complaint filed by Pasha is part of the petition. It cites statements of Hegde and his tweets, including the ones where he allegedly called Tipu a mass rapist.

The petition cites an alleged tweet by Hegde, "Conveyed #Karnataka Govt NOT to invite me to shameful event of glorifying a person known as brutal killer, wretched fanatic & mass rapist". In another tweet, Hegde challenged the chief minister to invite him to the function.

"If the Government prints my name on the invitation card, I will attend the function and raise slogans from the dais against Tipu. If Siddaramaiah has the guts, let him stop me."

The petition cites a statement allegedly made by CT Ravi and quoted in a newspaper. "Communal Congress led by arrogant @siddaramaiah is repeatedly insulting Hindus by celebrating Tyrant Tipu Jayanthi despite severe opposition.. and thrive on anti-Hindu appeasement policies," it states.
Hyderabad: The Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has scrapped the rule requiring post-graduate medical students to work for a year in a government hospital. Though the PG students have been agitating against mandatory government service rule for the past four years, the government did not heed to their demand.

KCR, who is on sops announcing spree in the election year to please all sections before the 2019 general elections, took the decision all of a sudden to scrap mandatory government service rule.

KCR said that the most backward classes corporation was already given `1,000 crore and allocations will also be made in this years Budget. In the past, under the economic support scheme, backward classes were given 60 per cent subsidy (`60,000 per `1 lakh) to set up any unit under self employment scheme. Since this was not deemed sufficient, the CM said an increase in the subsidy component and financial assistance should be given to set up 12 lakh units.

The CM instructed that for a loan of `1 lakh, the subsidy should be 80 per cent (`80,000), for `2 lakh loan the subsidy should be 70 per cent (`1.40 lakh) for the units ranging from `2 lakh to 12 lakh, the subsidy should be 60 per cent (maximum limit of `5 lakh). The CM signed on the file pertaining to subsidies to be given under self-employment schemes for the MBCs.

The CM is also expected to announce various sops to all sections in the Budget to be presented next week. The financial assistance for parents under Kalyana Laxmi/ Shaadi Mubarak to perform marriage of their daughters is being hiked from `75,000 to `1 lakh in the Budget. Another `15,000 crore is being sanctioned towards farmers sops.
Mangaluru: Despite strong lobbying by a section of Muslims for the post, the Congress has appointed Mr Bhaskar K, a distant relative of former Chief Minister, Veerappa Moily as Mayor of Mangaluru city. But taking no chances with the elections to the state assembly approaching, it has given the post of Deputy Mayor to a Muslim corporator as a compromise.

With 35 corporators in a council of 60, the Congress has a clear majority and the BJP with only 20 corporators in the House merely contested the Mayoral election as a token gesture on Thursday.

The Congress had two strong contenders for the post, standing committee chairman Abdul Ravoof and Mr Bhaskar K. It had been approached by some Muslim leaders a few days ago to select Mr Ravoof for the post as the community feels it does not have much representation in the council. The demand put the Congress in a fix as it could afford to annoy the Muslims with the assembly elections fast approaching. But on the other hand making Mr Ravoof the Mayor would give the BJP a chance to accuse it of trying to appease the minorities again.

"There are already two Muslim MLAs, including a Minister from our taluk. The district also has two Christian legislators. If the party had appointed a Muslim Mayor it would have risked annoying the Hindus and the BJP would have made use of this," said a senior corporator. The party finally decided to strike a compromise by making a Muslim the Deputy Mayor, and this appears to have pacified the community as anticipated.
Hurt Telugu pride was at the root of N.T. Rama Raos rise in the early 1980s. This changed the topography of Indian politics inexorably for years. NTR became pivot of the non-Congress or anti-Centre parties in the 1980s. With his charismatic presence and ability to keep several arch-rivals united in pursuit of the aim to oust the Congress government, NTR gave a fresh lease of life to anti-Congress politics after the botched Janata Party experiment.

According to an apocryphal story, in 1982 the newly-anointed Congress general secretary, Rajiv Gandhi, landed at Begumpet airport on a private visit. He was surprised when he was greeted on the tarmac by the state Cabinet and party workers led by chief minister T. Anjaiah. Instead of setting this aside as an act of unabashed servility, Rajiv Gandhi publicly humiliated him  some records say he called Anjaiah a buffoon. The story goes that already hurt by Indira Gandhi whimsically changing several Andhra Pradesh chief ministers in quick succession, NTR decided to quit his film career and turned politician. The Telugu Desam swept the ensuing elections and NTR became the first non-Congress CM of the state.

In the melodramatic parting of ways between the BJP and the Telugu Desam earlier this week, no one called each other names but TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu claimed that the Prime Minister was not available  which is odd in this mobile age  when he wished to communicate the decision to pull out from the NDA government at the Centre. My OSD spoke to his OSD, he said, explaining how the decision was communicated. Flashback to 2013-14, when Mr Modi and

Mr Naidu had worked in tandem  for Mr Modi as PM and the latter as CM.

Workers of both parties termed the duo Jodi No. 1. Partings are bitter but have deeper impact if one party accuses the other of humiliation. Mr Naidu claimed that he visited New Delhi to meet the PM and Central ministers 29 times in the last four years. I showed a lot of patience, but we were taken very lightly all the time. The Centre is behaving as if we are greedy to get a lot of money from the Centre which does not belong to us. We are only asking for what is rightfully ours.

Effectively, he claimed that since May 2014 he visited the Indian capital once every month and a half to seek what was promised but was humiliated. This will be interpreted as another instance of causing hurt to Telugu pride.

Mr Naidus principal challenger in the state, Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress, has for long pursued the narrative of the Centre habitually snubbing regional aspirations. Mr Reddy has been at this theme since 2011 when he stormed into Parliament in a byelection after being denied political space and dignity by the Congress after his father Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy died tragically.

His declaration of upping the ante against the NDA government  the party is circulating a no-confidence motion in Parliament, failing which its MPs are to resign from the House  ensures a clean slate for the BJP from Andhra in the next elections because the principal rivals are in sync on their anti-Centre posture. Mr Naidus decision to snap the pact with the BJP may have been taken with intent of not vacating the anti-Centre space in the state, but is also indicative of the BJPs growing woes with allies.

The trouble with the present BJP leadership is that it remains intoxicated with the 2014 verdict, and reads too much into state victories. However astounding the triumph in Uttar Pradesh may have been, the partys fortunes almost crashlanded on the banks of the Sabarmati river. Likewise, the victories in Tripura and the formation of coalitions in Nagaland and Meghalaya may have given rise to that heady sentiment once again, but only to be brought down thanks to the belligerence of supporters who display acute inability to remain level-headed after a victory.

Mr Modis decision, against the grain of his track record, to issue a stern statement on the reports of vandalism from different parts of the country, was no change of heart or sudden love for the memory of Lenin.

Instead, it was indication that the party leadership has recognised irreversible damage to party fortunes in Tamil Nadu caused by desecration of Periyar statues. After all, actor-turned-aspiring politician Kamal Haasan declared in public that Tamilians did not require assistance from the police to protect statues of the icon of Tamil nationalism. With the BJP already politically inconsequential on its own in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala, its failure to reverse the setback in Tamil Nadu bodes ill for the BJP  these four southern states account for 101 Lok Sabha seats.

Additionally, the BJP is in troubled relationships with its two oldest allies  the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal. Concerns about Mr Modis domineering personality once raised controversially by Nitish Kumar lie at the root of the BJPs uneasy partnership with these parties. The sentiment is shared by several others who are part of the NDA government. But while they have not immediately followed in the footsteps of Jitam Ram Manjhi, the possibility of major realignment cannot be ruled out if the parties begin to perceive that the hawa is blowing in a different direction. There is also no certainty if the partys ties with the Peoples Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir will hold comfortably till the next hustings. Although the PDPs support may not be required for the BJP to retain its stranglehold on the Jammu region, association with ideologically diverse parties increases its acceptability at the national level, and especially among people who are not fundamentally Hindutva supporters. The TDs pullout from the Union government has the possibility of reworking the equation prior to 2019. How Mr Modi now responds to this challenge will be crucial in the short and medium term.
Congress needs to promote able leaders: Devang Dave

The BJP juggernaut continues  it raised the saffron flag for the first time in 25 years in the Northeast. What was considered a strong Left-fortress soon became the land of the rising Sangh! As soon as the election results were out, Congress president Rahul Gandhi took the first flight out of India to meet his granny and celebrate her 90th birthday.

Well, best wishes to her and heres hoping that more years are added to her illustrious life. However, on the other hand, the lifespan of the 133-year old Indian National Congress is getting reduced by the day.

Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Tripura, Meghlaya and Nagaland  all are BJP strongholds now while the Congress fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. The Congress is now reduced to only four states.

The old guard seems to have failed to hold the fort for the party, while the young guns, except for Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia, arent being given any importance. A change in the party leadership hasnt yielded the results as expected.

Mr Gandhis much-talked-about unopposed promotion as Congress president has failed to deliver any concrete results. His not-so-impressive leadership has failed to evoke any confidence among the party cadres. With the 2019 elections just around the corner, it seems unlikely that the Congress will witness a revival or makeover of any sorts. Its overdependence on dynasty politics and continued emphasis on caste-based politics has rendered it ineffective. Ignoring the real issues  development and job creation  in the states it is ruling has also put a huge dent on its already tarnished image.

Further, Congress ministers have repeatedly used their official positions for their own selfish gains. The lack of punitive action against the tainted ministers has further spoilt the image of the Congress Party.

Just when we thought that the UPA scams were over for good, came the PNB-Nirav Modi and Karthi Chidambaram scams; both initiated during the excessively corrupt UPA-2 government.

More than a Congress comeback, what is even more needed is a complete change in the Congress ideology. A morally clean Congress is essential for a constructive and productive Opposition. The Congress culture still reeks of the 130-year old philosophy; it is still dependent on divide and rule politics.

Does the country really need a political party that will lay emphasis on politics over good governance? You know the answer!

Will we see a change in Congress fortunes under Mr Gandhis leadership? Given the political stance of the Gandhi-scion, this seems highly unlikely. Hence, a complete makeover, amidst crumbling alliances, is much needed for the Congress Party.



The writer is national convenor, BJYM Information Technology Committee

People are unhappy with BJP: Ashish Dua

This assertion itself is misplaced. We have the love and support of the people and we will oust the BJP government that is failing on all fronts in the 2019 elections. I concede we lost Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh but we did extremely well in Punjab. We were the single largest party in Goa but due to the machinations of the ruling dispensation at the Centre we were denied our rightful seat in the government in that state.

Now, lets take a look at Gujarat, the bastion of the BJP and Sangh politics, the home state of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. In Gujarat, the Congress had the strongest performance in the Assembly elections in the last three decades. Our tally improved markedly.

Again, in the recently-concluded Assembly elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in Meghalaya but the BJP, with just two seats, used its machinations to form the government there.

Even in the Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh byelections, people voted for us, clearly indicating that they are unhappy with the policies of the BJP government.

The problem with the BJP is that it is leaving governance out and adopting machinations. There is a list of questions that the Congress has put up before the Prime Minister ,but he has not yet responded to it. The unemployment rate has reached alarming proportions but this government is not bothered about it. The Congress is raising various issues plaguing the country; issues that have arisen because of sheer incompetence of the BJP government.

Then we have the saga of the PNB-Nirav Modi bank scam. We have been saying that several people had written letters about the scam while it was taking place, but the government made no effort to stop it. The entire banking system is shaken; the list of fugitives under the keen eye of this government is only increasing.

Look at the agriculture sector  small farmers are reeling under debt and the government has done nothing for them. Demonetisation and the hasty implementation of GST have hit small and medium traders hard. The unorganised sector has suffered the most; there has been massive job losses for which only the BJP is to be blamed.

As far as the Congress is concerned it is not a static organisation. In some measure it is always in election mode. Actually, the party machinery is much more election-oriented than most other parties. Congress workers and local leaders are holding their own against the BJP. The desperation of the BJP is evident in its refusal to engage in assessment of the governments performance, and Mr Modis reliance on traditional and social media, laced with half-truths, untruths and loudspeak.

In the end, I would only say that it is the BJP that needs to go in for a total makeover if it has to have any chance in the 2019 elections.



The writer is a Congress leader and AICC member
As we celebrate another International Womens Day, it has become ritualistic to assess the gains secured by Indian women. The focus of the womens movement has primarily been centred around legal reforms to combat violence. Sadly, the overemphasis on legal reforms has overshadowed the social reality of inaccessibility of legal mechanisms to those who need its protection the most.

Meanwhile, a parallel narrative has gained credence that women misuse stringent provisions and implicate innocent men. This myth is being perpetuated at all levels of the legal edifice, including Supreme Court judges. Endorsed by lawyers, sensationalised by the media, it provides fodder to mens rights groups. Their anecdotal stories run counter to national and international statistics about the extent of violence against women in India. Since violence is a norm, stories of even death and murder are passe. Yet these mundane stories of everyday violence must be told.

Lets start with Anita George (name changed), a frail woman of around 40 who was severely beaten by her husband ever since they got married. Finally, when she could not endure it any more, with the support of a well-wisher she approached a state agency mandated to help women. She pleaded that her husband was threatening to kill her. When the husband didnt respond to the letter sent by the agency to come for counselling, the woman was referred to the local police station. Instead of registering a complaint, the police called her husband for counselling, and then sent her back to her matrimonial home. No agency did any followup, nor was any step taken to ensure the woman was safe  this would be recorded as a success story in their records.

Three months later, the husband assaulted her brutally and broke three of her ribs. In utter despair, she drank poison and would have died, but for the timely intervention of her sister, who admitted her to a nearby hospital. The state agency that sent her back to her abusive husband wasnt held accountable for her condition. For us, it was a herculean task to get the police to register a complaint under the much-maligned Section 498A IPC. When the woman approached us, we filed a case under the Domestic Violence Act (DVA) for protection and maintenance  which is still languishing.

Anita is losing faith in the judicial system, as after the initial intervention there is no progress in her case. Instead of passing orders, the magistrates entire focus is to reunite the family! Her economic situation is grim. As a bleak future looms, Anita, who is living with her sister along with her son, may even consider this suggestion, as she cant see any other option. And when that happens, her case filed under Section 498A will be quashed and it will be added to the list of false cases.

Lets look at Jovita (name changed), another middle-aged woman from the lower middle class. Not much educated, she took up different jobs to support her family  domestic help, office assistant, receptionist, catering  any job that she got, including an overseas assignment that came her way, where she could save some money. With the money she earned, she purchased three small tenements in a nearby chawl  two as joint property and one wheres the sole owner. Her alcoholic husband controls everything.Jovita raised three sons in this violent marriage and even got them married. The brutal violence she endured has left deep scars on her body. Today the younger sons are siding with their father to grab her property. Recently, her husband assaulted her as she was attending church service because she was dressed in a pair of jeans. Someone guided her to the police, but the cops told her, ye ghar ka mamla hai (domestic affair), registered an NC (non-cognisable) complaint and sent her back. The husband threw her out of the house. She took shelter at her sisters home. A few days later, her husband came to her sisters home, beat her, took away her documents and warned her to never return home.

Then someone guided her to us. She was unaware of our existence, though her matrimonial home is just 500 yards from our office. We advised her to take a bold step, file a written complaint and enter the tenement, which is in her sole name. Two days passed peacefully, on the third day the storm broke. She ran out, screaming. The husband chased her and caught her by her dupatta that was draped round her neck, and dragged her. Then her husband and son literally lifted her, put her in a rickshaw and took her home. As they pinned her down and were pouring some liquid down her throat, her sister arrived with the police. They took her to the police station, where she fainted out of sheer trauma. Finally, a complaint was registered, but not under Section 498A. The police used other sections to skirt the mandatory counselling. The husband and son were arrested, but later released on bail.

The acute violence which Christian women suffer is seldom addressed; even the Church looks the other way. Women too are ridden with guilt as they are indoctrinated to believe that divorce is a sin. However, the situation is not peculiar to Christians. We see it everywhere.

Let us look at Saira (name changed), who was married just after she finished school. For two years, she was harassed for dowry. Her husband, a drug addict, used to return home late at night and assault her violently and force sex on her. She had no respite even when she got pregnant. One day, after a brutal attack, she suffered a miscarriage. She was writhing in pain and begging her husband to take her to hospital, but he refused. Finally, she called her mother who admitted her to a nursing home. That was the end of the marriage. No, he didnt send her a talaqnama. He just didnt come to discharge her from the hospital. So, she went to her mothers place. After all attempts at reconciliation failed, Saira went to her matrimonial home to pick up her belongings and valuables. She was abused and asked to leave. Before she could reach the local police station, the husband and in-laws filed a complaint against her and her mother. So there were cross NCs.

Imagine her shock when the special cell located at the police station called her on the complaint filed by her husband. The social worker directed her to a protection officer to file a case under the Domestic Violence Act, but didnt accompany them. They were lost. In sheer desperation, her mother approached an NGO. After a lot of pressure, the police registered a case under Section 498A and her belongings could be retrieved. The local NGO then referred her to us, and we filed a case under the DVA. Due to the pressure of litigation, the husband agreed to pay Rs 1.5 lakh as final settlement and a divorce by mutual consent  mubarra. The case under Section 498A will soon be quashed  one more false case.

Similar stories can be narrated of women from across class and religious communities. However, collectively, interventions by majlis and other organisations do not add up to even a drop in the ocean.

The concept that marriages are forever is deeply ingrained within our legal system, and a woman who approaches a court or the police is viewed as a deviant. It is against this ground reality that the narrative of misuse gets perpetuated.



All the names in this article have been changed to protect the identity of the women.
India and France are celebrating 20 years of partnership. The accord signed in 1998 by then French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is one of the oldest strategic partnerships that this country has. The pact was signed during President Chiracs visit to India: Both countries share a perspective that the new world order has to be a genuine multipolar world order. Our bilateral relationship is poised to grow in the coming months in a multi-faceted manner, Mr Chirac had declared.

Over the last two decades, the partnership has steadily grown  no major political differences have darkened the sky between Paris and New Delhi. France has been constantly supportive of India, particularly so for a permanent seat for India in the UN Security Council, and has shown comprehension for Indias nuclear policy. Though in recent years the term strategic partnership has been devalued by the multiplication of such accords, in the Indo-French case, the 1998 momentum has been regularly sustained by new initiatives.

One is of course the Rs 59,000-crore deal for 36 Rafale fighters in September 2016; it will soon prove to be a game-changer, partly due to the offset clauses forcing France to reinvest in India 50 per cent of the total deals amount, but also for Indias western and northern fronts. China realises this, and its recent efforts to reinforce its air defence of the Western Theatre Command, particularly on the Tibetan plateau, is definitely linked to the forthcoming arrival of the Rafale in India, expected in 2019.

In a media interview in October 2017, French defence minister Florence Parly had declared India was Frances major strategic partner in Asia. She noted that the relationship was the fruit of a long, shared history, grounded in an unshakeable trust. We have always worked alongside India, in good times but also at difficult moments, she said, adding: Our partnership is continuing to develop even more, including in very sensitive areas.

These sensitive areas make all the difference. New Delhi knows it needs to diversify its diplomatic relations if it wants to play a major role in the world. An example: for Indias engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, France could also be a crucial partner.

In a Carnegie India research paper, C. Raja Mohan and Darshana M. Baruah had written: Faced with a growing geopolitical turbulence and more aggressive maritime manoeuvring, India and France are eager to expand their strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific. The authors elaborated: As maritime security acquires greater salience in Indias foreign policy, New Delhi is increasingly looking to leverage its strategic partnerships, particularly with Paris. Although India and France have joined forces on a number of issues since 1998, regional cooperation in the Indo-Pacific has never risen to the top of the agenda. However, this may be about to change.

The study cited a series of high-level discussions between New Delhi and Paris that focused on the prospects of a stronger maritime security partnership: Central to the recent discussions has been the creation of a framework for strategic coordination in the Indo-Pacific. As they explore their bilateral cooperation on regional security, the Indo-Pacific offers ample potential for such an enterprise.

A high point of French President Emmanuel Macrons coming visit could be a logistics accord allowing India access to the strategically important French base in the Reunion Islands near Madagascar. Another possibility is the opening of French facilities in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, where Indias rival China already has a military base. This is part of Indias new maritime strategy.

Interestingly, another author, Emanuele Scimia, wrote in the Asian Times about a new alliance emerging in the region. He cited the French Jeanne dArcs naval task force, heading for East Asia and the South Pacific to hold exercises with Britains Royal Navy.

Though the objective of the five-month deployment is improvement of maritime cooperation between their navies, in reality, said Mr Scimia, it can be read as a new initiative by the two European countries to support the United States in its freedom of navigation operations in the region against Chinas military activism.

The task group consists of the Mistral-class helicopter assault ship Dixmude and the La Fayette-class frigate Surcouf. Mr Scimia further wrote: It is worth noting that the French-led task force will dock in countries at odds with China. Indeed Indonesia, Australia and Vietnam question Beijings claims to the South, before concluding: The prospective Quadrilateral (Quad) alliance among the United States, India, Japan and Australia to counter Chinas military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific space could be extended to France and Britain. Does this mean a Quad + Two? India and France will probably prefer the bilateral way to start with.

Incidentally, in December 1954, a previous avatar of the Dixmude arrived in Mumbai to deliver 20 aircraft with ammunition: Dixmude will stop at Bombay only for five days. In view of large quantities on board and the short time available for offloading, the French air ministry has requested for facilities, as a special case, to unload explosives at the jetty instead of at an anchor outside the harbour, wrote the then Indian ambassador in Paris.

Four years later, 22 Mystere and 13 Ouragan (Toofanis) were delivered again by the same Dixmude.

Another important development  during the coming presidential visit, a deal could also be signed between India and Safran (one of the partners of Dasault in the Rafale deal) to develop a M88 engine for the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas. A media report recently hinted that the M88 engine would be used as the base engine to adapt it for the LCA programme or it would be an altogether new development using Safran technology to create a new engine from the ground upwards. The LCA Tejas, manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), is now equipped with a General Electric F404 IN20 engine. India is obviously keen to resurrect the Kaveri engine project which was originally started in the 1990s to develop an indigenous jet engine. Safran has offered to collaborate on the Kaveri engine programme as part of the 50 per cent offsets for the Rafale deal. After Ms Parlys visit, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian came to India in November; in New Delhi he mentioned common bilateral interests like combating terrorism, maritime security, cooperation in the Indian Ocean  where France and India are two countries belonging to the Indian Ocean Rim  we have a complete commonality of views, which calls for the strengthening of our partnership.

Mr Macrons visit was delayed by a few months due to an important joint initiative, the International Solar Alliance (ISA). Launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015, the ISA wants to create a coalition of solar resource-rich countries and address each participants special energy needs. Finally, 20 years after President Chiracs visit, it would make economic and strategic sense for India to partner with France in more futuristic research projects such as a fifth-generation combat aircraft or an armed drone.

Mr Modi and Mr Macron need to prepare the future.
The time has come for India to shift focus to its northern border. The country is capable of handling Chinas assertiveness. China is a powerful country, but we are not a weak nation.

Yes, China is exerting pressure. We are dealing with it. Yes, we should try that it is not escalated. We will not allow our territory to intruded. Troops are earmarked should a situation arise

While troops (of the PLA) may have returned (from Doklam) and infrastructure remains, its anybodys guess whether they would come back there, or is it because of the winters that they could not take their equipment, but we are also there, so in case they come, we will face them  Army Chief General Bipin Rawat

Around Army Day (January 15), the Chief of Army Staff, a position revered by the troops, was busy shooting his mouth off, virtually delivering a quote a day, unbecoming of his stature. Indias Army Chiefs, ensconced in the Raksha Mantralayas corner office, dont normally indulge in needless gabfests, and in Gen. Rawats case it is unnecessary baiting of a dangerous adversary. On Tuesday, it emerged that India has been ranked the fourth most powerful military power in the world.

According to Global Fire Power Index 2017, Indias military strength is behind only that of the United States, Russia and China, while rival neighbour Pakistan ranks 13th on the elite list. Even as Gen. Rawat consistently rattled the cage, Pakistan, which has been bleeding us for years using its doctrine of death by a thousand cuts, was functioning with its usual impunity attacking military installations and soft targets in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Army Chief kept a stoic silence as our brave soldiers were killed with unceasing regularity. And for all the Army Chiefs theatrics and creation of optics, the dreadful and ugly truth is that the Chinese have not taken a backward step in the sensitive Doklam region.

On Monday itself, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman validated the Chinese threat perception in Doklam when she said in Parliament: Indian and Chinese troops have redeployed themselves away from the face-off site in Doklam, and China has undertaken construction of helipads, sentry posts and trenches for its Army personnel there. She added: Post disengagement from the face-off in 2017, troops of both sides have redeployed themselves away from their respective positions at the face-off site. The strength of both the sides has been reduced. In order to maintain these troops during the winter, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has undertaken construction of some infrastructure, including sentry posts, trenches and helipads. Last week, our junior defence minister Subhash Bhamre had said the situation along Indias border with China is sensitive and it has the potential to escalate. The troops of India and China were locked in a 73-day standoff in Doklam beginning June 16 last year after the Indian side stopped the building of a road in the disputed area by the Chinese Army. The face-off ended on August 28. Sources said China has been keeping its troops in north Doklam and significantly ramping up its infrastructure in the disputed area.

Now the question is why would you pump up the volume knowing well that the Chinese threat represents a clear and present danger? Obviously, one cannot back down to any threat posed against our sovereignty, but what about the active daily engagement on our western border. J&K is a cauldron brimming over, and despite an effective concentric circle-type all-pervasive security grid, Pakistan proxies or fidayeen are doing incalculable damage to the morale of our fighting forces. The Army Chief said not one word for those dying bravehearts, instead he is busy ratcheting up the pressure on our northern neighbor, where an undefined border has created constant consternation with a bellicose PLA trying to assert itself.

Since January 1 this year, the Indian Army has killed around 20 Pakistani soldiers in punitive fire assaults and lost more than 15 soldiers, apart from BSF personnel and civilians, in over 280 ceasefire violations and terror incidents in J&K this year so far. That both the PM and the defence minister chose to stay away from the Army Day functions on January 15 even though both were very much in the country was most galling. As many as 10 Indian soldiers were killed in the first two weeks of this year alone. In January alone, a belligerent Pakistan ISI-jihadi military complex had upped the ante. An Army jawan and three civilians were killed while 15 people were injured as Pakistani troops targeted forward Indian positions and civilian areas both along the international border and Line of Control (LoC) in J&K for the third day running. The injured included two security personnel. The four deaths took the toll for January to 10, almost equalling the number of deaths in the whole of 2017 in such cross-border firings. Yet the Army Chief focused on China, ignoring the ongoing fusillade in J&K. And as if all this wasnt enough, the piece de resistance came when in a confrontational move, he shot his mouth off making a tangential politically-loaded statement about Assam  I dont think you can now change the population dynamics of this area. If it was five districts to eight to nine the inversion has taken place, whichever be the government...There is a party called AIUDF if you look at they have grown in a faster timeframe than the BJP has grown over the years. When we talk of the Jan Sangh, with two members of Parliament, and where they have reached, the AIUDF is moving at a faster pace in the state of Assam. Finally, what will be the state of Assam, we will have to take a call?

This seems the theatre of the absurd. Since when did Army Chiefs comment on politics, and that too on sensitive demographics? The aggressive jingoism for China was in any case misplaced, by commenting on Assam and its religious makeup, he had opened a communal front in an openly disputatious comment. Was he being prodded into saying these things? That would tantamount to his position being compromised, and no Army Chief has indulged in this kind of cheap theatrics, at least not in recent memory. Should he be asked to zip up? Yes, most definitely, for the Indian Army cannot be associated with such colored statements. It is sacrilege to make such petty statements and it certainly doesnt behove the Army Chief to say what he said.

The reactions came swift and fast. Retired Lt. Gen. Prakash Menon, well respected for his sense of fair play, but extremely outspoken, tweeted: The army is not in charge and is the lead agency in politically-loaded internal security situation. Depending on context of issue relevant ministry/ dept/agency could comment. Overall, chief should not voice opinion that projects that he in charge of the entire situation. In another tweet, he argued: Two issues  1st chief making statements that have political and religious overtones eg madrasa edu in J& K etc, 2nd, government has not commented, therefore tacit approval. Is it healthy for mil institution? I dont think so. Though there could be more to it than what is in public domain.

Retired Gen. V.P. Malik, a former Army Chief, countered on his timeline, saying: Topmost mil ldr of the country has the right to spk on issues affecting national security where mil is/may be called upon to act. What, when, and where to spk depends upon situations and personality. Muzzling him will be counter-productive.

Retired Lt. Gen. H.S. Panag, writing in his blog, created a flutter when he said: Our Chiefs of the defence forces have been making headlines with their statements on national security issues and at times also on issues outside their domain. Questions have been raised by the media, the Opposition and veterans about what the Chiefs should and should not be saying. While some are cheering them, others say they have transgressed into the political domain.

He went on: Curiously, the defence secretary, who is responsible for the defence of India and the armed forces, as per the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules 1961, has never made a public statement with respect to national security in 53 years of my military memory. Yet, in the not-too-distant past, a defence secretary allegedly commented on the clamour for a Chief of Defence Staff: We already have a Chief of Defence Staff. I am the Chief of Defence Staff!

Three divergent schools of thought, but the majority view is that sagacity demands that Indias Army Chief should be more circumspect and choose his words more carefully. After all, he symbolises the garima of the armed forces and as its leitmotif, its not his job to make such utterances. And if he is being prompted to do so by those in power, thats even more distressing. Emasculating this fine institution will be our collective death.
The heist on Sunday is rare in so far as the amount is concerned, however it points toward the rise of organized crime which has become a national problem for Brazil. (Representational Image)

Brazil: Amid rising criminality in Brazil, Sunday saw five gang members armed with rifles wage through the Viracopos international airport and with seeming ease drive off with USD 5 million in cash.

Using cars that were re-painted to resemble airport security, the gang rushed through the gates and into the cargo section of the airport where they attacked two security guards and stuffed them into a van, the Washington Post reported.

They then drove up to a Lufthansa plane as employees were loading bags of money into an armoured vehicle and drove off with the cash even before the police could arrive. No one has been arrested.

"Everyone who passes through the Viracopos Airport is at the mercy of thugs," Alberto Carvalho, a director at the National Union of Airport Workers said.

He further reiterated several instances of abductions and muggings, adding that the airport along with the nearby highway and its surroundings in general, remain particularly unsafe. "The airport is completely unprepared to deal with these risks," Carvalho said.

Transporting goods in Brazil has become increasingly dangerous in lieu of an impending crime wave which stands at an astonishing 10, 500 cargo thefts in 2017 in Sao Paolo according to state figures. This has led to companies sending shipments by plane.

The heist on Sunday is rare in so far as the amount is concerned, however it points toward the rise of organized crime which has become a national problem for Brazil.
Washington: US President Donald Trump has denied accusations by a porn star that he had sexual encounters with her, the White House said on Thursday, a day after she sued him to invalidate a deal that prevented her from discussing the alleged relationship.

Stephanie Clifford, who is known as Stormy Daniels in the adult film industry, filed a lawsuit in a California State court on Tuesday. Running into 28 pages, the lawsuit alleges that she was paid $130,000 by Michael Cohen, personal lawyer of Trump, to not to go public with her alleged sexual encounters with Trump when he was the then Republican-presidential candidate.

The President has denied the allegations against him and again this case has already been won in arbitration," the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference. She alleged that Trumps lawyer Cohen forced her to sign a false statement and that she never signed a hush agreement regarding the alleged sexual encounter with him.

Despite Trumps failure to sign the Hush Agreement, Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000 to be wired to the trust account of Cliffords attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written nondisclosure agreement whereby Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Trump, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit says that Clifford began an intimate relationship with Trump in the summer of 2006 in Lake Tahoe, which continues till 2007.
Gupta is doing so much to apply real imagination, innovative thinking and sustainable rejuvenation to our nations heavy industries, said the 68-year-old Prince of Wales. (Photo: File)

London: Indian-origin steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has been appointed by Britains Prince Charles as an official ambassador for the Industrial Cadets programme designed to nurture manufacturing skills.

Gupta was appointment to the flagship programme to give children and young people direct structured experience of industry while still at school or college.

The Industrial Cadets annual awards ceremony was held Wednesday in London.

Gupta is doing so much to apply real imagination, innovative thinking and sustainable rejuvenation to our nations heavy industries and Im thrilled that he, through his GFG Alliance, has so enthusiastically become involved with Industrial Cadets as well, said the 68-year-old Prince of Wales.

Creating jobs

As the Executive Chairman of UK-based GFG Alliance, Gupta has been on an acquisition spree in the steel industry over the past few months which has helped secure hundreds of jobs.

The Industrial Cadets programme, which currently involves more than 15,000 youngsters across the UK, was set up at the behest of the Prince of Wales seven years ago after he visited steel plants at Teesside in north-east England and heard how the manufacturing and engineering sectors were struggling to recruit young people to their ranks.

Coming from a family of industrialists, I had the opportunity while growing up to spend time in steel works and engineering plants. That left a lasting impression on me and really inspired me to pursue an active career in industry. I see Industrial Cadets fulfilling the same function and am very excited about the impact it is facing, Gupta said.

Cadets programme

His GFG Foundation is actively involved in funding and promoting the Industrial Cadets programme, through a partnership with the Engineering Development Trust.

GFG Alliance companies, including Liberty House and SIMEC, currently support 1,300 cadets from 26 schools across Britain to participate in the scheme, with a target of 5,000 students by next year.

Around 26 GFG executives located at 13 industrial sites in the UK are regularly engaged in organising work placements at their respective plants, helping the youngsters to maximise the benefit they the get from time spent in the groups steelmaking, engineering, power generation and manufacturing facilities.

GFG also has an active apprenticeship training programme currently involving more than 100 young people in the UK.

Skill training

Gupta said that the task of ensuring the next generation has the motivation and skills to enable the UK to remain competitive and successful on the world stage in manufacturing as one of the most important tasks facing modern society.

As part of his role as ambassador, the 46-year-old businessman has also been tasked with establishing Industrial Cadets in Australia, where the GFG Alliance already employs 6,000 people in its integrated mining, steel and energy businesses.

The GFG Alliance is a London-headquartered international group of businesses, founded and owned by the UK-based Gupta family.

The vision of GFG Alliance is to promote industrial revival based on low-carbon and sustainable production methods through its GreenAluminium and GreenSteel strategies.

In February, the groups Liberty Speciality Steels reignited one of the arc furnaces mothballed by Tata Steel in 2015 at the height of the steel crisis in northern England.

Liberty, as part of the wider GFG Alliance, has created and safeguarded hundreds of jobs in the steel sector across the UK as a result of a series of acquisitions.
Buddhist-Muslim relations have worsened in recent years amid the rise of hard-line Buddhist groups, which accuse Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites. (Photo: AP/ Representational)

Mullegama: Religious violence flared anew in the hills of central Sri Lanka on Wednesday despite a state of emergency, with Buddhist mobs sweeping through towns and villages, burning Muslim homes and businesses and leaving victims barricaded inside mosques.

The government ordered popular social media networks blocked in an attempt to stop the violence from spreading, and thousands of police and soldiers spread out across the worst-hit areas.

The police also ordered a curfew across much of the region for a third straight day, trying to calm the situation.

Hundreds of Muslim residents of Mullegama, a village in the hills of central Sri Lanka, barricaded themselves inside a local mosque after Buddhist mobs attacked their homes Wednesday morning accusing them of stealing the donation box of a nearby temple.

At least 20 Muslim homes appeared badly damaged and flames engulfed one two-story home.

The Muslims hiding in the mosque, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said police prevented them from saving their property and did nothing to stop the attackers.

One Sinhala Buddhist man who was part of the attack died in an explosion and another man was injured, according to the men in the mosque.

A local Buddhist man said the Muslims were using improvised explosives, which the men in the mosque denied.

The police officials said they could not immediately identify what caused the explosion or who was responsible.

Mullegama Piyaratana, a Buddhist monk at the temple, said the attacks on the Muslim homes took place after some people pelted the temple with rocks late Tuesday. He would not identify who attacked the temple.

In the nearby small town of Katugastota, Ikram Mohamed, a Muslim, stood outside the wreckage of the textile shop where he worked, after Sinhalese Buddhist mobs set it on fire.

He and the owner had closed the shop Wednesday morning when police announced the curfew. They returned to find it destroyed, and clothing and dressmaker dummies smoking in the ruins.

"There are many good Sinhalese people," he said. "This is being done by a few jealous people."

Muslims own many of the small businesses in Sri Lanka, a fact that many believe has helped make them targets as Buddhist-Muslim relations have worsened in recent years amid the rise of hard-line Buddhist groups, which accuse Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites.

Area residents said mobs swept through at least two towns in the central hills Wednesday, attacking two mosques and a string of Muslim-owned shops and buildings.

An internet company official, meanwhile, said the government had ordered popular social media networks blocked in areas near the violence, and slowed dramatically across the rest of the country.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under company policy, said the order was for Facebook, Instagram, Viber and WhatsApp.

Some of those networks appeared to be blocked in Colombo, the capital, while others worked sporadically and very slowly.

President Maithripala Sirisena declared the state of emergency on Tuesday, though a day later, details of the decree remained unclear. While the hills were flooded with soldiers and policemen ordering people off the street, little, if anything, appeared to have changed elsewhere in the country.

While government officials have not directly accused Buddhist extremists of being behind the violence, many comments appeared aimed at them.

The government will "act sternly against groups that are inciting religious hatred," Cabinet minister Rauff Hakeem said Tuesday after a meeting with the president.

The emergency announcement came after Buddhist mobs swept through towns outside Kandy, burning at least 11 Muslim-owned shops and homes.

The attacks followed reports that a Buddhist man had been killed by a group of Muslims. Police fired tear gas into the crowds, and later announced a curfew in the town.

The UN office in Colombo condemned the violence. "The United Nations urges authorities to take immediate action against perpetrators and to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas," it said in a statement Wednesday.

Denmark and Norway warned their citizens in Sri Lanka about the state of emergency, saying they should be "cautious, stay away from large crowds and demonstrations, follow media and listen to advice from local authorities."

The Norwegian foreign ministry urged people "to stay in touch with family and relatives in Norway."

Sri Lanka has long been divided between the majority Sinhalese, who are overwhelmingly Buddhist, and minority Tamils who are Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The country remains deeply scarred by its 1983-2009 civil war, when Tamil rebels fought to create an independent homeland.

While the rebels were eventually crushed, the Buddhist-Muslim religious divide has taken hold in recent years.
A daytime curfew was relaxed on Thursday in the troubled Sri Lankan district of Kandy where three people were killed in anti-Muslim riots, but schools remained closed as beefed-up security forces patrolled the streets.



More than 200 homes, businesses and vehicles were set ablaze during three days of violence sparked by the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority at the hands of a Muslim mob last week.

The unrest began in the central district on Monday and escalated the following day when a Muslim man was found dead in a burned building.

A 24-hour curfew was imposed on Wednesday afternoon after a hand grenade exploded in the hands of an attacker, killing him and wounding 11 others, officials said.

But following a calm night, authorities decided to ease the curfew six hours earlier than planned, police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said.

The Kandy region, 115 km (72 miles) east of the capital Colombo, is popular with tourists as well as Buddhist pilgrims.

Holidaymakers have been urged to avoid the hill resort but no foreigners have been reported involved in the unrest.

The government responded to the riots by ordering a nationwide state of emergency, giving security forces and police special powers to arrest and detain suspects.

Internet access was restricted in Kandy and social media websites blocked in a bid to prevent the spread of anti-Muslim hate speech.

President Maithripala Sirisena on Wednesday toured Kandy, where rioters had defied curfews and clashed with police who used tear gas to disperse them.

"I have ordered that the full force of the law be used against troublemakers," he said.

Military officials said more reinforcements were sent to the area on Wednesday night to assist police.

The United Nations has condemned the violence and urged Colombo "to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas".

Sinhalese Buddhists are the majority ethnic group in Sri Lanka, making up 75% of its 21 million people. Muslims make up 10% of the population.

Parliament on Tuesday issued an apology to the Muslim minority for the latest violence targeting them in the Indian Ocean island.

Mobs also set fire to Muslim-owned businesses and attacked a mosque in the east of the country last week.

Last November, riots in the south of the island left one man dead and homes and vehicles damaged.

In June 2014 riots between Buddhists and Muslims left four dead.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said several women had left an "indelible mark in the history of mankind" through their "exemplary deeds" and paid tribute to the late Kunwar Bai, the mascot of his flagship Clean India mission.



In a series of posts on Twitter, the prime minister also urged people to write about women who had inspired them and use the hashtag #SheInspiresMe.

Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind. They continue to inspire generations. I urge you to write about some women who inspire you. #SheInspiresMe, Modi tweeted on International Women's Day.

Lauding Kunwar Bai, who passed away at the age of 106 earlier this year, the prime minister said she sold her goats, reportedly her only asset, to build two toilets at her home in Chhattisgarh's Kotabharri village.

Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat (Clean India) cannot be forgotten, he said and added that he was deeply inspired by her noble gesture.

I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bai's blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapu's dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe, Modi added.

The prime minister also shared photographs and a video clip of him felicitating Kunwar Bai during a programme in the state two years ago.
The Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned till noon on Thursday as members from various parties, including NDA ally the TDP and the AIADMK, continued their protests on various issues for the fourth consecutive day.



Members from the TDP, AIADMK, TRS and the TMC trooped into the Well, with many holding placards and raising slogans.

While the TDP was demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh, the AIADMK sought immediate setting up of Cauvery River Management Board.

Members from the TRS were demanding an increase in quota.

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan extended greetings for International Women's Day being celebrated on Thursday and also read out a message.

Soon after members trooped into the Well even as Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananthkumar requested the Speaker to continue with the Question Hour.

"We are ready to discuss irregularities in the banking (sector)," the minister said.

Under Rule 193, a discussion on systemic irregularities in the banking sector over the years and its impact on Indian economy has been scheduled for Thursday in the House. As the din continued, Sumitra adjourned the proceedings till noon.

This is the fourth straight day that Question Hour has been washed out in the Lower House.

TDP leader and Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju was not present in the House even though it was the question day of the ministry.

However, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was present.

Disappointed over the Centre not granting special status to Andhra Pradesh, the TDP had late on Wednesday night announced that the party's two ministers - Raju and Y S Chowdary - would resign from the central government.

The protesting members were wearing stoles of their party colours. While TDP members were sporting yellow stoles, those from the TRS had donned pink scarves. AIADMK members were wearing stoles in hues of white, black and red.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena today replaced Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister amidst fresh violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Kandy district despite the imposition of nationwide emergency.



Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) was sworn in this morning as the new minister in charge of the police.

Wickremesinghe's 11-day tenure as the law and order minister was marred by racial tension in the central district of Kandy since Monday.

Muslim owned businesses and religious sites came under attack from majority Sinhala mobs, forcing the government to enforce the curfew.

The Sri Lankan government yesterday suspended internet services and blocked access to social networking websites and messaging platforms like Whatsapp in the riot-hit areas.

Following the incidents of violence, President Sirisena on Tuesday declared a state of emergency and deployed police in the area.

A daytime curfew was relaxed today in Kandy where three people were killed in riots.

"In accordance with the people's request to remove the curfew for a short period to attend their essential activities including purchasing of food and other items, President Maithripala Sirisena has decided to remove the curfew from 10:00 am and re-impose at 6:00 pm in the Kandy district," Director General of Government Information Sudarshana Gunawardhana said in a statement.

The leader of the main Tamil party TNA R Sampanthan questioned the inaction of law enforcement authorities in response to the attacks on Muslim establishments.

Speaking in parliament, Sampanthan, who is also the leader of the Opposition, said such incidents are clearly unacceptable and is indicative of the sense of impunity.

"People seem to have the confidence that they can engage in such acts and that the arm of the law would not reach them; that the Rule of Law would not be enforced against them," Sampanthan said.

Kandy, the country's second largest with a population of around 125,000, is an important religious centre for Buddhists and is home to numerous monasteries and temple complexes.

Sinhalese Buddhists make up about 75 per cent of the population in Kandy.

The violence in Kandy reportedly triggered by an isolated incident on March 4, when a taxi carrying four Muslim men collided with a van driven by a young Buddhist man, according to local police.

The Buddhist man was assaulted with an iron bar and succumbed to his injuries in hospital, police confirmed.

The four Muslim men have since been arrested and remain in police custody.

Tensions between Muslim groups and the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community in the country have escalated since the end of the civil war in May 2009.

In 2014, violence directed against Muslim minority groups broke out in the southwestern town of Aluthgama, following a rally by hardline Buddhist nationalist monks, resulting in the death of at least three Muslims.
A statue of Lord Hanuman was desecrated in Uttar Pradesh's Kharuav village, triggering tension in the area, police said on Thursday.



The incident comes amid an ongoing spate of incidents targeting statues and busts of known figures across the country.

Station House Officer, Nagra, Ram Dinesh Tiwari, said the statue was damaged on Wednesday and a poster was also found pasted on it.

The police have lodged a case against unidentified persons on a complaint by Kharuav village chief Dushyant Singh, he said.

The officer said that the matter is being investigated. No arrests have been made, Tiwari, said.

The vandalisation of the Hanuman statue comes after a series of incidents targeting statues and busts across the country.

In Kolkata, a bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged on Wednesday following the razing of statues of Soviet icon Vladimir Illyich Lenin in Tripura.

The bust of Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadu's Vellore was also desecrated triggering widespread protests across the state.
The Supreme Court on Thursday restored marriage of a Kerala woman, Hadiya alias Akhila with a Muslim man, Shafin Jahan, by setting aside the May 24, 2017 High Court judgement that termed the matrimonial alliance as an instance of 'Love Jihad'.



"Marriage and intimacy of relationship are the core of plurality in India, we can't go into psychological and nuerological aspects of marriage being valid or not, so far it involved two consenting adults" a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.

The court, however, allowed the NIA to continue its probe for any criminality in accordance with law, after Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh submitted their investigation was over except interrogation of two persons who left the country against whom lookout circular was issued.

Senior advocate Shyam Divan, appearing for 25-year-old girl's father Asokan K M, contended her marriage entered upon on December 19, 2016 during the habeas corpus proceedings before the HC, was sham and the husband was merely a stooge to keep her beyond the parents and the court.

He contended the marriage in the case was a fraud as she was trapped into the well-oiled conversion machinery operating over there for trafficking of people to Syria and Yemen.

"These arguments do not impress us. Can we use our extra-ordinary power to get into personal relationship," the bench said, adding if marriage is disguise to commit an offence, the offender may be arrested.

The bench said we had directed the personal presence of Hadiya alias Akhila and she appeared before this court on November 27, last and admitted her marriage with Shafin Jahan.

"We hold that the HC should not have annulled the marriage between Shafin Jahan and Hadiya alias Akhila in a habeas corpus petition," the bench said, in its brief order.

The court said its detailed judgement would be delivered later. Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, along with Indira Jaising, appearing for the husband, contended no third party can question marriage between consenting adults as it would violate their right to privacy and liberty.

"An adult woman can't be vilified by questioning her mental status or choice," they said.
The Karnataka government on Thursday took a historic decision to have a separate state flag. The Karnataka flag will be yellow, white and red with the state's emblem - Gandaberunda - at its centre.



"The long-pending demand for a separate state flag has finally been realised with the unanimous support from all quarters," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said after chairing a meeting with representatives of Kannada organisations, littArateurs and others in Bengaluru.

The move is seen as a strategy adopted by the Congress to tap into local Kannada pride ahead of the state Assembly elections.

A nine-member panel headed by the Secretary, Department of Kannada and Culture recently submitted its report to the government with a recommendation that Karnataka has a tricolour state flag.

However, some pro-Kannada organisations were not happy. They wanted the yellow and red "Kannada flag" that is hoisted on November 1 every year to commemorate the state formation day be declared the official Karnataka flag.

The Cabinet had recently authorised Siddaramaiah to hold talks with the organisations and arrive at a consensus. "The recommendation of the expert committee to have a tricolour with the state emblem in the middle has been accepted unanimously," Siddaramaiah said, unveiling the flag before the media.

An expert committee was constituted following representation from journalist and writer Patil Puttappa that the state has its own flag.

In the tricolour stage flag, white symbolises peace with the state emblem. While yellow symbolises the auspiciousness and well-being of Kannadigas, red symbolises courage, the chief minister said.

"As the state government has no power to announce its state flag, a proposal in this regard will be sent to the Union government. We will urge the Centre to approve the proposal and make an official announcement at the earliest," Siddaramaiah said.

If the Ministry for Home Affairs (MHA) agrees to the proposal, Karnataka will be the second state in the country, after Jammu and Kashmir, to have a separate state flag. "There is no objection for states to have a separate flag in the Constitution. But the state flag will always fly below the national flag," Siddaramaiah said.

In 2012, the then BJP government headed by D V Sadananda Gowda accorded official status to the state flag through a notification making the hoisting of the state flag on government buildings, schools and colleges mandatory on the occasion of the state formation day. The notification was withdrawn after the Karnataka High Court raised questions on the legality of states having their own flags.
A cargo plane of the United States made an emergency landing at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai following hydraulic failure.

UPS Airlines flight no 015 was returning from Bangkok when it had to opt for emergency landing.

"Full emergency was declared for UPS 015 from Bangkok due to hydraulic failure," a spokesperson of the Mumbai International Airport Ltd said.

According to the spokesperson, it was a Boeing-737. The aircraft was reported to have blocked the main runway for a short period before being removed.
Indian Steel Association has raised concerns that the US move to raise import tariffs will encourage surplus nations to divert their steel exports to consuming nations like India affecting the local markets.



ISA represents major public and private sector steel players in the country.

US President Donald Trump said on March 1 that he would impose 25 percent import tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminium to protect US producers.

The apex industry body has raised concerns that imposition of steep tariffs on import by the US will adversely affect the domestic steel industry.

"Tariffs by the US will inevitably encourage steel-surplus nations to divert their exports to vibrant consumption centres like India and distort our domestic markets considerably," ISA said.

Its Secretary General Bhaskar Chatterjee said clubbing India with other steel surplus countries is "not appropriate". Inclusion of India among several others is not desirable as a policy. This adversely dents the growth prospects of a developing country like India whose production and consumption is inward-looking.

He further said that despite being the third largest producer of steel in the world, with 12 percent share of global non-Chinese production, India has only a 2.7 percent share in US imports.

"A total of 16 trade remedies are already in place in the US against Indian steel companies, which include 10 anti-dumping duties and 6 countervailing duties. This includes a variety of steel products such as corrosion-resistant steel, cold-rolled steel flat products, certain hot-rolled carbon steel flat products...," he said.

It is understandable that steel is an important material used for manufacturing military's combat vehicles, a country would like protect its industry from the threat to national security, Chatterjee said.

"However, Indian steel companies exporting to the US have always done so legitimately in line with global trade regulations and WTO framework. It is for a reason that in December 2016, the US bestowed the privileged status of 'Major Defence Partner' on India, which is a position unique to India," he added.
Opposition National Conference working president Omar Abdullah today accused the Jammu and Kashmir government of putting the Shopian firing incident, involving a senior Army officer, into cold storage.



The former chief minister claimed that the state government has come under pressure on the issue of filing an FIR against Army officer in the incident.

Omar's remarks has come days after the Supreme Court halted further investigation in the January 27 Shopian firing incident involving a senior Army officer, in which three persons were killed.

We have said that this incident should be probed thoroughly because there is a difference between what the army has said and the statement which came from the government. People want (to know) the truth and that is our demand. If there is some mistake, it should be accounted for, Omar told reporters at Anantnag in south Kashmir.

The state government, which has registered a case against the Army convoy allegedly led by Major Aditya Kumar, had told the apex court that the FIR does not mention the officer's name.

Reacting to the government's submission in the top court, Omar said he was surprised over what the state government has said in the Supreme Court.

FIR copy is there to see. It is not something which is a secret. We live in an age of social media, everyone knows what is mentioned there," the former J-K chief minister said.

Omar also questioned state's Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti's commitment on the issue.

What about the chief minister's commitment in the assembly because she made commitments not once but twice, saying the FIR will be taken to its logical conclusion, but they said a different thing in the Supreme Court. So, I think the state government has come under pressure and it is trying to put this issue in cold storage, he said.
The Indian Railways on Thursday celebrated Women's Day with several special initiatives ranging from allowing only women to man railway stations to deploying only women TTEs on board a train.



An all-woman team ran the Deccan Queen Express on the occasion, while an all-woman TTE team managed the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi, a statement from the national transporter said.

The Matunga station of the Central Railway become the first station to be operated by an all-women staff.

Matunga Road railway station of the Western Railway was operated by an all-women staff on Thursday.

Apart from this, Maninagar Station became the first station of Gujarat to be manned by an all-women staff.

The Railways also hailed the contribution of its first woman loco driver, Surekha Yadav, who, it said, paved the way for many others to follow suit.

Surekha, the first woman loco pilot, took on this difficult task three decades ago.

"She became the first woman rail driver of the Indian Railways in 1989," the statement said.

It also hailed the Vandana Chaturvedi from Bhopal who joined as the first woman guard of the Railways on April 19, 1990.

Automatic sanitary napkin vending machines were also inaugurated at Delhi Junction and Hazrat Nizamuddin railway stations, the railway ministry said.
Fullerton India Credit Company Limited (Fullerton India), a non-banking financial company (NBFC), on International Women's Day, Thursday, announced the launch of 'Samriddhi Loan' a a personal loan specially designed for its select Solidarity Group Loan borrowers with a good repayment track record of 24 months.

Fullerton India's rural business under the brand name a Gramshakti, offers Solidarity Group Loans exclusively to women entrepreneurs in rural India to start their business ventures and support their families.

Samriddhi Loan is a pre-approved personal loan with the ticket size ranging from Rs 45,000 to Rs 85,000, depending on the existing Solidarity Group Loan quantum borrowed. All applicants with an annual income of Rs 1.6 lakh and above, and with a good track record, are eligible for Samriddhi loans, a company statement said.

Vishal Wadhwa, Head of Rural Business, Fullerton India, said, "The launch of Samriddhi Loan is another step towards assisting enterprising women borrowers in rural areas establish an independent identity, expand their sources of livelihood, and fulfil their aspirations. Through Samriddhi Loan, we are re-establishing our faith on our existing Solidarity Group Loan customers, who have been regular in their repayments. Since these borrowers are preregistered, the sanction process is fast and hassle-free"

Borrowers can avail Samriddhi Loan from any of the Gramshakti branches located across Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Microsoft has announced the expansion of the Microsoft Intelligent Network for eyecare (MINE), now AI Network for Healthcare, to create an AI-focused network in cardiology, in partnership with Apollo Hospitals.

The AI Network for healthcare is part of Microsoft Healthcare NExT aimed to accelerate healthcare innovation through artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

The partnership between Microsoft and Apollo will work to develop and deploy new machine learning models to predict patient risk for heart disease and assists doctors on treatment plans. The team is already working on an AI-powered Cardio API (application program interface) platform, a company release said.

"AI Network for healthcare aims to democratise artificial intelligence by empowering healthcare providers with faster, intuitive and predictable solutions and reducing the disease burden. Our unique partnership with Apollo brings together our learnings in artificial intelligence and machine learning areas and Apollo's experience and expertise in cardiology. The systems of intelligence we create can change the lives of patients and the work of medical practitioners enabling accessible healthcare to all," said Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President, AI & Research, Microsoft.

"This collaboration marks a paradigm shift for patients and the management of non-communicable diseases the world over. This collaboration with Microsoft's path-breaking technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will help better predict, prevent and manage heart disease in the country. While we commence this in India, we will validate the algorithms and work towards creating a global consortium to tackle multiple conditions in cardiovascular disease," said Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals.
Expelled member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Maulana Salman Nadvi, today announced he is setting up a 'Manavta Kalyan Board' with an aim to spread the message of humanity in the society.



"I am constituting the board to spread message of humanity. It will have members of all the religions. The objective is to stand united where ever there is an atrocity on anyone irrespective of his caste," Nadvi told reporters here.

He said that while the AIMPLB was for issues related to personal laws, there was a need to constitute a board, from where the voice of the oppressed could be raised.

Not only Muslims, people of all religions can raise their voice from this forum, he said.

"There was no such platform after 1947 from where issues related to all castes and religions were taken and attempts could be made to resolve contentious issues," he said.

Asked about the Ayodhya issue, Nadvi said the issue was not on his agenda at present.

"I tried for an amicable solution but both the communities are not ready," he said.

In February, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) had expelled Nadvi, who expressed his view that shifting of the Babri mosque was permissible.

"The atmosphere should be good (between the two communities)...There is permission for this in the Sharia. As per the Hanbali school of (Islamic) thought, a mosque can be shifted," Nadvi had said.

The proposed Manavta Kalyan Board will have a former chief justice as its president and will have separate committees for society reform, legal assistance, medical help, women's rights, children's rights and an application bench beside others.
President Donald Trump is scheduled to announce new steel and aluminum tariffs from the White House at 3:30 p.m. local time.

What is President Trump going to announce?

Trade officials have said the president will impose across-the-board tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which will go into effect between 15 and 30 days from now. He would temporarily exempt Canada and Mexico, according to Trump adviser Peter Navarro, although President Trump has tied this to a renegotiation of NAFTA. As of this writing, the full details remain in flux.

Who would affected by across-the-board tariffs?

The top 10 steel exporters to the U.S. are, in order: Canada, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and India. Eleventh-ranked China accounts for about two to three percent of U.S. steel imports.

How will this affect U.S. workers and consumers?

Tariffs raise the cost of imported goods, often with the intention of preserving jobs U.S. industries. This means higher costs for everyone purchasing anything made with steel or aluminum, from canned food and drinks to automobiles. Tariffs are taxes that make U.S. businesses less competitive and U.S. consumers poorer, according to a letter that more than 100 congressional Republicans sent to President Trump.

This has unintended consequences, since businesses that purchase steel employ 16-times as many Americans (6.5 million) as steel producers (400,000). The Mercatus Centers Veronique de Rugy has predicted the tariffs will result in thousands of net job losses.

Among the largest consumers of steel and aluminum are defense industries like the aerospace sector and shipbuilders  industries vital to national security.

Has this been tried before?

Hasnt everything? In 2002, George W. Bush slapped tariffs on imported steel after a string of U.S. steel bankruptcies. However, he revoked them 18 months into their three-year term, after a government report found that tariffs cost Americans an estimated annual GDP loss of $30.4 million. About one-third of U.S. industries struggled to obtain the steel they needed, especially the steel fabrication, motor vehicle, motor vehicle parts, furniture, and canning industries. Americans paid an estimated $400,000 for each steel job saved, according to the Peterson Institute for Economic Affairs.

Is this the beginning of a trade war?

It could be. The EU has announced it will retaliate by raising tariffs against 2.8 billion ($3.5 billion) worth of U.S. goods. The four-page list of targeted industries, drawn up before the presidents announcement, is designed to exert maximum pressure on Congressional leaders, taxing Harley Davidson motorcycles produced in Paul Ryans Wisconsin and bourbon from Mitch McConnells Kentucky. Other made-in-America products on the list include steel, clothing, make up, yachts, kidney beans, rice, cranberries, orange juice, sweet corn, peanut butter, and tobacco products.

How can the president do this without congressional approval?

President Trump has invoked Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. Passed in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the seldom-used measure allows the president to impose tariffs if he deems it necessary for national security. President Trump has said preserving the U.S. steel industry is a vital national security concern. Congress has steadily ceded more of its power to the executive branch over the last century.

Do current steel imports threaten national security?

Its hard to see how. The U.S. steel industry supplied 73 percent of the domestic market last year. The two trading partners with the most strained relations  China and Russia  represent 11 percent of all steel imports.

How are U.S. allies responding?

Americas transatlantic allies arent buying the presidents rationale. We cannot see how the EU, friends, allies in NATO, can be a threat to security in the U.S., said EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom. German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries agreed, It is not credible that European or German steel imports should endanger the national security of the U.S.

Some have responded in warlike terms. Malmstrom promised the EU will take a firm and proportionate response, and Zypries said Europe will reply proportionately  the kind of language political leaders use after terrorist attacks. That may explain why Ludwig von Mises wrote, Economic nationalism is incompatible with durable peace.

Others warned of a deepening rift. UK Prime Minister Theresa May expressed deep concern over the tariffs in a phone call with Trump on Sunday, adding that multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of Chinese steel overcapacity.

Inverting President Trumps tweet, European Council President Donald Tusk replied, Trade wars are bad and easy to lose, and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde warned that nobody wins a trade war.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pointedly denounced the entire trade war process last Friday in Hamburg:

Now we will also impose import tariffs. This is basically a stupid process  the fact that we have to do this  but we have to do it.  We can also do stupid. We also have to be this stupid.

How will this affect our Asian allies?

The U.S. has a longstanding obligation to support Taiwan in any potential war with China, yet Taiwan exports more steel to the U.S. than the mainland. Ironically, an across-the-board tariff could hurt Taipei more than Beijing. Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said he may export more steel to Russia, instead. That certainly has national security implications.

Why should Christians care?

Raising the price of canned food and drinks disproportionately hurts the poor. Straining relations with U.S. allies and potentially hurting defense industries makes the nation less safe. And, if job loss estimates prove accurate, the resultant unemployment will reduce family well-being, harm whole communities, and deplete the funds available for charity or church work.

(Photo credit: Michael Vadon. CC BY-SA 4.0.)
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Thursday defended to the European Union's executive court reforms made by his ruling nationalists and warned that too much criticism from the bloc could backfire.



Morawiecki is meeting European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, the latest high-level contact between Warsaw and Brussels in recent months aimed at resolving a dispute over EU concerns about democracy in Poland.

Juncker offered a brief bear hug on receiving Morawiecki, who is presenting Warsaw's 'white paper' on the judicial overhaul.

The overhaul has been criticised by civil society campaigners, international democracy watchdogs, the EU and opposition parties in Poland for making the courts submit to more government control.

The document says the reforms were needed to improve efficiency and remove judges "entangled in dishonourable service" in Poland's communist government, which fell in 1989.

But it also warns western, more liberal EU states not to push Warsaw too much on the issue because of "strengthening anti-European sentiment that has been more ... apparent for the last years."

"It can lead to the growth of populist political forces, seeking to dismantle or weaken ... the European Union," said the document, circulated by the Polish government. An EU spokeswoman later said the bloc had received it and dialogue would continue.

Brussels last year launched a scheme to penalize Warsaw and force it to change tack on its media and court reforms imposed since the Law and Justice (PiS) party took power in 2015.

Hungary, a eurosceptic Polish ally, has vowed to block what could be the top sanction under the so-called Article 7 procedure - stripping Poland of its vote on EU affairs.

But even the fact the threat is on the table and being debated by the other 27 EU states is an embarrassment for Warsaw, which views itself as a leader of ex-communist EU countries.

The Polish document says triggering Article 7 was not justified and for now, Morawiecki has won time with the bloc by reopening dialogue with the EU on the matter. Poland is also at odds with the bloc EU over migration and environment policies.

Poland's new willingnes to talk came as the EU is embarking on difficult negotiations over its next, long-term budget and some net payers want to cut the bloc's generous handouts to countries not respecting the bloc's fundamental values.

Poland is currently the main beneficiary of EU money and risks losing billions of euros in the dispute over the rule of law.

The EU's management of eurosceptic and populist governments, including in member states like Poland and Hungary, has emerged as a key challenge for the bloc after Brexit.
The CRPF has for the first time set up three permanent camps in the Maoist hotbed of Abujhmadh forests in Chhattisgarh to launch 'surgical' operations against the ultras, a year after it lost 37 personnel in two ambushes.



The paramilitary force, along with contingents of the state police, has set up three bases in the dense and remote jungles of the 4,000 sq km region which essentially means 'abujh' (unknown) and 'madh' (hill).

Till now, the security forces used to undertake patrols inside the Abujhmadh jungle area in the Bastar region, camp there for few days and come back as they had no support system to stay in the jungle for long.

To make their presence felt in the area, the first camp, identified as 'P', has been established in close vicinity of the Indravati river.

Officials privy to the development said the strength of each camp was about 100 personnel.

The camps have been created as part of the 'Operation Madh' (Abujhmadh) being carried out by the CRPF and other security forces for the last few years to target Naxal cadres who hide or move in this area.

Last year, the CRPF lost 37 personnel in two ambushes (March-April) in the Sukma district and since then it was decided to intensify the operations by entering into unchartered territories of the Naxal violence-hit areas, the sources said.

The three permanent camps are located in the areas that connect Narayanpur, Bijapur and Basroor regions to the Abujhmadh forest, they said.

The exact location and names of the camps have not been disclosed due to security reasons.

Officials said a good amount of arms and ammunition, mini-Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for reconnaissance, tonnes of ration and medicines have been made available at these camps so that the troops can sustain themselves independently for a few days and carry out operations.

The camps are being fortified with the help of the engineering and construction wing of the security forces, they said.

Road and aerial links have been established with the nearest security camps and local police stations so that supplies and reinforcements can be sent to these three bases, they said.

"The idea is to launch surgical operations in the Abujhmadh area as due to its acute under-development, remoteness and dense forest cover it has become the hotbed for the stay and movement of Naxal cadres," a senior officer said on the condition of anonymity.

The main challenge for anti-Naxal operations now is the Bastar region, they said.

The Bastar region comprises the Sukma, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur and Kondagon districts, and Abujhmadh is the common link.

"Few encounters have taken place in the area since the camps were established. They (Naxals) know that we are here now.

"The troops based in these camps are drawn from some of the best units of the CRPF and its jungle warfare squad CoBRA. Good fighters from the state police and its commando teams are also in the contingent," the officer said.

Officials said the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the state government plan to create more such camps in this area so that not only quality operations are launched but also development works for the tribals and locals living in these forests can be ushered in.

The camps will also help the Chhattisgarh government in finishing its maiden revenue survey exercise, launched last year, to compile land holding data of the area, they said.

As per official data, the Abujhmadh region has about 36 village panchayats in which 207 villages are populated while 30 others are deserted.

The region is about 350 km from state capital Raipur and has been largely unexplored for all these years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's special insight on International Women's Day was to stress on the role that mother-in-laws can play in protecting the girl child.



"A mother-in-law can make a lot of difference. If she says she wants a daughter in the house, then no one will be able to hassle a daughter," he said.

The prime minister was speaking at a ceremony om Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district to expand the 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' (BBBP) programme from the existing 161 districts to 640 districts all over the country.

At the event, he spoke about the power of women and distributed certificates to the best-performing districts under BBBP.

Modi also launched the National Nutrition Mission (NNM), which was followed by the launch of NNMaICDS Common Application Software.

The mission strives to reduce poor nutrition and low birth weight, bring down anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls and to reduce the prevalence of stunting among children.

In his speech, the prime minister also showed concern for the girls in Haryana, a state where the sex ration is skewed.

However, he said, there was some consolation that even though the situation is still quite bad, significant improvement has been noted.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi, who was also present during the launch, said that a "historic" bill would be introduced in Parliament to check trafficking of women and children.

Modi also honoured the district administrations of Sikar and Jhunjhunu for improving the sex-ratio.

Jhunjhunu was slumming it at the bottom of the list when it came to sex ratio.

Before the BBBP campaign, the sex ratio in the district was alarming. In 2011, there were only 848 females for 1,000 males, which fortunately has gone up further to 952:1000, he said.

The prime minister's visit assumes significance as the state is going to Assembly polls seven months from now, and with a miserable victory in the by-polls just a month ago, the prospects do not look too great.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister also held a public rally with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, where he interacted with women and girls who have benefitedfrom BBBP.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today called upon all regional parties to come together to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections next year after the TDP decided to pull out its ministers from the Union government.



Banerjee also mocked at the BJP over its "dream" of capturing power in West Bengal, and said it should first concentrate on retaining power at the Centre as the "alarm bells have already started ringing".

"All the regional parties should come together to defeat the BJP in 2019 (Lok Sabha poll)," she told an International Women's Day rally organized by her Trinamool Congress here.

"Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out," she said.

Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu yesterday decided to pull out the two TDP ministers in the Modi government, saying the party took the "painful decision in the interest of the state" as it was left with "no other option".

The ruling TDP has been demanding special category status for Andhra Pradesh. "The BJP will be defeated in 2019. Instead of dreaming about capturing power in Bengal, they should look at themselves and see whether they can retain power at the Centre," she said.

Banerjee said the BJP should not be elated over the victory in Tripura and alleged it won the Assembly polls there through "misuse of central forces and money power".

The BJP, she said, won in Tripura because the ruling CPI(M) could not put up a fight and surrendered before the saffron brigade. She, however, noted that the Left party, which was in power for 25 years, secured over 45 percent of the votes polled.

The TMC supremo also criticised vandalisation of statutes of political icons and social reformers.

Referring to the defiling of the bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookherjee in Kolkata by activists of a left-wing organisation, she said a few people are trying to sully the reputation of the state by engaging in such activities.

Banerjee alleged that the BJP was trying to instigate riots in the state and said: "We should go all out to protect communal harmony".

She said women needed to take the initiative to protect communal harmony.
Fugitive mob boss Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla was a facilitator for those key accused who left the country before and after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, officials said on Thursday.



They also said Takla used to facilitate the travel of men from Dubai to Karachi without immigration checks, for their training in making bombs and use of sophisticated weapons.

Takla, 57, was arrested in Delhi by the CBI on Thursday upon his arrival from Dubai.

He was a hawala operator in the Gulf since early 1990s and had not taken shelter in Pakistan, like his mentor Dawood, a security official said.

The gangster had left Mumbai after a bitter rivalry with the Arun Gawli gang.

In September 1992, Shailesh Haldankar of the Gawli gang was killed by the Dawood group while he was recuperating in JJ hospital.

It was allegedly done to revenge the killing of Dawood's brother-in-law Ibrahim Parker, who was killed near his residence in 1992 allegedly by two members of the Gawli gang.

Takla was a key facilitator for stay and opening businesses for all the 1993 Mumbai blasts accused, who had left India before and after the attacks in the metropolis, the official said.

While Dawood and his family, another Mumbai blasts accused Tiger Memon and his family had left Dubai after a few years and taken shelter in Pakistan, Takla continued to live in the Gulf with his ever-increasing 'hawala' trading, another official said.

Takla has been mostly operating from Dubai and a few other places in the Gulf with an assumed name.

The CBI had got the Interpol to issue a Red Corner Notice against Takla in 1995.

Mohammed Farooq, better known as Farooq Takla, arrived in Delhi from Dubai and was arrested by the CBI when he was at an immigration counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport this morning.

While the CBI declined to comment on how he reached Delhi as an Interpol Red Corner notice was pending against him, officials said Farooq was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi.

Officials said India's engagements with West Asia have increased in last few years and the results were showing with the deportation of several gangsters and wanted terrorists in recent past.

Police officials in Mumbai who investigated the 1993 serial blasts case said Farooq was a big catch for the probe agencies as he was among those who were aware of the serial blasts conspiracy.

Dawood and Tiger Memon had sent some people to Dubai from India much before the serial blasts, to provide logistical support to those who were to be trained for executing the blasts.

Farooq used to send men from Dubai to Karachi and back, without immigration checks with the help of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, claimed Suresh Walishetty, a retired assistant commissioner of police, who was one of the investigating officers in the serial blasts case.

Farooq, who was camping in Dubai, used to take men to Karachi and from there to the training centres, he claimed.

These men were then provided training by the ISI about planting a bomb, mixing RDX (an explosive) and firing with sophisticated weapons, Walishetty said.

After completion of the training, it was Farooq's responsibility to take them to the Karachi airport and bring them to Dubai without any stamp on their passports, he said.

Because of this, investigators of Mumbai police were not able to collect evidence of the movement of men from Dubai to Karachi for the training purpose, he said.

Farooq would be produced before the designated court hearing the case of 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai.

The blasts shook the financial capital of the country, leaving 257 dead and damaging property to the tune of Rs 82 crore.

Immediately after the blasts, Dawood, who was the main accused in the case, and others escaped to Dubai and later to Pakistan.

India's sustained campaign against Dawood was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US Treasury department declared him a global terrorist having links with al-Qaeda. He also faces sanctions from the United Nations under its anti-terror resolution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the treasury department had said he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.
State BJP president Yeddyurappa today lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over deteriorating law and order in Karnataka and said the chief minister was running the state like 'Tughlaq darbar" ahead of the state assembly polls.



His remarks come a day after the state's most senior anti-corruption officer P Vishwanatha Shetty was hospitalised after he was stabbed repeatedly at his office in Bengaluru.

"By God's grace, he (Shetty) is still alive. I dont know how Siddaramaiah reacts to such incidents. When there is no safety for high-rank officers, will there be for ordinary people? The law and order has completely collapsed," Yeddyurappa told reporters.

He said the chief minister claimed that his government was number one. But it seems the government is number one is in terms of atrocities on women and breakdown of law and order in the state, the BJP leader said.

"It seems Siddaramaiah is running the government like a Tughlaq darbar. We have to bear it for two months," he said.

Yeddyurappa, BJP's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming Karnataka assembly polls, exuded confidence that his party would win more than 150 seats and form the government.

He also said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to visit Raichur on March 13 for the inauguration of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

Yeddyurappa was in the national capital to meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to request for inclusion of Talavara and Parivara tribal communities in the list of the Scheduled Tribes (STs). He also met Union Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda on the arecanut issue.

"On April 19, 1991, the Centre had included Nayak, Weda and Valmiki communities in the ST list but not Parivara and Talavara tribes. We met the home minister and asked him to include these two communities in the ST list," he said.

The home minister has assured that the issue will be resolved at the earliest, he added.

On the areca nut issue, the state BJP chief said the central government has been asked to clear concerns over quality of areca nut and protect the interest of farmers.

"Areca nut (supari) is being grown and consumed for ages. Some concerns were raised by Congress on its quality in Lok Sabha and that has affected farmers. There is no such content in areca nut which is harmful to health," he added.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar among other party members were part of the two meetings.
In a tit for tat move, BJP ministers Kamineni Srinivas Rao (medical and health) and P Manikyala Rao (endowments) submitted their resignation letters to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in Amaravati on Thursday.



The ministers, who skipped the cabinet meeting, met Naidu in his chambers in the Assembly and handed over the letters. They thanked the CM for the opportunity given to them to serve as ministers for nearly four years. Naidu also appreciated them for working efficiently along with TDP ministers.

They later shared their emotional bond with the CM and the fellow ministers during the period. Kamineni was all praise for Naidu for his hard work and dedication. Manikyala Rao said Naidu made him computer literate. He told the media that earlier he could only make phone calls from his smart phone, but now operates a laptop, thanks to the encouragement by Naidu. He remembered the paperless cabinet meetings, a brain child of Naidu

'No central neglect'

However, in a sudden turn of events hours after the resignations, a BJP delegation led by Kamineni Srinivasa Rao visited the construction site of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) near Mangalagiri in Guntur district to review its progress. "The construction of seven blocks has been going on, on a war footing," Rao said pointing out that the union government has never neglected projects in the state. The state unit members will be visiting all the projects undertaken during the past four years with central assistance.
When Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told the electorate at a rally here that it was he and not Upendra Shukla, the BJP nominee, who was contesting the elections, he was only underlining the importance of Lok Sabha bypoll from Gorakhpur, his home turf, the result of which could well set the tone for the bigger battle ahead in 2019.



For Adityanath, who was also the 'mahant' (head) of the famous and revered Gorakhnath Temple here, the forthcoming electoral battle is a matter of prestige and he has taken it upon himself to ensure that saffron reign continues in the constituency.

Upendra Shukla is not from the Gorakhnath temple. His candidature may have ended a 29-year-long relationship between the Gorakhpur LS constituency and the temple, but for many in the town and elsewhere, 'Maharaj ji' (as Yogi is addressed here) still calls the shots here.

"Whoever contests from Gorakhpur, people vote on the directions of the temple," says Avinash Upadhyaya, a resident of Kuraghat in the town.

Adityanath's rivals agree only partially. "It's not the same this time. Neither Adityanath nor any representative of the temple is in the fray in this polls," says Samajwadi Party candidate Praveen Nishad.

Even a section of local BJP leaders admits that the saffron party will win the seat hands down if someone from the temple is in the fray. There are also murmurs in the BJP that Shukla does not have good relations with Adityanath.

The BSP's decision to support the Samajwadi Party has only complicated the matter for BJP and Adityanath knows it well. No wonder he has been attacking the undeclared alliance with all his might.

Adityanath had secured over 51% votes in 2014 LS polls and won by more than three lakh votes. Even the combined vote share of BSP-SP was a little over 38%.

In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in four of the five segments of LS constituency, the combined vote share of SP-BSP was, however, much more than BJP's.

Caste equations

As is elsewhere, caste equations are likely to play an important role. The Nishad (boatmen) community numbers around four lakh, the biggest electoral bloc here, and a majority of them are likely to back SP nominee Sanjay Nishad, though the BJP claims otherwise.

Yadavs, who number around 1.6 lakh, are also likely to root for the SP. The 1.5 lakh Muslim votes may be split as the Congress has fielded a Muslim candidate in Dr Surhita Kareem, though local analysts say the community will support a candidate who is in a better position to defeat the BJP.

The Congress does not seem to be a factor here. Its nominees have lost their security deposits in the six previous Lok Sabha polls.

Rural challenge

While the BJP enjoys overwhelming support in the city, it will face the real challenge in the rural areas of Pipraich, Sahjanwan and others.

The declaration of support by some smaller caste-based outfits like the Peace Party and Nishad Party is also a cause of worry for the BJP here. In fact, the caste equations here have prompted the BJP to field a Brahmin as it does not want to "annoy" the 1.5 lakh Brahmins in the constituency. The BJP had made Shiv Pratap Shukla, considered to be a rival of Yogi in Gorakhpur, a union minister after Adityanath's anointment as chief minister to placate Brahmins.

"The BJP may be in trouble if the BSP is able to transfer its votes to the SP," says Rakesh Nishad, a resident of Pipraich.

Realising the importance of the battle, Adityanath has been campaigning aggressively here. He has so far addressed around a dozen rallies and has plans to address more.

The polling is scheduled for March 11.




Today is International Womens Day, a century-old international observance of womens cultural, economic, and social achievements. Here are five facts you should know both about this global celebration:

1. The original observance, held in the United States on February 23, 1909, was created by American socialist groups and dubbed National Womans Day (singular). As scholar Temma Kaplan explains, the event was originally an attempt by socialists and anarchists to establish a secular communal tradition. The observance was picked up in Europe in 1911 and redubbed International Womans Day (also singular). The event drew socialists into the cause of womens suffragea cause they had previously rejected as being a conservative issue.

2. The most historically significant celebration of International Womans Day occurred in Russia in 1917. When Russian women marched in protest to the working and living conditions in the country, the nations leader, Czar Nicholas II, ordered the military to quash the demonstrationsand to shoot the women if they refused to comply. This event was part of the Russian Revolution that forced the czar to abdicate. In honor of the contribution of women to the revolution, Vladimir Lenin, founder of Russias Communist Party, declared Womans Day an official Soviet holiday in 1911. Until the mid-1970s, International Womens Day has be celebrated primarily in socialist and communist-controlled countries.

3. In the 1950s an apocryphal story surfaced in French Communist circles that the first womans day event was a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of a spontaneous demonstration in 1857 by female textile workers in New York City. Ironically, some groups latched on to this narrative to distance the day from the events socialist roots. But the story has no basis in fact, and there is no evidence the 1857 demonstration ever occurred.

4. In 1975, during International Womens Year, the United Nations began celebrating International Womens Day (plural) on March 8. Since then, that day has been considered the official date of observance throughout most of the world.

5. International Womens Day is an official holiday in: Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia. In China, Macedonia, Madagascar, and Nepal its a holiday for women only. In some countries, the celebration is equivalent to Mothers Day and other gift-giving holidays.
Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress President Rahul Gandhi today said there is a general atmosphere of "intimidation" in India where "nasty form of politics" of dividing people are being played to win elections.



Speaking at a panel discussion at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Gandhi also said that there is a challenge to the institutional structure of India.

"If you ask me what am I proud about my country...it is the idea of plurality. It's the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they won't face any problem and that is being challenged...," he said.

"There is a particular type of politics that's not only happening in India but in a number of places - of dividing people, of using (their) anger to win elections and that's what is happening in India," he told the audience at the school, which is part of the National University of Singapore.

Commenting on the recent controversy of four senior Supreme Court judges holding an unprecedented press conference, Gandhi said, "They actually went out to the press and said listen we need the people to hear our voice because there is something fundamentally wrong."

"I don't know if you know the details about the comments they (judges) were making but the centre of the issue is the case of (BJP president) Amit Shah. So, there is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country," he said, apparently referring to the issue of alleged mysterious death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

Shah was discharged as an accused in the case.

Gandhi alleged that there is a "very very aggressive and organised attack on the system and on the judiciary. If you speak to the press, if you talk to business people, they will also tell you that we feel intimidated. so there is a general atmosphere of intimidation."

The Congress president said that the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned was that an India where everybody is comfortable regardless of religion, community, regardless of state.

"The idea that anybody coming to India, even the foreigner coming to India, feel comfortable in the country...that idea is being challenged now," he asserted.

"Where we are running into trouble now is the levels of violence and anger that you are seeing in India and this to me is a syndrome," he said, adding that "I'm proud to say that our vision is bringing people together."

Responding to a question, Gandhi accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in anti-minorities politics.

"Mahatma Gandhi died protecting minorities. We, the Congress party, have been protecting minority people for the last 70 years. We don't like an India where people are persecuted, where people are being beaten up for what they eat, what they say and what they wear," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi controls the law making, he controls the UP police, he controls the Haryana police, he controls these things. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India," Gandhi said, without elaborating.

Asserting that "we will fight him and we will defeat him" in the election, he said "very soon you will see India where everybody is respected and everybody is loved."

He also criticised BJP's Kashmir policy, saying the UPA government had curbed terrorism by 2012 but it resurfaced after the BJP came to power in 2014.

"In 2014 when I went to Jammu and Kashmir I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can do to years and years of policy-making," he said.

The BJP has lost the touch with the people and created a strategic problem in Jammu and Kashmir, he said and underlined the need to engage people and win their trust.

He also slammed the BJP government over its "bad record" of creating jobs, saying "our record is better".

Responding to a question on International Women's Day today, Gandhi said the Congress party had sought to pass the Women's Reservation Bill but it was opposed by other parties.

On India's foreign policy, he said India has to have peaceful relations with China, the US, Europe, Asean and others. He said India and China should have a peaceful and co-operative relationship.

"One complaint I have of the BJP foreign policy in general... is that it is very tactical and episode," he said.

Answering a wide range of questions from the panel and audience, Gandhi spoke of India's advantage in connecting its skilled people through IT and manufacturing sector.

He noted Chinese manufacturing capabilities of having factory operation based on large workforce, some running into 50,000 to 100,000 which, however, was not applicable to India due to different culture of working.

He also spoke of India's potential of developing a health care for the global markets.

Gandhi is on a two-day visit to Singapore and will meet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tomorrow. He will then travel to Malaysia where he will meet Prime Minister Najib Razak and members of the Indian community.
"Don't bring to us unbelievable statistics" - this was the terse message from a Parliamentary panel to Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in its latest report on border security.



The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs led by former home minister P Chidambaram did not mince words when it wondered how terrorist attacks continued to happen in Jammu and Kashmir if security forces foiled all infiltration attempts in the past four years.

Acknowledging that the efforts taken to foil infiltration attempts had resulted in a reduction in such incidents, the panel said its main concern was with the incidents where the terrorists "successfully infiltrate" into Indian territory and carry out terror attacks.

However, the report said, "the committee also takes exception to the confusing statistics furnished by the ministry that show that all cases of infiltration were foiled in the past 4 years. If such was the case, no terrorist attack would have happened in the last three years."

"The committee strongly recommends that instead of furnishing unbelievable statistics, the Ministry should focus on further augmenting the capacity of Border Guarding Forces to make Line of Control and International Boundary a zero-tolerance area for terrorist infiltration," it said.

The comments are part of a report prepared by the panel on the action taken by the government on its earlier recommendations on "Border Security: Capacity Building and Institutions".

The report acknowledged the MHA's argument that Pakistan is making attempts to divert international attention from the internal security situation within the country to Kashmir.

The panel said India should use all diplomatic avenues to counter it.

It also said Pakistan's efforts to regulate the inflow of terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir and to foment violence in the state need to be combated/checked to eliminate any possibility of terrorist attacks there.

The panel had in last April expressed concerns over the sudden spurt in infiltration attempts on Line of Control and to this, the government has now replied that it has constructed 668.66 km long Anti-Infiltration Obstacle System along the LoC and International Border under the operational control of Army.
The CBI will seek extension of Karti Chidambaram's custody in the INX Media case for confronting him with other accused Peter and Indrani Mukerjea and chartered accountant Bhaskararaman.



The three-day CBI custody of karti, son of former finance minister P Chidambaram, is ending on Friday and he will be produced before special CBI judge Sunil Rana at 2 pm.

Sources said the agency would ask for his further custody as investigators want to confront him with the other accused. The CBI will move applications for production warrant of Peter, Indrani and Bhaskararaman.

However, it is not clear whether the agency would press for a narco-analysis test on Karti during the hearing on Friday.

The INX Media case came to the CBI after the Enforcement Directorate seized a hard disk belonging to Bhaskararaman from which invoices related to payment to firms suspected to be linked with Karti were recovered.

The CBI had last Sunday brought both Karti and Indrani, one of the former INX Media promoters who is presently in jail in connection with her daughter's murder, face to face. In a statement recorded before a magistrate, she had claimed that she and her husband Peter Mukerjea had met Chidambaram who asked them to help his son.
The CBI on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murders of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.



The move by the agency came months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of October 12 last acquitting the couple.

The CBI filed an appeal challenging the high court order , CBI's spokesperson said.

The high court had freed the couple on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

Earlier, a CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013.

Before the high court's order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars' Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially pointed at 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing, until his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak for shoddy probe, the case was referred to the CBI on the recommendation of then Chief Minister Mayawati.
The Karnataka High Court rejected a petition filed by the accused in the RSS worker Rudresh R murder case, seeking their discharge from the case.



The accused - Azim Sharief, Wasim Ahmed, Irfan Pasha, Mohammed Sadiq and Mohammed Majid Ullah - had challenged the National Investigation Agency special court's dismissal of their discharge application.

They had filed an appeal seeking release from the charges framed against them.

The counsel for the accused has claimed that the alleged act (murder) does not call for invoking provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. He also claimed that the action against them had been politically motivated.

Special Public Prosecutor P Prasanna Kumar had earlier argued that provisions of Section 15 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act lists murder as part of a terrorist activity.

A division bench comprising Justice B S Patil and Justice K S Mudagal rejected the plea on the ground that dismissal of a discharge petition by the NIA court cannot be challenged in the high court, according to Section 21 of the NIA Act, 2008. The accused were arrested on November 2016 for hacking Rudresh to death in broad daylight near Shivajinagar.
The transfer of Hassan deputy commissioner Rohini Sindhuri Dasari will be put on hold till March 13, the state government informed the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on Thursday.



The2009-batch IAS officer moved the Bengaluru bench of the CAT after the government, on Wednesday, issued an order transferring her as the Commissioner, Department of Employment and Training. This is the second time Rohini's transfer has hit a roadblock. An earlier bid to transfer her was "put on hold" by the Election Commission of India as she was then engaged in the revision of electoral rolls.

Additional Advocate General A S Ponnanna submitted before the CAT that Rohini will not be "removed" from the post of Hassan deputy commissioner till March 13. The CAT has asked the government to file objections before March 12.
 Israel-E.U. Economic Ties Increase | Main | Wheres the Coverage? Hamas-Fatah Reconciliation is Floundering 

February 20, 2018

Boston Globe Op-Ed by Stephen Kinzer Includes Israel in List of Nations in Denial



A Feb. 18, 2018 Boston Globe Op-Ed, Nations built on lies,? by Stephen Kinzer, senior fellow at Brown University, lists Austria, China, France, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States.

He writes, Wallowing in past sins is as unhealthy for nations as it is for people. Denying those sins, however, is at least as pernicious. Historical facts are stubborn. They can be interpreted in endlessly various ways, but cannot be altered. Governments do no service to their people by protecting them from the reality of their past.?

About the attitude in the United States, he hyperbolizes, It is illegal to say that our country was built on the bones of slaughtered Indians and enslaved Africans.?

About the attitude in Austria, he writes, It is illegal to say that Hitler was born here, that most Austrians were thrilled when he absorbed Austria into the Third Reich, and that he was welcomed with delirious enthusiasm when he visited in 1938.?

About the attitude in China he writes, It is illegal to say that our army conquered Tibet in the 1950s and forcibly annexed it.?

And so on.

About the attitude in Israel, he creates an entirely false picture, It is illegal to say that our country sits on land that once belonged to Arabs, or that we chased them away in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in order to make room for victims of a crime that Arabs did not commit.?

First, it is certainly not illegal in Israel, a Westernized democracy, to engage in such fringe polemics. Second, Jewish presence in the Holy Land predates Arab presence by thousands of years. And as explained in a CAMERA report,

Israel's rights of nationhood under international law [arise] out of the same post-World War I League of Nations actions that are the legal basis for Arab claims to surrounding lands. The League of Nations and later the UN both affirmed the ancient and continuous presence of the Jewish people in the land of Israel and the right of the Jews to reconstitute their national home in that country. Ignoring all this, [is the] standard cant that European anti-Semitism and the Nazi Holocaust resulted in the foisting of an alien people onto indigenous Arabs [this is] a testimony to the abandonment of objectivity and an unalloyed advocacy of Arab attitudes towards Israel and the West.

Furthermore, there is ample evidence proving that the Palestinian Arabs were not chased away in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.? In fact, there is proof that ethnic cleansing was perpetrated by Arabs upon Jews. For example, since the mid-1800's, Jews had constituted the largest single group of residents in the city of Jerusalem until the 1948 ethnic cleansing of all east Jerusalem Jews by Jordan when it gained control of east Jerusalem. This lasted until the 1967 war.

Another example is the 1929 torture (including sexual mutilation) and massacre of Hebron Jews by an armed Arab mob enraged by false accusations involving Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The result was the slaughter of 67 and wounding of 60. The Jewish community in Hebron was destroyed.

Writer Stephen Kinzer is experienced in vilifying Israel. In 2008, he blamed the murder of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy by a Palestinian on the existence of Israel. In 2011, Kinzer blamed Israel for conflicts in the Middle East.

Not coincidentally, the Boston Globes editorials and other opinion pieces on Israel have long been mainly problematic.



Posted by MK at February 20, 2018 09:18 PM

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June 1 looks to be the date Solana Beach will flip the switch on its city-run energy entity and become the first city in San Diego to break away from SDG&Es century-old monopoly.

Solana Beachs city council, in a trio of resolutions approved last week, set several key details in its long-planned energy venture, including the entitys nameSolana Energy Alliance (SEA)and giving the go-ahead for the citys energy consultant to start procuring energy.

Through the Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, also known as Community Choice Energy, Solana Beach will buy electricity on the wholesale market and sell it to the citys 7,800 energy customers at whatever rate and with as much renewable energy as it wantswithout needing approval from state utilities regulators or being beholden to shareholders, as SDG&E is.

Solana Beach teamed up last year with a pair of consultants  The Energy Authority (TEA) and Calpine Energy Solutions  to organize and operate its CCA. Calpine focuses on data management; TEA handles energy acquisition and advises the city on strategic decisions.

The exact energy rates will be set at the councils March 14 meeting, but officials last week said SEA will aim for 50 percent renewable energy as its default customer plan, compared to the 43 percent offered by SDG&E.

Even after accounting for administrative costs, nearly $3 million in state-mandated exit fees and the slightly higher percentage of renewable energy, city officials expect SEA customers to save roughly 3 percent on their energy bill while the city amasses roughly $2.7 million by the end of 2019 into a special fund that can only be used to advance the energy venture. The city council will decide how to use that moneybe it to protect against market fluctuations, expand customer savings, pay for a higher percentage of renewable energy, or invest in clean-energy infrastructure such as electric vehicle charging stations.

SEA customers will be able to choose a higher percentage of renewable energy at their own expense, similar to the EcoChoice program SDG&E quietly rolled out last year as Solana Beach became the regions first jurisdiction to take concrete steps toward creating a CCA. At 100 percent renewable, SEA customers should save roughly 3 percent compared to EcoChoice, officials say. For solar-equipped homes that generate more power than they use, SEAs rate is expected to be equal to or better than SDGEs rate.

City officials have been meeting with SDG&E for months to hash out the logistics of the transition. While SEA itself comes online on June 1, customers will not switch to the citys service until their first meter-reading in June. Customers who want to keep their SDG&E service will be able to opt out at no cost beginning in April. By state law, every ratepayer who does not opt out is automatically enrolled in SEA. Most CCAs see around a 5 percent opt-out rate.

CCA advocates say half of the Californias residents will by 2020 live in an area served by a CCA. The tally surpassed 100 cities after Los Angeles County created a CCA last year that Ventura County joined soon after.

Solana Beachs CCA will be by far the smallest. But with jurisdictions as small as Goldendale, Wash.population 3,400among TEAs clientele, officials are confident Solana Beach will be able to achieve economies of scale.

Weve already got the credit and contractual relationships in place, Jeff Fuller, a TEA consultant, told the city council Feb. 28. . Even though youre small, were able to leverage our assets across our larger client base.

The councils 3-1 decision allows TEA to make Solana Beachs first energy purchase later this month, which will cover all of the citys energy needs through the end of the year.

Taking control of energy acquisition will enable the city council to push Solana Beach toward 100 percent renewable energya centerpiece of the citys Climate Action Plan enacted last yearwithout being hamstrung by SDG&Es shareholder obligations or the dictums of utilities regulators.

And as state climate-change mandates loom a decade and two away, the Climate Action Campaign lauded Solana Beach for showing the way to a brighter, bolder, more innovative energy future.

With this step, it gives hope to all of us that we can change everything in order to slow down the greatest crisis of our time, said Sebastian Sarria, CACs clean-energy fellow.

Solana Beachs CCA contract leaves open the possibility for other North County cities to join. Del Mar, Encinitas and Carlsbad banded together last year to share the expense of a $100,000 feasibility study.

At every incremental action last year as Solana Beach pushed aggressively through exploratory phases, Mayor Ginger Marshall cast the councils sole no votes, worried by the multitude of risks and unknowns.

I hope it works out, she said Feb. 28. I would prefer to join forces with some of the other larger cities in the area who are studying their own CCAs. I just think that would be a more prudent way to go about it.  Im definitely not an energy expert, and this is all very technical and complicated. I just hate to see any of the citys funds being put to risk at the expense of saying that we are the first ones in San Diego to launch a CCA.

Learn more about Solana Beachs energy venture at www.ci.solana-beach.ca.us/cca.
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Inclusiveness: We've taken steps, but have only started the journey

More inclusive teams make more informed decisions, resulting in better business results, which attract even more diverse people and points of view.



By ANITA MCGILLIE

Skanska

McGillie

Women in Construction Week highlights how far our industry has come in the past decade. I'm proud to work for a company where women serve in roles ranging from account managers to laborers. It's not the construction industry of a generation ago, for sure.

Still, as I work to make my company the construction firm of choice for women in Seattle, I ask, how can we do more to make sure our entire construction industry offers fun and dynamic careers? Do people want their daughters to pursue a construction career? Women and people of color are still underrepresented in our industry. When you consider the labor shortage that affects the local construction market's overall capacity, the need to attract new and diverse people is underscored. We all must commit ourselves to several actions so we can change our industry for the future, together.

Internal networking support

For starters, we need to accept that office cultures in many industries have not always been welcoming for women and people of color. I remember a story one of our account managers told of not being invited on a fishing trip with her male team members that served as something of an unofficial team building event. This was a case of the organizers simply thinking she wouldn't be interested in fishing (spoiler: she loves to fish).

Photo from Skanska [enlarge] Surveyor/layout lead Stephanie Imber takes measurements on Skanskas 2+U project in downtown Seattle.





When women are left out of softer networking opportunities like that, though, it can affect the relationships they build and, more urgently, it reinforces an environment where women are separate.

Our Skanska Women's Network helps bring those issues to the fore. Through meaningful programming and well-organized local chapter leadership, we've built an inclusive way for these topics to be addressed. I've watched it change the way we work and, while we have a long way to go, it's interesting to see how long-tenured employees are being more thoughtful about the culture they create.

Our local chapter has also influenced the way our office works in a number of ways, not the least of which is a rotation of employees through our leadership meetings so they can be part of building a culture of inclusive decision making. Other industries have had these sorts of internal networking groups for a long time. It's time for all of us in construction to follow suit.

Research also shows that diverse candidates want to look around and see themselves reflected in their leadership. In environments where that is not yet reality, one of the only ways to move the needle for those employees is active sponsorship (not just mentorship) by someone already in a management role.

All of this supports the business imperative of inclusion. More inclusive teams make more informed business decisions, resulting in better business results, which attract even more diverse people and points of view. We believe that being the best construction and development firm directly correlates to being the most inclusive, diverse construction and development firm. The employees we want to recruit expect this.

Recruiting  and retaining

Our industry needs to change the way we recruit employees. While our efforts to recruit talented college graduates will continue, we have to remember that construction offers people without a degree a very well-paying career path.

The labor shortage in the market shows what happens when our industry does not attract enough new workers to the trades. We need to work with high schools  and even middle schools  to engage students. Programs like the ACE Mentor Program are in place to push people toward careers as project managers. We need to put an equal amount of support into apprenticeship programs.

Given the cost of college, construction can be an attractive employer.

That said, we won't keep people if the culture they come into doesn't meet their needs. I believe there's a misconception that young people don't want to work as much. If anything, I've found younger employees starting in our company to be ready to work hard and learn. What they want is to be treated with dignity and the peace of mind to know that they can go to the doctor or handle something at home in the morning and catch up on work later in the day.

We are examining ways we can increase flexibility. With laptops, mobile technology and more, we have the tools we need. Longer term, we have to find ways to make sure flexibility applies beyond telework. For example, does it make sense to have a talented team member only work part time for a period, or share a job with a coworker? I'd rather find a way to be flexible than lose a great person.

Supporting the industry

Inclusivity cannot be just the job of a few firms. As much as we compete for talent and seek to establish our own cultures, we need to support our entire industry becoming more diverse.

We have programs in place to help show traditionally underutilized small businesses how they can win work and grow. Most small and certified-disadvantaged businesses don't have the back office support that larger firms take for granted. When we help a women-owned subcontractor succeed, it fills in a new piece of the inclusion puzzle, creating new possibilities for employees and future entrepreneurs.

Beyond these steps, we need to show how fulfilling and fun work in construction can be. We see the wonder on children's faces when they see the big equipment or tall cranes around our city. How do we keep that spirit alive and use it to attract people?

I think it comes from sharing the stories of what we do, going beyond the amazing things we build to show how we do it safely. Or how the work actually supports the community. Or how the work contributes to the sustainability of our region. We're often too comfortable behind the jobsite fence or too humble about what we achieve.

We're making progress, but it would be a shame if we let the momentum that progress has created slip. Together, we can continue to change the perception of our industry and the faces of the people who make it.

Anita McGillie is senior human resources manager at Skanska.





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WSDOT wants to tweak DBE program to get more African Americans firms

The Washington State Department of Transportation says a 2017 disparity study showed that African American-owned businesses are significantly underused in its DBE program compared to other socially and economically disadvantaged groups.

To rectify that, WSDOT is seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation to adjust the DBE program to improve inclusion of African American-owned firms on agency construction and consulting contracts. If approved, prime contractors would earn four times the DBE goal credit for including a firm owned and controlled by an African American.

WSDOT will hold two informational meetings on the proposed changes. Contractors, trade and labor organizations, small and disadvantaged businesses and others can attend.

The first meeting will be held 4-6 p.m. March 26 at South Seattle College, Georgetown Campus, Room C110/111, 6737 Corson Ave. S., Seattle. The second will be held 4-6 p.m. March 27 in the Spokane County Conference Room, 2714 N. Mayfair St., Spokane.

A webinar will be held 1011:30 a.m. on March 30.

Written comments on the waiver can be submitted by mail or email until April 20 to: Jackie Bayne, Policy & Reporting Manager, WSDOT, Office of Equal Opportunity, P.O. Box 47314, Olympia, WA 98504-7314; BayneJ@wsdot.wa.gov.

The documents can be viewed at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/equalopportunity.





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OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- In 2000, Dion Mario Neal of Gautier admitted he participated with two other men in the murder of a Clarke County, Ala., man, who was shot repeatedly with rifles and shotguns, according to records obtained from the Clarke County Circuit Clerk's office.

In exchange for his plea, Neal received a prison sentence of only 20 years and had an additional charge of arson dropped. He was denied parole in December 2015 and wasn't scheduled to complete his full sentence until April 2019.

Information as to when Neal was paroled was not immediately available, but sometime in the past two years the Alabama Parole Board released him.

Tuesday morning, investigators say, Neal beat and raped a Gautier woman at gunpoint in a wooded area off CCC Camp Road near Ocean Springs Road.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Department received a 911 call in the early morning Tuesday reporting a woman screaming in the woods. Deputies responding to the call located the victim, who said she had been physically and sexually assaulted at gunpoint. She was treated and released at Ocean Springs Hospital.

A few hours later, Neal turned himself in to Mississippi Probation and Parole. A Gautier resident at the time of the 2000 murder, Neal returned to the Jackson County city after his release, requiring him to report to Mississippi probation officials.

In the 2000 murder case, Neal pleaded guilty to his role in the murder of 45-year-old Bobby Tucker. Prosecutors said Tucker died in a rain of gunfire fired from several different weapons by at least two different people, according to a report on the case by the Mobile Press-Register.

One of Neal's co-defendants, Dewuan Latroy Dixon of Prichard, Ala., pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter and received a 15-year sentence. Dixon admitted to driving the getaway car but denied shooting Tucker. Information on the third man accused in the murder was not readily available.

While in prison, Neal reportedly was found guilty of passing prison contraband and had five years added to his sentence. He was also at one point charged with escape, but records indicate that charge was ultimately dismissed.

Neal also unsuccessfully sued the Alabama Department of Corrections, seeking to have disciplinary action against him reversed after he allegedly asked a female prison guard "How do you feel about oral sex?"

Neal's seemingly abbreviated sentence for murder and ability to return to Gautier leave Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell concerned.

"Absolutely it does trouble me," Ezell said. "Once again, this shows us exactly the kind of things that can happen. It troubles me very much, yes it does."

Ezell said the current case, which includes charges against Neal for aggravated assault, sexual battery and possession of a firearm by a felon, is still under investigation.

"What we have here is very serious," he said. "We're going to investigate it and prosecute to the full extent of the law."

Ezell said information as to how Neal and the victim first connected remains under investigation, as well.

Neal made his initial appearance in Jackson County court Wednesday afternoon. Judge T. Larry Wilson set total bond at $55,000 -- $25,000 each for aggravated assault and sexual battery, and $5,000 for possession of a firearm by a felon.

Neal, however, is unable to post bond, with Wilson placing a hold on him for the Alabama Department of Correction on a parole violation. Neal remains incarcerated in the Jackson County Adult Detention Center.
California has become the latest state to pass Right to Repair bill, with 18 other states having already signed it. Under the Right to Repair bill, smartphone manufacturers would be required to provide repair information, replacement parts, and diagnostic tools to product owners and independent repair shops. The bill emerged after Apple's iPhone battery controversy, as the company admitted that it throttled older iPhones to prevent random shutdowns. According to commentators, while this could come as good news for the consumer, it could mean that users would have fewer features packed in their devices. For instance, water resistant phones being offered nowadays, would not be offered. This is because, the special seal around the phone, which makes it waterproof would need to dropped. The innards of the iPhone are known to be tough to access and Apple's retail stores and repair efforts are meant to address this. Apple Stores, however, are not available everywhere just yet. While some customers are more than two hours from the nearest Apple Store, others outside of major countries, may not have access to an Apple Store or Apple Authorised retailer at all. In such scenarios, being able to get your own parts could be a key consideration in deciding which gadget to buy. Also, Right to Repair would make it easier for third-party and smaller repair shops to get the parts and machinery needed for more iPhone repairs. California Assembly member Susan Talamantes Eggman last afternoon announced plans to introduce the new California Right to Repair Act. According to Eggman, the bill will provide consumers with the freedom to choose a repair shop of their choice. "The Right to Repair Act will provide consumers with the freedom to have their electronic products and appliances fixed by a repair shop or service provider of their choice, a practice that was taken for granted a generation ago but is now becoming increasingly rare in a world of planned obsolescence," Eggman said.








Entries are now being accepted for the second annual Finnie Awards, giving Australias 600+ fintech companies an opportunity to be recognised for their successes.

Presented by FinTech Australia in partnership with the NSW Governments Jobs for NSW, the industry-backed Finnies boast 23 awards, including FinTech Organisation of the Year, Outstanding FinTech Leader of the Year, Female FinTech Leader of the Year, Emerging FinTech Leader of the Year and Emerging FinTech Organisation of the Year.

Fintech companies also have an opportunity to be recognised for excellence in sectors such as lending, wealth management, payments, crowdfunding, blockchain, artificial intelligence and regtech. For this years awards, a new award category has been introduced for the best fintech customer experience/design outcome.

FinTech Australia chair Stuart Stoyan said the Finnie awards are an important way to celebrate the best and brightest in the rapidly growing fintech industry.

The award categories have also been specifically designed to help showcase companies which are tackling many of the barriers to our industrys growth, as highlighted in our EY FinTech Australia Census, he said.

This includes fintechs that are driving female leadership and participation, successfully collaborating with banks and other financial institutions, expanding internationally and creating great market awareness of their product.

Commenting on Jobs for NSWs continued support for the Finnies, Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business John Barilaro described NSW as Australias fintech capital, noting it is home to 54% of the countries fintech companies.

Technology is transforming financial services and we recognise the high potential to grow our fintech industry to generate future economic returns and jobs for our state, he said.

As well as celebrating our fintech champions through the Finnies, we are investing $35 million in the Sydney Startup Hub which is home to leading fintech accelerator Stone & Chalk. Through Jobs for NSW we have supported about 30 fintechs to date, investing over $800,000 in their growth including companies like Pennybox and FarmPay.

Nick Molnar, the CEO of Afterpay, said his companys FinTech Organisation of the Year award in last years Finnies had helped build Afterpays brand awareness and industry backing.

The award gave Afterpay external appreciation for the hard work and effort our dedicated team puts into the business day in, day out, he said.

We are honoured to have been awarded FinTech Organisation of the Year and recognised amongst our peers and the fintech community.

Afterpay is proud to be able to offer a payment option that is fully aligned with the customer and resonates with Australian consumers, helping to stimulate sales and grow retail businesses.

More details about the Finnies, including award entry details, are available at https://fintechaustralia.org.au/finnies-18/ and entries can be submitted https://finnies.awardsplatform.com/.

Award entries are open until Sunday 18 March, with the gala award ceremony to be held Wednesday 13 June.
MOSS POINT, Miss. -- Police in Moss Point are asking for the public's help to find a man who allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted a Moss Point High School student, according to Interim Police Chief Brandon Ashley.

The assault happened on Wednesday police say. Police responded to the high school after being alerted to the assault by campus security.

The incident occurred off campus near Ruby Street, according to the victim. She immediately reported the incident to a teacher upon her arrival to school.

Campus Police notified police and an investigation was immediately opened, Ashley said. The student told police she was walking to the bus stop near her residence when a man known to her as Jimmy, pointed a handgun at her forcing her inside of his vehicle.

The suspect then drove to an area near Ruby Street and sexually assaulted the victim. Afterward, the suspect dropped her off near the high school and released her.

Police have identified a person of interest as 31-year-old Jimmy Williams of Moss Point. Williams is also known to have lived in the Gautier area.

If you have any information about this crime, you are asked to contact Detective Kimberlee Snowden or the Moss Point Police Department at 228-475-1726. You may also contact Crime Stoppers at 800-787-5898 or visit the Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers website at mscoastcrimestoppers.com.
Disintermediation often is described as taking out the middle-man between buyer and seller but when if comes to news, the Big Tech companies such as Google and Facebook and perhaps even Twitter have taken the essence of news content  perhaps a title, snippet and photo and provided it for free to their users.

Of course quite often, newspapers and magazines provide their information for free as well but use advertising as a monetizing vehicle. Big tech companies have disintermediated the advertisers and the eyeballs.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have gotten involved and introduced a bill today that would allow media outlets to band together to negotiate for better terms with giant tech platforms.



Rep. David Cicillines (D-R.I.) Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would grant a temporary antitrust waiver for news publishers to collectively negotiate with companies like Facebook and Google.

Our democracy is strongest when we have a free, open press that informs citizens, holds public officials accountable, and roots out corruption, Cicilline, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, said in a statement.

This bill empowers local newspapers to negotiate collectively with the biggest technology platforms to ensure consumers have access to the best journalism possible.

The News Media Alliance (NMA), a trade group representing hundreds of large and small outlets, has been pushing for such legislation. Last year, the group urged Congress to grant a waiver to the industry, arguing that tech giants have been squeezing them out of coveted ad dollars.


A Republican lawmaker wants to create Education Savings Accounts for military families, using money now given to school districts that receive federal Impact Aid.

Impact Aid, a $1.3 billion program that has been around for decades, helps school districts to make up for tax revenue lost because of a federal presence, such as a Native American reservation or military base. The proposal, by Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., would give some of that money directly to families through ESAs. The accounts could be used for tutoring, private school tuition, and more.

The legislation appears to be inspired in part by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, which last year urged Congress to create ESAs for both military and Native American students using Impact Aid dollars .

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, published Wednesday, Banks noted that a survey by Military Times found that 35 percent of service members with children said their dissatisfaction with their childrens education was a significant factor in determining whether to continue with their service.

The men and women who serve our country in uniform make sacrifices daily, but the education of their children should not be one of them, said Banks in a statement. The flexibility in this legislation will allow military families the freedom to tailor their childrens education to best fit individual needs and maximize academic achievement.

But groups representing military families and Impact Aid districtsincluding the Military Child Education Coalition, the Military Officers Association of America, National Military Family Association, the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, and the Military Impacted Schools Associationare vehemently opposed to the idea. They argue it would hurt public schools serving vulnerable populations.

Proposals to divert Impact Aid from schools that educate concentrations of military-connected students are shortsighted and will only reduce opportunities for all students in these school districts, the groups said in a statement released in December.

Their opposition could hurt the bills chance of passage. Impact Aid enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress.

Some more bill specifics, from Banks office: The bill would provide scholarships to three groups of students: those living on base in heavily impacted districts (those that receive a hefty share of impact), those living off-base in heavily impacted districts, and those living on base in non-heavily impacted districts.

Students living in heavily impacted districts would get ESAs of at least $4,500 annually and students living on base in non-heavily impacted districts would receive $2,500. Around 126,000 families would be eligible.

Banks summary of the bill says a small portion of the $1.3 billion Impact Aid would go to the ESAs. The exact amount would depend on how many families choose to participate, Banks office said.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos endorsed the idea of ESAs for military families in a recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, but she hasnt weighed in specifically on Banks bill.

School choice is one of the biggest topics we cover. See a sample of our top stories:

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
Today, the world celebrates International Womens Day as a tribute to the contribution women make to every aspect of life, but also as a reminder of continuing inequality and discrimination as well as a persistent gender pay gap.

The EBRD has launched major initiatives and created a policy framework to address these issues, which are a major challenge in many of the economies where the Bank invests.

In 2015, the Bank adopted a Strategy for the Promotion of Gender Equality . The policy sets out a framework to encourage advancement of equal opportunities for women and men in all its activities, in both public and private sectors.

This was followed by the adoption of the first EBRD Economic Inclusion Strategy in May 2017, reflecting the Banks pioneering work to widen access to economic opportunities to many under-served groups of society, including women, young people and regional populations.

These strategies are put into action through EBRD investments. Deeds not words was the famous slogan of the suffragette movement. This has also always been the EBRDs focus.

One example is the Banks Women in Business programme which combines support for access to finance with practical advice on how to start and run a business in a wide area of topics. Launched in 2014, to date the programme has delivered more than 400 million in loans to some 115 projects across 17 countries, benefiting 35,000 women entrepreneurs.

We also partner with donors, including the European Union, Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy and others, to support thousands of women-led businesses across the regions. Thanks to donor contributions, we work with local banks to offer dedicated financing and tailored advice to help women entrepreneurs access the finance they need to invest and grow.

The Bank helped Kozeta Gina, a transport mechanic engineer, to develop an innovative online learning platform and to access finance, helping her business stay ahead of the competition in Albania.

Inga and Elen Manukyan, the owners of LOOM Weaving, an Armenian brand of knitwear clothes with a traditional touch, received EBRD support to expand their business networks, enhance their financial management and expand their outreach to new geographies through a new marketing strategy.

With the EBRDs help, Okhtein Mounaz, an Egyptian accessories brand created by sisters Mounaz and Aya Abdel Raouf, defined their business plan and goals as they work towards their business expansion.

We also work on policy dialogue and capacity building to promote gender equality through initiatives addressing legal and regulatory bottlenecks for womens participation in the economy.

Legislation restricting womens access to certain tasks and jobs is present in multiple EBRD countries of operations. In Egypt, for example, women cannot work night shifts whereas in some countries of the former Soviet Union, women are not legally authorised to work underground or perform tasks that involve working with hazardous materials or lifting heavy weights. These restrictions limit womens access to such fast growing sectors of the economy as mining, metallurgy, construction and transport.

One of the EBRDs initiatives in this area has been supporting the governments of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic to reduce legal barriers to womens participation in the labour force. In the Kyrgyz Republic, the EBRD works closely with the government to support legal reform by amending the list of approximately 400 jobs and tasks that are currently prohibited to women under Resolution 158.

The EBRD signed 29 projects with a gender focus or component in 2017.
So much for running a government like a business. You can keep the $100 your tax cut will give me, if you take responsibility for your conduct and reimburse me what your potholes have cost me.

Thats the message Ann Arbor attorney John Minnock had for Gov. Rick Snyder this week, as reported by the Detroit Free Press. He wasnt alone. Plenty of citizens from across the political spectrum told the Freep how fed up they are with Michigans roads, which have long been terrible after years of neglect. A harsh winter and epic flooding have made some of the states major thoroughfares look like the lunar landscape. Washtenaw County even closed one of its main roads indefinitely because its been swallowed up by potholes, which is probably a sign of things to come.

Minnock was also referring to the bill that Snyder recently signed that restored the personal exemption in Michigan, which was wiped out by President Trumps tax plan last year. Republicans lopped on an increase over time so they could sell it as a tax cut in an election year.

But they rejected Democrats attempt to fix roads with $275 million this year from the states Rainy Day Fund.

Its raining in Michigan  literally, at times, raining concrete, declared Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. (D-East Lansing), which is a pretty pithy quote.

Republicans agreed to spend an extra $175 million for emergency road repairs  $100 million less than the Dems proposal. But lets be honest. Thats just a drop in the bucket. And drivers in Michigan know that.




VIV MEA held its successful 2nd edition

Press release

Good reviews from exhibitors and visitors have set the seal on a successful second edition of regional feed-to-food trade show VIV MEA.

Their comments about the February 2018 event confirmed the value of having a truly professional and international show in the region that extends from the Middle East and Africa to Iran and the countries of the Indian sub-continent.

Bigger show welcomed high-quality visitors

Held in the United Arab Emirates between 5th-7th February, VIV MEA 2018 was already going to be bigger than the 2016 edition because the show had spread into a fourth hall at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) to satisfy the extra demand for stands.

Final statistics for the 2018 show confirm that it was also bigger on attendance figures. Its 3-day total of 6,660 visits represented a 6.7% increase compared with the first edition.

Evidently the expanded exhibition this time was a factor in attracting more visitors, even if it impacted on traffic density around the stands at times by spreading the attendance across more square metres of space. But the key point about the attendees was their quality.

A survey conducted during the three weeks after the show has found a satisfaction score of 7.3 out of 10 from exhibitors and an even higher rating of 8.3 from visitors. Many exhibitors commented on the high quality of the VIV MEA visitors in 2018, confirming the evidence from registration details for visitor job title, function and decision-making power.

Exhibitor views

Among the exhibitors this time was Milan Tyller, geneticist and owner of Dominant CZ from the Czech Republic, who said: "VIV MEA has been for me an excellent opportunity to meet our primary target group, the poultry producers who are interested in dual-purpose chickens. People from Russia to Tanzania and from North Africa to Bangladesh have visited our booth. We see a growing interest in our product from all over the region and we will be happy to be present at the next VIV shows."

First-time exhibitor Expert Medical Ltd from Hungary was equally enthusiastic. According to export manager Geza Krasznai, "It is our aim to expand our activities in the MEA region as well as in Asia and this platform has proved to be the right place for us."

Orffa's international commercial manager Nizar Mahmoud, based in Jordan, expressed approval for the global spread of exhibitors at VIV MEA compared with local shows and for the accessibility of Abu Dhabi as its location.

Visitors remarked that the importance of the regional event had become clearly established, calling VIV MEA an excellent meeting point in the Middle East to expand knowledge and business. Their interest in the 2018 proceedings has now been backed by a new data analysis, relating to the amount of time people spent at the show. Almost all attendees were found to have stayed at least one full day and most of them returned on a second or even a third day.

Conference attractions

People attending VIV MEA 2018 could meet a total of 368 direct and indirect exhibitors from 46 countries in the trade fair, join the on-site networking events and discover the information on offer at a series of conferences and seminars held over the three days.

Conference themes included respiratory viruses in poultry, modern ways to market eggs, how dairies thrive in hot and dry climates, extruding feeds for aquaculture, fly control on farms and actions against mould toxins in feed grains. Knowledge in a professional and relaxed setting, was how one delegate described the special atmosphere that VIV MEA created around the conferences.

Underlining the fact that the VIV MEA 2018 attracted a quality audience, almost 300 top-level professionals from the Middle East/Africa region were invited and hosted by the show's organizer via the dedicated Industry Leader program. These leaders, representing the animal protein sectors of poultry meat, eggs, fish, milk or beef, are the owners or main directors of production companies together with important animal feed manufacturers and livestock product traders. They came from a range of countries regionally, but the largest individual contingents were from Morocco, India and Saudi Arabia.

International show wins support from throughout the region

Overall, visitors to VIV MEA 2018 were animal protein industry leaders from 88 countries. The Middle East and Africa accounted for 74% of attendees.

Almost 69% of the people visiting the event came from outside host country UAE, demonstrating further that VIV MEA has already become a truly international hub. Following the UAE that came top for the size of its contingent, as might be expected with the show taking place in its capital Abu Dhabi, Iran moved into second place on visitor attendance numbers. Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India each contributed over 5% of the attendees. The other countries in the Top 10 were Jordan, Iraq, Oman and Sudan.

That total of 6,660 visits did not count the many industry professionals who took the opportunity of also visiting VIV MEA in addition to attending the Global Forum on Innovations in Agriculture (GFIA) event that was co-located at ADNEC on the same dates. Including GFIA would in fact have taken the visits total to 7,901.

VIV MEA is held every two years and Abu Dhabi in the UAE will again be the location when it returns on 9-11 March 2020, show manager Renate Wiendels confirms. Planning has started already on an enriched programme to reinforce the event's position as the premier regional hub for knowledge and networking in animal protein production and processing, from feed to food.
U.S. Secretary Betsy DeVos said at news conference in Parkland, Fla., that schools should be given the option of arming school staff, potentially including teachers, who are expert in being able to defend schools. But she was also clear that the move shouldnt be mandatory.

DeVos said any armed school staff must meet very, very high standards. She specifically called out schools in Texas as potential models for the nation. She also seemed to make a reference to Polk County, a Florida jurisdiction where at least one private school has designated armed sentinels among school staff . These staffers receive 132 hours of training on the use of fire-arms and legal issues, among other things.

Her comments came Wednesday after meeting with students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of a mass shooting last month that left 17 dead .

DeVos boss, President Donald Trump, has been outspoken that the country should consider arming ceratin school staff, including teachers. But there are a lot of practical hurdles to the idea . And many Stoneman Douglas students say theyre opposed to the proposal. Instead, they are lobbying state and federal lawmakers for new gun-control measures. DeVos said the idea didnt come up in her meetings with Stoneman Douglas students.

DeVos also said Congress can take some practical steps that many, many people agree on to improve school safety. She specifically referenced the STOP School Violence Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, yesterday. House lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year with the same name, and it is similar to Hatchs bill.

Hatchs legislation would enable the Justice Department to offer states grants to help detect and report people who may pose a danger to others. It would also help pay for training for law enforcement officials, teachers, and even students on how to deal with people who may wish to hurt others.

DeVos visit to Stoneman Douglas was closed to the press. But, in the press conference after the visit, DeVos called her conversation very sobering and inspiring.

I give a lot of credit to students here who have found their voices and I encourage them to continue to speak out about finding those solutions, she said.

But on social media, some Stoneman Douglas students didnt exactly sound thrilled that the secretary had stopped by. They complained that she met with a very small group of students, not the entire school community, and didnt spend much time at Parkland.

Betsy Devos came to my school, talked to three people, and pet a dog. This is incase the press tries to say something else later  Alanna//#NEVERAGAIN (@AgCI3Cu2) March 7, 2018

Do something unexpected: answer our questions. You came to our school just for publicity and avoided our questions for the 90 minutes you were actually here. How about you actually do your job? #neveragain #DoYourJob https://t.co/4Ts0INq0gR  Aly Sheehy (@Aly_Sheehy) March 7, 2018

I thought she would at least give us her thoughts and prayers, but she refused to even meet/speak with students. I dont understand the point of her being here  carly (@car_nove) March 7, 2018

The Eagle Eye, Stoneman Douglas school newspaper, quoted a student expressing disapointment that DeVos didnt offer solutions to prevent similar massacres in the future.

Others, though, defended the secretary.

I did, actually. @BetsyDeVosED @BetsyDeVos is an American patriot and is the Sec. of EDUCATION which means she is a great person to talk with about SCHOOL safety. #MSDStrong #NeverAgain https://t.co/uzGDB8Y5Tj  Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) March 7, 2018

DeVos visit was designed to lend support to the community during a difficult time, but also to minimize disruption on students first full day back at school, said Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for DeVos. Student journalists covered DeVos visit, and the secretary said shed like to sit down with them and other students from Stoneman Douglas in the near future for a more in depth conversation, Hill added.

The secretary and her team have awarded an initial $1 million grant to Broward County Public Schools, the district thats home to Stoneman Douglas. The money was made available through the Project School Emergency Response to Violence, or SERV, which helps communities recover from significant, traumatic events.

Staff Writer Evie Blad contributed to this post.

Photo: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks at a news conference on March 7, in Coral Springs, Fla., following a visit to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. (Lynne Sladky/AP)

Cant get enough of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos? Check out some of our best coverage:

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chinadaily.com.cn

Updated: 2018-03-07

King Tupou VI of the Kingdom of Tonga visits the Hainan Binglanggu (Betelnut Valley) Li and Miao Cultural Heritage Park. [Photo by Song Guoqiang/Hainan Daily]

King Tupou VI of the Kingdom of Tonga visited Hainan province on March 4 and 5 as part of his state visit to China from Feb 28 to March 8.

He went to Sanya Yalong Bay International Rose Valley, Hainan Binglanggu (Betelnut Valley) Li and Miao Cultural Heritage Park, Sanya Qianguqing Scenic Spot and some other sites to learn about Hainan's booming tourism, agriculture and infrastructure construction. He also experienced unique Li and Miao ethnic culture and customs.

Although it was his first visit to Hainan, King Tupou VI was immediately attracted by the climate, landscape and culture. He felt he was back home when he was in Hainan because not only the climate but also the tattoos and bamboo pole dances of the Li ethnic group are similar to those of Tonga.

King Tupou VI of Tonga is attracted by sugar-figures blowing at the Sanya Qianguqing Scenic Spot. [Photo by Song Guoqiang/Hainan Daily]

He thought Hainan and Tonga have many things in common and their development concepts correspond. He wants to bring back the development experiences learnt in Hainan and choose some professionals to further study and communicate with experts here. King Tupou VI also expressed his strong willingness to seek mutual cooperation in such areas as tourism, agriculture, fisheries, trade, scientific research and culture.

Since 2004, the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences has organized several international training courses for Tonga. Experts were sent to the Pacific island nation to understand the country's current conditions and to introduce Hainan's new tropical agricultural techniques, equipment, horticulture, beverage production technologies, and tropical crop pest control technologies.




To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
Updates to Kentucky Power's Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP) will nearly double the number of low-income families who can be helped in 2018.

A recent order from the Kentucky Public Service Commission increased customer contributions to the HEAP program from 15 cents to 30 cents a month. Kentucky Power agreed to match that contribution dollar for dollar with shareholder funds. Together, the program will generate nearly $1 million this year to provide heating and cooling assistance to about 2,500 in the region.

"Kentucky Power wholeheartedly believes in assisting low- and fixed-income customers manage their energy usage and we will not waiver from this commitment," said Matt Satterwhite' Kentucky Power president and chief operating officer. "These funds will help many families in the near-term while we remain focused on leading economic development in eastern Kentucky as the long-term solution to help all customers and address poverty in the region."

The Kentucky Power HEAP program is separate from the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program called LIHEAP. While separate, both programs are administered through Community Action of Kentucky. These agencies are Big Sandy Community Action (Floyd, Johnson, Magoffin, Martin and Pike counties); Gateway Community Action (Morgan and Rowan counties); Leslie, Knott, Letcher and Perry Community Action (Leslie, Knott, Letcher and Perry counties); Middle Kentucky Community Action (Breathitt and Owsley counties); and Northeast Kentucky Community Action (Boyd, Carter, Greenup, Elliott and Lawrence counties). Customers seeking assistance should contact their local community action agency.

HEAP funds are distributed to customers who meet income requirements set by the community action agencies. Heating assistance is available for the months of December to March, while cooling assistance is available from July to September. Money is divided among customers who heat with both electric and non-electric sources, including wood and coal. Electric heating customers receive 85 percent of the funds. Non-heating customers receive 15 percent.

The real issue facing customers with higher than average bills in the coldest months is the broken heating systems and lack of insulation and weatherization in the homes, Satterwhite said. In recognition of this fact, Kentucky Power and the American Electric Power Foundation also recently awarded a $50,000 grant to Christian Appalachian Project provide assistance in basic home repair and weatherization for those in need. Weatherization improvements can dramatically reduce customer energy consumption and bills. Kentucky Power also is looking at other ways to revise the HEAP program offerings to shift focus on these weatherization needs in the region to help more people.

Customers also are encouraged to consider signing up for the budget billing option called Average Monthly Payment (AMP). AMP is 12-month average bill to even out winter heating and summer cooling bill spikes.

"After talking with customers, we recently adapted the AMP program to make it easier for those most in need of help to sign up," Satterwhite said. "The most important thing customers can do is contact us. We make every effort to assist all customers."

Kentucky Power, based in Ashland, provides electric service to about 168,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties. It is an operating company in the AEP system.

ALLISON D BARKER | CORPORATE COMMS MGR

ADBARKER@AEP.COM | D:606.327.2602 | C:502.545.7003

855 CENTRAL AVENUE, ASHLAND, KY 41101
U.S. Secretary Betsy DeVos is approving plans for the Every Student Succeeds Act that dont comply with the laws protections for vulnerable groups of students, Democratic House members representing heavily Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American districts wrote in a letter to the secretary Wednesday.

During congressional negotiations [on ESSA] we successfully fought to include provisions to ensure [subgroups] of students count in state accountability systems so that educators, school leaders, parents, and students receive the support and attention necessary to close achievement gaps, the lawmakers wrote. Members of the Congressional Tri-Caucus are concerned that you are not carrying out key protections in the bipartisan law that enabled us to support its passage, including accountability system requirements that subgroups count in differentiation of schools and that schools where subgroups are underserved be identified for both state and local support.

The Tri-Caucus is just the latest bunch to criticize DeVos approach to ESSA plan approval. Two Democratic ESSA architectsSen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.have also said DeVos is rubber-stamping state plans and allowing them to flout the law.

The lawmakers want DeVos to go back and get states to amend their plans to correct this issue, even if those plans already have the federal green light.

The Tri-Caucus argues, as Murray has, that DeVos has approved plans for some states that dont factor the performance of subgroups of students, including English-language learners, students in special education, and minority students, into school ratings.

Summative school ratingssuch as A through F gradesarent required by ESSA. But Democrats argue that if states are going to include a school rating system to meet ESSAs accountability requirements, subgroup performance on test scores, graduation rates, and things like school climate and chronic absenteeism must factor in the grades, numbers, or other designations schools receive. Democrats are also concerned that DeVos is allowing some states to identify as few schools as possible for extra support to meet the needs of subgroup students.

For her part, DeVos has said she hasnt approved any plans that violate the law. The secretary has said she will meet with the chairmen and top Democrats on the Senate and House education committees soon to discuss the plan approval process.

We unpacked the arguments behind DeVos interpretation of ESSA and congressional Democrats view of the law here .

Earlier this week, DeVos criticized state ESSA plans for not taking full advantage of the new flexibilities offered in the law.

Let me be clear: Just because a plan complies with the law doesnt mean it does whats best for students, DeVos said. Whatever the reasons, I see too many plans that only meet the bare minimum required by the law. Sure, they may pass muster around conference tables in Washington, but the bare minimum wont pass muster around kitchen tables.

She noted that governorsincluding two of her allies, GOP Govs. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Scott Walker of Wisconsinhave failed to sign off on their states plans. (In Walkers case, the plan was written by his would-be gubernatorial rival, state chief Tony Evers, a Democrat.)

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks to the Council of Chief State School Officers conference in Washington on March 5.

--Maria Danilova/AP

Want to learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act? Heres some useful information:

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
In defiance of opposition from the National Rifle Association, Florida lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday that would introduce some new gun restrictions and school safety measures after a Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

But the bill contains a controversial voluntary statewide program for arming school staff, and Gov. Rick Scott, who has expressed reservations about such plans, had not said Wednesday if he would sign it.

The House passed the bill by a 67-50 vote Wednesday after the Senate voted 20-18 in favor Monday.

The bill was supported by family members of all 17 victims of the Stoneman Douglas shooting, who wrote to lawmakers to insist on its passage , the Tampa Bay Times reported.

This issue cannot wait, the families wrote. The moment to pass this bill is now. We must be the last families to suffer the loss of a loved one due to a mass shooting at a school. We demand action by the entire Florida Legislature to keep our schools safe.

If it becomes law, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act would:



establish the Aaron Feis Guardian Program, a voluntary program through which school employees could be trained and armed. Its named for a Parkland football coach whos been called a hero for his actions to shield students during the attack.



create a commission to investigate system failures in the Parkland school shooting and prior mass violence incidents, and develop recommendations for system improvements.

establish a program to assist school personnel in preparing for and responding to active emergency situations and to implement local notification systems for all Florida public schools.

provide $400 million for school mental health services and security measures, including metal detectors and the placement of at least one police officer in every school.

In addition to those school safety provisions, the bill would raise the age requirements for all gun purchases from 18 to 21 in response to concerns that the Parkland shooting suspect was able to purchase a powerful AR-15 rifle, and it would impose a three-day waiting period for firearms purchases. It would prohibit the sale of bump stocks, which can be used to modify guns to function like automatic weapons. The bill would give law enforcement more authority to seize weapons from people who are deemed a possible threat, a measure that Broward County law enforcement pushed for after the shooting.

Even lawmakers who voted to pass the bill called it imperfect. While some Democrats called the measure to arm school staff a poison pill, some Republicans expressed concern about imposing more restrictions on gun purchases.

The bill is opposed by the National Rifle Association , which told its members to push lawmakers to vote against it.

Urge them to provide armed security in schools and tighten mental health laws to keep guns out of the hands of those who are a danger to themselves or others BUT LEAVE THE RIGHTS OF LAW-ABIDING GUN OWNERS ALONE, the organization said in a message to its members.



The bill also drew concern from civil rights groups, who said adding more law enforcement officers to schools may cause particular harm to black and Latino students, who are arrested at school at higher rates than their white peers.

Increasing funding for police in Florida schools will not lead to safer campuses and communities for students, said Judith Browne-Dianis, executive director of Advancement Project. We have seen the damaging impact to young people, particularly students of color, when lawmakers respond to school shootings with increased police presence in schools.

Photo: Mourners gather at a candlelight vigil for the victims of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. --Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Further reading on Parkland and school shootings:

Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.
Schools, parents, and law enforcement agencies regularly intervene before would-be shooters attack schools, but those thwarted plans understandably dont get the same level of coverage as mass shootings. And the resulting imbalance in discussions can affect the debate over how to keep schools safe, school safety experts say.

Thats because focusing largely on successful attacks can make them seem inevitable, turning conversations toward physical safety measureslike security hardware and armed officers meant to minimize damage in the event of a shooting.

But experts say school safety is also about invisible prevention measures: intervening with students in crisis before they develop an intent to harm others, creating an environment where students feel safe and comfortable reporting concerns about their peers, and developing systems to respond quickly to threats.

Although security measures are important, a focus on simply preparing for shootings is insufficient. We need a change in mindset and policy from reaction to prevention, says an eight-point Call for Action to Prevent Gun Violence in the United States of America, signed by a group of researchers and advocacy organizations since the Parkland shooting.

A sampling of news coverage shows that prevention efforts are important.

In the time since the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., sparking a new round of debates about gun laws and school security, police and schools around the country have responded to hundreds of copy cat threats. In some cases, police responding to tips from family, teachers, and peers have discovered credible plans and the weapons to carry them out, potentially saving lives. Here are a few examples:



An 18-year-old in Vermont pled not guilty to first-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault with a weapon, and two counts of aggravated attempted murder after police said hed discussed a plan to create mass casualties at a high school. They discovered he had a shotgun and ammunition and was reading books about the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the Burlington Free Press reports.

to create mass casualties at a high school. They discovered he had a shotgun and ammunition and was reading books about the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the Burlington Free Press reports. An 18-year-old Washington boy was arrested after his grandmother found a school shooting plan in his journal, USA Today reports. Police said they discovered inert grenades in his bedroom along with an AK-47 hidden in a guitar case.

in his journal, USA Today reports. Police said they discovered inert grenades in his bedroom along with an AK-47 hidden in a guitar case. Tulsa, Okla., police arrested a man after he had made repeated online threats to attack schools , Fox 23 News reports. Police said they recovered two guns and six magazines filled with ammunition from his home.

School shooters often share their plans in advance.

Its understandable that thwarted plans dont get as much attention as actual school attacks. They dont leave the same wake of pain and loss, and theyre more difficult to track and measure.

But an awareness of effective prevention is important when schools and policymakers debate ways to keep students safe, in part because federal agencies have found that most would-be school shooters leak their intentions beforehand.

In a report completed by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center in 2002, the agency analyzed 37 school attacks that occurred between 1974 and 2000. It concluded that attackers in 31 of those events had told at least one person about their plans beforehand. In 22 cases, two or more people knew about the planned attack in advance, the study concluded. In nearly all cases, those peers were classmates, siblings, and friends of the attackers, it said.

Thats why Colorado launched an school safety tipline after the Columbine attack. The tipline, credited with helping police intervene in many attacks, became a model for new reporting systems launched after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Groups like Sandy Hook Promise, founded by families of Newtown victims, have worked with experts in threat assessment to develop programs like Say Something, which encourages students to report concerns.

Among the other recommendations in the Call for Action to Prevent Gun Violence in the United States of America is a call for schools to develop physically and emotionally safe conditions and positive school environments. Such efforts not only ensure healthy development and reduce the social isolation that can contribute to harmful student behaviors, but they also help students to trust adults and share concerns, researchers say.

The document also calls for adequate staffing for coordinated school- and community-based mental-health services to assist individuals who may pose harm to others. In the time since the Parkland shooting, national groups that represent school counselors and school psychologists have highlighted their heavy workloads in schools.

The group also recommends lifting legal barriers that prevent educators, law enforcement, and health providers from sharing information about threatening individuals and a national program to train school and community groups in threat assessmenta research-based method of evaluating and responding to threats.

On a federal level, many of the headlines since Parkland have focused on President Donald Trumps calls to harden schools by training and arming some teachers . But lawmakers are also considering proposals with an eye toward prevention. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn and chair of the Senate education committee, plans to introduce the School Safety & Mental Health Services Improvement Act , which would change existing laws to allow schools to hire more counselors and fund violence prevention programs.

Are schools becoming less safe?

Contrary to popular narratives, federal indicators show that schools are not becoming less safe.

The numbers of school-associated violent deaths have not trended upward in the last 20 years. Other forms of student victimization are on a downward trend, and fewer students report fear of harm at school than in previous years, the most recent federal data show.

But several recent large mass shootings, including those at schools, have stoked public concerns. Three of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have happened in the last year, including Parkland, which ranks eighth.

Photo: Students are evacuated by police from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, after a shooter opened fire on the campus. --Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP

Further reading on Parkland and school shootings:

Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.
In a press conference, the Oklahoma Education Association unveiled its plan for a statewide teacher strike: By April 1, the legislature must fund a $6,000 pay raise this year for teachers, followed by an additional $2,000 bump each of the next two yearsor schools will shut down across the state.

The OEA is also asking for a $5,000 raise for full-time education support professionals and for the legislature to restore public education funding by $200 million over three years.

Oklahoma teachers have not received a pay raise in 10 years. According to the Tulsa World, the total cost to fund the teachers raises would be $1.46 billion over the next three years . Alicia Priest, the OEA president, did not specify revenue source options, saying there has been several proposals in front of the legislature over the past two years.

This is what were asking for, she said. Our teachers deserve nothing less. ... Schools will stay closed until we get what we are asking for.

But in the Facebook comments on the livestream of the press conference, several teachers balked: They want a $10,000 raise now.

Lawmakers have repeatedly failed us, one person wrote. Do not trust their word.

You wont recruit or retain with $6,000 either! another person said.

Earlier this week, teachers clashed with the union, which had originally set an April 23 deadline for the legislature to act. Teachers across stateboth members and nonmemberswere outraged, saying the date was too late and twouldnt be as effective as striking before state testing dates. After a day of outcry, the OEA pushed the deadline up to April 1.

This evening, the union plans to hold a teletown hall to discuss the plan further. Priest said at the press conference that the union will be holding live community town hall meetings throughout the month and helping school boards prepare to ensure the safety of students.

Our goal is to fund education, Priest said. Our goal is not to shut down schools.

Legislators are currently considering a bill that would grant a $2,000 pay raise to teachers, Priest said. We say to the legislature, thats too little, too late, she said.

According to Reuters, state Rep. Rhonda Baker, a Republican who chairs the state houses education committee, said her main concern is to ensure education in our state is fairly funded and that any law affecting our schools provides an actual benefit to students and educators.

Representatives from different groups joined OEAs press conference, including Joe Warren, a board member in the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance. He said small, independent oil and gas producers like himself stand 100 percent in support of teachers.

In a statement, the Oklahoma State Schools Board Association executive director urged the legislature to act swiftly and keep teachers in the classroom.

Every day that passes without a solution for long-term education funding and competitive teacher pay exacerbates an already devastating teacher shortage, OSSBAs Shawn Hime said.

Growing Momentum

Alberto Morejon, an 8th grade social studies teacher in Stillwater, Okla., said he started a Facebook group, Oklahoma Teacher WalkoutThe Time Is Now! last week after seeing the West Virginia teacher statewide strike on the news. The page has over 60,000 members, and much of the organizing has been talking place in the comments on the page.

West Virginia strike lasted for nine school days, ending when the state legislature struck a deal to give all teachers a 5 percent raise . The success of the movement invigorated teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kentucky.

Thousands of teachers in Arizona wore red on Wednesday to protest low wages. The president of the Arizona Education Association said that was an indication that teachers across the state might be ready to strike.

And in central Kentucky, hundreds of teachers rallied in front of public schools Thursday morning to protest proposed cuts to their retirement benefits. Conversations of a statewide schools shutdown are happening there, too.

This is only the beginning of an incredible movement, Morejon said. The time is now.

Correction: A previous version of this post misstated the cost of the proposed pay raise; according to the Tulsa World, it would cost a total of $1.46 billion.
PKK exploits children using them as soldiers

Turkish security forces has found evidence of the recruitment of child soldiers by the PKK/YPG in Syria.

Documents seized from the region prove once again the dirty side of the terrorist group, an issue which has been highlighted by the Human Rights Watch on several occasions.

Digital evidence found on cameras and memory cards recovered from killed YPG terrorists and their shelters during Operation Olive Branch, showed children around 13 to 17 years old recruited by PKK forces. Instead of receiving a proper education, the children can be seen holding guns and aiming at targets.

They were also found posing next to the photographs of the terror group's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan, as well as other so-called leaders.

Speaking on parliamentary counsel within the context of International Women's Day, ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) representative Ayse Kesir revealed the child abuse taking place in the terror group.

These are the proofs of child abuse, these 13-year-old girls in the photos. We will insistently show these pictures. Our soldiers struggle in Afrin for our border security also struggle for the girls who are exploited. Kesir said.
Walt Disney Pictures releases the new trailer for Christopher Robin featuring Winnie The Pooh reunited with the movie's lead character.

Disney's live-action film is set in the 1940s starring Ewan McGregor as Robin. In the film, Robin is reunited with his childhood animal friend, Pooh, only this time, Christopher is all grown up with a family of his own.

Pooh's character is relived in a real-life teddy bear called Stuffy, which still embodies the charm and friendliness of the adapted book as envisioned by its author.

"We really put a lot of time into designing the bear and choosing the right material for the fur," director Marc Forster said in an interview.

"We had so many samples of fur, and then the teddy bear, and then the sweater. And it's just really to make sure I'm getting it right because I love that bear so much," Forster added, referring to Stuffy.

When filming scenes with Pooh on the script, Forster said that the crew would place a real teddy bear and have a voice actor read the bear's lines.

Moral Dilemma

Set after the Second World War, Robin returns to London and starts working in a luggage company. One day, his boss asks him to forego a weekend trip with his wife and daughter in a plan to lay off 20 percent of the company's employees.

Robin is caught in a moral confusion not only because he is to sacrifice quality time for his family, but also he is also taking away jobs from many people. Robin then walks to the park to contemplate on his decision when his old friend, Pooh, appears in the background.

Hundred Acre Wood Friends

Unlike the original plot where the movie is based upon, Christopher Robin is not filmed in Hundred Acre Wood. Instead, the writers brought Hundred Acre Wood into the real world with all of Pooh's forest friends, including Tigger (Chris O'Dowd), Eeyore (Brad Garrett), Owl (Toby Jones), Piglet (Nick Mohammed), Rabbit (Peter Capaldi), and Kanga (Sophie Okenedo).

Disney's adaptation of Robin and Pooh is entirely different from Fox Searchlight's Goodbye, Christopher Robin. The latter focuses on the life of author A.A. Milne starring Margot Robbie and Domhnall Gleeson.

Forster teased a bonus scene toward the end of the story, where Bronte Carmichael plays with Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore, and Pooh on thin air.

"That girl, doing that and putting emotion into it, and you suddenly feel like she's really there with these stuffed animals. It's extraordinary," Forster said.

Carmichael portrays the role of McGregor's on-screen daughter, Madeleine.

Christopher Robin is slated to hit theaters on Aug. 3.
Brad Pitt is trying his best to get back to normal in spite of what's going on in his personal life.

The 54-year-old actor has called it quits with his wife, actress Angelina Jolie, but now the actor is ready to move forward as the two prepare to make their separation official.

The Allied actor was seen during Oscars weekend where he made a surprise visit at a party thrown by talent agency Gersh Agency. Sources close to Pitt state that he is more himself now and is "out of the dark place" he was in after he and Jolie separated.

"The separation was very dark for him, but lately he looks healthier and happier. He seems excited about life," a source close to the actor stated.

The actor even joked with Girls Trip star, Tiffany Haddish, about "getting together" if the two are still single in another year. Pitt also partied with Oscar winners Allison Janney and Sam Rockwell.

Brad and Angelina's Romance Gone Wrong

Jolie filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016. Reports stated that Pitt's drinking habits and alleged abusive behavior toward the children led to the couple's decision to separate.

The former couple were together for seven years before becoming engaged. They met while filming the action film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. At the time, Pitt was still married to his first wife, Friends actress Jennifer Aniston. Aniston and Pitt separated in January 2005 before finally divorcing in October 2005.

Rumors spread that Pitt's involvement with Jolie was what led to his divorce from Aniston. Jolie never confirmed nor denied this but did claim that they "fell in love" with each other while on set.

On Jan. 11, 2006, Jolie confirmed that she was pregnant with Pitt's child, which served as their public acknowledgement of their relationship for the first time. Jolie gave birth to the couple's first biological child together, Shiloh, in May 2016. In July 2008, Jolie gave birth to their twins, Knox and Vivienne.

Pitt and Jolie announced their engagement in April 2012 and were married on August 23, 2014, in a private ceremony in Chateau Miraval, France.

What's Next For Brad?

The Troy actor has signed on to star in Quentin Tarantino's upcoming biopic, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, opposite, Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is based on the Charles Manson murders and Sharon Tate's death.

The actor is also set to reprise his role in the sequel to the film World War Z.
The upcoming home release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi featured deleted scenes from the theater version, and one particular scene happened during Captain Phasma and Finn's showdown.

Fight Scene

Lucasfilm has given fans a preview of one of the contents of the home version via YouTube series The Star Wars Show. In the deleted scene, John Boyega's Finn faces off against Gwendoline Christie's Captain Phasma and four Stormtroopers.

Finn and Phasma argue over who is the real Imperial traitor. Fans who saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens may remember that Finn defected from the First Order to join the Resistance. He met Rey (Daisy Ridley), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and the rest is history.

However, Finn reveals who is the real traitor between him and his former superior officer. He exposes Captain Phasma's selfish character when he reveals that Phasma is the real defector. She allowed the Resistance to destroy the Starkiller Base when Finn pointed a gun at her head. She chose to save herself instead of keeping the First Order's greatest weapon safe in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Deleted Scene

In order to keep her reputation intact, Captain Phasma kills the four Stormtroopers. She and Finn then fight. The deleted scene in Star Wars: The Last Jedi includes the "Rebel scum" line Finn uttered in the original movie, although there is one important scene omitted.

In true Star Wars fashion, Finn springs into action while Captain Phasma is busy shooting at the Stormtroopers. Then he chops off her hand, a scene reminiscent of the classic The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. This scene is at the 2:39 mark in the video below. The fight ends with Captain Phasma's presumed death after Finn blasts her off a ledge.

It is unclear what happens to Captain Phasma, although in Star Wars lore, having one's limb chopped off is never a good sign. Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader after he lost an arm. Luke Skywalker also lost a limb, although he remains on the good side, for now, as rumors suggest that he eventually turns evil.

Regardless, it would be interesting to see what other deleted scenes are in the home release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Fans will have to wait to find out when the Blu-ray version arrives on March 27. The 4k UHD and digital copy come out on March 13.
Meghan Markle was reportedly baptized into the Church of England in a secret ceremony that took place on Tuesday, March 6, two months before the royal wedding.

Markle Baptized In Secret Ceremony

The soon-to-be royal had her future husband, Prince Harry, by her side as she was baptized in a 45-minute ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at the Chapel Royal on the Kensington Palace grounds on Tuesday.

The ceremony was attended by Prince Charles, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, and a few close friends. However, Prince William and Queen Elizabeth II were nowhere to be seen. Markle's parents were also expected to attend the ceremony but were not able to.

In November, Kensington Palace announced that the former Suits actress will be baptized into the Church of England before her nuptials with Harry, which will be held at the St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19.

Earlier this month, The Sunday Times published a report saying that the baptism was expected to take place sometime in March and most likely this week. Following the ceremony, Markle's future in-laws Charles and Camilla hosted a dinner for about 18 guests at the Clarence House.

Markle's Confirmation

Markle was officially confirmed shortly after the baptism, making her eligible to join Harry, 33, at Holy Matrimony.

The actress is following the footsteps of her future sister-in-law, Kate Middleton. The Duchess of Cambridge, who had been baptized as an infant, was also confirmed into the Church of England in a private ceremony a few weeks before she got married to Prince William in April 2011.

Prince Harry was also baptized as an Anglican shortly after his birth.

Markle's Religious Background

The 36-year-old royal bride-to-be chose to be baptized as an Anglican. There was no need for Markle to become an Anglican in order to tie the knot with Harry in church, but she did it out of respect for the Queen, who is the head of the Church of England.

Although Markle went to a Catholic high school in Los Angeles, she was not raised as a Catholic. Her father is an Episcopalian, which is essentially the American equivalent of the Church of England, and her mother, Doria Ragland is a Protestant.

The actress was previously married to a Jewish man, Trevor Engelson, for two years. However, she had not converted to his faith.
Terry Bryant, who walked out of the 2018 Oscars Governors Ball after-party with Frances McDormand's Best Actress trophy, pleads not guilty to theft during Wednesday's court appearance in Los Angeles.

The Plea

Bryant was released without bail after he pleaded not guilty before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Deborah S. Brazil. The judge released him from jail on his own recognizance.

Bryant's attorney, Daniel Brookman, provided sufficient support that yielded to the release of his client from jail. Brookman said that Bryant does not pose a threat to his community and has not had any contact with law enforcement for six years.

Naomie Levy, a rabbi who came to support Bryant, also attested to his good nature.

"He's a sweet and gentle man of faith," Levy said when Brookman brought her up to support Bryant's release.

Brookman's defense came after Judge Brazil brought up her concern over Bryant's prior theft-related charges and his failure to appear in court. He also contested the $20,000 bail for a grand theft felony charge against his client. He called the charge unnecessary as his client technically did not take home McDormand's Oscars trophy.

"There's a big difference between holding an Oscar and what he's charged with. I don't think his character matches these charges," Brookman told reporters outside court.

2018 Oscars

The 47-year-old Bryant swiped McDormand's trophy at the Governors Ball and even took a video where he is seen kissing the trophy. According to reports, the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing actress alerted security while inside the party when she noticed that her trophy was missing.

Bryant was later spotted leaving the 2018 Oscars after-party with the McDormand's trophy in his hand. He even posed for photos with the Oscar statue. However, he eventually gave it up when a photographer confronted him.

It is unclear how the accused got his hands on a ticket to the exclusive star-studded party. The footage taken from the Governors Ball shows Bryant walking beside McDormand while she was entering the venue. He even waved at the photographers and pretended to be a member of the actress's entourage when he made a move to usher her inside.

However, the footage does not show any indication that Bryant and McDormand knew each other. At that moment, the actress's son was seen carrying the Oscar, which is valued at $950.

McDormand said she did not want to press felony charges but the Academy wants the case to move forward. Bryant could face three years in jail if found guilty. He is due to appear in court again later this month.
It looks like Kylie Jenner isn't engaged after all, or is she?

Ever since the new mom stepped back into the limelight, she's been seen with different diamond rings, which of course sparked engagement rumors.

Well, Jenner is finally answering all the questions and letting everyone know that she and Travis Scott aren't engaged.

On Wednesday, March 7, the Life of Kylie star took to her Snapchat to show off a brand new ring, which appeared to be on her left hand's ring finger.

The new gold and diamond encrusted ring features the initials "JW" on it, which Kylie revealed are Scott's initials. Although JW isn't the rapper's stage name, the initials represent his real name which is Jacques Webster.

As Jenner fans may know, there's also another important JW in her life, her best friend, Jordan Woods

"Jacques Webster & Jordyn Woods. Real Ones, Ok...," Kylie labeled the photo.

The ring is reportedly retailed at $450 and is available at XIV Karats in Beverly Hills.

Travis Showers Kylie With Gifts

Before her pregnancy was disclosed, the "Goosebumps" rapper gifted Kylie a glittery butterfly diamond choker for her 20th birthday in August 2017. The first-time mom was also spotted with the choker in her pregnancy announcement video, "To Our Daughter."

Then weeks after she gave birth to Stormi Webster, who arrived on Feb. 1, Scott presented his baby momma with a Ferrari. Kylie unveiled the blacked out ride on her Instagram stories and confirmed that it was her push present.

According to TMZ, the lip kit maven's luxurious whip is reportedly worth a whopping $1.4 million.

New Parents

Aside from the gifts, it seems that the two are stronger than ever. On Monday, March 5, TMZ spotted the new parents in Miami with a group of friends. Scott and Kylie were seen cuddled up as they arrived at Seaspice in Miami on hospitality guru David Grutman's SS Groot boat. The trip seemed to be a parents-only trip as Stormi wasn't present, but that doesn't mean they were not enjoying being parents.

A source told E! News that the couple are still enjoying the arrival of their baby girl and couldn't be happier.

"Kylie and Travis are doing very well. Having Stormi has strengthened their relationship and elavated it to a new level," the souce stated.
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EU defense ministers met for the first time in the PESCO format earlier this week. The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) is the structural integration pursued by 25 of the 28 national armed forces of the European Union. PESCO was enabled by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 and initiated in 2017. The initiative plans to initially integrate a number of projects due to be launched in 2018.

The PESCO format of the defense meeting means that while all defense ministers met, only those participating in the structure were involved in adopting legal acts. The agreement is to seek a consolidation of defense spending and thus reduce Europes heavy reliance on the United States. This week, the leaders adopted a decision formally establishing a first list of 17 collaborative projects to be developed under PESCO and a game plan for their implementation. The projects include, for example, a European medical command, upgrade of maritime surveillance, a network of logistic hubs, a cyber threats sharing platform or armored infantry fighting vehicle.

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini commented that military mobility within the bloc can only be achieved through EU action, which is what the ministers had agreed. This is also why the European Parliament has been calling for a Military Schengen and Mrs. Mogherini stresses that an instrument to finance military and defense-related expenditures was needed. It would be a European Peace facility, off budget, that would provide support, capacity building and assistance to our partners armed forces, Ms. Mogherini said.

The Commission announced the establishment of an EU Defense Fund in September 2016 to help member states acquire and develop key strategic capabilities faster and in a collaborative fashion. Until 2020, the EU executive will allocate 590 million to the fund and as of 2020, it is proposing to allocate at least 1.5 billion per year.
Since October 2017, Eurojust has been supporting the Finnish authorities in one of the largest investigations of drug trafficking in Finland, and especially in the region of Pirkanmaa, from which most of the Finnish suspects originate.

A larger organised crime group (OCG) established both in Finland and the Netherlands, which has been trafficking drugs, mainly amphetamine, in those countries, was dismantled by the Finnish and Dutch authorities. The estimated value of the drugs (approximately 50 kg) amounts to EUR 2.8 million.

Eurojust facilitated the simultaneous execution of European Investigation Orders and European Arrest Warrants and assisted in the development of coordinated strategies for the joint operations of the Finnish, Dutch, German and Swedish national authorities, which were facilitated through a coordination centre established at Eurojust. Without Eurojust's intervention, cross-border actions would have been very difficult to perform.

The German and Swedish national authorities supported the Finnish authorities' investigation and cooperated on the basis of mutual legal assistance requests. In the Netherlands, suspects were arrested and house searches were conducted by the International Legal Assistance Centre (IRC) of Limburg. During these actions, important evidence was obtained for the Finnish authorities. Through the close and active cooperation of the national authorities with Eurojust and Europol, 19 members of the OCG were detained in Finland. A total of 37 individuals (23 in Finland, 14 in the Netherlands) are suspected of five aggravated drug offences.

In addition to drug trafficking, the investigation focused on seven suspected money laundering offences related to the trafficking of drugs between Finland and the Netherlands.

The National Member for Finland at Eurojust, Piia Vottonen, stated: 'The active cooperation between Eurojust and the national authorities at the Eurojust coordination centre enabled the success in the case. Eurojust dealt with the judicial aspects within its competence, organised a coordination meeting to discuss the details of the case and set up a coordination centre to support the coordinated actions.

Our core task at Eurojust is to assist judicial authorities in dealing with cross-border criminal cases. In this case, as in so many others, the Finnish authorities took on-the-spot investigative measures during the action day at the coordination centre, which provided the necessary judicial support to the investigation.'
BERLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Analog Devices, Inc. [http://www.analog.com/en/index.html ] today announced the acquisition of Symeo [https://www.symeo.com/en ] GmbH, a privately held company based in Munich, Germany that specializes in RADAR hardware and software for emerging autonomous automotive and industrial applications. Symeo's innovative signal processing algorithms will enable ADI to offer customers a RADAR platform with significant improvements in angular accuracy and resolution.

"With this acquisition, ADI can now deliver more comprehensive and compelling RADAR solutions to customers," said Chris Jacobs, Vice President of the Autonomous Transportation and Safety Business Unit, Analog Devices. "Combining ADI's industry-leading product portfolio with Symeo's system and algorithm expertise will pave the way for higher performance RADAR solutions, enabling more accurate sensing in autonomous systems."

Symeo's unique RF and sensor technology enables real-time position detection and distance measurement. The company's technology enables system integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to offer high precision RADAR solutions in rough industrial environments, and complements ADI's expanding portfolio of market solutions in this space.

Symeo's industrial high precision RADAR technology was originally developed within Siemens AG (XETRA: SIE) and subsequently spun-out as an independent entity in 2005 by the Siemens Technology Accelerator GmbH (STA).

"Symeo has become a technology leader in industrial RADAR solutions - with the completion of this transaction, the combination with the technology platform and broad market reach of ADI will ensure further innovations not only in the industrial space but also in the automotive and aerospace markets", said Dr. Rudolf Freytag, CEO of the Siemens Technology Accelerator.

The Symeo team will join ADI's Autonomous Transportation and Safety (ATS) business unit and continue to be based in Munich.

Argonas Corporate Finance acted as exclusive sell-side advisor to Siemens and the other shareholders of Symeo.

About Analog Devices

Analog Devices designs and manufactures semiconductor products and solutions. We enable our customers to interpret the world around us by intelligently bridging the physical and digital with unmatched technologies that sense, measure and connect.

Visit http://www.analog.com.

About Symeo

Symeo GmbH, based in Munich, Germany, specializes in developing and manufacturing telemetry solutions with RF data transmission.

Visit: http://www.symeo.com

About Siemens Technology Accelerator

Siemens Technology Accelerator is a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG and turns innovative Siemens technologies and commercial opportunities beyond Siemens' strategic focus into successful businesses. These businesses are founded as venture capital-financed start-ups or created through sales and licensing deals with existing companies.

Visit: http://www.sta.siemens.com

About Argonas Corporate Finance

Argonas Corporate Finance Advisors, headquartered in Berlin (Germany), is a specialized, independent advisory firm that supports particularly mid-market companies and their shareholders as well as private equity firms and family offices on M&A and structured financing transactions. The team combines complementary experience in the areas M&A, financing and private equity which has been built up over many years with various roles at leading banks, advisory firms and investment firms.

Visit: http://www.argonas.de .

Contact: Christian Berkhoff Managing Partner +49 (0) 30-92271339 c.berkhoff@argonas.de
This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon!

Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page?
Ive posted on this forum for almost three years, and many of my questions have undoubtedly been repetitive,p and ignorant as well as mildly irritating. I cant remember any instance where I felt anything but support from each response I received. I never felt my questions were stupid, or discouraged from asking more. Ive seen the same level of warmth and positive regard through the posts Ive read in the France and several other forums.



I recently joined a respected travel forum to ask a question on behalf of my daughter. I was shocked not only by the negativity but the language of responses, which included, I cant believe anyone could be so stupid and of course this is all your fault. Each time I read a negative comment, I thought this would not happen on the ExPat Forum. So I wanted to express my thanks to everyone, and hope all appreciate the support this forum provides.
A Schengen visa is mandatory for all nationals of Mauritius who stay in the country for a period greater than 90 days [out of a 180 day period].

For short stay visits (less than 90 days within a period of 180 days), the visitors are exempted from obtaining a valid Schengen visa.

Search for mauritius visa france and you will find something like...However, if you wish to stay longer, you will need a visa. The type of visa you will require will depend on the type of activity you plan to engage in: study, work, practice a profession, start a business, etc. A good place to start would be the French consulate in Mauritius.
NEWS FLASH





Nis Constantine the Great Airport has registered its busiest February on record by handling 27.347 passengers, representing an increase of 24.4% on last year. During the first two months of 2018, the airport welcomed 55.806 travellers through its doors, up 30.8%, while the number of aircraft movements stood at 204. It anticipates handling over 400.000 passengers this year and has projected strong growth over the coming period, with up to 650.000 travellers expected in 2021. The airport is now served by Wizz Air, Ryanair and Swiss International Air Lines on a year-round basis. Wizz has so far announced plans to launch new flights between Vienna and Nis this November, while Swiss will add an extra weekly service from Zurich for a total of three per week. The airport is seeking flights to several European cities including Paris, Oslo, Geneva, Frankfurt, Istanbul and Moscow.
Keystone Agricultural Producers has developed a program to help farmers address climate issues

By Kate Ayers

Staff Writer

Farms.com

Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP) has created the Manitoba Agricultural Climate Initiative to help farmers adapt to the challenges they may face as a result of climate change.

The program has three main objectives, according to a KAP report released on Monday:

Assess how climate change is likely to change agricultural production conditions in Manitoba Understand Manitoba farmers priorities for managing these changes Develop ideas on how government can support farmers efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change

Three years ago, the government realized that we had to do something about climate change so, they put some funding in place to do a study on how agriculture would be affected in Manitoba due to climate change, Dan Mazier, KAP president, explained to Farms.com today.

KAP worked alongside the Prairie Climate Centre in developing the report. The centre allows the public and decision-makers to access the best climate science available, the report said.

By 2080, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise on a global scale, Manitobas summer precipitation and temperatures are projected to be similar to those of present-day Kansas and northern Texas, according to the Prairie Climate Centre.

While higher temperatures in the province would lengthen the growing season and provide opportunities for new crop varieties, these benefits do not come without risks. Some of these risks include new pests, drier summers, and more extreme and variable weather, the report said.

The government can help farmers manage these challenges, for example, through streamlined water management regulations, making smart investments in natural infrastructure on farmland, and investing in upgraded weather forecasting tools to help producers better prepare for extreme weather.

Although climate change may present challenges, farmers will continue to be instrumental in reducing and sequestering greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report.

Provincial and federal governments could support farmers environmentally conscious efforts by encouraging the adoption of 4R nutrient stewardship (Right Source, Right Rate, Right Time, Right Place). The government could also help Manitoba farmers gain access to offset markets so they can be rewarded for beneficial practices.

Finally, governments can invest in the development of new practices and technologies that promote sound land management practices, the report said.

The whole idea behind the paper is to offer information (and guidance) for producers and the government, Mazier said. Just like agriculture adapts every day, we need to put policies in place that allow us to adapt to climate change.
Posted 3/8/18

The annual Dallas County Pageants, sponsored by the Dallas County R-1 Alumni Association Inc. will be held Friday and Saturday nights at the Shewmaker Center on the campus of Buffalo High School.The 
Officials with Soy Canada recently completed a successful trade mission to Taiwan and Japan.

Demand for increased supply and intensified marketing efforts were two recurrent themes.

It was clear from each of the importing organizations we met with in both markets that Canada is viewed as a preferred supplier of high-quality soybeans, said Ron Davidson, Soy Canadas Executive Director. The feedback received from importers and end-use manufacturers highlighted the importance of, first, ensuring a reliable supply of high quality soybeans and, second, increasing Canadian presence in the markets. In turn, the Canadian delegation emphasized the significance of timely adoption by end-users of new, higher-yielding varieties.

The mission marked Soy Canadas first visit to Taiwan, where imports of Canadian non-GM and commodity soybeans combined have increased by 416 percent since 2012. Approximately 46,000 tonnes of Canadian soybeans were shipped to Taiwan in 2017 when Canada achieved a 60% market share in non-GM soybeans. Japan consistently remains one of the Canadian soybean sectors top export markets, particularly for non-GM soybeans. Last year, over 340,000 tonnes of soybeans at a value exceeding $260 million were exported to Japan.

We heard the need to continue delivering an assured supply of high quality non-GM Identity Preserved soybeans and to intensify the frequency of engagement with our valued clients, said Jim Millington, Soy Canadas Director of Market Development. Japan and Taiwan continue to have a good image of Canada and they are generally satisfied with the level of assurance delivered from Canadian exporters.

Source : Steinbachonline
Wheat: Net sales of 391,500 metric tons for delivery in marketing year 2017/2018 were up noticeably from the previous week and up 28 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were for unknown destinations (113,500 MT), South Korea (71,500 MT, including 65,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), Japan (66,100 MT), the Philippines (52,000 MT), and Colombia (34,400 MT, switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 19,000 MT). Reductions were reported for Mexico (10,200 MT), Canada (1,400 MT), and Nicaragua (1,200 MT). For 2018/2019, net sales of 36,900 MT were primarily reported for Mexico (30,500 MT). Exports of 361,400 MT were up 9 percent from the previous week, but down 15 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were to South Korea (72,400 MT), Mexico (70,900 MT), Colombia (59,400 MT), Iraq (52,500 MT), and Japan (32,400 MT).

Corn: Net sales of 1,857,600 MT for 2017/2018 were up 8 percent from the previous week and 6 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (385,900 MT), Japan (376,800 MT, including 36,300 MT switched from unknown destinations and decreases of 60,200 MT), Mexico (366,200 MT, including decreases of 1,300 MT), Taiwan (165,400 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), and Vietnam (134,000 MT). Reductions were reported for Portugal (35,500 MT) and Guatemala (6,700 MT). For 2018/2019, net sales of 70,300 MT were primarily reported for Japan (67,900 MT). Exports of 1,076,800 MT were down 13 percent from the previous week, but up 10 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were primarily to Mexico (294,300 MT), Japan (230,800 MT), South Korea (134,200 MT), Colombia (77,600 MT), and the Netherlands (71,400 MT).

Optional Origin Sales: For 2017/2018, the current optional origin outstanding balance of 706,000 MT is for South Korea (274,000 MT), unknown destinations (246,000 MT), and Vietnam (186,000 MT).

Barley: Net sales of 15,000 MT were reported for Canada. Exports of 300 MT were reported to Japan (200 MT) and Taiwan (100 MT).

Sorghum: Net sales reductions of 1,700 MT for 2017/2018 resulted as increases for China (115,300 MT), were more than offset by reductions for unknown destinations (117,000 MT). Exports of 421,700 MT were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. The destination was primarily to China.

Rice: Net sales of 63,100 MT for 2017/2018 were down 34 percent from the previous week and 6 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Colombia (19,300 MT), Haiti (14,700 MT, including decreases of 300 MT), Mexico (8,800 MT), Jordan (8,500 MT), and Saudi Arabia (3,600 MT). Reductions were reported for Venezuela (300 MT) and Guatemala (100 MT). Exports of 106,900 MT were up 60 percent from the previous week and up noticeably from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Iraq (31,500 MT), Libya (29,800 MT), Venezuela (15,700 MT), Haiti (15,200 MT), and Mexico (2,800 MT).

Exports for Own Account: The current outstanding balance of 100 MT is for Canada.

Soybeans: Net sales of 2,509,500 MT for 2017/2018 were up noticeably from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (1,275,900 MT, including decreases of 74,600 MT), Mexico (307,100 MT, including decreases of 10,700 MT), unknown destinations (272,000 MT), Egypt (221,000 MT, including 50,000 MT switched from unknown destinations), and Bangladesh (115,100 MT, including 112,000 MT switched from unknown destinations). Reductions were reported for Pakistan (500 MT). For 2018/2019, net sales of 143,900 MT were primarily reported for unknown destinations (83,000 MT) and China (60,000 MT). Exports of 997,600 MT were up 11 percent from the previous week, but down 12 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were China (256,700 MT), Egypt (121,000 MT), Bangladesh (116,600 MT), Mexico (107,600 MT), and the Netherlands (85,100 MT).

Export for Own Account: The current outstanding balance of 12,200 MT is for Canada.

Export Adjustments: Accumulated exports to the Netherlands were adjusted down 75,595 MT for week ending February 1st. The correct destination is Germany and is included in this weeks report. Accumulated exports to Portugal were adjusted down 35,452 MT for week ending February 22nd. The correct destination is Spain and is included in this weeks report. Accumulated exports to Malaysia were adjusted down 161 MT for week ending February 8th.

Soybean Cake and Meal: Net sales of 200,600 MT for 2017/2018 were up 44 percent from the previous week and 25 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Vietnam (51,800 MT), Colombia (47,300 MT, including decreases of 4,900 MT), the Philippines (29,600 MT, including decreases of 1,400 MT), Canada (15,800 MT, including decreases of 300 MT), and Jamaica (11,700 MT). Reductions were reported for the United Kingdom (6,700 MT), Guatemala (1,900 MT), and Costa Rica (1,700 MT). Exports of 312,700 MT were up 18 percent from the previous week and 10 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Venezuela (55,000 MT), Vietnam (54,500 MT), Colombia (49,000 MT), Morocco (29,800 MT), and the Dominican Republic (26,900 MT).

Soybean Oil: Next sales of 34,000 MT were up noticeably from the previous week and up 48 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for unknown destinations (12,500 MT), Guatemala (10,100 MT), Jamaica (3,500 MT), Mexico (3,200 MT), and South Korea (2,000 MT). Exports of 16,600 MT were down 9 percent from the previous week and 16 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were the Dominican Republic (12,000 MT), Mexico (3,600 MT), and Canada (600 MT).

Cotton: Net sales of 383,900 running bales for 2017/2018 were up 31 percent from the previous week and 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for China (85,100 RB, including decreases of 200 RB), Turkey (73,200 RB, including decreases of 8,800 RB), Indonesia (66,300 RB, including 700 RB switched from China, 700 RB switched from Japan, 100 RB switched from unknown destinations, and decreases of 100 RB), Vietnam (65,900 RB, including 5,100 RB switched from China, 2,400 RB switched from South Korea and decreases of 500 RB), and Bangladesh (34,300 RB, including decreases of 100 RB). Reductions were reported for India (500 RB), unknown destinations (100 RB), and El Salvador (100 RB). For 2018/2019, net sales of 252,100 RB were primarily for Indonesia (107,400 RB), China (81,400 RB), and Bangladesh (49,300 RB). Exports of 524,200 RB--a marketing-year high--were up 88 percent from the previous week and 53 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Vietnam (93,600 RB), Pakistan (86,400 RB), China (79,200 RB), Turkey (78,800 RB), and Indonesia (53,800 RB). Net sales of Pima totaling 9,000 RB for 2017/2018 were up 66 percent from the previous week and 84 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were primarily reported for China (8,800 RB, including 3,000 RB switched from Hong Kong and decreases of 100 RB), India (1,700 RB), and Pakistan (1,300 RB). For 2018/2019, net sales of 3,300 RB were for Germany (2,600 RB) and India (700 RB). Exports of 27,100 RB--a marketing-year high--were up noticeably from the previous week and up 50 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were China (10,400 RB), India (7,400 RB), Germany (2,700 RB), and Peru (2,000 RB).

Optional Origin Sales: For 2017/2018, the current optional origin outstanding balance is 16,500 RB, all Indonesia.

Exports for Own Account: New exports for own account totaling 6,600 RB were reported to Vietnam (4,200 RB), Indonesia (2,200 RB), and China (200 RB). Exports to Indonesia (2,100 RB) were applied to new or outstanding sales. The current outstanding balance of 16,000 RB is for Vietnam (7,000 RB), China (3,900 RB), Indonesia (4,600 RB), and Bangladesh (500 RB).

Hides and Skins: Net sales of 364,800 pieces reported for 2018 were up 11 percent from the previous week and 23 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hide sales totaling 363,600 pieces were primarily for China (207,100 pieces, including decreases of 16,000 pieces), Mexico (69,600 pieces, including decreases of 3,100 pieces), South Korea (62,300 pieces, including decreases of 3,000 pieces), Taiwan (10,400 pieces, including decreases of 1,500 pieces), and Slovenia (6,900 pieces, including decreases of 300 pieces). Reductions were reported for Indonesia (400 pieces). Exports of 381,900 pieces reported for 2018 were unchanged from the previous week, but down 1 percent from the prior 4-week average. Whole cattle hide exports of 368,900 pieces were primarily to China (237,100 pieces), South Korea (56,400 pieces), Mexico (27,400 pieces), Thailand (19,400 pieces), and Taiwan (13,100 pieces).

Net sales of 152,100 wet blues for 2018 were down 1 percent from the previous week, but up 60 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Italy (53,000 unsplit and 10,000 grain splits), Mexico (33,500 grain splits and 100 unsplit), Thailand (13,600 grain splits and 8,000 unsplit), and China (11,700 unsplit and 3,800 grain splits). Reductions were reported for South Korea (200 unsplit), the Dominican Republic (100 grain splits), and Hong Kong (100 grain splits). Exports of 138,300 wet blues for 2018 were up 16 percent from the previous week and 31 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were China (36,900 unsplit and 3,800 grain splits), Italy (31,200 unsplit and 3,600 grain splits), Vietnam (18,200 unsplit), Mexico (12,300 grain splits and 1,700 unsplit), and Thailand (8,000 unsplit and 4,800 grain splits). Net sales splits totaling of 516,200 pounds for 2018 were primarily for Vietnam (386,200 pounds) and China (100,000 pounds) . Exports of 329,400 pounds were down 41 percent from the previous week and 44 percent from the prior 4-week average. The destinations were China (200,000 pounds), Vietnam (121,400 pounds), and South Korea (8,000 pounds).

Beef: Net sales of 19,700 MT for 2018 were down 10 percent from the previous week, but up 31 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for South Korea (6,300 MT, including decreases of 600 MT), Japan (6,200 MT, including decreases of 1,500 MT), Hong Kong (1,800 MT, including decreases of 200 MT), Mexico (1,800 MT, including decreases of 100 MT), and Taiwan (900 MT, including decreases of 100 MT). Exports of 15,800 MT were up 1 percent from the previous week and from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Japan (4,500 MT), South Korea (3,700 MT), Hong Kong (2,300 MT), Mexico (1,500 MT), and Taiwan (1,200 MT).

Pork: Net sales of 19,900 MT for 2018 were down 10 percent from the previous week and 17 percent from the prior 4-week average. Increases were reported for Mexico (6,000 MT), Hong Kong (4,800 MT), South Korea (2,500 MT), Japan (2,100 MT), and Colombia (1,400 MT). Exports of 23,600 MT were up 3 percent from the previous week, but down 5 percent from the prior 4-week average. The primary destinations were Mexico (8,100 MT), South Korea (5,200 MT), Japan (3,800 MT), Canada (1,700 MT), and Hong Kong (1,100 MT).

Source : USDA
WHILE increased wheat production out of Russia is edging in on Australias market share in key Asian markets, the competitive threat out of the Black Sea region may not be as pervasive as feared.

That was the message from US Wheat Associates president Vince Peterson, who discussed the outlook for the world wheat market at the Grains Research and Development Corporations Research Updates, Perth, last week.

Russia has seen a major boost in wheat production over the past five years, rising to a record 85 million tonne harvest in 2017.

The cheaper, improving Russian wheat product has begun to impose on Australias market share in key South East Asian markets  including from Indonesia, Australias largest traditional customer.

This has presented several challenges for Australian grain exporters including the CBH Group, which experienced extremely low harvest shipping during 2017 due to decreased demand for Australian grain in key markets.

Mr Peterson said Russia had also presented a large threat to US markets, and resulted in a major change in US wheat export distribution over the past three decades.

Thirty years ago 30 per cent of the US wheat crop was exported to the Middle East and North Africa, while 6pc was sold to European customers.

Fast forward to 2016-17 and just 14pc of exported US wheat is distributed to those regions, accounting for 4mt of the average 29mt exported.

Mr Peterson said major US customers were now primarily based in Latin American and Asian markets.

Weve lost almost 5mt in annual export sales just to the country of Egypt, let alone all of the others and thats largely, 100pc due to the Black Sea, Mr Peterson said.

There are the occasional spikes, you see the odd year where you do much better and youll see the same in the Australian export picture, those are the years when something happened in Russia.

However, Mr Peterson said while increased production out of Russia was hurting both US and Australian exporters, there were several reasons he did not expect the threat to be ongoing.

The US Wheat Associates president said despite Russian wheat production rising 35mt in five years, he expected growth to plateau as farming systems matured.

He predicted Russian farmers to follow in the footsteps of their Ukrainian counterparts, and focus on higher value crops.

What is happening in Ukraine I think is the future for Russia, Ukraine wheat land area has not increased over the past 27 years, Mr Peterson said.

What has increased is the corn planted area and their basket of oilseed crops  soybeans, sunflower seeds and canola rapeseeds  theyve increased those land areas by 11 million hectares over the past 15 years.

If youre a farmer in Russia and you put all of this money, all of this investment into equipment, land, infrastructure and now youre looking at the next 10 years, youre looking at crops thinking about what is the most profitable thing to produce on that farm with the best marginal income you can produce, its probably not going to be wheat.

In addition, Mr Peterson said it was unlikely that ideal climatic conditions would remain consistent in the Black Sea region as they had in the past five years.

He said favourable weather throughout the Russian growing season had played a major role in its significant production boost.

What I see is a couple of years of anomalies  without any really different changes in environment or anything else  theyve had five consecutive record or almost record years, Mr Peterson said.

Their yields far exceeded anything that theyve ever had in the past, is that because of great farming practices and technology  no  theyve just had five years of exceptionally good weather that put all of this extra wheat into the market place right now and youre seeing the pressure in Indonesia and the places that were all feeling.

With supply out of Russia likely to steady, Mr Peterson said demand from several neighbouring markets would increasinly dictate exports out of the Black Sea.

With a predicted population boost of 1.3 billion people by 2050 in the Middle East and Africa, he expected exporters out of the Black Sea to turn their focus to customers closer to home and away from more distant markets in South East Asia.

The Middle East and Sub Saharan Africa, that takes up 82pc on a five year average of Russias exports right there in their backyard, Mr Peterson said.

Its a huge market, if you look at the population potential growth for that market for them looking forward, if you extrapolate that out, thats 60mt more tonnes of wheat consumption within that environment.

That means trade is going to increase by at least 50mt into those regions.

I think Russia is going to be fully occupied supplying that market in the next 10 to 20 years and their need to go expeditionary out to South Asia and to Mexico, and to all of the places theyve been in recent years, (will decrease) because price is not going to be necessary moving forward.

On top of this, Mr Peterson said rising shipping costs would deter Black Sea exporters from transporting wheat over long distances.

I think were going to continue to strengthen the ocean fleet back down to somewhere where its in balance with commodity movements, I think were going to swing that pendulum back up on freight rates, Mr Peterson said.

Instead of Russia being able to come over to Indonesia for $25, it might cost them $50, $60 or $70.

Thats all of a sudden a pretty big breather, a pretty big insulator between that demand in Africa that will take care of their supplies and their ability to bring across the Indian Ocean.

Combining all of these factors, Mr Peterson said there was plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Australias wheat trade opportunities into the future.

The US Wheat Association president said he was hopeful the wheat trade climate would improve in favour of Australian and American exporters in the near future.

Im not as concerned about Russia in the long-term as I am right now in the day-to-day, year-on-year market place, Mr Peterson said.

Im very positive about it from our producers standpoint  were on a little bit of a low right now with prices and returns but I think the future is pretty bright for those of you that are going to be in the business 10, 20, 30 years from now.
ADT consultant Jorn Ib (right) shows Muntadgin farmer Brendan Maher (left) and Vantage representative Matt Meesak the Bredal ISOBUS controller settings on a Trimble GFX750 during last week's demonstration on the Mahers Rockdale property.

A Hydrema dump truck fitted with a Bredal spreader has come up trumps in a recent demonstration held by Perth business ADT at Muntadgin.

The 4x4 922F model was fitted with a 13 cubic metre (15 tonnes) Bredal spreader (with load cells) and a Trimble auto-guidance system.

The front axle suspension Hydrema, is powered by a Cummins engine rated at 218 kilowatts (300 horsepower) and linked to a 6/3 ZF transmission, which can provide a maximum speed of 50 kilometres an hour.

ADT general manager Darryl Moore has two units available for immediate sale.

We are gearing up for orders for deliveries later this year and into early 2019 and were happy to demo on a farmers property if they are interested in the machine, Mr Moore said.

This will be a self-propelled spreader that also can be converted to other uses when youre not spreading.

It will handle a 15,000 litre tank with a boom and it also could be used as a fire-fighter.

According to Mr Moore, the demo saw the Bredal spreader first spread lime over a 12 metre (40 foot) gridlines width, operating at between 20 and 25 hectares an hour.

It then engaged in gypsum spreading over a similar width at between 25 and 30ha/hr then switched to sulphate of ammonia spreading at a width of 24m (80ft) at a rate of 75ha/hr.

Wind conditions were pretty breezy so we were very happy with its performance, Mr Moore said.

Fuel consumption on the Hydrema was 14.5 litres an hour.

Everyone was also blown away by the quietness and comfort of the Hydrema, he said.

There already is interest in using the spreader at Muntadgin after a deep ripping program and we know this unit will have no problems getting across deep ripped country.

Supervising the demonstration were Mr Bredal, former importer Jorn Ib, who calibrated the Bredal ISObus controller settings on a Trimble GFX750 and Vantage branch manager Reece Salter, who fine-tuned the auto-steer.
It is no longer true to say that only regulated institutions of the financial sector in Brazil are obliged to adopt a compliance program. Now state authorities are adopting regulations requiring companies, foundations or foreign entities that execute public construction or sell products or services to the government, to adopt a complete compliance program.

The new laws go further than the Brazilian Anti-Bribery Law, which provides for credit if a company can prove it has an effective compliance program in place. The new laws, however, provide for heavy sanctions against companies, calculated on a daily basis, if the companies fail to prove the existence of an effective compliance program.

The Governor of Rio de Janeiro approved Law 7,753, of October 17, 2017, which introduces the requirement for a compliance program. Companies have 180 days after the signing of the contract with the government if the contract has a value higher than R$650,000.00 (about $202,000). The requirement applies to entities that have contracts, concession or partnership agreements signed with the government.

The law sets out a number of guidelines for compliance programs, similar to the requirements in the Brazilian Anti-Bribery Law. The penalty for failing to comply is 2 percent of the value of the contract, per day, up to 10 percent, possible suspension of the contract until the breach is corrected, and a ban from public tenders during the breach.

The Brazilian Federal District also passed a local law in February 2018 (Law 6,112/2018) requiring companies, foundations or foreign entities to adopt and implement compliance programs. The law is similar to the law of Rio de Janeiro and consistent with the national compliance law framework.

The value of the contracts, in the case of the Federal District, is much smaller than of Rio de Janeiro, with a threshold of just R$80,000.00 (around $24,500).

Under both new laws, the government agencies that are parties to the contracts have the power to assess the implementation of the mandatory compliance programs. It isnt clear what standards the inspectors will use to assess the programs, considering the likely lack of expertise of the officer in charge of the assessment. Nor is it clear how the inspecting agencies will coordinate their reviews and reach consistent results.

_______

Priscila Akemi Beltrame is partner at Barbosa & Spalding Advogados, in Brazil. She holds a PhD in criminal law by the University of Sao Paulo and is a specialist in compliance, ethics and anti-bribery law.
Posted 3/7/18

Ernest and Pat King, Buffalo, will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on March 8. The couple has two sons: Ernest Jr., Gladstone; and David, Buffalo.A family dinner will be held in their 
As a writer of novels about young adults, I often find myself incorporating feminist themes. I think its because living my life as a feminist has made such a positive difference in my relationships, my career, and my outlook on life. In my most recent UK publication, The Truth About Alice, a young girl is shunned by her small town after rumors start that shes a slut. Funny how that word never seems to apply to boys, right?

Jennifer Mathieu

Its my hope that in reading The Truth About Alice and my other recent novel, Moxie, young readers will find the strength within themselves to stand up for gender equality. Maybe they can be inspired not just by Alices story but by these ten fantastic female icons  past and present  that we should all get to know.

Audre Lorde  This black lesbian writers words are as relevant today as when she first wrote them decades ago. Outspoken, inciteful, and unflinchingly honest, Audre wasnt afraid to address how the fight for womens rights has to include conversations about race and sexuality. Known for reminding us that, your silence will not protect you, Audre has been motivating other women to speak up and out for years.

Roxane Gay  If youre not following Roxane on Twitter, you certainly should be. This funny, whip-smart writer has tackled such issues as body positivity and surviving sexual assault, constantly challenging readers to self-reflect on how they view themselves and the world.

Sonia Sotomayor  The first Latina to serve on the United States Supreme Court, this Puerto Rican woman has made it a point to speak out for womens rights and the rights of minorities while sitting on Americas highest court. Calling her nomination the most electrifying moment of my life, she now serves as inspiration to younger generations.

Lian Bell  This Irish feminist started the #WakingTheFeminists campaign, whose mission was to achieve gender equality in Irish theatre. A freelance arts manager and designer, Lian fell into activism after speaking out against the Abbey Theatres all-male programming. Shes still speaking out and encouraging others to fight for gender equality in the arts.

Emma Watson  Not only did she play feminist icon Hermione Granger, Emmas role as spokesperson for the United Nations HeforShe campaign served to inspire and encourage young women and men the world over to speak out about feminist issues. We love that Emma speaks out against slut-shaming, too. When criticized for clothing choices in a layout in Vanity Fair, Emma argued, Feminism is about giving women choiceI really dont know what my tits have to do with it. We totally agree, Emma!

Gloria Steinem  A legendary American feminist who has spoken out all over the globe for the rights of women, Gloria first made a name for herself by going undercover as a Playboy Bunny and spotlighting the companys sexist employment practices. Gloria has been speaking up ever since, and she shows no signs of stopping  for which we are grateful!

Malala Yousafzai  How could any list of feminist icons not include Malala? This brave Pakistani young woman almost died fighting for the rights of girls to go to school and get an education. Since her incredible story of survival made headlines in 2012, Malala continues to speak out as a fighter for human rights, especially the rights of young women. Her 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was certainly well-deserved.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  The author of the slim and powerful text We Should All Be Feminists, Adichie delivered a TEDx Talk of the same name in 2012, gaining the attention of women all over the globe, including Beyonce, who used parts of Adichies speech in her song Flawless. This Nigerian writer has a lot to say about gender equality, and wed be wise to listen.

Caitlin Moran  Writer and broadcaster, Caitlins collection of essays, How to Be a Woman, captured the hearts of readers all over the world. Funny, raw, and real, Caitlin should certainly be applauded for her honest, frank discussion of womens reproductive health issues, including her own abortion.

Emma Gonzalez  This bisexual Cuban-American teenage girl has become a symbol of hope and inspiration in the fight for sensible gun control in the United States. Her fierce, powerful words and courage in speaking out against a greedy gun lobby have sparked a movement in the United States that is led by teenagers. If the future is female, Emma is certainly an example of that!

Jennifer Mathieu is the author of The Truth About Alice and Moxie.
My novel is about a kidnapping by a clown. Fear of clowns is a well-known phenomenon called coulrophobia. Thankfully I'm not affected. My main phobia - and I don't think it has a special name - is cotton wool. I can't touch it, and even looking at it makes me feel queasy.

M J Ford

Hold My Hand is my first novel for adults, but I've written for children for many years. I've even ghost-written books for several celebrities, but I'm contractually bound to keep their identities to myself.

I have two dogs, Jasper and Olive. At first we just had Jasper, but he was stolen when he was a year old. We thought he was gone for good, and adopted Olive as a stray from Spain. After six months, we got Jasper back when a vet in a fairway town scanned his microchip. I'm not sure who was more put out and finding another dog in the house - Jasper or Olive. Luckily they get on!

I love dogs. Young, old, smelly, bouncy, massive and tiny. If I weren't a writer, I'd be a dog-walker.

I once wrote a ghost story for kids. I never really believed in ghosts, but on holiday in Sicily with friends, I was having an al fresco dinner at our remote villa when a girl in a white dress skipped past the table before vanishing. No one else saw her. The caveat is that I'd had quite a lot of the cheap local wine.

When I was seventeen, I nearly died falling off a mountain in Pakistan. I was with a group descending from an elevated pass, when my crampons slipped and I slid down an icy slope. I dropped my ice-axe, and it was only my bleeding fingertips that stopped me falling several thousand feet. I'm not a big fan of heights after that.

Though my novel is a crime thriller, my favourite books are all romances that end badly or sadly.

My main hobby is fell-running. The muddier the better. My lurcher Olive will come out in all weathers. Jasper the whippet is more choosy and will hide in a bed when it's raining outside.

I have two children. The oldest, Martha, knows I'm a writer for a living, but since there are no pictures, she's really not interested. William, the younger, isn't bothered either, unless the story is about a blue train called Thomas.

I recently moved back to the town of my birth, after nearly twenty years away. I'm visiting my former school to do a talk for the A-Level English students about crime fiction. It's a proud moment, but makes me feel very old indeed!
Before I started writing my novel The Girls Book of Priesthood, I interviewed over twenty women priests from all around the UK. It was a fascinating, often humbling, experience, as they shared their very personal stories about why they had followed this path. Many were in their early twenties, just starting out. Another was one of the original suffragettes who had marched down Whitehall, banner aloft, campaigning for womens ordination in the early 1990s.

Louise Rowland

This is what I learnt:

Forget all the stereotypes

Say female priest and, even now, that can still conjure up a picture of steel grey hair, bobbly cardigans and a houseful of cats. The women I met couldnt have been further from that image: funny, feisty, fiercely intelligent and in some cases drop-dead glamorous. They could have pursued any path  yet they felt called to take on this particular role, with all its various challenges and rewards.

Even 24 years after women were first ordained, some things havent changed

Although the intake of young trainee priests is now 50/50 male and female, there are still large swathes of the Church of England that oppose women officiating at the altar. That anti-camp compromises a pincer movement of both the high and the low end of the C of E: evangelicals on the one side and conservative Anglo-Catholics on the other. Some dioceses are also more liberal than others. Even in inner London, some parishes still refuse to employ a female curate or priest. But the capital has also done a recent high profile recruitment drive to encourage more women on board.

Older women priests often worked for free

Never mind the gender pay gap. Many of the first waves of female priests found themselves offered roles in Self Supporting Ministry  in other words, unpaid positions. These slots were frequently in remote rural team parishes, serving several villages, that no one else wanted to take on.

Being accepted intro training is like joining the Royal Marines

Getting into theological college and becoming a trainee, or ordinand, is not a shoe-in. Some curates even describe theological college as spiritual boot camp, so tough is the entrance process and the training that follows.

Its all about finding the right vicar

When youre in training, everything hinges on that all-important working relationship with your vicar  the incumbent. He or she is the one who guides you as you learn and helps you navigate the rough patches that are bound to crop up. Some vicars and curates first meet at introductory pets and owners sessions held at theological colleges  a form of clerical speed dating.

Being young, single and female makes you Public Property Number 1

People in the parish often think they know  or need to know  everything about you, as the new curate on board. That curiosity ramps up tenfold, if youre a young woman and still something of a novelty.

Dating a member of the congregation is an absolute no-no

Becoming romantically involved with a parishioner is totally off-limits for anyone on the clergy team. If that parishioner also happens to be married  as is the case in my novel  that could turn out to be a sackable offence.

Gallows humour gets you through

Rev and the Vicar of Dibley had it right. Being a priest is an extremely demanding role  emotionally, physically and spiritually. And, as in any close knit team, its the barbed in-jokes, the witty codenames, the letting off steam in a safe place that helps get you through.

Its a 24-7 job where me-time is essential

Priests can be dealing with life, death and everything in between, all in one afternoon: a baptism, sorting out the flower rota, attending a dying parishioner in a hospice, trying to sort out the endlessly leaking roof. Thats why curates are encouraged to ring-fence regular time for themselves  preferably out of the parish and with friends who know them from a completely different world.

You can get mistaken for a kiss-o-gram

Some people are apparently still so startled by the sight of an attractive young woman in a dog collar that they assume shes simply dressing up
Im a binge writer. I wish I could be one of those amazingly disciplined writers who write every day. But Im not. I give myself a word count I want to reach, usually 50, 000 words, and give myself a month to do it in. Im then so obsessed with making the word count that Im completely absorbed in the story, and the rest of my life goes to rack and ruin. The cats and I depend on my husband for food and water when Im on a tear.

Tina LeCount Myers by Alec Johnson Bates

I cant work at home. I love my home. It's cozy and cluttered and welcoming. There are also dishes I could be washing or bills that need paying or clothes I should be folding and putting away. Far too many productive distractions. So I have a lovely little desk in a shared writers space, called The Castro Writers Cooperative. We are tucked behind a bustling cafe and have a secret entrance. Its wonderfully cloak and dagger.

I use enormous storyboards to keep me on track. I've plastered the boards with photos of characters and a zillion bright sticky notes. It looks more like Im trying to solve a crime than write a fantasy novel. Every three months or so, I promise myself I will learn a program like Scrivener to make plotting and notes easier. But I love the feel of my pens and sticky notes too much to give them up.

I adore surfing. I grew up on beaches as a kid, but I didnt learn to surf until I was in college. My university offered surfing as a PE class. The only problem was, the course was midday, and I had a Russian language class right after it. I never had enough time to change. I would sit in the back of the lecture hall in my wet bathing suit, towel, and hoodie. Luckily, I never had to go up to the board.

My astrological chart foretold I would be a writer. When I was born my parents had my birth chart done, and my mother would often remind me I was destined to be a writer, particularly when she didnt approve of choices. I tried to prove her wrong, but she was right about this just as she was right about everything else.

I was an urban chicken rancher for seven years. By rancher I mean my neighbor and I had four chickens that free-ranged between our two yards. The paradox is Ive always despised the taste of eggs.

One of my superpowers is I can come up with a meal using whatever I have in the fridge. Its a genetic thing. My mother and her dad, my Finnish grandfather, had this gift. When I was living in Finland with my grandparents as a child, my mother told me never to ask my grandfather what was in the dish he was cooking, because you didnt want to know. I stand by that advice for my own cooking.

I walked away from my Ph.D. program without regrets. I spent eight life-changing years as a teaching assistant in the European History Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. I made lifelong friends. But there came a moment in the National Library in Florence where I asked myself if this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and the answer came back No! I have no regrets about not finishing my dissertation. In fact, I think it would make a better novel.

Despite being horribly allergic, I have two demanding Siamese cats. The first, Hello Kitty, came to us as a feral kitten. The second, Roo (Badtz Maru) is a rescue kitty from the animal shelter. I still wheeze, and if I touch my eyes they swell shut, but there is an undeniable bond that transcends any of these challenges.

My husband asked me to marry him a month after wed met at our best friends wedding. He lived in Kentucky, and I lived in California, and wed only spent time together the one weekend. Weve been together almost 20 years, and we still debate who was braver, him for asking or me for saying yes.
The dream of filling Turkey with railways was one of the ambitions of the Republic of Turkey when it was first founded. Although these railways and train lines were highly popular in the beginning, Turks lost their interest in railway transportation and began to prefer much faster ways. However, with the renewed popularity of the Eastern Express, which departs from Ankara heading to Kars, train lines are again in the spotlight for those who want to get to know the Anatolian hinterlands.

The Kurlatan Express

The latest trend is to take a trip to the East through Turkey on the Kurtalan Express, which began 74 years ago. Continuing nonstop since its opening, the express is now one of the first choices of adventure seekers that want to take a cultural tour through Anatolia.

The Kurtalan Express makes more than 70 stops in Krkkale, Kayseri, Sivas, Malatya, Elazg, Diyarbakr and Batman, along the 1,212-kilometer route from the first station in Ankara to the last in Siirts Kurlatan district, a journey of 23 hours.

The journey offers passengers a visual feast of changing scenery from the city, through villages and over rivers, to snow capped mountains.

Kurlatan Station Master, Selahattin Yldrm told Anadolu Agency (AA) that the Kurtalan Express made its first journey on October 29, 1944.

Yldrm said the express carries 10,000-15,000 passengers per year. The Kurtalan Express has great significance for transport in our region. Our Kurtalan district is renowned for the Kurtalan Express. In the past, films featuring the Kurtalan Express were shot.

Mehmet Simsek, a 73-year-old retiree who started his career on the Kurtalan Express in 1972 and served for more than 40 years, said when he started, rail transport throughout the country was more attractive than the highway.

At that time, there were many passengers not because they preferred it, but because there was no other means of transportation. Nowadays, passengers prefer trains with restaurant and sleeping cars for a comfortable journey

Source: Daily Sabah
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Posted 3/7/18

A lake area educator was charged for alleged sexual misconduct.Macks Creek resident Joseph Perry Rice IV, 35, was charged in Miller County with second degree sexual misconduct on Feb. 27 for alleged 
In Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) GVO Scientists Conduct a Series of "Live" Field Tests During an Ascent to Mt. Nyiragongo's Summit (11,380 ft.) Using Imcon Internet Backpack

ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / March 7, 2018 / Imcon International Inc. in collaboration with its global education partner, OPEN, and GVO have successfully tested the emergency service capabilities and data communications relays of the Imcon Internet Backpack.

Tests were conducted within the standard Backpack on an active volcano to determine how Internet-connectivity and off-grid emergency communications systems could operate in harsh electromagnetic environments. Throughout the ascent, GVO scientists were in constant satellite communications via the Imcon Cloud-Based Backpack GridstreamER Edgeware Platform with OPEN's backpack system in the USA 6,800 miles (10,944 km) away. The testing results showed that when all normal communications systems are unavailable due to an eruption or earthquake event, the Imcon Backpack technologies can maintain communications to other Imcon Internet Backpack units.

The Internet Backpack is designed with highly redundant and secure software-controlled communications. Data transmission systems can provide GVO and like organizations real-time emergency response data from sensor networks, while simultaneously communicating among disaster relief teams managing emergency events. GVO is in charge of the 24/7 monitoring of this volcano and directs large-scale evacuations with local and international emergency services organizations. GVO and Imcon/OPEN in Goma, DRC, are conducting further testing and customization of the backpack for education and emergency services applications. The teams will soon be setting up a new Internet of Things (IoT) volcano sensor networks for safe, secure state-of-the-art wireless volcano monitoring coverage, allowing for greater advance warning for emergency events.

OPEN is already offering Backpack-related emergency services education programs to the local public schools in the DRC, and its remote network of schools internationally. Imcon/OPEN teams will be conducting further testing on new units and IoT sensor networks with both local students and volcanologists. Imcon/OPEN team plans to offer additional Backpack Emergency services education to professionals and the general public.

"Our goal is to help GVO improve disaster response times, allow real-time communications and information exchanges between all emergency services organizations equipped with the Backpacks at all times, as well as keep the public better informed during such potentially chaotic emergency situations. The Cloud and Edgeware-based software platform within the Backpack allows for easy integration of new mobile and web-based GPS apps for a more fully informed field worker to make on-the-spot life-saving decisions, due to accurate real-time information. In collaboration with our school programs, we are currently training local and remote students on these important next-generation Internet tools, enlisting them to become active participants in protecting and supporting their communities while learning skills for the 21st-century job market." stated Rob Loud, CEO of Imcon international.

GVO Director General, Dr. Katcho Karume added,

"This is a ground-breaking technology tool for our scientists who can now safely monitor volcano and seismological disturbances from our offices 15 kilometers from the volcano and other sets of IoT sensors on the shores of nearby Lake Kivu. We plan on testing a series of new IoT sensor technologies this year and further customize the backpack for science, but also critical emergency services operations. Working with other disaster response organizations, we will test the Imcon Backpacks in a series of evacuation drills in the coming year to further refine this versatile mobile technology platform with its real-time monitoring and emergency response capabilities."

Associate Dean Arthur Thomas of Syracuse School of Information Studies

"The Imcon Internet Backpack Project has been an excellent opportunity for experiential learning for our students at Syracuse University (SU). The project has engaged students through the WiTec student organization, as well as through the iConsult information technology volunteer consulting program. The interdisciplinary nature of the project, involving technology management, earth science, software, Internet of Things and global engagement, is an example of the types of projects being coordinated by SU's Digital Transformation Collaborative (DTC). This new, multi-disciplinary program serves to connect external organizations with students representing degree programs at several schools and colleges inside SU. Through DTC projects, students have a chance to provide real-world, transformative solutions while the organizations tap into the developing talent and skills of our students across several specialty areas. The DTC is grateful to OPEN for engaging with us in this significant experiential learning opportunity - it's a win-win for everyone involved."

About Imcon International Inc.

Imcon International Inc., an immediate connectivity solutions provider, is developing edgeware services and device solutions such as the Internet Backpack, which conform to the Open Specifications Model for the Internet of Things v0.5. The Open Specifications Model was developed through fifteen years of National Science Foundation and industry-supported cloud to edge (edgeware) dynamic secure solutions research and development led by Syracuse University School of Information Studies Professor Lee W McKnight. Lee is co-inventor of the Internet Backpack. For more information visit Imconintl.com.

About OPEN (One Planet Education Network)

OPEN's mission is to promote scientific and technological literacy to best prepare young students for the global challenges ahead. These include the modernization of critical infrastructure, sustainable community development, environmental remediation, the impacts of Biotechnology/Neuroscience/AI/robotics, and commercialization and colonization of space. We prepare the global community of learners for the realities of the 21st-century workplace and world, so they can help us resolve the major challenges confronting civilization. For more information visit oneplaneteducation.com.

Media contact:

info@imconintl.com

678-915-1759

SOURCE: Imcon International Inc.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT / ACCESSWIRE / March 7, 2018 / Mr. Jerry Remy, the well-recognized broadcast voice of the Boston Red Sox, is a five-time lung cancer survivor. In an interview conducted by ProLung, Inc. ('ProLung' or the 'Company'), Mr. Remy and his wife, Phoebe, urge those at risk of lung cancer 'to get to their doctor.' Their powerful video message can be viewed exclusively on ProLung's website (www.prolunginc.com).

'Our thoughts are with our dear friend Jerry and his family in his battle with lung cancer,' said Steven Eror, President and CEO of ProLung. 'Jerry's journey mirrors so many lung cancer patients and his simple message of 'get to your doctor' may be life-saving. Early detection of lung cancer is critical because it may improve survival, expand the time available to treat the disease and lower the cost of current approaches. Patients like Jerry want access to non-invasive, radiation-free and rapid predictive analytic tests.'

About Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. It kills more than colorectal, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers combined. Lung cancer has the lowest five-year survival rate of all major cancers, at approximately 17 percent.[i] Approximately 1,800,000 new cases of lung cancer were diagnosed globally in 2012. According to the American Cancer Society, there were 224,390 new cases of lung cancer in the USA in 2016 with 158,080 disease-related deaths resulting from tobacco use, exposure to secondhand smoke, radon, asbestos and other risk factors.[ii]

There is a severe unmet clinical need to reduce the time required to determine malignancy in lung cancer patients diagnosed with Indeterminate Pulmonary Nodules (IPNs). Patients with IPNs can receive multiple CT scans over the course of months and years to confirm malignancy in their lungs. This wait often proves fatal as the cancer advances and spreads. The chance to diagnose and treat a malignant nodule in its earliest, localized state is often lost. If lung cancer is diagnosed while localized at an early stage, the five-year survival rates can soar three times to well over 50 percent with existing treatments.[iii]

In 2015, ProLung, Inc. was extremely heartened when the US Preventive Services Task Force and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented the first national lung cancer screen utilizing a low-dose CT scan (LDCT) of the chest. The screen will amplify the clinical need as it identifies up to 24,000,000 patients with IPNs who may experience a narrowing treatment window as they wait.

ProLung's predictive analytics device rapidly evaluates IPNs that have been identified by CT scan and provides an accurate assessment of the risk of malignancy in the lungs. Patients with a high probability of malignancy may be prioritized for biopsy, which can lead to an earlier diagnosis with improved prognosis and treatment options. Patients with a low probability of malignancy may benefit from a reduction in futile biopsies which involve significant risk (4.4% mortality rate for resection by thoracotomy, possible pneumothorax and infection), a relaxed CT vigilance program and decreased emotional trauma.

Results published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology and performed at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine yielded 92% specificity and 90% sensitivity in subjects with one or more indeterminate lung masses, confirmed by tissue biopsy. Other published research demonstrates superior performance in the evaluation of these patients in comparison to FDG PET scans. Further testing of the accuracy and safety of the ProLung Test is underway at multiple sites including MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Mayo Clinic, Stanford Health Care, Loyola University Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, MUSC Health, UCLA Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Harvard Medical School), Huntsman Cancer Institute and many other world-class organizations.

About ProLung, Inc.

ProLung's mission is to make a difference in time for lung cancer patients. ProLung is the world leader in innovative predictive analytics technology and non-invasive tests for the risk stratification of lung cancer. The Company develops, tests, and commercializes solutions which may shorten the time to diagnosis and expand the therapeutic window for lung cancer patients. ProLung's predictive analytics platform for lung cancer risk stratification is approved for sale in the European Economic Area and investigational use in the USA.

For further information, contact:

Andy C. Robertson | +1-801-503-9231 | acr@prolunginc.com

ProLung Chief Marketing Officer

ProLung

757 E. South Temple Suite 150

Salt Lake City, Utah 84102

USA

www.prolunginc.com

Follow ProLung, Inc. on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn: @ProLungInc

[i] http://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/lung-cancer/learn-about-lung-cancer/lung-cancer-fact-sheet.html

[ii] http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@research/documents/document/acspc-047079.pdf

[iii] http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html

SOURCE: ProLung, Inc.
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Fujitsu Laboratories IoT Systems Laboratory, Software Laboratory E-mail: dracena@ml.labs.fujitsu.com Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-6252-2176 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

TOKYO, Mar 7, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. today announced the development of Dracena (Dynamically Reconfigurable Asynchronous Consistent EveNt-processing Architecture), a stream processing architecture that can add or change content while processing large volumes of IoT data, without stopping.With recent advances in IoT technologies, it is expected that many real-time services will be created to utilize the large volumes of data flowing into the cloud from various devices across factories, homes, and social infrastructure. In the progression towards autonomous driving with connected cars, researchers are considering the analysis of the vast amounts of information, such as speed and location, generated from vehicles, which can then be presented to drivers, in the form of warnings, for example.Stream processing technology, which is effective in the high-speed processing of these sorts of huge volumes of data, has issues in that, because processing must be temporarily stopped when changing or adding processing content according to additions or improvements to services, the provision of services can be delayed.Now, Fujitsu has developed a new stream processing architecture that automatically switches to a newly provided data processing program when a parallelized data processing job has been completed, by separating stream processing into data reception processing and actual data processing so that data reception processing and current data processing are not stopped (patent pending). As a result, in a simulation of the reception of a few dozen bytes of data per second from one million vehicles, Fujitsu has confirmed that this architecture is able to continue processing streaming data while adding or changing processing programs, with an average delay increase volumes of five milliseconds or less.Fujitsu Laboratories is looking to commercialize this technology during fiscal 2018 on the Mobility IoT Platform, offered by Fujitsu Limited, and extend it to other industry areas.Details of this technology were presented at DEIM2018 (the Forum on Data Engineering and Information Management), a conference being held in Awara, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, from March 4.Development BackgroundWith the recent development of IoT technologies, data has begun to be gathered from all sorts of objects and collected in datacenters, and it is expected that by analyzing and utilizing this, a variety of new services will be created. In the case of connected cars, for example, it is thought that by collecting, analyzing, and utilizing data from automobiles in real time, it will be possible to relieve congestion, assist drivers, and improve the safety of autonomous driving (figure 1).IssuesIn order to rapidly process data, such as speed and location, that are generated on a second-to-second basis by huge numbers of cars in motion, the most effective method is to construct a system that uses stream processing to process data in parallel, such as on a car-by-car basis. In order to add to or change the processing program according to service additions and improvements, the current method involves preparing two systems of the same scale in advance, using one for operations, making changes to the other one, and then quickly swapping them out. This method required both systems to be temporarily stopped, however, while the data, such as the speed or position of a car, held in the memory of the system in use, was copied over to the revised system. This made it difficult to produce services that required truly continuous operations, such as the real-time transmission of warnings to connected cars.In addition, because new processing programs were obtained from the database, known as a repository, congestion resulted with the numerous queries from large volumes of processing units, delaying overall processing.Details of the Newly Developed TechnologyNow, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed Dracena, an architecture that can modify the processing programs of a system while it is operating, without halting operations.With this technology, when changing or adding data processing contents, this architecture distributes the new data processing program as a message, in the same way data is distributed, to each individual processing unit, called an object, such as the processing unit for each car. This eliminates the impact on overall processing speed due to the concentration of queries on the repository. Moreover, by separating intra-object message reception processing and data processing in this architecture, the system is able to add in the new data processing program without stopping the message reception processing or the existing data processing, and then have all objects change over to the new data processing program with the same timing. This has enabled Fujitsu Laboratories to create a stream processing architecture in which the data processing program can be added to or changed without stopping, in order to continue parallelized processing without holding back the flow of huge volumes of data for copying.EffectsThe results of a simulated evaluation confirmed that, in a use case in which a few dozen bytes of data are transmitted once each second from one million vehicles, this architecture was capable of continuously providing services when adding a sudden-braking detection service in a situation where the system was already providing a service to detect excessive driving times, with an average delay increase volume of five milliseconds or less. This architecture will enable the rapid provision of real-time services that require uninterrupted operation and that can respond to problems occurring in society, including providing driving assistance for connected cars, supporting energy-saving usage of appliances, providing in-home health and safety monitoring, and providing travel guidance for tourists using smartphones.Moreover, this architecture enables users to adopt a build method in which they first build a base system aimed at simple analysis and utilization, and then gradually add new services. Using this technology in the case of automobiles, for example, it would be possible to begin with a system that reads signs of drunk driving based on steering wheel operation data, and then add new services layer by layer, such as combining this with map data to detect crosswinds at tunnel exits, or combining it with image data to detect the presence of illegally parked cars, which can be expected to improve the efficiency of service development.Future PlansFujitsu aims to commercialize this technology during fiscal 2018 as a constituent element of the Mobility IoT Platform offered by Fujitsu Limited. In addition, Fujitsu is looking to extend this technology beyond the mobility field to business areas that require real-time services based on data that is continually generated at a high frequency, such as providing directions to people during events or in disaster situations.About Fujitsu LaboratoriesFounded in 1968 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. is one of the premier research centers in the world. With a global network of laboratories in Japan, China, the United States and Europe, the organization conducts a wide range of basic and applied research in the areas of Next-generation Services, Computer Servers, Networks, Electronic Devices and Advanced Materials. For more information, please see: http://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/labs/en/.About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.* Please see this press release, with images, at:http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2018 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.


CHICAGO (dpa-AFX) - Boeing Co. (BA) is expected to once again miss the key deadline for the contract on its KC-46 refueling tanker, the U.S. Air Force reportedly said.



Bloomberg reported that Boeing's program schedule continues to show that it plans to deliver the first 18 tankers, two spare engines and nine sets of wing-mounted refueling pods by October, which is already 14 months later than the initial date of August 2017.



But the Air Force now reportedly said that the required deliveries are 'more likely' to be completed 'in late spring 2019,' spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said that reflects the findings in a new schedule-risk assessment. 'The top issues slowing progress' are Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness certifications 'and completing the flight test program,' Stefanek said.



'These potential delays will not result in additional program cost to the taxpayer,' Stefanek reportedly said. That's because Boeing is required to use its own funds under its 'fixed priced-incentive fee' contract, which caps the Air Force's liability at $4.9 billion. The Air Force estimates Boeing will complete the contract for $6.3 billion, or $1.4 billion over budget. Boeing estimates it will complete the development work for $5.9 billion.



Boeing has 'worked closely with the U.S. Air Force on the updated' schedule assessment for the KC-46 and discussed a range of delivery dates, the Chicago-based company reportedly said. 'While there is always risk on any development program, we're relying on our partnership with the Air Force to help mitigate those risks, complete KC-46 testing and deliver 18 game-changing tankers to them as quickly as possible,' the contractor said.



The tanker's flight testing program has been beset by technical issues for what was once envisioned as a low-risk development project. The first KC-46 aircraft was originally expected to be delivered between April and June 2016; Boeing expects it now between April and June of this year, according to the Air Force statement. The Air Force said the first delivery 'is more likely' to occur later this year.



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NEC Seiichiro Toda s-toda@cj.jp.nec.com +81-3-3798-6511

TOKYO, Mar 8, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) today announced that NEC Deutschland GmbH has delivered an LX series supercomputer to Technische Universitat Kaiserslautern (TUK), one of Germany's leading Universities of Technology. The system will be used for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications from several scientific and engineering disciplines at TUK. Furthermore, member universities of the Alliance for High Performance Computing in Rhineland-Palatinate (AHRP) will also have access to the HPC system.The new HPC cluster consists of 324 compute nodes totaling nearly 7,800 cores of the latest-generation Intel Skylake CPUs, and comprises a highly optimized Intel Omni-Path Interconnect architecture for low-latency, high-bandwidth communication. Additional GPGPU compute nodes equipped with the latest NVIDIA VOLTA 100 GPUs contribute to a total peak performance of the HPC cluster at approximately 700 Teraflops per second (TFlops/s).In addition, a high-performance parallel file system is deployed based on the NEC BxFS-z Storage Appliance with approximately 1.2 Petabytes of usable storage capacity and an aggregate bandwidth of 20 Gigabytes per second (GBytes/s). The storage solution is based on the widely deployed BeeGFS parallel file system made in Germany. It is installed on top of ZFS as the underlying physical filesystem, combining the highest I/O throughput with high availability and reliability, as well as integrated and dynamically configured data integrity and redundancy."We are very happy to work together with NEC and jointly contribute to the research capacity of TUK as a whole. The level of NEC's understanding of our requirements, the high sustained performance and stability of NEC's HPC solution, as well as the dedication and technical competence of their team convinced us of their excellence," said Professor Dr. Nicolas Gauger, Head of TUK's Computing Center (RHRK) and Chair for Scientific Computing."We are very happy that TUK asked us to provide them with a major upgrade and replacement of their HPC environment. It is an honor that we have also been entrusted with an individually designed HPC solution to meet the requirements that TUK was looking to fill," said Yuichi Kojima, Vice President, HPC EMEA and Managing Director of NEC Deutschland.About Technische Universitat KaiserslauternKaiserslautern University of Technology (TUK) is a research university with an international presence. Research of the highest quality in accordance with international standards in the respective scientific disciplines lies at the very heart of TUK. The quality and strength of the whole spectrum of TUK's research are rooted in the scientific disciplines and in addressing the grand societal scientific challenges. TUK's research strategy is centered on a dynamic process of profile building and is consistent with the research initiative of the Federal State of Rhineland-Palatinate. The two research centers and six research units represent the university's current major scientific strongholds. TUK has strong ties with partners from all over Germany and around the world, both from academia as well as from industry.- Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM)- Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE)- German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)- Institute for Composite Materials (IVW)- Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI SWS)About NEC CorporationNEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.Based on its Mid-term Management Plan 2015, the NEC Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow. For more information, please visit http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/solutionsforsociety/message.html.Source: NEC CorporationContact:Copyright 2018 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Posted 3/7/18

Here in the U.S. and other western nations, we spend a lot of time beating up on ourselves, feeling guilty about things that happened 50 to 500 years ago (if you count Columbus, the latest 
Distance education in action

Diagram of the distance education system



Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-6252-2176 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

TOKYO, Mar 8, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu today announced that it will be conducting field research into real-time distance learning, connecting classrooms in Japan and Myanmar over the internet, for elementary school children from Japanese families working temporarily in Myanmar on March 10-11.This field research will consist of both a programming class and an experiment for a science class prepared in Japan. It will be conducted using Fujitsu tablets featuring the Fujitsu K-12Education Solution Learning Repository, a teaching support tool that allows children to share ideas with one another and helps teachers and children to ask one another questions. This solution will also be used alongside a video conference system that enables the students and teachers to converse and see one another.These tools will ensure that even during distance learning that classes can proceed efficiently while children and teachers communicate both ways, facilitating natural conversation between the children in Myanmar and their teachers in Japan, and additionally enabling the teachers to monitor students' answers and the status of their work in real time on their tablets. Fujitsu is additionally offering e-Learning content using Fujitsu Education Solution Digital Learning, a platform that lets users learn from digital teaching materials anytime and anywhere so that students participating in the trial can continue with applied learning in their own homes after the classes.Based on the results of this field research, Fujitsu will develop optimal distance learning solutions aimed at correcting gaps in education that occur in many countries, not just for families working abroad temporarily.http://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_FujitsuDistanceEducationAction.jpgDistance education in actionBackgroundInternational aid organizations suggest that at present there are millions of children around the world not in school, and there are even more children who have not completed a primary education(1). A lack of suitable teaching facilities, teachers, and teaching materials has been cited as one of the reasons for this.Now, Fujitsu is conducting a trial to provide educational opportunities for the children of Japanese expats working locally in Myanmar, where educational options are often limited for people living in the country temporarily compared with those for personnel living in Japan owing to a lack of teachers and teaching materials. Through this trial, Fujitsu aims to engage in research and development on optimal distance learning solutions aimed at addressing this educational gap.Trial Summary1. Trial SubjectsAbout 32 children (elementary school students) of Japanese expats working in Yangon, Myanmar2. ScheduleTrial time period: March 10, 11 (Saturday and Sunday)On both days, classes from 10:30-12:00 will take place in a classroom for science experiments, while classes from 1:00-2:30 will take place in a programming classroom.3. Lesson subjectsa. Programming class: Programming for Beginners(Content provided by Fujitsu Research Institute)This lesson is aimed at developing programming fundamentals, creativity, and logical thinking skills by creating a game using the Scratch(2) programming language.b. Science experiment: Making Air Fresheners Using Water-Absorbing Polymers(Content provided by Eikoh Science Labo, Eikoh Inc.)This lesson is aimed at using an experiment to develop an understanding of the hypothesis and testing cycle of the scientific method, and an understanding of the characteristics of the water-absorbing polymers used in the children's environment.4. Field Research detailsTeachers will conduct a programming class and a science experiment for the children of expats from Japan working in Myanmar using a video conferencing system and Fujitsu tablets featuring Learning Repository. The video conferencing system will facilitate natural conversations between teachers in Japan and children in Myanmar, while Learning Repository will provide real-time support for smooth classroom operation and monitoring of the status of student work. This includes allowing students to submit answers and teachers to distribute materials. In addition, the students will continue applied learning after the lessons in their own homes using e-Learning.5. Evaluation areas- Methods for effectively utilizing Learning Repository's communication tools, both between teachers and students and between students, in distance learning classes- Evaluation of the local communication environment in order to provide smooth transmission of video from Japan and screen-sharing from Myanmar- Optimal lesson content and teaching methods for distance learning- Satisfaction of both participating children and their guardians with the lessons, and their needs for distance education going forward6. System summary- The Learning Repository teaching support tools, which empower students to share ideas, and teachers and students to ask and respond to questions- The Digital Learning platform, which enables learning at any time or place using devices such as smartphones and tablets- The Fujitsu Tablet Arrows Tab, an education-focused tablet that can be reliably used in educational environments- A video conferencing system using cameras and screenshttp://www.acnnewswire.com/topimg/Low_DiagramDistanceEducationSystem.jpgDiagram of the distance education systemFuture PlansLeveraging the results of this field trial, Fujitsu not only aims to develop a distance learning platform to provide content from Japan to the children of Japanese expats working in various other countries, it aims to develop a system that can provide distance learning in any country or region to children who are not receiving sufficient education, targeting the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), which is to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all."(1) 58 million children around the world not in school, and about 100 million children who have not completed a primary educationSource: EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015, UNESCO(2) ScratchA programming language and toolset developed by the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.* Please see this press release, with images, at:http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2018 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON, March. 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Envirotainer, the global market leader in providing secure cold chain solutionsfor the pharmaceutical supply chain, recently signed a Global Master Lease Agreement (MLA) with Ethiopian Airlines. This is the first time Envirotainer partners with an airline that is based in Africa. The partnership will greatly enhance the connectivity for pharmaceutical companies and their customers in Africa.

Mr. Fitsum Abady, MD Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services, said: "We are very pleased to be the first African airline partnering with Envirotainer. In this highly lucrative market the application of active temperature controlled containers play vital role for the protection and safety of time & temperature sensitive healthcare products both onboard and on the ground throughout the supply chain. This commercial partnership with Envirotainer significantly fuels our aim on providing superior protection and seamless connectivity through our sales networks stretched across the five continents."

Bourji Mourad, Head of Global Partner Management at Envirotainer, said: "This newly signed Global Master Lease Agreement with Ethiopian Airlines is verywelcomed, particularly since it is our first with an African based airline that has invested so much in newly built facilities and services for the safe handling of pharmaceutical and life sciences products."

Jorg Krings, Global Partner Manager at Envirotainer further said: "The on ground training for how to handle our Envirotainer units went really well. It's a key element to guarantee the correct process implementation."

Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services, one of the seven business centers of Ethiopian Airlines, with the recently inaugurated state-of -the- Art cargo terminal II together with the existing Terminal will give us a total tonnage capacity of around 1 million ton per annum which is the largest in the continent of Africa. - The new terminal fitted with enhanced cold chain facility will boost the airlines' capacity for storage and handling of temperature sensitive and life Science products.

Moreover, the completion of the second phase, which adds 600, 000 tones annual uplift capacity, Ethiopian Cargo and Logistics Services will have one of the world's largest cargo terminals capability equivalent to cargo terminals in Amsterdam Schiphol, Singapore Changi, or Hong Kong. This investment and the resulting massive cargo facilities along with the 6 modern B-777F fleet, 2 B-757F on service and ordered 4 B777F & 2B737F will create adequate air cargo transporting capacity for the fast growing export and import demand of the continent.

CONTACT:

Mrs. Aniley Eshetu

A/Manager Corporate Communications, EthiopianAirlines

Tel :( 251-1)517-89-07/656/165/913/529

CorporateCommunication@ethiopianairlines.com

www.ethiopianairlines.com

www.facebook.com/ethiopianairlines

www.twitter.com/flyethiopian

Bourji Mourad

Head of Global Partner Management, Envirotainer

+44-7879-428-428

bourji.mourad@envirotainer.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

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Important clinical evaluation of pioneering approach for risk assessment

Cytox, an emerging precision medicine leader providing genetic testing for Alzheimer's disease, is pleased to announce that, in partnership with Cardiff University, the company has been awarded funding by Innovate UK. The award is 800,000 ($1.3m) out of a total project value of 1m ($1.6m) over two years.

The project will evaluate and validate the clinical utility of a customised SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) panel associated with the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The team comprises Professors Valentina Escott-Price and Julie Williams of Cardiff University and Cytox.

"We are delighted to be awarded further funding by Innovate UK," commented Dr Richard Pither, CEO of Cytox, "The previous award has enabled support for projects to date, and the subsequent commercialisation has been pivotal to the growth of the company. This new funding reaffirms the validity of our approach in this highly important area. We are also pleased to be collaborating with Cardiff University. We have been working with Professor Escott-Price as our AD statistical expert for a few years now, and welcome Professor Julie Williams, who is of course pre-eminent in the field of Alzheimer's disease genetics research and currently one of the four leaders of the IGAP genetics consortium."

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may be a prodromal state for AD and 50-60% of these patients are at high risk of progression to AD, however current prognostic methods for AD are only 25-30% accurate in early MCI. The lack of validated biomarkers hampers clinical management of these patients and also the development of new therapies. The project will develop, optimise and test a set of polygenic risk score (PRS) approaches and then implement them on Cytox's own proprietary software platform. Subsequently the algorithms will be tested in large cohorts of patients and cognitively normal subjects, such as the recently well characterised 500 patient subset of the 1946 birth cohort, to demonstrate the validity of a panel of identified at-risk AD biomarkers. The project aim is to confirm that a proprietary SNP panel and associated algorithm is an effective method for predicting the presence of AD pathology. Such a prognostic test is essential to enable meaningful clinical trials of emergent AD therapies.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180307006254/en/

Contacts:

Cytox Limited

Richard Pither, CEO

+44(0)1865338018

richard.pither@cytoxgroup.com

www.cytoxgroup.com
'New Era of Human-Machine Collaboration' Strategy to Address Consumption Upgrades

SHANGHAI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, the State Council of the People's Republic of China published the State Council Guiding Opinion on Developing the Industrial Internet Platform by Furthering Development of the 'Internet Plus Advanced Manufacturing Industry'. In the next 2-3 years, the 'industrial internet platform' will move from concept to reality, and the market will attract trillions of RMB. From an industry point of view, the industrial internet platform is still in its preliminary stages, but is developing quickly, with all kinds of advantages.

Given this opportunity, Midea Group announced at this year's Appliance & Electronics World Expo (AWE) that it will build its own digitalization, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven industrial internet platform. Although the industrial internet platform concept is popular, the experience of large companies in Europe and the United States proves that the transition from manufacturer to solution provider requires long-term planning, and extensive preparation. It took a decade for Germany's Siemens to finish its transition. Though the transition would take a long time to achieve, the results have proven to be worth the time invested. Siemens' after-tax net profit has risen 40% over the past five years. How does Midea plan to stand out among so many strong competitors through its own industrial internet platform?

Digital closed loop

In 2014, Midea, understanding the urgent need to remain competitive, began to implement the 'One Midea, One System and One Standard' strategy to move to standardized, and platform-based, manufacturing. It has standardized and systematized its seven links, which are R & D capability, response to orders, planning capability, flexible manufacturing, purchasing capability, quality tracking, logistics capability and customer service & installation, laying the foundation for an industrial internet platform which will make it easier for Midea to digitalize, and build its industrial internet platform.

Midea has not only integrated its manufacturing system, but has also connected its systems to providers. Midea implements the business transformation of determining production according to sales, based on the 'T + 3' model, using digital operations, both internally and in the supply chain. Beginning in 2017, Midea has operated through global cooperation with transparency and high efficiency, further transforming its business and upgrading its intelligent supply chain through intelligent manufacturing and intelligent logistics. In software development, Midea already has the ability to provide the most comprehensive intelligent manufacturing suites. Midea's original integrated planning and purchasing platform, combined with Midea's business management system MBS, improves scheduling efficiency by 83%, which, in turn, leads to accurate operations, and efficient quality management. The collaboration cloud, operated in partnership with providers, is able to fine-tune manufacturing plans, enables full tracking of logistics and ensures prior booking of everything before entry. With complete tracking enabled by blockchain technology, logistics can be efficient and safe.

Hardware and software collaboration

At present, the development of industrial internet platforms is primarily on the surface, relying only on the internet or on purchasing equipment. There are still many collaboration and connection problems to be solved in manufacturing platforms. This is where Midea's industrial internet platform shows its advantages. Midea, on one hand, has some of the best business practices in manufacturing industry, and many years of experience in complex manufacturing, such as plastic injection, electronics, assembling, and 3C manufacturing, because China is a large, powerful manufacturing nation, and Midea is one of the top manufacturers in China. On the other hand, Midea enables seamless integration of big manufacturing data into motion control, effectively enhancing visualization, cooperation between human and machine, and full quality control in the manufacturing process, because Midea has introduced global-leading robotics, automation and business solutions by cooperating with KUKA (Germany) and Servotronix (Israel).

In terms of logistics, which connects both the user and the manufacturer, Midea also ensures cooperation between human and machine to improve productivity in various parts of the industry chain. The distribution capacity of logistics warehouses is increased using large warehousing, efficient sorting, automatic loading, and mobile AGV, because of the use of robotics and automation technology. Delivery and storage can be made more efficient and safer, and all business aspects of products, such as sales, warehousing, delivery, and after-sales, are connected by data, transparently and seamlessly. Orders are also intelligently controlled, and business decisions are analyzed by massive, real-time analysis of IoT data, using AI, big data analysis, and blockchain technology.

Customization

The ultimate goal of Midea's industrial internet platform is to realize truly personalized C2M by implementing intelligent manufacturing and online collaboration, making the entire industry's closed loop operate efficiently around the core of customer demand. If Midea depends totally on the purchase and assembling of semi-finished goods, mass customization merely means customers can choose colors and patterns. But products which are truly designed for customers must respond to their potential needs or questions, in addition to meeting their existing needs.

Optimizing scheduling by AI and big data creates challenges for supply chain stocking and manufacturing scheduling, while also solving the problem of fragmented and unplanned customer orders. For Midea, which has already increased scheduling efficiency by 83%, this not only means reduction in costs, but also means Midea's industrial internet platform will be capable of manufacturing small orders, and even single item orders, in the future. To understand the needs of customers, Midea does not stop at merely letting customers participate in product design. It also introduces a new smart new retail model that can discover the real needs of customers, based on massive data accumulation and analysis. In sales, the most suitable product solutions will be recommended intelligently to customers through facial recognition, natural language understanding, big data analysis, and other technologies. In turn, Midea obtains customer profiles based on big data, which helps to develop products using consumer sales data, and interactions with the customers who make Midea's over 300 million units annual global sales of products possible.

It has been reported that, at present, the initial stages of Midea's industrial internet platform solutions have taken shape. Different from most providers, who only offer customers products and solutions in electronics or a single industry, Midea has products and solutions which it can transplant from the equipment manufacturing industry to electronics, assembly lines, and discrete manufacturing.

Midea's 'new era of human-machine collaboration' blueprint successfully unites the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and achieves fully intelligent cooperation between humans and machines throughout the whole process, and in the whole industry chain. However, Midea's goal is not only to achieve outstanding whole value chain operation. In the upcoming period of explosive growth for industrial internet platforms, Midea has undoubtedly shown that it can play a vital role in boosting the transformation and upgrading of other manufacturing companies.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651192/Midea.jpg
PUNE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Wire and Cable Management Market by Product (Trays & Ladders, Raceway, Connectors, Ties, Conduit), Cable Type (Power Cable, Communication Wire & Cable), Material (Metallic and Non-Metallic), End-User, and Region - Global Trends and Forecasts to 2023", published by MarketsandMarkets', the global market is estimated to grow from USD 16.91 Billion in 2018 to USD 25.26 Billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 8.36%, during the forecast period. The market is set to witness growth due to the rising demand from data center and IT facilities and the growing construction sector.

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Power cable segment is expected to be the largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by cable type, in 2018.

The power cable segment is expected to be the largest segment of the Wire and Cable Management Market, by cable type, in 2018. Power cables are widely used in the power distribution sector to distribute power, and can be installed overhead as well as underground in the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors. High demand for electrification of homes, increased investment in power distribution, and growth in the household sector in developing countries are the key drivers for the growth of the power cable Wire and Cable Management Market.

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Conduits & trunking segment is expected to be the second largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by product, during the forecast period.

Conduits & trunking are used to protect cables from damage and can be used in almost any location including homes, commercial spaces, and industrial sectors. Rising urban population and need for advanced infrastructure in regions such as Asia Pacific and the Middle East are thrusting the deployment of conduits & trunking system.

Asia Pacific: Largest Wire and Cable Management Market during the forecast period.

In this report, the Wire and Cable Management Market has been analyzed with respect to five regions, namely, Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and South America. Asia Pacific is the largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by region, during the forecast period. Rising urbanization and proliferation of electrification, demand from the construction and mining sectors, growing awareness of energy savings, and supportive government plans are expected to drive the market for wire and cable management in this region. China, India, and Japan are the leading countries among others which would contribute to the growth of the Wire and Cable Management Market in Asia Pacific.

To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes the profiles of some of the top players in the Wire and Cable Management Market such as Legrand (France), Eaton (Ireland), Hellermann Tyton (England), Atkore (US), Panduit (US), and Obo Bettermann (Germany).

Know more about the Wire and Cable Management Market

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DRUNEN, Netherlands, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

MEXX launches new Spring/Summer 18 collection

Global fashion brand MEXX is back and today launches its new Spring/Summer 18 mini collection, giving the markets a clear signal about its new products and brand positioning. The collection will be available to consumers through MEXX.com and in existing stores in Greece and CIS countries where MEXX has maintained distribution. MEXX has successfully presented a more extensive Fall 18 collection to its retail partners, which will be followed by the Winter 18 collection in April. In terms of distribution, MEXX will focus on e-commerce and expanding its retail operations in several countries, mainly in Europe.

(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/650374/MEXX_Spring_Summer.jpg )



The Spring/Summer 18 mini collection includes fashion for men, women and children. A comprehensive footwear collection will follow later this summer. Spring 19 will be the full 100% brand launch with the integration of accessories and bags, resulting in a full lifestyle product offer with a clear MEXX signature and brand DNA.

A collection inspired by city lifestyles

The new MEXX collection has been designed for the smart urban professional - a cosmopolitan city dweller, who enjoys good quality and good design. MEXX will offer its consumers a relevant, multi-category, city-inspired brand. Besides clothing, the brand will also develop comprehensive, contemporary collections of footwear, bags, underwear and accessories. With the relaunch, MEXX has its eyes firmly set on becoming the leading brand in the upper-low segment, positioned just under Massimo Dutti.

For fragrances, MEXX will continue its global success with its licence partner Coty Inc.

Distribution and channel approach

E-commerce is one of the highest priorities in MEXX's distribution strategy. Substantial investments have been made to develop and operate MEXX's own e-commerce platform. MEXX will also team up with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, and the OTTO Group to drive e-commerce sales.

As for physical distribution, MEXX has started to build up frontline organisations and country partnerships through a de-centralised market approach. This is aimed solely at markets where MEXX has been present for more than 25 years and consequently benefits from a high brand awareness as well as a historical consumer base.

The main channel focus is on controlled distribution through franchise and department store environments, major multi-brand chain stores and a limited number of smaller stand-alone multi-brand stores. City classifications and potential market share will of course be taken into account in rolling out this strategy.

From Fall 2018, MEXX will relaunch the brand in retail in Canada, France, Austria and the Netherlands. Belgium, Germany, the Middle East, the Russian Federation and Egypt are planned for Spring 19. The relaunch will be supported by opening flagship stores in Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin and Munich starting from Spring 19 onwards. Possible market entries in India and China during the course of 2019/2020 are being discussed.

An important element of the relaunch is the new, innovative, minimalistic and contemporary store and SIS concept designed by one of the world's leading architects, BOFFI DESIGN. MEXX will reduce their box formats to a 200-square-metre lifestyle box for controlled distribution.

The MEXX brand

The most crucial elements are re-capturing the DNA of the brand and the MEXX design signature - smart and contemporary, focusing on the 25+ international consumer base. The brand will connect with its target market in an authentic, cosmopolitan and uplifting way to drive longer-term relationships with its consumers. Brand communication will be focused on social media (Facebook and Instagram) and retail channels (POS materials).

"MEXX is an authentic brand with a distinctive positioning, strong heritage as well as global brand awareness to leverage. We are proud and excited to work on the revival of the brand. We see immense potential for MEXX to play a highly relevant role in today's fashion landscape", says Leo Cantagalli, CEO of MEXX International.

About MEXX International

MEXX International B.V., based in Drunen, the Netherlands, was founded in August 2017 by the two owners of RNF Holding, Ron Janssen and Ferry Helmer. RNF is a Dutch holding company for footwear, fashion accessories and apparel companies. In addition to his role in RNF Holding, Ferry Helmer will be highly involved in driving the MEXX brand and business forward.

MEXX International B.V. acquired solely the global IP of the MEXX brand from the Turkish EroAYlu Holding and has started from a ground-zero status. The company's mission is to build a successful MEXX brand globally by inspired product design, outstanding store/online experiences and superb marketing.

MEXX International B.V. has appointed and agreed a management buy-in with three senior executives from MEXX's heyday to relaunch the brand, namely Leo Cantagalli (CEO), Nur Basaran (Brand Director) and Jacques Mitterand (CFO/COO). MEXX International B.V. is expanding rapidly and putting the resources in place to build a successful global brand.

The MEXX story

The MEXX brand has its roots in the 1970s. It all started with fashion designer Rattan Chadha and his business partner Adu Advaney who supplied private label clothes to department and wholesale stores in the Netherlands. By 1980, this had resulted in the creation of two well-known Dutch clothing brands - Moustache for men and Emanuelle for women. The two brands merged in 1986 to create MEXX, with the company name coming from M (from Moustache) and E (from Emanuelle), plus XX (an abbreviation for "Kiss! Kiss!"). The brand achieved revenue of over $1 billion. The global IP of MEXX was acquired by the newly formed MEXX International B.V. based in the Netherlands in August 2017.
BERLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

British people are particularly critical of the increasing influence of future technologies on various areas of life. This is the result of a representative survey carried out by the polling organisation Ipsos on behalf of the Vodafone Institute. Only 38 percent of British people say that new technologies are an asset. Compared to the other EU countries polled, Bulgaria (57 percent), Sweden (45 percent), Italy (47 percent) and Germany (35 percent), this is the second lowest value.

When asked who should ensure the safe and sustainable use of new technologies, a complex picture emerges. 26 percent of British people think responsibility lies with government. 22 percent would trust consumers themselves with the responsibility, 19% have most confidence in consumer advocates and tech companies and only 14% would trust non-governmental organisations.

Inger Paus, Managing Director of the Vodafone Institute, said: "There is a clear trend towards individual responsibility. When it comes to safety and sustainability, neither governments nor companies currently seem to be able to provide adequate answers to the challenges posed by new technologies."

The study polled more than 5,000 people in Bulgaria, Germany, the UK, Italy and Sweden in February 2018. It also included questions about attitudes to other emerging technologies such as virtual reality, e-health, self-driving cars and drones.

The survey is the start of a large study to be published during the course of the year by the Vodafone Institute in conjunction with Ipsos, which will deal in greater detail with the issues raised here. This will look in greater depth at the issue of acceptance of and reservations about future technologies. In addition to the countries mentioned above, it will also include data collected from the USA and China.

The results of the full study are available here:

http://www.vodafone-institut.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Ipsos_VFI_Technologieakzeptanz.pdf

Press contact

Friedrich Pohl

Head of Communications

Mobile: +49 172 7155900

friedrich.pohl@vodafone.com
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - European stocks were trading mostly higher on Thursday as trade tensions showed signs of easing amid expectations that U.S. trade tariffs are likely to be differentiated by country and product. Investors looked ahead to the European Central Bank's closely watched policy decision later in the day, although no major change in policy is expected. The pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 index was up 0.3 percent at 373.68 in late opening deals after rising 0.4 percent in the previous session. France's CAC 40 index was moving up 0.4 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was rising 0.1 percent while the German DAX was down about 0.3 percent after a slew of disappointing earnings releases. Akzo Nobel rallied 2 percent. The Dutch paints and coatings maker reconfirmed its 2020 guidance despite rising raw material costs and adverse currency effects. Engie, formerly called GDF Suez, jumped 4 percent in Paris. The natural gas and electricity supplier reported net income Group share for fiscal year 2017 of 1.4 billion euros, compared to net loss of 0.4 billion euros last year. Evotec shares soared 7 percent in Frankfurt. The company has entered into exclusive negotiations with Sanofi to accelerate infectious disease research and development through a new open innovation platform. Insurer Aviva lost 2 percent despite reporting a 2 percent rise in FY17 operating profit and enhancing dividend payment. French supermarket giant Groupe Casino slumped 6 percent after its full-year net profit fell to 120 million euros from last year's 2.68 billion euros. Merck KgaA tumbled 4 percent. The German chemicals and drugs maker reported a 6.5 percent fall in Q4 EBITDA earnings and said it expects a further decline in 2018 earnings on a currency adjusted basis. German luxury fashion brand Hugo Boss lost 3.7 percent and media holding company Axel Springer fell as much as 9 percent after unveiling their fiscal 2017 results. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/08/18 -- Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd ("Osisko") (TSX: OR)(NYSE: OR) is pleased to announce that it has signed a term sheet (the "Term Sheet") with Victoria Gold Corp. ("Victoria") to acquire a 5% net smelter return ("NSR") royalty (the "Royalty") for C$98 million (the "Royalty Purchase") on the Dublin Gulch property (the "Property") which hosts the Eagle Gold project ("Eagle" or the "Project") located in Yukon, Canada ("Royalty").

Eagle is a shovel ready gold project which currently hosts 2.7 million ounces in proven and probable gold reserves from 123 million tonnes of ore with a grade of 0.67 grams of gold per tonne, as outlined in a National Instrument 43-101 feasibility study, and when in production is expected to produce approximately 200,000 ounces of gold annually at an operating cost of approximately US$550 per ounce. The Project is permitted for construction and operations.

The acquisition of the Royalty provides Osisko with:

-- A meaningful NSR royalty on a shovel-ready, fully-financed project in Canada; -- Near-term cash flow from a premier jurisdiction through the addition of an average 10,000 ounces of gold annually over the projected 10-year mine life of Eagle, starting in 2020; and -- Additional potential growth through the addition of the Olive deposit and further exploration.

As part of the Term Sheet, Osisko has also agreed to purchase on a private placement basis, 100,000,000 common shares of Victoria at a price of C$0.50 per common share (the "Private Placement"), for total financing by Osisko of C$148 million including the Royalty Purchase (the "Financing").

In connection with the Financing, Victoria has entered into documentation with Orion Mine Finance ("Orion") and Caterpillar Financial Services Limited ("Caterpillar") with respect to a construction financing package totaling approximately C$505 million in aggregate (including the Financing) that is expected to fully fund the development of the Project through to commercial production.

Sean Roosen, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Osisko, commenting on the transaction, "We are very pleased to partner with Victoria to develop Canada's next premier gold mine, and to generate important benefits for all project stakeholders. The addition of the Eagle royalty strengthens our Canadian asset base and adds near-term Canadian gold to Osisko's growth profile from a fully permitted, fully-financed and shovel-ready project located in Yukon, a premier mining jurisdiction.

Having been to the project and met with many of the stakeholders, we are looking forward to investing in and working with Victoria in the Yukon to bring this project to fruition. With the gold price currently over C$1,700 per ounce, this is a great time to be building a gold project in Canada as there is availability both from suppliers and in the work force. In addition, the robust economics of this project set the stage to start what we believe will be a project that brings economic change to the area and will be a meaningful contributor to the Yukon economy, both in the near term and long term, as the local workforce acquires important skills and experience that will be applied to future projects"

The Royalty Purchase

As part of the Royalty Purchase, Osisko will advance C$98 million, in exchange for a 5% NSR royalty on all metals and minerals produced from the Property, which includes the Eagle and Olive deposits, until an aggregate of 97,500 ounces of refined gold have been delivered to Osisko, and a 3% NSR royalty thereafter.

The funding of the Royalty is expected to be carried out in two tranches, with the first tranche of C$49 million to be funded upon the satisfaction of certain conditions including (but not limited to) the execution by Victoria and Orion of definitive credit agreements in respect of the Orion debt facilities and the occurrence of the closing date under such facilities, and the second tranche of C$49 million to be funded pro rata to drawdowns under the subordinated debt component of the Orion debt facilities.

The Private Placement

Osisko has agreed to purchase 100 million common shares ("Shares") of Victoria for aggregate proceeds of C$50 million. The proceeds of the Private Placement will be used primarily for the purpose of advancing construction of Eagle, and for working capital purposes. Following the Private Placement, Osisko expects to have ownership over approximately 121 million common shares of Victoria, representing approximately 15.7% of the issued and outstanding Victoria common shares. All securities issued to Osisko under the private placement will be subject to a four-month hold period from the date of issuance of the securities, pursuant to applicable securities legislation. Additionally, Osisko will have a right to nominate one member to Victoria's board of directors.

Closing of the transaction is subject to execution of definitive documentation, satisfaction of conditions precedent and regulatory approvals.

The Dublin Gulch Property and the Eagle Gold Project

Victoria Gold's 100%-owned Dublin Gulch gold property is situated in the central Yukon Territory, Canada, approximately 375 kilometres north of the capital city of Whitehorse, and approximately 85 kilometres from the village of Mayo. The Property is accessible by road year-round, and is located within Yukon Energy's electrical grid.

The Property covers an area of approximately 555 square kilometres, and is the site of Victoria's Eagle Gold Deposit. The Eagle Gold mine is expected to be Yukon's next operating gold mine and, between the Eagle and Olive deposits, include Proven and Probable Reserves of 2.7 million ounces of gold from 123 million tonnes of ore with a grade of 0.67 grams of gold per tonne, as outlined in a National Instrument 43-101 feasibility study. The NI 43-101 Mineral Resource for the Eagle and Olive deposits has been estimated to host 191 million tonnes averaging 0.65 grams of gold per tonne, containing 4.0 million ounces of gold in the "Measured and Indicated" category, inclusive of Proven and Probable Reserves, and a further 24 million tonnes averaging 0.61 grams of gold per tonne, containing 0.5 million ounces of gold in the "Inferred" category.

About Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd

Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd is an intermediate precious metal royalty company focused on the Americas that commenced activities in June 2014. Following the acquisition of the Orion portfolio, it now holds a North American focused portfolio of over 130 royalties, streams and precious metal offtakes. Osisko's portfolio is anchored by five cornerstone assets, including a 5% NSR royalty on the Canadian Malartic Mine, which is the largest gold mine in Canada. Osisko also owns a portfolio of investments in publicly held resource companies, including a 15.5% interest in Osisko Mining Inc., a 32.7% in Barkerville Gold Mines Ltd. and a 12.7% interest in Falco Resources Ltd.

Osisko's head office is located at 1100 Avenue des Canadiens-de-Montreal, Suite 300, Montreal, Quebec, H3B 2S2.

Forward-looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may be deemed "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian Securities Laws and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, the "forward-looking statements"). All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address future events, developments or performance that Osisko expects to occur including management's expectations regarding Osisko's growth, results of operations, estimated future revenues, requirements for additional capital, mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates, production estimates, production costs and revenue, future demand for and prices of commodities, business prospects and opportunities are forward-looking statements.

In addition, statements (including data in tables) relating to reserves and resources and gold equivalent ounces are forward-looking statements, as they involve implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions, and no assurance can be given that the estimates will be realized. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "scheduled" and similar expressions or variations (Including negative variations), or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur including, without limitation, the performance of the assets of Osisko, the realization of the anticipated benefits deriving from its investments and the transaction with Victoria. Although Osisko believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors and are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may accordingly differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, without limitation: fluctuations in the prices of the commodities that drive royalties held by Osisko (gold and silver); fluctuations in the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the U.S. dollar; regulatory changes in national and local government, including permitting and licensing regimes and taxation policies; regulations and political or economic developments in any of the countries where properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest are located or through which they are held; risks related to the operators of the properties in which Osisko holds a royalty, influence of macroeconomic developments; business opportunities that become available to, or are pursued by Osisko; continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions; litigation; title, permit or license disputes related to interests on any of the properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest; development, permitting, infrastructure, operating or technical difficulties, delays or adverse climatic conditions on any of the properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest; rate and timing of production differences from resource estimates or production forecasts by operators of properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest; risks and hazards associated with the business of exploring, development and mining on any of the properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest, including, but not limited to unusual or unexpected geological and metallurgical conditions, slope failures or cave-ins, flooding and other natural disasters or civil unrest or other uninsured risks.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including, without limitation: the ongoing operation of the properties in which Osisko holds a royalty or other interest by the owners or operators of such properties in a manner consistent with past practice; the accuracy of public statements and disclosures made by the owners or operators of such underlying properties; no material adverse change in the market price of the commodities that underlie the asset portfolio; no adverse development in respect of any significant property in which Osisko holds a royalty, stream or other interest; the accuracy of publicly disclosed expectations for the development of underlying properties that are not yet in production; and the absence of any other factors that could cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.

For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements made in this press release, see the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the most recent Annual Information Form of Osisko which is filed with the Canadian securities commissions and available electronically under Osisko's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects Osisko's expectations as at the date of this press release and is subject to change after such date. Osisko disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

Contacts:

Osisko Gold Royalties

Vincent Metcalfe

Vice President, Investor Relations

(514) 940-0670

vmetcalfe@osiskogr.com



Osisko Gold Royalties

Joseph de la Plante

Vice President, Corporate Development

(514) 940-0670

jdelaplante@osiskogr.com




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BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - German factory orders declined at the fastest pace in a year in January on weaker domestic as well as foreign demand. New orders in manufacturing dropped 3.9 percent month-on-month in January, reversing a revised 3 percent rise in December, figures from Destatis revealed Thursday. This was the biggest decline since January, when orders decreased 4.8 percent. Orders were forecast to fall moderately by 1.8 percent. Excluding major orders, demand in manufacturing decreased 2.4 percent. The decline is to be seen against the backdrop of the unusually strong increase in orders in the last few months of last year and may also be partly due to the usual seasonal adjustment problems around the turn of the year, Ralph Solveen, an analyst at Capital Economics, said. For this reason, the analyst does not see any sign of a significant slowdown in growth in today's figures. The economy ministry said the industry will continue its positive momentum. Domestic orders fell 2.8 percent and foreign orders decreased 4.6 percent. New orders from the euro area were down 5.9 percent and that from other countries slid 3.8 percent. On a yearly basis, factory orders advanced notably by 8.2 percent after rising revised 7.9 percent in the previous month. Further, data showed that manufacturing turnover dropped 0.2 percent in January from December, when it was unchanged after the revision. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/08/18 -- Africa Energy Corp. (TSX VENTURE: AFE) ("Africa Energy" or the "Company") is pleased to announce both the renewal of Petroleum Exploration License 37 ("PEL 37") offshore the Republic of Namibia and the signing of a rig contract.

The PEL 37 joint venture application for entry into the Second Renewal Period was approved by the Ministry of Mines and Energy in Namibia. The Second Renewal Period is for a period of two years commencing March 28, 2018 and includes an obligation to drill an exploration well.

The operator of PEL 37, Tullow Namibia Limited, has contracted the Ocean Rig Poseidon, a sixth-generation deep water drillship that is currently transitioning to Walvis Bay.

Jan Maier, Africa Energy's VP Exploration, commented, "We welcome the renewal of PEL 37 offshore Namibia so that we can commence operations. Operator Tullow recently executed a contract with Ocean Rig to drill the Cormorant Prospect and plans to spud on September 1, 2018. ExxonMobil's recent entry into a block adjoining PEL 37 confirms our positive view of the geology in this region."

PEL 37 covers an area of 17,295 square kilometers in the northern Namibian offshore region. The Cormorant Prospect is located in the Walvis Basin in a water depth of approximately 550 meters. The prospect is one in a series of extensive base-of-slope turbidite fan prospects with significant combined resource potential. The fans are in close vertical proximity to a mature oil-prone source rock of Aptian age that was recently proven by the nearby Murombe-1 and Wingat-1 wells, the latter of which recovered light oil.

Africa Energy owns one-third of the shares in a subsidiary of Pancontinental Oil & Gas N.L., which holds a 30% participating interest in PEL 37, providing Africa Energy an effective 10% interest. The other participants in the PEL 37 joint venture are Tullow Namibia Limited, the operator with a 35% interest, ONGC Videsh Vankorneft Pte Ltd with 30% and Paragon Oil & Gas with 5%.

About Africa Energy Corp.

Africa Energy Corp. is a Canadian oil and gas company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under ticker symbol "AFE". The Company is part of the Lundin Group of Companies and is actively building an exploration and production portfolio across Africa.

Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance including, without limitation, the Company's exploration and drilling proposal for 2018, which are based on assumptions of management.

The use of any of the words "will", "expected" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Company's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties relating to, among other things, changes in oil prices, results of exploration and development activities, uninsured risks, regulatory changes, defects in title, availability of materials and equipment, timeliness of government or other regulatory approvals, actual performance of facilities, availability of funds to complete the transaction or of financing on reasonable terms, availability of third party service providers, equipment and processes relative to specifications and expectations and unanticipated environmental impacts on operations. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Company. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Garrett Soden

President and CEO

+27 21 003 5500



Sophia Shane

Investor Relations

+1 (604) 689-7842

info@africaenergycorp.com

www.africaenergycorp.com




'Shell Powering Progress Together' 2018 Panel Discussion



SINGAPORE, Mar 8, 2018 - (ACN Newswire) - Society faces a dual challenge: how to make a transition to a low-carbon energy future to manage the risks of climate change, while also extending the economic and social benefits of energy to everyone on the planet. In Asia, where urbanisation, living standards and population growth continue to increase, energy demand is higher than ever and is growing fast, with consumption levels increasing.This was the key topic of discussion at the Shell Powering Progress Together Forum that took place in Singapore today. Themed "Energy for Better Living", the forum brought together over 150 people representing the brightest minds across diverse sectors of society together in an immersive dialogue centred on Asian growth aspirations and the imminent energy challenge facing the region.Speakers included leaders from both business and government sectors: Dr Cheong Koon Hean (Chief Executive Officer, Housing & Development Board, Singapore), Steffen Endler (Senior Vice President, Siemens Pte Ltd), Mark Gainsborough (Executive Vice President, New Energies, Royal Dutch Shell), Alexandre Lalumiere (Director, Client Sales of 3D Printing, Asia Pacific & Japan, HP), and Nathan Subramaniam (Director, Sector and Projects Division, Independent Evaluation, Asian Development Bank).Moderated by Jason Pomeroy, Founding Principal of the Pomeroy Studio, the discussion was lively but sobering. The panel shared their perspectives on how the global energy transition will require unprecedented collaboration between policy-makers, leaders from business and non-governmental organisations, and consumers. It also requires focusing on more than the promotion of renewables and energy efficiency as these only address specific aspects of the wider challenge.Shell recognises the role of energy in enabling a decent quality of life. While technological developments will emerge, multi-sector collaboration to drive effective policy and cultural change is essential to drive low-carbon business and consumer choices and opportunities.Now in its second year in Singapore, Shell Powering Progress Together is an annual forum, where leaders and stakeholders gather to discuss ideas on how to address Asia's future energy challenges. The forum will also be held in London, UK and San Francisco, USA later this year.According to the United Nations, continuing population growth is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the world's urban population by 2050, with nearly 90 per cent of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. In the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region, energy supply is expected to go up by 60 per cent by 2035 to meet the growing demand associated with the rapid urbanization, industrialization and economic growth taking place. As Asia rapidly urbanises, it needs to do so while reducing its carbon footprint.Societies and governments thus face a dual challenge: how to make the transition to a lower-carbon world while also ensuring more and cleaner energy for economies to expand and prosper."Energy is a vital hidden ingredient in almost every economy, and cities are the biggest users of energy. Occupying less than two per cent of the world's landmass, and hosting more than half of the world's population, cities account for more than 60 per cent of global energy use today and this number is estimated to rise to 80 per cent by 2040. Fundamental changes need to happen across the global economy, especially in power, transport, buildings and industry which produce significant carbon dioxide emissions," said Goh Swee Chen, Vice President, City Solutions - New Energies and Chairman, Shell Companies in Singapore.She added, "Shell Powering Progress Together is important because it is a venue for us to bring people with bright ideas together to discuss, debate and engage on the important topic of delivering more energy and cleaner energy.""We are living in an era of unprecedented urbanisation. The issue of sustainable development has rightly taken centrestage: much of the public debate on sustainability revolves around reducing carbon emissions and increasing the use of green technology for energy sources," said Dr Cheong Koon Hean.She added, "However, technology is only an enabler in solving the challenges associated with sustainable urban development. Sustainability can only be attained when a comprehensive and holistic approach is taken, starting with strategic planning choices on how we optimise our land and resources, and develop in an environmentally-responsible manner."Following this, we can harness the appropriate technologies to tackle urban and environmental issues. As a city state which is land and resource constrained, Singapore will have to turn to integrated urban solutions which strengthen the water-energy-waste nexus and supply part of our energy needs from renewable energy such as those generated from solar PV. We should also adopt smart technologies to help us to manage our urban services in a more energy efficient manner."The discussion continued with two roundtables, each designed to engage industry stakeholders on the following topics:- Shell Powering Progress Together Roundtable on How Technology is Revolutionising Manufacturing and Supply Chain (in partnership with HP) - How modern technology can be implemented to enable sustainable manufacturing and create efficiencies within the supply chain.- Shell Powering Progress Roundtable on Accelerating Accelerators - How corporates can partner governments, investors, and each other for a more collaborative accelerator space.Bright energy start-ups at IdeaRefineryTurning talk into action, this year's Shell Powering Progress Together forum also showcased promising Singapore start-ups selected in the inaugural Shell IdeaRefinery accelerator programme by Shell Singapore, ImpacTech and NUS Enterprise that are developing new energy solutions in support of Singapore's ambition to be a sustainable and smart nation. The start-ups are billionBricks, EnergyNova, Solarite, Tripledot Technologies, and Xnergy.Students imagine the future of Asian and Middle Eastern citiesShell's Imagine the Future Scenarios Competition brings together youths and millennials to discuss future possibilities and develop scenarios on how our cities would look like by 2050 based on this year's theme, "More and cleaner energy in urban Asian and Middle Eastern homes in 2050: How we live, work, and play."A total of 84 university students and more than 12 teams from Singapore, Thailand and Egypt took part in the competition. The Singapore team of Yale-NUS College was named the champion at the regional finals that took place on Monday (5 March). The winning national teams from each country shared their contrasting visions of future Asian and Middle Eastern cities by 2050 at this year's Shell Powering Progress Together Forum.To access photos from the 2018 Shell Powering Progress Together Forum and Roundtables, seewww.flickr.com/photos/royaldutchshell/albums/72157664194685427.To read more about the IdeaRefinery startups, see www.shell.com/inside-energy/global-energy-entrepreneurs-singapore.html.About Shell Powering Progress TogetherThe fifth Asian edition of the Shell Powering Progress Together Forum will be held on March 8, 2018 as part of Make the Future Singapore. The forum will bring together more than 150 leaders, young talents and representatives from business, government and society to discuss, debate and catalyse cross-border collaborations to tackle future energy challenges.The theme for 2018 is "Energy for Better Living" and will be an immersive and open dialogue centred on Asian aspirations - balancing the needs of some of the fast-growing economies with the growing pressure on resources to make more and cleaner energy a reality in this region. Since the first forum in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2012, Shell Powering Progress Together has evolved into a cross-market series of connected events that foster dialogues to help address future energy challenges.About Make the Future SingaporeMake the Future Singapore, a free festival of bright energy ideas and innovations for Asia, takes place at Singapore's Changi Exhibition Centre from March 8 to 11, 2018. Virtual reality and hands-on experiences will take visitors on a journey to explore bright ideas from around Asia, see what is happening now to power our world and get a glimpse of what the future of energy might look like. They will be able to discover what it's like to generate electrical energy by dancing, play interactive games, build and race mini saltwater cars, and meet young scientists and energy start-ups.Make the Future Festivals is Shell's global platform for conversation, collaboration and innovation around the world's energy challenges. With events hosted in countries around the globe, they aim to provide an opportunity for multiple stakeholders: including students, entrepreneurs, businesses, governments and the public, to experience, test and contribute bright energy ideas.MEDIA ENQUIRIES:Hsu LinNinemer Public Relations P Lhsulin@ninemer.comSource: ShellCopyright 2018 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The "Europe Smart Materials Market Analysis (2017-2023)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Europe Smart Materials Market would witness market growth of 12.1% CAGR during the forecast period 2017-2023

Smart materials exhibit responsiveness in a controlled manner in environments that change. With a unique molecular structure, smart materials respond to a wide array of external stimuli such as electric fields, magnetic fields, pressure, temperature, moisture, and chemicals. The EU Directive on Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) has led to ban on the use of lead oxides in the production process, as these substances are toxic to the natural environment.

Therefore, manufacturers are working on the development of lead-free products based on binary and ternary systems. Compounds such as barium titanate (BT), potassium bismuth titanate (KBT), sodium potassium niobate (KNN), and bismuth ferrite (BFO) are increasingly used in these products.

Scope of the Report

Based on Application, the market report segments the market into Actuators Motors, Transducers, Sensors, Structural Materials, and Others.

Based on Products, the Europe Smart Materials Market segments the market into Piezoelectric Materials, Shape Memory Materials, Phase Change Materials, Magnetostrictive Materials, Electrochromic Materials, Electrostrictive Materials, and Others.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Market Scope Methodology

2. Market Overview

3. Europe Smart Materials Market

4. Europe Smart Materials Market by Products

5. Europe Smart Materials Market by Country

6. Company Profiles

CeramTec

Kyocera Corporation

LORD Corporation

Ametek Corporation (Fine Tubes Ltd.)

TDK Corporation

Smart Material Corporation

CTS Corporation (Noliac A/S)

APC International, Ltd.

Piezo Kinetics, Inc.

Harris Corporation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wdnp7m/europe_smart?w=4

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005649/en/

Contacts:

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Related Topics: Advanced Materials
NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

NetworkNewsWire Editorial Coverage

Investment in blockchain technology is growing rapidly. As innovators develop new ways to apply the technology to a range of industries, more companies are finding new applications for the technology and attracting increased funding from investors at the same time. SinglePoint, Inc. (OTC: SING) (SING Profile) has attracted investment for a broad range of blockchain services, including applications in payment processing, logistics and health care. Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V) is testing a new business-to-business blockchain payment service aimed at making international financial transactions easier. Mastercard, Inc. (NYSE: MA) has registered a patent for a blockchain database to reduce the need for intermediaries and resultant delays in payment processing. International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is collaborating with a shipping firm to develop blockchain-based international logistics designed to smooth out global supply chains while HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (TSX-V: HIVE) (OTC: HVBTF) operates its own cryptocurrency facilities that seek to bridge the gap between new and traditional finance.



Blockchain's Potential Unleashed



Investing in blockchain has never been easier. The distributed ledger technology that drives cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, is now being applied to a wide range of services and sectors. A recent CB Insights report has highlighted over 30 industries that blockchain could transform or is already transforming. The technology is offering businesses faster financial transactions and smoother supply chain management, with spin-off benefits for better healthcare provision and government oversight of elections.



As blockchain spreads to other sectors, it continues to have the greatest impact in finance. Financial service firms are looking for ways to improve banking and payment processing through blockchain, with redesigns of traditional processes that could revolutionize the sector. Startups that apply blockchain in all areas of finance are springing up and attracting plenty of investment interest in their offerings. Meanwhile, bigger players that initially rejected all things cryptocurrency-related are now seeking patents to make blockchain part of their businesses.



Diversifying in Blockchain



One company that is making the most of this potential is SinglePoint, Inc. (OTCQB: SING). From its starting place as a mobile technology provider, the company has turned itself into a diverse holding company with a range of innovative blockchain-based products.



SinglePoint is involved in some of the best-known areas of blockchain businesses: digital currency and cannabis. The company recently welcomed to its board of directors former Amazon general manager and current F5 Networks Senior Vice President Venugopal Aravamudan. With more than 25 years of experience in the technology sector, Aravamudan has committed to making accretive introductions to the company leveraging cloud computing capabilities that will accelerate the capability for SinglePoint to deliver blockchain-enabled solutions.



SinglePoint is working on financial technology solutions through collaborations with other companies. SinglePoint is also working to raise the profile of blockchain technology through a collaboration with entrepreneur and SharkTank veteran Kevin Harrington, the brain behind 20 companies with combined revenues over the $100 million mark and whose public profile will help bring SinglePoint's services to a wider market.



Many of SinglePoint's financial solutions are geared toward the cannabis market, a growing sector that has been under-supported by the traditional finance industry. Cannabis sales are now legal in 29 U.S. states, but vendors struggle to access traditional banking systems. SinglePoint's SingleSeed Payments service provides cannabis suppliers with fast, secure payment systems, allowing these suppliers to accept payment methods other than cash. The company is also using blockchain to support additional parts of the supply chain, including inventory tracking and deliveries, as well as informing customers about products and ensuring that businesses meet tight regulatory requirements.



SinglePoint also has a joint-venture agreement with Smart Cannabis Corp. to license and market the SMART APP, an industry specific application that enables cultivators to control entire operations from a mobile device. Among other initiatives, the companies are collaborating to integrate SinglePoint's bitcoin payment solution into the app and finalize a "track and trace" solution utilizing blockchain.



"Consumers who walk into a dispensary, where a cultivator is using our system, will be able to see how, when, and where the product was grown. There is no other system on the market like it and we plan to be the first company to use transparent and traceable blockchain technology to bring this 'track and trace' product knowledge to consumers," SinglePoint President Wil Ralston stated (http://nnw.fm/d7zWA).



Blockchain in Medicine



SinglePoint's involvement in the healthcare sector extends beyond medical marijuana. The company is bringing blockchain into hospitals for a very different purpose.



This move comes through a recently announced collaboration with ORHub (http://nnw.fm/k0Yib). ORHub, a provider of real-time surgical analytics, already offers a range of products that benefit hospitals, patients and the health-care industry by improving data capture and the understanding of what is happening in and around the operating room. SinglePoint is bringing its blockchain expertise to this work.



Gathering and analyzing data can be a huge challenge in the medical sector. With records being kept for numerous patients, departments and systems, forming a complete data profile can be a daunting task. Yet the failure to do so leads to inefficiencies, lost opportunities for learning and even inadequate patient care. The partnership between SinglePoint and ORHub seeks to improve this situation. Starting with an initial $750,000 development project, SinglePoint will be finding ways to integrate blockchain with ORHub's data systems so that records can be made and maintained more accurately and efficiently.



"Having ORHub select SinglePoint as their solutions architect is fantastic," SinglePoint President Wil Ralston stated. "We are beyond excited to dig into this project and develop a truly industry-changing solution. With the commitment from ORHub to fund the project, we are in a strong position to design, develop and execute on the solution. As part of this collaboration and broader corporate initiatives in the blockchain market, we are aggressively establishing working relationships with key blockchain engineers."



Working with ORHub is likely to be only the first in a series of medical endeavors from SinglePoint. With an entry into the sector via ORHub and so much work to be done, SinglePoint has the opportunity to utilize and expand on blockchain's place in improving patient care.



A Forward-Looking Strategy for Success



The ORHub venture ties in neatly with SinglePoint's broader strategy of growth through collaborations and acquisitions.



Another example of this strategy is the company's recent decision to acquire Bitcoin Beyond (http://nnw.fm/rP4s6), a payment platform for using cryptocurrencies. This user-friendly, web-based platform allows merchants to integrate cryptocurrency payments into their systems through existing web-enabled, point-of-sale devices. It also allows dollar payments to be carried out using a range of different currencies. By acquiring Bitcoin Beyond - a purchase valued at $1 million - SinglePoint has positioned itself to take a lead in putting blockchain-based payments into high street stores and everyday financial transactions.



This is part of a broader acquisitions strategy that powers SinglePoint's business. The company has raised over a million dollars in funding (http://nnw.fm/5OHfF) to drive an aggressive strategy of acquisitions across the blockchain and cannabis cultivation sectors.



The result has been a dramatic rise in the company's value. SinglePoint share price rose from $0.01 to nearly $0.08 in a year's time and remains well above its initial value. With an expansion strategy targeting a broad range of assets across cutting-edge, high-value sectors of the economy, SinglePoint is emerging as a diversified holding company within the blockchain field.



Big Players in Blockchain



Other major players in the financial sector have also taken an interest in blockchain.



The biggest financial companies were initially wary of this new technology, but they are starting to come around. Visa (NYSE: V) is making its first steps into blockchain with its B2B Connect service, trials of which were announced in November. This business-to-business financial platform is intended to smooth out cross-border payments by supporting direct payments between institutions. Like much of blockchain finance, the objective is to make payments more direct, cut out the middleman, eliminate delays and decrease expenses. Developed in collaboration with blockchain startup Chain, this platform will help provide security and transparency for international payments. Banks in the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and Singapore are taking part in the trial.

Mastercard (NYSE: MA) places "putting technology first" among its interests as a business and is looking to blockchain to make that a reality. While avoiding bitcoin, the company has taken an interest in other uses for blockchain. It filed a patent on Nov. 9 on a blockchain database to be used in payment transfers. Like Visa, Mastercard is using its blockchain systems to eliminate delays in payment processing. The involvement of such significant companies bodes well for blockchain financial technology.



While finance companies are taking an interest in blockchain as a way to speed up their services, technology companies are looking to finance as a sector in which to apply their knowhow. Computing giant IBM (NYSE: IBM) has taken an interest in blockchain for supply chains and payment systems. Its boldest venture in this area is a new company set up in collaboration with Danish shipping provider Maersk. Following a successful 2016 trial, this new venture will look to apply blockchain to its global supply network. Working with ports, customs officers, banks and shippers, it will use blockchain's impressive record-sharing potential to smooth out the global flow of goods.



Companies specializing in blockchain are profiting from the growth of this sector. HIVE Blockchain (TSX-V: HIVE) (OTC: HVBTF) is working to connect traditional businesses with blockchain-driven financial sectors. The company has attracted over $100 million of investment and is further financed by its own cryptocurrency mining operations.



With so many initiatives by a growing number of companies such as SinglePoint, blockchain technology looks like a solid piece of the financial future.



For more information on SinglePoint, visit SinglePoint, Inc. (OTCQB: SING).



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NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

CannabisNewsWire Editorial Coverage:

The first wave of companies to enter the Canadian cannabis industry were grounded in medical marijuana, which was legalized in 2001. As the country prepares for legalized adult recreational-use this summer, new recreational brands are joining the scene, and many companies rooted in medicinal cannabis are taking action to participate in this second wave of the Canadian market. With its strong branding and modern store design, Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTC: CHOOF) (CHOOF Profile) is branded to appeal to the Canadian adult consumer ready to experience the cannabis lifestyle. Aurora Cannabis, Inc. (TSX: APH) (OTC: APHQF) is making strategic investments to establish footing in the recreational sector, while OrganiGram Holdings, Inc (TSX-V: OGI) (OTC: OGRMF) is taking measures to increase its production capacity ahead of a surge in product demand. Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc (TSX-V: FIRE) (OTC: SPRWF) has entered into multimillion-dollar agreements to supply cannabis to retail-oriented companies, and in Quebec, Hydropothecary Corp. (TSX-V: THCX) is expanding its greenhouse capacity to potentially increase its cannabis production to 30x its current volume.



Highs Coming for Canadian Cannabis



As established companies get serious about brand expansion, supply agreements, and potential retail revenues, investments within Canada's cannabis sector are soaring. The industry saw $1.2 billion investments in January alone - a 600 percent increase over the previous year - setting an incredible pace for continued growth. Currently, the State of California is the largest legal cannabis market in the world. With a population nearly as large as California's and an influx of cannabis capital, Canada is on track to potentially become one of the world's largest recreational-use markets. The country's combined medicinal and recreational market size is expected to reach $6 billion by the year 2021, surpassing the value of its whiskey and spirits industry.





While the Canadian cannabis industry has found impressive success with medicinal marijuana in recent years, a different approach will be needed to target recreational consumers. Cannabis producers that recognize this tremendous potential are pursuing investments in recreational brands that appeal to the retail market. One of Canada's most recognizable cannabis producers, Aphria, Inc. (TSX: APH) (OTCQB: APHQF), recently shelled out $230 million to acquire recreational brand Broken Coast - one of many M&A deals within the burgeoning industry.



A Relaxed Brand for a Relaxing Product



One of the new companies looking to stake a claim in the recreational market is Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF). Choom is based in British Columbia, though its hip, modern brand has been designed around the tropical, relaxed ambiance of Hawaii. The company's name, "Choom", and style invoke Hawaiian culture, in particular easy days on the beach and in the countryside enjoying a casual atmosphere that connects with relaxation, which fittingly is one of the main appeals of cannabis. The company's name, Choom, which means "to smoke marijuana" - comes from a slang word used by a fun-loving group of friends (including former U.S. President Barack Obama) who grew up together in Hawaii during the 1970s.

This relaxed, friendly and informal approach to selling cannabis is designed to tap into a younger market with socially liberal values and disposal income to spare, and differs radically from the marketing focus of medical marijuana companies. The look and feel more closely resembles a food or alcoholic beverage brand, evoking warm feelings instead of healing/medicinal properties, which are the focus of established brands. In short, it's exactly the sort of approach the recreational cannabis industry will need.

Moving forward, the advantage in the legal cannabis sector seems likely to go to companies such as Choom, which are able to innovate with their branding, creating appealing lifestyle choices. Strict limitations on advertising cannabis will prevent the big medical marijuana players from using their financial clout to dominate the market through saturation advertising, which will create a space for young brands such Choom to grow via agile, modern techniques where traditional approaches aren't an option.



From Seed to Sale



Choom appears to have another market advantage with its vertical integration. The business has a seed-to-sale model that covers the whole cannabis pipeline, from growing and processing the plants to selling the final product in its own stores. This control over the entire business process allows the company to maximize efficiencies and ensure integration along the supply chain.

This advantage starts in the growing facilities, where Choom will fully oversee the growth of carefully crafted strains of cannabis. Existing facilities are planned for Vernon and Chemainus, Canada, to ensure that the company is prepared for the market as soon as possible. Choom is refitting both facilities, a process scheduled to be complete by July, with more than 13,000 square feet of growing space in planning.

Choom has announced a clear plan for its move into this market. With the Canadian cannabis market expected to see dramatic growth in early stages, the company has capacity to expand as needed. A second phase of expansion is in place for both facilities, which will significantly increase the growing space and allow for doubling crop yields by early 2019.

At the sale end of this supply chain are Choom's dispensaries, which are designed with a clean, stylish, and modern feel, much like a more relaxed version of an Apple store, a favorite of millennials and those with disposable income. These stores have been envisioned to appeal to two different but important market sectors. One is existing cannabis users, who will be looking for more convenient ways to buy their product once the law changes. The other is the group of "curious customers," who weren't willing to use cannabis while it was illegal but are interested in trying it now. Choom's relaxing retail space is designed to draw in customers from both sides, quickly building up a strong high street brand.



Preparing for Change

To power further growth, the company also recently completed a financing initiative, exceeding expectations and raising CAD $2.7 million (http://cnw.fm/AkT9x). The funds are being invested in advancing the company's development strategy, as well as for growth and acquisitions.

Having recently released the retail design for its dispensaries (http://cnw.fm/DIl3r), Choom is readying those facilities ready for legalization as well. And with the official launch of its retail program, the company has created the opportunity to develop a chain of branded cannabis dispensaries across Canada (http://cnw.fm/jqn8I).

"Choom is using design and retail strategies that have worked successfully at some of the most profitable storefronts in the country. We are telling our Choom story with our stores and will elevate the concept of a high-quality product though our new retail environments, and we're inviting others to join us," Choom president and CEO Chris Bogart stated in the press release.

As the legal cannabis market prepares to open in Canada, Choom appears to have all the pieces in place to create a national premium recreation brand.



A Sector in Waiting

As the creation of Canada's legal recreational cannabis sector approaches, other companies are also preparing for the change.

One of Canada's biggest cannabis producers, Aurora Cannabis (TSX: APH) (OTCQB: APHQF), is investing in a range of related companies to set itself up for expansion into the recreational sector. The Vancouver-based organization has invested in The Green Organic Dutchman, a company that produces farm grown, organic, pesticide-free medical cannabis in small batches using all natural, organic craft growing principles. It has also teamed up with Liquor Stores NA Ltd. to convert existing retail outlets into cannabis retail stores.

Another licensed producer of medical marijuana, OrganiGram Holdings (TSX-V: OGI) (OTCQB: OGRMF), recently received an expanded cultivation license from Health Canada, enabling the company to move forward with its expansion strategy that would increase current capacity from approximately 5,200 kg/year to an estimated 16,000 kg/year. Its longer-term plan is to increase production to 65,000 kg/year over the next two years.

Supreme Cannabis Company (TSX-V: FIRE) (OTC: SPRWF) has made its mission to grow sustainable cannabis companies to cater to the growing recreational market. To this end, it has invested in late-stage ACMPR applicant company BlissCo, and has agreed to provide cannabis to that company through its 7ACRES subsidiary. 7ACRES will also supply cannabis to Namaste subsidiary, Cannmart.

Quebec-based Hydropothecary (TSX-V: THCX) has signed a letter of intent with Societe des alcools du Quebec (SAQ) to supply 20,000 kg of cannabis to Quebec's recreational cannabis market in its first year of operation. This recent announcement follows news in December that the company added 78 acres of land adjacent to its existing 65-acre facility, and that it is working on a 1 million-square-foot greenhouse designed to increase its production to 108,000 kg per year, 30 times the current capacity.

Based on all forecasts, Canada's cannabis market is set for significant expansion in 2018. New actors and existing medical companies alike are preparing to seize this opportunity through production, distribution, and retail growth. With a clearly defined growth strategy, Choom Holdings is demonstrating its intention to rapidly become a recognizable national brand.

For more information on Choom Holdings, please visit Choom Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CHOO) (OTCQB: CHOOF) .



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LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 8, 2017 / ImmunoPrecise (OTC PINK: IPATF), a full-service, custom, therapeutic antibody discovery CRO, announced that it will be presenting at the inaugural LD Micro Virtual Conference on Thursday, March 8th at 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST. CEO and President, Jennifer Bath, will be giving the presentation and answering questions from investors.

You can access the presentation at the following link: http://www.investorcalendar.com/console/conference/?id=26807.

"We are delighted to finally be hosting a virtual event, to support our in-person conferences" stated Chris Lahiji, President of LD Micro. "There are a great number of people and companies who are unable to come to our live events, due to a multitude of reasons (mostly related to having kids), so we are happy to offer an additional outlet where companies can present to investors without taking a lot of time out of their day-to-day operations. While virtual events will never supplant the experience of sitting in the same room as someone, or eating artery clogging pastries at 3 PM, it is a great format for updating the investor community and getting increased exposure."

The conference will be held via webcast and will feature over 50 companies in the small / micro-cap space.

View ImmunoPrecise's profile here: http://www.ldmicro.com/profile/IPA.V.

Profiles powered by LD Micro - News Compliments of Accesswire.

About ImmunoPrecise

ImmunoPrecise (IPATF) is a globally recognized antibody service provider, serving our clients for close to 25 years. We are currently undergoing a fundamental refocusing, specifically on CRO services generating fully human, high quality, therapeutic antibodies using cutting-edge technologies and demonstrated scientific expertise to greatly increase the probability of success in helping bring functional therapeutics to market.

As such, we are undergoing rapid growth through acquisitions and investments to complete a full service, high throughput, and cutting-edge technology platform to serve an unmet need in guiding therapeutic antibody discovery programs from target identification to clinical trial in North America and Europe.

IPA's CRO services will not only address the needs to fill the current market gaps in CRO antibody offerings, but they take the most advanced aspects of antibody discovery one step further: as unique, global CRO using therapeutically-focused immunization processes in transgenic animals while offering high-throughput and accelerated B-cell screening and sequencing and unparalleled antibody characterization- feeding these programs directly into a state-of-the-art, pre-clinical program.

IPA will change the way the next-generation of therapeutics are discovered. By bringing together state-of-the-art technologies in transgenic animal platforms, therapeutic immunization technologies, phage library display, rabbit monoclonal antibodies, B-cell screening/sequencing, and antibody characterization, IPA aims to offer the highest throughput, deepest output and most comprehensive antibody discovery program available.

About LD Micro

LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into an event platform hosting several influential conferences annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event).

In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and microcap universe.

For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.com for more information.

Contact:

Name: Jennifer L. Bath, Ph.D.

Phone: +1 778 966 1252

Address: Unit 3204-4464 Markham Street

Victoria, British Columbia,

V8Z 7X8, Canada

Email: jennifer@immunoprecise.com



SOURCE: ImmunoPrecise via LD Micro


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures were flat Thursday morning as traders looked ahead to U.S. jobs data and the weekly rig count. Earlier in the week, the IEA said that U.S. production would continue to soar in the next two years. The agency predicts that the U.S. will become the world's biggest oil producer surpassing Russia. Because of this, OPEC's supply quota plan has essentially flopped. The cartel will also need to boost production in order to preserve market share. WTI light sweet oil was up 6 cents at $61.21 a barrel. Also keeping oil near $60 a barrel, Friday's jobs report for February may show wages are on the rise, cementing a March rate hike. Yesterday, ADP said employment in the private sector jumped by 235,000 jobs in February after surging up by a revised 244,000 jobs in January. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PALM BEACH, Florida, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

MarketNewsUpdates.com News Commentary

Recent reports that Apple is now chasing after cobalt from active mining companies has put a huge spotlight on the industry concerning the valuable metal's impending supply shortage.More than 60 percent of the world's cobalt is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo. By moving to buy straight from miners, Apple is looking to find a level of guaranteeing their supply chain is clean.Demand for as well as the price of cobalt has skyrocketed since just over a year on projections of fast-growing demand for electric vehicles, whose lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are also dependent on the metal.Some industry professional believe it is likely the market will see other major electronics manufacturers like Samsung and LG Chem follow the path taken by Apple by opting for longer-term contracts with major cobalt miners to secure future supply. Cobalt/Lithium miners with developments include:LiCo Energy Metals Inc. (OTC:WCTXF) (TSX-V:LIC), First Cobalt Corp. (OTC: FTSSF) (TSXV: FCC), Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), Advantage Lithium Corp. (OTC: AAUKF) (TSXV:AAL), Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE).

LiCo Energy Metals Inc. (OTCQB: WCTXF) (TSX-V: LIC.V) BREAKING NEWS: LiCo Energy Metals is pleased to the update its shareholders on the completion on the Teledyne Cobalt Property Phase 1 diamond drilling program. During the fall of 2017, LiCo completed 11 diamond drill holes totaling 2,200 m. The drill program, along with the Phase 1 diamond drilling program completed on the Glencore Bucke Property, satisfied LiCo's flow-through financing obligations.

"We are extremely pleased with the overall results, especially the grades and widths of the cobalt mineralization intersected in the majority of the drill holes from the Teledyne Phase 1 drill program. We view the results of both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke drill programs as being successful" commented Mr. Tim Fernback, President & CEO of LiCo. "Now that we have all the drill results, LiCo will design the Phase 2 drill program which will then become the basis of completing a 43-101 Compliant resource estimation. We are very excited about the future and commencing Phase 2 on both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke properties in the future".

From 1979 through to 1980, Teledyne Canada Ltd., completed 6 surface diamond drill holes and 22 underground diamond drills for an aggregate of 3,160.8 m on the Teledyne Cobalt Property. Based on the surface and underground diamond drill programs, historical reserves of 60,000 tons in the geologically inferred category, and 40,000 tons in the probable category, at an average grade of 0.45% Co, 0.6 oz/t Ag was estimated (Linn, 1983). The reserve estimate is a historical estimate as defined by National Instrument 43-101. The historical reserve estimate contains categories that are not consistent with current CIM definitions. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. No attempt was made to reconcile the historical reserve calculations as reported by Teledyne Tungsten. LiCo is not treating the historical reserve estimate as a current mineral resource or mineral reserve. Read this and more news for LiCo Energy at:http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/wctxf.html



LiCo's Phase 1 diamond drill program was designed to confirm and extend the existing known mineralization along strike and up and down dip, and LiCo was successful in completing this objective. The program tested the Teledyne Zone for a strike length of approximately 220 m. A Summary of the most significant results of the Phase 1 Diamond Drill Program completed on the Teledyne Cobalt Property are:

- TE17'01 0.62% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m including 3.92% Co over 0.75 m from 140.25 to 141.00 m.

- TE17-02 0.95% Co over 1.90 m from 143.0 to 144.9 m, incl. 2.58% Co over 0.60 m from 144.30 to 144.90 m.

- TE17-02 0.59% Co over 3.90 m from 156.0 to 159.9 m, incl. 2.22% Co over 0.60 m from 156.6 to 157.2 m.

- TE17'04 1.82% Co over 6.00 m from 138.00 to 144.00 m, including 5.06% Co over 1.75 m from 141.25 to 143.00 m

- TE17'05 2.32% Co over 4.00 m from 126.5 to 130.50 m

- TE17'05 1.70% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m.

- TE17-07 0.50% Co over 2.10 m from 127.60 to 129.70 m

- TE17-08 0.77% Co over 3.40 m from 169.50 to 172.90 m, including 1.17% Co over 2.00 m from 169.50 to 171.50 m.

- TE17-08 0.59% Co over 1.20 m from 174.00 to 175.20 m.

- TE17-08 0.62% Co over 0.60 m from 178.60 to 179.20 m.

- TE17-11 0.54% Co over 2.00 m from 130.00 to 132.00 m

A summary of the most significant results from the Phase 1 diamond drilling program are provided in Table 1, while drill hole collar information is provided in Table 2 which can be seen at: http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/wctxf.html



In other mining industry news and developments:



First Cobalt Corp. (OTCQB: FTSSF) (TSXV: FCC) recently announced it has commenced its 2018 borehole geophysical and optical televiewer survey program to test holes drilled in Cobalt South and for the first time in Cobalt North. The borehole program is intended to expand known zones of cobalt mineralization and further define the controlling structures in these two areas. The borehole geophysical data will also be used to assess ground geophysical methods for detecting blind cobalt mineralization elsewhere in the Cobalt camp. Dr. Frank Santaguida, vice-president of exploration, commented: "Combining survey data with assay results and geological logs allows for quicker assessment and follow-up during the next stage of drilling. Borehole televiewer surveys are a relatively modern mineral exploration tool that will help map previously mined silver vein systems and could spatially define mineralization trends to predict where cobalt mineralization occurs."

In an article issued by Miningne.ws, several parties are interested in buying Freeport-McMoRan Inc's (NYSE: FCX) cobalt project in the Democratic Republic of Congo but not at a price that would interest the miner and so it is not planning a sale, Freeport's chief executive officer said. As a result, Freeport is looking at other options for the asset, including possibly a joint venture to develop the large cobalt project, CEO Richard Adkerson said. Freeport last year tried to sell its cobalt assets, including the Kisanfu exploration project in Congo and the Kokkola cobalt refinery in Finland, to China Molybdenum, as part of its sale of a stake in its Tenke Fungurume copper mine in the Congo. Read the full article herehttp://www.miningne.ws/2018/02/27/miner-freeport-says-no-plans-to-sell-congo-cobalt-asset/

Orocobre Ltd. (OTC:OROCF) (TSX:ORL) and Advantage Lithium Corp. (OTCQX: AAUKF) (TSXV:AAL) recently provided an update on the results of the pumping test conducted on CAU07 in the northwest sector of the Cauchari joint venture properties, located in the Jujuy province, Argentina. The exploration program is being managed by JV partner Advantage Lithium, which hold 75 per cent of Cauchari. Orocobre owns 33 per cent of Advantage Lithium's issued capital. Included highlights were: Positive results from CAU07 four-step pumping test suggest rates as high as 36 litres per second are achievable; CAU07 constant rate pumping test conducted at 17 litres per second over 48 hours with flow limited by the pump capacity; Good brine chemistry with 19 samples taken over the pumping test averaging 601 milligrams per litre lithium and 4,853 milligrams per litre potassium with a magnesium-lithium ratio of 2.6 to 1; Hole CAU13 in the southeast sector of Cauchari intersected a sequence of sandy sediments below 400 metres, adding additional brine volume in this area for the coming resource estimate.

In a recent article, it was reported Vale (NYSE: VALE) is reevaluating its plans for its Vale New Caledonia nickel project due to its improved results and the positive impact of higher cobalt prices, chief executive officer Fabio Schvartsman said on Wednesday February 28."We are waiting to see where things are going to move forward to in order to make a decision in the VNC situation," he told analysts during a conference call. It is clear that the situation now is different from where we were six months ago and we are reacting accordingly," Schvartsman added. Vale said in 2016 that its patience with VNC had ended and warned that it was considering alternatives for the then loss-making project. Read the full article Herehttps://www.fastmarkets.com/base-metals-news/americas/vale-optimistic-prospects-nickel-project-new-caledonia-ceo-says/

DISCLAIMER: MarketNewsUpdates.com (MNU) is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels.MNU is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. MNU and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. MNU's market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities. The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material. All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks. All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release. MNU is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks. For current services performed MNU has been compensated forty-four hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press release issued by LiCo Energy Metals Inc. by a non-affiliated third party.MNU HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and MNU undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

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OpenFin brings together leading capital markets participants to power industry application interoperability and desktop connectivity

NEW YORK and LONDON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A newly formed group of major finance industry players announced today that they have joined an OpenFin-led initiative to bring universal connectivity and standards to all of the financial industry's desktop applications. The group, known as the Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium or FDC3, is committed to addressing the increasingly fractured software landscape of capital markets. FDC3 standards will enable faster decision-making, improve productivity and streamline workflow. OpenFin, the first operating system created specifically for finance, and the industry's only technology designed to be unifying and application-agnostic, has contributed the open-source code that serves as the cornerstone for this new initiative.

The financial industry is powered by thousands of desktop applications for trading, market data, order management, analytics and productivity. End users at banks and hedge funds use a combination of these in-house and vendor applications to do their work. Because these applications are difficult or impossible to connect to one another, end users are required to continuously re-key information, hampering productivity and creating operational risk. The FDC3 initiative will solve the problem by creating common software and standards across industry applications.

Members of the FDC3 include Algomi, AllianceBernstein, Barclays, BGC Partners, BNP Paribas, ChartIQ, Citadel, Cloud9, FactSet, Fidessa, GreenKey, IHS Markit, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, OpenDoor, OpenFin, OTAS Technologies, RBC, RSRCHXchange, Trumid, TP ICAP, Wellington Management Company, and others.

Cyril Cottu, Global Head of Digital and eCommerce, Global Markets at BNP Paribas said: "Interoperability is a core pillar of our digital strategy; it has the potential to allow us to capture efficiencies through the creation of better workflows while freeing our teams to focus on innovation rather than re-invention. We are happy to be part of this initiative and excited about the possibilities."

Bhupesh Vora, Managing Director, Markets Technology at Barclays said: "Communicating and sharing context between multiple apps without the huge overhead of bespoke integration will be a massive boost to productivity for both the development community and ultimately our salespeople and traders to get more done. FDC3 will give us on the desktop what FIX gave us for server side interoperability between venues and clients."

Michael Herskovitz, Co-Head of Operations and Technology at AllianceBernstein said: "We are committed to innovation, and excited to partner with OpenFin in creating solutions that could dramatically enhance the efficiency of firms and become a standard technology for the industry."

Kim Prado, Global Head of Client Insight, Banking & Digital Channels Technology at RBC Capital Markets said: "We are delighted to join the FDC3. Together we will address the issues inherent within our fractured software landscape, enhance productivity through desktop interoperability and simplified workflow, and advance solutions that will drive efficiencies for the long-term."

Christopher McGuire, Manager, User Interface Design and Development at Citadel said: "Integrated communications between financial firms is crucial to the efficiency of capital markets. We are excited to partner with OpenFin on this initiative and look forward to the benefits that it will bring to all market participants."

Jim Adams, Managing Director, CIB Technology at J.P. Morgan said: "Our Corporate and Investment Banking staff can use anywhere between 5-15 applications in their daily workflow. Interoperability would allow this workflow to become seamless across applications and platforms, ultimately making our employees more productive and informed when talking to internal and external clients."

Brad Levy, Managing Director at IHS Markit and CEO of MarkitSERV said: "This is the rare opportunity for the financial services community to create true interoperability across complex and varied desktop environments. Standardization of application identity and discovery, among other technical innovations, will improve how we distribute and integrate our products."

Usman Khan, CTO of Algomi said: "The FDC3 is a strategically important global initiative, that will greatly help our industry standardise the integration of desktop applications in an efficient and scalable way. The FDC3's strategy takes into account the vast investments, in top of stack desktop application suites, already made by the institutions and vendors in our space. It is therefore well positioned to make recommendations around how these applications can leverage each other, ultimately creating a very powerful user experience."

Steve Grob, Director of Group Strategy at Fidessa said: "The FDC3 aligns perfectly with our broader outreach to top-tier firms. In particular, the OpenFin messaging bus resonates with our own approach to provide customers with better levels of innovation and control. This is important because all banks need to move faster than ever before, but without breaking what they have in place already."

Borre Wessel, Managing Director, Technology at BGC Partners said: "Innovative technology is at the core of our vision, and we are delighted to expand our strong partnership with OpenFin through the FDC3. Interoperability and standardisation on the desktop will bring client experience in financial services to the next level."

Josh Holden, CIO of OpenDoor, LLC said: "As a startup, OpenDoor has experienced first-hand the challenges of a Balkanized desktop. In order for innovation to thrive, there needs to be a way to easily integrate and open up existing workflows. To that end, OpenDoor is proud to support FDC3, not just for ourselves, but also for all the innovators to follow."

As part of this initiative, OpenFin is open-sourcing and making freely available its state-of-the-art desktop connectivity technology which is already being used by most of the largest banks and many buy-side and vendor firms in the space. OpenFin is also providing a central app directory which will be freely accessible and allow applications to identify one another safely and securely.

Mazy Dar, CEO of OpenFin said: "Today, the humans sitting at desktops are the integration layer between their applications. We believe the time has come to enable financial desktops with the same app interoperability that we take for granted on our iOS and Android devices."

Paul Walker, OpenFin Independent Board Member said: "Open interoperability standards are vitally important for efficient workflow, great end-user experiences, and the creation of innovative applications. I'm thrilled that FDC3 takes the standards-based lessons we have seen work in so many sectors and brings them to open, interoperable desktop applications which users will love to use and developers will love to deliver in Capital Markets."

www.fdc3.org

www.openfin.co

About OpenFin

Move Fast. Break Nothing. OpenFin is the financial industry's operating system, enabling rapid and secure deployment, native experience and desktop interoperability. Used by the largest industry players through to the newest of FinTech innovators, OpenFin deploys hundreds of desktop applications to over 400 buy-side and sell-side firms. OpenFin investors include Bain Capital Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Euclid Opportunities, J.P. Morgan, Nyca Partners and Pivot Investment Partners among others. The company is based in New York with offices in London.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651288/OpenFin_Logo.jpg
GDPR Takes Effect in May. Are You Ready?

Question : What do HMS Pinafore, Goofy, and the GDPR all have in common?

Answer : They all made their debut on May 25.

Gilbert & Sullivans HMS Pinafore premiered in London on May 25, 1878.

Goofy first appeared, in Mickeys Revue, on May 25, 1932.

And on May 25 of this year, the General Data Protective Regulation takes effect.

If youre not familiar with HMS Pinafore (and I wasnt), its an opera. You probably know (and, not to be elitist, but I did too) that Goofy is a Disney (News - Alert) character. And, in case youre not aware, the GDPR is a new European Union requirement.

And if GDPR is news to you, take comfort in the fact that youre not alone. Although it was announced two years ago, a MediaPro survey suggests more than half of U.S. employees have never heard of GDPR.

So what, you may be thinking; thats a Europe thing. What does that have to do with me? Why talk about this? Cant we discuss Goofy  or even opera  instead?

Well, although European Parliament enacted GDPR, it applies to any organization anywhere that collects and/or processes data from EU residents. So, it may well apply to your business too.

The goal of GDPR is to standardize data protection regulations across the EU. Thomson Reuters (News - Alert) says GDPR is arguably the biggest overhaul of data protection rules in two decades. And it says penalties for non-compliance will be severe.

Thats why multinational corporations based in the U.S. have spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours working to comply with GDPR, says Melissa A. Dials of Fisher Phillips. She adds that GDPR compliance is more than just an IT concern. Its something everybody in an organization needs to help address. Thats why companies need to train their people on how to handle personal data in a way that aligns with GDPR requirements, she explains.

For more information about GDPR compliance, check out Melissas blog here and the new European Commission data protection website here.

Please enable JavaScript to view the

Edited by Mandi Nowitz
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - March 8, 2018) - NetworkNewsAudio announces the Audio Press Release (APR) titled "Smokers Light Up Less, Alternative Nicotine Delivery Technologies Take Center Stage," featuring Lexaria Bioscience Corp. (CSE: LXX) (OTCQX: LXRP).

To hear the NetworkNewsAudio version, visit: http://nnw.fm/qwD6f

To read the original editorial, visit http://nnw.fm/P63Rk

At present, Lexaria is the only company in the world that has been awarded patents for the improved (oral or ingestible, including pills) delivery of all cannabinoids both psychoactive and non. These patents have been awarded in the United States and Australia and are pending in 40 more countries. This puts the company in the unusually advantageous position of owning proprietary technology that can deliver a vast range of cannabinoid-based drugs. The company recently received a new patent award in the U.S. that also protects its delivery system for use with nicotine, potentially offering the biggest disruption to nicotine delivery since the invention of the cigarette. "Lexaria has now locked-up the IP for its next-generation drug delivery system" Lexaria CEO Chris Bunka explained in the press release (http://nnw.fm/Q8JxJ). "This ground-breaking, patented IP builds a foundation for new business opportunities in 2018 including what could be the world's first nicotine edibles for the smokeless tobacco industry, or improved new products for NSAID-derived pain management, as well as in the rapidly growing cannabis market."

About Lexaria Bioscience Corp.

Lexaria Bioscience Corp. has developed and out-licenses its disruptive delivery technology that promotes healthier ingestion methods, lower overall dosing and higher effectiveness of lipophilic active molecules. Lexaria has multiple patents pending in over 40 countries around the world and was granted its first patents in the USA and in Australia related to edible forms of cannabinoids. Lexaria's technology provides increases in intestinal absorption rates; more rapid delivery to the bloodstream; and important taste-masking benefits, for orally administered bioactive molecules including cannabinoids, vitamins, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), nicotine and other molecules. For more information, visit www.LexariaEnergy.com.

About NetworkNewsAudio

NetworkNewsAudio, a service of NetworkNewsWire (NNW), allows you to sit back and listen to market updates, interviews and company press releases. NetworkNewsAudio keeps you informed on publicly traded companies we're watching. The audio clips provide snapshots of position, opportunity and momentum. NetworkNewsAudio is a Brand Awareness Distribution Solution from NetworkNewsWire.

For more information, visit: www.NetworkNewsAudio.com

About NetworkNewsWire

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is a financial news and content distribution company that provides (1) access to a network of wire services via NetworkWire to reach all target markets, industries and demographics in the most effective manner possible, (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ news outlets (3), enhanced press release services to ensure maximum impact, (4) social media distribution via the Investor Brand Network (IBN) to nearly 2 million followers, (5) a full array of corporate communications solutions, and (6) a total news coverage solution with NNW Prime. As a multifaceted organization with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge. For more information, please visit https://www.NetworkNewsWire.com.

Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements.

Corporate Communications Contact:

NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

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PUNE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Drilling Tools Market by Type (Drill Bits, Drilling Tubulars, Drilling Motors, Drill Reamers and Stabilizers, Drill Collars, Drill Jars, Drill Swivels, Mechanical Thrusters), Application (Onshore and Offshore), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets', the global market is estimated to grow from an USD 6.83 Billion in 2017 to USD 8.61 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 4.75%, from 2017 to 2022. This market growth worldwide is driven by the increased drilling activities and the development of unconventional hydrocarbon resources.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )

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Onshore application segment is expected to hold the largest share of the Drilling Tools Market, by application, during the forecast period.

Onshore segment is expected to be the largest market for drilling tools, by application, in 2017. Approximately 70% of the total oil and gas production in the world takes places at onshore fields. These fields are easier to operate from an exploration perspective and require less capital investment as compared to offshore fields. Formations in onshore wells are more stable during the drilling process than those in offshore. Market demand for drilling tools from onshore segment is also the fastest-growing. US and China with vast onshore reserves present ample market opportunities in this onshore segment.

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North America is expected to be the fastest-growing Drilling Tools Market.

In this report, Drilling Tools Market has been analyzed with respect to 6 regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and South America. North America is expected to be the largest and the fastest-growing market, by region, during the forecast period. Increasing shale gas production and energy reforms of respective countries would drive the growth of the drilling tools in the region. Asia Pacific is expected to be the second fastest-growing market for drilling tools.

To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes the profiles of some of the top players in the Drilling Tools Market including Schlumberger (US), Halliburton (US), Weatherford (Switzerland), Baker Hughes GE (US), and National Oilwell Varco (US).

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MarketsandMarkets' provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets' for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets' are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets' now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets' is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

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The Newly Updated Site Features an Introduction to the Talented Team at Legends Landscaping as well as Information on the Many Services that they Offer

RENO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / March 8, 2018 / The founders of Legends Landscaping, a landscaping company that offers residential and commercial services throughout Reno and Sparks, Nevada, are pleased to announce the launch of their freshly updated and eye-catching website. As a company spokesperson noted, some of the new pages that were added include a full introduction to the team at Legends Landscaping and a in-depth rundown of the services they offer.

To learn more about Legends Landscaping, please "Like" the Legends Landscaping Facebook page and check out their many positive reviews on the Legends Landscaping Yelp page.

"We are proud to give people a fresh look at Legends Landscaping in Reno," the spokesperson noted, adding that from the new features like the full team page that discusses why they have as much success as they do in the world of landscaping, to information about their services, the website is user-friendly and easy to navigate.

"Visitors to the site are also welcome to check out our portfolio, which highlights just some of the work that we have done, and shows the level of professionalism and quality of work that we provide."

About Legends Landscaping:

Legends Landscaping has been around for over 25 years, and they provide high-quality landscaping services in the Reno and Sparks area. They offer the best residential and commercial landscaping services and stand by their work. For more information, please visit http://www.legendslandscaping.com/.

Contact:

Belinda Thompson

admin@rocketfactor.com

(949) 555-2861

SOURCE: Legends Landscaping
PUNE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The report"Blow Molding Resins Marketby Type (Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Polyvinyl Chloride, Polyvinyl Terephthalate), Application (Packaging, Automotive & Transportation, Construction & Infrastructure), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022" published by MarketsandMarkets',the Blow Molding Resins Market is estimated at USD 36.67 Billion in 2017 and projected to reach USD 51.95 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 7.2% from 2017 to 2022.

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The growth of the Blow Molding Resins Market can be attributed to the increasing consumption of blow molding resins in the packaging, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical industries. Blow molded products possess excellent stiffness and Environmental Stress Cracking Resistance (ESCR), high load melt strength, and excellent rigidity. Such properties enable the use of these resins for blow molding applications.

Among types, thepolyethylenesegment of the Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2017 to 2022

Based on type, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, and others. Among types, the polyethylene segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2017 to 2022. The increased use of blow molding resins in various applications can be attributed to their high stiffness and Environmental Stress Cracking Resistance (ESCR), high load melt strength, and excellent rigidity.

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The packaging application segment of the Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2017 and 2022

Based on the application, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into packaging, automotive & transportation, construction & infrastructure, and others. The packaging segment is projected to be fastest-growing application segment during the forecast period. The growth of the segment is attributed to the increasing use of blow molded products to package pharmaceutical, food & beverages, cosmetics, and industrial products, such as chemicals, acids, and lubricants.

Automotive & transportation is projected to be the second largest market for blow molding resins during the forecast period. High demand for blow molding resins to produce automobile parts, such as panes and railings, bumper supports, fenders, mudguards, door locking systems, consoles, garnish pillars, cockpit systems, and fuel tanks is expected to fuel the growth of the segment.

The Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on region, the Blow Molding Resins Market has been segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, South America, and Middle East and Africa. The Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth of the Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market can be attributed to the presence of the leading blow molding resins producers in the region. Moreover, the growing demand for blow molding resins in packaging applications, such as pharmaceutical and food & beverage products in countries, such as China, Japan, and India also contribute to the growth of the Asia Pacific Blow Molding Resins Market.

Exxon Mobil (US), LyondellBasell (Netherlands), DowDuPont (US), SABIC (Saudi Arabia), INEOS (Switzerland), Solvay (Belgium), Formosa Plastics (Taiwan), Chevron (US), Eastman (US), China Petroleum (China), and Reliance Industries (India), among others are the key players operating in the Blow Molding Resins Market.

Know more about Blow Molding Resins Market:

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About MarketsandMarkets'

MarketsandMarkets' provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets' for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets' are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets' now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets' is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

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MarketsandMarkets' INC.

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Company Announcement No. 685 The annual general meeting of DSV A/S has been held today. Agenda and resolutions 1. Reports from the Board of Directors and the Executive Board on the Company's activities in 2017. The report is not a subject for voting. The annual general meeting took note of the report. 2. Presentation and adoption of the 2017 Annual Report with the audit report. The 2017 Annual Report was approved. 3. Approval of the proposed remuneration of the Board of Directors for the current financial year. The remuneration of the Board of Directors for 2018 was approved. The basic fee amounts to DKK 450,000. 4. Resolution on the appropriation of profits or covering of losses as per the adopted 2017 Annual Report. The Board of Directors' proposal for application of the result of the year, including the proposal for a dividend of DKK 2.00 per share to be paid out, was approved. 5. Election of members for the Board of Directors. Kurt K. Larsen, Annette Sadolin, Birgit W. Nrgaard, Thomas Plenborg, Robert Steen Kledal and Jrgen Mller were re-elected as members of the board. 6. Election of auditor(s). PricewaterhouseCoopers, Statsautoriseret Revisionspartnerselskab (CVR.nr. 33 77 12 31) was reelected as auditor of the company. 7. Proposed resolutions. 7.1 Proposed reduction of the share capital and amendment of Article 3 of the Articles of Association. The proposed reduction of the share capital by a nominal value of DKK 2,000,000 and the accordingly amendment of Article 3 of the Articles of Association were approved. 7.2 Proposed authorisation to increase the share capital and amendment of Articles 4a1, 4a2 and 4a3 of the Articles of Association. The authorisation to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital without or with pre-emptive rights until 8 March 2023 for a nominal value of up to DKK 37,600,000, corresponding to 20 per cent of the share capital and the accordingly amendment of Articles 4a1, 4a2 and 4a3 of the Articles of Association were approved. 7.3 Proposed authorisation to acquire treasury shares and deletion of Article 4c of the Articles of Association. The authorisation to the Board of Directors to let the company acquire treasury shares for the next five years corresponding to 10 per cent of the share capital provided that the Company's portfolio of treasury shares does not exceed 10 per cent of the Company's share capital at any time and deletion of Article 4c of the Articles of Association were approved. 7.4 Proposed amendment of Article 8, section 2, in the Articles of Association, regarding notices for Annual General Meetings, including the requirement to send out a notice through the Danish Business Authority's IT system. The Board of Directors proposal to amend Article 8, section 2, in the Articles of Association was adopted. 7.5 Proposed deletion of Article 12, section 1, in the Articles of Association, regarding admission cards. The Board of Directors proposal to deletion of Article 12, section 1, in the Articles of Association, regarding admission cards was adopted. Any questions may be addressed to Flemming Ole Nielsen. Director. Investor Relations on tel. +45 43 20 33 92. Yours sincerely. DSV A/S Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=667713
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced digital component solutions, today announced that it has achieved the industry's highest light efficacies for its fillet-enhanced chip-scale package (FEC) LED lineup LM101B, LH181B and LH231B.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005594/en/

Samsung LED Fillet-enhanced Chip Scale Packages with industry's highest efficacy levels (Graphic: Business Wire)

Initially chip-scale package (CSP) LEDs had not been widely used in mainstream LED lighting markets due to relatively lower efficacy levels compared to conventional LED packages. However, the newly upgraded, efficacy-leading FECs can be applied to most mainstream LED lighting environments, including ambient, downlight, spotlight, high bay, canopy and street lighting applications.

"Since introducing CSP technology to the industry in 2014, we have put extensive effort into advancing the performance levels and design flexibility of every one of our CSP LEDs," said Yoonjoon Choi, Vice President of the LED Business Team at Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to bolster its competitive edge in CSP technology, enabling the widest variety of luminaire designs with exceptional performance, reliability and cost benefits for lighting manufacturers worldwide."

The enhanced FEC LEDs are based on Samsung's most up-to-date CSP technology which builds TiO 2 (Titanium dioxide) walls around the side surfaces of the chip to direct light output upwards. The technology provides considerably higher light efficacy than conventional CSP LEDs while offering greater flexibility for luminaire designers. Moreover, dramatically reduced cross-talk between neighboring packages allows each package to be placed in close proximity to one another.

Building on these advancements, the revamped FEC LED packages achieve the industry's highest light efficacy levels, to suit an even wider range of lighting applications. The mid-power CSP, LM101B, features an increased efficacy of 205 lm/W (65mA, CRI 80+, 5000K), which is the highest among 1W-class, mid-power CSP LEDs. The 3W-class LH181B provides the highest light efficacy in its class with 190lm/W (350mA, CRI 70+, 5000K), which represents a more than 10-percent enhancement over the previous version. The 5W-class LH231B package continues to offer 170lm/W (700mA, CRI 70+, 5000K), the industry's highest efficacy for the 5W class.

With Samsung FEC's small form factor and reduced cross-talk, the LM101B is particularly well suited for spotlighting applications where packages can be densely placed within a small light-emitting surface area. Samsung also made the LM101B much simpler to mount compared to other mid-power CSP LEDs, by modifying the electrode pad.

In addition, the LH181B operates at a maximum current of 1.4A (Amps), making it an ideal component for high-power LED luminaires requiring superior lumen density.

The Samsung FEC lineup, now in mass production, is available in a full range of color temperature (CCT) and color rendering index (CRI) options. Samsung will be showcasing its complete lineup at Light Building 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany, March 18-23. Please visit Booth B04, Hall 6.2 to learn more about these state-of-the-art LED component solutions and dozens more.

About Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

Samsung inspires the world and shapes the future with transformative ideas and technologies. The company is redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, digital appliances, network systems, and memory, system LSI, foundry and LED solutions. For the latest news, please visit the Samsung Newsroom at news.samsung.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005594/en/

Contacts:

for Samsung

John E. Lucas, 925-872-2287

j.lucas@partner.samsung.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump has added to confusion about the timing of his announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports with a post on Twitter. Trump tweeted Thursday morning that he is 'looking forward' to a White House meeting with steel and aluminum industry workers at 3:30 pm ET. 'We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military,' Trump added. A report from CNN said White House aides were told to prepare for a signing ceremony at the meeting, although subsequent reports have said the details of the policy are still being finalized. Trump could use the meeting as a backdrop to sign a largely 'symbolic' proclamation, a White House official told NBC News. The president announced last week that he plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. The announcement raised concerns about retaliation by U.S. trade partners such as the European Union and China, sparking a global trade war. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders suggested during a press briefing on Wednesday that Mexico and Canada could be exempt from the tariffs. 'There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries, as well, based on that process,' Sanders said. She added, 'That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption.' White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business Network that Canada and Mexico would be temporarily exempt from the tariffs amid ongoing negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement. 'Our good friends north and south of the border, Canada and Mexico, are going to be given an opportunity to negotiate a fair trade deal for NAFTA,' Navarro said. 'If they get that, they won't be receiving the tariffs.' (Photo: Max Goldberg) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Florida House of Representatives has passed new gun control measures, three weeks after a mass shooting in the state shook America's conscience. Nicolas Cruz, 19, who was expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland for disciplinary reasons, killed 17 people after returning to the campus with an assault rifle on February 14. It triggered fresh calls for gun control, a national boycott campaign, and mass street protests. The Bill, named after the tragedy-hit school, passed the Republican-led lower House by 67-50 vote Wednesday. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act passed the Florida Senate narrowly by a 20-18 vote, after an amendment removed a provision to arm classroom teachers. The bill will become law once Governor Rick Scott signs it. It would allow for the hiring of more school resources officers, physical security improvements to schools, new age and waiting-period limits on shotgun and rifle purchases and more police powers to seize weapons from dangerous people. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PUNE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

According to the new market research report "Flight Data Monitoring Market by Solution Type (On Board, On Ground), Component (FDM Service, FDM System, FDM Software), End User (Fleet Operators, Drone Operators, FDM Service Providers, Investigation Agencies), Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets', the flight data monitoring market is projected to grow from USD 3.71 Billion in 2017 to USD 5.34 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 7.55% from 2017 to 2022.

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The growth of the aerospace industry has increased safety concerns due to number air accidents that have taken place in the past few years. This increase in the number of commercial flights implies that techniques and procedures used in-flight data monitoring match the referred growth, being necessary to update and improve this type of procedures to reduce the possibility of an incident.

Based on solution type, the on ground segment is projected to lead the flight data monitoring market during the forecast period.

Based on solution type, the on ground segment is expected to lead the flight data monitoring market during the forecast period. An aircraft operator uses a range of on ground (off the flight) Flight Data Services flight data analysis incorporating Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) and Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA). These services provide a full analysis of day to day flight operations to aircraft operators. By selecting ground (off the flight) Flight Data Services to monitor the aircraft, maintenance and safety events can be identified and addressed without delay, minimizing risk and Aircraft on Ground (AOG) time while ensuring adherence to aviation regulatory norms.

Based on component, the FDM service segment of the flight data monitoring market is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period.

Based on component, the flight data monitoring market has been segmented into FDM service, FDM system, and FDM software. The service segment has been further divided into flight data analysis service, Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA), helicopter FDM, FDR readouts, training and simulation, inspection, maintenance monitoring, condition monitoring, and FDM consulting. The FDM service component segment is expected to account for the largest share of the flight data monitoring market in 2017. This segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) is the process of collecting flight data from aircraft, processing it on a computer, and carrying out the analysis of the generated results to take necessary actions and ensure aviation safety, which makes it an essential part of the overall FDM process in the aviation industry.

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North American is expected to lead the flight data monitoring market during the forecast period.

North America is expected to lead the flight data monitoring market during the forecast period. The increase in the disposable income of the population has contributed to the demand for air travel, which, in turn, has led to the increase in air passenger traffic. The rise in air passenger traffic has led to an increase in aircraft deliveries in North America, which has further propelled the demand for flight data monitoring in this region.

Major companies profiled in the flight data monitoring market report are Curtiss Wright (US), Safran (France), Teledyne Controls (US), and FYHT (Canada).

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MarketsandMarkets' provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets' for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets' are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets' now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets' is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:

Mr. Salgarkar

MarketsandMarkets' INC.

630 Dundee Road

Suite 430

Northbrook, IL 60062

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Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com



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DEINOVE expands the AGIR project's field of investigation for the discovery of novel antibiotic structures by accessing the strain bank of rare bacteria selected by NAICONS.

NAICONS has been convinced by the power of DEINOVE's robotic and integrated screening platform to rapidly identify and develop new antibiotics.

Regulatory News:

DEINOVE (Paris:ALDEI) (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI), a biotech company that discovers, develops, and produces high-value compounds from rare bacteria, announces that they have signed an exclusive research license with NAICONS to expand their current strain bank and increase the opportunities to discover new antibiotics.

The AGIR (Antibiotics against Resistant Infectious Germs) project, carried out by DEINOVE and its subsidiary DEINOBIOTICS, and supported by the Investments for the Future Program, aims to discover new antibiotics by systematically exploring the potential of the living world, and more specifically the great diversity of microorganisms. The project plans to rapidly and selectively enrich the collection of 6,000 rare bacterial strains of DEINOVE, in order to maximize the chances of discovery.

In addition to the collection of new strains in various natural environments, launched in 2017, DEINOVE has engaged a collaboration with the Italian biopharmaceutical company NAICONS, also specialized in the research for innovative antibiotics, which has a collection of 45,000 microbial strains.

As a first step, DEINOVE will have access to 400 strains carefully selected for their potential and will use the power of its robotic technology platform to detect and characterize the antibiotic activities of these strains. In case of discovery of a strain of interest, DEINOVE may acquire it (under the conditions provided for in this agreement) either via a commercial license or in full ownership, in order to initiate the development of drug candidates.

"We chose to open our rare bacteria collection to Deinove as part of an exclusive agreement because we are confident that they have the resources to discover antibiotics through their breakthrough technologies and the know-how of their team. Our collection can provide a larger number of antibiotics than we can discover with our own resources," said Stefano Donadio, CEO of NAICONS.

Emmanuel PETIOT, CEO of DEINOVE, said: "Our collaboration with Naicons is a good example of our antibiotics development model: this company historically rooted in the pharmaceutical sector has an interesting biological heritage which potential we can quickly explore, thanks to our reference platform. Joining forces to advance faster is essential to win the battle against the development of antibiotic resistance. This type of collaboration must be extended in the near future if we truly want to respond to this global public health threat."

ABOUT THE AGIR PROJECT

The AGIR project, selected by the 'Investments for the Future' Program, led by the General Investment Commission (CGI) and operated by Bpifrance, within the framework of the call for projects "Structural R&D Projects for Competitiveness", is carried out by the DEINOVE Group together with the CHARLES VIOLLETTE INSTITUTE (CVI) It aims to implement an innovative strategy for the discovery of new antimicrobials antibiotics and antifungal agents through an integrated and automated approach. Its objective is to develop new technologies to optimize the platform for selecting, identifying, and developing new antimicrobial molecules of natural origin.

The AGIR project represents a total investment of 25 million over five years and will be financed to a level of 14.6 million by the 'Investments for the Future' Program.

ABOUT NAICONS

Entirely owned by individuals with extensive experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, NAICONS is a unique discovery engine based on natural products for the development of bioactive compounds, particularly novel antibiotics.

NAICONS' business strategy is to advance drug candidates to significant value creation, then partner them out for further development.

Since its start in 2006, NAICONS has out licensed two products, secured several million euros in research grants and established collaborations with several national and international companies. NAICONS' scientists have filed several patent applications and published their research results in important international journals.

ABOUT DEINOVE

DEINOVE (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI) is a biotech company that discovers, develops and produces high added-value compounds from rare microorganisms for use in the fields of health, nutrition and cosmetic markets.

To do so, DEINOVE draws on two key assets:

a unique library of 6,000 rare or unexploited bacterial strains;

a genetic, metabolic and fermentation engineering platform capable of customizing these natural "micro-factories" to transform them into new industrial standards.

Based in Montpellier, DEINOVE employs approximately 55 employees and has nearly 160 international patents. The Company has been listed on Euronext Growth since April 2010.

www.deinove.com

twitter.com/Deinove

linkedin.com/company/deinove

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005838/en/

Contacts:

DEINOVE

Emmanuel Petiot, Tel: +33 (0)4 48 19 01 28

Chief Executive Officer

emmanuel.petiot@deinove.com

or

Coralie Martin, Tel: +33 (0)4 48 19 01 60

Communication, Marketing and Investor Relations

coralie.martin@deinove.com

or

ALIZE RP, Press Relations

Caroline Carmagnol Aurore Gangloff

Tel +33 (0)1 44 54 36 66

deinove@alizerp.com
Wood Group has won a new contract to develop the world's largest crude oil to chemicals complex in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco and SABIC. The energy services company will provide front end engineering design and project management services during the engineering, procurement and construction phase, supporting the development of the complex that is expected to process 400,000 barrels a day and around nine million tons of chemicals and base oils annually. The contract, which is ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 8, 2018) - Kramer Capital Corp. (TSXV: KRM.H) (the "Corporation" or "Kramer") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement dated February 28, 2018 with 48North Cannabis Corp. ("48North") to acquire, subject to certain conditions, all of the outstanding securities of 48North (the "Transaction"), a vertically integrated cannabis company licensed under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations ("ACMPR").

The acquisition is to be completed by way of a three-cornered amalgamation. Upon completion of the Transaction, 48North will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kramer and Kramer will change its name to "48North Cannabis Corp.". The combined entity (the "Resulting Issuer") will continue the business of 48North. The terms of the Transaction were previously disclosed in Kramer's press release dated January 5, 2018.

The Transaction, once completed, is intended to constitute Kramer's "Qualifying Transaction" pursuant to Policy 2.4 of the Corporate Finance Manual of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). The Transaction is an arm's length transaction, and as such does not require Kramer shareholder approval. At a shareholder meeting held on March 7, 2018, Kramer's shareholders approved certain ancillary matters relating to the Transaction, including a Continuance of the Corporation from the provincial jurisdiction of the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) into the federal jurisdiction of the Canada Business Corporations Act. 48North is seeking shareholder approval of the Transaction at a meeting of 48North shareholders to be held on March 20, 2018.

Closing of the Transaction is subject to several conditions, including but not limited to:

Kramer and 48North obtaining all written consents and approvals required from all governmental and regulatory agencies, including the Exchange;

Entry into any regulatory required escrow agreements by certain Kramer shareholders;

48North obtaining approval of its shareholders;

Kramer having successfully completed a two (old) for one (new) share consolidation and the name change; and

Appointment of a new slate of directors agreed upon between both Kramer and 48North.

Transaction Financing

On January 26, 2018, 48North closed its previously announced concurrent financing, pursuant to which 48North issued 16,010 convertible debenture units (the "Convertible Debenture Units") at a price of $1,000 per Convertible Debenture Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $16,010,000 (the "Concurrent Financing"). The offering was led by Eight Capital as the sole underwriter (the "Underwriter") pursuant to an underwriting agreement dated January 26, 2018 among the Underwriter, Kramer and 48North (the "Underwriting Agreement").

Pursuant to the Concurrent Financing, each Convertible Debenture Unit was comprised of one convertible debenture with a principal amount of $1,000 of 48North (each a "Convertible Debenture") and 556 warrants of 48North (each a "Unit Warrant").

Immediately prior to the completion of the Transaction, the 48North Convertible Debentures will automatically convert into common shares of 48North (each, a "48North Share") at a price of $0.90 per 48North Share, with such 48North Shares then being exchanged in the Transaction for common shares of the Resulting Issuer (each, a "Resulting Issuer Share") on a 1:1 basis. Each Unit Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one Resulting Issuer Share at a price of $1.15 for a period of 24 months following the completion of the Transaction.

As consideration for its services in connection the Concurrent Financing, the Underwriter received a cash commission of $1,120,700 (approximately 7% of the aggregate gross proceeds) and compensation options to purchase 1,245,222 Compensation Units (approximately 7% of the aggregate gross proceeds of the Concurrent Financing divided by $0.90) (a "Compensation Option"). Each Compensation Option is exercisable to purchase one unit of 48North (a "Compensation Unit") at an exercise price of $0.90 until the date that is 24 months following the completion of the Transaction, with each Compensation Unit being comprised of one 48North Common Share and one-half of one Unit Warrant.

Kramer understands that 48North intends to use the net proceeds of the Concurrent Financing to fund 48North's business plan, for Transaction expenses, and for working capital and general corporate purposes, all as more particularly described in the Filing Statement.

New Board of Directors

Pursuant to the Transaction, Kramer shareholders approved the increase in the post-Transaction board size to seven and elected the following directors to serve on the board of the Resulting Issuer: William J. Assini, Martin Cauchon, Anne Darche, Alain Dubuc, Alan Gertner, James Gervais and Alison Gordon.

Sponsorship of Qualifying Transaction

Sponsorship of a Qualifying Transaction is required by the Exchange unless exempt in accordance with Exchange policies. Kramer and 48North intend to apply for an exemption from the sponsorship requirements and expect an exemption to be available. However, there is no assurance that Kramer and 48North will ultimately obtain an exemption from sponsorship.

About Kramer

Kramer was incorporated under the laws of Alberta and continued into British Columbia in August, 2016. It is a Capital Pool Company as such term is defined under Policy 2.4 of the Exchange. Kramer is a reporting issuer in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, and its common shares are listed and posted for trading on the NEX board of the Exchange. Kramer's head office in located in Vancouver, B.C.

About 48North

48North is a private, vertically integrated cannabis company with 150 shareholders. Its first ACMPR-licensed facility is located on 800 acres of owned land near Kirkland Lake, Ont., and is operated by its wholly owned subsidiary, DelShen Therapeutics Corp. 48North grows unique genetics sourced from MariPharm BV, a Netherlands-based phytopharmaceutical company with over 25 years of experience in the research and cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes. Its genetics are grown to exacting standards, ensuring patients can count on receiving the highest-quality cannabis products. 48North's values are rooted in the land they are planted on, and 48North has entered into a first-of-its-kind community benefits agreement with certain of its first nations investors.

DelShen was incorporated on Nov. 18, 2013, under the laws of the Province of Ontario. The company's head office, principal address and records are located at 76 Stafford St., Suite 101, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 2S1.

DelShen is authorized by Health Canada as a licensed producer of dried and fresh cannabis and cannabis oil for medical purposes pursuant to the ACMPR. DelShen's licence to produce cannabis was granted on Feb. 28, 2017, and pertains to the facility, a state-of-the-art, closed-box, 40,000-square-foot building with an additional 200,000 square feet of production space planned within the current security perimeter.

Additional Information

In accordance with the policies of the Exchange, the common shares of Kramer are currently halted from trading and will remain halted until further notice.

All information provided in this press release related to 48North has been provided by management of 48North and has not been independently verified by management of Kramer.

Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the management information circular or filing statement to be prepared in connection with the Qualifying Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Qualifying Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of a capital pool company should be considered highly speculative.

For Further Information, Please Contact:

Kramer Capital Corp.

Richard Graham, Director

Telephone: (604) 689-1428

Cautionary statements

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the proposal to complete the Qualifying Transaction and associated transactions, including statements regarding the terms and conditions of the Qualifying Transaction. . Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risks that the parties will not proceed with the Qualifying Transaction and associated transactions, that the ultimate terms of the Qualifying Transaction, and associated transactions will differ from those that currently are contemplated, and that the Qualifying Transaction and associated transactions will not be successfully completed for any reason (including the failure to obtain the required approvals or clearances from regulatory authorities). The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release. The Corporation undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of the Corporation, BC, their securities, or their respective financial or operating results or (as applicable).

Completion of the Qualifying Transaction is subject to a number of conditions including, but not limited to, Exchange acceptance and, if required by the Exchange policies, majority of the minority shareholder approval. Where applicable, the Qualifying Transaction cannot close until the required shareholder approval is obtained. There can be no assurance that the Qualifying Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the Qualifying Transaction and has neither approved or disapproved the contents of this press release.

The Resulting Issuer Shares have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and may not be offered or sold in the United States without registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirement. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 8, 2018 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Wells Fargo & Company ("Wells Fargo" or the "Company") (NYSE: WFC) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, for the Southern District of New York, and docketed under 18-cv-01318, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Wells Fargo securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants' violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Wells Fargo securities between January 13, 2017, and July 27, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until April 16, 2018, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Wells Fargo is a diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, leasing, credit cards, and consumer finance. The Company operates through physical stores, the internet, and other distribution channels worldwide.

On September 8, 2016, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a Consent Order with a Stipulation to its entry signed by Mary Mack, Executive Vice President of Wells Fargo Bank, detailing fraudulent practices at the Company, which were centered on a corporate culture intent on growing its cross-selling opportunities and unlawfully and without its customers' consent opening millions of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts, and imposing a fine of more than $185 million.

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) Wells Fargo had charged more than 800,000 customers for unneeded auto insurance, the expense of which pushed approximately 274,000 Wells Fargo customers into delinquency and resulted in almost 25,000 vehicle repossessions; (ii) the foregoing conduct, when it came to light, would foreseeably subject Wells Fargo to heightened regulatory scrutiny and/or enforcement actions; and (iii) as a result, Wells Fargo's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On July 27, 2017, post-market, The New York Times published an article entitled "Wells Fargo Forced Unwanted Auto Insurance on Borrowers." Citing an internal report prepared for Wells Fargo's executives, the article reported that "[m]ore than 800,000 people who took out car loans from Wells Fargo were charged for auto insurance they did not need," that "[t]he expense of the unneeded insurance . . . pushed roughly 274,000 Wells Fargo customers into delinquency and resulted in almost 25,000 wrongful vehicle repossessions," and "that the bank owed $73 million to wronged customers."

Following the publication of this article, Wells Fargo's share price fell $1.41, or 2.58%, to close at $53.30 on July 28, 2017.

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
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 8, 2018) - MAX RESOURCE CORP. (TSXV: MXR) (OTC Pink: MXROF) (FSE: M1D) ("MXR" or the "Company") is pleased to release Initial Long Wave InfraRed ("LWIR") results, continuing the due diligence in support of its acquisition of Copperbelt Minerals Corp's Gachala Copper Project, 50 kilometres east of Bogota, Colombia (the "Property"), as detailed in its February 26, 2018 news release.

The 3,400 square kilometre LWIR survey identified 8 separate targets within the 400 square kilometre Property showing spectral best match signatures for chalcocite, supported by best spectral match signatures for chalcopyrite. Individual targets ranged from 1 kilometre to 10 kilometres in length for an aggregate target length of 40 kilometres.

The Gachala Copper Project covers 25km of a 250km by 120km belt of Devonian through Cretaceous age rocks in a geological setting conducive to hosting sedimentary copper deposits. Mineralization appears to be localized at the contact between the Devonian-Permain red beds and the overlying Cretaceous reducing black shales, one of the settings typical of these copper deposits. Many of the LWIR target signatures are concentrated at this contact.

The MXR field teams plan to conduct a number of preliminary follow-up sampling programs over the 40 kilometres of LWIR anomalous zones, so results will be released in batches.

Interpretation of the remaining 2,800 square kilometre area the LWIR covered is underway. Results will be released as they are made available.

MXR is still waiting for assay results from an extensive channel sampling program taken from an outcrop near the historic Cerro de Cobre copper mine, including a zone returning 22.8 m averaging 3.16% copper. (The historic sampling was completed by Colombian Mines Corporation as disclosed in their 15-May-2008 News Release. The orientation of the mineralization is unknown and will require further mapping).

Assay results from a newly discovered area located 700 meters north of Cerro de Cobre are pending.

Additional results from the examination of a number of other areas around the Property area.

Brett Matich, MXR Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Our on-going due diligence continues to confirm our staunch believe the Gachala project will become a critical asset for Max Resource Corp. The LWIR signatures at the critical red bed / black shale contact is extremely encouraging and we eagerly anticipate the results of our due diligence exploration program."

Max Resource Corp. - Gachala Copper Project



To view an enhanced version of this figure, please visit:

http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3834/33401_a1520541951550_23.jpg

About LWIR

LWIR analysis, through proprietary processing of ASTER satellite data, has the ability to map or identify, through reflectance spectroscopy against a set of known standards, mineral distribution over extremely large areas covered by vegetation and shallow cover. The ground-penetrating nature of infrared radiation in the longwave bands allows viewing of mineral spectra in the first 30 to 60 cm of the earth's surface through dense vegetation. The Company believes LWIR is therefore well suited to Colombia. The Company cautions investors LWIR does not necessarily identify mineralization, only the signatures of individual minerals.

About Gachala

The Gachala Copper Project consists of 4 mineral claims and 21 exploration applications totaling approximately 400 square kilometers and includes the historic Cerro de Cobre copper mine, where 2008 channel sampling returned 22.8 metres grading 3.16% copper and 15.3 g/t silver. Subsequent Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) soil sampling defined a 1500 metre by 800 metre copper-in-soil anomaly encompassing the two zones, open in all directions. Colombian Mines Corporation felt there was a high potential for repetition on the opposite side of the hosting anticline and further felt the geology suggested mineralization may extend beyond the limits of known anomalous zones. (Source: Colombian Mines Corporation News Releases dated 15-May-2008 and 14-Nov-2012 respectively). The orientation of the channel sampled mineralization is unknown at this time. MXR cautions investors it has not yet verified the historical data.

The historic sampling combined with the recent mapping and sampling completed by MXR indicates that copper appears to be widely dispersed throughout the 400 square kilometre property holdings.

About the Transaction

MXR has signed a binding Letter of Intent ("LOI") to acquire 100% of the outstanding share capital of Copperbelt Minerals Corp., a private Canadian company holding the Property. MXR will issue 12,000,000 common shares to the Copperbelt Minerals' shareholders and take over the obligations of the Cerro de Cobre agreement, requiring the aggregate payment of US$1,060,000 over the next three years to the Cerro de Cobre vendors. Certain shareholders of Copperbelt Minerals will collectively retain a 3-per-cent net smelter returns royalty ("NSR") on the Property. MXR has the sole exclusive right to purchase half of the 3-per-cent NSR for the consideration of US$3-million at any time prior to production.

About Max Resource Corp.

Max Resource Corp., a Canadian-based exploration company, its focussed on acquiring advanced exploration projects which are located within the under-explored northern section of the richly endowed Andean Copper Belt of Colombia.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF MAX RESOURCE CORP.

"Brett Matich"



Brett Matich, CEO and President

Tim Henneberry, P. Geo (British Columbia), a member of the Max Resource Corp. Advisory Board, is the qualified person who has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release on behalf of the Company.

Further information regarding the Company can be found on SEDAR at www.SEDAR.com, or by contacting the Company directly at (604) 365 1522.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed as "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements pertaining to completion of the Acquisition and any approvals required in connection with the Acquisition. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include: changes in market conditions, unsuccessful exploration results, changes in the price of commodities (particularly copper), unanticipated changes in key management personnel and general social, economic or geo-political conditions. Mining exploration and development is an inherently risky business. Accordingly the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. We seek safe harbor.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Flanked by steel and aluminum industry workers, President Donald Trump signed proclamations Thursday imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Trump announced last week that he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. In remarks at a signing ceremony, Trump argued unfair trade practices and industrial policies of other countries pose a threat to U.S. national security. The president noted the U.S. would be open to modifying or removing the tariffs on certain countries if they can agree on alternate means to resolve trade inequities. At a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day, Trump suggested that countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Australia could be exempt from the tariffs. 'We're going to be very flexible,' Trump said. 'At the same time, we have some friends and some enemies where we have been tremendously taken advantage of over the years.' The exemptions for Canada and Mexico would depend on the successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump said. Trump also noted that the U.S. has a 'very close relationship' and a trade surplus with Australia, which he called a 'long-term partner.' Earlier this month, Commerce Department investigations concluded that the quantities and circumstances of steel and aluminum imports 'threaten to impair the national security.' The investigations into the impact of steel and aluminum imports on national security were carried out under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross subsequently recommended that Trump impose quotas or tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to remove the threatened impairment to national security. The announcement of the tariffs raised concerns about retaliation by U.S. trade partners such as the European Union and China sparking a global trade war. The decision to impose the tariffs led to a dispute among White House officials and has also drawn criticism from some Republican lawmakers. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 8, 2018 / Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of NQ Mobile Inc. ("NQ" or the "Company") (NYSE: NQ). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether NQ and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On February 6, 2018, Rota Fortunae published a report on the website Seeking Alpha entitled "NQ Mobile: Undisclosed Transfer Of Subsidiaries To Chairman Introduces Significant Risks - Price Target $0." Citing a review of Chinese corporate records, the report's author concluded that "insiders control Tongfang Investment Fund, the firm that recently acquired NQ's mobile gaming and video businesses" and stated that "[o]ur research leads us to doubt every aspect of the transaction, including the cash payments and the $270 million note receivable, which together represents over 100% of NQ's market cap."

On this news, NQ Mobile's American Depositary Receipt price fell $1.30, or 43.6%, to close at $1.68 on February 6, 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
DoubleDutch, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a Live Engagement Marketing platform, raised an additional funding of undisclosed amount.

Backers included existing investors KKR, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Bullpen Ventures, among others.

The company intends to use the funds to bring DoubleDutch Registration to market and to evaluate additional M&A opportunities.

Led by CEO Lawrence Coburn, DoubleDutch provides a live engagement platform for events, conferences, and trade shows ran by more than 1,700 customers including Akamai, LinkedIn, BlackRock, Bosch, ASAE, SAP, and more.

The company, which has additional U.S. offices in Phoenix and Portland and a global presence in Amsterdam, completed its acquisition of Eventgrid (now DoubleDutch Registration), an event registration and marketing platform, in September, 2017.

Customers of the product include Adobe, Dropbox, Sony, Northwestern Mutual, and more.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
Prevail Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company developing gene therapies for patients with Parkinsons disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, raised $75m in Series A financing.

Backers included OrbiMed, Pontifax Fund, RA Capital Management, EcoR1 Capital, Omega Funds, BVF Partners L.P., Boxer Capital, LLC, Adage Capital Management L.P., and Alexandria Venture Investments.

Led by Asa Abeliovich, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Prevail is advancing gene therapies with a goal of addressing the underlying disease process in Parkinsons disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

The company intends to use the proceeds to advance its pipeline of AAV-based (adeno-associated virus) therapeutics targeting lysosomal dysfunction to treat patients with genetically-defined neurodegenerative diseases. Prevails lead program, PR001, will be developed for a genetic subset of Parkinsons disease and other mechanistically-related disorders.

Prevail has an exclusive worldwide license agreement with Regenxbio, Inc., to develop and commercialize gene therapy products using REGENXBIOs NAV AAV9 vector for the treatment of Parkinsons disease and other related neurodegenerative diseases.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
Prime Venture Partners, a Bengaluru, India-based early stage venture capital firm, closed its third fund, at INR 400 crore (approx. $60M).

The fund will focus on Digital India, Fintech/Financial Services, Healthcare, Education, Logistics and Global SaaS solutions.

Founded in 2011, Prime has always invested in early stage technology startups in India focusing on companies having an innovative approach to solving fundamental problems through technology. It is typically the first institutional investor in a startup. The firm invests in only 3-5 companies per year, actively supporting entrepreneurs with business and product strategy, refining operating metrics, hiring, partnerships, marketing, finance, all the way through raising subsequent capital.

Led by Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya, Amit Somani, and Rajesh Mashruwala, the firm raised its first fund of $8M in 2012, and a $46M Fund 2 in 2015. It was the first investor in ZipDial, a missed-call based startup that was acquired by Twitter in 2015, and Ezetap, a mobile payments company that has since raised about $50M in follow-on capital.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
The Agent, a Paris, France-based platform that connects fashion brands and e-retailers, closed a  7m funding round.

Backers included Ventech, Generis Capital and Bpifrance.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate development efforts, and expand its international presence, firstly in China.

Launched in 2014 by Dimitri Dewavrin and led by CEO Thibault Mollat du Jourdin and CCO Romain Aymeric, The Agent provides a platform for brands which aim to accelerate their international sales to distribute their products on e-commerce sites. The company currently partners with over 600 brands and nearly 90 online retailers, managing more than 150,000 items from nearly 10,000 collections in over 40 countries.

The Agent today has a team of 30 people.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
The Fabric, a Mountain View, California-based co-creation foundry focused on the cloud and infrastructure sector, raised $15m for its third dedicated pool of capital.

Investors include Verizon Ventures and March Capital Partners.

The final target of the fund, which is expected to close by the end of April, is $20m. This will bring the foundrys total investment raised to $41m for the creation and development of cloud and IoT infrastructure companies.

Founded in 2012 by industry experts Rajan Raghavan, Prabakar Sundarrajan, and Sumant Mandal, the Fabric co-creates companies with entrepreneurs, funds and launches the companies through to Series A investment. It has since co-created eight companies, including VeloCloud, Perspica, Appcito, IoTium, Pensa, Spanugo, KMesh, and Rosetta Cyber Security. Three of them have already been acquired: VeloCloud acquired by VMware, Perspica acquired by Cisco, and Appcito acquired by A10 Networks.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
Trind Ventures, a Tallinn, Estonia-based early stage tech investor, has reached the first closing of new fund, at 21m.

The three largest investors in the fund are European Investment Fund (EIF) under the Juncker Plan, LHV pension funds (LHV) and Trind Ventures team itself.

Led by Established by Joel Aasmae, Ivar Siimar, Kimmo Irpola and Taavi Lepmets, the fund will focus on investing into early stage ICT companies in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and the rest of Central and Northern Europe. It will provide seed capital starting from 100k and do follow-on investments of up to 3m per company.

The fund, which can invest alone and co-invest alongside local business angels and/or other early stage funds, plans to invest in up to 10 new portfolio companies per year.

FinSMEs

08/03/2018
Pal-V unveiled its Liberty Flying Car  a sleek, red three-wheeled gyrocopter-type vehicle  at the Geneva Motor Show and deliveries could start next year.

From James Bond to The Jetsons, flying cars have long captured our imaginations, but now a Dutch company says they are almost ready to take to the streets, and the skies.

Pal-V unveiled its Liberty Flying Car  a sleek, red three-wheeled gyrocopter-type vehicle  at the Geneva Motor Show and vowed that client deliveries could start next year.

This kind of transportation, which allows drivers to both zip through traffic on the ground or simply fly above it, has never ceased to inspire engineers.

As a sign that this technology is not only being toyed with in the start-up realm, an alliance between Airbus, Audi and Italdesign also presented a concept flying vehicle, "Pop.Up Next", at the Geneva show.

That modular system, made up of an electric car with a huge quadcopter fastened to the roof, is expected to be commercialised starting in 2025, the companies said.

Inspired by 'frustration'

For Pal-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle), it was "frustration" that sparked the idea for Liberty.

In a plane, "you start at a point where you don't want to start and you end up in a place where you don't want to be," company chief Robert Dingemanse told AFP.

"The Pal-V is the perfect product for city-to-city mobility," he said, pointing out that "outside the cities you fly, inside the city you drive."

The vehicle, which seats two, has retractable helicopter blades and is powered by a gasoline-fuelled engine.

It can fly for 500 kilometres (310 miles), or can drive for nearly four times that distance without refuelling, reaching a maximum speed of 160 kilometres per hour.

Buyers are already lining up: For now the expected waiting time for delivery is around two years.

For take-off, "you can use the 10,000 strips available in Europe, and because you can drive, that's already enough," Dingemanse said, adding that "every German will have a small airport within 10 or 20 kilometres of his home".

But Pal-V's Liberty will not be a vehicle for everyman: Future drivers should expect to dish out between 10,000 and 20,000 euros ($12,000-$25,000) for pilot training, in addition to the anticipated 300,000-500,000-euro cost for the machine itself, Dingemanse said.

That is the same price range as a small helicopter, he said, stressing though that Pal-V's flying car is "easier, maintenance costs are much lower, (and) it's much more useful than a normal plane or helicopter."

Public transport on the fly

While also falling into the flying vehicle category, the modular Pop.Up Next is based on a radically different design.

The passenger capsule looks like a futuristic gondola lift, with a giant quadcopter attached to the roof.

The motorised base of the vehicle, which drives, and the upper part, which flies, can be detached and can move autonomously.

The Pop.Up Next is fully electric and was conceived for mass transport in an urban setting.

"This vehicle was not conceived to be sold to individuals, (but) as a shared means of transport," Mark Cousin, the project chief at Airbus, which developed the flying portion of Pop.Up Next.

Volkswagen's Italdesign unit meanwhile developed the passenger capsule while the motorised underbelly of the vehicle is based on Audi technology.

"I don't know if you would use it every day," Cousin said, pointing out that the vehicle would be practical for instance "going to the airport (at a price) hardly more expensive than a taxi", without needing to worry about traffic jams.

Airbus wants to launch the first urban trials by 2022, and is also looking into other uses, including transferring patients between hospitals and goods transport at night.

"The convergence today of certain technologies, especially in batteries and electric engines, is making it possible to develop this kind of vehicle  something that was impossible five or 10 years ago," Cousin said.

Not everyone is convinced that flying cars will soon be darkening our skies.

"It's a beautiful idea," Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, who heads the Center for Automotive Research in Germany, told AFP.

But in light of the current air traffic density, "it is difficult to imagine that there will be lots of additional flying saucers" filling the skies, he said.
Nissan IMx KURO includes the twin electric motors delivering all-wheel drive capability, 320 kW of power, and a staggering 700 Nm of torque.

For anyone who now thinks motor show concepts are little more than production-ready prototypes on the whole these days, the IMx KURO is definitely the kind of vision of the future concepts always used to be in the past.

The IMx was originally unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October last year, and as Kuro means black in Japanese, this new version is now appropriately dressed in a new-look black trim and wheels with an updated grille and new dark grey exterior colour.

Of course, despite Nissan claiming the concept is "designed to strengthen the link between car and driver as a close, reliable partner that delivers a safer, more convenient and more exciting drive," the IMx KURO features a fully autonomous future version of the manufacturer's ProPILOT technology. But rather than this being a completely driver-less car, the IMx KURO also has an intriguing system on-board called B2V.

B2V technology is the only system of its kind in the world right now. With it, the driver wears a device designed to measure brain wave activity that's then analysed by the vehicle's autonomous systems. The system then anticipates intended movement, which means it can then take actions such as turning the steering wheel or slowing the car between 0.2 and 0.5 seconds faster than the driver could unassisted, while at the same time remaining largely imperceptible. The whole idea is to improve reaction times and enhance manual driving, which makes a pleasant change from the fully driver-less systems so many manufacturers are pursuing at the moment.

Other more conventional features associated with the IMx KURO are equally impressive, including the twin electric motors delivering all-wheel drive capability, 320 kW of power, and a staggering 700 Nm of torque. Nissan even claims the battery could be good for a driving range of up to 600 km on a single charge.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a plan for putting the IMx KURO into production anytime soon.
Just a few days ago, AirAsia India had announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its network.

New Delhi: Low cost carrier AirAsia India will focus on expanding its domestic network and increase its flight frequencies, before commencing international operations to Southeast Asia by early next year, the airline's chief, Amar Abrol, said.

Just a few days ago, the budget passenger carrier announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its network, effective March 17. It will also introduce new routes connecting Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Indore and Nagpur.

In addition, the airline will operate daily flights connecting its two hubs -- Bengaluru and Kolkata -- which will become operational from 25 March.

"We are not shying away from India. We will first commence flight operations to new domestic destinations and increase frequencies. In all we are looking at starting flights to four to five new cities in this year," Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Abrol told IANS in an interview.

"We are making the preparations for international operations but it will most probably take place by the first quarter of 2019," he added.

Currently, the airline operates to Bengaluru, Kochi, Goa, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune, New Delhi, Guwahati, Imphal, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Srinagar, Bagdogra, Ranchi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bhubaneshwar with a fleet of 16 A320 aircrafts.

When asked about the first international port of call, Abrol said: "It can be anywhere from India's eastern seaboard to Southeast Asia, particularly to Thailand and Malaysia."

According to Abrol, apart from adding more domestic flight frequencies, the airline is "steadily working" towards "break-even" by the year-end.

On the perils of high crude oil prices denting the airline's ability to offer lower fares, Abrol said AirAsia India will continue to offer "lowest possible fares" to its customers.

"We don't control oil prices. But we do control other aspects; we are good at one thing and that is to provide affordable flying. AirAsia India will continue to offer the lowest possible airfares," Abrol said.

The airline, like many of its peers, has been known to offer promotional airfare schemes. It recently started the "Big Sale" promotion with all-in one-way fares starting at Rs 799 for domestic travel.

AirAsia India is a joint venture between Tata Sons and Malaysia-based AirAsia, with a small stake held by two individuals. It commenced operations on 12 June, 2014.
Travis Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009 and made the ride-hailing app one of the world's most valuable companies.

San Francisco: Tainted Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick has revealed plans to launch a new investment fund that will focus on large-scale job creation in India and China.

In a tweet, Kalanick said the fund, called the "10,100 Fund", will look into investment areas like real estate, e-commerce and emerging innovations.

"The over-arching theme will be about large-scale job creation, with investments in real estate, e-commerce and emerging innovations in China and India. Our non-profit efforts will initially focus on education and the future of cities," Kalanick tweeted late on Wednesday.

According to media reports, Kalanick will likely invest in startups that have between 10 and 100 employees -- the magic growth stage for startups.

Kalanick was forced out as the company's CEO in July over a number of controversies and mis-steps, including allegations of widespread sexual harassment against women in the company.

Susan Fowler, a former site reliability engineer, levelled numerous allegations of sexism against her former superiors in a blog post.

This led to further allegation from other employees, prompting Uber to conduct internal investigations.

Kalanick still remains on the company's board of directors.

Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009 and made the ride-hailing app one of the world's most valuable companies.

In his 2016 trip to India as Uber CEO, Kalanick had urged ex-servicemen in India to avail entrepreneurship opportunities with the company as driver partners.

Kalanick also felicitated some drivers for their extraordinary service to the country.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are hot on the trail of Pramod Kumar Mittal.

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are hot on the trail of Pramod Kumar Mittal. The investigating agencies alleged that Mittal defrauded government-owned State Trading Corporation of India Limited (STC) to the tune of Rs 2,112 crore. The ED officials said that while tracking whereabouts of Nirav Modi, they have zeroed in on Mittals London address and they will soon expedite the case to bring him back to India.

So far, we had issued three summons to Pramod Mittal after CBI had registered a case against him and other officers of STC. We had attached his assets worth around Rs 244 crore last years (sic). Although a look out circular has been issued against him, we will coordinate with the CBI for issuance of Red Corner Notice against Mittal, an ED official said.

The CBI had registered a case against Mittal and 19 officers of STC for criminal conspiracy and cheating in March 2017. Subsequently, ED had registered a case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Both the agencies had issued summons to Mittal, younger brother of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, but he has not appeared before the sleuths for examination. There were reports in 2013 that Pramod Mittal spent a whopping Rs 500 crore on his daughters wedding in Barcelona.

The CBI has alleged that Mittals company Global Infrastructure Holdings Limited (GIHL), registered in Isle of Man, now also known as Global Steel Holdings Limited (GSHL), approached STC and sought assistance in terms of providing financing facility by establishing Letters of Credit for purchasing raw materials required for their newly acquired steel plants in Philippines and Bosnia.

Then, the Indian Ambassador to Philippines suggested to STC that the Embassy was not in a position to comment on the financial aspects and liabilities of the company and had advised to ensure thorough enquiries to protect STCs interests. This warning was ignored by STC officials, facing the CBI heat, and a proposal for financing the agreement with Mittals company was cleared. Officials from STC  BD Majumdar, then General Manager, KK Sood, then Director Marketing and Vijay Krishan, then Director Finance  put up the proposal before the Committee of Management (comprising Dr Arvind Pandalai, the then Chairman and Managing Director) in its 225th meeting held on 7 January 2005 and directed to place the proposal before the board of directors for approval.

The CBI has alleged that a board note was prepared by Sood. However, the board was not apprised about the extant Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines regarding merchanting and intermediate trade transactions.

The CBI further noted: The board on 27.01.2005 in its 532nd meeting accorded approval in principle to the third country transactions and also authorized CMD (named in FIR) to exercise all powers including that of board, if required, for smooth implementation/functioning of the project in the best interest of the corporation. The board also authorized CMD to delegate powers to the concerned Director/CGM required for day to day functioning of the project.

The agreement was finally signed in April 2005. Subsequently, an amendment was made in the original agreement in September 2005 which allowed more time to the company to pay back but exposed STC to financial risk. CBI said that since payment was linked to the disposal of the finished goods, STC funds got blocked.

"As a result of revised system of payment, the associate (GSPI and GSHL) got easy money for longer period to fund their operations with no pressure to repay STC dues. Since April 2005 a total 80 Letter of Credits (LC) were opened by STC in favour of suppliers. The first LC number 5174 valued at US $7383872 was opened on 09.06.2005 and the last LC was opened on May 2010. The STC officials in conspiracy with GSPI and GSHL representatives opened fresh LCs despite the fact that outstanding amount was increasing every year due to default in payment. Due to changes in market conditions/global meltdown the plant operations of GSPI were shutdown in 2008. There was an outstanding of Rs 729 Crores as on 31st March 2009. However, ignoring the fact that outstanding amount was not being paid by the GSPI and market was very volatile, STC officials in conspiracy with GSPI representatives proceeded to make further funding in May 2009 and continued till May 2010, thus exposing STC to further financial risk, CBI has alleged.

CBI claims Mittal in September 2011 wrote to NK Mathur, then CMD of STC, and offered conciliation process to determine the mode of payment, time frame, schedule, qualification of interest amount and the mode of securing the payment due.

At the time of conciliation agreement on 15th November 2011, Pramod Mittal Chairman of GSPI and GSHL gave personal guarantee and also gave an undertaking that he would not transfer, sell and mortgage his investment in JSW Ispat Steel Limited as security totaling $38,96,27,333. However, BD Majumdar, then CGM STC in conspiracy with GSPI, GSHL did not take action to securitize the securities in favour of STC. Subsequently, Pramod Mittal cheated STC as he diluted the securities by transferring/selling them without STC knowledge for which the matter is pending before the court, CBI said.

The agency also charged the STC officials, alleging that they connived with Mittals company to misappropriate stocks at the project site. The tried to execute a Further Settlement Agreement in May 2012. In November 2012, the total outstanding amount against GSPI and GSHL was $371 million. But the cheques bounced.

Pramod Mittal committed breach of trust as he failed to make payment to STC as per terms of agreement accepted and signed by them. The cheques given by GSHL and GSPI against the outstanding dues were dishonored for which the matter is pending before the court, the agency claimed.

A majority of Mittals business activities in India are now defunct. However, he continues to be Non-Executive Director of Gontermann-Peipers (India) Limited. Speaking to the Firstpost on the condition of anonymity, a senior officer of the company said he has not seen Pramod Mittal during the board meetings and since Gontermann is not related to the case, he will not be in a position to make official comment.

He might be attending the meeting and affairs of the company through video conferencing. I have no idea about his whereabouts, the official further said.
Government ownership banks  public sector banks (PSBs) account for more than 70 percent of the system, both on the deposit and credit sides  has made us complacent about their fate.

Listening to comments by bankers expressing various levels of confidence in how resilient they are is fairly depressing. Back in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 credit crisis, the Icelandic banking failures, the Greek and Cypriot banking crises of a few years later, we heard the same refrain: The banks would bounce back, things would get better, etc.

Well, many banks didnt, and things havent gotten much better, especially in Europe. A CARE Ratings report in December 2017 found that measured by non-performing asset (NPA) ratios, India ranked 5th highest, after Greece, Italy, Portugal and Ireland  the PIIGs, as they were dubbed during the European debt crisis.

Government ownership of banks  public sector banks (PSBs) account for more than 70 percent of the system, both on the deposit and credit sides  has made us complacent about their fate. The government, most people believe, will not let them fail. The moral hazard implications of faith in this implicit guarantee are astounding. Which begs the question: How big does the problem have to get before the faith in that guarantee is shaken?

Lets take a look at the numbers. To begin with, the guesstimated value of stressed assets is currently about Rs 10 lakh crore or Rs 10 trillion. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2016-17 reports under existing mechanisms (excluding the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, or IBC) that in the period 2015-17, the recovery ratio of NPAs of public sector banks was 25.1 percent.

What about the chances for recovery of this humongous debt? The recovery rate is defined as the reduction in gross NPAs. In monetary terms, that translates to roughly 11 percent of the value of the NPAs. By that reckoning, banks should recover about Rs 1.1 lakh crore. The recovery comes from loans that have collateral  secured loans, term loans and real estate exposures, in the main.

Experts point out that historically, only a quarter of restructured assets become completely viable assets eventually (the gross NPA ratio does not include restructured assets). A CARE Ratings report in February 2018 estimated restructured assets at Rs 1.9 lakh crore at the end of March 2017, or the last financial year.

What that number is likely to be in March 2018 is unclear; in its February 12 2018 directives, the RBI accelerated balance sheet clean-up, instructing banks to recognise losses faster. Look at one other number: At the end of March 2017, Tier 1 capital (equity plus reserves) was Rs 6.48 lakh crore. NPAs in September 2017 were Rs 7.34 lakh crore, more than the net worth of all PSBs.

What about recapitalisation? Between 2008 and 2014  before the present government took charge  PSBs received Rs 79,700 crore as equity infusion from the government; until October 2017, an additional Rs 51900 crore was added. In the same two periods, PSBs raised Rs 21,300 crore from the markets.

The prospects for the announced Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation plan look daunting, to say the least. Of the Rs 76,000 crore in equity, Rs 58,000 crore is expected to come from the markets (and Rs 18,000 crore through budgetary support). The remaining Rs 1.35 lakh crore will come through recapitalisation bonds that banks themselves will subscribe to, a cash flow neutral exercise. Whether this will be enough, well know when the NPA numbers for March 2018 become public.

Lets use some foresight vision, and look to the end of 2020: if the banking system is to be as crucial to Indias economic growth prospects as we hope, what changes should we see? Three scenarios suggest themselves based on other country experiences: restricted size (as a natural or forced fallout), higher capital levels (the bigger you are, the higher the capital standard), and a more efficient resolution regime. These are different conceptually, but are nevertheless connected.

Start with the last. The IBC is thus far the best resolution option we have had, transferring relative power to creditors over borrowers. If politics  be sure that many industrialists have considerable political clout  does not intervene, we should be able to iron out the kinks in the system and have a well-functioning resolution mechanism in place. Think of the US-style of debtor-in-possession model as an example. The IBC is headed in that direction.

We cannot have the same capital standards for all banks; larger and systemically important banks  in short, those whose stability impacts the entire system  should have higher capital compared to others. Already, the RBI is issuing differentiated licenses to new banks, so that is not a great leap.

Further, banks discretion in deciding risk weights should also be subject to closer scrutiny, and standards tightened. Look at the number of upward revisions that individual banks have had to make in recognising NPAs after an RBI inspection, and the need for stricter ways of measuring risk-weights becomes apparent.

Restrictions on size in the midst of an NPA crisis can be enforced, as the RBI has done through its Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework, by restricting new lending, for example. It will be harder to do during normal times, other than by setting standards on the kinds of risks a bank can undertake; the problem is that such standards can be subjective.

Some measures, however, do suggest themselves as guides for finding objective standards of both size and complexity: Total assets in gross and net terms, total assets as a percentage of banking system assets, as a proportion of GDP. Similar measures can be developed for capital requirements too: equity plus free reserves as a percentage of total assets, a simple leverage ratio  as opposed to a percentage of risk-weighted assets, for example. The RBI is already monitoring that, and it is a part of Basel III norms.

It is probable that many PSBs will have smaller balance sheets by 2020, and that is not a bad thing. Its possible that the PSB share of the credit market will go down from its present 70 per cent to 50 per cent, as stronger and more nimble private sector banks take the bigger share. Credit growth will still be a proxy for economic growth in 2020; the dominant players may change.

In the book The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by the late Douglas Adams, the cover of that book supposedly says Dont Panic. The Indian banking system is in a similarly uncertain and unexplored universe, but the message remains the same  for now.

(The writer, a former journalist, is a communications consultant. He tweets @shrisrinivas)
Have you ever had the thought, Where am I? And what have you done with the world I used to know? I must admit its crossed my mind more than once.

When I was growing up, the biggest problems in our schools were chewing gum, running in the hallways, and the only shooting that took place involved spitballs through straws. To talk disrespectfully to a teacher, much less confront one violently in anger, was unthinkable. The idea of someone coming into a school with guns and other weapons, seeking death and devastation, wasnt on anyones fear monitor.



It used to be that comedians could comment on everyday situations we all could relate to, without resorting to heavy doses of profanity and vulgarity. They genuinely tried to entertain, not to demean or ridicule others, or to endorse a certain worldview. Funny people were, well, funny. And they left all of us feeling a little more lighthearted and better equipped for facing the realities of everyday life.



There was some degree of bullying in the world I used to know, and it was unacceptable even then. But these days, technology has driven malicious thinking, words and actions to depths we couldnt have envisioned in decades past. How tragic that seemingly neutral tools, things such as computers, smartphones and social media, have become twisted into devices for hate and depravity.



The world I used to know was far from perfect, Im fully aware of that. Society has made some important and positive strides forward. But today, tolerance has come to mean being favorable toward anyone who takes a do whatever you want posture, while being utterly intolerant of anyone who holds a view that some things just cant be tolerated, acceptedor heartily applauded and endorsed.



It once was unfathomable that someone on a daytime talk show would denigrate anyone who follows Jesus Christ  and believes He can personally speak to them in a variety of ways  as having a mental illness. This, however, is exactly what one celebrity whom I wont dignify by naming stated recently.



A Bible discussion I participated in helped to bring things into perspective. Several passages in the Bible refer to Gods people as aliens and strangers in this world. For example, 1 Peter 2:10-11 states, Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. (Another translation uses the phrase, aliens and strangers.)



King David wrote, Hear my prayer, LORD, listen to my cry for help; do not be deaf to my weeping. I dwell with you as a foreigner, a stranger, as all my ancestors were (Psalm 39:12). And in the book of Hebrews hall of faith, in speaking about those who through the centuries exhibited great faith, it says, All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth (Hebrews 11:13).



This reminds me of lines from an old hymn you might remember hearing: This world is not my home, Im just a passin through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heavens open door and I cant feel at home in this world anymore.



If we believe the Scriptures, were told this world is not the destination, just an interim stop  similar to a stopover in some citys airport where we change planes so we can get to where we want to go. The only time Ive been to Salt Lake City, Utah was like that. I didnt even change planes; we just landed, some passengers disembarked, others boarded, and we were off again. (Looking through the jets windows, the nearby mountains did look beautiful.)



Carrying the aliens and strangers metaphor further, Ephesians 2:19 points out that once we become members of Gods eternal family, we change citizenship: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household.



So as the political debate over illegal aliens continues to rage, we should recognize that from Gods point of view, we too are aliens in this world, neither legal nor illegal. Were just a-passin through. What are we to do in the interim? In 1 Peter 2:12, we find our instructions: Live such good lives among the pagans (non-believers) that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us (1 Peter 2:12).



So if we feel alienated at times, its because we are aliens, even though no passports, visas or green cards are involved. We can take heart by remembering, our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:20).



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The PNB scam was not about hoarding of gold but outright fraud conducted by diamantaire Nirav Modi in collusion with certain bankers forging Letter of Undertaking (LoU) from the bank for a good seven years

An exclusive media report about former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan and an impending problem in the gold industry throws interesting questions on the role of the UPA government and the approach of the regulator to the issue in the backdrop of the Rs 12,700 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.

The report in Moneycontrol mentions a letter written by the India Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA) on 26 July, 2014. The industry lobby accused the then Congress-led UPA government of 'deliberately yielding to the cronies' by changing the gold policy days before the government was demitting office, the report says. The accusation was primarily based on a decision taken by the government on May 21, 2014, five days before the UPA government officially demitted office, allowed 13 'star trading houses (STH)' and 'premier trading houses (PTH) including Choksi-led Gitanjali Gems to import gold and sell about 80 percent of their total bullion shipment in local markets under the so-called 80:20 scheme.

To begin with, one cannot draw a direct correlation between the 80:20 gold scheme to the PNB scam. The scheme was basically about letting certain traders import gold under the condition that 20 percent of the import will be exported while the rest would be used for domestic business. Under this, some of the trading houses would have certainly benefitted since they were able to hoard gold using this leeway. But, the PNB scam was not about hoarding of gold but outright fraud conducted by diamantaire Nirav Modi in collusion with certain bankers forging Letter of Undertaking (LoU) from the bank for a good seven years. The scheme was scrapped in November 2014 and all restrictions were lifted. But, in the context of the scam involving Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, founder of Gitanjali Gems, a closer re-look at how the scheme benefited select trading houses including Gitanjali is called for. Particularly after a Parliament panel to probe deep into the 80:20 scheme last week.

By now, it is quite well understood that the 80:20 scheme benefited Choksi. Only thing remaining to be seen is to what extent the scheme was misused to defraud bank money and were there any political kickbacks involved. Only a thorough investigation will reveal the details. What is curious to know is whether the RBI, as the regulator, took cognizance of the warning signals issued by the industry lobby?

As the Moneycontrol report points out, IBJA said that the RBI circular on 21 May, 2014 had sidestepped nationalised banks, which have been the backbone support of our bullion importing and jewellery exporting members by allowing certain private sector export houses to import gold up to two tonnes at one time, even for those who are not in the business of bullion and gold jewellery, besides asking Rajan to make a prudent appraisal of the decision and check the loopholes before it was too late. It is not clear whether Rajan acted on the caution.

In the context of the recent bank frauds, it is quite clear that the RBI clearly failed in its duty to ensure that checks and balances in the banking sector worked to avoid foul play. Former RBI deputy governor and PNB chairman K C Chakrabarty went to the extent to say that Indian banks have no risk management capacity to Firstpost earlier.

Repeated frauds and governance flaws in banking institutions it regulates raises questions on RBIs ability to ensure risks management tools are operational at the bank-level. Remember, there are representatives of the central bank in the boards of large banks including PNB, who failed to monitor and identify a fraud of this magnitude for several years. This is despite having all the checks in place. The SWIFT software, purportedly used to conduct the PNB fraud, was subjected to multiple checks and audits but none worked to dig out the dirt. There cant be any excuses from the part of the regulator for such a serious lapse. In the backdrop of the fresh questions on the PNB scam--the role of UPAs 80:20 scheme and the report of early warning to Rajanthe central bank owes an answer on charges of oversight.
Mehul Choksi goes on to explain that if arrested in India, he would lose access to his doctor and a private hospital.

Mehul Choksi, the owner of Gitanjali Gems Ltd and the co-accused in the Rs 12,700 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, has informed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that he cannot travel to India owing to a heart-condition.

Choksi, asked to appear in Mumbai on 7 March, 2018, informed the investigating officer that a persistent health problem prevents him from travel.

I had a cardiac procedure which was conducted in the first week of February 2018 and there is still pending work to be done on the same. The entire procedure could not be completed on all veins due to danger to kidney and therefore I am not allowed to travel for at least a period of four to six months, Choksi said in a lengthy letter to the CBI, available with Firstpost.

He went on to explain that if arrested in India, he would lose access to his doctor and a private hospital and that he would be forced to visit a government hospital for further treatment. Choksi, according to media reports, is believed to be in the US.

For now, he will communicate with the CBI via email or via his advocate Sanjay Abbot, the letter added.

The CBI had directed Choksi to obtain temporary travel documents from an Indian Embassy and return to Mumbai, after authorities revoked his passport in late February.

Choksi, his nephew Nirav Modi and others are being investigated by multiple agencies after the PNB fraud surfaced mid-February, following a complaint by the state-owned bank.

That complaint alleged that they cheated the nationalised bank to the tune of Rs 12,700 crore, with the purported involvement of a few employees of the bank.
Debt-laden Bhushan Steel is one of the 12 non-performing accounts referred by the Reserve Bank of India to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for insolvency proceedings

New Delhi: The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) on Thursday questioned debt-ridden Bhushan Steel's Chairman Brij Bhushan Singal with regard to alleged siphoning of funds worth over Rs 1,000 crore, a source said.

The agency, which comes under the Corporate Affairs Ministry, has been probing allegations of fund diversions at the company since last year.

According to the source, Singal was questioned by the SFIO in the national capital in the matter related to alleged siphoning of huge amount of funds.

The diversion of funds is estimated to be more than Rs 1,000 crore, the source added.

Calls made to Bhushan Steel officials for seeking comments remained unanswered.

Debt-laden Bhushan Steel is one of the 12 non-performing accounts referred by the Reserve Bank of India to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for insolvency proceedings. The company owes more than Rs 44,000 crore to its lenders.

In recent weeks, the SFIO has been asked to investigate a significant number of companies for fraudulent activities, especially those related to diamond merchants Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi in the Rs 12,700 crore Punjab National Bank fraud.

Last month, the ministry ordered the SFIO to probe around 110 companies and about 10 limited liability partnerships related to Modi and Choksi.

Besides, the white collar crime investigation agency has already questioned various bank officials with regard to the scam.
The CBI on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

New Delhi: The CBI on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

The move by the agency came months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of 12 October last year acquitting the couple.

The CBI filed an appeal challenging the high court order acquitting the Talwar couple, CBI's spokesperson said.

The high court had freed them of the charges on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

A CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on 26 November, 2013 in connection with the case.

Before the high court's order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars' Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over a shoddy probe into the case which was making national headlines, the case was handed over to the CBI on a recommendation by the then chief minister Mayawati.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday night asked his party's two central ministers to resign amid the growing strain in ties between his TDP and the BJP.

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The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Wednesday night announced its decision to pull out of the Narendra Modi government in protest against refusal of the Centre to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, saying the Centre has done injustice to the state.

TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced to the media that the two TDP ministers  P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology)  will tender their resignations on Thursday morning.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now.

Jaitley did not make any new commitment except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Chandrababu Naidu's announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi told the media that granting of special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

The drastic decision of the TDP may not have come as a shock to the BJP, which has already conveyed to its two ministers in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to be ready to quit any moment.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the prime minister for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come on line. My OSD informed the prime minister's OSD."

Chandrababu Naidu said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said.

Decision to quit is for benefit of people of Andhra Pradesh, says Chandrababu Naidu

This is too little and too late. The TDP has been an ally of the BJP for four years now and has done nothing to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh," senior Congress leader from Andhra Pradesh and former union minister MM Pallam Raju said.

The Congress on Wednesday said that the TDP's decision to pull out of the NDA government at the Centre was "too little, too late" as it "has done nothing" to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh in the past four years.

Congress says decision to pull out of NDA 'too little, too late'

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said the Modi dispensation worked to ensure that Andhra Pradesh got full resources in the infrastructure and industrial sector after the bifurcation of the state.

The BJP, on Wednesday night, rejected Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu's charge that the Modi government neglected the state, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations, but also had went out of its way to help the state.

'Centre went out of its way to help Andhra Pradesh,' says BJP

Meanwhile finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that the Centre has already provided the state (Rs 4,000 crore) with funds. "Only Rs 139 crore is remaining," he said.

According to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), this deficit has been taking place due to the bifurcation of the state into Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The party feels that the Centre must compensate for these losses. However, as per the India Today report, there is an another line of argument that the state has such a high revenue deficit because of the Rs 10,000 crore given as farm loan waiver.

If the state receives the special category status, it will considerably ease the financial burden on Naidu's government. Under the special category status, a state receives financial assistance in the ratio of 90:10 (Union: State) for externally aided and centrally sponsored projects, which is much higher than the Finance Commission mandated 60:40 ratio.

The reason Andhra Pradesh, led by chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, is clamouring for more funds is that the state has been facing a continued massive revenue deficit since 2014 - Rs 16,000 crore (2014-15), Rs 4,598 crore (2016-17) and Rs 14,682 crore (2017-18), according to India Today .

"TDP is not for power but for self-respect. We decided there is no point in continuing in the government," he added.

He said the promises on statehood and other financial demands of the state have not been honoured by the BJP and he could not make any compromise on the state's interest.

Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said at the time of making the alliance, the BJP had said it backed the demand for grant of special category status for Andhra Pradesh but now it was singing a different tune.

All parties in the state, including the ruling TDP and the main opposition YSR Congress Party, have been agitating in Delhi demanding grant of special status. Agitations are also going on across the state.

YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy has extended his support to TDP for demanding the special category status for Andhra Pradesh, reported India Today TV. He also suggested that TDP should move a "no trust motion" against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

'Not a good move, but unavoidable,' says TDP MP and MoS YS Chowdary on Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit NDA govt

BJP MLAs to resign from TDP Cabinet; no state has received as many favours as Andhra Pradesh, says BJP leader

Naidu made it clear that the promise of the special category status was the only reason behind the TDP-BJP alliance and added that the saffron party had shown double standards on keeping its promises.

Miffed with the Centre's inaction over providing the special category status to Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu asked in the Assembly on Wednesday why the BJP wasn't responding to the needs of its alliance. "Rahul Gandhi is saying they will give special category status to AP if they come to power. Why are you (BJP) not responding to the needs of your alliance partner? Naidu had asked, according to this Indian Express report .

'Rahul Gandhi has promised us special category status; why is BJP not paying attention to state's needs': Chandrababu Naidu

It was a performance targeted at the domestic audience in Andhra Pradesh, to tell the voters that if not for the BJP, he would have achieved all that he promised four years ago.

On Wednesday, when Naidu started speaking, it did not seem like it will be the endgame. Naidu's tone during his speech in the Assembly was one of hurt and beseeching, of someone left in the lurch.

Naidu's style of doing realpolitik is to never do anything in a hurry. In 1995, when he staged the coup to overthrow NT Rama Rao, it came on the back of several days of secret meetings with his camp followers. Likewise in 1998, when he had to take the decision on whether or not to support the Vajpayee-led NDA, he took over a week to do so. This manner of doing politics is with an eye to keep the window of dialogue open, to use the pressure to force the other side to climb down and to make it appear as a well thought-out decision arrived at after consulting everyone.

Timing the departure was not easy. The TDP procrastinated ever since the Union Budget 2018 completely ignored Andhra Pradesh, argues TS Sudhir in this Firstpost article . It was then that Naidu for the first time made his displeasure public and started the process of consultations to divorce BJP.

Chandrababu Naidu makes BJP look bad over special status row, but gambit may only pay off if Andhra buys sob story

Andhra Pradesh would have been granted special status if UPA was in power: Karnataka Congress leader Dinesh Gundu Rao

Both are set to address the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively.

BJP leader Kamineni Srinivas was among those who submitted their resignations. He said that the differences between BJP and TDP "have pained us all", reported CNN-News18.

Speaking about TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's decision to quit the NDA government, Shiva Sena leader Manisha Kayande told ANI : "Even before TDP, Uddhav Ji had clarified his stance. Two ministers from TDP are about to resign. BJP should've thought about it. Former NDA leaders had kept the alliance together. Now it's overconfident. 2019 will be challenging for BJP."

Speaking to ANI, Union minister Ramdas Athawale said that it was not a good move to break away from the NDA government and appealed to Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu to think about his decision again. "I want to appeal to Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu that he must think over this decision once again for development of people of Andhra Pradesh. They should stay with NDA," he said.

TV reports have confirmed that Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has accepted the resignations of the two BJP ministers in the state cabinet.

Among these, the special status issue took centrestage, as parties and leaders found themselves dipped in an inkpot of emotion in Andhra Pradesh. Public sentiment started to grow over the issue, which directly impacted a slew of grievances, including losing state capital Hyderabad to Telangana. Politicians also made it a prestige issue.

But just when things started appearing peaceful again, the 2018 Union Budget upset Naidu again. The BJP didn't agree to any of Andhra Pradesh's demands: Special status for the state after the creation of Telangana to tide over resultant loss of revenue; financial support in establishing a new state capital at Amaravati; and the Polavaram project.

The break-up happened on Wednesday, but seeds of discord were sown two years ago, after the Narendra Modi government didn't react to the TDP's demand  that all commitments made at the time of Andhra Pradesh's bifurcation be realised, argues this Firstpost article . Political compulsions forced Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to extend the TDP an olive branch, offering them the promise of a special package instead of special status to Andhra Pradesh, and Naidu reluctantly agreed to it.

After Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu directed two TDP ministers at the Centre to resign, party leader Srinivas told ANI that the bifurcation process itself was done in an unscientific and unjust manner. "No one from Andhra Pradesh was willing to bifurcate. All resources related to generation of employment were in Hyderabad. Bifurcation was not done in a scientific way and injustice done with the Andhra Pradesh," he said.

TDP MPs and Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and MoS Science and Technology YS Chowdary will submit their resignation to the Cabinet after 4 pm, reported CNN-News18.

With no strong local leaders in the coastal and Rayalseema region, BJP's fortune is invariably linked with TDP's. Moreover, the saffron party was comparatively stronger in the Telangana region, which now is the state of Telangana.

TDP, as a matter of fact, is the only ally of the BJP south of Vindhyas. For a party which aspires to form state governments in the south, an uncharted territory except for Karnataka, BJP needs TDP in order to survive in the bifurcated state .

"Whoever signs the Special Category Status file will get our support," Reddy told the media in Prakasam district. He said both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had cheated Andhra Pradesh by promising but not granting the SCS. - IANS

YSR Congress chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday said the party would support whoever promises Andhra Pradesh the Special Category Status (SCS).

Merely a day after TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu directed its ministers at the Centre to resign over the special category status row for Andhra Pradesh, rebel leader from JD(U) Pavan Verma began demanding special category status for Bihar, reported CNN-News18.

The two TDP MPs and Union ministers YS Chowdary and Ashok Gajapathi Raju will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday evening to submit their resignations, reported CNN-News18. Raju added that they were not meeting Modi to solve the problem but just to hand over their resignation. Currently, Modi is in Rajasthan to attend an International Women's Day event in Jhunjhunu and will return to New Delhi in the evening.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the prime minister for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come on line. My OSD informed the prime minister's OSD."

Tried to call Modi, but he didn't come on line, says Chandrababu Naidu

When Andhra Pradesh was created, people did not want to be treated like residue material: TDP MP and Union minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju

Congress, BJP given several chances to run this country, did not fulfill expectations: KT Rama Rao, Telangana minister

Speaking to ANI , RJD spokesperson Manoj Jha said that Chandrababu Naidu took a historical step by quitting the Narendra Modi government. "Why did our chief minister take a step back? The letter was written to him to create pressure over issue of special status to Bihar. This is much needed especially with the kind of disparities here. The chief minister should muster up at least 1 percent of Naidu's courage," Jha said.

The chief minister, in turn, complimented the BJP members, saying they had discharged their duties well.

They thanked him for having inducted them into the state Cabinet.

Health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations.

Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh today resigned after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government.

The state claims it suffered heavy losses when it was bifurcated in 2014 to form Telangana. It not only lost its capital but a heavily industrialised urban hub when Hyderabad was made a part of the new state. It has been demanding Centre's support to regain those losses.

Presenting his last full budget in the election year, finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said the state's fiscal deficit was expected to touch Rs 24,205 crore, which would be over Rs 3,000 crore less than 2017-18.

Andhra Pradesh government today presented a Rs 1.91-lakh-crore budget, with a projected revenue surplus of Rs 5,235 crore, for financial year 2018-19, vowing to make "every citizen in this state a happy person".

Then there's the question of severe fund crunch. AP faced a revenue deficit of Rs 16,000 crore in 2014-15, Rs 4,598 crore in 2016-17, and almost a similar amount in 2017-18. Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said the state's fiscal deficit was expected to touch Rs 24,205 crore this year. The deficit arose after the states bifurcation in 2014, and AP wants the Centre to compensate for its losses, The Indian Express reported.

"The contribution of agriculture to state GDP is higher for Andhra than its neighbouring states. In fact, today it is arguably the highest in South. This is also a reflection of a lower level of industrialization and along with it a lower per capita income and again, the lowest in South," an article in the Business Today explains.

When boundaries of Andhra Pradesh were redrawn, the state lost its urban centres, hence industries, to Telengana and became an agriculture-centric state.

"In 2018, one year before the elections again, he (Naidu) withdraws conveniently. The very reason for his withdrawal is to ensure that the BJP does not grow by itself and acquire equity, politically, in Andhra Pradesh," Rao told PTI.

"BJP considers it as a classic case of opportunistic politics by Chandrababu Naidu. It's also politics of convenience," Telangana BJP spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said.

The TDP's decision to exit the NDA government at the Centre is a "classic case of opportunistic politics" by its president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, a Telangana BJP leader alleged today.

The Finance Minister attributed his inability to fulfill the Manmohan Singh government's promise to the 14th Finance Commission recommendations, under which the special status categorisation has been removed. It is now restricted only to the northeastern and three hilly states. The recommendations were accepted in 2015, a year after the Andhra was bifurcated.

While Jaitley acknowledged that Andhra's demand for Centre's assistance is reasonable and just, he also said the Centre could not accommodate TDP's demands for "special category" status or tax relief for the state.

Arun Jaitley on Wednesday categorically denied to grant special status to Andhra, at the cost of losing an NDA ally and upsetting the state's electorate in an election year  a statement which was termed "the last straw" in TDP-BJP ties.

Centre's take on Andhra Special status explained: Why is BJP reluctant to give state its 'promised right' despite heavy political costs

"Demand of special status to Bihar is a unanimous decision of the state assembly. Our demand is still active. Bihar development is our prime focus, said Neeraj Kumar, JDU spokesperson Neeraj Kumar said.

After TDP pulled out of the central government demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh, JD(U)'s Pavan Verma has now said that a special category status for Bihar was also needed.

After TDP, strains appear in BJP-JD(U) ties as party says special status denied to Bihar too

Nitish's government has been demanding Bihar's special status for long and we've got a special package which is monetarily as beneficial as special status. But, despite this some people are not satisfied and to them I will just say that India can only grow in NDA's regime: Ram Vilas Paswan told ANI.

India can only grow under NDA regime: Ram Vilas Paswan on demands of special status for Bihar

BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said the Modi dispensation worked to ensure that Andhra Pradesh got full resources in the infrastructure and industrial sector after the bifurcation of the state. "Centre has offered the state all benefits without giving this tag," Rao told reporters.

The BJP rejected Naidu's charge that the Modi government neglected the state, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations, but also went out of its way to help the state.

Centre went out of its way to help Andhra Pradesh, says BJP; rejects Chandrababu Naidu's charge that Modi government neglected state

Now, however, with the election year for both Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh Assembly approaching next year, the timing is apt to pose once again as the crusader of Andhra's right and give up power for the sake of the people's right. Its noteworthy that neither BJP nor TP lose majority in the Centre and state govts respectively. Plus its not like Naidu has snapped ties with NDA, it has only come out of the government. This gives out the right political message but also leave enough room for a hurried patch-up post 2019 if need be.

This backdrop of 2014 was, perhaps, the reason behind Naidu not raising a storm of protest for last four years despite Modi government not so kind to the state. But, this has created a strong perception that Naidu is compromising the interests of the state for his political purpose. Though the opposition leader, Reddy tried hard to expose this, his tirade over Naidu failed to give him that much sympathy as he failed to be critical of Modi dispensation, a Firstpost article, written at a time when strains had already begun to surface, argued.

Chandrababu Naidu demonstrated consummate political skills by arriving at an early understanding with the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2014 and converted the threat of losing relevance in a newly formed state into an opportunity.

Its anybody's guess that if Modi would have chosen to intervene before Naidu went public with his threat to leave NDA, the headlines today may have been different.

"We wanted to convey the information about pulling out from the government to Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of courtesy, but he could not be contacted... My OSD has conveyed it to the PM's OSD," Naidu said.

"I went to Delhi 29 times, met Prime Minister and Central Ministers and requested them to fulfil our demands," Naidu said. He also expressed anguish over the fact that his efforts to reach Modi on call went unanswered.

Yesterday, even as Naidu announced his party would walk out of the government, he said "but party-to-party issue (of ties with the BJP) will be decided later. He also said he would like to "watch BJP's reaction" before deciding the next step.

It is noteworthy that a BJP source had told PTI that all is still not lost between his party and the TDP and that they will see how things unfold in the coming days. Meanwhile, Naidu had also given signals that he doesn't want to burn all bridges yet.

One of the points made by Naidu in his presser was that he was unable to reach the prime minister when he wanted to inform him of his decision out of courtesy. Modi has decided to return that call now and the TDP Union ministers are also scheduled to meet PM in an hours time.

"The manner in which Mr. Jaitley spoke yesterday was very unfortunate. He spoke in a very humiliating manner. He asked should we cut the defence budget and give you funds. We felt insulted by such statements," Babu said.

Babu speaking to NDTV said that he doesn't see much scope for a possible thaw in the relationship with BJP, adding that it is perhaps too late for reconciliation now.

In the roughly 10 minute long phone call, Naidu explained Modi his reasons to exit the central government, as he reasserted that there is no turning back at least from the Union ministers resignation, CNN-News 18 reported. The TV chancel reported that the phone call was apparently a "no go" and the TDP ministers will submit their resignations when they meet the prime minister at 6 pm.

Naidu explains reason of exit to Modi, says no other way left: Reports

The political situation is such that TDP cannot hold on to the national alliance for too long while they are criticising the Centre's stance on Andhra's special status.

Sources told CNN-News18 that the Andhra chief minister is currently meeting senior TDP leaders in the state to decide whether the party should also walk out of the NDA or not.

TDP considering whether to quit NDA too, or not: Reports

Rayalaseema is the southern part of Andhra Pradesh consisting of four districts  Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur, and Chittoor  which is considered more backward than the coastal Andhra patch.

"The aim is to put Naidu on the back foot and make him defensive. If TDP can attack the Modi government for not providing for Andhra in the Union Budget, BJP wants to show that TDP has done precious little for Rayalaseema in successive state budgets."

However, as this Firstpost article argues, the party may already be prepping plan B. "The Rayalaseema Declaration that consists of 16 demands, is proof that BJP has decided to ride the resentment feeling against Naidu that his focus is entirely on Amaravati region in coastal Andhra, ignoring Rayalaseema. The meeting of BJP representatives from Rayalaseema was significantly held in Kurnool, the capital of the then Andhra state between 1953 and 1956. Kurnool felt shortchanged when it was not made the capital after bifurcation in 2014"

After not receiving Chandrababu Naidu's call yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today reached out to the Andhra CM and reportedly tried to pursuade him to not walk out of the government.

Even as PM reached out to Naidu, is BJP already looking at life beyond TDP

Yet, the moot question is whether Naidu will continue his alliance with BJP or not and how will people react to Naidu's political moves," a Firstpost article points out.

"With this, while disarming the opposition, the TDP wants to benefit from any eventuality. If the Modi government concedes to the demands of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu will get the credit for making the Centre bow before its pressure. In case, Modi government fails to yield, the TDP would successfully blame it on the BJP. Thus, it will be a win-win situation for the TDP.

As political pundits are guessing, Chandrababu Naidu's move to walk out of the government seems more inspired by domestic political needs than by anger towards the BJP. What this clever political move of quitting the government while still retaining the alliance has done is safeguarded Naidu's interests in state while keeping the window for alliance in 2019 open in any eventuality.

"Considerable amount of time has elapsed (for the NDA to take decision on Andhra Pradesh). In these circumstances, unless we hear the people's voices, it doesn't make sense. As per direction of TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, we have taken the decision. Because we don't belong to BJP, we have to go as per our party president. I will serve for the people of Andhra Pradesh. Now probably, by being independent, we will have better freedom," TDP's YS Chowdary said at a press conference.

Will serve for people of Andhra Pradesh, says YS Chowdary after submitting resignation to Narendra Modi

"We are continuing as part of NDA, but the problems are there. From being Andhra Pradesh, we have become the "residuous state of Andhra Pradesh". There are different ways to look at it (the bifurcation issue). Our party has directed that we resign and continue being part of NDA. We hope that a solution will come," he added.

"We (BJP and TDP) have worked together and were able to work cohesively. This was an opportunity that I partly gave up. It's our courtesy that we call on him (Narendra Modi)," said Ashok Gajapathi Raju who submitted his resignation to Modi along with YS Chowdary on Thursday.

Ashok Gajapathi Raju says TDP directed the ministers to resign but stay as part of NDA

The politeness was noticeable in the press conference as CHoudhary said: "I don't think it's fair on our part to expect PM to deal with these issues. It's for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed."

Raju in his resignation letter expressed gratitude towards the PM, while Choudhary said that he was thankful for the experience under the PM's guidance.

As the two Union ministers conveyed their resignation to the Prime Minister, they also thanked him for giving the opportunity to work with them.

YS Choudhary said that the issue of special category status was very emotive for Andhra Pradesh but the Centre did not address it and added that even the special package was not adequate. Choudhary, however, said that it would be unfair to say that the Centre did nothing for the state.

Rayalaseema is the southern part of Andhra Pradesh consisting of four districts  Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur, and Chittoor  which is considered more backward than the coastal Andhra patch.

"The aim is to put Naidu on the back foot and make him defensive. If TDP can attack the Modi government for not providing for Andhra in the Union Budget, BJP wants to show that TDP has done precious little for Rayalaseema in successive state budgets."

However, as this Firstpost article argues, the party may already be prepping plan B. "The Rayalaseema Declaration that consists of 16 demands, is proof that BJP has decided to ride the resentment feeling against Naidu that his focus is entirely on Amaravati region in coastal Andhra, ignoring Rayalaseema. The meeting of BJP representatives from Rayalaseema was significantly held in Kurnool, the capital of the then Andhra state between 1953 and 1956. Kurnool felt shortchanged when it was not made the capital after bifurcation in 2014"

After not receiving Chandrababu Naidu's call yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today reached out to the Andhra CM and reportedly tried to pursuade him to not walk out of the government.

Even as PM reached out to Naidu, is BJP already looking at life beyond TDP

Yet, the moot question is whether Naidu will continue his alliance with BJP or not and how will people react to Naidu's political moves," a Firstpost article points out.

"With this, while disarming the opposition, the TDP wants to benefit from any eventuality. If the Modi government concedes to the demands of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu will get the credit for making the Centre bow before its pressure. In case, Modi government fails to yield, the TDP would successfully blame it on the BJP. Thus, it will be a win-win situation for the TDP.

As political pundits are guessing, Chandrababu Naidu's move to walk out of the government seems more inspired by domestic political needs than by anger towards the BJP. What this clever political move of quitting the government while still retaining the alliance has done is safeguarded Naidu's interests in state while keeping the window for alliance in 2019 open in any eventuality.

I don't think it's fair on our part to expect PM to deal with these issues. It's for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed: YS Choudhary,TDP pic.twitter.com/tAt0Tu4iBs

"Considerable amount of time has elapsed (for the NDA to take decision on Andhra Pradesh). In these circumstances, unless we hear the people's voices, it doesn't make sense. As per direction of TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, we have taken the decision. Because we don't belong to BJP, we have to go as per our party president. I will serve for the people of Andhra Pradesh. Now probably, by being independent, we will have better freedom," TDP's YS Chowdary said at a press conference.

Will serve for people of Andhra Pradesh, says YS Chowdary after submitting resignation to Narendra Modi

"We are continuing as part of NDA, but the problems are there. From being Andhra Pradesh, we have become the "residuous state of Andhra Pradesh". There are different ways to look at it (the bifurcation issue). Our party has directed that we resign and continue being part of NDA. We hope that a solution will come," he added.

"We (BJP and TDP) have worked together and were able to work cohesively. This was an opportunity that I partly gave up. It's our courtesy that we call on him (Narendra Modi)," said Ashok Gajapathi Raju who submitted his resignation to Modi along with YS Chowdary on Thursday.

Ashok Gajapathi Raju says TDP directed the ministers to resign but stay as part of NDA

That is between those two parties, we have nothing to say on that, you can ask them: YS Choudhary,TDP MP on possibility of BJP-YSRCP alliance pic.twitter.com/1VaABL0HeD

The politeness was noticeable in the press conference as CHoudhary said: "I don't think it's fair on our part to expect PM to deal with these issues. It's for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed."

Raju in his resignation letter expressed gratitude towards the PM, while Choudhary said that he was thankful for the experience under the PM's guidance.

As the two Union ministers conveyed their resignation to the Prime Minister, they also thanked him for giving the opportunity to work with them.

YS Choudhary said that the issue of special category status was very emotive for Andhra Pradesh but the Centre did not address it and added that even the special package was not adequate. Choudhary, however, said that it would be unfair to say that the Centre did nothing for the state.

Special Category Status for Andhra Pradesh Updates: After submitting their resignations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the two TDP ministers said that they will continue to be a part of NDA but would no longer hold ministerial positions.

In the roughly 10 minute long phone call, Naidu explained Modi his reasons to exit the central government, as he reasserted that there is no turning back at least from the Union ministers resignation, CNN-News 18 reported. The TV chancel reported that the phone call was apparently a "no go" and the TDP ministers will submit their resignations when they meet the prime minister at 6 pm.

As all eyes remained on TDP-BJP ties, politicos reading between the lines of all the political posturing say that nothing is unexpected of Naidu known for striking the best political bargains  until a final deal is done. BJP sources also told PTI that they believe all is not lost with TDP.

Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh today resigned after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government. Health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations.

Responding to the ongoing political tussle between the BJP and TDP, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the saffron party made false promises to the Telugu Desam Party to make them an ally in 2014, reported CNN-News18.

Chandrababu Naidu said that he tried to speak to Narendra Modi on phone as a courtesy to inform him about the decision to pull out of the government. "It is my responsibility as a coalition partner to inform the prime minister about our party decision. My OSD spoke to his OSD but the prime minister did not come on line," he said.

Amid the ongoing tussle between BJP and TDP over granting special category status to Andhra Pradesh, JD(U) demanded the same for Bihar.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Wednesday night announced its decision to pull out of the Narendra Modi government in protest against refusal of the Centre to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, saying the Centre has done injustice to the state.

TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced to the media that the two TDP ministers  P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology)  will tender their resignations on Thursday.

The TDP is second-largest party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In the Lok Sabha, the TDP has 16 members and in the Rajya Sabha six. It is the first pre-poll partner of the BJP to pull out of the Modi government after being part of it for nearly four years.

His announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi told the media that granting of special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

Jaitley did not make any new commitment except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now.

Naidu said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the prime minister for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come on line. My OSD informed the prime minister's OSD."

The drastic decision of the TDP may not have come as a shock to the BJP, which has already conveyed to its two ministers in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to be ready to quit any moment.

Dr. Kamineni Srinivas (Medical and Health) and P Manikyala Rao (Endowments) quit Naidu cabinet on Thursday morning, hours before the budget presentation by Finance Minister Y Ramakrishnudu in the assembly.

Naidu held consultations with the party's MPs, ministers and important leaders before taking the decision and making it public.

The MPs, including the two ministers, expressed a unanimous opinion that Jaitley's statement on the demands of Andhra Pradesh was disappointing and discouraging.

All parties in the state, including the ruling TDP and the main opposition YSR Congress Party, have been agitating in Delhi demanding grant of special status. Agitations are also going on across the state.

Naidu said at the time of making the alliance, the BJP had said it backed the demand for grant of special category status for Andhra Pradesh but now it was singing a different tune.

He said the promises on statehood and other financial demands of the state have not been honoured by the BJP and he could not make any compromise on the state's interest.

"TDP is not for power but for self-respect. We decided there is no point in continuing in the government," he added.

Naidu said Jaitley's comments suggest that Andhra Pradesh is asking for too much. He also slammed the finance minister for saying "sentiments will not decide the quantum of funds".

He said he made 29 trips to Delhi, met the Prime Minister and other ministers and tried to do his best to do justice for the state. "I am not angry with anybody," he added.

With inputs from IANS
In a breather for Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, the Delhi High Court on Thursday asked a Delhi Assembly committee

New Delhi: In a breather for Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, the Delhi High Court on Thursday asked a Delhi Assembly committee not to insist on his appearance.

Justice Rajiv Shakdher directed the Question and Reference Committee not to insist Prakash's appearance till 11 April, the next date fixed for hearing.

Prakash has challenged the notice issued by the Committee which had asked him to appear before it on Thursday.

The counsel told the court that the notice was issued although a stay had been granted by the high court in the Chief Secretary's main petition challenging the notice issued by the House's Privileges Committee.

On 5 March, the committee had assured the court that it would not take any coercive action against the Chief Secretary.

Prakash had challenged the Privileges Committee notice directing him to appear before it for skipping a meeting on 20 February, a day after he was allegedly assaulted by two AAP MLAs Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal, who are currently in judicial custody.

Prakash also did not attend the subsequent meetings on 21 and 23 February, following which the notice was issued on 1 March.

The officer had sought quashing of the notice issued to him by the committee and said he had a right to free and fair investigation.
The BJP on Thursday accused Trinamool workers of attacking its men who had gathered to 'purify' a marble bust of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee

Kolkata: The BJP on Thursday accused Trinamool workers of attacking its men who had gathered to "purify" a marble bust of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee that was vandalised and blackened by members of a left-wing student organisation a day ago.

"Our activists went there to peacefully purify and cleanse the statue of Mookherjee with milk and Ganga-jal (water from the Ganga). But police stopped them and the Trinamool goons beat them up severely.

"We condemn such actions by the ruling party," state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said, adding that the Mamata Banerjee government must issue a statement by Thursday evening regarding the restoration of the statue.

Ghosh said the police imposed prohibitory orders (under CrPC 144) in and around the area of the vandalised statue and detained some 25 to 30 BJP workers on charges of unlawful assembly, while the Trinamool Congress workers "went scot free".

No police confirmation was, however, available on the exact number of BJP workers detained.

Following the incident, BJP leaders and activists, led by Ghosh, rallied from Lake Mall until they were stopped by the police.

The members of BJP's Mahila Morcha (women wing) blew conch shells and protested demanding to go close to the statue.

"We demand the state government to issue a statement by 5 pm on Thursday about the restoration of the statue. Otherwise BJP will hold demonstration with Syama Prasad Mookherjee's photographs in every district," Ghosh said.

Seven members of a left-wing student group were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly damaging a bust of Syama Prasad Mookerjee at the Keoratola crematorium in Kolkata.

The incident came after a statue of Dravidian icon EVR Ramasamy, popularly called Periyar, was attacked in Tamil Nadu, while two statues of Lenin were pulled down in Tripura allegedly by BJP and RSS activists.
The Karnataka government will take a decision in consultation with the state legal team on filing a review petition on the final judgement given by the Supreme Court on the sharing of Cauvery water, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on Thursday.

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government will take a decision in consultation with the state legal team on filing a review petition on the final judgement given by the Supreme Court on the sharing of Cauvery water, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on Thursday.

The decision will be taken in consultation with our legal team headed by Nariman and Shyam Diwan," he told reporters after an all-party meeting here.

BJP and JDS leaders also attended the meeting which was convened to discuss the government's next course of action in the wake of the apex court judgment on the Cauvery issue.

In its judgment in February, the apex court had raised the 270 tmcft share of Cauvery water for Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu's share, while compensating it by allowing extraction of 10 tmcft groundwater from the river basin.

Likewise, the government would also take a decision on the type of dispute redressal forum to implement the Cauvery schemes, Siddaramaiah said.

"We are expecting the inputs from central government on the formation of dispute redressal forum, and based on that we will give our opinion in consultation with our legal team," he said.

Though the apex court has directed to form one such forum, it need not be Cauvery water management board alone, but may be any sort of a committee, temporary and permanent, Siddaramaiah said.

He also said Karnataka's appeal had been partly allowed by the Supreme Court which has allotted 14.75 TMC ft more to the state while Tamil Nadu was allowed to extract 10 tmcft, out of 20 tmcft groundwater.

The central government has called the chief secretaries of all riparian statesKarnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherryto New Delhi to discuss this mechanism on Friday.
French president Emmanuel Macron is all set to begin his maiden visit to India on Friday.

French president Emmanuel Macron is all set to begin his maiden visit to India on Friday. India and France's partnership on climate change, the strategic partnership they share, and people-to-people ties are the three key aspects in terms of bilateral relations during the visit, according to French sources.

It is learnt that Macron has been preparing for the visit for long, and it has been in the works ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to Paris in June 2017, extended an invitation.

A look at Macron's itinerary

Modi will hold a bilateral summit with Macron on Saturday following which several agreements across various sectors are expected to be signed.

The fight against terrorism and the security challenges the two countries face form an important aspect of the strategic partnership and are expected to come up in Saturday's discussions.

Macron is also looking forward to a town hall interaction with Indian youth scheduled for Saturday in New Delhi.

On Sunday, the two leaders will co-chair the founding conference of the India-initiated International Solar Alliance (ISA) which was launched by Modi and then French president Francois Hollande during the Paris climate summit in 2015.

The founding conference is expected to be attended by 55 countries of which 25 are expected to be represented at the head of state or head of the government level.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, France's 40-year-old president is set to make the visit to the Taj Mahal.

On the last day of his trip, Macron will inaugurate Uttar Pradesh's largest solar power plant at Mirzapur near Varanasi made by the French company Engie Solar.

During the presidential visit, an India-France CEOs forum will also be held which will be attended by around 40 CEOs each from both sides.

Significance of Macron's visit

The French president's visit comes on the 20th anniversary of the India-France relationship being elevated to that of a strategic partnership. It was in 1998 that this elevation was made and India is France's first strategic partnership in the region.

Macron will "spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi," AFP quoted a source in the French presidency. The source added that the two leaders had "formed a close relationship" during Macron's first nine months in power.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the world's biggest democracy and its business potential.

France played a "decisive" role in India's accession to three of the four export control regimesthe Missile Technology Control Regime, the Wassenaar Arrangement and the Australia Groupand is openly supporting India's membership in the fourth, the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Indian and French flags in #Delhi. Prez Macron is coming in 24 hours for a substantive State visit! #MacroninIndia @MEAIndia @PMOIndia pic.twitter.com/zsdev8Xh2A  Alexandre Ziegler (@FranceinIndia) March 8, 2018

In terms of maritime cooperation, the two countries are working together for peace and stability in the Indian Ocean region.

Space cooperation is another aspect of the strategic partnership and Macron's visit is expected to add momentum to this.

Trade between the two countries will also come up for discussion. Bilateral trade between the two sides reached $10.95 billion in 2016-17, and, according to the sources, this rose by a further 20 percent in 2017-18.

According to the sources, with access to solar technology being extremely difficult, there will be a clear expression of the needs of the smaller countries during the ISA conference.

The two biggest issues between the India and France in recent years defence and nuclear energy saleswill also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the world's biggest arms buyer. Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron is also expected to announce plans to allow Indian Navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.

Deals likely to be inked between India, France

The Union Cabinet has approved several agreements which are likely to be signed during Macron's visit.

The recent Cabinet meeting, chaired by Modi, approved the signing of four agreements between India and France on the migration of people, recognition of academic qualifications, prevention of illicit consumption and traffic of narcotic drugs, and cooperation on the environment.

"The agreement represents a major milestone in enhancing people-to-people contacts, fostering mobility of students, academics, researchers and skilled professionals and strengthening cooperation on issues related to irregular migration and human trafficking between the two sides," the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

The Cabinet also approved the signing of a deal between India and France to facilitate mutual recognition of educational qualifications and periods of study undertaken by students in recognised and accredited educational institutions in the two countries.

The ministry said that the deal will be instrumental in encouraging mobility of students from both the countries by facilitating possibilities for them to continue their studies in the other country and would also promote excellence in higher education through partnerships and joint research activities.

The Cabinet further approved an agreement between India and France on the Prevention of the Illicit Consumption and Reduction of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Chemical Precursors, and related offences. This agreement covers exchange of information, expertise and capacity building. Establishment of effective institutional interaction and curbing transnational narcotics trafficking including disruption of terrorist financing structures is also covered in it.

Macron and Modi are also likely to sign a memorandum of cooperation in the field of environment. The Cabinet cleared another agreement that aims to establish and promote closer and long-term cooperation between the countries in the field of environment protection and management of natural resources.

"The memorandum of cooperation is expected to bring in the latest technologies and best practices suited to bringing about better environment protection, better conservation, better management of climate change and wildlife protection/conservation," said another official statement.

With inputs from agencies
Farooq Takla, Dawood Ibrahim's close aide and one of the accused in 1993 Mumbai blasts was extradited from the UAE night and has been deported to India

Mohamed Farooq alias Farooq Takla, a close aide of gangster Dawood Ibrahim and one of the accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, was extradited from the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday and has been brought to India, according to media reports.

#EXCLUSIVE -- Big diplomatic win for India. Farooq Takla, wanted in the 1993 Mumbai blasts has been deported from Dubai. He will be produced in TADA court in Mumbai. @Zakka_Jacob with more details | input: @manojkumargupta pic.twitter.com/D9Ti7bSQkH  News18 (@CNNnews18) March 8, 2018

According to News18, Takla will be produced before the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) court in Mumbai on Thursday. He is currently being interrogated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Mumbai.

Takla faces criminal conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means and several other charges, according to INTERPOL.

At least 27 other accused in the case, including dreaded mafia dons Ibrahim Kaskar and Tiger Memon, who masterminded the blasts, continue to elude the investigators and are declared absconders.

In September last year, a special TADA court had sentenced two convicts to death, while Abu Salem Ansari and one other gangster were sentenced to life imprisonment, while one other accused received a 10-year sentence.

Special judge GA Sanap had sentenced Mohammed Taher Merchant, 55, and Feroze Abdul Rashid Khan, 47, to death for their role in the blasts.

Besides Salem, 50, the special court also sent Karimullah Khan, 55, to jail for life, while the fifth convict, Riyaz Siddiqui, 67, to 10 years rigorous imprisonment.

The special judge also slapped varying amounts of fines on the convicts after finding them guilty on various charges, including murder, hatching a criminal conspiracy to carry out the blasts, waging a war against the nation, supplying arms and ammunition, and other serious offences.

All six accused, including Mustafa Dossa, were earlier pronounced guilty by the special court on 16 June, 2017. However Dossa, 60, died of a heart attack on 28 June.

With inputs from IANS
David Byrd, a state legislator from Waynesboro, is a former school principal. Right after he learned a crazed school shooter had killed 17 on Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., the Tennessee lawmaker introduced a state bill that would allow some teachers to carry firearms in our schools. But Governor Bill Haslam and state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen are vigorously opposed to firearms in the schools.

Haslam added Rep. Byrd to his just-named 17-person committee after Byrd agreed to table his legislation for two weeks but already Byrds bill has 40 of the 99 members of the legislature as co-sponsors. Had the bill advanced to the Civil Justice Committee on Tuesday of this week as scheduled, there is little doubt the bill would had quickly moved towards a vote.

The Hamilton County Board of Education has a work session called for this afternoon but the original purpose was to discuss the states partnership with five of Chattanoogas at-risk schools. The HCDE has started using a new visitor monitoring system from Raptor Technologies. They started being installed this week. These can identify registered sex offenders, criminals and such if the right information is fed into the machine. But those with mental conditions dont give a rip about Raptors  they register as John Doe from Anytown, USA.

The only thing that scares a school shooter is another gun firing back, lot of times at that.

"A gun-free zone to a maniac, because they're all cowards, the President said this week, a gun-free zone is 'let's go in and let's attack because bullets aren't coming back at us ... If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly."

"I really believe that if these cowards knew the school was well guarded by professionals with great training, I don't think they'd go into the school to start off with," he continued.

Law enforcement officials overwhelmingly agree because from start-to-finish is mere seconds. Gunfire can only be answered by gunfire.

Here is John Bund, a senior political writer for the National Review, who realizes that in a nation where there are now over two privately-owned guns for every adult alive in our country, it is almost an impossibility to keep them out of the hands of criminals. He believes with it almost impossible to recognize a mental patient (if they are taking their med properly) that a rapid response is the best answer.

We would be better off debating two taboo subjects  the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness, Bund writes. There is a growing body of evidence that gun-free zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, dont work.

First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.

New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened.

Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement? asks Professor Jacobson. I doubt it.

Bunds article continues. Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a helpless-victim zone, says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff.

Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage, Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told (the reporter, Bund) at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting.

Indeed, there have been many instances  from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo.  where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

* * *

BEWARE: THIS IS GRAPHIC -- In an effort to illustrate how fast we must respond to a shooter, here is surveillance footage of a retired Rockford, Ill., policeman who was working as a security officer at a bank when Laurence Taylor  not a customer  showed up to make an unauthorized withdrawal. Taylor was linked to three other bank heists in 2017 and the fact a security guard, Brian Harrison, was on duty didnt faze the robber in the least. "There is no doubt in my mind the actions of Brian Harrison saved the lives of those that were employees in the Alpine Bank location on that date and saved his own life," Winnebago County State's Attorney Joe Bruscato said.

And there are people who think we should have yelled, Whoa up, Laurence! Sit and tell me about being deprived as a child, about not ever getting a break, and now walking into a bank, busting clip in the wall to prove you are a businessman. No, hold up  easy  easy ... that was natural pun, brother! Before whatever else may occur, youre gonna sit down and reveal how you really feel or I am going to throw a trash can at you and call the police.

HERES YOUR LESSON -- Now get your watch and look at this tape again, timing it from when Laurence backs up his Chevy in the parking lot until he became a door stop. Some loony grasping an AR-15 aint gonna play by anybodys rules, else some genius in Congess would propose a new law that we make school shootings illegal. To see what really happened, CLICK HERE.
CBI arrested Mohamed Farooq alias Farooq Takla, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and a close aide of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar

Twenty-five years after his escape, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested Mohamed Farooq alias Farooq Takla, a key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts and a close aide of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, from Dubai.

Takla was brought to Mumbai on Thursday and taken to the CBI offices for questioning. He will be produced before a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (TADA) court for remand later on Thursday.

At least 257 people were killed, over 700 injured and properties worth crores destroyed in the serial blasts that rocked Mumbai on 12 March, 1993. At least 27 other accused in the case, including dreaded mafia dons Ibrahim Kaskar and Tiger Memon, who masterminded the blasts, continue to elude the investigators and are declared absconders.

Yasin Mansoor Mohamed Farooq:

According to an INTERPOL notice, Takla's birth name is Yasin Mansoor Mohamed Farooq. He was born on 17 February, 1961, in Mumbai.

Takla, 57, against whom the INTERPOL had issued a red corner notice in 1995, was tracked to Dubai, where he was believed to be holed up and was later extradited to India to face the law.

Takla faces criminal conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means and several other charges.

Takla and his brother, Mohmad Ahmad Mansoor, provided logistical support to some of the blast accused, a Hindustan Times report quoted CBI sources as saying.

The CBI had arrested Mansoor but Takla managed to escape. Mansoor was later acquitted as prosecution failed to establish his role in the blast, added the report.

It is said that Takla managed Dawood's international crime syndicate from Dubai. According to The Statesman, apart from the Mumbai blast case, he is also wanted in cases like extortion, murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy.

A big blow to D-gang

According to NDTV, Takla's arrest is being seen as a diplomatic victory for India as several of the accused in the Mumbai blast case have reportedly found safe havens in Dubai and Pakistan.

Senior advocate Ujjwal Nikam, according to The Times of India, called the development a "big blow" to the D-company or D-gang.

With inputs from IANS
Daughters of numerous sex workers in Andhra Pradesh are escaping abusive surroundings by enrolling themselves in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas.

When Gauri was twelve years old, her mothers truck driver partner tried to rape her. The horrified girl managed to escape by finding shelter in a neighbours house.

When her mother Ratna amma, a sex worker by profession heard of this incident, she decided to move her daughter out of the house. She chose to do so because she realised she could not throw her partner out of the house since he protected her from her often violent and drunk clients.

The question before her was where she could move her daughter, given that her parents had refused to take care of her? Being a member of the community-based organisation Ushodoya being run by sex workers in Kalyandurg in the district of Anantapur, she consulted the office-bearers who advised her to get her daughter admitted into a Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), a free residential school that provided a safe nurturing environment for girls.

The school principal informed Ratna amma that admissions had closed in March and she would have to wait another nine months before admissions reopened. The crestfallen mother would have accepted the answer, but members of Ushodoya put so much pressure on the principal that she finally had to relent.

The girl has never looked back. Not only did she do well in her class twelve board exams, but she has gone on to study in a residential government college being run in Anantapur.

Ravi Kiran, senior project associate, working with Centre For Advocacy and Research (CFAR) has played a key role in helping to organise these women and has remained in touch with this student over the years. Meeting this student who is presently in her second year of college was an extremely moving experience. The girl, who was extremely candid in her views, told this reporter, " I have never gone home since that day nine years ago. My mother does not think it is safe for me to come home. She comes to meet me in school and during our vacations, the school organises summer camps for us, so we get a chance to travel around. I have been living in a hostel, first in school and now in college, for the last nine years, she said.

The KGBVs are run in every mandal in Andhra Pradesh. The teaching is done in English and since they cater to girls from deprived socio-economic backgrounds, the state government has ensured they are linked to good colleges in order to ensure a system of `automatic admission for these students.

What would she like to do after she completes her college education? "I would like to get a job so I can ensure my mother no longer has to do sex work," she said, a faint smile spreading across her face.

Another young girl from a similar background has ensured just that. The daughter of Gauri amma was admitted to the KGBV because the mother saw that many of her clients had begun to eye her daughter in a lascivious manner.

"This is the biggest problem we face. After our girls become eight to nine years old, it is very difficult to keep them in our homes for fear that they will be molested. It is for this reason that the KGBVs are a boon for us. Our daughters get a chance to study and grow up in a happy environment, said Gauri amma.

Ever since Gauri ammas daughter Avantika (name changed) was admitted into the KGBV in Anantapur, her teachers found that she was good at embroidery and stitching. She was encouraged to learn tailoring along with her studies and after completing her studies, she received training in garment making.

To Gauri ammas delight, Avantika has managed to get a job in a garment making factory in Bengaluru and is presently living there. Rishi Kant is in touch with her. During the course of a telephonic interview, she admitted that she had been fortunate to have discovered her ouvre as a garment cutter and hoped to move up in her profession so that her mother and brother could move in with her in Bengaluru.

Not all the girls are so lucky. A large number of girls of sex workers do end up being molested and raped and several sex workers admit they have sometimes to deal with the problem of teenage pregnancies with their daughters.

Asha, a former treasurer of Ushodoya, describes how recently the organisation had to deal with a case of a young girl who had been molested by a client. "The girl was left traumatised and it took many months of counselling for her to come to terms with what had happened. Even though we got her admitted to a KGBV in Hyderabad, she retreated into a shell and it took a long time for her to come to terms with the situation," said Asha.

The fact that their mothers are all members of CBOs and are also running a NGO has given the sex workers a new standing in society. This has helped the daughters see their mothers in a new light.

Asha said, "People in all the neighbouring districts have heard about us and have begun to contact us for their problems. This has given us a new status. Recently we were in search of a new office and we were short of funds. The local police officials and our local MLA were the first to come forward and donate money to us."

Other sex workers vouch for how their training as para legal volunteers has ensured that the district authorities use them for their outreach programs. Recently, the social audit director visited Kalyandurg and asked them to do an audit of the MNREGA and pension schemes to ensure there was no misuse of funds.

Rohini amma, another office bearer at Ushodoya, said, "We recently conducted an assessment of the pension scheme and found several rich farmers accessing the pension. Farmers with over 7 acres of land are not entitled to avail of pension. One family had illegally received Rs 48,000 and that was immediately stopped."

The sex workers are also assisting in stopping child marriages, dowry deaths and also in helping resolve cases of domestic violence. They receive Rs 250 for every case they report to the district authorities.

"Before any audit is undertaken, we are given a list of the beneficiaries which we need to check in order to find out whether payments match the number of days the individual has worked under MNREGA," she added.

Sex workers in Kadiri have conducted an informal survey on the number of sex workers operating in their district. This has also helped them draw up a list of the number of girls that need admission in the KGBV and in SOS schools operating in that region.

Very recently, the members of Ushodoya had a new kind of case to deal with. An eight-year-old girl was forced out of school by her maternal uncle so that she could baby sit his two children. Asha amma said, "The girls mother is a devadasi and was scared to make a complaint. We took up the matter and got the girl admitted to an SOS school in Tirupati thanks to the intervention of the local MLA and police. At least now we know that the girl will lead a better life now. She will get a chance to study and play and not be subject to the kind of sexual exploitation we faced when we were young."
India has also been careful to reiterate that its position on The Dalai Lama remains 'clear and consistent' and that there has been 'no change whatsoever in the Government of India's policy towards the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.'

India's recent moves on Tibet have generated a lot of heat and noise in media. In themselves and in context of Sino-Indian relationship, these moves are unexceptionable. Yet if it feels that India has suddenly introduced a tectonic shift in Tibet policy, there's a good reason for it.

One of the fallouts of Narendra Modi's shift from Gujarat to New Delhi is that in tune with other areas of polity, our foreign policy commentary too has become largely politicised. While the policy trajectory under Modi hasn't changed, every South Block move nevertheless is now subject to greater scrutiny and sometimes rather amusing interpretations. Political leanings colour analyses now more than ever before, which in turn interferes with perspective.

While analysing India's recent decision to distance itself from events to mark Tibetan leadership's 60th year of uprising against China, it might be useful to point out that first, strategy is not to be confused with tactics. Second, the relationship between India and Tibetan leadership-in-exile remains unsettled and complicated.

Successive Indian governments have tried to use it as leverage against China while trying to balance the aims and interests of the leadership.

In light of the maneuverability in ties, to suggest that avoiding from appearing at an 'inter-faith prayer' and a 'thank you India' program is tantamount to India letting down The Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause is alarmist and misleading.

Third, at some point, India and China need to find a new modus vivendi in bilateral ties. The current anxiety is untenable. It may not lead to another military conflict because both countries have nothing to gain from that eventuality but the state of non-engagement could potentially trigger newer areas of conflict that serves the purpose of neither.

In interpreting the dynamics of a bilateral relationship, it is useful to avoid stripping developments of their context and placing them in medias res. The foreign secretarys note to the cabinet secretary, urging government officials and leaders to skip the events marking six decades of The Dalai Lamas exile, wasn't an "unusual departure", nor was it adventurism. Every move at this level, and especially with regard to India's relationship with the Tibetan government-in-exile, is cautiously calibrated.

No, otherwise there wldn't hv been a HHDL visit to Arunachal in 2009 (after problems w/ China like the stapled visa issue earlier that yr) or in 2017. These things don't just happen; they are carefully choreographed. https://t.co/tZlgYVp77B  Tanvi Madan (@tanvi_madan) March 7, 2018

Such signalling works both ways. For instance, it has been suggested that The Dalai Lama's visit to Tawang in April last year (an area in Arunachal Pradesh over which China claims sovereignty) had set off intense posturing from Beijing which could have led to the standoff at Doka La.

To recall, China was furious that India had disregarded its "sensitivities" and allowed The Dalai Lama to visit the monastery which taps into Beijings insecurities over the question of his successor. The Tibetan spiritual leader has not countered speculation that the 15th incarnation could come from a "free region". Tawang, incidentally, is the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.

In lodging a protest with Vijay Gokhale, then India's ambassador in Beijing, China had said that "India in disregard to China's concerns obstinately arranged the Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed part of the eastern part of China-India border, causing serious damage to China's interests and China-India relations."

India's step to allow The Dalai Lama to visit Tawang, in turn, could be traced to its frustration over China repeatedly blocking New Delhi's NSG bid and vetoing UN move to designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist. It is reasonable, therefore, to deduce that foreign secretary Gokhale did not send the note as a sudden flight of fancy.

India has also been careful to reiterate that its position on The Dalai Lama remains "clear and consistent" and that there has been "no change whatsoever in the Government of India's policy towards the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China."

If that is so, what explains Indias move? Does this not appear as inconsistent? It is here that the difference between strategy and tactics needs to be stressed.

We will see more reports like this. Along the way, let us not mistake the tactical for the strategic. https://t.co/uvK51Th99Q  Dhruva Jaishankar (@d_jaishankar) March 2, 2018

While Indias overall strategy on the Tibetan issue and bilateral ties with China is based on an aim to reach desired outcomes, the objective is incumbent on tactical manoeuvres such as the one we have recently witnessed.

Clearly, by choosing to stay away from a Tibetan leaderships event to "thank India" on the 60th anniversary of The Dalai Lama's exile, New Delhi  as it has admitted  was trying not to needle China at "a very sensitive time in the context" of the ties.

Before we come to this "sensitive time" and figure out what it possibly may mean, it must be noted that this move is not synonymous with "rolling over", "kowtowing to" or "bending over backwards to please China" as has been variously argued.

That India was signalling intent to thaw tension with China and reset bilateral ties is obvious. The questions are whether this "intent" is a hopeful arrow in the dark, and whether it will be met with an appropriate reciprocation.

Once again, we need to step back and explore the chain of events that may have led to this denouement. Betraying its "iron brother" and a relationship that is "higher than mountains, deeper than the ocean, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey," China recently made way for global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to place Pakistan on the international terrorism financing "grey list" from where it had been delisted three years ago.

While the motion was moved by the US and its allies, China, which could have blocked the move, chose to remain "neutral" at the FATF plenary in Paris last month.

According to Indrani Bagchi in The Times of India, China's decision to "expose" Pakistan was part of a quid-pro-quo with India where New Delhi would back Beijing for a "top position in the FATF" in exchange for "China's neutrality on Pakistan."

The New York Times reported that "Pakistani officials say China dropped its objection to Islamabad's listing last week as Beijing lobbied for the vice chairmanship of the FATF. Beijing was granted that post on Friday, after the decision to list Pakistan." The report also mentioned that Pakistan was "disappointed" at China's decision.

Soon enough, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs congratulated China on its elevation in FATF, cementing further the notion that a deal was indeed struck.

Congratulations to China on its election as Vice President of Financial Action Task Force at the #FATF plenary mtg. on 23 February 2018. We remain hopeful that China would uphold & support the objectives & standards of FATF in a balanced, objective, impartial & holistic way.  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) February 25, 2018

In light of this context, let us now see how a careful reset in ties is being planned, with both sides dropping subtle hints that they are ready to deescalate tension, reduce irritants in ties, reengage and let the dialogue mechanisms that have been laid over the years, continue. In fact, reports have already emerged that both countries are thrashing out details of a "series of high-level talks" that could culminate in Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in June.

According to another report in The Times of India, representatives of both nations will meet in Hangzhou between 26-30 March to discuss sharing of hydrological data and in 13-15 April, "India and China will hold its strategic and economic dialogue between the NDRC of China and the Niti Aayog of India."

We now see that Gokhales note on Tibet was indeed part of a larger reengagement exercise where both sides are trying to move beyond Doka La. To be sure, the underlying realities and dynamics of India-China relationship are not going to change in foreseeable future.

The power differential between both nations will place India at a disadvantage. But even as we acknowledge the power differential we must build our economic and military capabilities to maintain an equilibrium; it should not deter us from trying to engage with China, and such engagements should not be read as pusillanimity.

As Tanvi Madan, fellow and director of The India Project at the Brookings Institution had written in Livemint post Doka La. "even as the standoff reflected the competitive and potentially conflictual dimensions of the China-India relationship, it also showed the importance of continued engagement. Not only does this keep the channels for resolving such situations open, it gives the Chinese some incentive to want to resolve them. The terms of engagement, of course, might need to be reassessed."

To sum up, while the attempt to reset ties with China through tactical tools at disposal is smart and logical, the resetting will only be of lasting consequence as long as India does so from a position of strength, which in turn will depend on India's ability to develop networks, improve economic integration with immediate neighbourhood and remove capacity constraints.
International Women's Day: If my daughter is one among three Indian women who is hit by her husband, I will tell her to think twice before getting a divorce. Where will she go?

This morning on International Women's Day, I read out the newspaper to my infant daughter. You see, I dont want her to grow up reading only nursery rhymes and fairytales. Sadly, instead of stories of victory for women, as I would have expected, I saw stories of continued terror and discrimination. I saw the milestones in my daughter's life charted along her country's treatment of women. And the India that I've brought my daughter into horrified me.

They say that a mother's womb is the first country a child inhabits. India will then be my daughters second country. In her first country I had kept her safe, protected and well cared for. In her second country, I am not so sure.

For instance, when my daughter gets her first period, I will have to think twice before buying her a sanitary napkin. Why would her fate be any different from 80 percent of our country's women who cannot afford sanitary napkins because the government has imposed a 12 percent GST on this essential commodity? So I'll tell her to use wood shavings, ash, old newspapers, plastic and sand. When she returns from school, uncomfortable and humiliated with a period stain on her dress, I will tell her  like 23 percent of India's school-going girls  to stop attending school on menarche. She will ask me why its cheaper for her to wear sindoor and a mangalsutra? What will I tell my daughter then? That sanitary napkins are taxable unlike sindoor and mangalsutras? That a girl is rewarded in marriage but not in her health?

When my daughter gets older and wants to go out for a party, I will have to ask her why? Why does she, a girl, want to go out at night? Why does she want to wear a skirt, or pants, or a burkha? Why does she want to put on makeup, hold a drink, laugh with boys, become a "dented and painted" woman? Does she not know that she is like sugar to ants, her very presence outside the four walls of her house will invite eve teasing and catcalls and obscene gestures, even rape? What will I tell my daughter then? That she has asked for it? Because boys will be boys?

When my daughter decides to get married I am sure Ill be thrilled. But when her in-laws come asking for gifts  a flat-screen TV, a Honda City, a double-door refrigerator, what will I do then? If I say no, they will not marry her. If I say yes, it will set a bad precedent and they will harass my daughter after marriage too, burn her if their demands for a new refrigerator are not met. When she goes to the police they will tell her that under Section 498 A they can only file a case against her in-laws when she shows physical wounds on her body or arrives dead. What will I tell my daughter then? That a girls life is worth less than a refrigerator in our country?

When my daughter leaves my home to build her own, I know that as a parent, I will be both happy and sad. But on the first night of marriage, when the husband forces himself upon her, what will I tell her then? Since the government has retained exception 2 of Section 375 of the IPC to not criminalise marital rape, since you think it doesnt exist. What will I tell my daughter then? That a family where a husband rapes his wife is better than a family where mutual respect, trust and dignity exists?

If my daughter is one among three Indian women who is hit by her husband, I will tell her to think twice before getting a divorce. Where will she go? There are no proper shelters for her, neither much legal or financial recourse. If she fights to keep her kids, it will be a losing battle, because a woman gets custody only till the child is five-years-old. What will I tell my daughter then? That she should forsake her career, her body, her sleep, the unseen unacknowledged hours of work that go into raising a child, so that the man with belts and punches walks into the sunset with my grandchildren?

When my daughter wants to fight back against patriarchy and violence, I will tell her not to. Because we teach our girls to stay silent. I will tell her about the humiliating way in which she will be treated at the police station, the chakars she will have to take of courts, the tedious procedures she will have to undergo in order to get justice, the expenses she will have to incur to get whats rightfully hers, the years and decades of her life she will have to punish herself to ensure that her perpetrator gets the punishment due to him.

At every point in their life, our daughters will be fighting some or the other battle, for the right to private and public agency, right to inheritance, property and personal finance, right to work without sexual harassment, right to sexual agency including consent and sexuality, rights to guardianship, right to equality, right to dignity, or the right to divorce. No matter what they do, they will be called names throughout their life: kali-kalooti, moti, bitchy, basanti, sweetie, chikni, slutty, chameli, karamjali, kalmoohi.

Our daughters have been born into a country that espouses the values of Satyamev Jayate and Stree Shakti, but also tells a woman that every time she has the courage to talk about her marital rape, or her physical abuse, or her sexual assault, she is lying. For centuries we have told our daughters to stay silent in the face of violence. Neither state machinery, nor the legal system, nor the next-door neighbour will help our daughters in need. Despite this, we are still teaching our women #MeToo instead of teaching them #HowTo.

We are in 2018 but sometimes it still feels like 1820. Therefore, I look at my daughters innocent hopeful face  the face of our countrys future, the face of our countrys dreams  and I fold the newspaper and keep it away.

Thank you for your heartiest congratulations once again.



The author is an award-winning author, columnist, feminist and TEDx Speaker. You can follow her on Twitter @MeghnaPant.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech on International Women's Day on Thursday will have to be telecast live across all schools in Rajasthan, a state government decree has said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech on International Women's Day on Thursday will be telecast live across all schools in Rajasthan, the Vasundhara Raje-government has decreed. The prime minister is expected to address an event via video conference on 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district. Rajasthan Patrika reported that students of Class VI to XI have been instructed to compulsorily attend the live screening of the programme, adding that school authorities across the state have been told to report the number of students who sat to watch the live telecast. According to PTI, the Jhunjhunu programme will take place between 1 to 2.30 pm.

According to DNA, Class XII students have been excluded due to the ongoing Secondary and Senior Secondary Board examinations in the state. The report added that schools in rural areas that lack electricity will have to arrange for radio sets.

Modi will be on a day-long tour of Jhunjhunu, where he will announce the expansion of 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' programme from the existing 161 to 640 districts all over the country, on the occasion of International Women's Day. Thursday will mark the third anniversary of the flagship programme.

Modi is also expected to interact with beneficiary mothers and girl children of the program. He will also distribute certificates to best performing districts under the program.

He will also launch National Nutrition Mission (NNM) from Jhunjhunu along with NNM-ICDS common application software. The mission is aimed at reducing under-nutrition and low birth weight, bring down anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls and to reduce the prevalence of stunting among children, it stated.

Rajasthan school education minister Vasudev Devnani has directed to include health and nutrition issues in morning prayer meetings across the schools. Directions to hold quiz on health and nutrition in schools across the state have also been issued. Girls studying in schools will be informed about the quality nutritious food, PTI reported.

With inputs from PTI
On Women's Day, prime minister Narendra Modi started the hash tag #SheInspires me while recognising the impact of certain women. Several other notable personalities followed suit

The 2018 International Women's Day is being celebrated by an array of personalities world-over. From politicians to actors, sportspersons and everyone in between  people everywhere are celebrating the day of/for the woman.

Closer to home, India's prime minister Narendra Modi also commemorated the day. Modi took to his Twitter account to celebrate 8 March through a series of tweets. Saying that several women had left an "indelible mark in the history of mankind" through their "exemplary deeds", Modi then brought to light the work of Kunwar Bai, the mascot of his flagship Clean India mission, and paid tribute to her contributions to society, especially Chhattisgarh's Kotabharri village. Modi also shared photographs and a video clip of him felicitating Kunwar Bai during a programme in the state two years ago.

Using the hash tag #SheInspiresMe, the prime minister then went on to urge people to write about women who had inspired them during the course of their life.

Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind. They continue to inspire generations. I urge you to write about some women who inspire you. #SheInspiresMe  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

#SheInspiresMe- Kunwar Bai, who died earlier this year at the age of 106. Hailing from Chhattisgarh, she sold her goats in order to build toilets. Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat can never be forgotten. I am deeply inspired by her noble gesture. pic.twitter.com/eANQz01ZYE  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bais blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapus dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/Gdt5STszgr  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

Since then, several other notable personalities have taken to Twitter to talk about the women who have left an impact on them and inspired them in some way.

My mother used to always tell me never to compromise on human values and perform my duties with utmost honesty. She gave me the best lessons of life without herself having any formal education. That's the power of a mother and a woman. Respect forever. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/FLJfRckun3  Sarbananda Sonowal (@sarbanandsonwal) March 8, 2018

From a young minister at 25 to redefining citizens outreach as EAM, @SushmaSwaraj ji made us believe every goal can be achieved through sheer hard work. A powerhouse in administration and Sangathan - #SheInspiresMe! pic.twitter.com/hiOGM8zzOI  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 8, 2018

CRPF Constable Kamlesh Kumari, the only woman Ashok Chakra awardee, laid down her life defending the Parliament House on December 13, 2001. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/4ppYn21l6j  Temsutula Imsong (@temsutulaimsong) March 8, 2018

#SheInspiresMe - I'm proud of all the courageous women in our Central Armed Forces. As directed by PM @narendramodi ji 33% of Central Armed Forces will be women. I salute the hard work and dedication of each of our female warriors #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/myQJTQ2Urj  Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) March 8, 2018

While speaking about her experiences when a lady village level entrepreneur got nervous before the audiences, Minister Smriti Irani walked up to her to extend encouragement and support. An outstanding gesture of kindness from @smritiirani #NariShakti4NewIndia pic.twitter.com/tg1SCEGa43  Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) March 8, 2018

#SheInspiresMe Had it not been for my mother's precious lessons, I would never have made through the tough exams in life! Her compassion, commitment and courage are the values that have made me what I am today! #WomensDay pic.twitter.com/HBr0TwJZi7  Rajyavardhan Rathore (@Ra_THORe) March 8, 2018

I can honestly say that the best of who I am as a man and how I show up today is primarily due to these three wonderful women in my life. They are my pillars of strength & continue to inspire me. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/iOaQntdNSQ  Dharmendra Pradhan (@dpradhanbjp) March 8, 2018

My heartiest congratulations to Muskan Kirar of State Archery Academy for clinching a gold in the women's compound at the #ArcheryAsiaCup. We are proud of your achievement. #WomensDay #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/E2JmFHVauC  ShivrajSingh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) March 8, 2018

Subhasini Mistry forged ahead with a dream, determined to succeed against all odds; channelised a personal tragedy to serve a greater good -#SheInspiresMe! pic.twitter.com/eVJiVDHhYm  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) March 8, 2018

#SheInspiresMe- I'm proud of Anshu Janshenpa the first woman in the world to achieve two double ascent of Mt. Everest & a double ascent in 5 days! I salute her on #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/Bj5zvBLnDR  Kiren Rijiju (@KirenRijiju) March 8, 2018

Rukmini Devi Arundale, was an Indian theosophist, choreographer, Bharatanatyam dancer, an influential opinion-maker. Took up the cause of Bharatanatyam, considered a vulgar art in the early 1920s. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/EXV49HrJd1  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) March 8, 2018

Rani Mangammal (1689-1704) # of the Madurai Nayaka rulers. During her reign Madurai first came into direct contact with Delhi - the Mughal Empire. Was known for her diplomatic, political skills & military campaigns. Her capital was Tiruchi. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/VoDQgX20mu  Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) March 8, 2018

Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian woman to go to space. She passed away in the infamous Columbia disaster in 2003 when the space shuttle disintegrated over Texas while re-entering the earth's atmosphere hours before it was scheduled to conclude its 28th mission. #SheInspiresMe  Pon Radhakrishnan (@PonnaarrBJP) March 8, 2018

Puja Thakur -Wing Commander Puja Thakur was the first woman to lead the Guard of Honour for a major visiting dignitary at the Presidential residence, the said major visiting dignitary being President Obama,one of the world's most powerful men in the recent times. #SheInspiresMe  Pon Radhakrishnan (@PonnaarrBJP) March 8, 2018

My late mother  Smt Girija Sastry, a fighter who fought against cancer for over 2 decades & did not let the disease stall her spirited support for public service  is an epitome of how powerful woman kind is. And a role model for me#SheInspiresMe  a true #AdamyaChetana she is pic.twitter.com/TQvXQTaBCV  Ananthkumar (@AnanthKumar_BJP) March 8, 2018

Like any other, I lift luggage as well as responsibilities with ease: Chandrakala, Lady Coolie of Gandhinagar Jaipur station of @NWRailways #Railways4Women#SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/cCW0TMmMOs  NWRailways (@NWRailways) March 8, 2018

During my travel to Chennai, I met Mrs Rani Ashok who had immense knowledge about meditation&yoga. She also teaches meditation to school children. Discussed a lot about spirituality.Her depth of knowledge over the spiritual domains inspired me#SheInspiresMe#NariShakthi4NewIndia  Arjun Ram Meghwal (@arjunrammeghwal) March 8, 2018

Sushilaben from Surat has been empowered by becoming the proud owner of a Pink Rickshaw after availing a loan under the Pradhanmantri MUDRA Yojana. #WomensDay #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/F5wAwC8Ktg  Darshana Jardosh (@DarshanaJardosh) March 8, 2018

She gloried in my Ability ! My mother is my inspiration. Do write about some Women who inspires you. #SheInspiresMe#NariShaktihttps://t.co/AJysDARrrXpic.twitter.com/Zy8QSctGPl  Maneka Gandhi (@Manekagandhibjp) March 8, 2018

(With inputs from PTI)
While roles are now changing, women have always played a significant and critical role in agriculture.

The village of Diguvapalli in Anantapur, some 200 km north of Bangalore, has only 100 families. Strangely, very few men are seen around. Most males left in the village are either children or senior citizens. With rains repeatedly failing us, men go to Bangalore to work as waiters and construction labourers, said K Nageshwaramma. The 38-year-old owns five acres in the village. With not too many men around, women farmers have not only gained more autonomy over their fields but also more burden. Farming has been left to us. With unpredictable rains and successive droughts, we are sustaining ourselves by growing more millets, she added.

Of the 100 households in Diguvapalli, farmlands of 25 households are run exclusively by women. Women take part of agricultural activities in at least 85 households, said Bhanuja. The latest economic survey by the ministry of finance points out this growing phenomenon. With rural to urban migration by men, there is a growing feminisation of the agriculture sector, said the survey.

The women of Diguvapalli along with 130 of their counterparts in three panchayats  Muthyalacheruvu, Eaguvapalli, and Brahmanapalli  registered themselves as a cooperative society to form the Mahila Raithula Uthpathidharula Sangham with the Union ministry of agriculture. Nageshwaramma is one of the leaders of the society. The aim of the society is to ensure they get fair prices on their products. The society also acts as the connection between the government and women farmers, especially with the implementation of Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), said founder president of the Rural & Environment Development Society (REDS) C Bhanuja. The NGO often works with the government to implement pro-poor policies in Anantapur district.

While roles are now changing, women have always played a significant and critical role in agriculture. It is patriarchy and a market-driven economy that blindsides them, farm experts and activists say.

With women predominant at all levels  production, pre-harvest, post-harvest processing, packaging, marketing  of the agricultural value chain, to increase productivity in agriculture, it is imperative to adopt gender-specific interventions, read the economic survey. An inclusive transformative agricultural policy should aim at gender-specific interventions to raise the productivity of small farm holdings, integrate women as active agents in rural transformation, and engage men and women in extension services with gender expertise, it added.

According to one report by the National Mission for Empowerment of Women, 80 percent of women who are employed in rural areas work in agricultural activities. About 60 percent of all agricultural operations are handled exclusively by women. Activists say while the role of women is changing within agriculture, their participation has always been integral. Their role has been made invisible, said convener of Alliance of Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) Kavitha Kuruganti. And they do not get equal pay. Female hourly wage rates in agriculture vary from 50 to 75% of male rates, and are too low to overcome absolute poverty, read the report. Another report by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj said almost 90 percent of women workers are dependent upon agriculture.

In the case of suicides, women farmers are not recognised. They are simply categorised as housewives, and not by their professional capacity. Of the 12,602 suicides by farmers and agricultural labourers in the year 2015, the NCRB recorded only 1,018 women suicides, which is about 8 percent of all farm-related suicides. The cop who is recording the suicide of a woman is from the same community and does not see her as a farmer. He just sees her as the wife of a farmer, said founder-editor of Peoples Archives of Rural India (PARI) P Sainath. This is the custom across the country. This is primarily because women are not land-holders. Less than 8% of the women in the country have land in their names, he added.

Telangana, followed by Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, leads the country in the number of suicides committed by women farmers and agricultural labourers. A woman who owns the land is a different person. She is not at the mercy of her husband or the family she is married into and community around. It changes the world for her. She cannot be kicked out by her husband, he added.

Traditional obstacles like mobility, education and the inability to interact with the market still exist. However, a few women farmer groups are breaking the mould. Growing millets is a symbol of moving away from the clutches of patriarchy in farming. Being the least input demanding crops, millets run against the 'high input = high output' market logic. Therefore, it leaves an anti-corporate economics. These values of millets bring them closest to the eco-feminist philosophy, said a statement from All India Millet Sisters Network. The network was launched in November 2016 and is set to receive the Nari Shakti Puraskar, 2017 for outstanding contribution to womens empowerment. The award will be presented by the President of India at Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi on the International Womens Day on 8 March.

The Womens Collective in Tamil Nadu, also part of the All India Millet Sisters Network, tries promoting millets amongst women farmers, as they can keep some of their produce for their homes, giving food security to the entire family. The challenge, however, is that most women are landless and do not have a say in what can be grown in the lands they are working on, said Sheelu Francis from the collective. We organise them into collectives and encourage to lease lands in groups of five to ten for them to grow millets. Millets are also hardy and resistant to the vagaries of climate change, she added. Her collective works with nearly 12,000 women farmers in dryland regions of Tamil Nadu.

The All India Millet Sisters Network is an initiative of the Deccan Development Society and has more than 20 NGOs working across ten states. CN Suresh, one of the coordinating members of its parent network, Millet Network of India, believes the knowledge of women in farming, especially in dry-land regions is unparalleled. In some villages in Telangana, crops are categorised as male crops and female crops. Male crops are commercial crops like cotton and sugar while female crops are millets, he said. While the men grow only commercial crops, they sell and the money does not leave their hands. Whereas women growing millets keep some for their house and then sell the rest. By growing millets, women are retaining decision-making powers, he said.

Women, in most cases, have a bigger role in agriculture than men  at least in small and marginal farmlands. Some 85 percent of all farmlands in the country are small and marginal. And in these lands, it is the woman who has a larger role in farming. In most cases, men only take care of plowing, cutting and selling, said a member of Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (Makaam) or Forum For Women Farmers' Rights Sejal Dand. Recognising the role of women is the best way to revive agriculture and ecology, especially in the era of direct benefit transfers. It gives her social security, she added. The forum has members across 24 states working towards securing due recognition and rights of women farmers in India.

In 2011, MS Swaminathan  often known as the father of Indias green revolution  introduced a Private Members Bill for the empowerment of farm women in land and water rights, access to technology, credit, and insurance. The bill was not taken up for discussion during his tenure. It is, however, time that both state and central governments enact legislation for the empowerment of farm women. An important cause for the present agrarian crisis is the neglect and disempowerment of women in agriculture, he said in a statement.
The Supreme Court said, on Thursday, that it will issue an order at 2 pm over the Kerala High Court's decision to annul the marriage of Hadiya, an alleged victim of 'love jihad'.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court said, on Thursday, that it will issue an order at 2 pm over the Kerala High Court's decision to annul the marriage of Hadiya, an alleged victim of 'love jihad'.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud put up the matter for order after lunch on the plea filed by a man, Shafin Jahan, who claimed to be Hadiya's husband, challenging a Kerala High Court order annulling his marriage to her.

Earlier this week, the father of the woman, who is alleged to be a victim of 'love jihad', claimed before the apex court that his efforts prevented his daughter from being transported to "extremist-controlled territories" of Syria to be used as a "sex slave or a human bomb".

In a fresh affidavit, K M Asokan said that his daughter Hadiya was a "vulnerable adult" and she "abjectly surrendered herself to complete strangers who adopted her into their fold, offering her shelter and protection and further imparted religious indoctrination in an isolated environment".

He was responding to an affidavit filed by his daughter, who had earlier told the apex court that she had willingly converted to Islam and wanted to remain a Muslim.

In his affidavit, Asokan said he cannot remain a mute spectator if his daughter is abducted and taken to extremist-controlled territories for being used as a sex slave or a human bomb.

The matter came to the fore when Shafin Jahan, who claimed to be Hadiya's husband, challenged a Kerala High Court order annulling his marriage to her and sending Hadiya to her parents' custody.

The apex court had, on 22 February, questioned whether the high court could nullify a marriage between "vulnerable adults" after the father of the 25-year-old woman had justified the order.

In an affidavit filed before the top court, Hadiya said that she had married Jahan on her own will and sought the court's permission to "live as his wife". She also claimed that her husband was wrongly portrayed as a terrorist by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and he had nothing to do with the West Asia-based terror group ISIS.

On 27 November last year, the apex court had freed Hadiya from her parents' custody and sent her to college to pursue her studies, even as she had pleaded that she should be allowed to go with her husband. The high court had annulled the marriage terming it as an instance of 'love jihad', following which Jahan had approached the apex court.
A Thai national, who was among the 23 seamen rescued from the container ship of Maersk Line that caught fire in the Arabian Sea off the Lakshadweep coast

Mumbai: A Thai national, who was among the 23 seamen rescued from the container ship of Maersk Line that caught fire in the Arabian Sea off the Lakshadweep coast, has died, the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS) said on Thursday.

A search was on for the other four missing crew members, including one Indian, a Coast Guard official said.

Fire continued to rage in the Singapore-flagged Maersk Honam, a 330-metre long vessel, where a massive blaze erupted on Tuesday night, forcing its 27 crew members to jump out into the sea waters.

Among the 27 crew members 13 were Indians, including the captain, nine Filipinos, two Thai sailors, and one each from the UK, Romania and South Africa.

While 23 crew members were rescued, one of them, a Thai sailor, died of burn injuries while being taken to Colombo, a DGS official said.

The vessel ALS Ceres, carrying the remaining 22 crew members, including 12 Indians, was expected to reach the nearest port Colombo later this evening, the official said.

Search and rescue operations for the four missing crew members continued with the help from the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard.

The missing Indian crew member has been identified as Sakim Hegde, one of the cooks on board, a senior official from the DGS said on Wednesday.

Maersk Line also confirmed the death one of the evacuated Thai national.

The company in a statement said his health condition drastically deteriorated yesterday afternoon due to the injuries sustained in the fire.

"We are deeply saddened with the passing of one of our colleagues who in the first place had been evacuated. The seriousness of the event has escalated and everyone in Maersk is moved by this," Soren Toft, the chief operating officer and member of the executive board, AP Moller-Maersk, said.

"We are in contact with the family of the deceased and our thoughts and condolences go to them," he said.

Maersk Line had on Wednesday termed it as a "serious fire" with the cargo on board the 2017-commissioned vessel.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard Ship 'Shoor' was on the spot and fire fighting was on, a CG spokesperson said.

The container ship reportedly had chemicals and dangerous goods on board, he said.

The fire was raging through the front portion of the ship and slowly spreading towards its bridge, he said.

A thick plume of toxic fumes was seen emanating from the ship, he said, adding that high temperatures have melted the containers on board.

During the fire fighting operation, a few empty life boats were spotted by the Coast Guard near the fire-hit ship, the official said.

A DGS official on Wednesday said the fire is suspected to have started in one of the 7,860 containers on board the ship, which had a capacity to carry 15,262 standard 20-footer boxes.
Banks in Maharashtra, both national and cooperative, did derail Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' ambitious plan to make the Rs 34,000 core farm loan waiver pilferage-proof.

Banks in Maharashtra, both national and cooperative, did derail Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' ambitious plan to make the Rs 34,000 core farm loan waiver pilferage-proof by linking disbursals to Aadhaar numbers.

Firstpost had run a series of investigative reports highlighting how banks turned in such corrupted list of beneficiaries and their Aadhaar numbers that the entire disbursal mechanism collapsed. This caused needless delay in disbursals and put enormous pressure on the government to speed up the process, which they did by abandoning the Aadhaar-linkage.

Confirmation of this came Thursday when the Maharashtra government accepted a long standing demand of the Opposition as well as the BJP's ally Shiv Sena, and released the full list of beneficiaries of the state's farm loan waiver scheme to all 386 state MLAs and MLCs.

Interestingly, the list was given in the form of a pen drive handed out to each legislator, rather than being uploaded on the state government's Aaple Sarkar portal.

The pen drive was handed over by state co-operation minister Subhash Deshmukh.

What's more, the list makes no mention of the Aadhaar numbers of the beneficiaries, although Aadhaar was stated to be a "primary and very major match parameter" (as the state's IT secretary SVR Srinivas told Firstpost). The list has other important columns such as district name, taluka, village, farmer's name, bank account number and loan amount. It also has a column on whether the farmer has applied for the full loan waiver or for an incentive. (As part of the scheme, farmers who repaid their loans within a stipulated time are paid an incentive amount of up to Rs 25,000.)

Firstpost has accessed the pen drive containing the entire list of farmers who are beneficiaries of the scheme.

The BJP-led government in Maharashtra announced its historic farm loan waiver scheme  titled the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana  on 22 June, 2017. The scheme was originally intended to benefit 89 lakh farmers. Chief Minister Fadnavis had estimated that the burden on the state exchequer on account of the scheme would be Rs 34,022 crore.

However, the scheme has been hobbled by technical glitches, mismatches in data and tussles in the bureaucracy.

As per the data presented by Deshmukh on Thursday, an amount of Rs 13,580 crore has been disbursed to 35.32 lakh farmers in their respective accounts till date. About 77 lakh farmers applied under the scheme in all, according to government numbers. Out of these, 55.02 lakh farmers were found to be eligible for receiving benefits of the scheme as per its stated parameters. The government approved 46.52 lakh farmers as primary beneficiaries of the scheme. Loan waiver amounts and incentive amounts of these farmers were given by the government to 63 banks. These banks include nationalised, private and district central co-operative ones. Out of the 46.52 lakh farmers, 30.38 lakh applied for the full loan waiver, while 16.14 lakh applied for the incentive amount.

Till date, the co-operation department has disbursed an amount of Rs 13580 crore into accounts of 35.32 lakhs farmers, said Deshmukh.

Speaking to Firstpost, the minister for co-operation said, "If we were to print the entire list of beneficiaries, it would run into 75,000 pages. So as an environmentally friendly measure, we gave the list to MLAs and MLCs in the form of a pen drive. The list is in English, but very soon, we will also provide the information in Marathi."

When asked why the government did not upload the list on the Aaple Sarkar portal, Deshmukh said, "In the last six months, Opposition parties have demanded the list of beneficiaries of the farm loan waiver on several occasions. Therefore, we have provided this list on a pen drive. Afterwards, we will upload the whole list online. We did not do anything which was wrong or illegal. Our actions were in the interest of transparency. The real beneficiaries know what the status is as to the disbursal of the amount to them."

Speaking about the delay in disbursing the waiver amounts, Deshmukh said, "In 2008-09, it took 18 months to disburse the loan amount. We did it in six months, and disbursed the amounts to the real beneficiaries.

A senior state bureaucrat confirmed to Firstpost that the co-operation department does not want to upload the list on the website as there are fears of technical glitches in displaying data, due to which discrepancies in the list may crop up. This may be a problem for the government as the Budget session is going on, the bureaucrat said.

Former Maharashtra chief minister Prithivraj Chavan slammed the state government, saying, "Devendra Fadnavis keeps harping on digitisation. Considering this, why has the entire list not been uploaded on the website? If they can give the list to us in the form of an excel sheet, why can they not upload it in the public domain?"

Senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Jayant Patil also said that the government should upload the list on its website. "The fact that the government is not doing so is suspicious. It suggests that it is trying to hide information from the farmers. As per my information, the government paid Rs 20 per entry to the Mahaonline company. This means that it would have paid the company Rs 9.30 crore for 46.52 entries. It is very unfortunate that the stated beneficiaries of the scheme, which were initially supposed to be 89 lakh, came down by 55 lakh.

Shiv Sena MLC Anil Parab said, "After Uddhav Thackeray repeated asked the government to give us the list, the government has accepted our demand. However, we do not understand why they gave it to us in a pen drive. If farmers wish to see their names on the list, then where will they go? We demand that the list should be uploaded on the website before the end of the Budget session."

Ajit Navale, general secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, said, "The farmers were promised a loan waiver package of Rs 34,000 crore by the Fadnavis government. However, in reality, a much smaller amount has been deposited in the farmers' accounts."

Following are some the reports in Firstpost's series on the loan waiver

Maharashtra farm loan waiver still leaves many in the lurch, 38 lakh farmers yet to receive benefits of scheme

Farm loan waivers, Aadhaar linking and the role of MahaOnline: Maharashtra IT secretary's claims debunked

Fadnavis govt junks Aadhaar, dines with the devil (banks), gets loan waiver Assembly-ready, but crisis far from over

Senior bureaucrat VK Gautam shunted to finance in fallout over Maharashtra government's bungled loan waiver scheme

Maharashtra loan waiver: How banks undid Fadnavis' pet plan, forcing him to delink Aadhaar from disbursal

Maharashtra farm loan waiver: One month after scheme's implementation, 77 lakh farmers still in the dark
In these troubled times, we need to honor those who have endured significant struggling, suffering, and sacrifice to keep our federal government functional. A moment of prayerful pause, please, as I present a paean for the pitiable printing presses of the United States, who have been printing money non-stop since around January 2009 onwards to monetize the federal debt. They supply ... (click for more)

It is no secret the Delta variant of the COVID pandemic has all but crippled our bulging hospitals. There isnt a room to be found in any nearby hospital and the ravaging consequences are best detailed in our ever-rising death rates. But it could be worse. As of Friday, there were 3,422 patients hospitalized in Tennessee with 1,033 in intensive care, 747 so sick they are on ventilators. ... (click for more)
Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who on Wednesday reached the US for medical treatment, is reportedly suffering from an advanced stage of pancreatic cancer.

Dona Paula: Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar, who on Wednesday reached the US for medical treatment, is reportedly suffering from an advanced stage of pancreatic cancer.

Sources in Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital and the Goa Medical College and Hospitalthe two health facilities where the former defence minister was admitted since 15 Februaryhave confirmed that Parrikar has cancer.

Meanwhile, both the ruling and opposition parties in the state have demanded that the government should make a formal statement on the health of the chief minister, who has landed in New York and has been taken to a specialist health facility there.

"It's at quite an advanced stage," said a source who declined to be named, adding that there was "probable metastasis", meaning it may have spread.

On 18 February, some media reports had mentioned that the chief minister was suffering from advanced stage IV of pancreatic cancer. The hospital had denied this.

Lilavati Hospital had said in a statement: "It has been brought to our notice, various malicious and misleading reports/rumours are floating around in the electronic/print media with regards to the health of the Chief Minister of Goa. We categorically deny all such rumours. We reiterate that Chief Minister of Goa is being treated and is responding well to the treatment."

Parrikar was discharged from Lilavati Hospital late on Tuesday. A statement issued by the Chief Minister's Office late on Wednesday said that Parrikar had landed in the US on Wednesday evening (IST) and maintained that "he is fine and will undergo further treatment".

"He is diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer of the pancreas... He has already been administered one round of chemotherapy when he was admitted to Lilavati Hospital," sources at the Goa hospital said.

Parrikar had complained of stomach pain on 14 February and was rushed to the GMCH and flown to Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai the following day. The stomach pain was then attributed to "food poisoning".

Soon after he was admitted to the Mumbai hospital, the Chief Minister's Office steadfastly maintained that Parrikar was suffering from "mild pancreatitis" and he was expected to be discharged shortly.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on Parrikar at the hospital on 18 February.

Parrikar returned to Goa on 22 February to deliver a truncated annual budget speech, but alarms bells sounded when he was again hospitalised on 25 February at the GMCH after officials claimed he had suffered a bout of "dehydration" and "blood pressure".

BJP cadres have been organising "Mahamrutyunjay japs" and prayer services in Goa's temples and churches respectively for the last couple of weeks. The Congress has demanded that Parrikar should come clean on the nature of his illness because he was a public person elected by the people of Goa.

Goa Forward, a ruling ally, said the people of Goa should have a clear picture of their chief minister's health. Aam Aadmi Party General Secretary Pradeep Padgaonkar said that before he left for the US, Parrikar should have been transparent to the people of Goa about his condition. "He should have told the Goans about what he is suffering from. By not doing so, he has created an atmosphere of distrust and confusion in Goa," Padgaonkar said.

The Chief Minister was discharged on 1 March and recuperating at home until he flew to the US on Wednesday morning.
A three-day meeting of the RSS's highest decision-making body - Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) - will begin from 9 March in Nagpur.

A three-day meeting of the RSS's highest decision-making body - the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) - will begin from 9 March in Nagpur. The meeting assumes significance as major organisational changes in the Sangh and its affiliates are likely to be decided.

The meeting, which is held every three years, will be the last annual meeting before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the meeting, the agenda of action for the next three years will be laid down. Around 1,500 delegates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from across the country are expected to attend the meeting, in which a host of issues will be discussed and deliberated upon.

All the regional heads of the RSS and its affiliates will attend the meeting. BJP chief Amit Shah is also expected to attend the meeting.

There are reports that during the meeting, a major organisational change may be announced and a new general secretary of the Sangh may be appointed in place of the incumbent Bhaiyyaji Joshi.

The election to choose the sarkaryavah

The sarkaryavah or general secretary is effectively the second most important position in the Sangh. The general secretary is the executive head of the organisation who looks after day-to-day activities.

While the sarshanghachalak is the top post of the RSS, its incumbent is seen in the role of a philosopher and guide leading the organisation.

According to a report in The Indian Express, usually on the second day of the three-day ABPS meeting, the incumbent sarkaryawah announces the election. An election officer is then appointed from among the senior functionaries.

One of the senior functionaries then proposes a name for the new sarkaryawah. The proposed name is generally accepted, and the new sarkaryawah is announced, added the report.

The current sarkaryawah Suresh alias Bhaiyyaji Joshi was appointed to the post for the third consecutive time in March 2015. There was speculation in 2015 about Joshi stepping down and deputy Sahsarkaryawah Dattatreya Hosbale taking the charge.

According to The New Indian Express report, Joshi, now in his 70, is likely to pass the mantle to Hosabale due to health reasons. A senior RSS functionary, on the condition of anonymity, told The New Indian Express that Hosabales elevation has been on the cards for a long time.

However, according to this Indian Express report, no such move is apparently afoot. Bhaiyyaji hasnt given any indication that he wants to step down. So, it is unlikely that he will be replaced, a middle-level RSS functionary was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Why is the election important?

According to News18, a change of guard in the Sarkaryavah's position historically has had a direct bearing on Sanghs relations with the BJP. The election is also important as the BJP is trying to make inroads into Karnataka in the upcoming Assembly polls. For this, the BJP will require help from the RSS.

On Tuesday, it was reported that top BJP leaders, including BS Yeddyurappa and Union minister Ananth Kumar, held a meeting with RSS leaders to chalk out the Sangh Parivar's plan for the upcoming Assembly polls in Karnataka.

The Sangh, however, said it would not directly involve itself in giving electoral help to BJP, but has given freedom to its swayamsevaks (volunteers) to do so.

With inputs from agencies
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday unveiled the new Karnataka State Flag- a yellow, white and red combination with the state emblem at the centre

Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday unveiled the new Karnataka state flag  a yellow, white and red combination with the state emblem at the centre.

Karnataka govt approves state flag. It will be sent to central govt for approval, after that it will be announced as the state flag. pic.twitter.com/BwidTfnyUb  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Siddaramaiah, who met a delegation of Kannada activists at his office on Thursday morning, displayed the red, white and yellow flag proposed to be used as the official state flag, The Indian Express reported.

The proposed flag will now be sent for approval to the Union home ministry. If accepted, Karnataka will be the second state to have an official state flag, the report added.

According to News18, the flag or 'Naada Dwaja' with red, white and yellow colours has the state emblem 'Ganda Bherunda', a two-headed mythical bird, in the middle.

According to The News Minute, the selected colours represented different things: Yellow symbolises forgiveness, white for peace and red for bravery. The emblem will the printed in black and white on the central white stripe.

The Siddaramaiah govternment's move marks a departure from the earlier state government's stand in 2012, when the then BJP government had told the Karnataka High Court that it had not accepted the suggestions to declare yellow and red Kannada flag as official, saying a separate flag would be against the unity and integrity of the country, DNA reported.

Kannada flag is not unconstitutional. It is not barred by the Constitution. We will send the design to the Centre. Hope they approve it. There has been a long pending demand for it. I am happy that we finally have a Kannada Baavuta (Kannada Flag)," the chief minister told News 18.

Last year, the state government had constituted a nine-member committee to design the state flag. The order nominated the principal secretary of the Kannada and culture department as the chairperson of the committee.

The panel comprised secretaries to the departments of Personnel and Administrative Services, Home, Law and Parliamentary Affairs, as also president of Kannada Sahitya Parishat, chairman of Kannada Development Authority, and vice-chancellor of Kannada University, Hampi, as its members.

With inputs from PTI
The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Karti Chidambaram, son of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, to approach the Delhi High Court for interim relief.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Karti Chidambaram, son of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, to approach the Delhi High Court for interim relief in the INX Media money laundering case.

PTI reported that the apex court asked Karti to move the Delhi High Court on Wednesday itself for interim relief. It also requested acting chief justice to allocate the matter to the appropriate bench.

On Tuesday, Karti was sent to three more days of CBI custody by a trial court in the INX Media bribery case and had also failed to get Supreme Court's interim protection from arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a related money laundering case.

Karti, meanwhile, had sought bail from the trial court, alleging that the CBI was acting at the behest of the Centre to malign the reputation of his father during whose tenure FIPB clearance was granted to the INX Media group.

Special CBI Judge Sunil Rana had posted the bail plea for hearing on 9 March when the three-day CBI custody of Karti would come to an end.

Karti had contended that his arrest was "illegal and arbitrary" but the central investigating agency had opposed his bail plea, saying the investigation was at a crucial stage and his custodial interrogation was necessary to unearth the entire conspiracy in the INX Media corruption case.

The CBI got a shot in the arm when the CBI judge rejected Karti's stand that the case against him was "politically motivated" and "targeted" to tarnish the image of his father and allowed the agency to subject him to three more days of custodial interrogation.

The setback to Karti in the CBI case came few hours after the Supreme Court refused to grant him interim protection from arrest by the ED in a money laundering case relating to the INX Media group.

The top court had asked the ED to file its response on a fresh plea by Karti against the probe done in the money laundering case.

It had also asked the CBI to respond to Karti's allegations that he was being harassed by the roving probe of the two agencies.

With inputs from PTI
Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu decided to pull out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, putting a spin on BJP-led Centre's 2019 plans.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu decided to pull out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, putting a spin on BJP-led Centre's 2019 plans.

When Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was presenting the Union Budget on 1 February, even while the political parties in Andhra Pradesh protested inside and outside Parliament, Jaitley bluntly rejected Special Status category to Andhra and continued to harp on Central version of Special Package implementation which is at variance with the assessment of the State government. Instead of assuaging the feelings of people from Andhra Pradesh, the finance minister's statement further fuelled sentiment in the state making it more difficult for the TDP to continue its political voyage with BJP.

Addressing the late night press conference on Wednesday, Naidu said that Jaitley's statement had hurt him a lot and Centre's unilateral approach made it inevitable for him to take this decision.

The TDP-BJP combine was catapulted to power on the promise that the NDA would grant special category status to the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh. This promise, made by none other than the then prime ministerial candidate of NDA, Narendra Modi, caught the imagination of the people of the truncated state at a time when people of Andhra strongly and emotionally felt that they need hand-holding due to the arbitrary manner in which the united Andhra Pradesh was divided.

Hyderabad was the bone of contention between the protagonists of separate state of Telangana and the people from Seemandhra. The then UPA government decided to keep the sprawling city of Hyderabad with the state of Telangana as it is geographically located in this region. The residuary state of Andhra Pradesh felt that it has lost the major source of finances and jobs. This resulted in the demand for special category status which was authored by senior leaders from Bhartiya Janata Party like M Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley. These facts gave enormous credence to Modi-Chandrababu promise of special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Instead of conceding to this demand, Modi told Parliament that the UPA government divided the state closing the doors to Lok Sabha. But, Modi was oblivious to the fact that the state bifurcation would not have been passed without the support of the then major opposition, the BJP.

Now, the BJP-led NDA government says it cannot accord the special category status to Andhra Pradesh as the 14th Finance Commission has scrapped such a scheme of devolution of Central funds to states. In fact, Chandrababu agreed to the Centre's offer of special package in lieu of special status. Naidu has taken greater political risk by accepting for special package though the public sentiment is for special status. But, as the promises made in the special package and the provisions of bifurcation act remain unimplemented, Chandrababu came under tremendous pressure to raise a banner of revolt against the Centre of which TDP is a part.

Adding fuel to fire, opposition leader Jagan Mohan Reddy, in an apparent bid to put Chandrababu in dock, announced that Members of Parliament belonging to his YSR Congress would resign on the last day of the Parliament session if the demand for special status is not met. This compelled Chandrababu to revert to the original demand of special status while pressing for the implementation of agreed special package. It would be politically difficult for TDP to remain in the alliance led by BJP even after the Centre remained adamant on the basic demands of the state. The proactive stand of Jagan Mohan further precipitated the crisis in the ruling NDA leading to the estrangement of TDP with the BJP.

Meanwhile, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao hit a salvo by declaring war on Modi dispensation by calling for third front comprising of non-Congress and non-BJP parties. KCR's battle cry has further galvanised the public opinion in the neighbouring Telugu state against Modi government making it difficult for the TDP to continue to sail with the BJP.

The finance minister after deliberating with the delegation of TDP and the representatives of the state government refused to yield anything and continued to assert his unilateral position. He further said that sentiment does not offer more central funds directly hitting at the ongoing agitation for the redressal of the grievances of the beleaguered state of Andhra Pradesh.

The bifurcation of the state was predicated upon the promise of special status. The finances of the residuary state became unviable after the arbitrary bifurcation of the state. The unviable finances of the state can be a ground to accord special status.

The 14th Finance Commission has never made any recommendation specific to Andhra Pradesh. In fact, the Parliament can take "supplemental, incidental and consequential measures" to effectuate the bifurcation of the state as per the article 4 of the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court has upheld this constitutional position in number of its judgments like Mangal Singh case, Mullaperiyar case, etc. The promise of special status may not be technically part of the bifurcation Act. But, politically speaking, it is part of the bifurcation exercise. Therefore, any provision, in this case promise, made during the bifurcation holds special constitutional stature. Thus, the promise of Special Status made at the time of bifurcation cannot be set aside due to the recommendations of the Finance Commission which came at a later date.

Though Jaitley claims that all the benefits that would accrue due to special status would be given to the state, Andhra Pradesh government dismisses these claims as a cruel hoax.

The revenue deficit is pegged at little over Rs 4,000 crore by the Centre, while the CAG estimated it to be over Rs 16,000 crore. The state was given industrial incentives that were offered to all the backward districts. But, no special industrial incentives that were due to Andhra Pradesh as part of the bifurcation act or under special category status were not given to the state. Similarly, the promises of 90 percent central component was not implemented to the satisfaction of the state government though Jaitley professes his commitment to this provision. Similarly, the railway zone for Visakhapatnam, steel plant at Kadapa, Petroleum refinery and cracker unit, Dugarajapatnam port, fiscal support for the construction of Greenfield capital at Amaravati, funds for infrastructural development in the backward districts, setting up of educational institutions with proper funding , adequate flow of funds for the Polavaram Project, fiscal support to metro projects in Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam, etc. still remain unresolved and unimplemented.

Therefore, Chandrababu was rather constrained to walk out of the NDA ministry. The political implications of TDP's decision can be anybody 's guess. But, the slogan of Third Front would certainly get shriller in the wake of Naidu's decision.

The author is former MLC in Telangana, former editor of The Hans India and professor of Journalism at the Osmania University
Tension gripped Kolkata's Jadavpur University on Thursday after a few students were injured in a clash between the activists of Hindu Jagran Manch and CPM over the vandalisation of Shyama Prasad's Mookherjee's statue.

Tension gripped Kolkata's Jadavpur University on Thursday after a few students were injured in a clash between the activists of Hindu Jagran Manch and CPM over the vandalisation of Shyama Prasad's Mookherjee's statue. The Kolkata Police later arrested seven people in this connection.

According to Times Now, an activist of the Hindu Jagran Manch had taken out a protest march towards the Shyama Prasad Mookherjee's statue which was objected to by CPM's student wing Students' Federation of India (SFI).

According to CNN-News18, several policemen too were injured in the violence.

The bust of Mookherjee, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder, was found damaged in Kolkatas Chittaranjan Das Park on Wednesday. The incident happened two days after Vladmir Lenin's bust was toppled in Tripura's Belonia town, allegedly by Bharatiya Janata Party workers.

Five of the seven people arrested are reportedly members of a Left-wing group called Radical, India Today said.

Speaking to The Telegraph, city police commissioner Rajiv Kumar said, "Six men and one woman in their early 20s who tried to deface the bust of Syama Prasad Mookerjee have been arrested by the Kolkata Police and strong legal action have been initiated. No vandalism would be tolerated."

Those arrested said that they had defaced and vandalised Mookerjee's bust to protest against the pulling down of communist icon Lenin's statues in Tripura, police said. They also raised slogans against the Tripura incidents.

On Thursday, clashes had erupted between workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Kolkata.

BJP had accused Trinamool workers of attacking its men who had gathered to "purify" Mookerjee's statue. "Our activists went there to peacefully purify and cleanse the statue of Mookherjee with milk and Ganga-jal (water from the Ganga). But police stopped them and the Trinamool goons beat them up severely", state BJP chief Dilip Ghosh said.

With inputs from PTI
On World Kidney Day that falls on 8 March, it's important to highlight just how much India needs a national movement for organ donation to prevent thousands of people from dying due to lack of organ donors

As the world comes together to raise awareness about the importance of our kidneys on World Kidney Day on 8 March, it's important to highlight just how much India needs a national movement for organ donation to prevent thousands of people from dying due to lack of kidneys, hearts, livers, lungs and other tissues.

The global 'opt-out' model of cadaver donation, where organs of all cadavers are automatically donated unless the deceased has voluntarily opted out, can be emulated. India needs such a system that pushes cadaver donation, especially since accidental deaths are high in our country.

Britain is joining the growing list of countries voting for the opt-out model. The Dutch placed their faith in it recently.

The Spanish organ donation model is regarded as the best in the world. After choosing an opt-out system, Spain dramatically emerged as the undisputed world leader in organ donations. The opt-out system is the presumed consent system where the deceased persons consent to organ donation is presumed unless his/her name is on the nations refusal registry, whereas, the opt-in system demands a prior consent of the deceased person for organ donation.

The opt-out system sees more organ donations and donors.

Germany, which uses an opt-in system, has an organ donation consent rate of 12 percent while the neighbouring Austria, which has an opt-out system, has a consent rate of 99.98 percent. In countries, which changed from an opt-in system to an opt-out system, the number of donors increased by 20 to 30 percent.

France has made organ donation mandatory after the death of a person. The new presumed consent law assumes that the deceased person agrees to have his/her organs donated, even if the individuals immediate family is against it. Those who do not wish to donate their organs can put their name on a national 'refusal register' whereby their consent will not be presumed, and their organs will not be donated after their demise.

Medical teams will check the National Rejection Registrar at the time of death before considering organ or tissue removal. If it is not possible to sign up to the register, people can also sign and date a written refusal and leave it with a relative, or make an oral testimony to a relative who will then need to attest this wish to a medical team. Frances frequency of organ donation is expected to rise steeply soon.

The present regulations, as well as the social milieu in India, must change. Organ donation from living donors is constricted by several stringent rules that restrict the eligibility to only close relatives of the patient. Cadaver organ donation, which is a more desirable option, is extremely rare in India, as it is the next of kin who decides if or not organs of the deceased are to be donated. There has been almost no improvement in the organ donation situation. People are not ready to part with organs of their loved ones even after death. While in the West around 70-80 percent of people pledge their organs, in India only about 0.01 percent do so.

India is the diabetes capital of the world. People with diabetes in India doubled from 32 million in 2000 to 63 million in 2013 and the number is projected to rise to 101.2 million in 15 years, says the latest assessment by WHO, raising an alarm over the need to treat and contain the condition.

In India, around 75,900 males and 51,700 females in the age group of 30-69 years died due to diabetes in 2015, whereas 46,800 males and 45,600 females above 70 years of age died of the disease, according to WHO. However, the agency maintains that the mortality data is uncertain in the absence of national monitoring.

To add to the woes are the skyrocketing rates of obesity. Obesity in India has reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting 5 percent of the country's population. There were 20 million obese women in India in 2014 compared to 9.8 million obese men. Severe obesity was observed in an additional 4 million Indian women. There were less than 800,000 obese women in India in 1975 compared with 400,000 obese men. There is an increasing prevalence of obesity even in school children. This increasing prevalence has implications for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and chronic kidney diseases.

And, in a worrying fallout of rising diabetes and hypertension cases in urban India, 17 out of every 100 Indian suffer from kidney disease. Of this, 6 percent have stage III kidney disease which necessitates medical attention and, in some cases, costly treatment like dialysis or transplants, suggests a study of kidney disease in the country.

The rising incidence of the disease among children is especially worrisome. Of the 1,50,000 new patients who need dialysis annually in the country, 1,35,000 people die without any kind of treatment due to financial constraints. Of the remaining 15,000 patients who are started on dialysis, 9,000 patients discontinue dialysis treatments within a month due to lack of resources.

Moreover, with dialysis not being a long-term option, patients have no option but to undergo transplants. A huge gap persists between demand and supply of organs in India. The country has a donation rate of 0.5 per million  one of the lowest in the world. In contrast, Spain has a donation rate of 36 per million inhabitants while numbers for Germany and the United States are 11 and 26 respectively.

Around 1.6 lakh patients are waiting for organs in India while a mere 12,000 donors are available. With the health ministry estimating that the annual requirement for kidneys ranges between 1-2 lakh with only 5,000 transplants occurring, the demand-supply gap is huge.

One of India's leading nephrologists, Dr Sanjeev Gulati, director and head of Nephrology and Kidney Transplant at Fortis Hospital, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, is of the opinion that the 'opt-out' model must be emulated and public awareness would encourage cadaver organ donation.

But for the global best practices in organ donation to succeed in India, people's attitudes must change. "India definitely needs cadaver donations but so many things need to be organised for the system to be successful and, at present, we are far from that," says Dr Sanjay K Agarwal, professor and head, Department of Nephrology, AIIMS, New Delhi.

The Spanish model of opt-out cadaver donations, he says, is unlikely to be emulated in India with the current structure of Indian society. We have to work towards changing society's mindset.

As someone who had to have a kidney transplant in 2009 after 10 months of dialysis following kidney failure, I have experienced the trauma and emotional, physical and financial costs first hand. Hence, my fervent plea on World Kidney Day (March 8) is for India to move towards cadaver donations on the European model and save the lives of millions.
However, even as TDP walked out of the government, it signalled that the possibility of a patch up is not ruled out.

The suspense over which way the already strained TDP-BJP ties will sway has subsided for now with the Telegu Desam Party ministers Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (MoS Science and Technology) quitting the Narendra Modi cabinet, while the party decided to continue supporting the NDA.

This came despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a last-ditch attempt to stave off the development.

However, the two ministers said the party was still part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance and it was hopeful that the promises made to Andhra Pradesh at the time of its bifurcation like the grant of special category status to the residual state and other financial demands would be met.

The Union ministers' resignation came shortly after Modi spoke to Naidu over the telephone and reportedly urged him to reconsider pulling out of the NDA government. But Naidu apparently told him of his compulsions in domestic politics.

Meanwhile, the BJP in its turn returned the favour as two Andhra ministers of the party quit the Naidu government. Andhra health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations. They thanked him for having inducted them into the state Cabinet. The chief minister, in turn, complimented the BJP members, saying they had discharged their duties well.

The action by the TDP, which has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in Rajya Sabha, will have no impact on the stability of the Modi government which has sufficient numbers in Parliament but will be seen as a big political setback because TDP is the first pre-poll ally to pull out of the Centre in nearly four years.

However, even as TDP walked out of the government, it signalled that the possibility of a patch up is not ruled out.

"We are continuing as part of the NDA. The problems are well known and we are hopeful that the commitments made by the national parties at the time of bifurcation will be met. Everyone in Andhra Pradesh wants that the promises should be implemented. Solutions are being attempted. We are trying to get solutions. We hope solutions will come. We have resigned in a cordial atmosphere," Chowdary said.

Both ministers said they know that the clock cannot be put back on the bifurcation but there are sentiments and emotions in the state which are to be addressed.

Asked what was the prime minister's response, they quoted him as saying it was unfortunate but he understood that it was a party decision. "I am with the state of Andhra Pradesh and for the people of Andhra Pradesh," Modi told them.

Chowdary said it was wrong for the media to expect that they went to negotiate with the prime minister. "It is for various departments of the Centre to work for fulfilling the demands of Andhra Pradesh.

"The major sentimental issue has not been addressed well in time. At least the special package should have been implemented by putting time-lines. People of Andhra Pradesh are very emotional. One national party has deceived us and the other has cheated us," he said.

Chowdary also said that even the special package was not adequate. He, however, said it would be unfair to say that the Centre did nothing for the state.

Asked about the deadline for the Centre to meet the TDP demands, he said, "16th Lok Sabha."

He also said the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act should not have been passed amid din in Parliament.

Chowdary conceded that the Centre did meet some demands but Andhra Pradesh needed a lot of hand-holding because demands like special category status were major emotional and sentimental issues.

In his resignation letter, Raju expressed his gratitude for the cooperation extended to him as a member of the Council of Ministers. Chowdary, in his letter, said he had enjoyed working with Modi and appreciated the support given to him.

"However, with due respect to the prevailing public sentiment in my constituency as well as the circumstances that led to that situation, and in adherence to the decision taken by my party (TDP) president, I am hereby tendering my resignation as Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences," Chowdary said.

"We will be happy when marriages happen, not when divorces happen. It is not a good move, but unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances we had to take this move. We are stepping down as ministers, but our president has said we will be continuing as part of NDA," Chowdary told reporters. The beauty of democracy, he said, was to bring unanimity and make everyone happy and this was the BJP's responsibility.

Asked about Congress president Rahul Gandhi's offer of giving special status to Andhra Pradesh if the party came to power, he said it was a hypothetical situation.

According to Raju, "The division was done unscientifically, this is told today by even those who did it. And it needs corrective action. That is what we are requesting now."

TDP MP Konagalla Narayana said Naidu waited for four years and the decision to withdraw the party's ministers was an outcome of his losing patience.

"The chief felt that during a fight for special status, it is not right to have our members in their cabinet. So he took this decision... now if they don't act, this agitation will be intensified," Narayana said.

With inputs from agencies
Federal Judge Curtis Collier has ordered the release of tapes and transcripts of racist comments made by members of the Pilot Travel Centers sales staff at a lake retreat.

Judge Collier said that since the trial of four Pilot employees, including former president Mark Hazelwood, is now over that the jury would no longer be affected.

Hazelwood was convicted of some counts along with Scott Wombold and Heather Jones. Karen Mann was acquitted.

The judge gave seven days for getting the items ready for release to the news media and the public.

The incident took place at the Rockwood, Tn. lake house of John Freeman, a Pilot sales director who pleaded guilty but did not testify in the trial in Chattanooga.

It was secretly recorded by a member of the sales team who began working with the government.

The tape included the playing of a racist country song using the N Word often.

A statement from a Pilot Flying J spokesperson regarding the recordings was released:

"As we conveyed in January when the tapes were played in court, we are very disturbed and appalled by the extremely offensive and deplorable comments recorded over 5 years ago involving a small group of former sales employees. This kind of behavior is reprehensible, not tolerated, nor reflective of the guiding principles of Pilot Flying J and does not represent the values of the dedicated 28,000 team members that we have today.



As soon as the Company was made aware of these tape recordings, immediate action was taken. The employees who participated were held responsible and are no longer with the Company. No current team member of Pilot Flying J was present or participated in this incident."



Here is the first order:



On January 11, 2018, the Court ordered the parties to show cause why certain documents should not be unsealed. (Doc. 427.) The documents consisted of briefing in favor of and in opposition to the admission into evidence of Government Exhibits 529, 530, and 531 (collectively, the Exhibits); proposals and objections regarding a related limiting instruction to the jury; a transcript of the in camera hearing to determine whether the Exhibits would be admitted; and a motion for the Court to review transcripts pursuant to United States v. Robinson, 707 F.2d 872 (6th Cir. 1983).

The Government responded that it had no reason not to unseal Documents 373, 395400, and 411, but it proposed certain redactions to Documents 372, 375, 417, and 418 before unsealing them. (Doc. 434.) Defendant Heather Jones responded that she had no objections to the Governments position. (Doc. 438.) Defendant Scott Wombold responded in opposition to unsealing any of the documents. (Doc. 461.) No other party filed a response to the Order to state why the identified documents should not be unsealed.

The Court has reviewed the Governments proposed redactions and finds them, with two limited exceptions, to be appropriate. The matters to be redacted, as modified by the Court, do not Case 3:16-cr-00020-CLC-HBG Document 501 Filed 03/07/18 Page 1 of 2 PageID #: 12543 2 concern any of the purposes for which the Exhibits were admitted into evidence at trial.

The interests supporting nondisclosure of these portions of the documents therefore outweigh the interests of the public in accessing this tangential information. The seal is no broader than necessary because it extends only to these specific portions of the documents.

The Court will issue a concise sealed Order directing that one proposed redaction be shortened and another be expanded. Defendant Wombold expressed two concerns with unsealing the documents: the possible reputational harm to him in falsely suggesting that [he] possesses attributes that no person has alleged he possesses and that he has not put at issue in this case and the increased chance that the jury would be improperly influenced as a result of the media coverage that might result from unsealing the pleadings. (Doc. 461 at 12.)

The Court has considered the content of the documents that will be unsealed and finds that the risk of reputational harm to Defendant Wombold from their unsealing is less compelling than the publics interest in their disclosure. And because the trial is now concluded, improper influence on the jury is no longer a concern. The Clerk of Court is DIRECTED to unseal Documents 373, 395400, and 411.

The Government SHALL FILE redacted versions of Documents 372, 375, 417, and 418, according to the proposal in Document 453 as modified by the Courts accompanying sealed Order, in the public record within seven days of the issuance of this Order.

Here is the second order:

On January 12, 2018, the Court conducted a hearing on certain media outlets requests for access to certain recordings, briefing, and transcripts.1 Attorney Richard Hollow (Media Counsel) appeared on behalf of the media outlets and later filed a memorandum (Doc. 450) in support of his clients motion. Media Counsel presented his clients request for five categories of information: (1) any written motions to play any portions of certain recordings for the jury; (2) any responses or objections to the same; (3) any orders pursuant to any hearings on the same; (4) the recordings played for the jury; and (5) transcripts of the recordings played for the jury.

The Court has addressed the first three categories in a contemporaneously issued Memorandum & Order. It remains for the Court to address the fourth and fifth categories, namely the release of Government Exhibits 529, 530, and 531 and their corresponding transcripts, Government Exhibits 529-A, 530- A, and 531-A (collectively, the Exhibits).

1 With the exception of a limited number of sidebars and in camera hearings, the trial of this matter was open to the media and the public alike. One of the in camera hearings related to the evidence at issue here, and a transcript of that hearing will be unsealed with certain limited redactions pursuant to the Courts contemporaneous Order. In addition, the Clerk of Court received multiple requests from media outlets for copies of other recordings that were played for the jury and introduced into evidence. Those requests were honored without objection from the parties.

The Court has considered the positions of the parties as presented at oral argument and in written filings, including Documents 450, 461, 462, and 492, in light of the Court of Appeals instructions in United States v. Beckham, 789 F.2d 401 (6th Cir. 1986), and in light of the fact that the jury has now returned its verdict on all counts in the Amended Superseding Indictment. The Court notes that Defendant Mark Hazelwood, as to whom the Exhibits were admitted, asked not to prevent the release of the Exhibits, but only to delay their release until the trial was completed. Defendant Heather Jones continues to object to the release of the recordings while she explores her options to appeal. (Doc. 492.) She relies in particular on United States v. Dimora, 862 F. Supp. 2d 697 (N.D. Ohio 2012).

The situation in the present case is different from that in Dimora in significant ways. First, in Dimora, there was not merely the possibility of an appeal that might have resulted in a remand and retrial, as there is here; there were still charges pending against the defendant and others that were scheduled to be tried within the next seven months. This gave additional weight to the dueprocess concerns in Dimora that are not present here. Second, in Dimora, the recordings the court withheld from release portrayed the defendant himself engaged in conduct that could be viewed as incriminating. (Even in one recording that did not show the defendant, the conduct shown was that of another individual allegedly arranging a bribe for defendant in the form of the services of a prostitute.) The Exhibits, however, do not include Defendant Jones at all.

There has been no allegation she was present at the time of the recorded conversations or that she otherwise knew of the substance of the conversations. The conversations never mention her name, and they do not bear on her guilt or innocence on any of the charges brought against her.

The Court makes one final observation on Defendant Joness argument that the release of the Evidence will have a spillover effect, tainting the jury pool for a potential retrial. The jury in the trial just completed demonstrated its ability to distinguish among the different pieces of evidence introduced against the various defendants and not to allow the Evidence, admitted for a limited purpose against Defendant Hazelwood, to affect its consideration of the other Defendants. Defendant Jones and Defendant Karen Mann were similarly situated as to the Evidence, and they made similar arguments about its potential spillover effect. Defendant Mann was acquitted on the single charge against her, and Defendant Jones was acquitted on four of the five charges against her.

The Court sees no reason to fear Defendant Jones will not be able to receive a fair trial if she prevails on appeal, even if the Evidence is released.The media outlets request for Government Exhibits 529, 529-A, 530, 530-A, 531, and531-A is GRANTED. Specifically, the Clerk of Court is AUTHORIZED to make GovernmentExhibits 529, 529-A, 530, 530-A, 531, and 531-A open for inspection and copying, subject to thestandard provisions and copying costs published by the Clerk of Court.
It takes more than just foolishness to do what a BJP leader has done in 'Dravidian' Tamil Nadu

It takes more than just foolishness to do what a BJP leader has done in 'Dravidian' Tamil Nadu. Although the bulk of the nation is under its thumb, Tamil Nadu has eluded its tentacles so far and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. One does not need a doctorate in astrology to predict it.

With no friends in sight, the BJP is worse off here than Rahul Gandhi's Congress. And that's saying a lot. It seems that for a long time to come, the BJP leadership will be able to see the insides of the Tamil Nadu Assembly only on television. So, the last thing the party wants is enemies. And that precisely is what a loud-mouthed local leader of the party has earned in abundance in 280 characters.

Here is how the strange tweet has affected BJP. First, deleting a social media post is like extinguishing a match stick after setting off the explosive. Erasing a post does not stop its spread. The Periyar post is very much in the public realm to haunt the BJP for quite some time.

Every party in Tamil Nadu, barring the BJP, lays claim to Periyar's legacy, for whatever it is worth. BJP had not one but several opportunities to have capitalised on the total irrelevance of Periyar and his so-called rationalist, often anti-nationalist, views and actions. But this should have happened on an ideological/intellectual plane. Instead, the BJP has shot itself in the foot and the bullet has set off a dormant stick of dyanamite.

Periyar was a self-styled iconoclast. The thrust of his campaign manifested in breaking idols of Hindu gods, garlanding them with chappals and pulling the tufts or cutting the sacred thread of chaste brahmins. All very rational and profound ideas of the much revered Thandhai (father figure); so revered that this prolific idol-breaker ironically now has the most number of idols, more even than those of the gods that he so hated. The annual rituals of garlanding his statues (not with slippers, may I point out) are also celebrated with much fervour and fanfare.

For rest of the year, the crows and pigeons have it for you-know-what. If all his statues were to be brought down, it would be a huge project and the Tamil Nadu BJP (ignore the oxymoron) has to import sundry senas from other states, like Tripura for instance, and may have to apply for a World Bank loan. And since crows are not a vote bank, the BJP need not worry.

Tamil Nadu is a land of temples. Here it is bhakti Hinduism, unlike the militant Hindutva of the north that bore the brunt of Mughal and pre-Mughal rules, whence mosques replaced many holy Hindu shrines. If there is any state that is the ripest for BJP's picking it is Tamil Nadu. Periyars atheism and Dravidian rationalism were mere doormats to temples, trod over by millions of Hindu devotees daily. No amount destroying Periyars statues can mock this perennial ignominy to the bearded Dravidian icon. Instead of reaping the harvest as a party of piety, BJP here is a non-starter. And worse, its prominent loudspeaker has resurrected the Periyars (statues, I mean) with statuesque guards (BJP's central leadership) on watch.

The BJP high command is much to blame for blowing opportunity upon opportunity to make a mark in Tamil Nadu. Having come to power on an anti-corrruption plank, it ignored the most corrupt state, namely Tamil Nadu! For some strange reason, Narendra Modi chose not to cross J Jayalalithaa's path. Even her open challenge in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, 'This Lady or that Modi', failed to provoke him. An aggressive counter campaign would have certainly given BJP a foothold, to begin with. This failure helped Jayalalithaa net 38 MPs.

Another chance sailed through the window when she was jailed in September 2014. Even Tamil Nadu BJP leaders (oxymoron again) had no clue what their northern netas had up their kurta sleeves. And the door of narrow opportunity shut almost instantly. In the Srirangam 'buy'-poll in February 2015, the BJP lost its deposit. Then came the 2015 December floods, a wholly man, rather, woman-made disaster. Even such criminal negligence went unquestioned.

In the 2016 state elections, with BJP not even in the picture, Jayalalithaa had her way. Stashes of cash (just one seizure was worth Rs 580 crore) were on parade. Elections to two constituencies were stopped. Still, not a whimper from Delhi. But the worst was during her hospitalisation and death. A mystery that was waiting to be unravelled was somehow prolonged and perpetrated by BJP and the Central governments misty eyes. The Centres silence during those critical hours, despite being equipped with all the wherewithal, is the direct cause for all the confusion in Tamil Nadu today.

Periyar has long been buried by his own followers. Breaking his statues is a waste of time. Instead, it will serve BJP and the state better if its central leadership, for once, breaks its head on how to tune into the heart and mind of Tamil Nadu. Or remain forever a party of North India that could never understand the Tamil psyche.
The BJP rejected Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu's charge that the Modi government neglected the state, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations, but also went out of its way to help the state.

New Delhi: The BJP, on Wednesday night, rejected Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu's charge that the Modi government neglected the state, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations, but also went out of its way to help the state.

BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said the Modi dispensation worked to ensure that Andhra Pradesh got full resources in the infrastructure and industrial sector after the bifurcation of the state. His remarks came soon after Naidu, in a late night press conference, announced that two of his party's central ministersCivil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdarywould resign from the government on Thursday.

Political parties in Andhra Pradesh have been raking up the demand for special category status for the state without acknowledging that the Centre has offered the state all benefits without giving this tag, which has become redundant after the 14th Finance Commission report, Rao said. Special category status has ceased to exist, he added.

Another BJP leader said that all is still not lost between his party and the TDP and they will see how things unfold in the coming days.

Naidu's move is aimed at projecting his party as a champion of the state's interest as he is facing a lot of heat from the opposition YSR Congress, the BJP leader added.

Click here for LIVE updates on Andhra Pradesh special status row
The historic low in ties between allies TDP and the BJP may not work well for the BJP in the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh and its party president Amit Shah's dream to breach the southern states.

A day after the Telugu Desam Party decided to quit the Union Cabinet, while putting the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance on notice period, politics in the state of Andhra Pradesh is only expected to undergo some churning. However, the historic low in ties between allies TDP and the BJP may not work well for the BJP in the bifurcated Andhra Pradesh and its party president Amit Shah's dream to breach the southern states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, apart from the two Telugu states.

Electoral compulsions

BJP first found an ally in TDP in 1998, when then Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu lent outside support to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. A year later, both party's forged a pre-poll alliance and swept the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

The elections were a historic for the BJP as it could win seven Lok Sabha and 10 Assembly seats  its highest ever tally. The victory was credited to the Vajpayee wave, the post-Kargil War nationalist sentiment and Naidu's personal popularity. The election also saw the transfer of votes between the TDP and BJP, which helped the party register its best tally ever.

After TDP left NDA, the BJP found it difficult to sustain its winning momentum as the party could win only two seats in the 2009 Assembly elections and none in the Lok Sabha elections, which were held concurrently.

TDP only ally of BJP in south

TDP, as a matter of fact, is the only ally of the BJP south of Vindhyas. For a party which aspires to form state governments in the south, an uncharted territory except for Karnataka, BJP needs TDP in order to survive in the bifurcated state.

With no strong local leaders in the coastal and Rayalseema region, BJP's fortune is invariably linked with TDP's. Moreover, the saffron party was comparatively stronger in the Telangana region, which now is the state of Telangana.

In fact, TDP was the first party to enter into an alliance with the NDA in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP's weakness can be gauged by a statement made my TDP politburo member Gali Muddu Krishnanma Naidu, "They (BJP) may grow but it will not be sufficient for them to come to power. Ultimately, they will have to join hands with the TDP."

In a 2015 Mint article, Andhra BJP leader K Haribabu agreed that the party was weak in the state and that it needed to build its organisational structure.

Rajya Sabha math

While the BJP can let go of the TDP in the Lok Sabha, given its comfortable majority in the Lower House, that cannot be the case in the Rajya Sabha, where the Amit Shah-led party is in a minority.

While the BJP will have 73 MPs after the 23 March elections to the Upper House, it will still fall short of the majority mark of 123 seats.

Even as an alliance, the NDA will fall short of the majority in the Rajya Sabha despite the uptick in numbers after 23 March elections. Currently, the NDA has 82 MPs and from April onward, the number is expected to go to at least 97.

The deficit in the Rajya Sabha makes the TDP a key ally of the BJP. While the TDP currently has 6 Rajya Sabha MPs, it is expected to win two seats in the Upper House on 23 March. The eight MPs of the party can play a crucial role during passages of key bills in the Upper House.

Meanwhile, the NDA is expected to win a majority in the Rajya Sabha only by 2020. With the exit of the TDP, things will be more difficult for the BJP-led NDA.

After weeks of speculation over the fate of ties between allies TDP and the BJP, Naidu on Wednesday finally announced that two Union ministers of the TDP will resign on Thursday, adding that his party will also come out of the NDA later.

Ashok Gajapati Raju, the Union civil aviation minister, and YS Chowdary, the junior minister of science and technology, are the two TDP representatives in the Modi Cabinet.

Ties between TDP and the BJP have been strained for a long time over alleged neglect of the state in the Union Budget. The state government has also been at loggerheads with the BJP-led NDA at the Centre over concerns related to the implementation of the promises made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.

The party began relaunched its demand for Special Category Status for Andhra Pradesh after blaming the Centre for failing to implement the special assistance measures it announced in September 2016 in lieu of granting special status.

With inputs from PTI
In playing the brinkmanship game once again now, Chandrababu Naidu might run the risk of mistaking the Modi-Amit Shah combine for the Vajpayee-Advani duo.

Just a few months before the Lok Sabha election 2004, the BJP had held its national executive in Hyderabad to chart out the future course of action. Chandrababu Naidu was then the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. He was at the peak of his popularity as a "cyber CM" and a certain flamboyance that literally intimidated friends and foes alike.

His shadow loomed large even on the BJP's national executive and Naidu was in the habit of making good use of any opportunity for public relations. Knowing fully well that the national media would be in attendance in Hyderabad to cover the BJP event, Naidu sent a message that he would come to address the media. Needless to point out, Naidu hogged the limelight at the expense of the BJP executive, much to the chagrin of party strategists.

This awe for Naidu and his flamboyance was the touchstone of the coalition between the two parties. Ever since Naidu joined the NDA in 1998, he had a unique leverage with the BJP leadership, particularly with prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and home minister LK Advani. Both of them were quite indulgent towards him with the belief that BJP was constricted by its ideological limitation to go across the Vindhyas and make inroads in southern India. Moreover, the BJP once had a president in M Venkaiah Naidu who was overawed by Naidu.

Chandrababu Naidu used the BJPs perceived vulnerability to the hilt and always exploited the situation to his advantage. Remember the manner in which Chandrababu arm-twisted Venkaiah Naidu to grant the maximum share of food grains to Andhra Pradesh even at the expense of other states. Similarly, in the corridors of power, his method of extracting the maximum from the NDA coalition government was the stuff of legend.

Back then, Narendra Modi was not a big leader as he had just taken over as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001 and his image was sullied in some quarters by the post-Godhra riots. But Modi had keenly watched the manner in which Naidu had often been coercing the BJP leadership to fall in line in the name of the coalition even if it caused damage to the organic growth of BJP in the state. Since Modi was not in a leadership role, he did not come in the way of the party leaderships self-limiting perception of state politics.

In playing the brinkmanship game once again now, Chandrababu might run the risk of mistaking the Modi-Amit Shah combine for the Vajpayee-Advani duo. Things have changed drastically. Unlike Vajpayee and Advani who were quite convinced of the partys inability to grow in the south and had sought an alliance with regional groups, Modi and Shah outright reject any idea of such an affliction for the BJP. On the contrary, they believe in encouraging an organic and robust growth of the party which must not be encumbered by the coalition partners in certain states. This is the precise the reason why Shiv Sena, the oldest ally of the BJP, has been facing trouble in Maharashtra.

The Modi-Shah leadership is wary of the fact that the bad deeds of the alliance partners often hamper the growth of the BJP as it happened in Punjab. The party leadership has evolved a strategy not to be hampered by alliance partners incapacities. The Modi-Shah definition of coalition dharma is distinctly different from the good old days of the Vajpayee-Advani era.

At the same time, memories have also been playing a critical role in defining the contours of the new NDA coalition. Chandrababu is seen to be in the habit of running after minority votes as the election draws near. Even when the NDA lost elections in 2004 and he was routed in Andhra, Chandrababu blamed his alliance with the BJP for his defeat. However, the reality was starkly different. He lost it because of his sheer flamboyance that convinced him of his electoral infallibility under the image of a suave and cyber-savvy chief minister. His party, the TDP, badly lost in rural Andhra Pradesh while YS Rajasekhara Reddy of the Congress had emerged as the new hero who subdued Naidu for a major part of a decade till his death in a chopper crash in 2009.

Apparently, Naidus posturing comes from his own political insecurities. Given the all-around decimation of regional parties across the country, he fears that a resurgent BJP may relegate him to an extreme background position which does not align with his usual political flamboyance of the past. And if he loses the election, he would run the risk of being a relic and be replaced by a new genre of politicians in Andhra Pradesh. The Modi-Shah duo may just have called his bluff this time. Their steadfast refusal to bend to his demands seems to show they have a plan for Andhra without Naidu.
The Congress on Wednesday said that the TDP's decision to pull out of the NDA government at the Centre was 'too little, too late'

New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday said that the TDP's decision to pull out of the NDA government at the Centre was "too little, too late" as it "has done nothing" to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh in the past four years.

This is too little and too late. The TDP has been an ally of the BJP for four years now and has done nothing to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh," senior Congress leader from Andhra Pradesh and former union minister MM Pallam Raju said.

His remarks came soon after Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu, in a late night press conference, announced that his party's two central ministers - civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology YS Chowdary - would resign from the government on Thursday.

Raju said the TDP has "abandoned" the interests of the state and that this is political posturing in view of the prevailing public mood.

Another Congress leader, when asked if the TDP pull-out of the NDA could create any potential of understanding with the Congress, said there was no such possibility.

For all these years the Congress has been struggling to secure what is rightfully the due of the state and the TDP has "sacrificed" the state's interests and is now indulging in political posturing. "Pulling out ministers from the government means nothing," the party leader said.

Commenting on the development, CPI leader D Raja said, "This clearly shows cracks have appeared in NDA...It needs to be seen what Naidu does after this."

Political parties in Andhra Pradesh have been demanding special category status for the state after Telangana was carved out of it in 2014.

Naidu's announcement came barely hours after Union finance minister Arun Jaitley told a press conference in New Delhi this evening that funds equivalent to what a special category state receives would be extended to Andhra Pradesh, but drew a line saying politics cannot increase the quantum of money.

We have now come out of the NDA. Party-to-party (TDP-BJP ties) issue will be decided later, Naidu added, hinting that their alliance may continue in the future.

"When the intended purpose (of joining the Union Cabinet) has not been served, there is no point in continuing. For me the sole agenda is to safeguard the interests of the state, he said.
While in other places, the dismantling of statues marked change already taken place, in Tripura, the act seems to have taken place to force a change.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the Tripura Assembly election has led to the highest amount of news coverage that the state has received in recent decades. In the aftermath of the election, celebratory actions such as the public demolition of the statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin garnered the mainstream medias attention. However, the attack on the Left cadre, their offices and sympathisers did not receive even a fraction of the coverage, despite all of this happening simultaneously. The celebratory spectacle masked the organised violence.

The destruction of Lenins statue is not an isolated case of destruction of historical heritage, even though it is being seen as such and is even being compared with the systematic dismantling of Lenin statues in Russia and eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The analogy is misplaced for various reasons. In post-Soviet Russia, as well as most of Europe and the United States (in the last case, Confederate monuments as an example), statues of only such people have been destroyed who have been seen as symbols of oppression  of slavery, tyranny and mass violence. In the third world, symbols of colonialism or foreign rule have been destroyed.

In Tripura, the act is nothing but a reflection of hate. Further, in most cases mentioned above, there hasn't been destruction  the statues have either been dismantled or relocated to a park, museum or visual archive, with tags that educate people about the significance of the structure (in whatever way, right or wrong). There are many examples of this. For instance, Soviet symbols in post-Soviet Russia have not been entirely eradicated. Parks have been created of dismantled statues. They are seen as an essential part of history, one which is no longer upheld, and yet is owned. In Germany, Nazi structures and monuments were preserved to educate the people about the horrors of the nation in that era, as well as the popular bigotry it mobilised. The cultural and architectural legacy of East Germany was not desecrated by united capitalist Germany.

In that sense, what happened in Tripura is a barbaric destruction, a show of power carried out by kicking around the broken head of Lenin.

Lenin himself was against the wanton destruction of symbols of Tsarist Russia. Built by the toil of the masses, palaces and monuments and galleries could, in his view, be used in new, educative ways  so that knowledge would be preserved and advanced. The Soviet Union under him allowed for cultural forms developed by the bourgeoisie to subsist  ballet as an example. Cuba, and to some extent pre-Cultural Revolution China, followed this. Stalin, of course, reversed this policy. Post-Soviet Russia discarded the older ideology but did not wholly abandon the socio-cultural sensibilities of the earlier state, built over seven decades. It is a little sad that the statue of a man so sensitive towards labour and symbolism should have had this fate.

Destroying statues is also a form of rewriting history  an attempt to sink into oblivion what is part of historical baggage. It is an attempt to erase popular memory, of whatever kind, with regard to the particular statue targeted and the related values and things it stands for. In the case of Lenin, it is the ideas of world revolution, emancipation of the oppressed and socialism, whereas in the case of Periyar, it is atheism, Dravdianism, social justice and womens rights.

Further, most instances of destruction of statues follow regime changes of a serious order. The destruction of Lenin statues in post-Soviet Russia or eastern Europe, again, are examples. Or Saddams statues in Iraq, Gaddafi statues in Libya, or the old regime structures after the Iranian Revolution. In Tripura, it was simply a victory in an election, within the same constitutional and secular framework of democracy  only with the complicity of the state  the new operative factor being state protection. While in other places the dismantling of statues marked change already taken place, in Tripura, the act seems to have taken place to force a change. The Union government since 2014 in terms of blatant communalism has legislated less and abetted more  the current constitutional framework does not allow much elbow room for majoritarian fascism.

Abetment opens up an extra political avenue: the masking of political violence as popular sentiment and the cadre hiding under the garb of the mob. Saffron-leaning narratives are already following this tactic. As an example, Sreemoy Talukdar, in this article, justifies the political violence against CPM cadre/offices and the demolition of the statue by claiming that it is a reflection of popular anger. He lists out incidents which have been dwarfed by the political violence meted out by parties such as the Congress, RJD, JDU, SP, BSP and others, and altogether whitewashed the role and actions of historically the most violent political elements in India  the BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. Further, Manik Sarkar was a far better chief minister than Pinaryi Vijayan or Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and does not have a record of acting to the publics detriment the way the latter of the other two has.

However, those (such as the far left in JNU) who are gloating over the vandalism or see it of not much consequence (as just another statue), are short-sighted. Lenin has symbolised the heritage of revolution and support to national liberation the world over. He was a friend of the anti-colonial struggle in India (something the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS werent) as elsewhere, as acknowledged even by Bal Gangadhar Tilak  and was one of the first to firmly tie the date of a socialist future with the emancipation of the colonies.

The utter ignorance, hatred and barbarism involved in the act of demolishing the statue is a precursor of what to expect from these forces and this regime. It suggests that the regime will have no respect for history, multi-culturalism, democracy or internationalism. It is not just an attack on the CPM, but a tiding of the direction our polity is taking. So far, no substantial or sincere criticism has come up from other political parties, and nearly none when it comes to the accompanying political violence beyond the vandalism. The moral sincerity of the statements of the prime minister and Mamata Banerjee (who conducted a similar massacre of CPM supporters and cadre in 2011) can be reasonably doubted on this one count.

In a way, the trajectory of saffron political violence is in line with the barbaric practice set in motion with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the violent semi-seditious speeches that mobilised lumpen elements from different parts of the country, as also the many routinely defaced and broken Ambedkar statues (often done in secrecy). Recently, there has been a call by a top BJP leader in Tamil Nadu for destroying the statue of EV Ramasamy Naicker (Periyar), one of which (in Vellore) was later damaged , following the incident in Tripura. It mirrors the destruction of historical and cultural symbols, artifacts, manuscripts and structures by the Islamic State in West Asia more than any post-Soviet or postcolonial destruction. It is more in keeping with the Nazi tradition of creating spectacles that are shows of power and brute intimidation, in this case, harnessing the immediate aftermath of an anti-incumbency vote. Nothing like this exists in non-fascist countries, the Tiananmen Square incident being one of the few exceptions, though enacted without a watershed moment of regime change, of course.

The destruction of statues in the absence of a far-reaching revolution (which is nearly always accompanied by a public consensus) can only lead to and offer a precedent for the normalisation of statue destruction as a retributive act. That this is true has been proved by the vandalisation of the statues of Periyar in Tamil Nadu, Shyama Prasad Mookherji in Bengal and Ambedkar in Meerut.

The specificity of Tripura lends another angle: the violent assertion of newfound political dominance over a long-standing incumbent, closing the chapter on the latters rule. The use of brute force is seen as essential to suppress competing ideologies and political discourses, especially when a key goal is saffronising a yet relatively unsaffronised territory. The simultaneous attacks on the Left cadre and sympathisers serve the purpose of dispersing and intimidating rival cadre bases as well as reducing the vocality of supporters for years to come. This tactic is reminiscent of the Mamata Banerjee regimes takeover in Bengal in 2011, initially followed by consistent violence and the driving out of CPM cadre and later the repainting of public buildings in Kolkata in green.

As the creation of a Hindu rashtra is the central aim of the BJP and RSS, beyond seasonal trysts with political power, a violent, religiously motivated cadre becomes the first line of defence of the intellectual project of redefining the nation. There have been other softer forms of ideological bigotry  the renaming of roads, buildings and places (notably Aurangzeb Road to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road) or the overall historical manipulation  such as the saffronisation of education, demonising minorities on a historical basis, the appropriation of Ambedkar, distorting his ideals to validate the saffron agenda (and the false portrayal of him not wanting to challenge the Hindu social order) while attempting to appease the perceived lower caste vote banks, and the appropriation of Sardar Patel, GB Pant and Madan Mohan Malviya; or the renaming of UPA welfare schemes or structures built under the latters ambit. So there have been two targets  our diverse past and the previous Congress regimes (as the Left usually lacks mainstream icons for the saffron forces to desecrate). The other half of the process involved building up right-wing leaders of the present and past as political giants, while exaggerating the nearly non-existent contribution of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS to the freedom struggle. Last year, there was a move to rename 12 colleges in Assam, of all places, after Deen Dayal Upadhyay. Every month, there are dozens of favourable and borderline fairytale books released on the prime minister by saffron and allied interests, a practice that started barely six months after his coming to power.

In addition, a committee (full of political appointments) has been formed in January to specifically rewrite Indian history (rather than just update specific textbooks, or an actual tangible charge) so as to highlight the nations Hindu heritage. Manmohan Vaidya has been quoted by Reuters as saying:

The true colour of Indian history is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewrite history."

The report further states 

"According to the minutes of the history committee's first meeting, Mr Dikshit, the chairman, said it was 'essential to establish a correlation' between ancient Hindu scriptures and evidence that Indian civilisation stretches back many thousands of years. Doing so would help bolster both conclusions the committee wants to reach: that events described in Hindu texts are real, and today's Hindus are descendants of those times.

Culture minister Mahesh Sharma told Reuters...'I worship the Ramayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it is fiction are absolutely wrong.'

During the last three years, Sharma said, his ministry has organised hundreds of workshops and seminars across the country....The aim, he said, is to build a fresh narrative to balance the liberal and secular philosophy espoused by India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and furthered by successive governments."

One major example of the above is the curious case of how the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) held a three-day national conference (5-7 March) on Indian History: Emerging Perspectives. In the conference, there was little discussion on the actual advances in historical research and methodology and the focus was almost entirely on linking Indias heritage with Vedic culture, exaggerating and valorising the contents of ancient texts as scientifically pioneering as well as presenting a picture of modern history more suited to the BJPs political ends.

This new history is equally inaccurate and politically motivated when it comes to aspects of the modern period. Savarkar, BS Moonje, Shyama Prasad Mookherji, NB Khare are no longer presented as the violence-inciting fringe elements that they were. They are projected as mainstream Hindu nationalist forces who fought for freedom  which is a term more applicable to the Congress right-wing of the 1930s and 40s. Closer to the truth is the fact that the BJP itself is today a mainstream Hindu nationalist (some academics use the term semi-fascist or fascist) political force. Something that differentiates the Hindu nationalist Congress right-wing of the 1940s from the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha of then and the BJP-RSS of today is that the Congress right believed in electoral democracy, in staying within the Congress despite having a Hindu orthodox outlook, and it did not have fascist tendencies.

The BJP itself has been rather tactical in its engagement when it comes to propaganda. The Jan Sangh demanded the Information and Broadcasting Ministry in 1977 and it was handed to LK Advani. Murli Manohar Joshis role as the union HRD minister had the sole purpose of pushing the Sangh agenda forward  securing state subsidy for RSS-run schools, putting communal historians in positions of power, defunding public assets, and saffronising school texts (including non-history textbooks). A watershed moment in historical whitewashing occurred when, under AB Vajpayee, VD Savarkars portrait was installed in Parliament.

Ultimately, the debate over the demolition of the Lenin statue is needless, as the act is a signifier of a steep descent into organised political intolerance in the name of religion, the nation and the public by majoritarian forces.

A nation without the Left can only be a right-wing nation, no matter what is wrong with the Left parties. The proverbial Overton window would shift rightwards. The complicity of the state in this act and the refusal to read what it signifies spells far more than simply the felling of a statue of a leader revered by some. The incident showcases the division of labour between a right-wing project aiming for a Hindu state, stormtroopers who effect it by more violent means and an administration that coolly allows it before stepping in to put a brake until the next outrage.

Saib Bilaval is a PhD scholar in Modern and Contemporary History at Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
NDPP leader Neiphiu Rio has been sworn in as Chief Minister of Nagaland by Governor PB Acharya at a public function on Thursday

Kohima: NDPP leader Neiphiu Rio has been sworn in as Chief Minister of Nagaland by Governor PB Acharya at a public function on Thursday.

#WATCH Swearing-in ceremony of Nagaland CM designate Neiphiu Rio & others in Kohima https://t.co/vqQaAfCSSt  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

This will be Rio's fourth term as chief minister of the northeastern state. Rio is heading the 'People's Democratic Alliance' government in partnership with the BJP.

BJP's Y Patton was administered the oath as the deputy chief minister by the governor.

Ten other ministers were also administered oath of office. They included five from the BJP, three from the Nationalist Democratic Progresstive Party (NDPP), an Independent candidate and a JD(U) MLA.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union minister Kiren Rijiju, BJP president Amit Shah and the party general secretary Ram Madhav were all present at the swearing-in ceremony. Outgoing chief minister TR Zeliang was also present.

The chief ministers of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya also attended Rio's swearing-in.

Rio had staked claim to form the government on 4 March with the support of 32 legislators in the 60-member House, 18 from NDPP, 12 of the BJP, one of the JD(U) and an Independent MLA.
Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said there is a general atmosphere of 'intimidation' in India where there is politics of dividing people and using their anger to win elections

Singapore: Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said there is a general atmosphere of "intimidation" in India where there is politics of dividing people and using their anger to win elections.

Speaking at a panel discussion at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Rahul also said that there is a challenge to the institutional structure of India.

"There is a particular type of politics that's not only happening in India but in a number of places  of dividing people, of using (their) anger to win elections and that's what is happening in India," he said.

"If you ask me what am I proud about my country, it is the idea of plurality. It's the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they won't face any problem and that is being challenged", he said.

Commenting on the recent controversy of four senior Supreme Court judges holding an unprecedented press conference, Rahul said, "they actually went out to the press and said listen we need the people to hear our voice because there is something fundamentally wrong."

"I don't know if you know the details about the comments they (judges) were making but the centre of the issue is the case of (BJP president) Amit Shah. So, there is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country," he said, apparently referring to the issue of alleged mysterious death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

Shah was discharged as an accused in the case.

He alleged that there is a "very very aggressive and organised attack on the system and on the judiciary. If you speak to the press, if you talk to business people, they will also tell you that we feel intimidated. so there is a general atmosphere of intimidation."

The Congress president said that the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned was that an India where everybody is comfortable regardless of religion, community, regardless of state.

"The idea that anybody coming to India, even the foreigner coming to India, feel comfortable in the country and that idea is being challenged now," he asserted.

Responding to a question from the audience, Rahul accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in anti-minorities politics.

"Mahatma Gandhi died protecting minorities. We, the Congress party, have been protecting minority people for the last 70 years. We don't like India where people are persecuted, where people are being beaten up for what they eat, what they say and what they wear," he said.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi controls the law making, he controls the Uttar Pradesh police, he controls the Haryana police, he controls these things. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India," Rahul said, without elaborating.

He asserted that "we will fight him and we will beat him" in the election.
Rahul Gandhi has probably learnt one thing from Prime Minister Narendra Modi  the significance of targeting non-resident Indians (NRIs).

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has probably learnt one thing from his arch rival and political opponent Prime Minister Narendra Modi  the significance of targeting non-resident Indians (NRIs) with frequent visits to countries with a substantial Indian diaspora.

After his Bahrain visit in January shortly after becoming the party president, Rahul is now on a visit to Singapore and Malaysia. He will be in Singapore for two days on 8 and 9 March, and spend a day in Malaysia on 10 March.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi met with Indian-origin CEOs of companies in Singapore and discussed a range of issues including jobs, investments and the prevalent economic conditions. pic.twitter.com/CNFTGOgf46  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

On Thursday, besides visiting the Indian National Army (INA) Memorial, Rahul will meet Jawed Ashraf, High Commissioner of India to Singapore and the foreign affairs minister of Singapore Vivian Balakrishnanan. Similar to his lecture at the University of California, Berkley in the United States in September 2017, he will address students at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. The Congress president will also have a meeting and an interactive session with Indian entrepreneurs and promoters based in Singapore.

With the rise of Modi in Indian politics in 2014, the participation of NRIs, which was earlier limited to diaspora events and conventions, assumed greater importance. As prime minister, Modi visited several countries that have a substantial Indian population and used NRI platforms effectively to enhance his brand equity as a popular leader.

Similarly, Rahul had visited Bahrain to attend the biennial conference of the Global Organisation of Persons of Indian Origin (GOPIO) in the second week of January.

Prior to becoming the party chief, Rahul had been on a two-week tour to the United States in September 2017. Between 2015 and 2017, he had visited the United Kingdom, United States, Turkey and Italy. His speech at Berkeley drew public attention because he made a coherent attack on Modi's policies and raised important issues related to the country.

After his Bahrain tour, Rahul had said that Canada could be a subsequent destination.

Rahuls thrust is on connecting with NRIs. His next visits could be Canada, Europe and Australia, where there are more people of Indian origin. We have found that these people, who have a global outlook, are not appreciative of the present political scenario in India under the NDA government, where fringe elements have taken over mainstream politics. The latest example is vandalising of Lenins statue in Tripura by the BJP cadre, a Congress leader said.

Why is the Congress addressing NRIs?

In the last ten years  especially after Modi becoming the prime minister  more persons of Indian origin (PIOs) are taking interest in Indian politics and acting as influencers. NRIs are visiting their respective native towns and villages in India during elections to campaign for political parties and motivate the local residents to vote. This has emerged as a big catchment area.

Both during the UPA government and before that, this segment remained somehow unaddressed by the Congress due to the approach of those who were in charge. Now, were moving ahead with a focussed approach keeping NRIs in mind. Rahul, by meeting students, academicians, entrepreneurs and politicians, is taking up issues related to Indian politics, another Congress leader, who had worked with former prime minister Manmohan Singh during the UPA regime told Firstpost on the condition of anonymity.

In comparison to the past, more PIOs are taking interest in Indian politics and acting as influencers. Modi has been actively trying to woo this segment to the BJPs advantage. The Congress should not be left behind as the party has a large number of followers living abroad who believe in its ideology. They would like to see the party back in power, he added.

Further, diaspora communities have emerged as hubs to scout investment opportunities for the government and in the nation-building process.

I want NRI leaders to be involved in the Congress party. Even though you are not in the country, you should be part of nation-building, Rahul had said in Bahrain.

Third, with a bill to grant voting rights (by proxy) to NRIs due to be introduced soon in the Parliament, and Modi wooing this vital 'international constituency' of Indian electorates, the Congress doesnt want to be left behind.

With a clear eye on the next Lok Sabha election, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in January had brought together PIOs from 23 countries to attend the PIO Parliamentarian Conference in New Delhi.

There are estimated to be 2.5 crore NRIs who are likely to get voting rights before the next Lok Sabha election.

The brains behind Rahuls foreign visits and his meetings with the NRIs are former chairman of National Knowledge Commission Sam Pitroda (who had worked with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi for over a decade, and Congress leaders Milind Deora and Shashi Tharoor.

According to party sources, Rahul is scheduled to address a gathering of entrepreneurs, businesspersons and a youth conclave in Malaysia, which has been organised by Pitroda.

In his earlier addresses abroad, Rahul did not mince words while criticising the Modi government. However, on the other hand, he was also honest in accepting positive aspects of Modis work.

Modi is a very good communicator, probably much better than me...If Make in India is implemented well, its a powerful idea...the scheme should be aimed at small and medium businesses, Rahul had said in 2017.

He even admitted frankly in Berkley that a certain amount of arrogance had crept into the Congress midway through UPA-II, and it had stopped having conversations with people.

The Congress president is trying to pump energy into his party, which had recently lost out to the BJP in elections in three North Eastern states. It needs to be seen how the Congress is able to garner support from the diaspora to its advantage, ahead of the Lok Sabha election.
The Dalton Board of Education will hold a called meeting for the purpose of a community listening session on school safety next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Dalton High School theatre.

Board members and the superintendent will hear suggestions from those in attendance regarding enhancing the safety and security of schools.

"As the board and district move forward with enhancements to school security, it is important to hear from the public regarding suggestions to be considered," officials said.

The public is encouraged to attend.
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), a key ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government after the Centre ruled out Special Category Status for Andhra Pradesh, among other demands.

Amaravati: Weeks of simmering tension between the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) finally came to a boil on Wednesday as the TDP, a key ally of the BJP, decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government after the Centre ruled out Special Category Status for Andhra Pradesh, among other demands.

"We have decided to pull out of the Union government, because the Centre has failed to meet the demands of the TDP on special status for Andhra Pradesh, which was promised at the time of bifurcation, and other demands relating to the state's finances," Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu told the media late on Wednesday night after holding consultations with the party colleagues.

"We wanted to convey the information about pulling out from the government to Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of courtesy, but he could not be contacted... My Officer on Special Duty (OSD) has conveyed it to the PM's OSD," Naidu said.

Naidu also announced to the media that the two TDP ministersP. Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and Y.S. Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology)will tender their resignations on Thursday morning.

The TDP is second-largest party after the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In the Lok Sabha, the TDP has 16 members and in the Rajya Sabha, it has six members. It is the first pre-poll partner of the BJP to pull out of the Modi government after being a part of it for nearly four years.

Naidu's announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in New Delhi, told the media that granting special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations. Jaitley did not make any new commitment, except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said. "They (the Centre) are determined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said.

The drastic decision of the TDP may not have come as a shock to the BJP, which has already conveyed to its two ministers in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to be ready to quit any moment. Dr. Kamineni Srinivas (Medical and Health) and P. Manikyala Rao (Endowments) may quit the Naidu cabinet on Thursday morning, hours before the budget presentation by Finance Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu in the assembly.

Naidu held consultations with the party's MPs, ministers and important leaders before taking the decision and making it public. The MPs, including the two ministers, expressed a unanimous opinion that Jaitley's statement on the demands for special status to Andhra Pradesh was disappointing and discouraging.

All parties in the state, including the ruling TDP and the main opposition YSR Congress Party, have been agitating in Delhi demanding grant of special status to Andhra Pradesh. Agitations are also going on across the state.

Naidu said at the time of making the alliance, the BJP had said it backed the demand for grant of special category status for Andhra Pradesh, but now it was singing a different tune. He said the promises on statehood and other financial demands of the state have not been honoured by the BJP and he could not make any compromise on the state's interest. "TDP is not for power but for self-respect. We decided there is no point in continuing in the government," he added.

Naidu said Jaitley's comments suggest that Andhra Pradesh is asking for too much. He also slammed the finance minister for saying "sentiments will not decide the quantum of funds". He said he made 29 trips to Delhi, met the prime minister and other ministers and tried to do his best to ensure justice for the state. "I am not angry with anybody," he added.

Click here for LIVE updates
Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee used to wait for Chandrababu Naidu, but Modi only found time to meet the TDP chief twice between 2016 and 2018

In April 2014, at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) central leadership was on the verge of sealing the deal for an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, the saffron party's cadre in Srikakulam strongly opposed the move, saying they can't allow the TDP to gain ground in the district.

Four years later, on Wednesday late night, when Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu confirmed that the TDP is walking out of the central government, BJP cadres in Srikakulam were all smiles.

The state BJP has never been comfortable with having TDP as an ally, believing that their growth trajectory was being limited by the regional party. So, Naidu's decision to quit the NDA government has resulted in a wave of optimism in both TDP and BJP camps.

The break-up happened on Wednesday, but seeds of discord were sown two years ago, after the Narendra Modi government didn't react to the TDP's demand  that all commitments made at the time of Andhra Pradesh's bifurcation be realised. Political compulsions forced Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to extend the TDP an olive branch, offering them the promise of a special package instead of special status to Andhra Pradesh, and Naidu reluctantly agreed to it.

But just when things started appearing peaceful again, the 2018 Union Budget upset Naidu again. The BJP didn't agree to any of Andhra Pradesh's demands: Special status for the state after the creation of Telangana to tide over resultant loss of revenue; financial support in establishing a new state capital at Amaravati; and the Polavaram project.

Among these, the special status issue took centrestage, as parties and leaders found themselves dipped in an inkpot of emotion in Andhra Pradesh. Public sentiment started to grow over the issue, which directly impacted a slew of grievances, including losing state capital Hyderabad to Telangana. Politicians also made it a prestige issue.

Chandrababu Naidu's main rival in the state, YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy, held a padyatra that raked up the special status issue and acted as gasoline to the fire which Naidu was trying hard to douse. Naidu, a shrewd politician, saw a large number of people perceiving the Centre's stand as a betrayal to Andhra Pradesh. With Assembly elections due next year, Naidu decided to act, and made his calculations. He wanted to avoid being tagged alongside the NDA government, which had failed to grant Andhra Pradesh special status. He started sending feelers of dissatisfaction to the Centre, but it fell on deaf ears.

TDP, which was under political pressure to demonstrate its strong base, had to move fast. In the last 48 hours, the party's MPs in Delhi and MLAs and MLCs in Amaravati decided to offer their full support to Naidu, urging him to withdraw from the government.

However, the chief minister, a master in striking strategic alliances with the Centre, knew the knack of bargaining with the government. He took little time in analysing the repercussions of a possible withdrawal. He also failed to understand Modi's cold shoulder treatment. In the last four years, he has visited Delhi 29 times seeking central funds for the development of the state. But in all these trips, he could meet the prime minister only a few times.

Naidu, the kingmaker in 1996-98 and from 1998 onwards, who was the principal ally to the Right-wing NDA governments, was finding himself in a tight spot which was suffocating him. Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee used to wait for Naidu, but Modi only found time to meet him twice between 2016 and 2018. There was also a gap of 20 months between the two, which humiliated the TDP chief.

During campaigning ahead of the polls, Modi was all in favour of Andhra Pradesh, and Naidu and went ahead with the commitment and support at Tirupati during a rally. Later, Modi was the chief guest at the foundation laying of Amaravati as the new capital city. The prime minister brought special water and soil from Varanasi, giving out the impression that the future is bright and Andhra Pradesh will flourish.

Political pundits asserted that Naidu was confident that the Modi government would accelerate Enforcement Directorate cases against Jagan Mohan Reddy, which would break the latter's backbone and the YSR Congress party. This didn't happen, and instead, Jagan's proximity only grew with Modi. Naidu was alert to the developments. Naidu was also irritated with the refusal of increase in seats in Andhra Pradesh Assembly. And special status was the third and final nail that pushed Naidu into a corner and forced him to take a call on the relationship with Modi.

With Lok Sabha and Assembly elections a year away, Naidu is trying to create a new brand for himself. At this junction, he cannot let any negativity derail his dreams. Politically, the TDP seems all too aware that the Centre's stock is down with many sections of society, especially farmers. The Gujarat election was a pointer and has been followed by the BJP's drubbing in by-elections in Rajasthan too. Though victory in the North East for the BJP pushed Naidu to delay his call, a few other considerations boosted his thought process.

Chief among these was the knowledge that the BJP is not growing in Andhra Pradesh and cannot be a thorn in the TDP's side in an election. Besides, the TDP is confident of winning the Muslim vote, as was demonstrated in the Nandyal by-election. Thus, he felt, it's the BJP which should be running after the TDP, not the other way around.

Now with TDP ministers pulling out of the Modi government, all eyes are on Naidu on his next move. Will he exit the NDA altogether? He will take his time, as he is aware that despite knowing the political consequences, any action can lead to repercussions.
Reuters

Businesses can now describe themselves in Google Maps listings as being owned, led or founded by women, the Alphabet Inc unit announced 7 March.

The feature would roll out this week in celebration of International Womens Day, on 8 March, Google said in a blog post.

Users would see the new descriptor alongside details in business listings that say whether shops have offerings such as kosher food, outdoor seating and Wi-Fi.

An icon with the female gender symbol would appear prominently on the listing, according to a screenshot in the blog post.

Google employee suggestions led to the women-led attribute as well as one launched last year that identifies businesses as friendly to gay, lesbian, bisexual queer and transgender individuals.

We strive to organise the worlds information in a way that is inclusive of all people, Google spokeswoman Liz Davidoff said by email. Weve added the women-led attribute to empower women-led businesses to succeed online and help people find places to visit using Google Maps and Search.
The attorney representing a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who is suing Donald Trump has said that the US President's personal lawyer had a restraining order issued against her and continues to pressurize her to keep silent, a media report said.

Washington: The attorney representing a porn star who is suing Donald Trump has said that the US President's personal lawyer had a restraining order issued against her and continues to pressurise her to keep silent, a media report said.

Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, has filed a lawsuit against Trump in which she cites multiple instances of the President's legal counsel, Michael Cohen, working to keep her from speaking out about an alleged sexual encounter, the CNN report said.

Clifford's attorney Michael Avenatti said a private mediator issued the temporary restraining order against her on behalf of Cohen on 27 February, and has cautioned Clifford to stay silent as recently as Wednesday.

"Earlier today (Wednesday), Cohen through his attorney, (Lawrence) Rosen, further threatened my client in an effort to prevent her from telling the truth about what really happened," Avenatti told CNN on Wednesday night. "We do not take kindly to these threats, nor will we be intimidated."

According to the legal complaint filed in a California state court, Clifford is claiming that the non-disclosure agreement is void because Trump never signed it himself. The "hush" agreement allegedly regards an affair involving the two several years before Trump was in office.

Just weeks before the 2016 election, Cohen paid Clifford $130,000, an admission he made in a statement last month.

"Despite Trump's failure to sign the 'hush' agreement, Cohen proceeded to cause $130,000 to be wired to the trust account of Clifford's attorney. He did so even though there was no legal agreement and thus no written non-disclosure agreement whereby Clifford was restricted from disclosing the truth about Trump," the document stated.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders fielded questions about the payment and said Trump did not know about it, reports CNN. "Not that I'm aware of," Sanders responded when pressed on whether Trump knew about the payment. "Anything beyond what I've already given you, I would refer you to the president's outside counsel."

Sanders also said that "the arbitration was won in the president's favour", admitting for the first time that a non-disclosure agreement did exist, and that the president is involved.

When asked about the comments Sanders made regarding the arbitration, Avenatti told CNN, "President Trump hasn't won anything relating to Clifford."
Religious violence flared anew in the hills of central Sri Lanka on Wednesday despite a state of emergency, with Buddhist mobs sweeping through towns and villages, burning Muslim homes and businesses and leaving victims barricaded inside mosques.

Mullegama, Sri Lanka: Religious violence flared anew in the hills of central Sri Lanka on Wednesday despite a state of emergency, with Buddhist mobs sweeping through towns and villages, burning Muslim homes and businesses and leaving victims barricaded inside mosques.

The government ordered popular social media networks blocked in an attempt to stop the violence from spreading, and thousands of police and soldiers spread out across the worst-hit areas.

The police also ordered a curfew across much of the region for a third straight day, trying to calm the situation.

Hundreds of Muslim residents of Mullegama, a village in the hills of central Sri Lanka, barricaded themselves inside a local mosque after Buddhist mobs attacked their homes Wednesday morning accusing them of stealing the donation box of a nearby temple. At least 20 Muslim homes appeared badly damaged and flames engulfed one two-story home.

The Muslims hiding in the mosque, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said police prevented them from saving their property and did nothing to stop the attackers.

One Sinhala Buddhist man who was part of the attack died in an explosion and another man was injured, according to the men in the mosque. A local Buddhist man said the Muslims were using improvised explosives, which the men in the mosque denied.

The police officials said they could not immediately identify what caused the explosion or who was responsible.

Mullegama Piyaratana , a Buddhist monk at the temple, said the attacks on the Muslim homes took place after some people pelted the temple with rocks late Tuesday. He would not identify who attacked the temple.

In the nearby small town of Katugastota, Ikram Mohamed, a Muslim, stood outside the wreckage of the textile shop where he worked, after Sinhalese Buddhist mobs set it on fire. He and the owner had closed the shop Wednesday morning when police announced the curfew. They returned to find it destroyed, and clothing and dressmaker dummies smoking in the ruins.

"There are many good Sinhalese people," he said. "This is being done by a few jealous people."

Muslims own many of the small businesses in Sri Lanka, a fact that many believe has helped make them targets as Buddhist-Muslim relations have worsened in recent years amid the rise of hard-line Buddhist groups, which accuse Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites.

Area residents said mobs swept through at least two towns in the central hills Wednesday, attacking two mosques and a string of Muslim-owned shops and buildings.

An internet company official, meanwhile, said the government had ordered popular social media networks blocked in areas near the violence, and slowed dramatically across the rest of the country.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity under company policy, said the order was for Facebook, Instagram, Viber and WhatsApp. Some of those networks appeared to be blocked in Colombo, the capital, while others worked sporadically and very slowly.

President Maithripala Sirisena declared the state of emergency on Tuesday, though a day later, details of the decree remained unclear. While the hills were flooded with soldiers and policemen ordering people off the street, little, if anything, appeared to have changed elsewhere in the country.

While government officials have not directly accused Buddhist extremists of being behind the violence, many comments appeared aimed at them. The government will "act sternly against groups that are inciting religious hatred," Cabinet minister Rauff Hakeem said Tuesday after a meeting with the president.

The emergency announcement came after Buddhist mobs swept through towns outside Kandy, burning at least 11 Muslim-owned shops and homes. The attacks followed reports that a Buddhist man had been killed by a group of Muslims. Police fired tear gas into the crowds, and later announced a curfew in the town.

The U.N. office in Colombo condemned the violence. "The United Nations urges authorities to take immediate action against perpetrators and to ensure that appropriate measures are swiftly taken to restore normalcy in affected areas," it said in a statement Wednesday.

Denmark and Norway warned their citizens in Sri Lanka about the state of emergency, saying they should be "cautious, stay away from large crowds and demonstrations, follow media and listen to advice from local authorities." The Norwegian foreign ministry urged people "to stay in touch with family and relatives in Norway."

Sri Lanka has long been divided between the majority Sinhalese, who are overwhelmingly Buddhist, and minority Tamils who are Hindu, Muslim and Christian. The country remains deeply scarred by its 1983-2009 civil war, when Tamil rebels fought to create an independent homeland.

While the rebels were eventually crushed, the Buddhist-Muslim religious divide has taken hold in recent years.
The Trump administration's lawsuit challenging California's efforts to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally served as the latest warning shot at communities nationwide with so-called sanctuary policies.

Sacramento (US): The Trump administration's lawsuit challenging California's efforts to protect immigrants who are in the country illegally served as the latest warning shot at communities nationwide with so-called sanctuary policies.

As he excoriated California officials for their policies and actions, US attorney general Jeff Sessions warned against "rewarding" people who enter the country illegally. "It's a rejection of law and it creates an open borders system," he told California law enforcement officials in Sacramento on Wednesday, just a few blocks from the state Capitol.

"Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted." Democratic Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek called Trump's lawsuit against California an attempt to "bully states," and promised to "make sure Oregon is a welcoming place for everyone, even in the face of these threats."

Oregon became America's first sanctuary state in 1987 with a law preventing law enforcement from detaining people who are in the United States illegally but have not broken other laws, and last year Oregon's Legislature doubled down on the policy with a bill to strengthen it.

In Sacramento on Wednesday, Governor Jerry Brown and state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats, called Sessions' visit and the lawsuit a political stunt and denied that they want to give immigrants free rein to enter the country illegally.

They said California is on firm legal ground with laws that limit police and employers' cooperation with federal immigration agents and require state inspections of federal detention facilities.

What Brown called "an act of war" comes as Trump is set to visit California next week for the first time since his election to see models of his proposed wall along the Mexican border.

Meanwhile, administration officials planned to meet with four Colorado state lawmakers on Wednesday who oppose so-called sanctuary policies. It was not immediately clear if representatives from other states would also attend.

The lawmakers will discuss with the White House Domestic Policy Council "how we can stop sanctuary cities, restore law and order, and prevent gangs like MS-13 from bringing violence and drugs across our borders," Republican Rep Dave Williams of Colorado Springs said in a statement.

Response to the Trump administration's lawsuit was divided along political lines, with much of the criticism coming from places that have already waged their own legal battles with the Trump administration.

"The Trump administration is now openly attacking jurisdictions that are protecting their residents from unjust and unfair treatment by federal agents," said Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor, in a tweet.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement that the administration "cannot bully or blackmail the City of Chicago into changing our values, nor can our values be bought."

The Trump administration has clashed repeatedly with Democratic mayors and state officials over its immigration policies, which have faced numerous setbacks in court.

A federal judge in November permanently blocked Trump's executive order to cut funding from sanctuary cities in lawsuits brought by two California counties  San Francisco and Santa Clara.

A federal judge in Illinois in September in a lawsuit brought by the city of Chicago said the administration could not impose tough new immigration requirements on a key federal grant, including giving federal immigration officials access to jails.

California has also sued the administration over the grant conditions and filed a separate suit to protect some young immigrants from deportation.

A federal judge in San Francisco in January blocked the Trump administration's decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, saying young immigrants were likely to suffer serious harm without court action.

The new federal lawsuit challenges specific California laws in a state that also is resisting the president on issues from marijuana policy to climate change. But comments by Sessions and Brown took the standoff to a new level on Wednesday, with Sessions calling out state and local officials for "obstruction of law enforcement" and Brown calling Sessions a liar who is pandering to Trump to save his job.

California passed sanctuary laws in response to Trump's promises to sharply ramp up the deportation of people in the US illegally. Sessions said several of them prevent US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from making deportation arrests.

Former US attorney general Eric Holder, who led the Obama administration's successful lawsuit overturning Arizona's anti-illegal immigration bill, said California and other jurisdictions are permitted to limit their cooperation with federal immigration agents.

"The Supreme Court has made really absolutely clear that states cannot be forced to divert resources to help the federal government enforce federal law," said Holder, who now works for the California Senate on contract.
The Trump administration has been threatening that it will act against countries which do not improve the trade deficit with the US.

A tariff regime to support US President Donald Trumps America first policy was always a key part of his agenda. In his first year in office, Trump did not take it up too seriously. By the end of his first year in office he has announced a slew of tariffs that threatens the global economy with a trade war.

Lets start with a full list before coming to the Indian case. There is steel and aluminium, which is going to affect mainly the European Union (EU), Mexico and Canada, of the latter two more in a bit.

Tariffs have also been imposed on washing machines and solar panels. Duties on motorbike imports from India were flayed, which attempted to placate Trumps ire by announcing that duties would be halved from the existing 100 percent. Trumps response was typically sarcastic. But there were other issues with New Delhi, of which more in a while.

As far as Mexico and Canada are concerned, Trump was prepared to eliminate the duties, if the two countries agreed a comprehensive free-trade agreement under the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement. Both countries pushed when it came to shove, which goes at least partly to show that Trumps eccentric administration does not have the heft it imagines it has. This is partially because there is a strong free-trade lobby opposed to the president. One of its members, the presidents economic advisor Gary Cohn, resigned on Wednesday, apparently over disagreements with Trumps trade policies; he was reputed to be virtually the second most influential man in the White House.

As far as washing machines and solar panels are concerned, US consumers will take a big hit as the price of washing machines and electricity will go up. It has been clearly demonstrated that US manufacturers cant fill the gap at all, far less at prices prevailing in the free-trade scenario. China and South Korea are playing a waiting game, but it is a cinch they will do something about this. But the big player is the EU. It has already signalled retaliation  a trade war, in other words  by threatening tariffs on iconic US products: Levis jeans, bourbon whiskey and motorbikes, including the now contentious Harley Davidson. In addition, it could target smaller products (in terms of volume of trade), including steel, T-shirts, bed linen, chewing tobacco, cranberries, and orange juice.

The point here is not necessarily the volumes involved (or for that matter, what US citizens pay; they will, which is why senior Republicans are opposed to the tariffs, including Paul D Ryan, the House speaker). The point is how should countries react to this destabilisation of the established global economy.

For instance, what should India do? It can take the matter lightly  after all, its just a matter of some tariff on a motorbike; and, New Delhis special relationship is more important than trying to sort out trade wars in which it is not really involved. Wrong. India is involved because this is not just a matter of a few Harleys.

Tension between the two special friends has been escalating on any number of issues since Trump came to power, especially over trade issues, with US companies and Congress pushing for cutting tariffs. It is important that India make greater efforts to lower barriers to trade, including tariff and non-tariff barriers, which will lower prices to consumers, promote development of value chains in India, a US state department official has told Reuters.

The Trump administration has been threatening that it will act against countries which do not improve the trade deficit with the US. In 2017, the US had a trade deficit of $22.9 billion with India. If Trump acts to correct these imbalances, which well he might, given his domestic policy and political agenda, and, of course, his core constituencies, the Indian economy may suddenly find itself in big trouble. It wont be a matter of exporting a few two-wheelers anymore. Strategically, therefore, India must make common cause with whichever country or bloc that is going to take on the US  China, the EU, whoever.

It is relevant here to point out that negotiations on the Doha round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) continued for almost 14 years, with India refusing to make concessions that would endanger its agricultural sector or diminish the food and income security of its farmers, until the present government caved in at Nairobi in December 2015. In that decade and a half, New Delhis special relationship flourished rather floundered.

Trump is a different kind of president  unpredictable and often vindictive, but that is no reason for India to take a pusillanimous stand. The worst is likely to happen anyway, hugs and telephone calls notwithstanding.

In other words, if the impending trade war does happen, India will have to take a clear stand  and there is little doubt with whom it needs to throw in its lot.
The White House, on Thursday, said that some countries, including Mexico and Canada, may get exemption from Donald Trump's new aluminium and steel tariffs on national security grounds.

Washington: The White House, on Thursday, said that some countries, including Mexico and Canada, may get exemption from Donald Trump's new aluminium and steel tariffs on national security grounds. This exception could be based on America's national security interest, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, days after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross insisted that there was going to be no country-specific exemptions.

Last week, Trump said that he has decided to impose a 25 percent import duty on steel and another 10 percent on aluminium. This drew a sharp reaction from the European Union and countries like China. Trump insisted that steps like these are necessary and the US would overcome any trade war as a result of this because it has a $800 billion trade deficit.

Canada has said that such an import tariff is unacceptable. However, White House said that its northern neighbour would be exempted from such a new import tariff.

"We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carveouts for Mexico and Canada based on national security and possibly for other countries as well, based on that process," Sanders told reporters. "That would be case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption," she asserted. The president, she said, has been very clear that he wants to address the trade imbalance that the US has with a number of countries. He feels that the US has been taken advantage for far too long and he's not going to allow that to continue under his watch, Sanders said.

In a tweet, Trump said that China has been asked to develop a plan for the year for a $1 billion reduction in the trade deficit. Sanders said the administration had conversations with officials last week. "We're going to continue those conversations with them," she said.

Responding to a question on global reaction, Sanders said Trump has been talking about this for a long time. "It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Other countries have created unfair trade policies for decades that have harmed our national and economic security," she said. "The president wants a strong economy and a strong national security, and a strong US economy benefits all Americans, particularly by helping us maintain a strong military and defend US national security interests. And he's going to continue every day to fight for making sure that we have strong, both national and economic security," Sanders said.
Since the incidents of communal violence have been reported in Sri Lanka, different countries have reacted to the way the country has dealt with the issue.

In the wake of communal violence in Sri Lanka that continued despite a state of Emergency being declared, different countries have reacted to the way the Colombo has dealt with the issue.

The United States on Thursday said it respects Sri Lanka's national security, but asked Colombo to ensure the freedom of expression of its citizens.

The Indian Ocean island nation has witnessed anti-Muslim riots in Kandy, in which several homes, businesses and mosques were damaged during three days of violence. The violence erupted after the death of a man from the Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week in an incident of road rage which was later given a communal twist.

To rein in the communal violence, a state of emergency was declared President Maithripala Sirisena. Internet access was also restricted in Kandy with social media websites including Facebook and instant messaging app Whatsapp being blocked by the national telecommunication regulator.

The US statement came after the news of clamp down on social media broke.

"While we respect Sri Lanka's national security, the US supports an open, reliable and secure Internet where the rights that all persons have offline are also protected online, such as freedom of expression," a State Department spokesperson told PTI.

"The United States values freedom of expression and access to information as a key component of democratic governance," the spokesperson said while responding to a question on blocking of social media sites and imposition of emergency in Sri Lanka.

Earlier, the US Embassy in Colombo said it is important that the Government of Sri Lanka act quickly against perpetrators of sectarian violence, protect religious minorities and their places of worship, and conclude the state of Emergency swiftly, while protecting human rights and basic freedoms for all.

According to Daily Mirror, the Canadian government has also conveyed its deep concern about the recent inter-communal violence in Sri Lanka and urged all sides to engage in inclusive dialogue and exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was quoted as saying, Canada is deeply concerned by recent inter-communal violence in Sri Lanka, in which Muslims were targeted. Canada urges all sides to engage in inclusive dialogue and exercise restraint to ensure peace and stability. We call for an immediate end to hate and misinformation campaigns inciting sectarian violence."

On Thursday, China urged the Sri Lankan government to take measures to ensure the security of its nationals in view of the communal clashes between the Buddhists and Muslims. On the declaration of the Emergency by the government, Geng declined to comment on it, saying that it is an internal affair of Sri Lanka.

"We believe it is the domestic affair of Sri Lanka. We believe the Sri Lankan government and the people are capable of dealing with the current situations and to ensure the social stability and national solidarity," he said.

China invested billions of dollars in Sri Lanka, including in the development of ports in Hambantota and Colombo. Sri Lanka has also emerged as a popular destination for Chinese tourists, AFP reported.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman said he will visit Sri Lanka on Friday for three days of talks with Sri Lankan leaders and is expected to visit Kandy where two people were killed in the violence.

However, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the visit was planned before the state of emergency was imposed. "We are obviously concerned over reports of the ongoing communal violence and we welcome the government's commitment to addressing the tensions and achieve reconciliation," he said.

With inputs from agencies
What is fairly certain is that conflicts between the Sinhala and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka will likely become Indias business if matters get worse.

One would think that Sri Lanka would hesitate to get into another bloody cycle of ethnic strife. After all, its just about seven years since the country actually declared itself at peace, and ended its last state of emergency. This time around, it seems that trouble has again flared  and flared badly  between sections of the islands Sinhala majority and the Muslims, who are in a minority. According to the last census, Muslims make up 9.2 percent of the total population, and are concentrated in about four districts, accounting for between forty to thirty percent of the population in those districts. Nowhere are they a majority, unlike the Tamils who dominate in the north and have a significant presence in the east. The Tamils however, numbered only a little over 11 percent, and waged a war for over three decades. Thats an unsettling thought.

Trouble between the two seems to have risen following the end of the civil war, though tensions flared up from time to time even prior to that. The present violence seems to have started after a Sinhalese truck driver was beaten to death by a group of Muslims, probably in an incident of road rage at a suburb of Kandy. The matter was reportedly settled amicably with the intervention of local leaders from both communities. However, a mob from the majority community thereafter indulged in an orgy of violence, burning houses and shops of Muslims in Digana town on a scale not seen since 2014. The presence of two hardline Buddhist leaders allegedly fanned the fires of hatred, so easily inflamed in a country that has seen a generation born in violence.

If one analyses the facts, there would be little difficulty in concluding that the violence was inflamed deliberately. The government, to its credit, responded promptly to quell the violence, after the police were unable or according to some unwilling, to deal with the situation. The imposition of an emergency may seem extreme, but the move indicates the seriousness of the situation in a country that had seen continuous emergency for 40 years. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has hinted that the violence was organised and systemic, comments that seem to have been fleshed out by the denials of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa  who was known to be soft on Buddhist hardliners during his tenure. The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramunna party ( SLPP) backed by the former president, recently won a thumping victory in local polls, winning 231 of 340 local councils. This is bad news for the shaky coalition headed by President Mathripala Sirisena. His faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party secured even fewer councils than the prime ministers United National Party which won a mere thirty-seven. Notably, Rajapaksa attributed his win to his opposition to the sale of national assets to the Chinese, and among other things the rising cost of living. Incidentally, his party won more than 39 percent of the vote in the Kandy municipal elections. Following the present violence, his popularity will only rise further.

Media and analytical reports last year indicate rising Sinhala -Muslim clashes, with leaders of Sinhala mobs operating with impunity. Persons like Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, general secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena  which in Sinhalese translates as Buddhist Power Force  even allege that the Muslims, despite being in the minority  have powerful friends from outside the country, a thinly veiled reference to international terrorist groups. It is a different issue that he himself has been at the centre of trouble recently, and that his many opponents accuse him of stoking anarchy. In addition, he has outside contacts too. Reports indicate that the BBS has links with hardline Buddhist leader Ashin Wirathu, who was a special guest at a rally of the BBS in September 2014. The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two organisations warned of subtle and foreign funded incursions adversely impacting Buddhism, and jointly promised to guard against extreme conversions and other threats to the community.

If these are the fundamentalists on one side  and the BBS is certainly one  reports over the last few years do indicate a rise in extremism among Muslims in Sri Lanka. Mohamed Muhsin Sharfaz Nilam a resident of Kandy, was one of the first to die under the banner of the Islamic State. Educated in Islamic doctrines in Pakistan, he left with his entire family including six children and his parents for Syria. It later emerged that he was leading a fight with 16 Sri Lankans. His posts were incendiary and extreme, and called for a war with all other religions. That was in 2015. The next year, the government claimed that 32 Sri Lankans from well established families had joined the Islamic State. In 2017, a video featuring a possibly Indian doctor, seemed to indicate that several Sri Lankan doctors were working for the Islamic State. With the Islamic State now in retreat, remaining recruits are likely to return.

It is more than well-known that there is serious trouble when politics meets competitive religious divides. The effect of such divisive and violent fissures on an already fragile state, only just recovering from a debilitating civil war is less clear. Even less clear are the contours of rising militant Buddhism which seems an anachronism in terms for what is one of the most admired and peaceful religions of all time.

What is fairly certain, however, is that Sri Lankas troubles will likely become Indias business if matters get worse. Already, the shrillness of the right in India in spurring the Buddhists on is apparent on social media. Better to offer counsel and help to douse this particular fire, sooner rather than later. Left to itself, it can only add debris and blood in a suddenly violent South Asia.
Joan Gray Lockaby Youngblood went home to Jesus Tuesday March 6 at the age of 85. She was the kindest, most decent woman I ever worked with. Her family was her heart. And boy did she have a great family.



She had to bury two husbands during her life and I had the privilege to be with her through both of those trials. They were both really fine men. Bob Lockaby Sr. was the father of her children and her best friend. He left suddenly on a Sunday afternoon. Bill Youngblood was a gift from God to be her partner later in life. Joan suffered with him through the final months of his life. She was so strong yet so humble. Joan was a classy, intelligent, thoughtful and beautiful person.

I met Joan in 1983 in the Gene Roberts campaign for Mayor. She had served Congressman, later U.S. Senator Bill Brock as his regional director and was one of the key GOP women locally with the likes of Jeanne Geraghty and Reba Brown. We became friends and, when I was 29 years old, I told her that if she would agree to be the Executive Director of the Hamilton County Republican Party that I would run for Chairman. She agreed so I ran and we won.



In the following six years (my two as chairman followed by Hal North and Valerie Copeland Rutledge), the Republican Party became the majority party in Hamilton County for the first time since reconstruction. Joan was instrumental in our success. In 1990 we won the majority on the County Commission, the legislative delegation and finally the first majority of judicial positions in history.



But Joan was not really a partisan. She believed in good government-period.



Her friendships from the Election Commission to the precincts were based on mutual respect and appreciation for all volunteers and activists Democrats or Republicans.



People called her my political mom and was at my side in every early campaign working with Pat Brock in 1992 and our team in 1994 when I was first elected to Congress then advised me for years to come.



I owe a whole lot to Joan Youngblood.



There would be a Zach Wamp without Joan Youngblood because my mother is Beth Wamp and she is wonderful. But there would never have been a Congressman Zach Wamp without Joan Youngblood because she taught me more about people and how to approach public service than anyone ever did or ever will. She was invaluable to me and many others.

Joan will be sorely missed but never forgotten. Today heaven wins out over this world because she is there right now with our Beloved Jesus. We love you so much Joan and shall see you again in Glory.

Zach Wamp

Member of U.S. Congress 1995-2011
Violent clashes between Buddhist mobs and Muslims rocked Sri Lanka for the third day in a row on Thursday, as armed Buddhist mobs rampaged through towns and villages of central Sri Lanka

Violent clashes between Buddhist mobs and Muslims rocked Sri Lanka for the third day in a row on Thursday, as armed Buddhist mobs rampaged through towns and villages of central Sri Lanka, burning Muslim-owned houses and businesses, and leaving victims barricaded inside mosques.

Despite the government announcing State of Emergency in an attempt to calm the situation, Buddhist mobs attacked at least 20 Muslim houses in Mullegama, accusing them of stealing from donation boxes.

Muslims hiding in the mosque, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals, said police prevented them from saving their property and did nothing to stop the attackers. One Sinhala Buddhist man who was part of the attack died in an explosion and another man was injured, according to the men in the mosque.

Thursday was the third day of violent clashes between Buddhists and Muslims in Sri Lanka, which started after mobs burnt 11 Muslim owned properties in Kandy, following reports that a Buddhist man had been killed by a group of Muslims.

Sectarian divide



The island nation has Buddhists in majority, numbering over 70 percent as per the 2011 census, while Muslims number about 10 percent. However, the two have coexisted largely peacefully over the centuries. Even when northern Sri Lanka was singed by communal violence, it involved the Sinhalese speakers, who are predominantly Buddhist, against Tamil speakers who are Hindu, Muslim and Christian. However, the civil war, that lasted from 1983 to 2009, wasn't communal in nature.

But in the years since the rebels were crushed, a Buddhism-Muslim divide has taken hold of Sri Lanka.

As reported by Time, Muslims and Buddhists have lived in harmony for decades but have begun clashing in sporadic incidents over the last few years. A religious divide has especially taken hold in recent years, with hard-line Sinhalese groups accusing Muslims of forcing people to convert and destroying sacred Buddhist sites.

The view of 'us versus them' is further propagated by fear mongering and unchecked spread of rumours. A report on India Today attributed clashes in Ampara town of central Sri Lanka to a rumour that Muslim-owned eateries were adding chemicals to food being eaten by Buddhist customers to make them impotent. This rumour, when taken in the context of Muslims' birth rate being greater than Buddhist birth rates, made many fear about Sri Lanka being on its way to becoming a Muslim-majority country.

Visible religious symbols like burqas being worn by women and men sporting long beard have also fuelled mistrust. Slogans like 'Sri Lanka for Sinhalese Buddhists' and 'Muslims are not one of us' have gained currency in Sri Lanka, the India Today report added.

Rise in Buddhism radicalism

Buddhist radicalism has been rising in Sri Lanka, just like it did in Myanmar, a report on The New York Times said. It wrote, back in 2014, that then President Mahinda Rajapaksa had given his backing to the Bodu Bala Sena, a hard-line Buddhist group which is led in part by monks; its name roughly translates as 'Buddhist Power Force'.

Previous attacks by the Bodu Bala Sena have gone unpunished, and hard-line monks have been able to operate largely with legal impunity, the report wrote.

"The Rajapaksas are hoping to consolidate the Sinhalese majority vote, which is about 75 percent of the country, by demonising minority Muslims and Tamils, said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a nonpartisan policy institute in the capital, Colombo," The New York Times wrote.

However, as explained by an article on The Indian Express, Rajapaksa went on to lose in the 2015 presidential election, which led to a de-escalation of Buddhist-Muslim tensions. But towards the end of 2016, the incidents began again, when some Muslims, who had been displaced from northern Sri Lanka during the earlier civil war, began returning to Mannar to reclaim their lands. With Mannar close to Sinhala majority areas of the northwestern province of Puttalam and north-central province of Anuradhapura, this led to violent clashes.

Arrival of Rohingya

Around mid-2017, Rohingya refugees began arriving in Sri Lanka, fleeing persecution in their native Myanmar. Buddhist outfits began a campaign against the arrival of Rohingya in Colombo. In September last year, The Indian Express reported, a monk led an attack on a UN-maintained safehouse for Rohingya in Colombo. The Rohingya were taken into custody while attempting to land in Sri Lanka, and were meant to be kept under UN protection at the safehouse.

However, the group that attacked the safehouse alleged that Rohingya were arriving in Sri Lanka having killed Buddhists in Myanmar. Witnesses said the monks stormed into the safe house chanting, "Rohingyas are terrorists", and accusing them of having killed Buddhist monks in Myanmar. This led to clashes on the streets of Gintota in Galle.

The clashes prompted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to call the situation "alarming". "UNHCR emphasises that (the) refugees... need international protection and assistance. UNHCR urges the public and all those concerned with refugees to continue extending protection and to show empathy for civilians fleeing persecution and violence," it said.

It said Rohingya had been staying in Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka with the Colombo government's approval and UNHCR was providing assistance "until longer-term solutions can be found".

With inputs from agencies
The department of Sri Lankan tourism issued a statement on Thursday, where it said that the situation in Kandy is fast improving and no violent incidents have been reported in 18 hours.

The department of Sri Lankan tourism issued a statement on Thursday, where it said that the situation in Kandy is fast improving and no violent incidents have been reported in the last 18 hours. On Thursday, Sri Lankan Police temporarily lifted the curfew in Kandy district, IANS reported.

Meanwhile, Ranjith Madduma Bandara was sworn in as the in-charge of police soon after Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday replaced Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister amidst fresh violence.

However, there were reports of violent clashes between Buddhist mobs and Muslims in Sri Lanka for the third day in a row early on Thursday, as armed mobs rampaged through towns and villages of central Sri Lanka, burning Muslim-owned houses and businesses, and leaving victims barricaded inside mosques. The clashes started after mobs burnt 11 Muslim owned properties in Kandy, following reports that a Buddhist man had been killed by a group of Muslims.

Buddhist mobs swept through Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lanka's central hills, destroying stores and restaurants despite a curfew, a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of security forces, residents told AP on Thursday.

About 50 people broke into a Mohamed Ramzeen's small restaurant in the town of Pilimathalawa on Wednesday night while the curfew was in effect, destroying nearly everything they found, he said. "The security in town is inadequate," Ramzeen said. "We fear for our lives."

Others in the area around Kandy, the main hill town, described similar attacks since the violence began early this week. The streets of most towns were all but empty Thursday except for police and soldiers.

In suburban Pallekele, four houses were burned by mobs using petrol bombs during the curfew Wednesday night.

Mohamed Nazar said only he and his 64-year-old father remained in their house after they sent other family members to a relative's house for safety after the violence started.

"Around 8 pm, rocks started hitting the house with a mob shouting outside and we put the lights off. Then a large flame came and the house caught fire," Nazar said.

He said his father hid under a sofa, but he grabbed him and they ran out.

Police came and put out the fire, but much of his family's belongings were destroyed, he said.

Later, the Bishop of Colombo also issued a statement urging the government to take action against the perpetrators.

With inputs from AP
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has said it was stripping Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a prestigious human rights award

Washington: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has said it was stripping Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a prestigious human rights award, accusing her of doing little to halt the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her long campaign against the country's military dictatorship, was awarded the Holocaust Museum's Elie Wiesel award six years ago "for her courageous leadership and great personal sacrifice in resisting tyranny and advancing the freedom and dignity of the Burmese people."

But the Museum said it was rescinding the award due to her inaction over what it called "mounting evidence of genocide" committed by the Myanmar military against civilians from the Rohingya minority.

"As the military's attacks against the Rohingya unfolded in 2016 and 2017, we had hoped that you - as someone we and many others have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights - would have done something to condemn and stop the military's brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population," the museum said in a letter to Suu Kyi.

Instead, it said, her political party, the National League for Democracy, has refused to cooperate with UN investigators and added to the anti-Rohingya rhetoric.

The party has also obstructed journalists trying to report on the mass murder and expulsion to Bangladesh of the Rohingya.

"The military's orchestration of the crimes against Rohingya and the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation," they said.

In November a joint report by the Museum and Southeast Asia-based watchdog Fortify Rights -- based on testimony they gathered in the field -- documented "widespread and systematic attacks" on Rohingya civilians.

The award was named after Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi genocide against Jews who spent much of his life campaigning for human rights, himself winning the Nobel Peace Prie in 1986.

Suu Kyi, the country's symbol of democracy for decades, has come under heavy criticism for her refusal to stand up for the Rohingya.

In January US diplomat Bill Richardson resigned from a Suu Kyi-appointed panel set up to ease tensions with the Rohingya, assailing her for an "absence of moral leadership."

About 7,00,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since August, with horrifying testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs.

In Geneva on Wednesday the UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called for a new body tasked with preparing criminal indictments over the Myanmar atrocities.
Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County:

U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. The contractor has closed the 12th Street tie-in ramp to U.S. 27 South. This closure will be in place until April. Traffic from 12th Street will be detoured to Carter Street and then to Westbound MLK where motorists may access the U.S.

27 South on-ramp. Detours are posted. Motorists should exercise caution when traveling through the construction zone and pay close attention to the detour signage posted. The contractor changed lane configurations on U.S. 27 North between Martin Luther King Blvd. and 4th Street. These changes affected the on-ramp to U.S. 27 North from MLK Blvd., and the off-ramp (Exit 1C) from U.S. 27 North to 4th Street. Traffic coming from downtown Chattanooga and using the on-ramp to U.S. 27 North from MLK Blvd. is required to come to a complete stop at the top of the ramp. Traffic wishing to access 4th Street at Exit 1C from U.S. 27 North is now directed to a new temporary exit ramp after crossing the 6th Street overpass. This new temporary exit ramp is narrow and posted for 25 MPH. Motorists are encouraged to seek alternate routes due to the increased congestion between MLK Blvd. and 4th Street. The speed limit has also been reduced from 45 MPH to 35 MPH between Main Street and 4th Street on U.S. 27 North. The speed limit on U.S. 27 in the rest of the construction zone remains 45 MPH. Motorists should exercise caution when traveling through the construction zone and pay close attention to the signage posted. Weather permitting, the contractor may implement temporary lane/shoulder closures on weeknights between the hours of 7 p.m.-6 a.m. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Restrictions: I 124 (US-27) Northbound Exit 1C 4th Street Off Ramp. No oversize/over-dimensional loads. Width Limit is 11 feet. Estimated project completion date is January 2020. [Dement Construction Company, LLC/Micka/CNP230]

SR-320 (East Brainerd Road) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: During this report period, the contractor will have intermittent lane closures between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Bel-Air Road. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is June. [Jones Bros. Contractors, LLC/Pruett/CNN383]






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Samsung at the companys First Look in New York event has introduced a array of QLED, UHD and Premium UHD TVs. The company says that the TVs come with groundbreaking design elements, enhanced picture quality, and smart, intuitive capabilities. The new QLED TV features Direct Full Array, Bixby and Ambient Mode for an immersive viewing experience.

The latest line-up of TVs come with the new Ambient mode which provides useful information throughout the day even if the user isnt watching anything. It can play music as well as display news headlines, traffic reports, and weather updates. An interesting aspect of the new Ambient mode is that it can mimic the pattern on the wall for wall-mounted TVs giving it an astonishing visual effect.

They also feature a new One Invisible Connection which basically is one slim cable that combines both users power and AV data to the TV. It is available up to 15 meters and eliminates the needs of placing the TV near data or power outlets. Bixby is finally making its way into the premium line of Samsung TVs. The QLED TVs smart capabilities offer a great way to set up the TV and find content.

It uses the Samsungs new SmartThings app to reduce the time taken to set up the TV drastically. With Bixby support, consumers can use voice commands to bring up their favorite shows and control compatible devices. Furthermore, the QLED TVs; Q8F and Q9F using the Direct Full Array (DFA) technology, delivers impressive images with pristine contrast. It uses a panel with zones of smartly controlled backlighting that adjust automatically to deliver deep blacks and pure whites.

Samsung is also offering a new audio-lineup which includes HW-K950 which is a soundbar that has support for Dolby Atmos and delivers 7.1.4 surround sound. HW-N650 which is aimed at gamers that features Acoustic Beam Technology. HW-NW700 soundbar features a wall-mounted design that compliments the new QLED TVs. Finally, the VL550 is a unique metal dial that consumers can attach to any metallic surface and use to control music with the sound of their voice.

Samsungs Bixby voice assistant feature is available QLED TV and Premium UHD, but will not be present in the UHD models. Samsungs 2018 new TV and audio line-up will be available in stores beginning March 2018.

Source
Following up on the North America Nakba Tour that visited Chattanooga during Human Rights Month in December, the International Solidarity Movement will bring two internationally renowned Palestinian activists to raise awareness about the current state of human rights issues in Palestine.

The group will visit local colleges and then hold a public talk at The Well on the Southside, a member church of the Adventist Peace Fellowship, at 1800 Rossville Ave., Suite 110, on Monday at 7 p.m.

The speakers include:

Rana Nazzal is a Palestinian-Canadian activist, artist, and facilitator. She is immersed in community organizing both at home in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and on Algonquin Anishnaabeg land in Canada. She served intermittently with the International Solidarity Movement between 2011 and 2016, taking various roles, from training international volunteers in military confrontation tactics, to coordinating ISM media. Like many Palestinians, for her activism she has endured beatings, injury from military weapons, arrest, and indictment.

Since 2014, Ms. Nazzal has run an activist leadership program based in Ottawa that works to empower young adults with the tools and frameworks necessary to fight for effective social change. Between 2016 and 2017, she also developed an arts-based peer support program for refugee youth in Canada that continues today. She recently returned to Palestine and is based in Bethlehem.

Joe Catron went to Palestine's Gaza Strip in March 2011, on the first international solidarity delegation to cross the Rafah border after the fall of Egypt's Mubarak government, and lived there through October 2014. Over three and a half years in the besieged coastal enclave, he accompanied farmers and fishermen in Israeli-enforced access-restricted areas, joined protests along Israel's separation barrier, supported campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, and assisted local organizations through editing and training. During the summer of 2014, he and other international volunteers established a constant presence in hospitals and accompanied rescue efforts in conflict areas. His writing and photography from Palestine have appeared in +972 Magazine, BBC, Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye, the New York Times, Newsweek, and various other media. He is in Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen's new documentary, Killing Gaza, and was profiled by Ramzy Baroud in his latest book, The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story. He lives in New York and is the U.S. coordinator of Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

Paul Larudee of International Solidarity Movement-Northern California said, "A human rights advocate multiplies her/his effectiveness by combating Israeli human rights violations on the ground in Palestine. We need advocates everywhere, but being in Palestine is an exponential change. In fact, when you return, you will find yourself far more effective at home than before you left."

Gandhi Global Center For Peace Co-Founder Missy Crutchfield said, "The work for nonviolent revolution in Israel-Palestine, Egypt, and across the Middle East is the final frontier of civil and human rights. And Palestine specifically has become a metaphor for ending global occupation and oppression. Gandhi spoke to it. Mandela spoke to it. And Gandhi reminded us that fear is the enemy, not each other, and ultimately it will be love that conquers all."

The North America International Solidarity Movement Tour is administered by the International Solidarity Movement  Northern California.

Local Chattanooga partners working with the committee to bring the North America International Solidarity Movement Tour to Chattanooga include: Gandhi Global Center For Peace and The Well on the Southside. Bridge Refugee Services joins to help make the connection locally and share about what is being done to help refugees who are relocated to Chattanooga.

For more information visit http://www.ism-norcal.org.


After an incident at their home last week, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott dealt with police again during an incident at a doctors office in California.

According to TMZ, McDermott called police when Tori left their home with at least one of their children. Its unclear why he was concerned enough about her departure to involve the authorities, but police got involved nonetheless.

Things ended outside a doctors office in Thousand Oaks, CA when police reportedly surrounded the building at around 9:45 a.m. PST. After Spelling reportedly spoke with police inside, they determined that no crime had been committed and allowed everyone involved, which included McDermott who was standing outside holding their 1-year-old, to leave freely.

While Thursdays incident ended without incident, it took place only a week after the couple had dealt with police at their home. As previously reported, police received a call on March 1 that Spelling was allegedly having some kind of breakdown. The 44-year-old star was reportedly getting aggressive, but its still unclear what, if anything, triggered the incident. It seems now that the couples struggles arent over as police have been involved in one of their private matters for the second time in just one week.

Spelling and McDermott have been in financial and legal struggles over the past year thanks to a string of lawsuits and liens for credit-card debts, bank loans and overdue taxes well into the six figures. McDermott, who shares 5 kids with Spelling, has narrowly avoided jail time over late child support payments to his ex-wife.

Reps for McDermott and Spelling did not immediately respond to Fox News request for comment.
ABC News The View star Joy Behar has reportedly apologized for recent comments that mocked Vice President Pences Christian faith.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said during the Q&A portion of a shareholder meeting on Thursday that Behar apologized directly to Pence on the phone.

A source close to Pence confirmed to Fox News that Behar did apologize.

The shareholder who asked the question was Justin Danhof, who is the general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research. Danhof told Iger that some of Disneys recent decisions are strange when trust in media is at an all-time low and referred to Disneys ESPN as a 24/7 anti-Trump tirade channel before bringing up the Behar controversy.

What do you say to the tens of millions of Christians, and President Trump supporters, that your networks have so blatantly offended and ascribed hateful labels? Danhof asked. Specifically, do you think, like Mrs. Hostin and Mrs. Behar, that the Christian faith is akin to a dangerous mental illness?

Iger responded by saying, I dont know where I start. First of all, Joy Behar apologized to Vice President Pence directly. She made a call to him and apologized, which I thought was absolutely appropriate.

Iger told the crowd he was glad to hear Behar apologized because he takes exception to what she said.

I dont think it was right, Iger said.

ABC News did not respond to requests for further information.

Not the most powerful man in Hollywood, today he was the most tepid man in Hollywood, Danhof told Fox News, referring to Iger. He took one real question after about a dozen soliloquies of praise for how great and wonderful he is.

Back on Feb. 13, The View panel criticized Pence's faith when co-host Sunny Hostin said, I dont know that I want my vice president, um  speaking in tongues and having Jesus speak to him.

Behar chimed in, adding that hearing from Jesus is actually called mental illness. Pence himself didnt appreciate the comments and slammed ABC News.

To have ABC maintain a broadcast forum that compared Christianity to mental illness is just wrong, Pence said during an appearance on C-SPAN following the controversial remarks. It is simply wrong for ABC to have a television program that expresses that kind of religious intolerance.

The Media Research Center launched a campaign to hold View co-hosts accountable for spewing anti-Christian bigotry, and ABC received over 30,000 phone calls from angry viewers.

The MRC, which says it's Americas leading media watchdog in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias, posted contact information for 14 of the ABC News programs advertisers as well as the president of ABC.

The controversy resulted in a variety of industry watchdogs suggesting it would be wise for ABC News to divorce itself from the show, which in a typical broadcast features four outspoken liberals and a single conservative.

It's a pure opinion and infotainment program and therefore should be under its entertainment division, The Hill media columnist Joe Concha told Fox News after Behars comments about Pence.

It is a good first step that Joy Behar privately apologized to Vice President Pence, but it is not nearly enough. Behar and ABC need to publicly apologize for the bigoted slurs on The View. The bigoted statements made about the Vice President's Christian faith offended hundreds of millions of Christians across the country, the largest faith group in the United States, MRC president Brent Bozell told Fox news. Their apology should therefore be as public as their insult. When they do that, this whole matter will be put to rest. Until they do, we will not let up our campaign to let the world -- including their advertisers -- know of their anti-Christian bigotry."

Meanwhile, liberal hero Oprah Winfrey recently told CBS 60 Minutes Overtime that God has not told her to run for president despite widespread speculation that her infamous Golden Globes speech was a preview of a potential 2020 matchup with President Trump.

Behar, an outspoken liberal, did not accuse Winfrey of having mental illness.
Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander on Thursday said, Governors are coming up with innovative solutions and leading the fight against the unique problems their state faces in the midst of the opioid crisis.

The committee held its sixth hearing on the opioid crisis this Congress, to hear from Governors Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and Kate Brown (D-Or.).

This is an evolving crisis that has affected nearly every state across the country, but the specific challenges faced by Tennessee may be very different from what Oregon or Maryland faces, Senator Alexander said. States are the ones who come up with the good ideas on how to tackle big problems because theyre on the frontlines, and its usually the federal governments role to encourage them and cut the red tape to create an environment so that states can innovate.

For example, Governor Hogan and Maryland have allowed all pharmacies to dispense naloxone, the drug that stops a drug overdose, and opened an Opioid Operations Command Center to coordinate the state and local governments response to the crisis. And Governor Brown has prioritized improving Oregons prescription drug monitoring program and is working with the state legislature in Oregon on a peer mentorship program for individuals struggling with addiction.

Congress has also taken a number of steps to support states fighting the opioid crisis, including the Protecting Our Infants Act, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, and the 21st Century Cures Act. In December, Senator Murray and I sent a letter to every governor and state insurance commissioner asking if these laws are working and how the federal government can be the best partner for states. We have heard back from 21 governors and 11 state health officials, in addition to feedback we heard at a roundtable with governors Senator Murray and I held last week.

For example, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam suggested additional funding to encourage states to share data in their Prescription Drug Monitoring Systems  something we talked about at our hearing last week. I think this is one of the most promising areas where the federal government can be helpful to states.

On Oct. 5, 2017, the committee held the first hearing of the series which focused on the federal response to the opioid crisis, and on Nov. 30, 2017, the committee heard from witnesses representing states, communities, and providers on what they are doing and what, if any, new authorities they need from the federal government to fight the crisis. On January 9, 2018, the committee heard from author Sam Quinones, who has extensively researched and written about the opioid crisis. On Feb. 8, the committee held a hearing to look the effects the opioid crisis has on children and families. On Feb. 27, the committee held a hearing on the role technology and data play in responding to the crisis.

Senator Alexander concluded Thursdays hearing saying, This committee hopes to approve that piece of legislation, as well as others by the end of the month, so that we can recommend those bills to the full Senate to vote on. So it is helpful to have the input from the governors here today, as well as the written responses from other governors and state health officials.

Senator Alexanders full prepared remarks are available here.
The New York Times issued an embarrassing correction after a report that attacked President Donald Trumps recently passed tax plan got the numbers about as wrong as could be.

The lengthy Feb. 23 feature, headlined, Get to Know the New Tax Code While Filling Out This Year's 1040, sought to detail how Trumps tax plan would hurt middle-class families. A hypothetical couple -- christened Sam and Felicity Taxpayer -- would see their tax bill rise by nearly $4,000, according to the story.

Then came the correction saying the family would actually see taxes go down.

The Wall Street Journals James Freeman mocked the Times piece before the Old Gray Lady issued the correction.

Even perennial tax-increase advocate Warren Buffett is now acknowledging the economic benefit of the Trump tax cuts, but The New York Times newsroom still wont concede the point, Freeman wrote on Feb. 27. Will criticism from a liberal law professor persuade The Times to reconsider?

Well, The Times did reconsider -- but it may still not be 100 percent accurate.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the probable effect of the new tax law on a hypothetical couples 2018 tax bill. The TurboTax What-If Worksheet that generated the projection for their 2018 taxes failed to indicate that the couple would probably be entitled to claim a sizable deduction for income earned from consulting. As a result of that deduction, the amount they would likely owe on taxes would decline by $43, not rise by $3,896, the correction states.

The accounting error in The Times original piece is quite significant for the family, which reported a combined income of $183,911. Freeman wrote a followup piece, noting that a liberal law professor says The Times still doesnt have the story quite right.

Freeman pointed to University of Chicago tax law professor Daniel Hemel, who said Times editors still dont understand Trumps tax cuts.

Still dont see why Samuel & Felicity arent claiming nonrefundable dependent credits of $500 for their children Luke & Heidi and their parent Sydney, for additional tax savings of $1,500 under the new law, Hemel recently tweeted.

In addition to Hemels analysis, a spokesperson for TurboTaxs parent company issued a statement to The Journal explaining that The Times used a program for the misleading feature that was not yet updated with the latest tax laws.

As much of the mainstream media looks for reasons to attack the president on a regular basis, the misleading feature on taxes peovides some evidence that many Americans dont understand the benefits of tax reform or don't acknowledge positives because of political reasons.

The search continues for Americans who will not benefit from the

Trump tax cuts on individual and corporate income, Freeman wrote.

The New York Times did not immediately respond when asked if it would issue another correction based on Hemels analysis.
Forget a divorce party  Russell Crowe is having a divorce purging.

The 53-year-old actor is celebrating the single life again by putting up 200 personal items he acquired during his nine-year marriage to Danielle Spencer in an auction called The Art of Divorce.

People Magazine reported in 2012 that more than 20 years after the couple met playing lovers in the 1990 movie The Crossing, the New Zealand-born Oscar winner and the Australian actress were calling it quits.

Auction house Sothebys Australia revealed Crowe is giving up his collection of movie memorabilia, clothing, artwork, furniture and more in the sale. The priciest item is an 1890 Leandro Bisiach violin Crowe used in the 2003 movie Master and Commander. The instrument is estimated to be worth between $110,000 and 140,000.

Sothebys Australia noted the auction will take place on April 7, a special day for Crowe. It is both the actors birthday and wedding anniversary.

Crowe previously announced the sale back in February on Twitter where he shared a photo of himself dressed in a tuxedo, smiling while raising a celebratory toast.

Crowe and Spencer married in April 2003 and share two sons: 13-year-old Charles and 11-year-old Tennyson.

The Gladiator star has kept busy since news broke of his failed marriage.

His upcoming film, Boy Erased, is currently in post-production. The movie, which also stars Nicole Kidman, explores how the son of a Baptist preacher is forced to participate in a church-supported gay conversion program. Its scheduled to premiere sometime this year.
Sharon Tates younger sister, Debra Tate, threw her support behind Kate Bosworth to play the murdered actress in a new film after she slammed other projects involving Hilary Duff and Quentin Tarantino for their portrayal of the infamous death.

Tate, who will be a co-producer of the movie, told People that Bosworth is the right actress to portray her sister because she will capture Sharons heart, feeling and attitude.

Theyre telling her story as a woman aside from the murders. Kate is going to capture Sharons heart, feeling and attitude, Tate told People.

There is no one thats ever going to look like Sharon, she continued. [Bosworth is] very Sharon-like  shes kind-hearted, gentle and generous.

Tate said she approved of the movie with Bosworth because it focused on Sharon Tate, rather than her death at the hands of Charles Manson followers.

SHARON TATE'S SISTER SLAMS HILARY DUFF'S 'TACKY' FILM ABOUT THE MANSON MURDERS

Bosworth also opened up to Deadline about taking on the role of Sharon Tate, saying her intention was to honor Sharons life.

She was a beautiful and complex woman: A sister, a daughter, a wife, a lover. Human. Her life has for too long been overshadowed by the tragedy orchestrated by a raging psychopath, Bosworth said. Now, more than ever, we feel it is important to focus on the woman  to reaffirm the voice of Sharon Tate  and to take away the megaphone from the maniac.

Debra Tate was 16 when her 26-year-old sister, an actress and model who was pregnant at the time, was stabbed to death in her home. Tate has been vocal about projects surrounding Sharon Tates 1969 murder as the 50th anniversary approaches. She slammed the film, titled The Haunting of Sharon Tate and stars Duff, as classless and exploitive.

It doesnt matter who it is acting in it  its just tasteless, Tate previously said. Its classless how everyone is rushing to release something for the 50th anniversary of this horrific event.

Tate also criticized Quentin Tarantinos upcoming film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and actors Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio for not contacting the victims families about the project. She called their actions terribly irresponsible.

These people are taking horrific situations and making them even more graphic than they were without any concern for the living victims of these crimes and I think thats horrible and crass, Tate said.
A man in Connecticut was taken into custody after calling 911 four times to complain that someone had thrown his clam chowder into the dumpster outside his house, police reported.

Sok Kyu Yi called the emergency line four times within 37 minutes  twice at 3:01 pm, once at 3:11 pm and finally at 3:38 pm  and was angrily screaming at dispatchers about the incident.

MAN ARRESTED AFTER REPEATEDLY CALLING 911 ABOUT RESTAURANT'S SMALL CLAMS

Law enforcement showed up at the 70-year-olds home, where the man confirmed to authorities that he did not need medical assistance.

Yi claimed to have called 911 because he did not have another phone number to contact police about his soup having been thrown out. The police said Yi smelled of alcohol and appeared to be intoxicated, The Patch reported.

Yi was given a non-emergency number by the police and issued a misdemeanor summons for misusing the emergency line.

After authorities left, Yi called 911 again at 4:18 pm and angrily complained to the dispatcher that he just received a summons from the police for misusing the 911 system, Patch reported.

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Police returned to Yis residence, where they found him seemingly drunk in bed. Police reminded the man that they had just given him a non-emergency number to contact them and then told Yi he was being arrested for misusing 911.

According to reports, Yi was also charged with interfering with police after he refused to cooperate with officers when they tried to handcuff him.

Yi was released later and scheduled to appear in court on March 12.
Food Network star, blogger and hotelier Ree Drummond is making it easier than ever for fans to serve up Southern flair at home with her latest collection of dinnerware and kitchen gadgets from Walmart.

Just in time for spring, Country Living Drummond's floral products are already flying off shelves.

Whats fun about it is that while its still colorful and covered in florals like the rest of the Pioneer Woman world, its darker and richer in color (the blue is beautiful!) and the florals are a little more casual and playful (and less literal) than previous PW patterns, the mom of four wrote on her blog.

Drummond further divulged that shes dropped new patterns for the 2018 spring line with the Celia, Spring Bouquet and Luster schemes, and teased the items in a Facebook video.



CHIP AND JOANNA GAINES' NEW SHOW 'FIXER UPPER: BEHIND THE DESIGN' GOES BEHIND THE SCENES

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that the Pioneer Womans latest collection features over 100 items including cups, bowls, plates, mini casserole dishes, measuring bowls and cups, frying pans, baking tools and more.

Prices range from $2.94 for four colorful Mason Jar Lids, to $99.00 for a 10-piece cookware set. Most products are available for purchase at Walmart stores and online, while select items will only be available for purchase in-store.

REESE WITHERSPOON DEBUTS PLUS-SIZE FASHION COLLECTION

First partnering with the retail superstore in 2015, Popsugar reports that the Pioneer Womans various collaborations with the superstore have been best sellers ever since. From vintage bedding to cast-iron cookware, Drummonds products consistently sell out like hot cakes.

From the silly salt and pepper shakers to pearlized goblets and decorative dinner plates, its no surprise that Drummond knew just what to serve up with her latest line. The famous Pawhuska, Oklahoma resident told Fox News in a November interview that one of the key secrets to being a great host is planning ahead.

It just makes the day so much more fun because no one wants to go to a party where the host is stressed, or shes not there because shes in the kitchen. Im a big proponent of prepping ahead and planning ahead and the day-of, making it as easy as pie, Drummond said.

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When certified nursing assistant Barnell Williams was told she needed to get the flu vaccine for her job in the fall of 2016, she refused, citing religious beliefs that her body was a "Holy Temple."

Her now former employer, Lasata Care Center, a nursing home in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, allowed employees to be exempt from an annual flu shot if they provided a written note from their clergy leader in support of their request. Those who were exempt had to wear a protective mask while interacting with patients during flu season.

At the time, Williams did not belong to a specific church or religious organization. She informed Lasata that documentation would not be possible ahead of their Oct. 25, 2016 deadline. So, her request was denied and she eventually agreed to the influenza vaccine.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a religious discrimination lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages for Williams' "pain and suffering," against Ozaukee County, which owns the care facility.

"She submitted to the flu shot, despite her religious objections, because she was told that her refusal would result in her termination," the DOJ explained in a statement.

After getting the shot, despite the fact that her "religious belief that Bible-based scriptures prohibited" such vaccinations, Williams reportedly became "emotionally distraught."

"Williams suffered severe emotional distress from receiving the flu shot in violation of her religious beliefs, including withdrawing from work and her personal life, suffering from sleep problems, anxiety, and fear of 'going to Hell' because she had disobeyed the Bible by receiving the shot," the lawsuit stated.

The suit alleges Lasata's policy involving religious exemptions violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on gender, sex or religious beliefs.

"The policy on its face denied religious accommodations to employees, like Ms. Williams, who do not belong to churches with clergy leaders," the DOJ says.

Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore for the Civil Rights Division said employees should not have to choose between "practicing their religion and keeping their jobs."

Employers should take care not to craft policies that disfavor individuals because of their sincerely held religious beliefs or practices in violation of Title VII," Gore said in an online statement.

Lasata has now eliminated the rule that employees must provide proof from a member of a clergy to avoid a vaccination.

The Chicago District Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was first to investigate Williams' complaint and then referred it to the DOJ for litigation, according to the DOJ.
A major British supermarket and retailer has pulled a hunting-themed childrens costume from shelves after receiving a series of complaints from parents.

Tesco was slammed on social media over a red fox hunter jacket aimed at children aged seven to nine by parents claiming it was encouraging children to take up a highly cruel animal bloodsport, The Independent reported.

STUDENT CLAIMS SHE WAS CALLED OUT FOR 'INAPPROPRIATE' OUTFIT, UNSURE WHY

The controversial costume, described as a long sleeved red tailcoat style jacket with a single black button at the front, was modeled after traditional fox hunting attire -- a sport that has been banned in England since 2005.

Parents were quick to call out Tesco for the outfit once it appeared online, saying they were appalled by the costume.

I am appalled at how you are selling fancy redcoat fox hunters fancy dress clothes for kids, one person wrote online, The Independent reported.

Are you really trying to encourage them to take up a highly cruel animal bloodsport? I would like this complaint to be forwarded to your head office," another said.

One took to Twitter, writing, "@Tesco disgusting that you are selling a fox hunting outfit at all, let alone for children! I would hope you reconsider stocking this!!"

Some were in favor of the costume -- with one even taking a good-natured jab at the controversy, tweeting, "I'm not in favor of fox hunting, but shouldn't we be more concerned that Tesco is promoting pirates - well known for plundering, raping, and murder? @Tesco."

The store quickly responded to the backlash by removing the costume from its online store.

We've listened to customers and have immediately removed this product from sale, a spokesperson told The Independent.

Tesco claimed the $14 coat was listed by a third-party vendor.

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Despite removing the jacket, anti-hunting groups were still upset about the supermarkets poor judgement, The Independent reported.

This appears to be remarkably poor judgement from Tesco, said Lee Moon, a spokesperson for the Hunt Saboteurs Association. Fox hunting is an illegal, archaic pastime that's abhorred by the majority of the population.

We look forward to seeing their badger baiting or dog fighting outfit in the near future! she added.

Fox hunting as a sport dates back to the 16th century in England, but was banned in England and Wales in 2005 by the Hunting Act. It is still legal in other countries around the world.
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Whether you blame it on the French, the English, the Germans or Benjamin Franklin, the scourge of daylight saving time will strike at 2 a.m. Sunday and create havoc for the hapless American worker. And it all started as a joke.

The elderly Benjamin Franklin, said to enjoy a robust social life in Paris as the American envoy, after bit of an all-nighter was once unhappily woken by the morning sunlight at 6 a.m. Annoyed, as any red-blooded American would be, he penned a bit of satire.

The French, Franklin wrote, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through the economy of using sunshine instead of candles if they moved their clocks ahead by an hour. Naturally, politicians could not take a joke and turned farce into fact, and poor Bens name has been defamed ever since as the founding father of daylight saving time.

Still, this pained idea was championed by an Englishman named William Willett, an earnest man and obviously the kind of offensively cheerful person who can make anyones morning a nightmare. Willet wrote a brochure titled The Waste of Daylight in 1907. He preached the gospel of summer time, proving once again that the American colonists were wise to fight a war to distance ourselves from tyranny.

But it wasnt until World War I that the Germans actually implemented the idea, and it crossed the ocean to the U.S. in 1918. Now, 100 years later, perhaps its time to send it back.

Having grown up much of my life in rural areas, I had long heard the slur that the rest of the country was forced to reset all their clocks to accommodate the American farmer. Not true. No matter how hard they tried, farmers couldnt convince the cows to adjust their wristwatches and alarm clocks.

Milking and harvesting cycles remained the same, with only the laborers all the more tired. In fact, big businesses with all their political power held firm against an attempt in 1919 to repeal the torture, one more offense that can be laid against them if anyone is keeping score this far out from the next election.

Despite the international birth of daylight saving time, most nations in the world have managed to avoid this obsessive fiddling with sleep. Fewer than 40 percent of countries endure the switch, while more than 140 countries gave it a shot and came to their senses  on that first day after they tried it most likely, when people looked at each other with bleary eyes and asked: Why are we doing this?

A 2016 Rasmussen Report found, shockingly, that Americans are not crazy about daylight saving time, reporting, only 35 percent consider the time change worth the hassle.

Perhaps scientists needs to retool the search for alien life in the SETI Institute to locate and identify the sadists who wish to see the rest of us woken at unnatural hours. Still, some claim it leads to energy savings, so in the name of saving the planet, does it?

The Department of Energy looked into the matter to determine just how much energy was conserved by this jarring shift in the time-space continuum, and found that the answer was not much if anything. Why? Because it turns out that if you get up early and its dark, you turn on the light, while if you stay up late and its dark, you turn on the light. This is the kind of cutting edge analysis that keeps government at full employment.

In fact, when the state of Indiana, which had held out against the peer pressure of shifting time like its neighbors, finally caved in 2006, researchers found that electrical usage rose, leading to an extra $9 million in spending.

Analysis shows that for ordinary Americans changing schedules is not that easy. In an article in Journal of Applied Psychology, a study revealed that on the Monday after the time change there were an increased number of workplace injuries, some of them likely caused when sleepy co-workers are confronted with that one early bird who is chirping about getting that proverbial worm.

And the abrupt time shift has been linked to all kinds of health issues, or at least all kinds of reported health issues as people sleep in, calling in sick to work.

Add to that the fact that no matter when you shift the clock, eventually, it will get dark. In fact, New York Citys Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $1.5 million dusk and darkness safety campaign to communicate to those in the Big Apple that when it gets dark, its easier to bang into things, such as with cars.

So pay attention when the government launches an ad campaign that parrots our mothers  be careful when the sun goes down.

Since farce became fact when Ben Franklins prose became policy, lets look to a comedy for relief. Fictional Congressman Jonah Ryan, on the award-winning comedy VEEP, introduced a pretend bill to end daylight saving time, saying the measure will be a call for less government. Sounds like an idea with actual bipartisan potential.

Its time to end daylight saving time. Whos with me?
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The Florida House gave final legislative approval Wednesday to a bill banning gun sales to anyone under 21, sending the measure to Gov. Rick Scott, who has not said whether he will sign it into law. More significantly, there is serious consideration in Congress of a similar national ban.

On top of this, Dicks Sporting Goods, Walmart, L.L. Bean and Kroger have all moved to discontinue gun sales to anyone under age 21.

We all know what prompted these well-meaning actions. It was the horrific attack at a Florida high school last month by a 19-year-old that claimed the lives of 14 students and three adults. So it is hardly surprising that people want to keep guns away from 19-year-olds.

The desire to do something is obvious. But what about a 20-year-old woman who is being stalked by a rapist or a killer? Research shows that having a gun is by far the most effective way for young women to defend themselves.

A ban on gun sales to anyone younger than 21 won't keep people who are determined to be mass killers from getting weapons.

We have to consider both types of cases to decide what changes will save the most lives.

Fortunately, we dont need to guess. This isnt the first time that the government has raised the age requirement for rifle purchases. In 1994 the first federal limits required buyers to be 18 years of age. Prior to that law, there was no federal age requirement for buying a rifle.

Thomas Marvell has done the only peer-reviewed study on this change. It was published in the Journal of Law and Economics, and concluded: Where the 1994 laws seem to have an impact, the suggestion is almost always that crime increases; thus, there is no evidence that these bans had their intended effect.

Marvell found that the 1994 age requirement was associated with a 5.1 percent increase in the homicide rate, and a 6 percent increase in firearm homicides. Beyond that, there was no real effect on crime rates.

But Marvell notes that if juveniles are more vulnerable targets, the result is likely to be more crime, especially violent crimes involving juveniles.

A ban on gun sales to anyone younger than 21 won't keep people who are determined to be mass killers from getting weapons. These killers often plan their attacks more than six months in advance, and sometimes as much as year or two ahead of time.

Young people have shown themselves to be highly capable of obtaining illegal drugs, and they can often buy illegal guns from the same sources. After all, the same people who sell drugs have guns to protect their valuable property.

What is certain is that the most law-abiding people will be disarmed.

Young adults tend to have lower incomes and live in less desirable areas where more crimes take place. Limiting gun purchases to those 21 and older makes it more difficult for young adults to defend themselves.

There is also a lot of evidence that the young people who use guns for self-defense are extremely law-abiding. Concealed handgun permit holders lose their permits for firearms violations at rates of thousandths or tens of thousandths of a percentage point.

The data for Michigan, Nevada and Texas indicate that permit holders between the ages of 18 and 22 are even more law-abiding than older permit holders. Why should these law-abiding young adults be denied their right to defend themselves?

Most who oppose the increased age for buying a gun point out that 18-year-olds can vote and serve in the military, where some of them handle fully automatic weapons in combat to defend our nation. So why cant they make decisions on whether to save their own lives or the lives of others?

Those who make arguments that 19- and 20-year-olds are emotional and irrational would never argue that we should take away these young adults ability to vote, to join the military, or to drive cars that can accidentally or deliberately kill people.

But, as I have just pointed out, the main argument for raising the age limit as a way to reduce crime is itself suspect.

The other gun control laws being pushed, such as background checks on gun transfers or waiting periods, wouldnt have stopped a single mass public shooting this century or even years before that.

Unfortunately, the discussion ignores that gun control laws have real costs. The vast majority of people stopped from purchasing guns by background checks are actually law-abiding citizens.

Waiting periods also stop law-abiding people who may need guns quickly for self-defense. Indeed, even short waiting periods have been associated with a small increase murder rates. We ignore that over 98 percent of these attacks keep happening in gun-free zones, where general citizens are not able to defend themselves.

Laws passed in the heat of the moment can do more harm than good. The current rush to pass legislation is no different. Even in the aftermath of terrible mass public shootings, we shouldnt lose sight of all of the crimes that are stopped by people acting in self-defense. Democrats ignore research at our peril.
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Five months out from the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the subsequent launch of #MeToo, we find ourselves celebrating International Womens Day on Thursday with a focus on gender parity.

Concerned Women for America members join in the celebration. Thankfully, American women enjoy more freedom, opportunity and legal protection than most, if not the entire, world. This is no secret.

The majority of legal immigrants to the United States are women who yearn to join our ranks. Even Hillary Clinton recognized this fact when she said in 2015: There has never been a better time in history to be born female. We are doctors, lawyers, and governors. We are CEOs and astronauts. Women are on the move.

However, as we applaud the freedom of women in the U.S., there are some questions that are begging to be addressed.

First, are women actually more inclined to speak up about sexual harassment and assault in the workplace today than they were five months ago? Did the show of support from Hollywood during the awards season or black-garbed senators during the State of the Union really change anything?

Last year saw women take on the tough topic of sexual assault, but we should take a moment to reflect on the current cultural phenomena of the #MeToo movement. What started here has spread to become an international inflection point for women to discuss sexual harassment and assault. It is no surprise that even other Western nations struggle, because this is a matter of the heart. Mankind is broken.

While the movement has left a trail of abusive men and women who have been fired from their lofty positions, or are at least are under investigation, its difficult to say with any authority that it will permanently change our institutions.

It took over 30 years for one Harvard professor, who was accused of sexual harassment over three decades by female colleagues and students, to finally be placed on leave. Women left their jobs at Harvard because of this man during all these years and only now are seeing justice.

However, despite decades of stories filtering out from the ivory towers of academia, for the most part, higher education is slipping undeservedly under the radar. One will know things have changed when universities stop predatory professors.

Secondly, is Hollywood serious? Several Hollywood actresses have indeed broken their silence and named the men who made their lives a living hell. Those men have fallen hard from the top, but then Hollywood chooses this week to give an Oscar to Kobe Bryant, who was arrested and charged with sexual assault in 2003 after a 19-year-old woman accused him of rape. The case against Bryant was dropped a year later when the woman said she wasnt willing to testify in court.

Hollywood also has made a huge show of appointing Anita Hill as head of a commission against sexual harassment. Yet, it was Hill who defended President Bill Clinton during one of his many alleged sexual escapades, several of which were reportedly unwanted advances. Conservative women are left to wonder Hollywood is just content to score political points.

And when is Congress going to come clean? A few members have resigned in the wake of the #MeToo movement, but others are hiding behind a secret list from the Office of Compliance that paid over $17 million in taxpayer money to settle workplace disputes  including sexual harassment settlements.

This is only in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Senate paid separately and also concealed the identities of the guilty. The taxpayers rightfully deserve to know how our money was spent and which lawmakers were involved.

The whole ordeal is rife with contradictions and seems to always be one step forward and two steps back.

What about lower-paid working women? Is the demand for zero tolerance of boorish behavior going to trickle down to them? Thus far, there are no stories of the hospitality industry and restaurant chains clamping down on grabby bosses or patrons.

So what makes a woman working a blue collar job who is sexually harassed think she stands a chance of not facing retribution should she report what is happening? This becomes real when reporters cover stories of new accountability at places like McDonalds and TGI Fridays.

The final question: When will the #MeToo movement realize that there can be no left or right litmus test for members? You think the mean-girl stage ends in high school, but no.

You cant sit with us has just turned into you cant stand with us. Many women feel as if they have no recourse in the public square, because in order to join other women in the #MeToo movement they think they must be liberal feminists.

So as women celebrate living in an exceptional nation, its good to consider ways to improve our nation for all women, regardless of socioeconomic class or political bent. The #MeToo movement needs consistency and inclusion in order to be both sustainable and effective. If gender equality is to happen, it must first happen among women leading the way by embracing the Golden Rule for each other.
Here are upcoming street closings:

Thursday:



Fire Chief Tapping Party: Northbound Broad Street will be closed between West 3rd Street and the parking lot exit at Aquarium Way from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The Chattanooga Fire Department and Chattanooga Police Department will be a part of this event celebrating the tapping of Big River's latest brew, The Fire Chief Red, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. with live music, food, giveaways and more. A donation of 25 cents from every Fire Chief Red and a portion of total sales will benefit The Forgotten Child Fund.

Visit www.bigrivergrille.com for more information.Friday:Riverside Chattanooga Spring Pre-Meet: West 11th Street will be closed between Broad Street and Market Street, as well as the Broad Street between West 10th Street and West 11th Street, from 6 p.m. to midnight. This free, public event is to welcome the participants of the Riverside Chattanooga Spring Meet 3, taking place on Saturday, at the First Tennessee Pavilion. Visit www.facebook.com/pg/RiversideChattanooga for more information.Saturday:Riverside Chattanooga Sprint Meet 3: Reggie White Boulevard will be closed from the entrance to the First TN Pavilion to West 19th Street from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. for this annual car meet, which is not a competition, but rather a place where enthusiasts are able to come together and enjoy the best vehicles from all over the Southeast, along with first class vendors and local food trucks. Visit www.facebook.com/pg/RiversideChattanooga for more information.ONGOING CLOSURESWest Village Street Festival: West 8th Street will be closed from Pine Street to Chestnut Street, as well as Pine Street in front of the Westin Hotel, from 8:00 am to Midnight for this celebration in the streets. Visit www.westvillagechattanooga.com for more information.Southside Social Chestnut Street Weekend Closures: Chestnut Street will be closed between West 17th Street and West 19th Street from 7:00 pm to Midnight on Friday and Saturday evenings.In order to view a map of these closures, visit: http://www.chattanooga.gov/transportation/traffic-engineering-a-operations/special-events-a-
The Florida House passed a school safety bill Wednesday that includes new restrictions on rifle sales and a program to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the governor for his signature.

The vote of 67-50 reflected a mix of Republicans and Democrats in support and opposition. The measure, a response to the shootings at a Parkland high school that left 17 dead, is supported by the victims families.

Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina, said there was enough good in the bill that it should pass.

More needs to be done, and its important for the country to be united in the same way the 17 families united in support of this bill, Pollack said after the vote. My precious daughter Meadows life was taken, and theres nothing I can do to change that, but make no mistake, Im a father and Im on a mission. Im on a mission to make sure Im the last dad to ever read a statement of this kind.

Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a former Parkland city commissioner, ended the eight hours of debate with an emotional account of seeing the high school after the shooting, attending victims funerals and working with students and families while the House was forming the legislation. He broke down in tears after talking about how his 4-year-old sons writing teacher lost her daughter in the attack.

You dont need to stand with me. I dont need you to stand with me. I need you to stand with the families, Moskowitz said.

Democratic Rep. Kristin Jacobs said she did not like the idea of arming teachers, but she voted yes. Republican Rep. Jay Fant said raising the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21 was unconstitutional, and he voted no.

There is a cultural divide in this room, in this state and across the country. And theres a bill before us that is not perfect, said Jacobs, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons. It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools; establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.

Fant, who is running for attorney general, said the gun restrictions violated the constitution.

I just cant imagine that Nikolas Cruz can commit such a heinous crime and then as a result we tell, potentially, a 20-year-old single mother living alone that she cannot purchase a firearm to defend herself, Fant said.

The Florida Senate narrowly passed the bill Monday. Gov. Rick Scott declined to say Wednesday whether he would sign the legislation.

Scott has repeatedly said he doesnt support arming teachers and pushed lawmakers adopt his proposal, which called for at least one law enforcement officer in every school and one for every thousand students who attend a school.

Im going to take the time and Im going to read the bill and Im going to talk to families, Scott told reporters.

Shooting suspect Cruz was formally charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder Wednesday, which could mean a death sentence if he is convicted.

The indictment returned by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale also charges the 19-year-old with 17 counts of attempted murder for the Valentines Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in which 17 people died and more than a dozen others were wounded.

Cruzs public defender has said he will plead guilty if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, which would mean a life prison sentence. Prosecutors have 45 days to decide whether they want to seek the death penalty.

James and Kimberly Snead, the couple who gave Cruz a home after his mother died late last year, testified before the grand jury. James Snead and the couples attorney, Jim Lewis, wore silver 17 pins to honor the victims of the shooting.

Well let justice take its course at this point, Lewis said. They still dont know what happened, why this happened. They dont have any answers. They feel very badly for everybody.
The head of the Transportation Security Administration, Administrator David Pekoske, confirmed the threat from non-metallic explosives targeting passenger jets goes beyond laptops and tablets, in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.

"I think terrorist groups would use whatever they think might be successful and that's how we approach it. If we have specific information, we act on that specific information and if we don't, what else do we think they might use that would be successful? And then we try to close that gap," Pekoske explained.

Pressed on whether non-metallic explosives are being fashioned for carry-on items beyond electronics, such as phone cases, Pekoske answered "right," without elaborating on potentially classified matters.

Pekoske, who took over the position less than a year ago, indicated the non-metallic IED threat is not limited to Al Qaeda and ISIS, with "non-traditional actors" seeking to exploit the potential vulnerability. While the terrorism threat is diversifying, Pekoske said Al Qaeda's interest in commerial aircraft is "not diminished in any way whatsoever; that's still a key focus of any organized terrorist group from everything that I'm aware of. [They] are still very much focused on commercial aviation."

After a wide-ranging speech on the TSA at the Center for Cyber & Homeland Security at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Pekoske elaborated on security in public areas of airports where recent successful attacks have taken place -- including Brussels in 2016, where bombs in suitcases killed more than 30 people and wounded some 300 others in the check-in hall.

Pekoske said there would be more visible security in the near term, as the security focus expands beyond checkpoints at the nation's airports.

"Our focus is always going to be on the checkpoint, but the point of my remarks was to not just look at the checkpoint in isolation. We've got to look at the rest of the airport, too, and that includes the public areas of the airport and also the parts of the airport that are behind the checkpoint, sterile areas, from when you leave the checkpoint to when you board the plane and also on the tarmac of airports. So it's really taking a more holistic look at the airport itself."

Asked about the rule limiting liquids on passenger carry-ons, Pekoske said, "I don't see any change in the short or the medium-term but once we get the computer tomography equipment in place, the new X-ray machines that we're testing right now and we hope to buy in large quantities beginning next year, that may change."

He added that getting to the point where people don't need to take their laptops or liquids out of their carry-on bags is still a couple of years away.

Pekoske said of the TSA workforce, "I get a greater and greater appreciation for how difficult the job is that they have and the awesome responsibility they carry on their shoulders... We need to be correct 100 percent of the time and they need to always be completely focused on that mission. In my experience, they are, and I really appreciate the great work they're doing."
Former White House communications director Hope Hicks informed the House Intelligence Committee that one of her email accounts had been hacked, according to an intelligence source.

Fox News has learned the one of Hicks old email accounts that she had since college had been hacked -- not her Trump or White House email addresses, according to the source.

Hicks, one of President Donald Trumps longest and most loyal advisers, announced her resignation last week just one day after she spoke to a House intelligence panel.

HOPE HICKS RESIGNING AS WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said at the time that her resignation had nothing to do with her testimony.

Hicks reportedly told the panel that she occasionally told white lies for Trump but never lied in regards to anything related to the Russian investigation.

The Special Counsel also paid particular attention to Hicks over her involvement in drafting a statement regarding a meeting between Trumps eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer.

Fox News John Roberts and Alex Pappas contributed to this report.
A suspect accused of breaking into the home of Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead on Tuesday was carrying a hunting knife, authorities said Wednesday evening.

The suspect, identified as Antoine Lewis, 35, was found hiding in a bathroom by responding officers after he broke in and set off a fire alarm about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Lewis is accused of pointing the knife at the officers before being apprehended.

Investigators say Lewis told them he was chased onto the property and intentionally set off the fire alarm to get help, but surveillance footage does not support that claim.

The arrest affidavit also says he allegedly told his employer the day before that if he were to steal from people, he would target the rich because they have insurance.

Mead said his family was inside the home at the time but not harmed.

Meads whereabouts were not immediately clear. The 55-year-old Republican has been Wyomings governor since 2011.

Authorities said Lewis had been living in a local motel.

After his arrest, the suspect was taken to the Laramie County jail where he was being held pending formal charges.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
President Trump asked Reince Priebus about the former White House chief of staff's testimony in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, sources confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday -- but they said the talk included nothing of substance.

A source with knowledge of the investigation said the conversation was limited to questions like how did it go? and were you treated fairly?

A second source said the president simply asked Priebus how he was treated and whether investigators were nice to him. The source summed up the conversation as nothing, saying Trump felt bad that Priebus was forced to sit for hours with Mueller and his staff.

Both sources said the conversation did not go into the substance of Priebuss testimony.

The president also spoke to White House Counsel Donald McGahn. Sources said Trump asked McGahn to talk to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about what they could do regarding Mueller, but that Trump never ordered McGahn to fire Mueller.

The New York Times reported Wednesday night that Mueller had learned of two conversations in which Trump asked key witnesses -- one of them Priebus -- about their discussions with investigators. The paper added that at one point, Trump said McGahn should deny its January article that the president once asked McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn never issued such a denial.

It's unclear when Trump's conversation with Priebus took place, although the Times reported it happened "in recent months."

In addition to investigating Russias involvement in the 2016 presidential election, Mueller's team has been looking into whether Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation after he fired FBI Director James Comey last May.

Fox News John Roberts contributed to this report.
As President Trump moves to save steel workers on the East Coast, critics say his new 25 percent tariff could kill steel jobs in the West.

A lot of us are looking to retire from this company and right now it is big concern because we dont know what is going to happen, said Howard Taylor, a steelworker here for 21 years.

California Steel is the largest steel plant on the West Coast. It took over when giant Kaiser Steel, the WW2 shipbuilder, went bankrupt 34 years ago. A consortium of steel companies from Brazil and Japan bought the plant and invested $1 billion to upgrade the process. Today, its model is different. Unlike integrated Rust Belt plants that mine their own iron ore, California Steel imports massive, unfinished steel slabs, turning them into coils, plates and pipelines it sells to more than 200 customers.

If they impose tariffs on our slabs it will hurt our business, said CEO Marcelo Rodrigues. We are talking about saving American jobs right? We are American jobs.

Rodrigues said there are two problems with the blanket tariff proposed by Trump.

One, Eastern Mills, could not or would not sell steel slabs to competitors fighting for the same market.

Secondly, transportation costs. Importing slabs from Mexico and Brazil by ship costs $20 a ton, he said, moving them by rail from the Midwest costs more than $100 a ton.

Each slab weighs 2 tons, making California Steel the largest costumer of the Port of Los Angeles.

The freight cost to bring slabs in from those countries to California costs 1/4 to 1/5 less than the freight cost of bringing them in from the east coast to west coast, Rodrigues said.

The main driver behind the Presidents tariff is dumping by China. The steel industry claims China, beset by overcapacity because of a slowing economy, has been shipping finished steel coils to the U.S. for as little as $200 a ton, when the going market rate today is closer to $500 a ton. China is shipping first to Vietnam, Turkey and South Korea, trying to hide the steels' country of origin.

We just want fairness because we have not been treated fairly by these countries, Trump said Thursday.

West of the Rockies there are only two steel plants. Both use imported slabs as feedstock. California Steel imports about 1.5 million tons of slab a year. At $500 a ton, a 25 percent tariff, adds $188 million of cost per year, passed on to their customers in oil and gas, heating and air conditioning and steel frame construction.

The cost is the biggest thing that is going to hurt us as a company if this goes through, said Taylor.

The company fears as prices rise, customers and clients will cut back, revenues will fall, leaving no money to invest in or grow the business, creating death spiral that leaves it where Kaiser Steel used to be.

In bankruptcy.
A Cook County judge has ordered Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city's police superintendent to provide sworn depositions within the next 30 days in the wrongful death lawsuits brought by the families of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones.

Both LeGrier and Jones were fatally shot by a Chicago police officer in December 2015.

Emanuel will address questions about the actions of city attorneys, why violence escalated in the December 2015 incident, why police weren't carying stun guns and why paramedics were not immediately aware that the shooting involved an officer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The mayor also will be asked about why paramedics' accounts of the shooting -- given one month after the shooting and again two weeks ago -- differ. Jack Kennedy, an attorney representing the LeGrier estate, insinuated that the paramedics accounts changed after they spoke with city attorneys.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, supervisor of the officer who pulled the trigger, will also face questions.

Judge James OHara ordered the deposition at a hearing Tuesday.

In December 2015 police were called to a home in the city's West Garfield Park neighborhood. LeGrier, 19, was near the front door of his fathers apartment, wielding a bat. An officer fatally shot LeGrier and the bullet inadvertently struck Jones, a downstairs neighbor, the Sun-Times reported.

Critics have condemned the ensuing trial as being too calloused toward the victims families.

In one instance, a city attorney asked LeGriers mother if she was working as a prostitute at the time LeGrier was born, WGN-TV reported.

Basileios Foutris, an attorney who represents the LeGrier estate, said the question was beyond the pale and had no bearing on the case. Foutris filed a motion seeking sanctions over the incident and asked the judge to block city attorneys from questioning LeGriers parents again at trial.

On Wednesday, OHara ordered city attorneys to submit a written response within 28 days, the Sun-Times reported.

In another instance about three months ago, the city sought to countersue the LeGrier estate in order to shift the financial liability for Jones' death. The motion was dropped after it drew the attention of Emanuel, who called the measure callous.

According to the Chicago Tribune, a sitting mayor submitting to sworn testimony in a lawsuit that alleges wrongdoing is rare but not unprecedented.

Both depositions will be filmed and admissible at trial, but the appearances of Emanuel and Johnson will not be open to the public.
A Democrat seeking a U.S. House seat in Illinois  who attracted attention for a campaign ad showing him smoking pot  now faces accusations that he has abused women and misleadingly described himself as an Iraq veteran" and "former FBI agent."

Benjamin Thomas Wolf, who is running in the Democratic primary against incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, came under fire after an ex-girlfriend alleged he acted abusively and intentionally revealed her name and home address on social media, a practice called doxing.

He actually hit me, threw me to the ground, put his foot on my chest. He was really angry. He grabbed my face, Katarina Coates, who interned for Wolfs campaign, told Politico.

"He actually hit me, threw me to the ground, put his foot on my chest. He was really angry. He grabbed my face."  Katarina Coates, former girlfriend of Benjamin Thomas Wolf

She added: I thought it was normal. I cannot explain the logic. It seemed like he cared about me when he did that. After that time he stood on my chest, he went and took me for chocolate cake. I kind of associated it with his caring.

"There were times I would ask him, 'Do you ever regret hitting me?' He would say: 'No, but I'm relieved when you put your head down so I don't have to do it again.'"

DEM CANDIDATE WHO SMOKED POT IN CAMPAIGN AD SAYS HELL DEFINITELY GET HIGH IF HE WINS

The woman said she did not report Wolf to police, but reached out to officials at both DePaul University, where she was studying, and Roosevelt University, where Wolf claims to be an adjunct professor.

Coates said that after she contacted DePaul campus security regarding Wolf in April 2017, a security officer told her Wolf was banned from campus.

Ben is not allowed in campus. He does know that as I told him that personally, Michael Dohm, deputy director of public safety at DePaul, told the woman via email, Politico reported.

But the ban was not prompted by Coates allegations. Instead, it reportedly was imposed after a DePaul professor named Jason Hill heard another student's accusation about an encounter with Wolf.

Hill told Politico that Wolf later sent him a number of threatening messages. He wrote a lot of nasty letters to me encouraging me to kill myself. He said: You should just commit suicide, Hill said.

Another ex-girlfriend, Kari Fitzgerald, also made accusations against Wolf, saying that although he was not violent toward her, he showed abusive, escalating behavior.

Wolf told Politico he denies the accusations of abuse. However, the Democrat also faces scrutiny over alleged claims of being an Iraq veteran and former FBI agent.

The candidate has reportedly never been a member of the armed forces, but says on his website that he has been a diplomat in the Foreign Service under the State Department during the Iraq war. One tweet from him reportedly read: "Wolf served multiple terms in Africa and Iraq. Wolf for Congress."

The candidate contends that one does not have to be in the military to call oneself a veteran.

"People in the military get upset when I say I served in Iraq. The military doesn't have a patent on the word 'served.'"  Benjamin Thomas Wolf, Democrat running for a U.S. House seat in Illinois

People in the military get upset when I say I served in Iraq. The military doesn't have a patent on the word 'served, he told Politico.

In a news release last week, Wolfs campaign also identified him as a former FBI agent, despite contrary claims by the agency.

A spokesperson for the FBI told the Chicago Tribune that the candidate worked at the agency as a non-special agent professional support employee rather than an agent.

Wolf confirmed to the outlet that he failed the FBIs agent test but denied he ever identifies himself as such, adding that there is a small difference between his role at the agency and that of actual FBI agents.
Actor Kal Penn, a former aide in Barack Obama's White House, wants fellow Democrat Chuck Schumer "out of office" after the Senate Democratic Leader delivered a pro-Israel speech in Washington this week.

New York is a beautiful state with incredible people from so many faiths & backgrounds. Instead of using his office to bring people together & really make a difference, @SenSchumer is making speeches to divide us," the liberal actor tweeted Wednesday. "Looking forward to the day hes out of office."

Schumer, D-N.Y., blamed the Palestinians for lack of peace in the Middle East during a speech Monday at a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Now, let me tell you why  my view, why we don't have peace," Schumer said. "Because the fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East. The view of Palestinians is simple, the Europeans treated the Jews badly culminating in the Holocaust and they gave them our land as compensation.

In his speech Schumer, who is Jewish, called on the conference to "never forget what Israel and its freedom mean to the Jewish people and what the friendship of the United States means to securing that freedom."

"As long as HaShem breathes air into my lungs, I will not forget, I know you will not forget and together we will forever fight to protect the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel, Schumer said.

Penn, the son of Indian immigrants, was the star of stoner movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. He briefly left acting to join the Obama administration in 2009 as associated director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Penn frequently offers his opinions on politics on Twitter.
Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign manager, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges including tax evasion and bank fraud stemming from Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe.

Manafort did not speak during Thursdays arraignment. Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia set Manaforts trial date for July 10.

The grand jury indictment in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, accuses Manafort of hiding from the Internal Revenue Service tens of millions of dollars he earned advising pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.

MANAFORT FACES NEW CHARGES IN MUELLER PROBE, BLASTS EX-PARTNER FOR PLEADING GUILTY

The charges are part of Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections.

Manaforts attorney, Kevin Downing, has requested an earlier trial date, telling the judge that looking through his rosy colored glasses, he was hoping for a November trial date.

You should go back to your optometrist, Ellis shot back.

Most of the charges against Manafort had been filed in the District of Columbia. But prosecutors say they were required to bring these charges to Virginia because they lacked venue in the nation's capital.

Manafort will now have to wear two GPS monitors, one from Washington and another from Virginia.

Ellis, the judge in this case, has sat on the bench in the Eastern District of Virginia since 1987 and has presided over other high-profile cases, including the trial of Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson and John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban.

Fox News Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Here is the Chattanooga Chamber Business Calendar for March 12-16:

March 12 Reality Check at East Hamilton High School

7:15 a.m.-2:15 p.m.

East Hamilton High School: 2015 Ooltewah-Ringgold Road

Reality Check teaches ninth graders budgeting and emphasizes the connection between education and income by allowing students to roleplay as head of household providing for a family on a budget. Community volunteers are needed to assist with this event. To volunteer for this Chattanooga Chamber career readiness program, please contact Cathy Humble at 763-4321 or chumble@chattanoogachamber.com.

March 12 Hiring Fundamentals for New and Small Businesses

Noon to 1 p.m.

The Edney, Floor 5: 1100 Market St.

Learn how to minimize your risk as you make a hire for your new or small business, and how to get the right person the first time. Pamper Garner and Associates has helped their clients hire thousands of employees and by attending youll learn a practical and immediately applicable process.

March 13 Hixson Chamber Council Community Coffee

8-9 a.m.

Bethel Bible Village: 3001 Hammill Road

March 13 Ribbon Cutting for RE/MAX Renaissance Realtors

4-4:30 p.m.

RE/MAX Renaissance Realtors: 6204 Hixson Pike, Ste. 112

March 14 Contract Job Cost Accounting

8:30 a.m.-noon

INCubator at the Business Development Center: 100 Cherokee Blvd.

Construction companies are really accounting companies that happen to build buildings. For any type of business, successful job cost accounting can mean the difference between a profitable business and one that struggles to stay alive. Topics include: Job Costing, Correct Formatting, Linking Accounts, Project Management, Policies & Procedures, and Top 10 Legal Aspects in Contracting. Breakfast included, free and open to all business owners and managers. Register today by contacting mnoel@chattanoogachamber.com or 763-4338.

March 14 midTown Chamber Council Meeting

11:45 a.m.-1 p.m.

Spare Time Chattanooga: 5518 Brainerd Road

Speaker: Dr. Donna Van Natten

$12

March 14 Instagram Marketing Strategies: Intermediate

3:30-5 p.m.

INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd.

Over 80 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day. Discover how to find your customers and grow your followers on Instagram utilizing hashtags and locations, engaging with influencers, content strategy tips, pre-scheduling posts and advertising.

Speaker: Lisa Brown, owner of 3E Social

$25

Register at clients.tsbdc.org.

March 15 North Hamilton County Chamber Council Meeting

11:45 a.m.-1 p.m.

Budweiser: 200 Shearer St.

Speaker: Richard Tate, ACES

$10

March 15 Find Your Funding

1:30-3 p.m.

INCubator: 100 Cherokee Blvd.

Explore funding opportunities ranging from traditional loans to bootstrapping, crowd funding, and angel and venture capital funding. A representative from SBA and TSBDC will discuss the variety of options, including the SBA 504, SBA 7a and others for small business startups.

Speakers: Jackie Merritt, SBA & Lynn Chesnutt, TSBDC

Free

Register at clients.tsbdc.org.

March 15 Ribbon Cutting for Threads of Grace Studio

4-4:30 p.m.

Threads of Grace Studio: 100 Cherokee Blvd, Ste. 327

March 15 Business After Hours Sponsored by Grandview

5-7 p.m.

Grandview: 1301 Patten Road

Business After Hours brings an average of 100 business people together for networking and refreshments.

March 16 Ribbon Cutting for BWY Transport Inc.

4-4:30 p.m.

BWY Transport Inc.: 100 Cherokee Blvd., Ste. 316

March 16 OC After 5: Ooltewah Collegedale Chamber Council Networking

5-7 p.m.

Spring Hill Suites Ooltewah: 8876 Old Lee Hwy.

For the most up-to-date event information visit chattanoogachamber.com














Paul Manafort's prison stay was extended Wednesday  nearly a week after he was sentenced to 47 months on bank and tax fraud charges in a separate case. The former Trump campaign chairman is now slated to spend a total of 81 months in prison.

He was given extra prison time at his second sentencing in connection with his guilty plea related to foreign lobbying and witness tampering.

In August, Manafort became the first Trump campaign associate to be found guilty by a jury as part of Special Counsel Robert Muellers long-running probe. He was convicted of eight bank and tax fraud charges at that time.

PAUL MANAFORT SENTENCED ON FOREIGN LOBBYING AND WITNESS TAMPERING CHARGES

Manafort has been the subject of an investigation over his dealings in Ukraine several years ago  he didnt file as a foreign agent until June 2017. But Mueller has incorporated that investigation into his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with Trump associates.

Manafort was convicted on multiple counts of financial fraud last year in connection with his Ukranian work, and is in prison. In November, Mueller accused Manafort of lying "on a variety of subject matters" since his plea deal, thus violating that agreement.

Read on for a look at Manafort's work with the Trump campaign and how he is connected to the Russia investigation.

What kind of foreign work did Manafort do?

A GOP operative who worked for former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Manafort reportedly began his work in Republican politics in the 1970s.

Eventually, Manafort was hired by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a controversial pro-Russia politician who was ousted from power twice. After Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, Manafort reportedly stayed on as an adviser and worked on other projects in Eastern Europe, including the Party of Regions political party.

Manafort also worked for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. In 2005, Manafort allegedly came up with a plan to influence U.S. politics, business dealings and the media in order to greatly benefit the Putin government, according to The Associated Press.

Deripaska is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and signed a $10 million annual contract with Manafort in 2006; they maintained a business relationship until at least 2009.

Financial records obtained by The New York Times indicated that Manafort was in debt to pro-Russian interests by up to $17 million prior to joining Donald Trumps presidential campaign.

He also took more than a dozen trips to Moscow and frequently talked to Putin allies over a period of about 10 years, McClatchy reported. He traveled to Kiev at least 19 times in 20 months after the February 2014 removal of Ukraines pro-Russia leader.

How was Manafort involved with Trump's campaign?

Manafort joined Trump's presidential campaign in March 2016 to help wrangle delegates ahead of the Republican National Convention in Ohio, something he'd done for former President Gerald Ford.

Just two months later, Manafort became Trump's campaign chairman.

Manaforts resignation from the campaign was announced on August 19, 2016, after The Times reported that he'd received $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from Yanukovychs pro-Russian party between 2007 and 2012.

Manafort and Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016. She reportedly was said to have damaging information on Trumps campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, which was "part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump."

What was Manafort charged with?

Along with his former business associate Rick Gates, Manafort was initially indicted in October 2017 on multiple counts that included: conspiracy against the U.S., conspiracy to launder money, false statements and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.

Nearly four months later, in February 2018, the pair were hit with additional tax evasion and bank fraud charges. These charges involved much of the same conduct Manafort and Gates were initially accused of, but the amount of money Manafort said to have laundered through offshore accounts increased to $30 million.

In June 2018, Mueller's team brought additional charges of obstruction of justice against Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate. The charges against Manafort and Gates dont relate to allegations of misconduct during Trumps campaign.

Mueller also accused Manafort of secretly paying former European politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine.

Manafort was found guilty of eight counts in August in the first trial victory for Mueller's team. The judge declared a mistrial on 10 other counts after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

In September, Manafort pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with Mueller's team ahead of his second trial. According to Politico, the plea deal includes a 10-year cap for how long Manafort will be in prison. It also includes allowing Manafort to serve his time for both trials concurrently.

He received a nearly 4-year prison sentence on March 7 after a federal jury in Virginia convicted him on eight counts of bank and tax fraud last year. A week later, on March 13, he received an additional three and a half years on foreign lobbying and witness tampering charges.

Manafort previously maintained his innocence despite all of the charges brought before him  but he has since expressed remorse for his actions.

"I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today," Manafort said in a written statement in March, begging a judge for mercy.

Fox News' Ann Schmidt, Jake Gibson, Alex Pappas, Matt Richardson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A presidential candidate was barnstorming across Los Angeles over the weekend, reaching out to Mexican migrants, blasting President Trump and calling for protection for illegal immigrants.

The twist: he is running for president of Mexico.



According to Mexican newspaper Excelsior, Ricardo Anaya Cortes met with businessmen and activists in Los Angeles -- which has a large Hispanic population.

Among those he met with was Obama-era Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, now the president of the University of California.



In a tweet accompanied by a picture with Napolitano, Anaya said they talked about the importance of supporting the Dreamers and agreed that Mexican migrants deserve respect.



By Dreamers, he was referring to illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. Trump repealed the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) in September, which gave protection to some of those arrivals, and gave Congress a deadline of March 5 to pass a fix. Court orders have since extended that deadline.



According to Excelsior, Anaya said that we are one, and reiterated that the Mexican migrant community in the U.S. is not alone. While on American soil, he also took a swipe at President Trump by saying he would not be on the side of an American president who has dedicated himself to insulting our community.

Relations between Trump and Mexico have been strained since the very beginning of Trumps campaign when he described the immigrants coming from Mexico in harsh terms.



When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best, Trump said in June 2015. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.



Trump has also clashed with Mexican leaders over his campaign pledge that Mexico would pay for the wall on the southern border.



For Anaya, though, even the cool actions from President Pena Nieto were too positive, with Anaya blasting Nieto for allowing Trump to visit the country in 2016.



"After Donald Trump had been insulting, and revolting at the best that Mexico has in the United States, they dared to roll out a red carpet to receive him in Los Pinos, as if he were a head of state," he said, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.



Appealing to the Mexican community, he said that those who have entered the U.S. are the heroes of the country.



I want to ask you, with my heart in my hand, that every time you hear an aggressive or denigrating expression, remember that there, in Mexico, you are the heroes of the country, the brave, the enterprising, the generous, those who dared to cross the border to give their family a better future, he said, according to CIS.

A candidate from the conservative National Action Party, Anaya has promised respectful relations with the United States but said his government would not let Washington take advantage.

"At the right time I will say personally to the president of the United States, and I will say it in his language so there will be absolutely no confusion ... Mexico will not pay a single cent for that wall," Anaya said.

The election is July 1. Reuters reported in January that since the last election, seven times as many Mexicans in the U.S. have received voting credentials under new rules that let Mexican citizens sign up at local consulates rather than in Mexico.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.


The House Intelligence Committee, investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, fell into further partisan divide after the release of a controversial memo that alleged federal surveillance abuses in the spying of President Trumps former associates.

The initial memo released by Republicans on the committee detailed purported improper surveillance by the FBI and Justice Department officials to spy on Carter Page, a foreign adviser for Trump during his campaign.

Less than a month later, Democrats on the committee released their own memo, although it contained heavy redactions. The rebuttal memo was meant to counter claims in the Republicans document.

As the memo clash continues, here are the names you should know.

Devin Nunes

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, serving in that role since 2015.

Nunes, 44, was one of the authors of the GOP memo released earlier this month that detailed the alleged surveillance abuses. He told Fox News he had an obligation to the American people to make FISA abuses public.

I think the American people understand that the FBI should not go to secret courts using information that was paid for by the Democrats to open up investigations, get warrants on people of the other political party. Thats the type of stuff that happens in banana republics, Nunes said.

Before the memo was released, Congress voted to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA. While that particular section wasnt used to obtain the warrant detailed in the memo, lawmakers have still pointed to it as a dangerous example of how FISA can lead to violations against Americans Fourth Amendment rights.

Nunes voted to reauthorize that section earlier this year.

Trump has said Nunes "may someday be recognized as a Great American hero for what he has exposed and what he has had to endure."

Adam Schiff

As the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., came out swinging at the GOPs memo, calling it misleading.

Schiff, 57, and other Democrats on the committee created their own rebuttal memo which was released  along with heavy redactions  in late February. The memo countered the GOP narrative that the FBI and Justice Department conspired against Trump as they investigated his ties to Russia.

Schiff said his partys memo is the product of good faith negotiation between the Minority and the FBI and DOJ.

Schiff is a former assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute the first FBI agent to be convicted of espionage for leaking secret documents to the Soviets.

Trump has lambasted the lawmaker, whom he called Little Adam Schiff, claiming he is desperate for higher office and one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington.

Christopher Steele

At the heart of the GOP memos surveillance abuse claims is the now-infamous dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.

The GOP memo alleged that the dossier was key to the FBIs FISA warrant in targeting Page. It also said the political origins of the dossier were not disclosed to the FISA court in the application or renewal process  something critics of the memo have denied.

The Democratic memo contended the Justice Department disclosed the assessed political motivation of those who hired him and that Steele was likely hired by someone looking for information that could be used to discredit then-candidate Trump's campaign.

Steele was hired by political firm Fusion GPS to compile opposition research on Trump, leading to the colorful but unverified dossier. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the presidential campaign for Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS through law firm Perkins Coie.

However, Clinton reportedly was unaware of the dossier until BuzzFeed News published it in January 2017.

Prior to the dossier dustup, Steele was an intelligence officer with Britains MI6 agency, serving in various countries, including Russia and France. Eventually, he co-founded Orbis Business Intelligence, an intelligence consulting agency.

Carter Page

FBI and Justice Department officials were able to obtain a FISA surveillance warrant on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, due to the controversial dossier, according to the GOP memo.

Page served as a foreign policy adviser to the campaign for a few months, although White House officials have sought to downplay the role he played.

He told Fox News he became a liability pretty quick for the campaign because of his Russian connections.

Page spent several years in Moscow, where he opened a Merrill Lynch office, according to the biography on the companys website. He bragged in a 2013 letter that he was an informal adviser to the Kremlin, Time reported.

And Russian intelligence agents once unsuccessfully tried to recruit Page as a spy in 2013, Foreign Policy reported.

Page has told Fox News that he did nothing that could even possibly be viewed in helping [Russians] in any way.

But in a statement following the release of the Democrats memo, Schiff said, The FBI had ample reason to believe that Carter Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power based on his history, including the fact that he had previously been a target of Russian recruitment, his travel to Russia, and other information.

Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley sent a criminal referral in early January for Steele, which was recently released. The pairs referral appears to support some of the claims made in the GOP memo.

In their criminal referral, Graham and Grassley said the surveillance applications relied heavily on Mr. Steeles dossier claims. They also said the applications failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpsons ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Grassley, the 84-year-old who represents Iowa, is the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. Graham is a member of the committee as well.

The American people now have some context for what they have been reading in the press for months, including some of which served as the basis of the criminal referral of Mr. Steele made by Senator Grassley and me, Graham, the 62-year-old from South Carolina, said in a statement. Through my service on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have been investigating this matter for months, and will continue to do so.

Michael Horowitz

The inspector general of the Department of Justice was appointed to investigate allegations of government surveillance abuse following the release of the memos.

Michael Horowitz has already been conducting a review of the FBI and Justice Departments handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons personal email server.

We believe the Department of Justice must adhere to the high standards in the FISA court, Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions said in February. Yes it will be investigated. And I think that's just the appropriate thing the inspector general will take that as one of the matters he'll deal with.

Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy

Republican Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Trey Gowdy have requested Sessions appoint a special counselor to investigate certain decisions made by Justice Department officials in 2016 and 2017.

The call for a special counsel appears to have stemmed from the FISA memos.

Goodlatte, from Virginia, told Fox News the case for which the FISA warrant was obtained was highly suspect.

In their request to Sessions, the congressmen wrote, There is evidence of bias, trending toward animus, among those charged with investigating serious cases.

There is evidence political opposition research was used in court filings. There is evidence this political opposition research was neither vetted before it was used nor fully revealed to the relevant tribunal, they added.

Gowdy is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee; Goodlatte chairs the House Judiciary Committee. Both men are not seeking re-election in 2018.

Fox News' Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Republican congressional candidate Rick Saccone conceded the special election to Democrat Conor Lamb more than a week after the close election ended.

Lamb, who had already declared victory in the race, revealed Saccones call in a tweet on March 21. Lamb offered congratulations to his opponent for a close, hard-fought race and said he wished him the best.

Lamb won the seat by a margin of about 750 votes. Republicans considered seeking a recount request or a lawsuit to contest the result, even as vote-counting over the past week continued to pad Lamb's lead. But officials said those efforts have been dropped since Saccone conceded.

Ahead of the election, Democrats had hoped to stir up enough enthusiasm  especially among union members  to increase voter turnout and change the party representing a district that has recently been red.

The one fact that has remained the same this year  whether Democrats have won or lost [recent special elections]  is Democrats are doing better in terms of turnout and enthusiasm, Kevan Yenerall, a social sciences professor at Clarion University, told Fox News before the election.

The congressional seat opened after Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who in public was staunchly anti-abortion, resigned in 2017 amid reports that he asked his mistress to get an abortion when he believed she was pregnant.

Here's a look at the candidates and what is unique about Pennsylvania's 18th district.

Conor Lamb

A Marine Corps captain, Conor Lamb, 33, said on his campaign website the biggest issues facing the 18th congressional district arent partisan.

My only bias is the one they taught us in the Marines: a bias for action, Lamb said on his website.

His congressional to-do list includes: battling the nations heroin epidemic, modern energy development and creating jobs.

In Pennsylvania, Lamb already worked towards ending the growing heroin crisis; as an assistant U.S. attorney, Lamb worked to make the Justice Departments Pittsburgh office a national leader in the fight, according to his campaign website.

Lamb has advocated for new leadership in the House and said he would not vote for Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as Minority Leader again  a politically astute move that could garner him the support of more moderate or independent voters, said Yenerall.

Most Democrats in the district may not dislike Pelosi, per se, but would like to shake up the status quo, Yenerall explained.

He added that Lambs background as a veteran and U.S. attorney as well as his temperament does fit the district more so than other Democrats have.

Lamb spoke out about gun control in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre. He said he doesnt believe additional gun laws are needed to prevent mass shootings.

"The broad agreement already is that we're not doing a good enough job keeping guns out of the hands of people with mental health conditions and with criminals," Lamb said at a campaign event.

He told the Weekly Standard he would not have voted for legislation that would have prohibited abortions after 20 weeks, adding that he doesnt label himself as pro-life because its a political term.

Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned for Lamb a week ahead of the election, comparing the candidate to his late son Beau and praising him for his dedication to unions.

Lamb will never ever stop, will never ever play a game, Biden said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Thats this guy. This guy gets it.

Rick Saccone

A longtime state representative, Rick Saccone, 60, is a conservative Republican who more embodies the policies of President Trump.

Saccone is more known for his religious conservatism as opposed to Murphy, who is a more mainstream Republican, Robert Speel, an associate professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University in Erie, told Fox News.

He was one of the lawmakers who championed Pennsylvanias Castle Doctrine, or stand your ground law, which allows law-abiding people to protect themselves, their families and others from intruders and attackers without fear of prosecution or civil action for acting in defense of themselves and others.

Saccone also sponsored a bill that would require public school buildings to bear the motto In God We Trust. Additionally, he pushed for a National Fast Day in the state to mirror President Lincolns proclamation of a national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer.

PARTY LEADERS SENDING BIG MONEY, TOP STARS TO RIGHT PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE RACE

Saccone is a retired Air Force officer with vast experience in counter-terrorism efforts, including working on task forces for two Olympic Games, according to his campaign website.

Ive got a resume that my opponent doesnt have, Saccone told Fox News.

Trump often tweeted his support of Saccone, including ahead of a January visit to the Keystone state.

Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda, the president said.

Trump again traveled to western Pennsylvania the weekend before the election, urging voters to elect Saccone to advance the White House agenda.

We need our Congressman Saccone, Trump said.

Aside from Trump, Saccone also received support from Vice President Mike Pence and Ivanka, the president's daughter and adviser.

But not all Republicans were happy with Saccone, Politico reported just before the election. Strategists and national GOP officials described Saccone to the publication as deeply underwhelming as a candidate and complained about his fundraising ability. Saccone told Fox News the reported friction was nonsense peddled by his opponents.

Saccone is married with two sons. He studied in Africa, visited 75 countries, authored multiple books on North Korea and earned a Ph.D. in international affairs.

The district

Pennsylvanias 18th congressional district is located in the western part of the state near Pittsburgh. It includes parts of Allegheny, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland Counties and is made up of many rural, blue-collar voters.

There are actually more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district  a result of strong organized labor in the area.

Union workers are a key demographic for the special election, although Trump made inroads with the more than 80,000 members in the district with his candidacy, Yenerall said.

But Saccones anti-union voting record in the state legislature ultimately hurt him.

Due to redistricting in the state, both Lamb and Saccone are expected to run again later this year  in what will now be separate districts.

What shaped the election

Bellwether election: Pennsylvanias 18th district overwhelmingly voted for Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. The election shaped up as the next test of Democrats enthusiasm and GOP resilience in the Trump era and an early indicator of whether a midterm wave could be coming later this year.

Political activists are certainly looking at this race as an indicator of Pennsylvania and national trends, Speel said.

Lambs win could spell major trouble for Republicans in similar districts across the country, Yenerall said ahead of the election.

Both parties have a great deal at stake here. If a Democrat can win this type of district with the right type of candidate  it would mean the Democrats would do better than expected in the midterms," he had predicted.

Spending: This race was expensive. Lamb raised more than $3.3 million this year, compared to just $703,000 for Saccone, according to FEC records.

Ending Spending Inc., a super PAC founded by billionaire Joe Ricketts, was the first to hit the airwaves with a $1 million ad buy in support of Saccone.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, announced earlier this year that it would open two field offices in the district with 50 full-time canvassers.

In Lambs first television spot, he noted that he has refused corporate PAC money.

Tim Murphy fallout: The reasoning behind Murphys decision to leave office could have an effect on voters, some politicos in the state warned ahead of election night.

Itll be interesting to see if voters turn against the Republican Party, seeing them as hypocritical, Speel said.

Lamb has already painted Republicans as the party of hypocrisy. When he was selected as the Democrats nominee, Lamb said he planned to expose Republicans public hypocrisy fully equal to the private hypocrisy of Tim Murphy, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in November.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels is cashing in on her legal battle with President Trump, as she ramps up a strip club tour across the United States thats playfully named after Trumps campaign slogan.

Daniels  whose real name is Stephanie Clifford  made headlines across the globe this week by filing a lawsuit Tuesday against the president, claiming a nondisclosure agreement she signed in 2016 about an alleged relationship they had isnt valid. The White House denies an affair took place.

Meanwhile, Daniels took the stage Wednesday evening before 100 patrons at Thee DollHouse, a strip club in Myrtle Beach. Shes scheduled to dance again at the same club Thursday night.

She has referred to her cross country strip club appearances on social media as the make America horny again tour."

The Sun News in Myrtle Beach reported that Daniels wore a USA-themed red, white and blue outfit and danced to Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman" during one performance. Customers paid $20 each for photos with her.

Daniels recently posted on Twitter a list of appearances at 26 different strip clubs, with shows in California, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Colorado, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

STORMY DANIELS SUES TRUMP, SAYS HUSH AGREEMENT IS INVALID BECAUSE HE DIDNT SIGN IT

Her tour comes as Daniels is keeping her name in the news by filing a lawsuit against Trump in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday alleging a Hush Agreement. Daniels, suggesting she wants to talk about her past experiences with Trump, argues her alleged agreement with Trump is invalid because he never signed the document himself.

Daniels and Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, signed the non-disclosure agreement on Oct. 28, 2016, the suit said. Trump was elected president less than two weeks later.

A copy of the agreement shows Daniels, identified as Peggy Peterson, signed the paperwork, but Trump, identified as David Dennison, did not.

The lawsuit claims the two had an intimate relationship during the summer of 2006 in Lake Tahoe, and it continued well into the year 2007.

He has denied all these allegations," press secretary Sarah Sanders said during Wednesdays White House press briefing.

Cohen admitted last month that he paid Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket in October 2016. He said the payment was lawful and not a campaign contribution or campaign expenditure by anyone.

STORMY DANIELS ORDERED BY ARBITRATION JUDGE NOT TO SUE, COHENS LAWYER SAYS

An attorney for Cohen told Fox News on Wednesday that Daniels was ordered by an arbitration judge not to sue Trump. Cohens attorney argues Daniels violated that by filing her lawsuit Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the bank used by Cohen to wire the $130,000 to Daniels flagged the transaction as suspicious and reported it to the government.

The adult film actress first detailed her account of an alleged extramarital affair with Trump in 2011 on the celebrity website The Dirty, and it was picked up before the 2016 election by The Smoking Gun.

Fox News Nicole Darrah and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
The centerpiece of a new Republican National Committee midterm plan to hold the House of Representatives? House parties.

Republican operatives are organizing small groups of Hispanic constituents on couches across the country, emphasizing districts where their votes could prevent a seat from flipping in Florida, Arizona, and Nevada.

We are going to continue outreach to communities that havent traditionally been Republican, that dont know our message, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News at a recent house party in Coral Gables, Fla. But the only way we can share our message is if we show up.

In the last three midterm cycles, 2014, 2010, and 2006, Hispanic voters only made up 8 percent of the electorate according to exit polls. In 2016, Hispanic voters broke for Clinton over Trump by nearly 40 points. But Republicans seem to believe a platform highlighting the strength of the economy may motivate more Hispanic voters to turn out  and for their candidates  than in recent contests.

In Florida, McDaniel was joined by a handful of GOP activists, who are particularly focused on solutions for improving hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Thousands of Puerto Rican natives displaced by the storm are still in Florida, which some operatives see as an opportunity for Republicans.

We believe that many families are going to stay, the RNCs Puerto Rico engagement director Gary Berrios said. Our job is to tell them the message of the Republican Party.

Surprisingly, immigration never came up at the house party in Florida attended by Fox News. But as long as President Trump is in office, Democrats plan to make immigration a top-tier issue.

Latinos judge people by their words and their actions, and this president has made one statement after another, taken one action after another, disparaging and demoralizing and disenfranchising Latinos, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez told Fox News in an interview Wednesday. Look at the Puerto Rican situation  Puerto Ricans are second-class citizens in Donald Trumps opinion, thats why we have a third of the island  still  without electricity.
President Trump has promised to crack down on so-called sanctuary cities, signing an executive order in January 2017 that moved to strip federal grant money from towns that harbor illegal immigrants.

A federal judge permanently blocked it in November 2017, saying the Trump administration lacks the authority to impose new conditions on spending that has already been approved by Congress.

But the Justice Department has taken legal action against California, the first sanctuary state. Its designation means the nations most populous state will limit just how much local law enforcement will cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

What are sanctuary cities?

While the exact specifications can vary, sanctuary city policies overall limit how much local law enforcement officials can comply with federal immigration authorities.

San Francisco, for example, passed an ordinance in 1989 that prohibits city employees, funds or resources from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in enforcing federal immigration law unless its required by state or federal law.

It also passed an ordinance that limits when law enforcement officials can give ICE notice that an immigrant has been released from a local jail and prohibits law enforcement officials from cooperating with detainer requests from ICE.

Berkeley, near San Francisco, is reportedly the original sanctuary city. It passed a resolution in 1971 that protected sailors who wanted to resist the Vietnam War.

Its difficult to nail down a concrete number of just how many cities are considered to be a sanctuary for illegal immigrants  some cities have an ordinance or policy in place; others do not.

What about states?

Aside from cities, five states  California, Oregon, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont  have enacted laws that limit how much police can contribute assistance to federal immigration agents, according to The New York Times.

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the law that went into effect this year designating California as a sanctuary state. The law, in part, bars police from asking people about their immigration status or participating in some federal immigration enforcement activities.

How are they viewed?

The debate about sanctuary cities intensified in July 2015 when Kate Steinle, 32, was killed as she strolled along the San Francisco waterfront with her father. Steinle was shot by a man with a criminal record who had slipped into the U.S. multiple times illegally.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed a roomful of federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials last year and criticized cities, like Philadelphia, that are giving sanctuary to criminals. He asked them to reconsider the harm they are doing to their residents.

And in suing California, Sessions told Fox News that its federal law [that] determines immigration policy.

The state of California is not entitled to block that activity, he said. Somebody needs to stand up and say no, youve gone too far, you cannot do this, this is not reasonable. Its radical, really.

Not every city in The Golden State is on board with the states sanctuary policies, however. The Los Alamitos Council voted to opt out of the sanctuary policies, and other municipalities are reportedly exploring similar options.

But the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) argues that local law enforcement jurisdictions do not have a legal obligation to assist with civil immigration enforcement, which is the responsibility of the federal government.

A local decision to offer resources to federal immigration enforcement authorities is completely voluntary, the legal organization said in a 2016 report.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Jeff Sessions, the U.S. attorney general, on Wednesday told Fox News that California is not entitled to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and vowed that the federal government will not allow the Golden State to flout immigration laws.

Sessions called the states actions radical," and reminded other sanctuary city states that federal law determines immigration policy, not states.

He told Shannon Bream, the host of Fox News @ Night, he is not happy with comments by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who on Wednesday slammed the ICE raids in the state last week as "unjust and cruel."

"Why do we have ICE officers? Are they just going to sit in their offices and do nothing?"  Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Federal immigration agents arrested more than 150 people in California in the days after Oakland's mayor gave early warning of the raids over the weekend late last month.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned residents that "credible sources" had told her a sweep was imminent, calling it her "duty and moral obligation" to warn families.

California lawmakers from Gov. Jerry Brown down to local mayors have resisted a Trump administration immigration crackdown that they contend is arbitrarily hauling in otherwise law-abiding people and splitting up families that include U.S.-born children.

We wanted a healthy and good relationship with [California], but federal law determines immigration policy," he said. "The state of California is not entitled to block that activity. Somebody needs to stand up and say no, youve gone too far, you cannot do this, this is not reasonable. Its radical, really.

The attorney general said California's position essentially amounted to adopting "open borders." He denied that the federal government wants to commandeer state authorities.

"People have tried to spin this as somehow we're demanding that state and local officials go out and do the work of the federal government," Sessions said. "We just cannot allow them to obstruct or block" federal officers, he said.

"We cannot accept this," he reiterated.

PELOSI SLAMS 'UNJUST AND CRUEL' ICE RAID

Sessions said there is "nothing wrong" with ICE raids.

"Why do we have ICE officers?" Sessions asked. "Are they just going to sit in their offices and do nothing?"

Sessions also spoke to the recent calls for a second Special Counsel, saying he has a responsibility to ensure the integrity of the FISA process and that he will consider their request.

I have great respect for Mr. Gowdy and Chairman Goodlatte, and we're going to consider seriously their recommendations.

Sessions also cooled off rumors about tension between the president and himself, saying that he believes in the policies hes advancing.

I think President Trump moves the ball. He can get things done that Im not sure any other person in America could get done, he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Cynthia Nixon, known as Miranda Hobbes by fans of HBOs Sex and the City series, officially is challenging incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York's Democratic primary.

New York is my home. Ive never lived anywhere else, Nixon said in a campaign video. New York is where I was raised and where Im raising my kids. Im a proud public school graduate and a prouder public school parent.

I love New York. Ive never wanted to live anywhere else, but something has to change, Nixon said, adding that the government should fix the states problems with healthcare, mass incarceration and the subway system.

Nixon, 52, is no stranger to politics. Shes often butted heads with Cuomo over issues pertaining to public education. Shes advocated for an increase in funding for public schools, breast cancer awareness and gay rights, among other things. Shes protested President Trump and campaigned for former President Barack Obama.

Nixon also received the endorsement of the Working Families Party (WFP), an influential, progressive third party in New York.

In the primary, Nixon has been credited with pushing Cuomo to the left on some issues, including his executive order granting paroled felons the right to vote in the state.

Heres a look at Nixons political advocacy and some of the issues shes passionate about.

Public schools

Along with her wife, Nixon has championed causes related to New York Citys public schools, including an effort to reduce public school classroom sizes. It was during this campaign that Nixon met her future spouse Christine Marinoni, according to a profile in The Advocate.

Nixon was once arrested during a protest at City Hall aimed at increasing funding to public schools.

We marched on up, sat down and blocked the entrance, she told The New York Times. The police very politely asked us to move, and we declined. They pulled up the police van and put us in.

The Tony Award winner is also a spokeswoman for the Alliance for Quality Education, a New York-based organization that advocates for high quality academic opportunities.

Cynthia is a public school mom who is extremely sincere and knowledgeable and has consistently been outspoken on the need for fair and adequate funding for our public schools.  Billy Easton, executive director of Alliance for Quality Education

Cynthia is a public school mom who is extremely sincere and knowledgeable and has consistently been outspoken on the need for fair and adequate funding for our public schools, Billy Easton, executive director of AQE, told Fox News.

Shes been a very clear advocate, not just in a sort of self-interested, Im just trying to take care of my kids [way], but more from the standpoint of every kid deserves a great opportunity, he said.

In an op-ed for The Journal News, a New York newspaper, Nixon criticized the Trump administrations support for charter schools and implored New York to put more resources into public schools.

Gay rights

Nixon was honored with the Human Rights Campaigns Visibility Award in February 2018 because she is a fearless and outspoken advocate for all LGBTQ people, HRC President Chad Griffin said.

Cynthia uses her talent and public platform to speak out for equality in this country and around the globe, and in the process, she is changing countless hearts and minds, Griffin said in a statement.

CYNTHIA NIXON RELEASES MIRANDA-THEMED CAMPAIGN GEAR ON SHOW'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY

A year before she was awarded the honor, Nixon protested Trumps immigration ban at a rally held outside New York Citys Stonewall Inn, an important historical site for gay rights. She criticized Vice President Mike Pence, calling him the poster boy for anti-LGBT rhetoric, legislation and conversion therapy.

As LGBT people, we know how important coming out is, but I would argue that our coming out has never been more important than it is right now, Nixon said.

Nixon has been married to activist Marinoni since 2012. The pair lobbied to legalize gay marriage in Washington, where Marinoni is from.

Breast cancer awareness

After battling breast cancer herself, Nixon became a spokeswoman for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.

Nixon kept her own diagnosis quiet while she received treatment, telling ABC News she didnt want paparazzi at the hospital. After hearing the news from her doctor, she said she felt scared and didnt want this to be happening.

The cancer was found early, in 2006, and Nixon was able to beat it. She also had some prior experience with breast cancer; her mother successfully battled it when Nixon was a child, according to ABC News.

To treat it, Nixon had a lumpectomy and underwent more than six weeks of radiation, Fox News previously reported.

Access to abortion

Nixon has long been a supporter of Planned Parenthood and abortion rights, attending protests in Washington, D.C., and penning editorials in support of the reproductive health organization.

I am convinced that abortion rights are human rights not only because of compassion for my mother but also because I am a mother of three, Nixon wrote in an op-ed for Time, detailing her mothers own abortion. Many of us who made the decision to become parents have experienced a unique desire for parenthood. But that in no way mutes our desire for abortion to be safe, legal and available.

Women must have the right to determine whether and when to have children. That is what reproductive rights are all about, she continued. Abortion, like parenthood, is a deeply personal and sometimes complex decision for a woman, and no one can make that decision for her. Decisions about whether to choose adoption, end a pregnancy or raise a child must be left to the woman and her family to determine based on their faith with the counsel of their medical provider.

CYNTHIA NIXON EMBRACES 'UNQUALIFIED LESBIAN' LABEL IN NEW YORK GUBERNATORIAL RUN

Nixon was a keynote speaker at Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas awards luncheon in Dallas in March. And shes also participated in the Womens March, a nationwide women-led rally that advocates for women's rights, as well as other hot button issues such as immigration reform and LGBTQ rights

Mayor de Blasios campaign

Nixon was able to get another big-name celebrity to endorse Bill de Blasio in the Democratic primary when he ran for mayor in 2013: Alec Baldwin.

According to a New York Times profile, Nixon sent Baldwin an email, encouraging him to publicly pick de Blasio over Christine Quinn, then the speaker of the City Council.

Baldwin responded to Nixons email, ensuring her that he would support de Blasio and apologizing for lamely assuming that she was supporting Quinn as both women are lesbians, according to The Times.

She would also get other celebrities on board with de Blasio  including fellow Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker  and organized a fundraiser for him.

She is listed as one of de Blasios advisors. And for her own campaign, she's assembled a staff that includes veteran operatives who have worked for de Blasio, according to NY1.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
English Country Dance is a beautiful, historical social dance that was popular from around 1650 through 1800. Movies based on Jane Austen novels such as "Pride & Prejudice" or "Emma," feature scenes with English Country dancing at balls and parties. Experience English Country Dance as part of this continuing group class on Saturday, March 10, from 4-6 p.m. at Brainerd United Methodist Churchs Lundy Hall Gym, 4315 Brainerd Road. Admission is $5.

The class starts with basic ECD moves, including: set and turn single, two hand turn, changes of rights and lefts, star across, back to back, figure eight, hey for three. The program includes dances from the historical and modern English Country Dance repertoire. Dances are taught and walked through with prompting and attention to detail and style.

Everyone is welcome. No partner or previous experience is necessary. Nearly everyone is a beginner so no one will feel out of place, said officials.

Participants should bring a separate pair of soft-soled shoes for dancing (sneakers or flats).

For more information follow on Facebook.

After the English Country Dance the Chattanooga Traditional Dance Society will host a St. Patricks Contra Dance from 8-11 p.m. with calling by Vicki Herndon and music by Carolina Ceili.

The dance will also be held in Lundy Hall Gym. Admission is $10, $7 for students and seniors.

Everyone is invited to join the welcoming, family-friendly community and enjoy this lively, traditional social dance. No need to bring a partner. All dances are taught in walk-throughs. Participants are asked to wear comfortable, casual clothes and bring a separate pair of clean, soft-soled shoes for dancing. Boots or shoes with hard heels are not allowed on the dance floor.

There is always a Contra Basics lesson for newcomers at 7:30 p.m.

The Chattanooga Traditional Dance Society has been sponsoring contra dances for over 20 years.



For more information follow on Facebook.
The mainstream media are heartsick over the departure of Gary Cohn.

As the presidents chief economic adviser heads for the exits, the framing of most storiesnot to mention the continuation of the chaos narrativeis that this development is truly bad news for the White House.

That comes against the backdrop of coverage that Trumps sudden move to impose hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum is a wrong-headed decision that has greatly upset Paul Ryan and the Republican Party.

But heres the thing: Donald Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do during the campaign, which he spent talking tough on trade. In fact, the real estate mogul has been complaining since the 1980s that other countries are taking America to the cleaners.

The tariff plan may be smart or self-defeating. And its certainly created a political storm. But why should Trump be pilloried for keeping a campaign promise, just because the former head of Goldman Sachs was opposed?

This is not a knock on Cohn, who brought stature to the administration. There is little doubt that his battle against tariffs was a last stand for him and that he felt blindsided by the move, even leaving aside his request that the president give him a bigger job. (Its hard to imagine he wanted to be chief of staff, despite reports that Trump was considering him if he wanted to replace John Kelly).

I mean, does anyone remember this kind of media drama surrounding such Obama economic advisers as Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman?

So how is the Cohn resignation playing?

Politicos headline includes an anonymous quote that the departure will be a disaster:

The number of bad ideas that have come though this White house that were thankfully killed dead  there are too many to count, an unnamed White House official says. With Gary gone, I just think, from a policy perspective, it means disaster.

Politico says that Cohn joins the long list of policy experts who have departed in recent months  a brain drain that leaves the president with fewer people around him who know how to get policy made, and how to stop Trump from moving ahead with unworkable ideas.

Some worry the White House could return to the uncontrolled days immediately following Trumps inauguration, when many West Wing jobs were still unfilled and former strategist Steve Bannon was writing executive orders with policy adviser Stephen Miller.

Lets just say Bannons departure wasnt covered with quite the same tone.

The Washington Post says that the departure of Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs who had been an interlocutor between the Trump administration and the business community, is the latest jolt to a White House that has been especially tumultuous in recent weeks and unable to retain some of its top talent.

His resignation as National Economic Council director will leave the White House without a financial heavyweight who business executives and foreign leaders believed had served as a counter to Trumps protectionist impulses and as a moderating force in other areas.

This is an important story because, as the New York Times says, trade has always been the iron curtain that divided Mr. Trump and establishment Republicans.

The consensus among economists is that however many jobs may be saved in steel and aluminum, about triple that number will be lost in industries that rely on these imports.

But that is, in a nutshell, the free trade argument that has been resented for decades by workers in manufacturing who care more about their struggling industries than the overall health of the global economy. And making the populist case against such agreements helps explain how Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and thus the presidency.

Gary Cohn is a Wall Street guy. He may be right about this issue. But he doesnt have to run for reelection in 2020, and the tariffs he fought play very well with the presidents base.
President Trump hinted that he would sign controversial tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel Thursday, but also suggested flexibility for real friends abroad who treat the U.S. fairly.

At a Cabinet meeting Thursday afternoon, Trump told reporters that he was intending to stick with the 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum ahead of an expected announcement later in the day.

But there had been mixed messages from the White House surrounding if and when Trump would sign the tariffs.

No event was listed on the White House schedule, and officials told Fox News there would likely be no tariff event on Thursday, despite the White House having confirmed on Wednesday there would be a signing ceremony.

But in a tweet Thursday morning, Trump indicated that an event with industry leaders was still on.



We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military, he said.



The White House said last week that there would be no exemptions to the tariffs -- 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum -- but both White House officials and Trump himself indicated differently this week.

Officials said Wednesday that Mexico and Canada would be exempt from the tariffs as part of negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and Trump himself had hinted at other exemptions.



In a press conference alongside Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Tuesday, he had cushioned threats of a 25 percent tax on European cars in response to E.U. countermeasures with a hint that he could also exempt the E.U. from his planned tariffs if there was a like-for-like reduction from the bloc.

TRUMP, UNDER PRESSURE AT HOME AND ABROAD, HINTS AT WIGGLE ROOM ON TARIFFS



Unless they can do something for us, as an example if the E.U. takes off some of the horrible barriers that make it impossible for our product to go into there, then we can start talking, otherwise well leave it the way it is, he said.



The New York Times reported Tuesday that, in a call to British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump disagreed with Mays assessment that the tariffs would be dangerous but concluded by telling her he had not made a final decision on what to do.



Trump has been under pressure both at home and abroad over his tariff plans. A number of top Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have expressed concern about the proposals. Trumps top economic adviser Gary Cohn, who had been a firm opponent of protectionist measures, announced his resignation this week.



Fox News Blake Burman and John Roberts contributed to this report.
President Trump signed an order Thursday that imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all foreign countries, while carving out an exception for Canada and Mexico for now while North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations are under way.

The president, joined by steel and aluminum workers, signed a companion proclamation  one on steel and one on aluminum  instituting a tariff of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports. The tariffs will become effective in 15 days, with exclusions for Mexico and Canada taking effect immediately, officials said.

"You are truly the backbone of America, you know that. Very special people," Trump told the workers. "We have to protect our steel and alumnium industries while at the same time, showing great flexibility with people who are really friends of ours."

Vice President Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer stood behind the president during his remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

"This is not merely an economic disaster, but it's a security disaster," Trump said. "Today, I'm defending America's national security."

The U.S. is the worlds largest importer of steel, importing nearly four times as much as it exports, according to the White House. The U.S. imported five times as much primary aluminum as it produced in 2016.

"It's a process called dumping. And they dumped more than any time, on any nation, anywhere in the world, and it drove our plants out and our businesses out," Trump said.

The administration's move to impose tariffs came after a nine-month investigation, led by Ross, and interagency meetings from April 2017 through January 2018, which found that the current level of aluminum and steel imports to the U.S. had the potential to threaten our national security.

Trump said the investigation documented a "growing crisis" in U.S. steel and aluminum industries, which he said have been "ravaged."

"The steel industry has been ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices, an assault on our country... It's been an assault, they know better than anybody," Trump said. "And I've been talking about this for a long time, longer than my political career."

The president blasted politicians, noting they "never did anything about it."

"Our factories were left to rot and to rust all over the place. Thriving communities turned into ghost towns. Not any longer," Trump said. "The workers who poured their souls into building this great nation were betrayed, but that betrayal is over."

A senior official said Thursday that the Commerce Department investigation "provided the president with the powers to take actions, should the department find that imports of commodities like aluminum and steel provide a significant threat to our national security and economic security." The official noted that national security was "broadly defined," not limited to national defense.

Ross recommended a 24 percent tariff on steel, but the administration official said that the official 25 percent tariff was based on additional data and support.

Aluminum is used in a range of ground weapons and aircraft, and steel is required for aircraft carriers, amphibious force ships, submarines, tanks and light armored vehicles. The White House said the investigation rendered the U.S. "unable" to produce enough steel and aluminum to meet national defense and critical industry needs in the event of a national emergency.

"We will not place any new tax on products made in the United States," Trump said. "You don't want to pay a tax, bring your plants to the United States."

He added: "We're urging all companies to buy American. That's what we want. Buy American."

The move though, should not be a "surprise," according to the official, who called it another "promise made" and "promise kept" by Trump.

"No one should be surprised with any kind of action were taking," the official said. "This is one of the most well-discussed, well-signaled actions in the history of trade actions."

The Trump administration, in January, approved safeguard tariffs on imported large residential washing machines and solar cells.

The official said Thursday that there is language in the proclamation outlining "security relationships" with countries around the globe, and noted that "they will be welcome to discuss" with the U.S. "alternate ways" to tariff the imports.

"America will remain open to modifying or removing the tariffs for individual countries," Trump said. "So long as we can ensure their products no longer threaten our security."

Trump said that Lighthizer would be responsibile for negotiating tariffs with other nations.

Trump said hat Mexico and Canada would be exempt from the tariffs during NAFTA negotiations, noting that if there is no deal, he will "terminate NAFTA and start all over again."

"I have a feeling we're going to make a deal on NAFTA. I've been saying it for a long time," Trump said. "If we do, there won't be any tariffs on Canada or Mexico."

"If that [NAFTA] negotiation is unsuccessful then tariffs will be applied across the board," Peter Navarro, the director of the White House National Trade Council, told Fox News. "Now, importantly, in addition to that, there is language that will allow other countries to effectively propose ways that they could get a similar dispensation in exchange for more fair and reciprocal trade with the United States."

Trump introduced a recipricol tax--or a mirror tax, saying "they charge us 50, we charge them 50."

"Right now, they charge us 50, we charge them nothing," Trump said. "We just want fairness. We want everything to be recipricol and I think in the end we're going to have a lot of great jobs, a lot of great companies, all coming back into our country."

But the 25 percent and 10 percent levels should not be seen as firm, officials said. Navarro added that if Canada, Mexico, or any other country is eventually granted an exemption, then tariffs would be raised for all other countries affected.

The president, himself, has said the U.S. would be "very fair."

"[Were] sticking with 10 and 25 percent initially," Trump said earlier Thursday during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday. "Ill have a right to go up or down, depending on the country."

Trump added, though, "Were going to be very flexible."

Navarro told Fox News that the president was not using the tariffs as a "bargaining chip," but noted that "any country that is allowed to be removed from the tariffs would result in higher tariffs for everybody else."

He aded, "So we still maintain a level of protection in defense of the aluminum and steel industries."

The White House said that "key sectors" of steel and aluminum industries have faced "long-term downward trends in employment." The White House said employment in iron and steel mills has dropped by more than 54,000 since 2000. The aluminum industry has cut more than 40,000 jobs in the same time period.

"The decline of American steel and aluminum production has resulted in extensive job losses for hardworking Americans in industries critical to our national security and economic well-being," the White House said Thursday, noting that despite "considerable growth in demand," six primary aluminum smelters have permanently shut down since 2012.

"It's going to make a huge difference. This is the start of a process," Ross said on Fox News' "Your World" after the president signed the order. "The process is aimed at leveling the playing field globally."

After the president signed the order, Ross said the president was just keeping campaign promises, and "unleashing" Americans from "unfair trade practices that have hounded us for years."

"Anybody that doubts the president's sense of conviction in his willingness to be very, very aggressive really misses the boat," Ross added.

Ross noted that this is the first time the U.S. has "really pushed back on this kind of scale."

"It's taking some of the other countries, both our allies and those that are less allied with us, taken them a little while to realize this is not the old administration," Ross said. "This is a different administration. It's forceful, it is determined, it is serious and thoughtful, deliberative about the issues, but make no mistake about it, at the end of the day, we need and we will get lower trade deficits and we will stop exporting jobs and start exporting more products instead."

Fox News' Adam Shaw, John Roberts, Kristin Brown and Serafin Gomez contributed to this report.
The decision to meet with Kim Jong Un in the coming weeks was one that President Donald Trump made "himself," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday, attributing the move to a "dramatic" change in posture by the North Korean leader.

"President Trump has said for some time that he was open to talks and he would willingly meet with Kim when conditions were right,'' Tillserson said during a visit to the African nation of Djibouti. "And I think in the president's judgment that time has arrived now.''

According to Tillerson, the U.S. has seen a shift in Kim from "not just willingness but really his desire for talks."

The news that Trump had accepted the North Korean leader's invitation to meet was greeted positively Friday by officials in China, Russia and South Korea -- three major players in efforts to resolve the ongoing dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over the Hermit Kingdom's nuclear ambitions.

China's foreign ministry said it hopes all parties to the dispute will "show their political courage" in restarting negotiations, and pledges its support in working toward that goal.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russian state news agency Tass on Friday saying -- during a visit to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa -- that Russia considers the move by Trump and Kim to be "a step in the right direction."

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said, during a visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, that her government was consulting with the U.S. on the planned summit -- and hopes that if it does take place, "it's a meaningful meeting with good outcome."

News of the planned meeting between Trump and Kim, which the White House confirmed Thursday night, was a dramatic development after months of saber-rattling between the two world leaders.

Kim extended the invitation and the president agreed that the two would meet by May, South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong announced at the White House.

"Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze," Trump tweeted. "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!"

Trump, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, "will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined." But, Sanders added, "in the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain."

Earlier Thursday, Chung announced that Trump would meet with Kim to "continue the goal of denuclearization."

Kim "expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible," Chung said. "President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization."

Kim, according to Chung, understands that joint military exercises between South Korea and the U.S. would continue. The North Korean leader, according to recent talks with Chung, also claimed to be "commited to denuclearization."

"He (Kim) pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear missile tests," Chung said, adding that Trump's "leadership" and "maximum pressure" brought us "to this juncture."

Chung said that "along with President Trump," he is "optimistic of continuing a diplomatic process." But he added that "the pressure will continue until North Korea matches its words with concrete actions."

News of the willingness of Kim to meet with Trump follows recent high-profile talks between North Korea and South Korea.

Earlier Thursday, Trump announced that South Korea would be making a "major statement" about North Korea. Chung met at the White House earlier in the day with U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

Chung and other South Korean officials briefed the White House Thursday on a potential diplomatic opening with North Korea after a year of escalating tensions. Chung told reporters Tuesday that he had received a message from North Korea intended for the United States, but did not disclose what it was.

Trump and Kim have had a contentious relationship during the last year as both men dramatically increased the rhetoric against the other amid the backdrop of increased nuclear and missile testing by the North Korean regime.

In August Trump warned Kim that, if pressed, the U.S. would unleash "fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before." At the time, the president argued that Kim had "been very threatening beyond a normal state," adding that the regime "best not make any more threats to the United States."

However, threats and counter-threats continued into 2018.

"The U.S. should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my table," Kim said during a Jan. 1 speech, according to a translation. "The entire area of the U.S. mainland is within our nuclear strike range," he continued, adding that "the United States can never start a war against me and our country."

The next day Trump hit back against Kim by claiming that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was more powerful. "North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the 'Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times,'" Trump tweeted. "Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

The last round of significant talks involving the U.S. and North Korea concluded in 2009. The so-called six-party talks, which involved the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, ended when North Korea walked out.

Fox News John Roberts, Kristin Brown, Jennifer Griffin, Rich Edson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A lost Viking settlement known as "Hop," which has been mentioned in sagas passed down over hundreds of years, is said to have supported wild grapes, abundant salmon and inhabitants who made canoes out of animal hides. Now, a prominent archaeologist says the settlement likely resides in northeastern New Brunswick.

If Hop is found it would be the second Viking settlement to be discovered in North America. The other is at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland.

Over the decades, scholars have suggested possible locations where the remains of Hop might be found, including Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick (on the east coast of Canada), Nova Scotia, Maine, New England and New York. However, using the description of the settlement from sagas of Viking voyages, along with archaeological work carried out at L'Anse aux Meadows and at Native American sites along the east coast of North America, an archaeologist has narrowed down the likely location of Hop to northeastern New Brunswick. The likeliest location there? The Miramichi-Chaleur bay area. [In Photos: Viking Settlement Discovered at L'Anse aux Meadows]

Based on the research, "I am placing Hop in the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area," Birgitta Wallace, a senior archaeologist emerita with Parks Canada who has done extensive research on the Vikings in North America, told Live Science. Hop, she said, may not be the name of just one settlement, but rather an area where the Vikings may have created multiple short-term settlements whose precise locations varied from year to year. Tales of the Viking voyages were passed down orally before being written down, and "Hop" may have been misunderstood as being just one site when it could have referred to several seasonal settlements, Wallace said.

Narrowing the search

Wallace found that northeastern New Brunswick is the only place that meets all the criteria in the sagas for Hop: It contains wild grapes and salmon, barrier sandbars and a native population that used animal-hide canoes. "New Brunswick is the northern limit of grapes, which are not native either to Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia," said Wallace, noting that grapes were not found in Maine, either.

Additionally, "barrier sandbars occur along the coasts of [Prince Edward Island], Massachusetts and Long Island, but they are particularly dominant along the New Brunswick east coast," Wallace said. Wild salmon was abundant in eastern New Brunswick at the time, but research conducted by archaeologist Catherine Carlson shows that they were not found at pre-Columbian Native American sites in Maine or New England, Wallace said.

Hide canoes were used by the Mi'kmaq people in the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area, and that region was so abundant in wild salmon (before overfishing in the past century caused the population to fall) that the Mi'kmaq used the salmon as a totem (a creature of spiritual significance), Wallace said. "The only area on the Atlantic seaboard that accommodates all the saga criteria [for Hop] is northeastern New Brunswick," Wallace told Live Science.

Additionally, excavations at the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows revealed the remains of three butternuts and wood from a butternut tree  species that are native to New Brunswick, Wallace said. They also reveal the presence of white ash, beech, eastern hemlock and white elm  all of which can be found in New Brunswick.

Finding Hop

While Wallace can narrow down the location of Hop, finding the actual site(s) will be difficult and perhaps impossible, Wallace said.

Hop was likely used as a summer camp, and any tents or buildings constructed there would have been used only for a few months at most, making them difficult for archaeologists to find, Wallace said. At the end of the summer, the Vikings likely brought the remains of anyone who died back to Greenland (the home base for the Vikings in the region). Any tools they used would likely have been brought back to Greenland or L'Anse aux Meadows. Additionally, the sagas indicate that the Vikings at Hop would have focused on gathering wood and food, an activity that wouldn't leave a large trace in the archaeological record, as organic materials don't preserve well. Furthermore, the landscape in the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area has changed, and any Viking site (or sites) could be paved over.

Even so, "I hope that all archaeologists working in this area keep their eyes open just in case they should run across something not fitting the cultural patterns they set out to explore," Wallace told Live Science.

An essay containing some of Wallace's research was published recently in Canada's History magazine.

Originally published on Live Science.
Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly became the first American to spend 12 consecutive months in space when he completed an epic 340-day stint on the International Space Station in 2016. So what was it like to spend a year in space?

I was surprised at how long a year is  its a really, really long time, he told Fox News. But I was also surprised and really inspired that, after the end of this flight, and my four spaceflights, and all my time in space ... if we can have incredible dreams, we can achieve incredible things.

We built this million-pound space station, while flying around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, in a vacuum [and] extremes of temperature of plus or minus 270 degrees  if we can do this, we can do anything, he added. The Space Station is an amazing place  its really an incredible experience and a privilege to live there.

ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY: HOW I WENT FROM BAD STUDENT TO SPACE STAR

Kelly served as a Navy fighter pilot and test pilot prior to his selection by NASA in 1996. The Orange, NJ.-native went on to become a Space Shuttle pilot and commander and had two stints on the ISS. He returned to Earth after his 340-day stay in March 2016.

The astronaut conducted hundreds of experiments during his near year-long journey in space. Scientists also studied the differences between the astronaut and his twin brother, Mark, back on Earth. They provided blood, saliva and urine samples, underwent ultrasounds and bone scans, got flu shots and more, all in the name of science.

Researchers, Kelly quipped, told him that he is not only smarter, but more handsome, than his brother Mark, a former astronaut himself.

ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY BACK ON EARTH AFTER YEARLONG SPACE MISSION

On a serious scientific level, researchers did note significant changes in the telomeres found at the ends of the chromosomes in Scott Kellys white blood cells.

The telomeres are the things that are in our chromosomes that are indications of our physical age, so as we age, they get shorter  mine got longer in space, he said. So it was a little bit like the fountain of youth  unfortunately when I got back down to Earth they went back down to where they were.

His body experienced other changes in space, such as a temporary height gain and even differences in his DNA.

ASTRONAUT SCOTT KELLY: I COULD HAVE SPENT LONGER IN SPACE

I read in the newspaper the other day that 7 percent of my DNA has been changed, he added, noting that that his microbiome, the bacteria that live inside the human body, also altered dramatically during his year in space. Mine is completely different to my brothers  mine, of course, is better than his.

Kelly returned to Earth on March 2, 2016 when the Soyuz capsule carrying the astronaut and Russian Cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov landed in Kazakhstan.

Its a crazy ride, coming back into Earth in a capsule, he said. Its like the wildest ride you will ever have in your life  its kind of like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, but while youre on fire. As soon as you realize youre not going to die  [its] the most fun youll ever have in your life.

SCOTT KELLY: YEAR IN SPACE PAVES THE WAY FOR EVEN LONGER MISSIONS

The parachute opens and youre thrown around like crazy, and eventually it calms down and you drift slowly down to Earth for about 15 minutes and you crash into it  a pretty abrupt end to a year in space, he added. But when they open the hatch and that fresh air rushes inside for the first time, it smelt like the first time I ever breathed fresh air in my entire life.

Kelly also noticed a very sweet smell as the hatch opened, which he thought was maybe wildflowers on the Kazakh steppe. The smell, however, was actually the capsules charred heatshield, which the astronaut compared to the smell of honeysuckle.

SPACE FLIGHT CHANGES ASTRONAUTS' BRAINS, RESEARCH REVEALS

While Kelly retired from NASA in 2016 after his return from the ISS, his former employer is now setting its sights on Mars. The space agencys goal is to send a manned mission into low orbit around the Red Planet in the 2030s.

Kelly believes that the biggest challenge in getting to Mars is political, rather than scientific or technological.

I think that we have the technology, we have the smarts, we dont always have the support, which means, really, the bottom line is the money, he told Fox News. Its going to be expensive, but I think its going to be well worth it - I think there are things that we get out of the space program that we cant get anywhere else.

The Associated Press contributed to this article. Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Friendly reminder: daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, Nov. 4, which means it's almost time to turn those clocks back.

Theoretically, we'll gain an hour of sleep. But we'll also be losing an hour of evening light through March 10, 2019  when it's time to "spring" forward.

Daylight saving time was extra special this year, as it marked the 100th anniversary of the event. The tradition of changing clocks officially began in the U.S. on March 19, 1918.

Here's what you need to know about the century-old tradition.

When did daylight saving time start?

It was established during World War I as "a way of conserving fuel needed for war industries and of extending the working day," the Library of Congress explained in a post online.

But it was only temporary. The law was repealed about a year later, on August 20, 1919, as soon as the war was over.

"However, the sections of the 1918 law, which had established standard time zones for the country, remained in effect," the library said. "In 1921, Congress readjusted the western boundary of the standard central time zone, shifting parts of Texas and Oklahoma into this zone."

The topic of daylight saving surfaced again during World War II. On Jan. 20, 1942 Congress re-established daylight saving time.

More than two decades later, in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Uniform Time Act, declaring daylight saving time a policy of the U.S. and establishing uniform start and end times within standard time zones.

What are the rules?

Daylight saving time and time zones are regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) under the Uniform Time Act. Daylight saving begins each year on the second Sunday in March, starting at 2 a.m.

"If a state chooses to observe Daylight Saving Time, it must begin and end on federally mandated dates," the DOT says.

Does everyone change their clocks?

No. Hawaii, most of Arizona, and a handful of U.S. territories  including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands  do not observe daylight saving time.

A bill called the "Sunshine Protection Act," which allows Florida to remain on daylight saving time year-round, was passed in the state House and Senate in March. Gov. Rick Scott then signed the bill into law. However, Congress still needs to amend existing federal law to allow the change.

If approved by the federal government, this will effectively move Floridas residents one time zone to the east, aligning cities from Jacksonville to Miami with Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.

Why does it matter?

There are several reasons why officials believe daylight saving time is beneficial.

Some say it saves energy because people tend to spend more time outside when it's lighter out. The DOT claims it also "saves lives and prevents traffic injuries," because visibility is better.

However, some believe the process is a "hassle."

Proponents of scrapping daylight saving time argue it's generally unnecessary, disturbs sleep patterns and has recently become even more complicated. In 1986, Congress extended daylight saving from a six- to seven-month period and extended it again in 2005 to eight months  mid-March to mid-November.

"Congress really gave us a wise compromise in 1966 with six months of standard time, but because of the lobbies on behalf of daylight we now spring forward in the middle of the winter," Michael Downing, author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving," told Fox News in 2015.

Disagreements over daylight saving aren't new. In 1965, before the Uniform Act was passed, 71 major cities in the U.S. with a population of over 100,000 were using daylight saving, while 59 others were not.

"People do not like the hassle of adjusting their clocks twice a year," Downing added.

Fox News' Matt Finn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Your name could soon zoom through the sun's superheated outer atmosphere, just like William Shatner's.

The "Star Trek" actor has signed up to put his name on a microchip that will fly aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which will launch on a historic sun-studying mission this summer. And he wants you to book a seat as well.

"The first-ever spacecraft to the sun, NASA's Parker Solar Probe, will launch this year on a course to orbit through the heat of our star's corona, where temperatures are greater than 1 million degrees," Shatner said in a new NASA video about this public-outreach effort. "The spacecraft will also carry my name to the sun, and your name, and the names of everyone who wants to join this voyage of extreme exploration." [NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission in Pictures]

You can get your name on that chip for free by visiting the NASA "Hot Ticket" site through April 27.

The $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe mission is scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 31. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will perform 24 close flybys of the sun over the next seven years, at times getting within just 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface. That's seven times closer than any other probe has ever gotten to the sun, NASA officials said.

The Parker Solar Probe is therefore outfitted with a 4.5-inch-thick (11.4 centimeters) carbon-composite shield, which will protect the spacecraft from radiation levels 475 times greater than those we experience here on Earth and temperatures that reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius). The spacecraft's onboard instruments should be able to operate at room temperature despite these extreme external conditions, NASA officials said.

Those instruments will make a variety of measurements, helping to characterize the sun's structure, magnetic and electric fields and the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing from our star. Mission scientists hope these observations help solve two longstanding solar mysteries: how the solar wind is accelerated, and why the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere, is so much hotter than the surface (which reaches a mere 10,000 degrees F, or 5,500 degrees C.)

"Parker Solar Probe is, quite literally, the fastest, hottest  and, to me, coolest  mission under the sun," project scientist Nicola Fox, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore, said in a statement. "This incredible spacecraft is going to reveal so much about our star and how it works that we've not been able to understand."

And about that speed: During its closest approaches to the sun, the spacecraft will top out at about 430,000 mph (690,000 km/h). The current speed record is held by NASA's Juno probe, which was accelerated to about 165,000 mph (265,000 km/h) by Jupiter's powerful gravity upon its approach to the gas giant in the summer of 2016.

The Parker Solar Probe was originally called Solar Probe Plus. In May 2017, NASA announced the name change, which honors pioneering astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who predicted the solar wind's existence in 1958. In addition to the microchip with all the names, the Parker Solar Probe will also carry a copy of Parker's 1958 paper, along with photos of the scientist, mission team members have said.

Shatner's name really gets around the solar system. The actor also helped publicize a similar public-outreach effort for NASA's Mars InSight mission, which will launch toward the Red Planet this May. Shatner's name is among 2.4 million that will travel on a chip aboard InSight.

Originally published on Space.com.
When you combine the skill of U.S. soldiers with this new mighty sniper rifle, it means very bad news for those foolish enough to take on the United States.

Army squads designated marksmen have been using the M110A1 7.62mm semi-automatic sniper rifle  but threats have evolved and U.S. soldiers deserve the best rifle for the job.

Enemy body armor is one of these evolving challenges. Russian-made advanced armor increasingly protects U.S. adversaries. In war zones, U.S. boots on the ground have had to contend with terrorist group ISIS protected by armor  and by ever stronger armor.

U.S. soldiers need a sniper rifle that they can always rely on to penetrate these types of strong armor and stop the threat.

Once the Army announced that it was on the hunt for an upgrade, there was an intense competition to become the new sniper rifle.

US ARMY TANKS GET FUTURISTIC SHIELDS TO DESTROY INCOMING THREATS

In 2016, the Army selected Heckler & Kochs 7.62mm rifle based on their G28, with specific modifications tailored to meet the militarys requirements.

And it is this compact semi-automatic sniper system that will be the new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle. (SDMR)

Recently, the Army confirmed that this new, powerful sniper rifle should be in soldiers hands this year.

Whats the change?

The modified HK G28 will replace the Armys current SDMR, the M110 SASS 7.62 compact sniper rifle. The last significant change was in 2010 when the Army aimed to standardize sniper rifles in use and introduced the M110 to replace models like the M14 (modified Remington 700).

For starters, this will be a harder-hitting rifle than the rifle it replaces. The goal is to provide infantry soldiers with an upgraded, deadly capability.

US SOLDIERS SET TO RECEIVE NEW SPECIAL OPERATIONS-STYLE NIGHT VISION GOGGLES

As well as providing better penetration of enemy forces armor, it is expected to be lighter, shorter, easier to carry and more ergonomic to use.

PODCAST: CONCEALED CARRY AND MARKSMANSHIP MASTER CLASS w/ DELTA FORCE, MARINE RECON AND SPECIAL FORCES LEGEND MIKE PANNONE

G28 clues

The new Army sniper rifle continues to be shrouded in mystery. Even when the Army announced it chose Heckler & Koch for the new weapon, the company kept quiet. No details emerged immediately from the Army either.

Eventually, it was confirmed that the SDMR would be a modified version of the G28 to meet the Armys requirements  but the details of the new sniper rifle remain the subject of much speculation and curiosity.

While the details have yet to be confirmed on how the rifle will be modified, we can look at the G28 to get an idea of what soldiers might expect.

Familiar with the civilian semi-automatic competition rifle MR308? The G28 is Heckler & Kochs military version.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS DOGS SET FOR NEW ADVANCED TACTICAL GEAR

One of the military upgrades to the civilian rifle is the G28s green and brown camouflage looks. The German Army has been using the G28.

Designed to meet the needs of designated marksmen tackling current threats, the G28 fires the same 7.62mm ammunition as the M110. It remains to be revealed whether the cutting-edge hard-hitting ammo underway by the geniuses at Fort Benning, and elsewhere, will be integrated.

Size

The Army was looking for accuracy and reliability in a more compact package. According to Heckler & Kochs announcement, it looks like the modified G28 will give soldiers a shorter and lighter rifle than the M110.

The M110 weighs about 2.5 pounds more than the G28  so this new modified U.S. Army G28 could potentially be even lighter than 12.7 pounds.

How much shorter will the new gas-powered sniper rifle be? The G28 is 38 inches long, so that is about 2.5 inches smaller than the M110.

A few G28 features

In terms of accessories, the G28 rifle incorporates the new Stanag 4694 NATO accessory rails and mounts and backward compatibility with MILSTD1913 rail. The G28 has a telescopic stock with an adjustable cheek rest.

HOW DEADLY DRONE SWARMS WILL HELP US TROOPS ON THE FRONTLINE

Suppressor needed for the job? This rifle has a toolless gas regulator.

In terms of safety, Heckler & Koch has incorporated safety/cocking in every hammer position.

PODCAST: TEXAN HELLRAISER TURNED MASTERFUL MARINE CORPS COMBAT SHOOTER REVEALS MINDBLOWING WAR STORIES

Mission adaptation

To adapt for mission requirements, the G28 has a conversion kit.

For example, if a lighter version is needed for a patrol or assault rifle purposes, then the approximately 1.4- pounds lighter patrol variant can be used. There is also an Over the Beach capability available.

Leveraging thermal and starlight imaging, the G28 is designed for fighting at night as well.

AMAZING NEW MILITARY HELICOPTERS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2018

For close quarters threats, the modified G28 should deliver enhanced accuracy and performance while being easier to use.

Accuracy

The G28 is designed to provide accuracy of 1.5 MOA.

Whats the maximum effective range? The company indicates high first round hit probability up to about 2,600 feet.

Escalating threat of enemy body armor

Body armor made by some overseas companies can be bought by terrorists for less than $300  and some types can stop US Army M110 rifle rounds and other weapons like the M4s firing 5.56mm rounds.

Some Russian-made body armor models worn by ISIS will resist multiple hits of 5.56 and 7.62 rounds.

THE MOST EXCITING MILITARY VEHICLES OF 2017

One smart proposal was to take a currently available sniper system and adapt it so it can use remarkable new munitions created at places like Fort Benning. These munitions have the potential to penetrate any of these super tough armor plates.

Two new weapons to penetrate enemy body armor

$44.5 million worth of new upgraded sniper rifles  possibly as many as 3,643  will soon be in soldiers hands this year if plans continue on track.

In addition to the new sniper rifle, there may also be a new replacement for the M249 squad automatic weapon that fires 5.56m rounds.
Signal Mountain has received proposals to buy and/or manage our water system from Waldens Ridge Utility District, which is public, and TN. American Water, a private company. When asked about having town meetings before any decision is made on this issue, then Mayor Dick Gee publicly stated at a town council meeting we are going to have a thorough discussion with the citizens  we'll get a lot of input from citizens on what they feel is the right thing to do.

When asked if there would be a couple of meetings with a Q & A format, so WRUD and TAW employees and/or representatives would each answer one question at a time from the public, Councilman Gee responded At least a couple. Yes. I consider Councilman Gee a man of his word.

The time frame set for these meetings is March 14-April 4.

Potential customers of these entities deserve to have questions answered from personnel qualified to provide answers. I would expect WRUD and TAW to send several employees knowledgeable in areas such as water rates, riders, infrastructure, hydrant maintenance, customer service, water quality, info. about expense trackers, etc.

If TAW or WRUD will not participate in this format, and I cant imagine both would not jump at the chance to answer questions in public, then the citizens can ask their questions to the one group that does want to participate.

I urge the citizens of Signal Mountain to attend at least one of these meetings. Bring questions

or just come to listen and learn.

The dates have not been announced, but I hope more information will be sent out in the very near future. March 14 is just around the corner.

Claire Griesinger

Signal Mountain




SpaceX and Tesla chieftain Elon Musk has gone on a tweetstorm, tweeting to President Donald Trump about his recently announced tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum.

Musk, who was a member of President Trump's advisory council but left in June 2017, asked the president whether the U.S. and China should have the same rules for cars, delving into international trade policy at a time when it has become a touchy subject for many domestic corporations.

"Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars?" Musk wrote. "Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors."

ELON MUSK GETS THE OK TO DIG IN ABANDONED DC LOT

Musk added that American companies that ship their cars to China pay a significantly larger import duty than Chinese cars that come to the U.S.

"For example, an American car going to China pays 25% import duty, but a Chinese car coming to the US only pays 2.5%, a tenfold difference," Musk tweeted.

He also said that American companies that set up factories in China effectively have to have a joint-venture with Chinese counterparts, allowing them to own no more than 50 percent of the factory in China.

"Also, no US auto company is allowed to own even 50% of their own factory in China, but there are five 100% China-owned EV [electric vehicle] auto companies in the US," Musk wrote.

He also noted that he is generally for free trade, but highlighted the fact the current regulations make it difficult. He likened it to "competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes."

Musk, 46, concluded his tweetstorm by noting that he had raised the issue with the Obama administration, but nothing was ever resolved.

"We raised this with the prior administration and nothing happened," Musk wrote. "Just want a fair outcome, ideally where tariffs/rules are equally moderate. Nothing more. Hope this does not seem unreasonable."

President Trump has come under fire from both Republicans and Democrats for his announcement on tariffs last week, which would see foreign-made steel imports be taxed at 25 percent and aluminum be taxed at 10 percent.

ELON MUSK POSTS FINAL PHOTO OF TESLA ROADSTER HEADED TO ASTEROID BELT

On Thursday, President Trump signed the order Thursday that imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all foreign countries, while carving out an exception for Canada and Mexico for now while North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations are under way, White House officials told Fox News.

The president, joined by steel and aluminum workers, signed the companion proclamation  one on steel and one on aluminum  that will institute a tariff of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports. The tariffs will become effective in 15 days, with exclusions for Mexico and Canada taking effect immediately, officials said.

A nation that does not protect prosperity at home cannot protect its interests abroad, the president said. When it comes time where our country cant make aluminum and steel, you almost dont have much of a country.

Earlier this week, Trump hinted that he would sign controversial tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel Thursday, but also suggested flexibility for real friends abroad who treat the U.S. fairly.

This story has been updated to reflect President Trump has signed the tariffs. Fox News' Adam Shaw, Brooke Singman and Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.
A group of thieves stole $5 million in cash from a Lufthansa cargo jet at a freight airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The jet was scheduled to fly from Brazil to Switzerland on Monday, police said, but was derailed by the heist, which took place Sunday night.

HOMELESS MAN FINDS $354,000 IN ROOM AT PARIS AIRPORT

The robbery was completed within six minutes after criminals entered the Viracopos International Airports freight terminal in a pickup truck, upon which they had "placed stickers mimicking the runway security company's logo," federal police said in a statement, NDTV reported.

The airplane was making a stop at the airport after flying from another destination, before continuing on to its final destination of Zurich.

According to reports, five men threatened security agents on the runway before locking them in their vehicles and taking off with the stolen loot.

No injuries have been reported, airport officials said.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

The police have yet to arrest any suspects for the cargo theft, a type of crime that has been on the rise across Brazil.

The brazen heist has some recalling the 1978 Lufthansa heist, in which a group stole $5 million from a vault at JFK airport. The incident was portrayed in the 1990 hit Academy Award-winning film, Goodfellas.
The Missouri officer who was killed during a shootout Tuesday, as well as the two other officers who were injured, were actually sent to the wrong location when responding to a 911 call, officials said during a news conference Wednesday.

Three officers from the Clinton Police Department were dispatched to a home in Clinton around 9:22 p.m. after 911 operators received a call that had two women screaming in the background, Sgt. Bill Lowe of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said of the tragic incident. However, authorities were later able to determine that the placed call did not originate from that location, but rather one in Windsor, about 15 miles away, Lowe said.

When authorities reached the Clinton residence, they encountered a woman, Tammy Widger, who said there was nothing wrong and she was the only one home, Lowe said. The officers reportedly confirmed with dispatch that they were in the correct location and proceeded to enter the home to further investigate the situation.

After walking in, the suspect, James E. Waters, 37, started shooting at the officers, Lowe said. They reportedly returned fire but Officer Ryan Morton was killed in the shootout. The two accompanying offficers sustained non-life threatening injuries, Lowe said.

MISSOURI POLICE OFFICER KILLED, 2 OTHERS WOUNDED IN SHOOTING; SUSPECT DEAD

Mortons body was retrieved from the home by a tactical team and a SWAT team, who around 12:10 a.m. Wednesday went back in for the suspect, Lowe said. Waters was reportedly found dead in the bathroom from a gunshot wound. Authorities are waiting for an autopsy report to determine how he died, they said.

A number of weapons were also seized from the home, Lowe said.

Its not yet clear how the officers ended up getting directed to the wrong place but its under investigation, police said. They added that at no point during the 911 call from Windsor did anyone indicate that they were in Clinton.

When the officers entered the home, Lowe said they were doing what they were supposed to and that Widgers comments could not be taken at face value. They needed to investigate and they did that heroically.

To enter a residence like that and sustain the amount of gunfire that they took on, they were heroic in their actions, Lowe said.

Widger was arrested, police said, and was charged with possession of methamphetamines with the intent to deliver as well as keeping or maintaining a public nuisance, Henry County Prosecuting Attorney Richard Shields said, alleging that she had been delivering controlled substances at that location. Her bail was set at $25,000, he added.

OFFICERS KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY IN 2018

Waters had been arrested in November 2017 for unlawful possession of a controlled substance and was also currently part of another investigation involving a rape allegation, police said. It wasnt clear what his involvement in the investigation was.

The shootout was described by police as a separate incident from the initial 911 call and said it was a coincidence that officers were called to the house before the eventual discovery Widgers alleged crimes.

Officer Morton was first employed by the Clinton Police Department in 2015 and recently returned to full-time duty after fellow Officer Gary Michael was killed in the line of duty.

This police department has endured a lot over the last seven months and then to endure it again, you know, its going to be difficult for them, Lowe said. Our heart goes out to the Clinton Police Department. Our heart goes out the families that have been impacted. Its a tragedy that we dont want to happen again and from this point on, we're in that healing process.

At least 20 officers across the U.S. have been killed on duty so far this year.
A 17-year-old girl is dead and two other people are injured after shots were fired Wednesday at an Alabama high school, investigators said.

Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson confirmed at a news conference that one female student, 17, died, and a male student, also 17, is in critical but stable condition.

A school employee was also injured, AL.com reported, but it's unclear to what extent.

The incident  which involved at least two shots fired  just before 3:30 p.m. at Huffman High School was initially reported as "accidental" but officials, but the police chief said investigators are investigating whether it was intentionally discharged.

"Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions. This should not happen in schools," Wilson said. "We are asking questions from the staff, the students, anyone who was in that area."

Authorities have, however, determined the shooting was not sparked by someone from outside the school. Officials declined to say who fired the weapon or identify what type of firearm it was.

In a statement, Birmingham City Schools said Huffman High was placed on lockdown and police were called amid the situation.

"Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting," the statement read.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said the deceased student would have turned 18 in about 30 days and was a senior "who had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse."

"We are not just talking about some person, talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy. I think it's really important we find a way to mourn with this family," Woodfin said at the news conference.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A man in California convicted Wednesday of sex crimes and child porn is facing a very long prison sentence.

In fact, the 1,882 years to life in prison that Cornelio Jimenez could receive is likely to be the longest in state history, experts told KABC.

Jimenez was found guilty on three dozen counts of child porn and sex crimes. Jimenez, from Fresno, a registered sex offender, reportedly lied to police about where he lived for approximately a year. He eventually was discovered after police tracked child porn to the address he was staying.

During his trial, prosecutors claimed Jimenez wrote in emails about molesting children. Investigators also reportedly discovered videos of Jimenez engaging in sexual activities with two girls, ages 4 and 7.

"There's this very cute little 4-year-old girl that I babysit about once a week," one of Jimenez's emails read, according to a prosecutor. "I have hella pictures of her. I have to molest her every chance I get."

Jurors reportedly viewed portions of the videos, too.

Jimenez's lawyer argued that her client's counts should've been taken seperately - and that two of the 36 involved the same act.

"The easy thing to do in this case is to clump all the counts together," Angelica Rivera said, according to WABC. "That's the easy thing to do. The right thing is to take them separately."

Prior to the trial Jimenez had reportedly been offered a deal of 75 years to life in prison but he turned it down.

Now, he faces 1,882 instead.
The FBI this week detailed to Congress a series of mistakes and missed opportunities to intervene before a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida -- including a revelation that staffers knew two warnings about suspect Nikolas Cruz were related, but still closed the case.

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich made the comments in a closed briefing Tuesday with members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees.

In a summary released Wednesday to Fox News, Bowdich cited two tips that the FBI received about Cruz in September 2017 and January 2018 that were mishandled.

The 2017 tip alerted the FBI to a threatening YouTube comment, made by user Nikolas Cruz, which stated: Im going to be a professional school shooter.

According to the summary, a FBI call taker did not ask any standard investigative probing questions about the 2018 tip.

The 2018 call taker was able to connect Cruz to the earlier call about the YouTube comment, but after discussing it with a supervisor, they decided not to pursue the matter and the case was closed.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said that despite multiple opportunities, the FBI did not share information with state and local authorities about Nikolas Cruz.

The FBI is reviewing its handling of the case and will report findings to Congress.

Cruz was charged Wednesday formally with 17 counts each of premeditated murder and attempted murder. The Broward County grand jury announced the 34-count indictment for Cruz, who police say opened fire inside the high school in Parkland, killing 17 people. The attempted murder charges were for the 17 other people injured in the mass shooting on Valentines Day.

Fox News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Colorado authorities have arrested the second suspect involved in an attack on a man who was viciously beaten while holding his 4-year-old daughter in a restaurant.

Devon Lee Premer, 22, was arrested Wednesday without incident, the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office said.

Police sought Premer, and had previously arrested Joel Michael Wilson, 31, for allegedly attacking Richard Warry Brown, 39.

The attack, which took place just after 10 p.m. on Jan. 25 at Crossroads Pizza and Wings in Pine Junction, was captured on surveillance footage.

BRUTAL VIDEO SHOWS MAN HOLDING 4-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AS HE'S VICIOUSLY ATTACKED

Brown was holding his 4-year-old daughter when he was punched in the face several times by two men. A bystander eventually removes the child from his arms.

The brutal fight continued as Brown was punched to the ground and held by the men, who continued to beat him and kick him in the face.

Brown was airlifted to a nearby hospital and sustained serious bodily injuries, police said.

The daughter was not injured in the quarrel. Browns family said he didnt have time to put her down before being attacked, Fox 31 Denver reported.

He was issued a summons for misdemeanor child abuse following the incident, the sheriffs office said.

Premer is being held on a $50,000 bond in the county jail on charges of first-degree assault  extreme indifference, second-degree assault  serious bodily injury, and child abuse.

Fox News' Katherine Lam contributed to this report.
A New Jersey middle school teacher was struck by lightning Wednesday during a fierce nor'easter that's bringing a rare weather phenomenon known as thundersnow to the East Coast.

The 33-year-old eighth-grade teacher was holding an umbrella while preparing students for dismissal outside Manchester Middle when a bolt of lightning struck her, police said.

Capt. Todd Malland of the Manchester Township police said the woman, who remained unnamed, felt a tingling in her hand and arm but didn't lose consciousness and wasn't knocked to the ground. She was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

WHAT IS THUNDERSNOW?

Police said a second woman who had been standing under the umbrella but not holding it escaped injury.

The second major snowstorm to slam the Northeast in a week is startling residents with reports of lightning and booming thunder.

The Asbury Park Press reported a property in Ship Bottom, N.J., caught fire after it was struck by lightning during the storm.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
During the last year, multiple schools across the U.S. have been impacted by shootings, which have resulted in the deaths of both students and faculty members.

Read on for a look at school shootings that have taken place within the last year.

Noblesville West Middle School, Indiana

A male student fired shots at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana on May 25, critically injuring another student and a teacher at the school.

The alleged shooter, who has not yet been identified, was taken into custody shortly after the incident occurred at roughly 9 a.m.

Sources told FOX 59 the suspect walked into a science classroom with a gun and opened fire, hitting a female. A science teacher was able to tackle the student who fired shots inside the classroom, student Ethan Stonebraker told The Associated Press.

The victims were taken to a local hospital. The extent of their injuries is unclear.

Santa Fe High School, Texas

At least eight people were killed and several others were injured following reports of an active shooter at a Texas high school on May 18, local affiliate KTRK reported. The suspected shooter was taken into custody.

"Personnel treating the injured. Info is still preliminary, but there are multiple casualties," Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez confirmed.

Police officers responded to Santa Fe High School around 8 a.m. CDT after reports that a shooter opened fire inside a first-period art class. Details of the incident were not immediately available.

"Details will be released as we receive updated information. Law enforcement will continue to secure the building and initiate all emergency management protocols to release and move students to another location," the school district said in a statement.

Highland High School, California

A 14-year-old student was taken into custody after allegedly shooting a classmate at Highland High School in Palmdale, California on May 11.

The suspected gunman shot a fellow student in the arm, police said. The shooting stemmed from a dispute between the shooter and the victim, according to authorities.

The injured student is expected to make a full recovery.



Forest High School, Florida

A suspected gunman, later identified as 19-year-old Sky Bouche, allegedly opened fire at Forest High School in Ocala, Florida, on April 20. The shooting occured on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

At least one student was injured after the gunman shot through a classroom door, hitting a 17-year-old student in the ankle, authorities said. The student was later taken to a local hospital with a non-life-threatening injury.

A school resource officer, James Long, was hailed a hero after arresting Bouche just three minutes after he opened fire.

Bouche, a former student at the school, allegedly carried the weapon in a guitar case inside the school, authorities said.

Great Mills High School, Maryland

On March 20, a gunman, identified as 17-year-old Austin Rollins, shot 16-year-old sophomore Jaelynn Willey at Great Mills High School in Lexington Park, Maryland, authorities said. Willey died days later from her injuries.

Investigators believe the shooting was not random as the gunman and Willey had recently ended their relationship.

Rollins was fatally wounded during a confrontation with Deputy Blaine Gaskill, an armed school resource officer who doubles as a SWAT team member.

"Our school resource officer...pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter, fired a round at the shooter," St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said. "The shooter fired a round as well. In the hours and days to come, we'll be able to determine if our school resource officer's round struck the shooter."

Gaskill was praised because he reportedly contained the situation in under a minute, Cameron said.

Willey's parents announced on March 22 that their daughter was brain dead and that they would be taking her off of life support. She died later that night.

Jaelynn's mother, Melissa, told reporters her daughter had "no life left in her."

"On Tuesday ... our lives changed completely and totally forever. My daughter was hurt by a boy who shot her in the head and took everything from our lives," she said.

A 14-year-old boy, later identified as Desmond Barnes, was also injured in the shooting. Authorities said he was shot in the thigh but was later released from a local hospital.

Police are still investigating if the boy was shot by Rollins or Gaskill while the two exchanged gunfire.

Huffman High School, Alabama

A 17-year old girl is dead and one other person was left injured from a March 7 shooting at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama.

Courtlin Arrington, 17, was killed when shots were fired in a classroom, Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson told WBRC. A 17-year-old male student was wounded. He was taken to the hospital and released.

Birmingham Police Department announced March 8 that a student was taken into custody in the investigation into the deadly shooting. Police said evidence, surveillance video and statements were reviewed throughout the night.

Police initially called the shooting accidental, but later reviewed a video that captured the deadly incident.

"We're not saying he shot her, we're not saying he didn't shoot her," the chief said. "We're asking those questions ourselves so we can determine exactly what happened."

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida

Police responded to reports of shots fired at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., around 3 p.m. on Feb. 14. Seventeen people lost their lives and 17 others were injured.

The day after the shooting, the suspected gunman, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, told authorities he arrived at the school with an AR-15 rifle, adding that he shot "students that he saw in the hallways and on school grounds," according to an arrest affidavit.

Cruz may plead guilty to avoid the death penalty, his lawyer reportedly said Feb. 16.

Cruz was formally charged March 7 with 17 counts each of premeditated murder and attempted murder.

A 12-year-old girl was taken into custody after police said the loaded gun she brought to Salvador B. Castro Middle School in Los Angeles accidentally discharged on Feb. 1, shooting a 15-year-old boy in the head and a 15-year-old girl in the wrist.

Police interviewed the 12-year-old student and agreed the shooting was accidental. She was booked in a juvenile detention center on suspicion of negligently discharging a firearm on school grounds.

It is unclear where the girl got the gun or why she decided to bring it to her school.

Doctors said both students who were shot are expected to recover.

Additionally, an 11-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl were treated at the hospital and released while a 30-year-old woman, who is a school staff member, had only minor injuries, Los Angeles city police said in a statement.

Marshall County High School, Kentucky

A shooter opened fire at Marshall County High School in Benton, Ky., on Jan. 23, killing two people.

Students Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, both 15 years old, died.

Suspected shooter Gabriel Ross Parker, 15, was arraigned on Feb. 16, according to Kentucky State Police.

"A Marshall County Grand Jury returned an indictment on Tuesday, charging Parker with two counts of Murder and fourteen counts of First Degree Assault," KSP said.

Marshall County Circuit Clerk Tiffany Griffith told Reuters a judge entered a not guilty plea on the teen's behalf.

Italy High School, Texas

A 15-year-old girl was hurt in a Jan. 22 shooting at Italy High School in Italy, Texas. A 16-year-old male student was taken into custody, Ellis County police told Fox News.

In the school's cafeteria, the suspect "engaged the victim" and fired several shots with a semi-automatic handgun, Ellis County Sheriff Chuck Edge said during a press briefing.

The suspect was confronted by an Italy Independent School District staffer in the school cafeteria and took off, Edge said. Law enforcement later apprehended the suspect on school grounds.

The suspect was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the Ellis County district attorney's office announced.

Aztec High School, New Mexico

Gunman William Atchison, 21, disguised himself as a student to get inside Aztec High School in Aztec, N.M., on Dec. 7, 2017, according to authorities. Atchison was also a former student.

State police said that Atchison killed students Francisco I. Fernandez and Casey J. Marquez.

Officials said Atchison eventually shot himself, adding that the students killed were not targeted, but were at the "wrong place at the wrong time."

Rancho Tehama Elementary School, California

A man in Northern California went on a random shooting rampage on Nov. 14, 2017, killing five people and wounding at least a dozen adults and children before authorities shot and killed him.

The gunman, who was later identified as Kevin Neal, 44, rammed a car into the gates of Rancho Tehama Elementary School and shot at its portable classrooms. He repeatedly tried to get into a kindergarten classroom but quick-thinking staff locked the school down, and he eventually stormed off.

Neal reportedly targeted the elementary school as part of a long-running feud with neighbors.

Mattoon High School, Illinois

A male student shot and injured a fellow student at a central Illinois high school on Sept. 20, 2017. The shooting unfolded in Mattoon High Schools cafeteria around 11:30 a.m., officials said at the time.

One female teacher intervened and successfully subdued and disarmed the gunman -- a move Mattoon Police Chief Jeff Branson said at the time was pivotal.

The gunman was taken into custody shortly after the incident.

Freeman High School, Washington

A 15-year-old student opened fire on fellow classmates at a Washington state high school on Sept. 13, 2017, killing one, investigators said. Caleb Sharpe, the suspected gunman, said the student who died had bullied him.

The slain student tried to stop the teen's rampage when the gun jammed, according to The Associated Press. A school janitor was hailed a hero after he was able to subdue the alleged shooter.

Three other students were wounded in the attack. According to court documents, Sharpe told officials that he brought the two guns to school to teach everyone a lesson about what happens when you bully others.

North Park Elementary School, California

A special needs teacher and a child, 8, were killed in what police said was a murder-suicide at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, California.

Police said Cedric Anderson walked into the school on April 10, 2017, and shot his estranged wife, Karen Elaine Smith. Two other students were also struck before Anderson killed himself, although law enforcement officials said they do not believe they were intended targets.

Jonathan Martinez was identified as the 8-year-old killed at the elementary school. A 9-year-old was injured.

Liberty-Salem High School, Ohio

Two high school students were injured after a fellow student allegedly fired a shotgun inside Liberty-Salem High School in Ohio on Jan. 20, 2017.

Logan Cole, who was 16 at the time, was shot twice but survived. Another student was grazed by a bullet. Champaign County Sheriff Matthew Melvin said the gunman intended to harm more students than he did.

Ely Serna, the accused gunman, was 17 at the time of the shooting but is being tried as an adult in Champaign County court. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Fox News' Nicole Darrah, Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Elizabeth Zwirz, Katherine Lam, Lucia I. Suarez Sang, Samuel Chamberlain, Kathleen Joyce, Shira Bush and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A suspended Yale University student from Afghanistan accused of raping a female undergraduate student in 2015 has been acquitted of all charges, and his lawyer is calling on the school to reinstate him.

A state jury in New Haven on Wednesday found Saifullah Khan not guilty of four sexual assault charges in less than four hours.

According to the New Haven Register, Khan testified that he has no real home. Last week he told the papers reporter: I am alone in America.

The 25-year-old  who gave his home address as his attorneys office in New Haven, according to the Register  was charged with raping a female student in her dorm room on Halloween night amid rowdy partying and a campus orchestra concert.

The woman told police Khan took advantage of her when she was drunk and raped her, but Khan testified Tuesday that she was the aggressor and invited him into her room.

The trial, according to The New York Times, took on political significance over whether campus assault cases ought to be conducted by universities or law enforcement.

The Times reported that during the trial Khans defense lawyers accused the Ivy League university of making their client a scapegoat for its own previous poor handling of sexual assault claims.

These are dangerous times for everyone on campus, Norm Pattis said in his closing arguments, according to The Times.

Khans case is one of the few campus rape cases to go to trial, according to The Yale Daily News.

Were grateful to six courageous jurors who were able to understand that campus life isnt the real world, Pattis said via email after the verdict, according to the Yale paper. Kids experiment with identity and sexuality. When an experiment goes awry, its not a crime.

Yale suspended Khan, who was studying cognitive science, after his arrest more than two years ago.

His attorneys told the Register, Now that Mr. Khan has been acquitted, were calling for Yale to readmit him. He was suspended in 2015 without a hearing. Its time to right that wrong.

Tom Conroy, director of the Office of Public Affairs and Communications, told Fox News via email: Yale doesnt have a comment on the verdict.

Conroy didnt comment on whether Khan will be allowed to return to school.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A 53-year-old man who had been acting very aggressive allegedly stabbed one Monterey County deputy and injured another after authorities were asked to check on him Tuesday afternoon.

Sam Bahris 72-year-old mother called authorities because her adult son, who she said has mental issues, had been acting aggressively and she was not sure hed taken his prescribed medication, police officials said in a Facebook post.

Although deputies said they had a rapport with Bahri due to prior contacts with him, and hed never been violent before, this time was different.

When one of the deputies reached out to shake Bahris hand, the 53-year-old stabbed the deputy on the top of his left hand with a thick 5-inch nail.

Bahri then began throwing large metal objects at the deputies, most of which struck the law enforcement officers in the head. One deputy had taken shelter behind a recreational vehicle trailer, which was pierced by one of the objects that Bahri threw.

Officers used a Taser to subdue Bahri, which they fired twice, and it took them another five minutes once he was on the ground to put handcuffs on him.

Although two deputies were injured, they have already been medically treated. Both are doing fine and are back to full duty.

Bahri, who was taken to a medical facility for evaluation before being transported to jail, faces charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, battery on a peace officer and resisting arrest.
An Alabama high school student who was killed in a classroom shooting Wednesday was described as an incredible person who aspired to be a nurse once she graduated in May, reports said.

Police announced Thursday a person of interest was taken into custody in the deadly shooting at Huffman High School in Birmingham. Courtlin Arrington, 17, was killed when shots were fired in a classroom, Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson told WBRC. Another 17-year-old male student was wounded. He was taken to the hospital and released.

Arrington was set to graduate from the high school in May and had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said.

We're not just talking about some person, we're talking about losing a part of our future,'' Woodfin said Wednesday night, according to AL.com. "Our hearts are heavy."

Woodfin also tweeted earlier the 17-year-old girl was a daughter, niece, a grandchild.

We lost a 17 year old student. A daughter, a niece, a grandchild. An incredible person that was aspiring to be a nurse. Our hearts are heavy, and our prayers are with the Huffman community, he tweeted.

Birmingham Police Department announced Thursday morning a student was taken into custody in the investigation into the deadly shooting. Police said evidence, surveillance video and statements were reviewed throughout the night.

GUNFIRE AT ALABAMA HIGH SCHOOL KILLS GIRL, 17; POLICE INVESTIGATE WHETHER IT WAS ACCIDENTAL

Due to their diligent work a person of interest has been taken into custody. Charges are pending a review of the case by the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office. Because the charges are pending we will not be releasing any information on the individual in custody, the department said in a statement.

Police initially called the shooting accidental, but later reviewed a video that captured the deadly incident. Wilson said Wednesday night he didnt hear about any sort of argument, struggle or fight before shots were fired.

"We're not saying he shot her, we're not saying he didn't shoot her," the chief said Wednesday. "We're asking those questions ourselves so we can determine exactly what happened."

The shooting prompted the high school to close on Thursday for authorities to do a thorough safety sweep. Huffman High School has metal detectors and security measures in place to prevent weapons from entering the building. The detectors were functioning at the school that day.

"This should not happen in schools," Wilson said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Texas State University student accused of killing a man and his unborn child in a 2016 drunk driving incident pleaded guilty on Monday.

Shana Elliott, 22, allegedly crashed her Chevrolet Impala over the center line on Highway 21 into a Toyota Corolla. Inside the Corolla were father-to-be Fabian Guerrero-Moreno, 23, and his wife, Kristian Nicole Guerrero, who was five months pregnant. Guerrero-Moreno died in the Aug. 2 crash and his wifes injury led to the unborn childs death.

The trial is ongoing, but since Elliott pled guilty in front of the jury, they have been instructed to return a guilty verdict on the two counts of intoxication manslaughter and then she will be sentenced.

In video footage shown to the jury and seen by KXAN, a bikini-clad Elliott is seen struggling to pass a sobriety test, and asking the police officers how the couple was doing, saying: Kill me now. Please. I just want them to be OK.

Her blood alcohol level was 0.199, according to KXAN, and the legal limit in Texas is 0.08.

Elliott admitted to police that shed been drinking beer and liquor while floating down the river at Texas State Tubes with friends prior to the crash, according to the local station.

Guerrero-Moreno died at the scene and, although doctors tried to save the baby by inducing labor, the child was stillborn. Guerrero told jurors that she learned hours later that her husband had also died.

Just knowing that you lost your husband and your sonthe last piece of him that I had in this world Guerrero said just before breaking down on the stand, according to KXAN.

The baby was just perfect, Guerrero's aunt, Diane Castillo, told People Magazine at the time. Guerrero got to hold his hand for a while, and his paternal grandmother got to hold him as well.

A GoFundMe set up for Guerrero has raised over $24,000.
Brown University has canceled plans to display the house where Rosa Parks lived for a time after she left the south and moved to Detroit.

The house had been on a demolition list until it was saved by Parks' niece and artist Ryan Mendoza, who moved it to Berlin. He brought it back to the United States in pieces last month with Brown's backing, and was reassembling it when the Ivy League university made the abrupt announcement Thursday.

Parks' niece, Rhea McCauley, called the decision a missed opportunity and said the university had not consulted with the family.

"They made this decision on their own," she said.

Brown cited an unspecified dispute involving the R osa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, which Parks co-founded but which has feuded with relatives in the past. Brown spokesman Brian Clark said in an email that the university "took steps quickly upon learning recently about the dispute."

"Brown is not a party in the dispute and therefore we are not in a position to speak about the nature of the dispute," when asked for more details. "Also, we know that individuals involved in the dispute intended to object strongly if the exhibit proceeded. It is out of our respect for the legacy of Rosa Parks that Brown is stepping aside."

A message left for the institute was not immediately returned Thursday. But a lawyer for the institute, Steven Cohen, cast doubt on the connection to Parks in comments he made to The Brown Daily Herald student newspaper last month.

"The truth is, she didn't stay there," he told the newspaper. "It's a house which Rosa Parks' brother and his family used to live in. It's no more Rosa Parks' house than it is my house."

McCauley disputed that, as did Ray Rickman, a Providence community activist who worked with Parks for three years in the office of U.S. Rep. John Conyers in Detroit. Rickman, who sometimes drove Parks to church, recalled driving by the house with Parks one day.

"She told me she used to live in it. And I laughed and said that's a tiny house, and she said a lot of people lived in it," he said. "It was something to that effect. And then she laughed and I laughed and changed the subject."

Mendoza, who owns the house, decided to bring it to Brown because it has grappled in recent years with its historical ties to the slave trade. He disassembled the house, packed it up and sent it by ship across the Atlantic and has spent the past few weeks preparing the site for the house and building a frame for it.

Mendoza had planned to reassemble it piece by piece for a display that was due to open to the public next month. He said someone told him a lawyer had threatened Brown with a cease-and-desist letter, and he learned Thursday afternoon that the display was canceled. He pointed out that the decision was announced a few hours after he published a statement calling on Brown to rename itself "Rosa Parks University."

"Maybe Brown took on a project too big for them," Mendoza said. "Brown does not command this ship, and this house will go on to find a better home, but it breaks my heart that there should be such vast cowardice, everybody's ducking and hiding."

McCauley called the house a part of history and said the project was an effort to help students "understand Auntie Rosa's legacy."

"It's a missed opportunity for Brown University to begin to repair the legacy of slavery," she said.
A teenager was arrested on Tuesday for pretending to be a sheriff's deputy who launched phony investigations and pulled people over in his Southern California neighborhood in an SUV fitted with flashing blue and red lights, officials said.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office said in a news release they were alerted a day earlier when a homeowner in Victorville reported someone driving in an unmarked Ford Explorer wearing a sheriff's uniform with a gun holster came to the home and said he was investigating a domestic disturbance.

"The homeowner informed him there was no problem and they had not placed a call to the police," the sheriff's office said. "The suspect tried to open the door but the homeowner had locked it."

Police said the teenager then returned to the Explorer and left the area after an exchange with the homeowner, who followed him to the driveway.

Jasmine Jones, who lives home involved, told FOX 11 she didn't notice the boy's age at first, only that he was a police officer.

"I saw a police officer in dress code, that's what I saw, and that's what was really concerning," she said.

Detectives determined in the course of their investigation that the boy interacted with at least two other people while impersonating a deputy.

OKLAHOMA MAN FOUND AT CASINO AFTER FAKING OWN KIDNAPPING, ASKING WIFE FOR RANSOM MONEY, POLICE SAY

"The suspect again activated the emergency lights mounted in the vehicle, causing a white male, approximately 16-years old, to come out of his house," the sheriff's office said. "The suspect again claimed to be investigating a domestic disturbance call. When he was told, there was no disturbance, the suspect left."

On the same day, the teen also pulled a woman over and gave her a warning before letting her go, officials said.

Deputies later stopped the Ford Explorer and found the uniformed teen inside.

During a search of the 14-year-old's home, detectives found the uniform worn during the incident, in addition to a large amount of counterfeit money, fake guns, ballistic vests and other law enforcement related items.

TEXAS POLICE OFFICER FACES HUMAN SMUGGLING CHARGES

"As a civilian, how the heck are we supposed to tell is he's real police or not?" Jones told FOX 11. "Other than the age, and he looks obvious, OK yeah but he could obviously not look like a cop and be a cop."

The SUV belonged to the teen's great-grandfather, according to the San Bernardino Sun newspaper. It wasn't clear if the boy lived with his great-grandfather or how he was able to access the vehicle.

The boy, who was on probation at the time of his arrest, was being held at a juvenile detention center east of Los Angeles, according to police.
Recordings of 911 calls released Wednesday describe a frantic scene late last month at a Winchester, Mass., library, where authorities say a suspect armed with a hunting knife repeatedly stabbed a young medical student, resulting in her death.

Shes lying down on her back, a library staff member tells a 911 operator at one point, Bostons Fox 25 reported. Oh my God, there is a lot of blood.

"She's lying down on her back. Oh my God, there is a lot of blood."  Library staffer, in call to 911 operator

Authorities say suspect Jeffrey Yao, 23, killed Deane Stryker, 22, in what appears to be a random attack  although authorities noted that both had attended Winchester High School.

This is the library. Somebody is stabbing someone. Please come. Hurry, another caller says.

Prosecutors said that during the attack, Stryker managed to get up from her spot at a reading room table and run to the front lobby, with Yao following her, Fox 25 reported. Several witnesses tried to intervene, including a 77-year-old man who suffered a non-life-threatening stab wound to an arm.

Stryker, who was stabbed multiple times in the head and torso, was rushed to a hospital, but died of her injuries, authorities said.

Yao faces charges of murder and assault with intent to murder in the Feb. 24 killing of Stryker and the wounding of the elderly man, MassLive.com reported.

Earlier this month, Yao was transferred to Bridgewater State Hospital after officials from the Middlesex County Sherriff's Office told a judge he was too mentally ill to remain in jail.

In addition to the 911 calls, authorities released records of more than a dozen previous interactions between Yao and police, dating to 2012.

We are releasing this information because it is in the public interest and because we believe that the public is served by the release of this information, Winchester police Chief Peter MacDonnell told Fox 25. Our officers brought this individual to a local hospital for mental health evaluations many times. It is my hope that the release of this information will contribute to the dialogue on mental health in our society.

"Our officers brought this individual to a local hospital for mental health evaluations many times. It is my hope that the release of this information will contribute to the dialogue on mental health in our society."  Winchester police Chief Peter MacDonnell

According to police, previous incidents included accusations that Yao wrote inappropriate social media posts, interrupted a high school lacrosse match and threw a shovel during an argument with a neighbor.

Jeffery Yao is a troubled young man who has a long history of serious mental illness and multiple hospitalizations for the mental illness, Yaos attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., told Fox 25 soon after Yaos arrest.

Hes had a lot of contact with the Winchester police over the years [and] to their credit, they recognized he has a severe mental illness and dealt with him in that manner, by often taking him to a hospital instead of a police station.

Stryker was studying at the University of New England's College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Biddeford, Maine, her family said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
A condemned Ohio killer scheduled to die next month should be spared because of the possibility of other suspects and questions about when one of the victims was slain, attorneys planned to argue to the state's parole board on Thursday.

At issue before the board is the conviction and death sentence of William Montgomery for the fatal shooting of Debra Ogle in 1986 in the Toledo area. Montgomery also was convicted of murder but not sentenced to death for the shooting of Cynthia Tincher, Ogle's roommate.

Montgomery is set to die on April 11. Republican Gov. John Kasich has the final say.

Ogle and Tincher were killed March 8, 1986, with Ogle shot as part of a robbery and Tincher killed because she could identify Montgomery and his co-defendant, Glover Heard, according to the Lucas County prosecutor.

Tincher's body was found in her car on March 8. Ogle's body was found in woods on March 13.

Heard and Montgomery each blamed the other for the killings. Heard pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Montgomery in exchange for prosecutors dropping death penalty charges and a child molesting charge.

Prosecutors say evidence points to Montgomery as the killer, including his gun being used in both killings and eyewitnesses who saw him near Tincher's car where she was found dead.

Montgomery also dropped off a jacket at the dry cleaner the day of the killings, described as "putting a yellowish brown, brownish dripping mess on the floor," according to prosecutors.

The "Ohio Parole Board should conclude that executive clemency is not warranted," Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates told the board in a filing ahead of Thursday's hearing.

Montgomery's attorneys say an examination of Ogle's autopsy casts doubt on the state's version of the killings, which then calls into question the entire case against Montgomery.

Ogle's body lacked signs of decomposition natural for a body left outside for several days and the pooling of blood known as "lividity" indicated she died within six to 12 hours before she was found on nMarch 13, 1986, and not a few days earlier on March 8, according to the review by Colorado-based Independent Forensic Services.

Montgomery's attorneys also argue:

 The state withheld information at trial about other suspects, including jealous boyfriends and a "drug cartel" hit man, and evidence that Ogle was seen alive after March 8.

 A juror who recommended death for Montgomery said in an affidavit last month he would not have done so based on the new evidence, including discrepancies about Ogle's death.

 Another juror should not have been allowed to stay on the case after telling the trial judge she was a psychiatric patient who claimed to have seen a psychiatrist testifying on behalf of Montgomery in a dream 22 years earlier.

"Clemency is warranted so that the State of Ohio does not execute a man who was given an unfair trial and was convicted and sentenced on a false set of facts," defense attorney Jon Oebker told the board in a filing.

___

Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
The Tennessee highway patrol officer being sued for allegedly groping a woman during a traffic stop in August, then stopping her again three hours later near her home, will receive "oral counseling" on his "search techniques," authorities said Tuesday.

State Trooper Isaiah Lloyd is reportedly slated for remedial training even though state officials suggested dashcam video of the two incidents didn't prove anything illegal occured.

"We saw no criminal intent on the video," state Department of Safety and Homeland Security spokeswoman Megan Buell said Tuesday, according to The Knoxville News Sentinel. "He's been orally counseled on his search techniques."

THP STATEMENT SUPPORTS TROOPER, BUT STATE PROSECUTOR CALLS FOR REVIEW

But, the paper reported, Tennesee Highway Patrol records seem to contradict Lloyd's statement to internal investigators that he had been trained to check inside waistbands during pat-down searches.

Going inside waistbands is not normal pat-down procedure, THP training commanders said, according to the News Sentinel.

The dashcam video shows Lloyd, who was hired by the department in 2015 and had previously served in Iraq, ordering Patricia Aileen Wilson out of her truck on a highway shoulder.

Wilson alleges in her $100,000 lawsuit that Lloyd then put his hands inside her waistband and touched her buttocks and genital area.

Hours later, Lloyd stopped Wilson a second time near her home, purportedly because of the tint on her truck windows, the lawsuit alleges. That's when he allegedly saw Wilson's two young children in the car's backseat.

The lawsuit alleges that Lloyd told her, We have to stop meeting like this. Although the first interactions audio was recorded, Lloyd reportedly claimed the battery on his microphone died for the second.

For her part, Wilson said she doesn't want Lloyd to suffer permanent consequences -- other than changing his technique.

Im not asking for him to lose his job," Wilson told the Knoxville News Sentinel. "Im not asking him to go to jail. He may be a good officer but when it comes to searches  I want that he gets trained properly and that no other women have to go through what I had to go through. I want it to be known that its not OK.
The decapitated body of a 26-year-old woman was found Saturday afternoon near a survivalist bunker loaded with guns and ammo in northwest Washington, and police say a person of interest in the case may be heading for California.

Katherine Cunningham's remains were found Saturday on the rural Camano Island, north of Seattle. Near the headless corpse, investigators discovered a bunker dug into a hillside containing supplies, guns and ammo.

BREWERY REVEALS 'NUTRIENT-RICH' BEER FOR SURVIVALISTS

Island County Sheriff Mark Brown said Wednesday that police are looking for 34-year-old Jacob Gonzales, who he called a person of interest.

He is believed to be a black-haired, 5-foot-9 Hispanic man with hazel eyes who weighs 150 pounds, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The Seattle Times interviewed a woman who said she knows the two, and described them as boyfriend and girlfriend. She said they met in the military.

Its just crazy, the woman said. They were in my house, around my kids and I never thought he was capable of something like this.

Authorities said he may be on the way to southern or central California. They did not elaborate on Gonzales' relationship with Cunningham.

Gonzales is believed to be armed and driving a green 1990 Mitsubishi Montero, with Washington license plate AYE2639.

Based on the evidence it appears that the victim was specifically targeted and this was not a random act, the Island County Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Guest Commentary Fair maps for our children, for our Hispanic communities, for our futures My son will vote for the first time next year. And for his first time, the state of Indiana will have brand new legislative and congressional districts. It should feel like a clean...

Voice of the People During the 13 years I have called Chesterton my home, there are few small-town activities I have come to enjoy quite like the high schools homecoming parade. It is always a beautiful moment of celebrating our students, gathering for an afternoon of fun and seeing...

Voice of the People I find it hard to believe that the majority of Town employees will put their self-interest over the GREATER GOOD which is, the viability of the Town of Chesterton by not getting vaccinated. Our town tried to save money by self-insuring itself. We could be...

Guest Commentary Local coalition aspires to achieve smokefree air for all More than 1 in 5 Indiana adults smoke cigarettes (21.5%), one of the highest rates in the nation, while the number of youths using vaping products remains a concern for anti-smoking advocates. Secondhand smoke is estimated...
A former Maryland governor says he was wrong to deny early release to prisoners sentenced to life.

Democrat Parris N. Glendening denounced his 1995 declaration and called for the governor to be removed from the parole process. The Washington Post reports Maryland is one of three states that require governors to sign off on parole for inmates sentenced to life.

No Maryland governor has signed off on a parole board's recommendation to release a lifer who committed a crime before 18 years old since Glendening's declaration. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan says the decision should be left to someone directly accountable to Maryland citizens, not the parole board.

The ACLU has challenged Maryland's parole system, and the state General Assembly is considering legislation to take the responsibility away from the governor.

___

Information from: The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com
Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.

Developing now, Thursday, March 8, 2018

FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General Jeff Sessions defends DOJ's lawsuit against California, telling Fox News, 'We're going to defend our ICE officers.'

FBI connected some dots on Florida massacre suspect Nikolas Cruz, but still closed the case, agency officials tell Congress

President Trump questioned former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about his treatment by Robert Mueller's team, Fox News confirms.

Trumps rollout of tariffs on imported aluminum and steel may face delays over its language and the departure of chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.

THE LEAD STORY - FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: JEFF SESSIONS: SOMEBODY NEEDS TO STAND UP TO 'RADICAL' CALIFORNIA: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News that California is not entitled to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and vowed that the federal government will not allow the Golden State to flout immigration laws ... We wanted a healthy and good relationship with [California], but federal law determines immigration policy," Sessions told "Fox News @ Night" host Shannon Bream. "The state of California is not entitled to block that activity. Somebody needs to stand up and say no, youve gone too far, you cannot do this, this is not reasonable. Its radical, really. Sessions was defending the Justice Department's lawsuit against California for alleged "immigration interference." He reminded other sanctuary cities and states that federal law determines immigration policy, not states. He said he was not happy with comments by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who on Wednesday slammed the ICE raids in the state last week as "unjust and cruel."

TRAGIC FBI MISSTEPS IN PARKLAND MASSACRE DETAILED: The FBI this week detailed to Congress a series of mistakes and missed opportunities to intervene before a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. -- including a revelation that staffers knew two warnings about suspect Nikolas Cruz were related, but still closed the case ... FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich made the comments in a closed briefing Tuesday with members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees. In a summary released Wednesday to Fox News, Bowdich cited two tips that the FBI received about Cruz in September 2017 and January 2018 that were mishandled.

A CONVERSATION ABOUT 'NOTHING': President Trump asked Reince Priebus about the former White House chief of staff's testimony in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, sources confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday -- but they said the talk included nothing of substance ... A source with knowledge of the investigation said the conversation was limited to questions like How did it go? and Were you treated fairly? A second source said the president simply asked Priebus how he was treated and whether investigators were nice to him. The source summed up the conversation as nothing, saying Trump felt bad that Priebus was forced to sit for hours with Mueller and his staff. Both sources said the conversation did not go into the substance of Priebuss testimony.

TRUMP TARIFFS PLAN READY FOR PRIMETIME? ... MAYBE: President Trump was expected to formally unveil his plan to slap tariffs on imported aluminum and steel at a White House ceremony Thursday. But the event's absence from the White House schedule has sparked reports of its cancellation ... Fox News' Ed Henry reported that the resignation of White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, resistance from GOP lawmakers worried about a potential trade war and stock market jitters may fuel a possible delay in the rollout of the plan. The developments came after the White House said Wednesday that Mexico, Canada and other countries may be spared the tariffs under national security "carve-outs." White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters the exemptions would be made on a "case by case" and "country by country" basis, a reversal from the policy articulated days ago.

AS SEEN ON FOX NEWS

CALIFORNIA ON THIN ICE: "Why do we have ICE officers? Are they just going to sit in their offices and do nothing?" U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on Fox News @ Night, defending ICE raids in sanctuary state California. WATCH

CALLING OUT LIBERAL HYPOCRISY ON RACISTS: "Where is their disavowal? Where are their statements [condemning Farrakhan]?"  Kimberly Guilfoyle, co-host of "The Five," sounding off on the revelation that at least seven House Democrats have ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. WATCH

THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

Hope Hicks tells House Intel one of her email accounts was hacked, source says.

Stormy Daniels ordered by arbitration judge not to sue, Michael Cohen's lawyer says.

Inside the meeting that may have ended Gary Cohn's tenure in the Trump administration.

THE SWAMP

Democratic Rep. Kihuen reconsidering retirement decision amid sexual harassment allegations.

Trump administration to turn over documents related to Obama-era Operation Fast and Furious.

Inside the Pennsylvania special House election pitting Conor Lamb against Rick Saccone.

ACROSS THE NATION

Nor'easter brings heavy snow, creates travel headaches across Northeast.

Explosive threat on passenger jets goes beyond laptops and tablets, TSA boss says.

Convicted California sex offender could face longest punishment in state history.

MINDING YOUR BUSINESS

Cigna nears deal to buy Express Scripts.

Target raises minimum wage to $12, with hopes of hitting $15 by 2020.

Coca-Cola to launch first alcoholic drink.

FOX NEWS OPINION

International Womens Day: Is #MeToo yesterday's hashtag, or will it bring true change?

International Womens Day: Heres what business leaders and parents should know about the value of girls.

United Steelworkers president: Trump tariffs needed to preserve Americas steel and aluminum industries.

HOLLYWOOD SQUARED

'Shark Tank' star Mark Cuban denies 2011 sex assault claims; with Seacrest already under fire, ABC stays mum.

NYPD reportedly ready to arrest Harvey Weinstein.

Terry Crews' groping case rejected.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?

Amelia Earhart mystery solved? Scientist '99 percent' sure bones found belong to aviator.

Prehistoric cave believed to be 10 million years old found in Texas.

Cecil the lion 'suffered incredible cruelty' for up to 12 hours before dying, researcher claims.

STAY TUNED

On Fox News:

Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan on the Justice Department's lawsuit against California; NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch on the latest revelations in the Parkland massacre investigation; and meet the Walmart employee who wowed shoppers with her rendition of the national anthem.

Tucker Carlson Tonight, 8 p.m. ET: Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright explains why he's trying to convince his fellow Democrats that open borders are not sustainable.

Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: Tomi Lahren sounds off on the legal showdown between California and the DOJ.

Fox News @ Night, 11 p.m. ET: Mike Huckabee on the Justice Department's lawsuit against California, the debate over sanctuary cities and more.

On Fox Business:

Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: Guests include: John Hayes, Ball Corporation CEO; Caleb Barlow, IBM Security vice president; Joe Kaeser, Siemens CEO; Mack McLarty, former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton; Lara Trump.

Varney & Co., 9 a.m. ET: Rep. Jim Renacci; La. Sen. John Kennedy; Rep. Louie Gohmert; Rick Saccone, Pennsylvania congressional candidate.

Cavuto: Coast to Coast, Noon ET: Rep. Mike Bost, Congressional Steel Caucus co-chairman; Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana.

Lou Dobbs Tonight, 7 p.m. ET: Rep Sean Duffy.

On Fox News Radio:

The Fox News Rundown podcast: The fight over immigration has reached a fever pitch in California. The Justice Department is suing the sanctuary state. Shannon Bream, host of "Fox News @Night," explains. White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn is the latest departure from the Trump administration. Charles Gasparino, Fox Business Network senior correspondent, discusses the possible reasons behind Cohns resignation. Plus, a commentary from Judge Andrew Napolitano.

Want the Fox News Rundown sent straight to your mobile device? Subscribe through Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher.

The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 a.m. ET: Allen West on North Korea's apparent willingness to negotiate on nukes; Rep. Steve King and Colo. Gov. John Hickenlooper on the showdown between the Trump administration and sanctuary state California; Gregory Zuckerman gives the inside story on his new book, "Rising Above: Inspiring Women in Sports."

#OnThisDay

1983: In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Florida, President Ronald Reagan refers to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."

1965: The United States lands its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines arrive to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nang.

1948: The Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, strikes down voluntary religious education classes in Champaign, Ill., public schools, saying the program violates separation of church and state.

Fox News First is compiled by Fox News' Bryan Robinson. Thank you for joining us! Enjoy your day! We'll see you in your inbox first thing Friday morning.
Human remains found in Texas on Wednesday were identified as belonging to kidnapping victim Christina Morris, who has been missing since 2014, the Plano Police Department announced in a news conference Thursday.

The skeletal remains were found by a construction crew in an area where homes are being built in Anna, about 45 miles north of Dallas.

"The Collin County medical examiner's office has examined the recovered remains and this morning has positively identified the remains as those of Christina Morris," Plano Police Chief Gregory Rushin said.

While the Collin County Sheriff's Office previously said it would not have public comments until a positive identification was made by the medical examiner, law enforcement sources told FOX4 the remains were indeed from Morris.

"Today is bittersweet," Rushin continued, "as we return Christina to her family in our continuing effort to bring answers and perhaps some measure of peace to those who have been personally affected by her disappearance."

The remains were discovered in an area where authorities had previously searched for the 23-year-old Morris, who was reported missing on Aug. 30, 2014, after being seen leaving a shopping center with acquaintance Enrique Arochi.

You could just see really up on the hillside over there up in a little opening, there was a skull laying there, Andy Mitchell told FOX4.

Mitchel told the television station he spotted the skull while clearing brush, and that it was near what appeared to be a womans dress and undergarments.

You hope the family has closure, he said.

Arochi is now serving a life sentence in prison for her kidnapping. Prosecutors said during his trial that her DNA was in the trunk of his car, but he has denied any wrongdoing.

During his trial, cellphone and cell tower data indicated that Arochi was in and around the Anna area after Morris disappeared, prompting searches of the area.

VIRGINIA MOM, 23, WHO MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARED FROM FRONT YARD FOUND DEAD; SUSPECT IN CUSTODY

In a 2016 interview with The Dallas Morning News, Arochi said he was wrongfully convicted of abducting Morris and hoped "she's alive."

"I want to apologize to the Morris family for not being able to help them," Arochi told the newspaper at the time. "My family and I are constantly praying for them and for Christina's well-being."

The Plano Police Department told FOX 4 that Morris' parents were notified about the discovery on Wednesday.

"Our family has been notified, but nothing has been confirmed. Please keep Christina and our family in your thoughts and prayers, her family said prior to Thursday's announcement in a statement released on a Facebook page dedicated to helping to find Morris.

WOMAN, 2 MEN DEAD IN ILLINOIS HAD BEEN REPORTED MISSING

Investigators with the Collin County Sheriffs Office, Anna Police Department and Plano Police Department are expected to return to the scene Thursday to continue collecting evidence, according to FOX 4. Lt. Nick Bristow with the sheriff's office said the remains were transferred to the Collin County ME for a positive identification.

Lekita McMillan who lives in the area where the remains were discovered, told FOX 4 on Wednesday she felt "heartbroken."

"I feel their grief, she said. So that's why I'm here trying to organize a candlelight vigil."

Fox News' Elizabeth Zwirz contributed to this report.
Despite a request from federal immigration officials, the Denver Sheriff Department this week refused to detain an undocumented immigrant who was arrested Sunday in connection with a fatal hit and run.

The crash between a semi-truck and a pickup truck on Interstate 70 killed the driver of the semi and caused a fire that closed the roadway in both directions for several hours.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents requested that the department detain the pickup truck's driver, Ivan Zamarripa-Castaneda, 26, so they could take him into custody. But Denver stopped honoring detention requests from ICE in 2014, FOX 31 reported.

Zamarripa-Castaneda, who allegedly fled the scene, can avoid federal immigration officials and deportation by posting a $25,000 bond -- making him a free man until his next court date, the station reported.

After learning that Zamarripa-Castaneda was in the country illegally, ICE issued a detainer to deport him to Mexico.

But the Denver Sheriff Department cited a potential Fourth Amendment violation for why it will not honor the detainer, the station reported.

Instead, the department said it would comply if it received an order or warrant sign by a federal judge or magistrate, something ICE officials say they dont have the resources to acquire.

One of the issues is we detain somewhere around 34,000 to 40,000 people per day," ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok told the station. "We place detainers on thousands and thousands of people. Getting federal warrants for each one of those individuals would be extremely time-consuming and its something we dont have the resources for.

"We place detainers on thousands and thousands of people. Getting federal warrants for each one of those individuals would be extremely time-consuming."  ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok

As of Wednesday, Zamarripa-Castaneda had yet to be charged, but a spokesperson for the Denver District Attorney's Office told the station the goal would be to have him serve time in Colorado if convicted, before being deported.
A Boston-based IRS agent was indicted on Wednesday on multiple charges, including rape and assault of a former intern. He was reportedly allowed to keep his job despite the explosive allegations.

James Clarke, 44, was charged with aggravated rape, rape, indecent assault and battery, strangulation and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He is accused of assaulting a 21-year-old woman after inviting her out for drinks, the Suffolk County district attorney said.

Clarke invited the college student out for drinks after work on July 26, 2017, and offered to drive her to South Station to catch a train.

Thats when, according to district attorney's office, he handcuffed the woman while parked in his IRS-owned vehicle in a parking garage, assaulted her with his service firearm and then forced her to engage in sexual acts against her will.

The woman, who has not been named by the authorities, called police after Clarke left her at South Station, and she was later transported to the hospital.

According to The Boston Globe, which first reported the story in November, Clarke remained with the IRS despite an ongoing investigation. The Globe reported on Wednesday that IRS did not comment on whether he'd been placed on leave since the charges were brought.

A joint investigation by the Boston Police Departments Sexual Assault Unit and the Suffolks DA led to Clarkes indictment.

He was not arrested but according to the DAs office it is procedural practice that has nothing to do with his employment status at the IRS.

Clarkes attorney, Michael Doolin, said Wednesday his client denies the allegations and looks forward to being vindicated in court.

Clarke is to be arraigned on April 5.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Some 5,000 American and Israeli troops are participating in a joint missile-defense exercise, preparing for the threat of attacks from across the region.

The "Juniper Cobra" exercise began March 4 and is taking place in Israel over several weeks. It includes field exercises, computer simulations and live-fire drills.

Israel has made missile defense a top priority. Enemies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran all possess arsenals capable of striking deep inside Israel.

Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, chief of Israel's air defense command, said Wednesday the drills will simulate "very complex scenarios" that include simultaneous attacks from various adversaries.

Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, who is commanding the U.S. troops for the exercise, says American forces are prepared to deploy to Israel, and that the exercise is an opportunity to improve coordination.
It's one of the most gruesome murder cases Denmark  maybe even the world  has ever seen: journalist Kim Wall's body found in pieces sprawled across an ocean bed.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen, who Wall was interviewing for a story about his homemade submarine in Copenhagen, was charged with her murder. Madsen has maintained his innocence since his arrest on Aug. 11, hours after Wall was reported missing.

"We found a bag with Kim Wall's clothing; shirt, skirt, socks and shoes, and also a knife and lead pieces weighing them down," Copenhagen police investigator Jens Moeller Jensen said at the time. "Around noon we found a leg, then another leg, and shortly thereafter we found a head, also in a bag weighted down by several metal pieces."

Madsen, 47, pleaded not guilty in Wall's death, maintaining that it was an accident. During his trial on March 8, he claimed she was inside the submarine and died of carbon monoxide poisoning while he was on deck. He admitted cutting her up before he "buried her at sea."

"I don't see how that mattered at that time, as she was dead," he told the court, according to BBC News.

Madsen was charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse. He was sentenced in April 2018 to life in prison.

Here's a timeline of events that occurred since Wall stepped foot on Madsen's sub.

April 25, 2018

Madsen is sentenced to life in prison for the murder and dismemberment of Wall. Madsen said he will appeal the murder conviction and life sentence.

April 23, 2018

A prosecutor details grisly parts of Wall's death in the final day of Madsen's trial, claiming the journalist may have been tied with her own stockings before Madsen "impaled her" in what he described as a sexual motive.

Madsen's lawyer called it "a horror story ... but the story is not based on facts. It is based on undocumented claims."

The prosecutor is asking that Madsen be given life in prison  16 years in Denmark, which could be extended if necessary. Meanwhile, Madsen's attorney is asking for 6 months in prison for cutting up Wall's body.

March 21, 2018

After a two-week hiatus, Madsen's murder trial resumes.

Madsen, who is accused of either cutting Kim Wall's throat or strangling her on his submarine, took the stand at the Copenhagen City Court.

Again, Madsen denied killing Wall, asserting to prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen he's "never been violent to any human being  and no dead human being either."

Madsen eventually admitted to stabbing Wall after prosecutors revealed multiple stab wounds were found on the recovered body parts. The inventor said he used a sharpened screwdriver to stab the body, insisting they were only done to make sure the parts would sink.

"I put some punctures in the body parts because I didnt want them to be inflated by gases, Madsen said, according to the Telegraph. There is nothing sexual in the fact that the stab holes were in her vagina. I understand why you might think there was, but there was nothing sexual in it for me.

Madsen said he stabbed her after taking her clothes off, beheading her and placing the head in a plastic bag.



"I wanted to make sure there were no traces in Nautilus, so yes. I am in a condition where I want this accident to go away," Madsen said.

March 8, 2018

Madsen's murder trial begins in Copenhagen City Court, where he faces two judges and two jurors.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen kicked off the 12-day trial by reading the charges against Madsen.

He detailed how Wall's body parts were discovered. And said a psychiatric report concluded Madsen was intelligent "with psychopathic tendencies" who has "no empathy or feelings of guilt."

Madsen himself later took the stand, once again denying that he murdered Wall, according to Sky News.

"What I will tell you today is a grim story that I did not want to tell anyone ever," he said.

Jan. 16, 2018

Madsen is formally charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse. He is also charged with having sexual relations with Wall of a "particularly dangerous nature."

Nov. 29, 2017

Divers find Wall's right arm in the sea south of the Danish capital.

Nov. 22, 2017

Divers find Wall's left arm in the sea.



Oct. 7, 2017

Police say they have found a head, two legs and clothes in plastic bags a day earlier. Dental records help identify Wall.

Oct. 4, 2017

Police say they found 15 stab wounds on Wall's torso. They also find videos of women being tortured, decapitated and killed on Madsen's computer. The videos are not produced by Madsen.

Oct. 3, 2017

A prosecutor says in court that Madsen had a computer containing video of the torture and killing of women.

"We think it's video recordings of true killing of women," Buch-Jepsen said, according to a translation in The Ekstra Bladet newspaper, adding some of the videos containing killings done by "decapitation and burning."

A judge later ruled Madsen will continue to sit behind bars until Oct. 31 as police continue to investigate Wall's death.

Sept. 5, 2017

Madsen claims at a pre-trial hearing that Wall was hit in the head by a 155-pound hatch on the submarine and died from an open skull fracture. He later changes his story when Wall's head is found with no skull fractures.

The court changes the charge against Madsen to manslaughter.

Aug. 25, 2017

Danish police file another charge against Madsen In addition to a preliminary manslaughter charge in Wall's death, the inventor also faces a charge of indecent handling of a corpse, chief investigator Jens Moeller Jensen announces.

Aug. 23, 2017

Danish police say the headless torso that washed ashore matches the DNA of Wall.

Aug. 21, 2017

Wall's naked, headless body is first spotted by a cyclist riding along Amager Island in Copenhagen, Wired reports.

Aug. 15, 2017

Swedish police assist Danish officials with their search for Wall.

Aug. 14, 2017

Danish investigators say the sinking of Welden's submarine was a deliberate act."

Aug. 13, 2017

Madsen's submarine is raised and put onto land in Copenhagen.

Aug. 12, 2017

Madsen appears in court for a pre-trial custody hearing. He said her death was an "accident," explaining that a hatch knocked her in the head. He was ordered held for 24 days.

Aug. 11, 2017

Madsen is rescued by a private motorboat Friday morning in Denmarks Koge Bay after his submarine sank. He tells police he dropped Wall off before the vessel went down, but she was later reported missing by her boyfriend, which raised suspicion.

Madsen is later detained on involuntary manslaughter charges by Danish police in Wall's death.

Aug. 10, 2017

Wall skipped her own goodbye party  a celebration of her and her boyfriend, Ole Stobbe's move to Beijing  to meet Madsen aboard his 55-foot UC3 Nautilus submarine with plans to interview him for a story.

Wall texted Stobbe a picture of herself, possibly the last one ever taken, smiling aboard the sub and standing alongside Madsen, whose back is turned.

Fox News' Travis Fedschun, Katherine Lam, Kaitlyn Schallhorn and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Missouri officer fatally shot while responding to a 911 call was sent to the wrong house  about 15 miles away from where he and two other officers were supposed to be, authorities said.

Clinton Police Officer Christopher Ryan Morton, 30, was shot and killed when he and two other officers responded to a 911 call in which two women were heard screaming in the background. None of the women directly spoke to the operator.

"The 911 call that came in was somehow attached to that [Clinton] address," Lowe said in a Wednesday afternoon, according to the Kansas City Star.

The officers were sent to an address in Clinton, even though the home that the officers should have been responding to was in Windsor, Mo., about 15 miles away, Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe said. The dispatcher mistakenly led the three officers to the home unrelated to the call.

MISSOURI POLICE OFFICER KILLED, 2 OTHERS WOUNDED IN SHOOTING; SUSPECT DEAD

The three officers entered the Clinton home, about 70 miles east of Kansas City, and were searching for possible criminal activity when James E. Waters, 37, opened fire, according to Lowe.

"We're confident that is not part of this incident [in Clinton], but the fact remains they were called to that residence...In order to determine nothing adverse was going on in that residence, they had to make sure everything was OK. That's when the tragic incident took place, Lowe said.

Morton was shot and killed. Officers Nathan Bettencourt and Nicholas Kasper were both wounded. Bettencourt was in stable condition as of Wednesday. Kasper was treated for his gunshot wounds and released.

A SWAT team responded to the scene after the shooting and found Waters dead inside the home. Its unclear how Waters died and if he was living in the home at the time.

"It is a coincidence they were called to that specific address," Lowe said. "It is tragic that happened. But the fact is they were in the act of committing crimes within that house. When (the officers) entered that house, they were doing what they needed to ensure no one was hurt and there wasn't any other problems."

A woman who lived in the Clinton home, Tammy Widger, 37, was charged Wednesday with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and maintaining a public nuisance, Henry County Prosecuting Attorney Richard Shields said. Drugs were being sold in the house, but its unclear if Tuesday nights shooting was related to that crime.

OFFICERS KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY IN 2018

Lowe said authorities backtracked and found the address the officers were supposed to respond to. The women who were heard in the 911 call were not connected to the Clinton home.

Waters was wanted in connection with a rape case, Shields said. He was previously convicted for drugs and resisting arrest and served several stints in prison between October 2000 and July 2017, according to Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Garry Brix. Waters was charged in November in Cass County with unlawful possession of a firearm and drug possession, court records show. He pleaded not guilty, and the case was pending when he died.

Morton joined the Army in November 2005 and was deployed twice. He had been with the Clinton Police Department from February 2015 to January 2017. He stayed on as a reserve officer, but returned to full-time duty in the summer after fellow Officer Gary Michael was shot and killed during a traffic stop in August, FOX4 KC reported.

Mortons death marks the second Clinton police officer to die in the line of duty in the last seven months.

"It's just another tragic event for this community and especially this police department. They've endured a lot. They're going to endure more," Lowe said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Nashville musician was arrested Wednesday in connection with an October crash that killed a taxi driver in the Tennessee capital, police said.

Dallas Wayne Hendrix, 30, faces multiple charges, including vehicular homicide by recklessness, reckless endangerment by a motor vehicle and aggravated assault, the Tennessean reported.

NashVegas Cab driver Hizkias Woldegabrie, 55, was stopped at a traffic light in Nashville on Oct. 11 when Hendrix drove his Ford van into the cab, Metro Nashville Police said, according to Nashville's FOX 17.

The crash caused Woldegabries vehicle to roll over, killing the driver and injuring his passenger.

Hendrix and his passenger also were injured, the station reported.

On Wednesday, Hendrix posted $75,000 bond and was released from jail.
A driver in New Jersey was killed Thursday in a vehicle fire after he drove his car around a barricade and onto live wires after a nor'easter hit the state, officials said.

The Franklin Lakes Police Department told ABC 7 the vehicle erupted into flames on Route 208 just before 9 a.m. about 20 miles northwest of New York City.

Officers arriving at the scene found the vehicle fully engulfed in flames after driving over a live power line that was in the roadway.

"It appears the driver drove around the cones that we put to block the roadway because the wire was down," Capt. John Bakelaar told NorthJersey.com.

Bakelaar told the news outlet no officers were posted near the live wire, and that they typically notify the power company after blocking off the area.

"We don't have the resources to put an officer at each hazard," Bakelaar told NorthJersey.com. "Live wires are dangerous and that's why there were different layers of road blocks for that particular area."

Authorities have not yet identified the man and said the incident remains under investigation.

NOR'EASTER LIGHTNING STRIKES NJ TEACHER DURING SCHOOL DISMISSAL

The death in New Jersey was the second in the New York City suburbs blamed on the winter storm.

An 88-year-old woman was killed by a tree that fell and crushed her as she shoveled snow on Wednesday.

Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn told the Journal News that Barbara Suleski was injured around 5 p.m. Wednesday and died at a hospital.

Neighbors were trying to help her when police arrived. Live wires wrapped around the tree made the rescue more difficult, and another large branch broke off a tree and fell near emergency workers along with wires.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 
Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruzs adoptive mother contemplated signing over her parental rights after enduring his behavior problems for years, a family source told Fox News. The revelation offers yet another glimpse into the 19-year-olds troubles in the years leading up to the bloody massacre.

A family source on Thursday offered Fox News details about Cruz's family life, covering his childhood years until his adoptive mother's death. The source, who asked not to be named, said Cruzs mom, Lynda Cruz, was terrified in the months before her death. Lynda Cruz died of pneumonia on Nov. 1, about three months before the Valentine's Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in which 17 people were fatally wounded. The 19-year-old Nikolas is accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder.

The past few months [before she died] she was scared, the source said. I think thats what killed her.

NIKOLAS CRUZ INDICTED ON 17 COUNTS OF MURDER, JAIL RECORDS REVEAL ODD BEHAVIOR IN DAYS AFTER FLORIDA MASSACRE

Lynda Cruz had trouble controlling both her sons, Nikolas and Zachary, despite meeting with therapists and pleading with local police for help. The outbursts at home got so bad that she made a comment about possibly signing over her parental rights. (It is not known to whom she might have relinquished those rights.)

I dont think she would have done it, she loved the boys more than anything in the world, the source said. She was just fed up with not getting anywhere, tired of how she was being treated and she was saying, Why am I doing this to myself?

Nikolas Cruz was found to be on the autism spectrum at age 10, according to the source, and also suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHA) and depression in his preteen years. Cruz had frequent violent outbursts and would punch holes in walls that his mother would patch.

Outbursts were sparked over events as seemingly innocuous as not stopping at the store. Cruz hit his mother with a vacuum hose when she confiscated his XBox and she would often try to lock the consoles away when it was too much.

NIKOLAS CRUZ INVESTIGATED AFTER SNAPCHAT CUTTING VIDEO, BUT NOT CONSIDERED A THREAT, REPORT SHOWS

In another instance, Cruz punched her in the jaw when she was driving because she wouldnt stop at the store he wanted. Three of her teeth were knocked loose, the family source said.

The mother once told the family source that Nikolas, dressed in a military uniform and holding an air gun, approached her and said: Drop to your knees b----, Im going to blow your f---ing brains out.

He later laughed and said, Im sorry, Mom.

His mother would say on the phone, He thinks hes f---ing ISIS.

NIKOLAS CRUZ REPORTED TO POLICE FOR THREATS, PUNCHING WALLS MONTHS BEFORE FLORIDA SHOOTING, REPORT SAYS

Its unclear, the family source said, how much he understood about what he was saying and doing. Despite the outbursts, the source said Cruzs mother loved her son deeply.

She wrote things off that should have been addressed sooner, the source said.

In the days after the deadly shooting, authorities were looking into social media posts which appeared to include Nikolas posing with guns. His troubled past was previously detailed in reports by police, schools and the Florida Department of Children and Families.

In a September 2016 episode, officials were called to Cruzs house over Snapchat videos that seemed to show him cutting both his arms. Investigators questioned Cruz and his mother, who said her sons behavior was due to a breakup with a girlfriend who had been unfaithful, according to a Florida Department of Children and Families report obtained by Fox News.

Police were also called to a mobile home just after Thanksgiving about Cruz getting into a physical fight. Cruz was allegedly punching walls and breaking items inside the home before getting into a fight with Rock Deschamps, the 22-year old son of Lynda Cruzs friend, Rocxanne Deschamps.

It was initially reported that Cruz was expelled from Douglas High due to a disciplinary problem, but a school source told Fox News the district had recommended to Cruzs mother that he transfer back to Cross Creek  a school in Pompano Beach he had just transitioned out of  so he could have access to more intensive therapy and services. But Cruz reportedly hated it there.

The district then recommended that Cruz enroll in an off-campus alternative school. His mom was convinced it was important for her son to graduate on time and eventually agreed to sign paperwork to revoke services for her son, believing if she didnt, the district would force him to go back to Cross Creek, a source said.

Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie recommended Tuesday that there be a comprehensive, independent review of Cruzs educational records through the years.

Cruz was formally charged on Wednesday with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 of attempted murder.
The plot for the next "Ocean's 11" sequel? Maybe not.

An Oklahoma man was arrested at a Tulsa casino last week for allegedly faking his own kidnapping in order to collect ransom payments from his wife and friends, authorities said.

Jonathon Michael Davis, 34, of Owasso, had been missing for three days when his wife reported him missing, according to the Owasso Reporter. She said she had received text messages from her husband's cellphone, purportedly from her husband's captor, police told the newspaper.

The messages demanded that money be deposited into a PayPal account, the report said.

One message contained a photo of a broken finger and said that they were going to continue breaking fingers until they pay, Owasso police Deputy Chief Jason Woodruff told People magazine.

Officers then tracked Davis cellphone to the River Spirit Casino in Tulsa, where they found him gambling alone at a table -- and carrying the cellphone used to send the ransom texts, police said.

He wasnt very good at this, Woodruff told People. I dont know if he was thinking about it long term.

"He wasnt very good at this. I dont know if he was thinking about it long term."  Deputy Chief Jason Woodruff, Owasso, Okla., Police Department

Davis was arrested and charged March 1 with extortion and false reporting of a crime. He was scheduled to appear in court March 9.
A California professor has been placed on a two-week leave after she was captured on video telling a couple to go back to your home country.

The woman captured in the viral video was identified as Tarrin Olson, who is employed at Golden West College as a professor and counselor, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In the video, Olson is seen telling Tony Kao and his wife to go back to your home country. Kao uploaded the video to his Facebook page last week where it received more than 624,000 views, KTLA reported.

Kao wrote in the video caption that he and his wife encountered a bigot and a racist today in our neighborhood in Long Beach while walking. The video shows a woman wearing a hat walking away from the couple as Kao asked her why [she] told us to back to our country.

SESSIONS UNLOADS ON CALIFORNIA DEMS FOR RADICAL, OPEN BORDERS AGENDA

"You need to go back to your country," the woman stated as she walked away.

"And what does that mean?" Kao asked. He told the woman that he and his wife were both born and raised in the U.S.

"Have your wife turn your phone off and I'll talk to you," the woman shot back.

In the post, Kao claimed Olsons comment was completely unprovoked.

Olson told KCBS her students know she is not a racist.

"I feel my perspective will be twisted if discussing the skewed video which cut out part of the incident.  If you would like to have a full normal interview about the displacement of European-Americans then I gladly am available to enlighten the public, Olson said in a statement.

CALIFORNIA BOY, 14, ARRESTED FOR PRETENDING TO BE SHERIFFS DEPUTY, INITIATED TRAFFIC STOP

The college said it did not condone or support Olsons comments in a statement.

"It has recently come to our attention that there was a video posted on Facebook of a GWC faculty member making comments that the college does not condone or support. Golden West College believes in an inclusive and welcoming environment for all students, the statement from the college read.

In an update, Kao thanked social media users for their support but stated his family had no intention of seeking out or besmirching the offenders personal life or career."
Louisiana's attorney general has sued a local school board over a meeting disrupted by the video-recorded arrest of a teacher who was roughly handcuffed on a hallway floor after she criticized the district superintendent's pay raise.

Attorney General Jeff Landry's lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the Vermilion Parish School Board and its members of violating the state's Open Meetings Law.

The suit asks the court to nullify all board actions at the Jan. 8 meeting, including its vote to raise Schools Superintendent Jerome Puyau's salary by roughly $30,000. The suit also seeks civil penalties against board members.

A deputy city marshal arrested middle school English teacher Deyshia Hargrave after escorting her out of the meeting room and handcuffing her in the hallway. A viral video of the arrest sparked widespread outrage.
Stanford University denied the College Republicans request for a new logo on T-shirts because it shows a portion of the American flag.

"We find the idea that flags are off limits ridiculous," the Stanford College Republicans told Fox News, "and especially the American flag shouldn't be off limits."

The group was told the patriotic look doesnt meet the private universitys standards, according to an email from the schools copyright office that was obtained by The College Fix.

Stanford does not approve the use of the American (or other flag) on product also featuring our trademarks (including the Stanford name), wrote Stanford Universitys trademark licensing associate, Kara Hegwood, in an email to the College Republicans president.

While the university points to its trademark guide for the rejection, it doesnt seem to mention or include any references to flags.

MIAMI ART PROFESSOR TURNS AMERICAN FLAGS INTO KKK HOODS CAUSING OUTRAGE

We can approve red/white/blue themed product but cannot approve this design which features altered version of the flag in the background of the design, and within the initials for the organization name, Hegwood wrote.

However, the private institution did say the old logo was a go.

I note you feature a different design on your website, she wrote. We would be able to approve that design on product.

But the Stanford College Republicans' incoming president, John Rice-Cameron, told the College Fix he doesnt want to use the old logo as suggested by the trademark office.

The logo is emblematic of our club, he said. It shows we are willing to boldly promote conservatism.

Stanford University did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.

The Stanford College Republicans have featured the new logo on the clubs Facebook page since October and used it to promote a recent debate on tax reform with the Stanford Democrats.

The original plan had been to sell the new shirts to members and anyone else who might be interested, but now the group said it did not know if it would go ahead and print them.

CHRISTIAN GROUP SUES MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY AFTER IT IS KICKED OFF CAMPUS

Meanwhile, Rice-Cameron reportedly emailed the school wondering why it doesn't want to be associated with the American flag.

In a recent post online, Rice-Cameron highlighted the SCRs activity in the past year, noting they've faced opposition on campus.

This past year, the Stanford College Republicans have drastically transformed the political environment at Stanford, taking bold steps to promote conservative ideas on campus, he wrote. We have worked with the Young America's Foundation to bring prominent conservative speakers to campus, engaged in debates with left-leaning organizations, and have taken on and defeated those who seek to intimidate conservatives into submission.
Just three weeks after the worst high school shooting in U.S. history, members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School band traveled to New York City to perform at Carnegie Hall.

The schools elite wind symphony was chosen last June to participate in the prestigious Wind Band festival at the famed concert hall. The performance took on new meaning for the students who lost 17 of their classmates and teachers in the school massacre.

Music is the thing that holds us together and allows to express, in the most pure way that we can, senior percussion player Ryan Lewert said.

It was a stirring performance on Tuesday at the New York City concert hall. Some band members were seen crying on stage after they performed at Carnegie Hall.

Most of the 54-member symphony group survived the shooting together hiding inside the band room just feet away from the freshman building where the shooting took place. Alex Kaminsky, the band director for three years, guided the students through the terror that day. His son Ethan was in the band room, as well.

It definitely gives this trip a new meaning  now were playing for people that weve lost, the 15-year-old trumpet player said. I just want to show that music can overcome anything. The feeling you can get from hearing a song or playing a song is something that cant be described. And it really can help in any situation.

The band lost two members in the shooting. Alex Schachter, a 14-year-old trombone player, and Gina Montalto, a 14-year-old color guard member.

Kaminsky said that since the shooting, the band is playing differently.

Theres something that theyre infusing into their music-making that you can see even in their body language and through their eyes, the band director said.

From the very start, I saw what the music was doing to them. And to their souls. In a positive way. I could see it in their demeanor. As soon as they started playing their instruments  and for me too, as the conductor  the music-making began and it took us to a different place: a happy place.

Two of the students now sport tattoos in honor of the Valentines Day shooting. Daniel Journey rushed to the tattoo parlor the next morning to get a tattoo on his inner bicep with the name of his childhood best friend, Joaquin Oliver.

I was originally going to put it on my heart, because Joaquins always going to be in my heart, Journey explained. But I wanted to read it every morning. So I wanted to turn over in my bed and look at Joaquins name and see that hes always with me.

The senior bassoon player says he now plays for him.

I feel so many things, just coming out of me when I play music now, he said. Ive cried when I play. Its tough but moving forward, all I have is happy memories of me and him, you know? And all our friends in that group only have happy memories. We never sit and cry anymore. All we do is laugh.

Fox News' Tara Prindiville contributed to this report.
A South Texas mother of five convicted in the 2006 salt poisoning death of her 4-year-old foster son is set to receive nearly $600,000 in state compensation for seven years spent behind bars.

ABC News reported that the Texas comptroller told Hannah Overton on Tuesday that she would receive a check for $573,333.33 for wrongful incarceration. She also is qualified to receive insurance and education benefits, and next year shell get an annuity, according to ABC News.

Im very thankful that this compensation is finally coming through, Overton, now pregnant with her sixth child, told the news organization. No amount of money will ever bring back the years that were taken away, and the seven years of freedom I lost. I could never thank my attorneys enough for fighting endlessly to prove my innocence and bring me home.

Four years ago the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, citing poor legal help at her 2007 trial, overturned Overtons capital murder conviction in the death of Andrew Burd. Burd died in 2006 from high levels of sodium in his body.

Prosecutors argued she fed the child a mixture of water and Cajun seasoning, causing sodium poisoning.

Last year prosecutors said she didnt get a fair trial. The news gained international attention because it was widely held that Overton had been wrongfully convicted.

I am over the moon that Hannah has been granted compensation by Texas for her wrongful imprisonment, Cynthia Orr, Overtons lawyer, told ABC News. She and her family do so much good with nothing. This small benefit will allow her and her sweet family to continue to share their goodness with all of us with some degree of comfort.

It is a small thing for one who has suffered so greatly.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China will remain a firm supporter of free trade, regional cooperation, and the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region.

He made the remarks while commenting on China's stance towards the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership on the sideline of the ongoing Two Sessions or Lianghui in Beijing.

The Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership is due to be signed on March 8 in Chile, and is expected to take effect in 2019.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. [Photo: Xinhua]

11 countries have committed to signing up to the agreement. Negotiations on the agreement continued despite the US falling out of the original Trans-Pacific Partnership after Donald Trump became president in 2017.

China will not be a signatory to the new Trans-Pacific Partnership. However, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China has been and will remain a firm supporter of free trade.

China helped facilitate the launch of the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area at the annual APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in 2014, and is an active participant in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

"Be it the RCEP or CPTPP, we hope to see better communication, coordination, and interaction between the various free trade initiatives in our region so that they will complement one another, help resist trade protectionism, and contribute to a more open global economy."

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Initiative is expected to support efforts towards greater globalization.

On Thursday, Wang Yi dismissed the suggestions from some commentators that the Belt and Road Initiative lacked openness and transparency.

"The planning and implementation of Belt and Road projects has been openly discussed by participants. No country is dominating the process. All parties have an equal say. There are no backroom deals and everything is transparent. There's no winner takes all. Every project delivers win-win results."

The minister also dismissed suggestions that plans by the US, Japan, India, and Australia to establish a regional infrastructure scheme known as the Indo-Pacific Strategy was a countermove to the Belt and Road.

"Contrary to the claims made by some academics and media outlets that the Indo-Pacific Strategy aims to contain China, the official position of the four countries is that it targets no one. I hope they mean what they say, and that their action will match their rhetoric. As to the relationship between the Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Belt and Road Initiative, let's not forget that the Belt and Road Initiative has received the support of more than 100 countries. People looking to start a new Cold War are out of step with the times. And inciting confrontation will find no market."

Meanwhile, Wang Yi also shed light on US-China trade frictions, saying that as the first and second largest economy in the world, the two sides should find a mutually beneficial solution, as their interests are highly intertwined.
A U.S. Navy warship made a sudden turn, colliding with a commercial vessel in Singapore territorial waters and resulting in the deaths of 10 U.S. sailors, Singapore's government said in a report Thursday.

The USS John S. McCain's collision with an oil tanker Aug. 21 was among several mishaps in the Asia-Pacific region that involved U.S. Navy warships, Reuters reported.

Just two days after the McCain crashed, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin was relieved of his duty as commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet.

The sudden turn by the McCain -- named for the grandfather and father of U.S. Sen. John S. McCain III, R-Ariz. -- was from a series of missteps at the control of the ship, said the report from Singapores Transport Safety Investigation Bureau, VOA News reported.

The rapid change in direction unintentionally increased the rate of the vessels turn, putting it in the path of the Liberian-flagged commercial vessel Alnic MC, the bureau's report said.

But the agency report should not be used to assign blame and determine liability, the bureau noted.

Two months earlier, the USS Fitzgerald, another U.S. guided missile destroyer, collided with a Philippine container ship off the Japanese coast, killing seven sailors.

The commanding officers of both the USS John S. McCain and the USS Fitzgerald are facing criminal charges, including negligent homicide, dereliction of duty and endangerment of a ship, VOA News reported.

Several other officers from both ships face criminal charges or administrative actions, while several senior naval officers were fired, the report said.

Another report by Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, found the collisions were avoidable, VOA News reported.

A review of deadly ship collisions in the Asia-Pacific showed sailors were undertrained and overworked, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Navy subsequently announced a series of systemic reforms in hopes of restoring basic naval skills and alertness at sea.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, speaking to a group at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Wednesday, essentially sided with President Trump when she said arming some school employees should be considered. Florida Gov. Rick Scott disagrees  and hes not alone among the nations governors.

Washington States Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee made news last week when he confronted President Trump at the White House over his desire to let teachers and other school personnel carry guns.

I have listened to the people who would be affected by that, Inslee told Trump during a question and answer session. I have listened to the biology teachers, and they dont want to do that at any percentage.

Gov. Inslee apparently did not listen to John Cerna, superintendent of the Toppenish, Washington School District. Cerna carries his own gun to work and allows 18 other administrators to also carry a concealed handgun in their schools.

This isnt about President Trump or our governor, said Cerna, this is about the kids in Toppenish. This is about the safety of my people.

Cerna said after the shooting tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, he became open to any and all methods aimed at hardening his schools. Among the changes since then, school doors are locked so visitors have to be buzzed in. Theres also one private armed security guard and at least one armed administrator in every building. The volunteer administrators are put through 40 hours of training and are retrained every two years.

The state school superintendent and gun control groups say the risks outweigh the potential benefits.

A school administrator should be focused on better running their schools, said Jaron Lindbaum of Washington Ceasefire. Teachers should be focused on their curriculum and better teaching their students. Lets leave the public safety aspect to the trained public safety officers.

Nearly one-third of the nations public schools already have armed school resource officers. There was one on duty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at the time of the deadly rampage.

But when it comes to arming educators to add deterrent and cut response time, most parents in Toppenish are in full support.

It protects the kids, said parent Lily Sampson-Ohms. And speaking about the schools armed administrators, theyre the first line of defense.

Toppenish is not the only school district in Washington that allows armed employees. The Kiona-Benton School District has a similar policy. Each is fielding a lot of calls from educators around the country who are also worried about their schools being soft targets.
The United Nations Security Council renewed calls on Wednesday to implement a 30-day cease-fire across Syria after a resolution to deliver humanitarian aid during that period remained unenforced.

Council President and Netherlands Ambassador Karel van Oosterom told reporters that the 15-member council had expressed concerns about the humanitarian situation during a closed meeting.

The resolution, unanimously passed on Feb. 24, called for all parties to immediately lift the sieges of populated Syrian cities so that the U.N. could deliver humanitarian aid to those in need and evacuate the critically ill and wounded.

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Syria doubled down on these calls after appealing to the Syrian government to abide by the cease-fire in heavily targeted eastern Ghouta, Reuters reported.

On Monday a convoy carrying emergency medical supplies to nearly 400,000 people near Damascus was stripped by security forces.

U.N. aid workers have said that trauma treatment kits and surgical supplies are often removed from convoys by Syrian forces because they may be used to treat wounded rebels, Reuters reported.

According to the proposal, 5.6 million Syrians are in acute need of help, 2.9 million of whom are in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.

U.N. figures also show that nearly 12 percent of children under the age of 5 in Ghouta have acute malnutrition.

Aid workers told Reuters that some children have not seen daylight in 20 days because its simply too dangerous to leave the basements they are hiding in.

Just Wednesday, the Syrian government bombarded the rebel-held eastern part of Ghouta in an effort to defeat the opposition.

Even calls by Russia, which initially delayed the 30-day cease-fire, for a daily five-hour truce to allow aid to be delivered have gone unanswered.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities in Austria have detained a 23-year-old suspect Thursday in connection with knife attacks in Vienna in which four people were injured, Vienna police confirmed online.

Patrick Maierhofer, a police spokesman, said in a statement that the male suspect was detained shortly after a 20-year-old man was brought to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Police say they are still investigating whether the suspect is also responsible for the stabbing of a family of three an hour earlier, also in Vienna.

All three family members, the 67-year-old father, the 56-year-old mother and their 17-year-old daughter, suffered life-threatening injuries and were taken to the hospital. The names of the victims were not given.

Further details regarding the attack and a possible motive were not immediately clear.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
British prosecutors have dropped drug charges against a suspect who refused to use the toilet while he was in custody for 47 days.

Lamarr Chambers, 24, of Brixton was arrested on Jan. 17 after being chased by police. He was suspected of swallowing drugs during the chase, the BBC reported.

The Crown Prosecution Service announced Monday that drug charges were being dropped against Chambers due to insufficient evidence. Police were also forced to release Chambers due to medical and legal advice.

EX-RUSSIAN SPY, DAUGHTER POISONED BY NERVE AGENT IN TARGETED ACT, BRITISH AUTHORITIES SAY

He was released from custody Monday and treated at a hospital, Essex Police said.

The BBC reported that 47 days is the longest anyone has gone without going to the toilet while in custody.

Sky News reported social media users closely monitored #PooWatch which gave updates on Chambers lack of bowel movements.

Chambers refused to take laxatives while in custody but ate and drank, officials said. He also had medical visits daily. However, Chambers never once defecated while in custody, police said. He also refused medical treatment while in custody.

EU TO REJECT CHERRY-PICKING FOR BRITAIN IN POST-BREXIT DEAL

Officers monitored Chambers fearing his health could be harmed after not defecating for 47 days.

"Where detainees are suspected of ingesting or concealing drugs inside their body, we must balance overseeing their welfare and ensuring that all evidence is captured to ensure the best possible chance of prosecution, Deputy Chief Constable BJ Harrington said.

"We will... not shy away from talking about the unpleasant truths that go hand in hand with the drug dealing lifestyle, from the violence often perpetrated by those involved to the expectation on dealers to 'plug' drugs to avoid capture, Harrington continued.
The Danish inventor accused of killing journalist Kim Wall during a trip on his private submarine shared details of her "grim" death at the start of the murder trial on Thursday, as a prosecutor told the court the lead suspect is an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies."

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading the charges while Peter Madsen, wearing glasses and a dark shirt, watched the prosecutor from his seat beside his defense lawyer. He later detailed how Wall's body parts were found on the ocean bed.

Madsen, 47, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Wall's body.

The prosecutor said a psychiatric report of Madsen concluded that he is an intelligent man "with psychopathic tendencies" who has "no empathy or feelings of guilt."

Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhoses  both damaged  and pieces of hair.

The prosecutor said that the cause of Wall's death has not yet been determined, but that her blood was found on the military-style bodysuit that Madsen wore when he was arrested, and he also said detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive.

Madsen's lawyer, Betaina Hald Engmark, told the court he denied killing Wall, but admitted to the indecent handling of a corpse. She then formally entered a not-guilty plea to the murder charge.

Madsen himself later took the stand, telling the court he denied murdering Wall while answering the prosecutor's questions, according to Sky News.

"What I will tell you today is a grim story that I did not want to tell anyone ever," he told the court.

Madsen said he did not want to share the "terrible way" that Wall died, especially with her relatives.

WHO IS PETER MADSEN, THE DANISH INVENTOR CHARGED WITH MURDERING KIM WALL?

He later repeated his claim that Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck, testifying that Wall "had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident," but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them.

The inventor had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death prior to the trial. After initially telling authorities he had dropped Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip, he then said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head.

On Thursday, he described how he found Wall lifeless after a sudden pressure problem in the submarine and he felt a "cloud of warm air" on his face.

"I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good," he said.

He added that he tried to give her first aid when he finally reached her, but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he told the court.

After Wall's death, Madsen claimed that he slept for a few hours in the sub with her body near his after an unsuccessful attempt to lift it out of the vessel.

"At that time, Peter Madsen couldn't handle any more," he told the court, referring to himself in the third-person.

Under the Danish law, manslaughter is used to describe the deliberate killing of a person and there is no distinction between manslaughter and murder, according to Reuters. Involuntary manslaughter however is used when the killing is not intentional.

At the start of the trial, Buch-Jepsen said Madsen's submarine was submerged for several hours on the night when journalist Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didn't immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact.

When reached over radio, Madsen said he had let Wall off on an island in Kge Bay off Copenhagen several hours into the trip, according to the audio file played in court on Thursday

Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported "man overboard" over the radio before he was later picked up alone.

KIM WALL MURDER SUSPECT ALLEGEDLY TEXTED 'MURDER PLAN' ON SUBMARINE TO EX-LOVER

After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsen's nose, "blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall," said prosecutor Buch-Jepsen.

Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium to develop and construct manned spacecraft. In 2011, it launched a homemade 30-foot rocket five miles into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space.

In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day "hoped to have a criminal career," adding he didn't want to rob a bank because "no one must be hurt."

Wall's family has declined to comment "for the time being" but were present Thursday at the start of the trial. The case will be back at Copenhagen Crown Court on March 21, and is expected to end on April 25.

Since September they have raised money for the "Kim Wall Memorial Fund Grant" as part of an online crowdfunding campaign from donors around the world. The fund will award a female reporter a $5,000 grant on March 23, which would have been Walls 31st birthday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Baltic nation of Latvia has proposed legislation to taper Russian influence within its borders, where it's estimated that 40 percent of the population are Russians who call it home.

Current Latvian law states that a person cannot become a Latvian citizen if he or she does not speak fluent Latvian. The thousands of ethnic Russians who reside in the country contend that they moved to the Baltic nation when it was part of the Soviet Union and was therefore a part of a single nation.

As the Canada-based Center for Research on Globalization explains, ethnic Russians argue that their presence in Latvia is as natural, as if an American moved from Illinois to California.

Built around the notion of the Russians as "foreign occupiers," the new legislation aims to have schools for national minorities be conducted completely in Latvian. At the moment, schools for ethnic minorities allow 40 percent of subjects to be in a language other than Latvian. Under the new legislation, students would only be able to learn in their mother tongue in subjects related to culture and history.

Baltic-Russian relations have been tense for years, with the region fearing an invasion similar to Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea.

In September 2017, phone services in Latvia, Norway and Sweden were reportedly jammed for hours during a Russian military exercise in the Baltic Sea, according to The Associated Press. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concern over Russia's use of electronic warfare.

With recent military developments in the region including an influx of Baltic, Scandinavian and Russia troops on the border, anti-Russian sentiment in Latvia is expected to escalate.

If the legislation is signed into law by Latvia's president, the reform will likely be enacted by Sept. 1, 2019.


Poland is marking 50 years since the start of student protests that were exploited by the communist regime to purge Jews from the party and from Poland.

The result was the expulsion of 13,000 Jews, among them Holocaust survivors and prominent intellectuals like philosopher Leszek Kolakowski and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.

The anniversary Thursday had long been expected to be commemorated with a celebratory message about how far Poland has distanced itself from its anti-Semitic demons of the past. Instead, it follows a new wave of anti-Semitism sparked by a recent diplomatic dispute with Israel.

Starting in March 1968, students staged mass protests that were brutally quashed by the regime. Rival factions in the communist party exploited the protests in their pursuit of party control, with the crisis climaxing in the purge of Jews.
A prominent member of the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD, will resign from his party posts following several controversial and anti-Muslim remarks about migrants.

The party board of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt said in a statement Thursday Andre Poggenburg will step down both as the party's state leader and as head of the party's faction in state parliament.

The 42-year-old made headlines last month, when he insulted Turks as "camel drivers" and immigrants with dual passports as a "homeless mob we no longer want to have."

Poggenburg said his resignation was supposed to take "pressure from the party," which has come under criticism for its anti-migrant stance.

AfD came in as the third-strongest party in Germany's national election in September, and is represented in several state parliaments.
A doctor in Syrias Eastern Ghouta neighborhood is pleading for help from President Trump as reports emerge of yet more chemical attacks against civilians in the battle-torn country. His pleas come as the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad, in coordination with its Russian and Iranian backers, continues to ignore a Security Council resolution that calls for a 30-day humanitarian truce.

The aid convoy planned for Thursday has already been postponed due to the heavy fighting.

You are the president of the largest and greatest country in this world. You are the (most) powerful president in this world, so please therefore I call on you to stop the killing, to break this siege and help our people, Dr. Bassam Bakri pleaded to Trump from a clinic in eastern Ghouta.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering a new round of military action against the Assad regime following reports of chemical weapons use on civilians. Trump ordered an attack in April 2017 against a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical attack that killed dozens of civilians, many of them children. The U.S. launched dozens of cruise missiles during the attack.

"I call on you to stop the killing, to break this siege and help our people.  Dr. Bassam Bakri

As you saw the presidents response to the attack last year, this is something that is under serious discussion as we speak, but again something that needs to be discussed in a classified discussion, Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, told senators on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing on worldwide threats.

Coats was responding to a question from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who asked about recent chemical attacks on civilians in Syria, the use of chlorine gas as a weapon of mass destruction and how the administration was responding to it.

Bakri, who is working for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), told Fox News on Wednesday that he was a witness to the criminal war by the Assad regime, Iran and Russia. Speaking via text messages, he said that medics are struggling to keep up given the lack of medicine and medical supplies getting to him and his colleagues.

Bakri complained about the UN Security Councils inaction regarding the chemical attacks. The problem is the Security Council is just watching. They dont make real action to enforce its resolution. He said the effects on women and children in eastern Ghouta are catastrophic.

Within a few hours of his first interview with Fox News, Bakri sent a video, supplied to Fox News by the Syrian American Council, which showed the aftermath of what he claimed was another chemical weapons attack Wednesday.

Standing in what looked like a clinic with the sound of a respirator growling in the background, Bakri told Fox News: We are here standing in besieged eastern Ghouta. Its the third or fourth attack by chlorine gas by Assad and Russia airstrike. He then panned his camera to show a child victim who was coughing and crying. In another video, he said the smell of chlorine gas was in the air as he tried to help a male patient who was suffering a severe coughing episode.

Also on Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert tweeted a meme condemning Russias actions. It showed a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian Promises as the title, and said in part that Russia and the Syrian regime are responsible for the killing of innocent civilians.

Nauert's tweet said, #Russia voted for the @UN #ceasefire across #Syria, then Russia ignored it by bombing civilians in Damascus and #East Ghouta. We call on Russia and the Assad regime to adhere to #UNSC Res.2401 and & allow the delivery of desperately-needed humanitarian aid to 400,000 civilians.

As the attacks continue, seemingly unabated on eastern Ghouta, France and the UK called for an emergency closed meeting of the Security Council Wednesday, when members were briefed on the situation on the ground there. While no action was agreed upon, members heard briefings on the humanitarian situation as well as the political situation between the warring parties.

One Security Council diplomat told Fox News that the briefing from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed to Security Council members that the number of people in urgent need of medical evacuations is now 6,500 -- up from approximately 600 people before the concentrated airstrikes against eastern Ghouta began in January.

The Security Council will meet again next Monday on Syria and will hear a briefing from the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Resolution 2401.

The Syrian American Council estimates hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed since the passage of the UN Security Council resolution 12 days ago.
The European Union (EU) is planning "a whole arsenal" of counter-measures if U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead with imposing new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum amid global opposition, an official said on Thursday.

"Donald Trump is wrong. All war is bad and in trade war there would be only losers ... The commission is preparing a riposte," European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a French television news channel.

The European Comissioner for Economic and Finacial Affairs Pierre Moscovici gestures during a news conference, following his meeting with Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno at the Finance Ministry in Lisbon, Thursday, March 10 2016. [File Photo: AP/Armando Franca]

"If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal," he said.

The former French economy minister said that "immediate" retaliatory measures would include European tariffs on U.S. exported oranges, tobacco and bourbon, and goods which he said were mainly produced in constituencies held by Trump's Republican party.

Europe would also take measures to limit eventual excess of imported steel and aluminum into Europe in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules while filing a complaint before the WTO, he added.

Moscovici said Europe "wants to avoid escalation" but "must keep the multilateral framework" because "protectionism is never the answer: protectionism is nationalism, nationalism is war and the war only makes losers."

Trump announced on Thursday last week that the United States was set to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports.

Trump is expected to sign the text on new duties later Thursday.
Two missiles fired from a U.S. drone hit a militant facility in neighboring Afghanistan, killing 21 insurgents, including the son of the head of the Pakistani Taliban, two Pakistani intelligence officials and local Taliban commanders said on Thursday.

The strike, which according to the officials took place on Wednesday, targeted a compound frequented by Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

The intelligence officials said that Fazlullah was apparently not there, but his son was killed in the strike in Afghanistans Kunar province, miles away from Pakistani border.

Three Pakistani Taliban commanders also confirmed the strike and militant casualties. Pakistani officials and the Taliban commanders spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The United States made no comment on the strike. There was also no immediate comment from NATO, Afghan authorities or the Pakistani government.

It was unclear whether the bodies of those killed in Wednesdays drone strike would be brought to Pakistan for burial.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Fox News email early Thursday to confirm the details of the report.

Islamabad has for years has asked Washington and Kabul to take action against Fazlullah and other Pakistani Taliban, who are believed to be hiding in neighboring Afghanistan and who cross the porous Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks inside Pakistan.

Kabul, for its part, has long complained that Islamabad is not taking enough action against militants who use Pakistani soil to launch attacks against U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump began the New Year by sending an angry, early morning tweet criticizing Pakistan.

"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!" Trump tweeted.

Fazlullahs is the son-in-law of a Sufi Mohammad, a radical anti-U.S. cleric who was recently freed by Pakistan. The cleric, imprisoned in Pakistan in 2009, was released in January from a prison in the northwestern city of Peshawar, following a court order for his release on health grounds earlier that month.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
In August, 30-year-old Swedish reporter Kim Wall stepped aboard the UC3 Nautilus, a 58-foot submarine built by Danish inventor Peter Madsen and was never seen alive again.

On April 25, Madsen was sentenced to life in prison for her murder.

Wall, who had plans to move to Beijing with her boyfriend, skipped her going-away party to interview the well-known engineer and entrepreneur for a story.

Shortly after stepping onto the submarine, Wall disappeared and Madsen, the subject of her interview, soon became her suspected killer.

Police believe Madsen intentionally sank the submarine the day after Wall accompanied him on the vessel. He initially told police Wall disembarked on an island near Copenhagen hours after their trip began. But he later changed his story, claiming that she died during an onboard accident and he had buried her at sea.

Walls body was later found dismembered  her naked torso washed up on the coast of southern Copenhagen. The torso had been repeatedly stabbed, both in and around the genitalia, police said, adding that a heavy metal object was used in an attempt to sink it to the ocean floor.

Divers found Walls head, legs and clothes in bags in Koege Bay near Copenhagen on October 7, two months after her death. Her arms were found at a later date.

"We found a bag with Kim Wall's clothing; shirt, skirt, socks and shoes, and also a knife and lead pieces weighing them down," Copenhagen police investigator Jens Moeller Jensen said at the time. "Around noon we found a leg, then another leg, and shortly thereafter we found a head, also in a bag weighted down by several metal pieces."

Madsen denied the murder, but did admit to throwing Wall's body parts into the sea.

Prosecutors said Madsen tied up and tortured Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her during the trip on his private submarine.

Days before he met Wall, Madsen allegedly texted an ex-lover that he had a murder plan ready in the submarine.

Madsen was charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse. His trial began in Copenhagen on March 8. He pleaded not guilty to murdering Wall.

On March 21, Madsen allegedly admitted to stabbing the journalist, though it was after she was already dead, he said. The purpose, he reportedly said, was to prevent gasses from being trapped inside her body so it would sink when dropped into the ocean.

Heres what you need to know about Madsen.

Early life

Born in 1971, Madsen grew up in a town near Copenhagen. His mother, Annie, had three sons from two previous marriages, according to Wired. When Madsen was six-years-old, his mother left with her three other children  leaving Madsen behind with his father, Carl.

Madsens father, who owned a pub, was allegedly abusive, Madsen once told a biographer (though his father was allegedly only abusive toward his three stepsons, Wired reported).

Madsen became interested in science at a young age; his father, who died when Madsen was 18, sparked his sons interest in rockets, according to Wired.

After dropping out of various apprenticeships, Madsen focused on building submarines and rockets.

A career in science

Madsen co-founded Copenhagen Suborbitals in 2008. The organization is the worlds only manned, amateur space program, according to its website. The program is funded by fans and supporters.

One volunteer at the organization told Wired Madsen would behave like a child who just lost his toy or dropped his ice cream or something when he was angry, adding that he would occasionally throw hammers and other tools.

Madsen also co-founded Rocket-Madsens Space Laboratory, a space exploration company that also receives its fundings through donations, according to the BBC.

Both organizations are attempting to be the first non-government, volunteer-based groups to send someone to space, the BBC reported.

Amateur submariner

In addition to the UC3 Nautilus, Madsen also built submarines UC2 Kraka and UC1 Freya.

The UC3, which Madsen reportedly created with a submarine club called Freya, is the largest privately built submariner in the world, he once told a Danish publication.

Fox News Travis Fedschun and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Your Excellency Patricia Scotland QC,

commonwealth Secretary General ,



Greetings.

My names is Jeanne Mukamurenzi, a Rwandese refugee leaving in Norway.



Your Excellency, I have decided to write this open letter to you on this day instead of me going out to celebrate this International women's day with my fellow women.



I thought it was pointless to celebrate this day when my fellow women in Rwanda are in prisons because of political reasons and others are dying quietly.



What is there to celebrate when my fellow women in Rwanda have been denied justice by the same people who are supposed to give them justice? And in all this your organisation is just quiet?



What is there for me to celebrate on this day when Madam Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza has been denied justice , her rights have been violated and your organisation is quiet ?



What is there for to celebrate when a Fellow woman Madam Claire Nadine Kasinge and her son Kejo Skyler who were in Father Thomas Nahimana delegation spent 72 hours at Jomo Kenyatta international airport when President Kagame and his government denied them entry into Rwanda and your organisation has kept quiet about it?



By the way your Excellency, this has happened twice at Jomo Kenyatta and Zaventem airports respectively.



What is there for me to celebrate when my fellow women from Congo have been raped and killed by Kagame's soldiers and your organisation has failed to caution Kagame for his impunity against humanity , the women In particular .



Your Excellency, I was pleased to see you taking interest in the matter where an opposition leader in Zambia ,Mr.Hakainde Hichilema was facing treason charges. This made me think. The next stop is Rwanda.



In your capacity as the commonwealth Secretary General ,you traveled to Zambia and met with the Republican President HE Edgar Lungu and you heard his side of story, you also went to prison where the said opposition leader was and also heard him.Before concluding your visit you held a press conference of which you stressed a point that all you wanted was to see the two leaders reconcile through reconciliation dialogue.

Your Excellency, within a short time, you appointed a special envoy Professor Ibrahim Gambari to facilitate the dialogue between these two leaders.



Your Excellency,

You have received a lot of reports about political situation in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch has published numerous reports about the government of Rwanda violating the rights of its Citizens but your office has gone mute on that.



You have heard about political prisoners , those who are prosecuted and persecuted on daily basis for political reasons, you have just kept quiet.



Your Excellency, Like Zambia, Rwanda is a commonwealth member, I fail to understand why Mr Paul Kagame continues to misbehave and your office is quiet about his brutal behavior against the people of Rwanda and the entire region of Great Lakes ?



Has Mr.Paul Kagame become untouchable that your office has failed to handle his behavior? Or should I just say that where brutal regime is concerned you choose which brutal leader to caution while a so called leader like Paul Kagame is left to kill his people under your watch?



Your Excellency, last year you visited Rwanda at the time when Mr.Paul Kagame had just declared himself as a winner of the controversial elections.Elections held after changing the constitution in order for him to remain in power forever , elections held without any serious contenders against him after barring all the credible opponents like Diane Rwigara who is now in prison for trying to challenge Mr. Kagame and Father Thomas Nahimana who has been declared persona non grata in Rwanda by Kagame because he tried to travel to Rwanda to go and register his Political Party , Ishema Party.

Mr.Gilbert Mwenedata who also attempted to challenge Mr.Kagame in the elections has ended up into exile as he was being threatened by Kagame,s regime.



Madam Victoire Umuhoza who tried to contest the 2010 Presidential elections but she ended up being handed a 15 years jail term, your office knows her story, nothing has been done by your office.



Your Excellency, all these matters your office has swept them under the carpet and Kagame keeps on taking the same path of infringing our rights while your office watches.



What are the people of Rwanda benefiting as member of your organisation if you can't come to our aide in times like this?



Your Excellency, Rwandans who are longing for Justice expect more from organisations such as yours.



And it is about time we started seing the benefits of being a commonwealth member.



Appoint more Gambaris to facilitate the dialogue in Rwanda as you have done in Zambia which is too far much better than Rwanda when it comes to democracy and human rights.



Your Excellency, I thank you for your immediate attention into this letter.



Jeanne Mukamurenzi.

Deputy Secretary General in Charge of the Youths in Ishema Party.
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Galveston, TX (77553)

Today

Mainly clear. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 80F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low near 80F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.
The Japanese government is slapping penalties on several cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, after JPY 58 billion ($530 million or roughly Rs. 3,250 crores) of virtual coins were lost earlier this year from hacking.

The Financial Services Agency, which has been checking the exchanges, said Thursday that FSHO and Bit Station exchanges were ordered to halt operations for a month.

It said FSHO was not properly monitoring trades and had not carried out employee training. The agency said it found that a Bit Station employee had taken Bitcoins for personal use.

Five other exchanges, including Coincheck, targeted in the massive hacking, were ordered to improve their operations.

Coincheck had received a similar order earlier to beef up security measures.

Japan is unusual in the world for embracing cryptocurrencies and setting up a licensing system to oversee their use.

The exchanges ordered to improve their operations must file a plan to the agency by March 22.

The theft at Coincheck of the NEM currency was the second major hacking assault on a Japanese crypto exchange after the Mt. Gox debacle in 2014.

But Japan has chosen to seize the opportunity and regulate exchanges, setting up a licensing system last year, although experts say such measures are no guarantee against hacking and cybercrime.

Japan has officially licensed 16 virtual-currency exchanges, and more, including Coincheck, are applying for licenses. As much as half of the world's Bitcoin trading is estimated to be in yen.

Some countries like China are cracking down on virtual currencies, while other countries like the US have been cautious, encouraging their use in limited ways.

Japan has been far more accommodating to cryptocurrencies, attracting new businesses in the technology called blockchain.

TV ads and billboard posters sing the praise of Bitcoin, although they come with warnings, in fine print, to invest at your own risk.
The quake was reportedly felt as far north as Oxnard and as far south as Carlsbad, officials said.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Carolina Author Pens Book for Grieving Spouses Praised by Leaders in the Christian Community Contact: AnnaMarie Cantrell, 864-504-5616, Anna@CaptiveInkMedia.com



GREENVILLE, S.C., March 8, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- After the sudden loss of her childhood sweetheart, Jan Teel-Nealis was left to pick up the shattered pieces as a widow with three sons and a daughter. The Charlotte businesswoman, public speaker, and now author has written a new book aimed to help bring healing to those who have lost a loved one. "Grieving by the Numbers: Glimpses of Glory" will be released this month.



"Grieving is not something you get over, it is something you get through," said Teel-Nealis.



Following her husband's death, she began journaling through a weekly post on social media. She discovered the Biblical relevance of each week's number and shared with her followers how these revelations guided her in the emptiness left after losing her childhood sweetheart and best friend. "I found that God's Word is rich in symbolism and revelation which brought me comfort and hope," said Teel-Nealis.



After the first few entries, she received numerous requests from others who were also suffering from the loss of a loved one to share her journey. She has since amassed an impressive following on social media.



"Grieving by the Numbers" is an intimate journey that traverses those first critical hours following the pain of loss. The aftermath of that event segues into the exploration of a second act. A supernatural trip to Ireland led Teel-Nealis to open her mind up to imagine a new beginning. "It wasn't what I had planned, nor even what I had imagined, but God had a Divine outcome that I am still watching unfold as He has turned my mourning into laughter."



Teel-Nealis and her book have already received some stellar reviews by notable leaders in the Christian community. Founders of Anothen Mark and Julie Appleyard said, "Jan has done everything differently. Opposite. Untraditionally. 'Anti-culturally' if you will Her resolve to let others in on her process has been rewarded with a depth and richness of relationship with others that has been surprising."



Jason Clark, author of "Prone to Love" and "God is (Not) in Control," praised the work stating, "'Grieving by the Numbers' is a masterpiece on the healing and redemptive nature of God's love in the midst of sorrow."



"I want to infuse hope into the hurting. It is my greatest desire to inspire those who have lost a close family member to dream again, to dance again, and to risk trusting your heart to love again," said Teel-Nealis.



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clarajancita at 8-03-2018 11:17 AM (3 years ago) (f)

Police catch 63-year-old Niger state kidnapper with 35 stolen cars. The Niger state police have arrested a kidnapper operating in the state named Maitarari Isa Saidu. Saidu was paraded in Minna by the Force Public Relations Officer (FPPRO) Jimoh Moshood along with 48 suspects including two of his children. 35 stolen vehicles were recovered from Maitarari Isa Saidu.

Police catch 63-year-old Niger state kidnapper with 35 stolen cars. The Niger state police have arrested a kidnapper operating in the state named Maitarari Isa Saidu. Saidu was paraded in Minna by the Force Public Relations Officer (FPPRO) Jimoh Moshood along with 48 suspects including two of his children. 35 stolen vehicles were recovered from Maitarari Isa Saidu.

In an interview with newsmen, the 63 year-old old father of 29 children and three wives stated that the business of kidnapping had become too risky which was the reason he switched to receiving stolen cars. He said that in his last two operations, he received N300m and N170m.



According to Saidu, he operates in Niger, Zamfara, Kaduna,Yobe and FCT adding that the police recovered 28 stolen cars from his depots in Niger and Abuja, 15 others Zamfara and a number of other stolen cars from Kaduna.

The Kidnap Kingpin ran into trouble when his boys received and paid N400,000 for a car which he quickly took to sell at the cost of N800,000 in Kano.



The Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood said that they were arrested by men of Operation Save Sanity deployed to deal with criminals within the five states including Niger state.

Five AK 47 rifles were also recovered from the suspects.

In an interview with newsmen, the 63 year-old old father of 29 children and three wives stated that the business of kidnapping had become too risky which was the reason he switched to receiving stolen cars. He said that in his last two operations, he received N300m and N170m.According to Saidu, he operates in Niger, Zamfara, Kaduna,Yobe and FCT adding that the police recovered 28 stolen cars from his depots in Niger and Abuja, 15 others Zamfara and a number of other stolen cars from Kaduna.The Kidnap Kingpin ran into trouble when his boys received and paid N400,000 for a car which he quickly took to sell at the cost of N800,000 in Kano.The Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood said that they were arrested by men of Operation Save Sanity deployed to deal with criminals within the five states including Niger state.Five AK 47 rifles were also recovered from the suspects.

Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 8-03-2018 11:17 AM (3 years ago) | Hero
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Michelle Frank, The Courier

Mrs. Michelle Fuhrman's Tuesday morning First Lutheran Preschool class was asked to bring their favorite stuffed animal and blanket to school during "I Love to Read Week." Every year, for one week, Glasgow Schools celebrate "I Love to Read Week." During this time, students are involved in activities that promote and celebrate reading in their daily lives. The week is always an interesting time for the students and they have a lot of fun! This year, "I Love to Read Week" runs from Monday, March 5 to Friday, March 9.
Weather Event Shuts Down NE Montana

The 13.0 inches of snow that wreaked havoc in the area provided a welcome snow day for the children.

Three days ago, the National Weather Service in Glasgow began warning northeast Montana residents: expect a winter storm that will bring heavy and blowing snow. In the days following, the warning was updated and enhanced multiple times, but the NWS never wavered when predicting the severity of the event. Residents were told to expect up to 12 inches of snowfall in some areas, and strong winds that could create blowing and drifting snow.

As of Sunday afternoon, the forecast was proving to be accurate. Snow began falling in Glasgow early afternoon, and the NWS estimated seven inches had fallen by 5 p.m. Social media began to be an indicator of the severity of the storm, with many people requesting updates on road conditions and sharing photos of poor driving conditions.

Schools in Valley and neighboring counties began canceling Monday classes with Nashua, Hinsdale, Saco, Frazer and Opheim among the first to make the decision. The Glasgow School District opted to remain open, but did cancel busses for the day. Several local businesses were also declaring a snow day.

Eventually, GHS administration announced that school would not be in session due to the inclement weather. When contacted by The Glasgow Courier about the history of school closures in Glasgow, Superintendent Bob Connors remarked, "We can't come up with a time school was ever cancelled."

After a night of watching the snow fall and listening to the wind blow, on the morning of March 5 area residents woke the to the news that a record 13.0 inches of snow had fallen in Glasgow the previous day. It was the second snowiest day on record and the snowiest day in Glasgow in 78 years.

Later in the morning, the NWS reported 12 inches of new snow in Opheim and near Jordan, 13.8 inches in Glasgow, 15 inches in Zortman, and 20 inches in Saco.

Throughout the day, the NWS continued to report on the storm, including updates about road conditions and possible impact on newborn livestock. By noon, the total snow fall total for the storm was measured at 14.7 inches.

In addition to severe driving conditions across the eastern third of the state, road closures were reported south of Malta and near Circle. Conditions worsened into the evening, with road closures reported near Baker and emergency travel only recommended for most of the region. Driving conditions worsened into the evening along the Montana/North Dakota border as the storm moved east from Glasgow.

As of press time the NWS was reporting the winter storm to be winding down, but still cautioned about hazardous road conditions across the region.
Dana Nixdorf has worked at Valley View Nursing Home since 2004 with a few exceptions. Following last years change in management she returned to take over as the Director of Nursing (DON). She sat down with the Courier to talk about the implementation of a new nursing apprenticeship program being launched at the home, a program she believes will draw people into the nursing profession as well as let Valley View invest in their employees and improve long-term retention.

The apprenticeship was started and funded by grants from the Montana Health Network, and according to Nixdorf is modeled off the European style of nursing which focuses more on work experience and hands on education rather than formal college class work. Nixdorf compared it to skilled apprenticeship jobs like welding and plumbing, and said it is a great system to learn the profession while living in Glasgow and working a full-time or part-time job.

To apply for and enter the program requires no experience. New employees are hired on as utility aides, and they assist certified nursing aides (CNA) with changing linens, handing out water on schedule and offering residents snacks. "It's great because it gives them a feel for the facility and the type of work," explained Nixdorf, who believes it helps would-be nurses learn the benefits and challenges of working in long-term care before deciding to pursue a degree or career in the field.

As a utility aide the hopeful nurse can pursue an online CNA course, and must perform 40 hours of clinical work at the home under supervision from the Montana Health Network, then pass the state testing. The new CNA will perform 12 shifts under the supervision of another experienced CNA, and then, if they feel up to the challenge, they begin to do the job independently. According to Nixdorf, if the newly licensed CNA does not feel comfortable alone then they continue working under supervision until they can perform independently.

As a CNA the apprentice has further options in climbing their career ladder. They can choose to apply to be a MedAid which means they can administer prescribed medications, which are normally administered by a license practical nurse (LPN) or registered nurse (RN). The position requires an intensive online course and 40 more clinical hours with 12 supervised shifts. It is possible, however, to skip becoming a MedAid and go straight to pursuing an LPN or RN degree directly, explained Nixdorf.

According to Nixdorf, a LPN requires one year of formal school and clinical hours through a college such as Miles Community College or Helena College. Following that one year of schooling and the clinicals and licensing exams, the LPN can then provide a higher level of care at the home. A RN requires either an associate's or bachelor's degree in nursing, meaning more formal education and clinical hours. Both the associate's and bachelor's degrees can be earned online with some requirement to travel for on-site clinicals. Nixdorf explained that someone could, in theory, earn a bachelor's degree while working full-time, and never moving out of Glasgow.

She also explained that a high school student could begin work now as a utility aide at $10 an hour, and become a CNA at $12.50 an hour, then apply to become a travelling nurse and work shifts while away at college. Nixdorf explained that "It really is a great high school and college job," and that it is a great way to get started in long-term care and to learn the challenges and rewards before investing deeply in the career choice.
On Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018, the "barefoot boat mechanic" from Fort Peck Marina went to his last best Walleye spot on the lake and took all his fishing secrets with him.

The family will receive friends from 5-7 p.m. on Friday, March 9, at Bell Mortuary in Glasgow. There will be a celebration of Les' life at a later date.

Clinton "Les" Mason was born in Wolf Point, Mont., Aug. 22, 1950, to Clarence "Swede" Mason and Christine (Jackson) Mason. He grew up in Fort Peck, attending school there and in Nashua, Mont.

He was a natural mechanic, and after high school he attended a marine mechanic tech school and began a career that always played a part in his life. He moved to Great Falls in the early 70s, working on boats and RVs at Alpenhaus/Sports Motors, now known as White Bear Island Marine.

In 1981 it was time to go home to Eastern Montana, this time taking his new wife and step-daughter with him. A son joined the family in 1983. They made a home in Glasgow and enjoyed everything Fort Peck Lake and the surrounding area had to offer.

In 1982, Northern Border Natural Gas Pipeline was being constructed and Les was hired. Again, his mechanical aptitude stood out, and in the following years he excelled at the computer technology and needed to keep the gas flowing. He officially retired in May 2017. Until complications from diabetes took its toll, he continued to repair boat motors and keep his friends and fellow fisherman out on the water. Feeling better in his last months, he was looking forward to a summer on the lake, taking his fair share of walleye.

He is preceded in death by his parents and baby brother, Clarence.

Survivors include his wife, Loryn "Lori" Mason; a son, Curtis Mason and his wife, Mandy, of Glasgow; a daughter, JoAnn Gilman and her husband, Barry, of Helena; five grandchildren, Nathan, Aaron and Kaleigh Gilman, Maria Morris and Reyna Merritt; three sisters, Susan Tihista and her husband, Buck, Frances "Tan" Leckie and her husband, Ed, and Sarah Mason; niece Cathy Rodenbaugh; nephews Christopher Leckie and Caleb Mason and three great-nephews and a great-niece.

To replace the fisherman we have lost, Les's family suggests in lieu of flowers, to consider a donation to the "Kids to Fish" program at Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. An account has been set up at Wells Fargo Bank in Glasgow.

Condolences may be left at bellmortuaryglasgow.com.
Gay Marie (Minnerath) Anderson, 68, passed away peacefully at her home surrounded by her family, on Monday, Feb. 26, 2018.

Cremation has taken place and a memorial service and inurnment will take place in the Saco Cemetery at a date and time to be determined and announced.

She was born to Raymond and Ida (Fjeldheim) Minnerath on April 7, 1949, in Glasgow, Mont. She attended school in Saco until she was in the seventh grade when her family moved to Glasgow. Here she spent the rest of her school days until she graduated in 1967. This enabled her to make lifelong friends from both Saco and Glasgow.

She married Richard Larry Anderson and while they were married, had one son, Gary Thomas Anderson, in 1968, and a daughter, Jennifer Marie Anderson-Munden, in 1971. In 1981, she married John "Butch" Leckie. Though they later divorced, they remained lifelong friends to this day.

After high school, she worked at Cable Vision for a few years. She then went to work at the Department of Health and Human Services for the state of Montana, where she eventually retired after 30 years of service.

Her family was her pride and joy. She dedicated herself to creating the most wonderful memories with those she loved. Some fondest memories include late nights playing rambunctious games of Spoons, an endless supply of milkshakes, baking monster cookies in the kitchen, sending random care packages to her grandkids that always smelled of cookies, and having the best Easter egg hunts. She had the best house to make endless forts complete with their very own doorbell. Her house was, the "MacGyver" house - she always had whatever someone was looking for. All they had to do was ask and she would point them in the right direction to find it. Her kitchen was a place of gathering for great food, games and stories. She had the most incredible knack of creating a fabulous sense of home. A sense of comfort just came over anyone who stepped through her door and she made everyone feel welcome in the warmth of her home.

Along with her love of family, she poured her passion into quilting, Bunko nights, enjoying her beloved dog, Rango, cooking for her family, and tending to her flower beds. She knew anything and everything about birds and how to entice them into her yard.

She built wonderful friendships with many. She especially enjoyed coffee and drives with her lifelong friend, Sue Garsjo, and morning breakfasts at the Oasis with her beloved friend, Gloria Robertson, whom she considered both to be more like family.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Ray and Ida; two sisters, Betty (Minnerath) Fielder and Kerry Ann (Minnerath) Ross, a nephew, Mike Minnerath; and a grandson, Ethan Munden.

Survivors include two forever loving children - a son, Gary Anderson and his wife, Brenda, of Glasgow, and a daughter, Jenny Munden and her husband, Travis, of Missoula; grandchildren, Katelin Anderson and Taylor, of Missoula, McKenna Munden, Kinley Munden and Haiden Munden of Missoula, and Gage Anderson of Glasgow; four siblings, one sister, Shari Minnerath of Billings and three brothers, Ken Minnerath and his wife, Alice, of Laurel, Don Minnerath and his wife, Holly, and Bob Minnerath and his wife, Patty, both of Saco; and many nieces, nephews and great nieces and nephew.
WCC Welcomes 'Powerful Sign of Hope' on Korean Peninsula

Contact: Media Office, World Council of Churches, +41 79 507 6363



GENEVE, March 8, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- The World Council of Churches (WCC) welcomed historic meetings on 5-6 March between a South Korean special envoy delegation and North Korean leadership in Pyongyang, the first high-level direct talks between the two Koreas in more than a decade.



Photo: Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope conference. Photo: Kim Minji/NCCK

As a result of agreements reached in the meetings, the two Koreas will hold a summit at the border village of Panmunjeom at the end of April, and a hotline for communication between the two sides' leaders will be established.

It is also reported that North Korea will cease nuclear and missile tests while dialogue takes place.

"The reported outcomes of those meetings are powerful signs of hope compared to dangerously escalating tensions and military confrontation of the recent past, and provide major encouragement to President Moon Jae-ins diplomatic engagement with the North," said a WCC statement released 7 March.

These developments took place while representatives of Korean churches and international partners  including the WCC  were gathered in a conference organized by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) in Seoul on the 30th anniversary of the NCCK 1988 Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace.

"The WCC joins the participants in the NCCK conference in calling for the international community, and especially the United States of America, to respond affirmatively to these signs of hope, with reciprocal tension-reducing and trust-building measures," said the WCC statement.

Participants of the NCCK conference issued a communique entitled "Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope," that welcomes the new steps toward dialogue as an historic opportunity.

Related links:

Communique by NCCK conference participants: "Cultivating Peace, Proclaiming Hope"

WCC statement of 7 March

WCC member churches in South Korea

"Solidarity more powerful than darkness" (WCC press release of 11 December 2017)


How to Spread the Epidemic of Substance Abuse in Montana

Editors Note: This is an Opinion by Medical Directors from the Community-Based Mental Health Centers in Montana.

Montana Substance Use Statistics: Since the year 2000, more than 700 Montanans have died from opioid overdose. Forty-four percent of all drug overdose deaths are attributable to opioids. One in seven high school students has taken prescription drugs without a doctors prescription. Ninety percent of Montanans with a Substance Use Disorder are not receiving treatment. There are 300 deaths attributed to alcohol in Montana annually. Eighty-three percent of all traffic fatalities are attributable to alcohol. There was a 427 percent increase in meth violations from 2010-2015.

Comprehensive Community Mental Health Centers were created in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy when he signed into law the Community Mental Health Act. This Act drastically altered the delivery of mental health services. The law led to the establishment of comprehensive community mental health centers throughout the country, and it helped people with mental illnesses that were warehoused in hospitals and institutions move back into their communities.

In Montana, the law led to the creation of four community-based comprehensive mental health centers: Western Montana Mental Health Center, Center for Mental Health, South Central Montana Regional Mental Health Center, and Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center. We write today as the medical directors for these four centers.

Montanas revenue shortfall recently has caused drastic cuts to our budgets, as well as many other social service agencies that serve some of Montanas most vulnerable people. To date, cuts have been implemented that have severely reduced our budgets, caused the closing of treatment programs, impacted therapeutic group homes, required dozens of staff to be laid off, and put in jeopardy our ability to continue to treat our clients with community-based programs. These cuts are reminiscent of the managed care debacle when the State partnered with an out-of-state company, Magellan, in the mid-1990s.

Now, the state is proposing additional cuts to treatment for our Behavioral Health clients. Substance Use Disorders and Mental Health Conditions overlap 80 percent of the time. These are people living with a substance use disorder from alcohol, prescription drugs, or substance use. We find ourselves on the frontline of a national epidemic. According to Montanas Attorney General, Tim Fox, one in 10 Montanans is dependent on or abusing drugs or alcohol. In Montanas Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Services State Plan 2015-2018, the State lists as its first goal, To provide evidence-based program supports and services that improves and sustains the recovery of individuals with substance abuse disorders to provide needed services to a minimum of 10,000 people per year.

However, the new rule proposed by DPHHS actually suggests cutting the rate paid for SUD assessments, shortening the number of hours for group treatment sessions, reducing the number of group sessions available to those needing treatment support for recovery, increasing the staffing requirements for recovery homes, and reducing the rates of reimbursement for all services which ultimately will grossly reduce the availability of services in Montana communities. These reductions in reimbursement further cripple the ability to pay a fair wage to the clinicians who serve these clients.

This is ineffective for obvious reasons, and even more so in that that the Attorney General recently held a summit to support Montana in this time of substance use disorder crisis, specifically with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders. In addition, the State wisely expanded SUD service options through Medicaid Expansion so that more treatment could be provided, which was an excellent move. However, with the severe reduction of reimbursement rates and the time restrictions for groups, as well as the reduction of the assessment rate, the State is now, wittingly or unwittingly, forcing a reduction in access to available treatment.

For over 10 years, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the State of Montana have actually promoted the development of Integrated Behavioral Health Care which is currently reflected in the award of a SAMHSA grant to fund treatment statewide to address the current opioid epidemic in Montana. This requires the ability to provide appropriate levels of care and wrap-around services based on an integrated care model. The States proposed action to decrease treatment availability and reimbursement rates raises serious questions regarding our collective ability as providers to service the grant. These actions potentially will deny access to our citizens not only for the grant project, but across all levels of treatment services state-wide.

It is important to note that the standards for treating SUDs were not devised by the Montana providers, but by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). Forcing providers to offer less treatment than what is required by ASAMs evidence-based standards is detrimental to the citizens of Montana.

These proposed changes appear arbitrary and not well thought out. In any medical treatment system, one seemingly small or relatively insignificant change causes a domino effect on the entire treatment delivery system which results in devastating reductions in the treatment efficacy. These changes are neither based on best practices nor do they align with the national standards of care. If the proposed rules are brought into being, Montana will experience a collapse of treatment for substance use disorders, simply because we cannot afford to sustain our services.

These short-sighted measures only result in a shifting of costs to the criminal justice system, our hospitals, emergency rooms, social services, foster care, and Montana State Hospital. Let alone the guaranteed increase in deaths from overdoses that accompany a lack of available resources.

If the State decides to re-engage with Magellan for managed care, Montanans will find themselves reliving the not-so-distant history of Magellan gutting behavioral health care in Montana. The States decision to partner with Magellan in the mid-1990s eventually led to the closing of several psychiatric and substance abuse programs across the state and led to the demise of a continuum of care for all services. Do we want to be there again?

Signed:

Medical Directors from Montanas four Comprehensive Community-Based Mental Health Centers.

Daniel Nauts, M.D. and Edward Erbe, M.D., Western Montana Mental Health Center, Missoula

Eva LaRocque, M.D., Center for Mental Health, Great Falls

Bruce Whitworth, M.D., South Central Montana Regional Mental Health Center, Billings

Joan Mutt Dickson, M.D., Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center, Miles City
The Company has completed the installation and initiation of the reverse osmosis (RO) system with Mitchell County Board of Economic Development, designed to treat 250,000 gallons of water per day

San Angelo, Texas, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alpha Water Resources, a service and turn-key solutions provider of water treatment systems for municipal, agricultural, industrial and oil and gas operations, announced today that it has completed the installation and initiation of a reverse osmosis (RO) system for an ongoing desalinization project in Colorado City, Texas. This is the first project of its kind in the area to deliver drinkable water through a system powered by wind turbines, a renewable technology.

The six-year project to utilize wind-power in the water desalinization process leveraged a grant worth approximately $2.6 million from the Texas Department of Agriculture for the implementation of the wind-powered RO system. With these funds, Mitchell County purchased the RO system from a Houston-based company and selected Alpha Water Resources to complete the project and implement the system. Alpha Waters Executive Vice President Alan Murphy contributed to the original system design.

Alpha Water worked with the selected engineering firm, general contractor and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to complete the project. The system is capable of processing up to 250,000 gallons of water per day, with the potential to scale up to 1,000,000 in the event of rapid population growth in the area. The first successful test performed by the TCEQ approved the process water, deeming it fit for consumption.

We had previously worked with Alan, the designer of the original RO system, who would later become a member of Alpha Water Resources' team. Alpha Water has recruited top talent with proven expertise in water desalinization systems, and continues to provide high-quality service, said Sue Young, Director of the Mitchell County Board of Economic Development. These types of large-scale projects are rarely easy, but our work with Alpha Water Resources made the implementation and initiation of the RO system extremely simple. The Alpha Water team provided on-site guidance, helping to introduce a system that meets our current needs and is capable of expansion for future needs.

This was a very exciting project to work on being the first of its kind in the area to incorporate electric generation from wind-power into the water desalinization process, said J. Ferrara, CEO, Alpha Water Resources. Through our teams expertise in the development, design and implementation of RO systems for municipalities, we were able to deliver a RO project that fit with what Mitchell County was looking for and maintained TCEQ requirements. Thanks to the involvement of our EVP, Alan, and our partners like WET/MCI, who worked closely with us in furthering the capabilities of the original design by adding remote monitoring and troubleshooting in the initial design of the system, we were able to complete and initiate this high-quality system.

The Alpha Water Resources team was selected due to their exceptional level of service and knowledgeable staff who was onsite to complete the project. With the help of the team, Mitchell County Economic Development was able to implement the new RO system within six months.

To learn more about Alpha Water Resources, please visit: https://www.alphawaterresources.com/



About Alpha Water Resources:

Alpha Water Resources provides turnkey solutions for municipal, industrial, agricultural and oil & gas markets  managing the entire project from concept to commissioning. The Company offers end-to-end service, from design and manufacture to commission and aftersales service providing customers with faster delivery, greater cost- efficiencies, and more effective project management. Alpha Water is fully equipped with proprietary technologies and service processes to provide ongoing consultation including but not limited to process design & engineering, fabrication, installation & commissioning, training, operation & maintenance, troubleshooting, repairs and other miscellaneous services necessary to customers water management needs.
Azusa Street Revival Again & Even Greater Contact: Azusa Street Mission and Historical Society, 323-692-7268; azusafest.com



LOS ANGELES, March 8, 2018 /Christian Newswire/ -- Apostle Fred and Wilma Berry expect fulfillment of the William Seymour Prophesy which he declared over 100 years ago that a greater Azusa Street revival would spring up from this very place! "This is the year of manifestation," says Apostle Fred Berry!



The April 6, 7 & 8 Azusafest Prophetic conference celebration will feature gospel music, international speakers and a special William Seymour unity luncheon featuring Southern Baptist convention Pastor Wm. Dwight McKissic.



Azusafest is a gospel music celebration commemorating the Azusa Street Revival. The festival will take place at the Japanese American Community Cultural Center, 244 South San Pedro Street downtown Los Angeles, California. Azusafest 2018 theme is "All in one accord and all in one place" according to Acts 2:1. We will celebrate the 112th year since the Azusa Street Revival. The Azusafest Prophetic conference will be three days of remembering the history and heritage of Pastor William Seymour and his legacy of unity, love and equality. Other special events includes the Azusa Street Prophetic school on Friday April 6th @ 3pm.



William Seymour Unity luncheon on Saturday @12:30 A special movie premier about Native Americans' revival called "Awakened." All night services and special events will be held at Union Church, 401 East 3rd Street next door to Azusa Street!



Azusafest starts Friday, evening on April 6 with a 2 hour prophetic schools on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Each night's service will feature a night of prophetic release and anointing. Saturday morning, April 7th at 9am will convene with the International Gathering of Tribal Nations. All are invited to the William Seymour Unity luncheon. Apostles, Prophets, Pastoral leaders along with business leaders will dialogue about our movement of Unity. Church United founder Jim Domen and school choice advocates will speak with leaders during the luncheon of the opportunity for churches to impact the education arena by supporting school choice Saturday evening will feature a movie premiere of "Awakened." About the revival that has hit the First Nation community Saturday night will include a message of Unity in the body of Christ. There is an expectation of the fulfillment of William J. Seymour's prophesy of a greater revival spreading all over the world. Sunday morning, April 8 will feature Sunday service at local churches in the community.



Fred and Wilma Berry carry on the history of Azusa Street as international representatives through the Azusa Street Mission and Historical Society. The organization's mission is to carry the flame of Azusa Street to the next generation throughout the nations of the world. Contact info for ASMHS at 323-692-7268 or on the web at azusafest.com.



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One evening in April 2010, in the middle of my time as mayor of Kansas City, Mo., some 750 to 1,000 young people descended on the citys upscale shopping district, Country Club Plaza. There were assaults, property damage, and a lot of frightened customers and upset business owners. My staff told me that what had occurred was a flash mob fueled by social media and that one had happened a couple of weeks earlier in Philadelphia. I immediately called Philadelphias then-mayor, Michael Nutter. He gave me solid advice and worked with me to set up a meeting between our respective staffs the following day.Now Nutter has published a book filled with blunt advice for mayors, would-be mayors and other city leaders. Mayor: The Best Job in Politics is an insightful look at both campaigning and serving. Its also a brisk, fun read, even in describing fiscal challenges like those his city faced in the Great Recession. He writes, Being in my first year and not knowing all the things I needed to know, I didnt realize that the last call you ever want to get is the chief of staff and the finance director saying they want to talk to you and its important.  They are not coming to tell you that they found a billion dollars in the sofa.Nutters book is, however, about only one kind of city. Philadelphia is what H. George Frederickson, Gary Alan Johnson and Curtis H. Wood, in their 2004 book, call a political city, one in which the mayor is both political and administrative leader. The authors estimate that about 16 percent of American cities fit this model. At the other end is what they term the administrative city. In these, which constitute about 14 percent, the mayor is selected by the city council from among its members and administrative authority is held by a council-appointed city manager. The remaining cities employ some variation of one or the other.It surprises me that with the rise of interest in cities in recent years -- as evidenced by programs ranging from Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities to the Rockefeller Foundations 100 Resilient Cities to the MetroLab Network that pairs local governments with academia -- no one seems to be considering these differences in governing structure. Yet Nikuyah Walker, recently selected by her Charlottesville, Va., City Council colleagues as the citys first black female mayor, has significantly different power and authority than Nutter had in Philadelphia.This is not an argument for one form of government or another, but that the current focus on cities, while welcome, misses the important fact that the structure and authority of the mayors office differs vastly from city to city. The subtitle of Nutters book calls being mayor the best job in politics. It is also the least understood. We need more research on what works best.
Almost 14 months into Donald Trumps presidency, there are still more than 200 top positions that are vacant or filled with an interim director. Among the agencies lacking permanent leadership are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Highway Administration and the Food Safety and Inspection Service. As tensions with North Korea rise, the fact that the administration has yet to nominate someone to be the next ambassador for South Korea has attracted much controversy.Though Trumps pace of appointments is slower than that of the past three presidents, vacancies arent unique to the federal level.In the first two months of 2018, five state Chief Information Officers -- from Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada and New Jersey -- left their jobs. With 36 gubernatorial races in November -- and 17 current governors not running for reelection -- many more CIOs are likely to quit or be pushed out if they get a new boss.A graph of CIO tenure -- 31.5 months at last count -- is going to start looking like an Olympic ski slope, says Doug Robinson, executive director of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). According to NASCIO data, tenure drops in the year of a big gubernatorial election and the one following it. From 2009 to 2011, CIO tenure fell from 37 to 33 to 24 months.Of course, interim or acting directors usually keep operations going during the search for replacements, but they lack all the powers of permanent leaders. Mallory Barg Bulman, vice president of research and evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service, compares acting directors to substitute teachers.They dont have formal authority. Its very challenging  to lead without meaningful leadership teams in place, she says.When interim directors stay put for more than three months, Robinson says agencies can end up in limbo with major initiatives frozen. CIO positions, left unfilled, can be particularly troublesome at a time when many states are trying to implement new technology or IT processes.With an interim or acting CIO theres less deliberate progress because they may not have the juice behind them, he says. Theres a sense that reform isnt serious.State Medicaid directors, tasked with overseeing the health insurance program for lower-income people, have an even shorter average tenure than CIOs -- 19 months, according to the National Association of Medicaid Directors. The association doesn't track how long it takes to hire a replacement, but executive director Matt Salo says "its all over the map."Sometimes, he says, a plan is already in place when the current director leaves and hiring is instantaneous. In other cases, an interim director can stay in the position for several years -- which is currently the case in Illinois.There are a number of reasons why its difficult to find people to lead government departments.For one, qualified candidates can often make much more money in the private sector. In March 2017, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) compared the total compensation of Medicaid directors to the top managed care executives with whom they often work. In the 10 states examined, the private executives made $314,278, on average, which is more than double Medicaid directors average pay of $152,439.Money aside, people who take these jobs have to be willing to withstand constant criticism from within and outside of government. The work is strenuous and finding a work-life balance can seem impossible. Robinson recalls the following comment made to him by a chief information security officer who left his job for the private sector.He said, Doug, Ill make twice as much money and Im going to work half as much. And its highly unlikely that my name will be in the front page of the paper.Hiring is also complicated when the decision is up to more than one official.In Texas, for instance, Auditor John Keel announced his resignation in 2015. More than two years later, the job responsible for reviewing state finances and programs' effectiveness, is still empty. Off the record, government observers say this stagnation stems from the well-known tensions between the House speaker and the lieutenant governor, who must agree on who to appoint.Theres at least one strategy that can speed up the replacement process, but it has its own drawbacks: hiring from within.Appointing people from within increases the likelihood that a new leader will have a good understanding of the existing organizational culture. But when this happens, one vacancy often turns into another in a job-shifting round of musical chairs.Oregon takes this approach: 70 percent of its recent vacancies were filled from inside rather than outside of the government, says Katy Coba, the state's chief operating officer, who estimates that about 20 high-level directors have left in the last two years.For example, when the director of the Oregon Health Authority resigned in August, she was replaced by the director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS). The director of the state Veterans Affairs Department (VA) then stepped into the head spot at DCBS. And now, the VA lacks a permanent leader.There is very much a domino effect, says Coba.In New Jersey, one of the few states where an attorney general is appointed rather than elected, an acting AG was in place for almost three years, between June 2013 and February 2016. Critics say the lag eliminated the state's checks and balances.Because of the state constitutions special protections of independence for the attorney general, who might engage in an investigation of the governor, would not apply to an acting attorney general, the people of New Jersey are being denied those checks and balances, according to an editorial in the New Jersey Law Journal.
In a fundraising letter that calls him "a truly remarkable man of God," gubernatorial candidate Bill O'Neill is staking out his position as an anti-abortion candidate in the Democratic primary.The letter is raising eyebrows because few Democrats appeal to the anti-abortion vote, and because O'Neill caused a stir last year with a Facebook post in which he said he had slept with 50 women over the years."We're expanding my appeal into the pro-life community," O'Neill, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice, said Tuesday.The Chagrin Falls resident already has taken positions intended to capture certain segments of the vote in the four-way May 8 primary. For example, he has repeatedly called for legalizing marijuana and using the proceeds to combat Ohio's opioid epidemic.But O'Neill's stance on abortion is farther outside the Democratic mainstream -- at least in the eyes of his opponents."I've always stood on the side of women, who I trust to make their own medical decisions," said state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Boardman. "I don't know why O'Neill is making this a position of his, but it's his decision. We'll see how it works out."O'Neill's position on abortion has some nuance. He acknowledges that he's "a man who will never have to make an abortion decision," and on the Supreme Court, he held that some Ohio abortion laws place an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion.He explains that, as a state Supreme Court justice, he was bound by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that says women have a constitutional guarantee of access to abortion.But that doesn't mean that O'Neill agrees with the ruling. "I think it's wrongly decided, there's no question," he said.NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio struck back at O'Neill's stance in a statement on Wednesday morning. "Once a woman has made the decision to end a pregnancy, she needs access to safe and legal abortion care in her community. Any candidate for governor, regardless of political affiliation, who doesn't respect her decision is unfit to lead the state of Ohio."As for his 50-lovers Facebook post, O'Neill apologized for writing it. On Tuesday, he emphasized that he's been faithful within the bonds of marriage."But before that, I was a child of the '60s and '70s when I got back from Vietnam," O'Neill said. "I have had consensual sex with multiple people in my youth. People who have a problem with that probably didn't have the youth I had."When the Democratic candidates appear on the debate stage in Toledo on Wednesday, abortion rights could well be among the topics. Critics of Dennis Kucinich, a former Cleveland mayor and congressman, have been highlighting his change of heart on the issue. Prior to 2003, he had a record of voting against many abortion-rights measures."I support a woman's right to choose," Kucinich said Tuesday when asked about his change of heart. "I looked at it and decided to address it in a nonpolarizing way."Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general and former director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said he would fight what he considers an erosion of abortion rights in Ohio."Rich Cordray and (lieutenant-governor candidate) Betty Sutton have been strong and consistent supporters of reproductive choice throughout their careers in public service," Cordray's campaign said in a statement. "As Ohio's governor and lieutenant governor, they'll stop the relentless attacks on women's health by Statehouse Republicans and will work to restore funding for Planned Parenthood. Rich and Betty will fight to ensure that all women in Ohio will be allowed to make constitutionally protected decisions about their personal health and will have expanded access to critical health screenings, prenatal and postnatal care, as well as measures to prevent infant mortality."
A bill prohibiting domestic abusers and people under restraining orders from owning firearms became Americas first new gun control law since the Feb. 14 Florida high school massacre.Well done, Oregon, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown exclaimed Monday after signing the law on the steps of the state Capitol as some 200 people, including victims of domestic abuse and high school students, applauded and cheered.State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, whose sister was fatally shot by her boyfriend, and Rep. Janeen Sollman, who fled her home as a child when her father was in a violent rage, hugged as they stood behind the governor.The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people has created a wave of young anti-gun activists that has now reached cross-country into Oregon. Students from a high school in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego traveled 40 miles (65 kilometers) to stage a gun-control rally in Salem Monday morning.
A long-simmering battle between the Trump administration and California over immigration boiled over Wednesday, with Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions deriding the state's "irrational, unfair and unconstitutional policies" and Gov. Jerry Brown accusing the federal government of launching "a reign of terror.""This is basically going to war against the state of California," Brown declared.As the Justice Department formally filed a legal challenge to state immigration laws, Sessions told a gathering of law enforcement officers in Sacramento that California was attempting to keep federal immigration officials from doing their jobs, and he charged Democrats with advancing the political agendas of "radical extremists."He took particular aim at Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who had warned immigrant communities about recent federal raids in the Bay Area, and at Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, for praising her actions."So here's my message to Mayor Schaaf: How dare you?" Sessions said of the Brown protege. "Contrary to what you may hear from open-borders radicals, we are not asking California, Oakland or anyone else to actively, effectively enforce immigration laws."The remarks drew protests and sharp rebukes from state leaders, underscoring huge rifts over the role of law enforcement in federal immigration policy.President Trump has made restricting immigration a central focus of his agenda and has frequently criticized California for resistance to his calls to increase deportations. On Wednesday, the White House confirmed that Trump would make his first visit to California since becoming president next week, to assess prototypes for the border wall he wants built between California and Mexico and to attend a GOP fundraiser.California Democratic leaders and the state's top law enforcement officer responded with war talk of their own, describing Sessions' actions as unprecedented. In fiery tweets, speeches and at a news conference at the Capitol, the Democrats said the Justice Department lawsuit is based on lies and challenges California's sovereignty.The governor called Sessions' actions a political stunt, aimed at distracting the public from guilty pleas made by Trump's advisors in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election."Let's face it, the Trump White House is under siege," Brown said. "Obviously, the attorney general has found it hard just to be a normal attorney general. He's been caught up in the whirlwind of Trumpism ... [and is] initiating a reign of terror."State Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), author of one of the laws targeted by the legal challenge, accused Sessions of having ideology based on "white supremacy and white nationalism."De Leon said he is directing former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., under contract to provide legal advice to the state Senate, to help formulate a response to submit in court. On a conference call with reporters, Holder said legal precedent makes clear that the federal government cannot insist that a state use its resources to enforce federal immigration law."From my perspective, the Trump administration's lawsuit is really a political and unconstitutional attack on the state of California's well-established rights under our system of government," Holder said.The three laws administration officials seek to challenge make it a crime for business owners to voluntarily help federal agents find and detain undocumented workers, prohibit local law enforcement from alerting immigration agents when detainees are released from custody and create a state inspection program for federal immigration detention centers.Administration officials allege the laws, passed by the Legislature last year and signed by Brown, blatantly obstruct federal immigration law and thus violate the Constitution's supremacy clause, which gives federal law precedence over state enactments.State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has pledged to defend the measures in court, saying they work in concert with federal laws. "Our teams work together to go after drug dealers, to combat gang violence, to take down sex-trafficking rings, and we have no intention of changing that," he said Wednesday.In his speech to more than 100 police chiefs, sheriffs and other law enforcement officers, Sessions argued that the Trump administration did not reject immigration, but said the U.S. should not reward those who unlawfully enter the country with benefits, such as legal status, food stamps and work permits.He said the federal government sued California to invalidate and immediately freeze what he called unjust laws."We are going to fight these irrational, unfair and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you and our federal officers," Sessions said as he finished his speech to the California Peace Officers Assn., and some officers stood in ovation. "You can be certain about this: We have your back, and you have our thanks."As the group welcomed Sessions with applause, a statewide coalition of immigrant rights groups gathered outside to protest his arrival.The lawsuit and Sessions' visit are the latest volley in an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Democratic leaders in California, where laws have been passed to extend healthcare, driver's licenses and education to some of the more than 2.3 million immigrants living in the state illegally.The event is usually a time for law enforcement officers to mingle with lawmakers, lobby for legislation and receive guidance from leaders on law enforcement priorities across the state. But Sessions' appearance swept the attention away.Police officers said the state's immigration laws had not impeded their jobs so far, but the constant battles between state and federal leaders were affecting their relationships with federal partners.Fairfield Police Chief Randy Fenn said the lawsuit raised concerns about whether law enforcement agencies would be caught in the middle of a larger immigration battle."We are waiting to see how this shakes out," Fenn said.Neil Gallucci, second vice president of the state peace officers group, said Sessions' opinion was important to understand as the federal lawsuit had the potential to change California laws."Atty. Gen. Sessions is the top law enforcement officer in the United States of America," Gallucci said. "It would be foolish for us not to listen to where we may be headed and to understand what all the issues are. That is what this forum is for."Though the state government's foray into immigration issues has drawn criticism outside California in recent months, it has broad support within the state. A January poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found 58% of likely voters wanted state and local immigration action. Among all adults, support rose to 65% of those surveyed.Law enforcement officials have been divided on the issue. The most contested of the statutes -- the so-called sanctuary state law -- limits state and local law enforcement agencies from using any resources to hold, question or share information about people with federal immigration agents, unless they have violent or serious criminal convictions.For many officers across the state, that won't change much of their daily work. Some police and sheriff's agencies already have developed similar restrictions on working with immigration agents, either through their own policies or under local "sanctuary city" rules.The California Police Chiefs Assn. moved its official position from opposed to neutral after final changes to the bill, but the California State Sheriffs' Assn. remained opposed.Outside Sessions' speech Wednesday, a few hundred people gathered to protest. Right before the speech began, protesters spilled out onto a major street, blocking traffic, and then marched around the building.Maria Isabel Serrano, 46, from Imperial County, said the attorney general should focus on violent crimes, not immigration."This is the only place where we have a sanctuary," Serrano said in Spanish. "This lawsuit is uncalled for."The protests are perhaps just a preview of what's to come. Trump will make his first trip to California on Tuesday, the White House announced. He will view border wall prototypes in San Diego and raise money at a high-dollar fundraiser in Beverly Hills.
The Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) celebrates and welcomes International Womens Day. It is unacceptable that women are oppressed; but it is unacceptable, too, that even the men who are not consciously perpetuating the problem do little to address it.

Sarah McKeen, political science junior, is the Head Executive of the AAUW at A&M.

The global women's celebration day was launched to advocate for improved rights and pay for women, while International Men's Day focuses on raising awareness for discrimination and male health.

International Women's Day events are held worldwide today.

So I hope International Women's Day next year sees further opportunities open up for women as we all continue to #PressforProgress.

It's important to remember that gender equality is all about fighting for the right for women to live their lives how they please.

Wilmarie Marrero Ortiz, chemistry Ph.D. candidate and former conference panelist, is the Diversity & Inclusion co-chair of GPSC and helped organize the 2018 conference.

"In 2018 the world-wide International Women's Day organisation has called for action", a USQ spokeswoman said. We are making progress around female political representation. "I am looking forward to learning new ways to get empowered. Plus, there is indeed a very strong and growing global movement of advocacy, activism and support" the release said. Men with 11 and more years of experience earned 25% higher median wages than women.

The empowerment of rural women and girls will be a priority theme at the sixty-second session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations Headquarters in NY from 12 to 23 March. While in opposition, we will put this proposal to a public consultation to obtain feedback from businesses, workers, women's organisations, trade unions and relevant non-departmental public bodies to ensure we are ready to introduce the policy when we walk into Downing Street. For instance, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) of the United Nations, on which a Nigerian woman, Ms Amina Mohammed, the current Deputy Secretary General, had actively participated in developing, set as one of the goals the undertaking of reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources. March 8 also became a national holiday in Soviet Russia in 1917 after women gained suffrage there. She said it is organizing marches and programs to celebrate the power of women. We also need to remind people of the big issues we are still needing to tackle if we are serious about creating a community where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their potential.

Women's equality is among the most persistent human rights challenges of the last several generations.

That would be the change I would love to see that I don't think my generation has had.

Women are entitled to safety, inclusion, and fairness, and they will have them. (Designed by Nidhi Mishra/The Indian Express) International Women's Day: Respecting women is a must.
The Governors Official Program is comprised of a wide range of constitutional and legal duties and ceremonial and community engagements. Each year, the Governor hosts thousands of visitors to Government House to take part in investiture and award ceremonies, Open Days, receptions and meetings, and travels widely throughout Queensland to support the activities of Patron groups. View a chronological record of the Governors daily program below.

In the morning, at the Royal International Convention Centre, Bowen Hills, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC attended the Public Safety Portfolio International Women's Day event, and addressed guests.

In the afternoon, at Parliament House, the Governor presided over a meeting of the Executive Council.

Following, at Government House, the Governor and Mrs Kaye de Jersey hosted a Reception in support of International Womens Day, and the Governor addressed guests.
One of the most viable strategies to achieve national development goals in both developing and developed nations is to promote SMEs. This sector accounts for 55% of GDP in developed economies and 35% in developing economies, said

the Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Mr Soomilduth Bholah, this morning

at Le Meriden Hotel in Pointe aux Piments.

The Minister was speaking at the opening of a workshop on Rules of Origin, Business and Export Development in the context of a project entitled Strengthening Export Competitiveness for inclusive growth in Mauritius, especially with regard to the implementation of the IEPA. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs (SFA) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Ambassador Mrs Usha. Dwarka Canabady; the Charge d'Affaires, of the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Mauritius and to the Republic of Seychelles; and the Representative of TradeCom, Ms Paula Hippolyte-Bauwens, were also present.

In his address, Minister Bholah pointed out that African countries are bound to rely on SMEs to provide employment for their growing working age population as the number of new entrants into African labour markets increase, from 23 million a year in 2015 to an expected 32 million a year in 2030.

He recalled that, whatever the incentive framework set up by successive governments for SMEs, the Mauritian market, like those of most Small Island Developing States, is restricted. The sector will undoubtedly fail if no action is taken to enhance the business environment for exporting SMEs and to promote exports, cautioned Mr Bholah. According to him SMEs often deplore the detrimental effects of global trade on their business activity. On that score a change of perspective is necessary given that trade agreements now have to be viewed as opportunities to be seized, he pointed out.

The Minister also spoke of Government vision in transforming Mauritius into a strategic hub for international trade. High growth potential of SMEs as advocated by the SME Master Plan launched in 2017 will assume a greater role in the economy over the next ten years, he said. The sector, Mr Bholah pointed out , presents unique opportunities to create quality jobs, diversify and democratise the economy, leverage innovation and increase export earnings. Increasing market access and exports by providing SMEs with intelligence, market development supports and logistics to integrate the global supply chain are among the main objectives of this roadmap for the sector. Our ambition is to increase current exports from about 3% to about 18% by 2026, he added.

For her part, the SFA, Mrs Dwarka Canabady, outlined that in Mauritius, SMEs contribute about 40% of GDP and represent about 54.6% of total employment. Their contribution to exports however still remains at 3% and this should be matter of concern, she recalled. The question that should be addressed is how to support SMEs in developing not only export readiness, but also crossing the barrier, and finally entering into regional and international markets, she added.

There is no point in opening markets if those markets are not going to be avail of and the real test is not the opening of markets but whether small businesses which constitute of 40% of GDP will be able to cross that barrier from the domestic market into the regional market and into the international market, SFA said. She listed out incentives and initiatives undertaken by Mauritius over the years to promote SMEs, which include Leasing equipment modernisation scheme; fiscal incentives; and risk guarantee scheme; as well as the creation of SME Mauritius which provides tailor-made solutions.

Workshops Agenda

The two-day workshop is organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, in collaboration with TradeCom. Presentations are focusing on the following: Manual on Rules of Origin; Business and Export Development; and Debrief on Project Implementation. An information session on the Economic Business Information Centre is also being held.

Mauritius obtained assistance from the TradeCom II Programme under the ACP Trade Capacity Building Programme, funded by the EU on the Project Strengthening Export Competitiveness for inclusive growth in Mauritius, especially in the context of the IEPA Implementation. The Project is being executed by a group of Consultants from Landell Mill ltd, a company based in London.

Project objectives

The goals are to assist Mauritius in enhancing its business environment for exporting SMEs and promoting exports on the EU market. Some 32 SMEs, engaged in different economic sectors, are benefitting from the assistance.
Description

GIS  08 March 2018: The Peoples Republic of China has donated 100 000 national flags, 150 000 pins and 10 000 mugs to the Government of Mauritius in the context of the celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the Independence Day of Mauritius.

The Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr Prithvirajsing Roopun, made this announcement yesterday at a press conference in Port Louis in the presence of the Ambassador of the Peoples Republic of China to Mauritius, Mr Sun Gongyi and other personalities. The signature of certificate for the donation of national flags, pins and mugs was signed by the Minister Roopun and Ambassador Gongyi.

Minister Roopun highlighted that diplomatic relations between Mauritius and China were established in 1972 and stressed on further strengthening the cultural and economic ties between the two countries. He expressed gratitude to the Chinese Embassy for their contribution in providing national flags, pins and mugs which will be distributed among the population for the celebrations of Independence Day.

For his part, Mr Gongyi spoke of the friendly and longstanding relationship between China and Mauritius which he said should be further nurtured by collaborating in new areas of cooperation. The existing 45 years of cultural bond between the two countries can serve as an example to the world, he added.
Description

GIS  08 March 2018: The key is to change our mindset and acknowledge the contribution of women in society, along with creating respectful relationships, which include equal partnership, starting with our own homes. Prejudices against women, lack of respect towards women, violence against women, and abuse of power to exploit women should stop and more people should come forward to denounce all forms of abuse against womenfolk.

This appeal was made this morning by the Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit and Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, at the official celebration of the International Womens Day 2018 held at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre in Pailles. The Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development, and Family Welfare, Mrs Roubina Jadoo-Jaunbocus, and other eminent personalities were present.

The Prime Minister underlined that since independence, a lot of progress has been made as regards women empowerment especially in the public sector. However, he highlighted, the private sector needs to be more sensitive to gender equality and appealed to them to adopt a more proactive attitude and eliminate barriers and discrimination towards women.

While acknowledging the progress accomplished in several sectors as regards women emancipation and empowerment, Mr Pravind Jugnauth condemned the fact that the biggest problem in society is violence against women. Domestic violence, violence at work and in public, and abuse against women, he emphasised, is still rampant despite the structures put in place, laws voted, and resources made available to address this issue.

Hence the need, he pointed out, to redouble efforts to sensitise the youth as well as men and women and to continue with the education reform which lays emphasis on a holistic education centred on human values, respect towards girls and women, and tolerance, solidarity and volunteering.

He also dwelt on several initiatives being taken in view of women empowerment. They include: launching of Gender Caucus in 2016 which reflects Governments political will for women empowerment and gender equality at the highest level of decision-making; consultations being undertaken in view of the Gender Equality Bill; the National Womens Council Bill which will be promulgated today; and review of the Gender Policy statement for the 16 departments falling under the Prime Ministers Office.

Mr Pravind Jugnauth concluded by reiterating Governments determination to address challenges so that the Mauritian woman is fully empowered and emancipated while adding that Mauritius should become a better example than what it already is on the global platform as regards rights of women.

For her part, the Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development, and Family Welfare, Mrs Roubina Jadoo-Jaunbocus, pointed out that the celebration of Womens Day this year is special since it coincides with the celebration of the 50 years of the independence of Mauritius. She highlighted the progress accomplished by the Mauritian women since independence while adding that women consisted of an essential link in the socioeconomic development of the country.

She stated that the Government is working towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 5-Achieve Gender Equality and empower all women and girls. She announced that a formal structure will soon be put in place for girl empowerment since girls need to become more independent and empowered.

Mrs Jadoo-Jaunbocus also spoke about gender budgeting, in line with the National Gender Policy Framework of 2008, which calls upon all Ministries to engender their respective policies, The Government, she recalled, introduced the Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative in the fiscal year 2016/2017 on a pilot basis. An amount of (Rs 200, 000) was allocated to five Ministries.

She announced that several measures will be implemented this year in a bid to further empower women and girls so that they participate fully across all sectors and contribute to achieve sustainable development. They include: encouraging the academia to engage in the fight for women; special training on Gender Reporting for reporters; and engaging youth to create a network in school activities and to discuss on challenges for women.

On that occasion, the Africa Gender Development Index-Mauritius Report was launched as well as a handbook entitled Engendering the Private Sector: A Triple Win. Shields were also handed over to participants of the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Award.

International Womens Day 2018

Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming womens lives . The global theme for International Womens Day 2018 is 

This year, International Womens Day comes on the heels of unprecedented global movement for womens rights, equality and justice. This has taken the form of global marches and campaigns on issues ranging from sexual harassment and femicide to equal pay and womens political representation.

Echoing the priority theme of the upcoming 62nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, International Womens Day will also draw attention to the rights and activism of rural women, who make up over a quarter of the world population, and are being left behind in every measure of development.

The theme chosen by the ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development, and Family Welfare is 1968-2018: Le parcours de la femme mauricienne-Les defis a relever.
When Chicago City Councilman James Cappleman took office in 2011, his staff almost immediately ran into a problem: constituent communication.It wasn't an issue of inexperience. Tressa Feher, Capplemans chief of staff, had years of experience connecting politicians with their constituents, both in Washington, D.C., and at the Illinois state Capitol in Springfield.The problem was volume.About 53,000 people live in Ward 46 on the north side of Chicago, just north of Wrigley Field. Each day, Capplemans office received 50 or more phone calls, along with dozens of emails, texts and messages on social media. Feher and her staff were able to manage the responses, but each activity  combing through Facebook, monitoring Twitter, listening to voicemails, checking text messages and reading emails  was a separate task.After four years, Cappleman's office teamed up with a tech company called Seneca Systems to try out a new product it was developing for the public sector. Known as Romulus, it's a dashboard designed to track, compile and sort all communications coming in and going out to the public. Chicago was among the first cities to test it.The ways the constituents get in touch with government has exploded, says Seneca Marketing Director Maggie Henry.Instead of all those communications being scattered across internet and phone systems, its collected in a single place. Cappleman and his staff can respond within the dashboard, and the response will show up in whatever format the resident originally used to connect with the office.Its been helpful to not only track whats coming in, but our response time, says Feher.She says the dashboard has saved her team 20 hours a week of administrative work and also sped up their response times. That's partially because the system can be set to automatically handle certain types of requests in certain ways.For instance, if a resident notifies the office about a pothole  whether by phone, text or tweet  the request can automatically be routed to the city Transportation Department, even before Cappleman's staff has had a chance to respond.Dashboard systems like Romulus are common in the business world. Media companies use Chartbeat to track web traffic in real time; Salesforce is common among sales organizations and Tableau is a dashboard often used by businesses to create interactives and graphics.But municipalities have been slow to adopt dashboard systems because they didn't align with the needs of government. Because of the unique requirements and mission of government, Seneca set out to create a dashboard designed for the public sector.We really felt that government needed its own category, says Seneca founder and CEO Nick DeMonner. Government is not designed to be a sales organization. Its designed to be a service organization.In addition to Ward 46, Seneca has conducted beta tests with city offices in San Rafael, Calif., and with the office of Houston City Councilmember Karla Cisneros. Text messages weren't included in the original version of the dashboard, but after Seneca saw how many constituents were texting their concerns, the company added the feature into the next iteration of Romulus.Seneca Systems moved from testing Romulus to selling the service last year. Cities pay $80 a month per user for the dashboard.Depending on the laws of a given jurisdiction, constituent contacts within Romulus may be considered open records subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. The encrypted system secures those communications in an effort to keep critical data from being stolen  but allows users to export the data to meet public records requests, according to Seneca Systems.Ultimately, DeMonner says that because the communications data is public, different cities could use a dashboard like Romulus to share ideas and best practices.We want cities to go into Romulus and see how other cities are doing" on everything from handling constituent requests to setting up farmers markets, he says. "We really see the platform as a collaborative space for cities across the country."
Anchorage, Alaskas innovation team is housed in a unique space, at least in terms of government offices in the states most populous city.The innovation lab, as this space is called, has none of the plain walls or gray cubicles generally associated with government workplaces. Instead, the innovation lab is located on the ground floor of city hall and has an open floor plan, walls covered by colorful post-it notes, white boards brimming with ideas, and plenty of light spilling in through its ample windows  many of which face a bus transit center. This all gives Anchorages public servants and residents alike a glimpse of the activity within.This space is perhaps indicative of how in recent years tech and innovation has begun to take hold within Anchorages city government. Technologists there are now working to improve quality of life through open data, smart cities, human-centric design and many other initiatives often found in larger jurisdictions. Fueled by participation in roughly a half-dozen philanthropic programs, this Alaskan city of roughly 300,000 residents has become a regional hub for gov tech, and one need only steal a peek inside the innovation lab to get a sense of whats happening.As people walk into work, they can see us in there, said Brendan Babb, who became Anchorages first chief innovation officer in June 2016. They can see stuff written on white boards. They dont know exactly what were doing, but its useful just for people to see that something different is going on. Were starting to have more and more people come visit, or convene meetings down here.Anchorage is a participant in Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities , as well as in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative . Anchorage is part of Cities of Service , and its aforementioned innovation team is also one of about 20 throughout the nation born of another Bloomberg Philanthropies program. Babb described his role and that of the rest of the innovation team as somewhat of a consultancy, one that can spend months focusing on an issue to make the way business is done every day more efficient.Projects have so far included increasing economic opportunities in underserved neighborhoods in the city by pinpointing barriers and creating a streamlined website for job seekers, looking at cost of living, and other similar quality of life-related efforts. The list goes on, ranging from simple to exceedingly complex. Sometimes, Babb said, the work is just a matter of putting the right information in the right place, pointing to actions like having restaurant inspection information added to Yelp, or real-time bus info put on Google maps.Most recently, the innovation team coordinated with the United Kingdom-based Behavioural Insights on a project called Letterpalooza, which was aimed at improving the clarity of government letters. By rethinking the way letters about past due traffic violation fees are worded, this project alone could bring in a significant amount of additional revenue for the city.The data expertise being fostered in city hall has also begun to extend to other parts of Alaska. Ben Matheson works on the innovation team as a data analyst, and this year he has spent some of his time off of work constructing a series of data visualizations related to the Iditarod, likely the biggest annual event that takes place in Alaska. Matheson said he took this on because hes a big fan of the Iditarod and also wanted to hone some of his tech skills.In terms of what the future holds, Babb said that in July the innovation team is planning to pivot its focus to take on the high cost of employee health care, but beyond that the hope is that tech and innovation have become ingrained in Anchorages municipal government culture. To that end, the innovation team has made an effort to work with many internal departments.We dont always have the bandwidth to solve everyones problems, Babb said, but we try to at least give them insights on how best to ideate.
Whats New in Civic Tech: U.S. Justice Department Launches New FOIA.gov Site
(TNS) - California had more than 9,100 wildland fires in 2017, according to Cal Fire data, burning across more than 1.2 million acres.The largest was in Southern California in December, the most destructive was here in Sonoma County two months earlier.One thing common to many, if not most, California wildfires is a concerted response, a marshaling of equipment and personnel from local, state and federal firefighting agencies.Californias mutual-aid system, created in 1950, has been described as the gold standard for wildland firefighting. But the resources havent kept pace with the growing threat in a state where almost a third of all homes are in areas bordering on forests, grasslands and other natural vegetation  a zone known as the wildland-urban interface.The fraying was never clearer than in the first hours of the Wine Country fires.As gale-force winds drove flames across Sonoma and Napa counties on Oct. 8 and Oct. 9, local fire chiefs and incident commanders asked for 305 fire engines from the mutual-aid system managed by the state Office of Emergency Services. Only 130 arrived within the first 12 hours, when most of the 5,800 homes burned in the two counties. Mendocino County firefighters asked for 15 engines, and not one arrived during the first 12 hours of the Redwood Valley fire.In the aftermath, emergency officials say the mutual-aid system needs to be fortified.At a state Senate hearing last week in Sacramento, they asked for $100 million to position firefighters in advance when weather conditions raise the risk of devastating wildfires and to upgrade communication equipment to more effectively deploy equipment and crews.We need to be more nimble in the first few hours of these incidents, Santa Rosa fire Chief Tony Gossner told lawmakers. Pre-positioned engines  that would have helped. It wouldnt have solved everything, but it wouldve helped.In December, 24 engines were pre-positioned in Ventura County, and the fire chiefs credit them with saving hundreds of structures from the Thomas fire.The state Office of Emergency Services inability to fulfill mutual-aid requests has increased dramatically  from 134 in 2012 to 3,029 in 2016  even as California has experienced longer fire seasons and some of the most ferocious wildfires in state history.Shortcomings in the system were identified almost 15 years ago by a state commission appointed after a 2003 firestorm in San Diego County burned 750,000 acres, destroyed 3,700 homes and took 24 lives. The panels recommendations included state acquisition of 150 additional fire engines to be placed with local agencies and kept on-call for mutual-aid.Ten years later, only 44 of those engines had been purchased.With the states budget surplus, and experts predicting longer fire seasons, lawmakers should consider adding more of those engines so future mutual-aid calls dont go unanswered.Under the mutual aid system, local agencies are reimbursed for sending engines and strike teams to fight wildland fires. But they arent reimbursed for sending crews as a precaution when there is an imminent danger. The chiefs want to change that.The cost isnt insignificant: about $50,000 a day for a strike team of five engines and 20 firefighters. But, as the success in Ventura County showed, the payoff can be enormous.2018 The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.)Visit The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.) at www.pressdemocrat.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS)  Santa Rosa put a Verizon wireless network upgrade on hold Tuesday after residents raised questions in the minds of city council members about the wisdom of allowing new telecommunications gear on light and power poles in neighborhoods.Dozens of critics of Verizons small cell technology, which aims to boost network reliability and speed, urged council members to dial back a 2017 agreement with the city allowing the installation of 72 such antennas around the Santa Rosa. They cited health, safety and aesthetic concerns among their reasons for opposing the upgrades.I think it is time to push the pause button on this installation in our neighborhoods, said John Cushman, a resident of Hidden Valley. This project has been rushed and the only urgency I can see is financial.The windfall would appear to be Verizons as it seeks to boost its customer base in a highly competitive wireless telephone and data market. The city earns only $350 per installation on its poles, a figure some in the audience said is too low.Santa Rosa changed its council policy last February to make smaller wireless antenna projects easier to install on city properties. Verizon, citing poor network performance, began attaching the new antennas throughout the city earlier this year. It was underway with work on 15 locations before a self-imposed pause late last month.The company got plenty of static from residents who worried about the health effects from radio frequency radiation and visuals of unsightly equipment on power poles.The city required the company to hold a series of meetings to help address residents concerns, the first two of which took place last week. But by the councils study session Tuesday, Verizons critics were emboldened, and council members were decidedly uncomfortable.I am supportive of putting the brakes on this, Councilman Tom Schwedhelm said. Im not convinced that weve done everything that we can so we can look anyone in the face and say Yes its safe there. Its safe to be in front of my house.Councilman Jack Tibbetts said he viewed the rollout as a commercial enterprise that perhaps was better suited to commercial areas given the citys stated goal of helping strengthen the citys wireless infrastructure to foster entrepreneurialism.Id like to see residential zones be carved out in our ordinance, Tibbetts said to loud applause in a chamber full of people wearing bright yellow stickers reading Caution: Cell tower microwave frequency hazard.Critics seized upon a presentation that city and Verizon officials gave to the council Feb. 14, 2017, depicting poles with small cell technology. Some council members agreed that the images shown to the council differed substantially from whats been popping up on poles in front of peoples homes.Eric McHenry, the citys chief information officer, explained that part of the disconnect was that there are two types of poles being envisioned for the Verizon project, wooden utility power maintained by Pacific Gas & Electric and steel streetlights owned by the city.The city had been focusing more on the equipment proposed to adorn its poles, a process over which it has significant control, and less on the utility pole process, over which it has far less say, McHenry explained.One of the elements that surprised some residents was the installation of cabinets full of batteries near the base of the poles. The metal cabinets are designed to keep the network operating for up to four hours in an emergency, but are not required. In a recently publicized case on Link Lane involving such a box in a tight planter strip, the city was able to work with Verizon to have it removed, McHenry said.Its not entirely clear just what the city has halted or for how long. Council members asked staff to halt the project and return with a plan for how to proceed. But a Verizon spokeswoman said work would continue on 25 other sites for which the city has issued permits.Weve already received those permits so we have a legal right to move forward, spokeswoman Heidi Flato said.As for the other two PG&E sites and 31 city light poles for which the company has yet to obtain permits, Flato said the company would work closely with the city to assess its options. Advocates called for a six-month breather, but it was far from clear how much of a setback the move represented. The citys lack of direct control over Verizons right to use PG&E utility poles, a right enjoyed by telecommunications companies regulated by the state Public Utilities Commission, made the projects future unclear.Verizon had planned to install 41 antennas on wooden power poles, 31 on city street lights. But if the city limited the use of its poles, the suggestion was made that Verizon might just shift everything over to PG&E poles.
(TNS)  The Smithtown Town Council on Tuesday ordered that an environmental impact study must be conducted before it will vote on an application for a cellphone tower on West Main Street across from Stop & Shop.The proposed location for the 120-foot tower is a commercial parcel less than a third of a mile east of the Nissequogue River.An impact study typically covers a broad range of possible effects of development on both wildlife and nearby human communities. It could add months or years to a review process that began in 2015. In public comments minutes after the councils 5-0 vote to require the study, Greg Alvarez, an attorney for Deer Park-based developer Elite Towers, called the wait patently unfair for commercial applicants to this town looking to redevelop in the area.Russell Barnett, the towns Department of Environment and Waterways director, disputed that characterization in an interview following the council meeting. The applicant, not town government, is responsible for providing information necessary to complete an application, he said. The applicant is in control of how long that takes.Elite is seeking a special exception from the council to house equipment for Verizon Wireless and New Cingular Wireless at the 300 E. Main St. site. The proposal does not meet several zoning requirements, including one limiting structures in the area to 35 feet.Alvarez has said that the tower is the best remedy for a gap in cellphone coverage in the area that can result in dropped calls and in 911 calls being erroneously routed to Connecticut. Skeptical neighbors have complained that the tower would be an eyesore in the environmentally sensitive area around the river.DEW staffers earlier this month recommended that the town council require the impact study. Staffers based their recommendation on reasons having to do with the dangers of a pole collapse and the potential for significant adverse visual impacts. They also warned that Elite might not have considered less intrusive solutions, including alternative locations or technologies, before making its application.Alvarez and a lawyer for New Cingular said that earlier reviews had already addressed most of those concerns.They also said that they hadnt been given access to the DEW memo, written March 6. Barnett countered that the town was following long-standing practice in not releasing internal town communications.A DEW staffer discussed the contents of the memo with the lawyers in a lengthy meeting last week, he said. Town officials released the memo late Tuesday afternoon.
In January 2018, NHS, the largest healthcare provider in the UK, had taken an important step to offshore patient data to the cloud. Of course, some NHS organizations had already made this move, but now this initiative is supported officially. Although this decision was made to gain a huge range of benefits that include greater data security protection and reduced running costs, a lot of cloud sceptics doubt if it was a wise choice.

Cloud security is now more dependent on the ability of business users to handle sensitive data, rather than on security services offered by cloud providers. In 2015, Gartner (News - Alert) predicted that customers will be responsible for 95% of security failures in the cloud through 2020. Netwrix 2018 Cloud Security Report supports this statement, as employee misbehavior was the main root cause in 58% of security breaches in 2017.

The results of the report revealed that cloud started to play a core part in business, but security is still an issue for the majority of respondents. In fact, 88% of IT pros believe that a cloud data breach can seriously impact their business. The same as last year, the top cloud concerns include risks of unauthorized data access (69%) and malware infiltrations (50%). The third most disturbing trend is that 39% of companies cannot monitor employee activity in the cloud, which replaced DDOS attacks that were popular in 2016.

Insiders have always been an issue for businesses, but in 2017 this problem exploded. Insiders were blamed by almost 58% of organizations for security incidents in the cloud. Although the majority of security attacks were external, in most cases insiders served as catalyst for the process. The vivid example is ransomware that is hidden in a phishing email. You just open a malicious attachment or click the link and voila, your organization is paralyzed by encrypting virus.

The fun fact is that although most companies understand insider threat, the majority of them still prefer not to dive into the problem and blame their own IT staff for security incidents in the cloud. What is more interesting, most companies dont even try to find out a reason for an incident, as only 28% of organizations have visibility into what their IT personnel is doing, and even less can track activity of their business users, contractors and cloud providers.

Unfortunately, rich set of security controls offered by cloud providers (for instance, AWS offers 1,800 to choose from) is balanced by human factor and lack of visibility into user behavior. This is the main reason why the number of those who think that cloud had a positive impact has decreased since 2016 from 41% to 32%, and the number of those who named negative impact has increased from 11% to 27%.

However, cloud is a promising technology, which makes companies to rethink their approach and change the workflows. Security strategy that worked on premises is not applicable in the cloud. This makes IT departments to request extra budget and hire highly skilled professionals to drive security initiatives. The bad news is that only 66% of our respondents have support of the top management to achieve their goals.

Management support is great, but usually it is stated only on paper. In practice, most companies have to settle for less and start with low-cost measures. Yes, human factor cannot be eliminated completely, but it doesnt mean that we should stop trying. Teaching people what is good and what is bad is a thorny path, but still 55% of companies have chosen regular employee trainings as a way to improve at least cyber security awareness. The best advice here is to make the content entertaining, focus on current trends, add vivid examples and explain common traps used to fool a user as simple as possible.

Hardly any security training can go without toughening existing security policies. This measure was chosen by 53% of companies. Although this step is also very low-cost, it is very important and often underestimated. Everyone has their own vision of how to handle sensitive data, unless the exact security rules are documented. Make sure you adjust the policy to the existing threat landscape and update your colleagues about any changes.

Other steps include adding security layers with additional security automation software (39%) or developing in-house solutions (36%). Some companies (17%) include hiring more security professionals as a key initiative for 2018. Finally, 16% of companies are satisfied with the state of things and are not going to change anything. Meanwhile a fraction of respondents are going to move their data back on premises, as they turned out to be unprepared for the challenges of cloud adoption.

View the full 2018 Cloud Security Risks infographics:

https://blog.netwrix.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Infographics_2018.jpg

Edited by Mandi Nowitz
(TNS)  Georgia lawmakers are preparing to ditch the states old and vulnerable electronic voting machines, but they havent fully committed to paper ballots that cant be hacked.A bill to to replace all of Georgias 27,000 voting machines in time for the 2020 presidential election cleared the state Senate last week and is now pending in the House.Organizations seeking secure elections say theyre worried that Georgia could end up with an untrustworthy and expensive election system.The legislation has raised some concerns, including the lack of a requirement that manual recounts be conducted with paper ballots and the possibility that bar codes could be printed on the ballots.Electronics make life easier, but they also can be manipulated, said Sara Henderson, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia , a government accountability group. Were trying to get changes into the bill that will make paper the official ballot of record.If we dont have that language in there, well have the same situation as we have now, she said.Georgias current voting machines rely on memory cards that dont leave a paper trail , meaning theres no way to verify the accuracy of election results.About 70 percent of the nation uses paper ballots. Only Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina rely entirely on direct-recording electronic voting machines without a paper backup, according to Verified Voting , an election integrity organization.Georgia needs to change its voting system after tech experts exposed security vulnerabilities in such machines during the DefCon computer hacking conference in July in Las Vegas, said state Sen. Bruce Thompson , the sponsor of the election legislation, Senate Bill 403 Theres no evidence hackers have penetrated voting machines in Georgia.The citizens of Georgia right now are very concerned. Their confidence in elections is not very high, said Thompson, R-White. Its time for us to implement a system that will provide a paper ballot and audits so we can do spot checks.Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign also heightened the need to protect the sanctity of elections. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in August 2016 that Russian hackers targeted election systems in 21 states. Georgia wasnt one of those states.Georgians strongly support replacing the states current voting machines, according to a poll released Tuesday by a group called Secure Vote Georgia. The group is buying billboard ads and sending mailers in favor of a voting system that leaves a paper trail.Its unclear what kind of voting system the state would end up with.Many voters across the country use paper-and-pencil to bubble in their selections by hand, and those paper ballots are then fed into a machine that counts their votes. The ballots are saved in a secure box for recounts and audits.A voting system tested in Conyers in November uses a different method: touch-screen machines that print ballots to reflect voters choices. Then voters can slide them into a vote scanning machine. The test run was paid for by Georgias current voting system vendor, Election Systems & Software , which provided its ExpressVote touch screens and DS200 tabulation machines.Under the legislation, either paper-and-pencil or machine-generated ballots could be used for the states next voting system.The bill calls for election companies to submit bids starting in January, and for Georgias incoming secretary of state to pick an election system. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp leaves that office at the end of this year.Then the Georgia General Assembly would have to decide whether to fund it during the 2019 legislative session.Old-fashioned paper ballots could cost $35 million or more, while a touch screen-and-paper voting system could run well over $100 million. Its unclear whether legislative leaders are committed to paying for a new voting system next year.The bill would allow election officials to decide whether to conduct manual recounts, even in very close elections. Without a recount by hand, recounts would use the same vote-counting machines that produced the initial result.By permitting the recounts to be done by the machine, you get no benefit of putting it on paper, said Susan Greenhalgh of the National Election Defense Coalition , which advocates for secure and accurate elections. The whole point of getting the paper ballot is to have an independent record of voter intent thats not in digital form, so it can be counted to ensure the tally is correct and that it wasnt affected by any software bug, error or cyber event.She said hand-filled paper ballots  without touch screens, bar codes, printers or other machinery  would be the safest option.The problem with using bar codes on ballots is that voters cant tell whether those lines match their selections, and those bar codes would make it too easy for election officials to simply re-scan ballots than perform a true hand recount, she said.Senators amended the voting legislation last month to state that voters selections may be detectable by tabulation machines, but the bill doesnt require machines to scan their choices rather than bar codes.The elections director from Augusta and Richmond County, Lynn Bailey, told senators during a hearing last month that she prefers a touch screen system.I personally am concerned about going to a system thats all paper at the polling place, she said. There are problems with it, the least of which is that people tend to hit the top offices, and the down-ballot offices wont even get looked at.Garland Favorito, who founded a group called Voter GA to seek secure elections, prefers paper ballots but said the voting legislation needs more work before it becomes law.We are trying to protect Georgia voters against the state purchasing unverifiable devices again, Favorito said.
Most 911 call centers are capable of locating landline callers, but they struggle to find cellphone users when they need emergency help. The 911 system was designed long ago for home phones, said Fiona Lee, Googles global evangelist for Android Emergency Location Service (ELS).There is a reason why 911 call centers have trouble locating cellphone users. If the caller is outdoors, the phone's GPS chip can connect with satellites or with a cell tower; the 911 operator will know the latitude and longitude of the caller  within 164 feet or so  most of the time. However, a call made from inside a building has a harder time connecting with a satellite, which can throw off the caller's location by several hundred feet.Google recently concluded a pilot study of its Android ELS, a supplemental service that sends location directly from Android handsets to emergency services when a person calls 911. The test involved fifty 911 call centers covering 2.4 million people in Texas, Tennessee and Florida. Google collaborated with West Corporation, a provider of communication and network infrastructure services; and RapidSOS, which works with public safety call centers by making 911 services more responsive.Android's ELS helps mobile network operators, emergency infrastructure providers and governments provide more accurate location information to first responders during an emergency. It is not an app; the user does not need hardware or software, said Lee.When a user calls 911, the ELS is activated and enables first responders to more quickly find and help the user. ELS is a part of the Android operating system . According to Lee, if the cell user has the location application closed, the phone will activate this feature during a 911 call.Google successfully deployed ELS in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, the United Kingdom and New Zealand in 2017, with more countries planning deployment in 2018, according to the European Emergency Number Association Christy Williams, 911 director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which includes several dozen call centers that participated in the Google ELS pilot, said her group was pleased with the results. I went out to see the [public safety answering point] in action; the calls would come in on our native screens with a bull's-eye around it.For example, she said, side by side, a satellite showed that an emergency was several miles away, while Google ELS indicated that the crisis was across the street from the call center. It told us what entrance to use and what building at the school to go into.Before the trial took place, it was tough to find emergency cellphone callers. Our ability to see the location is often not what it should be, said Williams. The public is often frustrated with us because they expect that if Uber knows where they are, emergency services should know too.At the initiation of a call, ELS was swift and under 30 seconds, according to Williams. If you have a heart attack, 30 seconds is a long time. During the pilot, the call center immediately knew the location of more than 70 percent of the calls. This is just the beginning, she said. This was an amazing demonstration of what is ahead for emergency services.Google is actively looking for partners to deploy ELS across the United States, according to Lee. The cost of implementing the service is minimal and involves little capital expenditure. ELS relies on centralized infrastructure  an endpoint  that can receive emergency location (either over HTTPS or Data SMS) and relays that information to call centers, which then incorporate this information into their call/dispatch workflows.The typical process to deploy ELS ranges from two to 15 weeks depending on resourcing and technical proficiency. Google works with its partners to verify performance benchmarks, and progress but the ELS partner decides when it is ready to move from one deployment phase to the next. Google will also begin to offer 911 texting For more information about Google ELS and an application to partner with the company, click here.
Iowa Public Information Board

Iowa Freedom of Information Council

Iowa Newspaper Association

Department of Justice

Iowa Peace Officers Association

Iowa Police Chiefs Association

Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Department of Public Safety

Iowa County Attorneys Association

Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association

Office of the State Public Defender

Iowa League of Cities

American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.

(TNS)  DES MOINES, Iowa  A disparate group of lobbying groups are backing legislation to establish an interim study group to look at issues stemming from the use of body cameras by law enforcement.In fact, several groups not already part of a 13-member panel proposed in House File 2465 asked a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing Tuesday to be included in the study.The subcommittee heard requests to be included in the study from the Iowa State Police Officers Association Iowa Broadcasters Association and Iowa Association for Justice That might make the panel a mini-legislature that has difficulty reaching consensus on statewide standards for the use, storage, cost, retention, public inspection and confidentiality of body camera audio and video recordings, Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, worried.The intent is to bring together a group to try to put together some rules that everybody is comfortable with, subcommittee member Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, said. LOL. Thats going to be difficult.However, she said the standards are needed by people who seek to obtain the recordings as well as law enforcement who dont want to be embroiled in constant litigation.Des Moines Senior Police Officer Matt Harkin of the Iowa Police Officers Association  the ones out on the street wearing the cameras  agreed. He didnt know how many departments use body cameras, but said how departments use cameras and handle the recording varies widely.Not surprisingly, theres a huge difference between their availability of cameras and, frankly, the training, added Paula Feltner, a lobbyist for the police officers association. Currently, departments have rules and bigger cities tend to be the ones who have the most rules. Some smaller departments dont get training, they dont have rules, so we think we could officer a variety of viewpoints if added to the study group.Margaret Johnson of the Iowa Public Information Board said her office deals with body cameras issues on a daily basis.It would be helpful to have some guidelines and some ability to figure out exactly what (the law) means with respect to body cameras, Johnson said. The current open records law predates body cameras and digital storage of audio and video recordings.Technology has far outpaced the law on this, Harkin concurred.The bill, which was approved by the House Local Government Committee, now goes to the full Judiciary Committee. A companion bill in the Senate has not received a hearing.HF 2456 calls for these groups to be part of the interim study committee on body cameras:
(TNS)  PEORIA, Ill.  Body cameras will not be issued to Peoria police officers until at least mid-summer, the interim police chief said this week.But Lorien Marion, who was recently tapped to head the Peoria Police Department, said the delay is only from mid-spring to mid-summer. The department, he reiterated, will have body cameras soon. He did say the delay would allow Peoria to examine cheaper ways to store the footage.Three departments  Peoria Heights, Chillicothe and Bartonville  have dropped out of a regional effort to use Department of Justice dollars to obtain body cameras. The reason, those departments say, is money."The first estimate was a lot less than the final one that came in," said Chillicothe Police Chief Scott Mettille. "Some of the technology that we first talked about has changed over time."Last year, the Peoria Police Department announced it was participating in a two-year, $253,000 federal grant that will pay for 285 cameras and the storage needed to hold the archived footage for the seven departments.The departments remaining in the grant are Peoria, the Peoria County Sheriff's Office, the East Peoria Police Department and the Peoria Park District. Marion and others have said the cost for the cameras shouldn't change dramatically as the number Peoria Heights, Chillicothe or Bartonville would have used was fairly small compared to the overall order. Marion said he didn't know if having three departments withdraw would alter the size of the grant.Marion said his department is going to redo bidding to re-examine both the cameras as well as the type of storage for the data  cloud-based vs. having a dedicated server. It's possible the grant could be modified, and that could affect the cost for both the city of Peoria as well as others."It could affect it a little, but when you weigh how much the grant is, then you could get a little bit more out of it because of the agencies that dropped out. But we'll have to look at pricing and then at server-based storage as well as cloud," he said.But in Bartonville, which purchased body cameras on its own in 2016, police Chief Brian Fengel said his officers couldn't be happier with the cameras. He had planned to use the grant to get similar cameras so all the departments would be using compatible systems, but he, too, said cost was a factor."We already have a dedicated server where we can store the footage," he said.Bartonville had planned to use the grant to buy new cameras and use the old ones as backups, but the higher prices for storage caused the department to rethink that plan.Fengel and his officers say they have embraced the cameras as a new tool, akin to in-dashboard cameras, Tasers, cellphones and computers. To them, it's a way to both protect the public and the officers.Officer Fred Kerrn agreed, saying "it keeps everyone accountable for their actions."In the year that Bartonville has used body cameras, the Peoria County State's Attorney's Office has asked for about 30 different videos for its prosecutions. Fengel said that is proof his program is working.People have the right to ask that it be turned off when in their home. So far, however, Kerrn said, it hasn't been an issue, and most people seem to want the cameras.And that's what Marion hopes will happen here in Peoria. He said he hopes to have a vendor lined up by May so the program could be in place by mid-summer.
(TNS)  Politicians aren't taking cybersecurity seriously enough, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday in Colorado Springs."I don't see a sense of urgency in the political world about how serious this challenge is," Ridge said in a luncheon speech during the Rocky Mountain Cyberspace Symposium at The Broadmoor hotel. "We have been engaged in a fifth-dimension war, a cyberwar. No one has asked Congress to declare war, but every minute of every day and every week of every year, our adversaries are looking to disrupt, destroy and steal from us."More than 2,500 cybersecurity professionals are attending the four-day conference hosted by the Colorado Springs-based Rocky Mountain chapter of AFCEA International, a nonprofit that connects military, government and businesses to advance information technology, communications and electronics capabilities.The former Pennsylvania congressman and governor, who later became the first secretary of the newly created Department of Homeland Defense, said Congress has been slow to adopt cybersecurity policies ranging from giving businesses immunity from regulatory penalties if they share information on cyberattacks with federal agencies to proposals to merge the National Security Agency with U.S. Cyber Command. When politicians are slow to act, those who launch cyberattacks are quick to exploit vulnerabilities, he said."This is a war that we will be fighting permanently, and I'm not sure we will ever be able to say that we won," Ridge said. "The tactics amount to a guerrilla war. In the past, during the Cold War, we could eliminate a threat if they breached the perimeter. Too often in cyber, the adversary is disguised and undetected, and no longer is their technology inferior."Ridge said during an interview after his speech that cybersecurity should be a higher priority because of the "immediacy of the challenge," including the growing threat that cyberattacks will soon be launched with artificial intelligence and the danger that some nations may respond to state-sponsored cyberattacks with conventional weapons.The growth in the number and types of devices connected to the internet offers both promise and peril, Ridge said. "It's not just the internet of things but the internet of everything. We don't know the number of devices that will be connected to the internet by 2020, but we know it will be huge."Ridge said most Americans believe Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election and noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in his career had worked to destabilize and divide countries - and "he has done his job well."He urged colleges and universities to develop new programs to train cybersecurity workers more quickly, perhaps with two-year degrees instead of four-year degrees and through apprenticeships. The nation's military services, he said, should allow disabled soldiers to work defending the nation against cyberattacks.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday indicted ten members of the Aegis Juris fraternity over the hazing death of University of Santo Tomas (UST) law student Horacio "Atio" Castillo III.

In its resolution, the Justice Department said it found probable cause that the following fraternity members violated Republic Act 8049, or the Anti-Hazing Law:

Arvin Balag

Ralph Trangia

Oliver John Audrey Onofre

Mhin Wei Chan

Hans Matthew Rodrigo

Joshua Joriel Macabali

Axel Munro Hipe

Marcelino Bagtang

Jose Miguel Salamat

Robin Ramos

The law states that violators, when the hazing results in death, will face life imprisonment.

"The principal basis is the testimony of witness Mark Ventura, who is covered under the Witness Protection Program...His testimony appears to be credible and believable," Prosecutor General Jorge Catalan said.

He added cases have been filed with the Manila Regional Trial Court.

John Paul Solano, one of the primary suspects in the case, was indicted with perjury and obstruction of justice.

Solano was a fellow Thomasian who claimed to have found Atio's body Sept. 17, 2017 in Tondo, Manila where it seemed to have been dumped. It was later revealed Solano, who has a background in medicine, was called by fraternity members to revive Atio.

After his unsuccessful attempt, Solano told the frat members to bring Atio to a hospital.

READ: Aegis Juris president struck final blow that rendered Atio unconscious  state witness

Meanwhile, the DOJ dismissed all cases against UST Law Dean Nilo Divina, UST Law Faculty Secretary Arthur Capili, and fraternity member Marc Anthony Ventura.

The cases against Divina and Capili were dismissed due to insufficiency of evidence, while Ventura was cleared due to his status as a state witness.

In a statement, Divina said he is relieved to be cleared of any wrongdoing in the hazing case.

"I have always maintained my full innocence throughout this unfortunate incident, and thankfully, this has now been established beyond question. As they say, the moral arc of the universe may be long but it bends towards justice," he said.

The DOJ, however, recommended further investigation against the following:

Zach Abulencia

Daniel Ragos

Dave Felix

Sam Cagalingan

Alex Cairo

Luis Capulong

Kim Cyrill Roque

Ged Villanueva

Edric Pilapil

RR Magbuhos

The Justice Department reopened Atio's case on January 12 in the wake of Ventura's statement.

READ: DOJ reopens Atio Castillo's case

Atio's mother, Carmina Castillo, said while they are happy with the resolution, they still want accountability from everyone involved.

"We will continue to fight for justice. We will make sure that all those involved will eventually be put behind bars. Those others who were named but not included will eventually fall. We know that they are guilty . Rest assured we will not stop until everybody involved in this crime will get their fair share of justice," she said in a statement.

The law student's father, Horacio Castillo, Jr., said the indictment of the ten AJF members is not enough.

"As far as we are concerned, they are all guilty and they should be tried," he told CNN Philippines.

He added they will push through with their case against the UST before the Vatican.

"This is what we've been waiting for, the probable cause, and with this, we can now elevate this to the Papal courts and to our complaint with the Vatican. Now, we have a basis," Castillo said.

Senator Migz Zubiri, a friend of the Castillo family, said he welcomes the development in Atio's case.

"At this point, I urge all the parties involved to cooperate fully and finally tell all in order to clear their conscience and aid in the swift resolution of this case," Zubiri said.

The Senate Committees on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs, and Justice and Human Rights stated in their report the 22-year-old UST student, who had last told his parents he would attend a "welcoming party" of the fraternity, died on September 17 at the hands of fraternity members during hazing rites.

UST has also expelled eight law students allegedly involved in the case.

READ: UST expels eight students involved in Atio Castillo hazing death

The report also recommended UST law dean Nilo Divina's disbarment for failing to report Atio's death after knowing about it.

Following Atio's death, both the Senate and the House of Representatives approved bills completely banning hazing as a requirement for admission into a fraternity, sorority, or organization.

READ: House OKs new anti-hazing bill on third and final reading

CNN Philippines Correspondent Anjo Alimario contributed to this report.
Fernando Alonso says he is not worried about a new race start procedure for 2018.

At the Barcelona test, drivers simulated a new procedure where a race is re-started from the grid on old tyres after a red flag stoppage.

Afterwards, Romain Grosjean sounded the alarm.

"It was like driving on slicks in the rain," he said. "On cold rubber, the car was uncontrollable.

"I have concerns about safety," said the Haas driver. "The restart could be chaos and dangerous."

Grosjean said he will be in touch with GPDA director and Charlie Whiting with his concerns.

However, F1 veteran and double world champion Alonso says he is not worried.

"I don't see any problems," said the McLaren driver.

"Of course, when the track is cold we will have to concentrate more on warming up the tyres, but it's the same for everyone."

Meanwhile, Grosjean also expressed concern about the new 'Halo' device, with some fans saying they cannot identify their favourite driver's helmet any more.

"Perhaps we need to work on the design," said the Frenchman. "Could we paint it in the colours of the helmet? We'll have to think about it."

(GMM)
The all-new 2019 Volkswagen Jetta, unveiled in January at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit (earlier post) will offer improved EPA-estimated fuel economy for the model: 30 mpg city (7.8 L/100km) and 40 mpg (5.88 L/100km) highway, for a combined 34 mpg (6.91 L/100km), two mpg higher on the combined measure than the automatic transmission version of the current generation Jetta.





Making those improvements required a focused approach to fuel efficiency throughout the vehicle development process, as the seventh-generation Jetta grew in most dimensions from its predecessors.

Fuel efficiency has long been a key concern of compact sedan buyers, and we knew in designing the new Jetta we would need to push the state of the art. Dr. Matthias Erb, Chief Engineering Officer, North American Region, Volkswagen

The Jettas exterior was optimized for aerodynamic drag reduction. From early virtual modeling, every crease and curve of the new Jetta was studied for ways to reduce wind drag without hurting styling, interior noise or other priorities.

New to this Jetta are shutters in the front grille that close at certain speeds when the engine needs less airflow, and an air curtain design in the front bumper that lowers turbulence over the wheels. Underbody panels have been sculpted to help ensure suspension components dont create unnecessary air obstructions, and the rear styling helps smooth the airflow further. All told, the refinements of the Jettas exterior reduce its coefficient of drag to a class-leading 0.27.

The 1.4-liter TSI engine from the EA211 family has also been optimized for further fuel efficiency, including a clutch-driven air conditioner that reduces pumping losses; a more efficient generator; and a smoother-flowing grade of oil.

The stop/start system that is standard on 2019 Jettas with an automatic transmission shuts off the engine at appropriate times, is designed to help to reduce fuel consumption in stop-and-go traffic by as much as 6%.

Another major boost comes from the new 8-speed automatic transmission, which provides a wider band of drive ratios that allow more efficient running at higher speeds That power will hit the pavement through a new selection of low rolling-resistance tires that, while slightly larger than the tires on the previous model year Jetta, reduce resistance by up to 25% without sacrificing handling.

The 2019 Volkswagen Jetta will be available in S, SE, R-Line, SEL, and SEL Premium trim levels and is expected to arrive at US Volkswagen dealers in the second quarter of 2018. The R-Line trim features sportier styling, exclusive interior and exterior design elements, R-Line badging, and the XDS electronic differential.
Researchers at Australias RMIT University have demonstrated for the first time a working rechargeable proton battery. (Earlier post.) The rechargeable battery is environmentally friendly, and has the potential, with further development, to store more energy than currently-available lithium ion batteries.

The working prototype proton battery combines the best aspects of hydrogen fuel cells and battery-based electrical power. In 2014, the RMIT team showed that a proton battery with a metal alloy electrode for storing hydrogen could work, but its reversibility and rechargeability was too low. (Earlier post.) Also the alloy employed contained rare-earth elements, and was thus heavy and costly.

The latest version combines a carbon-based electrode for solid-state storage of hydrogen instead of metal hydride as in the earlier work with a reversible fuel cell to provide an integrated rechargeable unit. The oxygen side of the reversible cell is similar to a PEM URFC (unitized regenerative fuel cell) with titanium felt as the gas diffusion layer (GDL) and a mixed platinum/iridium oxide catalyst.





Schematic diagram of the experimental proton battery with an activated carbon electrode. Heidari et al.

Essentially a proton battery is a reversible PEM fuel cell with an integrated solid-state electrode for storing hydrogen in atomic form, rather than as molecular gaseous hydrogen in an external cylinder. It is thus a hybrid between a hydrogen-fuel-cell and battery-based system, combining advantages of both system types. Heidari et al.

The successful use of an electrode made from activated carbon in a proton battery is a significant step forward and is reported in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.

During charging, protons produced by water splitting in a reversible fuel cell are conducted through the cell membrane and directly bond with the storage material with the aid of electrons supplied by the applied voltage, without forming hydrogen gas.

In electricity supply mode this process is reversed; hydrogen atoms are released from the storage and lose an electron to become protons once again. These protons then pass back through the cell membrane where they combine with oxygen and electrons from the external circuit to re-form water.

A major potential advantage of the proton battery is much higher energy efficiency than conventional hydrogen systems, making it comparable to lithium-ion batteries. The losses associated with hydrogen gas evolution and splitting back into protons are eliminated.

The latest experimental results showed that a porous activated-carbon electrode made from phenolic resin was able to store around 1 wt% hydrogen in the electrode. This is an energy per unit mass already comparable with commercially-available lithium ion batteries, even though the proton battery is far from being optimized. The maximum cell voltage was 1.2 volt.

Potential applications for the proton battery include household storage of electricity from solar photovoltaic panels. With some modifications and scaling up, proton battery technology may also be used for medium-scale storage on electricity grids as well as powering electric vehicles.

Future work will now focus on further improving performance and energy density through use of atomically-thin layered carbon-based materials such as graphene, with the target of a proton battery that is truly competitive with lithium ion batteries firmly in sight. Professor John Andrews, corresponding author

RMITs research on the proton battery has been partly funded by the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group and the US Office of Naval Research Global.

Resources
Scania announced a partnership agreement with Finnish company Ahola Transport to implement semi-autonomous platooning on Nordic roadsthe first such customer agreement in Europe for semi-autonomous truck platooning on public roads. The partnership will also focus on developing other new transport technologies related to driver assistance.

Ahola Transport Oyj will utilize Scania trucks and technology on Finnish motorways to test semi-autonomous platooning formations with three or more connected trucks. During these tests, drivers will man all trucks. However, the driver in the first truck will control the entire platoon; the following trucks are driven autonomously.

In order to deploy new transport technologies broadly, public acceptance and legislation need to be developed in parallel; trials in actual traffic situations and varying weather conditions are therefore essential. This agreement represents a significant step towards commercially viable semi-autonomous platooning.

For us it is important to enhance our drivers work situation with help of new technology. The planned solutions also help us to meet customer expectations for faster deliveries and environmental targets. Our association with Scania started with the first truck back in 1959 and we are pleased to extend cooperation to new solutions. Hans Ahola, CEO of Ahola Transport

In combination with platooning, new driver assistance functions will enable on-time delivery through optimized route planning and speeds for improved transport efficiency. In addition to the positive environmental effects of an improved traffic flow, the lower drag achieved through platooning reduces fuel consumption and thereby carbon emissions.

These new technologies also have the potential to enhance the role of the truck driver, Scania suggested. Since the lead truck controls the platoon, drivers in following trucks can, for example, perform administrative tasks. With more flexible regulations for driving time and rest periods, this could open increased opportunities for long-haulage drivers to return home instead of sleeping in the truck.

This marks Scanias second customer agreement on truck platooning. The first was announced in January 2017, and is with the Singapore Ministry of Transport and the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA Corporation). That project entails truck platooning on public roads while transporting containers between port terminals in Singapore. (Earlier post.)

The aim is to organize convoys of four truckswith the following three trucks behind the lead truck autonomously driven,as well as to fully automate the processes for precise docking and undocking of cargo.
Story updated to include other parts of Chief Justice Sereno's exclusive interview.

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno is ready to face the Senate impeachment court.

When asked about her preparations, Sereno said in an exclusive interview with CNN Philippines her team was "quite advanced [and] ready to go."

Alex Poblador will lead her legal team. Other than that information, Sereno deferred other issues to her lawyers preparing her defense.

Poblador is a founding partner of the Poblador, Bautista & Reyes law office. He graduated valedictorian in 1978 from the University of the Philippines College of Law and placed third in the bar exams that same year. He also has a Master of Laws from the University of Michigan.

Sereno's statement comes after the House Justice Committee, voting 38-2, found probable cause to impeach her. Committee Chair Rey Umali expects the plenary to vote on it by the end of the month.

Read: Sereno on House panel vote: I knew the numbers were not in my favor

Umali previously called for Sereno's resignation in an interview with CNN Philippines' The Source.

But when pressed on what would get her to resign, Sereno answered, "Wala [Nothing]."

Sereno said lawyer Larry Gadon, who filed the impeachment complaint against her, needs to prove his accusations are impeachable offenses.

"Sa dinadami-dami niyang sinalaysay na nagawa ko daw, alin dun po ba yung karumal-dumal kong kasalanan sa bayan?" she said.

[Translation: Of all the things that he said I did, which one of those was an offense to the country?]

Read: Sereno: Outcome of hearing seemed predetermined

If one-third of the House agrees with the articles of impeachment, the case would be elevated to the Senate for trial. Sereno's camp has long pushed for the complaint to be fast-tracked to the upper house, where they believe they have a chance at disproving the claims against her.

"Everyone has a fighting chance. Especially when you stand on the truth, you have more than a fighting chance," said Sereno.

Here are the other highlights from the full interview with Sereno:

'No big deal' on urge for indefinite leave

Sereno dismissed impressions that the Supreme Court's decision to have her take a leave was a sign that its members wanted her out. Thirteen out of 14 justices made the vote, and the high court attributed the move to "various reasons."

"I don't read anything into that, other than that I agreed to an indefinite leave," she said.

She added the decision was "an administrative matter," and not a statement on judicial independence.

"I don't want to blow it out of proportion. Life goes on, work goes on," said Sereno.

Eight associate justices also spoke in the House hearings regarding Sereno, with only Mariano del Castillo defending her purchase of a high security vehicle.

She also dismissed as a 'non-issue' any talk of betrayal among friends in the court, particularly Associate Justice Marvic Leonen.

When asked about possibly returning to a fractured Supreme Court, she even said "hurts can be healed."

"The movement to go forward can be pushed all in good time I have not actually borne any grudge against anybody. There is no point in harboring ill will," said Sereno. "All this can actually be set aside."

Read: Sereno on relationship with SC justices: 'Hurts can be healed'

On De Castro: 'That's her opinion'

Sereno waved off any reactions to Associate Justice Teresita De Castro's scolding earlier on Thursday.

"Everyone is entitled to her opinion. So that's her opinion, I leave it at that," she said.

Tension rose between the two justices when De Castro unexpectedly took the microphone to call out Sereno after her speech before a gathering of female judges. She also testified against Sereno at the House hearings.

Related: De Castro calls out Chief Justice for discussing SolGen petition

Sereno to contest psych test, SALNs

Sereno will respond in the Senate about accusation that she failed to file her statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALN) during her term as a professor at the University of the Philippines.

While Sereno maintained "many wrong things were said about my SALN," she said she did not want to preempt her defense.

She added that doubts on her mental fitness due to a psychological exam could "easily be debunked."

The House Justice committee on Thursday voted to declassify the exam results, making it a piece of evidence in her impeachment. However, the Philippine Association of Psychologists earlier said this was a "misuse" of the results.

Read: House panel declassifies results of Sereno's psychological test, discussion in executive session

No comment on quo warranto

Sereno declined to comment on the quo warranto petition she faces before the Supreme Court.

On top of the impeachment effort in Congress, Solicitor General Jose Calida questioned her appointment as Chief Justice through the petition. The high court gave Sereno ten days to reply.

Read: SC gives Sereno 10 days to respond to petition to oust her

Sereno's camp and some senators maintain impeachment is the only way to unseat a Chief Justice. In a speech on Thursday, she dismissed the move as a "gimmick."

Conspiracy vs. Sereno?

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Sereno. "We have to ask some important questions, there are always disclaimers We have to ask where Calida's actions are coming from."

Sereno is a critic of President Rodrigo Duterte and his bloody war on drugs. She has also voted against his controversial decisions such as the burial of former President Ferdinand Marcos and the extended declaration of martial law in Mindanao.

While Duterte has denied a hand in the impeachment, opposition lawmakers believe the effort to unseat Sereno as a stifling of criticism.

Related: House leaders, some SC justices colluding to oust Sereno - opposition

'For judicial independence'

"I have to clarify that this fight is larger than me It has to do with judicial independence," said Sereno.

Despite the controversy hounding her, the embattled Chief Justice said she did not regret accepting the post because she wants to shed light to "judges on the frontline."

"They get harassed, bullied, they get threats On behalf of judges who are similarly situated as I am, I will have to continue to fight," said Sereno.

"Some columnists have spoken of me as black and blue That does not matter," she added. "You don't count how many punches you've taken. Just continue to fight, with everything you've had, fight."

Catch the replay of CNN Philippines' interview with Sereno at 9 a.m. on Friday, March 9.

CNN Philippines' Digital Producer VJ Bacungan contributed to this report.
This story was updated to include statements from CNN Philippines' one-on-one interview with Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Thursday crossed paths with one of her harshest critics in the Supreme Court, who gave her a scolding.

Sereno and Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, President of the Philippine Women Judges Association (PWJA), both spoke at a forum hosted by the orgaization. After Sereno gave her speech, De Castro unexpectedly stood up, went to the podium, and took hold of the microphone.

"I'm sorry that the CJ (Chief Justice) has taken this opportunity to discuss a matter that is sub judice. We have given her all the courtesy and I sincerely hope that she should not have dealt with the matter which is pending with the court," she said.

Athough Sereno did not directly discuss the quo warranto case filed against her by Solicitor General Jose Calida before the Supreme Court, she accused her detractors of resorting to "gimmicks" to oust her.

"Indeed, any form to try me other than the constitutionally-exclusive form of impeachment is an admission by my complainant and other detractors that after 15 hearings, they have failed to come up with any evidence with which I can be convicted in the Senate," Sereno said.

She added, "Napakaaga naman yata para umamin sila na wala silang napala kundi matinding kabiguan. Kaya kung anu-ano na lamang ang gimik na ginagawa nila masunod lamang ang kanilang nais."

[Translation: It's too soon for them to accept defeat, which is why they are resorting to gimmicks to get what they need.]

Related: SolGen questions Sereno's qualifications as chief justice

Right after her speech, a visibly surprised Chief Justice briefly stopped walking towards the presidential table on the stage and looked at De Castro who had left her chair.

De Castro was supposed to hand over a token to Sereno but she refused to do it, prompting Associate Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe to take over the task.

Speaking to CNN Philippines, Sereno said she was not surprised at De Castro's remark, saying everyone is entitled to an opinion.

"If that's her opinion, then that's her opinion. I leave it at that," Sereno said.

The Chief Justice also justified why she talked about the case.

"You have to respect a right of a person accused in a political arena to respond and speak, otherwise, anyone who's being impeached cannot speak and cannot explain to the public her position. I don't think that's right at all," she said.

De Castro in a hearing in the House of Representatives testified accused Sereno of violating Supreme Court procedures when she tampered with a temporary restraining order (TRO), among others.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday said he is willing to open his bank accounts in question to the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC).

"Kayo, anytime, I will give you the authority, honestly, wala kayong makuha. If it exceeds 40 million  kasali ko na ang inheritance ko noon," Duterte told the PACC officials who took their oath on Tuesday. "Magsobra diyan, I step down."

[Translation: You, anytime, I will give you authority. Honestly, you wouldn't get anything. If it exceeds 40 million, including my inheritance. If it exceeds that, I will step down.]

The PACC is spearheaded by Dante Jimenez, who was appointed by Duterte in January . Jimenez was the chair of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, who filed an impeachment complaint against Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and a criminal complaint against now-detained Senator Leila de Lima. Both women officials are considered are Duterte's critics.

The President said his critics would not enjoy the same luxury, saying giving them access to his bank records would only be a "fishing expedition."

"Pero ikaw kalaban ko sa politika [But you, my political opponent]? Do not  if you want evidence, do not get it from my mouth or make me do the effort."

The President's bank records have been in scrutiny since Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang claimed getting these documents from the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC). Carandang said Duterte had over 1 billion in assets.

But AMLC said in September 2017 that they did not give Carandang documents as his request was still being evaluated. Malacanang ordered Carandang's suspension for supposedly spreading false information on Duterte's bank records, but the Ombudsman refused to enforce this as she deemed it unconstitutional.

Another staunch Duterte critic, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, filed a plunder complaint against the then-presidential candidate. He alleged Duterte amassed at least 211 million in ill-gotten wealth, as well as hired ghost employees with a budget of 708 million when he was still Davao City Mayor.

In February 2017, Trillanes revealed that Duterte and his family had 2 billion in undeclared wealth in their bank accounts from 2006 to 2015. He urged the President to sign a bank waiver to allow the probe into his accounts, but Duterte refused.

The President has consistently denied having ill-gotten wealth, and threw back accusations at Trillanes  claiming that the senator has millions in his offshore bank accounts.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  As a House panel decides on whether or not to impeach Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday junked claims that he's behind her ouster.

"You can ask anybody  I never initiated 'to si Sereno Eh I just called her attention because of the so many cases pending tapos pa-iba ang decision niya," Duterte said during the oath-taking of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission on Tuesday.

"'Yung the very complaint now of the Justices. 'Yun man 'yon. O kita mo, 'di lumabas rin [It is what it is. See, it would come out eventually]," he added.

The President said he is not vested with powers to impeach Sereno.

"Congress, well, you be the judge. Hindi ako pwede. Executive department ako. Co-equal kami eh so hindi ako pwedeng mag-ano, Executive department lang ako," he said.

[Translation: Congress, well you be the hudge. I'm not allowed, I'm part of the executive department. We're co-equals.]

The House Committee on Justice is expected to vote today if there is probable cause to impeach her. Eight associate justices of the Supreme Court spoke during the previous hearings: Justices Lucas Bersamin, Teresita de Castro, Mariano del Castillo, Francis Jardaleza, Samuel Martires, Diosdado Peralta, Andres Reyes, and Noel Tijam.

The SC announced on Thursday 13 out of 14 justices urged Sereno to take an indefinite leave. While the high court attributed the move to "various reasons," some of her detractors took this to mean members of the court wanted her out.

Apart from the impeachment case, Sereno is facing a quo warranto petition before the Supreme Court (SC). Solicitor General Jose Calida seeks to void Sereno's appointment, saying Sereno has been "unlawfully holding" her post since she allegedly failed to submit her Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) for 10 years before she applied for the post in 2012.

In February, Sereno's lawyers spoke against "coordinated" efforts to oust the Chief Justice from her post.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon said on Wednesday that they will begin with the national identification system even without a law.

Esperon said the government has allotted 2 billion this year so that the concerned agencies, led by the National Statistics Authority, may start the project.

"Let us look at the national id as a necessary tool for knowing every citizen of the Philippines," he said. " Therefore, it's an economic tool, it's a social (tool) and need not be a security tool. Pero magagamit din [But it can be used] as security tool."

Esperon said the national ID system may cost up to 20 billion.

He said the idea is for every citizen to have an ID from birth and will be renewed upon reaching the age of 18.

The House of Representatives approved its version of a national ID system bill in September 2017.

Read: House approves national ID bill on final reading

Under the measure, Filipinos who are at least 18 years old should register with the Filipino Identification System or FilSys at the local civil registry office where they live or at other implementing agencies to apply for an ID.

According to Population Committee Chairman Sol Aragones, a national ID would speed up government transactions as there would be no need for multiple identification cards to do business with different offices.

Meanwhile, Senator Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the subcommittee on the national ID system, said in December 2017 that the Senate is looking to pass its version of the bill by the first quarter of 2018.

Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Manny Pacquiao both filed bills establishing a national ID system, but these remain pending in the committee level.

CNN Philippines Digital Producer VJ Bacungan contributed to this report.
Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Whiskey makers argue that the tariffs that President Trump plans to order as soon as today wont just penalize beer companies, Hersheys, and Campbells. While steep levies  10 percent on imported aluminum, 25 percent on foreign steel  dont directly affect bourbon or rye production, the owner of Jack Daniels says the whiskey industry will end up an unfortunate and unintended victim anyway, now that the EU is vowing to impose retaliatory tariffs as payback.

Yesterday, the EUs trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the body is considering imposing its own taxes on things like American-made bourbon, chewing tobacco, denim, peanut butter, and motorcycles. This led the CEO of Brown-Forman, which owns Jack Daniels plus 16 other liquor brands, to denounce Trumps tariffs: On a call with investors, Paul Varga said theyre strongly opposed to the idea, and went on to note the irony of Trump trying to boost U.S. manufacturing with a policy thats put the 148-year-old Tennessee distillery responsible for the planets top-selling American whiskey in Europes crosshairs. A whiskey tax in Europe  the second-biggest buyer of Brown-Formans brands  would be bad for the company, and therefore bad for America, he argues.

Varga says theyll monitor the EUs plans closely, and of course shar[e] our point of view in Washington, as well. Thats fine by Europe, and in fact Brown-Forman can probably pass along a message from a few EU member countries if it wants. In particular, Germany  a major steel and aluminum exporter to the U.S.  has been stressing separately how decisively theyll respond to any tariffs Trump imposes. There should be no doubt about that in Washington, its foreign minister says.
Photo: Frank Herfort/Vostok/Getty Images

As my quietly mortified daughters will tell you, their grumpy dad has nothing against a good Ed Sheeran ballad now and then, but even I had to agree with one exasperated gourmand I know when he recently groused, Theres nothing but Ed Sheeran restaurants out there, Platty! Like me, he had just dropped several hundred bucks on dinner in a pleasantly agreeable new establishment in Brooklyn, which wasnt so different from the perfectly serviceable new place wed both visited in the Flatiron District the week before, or the slightly less pleasant dinner wed endured together at the ridiculously loud, unaccountably popular new Italian-themed noise box in the Village the week before that.

I wouldnt have made the Sheeran connection at the time, but upon hours  okay, several minutes  of reflection spent listening to some Sheeran songs I could find online (Perfect and Happier, for the record), I think I know what he meant. He meant that more and more new restaurants around town seem to be comfortable and well-crafted, in a focus-grouped, middle-brow kind of way. He meant that, like a popular Sheeran song, these restaurants are technically proficient and tailored to please the broadest possible audience in the most purposely inoffensive way. And, like the music critic whose duty it is to listen to an endless stream of pop hits, if you sit through too many of these good-natured, narrowly focused meals in a row, you might quietly go insane.

Any dedicated New York City restaurant-goer can tell you that these gray, post-holiday months are the traditional dog days of the dining calendar. As in the parallel worlds of art, theater, movies, and music, this is a time of the year filled with half-hearted revivals, second-rate releases, and concepts that, if you squint your eyes, all tend to look more or less the same. Nevertheless, I hope youll forgive your jaded critic for observing that this groundhog season seems grimmer than most. Sure, there are a handful of hopeful reboots opening here and there (Floyd Cardozs Bombay Bread Bar, for example). Youll find the usual influx of star-crossed out-of-towners hoping to revive their franchises or searching for fame and fortune. There is the familiar rabble of randomly themed hotel restaurants. And lofty, Bigfoot chefs still attempt to expand their franchises with more populist, affordable outposts (see, for example, Masa Takayamas Tetsu).

The more-and-more ubiquitous Ed Sheeran restaurant, on the other hand, takes the form of a well-mannered neighborhood joint. Chances are the rooms will be on the small side because in the manner of a soulful folk tune, intimacy promotes bonhomie and good cheer. The smiling, unfailingly competent waitstaff will often be casually dressed (in designer aprons, or some facsimile thereof). The style of food could be French bistro, or classic American bar and grill, but in this pasta-mad town, it leans most strongly toward the Italian trattoria. Your menu will be neatly stenciled on a single, accessible page, and may well contain oysters, a crudo or two, some pastas, and a tasteful selection of mid-price entrees  locally caught black sea bass, anyone?  designed to hit the same comfortably accessible notes again and again.

The casual-dining revolution is the story of our culinary age, after all, and even snooty, high-minded critics dont want to spend all their time deciphering the latest forager trends from Norway, say, or crouching fitfully in tiny omakase bars. But for all sorts of reasons  the high cost of doing business in the city, the erosion of the classic gourmet culture  agreeable trends like bar dining, neighborhood dining, and the farm-to-table craze have merged into a single, increasingly formulaic genre that is at odds with whats left of the citys cutting-edge dining culture.

With its high barriers to entry and traditionalist meat-and-potato tastes, New York City has never been an entirely hospitable place for rabble-rousing or avant-garde cooking, of course. But now more than ever, the big money at the top of the food chain seems earmarked only for safe, time-tested formulas, and destination ventures designed to attract out-of-town gastronauts. If youre a promising, boundary-pushing cook working in one of the big kitchens around the city, chances are youve also considered opening your promising, boundary-pushing restaurant somewhere else. (Or youre working overtime to develop the next great fast-casual scheme.)

Is this the end of the world as we know it? No, its not. Even now, New York is in the midst of a great Chinese and Asian food renaissance, and well always have our pizzas, our bustling markets in Flushing and Jackson Heights, our endless supply of rib-eye steaks, and first-rate bars for ramen and sushi. Every now and then, no doubt, little miracles will occur, even in the most unexpected places. But those little miracles tend to happen with less and less frequency these days, so get used to the smooth, sentimental tones of the Ed Sheeran restaurant. Whether you live in a Bushwick loft, an East Village walk-up, a Williamsburg condo, a Prospect Heights brownstone, or one of the first glass boxes sprouting up in Hudson Yards, chances are you wont have to travel far to find it.
Yei Bishop Appeals For Press Freedom In South Sudan

The bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Yei is appealing for promotion of press freedom across South Sudan.

Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Yei, Hillary Luate Adeba [Gurtong file photo]

By Daniel Friday Martin



YEI, 08 March 2018 [Gurtong]Hillary Luate Adeba says the media promotes an important role in peace building, reconciling communities and advocates for the rights of the marginalized people in the communities.



As Yei River State or the nation at large, we need to ensure that that the press / media is respected, supported and protected because without the media we will leave in a dark world. I also believe that media is a tool that can be properly used to propagate messages of peace, reconciliation, humanitarian assistance and speaking on behalf of the voiceless in our societies or communities he said.



Hillary is calling on the government to ensure that there is press freedom. Its not good to hear journalists being arrested or detained for telling the truth. The truth must be spoken out so that we all build a transformed nation he added.



The prelate also urges journalists or reporters to stick to their ethics of accuracy, fairness and balanced information delivery to the people.



We are at a situation of crisis and I also want to urge our media workers to really make maximum use of the radio stations or news papers to ensure that they have a role to preach messages of peace, love peaceful co-existence, reconciliation and positive developments in the country. Dont concentrate on negatives most of the times, there are good things that can be talked about to change the mindset of the people in our communities Bishop Adeba stressed.



Meanwhile, Yei River State Information Minister, Alfred Kennedy Duku, says the State government is ready to ensure that there is freedom of speech and expression in the State.

The constitution of the country has stipulated very clearly that there is need for freedom of expression and respect for media. For us in the State we will work to respect the rights and freedom of expression but the freedom of speech and expression should not create hate and violence he added.



Alfred noted that the State government will not allow media houses working to creating violence, preaching hate and disuniting communities. The role of the media is also to promote peace and reconciliation but not violence and as a Government we will not allow that to happen he lamented.



Alfred praised media houses and reporters in Yei for working hard towards peace and reconciliation amidst the difficult economic and political challenges. He appeals to the media houses in the area to remain committed to their work and serve the public with accurate information.






Wine Net joins Merchant Vintners

By Lisa Riley

Essex-based wine merchant Wine Net has signed up as a member of Merchant Vintners growing the buying groups members to 20.

Part of Merchant Vintners active search for new members, the latest recruit would extend the groups geographical reach as well as its combined purchasing power, said chairman, James Tanner of Tanners Wines.

The membership gives Wine Net access to Merchant Vintners 2 million worth of UK-held bonded stock at "near shipping prices", with many products available exclusively to the group.

Our membership includes some notable names in the UK wine trade with each having an equal share in the company  the smallest trader stands on par with the bigger companies, said Tanner.

Wine Net is the second recruit in as many years, with a third one in the pipeline, details of which was still under wraps, he added.

We dont have a target membership number as such and were consistently looking for new members who fit with both the groups profile and that of existing members and, for obvious reasons, territorial overlap is avoided as far as possible in the admission of new members and the future expansion plans of existing members are also taken into account, he said.

Members of Merchant Vintners include: Adnams, Davy's Wine Merchants, Frazier's Wine Merchants, Gordon & MacPhail, Grapevine, Gusto Wines, Haynes Hanson & Clark, Heron and Brearley, House of Townend, Lanchester Wines, Laurence Smith & Son, Manor Wines, Portland Wine Company, S.H Jones & Co, Steevenson Wines, Tanners Wines, The Wine Company, Weavers of Nottingham, Wine Net and Wineservice.
This story was updated to include statements from CNN Philippines' one-on-one interview with Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno was not surprised when the House Justice Panel ruled there was probable cause to remove her from office.

Speaking to CNN Philippines just hours after the vote on Thursday, the embattled Chief Justice said the House ruling was "not unexpected."

"I haven't really been keeping track of the numbers, but I knew from the beginning that the numbers were not in my favor and that had been repeated so many times -- countless times, in fact -- by the leadership of the House so it's not unexpected," Sereno said.

She said the Lower House had made the decision "at last," and had tried the case "long enough."

"I have always made the call that if they have any basis to find probable cause, they should forthwith send it to the Senate," she pointed out.

Sereno said this after the House Committee on Justice voted 38-2 that there was probable cause to impeach her.

"Throughout the probable cause hearings, this committee has gathered sufficient evidence to provide us with the ammunition to prosecute this case to its victory," the panel's chairman, Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, said in his opening speech.

Only Representatives Kaka Bag-ao and Kit Belmonte voted against the impeachment complaint which was earlier endorsed by 25 lawmakers.

The committee's five chairpersons will draft the committee report listing the articles of impeachment to be submitted to the House plenary. Members of the committee will meet on March 14 to approve the report.

It took the panel less than a minute to reach a decision after Rep. Doy Leachon moved to dispense with the presentation of the findings, arguing these were already discussed in hearings over the past four months.

The initial plan was for the lawmakers to vote on each charge one by one, Umali told CNN Philippines on Wednesday.

But Rep. Alfredo Garbin pointed out that the rules say the lawmakers should "vote in totality."

As the justice panel was conducting its hearing, Sereno was speaking before members of the Philippine Women Judges Association. The group is chaired by Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, a staunch critic of Sereno who had testified against the Chief Justice in impeachment hearings at the House of Representatives.

Sereno said the justice committee's hearings have been "blatantly unfair" since she was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses through her legal counsel.

She reiterated that she is waiting for the impeachment trial at the Senate.

READ: Sereno: House Justice Committee has been 'blatantly unfair'

If at least one-third of the members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach Sereno, the complaint would go to trial at the Senate.

A two-thirds vote, or 16 out of the 23 senators, is needed to convict Sereno.

Palace happy

For its part, Malacanang said it was elated by the justice panel's decision.

"Patunay na naman po ito na gumagana yung ating mga proseso na nakasaad sa ating Saligang Batas lalo na yung proseso ng impeachmant na proseso para mapanagot yung pinakamaatas na opisyales ng ating bayan," Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a press briefing.

[Translation: "This proves that the processes contained in the Constitution are working, especially the impeachment process where the highest officials of the country are called to task."]

Roque said the Palace will wait for the final decision of the plenary, noting that it could still overturn the panel's decision.

President Rodrigo Duterte denied any hand in Sereno's impeachment case despite previously criticizing the Chief Justice for her supposed lavish lifestyle and undeclared income.

READ: Duterte denies hand in Sereno impeachment

In the impeachment complaint filed by lawyer Larry Gadon, the Chief Justice is accused of betraying public trust when she "attacked" several pronouncements of Duterte - including the declaration of martial law in Mindanao.

Charges against Sereno

Prior to the voting on probable cause, the panel agreed to declassify the results of Sereno's psychological test and all that was discussed in its close-door session on February 27.

READ: House panel declassifies results of Sereno's psychological test, discussion in executive session

Umali earlier said Sereno should be impeached for betraying the public's trust in failing to disclose information on her mental condition. However, Sereno's camp maintained she is psychologically fit, adding that result of a psyhological exam is not a ground for impeachment.

Sereno is also accused of violating the Constitution, corruption, and other high crimes which are valid grounds for impeachment under the Constitution.

Sereno repeatedly denied the allegations and asked for the complaint to be junked.

Umali said the strongest charges against Sereno include failure to submit and discreprancies in her Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs).

Two associate justices earlier told the House committee that Sereno should have been disqualified from running for chief justice because of issues in her SALN.

Sereno was appointed in 2012, replacing the late Chief Justice Renato Corona, the first chief magistrate in the country to be impeached. He was convicted for failing to declare his foreign bank accounts in his SALN.

CNN Philippines' Joyce Ilas contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  The House Committee on Justice on Thursday ruled to declassify the results of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno's psychological test and all that was discussed in its close-door session on February 27.

Rep. Juan Pablo Bondoc moved to make public the information prior to the panel's voting on probable cause in the impeachment complaint against Sereno.

Two committee members initially objected to the motion, but later withdrew.

"The motion is carried and the information is now declassified," House Justice Committee Chairman Reynaldo Umali declared.

He was referring to documents and testimonies related to Sereno's psychiatric test, the same set of results psychiatrists from the Judicial Bar and Council shared with lawmakers in the executive session.

Umali said these can now be used as evidence in an impeachment trial at the Senate.

The panel voted 38-2 on Thursday finding probable cause to impeach the Chief Justice. The committee will meet again on March 14 to approve its report to the plenary.

If at least one-third of the members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach Sereno, the complaint would go to trial at the Senate.

Umali earlier said Sereno should be impeached for betraying the public's trust in failing to disclose information on her mental condition.

READ: Umali: We want to make CJ Sereno's psych test public

In his impeachment complaint, lawyer Larry Gadon claimed Sereno "failed in a psychiatric exam" prior to her appointment by scoring a 4, with 5 as the lowest.

Sereno: We can 'easily debunk' psych test results in Senate

In an exclusive interview with CNN Philippines, Sereno however, brushed off the panel's vote to declassify the test.

"If that is their vote, I have to look at the merits of the idea that they have," she said. "In any case, when we get to the Senate, that can easily be debunked."

She cited a Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP) statement that chided the House Committee on Justice for its "misuse" of the Chief Justice's test results.

PAP said a psychological assessment should only be used for the specific purpose for which it was conducted. It added Sereno could not have flunked "as no one 'passes' or 'fails' a psychological assessment."

READ: Psychologists dispute House justice panel assessment on Sereno's mental health

"They issued a strong statement already explaining the utter lack of basis for the testimonies that were given in the House supposedly trying to analyze me made by someone who's never met me. That throws the whole question of expertise open," said Sereno.

Sereno added her lawyers are still deciding if they will oppose the declassification of the test.

"This seems to tie together to point to a desired outcome, regardless of the evidence, regardless of the basis. The outcome seems to be predetermined," she said.

Sereno's camp has said the score does not mean failure in the test, especially if no troubling psychological conditions were found. They also argued that the performance on such an exam was not an impeachable offense.

"This is nothing but a mere publicity stunt with the intention to humiliate, insult, malign, ridicule and discredit the Chief Justice before the public," Josa Deinla, one of Sereno's spokespersons said in an earlier statement.

READ: Sereno camp to exclude psychological test as evidence in Senate trial
Aloha mai! March 8, 2018

First Crossover is finished and a little over 300 bills crossed from the House to the Senate and vice versa. Hearings for Senate bills are beginning this week! If you have been following legislation in the Senate and feel passionately about it, feel free to reach out to our offices to give us a heads up.

I am happy to share that among the hundreds of bills that crossed over, three bills primarily introduced by a Republican Representative made it. See below for a full list:

COME AND TESTIFY!

Here is an ***UPDATE!*** to the bills introduced by members of our Republican Caucus that crossed over to the Senate:

HB 2631 - RELATING TO THE ELECTRONIC PRESCRIPTION ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

Enhances the electronic prescription accountability system to inform prescribers of the percentile ranking of their opiate prescription practices as compared to their peers. (HB2631 HD1)

Primary Introducer: Representative Lauren Matsumoto (District 45 - Schofield, Mokuleia, Waialua, Kunia, Waipio Acres, Mililani)

HD1 passed third reading and crossed over to the Senate.

HB 1819 - RELATING TO NORTH ROAD

Requires the Department of Transportation to acquire a privately owned portion of North Road and install lighting there. Appropriates funds for the acquisition and lighting. Appropriates funds as a grant-in-aid to the City and County of Honolulu to install lighting on the city-owned portion of North Road. (HB1819 HD1)

Primary Introducer: Representative Bob McDermott (District 40 - Ewa, Ewa Beach, Ewa Gentry, Iroquois Point)

HD1 passed third reading and crossed over to the Senate.

HB 1602 - RELATING TO OPIOIDS

Requires that persons who sell opioid drugs must also provide a label warning of the risks of addiction and death.

Primary Introducer: Representative Cynthia Thielen (District 50 - Kaneohe Bay, Kailua)

HD2 passed third reading and crossed over to the Senate.

GET INVOLVED!

These bill ideas are still alive and need your support in the Senate. Please join us throughout this session by advocating for these ideas. Here is how you can get involved:

Call your Senator and tell them to give these bills a hearing (bill numbers are listed within this email). Come to the legislature and testify or submit testimony online at capitol.hawaii.gov for these measures. Tell your friends and family about it, and get them involved too!

For more information or to stay up-to-date with what's happening at the capitol, please view our website at houseminority.wordpress.com.

We are excited and grateful for this opportunity to serve you. We look forward to seeing you at the hearings, in the halls of the Capitol, and in the community. And if there is anything we can do for you, please reach out to any of our offices. Our contact information can be found on the capitol website. Don't forget to share this with your family and friends! Take care and God bless.

Mahalo,

Andria Tupola

State House Representative, District 43

Minority Leader
Grahn-Laasonen told Uusi Suomi on Wednesday that the matter must be investigated thoroughly.

Sanni Grahn-Laasonen (NCP), the Minister of Education, has urged municipalities in the capital region to come clean about whether or not they have agreed to keep the wages of nursery school teachers in check.

YLE on Monday reported that Espoo, Helsinki and Vantaa have a gentlemans agreement not to compete against each other by offering higher wages to competent nursery school teachers. The Trade Union for Education (OAJ) expressed its dismay with the alleged arrangement, describing it as a cartel formed by the municipalities.

Both OAJ and Grahn-Laasonen also demanded that the veracity of the claims be investigated by Local Government Employers (KT).

We arent involved with the wages, but I believe its important that the stakeholders look into the issue thoroughly and that the labour market organisations hold talks also with a view to making sure that early-childhood education is appreciated. The municipalities have to tell the truth here, commented Grahn-Laasonen.

Finnish nursery school teachers have a monthly base wage of roughly 2,300 euros, which is close to the average in all of Europe.

Mika Kortelainen, a chief researcher at the Government Institute for Economic Research (VATT), on Tuesday drew attention to a comparison indicating that the wages are not only lower than the OECD average but also increase much less with experience than in other OECD countries.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Roni Rekomaa  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
The much-discussed article referenced classified documents to shed light on the staff and operations of the secretive agency based in Tikkakoski, Central Finland.

The National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) has been granted permission to search devices confiscated from Laura Halminen, one of two journalists who wrote about the operations of the Finnish Defence Intelligence Agency (VKoeL) in Helsingin Sanomat last December.

Helsingin Sanomat reports yesterday that the permission to search the confiscated devices for data was granted by the District Court of Helsinki on Wednesday. The permission, the court ruled, was necessary to locate and obtain documents that had likely been leaked illegally to the newspaper.

Halminen has made a complaint about the house search, arguing that it had jeopardised the protection of sources.

The District Court of Helsinki, however, ruled last week that the house search was legal and estimated that there is no reason to believe the seizure has compromised or will compromise the protection of sources.

A total of 19 items  including a laptop, notepad, tablet computer and several flash drives  were confiscated from the home of Halminen in Helsinki on 17 December. The latest ruling enables investigators to search the confiscated items for data under the supervision of a search representative, whose task is to ensure the investigators do not access any data that fall within the scope of the protection of sources.

KRP has opened a pre-trial investigation into a possible disclosure of national secrets in connection with the article published by Helsingin Sanomat.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Timo Jaakonaho  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Hearings at the House Committee on Justice showed Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno did not commit any impeachable offense, two lawmakers said Thursday.

Fifteen hearings which began in November 2017 only revealed cracks in the Supreme Court as some associate justices aired their grievances against Sereno, Representatives Kaka Bag-ao of Dinagat Island and Kit Belmonte of Quezon City said.

"What has been proven so far is that, in the eyes of the members of the Supreme Court who testified and gave statements with the Justice Committee, it is difficult to get along with respondent Chief Justice," the lawmakers said in a joint memorandum submitted to the justice panel, an excerpt of which was uploaded by Belmonte on his Facebook page.

"The testimonies given during the hearings were revealing, but for everything that has been exposed so far against the respondent, not one of these would fall under the definition of an impeachable offense," they added.

Only Bag-ao and Belmonte voted on Thursday against finding probable cause to impeach Sereno. Thirty-eight other lawmakers, however, said Sereno must be impeached.

"Throughout the probable cause hearings, this committee has gathered sufficient evidence to provide us with the ammunition to prosecute this case to its victory," the panel's chairman, Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, said in his opening speech.

It took the panel less than a minute to reach the nearly unanimous decision and the 40 committee members present no longer explained their votes. They stood up to cast their votes for or against ousting Sereno.

The committee's five chairpersons will draft the committee report listing the articles of impeachment to be submitted to the House plenary. Members of the committee will meet on March 14 to approve the report, which will then be sent to the plenary.

If at least one-third of the members of the House of Representatives vote to impeach Sereno, the complaint would go to trial at the Senate.

A two-thirds vote, or 16 out of 23 senators, is needed to convict Sereno.

'Justices should have settled issues instead'

Bag-ao in a Facebook post further said the justices should have settled issues among themselves.

"Napakaraming isyu-na hindi naman talaga impeachable offenses-ang sana'y niresolba na lamang sa maayos na usapan," Bag-ao said.

Translation: "There were many issues  which are really not impeachable offenses  that should have been resolved by talking instead."

As the justice panel was conducting its hearing on Thursday, tension ensued as Sereno crossed paths with Associate Justice Teresita Leonardo-De Castro, one of her harshest critics.

Castro called out Sereno after the embattled Chief Justice discussed efforts to oust her. Castro said Sereno should have not talked about a matter that is pending with the court.

De Castro in a hearing accused Sereno of violating Supreme Court procedures when she tampered with a temporary restraining order, among others. She said her testimony was not driven by emotions, amid the rumored rivalry between her and Sereno.

Thirteen associate justices in a February 27 en banc session asked Sereno to go on an indefinite leave starting March 1. No reasons were given by the high court.

In the impeachment case, Sereno is accused of violating the Constitution, corruption, betrayal of public trust, and other high crimes - grounds for officials to be impeached under the Constitution. She repeatedly denied the allegations and asked for the complaint to be junked.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) filed a tax evasion case against Rappler Holdings Corporation (RHC) on Thursday.

BIR filed the criminal complaint against RHC, its president Maria Ressa, and treasurer James Bitanga before the Department of Justice.

RHC is the parent company of online news site Rappler Incorporated whose primary purpose is to buy and sell real and personal properties, according to the BIR.

In a statement, it said there was "deliberate failure" by RHC to provide correct information in its income tax return and value added tax (VAT) in 2015.

It said RHC bought shares amounting to P19.25 million from Rappler Incorporated and then issued and sold Philippine Depository Receipts (PDRs) worth P181M to two foreign entities.

BIR said no income tax and VAT were paid by RHC in 2015 for the income it gained in the PDR transactions.

"As a consequence of its acts and omissions, the aggregate tax liability of RHC amounted to P133,841,305," BIR said.

Ressa called the complaint "ludicrous."

Rappler insisted it pays taxes accurately, promptly, and diligently.

"This is clear intimidation and harassment. The government is wasting its energy and resources in an attempt to silence reporting that do not please the administration," Ressa said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Embattled Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno said the impeachment proceedings in the House Justice Committee have been "blatantly unfair."

"Considering the (House Justice Committee) has denied me my right to confront and cross-examine the witnesses and resource persons arrayed against me is nothing but blatantly unfair," Sereno said Thursday.

The Chief Justice delivered an inspirational message before members of the Philippine Women Judges Association, which is holding a three-day convention. Among her audience was Supreme Court Associate Justice Teresita de Castro, who testified against her in the House proceedings.

While Sereno was speaking in the forum, the House Justice panel also voted to determine if there is probable cause to impeach the Chief Justice.

Voting 38-2, the lawmakers said the Chief Justice should be removed from office.

Sereno did not attend any of the hearings in the House panel, which ran for more than four months.

During the first probable cause hearing, the committee prohibited the Chief Justice's lawyers to cross-examine witnesses and resource persons.

READ: House panel prohibits Chief Justice's lawyers from participating in impeachment proceeding

The Chief Justice also faces a quo warranto case before the Supreme Court, filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida.

Although she did not mention the quo warranto petition, Sereno said all means to try her other than impeachment is nothing but an admission that her detractors "failed to come up with any evidence with which (she) can be convicted in the Senate."

"Napakaaga naman yata para umamin sila na wala silang napala kundi matinding kabiguan. Kaya kung anu-ano na lamang ang gimik na ginagawa nila masunod lamang ang kanilang nais," Sereno said.

(Translation: It seems early to admit they did not find anything substantial. That's why they are trying anything to achieve what they want.)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Sereno 10 days to respond to the quo warranto case filed by Solicitor General Calida.

READ: SC gives Sereno 10 days to respond to petition to oust her

A quo warranto is a legal proceeding where an individual's right to hold office is challenged.

Sereno reiterated that she is waiting for the impeachment hearing to advance to the Senate.

"This fight is a fight for judicial independence, for the right of every member of the Court to confront her accuser face to face in a trial type proceeding, where all allegations can be challenged, and all lies can be unmasked," Sereno said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno has spoken up after the House vote saying there was probable cause to impeach her.

Speaking to CNN Philippines Senior Anchor Pinky Webb Thursday, Sereno said, the outcome of the hearing seemed "predetermined."

READ: Sereno on House panel vote: I knew the numbers were not in my favor

Members of the House Committe on Justice voted 38-2 against Sereno, saying there was "sufficient evidence" to prosecute her.

RELATED: House justice panel finds probable cause to impeach Sereno

Sereno said she was not surprised by the result.

When asked how she felt about how the House conducted the hearings, Sereno said she lamented her camp not being allowed to cross-examine witnesses, even as Atty. Larry Gadon  the person who lodged an impeachment case against her  showed he had no personal knowledge of the allegations.

"There were already serious perjuries being committed, but still, there was no stop to the proceedings going on," Sereno said.

She added the hearings proved nothing.

The Chief Justice said her only call remains, "Sinimulan nila, wakasan nila. Dalhin na nila sa Senado."

[Translation: They started it, they should end it. They should take it to the Senate.]

READ: Sereno on impeachment defense: We're 'ready to go'

Sereno also said she had to consider the merit behind the declassification of her psychiatric evaluation.

"What is behind it? What do they call confidential or not? In any case...when we get to the Senate, that can easily be debunked," she said.

READ: Sereno: House Justice Committee has been 'blatantly unfair'

She recalled the statement released by the Psychological Association of the Philippines, saying there was "utter lack of basis" for the testimony given in the House by someone who has never met her.

"That throws the whole question of expertise open," Sereno said.

She added, "Ang tingin ko [The way I see it], we have to give occasion to the legal community to weigh in on that. Because we have privacy rights, we have the right of the Judicial and Bar Council, we have the right of whether there will be a misuse of these testing tools, and you have the question of the political motives behind all of this."

Sereno however, demurred from revealing what legal steps her team would make as her impeachment case moves to the Senate.

When asked on the issue of the quo warranto case, her Statement of Assests, Liabilities and Net worth, and whether or not her appointment as Chief Justice was valid, she merely said to wait for the proceedings and let her lawyers do their job.

RELATED: SC gives Sereno 10 days to respond to petition to oust her

"Maraming maling nasabi. Gusto naman namin mag-participate, ayaw nila kaming ipa-participate, e di sige. Kayo na lang muna. You have your day, we will have our day," she said.

[Translation: A lot of wrong this have been said. We wanted to participate, but they did not want us to. Then okay, you can go first. You have your day, we will have our day.]

Duterte involvement?

Sereno's team has said there was a grand conspiracy to oust her from her post, but as to who was behind it, she said she had no idea.

"Your guess is as good as mine," she told Webb.

"The President keeps on disclaiming any knowledge or participation about this whole thing. Then we have to ask where Calida's actions are coming from. Maybe the people themselves should be asking these questions," she said.

RELATED: SolGen: Chief Justice Sereno 'unlawfully holding position'

When asked if she thought President Rodrigo Duterte had a hand in the call for her impeachment, Sereno said, "If he says he has nothing to do with it, then he has nothing to do with it."

She was keeping her opinion on the matter to herself, she said.

RELATED: Duterte denies hand in Sereno impeachment
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8) The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) chief called out President Rodrigo Duterte for ordering the police to ignore investigators of the country's drug war.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also hit Duterte for the "continuous vilification" of Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, who frequently criticized the anti-drug campaign.

"The government has a duty to uphold human rights and to engage with persons appointed by this Council," Al Hussein said at the UNHRC's 37th session. "I am concerned by deepening repression and increasing threats to individuals and groups with independent or dissenting views, including opposition senators, current and former public officials, the Commission on Human Rights, human rights defenders and journalists."

Al Hussein said Duterte's authoritarian approach damages efforts to strengthen the country's rule of law. He also condemned Duterte's remarks against women in the New People's Army.

Duterte earlier warned the police that human rights investigators could "produce lies" out of their statements to cater to "the angle that they would like it to."

READ: Duterte tells police to ignore UN human rights probers of drug war

Meanwhile, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque was quick to respond to Al Hussein's comments, saying government continues to observe human rights.

"Ang sinasabi lang namin, hindi naman po binabalewala ang soberanya pati diyan sa UN Human Rights Council. Kailangan po pumayag ng mga bansa kung nais mag-imbestiga ng mga rapporteurs. Ang hindi po mapatawad natin is si Callamard na pumasok ng Pilipinas uninvited, and made her conclusions na para bagang nag-imbestigasyon siya," he said.

[Translation: What we are saying is, we're not disregarding sovereignty even at the UN Human Rights Council. The country must give permission to rapporteurs before they investigate. We cannot forgive Callamard for entering the Philippines uninvited, and (she) made her conclusions as if she conducted an investigation.]

Roque said Callamard's actions caused government to lose trust in some UN rapporteurs.

"My reply to his excellency, the prince of Jordan is, it's a two-way street. The entire human rights mechanism of the UN is built around sovereignty. It will not work if rapporteurs become untrustworthy as far as sovereign states are concerned," he claimed.

Local and international human rights groups have criticized the administration's drug war since it began in July 2016 when Duterte took over the presidency. Government data show around 4,000 drug suspects were killed in operations, but the groups believe the number are as high as 13,000 - including those killed in vigilante-style executions.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 8)  Women's groups held protests in Intramuros on Thursday in time for the celebration of International Women's day

Hundreds of people, led by militant women's movement Gabriela, converged in the Walled City to protest issues like contractualization.

Three horse-riding women representing modern day versions of revolutionary leader Gabriela Silang led them to Department of Labor and Employment's office in Intramuros.

They called on the government to issue an executive order (EO) that would totally ban "endo"  a practice where workers are repeatedly hired on five-month contracts that fall short of regularization  in the Philippines.

They said the move would ease the burden for poor Filipinos striving to make ends meet as the country's tax reform law increases the prices of some commodities.

Ending contractualization was one of President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign promises. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said in February Duterte is planning to sign an EO banning illegal forms of contractualization by March.

READ: Bello: Duterte promised to sign EO on contractualization by March

In a press release, Gabriela said the rally would mark the start of a week-long countdown until the issuance of an "endo EO" from President Rodrigo Duterte on March 15.

"President Duterte's fulfillment of his election campaign promise to end contractualization is long overdue," Gabriela Metro Manila Chairperson Nora Calubaquib said. "Since the May 2016 polls, we have been waiting for concrete moves of Duterte that will criminalize all forms of contractualization."

Gabriela also said if Duterte was "serious" about ending contractualization, he would start with one of the country's biggest establishments.

Duterte recently said he cannot force businessmen into ending contractualization.

READ: Duterte seeks 'compromise' on contractualization: 'I can't force capitalists'

"Instead of directing his iron fists against progressive groups and individuals critical to his anti-people policies, President Duterte must re-direct his wars against implementers of contractualization and to the system of endo as a whole," Calubaquib said.

READ: Bello: Duterte promised to sign EO on contractualization by March

Calubaquib claimed Duterte "did nothing on endo" for almost two years, and instead just continued to implement "anti-women and anti-people policies."

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello, meanwhile, said they are preparing a draft EO that hopefully will be amenable to both business and labor sectors.

"You need to balance the interest of labor and also the interest of management. Otherwise, kung walang business, there is no employment," he said. "You rely on the department. We will see to it na yung hindi dapat i-outsource dapat gawing regular. At kapag may ginagawang contractual, we will order."

Bello said the President did not change his position, and explained when the president said that he would end contractualization, he meant ending 'illegal' contractualization.

Bello said to totally scrap labor contractualization, the labor code needs to be amended.

Last year, the Labor Department issued Department Order 174, banning labor-only contracting, outsourcing work due to a strike, and the so-called "endo" practice.

Labor groups that were dissatisfied with the order have continued to call for an EO that will end any form of contractualization.
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1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Half Moon Bay, CA (94019)

Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 53F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 53F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.
Page Content

The European Union increased its support for local and regional authorities in Ukraine on 8 March, with the launch of five partnerships between Ukrainian and EU regions and cities. The relationships will see Estonian, German, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Polish communities share their experience in areas identified as priorities by their Ukrainian partners  drawing up economic-development plans, supporting rural areas, helping small and medium-sized enterprises, boosting tourism, and increasing transparency.

The initiative is part of a broader effort by the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) to support the decentralisation of power in Ukraine, a process that began in April 2014 and that has seen a consolidation of local governments, an increase in their funding and the transfer of greater powers to them.

The partnerships will see local officials and experts visit each other's communities to identify objectives, analyse challenges, and implement plans over the course of the next three years or more. Four of the five EU communities involved have representatives in the European Committee of the Regions. Financial support comes from the European Commission, with GIZ, the German development agency, providing day-to-day technical support.

Karl-Heinz Lambertz , the President of the CoR, said: "Local and regional governments are working together to encourage decentralisation and increase capacity-building by providing practical support to communities in Ukraine. These partnerships will help Ukrainian communities emulate the progress of EU towns and regions that have prospered from greater control over local services. Strengthening relations and sharing good policy is in the interests of local communities and will ensure a securer, more prosperous European neighbourhood."

Sergey Chernov , Chairman of Kharkiv Regional Council and President of the Ukrainian Association of Local and Regional Authorities, said: "These partnerships are a very welcome initiative that will help the decentralisation process. Ukrainian communities are gaining more power and funding, but local politicians need very specific support as they learn how to use that power to the best effect for their communities. This is also a show of solidarity by communities  in eastern Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland  that have made a similar journey away from very centralised state management."

The city of Rakvere in Estonia will work with Vesele in southern Ukraine on energy efficiency and sustainable local development, while the Wielkopolska region has teamed up with Kharkiv region in north-eastern Ukraine to assist rural development. Shyroke in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine will be teamed with Barleben from Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, while the western Ukrainian region of Khmelnytskyi has asked Szabolcs Szatmar Bereg County in Hungary to help develop green rural tourism. Zarasai municipality in Lithuania will share its experience of improving transparency and involving local citizens in decision-making processes with Chemerivtsi, a town in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains.

On the same day, representatives from the Ukrainian regions also attended a meeting in Brussels of the Ukraine task-force created by the CoR, at which the keynote speech was given by Vyacheslav Nehoda, Ukraine's First Deputy Minister for Regional Development, Building and Housing. Other speakers included Marc Cools, Vice-President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, Tibor Szanyi MEP, deputy chair of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee, and senior EU officials  including Peter Wagner, Head of the European Commission's Support Group for Ukraine, and Dirk Schuebel, head of the Eastern Partnership division in the European External Action Service.

Notes to the editor:

The European Commission is providing funding through its U-LEAD programme . GIZ, the German development agency, is running the programme on behalf of the EU. Bastian Veigel , GIZ Programme Director of U-LEAD, spoke at the launch of the initiative in Brussels on 8 March.

The European Committee of the Regions created a Ukraine task-force in 2015. Ukrainian local and regional authorities are also represented in CORLEAP , the Conference of the Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership, which was established by the CoR in 2011 to foster contact and collaboration between EU cities and regions and peers in the six members of the EU's Eastern Partnership: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

In 2016, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) launched peer-to-peer partnerships with Libyan cities , including Tripoli, Benghazi, Ghariyan, Tobruk, Sabha, Sirte, Zintan and Zliten. Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign-policy chief, has described the CoR's cooperation with Libyan cities as an example of "city diplomacy at its best", arguing that "municipalities can play a central role in the reconstruction of Libya, and we need [the CoR] to keep engaging with them".

The Mayors for Economic Growth initiative was launched by the European Union in 2017. It offers technical support to local governments in the Eastern Partnership countries  Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia  that wish to develop economic-development plans. The objective is to help municipalities catalyse economic growth at the local level. The CoR has urged local governments in the Eastern Partnership to take the opportunity to access EU expertise and to develop peer-to-peer relationships.

Contact:

Andrew Gardner

Tel. +32 473 843 981

andrew.gardner@cor.europa.eu
A showcase performance of the most outstanding competitors from this years Festival will perform at a celebratory Gala Concert in the National ConcertHall at 7.30pm on 11 April.

ESB Feis Ceoil attracts over 5,000 participants from all over Ireland. The beloved classical music competition run by Feis Ceoil Association has been held annually before Easter in Dublin since 1896.

The musical competitions at Feis are open to everyone to enjoy as an audience member. For a 5 daily ticket, all of the competitions, from opera performances to childrens choirs, are open to the public.

As Irelands premier music competition, the Feis is a rite of passage for so many Irish students, said Laura Gilsenan, CEO of ESB Feis Ceoil.

Our young competitors, along with their teachers and parents, impress us every year and our international adjudicators often remark on the very high standard of our young musicians.

Since 2008, the Feis has worked closely with ESB to innovate and keep the partnership changing and developing, including the development of a new brand identity for the organisation and a number of new competitions introduced over the past decade. This successful collaboration won the Best Long Term Partnership Award at the Allianz Business to Arts Awards in 2016.

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Trevor Walsh, ESB Networks Area Supervisor for Carlow and Kilkenny said, Supporting the next generation of Irish musical talent is important to ESB and we are very proud of our long standing relationship with Feis Ceoil.

"This festival promotes excellence in learning and performance and showcases the very best in Irish talent.

Information is available at www.feisceoil.ie, to help audiences choose which performances they would like to see. Tickets can be bought daily at the RDS Feis venues, accessed through the Anglesea Rd Entrance.
New proposed legislation will make it a separate criminal offence to groom or incite a child to commit a crime.

Fianna Fail Spokesperson on Children & Youth Affairs Anne Rabbitte is bringing forward a new Bill to create a new offence of grooming or inciting a child to commit a crime.

The Criminal Law (Recruitment of Children to Engage in Criminal Activity) Bill 2018, also known as Fagins Law will be introduced in the Dail later today.

Deputy Rabbitte explained, This Bill follows on from a recommendation contained in the tenth report by the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Geoffrey Shannon, who identified a major gap in Irish law, in this area.

"The prevalence of crimes being committed by children is on the rise - with statistics revealing that almost 1 in 10 crimes in Ireland in 2014 were committed by children. There is no doubt that some of these children were groomed or pressured into carrying out these crimes, in some cases by parents, older siblings or other young adults in their communities.

As it stands, while incitement to commit criminal offences is an offence, it can often prove difficult to secure a prosecution in cases involving minors.

"While children must accept personal responsibility, we have to acknowledge that there are unscrupulous individuals who target vulnerable children and coerce them into carrying out crimes. This needs to be tackled.

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A similar Fagins Law was introduced in the Australian state of Victoria and has proved successful.

The government here has failed to act on the recommendations of Mr. Shannon and we are bringing forward our own legislation to address this very serious issue," said Anne Rabbitte.

Given that there is already all-party agreement on the principle of this Bill we are urging Minister Zappone to ensure that the government supports this legislation and facilitates its passage in the coming weeks.

"Too many Bills are getting lost in the bureaucracy of the system, and an issue of this magnitude cannot be allowed to slip off the agenda.
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The President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) has welcomed a European Union plan to provide funding to build urban defences against terrorist attacks, stressing the role of local authorities in both the prevention and fight against violent radicalisation. Speaking in Brussels, he said that strengthening public protection must go hand-in-hand with tackling social exclusion and warned that proposals to cut EU cohesion policy would therefore undermine these efforts.

President Lambertz was speaking during a conference, ' Building urban defences against terrorism: lessons learned from recent attacks ', that took place just 300 metres from the site of one of the terrorist attacks in Brussels on 22 March 2016, the Maalbeek metro station in the heart of the Belgian capital's EU quarter. The conference is one element of the EU's effort to put in place counter-terrorism measures, which includes an initiative to increase the protection of public spaces launched at the end of last year, led by Julian King, the European Commissioner for the Security Union.

Karl-Heinz Lambertz (BE/PES), the President of the EU's assembly of local and regional politicians, welcomed the decision by the European Commission to dedicate specific measures and EU funds for cities to increase protection of public spaces against terrorism. "Community safety is a priority and, by bringing together every level of government, the EU is taking the right steps to counter terrorism," he said. "We need to cooperate across borders, invest locally to promote social cohesion and ensure that our security services are ready to prevent future attacks. This work starts in our communities."



The fund for cities was promoted by the European Commission at the conference, which was co-organised with and hosted by the CoR. Commissioner King, Dimitris Avramopoulos, European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Corina Cretu, European Commissioner for Regional Policy, as well as French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb also took the floor.



President Lambertz said: "It is welcome that the EU is taking action by working together with our cities to protect our streets. Nevertheless, if we want to prevent future tragedies we need to tackle the root causes of radicalism: social exclusion and a lack of community integration. Cutting EU cohesion policy or diverting precious EU funds away from local authorities' pockets would be dangerous and counterproductive. Cohesion policy is not a cash cow, or a cow to be slaughtered to feed other objectives. It is about investing in shared local problems that need European solutions."

Corina Cretu , the European Commissioner for Regional Policy, also addressed the conference. "There is far more to security than security measures," she said. "Security in our cities has a social dimension: access to quality basic services such as education and healthcare, urban regeneration, community empowerment. Also, I truly believe that solutions will be found by working together at all levels, local, national and European, by exchanging experience and good ideas, and by making our cities truly more inclusive in order to tackle extremism and violence before they take roots in our streets."

Bart Somers (BE/ALDE), Mayor of Mechelen, winner of the World Mayors Prize in 2017 for his work on social integration, and the CoR's rapporteur on counter-radicalisation efforts, said: "To counter radicalisation, our Committee advocates a strong line on respecting the rule of law. But local and regional governments also deeply believe in the importance of integration and of upholding fundamental European values. Extremists share a common trait  a sense of alienation. While many others who face social exclusion never become terrorists, they often express their alienation in other ways that harm society, such as rejecting shared values of democracy and the rule of law. A lack of integration is bad for society and potentially dangerous, which is why the EU must act together to invest in social infrastructure."

The CoR is currently drafting a response to the European Commission's action plan to reduce the vulnerability of public spaces. The CoR's rapporteur, Jean-Francois Barnier (FR/ALDE), mayor of Chambon-Feugerolles, said: "In its action plan, the European Commission recognises that we need cooperation between local, regional, national and European authorities to protect public spaces better. That is very welcome. The plan is an invitation to politicians and officials to learn from each other. I believe the plan will not just help reduce the number of terrorist attacks, but will also help to prevent radicalisation and promote more inclusive communities."

In a joint statement, the European Committee of the Regions and European Commission welcomed the initiative of EU local leaders to work together to share knowledge, increase cooperation and the improve security of their public spaces. The statement complements a declaration adopted in Nice in September 2017.

Speakers at the conference included the mayors of Nice,Christian Estrosi, and of Manchester, Andrew Burnham. Both cities have been the targets of major attacks in the past two years.

Notes to editors:

The conference on 'Building urban defences against terrorism: lessons learned from recent attacks' was organised by the European Commission and hosted by the European Committee of the Regions. Over 100 local and regional politicians and municipal officials attended, with speakers from Barcelona, Berlin, London, Nice, Manchester, Marseille, and Stockholm and  from the United States  New York.

The European Committee of the Regions adopted proposals for counter-radicalisation efforts at the local and regional level in June 2016. The opinion  entitled " Combatting Radicalisation and Violent Extremism: Prevention mechanisms at local and regional level "  was drafted by Bart Somers (BE/ALDE). The CoR decided to present proposals two days after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015.

The CoR is currently drafting recommendations for an " Action Plan to support the protection of public spaces " drawn up by the European Commission. The opinion, whose rapporteur is Jean-Francois Barnier (FR/ALDE), will be adopted in July 2018.

Contact:

Andrew Gardner

Tel. +32 473 843 981

andrew.gardner@cor.europa.eu
Translations: Spanish (pdf)

Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that Norway became the first market to implement the New Generation of IATA Settlement Systems (NewGen ISS).

NewGen ISS was adopted by the Passenger Agency Conference (PAConf) in November 2017. It represents the most extensive and ambitious modernization of the IATA Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP) since it was created in 1971 to facilitate the global distribution and settlement of passenger funds between travel agents and airlines. In 2017, the BSP processed $236.3 billion in airline funds with virtually 100% on-time settlement.

"As the first market to implement NewGen ISS, travel agents and airlines in Norway are in the vanguard of a vital transformation to modernize the industry's settlement functions while ensuring the viability of the travel agent shopping channel used by millions of passengers every day. While Norway is a relatively small travel market, it is technologically advanced and has a history of embracing new solutions, making it the ideal environment to go live with NewGen ISS," said Aleks Popovich, IATA's Senior Vice President, Financial and Distribution Services.

NewGen ISS consists of four pillars:



IATA EasyPay - a new voluntary pay-as-you-go e-wallet solution for issuance of airline tickets in the BSP with a low cost per transaction. As a secure form of payment, IATA EasyPay transactions are not part of a travel agent's cash sales at risk. This allows travel agents a means to lower their financial security amounts held with IATA, and to issue transactions which are not included in their BSP Remittance Holding Capacity (below)

a new voluntary pay-as-you-go e-wallet solution for issuance of airline tickets in the BSP with a low cost per transaction. As a secure form of payment, IATA EasyPay transactions are not part of a travel agent's cash sales at risk. This allows travel agents a means to lower their financial security amounts held with IATA, and to issue transactions which are not included in their BSP Remittance Holding Capacity (below) Remittance Holding Capacity (RHC), a risk management framework to enable safer selling and mitigate losses resulting from travel agency defaults. For the majority of travel agents, RHC is calculated based on the average of the three highest reporting periods of the previous 12 months plus 100%. Furthermore, measures are available allowing travel agents to manage their RHC, and to continue selling in a secure manner should their RHC ever be reached, such as with IATA EasyPay.

a risk management framework to enable safer selling and mitigate losses resulting from travel agency defaults. For the majority of travel agents, RHC is calculated based on the average of the three highest reporting periods of the previous 12 months plus 100%. Furthermore, measures are available allowing travel agents to manage their RHC, and to continue selling in a secure manner should their RHC ever be reached, such as with IATA EasyPay. Three levels of travel agent accreditation, offering agents greater flexibility. Travel agents will be able to choose among the model most applicable to their business, as well as to convert across levels as their business evolves. These models are:

GoGlobal Accreditation is a "one-stop-shop" accreditation for agents with operations in multiple BSPs. Multi-Country agents will meet a single global set of requirements and criteria and will be able to accredit all their locations worldwide under a single Passenger Sales Agency Agreement.

a "one-stop-shop" accreditation for agents with operations in multiple BSPs. Multi-Country agents will meet a single global set of requirements and criteria and will be able to accredit all their locations worldwide under a single Passenger Sales Agency Agreement.

GoStandard Accreditation corresponds most closely to the current accreditation, and is for agents operating in a single country. These agents will have access to all the BSP forms of payment: cash, credit card and IATA EasyPay. Initially, all agents in Norway will have GoStandard Accreditation.

corresponds most closely to the current accreditation, and is for agents operating in a single country. These agents will have access to all the BSP forms of payment: cash, credit card and IATA EasyPay. Initially, all agents in Norway will have GoStandard Accreditation.

GoLite Accreditation is a simpler form of accreditation for agents that will ticket only using IATA EasyPay and/or customer credit cards. As there is limited financial risk, the security requirements are minimal.

Global Default Insurance  an optional financial security alternative for travel agents that presents a cost effective and flexible alternative to bank guarantees and other types of security.

Norway will also be the first market to roll out another vital innovation when the Transparency in Payments (TIP) initiative is launched there in April. TIP is an industry initiative focused on providing airlines with increased transparency and control in the collection of their sales through the travel agency channel. At the same time, it will enable travel agents to take advantage of new forms of payment for the remittance of customer funds. No form of remittance is barred by TIP, but travel agents can only use those forms to which an airline has previously given consent. Importantly, if an airline consents, TIP allows travel agents to use their own credit cards - previously not supported in the BSP.



"NewGen ISS go-live in Norway represents the culmination of years of planning, engagement and effort with participants across the air travel value chain, including airlines, travel agents, and IT and system providers. Congratulations to all our partners in Norway who have worked with us to achieve this milestone," Popovich said.



Over the coming weeks, NewGen ISS will be implemented in Finland (16 March), Sweden (19 March), Canada (26 March), Denmark (1 April), Bermuda (9 April), Iceland and Singapore (16 April), with rollout expected to be completed in all BSP markets by Q1 2020.



Aleks Popovich discusses NewGen ISS Go-Live in Norway









For more information, please contact:

Corporate Communications

Tel: +41 22 770 2967

Email: corpcomms@iata.org

Notes for Editors:
McCann School officials presented the regional vocational school district's budget to the Selectmen on Tuesday.

Cheshire Sees McCann Budget for Fiscal 2019

CHESHIRE, Mass.  Cheshire officials offered no objections to McCann Technical School's $9.3 million for fiscal 2019.

Officials of the regional vocational school district presented the budget to the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday before the board's regular meeting. The budget is virtually level-funded at $9,343,958 and the town will be assessed $481,594.

The board heard from Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District Superintendent James Brosnan and School Committee Cheshire representative Bill Craig, who walked the selectmen through the entire budget that will only increase .04 percent.

"We took what the towns told us very seriously about the assessments and  we have worked very hard to reduce the assessments to the towns while still maintaining our level of education," Craig told the selectmen. "I think we did a good job with that."

Brosnan said Cheshire will see a $61,535 increase over last year that can be directly correlated to more Cheshire students going to McCann.

"There was an increase there, but this is really proportionate to the number of students that attend," he said. "More students mean a few more dollars."

Cheshire's enrollment has gone up five students making them the third largest contributor in the district with 49 students.

The selectmen had no substantial concerns with the budget.

"This is a good clean budget," Selectwoman Carol Francesconi said. "Thank you very much for a very good presentation."

Before starting their regularly scheduled meeting, the Selectmen also heard from some of the town's younger residents who asked if it would be possible to build a skate park somewhere on the former Cheshire Elementary School grounds.

Francesconi said she did not know much about skate parks or what it would entail but was not opposed to the idea

"This is not the first time this has been brought before us and we will discuss and see what the feeling is," she said. "We also need to figure out the cost and things like that."

Selectman Edmund St. John IV agreed and said there may be grant opportunities and recommended that they approach North Adams, which recently built a skate park.

"It may be good to ask them what it took and that could provide a blueprint and then we can work towards working something out," he said. "Thank you for bringing it to us."
North Adams School Committee OKs Calendar

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  The North Adams Public Schools haven't completed this year but it does know when the next school year will begin.

The School Committee on Tuesday approved a school calendar for 2018-19 that begins after the Labor Day weekend, with a Sept. 4 start for kindergarten through Grade 8 and Sept. 5 for Grades 9-12. Drury High School graduation is June 6 and the last school day on Friday, June 21.

Teachers will start on Aug. 30 and 31 for professional development; the year will also have seven half-days, including the traditional Nov. 21, the day before Thanksgiving.

Superintendent Barbara Malkas said this model has two more half-days rather than a full-day professional development day because of issues with salary scheduling for some part-timers. They were placed in March since it was one of the few months without a holiday or break.

"This is a long month ... we found that was just a good opportunity to have built-in breaks for our students and staff," she said.

In other business, Malkas also reported on the school district's participation in the state's educator equity plans.

"The goal was to provide equitable access to high-quality educators for subgroup populations such as our economically disadvantaged students or students with disabilities and our English language learners, and students of color," she said.

The data the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education collected showed that students in high-poverty areas were more likely to have inexperienced teachers or teachers with unsatisfactory or needs improvement ratings.

According to DESE, students in high poverty schools were three times more likely to have teachers with "ineffective" evaluations and, on average, twice as many inexperienced teachers (teachers with less than three years in the classroom). Schools with high minority populations also had more than eight times as many teachers teaching outside of their subjects, compared to low minority schools.

"The data was compelling enough for them to say we're going to actually aggregate this data by district and by school so that individual districts and schools can review their own data," Malkas said.

"An initial review of the data shows we're in pretty good stead in most areas but when we broke it down into individual schools, certain schools will need to address the equity plan issues as we go forward in developing district improvement strategies for next year."

The state's developed a risk ratio to compare student subgroups to teachers, based on areas such as use of long-term substitutes, absenteeism and professional status. DESE has set a benchmark of 1.5  schools over that mark will have to submit a plan on how they will address equity concerns.

Malkas said this data being shared by the state will be useful and that the school district will now be able to track absenteeism in real time. "A teacher may be a great educator, but if they're out a lot then the students aren't getting the benefit of their instruction," she said.

The data will be shared with the School Committee after adminstrators take several trainings; Malkas said the state wants to be sure they understand the information before sharing it.

The committee also approved the final agreement with the Northern Berkshire School Union to share the services of Carrie Burnett as business administrator. There were some modifications to the original draft, said Mayor Thomas Bernard, that were hammered about when he and Malkas met with the union's subcommittee.

Among the changes are title (business administrator rather than manager), a change in the salary for this year to denote the later adoption of the contract, and that Burnett will be on the city's insurance, rather than North Adams paying the school union for it. The language also makes clear that the Burnett answers to the two entities only for the responsibilities she as for each.

The decision to share services came after the city had difficulty finding a replacement for longtime manager Nancy Ziter, who retired at the end of last year. The Northern Berkshire School Union is expected to approve the contract on Thursday.

North Adams Public Schools Calendar 2018-2019 by iBerkshires.com on Scribd
Kennebunk Post

Extensive work on the steeple, the Aaron Willard Jr. clock and the weathervane of the 1824 building is complete.
Israels Founding Mothers

The Fellowship | March 8, 2018 Israel's Founding Mothers

On International Womens Day, Stand for Israel celebrates eight inspiring women who helped shape the Jewish state into the thriving nation she is today.

The Prime Minister: Golda Meir (1898-1978)

After immigrating to Israel from the U.S. with her husband Morris in 1921, Meir served Israel in many key positions, including Israels envoy to Moscow, Minister of Labor, and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

After World War II, she traveled around the world to rally support for the establishment of the Jewish state. When she was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, Meir became Israels first and the worlds third woman to hold such an office.

I am also grateful that I live in a country whose people have learned how to go on living in a sea of hatred without hating those who want to destroy them and without abandoning their own vision of peace, she wrote in her 1975 book, My Life. To have learned this is a great art, the prescription for which is not written down anywhere. It is part of our way of life in Israel.

The Poet Laureate: Zelda (1914-1984)

Though her full name is Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, this teacher and prolific poet was widely known simply as Zelda. After moving to Jerusalem from Ukraine with her family when she was 12, Zelda began writing poetry in college, eventually publishing six books of poems.

Though her poems often contained biblical, Talmudic, and liturgical themes, they appealed to a wide readership, who made all of her poetry books bestsellers. One of Zeldas poems, Lkhol Ish Yesh Shem (Each Person Has a Name), is now recited in Israel on every Holocaust Remembrance Day. And in 1984, she passed away on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Supreme Court Justice: Miriam Ben-Porat (1918-2012)

Born Miriam Shinezon in Russia, the youngest of three sisters and four brothers, Miriam lost most of her family to the Holocaust. She moved to what is now Israel by herself after she completed high school, and there she changed her name to Ben-Porat.

Miriam was one of the first women to study law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and she was admitted to the bar in 1945. Soon after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Ben-Porat started working at Israels Ministry of Justice. She served as a judge and president of the district court, and was appointed a permanent justice of the Israeli Supreme Court in 1977, the first woman in Israel appointed to this governing body.

Known for fighting government corruption, Ben-Porat was described by Prime Minister Netanyahu as a trailblazer who sanctified the values of integrity and transparency.

The First Lady of the IDF: Sara Braverman (1918-2013)

Born to a Jewish family in Romania, Sara made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) at a young age and joined the Zionist youth movement. She served in the Palmach, which was the elite branch of the Haganah, the precursor to todays IDF.

During World War II, she was one of only three women in a group of volunteers who parachuted into Nazi-controlled Europe to aid European Jews. The other two women were captured and murdered by the Nazis, but Sara escaped.

Back in the Holy Land, Sara fought in combat during Israels War of Independence. Once the Jewish state won said independence in 1948, Sara established the IDFs Womens Corps. She is still known as the First Lady of the IDF.

The Hero: Hannah Szenes (1921-1944)

Born to a Jewish family in Hungary, Hannah was exposed to anti-Semitism in school, which prompted her to join the Zionist youth movement. In 1939, she immigrated to what was then British Mandate Palestine (now Israel).

After the outbreak of World War II, Hannah joined the British Army and parachuted into Yugoslavia with several other Jewish volunteers. They helped the anti-Nazi forces there and planned to enter Hungary and rescue Jews from being sent to Auschwitz. Tragically, Hannah was arrested at the Hungarian border and was eventually tried as a spy and executed.

Her remains were brought to Israel in 1950 and buried in the cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Hannahs poetry is widely known throughout Israel today, and akibbutz and several streets are named after her.

The Pioneer of Womens Education: Alice Shalvi (1926-present)

Born in Germany, Alice immigrated to Israel in 1949 after completing a degree in social work at the London School of Economics. She became a faculty member in the English department at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned her Ph.D. from the university in 1962.

In 1975, Pelech School for Haredi Girls, the school that two of her daughters attended, faced closure. In order to keep the school from closing, Alice volunteered to run the school on a temporary basis until a replacement could be found. She ended up running the school for 15 years and increasing the student body from 60 to 240 students.

Alice was also the founding director of the Israel Womens Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the status of women in Israel. She has also been lauded for her work regarding women in the Israel Defense Forces, and her contribution to the general acceptance of women in all levels and sections of the army.

The First Lady of Israeli Song: Naomi Shemer (1930-2004)

Born and raised in Israel, Naomi became interested in music at an early age. After studying music in Jerusalem, she went on to teach music, write a musical, and craft a large collection of songs that paid tribute to Israels beautiful landscapes.

Naomis song Yerushalayim shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold), which she wrote in conjunction with the Israel Song Festival just before the 1967 Six-Day War, took on national significance and became a sort of second national anthem as it captured the countrys longing for the reunification of Jerusalem.

With her extensive collection of original songs, Naomi was arguably one of the most-sung Israeli artists from the 1960s to the 1980s. She was awarded the Israel prize in 1983 for her important contribution to Israeli music.

The Major General: Orna Barbivai (1962-present)

A native Israeli, Orna has been in the IDF since 1981. In those years she has held the positions of Chief Adjutant Officer of a Command, Chief Adjutant Officer, head of the Ground Forces manpower section, and head of the Individuals Sector in the Manpower Directorate.

Ornas nomination as the IDFs first female major general in 2011 was a historic moment for Israel  while women had sat on the General Staff before, it was only in the position of IDF spokesperson. Since being nominated to major general, Barbivai has continued to stress the importance of female roles in the IDF.
Imperial Valley News Center

CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture: Leveraging New Tools for Gender Equality

Washington, DC - March 8 is International Womens Day, a day to celebrate the economic, social, cultural, political, and agricultural achievements of women all around the world. This years theme is #PressforProgress, a call to women everywhere to unite against gender inequality.

Women play a critical role in agricultural systems and global food security; according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), women make up 43 percent of the agricultural workforce in developing countries and two-thirds of the worlds 600 million subsistence livestock farmers. Gender inequality, therefore, has a significant impact on global agricultural development. In countries where agriculture is the primary source of income, women are frequently barred from owning land and have restricted access to critical resources like seeds, equipment, and credit. The FAO has found that if women had the same access to land and resources as men, overall food production could increase up to 30 percentenough to feed 150 million of the estimated 815 million people who are suffering from hunger in the world.

While there is significant funding and the political will to address gender inequality in agriculture, a fundamental problem is a lack of data. Recently, the United Nations released an interim report on the progress of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to gender equality, stressing the data gaps that persist. In the SDGs, gender equality is one of the seventeen goals as well as an objective necessary for achieving many of the other goals, including zero hunger. Reliable data is at the center of these development projects and has the power to cast light on the individuals and communities affected by gender inequality.

Innovative tools for large-scale data collection and analytics known as Big Data are providing researchers with unprecedented opportunities to conduct studies and collect and analyze agricultural data. Big Data tools allow researchers to process larger datasets and collect data from new sources like cell phone usage and social media. CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) has developed a new Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, which incorporates Big Data tools into the work of their 15 research centers and 12 research programs to produce actionable insights at a faster pace, a lower cost, and a larger scale. By leveraging the mobile phone revolution, satellite imaging, and meta-analysis of massive social, health, and economic datasets, the Platform can provide creative approaches to research on gender equality in agriculture.

Producing sex-disaggregated data remains a primary challenge for research on gender equality issues. Currently, many major data collection projects do not distinguish between male and female respondents, which would be an effective protocol to significantly increase insights on gender equality. For this reason, the CGIAR Big Data Platform is building a partnership with the CGIAR Gender Research Platform to ensure that gender is embedded into the Big Data collection methods and that the results of these Big Data projects are useful to gender researchers.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is one CGIARs research centers and a co-leader, along with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), of the Big Data Platform as well as a leader in global research on gender equality in agriculture. In 2012, through a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Developments Feed the Future initiative, IFPRI launched the Womens Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to establish a standardized method for measuring gender equality around the world. Dr. Agnes Quisumbing, a Senior Fellow at IFPRI and a researcher on gender and agriculture, has seen the WEAI go from being a limited research method to a valuable tool for data collection. When the WEAI started it was supposed to be used in just the 19 Feed the Future countries in order to monitor womens inclusion in the initiative, Quisumbing says. By 2017, the WEAI had been adopted in 49 different countries by 69 separate organizations. Through the WEAI, researchers in the field of gender equality and agriculture have a unifying methodology for collecting data and implementing programs on this issue.

One of the strengths of the WEAI is its adaptability. The index is composed of five domains of womens empowermentproduction, resources, income, leadership, and timeand it incorporates a gender parity index that measures the relative empowerment of women compared to their male partners within households. The WEAI has many uses. As a diagnostic tool, it can be broken out into its component indicators. The extent of empowerment can be looked at in each domain, and this is useful for designing targeted interventions, says Quisumbing. Big Data tools could be applied to these empowerment domains of the WEAI in ways that can produce more consistent and reliable data.

Time allocation is one of the domains that is seen as particularly challenging for womens empowerment. In many communities, women are expected to be the primary caretakers in addition to their farming responsibilities, and the time allocated for domestic work limits their agricultural productivity. The WEAI measures time allocation using two indicators: hours spent on agricultural and domestic work, and satisfaction with the amount of available leisure time. Researchers could design a voluntary quantitative study in which female farmers directly measure the number of hours they spend working per day using a mobile phone or a wearable sensor, even going so far as to identify whether the activity is related to farming or to domestic work.

In addition to time allocation, land ownership is another major barrier to womens empowerment in agriculture. Due to cultural norms or informal land tenancy agreements, female farmers are often unable to own the land that they are farming. Satellite imagery is a Big Data tool that could be employed to map female land ownership across a region and to produce a meta-analysis that overlays land ownership data with large existing datasets for important health and social indicators. Dr. Jawoo Kim, a co-founder of the Big Data Platform, is a Senior Fellow at IFPRI who specializes in geospatial data and modeling analysis: Remote sensing imagery data from satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used to map the boundary of farm fields and their characteristics, such as crop types and production yield. By linking with sex-disaggregated household-level data, this farm-level geospatial data can provide objective, timely, and rich contextual information across multiple domains. Most importantly, Big Data tools would offer the capacity to conduct such studies at a large scale with massive data through automated, algorithmic analysis. The use of meta-analysis could be a very powerful tool for providing very specific examples of how womens empowerment in agriculture leads to broader societal improvements.

An issue as complex as gender equality is best understood through the lens of human-centered studies on a local level to gain a clear, accurate understanding of cultural norms and perceptions. Previously, this kind of data has been collected through surveys administered to a community person by person. Technology like mobile phones has introduced a new access point for data collection. The question remains, however, whether this technology will improve gender equality or exacerbate the gender divide. This is another reason why sex-disaggregated data is essential to projects related to gender equality and highlights the importance of the partnership between the Big Data Platform and the Gender Research Platform.

With Big Data tools, there are opportunities to develop methods to look at this issue in new, more efficient ways. The CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture is working to methodically incorporate these exciting tools into their research to open up greater possibilities for the future of gender equality in agriculture.
Imperial Valley News Center

Justice Department Files Preemption Lawsuit Against the State of California to Stop Interference with Federal Immigration Authorities

Washington, DC - In a speech to the California Peace Officers' Associations Legislative Day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions today announced that the Justice Department has filed a legal action against the State of California, Governor of California Jerry Brown, and Attorney General of California Xavier Becerra, seeking both declaratory and injunctive relief based upon the enactment and implementation of certain provisions of three California lawsAssembly Bill 450 (AB 450); Senate Bill 54 (SB 54); and Assembly Bill 103 (AB 103)which intentionally obstruct and discriminate against the enforcement of federal immigration law.

The complaint contends that the laws in question are preempted by federal law and impermissibly target the Federal Government, and therefore violate the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. As a result, the Justice Department is seeking to permanently enjoin these state statutes, which are contrary to federal law and interfere with federal immigration authorities ability to carry out their lawful duties. In addition, the Justice Department is continuing to review other related California enactments.

The complaint, accompanying motion for a preliminary injunction, and declarations from Department of Homeland Security and Department of State officialsfiled last evening in the Eastern District of Californiaspell out in detail the extent to which each of these laws have interfered, and will continue to interfere, with federal law enforcement efforts.

AB 450 prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officialsincluding officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts and other enforcement operations. It also requires that private employers notify employees in advance of a potential worksite enforcement inspectiondespite clear federal law that has been on the books for approximately three decades that has no such requirements. An April 22, 2017, report on AB 450 compiled by the California State Assemblys Committee on Judiciary states that the law is designed to frustrate an expected increase in federal immigration enforcement actions. California has demonstrated its intent to enforce this law: on Jan. 18, 2018, California Attorney General Becerra issued a warning to employers in the state that his office would prosecute those who violate [AB 450] by voluntarily cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts. Additionally, failure to comply with AB 450 could result in a fine for the business owner ranging from $2,000-$10,000. California employers are thus caught between what many may feel is a civic duty to cooperate with the enforcement of federal law, and a state government that penalizes such lawful cooperation.

SB 54 restricts state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to federal immigration authorities about the release date of removable criminal aliens who are in their custody. These criminal aliens are subject to removal from the United States under federal immigration law, and SB 54 interferes with federal immigration authorities ability to carry out their responsibilities under federal law. SB 54 also violates 8 USC 1373, a law enacted by Congress, which promotes information sharing related to immigration enforcement. The state law also prohibits the actual transfer of criminal aliens to federal custody, which creates a dangerous operating environment for ICE agents executing arrests in non-custodial settings. In a declaration provided to the Court, ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan states that these at-large arrests. . .unquestionably involve a greater possibility of the use of force or violence by the target . . . and have greater access to weapons, exposing officers, the public, and the alien to greater risk of harm.

Remarkably, with this law California attempts to shield from federal law enforcement removable criminal aliens who have committed crimes in the state of California and across the country. In doing so, California is releasing onto its streets those removable criminal aliens who have already shown a willingness to engage in criminal activityas evidenced by their state or local detention for violating state lawand who therefore are most likely to commit crimes in the future.

AB 103 imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme of the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts. This includes review of immigration processes and the circumstances in which aliens were apprehended, and also requires access to privileged federal records that are under ICEs control. With this law, California is trying to regulate federal immigration detention, which it cannot do under the Constitution. California does not impose such an inspection and review scheme on other similar detention facilities that do not house civil immigration detaineesin other words, this is a special review regime that applies only to facilities that house civil immigration detainees. This different treatment shows that California is seeking to regulate the federal government, which is not permitted under well-established Supreme Court precedent.

The Department of Justice and the Trump Administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you, Attorney General Jeff Sessions today told law enforcement officers attending the California Peace Officers Associations 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day, referencing AB 450, SB 54, and AB 103. We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. And I believe that we are going to win.

Our duty at the Department of Homeland Security is to enforce and uphold the nations security laws as passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the President, said Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen for the Department of Homeland Security. California has chosen to purposefully contradict the will and responsibility of the Congress to protect our homeland. I appreciate the efforts of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice to uphold the rule of law and protect American communities.
Imperial Valley News Center

President Trump at the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit

Washington, DC - Remarks by President Trump at the Latino Coalition Legislative Summit:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you, Hector. Im thrilled to be here with so many of our incredible leaders in the Latino business community. And you folks are good business people. I know that. I know that for a fact. Ive had to compete against you for a long time. (Laughter.) In fact, I said, I want to get out of that; I want to be President. Its easier. (Laughter.)

But I especially want to thank Chairman Hector Barreto for the invitation and for the many years of his leadership on behalf of Americas small businesses. I also want to recognize Secretary Chao whos joining us today. Elaine? Hi, Elaine. (Applause.) Youre doing a fantastic job, by the way. Thank you very much, Elaine.

Most of all, I want to thank all of you, the Latino business leaders, who are living proof that the American Dream is back and stronger than ever.

The Latino community embodies the pioneering spirit of America. Were a nation that loves adventure  and you love adventure  (laughter)  that celebrates risk-taking, and that embraces faith and family as the true center of American life.

As President, I am committed to unleashing the full potential of the Latino community by removing government burdens, by restoring safety and security to our neighborhoods, and by defending Americas interests so that all of our citizens can prosper.

America First is about unity. Its about coming together as one family  one big, beautiful American family  no matter our race, or color, or creed, to protect our jobs, our communities, and our country. We want all Americans to thrive and flourish together.

Our program is working far beyond our wildest expectations. Weve created nearly 3 million jobs since the election. Think of that. Three million jobs. If I would have said that prior to the election, nobody would have believed it. (Applause.) Right? They would not have believed it.

Today we have more Hispanic Americans working than ever before in our history, setting records. New jobless claims have hit a 48-year low last week. (Applause.) And last year, the Hispanic unemployment rate reached the lowest level in history. Congratulations. (Applause.) And Im proud to report Hispanic unemployment has now remained at or below 5 percent for the longest period of time ever recorded. Youre doing very well. (Applause.) Thats good.

Consumer confidence is at an 18-year high. Business confidence is through the roof, with a record number of small business owners saying that now is a good time to expand.

And, by the way, were going to keep your playing field level so that we dont have outside interests coming in and hurting our country, which theyve been doing. Theyve been doing a lot of that over the last 25 years. And were doing a lot of things to stop that. And youre seeing that, actually, already, in the numbers. Thats why these numbers have been so good  or great, I might add.

Latino-owned businesses now make up more than 10 percent of all businesses in the United States, providing jobs for more than 2 million American workers. These businesses contributed nearly half a trillion dollars to our economy last year alone. Latinos are also starting new businesses at three times the national average. Thats pretty good. Three times.

The American economy is coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before. And Latino businesses are helping to lead the way. Youre paving the path.

At the center of Americas resurgence are the massive tax cuts I just signed into law. Now, that is a lot of money in your pockets, no matter where youre coming from. (Applause.) Business or personal, its a lot of money. Its the biggest tax cut and reform in American history. We got no Democrat votes, by the way. Not one. Now theyre all saying, mmm, maybe we should have voted. You notice theyre having second thoughts? Theyre saying, we think we made a big mistake. We didnt get one vote. And at the heart of our plan itself is the tremendous relief for working families and small businesses.

A typical family of four earning $75,000 a year will see an income tax cut of more than $2,000  thats not crumbs  slashing their tax bill in half. We nearly doubled the standard deduction, meaning a married couple will not have to pay one dime of income tax on the first $24,000 that they earn.

We doubled the child tax credit because the most important investment we can make is in our children. That was a big thing.

When I signed the tax cuts just before Christmas, it was like jet fuel for the American economy. Within hours, companies began announcing thousands of new jobs and thousands of dollars each in bonuses to their workers. Over 4 million workers have already received tax cut bonuses, and the number continues to grow every single day.

As a result of our business tax cuts and reforms, the typical family will see their annual household income eventually rise by an average of $4,000 a year.

We have finally given American businesses a level playing field, and youll see more of this in the coming weeks. Were bringing it back. Our jobs have been stolen from us. Our businesses have been taken. Our factories have been closed. Its all coming back.

You saw, two weeks ago, Chrysler announced theyre leaving Mexico and theyre coming back into Michigan, and open up a big plant. (Applause.) We have many plants opening. Many, many plants are opening. Theyre coming back. For a lot of reasons theyre coming back, but one of them is the tax cuts, another is the regulations. But now were able, again, to compete with anyone in the world.

Joining us today are two business leaders who are at the forefront of Americas economic revival. Jeanette Prenger is the president of Ecco Select, a technology staffing business in Kansas City, Missouri. Great place. (Applause.) A lot of people from Kansas City, I noticed. Ive seen a lot of people from Kansas City. A lot of friends there.

Not only is her companys tax bill going down, her sales are going way up as other businesses hire and just, really, are working very hard. Shes filling those jobs for those businesses. And theyre really creating something very special. In fact, Jeanette says her business is experiencing the best quarter in the companys 22-year history. And thats great news for everybody. (Applause.) Congratulations to Jeanette.

Where is Jeanette? Where is Jeanette? Hi, Jeanette. Pretty good, right? Big difference. Big difference. Yep. A lot of people are saying the same thing. Thank you very much, Jeanette.

Adam DeVone is also joining us. Adam is the founder of Benefits Exchange Alliance, an HR consulting firm headquartered in Orange County, California. As a result of tax reform, Adam was able to provide generous five-figure bonuses to every one of his employees. They very much appreciated it. Hes also hired six new workers, and he plans to hire as many as 15 more this year. Adam, wherever you are in this, really, beautiful room, packed with people  Adam, thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you, Adam. Great. Great job. A big difference, Adam. Like day and night?

MR. DEVONE: Day and night.

THE PRESIDENT: Ah, thats great. Thank you, Adam.

And thank you both for investing in your workers and investing in your country. Thank you very much.

In addition to passing a historic tax cut, were also slashing job-killing regulations. And I have friends, great business people; many of them think that the regulation cutting is more important, frankly, than even these big tax cuts.

According to a survey by the National Small Business Association, the average small business spends $83,000 to comply with regulations in just their first year of existence.

Under the Trump administration, we are finally getting government off of your backs and out of your pocketbooks. That is why Im proud to report we have cut more regulations than any administration in the history of our country, and weve only had 12, 13 months now to do it. So, in a short period of time, weve cut more regulations than any administration, whether its 4, or 8, or, in one case, 16 years. Nobody is even close.

And, Elaine, while Im looking at you, maybe you could cut some more because  (laughter)  you know, it would take 17, 20, 21 years to get a roadway built. (Applause.) We want to bring those numbers down to two years, and even one year. And if its not done properly and environmentally good, were not going to approve it. But youre not going to have to wait 20 years to find out whether or not its going to be approved. So I know, Elaine, youre working on it.

In fact, Ive just instructed my whole Cabinet  were going to go for that final 40 percent. And we need some regulation. But you had regulations on top of regulations. You had the same approval to get from four or five different agencies. And it was ridiculous. It was impossible to do business.

One of the reasons were doing so well now is because of the regulation cutting. So, Elaine, youll go and start cutting some more as soon as you get back to the office. Right? (Laughter and applause.) We want to get those roads down to one year instead of two.

And we will cut even more red tape if Congress acts on my infrastructure proposal. You know, we have an infrastructure proposal in front of Congress. The Democrats dont want to approve it because they dont want to give us a victory. They think weve had too many victories. We got a lot victories. Weve had a lot.

And were trying to have a DACA victory for everybody, by the way. And the Democrats are nowhere to be found. Theyre nowhere to be found. (Applause.) Its really terrible. Were ready. You know the expression, Ready, willing, and able. Were ready, willing, and able. They are nowhere to be found.

But also, infrastructure. Also, the people in the administration. We have hundreds of people sitting out there, and theyre obstructionists. They dont want to approve them. So then we get blamed for not having  they are  it is just a terrible thing. Elaine, we have so many people  is that correct?  so many people from other agencies. Your agency gets pretty good treatment, I think.

But I will say that many of the agencies just have so many people out there, including diplomats from, as an example, Germany. Major countries  we have diplomats, they wait in a line because the Democrats dont want to approve them, because they want to obstruct. And thats not good. Its never been like this, ever. Theyve never held them this long. Republicans have never done this to this extent with the Democrats. And Schumer and the Democrats ought to get going because its the wrong thing for our country. Its a very terrible thing.

Ive asked Congress to pass a bill that generates $1.5 trillion on infrastructure and cuts the permitting process from 10 years down to 2 years, or even less. After years of rebuilding other countries  and we have built a lot of countries  its time to start building our country again. (Applause.)

But a wealthy nation must be a safe nation. Protecting the security of our country is my highest duty. Its the most important thing I can do. That is why my administration is committed to securing our border, dismantling dangerous gangs, and stopping the flow of deadly drugs that are just pouring across. Its never been a problem  like over the last three, four years.

And were doing a job, and I will say the Border Patrol and the ICE, and the all of the different people that are working so hard  law enforcement, generally  theyre working so hard on the drug problem. Never been a problem, but many countries are having this problem. But theres never been anything like it in the history of this world, and its destroying peoples lives. So many. And were going to stop it. Every American child, regardless of where they live or what family they come from, should be able to grow up in a safe community.

My administration submitted a balanced and responsible immigration reform plan to Congress. Our plan fully secures the border; provides a permanent solution to DACA, which were really working on; and modernizes our immigration system by ending extended-family migration and the lottery system so we can eventually have a merit-based system where people can come in and work for your companies, work for you, and do a phenomenal job  a phenomenal job. People that love our country and that want to love our country and our people.

These reforms are supported by the vast majority of Latino voters. In fact, more than 8 in 10 Latino voters think immigration to our country should be based on skill, not just a relationship with people you dont even know. This is the mainstream view of all Americans, including Latinos. Yet, the Senate Democrats filibustered our plan because they dont care about the immigration system or reform, and they dont want to solve the problem. They would rather use it to get elected. Thats not working so well.

But we remain committed to immigration reform that protects our country, strengthens our economy, and lifts our workers from poverty to prosperity.

We want every American to know the dignity of work, the pride of a paycheck, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Because when our people are free to live their lives and to follow their hearts, there is nothing  nothing at all  that we cannot achieve.

What we are witnessing now is the rebirth of the American Dream. Everybody in the world is talking about it. It looks a little nasty when you watch the news, or as I sometimes call it, the Fake News. (Laughter.) But everybody in the world is talking about whats happening in the United States. Its really incredible. Best numbers in so many different ways  companies, unemployment. So many records were setting. The whole world is talking about it. And each of you here today, along with millions of hardworking Latinos all across our nation, are making that dream into a reality. Youre really making America great again. A lot of the people in this room are making America great again. (Applause.)

Youre unleashing the American spirit. Youre bringing jobs to American communities. And you are fighting for the American way.

Because you know that America is a nation that thinks big, dreams even bigger, and always reaches for the stars. Youre reaching for the stars. I know so many of you. Youre reaching for the stars; you have been for a long time. And now youre getting there.

Together, we will build great buildings, invent incredible new products, discover amazing new technologies, and blaze bold new trails in science and medicine and the arts. And we will do it all with American skill, American grit, and American pride.

This is our time. This is our moment. Go get DACA. Go push those Democrats. Im telling you. So this is a moment for DACA, for all of us. But this is a very special moment. A lot of tremendous things can happen here. Right now, so many tremendous things can happen if people want them to happen. This is how we are taking care of our people, taking care of our country.

I just want to thank all of you for being here. Having known so many in the room and having respected all of you, I can say that Im very proud of you. And I know youre very proud of our country.

So thank you all very much. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Imperial Valley News Center

Criminal Aliens Set Free by Californias Radical Agenda of Resistance to Federal Law

Washington, DC - Tuesday night, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the State of California to save lives and keep dangerous criminal aliens off our streets. For far too long, California has obstructed Federal law and put the interests of criminal aliens ahead of the well-being of American citizens.

When a foreign national in the United States illegally is arrested on criminal charges, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can issue a detainer, a request that local law enforcement notify ICE before the illegal alien is released from custody. As a Sanctuary State, California refuses to honor these detainers and instead releases criminal aliens back onto the streets.

This policy of mass recalcitrance to lawful Federal authority not only puts innocent and law-abiding Americans at risk, but it also endangers the lives of the rank-and-file law enforcement officers charged with keeping our communities safe.

Below are just a few examples of the dangerous criminal aliens that California has set free, despite the lawful requests of immigration authorities.
Empowering Americans to Innovate

Washington, DC - Since President Trumps inauguration, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has built a robust team of over 50 staff members, including a corps of scientists and engineers, policymakers, and academics to advise the President on science and technology (S&T), support the Presidents agenda, and ensure that S&T efforts across the Executive Branch are effectively coordinated.

OSTP policy advisors are providing expert advice and developing policies on a wide range of topics, including advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, biotechnology, cybersecurity, digital economy, disaster preparedness, healthcare, infectious diseases, information technology, medicine, nanotechnology, nuclear energy, ocean science, quantum information sciences, space and aeronautics, and telecommunications, among others.

The Trump Administration is committed to advancing technological development and conducting research and development (R&D) to ensure national security, grow the economy, create well-paying jobs, and improve the lives of Americans across this great nation. Over the past year, OSTP has led coordinated Administration efforts to promote emerging technologies, empower Americans to innovate, and defend American technologies abroad.

President Trump demonstrated his commitment to the importance of Federal scientific exploration by requesting $151.2 billion for Federal R&D investment in the FY 2018 budget  a 2% increase over FY 2017. Furthermore, the Presidents FY 2018 Budget Request would result in the highest percent of the budget for the conduct of R&D since the FY 2014 Budget Request. In August, OSTP and OMB released the annual Administration R&D budget priorities for FY 2019, advising agencies to prioritize basic and early-stage applied research, the foundation for the development of transformative commercial products and services.

In March 2017, President Trump established the White House Office of American Innovation (OAI) to develop policies and plans that improve government services and launch initiatives focused on innovation. Three months later, OSTP and OAI co-hosted the Administrations Technology Week, bringing top tech executives to the White House for discussions with the President and senior Administration leadership. As part of Technology Week, OSTP hosted the American Leadership in Emerging Technology Summit to work with industry leaders to identify barriers to developing technologies in the United States.

OSTP led the international delegation at the G7 Information and Communications Technology Ministerial in Italy, and has been instrumental in Administration efforts to promote the free flow of data, prevent requirements for data localization, and maintain open markets while standing firm against unfair trade practices. The Trump Administration also signed the first bilateral S&T agreement with the United Kingdom, creating a pathway for collaboration on scientific initiatives that will benefit the nation and the entire world.

OSTP led a robust agenda of interagency coordination activities, convening senior leadership from across the Federal Government to discuss department and agency S&T priorities and set a path for future collaboration through OSTPs leadership of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). In recognition of the cross-cutting nature of policies related to tech transfer, infrastructure utilization, open data, and workforce development, OSTP created a new NSTC Committee on the S&T Enterprise, to be co-chaired by the Directors of the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Undersecretary of Energy for Science.
Corporations and governments around the world increasingly stand accused of causing or failing to prevent the damaging effects of climate change. Test cases are being filed in many countries to establish who is responsible and what action should be taken.

In 2016, after a series of particularly violent typhoons hit the Philippines, a group of Filipino citizens and civil organisations, including Greenpeace, accused 47 corporations of having significantly contributed to climate change, and called for them to be held accountable. Dubbed the Carbon Majors, these included the likes of Shell, BP and Chevron.

The group asked the Philippines Human Rights Commission to investigate the Carbon Majors responsibility for alleged breaches of Filipinos human rights to life, health, food, water, sanitation, adequate housing and self determination that are associated with climate change.

The lions share of emissions have been attributed to the largest oil, gas, coal and cement producers (Shutterstock)

The Carbon Majors petition bases its claims on a study by climate expert Richard Heede, which attributes the lions share of cumulative global CO2 and methane emissions since the industrial revolution to the worlds largest producers of crude oil, natural gas, coal and cement.

Taking on the big guns

In an unprecedented move, in December 2017, the commission agreed to investigate the Carbon Majors petition. Its powers are relatively modest: the commission can only make recommendations to the Filipino authorities and those found to have breached human rights, but it cannot award damages and it has no enforcement powers. Still, its decision could be a game changer for climate change litigation.

In 2005, a group of Inuit petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to assert the United States responsibility for human rights violations associated with climate change in the Arctic. But the petition was dismissed on procedural grounds. So what has changed since then?

In recent years, a long string of United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions has emphasised the role of human rights in tackling climate change. The most recent international climate change treaty  the 2015 Paris agreement  explicitly links human rights and the obligations of climate change law. These developments seem to have emboldened efforts to use human rights law as a means to tackle climate change.

Far from being an isolated complaint, the Carbon Majors petition is part of a global upsurge in climate change litigation. Yet, there are complex legal obstacles to attributing responsibility for breaches of human rights caused by climate change.

First, applicants have to demonstrate that the obligations of corporations encompass human rights violations associated with the adverse effects of climate change. Second, they have to prove that a specific corporation has contributed to climate change, in such a way that amounts to a breach of human rights.

But a balance has to be struck between environmental protection and other legitimate interests, such as providing energy for consumers. However, John Knox, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, has pointed out that this cannot result in unjustified, foreseeable breaches of human rights. He has also suggested that improved scientific knowledge, such as that used to identify the Carbon Majors, has made it easier to trace the links between particular emissions and resulting harm.

Survivors of recent typhoons have joined civil organisations and Greenpeace to launch the campaign (Shutterstock)

A petition for justice

All of these elements come together in the Carbon Majors petition, which concerns harm caused by corporations that was largely foreseeable. Recent research suggests that corporations have long known about climate change and its likely consequences, but have failed to act on it.

So the petition can be likened to groundbreaking litigation for harm caused by smoking tobacco or by driving cars. Before successful court cases were brought, liability for either of these hazardous activities was hard to establish. It was only when courts started to attribute responsibility that victims were provided with redress, and dedicated insurance schemes and liability regimes were created.

The decision of the Philippines Human Rights Commission to investigate the Carbon Majors petition is, then, potentially revolutionary. In 2018, the commission will carry out a series of fact-finding missions and public hearings in the Philippines, London and New York to establish whether multinational corporations can be held responsible for human rights violations associated with climate change and, if so, recommend ways to mitigate them.

Far from being a symbolic gesture, this acknowledgement of multinationals role in causing climate change would be a primer, and could potentially spark a domino effect in climate change litigation elsewhere.

Corporations are already being brought to courts in the US, where the cities of New York and San Francisco are seeking to hold the worlds biggest oil companies responsible for present and future damage caused by climate change.

All eyes are now on the Philippines to see what conclusions its Human Rights Commission will draw; for many, it has already made history by deciding to investigate the Carbon Majors petition in the first place.

Annalisa Savaresi is a lecturer in environmental law and co-director of LLM/MSc environmental policy and governance at the University of Stirling, Ioana Cismas is a senior lecturer at the University of York and Jacques Hartmann is a senior lecturer and director of the LLM in international law and security at the University of Dundee. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)
This year marks a century since the first women in society were given the right to vote in UK elections. Suffrage was granted to females over the age of 30 who were property owners (it wasnt until 1928 that women were able to vote on the same grounds as men).

Many books about the suffragettes plight have followed. Most focus on the famed Pankhursts, but others have delved into the stories of lesser-known activists and the wider impact of their campaign. To mark this years milestone and International Womens Day, weve picked eight of the best.

The below are selected for their insights into the long fight for the vote, their historic detail, or their comment on the broader experience of women since 1918. While some volumes follow only the suffragettes, others celebrate the suffragists: peaceful campaigners who avoided militant tactics but were no less instrumental in the battle. Most are very recent releases, with a couple of older titles included for their sheer staying power.

Deeds Not Words: The Story of Womens Rights, Then And Now by Helen Pankhurst: 25, Sceptre

Penned by Helen Pankhurst, great granddaughter of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst (and granddaughter of Sylvia), this is a frank and unflinching study of the female experience over 100 years.

Divided into six sections (politics, money, identity, violence, culture and power), the volume is concise given the ground covered. It sits somewhere between a reference book on gender issues through the ages, and an impassioned cry for change. Pankhurst celebrates victories  womens rising political profile, increased economic opportunity  but laments the barriers that she feels remain: the continued violence at the hands of men, the objectification of female bodies, and the patriarchal power that still dominates in politics and many work places. Each chapter ends with a score out of five, indicating the progress made under that particular umbrella of social history.

Theres a lengthy list of footnotes, but Pankhursts own word counts for a lot, too. More than the successor of great activists, she is one herself: a doctor of the social sciences and a fierce campaigner for womens rights internationally.

In 300 pages Pankhurst encapsulates just how far women have come since achieving suffrage  but also how much more there is to be done.

Buy now

Rise Up Women!: The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson: 30, Bloomsbury

This near 700-page book is quite a tome, but its exacting history warrants the space. Diane Atkinson, the author of numerous well-received books on women in history, chronicles the militant struggle of the suffragettes in impressive and colourful detail.

In an early chapter, she muses that the campaign was a defiant panorama of first nights, long runs, tragedies, comedies and coup de theatre. And, written as a narrative history, the book succeeds in laying bare the suffragettes toils  but also in celebrating the flair and flamboyance of their controversial campaign.

The plot pushes on chronologically, spending ample time on key moments of the crusade. A moving chapter is that which documents Black Friday: a day in November 1910 when 150 women suffered police brutality during a protest. Generous extracts from the biographies of those women involved bring this and other events into sharp focus, and the black and white photographs throughout add further historic richness. A vivid and meticulous account.

Buy now

Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote by Jane Robinson: 20, Doubleday

While the combative Pankhursts and their cohort made the headlines in the early 1900s, the vote was not won by this handful of women alone. It was the effort of a much greater collective.

In this account, historian and writer Jane Robinson sews together the stories of the suffragists, or non-militant campaigners, most of whom did not find themselves in prison or on a front-page splash.

Robinsons experience as an archivist put her in great stead to bring together this shared biography. She documents the many organisations, the failed petitions, the peaceful protests, and in doing so demonstrates the broad spectrum of women involved in the campaign: factory workers, teachers, mothers, grandmothers, aristocrats, servants.

The narrative thrust is focused on the Great Pilgrimage  a mammoth march of more than 50,000 people, which culminated in a peaceful rally in Londons Hyde Park. Anecdotal and rich in detail, Robinsons account moves effortlessly from suffragist to suffragist, using letters, journals and autobiographies to bring personal histories to life. Its clearly a passion project for Robinson, and she manages to hold a fresh lens to this otherwise well-documented portion of history.

Buy now

Sylvia Pankhurst: Rebellious Suffragette by Shirley Harrison: 9.99, Sapere Books

Once united in their quest for suffrage, the Pankhursts would eventually become estranged. While Christabel remained close to her mother, both Adela and Sylvia went their separate ways. Politically, at least, the gulf was perhaps largest between Sylvia and Emmeline  Sylvia was a staunch socialist and a pacifist who disapproved of her mothers efforts in support of the war.

Rebellious suffragette, then, is a fitting title for her stirring story. The foreword is written by Sylvias son, academic Richard Pankhurst  he muses on what his mother would make of the issues of the day, from the state of the UN, to the British welfare system. The rest of her story is recounted by author Shirley Harrison (whose other biographies include Jack the Ripper and Winnie the Pooh, no less).

The biography spans Sylvias formative years, which were shaped by the socialist movement, her love of art and painting, her apathy towards domestic chores, her fight for Ethiopias independence from Italy, and her birth of a child out of wedlock (much to her mothers abhorrence). Using Sylvias own journals and letters as a reference, Harrison succeeds in bringing her to life.

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Death in Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion: Activist. Arsonist. Suffragette by Fern Riddell: 25, Hodder & Stoughton

The tale this book tells is as explosive as its title. It focuses on the life of Kitty Marion, a militant suffragette and eccentric who made her living as an actor in music halls.

Historian Fern Riddell has said that she became obsessed by Marion when completing her PhD, and her fixation shines through in this dogged record of Marions movements during the battle for suffrage and beyond.

Riddells aim is to showcase the women and events in history that have been deleted by the process of PR and simplified storytelling. Punctuated with liberal extracts from Marions own unpublished autobiography, Riddells vivid prose follows this unsung heroine in her fight for birth control (she was an early founder of Planned Parenthood) and suffrage  but also her controversial bombing and arson campaign. Our heroes are flawed, says Riddell, but we should not distort or dilute their stories.

In this honest, unshrinking story of Marions life, Riddell practices what she preaches.

Pre-order now (released 19 April)

Suffragette: My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst: 7.99, Vintage

A list of this kind would not be complete without a word from the grande dame herself. Here, Emmeline Pankhurst recounts her own tale in 300 pages of staunch, sobering prose.

First published in 1914, its an accessible if not intimate view into the psyche of the best-known suffragette in history. This latest reprint (2015) is fronted by a pensive Carey Mulligan, who stars in the 2015 film Suffragette, inspired by this autobiography.

Pankhurst starts from the beginning. She writes early on of her frustration at her brothers education being valued more than her own, and her fathers wish that she was born a boy. The account stretches up to 1914, still four years short of suffrage for women, as she covers such ordeals as force feeding passionately yet plainly. Had I remained there much longer, I should have been a dead woman, she says of one stint in prison in 1913. The finished product rests somewhere between a gripping novel and a painstaking historical record. No view of the suffragette story is complete without this comprehensive puzzle piece.

Buy now

Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary Talbot, Kate Charlesworth, Bryan Talbot: 18.99, Jonathan Cape

This book has been on our shelves since 2014, but it warrants a place on this list for its ingenuity. A graphic novel, it follows the story of its namesake, a fictional servant girl who finds herself swept up in the full furore of the suffragette campaign. A seamless blend of historical fact and fiction, the novel allows both the Pankhursts and the Pethick-Lawrences (a married couple who were key players in the appeal for suffrage) starring roles.

The illustrations are full of energy and expression, black and white for the most part but with carefully placed pops of purple and green, and orange for the protagonists fiery ginger hair. To continue its historical clout, the book finishes with a timeline relating to womens suffrage and other significant milestones, as well as notes that breathe further real-life significance into moments of the plot.

Its a collaboration between writer and scholar Mary Talbot, and talented artists and cartoonists Bryan Talbot and Kate Charlesworth.

Buy now

The Century Girls: The Final Word from the Women Whove Lived the Past Hundred Years of British History by Tessa Dunlop: 20, Simon & Schuster

This book does not follow the troubles and triumphs of the Pankhursts, but it is intrinsically linked to their plight. The leading ladies here are six special women, each of whom were born towards the end, or in the immediate wake, of the suffrage campaign.

Historian and broadcaster Tessa Dunlop (best known for her work on the BBC) made pains to select women from broad walks of life, and succeeds in weaving a rich tapestry of experiences. Ann, Olive, Helena, Phyllis, Joyce and Edna all reflect on their long lives and the changing lot of women over time. Dunlops line-up runs the gamut from a Lincolnshire lass and servant girl (Edna), to a Cambridge fellow born into relative privilege (Joyce).

But despite their differences these women share a common stoicism and charm. References to the suffragettes are laced throughout: Londoner Ann called her childhood doll Panky after her suffragette neighbour, while Joyce remembers her mother sobbing as she voted for the very first time.

Dunlop is playful and probing in her questioning, covering everything from sex and relationships to feminism  and its clear she formed a lasting friendship with each of the women interviewed.

Buy now

The Verdict: Suffragette books

For a blanket history of the suffragette movement, Diane Atkinsons Rise Up, Women! should be your pick. This hefty volume leaves few stones unturned, chronicling the campaign in scrupulous detail. But for a broader perspective that captures not only the drive for suffrage itself but its impact on todays society and the broader experience of women since, Helen Pankhursts Deeds not Words truly delivers. Youll lay the book down feeling not only informed, but galvanised to take action yourself.

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Brexit has focussed attention  almost obsessively  on several ongoing dramas: on the negotiations between the UK and the EU; on the shifting balance of power within the Cabinet; and on the UK Parliaments role in the process of leaving the EU.

But London and Brussels, where these stories play out, are only a part of the story. Britains decision to leave the EU is already unsettling and altering the nature of the United Kingdom itself.

Theresa Mays recent Mansion House speech put the dilemmas this creates front and centre. The Prime Minister argued that any Brexit deal must strengthen the union of nations. It must also, she insisted, benefit, and gain the support of, coastal towns and large cities with divergent views on the EU. Yet relatively little attention has been paid, however, to what this means in practice.

In a new report, a number of leading scholars have attempted to understand what Brexit might mean for the future of what Tony Travers neatly describes as this unitary state with some devolved parts. How will different parts of the UK be affected? And, where will powers and competences returned from the EU ultimately land?

These questions are crucial. After all, the Brexit vote has disturbed the devolution settlement. Politics in Northern Ireland have been roiled by the Brexit vote and its aftermath. The referendum triggered a (brief) revival of interest in a second Scottish independence referendum.

There was of course some discussion during the referendum campaign about the potential implications for the unity of the UK. In the weeks prior to the vote, for instance, Tony Blair and John Major, campaigning together in Northern Ireland, warned that a vote to Leave might have a destabilising effect not only in Stormont, but also in Scotland.

Subsequently, however, these debates have become more urgent. Discussions over the future relationship of Northern Ireland both with the Republic of Ireland and with the rest of the UK have of course featured prominently in press coverage of late. Brexit has fed directly into the sectarian divide, further disrupting a settlement already under pressure.

There is stalemate between London and Brussels on this. Brussels is anxious to secure agreement on a fall-back position under which Northern Ireland remains in the customs union and parts of the single market as part of the withdrawal agreement. The UK Government, for its part, wants the matter to be resolved as part of the trade talks.

And the issues are not confined to Ireland. Following the publication of the Withdrawal Bill, the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused the UK government of attempting a naked power grab. My colleague Roger Awan-Scully notes similar irritation in Wales. While the Welsh Government saw Brexit as a way of strengthening devolved powers, it too has come to focus on fighting a rear-guard action against what it sees as Londons attempt to snatch powers back for itself.

Last week, David Lidington set out how the UK government planned to address these criticisms while preserving the integrity of the UKs own single market. The swift rejection of his arguments by the Welsh and Scottish governments bore eloquent testimony to the problems inherent in squaring the objectives of Westminster with those of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Stormont.

And all this is of immediate political relevance, given the Governments need to secure legislative consent for the Withdrawal Bill and its reliance on the DUP. Solving the various Brexit-related dilemmas will require both ingenuity and trust. Both, however, seem to be in short supply at the moment.

Meanwhile, new political voices have joined the debate. The newly elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, claimed that Brexit should lead to greater devolution to cities and regions across the UK. Inequality, and the inability of London to provide adequately for the rest of the country, were, he argued, key drivers of the Brexit vote. Moreover, with the Westminster system grinding to a halt under the weight of Brexit, it was less able than ever to govern effectively. Tony Travers puts it somewhat differently, arguing that, with central government preoccupied with negotiating Brexit and trade deals around the world, devolution might offer an opportunity for the Government to lighten its load in order to focus on the primary task at hand.

Research from the Centre for Towns underlines how we are increasingly divided not only by nationality but also geography. Towns and cities are increasingly populated by different kinds of people, the former tending to be older and less well educated. This has increasingly translated into political divisions, as illustrated by the way areas that have experienced relative decline in recent decades voted Leave.

Meanwhile, Andrew Carter notes that, even were it not for Brexit, the economy would still face significant problems. Fifty out of 62 British cities lagged behind the national productivity average even in 2015. Leaving the EU will compound these problems, as cities are highly dependent on trade with the EU.

Yet, while the more vibrant cities will initially be the worst hit, Carter points out that they are also perhaps best placed to respond. Chloe Billing and others reinforce this point, arguing that those regions that voted Leave are more dependent on EU markets for their prosperity. The response, they argue, should be an industrial strategy that empowers cities. Yet, the Governments instinctive reaction has been to centralise.

Leaving the European Union brings these socio-economic and constitutional issues into sharp focus. We need to be realistic about the fact that these are long-term problems, requiring long-term solutions. Yet they need immediate and sustained attention. Whatever the outcome of Brexit in terms of UK-EU relations, the UK must find a stable equilibrium for its own internal governance structures.

Anand Menon is the director The UK in a Changing Europe and professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs, Kings College London
The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will present the UK Governments first Spring Statement at 12.30pm on Tuesday 13 March.

But what is this event? Whats the logic behind it?

And what should we look out for?

What is a Spring Statement?

In November 2016 Mr Hammond, shortly after he was appointed Chancellor, dramatically announced the abolition of the long tradition of the Government holding the annual Budget in March.

He said that the Budget would instead be held in the Autumn, around the time that the Autumn Statement, the second fiscal event of the year, is currently held.

The Autumn Statement would be scrapped and the Autumn Budget would be the one and only major fiscal event of the year.

However, under the law, the Governments fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, is mandated to produce two forecasts for borrowing and growth a year, which has meant one in the Spring and one in the Autumn.

So, rather than trying to change the law, the Government has decided to allow the OBR to continue to update its forecasts in March and has said it will respond to those forecasts in this Spring Statement.

What will be in it?

No much, is the steer from the Treasury. No tax changes. No spending announcements. Perhaps the launch of some consultations on addressing long-term fiscal challenges. But it will mainly be a response to the new fiscal and economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Independents political editor has learned that Mr Hammonds Commons speech might last only 15 minutes.

Compare that with the 60 minutes plus that Chancellors Budget speeches generally take.

However, the OBRs forecasts, still promise to be interesting because they are likely to show a downward revision of borrowing forecasts  possibly up to 11bn according to City of London analysts  as tax revenues this year have held up much better than previously expected.

This is likely to create political pressure for the Chancellor to spend some of this windfall on our creaking public services.

The OBR document will also, for the first time, include an estimate of the annual cost of the post-2019 Brexit divorce payments to the EU agreed, in principle, by the Prime Minister in December.

These have been previously estimated by the Government as summing to between 35-39bn in total.

Is this Budget reform a good idea?

No other major economy makes hundreds of tax changes twice a year, and neither should we, said the Chancellor when he unveiled the plan.

Public finance experts agree.

In fact, they recommended the reform.

Luminaries from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Institute for Government and the Chartered Institute of Taxation wrote to the Chancellor in September 2016 arguing that moving to just one fiscal event a year should reduce the frequency of new significant changes of direction, release resource for better consultation, produce higher quality legislation and more effective implementation, and make life simpler for taxpayers.

The Chancellor delivered on their proposal just two months later in the 2016 Autumn Statement.

The Autumn Statement was originally supposed to be a relatively minor fiscal event, but ballooned as successive Chancellors couldnt resist the temptation to tinker, mainly for political reasons rather than good economic or fiscal ones.

The question is whether ministerial discipline will hold and the Spring Statement will remain just a basic fiscal update  or whether it too will bloat, taking us back to square one.

The Treasury says, perhaps ominously, that it will retain the option to make changes to fiscal policy at the Spring Statement if the economic circumstances require it.
John McDonnell has criticised the Chancellor for appearing to favour the City of London over the rest of the economy in Brexit negotiations.

The Chancellor Philip Hammond has made it clear that, far from seeking a deal that works for all, there is one part of the economy that he wants to prioritise, Mr McDonnell said in a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce on Thursday.

We are not cherry-picking favourite sectors of the economy for a special deal, we want a deal that works for every business, every sector, the Shadow Chancellor said, adding that the Conservatives were taking exactly the opposite approach.

Recommended Euroclear confirms headquarters move from London to Brussels

Mr Hammond told European leaders on Wednesday that it was in the UK and the EUs mutual interest to include financial services in a Brexit trade deal.

Mr McDonnell said the Chancellor had finally shown his hand in Wednesday's speech.

It is now clear that the Governments priorities are to win a deal for the financial services first, and then worry about the rest of the economy later, he said.

There is no other reason to raise a specific deal for financial services... while refusing to negotiate a new customs union that would protect our manufacturing trade, he added.

The time of offering special privileges has long past.

Mr McDonnell said the Chancellor had also been wrong to raise Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP - the defunct deal between the EU and the US - as a potential model for what could be attained in the Brexit negotiations.

He said: Not only did [TTIP] include additional deregulation of the banks, just years after the financial crash, it included investor-state dispute resolution.

This type of system allows firms to take legal action against governments if they believe their rights have been infringed. Mr McDonnell said that introducing such a mechanism would allow businesses and financiers to strike down government policy.

That would leave it to businesses, not parliaments, to decide what would be allowed and what would not, Mr McDonnell said.

We want a financial system that works for the people and the wider economy, not only, as has often been the case in the past, for the benefit of a small group at the top of that industry.

It means making finance the servant not the master of the economy.

He said the Government should spend less time tending to the needs of rentiers and speculators and more on those who work in and run businesses

It comes after Mr Hammond stressed the importance of a deal with the EU on the UKs financial sector in a speech to European leaders on Wednesday.

I am clear not only that it is possible to include financial services within a trade deal but that it is very much in our mutual interest to do so, Mr Hammond said.

European Council president Donald Tusk swiftly rejected the idea. No member state is free to pick only those sectors of the internal market they like, or to accept the role of the ECJ only when it suits their interest, Mr Tusk said, shortly after the Chancellors comments.

Financial services contribute 124bn a year to the UK economy, according to the latest government figures. Many banks and other financial firms have already been forced to relocate some staff to the EU due to uncertainty about whether they will be able to serve their clients from London once Britain leaves the trading bloc.
Matthew Taylor, the leader of an independent review into the gig economy, has rated the Governments response to his proposals at just four out of 10.

Mr Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, said the Government had at least acknowledged there should be limits to flexibility in working arrangements but said more needed to be done.

He told the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference on Thursday that flexibility had been the single mantra on labour markets for successive governments but he said there were indications that this was changing.

Referring to the Governments response to his review of modern work, Mr Taylor said: There is a recognition that flexibility has to be balanced with other objectives like social inclusion, social justice and fiscal sustainability.

Thats the important moment; that we move away from [the idea that] all flexibility is great and it doesnt involve any trade-offs.

He added: In terms of my review, I would give the Government four out of 10 on their response so far.

He said the low score was partly because the Government was consulting on a whole host of other issues.

Hopefully, if those consultations are productive, that [score] may move up to seven or eight, he said.

He said it was also important for the Government to recognise that it is responsible for the quality as well as the quantity of work.

Mr Taylor added that reform of the labour market would help to raise the UKs low productivity.

Prime Minister Theresa May laid out the Governments response to the Taylor reviews findings last month. She promised millions of workers, including those in the gig economy, better holiday and sick pay rights and stronger contracts.

Ms May also pledged a crackdown on firms using unpaid interns, and to hike fines on companies if they mistreat staff.

The Institute of Directors branded it the biggest shake-up of employment law in generations, but unions gave it a frosty reception and Labour said it did not go far enough.

The Government commissioned the Taylor review to explore Britains changing labour market and how workers rights could be better protected.

When the review was published in July, Unite, the countrys largest union, said it had spectacularly failed to deliver on its promise to tackle the problem of insecure work. The GMB union described the review as a disappointing missed opportunity.
The chairwoman of one of the UKs leading business groups is reported to have stepped down in response to allegations of serious misconduct.

Several news outlets reported that an investigation had been conducted into Lady Barbara Judge, chairwoman of the influential Institute of Directors (IoD), following allegations raised by a whistleblower.

The Times reported that Lady Judges alleged misconduct includes making racist and sexist slurs and bullying other IoD staff members.

The IoD is known as a promoter of good corporate governance practices and frequently criticises and calls out other organisations and companies for falling short in this area.

Citing an email from one board director, Sky News reported that the investigation into complaints against Lady Judge, conducted by law firm Hill Dickinson, is estimated to have cost more than 60,000.

The broadcaster also reported that the investigation had concluded that the chairwoman had sought to appoint close allies to the IoD board and had used her role to further her own external commercial interests.

She is reported to have instructed the City law firm Addleshaw Goddard to represent her.

A spokesman for the IoD said: Our HR department was made aware of a number of allegations from staff members concerning the conduct of non-executive members of our board.

Senior independent council member Dame Joan Stringer commissioned a full investigation into the allegations which was carried out by independent experts from the Hill Dickinson law firm.

The spokesman added that a detailed report and findings would be discussed by members of the IoD council on Thursday afternoon.

The chairwoman was awarded a CBE in the Queens Birthday Honours in 2010 for services to the nuclear and financial services industries. In the same year, she was also named in BBC Radio 4s Womans Hour 100 Most Powerful Women list.

She has served as chairwoman of the Pension Protection Fund and became the first female chair of the IoD in 2015.
Local councils have seen their central government funding halved in the era of austerity and are now on the verge of financial breaking point, according to a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO).

Parliaments official spending watchdog said that, even as grants have been slashed as part of the Governments drive to eradicate the deficit since 2010, demand for councils services, particularly adult social care, has continued to rise, putting them under extreme pressure.

Councils have been forced to dip into their financial reserves to fund their care commitments and the NAO estimates that if local authorities keep draining their savings at the current rate one in 10 will have exhausted them in just three years time.

The financial pressure on local authorities has been much publicised, but the NAO report lays out in detail how they have been forced to slash valued local services in response to central cuts.

Relative to 2010, more than a third fewer households have a weekly waste collection and the number of libraries has fallen by more than 10 per cent.

Grants from central government to councils have been reduced by 49.1 per cent in real terms over the period 2010-11 to 2017-18, making local authorities the most squeezed of all areas of state activity under the austerity programme of former Chancellor George Osborne.

The spending power of councils has been supported somewhat by increases in council tax and other forms of revenue, but even this has fallen by a still daunting 28.6 per cent over the past seven years.

For the first three years of austerity, councils managed to spend considerably less than their diminishing income, building up their financial reserves. But that changed in 2015-16, when they started to eat into those savings to finance current expenditure.

Reserves fell by 1.5bn in 2016-17 to 23bn.

These trends are not financially sustainable over the medium term, the NAO stated.

Northamptonshire County Council was forced to put itself in what amounts to special financial measures in February, indicating to central government that it was at risk of breaking the law by spending more than its income.

Coalition and Conservative ministers have been accused of deliberately devolving the pain of austerity onto local councils to disassociate them from its impact.

In 2015, former Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to the leader of Oxfordshire County Council (which covered his own constituency) to complain about cuts to elderly day centres, museums and libraries, saying that the authority should be making back-office savings instead.

The councils leader wrote back to Mr Cameron pointing out that its government grants had fallen by 37 per cent since 2009.

However, other research has shown that councils in the poorest areas of the UK have actually borne the largest proportional cuts since 2010, since they were more reliant on central government grants.

Recommended The Government has bled local councils dry of funds

According to the NAO, the estimated number of people aged 65 and over in need of care increased by 14.3 per cent between 2010 and 2016, reflecting the ageing profile of the UK population.

But even with many resources being switched from other areas to social care, the total council spend on it still fell 3 per cent over that period, indicating that many older people are simply being denied the care they need by councils.

The number of children being looked after also grew by 10.9 per cent over the six years, another source of pressure on council budgets.

Despite some short-term cash injections for social care from the Treasury in recent years and an agreement that councils will in future be able to retain 75 per cent of their local business rates (rather than having to pass it on to the government), the NAO said the finances of local authorities were in serious jeopardy.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA UK news in pictures 31 July 2021 James Guy, Adam Peaty and Kathleen Dawson celebrate winning the gold medal in the mixed 4x100m medley relay final at the Tokyo Olympics AP UK news in pictures 30 July 2021 Great Britain's Bethany Shriever and Kye Whyte celebrate their Gold and Silver medals respectively for the Cycling BMX Racing at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the seventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 29 July 2021 Team GB's Mallory Franklin during the Womens Canoe Slalom Final on day six of the Tokyo Olympic Games. 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Current funding for local authorities is characterised by one-off and short-term fixes, many of which come with centrally driven conditions, said Amyas Morse, head of the NAO.

This restricts the capacity of local authorities and yet the weight of responsibility to respond to increased demand and maintain services remains very much on their shoulders.

In 2010-11, English councils were spending 23.2bn on adult social care and 21.2bn on other services in todays money. By 2016-17, that had fallen to 22.5bn and 14.8bn respectively.
The ethics watchdog for Norways $1-trillion sovereign wealth may blacklist more companies that produce too much greenhouse gas by scrutinising more industry sectors, including shipping and power.

Carbon emissions became a criteria for exclusion from the fund in 2016 and last year the watchdog recommended that a small handful of firms be excluded from the fund for producing too much greenhouse gas emissions in either the oil, cement and steel industries.

Those recommendations are currently under review with the board of the central bank, which oversees the fund, and a public announcement is expected soon, the banks governor told Reuters on 27 February.

Johan Andresen, chair of the funds publicly appointed Council on Ethics, said the watchdog would look at more firms in the energy, steel and concrete industries and add more sectors, including shipping and power producers.

Speaking in an interview ahead of publication of the councils annual report on Thursday, he said: I expect there will be more companies recommended for exclusions based on the climate criteria.

Shipping and power producers are among the sectors we may be looking at.

The worlds largest sovereign wealth fund was created from the proceeds of Norways oil industry and operates under ethical guidelines set by parliament.

It owns shares in 9,100 companies, 1.4 per cent of the worlds listed equity, so its decisions to drop or reinstate companies from its investments carry considerable weight among investors.

Mr Andresen said a company that is a big emitter of climate gases must show what plans it has to cut emissions by 2030 to remain in the funds portfolio, revealing for the first time what factors the watchdog takes into account.

If they are very big emitters of greenhouse gas on an aggregate level and they are worst in class, they will really have to move, said the 56-year-old Norwegian, who also owns private investment vehicle Ferd.

They will need to have very credible plans to reduce emissions, that they have said they are going to do, not only to us, but to their shareholders.

The fund itself has proposed dropping oil and gas stocks from its benchmark index which, if accepted, would mean the fund would cut stakes in oil and gas companies over time.

The proposal is currently under review at Norways finance ministry and will be voted on by parliament at a later date. Even if it goes ahead, the ethics watchdog will still have plenty of high polluters to examine.

It would reduce the number of suspects we are looking at, but I dont think we will be out of work, said Mr Andresen. He declined to name specific companies.

CORRUPTION WATCH LIST

The fund has also been looking at blacklisting companies because of corruption risks. One is Brazils Petroleo Brasileiro which is on a watch list for possible exclusion in the future if the ethics watchdog deems there is a risk of corruption.

In January, state-controlled Petrobras agreed to pay $2.95bn to settle a US class action corruption lawsuit.

The fund held a 0.68 per cent stake in Petrobras worth $436m at end-2017, according to fund data.

Andresen said that while there were parts of Petrobras that were trying to change their practice to a more sustainable one, an inherent challenge was the practice of changing Petrobras board members whenever a new government came to power.

It is going to take some time for state-controlled companies to understand that they must adhere to these compliance practices which minority shareholders, or other shareholders, expect and which is the basis for which they are listed, he said.

The watchdog has an ongoing evaluation under the watch list scheme, he said. We will just have to decide what kind of risk that entails and whether it makes it (Petrobras) more or less likely to be engaged in gross corruption in the future.

HUMAN RIGHTS

The funds ethics procedure was launched at the start of the millennium and 73 companies are presently excluded on recommendations by the Council on Ethics, on various grounds.

Another 69 companies are excluded directly by the central bank based on their dependence on thermal coal.

The fund gradually sells shares in any company it wishes to drop, before any announcement is made. The main aim is to remove the ethical risk.

The fund is forbidden by law from investing in companies that produce nuclear weapons or landmines, or are involved in human rights violations, among other criteria.

This year, Mr Andresen said the ethics panel would definitely make a recommendation for exclusion due to the risk of corruption and was working actively on recommending exclusions regarding human rights violations in the textile industry in Asia.

He also anticipated there could be more recommendations against shipping companies for the practice of beaching  running old vessels aground to be picked apart by manual labour. The fund excluded four shippers on these grounds in January.

Reuters
A federal appeals court has ruled in favour of 21 teenagers suing the US government for its energy and climate change policies.

The case, Juliana v. United States, will now be able to go to trial as President Donald Trumps administration is expected to try and get the Supreme Court to throw out the case.

The lawsuit alleges that decades of US energy policy takes away the childrens Constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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The complaint claimed that US energy policy over the last 50 years in promoting the use of fossil fuels and becoming one of the worlds largest polluters has put these young peoples lives in jeopardy now and spoiled the environment for future generations.

But, the new federal appeals court ruling defeated the current US Department of Justices request that the case be thrown out on the basis that it is based on utterly unprecedented legal theories.

The Trump administration also argued that its unreasonable to delve into unbounded research into the executive branch dating back to the Lyndon Johnson presidency, as Bloomberg News reported.

Mr Trump himself has repeatedly called climate change a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese.

The case, supported by Our Childrens Trust legal organisation in Eugene, Oregon, was first fought by former President Barack Obamas administration in 2016.

Julia Olson, the attorney representing the group of teenagers, told The Independent that though Mr Obama acknowledged climate science and that we are in a dangerous situation, but his actions did not match his speeches.

 Emmanuel Macron takes a swipe at Donald Trump over climate change

She said that the administration promoted and supported fossil fuels as much as George W. Bush before him. His signature climate policy, the Clean Power Plan (CPP) would have replaced coal with natural gas and basically flatlined US emissions through 2040 according to the US Department of Energys projections, leading to climate catastrophe.

The Trump administrations Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt made it his mission to dismantle the CPP, legislation meant to address the fact that power plants account for almost 40 per cent of the countrys emissions.

If left in place, the CPP would have reduced power plants carbon emissions by 2030 to a level 32 per cent lower than they were in 2005.

But now, Ms Olson said they have the green light for trial, adding that the group will request a trial date later this year.

US District Judge Ann Aiken is now deciding which of the several federal agency officials can be questioned in depositions.

Among those named are Mr Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, Ryan Zinke the Interior Secretary, Senator Mitch McConnells wife Transportation chief Elaine Chao, Defence Secretary James Mattis, and Mr Trump himself.

The teenagers had earlier requested Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former CEO of oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, to testify but the request was denied whilst he was going through the Senate confirmation process for his current position.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

Ms Olson underscored the importance of the case to American children in particular and why this has become a court case to impose against the US government rather than only a social movement.

She said the federal government has consistently discriminate[d] against children in making climate and energy policy.

In June 2017, Mr Trump began the withdrawal process for the US to cut ties with the Paris Agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries in an effort to curb global carbon emissions and contain global warming to 2 C.

There was immediate and widespread criticism of the move from world and local leaders and CEOs alike.

More than a thousand mayors and CEOs joined in the We Are Still In coalition to say they will still work to meet the targets laid out for the US in the Paris accord despite the Trumps administrations decision.

Though the group has gotten some support from a handful of mayors and cities, Ms Olson said the Trump administration is leading the country to climate catastrophe.

Remember that the US is a primary reason that the international targets, including those in the Paris Agreement, are not binding and are not based in the science of stabilising our climate system and saving our ice sheets, Ms Olson cautioned.

This is why it is so important that the US courts provide that critical constitutional check on politicians who are not upholding the fundamental rights of these young people, Ms Olson said.
We are more connected today than at any time in our species history, yet isolated pockets of people still manage to live apart from globalized society.

Its impossible to know exactly how many such tribes exist. Organisations like Survival International, however, estimate that more than 100 are sprinkled around the globe.

To call these people uncontacted, as they often are, is imprecise. Its nearly impossible to completely avoid contact with outsiders, and even harder to avoid objects like factory-made knives or bowls that make their way deep into remote areas through trade.

Despite these connections, dozens of groups manage to preserve their isolation and ways of life.

Unfortunately, environmental destruction and exploitation  such as clearing forests for timber and farms  put many of these cultures at great risk. Survival International, the Brazilian governments FUNAI (National Indian Foundation), and other advocacy groups seek to protect vulnerable tribes without interfering with them.

Heres where some of these groups live and the challenges they face in preserving their unique existence.

What does it mean to be uncontacted? The names a bit misleading  these are groups of people that have avoided, or even violently rejected, contact with the outside world. Its possible theyve made contact with outsiders at some point, but violence from settlers may have pushed them to return to isolation. Others may have never had an interest in the first place, championing their independence.

It was surprisingly powerful and emotional (Ricardo Stuckert)

These tribes can avoid the outside world largely because of their geographic isolation in some of the most remote corners of the planet. Some live in the dense jungle highlands of New Guinea in Southeast Asia. The West Papua region in Indonesia is estimated to host more than 40 uncontacted groups. Verifying that number is difficult, however, because of the mountainous terrain and because journalists and human-rights organisations are banned from the region by the Indonesian government.

Yagua tribe next to their Maloca, a traditional house with thatched roof, in Iquitos, Amazonian, Peru. (Alamy)

Others live in the Andaman Islands archipelago, between India and the Malay Peninsula. Until recently, the Jarawa of the Andaman Islands avoided contact with outsiders, although the Great Andaman Trunk Road has brought both tourists and poachers, leading to disease outbreaks and exploitation of the tribe. And just off the coast of the Andaman Islands is North Sentinel Island, home to the Sentinelese, a group that attacks just about anyone who comes ashore.

But most of the known uncontacted tribes live in South America, deep in the Amazon rainforest. Brazil claims to have most of the worlds uncontacted people, estimating as many as 77 tribes  though National Geographic estimates as many as 84. Many of them live in the western states of Mato Grosso, Rondonia, and Acre.

Tribesmen fired a barrage of arrows at the helicopter (Ricardo Stuckert)

Illegal logging in the Amazon poses a huge risk for the indigenous people living in the region, and some uncontacted tribes have even come out of their isolation in protest of encroaching devastation.

The Brazilian government used to conduct first contact expeditions to find these tribes, believing that this was the best way to protect them. But theyve since discontinued these expeditions in favour of the occasional status flyover. FUNAI seeks to protect these uncontacted tribes, as well as other indigenous people of the Amazon river basin, with infrequent flyovers, checking to see if theyve moved locations or if loggers are illegally encroaching on their lands.

But in Amazonian countries with fewer resources to police the region, like Peru  home to some 15 identified uncontacted tribes  conservationists struggle to protect the region and its isolated inhabitants from loggers and prospectors. Unfortunately, their isolation means theyre susceptible to diseases from the outside world. Its part of the reason why anthropologists and indigenous-rights advocates support their continued isolation.

But these tribes are part of our shared humanity, and their unique cultures are worth preserving and protecting, too.

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Read the original article on Business Insider UK.  2016. Follow Business Insider UK on Twitter.
Police have released photos showing the leaders of far-right extremist group Britain First in custody because of the effect their hate crimes had on the local community.

Kent Polices rules stipulate that mugshots are normally released for convicts jailed for a year or more, but a spokesperson said Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen were an exception.

Due to the nature of the offences committed and the impact they had on the wider community, we believe it is in the public interest to make these available, he said.

 Jayda Fransen appeals to Donald Trump to intervene in her criminal court case

Fransen was jailed for 36 weeks and Golding for 18 weeks after they were convicted on several counts of religiously-aggravated harassment following a trial at Folkestone Magistrates Court.

They were arrested in May after harassing and abusing people they incorrectly believed were involved in an ongoing rape trial.

The pair distributed leaflets and posted videos, endangering an ongoing trial at Canterbury Crown Court where three Muslim men and a teenager were later convicted and jailed.

Judge Justin Barron said their words and actions demonstrated hostility towards Muslims and Islam, and prosecutors warned that Fransen and Golding could have caused the case to collapse.

I have no doubt it was their joint intention to use the facts of the case for their own political ends, the judge said.

It was a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.

 Britain First leaders jailed for anti-Muslim hate crime

Kent Police recorded at least three days of abuse. One saw Golding film Fransen attempting to enter a fast food restaurant near where the defendants had gang raped a 16-year-old girl and shouting abuse at the people inside.

But the man, a woman and two teenage girls targeted were not involved in the trial and had not committed any criminal offences.

Days later, Fransen banged on the front door of a house where one of the defendants lived and shouted abuse while his partner and her two young children were inside, then posted footage online.

In the video played in court, Fransen could be seen shouting: Come out and face me you disgusting rapist, come on.

The following day, a vulnerable man from Canterbury learned that a video had been posted online in which his address was wrongly identified as the home of one of the men on trial.

Leaflets entitled Exposing Muslim Rapist had been posted through his front door and those of his neighbours, forcing him to move house because he feared for his safety.

Detective Inspector Bill Thornton said Golding and Fransens crimes were abhorrent and motivated by religious insensitivities.

They claimed to be exposing the men who had been accused of rape when in reality they knew little about the case in question and could have put the trial at risk due to their reckless actions, he added.

It was the bravery of the female who was attacked and the tireless work of Kent Police detectives who ensured the men responsible are now serving a significant period of time behind bars, not because of any misguided attempt by Golding and Fransen to claim credit for their conviction by bringing religion into the equation.

The fact that completely innocent members of the public were accused of being rapists, making them fear for their own safety, shows how little regard they have for the consequences of their actions.

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Kent Police simply will not tolerate any offences that are motivated by prejudice and hate.

Golding, 36, was convicted of one count of religiously aggravated harassment and acquitted on two others.

His deputy, 32-year-old Fransen, was found guilty of three counts of the same offence and cleared of one.

Fransen had denied all charges and claimed she did not use the phrase Muslim bastards, or say that all Muslims are rapists.

Golding also denied the charges and said he was only acting as Fransen's cameraman.

The campaign was one of a series of similar stunts by Britain First, which selectively highlights crimes it believes to be convicted by defendants from Muslim backgrounds.

The Finsbury Park terror attacker, Darren Osborne, read Britain First posts before his attempted massacre of Muslim worshippers, while neo-Nazi Thomas Mair repeatedly shouted the groups name while murdering Labour MP Jo Cox.

The group gained international notoriety when Donald Trump shared several of Fransens Twitter posts last year, sparking a diplomatic row after Theresa May condemned the action.

Both Fransen and Golding have since been banned from Twitter in a crackdown on extremism and hate speech, but Britain First continues to have a large following on Facebook, were its official page is liked by more than 2 million people.

They are due to stand trial in Northern Ireland next month over separate allegations of inciting hatred at the Northern Ireland Against Terrorism rally in Belfast.

Britain First was attempting to use their imprisonment to recruit supporters and further its narrative of being victimised by authorities for free speech.
A police officer who was poisoned by a nerve agent in the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter is sitting up and talking in hospital as the hunt continues for the culprits.

He was named as Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, amid hopes he will make a full recovery.

DS Bailey was given a formal commendation by Wiltshire Police in 2016 for his work putting a serial rapist who targeted victims over four decades behind bars.

Kier Pritchard, the force's temporary Chief Constable, said the officer was missed by his colleagues but should be back on his feet and back at work very soon.

After visiting DS Bailey in the intensive care unit, where his wife was by his bedside, the officer said: I've known Nick for many years, he's a great character, he's a huge presence in Wiltshire Police - well liked, well loved, a massively dedicated officer.

He's well, he's sat up. He is not the Nick that I know but of course he's receiving a high level of treatment.

DS Bailey, who joined Wiltshire Police in 2002, was given a formal commendation in 2016 for his work putting a serial rapist who targeted victims over four decades behind bars.

DS Nick Bailey is in hospital after being poisoned by the nerve agent (Wiltshire Police)

T/Chief Constable Pritchard said he was massively proud of the officer and all his staff for their response, which will be the subject of a church service at St Thomas's, in Salisbury city centre next month.

Weve had multiple officers involved, theres been a total of 21 people including the main two index patientsa number of those have been through the hospital treatment process, the officer added.

Theyre having blood tests, theyve having treatment, support and advice provided.

Security sources told The Independent several people are believed to be behind the assassination attempt in Salisbury, and are likely to be either present or past state-sponsored actors.

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in intensive care in hospital and authorities have not said whether they can recover.

Amber Rudd told the House of Commons both remain unconscious, in a critical but stable condition.

The officer was one of the first responders on Sunday, acting selflessly to help others, the Home Secretary said. The latest update from the hospital is that the officer remains serious but stable and is conscious, talking and engaging.

Ms Rudd said the nerve agent used was very rare but declined to name the precise chemical and emphasised that the risk to the public was low.

Samples from the victims have been tested by experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, she added, referring to the secretive military facility where nerve agents have been developed and tested over decades of controversial research.

That forensic analysis has revealed the presence of a nerve agent and the incident is therefore being treated as attempted murder.

(PA (PA)

It is highly likely the police officer has been exposed to the same nerve agent.

Downing Street said Theresa May was being kept updated by officials on developments in the case and has sent her personal thanks to police.

Its clear that this was an appalling and reckless crime and the public will rightly want those responsible to be identified and held to account, the Prime Ministers official spokesman said.

Recommended Boris Johnson warns Russia after apparent poisoning of former MI6 spy

But it is important that we avoid speculation and allow police and others to rigorously establish the full facts. As the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary have made clear, our response to those found to be responsible will be robust.

Suspicion has turned to the Russian government, which jailed Mr Skripal for treason in 2006, or former spies he betrayed while working for MI6 during his time a colonel in the GRU military intelligence service.

He was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged in 2010 for Russian agents caught in the West as part of a Cold War-style swap in Vienna.

Mr Skripal appears to have lived a quiet life in a semi-detached home in Salisbury, but a former associate, Valery Morozov, believes he had not completely retired from espionage.

Skripal during his trial in Moscow, 2006 (AP)

Every month [he was] going to the Russian embassy to meet military intelligence officers, he told Channel 4 News, claiming that that the former double agent was keeping dangerous company.

The Russian Embassy said they were not aware of any meetings and denied any involvement by its security services.

Ms Rudd declined to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible for the attack but said the Government will put a plan in place to respond when the culprit is identified, adding that there was nothing soft about the UKs response.

The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act, she told MPs.

This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way  people are right to want to know who to hold to account.

But we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow police to continue their investigation.

We will respond in a robust and appropriate matter once we ascertain who is responsible.

The attack in Salisbury may prompt further action following on from the Governments Criminal Finances Act, which was inspired by the USs Magnitsky Act.

Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned along with her father, Sergei Skripal (Facebook)

In measures introduced last year, it allowed the assets of international human rights violators to be frozen, and powers could be strengthened by the Sanctions Bill, which is currently going through committees in the Houses of Parliament.

Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, said Russia was becoming an ever-greater threat, citing its aggressive stance in Eastern Europe and alleged support for separatists in Ukraine.

Russias changing the way they actually fight and raise the level of conflict, he added. We are seeing this in the north Atlantic as well, the amount of submarines that are operating, theres a 10-fold increase in the last seven years.

Russias being assertive, Russias being more aggressive, and we have to change the way that we deal with it because we cant be in a situation in these areas of conflict where we are being pushed around by another nation.

Mr Williamson also declined to say whether he held Russia responsible for the attack in Salisbury, saying: Whats happened is absolutely disgusting and it is so important we give the police the space and opportunity to do a proper and thorough investigation.

Hundreds of detectives, forensic specialists, analysts and intelligence officers working around the clock on the case, police said.

They are examining CCTV and building a detailed timeline of events, while specialist officers in protective clothing continue investigations and decontamination activity at cordoned off areas of Salisbury.

The work is expected to take several days, while police appeal for witnesses who were in and around the city centre on Sunday afternoon to come forward.

Mr Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench in The Maltings shopping centre at around 4.15pm.

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They had eaten at a nearby Zizzi restaurant and gone for a drink at The Mill pub, with both establishments still cordoned off.

Chemical weapons experts told The Independent that the nerve agent could have been administered in a variety of ways, including in their food or drink, and in the form of a spray or liquid.

Sarin has been used globally in both liquid and gas forms, while the even stronger nerve agent VX  developed in the British militarys secretive Porton Down facility  was used to assassinate Kim Jong-uns brother last year.

Dr Jennifer Cole, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said anyone manufacturing nerve agents needs advanced chemical knowledge and some form of laboratory.

With something that dangerous you need to know exactly what youre doing, particularly so that you dont get it on yourself, she told The Independent.

It wouldnt be difficult to manufacture in the UK  it wouldnt have to be imported.

Dr Cole said that when nerve agents are absorbed through the skin or inhaled, they are very fast-acting.

The fact that there doesnt seem to have been anyone with them when they collapsed could point to it being ingested - the need to digest would slow the reaction and give whoever administered it chance to get away, she added.

Antidotes do exist to several nerve agents but their effectiveness relies on them being administered immediately to counteract their rapid effect on the nervous system.
The Russian double agent poisoned in Salisbury may have become a target after using his contacts in the intelligence community to work for private security firms, investigators believe.

Sergei Skripal could have come to the attention of certain people in Russia by attempting to freelance for companies run by former MI5, MI6 and GCHQ spies, security sources say.

Mr Skripal, who remains in hospital in a critical condition alongside his daughter, Yulia, had kept in touch with members of the intelligence community, past and present. Investigators are examining whether he was using those contacts for work.

 Russian exile claims Sergei Skripal was still in contact with Russian embassy when they met

There are large numbers of private security firms in the UK which are actively involved, for commercial as well as state clients, in researching the activities of powerful individuals with links to the Kremlin power structure.

Sources close to Orbis, the business intelligence firm run by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who was behind a dossier of compromising allegations against Donald Trump, said Mr Skripal did not contribute to the file. But they could not say whether Mr Skripal was involved in different investigations into the US President for other interested parties.

The developments came as Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey was named as the police officer who was also admitted to hospital after exposure to the nerve agent. A total of 21 people were affected by the poison, police said last night.

Security officials told The Independent that 66-year-old Mr Skripal was no longer an active MI6 asset and was not regarded as being under threat, meaning he was not given a new identity and lived openly under his own name.

Investigators are looking at the possibility that the attackers may have flown into Britain to carry out their mission and then left, possibly individually, afterwards. It is possible, say security sources, that the attack was carried out by sleeper agents, but this is believed to be an unlikely scenario.

Skripal during his trial in Moscow, 2006 (AP)

The Home Secretary told the House of Commons both Mr Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter remain unconscious, in a critical but stable condition.

Amber Rudd said the nerve agent used was very rare but declined to name the precise chemical and emphasised that the risk to the public was low.

 21 people treated as a result of poisoning of Sergei Skripal

Investigators are considering the possibility that instead of an overtly physical assault, a package containing the nerve agent may have been delivered to Mr Skripal and opened it in the presence of his daughter, exposing them both.

Forensic tests are focusing on his home in Salisbury, a branch of the Zizzi restaurant chain and The Mill pub in Salisbury, where witnesses say Mr Skripal began to behave in an agitated manner.

Samples from the victims have been tested by experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, Ms Rudd said, referring to the secretive military facility where nerve agents have been developed and tested over decades of controversial research.

The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.

She said DS Bailey was conscious, talking and engaging from his bed at Salisbury District Hospital, praising his selfless actions.

Kier Pritchard, the temporary Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police, said the officer should be back on his feet and back at work very soon.

After visiting DS Bailey in the intensive care unit, where his wife was by his bedside, the officer said: Ive known Nick for many years, hes a great character, hes a huge presence in Wiltshire Police  well liked, well loved, a massively dedicated officer.

DS Nick Bailey is in hospital after being poisoned by the nerve agent (Wiltshire Police)

Hes well, hes sat up. He is not the Nick that I know but of course hes receiving a high level of treatment.

DS Bailey, who joined Wiltshire Police in 2002, was given a formal commendation in 2016 for his work putting a serial rapist who targeted victims over four decades behind bars.

Temporary Chief Constable Pritchard said he was massively proud of the officer and all his staff for their response, which will be the subject of a church service at St Thomass, in Salisbury city centre next month.

Weve had multiple officers involved, theres been a total of 21 people including the main two index patients a number of those have been through the hospital treatment process, the officer added.

Theyre having blood tests, theyve having treatment, support and advice provided.

The investigation continued to widen on Thursday as officers raced to establish how Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned, and who by.

New police cordons were erected around the gravestone of Mr Skripals wife Liudmila, who was buried in 2012, and the memorial stone of his son, Alexander, who was cremated last year.

They are located at separate sites in the London Road Cemetery with each guarded by a police officer.

Counter-terror police are believed to be looking into the deaths, as well as that of Mr Skripals elder brother Valeri, a former paratrooper in Russian forces who died two years ago after sudden weight loss.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA UK news in pictures 31 July 2021 James Guy, Adam Peaty and Kathleen Dawson celebrate winning the gold medal in the mixed 4x100m medley relay final at the Tokyo Olympics AP UK news in pictures 30 July 2021 Great Britain's Bethany Shriever and Kye Whyte celebrate their Gold and Silver medals respectively for the Cycling BMX Racing at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the seventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 29 July 2021 Team GB's Mallory Franklin during the Womens Canoe Slalom Final on day six of the Tokyo Olympic Games. She went on to win the silver medal Getty

The cause of 59-year-old Ms Skripals death was recorded as endometrial cancer and Alexander, 44, was said to have suffered liver failure while on holiday.

Mr Skripals wife passed away in the UK but Alexander and Valeri died in Russia and any fresh probe into the circumstances will need the cooperation of the authorities in Moscow.

Tom Tugdenhat, a Conservative MP, claimed it wasnt just Mr Skripal that was [attempted to be] murdered, it looks likely that his wife was murdered a year or so ago, his son was murdered in 2007 and now his daughter too.

Security sources, however cautioned against making assumptions before investigations have been carried out.

Suspicion has turned to the Russian government, which jailed Mr Skripal for treason in 2006, or former spies he betrayed while working for MI6 during his time as a colonel in the GRU military intelligence service.

Theresa May declined to say whether she held Russia responsible for the attack, in the wake of high-level Cobra and National Security Council meetings.

We need to let the police have the space and time to conduct their investigating so that we get the best possible evidence of what has happened in this particular case, the Prime Minister said.

Of course if action needs to be taken then the Government will do that. Well do that properly, at the right time, and on the basis on the best evidence.

Yulia Skripal was found unconscious next to her father (Facebook)

Mr Skripal and his daughter were found unconscious on a nearby bench in The Maltings shopping centre at around 4.15pm, where a passing doctor described Yulia vomiting and fitting after losing control of her bodily functions.

The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.

The nerve agent used would have been difficult to obtain and could have only been manufactured in a specialist laboratory, according to a Whitehall official with knowledge of the investigation.

The substance would, it is claimed, have been relatively easy to make but the relative rarity of the material and the damage it can cause points towards the production taking place in state controlled facilities and tracing it could point towards those who wanted Mr Skripal murdered.

Preliminary tests do not indicate that the substance used was sarin, which has been used in a Tokyo subway attack and the Syrian civil war, or deadly VX, which was developed at Porton Down and used to kill the brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia last year.
The number of people being arrested for terror offences in the UK has hit a new record, with 412 arrests in 2017 as the threat continues to rise.

The figure rose by more than 58 per cent on the previous year, with the period seeing 36 victims killed and hundreds injured in the Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park attacks.

Only a third of the arrests resulted in a criminal charge, and not all for terror-related offences, with some people released without further action, on bail or under alternative measures.

The vast majority of suspects were men, who were mainly British and of Asian appearance, although the number of white people arrested rocketed by 61 per cent to make up more than a third of the total.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, said the rise in arrests was testament to the breadth of work undertaken by the police, security services and wider judicial system in identifying and stopping terrorism in our communities and bringing those responsible to justice.

The police and security services have been clear about the scale of the threat we face, he added.

We will continue to work with them and other agencies to ensure we have a broad response to all forms of terrorism both now and in the future.

The public should remain alert but not alarmed and report any suspicions they have about unusual activity or behaviour to the appropriate authorities.

 Four far-right UK terrorist plots foiled since Westminster attack, police reveal

There were 86 terror trials in 2017 and 90 per cent resulted in a conviction, as defendants were only acquitted in eight cases, according to Home Office figures.

By the end of the year, there were 224 terrorist prisoners in the UK, up a quarter on 2016, and the number is set to rise.

The vast majority, 86 per cent, held Islamist extremist views, 9 per cent were affiliated to the far right and 5 per cent had other ideologies.

Recommended Timeline of MI5 investigations into UK terror attackers revealed

Part of the increase in arrests was accounted for by large-scale police operations in the wake of five terror attacks.

A dozen people were arrested in connection with the Westminster attack in March, 23 over the Manchester Arena bombing, 21 following the van-and-knife rampage in London Bridge, one in Finsbury Park and seven linked to the Parsons Green explosion.

All suspects were later released without charge, with the exception of the Finsbury Park attacker and alleged Parsons Green bomber, and a review revealed that security services could have prevented the Manchester and London Bridge attacks.

Darren Osborne was jailed for life last month for ramming a van into Muslim worshippers in London, in perceived revenge for Isis-inspired terror attacks and grooming gang activity in Rotherham.

Ahmed Hasan, an 18-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, denied carrying out the Parsons Green attack and is currently on trial at the Old Bailey.

Police have used a variety of legal powers to investigate terror suspects, including 767 stop and searches under the Terrorism Act  which resulted in 61 arrests  and more than 16,000 Schedule 7 checks at land, sea and airports.

People look at floral tributes left for the victims of the Westminster terrorist attack (Getty)

The latest figures were released after officials revealed that 10 Islamist and four far-right terror plots have been foiled since the Westminster attack in March 2017.

Mark Rowley, the outgoing head of national counter-terror policing, made the figure public for the first time to illustrate the growth of right-wing terrorism.

The right-wing terrorist threat is more significant and more challenging than perhaps the public debate gives it credit for, he added.

Security services have described the current threat facing the UK as unprecedented, with the current level set as severe  meaning further attacks are considered highly likely.

Police and MI5 are running more than 600 live counter-terror investigations relating to 3,000 individuals.

There is a wider pool of 20,000 former subjects of interest who have previously featured in probes and who are kept under review.

While the bulk of the threat emanates from Isis and its supporters, the far right is gaining recruits by perpetuating the idea of a cultural war against Islam and radicalisation is increasing on both sides.

Last week, an Isis fanatic who tried to groom a child death squad for simultaneous terror attacks across London was convicted, followed by an autistic teenager who planned a car-and-knife massacre in Cardiff after watching propaganda videos online.

Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Show all 23 1 /23 Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion A bucket with flames and wires coming out of it was photographed in the carriage after the explosion  apparently the source of the blast AFP Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion An explosion on a packed Tube train has injured a number of people in west London AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion The blast triggered a stampede as commuters panicked AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Click through for more pictures from the scene Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosioN Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion PA Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Parsons Green explosion Reuters Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures AFP/Getty Terror attack at Parson's Green  in pictures AFP/Getty

A growing number of attacks have been launched or planned by the far right, including a man who attempted to murder a Muslim woman and 12-year-old girl in revenge for the 7/7 bombings and Parsons Green terror attacks.

Several members of the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Action have been arrested since it was proscribed in December 2016, and one of its supporters was jailed for planning a knife attack at a gay pride event in Cumbria.

The rise in extremism has driven global action to counter the spread of terrorist propaganda and hate speech online, as well as proposals for tougher jail sentences for terror offences.

But the Parole Board warned that radicalisation in prison was widespread and increasing penalties for less serious offenders  like those found guilty of spreading terrorist material online  could result in them becoming more likely to commit terrorist acts when they are released.

Specific terror offences are mostly contained in the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006, which were drawn up to outlaw behaviour that skirted the boundaries of pre-existing legislation, and are mostly used in cases where a common law offence has not been committed.

Terrorists who have committed murder or other serious crimes, like Osborne and the murderers of Lee Rigby and Jo Cox, are therefore not charged with terrorist crimes.

The acts formalised the definition of terrorism and introduced powers of arrest without warrant for suspects, and stop and search without prior suspicion.

They created new crimes that made it illegal to collect or possess information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, glorify or encourage terror attacks and disseminate terrorist publications.

The offence of preparation of terrorist acts that was introduced by the Terrorism Act 2006 has been prolifically used to jail people attempting to join Isis in Syria and Iraq, or mount plots at home, and can be punished with life imprisonment.
A 19-year-old man has been shot dead outside a cinema in London, becoming the first teenager to die of gunshot wounds in the capital this year.

Armed police were sent to Wood Green, north London, following reports of a shooting in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The victim was found suffering from a gunshot wound outside Vue cinema complex on Hollywood Green.

The teenager, who has not been named, was taken by paramedics to hospital, where he died a short time later.

His attackers are believed to have fled the scene by moped.

A witness told the Evening Standard: I was near the entrance to the Tube station when I heard what I thought was fireworks.

There werent many people around as it was late so there was no big reaction. I didnt see anybody running away, just people looking toward where the sound came from.

There was a guy shouting at paramedics to save him.

The Metropolitan Police said it was called to reports of a shooting at 12.32am on Thursday. The forces murder squad is investigating but no arrests have been made.

Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks said: At this early stage, were trying to piece together exactly what has happened. However we believed two people made off on a moped shortly after the incident and this is one line of enquiry that were actively pursuing.

A young person who knew the victim but did not want to be named told The Independent the teenager was a loving, kind-hearted soul and said his death was a complete shock to everyone who knew him.

The victims next of kin have been informed and a post-mortem examination will be held soon.

Mr Marks said: We would urge anyone who witnessed the incident, or has any information to come forward and speak to police as soon as possible.
Women have effectively worked for free so far this year because of the gender pay gap, campaigners have said.

Today has been dubbed Womens Pay Day, since an 18.4 per cent wage difference means women must wait more than two months of the calendar year before they start to earn the same as men, according to new analysis.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) said this years Womens Pay Day happened to come at the same time as International Womens Day, which is held on 8 March every year to celebrate the achievements of females around the world.

The federation based its calculations on figures from the Office for National Statistics that found the median hourly pay of both full and part time workers.

Since 2011 the full-time pay gap has fallen by around 0.2 per cent a year, the TUC said. At this rate it will take more than 40 years to achieve equal pay between men and women.

The findings come after the European Commissions statistical agency revealed the UK had the fourth highest pay gap in the EU in 2016, behind Estonia, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Last year, the UK Government decided companies with more than 250 employees must report their gender pay cap. The deadline for reporting, which affects around 9,000 companies, is on 4 April.

The TUC, which is made up of 49 unions and has 5.5 million members, is calling on the Government to make all employers carry out equal pay audits and to produce action plans to close the pay gap in their workplace. Companies that fail to do so should be fined, the federation said.

TUC general secretary Frances OGrady said: Nearly 50 years since the Ford machinists went on strike at Dagenham, the UK still has one of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe. Women effectively work for free for two months a year.

Companies publishing information on their gender pay gaps is a small step in the right direction but its nowhere near enough. Women in the UK will only start to get paid properly when we have better paid part-time and flexible jobs. And higher wages in key sectors like social care.

In some industries, women must wait until April or even May before they start to be paid at the same rate as men in their industry, according to the TUC.

The longest wait for Womens Pay Day is in the finance and insurance industry, where a 35.6 per cent pay gap between men and women is the equivalent of 130 days  more than a third of the year.

Female dominated professions were also among those with the largest pay differences between men and women. Women working in education were on average paid 26.5 per cent a year less than their male colleagues, the analysis found, while the gender pay gap was also above average for health and social workers  women in these professions were paid 18.8 per cent less.

Liz Shafer, a drama and theatre studies professor who took legal action and reached a settlement with Royal Holloway, University of London, over unequal pay in 2011 told The Independent she hoped things would have changed more since then.

I started asking questions about my pay in 2007, she said. I was polite and I was ignored, so then I was assertive and I was ignored. Then I got cross, but I was still ignored.

It was only by going to the employment tribunal that I could force my employer to concentrate on the problem. Employers need to think how demotivating it is for women to be looking at the gender pay gap.

She described going stratospheric when she saw what her male counterparts were paid.

Thats when I said this is a point of no return, she said. There was no way I was not fighting that all the way  I could not believe what I was looking at.

I committed to an employment tribunal process, but its a long process. Its exposing and exhausting and everything goes into the public domain  everything. People knew about my childcare arrangements, its not something you should take lightly.

She said before she went to her employment tribunal she conducted research that confirmed she was worth a higher wage.

Because I am a researcher, I went at it with gusto. I came out feeling empowered and confident  but people who are not so used to being assertive might find the employment tribunal process daunting.

Its just not something you want to do. Its a last resort. You shouldnt have to do it.

 International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

A spokesman from Royal Holloway said since Ms Schafers employment tribunal the institution had pioneered a number of initiatives to address the gender pay gap.

A statement from the college said: Today, we have transparent pay scales and clear criteria for progression and promotion across the academic community, and our approach is working.

We believe that Royal Holloway is playing a leading role in tackling inequality in relation to the academic progression of women.

The TUCs revelations about the pay gap came on the same day a survey was published that found a third of women earning below the voluntary living wage had no savings.

The Living Wage Foundation and the Fawcett Society asked 1,000 female workers about their finances and found that two out of five have more than 500 of debt, with one in four spending over 100 a month servicing their debt.

The voluntary wage is 8.75 an hour outside of London and 10.20 in the capital, compared with the Governments national living wage of 7.50 for over 25-year-olds.

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

Sam Smethers, Chief executive of womens rights organisation the Fawcett Society, said: We know that the gender pay gap remains stubbornly large and progress has stalled.

But we wont close it until we address all the causes of the pay gap and women wont achieve true pay equality until we have transparency at work.

High profile equal pay cases prove that pay discrimination still happens in our workplaces. With pay secrecy discrimination can thrive. We need to make 2018 the year that we make it OK to talk about pay.

A Home Office spokesperson said: This Government is clear that tackling injustices like the gender pay gap is part of building a country that works for everyone. Equality pays - estimates show that bridging the gender gap in work could add 150bn to the UK economy by 2025.

The UK is one of the first countries to introduce gender pay gap reporting, which will shine a light on where employers need to take action and allow them to address the gaps.

Reporting gender pay gap data is not optional; it is the law, and employers that do not comply will risk facing legal action from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Saudi Arabias new Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman travelled to Chequers on day two of his state visit for a meeting with the Prime Minister at her official country residence in Buckinghamshire.

Theresa May presented the Prince with an antique family tree showing the descent of the al Saud dynasty of the kings of Arabia. Downing Street said the framed document was originally created by Queen Victorias consul general in Jeddah in 1880.

The PM thought it would be a nice and appropriate gift to give, the Prime Ministers official spokesman said. Ms May was also expected to press him off-camera on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, according to her spokesperson.

During the dinner they were served halibut with cucumber, radish and lemon, followed by Chiltern lamb rack with lamb shoulder broth and new potatoes with dessert of Yorkshire rhubarb cheesecake with ginger.

The Prince on Thursday also met the head of the Anglican church in London and promised to promote interfaith dialogue as part of his domestic reforms, the British faith leaders office said.

The Crown Prince made a strong commitment to promote the flourishing of those of different faith traditions, and to interfaith dialogue within the Kingdom and beyond, a statement from Lambeth Palace said.

It comes just a day after the Conservative leader defended Britains links to security ally Saudi Arabia as the Princes arrival drew mass protests over Riyadhs human rights record.

A fiery exchange in parliament between Ms May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn underlined tension in Britain over the Princes trip, which was aimed at building a broader economic partnership between the two countries.

Ms May and the crown prince used talks in Downing Street on Wednesday to lay plans for a 65bn trade and investment package, while also touching on the Yemen conflict.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

A spokesperson said: The Prime Minister raised our deep concerns at the humanitarian situation in Yemen.

The Prime Minister and crown prince agreed on the importance of full and unfettered humanitarian and commercial access, including through the ports, and that a political solution was ultimately the only way to end the conflict and humanitarian suffering in Yemen.

On Wednesday, he had lunch with the Queen and the Duke of York and was to have dinner with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge as the UK rolled out the red carpet for the controversial figure.

On Friday, he will meet Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for talks.

The Princes visit has caused widespread controversy over Saudi Arabias role in the war in Yemen, and the countrys human rights record.

Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014 when rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia is the main player in a coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis in a war which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Prince has been the driving force behind a modernisation programme, Vision 2030, in Saudi Arabia  but the reforms have been largely dismissed as a mirage by campaigners.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said: Wed like to see Theresa May finally showing some backbone in the UKs relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Additional reporting by agencies
Sergei Skripal, a Russian former double agent, was found slumped on a bench alongside his daughter in Salisbury on Sunday. We now know they had been exposed to a nerve agent.

Such toxic substances have been used to deadly effect in assassinations and conflicts of the past.

They disrupts signals in the nervous system, causing debilitating side effects which can be fatal.

Here is everything you need to know about nerve agents

What are nerve agents?

They are anything that affects the nervous system. There are various different types of nerve agents and they can take many different forms.

Usually they come in liquid form as opposed to a gas and can seep through the skin and are incredibly toxic.

Russia came across such chemical agents for the first time when they swept into East Germany following World War Two and took control of the plants where they were made.

How do they work?

The toxins in nerve agents interfere with the central nervous system, causing the body to become overstimulated.

There are several different forms including Sarin, VX and Tabun, all of which have very similar structures and appear to work in the same way.

Recommended Investigators hunting network over nerve agent attack on Russian spy

Dr Simon Cotton from the University of Birmingham said: They interfere with the transmitting of nerve impulses.

Our bodies use a molecule called acetylcholine that migrates the gaps between cells  it goes from one cell and slots into the second and triggers a nerve impulse.

The body has to get rid of acetylcholine that is docked in the receptor because it builds up and you keep getting nerve impulses and become overstimulated.

Our bodies have got an enzyme that breaks up acetylcholine called acetylcholinesterase  what a nerve agent does is bind to the acetylcholinesterase and stops it from working.

What are the symptoms?

Twitching, spasms, heart failure and respiratory arrest are among the more common side effects.

Dr Cotton added: It is basically overstimulated to death because of the build-up of acetylcholine.

How much is needed to make an impact and how long does it take?

Only time amounts of nerve agent is required for it to take effect.

It is so toxic that it would usually be transported in something tightly sealed and those who apply it will need protective clothing.

A drop would be needed, that is all, it is that sort of scale  a tiny scale, Dr Cotton said.

People would start feeling funny within a few seconds, but it would depend on the dose.

How is it applied?

This can vary and doses can be turned into an aerosol can spray or be used on a cloth.

When Kim Jong Nam, North Korea leader Kim Jong Uns half-brother, was killed in Malaysia in 2017, a cloth doused with VX was smeared on his face.

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

Can victims be treated?

There are antidotes including a medication called atropine but they must be administered soon after exposure for them to work properly.
The last time I went to the British Chamber of Commerce Annual Conference was in 2016, when its Director General John Longworth got the day off to a flying start by publicly resigning from the British Chamber of Commerce in order to campaign for Brexit.

Perhaps we should have foreseen then just how deep the Brexit rabbit hole might go.

Fast forward two years and this is a summary, roughly, of where we are:

The International Trade Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, a free market Conservative, was told he made no sense by a questioner from the audience - who are all, of course, business people.

Then the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell appeared, a lifelong Marxist who for years who lists his hobbies in Whos Who as generally fomenting the throw of international capitalism.

Hes the business communitys preferred choice these days, because despite wanting to bring down capitalism, he also wants to keep the UK in some sort of customs union with the EU. Which means as far as theyre concerned he does at least have an outstretched toe still in contact with reality.

It being International Womens Day, he began by commending the assembled small businessmen and one or two women for everything they had done in breaking the glass seagull.

Then he went into his usual shtick about the fourth industrial revolution, and the rise of the robots, and how Labour was going to take a different approach with a meaningful industrial strategy, a phrase that would ordinarily scare the living daylights out of small business people, but not ones that have just heard from Liam Fox.

Liam Fox, by the way, had yet again explained how, in the future 90 per cent of growth is going to come from outside Europe. He said these words a couple of hours after the Department of Exiting the European Union formally published its own assessments on the UKs growth prospects outside the European Union, the ones that were leaked a few weeks ago. They conclude that there is absolutely no scenario under which UK growth will be higher after it has left the European Union than if it didnt.

Having led the world in previous industrial revolutions, were now lagging behind, McDonnell warned. It is essentially rather sweet that any mainstream politician, Conservative or Labour, whose time in government is going to come within touching distance of the UKs exit from the European Union, still likes to think that they will be called upon to do anything other than patiently clearing up the mess.

By this point, wed also heard from a chap called Drax, sharing exciting visions of the fully electrified, fully renewable, driverless future. He explained how the future of energy belonged to pro-sumers. Pro-sumers, we learned, are not consumers. Pro-sumers will have solar powers on their roofs. Pro-sumers dont just consume power, he said. They share it.

And naturally, who should be on next after this bold vision of a power-sharing future, but the nations favourite power-sharer Arlene Foster.

And its here that things got particularly strange. The DUP leader told shocking stories of growing up on the Irish border during the troubles. Of her father stumbling into the family home having been shot by the IRA. Of the IRA bomb attack on her school bus.

And then, in remarks that have been widely understood to be aimed at John Major and Tony Blair, she said that those warning that the Good Friday Agreement could be in jeopardy were an insult to the people of Northern Ireland who worked hard to bring peace to the country.

I object, she said, in the strongest terms, to people who have limited experience of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, throwing threats of violence around as some kind of bargaining chip in this negotiating process.

Is it acceptable to point out at this juncture that Arlene Foster leads the DUP, whose then leader the Revd Ian Paisley walked out of the Good Friday agreement?

Ms Foster again stated that she wants a sensible Brexit, but has been a hard Brexiteer since before the referendum. Her party props up a Remain-voting Prime Minister. She wont countenance any regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK whatsoever, yet nor will she tolerate the return of a hard border.

To extend the nations favourite cake-based Brexit metaphor even further beyond its breaking point, this can only be described as chimpanzees tea party Brexit. There is cake everywhere. Its been had, its been eaten eaten, its been smeared up walls. Its had pots of hot tea smashed over the top of it. Its been scooped on to the end of long hairy fingers and violently jammed into ears.

And yet, this is the Brexit the government actively pursues. This is how deep the rabbit hole goes.
A Conservative minister has warned that if his party fails to achieve a workable Brexit then Jeremy Corbyn could end up in Downing Street.

Sam Gyimah, the universities and science minister, added that his party had failed to reach out to students, and allowed the Labour leader to become the only game on campus at the snap general election in 2017.

Speaking to The House magazine, Mr Gyimah  considered a rising star in the Conservative Party  said: I guess ultimately we have a workable Brexit or Jeremy Corbyn ends up in Downing Street. And I think that would be a terrible thing for the country.

Asked whether the election  at which the Conservative majority was wiped out  was a wakeup call for his party, Mr Gyimah added: Yes, of course. Although, the evidence shows that there wasnt the youthquake that everyone thought that there would be.

What it made clear is that here is a group of people that politicians had assumed dont vote. I remember when I said to one senior politician that we should mobilise and get young to vote, he replied, the young dont vote. Why go chasing shadows?

Mr Gyimah called on his party to ramp up campaigns on university and registering supporters to vote. If we are not doing all of these exercises, then you cant expect them on polling day to put their cross against a Conservative name, he added.

He also expressed his desire for ministers to reach a deal on sciences before everything else, but added it would be a matter for Theresa May and the European Commission to negotiate.

On immigration after Brexit, he said: People are also essential to this. For science to work you need collaboration and deep collaboration, and that means we need an immigration regime that enables the brightest and the best to come not just to study here but also work here as scientists.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA UK news in pictures 31 July 2021 James Guy, Adam Peaty and Kathleen Dawson celebrate winning the gold medal in the mixed 4x100m medley relay final at the Tokyo Olympics AP UK news in pictures 30 July 2021 Great Britain's Bethany Shriever and Kye Whyte celebrate their Gold and Silver medals respectively for the Cycling BMX Racing at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the seventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA

The steps that have been taking on EU nationals so far by the Prime Minister provides some reassurance in terms of what regime we would have post-exit and post the implementation period.

The important thing, certainly from my perspective as universities and science minister, is thinking and looking ahead to what kind of regime and system we have post-Brexit to ensure that these sectors continue to be a success.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has warned that Britain has a plan of action in place to deal with those who attempted to assassinate a former Russian spy on UK soil.

The Cabinet minister also said members of the public may not hear about all of the action British security services take to keep the people safe.

Her words came as both Labour and Tory MPs called for stronger action against the Russian state if it is found complicit in the ruthless nerve-agent attack that left Sergei Skripal and his daughter in a critical condition.

Recommended Johnson threatens fresh sanctions if Kremlin poisoned Skripal

The Independent revealed this morning that British agents suspect a network of highly-trained assassins to be behind the incident in Salisbury that targeted the former military intelligence colonel.

Ms Rudd said: Let me be clear. We are absolutely robust about any crimes committed on these streets in the UK. There is nothing soft about the UKs response to any sort of state activity in this country.

You may not hear about it all. But when we do see that there is action to be taken  we will take it.

She explained the UK would be methodical in its approach to the investigation and gather all evidence first before deciding whether to attribute the attack.

 Russian exile claims Sergei Skripal was still in contact with Russian embassy when they met

Asked if the UK has a plan to deal with Russia if links with Moscow are uncovered, Ms Rudd added: When we have all the evidence of what took place, we will if it is appropriate attribute it to somebody.

If that is the case, then we will have a plan in place.

You may not hear about it all. But when we do see that there is action to be taken  we will take it Home Secretary Amber Rudd

She refuted claims levied against the Government in the wake of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, that the Government was unwilling to confront the Russian state because it feared disrupting cash flow into the country.

Ms Rudd said: Thats not the case at all. If you talk about money, weve taken very firm action on anything to do with corrupt money in this country, weve recently introduced unexplained wealth orders.

 CCTV shows Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal days before falling critically ill

If people are flaunting wealth and we dont know where it comes from, we can find out where it is and absolutely go for the people who may have that wealth.

She said measures were also being strengthened through the Criminal Finances Act and the Sanctions Bill and that the incident in Salisbury would inevitably spark debate over whether the Government should also do more.

Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat said on Thursday that ministers could target wealthy London-based Russians with strong ties to the Kremlin.

He urged the Government to probe unexplained wealth, saying: Weve got to deal with the new Russian aristocracy around the Tsar.

Putin needs to keep them loyal, and we need to show that his wilful disregard of the worlds rules will always be firmly punished. Many of Putins friends enjoy the liberties and luxury of London.

He told The Sun: We can use the usual sanctions we use for crooks to make life uncomfortable for them, and also by ensuring their children dont get the opportunity that Putin is denying to those he murders.

Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Show all 20 1 /20 Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin is pictured with a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia on August 3, 2009. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin aims at a whale with an arbalest to take a piece of its skin for analysis on the Olga Bay, some 240 kilometres north-east of Nakhodka on August 25, 2010. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin plunges into the icy waters of lake Seliger during the celebration of the Epiphany holiday in Russia's Tver region AFP/Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin (top) takes part in a judo training session at the "Moscow" sports complex in St. Petersburg, on December 22, 2010. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin works out at a gym at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi on August 30, 2015. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin fishes in the remote Tuva region in southern Siberia. The picture taken between August 1 and 3, 2017. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin (L) and the leader of the Night Wolves biker group, Alexander Zaldostanov (R), also known as the Surgeon, ride motorcycles on August 29, 2011 at a bikers' festival in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Russia. Putin described leather-clad bikers as brothers and boasted of the "indivisible Russian nation" after roaring into a biking rally on a Harley Davidson. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin wears glasses as he visits the Technology Park of the Novosibirsk Academic Town in Novosibirsk on February 17, 2012. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin rides a horse during his vacation outside the town of Kyzyl in Southern Siberia on August 3, 2009. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin holds a pistol during his visit to a newly-built headquarters of the Russian General Staff's Main Intelligence Department (GRU) in Moscow, 08 November 2006. ?Some countries are seeking to untie their hands in order to take weapons to outer space, including nuclear weapons,? Putin said at the Chief Military Intelligence Department on Wednesday. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin sits inside a T-90AM tank during a visit to an arms exhibition in the Urals town of Nizhny Tagil on September 9, 2011 Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin wears a helmet and the uniform of the Renault Formula One team before driving a F1 race car on a special track in Leningrad region outside St. Petersburg on November 7, 2010. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin guides a boat during his vacation in the remote Tuva region in southern Siberia. The picture taken between August 1 and 3, 2017. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin hunts fish underwater in the remote Tuva region in southern Siberia. The picture taken between August 1 and 3, 2017. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin is seen at the Russian boxing team training club after casting his vote for the Russian Presidential election, 14 March 2004 in Moscow. Putin coasted to a landslide victory with 69.0 percent of the vote in Sunday's election, according to the first exit poll aired on Russian television moments after voting ended across the country's 11 time zones. AFP/Getty Images Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Russian President Vladimir Putin poses for a picture inside the Tupolev-160 strategic bomber jet at the Moscow's Chkalovsky military airport, 16 August 2005. President Vladimir Putin took off from Moscow for a supersonic flight in a cruise-missile carrying Tupolev-160 bomber jet, the latest in the Russian leader's action-packed public appearances. After a health check, Putin donned a flight suit and took the commander's position in the strategic bomber, which was piloted by Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, with a colonel and a lieutenant colonel in charge of navigation, Russian media reported. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? A picture released on March 6, 2010 shows Vladimir Putin look through binoculars in the Karatash area, near the town of Abakan, during his working trip to Khakassia, on February 25, 2010. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin measuring a polar bear on the island Alexandra Land, part of the Franz Josef Land archipalego in the Arctic Ocean. Putin, better known in the West for his tough-guy image, expressed concern for the fate of Arctic polar bears threatened by climate change. "The polar bear is under threat. Their population is currently only 25,000 individuals," Putin was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Vladimir Putin carries a hunting rifle during his trip in Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve in Tuva Republic in this undated picture released on October 30, 2010 by RIA Novosti news agency. Getty Vladimir Putin's Photo ops  Russia's Man of Steel? Russian President Vladimir Putin pilots a motorized hang glider while flying with cranes as he takes part in a scientific experiment as part of the "Flight of Hope", which aims to preserve a rare species of - cranes on September 5, 2012. At the helm of a motorized hang glider that the birds have taken as their leader, Putin made three flights - the first to get familiar with the process, and two others with the birds. AFP/Getty

On Wednesday evening Nick Boles MP, a minister in David Camerons government, said Ms May should take retaliatory action against Vladimir Putins regime.

He said on Twitter: I do not see how we can maintain diplomatic relations with a country that tries to murder people on British soil and puts the lives of British citizens at risk.

Its time for us to turn tough talk into action.

Labour MP Chris Bryant followed suit, telling The Times: Ministers must be thinking about when to call in the Russian ambassador now.

Questions which may have been premature are no longer so now. How did this nerve agent enter the country, did it arrive in a diplomatic bag, can we be sure there is none left?
A Liberal Democrat MP has tabled a parliamentary bill that would make it a criminal offence to take a photo up a persons skirt without their permission.

Wera Hobhouse introduced the bill after discovering upskirting is not illegal because there is no specific crime covering the act.

As a result, police have often been unable to charge people found to be taking inappropriate photos of women without their permission.

Ms Hobhouses bill would amend the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to add upskirting as an offence under a section on voyeurism.

The proposals would see anyone convicted of the crime given a fine or a jail term of up to two years.

The Bath MP is due to meet with government ministers to discuss the bill, which she hopes will be passed with cross-party support.

Upskirting was made illegal in Scotland in 2009 but equivalent legislation has not been passed in England and Wales. Ms Hobhouses proposed law is based on the Scottish version.

While some people have been charged for committing the act under laws relating to public decency, this relies on the incident taking place in a public place or being witnessed by others  a factor campaigners say is irrelevant to the inappropriate nature the act.

Speaking to The Independent, Ms Hobhouse said: Its a very vile practice  its humiliating, its degrading, it doesnt fit with what we as women expect to encounter in the 21st Century.

Its discriminating and disgusting and theres a very simple change that would make it a criminal offence.

She added: Its never happened to me, luckily, but I know how embarrassed and awful I would feel if somebody had done that to me.

It makes you immediately sympathise and think this should absolutely be stopped.

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

Ms Hobhouse tabled the bill shortly before International Womens Day.

She said: Were doing this in advance of International Womens Day because we think everybody should do something on that day, not just say Oh weve achieved a great deal but we need to achieve more. Lets do one little thing that will make a difference.

I think this has the potential to make a difference. It wont change the world but it will make a different to a lot of women.

There is no excuse for failing to act, she added.

Ms Hobhouses bill is scheduled to be debated by MPs on 11 May. Before then the MP is due to lobby Victoria Atkins, the minister for women, who asked to meet her to discuss the issue.

It follows a petition set up by Gina Martin, 25, who was the victim of upskirting at a music festival last summer but was told by police that the culprit could not be charged because the offence was not technically a crime.

Ms Martin said: I am delighted that Wera Hobhouse and her colleagues in the Liberal Democrats have decided to support my campaign to introduce a specific upskirting offence.

During her work on this bill with my lawyer Ryan Whelan, at Gibson Dunn, I have seen first-hand just how much Wera wants to get this right, how much she, like me, wants to ensure that upskirters can be prosecuted appropriately in all circumstances.

I believe this bill achieves that and I look forward to other politicians from across the political divide joining Wera, Ryan and I in working to implore [Justice Secretary] David Gauke  and others in government  to close this gap in the law.

The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has previously said a new law is needed to make upskirting a sexual offence.

Vera Baird QC, the organisations lead on matters relating to victims, said the current law is far from clear because there is no specific offence relating to the taking of pictures for sexual gratification without the victims knowledge or consent.
The UK is to build a 700,000 jail in Nigeria so it can deport foreign criminals and free up places in British jails.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced construction of the UN-compliant 112-bed wing at the maximum security Kiri Kiri jail in Lagos in a written statement to Parliament.

The new facility is part of the compulsory prisoner transfer deal signed with Nigeria in 2014, said Mr Johnson.

As part of this agreement, eligible prisoners serving criminal sentences in Nigeria and the UK can be returned to complete their sentences in their respective countries, he said.

There were 270 Nigerian prisoners out of a total of 9,349 foreign nationals in UK jails at the end of 2017, according to the latest statistics.

The total prison population at that time was 84,373 and it costs an average of around 35,000 a year to keep one person in prison.

"The Government believes that wherever possible foreign nationals should serve their sentences in their own country," a Foreign Office spokesperson said.

"Helping Nigeria to improve its prison conditions and increase prison capacity will enable us to transfer more prisoners to Nigeria, which will in turn free up prison places in the UK."

The UK announced a 25m deal to build a prison in Jamaica in 2015 but the plan fell through following a dispute over funding.

Deals to transfer prisoners in UK jails to their countries of origin have also been made with Albania, Rwanda, Jamaica and Libya.

Kiri Kiri prison has a controversial history. According to a 1995 report it was notorious for overcrowding, degrading treatment of prisoners and very high death rate.

The new wing is being paid for using the CSSF (Conflict, Stability and Security Fund) migration returns fund, said Mr Johnson.

"Tenders have been placed and a supplier identified to conduct the building work, alongside project support and monitoring and evaluation, bringing the total cost to 695,525," he added.

The provision of this assistance is in line with the Governments security and stability objectives in West Africa. FCO officials carry out regular reviews of our programmes in Nigeria to ensure funding is directed only to approved recipients."
Nikolas Cruz has been formally charged with carrying out a massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

An indictment handed down by a Broward County grand jury charged Mr Cruz with 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. It means Mr Cruz may face the death penalty if he is convicted.

A former student who had been expelled from the Parkland high school, Mr Cruz is accused of killing 14 students and three school employees during a rampage last month.

Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they plan to seek the death penalty, but Mr Cruzs public defender has said his client would be willing to plead guilty to avoid execution.

Mr Cruz confessed to carrying out the shooting when he was apprehended shortly afterward, according to an arrest affidavit.

The suspected shooters lawyers have described him as a troubled and broken young man and have argued the system failed him, noting that his behaviour repeatedly drew the attention of authorities.

Florida shooting  in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Florida shooting  in pictures Florida shooting  in pictures Police arrest a suspect in connection with the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida Reuters Florida shooting  in pictures Parents wait for news after reports of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida AP Florida shooting  in pictures Anxious family members wait for news of students AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee Florida shooting  in pictures Students being evacuated from the school AP Florida shooting  in pictures Students being evacuated from the school Getty Florida shooting  in pictures People gather waiting for word from students AP Florida shooting  in pictures Parents waiting for news on their children AP Florida shooting  in pictures People gather at a hotel where students were taken after the shooting Getty Florida shooting  in pictures Florida Governor Rick Scott speaks to the media as he visits Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School following the shooting AFP/Getty Florida shooting  in pictures Dr. Igor Nichiporenko, Medical Director Trauma, left, and Dr. Evan Boyer, Medical Director, Emergency Services, speak about treating victims and the suspect at a press conference outside Broward Health North hospital AP

Jail records released by the Broward County Sheriffs Office describe Mr Cruz, segregated from other inmates, as at times appearing logical and coherent and in other instances exhibiting a blank stare. He has shown signs of restlessness and been heard laughing, the records say.

On the same day the grand jury handed down its indictment, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Her appearance frustrated some students who said said they were not able to air their concerns.

 Betsy DeVos says guns can be used in schools because of grizzly bears

Survivors of the shooting have been the public faces of a renewed push for tougher gun laws in the shootings aftermath. Florida legislators have pursued measures that include raising the gun-buying age to 21, empowering courts to bar troubled people from owning firearms and arming some teachers.
A pet dog whose owner was fatally stabbed has made a home for himself in front of the hospital where the man died.

The animal, who has no name, has been waiting in front of the Santa Casa de Novo Horizonte hospital in Brazil for four months, according to local media reports.

The dog first arrived at the unit after chasing after the ambulance that was transporting his owner, a 59-year-old homeless man, to hospital in October.

The man, who had been involved in a street fight, died from his injuries but two months on, the dog continued to wait for him in front of the hospital, Brazil's O Globo newspaper reported.

Staff at the hospital gave the dog food and water, and they eventually found a local kennels, 3km from the hospital, willing to take him in.

But with a new owner lined up to take him, hospital workers were shocked to find the dog turn up back to the hospital not long after, having escaped the kennels.

It is not the first story of a dog showing unwavering loyalty to its owner.

In 2016, a dog waited for a week outside a Spanish hospital while her owner recovered from surgery.

And pictures of a familys two pet dogs were widely shared after they refused to leave the side of a terminally-ill baby girl.
An undocumented immigrant rights organiser has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in what activists say is the latest example of the Trump administration targeting vocal members of the immigrant rights movement.

Alejandra Pablos, 32, was detained early Thursday morning during a routine check-in with ICE officials, just months after she was arrested by immigration officials at what has been described as a peaceful immigration protest outside of an ICE field office in Virginia.

Ms Pablos, in a video recorded before her detention and posted on Facebook, said that arrests like hers are an effort to silence immigration activists and disassemble the larger pro-immigrant movement. At least four other prominent immigration activists have been detained and threatened with deportation since President Donald Trump took office.

They are trying to tear our movement and our community apart, and Im not going to let that happen, Ms Pablos said in the video, which she pre-recorded suspecting she might be detained. They are retaliating against all activists and organisers. I need you to fight for me on the outside as I am fighting inside.

The woman, who says that she would be in danger if deported to Mexico, is currently seeking asylum and previously served two years in US detention facilities. That detention began in 2011 after she was charged with driving under the influence and for being in possession of marijuana, Tania Unzueta, a fellow undocumented organiser with the group Mijente in Tucson who is familiar with her case, told The Independent.

Ms Pablos was released following that detention on parole after serving two years at a detention centre in Eloy, Arizona, and was instructed to regularly check in with immigration officials.

People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Show all 16 1 /16 People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP

But Ms Unzueta says that the most recent detention is connected to her arrest at the January, and not because of her run-in with the law seven years ago.

To put it bluntly, I think it is an intimidation tactic for people who are speaking out on immigration, Ms Unzuenta said, saying that an ICE agent in Virginia had notified their colleagues in Arizona about Ms Pablos.

Immigration rights groups sued ICE last month after a different immigration activist, Ravi Ragbir, was detained and threatened with deportation proceedings. The lawsuit, which has gotten Mr Ragbir a stay on his deportation order, argued that his detention was the result of his activism and not solely related to his immigration status.

ICEs targeting of immigrant-rights activists based on their protected speech and political advocacy plainly violates the First Amendment. We intend to put an end to this vindictive practice, Sally Pei, an attorney working on that case, said in a statement released the time.

When contacted for comment, ICE spokesperson Lauren Mack rejected the notion that immigrants are being targeted for their political activism, and pointed out that the agency has a directive to target criminal aliens in the US. In the fiscal year of 2017, Ms Mack said, 73.7 per cent of the undocumented immigrants detained fell into that category, they noted  a category that Ms Pablos would fall under for her previous convictions.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not target unlawfully present aliens for arrest based on advocacy positions they hold or in retaliation for critical comments they make, Ms Mack said in a statement representing the agency. Any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible, speculative and inaccurate. ICE focuses its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.

Immigration advocates, including Ms Unzuenta, disagree. When asked about the stated goal of ICE to arrest criminal aliens, advocates often reference cases in which ICE agents arrested immigrants who had been critical of the agency even though they did not have a criminal history.

Ms Unzuenta noted the case of Maru Mora-Villalpando, 47, who is an outspoken activist in the Seattle area who has lived in the United States for more than 25 years, and who has an American daughter.

Ms Mora-Villalpando was served a notice to appear before an immigration judge in December after an ICE agent showed up at her front door. Ms Mora-Villalpando does not have a criminal background, but did overstay her visa, which is a civil  not criminal  violation.

She had never been in deportation proceedings before, she had never been in contact with police, Ms Unzuenta, who is organising around the case as well, said. They found her story in a newspaper where they said she was undocumented. I think her case is one where its really clear that there is no other excuse for ICE to target her except for her public speaking.
President Donald Trumps alleged comment last month that 54 African nations and others were s***hole countries is in the past according to the African Union.

The chair of the group Moussa Faki said he had received a letter from Mr Trump and said Secretary of State Rex Tillersons current five-country listening tour on the continent reaffirmed the US commitment.

The pair met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and discussed a number of issues including trade, counter-terrorism efforts, Chinese investment, and development.

Just last month Mr Faki had written in a statement that the AU "condemns the comments in the strongest terms and demands a retraction of the comment as well as an apology to not only the Africans but to all people of African descent around the globe.

Nigeria, Botswana, Senegal, South Africa, Ghana, and Haiti have all called in American diplomats to explain what Mr Trump meant by his supposed comment.

Mr Trump has denied making the remarks - attributed to the President by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin - during a meeting about immigration, during which he also reportedly wondered why the US did not have more immigrants from places like Norway, whose Prime Minister he had just hosted.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had said in response that the President hasn't said he didn't use strong language, and this is an important issue, he's passionate about it, he's not going to apologise for trying to fix our immigration system."

 'S***hole' projected onto Donald Trump's hotel in Washington DC

"At this stage, nothing has changed with respect to our relationship with African nations and we continue to see them wanting to strengthen our relationship," Mr Tillerson told Buzzfeed News in the wake of the reports about the comment.

The Presidents alleged sentiment is not the only point of contention between the parties, however.

Last month, as part of the apparent attempt at damage control, Mr Tillerson also claimed that during the last successful meeting with the AU one of their greatest concerns is counterterrorism.

However, the Trump administration slighted one of its most robust African counter-terrorism partnerships by placing a travel ban on people from Chad, Mr Faki's home country.

Chad assists in the fight against Isis-West Africa, al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram.

Mr Faki and Mr Tillerson also discussed Chinese investment in the African Union, an issue Africa Commands Marine General Thomas Waldhauser told the House he was concerned about in Djibouti.

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

Djibouti also hosts approximately 4,000 American personnel, including special operations forces. It also serves a launch pad for operations in Yemen and Somalia.

It also hosts a Chinese military base and recently seized control of the port from a private company to reportedly turn it over to the Chinese.

Ethiopia is another example of growing Chinese influence. The US has invested $567 million, while Chinese investments amount to about $15 billion.

They have also constructed shopping malls, stadiums, and host nation government buildings, prompting Mr Waldhauser to say at the House Armed Services Committee meeting that the US will never outspend China on the continent.

Mr Tillerson has said in the past that though that he thought Chinas investments on the continent encouraged dependency versus the forms of US aid, which promotes sustainable growth - a perspective with which some global development experts have disagreed.

He was referring to some of the African nations who have defaulted on loans from Chinese companies and those that still lack jobs for domestic populations despite the Chinese projects going on in the country.

"We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese investment dollars out of Africa. They are badly needed. However, we think it's important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those investments, Mr Tillerson said in Addis Ababa.

Mr Faki was quick to point out though that Africans are "mature enough" to handle who invests in their countries on their own. He noted there was no one country that controlled the ability of others to invest in the continent either.

Mr Tillersons trip will also include visits to Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria.
Texas Democrats have more than doubled the partys turnout since the last primary election four years ago.

One million Democrats had cast ballots in the states recent primary election, while 1.5 million Republicans did. In 2014 Democrats only had a 30 per cent share of the vote in the historically conservative state.

The jump was less than what party officials had hoped for but it will make for a tighter race in November general election in certain races, particularly Republican Senator Ted Cruz being challenged by Democrat Beto ORourke.

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Democrats are hoping to mount challenges in other races as well though because at last count, voter turnout was up for the party in 15 of the most populated counties.

Texas is made of nearly 40 per cent Hispanic and Latino residents according to the last US Census data. It is now perhaps ready to send the first Latinas - Democrats Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia - to Congress from districts that are seen as safe wins for the party.

While Mr ORourke performed well in terms of fundraising and overall - he garnered nearly 700,000 votes to Mr Cruzs 1.3 million - he stumbled in the southern parts of the state that are predominantly Hispanic or Latino.

Ted Cruz: The Democrats are the party of the KKK

As The Hill newspaper reported: Hispanic turnout will be key for the Democratic effort in the fall.

What may bolster Democrats in the state even more is Mr Cruz himself.

He expressed concern about the partys growing numbers, telling CNN this past week: "The extreme left is energized and angry, and it makes it all the important for conservatives to show up in November.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

"If conservatives stay home, if we rest on our laurels, we could see Texas turn blue, he said, referring to the colour denoted on maps to Democrats.

Texas has been a reliably red state for decades. In fact, the last time a Democrat held a US Senate seat for the state was 1993-1994, the same year as the last Democratic Governor.

Since then, Republicans have controlled all federal level offices and governorships.

A presidential candidate has not won the state since Former President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
The Trump administration has given a woman who built her career championing abstinence the final say on which family planning clinics will receive federal funding.

The administration has placed the decision as to which organisations receive a Title X grant in the hands of Valerie Huber, the acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and an advocate for sexual risk avoidance".

The $286m Title X grant programme provides federal funding to health care providers that offer family planning services like fertility treatment and contraceptives. The money cannot legally be used to fund abortions, but conservatives have railed against the grants in the past for going to organisations  like Planned Parenthood  that provide the procedure alongside other family planning services.

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Ms Huber has said Planned Parenthood is still welcome to apply for the grants, but that the department would prioritise applications from organisations with a religious background, and those that counsel abstinence or natural methods.

Before joining the Trump administration, Ms Huber served as president of Ascend  a sexual risk avoidance organisation formerly known as the National Abstinence Education Association. Before that, she managed the Ohio Department of Healths Abstinence Education Program.

Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Show all 30 1 /30 Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Threatening to shut down Twitter after being fact-checked After the president tweeted that voting by post would be "substantially fraudulent", Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet and referred readers to a site which explained how the claim was "unsubstantiated". Trump then said Twitter was "stifling free speech" and that he may have to shut it down, something which he would not have the power to do AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Flippantly dismissing a serious allegation of sexual assault When author E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her, the president responded: Number one, shes not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Insulting the Mayor of London as he landed in London Just before touching down at Stansted Airport for his state visit, Trump took time out to @ the London mayor Sadiq Khan on twitter. He said that Khan has done a "terrible job"as mayor and that he is a "stone cold loser" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Taking plenty of "Executive Time" The president's official schedule sets aside the hours from 8 to 11am daily for "Executive Time". Further intermittent periods of "Executive Time" are scheduled throughout any given day, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. His duties in these hours have not been officially disclosed, though Axios reports that he spends them watching TV, reading the newspapers and tweeting Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Shutdown the government for over a month in an effort to secure funding for his wall With Mexico declining to pay for the wall, the president has faced difficulty in raising the required $5bn at home. Due to his demand that the money for the wall be included in the budget, and Congress's refusal, the government partially shut down on 22 December 2018. It remained shut for over a month, the longest period in history Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Joking about the Nazi occupation of France to President Macron In this tweet from 13 November 2018, the president mocks Emmanuel Macron's suggestion of a "true, European army" by invoking the conflict between France and Germany in the world wars Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Railing against the Mueller investigation The president has repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is a "rigged witch hunt" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting a US intelligence report on Russian meddling in the presence of Vladimir Putin In the press conference that followed his landmark meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump stated that he saw no reason why Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US election. This contradicted a 2017 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found evidence of Russian interference in favour of Trump Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting his contradiction of a US intelligence report on Russian meddling Following furious backlash in the US, the president claimed that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not have been Russia who meddled in the 2016 US election. As to why he would have intended to use such bizarre phrasing, he did not comment Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Colouring in the US flag wrong The president coloured in the US flag wrongly during a visit to a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added a blue stripe where in tradition, and statute, there have been only white and red stripes AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing a Secretary of State over Twitter The president announced on Twitter that he was appointing Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, much to the surprise of then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Quoting a catchphrase from a reality TV show when discussing police brutality While addressing the issue of black athletes not standing for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, the president made reference to his catchphrase from reality TV show "The Apprentice": you're fired! Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Calling African nations "S***hole Countries" Ever one for diplomacy, the president reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole countries". Asked to confirm this when meeting with Nigeria's President Buhari, Trump stated that there are "some countries that are in very bad shape". Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Defending Russian President Vladimir Putin Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying: There are a lot of killers. You think our countrys so innocent? Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Asking for people to 'pray' for Arnold Schwarzenegger At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump couldnt help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzeneggers show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of The Apprentice  which buoyed Trumps celebrity status years ago Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Hanging up on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Early in his presidency, Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the worst call he had had so far Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... The 'Muslim ban' Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Trumps travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administrations argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Praising crowd size while touring Hurricane Harvey damage After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the president picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... 'Little Rocket Man' During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be little Rocket Man as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Attacking Sadiq Khan following London Bridge terror attack After the attack on the London Bridge, Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticising Khan for saying there was no reason to be alarmed after the attack. Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming presenter Mika Brezinkski was 'bleeding from the face' Never one not to mock his enemies, Trump mocked MSNBCs Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to join him. He noted that she was bleeding badly from a face-lift at the time, and that he said no MSNBC Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming the blame for Charlottesville was on 'both sides' Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Retweeting cartoon of CNN being hit by a 'Trump train' Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Tweeting about 'slamming' CNN Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of fake news Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... 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Accusing Obama of wiretapping him Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Obama had not, in fact, done so Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming there had been 3 million 'illegal votes' Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.) Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Leaving Jews out of the Holocaust memorial statement Just days after taking office, Trumps White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didnt mention jews or even the word jewish in the written statement Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Anger over Inauguration crowd size Trumps inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didnt, the day was very dreary Reuters

Describing her sexual risk avoidance curriculum in a 2017 column for the Hill, Ms Huber wrote that she focuses on normalizing sexual delay for youth.

The healthiest message for youth is one that gives youth the skills and information to avoid the risks of teen sex, not merely reduce them, she wrote.

At a 2012 speech to the Bringing America Back to Life symposium, Ms Huber said: We think that young people need to know information that is going to help them make the best decision  and that best decision is to wait.

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The decision to give Ms Huber the final say on grants is a change from previous years, when decisions were made by a regional health official, as well as the HHS deputy assistant secretary for population affairs and the assistant secretary for health.

This year, applications will be reviewed by an independent review panel. Then they will go to Ms Huber for the final say, according to Politico, which first reported the news. An HHS spokesperson told the outlet that the department has been working for years to streamline administrative function for Title X grants.

The selection process in the funding opportunity announcement has been updated to reflect that the office head, in this case, the [deputy assistant secretary for population affairs], will make the final selections, the spokesperson said.
Donald Trump reportedly talked to multiple witnesses in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation about his probe into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia.

Mr Trump quizzed former chief of staff Reince Priebus about his interview with investigators, and asked White House counsel Don McGahn to deny damaging reports about the investigation, according to the New York Times.

The conversations are likely not illegal, but could add fire to Mr Muellers investigation into whether the president attempted to obstruct the Russia investigation.

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Mr Trump asked Mr Priebus about his interview with investigators when he visited the White House in December, people with knowledge of the investigation told the Times. Mr Trump reportedly wanted to know how the interview went, and if the investigators were nice.

Mr Priebus told Mr Trump that the interviewers were courteous and professional but did not go into specifics of what they asked, according to the sources.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

Mr Trump also reportedly asked Mr McGahn, one of this longest-serving aides, to publicly refute an article about the investigation in the Times. The Times report claimed Mr McGahn had threatened to resign when the president told him to fire Mr Mueller.

Mr Trump dismissed the report as fake news at the time. But according to two sources with knowledge of the situation, then-White House staff secretary Rob Porter confronted Mr McGhan after the article was published. He told the White House counsel that said Mr Trump wanted him to issue a statement denying the reports, and that he would "get rid" of him if he didn't.

Mr McGahn refused to comply with the order, leading to a heated conversation with Mr Trump in the Oval Office, according to the sources. Mr McGhan never released the statement, and remains as White House counsel.

William Burck, the attorney for Mr McGahn and Mr Priebus, denied to comment on the situation. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

 Donald Trump says he doesn't intend to fire Robert Mueller

The incidents are interesting in light of Mr Muellers probe into whether Mr Trump attempted to obstruct the Russia investigation. Experts interviewed by the Times said these interactions would likely drive Mr Mueller to further probe Mr Trumps interactions with other witnesses.

Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress in June that Mr Trump had asked him to pledge his loyalty, and to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Mr Trump denies this occurred.

Mr Comey said he did not comply with either of the presidents requests. He was ultimately fired.

Mr Trump also reportedly told Mr Comey that the Russia investigation was a cloud over his presidency, and asked him what he could do to lift the cloud". The Times also reported that Mr Trump asked Mr McGahn to stop Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia investigation, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him.

Mr Trumps attorneys have said the president fully cooperated with the investigation.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said the White House is getting hollowed out as top-level officials continue to leave President Donald Trumps administration.

The number of people capable of doing things - doing real things, whether you agree or disagree ideologically - is getting smaller and smaller, Mr Schumer told reporters at a news conference.

And the White House seems unable to recruit new people to take these jobs, he added.

The Presidents top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, announced on Wednesday that he planned to resign, the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the White House.

During a White House briefing, reporters grilled Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about why so many people are leaving the administration.

This is an intense place, as is every White House, Ms Sanders said. And its not abnormal that you would have people come and go.

While every administration suffers from a revolving door of personnel, Mr Trumps White House has a staff turnover rate of 34 per cent  a level that has not been seen for decades, according to the Brookings Institution think tank.

Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Show all 29 1 /29 Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Inauguration - 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump acknowledges the audience after taking the oath of office as his wife Melania (L) and daughter Tiffany watch during inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as the 45th president of the United States on the West Front of the US capital in Washington on 20 January, 2017. Photographer Jim Bourg: "This photo was shot with one of two remote cameras. The cameras were monitored and triggered remotely and the pictures were transmitted to clients worldwide within minutes of being taken." Reuters/Jim Bourg Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Obama farewell address - 10 January 2017 US President Barack Obama wipes away tears as he delivers his farewell address in Chicago on 10 January, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "In his final days in office, Obama made a visit home to Chicago. As he spoke from the stage to his wife and daughter in the audience, he became emotional when he talked about what they had sacrificed during his time in office. I turned from photographing the Obama women embracing to find him onstage wiping away tears." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Inauguration - 20 January 2017 A combination of photos shows the crowds attending the inauguration ceremonies to swear in U.S. President Donald Trump at 12:01pm (left) on January 20, 2017 and President Barack Obama sometime between 12:07pm and 12:26pm on January 20, 2009. Reuters/ Lucas Jackson/Stelios Varias Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Liberty Ball - 20 January 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump attend the Liberty Ball in honour of his inauguration in Washington on 20 January, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "What I see when I look at this picture is the end of a very long day, not to mention weeks and months of preparation by many photographers, editors and network experts and the beginning of everything since." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception - 22 January 2017 US President Donald Trump greets Director of the FBI James Comey as Director of the Secret Service Joseph Clancy (L), watches during the Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception in the Blue Room of the White House on 22 January, 2017. Photographer Joshua Roberts: "I have covered the White House for 16 years and normally either the President or the pool is in position when an event starts. In this case the President was not where anyone expected him to be. In fact, he was almost blocking the door when the pool came in. We had to scramble to find a position without bumping him or the furniture as he greeted and thanked members of law enforcement for their security efforts during the inauguration. Luckily, he greeted FBI Director James Comey a few seconds after the pool had made its way into the room." Reuters/Joshua Roberts Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Private phone calls to world leaders - 28 January 2017 US President Donald Trump, is joined by his staff, as he speaks by phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office on 28 January, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "Very early in the Trump administration, weekends were as busy as weekdays. On Trump's second Saturday the official schedule said he would be making private phone calls to a number of world leaders including Russia's Vladimir Putin. I arrived early and, before sitting down at my desk walked up to Press Secretary Sean Spicer's office. He, too, was just taking his coat off. I gingerly made the suggestion that previous administrations had sometimes allowed photos of such phone calls through the Oval Office windows on the colonnade. To my mild shock, he didn't even think about it twice. "We'll do it!" he said. In truth, I really only expected the Putin call, but we were outside the windows multiple times throughout the day as the calls went on." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Senior advisor Kellyanne Conway - 27 February 2017 Senior advisor Kellyanne Conway (L) attends as US President Donald Trump welcomes the leaders of dozens of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) in the Oval Office on 27 February, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "We're often asked how much access we have to the Trump administration, and the answer is we have an awful lot. President Trump himself is very comfortable in the spotlight, and his aides are similarly unfazed by cameras. In this instance, senior advisor Kellyanne Conway was so comfortable in our presence she seemed not to consider the optics of kneeling on a Oval Office sofa to take pictures with her phone." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Angela Merkel heads to Washington - 17 March 2017 Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Donald Trump hold a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House on 17 March, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "Chancellor Merkel made one of the earliest important visits of any US allies to meet Trump in his first months in office. When world leaders give joint news conferences they don't always tend to give each other their full attention - but Merkel watched Trump intently at several key moments, and here seemed particularly rapt." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Trump welcomes truckers to the White House - 23 March 2017 President Trump reacts as he sits on a truck while he welcomes truckers and CEOs to attend a meeting regarding healthcare at the White House on 23 March, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "The White House organised a listening session with truckers and CEO's of major American companies, regarding healthcare reform. An 18-wheeler tow truck was parked on the South Lawn of the White House and as Trump welcomed the truckers someone invited the him to come and sit in the driver's seat. Trump jumped into the cab and started yelling and pretending to drive - creating one of the most memorable pictures of the year. A lesson learned, always be prepared for the unexpected." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Air Force One - 6 April 2017 US President Donald Trump talks to journalists members of the travel pool on board the Air Force One during his trip to Palm Beach, Florida on 6 April, 2017. Carlos Barria: "During the many trips to President Trump's residence in Florida it is usual to see the president coming to the back of the plane to chat with journalists. During one of the trips to the so called 'Winter White House', Trump had a long talk with reporters while the Air Force One entertainment system was playing one of the latest Star Wars movies. As I was listening to Trump talk I was also looking at the movie waiting for a part of the movie to frame the mood of the day. Of the many scenes, I choose the one with Darth Vader." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures 100 Days - 27 April 2017 US President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office of the White House on 27 April, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "A day before President Trump's hundred days in office I was part of the team that interviewed the commander-in-chief in the Oval Office. I was only allowed to photograph Trump during the last five minutes of the interview. The time was very tight so I had to move fast as I had pictures in mind that I wanted to shoot. I walked into the Oval Office and saw that the President had printed maps of the country showing areas in red where he won. I raised my hands holding my camera as high as possible to get the best view of the scene using a 16mm wide angle lens." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures 100 Days - 27 April 2017 US President Donald Trump reacts as he arrives at Harrisburg international airport, before attending a rally marking his first 100 days in office in Pennsylvania on 29 April, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "President Trump travelled to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to celebrate his hundred days in office with a victory rally. He was in friendly territory as he won with a big difference over his opponent Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, during the November elections. As usual when the commander-in-chief arrives local residents gather to greet him. This time a small group of military personnel attended the arrival. Surrounded by secret service agents Trump walked from the Air Force One and raised his hand in a sign of victory as the crowd cheered him on." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures White House staffers - 2 May 2017 White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer (L) and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus watch as US President Donald Trump presents the U.S. Air Force Academy football team with the Commander-in-Chief trophy in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on 2 May, 2017. Photographer Joshua Roberts: "Covering the White House does not just mean covering the President. White House staffers are an important part of the story and their relationship with the President and each other is an indicator of how things are going in the West Wing. The tendency is to focus exclusively on the President once an event starts but I always try to look around to see how people are reacting as things unfold." Reuters/Joshua Roberts Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Secret Service - 4 May 2017 Secret Service agents use a presidential limousine as cover from spraying water as US President Donald Trump lands via Marine One helicopter in New York on 4 May, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "The best part of any trip to New York City with the sitting US President is the helicopter ride into Manhattan. The ride out at night can be stunning. Here, Secret Service agents protect themselves from the spray from the East River as Trump lands on the helipad." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures NATO Summit - 25 May 2017 US President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump wait the arrival of French President Emmanuel Macron (unseen) before a lunch ahead of a NATO Summit in Brussels on 25 May, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "One of the best parts of travelling overseas for White House coverage is the chance to see the U.S. president in different environments and (literally) a different light. Here, Trump and his wife came out of the shadows to greet France's President Macron." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Trump meets Putin at G20 summit - 7 July 2017 US President Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany on 7 July, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "On July 7, I witnessed one of the most important meetings of President Trump's first year in office. Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Germany. The world's eyes were on these two leaders after speculation about Russian interference during the 2016 US elections. We entered the room for less than two minutes, where I took dozens of pictures. But there was this very interesting moment when Trump extended his hand to Putin for a handshake. Putin paused for a second and looked at Trump's hand. That was the picture that I was looking for, a little moment that seemed to say a lot." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures First lady - 8 July 2017 First lady Melania Trump chats with US President Donald Trump during their return from Germany at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on 8 July, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "After President Trump's trip to Germany he arrived back at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. First Lady Melania Trump said goodbye to Trump as she was heading off in a different direction that day. While chatting a breeze blew Melania's hair up in the air." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Made in America product showcase - 17 July 2017 Vice President Mike Pence laughs as President Donald Trump holds a baseball bat as they attend a Made in America product showcase event at the White House on 17 July, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "This summer the White House organized an event to showcase 'Made in America' products. All kinds of exhibitors brought their products as the President and Vice President toured the event. One of the companies was Marucci Sport, a manufacturer of baseball bats based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As Trump approached a table full of baseball bats, photographers at the event, including me, rushed to get a good angle hoping that he would pick up a bat. As we predicted, he did. He took one and joked around as though he was hitting something hard. The only thing closer to him right there, was the media." Reuters Donald Trump's first year: in pictures White House staffers - 25 July 2017 Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says hello to reporters as he and White House advisors including Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci accompany President Trump for an event celebrating veterans at AMVETS Post 44 in Ohio, July 25, 2017. Jonathan Ernst: "The most visible person in any White House is naturally the President, followed by the press secretary. But there are also the staff who support them. For those of us covering the Trump administration, there seem to be more compelling figures in the West Wing than ever before. It's crucial to know who's who and why they're important. When I raised my camera and back-pedalled ahead of the group to take this image Lewandowski gave me a hello. I liked the photo, but had no idea it would go a little bit viral, especially since Scaramucci, who was the biggest mover and shaker that week, was hidden back in the pack. But I guess the image catches a glimpse of what it's like to be a West Wing staffer on the road." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Campaign rally - 3 August 2017 US President Donald Trump arrives at a rally in West Virginia on 3 August, 2017. Photographer Carlos Barria: "President Trump travelled to Huntington for one of his usual campaign rallies. While members of his family spoke to the crowd he was waiting under a black curtain to be introduced. Suddenly he walked onto the stage, one of the first frames that I took was of his hand. I set my exposure for the light on the stage hoping to create this dark background and it worked." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Staring into the solar eclipse - 21 August 2017 Without his protective glasses on, US President Donald Trump looks up towards the solar eclipse while viewing with his wife Melania and son Barron at the White House on 21 August, 2017. Photographer Kevin Lamarque: "On a day when everyone, and I mean everyone, was told not to look at the eclipse without protective glasses, Trump, President of the United States, couldn't help himself." Reuters/Kevin Lamarque Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Hurricane Harvey - 2 September 2017 US President Donald Trump poses for a photo as he and first lady Melania Trump help volunteers hand out meals during a visit with flood survivors of Hurricane Harvey at a relief centre in Houston, Texas on 2 September, 2017. Photohrapher Kevin Lamarque: "Trump, eager to deliver the image of a hands-on response to Hurricane Harvey, made this visit to a relief centre and obliged this woman with a selfie as Melania continued to work." Reuters/Kevin Lamarque Donald Trump's first year: in pictures White House - 15 September 2017 Donald Trump welcomes 11-year-old Frank Giaccio as he cuts the Rose Garden grass at the White House on 15 September. Frank, who wrote a letter to Trump offering to mow the lawn, was invited to work for a day at the White House along the National Park Service staff. Frank was so focused on his task that he did not notice the President arrive to surprise him. He took his father jumping in to grab his attention and point Trump out. Photographer Carlos Barria said: The image of Trump shouting at a kid who is mowing his lawn might have many interpretations in today's politically polarized United States. But for me it was just a kid who loved what he was doing, to the point he almost appeared to ignore the President." Reuters/Carlos Barria Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Take a knee - 27 September 2017 A man kneels with a folded U.S. flag as the motorcade of U.S. President Donald Trump passes him after an event at the state fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., September 27, 2017. In September, soon after Trump had made comments condemning NFL players who kneel during the national anthem, he made a day trip to a rally in Indianapolis. Jonathan Ernst managed to capture a man on one knee with a tri-folded flag and was able to use a portion of the sign on the building he was kneeling in front of to track the man down and tell his story in full. US Army veteran Marvin Boatright wanted to send a message against social injustice. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Hurricane Maria - 3 October 2017 President Donald Trump throws rolls of paper towels into a crowd of local residents affected by Hurricane Maria as he visits Calgary Chapel in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 3 October, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "During an afternoon visit to Puerto Rico for President Trump to survey damage from Hurricane Maria and greet some of its victims, Trump made a stop at a church where food and supplies were being distributed. Among the items were paper towels and Trump, apparently caught up in the moment, decided to distribute some of the rolls." Reuters Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Jared Kushner - 1 November 2017 White House Senior adviser Jared Kushner sits behind President Trump during a cabinet meeting in Washington on 1 November, 2017. Photographer Kevin Lamarque: "The role of Jared Kushner has gone through a series of changes. He began front and centre as a high profile adviser, but as time has passed and issues surrounding him have surfaced, he has become more of a background figure." Reuters/Kevin Lamarque Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Trump in China - 9 November 2017 Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 9 November, 2017. Photographer Damir Sagolj: "It's one of those "how to make a better or at least different shot when two presidents shake hands several times a day, several days in row". If I'm not mistaken in calculation, presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump shook their hands at least six times in events I covered during Trump's recent visit to China. I would imagine there were some more handshakes I haven't seen but other photographers did. And they all look similar - two big men, smiling and heartily greeting each other until everyone gets their shot. But then there is always something that can make it special - in this case the background made of US and Chinese flags. The first time it didn't work for me. The second time I positioned myself lower and centrally, and used the longest lens I have to capture only hands reaching for a handshake." Reuters/Damir Sagolj Donald Trump's first year: in pictures Air Force One - 10 November 2017 US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One to depart for Vietnam from Beijing Airport in Beijing, China, November 10, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "There is a Reuters photographer in the tight pool covering the US president for every appearance he makes 365 days a year. This was just one of 32 images of mine that were transmitted on the Reuters wire of President Trump visiting China and Vietnam that day. You never know when a sudden interaction, a gust of wind or a unique facial expression will lead to a striking image that grabs peoples' attention." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump's first year: in pictures ASEAN handshake - 13 November 2017 Donald Trump registers his surprise as he realises other leaders, including Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, are crossing their arms for the traditional "ASEAN handshake" as he participates in the opening ceremony of the summit in Manila on 13 November, 2017. Photographer Jonathan Ernst: "Having covered a few ASEAN summits, I knew to expect the ASEAN handshake. Not everyone in the room knew to expect the ASEAN handshake. A lot was written about this unscripted moment, and what deeper meaning it might have. The simple truth is that sometimes in life there are unscripted moments." Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

No administration in recent history has had this much turnover, ABC News reporter Cecilia Vega told Ms Sanders. If this is not the definition of chaotic, how would you describe whats happening in these recent weeks?

Ms Sanders responded by declaring that if the White House was as chaotic as reports say, then I dont think we would have been able to accomplish all that weve done.

The economy is stronger than its been in ages, Ms Sanders said. Isis is on the run. Making of the judiciary jobs are coming in at record numbers. There are historic things that have taken place in the first year. Sounds like a very functioning place of business to me.

Mr Trump said on Tuesday that everybody wants to work in the White House.

They all want a piece of that Oval Office; they want a piece of the West Wing, he added during a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

Earlier, the President had dismissed reports of chaos in the White House while hinting that the staff shakeup will continue.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been stripped of a prestigious award by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum over what it said was her failure to speak out against ethnic cleansing and genocide committed against a Muslim minority in her country.

Over the past 12 months there have been repeated reports of atrocities carried out against Myanmars Rohingya by the countrys military. Anywhere up to 700,000 people have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The international community has repeatedly called on Ms Suu Kyi, the most powerful civilian leader in the country and a Nobel laureate to speak out about the murder and killings that the UN has described as a text-book case of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar's army has repeatedly denied allegations

The Burmese military, allied with armed Buddhist civilians, are alleged to have killed thousands of Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine since last August., although the army has repeatedly denied the allegations. The US has described Myanmars denials as preposterous and called on the UN security council to pressure MsSuu Kyi to acknowledge these horrific acts.

The Washington museums rescission of its Elie Wiesel Award to Ms Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the latest honour to be retracted over her silence about widespread abuses against the Rohingya.

Ms Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy have refused to cooperate with United Nations investigators, fed hate attacks on the Rohingya and denied reporters access to areas where alleged abuses have taken place, the museum said in a letter to Ms Suu Kyi that was posted on its website.

 Boris Johnson on Rohingya crisis 'We need to find a political solution'

Preventing genocide is at the core of our work every day. Based on inspiration that you created for millions around the world, with your long resistance to military dictatorship, and your advocacy for freedom and human rights for all the people of Myanmar, we were honoured to present you with the first Elie Wiesel Award in 2012, it said.

It is with great regret that we are now rescinding that award. We did not take this decision lightly.

Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Show all 9 1 /9 Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Refugee children scuffle over free meals given away during a wedding party for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Women and children attend a wedding party for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Guests enjoy a wedding party for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp People attend a wedding party for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Guests dance during a wedding party for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp A refugee tent is decorated by colourful blankets for the wedding ceremony of Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein, 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Shofika Begum, 18, is helped with make-up by her brother's wife on the day she marries Saddam Hussein, 23, both Rohingya refugees, at Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp Shofika Begum, 18, cries leaving a tent with her relatives as she is about to meet Saddam Hussein, 23, both Rohingya refugees, on their wedding day at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh Reuters Wedding in a Rohingya refugee camp An muslim cleric (R) performs a wedding ritual for Rohingya refugees Saddam Hussein (L), 23, and Shofika Begum, 18, who stays in a separate room, at the Kutupalong camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, December 11, 2017. The newly wed couple, both from the village of Foyra Bazar in Maungdaw township that was burnt by the Myanmar military, fled with their families and other Rohingya some three months ago, Saddam Hussein said. They knew each other from before escaping from Myanmar and were planning to get married but managed to do so only now, as refugees living in the overcrowded Kutupalong refugee camp Reuters

It added: The National League for Democracy, under your leadership, has instead refused to cooperate with United Nations investigators, promulgated hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya community, and denied access to and cracked down on journalists trying to uncover the scope of the crimes in Rakhine State.

We understand the difficult situation you must face in confronting decades of military misrule and violence in your country and that institutions still powerful constitutional role.

However, the militarys orchestration of the crimes against Rohingya and the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation.

Reuters said the move by the museum was the latest institution to rescind an honour. Last month, three Nobel peace laureates urged Ms Suu Kyi and the military to end the genocide of Rohingya Muslims now or face prosecution.
Central Sri Lanka was gripped by tension on Thursday as a fresh wave of anti-Muslim attacks swept through the Buddhist holy city of Kandy and the surrounding hillside.

The attacks, led by the increasingly bold Sinhala-Buddhist mobs, have drawn comparisons with the start of the countrys decades-long civil war in 1983.

As the fourth night of a military imposed curfew fell, minority Muslims told The Independent they were apprehensive about the possibility of an escalation in violence following Friday prayers, with dozens of Muslim-owned houses, businesses and vehicles now burnt down.

Fresh tensions erupted in riot-torn Kandy when Sinhalese mobs took to the streets, defying the curfew, on Wednesday night. A Buddhist man was killed in an explosion, authorities said, when a grenade he was carrying detonated prematurely.

So far three people have died, including one Muslim youth who lost his life after being trapped in a house set on fire by mobs.

The riots started on Monday after a 41-year-old Sinhalese man died following a clash between some youths in Digana village, five miles from Kandy.

The incident, a personal scuffle, was stoked into racial riots by outside elements, say government ministers, and the Sinhalese community at large.

This situation has been created by outsiders. Its a conspiracy, said Lakshman Kiriella, a Kandy District parliamentarian. We should be ashamed as a majority Buddhist nation to be persecuting innocent Muslims in this country, he told parliament.

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara insisted the situation was under control. The government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said that the army has been deployed in ten and thousands to the hill country.

But despite such reassurances from police and military, residents in and around Kandy fear that Friday, when the Muslim men gather in congregation at mosques for midday prayers, could bring more attacks.

Victims and eyewitnesses have made allegations that the countrys elite Special Task Force (STF) and the army, called in to quell the riots on Monday, did not move to prevent the mobs from their rampage, looting, burning and pillaging of homes and businesses.

In Welikada, five miles from Kandy, where several houses and shops were burnt down and the mosque attacked, victims say the STF did nothing to stop the violence.

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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The STF, police and the army watched more than 300 people destroy all the Muslim-owned property in my village, one victim, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Independent.

Three of my cousins homes and my nephews shop were all burnt down. Their vehicles were set on fire and our family home, where all the Muslim families gathered when the mob started attacking, was destroyed, he said.

The Central Province Deputy Inspector General of Police, Mahinda Ekanayake, denied claims that the police did not take action.

Under the Sri Lankan state of emergency law, which President Maithripala Sirisena imposed on Monday, the police and military have extensive powers to quell riots.

On Wednesday the police fired shots in the air and used teargas to dispel rioters in some parts of the hill country.

The state of emergency has been declared for the first time since the end of the countrys three-decades long bloody ethnic war that began in 1983 when Sinhalese mobs attacked the minority Tamils around the island.

Another victim, Jazeer Mohamed Hilmy, whose furniture workshop and showroom was razed to the ground in Akurana, a few miles from Kandy, said he has lost all faith in the system.

I have lost everything. But whats harder than the monetary loss is that some of the men who set fire to my building are people we have lived with peacefully for generations.

We have never thought of ourselves as Sinhalese or Muslims, he added. But we dont feel safe anymore, we feel very helpless. We have our bags packed with the basic necessities, ready to flee if the need arises. Thats how insecure we feel.

Mr Hilmys daughter, Zainab, a law student, confirmed there was no police or military presence in the area and the fire brigade arrived only after the building had burnt completely to the ground.

Meanwhile, President Maithripala Sirisena met with religious leaders in Kandy, promising stern action on those responsible for the violence.

The government has restricted access to the internet and blocked all social media platforms, starting on Wednesday, after the president blamed social media for the escalating violence.

Schools have been closed indefinitely in the central district and police leave has been cancelled.

Last week the eastern town of Ampara also saw a spate of anti-Muslim violence.

Tensions have been building in the 70 per cent Buddhist-majority country where Muslims make up only eight per cent of the population. Buddhist extremists, led by hardliner monks, have been fuelling the sort of anti-Muslim sentiment that resulted in an entire Muslim village in the south being burnt down in 2014.

Sri Lanka has a history of religious and ethnic violence. The country gave birth to one of the deadliest terrorist organisations in the world, the Tamil Tigers, following the 1983 Sinhala-Tamil riots. More than 100,000 people from both sides died in the three-decades long war that ended in 2009.
In the city of Kandy, located in the Central Province of Sri Lanka, recent attacks against Muslims by Sinhala Buddhist militants have raised fears of increased communal violence. Social media images have shown the scale of damage to Muslim neighbourhoods, with arson attacks and vandalism of Muslim-owned stores and mosques. In response the government declared a 10-day state of emergency for the first time since the end of the civil war era.

What is clear is that the recent violence is not random or isolated. Just before these current attacks, there had been an earlier attack on a mosque and Muslim businesses in the south-eastern town of Ampara.

Hardline Buddhist groups use of social media clearly showed that these attacks were carefully planned drawing in Buddhist militants from surrounding areas.

Since the Sri Lankan civil war ended in 2009, an increasing religious divide has grown, with a rise of such militant Buddhist groups, such as Bodu Bala Sena. Tapping into longstanding insecurities that the Sinhalese and Buddhist nature of the country is under threat, these groups present Islam and Muslims as a religious, cultural and economic threat to the country. Such militant groups then use social media spaces to play on these fears, fuel tensions, and encourage, incite and plan violence.

While Sri Lankas Telecommunications Regulatory Commission has temporarily blocked or restricted access to Facebook and other social media services this week, to curb ongoing anti-Muslim rhetoric, this is not an ideal solution given its wider ramifications for free speech.

Hardline Buddhist groups are strengthened in their actions by a culture of impunity where they are not held accountable for any hate speech or violence. Even leaving side the current crisis, it is striking what little the Sri Lankan coalition government has actually done to hold people accountable for acts of violence against Muslim communities. Long-term approaches dealing with communal tensions seem thin on the ground.

There is an urgent need for a strong response from the Sri Lankan government that ensures perpetrators of violence are held accountable for their actions. A relatively small number of militant Buddhist groups are having a disproportionate impact on local communities. If the government does not take a stronger stance  enforcing hate speech laws and arresting and prosecuting those responsible  there is a strong chance that increasingly we will see more targeted violence against Muslim communities and further communal conflict.

Champa Patel is head of the Asia-Pacific programme at Chatham House
The father of the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, claiming that no one else in Russia would have the authority to sanction an assassination on foreign soil.

In his first interview since his sons death, Walter Litvinenko, who served as a doctor in the Gulag during the Communist years, said he was convinced that Alexander was poisoned by the FSB  the successor to the KGB. The cynical murder of my son was a calculated act of intimidation, he said. I have no doubt that he was killed by the FSB, and that the order came from that former KGB spy President Putin. He was the only person who could give that order. I havent a shadow of a doubt that this was done by Putins men.

The comments will infuriate the Kremlin, which is still trying to ride out the political storm that followed Mr Litvinenkos death on 23 November, after being poisoned with the radioactive element polonium-210 in London on 1 November. Mr Litvinenko also accused Russias President of running an authoritarian regime, and claimed: Bush and Blair have trusted him too much. They shouldnt have trusted him.

In Moscow today, thousands of Russians are expected to join a march to protest against Mr Putins increasing authoritarianism. The officially banned protest, called the March of Those Who Dont Agree, is being organised by a coalition of anti-Kremlin forces that includes liberal free marketeers, nationalists and radical youth movements. Organisers include the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, the former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, and Eduard Limonov, a radical nationalist whose National Bolshevik party is officially banned.

Mr Litvinenko also described how his son startled him by revealing that he had made a deathbed conversion to Islam. All four of his children were raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. But Nalchik, near Chechnya, where Alexander grew up, is in a region where Muslims outnumber Christians. Mr Litvinenko, who speaks no English, also said that he would go back to Russia, despite his suspicions about Mr Putin. Asked whether he might be putting himself at risk if The Independent reported his accusations, he said: Of course it will be dangerous, but you must write it anyway. If you dont write it, then I have betrayed my son.

He said that he was in Russia when he first heard that his son was in hospital. He prayed intently, but soon afterwards he learnt that Alexander  known in the family as Sasha  wanted to see him urgently. The train journey to Moscow took two days. Mr Litvinenko was so sick with anxiety that he could not eat until he was on the plane to London.

When he arrived at the hospital, he found his son close to death. I tried to look at his face, and it was full of suffering. It was always a joy to look at my son, because he was so handsome, but now it was difficult to recognise him. His eyes were closed. I made the sign of the cross over him, and read the Paternoster. I said, Sasha, I saw the light when I was praying to Saint Sergei, and I know you will get better.

I told him a lie. I said, Sasha, the poison inside you has gone. All you have got to do now is overcome the effects of the poison. Sasha opened his eyes. He sat up, exactly as in the photograph in all the newspapers. And I saw huge hope in his eyes. He said: Papa, I have something serious to tell you. His eyes were very, very serious: Ill always remember that look. He told me: I converted to Islam.

I thought that this was very strange. It was as if our roles had been exchanged; it was as if he had become my father, and I had become his son. I said, Sasha  anything. Anything, as long as you dont turn into a Communist or worship the devil.

I could only be with him for two evenings. He suffered in front of me. Something hugely powerful was acting inside him, and it was killing him. He was being torn apart from inside. Sasha told me: The long arm of Putin reached out and got me here. He was very strong, and very courageous, as he struggled to live. Books will be written about him.

Mr Litvinenko broke his silence as the investigation into his sons death intensified. The third man who met Alexander at the Millennium Hotel on 1 November, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, was interviewed yesterday by Russian officials and British police. A team of Scotland Yard officers in Moscow has already met the other two men, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi  who yesterday protested his innocence.

Mr Litvinenko, 68, had his own clash with authority in 1979, when he was working with mentally disturbed prisoners in Sakhalin island, in Russias far east, with the rank of captain in the USSRs Ministry of Interior troops. He said he resigned his commission after an official investigation failed to back his complaints about the treatment of detainees. He retrained as a psychiatrist.

Alexanders grandfather was a fighter pilot. One day the boy made the mistake of saying that he did not want to grow up to be a bloody soldier. His furious grandfather cracked a plate over his head. Alexander enlisted at the age of 17 in the Dzerzhinsky Division and was offered a transfer to the KGB in 1988.

One day, Sasha called me and said, Listen Dad, I have a suggestion from the KGB that I should join them. What would you say? At that time, the KGB had a legendary aura, and I said, Yes, son  go ahead and serve your motherland.

He did not talk much about his time with the KGB. What he did say was that he used to infiltrate gangs. On the internet there are reports saying that Sasha used to be a spy. Thats simply a lie. He was mostly in counter-intelligence.

In 1998, Alexander gave a now famous press conference, alleging that the FSB was forming a hit squad to eliminate political troublemakers, and he had himself been commissioned to kill Boris Berezovsky. He was arrested in 1999.

Mr Litvinenko said: They lodged six charges against him, but four were dropped. It was obvious that these charges were fabricated. They found a couple of quite ridiculous things. He was accused of pilfering some cans of food, and of slapping someone in the face.

Then they produced a fake video in which a blond man wearing camouflage was beating up a detainee. But thankfully, Alexanders friends knew about this video and found the original, in which Sasha wasnt beating up the detainee. Thats when the FSB came to him and said: You have a son. If you produce that video in court, you should be very afraid for your son. That was one of the reasons why he decided to run.

It wasnt just coincidence that Sasha came to London, and it wasnt coincidence that he started to fight against one of the most terroristic organisations in the world, which is headed by President Putin. Sasha never betrayed anyone and I say to the people for whom he gave his life Please dont betray Sasha.

This article was originally published on Saturday 16 December 2006. It has since been republished.
I am not brave enough to show you who I am, but I feel compelled to tell you my story. In 2012, I became pregnant.

Maria Povedano (not her real name) is a 26-year-old woman who lives in Gibraltar. Carefully concealing her face, she tells The Independent about how she took the impossible choice and travelled to mainland Spain in order to seek an abortion  an act which still, in a British Overseas Territory, in 2018, is punishable by life imprisonment.

At the clinic in Spain, they didnt tell me everything about the procedure, she says. When I walked up the stairs to the room to have the operation, I started crying hysterically.

I kept on asking if I was going to die; panic overwhelmed me. After the operation, tears could not stop running down my face. I cannot describe the guilt I felt.

For most Gibraltarian women, crossing the border is a regular and stress-free occurrence (Jessica Cummings)

Six years later, Maria still resides in Gibraltar, and as such cannot speak openly about her experience without risking arrest. She says she is now with her soul mate  we have two beautiful children.

However, after giving birth to my eldest I entered into a deep depression. I couldnt leave my house and was having lots of suicidal thoughts. I couldnt live with myself.

Seeing my children smile and laugh is the best feeling in the world, but for me it is also the most painful thing in the world because it fills me with vivid memories of travelling to Spain for the abortion.

Unlike Maria, most Gibraltarians find crossing the border from the territory to Spain to be a pleasurable, everyday occurrence.

And on their return they are welcomed back by the Rock towering majestically above them. Lights twinkle in the booming offices of the World Trade Centre, a global fintech hub, and laughter echoes from the deck of the Sunborn, the worlds first 5-star super-yacht hotel.

Indeed, on first impressions, Gibraltar has all the trappings of a thriving modern city-state, in the mould of Hong Kong or Singapore.

It is certainly affluent enough to match its rivals. In 2017, Gibraltars Gross Domestic Product per capita was 56,612  the fourth highest in the world.

But not everything seems to have advanced at the pace of its booming economy.

Yolanda Garcia*, 29, travels from Gibraltar into Spain several times a week.

Everyone in Gibraltar crosses regularly; we all have business in Spain, most of us have family there, things are very different these days, she tells The Independent.

However, there was one journey across the border which changed her life forever. In late 2016, Yolanda discovered she was pregnant, and after much deliberation she decided to get an abortion.

 International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

It was the most difficult decision of my life, she sighs. But, as I was not with the father and it would have put my career in jeopardy I decided to go ahead with the termination.

Yolanda, like countless other Gibraltarian women, was forced to cross the frontier into Spain to get a backstreet abortion in one of the nearby border towns, such as La Linea de la Concepcion or Cadiz.

Thats because Gibraltar possesses the harshest penalty for abortion in the entirety of Europe. According to Section 162(1) of the 2011 Crimes Act: A pregnant woman who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, unlawfully administers to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or unlawfully uses any other means with that intent, commits an offence or is liable on conviction to imprisonment for life.

Yolanda felt this law gave her no choice.

The whole thing cost me 500 all in, she says. I couldnt afford to go to a proper specialist clinic in the UK or one in a bigger Spanish city like Malaga, so I had to go to a doctor in La Linea.

Immediately, I did not feel comfortable  his practice was dirty and his staff rude. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt.

However, unable to consider an alternative, Yolanda went ahead with the termination.

Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights Show all 5 1 /5 Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights REUTERS Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights REUTERS Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights REUTERS Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights REUTERS Thousands march in Dublin for Irish abortion rights REUTERS

In the immediate aftermath she knew something was wrong. I couldnt stop throwing up and had awful cramps in my stomach and pelvic region over the next 48 hours, she groans at the memory of the experience.

Too afraid to visit a doctor in Gibraltar with such symptoms, she borrowed money from a close friend she swore to secrecy and visited a private doctor, again in Spain.

During the abortion, Yolanda had contracted endometritis, an infection in the lining of the uterus and genital tract. While the initial infection fortunately cleared up after a course of antibiotics, Yolanda says she continues to endure daily stomach cramps.

Furthermore, despite trying to conceive over the last months, she has not become pregnant. She worries this is because her abortion has affected her ability to have children.

My partner doesnt understand why I havent conceived, she says shaking her head. Worst of all, I cant tell him my fears  Im worried hed leave me and word will spread around Gibraltar; it is such a small place.

Who knows what would happen to me if word got out here, I could get in serious trouble with the law, and my family might never speak to me again.

Yolanda continues to suffer the physical and mental trauma of her botched abortion. She is exasperated: It really is incredible in Gibraltar, where politicians boast that we have some of the best healthcare treatment in the world, that women like me are risking their health going across the border in secret for dangerous operations.

It may be too late for Yolanda and Maria, but for future generations of Gibraltarian women there are two figures are standing up and seeking change.

Tamsin Suarez, 43, and Anne-Marie Struggles, 51, are two members on the committee of the Gibraltar Womens Association.

Despite being threatened online, they have spoken out publicly in support of decriminalising abortion in Gibraltar and giving women the choice as a basic human right.

Gibraltar is such a conservative place, Struggles told The Independent. We like to think we are Gibraltarian suffragettes  we dont encourage women to get abortions but we think they should have the choice: we are pro-choice.

They aim to present their research into the experiences of Gibraltarian women like Maria and Yolanda over the upcoming months.

There is a lack of womens rights in Gibraltar  it is a patriarchal society, rebukes Suarez.

We believe that the criminalisation of abortion leads to discrimination and infringes on womens dignity.

It is so sad when you hear anonymous stories from women that are unable to get any advice here or to help with their situations, and can never talk about this big secret in the back of their minds.

Despite its booming economies, Gibraltar is still a very conservative, patriarchal place (Jessica Cummings)

Well informed and aware that the UN has opened dialogue with the other nations in Europe where abortion is illegal  Malta, the Republic of Ireland and Poland  the pair plan to write to the UN in the hope a delegation can put pressure on Gibraltarian leaders to change the law.

The pair believe the prehistoric law still exists today thanks to the influence that religious groups, in particular the Catholic Church, still wield on the Rock.

Furthermore, the small-town feel of Gibraltar means that many women do not feel comfortable approaching doctors or health-care practitioners for fear of word spreading around the community. Their concern helps to cement the idea that abortion is inherently wrong.

When contacted, the Gibraltarian government refused to consider the possibility of changing the law. Abortion other than in certain, defined, medically certified circumstances is illegal under Gibraltar law, a government spokesman said.

The Cabinet has not considered changing this policy. The matter is not one on which the parties that form the government sought a policy mandate to pursue a reform of the existing position.

Davinia Caruana*, 34, booked a secret termination in Spain but changed her mind at the last minute, and she believes she made the right decision.

Regardless, she thinks it should be up to the woman in question to decide what to do should she fall pregnant.

Nobody, young or old, wise or foolish, deserves to be backed into the corner of having a baby they did not plan or they did not want, she says.

Lets talk about this, lets put abortion on the agenda, because once it is there we not only empower women with the choices about their bodies, but we inspire our children to be a little bit more open minded, and we encourage societal change.

The Gibraltarian Suffragettes know they have a long way to go. But, like their resolute sisters from 100 years ago, they wont give up.

I think we have to move away from personal and religious choice and think about human rights issues for all, says Suarez.

We are not with other developed countries  we have a law here which is equal with those in non-developed countries, and it is very shocking.

Did going to Spain affect me mentally? Yes. Was having an abortion the wrong choice? No (Joe Wallen)

Women have no information here. They are rushing into it and not getting the before or aftercare, Suarez continues shaking her head.

With abortion it is like we have gone back 100 years  we cant just stay where we are because there are some powerful voices against us.

Rose Thompson*, 35, had an abortion when she fell pregnant for the third time, knowing the birth of another child would tie her to her abusive partner.

I was married to a man who was emotionally and physically abusive, Rose confided in The Independent. Any sexual relations we had, was forced by him.

When I fell pregnant for the third time, I was devastated. I was already suffering with severe depression, sleep deprivation and was trying to find a way to leave my partner.

When I informed him I was pregnant, he was elated but I felt trapped.

She explains: Although he disagreed with my decision, he drove me to a clinic in Spain, I was terrified as I didnt actually know what the procedure entailed.

After getting home I had no one to turn to. No one knew what I had just done, I was alone with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I felt guilty  but not for terminating my pregnancy. I felt guilty that I wasnt able to love my baby the same way as I loved the two children I already had.

But I knew I made the right decision and I left my abusive husband seven months later. Three years later I was happier, safer and I gave birth to another baby.

Thompson adds: Every time I look at her, I am totally reassured that I made the right decision.
Women in Spain have marked International Womens Day by deserting paid and unpaid labour to take part in the countrys first nationwide feminist strike.

The 24-hour walkout, aimed at drawing attention to domestic violence, sexual discrimination and the gender pay gap, has substantially disrupted the country's train network.

Its transport ministry announced 300 trains would not run on Thursday.

The strike, which has been called by ten unions, kicked off with a pot-banging demonstration in Madrid public square Puerto del Sol at midnight. Activists marched to call for an end to gender disparities in salaries, gender violence and the nations macho culture.

Feminist groups called for women to abandon their domestic chores for the day and not spend any money in an attempt to show how integral women are to the economy.

The walkout has gained the backing of some Spains highest-profile female politicians  including the mayors of Madrid and Barcelona.

(AFP/Getty (AFP/Getty)

But the protests have also been the subject of heated debate in the country in recent weeks. The ruling centre-right party, the Partido Popular (PP), claimed the action was "for feminist elites and not real women with everyday problems".

Iconic Spanish actor Penelope Cruz showed solidarity with the protests by cancelling public events she had planned and also going on domestic strike - leaving her partner Javier Bardem to care for their two children.

Holly Hosie, a 22-year-old Briton who teaches in Spain, said she was joining in.

Today, along with the majority of the other female teachers at my school, Im taking part in the huelga feminista (feminist strike), in support of gender inequality, discrimination, oppression, domestic abuse, sexual assault and the gender pay gap, she told The Independent.

Ms Hosie, who said she would attend a march at 7pm in Madrid, said she thought the chief purpose of the strikes was to highlight gender inequalities.

I think the main impact the strikes will have is raising awareness of the issues and inequalities women still face. And in turn encouraging people to do something about it!

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

She noted that a good deal of Spaniards were supportive of the strike but were not striking themselves as they cannot afford to do so.

Asked about the difference between Spain and the UK in terms of gender relations, she said: Im not sure if Spain is less equal than the UK but it does feel slightly more behind the times in general, so I suppose that includes gender equality as well.

Ms Hosie said she noticed some small businesses in Madrid were closed in support.

Spanish paper El Pais shared a video explaining that they are not fully staffed today because of the action.

A poll for the newspaper found 82 per cent supported the strike while 76 per cent thought women living in Spain had more difficult lives than their male counterparts.

In Spain, women were paid 13 per cent and 19 per cent less than their male counterparts in the public and private sectors, data from the European Union's statistical provider Eurostat said.

In 2016, women's gross hourly earnings in the European Union were on average 16.2 per cent below those of men.

Government statistics also demonstrate that reports of violent abuse in Spain is rising - there were 129,193 reports in 2015 and 142,893 in 2016. Last year in Spain 49 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners in comparison to 44 in 2016.

Activists are urging women in the UK to go on strike, with organisers from Women's Strike UK saying 2,000 people are expected to meet in central London.

Organiser Noshin Salari Rad said: Thursday is about solidarity between all women trans women, women of colour, indigenous, working class, disabled, migrant, sex workers, Muslim, lesbian and queer.

Further afield, people in the Philippines, Nepal, South Korea and Hong Kong marked International Womens Day with protests.
A Danish submarine inventor has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall.

Peter Madsen is accused of torturing and murdering the 30-year-old and dismembering and disposing of her body during a submarine trip in August last year.

Madsen initially told authorities he had dropped Ms Wall off on a Copenhagen island several hours after she boarded to interview the inventor.

But he later claimed Ms Wall had died accidentally inside his submarine while he was on deck, a story he repeated during the murder trial on Thursday.

Asked why he had repeatedly changed his story, Madsen said he had initially been in total denial of what had happened and I didnt wish to share with the whole world how Kim Wall died.

Madsen admitted to dismembering Ms Wall and throwing her body parts into the sea. He is accused of tying her up and torturing her before he either cut her throat or strangled her.

Her torso was found on a southern Copenhagen shoreline in late August. Her head, legs and clothes were discovered in bags at sea in October and November, along with heavy metal objects designed to take them to the ocean floor.

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

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen said a psychiatric report of 47-year-old Madsen found him to be an intelligent man with psychopathic tendencies who has no empathy or feelings of guilt.

Detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsens laptop and an external hard drive. Mr Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhose  both damaged  and pieces of hair.

Madsens submarine was submerged for several hours on the fatal night when Ms Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didnt immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact, the court heard.

When reached over radio, Madsen said he had let Ms Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip. Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported man overboard over the radio. He was picked up alone.

Recommended Submarine owner says Swedish journalist died when she was hit by hatch

After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsens nose, blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall, said prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen.

The prosecution claims Ms Walls murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didnt take when sailing.

Ms Walls parents were present on Thursday for the opening of the trial at Copenhagen City Court. The trial ends on 25 April.
The threat of political assassination is not new to Russia. From Ivan the Terribles Oprichniki secret police, dressed in black garbs and the insignia of a severed dogs head, to the shadow of Stalins feared NKVD agents, political opponents to the Moscow regime have long lived their lives in terror.

Today, the methods of control and coercion of opposition are more sophisticated. But the attitude towards those considered traitors remains largely the same.

In a televised discussion shortly after the 2010 spy swap that saw 10 Russian sleeper agents traded for four men  including Sergei Skripal, the man now fighting for his life in Salisbury  President Vladimir Putin was blunt. While denying his state engaged in the practice assassination, he asserted a traitor would come to regret his choice thousands of times over.

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Someone has betrayed their comrades in arms, people who gave their lives to serving their country, he said. How will he be able to live with this? How will he look his kids in the eye? The bastard.

Mr Skripal, who admitted to passing the names of dozens of active agents to MI6 in exchange for cash, surely has countless enemies within the Russian state and secret services community. On his arrest in 2004, authorities compared him to the infamous Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky, who leaked information the location of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and was shot in 1963. Mr Skripals 13-year hard-labour prison sentence looks lenient in comparison.

But what is not clear is whether Mr Skripal continued to cooperate with British security services in any meaningful way. Or whether normal inter-agency etiquette accompanying spy swaps has broken down to such an extent that the Kremlin issued an order to assassinate him  a full seven years after being pardoned.

It has become commonplace to link Vladimir Putins Kremlin to the mysterious deaths of Russian nationals. Those deaths have ranged from typical mafia-style gunning-down, to excruciating via poison. Usually, the evidence base behind them has been circumstantial. But in the case of Alexander Litvinenko, who died after radioactive poisoning in 2006, a British judge, Sir Robert Owens directly blamed the Kremlin, despite their denials.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Litvinenkos death was an FSB operation ... probably approved by [Nikolai] Patrushev [head of the security service in 2006], he surmised, and also by President Putin.

To begin with the facts, President Putins time in office has corresponded with the end of many of his critics. In Russia itself, they include opposition politicians like Boris Nemtsov, gunned down in the shadow of the Kremlin in Moscow in 2015, to journalists Yuri Shchekochikhin (2003), Paul Klebnikov (2005), Anna Politkovskaya (2006), Anastasia Baburova (2009), lawyer Stanislav Markelov (2009) and activist Natalya Estemirova (2009) among others.

In 2017, the US publication Buzzfeed went further and linked the Kremlin to a further 14 unexplained deaths on British soil. They included, most prominently, the former spy Alexander Litvinenko (2006), tycoons Boris Berezovsky (2013) and his associate Badri Patarkatsishvili (2008), and the money laundering whistleblower Aleksandr Perepilichny, who dropped dead while jogging in Surrey in 2012.

Kremlin critics have been exposed to a wave of deliberate violence and threats. None of the deaths in Russia have been accompanied by satisfactory investigative work.

 Russian exile claims Sergei Skripal was still in contact with Russian embassy when they met

But there is also much that distinguishes the cases from one another. Some have deep connections to organised crime. Others involve the occupational hazard of reporting on Chechnya and its explosive leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Some of the victims were critics of the regime. Others like Mr Litvnenko, Denis Voronenkov, assassinated in Kiev last year, and Mr Skripal were viewed in Moscow as traitors. The Kremlin has denied ordering their assassinations. Some might argue that is plausible deniability: The Kremlin after all is not the same thing as the larger security services community. Russias four main security agencies do operate at the behest of the Kremlin, but the Kremlin is not always in total control of them. There are any number of reports of turf wars, unclear boundaries of responsibilities and out-of-control freelance operations. That turbulence has increased ahead of what many believe is Mr Putins final term in office.

But Gennady Gudkov, an opposition politician who worked in the KGBs counter-espionage section between 1982 and 1993, told The Independent it was unlikely control had broken down to the extent that a state order had been issued to kill Mr Skripal.

I remember what things were like in the KGB, and I have a very negative opinion of Putin, but I cant believe things have changed so much, he said. Had they wanted to kill him, they would have done so while he was in their prison, dying an everyday, unsuspicious death. Its illogical for them to do it now.

Instead, the most likely culprits for such a complicated poisoning operation were disgruntled elements who lost out over Mr Skripals revelations to MI6. Losing business, or a career  these provoke strong emotions, he said. My guess is that it is a group of people, and they could be indirectly connected with government.

On Tuesday, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was open to working with the British Government in their investigation. Many will be watching to see if that collaboration is more than that offered in the aftermath of Mr Litvinenkos death. Then, neither of the two main suspects, Andrei Lugovoi or Dmitry Kovtun, were handed over. Mr Lugovoi subsequently became a deputy in the national parliament.

The Kremlin needs to be completely committed to this investigation if it is to defend its image, said Mr Gudkov. It needs to prove to the world that it is innocent.
Four people are seriously wounded following two knife attacks in Vienna, but Austrian police remain baffled to any motive or connection between the assaults.

The stabbings  the first of which took place at 7.45pm on Wednesday evening - occurred in the capitals Second District, which includes the famous Prater park.

"A man attacked a family - a father, a mother and their 17-year-old daughter - with a knife, a police spokesperson said. The three people were seriously injured and their lives are in danger."

The family, who were Austrian citizens, were ambushed outside a Japanese restaurant on the popular shopping street of Praterstrasse, near a subway stop in the capital, authorities said.

"And half an hour later, there was another attack... at Praterstern and here a person was also seriously injured and their life is in danger," the spokesperson added.

"We do not know to what extent there is a connection here and any motive remains unclear."

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

Asked what was known about an assailant, he said: "Absolutely nothing. We know we are looking for a man."

Sylvie Franke, an eyewitness, told Euronews: "I'm convinced he is psychotic. He could have stabbed me as well had I been there by chance. He had lost all control."

A male citizen from Afghanistan was later arrested in connection with the second assault, but no further details were immediately available and any connection between the stabbings remained unclear, the spokesperson said.
Palestinians and rights activists have reacted with anger to the passing of a controversial breach of loyalty bill in the Israeli Knesset which will allow the authorities to strip Arabs living in Jerusalem of their right to live there.

Residency documents belonging to any Palestinian deemed to be a threat to the state can be seized by the ministry of the interior under the new measures, which went to a vote on Wednesday.

An amendment to the bill, which was first proposed in September, also means the Supreme Court will be unable to challenge any interior ministry rulings.

 The United Nations General Assembly votes 128-9 to declare the United States' Jerusalem capital recognition 'null and void'

It will also apply to Palestinians who are believed to have falsely claimed residence.

The measures will be used against permanent residents who plan to carry out attacks against Israeli citizens, right-wing interior minister Aryeh Deri said on Twitter after the vote passed.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) called the vaguely worded new legislation deeply racist.

By unethically stripping the residency of Palestinians from Jerusalem and depriving the rights of those Palestinians to remain in their own city, the Israeli government is acting in defiance of international law and is violating international human rights and humanitarian laws, senior PLO member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement.

Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Show all 22 1 /22 Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of Difa-e-Pakistan Council a coalition of right wing Islamic parties, burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump, during a protest in Quetta, Pakistan EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli police scuffle with a Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn pictures of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu following Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces disperse Palestinian protesters outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City on 7 December 2017 AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organization, chant slogans as they burn Israeli and US flags during a protest against Donald Trump in Peshawar REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinians paint an 'X' over the face of a picture of US president Donald J. Trump which was painted on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors burn the Israeli flag and a poster of US President Donald Trump in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally against Donald Trump in Lahore AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn the US and Israeli flags in Gaza City AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A poster depicting U.S. President Donald Trump is burnt during a protest against Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Israeli forces detain a Palestinian protester during clashes that followed protests against US President Donald Trump recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters burn an effigy of U.S. President Donald Trump AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protesters shout slogans against Donald Trump EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital A Palestinian protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask used by the anonymous movement during clashes with Israeli troops in Hebron AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops during protests AFP/Getty Images Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Supporters of a Pakistani religious party chant anti-American slogans during a rally in Islamabad, Pakistan AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistanis burn a representation of the U.S. flag during a protest rally in Hyderabad AP Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Young Palestinian women look on as smoke billows from burning tyres as fellow Palestinian demonstrators clash with Isralei troops AFP/Getty Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protesters burn a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump at a protest in Islamabad REUTERS Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Protestors shouts slogans against US President Donald Trump as they hold Palestinian and Turkish flags during a protest near the US Embassy in Ankara, Turkey EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Palestinian protestors put their feet over a picture of US president Donald Trump during a protest in the West Bank City of Nablus EPA Protests erupt after Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital Pakistani protesters burn tires at an anti-Donald Trump rally in Multan AP

Around 420,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem, which was annexed and occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, a move not recognised international law.

Most Arabs living in the city do not have Israeli citizenship: they instead hold permanent residency ID cards and are allowed to use temporary Jordanian passports for foreign travel. To date around 14,000 have had their Jerusalem residency revoked.

The new law was first proposed in 2017, after Israels supreme court overturned an interior ministry decision to strip one former Knesset minister and three elected Hamas officials of their Jerusalem residency.

The contested city has seen an upswing in stabbings and shooting attacks in the past three years in what has been dubbed the Jerusalem or silent intifada.

The unrest has largely been attributed to the breakdown of the 2013-2014 peace talks, the increased rate of Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank, and a lack of economic opportunity for Palestinian youth.

In July this year there were intense clashes over access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound after the Israeli authorities installed security cameras, X-ray machines and other security measures in what was viewed as an attempt to control the site.

Tensions were further inflamed by US President Donald Trumps decision to recognise Israel as the undivided capital of the Israeli state last December. The US embassy will relocate to the city from Tel Aviv in May.

 Trump: 'Jerusalem was the right thing to do, we took that off the table'

Israel-based Palestinian rights group Adelah said the new Israeli law is illegal under international humanitarian law as East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory.

Palestinian residents are a protected civilian population [it is illegal] to impose upon them an obligation of loyalty to the occupying power, let alone to deny them the permanent residency status on this basis, a statement said.
A bill to decriminalise cannabis use passed was unanimously in its first reading in Israels parliament.

The proposal would mean those caught smoking marijuana would be fined rather than arrested and prosecuted.

First-time offenders would be fined 1,000 shekels (209), second-time offenders fined double and those caught a third time would face a probation period.

Only on the fourth offence could individuals be subject to criminal proceedings.

Minors caught smoking cannabis would be prosecuted if they refuse to attend a rehabilitation programme.

 The UK cannabis market is dominated by high-potency skunk, a new study has found

Presenting the bill in the Knesset in Jerusalem, Israels public security minister Gilad Erdan said the country wanted to reduce the harms of drug usage and avoid stigmatising those who seldom use the drug as criminals, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The law is far from perfect, but its a foot in the door on the way to full legalisation, Tamar Zandberg, MK for the green Meretz party, said, according to the Times of Israel. There is a lot of work ahead.

The bill will need to pass two further readings before it comes law.

Almost 9 per cent of Israelis use marijuana, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Around 25,000 of the countrys eight million people have a licence to use the drug for medicinal purposes.

Last year, hundreds of Israelis gathered for a sit-down protest outside the Knesset to call for the full legalisation of marijuana.

As part of the 420 tradition, held every 20 April since the 1970s, they light joints when the clock struck 4.20pm.

Where cannabis is and isn't legal Show all 10 1 /10 Where cannabis is and isn't legal Where cannabis is and isn't legal UK Having been reclassified in 2009 from a Class C to a Class B drug, cannabis is now the most used illegal drug within the United Kingdom. The UK is also, however, the only country where Sativex  a prescribed drug that helps to combat muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis and contains some ingredients that are also found in cannabis - is licensed as a treatment Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal North Korea Although many people believe the consumption of cannabis in North Korea to be legal, the official law regarding the drug has never been made entirely clear whilst under Kim Jong Uns regime. However, it is said that the North Korean leader himself has openly said that he does not consider cannabis to be a drug and his regime doesnt take any issue with the consumption or sale of the drug MARCEL VAN HOORN/AFP/Getty Images Where cannabis is and isn't legal Netherlands In the Netherlands smoking cannabis is legal, given that it is smoked within the designated smoking areas and you dont possess more than 5 grams for personal use. It is also legal to sell the substance, but only in specified coffee shops Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal USA Although in some states of America cannabis has now been legalised, prior to the legalisation, police in the U.S. could make a marijuana-related arrest every 42 seconds, according to US News and World Report. The country also used to spend around $3.6 billion a year enforcing marijuana law, the American Civil Liberties Union notes AP Photo/Ted S. Warren Where cannabis is and isn't legal Spain Despite cannabis being officially illegal in Spain, the European hotspot has recently started to be branded, the new Amsterdam. This is because across Spain there are over 700 Cannabis Clubs  these are considered legal venues to consume cannabis in because the consumption of the drug is in private, and not in public. These figures have risen dramatically in the last three years  in 2010 there were just 40 Cannabis Clubs in the whole of Spain. Recent figures also show that in Catalonia alone there are 165,000 registered members of cannabis clubs  this amounts to over 5 million euros (4 million) in revenue each month Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Uruguay In December 2013, the House of Representatives and Senate passed a bill legalizing and regulating the production and sale of the drug. But the president has since postponed the legalization of cannabis until to 2015 and when it is made legal, it will be the authorities who will grow the cannabis that can be sold legally. Buyers must be 18 or older, residents of Uruguay, and must register with the authorities Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Pakistan Despite the fact that laws prohibiting the sale and misuse of cannabis exist and is considered a habit only entertained by lower-income groups, it is very rarely enforced. The occasional use of cannabis in community gatherings is broadly tolerated as a centuries old custom. The open use of cannabis by Sufis and Hindus as a means to induce euphoria has never been challenged by the state. Further, large tracts of cannabis grow unchecked in the wild Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Portugal In 2001, Portugal became the first country in the world to decriminalize the use of all drugs, and started treating drug users as sick people, instead of criminals. However, you can still be arrested or assigned mandatory rehab if you are caught several times in possession of drugs Getty Where cannabis is and isn't legal Puerto Rico Although the use of cannabis is currently illegal, it is said that Puerto Rico are in the process of decriminalising it RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP/Getty Images Where cannabis is and isn't legal China Cannabis is grown in the wild and has been used to treat conditions such as gout and malaria. But, officially the substance is illegal to consume, possess and sell Getty

Niamh Eastwood, executive director of Release, a UK charity which campaigns on issues of drug use and drug laws, told The Independent: This is a pragmatic and evidence-based move by the Israeli parliament.

Across the world 26 countries have ended criminal sanctions for either possession of all drugs or for cannabis, none experienced an increase in use as a result of the reforms.

More importantly, many jurisdictions including Portugal and several states in Australia reported better health, social and economic outcomes, as well as a reduction in reoffending.

In the UK, sentencing for the possession of cannabis, a Class B drug, varies between a 90 on-the-spot fine and a five-year prison sentence.

Twenty-nine states in the US have legalised the use of cannabis for medical purposes and several have approved marijuana for recreational use.
Cascades of broken concrete line the streets of Raqqa. Few people are about and those who are look crushed and dispirited. An 80-year-old woman who says her name is Islim is scrabbling in the debris looking for scraps of metal and plastic to sell. She explains that she is trying to look after the wife and daughter of one of her sons who was killed by a mine.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by US air and artillery strikes, captured Raqqa from Isis on 20 October last year after a four-month siege. The destruction is apocalyptic. Houses, hospitals, bridges, schools and factories are gone, turned into heaps of broken masonry. There is no electricity and little water.

After the war we were at zero and we are still at zero, says Dr Saddam al-Hawidy. He complains that foreign aid organisations come and look at the ruins of the city, but then leave and are never seen again. The final siege was only the devastating culmination of years of degradation that predates Isis rule. When the much-hated government rule collapsed there was nothing to put in its place. My father died because the kidney dialysis unit in a local hospital was hit in a Syrian government air strike in 2015, Dr Hawidy said.

Kurdish fighters patrol the streets of Raqqa and a curfew is enforced after 5pm every day. There is a constant fear of Isis attacks (Getty) (AFP/Getty)

A few districts escaped the worst of the bombing by the coalition, but none are unscathed. Inside the old walled city, we meet Ahmed Mousaqi, a middle-aged former building worker specialising in ceramics, who complains about the high price of buying a minimal amount of electricity from a private generator. He says he survived the siege, though Isis kept herding him and other civilians held as hostages from building to building.

His brother Ahmed, a motorcycle mechanic, was not so lucky. Isis fighters took over part of his house and it was hit by an air strike, he says. He was killed along with five members of his family. He adds there is little aid available for people like him because as soon as you say you are from Raqqa they think you belong to Isis.

Some 150,000 people have returned to Raqqa, though they are not very visible on the streets. A few shops have reopened but there not many customers and business is slow. Beside an ancient ruin called The Ladies Castle, Basil Amar as-Sawas has a shop selling doors, some of which he makes himself, while others he buys from people whose houses have been badly damaged but they have been able to salvage some of the fittings.

Syrians walk along a destroyed street in Raqqa. Officials estimate 150,000 people have returned to the city after the liberation  around half its pre-war population. But evidence of them is scant on the streets (Getty) (AFP/Getty)

He says there is little money around and those who have any are reluctant to spend it while the situation remains so uncertain. Some people whose houses have survived are selling them to businessmen because they need the money. He has two small children below school age but for other people the absence of schools  mostly destroyed or badly damaged  is another disincentive for thinking of a return to Raqqa.

Those who do try to rebuild here face the constant threat of unexploded mines and bombs, and deliberate booby-traps placed by Isis (Getty) (AFP/Getty)

Another danger faces those whose homes were not hit in the battles: Isis was notorious for its copious use of mines and booby-traps. Its fighters specialised in placing well-concealed bombs in the homes of people known to oppose their organisation, and who had fled the city, but were likely to return when the siege was over. One member of the local council was killed when he impatiently went home before the limited demining operation had cleared his house. A reason why so little aid is distributed is the difficulty of finding distribution points for food and medicine that have been declared safe. Sarbast Hassan, an electrical technician working to restore the electricity supply, says that we cant even work in the city because of the mines.

Areas of control across Syria

There is an extra charge of fear percolating everywhere in Raqqa that makes it different from the many other Syrian cities ravaged by war since 2011. It stems primarily from the three-and-a-half years of sadistic and pitiless Isis rule which has left everybody in the city traumatised. Daesh is in our hearts and minds, says Abdel Salaam, who is in charge of social affairs for the council. Five-year-old children have seen women stoned to death and heads chopped off and put on spikes in the city centre. Others speak of sons who killed their and fathers who did the same to their sons. Some of these atrocity stories may be exaggerated but, given the Isis cult of cruelty, many of them are likely to be all too true.

The memory of Isis terror will never go away and is accompanied by a more concrete fear that some of the movement have survived and are reorganising. Commander Masloum, one of four SDF field commanders in charge of security in Raqqa, dismisses this as an exaggerated rumour and says that there have been no recent Isis attacks in the city. He had investigated reports of sleeper cells but so far these had turned out to be untrue. Even so, security is tight and a curfew begins at 5 pm after which everybody must be off the streets. The roads leading to the city have checkpoints every few miles manned by locally recruited security forces.

Syria is subject to a complex web of competing international influences

In other Syrian cities bombed or shelled to the point of oblivion there is at least one district that has survived intact. This is the case even in Mosul in Iraq, though much of it was pounded into rubble. But in Raqqa the damage and the demoralisation are all pervasive. When something does work, such as a single traffic light, the only one to do so in the city, people express surprise.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

Reminders of the grim rule of Isis are everywhere. The tops of the pointed metal railing surrounding the al-Naeem Roundabout are bent outwards because that is where severed heads were put on display. A couple of hundred yards away is what looks like a square manhole which is the entrance into an elaborate system of tunnels which Isis dug under Raqqa.

The horrendous past of the city has been succeeded by the prospect of a dangerous and uncertain future. People here are frightened of everybody: Isis, Kurds and the Assad regime, says a local observer. They may prefer the Kurdish-led SDF to Isis, but the choice between the Kurds and the Syrian government is more difficult to make. They know that the Assad regime will be more merciless towards anybody who had dealings with Isis, though they may just have been selling them food or other goods, says one frequent visitor to the city. On the other hand, they have never liked the Kurds and at least the Assad regime is Arab like them. Like most Syrians, the people of Raqqa are faced with a choice of evils  and nobody knows more about what evil rulers are capable of doing than they are.
Unesco is urging governments around the world to prioritise providing single-sex toilets in schools, warning as many as 1 in 10 girls in some countries are missing out on lessons because of their period.

The UNs education body surveyed 189 countries as part of its sixth annual gender review, obtained exclusively by The Independent ahead of International Womens Day.

While the report found some progress had been made in gender equality in education, it said one in three countries still failed to allow equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school.

Recommended Some UK businesses accused of understating gender pay gap

In 1990, the world committed to admitting equal numbers of boys and girls into primary school by 2005, Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco said.

Since then we have set ourselves a more ambitious set of gender equality targets with a deadline of 2030, but we must not forget that, despite considerable progress, one in three countries have yet to achieve the original goal.

One obstacle to girls attending school was a lack of segregated toilets in schools, review director Manos Antoninis said, adding the agency found there was little focus on menstrual hygiene in schools in 21 low and middle income countries.

Improved sanitation to address adolescent girls concerns over privacy, particularly during menstruation, can influence their education decisions, he said.

Single-sex toilets are desperately needed to overcome girls barriers to education.

In Bangladesh, 41 per cent of schoolgirls aged between 11 and 17 reported missing three days of school every month because of a lack of adequate sanitary care, according to the report.

Meanwhile, in rural areas of west African nations including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, less than a fifth of schools had four or more of Unescos five recommended menstrual hygiene services. These include separate sex toilets with doors and locks, water and rubbish bins.

The issue was not confined to those at secondary school, Unesco said, and primary schools also needed to introduce better toilet facilities to not discourage female pupils.

In many countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, late enrolment and repetition means that girls in adolescence are still in primary school, which makes it crucial to ensure that single-sex sanitation facilities are present in primary as well as in secondary schools, Mr Antoninis said. One in ten African girls miss school because of their period, the Unesco report found.

According to one study cited in the review, only 9 of 44 countries did more than 75 per cent of primary schools have single-sex facilities.

Other challenges include fighting negative attitudes towards menstruation and increasing the provision of health information and facilities in schools, Mr Antoninis said.

In rural Bolivia, for example, girls received limited information on menstrual hygiene from their parents. Unesco said the school curriculum in Bolivia needed to compensate for this.

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

Unesco also for the first time recommended children be taught about power dynamics between boys and girls in school.

Teaching children about the relationship between the genders in sex education classes would not only tackle gender-based violence, but also help reduce teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, Unesco said.
Legacy airline British Airways operated the UKs biggest ever all-female flight to celebrate International Womens Day (IWD).

The flight from London Heathrow to Glasgow took off on Monday 6 March with 61 women involved  including baggage handlers, pilots, cabin crew, flight managers, loaders and push back teams, security, check in and airport teams.

British Airways hopes the flight will inspire young women

Im incredibly proud to have been a part of the team on our all-female flight, said British Airways Captain Julie Levy.

As a mum of two teenage daughters I think its crucial that we grab every opportunity we can to inspire the next generation. There wasnt any visibility of female pilots when I was growing up, so I think events like this are important to help show the range of different careers that are available to women.

She added: With women currently only representing around three to four per cent of the industrys professional pilots, we have to redress the balance. Im pleased to be part of an organisation trying to do something about it.

As well as marking IWD, 8 March is also the anniversary of the first woman to receive a pilots licence. One hundred and eight years after Elise Raymonde Deroches milestone achievement, British Airways had three female pilots in the cockpit for its female-operated flight.

Aiming to inspire the next generation of women to get involved in the male-dominated aviation industry, BA invited seven women aged between 16 and 18 who had previously done work experience with the airline to join the flight as passengers.

Three women were in the cockpit

Many aviation jobs are still seen as being just for men, according to British Airways ramp manager, Joanne Kershaw.

She said: So many people think the jobs on the ramp, under the wings of aircraft, are just for men. I loved being part of a team of women at the top of their game, working all together for the first time on one flight, to get it ready and away on time for our customers.

BA wasnt the only British airline to run flights with female crews.

Six all-female crews are operating 16 easyJet flights between London, Bologna, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Agadir on Thursday 8, and more than 300 of its flights will have women in the cockpit for IWD.

There's a perception that some jobs are 'just for men'

Meanwhile Virgin Atlantic has three all-female crews on flights out of Manchester, London Gatwick and London Heathrow on Thursday.

Having our female pilots out in force will provide visibility of female pilots and hopefully inspire some girls and women to take up this rewarding career, said easyJets director of flight operations, David Morgan.

The low-cost airline is aiming for 20 per cent of its new entrant pilots to be female by 2020.
Although female pilots only make up around 4.5 per cent of commercial pilots in the UK, women have been working in aviation industries around the world since the beginnings of air travel.

Traditionally, however, womens jobs in aviation were limited to non-flying roles such as flight attendants, flight simulation training and air traffic control.

While the number of women working as pilots has risen significantly, it remains far too low, particularly given the fact that it is one of the few industries in the world with genuine pay parity.

In India, women make up 11.6 per cent of all commercial airline pilots, but globally this figure remains around the 3 per cent mark. To mark International Womens Day, we spoke to four female pilots about their experiences working for commercial airlines.

Heres what they had to say:

Jessica Sundquist: 787 Dreamliner captain at Norwegian

Jessica Sundquist, Norwegian 787 captain (Norwegian)

Jessica Sundquist, a Swedish 787 Dreamliner captain for Norwegian, has spoken extensively about being a woman in the industry. In the past shes spoken about the concept of putting your femininity aside in order to succeed.

Sundquist says today that she felt she didnt have to do it, but also wanted to fit into the industry without being known as the girl.

Today, times are changing, she says, and more women are joining the industry  but its not all good news. Despite working hard to get to where I am today as a captain at one of the most modern and exciting airlines, the industry still has a lot more work to do to give women more opportunities, she says

To make it easier and more attractive for women to work as pilots, airlines could allow more flexibility. As with other industries, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the challenges when combining work with family.

In the future, shed like the discussion on gender inequality to remain open and ongoing, but argues that real action also needs to take place to make any difference.

We can talk about inequalities forever, but without making any changes we will stand still, she says. I believe women deserve to have more power and influence in companies, and life in general. Only then will true change happen.

 International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

Joanna Riggs: A380 first officer at British Airways

British Airways A380 first officer Joanna Riggs (British Airways)

First officer Joanna Riggs says she was never particularly exposed to aviation as a career choice, but became a BA cabin crew member after university in order to see more of the world.

As cabin crew in my early twenties, I quickly became hooked on the aviation industry, she says. I saw that young guys and girls were flying planes, which inspired me to follow in their footsteps.

She says that entering such a highly male-dominated profession wasnt daunting, but that she felt lucky to have two other females on her course. Colleagues have always been supportive in Riggs experience as have  for the most part  passengers, though some are surprised when they see a female pilot.

I hope it will one day be normal to everyone, she adds, saying that of the 469 passengers she has on each British Airways A380 flight, most react positively, with some giving a thumbs up or a girl power sign.

As for gender differences on the flight deck, Riggs says, We are very professional on the flight deck so it doesnt matter what the gender, race or sexuality of my colleague is.

Flying with a fellow female is always a treat though. My brother is also a British Airways pilot, and although I havent flown with him, I get the feeling we would be very similar. I know that all my colleagues have been trained to a very high standard.

So should more women become pilots? Of course, says Riggs: Go for it! Its a fantastic career. Along with others I am working hard on social media to promote the role from a lifestyle perspective and to make the profession more visible to future generations. Follow her on Twitter @ladyspeedbird.

Lucy Tardrew: Boeing 747 captain at Virgin Atlantic

Captain Lucy Tardrew (Virgin Atlantic)

Lucy Tardrew had always wanted to join the RAF, she says, but it was never allowed to happen  because they werent taking girls at the time.

Instead, she travelled to America, where she trained before becoming a flying instructor. After returning to the UK and converting her licences, she began flying night mail  literally all the posts around the country at night  before stints flying executive jets, and last-minute jobs including air ambulances and freighting transplant organs, before joining Virgin 23 years ago.

Tardrew is enthusiastic about the company, but is saddened that the ratio of women in the industry as a whole remains low. As for challenges in the workplace, shes never experienced any discrimination.

From my perspective, if youre confident and you can do the job, youre a pilot. It doesnt matter whether youre male or female.

Noting the rare pay equality in the piloting industry, Tardrew feels the reason there arent more female pilots is down to the fact that there arent enough female role models for schoolchildren to think, Im going to become an airline pilot.

This year to celebrate International Womens Day, she piloted a Virgin Atlantic flight from Gatwick to Orlando with an all-female crew, including both pilots and cabin crew.

Kate McWilliams: captain at easyJet

Kate McWilliams became the youngest female commercial captain at 26 (easyJet)

At 26, Kate McWilliams became the youngest commercial captain in the world.

I love being a captain for easyJet, she says. And Im really happy to be working for an airline that is working hard to increase the number of female pilots.

Flying was always her goal  but she didnt realise how far she could take it. I joined the air cadets at 13-years-old, but it wasnt until much later that I realised I could become a commercial pilot, she says.

EasyJet is aiming to inspire young women, with the Amy Johnson Flying Initiative and their sponsorship of the Brownies, giving girls aged seven to 10 the opportunity to earn an Aviation Badge. The work its doing is really important.

The Amy Johnson Flying Initiative was launched in October 2015 with the aim of doubling the number of female new entrant pilots, to 12 per cent, over a two-year period.

After achieving its aim in the first year, the airline set a target of 20 per cent for new entrant cadet pilots in 2020.
Europes biggest budget airline has softened its warnings on Brexit. Ryanair now says you wont see planes grounded after 29 March 2019, the date the UK leaves the EU. But it still fears open skies may not continue beyond 2020.

The Irish airline has its main base of operations in the UK, taking advantage of the policy that allows any EU carrier to fly anywhere within the European Union. Last August the chief executive, Michael OLeary, said: We havent got plan B. We havent even got plan A-and-a-half yet.

But Ryanairs chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, has now told The Independent: We think good progress has been made in the past two months. The British Government has sent out their blueprint for transition and thats got some positive signs for the industry. That means that until the end of December 2020, the status quo remains the same.

What happens after that transition agreement from 1 January 2021 is less certain. The signals are more negative than we would like.

A number of airlines are concerned about how ownership rules could affect them after Brexit. An EU airline must be over 50 per cent EU owned. Once the UK leaves, with its present shareholder structure, Ryanair would fall short of this proportion.

Its leading rival, easyJet, has already announced it is setting up an Austrian subsidiary to allow it to continue to fly intra-EU routes after Brexit.

Mr Jacobs said: We want to continue to offer British consumers the cheapest flights. But he added: Weve very moveable assets, were in 34 countries.

Ryanair has announced that it will continue its Stansted to Edinburgh link through the winter, but is not restoring the Glasgow service from the Essex airport.
For the first time in its 34-year history, Virgin Atlantic is telling travellers who want the cheapest fares that they can take only cabin baggage.

The airline that Sir Richard Branson founded has unveiled economy light, a ticket that subtracts checked luggage from the present offer. It will be available from spring 2019.

The new economy light ticket will always offer Virgin Atlantics lowest fare, says the airline, making long haul travel affordable and accessible for millennials.

Compared with rivals, the cabin baggage allowance is meagre. It is broadly the same as Ryanairs. The maximum dimensions are 23x36x56cm with a weight limit of 10kg.

On British Airways, which is launching similar hand-baggage-only fares in April, cabin luggage can be one-third larger and weigh up to 23kg.

In addition, both airlines allow a smaller item  though Virgin Atlantics rules say a handbag or small backpack must be as you would normally use it (in other words, not just being used to contain items that would otherwise be regarded as baggage). Passengers can also carry a small amount of duty free goods.

Those travelling on the cheapest tickets will be assigned seats in the main economy cabin at check in.

The existing economy class is rebranded classic economy, with an added benefit of the right to select seats free of charge at any time after booking.

A new economy delight section will offer three extra inches of legroom. Passenger prepared to pay the premium will also get priority check-in and boarding.

Craig Kreeger, the airlines chief executive, told The Independent: All of our economy products  light, classic and delight  still include free drinks, the same food, the same frequency of service from our cabin crew. On board, economy is economy.

But there are customers who have different expectations and want a choice, but not really compromising on any of the stuff on board.

In a dig at British Airways densification process of adding extra seats, Mr Kreeger said: Unlike some other airlines, weve been actually taking seats off aircraft to create extra legroom.

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. 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The new configuration means Virgin Atlantic will effectively become a four-class airline, with economy, economy delight, premium economy and its business product, Upper Class. When the carrier was first launched in 1984, it had only economy and Upper Class.

Virgin Atlantic was started by Richard [Branson] with the fundamental belief that we could do things better for customers, said Mr Kreeger.

The idea that we could now create a match of how customers would like to fly in economy and give them choices with the great Virgin experience on board regardless of the price they paid I think is totally in keeping with the Virgin Atlantic spirit.

Virgin Atlantics partner, Delta, has already launched basic economy fares on transatlantic flight, but has no weight limit for cabin baggage.

The aviation analyst John Strickland said: Airlines like Virgin are witnessing the passenger appeal of long-haul low-cost services, especially out of Gatwick, and they see these new fare offers as an opportunity to tap into additional very price-sensitive traffic.

Equally, of course, it provides a defence against loss of traffic to long-haul low-cost carriers as well as making their lives more difficult by reducing any price advantage they may have.
Thousands of digital elephants will descend on Manchester today on the first stop of their world tour. The herd, part of global movement #MarchforGiants, will appear on a digital billboard in the city's centre to boost support for the fight against poaching.

The #MarchforGiants herd will march on to Birmingham tomorrow and Londons Westfield shopping centre on Saturday, before marching through France, Holland, Australia and Botswana to raise awareness of the poaching crisis.

One third of Africas elephants have been wiped out, with an average of 55 killed each day. Every digital elephant in #MarchforGiants represents an elephant in the wild that has been protected by a person during this campaign.

Joanna Lumley, Deborah Meaden, and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill have lent their support. Lumley said: March for Giants presents a one-of-a-kind opportunity for people everywhere to make their voice heard. It is a truly transformative moment for the conservation of Africas elephants.

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill has supported the March against poaching

Anyone can join the herd by donating 5 by either texting GIANT plus their name to 70025, or online at www.marchforgiants.org. Each sponsor customises their elephants design before it joins the ever-growing herd.

The funds raised go to Space for Giants, the conservation charity of which The Independent proprietor Evgeny Lebedev is a patron. An elephant bearing this newspapers logo will be among the herd.

Following the success of 2017s inaugural #MarchforGiants, this years campaign promises to be even bigger. Once the herd has marched across global billboards and social media, it will head to Africa, arriving at a conservation event called the Giants Club Summit in Botswana on March 16.

Held in the presence of Botswanas President Khama, the Giants Club Summit brings together African leaders, conservationists and global influencers to chart the next steps for ensuring elephants and their landscapes are protected, forever.

The #MarchforGiants herd will boost momentum as African leaders lend their names to an Avaaz petition  with over one million signatures  that demands the European Union end its ivory trade. Now that China has closed its ivory market, the EU is the largest legal ivory exporter.

Max Graham, CEO of Space for Giants, said: There have been a number of huge gains in the fight to protect elephants, but theres a danger we could become complacent. Poaching is not over. Elephant habitats are not secure. The job is not finished.

"Joining the global movement that is the March for Giants is a way to loudly add your voice to thousands of others demanding we all keep the pressure up to secure a future for elephants and the landscapes they depend on."

The digital elephant project is made possible through the generous support of many organisations. The screen space is donated by Ocean who formed The Alliance, a network of like-minded global digital out-of-home media owners who can offer both full-motion imagery and integrated technology in their screens, allowing campaigns such as March for Giants to have global reach.

The original #MarchforGiants concept came from London-based creative agency 18 Feet & Rising. The technology to create the experience was made by digital studio Popped. Freefolk provided 3D expertise. DOOH.com is facilitating the streaming of the virtual herd to iconic digital billboards worldwide and by closing the social media loop, returning an image of every elephants visit to each city back to its donator.

Join the March at www.marchforgiants.org
Trade wars are never good. There are not many things we can be sure about in economics, but that is one. I cannot think of a single example where a trade war has resulted in either side gaining in anything other than the very short term, and usually not even that.

The question that follows is whether the world is heading into one, or whether the spat between the Trump administration and the European Commission is just that  one of the standard spats that frequently occur in trade negotiations  or something more troubling.

It is probably the former. This is the way the US President negotiates  sound off, create some headlines and then seek a deal. But the departure of his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, gives a signal that his administration might miscalculate and trigger a round of measure and counter-measure that will end up seriously damaging world trade.

Viewed in isolation, a threat of import tariffs on steel and aluminium by the US and retaliation against bourbon, orange juice and peanut butter by the EU has an almost comical tone. But while we in Europe can rub along without Makers Mark, I dont think we in the UK would like to find a larger duty slapped on scotch or gin. Tit for tat is a silly game.

The financial markets, which have to make instant decisions on the significance of political events, did not like the prospect of a trade war at all. Their immediate reaction to the Cohn news was to open 1 per cent lower on Wednesday. The markets are saying that this trade approach is likely to damage the US economy. That, more than anything else, is likely to push the US negotiators towards some kind of accommodation with its trading partners, for it is language Donald Trump understands.

But I think it is important to understand the aims of the administration. Figures just out show that the US trade deficit hit a nine-year high in January, and the US has some reason to feel that trade is sometimes rigged against it.

For example, there is the simple matter of duties on cars: a 2.5 per cent one on European cars imported into the US, but a 10 per cent one on US cars imported into Europe. Germany last year had a current account surplus equivalent to 8 per cent of GDP, a level is bound to destabilise its relations with the rest of the world. Or look at China, delighted to export its stuff to the US, but putting up various barriers on US imports.

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There is also a cultural dimension and Im not sure what you can do about this. Go into any upmarket food store in the US, say a Whole Foods, and you will find lots of French wines on sale. Go into a French supermarket and you will struggle to find many Italian and Spanish wines, let alone American ones.

Indeed, that Europe should target things like cranberry juice and peanut butter as US imports to hit, highlights how limited is the range of goods that the US sells in Europe. What it sells are mainly services. Note that the commission is not suggesting that Europeans should pay a levy if they use the Google search engine or log onto Facebook.

The President is going about this in an unpleasant, aggressive and possibly self-defeating way. But he has a point. In some ways Europe is more protectionist than the US, and China is vastly so.

The thing that protects us all from a trade war is the experience of history. There is a famous cobweb diagram created by the US economist Charles Kindleberger in his book, The World in Depression, 1929-1939. It shows how world trade declined relentlessly month by month between 1929 and 1933, so that by the beginning of 1933 it was one-third of the level it was at the beginning of 1929. That collapse was largely caused by restrictive trade policies, including the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which led pretty directly to the Depression and US unemployment of more than 20 per cent, and indirectly to the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany.

There is no need to be apocalyptic. This row will almost certainly be settled in a more or less acceptable way. Almost certainly... but not absolutely certainly, which is why we are right to worry.
The wonderful thing about history is that sometimes its a guide to the future rather than a recording of the past.

This is what worries me. A large number of white people in the west seem to have forgotten the far right will eventually come for them too. They will come for people like me first, of course, but eventually they will come for them as well.

Why would I say that? Italians just made the far right Northern League their biggest party in the centre-right coalition. In Germany and France the far right are unofficially the main opposition. In Britain the Conservatives have swallowed whole the Ukip agenda. In Russia, Putin has become an icon for the far right and Eastern European countries such as Hungary and Poland are already run by the far right.

And then theres Donald Trump.

Look, I get it. People are angry. That is usually the reason why they vote for people clearly unfit for the job. But you dont put out a fire by throwing more fuel on it.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. 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PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA UK news in pictures 31 July 2021 James Guy, Adam Peaty and Kathleen Dawson celebrate winning the gold medal in the mixed 4x100m medley relay final at the Tokyo Olympics AP UK news in pictures 30 July 2021 Great Britain's Bethany Shriever and Kye Whyte celebrate their Gold and Silver medals respectively for the Cycling BMX Racing at the Ariake Urban Sports Park on the seventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA

The far right will come for people like me. Theyll come for Jews. Theyll come for gay people. Theyll come for the trade unionists, and so on. But then theyll come for you. Their aim is to reshape society, not just make minor changes to foreign policy.

It's not just white people who are guilty of extremism. Far from it. Everyone is guilty of extremism. South Asia is a mess for it. A few decades ago Pakistan was a bustling country which genuinely thought it could be the economic star of Asia. Now it is plagued by religious extremists and terrorism. It is plagued by the very people its state created and legitimised as a proxy war against India. If you raise a snake then dont be shocked if it grows up and bites you.

India is not there yet but it's heading down the same path. The BJP government has encouraged the rise of Hindutva  extremists who want the country to be a Hindu state  as a weapon against its Muslim and Sikh minorities. Inevitably, those extremists will soon end up fighting each other for power and influence, and push their extremist agenda on Hindus. But by the time they realise the danger, it may be too late.

Our extremists are better than your extremists  this is what much of our conflict boils down to.

 Four far-right UK terrorist plots foiled since Westminster attack, police reveal

Not everyone who supports the far right believes in the ideology. This should be obvious. They just think their extremists are a useful foil against others. Many Hindus tolerate Hindutva because they think Indian Muslims need to be shown their place. Many Muslims tolerate their extremists because they see them as a foil against western interference. White folks vote for Trump despite his obvious inability because he flatters them. He stands up for them even if hes extremely uncouth about it. Our extremists are standing up for us!

I can see why this is an attractive argument. But your extremists will destroy you. They need power and they are insatiable. Thats why they are extremists, remember?

You dont have to listen to me. Winston Churchill, for all his faults, clearly saw the threat posed by Nazis. He knew Britain had to confront it. Not because he was an idealist, but because he knew Hitler would eventually come for Britain.

The same goes for Trump and Europes far right. The same goes for the Middle East and Asia. You can't control extremists  you can only fight to keep them away from legitimacy.

And this is where the problem lies. The left's response to the rise of extremism hasnt been great, I'll give you that. But make no mistake  the extremists have become powerful because the centre-right has mainstreamed them. Trump is reshaping the Republican Party. The UK Conservatives are staving off civil war as long as they can, but it is coming. You can see it a mile off. The crazy are crazy because they have no stop button.

The far right could destroy Europe. Again. If it gets into power it certainly will. So its time to end this complacency before it's too late. It's no different than last time  Europe is about to repeat its shocking history.
I was 15 years old when I got married. It had been arranged by my family and Id been sent to America to live with a man I barely knew. A child, alone in an unfamiliar country, I discovered that I was a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM), when I had my vagina cut back open to have sex.

I was subjected to infibulation, the most extreme form of FGM, when I was just one week old in my home country, The Gambia.

The woman who cut me was my mothers friend. She just thought it was the normal thing to do. Ive since asked her why she did it, and her excuse was that when I was born they could tell from my eyes that I was strong-headed and they wanted to tame me, to protect me from their forecast promiscuity.

Desperate for answers, and determined that no girl should ever endure the same abuse, I petitioned then President Barack Obama to look into the impact of FGM on women in the US. After it was signed by more than 220,000 people, Obama agreed and as a result its now a crime to transport American girls abroad for FGM.

I decided to take the campaign to my home country, The Gambia, and I followed former President Yahya Jammeh all over the country as he travelled on tour. He had never spoken out about FGM before but he finally agreed to meet and, two days later, the practice was banned.

After decades of campaigning, we are making progress. In 2012 the UN General Assembly adopted a milestone resolution calling on the international community to intensify efforts to end female genital mutilation. Three years later the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) included a target to eliminate all harmful practices  such as child, early and forced marriage and FGM  by the year 2030, and the issue is now hitting mainstage agendas at the likes of leading youth forum One Young World and the World Economic Forum.

However, despite these important signals of intent from the global community, the practice continues; more than 200 million girls and women have undergone FGM. That is 5 per cent of the global female population.

 International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

FGM has been formally condemned internationally since 1994, when a United Nations conference, backed by 173 countries, announced that it was a violation of basic rights and a major lifelong risk to womens health.

Bans like those in The Gambia have had some effect, and are vital steps in the right direction, but 6,000 girls worldwide are still mutilated every day. And despite a common misconception its not just an issue for the developing world  there are more than 500,000 girls at risk of mutilation in the United States alone.

Clearly, campaigning at the highest level has not been able to solve the problem, and a national, or even a global, ban isnt enough to eliminate the practice. One of the biggest problems is these high-profile campaigns have been driven by the West  and too often the survivors, practitioners and communities at risk are left out of the conversation.

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

In the absence of a cohesive grassroots campaign, governments can pay lip service to the idea without taking meaningful action. Many countries have announced bans and passed laws that simply arent enforced. An effective policy needs to work with survivors and those at risk to help change the preconceptions of sexual health  we must focus on educating communities on the dangers and harm FGM causes.

That is why, to coincide with this years International Womens Day, we are launching The Big Sister Movement in Dakar, Senegal. Its a new African-led grassroots movement that will campaign to end FGM and child marriage by 2030.

We need to develop, define and support leaders who have garnered the trust and have the cultural competency to tackle some of the biggest obstacles to change  including religion and cultural beliefs.

In order to break this cycle of abuse we cannot merely point fingers. We must also build bridges and allow for meaningful conversations that can change the culture of silence and pave the way for a narrative shift.

Its a complex issue and its all too often a taboo. In The Gambia, for example, many believe FGM is a religious obligation and is therefore the right thing to do. Practitioners often have no other source of income to allow them to contemplate change.

When I started campaigning my family was ashamed and embarrassed, but now I am celebrated as a national hero  proof that attitudes can change.

We are in desperate need of a grassroots education-led approach that can talk openly and honestly with religious leaders, families and the practitioners themselves. Ultimately, this is the only way we can change the horrendous narrative that plagues the lives of so many girls around the world.

Jaha Dukureh is founder of Safe Hands for Girls and The Big Sister Movement, a One Young World ambassador and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
It was in 1857, that on 8 March in New York City, garments workers went on strike. Suffering horrific conditions, endless hours and low pay, they took to the streets demanding better money and working conditions. Dispersed after being attacked by police, the women continued to fight and from their movement the first womens labour unions were established.

In the early 20th century, their movement blossomed. New York Citys streets again saw women march demanding shorter hours, better pay, an end to child labour and the right to vote in 1908. Leading labour organisers sought to strengthen the movement internationally. At the Conference of Working Women held in Copenhagen in 1910, Clara Zetkin asked over 100 women from 17 countries  representing unions, socialist parties and womens working clubs  to pass a motion for an International Working Womens Day. They did so, unanimously, and the so International Womens Day was born.

Zetkin, in conjunction with other well-known women from the movement including Rosa Luxembourg and Theresa Malkiel focussed on the conditions that dictated womens lives. They organised with women working in inhumane conditions for long hours and no pay. Women who also went home to complete their second shift  cleaning, cooking, childrearing and household managing; women who were the engine keeping families, communities, companies and countries running, but whose work received little pay and even less recognition.

 International Women's Day: Why we celebrate it

It was after the first International Working Womens Day  a day that saw a million women across Europe take part in rallies  that 140 womens lives were claimed in the tragic Triangle Fire of 1911. Many of them Italian and Jewish migrants, these women died working for next to nothing under atrocious conditions in a New York garments factory. We know, of course, that this is a situation women in the global South endure today.

Rose Schneiderman, a socialist who worked tirelessly to draw attention to conditions that had caused the Triangle Fire, a year later coined the slogan that reverberated across the womens movement: the demand for bread and roses. Demanding that women have the right to live, not simply exist in a speech, she said: The rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with. Five years later, Russian textile workers called for bread and peace when they went on strike in protest of the millions of men they knew killed in World War I. Their strike ignited the Russian Revolution.

International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Show all 17 1 /17 International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Radical political activist Angela Davis speaks at a protest in Raleigh Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Poor pay, 14 hour days and dangerous working conditions led to a strike by around 1400 women and girls at a match factory in Bow, London, 1888. The action was later coined The Matchgirls Strike International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Christabel Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a leading member of the suffragette movement, addresses a crowd in Trafalgar Square in a speech in which she invites the crowd to rush the House of Commons, 11 October 1908. Christabel Pankhurst and her mother Emmeline, alongside Flora Drummond, were arrested two days later charged with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace. The rush on parliament went ahead without them however, with over 60,000 suffragettes attempting to break through the 5000 strong police cordon protecting parliament. Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Suffragette Emily Davison is hit and killed by King George V's horse Anmer during the 1913 Epsom Derby. She fell underneath the galloping horse after leaping from the crowd and trying to grab hold of the reins Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham protest outside negotiations over their wages, 1968. The women went on strike over their lack of pay in relation to their male colleagues. The action helped to trigger the Equal Pay Act 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history The women's liberation movement march in Washington, August 1970 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protestors disrupt the 1970 Miss World competition. Original caption: The Miss World contest causes a feminist storm as demonstrators invade the Royal Albert Hall where the contest was held. Protestors fired ink at spectators and let off stink bombs in scenes resembling a school assembly. The unruly ladies were eventually expelled from the hall by security guards and policemen Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Somalians demonstrating in Mogadishu for the release of Angela Davis, March 1972, a Black Panther activist imprisoned in the USA after being charged with first degree murder. Davis was later acquitted Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Jayaben Desai, one of the mostly British-Asian women out on strike at the Grunwick factory in 1977, pictured on the picket line Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women protest against nuclear weapons outside of RAF base Greenham Common, 1982 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Indian protestors hold candles during a rally in New Delhi in December 2012, after the death of a student who was gang raped on a bus in the Indian capital Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history A feminist group Sisters Uncut protesting against cuts to domestic violence refuges occupy the red carpet during a protest at the Suffragette premiere, 7 October 2015 Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history People gather for the Womens March in Washington, January 2017 Reuters International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Protesters walk during the Womens March on Washington, with the US Capitol in the background, in January, 2017. Donald Trump was sworn in as president the previous day Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Women march as part of the gender equality protest in London, March 2017 AFP/Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Demonstrators march through during the March4Women event, 4 March 2018, London Getty International Womens Day: groundbreaking figures from history Placards are displayed during the March4Women, 4 March 2018, London Getty

Recurrent across this history of International Womens Day is one tactic: strike. Women - most often low income, migrant women working tirelessly as employees, carers, wives, mothers, sex workers - knew the power of their labour. They knew withdrawing the work they did would stop the world turning and win them victories.

It is not a tactic lost today. In the tradition of the matchgirls strike that birthed the modern trade union movement, the Grunwick and Dagenham strikes that set the foundations for equal pay and migrant workers place in workers movements, and the Irish womens strikes since 2000 that marked the founding of the Global Womens Strike organisation, strikes are having a resurgence.

 International Women's Day: women walk down street in Bilbao for 'feminist strike'

In the UK, many are spearheaded by grassroots and largely migrant workers. The United Voices of the World, workers enduring horrific treatment and poverty wages from outsourcing firms have organised strikes and won sick pay, holiday pay and in-house contracts. All across this month, too, academics are striking against a raiding of their pensions. This week, with Oxford University backing down, it looks like they are also set to win. And in Yarls Wood detention centre, women forcibly detained and driven to work for next to nothing to maintain the centres functioning are on strike from work and from food.

For International Womens Day, too, the strike is back. In 54 countries, women are due to stop work  both paid and unpaid  and take to the streets. Their issues are innumerable: sexual harassment, the denial of trans womanhood, the forcible removal of children from low income and migrant mothers; corporate, street and state racism; poverty wages, benefit cuts, reproductive justice, the decriminalisation of sex work. The women who founded International Womens Day knew their labour ran the world; they knew the dire conditions of their womanhood would not be remedied with representation, telling their stories, or leaning in  but by action. It is in the tradition of International Womens Day that this 8 March, we strike.
Vop Osili is leading the Indianapolis City-County Council in a new direction as it emerges from recent controversy.

I imagine the council with a focus on what benefits our constituents the most, said Osili, a Democrat who was elected president of the council on Feb. 19 with unanimous support from his party and Republicans.

Osilis tenure began following the resignation of Stephen Clay, whose sudden rise to power and six-week reign led to sweeping changes marked by turmoil.

Council unity

Almost immediately, Osili became a unifying force on the council at a time when it must address the urgent needs of more than 800,000 people who live in the city. Osili says he is up to meeting the challenge.

Thinking creatively about a problem and working out a solution is motivating, said Osili, who was elected to the council from the 11th District in 2011.

He certainly brings integrity and a passion for the community to the position, said Pitt Thompson, executive director of Christamore House, an organization that provides educational and youth services in Osilis district.

Osili is also motivated to act whenever he sees residents in his district who live in food deserts and dont have close access to grocery stores and lack the transportation to get to shelters and kitchens.

Economic development

Affordable housing is also an enormous issue, said Osili. Housing that provides shelter and easily accessible food as well as opportunities for skills training and job placement.

Although he was born in Nigeria, Osili grew up in his grandparents home in Haughville on the citys westside. He is concerned about how longtime residents like them could be affected by gentrification, which often displaces urban homeowners in favor of more affluent buyers.

I believe in economic development, but not the ugly side of it, Osili said. I understand that oftentimes the victims of gentrification are people who look like me.

Osili said one tool to handle gentrification is identifying so-called hot zones where rising home values could lead to property tax increases that many residents cannot afford.

Once we identify a zone, then we can find someone who is at risk of losing his or her home and offer assistance, Osili said.

Ian Nicolini, vice president of Develop Indy, an economic development initiative of the Indy Chamber, praised Osili as a champion of economic growth that benefits residents of all incomes.

He has been a strong advocate for economic development, Nicolini. He has been a great partner and we look forward to working with him as council president.

Committed to community

Osili also is committed to helping ex-offenders find employment and decreasing recidivism. The council, along with Develop Indy and Employ Indy, will soon launch Hired, a program that awards tax abatements and other incentives to companies who make significant progress in hiring ex-offenders.

We will do this every year until it becomes the norm, he said.

Osili wants the council to think more outside the box and expand its problem-solving abilities by having more partnerships with community organizations and academic institutions such as IUPUI. This, he says, will provide more solutions to city problems and overcome the hurdle of limited resources.

With partnerships, we can produce far more and increase our research horsepower as a legislative body, Osili stated. It could also spark new ideas, energy and excitement about government and community work.

Osili also is passionate about mentoring youth and involving them in developing community solutions. He often encourages groups of students involved in organizations such as Teen Works, which provides year-round employment and college readiness programs to area teens.

Vop understands the community from a range of perspectives, said Tammie Barney, president and CEO of Teen Works. He has a constrained and thoughtful approach to his decision-making, and I think our council can benefit from that. He is fair, level-headed and has an ability to hear both sides without pushing his own agenda.

Osili restored Democrats to the chairmanship of all committees. However, he maintained the balance of political parties that Clay established on the committees.

It is important that we work outside of party to address the needs of the people who put us in office, said Osili.

Vop Osili, Indianapolis City-County Council president. (Photo/John Hurst)
Sanjay Dutt has written to the bank, saying that the contents of a safety deposit vault bequeathed to him by a late fan be handed over to her family members. (IANS photo)
Sarod master Tejendra Majumdar (r), accompanied by Ravi Albright on tabla, performed for the 2016 Access to Ustads project. ACIT was among several Indian American organizations receiving grants from the National Endowment for the Arts this year. (photo provided)
Taxi driver Gagandeep Singh was fatally stabbed last Aug. 28. His teenage passenger, who was charged with his murder, has pleaded not guilty to the attack. (Facebook photo)
People protested outside a speech by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions March 7, 2018, in Sacramento, California. Sessions warned California that the federal government would use all its legal powers to fight protections provided unauthorized immigrants, a day after suing the state over its sanctuary laws. California is seeking to protect its residents. It has every right not to participate in activities that violate peoples constitutional rights, Indian American Manju Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, told India-West. (Noah Berger/AFP/Getty Images)
How Russiagate Helps the Israel Lobby



By Ali Abunimah

March 07, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Ever since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 US presidential election , the Democratic Party establishment has held tightly to the belief that her shock defeat was not the result of her and their shortcomings, but rather due to a nefarious Russian plot to hack the election in collusion with the winner.

Instead of examining why Donald Trump was able to connect with voters in economically distressed parts of the country in a way that Democrats failed to do, adherents of the Russiagate narrative hoped that investigations would quickly find a smoking gun, leading to Trumps impeachment and undoing an election result they consider aberrant and unjust.

On Friday, I spoke at a conference in Washington, DC, titled The Israel Lobby and American Policy , sponsored by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and IRmep , a group that researches the lobbys influence.

As I note in my talk, a handful of journalists  especially Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate of The Real News  have consistently debunked the wild, exaggerated and sometimes fabricated claims of Russian interference made by members of the self-styled but woefully ineffectual Resistance to Trump.

Watch the video above.

True, over the course of the last year, special counsel Robert Mueller has made a number of indictments, but none of those cases  including the recent indictment of 13 Russians linked to a St. Petersburg troll farm  substantiates the heavily hyped claim that Russia helped Trump win the White House.

Perhaps the most high-profile indictment of someone in Trumps inner circle, the presidents first national security adviser Michael Flynn , actually shows that rather than colluding with Russia, senior members of Trumps team were really working with Israel to advance its agenda.

And while no one has pinpointed evidence of Trump auctioning off his foreign policy to any Russian oligarchs, he has definitely tailored his policy toward Israel to the demands of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson , his biggest campaign donor .

Adelsons immediate priority was securing US recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital and moving the American embassy there  and Trump duly obliged .

New censorship helps Israel

In my talk I consider how the Russiagate narrative is actually helping Israel and its lobby in particular ways.

I point out that the Russiagate hysteria being adopted by many liberals is legitimizing censorship that helps Israel clamp down on free speech and a free press.

Last year, the Russian-funded network RT was forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

As Mate has noted, free speech advocates and journalists were largely silent about it , perhaps thinking this tool of government control over the media would never be used against them.

But now, Israels supporters in Congress  including Senator Ted Cruz  are demanding that Al Jazeera be investigated by the Department of Justice and forced to register as an agent of Qatar. They are explicitly citing the US government crackdown on RT as their precedent.

Al Jazeeras transgression is that it produced an undercover documentary on the workings of the Israel lobby in the US.

Qatar has come under intense pressure from that lobby to make sure the documentary is never aired. Five months after the networks head of investigations Clayton Swisher announced it would be released very soon, the film has yet to be broadcast.

On Monday, The Electronic Intifada exclusively published details of what is in the film.

According to a source who has seen it, the film identifies a number of lobby groups as working with Israel to spy on American citizens using sophisticated data gathering techniques. It is also said to cast light on covert efforts to smear and intimidate Americans seen as too critical of Israel.

True, FARA is being used only against foreign networks, but the point is that these outlets  whatever their flaws  are providing space for discussion and dissent that docile US mainstream media keep closed.

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Its simply impossible to imagine CNN, ABC  or for that matter the BBC  showing true independence and taking on the power of the Israel lobby.

While organizers diligently informed media about the Washington conference, the only outlets that invited me on to talk about the Israel lobby were the The Real News and RT. I know that other speakers were shut out of mainstream media as well.

And besides, there are other forms of high-tech censorship that are being used to stifle or stigmatize dissent in domestic media: Partly as an outgrowth of Russiagate, Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook have succumbed to political pressure to effectively throttle the exposure of independent outlets in the name of fighting extremism, fake news and alleged foreign interference.

The perverse effect has been to reassert state and elite control over media and erode the freedom that those of us shut out of mainstream outlets rely on. Nothing could suit Israel and its lobby better.

Stark warning

The conference in Washington featured many interesting presentations that can be seen at The Washington Reports YouTube channel .

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, issued a stark warning that the US ramping up its military presence in Syria may be a prelude to launching a war on Iran on behalf of Israel.

Wilkerson said that Israel and its ally Saudi Arabia are encouraging the US to fight a regime-change war against Tehran that they would be incapable of mounting on their own.

Weve already done Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Wilkerson said, so wed just be seen as continuing the trend.

He warned that an Israeli confrontation and war with Lebanon  perhaps on the pretext of disputed gas fields in the Mediterranean  could provide the pretext.

In an ominous parallel, he likened the current situation to 1914, the eve of World War I  any spark could generate a broad regional or even global conflagration.

Wilkerson singled out the role of the neoconservative think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies as leading the campaign for war on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Notably, the source who spoke to The Electronic Intifada about Al Jazeeras suppressed Israel lobby film said that the documentary reveals that the same think tank may be acting as an agent for Israel in its covert efforts to undermine support for Palestinian rights in the US.

In spite of Wilkersons worrying thesis, it must be said that, however powerful, the Israel lobby cannot alone force the US to undertake foreign military conquests. For one thing, US elites have never needed encouragement from anyone to wage devastating wars around the world.

When the US establishment sees a critical interest at stake, it pursues it regardless of what the lobby may want. That is why the US signed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement despite all of Israels efforts to sabotage it. Of course whether that deal survives the Trump administration remains to be seen .

In his keynote address , Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy stated that Israels military rule over Palestinians is today one of the most brutal, cruel tyrannies on Earth.

He asserted that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights is a legitimate tool and the only game in town to force Israel to end this injustice.

Ali Abunimah, Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine , now out from Haymarket Books.

This article was originally published by " The Electronic Intifada " -

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of Information Clearing House.

Congressmen call for foreign agent tag for Al Jazeera as it digs into pro-Israel lobby

Watch: Netanyahu Gives Paratroopers Red Beret to Rep. Steve Scalise : Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA 1st District) an IDF Paratroopers red beret, in appreciation of his support for Israel.

Congressmen call for foreign agent tag for Al Jazeera as it digs into pro-Israel lobby

Israeli army erects checkpoints to collect Palestinians' personal details

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While MSM Screams About Eastern Ghouta, US Bombs Kill Over 100 Syrian Civilians

By Brett Wilkins

March 07, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - The US corporate mainstream media has turned its attention back to Syria, where Russian-backed Syrian government troops have killed hundreds of civilians during weeks of air and artillery bombardment of the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta. Outlets including CNN, NBC, Fox News and the New York Times have recently run headlines revealing how Syrian President Bashar al-Assads Kremlin-backed troops are committing "atrocities" and "war crimes on an epic scale" as they "target everything that moves." The Times even ran a photo essay on the toys Eastern Ghoutas children are clinging to for comfort during the ferocious attack.

A year ago, when US-led coalition air strikes were killing more Syrian civilians than attacks by Islamic State fighters or bombing by Russia, the US media was silent. By last summer, the US was killing more civilians than not only IS or Russia, but more than even Assads forces as well. This was never reported by any US corporate media outlet.

Something similar is happening again amid news of the shocking slaughter in Eastern Ghouta. During the month of February, US-led coalition air strikes killed at least 100 Syrian civilians, many of them children, in Deir Ezzor province, and the mainstream media has completely ignored the story. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitor group reporting on civilian casualties caused by all sides during the seven-year Syrian civil war, 129 civilians, including 83 women and children, were killed by coalition bombing last month. Airwars, another UK-based monitor, published credible reports of between 52 and 95 civilians, including 21 children, who were killed by US-led bombing in Deir Ezzor between February 19-28, roughly the same period as the Eastern Ghouta offensive.

The small town of al-Shafa on the Euphrates River has been hit particularly hard. Last November, Russian air strikes killed dozens of civilians in the town of 18,000 residents. On January 23, US bombs struck a hospital there, killing as many as 15 civilians, according to Airwars. On February 5, Airwars reported coalition warplanes returned to bomb the town, killing at least 17 more civilians. Local media reported as many as 59 men, women and children died in the strike.

Most recently, US warplanes bombed al-Shafa at least four times during the final week of February. Airwars reported at least eight civilians, mostly women and children, died when a school housing civil war refugees was struck on February 23. Two days later SOHR reported 25 civilians , again mostly women and children, were killed in coalition air strikes targeting IS fighters on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. On February 28, US warplanes returned to bomb the al-Kashma district of al-Shafa, with SOHR reporting 22 killed , mostly women and children. The death tolls from both the February 25 and February 28 attacks were expected to rise, as many of the dozen or more people wounded in each bombing were in serious or critical condition.

Many of the women and children killed in the late February air strikes were reportedly the wives and children of IS fighters in some of the last remaining areas controlled by the militant Islamist group. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to "bomb the shit out of" IS fighters and "take out their families," and since taking office the president has loosened rules of engagement meant to protect innocent civilians. Civilian casualties have subsequently soared; entire families were regularly killed as air strikes and allied local ground forces destroyed Mosul , Raqqa and other cities, towns and villages throughout IS-held areas of Iraq and Syria.

In addition to those two countries, civilian casualties have also spiked in Afghanistan, where air strike deaths soared 50 percent last year, in Somalia , where bombing is only part of the problem as US Special Forces troops have massacred men, women and children during "anti-terrorism" raids widely condemned as a form of state terrorism, and in Yemen, where a massive US-backed Saudi bombing and starvation campaign has killed thousands and where Navy SEALs gunned down terrified women and children fleeing for their lives in al-Ghayil last January. The Trump administration called the latter slaughter, in which 10 children and six women were killed, "very, very well thought-out and executed" and "highly successful."

US military commanders regularly claim they are waging "the most precise air campaign in history" and argue they always take great care to avoid harming civilians. However, the US has come under fire for failing to investigate the vast majority of air strikes in which civilian casualties have been reported. American officials have also struck a dismissive tone when discussing the subject. While announcing last May that the US was escalating the fight against IS from a war of "attrition" to one of "annihilation," Defense Secretary James "Mad Dod" Mattis  who earned the moniker during the atrocity-laden battles for Fallujah in 2004  shrugged off dead children as "a fact of life in this sort of situation."

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While the Pentagon officially accepts responsibility for killing around 800 Syrian and Iraqi civilians since former president Barack Obama launched the anti-IS campaign in August 2014, Airwars says at least 6,136 civilians have likely died in more than 29,000 coalition air strikes in Syria and Iraq over the past three and a half years. This has generated much international outrage and almost no US corporate media coverage. When United Nations war crimes investigators condemned the "staggering loss of life" resulting from US-led bombing and shelling of Raqqa during the fight to recapture the de facto IS capital last spring, very few mainstream media outlets bothered to report the story.

Nor have they reported the "staggering loss of life" resulting from US military action over the course of the 16-year anti-terrorism war in which at least hundreds of thousands and perhaps more than 1.3 million men, women and children in six majority Muslim countries have perished. Or the fact that since the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, the United States has killed more foreign civilians than any other armed force on the planet  by far.

Based in San Francisco, Brett Wilkins is editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His articles, blogs and op-eds, which focus on war and peace, human rights and social justice, have appeared in Digital Journal, Daily Kos, Business Insider and Yahoo News.

This article was originally published by " Antiwar " -

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of Information Clearing House.

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US Wants Inter-Korean Thaw Undermined



By Stephen Lendman

March 07, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Washington has been hostile toward North Korea throughout the entire post-WW II era because of its sovereign independence  not for any threat the country poses.

The DPRK never attacked another nation throughout its entire history, threatening none now.

Unless provoked to believe its security is gravely threatened, theres isnt the remotest possibility it would attack another country. Not a shred of evidence suggests otherwise.

If Washington and the West had normalized relations with Pyongyang, respecting its sovereignty, its leadership never would have pursued development of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Theyre solely for defense against a genuine threat posed by Washington, not for preemptive war against any nation.

US administrations from Truman to Trump bear full responsibility for adversarial relations  the way Washington treats all sovereign independent countries, on its target list for regime change, naked aggression its favored strategy.

Americas longstanding record of endless wars against one country after another is clear evidence of the menace it poses  to North Korea, all other sovereign independent nations and humanity.

In the run-up to the February Winter Olympics, Pyongyang extended diplomatic outreach to Seoul, reciprocated in kind.

On Monday and Tuesday, North and South Korean officials met in Pyongyang, the first high-level talks between both countries in over a decade, discussed in a same-day article.

An April summit was announced between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, details to follow. Both countries want peace, Washingtons rage for war and regime the major obstacle to ending decades of brinkmanship on the Korean peninsula.

The DPRK expressed willingness to denuclearize if guaranteed security, a near-unattainable objective given unrelenting US hostility toward its government.

Earlier Pyongyang diplomatic efforts were undermined by Washington, DPRK leadership falsely blamed, the way US administrations operate.

Dirty tricks, double-dealing, and other deceitful actions are longstanding imperial tactics.

Washington took an initial step to undermine efforts between North and South Korea to normalize relations.

New illegal US sanctions were announced, likely more coming, perhaps an embargo on oil imports ahead, what North Korea calls a declaration of war if imposed.

The Trump administrations phony pretext was claiming DPRK use of chemical weapons and the February 2017 killing of Kim Jong-nam  North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns paternal half brother.

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The bizarre incident at Kuala Lumpurs airport was captured on security camera videotape for the whole world to see  an obvious red flag.

Malaysian authorities said he died from VX poisoning, a banned lethal nerve agent.

At one time, he was considered heir apparent to his father, Kim Jong-il, later exiled in 2003 after falling out of favor with ruling authorities.

An anti-North Korea media blitzkrieg followed his killing. No credible evidence suggested he planned returning to challenge Kim Jong-uns leadership.

He was an obscure figure. What possible motive could North Korean authorities have had for wanting him eliminated  let alone by public execution, providing red meat for US-led Western vilification of its government.

At the time, senior North Korean representatives were preparing to come to New York to meet with former US officials, a chance for both sides to discuss differences diplomatically, hopefully leading to direct talks with Trump officials.

Why would Pyongyang want Kim Jong-nam killed at this potentially sensitive time, knowing it would be blamed for the incident, talks likely cancelled  precisely what happened!

Pyongyang denied involvement in Kim Jong-nams death. Its government is still unjustly blamed for what happened.

An opportunity for possible DPRK/US thaw was lost. New US sanctions on Pyongyang come in response to a North/South thaw, including an April summit between their leaders.

Clearly its a Trump administration attempt to undermine stepping back from the brink on the Korean peninsula  wanting longstanding hostility toward the DPRK unchanged, its government falsely blamed for unacceptable US actions.

stephenlendman.org . Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net . - My newest book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III. - www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of Information Clearing House.

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Freedoms Perversities

By Lawrence Davidson

March 07, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - For much of human history, the idea of freedom had little meaning. This was because life was, as Thomas Hobbes put it, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And while he thought this descriptor applied to life outside of society, for a long time it did not really matter  life within pre-modern societies often had the same limiting character. Religious belief in these same times reflected this depressing fact by asserting that there was no hope of meaningful freedom in this life. To achieve it you would have to die and go to Heaven. So, what set you free was death.

Around the end of the 18th century, progress in technology and science suggested an alternative to this life is a vale of tears scenario. It was at that point that different types of freedoms started to become viable goals. However, as the use of the plural implies, the idea of freedom manifested itself in discrete categories: political freedom, economic freedom (here defined as freedom from want), religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, and so forth. It really had to be this way. Total freedom produces anarchy and  here is the irony  anarchy will quickly make any particular freedom meaningless.

Thus it was that over time, as constitutions came into vogue, freedoms were written down, usually in the form of rights. Yet, not surprisingly, their translation into practice often ended up reflecting the needs and desires of the powerful and influential. This was the case whether we are considering democracies or more authoritarian forms of government. This customizing of freedoms by select groups inevitably led to less than satisfactory, and sometimes quite perverse, results.

Lets take a look at an example of such a conceptual deformity taken from the practice in the United States, the land of the free.

Gun Rights: A Perversion of Freedom

Perhaps the most perverse American definition of freedom is the one that promotes largely unrestricted gun rights. The champion of this definition is the National Rifle Association (NRA). We are not just talking about guns used to shoot at targets or for hunting game. One can actually make an argument for ownership of the latter weapons along the same line as bows and arrows, slingshots and fishing rods. However, according to Wayne LaPierre, the NRAs executive vice president, freedom demands more. His stand is that citizens have a fundamental right to own almost any firearm, including military-style assault weapons. His position is that this right is the sine qua non of American freedom. And only by exercising it can you really ensure individual freedom.

LaPierre insists that gun ownership is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution , and the NRA has taken an out-of-context fragment of that amendment as its motto  The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed. The fact that this phrase is part of a a comprehensive statement that ties gun ownership to the governments need to maintain a well regulated militia is disregarded by the NRA leadership. In truth, if we are to take the Second Amendment in its entirely as describing a discrete freedom, Mr. LaPierre and his buddies would have to join the National Guard in order to play with guns.

So here is a case where a definition of a freedom or a right has been customized to meet the demands of a politically powerful subgroup of society, and it has had predictably disastrous results. The largely open-ended access of U.S. citizens to military-style weapons has resulted in a prolonged bloodbath. It is estimated that between 2011 and 2014, there was a mass shooting (defined as the killing or wounding of 4 or more people) in the United States every 64 days . This rate has not slowed down in the last four years. As the world now knows, the latest of these massacres came on 14 February 2018, when 17 high school students were shot dead in Parkland, Florida.

Soon after this massacre, Wayne LaPierre gave the NRAs response to those surviving students and their supporters who were demanding greater gun regulation laws. He accused them of being socialists who want to make law abiding citizens less free. If these leftists manage to seize power  our American freedoms could be lost and our country will be changed forever.

LaPierres answer to the bloodbaths caused by guns is to have more guns. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. In the case of the Parkland high school shooting, where, in fact, there was an armed guard present at the school, as well as with previous school shootings, LaPierres formula translates into arming teachers as a way of hardening the schools.

By the way, President Trump initially agreed with LaPierre. He too called for arming teachers , suggesting that if 20 percent of teachers were armed and adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly. Assuming Trump meant giving teachers a sidearm while the usual assailants continue to use military-style automatic weapons, one can only call such a suggestion naive. He also praised the NRA leadership and specifically LaPierre, saying that they are great people and great American patriots who will do the right thing.

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Subsequently, Trump suggested that the country may well need to toughen its gun laws, much to the dismay of all those patriots at the NRA. Twenty-four hours later he was back on track with the NRA. Perhaps his flip-flopping was a tactical maneuver. Throw out some reforms and then do nothing. Later he can then say to the general public, perhaps during a reelection campaign, that he proved more willing to sign off on gun control reform than any president in history. Trump is famous for such mendacious hyperboles.

In the end LaPierre and all the the other gun fanatics who whittle their definition of freedom down to the nearly unrestricted right to own weapons are archaic primitives whose idea of freedom harkens back to those pre-civilized times so well described by Thomas Hobbes. In a perpetually dangerous world, one that is poor, nasty, brutish and short, the armed man is the only one with any chance of being free. And so, he is the real man, the man who can protect himself, his family and his country.

But that is not the way the world is, at least in the West. It is a relatively settled and safe place where the major threat is not so much crime, and certainly not socialists, but rather LaPierres own demand  the proliferation of guns. What we are all threatened by is the perversion of this discrete freedom.

The gun rights issue is not the only perversion of freedom one can come up with. The whole issue of economic freedom (as defined as freedom from want) is another. One can argue that, in an era of sufficient resources, this should be an undeniable right. Yet, in the United States, economic freedom is defined in such a way as to satisfy the desires and needs of a particular powerful group. Economic freedom is the freedom of the capitalist to operate within a free market. Unfortunately, such a definition, applied in practice, has left many people economically disadvantaged.

As is the case with the issue of gun rights, those who want to alter the definition of economic freedom so as to minimize such conditions as indebtedness and poverty are accused of being socialists and wanting to take away our freedoms.

So, really, just what does freedom mean? Well, it means what the powerful and the influential say it means. And, having it manifested in discrete categories makes it easy to customize. Nonetheless, part of civilizational progress is assuring that freedoms are sane and beneficial to larger and larger groups  but, obviously, progress in this sense is a real struggle.

Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic research focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He taught courses in Middle East history, the history of science and modern European intellectual history.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of Information Clearing House.

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The Italian Job: Unlikely Alliance Could Become Reality



As Italy's traditional parties scramble to rise from the debris, two extremes  populist Five Star and far-right Lega  may eye coalition



By Pepe Escobar

March 07, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - A triumph of populism. A hung parliament. Ungovernable Italy. Berlusconis demise. The latest chapter in a European saga. The end of socialist parties. Italys latest elections were a roller coaster featuring plenty of thrills. Yet the top political nugget is unmistakable: Only one coalition may aspire to an absolute majority, an  unlikely  alliance between the populist Five Star Movement and the extreme-right League, led by Matteo Salvini.

Thats what actually will be hangin in the air for the next  long  days; arguably as many as 51, according to a projection by JPMorgan relayed by Bloomberg. Europe, meanwhile, will also be hangin in the balance, as Italy is the third-largest economy in the eurozone.

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The Italian race was a highly personalized affair, centered on four stars: former prime minister Matteo Renzi  the Italian Tony Blair  of the center-left Democratic Party (PD); the larger-than-life Silvio bunga bunga Berlusconi of the right-wing Forza Italia; populist Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio; and extreme-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini.

As for Sergio Mattarella, the president of the Italian Republic, he will have to pull nothing less than a magic trick to come up with a government.

Italy for Italians

With nearly 32% of the vote, the populist Five Star Movement is now the top party of a largely fractured Italy. Five Star won largely in the south while Lega won largely in the north. As for the PD, it even managed to lose historically leftist Emilia-Romagna.

Five Stars platform features a promise to lower taxes  which in Italy tend to hover around a Dante-esque lower circle of hell; set up a universal minimum wage; raise pensions; revise the terms of hire and fire; invest in new technologies; cut red tape for business; and on the crucial immigration issue, come up with more bilateral treaties to increase repatriation of immigrants.

Contrary to alarmist hysteria, Italy is not exactly sinking. The fundamentals are actually solid. Gross domestic product went up 1.5% in 2017  twice the rate of Romes forecasts. Of course thats much less than the 2.5% European average, but its still Italys best score in 10 years, during which the nation was mostly mired in a horrible recession. Industrial production went up by 3%, and exports by 7%, leading to a trade surplus of 48 billion (US$59 billion).

Still, the center-left coalition, in power since 2013, ended up in smithereens. The PD will hardly recover. Blair clone Renzi, the partys secretary, might as well say goodbye, as the stigma of loser will not vanish.

Indeed, this election result might as well represent the end of a historical cycle of socialist  only in name  parties in power; their demise is due to the simple fact they went hardcore neoliberal. The PD most likely will turn into an opposition radical chic minority vehicle for sectors of the educated middle class paying lip service to humanitarian values. Definitely not a mass party.

All eyes are focused on whether Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio  who succeeded founder Beppe Grillo  will bow out to a political alliance.

Five Star may be entering a new, more moderate phase; in fact it will have to, otherwise its change you can believe in narrative simply wont be implemented (even as it insists nothing can change with those corrupt political parties in place).

Five Star has been presented with a historic chance actually to rule. As much as theres a fierce internal struggle between the orthodox and the governists, 5S would hardly trade this electoral gift for playing the role of opposition.

As for the 45-year-old Milanese Salvini, he was rewarded for a master political coup. Salvini erased Nord from the partys name and got rid of the green representing wealthy  and largely mythical  Padania from the party logo to the benefit of a nationalist/populist blue. And he bet on campaigning hard on immigration  in the process thoroughly overtaking its right-wing ally, Berlusconis Forza Italia.

Salvini was praised by Marine Le Pen and fully supported by Steve Bannon. He even conquered large swaths of southern Italy in the election, promising only 15% in taxes and protection for Italian olive oil from North African competition. Sporting sweatshirts emblazoned with Italy for Italians, his tirades against clandestine immigrants, Nigerian drug dealers, the euro, Islam and homosexual liaisons were wildly popular.

No more bunga bunga?

And that brings us to the fate of Silvio Il Cavaliere Berlusconi, cutting quite a lonely figure in his seventh electoral campaign, something totally against his glamour-drenched historical script. He rambled on like a scratched CD. He lost his mojo. He was heavily criticized even by his  much younger  allies. And the worst  from his point of view  happened: The Lega boomed, yet that was still not enough to propel his alliance toward a large majority.

Silvio could always come up with a last-minute cliffhanger  an alliance with Renzi. Too little, too late.

Even as Salvini insists there will be no coalition and the center-right will rule by itself, Italy may wake up one of these days to a political outlook closer to Hungarys Viktor Orban than Germanys Angela Merkel. The real Italian Job would be the surge of an anti-Brussels coalition of 5S and Lega.

Stranger things have happened in the magic peninsula.

Pepe Escobar is correspondent-at-large at Asia Times

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of Information Clearing House.

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A Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced Charles Okah and Obi Nwabueze to life imprisonment for the 2010 explosions in Abuja and Warri.

After over six hours of deliberation, Justice Gabriel Kolawole on Wednesday ruled that the prosecution proved its case against the two defendants in the five counts.

Okah and Nwabueze were charged with financing and actual participation in the act of terrorism in relation to the March 15, 2010 bomb blast in Government House Annex, Warri, Delta State and a similar blast on October 1, 2010 at Eagle Sqaure in Abuja.

Justice Kolawole rejected the plea for mercy by lawyers to the defendants and insisted that they must be subjected to the maximum sentence prescribed under Section 15(1) and (2) of the Economic and Financial Commission Act

Okah was convicted on two counts, while Nwabueze was convicted on three counts of the charges proffered against them.

One of their accomplices, Edmund Ebiware, who had his trial conducted separately, is serving life sentence upon his conviction and sentencing in 2013.

Justice Kolawole, in his 145-page judgment, held that the defendants  through their six witnesses  failed to puncture the prosecutions evidence linking them to the crimes.

The judge held that the prosecution, led by Alex Iziyon (SAN), established that the two explosions were financed with the N3.2million provided by Okah and his senior brother Henry Okah, who is serving a jail term in South Africa.

He also held that the prosecution also established that Nwabueze got a total of N3.2m from Charles and Henry Okah with which he bought six used vehicles, four of which were utilsed for the two bomb.

The prosecution has proved the offences charged beyond reasonable doubt. The defendants are found guilty on the five counts relating to them and are hereby convicted, the judge said.

TheNation reports that Okah and Nwabueze looked unruffled in the dock as the judge made his pronouncement.

-Thenation
A 26-year old self acclaimed Islamic scholar, Alfa Babatunde Samuel has been arrested for defrauding a woman to the tune N500,000 and engaging her in s*x deliverance that was to last for one month in Lagos.

The incident happened at Jofolo Street in Iyana Ipaja area of Abule-Oke where the suspect took the victim for the s*x deliverance.

P.M.EXPRESS reports that the deliverance started but did not last for the one month Samuel had planned after the Police at Area M Command, Idimu busted the plan and arrested Samuel.

Ondo State-born Samuel who informed the police that he was into selling of films before he changed and became Alfa, gave the victim a prophecy that put fear into her.

According to the victim, Samuel met her and informed her that she will soon die and therefore needed deliverance to cast out the spirit of

death from her life. It was gathered that Samuel told the victim things related to her and her family and she asked for the solution to avert those calamities.

P.M.EXPRESS scooped that it was then that Samuel took her to the place where he gave her the conditions which involved paying the said amount of money, buying a goat and s*xual intercourse with him that will continue for one month before she will be totally delivered.

It was gathered that the victim collected the whole money from her sister and fulfilled other requests from Samuel including the s*x romp in the form of deliverance.

However, the whole thing got exposed after Samuel continued to make demands of money and s*x from her. She then confided in her sister what she was going through and how she gave Samuel the money she collected from the sister.

The matter was reported to the police; Samuel was trailed, arrested and taken to the Area M Command, Idimu.

Police sources said that during interrogation, Samuel accepted that he was Alfa but he gave the victim a false prophecy to obtain money from her and had carnal knowledge of her which he had expected to last forat least One month.

He was charged before Ejigbo Magistrates court for the alleged offences. He pleaded not guilty.

The Presiding Magistrate, Mrs. J.O.E. Adeyemi Ajayi granted Samuel bail in the sum of N100,000 with two sureties in like sum.

The prosecutor, Supol Kenneth Asibor did not object to his bail condition.

The court also ordered that surety must deposit another N100,000 into Court Registrars account as one of the conditions for his bail.

Samuel was remanded in prison custody pending when he will perfect his bail condition.

The matter was adjourned till 26 March, 2018
Since the beginning of the Big Brother Naija Show, some Nigerian FBIs revealed that one of the housemates, Tobi Bakre worked with Heritage Bank prior to the beginning of the show.

Many evey claimed that the Bank, one of the sponsors of the show, fixed their staff, Tobi into the show, so he could carry the bank on his shoulders with the fame hed attain.

Well, the management of the Heritage Bank has on social media set the records straight about their relationship Tobi.

They decided to make this clarification following the news making rounds that the bank, which is the official sponsor of this years show, are influencing it in favor of Tobi.

Although, they didnt give full details but they made it known that he no longer works for them  meaning they could never influence it in the favor of an ex-staff.

They wrote:

We know you have all been wondering about Tobis connection to Heritage Bank. This is to clarify that he is a former staff of the bank and resigned appropriately prior to the Big Brother Naija show @bigbronaija #HeritageBank #BBNaija2018
Black Panther star, Chadwick Boseman recently revealed that Hollywood Denzel Washington was largely responsible for his success as he covered the cost of an acting program he attended at Oxford while he was a student at Howard University.



Chadwick is an American actor whose ancestry test, has proved that his family is descended from West African peoples: the Limba and Mende people of Sierra Leone, the Yoruba of Nigeria, and the Jola people of Guinea-Bissau.

Chadwick however, revealed that he never got the chance to thank Denzel Washington in person for his generous gesture. Thankfully, he recently got his chance to express his gratitude, and the Oscar-winning actors response was perfect.

Washington paid for Boseman to attend a prestigious summer theater program at the University of Oxford.

Boseman revealed that it was after the program had ended, that he learned through a beneficiary letter that Denzel Washington funded the program.

Denzel paid for me, he said. Im sure he has no idea Ive been waiting to meet him, so I can tell him.

The Black Panther star added that he wrote Washington a thank you letter, but refrained from speaking on it for the next 20 years.

Ive basically been holding this secret my whole career, he told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show while explaining that he did not want Washington to feel like he owed him anything more.

Thankfully, Boseman received his chance to thank his benefactor, in person, at the New York premiere of his massively successful film, Marvels Black Panther.

I met him, before the article came out, he said. So, I actually lived up to what I originally wanted to do. It was amazing.

On thanking Denzel Washington, here is the funny and epic response Chadwick got from Denzel:

Oh, so thats why Im here. You owe me money! I came to collect!

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Hours after a Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, bus crushed a 16-year-old school boy, Daniel Ezekiel, to death at Ogolonto Bus Stop, along Ikorodu Road in Lagos, his guardians  Dr. and Mrs. Olajide Oyesanya, are yet to come to terms with the tragic reality of their loss.

Vanguard reports they are still in shock that their beloved Ezekiel is gone forever, and more so by the bizarre and cruel manner of his death.

This is because the bus had on impact crushed and decapitated Ezekiel in a manner reminiscent of the guillotine horror of the French Revolution era.

In fact, Mrs. Oyesanya said on waking up Tuesday morning, she momentarily forgot that Ezekiel was gone and was waiting for him to knock on her door and say: Grandma, I want to go to school. But that knock never came.

For now, theirs is a lamentation of pain laced with regret. The regret is that their wish of sending Ezekiel to school so that he would become great had ended in tragedy.

Yet when young Daniel left home in the morning of that fateful Monday, March 5, 2018, little did he or his guardians nurse any premonition that death was lurking like a remorseless, vengeful reaper on the way.

Oyesanya told Vanguard Metro that after consuming a heavy meal that morning the boy was in high spirits and cheerfully waved them goodbye as he left home for the school.

But we didnt know that was the last time we will see him, they wept, adding: We fed Ezekiel at 7:15am but picked up his corpse two hours later, at about 9:45am.

Narrating their experiences on what transpired on the fateful day, a distraught Mrs. Oyesanya informed that since she enrolled Ezekiel in school last January, he had always taken his breakfast by 7:15am before proceeding to school at 7:20am.

And on that fateful day, he left home to school. But I was alerted of the incident that happened by someone who told me to find out if Ezekiel was safe. Immediately I started calling his teacher, but she refused to pick my call.

I thought they were on assembly ground so I called the school director who also didnt pick my calls. At that moment, I knew there was a problem.

I was confused and my husband also called to inform me to proceed to his school. On my way, someone told me that Ezekiel had been rushed to Ikorodu General Hospital.

When I got to the hospital premises, I was told to identify the lifeless body of Ezekiel; at that moment, I knew I had lost our dear child. I couldnt believe my eyes that the child I fed at exactly 7:15am had become a corpse for me to pick at exactly 9:45am, she said amidst tears.

We are only two in this house, my husband and I. Since we are getting old and all our children are grown up, we thought it will be nice to have a small child that can keep us company. So we contacted a lady in our community to help us find someone to stay with us.

They eventually helped us to get Ezekiel from the Northern part of the country; that was around August last year.

Our initial plan was to enroll him in school by October this year but due to the fact that it was late to do so, we decided to enroll him in January this year, a decision I now regret.

He was 15 years when they brought him to us, and they told us that he was in JSS3 in Kaduna State before he came to Lagos. But when we took him to school, they told us that he should start from Primary Four.

She hinted that their aim of enrolling him in school was to ensure that he became a great person in future and to contribute his own quota to Nigerias development,adding:

Unfortunately that dream has been cut short by the BRT driver.

He is a very pleasant child. Sometimes after offending me and I threatened to send him back to the village, he would beg me and say: Mummy pray for me, I will not do that again.

People in this community liked him; and education wise, he showed a lot of promise. Whenever he returned from school, before taking his meal, he would do his assignment and ask me to look at it; and in case there was any error I would correct it for him.

Ezekiels last moment:

Sources said that Ezekiel alighted from a cab with other students, and they were being taking across in batches to the other side of the BRT corridor by the school security official.

But misunderstanding the flag mans signal, the boy was said to have attempted dashing across the BRT corridor, believing that the road was clear.

Unfortunately he was hit by a fast-moving BRT bus. As a result of the impact, his head severed from his body. The driver was said to have taken to his heels immediately, for fear of possible mob action against him.

Mrs. Oyesanya said that Ezekiels family in Kaduna had been notified about his tragic demise. She informed that their eldest sister lives around here, adding: their parents gave birth to three of them. His father is late and the mother is in Kaduna.

Asked by Vanguard Metro team to say what Ezekiel meant to him and his wife, Dr. Olajide Oyesanya was almost overwhelmed by emotion as he informed that doing so would entail him shedding uncontrollable tears.

To talk about Ezekiel will only make me to cry; yes, the moment I start doing so, tears will definitely start rolling down my cheeks. So, please just leave me, he pleaded with feeling.

The Oyasanyas, however, would want government to construct a pedestrian bridge to immortalise Ezekiel and also serve the purpose of preventing a reoccurence of such tragic incident.

An official of Primero Transport Services, operator of the Bus Rapid Transit, BRT, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the management had begun investigation into the crash and there was high possibility of compensating the deceased family.

-YBL


President Muhammadu Buhari was at the 61st Independence anniversary of Ghana on Tuesday, during the course of his speech, Buhari pledged to groom Ghana on ways of fighting corruption, which he noted, had eaten deep into the fabric of both nations. Nigerians on Twitter couldnt hide their surprise as they wondered why Nigeria would help Ghana fight corruption while we are still battling our own. Below are 8 of the replies to Buahari.

Ghana is at 81 on this years Transparency Internationals Corruption Perception Index, while Nigeria is at 148. My question to President Buhari is this: how can you help a nation that is less corrupt than yours to fight corruption? Its like a demon offering to deliver a pastor!  Reno Omokri (@renoomokri) March 7, 2018

Rather than promise to help Ghana fight corruption, show by example that you are fighting corruption, and not opposition in Nigeria. If corruption is increasing in your nation, you make yourself a laughing stock if you promise to fight it in another nation. Charity begins at home  Ben Murray-Bruce (@benmurraybruce) March 6, 2018

Buhari told the Ghanaians he would help them to fight corruption! Next he will tell the Americans that he will help them to fight terror and the Germans, Chinese and Japs that he will help them to improve their economy! When delusion and senility converge it is a terrible thing.  Femi Fani-Kayode (@realFFK) March 8, 2018

Its been 3 days and i still cant get over this. Did Prez Buhari really say Nigeria is helping Ghana fight corruption ? pic.twitter.com/5GPWNBTNsV  I (@kwame_dagger) March 8, 2018

Buhari to help Ghana fight Corruption while I lecture you on Hygiene. pic.twitter.com/g1HiMYnCsV  Mr Stanley Nwabia (@MrStanleyNwabia) March 7, 2018

B4 I sleep let me just tell everybody My country Nigeria (Buhari) has agreed to help Ghana fight corruption What a kind gesture  Correct Bro (@iamcorrectbro) March 6, 2018

Buhari wants to help Ghana fight corruption. Example of dropping your own load to carry someone elses load.  TemilOluwa (@Temphiz) March 7, 2018
Ace Nigerian comedian and musician, Koffi Tha Guru and his lovely wife Ayoka are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary today.

In his anniversary message, he wrote;

10 great years and it feels like we young lovers just starting out. All bliss and peace not fisticuffs and bouts. 17 years as friends and I know its another 70 till the end. A happy home and beautiful kids and you gave me an anniversary gift, to your darlings a lil Sis. Thank you Ayoka Yikky Yikky for being my greatest support system, lover, bestie and partner in all deeds, for indeed without you and God, who I for Be. Heres to 70 more.

See more photos below;
Truck drivers on Wednesday got a 48 hours deadline to vacate the bridges in Lagos after a meeting of stakeholders in the state.

This was the decision of the military and the State Government at the end of the meeting at Apapa Headquarters of the Western Naval Command (WNC).

Among those at the meeting were the Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) WNC, Rear Admiral Slyvanus Abbah; Permanent Secretary (PS), Lagos State Ministry of Transport, Dr. Taiwo Salau; Commander, 9 Brigade, Nigerian Army (NA), Brig.-Gen. Adiku Attu; Base Commander, Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Air Commodore Mike Olatunji, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) manager, Aisha Ali-Ibrahim, and representatives of Dangote Group.

Others were National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), containerised truck drivers, Apapa Residents Association, the police and the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA).

It was agreed that the trucks presence on the bridges constituted a security risk as they could be easy targets for terrorists, TheNation writes.

Rear Admiral Abbah warned that the bridges could collapse because of the static weight they had been forced to carry for over a decade.

We cannot continue like this. This gridlock from Apapa to Mile Two and then from the stadium up to Eko Bridge does not do anyone good, the FOC said.

We do not want to see tankers and trucks parked on the bridges anymore. They have requested for 48 hours to start phasing off their trucks from the bridges and we have obliged.

Salau said the government had completed a holding bay that could accommodate 3,500 tankers at Orile, adding that work is ongoing on another one that can take 2,700 containerised trucks.

Salau said: The bridges were built to carry light load and not heavy weights as they have been subjected to.

The vehicles have entered inner routes and virtually all parts of the state suffer from their action.

-Olisa
BROCKVILLE, ON (March 8, 2018)- Fans have come to count on Brockville Ontario Speedway for some of the best action on the DIRTcar Northeast circuit and the 2018 season  getting underway Saturday, May 12th  promises to be no exception. The tracks five regular divisions  358 Modifieds, Sportsman Mods, Rookie Sportsman, Street Stocks and Mini Stocks  highlight weekly action at the popular 3/8ths mile clay oval on Temperance Lake Road, north of the city.

2017 track champions Luke Whitteker, Dylan Evoy, Alex Gagnon, Tyler Bushey and Dylan Kirkland are expected to return, looking to defend their titles from last year; but earning back-to-back crowns could be a difficult feat, as a very competitive field in each division aims to take the top spot in the final standings. Track owner and promoter Paul Kirkland says it looks to be another exciting season at The Bullring.

We work as hard putting together a winning schedule as our teams do when it comes to preparing a winning race car, Paul Kirkland said. Our fans deserve the best and well always do whatever we can to please the people who come through the gates. For the upcoming season, weve added some exciting special events to our schedule.

Perhaps the biggest news to come out the winter months at The BOS is The Bullringer  presented by RTD Trailers  Wednesday, August 8th. A 110 lap DIRTcar 358 Modified Series event, paying $10,000 to win and a 110 lap Sportsman-Modified tour stop, with a winners purse of $2,000. Fans are also looking forward to the 1000 Islands RV Border Battle Series with Can Am Speedway. Brockvilles dates are Saturday, June 9th and Saturday, July 14th. 358 Mods run a 35 lap A main for $2,000 with the Sportsman teams fighting it out for 30 laps and an $800 payday.

The 2018 calendar wraps-up with the Loud & Dirty Brand Northeast Fall Nationals. Friday, October 12th features the DIRTcar Big Block and Sportsman-Modified Series events, plus the DIRT Pro Stocks and Outlaw Vintage Mods. Saturday, October 13th has the 358 Modified Series, with open 360 Sprints, along with invitational Street Stock and Mini Stock events. See the track web-site and Facebook page for all the details.

Short Track Saturday Night Notes: Brockville Ontario Speedway will be part of the racing preview show  Friday and Saturday, March 23rd and 24th  at the Frontenac Mall in Kingston, OntarioThe annual Night of Champions will be held Saturday, March 31st at the Brockville Memorial HallFans are also reminded of the annual Fan Fest and Fundraiser for the Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario  Saturday, April 21st  at Walmart on Parkdale Avenue in Brockville. The admission free event will include a race car display and a live band.

Keep up to date with the latest pre-season news and information by visiting www.brockvillespeedway.com, as well as checking the tracks various social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter.

Prepared by: Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications/First Draft Media

clarkemotorsports@hotmail.com, www.facebook.com/clarkemotorsports

613.968.6410
TORONTO - March 8, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Imex Systems Inc. ("Imex" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:IMEX), a software solution provider to Governments, Municipalities and Public Authorities, is pleased to announce the following update to its business operations.

Effective March 1, 2018, the company announces the resignation of Damodar Arapakota as CEO and from the Board of Imex Systems Inc., and the appointment of Kris Parthiban as Interim President and CEO. Kris is currently a board member and has had a successful career in organizational and business strategy and operations.

Kris has recently been accredited as a Certified Blockchain Expert by Blockchain Council, a leading authority in education and training of Blockchain experts. Additionally, he has been operating his own personal crypto mining operation and consequently is well versed in this space.

Kris Parthiban has over 20 years of senior executive experience in operations to general management and corporate finance in manufacturing, software, real estate and energy related industries. Kris has held senior positions in major corporations: Director of Engineering at Hallmark Cards, Direct of Program Development at American Greetings, Vice President of Human Resources and Planning at Newstar Technologies, President of Crystonics Limited, a fiber optics company, President of Strategy Energy Corporation and Vice President of Tier1 Advisory Inc., a real estate investment advisory group. He is a founder of several community service organizations and has served also in executive positions in political organizations and contested as the Liberal candidate in Scarborough in the 1995 Ontario Provincial Election. He also serves as president of the South Indian Chamber of Commerce of Canada.

Kris graduated from one of the renowned Indian Institutes of Technology in Madras, India and has M. Eng. and M.B.A degrees from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

The company is also currently in discussions with a number of blockchain opportunities that are synergistic from an integration standpoint while at the same time providing accretive revenue potential by leveraging and exploiting its legacy Government software platform. The company plans to conclude on a relevant blockchain transaction upon satisfactory due diligence.

About Imex Systems

Imex Systems Inc. is a Canadian software products and solution provider to Governments, Municipalities and Public Authorities in Canada and internationally. Imex primarily focuses on E-Government and the Smart Cities market that also include the integration to payment processing. The company helps public sector entities to provide "Any Time, Any Where, Any Device and Any Channel" convenience for citizens to access government services and help with digital transformation of government operations and streamline revenue. Imex's various product and service offerings include: iGov - a Digital Government Platform for all levels of governments, which provides all the pre-built components for building an effective Digital Government and supporting payment processing through multiple channels; iCity - a Smart City Solution; and miGov - a Mobile Government Framework.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates with respect to the future revenue of the Company. Any statements that involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information and are intended to identify forward-looking information. This forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time it was made, and involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others: the need for approvals from the relevant government body; future capital needs and uncertainty of additional financing; the competitive nature of the industry; the effects of product development and need for continued technology change; and those risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on www.sedar.com.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking information other than as required by law.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Imex Systems Inc.

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aijohn784/iStock/Thinkstock(BIRMINGHAM, Ala.) -- A shooting at an Alabama high school Wednesday afternoon has left a 17-year-old female student dead and a 17-year-old male student injured, according to police.



The shooting occurred around 3:40 p.m. inside Birmingham's Huffman High School, the largest of seven high schools in the Birmingham City School System, police said.



"School Resource and East Precinct Officers were dispatched to Huffman High School on the report of an individual shot inside the school," police said in a statement. "Officers immediately responded and found that two individuals had been shot."



Both students were transported to UAB Hospital, where the female student was pronounced deceased, police said.



Initially, police described the incident as an "accidental shooting," but they later ceased to describe it as such and said it is a "death investigation."



"Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal today at Huffman High School," the school system said in a statement. "The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene. Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting."



"Birmingham detectives are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation which will include many interviews and processing of video," police said in a statement later Wednesday night. "The gun involved in the incident has been recovered as evidence."



A "saddened" Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey took to Twitter Wednesday night, writing, "I'm saddened to learn of the death of the Huffman student. I'm praying for the family of this young lady who tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and even though this was an accident it reaffirms there's no place for students to have firearms on campus."



At a press conference Wednesday night, officials said the deceased student was a senior, who had plans to become a nurse, WBMA reported.



Parents were allowed to pick up their children from the school around 5 p.m. The school will be open on Thursday, officials said.



No arrests have been made.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Vancouver, British Columbia - March 8, 2018 (Newsfile Corp.) (Investorideas.com Newswire) Brisio Innovations Inc. (CSE: BZI) (OTC Pink: NTCEF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed a definitive share purchase agreement (the "Definitive Agreement") with NameSilo, LLC ("NameSilo") whereby the Company has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding securities of NameSilo (the "Transaction").

With a priority of no interruption to existing customers or NameSilo's growth trajectory, the Transaction will not impact the existing operations of NameSilo and the founders, who are also the owner/operators of NameSilo and who will continue in their current roles and continue operating the business. Further, there are no planned changes to the system infrastructure or operational policies of the business.

NameSilo is a low-cost provider of domain name registration and management services, and is an ICANN-accredited registrar. NameSilo is a high growth registrar with nearly 1.5 million domains under management, and over 85,000 customers from approximately 160 countries. According to RegistrarOwl.com, which provides domain registrar industry statistics from ICANN, NameSilo is the 6th-fastest growing registrar in the world based on percentage growth of new registrations, and 6th-fastest growing registrar in the world when based on net new registrations, behind household names such as Google, GoDaddy and Alibaba.

"We are excited to enter this new phase of the NameSilo journey," said Michael Goldfarb, founder and Managing Member of NameSilo. "We couldn't be happier to find a partner with a track record of success like Brisio, and we look forward to working with them to build upon the success of NameSilo. Our customers and partners will continue to receive the same excellent service they are accustomed to and they will enjoy the benefits of access to additional resources that will be made available."

NameSilo recorded approximately US$11.1 million in annual recurring billings in 2017 up from US$6.9 million in 2016. It has grown its domain names under management from approximately 745,000 domains at the beginning of 2017 to over 1.35 million today, a growth rate of over 65% versus industry averages of approximately 7%. Additionally, NameSilo maintains a customer retention rate of approximately 87%.

Under the terms of the Definitive Agreement, the Company will acquire all of the securities of NameSilo and, in consideration of which, the Company will pay a total of US$9,511,500 (the "Purchase Price") to the members of NameSilo (the "NameSilo Members"). The closing of the Transaction is anticipated to be July 2, 2018.

Further, NameSilo Members will be entitled to certain earnout payments provided that the business achieves a specified EBITDA. All earnout payments will be made no later than August 15, 2018 and will be payable in cash and shares.

After completion of the Transaction, the Company intends to spin-out NameSilo as a separately listed entity on a Canadian stock exchange. The board of directors of the Company will provide further details on the proposed spin-out on closing of the Transaction.

CEO Paul Andreola states, "We are extremely pleased to have found a world class company that meets our criteria of high growth, profitability, high customer retention and customer satisfaction. We look forward to working with the NameSilo team to continue to build the brand and provide their customers outstanding value and service and to meet their ongoing needs."

The Transaction is subject to customary conditions contained in the Definitive Agreement as well as approval of the stock exchange, and the Company completing sufficient financing to satisfy the Purchase Price. If the Company is unable to close the transaction, the Company will be required to pay a break fee to NameSilo.

Brisio Innovations Inc.

Paul Andreola

President, CEO and Director

(604) 644-0072

www.brisio.com

About Brisio Innovations

Brisio Innovations Inc. invests its capital in companies and opportunities which management believes are undervalued and have potential for significant appreciation. The company makes investments in both public and private markets and focuses on opportunities in a wide variety of industries excluding the resource and resource service sectors. Brisio does not invest on behalf of any third party and it does not offer investment advice.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking statements, which reflect the expectations of management regarding potential future investments by the Company. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. These forward-looking statements reflect management's current views and are based on certain expectations, estimates and assumptions which may prove to be incorrect. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward looking statements.

THE CSE HAS NEITHER APPROVED NOR DISAPPROVED THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

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March 8, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A company exploring in northern Mexico looks to have hit a major high-grade zone under its already defined deposit.

One of the highest-grade silver projects in the world is the Mangazeisky Silver Project in Russia. Operated by Silver Bear Resources, the deposit boasts reserves of 809 g/t silver and Indicated and Inferred resources in the 1,300-1,400 g/t range.

Excellon Resources' La Platosa stands out as one of Mexico's highest-grade mines. It offers Measured and Indicated resources of 760 g/t silver.

Silver Bull Resources Inc.'s (SVB:TSX; SVBL:NYSE.MKT) Sierra Mojada project in Coahuila, northern Mexico, may be giving both these projects a run for their money. The company announced on Feb. 21 assays from seven drill holes from its newly discovered sulphide zone that sits under its oxide zone.

Highlights include:

Hole T17022 -- 6 meters @ 802g/t silver, 5.87% zinc, 3.3% copper, and 0.54% lead.

Hole T17019 -- 2 meters @ 1,300g/t silver, 13.52% zinc, 3.87% copper, and 2.95% lead.

Hole T17021 -- 6 meters @ 5.8% zinc, and 0.47% copper.

Silver Bull's project contains oxide mineralization and sulphide mineralization. The company previous exploration concentrated on the oxide portion; its 2015 Technical Report with a "NI 43-101 compliant measured and indicated "global" resource of 58.7 million tonnes grading 3.6% zinc and 50g/t silver at a $13.50 NSR cutoff giving 4.670 billion pounds of zinc and 90.8 million ounces of silver."

Within that resource the company noted that there is a "measured and indicated 'high grade zinc zone' within the Lerchs-Grossman (LG) Optimized Pit of 10.03 million tonnes with an average grade of 11% zinc at a 6% cutoff, giving 2.426 billion pounds of zinc, and a measured and indicated 'high grade silver zone' of 19 million tonnes with an average grade of 102.5g/t silver at a 50g/t cutoff giving 62.6 million ounces of silver."

Now the company believes that it is on to something much bigger.

Tim Barry, CEO of Silver Bull, noted that "the new sulphide zone is proving to be very productive for high grade sulphide mineralization." The just-released drill asssays targeted the "second of three steeply dipping, discreet structures we have identified in the sulphide zone. Drilling from the first structure announced in the previous news releases of holes T17001 to T17014 were dominated by high grade silver-copper sulphide mineralization grading up 1,300g/t silver and 6% copper."

"A second structure defined by holes T17010 and T17018 to T17022 is dominated by extremely high zinc sulphide mineralization, grading up to 48% zinc and suggests a metal zonation in the mineralization," Barry added.

Silver Bull has opened up silver workings to the west. Barry explained, "A recent Channel sampling program clearly shows the continuation of high grade mineralization towards the west. Our underground geological mapping of this area shows a number of high angle structures up to 2 meters wide containing sulphide mineralization grading up to 1,300 grams per ton silver, 42% zinc, 18% lead, and 13% copper that appear to feed into the overlying oxide zone. This will be the next target of our drill program in this area."

Silver Bull noted that it plans to deploy its Termite drill rig to "test the grade, thickness, and continuity of the sulphide mineralization identified by the channel sampling program."

That means the company will to continue to release drill results over the next weeks and months.

A number of industry observers have Silver Bull on their radar.

Technical analyst Clive Maund wrote on March 2 that Silver Bull Resources is "now at an excellent entry point. Coeur Mines finished selling its holdings in the stock a while back and the stock has been kept in check by some selling of warrants. However, the company announced a significant discovery last month."

On March 5, Maund wrote, "We have been accumulating Silver Bull this year on minor weakness because this is a stock that is already in an established uptrend and looks set to do very well indeed during silver's expected major bull market." He noted, "Silver Bull's latest 6-month chart looks very positive indeed, with the gentle reaction that has been going on for about 7 weeks now being a normal correction to the sharp run-up at the start of the year." Maund concluded that "Silver Bull is a strong buy here and holders should stay long."

Ron Struthers wrote in Struthers Resource Stock Report on Feb. 21, "Silver Bull came out with more strong drill results this morning. I believe the only reason the stock is so cheap is the recent weakness in the mining market and there were some warrants being exercised. There are still about 27 million warrants but most of these are from the 8 cent financing and do not expire until July 2019 so will not be any pressure on the stock price this year."

"The channel samples they have done in areas yet to be drilled are spectacular, mostly running 15% to 30% zinc with 100s of grams silver and some decent copper and lead grades too," Struthers stated.

Struthers added, "I would be accumulating this stock before it wakes up in the investment community. I would bet major mining companies already have an eye on this as these high grade sulphide zones keep getting bigger. Silver Bull can drill very inexpensively using their underground termite drill, probably around one-third the cost as typical above ground drilling with a contractor."

"Sooner or later the Bull is going to come back to the SilverBull stock price. The chart is a thing of beauty. A nice uptrend channel is in place and currently it is just above the 20 cents support area. An excellent time and price to buy," Struthers concluded.

Bob Moriarty of 321 Gold wrote in November, "Channel sample results released in late August showed silver as high as 1.13 kg per ton, 22% zinc, 3.26% lead and 12.8% copper. The in the ground value of that rock is $2284 and economic under any conditions. But channel samples don't trump drill core. A month ago Silver Bull began to release the numbers from the first underground drill program for this year showing 294 g/t silver and 0.96% copper over 25.5 meters. That's a still respectable $226 per ton in the ground."

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Disclosure:

1) Patrice Fusillo compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She or members of her household own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Silver Bull Resources. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Silver Bull Resources.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Silver Bull Resources, a company mentioned in this article.

Additional disclosures:

Ron Struthers, Struthers Resource Stock Report

I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: Silver Bull Resources and Garibaldi Resources. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company currently has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: Silver Bull Resources.

Struther's Resource Stock Report Disclaimer:

All forecasts and recommendations are based on opinion. Markets change direction with consensus beliefs, which may change at any time and without notice. The author/publisher of this publication has taken every precaution to provide the most accurate information possible. The information & data were obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but because the information & data source are beyond the author's control, no representation or guarantee is made that it is complete or accurate. The reader accepts information on the condition that errors or omissions shall not be made the basis for any claim, demand or cause for action. Because of the ever-changing nature of information & statistics the author/publisher strongly encourages the reader to communicate directly with the company and/or with their personal investment adviser to obtain up to date information. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Any statements non-factual in nature constitute only current opinions, which are subject to change. The author/publisher may or may not have a position in the securities and/or options relating thereto, & may make purchases and/or sales of these securities relating thereto from time to time in the open market or otherwise. Neither the information, nor opinions expressed, shall be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any stock, futures or options contract mentioned herein. The author/publisher of this letter is not a qualified financial adviser & is not acting as such in this publication.

321 Gold Disclosure:

Silver Bull is an advertiser on 321 Gold.

CliveMaund.com Disclosure:

The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr. Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stockmarket analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction. Mr. Maund does not own shares of Silver Bull Resources.

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March 8, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Analysts assess the move by this company to acquire a royalty on a project that one calls "one of the largest undeveloped nickel reserves and the largest undeveloped cobalt reserve globally."

Analyst Anoop Prihar with GMP Securities, in a Feb. 22 research note, reported that Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. (KBLT:TSX.V; CBLLF:OTC; 27O:FSE) acquired from a third party a 1.75% net smelter return royalty (NSR) on all metals (nickel, cobalt, platinum and palladium) produced at the Dumont project in Quebec's Abitibi region.

The terms of the deal were not made public, yet Cobalt 27 indicated it is funding it with the cash it has on hand, which was $14.1 million as of Oct. 31, 2017, Prihar indicated.

As for the project, Dumont is fully permitted and production could start in 2021. It is anticipated project financing will be obtained this year, following which construction could ensue, likely taking about two years to complete.

The mine plan in a 2013 definitive feasibility study outlined initial production of 33,000 tons per year (33 Kt/year) of nickel and 1 Kt/year of cobalt, a total capex of $1.2 billion and a mine life of 33 years. Prihar commented, "There is also production upside potential, increasing production of nickel to 51 Kt/year and cobalt to 2 Kt/year after five years for an incremental capex of approximately $900M."

The Dumont joint venture is owned by RNC Minerals Corp. and a private equity firm, Waterton Global Resource Management.

GMP values the Dumont NSR at "an estimated book value of $10M," but will re-evaluate it once project financing is in place, Prihar said. He reiterated GMP's CA$13.30 per share target price on Cobalt 27.

Analyst Craig Hutchison indicated in a Feb. 23 research report that TD Securities Inc. was assuming coverage of Cobalt 27 following the Dumont royalty acquisition and increased its target price on the company to $17 from $16 per share. Noting that the transaction was the first of its kind for the company following its initial public offering, Hutchison added that it "is consistent with its strategy to acquire royalties and streams on cobalt-related assets in established, stable mining districts."

The transaction price was not disclosed. However, one could derive an "undiscounted value of $70M" for the royalty from the buyback provision in the agreement, concluded Hutchison. That would allow the Dumont joint venture owners to repurchase 0.375% of the NSR for $15M.

Using a 12% discount rate for under-coverage base metals developers, Hutchison calculated a $43.4 million net present value for the Dumont royalty.

"Cobalt 27 remains, in our view, the best way in the TD coverage universe for investors to get pure-play cobalt exposure as part of the broader trend of increasing electric vehicle adoption without traditional mining or development-related project risks," opined Hutchison.

Cormark Securities Inc. also raised its target price on Cobalt 27, to $16.30 from $14.50, after incorporating the NSR royalty into its company model, wrote MacMurray Whale in a Feb. 27 research piece. As public records suggest, the cobalt firm transacted this deal for under $15M, the analyst concluded, "We believe it paid a reasonable amount in line with the original investor in the NSR royalty."

Whale provided several details about the NSR royalty. For one, its duration is for 60 years, at which time it renews for the same amount of time. Upon onset of production at Dumont, the royalty is to be paid quarterly in U.S. dollars, "providing Cobalt 27 with cash flow over the 33-year initial life of mine," Whale explained.

He also described Dumont, noting it is advanced to where it could "deliver nickel and cobalt to the market by 2020." With a 1.18 billion ton reserve, containing 3.15 million tons of nickel and 126 Kt of cobalt, the project is the "fifth largest nickel sulphide discovery and globally, the second largest nickel reserve and largest undeveloped cobalt reserve." Further, Whale pointed out that Dumont "is ideal for producing nickel and cobalt material feedstock" for sale directly to the battery industry. This is significant in that roughly only half of global nickel mine supply is "suitable" for inclusion in batteries.

The positives of the Dumont project are its large resource, existing infrastructure (road, rail, power and water) and that it's fully permitted and in a mining-friendly jurisdiction. The downside is the "large capex relative to the market cap of the developer," Whale said. However, RNC Minerals is currently updating the feasibility study which, with an increased internal rate of return and higher cobalt prices, "could be a catalyst to move the project toward financing."

GMP, TD Securities and Cormark all have a Buy rating on Cobalt 27. Its stock is currently trading at around $12.35 per share.

BMO Capital Markets rates Cobalt 27 an Outperform and raised its target price to $17.50. Analyst Andrew Mikitchook noted in a Feb. 22 report that the Dumont property "represents one of the largest undeveloped nickel reserves and the largest undeveloped cobalt reserve globally."

"Mine life extensions up to an additional 30 years are possible from resources not included in the current mine plan. Dumont is located in a modern mining friendly jurisdiction west of Amos, Quebec, with access to modern infrastructure including rail and power," the analyst stated.

Looking ahead, Mikitchook noted that Cobalt 27 is "pursuing streaming deals from mining companies that produce cobalt as a by-product and we expect finalization of the first such deal within 2018."

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Disclosure:

1) Doresa Banning compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise reports as an independent contractor. She or members of her household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. Streetwise Reports does not accept stock in exchange for its services. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article.

Disclosures from GMP Securities, Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., Feb. 22, 2018

GMP and/or affiliated companies or persons may as principal or agent, buy and sell securities mentioned herein, including options, futures or other derivative instruments thereon.

Company-Specific Disclosures: GMP has, within the previous 12 months, provided paid investment banking services or acted as underwriter to the issuer.

Each research analyst and associate research analyst who authored this document and whose name appears herein certifies that: (1)the recommendations and opinions expressed in the research report accurately reflect their personal views about any and all of the securities or issuers discussed herein that are within their coverage universe; and (2) no part of their compensation was, is or will be, directly or indirectly, related to the provision of specific recommendations or views expressed herein.

GMP Analysts are compensated competitively based on several criteria. The Analyst compensation pool is comprised of several revenue sources, including secondary trading commissions, new issue commissions, investment banking fees, and directed payments from institutional clients. GMP prohibits any director, officer or employee of GMP from holding any office in publicly traded companies or any office in non-affiliated private companies in the financial services industry.

Disclosures from TD Securities, Cobalt 27, Action Note, Feb. 23, 2018

Analyst Certification: Each analyst of TD Securities Inc. whose name appears on page 1 of this research report hereby certifies that (i) the recommendations and opinions expressed in the research report accurately reflect the research analyst's personal views about any and all of the securities or issuers discussed herein that are within the analysts coverage universe and (ii) no part of the research analyst's compensation was, is, or will be, directly or indirectly, related to the provision of specific recommendations or views expressed by the research analyst in the research report.

Full disclosures for all companies covered by TD Securities can be viewed at here.

Disclosures from Cormark Securities, Cobalt 27, Feb. 27, 2018

Analyst Certification: I, MacMurray D. Whale, hereby certify that the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect my personal views about the subject company(ies) and its (their) securities. I also certify that I have not been, and will not be receiving direct or indirect compensation in exchange for expressing the specific recommendation(s) in this report.

Disclosure Statements and Dissemination Policies: A full list of our disclosure statements as well as our research dissemination policies and procedures can be found on our website.

Disclosures from BMO Capital Markets, Cobalt 27, Feb. 22, 2018

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

Analyst's Certification

I, Andrew Mikitchook, hereby certify that the views expressed in this report accurately reflect my personal views about the subject securities or issuers. I also certify that no part of my compensation was, is, or will be, directly or indirectly, related to the specific recommendations or views expressed in this report.

Analysts who prepared this report are compensated based upon (among other factors) the overall profitability of BMO Capital Markets and their affiliates, which includes the overall profitability of investment banking services. Compensation for research is based on effectiveness in generating new ideas and in communication of ideas to clients, performance of recommendations, accuracy of earnings estimates, and service to clients.

Company Specific Disclosures

Disclosure 1: BMO Capital Markets has undertaken an underwriting liability with respect to Cobalt 27 within the past 12 months.

Disclosure 2: BMO Capital Markets has provided investment banking services with respect to Cobalt 27 within the past 12 months.

Disclosure 3: BMO Capital Markets has managed or co-managed a public offering of securities with respect to Cobalt 27 within the past 12 months.

Disclosure 4: BMO Capital Markets or an affiliate has received compensation for investment banking services from Cobalt 27 within the past 12 months.

Disclosure 5: BMO Capital Markets or an affiliate received compensation for products or services other than investment banking services within the past 12 months from Cobalt 27.

Disclosure 6A: Cobalt 27 is a client (or was a client) of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., BMO Capital Markets Corp., BMO Capital Markets Limited or an affiliate within the past 12 months: A) Investment Banking Services

Disclosure 6C: Cobalt 27 is a client (or was a client) of BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., BMO Capital Markets Corp., BMO Capital Markets Limited or an affiliate within the past 12 months: C) Non-Securities Related Services.

Disclosure 19: BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. ("BMO NBI") is acting as financial advisor to Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., in connection with its acquisition of a 1.75% Net Smelter Return ("NSR") royalty on all future production over all metals from the Dumont Nickel-Cobalt Project (the "Dumont Project"). BMO NBI will be paid a fee contingent on the successful completion of the transaction. BMO NBI follows information control procedures which prevent its research analysts who are issuing research from having access to non-public information received by BMO NBI's investment banking

personnel in connection with the transaction. Accordingly, it is possible that individual employees at BMO NBI may have material non-public information or opinions which are not included in, and may not be consistent with, the information and advice in this research report.

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March 8, 2018 (Investorideas.com Newswire) This company had news on two fronts: drilling at its Northwest Territories deposit could change the economics of that project while a massive increase in its resource in its British Columbia project could be the catalyst that brings a major partner to the table, according to industry analysts.

On February 20, Seabridge Gold Inc. (SEA:TSX; SA:NYSE.MKT) announced that it has begun a 36-hole, 7,200-meter program using two core rigs at its 100%-owned Courageous Lake Project in Canada's Northwest Territories. The program is being conducted to test seven separate targets.

Nearly all of the 53-km-long Mathews Lake Greenstone Belt (MLGB) is covered in the Courageous Lake Project. The Felsic-Ash-Tuff (FAT) deposit owned by Seabridge is part of this area; a 2012 estimate found 6.46 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves are contained in the FAT deposit.

A campaign to increase Courageous Lake's mine life resulted in the discovery of the Walsh Lake deposit in 2013. A 2014 surface Inferred resource estimate of 482,000 ounces of gold (4.6 million tonnes grading 3.24 g/t) at Walsh Lake was confirmed by an independent resource expert.

According to Seabridge Gold, "the Walsh Lake deposit could be mined prior to constructing the processing plant required for the larger, refractory FAT deposit. This order of development could have significant economic benefits for the Courageous Lake project not only by extending mine life but also by generating cash flow to pay for some capital costs as the FAT deposit ramps up."

"More Walsh Lake-style deposits added to the front end of the FAT Deposit revised mine plan could have a significant positive economic impact. These seven targets have been carefully selected on the basis of historical data and our own mapping and geophysical work which clearly shows that they are in the same geological setting as our Walsh Lake discovery," said Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk.

While speaking with Streetwise Reports after the drilling announcement, Fronk provided some more details, "One of our ideas at Courageous Lake is that we control a 52-kilometer greenstone belt and our existing resource and reserve sits on only two kilometers of that belt. There are gold showings up and down the entire belt, so what we are hoping to find are some new zones that can be put in on the front of a mine plan at Courageous Lake to improve the economics."

Earlier in February, Seabridge announced an updated resource estimate for the Iron Cap deposit at its 100%-owned KSM project in British Columbia. All existing drilling holes were included as was an additional 10,383 meters of diamond core drilling. This drilling was completed in 11 holes in 2017, and all of them returned wide zones of significant grade.

The figures for the updated estimate are:

Inferred gold resources increase 302% to 20.0 million ounces.

Inferred copper resources grow 379% to 8.6 billion pounds.

Inferred copper grade jumps 36%, Inferred gold grade rises 14%.

CEO Rudi Fronk explained, "The grades of these new zones are significantly higher than our reserve grades. So as these new zones are moved into reserves through infill drilling and engineering studies, we expect to see a dramatic improvement in the project's economics. Last year, before we even started working on Iron Cap, an updated mine plan incorporating the Deep Kerr zone showed the potential of reducing the total cost of gold production by over $300 an ounce. We believe Iron Cap could reduce production costs further due to its proximity to planned infrastructure and higher grades."

Canaccord Genuity analyst Tony Lesiak noted in a February 13 report on Seabridge that "the Iron Cap resource increased tonnage 133% with gold and copper grades higher by 1% and 27%, respectively. The resource was calculated utilizing three separate block cave shapes, exhibits strong continuity, employs a rigorous QA/QC program and, moreover, remains open for expansion down dip to the northwest with increasing grades."

Lesiak stated that "while the ~14.5Moz gold resource addition is impressive, KSM is already one of the world's largest copper gold systems. The key remains finding additional higher-grade reserves for the front of the production queue."

"The discovery of vertically and laterally continuous zones of well above reserve grade material at Iron Cap, close to planned infrastructure, in our opinion, could be the catalyst that vaults KSM from a perceived option value in the minds of investors to strategic in the minds of potential partners," Lesiak added.

Canaccord has a CA$29.00 price target on Seabridge, which is currently trading at around CA$14.20.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak wrote in a February 13 update on Seabridge, "The 2017 exploration program at Iron Cap was a clear success. Gold, copper, silver and molybdenum grades all increased and contained metal at Iron Cap more than doubled."

He also noted, "We believe today's resource increase at Iron Cap will serve as the catalyst to bring large-tier JV partners to the table. We believe a partnership is potentially a H1/18 event."

Cantor Fitzgerald increased its target price on Seabridge to CA$25 from CA$24.

Seabridge CEO Rudi Fronk went into more detail about a potential joint venture, We still think there's a chance of having a partner in place before this season begins, and if we don't that's fine as well because there's another program we could do at Iron Cap to make it even better. The last hole we drilled at Iron Cap last year was the best, and there's a clear indication there's a lot better material down dip to what we had found already."

Read what other experts are saying about:

Disclosure:

1) Jake Richardson compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. He or members of his household own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. He or members of his household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Seabridge Gold. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article.

Disclosures from Canaccord Genuity, Seabridge Gold, Feb. 13, 2018

Analyst Certification: Each authoring analyst of Canaccord Genuity whose name appears on the front page of this research hereby certifies that (i) the recommendations and opinions expressed in this research accurately reflect the authoring analyst's personal, independent and objective views about any and all of the designated investments or relevant issuers discussed herein that are within such authoring analyst's coverage universe and (ii) no part of the authoring analyst's compensation was, is, or will be, directly or indirectly, related to the specific recommendations or views expressed by the authoring analyst in the research.

Required Company-Specific Disclosures (as of date of this publication): Seabridge Gold currently is, or in the past 12 months was, a client of Canaccord Genuity or its affiliated companies. During this period, Canaccord Genuity or its affiliated companies provided investment banking services to Seabridge Gold.

In the past 12 months, Canaccord Genuity or its affiliated companies have received compensation for Investment Banking services from Seabridge Gold.

Canaccord Genuity or one or more of its affiliated companies intend to seek or expect to receive compensation for Investment Banking services from Seabridge Gold in the next three months.

Disclosures from Cantor Fitzgerald, Seabridge Gold Inc., Company Update, Feb. 13, 2018

Potential conflicts of interest: The author of this report is compensated based in part on the overall revenues of Cantor, a portion of which are generated by investment banking activities. Cantor may have had, or seek to have, an investment banking relationship with companies mentioned in this report. Cantor and/or its officers, directors and employees may from time to time acquire, hold or sell securities mentioned herein as principal or agent. Although Cantor makes every effort possible to avoid conflicts of interest, readers should assume that a conflict might exist, and therefore not rely solely on this report when evaluating whether or not to buy or sell the securities of subject companies.

Disclosures as of February 13, 2018

Cantor has provided investment banking services or received investment banking related compensation from Seabridge Gold Inc. within the past 12 months.

The analysts responsible for this research report do not have, either directly or indirectly, a long or short position in the shares or options of Seabridge Gold Inc.

The analyst responsible for this report has visited the material operations of Seabridge Gold Inc. (KSM and Iskut). No payment or reimbursement was received for the related travel costs.

Analyst certification: The research analyst whose name appears on this report hereby certifies that the opinions and recommendations expressed herein accurately reflect his personal views about the securities, issuers or industries discussed herein.

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The Ames Main Street Farmers Market is a local market that has been a staple of downtown Ames for the past eight years. The market 
Iowa State Student Government elections take place every spring. One of 15 constituencies, the College of Design is represented by o
Ward Two Representative Tim Gartin speaks to representatives from the Ames Airport after John Joiner Spoke about lengthening the runway which would allow larger jets to land. This proposed improvement follows a request from several Big 12 teams which operate their own jets, but must currently land in Des Moines and drive to Ames due to runway length requirements.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Focus on Lisa Netz, co-owner of The Lavish Loft

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Tell me a bit about your life in South Jersey. I grew up in Cherry Hill. We moved here from Paris when I was six...
Emily Mieure covers criminal justice and emergency news. She also leads the News&Guides investigative efforts. She has reported for WDRB TV in Louisville, Ky., WFIE TV in Evansville, Ind., and WEIU TV in Charleston, Ill.
Kylie Mohr covers the education and health beats. Mohr grew up in Washington and came to Wyoming via Georgetown. She loves seeing the starry night sky again.
Cody Cottier covers town and state government. He grew up with a view of the Olympic Mountains, and after graduating Washington State University he traded it for a view of the Tetons. Odds are the mountains are where youll find him when not on deadline.
Security Guards Job in Vital Security Private Limited

Latest Vital Security Company Security Posts Quetta 2021 Security Guards Pakistan Army Retired / Frontier Constabulary FC Retired are required in Vital Security Private Limited in Quetta. Retired Candidate contact for Security Guards Jobs.

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Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online.

Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If the employer asks you to pay money for any purpose including processing to shortlisting, do not pay at all and report us using our contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs cannot be applied online here. Error & omissions excepted.
Advancing women in politics: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ralph Regenvanu with 1st Political Advisor Mrs. Anthea Arukole (r) and and 2nd Political Advisor Mrs. Jeanette Yiu-Hing Faerua (l)
Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening. Increasing clouds with periods of showers late. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening. Increasing clouds with periods of showers late. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.

Tomorrow

A few showers early with overcast skies later in the day. High 79F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
The UKs High Court of Justice [official website] on Tuesday declined a request [judgment] to force publication of Brexit economic impact studies.

Following the referendum to leave the EU, British ministries compiled data and analyzed Brexits impact on 58 sectors of the economy. Some of the documents related to these studies were leaked [BuzzFeed report] in January. They show, overall, an economic outlook that is much bleaker than what Leave campaigners and the current Conservative government have been promising.

Green Party European parliamentarian Molly Scott Cato [official profile] and the Good Law Project [advocacy website] brought suit to have all the documents released. Their central claim was that the public and their representatives cannot function democratically unless the information is made available. The government countered that the data remains available through freedom of information act requests and that releasing everything would undermine Britains negotiating position with the EU as they iron out the terms of the divorce. The court declined to offer full review of the case with Justice Supperstone ruling there was a suitable alternative remedy in this case.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official bio] on Wednesday released his annual report [text] concerning global human rights in which he criticized global politicians for acting to further their own political ambitions at the expense of vulnerable humans.

Al Hussein began the report acknowledging the celebration for Nelson Mandelas one-hundredth birthday and his premier example of greatness in leadership, contrasting Mandelas example with the conduct of present-day politicians. Al Hussein specifically addressed narrow politicians  [a]uthoritarian in nature, who are prone to fan division and intolerance and just for the sake of securing their political ambition, saying:

[Y]ou may seize power, or stubbornly hold onto it, by playing on and stoking the fears of your followers. You may congratulate yourselves for this and you may think yourself so clever for it. But we know all youve done is copy the behaviour of previous generations of once strong, but ultimately catastrophic, leaders and politicians. Yours will in the end become a mouse-like global reputation, never the fine example of the leader you think you are  and never even close to a Mandela. To deserve global respect, you must begin to follow his example  committing to the spirit and letter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Al Hussein then went on to address human rights violations in numerous individual countries, including the United States, Russia, China, Poland, Burundi, Kenya, the Maldives, Yemen and Syria, expressing his greatest concerns for individual human rights. He ended the report with a note on womens rights and singled out the MeToo Movement [advocacy website] as, an expression of solidarity and a force for dignity that is much needed, including in the wealthiest societies. Al Hussein went on to say that [w]herever I have travelled I have been privileged to meet women who defy restrictions on their freedom. These resilient and powerful women teach us - have, indeed, taught me  that every individual can help to reshape society, and the world. I dont much like the phrase speaking truth to power because in reality it is not rank which confers moral value: the power is in truth itself.
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American citizens are sick and tired of being made into tax-slaves to finance the economic needs of millions of poverty stricken, poorly educated, low and unskilled aliens who have invaded America borders.



This crap about State authority vs federal authority with regard to illegal entrants and harboring has already been litigated.let us read Judge Harry D. Leinenwebers recent WRITTEN OPINION dealing with 8 U.S. Code  1373 - Communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service _The constitutionality of Section 1373 has been challenged before. The Second Circuit in City of New York v. United States, 179 F.3d 29 (2d Cir. 1999), addressed a facial challenge to Section 1373 in similar circumstances. By executive order, New York City prohibited its employees from voluntarily providing federal immigration authorities with information concerning the immigration status of any alien. Id. at 31-32. The city sued the United States, challenging the constitutionality of Section 1373 under the Tenth Amendment._Id. at 32.__The Second Circuit found that Section 1373 did not compel state or local governments to enact or administer any federal regulatory program or conscript local employees into its service, and therefore did not run afoul of the rules gleaned from the Supreme Courts Printz and New York decisions. City of New York, 179 F.3d at 35. **Rather, the court held that Section 1373 prohibits local governmental entities and officials only from directly restricting the voluntary exchange of immigration information with the INS. Ibid_______So, as it turns out, what the Trump Administration is considering is not a violation of the Constitution, as alleged by the advocates of illegal entrants. What the Trump Administration is considering is the prosecution of local elected leaders who forbid local law enforcement officers from cooperating with Federal ICE Agents. In fact, those elected leaders are in violation of 8 U.S. Code  1373 - Communication between government agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as noted by the court, and their actions also constitute the criminal offense of HarboringJWK
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice signed a bill Tuesday that gives a 5% pay raise to all state employees, including striking teachers and school staff.

The deal is intended to end a teachers' strike that has canceled nine consecutive school days across the state. Teachers' union representative Christine Campbell told CNN she anticipates school will be back in session Wednesday.

Schools should reopen Wednesday, union rep says "It took a lot of pulling for everyone to get there," governor tells crowd

Both the House of Delegates and Senate unanimously approved the bill and Justice signed it into law.

"It took a lot of pulling for everyone to get there," Justice told crowds of cheering educators at the state Capitol in Charleston. "But we're there."

Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, said the deal was a "huge breakthrough" for school employees and for doing what's right.

"You have a story here, a modern-day story, of labor solidarity on an issue that is irrefutable," she said. "That for teachers to stay in our profession, for bus drivers and support staff to stay and do this work, we need a livable wage, and we need the conditions in schools that we can help kids thrive."

The strike began February 22 when about 20,000 teachers walked out of schools in what has been a show of the strength of organized labor.

Public schools in 55 counties across the Mountain State were closed again Tuesday as teachers and educators demanded higher wages and better benefits, particularly for the embattled state employee health insurance program known as the Public Employee Insurance Agency, or PEIA.

West Virginia ranks 48th in the nation in terms of how much it pays its teachers, according to the National Education Association, and educators say that low pay pushes qualified teachers to leave the state.

Separately, the governor agreed to set up a task force to address the state health insurance program on March 13.

Though currently limited to West Virginia, the strike has had repercussions outside the state as teachers in Oklahoma say they, too, have reached their breaking point and are considering walking off the job next month.

Yet the focus in West Virginia has remained on the teachers in the trenches, even for students who have been out of class for days.

"I wish it wouldn't have come to this and that I was still in school, but I want the teachers to get the wages that they deserve, so I'm all right with it," Victoria Blickenstaff, a sophomore at Fairmont Senior High School in Fairmont, said before the announcement of the deal.

A legislative standoff

The West Virginia Legislature faced a standoff over how much of a pay raise to offer striking teachers and educators. A legislative conference committee was appointed to resolve differences between bills in the House and Senate.

Last week, the governor and union leaders agreed that teachers and service personnel would receive a 5% pay raise, and the House approved the proposal. However, Republicans in the Senate passed a bill Saturday night with a 4% raise.

Union leaders said teachers wouldn't return to work until they got a 5% raise.

At a legislative conference committee meeting Tuesday to resolve the issue, Republican state Sen. Craig Blair said the new deal represents the largest pay raise in state history.

There will be no tax increase to offset the raise, and Blair said the government will see a $20 million reduction in spending out of cuts to general services and Medicaid.

"With this agreement today to reduce spending in state government, in order to give every single dollar available to our public employees, we've achieved the goal of being fiscally responsible while also getting a pay raise that will help our teachers get back in the classroom and our students back to school," said Senate Majority leader Ryan Ferns, a Republican.

Justice told CNN that the funding would not come out of Medicaid or Medicare; the subject will come up in budget negotiations.

The governor said that the bill was a win not for any particular group -- but for what's right.

"At the end of the day, I think right won out," Justice said. "Not that the unions won or the Legislature won or I won. It's the idea and the premise that we ought to invest in education and let education be an economic driver for us."
BAKERSFIELD, CA -- A California judge will soon decide who gets to keep the remains of cult leader and convicted killer Charles Manson.

The decision is expected to be posted online in the next few days. Manson's alleged son, grandson and pen pal who claims to have his will, are all fighting for rights to his remains.

As of March 8, 2018, Manson's body has not been cremated. He died in November of natural causes.

Manson was sentenced to nine life terms for orchestrating the deaths of seven pole in 1969.

He was 83.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump's plan to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum (all times local):

2:58 p.m.

The White House says Mexico, Canada, and other countries may be exempted from President Donald Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs under national security "carve-outs."

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells reporters that the exemptions would be on a "case by case" and a "country by country" basis.

The openness to country exemptions is a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exceptions to Trump's plan to put in place 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

Sanders says Trump will finalize the tariffs later this week. The plan has roiled markets and drawn consternation from American allies, Republican free-trade advocates, and the business community.

____

11:42 a.m.

As Trump prepares to formally institute tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, he's in the final stages of decision-making on another tough trade action.

In a Wednesday tweet, Trump says, "The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft."

A White House official says Trump is referencing the ongoing Section 301 investigation of China, under which the U.S. Trade Representative is studying whether Chinese intellectual property rules are "unreasonable or discriminatory" to American business.

An announcement of the findings of the report, and possible retaliatory actions, is expected within the next three weeks.

____

11:30 a.m.

The head of the world's largest business federation is urging President Donald Trump to refrain from imposing new global tariffs on steel and aluminum, warning it risks a trade war and will hurt the U.S. economy.

In a sharply worded statement, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue says his group is "very concerned" about a potential trade war. He says it would risk the economic momentum spurred on by the new tax law.

Donohue says the tariffs would "directly harm American manufacturers" and lead to "widespread retaliation from our trading partners." He says it will not address the "true problem of Chinese steel and aluminum overcapacity."

Business leaders and Republicans in Congress are pressuring Trump to change course on the planned tariffs, warning it would hurt the economy.

____

11:15 a.m.

President Donald Trump says the administration is asking China to trim the huge trade surplus it runs with the United States, the largest of any country.

The U.S. deficit with China hit a record $375 billion last year. Trump says Wednesday on Twitter that China has been asked to cut the surplus by $1 billion, or three-tenths of a percent.

Trump tweets: "China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States." He says the U.S. relationship with China "has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!"

Trump says in a separate tweet that the U.S. is "acting swiftly" on intellectual property theft. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is overseeing an investigation into whether China is systematically violating U.S. intellectual property rights, particularly in the technology industry.

__

10:18 a.m.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says President Donald Trump should back off his plan to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum.

He says the problem with the proposed 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum is that it could draw reciprocal sanctions on American-made goods. He says the U.S. needs to avoid a trade war. Schumer, the Senate's top Democrat, is lending his voice to that of GOP leaders who have been critical of Trump's latest trade proposal.

But Schumer calls the president's "instincts to go after China" correct. He says China steals intellectual property from U.S. companies and also dumps counterfeit products into the U.S.

The New York lawmaker says, "Mr. President, focus on China. Go after China."

____

9:05 a.m.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says the White House is seeking to take a "surgical approach" to new tariffs, saying it is possible Canada and Mexico could be exempted.

House Speaker Paul Ryan used the same language Tuesday in calling for President Donald Trump to use a more targeted "surgical approach" to avert a potentially dangerous trade war.

Ross told reporters Wednesday: "The president indicated that if we can work something out with Canada and Mexico they will be exempted." He says it's "not inconceivable that others could be exempted on a similar basis."

Trump plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. But he has held out the possibility that Canada and Mexico might not face tariffs if they are willing to offer more favorable terms under the North American Free Agreement, which is being renegotiated.

__

12:17 a.m.

More warnings are coming in response to President Donald Trump's plan to impose tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

Congressional Republicans and industry groups are pressing the president to narrow his plan for across-the-board tariffs. A visiting head of state, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, said during a joint news conference with Trump that increased tariffs will hurt everyone in the long run.

And the president's top economic adviser and an opponent of tariffs, Gary Cohn, announced his plans to depart the White House.

Nonetheless, Trump has reiterated his plans as a response to mistreatment of the U.S. in trade deals. He's leaving open the possibility that Canada and Mexico could be spared if they're willing to offer more favorable terms under a renegotiated North American Free Agreement.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

3/7/2018 12:16:56 PM (GMT -8:00)
Chinese border police officers watch the arrival of a container ship at a port in Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province, Thursday, March 8, 2018. China's exports in February surged 44.5 percent over a year earlier while its politically sensitive trade surplus widened amid mounting tension with Washington. (Chinatopix via AP)
Women march as they shout slogans during the International Women's Day in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, March 8, 2018. Spanish women are marking International Women's Day with the first-ever full day strike and dozens of protests across the country against wage gap and gender violence. The placard at the right side reads in Spanish "It does not matter what they say, women are at war". (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Red-light cameras will be modified at five Kelowna intersections, including this one at Highway 97 and Spall Road, to also detect and photograph vehicles that speed through on green lights.
Halifax Regional Police attend a crime scene in Halifax on May 17, 2016. Police say they will be at three schools in Halifax today after unspecified threats were made against them. Officers say they will be at Caledonia Junior High School, Rocky Lake Junior High School and Ian Forsyth Elementary as a precaution. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross listens during a meeting between President Donald Trump and steel and aluminum executives in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington on March 1, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Evan Vucci
Ramin Seyed Emami, right, speaks to the media as his brother Mehran looks on following their arrival at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., Thursday, March, 8, 2018. The two brothers, sons of an Iranian-Canadian professor who died in prison in Tehran, arrived in Canada on Thursday, a day after Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland pressured Iran to allow their mother to leave the country as well. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
From bottom left, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, Uruguay's President Tabare Vazquez, Brazil's President Michel Temer, Paraguay's President Horacio Cartes, Argentina's President Mauricio Macri and Guyana's President David Arthur Granger, and from top left, Suriname's Minister in Charge of Business Natasha Halfhuid, Ecuador's Negotiator for Mercosur Diego Ribadaneira, Chile's Foreign Minister Heraldo Munuz, Colombia's Embassador to Brasil Alejandro Borda, Peru's Negotiator for Mercosur Luis Quesada and Egypt's Minister of Trade and Industry Tarek Kabil pose for an official photo of the Mercosur and Associated States Summit of Heads of State, at the Itamaraty Palace, in Brasilia, Brazil on December 21, 2017. Canada is expected to announce the start of formal free trade negotiations on Friday with the four-country South American trade bloc known as Mercosur. A spokesman for International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says the negotiations could begin in earnest in the next 10 days. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Eraldo Peres
Rep. Adrienne Wooten, D-Jackson, questions House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, R-Braxton, about House Bill 1510, on what is likely to be the nation's most restrictive abortion law, Thursday, March 8, 2018, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. The House voted 75-34 in favor of the measure, which would make most abortions illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said he'll sign the bill. The Mississippi Senate passed the measure on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
This photo released by the Syrian Red Crescent shows civilians gathering near a convoy of vehicles of the Syrian Red Crescent in Douma, eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria, Monday, March. 5, 2018. Desperate for food and medicine, Syrian civilians in the war-ravaged eastern suburbs of Damascus hoped for relief Monday as a 46-truck aid convoy began entering the rebel stronghold, the first such shipment in months. (Syrian Red Crescent via AP)
REMOVES INCORRECT LAST NAME FOR MIGUEL - Miguel, left, and Natalia Lafourcade perform "Remember Me" from "Coco" at the Oscars on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
FILE - In this Jan. 21, 2018, file photo, Terry Crews poses for a portrait to promote the film, "Sorry to Bother You", at the Music Lodge during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Prosecutors on Wednesday, March 7, decided not to file charges against a talent agent whom Crews said groped him at a Hollywood party. (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File)
But I dont want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you cant help that," said the Cat: "were all mad here. Im mad. Youre mad."

"How do you know Im mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldnt have come here.

 Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland





With freedom comes responsibility.

 Eleanor Roosevelt




EUGENE, Ore. -- The Eugene Airport announced it is offering a new nonstop flight to San Diego.

Allegiant Air will be offering nonstop flights from the Eugene Airport to San Diego International Airport starting May 17. One way fares start as low as $59.

"Allegiant is excited to offer Eugene-area travelers their only ultra-low-cost, nonstop option to visit San Diego," said Lukas Johnson, Allegiant senior vice president of commercial. "The Eugene community has been very supportive of us, and we're pleased to be able to provide them with convenient, nonstop service to enjoy all that sunny destination has to offer."

The new seasonal service route will operate twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays. Right now, the service is only expected to last about six months, but airport officials said if it is popular with travelers, it could be offered year-round.

Airport officials said there are now a total of 12 nonstop destinations offered at Eugene Airport. Cathryn Stephens, the assistant airport director, said they have been working on getting non-stop flights to popular destinations around the country, and are excited to have more flights available to passengers.

"It's helping the airport grow and more importantly it's giving those options to people to fly locally instead of driving and flying out of a larger airport because we really do have very good connectivity now," Stephens said.

Some passengers at the airport said they have had a positive experience flying on some of the other nonstop routes.

"It's really nice, I can go online and find the price that I want and then I'm there. It's fantastic, I love it," Diane Vandehey-Neale said.

Stephens said the airport has been having record passenger years, and they are already tracking about 10 percent of what was originally anticipated for this year. She said by adding more flights, they are able to bring in larger aircraft, have more frequent flights and offer more roundtrips.

She said other destinations they are looking to add nonstop flights are to Orange County, Chicago, and Dallas.
EUGENE, Ore.  Dont let his size fool you. A pint-sized police officer in Eugene is ready to catch the bad guys.

Camden McGee stands 44 inches tall, and according to Eugene police, the 10-year-old is one of the most inspiring officers on the force.

Camden is one of two boys in Oregon battling a rare disorder called Lowe syndrome. When hes having a good week, he doesnt leave home without his uniform.

His stepdad said he got the bug to become a police officer about four or five years ago, when officers came to their home looking for a former tenant.

Camden got to check out their patrol car and try out the loudspeaker.

Ever since, he likes to patrol the streets of Eugene with his uniform, badge and handcuffs as often as he can.
EUGENE, Ore. -- KEZI 9 News has learned the St. Patrick's Day party to benefit Catholic Community Services, where local musicians are lending their talent, is sold out.

KEZI 9 News got a behind-the-scenes preview of the band, Irish Echo, rehearsing for the upcoming concert and dinner. Irish Echo has been together for 37 years. Band members are local business leaders, doctors, and teachers who donate their talent for community concerts.

Irish Echo's next gig is the St. Patrick's Day Party at Marist High School. The event will help fund the school's Project Starfish and support the G Street Oasis Program at CCS that started in 2016. The program helps homeless families with children in Springfield.

Band members said the St. Patrick's Day Party is action-packed with traditional Irish songs.

"These are songs that you don't often hear on the radio, just funny songs, fun to sing. People get into it and they are clapping and dancing," said band member Jerry Ragan.

The St. Patrick's Day party is Saturday, March 17 at Marist High School's Activity Center. Last year, the event raised $12,000 for Catholic Community Services.
MASON CITY, Iowa - New obstacles are standing in the way of completing the River City Renaissance Project after those with the Cerro Gordo County Treasurers Office say Southbridge Mall owner Mike Kohan owes $218,637 in back taxes.

I want him to get it together and get it accomplished, said Carol Iverson of Mason City.

Iverson understands that Southbridge Mall is a key component to the project as the city planned on using the taxes to pay off some of the debt on the project once it is completed.

Those with the Treasurers Office say Kohan has verbally stated that he is going to pay $30,224 of those overdue taxes. They say that is the minimum he could pay to stop penalties from adding up. They also clarified that they dont count the taxes as paid for unless they have the money in their office. Kohan would still need to pay another $24, 577 to keep the parcels of land from going to a tax sale in June.

In a brief phone conversation with Kohan on Wednesday, he said the reason he isnt paying the taxes is because the mail is failing." Clayton Rye, of Hanlontown, says he understands Kohans position.

Were selling corn for three dollars so expenses are way up and the income is way down, he said.

Despite the potential setbacks in the project because of the back taxes, those in the community are still in favor of the project.

I'd like to see it be a thriving mall, you know, with restaurants and recreation, said Iverson.

Those with the city say they do have reason to be concerned over the unpaid taxes, but are confident they can work through the issues and complete the project.
MASON CITY, Iowa - Do you remember how nerve-racking it was when you were interviewed for your first job?

Some area sophomores are getting the experience done before getting hired.

It was super nerve-racking but once you sat down and they started asking questions it got easier, Elle Buffington said.

Buffington is hoping to have a future in teaching one day, but she may have to get a couple other side jobs before then. That's why Mason City High School has sophomores doing mock interviews with businesses across the area in order to get a grasp on how it works. Buffington says its well worth it.

Then you know what to expect when you get older and have your actual career to apply for, Buffington said.

Leading up to the interviews kids were being taught to smile when being asked questions and to sit up straight. This is all part of Mason City CAN community project, a collaboration of professionals working with students.
MASON CITY, Iowa - A new bill aiming to ban sanctuary cities in Iowa has cleared the House Public Safety Committee and is now heading to the House for debate.

Senate File 481, if passed, would require law enforcement to follow federal immigration laws, and withhold state funding if cities don't comply.

Jim Whitty, a Virginia resident who is visiting relatives in North Iowa, says that states should have the ability to welcome undocumented immigrants, but they must follow the law, regardless of status.

"If they're illegal, they're illegal. I don't understand what the problem with the word is. If you come here legally, welcome. If you assimilate to the country, welcome. If you come here illegally, you gotta go. Simple as that," Whitty says.

However, Mason City pastor Chuck Kelsey of the First Congregational United Church of Christ, says that the order goes completely against what legislators are called to do and won't change the church's status on helping those in need.

"We'll remain a sanctuary, and if there's a need, we'll protect people along the way. But I think the legislators are way overstepping what they should be doing. It should be opening doors rather than closing the doors to people," Kelsey says.

The committee voted in favor of sending the bill to the House for debate 11-10.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP)  A young woman who tried to claim $50,000 she won from an Iowa scratch-off lottery ticket has been charged with fraud: She was too young to buy the ticket.

The Daily Nonpareil reports that Katelyn Dolezal, of Macedonia, is charged with lottery fraud. Court records don't list the name of an attorney who could comment for her.

Iowa law requires players to be 21 or older. Authorities say she was 19 when she bought the winning ticket Nov. 18. A relative went to the Iowa Lottery office in Council Bluffs to claim the prize for Dolezal, and a check was issued in the relative's name. They tried to cash the $35,000 check  $15,000 in taxes had been withheld  but a bank placed a hold on it.

Police say Dolezal later called the lottery office for help because the relative wasn't going to share the money with Dolezal.
DECORAH, Iowa  A violent confrontation with law enforcement is sending a Randalia man to prison.

A West Union police officer says he tried to stop a vehicle driven by 25-year-old Zachary Willie on May 4, 2017. The officer says Willie sped away, beginning a chase that went from Fayette County in Winneshiek County and involved several other law enforcement vehicles.

Willie was accused of ramming one patrol vehicle and trying to ram another before he was arrested in a farm field in western Winneshiek County.

Willie entered a guilty plea to eluding, four counts of assault on persons in certain occupations, 2nd degree criminal mischief, and interference with official acts. Hes been sentenced to five years in prison and must pay $940 in fines.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  Its one of our rights as Americans to have a fair and speedy trial when charged with a crime. However, recently one judge ruled 24-year-old Majed Ijong incompetent to stand trial.

Ijong is charged with five counts of criminal sexual conduct with a child under the age of 13.



Majed Ijong Majed Ijong

Steve Rolsch, a local attorney, explains Rule 20 of the Criminal Procedure in Minnesota. He said being competent means that he could understand the nature of the proceedings, and be helpful to his or her attorney.

For that ruling, Rolsch explains Ijong had to go to a doctor for them to determine his competency. Online court records said he had a hearing Tuesday, which resulted in a judge ruling him incompetent.

It wouldn't be fundamentally fair to make this person go to trial because he can't help in his defense, Rolsch said, and he doesn't even understand the nature of the proceedings.

Rolsch said its different than an insanity plea, because Ijong isnt even going to trial to make that plea.

If you plead insanity, then you have to put forward it's your burden as a defendant to put forward that you're mentally ill and you're so mentally ill that you do not know the nature of the actions that caused the crime, Rolsch said. You didn't know what you were doing at the time of the crime, due to your mental illness.

Rolsch said Ijong will be committed until hes ruled competent.

They'll check back in six months. Is he competent yet? Because he's still under commitment, you go at six months at a time usually, Rolsch said.

Ijong was a wanted man in Rochester before he was taken into custody in California. Rolsch said thats something lawyers can use in their arguments when they go back to review Ijongs competency, because it indicates he knew he committed a crime.

Ijong is still listed as being held in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center. No future court dates have been scheduled.
MARCH 2, 2018

Editors Note : Marin Katusa recently had a question and answer workshop with legendary speculator Doug Casey at the 2018 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. Below, youll find the first of their two-part interview series.

Marin Katusa:

So, Doug Casey, you have been there and done that, now youre writing books about fiction. Is that because youre going insane or whats going on?

Doug Casey:

Look, the reason Im writing these novels first, Speculator, about the mining business and you guys are basically here about the mining business you should read that book, Speculator. And of course, now, Drug Lord which came out last year where I show that you could be a good guy and be a drug lord. Of course this year were going to complete Assassin which is perhaps topical because there are all kinds of anti-thought people that have actually said they want to kill Trump so were looking at the history and the techniques and the morality and the practicality of political assassinations. So get those books. But the reason, Marin, to answer your question, is that there are a lot of things that you cannot say in nonfiction or you probably shouldnt say that you can say in the form of fiction. So thats the reason.

Marin Katusa:

For the record, were looking at ways to make this into a Netflix or Amazon series which it will be one day, and Im a partner in that business. I expect it to do well. Doug, give me a couple of novels that you believe people should read to expand their horizons on investing speculation, geopolitics, that would help them become a better, wiser investor.

Doug Casey:

Yeah novels are easier to read in many cases than nonfiction.

Marin Katusa:

Except for the Colder War.

Doug Casey:

Well, that is definitely not fiction. It is nonfiction. Ive been a fan of Ayn Rand ever since I read her first Well, I started out with her nonfiction, which is excellent, but if you havent read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, you should actually do it because everybody talks about what they think Ayn Rand said but they dont know. Of course, she talks about business and all this type of thing. Id put that there at number one. But I dont read business type fiction. Frankly, I like science fiction more than anything else because, even though I dont have a cellphone and I find that Im becoming a dinosaur when it comes to actually manipulating the devices that people use today, Im a technophile and most of the reading that I do is either history or science. When I read fiction, it is generally science fiction.

Marin Katusa:

Give me your two-favorite must reads.

Doug Casey:

Okay. Neal Stephenson is a genius. Anything by Neal Stephenson, you cant go wrong with.

But my favorite by him is Diamond Age and he wrote it years ago. It accurately predicted the way, in many ways, whats happening with nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is one of five or six technologies that are all advancing at hyper speed, faster than the rate of Moores law actually. You should read that book. You should read Diamond Age. Youll really be doing yourself a favor and introduce yourself to a whole different way of thinking.

Marin Katusa:

Doug, now that youve kind of made a bundle of money, and I do a lot of investing for you in the funds and everything we do looking back at your career what would have been your biggest financial mistake.

Doug Casey:

Not investigating something adequately before putting money in it. Just throwing money at it because this is a big problem.

Ive talked with a lot of other guys about this and you get lucky in a bull market. You make a lot of money, you take the money, and you feel an obligation to reinvest the money. Very stupid. Make the money and keep the money and dont put it back on the market. The number one mistake Ive made. Dont do that.

Number two is dont hold these things too long because most, not all but most, almost all, of the stocks that you will find here, even with good people and so forth, most of them are burning matches. So dont treat them like heirlooms. When you most want to buy more because its gone up a lot, you should probably think about selling instead.

So thats another mistake Ive made. Not being a disciplined seller. Marin is very good that way. If anything he sells too soon but thats better than selling too late. I promise you.

Marin Katusa:

Doug, what about picking the right broker? What advice can you give someone in the audience about picking the right stockbroker?

Doug Casey:

Look, I guess everybody is using the Internet to execute their orders and so forth because you can do so very cheaply. The commissions are trivial when you use an electronic broker. I dont do that actually. The reason why is that most of the investing that I do is with private placements and if you get good brokers that are really wired in this, theyre on the street and they can show you deals that your electronic account is not going to show you and give you information if the broker is on the street and knows what hes doing. Im willing to pay a commission for that extra source of information.

Marin Katusa:

But Doug, they are called brokers, not creators. Right? Theyre going to make you broke. Ironically the brokers are probably the least qualified or least educated in the financial chain and they have more influence on investment decisions than anyone else in the financial chain. So I would add the real advantage of having a full-service broker is on the warrant side if you invest in private placements. Can you explain to the crowd about the benefit of warrants and why so much of what I do focuses on warrants?

Doug Casey:

Exactly. Marin has said correctly that the ideal portfolio consists of nothing but cash and warrants.

The way it works in Canada, Im sure you guys all know this Im not making any cosmic breakthrough in saying this but, all of these companies are constantly raising money because very few of them have any earnings. Very few of them even have any revenues, forget about earnings. So theyre constantly selling more shares to keep the doors open and they do this in the form of private placements.

Generally, when they do a private placement its at a discount to the market, A, and you get a warrant, B. The warrant can be good for anywhere from as little as a year, which is not good, to as much as five years which is incidentally something that Marin has pioneered. The best kind of warrant is a five year detachable, separately tradable warrant.

Marin Katusa:

So a listed, tradeable warrant?

Doug Casey:

Exactly.

Marin Katusa:

Doug, switching gears walk readers through the Northern Dynasty concept.

Doug Casey:

This is an ideal case. Stock is fine an excellent basic property and the Northern Dynasty property is excellent. Its gigantic in size and economics and so forth. Marin financed that at what, forty cents? I forget what the exact number was.

Marin Katusa:

We did three financings for a total of slightly more than $42 million all at or under $0.45.

Doug Casey:

Right, and on those, the stock later went to as high as What did it get to? Five dollars?

Marin Katusa:

Yeah, about 4 and change

The beauty here is every unit you bought at forty-five cents you got a warrant and the warrant traded almost as high as four dollars a share. So if you bought the stock, just the shares, you made lets say eight or nine times your money when I wrote it up. Three or four times your money if you follow Casey Research but thats a separate issue (I kid, as I like teasing my old friends at Casey Research about being the second best research outfit in the sector). But with the warrant, you basically double pay yourself. Were taking all this risk if youre accredited and this is something I tried to really push in my newsletter, Katusas Resource Opportunities.

Also, we broke a Toronto Stock Exchange record for a number of subscribers to take a stake, where we raised over one hundred and twenty million dollars from our newsletter base at Katusa Research. Were really changing the whole industry so the big banks dont like me because theyre not getting their fees. The big brokers dont like me because theyre not getting their B warrant (broker warrant) or they call it Bs and fees, broker fees and broker warrants. All I care about is bringing us (we being the investors) to have the best advantage. So I really dont care what the banks and the brokers do because they dont really add that much value in my opinion.

Doug Casey:

Marin is absolutely correct.

When youre doing these financings look at the terms of the warrant. Some people will offer an eighteen-month half-warrant. It better be a really sweet deal if thats all theyre gonna give you for risking your money and being tied up for four months.

Marin Katusa:

Also, remember Many people downloaded the Katusa Research guideline to a conference where you can ask all the questions to a company management team. If you havent, I strongly suggest you do it. Like when you ask the questions to management, such as, how much are you invested? Where you take someone like Amir Adnani that Doug and I have put millions behind Hes invested in two companies and he owns ten percent of it himself at the same cost base as the investors. Hes got hard dollars into his company, not just options or what I call soft-dollars like most management teams in the resource sector. He is the real deal  so we back the real players like Amir, Ross Beaty, Lukas Lundin, and that elk.

Remember, soft dollars are not real money, theyre options, and these options are at five years.

Many know me as the pioneer of the five-year listed warrant, but that isnt true. Ive just brought it back in good style. Management teams in the resource sector have had it good during the last 15 years. All I ask is that the investors who put up real dollars to finance the management dreams to get treated equally as management. Funny thing about management, their warrants are always exercisable for 5 years. Im yet to see a 2-year half option issued by the companies to their management. And yet they try to justify that I should buy a two-year half warrant.

The exchange used to allow a ten-year warrant back in the day. In fact, there used to be something called piggyback warrant. A piggyback warrant came with a unit in a PP and when the first warrant was exercised, a second warrant was issued with the exercise of the first warrant. Murray Pezim was the master of Piggy Back warrants. Im not that greedy. I just want to be treated the same way management treat themselves.

Doug Casey:

You get the paper and the management gets to fly around in a private jet with the money you give them half the time. Ideally, five-year warrants are the best way to invest in the market but, in order to get into those deals, youre basically either going to have to be next to a really good broker that beats the bushes for those deals, or get to know these companies. I dont do this at Casey Research but Marin does so sign up for his newsletter and get into those deals. Its not cheap but Well, it is cheap actually. Because Marin is the best at this.

Marin Katusa:

Its about value. And thanks Doug.

Doug Casey:

No, thank you Marin.

Editors Note: In tomorrows second part of the Q&A series, Marin and Doug talk two cryptocurrency plays, a junior silver company and what markets Doug Casey wants to be completely out of.
(Kitco News) - The Worlds famous mining gathering in Toronto revealed a clear reversal in the industry, as participants filled the convention halls with cheerful outlooks, renewed interest, and hope.

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) was attended by over 25,000 people this year, beating last years total of 24,000.

This years convention was full of energy and excitement for the year ahead, PDAC President Glenn Mullan said in a press release published on Wednesday. After experiencing several years of economic challenges, today the mineral exploration and mining industry is experiencing a renaissance and renewed sense of confidence.

The hype was definitely on during the four-day conference, as sold-out exhibitor spaces filled the massive halls of the Metro Convention Centre and analysts preached optimism at standing-room-only panel discussions.

Kitco News talked to some of the participating mining companies in order to get the sense of the overall market sentiment. What our team heard was cautious optimism and excitement about the future.

Investors are slowly regaining confidence in mining. Maybe specifically so in precious metals, but not inclusively. And the reason behind it is that mines are accepting the new normal, they are adjusting to new cost spaces and new metal prices. Higher focus on transparency and productivity is causing investors to trust mining companies with their funds, said Mine PRs vice president of marketing Empie Strydom.

The metals that were talked about the most were gold and copper.

Precious metals have a bright future this year. We certainly have seen an increase in interest overall and not just in precious metals. Copper seems like the real flavor of the year, said K92 Minings vice president of exploration Chris Muller.

But, some expressed firm belief in other metals like uranium.

Both uranium and rare earths prices have higher to go. Even a $5 increase in uranium leads to a 20% increase, said Appia Energy Corps vice president of exploration and development James Sykes.

Despite the renewed optimism all around, the lean years of yesterday were still fresh in everyone's minds.

Weve had about five years when there was no money at all and the juniors were dying. And this year we are seeing some comeback. There is a trickle of money, with producers interested in grassroots, said Gold Mining Claims For Options geologist Donald Brown.

Kitco News was on the ground in Toronto this week, providing our readers live updates and in-depth interviews with leading experts.

Stay tuned for more footage from the conference, including an evening dedicated to celebrating silver at Torontos Ripley Aquarium.

Also, dont forget to check out Kitcos top ten highlights from the convention.
Editor's Note: Gold and silver has been, at best, a frustrating trade. Exclusive to Kitco News, expert trader, Todd "Bubba" Horwitz, chief market strategist and founder of 'Bubba Trading provides a strategy investors can use in a range-bound gold price environment. Sign up before March 10 for the Kitco News Weekly Rundown newsletter to receive Horwitz's exclusive report and trading strategy.

(Kitco News) - Participants in the recent BMO Global Metals & Mining Conference were more upbeat on industrial metals than precious metals, the bank reports.

BMO analysts late Wednesday released results of a poll conducted during the conference. There were more than 800 participants in the survey, including responses from all major groups of conference attendees.

We believe it provides an insightful snapshot of corporate and investor views on the mining sector, the analysts said.

Both investor and corporate attendees overwhelmingly agreed that the more constructive outlook lies with the industrial metals, with over 83% of investors and 76% of corporates indicating that industrial metals have the greater case for investment, BMO reported.

In the case of precious metals, investors are still focused on growth and execution of plans, BMO said. Analysts cited survey responses during presentations made by major producers Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE, TSX: ABX), Goldcorp Inc. (TSX: G, NYSE: GG) and Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM).

The responses suggest that many investors continue to focus on production profiles, advancing growth projects, and growing reserves and resources, particularly ABX [Barrick], where two-thirds of investors are focused on maintaining and growing production levels, BMO reported.

In the case of Goldcorp, investors focus is on the companys execution of its so-called 20/20/20 plan and growth projects, BMO said. Goldcorp has publicly stated a goal for a 20% increase in gold production, 20% increase in gold reserves and 20% reduction in all-in sustaining costs by 2021.

In the case of Newmont, deployment of free cash flow remains topical to investors, BMO added.

Meanwhile, for large-capitalized diversified companies, investors had no mandate for growth but supported mergers and acquisitions and debt reduction.

Both investors and corporates overwhelmingly indicated that the priority for FCX [Freeport-McMoRan Inc.] management remains the resolution of negotiations in Indonesia, BMO said. The company is in talks with the government over the future of its giant Grasberg copper-gold mine.

Analysts said the poll showed lots of interest in blockchain technology, although participants appeared uncertain about the impact.

The majority of investors reportedly understand blockchain technology, but far fewer appear to understand the potential impact on their business, BMO said. Among corporates, the split is even between attendees who reportedly understand the technology, and those who do not.
WASHINGTON/SANTIAGO (Reuters) - President Donald Trump was set to press ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, although he said on Thursday he was willing to strike a deal that could exempt Canada and Mexico.

Trump has offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that treat us fairly on trade, a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which appear to be stalled.

Mexico rejected the linkage to NAFTA in robust terms on Thursday. Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Reuters, Under no circumstance will we be subject to any type of pressure. Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne told Reuters his country would not accept any duties or quotas from the United States.

Trumps unexpected announcement of the tariffs last week roiled stock markets as it raised the prospect of an escalating global trade war. He appeared to have conceded some ground after a campaign by legislators from his own Republican party, industry groups and Americas allies abroad.

Im sticking with 10 and 25 (percent) initially. Ill have a right to go up or down, depending on the country, and Ill have a right to drop out countries or add countries, the president told reporters at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Trump was due to announce the duties at 3.30 p.m. ET (2030 GMT), although the range of potential exemptions for allies and for industries has made the final outcome unpredictable.

U.S. stock markets were roughly flat on Thursday as investors were nervous of making bets ahead of the announcement.

The president said he was pleased with progress in the NAFTA talks, although he repeated that he would be willing to terminate the agreement. The talks were launched after Trump took office last year saying that if the pact was not negotiated to better serve American interests, Washington would leave.

Many observers take a dimmer view of six-month-old talks, saying little progress has been made and the negotiations are stalled over issues such as autos. Car manufacturings contribution to the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies far outweighs that of steel and aluminium production.

In addition to possible exemptions to the steel and aluminum tariffs, there could be a consultation period that would lead to intense lobbying by industry and a growing group of disgruntled Republican lawmakers.

Several major trading partners have said they will respond to the tariffs with direct action.

If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal with which to respond, European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.

Countermeasures would include European tariffs on U.S. oranges, tobacco and bourbon, he said. Harley Davidson Inc motorcycles have also been mentioned, targeting House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryans home state of Wisconsin.

ASIA-PACIFIC PACT

Even as Trump threatened tariffs and prodded his NAFTA partners, 11 nations gathered in Chile to sign a landmark Asia-Pacific trade pact, one that Trump withdrew from on his first day in office.

Both Guajardo and Champagne were speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the signing ceremony in Santiago.

Trump, who won the White House after a career in real estate and reality TV, has long touted an economic nationalism, promising to bring back jobs to the United States and save the country from trade deals he views as unfair. That has put him at odds with many in his Republican Party.

Beijing, which until now had kept largely silent on the issue, sharpened its rhetoric significantly. One lever that China has is U.S. agricultural exports and it has said in the past that it could target soybeans.

Especially given todays globalization, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sidelines of an annual meeting of Chinas parliament. China would have to make a justified and necessary response.

China had a record $375.2 billion goods surplus with the United States last year.

Trade tensions between the worlds two largest economies have risen since Trump took office, and although China accounts for only a small fraction of U.S. steel imports, its massive industrial expansion has helped create a global glut of steel that has driven down prices.

The White House has said there could be a 30-day tariff exemption for Mexico and Canada - and some other countries - based on national security. A White House official linked any extension of the exemption to progress in the NAFTA talks..

Most economists and trade specialists say they doubt the steel and aluminum tariffs alone would trigger a global trade war, but point to the risk of further U.S. measures against China as a major tipping point. Trump has also threatened to impose hefty tariffs on European car exports if the EU does take retaliatory measures.
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Shane Reeves is her GOP opponent. He touts himself as a successful small businessman and a novice to politics. Well, he inherited his familys pharmacy business and recently sold it for $66 million. His father was mayor of Murfreesboro, the largest city in the region. In other words, Shane Reeves misrepresents himself rather seriously. Thats the polite way of putting it. Or, maybe like Hope Hicks he tells "little white lies"-- bless his heart (as we say here in the South)!













may reimburse taxpayer money, but you dont have to? Gee, wonder how that goes?). Reeves also opposes Medicaid expansion for Tennessee, favoring public-private partnerships (see our own Zen Trainer's heart-felt plea for Medicaid expansion-- and opposition to Shane Reeves-- here . And why wouldnt he? In July 2016, Reevess own company, TwelveStone Health Partners, was given $1 million of taxpayers hard-earned money in a "reimbursable grant" to fund 200 jobs (so youreimburse taxpayer money, but you dontto? Gee, wonder how that goes?).





Do you like people who hang their clean laundry in public? I kind of dont like it.









Whatever happened to the GOP belief in the virtues of a free and competitive market? Didnt we used to hear an awful lot of Republican bleating about how the Obama Administration was picking winners and losers? This little waltz of corporate welfare was orchestrated by Randy Boyd, currently a candidate for governor and then commissioner of Tennessee Economic and Community Development. After he got the money, Reeves donated $5K to Boyds campaign. According to the Tennessee Star article that is my source for all this, the grants are supposed to be given only in exceptional cases and the newspaper could get no comment from Boyd on what made Reevess case exceptional. The paper reports, too, that as of September 2017, Reeves was employing only 122 workers, not the 200 hed contracted to hire.













Punching Nuns marketing strategy for Shane Reevess company TwelveStone Health Partners To promote his company, Reeves has hired a marketing firm called Punching Nun Group, which obligingly places its clients strategies online together with clients favorable comments. We can see that Reeves whole-heartedly applauds their plan that he use leadership positions in the community to expand so as to better compete with mom-and-pop businesses (if perchance you cant read the tiny print go here ). Or at least thats what the garbled grammar says to me. So, while Reeves may tout himself as standing up for small businesses, hes actually in competition with many of them (healthcare is a major economic driver in central Tennessee) and has already shown a predilection for using his political connections to create an unfair advantage for his own business. If he succeeded in helping pass the public-private partnerships he envisions, I wouldnt want to bet that hed become poorer as a result.













If thats not enough, Reeves loves to brag about his A rating from the NRA, and sent out this flyer AFTER the Parkland massacre. Lovely guy, really. And guns for freedom, not hunting. Sounds just a tad militia-y to my ears.





The wheelings and dealings going on behind the sanctimonious facade is all of a piece with Reevess adoration of Trump, who he insists holds the same Tennessee values of family, faith, and freedom that he claims are the touchstones of his own moral character.













Hmmm... or is he drawn to Trump, the outrageous bigotted womanizer? Because he sure likes to hang with disgraced and despised Congressman Scott DesJarlais-- and contribute to his coffers. In fact, Reeves has hired DesJarlaiss stepson, Tyler Privette, to work on his campaign. In 2016, Privette served as DesJarlaiss campaign coordinator, so it seems unlikely that he has only a small role on Reevess staff.





This cartoon appeared at the time the scandal broke out. DesJarlais did not deny the affairs and ended up paying a fine to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners for his ethical misconduct.









Personally, if I were Reevess campaign manager, I wouldnt advertise that I drew only a handful of people to an event at which a US Congressman appeared. Just sayin.





still couldnt figure out how to prevent her pregnancy? Or, perhaps we should say that the story is not really and truly credible, and DesJarlais is pro-life in DC and pro-choice in Tennessee. Divorce documents from this marriage allege violent behavior by DesJarlais (to some of which he admits) as WaPo reports. DesJarlaiss voting record on domestic violence-- he voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act-- was connected to his past behavior by Democratic opponent Lenda Sherrell. Even Mark Levin called DesJarlais a sleazeball, yet Reeves has contributed $3,000 to DesJarlais and, lets not forget, hired his stepson. Remember DesJarlais? Hes the anti-abortion rights arch-conservative family values Christian Republican and doctor who stepped out on his first wife six times including with patients and subordinates and who paid for at least three abortions ( details here and here ). Hmmm... guess they dont teach what causes pregnancy in med school anymore. His defense of the first abortion his first wife had is astonishing: she had a medical condition that made it inadvisable for her to bear children. So even to protect her, hecouldnt figure out how to prevent her pregnancy? Or, perhaps we should say that the story is not really and truly credible, and DesJarlais is pro-life in DC and pro-choice in Tennessee. Divorce documents from this marriage allege violent behavior by DesJarlais (to some of which he admits) as WaPo reports. DesJarlaiss voting record on domestic violence-- he voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act-- was connected to his past behavior by Democratic opponent Lenda Sherrell. Even Mark Levin called DesJarlais a sleazeball, yet Reeves has contributed $3,000 to DesJarlais and, lets not forget, hired his stepson.





OK, to summarize: weve got a little-white-lie-telling, NRA-touting, Trump mini-me who seems to be positioning himself to use public office for private gain (as I said, Trump mini-me), has kissing-close ties with a disgraced Congressman, and who is doing it all while hiding behind the Bible! Does it get worse? Yes it does!





Tennessees Lt. Gov. weighs in, demonizing Gayle Jordan, perhaps in a way that could incite violence against her. I personally will adopt the "Dangerous Woman" tag to go along with "Nasty Woman!"









eau ddesperation (one could not help but notice, in going through his financials, that Reeves has paid for a poll). Certainly the response from the Twittersphere has been resoundingly pro-Gayle-- and pro-Constitution, I may add-- and several have pledged votes and money to her. The Tennessee GOP has launched a campaign slamming Reevess opponent, Democrat (and fellow Kossack) Gayle Jordan because shes an atheist. SHE, were meant to believe, is a dangerous woman wholl undermine traditional Tennessee values! Given all the above, this is laughable, and it methinks it bears a whiff of(one could not help but notice, in going through his financials, that Reeves has paid for a poll). Certainly the response from the Twittersphere has been resoundingly pro-Gayle-- and pro-Constitution, I may add-- and several have pledged votes and money to her. Here's Gayle fabulous response













And this is where you come in, dear reader! This election in ONE WEEK AWAY-- March 13-- and early voting has already begun (through March 8). Gayle has been running a dynamite campaign, but her opponent is wealthy and she needs our help.





Gayle IS dangerous: shes accomplished, articulate, compassionate. Shes an Ironman athlete, an attorney, a farmer, a mother of four. Her campaign has gained a lot of steam, so its no wonder the GOP is desperate!





Please contribute what you can to Gayles campaign. If youre on Twitter, follow & retweet her to help her get her message out ( @Jordan4SenateTN
On Sunday, Maine Democrats held statewide caucuses. In the state's sprawling 2nd district, a crowded primary yielded the one candidate, Jared Golden, who caucus goers know is the surest bet to beat GOP incumbent Bruce Poliquin. Golden had volunteers at 80% of the caucus locations in the 26,000 square mile district, straight off fresh the Canadian-American Sled Dog races where his campaign raised money for state and local Democratic candidates. And he won just over 90% of the caucus straw poll votes.

Lately Golden has been busy with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445 strike against Hannaford, the second biggest private employer in the state. It was bought by Delhaize, a Belgian company, and then by a Dutch company, Royal Ahold in 2016. Hannaford has 181 stores in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont and New York with over 8,500 employees. Golden did a guest post for us on the strike and why it's important. Please give it a read and if you agree with his sentiments, consider contributing what you can to his campaign here

Over the past year, a question I hear a lot is what do Democrats stand for? Its an interesting question, considering our party is often criticized for being too far in the weeds when talking to everyday people about the issues we stand for.





I believe the challenge our party faces in 2018 is to make clear to voters who we stand for, rather than what we stand for, and that its a mistake to assume working and middle class people believe Democrats are fighting for them, and not for Wall Street, corporations or the wealthy-elite, just because we say we do.





Recently, at a Democratic meeting in Fort Kent, Maine, I told the attendees that I dont care about labels like progressive, conservative, Democrat, Republican or independent. What matters to me is what you do and who you do it for.





As we enter into another election year, the GOP is going to take its only legislative accomplishment of substance, Decembers tax bill, and attempt to sell it to voters as something that benefits working men and women. That was the basic promise Republicans made to the American people, stating the benefit of tax cuts to CEOs and corporations will trickle-down to workers in the form of new jobs and higher wages.





Democrats opposed the GOP tax plan, arguing that the majority of tax breaks should be given directly to working, middle-class people. The GOP, on the other hand, advocated for the same, failed approach of trickle-down economics that gives the majority of tax breaks directly to the super rich and corporations. At its base, this was a debate centered upon who the tax break was for, and the GOP wants to have it both ways.





Here in Maine, however, there are signs that reveal the GOP promise just isnt true. Recently, Delhaize America Distributors refused to negotiate a new contract that would have provided more affordable healthcare and increased wages to its workers. They refused despite large profit increases for Delhaize in 2017, and the sizable corporate tax break it received when the GOP tax plan was passed.





As a result, the union workers from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445 went on strike to demand their fair share from Delhaize. I fully support those union men and women because there is no doubt to me they ought to receive the higher wages and affordable healthcare benefits that were promised to them. Isnt that the promise the GOP made to working class Americans? Corporations should make good on these promises, and if they dont, workers should demand it.





As this debate continues into 2018, Democrats must make clear that our opposition to the GOP tax plan was never about opposition to tax breaks for the working and middle class, but instead, was focused on the wealthy and corporations.





The wealthy and large corporations need to bear a greater share of the weight in this country, and contribute more to the cost of rebuilding America. The working, middle-class has been carrying that weight on its own for far too long. Democrats need to sound off loudly that we will fight to take that crushing weight off working people and place it squarely where it belongs-- with the wealthy and the corporations that can most afford it:
By Kim Yoo-chul



The financial authorities are preparing a plan to allow initial coin offerings (ICOs), digital token-based fundraising rounds, for domestic investors, to advance blockchain-based technologies, according to sources familiar with the issue.



"The financial authorities have been talking to the country's tax agency, justice ministry and other relevant government offices about a plan to allow ICOs in Korea when certain conditions are met," said a source asking for anonymity as he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.



The plan, if implemented, will be a major reversal as last September the government banned ICOs, claiming cryptocurrencies were neither money, nor currency or financial products.



Despite this, the administration has yet to implement the ICO rule and hasn't forced companies to return ICO funds. It also continues to let local investors put money into foreign ICOs and digital currency exchanges operating within the country.



Kang Young-soo, who oversees cryptocurrency trading policies at the Financial Service Commission (FSC), said the country's top financial policy regulator has yet to decide whether to allow ICOs in Korea for domestic investors and companies.



"There are many speculating about the possibility of allowing ICOs. The FSC has acknowledged a third-party view regarding the issue, but there's nothing that we can say officially at the moment," Kang said.



Another source familiar with the country's tax code said he expects the order banning ICOs would only be reversed after the country fixes the legal groundwork for crypto-trading.



"Various scenarios such as the imposition of value-added tax, a capital gains tax, or both on trade; and the collection of corporate tax from local cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as the initiation of authorized exchanges with licenses are being discussed," said the source. He added that allowing ICOs should involve local banks, the justice and finance ministries, and the tax agency to create transparency. This will allow the government to track the history of capital inflow into ICOs.



ICOs are used by startups to raise funds with digital currencies which work through blockchain technologies. In Korea, some startups used ICOs as they require little paperwork, letting companies solicit money directly from investors rather than relying on banks or venture-capital firms (VCs).



When the ICO ban was announced, local startups which had planned to raise seed money through them said they would raise funds overseas, instead.



A trend taking place is that the number of investors interested in ICOs is rising significantly. Also, with increased transparency, more and more investors are able to make better investment decisions when it comes to the offerings. Some analysts say this is the reason companies are gaining larger investments in shorter time periods.



Kang, said the country has no plans to regulate cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, while it tries to work out how to regulate the market.



"Yes, we have to have plans on how to advance blockchain-related technologies and effectively regulate crypto-trading. This is a separate issue," Kang told an industry forum held recently at the National Assembly.






By Yoon Ja-young



Amid escalating tension between the United States and other global powers such as China and the EU over trade, experts point out that Korea, which is highly dependent on trade, will be a scapegoat of protectionism.



"If the United States' multi-directional pressure on trade leads to retaliation by China and EU, fomenting a storm of protectionism in trade, it would be a huge blow to the Korean economy which is highly dependent on trade," said Korea Economic Research Institute President Kwon Tae-shin, Wednesday.



As the United States tries to gain a firmer grip on prices and quotas of imported steel, other countries are considering taking similar countermeasures. When such measures are not limited just to steel, but expand to other items, the entire world, including the EU and China, might be brought into the swirl of protective trade. Experts warn that it would result in losing all the benefits offered by free trade, and bring about undesirable consequences to the global economy.



Following U.S. President Donald Trump's remark that the country will levy 25 percent tariffs on imported steel, the European Union fired back by identifying America's iconic products such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Levi's jeans as items to face EUtariffs as countermeasures.



China is also considering restricting imports of American agriculture produce, such as soybeans, which will be a blow to U.S. farmers who constitute one of the main supporter groups of Trump. China purchases one third of the entire U.S. soybean production.



Canada, which is one of the traditional allies of the United States, also says it will take action. "Should restrictions be imposed on Canadian steel and aluminum products, Canada will take appropriate, responsive measures to defend our trade interests and our workers," said Canada's foreign minister Chrystia Freeland.



Kim Jong-hoon, Korea's former chief negotiator for the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS FTA), said Trump will continue his current course of action.



"The unilateral trade policy of Trump seems to be based on political motivation ahead of the U.S. midterm elections scheduled in November, and hence the current mode will continue for a while. If retaliation by economic blocs such as China and EU lead to mutual escalation, it would be detrimental to Korea's exports and economy," he added.



The former top negotiator advised Korea to take joint action with other countries.



"When Korea chooses settlement options such as the one through WTO, it should use international public opinion by taking joint action with other countries in the same position," he said.



"As the negotiation table is open, thanks to the KORUS FTA revision talks, the government can use it to ease U.S. pressure."



Kim also stressed that U.S. industries and politicians whose interests are directly related with Korea's trade and investment should be secured as friendly forces.



The country's trade ministry, meanwhile, is pouring in efforts for outreach in the United States to cope with the steel issue.



Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong left for the United States from March 6 to 9, only four days since his Feb. 25 to March 2 trip. At that time, he met major figures of the Trump administration including former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross as well as politicians and representatives of manufacturing and agriculture for outreach and goodwill.



During meetings, Kim stressed that Korean steel is not threatening the U.S. steel industry while contributing to the U.S. economy through investment.



In fact, Korean steel exports to the United States dropped to 3.4 million tons in 2017 from 4.97 million tons in 2014, marking a 31.5 percent decrease. Korea's stake in the U.S. steel market also fell to 3.5 percent from 4.6 percent during the same period.



Meanwhile, Korean steelmakers created 33,000 jobs in the United States through $5.7 billion in investment. Korean carmakers also operating an automobile factories in the United States.



There is growing concern within the United States that Trump's tariffs on steel will incur huge damage to U.S. automobile and airplane manufacturers as well as U.S. consumers.



According to Goldman Sachs, the tariffs planned by Trump would decrease annual profits of Ford and GM by $1 billion each. Ford said in a statement that the tariffs can hurt competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers by raising costs of raw materials.



In a letter sent to key figures of the United States, Federation of Korean Industries pointed out that Korea is one of the core allies of the U.S., being one of only three countries that have signed a bilateral mutual defense treaty with the U.S. It also stresses Korean companies' contribution to the U.S. economy, through investments that more than doubled since 2012, as well as over a 10 billion dollar annual surplus the United States is reaping in the services trade with Korea.



Cheon Yong-chan, a senior researcher at Hyundai Research Institute, said that Korean businesses should upgrade their technology in the long run.



"Growing protectionism in major countries will become a major hurdle to recovery of Korea's economy. Businesses should upgrade technology and enhance competitiveness of major export items," he said.



He added that bolstering networks and partnerships with local companies overseas will help minimize the fallout of the protectionism.














By Kang Hyun-kyung



A social media-driven collective action to bring down sexually abusive men occurred in Korea in October 2016, a year before the #MeToo movement hit Hollywood like an earthquake.





Novelist Park Bum-shin / Korea Times file




Jung Ku-ho, left, executive director of HERA Seoul Fashion Week, speaks at a press conference at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul, Tuesday. /Courtesy of Seoul Design Foundation



By Rachel Lee



Top Korean designers will be unveiling their 2018 fall and winter collections at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul from March 19-24, beginning with a hanbok show to herald the overall concept _ Korean beauty.



The HERA Seoul Fashion Week will have 37 designer brands, and two companies are expected to participate, and the Generation Next Seoul, a trade show started two years ago, will present 13 shows and 90 rising designer brands, according to organizer Seoul Design Foundation.

Hanbok designer Kim Hye-soon will grace the stage with her authentic collection in the opening ceremony on the very first day. This will be the first time for the Korean costume designer to open the trade show.



"I hope this will be an opportunity to introduce our traditional costumes to the world out there," said Jung Ku-ho, executive director of Seoul Fashion Week.



The show will be a reinterpretation of hanbok in a "modern" way adding fun elements, Jung added.



The director said he has always been interested in and has appreciated traditional values and beauty, shown by participating in historical film productions and showcasing traditional furniture collections.



Fashion week is not just a festival where people enjoy pretty clothes on runways. After all, it is a business.

Along with such initiatives, the organizers have been discussing ways to support rising designers and collaborate with established organizations including the British Fashion Council all during the event, Jung said.



"In addition to the fashion show, we are planning on supporting designers to stably enter overseas markets such as fashion shows, London shows, and more," the director said.



Last month, the Korea Creative Content Agency showcased eight Korean fashion brands at the British Fashion Council's showspace at 180 The Strand. The artists included Anne and The Crwd, Beauton, Bmuete(TE), Gayeon Lee, Kimmy.J and Moon Lee.







Models wear creations of Kimmy.J's 2018 spring and summer collection at the HERA Seoul Fashion Week at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul in October last year. / Courtesy of Seoul Design Foundation
Chung Eui-yong, left, head of the National Security Office, speaks to reporters at Incheon International Airport, Thursday. / Yonhap



South Korean President Moon Jae-in's top security adviser left Thursday for the United States to explain the outcome of his recent trip to North Korea that led to what many here have called "exceptional" concessions from the communist state, such as plans for an inter-Korean summit.

Chung Eui-yong, head of the National Security Office, has quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying the North is willing to suspend all its military provocations, including ballistic missile tests, as long as U.S.-North Korea dialogue was in progress.

He will directly explain the outcome of his Pyongyang trip to the highest U.S. officials during his three-day visit to Washington, an official from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae told reporters.

The U.S. officials he will meet with are widely expected to include National Security Advisor Herbert McMaster and State Secretary Rex Tillerson.

Both Washington and Pyongyang have expressed their willingness to talk, but the U.S. is still seen to be skeptical about the North's intentions.

Following the two-day trip by Moon's special envoys to North Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump said the North appeared to be "sincere."

In an unprecedented meeting with the South Korean officials, Kim also said his country was willing to denuclearize in exchange for a security guarantee.

Chung earlier said he carried additional messages for the U.S. from North Korea.

Moon's special envoys included Suh Hoon, the chief of South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service. He, too, headed to Washington on Thursday, according to the Cheong Wa Dae official.

Chung and Suh will later visit China, Japan and Russia to inform them of the outcome of their North Korea trip.

The three countries, along with the U.S., are involved in the six-nation talks aimed at ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. The talks, also attended by the two Koreas, have stalled since late 2008. (Yonhap)
Analysts question whether NK buying time to complete ICBM



By Kim Jae-kyoung



The latest agreement between the two Koreas for an inter-Korean summit is paving the way to find a potential breakthrough in the North Korea nuclear crisis, experts said Thursday.



They, however, called on Seoul and Washington to remain prudent because the North's peace overture could be a calibrated strategy aimed at buying time to complete its nuclear-tipped long-range missile.



They expect that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will demand a withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea in return for giving up its nuclear weapons.



"This is a positive development. What Kim Jong-un is requesting is what was provided in the Sept. 19, 2005, Joint Statement," Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks with North Korea, told The Korea Times.



From his perspective, the North's willingness to halt nuclear tests and missile launches should be sufficient to get the U.S. to the table to discuss denuclearization and the requested security assurances Kim wants.



However, DeTrani, currently a professor at Missouri State University's Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies in Fairfax, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), said the key is moving forward, knowing Kim wants a halt to joint military exercises and the lifting of sanctions.



"These are all negotiable for complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," he said.



The view came after Cheong Wa Dae announced Tuesday that the two Koreas agreed to hold an inter-Korean summit at the truce village of Panmunjeom at the end of April.



Pyongyang also expressed its willingness to hold talks with Washington on denuclearization, saying it could give up its nuclear weapons if the safety of its regime was guaranteed.





William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said that these are very welcome developments on several fronts.



"The summit is to be on neutral ground, in Panmunjom, not Pyongyang. North Korea is apparently willing to discuss denuclearization, and the upcoming exercises are said not to interfere with the process," he said.



"Pyongyang may have a somewhat different spin but there is potential here for a real breakthrough."



Sean King, senior vice president of Park Strategies, echoed the view, saying that it's worth noting that next month's inter-Korean summit will be on the south side of Panmunjom.



"As such, this means the summit won't be the usual tributary pilgrimage north as in 2000 and 2007," he said.



"This is a symbolic climb down for Kim Jong-un and should at least give Moon Jae-in some perceived leverage."



Regarding the possibility of Pyongyang giving up nuclear weapons, the analysts said that it is going to be a long and difficult negotiating process.



Brown, who previously worked for the CIA and the National Intelligence Council, believes that guaranteeing safety, in North Korea's mind, might mean the withdrawal of U.S. Forces from Korea.



"I don't think the U.S. can guarantee the safety of the regime, say from internal disruption," he said.



"But we can, and should, guarantee that we would not initiate an attack on a North Korea that does not have nuclear weapons, and that we would never use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state."



Will NK give up nukes?



King, a New York-based East Asia specialist, stressed that South Korea and the U.S. should not forget the North traditionally defines the safety of its regime as the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula and an end to the U.S.-South Korean mutual defense treaty.



This, he believes, will expose the South to northern coercion and/or a second North Korean invasion.



"That means we'd be right back to where we were before the Korean War, again leaving the South vulnerable," he said.



He pointed out that the North's nukes would have in effect already served their purpose without ever having been used and the South could be there for the taking.



Tara O, adjunct fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS, doubts that North Korea is serious about giving up its nuclear weapons.



She noted that the North talked about a nuclear freeze in the past and that there were agreements to do so but it did not follow through.



"North Korea continued to develop nuclear weapons even while the talks were going on," she said.



"With the U.S. having all options on the table, North Korea is afraid of potential strikes. North Korea wants to buy time until it completes a nuclear-tipped ICBM, which can strike the U.S."



The analysts expect that U.S. President Donald Trump will eventually respond positively to a peace overture from the recalcitrant North Korean leader.



"Trump's always indicated a willingness to engage the North directly and the latest news gives him the diplomatic and political cover to do so," King said.



"I just hope we don't give away anything meaningful when talking. For example, sanctions must stay."


North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's wife Ri Sol-ju shakes hands with Chung Eui-yong, who led South Korean President Moon Jae-in's envoys, before a dinner at the Workers' Party of Korea headquarters in Pyongyang, Monday. / Yonhap



By Kim Rahn



President Moon Jae-in's envoys to North Korea could watch South Korean and foreign broadcasts and use South Korean portal sites at their lodging, a Cheong Wa Dae official said Thursday.



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was also well aware of his image and assessment portrayed by foreign media.



The special envoys, who visited Pyongyang from Monday to Tuesday, said they were not intensely guarded at their lodging, Kobangsan Guest House, using a whole floor of the resort and allowed to walk freely in the resort compound.



In their rooms, dozens of international TV channels were available, including South Korea's KBS, MBC and YTN as well as the U.S.' CNN and China's CCTV, the official quoted the envoys as saying.



"They said they could use South Korean portals, such as Naver and Daum, on the computer in the room," the official said on condition of anonymity.



According to the envoys, the North Korean leader was well aware of his image described by foreign media, which was not favorable to him, but he talked about it lightly and even with jokes.



The envoys said Kim showed many unexpected  positively unexpected  actions. They expected they would meet him on the second day, but upon arrival in Pyongyang, they were told they would meet him that evening.



At the meeting at the headquarters of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim and his sister Kim Yo-jong greeted them at the entrance. The meeting also finished smoothly after only about an hour, as Kim had prepared almost all responses to Moon's earlier proposals and opinions relayed by Kim Yo-jong after her visit to the South in February.



After the meeting, the envoys moved to another room in the building for dinner, and Kim and his wife Ri Sol-ju were waiting for them outside the room.



Kim Yo-jong, who had met some of the five members of the envoys during her Seoul visit, was friendly and thoughtful to them during the dinner, asking them whether they liked the food.



"During her visit here, South Korean officials asked her about famous North Korean foods, such as onban (rice in chicken soup) and Pyongyang naengmyeon (cold noodles). And the envoys were served onban at the dinner, and naengmyeon at the lunch the next day," the official said.


"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne





"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the Ground

Who is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown





Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level

and then beat you with experience. -- Mark Twain





"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers








By Jung Min-ho







The Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Koreans about traveling to Sri Lanka amid anti-Muslim riots in Kandy and neighboring regions.





"We advise Koreans traveling or living there to pay extra attention to your safety," the ministry said Wednesday on Facebook. "Please be aware that violence started from Kandy. Be careful if you have to visit there and, when you do, avoid going near protests or rallies."





According to foreign media reports, the violence began after a group of young Muslims beat up a Sinhalese driver. Following the incident, angry mobs made up of the majority Buddhist Sinhalese ethnic group attacked many houses and stores belonging to Muslims and at least one mosque.





In response, the Sri Lankan government has declared a state of emergency in Kandy and Ampara. The measures may include arrests and searches without warrant, and curfews in some locations.





Other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, also issued travel warnings for Sri Lanka this week.


By Kim Rahn





President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook join in a prayer service during a breakfast meeting with Christian groups at KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. / Yonhap




By Oh Young-jin







Amid the spreading #MeToo movement, a native English-speaking teacher at a girls' high school was recently fired over allegations of sexually molesting students and calling the East Sea the "Japan Sea." It was the victimized students who told the school of his misbehavior.







According to Yonhap News, the instructor, who worked at the school in Cheongju, was booked without physical detention on suspicion of sexually molesting students. The school also terminated his contract.







The former instructor is from Western Europe and worked at the school for seven years.







The school became aware of his misbehavior in May last year and asked police to investigate.







The school confronted him with its findings and he admitted making unwanted physical contact with the students, and racial and sexually offensive remarks.







He had allegedly forced his face into the students' faces despite their objections and linked arms with them at random in the school hall.







He was quoted as telling students that kissing a woman with dental braces would make Western men horny.







He also allegedly told the students that Korea and Japan should share Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo rather than fighting over them.







The school said there had been discrepancies in accounts by the fired instructor and students, so it passed the case to police.







An education office official said the teacher may have not have had ill intentions but the students said they felt offended.






By Jung Min-ho







Top military officials seriously considered suppressing a nationwide candlelight vigil by force after former President Park Geun-hye was impeached by the National Assembly in late 2016, the Center for Military Human Rights Korea (CMHRK) claimed Thursday.





Citing sources in the military, the CMHRK said senior officials, including Major General Koo Hong-mo, discussed in detail scenarios of quelling millions of street protesters across the nation.





"It is very shocking that they considered using military forces to quell the peaceful protest," the center said. "The military mapped out a plan to trample on citizens with guns and swords in order to suck up to those in power like they did 40 years ago in Gwangju. It is tantamount to a rebellion conspiracy."





If the Constitutional Court had dismissed the Assembly's impeachment motion, the officials would have put that plan into action, according to the center. But in March 2017, the court ruled unanimously to remove the former president from office.





The center urged the government to investigate everyone allegedly involved in the scheme, including former Defense Minister Han Min-goo and Major General Koo. It also demands that the presidential office withdraw the garrison decree, which allows a president to mobilize the military without the Assembly's consent.



The ministry said it will look into the allegation.
#MeToo is all the rage in South Korea. The Korea Times daily updates new claims you should not miss. -- ED.



31 celebs under investigation



Police said 40 people, including 31 well-known figures, are under formal investigation over #MeToo accusations. Among them are actor Jo Min-ki, play director Lee Yoon-taek and Cho Jeung-yoon, head of an acting troupe, according to the National Police Agency. Musician Nam Goong Yeon and film director Kim Ki-duk were not added to the list because investigators were unable to contact their alleged victims.



Pastor



A pastor was struck by #MeToo accusations. An alleged victim told the Hankook Ilbo, a sister daily of The Korea Times, she was molested by a chief pastor of a church in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, 10 years ago. The alleged perpetrator, surnamed Lee, 74, is a co-chair of the Christian Council of Korea. She claimed the pastor started molesting her after she divorced.



Judge



The Supreme Court launched an investigation into allegations a male judge spoke "sexually humiliating" words to a female lawyer over the phone in mid-February. The lawyer recently filed a complaint with the court and its audit office is handling the investigation. According to the Joong-Ang Ilbo daily, the incident happened during phone consulting between the lawyer and a male client, who later turned out to be an incumbent judge. The alleged victim claimed he started the communication with gentle questions about divorce but turned rude gradually with "sexually humiliating questions."



#MeToo-hit ex-governor





The government will toughen punishment for sexual violence in the workplace as the #MeToo movement rages on.

It plans to raise the maximum punishment and extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases involving abuse of power at work. According to the plan, the maximum prison sentence for obtaining sex through abuse will be raised to 10 years from five years. The statute of limitations will also be extended to 10 years from the present seven-year threshold. For sexual harassment cases, the maximum punishment will be raised to five years from the present two-year ceiling. The statute of limitations will be lengthened to seven years from five. The government also said it plans to pursue criminal cases against those who cover up, ignore or abet sex-related crimes within organizations or groups. It will also revise regulations automatically to ban subsidies to such private entities. Chief executives of private companies that do not take disciplinary action in sexual harassment cases could also face jail time, according to the government. The justice ministry is considering raising the maximum penalty to a prison sentence from the present fine of 5 million won ($4,680) or below.


South Korea on Thursday announced measures to toughen punishment on sexual violence in the workplace, responding to growing calls to root out the pervasive culture of predatory sexual behavior at work.

The government announced a plan to raise the maximum punishment and extend the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases involving abuse of power at work, as seen in cases of An Hee-jung, former South Chungcheong Province governor accused of raping his secretary multiple times, and theatrical writer-director Lee Youn-taek, who is accused of sexually assaulting numerous female junior colleagues.

According to the new plan, the maximum prison sentence for obtaining sex through abuse will be raised to 10 years from the current five years. The statute of limitations will also be extended to 10 years from the current 7-year threshold.

For sexual harassment cases, maximum punishment will be raised to five years from the current two-year ceiling. Statute of limitation will be lengthened to seven years from the current 5-year period.

The government also said it plans to actively pursue criminal cases against those who cover up, ignore or abet sex-related crimes within organizations or groups. It will also revise regulations to automatically ban subsidies to such private entities.

Chief executives of private companies that do not take disciplinary actions against sexual harassments cases could also face jail time, according to the government. The justice ministry is considering raising the maximum penalty to a prison sentence from the current fine of 5 million won ($4,680) or below.












Defense Minister Song Young-moo shakes hands with U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift after a meeting at the ministry in Yongsan, central Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



Defense Minister Song Young-moo hinted Thursday that South Korea and the United States may keep their upcoming joint military exercises low-key in consideration of the peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula.



In a meeting with the outgoing U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift, Song half-jokingly said the U.S. does not have to deploy strategic weapons during the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle drills slated to begin at the end of this month. Swift will end his three-year term in May.



"You need not send strategic weapons  such as nuclear-powered submarines  this time while serving as commander," Song said.



This was apparently a joke to sympathize with Swift who has had to contend with the escalating nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. However, Song's remarks raised speculation that the allies have already agreed to scale down the exercises.



The meeting between Song and Swift came amid thawing inter-Korean relations with both sides agreeing to hold a summit late next month.



South Korea hopes to extend the rare momentum for peace and reduce military tension on the peninsula by engaging in repeated dialogue with the North.



The regular military drills, delayed until after the closing of the PyeongChang Paralympics, has been one of the major sources of conflict between Seoul and Pyongyang, drawing frequent massive criticism from the North.



President Moon Jae-in has also reiterated his hope to enhance the ongoing reconciliatory ties with Pyongyang. Moon, however, also needs to take into consideration the alliance with the U.S. and unpredictable military provocations from the North.



Against this backdrop, rumors are that Seoul and Washington may further delay the drills, but overseas media said Thursday the upcoming exercises will begin March 31



CNN quoted two defense sources as saying the U.S. has come to an agreement with the South to begin the drills at the end of this month.



A Joint Chiefs of Staff official said: "The defense ministry cannot comment on specific timelines of the exercises until after Song and his U.S. counterpart James Mattis confirm the date in public before the end of the month." The official declined to comment further, citing a recent non-circumvention, non-disclosure (NCND) agreement signed by the two defense chiefs.



Last month, North Korea held what critics call a "silent" military parade, a day before the opening of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, as part of its efforts to minimize unnecessary provocations and join the peace momentum during the sporting event.



The rare gesture for inter-Korean reconciliation has taken shape faster than expected, with the two Koreas exchanging delegations and reaching a consensus to hold a summit in the southern part of the demilitarized zone for the first time in history.



Defense cost talks



On Thursday, Seoul and Washington held their first round of defense cost sharing negotiations to decide how much the South, starting next year, should pay toward the costs of to stationing 28,500 American troops here, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.



Twenty high-ranking officials from the nation's foreign and defense ministries are expected to hold a series of talks with their American counterparts during the three-day meeting to renew the five-year agreement, which expires at the end of the year.



The foreign ministry has yet to unveil the details, and plans to make public the outcome after completing the negotiations being held in Honolulu.




By Lee Kyung-min



Former South Chungcheong Province Governor An Hee-jung, accused of raping his secretary, cancelled his planned press conference Thursday, after another sexual misconduct allegation against him surfaced Wednesday night. An called off the press conference just two hours before it was scheduled to take place, a move widely seen as an attempt to avoid questions about a second victim who spoke up against him. "I decided that it would be best for me to submit to prosecution questioning," An said via his aide. "I urge the prosecution to summon me as soon as possible so that I can tell everything to the prosecutors myself."



The abrupt decision came amid increasing public anger against An as a second victim made a similar allegation on nationally televised news on JTBC late Wednesday, only two hours after he said he would make clarifications about an earlier allegation made by former aide Kim Ji-eun, late Monday.



The alleged second victim, whose identity is being withheld, said she was raped and sexually harassed on seven occasions over two years while she worked for An, the then-head of a policy think-tank in Mapo, Seoul. She said An first touched her body at an after-work get-together in October 2015 and he raped her at a hotel in Seoul last January, which were among seven sexual assaults he made against her. She said she was unable to reject his sexual advances due to his powerful position in politics.



Her comments were similar to an earlier statement made by Kim who said An raped her on four occasions over the past eight months. Kim, who had been serving as his public relations manager in the lead up to the presidential election last year, became his political affairs secretary after he failed to win the presidential race. Kim, who continued to refer to An as "governor," instead of "perpetrator" or "assaulter" during the interview said she was unable to reject his advances, sexual or otherwise because she was in a position where she always had to say yes to him even when everybody else could say no. Kim said the incident was the result of abuse of power, as she was not in an equal position to An, denying his claim that the sexual relations were consensual.



Kim said she decided to come forward as An tried to rape her Feb. 25, when the #MeToo movement was increasingly gaining public support, a month after woman prosecutor, Seo Ji-hyun, publicly alleged that she was groped by then-senior justice ministry official, Ahn Tae-geun, at a funeral eight years ago. An, Kim said, apologized to her asking whether she was okay, which she considered meaningless as he again tried to rape her later in the day.



Investigators with the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office began an investigation into the case following a complaint filed by Kim late Tuesday. A four-member team under the district office searched an apartment studio in Mapo, where Kim said she was raped, to secure surveillance video footage on the day the alleged incident occurred. The team will also review whether An abused the office of the South Chungcheong Province Governorship to sexually assault her, as she alleged. The team said, however, it has not yet begun an investigation into the claim raised by the second victim.



Meanwhile, a group of unidentified men moved about ten boxes containing documents out of the office of the think-tank in Mapo early in the morning, drawing suspicion that An sought to destroy evidence ahead of the full-blown investigation. An official at the think-tank reportedly said moving the documents had no bearing on the investigation.

The South Chungcheong Province Government accepted An's resignation, tendered hours after the broadcast aired. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) expelled him and permanently removed him from party membership, Tuesday.



Meanwhile, the government unveiled strengthened anti-sex crime measures to impose harsher punishment on those who engage in sexual misconduct by abusing power against workers of lower rank. Under the revised law, those who abuse power to commit rape will be subject to a prison term of up to ten years and a fine of up to 50 million won ($46,700), far harsher than the status quo _ a prison term of up to five years or a fine of up to 15 million won. Those who abuse their power to grab or fondle a subordinate will be subject to a prison term of up to five years or a fine of up to 30 million won _ more harsh than the current punishment of a two-year prison term or a 5 million won fine.

The statute of limitations for such offenses will be also extended to ten years from the current seven for rape, and seven to current five for grabbing or fondling, respectively.


By Kim Bo-eun



National Security Office chief Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service director Suh Hoon plan to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House to deliver a message from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, South Korean officials said Thursday.



Chung and Suh met Kim in Pyongyang this week as leaders of President Moon Jae-in's special envoy team. They left for Washington, Thursday, for a two-day visit, which is likely to be centered on arranging dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea over denuclearization.



Upon arrival in Washington, they will meet National Security Advisor Herbert MacMaster and Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo.



The two envoys are also scheduled to meet with secretaries of relevant departments, before meeting President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, possibly today (local time). Details of the envoys' itinerary have yet to be fixed, according to Cheong Wa Dae.



"The most pressing agenda is to enable dialogue between North Korea and the U.S.," Chung told reporters before departing from Incheon International Airport, Thursday.



In the North Korean leader's meeting with South Korean officials Monday, Kim stated Pyongyang has no reason to possess nuclear weapons if the safety of its regime was guaranteed. He also stated North Korea was willing to talk with the U.S. about its denuclearization and normalizing relations between the two states.



Aside from North Korea's stance unveiled in the talks, the envoys are set to deliver an additional message from Kim.



On Tuesday, Chung told reporters the envoys "have an additional stance of North Korea that will be delivered to the U.S." but declined to give any details.



Speculations are that the message could be about halting the development of its intercontinental ballistic missiles or the release of three Americans the regime is detaining as conditions for talks with Washington.



A Cheong Wa Dae official referred to these as "presumptions."





Kim vs. Trump



The South China Morning Post reported Thursday that Pyongyang's proposal could be sending Kim Jong-un's younger sister Kim Yo-jong as an envoy to Washington, citing an anonymous South Korean diplomatic source.



Kim Yo-jong visited South Korea as part of a high-level delegation to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics last month. In a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, she invited him to Pyongyang for a summit. The South Korean envoys were sent to Pyongyang this week as a response to the proposition.



According to other reports, the message contains details on Pyongyang's willingness to have dialogue with Washington, and its denuclearization.



The Cheong Wa Dae official was cited as saying "the only people who know (what the message is) are the five special envoys to the North and President Moon Jae-in."



Chung, however, is known to have spoken via telephone with MacMaster after returning from Pyongyang.



It is yet to be seen whether the message will be disclosed by the U.S. or South Korean governments.



The envoys will return to Seoul, Sunday. Chung will then head to China and Russia, and Suh to Japan.



Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha is also set to visit Washington. According to reports, she could possibly meet with her counterpart Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss arrangements for a U.S.-NK dialogue. Lee Do-hoon, the special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, may accompany the minister.



Foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk said Thursday details of the visit were still being arranged.


By Lee Min-hyung



Seoul and Pyongyang will hold talks about military and family reunions after both sides have their first-ever summit at the southern part of the demilitarized zone at the end of April, officials said Thursday.



According to the Ministry of Unification, the two Koreas are highly likely to hold a series of inter-Korean dialogue sometime in a near future following the upcoming summit.



"We believe the South and North will speed up their negotiation to conduct talks about military and family reunions, as they reached a consensus to have a summit in April at the truce village," a unification ministry official said.



On Monday, President Moon jae-in sent a group of his special envoys to Pyongyang. They met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and upon their return to Seoul, they announced that the two Koreas agreed on the time and place for the summit.



In July last year, the unification ministry offered the North to resume dialogue in a peace gesture to enhance inter-Korean relations.



"During the previous summits, both Koreas actively held additional talks to follow up on the agreements made by leaders from both sides," said the official. "Things will follow in a similar vein this time to restore inter-Korean relations."



In high-level talks held this January, the North agreed to hold the talks about the military. But the regime has yet to confirm whether to hold talks about the Red Cross, the key theme of which will be the family reunions.



As agendas have been discussed with the North in recent months and both sides are in a rare mood for reconciliation, dialogue will likely take place sometime soon after the summit, according to the official.



Last year, the Korean Red Cross proposed talks to discuss humanitarian issues with the North. They include the reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. The last of the inter-Korean family reunions took place in October 2015.


By Michael Bergmann





German reunification was achieved, from my viewpoint now as a middle-aged hobby strategist, by West-German policies of partially joining the American "pressure" campaign while pursuing parallel engagement of both the East-German regime and people. Chancellor Helmut Kohl's crucial decision was to continue his pre-predecessor Willy Brandt's "Ostpolitik," the set of foreign and inter-German policies which Kohl's conservative party had fiercely opposed, not unlike the South Korean conservatives of today. With this and another irony, Kohl could become the hero of the East-German revolution of 1989-90.



But when you ask the teenager in me who witnessed the miracle, I will tell you a somewhat different story, not a story of winners and losers, heroes and enemies, but a story of humanity undefeated by "forces."



I had grown up in a small town on the western side of the border. Correctly speaking, the border was north of my hometown at a distance very similar to the one I have now from Seoul to the North. I had often seen the enormous fences, the watchtowers and landmine warnings, as well as the mysterious villages across the border. And until the summer of 1989, I had been told that we would more likely experience a Third World War, with Germany as the first battlefield, than the opening of the border in our lifetime.



Spring 1990, around my 17th birthday: Three teenagers on bicycles, two boys and one girl, demanded their right to unrestricted movement, now guaranteed in both directions by both governments, and expressed their will to pedal to the "village over there." I remember us being guided by police through a fenced area. The new fence had been built to guarantee pedestrians' safe passage through the "Death Strip." I remember this landmine-free zone within the Death Zone as narrow for our bicycles, but we made it, friendly assisted, and returned one or two hours later. The half-deserted village was the most boring place on earth, but our journey there left a memory of freedom that had won over fear.



A related memory I recall from this time is the question in my head: Whom had we been afraid of? No one can, of course, deny the dangers of landmines, nuclear bombs and missiles. But those representatives of the fallen regime, stripped of the impressive titles we had heard echoing through walls and fences, directly exposed then to the cameras and microphones of the free media, stuttered gibberish and looked like clumsy granddads lucky enough to have reached retirement.



This thought came back to me when I read Choi Sung-jin's Feb. 27 column "Don't overestimate your enemy" in The Korea Times. Yes, a "demonized enemy" is much more dangerous than the bankrupts, control freaks, criminals or spoiled heirs they really are. Should we risk a war to fight the demon in our mind? Or should we deal with real human opponents, as strong and as weak as they are?





Michael Bergmann (bergmann2473@yahoo.de) is a teacher in Seoul.


By John J. Metzler





UNITED NATIONS  Following the celebratory Lunar New Year holiday, China's ruling Communist Party announced that Chairman Xi Jinping, the current president, would be allowed to stay in office beyond the constitutionally proscribed two-term limit.







A tweaking of the constitution would allow in effect Xi, who assumed power in 2013, the opportunity to remain in power as long as he wishes.







Why give up when you are having so much fun? After all it's Chairman Xi who promoted the visionary "China Dream" plan and who's engineering the massive "Belt and Road Initiative" which signals both China's global infrastructure building ambitions and strategic outreach program.







So now as the rubber-stamp National People's Congress dutifully meets in Beijing for its annual clap/cheer/chant session it appears that riveting constitutional change will be on the agenda too.







Why is this so troubling for China and the wider world? We know Beijing's authoritarian polity offers the usual mix of economic prosperity amid fanciful figures, tub thumping nationalism, and self-righteous historiography, all set to the clap on cue chorus of the National People's Congress.







But since the more rational days of the post-Mao era, the "deal" that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) struck is that the paramount leaders of the world's most populous country, would scrupulously stick to a decade in power before handing the mandate of heaven to the next comrade in line.







Significantly the system allowed for collective leadership, which often resembled the board of directors of China Inc., more than the aged Politburo of the Maoist era.







This all started with Deng Xiaoping who, as a victim of the horrors of Maoism and the so-called Cultural Revolution, feared that the rule of a cult-like figure as was Mao Zedong was not only a domestic disaster but a dangerous harbinger for the future. To his credit, Deng paved the path for agricultural and economic reforms which led to some freedoms which during the past generation have certainly changed China for the better.







Yet the political structure remains profoundly static and unchanged with the ruling Communist Party as the sole arbiter of power. Nonetheless to assume Xi's accession to the CCP's undisputed pinnacle of dictatorship equals a return to the dark Maoist era remains problematic.







Despite his iron grip on Chinese politics, and the CCP censorship in the state-run media, the economic genie is long out of the bottle. Middle class Chinese traveling to Europe or the U.S. see for themselves that there's a prosperous outside world.







Whether or not Chairman Xi likes it, Mainland China has profoundly changed since Mao the "Great Helmsman" died in 1976. Despite its continuing political atrophy, China nonetheless has a strong business sector which has thrust the PRC into one of the world's major economies and commercial forces.







The China of Mao's era was an agricultural land besot by deep poverty, inefficient production and a smug socialist self-reliance which guaranteed the PRC would stay poor. This is no longer the case.







Contrary to Western perceptions, China is hardly a booming market economy as much as a mercantile Corporate State under the leadership and patronage of the CCP and its various family cousins and sycophants.







Many Chinese even among the educated and entrepreneurial classes have made a kind of Faustian pact with the CCP; the current system until now has provided order, prosperity and national pride without recourse to a heavy-handed secret police, the ubiquitous labor reform camps, and perennial shortages.







There's always been a strong element inside China which remains captivated, indeed enchanted by the totalitarian temptation. Namely the sanguinary appeal of brute power, which characterized the Peoples' Republic from its inception in 1949, until the years immediately after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on democracy. It equally encourages Beijing's geopolitical threats both against democratic Taiwan as well as its military expansion in the South China Sea, the Mare Nostrum of Chairman Xi.







But there's still the tug of war between Shanghai's bling-bling society and economy versus the vast reaches of "China profound" where grit and hardscrabble living still encompass the majority. That unseen Chinese majority is probably closer to Chairman Xi's coercive charms than Western democrats would care to imagine.







From the time of the missionaries and merchants until today's high-tech giants, Western eyes have traditionally viewed China through the prism of wishful thinking mixed with occasional distain and contempt.







The rationalized paradigm that the People's Republic has no choice but to "change," especially given this generation of amazing socioeconomic development, presupposes that change will be one of our liking. Xi Jinping begs to differ.









John J. Metzler (





jjmcolumn@earthlink.net ) is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China."


Sad to see another president face corruption probe



The prosecution summoned conservative former President Lee Myung-bak, who served from February 2008 until February 2013, to appear March 14 for questioning as a criminal suspect over a range of irregularities, including bribery.



Lee is at the center of a widening bribery scandal involving the National Intelligence Service. Prosecutors suspect that Lee instructed his aides to take illicit money from the state intelligence agency. They will also look into Lee's involvement in a string of management irregularities at his brother's auto parts manufacturer DAS, which they suspect Lee actually owns. The former president is also facing allegations that he received kickbacks from the Woori Financial Group.



It is truly embarrassing for the nation that all of the living former heads of state have been embroiled in corruption scandals.



If he appears at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office as scheduled, the businessman-turned-politician is the fourth former president to face questioning. The late Roh Moo-hyun was questioned over bribery allegations shortly before his suicide in May 2009. Roh Tae-woo and Park Geun-hye appeared before the prosecution in 1995 and 2017, respectively. Chun Doo-hwan refused to comply with the summons in an infamous address in front of his residence in 1995 and was subsequently arrested. Park was removed early from office in 2017 and is on trial for corruption, with the verdict on charges of bribery and other irregularities due soon. Prosecutors recently demanded 30 years of prison term.



Korean presidents have a tendency to blame political foes when they are faced with corruption charges. Lee has also claimed that the prosecution's probe is political retaliation by the liberal Moon Jae-in administration for Roh's death. He held a press conference in January to make such claims, which triggered outrage from President Moon, who was one of Roh's key aides.



Lee's remarks are a serious affront to the rule of law. As a former leader, he should feel ashamed that he has been linked to corruption allegations and apologize to the people.



Public sentiment is not favorable toward him, as shown by a recent survey which showed that almost 70 percent of the people think he should be detained while the prosecution investigates his case.



Lee's next step should be to comply with the summons and provide only a truthful account regarding all the suspicions against him. He must stop blaming politics for the misfortunes he now faces.




Export-Import Bank of Korea Chairman Eun Sung-soo, left, speaks during a press conference at the Korea Development Bank (KDB) headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul, Thursday. On his right is KDB Chairman Lee Dong-gull. / Yonhap



By Nam Hyun-woo, Jhoo Dong-chan



The government said Thursday it has decided to salvage troubled shipbuilder STX Offshore & Shipbuilding through a self-rescue plan, while filing for court receivership for the debt-ridden Sungdong Shipbuilding.



During a ministerial meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul, Deputy Prime Minister Kim Dong-yeon said: "Court receivership for Sungdong is inevitable, and STX requires more serious self-rescue efforts to keep it afloat."



The two shipbuilders are heavily indebted to Korea's two state-run banks, as they have struggled with snowballing losses amid unfavorable oil prices and the worldwide industry downturn. The Korea Development Bank (KDB) is the main creditor of STX and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank) manages Sungdong, holding a 67.04 percent stake in it after providing more than 3 trillion won ($2.8 billion) in financial support.



"The government came up with its decisions based on consulting firms' analysis on their respective competitiveness, restructuring plans and the impact on the entire ecosystem of the shipbuilding industry," Kim said.



"The creditors concluded that there was no other option but to place Sungdong under receivership. For STX, it should come up with a management-labor agreement on a strong self-rescue and restructuring plan by April 9. Unless they come to an agreement, STX will also be dealt with under market principles, meaning court receivership." Kim said.



According to the Eximbank, it found Sungdong's liquidation value is overtaking the value of keeping the company afloat, after a number of due diligences by consulting firms including EY Han Young and Samjong KPMG.



In the most recent consulting, Samjong KPMG analyzed that "Sungdong's main business of building mid- and large-sized tankers (Aframax and Suezmax sizes) is expected to suffer weak demand, and the shipbuilder's competitiveness is falling short of its rivals, meaning it seems impossible for Sungdong to turn a profit."



"Given the firm's financial status, it is feared to go bankrupt in the second quarter of the year," Eximbank Chairman Eun Sung-soo said in a press conference. "It is difficult to determine whether Sungdong could survive under receivership or go bankrupt in the near future."



On the other hand, the KDB said while it is uncertain that STX Shipbuilding can normalize itself with its current market status and price structure, several other factors persuaded creditors to give it a month grace period.



The KDB said STX's financial prudence has improved since its previous receivership in 2016. STX was under receivership from 2016 to last July. Also, the shipbuilder's current finances of 147.5 billion won will enable it to run for a certain period of time, and its main business of medium-sized vessels has relatively favorable outlook.



"The decision on STX is based on industrial consideration," KDB Chairman Lee Dong-gull said during the conference. "The market for mid-sized vessels is showing a sign of recovery and STX has received demands for 11 vessels."



Lee stressed that the management-labor agreement was "a prerequisite" for the KDB to issue refund guarantees to STX.



In ship contracts, buyers pay a certain amount of the vessel's price before actual delivery, thus requiring a refund guarantee. If the shipbuilder for any reason fails to refund the advance installment, the bank which issued the refund guarantee will refund this on its behalf.



During the ministerial meeting, the government also decided to inject 240 billion won into Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, where Sungdong is located, and Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, which hosts GM Korea's ailing plant, to help the two cities cope with job losses.



The funds will be used to waive or defer taxes for people who lose their jobs, support subcontractors and provide loans to smaller businesses in the two cities, the ministers said.


Models promote HiteJinro's Max Special Hop at Cheonggye Square near Cheonggyecheon Stream in Jongno-gu, Seoul. The Korea Times' 24-hour online poll showed 57 percent of the respondents disliked Korean beers, particularly the products of major conglomerates like OB, HiteJinro and Lotte. / Korea Times file



By Ko Dong-hwan



More than half of people who tried South Korean beers, including perennial top seller OB's Cass, said they didn't like them.



In a 24-hour poll conducted by The Korea Times March 6-7, among 340 respondents, 57 percent said "No" when asked whether they liked Korean beers.



The poll was conducted online and the questions were in English so Koreans' opinions were not properly reflected.



People gave a variety of reasons for liking or disliking the beers.



"They taste like an accident in a chemical lab," one respondent said.



Another said Koreans "dump soju (a popular liquor with alcoholic levels of about 20 percent) into Korean beer to make it taste better," which shows "how bad the beer tastes." One netizen dubbed all major Korean beers "awful," branding Cass and Hite, the two leading brands, "the worst beers in the world."



"Even Korean restaurants in London sell Japanese brands," another anti-Korean beer netizen quipped.





Thumbs down for Ramsay Cass commercial Ramsay goes out of his way to give flavor to Cass Gordon Ramsay renews contract with OB

The detractors claimed the beers were like "dirty water," "bland" or "watery." Another even argued that Korean beers weren't brewed properly and people who drank them reek of alcohol, which doesn't happen with real beers.



One respondent praised China's Qing Dao beer. Another claimed that Korean beers are "far worse than those from nations such as Japan, China and Thailand."



While they were critical of the beers of major brands like OB and Lotte, they admitted that craft beers from Korean micro breweries deserved praise.



"There are some fantastic craft beers in Korea, which is why I say I like' Korean beer," one respondent said.



The fans of Korean craft beers like them enough to list the local brewing companies, including Magpie, Hand & Malt, Gorilla, Table Booth and Maloney's.



T.O.P from K-pop boy band BIGBANG acts in a commercial for OB's Cass. / Korea Times file

"I do like some Korean beer," one netizen said. "Just not the light lagers made by the big conglomerate Korean brewers like Cass, Hite, Kloud and OB. Those beers are as boring as the Budweiser, Coors or Miller brewing companies from the U.S."



Korean beer fans, on the other hand, acknowledged that the Korean products are merely different from other beers. One came up with the analogy that Korean lagers and exotic craft India pale ale (IPA), or dark European beers, are like "apples and oranges." "It is important to moderate our expectations accordingly," the netizen said.



They were aware that many non-Koreans disliked Korean beers. But they said such opinions were "exaggerated." "Korean beer is very mediocre and it's not as terrible as a lot of them say," one netizen said.




Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by some light rain after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by some light rain after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Reggio Calabria, March 8 - Italian police on Thursday arrested a fugitive member of the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia wanted for mafia association, extortion and aggravated fraud. Girolamo Facchineri, 52, is accused of proving top bosses with goods and hiding places.
Rome, March 8 - Italian police on Thursday arrested 39 people as they busted a mafia-style drug trafficking and distribution network in Rome. Those arrested are accused of conspiracy to traffic and distribute drugs, weapons possession and extortion, aggravated by mafia methods. Anti-mafia police said they had uncovered "a mafia-style organisation principally dedicated to the management of a monopoly on drug trafficking and pushing in the eastern area of the capital".
Vatican City, March 8 - Words must be followed by "concrete commitments" to help migrants, Pope Francis told the International Catholic Migration Commission at an audience in the Vatican Thursday. "We must encourage," Francis said, "States to agree more adequate and effective responses to the challenges posed by migratory phenomena; and we can do so on the basis of the fundamental principles of the Church's social doctrine". The pontiff said "we must also work to ensure that words are followed by concrete commitments towards a global and shared responsibility".
Milan, March 8 - Milan Mayor was guilty of wrongdoing while Milan Expo 2015 commissioner and should be tried, prosecutors insisted on Thursday. The former Expo CEO allegedly abused his position by breaching a string of norms including Italy's tenders code, prosecutors Vincenzo Calia and Massimo Gaballo told a preliminary hearing. They said he did do by directly assigning a contract to supply 6,000 trees to Mantovani SpA firm without holding a public tender. The prosecutors thus reiterated an indictment request for Sala and others being probed in connection with the so-called Service Platform at the 2015 event. Sala's lawyer Salvatore Scuto said Sala should be acquitted by the preliminary hearings judge because he did nothing wrong and the prosecutors are "out of touch with reality".
Rome, March 8 - Ryanair on Thursday signed its first accord to recognise trade unions in Italy. The Irish budget airline and civil aviation authority ANPAC signed the first formal accord recognising the union representing Ryanair pilots in Italy. The accord was signed between ANPAC and Ryanair personnel chief Eddie Wilson. "It is an historic turning point for Ryanair pilots in Italy," ANPAC said, "who have been fighting for many years to obtain union representation and certain and homogeneous work and salary conditions for their various national bases". Wilson said in a statement "we are pleased to announce the accord with ANPAC in recognition of our pilots directly working in Italy. "This accord (which follows that signed in the UK with BALPA in January) confirms the decision taken in December by the Ryanair board on the desire to recognise unions". He welcomed "the positive and constructive work of ANPAC which led to this accord eight weeks after the first meeting. "Th recognition accord is significant because Italy currently accounts for almost 80 of the around 400 planes in the Ryanair fleet: 20% of Ryanair pilots". He voiced the hope of "working with ANPAC and the pilots towards the first collective contract for pilots working in Italy".
Bari, March 8 - Several residents of Puglia on Wednesday and Thursday went to job centres and union advice offices and demanded the basic income that is a central plank in the platform of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), which came first in Sunday's general election. At the Porta Futura job centre in Bari, around 50 people, mainly young persons, asked for the forms to fill out to get the basic income of 780 euros a month. The M5S is far from having a majority to form a government and leader Luigi Di Maio has appealed to other parties to get behind its government programme, so far without success. Di Maio said on Italian TV earlier this week that the basic income, if the M5S were to come to power, would probably have to be delayed for at least two years while Italy's job centres are revamped. The basic income would be somewhat similar to job seekers' allowance in some cases, and anyone who turned down three straight jobs would lose it, M5S bigwig Alessandro Di Battista said before the election. In other cases, it would be given to people to lift them out of poverty, the M5S says. photo: Di Maio
Rome, March 8 - A protocol that will make organ donations among HIV patients possible is being published in the Official Gazette, meaning it is about to come into force, Alessandro Nanni Costa, the head of the National Transplants Centre, said on Thursday. "This has great social importance as it removes a factor of discrimination for HIV individuals, obviously without altering the safety with which the transplant is performed," Nanni Costa said.
Modena, February 27 - Italian police have arrested a man in connection with a double murder near Modena Tuesday, sources said. The man allegedly killed two brothers - his father-in-law and his wife's uncle - with a bill-hook on a farm near the small town of Zocca in the Apennines, police said. The victims were named as Ugo and Remo Bertarini, both in their seventies. The murder suspect was named as Angelo Rainone.
When it comes to bike-sharing in La Jolla, its damned if you dock and damned if you dont.

Two new companies of dock-less bikes have rolled out in San Diego: Ofo and Limebike, and electric scooter brand Bird is also hitting the streets.

Because they do not have stations at which they are parked, some members of the La Jolla Parks & Beaches advisory group and the La Jolla Village Merchants Association lament the littering of these bikes in parks and on sidewalks. These boards previously disapproved of the City of San Diego bike-sharing program, DecoBike, because it had docking stations that would have taken up street parking and sidewalk space. However, the City withdrew its proposal to bring DecoBike kiosks to La Jolla.

LimeBike launched in December 2017, Bird earlier this year, and Ofo just last month. But representatives from these companies have yet to explain to La Jolla community groups what they are all about.

The bicycle and scooter companies have a similar model: They use an app to locate and unlock the vehicles. The bikes can be dropped off anywhere, but sidewalks are preferred, and they do not require or use docking stations. As such, there are not locations specific to La Jolla, but bikes could be picked up or dropped off anywhere around town. Bird recommends parking its scooters at public bike racks.

How it works

Riders download the companys app to their cell phone and locate the available bikes based on GPS tracking. Bikes are unlocked with the app, which starts the rental. The rental ends when and where the rider decides, and bikes are left at the reached destination and locked with an on-bike mechanism.

When it comes to parking the LimeBikes, the company suggests leaving them by the sidewalk pavement, not on grass. It also advises against placing the bikes on the ground.

Ofo similarly recommends parking anywhere outside of the pedestrian right-of-way that complies with local laws and does not obstruct traffic. You can park at any public bicycle rack.

However, La Jolla Village Merchants Association executive director Sheila Fortune said the issue has been a major topic at the San Diego Business Improvement District (BID) Council, mainly because none of the BID representatives knew anything about these ride-shares before they started popping up.

These programs were blessed by the City Attorneys office without presenting to local groups, she said. These companies are not paying rent, they are taking business away from companies that are paying rent. They are not contributing to the community. They leave their inventory on our sidewalks. Theyre parked anywhere and everywhere.

She said the Merchants Association would likely discuss the new bike-sharing programs at a future meeting, but, in the meantime, were all still trying to figure out what happened and where to go from here.

Putting on the brakes

At the Feb. 26 La Jolla Parks & Beaches meeting, members decided to request a presentation from representatives who could explain the programs and the approval processes that transpired to allow them to operate in the City. Trustee Bill Robbins said he wasnt against the bikes, but the cluttering of sidewalks. As an example, he cited Coast Boulevard South, where the sidewalk was recently expanded and repaved.

An awful lot of people walk that way, using walkers, rollers, strollers and wheelchairs. I dont want bikes on that sidewalk, he said. Id like to write a letter to the Parks Department and the Mayors office, but also ask the companies, or the City, to make a presentation so we better understand what is going on. We dont need to come up with the ultimate solution, but we need to get on board and let people know we are concerned about this.

Agreeing, Sally Miller pleaded that the bikes not be left in La Jolla and questioned why these companies are allowed to operate without community input.

They did not get our permission to come in and invade our town. If we let any company, any vendor, come in, it will open up Pandoras Box to letting more vendors come and litter our sidewalks. Im also adamant about protecting businesses that pay rent, pay taxes and are losing business. That was one of the reasons we didnt want DecoBike, they took money away from local businesses.

Chair Ann Dynes agreed to ask these companies to come before La Jollas community groups to explain their business model.

Greasing the wheels

At a press conference after the meeting, San Diego Bike Coalition Executive Director Andy Hanshaw said a presentation has not come to La Jolla because there are a staggering number of community groups in San Diego and we are still planning on presenting to them.

In December 2015, the City of San Diego adopted a Climate Action Plan that outlines the efforts it will undertake to achieve its proportional share of State greenhouse gas emission reductions. Part of the effort is to encourage bike- and car-sharing to reduce carbon emissions.

When introduced as the Citys first bike-share program, DecoBike, faced uproarious opposition because of its lack of locking systems, helmets, bikes not functioning properly, and bike stations taking up parking and sidewalk space. When the City stated its intent to install docking stations in La Jolla, the community rebelled, hosting forums against the idea. Locals ultimately prevailed, and the City pulled the plug its plan to bring the kiosks to 92037.

By not having kiosks, the new rental bike programs avoid a conflict with the Citys DecoBike partnership.

DecoBike was recently revamped as Discover Bike, thanks to corporate sponsor Discover card. With the sponsorship, the company shifted its focus to San Diegos urban core, rather than the coastal communities, and expanded its fleet by 20 percent.

Hanshaw said what makes LimeBike and Ofo different from Discover (Deco) Bike, is the absence of kiosks and being tied to GPS tracking, which can provide more data for the Citys Climate Action Plan.

The GPS tracking will help us determine where people are riding, and where we need bike lanes or more bike infrastructure, he said. Weve found when you provide bikes at an affordable price and bike infrastructure, people will ride. Now we have more riders, which is what we wanted, we will continue to advocate for building infrastructure sooner  that is a key piece to all of this.
A new trial has been tentatively set for March 29 in San Diego Superior Court for the City to re-argue for the La Jolla Maintenance Assessment District (MAD). Judge Randa Trapp  the same judge who ruled in November 2017 that the La Jolla MAD was unconstitutional  will preside. Deputy City Attorney Carmen Brock will represent the City.

The City requested the new trial to vacate the ruling against the MAD on the grounds that it did not receive a fair trial due to an abuse of discretion by the court and irregularities in the legal proceedings.

The La Jolla MAD was approved by the majority of voters within the District and ratified by the San Diego City Council in November 2016. Those voters also decided the MAD would be managed by a local non-profit board called Enhance La Jolla.

The MAD would provide enhanced services in The Village, including landscape maintenance, street and sidewalk cleaning, litter and graffiti abatement, and additional trash collection. Enhance La Jolla could also accept donations for capital improvement projects.

Second thoughts

However, soon after it was passed, a group of La Jolla property owners filed a lawsuit challenging the MAD because the services to be provided were services, they argued, the City should be carrying out.

As previously reported in the Light, Lincoln Foster, who is named as a leading opponent in the lawsuit filed by the property owners, explained: We are all in favor of everything the MAD and Enhance La Jolla want to achieve, its just the funding mechanism we object to. ... Were already being taxed for these services, but the City is not delivering them. Further, there are other ways to raise money that are more equitable, some City rules and regulations may have to change, but it may be easier.

On Nov. 30, 2017, court records show Judge Trapp ruled that the City failed to show the MAD would provide special benefits, as opposed to those already provided as part of general municipal services.

In January, the City filed its request for a new trial.

Enhance La Jolla president Bill Tribolet told the Light: We are encouraged by the strong outpouring of support weve received from the community, and we plan to stay engaged in this process, hopeful that the earlier decision will be reversed.

It is our belief that the City has performed properly and that the MAD will be reinstated and allowed to restart our stated promises to provide both important supplemental clean-up assistance, and generate special property enhancing capital improvements in The Village. The property owners who voted to have their property tax liability increased for the good of the community deserve to see this happen, as do those who have invested countless hours and substantial financial support to this critical citizen-driven effort.

The initial MAD assessments total a little over $500,000 and were collected by the City beginning in Fall 2017. They remain in a City account, pending outcome of the court action.

The boundaries of the MAD are Coast Boulevard, La Jolla Boulevard, Pearl Street, Girard Avenue and Torrey Pines Road, and consists of two zones.

According to enhancelajolla.org: Zone 1 is comprised primarily of commercial properties and Zone 2 includes primarily residential properties. Because Zone 1 has a higher need for frequent maintenance, a higher level of service would be provided in this zone. Assessments would be higher in Zone 1 than in Zone 2.
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This Sept. 11, will revisiting the past reset our present? Two decades after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, there are distinct perspectives for those looking back on a day that stopped a nation in its tracks. Many of those who...
Yezidi girl will not marry, if she does not want to - resident of Apna (video)

Zuzan, who lives in Apna village, every day travels one kilometer to take public transport and go to class. "Our village is about 40 km from Yerevan. I study at the Faculty of Journalism at Yerevan State University, and I am the only Yezidi student at this faculty. I did not choose my profession by accident; I loved this profession, my mother stood with me, but my father offered alternatives, such as becoming a doctor, or a teacher. However, when I said why I wanted to go to this faculty, my father agreed, and no any other problem came about. There are very few girls in our community who have chosen this profession because we have to communicate with many people, we are in constant motion, and even if [people] specialize in this direction, they do not continue to do this after marriage. According to the so called traditions of the Yezidi community, a Yezidi girl should not get an education, she should get married early. But there are other girls who choose a profession afterwards, are able to break stereotypes and get an education. We are the educators of the generation, and the more educated we are, the more educated the generation will be, and that educated generation is the basis, the future of our community. I also create [works], now I am working on my first collection of poems. The topics of my poems are different - homeland, love, humanity; but I have not decided the title yet."
Our poetry community has sustained some major blows of late  recent deaths of canonical figures have elicited shocked and painfully paid respects. The great oaks are falling, observed one poet, and indeed the metaphoric forest reverberates still with its emptying of towering heights  Mark Strand, Philip Levine, Carolyn Kizer, Adrienne Rich, and many more, a whole generation and beyond  brought down and lost forever.

Yet the death Tuesday of my friend Lucie Brock-Broido represents a sudden swift implausible descent in another part of the forest. Implausible not only because Lucie was 61, not as advanced in years as her poet elders, but because, like Keats nightingale, one thought of her as far too alive to die  or as the monumental Ode has it: Thou was not born for death, immortal bird.

Lucie was my friend from the time I taught in Columbias master of fine arts program in 1980, where I was colossally intimidated as a youthful poet-teacher by legendary colleagues Derek Walcott and Joseph Brodsky (now peering, fallen but restored, from their starry Nobel heights). I was an uncertain teacher back then, but I was deeply impressed by Lucie, who, from her time as a student onward, possessed a self-confidence that defied uncertainty (though she once claimed to have stage fright). She also possessed, from the start, an obsessively polished poetic style that in youth might have been dismissed as all glittering surface, pure precocity. But Lucie knew from the beginning what she was about as a poet. I came to poetry because I felt I couldnt live properly in the real world. I was thirteen in Algebra class. That was the day I decided I would be a poet for all time. I walked out of class and dropped out of school. What also drove her poetic vocation was a sense of eerie prescience about lifes timing  even unto death: Our brief generation/hasnt even yet begun descent.

Lucies friends all knew that she lived a life fueled both by eccentric passion and an absolute unrelenting committed rigor  her writing life was set in stone according to its calendar: She dropped out each year on John Keats birthday, Oct. 31  and sequestered herself in order to write her poems. She usually traveled to Cambridge, Mass., from New York City (and her job as director of the Columbia MFA poetry program) with her beloved cats  returning like Persephone, in the spring.

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Her friends also knew that Lucie lived like a vampire. A legendary insomniac, she stayed up, owl-ish, each night till dawn.

It was not unusual to receive, on either coast, a phone call at 3 or 4 a.m. from Lucie, revved up and ready to converse in and out of the wee hours, as if she were dialing up for an afternoon chat. She would finally retire, at first light  and sleep until noon or later. All her Columbia courses were scheduled for the evening at her spacious penthouse, a deep crimson color with panoramic views, just across the street from the university.

If this schedule sounds a bit bizarre, it set its own convention. Lucie ran the Columbia poetry program with perfect equipoise, taught her classes, held meetings, hired visiting poets  all on her own schedule.

Her eccentric energy informed her poems from her first book, A Hunger (1988), onward, a debut which critic Helen Vendler praised for talismanic words which open into a magical territory of Domestic Mysticism.

Lucies adaptation of her own life into domestic mysticism brought her home to another muse-figure, Emily Dickinson. With what felt like (to some critics) rather heady presumptiveness, Lucie titled her second book The Master Letters, meant to poach delicately on the territory of three mysterious letters left by Dickinson at her death  two addressed to Dear Master, the third to an unknown recipient. The poems in this, Lucies second book, were written as verse-letters: A random line from one offers a quick glimpse of her developed signature, a swift ecstatic style: Invalid to sorrow  right half, left half, limbic & all/For memory or love  I am subject, subjugate, inthralled.

The purposeful misspelling of enthralled reveals a great deal about the poets misprision (a seeming mistake) in linguistic play. IN-thralled is an exact Lucie Brock-Broido word-portrait of the self. The self is not caught up, owned by thrall  but is kept in thrall by the in, the interior life.

Interior life and the outside world were mediated by what she called the skin of poetry, which floated between inner and outer reality. Poetry was to Lucie a living breathing membrane, her messages to the world traveled through this skin and back.

Her language became intensely hermetic but remained nonetheless seductively accessible. In a review of her last book, the New Yorker critic Dan Chaisson referred to the collection, Stay, Illusion (2013) as a grimoire. A grimoire is a textbook of magic, an instruction manual, a how-to guide to spinning spells that create talismanic objects, amulets.

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Stay, Illusion is her finest book, the attainment of rhetorical mastery. The title informs the mood that runs throughout the collection. Stay, illusion! is what Hamlet cries out, pleadingly, to the ghost in Act 1, Scene 1, of the play. When 13-year-old Lucie Brock-Broido walked out of her algebra class and into her future, she chose, in a sense, to forever honor illusion, to stay the illusionary power of poetry as every bit as authentic and alive as the so-called real world.

From her illusory world comes instruction even as to the afterlife  as if she has left us with a fluid monument of loss: Take this road to arrive at its end. Or: What if I were gone and the wind still reeks of hyacinth. What then?

What I believe is the response to that What then? resides in her own snap moment, from a haunting, musical high-jinksy poem called Hello Babies, Welcome to Earth. I read the last line of this poem about returning to a long-forgotten landscape of childhood as a farewell, but also an address to the future.

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I read this poem to the poets in my graduate workshop the day after Lucie died. Let it be a talisman, I thought, let it be a message from wherever our beautiful lynx-souled sister is now.

In the poems ultimate line, she speaks to a baby  or a beginning poet? Poppet she says, if youve anything to say, you should say it soon, I think.

Muske-Dukes is a professor at USC and the former poet laureate of California. Her next collection, Blue Rose, will be published in April.
Senators pushing legislation to roll back banking regulations instituted after the financial crisis are proposing changes to try to blunt liberal criticisms  and adding provisions for conservatives to assure House passage.

The bipartisan bill is focused on easing burdens on community and midsized banks put in place by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

While theres broad support for that goal, the legislation being considered by the Senate this week also would help larger financial institutions, including huge foreign banks. That has drawn fire from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other liberals.

The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would raise the threshold for so-called systemically important financial institutions, which face mandatory and rigorous annual stress tests and other heightened oversight, to $250 billion in assets from the current $50-billion level.

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That could provide significant relief for large firms such as State Street Corp., BB&T Corp. and Suntrust Banks Inc.

The bill also could offer a regulatory break for giant foreign banks, including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas, because their U.S. affiliates have less than $250 billion in assets, even though they are part of global operations that are well above that threshold.

Those and other foreign banks have a history of problems that have led to major fines or settlements with the Justice Department in recent years.

This legislation weakens oversight of foreign banks operating in the United States, many of which have a track record of breaking U.S. laws, said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

Crapo and other bill supporters, which include a dozen Democratic co-sponsors, said the bill would not reduce oversight of those banks. They pointed to testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell last week that regulators consider a foreign banks total global assets in deciding how much oversight its U.S. operation should get.

But Brown noted that Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin testified to the Senate Banking Committee in January that the bill would reduce regulation on foreign banks whose U.S. assets are below $250 billion. And former Federal Reserve Gov. Dan Tarullo, who oversaw the central banks regulatory efforts for several years before resigning in 2017, said in a letter to Crapo and Brown that the provision was ambiguous and needed to be clarified.

Crapo attempted to do that in a package of amendments introduced Wednesday night after discussions with the bills co-sponsors. One change specifies that nothing in the bill should be construed as affecting the Feds rules for foreign bank oversight.

Brown said that wasnt good enough because it gives the Fed too much discretion to ease oversight of U.S. operations of huge foreign banks.

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The provision provides some vague, ambiguous language that puts the question to the Fed: You can regulate the foreign banks or not, its your choice, Brown said Thursday.

The legislation doesnt require the Fed to keep the strong rules that are currently in place, and it doesnt stop the foreign banks from suing if the Fed doesnt obey their requests, he said.

Brown said he wants the bill amended to specify that there be no favors for the biggest global banks operating here in the United States.

Crapos package of proposed amendments is designed to make technical fixes but also to add some provisions that could ensure passage by the House.

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House Republicans last year approved a much more sweeping overhaul of Dodd-Frank, which conservatives have complained has restricted access to capital.

But to get the bipartisan support needed for legislation to pass the Senate, Crapo had to shepherd a more modest package that avoided some of the Houses more extreme moves, such as gutting the authority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Crapos bill doesnt make any major changes to that agency, which was created by Dodd-Frank.

The revisions to the Senate legislation include some provisions designed to lure House support. They include adding a House-passed bill that would loosen some rules on high-volatility commercial real estate. The change, sought by smaller community banks and regional banks, would revise requirements that they hold more capital for those loans by exempting loans in which borrowers also contribute some resources, land, or property as part of the deal.

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This is a clear effort to buy support from the House, Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with brokerage and investment bank Cowen & Co., wrote in a research note Thursday. It contains several new provisions that the House either has passed or has been considering.

Crapos package of changes is likely to be approved as the Senate heads toward expected passage of the bill next week.

Other senators have amendments that are unlikely to pass. Warren has proposed 17 amendments toughening the bill, including preventing any bank that received more than $1 billion in bailout money or was fined more than $10 million over the last decade from getting reduced federal oversight.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

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Twitter: @JimPuzzanghera
Trade ministers from 11 Pacific Rim countries signed a sweeping free trade agreement Thursday to streamline trade and slash tariffs just hours before President Trump announced his plans to impose new tariffs on aluminum and steel to protect U.S. producers.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year, causing fears that it would not prosper without its most influential country. But the remaining 11 members pressed ahead, saying they were showing resolve against protectionism.

The ministers dropped key provisions that the Americans had required on protection of intellectual property, among others. The renegotiated pact signed in the Chilean capital of Santiago was renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The pact covers 500 million people; it includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, which together account for 13% of the global economy. Its success highlights the isolation of the U.S. under Trumps protectionist rhetoric on trade and his America first philosophy.

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It leaves the U.S. at a disadvantage from both a trade and a broader strategic perspective, said Joshua Meltzer, senior fellow in the global economy and development program at the Brookings Institution. It is now a trade bloc that discriminates against the U.S.

Meltzer said the United States ability to shape the rules of trade in the Asia-Pacific region is very much diminished.

The U.S., originally the biggest TPP economy, was one of the trade deals strongest supporters before Trump took office. Trump has said he prefers country-to-country deals and is seeking to renegotiate several major trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement that includes the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

This is a strong sign against the protectionist pressures, and in favor of a world open to free trade, without unilateral sanctions and the threat of trade wars, Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz said.

The European Union said this week that it is ready to retaliate against Trumps tariffs  of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminum imports  with counter-measures against such U.S. products as Harley Davidson motorcycles, Levis jeans and bourbon.

The EU threat and Trumps announcement on the tariffs were expected to escalate the risk of a trade war, in which nations try to punish each other by hiking taxes on traded goods. Experts say that tends to harm both exporting nations as well as consumers in importing countries, who face higher costs.

The EU considers itself to be caught in the crossfire of a trade dispute, in which Trump has mainly singled out China for being unfair in its commercial deals.

The original TPP was conceived by the U.S. as a counterweight to Chinas growing economic influence through a robust trading bloc that excluded the Asian giant. The thinking was that China would have an incentive to open its market and liberalize its policies in an effort to eventually qualify for TPP membership.

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Without the United States, it doesnt serve that purpose, said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. It becomes a modest liberalization measure.

Chinas foreign minister, Wang Yi, commented Thursday on the deal before it was signed.

China did not participate in the CPTPP Agreement. However, China has always been a staunch supporter of trade liberalization and an important participant in Asia-Pacific regional cooperation and economic integration, Wang said at a news conference.

Of course, we also hope that the various free trade arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region will be able to communicate and coordinate with each other and form a benign interaction, playing a constructive role in their respective fields in resisting trade protectionism and building an open world economy.

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UPDATES:

1:40 p.m.: This article was updated with Trumps announcement, information about the countries in the deal, about trade with China and comments from Edward Alden and Wang Yi.

This article was originally published at 11:20 a.m.
A Bahraini Shiite cleric and political activist warned of the Manama regimes strategy to allow the Zionist regime of Israel to establish a foothold in the Arab country and the Persian Gulf region.

(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Deputy Secretary-General of Bahrains Islamic Action Society (Al-Amal) Sheikh Abdullah Saleh slammed the Al Khalifa regimes attempts to normalize ties with Israel as a way to maintain the throne in the Persian Gulf country.



The Bahraini regime is seeking to normalize ties with Israel and pave the way for Zionists presence in the region, just as they helped Britain enter the region decades ago, the cleric deplored.



He also denounced the Al Khalifa governments move to found a Saudi-sponsored center, known as King Hamad Global Centre for Inter-Faith Dialogue and Peaceful Co-Existence, as a message for the US and Israel that they could take the next steps for normalization of ties with Zionists.



Some members of the center are individuals who were recently sent by Manama to the Occupied Palestine on an official visit.



Bahrain, a close ally of the US in the Persian Gulf region, has been witnessing almost daily protests against the ruling Al Khalifa dynasty since early 2011, with Manama using heavy-handed measures in an attempt to crush the demonstrations.



Scores of Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds of others injured and arrested in the ongoing crackdown on the peaceful demonstrations.



Amnesty International and many other international rights organizations have frequently censured the Bahraini regime for the rampant human rights abuses against opposition groups and anti-regime protesters.







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President Trumps final order to slap sweeping tariffs on imported steel and aluminum looks less like an effort to preserve national security and more like an attempt to create a giant bargaining chip that the president can play around the world.

A week after haphazardly announcing across-the-board tariffs on imported metals, Trump on Thursday signed orders that would impose duties of 25% on foreign steel and 10% on aluminum. The levies take effect in 15 days.

In doing so, the president swept aside a flurry of warnings from ally nations, companies and lawmakers from his own party, who worry Trumps actions will ignite a dangerous trade war that costs more American jobs than it saves.

The final decrees retreated sharply from the blanket tariffs Trump spoke of just a week ago. He exempted  at least temporarily  Canada and Mexico from the duties, and opened the door for virtually every other country to also avoid them  provided they offer a satisfactory alternative, according to the orders.

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Exactly what might be acceptable as an alternative wasnt spelled out and Trump stressed that were going to be very flexible. His criteria appeared subjective.

Were going to see whos treating us fairly, whos not treating us fairly, Trump said. He then invited trading partners who want to avert the new tariffs to make their case to his chief trade official, Robert Lighthizer. Part of the consideration, he said, is going to be military. Whos paying the bills, whos not paying the bills.

Trump suggested that Canada and Mexico could make their exemption permanent by agreeing to U.S. demands in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. So far the two trading partners in the 24-year-old pact have flatly rejected Trumps effort to link the two issues.

The negotiation process for the modernization of NAFTA will follow its course independently of this or any domestic policy measure taken by the United States government, Mexicos Finance Ministry said Thursday in a statement.

Trump and administration officials said other factors that would be considered for exemption from the tariffs could include reducing a bilateral trade deficit with the U.S. or coughing up more money for joint international security expenses. China, Trump noted, is currently discussing ways to reduce its overall trade surplus with the U.S.

While Trump has often cast himself as a deal maker, its far from clear whether his strategy will work or how other nations will respond.

The European Union and other trading partners of the U.S. will be reluctant to make concessions to placate Trump to get off the hook on the new tariffs. On the other hand, responding with a tit-for-tat manner could escalate trade conflicts that would hurt everybody in the long run.

Trump signaled that the White House is open to any and all offers, apparently in an effort to show flexibility to ease the concerns of his fellow conservatives. Republicans and businesspeople have long championed free trade, and earlier this week, Trumps top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, resigned after losing an internal battle with nationalists in the administration over the tariffs.

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But Trump now risks weakening the legal argument that the protections are needed for national security or to help the U.S. steel and aluminum industries.

And the chaotic rollout of the tariffs, lack of details and the uncertain process that lies ahead could mean that the plan  like so many other Trump programs  finds itself tied up in legal challenges.

In making his boldest use of presidential trading power to date, Trump invoked a U.S. law that allows the president to restrict trade on the basis of national security, the first time in more than three decades that that rationale has been invoked to implement protectionist measures to shield a domestic industry from import competition.

Standing in front of 10 steelworkers in factory uniforms on Thursday, Trump emphasized the importance of steel and aluminum to Americas defense industry. You dont have steel, you dont have a country.

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But in exempting Canada and Mexico  and leaving wiggle room for other countries to get tariff waivers as well  Trump has undercut his own claim that the duties are necessary to protect national security, said James Bacchus, a former House lawmaker and ex-chairman of the appellate body of the World Trade Organization.

This is looking less and less like a national security measure and more and more like economic pressure, Bacchus said, noting that the cherry-picking of countries to exclude was a clear violation of WTO rules. He and other experts expect Trumps tariff orders to be challenged at the WTO.

The U.S. also could be hit with retaliatory tariffs. In anticipation of the tariff orders, EU leaders earlier in the week endorsed a plan to target for countertariffs items such as American steel, chewing tobacco and orange juice. EU members such as Germany and the United Kingdom export hundreds of millions of dollars of steel to the U.S.

Canada is the largest American source of foreign steel and aluminum, and Mexico is among the top five, as metals from both countries are shipped across North American borders for production of things such as cars and appliances. South Korea and Japan, as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Turkey, also stand to be among the biggest losers if the tariffs take effect.

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China is the worlds largest manufacturer and exporter of steel and aluminum, and has been blamed for overproducing metals that have created a global glut and indirectly hurt the U.S. industry and jobs. But because of many prior U.S. tariff measures on individual steel products, China accounts for only about 2.5% of U.S. imports of steel.

For that reason, U.S. business interests, GOP lawmakers and manufacturing groups pressed Trump not to issue blanket tariffs. Instead, they urged Trump to take actions that could address that root problem or target China and other select nations that the Trump administration says are buying Chinese steel and selling to the United States.

After Trump issued the tariff decrees, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said he was heartened by the presidents insistence that he would be flexible in invoking tariffs. Im encouraged, Alexander said, although he has warned that the tariffs would cost jobs in his state.

Other Republicans were far less diplomatic.

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These so-called flexible tariffs are a marriage of two lethal poisons to economic growth  protectionism and uncertainty, said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) called it a really stupid policy, saying: Its going to hurt American consumers and its going to hurt American workers.

Despite the vocal opposition, it was doubtful whether Congress would attempt to block Trumps orders. Some Democrats supported the tariffs as helpful to American workers. Im glad we are finally standing up for ourselves, said West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

Trump won the presidency in part on the promise to strengthen American industry.

Although the tariffs will help domestic producers, at least for awhile, economists and other U.S. businesses that use imported steel said that the tariffs would drive up metal prices, hurt consumers and ultimately lead to net job losses for Americans.

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Staff writers Cathleen Decker in Washington and Kate Linthicum in Mexico contributed to this report.

don.lee@latimes.com

Twitter: @dleelatimes

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UPDATES:

4:5o p.m.: This article was updated with additional reaction from lawmakers and trade experts.

1 p.m.: This article was updated with Trump signing the orders.

12:30 p.m.: This article was updated with details about the tariff orders.

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This article was originally published at 5:45 a.m.
Theres life after Uber for Travis Kalanick.

The ride-hailing giants co-founder and controversial former chief executive tweeted Wednesday that he will start an investment fund called 10100.

Over the past few months Ive started thinking about whats next, Kalanick wrote. Ive begun making investments, joining boards, working with entrepreneurs and non-profits. Today Im announcing the creation of a fund called 10100 (pronounced ten-one-hundred), home to my passions, investments, ideas and big-bets.

Kalanick said the fund would focus on large-scale job creation, with investments in real estate, e-commerce, and emerging innovation in China and India.

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Its unclear what kind of jobs Kalanick is hoping to create. A spokesman for Kalanick declined to provide more details about the fund. At Uber, Kalanick was criticized for kickstarting an entire sector of the tech industry reliant on contract workers rather than employees. Uber itself is expected to someday replace its drivers with autonomous vehicles.

Kalanick will use his own money to capitalize 10100, named after his home address growing up in Los Angeles. Forbes estimates Kalanicks net worth at $4.8 billion. He sold $1.4 billion worth of Uber stock to SoftBank earlier this year. That amounted to 29% of his stake in the company. The SoftBank deal put the value of Uber at $48 billion.

Kalanick remains a member of Ubers board. He resigned as CEO in 2017 after the company was mired in a series of controversies that included unethical business practices and ignoring the harassment of employees.

Kalanick said the fund would also house his nonprofit work, which he said centers on education and the future of cities.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Twitter: @dhpierson
In the conference room of a generic hotel just outside of Mexico Citys historic center, 160 young musicians have crammed themselves with Gustavo Dudamel for a rehearsal of the last movement from Dvoraks New World Symphony. The conductor urges the kids, ages 9 to 21, to slow down and savor a delicious melody. Dont eat the chocolate with the paper. Never, he says. Enjoy.

He shows the strings how to create a tremolo, like a bird that rapidly flaps its wings but gives the sensation of floating. He then unleashes the full brass and percussion with a buoyancy that competes with the overwhelming color and spirit of Mexico City street life, loud and forceful enough to pin against the wall a few observers who happily squeeze into the room.

Forty-five minutes later at the glorious Palacio de Bellas Artes  the spectacular concert hall with monumental murals created for its lobby by Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and Rufino Tamayo  the hallowed guardian orchestra of the Old World, the Vienna Philharmonic, awaits Dudamel for a brief rehearsal for its evening concert. He arrives dressed in the same black T-shirt, Levis and Adidas sneakers as in the earlier rehearsal.

Beyond that, little is the same. A mere Mexico City mile blatantly separates classical musics Old World and New. You could walk it in 20 minutes, as I did, and feel the modern world slip away from you. There is no question where the future of classical music and  if we want to be smart about it, society  lies.

For the moment, though, the future is behind the scenes. Media hullabaloo necessarily surrounded the Vienna Philharmonics two-week Americas tour with Dudamel, which began at Carnegie Hall in New York and winds up in Buenos Aires on Saturday. The orchestra has made few appearances in Mexico, the last being with Riccardo Muti a dozen years ago, and before that in 1981 with Carlos Kleiber.

Artwork of Gustavo Dudamel in El Heraldo de Mexico, one of several Mexican newspaper spreads touting the presence of the conductor in the nation's capital. Allan G. Ramirez / El Heraldo de Mexico

Given Dudamels rock-star celebrity in Latin America, Viennas two programs at the 1,300-seat Bellas Artes sold out within one hour. A third concert at the 10,000-seat Auditorio Nacional was scheduled for the same time as the Academy Awards ceremony, which was of obvious interest because Mexican director Guillermo del Toros The Shape of Water was a front-runner.

No matter. The venue was full for Vienna. From what I could tell scanning the capitals many newspapers, attention for Dudamel was even more massive than that for Del Toro.

The Vienna Philharmonic performances were impressive in ways not difficult to predict by anyone familiar with the Los Angeles Philharmonics music director or this incomparable orchestra. Dudamel first worked with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2007, when he was 26, and he has since conducted it more than 100 times. The tour repertory stayed mostly within the narrow Viennese comfort zone with one notable exception, Charles Ives Second Symphony.

The symphony was a gracious, if half-hearted, gesture by the Vienna Philharmonic to connect its tradition to the New World. Ives, for instance, might begin a phrase with America the Beautiful and let it tail off beautifully into something from Brahms First Symphony. Vienna happens to be the best orchestra in the world when it comes to unwrapping the paper and savoring the chocolate. For them, America the Beautiful was the paper to be tossed away, a prelude to Brahms, not with the accent where Ives had it, using American music to wave goodbye to Europe.

However misplaced the accents, this was a beautiful Viennese tribute to America, with every detail exquisitely balanced, down to the last chord  raucously dissonant with every note of the scale but one  treated as a respectful raspberry.

Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Mexico City. Lorena Alcaraz / Gerencia Palacio de Bellas Artes

Elsewhere in the two Bellas Artes programs, Dudamel took reverential advantage of the orchestras greatest strengths. Tchaikovskys Fourth Symphony was extraordinary in the blend of richly dark instrumental colors and breathtaking virtuosity. Brahms Symphony No. 1 had the meticulous grandeur that Dudamels performance with the L.A. Phil in Walt Disney Concert Hall had a couple of weeks earlier, although here it sounded more coddled, a massive monument to be protected from all fingerprints and not to be moved a fraction of an inch.

A fashionable, sophisticated and marvelously intent audience aided the atmosphere, even when the luscious Viennese cream turned sour during a performance of Mozarts Flute Concerto No. 2. Although Dudamel attempted to sculpt a nuanced performance of the concerto with the orchestra, the orchestras unpleasant principal flutist, Walter Auer, tried to conduct at the same time, wanting little more from his colleagues than an urging on of his own blandly, if showy, bluster.

But none of this had the sheer immediacy of music making, the sense of life and death hanging on getting a note to sing, that was on display in the Encounters program Dudamel masterminded especially for the Mexico City tour stop and helped to fund through his Gustavo Dudamel Foundation. The foundation of Mexican composer (and CalArts graduate) Arturo Marquez, who was co-director of the workshops, also chipped in.

Students were selected from education programs throughout the Americas  from Moncton, Canada, to Chascomus, Argentina. The majority were from the U.S. (including four graduates of the Los Angeles Philharmonics YOLA program, all now college music majors) and Mexico (with the youngest players representing 17 states in the country). Dudamel handpicked an international faculty, which included noted instrumental players (including Simon Bernardini, a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic), soloists and educators.

This culminated in a Sunday morning concert in the Bellas Artes for the families and friends of the young players, plus dignitaries and press. Marquez conducted his own Alas (a Malala), an electrifying Caribbean-style dance written in tribute to the Pakistani activist and educator Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Peace. The orchestra musicians swayed in their seats, and a local youth chorus executed stirring hand movements while it sang, successfully employing a tuneful earworm I have yet to shed.

The New World Finale under Dudamel had a special emotional significance when played by an orchestra nearly twice the size of the Vienna Philharmonic and composed of inexperienced players who had been together only a few days and who spoke different languages. So did an Adagio for strings by John Williams, who adapted his score to Star Wars: The Force Awakens as a present to Dudamel.

But as Dudamel told the kids, Its not for me; its for you. The piece may be used only for educational purposes. The music cannot be recorded, the score cannot be copied. Here, indeed, was a meaningful place for reverence. For these kids, Williams is their Mozart, and they brought to the music spiritual awe.

The final night of the Vienna Philharmonic residency began with one of the most cosmic of all Adagio movements, the one that opens Mahlers unfinished Tenth Symphony, his last music. I cant say all that much about how it sounded with Vienna, since all I could hear in the Auditorio Nacional was a nearby loudspeaker with only slightly more ability to capture tonal nuance than a portable Bluetooth speaker I had in my suitcase.

But this was, nonetheless, a special occasion. The least expensive seats were around $10. The audience was as quiet and attentive as that in the Bellas Artes. Friends in New York told me that they thought Dudamels Carnegie performance of the Mahler lacked passion and intensity. Perhaps because of the need to reach people in distant seats, this performance had plenty of both.

I learned afterward that the atmosphere so impressed the orchestra musicians that they asked for the lights to be turned on during applause in the second half, after Berliozs Symphonie Fantastique. They wanted to see for themselves what this extraordinary crowd looked like.

Could it be that the radical left-wing murals in Bellas Artes had a subliminal populist effect on a pampered orchestra that rarely leaves the confines of fine concert halls and that prides itself on charging an arm and a leg? The Berlioz was a knockout, however crummy the sound system. Afterward, Dudamel, who is especially proud of how much the amplification at the Hollywood Bowl has improved since his debut there 13 years ago, said that he has already spoken to the Auditorio Nacional sound people about ways to improve their loudspeakers.

The South American country to which Dudamel would have most wanted to bring the Vienna Philharmonic, of course, is his native Venezuela. It is in shocking economic decline. And Dudamel is persona non grata with the authoritarian Venezuelan regime after calling for basic freedoms. Even so he maintains daily contact with Caracas, mentoring students over Skype and participating in meetings for El Sistema music education program. Moreover, Dudamel did manage to bring Venezuelan students and faculty to be part of the Mexico City encounters, the orchestra musicians proudly wearing their flag jackets during the concert.

Having been away from Venezuela for a year, Dudamel appeared especially happy and relaxed to be in a great Latino capital, going dancing in clubs after concerts and running his handlers ragged. In a brief chat after his final concert, he seemed elated and told me that he is, indeed, planning to return to Venezuela, most likely in June, after he finishes the L.A. Phil season.

Encuentros students take their bows at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Gustavo Dudamel Foundation

mark.swed@latimes.com
In 1969, a 34-year-old artist (and part-time rock band drummer) named Walter De Maria was one of 69 emerging American and European artists invited to participate in an unconventional museum show in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. The soon-to-be landmark exhibition carried the unwieldy title, Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Works  Concepts  Processes  Situations  Information). De Maria suggested restaging a project he had recently tried out in Chicago.

It consisted of an ordinary, rotary-style black telephone placed on the gallerys parquet floor, as if it were a sculpture and the museum its pedestal. The phone was altered so that outgoing calls could not be made, while only the artist knew the phone number to call in. Next to it he placed a printed card.

If this telephone rings, the card said, you may answer it. Walter De Maria is on the line and would like to talk to you.

Just how many visitors to the Kunsthalle Bern spoke to the artist during the shows run is unrecorded, so far as I know. A current exhibition at the Getty Research Institute in Brentwood, where documentation of DeMarias Art by Telephone is featured, is also unsure.

But there couldnt have been many. In a neatly typed thank-you letter to Harald Szeemann, the shows audacious curator, displayed in a Getty vitrine, the artist noted that he probably called the line no more than half a dozen times during the five-week run.

Sometimes those calls arrived in the dead of night, when the museum was closed, given the six-hour time difference between Switzerland and the artists New York studio. I can imagine it ringing in the palace at 4 a.m., De Maria wrote, slyly invoking the title of a famous 1932 sculpture by Alberto Giacometti. That Surrealist dream-scape sculpture is a treasure in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

De Marias Art by Telephone is a textbook example of what Szeemann meant with his shows own title, Live in Your Head. What mattered most was not a crafted physical object residing in an art museum, but the prospect of an actual connection between an interested audience and an artists way of thinking. The purpose was to upend the artistic certainties that museums inevitably imply.

And it wouldnt be by way of some telepathic transmission, some sci-fi Vulcan mind-meld, either. The object was merely a catalyst for imagination. Stand in the gallery, look at the telephone on the floor and wonder, will he call? Whats he doing right now? Who is Walter De Maria anyway?

Where in the world is he? And if the artist calls, what would I say? Why is he doing this?

"Art by Telephone," 1969, by Walter De Maria, as installed at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969. Balthasar Burkhead / Estate of Walter De Maria

An audience would be asking questions about its immediate experience, like artists do. If a museum was a palace  a hallowed, historical space for the transmission of established power and value  an artist needed to find a way around it if questions were going to be asked rather than answers handed down. If he was successful, an audience would suddenly see things in a new way.

Metaphorically, a visitor would awaken in the palace at 4 a.m.

Szeemann, barely two years older than De Maria, had already been the director at Kunsthalle Bern for eight years, and he had grown dissatisfied with the museum status quo. The Getty exhibition discloses how he came to a new perspective  and how it was manifested in two of the most important shows of the last half-century.

After the landmark When Attitudes Become Form, Szeemann took on Documenta  a periodic survey of new art in Kassel, Germany. The 1972 Documenta 5, its poster featuring an illusionistic swarm of busy little ants drawn by Ed Ruscha, is widely regarded as the best of all the quinquennial shows, before or since.

The radical nature of these 50-year-old shows might be difficult to see today, when Postminimal and Conceptual art are firmly ensconced in the cultural pantheon. Szeemanns pioneering curatorial technique is now routine  a measure of his influence.

Drawing on the massive archive of Szeemanns papers that the GRI acquired in 2011  the largest single archival collection it has obtained  Getty curator Glenn Phillips, independent curator Philipp Kaiser and their team have laid out a fascinating history. (The hefty catalog, a yeomans task to assemble given the volume of material from which to choose, is excellent.) Its a proper swan song for outgoing GRI director Thomas W. Gaehtgens, who initiated the acquisition and who retires in the spring.

Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions is a rarity  a show about a curator, not an artist. Occasionally it slips into hagiography, not quite acknowledging the degree to which Szeemann happened to be in the right place at the right time. But Szeemann was the right person to be there, then  director of an establishment institution but who didnt think like an administrator or bureaucrat. He wasnt an organization man.

The world in 1968-69 was in turmoil, a seismic social and political ruckus spanning civil rights clashes in Alabama, student revolts in Paris, the Russian invasion of Prague, the Tet offensive in Vietnam, civil war in Biafra and more. The hair-raising mayhem hardly escaped art and artists.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the show is about a curator as artist. Much like Oscar Wilde, who conceived of the critic as artist at the transformative end of the 19th century, Szeemann formed a distinctive aesthetic philosophy about artists who were his contemporaries. His exhibitions expressed a shared philosophy.

The major characteristic of todays art is no longer the articulation of space but human activity, Szeemann wrote in the catalog to his show at the Kunsthalle Bern  a catalog, not so incidentally, that is more like a collection of loose artist-files held together by a metal fastener than a traditional book. The activity of the artist has become the dominant theme and content.

Selecting mostly emerging artists in his own age group and working in Europe, New York and Los Angeles, he let them loose in his museum.

Harald Szeeman delivers a lecture in front of a drawing by Swiss outsider artist Emma Kunz. Getty Research Institute

Robert Morris assembled piles of combustible materials, which he incinerated at shows end. Michael Heizer smashed up the pavement in front of the museum with a wrecking ball. Robert Barry photographed the roof of the building, where he had distributed mildly radioactive material. Robert Smithson photographed mirrors on the roof, displacing art historys shelter with topsy-turvy reflections of trees and sky.

In the galleries, Gilberto Zorio suspended torches that periodically burst into flame and consumed themselves. (He was lucky the building didnt ignite.) Lawrence Weiner chiseled white plaster off a wall in the shape of a square to expose the implacable institutional structure beneath  in the process reversing Kazimir Malevichs 1918 White on White, an ethereal white square painted on a gauzy white background and a benchmark of spiritual abstract painting.

Almost half of the artists were American, including several from Los Angeles (Edward Kienholz, Bruce Nauman, Allen Ruppersberg) and others who would soon be working in the city (Douglas Huebler, William Wegman). A page from the curators notebook lists nearly 30 people Szeemann visited during a Southern California trip, including Ruscha and Robert Irwin, as well as gallerists Eugenia Butler and Esther Robles.

Szeemanns international show recognized that the world, including the art world, was shrinking. While the curator was assembling it, the first astronauts to orbit the moon took flight  the first humans to visually observe the Earth as one unified sphere. The first airline jumbo-jet took off just six weeks before the show opened, launching mass trans-Atlantic and trans-continental travel.

One of the shows great failings, however common for its day, was that 66 of the 69 artists were male (almost exclusively white). Systems artist Hanne Darboven, Postminimalist Eva Hesse and filmmaker Jo Ann Kaplan were the only women to make the cut in an otherwise socially attuned exhibition apparently indifferent to the feminist movement.

The Getty show has some surprises. I had forgotten, for example, that an American corporation sponsored it.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris was beginning a push into European markets  the Marlboro Man, its cartoonish cowboy, soon captured them  and its stated claim of valuing corporate creativity was being branded with the newly popular world of contemporary art museums. The company gave Szeemann a hefty $150,000 budget, a sum equivalent to more than $1 million today, to mount his path-breaking show.

In a marvelous (and unrealized) proposal for an exhibition poster, a witty contour drawing by Swiss artist Markus Raetz shows a Philip Morris cigarette pack on top and an ashtray with Claes Oldenburg-style crushed cigarette butts on the bottom. The pristine pack is captioned When attitudes , while the butt-filled ashtray is captioned,  became form. Desire ends in ruin and decay.

The Getty show is divided into three sections. The first, focused on the momentous Bern and Kassel shows, is the most absorbing.

Then comes Utopias and Visionaries, a loose-limbed survey of three 1970s and 80s exhibitions in which alternative political movements, outsider artists and mystical philosophies were injected into standard histories of Modern art. Finally, Geographies is a grab bag of later shows (Szeemann organized around 150 in his career), including one on machine imagery and another on Swiss identity, a fraught concept in a region where German, French and Italian histories collide.

Off site at the downtown Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, a satellite show re-creates a revealing 1974 Szeemann project. He had resigned as Berns director not long after that controversial exhibition closed and, unemployed after Documenta, he decided to turn an apartment above Berns Cafe du Commerce into a museum for a show about his recently deceased grandfather, Etienne Szeemann.

Beauty was Etiennes business: A Hungarian-born hairdresser, who lived to 98, he had invented a permanent wave machine. The gizmo of tubes, coils and wiring looks like something from Dr. Frankensteins lab, useful for glamorizing the monsters bride.

Szeemann turned an apartment into a museum. Brian Forrest / ICA LA

A haridresser, Etienne Szeemann invented a permanent wave machine Brian Forrest / ICA LA

Szeemann's apartment-museum chronicled the life of his grandfather, Etienne Brian Forrest / ICA LA

The ICA LA has reconstructed Szeemann's apartment/museum and show inside its main gallery. Brian Forrest / ICA LA

Etiennes grandson, a hoarder who saved virtually everything even vaguely meaningful to him throughout his life, sorted, cataloged and displayed what his beloved grandfather left behind. The ICA LA has reconstructed the small apartment as a freestanding gallery installation.

Its hallways and rooms are filled with neatly organized photographs, papers and artifacts  grandfathers family tree, roots in the Austro-Hungarian empire, professional life, hobbies and daily activities. Amusing reminiscences from family include the curators sister: I liked grandfather, but I dont have any illusions. You are just as egotistical as him.

Nothing in Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us is especially captivating, not the wigs and combs nor the postcards, engraved diplomas and knickknacks. What makes it worth seeing is its example.

Perhaps the most intensely personal of Szeemanns shows, it speaks to meticulous, exhaustive obsession. A scrupulously organized archive of a life lived, it mirrors what the Getty has likewise undertaken with the celebrated curator.

         

Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions

Where: Getty Research Institute, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood

When: Through May 6; closed Mondays

         

Grandfather: A Pioneer Like Us

Where: ICA/LA, 1717 E. 7th St., L.A.

When: Through April 22; closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Mass international air travel began with the 747, which launched just six weeks before the exhibition "When Attitudes Become Form" opened in Switzerland

christopher.knight@latimes.com

@KnightLAT

UPDATES:

For the Record

3:40 p.m. This article was updated to correct a reference to Glenn Phillips. He is a Getty curator, not a Getty consulting curator.
Your options for performing arts this weekend include the Joffrey Ballet, the artist Miwa Matreyek, and the Kronos Quartet leading the fact-based My Lai at Royce Hall. The new tune-filled tale Cambodian Rock Band opens at South Coast Repertory. And theres a birthday bash at the Getty Center, and youre invited. Heres the quick rundown.

Joffreys Romeo & Juliet

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene: Political turmoil in 20th century Italy serves as the backdrop for the Joffrey Ballet's reimagining of Romeo & Juliet, Prokofievs take on Shakespeares romantic tragedy. Rory Hohenstein and Christine Rocas dance the lead roles. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; ends March 17. $34 and up. www.musiccenter.org

Orpheus and Eurydice

The Joffrey also is joining forces with Los Angeles Opera for an update of Glucks 18th century opera based on ancient Greek myth. In Orpheus and Eurydice, a legendary hero goes to hell and back to rescue his beloved. Tenor Maxim Mironov and soprano Lisette Oropesa sing the lead roles. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. 7:30 p.m. Saturday; five additional performances through March 25. $16 and up. www.laopera.org

Lisette Oropesa and Maxim Mironov in "Orpheus and Eurydice." Ken Howard

Miwa Matreyek at Caltech

Prepare to be enchanted when animator and performance artist Miwa Matreyek reprises her mythologically inspired, multimedia-enhanced and visually ravishing shadow plays Myth & Infrastructure and This World Made Itself. Caltech, Beckman Auditorium, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. 8 p.m. Friday. $10, $30. www.events.caltech.edu

Miwa Matreyek performing "Myth & Infrastructure." Scott Groller / RADAR L.A.

My Lai at Royce Hall

The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA presents Kronos Quartet, tenor Rinde Eckert and musician Van-Anh Vo in a one-night-only performance of My Lai. Jonathan Bergers monodrama is based on a U.S. Army helicopter pilots first-person account of the 1968 massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers by American troops. Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. 8 p.m. $29-$59. www.cap.ucla.edu

Kronos Quartet, left, with tenor Rinde Eckert and instrumentalist Van-Anh Vo . Zoran Orlic

Bingo Hall at the Autry

Native Voices at the Autry focuses on Native American, Alaska Native and First Nations playwrights. Next up for the company is Bingo Hall, Dillon Chittos new family-friendly, coming-of-age comedy-drama about a young man whos thinking about leaving his pueblo and heading off to college. Autry Museum of the American West, Griffith Park, 4700 Western Heritage Way, L.A. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; ends March 25. $8-$25; reservations recommended. www.theautry.org

Cast members Michaela Escarcega, left, Kholan Studi and Kenny Ramos in Dillon Chitto's new comedy drama "Bingo Hall," presented by Native Voices at the Autry. Craig Schwartz

The Gettys 20th birthday

Congrats, Getty Center, you dont look a day over 19! The museum complex that looms over the 405 celebrates its 20th birthday with a bash featuring live music and dance, arts-and-crafts workshops and much, much more. 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Free. www.getty.edu

Cambodian Rock Band at South Coast Rep

Lauren Yees world-premiere comedy-drama-mystery Cambodian Rock Band tells the complicated tale of a young woman, her immigrant father, a brutal regime and surf-rock music in 1970s Cambodia. Songs are by local group Dengue Fever. South Coast Repertory, Julianne Argyros Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 2 and 7:45 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; ends March 25. $23 and up. www.scr.org
Have you heard about the little movie that tells the story of a royal man-feline named TChalla who is powered by vibranium and defends a secret African paradise named Wakanda?

Ryan Cooglers Black Panther is not just an epic comic-book action flick  it could approach the $1-billion mark globally after its opening in China this weekend  the movie is a full-blown cultural phenomenon, generating a cottage industry of cultural criticism that touches on a spectacular array of topics, including racial politics, geopolitics, gender issues, beauty standards, design and urbanism. (Hello, Wakandan municipal transit system!)

In fact, there are so many takes on Black Panther that New York-based educator Roberto Soto-Carrion has helpfully compiled dozens of analytical stories related to the film and the Black Panther comics in general into a 14-page Google Doc called The Black Panther Reader.

Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), left, and Shuri (Letitia Wright) in "Black Panther." Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

For those who dont have a spare month to pore over that excellent document  or to seek out additional worthy reading on the subject  weve come up with our own abbreviated Pantherpedia. (Warning: spoilers, ahead.)

American history

The roots of the fictional Wakanda  a utopic African nation untouched by slavery  lie, to some degree, in the Americas, writes historian N.B.D. Connolly, of Johns Hopkins University, in an engaging essay in the Hollywood Reporter.

He refers to the autonomous settlements of escaped slaves known as maroons that established themselves in corners of Jamaica, Suriname and Saint-Domingue (otherwise known as Haiti) during the colonial era. And theres the slave-led uprising that led to Haitis independence in 1804  a free black nation decades before slavery came to an end in the U.S.

Wakanda might not be Haiti, it's true, writes Connolly. But it's what Haiti was before such a place even existed. It's a dream and a wish spoken into the wind.

Angela Bassett in a scene from "Black Panther." Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

An African present

The idea of Wakanda also echoes the history of the few African nations that were never colonized by Europeans, such as Ethiopia.

In an enlightening article on Longreads, Eritrean American writer Rawaha Haile considers how Black Panthers narrative of liberation might read in that country, currently plagued by civil unrest.

In Addis Ababa, she writes, Black Panther spent its opening weekend sold out five times a day out of a possible five showings. A question I repeatedly found myself asking is where Africans watching this film fit within the Afrofuturist possibility of Wakanda? How do you watch the dream of Africa, set within the real Africa, created by filmmakers in the diaspora, and then emerge to martial law?

The secret entrance to Wakanda. Film Frame / Marvel Studios

Connecting to Afrofuturism

The film dwells in science fiction: a feline superhero, impossible technologies, the powerful vibranium from which Wakanda draws its power. In an exquisite piece in the New York Times Magazine, essayist Carvell Wallace looks beyond the sci-fi to examine how Black Panther embodies the fantastical in relation to the black experience.

The artistic movement called Afrofuturism, a decidedly black creation, is meant to go far beyond the limitations of the white imagination, he writes. It isnt just the idea that black people will exist in the future, will use technology and science, will travel deep into space. It is the idea that we will have won the future. There exists, somewhere within us, an image in which we are whole, in which we are home. Afrofuturism is, if nothing else, an attempt to imagine what that home would be. Black Panther cannot help being part of this.

Letitia Wright as the technologically minded Shuri in "Black Panther." Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

Killmongers character

Killmonger as a villain has inspired endless theorizing: the Wakandan boy who is abandoned in the U.S. after his father is murdered, he returns to seize the throne and turn the secretive kingdom into a tool for black liberation.

At the Boston Review, Johns Hopkins scholar Christopher Lebron takes issue with the characters depiction: Rather than the enlightened radical, he comes across as the black thug from Oakland, hell bent on killing for killings sake... The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.

But political writer and editor Adam Serwer at the Atlantic says thats a mistaken reading of the character.

Killmonger is not a product of the ghetto, so much as he is a product of the American military-industrial complex, he writes, noting the characters imperial ambitions.

Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger. Marvel Studios

Black Panther does not render a verdict that violence is an unacceptable tool of black liberation  to the contrary, that is precisely how Wakanda is liberated, he writes. It renders a verdict on imperialism as a tool of black liberation, to say that the masters tools cannot dismantle the masters house.

Americans in Africa

On a related subject, numerous essays explore the ways in which Killmongers journey mirrors the ways in which black Americans seek to reconnect with Africa, a continent that is no longer their own.

Our AncestryDNA results dont exactly lead us into the open arms of our ancestral cousins, writes novelist Brooke Obie on the cinematic website Shadow and Act. We are a homeless people, not welcomed anywhere. If Wakanda is the Black Promised Land, then we are its forgotten children, sold away, left behind, rejected, condescended to.

Huffington Post opinion editor Jolie A. Doggett expresses a similar idea (with a touch of humor): I know its not a real place, but if Wakanda were real, would its people actually let my black ass in? According to every Wakandan in this movie, not likely.

Black Panther chasing the baddies. Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

Critical views

If Black Panther has been hailed, its every last second of screen time has also been critically parsed.

American historian Russell Rickford, in an essay on the website Africa is a Country, states that Wakanda may serve as a beacon of hope, but it is also a symbol of conservative nationalism.

As blacks in the diaspora are brutalized, Wakandans remain detached, surrounded by luxury and comfort in what amounts to an enormous gated community, he writes. In other words, they behave like any other modern capitalist elite.

W'Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya) in a scene from "Black Panther." Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

On the same site, writer Boima Tucker, whose family hails from Sierra Leone, notes that Black Panthers depiction of the African continent is not any more complex than any other in the history of Hollywood.

The Africa of Wakanda, he adds, resembles more an undifferentiated African stew floating in the red, black and green universe somewhere between Kwanza and Kente.

M'Baku as played by Winston Duke in "Black Panther." Film Frame / Marvel Studios

Inventing Africa

Cooglers vision of Africa may be an invented, slightly homogenized one. But it raises the question of how the real Africa is perceived by the Western imagination.

Black Panther, writes New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb, exists in an invented nation in Africa, a continent that has been grappling with invented versions of itself ever since white men first declared it the dark continent and set about plundering its people and its resources. This fantasy of Africa as a place bereft of history was politically useful, justifying imperialism.

In its creation of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, the film also takes stereotypical symbols of Africa and inverts them, says Zambian novelist Namwalli Serpell  who analyzes the weaponry employed in the film in the New York Review of Books.

Black Panthers speculative fantasy does not simply reverse these stereotypes about Africa; it complicates them, she writes  noting the way in which one character dismisses guns as primitive. We see plenty of Wakandan weaponry that might be considered primitive or savage: swords, daggers, scimitars, shields, and even beasts  trained, armored rhinoceroses that seem part horse, part tank.

But in Wakanda, its the weaponry of choice.

M'Baku (Winston Duke), at center, in a fight scene from "Black Panther." Film Frame / Marvel Studios

Women warriors

The strong female characters in Black Panther have not gone unnoticed. Essays about about the Dora Milaje, the female warriors that protect TChalla, abound. But as writer R. Eric Thomas notes in a column in Elle, the presence of women goes beyond simple butt-kicking.

He describes a crucial moment in which Nakia (played by Lupita Nyongo) and Okoye (Danai Gurira) discuss the uncertain future of the Wakandan state.

It's a rare moment in film and almost unheard of in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: two women speaking alone about ideas and framing the film's central themes, writes Thomas. Their conversation plays like an AP Bechdel Test; even as Wakanda falls, these two women are able to engage in passionate, intelligent debate that involves men but is actually about the women themselves, and actually speaks not only to who they are, but what they want their country to be.

And the fact that its two black women makes it even more potent. Writer Jenee Osterheldt of the Kansas City Star notes, Its rare to see black women so dynamic and dimensional in a mainstream movie.

The women dont play to Hollywood stereotypes, she writes. White is not the beauty standard. The melanin is poppin in all shades of chocolate. Theres no long, straight hair flowing in the wind. There are braids, Afros, twists, locs, headwraps and beautiful bald heads.

Members of the Dora Milaje in "Black Panther." From left: Okoye (Danai Gurira), Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba). Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

Style profile

Which brings us to the films fashion, which cannot go ignored. On the academic website The Conversation, fashion scholar Henry Navarro Delgado writes not only about the importance of Black Panthers costuming but about the dressing of the cast at the films premieres. All of it speaks to the importance of style as a form of expression.

Lupita Nyong'o at the Los Angeles premiere of "Black Panther." Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP

Dress style has long been one of few accessible forms of self-expression for North Americas marginalized groups, he writes. For the African Diaspora in North America, dress has always had political connotations.

The urbanism angle

Wakandas glimmering cityscape was bound to inspire some poetic waxing from the design nerds  so much so that Brentin Mock at Citylab has an entire roundup devoted to stories that explore the very narrow topic of Wakandas urbanism.

On Curbed, design writer Patrick Sisson examines the countrys visual connections with the Afrofuturist aesthetic  connecting it to several decades worth of graphic design. Black Panther, he writes, shows a sci-fi version of what a city designed by and for Africans could be.

Letitia Wright in a scene from "Black Panther." Matt Kennedy/Disney/Marvel Studios via AP

Meanwhile, on Citylab, transportation reporter Laura Bliss explores Wakandas streetcar system, which she deduces employs a magnetic levitation technology that allows cars to hover over the surface of the Earth as they travel at high speeds.

Maglev technology, she notes, is real  it just hasnt been widely deployed. Routes have been proposed in the U.S. (most recently between Baltimore and Washington, D.C.), she notes. But theyre a tough sell, especially these days.

Bliss also helpfully notes that the Wakandan train design was inspired by the the train cars of the Bay Area Rapid Transit  Coogler is from the Bay Area. Except, since this is fantasy, the trains always work.

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

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Its good that award-winning French filmmaker Alain Resnais listened to his mother. If not, Genevieve Bujolds film career may have taken a different turn.

Flashback to 1965: The young French Canadian actress was appearing in Paris with the Montreal-based Theatre du Rideau Vert , when Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amor, Last Year in Marienbad) mother saw one of her performances.

She immediately called her son who was casting his award-winning 1966 political drama La Guerre Est Finie with Yves Montand and looking for a young actress to play a member of an extremist political group.

So being a dutiful son he went to see Bujold on stage. Suddenly, I got a call, noted Bujold, 75, during a recent phone interview from her Malibu home. I met him. He had a little camera, and we talked. And he told me something that to this day I try and practice  always go to the end of your movement, meaning follow through on everything you do. Even if I was young and not wise I thought, Oh, I like that. I am gonna remember that.

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Genevieve Bujold in 1966s King of Hearts. (Cohen Media )

No sooner had she returned to Montreal than she went back to Paris to star with Alan Bates in Philippe de Brocas 1966 antiwar fable, King of Hearts, which returned to theaters March 9 in a beautiful 4K restoration.

King of Hearts was not a hit when it was initially released in France and the U.S. but became a midnight movie, a counter-culture hit in the U.S. in the 1970s with young audiences. In fact, it played at the Central Square Cinema in Boston for five years.

Set in a quaint French village during World War I, the magical comedy revolves around a Scottish soldier (Bates) sent into the town to diffuse the bombs that had been rigged to explode at midnight. The only people left in the village are the colorful escapees from the towns mental asylum who arent quite as crazy as the soldiers on each side of the conflict.

The gamin Bujold plays the enchanting Coquelicot with whom Bates falls in love. The rest of the cast is a whos who of famous French actors including Pierre Brasseur, Jean-Claude Brialy and Michel Serrault.

The actress has warm memories of the production, which was shot in the small medieval town of Senlis, France, north of Paris.

It was really magical, the shooting of the film, because it was real, fun and poetic. Genevieve Bujold on King of Hearts

It was really magical, the shooting of the film, Bujold reflected, because it was real, fun and poetic.

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The late de Broca had bottomless energy and a very, very healthy enthusiasm for everything, for life, for what he did. That power was on the set daily.

As was the quintessentially excellent French food.

As you know, meal time is a sacred time, she explained. When we were shooting in the morning we knew we would have a beautiful lunch. They would set tables outside with white table clothes, wildflowers and good food. Then we went back to work.

Bujold said she was too young to be intimidated by her famous costars or Resnais, de Broca and later Louis Malle, with whom she did 1967s The Thief of Paris.

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That was one element that I had working for me, said Bujold. I was young. I was like an unwritten page. They all helped me, more than helped me, they sculpted, almost, my career and life. I am who I am today because [of those films].

Genevieve Bujold in a scene from Anne of the Thousand Days. (Hal Wallis Productions )

But most audiences know Bujold for her haunting Oscar-nominated performance as the tragic Anne Boleyn opposite Richard Burtons Henry VIII in 1969s Anne of the Thousand Days.

It was veteran Hal B. Wallis, who produced countless films including the 1942 Oscar-winning Casablanca, who pursued Bujold for the film after seeing her in the 1968 Canadian film Isabel, that was directed by her late ex-husband Paul Almond.

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I was young, independent and opinionated, she said. I got a call saying that Hal Wallis, the great Hal Wallis, wanted to talk to me. He wanted to give me the role of Anne and asked me for a screen test. Me, in my kitchen in the east end of Montreal, said, No, I dont want a screen test. He told me afterwards, he kind of loved that because he thought that was the spirit of Anne.

Burton, who also got one of the films 10 Oscar nominations, was a force of nature, said the actress. We were perfect for both those roles. The film ended, and he went on with his life and I went on with mine.

Wallis wanted Bujold to next star in 1971s Mary, Queen of Scots, which would be directed by Anne filmmaker Charles Jarrott.

It was great doing Anne, but to do another queen, I just didnt feel up for it.

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Instead she worked for such directors as Brian De Palma, in the haunting 1976 thriller Obsession, Michael Crichton, in 1978s suspense thriller Coma, David Cronenberg, in 1988s horror film Dead Ringers and being the perfect muse for indie icon Alan Rudolph in 1984s Choose Me, 1985s Trouble in Mind and 1988s The Moderns.

Genevieve Bujold in Finding Home. (Castle Hill Productions )

Bjuold continues to work mainly in independent film  including the acclaimed 2012 Canadian romantic drama Still Mine  but she finds that good roles are few and far between for actresses in her age group. I dont get many offers, and the few offers I get I dont want to do.

But shes hoping that an indie film with a beautiful script to be shot in New Zealand will come together. Theyre looking for the money now, and I have a feeling it will happen.

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Bujold admits she feels most at home on a movie set. The camera  the film camera  is like the eye of God. I feel I belong there.

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As the auspicious birth anniversary of Lady Fatima Zahra(as) -- the mother of Imams -- approaches, a group of panegyrists and eulogists from across the nation met with Ayatollah Khamenei this morning, March 8, 2018.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei said Thu. that by promoting modest dress (hijab), Islam has blocked the path which would lead women to a "deviant lifestyle" as practiced by the western woman.



As the auspicious birth anniversary of Lady Fatima Zahra(as) -- the mother of Imams -- approaches, a group of panegyrists and eulogists from across the nation met with Ayatollah Khamenei this morning, March 8, 2018.



During the meeting, Iran's Leader defined women's roles through the framework of Islamic logic, adding "an Islamic woman is the one who has faith and chastity and leads the most crucial section of human education. She influences the society, achieves scientific & spiritual growth: She is the director of the family's hub."



"In contrast, there has always been a deviant framework; today, that different model for women is the one offered by the west," he added.



Ayatollah Khamenei went on to add, "today, according to the western model, the most sought-after characteristics of a woman involve her ability to physically attract men and appease them: one distinct image (portrayed in society) of the western woman is her nudity."



"By promoting modest dress (hijab), Islam has blocked the path which would lead women to such a deviant lifestyle. Hijab is a means of immunity, not a restriction," he stressed.



"For 40 years, enemies have plotted against Iran, spending billions to strike a blow to the Islamic Republic, but for 40 years this pure tree has been steadily growing, which makes us proud," the Leader said. "There have never been so many plots against any nation, yet enemies haven't achieved even one of their goals."



He went on to add, "just a few months ago they plotted, among their think-tanks, and set a plan and a time, estimating that the Islamic Republic would fall by the end of the year. You witnessed how the Iranian nation responded. Iranians are ready to respond to any invaders or any transgressor."







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The crime thriller Bent, not to be confused with the acclaimed Holocaust-era drama of the same name, is a routine programmer filled with surface characters, generic tough-talk and forgettable plotting. One wonders what drew talented writer-director Bobby Moresco, the Oscar-winning co-scripter of Crash, to such uninspired material.

The story, based on characters created by novelist J.P. ODonnell, involves Danny Gallagher (a stolid Karl Urban), an ex-cop wrongly deemed bent (corrupt) after a botched drug bust in which both his partner (Vincent Spano) and an undercover detective were killed.

Three years  and a prison term  later, Gallagher decides to investigate a car-bombing death he believes may be related to said drug bust. With input from old family friend and former cop Jimmy (Andy Garcia), Gallagher hunts down a largely ho-hum series of clues and connections involving a string of shady types. (The Louisiana-set film was shot in Rome.)

Pedestrian action and fight scenes ensue as well as an unconvincing fling between Gallagher and a federal agent (Sofia Vergara) who was romantically connected to the car bomb victim, the wife of a supposed government official (Joe Pacheco).

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Strangely, Gallagher is scripted out of the films final showdown, ending things on a bit of an anti-climactic note. He also misses out on an odd monologue about wild salmon. Were not so lucky.

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Bent

Rating: R, for violence, language and some sexuality/nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

Playing: AMC Universal CityWalk Stadium 19; also on VOD

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In the excruciatingly shrill Chinese import Girls vs Gangsters, a shoddy Hangover knockoff, a trio of girlfriends on a wild bachelorette trip to Vietnam wake up naked on a beach with one of them handcuffed to a briefcase and another in possession of a mysterious tattoo on her back.

A sequel to the 2014 romp, Girls, the new adventure reunites brash, spirited Kimmy (Fiona Sit) and posh, pretentious Jialan (Janine Chang) as they take their recently engaged sweet-natured bestie, Xiwen (Ivy Chen) on a last-chance, debauchery-filled escapade.

In the process of attempting to piece together the events that left them with a cache of gold bars and minus a little sister, they also find themselves having to outrun a bunch of persistent gangsters.

Meanwhile, just in case the uncredited source material isnt readily apparent, Mike Tyson, who appeared in a couple of those Hangover movies, pops up as a half-American, half-Korean Muay Thai champ-turned-snack bar proprietor named Dragon.

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Given the interminable crying/shrieking/squealing that ensues, it might come as a surprise that the comedy, which also sees fit to squeeze in a rape joke, was actually directed by a woman (Wong Chun-Chun), known for her 2000 documentary, the frank Womens Private Parts.

While those vibrant Vietnamese backdrops make for an enticing tourism pitch, audiences are advised to skip this girls trip.

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Girls vs. Gangsters

In Mandarin and English with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Playing: AMC Atlantic Times Square, Monterey Park

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Part documentary, part travelogue, part worship service, Viva Kino! is unfortunately too confused about its component parts to ever coalesce into what it would like to be, a stirring, Mexican-centric tribute to the 17th-century missionary Eusebio Kino.

The Italian Jesuit arrived in New Spain in 1687 and over 24 years, while founding dozens of missions in Baja California and what would become Sonora and southern Arizona, he established a relationship with the indigenous population that many consider especially enlightened. Director Lea Beltramis heartfelt if amateurish movie is built around holistically photographed scenes of a horseback pilgrimage taken by present-day Mexicans that retraces Kinos steps as a desert-communing explorer and compassionate uniter of disparate peoples. (His cartographic acumen led him to draw up Mexicos first detailed maps, and hes credited with introducing European farming techniques to the Pima Indians that broadened their agriculture.)

But the movie is also a devotional meander  with attendant interviews  across many towns where Kino is celebrated with festivals, dances and, at the Nogales border, a Catholic humanitarian initiative in his name that helps ease the transition back to Mexico for the deported.

All well and good for the history novice, and its desire to canonize its subject as an aspirational figure during our time of fearful border talk is well-intentioned. But Viva Kino!  which also inserts narrated snippets from the priests writings  never rises above the level of supplemental video material.

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Viva Kino!

In Spanish and English with English subtitles

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 1 minute

Playing: Arena Cinelounge Sunset, Hollywood

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Goldstone, a tangy chew of socially conscious Outback Noir, boasts the kind of fulsome, mood-loaded desert images that make Australias famed interior seem both appealing and appalling. Its a slow roast technique that enriches writer-director-cinematographer Ivan Sens corruption thriller, even when its Chinatown-meets-Bad Day at Black Rock signposts are readable from vast distances.

The desolate title town, home to an indigenous population but firmly in the clenches of an expansion-hungry mining outfit, is where young white lawman Josh (Alex Russell) butts up against visiting aboriginal investigator Jay (Aaron Pedersen). While the affable yet steely Josh struggles with open bribery by the companys overseer (David Wenham) and Goldstones mayor (Jacki Weaver), the taciturn Jay  whose search for a missing Chinese woman threatens the local power dynamic  fights his own demons of isolated assimilation.

The only real question in Sens workmanlike plot medley of land rights controversy, sex slavery and simmering violence, is when its compassionate male-lead loners will stop mistrusting each other and join forces. Make that two questions: why isnt Pedersen  a world-class brooder with soulful eyes and a singed masculinity  an international star?

This is Pedersens second movie for Sen in the same role (after Mystery Road, with a reported Australian television series in the works), and his Jay is the kind of compellingly gloomy, intelligent and tough justice-seeker easily worth a whole series of politically thorny, culturally resonant crime sagas. The bush, with all its sun-baked secrets, may not be big enough to contain this magnetic characters multitudes.

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Goldstone

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Rating: R for language and violence

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica; expands March 16

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Several powerful narratives vie for supremacy in the political drama The Forgiven, but this sluggishly paced films disparate parts never come together as a compelling whole.

Although director Roland Joffe, who co-wrote with Michael Ashton (based on Ashtons play), attempts a mini-epic look at post-Apartheid South Africa circa 1996, the picture works best in its many highly charged, one-on-one face-offs.

The core of the story, which is based on actual events, is the fraught dynamic between Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker), then-head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Piet Blomfeld (Eric Bana), a convicted death squad assassin  and avowed racist  seeking clemency.

The compassionate Tutu may believe Blomfeld, imprisoned in suburban Cape Towns Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, is savable. But Blomfeld, surly, savage and unyielding, feels and acts otherwise. Tutu and Blomfelds confrontations have vigor and commitment but dont build to the requisite catharsis.

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Brutal gang and racial tensions within the prison take up much time here. These scenes are compelling but, like a third story strand involving a grieving mother (Thandi Makhubele) seeking justice for her daughters disappearance, can ultimately feel more tangential than organic.

Performances are uniformly strong with Whitakers Tutu an effective disappearing act, Banas Blomfeld a vivid monster, Jeff Gum quite good as a conflicted prison guard, and Makhubele heartbreaking in a climactic courtroom scene.

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The Forgiven

Rating: R, for disturbing/violent content, and language throughout including some sexual references

Running time: 2 hours

Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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Theres a moment in the early stages of The Oath  a frenetic but dim crime series debuting Thursday on Sonys streaming service Crackle  that makes the unfortunate choice of inviting comparison to The Wire.

The Oath, which was created by former L.A. County Sheriffs Department deputy Joe Halpin (Hawaii Five-O), will not be as well remembered as the revered HBO series, which just received the oral history treatment in a book by Jonathan Abrams. In an early episode, The Oath finds a crime boss (Kwame Patterson, who also appeared in The Wire) asking a corrupt cop about a street drug called WMD, which he describes as Oxycontin on steroids.

The Wire also drew from the headlines to name its corner products, and by tribute or coincidence, that line is the first and last time The Oath approaches the same airspace as the many far better programs about police, corruption, crime and drugs.

To be fair, the series isnt aiming nearly that high. Executive produced by Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, whose contributions to Starzs Power left a greater impression than his recent hip-hop output, The Oath builds on a title card that opens each episode to explain the existence of criminal organizations within police departments. The colorful gang names (Berserkers, Vipers and the like) are so common that there seems no decent cop in the whole city, which seems L.A.-adjacent in spirit but was primarily shot in Puerto Rico.

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Our hero is officer Steve Hammond (Ryan Kwanten, known in happier times as the goofily dumb Jason Stackhouse from True Blood), who leads the Ravens. We meet the masked Steve and his crew in scenes blatantly ripping off the Al Pacino-Robert De Niro thriller Heat, pulling off bank heists armed with automatic rifles. One of the Ravens, Steves brother Cole (Cory Hardrict, American Sniper), angers the rest by roughing up a guard during the robbery, which is a rare instance of any of the shows characters exhibiting a flicker of morality.

In the early going, The Oath is most interested in establishing that everyone is very bad, especially given how seldom theyre distracted by any actual police work. The cartoonishly harsh Beach (Katrina Law) has a mostly insult-driven relationship with a cop from a rival gang, and Ramos (Joseph Julian Soria) has shady in-laws and an extraordinarily careless way of covering his tracks.

Then there are Steve and Cole, who dont like one another much but are theoretically united by an incarcerated patriarch (Sean Bean of Game of Thrones, who mostly stays out of sight) and a cancer-striken mother (Linda Purl). Both could serve as some kind of justification for the brothers to have turned to crime and maybe inspire some sympathy, but The Oath isnt that kind of show. Everyone is corrupt because they are.

Even with its stiff storyline and performances, the series shows a flash of potential with the quick arrival of the FBI, which has been investigating the Ravens. But agent Damon Byrd (Arlen Escarpeta) is the least capable undercover cop on TV and quickly gets mixed up in their dirty business too. Without someone to actually root for, The Oath functions on the hope that viewers have the time or patience to watch dirty cops evade justice if the twists come fast enough.

The show delivers decent enough action-movie pacing in a gruff, amoral universe that really wants to be reminiscent of Training Day or The Shield, but with so many one-dimensional characters saddled with leaden dialogue, it falls well short. Some half-hearted groundwork is laid for the possibility of redemption in a few Ravens, but theres so little evidence of something deeper or surprising anywhere on-screen that its difficult to care. The Oath just shows too little promise.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

The Oath

Where: Crackle

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When: Any time, Thursday

Rating: Not rated

chris.barton@latimes.com

Follow me over here @chrisbarton.

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Overrated/Underrated: Oscars edition: The Breadwinner deserves a win, and how Hollywood cant resist itself
In a powerful juxtaposition of history and future, Louis Vuitton wowed guests at its show at the Louvre on Tuesday with a spaceship-themed runway landed in one of the museums courtyards.

Gazing in wonder at the set, surrounded by features including ancient statues of wild boars and wolves, and a pond filled with water lilies, was Ruth Negga, who plays an astro scientist in the soon-to-be-released Ad Astra, costarring Brad Pitt, and helmed by James Gray.

Show regular Michelle Williams was equally impressed. Its like nothing Ive ever seen. Every time you think theyve hit the top, something else comes along to totally take your breath away, more impressive than the last time and the time before that and the time before that, said the actress, who recently wrapped filming the Spider-Man spin-off, Venom, with Tom Hardy.

Michelle Williams (Stephane Feugere / WWD )

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Emma Stone, the brands latest ambassador, had already gotten a sneak-peek backstage. I saw the view from above. I just went back to see Nicolas [Ghesquiere], and he was like, Look at the TV. So cool, said the actress. It reminds me a little bit of Star Wars, added Stone, who was sitting next to Justin Theroux, her costar in the TV series Maniac, set for release on Netflix later this year. So what was he like to work with? Oh, is nightmare a strong enough word? deadpanned Stone, with Theroux chipping in, Night terror.

Sienna Miller had flown in fresh from attending the Oscars. But she had the jet lag under control. Slightly discombobulated, but nothing a bit of TM [Transcendental Meditation] and a big sleep on the flight cant help. Motherhood is good training for lack of sleep, said Miller, who stars in The Burning Woman, due for release toward the end of the year.

Its about a woman growing up, transforming over time, and life happens and its incredibly hard. Its about the journey of womanhood against all odds, said the actress. I live in New York, but to be able to come to the Louvre and have it closed off. This opulence, its exquisite.

A pink-haired Jaden Smith proved the perfect gentleman as everyone clambered on to the runway after the show to congratulate Ghesquiere, helping his fellow show guests make their way through. He held his hand aloft as rain pelted down on the shows temporary tent structure, showering the crowd.

Raindrops, its raining inside, said Smith. It didnt dampen his appreciation of the event, though. I thought it was amazing, everything.
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 
Ayatollah Khamenei visited Martyr First Sergeant Mohammad-Ali Bayrami's family.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei visited the family of one of the martyrs of the recent riots in Tehran Wednesday night.



Ayatollah Khamenei visited Martyr First Sergeant Mohammad-Ali Bayrami's family.



In one of the streets of northern Tehran, there was a riot broke out on February 19. After the deadline of the police was over at 4:00 a.m., the riot was subdued by the security forces and the main instigators were arrested.



In the unrest, held by a group of dervishes, five of the law enforcement forces were killed in a bus and car attack and stabbing and 30 others were injured. Some of the rioters sustained injuries as well.



Public property, people's cars and homes were also damaged by the rioters.



Regarding the reasons for the riot, Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli said that in the past 40 years, enemies have been bent on disrupting the country's security through various scenarios and what happened on Pasdaran Street was part of the same plot.



They were to ignite the spark in Tehran and spread it to other cities across the country, he said.



A Dervish cult claiming to be followers of mysticism and chivalry attacked innocent civilians with swords, daggers and sticks putting the security of the people at risk, the interior minister said.

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A sixth-grader died Tuesday after collapsing during a physical education class at Dodson Middle School in Rancho Palos Verdes.

School staff declined to answer questions about the incident, but the Los Angeles Unified School District released the text of a recorded message sent to parents.

The student collapsed this afternoon while running during physical education class, said Assistant Principal Sarah Aiello on behalf of the schools interim principal, Kathleen Miyamoto. He received immediate attention from the school nurse and from paramedics, who rushed the student to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

According to the message, the district quickly deployed crisis counselors. Children who needed emotional support were advised to notify a teacher or counselor. Students also were told they could call a support service called Teen Line from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at 1-800-TLC-TEEN.

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howard.blume@latimes.com

@howardblume
Californias three new sanctuary laws, challenged in court this week by the Trump administration, face different hurdles and have varying vulnerabilities, legal experts said Wednesday.

Law professors who read the lawsuit filed by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions generally described it as a credible challenge that presents complex legal questions that might wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The arguments made by the Justice Department are not at all lightweight arguments, said Pepperdine law school professor Douglas W. Kmiec. They are quite substantial.

The federal government has wide authority over matters of immigration, and Sessions has charged that Californias new laws usurp or preempt federal rules.

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The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution says federal law takes precedence over state laws, and Sessions suit accuses Californias new regulations of violating that provision.

Most analysts said they expected California would prevail in defending a law that prohibits state and local law enforcement from voluntarily giving federal immigration authorities information about the release dates of immigrant inmates.

Federal district judges have decided in favor of cities with ordinances that limit law enforcements cooperation with immigration agents, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government may not commandeer states into becoming the enforcement agents of federal law.

In 1997, for example, the Supreme Court said a federal law requiring state and local governments to do background checks before issuing permits for firearms violated the 10th Amendment.

The state is trying to say, we are only going to cooperate with the federal government to the extent required by federal law, said UC Davis law school Dean Kevin R. Johnson.

California acknowledges that the federal government is in charge of immigration, and we have to cooperate, Johnson said,  but we dont have to go one inch further.

Loyola law professor Kathleen Kim said the purpose of sanctuary laws was to ensure that immigrants report crimes and cooperate with law enforcement without fear of being deported.

The cities and the state have a right under the 10th Amendment to pass what they deem necessary to advance public safety for California residents, she said.

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UCLA law professor Hiroshi Motomura said the Trump administration was attacking California laws that do nothing more than require immigration enforcement to respect the U.S. Constitution.

This was settled 200 years ago. States dont get to do that. Chapman law professor John Eastman, saying a state law on inspecting detainees records amounts to supervising the federal government

But analysts were less certain about the prospects of another state law that makes private employers liable for voluntarily cooperating with immigration authorities.

That law requires private employers to give workers 72 hours notice before inspections by immigration authorities.

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A state cant act in a way that impedes the achievement of a federal objective, UC Berkeley law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said.

The state could counter that it was simply regulating business to protect citizens, he said.

Its a difficult question under current law, and a lot depends on the judges perspective, Chemerinsky said.

Legal analysts generally agreed that the regulation involving private employers was the most vulnerable of the laws Sessions challenged.

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Whenever the federal government is seeking to impose obligations or duties on state and local officers, as opposed to private citizens, the state will have a better chance of succeeding, Kmiec said.

Also potentially vulnerable is a law that requires the state to inspect non-criminal immigration detainees being held in state, local and private facilities, analysts said.

Chapman University law professor John Eastman said that law creates a clear conflict with federal law by giving the state the right to inspect detainees records.

That amounts to supervising the federal government, Eastman said. This was settled 200 years ago. States dont get to do that.

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Others said that California has the right to inspect detainees in state, local and private prisons and can argue that the law was necessary to ensure safe and humane conditions.

Johnson noted that the new state laws were pretty carefully crafted and contained caveats that the rules were not to interfere with federal requirements.

If there is a conflict between the laws, then federal law is going to prevail, Johnson said.

Kmiec said the federal government will try to throw its weight around.

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They have substantial authority, given the foreign affairs aspect of immigration, he said, but the state is not without its arguments.

The federal government has sued states in the past.

The Obama administration in 2010 challenged an Arizona law that made it a crime for an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally to search for a job and required immigrants to carry documentation with them at all times.

The Obama administration argued that Arizona was usurping the U.S. governments sole right to make immigration law. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of Arizonas law.

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Sessions filed the lawsuit in a federal court in Sacramento, a more conservative district than those in San Francisco and Los Angeles. But the district courts rulings will likely be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a majority of judges appointed by Democrats.

Johnson said Sessions probably chose to file in Sacramento for political, not legal, reasons.

It seems to me that this is all kind of a political show, the UC Davis law school dean said. Jeff Sessions is going to Sacramento talking about open borders. It is more a political statement.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Twitter: @mauradolan
Residents near San Diego are warned to watch out for a four-legged fugitive: a 5-foot monitor lizard that wriggled out of its cage.

Mike Estevez tells KGTV that the 35-pound reptile named Bubbles was last seen on Sunday at his store, Mikes Pets in Spring Valley.

Estevez says the carnivorous critter probably managed to escape through a tiny crevice at the bottom of a cage.

Security camera footage shows Bubbles sauntering toward the rear of the store.

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Estevez says Bubbles is good around people and often roams the store while customers are around. But hes advising anyone who sees the reptile not to try grabbing it.

San Diego Countys Animal Services department is assisting in the search.
An herbalist who touted natural cures that helped him overcome cancer has been charged in the death of a 13-year-old diabetic boy prosecutors say he treated with herbal oils instead of insulin.

Timothy Morrow, 83, was charged with practicing medicine without a license and child abuse causing a death, the Los Angeles city attorney said Wednesday. His lawyer said he disputes the charges.

Morrow, who describes on his website how the voice of God led him to start using herbs for his prostate cancer, began treating the boys Type 1 diabetes with herbs in 2014 after meeting his mother at seminars he conducted, City Atty. Mike Feuer said.

When the boy became sick and semi-comatose in August 2014, Morrow told the parents not to give the boy insulin but to use herbal oils he was selling, Feuer said.

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The boy, identified in court papers as Edgar L., died the next day. The medical examiner determined the boy would have survived if he received proper medical care.

The allegations in this case underscore the serious health and safety risks of taking medical advice from someone who lacks a license and the proper training that goes with it, Feuer said in a statement. No family should have to suffer the tragedy of losing a child because of irresponsible, uncredentialed medical advice.

A defense lawyer said Morrow had nothing to do with the boys death and is not guilty.

Hes never been in trouble in his life, attorney Sanford Perliss said. He really has a lifetime of helping people.

The Los Angeles County district attorney declined to bring felony charges and referred the case to the city attorney, a spokesman said. The charges were filed in August just before a three-year deadline, and Morrows arraignment was postponed until later this month.

It wasnt clear why the city attorney announced the charges Wednesday, and a spokesman couldnt answer other questions about the case.

Perliss pointed out that in the three years since the boys death, there has been no attempt to take away Morrows business license, no agency has tried to shut him down, and the parents of the boy have not sued him.

No one did anything to indicate he was doing anything wrong, Perliss said.

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Morrow faces up to two years in jail if convicted of the misdemeanors. He,s due in Los Angeles County Superior Court for arraignment March 27.

Morrows website, Common Sense Products, touts his story as a testament to the value of herbal remedies as part of a healthy lifestyle. The site includes products for adults and children targeted at various health needs, including blood sugar.

Morrow encourages people to take charge of their own health and says, We dont force anyone or try to lead anyone.

Keep in mind: There are no side effects to herbs, no labels that read Keep Out of Reach of Children,  the websites mission statement says. These herbs, in fact, are gentle enough for children.
Prosecutors wont criminally charge a now-former Los Angeles police officer in the fatal shooting of a man near the Venice boardwalk  a decision that bucks an unprecedented call by Chief Charlie Beck to prosecute one of his own for a deadly, on-duty shooting.

The long-awaited decision announced Thursday by Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey comes almost three years after Officer Clifford Proctor  who resigned from the Los Angeles Police Department in 2017  shot and killed Brendon Glenn, a New York native who was staying near the famed boardwalk.

The shooting of the unarmed, black homeless man drew scrutiny from the start, a spotlight that intensified in 2016 when Beck revealed his recommendation. The chiefs remarks also upped the public pressure on Lacey and her office, which has not prosecuted a law enforcement officer for an on-duty shooting in nearly two decades. Police critics and supporters wondered whether this case would become a watershed moment in Los Angeles.

In the end, however, it was not.

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Prosecutors disagreed with the chiefs analysis, saying it was reasonable for Proctor to believe Glenn was reaching for the officers partners gun. Even if he was mistaken, Laceys office said, such a mistake would not be unreasonable under the law.

A duty to file criminal charges exists only when our office determines that the admissible evidence is of such a compelling force that it would warrant a conviction after considering the most plausible, reasonable and foreseeable defenses, Laceys office wrote in a memo made public Thursday. That is not the case here.

The comments were part of an 83-page letter outlining the decision by prosecutors  an unusually lengthy document that included DNA analysis, an outside experts opinion and, for the first time, video showing the shooting.

The footage came from a nearby bars security camera and was a crucial piece of evidence for Beck and the citys Police Commission, which determined Proctor broke the LAPDs rules for using deadly force. The video, Beck said, was a key reason why he believed the then-officer committed manslaughter.

I respect our D.A. very much. She is a personal friend, he said. But I disagree with her on this decision.

So did Matt Johnson, vice president of the civilian Police Commission, which oversees the LAPD. Proctors actions, he said, were not consistent with the training or values of the citys police officers.

Having analyzed the evidence as part of our administrative review, I am in agreement with Chief Beck that Officer Proctor should have been charged with manslaughter, he said.

I respect our D.A. very much. She is a personal friend. But I disagree with her on this decision. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck

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Laceys office said Thursday that she did not consider the Police Commissions decision, nor a $4-million settlement the city of L.A. awarded to Glenns mother and young son, when weighing the case. The district attorney said she also did not factor in Becks opinion.

A letter from the chief indicating that he thinks we ought to file charges is no different from a police officer bringing a packet of evidence in here and saying, I think you ought to file on this,  she said. As independent prosecutors, were supposed to look at the evidence and the law. And thats what we did.

The district attorney said she would prefer that the chief not publicly weigh in on similar cases in the future.

It raises expectations when the evidence just may not be there, she said.

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She has her job to do, and I have my job, Beck told reporters when asked about Laceys remarks. One of the problems is the district attorney takes far too long to make their decisions on these cases, and I cannot wait that long.

Part of the delay, Lacey said, was that prosecutors didnt receive all of the evidence they needed from the LAPD until less than a year ago. Hiring an outside use-of-force expert was also time-consuming, she said.

Glenn was fatally shot May 5, 2015, as police tried to detain the 29-year-old after he fought with a bouncer outside a Windward Avenue bar. Proctor and his partner intervened, and a struggle began.

Proctor told investigators that he opened fire because he saw Glenns hand on his partners holster and thought Glenn was trying to grab the officers gun, according to an LAPD report made public in 2016.

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But video from the bar and statements from Proctors partner disputed that account, according to the report. Glenns hand was never seen on or near any portion of the holster, the report said, and his partner never made any statements or actions suggesting Glenn was trying to take the gun.

Beck said Thursday that the footage showed that Proctors belief was not only incorrect, it was also very difficult to tell why somebody would come to that conclusion.

According to the district attorneys analysis, however, it is not clear whether the video does, in fact, contradict any of Proctors observations.

Glenns left hand could not be seen in the footage, the memo said, and it appeared based on Proctors movements and facial expressions that he believed Glenn posed a threat.

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Witnesses said they couldnt see Glenns hands, prosecutors said, but no witnesses stated that Glenn was not attempting to grab the gun. DNA analysis of the officers holster and duty belt didnt rule out the possibility, the memo noted. And an independent expert hired by the office concluded after watching the video that Proctors actions were consistent with his having observed a threat posed by Glenn.

After the gunfire, one witness told investigators, Proctor looked pale and scared. He then tried to perform CPR on Glenn, prosecutors noted.

Read the full memo: Officer involved shooting of Brendon Glenn 

I think the D.A.s office made a very difficult decision, but it was the right decision, said Proctors attorney, Bill Seki. Based upon the standards in the law, this was a justified shooting.

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Because of Glenns behavior and the subsequent fight, Seki said, Proctor had an honest belief that he and his partner were in danger.

Brittany Glenn looks through pictures of her brother, Brendon Glenn, 29, as their mother, Sheri Camprone, looks on. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )

Beck told reporters hours after the shooting that he was very concerned by what he saw on the video  comments quickly criticized by the union representing the LAPDs rank-and-file officers, which accused the chief of speaking too quickly about the matter. On Thursday, the unions leaders said the district attorney did not succumb to political posturing or pressure.

There is a reason why we strongly advocate not rushing to judgment with complex cases, the union said. Proctor believed he and his partner were in danger and this danger justified the officers actions.

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The shooting rattled Venice, particularly the young homeless people whom Glenn camped with on the beach. After the shooting, as investigators combed the scene, Glenns friends held signs with his name outside the yellow police tape. They later packed a town hall meeting, criticizing police.

Glenn moved to California looking for work a few months before his death, his mother and sister previously told The Times. They described him as an adventurer who wasnt afraid of a challenge, someone who loved cracking jokes and helping others.

Glenns family was stunned by the news Thursday, their lawyer said. Attorney V. James DeSimone had harsh words for the district attorney, saying there was a conflict of interest in letting prosecutors decide whether to charge the law enforcement officers they rely on in other cases.

This is the type of case where a jury should decide whether Officer Clifford Proctor is guilty, not the district attorney, DeSimone said.

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Proctor, meanwhile, is awaiting trial on domestic violence and other charges in Orange County. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

kate.mather@latimes.com

Twitter: @katemather

cindy.chang@latimes.com

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Twitter: @cindychangla

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

Twitter: @marisagerber

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UPDATES:

4:35 p.m.: This article was updated to include comments from Beck, Lacey, Johnson, the union representing LAPD officers, and more details about the D.A.s decision.

11:55 a.m. This article was updated with comments from attorney V. James DeSimone.

11:05 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey.

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10:50 a.m.: This post was updated with comments from attorney Bill Seki.

This article was originally published at 10:35 a.m.
Wanted: New police chief.

Job description: Reduce crime. Increase transparency. Build trust in police, particularly among African Americans. Motivate officers. Crack down on problem cops. Tackle homelessness. Curb shootings by police. Put more officers on the streets. Stay away from immigration enforcement. Continue police reforms.

The distinct, often-competing needs of a city as vast and diverse as Los Angeles were underscored during the Police Commissions recent listening tour, on which members of the LAPDs civilian oversight panel canvassed residents about what theyd like to see in their next police chief. Their list of demands was long.

The series of meetings offered the first public glimpse at some of the Los Angeles Police Department insiders who are weighing whether to apply, but it also illustrated the challenges ahead for whomever is chosen.

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The next chief will have to confront some of the most intractable problems facing the city and policing overall, including ongoing concerns over how LAPD officers use force, a sharp rise in homelessness, allegations of racial profiling, a stubborn uptick in crime and friction with a White House angry at the citys sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with immigration agents.

I believe that what were looking for is impossible, said Steve Soboroff, the president of the Police Commission. Its not so much as what the person is right now, but are they on their way to getting to be what we want? Whos got the best chance to do it all?

Were setting very, very high standards and expectations in a very difficult time.

Finding the citys next police chief will be one of the most closely watched decisions made by Mayor Eric Garcetti, who will make the final selection from a list of applicants narrowed down by his appointees on the Police Commission. Commissioners have said they hope to finish evaluating what could be dozens of candidates and offer Garcetti their top three suggestions in early June, a few weeks before Chief Charlie Becks last day, June 27. The city began accepting applications for the job last week.

At the recent meetings, several residents called for the next chief to come from within the LAPDs ranks rather than an outside agency. They said they wanted someone who already knows L.A. and the dynamics of the citys different neighborhoods.

We need someone with deep knowledge and understanding who can be effective right from the start, one resident, Steven Kaplansky, told a police commissioner at Van Nuys City Hall.

In West L.A., Shana Lloyd said the next LAPD chief needs to understand the history of the citys still-evolving relationship with the police, particularly the departments treatment of nonwhite residents.

We also still have a huge gap between law enforcement and communities of color, said Lloyd, who is black. I think Los Angeles has taken great strides, and Charlie Beck has done some things, but we can go further.

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For me, as a law-abiding citizen of Los Angeles, Im still nervous if cop cars roll by if I dont know any of them, she continued. I am concerned about myself and members of my community, and I want to make sure we can close that gap.

Police commissioners Cynthia McClain-Hill, right, and Matt Johnson, center, along with the panels executive director, Richard Tefank, listen to residents talk about the citys next police chief during a meeting last month in Watts. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times )

Some residents stressed the importance of continuing to train officers to guard against their own implicit biases and to de-escalate tense encounters without using serious force  renewed focuses in policing that the LAPD has incorporated into its training. And if officers act inappropriately, residents said, they want a chief who will swiftly take action.

In Watts, Perry Crouch said the incoming chief should encourage officers to get out of their cars and talk to residents, particularly in African American neighborhoods. The chief should do the same, he said  and not just drive by and look at us like were nothing.

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Were setting very, very high standards and expectations in a very difficult time. Steve Soboroff, president of the Police Commission

The City Council, which must confirm the mayors choice for police chief, weighed in at a meeting Wednesday. Council members echoed their constituents in calling for a chief who understands Los Angeles diverse neighborhoods and can relate to the people who live there.

Young African American, Latino and Asian boys and men have a different experience than others in the city, said Councilman Gil Cedillo. And as this city continues to diversify and become the place that everyone in the world comes to to realize their greatest hopes and aspirations, we have to have a police department that is prepared to embrace them and that they embrace.

Councilman Mike Bonin said the new chief needs to figure out how to put more officers on the streets without a huge increase in the departments budget.

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Particularly for internal candidates, if they cant articulate a strategy to do that, theyre probably not right for the job, Bonin said.

Council members Joe Buscaino and Nury Martinez said it is time for Los Angeles to have its first female police chief.

Most of the community meetings were short and sparsely attended  generally drawing a couple dozen people and lasting less than an hour. A handful of current and former high-ranking LAPD officials whose names have circulated as potential contenders for the job were also in attendance, often sitting inconspicuously in the back of the room.

The list included Deputy Chief Robert Arcos, who heads the LAPDs Central Bureau; Sandy Jo MacArthur, a former LAPD assistant chief who retired in 2015 but is still a reserve officer; and Assistant Chief Beatrice Girmala, who oversees the departments counter-terrorism and detective bureaus.

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Some residents who attended the meetings pitched specific people they said theyd like to see become chief. Arcos was mentioned, as was Michel Moore, an assistant chief who was one of three finalists for the job in 2009. Several people suggested Girmala, pointing to their experiences with her as a captain in Hollywood and while working with her on LGBTQ issues.

Shes a person who will say, Lets bring people together. Lets work this out. Lets come up with a resolution,  said Troy Isaac, who first met Girmala after he was released from prison in 2008. Shes not a pushover. Shes straightforward. And she will do the right thing for this city.

Girmala said Wednesday that she was considering applying for the job, as did Arcos. Moore said he would apply, calling it a tremendous opportunity. MacArthur said she was also going to apply, saying she felt she had more to give.

After announcing his retirement in January, Beck suggested that his successor should be an insider  or someone who recently left the department. That possibility appears to have gained momentum, as Soboroff has also said he believes the best candidate would be someone with experience working for the LAPD.

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Matt Johnson, the Police Commissions vice president, said last week that it would be easier for him to judge candidates hes already worked with at the LAPD versus an outsider he meets for the first time during an interview.

I can see what someones track record is, he said. It will be harder for someone to prove to me in an hour what theyre really about.

His comments came during a meeting with members of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization, in a church in Jefferson Park. They talked for nearly 90 minutes about policing in Los Angeles, how to bring more black officers on the force and why the next chief must focus on his or her relationship with African American residents.

The next chief needs to be accessible and engaged, said Larry Morris, a 51-year-old pastor and insurance agent. Someone who genuinely spends time in the community  not just when there are television cameras covering a rise in crime or the opening of a new park.

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Johnson agreed, adding that he believes the LAPD chief should live in the city of L.A.  Watts, one person in the room suggested  and spend more time stopping by community meetings and walking through neighborhoods, just to say hello.

By doing so, the next chief would signal a genuine concern about the citys residents, Morris said after the meeting.

They need to know that this police chief really cares about us, he said.

kate.mather@latimes.com

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cindy.chang@latimes.com

For more LAPD news, follow us on Twitter: @katemather and @cindychangLA
A man was being questioned late Wednesday in connection with a threat to Pierce College that prompted administrators to cancel classes for the night, officials said.

Someone overheard the threat and reported it to authorities, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

Sheriffs officials initially said a suspect had been arrested, but later put out a news release saying a man was detained and being questioned by Los Angeles Police Department investigators.

At this time he has not been arrested for the threat related to Pierce College, the statement said.

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Investigators said the campus was not at risk.

Students were advised about 5:30 p.m. to leave the Woodland Hills campus, according to an emergency alert posted on Facebook.

Classes are slated to resume Thursday morning, officials said.

We are taking measures to ensure safety of our students and employees, the college said in the post. Please do not come to Pierce College tonight.

#LASD investigating threats to @PierceCollegeCA that were overhead by reporting party. Threats reportedly made in @LAPDHQ jurisdiction. #PierceCollege is currently being evacuated.  LA County Sheriff's (@LASDHQ) March 8, 2018

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek

UPDATES:

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11:30 p.m.: This article was updated to reflect that authorities now say that a man was detained and questioned, not arrested.

9:10 p.m.: This article was updated to indicate that a suspect was arrested.

This article was originally published at 6:05 p.m.
Los Angeles city officials and organizers struck a defiant tone Wednesday, pushing back against President Trumps plan to end protected status for tens of thousands of immigrants.

Organizers and elected officials, including City Council members Curren Price and Gil Cedillo, gathered outside City Hall to decry Trumps termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, and to offer strategies to protect those immigrants.

Were focusing for the minute on TPS, given the termination of TPS programs and given that theres tens of thousands of TPS people who live in Los Angeles, said Peter Schey, L.A. city advocate for immigrant affairs, civil rights and equity.

Now, for the first time in many, many administrations, their temporary protected status is being terminated by President Trump, he said. This will simply push them into undocumented status.

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Schey, who is also the executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, introduced the L.A. Movement for Immigrant Justice and Equity, a coalition that includes members of the City Council, mayors office and a range of grass-roots and faith-based groups vowing to protect TPS recipients living in Los Angeles from arrest, detention or deportation.

TPS, which provides protection from deportation and gives people authorization to work in the country legally, is granted under immigration law for people from countries hit hard by natural disasters and civil wars.

The TPS designation for El Salvador will expire in November 2019. Protections for some 59,000 Haitians expire in July 2019. Both groups of protected immigrants must apply by March 18 to extend their protections until the new expiration dates.

About 5,000 Nicaraguans, who will lose TPS in January 2019, needed to apply for an extension by Feb. 13.

Schey said there is a plan to file a lawsuit in the next couple of weeks challenging the constitutionality and legality of the termination of TPS. Other strategies will include a mass distribution of legal protection letters signed by lawyers asserting the letter holders rights, as well as drafting legislation for consideration by Congress to legalize the status of TPS holders.

Organizers also announced a TPS fair Saturday at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College beginning at 9 a.m. Free legal assistance will be provided to help complete TPS renewals for Salvadorans, Haitians and Syrians, whose status was recently extended.

Among those gathered outside City Hall on Wednesday was Astrid Garcia. Garcia, her mother and her father, originally from Honduras, all have TPS.

Garcia, a Long Beach resident, is studying sociology at El Camino College in Torrance.

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Its hard that theyre trying to take it from us, because thats what helps us work, thats what helps me go to school, the 19-year-old said. Its scary, because from one day to another they can just take everything from us.

The news conference came a day after the Trump administration announced plans to sue California over its new laws protecting immigrants living in the state illegally.

I heard what Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions had to say this morning about invalidating Californias sanctuary laws. Well, you had your turn, attorney general, now its our turn to speak up, so listen, Price said.

Enough is enough. First he came after our Dreamers, then the Haitians, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans and now all of California. From Sacramento to the steps of L.A. City Hall, weve been ready for this fight. Washington, D.C., look closely, because youve met your match.

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brittny.mejia@latimes.com

Twitter: @Brittny_Mejia
Police are looking for a suspect who they say shot and wounded a man in Venice, blocks from the boardwalk, on Wednesday night.

Officers responded at 10:24 p.m. to the report of a shooting near the intersection of Main Street and Windward Avenue, where they found a man who had been struck by gunfire, authorities said.

The victim was transported to a hospital and is in critical but stable condition, said Officer Rosario Herrera, a Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman. The suspect is a man, but she did not provide any further details about him.

Anyone with information about the incident can call LAPD Pacific station detectives at 310-482-6313.

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Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli.
Was the great Oscar caper of 2018 actually just a stunt from a publicity-seeking celebrity wannabe?

That was the question as Terry Bryant faced his first court hearing after picking up Frances McDormands Oscar statuette at the Governors Ball after the Academy Awards and mugging to the cameras with it.

Bryants attorney says it was just a stunt from a man known to attend awards parties, rub elbows with the famous and hoist up their awards. But Los Angeles prosecutors see it differently, charging him with felony grand theft.

Bryant appeared in a downtown Los Angeles court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.

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There is a big difference between holding an Oscar and what he is charged with, said Daniel Brookman, Bryants attorney. Brookman said Bryant, 47, will vigorously fight the case. I dont think his character matches these charges.

Brookman alludes to another question: What kind of thief would make a Facebook video bragging about his brush with the Oscar?

Authorities said they believe Bryant had every intention of leaving the ball with the Oscar, pointing out that in one video he says the Oscar belongs to his team.

To prove felony grand theft, the Los Angeles County district attorneys office must show Bryant intended to permanently deprive the academy and McDormand of the award.

Then there is the question of the value of an Oscar. Prosecutors charged Bryant with a single felony count for taking the statuette because it is worth more than $950. An LAPD report listed its value at $2,500.

But Brookman notes that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes it clear that an Oscar cannot be sold. Rule 10 of the academy requires that owners of awards first offer to sell the statuette back to the academy for $1 before disposing of it by any other means.

Some legal experts said they doubt the felony charge would stick.

Frances McDormand at the Academy Awards Governors Ball on Sunday. A man was charged with felony grand theft for allegedly taking McDormands lead actress Oscar. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times )

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I think a judge will almost certainly reduce this to a misdemeanor at a preliminary hearing, said criminal defense attorney Louis Shapiro, noting there is a penal code section for such action. Given the issues with the value of the property and totality of circumstances, I would expect that to happen.

Shapiro said Bryants case also has issues based on the videos that have emerged. The circumstances of the incident arent that favorable to Mr. Bryant.... It looked like he was leaving, he said.

Prosecutors say McDormands lead actress prize for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was at the Governors Ball when the theft occurred.

Like all award winners, she went to the ball so she could have her statuette engraved, and later realized it was missing. When McDormand told a Times photographer she lost her Oscar, Bryant was nearby with it.

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As he drank champagne, Bryant posted a Facebook Live video, holding the golden statuette up and gloating to others at the party about the prize his team was taking home.

This is mine. We got it tonight, baby! He then proceeds to let people touch it. A woman is seen asking if hes had the Oscar engraved yet.

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Meghan Aguilar said a photographer stopped Bryant before he could take off with the statuette. She said the photographer did not recognize Bryant as one of the winners, so the photographer followed him and took the statuette from him without any resistance.

The photographer notified security, who apprehended Bryant. The LAPD arrested Bryant at 11:50 p.m. at the party site inside the Hollywood & Highland complex where the Oscars awards show is held.

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Bryant had a legitimate ticket to the party, Aguilar said.

Based on Bryants social media postings, it isnt the first time he has held an Oscar. His Instagram includes a photo he says was taken at a Vanity Fair party that shows him holding an Oscar statuette in 2017. There are also Instagram images of him of holding what he claims is a Screen Actors Guild award in January and an MTV popcorn award in 2017.

As of Wednesday, Bryant remained in the L.A. County Jail on $20,000 bail.

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Twitter: @lacrimes

UPDATES:

5:55 p.m.: This article was updated with a not-guilty plea by Bryant.

This article was originally published at 4 p.m.
National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan addresses the meeting (Photo: VNA)



Showing her delight at the effective cooperation between Vietnam and the WB, the top legislator said that Vietnam needs the support of the international community, including the bank, to fulfill its goals amidst many difficulties and challenges.

She affirmed that the NA of Vietnam will closely supervise the management and use of WB assistance, ensuring it is used effectively to bring added value to the local socio-economic development.

She also spoke highly of the cooperation and support that the WB has given to NA agencies, which she said helped improve the legislatures supervision over finance, budget and economy.

She lauded the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the WB and the NA Finance and Budget Committee in 2017, aiming to enhance the committees capacity in monitoring financial and budgetary issues.

Over the past years, the WB has also given consultations to Vietnam on important strategic issues, she added.

Ngan proposed the WB continue aiding Vietnam in building and completing legal framework to stabilise the macro economy, promote growth, develop human resources and ensure social harmony and sustainable use of natural resources.

She asked for the WBs assistance for major infrastructure, human resources development and climate change response projects.

She also called for support from the Parliamentary Networks members to activities of the WB and IMF in Vietnam.

Hailing the Parliamentary Network as a bridge to enhance cooperation channels among parliaments, Ngan stressed that the Vietnamese NA is ready to join and make active contributions to the network.

The host discussed with the networks parliamentarians about gender equality, job creation for women and young people, changes to tax policy once the WB cuts investment assistance, population aging, public debt limit, the legislatures role in budget allocation, climate change response, the NAs supervisory role and relations between the law-making body and the government.

According to her, the rate of Vietnamese female lawmakers reaches 26.7 percent, still below the targeted 30 percent.

Vice President of the Parliamentary Network Soukri Cherif and WB Country Director in Vietnam Ousmane Dione thanked NA Chairwoman Ngan for practical discussions.

Dione said the working trip is part of cooperation programmes between WB, IMF and member nations, adding that the discussed matters will be reflected in the next agenda.

The delegation comprises parliamentarians from Australia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Latvia, Morocco, Myanmar, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda and Ukraine.

The delegation will visit on-going projects in Vietnam and discuss with leaders of State agencies and representatives from the private sector during the four-day trip.

Founded in 2000 with the engagement of parliamentarians from over 140 countries, the Parliamentary Network seeks to engage lawmakers from around the globe in the common mission of addressing good governance and poverty challenges in both their home countries and abroad./.
Los Angeles police arrested one of their retired officers on Thursday on suspicion of workers compensation fraud while enrolled in a controversial program that pays veteran cops and firefighters their salary and pension simultaneously for up to five years.

Former Police Officer Terry Johns joined the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, or DROP, in July 2014. The next month he filed a workers compensation claim for a bad back, public records show.

He then took a long injury leave, collecting nearly $250,000 in pension and salary for the time off, according to city payroll data. He retired in 2016.

At a news conference Thursday, Police Chief Charlie Beck said internal affairs investigators had observed Johns engaged in activity inconsistent with his claimed injuries but refused to offer further details.

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The DROP program was approved by voters in 2001 with a promise that it would keep veteran officers on the job a few years longer with no additional cost to the city.

A Times investigation published last month found more than 1,200 public safety officers had joined DROP and then gone out with injuries  typically bad backs, sore knees and other ailments of aging bodies  turning the program into an extended leave at nearly twice the pay.

The program has paid out more than $1.6 billion in extra pension checks since its inception in 2002, The Times found.

Nearly half of participants who entered DROP from July 2008 to July 2017 subsequently took injury leaves. Their average absence was 10 months, but hundreds stayed out for more than a year.

Two married LAPD officers joined DROP, then went out with carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative injuries. They missed more than two years, and spent some of that time starting a family business and vacationing at their condo in Cabo, The Times found. They collected nearly $2 million in salary and pension while in the program.

A firefighter in DROP who filed a claim for a bad back and a sore knee worked part time as a longshoreman at L.A. Harbor while on injury leave from the department, according to one of the doctors who examined him in the course of his workers compensation case.

Mayor Eric Garcetti and key members of the City Council called for a thorough review of the program last month following The Times investigation.

But Garcetti and the council ignored a report from the city administrative officer in 2016 warning the program was not, and never had been, cost neutral as promised to voters and was no longer necessary to retain veteran officers.

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Johns, 56, spent 32 years on the LAPD, according to a department news release. He was arrested and booked into the Riverside County jail where he was being held on $160,000 bond, Beck said.

Johns did not respond to a request for comment left on his answering machine.

Johns is the first DROP participant arrested on suspicion of workers compensation fraud, Beck said, adding that he isnt aware of any other ongoing investigations of program participants.

There is a difficulty to prosecute police officers and there is a reluctance to prosecute police officers, and Im glad about that in many ways, Beck said.

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But the department takes workers compensation fraud seriously, Beck said, adding that three officers who are not in the DROP program have been arrested this year.

UPDATES:

4:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, as well as background on the arrested officer and the DROP program.

This article was originally published at 2 p.m.
Kris Brown has never seen the energy and support behind gun control reach this level.

Students are staging walk outs. Businesses are limiting gun sales. And politicians are voicing support for legislation that, a month ago, seemed unimaginable.

Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said that in the weeks since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the gun control advocacy organization has swelled with support. Following the Feb. 14 shooting, she said, 18 new chapters  in addition to the more than 100 that already existed  have emerged nationwide. The group is helping to organize March for Our Lives rallies across the country on March 24 that will call for more gun control laws.

Brown, 49, spoke with The Times about the student uprising, the National Rifle Assn. and gun control legislation that could pass in the weeks ahead. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Youve been on the front lines of the gun debate that follows mass shootings. At this moment, what most gives you a sense of optimism that significant gun control legislation will be passed by Congress?

The debate thats going on right now is different from what weve seen before, and the momentum is different. After Sandy Hook [in 2012], I think the nation was appalled. Congress attempted to pass legislation that did not go anywhere.  I think that many Americans felt that after the slaughter of innocent children in a school, the idea that Congress didnt do anything at all about it made them feel very defeated about the prospect for meaningful change in this country.

The high school kids  many of whom were students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who are speaking out and continuing to share their thoughts and voices  they feel very much that this country has let them down. Thats what were hearing over and over again. And the demands for change that theyre making arent just for small fixes to the system. They want it all. And I think thats really inspiring people to rethink why the rules are set up this way. Why is it that theyre set up and actually designed to protect gun manufacturers with no real internalization of the cost of human lives?

I think theyve really sparked something, and were seeing that even in the political commentary. We have people like Lindsey Graham, even Ted Cruz on MSNBCs Morning Joe, talking about measures related to more regulations of guns. That is unique and new.

So you think that the students are the core cause of change?

I really do think they sparked something that is the momentum toward a real change. I think theyre the catalyst for the change. I think when you have people who have no interest except their own self-preservation and safety, who can speak with an authentic and both youthful and adult-like voice, thats powerful.

Being victim survivors themselves, they have the ability to ask the really tough questions. Why have you, Marco Rubio, taken money from the NRA? Why arent you supporting these policies that we as voters want you to support? I think that has sparked a whole conversation in households all across the country. Yes, why is it this way? Lets change this and fix it.

When you look across at the National Rifle Assn., what do you see?

I see an organization that started many, many years ago with a noble purpose, which is to represent owners of guns and provide information about proper stewardship of guns. To provide opportunities for sharpshooting, going out to ranges and things like that  thats how the NRA started.

I now see an organization that has strayed dramatically away from actually representing the gun owners that they were formed to represent and really taking the interests of manufacturers to heart.

The best example I have of that is the latest [Quinnipiac] poll around background checks that says 97%  97%!  of all Americans believe that we must strengthen and protect our background check system. The NRA has fought tooth and nail actually against every proposal that would do that and does even now. So I think it has gone way far astray from the purpose that it was set up for.

Critics of gun control say more laws will not stop the next mass shooting. What do you say to them?

We have over 300 million guns in this country.  Its not about whether or not we need additional laws. We actually need reasonable laws and protections in place that actually work, and then we need to able to enforce them. So its both sides of the equation.

President Trump made some extraordinary comments last week, saying, in part, he would support taking guns away from citizens and worrying about the legality of such a move later. What are your thoughts about that?

My candid thought is that if President Obama had said something like that, he might have been subject to impeachment hearings right away. I think its an interesting standard. We at Brady actually have been strong proponents of extreme risk laws, and we support due process being a part of that equation. Of course, if law enforcement comes into anyones home and believes theyre truly an immanent risk to themselves or others, they can always have an expedited process in that case to remove guns.

Whats your message to some people in inner cities  who live in mostly black and Latino neighborhoods  who experience gun violence on a daily basis but feel as if their voices are not heard. They feel as if calls for gun control only take place after mass shootings in the suburbs.

I hear that and I actually agree with that. There are over 96 people a day who die from gun violence in this country. Mass shootings constitute 1% to 2% of all gun violence. We want an opportunity here to actually talk as a gun violence organization about all of the things that we think must be done to solve the problem of gun violence and that is in every community.

For many communities, the most dangerous part of the day is not at school. Thats the safest part of the day. The most dangerous part of the day is walking to and from school. So Brady has an entire campaign actually aimed at disrupting the supply of guns into urban communities across the country, and were working with the National Urban League to actually implement that campaign.

Finish this sentence: Guns in America 

 have a very important role in American life, and its in all Americans interest to actually ensure that we live in a society where all of us can live our daily lives without the fear of being shot.

Support our journalism Please consider subscribing today to support stories like this one. Get full access to our signature journalism for just 99 cents for the first four weeks. Already a subscriber? Your support makes our work possible. Thank you.

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As Los Angeles schools and others this week observe the 50th anniversary of the East L.A. walkouts, when thousands of Mexican American students marched to demand a better education, much attention has focused on those who became known as the Eastside 13.

But who were the Eastside 13?

They were 13 men secretly indicted by a grand jury June 1, 1968, on conspiracy charges stemming from the East L.A. blowouts. The walkouts kicked off March 5, 1968, when students began protesting at Garfield High School, and spread to other campuses to decry the shortcomings of public schools in Los Angeles barrios. The walkouts are viewed as a turning point in the political development of the nations Mexican American community.

Some local leaders at the time, including Mayor Sam Yorty, denounced the walkouts as a communist plot, and in the months that followed, law enforcement responded with undercover operations, raids and arrests.

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In returning the indictments, the grand jurors found there was sufficient evidence to show that the protests staged at Garfield, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Belmont high schools were not spontaneous, but rather the result of careful off-campus planning by non-students.

Defense attorneys would later argue, successfully, that the protest organizers were merely exercising their 1st Amendment rights. But when the indictments were handed down, each defendant faced 66 years in prison.

Among the 13 arrested was Carlos Munoz Jr., who recalled how the police arrived at his apartment at dawn with guns drawn. Munoz, then a 20-year-old college student, had been writing a paper for a graduate seminar on the international communist movement when the officers broke in.

One of the officers noticed a stack of books on the kitchen table where Munoz had been typing. He scanned the names of the authors  Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx  and yelled out, Weve got the goods on this damn communist agitator!

Also indicted on multiple charges of conspiracy to disturb public schools and conspiracy to disturb the peace were Sal Castro, 34, a teacher at Lincoln High, and Eliezer Risco, 31, a Cuban-born editor of La Raza, a newspaper circulated in the Mexican American community.

Indicted members of the militant Brown Berets, who often took the title of minister, were David Sanchez, 19, chairman; Ralph Ramirez, 18, minister of discipline; Fred Lopez, 19, minister of communication; and Carlos Montes, 20, minister of public relations and holy grace.

Others indicted were Gilberto Olmeda, 23; Richard Vigil, 27; Joe Razo, 29; Henry Gomez, 20; Moctesuma Esparza, 19; and Juan Sanchez, 41.

The indictments sparked protest marches in front of the Los Angeles Police Departments downtown headquarters and the Justice Department in Washington. The American Civil Liberties Union branded the charges as a heavy-handed violation of the defendants constitutional rights to freedom of speech.

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We could hear outside of the jail thousands of people chanting  protesting our arrests. That made us feel that what we had done was worthwhile, Esparza recalled.

Defense attorneys in the case included Oscar Acosta, a hell-raising lawyer with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs and dangerous living who inspired the character of Dr. Gonzo in Hunter S. Thompsons surreal book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Oscar popped up out of nowhere offering to help, David Sanchez recalled with a laugh. I asked him once, Howd you learn about us? He said he had been waiting on tables at a restaurant in Aspen, Colo., when he looked up at a television on the wall and saw news footage of Eastside kids being chased and beaten by police.

Oscar said he took off his apron, threw it down on a table and announced, Those people need a lawyer! Then he drove to L.A.

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Throughout the summer, Mexican American leaders urged the L.A. Board of Education to reinstate Castro, who had been removed from his job at Lincoln. Julian Nava, the only Mexican American on the school board, suggested a political motive for the arrests: They were made a few days before the June 4 municipal primary at which Dist. Atty. Evelle J. Younger was a candidate for reelection and a police bond issue was being submitted to voters.

RELATED: Do you remember the East L.A. walkouts? Share your memory. 

The indictments were struck down in 1970 by an appeals court in a case that became a cause celebre to Chicanos.

The No. 1 thing that the walkouts achieved is that it gave our own community a voice  that we didnt have to rely on what other people thought we should be doing or who we should be, said Esparza, who went on to become an award-winning filmmaker, producing movies such as Gettysburg, Selena and Walkout, a dramatization of the 1968 Chicano student protests.

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I never gave up my identity as a Chicano, Esparza said. The struggle never ends.

Louis.Sahagun@latimes.com

@LouisSahagun
After recent school shootings, especially the appalling attack at a Florida high school that killed and injured so many students and staff, its only natural and right for local authorities throughout the nation to consider how they might best protect the children and teenagers in their charge.

Many would certainly love to outlaw the sale of assault-type weapons and get the existing ones out of circulation, as difficult as that may be. But thats largely a matter for federal lawmakers, who are unlikely to take such a logical step at the moment. California has among the strongest restrictions on assault weapons, but its ban doesnt extend to all such firearms. And lets face it, if surrounding states dont do the same, it is too easy for weapons that have no legitimate use in civilian life to find their way across state lines.

What, then, can be done? Do these terrifying events call for metal detectors at the entrances to every school, or for all campuses to be securely fenced so that only students and teachers can enter?

Officials should look at whether providing safe passage to and from school might do more to protect students than beefing up metal detection at the entryways

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Fortunately, Los Angeles city and educational leaders arent jumping up to demand immediate, draconian measures, though theyre also wisely acknowledging that new safety protocols may be needed. No one can pretend any longer that such tragedies only happen somewhere else.

L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer is assembling a blue-ribbon panel to examine the matter, and on Tuesday the Los Angeles Unified school board will consider several steps of its own. The boards resolution includes some of the usual political grandstanding, with demands for gun control that are understandable but not within the school districts purview. More helpfully, it calls for the superintendent to make recommendations within about a month for improving safety, as well as setting up an ongoing school-safety committee with parents and community members as well as district officials.

As these leaders and groups search for solutions, we hope that they will look broadly at the issue of safety for L.A. children and teens, rather than solely at school shootings. The attacks at other cities schools have been horrific, and the thought that students might not be safe on campus is unbearable. But it also is worth keeping those tragic events in perspective: In the past year, fewer than 30 students have been killed at public schools (not counting colleges, which have their own security issues). More than 100 of the nations children died from the flu during the past few months; thousands of teenagers are killed each year in traffic accidents.

Each kind of tragedy has its own origins, and each requires different responses. But its worth keeping in mind that school shootings, though they call for examination and possible action, are not the biggest danger confronted by students.

Its also important to consider that many well-intentioned safeguards come with down sides. Many students already complain about the random use of metal-detecting wands to check a small percentage of students each day for weapons. They find it demeaning and say it interrupts class time, though others like the extra sense of safety.

Using metal detection on every student would be many times more disruptive. It also would make schools feel more like detention centers and less like places of learning and mutual respect. L.A. Unified and Feuers panel should look at whether providing safe passage to and from school might do more to protect students than beefing up metal detection at the entryways. Similarly, locking all classroom doors once lessons have started might be a cheap and effective way to keep students safer without making them feel distrusted.

The school district has worked hard over the last decade to make its schools more a part of their surrounding communities, with shared parks, clinics and recreational facilities. These help to make neighborhoods safer as people engage in community activities together; they also create stronger support for schools. Reversing this kind of progress in the name of improved school security might do all kinds of damage while providing little in the way of added safety.

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Modern threats challenge our ability to respond. But we shouldnt allow these incidents to make us frantic or frighten us into losing cherished traditions of learning and community.

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Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has a message for California: Be like us, break the law.

Following repeated threats to withhold federal funding from sanctuary locales, (which have met defeat after defeat in the courts), Sessions is going to war against the state of California, in the words of Gov. Jerry Brown. There have been retaliatory immigration raids across the state, and now the U.S. is suing California over three state laws our Legislature passed to ensure that we are not complicit in the un-American approach to immigration enforcement that the Trump administration is waging every day.

Sessions claims that the lawsuit seeks to uphold the rule of law. But the reverse is true. The administrations policies are grounded in a fundamental disregard for the basic tenets of our constitutional system.

Take for example a workplace raid that occurred last September in Los Angeles. Caught on surveillance cameras, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents disguised as police officers stormed a family-owned mechanics shop in South L.A. armed with assault rifles. Although they had no court-issued warrants, ICE arrested three workers in the shop, based on nothing more than the color of their skin  a clear violation of law. The government has already dropped its case against one of the workers.

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Workplace raids are not about public safety. Their sole aim is to penalize workers who lack employment authorization and the employers who hire them.

Or take the recent case of a Los Angeles resident arrested by federal immigration agents as he proceeded to board a Greyhound bus in Indio. In plain violation of the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Customs and Border Protection agents blocked him from boarding and detained him, claiming that his untied shoes looked suspicious, like those of someone who had recently crossed the border.

The new California laws that Sessions so disdains simply make it clear that these kinds of stormtrooper-like tactics are not permissible here. They provide that:

Employers and businesses must require immigration authorities to have a warrant before allowing them to search nonpublic areas of their businesses  a response to increased immigration raids on workplaces.

Police may not hand over someone in their custody to ICE or share information about his or her release date unless presented with a warrant or unless the person has been convicted of serious crimes.

California may conduct routine inspections of immigration detention centers operated under contracts with state municipalities.

Sessions says that these laws obstruct immigration agents ability to apprehend violent criminals. Except workplace raids are not about public safety. Their sole aim is to penalize workers who lack employment authorization and the employers who hire them.

He says that our sanctuary policies prevent federal agents from ridding dangerous people from our communities, except ICE data show that even before there were restrictions on police-ICE cooperation, ICE sought to arrest only 30% of all the people they asked police to hold for them.

He says that inspecting immigration detention centers under contract with California municipalities will interfere with federal prerogatives, except that oversight of the ICE detention system is woefully inadequate, permitting substandard medical care and other violations that have contributed to preventable detainee deaths.

In the end, the Sessions lawsuit is tantamount to an admission that the federal government cannot engage in mass roundups of immigrants in our communities without trampling on bedrock 4th Amendment requirements and without conscripting our local institutions into that effort.

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California adopted limitations on police-ICE cooperation so as not to aid inhumane dragnet operations that destabilize communities, undermine trust in the police and enhance an agenda motivated by racial hatred, not sensible policy. And it adopted these limitations because time and again, courts have said that what ICE is asking of local law enforcement violates the 4th Amendment.

The attorney general of the United States wants things easy; he wants no legal checks on his police powers. But, as he should know, thats not how our system works. The constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the guarantee of due process are intended to limit the governments ability to harm people by unjustly arresting and detaining them.

Jeff Sessions real problem is not with California. Its with the Constitution.

Jennie Pasquarella is director of immigrants rights at the ACLU of California.

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To the editor: In 1994, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which would have made illegal immigrants ineligible for most taxpayer-funded public services. In an opposing editorial on Oct. 30, 1994, The Times Editorial Board wrote, The federal government, asleep at the switch for years, is at last putting resources on the border; Gov. Pete Wilson, though horribly wrong to endorse Prop. 187, has been right to pound on Washingtons door, along with many members of the California congressional delegation, demanding more federal aid to address a problem that is fundamentally a federal responsibility: international border control.

The intent of declaring California a sanctuary state is to safely harbor those here illegally by discouraging state and local law enforcement authorities from cooperating with federal authorities, who have proper jurisdiction over our sovereign borders. (California leaders rebuke Sessions as going to war over state immigration policy, March 7)

Just as Proposition 187 was largely struck down as unconstitutional, the current federal versus state conflict must be resolved legally by our judicial system, preferably ending in a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jim Redhead, San Diego

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To the editor: I am appalled by what can be described as the unconstitutional stormtrooper tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs of Enforcement, which, to the extent that they are based on nothing more than racial profiling, are ominously reminiscent of the round-up of European Jews before and during World War II.

I applaud Californias decision to prevent state and local law enforcement from voluntarily providing ICE with information about the release dates of immigrant detainees, as well as those instances in which employers exercise their 4th Amendment right to insist upon probable cause warrants before allowing ICE agents to enter their facilities.

That said, I believe California overstepped its authority by mandating that private employers insist on a warrant. The 4th Amendment right against an unreasonable search belongs to the employer, not the state of California.

While one may regard an employers decision to aid ICE as repugnant, that employer has a 1st Amendment right to disagree.

Ernest A. Canning, Thousand Oaks

The writer is a retired attorney.

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To the editor: Wasnt this question settled decades ago? Can the Jim Crow laws in the South be re-instated?

Federal law supersedes state law. Changing that would make this difficult situation even more conflicted.

The Dreamer question can be settled simply: Allow them to earn citizenship, and detain and deport their parents for bringing them into the country illegally.

Bill Serantoni, Thousand Oaks

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To the editor: I read your first article on Los Angeles DROP program (the Deferred Retirement Option Plan) with disgust and perhaps even a sense of wonder that people can find it in themselves to have taxpayers finance their vacation condos.

Years ago, I compared a California teachers pension to those of safety officers. I laughed at the time that these bureaucrats, some of whom injured themselves in office chairs, had a more dangerous profession than a teacher who might someday be called upon to use her body to shield her students from a rain of bullets.

I taught high school for 25 years, retired, and am now back to work because the pension doesnt pay for the travel I crave. Fair enough.

But now, to discover that Mayor Eric Garcetti and select City Council members were told about the problems with the DROP program, and then castigated the report instead of warmly thanking the author for protecting taxpayer sanctity  well, that spurred me to write this letter calling for them to step down.

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Ineffectiveness is a serious enough defect in itself; outright neglect is unforgivable.

Kathy Fleming, Stockton

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To the editor: I cant help but be amazed at the contrast between the articles and opinion pieces on L.A.s homeless population and the stories about the DROP program.

While I certainly appreciate the work that police and firefighters do on our behalf, the DROP program seems to have been poorly conceived, at least for its stated purpose. I dont recall seeing a total bill for it over the last years, let alone a benefit assessment, but imagine if that money, precious public dollars, had been applied to the problem of homelessness in L.A.

That would not have solved the problem, but it would have helped. Of course, homeless people generally dont make campaign contributions.

Mike Liewald, Los Alamitos

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To the editor: In the 1990s, public school educators did not think or need to say, We are not warriors, we are teachers. No one talked about how to shelter in place. (We already ask too much of teachers. Dont ask them to take on kids with guns, Opinion, March 6)

During that time, as a community college counselor, I met with the relative of a student who committed suicide after killing four strangers at a local gym. Two years later, I counseled the spouse of a teacher at the nearby high school who was unable to save a students life during a shooting. The teachers grief and guilt profoundly affected the functioning of the whole family.

The repercussions of each gun death extends out to every member of a family and educational setting, as well as heartbroken friends and strangers struggling to provide comfort. The possibility of an armed teacher inadvertently shooting innocent students in a gun melee is not going to make things better, let alone safer.

Rather than continue to enhance the fortunes of the National Rifle Assn. and its supporters, the president and Republican politicians must do their duty to protect and serve the country. They must be the warriors in the fight to enact and enforce common-sense gun control.

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Mary Rider, Idyllwild

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To the editor: I am a graduate student and a substitute teacher for the city of Alexandria, Va. I see the fear in the eyes of the children when any discussion of drills or guns arises, and I feel the fear in my own pitted stomach as well.

I agree with op-ed article writer Belle Chesler that teachers can only do so much. Our job is to educate and advocate for the young minds who cannot do it themselves  or those, like the students of Parkland, Fla., whose opinions on guns are dismissed because of their age. It prompts the question as to whether reality will set in or not in the minds of politicians and even the NRA.

The basic reality of more guns in places of supposed safety will only increase the already growing fear that maybe this day, or the next, will be the last for these children. Instead there should be a call to a different type of arms, one that makes an attempt to unify this country and seek out the real problems at hand, instead of placing new ones in multiple hands.

Jenni Dooley, Alexandria, Va.

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To the editor: Brilliant, heartbreaking letter by this teacher.

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Yes, the emotional stresses are heavy on our kids and the hurts are too great, as she says. But as Im sure this teacher knows, the student whos making disturbing art needs more than to be told to tone down the violence in his work.

He needs counseling, gentle and concerned curiosity as to whats hurting him that makes him create such violent art. This takes a financial commitment to schools that is sorely lacking.

Kids who are expelled or punished for acting out need just the opposite. They need help.

Ellen Butterfield, Studio City

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The writer is a licensed marriage and family therapist.

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Gavin Newsom releases ad that highlights his push to allow same-sex couples to marry By Phil Willon A new ad from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom features Phyllis Lyon, who with her partner, Del Martin, received the first marriage license after Newsom vowed to allow same-sex couples to marry when he was mayor of San Francisco in 2004. The current lieutenant governors push for marriage equality thrust him into the national spotlight and he has emphasized that effort to portray himself as a bold, progressive leader. Facebook

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Failed California housing bill was not a bad idea, Gov. Jerry Brown says By Liam Dillon Gov. Jerry Brown (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Earlier this month, high-profile housing legislation that would have allowed for four- to five-story apartments and condominiums near transit stops failed to advance in the state Legislature. But had it reached his desk, would Gov. Jerry Brown have signed it? Maybe. I think that was not a bad idea, Brown said of Senate Bill 827 at a meeting with business leaders from the Bay Area Council on Monday afternoon. The bill, written by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), attracted national attention and a maelstrom of opposition in part because it would have eliminated single-family zoning near transit stops in favor of apartments or condominiums. Brown said that a relative of his who lives in West Portal, a low-density neighborhood in San Francisco, told the governor he was horrified by the bill. Brown also lamented dramatically rising housing costs. He said he bought his first house in Los Angeles in 1973 for $75,000 at a time when his salary as secretary of state was $35,000. Now, he said, buying a house for a little over twice ones annual salary is virtually impossible anywhere in the state. FOR THE RECORD

May 1, 9:32 a.m.: This post originally misstated the year Brown purchased his house as 1970. It was 1973. Facebook

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John Cox begins California barnstorm with the delivery of gas tax repeal signatures By Javier Panzar Gubernatorial candidate John Cox, left, and Assembly candidate Bill Essayli load boxes of signatures for the gas tax repeal initiative. (Francine Orr) GOP gubernatorial candidate John Cox strolled up to the stack of 12 boxes in front of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorders offices in Norwalk on Monday and placed his hands on top of his partys hope for success in 2018. The boxes, stacked four across and three high, contained 211,000 signatures for an initiative to repeal recent increases in Californias gas tax and vehicle fees. Cox says the effort has gathered more than 940,000 signatures from registered voters to put the measure on the ballot  far more than the 585,407 signatures that are required. The aim: to bring out the partys base to the polls this November and help candidates in tough congressional and legislative races down the ticket. A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll in November found 54.2% of registered voters surveyed said they would repeal the tax and fee hike, but a survey a month earlier by another group said a majority would vote to keep the higher taxes. Cox was flanked by Bill Essayli, a former federal prosecutor who is challenging Democratic Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes of Riverside in the June primary. Cervantes voted for the gas tax and Essayli plans to use that vote against her. He even launched his campaign at a 76 gas station in Norco. This is a central issue in my campaign, he said. Cox also submitted signatures in San Diego on Monday and is headed to Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento, as well as Shasta and Butte counties in coming days. We are going all across the state, Cox said. The whole state is paying this tax and the whole state wants it gone. Facebook

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All Californians would be able to serve on state boards  even people in the U.S. illegally  under new bill By Jazmine Ulloa Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) State lawmakers on Monday introduced legislation that would allow all Californians to serve on state boards and commissions regardless of immigration status. Senate Bill 174, by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles), comes as the state is locked in a broader legal battle with the Trump administration over state immigration laws and his call for mass deportations. Lawmakers point to what they say is the states own discriminatory history as their basis for introducing the legislation. The proposal would amend an 1872 provision that was first adopted to exclude Chinese immigrants and other transient aliens from holding appointed civil positions. At the time, antipathy toward the Chinese had been building in California, though, Chinese immigrants opened hundreds of businesses across the state and would play a critical role in building the transcontinental railroad. The Senate bill would delete the phrase transient aliens from the government code and make clear that any person, regardless of citizenship or immigration status, can hold an appointed civil office if they are at least 18 years old and a resident of the state. That would allow any Californian to serve on hundreds of boards and commissions that advice in an array of policy areas, including farm labor, history and employment development. Californias two million undocumented immigrants are a source of energy for our state, Lara said in a statement. It is shocking to read the words of fear and exclusion that are still in California law but belong in historys trash can. Facebook

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Tony Mendozas fundraising dries up after resignation amid harassment inquiry By Patrick McGreevy Former state Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia). (Steve Yeater / Associated Press) Political contributions to Tony Mendoza, who resigned from the state Senate under pressure amid sexual harassment allegations, have nearly dried up. New documents he filed with the state in his bid to reclaim the seat he once held show that his support has eroded. As a result, five other candidates for the 32nd District senate seat in the June 5 election have raised more than Mendoza so far this year. With the June 5 election approaching, Mendoza has reported raising just $7,750 in cash from six supporters during the nearly four-month period from Jan. 1 to April 21. Mendoza, a Democrat from Artesia, went on a leave of absence from the Senate Jan. 3 and resigned a month later under the threat of expulsion from colleagues. An investigation ordered by the Senate found a pattern of unwanted flirtatious or sexually suggestive behavior based on testimony from six women. Mendoza has denied wrongdoing. Last year, Mendozas reelection campaign raised $412,600, or an average of about $34,000 per month, from more than 350 supporters. Most of Mendozas 2018 total was contributed by the political arm of the Southern California Pipe Trades District Council 16 on Jan. 22, a month before Mendoza resigned. Mendoza also reported that his campaign loaned $125,000 this year to his legal defense fund. That left him with $446,600 in his campaign account at the end of April. Mendoza is running against eight Democrats and two Republicans. Democrat Bob J. Archuleta, a Pico Rivera city councilman, raised the most, $210,000, during the period. On Monday, Mendoza suffered another setback when the State Legislative Womens Caucus endorsed Democrat Vicky Santana, a member of the Rio Hondo College Board. Facebook

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Newsom and Villaraigosa affairs coming to TV ads in California By Phil Willon An independent political committee backing Republican John Cox for governor released an ad blasting both Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for their past sexual affairs. The California Deserves Better ad, which was first reported by Politico, criticizes Newsom for having an affair with a woman on his staff in 2005 while he served as mayor of San Francisco. It also goes after Villaraigosa for having an extramarital affair with a television reporter in 2007 while he was mayor of Los Angeles. The ad, which begins airing on Fox stations in the states top media markets Monday, links Newsom and Villaraigosa to the men accused of sexual impropriety in the #MeToo movement, including movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and disgraced Today show veteran Matt Lauer. Powerful men are finally being held to account, punished for inappropriate sexual conduct with women over whom they exercise power, the ad begins. Newsom and Villaraigosa think the rules shouldnt apply to them. The independent campaign committee, called Restore Our Values, already has raised more than $100,000, said Leigh Teece of Emeryville in Northern California, co-founder of the group. Teece, the CEO of a nonprofit that helps line up students with professional mentors, said the campaign will actively support Cox. She called him a true conservative and noted that he supports cutting taxes and opposes Californias sanctuary state policy. John is a business person who has demonstrated integrity, Teece said. Facebook

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Was that Cisneros in the voicemail? Dispute is latest espisode of Democratic infighting in crowded primary races By Christine Mai-Duc Gil Cisneros speaks during a forum at Fullerton College in January. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) With less than five weeks to go before Californias primary, insults and accusations are flying with abandon in the most crowded races Democrats hope to ultimately win. The latest example of this is in the 39th Congressional District, where a half dozen Democrats are vying for a chance to replace Rep. Ed Royce, whos retiring. Its one of several California contests where Democratic leaders are already worried that divisions could ultimately split votes and shut Democrats out of key pickup opportunities. In that race, millionaires Gil Cisneros and Andy Thorburn are going negative  about going negative. Cisneros was recently elevated to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees Red to Blue program in hopes it would serve as a signal to Democratic activists and donors that his campaign was the most viable. But both Cisneros and Thorburn have poured millions into the race, which promises to be a knock down, drag out fight through June 5. At the center of the latest controversy is a voicemail, allegedly left by Cisneros on Thorburns home answering machine earlier this month. The recording, which the Thorburn campaign turned over to media outlet The Intercept, lasts less than 10 seconds. Hi Andy, its Gil Cisneros. Im gonna go negative on you, a mans voice is heard saying. Cisneros campaign manager Orrin Evans denied the candidate made the call, posting a cease and desist letter to The Intercept on Twitter. The letter, sent by a Cisneros campaign attorney, called the voicemail fabricated and demanded that the story be taken down, calling it defamatory. It gave the publication until 3 p.m. Friday to take down the story before they pursue all legal rights and remedies. An attorney for The Intercept, in a letter to Cisneros, said the publication confirmed with multiple sources familiar with Mr. Cisneros that his voice was on the recording, and that it stands by its reporting. Thorburns camp says it flatly rejects Cisneros denial, and that the timing of a negative website filled with unflattering background on Thorburn, released three days later, suggests it was him. Track the California races that could flip the House According to The Intercepts report, Cisneros campaign manager did not respond to initial inquiries about the voicemail, calling its questions ridiculous. In a follow-up statement Friday, Evans said called the episode a dirty, desperate trick by the Thorburn campaign and said they are readying to pursue legal action for defamation and false light against both him and the publication. It sounded like him to me! said Thorburns wife, Karen, in a statement released by the campaign. She was the one who first heard the voicemail, they said. Thorburn campaign manager Nancy Leeds called Cisneros threats Trump-like tactics and accused the candidate of trying to harass and intimidate anyone who stands in his way. Its not the first time candidates from the same party have clashed in the lead-up to the June 5 primary, and its all but certain to not be the last. Cisneros sued two of his opponents, Thorburn and Sam Jammal, over their ballot descriptions until they had to change them. Earlier this month, Democrat Bryan Caforio asked his opponent, Katie Hill, to sign a pledge rejecting the use of independent expenditure committees, entities that neither of them can legally coordinate with, in the race to unseat Rep. Steve Knight (R-Lancaster). Hill refused and called the attempt hollow and likened it to political theater, while Caforio accused her of empty campaign promises. Facebook

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California Politics Podcast: The money raised in the race for governor hints at a race thats now red hot By John Myers With less than six weeks before election day, the cash raised in the California governors race mirrors the overall dynamics: one major front-runner and a heated race for second place. This weeks podcast episode offers a glimpse into those cash reports and how the Republican field seems more settled in a new statewide poll than the battle between Democrats. We also examine the reasons why a nationally talked-about housing bill in Sacramento was killed by the Democratic authors own allies. Im joined by Times staff writers Melanie Mason and Liam Dillon. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud and Stitcher. Facebook

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L.A. County politician sexually assaulted woman when she was 16, lawsuit claims By Dakota Smith A woman sued an unnamed politician in Los Angeles County on Friday, alleging the man sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager after he gave her an unusual-tasting drink. The politician, identified as John Doe, was in his early 40s and a public figure at the time of the 2007 assault, according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. The man is an elected official today and lives in Los Angeles, said attorney Lisa Bloom, who is representing the woman identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe. Bloom declined to say what branch of government the man represents. Read More Facebook

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Villaraigosa touts his working-class upbringing, accomplishments as mayor in first TV ad By Phil Willon Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa released his first TV ad in the governors race Friday, touting his record and accomplishments as mayor of Los Angeles when up against the economic downturn during the recession. The 30-second television spot opens with a sweeping shot of Los Angeles and cuts to Villaraigosa sitting on a bus. In kindergarten, my sister and I took three buses to get to school. As mayor, I remembered that, Villaraigosa says into the camera. And despite the recession, we built more new schools and rail lines than any city in America, added 200,000 living wage jobs, built 20,000 units of affordable housing and nearly doubled graduation rates. Campaign spokesman Luis Vizcaino said the ad will air statewide over the next week at a cost of approximately $1 million. The commercial will being airing Saturday. Two Democratic rivals in Californias race for governor, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer John Chiang, also launched ads this week, signaling the biggest ramp-up of the campaign as the June 5 primary approaches. Newsom is the front-runner, while Villaraigosa is battling for second place with Republican John Cox. One recent poll has Villaraigosa trailing both Cox and Republican Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach. Chiang has been stuck in the single digits in almost all polling in the race. Last week, an independent expenditure group called Families and Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor, funded largely by a trio of wealthy charter school backers, launched a spot in support of the former mayor of Los Angeles. That ad campaign is focused on increasing Villaraigosas chances of coming in second in the June 5 primary and moving on to the general election. Villaraigosas ad, titled Three Buses, emphasizes the struggles he faced growing up in East Los Angeles and addresses one of his central campaign themes  that hes the candidate best suited to help working-class Californians. I know how far a bus can take you, Villaraigosa says in the ad. Facebook

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein wont participate in pre-primary debate By Sarah D. Wire (Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call) California Sen. Dianne Feinstein will not participate in a proposed pre-primary debate because there are too many candidates in the race, her campaign spokesman said Thursday. Political activists with the group Indivisible Los Angeles said they had a venue and date  May 5  reserved for a debate with four of the Senate candidates. But they said if Feinstein does not participate, it will be canceled. Feinstein faces 31 primary opponents in her bid for a fifth full term representing California in the Senate. Feinstein staffers initially said she had a prior commitment on May 5 in San Francisco. When organizers offered to let her campaign pick another date, her campaign said it wasnt fair for the group to invite only some of the candidates when there is such a big field, said Tudor Popescu, volunteer community organizer with Indivisible Los Angeles. The invited candidates, all Democrats, were Feinstein, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, political action committee director Alison Hartson and lawyer Pat Harris. They were selected based on fundraising and poll numbers. There are 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, nine independents and 2 third-party candidates running for Senate on the June ballot. Indivisible Los Angeles is still hoping Feinstein will pick another date, Popescu said. Feinstein spokesman Jeff Millman pointed to a San Francisco Chronicle endorsement of Feinstein, which indicates that she told the editorial board she would be willing to have a debate ahead of Novembers general election. Senator Feinstein looks forward to debating her opponent in the general election, Millman said in an email. Feinstein holds a substantial lead in both fundraising and in the polls. Front-runners in statewide races have routinely declined to debate their challengers, knowing that its free publicity for candidates who dont have the cash to increase their name recognition on their own. De Leon spokesman Jonathan Underland said the state senator has done candidate forums before, but planned to attend the May 5 debate only if Feinstein did. We basically said well clear his calendar 100%, well clear his calendar if Feinstein shows up, Underland said. Wed love to make it happen, but we want her to be there. Facebook

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NRA, Olympic shooter sue California over its restrictions on ammunition sales By Patrick McGreevy Olympian Kim Rhode is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the NRA and its state affiliate against California. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) The National Rifle Assn. and its state affiliate have filed a fourth lawsuit against California over its gun control laws, this time challenging new restrictions on the sale and transfer of ammunition. The NRA and the California Rifle and Pistol Assn. filed a challenge in federal court to a requirement that ammunition sales and transfers be conducted face to face with California firearms dealers or licensed vendors, ending purchases made directly from out-of-state sellers on the internet. The lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California also challenged a requirement starting next year for background checks for people buying ammunition. The lawsuit was filed in the name of Kim Rhode, a six-time Olympic medal-winning shooter, and others. It challenges Californias new ammunition sales restrictions as a violation of the 2nd Amendment and the commerce clause of the United States Constitution. Restrictions on ammunition purchases were included in Proposition 63, approved by voters in 2016, and in bills approved by the Legislature. As a result of these laws, millions of constitutionally protected ammunition transfers are banned in California, Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRAs Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. Californias law-abiding gun owners are sick of being treated like criminals and the NRA is proud to assist in this fight. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor, defended his initiative and vowed to fight the NRA lawsuit. We wrote Proposition 63 on solid legal ground and principle: If youre a felon banned from possessing guns in California, then you should not be able to purchase the ammunition that makes a firearm deadly, Newsom said in a statement. California voters said loudly and clearly that guns and ammunition do not belong in the hands of dangerous individuals  but once again, the NRA has prioritized gun industry profits over the lives of law-abiding Californians. Facebook

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Republicans hope to ride a gas-tax repeal to victory By Patrick McGreevy In a Central Valley barn decked out in red, white and blue, dairyman and state Senate candidate Johnny Tacherra drew cheers from a crowd of fellow farmers when he said he opposes the California Legislatures hike on gas taxes and vehicle fees. I would not have voted for that. It is not the time to be voting on (raising) the gas tax, said Tacherra, a Republican running against Democratic Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, who voted for the tax increase last year. Three hundred miles away the same week, a campaign mailer arrived at homes in Orange County from an Assembly candidate with a message blaring from the cover in bold type: Republican Greg Haskin  tough enough to stand up to Jerry Brown and repeal the gas tax. Read More Facebook

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Treasurer John Chiang launches ad in governors race touting his record as a fiscal steward By Seema Mehta In his first television ad in the governors race, state Treasurer John Chiang touts his record on fiscal issues as California faced the recession. Some thought we were done, Chiang says in a voiceover in the 30-second spot he released Thursday, with images of him standing seriously at a lectern and complimentary headlines about his work as controller and treasurer. But I knew better. I made the tough calls. And brought California back from the brink of financial disaster because you trusted me to manage our economy. Chiangs campaign is spending about $500,000 to air the ad in Los Angeles and San Diego in coming days. That buy is dwarfed by seven-figure purchases for ads supporting Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Newsom is the front-runner, while Villaraigosa is battling for second place with Republican businessman John Cox. Chiang has been mired in the single digits in almost all polling in the race. His ad, called Quiet Storm, tries to portray Chiang as a progressive who is effective and can move policy in Sacramento. Chiang points to his work challenging Wells Fargo before arguing that he could accomplish what doubters say is impossible to improve the states healthcare, housing and schools. I say, we got this, Chiang concludes. Facebook

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Been ignoring the race for California governor? Thats OK, in some ways its just starting By Mark Z. Barabak On a recent trip to Iowa, Eric Garcetti  the mayor of Los Angeles and a possible 2020 White House contestant  raised eyebrows with a bit of exuberant outreach. Los Angeles and Iowa, Garcetti insisted, have a ton in common, and he didnt simply mean both are inhabited by carbon-based life forms needing oxygen to survive. Urban or rural, farmer or fashion plate, all of us harbor the same hopes and dreams, the mayor suggested, and if it wasnt a terribly original thought it also wasnt the most egregious sort of political pandering  like, say, ordering that every home in Los Angeles be powered by Iowa-produced ethanol. Read More Facebook

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California voters should expect to decide on an $8.9-billion water bond in November By Liam Dillon (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) A proposal to borrow $8.9 billion for improvements to Californias water quality systems and watersheds and protection of natural habitats is eligible for the statewide ballot in November, Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced in a press release Wednesday. Padilla said the measure, which is backed by agricultural interests, had exceeded the 365,800 valid signatures it needed to qualify for the general election ballot. The bond measure will appear on the ballot unless proponents withdraw it by June 28, the release said. The bond is one of many voters could decide on in 2018. A $4-billion bond for parks and water infrastructure improvements will appear on the June 5 ballot. State lawmakers approved it last year. Facebook

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They came for Darrell Issa. They stayed with their inflatable chicken, blue wall and signs for political therapy By Christine Mai-Duc (John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune) A mother of two turned ringleader of the resistance and more than a hundred of her faithful followers gathered on Tuesday morning outside Rep. Darrell Issas office in a northern San Diego County suburb. Across the street was her foil, a wedding DJ in a red Make American Great Again cap, setting up hefty speakers for an upcoming war of words. For about 65 weeks the deep divide in America played out along this 100-yard stretch of road in Vista. Here, at 10 a.m. every Tuesday, passersby found signs, chants, songs and, if they were lucky, sometimes a 20-foot-tall inflatable chicken with a Trump-esque coif. Theyd also glimpse the state of the body politic in 2018, a time when shock has turned to anger and post-2016 calls for reconciliation have morphed into grudging acceptance that each side might be better off in their respective corners. Or in this case, their sides of the street. On Tuesday, the anti-Issa, anti-Trump contingent fought this particular battle for the last time, declaring it their final protest at the congressmans office. They said they planned to use their energy to knock on doors and get out the vote, with an occasional protest on the side. Their pro-Trump rivals vowed to show up wherever they do. Read More Facebook

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Efforts to regulate bail companies have some unlikely allies: bail agents By Jazmine Ulloa Jane Un, chief executive and founder of Abba Bail Bonds, works with a client. ( Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) In recent years, the seriousness and number of official complaints related to the bail industry in California have significantly increased while bail agents and bounty hunters face limited oversight, putting vulnerable communities at risk of fraud, embezzlement and other forms of victimization. This year, as Gov. Jerry Brown has pledged to work with lawmakers in a push to overhaul how courts assign defendants bail and to better regulate bail agencies, even some who profit from the court practice admit its time for regulation. These bail and bail-recovery agents could become unlikely allies, saying they advocate for change because theyve seen the system abuse the poor. Read More Facebook

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California voters: Get ready for an onslaught of television ads By Seema Mehta After a sleepy campaign, California voters are now being bombarded with television advertisements in the governors race, an onslaught that is expected to ramp up in coming weeks. The ads most frequently seen on television are those promoting Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the front-runner in the race, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is trying to secure the second spot in the June primary. Newsoms campaign and an outside group backing Villaraigosa are spending seven figures weekly on these efforts, according to filings with the California secretary of states office and a media buyer who asked not to be identified in order to freely discuss the ads. Other gubernatorial candidates are expected to hit the airwaves soon, the media buyer said. State Treasurer John Chiang has reserved a half-million dollars in the coming days in the Los Angeles and San Diego markets, and Villaraigosas campaign has requested availability in at least five of the states biggest TV markets. The GOP candidates in the race, who will be seeking the state Republican Partys endorsement at its convention next weekend, have been much less active. Businessman John Cox in recent weeks has been spending about $90,000 per week, but doubled that this week in Los Angeles and added small buys on KFI-AM radio and cable in markets including Fresno, Bakersfield and Salinas. State Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach, who has been scooping up Republican Party endorsements across the state, has yet to make a notable television or radio buy, though he and Cox have received some attention as commentators on Fox News. Facebook

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Republicans ready to turn in signatures for ballot measure to repeal California gas-tax increase By Patrick McGreevy A Chevron gas station in Sacramento shows prices last year. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Republican activists said Tuesday that they have collected at least 830,000 signatures for an initiative to repeal recent increases in Californias gas tax and vehicle fees, more than enough to qualify the measure for the November ballot. The activists need 585,407 signatures of registered voters to qualify the ballot measure. Because signatures are still being processed and counted by the campaign, backers hope to have 900,000 by the time they begin turning them in to the counties on Friday, according to Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego City Council member and organizer of the drive. The breadth and depth of voter anger over the car and gas tax hikes is just amazing, said DeMaio, who hosts a radio talk show. We are seeing Democrats, independents and Republicans sign the petition and volunteering to carry the petition, people from all walks of life. The initiative targets a law approved in April 2017 by the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown that is expected to raise $5.4 billion annually for road and bridge repairs and improvements to mass transit. The money comes from a recent 12-cents-per-gallon increase in the gas tax, a 20-cent increase in the diesel fuel excise tax and a new annual vehicle fee ranging from $25 for cars valued at under $5,000, to $175 for cars worth $60,000 or more. The petition drive raised more than $2 million with significant contributions from the California Republican Party and Republican members of Congress from California, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and Reps. Ken Calvert of Corona and Mimi Walters of Irvine. Republicans hope the issue will help their candidates for office in this years election and hurt Democrats who support the higher taxes. I think this is going to put Democrats in real bad spot, DeMaio said. A spokesman for Brown declined to comment until the signatures are filed. DeMaio said there were approximately 20,000 volunteer petition circulators who brought in more than 250,000 signatures, with the rest collected by paid circulators who received $1 to $2.50 per signature. Its a pretty comfortable margin [of signatures] that we have been able to hit here, DeMaio said. Opposition will grow, he said, as more Californians get their annual vehicle registration notice. The repeal campaign hopes to raise $5 million for the campaign to pass the constitutional amendment, which would not only repeal the increase in the gas tax and vehicle fees but require future increases to be submitted to voters. We know that Gov. Brown and his cohorts are going to spend an amazing amount of money to mislead voters, DeMaio said. But I feel pretty confident that we will repeal the gas tax. Read More Facebook

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Rep. Duncan Hunter sets up trust to raise money for legal expenses amid ongoing criminal investigation By Morgan Cook Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, has filed paperwork to establish a legal expense fund amid an ongoing federal criminal investigation into misused campaign cash. Hunter filed the required paperwork March 27, seeking a rarely granted Legal Expense Fund through which members of Congress under investigation or being sued in connection with doing their jobs or running for office can raise money for their legal expenses. Such funds are administered by an independent trustee and allow donors to give above the maximum amount they can contribute a candidates campaign. Hunter has spent more than $600,000 of campaign money on lawyers. Read More Facebook

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Kamala Harris says she wont take corporate donations anymore By Sarah D. Wire (Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press) California Sen. Kamala Harris says she will no longer accept money from corporate political action committees. In an interview with WWPM-FMs The Breakfast Club, in New York that aired Monday, the senator said she wasnt expecting a question at a town hall this month about whether she would accept money for corporations or corporate lobbyists. At the time, Harris said it depends, but she said on Monday that she had reflected on the matter and changed her mind. Money has had such an outside influence on politics, and especially with the Supreme Court determining Citizens United, which basically means that big corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money influencing a campaign, right? Harris said. Were all supposed to have an equal vote, but money has now really tipped the balance between an individual having equal power in an election to a corporation. So Ive actually made a decision since I had that conversation that Im not going to accept corporate PAC checks. I just  Im not. You can watch the video of the interview here. (Harris corporate money comments come about 30 minutes in.) Harris wouldnt be on the ballot for a second Senate term until 2022, though its widely believed that she is planning a presidential bid in 2020. Other potential 2020 presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have also ruled out taking corporate PAC money. Soon after Mondays show aired, Harris campaign sent out a fundraising request noting her new stance. As corporate PACs continue to corrupt our politics and twist Congress priorities at your expense, were going to focus on raising money from small-dollar, individual donors like you, the email says. Facebook

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With money tied up in court, California lawmakers try again with new plan to spend $2 billion on homeless housing By Liam Dillon A man sleeps on the sidewalk in front of the Union Rescue Mission in the skid row neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) A measure to spend $2 billion on housing homeless Californians could be on the November statewide ballot. State Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) is pushing the idea to deal with what he said was a burgeoning humanitarian crisis whose epicenter is here in California. De Leons new measure is a do-over for a 2016 plan passed by the Legislature to redirect $2 billion toward building homeless housing from a voter-approved 1% income tax surcharge on millionaires that funds mental health services. A Sacramento attorney sued over that decision, arguing that the move violated constitutional rules on approving loans without a public vote and that lawmakers shouldnt take money away from mental health treatment. The case remains active in Sacramento Superior Court and its unclear when, or if, the state will be able to spend the $2 billion. De Leons Senate Bill 1206 would put the $2-billion loan on the ballot in November, freeing up the money if voters approve the measure. De Leon said had he been able to predict the 2016 plan would end up in court, he would have sought a ballot measure at the time. We thought this was like apple pie and baseball and puppies, De Leon said. Who would oppose the idea of repurposing the dollars to build immediate housing as a permanent solution for homelessness? Obviously with a crystal ball, had I anticipated the litigation, I would have worked to place it on the ballot. De Leon noted that the 2016 plan had bipartisan supermajority support in the Legislature, something his new bill also will need to get on the ballot. Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa) is a coauthor of the plan. SB 1206 is scheduled for its first hearing in the Legislature on Wednesday. Should De Leons measure be approved, it will join a crowded list of housing issues before voters in November. Californians will decide on a separate $4-billion bond to help finance new low-income housing and home loans for veterans. De Leon said hes not worried those two measures will compete against each other because voters are aware of the scale of the states housing problems and the proposed homeless housing bond redirects existing dollars instead of raising taxes. Once [voters] know that the impact on their pocketbook is not existent, Im confident that theyll join me and my colleague John Moorlach in support of this measure, De Leon said. Facebook

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California lawmakers say too many former felons are being denied professional licenses By John Myers Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) along with supporters of bills to allow more former felons to receive professional licenses. (John Myers/Los Angeles Times) A trio of California Assembly members urged colleagues on Monday to pass legislation that would prohibit state commissions and agencies from rejecting a professional license for those who were once convicted of less serious crimes. We cant say we want to rehabilitate people, and then block them from getting the jobs that they need when theyre released, said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco). That leads to more recidivism and to more crime. The bills, scheduled to be heard in Assembly committees Tuesday, would ban the use of arrest or conviction records as the reason for denying a professional license. The bill would not apply to Californians who served time for any of the offenses on the states list of violent crimes. The authors, all Democrats, said that a government-issued professional license is required for some 30% of all jobs in the state. Their bills would change the licensing process at the California departments of Consumer Affairs and Social Services and agencies that certify emergency medical technicians. The bills would block prior convictions from leading to the delay or denial of a license unless that crime is directly related to the profession the person intends to pursue. Two of the bills also specifically say convictions less than 5 years old could continue to play a role in licensing decisions. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that keeps private sector employers from inquiring about a job applicants conviction history prior to an offer of employment. Advocates joined the lawmakers at a press conference in Sacramento to point out that limits on awarding licenses should focus only on those whose prior criminal activity could pose a threat to consumers. Continuing to hold people back for crimes that are 6, 7, 8, 10, 20 years old does not actually make sense if youre looking at public safety, said Jael Myrick of the East Bay Community Law Center. One of the proposals, Assembly Bill 2293, seeks to make it easier for ex-felons to get a license allowing a job with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection  the same agency that often uses prison inmates to battle blazes around the state. If a person is good enough to risk their life fighting fires for the state of California as an inmate, said Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes (D-Grand Terrace), their previous actions should not prevent from having a job utilizing the skill set that they learned. Facebook

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Assembly speaker rebukes building trades union after it targets Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia By John Myers ( (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)) The decision by a politically powerful labor group to openly campaign against an embattled Los Angeles-area lawmaker drew a sharp rebuke on Friday from Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. The Lakewood Democrat lashed out hours after the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California filed paperwork for a political action committee to defeat Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens). Garcia, whos seeking her fourth term, took an unpaid leave of absence in February following allegations of sexual misconduct. She has denied the reports and an Assembly investigation remains underway. Rendon didnt criticize the labor group by name, insisting instead that the decision was driven by oil and gas industry interests. This is a thinly veiled attempt by Big Oil and polluters to intimidate me and my members. It is an affront to my speakership, Rendon said in a statement. We are proud of the work that the Assembly has done to increase jobs and wages while defending our environment. We will vigorously defend the members of our caucus from any ill-advised political attack. A statement from the labor group, which sparred with Garcia last year on her effort to link new climate change policies with a crackdown on air pollution, said it had decided to reverse past support for her. The Trades have thousands of hard working members in Garcias district, and we look forward to lifting up another Democrat in the 58th Assembly to better represent them and their families, said the statement. The political action committees campaign finance filing on Friday listed nonmonetary in kind contributions from Erin Lehane, a public affairs consultant aligned with the building labor group. Lehane said she had begun researching Garcia in November. In January, a former legislative staffer accused her of groping him in 2014. Lehane, who identified herself as a spokesperson for the labor groups political action committee, said on Friday that she believed Garcias hypocrisy threatened a movement that will dictate how much harassment and abuse my daughter will face in her work life. Garcia, who has been an outspoken advocate for women in the #MeToo movement, has complained that her political opponents helped fan the flames of the accusations. Through a campaign consultant, she declined to comment on Friday. Rendons critique came on the heels of a full-page ad in The Times on Friday, partly paid for by the Trades Council, that criticized well-funded ivory tower elites who push proposals that hurt the oil and gas industry. We are the real jobs that fuel the real California economy, read the advertisement. Facebook

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Legal tiff breaks out over independent committees ad backing Antonio Villaraigosa for governor By Phil Willon An attorney representing Gavin Newsoms campaign for governor is demanding that California television stations cease airing an ad by an independent political committee supporting his Democratic rival Antonio Villaraigosa. Attorney Thomas A. Willis, in a letter to the stations, said the ad is false and misleading and violates California law because it uses snippets of video footage from Villaraigosas own campaign ads. Willis called that illegal coordination between the campaign and PAC. Under California law, advertisements made by entities other than a candidate are presumed to be coordinated  and thus not independent expenditures  when the advertisement replicates, reproduces or disseminates substantial parts of a communication, including video footage, created and paid for by the candidate, the letter states. A representative for the independent expenditure committee  Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor  fired back. Attorney Brian T. Hildreth says those allegations have no merit and accused the Newsom campaign of being misleading. Hildreth sent a letter to the television stations in response, urging them to ignore the Newsom campaigns accusations. He said the Newsom camp appears to intentionally misrepresent the law and that the video use was permissible. He said only six seconds of video from Villaraigosas campaign ads was used, which is well within the legal limits. The independent committee is sponsored by the group California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, according to the California secretary of states office. The ad is airing on broadcast and cable stations statewide. The committees ad is focused on Villaraigosas record as Assembly speaker and as mayor of Los Angeles when there was a drop in crime. Facebook

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Governors race snapshot: Californians are generally upbeat but not focused on the campaign By Mark Z. Barabak Armand Werden, a 29-year-old community college student who works the taps at Dust Bowl Brewery in Turlock, said the state is on the upswing. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) As California chooses a new governor  one of just a handful in the last 40 years not named Jerry Brown  the state seems to be enjoying something unusual in these tumultuous political times: a feeling of relative contentment. Not to say things are perfect. Still, more than 100 random interviews conducted over the length and breadth of the state  from Redding in the north to Santee in the south, from the Pacific coastline to the edge of the Sierra Nevada  found most saying things are looking up, at least so far as Californias direction is concerned. Read More Facebook

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Sierra Club backs Gavin Newsom for California governor By Phil Willon Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with members of the public following a debate at USC in January. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) The Sierra Club endorsed Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in the race for California governor, with officials in the established environmental group praising the Democrats record on climate change and clean energy. He has a proven record for leading on environmental protection, public health and clean energy, Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, said in a statement released by the Newsom campaign. He understands that we are feeling the effects of climate change and that California must reduce carbon emissions and reach 100% renewable energy to achieve our climate goals. Phillips said the Sierra Clubs extensive network of volunteers will campaign for Newsom as the June 5 primary approaches. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune also praised the Democrat, saying he will protect California from Donald Trumps attacks on our clean air and water. The Sierra Club joins a series of other influential groups in California that have backed Newsom. The California Medical Assn., the powerful state doctors lobby, announced its endorsement of Newsom on Thursday. The California Nurses Assn. and the Service Employees International Union, one of the most powerful labor unions in the state, also support Newsom. Newsom is the races front-runner in polls and fundraising. A poll released earlier this month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 26% of likely voters backed Newsom. John Cox, a Republican from Rancho Santa Fe, was favored by 15% of likely voters and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, by 13%. Facebook

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Californias GOP House members are taking their challengers more seriously and the numbers show it By Christine Mai-Duc For much of last year, consultants and campaign managers for some of Californias most vulnerable Republican incumbents maintained a bullish tone on the prospect that the GOP would hold the House in this years midterms. The National Republican Congressional Committee insisted that longtime Republican incumbents in California had built up reputations as effective champions of local issues that would help them weather a flood of Democratic enthusiasm. Since then Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) have decided not to seek reelection and the NRCC has opened a West Coast headquarters in Orange County. Read More Facebook

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California officials say Pentagon has confirmed National Guard funding despite Trump threat By John Myers (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) The awkward dance between Gov. Jerry Brown and the federal government over the National Guard jerked back toward discord on Thursday, when Trump said he would refuse to pay for a new deployment of troops  just hours after his administration said otherwise. And a few hours later, California officials said they had received written confirmation from the Pentagon that the mission would indeed be funded. Trump had earlier called Browns decision to approve 400 troops for a mission focused on combating transnational crime and drug smuggling a charade in a tweet. We need border security and action, not words! the president wrote. Governor Jerry Brown announced he will deploy up to 400 National Guard Troops to do nothing. The crime rate in California is high enough, and the Federal Government will not be paying for Governor Browns charade. We need border security and action, not words!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2018 A spokesman for Brown pointed to a tweet written Wednesday night by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, thanking the California governor for his efforts. Trump was meeting on Thursday with Nielsen at his Mar-a-Lago estate not long after his tweet was posted. A tweet later posted by the California National Guard said that almost three hours after Trumps comment, the state received written confirmation from the Pentagon to fund the mission as outlined by Brown the day before. In short, nothing has changed today, said a subsequent Guard tweet. Just spoke w @JerryBrownGov about deploying the @USNationalGuard in California. Final details are being worked out but we are looking forward to the support. Thank you Gov Brown!  Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen (@SecNielsen) April 19, 2018 Brown was the last of the nations border governors to respond to Trumps insistence earlier this month that National Guard troops were needed to assist with immigration-related duties at the U.S.-Mexico border. And he has consistently refused to allow California troops to engage in any mission related to federal immigration law. This will not be a mission to build a new wall, Brown wrote last week to Nielsen and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. Exactly what the California operations will cost remains unclear, as state officials have said it will depend on decisions made once the mission begins. The funds would not be transferred to the state, but instead would be paid directly by the Department of Defense. Trump has critiqued California several times over the past few days, often writing tweets that embrace the actions by some cities and counties to join his administrations lawsuit against the states sanctuary immigration law. He made similar comments to reporters on Thursday afternoon. If you look at whats happening in California with sanctuary cities  people are really going the opposite way, Trump said. They dont want sanctuary cities. Theres a little bit of a revolution going on in California. 2:26 p.m.:This article was updated with additional information from the California National Guard and with remarks from Trump. This article was originally published at 9:51 a.m. Facebook

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Gay conversion therapy services would be banned under measure advancing in California By John Myers (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The California Assembly voted Thursday to add gay conversion therapy to the states list of deceptive business practices, following a debate that focused on the personal experiences of several lawmakers and hinted at potential lawsuits to come. It is harmful and it is unnecessary, Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), the bills author and one of the Legislatures most vocal LGBTQ members, said of the practice. Low, who told Assembly members that he explored conversion therapy as a teenager and suffered depression over his sexual orientation, insisted that the bill would be limited to efforts that involve the exchange of money. Theres nothing wrong with me, he said in an emotional speech on the Assembly floor. Theres nothing that needs to be changed. The bill, which now heads to the Senate, has become the focal point of intense debate on social media. Some religious groups have said that such a law would be a violation of their constitutional rights, while advocates insist the provisions are narrow and theres no credible evidence that the services work. One key part of the debate centers on whether Assembly Bill 2943 would stretch beyond businesses that charge for these programs and extend to printed documents, even Bibles. An analysis by the Assembly Judiciary Committee says the bill would apply only to services that purport to change a persons sexual orientation and offered on a commercial basis, as well as the advertising and offering of such services. Lawmakers who spoke in support of AB 2943 also made clear that they believe those kinds of services have been discredited. This is fraudulent, it should not be occurring, said Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton). But you can still try to pray the gay away, if you like. Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who said the bill addresses a difficult issue, nonetheless said that its important to ensure laws dont tamper with religious freedom. We have to think about the legitimate experience of people who have gone through conversion therapy and said this was a good thing for them, Gallagher told his colleagues. California law already bans the use of conversion therapy by mental health professionals on those under age 18. Lows bill would expand the states efforts beyond minors. It would join a list of commercial activities deemed unfair or deceptive acts or practices and therefore banned under state law. Facebook

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Gavin Newsom gets backing from doctors group, despite differences over single-payer healthcare By Melanie Mason Gavin Newsom speaks at the California Democrats State Convention in San Diego on Feb. 24. (Kent Nishimura) Californias doctors are siding with Gavin Newsom in the governors race, even though they dont see eye-to-eye on a defining issue of the campaign: single-payer healthcare. The California Medical Assn., the state doctors lobby and a political heavyweight, announced its endorsement of the lieutenant governor on Thursday. Gavin is a lifelong champion for health care in California, and we know he will continue to fight for pragmatic solutions to our most crucial health care challenges, including working to achieve universal access and tackling our states physician shortage, CMA President Theodore M. Mazer said in a statement. Newsom has made his support for state-financed healthcare a centerpiece of his campaign, and he earned the early backing of the most ardent single-payer supporters, the state nurses union. The doctors, meanwhile, oppose the nurses bill, SB 562, which emerged as a flashpoint in the healthcare debate last year. The CMA said the bill would dismantle the healthcare marketplace and destabilize Californias economy. Newsom has said SB 562 should advance in the Legislature, but also said it has open-ended issues that still need to be addressed. The doctors group is also battling with another prominent Newsom endorser, the Service Employees International Union, over a new measure that would impose price caps on an array of medical services paid for by commercial health insurers in the state. The SEIU is a leading sponsor of the proposal; the doctors fiercely oppose it. Newsom and the physicians group have a history of political alignment. Newsom was the first statewide official to support Proposition 56, a 2016 tobacco tax pushed by the CMA that raised revenue in part to increase money for doctors who saw Medi-Cal patients. That year, the association also endorsed two initiatives championed by Newsom: Proposition 63, which imposed new gun control measures, and Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana. Facebook

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Independent committee backing Antonio Villaraigosa for governor hits the airwaves with first ad By Phil Willon Antonio Villaraigosa speaks at the 2018 California Democratic Party Convention in San Diego in February.. (Denis Poroy / Associated Press) A well-financed independent committee backing Antonio Villaraigosas bid to be Californias next governor released its first television ad Thursday, praising his record for working with Republicans and as a candidate for all of California. The ad, which is to air statewide on broadcast and cable stations, is focused on Villaraigosas record as Assembly speaker and mayor of Los Angeles, including on education and a drop in crime while he was at City Hall. To move California forward, we need to help more Californians get ahead, the ad says. Thats why Antonio Villaraigosa brought both parties together to balance the state budget with record investments in public schools and new career training programs. The independent expenditure committee behind the ad campaign, Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018, is sponsored by the California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, according to the California secretary of states office. The committee is spending seven figures per week on the ad buy, said Josh Pulliam, a political consultant for the committee. As mayor of Los Angeles, Villaraigosa clashed with teachers unions, starting with his failed attempt to take political control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. His fight with those unions continued after he left office in 2013. Money has poured into the committee this month from wealthy charter schools supporters: Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, donated $7 million, and Los Angeles billionaire and philanthropist Eli Broad donated $1.5 million. On Wednesday, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan donated $1 million. The independent expenditure committee is expected to provide a boost to Villaraigosas campaign. Democratic front-runner Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has a major advantage in fundraising over all other candidates in the race and has received the backing of the California Teachers Assn. and other education unions. A recent Public Policy Institute of California poll also showed Villaraigosa lagging in third place in the race, trailing Newsom and Republican businessman John Cox. The candidates who finish in the top two in the June 5 primary will advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown says Trump administration will fund his National Guard mission  without immigration duties By John Myers (Alex Wong / Getty Images) Gov. Jerry Brown formally mobilized 400 California National Guard members Wednesday for transnational crime-fighting duties, thus preventing any effort by President Trump to have the troops focus on immigration enforcement on the Mexican border. The governor announced that federal officials have agreed to fund the plan he announced last week  a mission to combat criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers in locations around California, including near the border. The order Brown signed makes clear that the troops will not be allowed to perform a broader set of duties as envisioned by Trumps recent comments. California National Guard service members shall not engage in any direct law enforcement role nor enforce immigration laws, arrest people for immigration law violations, guard people taken into custody for alleged immigration violations, or support immigration law enforcement activities, the order read. The cost of the mission, a spokesman for Brown said, will be paid directly by the federal government. No initial estimate has been made, as the exact amount will depend on exactly how the troops will be used. Though the duties of California Guard members were outlined last week, the state had been waiting for an agreement by federal officials to pay for the operations. Since that time, the president has taken Brown and the state to task over its decision to avoid any immigration-related duties at the border. On Wednesday morning, Trump tweeted, Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW! There is a Revolution going on in California. Soooo many Sanctuary areas want OUT of this ridiculous, crime infested & breeding concept. Jerry Brown is trying to back out of the National Guard at the Border, but the people of the State are not happy. Want Security & Safety NOW!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2018 Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border. He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border, Trump tweeted Tuesday. There was no immediate reaction from the White House to Browns announcement. On Tuesday, Brown told reporters in Washington that his plan was consistent with a safer border. That sounds to me like fighting crime, the governor said. Trying to catch some desperate mothers and children, or unaccompanied minors coming from Central America, that sounds like something else. The order Brown issued Wednesday after returning from a brief trip to talk climate change in Toronto and to speak to a national trade union and visit with reporters in Washington is set to expire at the end of September. It specifically says no Guard service member may participate in a mission that would exceed the mission scope and limitations related to transnational crime activity. It also says troops cannot help build any new border barrier. 5:27 p.m.: This article was updated with information related to the cost of the Guard mission and Browns trip to Washington. This article was originally published at 5:13 p.m. Facebook

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California bill aims to end practice that keeps workplace misconduct cases out of court By Melanie Mason A California bill would prohibit employers from requiring workers to use private arbitration to settle disputes, a practice that critics say shields improper workplace conduct from public view. The bill by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) would bar businesses from making employees, when they are hired, waive their future rights to take any harassment, discrimination or other claims to court. Arbitration can be a highly effective dispute resolution method when both parties can choose it freely, when both parties are equal, Gonzalez Fletcher said at a news conference on Wednesday. It is far less successful when the more powerful party forces the other to accept those terms, especially as a condition of employment. Forced arbitration has come under increasing scrutiny since the #MeToo movement, with high-profile figures such as former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson pointing to the practice as shielding workplace abusers from public disclosure because arbitration resolutions often include nondisclosure agreements. Last year, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress to end mandatory arbitration in employment agreements. Gonzalez Fletcher said she was pursuing an unusual tool to draw attention to the issue  a subpoena issued by the Legislature to compel testimony from a worker bound by a nondisclosure agreement as a result of arbitration. The Legislature has subpoena power but it is rarely used. The bills sponsors believe lawmakers last issued a subpoena in 2001 while investigating price manipulation by Enron. Gonzalez Fletcher said she has requested Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) to issue the subpoena to require Tara Zoumer, who sued the company WeWork in 2016 for overtime pay, to testify before the Assembly Judiciary Committee next week. Zoumers suit was moved to arbitration and resolved. She is now subject to a nondisclosure agreement and could face a financial penalty for speaking publicly about her case. A spokesman for Rendon said the subpoena request is under consideration. Business groups oppose the bill, AB 3080. The California Chamber of Commerce has dubbed it a job biller, claiming it would dramatically increase legal costs for businesses. Banning such agreements benefits the trial attorneys, not the employer or employee, the group said. The bill must first advance from the Assembly Labor Committee on Wednesday. Facebook

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At least 240 House lawmakers want a vote on immigration. California supporters say they arent ready to force one By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), flanked by Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) speak about DACA legislation (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) Rep. Jeff Denham says at least 240 of the 430 current House members have signed onto his resolution to hold votes on four immigration bills, and he hopes House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and President Trump are paying attention to the show of support. But, the Republican from Turlock and his allies said Wednesday that they are not yet willing to commit to forcing Ryans hand through a little-used procedural move called a discharge petition; they acknowledged theres no guarantee that all of 47 Republicans and 193 Democrats House co-signers will back them up if they try to force the issue. Im sure that it is something that will be discussed in the coming weeks. You should not need a discharge petition. When you can show the overwhelming majority of the House, the support of it, you should not need a discharge petition, but it is something we would talk about in the future, Denham said. It is far too early to talk about next steps. Ryan said last week that he opposes Denhams effort, saying its a waste of time for the House to vote on bills the president might veto. Denhams resolution would prompt debate and votes on four very different immigration bills: one favored by the Trump administration, one preferred by Democrats, one bipartisan proposal and another immigration bill of Ryans choice. Whichever got the most votes would move forward to the Senate. All four bills would help Dreamers to differing degrees and include varying levels of border security or immigration enforcement. For example, the Trump-backed bill would also dramatically reduce legal immigration, while the Democrats would only deal with legal status for Dreamers. Democrats say they dont expect the show of support will sway Ryan. Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) said Tuesday night she expects Ryan will have to be forced into allowing a vote. It doesnt matter how many signatures we get. We could have every signature, technically, except his, on the floor of the House and... if he doesnt want to, it doesnt happen, Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) said. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), who gathered the Democratic co-sponsors for Denham, also wouldnt give a deadline for House leaders to act, but said the co-sponsors are only willing to wait weeks not months. We do want to give them an opportunity to bring up the rule and to use whatever process they want, Aguilar said. They do have options, but I think they need to understand that we have options too. Facebook

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Billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer endorses Kevin de Leon in his insurgent bid against Sen. Dianne Feinstein By Seema Mehta Tom Steyer, left, and California state Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles). (Getty Images; Los Angeles Times) Billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer is endorsing state Sen. Kevin de Leon in his insurgent challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and did not rule out funding an outside effort to boost De Leons chances. I think hes the kind of young progressive that reflects California and would be a very strong advocate for our state nationally, Steyer said in an interview on Tuesday, pointing to De Leons efforts on issues such as immigration, climate change and gun control while he was the state Senate leader. I know him well and hes a friend. We share a lot of values. Steyer, who flirted with running for the Senate seat, did not criticize Feinstein as he has in the past. Sen. Feinstein has been an outstanding public servant who has dedicated the bulk of her adult life to the service of our state and the country, he said. These are two strong, very good Democrats. I just believe Kevin is the true progressive and he reflects something we need representing California going forward. I have nothing bad to say about Dianne Feinstein. I have a lot of good to say about Kevin de Leon. De Leon faces enormous odds as he tries to oust Feinstein, who has served in the Senate for a quarter-century, is well known to the states voters and has daunting leads in polls and fundraising. But De Leon has gained notable endorsements, most recently from the 2.1-million-member California Labor Federation last week. Campaign finance reports released this week show that Feinstein has more than $10 million in the bank, while De Leon has just more than $670,000. Feinstein, a multimillionaire and one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, has already lent her campaign $5 million and could easily write another check. But Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund manager, could write a larger one. He is among the largest Democratic donors in the nation and has already committed more than $50 million to push for the impeachment of President Trump and to register young voters. He was noncommittal when asked if he would fund an independent expenditure group on behalf of De Leon. I dont have any concrete plans for that, he said. Read More Facebook

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Californias largest pension fund sends next years invoice to state government: $6.3 billion By John Myers The California Public Employees Retirement System building (Max Whittaker / Getty Images) As part of a shift toward less optimistic expectations for investment returns to pay for government worker pensions, board members of the California Public Employees Retirement System voted Tuesday to require an almost $6.3-billion payment from the state budget in the fiscal year that begins on July 1. The action, which could receive final approval on Wednesday, reflects a gradually higher annual contribution to public employee pensions by the state and from local governments across California. In 2016, CalPERS approved a half-percentage point decrease in its official estimate of the long-term investment return on its $353.3-billion portfolio. That shift was designed to happen over several years, in hopes it would lessen the financial shock of shifting more of the costs onto government employers. The highest costs are also, in part, a reflection of increases in the size of the states payroll. The states CalPERS payment will be about $450 million more than the total paid in the current fiscal year and more than double what it was only a decade ago. CalPERS board members voted on Tuesdays staff proposal with little discussion, save for a question about the increase in contributions also required from workers hired after a pension overhaul that took effect in June. It seems like it will be a ding on peoples salaries, said Theresa Taylor, the chairwoman of CalPERS finance committee and a member of SEIU Local 1000, the union that represents some 96,000 state employees. The $6.299-billion payment required from Californias state government must now be factored into the budget crafted by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in late June. Brown had already assumed a similarly sized payment in his budget proposal unveiled in January. In February, a coalition representing city governments warned about the effects of rising pension costs under the expectations of less money from Wall Street investments. The report issued by the League of California Cities projected an average increase of more than 50% in annual pension payments made by the states largest cities over the next seven years. A CalPERS staff report notes that the net return on all of the funds investments for the fiscal year that ended in July was 11.2%. But expectations on profits over the next 30 years remain significantly more modest, and theres long been a robust debate about how to properly set those future expectations. The lower the rate of projected investment return, the larger the share of pension costs that must be covered by taxpayers and some employees. Overall, CalPERS officials believe the system has assets to cover 71% of its long-term obligations. Facebook

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California warns legal pot sellers not to participate in unlicensed 4/20 events By Patrick McGreevy Marijuana on display at a dispensary in Los Angeles. ( (Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images)) The state issued a warning Tuesday that businesses holding licenses to sell marijuana could face penalties if they participate in unlicensed temporary events away from their stores, including on Friday, April 20, which has become an annual celebration for counterculture groups. The warning was issued ahead of 4/20 by the state Bureau of Cannabis Control. Since Jan. 1, the bureau has issued more than 700 state licenses to sell marijuana for medical or recreational use. The bureau has issued 47 temporary event licenses to groups that are limited to holding the marijuana celebrations on county fairgrounds that have authorized such events with city approval. Any bureau licensee participating in an unlicensed cannabis event may be subject to disciplinary action, the warning said, adding that lawful participation by bureau licensees in any temporary cannabis event that allows sales and/or consumption is dependent upon issuance of the appropriate licenses from the bureau. While many Californians have been issued medical approval to sell or use marijuana, the law does not allow them to participate in unlicensed events, also referred to as Proposition 215 events after the ballot measure that legalized medical pot two decades ago in the state. Participation in such events may lead to civil penalties for unlicensed commercial cannabis activity, the warning said. Meanwhile, a survey of some 1,000 marijuana users that was released Tuesday by the firm LendEDU found that the average 4/20 participant plans to spend $71 on marijuana to celebrate the unofficial holiday, and about 35% of respondents are planning to take off work Friday. Facebook

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California police groups shift position on officer discipline records, now consider support for making some of them public By Liam Dillon Los Angeles Police Department recruits at a graduation ceremony in April (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Some major law enforcement groups signaled Tuesday they are willing to support making part of police officer disciplinary records public, a dramatic departure from their past positions. Local and national attention on police shootings and misconduct has led law enforcement organizations to reconsider their blanket opposition to proposals that would give public access to some internal disciplinary investigations of officers. Were going to be open to supporting efforts that would allow for some records to be released, said Ryan Sherman, a lobbyist with the Riverside Sheriffs Assn. Debate over secrecy provisions in officer disciplinary files came during a legislative hearing on Senate Bill 1421 from Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley). Skinners bill, which advanced out of the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, would require public disclosure of all internal officer shooting investigations and confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying while on duty. Currently, all police discipline information is confidential outside of a courtroom in California, which has some of the nations strictest standards against public disclosure. Unfortunately, the fact that we have such strict restrictions on any access to public records has affected certain communities trust towards our law enforcement, Skinner said during the hearing. Prior to Skinners effort, other have tried to loosen these rules, some of which date back 40 years. Most recently in 2016, a bid by then-Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) failed in a Senate committee. In debate two years ago, no major law enforcement groups indicated they would accept changes to state laws that would make individual internal investigations public, saying they were essential to protect officer privacy and safety. But Tuesday, Sherman and other lobbyists including those representing the states largest police labor organization, signaled they might be willing to entertain changes. They said they were negotiating with Skinner on the bills details. Law enforcement groups still have major concerns about SB 1421 as written. Ed Fishman, an attorney for the Police Officers Research Assn., told legislators that the bill would wrongfully expose police officers who acted within departmental policy to invasions of their privacy. It has unintended consequences that are extreme and will hurt the public, Fishman said. Tuesdays hearing featured testimony from many who have had relatives killed by police officers in recent years advocating for the bill. Senators on the Public Safety Committee also gave public rebukes to law enforcement lobbyists, criticizing them for a lack of diversity and insensitivity to concerns raised by communities of color. I think that you are completely and utterly out of touch with the realities of how those you are representing are perceived by major segments of California, said Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles). You are not going to be able to continue to lobby your way out of it. The bill faces at least one more committee hearing in the Senate before reaching the floor. It will have to pass both houses of the Legislature by the end of August. Facebook

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Newest member of the California Assembly arrives ready to work on criminal justice issues By John Myers Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove prepares for the oath of office from Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon with her husband, Austin Dove. (California Assembly Democrats) Two weeks after winning a Los Angeles special election, the newest member of the California Assembly says she hopes to focus on reforms to the states criminal justice system during her time in Sacramento. Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) took the oath of office on Monday, filling one of three vacant seats representing Los Angeles County in the lower house. The Democrat, a former community college trustee and legislative staffer, thanked her mentors in remarks from the Assembly rostrum. So many women, and in my life so many black women, have paid in giving me the kind of morals and integrity and grit that is required to fight on behalf of people that you know, and people that you dont know, she said. Kamlager-Dove won handily on April 3, receiving 70% of the votes cast in the 54th Assembly District which encompasses communities west of downtown Los Angeles, from Crenshaw to Culver City and as far north as Westwood. She will serve the remaining eight months of the term of former Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, who resigned last year citing health concerns. She has said she hopes to focus her attention on poverty issues and on reform of the states criminal justice system. I think we have an opportunity to really push the needle in terms of how we look at rehabilitation, how we look at incarceration, and how we look at changing the lives oftentimes of poor men and women of color, Kamalager-Dove said on Monday in a video released by Assembly Democrats. Facebook

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Survivors of violent crime raise their voices in California to call for a new approach to criminal justice By Jazmine Ulloa Aaliyah Smith marches with her cousins. (Jazmine Ulloa / Los Angeles Times) Her father, uncle, a cousin and two older brothers. Those are some of the family members 16-year-old Aaliyah Smith has lost to gun violence. Then there are her friends. Jermaine Jackson Jr., 27, was shot and killed in 2016 while he painted over graffiti in San Francisco. Toriano Tito Adger, 18, was shot there a year later at a bus stop. He called Smith, who was nearby, and warned her to run. She made it inside a library moments before the crack of gunfire. Last week, Smith was among hundreds who gathered in Sacramento for annual National Crime Victims Rights Week events, where calls were issued for a new approach to criminal justice and public safety in California, one that puts survivors at the center of policy. But a debate is brewing over what that entails. Read More Facebook

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California expects $14 billion in tax payments this month By John Myers State workers handle income tax returns at the California Franchise Tax Board offices. (Laura Morton / For The Times) Gov. Jerry Browns proposed state budget is built on what taxpayers might find an audacious assumption: almost $14 billion in tax payments in the month of April, an average of $83 million collected per hour on every business day of the month. Most of that money will come from the taxes Californians pay in advance of Tuesday nights filing deadline for income tax returns. If history is any guide, the rate of payment could quadruple by weeks end. While tax rules have shifted some of the payment schedules to other months, April remains a vitally important month to the fiscal health of state government. The state controllers office reports more than 15% of all personal income tax revenues in 2017 were collected in April. In the recession years of a decade ago, tax revenue predictions were frequently off the mark by hundreds of millions of dollars. The last two state budgets have seen significant windfalls of personal income tax revenue, thanks in part both to an improving economy and to the continuation of a temporary surcharge on the wealthiest taxpayers  extended by voters in 2016. In the budget plan he sent to lawmakers in January, Brown projected a $6.1-billion windfall and proposed using a sizable amount to top off Californias rainy-day fund ahead of schedule. The independent Legislative Analysts Office reports that through the end of last week, the months income tax tally stood at $3 billion, slightly ahead of projections. By the end of the current week, a single days total could be almost that large. Lawmakers began reviewing the governors $190.3-billion spending plan during the winter, but few decisions are made until they get a look at Aprils tax revenues. The governor will release a revised plan based on the new data next month; lawmakers are required to send him a completed budget no later than June 15. Facebook

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Feinstein war chest tops $10 million while Kevin de Leon struggles to keep pace By Sarah D. Wire Sen. Dianne Feinstein widened her already-massive fundraising advantage in the run-up to Junes primary, raising twice as much in the first quarter than her strongest Senate challenger has sitting in the bank. Feinstein raised $1.3 million between January and March, bringing her war chest to just over $10 million as Californias U.S. Senate race begins in earnest, according Federal Election Commission reports. Former state Senate leader Kevin De Leon, the best known of the more than 30 people who will appear with Feinstein on the June primary ballot, raised just $575,991 in that same period, bringing his cash on hand to $672,331, according to his quarterly FEC report. Read More Facebook

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Trump has met his match, says Gov. Jerry Brown in promoting climate action on a quick trip to Canada By John Myers (Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press) Gov. Jerry Brown told a Canadian audience Monday that he believes President Trumps efforts to reverse course on climate change policy are a momentary deviation as others in the United States seek limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Thats very temporary, I can assure you, Brown said at a joint event in Toronto with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. The governors quick international trip, announced only late last week, comes as Wynnes Liberal Party faces a stiff challenge in Junes election from the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and its leader, Doug Ford. Critics of Wynnes party have called for Ontario to pull out of the Western Climate Initiative, a cooperative agreement between three Canadian provinces and California on efforts to limit greenhouse gases. Brown sought to link the efforts of Canadian conservatives with Republicans in the United States who oppose existing climate change programs. In contrast, he told the audience, several GOP lawmakers voted last summer to renew Californias cap-and-trade program. I would say to the conservatives of Canada, wake up and see what your friends in California are doing, he said. The Democrat took particular notice of Trumps efforts to shift away from climate change policies from the administration of former President Obama, as well as a push by the Environmental Protection Agency to cancel Californias strict limits on automobile emissions. If Trump tries to change that, well have litigation well beyond his term in office, Brown said while also noting Chinese government efforts to produce more low-emissions vehicles. Between California and China, Trump has met his match. What hes saying is not going to happen. Many of the governors remarks, though, were aimed at the tough political situation in which Wynne finds herself with seven weeks to go before Ontarios parliamentary elections. Dangers abound, but success is right in our hands, Brown said. So dont blow it! Facebook

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California voters are getting to know the states attorney general through his aggressive stance challenging Trump By Patrick McGreevy Less than two months from his first statewide election, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has become adept not only at challenging President Trump but at using the bully pulpit of his office to raise his profile with voters. The aggressive effort may help boost the former Los Angeles congressmans chances at winning a full term in office this fall, almost two years after he was appointed to replace Sen. Kamala Harris in 2017. Appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, Becerra took office as attorney general four days after Trumps inauguration. Thats afforded him an opportunity to get in front of Californians  and potential voters  on an array of issues including immigration, healthcare and the environment. Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown forms commission for 2020 census outreach By Melanie Mason In an effort to make sure California has a strong showing in the next national census, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday established a state commission to prepare outreach for the decennial count. It is vitally important for California to do everything it can to ensure that every Californian is counted in the upcoming census, Brown said in a prepared statement. The commissions formation comes on the heels of a Trump administration plan to ask about citizenship status as a part of the census. State officials fear that such a question, which has not been asked in a census since 1950, could chill participation among California residents. That could result in the state losing billions of dollars in federal funds and a seat in Congress. The 23-member panel, appointed largely by Brown as well as picks by legislative leaders, comes from private- and public-sector backgrounds, including civil rights groups, religious institutions and educational institutions. Facebook

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Garcetti kicks off Iowa visit with 2020 on his mind and a hardhat on his head LA Mayor - and 2020 prospect - Eric Garcetti makes his Iowa debut at the Carpenters Union Training Center. Fearlessly flaunts the never be photographed in head gear/safety glasses rule. pic.twitter.com/14bUOPXMvF  Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) April 13, 2018 Facebook

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Asm. Rocky Chavez takes the lead in race to replace Issa, while Doug Applegate slips By Joshua Stewart A new poll shows that Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez has taken a clear lead over 15 other candidates running to replace Rep. Darrell Issa in Congress and has overtaken Democrat Doug Applegate, the previous frontrunner. In a SurveyUSA poll by 10News and The San Diego Union-Tribune, Chavez, R-Oceanside, has support of 16 percent of likely voters, putting him ahead of Applegate, a lawyer, who was favored by 12 percent of voters and is in second place. The top two vote-getters in June, regardless of party, will proceed to a November runoff election. Competing with Applegate for the No. 2 spot is Democrat Mike Levin, also a lawyer, with support of 9 percent of voters. Several other candidates were right at his heels. Democratic Businessman Paul Kerr and Board of Equalization Member Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, were tied for fourth at 8 percent each. Read More Facebook

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Pro-Kevin de Leon group launches ad castigating Dianne Feinstein By Seema Mehta A group that is supporting Kevin de Leons bid for the U.S. Senate launched a blistering ad against Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday, questioning her progressive principles and tying her to President Trump. The ad buy from A Progressive California is minuscule  $10,000 to air it in Los Angeles for one day on CNN and MSNBC during programming such as The Rachel Maddow Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper 360. The minute-long ad features news clips about Feinstein not getting the California Democratic Party endorsement earlier this year, as well as footage of Feinstein saying that Trump can be a good president and appearing to share a laugh with Trump. That moment actually came during a White House meeting in the aftermath of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting when the president suggested an assault weapons ban should be included in a bipartisan bill to expand gun background checks. It also features extensive clips of de Leons speech at the state partys convention. De Leon, who just ended his final term as leader of the state Senate, announced last year he would run against fellow Democrat Feinstein as she seeks her fifth full term. Feinsteins longtime political advisor dismissed the ad, noting the size of the buy. Its not really a buy, said Bill Carrick. Ten thousand dollars in cable in L.A. Poof, its gone. Still, he said he planned to have the campaigns lawyers review the ad to see if it violates campaign law that limits what outside groups like A Progressive California can do. Such groups cannot coordinate with campaigns or candidates, and are limited in how much their messages can support a candidate. Ann Ravel, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission and the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said if the ad was in a state race, she is certain that the state commission would open an investigation into potential coordination with de Leons campaign because of the messaging and the types of footage in the ad. But the bipartisan federal commission cant agree on how to enforce the federal regulations, she said. The problem is [outside groups] understand that given the lack of very strong enforcement at the federal level, theres the ability to stretch the law, she said. A spokeswoman for the FEC declined to comment. Dave Jacobson, a spokesman for A Progressive California, disputed the suggestion that the ad violated campaign law. This frivolous allegation shows that Sen. Feinstein is afraid of the public seeing an ad which showcases her own words, that Donald Trump can be a good president, he said. Facebook

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Dispute over money emerges in campaign to repeal Californias gas tax increase By Patrick McGreevy A motorist prepares to gas up her vehicle in San Rafael, Calif., in 2015. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) A proposed initiative to repeal hikes to Californias gas tax has been caught in the middle of a dispute involving Republican rivals in the governors race. Assemblyman Travis Allen, a Republican candidate for governor, decided in January to drop plans for his own initiative and said he would urge supporters to sign a separate petition being supported by several Republican members of Congress. Then last week, the committee Allen formed to finance his ballot measure reported a $300,000 contribution from PISF Inc., a Novato, Calif., real estate firm. Now, an organizer of the still active Give Voters a Voice committee is urging the Allen committee to immediately donate their funds in support of the ongoing signature gathering efforts. There is only one gas tax repeal measure currently in circulation and that is the measure sponsored by the Give Voters a Voice Committee, said Dave Gilliard, a consultant to the group. PISF Inc., he said, gave to repeal taxes a
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
When President Trumps former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, appeared in January before the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian political interference, he refused to answer questions about his conversations with Trump after he was fired by the future president in June 2016.

The Republicans running the panel responded not with a subpoena, which Congress can use to compel testimony. They invited Lewandowski to return when he was ready, and hes scheduled to testify again on Thursday.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, Donald Trump Jr., the presidents eldest son, and Hope Hicks, the outgoing communications director, also have declined to discuss certain topics in closed-door House committee hearings.

Over in the Senate, top Trump administration intelligence and law enforcement officials, most notably Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, have refused to discuss their private conversations with Trump, at least in public hearings, regarding Russia and other issues.

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Most of the conflicts over congressional testimony have revolved around executive privilege, the presidents legal authority to keep some conversations and other material secret to protect internal deliberations. Although the White House hasnt formally invoked the privilege, Trumps current and former aides said they would not answer questions to protect the presidents right to cite the privilege later should he seek to do so.

Legal experts said the White House had significantly broadened the traditional use of executive privilege to direct individuals to avoid answering questions about specific conversations with the president.

The Trump White House is preventing any testimony from people on the grounds that something, at some point, is potentially covered by executive privilege, said Mark J. Rozell, a professor at George Mason University who has studied the presidency.

Then it becomes a blanket protection to prevent any and all questions from current and former staff, which is an almost breathtaking notion of executive privilege, he added.

Robert Bauer, who served as White House counsel under President Obama, said the Trump administration is attempting something quite new.

Normally, an administration advances a claim of executive privilege, then negotiates around it to accommodate the Congress without forcing the conflict to outright confrontation, Bauer said.

In this case, he said, current and former Trump aides have declined to answer questions on the grounds that they were instructed not to do so. This is not standard practice in dealing with unwanted congressional inquiries, and there is no constitutional basis for it.

Jim Schultz, a former deputy counsel in Trumps White House who now works at the Cozen OConnor law firm, said there was nothing wrong with safeguarding the presidents prerogative to keep some information secret.

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Its the obligation of the White House counsel to protect the institution of the White House and the executive privilege that goes along with it, Schultz said.

If there were another party in the White House, the Democrats would not be thumping away about it, he added.

Follow live coverage of the Trump administration on Essential Washington 

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, conceded that partisanship could be at play. But he said Republicans were bending over backward to accede to White House efforts to rope off areas of inquiry.

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Ive rarely seen a total surrender, a total failure of congressional oversight, Nadler said. Theyre going further than the presidents party usually goes.

Republicans have accused Democrats of conducting a partisan quest to embarrass the president and his inner circle. They also have argued that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is conducting a criminal investigation of the Russian meddling, and whether Trump or his aides committed any crimes, reducing pressure on Congress to find the answers for themselves.

Still, the pushback is a sharp contrast with how Republicans investigated allegations of wrongdoing in the Obama administration.

As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa of California issued more than 100 subpoenas to investigate the failed Fast and Furious gun-tracking operation, the Internal Revenue Services treatment of conservative groups, and armed attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA post in Benghazi, Libya.

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Issa also successfully pushed to hold then-Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress after the Obama administration invoked executive privilege to withhold information from his committee. The Justice Department declined to prosecute Holder, who headed the department, a reminder that the executive branch often has more leverage in disputes with Congress.

Issa declined to be interviewed for this story.

The venue for most conflicts involving the Russia investigation has been the House Intelligence Committee, one of three congressional panels conducting inquiries.

When the House panel interviewed Donald Trump Jr. about his June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, he refused to recount his conversation with his father about the meeting, claiming attorney-client privilege because a lawyer was present at the time.

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Bannon, the former White House strategist, rejected to answer any questions from the committee regarding events or conversations after the election. After the committee slapped him with a subpoena, Bannon agreed to return for another hearing.

But during his second appearance, he was only willing to address a pre-determined list of yes or no questions that White House lawyers had helped him prepare.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, declined to discuss whether Bannon would be held in contempt.

A spokesman for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the panels chairman, did not respond to a question about how many subpoenas had been issued in the investigation. Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) declined requests for interviews.

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Rozell, the George Mason professor, said the Constitutions separation of powers was no longer working as envisioned.

James Madison would not be happy to see this. He believed each branch of government would zealously defend its prerogatives, he said. The administration is essentially preventing the legislative branch from doing its job. And to extent they stand down, it weakens the institution in the long run.

chris.megerian@latimes.com

Twitter: @chrismegerian

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For Trumps national security team, addressing the threats means ignoring the tweets

Whatever President Trump has done, it cant be obstruction of justice, his lawyer argues
Allies balk at Trump administration bid to block Chinese firm from cutting-edge telecom markets By David S. Cloud Britain and Germany are balking at the Trump administrations call for a ban on equipment from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, threatening a global U.S. campaign to thwart Chinas involvement in future mobile networks. Both countries are expected to limit Huawei and other Chinese companies from providing core components including routers. But other types of Chinese equipment for next-generation, high-speed communications could still be installed on British and German networks, officials and analysts say. The U.S. push to ban Huawei has provoked a global dispute in recent weeks, with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, publicly urging NATO allies in Europe to exclude the company and warning that the United States might limit its military presence in countries that did not do so. Read More Facebook

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Confucius Institutes: Do they improve U.S.-China ties or harbor spies? By Don Lee Hanging red lanterns welcome visitors to the University of Marylands Confucius Institute, the oldest of about 100 Chinese language and cultural centers that have popped up over the last 15 years on American campuses, subsidized by millions of dollars from Chinas central government. But last fall, when four U.S. Senate investigators walked into the Confucius offices in Maryland and spent hours questioning staff, they werent looking for an educational exchange. The committee has been seeking detailed information from the university about the program, including contracts, email exchanges and financial arrangements that school administrators have kept under wraps since it started in 2004. American colleges once viewed these jointly funded institutes as an economical way to expand their language offerings  one that could also bring warmer ties with China and, importantly, an influx of Chinese international students paying full tuition. Read More Facebook

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U.S. policy toward China shifts from engagement to confrontation By David S. Cloud For decades, China had no closer American friend than Dianne Feinstein. As San Francisco mayor in the 1970s, she forged a sister-city relationship with Shanghai, the first between American and Chinese communities. As U.S. senator, she dined with Chinese leaders at Mao Tse-tungs old Beijing residence. And in the 1990s, she championed a trade policy change that opened a floodgate of Western investment into China. Today the Democratic senator sees China as a growing threat, joining a broad array of Trump administration officials, national security strategists and business executives who once favored engagement with Beijing and now advocate a confrontational approach instead. Read More Facebook

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Mnuchins attempt to calm markets backfires as Trump takes another shot at the Federal Reserve By Jim Puzzanghera An attempt by Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin to calm plunging financial markets backfired Monday, further rattling investors with new fears about whether major U.S. banks have enough cash on top of worries about interest rates, political instability in Washington and a slowing global economy. Adding to the volatile mix was a fresh attack on the Federal Reserve by President Trump, who declared that the central bank was the U.S. economys only problem and that it didnt have a feel for the market. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who cant score because he has no touch -- he cant putt! Trump said on Twitter. Read More Facebook

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He speaks to Democratic hearts. But is Beto ORourke a serious White House contender? By Mark Z. Barabak Hes a failed U.S. Senate candidate with an undistinguished congressional record who, for the moment, is a blazing-hot 2020 presidential prospect  despite the fact that he may not run and faces long odds if he does. Beto ORourke suggests the will-he-or-wont-he speculation is something he himself cant quite fathom. I think thats a great question, he responded in a Dallas Morning News interview when asked whether his unsuccessful November Senate bid merited a promotion to the White House. I ask that question myself. Read More Facebook

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Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate By Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. (Associated Press) Months after President Trump took office, Russias disinformation teams trained their sites on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram  which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal  claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with radical Islamic groups. Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday. Read more Timberg, Romm and Dwoskin report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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President Trump announces Mick Mulvaney as acting White House chief of staff By Associated Press President Trump says budget director Mick Mulvaney will serve as acting chief of staff, replacing John F. Kelly in the new year. I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018 Facebook

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It aint over when its over: In Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, losers seek to undermine election results By Mark Z. Barabak Democrat Gavin Newsom has yet to become California governor, but already a candidate for state Republican Party chairman is promoting a recall effort. In Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers have rushed through legislation to thwart their incoming Democratic governors and hamper others in the opposing party from doing the jobs voters chose them to do. In Congress, GOP leaders have echoed President Trump and sought to undermine the legitimacy of Democrats strong midterm performance, raising unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and political malfeasance. Read More Facebook

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New CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger says she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera On her first full day leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger said she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney, the controversial acting director whom she replaced in the powerful regulatory position. To underscore that point, the former White House aide said she would even reconsider a Mulvaney action that critics saw as a gratuitous jab at Democrats who championed the agencys creation: changing its name to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. Kraningers declaration during a meeting with reporters Tuesday addressed one of the main criticisms of her selection. She is considered a protege of Mulvaney, her boss at the White House Office of Management and Budget who has executed a dramatic, industry-friendly shift at the watchdog agency. Read More Facebook

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Trumps pick for chief of staff, Nick Ayers, out of running By Associated Press Nick Ayers, right, with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, at the funeral service for George H.W. Bush on Dec. 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Associated Press) President Trumps top pick to replace John F. Kelly as chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is no longer expected to fill that role. Thats according to a White House official who is not authorized to discuss the personnel issue by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Ayers is Vice President Mike Pences chief of staff. The official says that Trump and Ayers could not agree on Ayers length of service. The father of young children, Ayers had agreed to serve in an interim capacity though the spring, but Trump wanted a two-year commitment. The official says that Ayers will instead assist the president from outside the administration. Trump announced Saturday that Kelly would be departing the White House around the end of the year. Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause.  #Georgia  Nick Ayers (@nick_ayers) December 9, 2018 Facebook

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U.S. hiring slows to 155,000 jobs, unemployment rate holds at 3.7% By Jim Puzzanghera Job growth slowed significantly in November but still was solid, indicating the economy remains in good shape but not expanding so quickly that it will lead to sharply higher interest rates. U.S. employers added 155,000 jobs last month, well below analyst expectations and a steep decline from Octobers strong 237,000 figure, the Labor Department reported Friday. Still, monthly job gains are averaging 206,000 this year, the best since 2015. Even the slower pace of 170,000 over the last three months is close to last years average of 182,000 and well above the amount needed to keep up with population growth. Read More Facebook

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Trump is expected to pick State Department spokeswoman for U.N. ambassador By Associated Press Heather Nauert at a briefing at the State Department on Aug. 9, 2017. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump is expected to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Two administration officials confirmed Trumps plans. A Republican congressional aide said the president was expected to announce his decision by tweet on Friday morning. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly before Trumps announcement. Trump has previously said Nauert was under serious consideration to replace Nikki Haley, who announced in October that she would step down at the end of this year. Trump has been known to change course on staffing decisions in the past. Nauert was a reporter for Fox News Channel before she became State Department spokeswoman under former Secretary Rex Tillerson. Facebook

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Senate confirms new consumer financial protection chief: Kathy Kraninger, protege of industry-friendly Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera The Senate, in a party-line vote Thursday, confirmed White House aide Kathy Kraninger to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and experts predicted a continuation of the industry-friendly shift it has taken since President Trump installed an acting director last year. Kraninger is a protege of acting director and White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, an outspoken critic of the agency that was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent predatory lending and other abuses that led to it. Democrats and consumer advocates have denounced him for sharply departing from the aggressive watchdog role the bureau had pursued under its first director, Obama-appointee Richard Cordray, including scaling back enforcement and moving to reassess tough new rules on payday loans and narrow the definition of abusive practices by banks and other firms. Read More Facebook

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Shutdown postponed by two weeks under plan approved by Congress By Erik Wasson Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), shown at the Capitol on Tuesday, says President Trumps border wall is a waste of money. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Congress passed a two-week stopgap spending bill that will delay the chance of a partial government shutdown until Dec. 22 as lawmakers and President Donald Trump negotiate over his demands to pay for a wall on the southern border. The House and Senate passed the measure Thursday without dissent, and Trump has indicated hell sign the bill before the current shutdown deadline of midnight Friday. Negotiations were delayed by memorial services this week for former President George H.W. Bush. The temporary measure gives Democrats and Republicans more time to find a resolution to their biggest hurdle: funding a wall on the U.S. Mexico border wall. Trump says he wants $5 billion for parts of a concrete wall on the southern border and is willing to shut down the government if he doesnt get it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said Democrats will provide no more than $1.6 billion for border security, because the wall is a waste of money. The presidents demands for wall funding from Congress come after he said during the campaign that Mexico would pay for it. This week he said on Twitter that a $25 billion border wall would pay for itself in two months, without providing evidence. Most of the U.S. governments $1.2 trillion discretionary budget has been appropriated already by Congress for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Departments at a risk of a partial shutdown late this month include the departments of State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security. Talks to resolve the differences have been on hold since a meeting among Trump, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California originally slated for Dec. 4 was postponed due to Bush memorial events. The three are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama told reporters the rest of the seven-bill spending package being negotiated is basically done. Shelby in recent weeks had tried to broker a compromise in which Trumps $5 billion request would be split over two years, but Schumer has rejected that. Some Democrats have been willing to trade border wall funding for deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants. Pelosi ruled out such a deal in remarks to reporters Thursday. The stopgap government funding measure also would extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized coverage for homes in flood-prone areas, to Dec. 21. Facebook

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Bipartisan Senate group wants to formally blame Saudi crown prince for journalists killing By Karoun Demirjian Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires. (Associated Press) A bipartisan group of senators filed a resolution Wednesday condemning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, directly challenging President Trump to do the same. This resolution -- without equivocation -- definitively states that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was complicit in the murder of Mr. [Jamal] Khashoggi and has been a wrecking ball to the region jeopardizing our national security interests on multiple fronts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the resolution. It will be up to Saudi Arabia as to how to deal with this matter. But it is up to the United States to firmly stand for who we are and what we believe. The resolution put forward by Graham and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who are expected to lead the Judiciary Committee together next year, comes just one day after CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed leading senators about the details of the agencys assessment that Mohammed ordered and monitored the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Senators emerged from that closed-door briefing furious not only with Saudi Arabia, but Trump as well for dismissing the heft of the CIAs findings. You have to be willfully blind not to come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under the command of MBS and that he was intricately involved in the demise of Mr. Khashoggi, Graham said following the briefing, referring to Mohammed by his initials. He added that Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who briefed senators last week, were at best being good soldiers and at worst were in the pocket of Saudi Arabia for presenting the evidence of Mohammeds involvement as inconclusive. The release of the resolution condemning Mohammed also comes as the Senate is preparing to move ahead with debate on a resolution to curtail U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. Though the Yemen resolution does not directly address Khashoggis murder, its popularity is a sign of how strained the United States patience with Saudi Arabia is on multiple fronts, including its role in worsening the civilian cost of the war in Yemen, cited by the United Nations as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Last week, the Senate voted 63 to 37 to advance the Yemen resolution past an opening procedural hurdle. But Graham and Feinsteins resolution on the crown prince has the potential of drawing broader support, especially from Republicans, who are deeply divided about how fiercely to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggis killing. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and is seen as one of the more influential foreign policy voices in the GOP, did not vote for the Yemen resolution last week or sign on to a bipartisan measure last month to sanction Saudi officials and cease weapons transfers to the kingdom. But he is an original co-sponsor of the resolution condemning Mohammed over Khashoggis death. So is Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who represents the other end of the GOP spectrum in terms of recent Saudi-related votes and endorsements. Young was an initial co-sponsor of the bill Graham wrote with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to sanction Saudi officials deemed responsible for Khashoggis killing and stop the sale of anything but exclusively defensive weapons to the kingdom until it ceased hostilities in Yemen. Young also voted to advance the Yemen resolution  something Graham did as well, though Graham has signaled he will not be lending any similar support to the measure, fearing it may establish a precedent of invoking the War Powers Act too broadly. Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are listed as original co-sponsors of the resolution condemning Mohammed, which also urges Saudi Arabia to negotiate with Houthi rebels to end the Yemen war, work out a political solution to its standoff with Qatar and release political prisoners. But how much sway the resolution has probably comes down to how forcefully the administration decides to heed it -- and thus far, Trump has not shown any interest in condemning the crown prince the way the senators hope he will. Demirjian reports for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Los Angeles County offices and U.S. Postal Service closed Wednesday in honor of George H.W. Bush By Brian Park The Honor Guard carries the casket of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush following his funeral on Dec. 5 in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images) The U.S. Postal Service will suspend regular mail delivery Wednesday, which President Trump has declared a national day of mourning in honor of former President George H.W. Bush. All retail postal outlets will be closed, and package delivery will be limited. In Los Angeles, all nonessential county departments, offices and libraries will be closed for the day, L.A. County officials said. The Los Angeles County Library said no overdue fines will be assessed for books, and due dates will be moved forward one week. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health offices also are closed Wednesday. The Sheriffs Department, Fire Department, clinics and hospitals will continue to operate, the county said. The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health clinics are being operated with reduced staffing, and the department asked patients to confirm or reschedule any appointments. All county courts and the disaster recovery centers for the Woolsey fire in Malibu and Agoura Hills will remain open. Larger federal government operations will be closed Wednesday. To honor the life and legacy of President Bush, the Postal Service will observe the National Day of Mourning. Learn how Postal operations will be affected. https://t.co/Mffch7bPCh pic.twitter.com/vG46BsIOpm  U.S. Postal Service (@USPS) December 4, 2018 L.A. County offices and libraries will be closed tomorrow (Dec 5) in observance of the #NationalDayOfMourning for President George H. W. Bush.



The Countys Disaster Recovery Centers in Malibu & Agoura Hills will remain open from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. pic.twitter.com/Sv1J7GoJ7T  Los Angeles County (@CountyofLA) December 4, 2018 @LAPublicHealth offices will be closed tomorrow December 5 in observance of the national Day of Mourning for President George H. W. Bush. Essential Services including clinics and other services will remain open: https://t.co/tZGoGGHRlg pic.twitter.com/ypXsV6vlYY  LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) December 4, 2018 Facebook

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to skip 2020 White House race, sources say By Associated Press Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick speaks during an interview in Boston on Dec. 15, 2014. (Elise Amendola / Associated Press) Former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts will soon announce he wont launch a 2020 presidential campaign, according to three sources familiar with his plans. They did not say why the Democrat decided against a run. A formal announcement was delayed as the country observed a day of mourning for President George H.W. Bush, one source said. News of Patricks plans was first reported by Politico. Patrick, 62, served two terms as governor, from 2007 to 2015, was assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration and since leaving the governors office has been a managing director for Bain Capital. Patrick traveled the country in support of Democratic candidates in the recent midterm election. Earlier this year, some of Patricks supporters and close advisors started the Reason to Believe political action committee, a grassroots organization dedicated to advancing a positive, progressive vision for our nation in 2018 and 2020. Reason to Believe PAC had been holding meetups across the country, including in early presidential primary states. While Patrick is opting against a 2020 run, dozens of Democrats are considering jumping in, including nearly a half-dozen members of the Senate, several House members, and other Massachusetts politicians. On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels and a vocal critic of President Trump, said in a statement that he would run. Patrick had previously expressed some concerns about breaking through if he sought the nomination, telling David Axelrod, a former advisor to President Obama, that he wasnt sure he could stand out in such a large field. Its hard to see how you even get noticed in such a big, broad field without being shrill, sensational or a celebrity, and Im none of those things and Im never going to be any of those things, Patrick said in a September interview with Axelrod. Facebook

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Former Trump adviser Roger Stone invokes 5th Amendment right and wont testify before Senate Judiciary Committee By Associated Press Roger Stone in 2017. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Roger Stone, an associate of President Trump, says he wont provide testimony or documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. An attorney for Stone said in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committees top Democrat, that Stone was invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to produce documents or appear for an interview. Stone has been entangled in investigations by Congress and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about whether Trump aides had advance knowledge of Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. Stone has not been charged and has said he had no knowledge of the timing or specifics of WikiLeaks plans. In the letter to Feinstein, Stone said the committees requests were far too overbroad, far too overreaching and far too wide-ranging. Facebook

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Watch live: Vice President Pence and lawmakers honor George H.W. Bush at the U.S. Capitol before he lies in state Facebook

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Rebuilding crumbling infrastructure has bipartisan support. But who gets to pay for it? By Jim Puzzanghera The grades for major U.S. infrastructure would give any parent indigestion if they were on a childs report card. Roads: D; bridges: C+; dams: D; ports: C+: railways: B; airports: D; schools: D+; public transit: D-. The nations overall grade: D+, which translates to being in fair to poor condition and mostly below standards with significant deterioration and a strong risk of failure, according to an evaluation last year by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Read More Facebook

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Trump calls former lawyer Michael Cohen a weak person who is lying By Associated Press President Trump says his former lawyer Michael Cohen is lying to get a reduced sentence. The president is reacting to Cohens guilty plea Thursday to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate project in Russia. During a surprise court hearing, Cohen admitted to lying in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen in his guilty plea said he made the false statements to be consistent with Trumps political message. Cohens lawyer says he continues to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates. Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Mark Z. Barabak When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Sarah D. Wire When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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Michael Cohen, President Trumps ex-lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Trump real estate project in Russia By Associated Press Michael Cohen, President Trumps former personal lawyer, pursued a Russian real estate project on candidate Trumps behalf well into the 2016 campaign, he said Thursday while pleading guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen had previously said that the project was abandoned in January 2016, but he now admits he continued to pursue a deal and says he updated Trump and members of his family about the negotiations, according to a new court document. Read More Facebook

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James Comey says acting Atty. Gen. Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer By John Wagner Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker speaks at the Justice Department in Washington on Nov. 14. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) Former FBI Director James B. Comey apparently isnt too impressed with the mental prowess of President Trumps acting attorney general. Matthew Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, Comey said during a radio interview on Monday night in which he sized up the man Trump installed this month to replace ousted Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. Comey was asked by WGBH News in Boston if he thinks Whitaker could derail the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Whitaker has spoken critically of the probe, and Trump  as recently as Tuesday  continues to call it a witch hunt. I think its a worry, but to my mind not a serious worry, Comey said. The institution is too strong, and [Whitaker], frankly, is not strong enough to have that kind of impact. He may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, but he can see his future and knows that if he acted in an extralegal way, he would go down in history for the wrong reasons, and Im sure he doesnt want that, added Comey, who was fired by Trump last year and later wrote a book that portrays the president as an ego-driven congenital liar. Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, was Sessions chief of staff before being picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department. Trump has called Whitaker a very smart man. Earlier this year, Trump called Comey an untruthful slime ball. Wagner writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Interior Department watchdog clears Zinke in investigation of Utah national monument By Juliet Eilperin Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, third from the left, and Gov. Jerry Brown tour fire damage in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 14. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The Interior Departments Office of Inspector General has cleared Secretary Ryan Zinke in a probe of whether he redrew boundaries of a national monument in Utah to aid the financial interests of a Republican state lawmaker and stalwart supporter of President Trump. In a Nov. 21 letter to Zinkes deputy, David Bernhardt, Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall wrote that her office found no evidence that the secretary or his aides changed the boundaries of Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in an effort to help former Utah state representative Mike Noel, who serves as executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District. Last December, Trump shrank the monument, first established by President Clinton in 1996, by 46% based on Zinkes recommendation. Noel owns 40 acres that had been surrounded by the monument, but now lies outside its boundaries. The new boundaries also would make it easier to construct the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline, which would deliver water to sites in Kane County that include Noels property. Earlier this year, the Interior Department had proposed selling off 120 acres of federal land from the former monument that lay adjacent to some of Noels land holdings, but later reversed the plan. We found no evidence that Noel influenced the DOIs proposed revisions to the [monuments] boundaries, that Zinke or other DOI staff involved in the project were aware of Noels financial interest in the revised boundaries, or that they gave Noel any preferential treatment in the resulting proposed boundaries, Kendall wrote. Neither the Interior Department nor the inspector generals office would release the actual investigative report. In the letter, Kendall writes that her office will provide the report to Congress no sooner than 31 days from Nov. 21, when it is provided it to Zinkes office. The Associated Press first reported the inspector generals conclusions Monday night, but did not provide details from the report itself. Noel emailed Zinke about the effort to alter Grand Staircase-Escalante, according to emails released by Interior under the Freedom of Informational Act. But those emails do not make references to Noels land holdings. Noel also pushed to rename a Utah highway in honor of Trump, but abandoned that effort in March after some of his fellow Republicans objected to the idea. Noel did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The inspector generals office still has at least two ongoing probes of the secretary, including one focused on his real estate dealings in Whitefish, Mont., and another regarding his decision to deny a permit to two Connecticut tribes who were hoping to jointly run a casino after MGM Resorts International lobbied against it. Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift welcomed the watchdogs conclusions. The report shows exactly what the secretarys office has known all along  that the monument boundaries were adjusted in accordance with all rules, regulations and laws, she said in an email. This report is also the latest example of opponents and special interest groups ginning up fake and misleading stories, only to be proven false after expensive and time consuming inquiries by the IGs office. But Kendalls spokeswoman, Nancy DiPaolo, defended the inquiry, even though she said the report has not been publicly released and we will not be speaking specifically about the matter at this time. The OIG opens investigations based on credible allegations and reports our findings objectively and independently, DiPaolo added. Any time or resources spent investigating conduct or activity that may be a violation of law, regulation or policy is a service to the public, Congress and the Department. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that he still intended to investigate the way Zinke and his colleague redrew the boundaries for Grand Staircase-Escalante and another Utah national monument, Bears Ears, next year. I have great respect for the inspector general, and I accept these findings, but Secretary Zinke should have known the people he listened to while destroying our national monuments had disqualifying conflicts of interest, he said. Should I chair the Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress, the process he and President Trump used to destroy Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be front and center in our oversight and investigations efforts. We need to know why they ignored overwhelming public expressions of support for both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, why they ignored Native American tribes throughout their decision-making, and why they removed protections on parcels of land with known mineral deposits. Eilperin and Rein report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump advisor Larry Kudlow says China must do more to end trade war By Jim Puzzanghera Larry Kudlow, President Trumps top economic advisor, said Tuesday that Chinas response to U.S. efforts to rework the two economic superpowers trade relationship has been extremely disappointing but the planned meeting this weekend between the nations leaders is an opportunity for a breakthrough. They have to do more. They must do more, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters ahead of a Saturday dinner between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 Summit in Argentina. I think the president is exactly right  to show strong backbone when prior administrations did not, to break through these Chinese walls, Kudlow said. Theyre so resistant to change. We have to protect the country. We have to protect our technology, our inventiveness, our innovation. Read More Facebook

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Watch live: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a media briefing amid tensions at the border By Los Angeles Times Staff Facebook

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Democrat TJ Cox grabs lead over Republican David Valadao in nations last remaining undecided House race By Maya Sweedler Democrat TJ Cox slipped past Republican incumbent David Valadao on Monday to take the lead in the countrys sole remaining undecided congressional race, positioning Democrats to pick up their seventh House seat in California and 40th nationwide. Cox, who trailed by nearly 4,400 votes on election night, has steadily gained as ballot counting continues nearly three weeks after the Nov. 6 election, a pattern consistent with the states recent voting history. On Monday, he pulled ahead by 438 votes after Kern County updated its results. Read More Facebook

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Former CIA director Michael Hayden hospitalized after suffering a stroke By Deanna Paul Then-CIA Director Michael Hayden testifies before a Senate committee in 2008. (Saul Loeb / Getty Images) Former CIA Director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke, his family said Friday. He is receiving expert medical care for which the family is grateful, according to a statement issued by his namesake organization. The General and his family greatly appreciate the warm wishes and prayers of his friends, colleagues, and supporters. Hayden, 73, served as director of the CIA and National Security Agency during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He retired from the CIA in 2009. Hayden has been a vocal critic of Donald Trumps campaign and presidency. Earlier this year, after Trump decided to revoke the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Hayden was one of several former intelligence leaders who signed a statement in opposition. Criticizing the president for crossing a line, he quickly became one of the individuals whose security clearance Trump threatened to review. Deanna Paul writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump tells troops hes thankful for what hes done for the U.S. and rails against courts and migrants By Associated Press President Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thanksgiving. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump used his Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trumps call, made from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. Its a disgrace, Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. Trump later threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines Mexico has lost control on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops  You really are our heroes, he said  as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. It was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of politics. You probably see over the news whats happening on our southern border, Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: I dont have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who were letting in. Later, Trump asked a U.S. Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was a very big subject for him personally. Weve been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals, Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied, Mr. President, from our perspective on the water  we dont see any issues in terms of trade right now. And throughout, Trump congratulated himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. I hope that youll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well, he said. The nations doing well economically, better than anybody in the world. He later told reporters, Nobodys done more for the military than me. Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his great family as well as himself. I made a tremendous difference in this country, he said. Facebook

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Trump contradicts CIA assessment that Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi killing By Josh Dawsey | Washington Post (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump on Thursday contradicted the CIAs assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting that the agency had feelings but did not firmly place blame for the death. Trump, in defiant remarks to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, defended his continued support for Mohammed in the face of a CIA assessment that the crown prince had ordered the killing. He denies it vehemently, Trump said. He said his own conclusion was that maybe he did, maybe he didnt. I hate the crime .... I hate the cover-up. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, Trump said. Asked who should be held accountable for the death of Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, Trump refused to place blame. Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a very, very vicious place, the president said. He also seemed to suggest that all U.S. allies were guilty of the same behavior, declaring that if the others were held to the standard that critics have held Saudi Arabia to in recent days, we wouldnt be able to have anyone for an ally. Trumps remarks came after he held a conference call with U.S. military officers overseas, during which he repeatedly praised his administration and sought to draw the officers into discussions of domestic policy. Facebook

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Former FBI Director James Comey gets subpoena from House Republicans By Bloomberg Former FBI Director James B. Comey said he has received a subpoena from House Republicans, according to a Twitter post on Thursday. Bloomberg News reported last week that Comey would be receiving a subpoena alongside former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch as part of continuing probes into their handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton and Russian election meddling, according to a top House Democrat. Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see.  James Comey (@Comey) November 22, 2018 Read More Facebook

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Republican David Valadaos lead slips to 447 votes over Democrat TJ Cox in still-undecided Central Valley House race By Mark Z. Barabak Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), right, finds himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox. (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) On election night, it looked like Rep. David Valadao had survived a close shave and was destined to return to Washington for his fourth term. But on Wednesday, when Fresno County announced its latest vote totals, the Hanford Republican found himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox, with his lead in the Central Valley district shrunken to 447 votes. Thousands remain to be counted. Valadao, a repeated Democratic target, finished election night with a lead of nearly 4,440 votes. Cox, an engineer and a business owner who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2006, has steadily gained ground in the 21st Congressional District ever since. The trend is consistent with historic patterns showing Republicans in California tend to vote early and Democrats later, meaning their mail ballots continue to stream in past election day. Under California law, ballots postmarked up to midnight on Nov. 6 will be counted. Democrats have already picked up six House seats in California. They ousted Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi Walters, Steve Knight and Jeff Denham and won the seats of retiring Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. All six represented districts that backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. Valadao was the seventh California Republican in a district Clinton won, though his previous successes  he last won reelection by a 14-point margin  suggested his ouster was a longer shot for Democrats. If Cox prevails, it would give Democrats a 40-seat gain nationwide, far more than the 23 seats needed to take control when Congress reconvenes in January. Facebook

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Trump says no new punishments against Saudi Arabia in Jamal Khashoggi murder By Eli Stokols In this Oct. 25 photo, candles are lit in front of a photo of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Lefteris Pitarakis) President Trump made it clear on Tuesday that he does not intend to punish Saudi Arabia or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident killed by Saudi officials in Turkey in October. In a remarkable statement replete with exclamation points, Trump cast doubt on the CIAs reported conclusions that it has a high degree of confidence that the crown prince ordered Khashoggis murder and sent his closest allies to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul to carry it out. Read MoreThis article has been updated with staff. Facebook

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Sixteen House Democrats vow to oppose Nancy Pelosi as next speaker By Mike DeBonis | Washington Post House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Sixteen House Democrats said Monday that they will vote to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi another stint as House speaker, a show of defiance that puts her opponents on the cusp of forcing a seismic leadership shake-up as their party prepares to take the majority. Their pledge to oppose Pelosi (D-San Francisco), both in an internal caucus election and a Jan. 3 floor vote, delivered in a letter sent to Democratic colleagues, comes as Pelosi has marshaled a legion of supporters on and off Capitol Hill to make her case. But her opponents said Monday they are convinced it is time to select a new leader. We are thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service to our Country and to our Caucus, they wrote. However, we also recognize that in this recent election, Democrats ran on and won on a message of change. Pelosi has expressed complete confidence that she will retake the speakers gavel in January  eight years after she lost it following massive Republican gains in the 2010 midterms and 16 years after she was first elevated to the top Democratic leadership post in the House. Come on in, the waters fine, she said Friday about a potential leadership challenge. The signers might not be able to force Pelosi out themselves. The size of the Democratic majority remains in flux, but Democrats have already won 232 seats, according to the Associated Press, with five races still undecided. All those races have Republican incumbents, but the Democratic challenger is ahead in only one of them. If the leads hold in the uncalled races, Democrats would have won 233 seats, a 16-seat majority. That means Pelosi could lose as many as 15 Democratic votes when she stands for election as speaker on Jan. 3. Read More Facebook

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Democratic senators sue over Whitakers appointment as acting attorney general By Associated Press Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images) Three Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit Monday arguing that Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and asking a federal judge to remove him. The suit, filed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, argues that Whitakers appointment violates the Constitution because he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Whitaker was chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and was elevated to the top job after Sessions was ousted by President Trump on Nov. 7. The Constitutions Appointments Clause requires that the Senate confirm all principal officials before they can serve in their office. The Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that said Whitakers appointment would not violate the clause because he is serving in an acting capacity. The opinion concluded that Whitaker, even without Senate confirmation, may serve in an acting capacity because he has been at the department for more than a year at a sufficiently senior pay level. President Trump is denying senators our constitutional obligation and opportunity to do our job: scrutinizing the nomination of our nations top law enforcement official, Blumenthal said in a statement. The reason is simple: Whitaker would never pass the advice and consent test. In selecting a so-called constitutional nobody and thwarting every senators constitutional duty, Trump leaves us no choice but to seek recourse through the courts. The lawsuit comes days after a Washington lawyer challenged Whitakers appointment in a pending Supreme Court case dealing with gun rights. The attorney, Thomas Goldstein, asked the high court to find that Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and replace him with Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein, the second-ranking Justice Department official, has been confirmed by the Senate and had been overseeing special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker is now overseeing the investigation. The Justice Department issued a statement Monday defending Whitakers appointment as lawful and said it comports with the Appointments Clause, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and legal precedent. There are over 160 instances in American history in which non-Senate confirmed persons performed, on a temporary basis, the duties of a Senate-confirmed position, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. To suggest otherwise is to ignore centuries of practice and precedent. Facebook

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Gov. Rick Scott says Sen. Bill Nelson concedes Florida Senate race By Associated Press Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott speaks with his wife, Ann, by his side at an election watch party in Naples, Fla., on Nov. 7. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas Republican Gov. Rick Scott says incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson called him to concede defeat in their extremely tight race. Scott issued a statement Sunday saying Nelson graciously conceded their Senate race shortly after the states recount ended. The final results show Scott defeated Nelson by just over 10,000 votes out of 8 million cast. Nelson is scheduled to release a videotaped statement later Sunday. The defeat ends Nelsons lengthy political career. The three-term incumbent was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. Before that he served six terms in the U.S. House and as state treasurer and insurance commissioner for six years. Scott spent more than $60 million of his own money on ads that portrayed Nelson as out-of-touch and ineffective. Nelson responded by questioning Scotts ethics and saying he would be under the sway of President Trump. Facebook

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Orange County goes blue, as Democrats complete historic sweep of its seven congressional seats By Michael Finnegan Gil Cisneros defeated Republican Young Kim on Saturday in the last of Orange Countys undecided House races, giving Democrats a clean sweep of the states six most fiercely fought congressional contests and marking an epochal shift in a region long synonymous with political conservatism. With Cisneros victory, Democrats will constitute the entirety of Orange Countys seven-member congressional delegation, the first time since the 1930s that the birthplace of Richard Nixon, home of John Wayne and spiritual center of the Republican Party will have no GOP representative in the House. Sitting back in the 1960s, I would never have believed this would happen, said Stuart K. Spencer, a party strategist who spent more than half a century ushering Republicans, including President Reagan, into office. Read More Facebook

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Going, going ... with midterm wipeout, California Republican Party drifts closer to irrelevance By Michael Finnegan For a party in freefall the last two decades, California Republicans learned that its possible to plunge even further. The GOP not only lost every statewide office in the midterm election  again, in blowout fashion  but Democrats reestablished their supermajority in Sacramento, allowing them to legislate however they see fit After major defeats in Orange County and the Central Valley, two longtime strongholds, Republicans will have a significantly smaller footprint on Capitol Hill. (Democrats hold both Senate seats.) When the vote-counting is finished, the GOP may not even have enough lawmakers in Californias 53-member House delegation to field a nine-person softball team. Read More Facebook

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Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter says she will support Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker By Maya Sweedler Democratic Rep.-elect Katie Porter is congratulated by volunteers at her campaign headquarters in Irvine. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter said she plans to support Rep. Nancy Pelosis bid for speaker of the House and will make campaign finance reform her top priority when she enters the chamber in January. Im going to continue to have conversations, but so far I feel like Leader Pelosi is definitely making the things that were a priority to the families that elected me her priorities, including announcing her support for campaign finance reform and anti-corruption as HR1, Porter said in her first public appearance since being declared the winner in Californias 45th Congressional District on Thursday evening. It means a lot to me that she is a Californian. She understands our state, Porter added. When we talk about environmental protections, this is a person who understands as a Californian how fragile our environment is and whats at risk in things like drilling off our coasts. Porter, a law professor at UC Irvine, defeated two-term Republican Rep. Mimi Walters. The 45th District, covering inland Orange County, has never been represented by a Democrat. Porter became the third Democrat to claim a Republican-held seat in Orange County, following the victories of Harley Rouda in the 48th District and Mike Levin in the 49th. A fourth, Gil Cisneros, is running slightly ahead of his Republican opponent in the race for the open seat in the 39th District, which extends into Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Porter attributed the massive political shift in the county, for decades a conservative stronghold, to increased levels of political engagement. Folks here care about education, they care about the environment, they believe climate change is real, they want healthcare that protects preexisting conditions, they want a tax system that doesnt punish California, they want our schools and places of worship to be safe from gun violence, she said. Those are the issues we campaigned on, and to the extent that Donald Trump and Mimi Walters were on the wrong side of those issues, the voters have made clear what direction they want us to go. Porter was flying back from the East Coast when her race was called, she said. She turned on her phone to find 167 text messages from friends and supporters. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of Porters teachers in law school and with whom she has remained close. The pair spoke via FaceTime this morning, she said. Facebook

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Bitter battle for Senate seat in Florida goes to hand recount By Associated Press Employees look through damaged ballots during a recount Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas acrimonious battle for the U.S. Senate headed Thursday to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by less than 13,000 votes. But the highly watched contest for governor between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum appeared to be over, with a machine recount showing DeSantis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race. Gillum, who conceded the contest on election night only to retract his concession later, said in a statement that it is not over until every legally casted vote is counted. The recount so far has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline. We gave a heroic effort, said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. If the county had three or four more hours, it would have made the deadline to recount ballots in the Senate race, she said. Meanwhile, election officials in another urban county in the Tampa Bay area decided against turning in the results of their machine recount, which came up with 846 fewer votes than originally counted. Media in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes. Counties were ordered last weekend to do a machine recount of three statewide races because the margins were so tight. The next stage is a manual review of ballots that were not counted by machines to see whether there is a way to figure out voter intent. Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle. Its time for Nelson to respect the will of the voters and graciously bring this process to an end rather than proceed with yet another count of the votes  which will yield the same result and bring more embarrassment to the state that we both love and have served, the governor said in a statement. The recount has triggered multiple lawsuits, many of them filed by Nelson and Democrats. The legal battles drew the ire of U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker, who slammed the state for repeatedly failing to anticipate election problems. He also said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000. We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this, Walker said during a morning hearing. Walker vented his anger at state lawmakers and Palm Beach County officials, saying they should have made sure they had enough equipment in place to handle this kind of a recount. But he said he could not extend the recount deadline because he did not know when Palm Beach County would finish its work. This court must be able to craft a remedy with knowledge that it will not prove futile, Walker wrote in his ruling turning down the request from Democrats. It cannot do so on this record. This court does not and will not fashion a remedy in the dark. The overarching problem was created by the Florida Legislature, which Walker said passed a recount law that appears to run afoul of the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision by locking in procedures that do not allow for potential problems. A total of six election-related lawsuits are pending in federal court in Tallahassee as well at least one lawsuit filed in state court. Walker also ordered that voters be given until 5 p.m. Saturday to show a valid identification and fix their ballots if they have not been counted due to mismatched signatures. Republicans appealed the ruling, but an appeals court turned down the request. State officials testified that nearly 4,000 mailed-in ballots were set aside because local officials decided the signatures on the envelopes did not match the signatures on file. If those voters can prove their identity, their votes will be counted and included in final official returns due from each county by noon Sunday. Walker was asked by Democrats to require local officials to provide a list of people whose ballots were rejected. But the judge appointed by President Obama refused the request, calling it inappropriate. Under state law, a hand review is required with races that have a margin of 0.25 percentage points or less. A state website put the unofficial results showing Scott ahead of Nelson by 0.15 percentage points. The margin between DeSantis and Gillum was at 0.41 points. The margin between Scott and Nelson had not changed much in the last few days, conceded Marc Elias, an attorney working for Nelsons campaign. But he said that he expected the vote tally to shrink due to the hand recount and the ruling on signatures. The developments fueled frustrations among Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats want state officials to do whatever it takes to make sure every eligible vote is counted. Republicans, including President Trump, have argued without evidence that voter fraud threatens to steal races from the GOP. Facebook

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Democrat Gil Cisneros pulls ahead of Republican Young Kim as more votes are tallied in Orange and San Bernardino counties By Michael Finnegan Congressional candidate Gil Cisneros (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Democrat Gil Cisneros pulled ahead of Republican Young Kim in one of Californias undecided congressional races Thursday, an ominous sign for a GOP already reeling from its loss of four House seats in the state. In updated vote counts released by the registrars for Orange and San Bernardino counties, Kim fell 941 votes behind Cisneros in the contest to succeed Republican Rep. Ed Royce in Californias 39th Congressional District. The 39th straddles Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties. In another unresolved House race, Democrat Katie Porter pulled further ahead of Republican incumbent Mimi Walters in the 45th District, which includes Mission Viejo, Tustin, Irvine, Rancho Santa Margarita and Laguna Hills. Porter, a consumer attorney and UC Irvine law professor, is now 6,203 votes ahead. The Nov. 6 midterm election has been devastating to Republicans in California. If Cisneros and Porter win, the party will have lost six of its 14 House seats in the state, essentially a wipeout in every contest that both parties spent heavily to win. The three Republicans already bounced from Congress are Reps. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Jeff Denham of Turlock in the San Joaquin Valley. Democrat Mike Levin won the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista in the fourth district flipped so far. Facebook

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Florida Senate race likely headed to second recount By Associated Press A Palm Beach County Sheriffs deputy walks past boxes of ballots before a recount on Nov. 15 in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee) Unofficial Florida election results show that the governors race seems to be settled after a machine recount but the U.S. Senate race is likely headed to a hand recount. Republican Ron DeSantis is virtually assured of winning the nationally watched governors race over Democrat Andrew Gillum. Florida finished a machine recount Thursday that showed Gillum without enough votes to force a manual recount. Unofficial results posted on a state website show the margin between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott is still thin enough to trigger a second review. State law requires a hand recount of races with a margin of 0.25 percentage point or less. Counties have until Sunday to inspect the ballots that did not record a vote when put through the machines. Those ballots are re-examined to see whether the voter skipped the race or marked the ballot in a way that the machines cannot read but can be deciphered. The election will be certified Tuesday. Read More Facebook

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Pelosi says she has the votes to become the next House speaker By John Wagner Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in Washington on Nov. 14. (Susan Walsh) House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi insisted Thursday that she has the votes to become the chambers speaker despite solid opposition from more than a dozen Democrats who want fresh leadership when the party takes control next year. I have overwhelming support in my caucus to be speaker of the House, the San Francisco lawmaker told reporters. I happen to think at this point, Im the best person for that. A vote within the Democratic caucus is scheduled for Nov. 28. The full House votes on Jan. 3 to elect a new speaker. During her remarks, Pelosi touted the size of the Democratic victory in the midterms, which she called almost a tsunami. With a few races still to be decided, Democrats are poised to pick up close to 40 seats in the chamber. Pelosi called that the biggest victory for the Democrats since 1974, when the Watergate babies came in. Pelosis comments come as she faces solid opposition from at least 17 Democrats, setting the stage for a battle over who will ascend to one of the most powerful positions in Washington. After a campaign in which some Democrats prevailed in competitive districts by promising to oppose her, a coalition of incumbents and newly elected members has denied her a smooth path to the speakership. The defections, if they stand, would leave Pelosi, who has led the Democrats for more than 15 years, several votes short of the 218 she would need when the full House votes for speaker Jan. 3. However, no Democrat has stepped forward to run against her for a job she held from 2007 through 2010. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) told reporters Wednesday that shes being encouraged to stand for speaker if Pelosi doesnt have the votes. In an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday, she said she has been overwhelmed by the support from many of her colleagues for her possible entry into the race for House speaker. Over the last 12 hours, Ive been overwhelmed by the amount of support Ive received, Fudge said, adding that there are probably closer to 30" Democrats who have privately signaled that they are willing to oppose Pelosi. Things could change rapidly, Fudge said. Fudge, 66, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she is building a diverse coalition as she mulls a speaker run, talking with allies in the caucus, moderate Democrats and newly elected members. To this point, Pelosi has enjoyed the strong backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Thursday, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), one of its members, wrote a letter to colleagues praising her insight, fortitude and strategic thinking and urging support for her speakership bid. Former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., an African American who is contemplating a 2020 presidential bid, also voiced support for Pelosi, praising her in a tweet as an architect of the recent midterm success. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a leader of the resistance to Pelosi, said during an interview on CNN on Thursday that Fudge is the kind of new leader that we need in this party. Shes in touch with middle America. She understands what the American people want. Shes a next-generation leader that people will look to and say, Thats the future of our party, thats the future of our country, and thats exactly the kind of leader that I want to see as our next speaker. Wagner reports for the Washington Post. The Posts Robert Costa, Erica Werner, Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and Elise Viebeck contributed to this report. Facebook

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GOP Rep. Jeff Denham concedes to Democrat Josh Harder in Central Valley race By Maya Sweedler Rep. Jeff Denham (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) Republican Rep. Jeff Denham has conceded to Democrat Josh Harder in the race to represent Californias 10th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley. It has been an absolute honor to serve our community and represent the Central Valley in Congress over the past eight years, the 51-year-old congressman said. The enormity of the responsibility was never lost on me. My wife Sonia and I look forward to starting the next chapter of our lives. Harder said he had spoken with Denham and the two were committed to a productive transition. Denham, an Air Force veteran, previously represented the region in the state Senate for eight years and founded a company specializing in plastic packaging used in agriculture. While a member of Congress, he sat on the Transportation and Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture committees. First-time candidate Harder was born and raised in the district. After graduating from Stanford University, he served as vice president of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Since moving back, he has been teaching at Modesto Junior College. Denhams House seat is one of four in California that Republicans lost in the Nov. 6 election, with two contests in Orange County still undecided as of Thursday morning. Jeff Denham called me this morning and we had a very productive conversation. I'm honored that I've been chosen to serve our community in Congress, and we're both looking forward to a productive transition that best serves the people of District 10.  Josh Harder (@JoshHarder) November 14, 2018 Facebook

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Democrat Katie Porter now nearly 3,800 votes ahead of GOP Rep. Mimi Walters By Maya Sweedler Rep. Mimi Walters thanks all of her supporters as she watches election results in Irvine on Nov. 7, 2018. (Alex Gallardo / Associated Press) Democrat Katie Porter opened a 3,797-vote lead Wednesday over Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange Countys 45th Congressional District. In the neighboring 39th, Democrat Gil Cisneros has nearly tied the race against Republican Young Kim. Cisneros now trails Kim by a razor-thin margin of 122 votes. The 39th District straddles Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties; Wednesdays updated ballot counts came from the latter two. There are more than 202,000 ballots left to count in Orange County, which includes parts of seven congressional districts. The 45th is entirely in inland Orange County. In California, the ballots counted first tend to lean Republican and those tallied later skew Democratic. In the Central Valleys 21st Congressional District, Democratic challenger TJ Cox has pulled within 2 percentage points of Rep. David Valadao, who is serving his third term. The Associated Press had projected a win for Valadao on election night, but his 4,839-vote advantage has shrunk to 2,090. Back in CA-21, Valadao (R) wins a batch of ballots from his stronghold in Kings Co., but by a considerably smaller margin (14 points) than his previous ~30-point margin in the county. We're moving to Lean R from Likely R; today a bit scary for Valadao.https://t.co/WqJVUVkqGW  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 15, 2018 A spokesman for Valadao told the Fresno Bee that the changes were expected and that [s]tatistically, David Valadao has won this race. Democrats in California have already flipped four House seats, defeating three Republican incumbents and claiming an open seat previously held by the GOP. Reps. Steve Knight of Palmdale, Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Jeff Denham of Turlock have already lost their races, and retiring Rep. Darrell Issas San Diego County seat was claimed by Democrat Mike Levin. Facebook

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Trump aide departs West Wing after rebuke from Melania Trump By Associated Press First Lady Melania Trump. (Alain Jocard / AFP-Getty Images) Deputy national security advisor Mira Ricardel is leaving the White House, one day after First Lady Melania Trumps office issued an extraordinary statement calling for her dismissal. No replacement was named. Aides said Ricardel clashed with the first ladys staff over her visit to Africa last month. Yet it is highly unusual for a first lady or her office to weigh in on personnel matters, especially the presidents national security staff. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Ricardel would have a new role in the administration. On Tuesday, Stephanie Grisham, the first ladys spokeswoman, released a statement saying, It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House. President Trumps White House has set records for administration turnover. Ricardel was the third person to hold the post under Trump. An ally of national security advisor John Bolton, Ricardel began her service in the Trump administration as associate director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, then moved to the Commerce Department last year. Bolton brought her into the West Wing shortly after taking the job in April. He is traveling in Asia this week alongside Vice President Mike Pence. Facebook

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Race for House Minority Leader is Kevin McCarthys to lose By Associated Press (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is running to take over next years shrunken caucus in closed-door elections that will set the tone for the new Congress. The race for minority leader is McCarthys to lose Wednesday. But the California Republican, who is an ally of President Trump, must fend off a challenge from conservative Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan is a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. The two encountered questions and finger-pointing during a private meeting with lawmakers Tuesday night as the GOP sorted through the midterm defeat that put Democrats in the majority next year. Elections Wednesday will also determine party leadership in the Senate. Voting for the biggest race, Nancy Pelosis bid to return as the Democrats nominee for speaker, is later this month. Read More Facebook

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Melania Trump calls for the firing of deputy national security advisor By Justin Sink First Lady Melania Trump arrives at the Chateau de Versailles outside Paris on Nov. 11. (Alain Jocard / AFP/Getty Images ) First Lady Melania Trumps office said she wants Mira Ricardel, the deputy national security advisor, ousted from the White House. It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House, Trumps spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement in response to a question about reports the first lady had sought Ricardels removal. Ricardel is the top deputy to national security advisor John Bolton. She drew the first ladys wrath after threatening to withhold National Security Council resources during Melania Trumps trip to Africa last month unless Ricardel was included in her entourage, one person familiar with the matter said. Grishams statement comes as several media outlets have reported that President Trump is considering a broader shakeup of his administration, including ousting Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Sink and Jacobs report for Bloomberg. Read More Facebook

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CNN sues Trump over the suspension of Jim Acostas White House press credentials By Jim Puzzanghera CNN said Tuesday that it is suing President Trump and other administration officials over the decision to suspend the White House press credentials of correspondent Jim Acosta after a conflict at a news conference last week. The suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, escalates an ongoing battle between Trump and the cable news outlet that he frequently accuses of disseminating fake news for its aggressive coverage of him and his administration. The wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acostas 1st Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their 5th Amendment rights to due process, CNN said in a written statement. If left unchallenged, the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials. Read More Facebook

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Maxine Waters to take aim at Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank as new head of House Financial Services Committee By Jim Puzzanghera Rep. Maxine Waters plans to zero in on two big banks  Wells Fargo & Co. and Deutsche Bank  when she becomes head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. The Los Angeles congresswoman, now the committees top Democrat, is widely expected to gain the gavel after her party won control of the House in last weeks elections. While Waters has outlined a wide-ranging agenda, she said her focus on bank oversight will target two large institutions she has been tangling with for a while  including one, Deutsche Bank, that spills into her bitter feud with President Trump. With Trump in the White House, I know that our fight for Americas consumers and investors will continue to be challenging. But I am more than up to that fight, Waters wrote in a letter last week to her Democratic colleagues on the committee that was obtained by The Times. Read More Facebook

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Heres how a controversial voting system will decide a congressional race in Maine By Kurtis Lee For the first time in U.S. history, a controversial voting system known as ranked choice is being used to decide a federal election. Its happening in Maine, which adopted the system in 2016. Rather than marking a single candidate, each voter ranks them all, assigning a first-place vote, a second-place vote and so on down the ballot. Read More Facebook

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ACLU files suit to stop Trumps new asylum limits By Associated Press A group of Central American migrants march to the office of the U.N.'s humans rights body in Mexico City on Nov. 8. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press) The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a legal challenge to President Trumps order denying asylum to migrants if they cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco and argues the new rules are against the law. Attorney Lee Gelernt said the regulations will put families in danger. The suit seeks to declare the regulations invalid and wants a judge to stop the rules from going into effect while the litigation is pending. The new rules were spurred in part by caravans of Central American migrants slowly moving north on foot, but officials say they will apply to anyone caught crossing illegally. Officials say about 70,000 people who enter the country illegally claim asylum. The order invoked the same national security powers Trump used to push through his travel ban. Read More Facebook

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Trump on new acting AG: I dont know Matt Whitaker By Associated Press President Trump talks with reporters before departing for France on the South Lawn of the White House on Nov. 9. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) President Trump is moving to distance himself from Matthew Whitaker as he faces criticism over his choice for acting attorney general. Trump told reporters Friday that I dont know Matt Whitaker and said he didnt speak with Whitaker about special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker has made public comments critical of Muellers investigation, and critics have called on Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of the inquiry. Under former Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, the investigation was overseen by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Of the scrutiny Whitaker is facing, Trump said: Its a shame that no matter who I put in they go after. He also called Whitaker a very highly respected man. Whitaker was Sessions chief of staff before Trump made him Sessions interim replacement. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg out of hospital after fall By Associated Press The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is home after being released from the hospital. She had been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. The court said Ginsburg was released Friday. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says she is doing well and working from home. The court had previously said the justice fell in her office at the court on Wednesday evening and went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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Gun-control activist Lucy McBath defeats GOP Rep. Karen Handel in Georgia By Associated Press Lucy McBath speaks during a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Nov. 2 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Democratic gun-control activist Lucy McBath has defeated Republican Rep. Karen Handel of Georgia in a suburban congressional district long considered safe for the GOP. Handel had to seek reelection after winning her seat last year in a close special election race against Democrat Jon Ossoff. McBath became an advocate for stricter gun laws after her son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a man angry over loud music the teenager and his friends were playing in a car. McBaths margin of victory was narrow enough for Handel to have requested a recount. The Associated Press declared McBath the winner Thursday after Handel conceded. Handel conceded in a statement Thursday morning, stating that after reviewing all of the election data, its clear she came up a bit short in Tuesdays vote. Handel congratulated McBath, offering good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead for her. McBath, who is African American, declared victory Wednesday. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized after fracturing 3 ribs in fall By Associated Press Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fractured three ribs in a fall in her office at the court and is in the hospital. The court says the justice went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. The court says the fall occurred Wednesday evening. Ginsburg was admitted to the hospital for treatment and observation after tests showed she fractured three ribs. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She has had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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White House suspends press pass of CNNs Jim Acosta after heated exchange with Trump By Associated Press The White House on Wednesday suspended the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after he and President Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference. They began sparring after Acosta asked Trump about the caravan of migrants heading from Latin America to the southern U.S. border. When Acosta tried to follow up with another question, Trump said, Thats enough! and a female White House aide unsuccessfully tried to grab the microphone from Acosta. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement accusing Acosta of placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern, calling it absolutely unacceptable. The interaction between Acosta and the intern was brief, and Acosta appeared to brush her arm as she reached for the microphone and he tried to hold onto it. Pardon me, maam, he told her. Acosta tweeted that Sanders statement that he put his hands on the aide was a lie. CNN said in a statement that the White House revoked Acostas press pass in retaliation for his challenging questions Wednesday, and the network accused Sanders of lying about Acostas actions. This conduct is absolutely unacceptable. It is also completely disrespectful to the reporters colleagues not to allow them an opportunity to ask a question. President Trump has given the press more access than any President in history.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Contrary to CNNs assertions there is no greater demonstration of the Presidents support for a free press than the event he held today. Only they would attack the President for not supporting a free press in the midst of him taking 68 questions from 35 different reporters...  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 As a result of todays incident, the White House is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Sanders provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better, CNN said. Jim Acosta has our full support. Journalists assigned to cover the White House apply for passes that allow them daily access to press areas in the West Wing. White House staffers decide whether journalists are eligible, though the Secret Service determines whether their applications are approved. Facebook

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Trump spars with reporters at post-election news briefing, ordering several to sit down By Associated Press  President Trump assails CNNs Jim Acosta at a White House news conference. President Trump sparred with reporters at his post-election news conference, ordering several to sit down and telling another hes a rude, terrible person. He told another reporter hes not a fan of yours, either. The presidents mood turned sour Wednesday after reporters pressed him on why he referred to a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S. on foot through Mexico as an invasion. Trump ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric against the caravan in the final days of the midterm elections. Trump was also pressed on why his campaign aired an ad featuring a Mexican immigrant convicted of killing American police officers and linking the mans actions to the caravan. Several television networks pulled the ad after airing it or declined to air it at all. Facebook

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Im living one hour at a time at this point By Christine Mai-Duc Republican congressional candidate Young Kim and gubernatorial candidate John Cox campaign in Rowland Heights. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Republican congressional candidate Young Kim greeted gubernatorial candidate John Coxs giant campaign bus, the words HELP IS ON THE WAY emblazoned across it, as it rolled into the parking lot outside her Rowland Heights field office. Standing beside Cox on Saturday, Kim predicted that a string of GOP victories Tuesday would start with voters repealing the gas tax hike. Can you imagine Gavin Newsom being our governor? Can you imagine Gil Cisneros being your representative? Kim asked the crowd, to loud boos and cries of Nooo! The former state assemblywoman who worked for retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) is vying for his seat with Democrat Gil Cisneros. She led the crowd in chants of Enough is enough! and, though short-lived, Drain the swamp! Ive served you in Sacramento and Ive seen dysfunction personally, Kim continued. We cannot continue that route. She urged her supporters to stay and help make phone calls or walk neighborhoods. Lets get out there  the 72 hours is really critical. Its all going to come down to a few votes, it could be your vote, she said pointing to her left, then pivoting right, it could be your vote. So dont sit back and do nothing. Every night I go to sleep thinking, OK, how many more votes can I get or how many more people can I call tomorrow? Kim said. It can be physically exhausting but Im mentally, emotionally very energized. She listed off her events so far that day  and the next one she was heading to. Thats just what I can remember, she said. Im living one hour at a time at this point. Kims campaign invited press to two of her events on Saturday. After she was whisked away to her next event  a high tea fundraiser in Walnut, a couple dozen volunteers remained. John Freeman, a statewide field manager for the state Republican Party, tried to pump them up. This is the Super Bowl. Were not in an NFL stadium, were not getting paid millions of dollars, but you know what? Freeman said. Were walking on the field right now. This is that high-stakes-level game. Facebook

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Its going to be tough out there Democratic candidate Katie Porter speaks to volunteers in Mission Viejo. Jon Bauman, Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na, is in the background. (Victoria Kim / Los Angeles Times ) Judging from the cheers in the crowd, about half those assembled at Katie Porters campaign headquarters in Mission Viejo Sunday morning were old enough to remember 70s rock n roll star Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na. Jon Bauman, as Bowzer is known off stage, said it was her position on senior issues including retirement and social security that has him out supporting Porter over her opponent, incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters. I want you to make sure every phone is called and every door is knocked, he told the crowd of about 80 volunteers. There has never been a more important election. Both Bauman and his nephew, California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman, were interrupted by yells from Trump supporters coming from an adjoining hillside. We love Trump, the voice cried out. We love him too, he makes great fodder, the younger Bauman retorted, before introducing Porter. Porter, a UC Irvine law professor and first-time candidate, acknowledged the uphill battle some of her canvassers might face in this more conservative end of the long-red Orange County district. I know its going to be tough out there, she said, motioning to the hillside. But she said the attacks meant the other side viewed her campaign as a significant threat. This election is going to be close, she said. If we dont fight all the way to the finish line, until 8 oclock on Tuesday, this could slip away. Bowzer then took to a keyboard piano to lead the crowd in a reworded rendition of the song Good Night Sweetheart: Good night, Mimi Walters, he crooned. A woman in a black tank top, jeans and flip flops holding a cup of coffee later joined the crowd with her two sons, 17 and 14, the younger one wearing a Trump 2016 T-shirt. She declined to give her name, saying she was concerned about being attacked, but said she lived up the hill and said she had been the one yelling. She said she was encouraging her sons to talk to people on both sides and make up their own minds. We need to have a government that runs the way government teachers are telling kids its supposed to be run, said the woman, a retired registered dental assistant who voted early for Mimi Walters. Referring to Democrats, she said: Theyve had control over all these years and Californias gone to crap. Among those canvassing was Stacie Campbell, 37, who was at the launch with her husband Jerome and three children, the youngest of whom was 2 months old. Campbell, a Mission Viejo resident who runs a business, had never canvassed or volunteered for campaigns before, and her husband is a French citizen and unable to vote. She said they had been talking to their children  the older ones are 5 and 2  about the presidency and the government since Trumps election. Together, they worked on homemade Katie Porter lawn signs and put them up around town. This is the first time its felt like a big deal and there isnt a president up for election, she said. Because her city is a mix of conservatives and liberals  her next-door neighbor is an NRA-supporting Republican  she the race felt m
President Trumps personal lawyer obtained a secret restraining order last week to block porn actress Stormy Daniels from speaking publicly about Trumps alleged extramarital affair with her, according to Daniels attorney.

The order came in a private arbitration proceeding in Los Angeles that Trump attorney Michael Cohen initiated to enforce a hush-money deal reached with Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign. In return for keeping silent, Daniels received $130,000 from a Delaware shell company that Cohen set up.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that the president has made very clear that none of these allegations are true.

This case has already been won in arbitration, she said.

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Pressed on whether Trump knew about the payment when it was made, Sanders responded: Not that Im aware of.

Arbitrator Jacqueline A. Connor, a retired state judge, granted Cohens request last week for a temporary restraining order to muzzle Daniels, who was not given a chance to argue against it. Connor barred Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, from disclosing that the arbitration proceeding was taking place once she found out about it.

In apparent defiance of that order, Daniels, 38, filed a lawsuit against the president on Tuesday seeking to void the October 2016 hush-money agreement, saying Trump never signed it. The suit charged that Cohen, at the presidents behest, tried to shut her up to protect Trump in what her complaint called a bogus arbitration proceeding.

The order, dated Feb. 28, was first reported Wednesday by NBC News, which posted it on its website.

Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti of Newport Beach confirmed that it was Cohen who obtained the restraining order.

The legal wrangling cast light on the hardball tactics used by celebrities to enforce confidentiality agreements, including secret arbitration proceedings that can be tilted in favor of the famous person. The nondisclosure pact gave Trump sole discretion to decide whether the arbitration would take place under California, Nevada or Arizona law. Should Daniels be found to have broken the deal, she would have to return the $130,000 and pay Trump at least $1 million in damages.

The agreements are not worth the paper theyre printed on, said Avenatti, referring to the October 2016 documents signed by Daniels and Cohen, but not Trump. Theyre completely invalid.

Lawrence Rosen, an attorney for Cohen, said the arbitrator had barred Daniels from filing the lawsuit.

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We intend to pursue our recourse in the context of the arbitration as agreed to by the parties and continue to categorically refute the claims of Daniels and her lawyer, Rosen said.

The restraining order does not use the real names of Daniels and Trump. Instead, it refers to Daniels as Peggy Peterson, her pseudonym in the confidentiality agreement, and Trump as DD, short for David Dennison, an alias used for the president.

The nondisclosure deal required Daniels to give Trump every copy of every text and email shed ever exchanged with him, along with all her photos relating to Trump. On NBCs Today show, Avenatti declined to say whether she turned everything over. When anchor Savannah Guthrie asked him whether Daniels had a sexual relationship with Trump, Avenatti responded, Yes.

The legal maneuvering could harm Trumps defense against allegations that the $130,000 payment to Daniels violated federal campaign finance laws. In complaints to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission, Common Cause, a nonpartisan ethics group, says the payment was made for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election and thus needed to be disclosed by the Trump campaign. Cohen has rejected that argument.

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Susan Simpson, a white-collar-crime defense attorney in Washington, said the convoluted hush-money contract was unusual. It appeared to be drafted in such a way that Trump could deny knowing about it, which makes it hard for him or his lawyers to enforce it, particularly since the signature line for David Dennison was left blank. If authorities ultimately find the hush money payment broke federal disclosure laws on campaign spending, that alone could void the deal, she said.

Its a mess, this whole contract, Simpson said.

To read this article in Spanish click here

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michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

UPDATES:

6:50 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Lawrence Rosen, Michael Avenatti and Susan Simpson, along with details of the Common Cause complaints.

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This article was originally published at 4:20 p.m.
Deadlocked with Congress on an immigration issue that both parties say they support, President Trump has gone on the attack, blaming Democrats and further dimming the chances of agreement before Novembers elections to protect so-called Dreamers from deportation.

In a speech to Republican-friendly Latino business leaders on Wednesday, Trump said he wants to sign a law replacing the Obama-era program  Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA  to allow up to 1.8 million young immigrants who are in the country illegally to stay, get work permits, attend college or serve in the military. The problem, he said, is Democrats.

Theyre nowhere to be found. Its really terrible, Trump said, while Republicans are ready, willing and able.

He urged the audience: Go get DACA. Go push those Democrats. Im telling you its lost. So this is a moment for DACA, for all of us.

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The presidents comments, which echoed his partisan tweets of recent days, reflected his sensitivity to being blamed himself for the demise of a program that is broadly popular with Americans. His speech came in a week when the program was supposed to end, by his order of last September, and after he rejected bipartisan Senate legislation to replace it last month. The presidents party, which controls Congress, has been unable to agree on legislation it could pass without Democrats backing.

Democrats point out that DACAs proposed expiration is a problem of Trumps own making, given his September order putting nearly 700,000 young permit-holders at risk of deportation.

Right now the president created this crisis and only the president can end this crisis, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said in the Senate on Wednesday.

Six different times weve gone to him and six different times hes rejected bipartisan approaches, Durbin said. Congress needs to do its job.

Court decisions have temporarily kept the program partially operating, in the meantime, requiring the administration to continue renewing the two-year protections indefinitely for people already approved for DACA permits. That was unchanged by a third court ruling this week in the presidents favor.

The two earlier federal court decisions also removed the urgency for Congress and the White House to act on a substitute program, according to lawmakers from both parties.

While Im glad that DACA recipients have a little bit more time, for some, that urgency is no longer there, said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida who has worked on previous immigration bills.

Similarly, Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the Republican leadership, said on Wednesday: Some of the time pressure has gone off DACA, but if youre a DACA kid, youre a DACA young adult, you still feel that pressure, Im sure.

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It is a problem we ought to solve, Blunt said. There is an ongoing discussion, but I dont think theres a bipartisan solution.

Republicans and Democrats each are waiting for an overture or concession from the other party, according to interviews on Capitol Hill. Democrats, however, are less eager to act in the wake of the court rulings, banking that they will have more congressional seats  and more leverage  after the midterm election results are in.

If there was helium in the balloon, I think it has been zapped, said Angela Kelley, a senior strategic advisor for immigration at the Open Society Policy Center, which favors looser immigration restrictions. Republicans have no clear plan, she added, and Democrats would be wise to hang back and see what they come to them with.

Right now, Democrats are just not talking, said Alfonso Aguilar, president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. They are playing with the Dreamers.

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The Senate last month failed to pass either Trumps preferred bill, which would not only legalize Dreamers but also sharply restrict legal immigration, or a separate, bipartisan measure with more support. Afterward, several Republican senators suggested extending the current DACA program as part of a government-spending bill that must pass by March 23 to avoid another federal shutdown.

Yet as Republican and Democratic leadership aides have met this week to determine what goes into the spending bill, neither side has proposed adding an immigration provision, three aides said.

The White House has opposed a short-term fix, arguing that Trump wants to hold out for significant reductions in legal immigration and for money to build his proposed southern border wall in exchange for granting legal status to Dreamers. Democrats, and some Republicans, oppose Trumps demands.

In the House, Republicans have struggled to pass an immigration package championed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. That bill would extend the DACA program but restrict who can renew, while also cutting legal immigration and requiring employers to check a federal immigration database called E-Verify before hiring employees, among other provisions.

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After lunch with fellow Republican senators on Tuesday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky gave no sign that hes willing to take another stab at an immigration bill. He instead is focused on passing bills overhauling Obama-era banking regulations and acting against human trafficking, and voting on judicial nominations.

Congress would have to scramble if court injunctions lift later this year and DACA protections begin to expire.

On the Senate floor, Durbin showed a poster-sized picture of a DACA recipient named Alejandro, who, the senator said, was brought to this country at age 4, studied hard, worked at Teach for America, and is now teaching at an elementary school in Colorado.

Whats going to happen to him if Congress fails to replace DACA? Durbin asked, adding, Why would we want to throw him out of this country? To me it would be a horrible waste.

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Los Angeles Times staff writers Cathleen Decker and Christi Parsons contributed to this report.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett
Weve seen this movie many times: A prominent Republican attacks illegal immigration. The shriveling GOP base cheers. Latinos feel threatened. And California Democrats become even stronger.

Its an ongoing rerun that debuted in 1994. Republican Gov. Pete Wilson aggressively campaigned for Proposition 187, which sought to deny public services to immigrants here illegally. It passed overwhelmingly. Courts found it unconstitutional. Latinos were awakened. And they turned away from Republicans.

Today Republican voter registration is so low in California that its virtually even with no party preference  25.4% to 25%. Democrats are at 44.6%. Republicans no longer are competitive in statewide races. And Democrats lopsidedly control the Legislature along with the states congressional delegation.

That isnt just because Republicans havent stopped hammering on illegal immigration, which has prodded Latinos to the polls, where they tend to vote for Democrats. But its a big reason.

President Trump has been a nonstop generator of Latino votes for Democrats. It started with his candidacy announcement in 2015, riding down that escalator and characterizing Mexicans migrating to the U.S. illegally as rapists, drug dealers and violent criminals.

Some, I assume, are good people, he said.

That rhetoric plays well in some red states. But not in this state, the nations most populous, most diversified  and now among the deepest blue.

Regardless of this unlearned lesson the GOP refuses to grasp, U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions charged into Sacramento on Wednesday to announce a federal lawsuit challenging three so-called sanctuary state laws enacted last year by the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown.

That wouldnt have stirred up anyone. After all, California has been filing suits right and left challenging Trump administration policies, particularly on immigration. But Sessions also gave a blistering speech to a law enforcement group, attacking California, claiming it was trying to block the federal government from rounding up undocumented immigrants and deporting them.

And Trump  riling Latinos even more and further pushing them into Democratic arms  will fly to California next week for the first time as president. And naturally hell go to San Diego to inspect prototypes for his proposed border wall. The GOP flick keeps running.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addresses the California Peace Officers' Association 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day in Sacramento March 7. Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

More from George Skelton 

In his speech, Sessions said California was full of lawless open-borders radicals and run by people protecting lawbreakers and giving all [immigration] officers more dangerous work to do so that politicians can score political points.

Federal law is the supreme law of the land, he said. I would invite any doubters to go to Gettysburg or to the tombstones of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted. So California, [it] absolutely appears to me, is using every power it has  powers it doesnt have  to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure Im going to use every power I have to stop them.

Brown and state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra pretty much denied all of it during a post-speech news conference.

This is really unprecedented for the chief law enforcement [officer] of the United States to come out to California and act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer, said Brown, shouting and holding little back.

Unprecedented without question. I cant remember a time when Washington and California were at each others throats like this  particularly the U.S. attorney general and a governor, regardless of parties in power. No mutual respect. Little civility.

In this ugly climate, federal-state cooperation seems impossible.

But thats probably a reflection of todays national culture more than it is the individuals involved. Blame it, in large part, on impersonal social media where people communicate without having to look at each other in the eye. Standards decline and Americans elect a classless president who sets the tone even lower.

Coverage of California politics 

Rovante Robinson holds up a sign as protesters rally outside a hotel where Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks in Sacramento on March 7. Josh Edelson / For The Times

Brown, however, pinned the immediate blame on Sessions.

Ill cooperate, Jeff, if you can get off this current maneuver youre on because its unbecoming, Brown told reporters.

This lawsuit  theyre talking about going to the Supreme Court, Brown said. This lawsuit is going to last a lot longer than the Trump administration.

This is a political stunt, Brown insisted. Its about dividing America  division and discord. Like so many in the Trump administration, this attorney general has no regard for the truth. What he said [in the speech] is not true. It is a lie.

There [were] three lies in Sessions speech, the governor concluded.

One was that Brown and other California Democrats favored open borders. Two, that they were trying to protect criminals. Three, that California was trying to secede from the nation. Not true.

Brown was proud of the compromise he negotiated with state Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) on the sanctuary state bill. Basically it amounted to forbidding state and local cops from helping federal agents capture and deport undocumented immigrants who had been staying out of legal trouble. But it instructed them to help boot out criminals convicted of violent or serious crimes.

Around 800 crimes were listed as red lines that couldnt be crossed.

In January, a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 58% of likely voters favored state and local governments making their own laws to protect undocumented immigrants.

While the Trump administration is trying to rile and coalesce its own base, its doing the same with the fastest growing segment of the electorate, Latinos, says longtime Republican political consultant Mike Madrid.

The Democratic Party should pay for more Sessions trips to California.

george.skelton@latimes.com

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter
For a nurse in one of Australias most remote corners, it is DIY or die.

Alone at his station, more than 600 miles from the city of Perth and 100 miles from any hospital at all, the 44-year-old man experiences a sudden bout of dizziness and severe chest pain.

What he does next is remarkable, life-saving and  to a considerable degree  instructive.

He hooks up electrical leads to his upper body, records a heart-rhythm graph and sends it over a phone line established in 2012 to bring medical care to Australias remote hustings.

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Hundreds of miles away, emergency physicians pore over the spikes and spindles of his electrocardiogram to confirm that a clot  probably a breakaway blob of fatty plaque  has likely lodged itself in his right coronary artery.

With its supply of oxygenated blood constricted, the nurses heart had fired off a volley of erratic and dangerous electrical signals.

His pulse is racing, and his life is very much in danger.

A second electrocardiogram, sent by the nurse 50 minutes later, confirms his dire situation. Sinus tachycardia  runs of rapid-fire heartbeats  suggests the vessel has gone from partially blocked to completely blocked.

In other words, things are bad, and getting worse.

If blood flow to the heart is not restored very soon, the result will likely be a barrage of lethal heart rhythms, according to Dr. John Osborne, a cardiologist at Dallas Cardiovascular Center and a volunteer for the American Heart Assn.

These electrocardiogram were obtained from the patient who had a heart attack. The one on top shows complete heart block and right bundle-branch block, among other problems. The one on the bottom was taken about 50 minutes later and shows sinus tachycardia. (New England Journal of Medicine )

Once those runs begin, Osborne says, the nurses likelihood of dying rises by 10% with every minute that blood flow remains blocked.

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If the patient survives, Osborne adds, the scarring and damage to his heart muscle will likely weaken it  increasing the prospects that his heart will fail before too long.

But the patient is undaunted.

He sinks an IV line into his own arm, chews a full-strength aspirin, and puts himself on a trio of first-line medications for heart attack: a tablet of the anti-platelet drug clopidogrel (known commercially as Plavix), a dose of nitroglycerine under the tongue, and an IV bag of the blood thinner heparin.

Then, he assembles a McGyver-esque toolkit of emergency cardiology medicines.

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Theres a clot-busting drug called tenecteplase, which is in limited use nowadays as cardiologists make wider use of clot-retrieval devices in hospital cath labs. Syringes of adrenaline, atropine and amiodorone are prepared to stimulate and stabilize the faltering currents of a heart muscle starved of oxygen. An opioid pain medication is added to the mix, because things could go south in a hurry.

Finally, the ailing man attaches defibrillator pads to his own chest, ready to shock his heart back into rhythm if that becomes necessary.

But then a reprieve: The tenecteplase, a so-called thrombolytic drug bioengineered from the ovarian cells of Chinese hamsters, seems to have succeeded in dissolving the clot. There was only a 50-50 chance that this would work.

Even better: The nurse has not suffered bleeding in the brain, the drugs most fearsome side effect. This occurs in 5% to 7% of patients and can cause a potentially devastating stroke.

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Do not try this at home, kids, warns Dr. Osborne.

He notes that patients living within a two-hour drive to a hospital will more likely have their electrocardiogram read while theyre en route in an ambulance, and have their plaques removed by a clot-retrieving device rather than dissolved with tenecteplase. Even in remote parts of the United States, emergency medical technicians, emergency physicians and cardiologists are devising ways to speed the clearance of coronary arteries blocked by clots and plaques.

But the Australian nurses speed and resourcefulness can be inspirational to the rest of us, Osborne says.

Know your family history and minimize your risks by quitting smoking and treating high blood pressure, worrisome cholesterol and diabetes.

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When you suspect somethings wrong (or have any of these symptoms), dont wait.

If you have chest pain, call 911, Osborne says. Get it done. You make the wrong call, you die.

Follow the Australian nurses example and chew a full-strength aspirin (325 milligrams). This is a recommended first step for patients who believe theyre suffering a heart attack.

Driving home the urgency of acting quickly on heart attack symptoms, Osborne offers these facts:

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 In half of men and two-thirds of women, the first symptom of heart disease is death.

 In 2018, strokes and heart attacks will account for 40% of deaths in the United States  and closer to 75% of deaths among those with diabetes.

 Someone in the U.S. will die of stroke or heart attack every 40 seconds.

How does the nurses story end?

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He lives to be airlifted by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to a cardiology unit in Perth. There, cardiologists confirm severe narrowing of his hearts mid-right coronary artery and mild left ventricular systolic dysfunction.

A stent  a tiny device that opens the patients occluded artery  is threaded to the spot of bother and deposited there to keep it open. A mere 48 hours later, the man returns to his remote outpost in Coral Bay, Western Australia.

His true story is recounted in a case study published in this weeks edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

In the absence of other trained medical personnel or resources, the actions of this patient are likely to have had a substantial beneficial effect on the clinical outcome, write three treating physicians at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Nedlands, Western Australia.

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However, they say, a persons self-management of a myocardial infarction cannot be considered medically appropriate if any other option is available.

melissa.healy@latimes.com

@LATMelissaHealy

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How many little errors can you squeeze into a 200-word document?

If youre one of the public relations pros who wrote any of the doctor profiles I edited recently, the answer is a lot.

In fact, you were probably working overtime to supply me with great examples of errors involving the finer points of punctuation, capitalization, spacing and good old-fashioned spell checking.

These mistakes dont reflect badly on the people who made them. Theyre dinky things that only a perfectionist or professional editor would notice.

But theyre excellent cautionary examples for anyone who wants their prose to be letter-perfect.

Dr. John Doe, M.D. is a board certified cardiologist. First off: Good for him. That impressive accomplishment makes my nitpicking seem petty indeed.

That said, I have a nit to pick. There should be a comma after M.D. An academic credential like this is parenthetical to the name, like Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

Parenthetical elements in the middle of a sentence need one comma before and one after  yes, even if that credential ends with a period.

You may also be wondering: 1. Can you write MD without periods, and 2. Shouldnt there be a hyphen in board certified? The answers: yes and probably.

Periods in academic credentials are optional. Just be consistent. And compound modifiers like board certified that come before a noun should be hyphenated anytime doing so helps the reader. In this case, I added one.

Doe (not his real name) is proud to have been selected by a certain magazine as one of Americas Top Cardiologists. Note the period. Its wrong.

In American English, a period always comes before a closing quotation mark, regardless of whether its part of the quote.

Doe is also proud to have been published extensively in many prestigious Cardiology journals. Its fascinating how often people assume specialties, job descriptions and the like should begin with capital letters.

Stu is a Cashier who uses Mathematics in his daily work. Nope and nope. Your guidepost: If a job description, specialty or academic discipline can be lowercased, it should be: Hes a cashier who studied math, biology and French.

Heres another common theme I saw in the doctor profiles: People still think youre supposed to double space between sentences. Dont. Just dont. Single spacing is the standard among pretty much every professional publishing outlet in the English-speaking world.

One of the physicians has extensive expertise in Descemets stripping endothelial keratoplasty. Theres just one problem: There is no Descemets stripping endothelial keratoplasty. Its Descemets, singular possessive, which a simple Google search proved.

Another of these doctors, according to her own spin doctors, believes in giving back to the community, and has performed cataract surgeries.

If the stuff after the and is a whole clause, complete with subject and verb, use a comma. If not, dont.

So either she believes in giving back to the community and has performed cataract surgeries or she believes in giving back to the community, and she has performed cataract surgeries. Inserting that subject she makes all the difference.

One of these doctors specializes hi-res imaging, which, while very friendly, would be better as high-res. Thats not any kind of rule, mind you, just professional advice from someone who pays attention and has never seen high abbreviated as hi in any reputable publication  at least not since the days when people bragged about their Hi-Fi stereos.

Finally, theres a doctor who has lots of experience with MRIs. I understand why a PR writer would put an apostrophe here. And its not really an error to do so.

But editors use apostrophes to form plurals only when the absence of an apostrophe would cause confusion. So MRIs is fine.

But if you were writing a headline in all capital letters, an apostrophe would be appropriate because it would show that the S in MRIS is there to make it plural and not to stand in for a word.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of The Best Punctuation Book, Period. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.
The Laguna Beach City Council held off an approving the first reading of an ordinance Tuesday night designed to facilitate housing growth in the city, saying the proposed law was too complicated to tackle in one sitting.

After hearing commentary on the so-called granny flats ordinance, council members opted for city staff to bring the law back for its first reading at a future date.

Under the currently proposed ordinance, Laguna property owners may be able to more easily receive permission to create new rental housing through methods like converting garages into apartments or creating new stand-alone buildings on existing housing lots that can be rented out.

The law, which is part of a statewide initiative, aims to create more affordable housing options for seniors, students, the disabled and in-home care providers.

Though the ordinance is being praised for giving property owners more ways to generate income and, in some cases, continue being able to afford living in Laguna Beach, others are worried that more housing would ruin the character of neighborhoods and exacerbate difficult parking conditions.

Some council members noted that City Hall doesnt have an enforcement plan in place to ensure that landlords who receive permission to create affordable housing, particularly for seniors, keep it that way in the years to come.

People are going to game the system, said Councilman Steve Dicterow. Were going to need more staff to be able to monitor this properly and enforce it.

Councilman Rob Zur Schmiede said the city could consider excluding new granny-flat style housing for properties that already are difficult for public safety vehicles, like fire trucks, to navigate.

The granny flats ordinance was vetted by the Planning Commission last year and Laguna Beach Seniors.

The commission suggested increasing the maximum size of a new unit  also called an accessory dwelling unit, in city parlance  from 640 square feet to 750 square feet. The panel also recommended allowing the units to be placed in more areas of the city than they are permitted now.

Christopher Quilter, a former president of Laguna Beach Seniors, called the ordinance an opportunity to help boost Lagunas tight housing supply, not an attack on our way of life.

He called it the least impactful way of providing affordable housing.

We have to do something, Quilter added. This would be the right thing to do, even if the state did not require it of us.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
Authorities arrested a Glendale man suspected of barricading himself inside his home for four hours Wednesday after he reportedly got into a fight with a neighbor over a parking spot.

Police identified him as 40-year-old Stephen Fries. The argument began sometime around 1:30 p.m. near Fries home off of Boynton Street and Palmer Avenue.

Sgt. Dan Suttles, a spokesman for the Glendale Police Department, said Fries told the neighbor he couldnt park his car on the street, while the other man said he was within his legal rights.

An argument ensued and then a physical altercation started, Suttles said.

Fries allegedly struck the man several times and ran back into his home and then refused to leave.

The other man, described as being in his 40s or 50s, suffered a broken ankle and lacerations to the face. He was transported to a nearby hospital and is recovering from his injuries.

The victim told officers Fries had used metal pipe to strike him, according to Suttles.

[The neighbors injuries] are of such a nature that, just by sight, you look at this guy and  you think he mustve been hit by something, he said.

However, Suttles said police could not locate any weapon, and witnesses said Fries was not holding anything when he ran inside.

Police then spent several hours negotiating with Fries to leave his home. He eventually complied with officers just after 5:30 p.m. and was taken into custody without further incident, according to Suttles.

Anyone with information about the incident can contact Glendale police at (818) 548-4911.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc

UPDATES:

March 8, 4:55 p.m.: This article was updated with the suspected attackers name and a possible motive for the crime.

This article was originally published on March 7 at 6:10 p.m.
In an email sent out to parents Wednesday, La Canada Unified School District Supt. Wendy Sinnette confirmed a La Canada High school student was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, although the arrest was not made on any LCUSD school campus.

Within the last 24 hours, an LCHS student was detained under California Penal Code Section 422 for making criminal threats, Sinnette said in the email. We are being vigilant in monitoring the safety and security of students and staff and taking immediate and appropriate measures, both proactively and in response to any dynamic situation.

The superintendent assured as of Wednesday there was no current active threat to any of our students, staff, teachers or facilities.

Lt. De Markus Smith, watch commander for the Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Station, said officials with the school contacted the station Tuesday with a report of a possible threat.

Well do an investigation and then see if a threat is credible, he said of the general procedure followed in such incidents. In this case, we determined the threat was credible.

The student  whose identity is not being released to protect the privacy of a minor  was detained and taken to juvenile hall. A court date is pending, Smith said.

The incident follows a Feb. 27 school board meeting during which scores of parents expressed their frustration about drug use and student safety after two students were arrested in drug-related incidents. At that meeting, speakers discussed hearing of a male high school student whod been reportedly making threats to the campus.

Dep. Eric Matejka, who works as a school resource officer at La Canada High School, said at the meeting those reports were followed up on, and the rumor of threats made were unfounded. It is unclear whether the student arrested Tuesday has any connection to the student mentioned at the school board meeting.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Area water officials support helping low-income districts across the state clean up their drinking water supplies but have categorically opposed a recent budget trailer bill being considered in Sacramento that would impose a permanent statewide water tax to fund it.

Officials from Foothill Municipal Water District  which serves La Canada Irrigation District, Valley Water Co. and the Crescenta Valley and Mesa Crest water districts, among others  are joining others in voicing opposition to the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act.

Derived mainly from Senate Bill-623, introduced last year by state Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel), the legislation would impose agricultural fees on businesses that historically contribute to nitrate contamination of groundwater supplies as well as a meter-based tax on water customers.

According to the rates outlined in the bill, customers whose water meters are 1 inch in diameter or less would pay an additional $0.95 per month. Larger homes, which may use meters up to 2 inches in diameter would be charged $2 per month, while larger commercial customers with meters less than 4 inches in diameter would be charged $6 monthly and those with meters larger than 4 inches would be charged $10 a month.

If passed by a two-thirds majority in the house and senate, the tax component alone could raise an estimated $110 million annually. Agricultural fees associated with bulk fertilizer sales, dairy milk production and businesses involving confined animals would raise another $30 million per year.

Those funds would be collected by the State Water Resource Control Board, which would be responsible for assisting nearly 300 public water systems currently out of compliance with drinking water standards. Those largely rural systems, which serve 692,807 people across California, typically cannot afford the cost of water treatment and the ongoing operation and maintenance of such systems.

Foothill Municipal General Manager Nina Jazmadarian said while there is certainly a need to assist low-income water districts and customers, imposing a tax that would disproportionately burden urban communities would turn retail agencies into de facto tax collectors and set a troubling precedent for the likelihood of future taxes.

We have no problem with something being done to assist these areas, Jazmadarian said. Our problem is putting a tax on something which is essential to life. And the people who are getting taxed arent going to be getting the benefit of the tax.

Foothill Municipal currently serves about 80,000 customers through 25,000 meters, 90% of which are residential. Jazmadarian estimates the budget bill would collect about $575,000 from the district each year.

There are other ways of paying these disadvantaged communities to help them improve their water systems, she said.

The Assn. of California Water Agencies, a coalition of more than 430 public agencies that also opposes the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act, has put forth several alternative funding suggestions that would allow state lawmakers to avoid a water tax.

Cindy Tuck, the associations deputy executive director for government relations, explained opponents of the proposal are asking state officials to consider seeking funding by maintaining the agricultural fees but dropping the water tax. Instead, she said, funds could be sought through the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act, general obligation bonds that let voters decide whether to be taxed and a commitment of state general fund money.

The problem the bills trying to solve is really a social issue for the state of California, so the state should put up the funding, Tuck said.

The Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Act is scheduled to be heard by the state Assemblys Budget Subcommittee March 14 at 11 a.m. before moving on to the Senate the following day.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Public safety-minded La Canadans attended a town hall forum Tuesday to learn more about the citys many crime-fighting resources as well as its vulnerabilities and how an apparent increase in crime could point to state laws in need of reform.

Hosted by the city of La Canada Flintridge and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, the Lanterman Auditorium talk included law enforcement officials who explained crime trends and whats being done to keep citizens safe, as well as elected regional and state officials who provided a legislative look at crime laws past and present.

Also joining the forum were backers of a Taking Back Our Community, a coalition of San Gabriel Valley municipalities that hopes to amend a set of controversial California laws they claim are having unintended negative impacts on public safety.

La Canada Flintridge Public Safety Commission Chair Terry Manning explained how a strong public showing of worried residents at a Jan. 22 commission meeting inspired that evenings event.

Although we are still one of the safest cities in California, this increase has impacted many of us directly  my home was burglarized in December  or indirectly, by our neighbors, family or friends being victims of these crimes, Manning told the more than 150 in attendance. We felt we needed to bring the community together tonight to address these issues.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys for Los Angeles County, explained three fairly recent changes in state law that have made it harder to detain and prosecute criminals.

AB-109 was approved by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2011 to ease overcrowding at state prisons by shifting the responsibility of supervising released nonviolent felons and parolees from state parole officers to county probation officers. Under that law, assault with a deadly weapon, rape of an unconscious victim and trafficking children for sex are considered nonviolent offenses.

A list of crimes that are considered not violent felonies at a town hall discussion at Lanterman Auditorium regarding residential burglaries. (Tim Berger / La Canada Valley Sun )

The successful 2014 ballot measure Proposition 47 reduced criminal penalties for certain drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, such as thefts resulting in a loss of less than $950. Proposition 57, passed by voters in 2016, allowed certain nonviolent felons to become eligible for parole and created good behavior credits for early release.

Hanisee said the laws have caused a backlog at the county level, as jails become too crowded and staff too burdened with a new class of felons to address misdemeanor offenses. Reclassifying other offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies has put more criminals back onto city streets.

A lot of these dangerous criminals absconded into our communities  theyve just disappeared, Hanisse said. Now, because no matter how many thefts you commit its always a misdemeanor, it limits the polices ability to make an arrest. And these consequences are resulting in the underreporting of the thefts that are occurring.

Monrovia City Manager Oliver Chi said 37 local municipalities, including La Canada Flintridge, formed the Taking Back Our Community Coalition to raise awareness of the adverse effects of the states crime laws and help lobby for changes.

Until now, fierce advocates for and against AB-109 and propositions 47 and 57 have dominated the political conversation, as bills attempting to add or increase penalties have died in committee, Chi said.

Coalition members are collecting signatures for the Keeping California Safe Act of 2018, which aims to reclassify certain nonviolent crimes, restore accountability for serial thieves and organized theft rings and subject people convicted of drug, theft and domestic violence crimes to DNA collection.

Michele Hanisee, president of the Deputy District Attorneys Assn., talks about the intents and unintended consequences of California law AB109 and Props 47 and 57. The three laws are being pointed to as a reason crime is going up in several Los Angeles County cities. (Tim Berger / La Canada Valley Sun )

We think this is going to be an effective way to address a lot of the issues that were dealing with here in California on the public safety front, Chi said.

State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge) explained legislative efforts in progress, including his own Senate Bill 1266, which would require people with prior burglary offense convicted of a second-degree burglary to serve a mandatory minimum of 180 days in county jail and subject convicted burglars to GPS monitoring as a condition of parole.

That way well be able to track where these people are, he said.

In a Q&A segment, audience members at Lanterman and people watching the event on Facebook Live asked pointed questions about sheriffs response times, school safety and how to make their homes and vehicles unattractive to burglars.

Moderator and La Canada Mayor Mike Davitt promised officials would respond to all questions and post the responses on the citys website, www.lcf.ca.gov, and its social media accounts.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Forget stars homes. These tours visit pot growers and bong makers By Hugo Martin In Napa and Sonoma, tour bus operators ferry oenophiles between tasting rooms and vineyards. In Hollywood and environs, they shepherd the starstruck past the homes of the rich and famous. Now theyre giving customers a mind-expanding look at one of Los Angeles burgeoning industries: pot. Since recreational use of marijuana became legal a year ago, a pot tourism business has emerged, taking visitors behind the scenes of Californias estimated $7-billion cannabis industry. Read More Facebook

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Plans for a state-backed pot bank arent feasible, a study says By Sam Dean Hopes that California might create a public bank to serve the states legal marijuana industry are nothing but a pipe dream, the authors of a new feasibility study told state officials Thursday. In the end we were not able to find any approach to doing this that makes any sense whatsoever, said William Roetzheim, founder and chief executive of Level 4 Ventures, the consulting firm hired to carry out the study for the State Treasurers Cannabis Banking Working Group. California voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016 to legalize growing, possessing and selling marijuana for recreational use. But since cannabis remains illegal under federal law, most banks which are federally chartered and insured by the FDIC  refuse to hold weed money. Read More Facebook

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Santa Cruz marijuana company fined $50,000 for explosion that badly burned employee By Hannah Fry A Santa Cruz-based marijuana manufacturing company is being fined more than $50,000 by state regulators for safety violations after an employee was severely burned in a propane explosion, officials have announced. An employee at Future2 Labs Health Services was working alone inside a 128-square-foot portable storage container in Watsonville on June 19, extracting oil from cannabis leaves with propane, when a spark ignited the tank and it exploded. The worker was hospitalized with severe burns, according to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health. The process of using a highly flammable gas to extract oil from cannabis leaves is dangerous, Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum said Thursday in a prepared statement. Read More Facebook

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FDA casts shadow on hemp win, calling CBD products illegal By Associated Press The hemp industry still has work ahead to win legal status for hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD oil, as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements despite the big farm bill President Trump signed this week designating hemp as an agricultural crop. CBD oils have become increasingly popular in lotions, tinctures and foods, but their legal status has been murky and the Food and Drug Administration has sent warning letters to some companies making health claims for CBD. In a statement following Thursdays bill signing in Washington, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb restated his agencys stance that CBD is a drug ingredient and therefore illegal to add to food or health products without approval from his agency. Read More Facebook

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One year of legal pot sales and California doesnt have the bustling industry it expected. Heres why By Patrick McGreevy When Californians voted in 2016 to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, advocates of the move envisioned thousands of pot shops and cannabis farms obtaining state licenses, making the drug easily available to all adults within a short drive. But as the first year of licensed sales comes to a close, Californias legal market hasnt performed as state officials and the cannabis industry had hoped. Retailers and growers say theyve been stunted by complex regulations, high taxes and decisions by most cities to ban cannabis shops. At the same time, many residents are going to city halls and courts to fight pot businesses they see as nuisances, and police chiefs are raising concerns about crime triggered by the marijuana trade. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who played a large role in the legalization of cannabis, will inherit the numerous challenges when he takes office in January as legislators hope to send him a raft of bills next year to provide banking for the pot industry, ease the tax burden on retailers and crack down on sales to minors. Read More Facebook

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Hemp is about to be legal under the 2018 farm bill. You cant get high from it  but you can wear it By Kurtis Lee Hemp  a close relative of marijuana that can be used to make textiles and other products  has long been classified as a Schedule I drug by the federal government. Thats set to change. President Trump is soon expected to sign a farm bill that includes a section that legalizes the commercial cultivation of hemp nationwide. The bill, years in the making, comes as public support for cannabis legalization has increased over the years, offering a cover of sorts to politicians who see the potential for boosting state tax revenue. Read More Facebook

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Students sent home after Marysville middle schooler brings pot brownies for class to eat By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Several students at a middle school in Marysville, Calif., were sent home this week after eating marijuana-laced brownies, officials said. Staff at Anna McKenney Intermediate School called police Wednesday morning after learning that a 13-year-old girl had passed out the brownies to her classmates, said Marysville Police Sgt. Jason Garringer. Nine students were sent home, Garringer said, but no one who ate the brownies showed obvious signs of being under the influence. Read More Facebook

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Mistletoke, luxe vape cases and other gift suggestions for the cannabis enthusiast on your nice list By Adam Tschorn Now that some form of cannabis use is legal in 33 U.S. states and the District of Columbia and Californias era of legal adult-use weed is almost a year old (though it remains illegal under federal law), its easier than ever to find a little something special for the cannabis consumer on your nice list. Below are a few items that  with the exception of the first item which is available in L.A. only  are legal, widely available and, if ordered soon, can still be under the tree in the U.S. by Christmas Day. For those who want to do good while feeling good  and score a little holiday decor at the same time  L.A.-based Zoma Cannabis is prepared to send some lucky L.A. residents a limited-edition floral-meets-cannabis Mistletoke arrangement that intertwines sprigs of mistletoe with three trimmed buds (roughly five grams total) of its Santa Cruz-grown True OG and/or Gelato strain cannabis flower all tied up in a big red Santa-worthy bow. No purchase is necessary, but recipients are highly encouraged to make a donation to the charity reforestation group One Tree Planted to aid in the recovery efforts from the 2017 and 2018 California fires. Zoma will match donations dollar for dollar. Each dollar donated means one tree gets planted, and that means the green you donate for its green means a greener Golden State moving forward. Zoma is set to deliver the decor right to your door if you live in L.A., are over the age of 21 and are one of the first 50 folks to fire off an email to info@zomacannabis.com with the word Mistletoke in the subject line. Supplies willing, orders placed as late as Dec. 20 will arrive in time to make your Christmas very merry indeed. Read More Facebook

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3 marijuana businesses win OK in Costa Mesa as another is put on hold By Bradley Zint The Costa Mesa Planning Commission this week approved three new marijuana facilities but postponed a decision on a fourth due to the absence of one commissioner, whose vote likely will decide the fate of the business. After two commissioners expressed support and two expressed opposition for Triiads proposal for a marijuana distribution facility, the panel voted 3-1 on Monday night, with Commissioner Jeffrey Harlan absent, to hold a special meeting Monday to reexamine the matter. Commissioner Carla Navarro Woods dissented. The proposed location at 3525 Hyland Ave., Suite 265, is in Hyland Plaza, north of South Coast Collection in an area identified under city law as permissible for marijuana uses. Read More Facebook

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Marlboro cigarette maker places a $2.4-billion bet on marijuana By Associated Press Altria Group Inc., one of the worlds biggest tobacco companies, is diving into the cannabis market with a $2.4 billion buy-in. The Marlboro cigarette maker is taking a 45% stake in Cronos Group Inc., the Canadian medical and recreational marijuana provider said Friday. Altria will pay an additional $1.4 billion for warrants that, if exercised, would give Altria a 55% ownership stake in the Toronto company. Read More Facebook

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Utah voters approved medical marijuana in November. State lawmakers just passed big changes to the ballot measure By Associated Press Lawmakers in Utah passed sweeping changes Monday to a voter-approved medical marijuana ballot measure under a planned compromise that secured the support of the influential Mormon Church but sparked a backlash from pot advocates. Supporters of the compromise cheered the vote, saying it would help suffering patients while creating safeguards against broader recreational use. I believe this agreement was a landmark day for our state, and we are helping people, said outgoing Republican House Speaker Greg Hughes, who sponsored the legislation and helped bring together the players for talks. Read More Facebook

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Los Angeles County sheriffs deputy, two others arrested on drug charges after heist at pot warehouse By Maya Lau The Los Angeles sheriffs deputy pulled up to the pot-filled warehouse just after three in the morning. He held up an official-looking document to a guard, who promptly unlocked a gate. The deputy and two other men, each of them armed and dressed in sheriffs jackets, got out. After locking the guard and two other employees in the back of the deputys SUV, the men went to work lugging bags of marijuana from the warehouse. Read More Facebook

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Cannary West dispensary to host Higher Standards pop-up shop Saturday through Feb. 28 By Adam Tschorn The Higher Standards X Cannary West pop-up is slated to run from Saturday through Feb. 28. (Higher Standards) Following its successful (and still running) pop-up space inside the Pottery dispensary in L.A.s Mid-City, purveyor of luxury-level cannabis accoutrements Higher Standards has announced plans to take up temporary residence inside the Cannary West dispensary in the Rancho Park neighborhood just in time for the holidays. On track to pop-up on Saturday (with a 20% opening day discount) and run through the end of February, itll serve up a similar curated mix of high-end smoking tools and accessories from brands like Marley Naturals, Grav Labs, Dr. Dabber and Puffco (makers of the futuristic-looking Peak dab rig) as well as home goods for the discerning head by Jonathan Adler, Malin+Goetz and Forestry Wool. Higher Standards X Cannary West Where: 2435 Military Ave., Los Angeles. Entry is restricted to those 21 and older. Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays from Saturday through Feb. 28. Info: cannarywest.com, higherstandards.com Facebook

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I fell off the way. A charismatic pastor-turned-marijuana smuggler heads to prison By Kristina Davis On Easter Sunday 2007, Pastor John Lee Bishop drew about 15,000 worshipers to a sports arena in Portland, Ore. With a flair for showmanship, Bishop  a jeans-clad minister sporting a youthful, moppish haircut  relished building buzz around his Living Hope Church, based in Vancouver, Wash., on the north bank of the Columbia River. One time, it was bringing a Bengal tiger onstage. Another, according to an account in the Columbian newspaper, it was advertising a sermon series with the word sex prominently facing a busy street. Read More Facebook

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For all your weed needs, theres now a pot superstore in Las Vegas By David Montero The employee in the red shirt counseled the two men on what  or what not  to buy. Now, if you start thinking dolphins are talking to you, that might be too much, she explained. The two young men nodded slowly. One stroked his beard. Neither had ever talked to dolphins before. Or even yelled at them on Sundays when they play against the New England Patriots. Above them, the continuous light show on the ceiling was like an electric lava lamp  orbs expanding and dividing in an endless trip. Then it was gone and replaced by flowers and a Saturn-like planet floating in the sky. Read More Facebook

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4 more marijuana permit applications await Costa Mesa Planning Commission review By Luke Money The recent parade of permit applications from marijuana manufacturing and distribution businesses looking to open in Costa Mesa will continue next week, when the city Planning Commission is scheduled to review four more. All the requests on Mondays agenda are for conditional use permits, which are among several approvals required to open a cannabis company in the city. Here is the latest lineup of applicants: Read More Facebook

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With Jeff Sessions out at the Justice Dept., the marijuana movement exhales By Kurtis Lee He described marijuana as a very real danger and has said its effects are only slightly less awful than those of heroin. Once, during a drug hearing when he was a Senator, he said he wanted to send a clear message: Good people dont smoke marijuana. So when Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions was ousted recently, a collective sigh of relief rose up from proponents of legalized pot  activists, politicians, investors  who felt targeted by the nations top law enforcement officer. Sessionss departure has translated into spiking stocks for cannabis companies and a reset of sorts for the legalization movement which, since 2012, has seen nearly a dozen states pass recreational pot measures. Read More Facebook

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This is what a cannabis executives party pad looks like By Kavita Daswani Dont expect to find bongs, water pipes and empty packets of Funyuns at the Los Angeles-area home of Will Htun. When we asked to look inside the home of the CEO of cannabis brand Sherbinskis, we found a sleek and minimal space where he could host chef-catered, cannabis-paired dinners on the rooftop and take meetings in a high-ceilinged front room. Htun, 34, moved into the 2,700-square-foot townhouse in July 2016, after he and brand founder Mario Sherbinski, who is based in San Francisco, decided it would make an ideal live/work space. With its three en-suite bedrooms, Htun opens up the home to associates in town for business instead of housing them in a serviced apartment. Read More Facebook

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First recreational pot shops in Eastern U.S. to open in Massachusetts By Associated Press Two marijuana stores in Massachusetts have been given the green light to begin selling to recreational customers, making them the first commercial pot shops in the eastern United States. Both stores, one located in Northampton and the other in Leicester, said they would open Tuesday morning after the Cannabis Control Commission, the states marijuana regulatory agency, on Friday authorized them to begin operations. The announcement ended a long wait for commercial sales to begin in Massachusetts. The states voters legalized the use of recreational marijuana by adults 21 and older in 2016, but its taken more than two years for state legislators and regulators to reach the point where the first stores can finally open. Read More Facebook

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Heres whats behind Mexicos radical move toward legalizing marijuana during its war on drugs By Kate Linthicum Mexico may soon legalize marijuana, a radical shift for a country whose prohibition on narcotics has been at the heart of its long and violent war against drug traffickers. Legislation submitted to Congress last week by the party of leftist President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would regulate cannabis, allowing it to be grown, sold and consumed for recreational use. Proponents of legalization say it would reduce bloodshed in Mexico by weakening drug cartels and freeing up police officers and prosecutors to focus on more serious crimes. But the proposal has critics, including the Catholic Church, which holds significant sway in Mexican politics. A poll in Mexico last year showed a majority of respondents opposed legalizing marijuana. Read More Facebook

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Curious about all the CBD-infused products you see? By Kavita Daswani Some chew it, or place a few drops under the tongue or let it soak in through the skin. There are numerous ways to consume cannabidiol  better known as CBD. Its touted for its therapeutic effects, but, unlike its better-known cousin THC, does not get you high. Hemp-derived CBD is increasingly in the limelight these days, at natural products stores and even fashion boutiques, catering to widening demand from consumers who find it helps them with pain, anxiety and insomnia. Despite Californias marijuana-friendly laws, however, the state announced earlier this year it is waiting for the federal government to rule on the use of CBD oils and products before giving the green light to sales. Critics, meanwhile, have been asking for clarity, to help consumers who want options. Read More Facebook

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6 cannabis cookbooks with recipes from basic to gourmet By Amy Scattergood As cannabis is legalized  although it remains illegal under federal law and goes mainstream in California and other states, the cookbook industry has churned into high gear with books on what ways to use jazz cabbage beyond the bong. What to look for? A lot depends on your level of expertise  not just in the kitchen but with cannabis itself. If youve been making batches of pot brownies and want to expand your repertoire to, say, French macarons, there are cookbooks to help you out. Many books have lengthy introductions that outline the specifics of cooking with cannabis, so find one that fits with what you know  or dont know. Bong Appetit: Mastering the Art of Cooking With Weed by the editors of Munchies (Ten Speed Press, $30) This book, based on the Munchies and Viceland television series Bong Appetit, was published in October by Ten Speed Press. (This is in itself notable, as Ten Speed is one of the best cookbook publishers around, and continues the legitimate trajectory of the cannabis cooking genre.) The book has a comprehensive introduction that includes topics such as dosing, techniques, methods of decarboxylation and infusion, cannabis pairing tips, questions to ask your dispensary, tips on equipment and more. The recipes are sourced from the Munchies test kitchen and from many well-known chefs, whose recipes are recalibrated to add cannabis. Thus: Korean fried chicken from Deuki Hong of San Franciscos Sunday Bird; fried soft-shell crab with shishito pepper mole from Daniela Soto-Innes of Cosme and Atla; and (my favorite) Joan Nathans preserved lemons. The Munchies test kitchen also has some fun ones, including herb focaccia with, well, herb; and confit octopus, in which a whole octopus is poached in cannabis-infused olive oil. If that sounds too aspirational, there are instructions for making an apple bong  a hollowed-out apple filled with weed-infused mezcal  at the end of the drinks chapter. Read More Facebook

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Sativa or indica? CBD or THC? What to know before cooking with cannabis By Brette Warshaw Dont know the difference between MSG and THC? Heres a guide to the terminology youll encounter. Cannabis sativa and cannabis indica are two of the three species of cannabis. (The third species, cannabis ruderalis, is less attractive due to its smaller stature and low concentration of THC.) Sativa is a warm-weather species characterized by tall plants and thin leaves. The plant takes 10 to 15 weeks to mature and is known for a cerebral, energetic and invigorating high thats particularly suited for daytime use. Medically, it can be used to help people with depression and chronic pain. Read More Facebook

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California pot tax revenue improves but is still short of projections (Mathew Sumner / Associated Press) The amount of money collected by the state from taxes on cannabis grown and sold legally in California continues to increase but is still falling short of budget estimates, according to figures released Wednesday. Tax revenue reported from the cannabis industry totaled $93.1 million for the three months ending Sept. 30, according to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. That is an increase from the $80.2 million collected during the second quarter of the year. If revenue continues to grow by the same 16% per quarter, pot taxes will bring in $471 million during the fiscal year that began July 1, while the budget approved by the governor and Legislature estimates the taxes would bring in $630 million during the fiscal year. Read More Facebook

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Eaze launches (nearly) nationwide delivery of hemp-derived CBD products By Adam Tschorn Eaze Wellness offers non-psychoactive CBD products derived from hemp. (Eaze) Eaze, the San Francisco-based technology platform thats been coordinating dispensary-to-consumer home deliveries of cannabis in Los Angeles since April, has expanded its reach  for CBD-containing products, that is  to most of the United States. (CBD, a.k.a cannabidiol, is a cannabis compound said to have anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties but none of the high associated with THC. These claims have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.) Through the just-launched Eaze Wellness website, consumers over the age of 21 in 41 states and the District of Columbia can order a range of hemp-derived CBD tinctures, tablets, balms, bath bombs, patches, vape pens and pet products for delivery within four to six days. (Shipping is free for orders $50 and up; otherwise, itll cost you $5.) Much like its in-state marijuana-delivery service, which coordinates deliveries with local dispensaries, Eaze isnt doing the shipping itself, but rather working with a third-party partner to get goods from brands such as Plant People, Cannuka, BeTru Wellness and Vital Leaf from point A to point B. Although the laws surrounding the legality of CBD are murky at best (a loophole in federal law has been widely interpreted as making CBD derived from hemp grown for research purposes legal), one point B that Eaze Wellness wont be coordinating shipping to is its home state of California. (The company cites state regulations as the reason.) Yes, California, where cannabis  even the kind that gets you high  has been legal under state law since the beginning of the year. Additional information is available at www.eazewellness.com. Facebook

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What THC-infused edibles are most popular? Fruit-flavored gummies and chocolate-covered coffee beans for starters By Adam Tschorn Nearly a year in to the state-legal cannabis scene, theres no shortage of THC-infused items on the market for 21-and-older consumers, from sachets of herbal tea and cans of citrus-flavored soda to honey mustard pretzels, with analysts and dispensary owners seeing it as a growing side of the business. Since recreational use was legalized in January, edibles have seen a 20%-30% hike in sales, said Nick Danias, managing partner of the Pottery and Cannary West dispensaries in Los Angeles, who added that edibles have proved particularly popular with new cannabis users who might be reluctant to start experimenting by smoking cannabis flower. Edibles companies have been able to offer consumers micro dosing that allows for a controlled amount of THC to be ingested, he said. (State law requires that edibles be portioned or scored into servings that contain no more than 10 milligrams of THC per piece and no more than 100 milligrams of THC per package.) Read More Facebook

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5 more marijuana permit applications await Costa Mesa Planning Commission By Luke Money The torrent of applications from marijuana manufacturing and distribution facilities looking to open in Costa Mesa continues Thursday, when city planning commissioners will review five more during a special meeting. Should the commission grant all the requested conditional use permits, it would bring the total number of marijuana facilities with such approvals to 22  including nine in the past month. The applications up for review this time are: Read More Facebook

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Two shot and killed in Koreatown marijuana dispensary By James Queally Two people were shot and killed early Monday morning after gunfire erupted inside a Koreatown marijuana dispensary, authorities said. Officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 400 block of Western Avenue in Koreatown around 4:20 a.m. Monday, according to a statement issued by the Los Angeles Police Department. There, they found a locked and sealed marijuana dispensary, according to the statement. A female employee told police she and several customers were inside the dispensary when they heard gunshots in the waiting room. They fled through the back of the building, and when officers gained entry, they found two people who were pronounced dead at the scene. Read More Facebook

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Party of Mexicos president-elect wants to legalize marijuana By Associated Press The party of Mexicos president-elect submitted legislation Thursday that would legalize marijuana possession, public use, growing and sales. Sen. Olga Sanchez Cordero presented the measure, saying that everyone should have the right to carry up to 30 grams [1 ounce] of cannabis. People could carry more than an ounce if they obtained a permit to do so under the proposal. From the point of view of negative effects, there is no reason why marijuana should not be legal, if alcohol and tobacco are, according to the bill. Read More Facebook

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Want to grow your own marijuana? This class will show you how By Jeanette Marantos California law lets anyone over 21 grow up to six marijuana plants in their yard or home, as long as the plants are not accessible to the public. (Check your City Hall for any additional local rules.) Unsure how to start? Check out Fig Earth Supplys two-hour workshops, Cannabis Cultivation for the Home Grower, on Nov. 10 or Nov. 17, taught by professional cannabis growers. Attendees must be at least 21. No plants or seeds will be sold. Workshops cost $95 and start at 5 p.m. at 3577 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles. More info: figearthsupply.com Read More Facebook

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Whats that smell? Survey asks Venice Beach denizens if theyre vexed by odor of marijuana By Joseph Serna They descended on free-wheeling Venice Beach with clipboards and questions in hand. Their goal: to gauge humanitys tolerance for the smell and sight of public pot smoking. Akbar Karriem considered them ridiculous. Everybody be smoking, Karriem said as he sat on the boardwalk and lit a marijuana pipe. Its part of the culture here. Its like a religion. Read More Facebook

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Las Vegas newest and biggest pot shop aims to entertain By Jay Jones Prepare to be entertained at Las Vegas newest and biggest cannabis store a mile west of the Strip. Planet 13 combines light shows and fog-making fountains to wow visitors at the shop, which sells recreational pot, cannabis extracts and cannabis-infused products. The idea is to meld a cannabis shop with an entertainment complex. Visitors, who must be at least 21, can change the colors of 13 giant LED-lighted lotus flowers blooming on the roof of the building. Read More Facebook

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CBD-infused products are being sold everywhere in California  but are they legal? By Laura Newberry Greg and Gary Avetisyan make no secret of it: They proudly sell all manner of products infused with CBD, from essential oils to bath bombs to fruity tea-like beverages that promise calming relief in a frantic world. CBD, short for cannabidiol, is a molecule derived from cannabis. But unlike its chemical cousin THC, it wont get you high. What it might do, according to some research, is alleviate anxiety, seizures, chronic pain and dozens of other ailments. The Avetisyan brothers belief in the alleged benefits of the extract is so steadfast that they opened Californias first CBD-only store, Topikal, in Tarzana last year and opened a second along the Venice Beach boardwalk in April. Read More Facebook

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Review: Documentary Weed the People looks at cannabis and pediatric cancer By Kimber Myers An urgent cry for help, Weed the People explores the effects of cannabis on pediatric cancer, as well as the establishments disinterest in researching its efficacy. With the lack of scientific studies available, Abby Epsteins moving documentary primarily devotes its time to five children and their families who are trying to survive using the alternative treatment. Weed the People doesnt ease into its multi-story narrative, wasting no time in sharing the stories of these kids with cancer. With parents desperate for their children to feel better, they turn to medical marijuana to ease the pain, as well as directly addressing the cancer cells. Without studies and lack of nationwide legalization, there is little regulation in the industry. Enter Mara Gordon, a former process engineer who brings precision and rigor to her medical cannabis company, offering the families hope for healing. Read More Facebook

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Denver verdict on pot odor and property values could discourage homeowners from filing RICO lawsuits By Associated Press A Colorado jury likely threw cold water on future legal challenges against cannabis companies by homeowners who consider filing racketeering lawsuits alleging that proximity to pot operations hurts their property values, analysts and industry lawyers said Thursday. A federal jury in Denver on Wednesday rejected claims involving the odor from a pot farm made in a case that was closely watched by the marijuana industry. It was the first such lawsuit to reach a jury. Three others are pending in California, Massachusetts and Oregon. Read More Facebook

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Santa Barbara County Sheriffs Office makes its largest seizure of illegal marijuana plants By Joseph Serna An estimated 400,000 marijuana plants were destroyed by Santa Barbara County sheriffs investigators this week in what authorities are calling the countys largest seizure of pot plants at one site. The plants were hidden among farmland in Santa Maria and discovered by sheriffs investigators on Monday, the sheriffs office said in a statement. The crop belonged to a resident who, authorities said, had applied for a temporary state cannabis license using false information and did not have a valid cannabis license. Investigators found the 400,000 plants in various levels of maturity and tapped state Department of Fish and Wildlife personnel to help in the case. Read More Facebook

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Is Rohrabacher trying to lose Republican voters by caving on marijuana policy? To the editor: I was disappointed to read in a column on voters trying to flip an Orange County congressional district that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) wants to weaken federal laws against marijuana. Recently-approved state laws legalizing marijuana have not been beneficial. In Colorado, following the legalization of recreational marijuana, the number of traffic fatalities involving marijuana-impaired drivers more than doubled. Surveys have found a majority of marijuana users in Colorado do not believe driving high is dangerous, leading some to get behind the wheel impaired. As a retired law enforcement officer who has had the opportunity to work with people impacted by drug addiction, and as a lifelong Republican, I feel Rohrabacher is making a mistake. Read More Facebook

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Berners Melrose birthday bash celebrates a new dispensary  and a collaboration with the G Pen Gio By Adam Tschorn The Cookies dispensary at 8360 Melrose Ave. celebrated its grand opening on Saturday. (Grenco Science) On Saturday morning, the lines were stretching around the corner and down the block outside the bright blue Beverly Grove storefront with the word Cookies above the door. The enthusiastic members of the crowd werent queued up for baked goods, though. They were waiting to get into a new cannabis dispensary  and to help celebrate the birthday of its founding partner, Bay Area rapper and entrepreneur Berner (born Gilbert Millam Jr.). Minimalist, awash in natural light and appointed in the brands blue and white color scheme and emblazoned with the cookie-with-a-bite-missing logo, it marks the second Cookies dispensary in Los Angeles County; the first, Cookies Los Angeles, is located in Maywood. Like that one, its stocked with a wide variety of cannabis flower, oils, edibles and the like, with a particular emphasis on the proprietary strains from the Cookie Family collective (the growers who originated the strain formerly known as Girl Scout Cookies as well as other dessert-named strains such as Gelato and Sunset Sherbet). It also stocks three different Cookies-logoed colors (blue, white and black) of the new G Pen Gio ($29.95), a vaporizer pen that uses cannabis concentrate cartridges for a super-simple, draw-activated plug-and-puff experience. The Cookies G Pen Gio from Grenco Science x Berner collaboration officially launched at the Saturday Berner bash, and includes Gio cannabis-oil cartridges filled with Gelato, London Poundcake, Sunset Sherbet or Snowman strains ($60 for 500 mg, which Tim Patenaude, Grencos vice president of marketing, says marks the first time those Cookie strains have been commercially available as concentrates. (Gio pod cartridges are now available at 500 dispensaries across 12 states, according to Patenaude, including MedMen, BARC and the Pottery locally, as well as through the Eaze delivery service.) Shown are Berners blue-and-white birthday cake, left, and vape pens and cartridges from his Cookies G Pen Gio collaboration. (Grenco Science) Patenaude says the partnership with Berner has its roots in Grencos 2014 partnership with another rapper  Wiz Khalifa (Wiz Khalifas weed guy was Berner, Patenaude said, and thats how we first met him.). He calls Berner the most important person in cannabis today, citing not only Berner and his partners wildly successful strains, but the rapper/entrepreneurs brand-building abilities outside of the cannabis space. His Cookies clothing label is sold in every Zumiez in every mall in America, Patenaude said. In a chat with the Los Angeles Times Rolling Paper, Berner said that the Cookies SF streetwear label he launched out of his garage less than a decade ago saw $12.8 million in revenue in 2017 and that hes aiming to open a store next door to the dispensary  hopefully in time for the Black Friday shopping season. (Theres currently a single flagship store in San Francisco.) He also said the dispensary opening bash was a good way to usher in his 35th year on the planet. Man, I couldnt be happier, he said. Were turning [over] customers left and right, theres no holdup anywhere, everyone is super-juiced and there was a line down the block and wrapped around [the corner] at 6 a.m. You cant ask for anything else. Cookies Melrose, 8360 Melrose Ave. (at North Kings Road), Los Angeles. Additional information on the G Pen Gio (including local availability) is at gpen.com. Facebook

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2 Chainz wants to put a THC tiger in your tank with his new cannabis brand Gas By Adam Tschorn Rapper 2 Chainz attends the launch party for Gas, his fuel-themed cannabis line now available in flower and pre-rolled joints. (Adam Tschorn / Los Angeles Times) Rolling into the Friday launch party for his new cannabis brand Gas, the first thing Grammy-winning rapper 2 Chainz did was brandish a joint in one hand and a smartphone in the other to record the rows of boldly packaged cannabis flower and pre-rolled joints in a video to share with his 5.7 million Instagram followers. The second thing he did was stand back and take in the moment. I cant believe it, thats why I was over here just trying to take it all in, 2 Chainz said about seeing all the green, yellow and black plastic pouches filled with marijuana, and a jerrycan converted into a display tray overflowing with green buds. Ive been told for over a year that we were doing this line, so now Im just trying to live in the moment. I dont do that a lot. The launch party took place at the Mid-Wilshire offices of Green Street Agency, a cannabis-focused branding and licensing company that is one of the rappers two Southern California partners in the venture. The other is L.A.-based Mazel Management Group (owners of the Westside Station dispensary in Van Nuys). Before joining the throng of well-wishers, industry friends and employees dressed in logo-emblazoned overalls, 2 Chainz (born Tauheed Epps), chatted with the Los Angeles Times Rolling Paper about his new project, how cannabis branding is like music and what took so long for the project to come to fruition. (Hint: There was lots of taste-testing). The Rolling Paper: Where does the name of your line  Gas  come from and what does it mean? 2 Chainz: Its Atlanta lingo that we use that basically signifies that this is a stronger type of flower  a stronger cannabis. Ive been saying it since I came into the rap game and Ive used it in a few verses of a few songs. At first people were like: What do you mean by [the line] gas in the ashtray? After it caught on and basically went mainstream, I figured why veer off from what got me here? So we started a legal line of cannabis called Gas. TRP: Ive heard that you were pretty picky in the development process. 2C: It took months and months and about 30 different kinds of [cannabis] flower. I think I was looking for that first impression  that first pull  how it made me feel. Were there fireworks or no fireworks? What kind of memory did it create? Thats what I was looking for. TRP: The three different types of flower youre launching with dont have names but numbers  87, 89 and 93  are those supposed to be kind of like octane ratings but for marijuana? 2C: Thats a great way of describing it. The 87, for example [a Petrol OG hybrid, with a THC content of 14%] is for functioning throughout the day, [and for] people who are on the go [or] at work and cant get that whole indica sleepy feeling during the middle of the day. I think 87 will be sufficient. The 89 [a Sour Gas hybrid, 17% THC] is for when people go out for cocktails after work, when they want to get ready for the wind-down  it signifies the medium [strength]. And the 93 [an indica called Gods Fuel No. 2 with a THC level of 20%] Id definitely say is the strongest. Thats for night-night. TRP: How did the fuel theme and octane ratings and all that evolve from the name? 2C: I approached this the way I do in my music  which was come up with the concept and follow all the way through with it. So, when you have Gas, you have to have the gas cans and the imagery that actually represents the gas pumps and things that tie in to the brand itself. I think that gives it legs  gives it a little more substance and sustainability. And I used these colors because I knew they would be very catching and appealing to the eye and I know that I will kind of have to muscle my way in as far as getting where I need to be on [dispensary] shelves these days. I figure I could be on the back of the shelf and you could still see this green, this yellow and this black packaging. Gas prices range from $12 to $14 (for 1-gram pre-rolled joints) and $36 to $48 for 3.5 gram packages of flower. Currently available at Westside Station, 7022 Valjean Ave., Van Nuys. Facebook

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A chemical found in liverwort has surprising similarities to the THC in marijuana By Noga Tarnopolsky Its an amazing plant that produces hypnotic effects, according to online testimonials. Some people who have ingested it or inhaled its smoke say it gave them a mild, marijuana-like high. Now scientists have weighed in. In experiments with more than 100 mice, they found that chemicals in the liverwort plant produced four of the same key effects as THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. An hour after being injected with the experimental chemicals, the mice entered a trance-like state, lost some of their ability to move, became less responsive to pain and experienced a drop in body temperature, according to a study published this week in the journal Science Advances. Read More Facebook

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Hours-long standoff at Tarzana weed dispensary ends after police learn building is empty By Hailey Branson-Potts The police standoff lasted more than six hours, shutting down a busy six-lane stretch of Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana for most of the evening. An armed robbery suspect, authorities said, had barricaded himself inside an illegal marijuana dispensary in a strip mall in the 18300 block of Ventura Boulevard. He was believed to be one of four suspects and was thought to have a female hostage. But when officers searched the building after 8:20 p.m., there was no one inside, said Officer Mike Lopez, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department. Read More Facebook

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State officials decline to drop plan to allow home deliveries of pot in California cities that ban marijuana stores Cities and law enforcement leaders say a state proposal to allow pot delivery to homes would increase crime. (Mathew Sumner / Associated Press) Despite objections from cities and police chiefs, state officials on Friday declined to drop a proposal allowing marijuana firms to deliver to homes everywhere in California, including in areas that have banned pot shops. The proposed rule, which was made public in July, was opposed by the League of California Cities, which represents the states 482 municipalities, and the California Police Chiefs Assn., which said it would jeopardize public safety. But the state Bureau of Cannabis Control announced Friday that it is moving forward with the proposed rule after a series of public hearings and after weighing hundreds of comments from residents and interested parties. Read More Facebook

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San Diego plans to crack down on marijuana ads, especially billboards By David Garrick San Diego officials say they plan to crack down on marijuana advertising, particularly the billboard ads that have become increasingly common with recreational use of the drug now legal in California. Legislation proposed by City Councilman Chris Cate aims to keep marijuana billboard ads out of areas where young people congregate and to prevent illegal marijuana businesses from advertising anywhere. The proposal, which would go beyond relatively new state laws that govern marijuana advertising, will be included in a series of city code updates that Mayor Kevin Faulconers staff plans to present to the City Council next year. Read More Facebook

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Drinking before a flight is common. Now some fliers are turning to pot before takeoff By Hugo Martin Commercial flights can be so stressful  cramped seats, delays, turbulence, loud seatmates  that more than 60% of travelers in a recent survey said they down a drink or two before heading to the airport. But the survey by a drug treatment organization found that nearly as many fliers are now turning to marijuana to relax before getting on a plane. The online survey of 1,137 people who have flown in the past year was taken by Florida-based Delphi Behavioral Health Group. It found that nearly 30% of respondents said they had smoked marijuana and another 25% had consumed pot-infused snacks before arriving at an airport. Read More Facebook

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Marijuana issues dominate Costa Mesa Planning Commission agenda By Luke Money Cannabis-related companies will be front and center in Costa Mesa again Monday, when city planning commissioners will consider four applications for proposed marijuana manufacturing and distribution facilities. Should the Planning Commission OK all the requests, it would bring the number of marijuana businesses with city-approved conditional use permits to 17. First up will be Aureus LLC, which is looking to open in a 5,556-square-foot industrial space at 3505 Cadillac Ave., Building A. The company proposes to manufacture cannabis concentrates, particularly oils intended for use in vaporizer cartridges, according to city planning documents. Read More Facebook

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Canada is now the worlds largest legal marijuana marketplace By Associated Press Ian Power was among the first to buy legal recreational marijuana in Canada but he has no plans to smoke it. He plans to frame it. Canada became the largest country with a legal national marijuana marketplace as sales began early Wednesday in Newfoundland. Power was first in line at a store in St. Johns, Newfoundland. I am going to frame it and hang it on my wall. Im not even going to smoke it. Im just going to save it forever, Power said. Read More Facebook

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Bloom Farms doubles its meal donations on Oct. 16 in observance of World Food Day By Adam Tschorn Bloom Farms Pineapple Single Origin vape cartridge is a World Food Day exclusive that will be available only in October. (Bloom Farms) In recognition of the United Nations designation of Oct. 16 as World Food Day 2018, Oakland-based cannabis company Bloom Farms is doubling its usual meal-donation-per-sale for purchase made through the Eaze delivery service (which is doing its part by offering a day-long 20% discount on all Bloom Farms products) as well as participating dispensaries statewide (including Buds & Roses, Urban Treez and Green Dot locally). The company says that since 2014 it has donated about 1.4 million meals to food banks statewide through its one-for-one program, with a goal of donating 5 million meals. World Harvest Food Bank in Los Angeles and the San Diego Food Bank are among the SoCal beneficiaries of the Bloom Farm donations. Although the double-down on meal donations lasts only one day, Bloom Farms has a couple of slightly less time-sensitive promotions to raise awareness and drive donations in furtherance of the U.N.s mission of a zero-hunger world by 2030. One is a partnership with vaporizer maker Pax  which has pledged $10,000 to fund meal donations  that includes a free Pax Era vape pen (custom-engraved on-site) with the purchase of two Bloom Farms Pax pods at special dispensary events throughout the month, the second is an exclusive, October-only Pineapple Single Origin vape cartridge that, after the purchase of any two Bloom Farms products  can be purchased for just a penny. Additional information  and a calendar of dispensary events and demonstrations  can be found at getbloomfarms.com/events. Facebook

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Screened at U.S. border, Canadians who are honest about using marijuana could be banned from the U.S. By Kurtis Lee Bill Powers flipped through the sworn statement he gave to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the printed pages taking him back to that August afternoon  back to the border checkpoint into Washington state where agents asked if he had ever smoked marijuana. Yes, he answered, not initially thinking much of the question. The 57-year-old Canadian has a license for medical marijuana, and pot had been legal in Washington for six years. Like that, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents turned him away with an extreme decree: He had been banned from the United States. Its absolutely out of control. Here I am being honest with the United States and I get the boot, Powers said on a recent afternoon as he stood in his driveway in this farming town an hour east of Vancouver. I have a license  yet theyre turning people away for pot? It makes not a single bit of sense. Read More Facebook

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Newport mayor says he wants to sell his boat factory site, not grow marijuana on it By Hillary Davis Despite having local and state approvals to cultivate or distribute medical marijuana on the site of his boat factory in San Bernardino County, Newport Beach Mayor Marshall Duffy Duffield says he isnt a pot farmer. Rather, he says, he sought the entitlements to make the property more attractive to buyers so he can move his factory to Utah. Duffield said in a statement emailed to the Daily Pilot on Sunday that he split his 4.7-acre property in Adelanto into thirds and sought a cannabis distribution permit from the California Bureau of Cannabis Control to take advantage of increased property values that followed Adelantos passage of a medicinal cultivation ordinance in 2015 and creation of a cultivation zone in 2016 that later expanded to include the factory site. As a property owner, I am trying to maximize the value to sell the land, not grow pot, Duffield said. I am actively manufacturing electric boats at the plant and there is no room to be growing pot. Read More Facebook

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NHL: Legal pot in Canada wont affect league policy By Associated Press Now a handful of years into retirement from more than a decade of junior and pro hockey, former enforcer Riley Cote is a proponent of cannabis and its oils as an alternative to more addictive drugs commonly used by athletes to play through pain. Marijuana can be detected in a persons system for more than 30 days, is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency without a specific therapeutic use exemption and is illegal in much of the United States. Canada on Wednesday will become the largest country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana. That means it will be available under the law in seven more NHL cities (its been legal to adults in Denver since 2012). The move is a step forward for those who, like Cote, believe marijuana has been stigmatized and should be accepted as a form of treatment. It was so tainted for a long time, Ottawa Senators forward Matt Duchene said. And now people are starting to learn a little bit more about it and there is definitely some positive uses to different elements of it. Read More Facebook

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Costa Mesa council to review marijuana permit decision By Luke Money Costa Mesas review process for marijuana-related businesses will enter uncharted territory Tuesday when the City Council takes a second look at an earlier decision to award a required permit. So far, whats separated this particular application by Pivot Naturals LLC from the dozen other marijuana manufacturing and distribution facilities that previously sailed through City Hall isnt so much the question of whether the business should be allowed to open, but when. City planning commissioners decided last month to grant the business a conditional use permit to operate within a 5,283-square-foot industrial space in Suite 101 at 3595 Cadillac Ave. However, they added a new wrinkle by restricting hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Read More Facebook

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Business linked to Newport mayor paid councilman to help create marijuana facility in Inland Empire, records show By Hillary Davis A business linked to Newport Beach Mayor Marshall Duffy Duffield paid his City Council colleague Scott Peotter to help convert part of Duffields boat manufacturing facility in San Bernardino County to a medical marijuana cultivation or distribution hub, records show. Peotter made at least $10,000 from DC Developments, a Duffield-associated company, according to Peotters state-required statement of economic interest forms. A string of corporations that financially tie the two together appears to answer a question  has Peotter ever worked for Duffield?  that has dogged them for weeks as they seek reelection in November. Read More Facebook

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Following California, pot legalization campaigns across the U.S. aim to throw out old convictions By Kurtis Lee Rob Jenkins tried for four years to find a job, scouring the internet for anything that seemed at all appealing  a maintenance position at a Chevron refinery, a counselor for foster kids, a clerk at Hertz. Some employers seemed interested, until they found out about his 2008 misdemeanor conviction for growing marijuana. I was stuck, recalled the 37-year-old college graduate. No job opportunities were coming in. Read More Facebook

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Canada is about to legalize marijuana. How did that happen? Justin Trudeau, for starters By Kurtis Lee Politicians herald it as transformative. Residents offer resounding support in the polls. Investors see billions of dollars on the horizon. When Canada legalizes marijuana on Oct. 17, it will join Uruguay as the only countries to allow recreational cannabis nationwide. The South American country became the first in 2013. The effort, years in the making, is unlike the piecemeal approaches to marijuana legalization that have been passed in the United States and the Netherlands. For pot proponents around the world, Canadas implementation of legal marijuana is being closely watched. Read More Facebook

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Can you carry marijuana in LAX? Yes, but its more complicated than that By Chris Erskine LAX wants you to know this about the marijuana you may be taking with you on your trip: Whats legal on the street is also legal in the terminals. Up to a point. Travelers can carry the legal amount of marijuana in California  up to 28.5 grams through the airport areas that are under city supervision, that is up to pre-security checkpoints. Read More Facebook

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Dont you dare light up at Las Vegas new cannabis museum By Jay Jones Inhale  we mean through your nose  in the new marijuana museum in Las Vegas. You wont smell a thing, even though recreational pot is legal in Nevada. Signs in the elevators at Neonopolis, the downtown entertainment, dining and retail center thats home to the immersive Cannabition museum, make it clear that consumption in public is still against the law. Just steps away, a colorful mural covering the museums exterior depicts the changing attitudes toward marijuana, from the scare tactics of the 1930s to strict law enforcement in the 80s to growing tolerance today. That history is depicted in greater detail once youre inside. Read More Facebook

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Costa Mesa Planning Commission awards permit to 13th marijuana business By Luke Money A 13th marijuana manufacturing and distribution facility took a step closer to opening in Costa Mesa after the city Planning Commission decided Monday to grant it a required permit. The 3-2 vote, with Chairman Stephan Andranian and Vice Chairman Byron de Arakal opposed, awards a conditional use permit to Pivot Naturals LLC to operate in an existing 5,283-square-foot industrial space in Suite 101 at 3595 Cadillac Ave. Pivot Naturals intends to process cannabis oils into a powder for use in a variety of products, including tablets, food and beverages. Read More Facebook

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Kindergartner can take cannabis drug to school, judge says By Associated Press A kindergartner can keep bringing a cannabis-based drug used for emergency treatment of a rare form of epilepsy to her public school, a judge ruled Friday. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that a judge sided with the family of 5-year-old Brooke Adams. The Rincon Valley Union School District in Santa Rosa sought to ban the ointment from school grounds because it contains the active ingredient in marijuana. Read More Facebook

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Glendale police seize hundreds of marijuana plants after reportedly discovering elaborate grow operation By Andy Nguyen What started as a routine wellness check by Glendale police officers on Monday led to the alleged discovery of an illegal marijuana grow operation and the seizure of more than 600 plants. Officers with the Glendale Police Department were in the 100 block of Wonderview Drive at around 12:40 a.m. after receiving a call about a person yelling for help from one of the homes in the neighborhood. After speaking with the homes occupant, 38-year-old Rui Yun Guan, officers entered the residence and discovered it had been converted into an elaborate marijuana grow operation, according to Tahnee Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for the department. Read More Facebook

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Tilrays wild ride shows how hyped pot stocks are catching up to the crypto craze By Craig Giammona Tilray Inc. investors could probably use a bit of the companys products right now. The Canadian maker of medicinal cannabis extracts finished a whipsaw session Wednesday with its share price 38% higher. But Tilray was up as much as 94% earlier in the day, peaking at $300. Fifty-three minutes and four trading halts later, it was in negative territory. The closing flourish that added $63 to the share price  it finished up $59.08 to $214.06  took just six minutes. It left a sea of bodies, both longs and shorts, behind in its wake, said Dave Lutz, managing director at JonesTrading. Read More Facebook

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Marijuana industry fights stoner, pot and other words that stigmatizes people By Gary Robbins Theres a badge on her uniform, possibly a gun on her hip, and her arms are spread a little, suggesting shes ready for anything. You might think that youre looking at a police officer walking a beat. But what youve seen on billboards and, more recently, the internet is an effort by MedMen Enterprises of Culver City to remind you that marijuana users come from all walks of life. They can be cops, nurses, teachers, scientists, construction foremen and grandmothers. Read More Facebook

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Police arrest eight people after searching illegal cannabis store in San Fernando Valley By Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Los Angeles police arrested eight people at an illegal cannabis store in the San Fernando Valley after serving a search warrant, officials said Wednesday. About 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Los Angeles Police Departments Mission Area Narcotics Unit searched a cannabis retail shop in the 15400 block of Devonshire Street and confiscated several items of evidence and contraband, police said in a news release. The store was operating without proper permits and was considered a nuisance location, authorities said. Read More Facebook

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More than 2 million U.S. middle and high school students have vaped marijuana, study finds By Karen Kaplan Electronic cigarettes are the most popular tobacco product among U.S. teens, but tobacco isnt the only thing theyre vaping. A new report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that more than 2 million middle and high school students have used an e-cigarette to vape marijuana. That figure is based on survey results from the 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey, which polls a representative sample of American students in grades 6 through 12. Among the questions the 20,675 participants were asked in 2016 was, Have you ever used an e-cigarette device with a substance besides nicotine? One of the possible answers was this: Yes, I have used an e-cigarette device with marijuana, THC or hash oil, or THC wax. (THC, short for tetrahydrocannabinol, is the mind-altering chemical that produces marijuanas high.) Read More Facebook

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Police chiefs warn of increased crime if California allows pot deliveries statewide By Patrick McGreevy The prospect of vans loaded with pot delivering to homes in quiet Morgan Hill makes Police Chief David Swing uneasy. Like most cities in the state, the upscale San Jose suburb has banned pot shops. But now, as California considers a proposal to allow marijuana businesses to send home-delivery vans into communities where retail stores are prohibited, Swing and others in law enforcement say they are preparing for the worst. This will make it easier and more lucrative to rob a delivery person than a liquor store, said Swing, who is president of the California Police Chiefs Assn. He notes drivers would be allowed to carry up to $10,000 in cash. Robberies are the tip of the iceberg. They can lead to other crimes, including aggravated assaults and homicides. Read More Facebook

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Tesla erupts in chaos after senior executives leave and Elon Musk tokes up By Dana Hull The turmoil at Tesla Inc. reached a fever pitch Friday, as news emerged that two senior executives will leave Elon Musks electric-car maker a matter of hours after he smoked marijuana during an hours-long interview with a comedian. Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton gave notice Tuesday that he was resigning less than a month into the job, according to a filing. Teslas stock plunged, then extended declines after Gabrielle Toledano, the head of human resources whos been on a leave of absence, told Bloomberg News that she wont rejoin the company. Morton, a former chief financial officer for computer-drive maker Seagate Technology Plc, joined Tesla the day before Chief Executive Musk tweeted that he was considering buying out some investors at $420 a share and taking the company private. Musk abandoned that take-private effort 17 days later, and in the process drew a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of lawsuits alleging market manipulation. Read More Facebook

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Elon Musk smokes a blunt live on YouTube with podcaster Joe Rogan By Russ Mitchell Elon Musk apparently smoked dope with comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan live on YouTube late Thursday night, then giggled about turning Mars into a big Jamaica. I mean, its legal, right? Musk said, accepting a lit blunt from Rogan in the Los Angeles studio, where The Joe Rogan Experience is webcast live. Rogan told Musk hed rolled marijuana in tobacco leaves. Musk took a single deep toke. If the pair were joking about what they were smoking, they didnt say so. Read More Facebook

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L.A. launches crackdown on unlicensed marijuana businesses; more than 500 people are charged By Joseph Serna A police crackdown on local unlicensed marijuana businesses has ended with misdemeanor charges against more than 500 people in Los Angeles, the city attorneys office said. In 120 criminal cases filed since May, City Atty. Mike Feuer has charged 515 people in connection with 105 illegal marijuana businesses, grow sites, extraction labs and delivery companies located throughout the city, his office announced Friday. All of the defendants were charged with unlicensed commercial cannabis activity within the city, which carries a potential sentence of six months in jail and $1,000 in fines. Local judges have been hearing the cases since May with arraignments scheduled through the end of October, Feuers office said. Read More Facebook

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12th marijuana business wins permit approval in Costa Mesa By Luke Money Costa Mesa planning commissioners Monday evening gave their blessing to another local marijuana manufacturing and distribution facility, bringing the total number of approvals to 12. On a 4-0 vote  with Chairman Stephan Andranian absent  the commission awarded a conditional use permit to Pure Labs Inc., which is looking to open in a 2,025-square-foot space in Unit M-103 at 3505 Cadillac Ave. The decision is final unless appealed to the City Council within seven days. Read More Facebook

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Former L.A. mayor Villaraigosa joins board of local cannabis firm MedMen By James Rufus Koren Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is joining the board of publicly traded cannabis company MedMen, marking his return to the business world following a resounding defeat in Junes Democratic gubernatorial primary. MedMen, a Culver City company that operates high-end cannabis shops in California, Nevada and New York and has aggressive expansion plans, announced Villaraigosas appointment Wednesday morning. Villaraigosa adds political and governmental experience to a board made up of branding, entertainment and accounting executives. Other recent additions to the companys board include Stacey Hallerman, a former executive at the conglomerate that owns luxury brands Montblanc and Cartier, and Jay Brown, the chief executive of of RocNation, the entertainment company co-founded by Shawn Jay Z Carter. Read More Facebook

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Newport man accused of operating illegal marijuana dispensary in Costa Mesa By Luke Money A Newport Beach man is accused of operating an illegal marijuana dispensary in Costa Mesa, according to authorities. Omid Delkash, 47, was charged Monday with four misdemeanor counts of unlawful transportation, sale and furnishing of marijuana. He pleaded not guilty and is in custody at Orange County Jail, records show. He is scheduled to appear in court Friday for a pretrial hearing. Costa Mesa law prohibits the retail sale of marijuana or marijuana products anywhere in the city. Read More Facebook

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California lawmakers want the state to collect data on drivers under the influence of pot By Patrick McGreevy After she was injured in a car accident allegedly caused by a driver impaired by pot, state Controller Betty Yee is backing a bill approved Monday by the Legislature that aims to begin addressing the problem of drugged driving on California roads. The measure sent to Gov. Jerry Brown would require the California Highway Patrol to report on how many motorists stopped for impaired driving are allegedly under the influence of marijuana. Its what other states have done  like Colorado and Washington  to at least start collecting state-level data, Yee said. They just want to understand the extent of cannabis-impaired driving. Read More Facebook

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Marijuana use is rising among pregnant patients. Not so fast, doctors warn By Jenny Gold Marijuana may be losing its image as a dangerous drug, but mounting research suggests women should steer clear of it if they are pregnant or breastfeeding, according to new recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. The advice comes as more than half of the states, including California, have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. Growing acceptance of the drug has made it seem harmless, or even beneficial. As a result, doctors fret that more and more babies are being exposed to the drug. The march toward legalization has outpaced scientific research about marijuanas health effects. Because it is a Schedule 1 drug  one with potential for abuse and no approved medical use  studies have been limited by federal law. Read More Facebook

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Mormon Church ramps up opposition to medical marijuana effort in Utah, speaking out publicly By Kurtis Lee The Mormon Church has played a quiet role in the fight against an effort to legalize medical marijuana in Utah, releasing measured statements and helping to bankroll lawsuits. But on Thursday, leaders of the powerful Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out from behind the scenes. We are deeply concerned by the history of other states that have allowed medical and recreational use of this drug  and have experienced serious consequences to the health of its citizens, Elder Jack N. Gerard, flanked by politicians, medical professionals and other church leaders, said at a news conference at the state Capitol. Read More Facebook

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California lawmakers move to help expunge pot-related convictions California lawmakers voted Wednesday to ease the process for clearing the records of those convicted in the past of marijuana offenses. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) With recreational marijuana legalized by the states voters, Californians with past convictions for cannabis-related offenses would get state help in expunging their records under a bill sent by lawmakers to the governor on Wednesday. Proposition 64, which state voters approved in 2016, legalized the sale and use of marijuana for recreational use and permitted those with past convictions for the activity to petition the courts to clear their records. But state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told his colleagues Wednesday that the process is complicated, and many with pot convictions do not know about the opportunity. Read More Facebook

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By next year, you can buy medical marijuana in Hawaii, but youll still have to jump through some hoops By Jay Jones Out-of-state medical marijuana users next year will be able to buy cannabis products at dispensaries in Hawaii. The only hitches: Visitors will need to apply online and pay $45 (plus a $4.50 processing fee) for a temporary Hawaii medical marijuana card thats valid for 60 days. Weve been fielding a lot of calls daily about reciprocity, said George Bullock, director of the Cure Oahu marijuana dispensary in Waikiki. We really look forward to being able to serve them in the future. The Hawaii Department of Health plans to allow medical marijuana cardholders from other states to make purchases at dispensaries on Oahu, Maui and Kauai. But state officials are not using the word reciprocity because those out-of-state cards wont work. Read More Facebook

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Teen sold weed from her bedroom, with her parents as suppliers, Merced County officials say By Joseph Serna A teenage girl who sold marijuana out of her bedroom was using her gun-toting parents as her suppliers, the Merced County Sheriffs Office said. On Friday, deputies served a search warrant on the home of Jose Reyes Martinez, 44, and his wife in Delhi, Calif., where they found 80 pounds of packaged marijuana and a dozen large plants along with two firearms, officials said on Facebook. The packaged weed was found in the master bedroom closet alongside a loaded AK-47, deputies said. A makeshift greenhouse in the backyard held a dozen large plants, authorities said. Read More Facebook

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Newport Beach sues to halt what city calls a marijuana dispensary at Church of the Holy Grail By Hannah Fry Newport Beach officials are asking an Orange County Superior Court judge to block an operation that identifies itself as a church but the city says is a marijuana dispensary violating local law. Brick-and-mortar marijuana dispensaries are prohibited in Newport Beach under municipal code. Cultivation, processing, distribution and delivery of cannabis have been banned in the city since 2016. A civil lawsuit Newport filed June 25 seeks an injunction to forbid the organization known as Church of the Holy Grail from operating at 2072 Bristol St. It isnt clear how long it has been operating, though the lawsuit states the location has been running without a business license since at least Jan. 24. Read More Facebook

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Proposal to create state-chartered banks for California marijuana industry fails to advance Virgil Grant arranges containers of various strains of medical marijuana in a display case at a dispensary he runs in Los Angeles. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images) California lawmakers on Thursday shelved a proposal to allow the state to license private banks to handle the billions of dollars expected to be generated by the states legal marijuana industry amid questions about the plans feasibility. Voters approved Proposition 64 in 2016 to legalize growing, possessing and selling marijuana for recreational use, but newly licensed pot shops and farms say they cannot put their money in federally chartered banks because cannabis remains illegal under federal law. Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles) proposed that the state could license special privately financed banks that would issue checks to the businesses to pay rent and state and local taxes and fees, and to compensate vendors for goods and services provided to their businesses. Read More Facebook

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Parent of Corona beer bets $3.8 billion on U.S. love of marijuana By Bloomberg Constellation Brands Inc., which for seven decades has made its money off beer, wine and whiskey, sees its future in a marijuana leaf. In the biggest (legal) marijuana deal, the Victor, N.Y., beverage company will spend about $3.8 billion to boost its stake in Canadian grower Canopy Growth Corp., betting legalization will gain traction around the world and especially in the United States. This is rocket fuel, Canopy Chief Executive Bruce Linton said on the companys earnings call Wednesday. Were going to be way more global. Read More Facebook

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Marijuana is not really legal in California if residents dont have a reasonable way to buy it By The Times Editorial Board California law allows adults to buy marijuana. It allows licensed businesses to deliver marijuana to customers, and it says specifically that cities and counties cannot prevent delivery services from traveling on public roads. Yet even though cities cant stop deliveries traveling through their jurisdiction, many cities currently ban deliveries to their jurisdiction. That means that unlike deliveries of virtually every other legal, adult-use product  including alcohol and cigarettes, which can be ordered over the internet in California  marijuana deliveries are barred. The practical effect is that residents in some places have little to no access to legal medical or recreational cannabis products because of local regulations  which seems contrary to the intent of Proposition 64. Roughly half of Californians live in cities or counties that prohibit marijuana stores and delivery services form opening in their jurisdictions. An analysis by the Sacramento Bee earlier this year found residents in 40% of the state had to drive 60 miles or more to find a licensed dispensary to buy legal marijuana  medical or recreational. Read More Facebook

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California cities oppose plan to allow pot delivery in areas where sales are banned California cities are objecting to changes in the states rules on marijuana that they say undermine local control. (Mathew Sumner / Associated Press) California cities on Monday objected to a state proposal that would allow marijuana delivery to homes in areas where storefront pot sales have been banned locally. The changes, which are being considered by the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, will undermine a citys ability to effectively regulate cannabis at the local level, Charles Harvey, a legislative representative for the League of California Cities, said in a letter to the bureau. The cities group, which represents the states 482 municipalities, supports other changes to clarify the rules of Proposition 64, which was approved by voters in 2016 and allows the growing and sale of marijuana for recreational use. Read More Facebook

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Cypress Hills B-Real set to open a Sylmar dispensary, as Cannary West takes flight Saturday By Adam Tschorn B-Real, from left, Kenji Fujishima and Rojo Desantis in front of the soon-to-open Dr. Greenthumbs dispensary in Sylmar. (Dr. Greenthumbs) Rapper and marijuana entrepreneur Louis Freese, better known as Cypress Hill frontman B-Real, plans to celebrate the grand opening of his flagship dispensary in Sylmar with a day-long bash next Wednesday. Called Dr. Greenthumbs  a name music fans will recognize as the title of a 1998 Cypress Hill song  the Foothill Boulevard dispensary will be heavy on strains from B-Reals Insane brand of cannabis as well his Phuncky Feel Tips product line (glass tips designed to fit the business end of a hand-rolled joint). It will also serve as the home base for the rappers online BReal.TV network. According to todays announcement, the Wednesday event will be open to the public (though youll need to be at least 21  or 18 with a medical marijuana card) and feature a line-up of BRealTVs DJs as well as a slew of surprise guests [making] appearances throughout the day. A second Dr. Greenthumbs is expected to open in Cathedral City later this year. Dr. Greenthumbs grand-opening party, Aug. 15 from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., 12751 Foothill Blvd., Sylmar (just west of the 210 freeway between Arroyo and Vaughn streets). Cannary West In other dispensary-opening news, a rebooted and relocated Cannary West (this version by the folks behind the stylish, upscale Venice Blvd. dispensary the Pottery), officially opens its doors Saturday. Although parts of the space in the Rancho Park neighborhood are still under construction, its only because plans include adding sustainable on-site cultivation (a process also underway at the Pottery), it does already have one of Los Angeles real estates most enviable features  a dedicated off-street parking lot for customers around back. To mark the grand opening, the first 200 customers who spend $30 or more after the dispensary opens for business at 10 a.m. will receive a little something special for their efforts. Cannary West, grand opening, Aug. 11 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., 2435 Military Avenue, Los Angeles (just south of Pico and two blocks east of Sepulveda). Facebook

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As budget remedies, Huntington Beach may explore marijuana-related revenue and boosting fines for illegal short-term rentals By Priscella Vega With general-fund revenue increases projected to taper off in coming years, the Huntington Beach Finance Commission this week recommended several potential budget-tightening and revenue-generating solutions. Among them are increasing fines for illegal short-term rentals, reducing city staff and exploring opportunities for marijuana-related revenue. Some recommendations will be unpopular with employees, but at the same time we hope they realize implementing some recommendations may make funding available for salary increases, Finance Commission Chairman Nouha Hreish told the City Council during a study session Monday. Read More Facebook

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High Times rolls out new online video network By Adam Tschorn High Times, which launched as a print magazine in 1974, has added a streaming video service to its offerings. (High Times TV) Los Angeles-based cannabis media brand High Times, which launched as a print magazine in 1974, has added a streaming video service to its offerings. Announced Thursday, the ad-supported web channel High Times TV is both a showcase for the brands own content (behind-the-scenes videos from its Cannabis Cup events, for example, and how-to videos for ganja guacamole) as well as a platform for an assortment of independent cannabis-content creators like the Stoner Mom (a Colorado mother with a family of six who focuses on living a responsible cannabis lifestyle), StrainCentral (a strain review site founded by Joshua Young) and That High Couple (Hollywood-based couple Alice and Clark who chronicle their THC-infused life via social media). While High Times newest venture is hardly a unique move- there isnt a legacy media brand out there that isnt trying to capitalize on streaming video  it could end up being a lifeline for the independents in the stoner space who have seen their traditional social media channels (particularly YouTube) threatened, restricted or suspended in a cannabis-content crackdown that began earlier this year. High Times TV is now available as an app on Android, Roku and Apple TV as well as online at tv.hightimes.com. Facebook

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Newport Beach lawsuit seeks to ban marijuana business that operated in residential neighborhoods By Hannah Fry Newport Beach officials are asking an Orange County Superior Court judge to block a marijuana business from operating in two homes in violation of city law. A civil lawsuit filed May 4 seeks an injunction to forbid the business  known as OC Healing House, Bud Man OC and Bud Man Newport Beach  from operating at a home on Drakes Bay Drive in Corona del Mar and a home on Promontory Drive in Newports Promontory Point community. The city attorneys office says the business was using the homes for marijuana delivery and distribution. The lawsuit calls the business a public nuisance. Read More Facebook

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Marijuana is a gift from God. A battle over pot pits the Mormon Church against an unlikely group: other Mormons By Kurtis Lee Brian Stoll faced a dilemma as his wedding day approached. For more than a year, he had been smoking marijuana to treat severe back pain, but to remain in good standing with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and get married in the temple, he had to stop using pot. Since marijuana was illegal under Utah law, church leaders told him, it was forbidden. Stoll turned to an opioid painkiller and has continued using it since his marriage three years ago, despite unpleasant side effects and its inability to match the soothing qualities of marijuana. This was devastating ... I had to choose between my health and my fiancee, Stoll said recently. It seemed asinine that if I lived in another state, I wouldnt have to make such a difficult decision. Read More Facebook

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Roommates were unaware of drug lab operation in Glendale home, police say By Andy Nguyen Authorities arrested a man on Friday suspected of operating an illegal butane honey-oil lab out of a Glendale home. John Kelly, 52, was taken into custody after the Glendale Police Department received a tip about the suspected manufacturing operation in the 1400 block of Randall Street. The information was derived from an ongoing narcotics investigation, according to Sgt. Dan Suttles, a spokesman for the department. Butane honey oil is a type of concentrated cannabis product made when marijuana is soaked in butane in order to extract the plants essential oils. The process can lead to explosions if the butane gas builds up in an enclosed area and ignites from a spark. Read More Facebook

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Rams guard Jamon Brown says marijuana is reason for suspension By Gary Klein Rams starting right guard Jamon Brown, suspended for the first two games of the season for violating the NFLs substance-abuse policy, said Thursday that the suspension stemmed from a 2017 incident in Kentucky that involved marijuana. Brown still worked with the first-team offense Thursday as the Rams held their first training camp practice at UC Irvine. Brown, a fourth-year pro from Louisville, said that before last season he was pulled over for speeding and that police found marijuana in the car. Read More Facebook

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Democrats still havent figured out that legal weed is a winning issue By Tom Angell Every Democratic U.S. senator rumored to be considering a 2020 presidential run supports marijuana legalization. So do 77% of Democratic voters. The partys 2016 national platform backs states rights on cannabis and calls for a reasoned pathway for future legalization. So why is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee  the entity charged with winning back control of the U.S. House  attacking a Republican congressman over his support for marijuana reform? And why is it citing a right-wing magazine to make the case? Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) has a cult-like fixation on marijuana, said a National Review article excerpt the Democratic committee highlighted in a tweet posted Monday. The party organ said the GOP congressmans cannabis advocacy is one reason why [Democratic nominee] @HarleyRouda needs your help flipping this seat...from #RedToBlue. Read More Facebook

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They worked at Apple, Amazon and Lyft. Now theyre working to get you stoned By Tracey Lien For much of her career, Natasha Pecor followed a path well-worn by tech workers. She built her reputation with her first employer in the industry, earning the title head of platform at Yelp. Then she jumped to one of the giants, Amazon, where she worked as a product manager. Most recently she parlayed that experience into a leadership role at a smaller start-up  a common move among techies willing to take a risk for a new challenge and perhaps a big payday. But this start-up wasnt exactly a tech company. Read More Facebook

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Fountain Valley man sentenced to life in prison in kidnapping and torture of marijuana dispensary owner By Hannah Fry A Fountain Valley man was sentenced Friday to spend the rest of his life behind bars for kidnapping a medical marijuana dispensary owner and his roommate in 2012 and torturing the dispensary owner as part of a plot to extort money. Orange County Superior Court Judge Gregg Prickett gave Kyle Shirakawa Handley, 39, the maximum sentence of life in state prison. A Superior Court jury in January swiftly found Handley guilty of of kidnapping, aggravated mayhem and torture, all felonies. Prosecutors contended that Handley, a marijuana grower who supplied the victims dispensary, and three other defendants kidnapped the man and his female roommate from their 25th Street home on the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach on Oct. 2, 2012. Read More Facebook

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More California kids are having pot-related health scares, poison control officials warn By Patrick McGreevy State and local officials say they are alarmed by a spike in calls they have received to report children and teenagers ingesting marijuana products since California legalized cannabis for recreational use by adults in 2016. The number of calls to poison control centers involving people 19 and younger who were exposed to marijuana has steadily risen from 347 three years ago to 588 last year. In the first six months of this year, there have been 386 calls to poison control centers involving marijuana exposure by underage people. If that trend continues, there could be more than double the reports in 2018 as there were 2015. Nearly half of the calls received last year  256  involved children 5 and younger, including 38 children under 12 months old, and 64 toddlers who were a year old, according to Stuart E. Heard, executive director of the California Poison Control System. Read More Facebook

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With marijuana legal, California flooded with dubious health claims about the drug By Gary Robbins Spend a few minutes surfing Twitter and youre likely to encounter a startling claim that comes without proof: Cannabis cures cancer. The online world is awash with such posts, startling scientists and physicians who are urging weeds proselytizers to tap the brakes. Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown appoints members to new cannabis permit appeals panel Marijuana on display at the Harborside dispensary in Oakland. (Mathew Sumner / Associated Press) Six months after California began licensing growing and selling marijuana, Gov. Jerry Brown on July 3 appointed the first members of a new Cannabis Control Appeals Panel to consider objections from those denied permits or those facing penalties for violating regulations. The governor gets to name three of the five members of the panel and appointed county prosecutor Sabrina D. Ashjian of Fresno, college lecturer Diandra Bremond of Los Angeles, and a staff attorney for the governor, Adrian Carpenter of Plumas Lake. The other two appointments will be made by the Senate Rules Committee and the speaker of the Assembly. Read More Facebook

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Federal law? State law? Which takes precedence when you want to travel with cannabis? By Catharine Hamm You cant take it with you. Actually, you can. But its not a good idea when youre traveling, especially for the risk-averse. We speak, of course, of cannabis; its use was approved by 57% of California voters in November 2016. Proposition 64, known as the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, allows the recreational use of marijuana in the Golden State; medical marijuana had been legal for about a decade before that. Legal, it should be noted, in California. Not legal according to federal law, although President Trump has signaled his willingness to support legislation that, according to an L.A. Times article, would end the federal ban on marijuana. Read More Facebook

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Some of the cruise industrys top execs got together to talk shop Tuesday at Seatrade Cruise Global, a mega-convention that brings together more than 11,000 participants annually in Southern Florida.

The executives discussed the challenges of 2017, when 17 deadly hurricanes swirled through the Atlantic, wreaking devastation on communities and destroying ports.

They also talked about what a great year 2017 was in terms of the cruise line successes.

More than 25 million people took cruises in 2017, and the number is expected to grow to 27 million in 2018, according to the Cruise Lines International Assn.

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If this were Christmas and you were Santa Claus, Id ask for nothing this year, said Frank J. Del Rio, president and chief executive of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.

Del Rio was addressing the audience and Peter Greenberg, CBS News travel editor, who was moderating the conferences keynote panel, State of the Global Cruise Industry.

Other top execs on the panel were Arnold W. Donald, president and chief executive of Carnival Corp., Richard D. Fain, chairman and chief executive of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., and Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Cruises.

Del Rios Christmas gift comment brought laughs from the audience and reflected the strong growth the industry is currently undergoing.

Cruising is becoming so popular that most lines are ordering new ships to accommodate the growth; more than 80 new ships are in development, with 27 expected to launch this year alone.

According to Fain of Royal Caribbean, We are no longer a niche player, and I think you are seeing that in the U.S., beginning to see that in Europe, see it in Australia, and in due course will see that in China and other parts of Asia. Thats why were beginning to do so well.

China is the one sour note in the picture. Cruise lines built new ships in the last few years specifically to appeal to Chinese middle-class travelers but acceptance has been slow in coming.

The recent boom in cruises to Cuba, however, has paid off. Norwegians Del Rio said ships to Cuba are full, at very high prices.

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The Obama administration loosened restrictions on travel to Cuba in 2015 while keeping the embargo against the island nation in place.

Donald, of Carnival Corp., agreed. Cubas fantastic, he said, noting that tighter regulations from the Trump administration last year havent affected sailings. Another plus: We think its great for normalizing relations.

What about the future?

The skys the limit, speakers agreed, and cruisers can expect to find an increasing number of unusual features on ships, said Del Rio. He credits his 10-year-old grandson with the idea for adding a racetrack to ships. A two-story racetrack will debut on Norwegian Bliss, set to launch this spring.

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No idea is absurd anymore, Del Rio said. These ships are big. Anything can fit on them, and they are only going to get bigger.

travel@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimestravel
Travel into the Andes Mountains and then onto the Caribbean coast on a tour of Colombia, one of three itineraries to the South American country being introduced by Wildland Adventures.

The 11-day excursion begins with a city and food tour of Bogota and includes visits to the 16th century town of Villa de Leyva and the UNESCO World Heritage town of Barichara.

Other highlights include hikes through an Andean cloud forest in Iguaque National Park and the Chicamocha Gorge, considered the Grand Canyon of South America.

Dancers on the streets of Cartagena, Colombia. (Wildland Adventures )

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On the coast, participants will explore Tayrona National Park and the ruins of an ancient civilization. The tour concludes in Cartagena with a culinary walk, stopping at cafes and food stands that were favorites of author Garbriel Garcia Marquez.

Dates: April 13, May 18, June 22, July 13, Nov. 23 and Dec. 21 as well as 2019 departures. Custom dates available.

Price: From $3,150 per person, double occupancy, depending on group size. Includes all guided tours, excursions and national park entrance fees, local English-speaking guides, hotels as indicated, most meals and land and sea transportation. International and in-country airfare, tips and gratuities not included.

Info: Wildland Adventures, (800) 345-4453

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
Women across Europe and Asia shouted their demands for equality, respect and empowerment Thursday to mark International Women's Day, with protesters in Spain launching a 24-hour strike and crowds of demonstrators filling the streets of Manila, Seoul and New Delhi.

An artist paints a message on a wall in Sana, Yemen, to mark International Women's Day. (Yahya Arhab / EPA/Shutterstock) During a Women's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, men hold placards highlighting violence against women. (A.M. Ahad / Associated Press) An artist paints a message on a wall in Sana, Yemen, to mark International Women's Day. During a Women's Day rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, men hold placards highlighting violence against women. (Yahya Arhab / EPA/Shutterstock; A.M. Ahad / Associated Press)

Spain

Spanish women were staging dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence. In Barcelona, protesters disrupting traffic into the city center were pushed back by riot police.

In Madrid, hundreds of women gathered in its central square to demand change. Teresa Sonsur, a 38-year-old social services agency worker, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination.

The 731 crosses at Forti de Vinaros beach represent the women who died of gender-related violence since 2007; the installation was part of the International Women's Day events in Castellon, Spain. (Domenich Castello / EPA/Shutterstock) A young woman in Barcelona attends a protest during a one-day strike for women's rights. (Lluis Gene / AFP/Getty Images) 'If we stop, the world stops' is the slogan for the first general feminist strike in Barcelona, Spain. (Quique Garcia / EPA / Shutterstock) The 731 crosses at Forti de Vinaros beach in Castellon, Spain, represent women who died in gender-related violence since 2007. Left, a young woman in Barcelona attends a protest during a one-day strike for women's rights. Right, riot police surround women on a Barcelona street during the general strike for International Women's Day. (Domenich Castello / EPA/Shutterstock; Lluis Gene / AFP/Getty Images; Quique Garcia / EPA/Shutterstock)

Turkey

Women gather as they shout slogans and flash the V-sign for victory during a demonstration to mark International Women's Day in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Ilyas Akengin / AFP/Getty Images

Asia

Across Asia, women came out to mark the day. In China, students at Tsinghua University used the day to make light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the country's president. One banner joked that a boyfriend's term should also have no limits, while another said, A country cannot exist without a constitution, as we cannot exist without you!

Pakistani women rally to mark the International Women's Day in Karachi, Pakistan. (SHAHZAIB AKBER / EPA / Shutterstock) Women join a protest march for International Women's Day in Manila, Philippines. (Jes Aznar / Getty Images) A Reang tribal woman takes care of a baby on the International Women's Day in Khowai district of Tripura state, India. (EPA / Shutterstock) Demonstrators supporting the #MeToo movement in black stage a rally to mark the International Women's Day in Seoul, South Korea. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press) Clockwise from top left: Pakistani women rally in Karachi to mark International Women's Day. In Manila, Filipinas hold a march to mark the day and to protest President Rodrigo Duterte's human rights abuses. South Koreans supporting the #MeToo movement wear all black to rally in Seoul. A Reang tribal woman takes care of a baby in Tripura state, India. (Shahzaib Akber / EPA/Shutterstock; Jes Aznar/Getty Images; EPA/Shutterstock; Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Russia

International Women's Day is a public holiday in Russia, but opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak was one of only a few demonstrators in Moscow.
Indias highest court Thursday upheld the marriage of a Muslim man and a woman who converted to Islam against the wishes of her Hindu parents in a case that fueled claims that Muslims were forcibly converting Hindu women.

The case of 24-year-old Hadiya, who uses one name, and her husband gained national attention after a court in the southern state of Kerala nullified their marriage last year and the Supreme Court asked Indias federal investigative agency to examine allegations of forced religious conversions  a practice dubbed love jihad.

No evidence has publicly emerged to support the claim that Muslims, a minority in overwhelmingly Hindu India, have launched an organized effort to convert Hindu women through marriage. But the allegations have spread through a country led by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Hadiya, who was born Akhila Ashokan in the southern state of Kerala, testified before the Supreme Court that she married Shefin Jahan in 2016 out of love after they met on a matrimonial website.

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Her father had challenged the marriage in the state court in Kerala, alleging that Muslim organizations planned to take her to Syria, where she would be used as a sex slave or human bomb.

Kerala, a lush coastal state of 33 million people, half of whom practice Christianity or Islam, has come under scrutiny from Indian investigators as a potential source of Islamic State sympathizers. Indian police have said as many as 100 people from Kerala have joined or sympathized with Islamic State, although a study by Brookings India, a think tank, last year put the figure at 37.

The Kerala state court ruled last May that a woman Hadiyas age was weak and vulnerable and that marriage, being the most important decision in her life, can be taken only with the active involvement of her parents. The court annulled the union, sending Hadiya back to live with her parents.

The state court ruling galvanized human rights advocates in India, particularly after the Supreme Court  hearing an appeal by Jahan  asked the National Investigation Agency, the countrys main anti-terrorism law enforcement organization, to look into alleged cases of forced conversions.

The agency has not publicly released its findings, and the Supreme Court said that its investigation could continue so long as it did not delve into Hadiyas marriage.

Hadiya was at liberty to pursue her future endeavors according to [the] law, the high court said in its judgment Thursday.

Hadiya did not immediately comment publicly. Speaking by phone, Jahan, who has not been charged in the case, said he was relieved.

Our prayers are heard, he said. We are very happy.

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Hadiyas parents did not answer phone calls.

Parth M.N. is a special correspondent.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Shashank Bengali is South Asia correspondent for The Times. Follow him on Twitter at @SBengali
In a thunderous assault, the Syrian army all but sliced the rebel-held enclave of Ghouta in two Thursday, pushing the death toll to more than 900 since the onslaught began last month and stalling the delivery of food and desperately needed medical supplies.

The fighting created a chaotic and uncertain situation on the ground as world leaders raised concerns regarding the safety of the some 400,000 trapped in the battered territory, just miles from the Syrian capital of Damascus. To many, the fighting was reminiscent of the fierce and final siege in Aleppo when government troops and a Russian-backed airstrike drove rebels from the Syrian city.

Overnight, pro-opposition activists and medical charities reported a devastating uptick in the governments onslaught, including unconfirmed reports that chlorine has been used in a chemical weapons attack, an assertion the government denied.

It was absolutely hysterical. Phosphorous, cluster bombs, napalm, machine gunsplanes combed the Ghouta all night, said Hamza Hassan, a 35-year-old doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society, a group that supports and administers health centers in opposition areas.

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Nothing can stop this, Hassan said via the WhatsApp messaging platform. This isnt war, this is burning an area down that has almost 400,000 people.

A Syrian child walking down a street past rubble from destroyed buildings, in the rebel-held town of Douma (Hamza Al-Ajweh/ AFP/Getty Images )

On Wednesday, 91 people were killed in Ghouta, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a rebel-aligned monitor based in Great Britain that relies on activists in the country. Additional attacks on Thursday raised the death toll to 915 since the beginning of the governments campaign Feb. 18.

Hassan and others claimed that chemical weapons were deployed in Wednesdays barrage. Hassan described the attack on Hammouriyah and Saqba -- adjacent towns some four miles east of Damascuss Old Quarter -- as the harshest chlorine attack I ever saw.

You could smell it all over Hammouriyeh. Fifteen of them were children; water sprays, cortisone, we spared nothing to treat them, he said.

The Observatory also reported 60 people suffered breathing difficulties after Syrian and Russian airstrikes targeted Saqba and Hammouriyeh on Wednesday.

Damascus has long been accused of using chemical weapons, including a Sarin gas attack on the Ghouta in 2013 estimated to have killed anywhere from 281 to more than a thousand people. The government has repeatedly denied the charge, dismissing it again Thursday as a charade.

Photo released by Syrian official news agency SANA shows Syrian government soldiers firing a weapon during a battle against Syrian rebels in eastern Ghouta (AP )

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Pro-opposition activists uploaded footage of what they half-jokingly called a fireworks display over Hammouriyeh. Other images depicted members of the Syrian Civil Defense known as the White Helmets, rescue crews working in opposition-held areas, racing to extinguish burning bodies scattered on the ground.

Rami Abdul Rahman, who heads the Observatory, claimed Thursday that government forces used Thermite munitions, incendiary bombs whose use is banned by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Russia is among the countries that signed that agreement.

Thursdays violence forced humanitarian groups to postpone the entry of an aid convoy into Duma, the de facto rebel capital in Ghouta.

We postponed it because there are many developments The situation is rapidly evolving and its difficult for us to go with the convoy, said Ingy Sedky, the spokeswoman for the International Community of the Red Cross, in a phone conversation Thursday.

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Earlier this week, a 46-truck convoy entered the Ghouta and delivered medical supplies as well as food to some 27,500 people. But the shelling, which continued even as aid workers raced to unload their cargo, meant half the supplies remained on the trucks, the U.N.s coordination office said in a statement Thursday.

The postponement leaves Ghoutas residents in a state of constant tension and fear, said Pawel Krzysiek, a Red Cross spokesman who was aboard the supply convoy.

These people basically spent the last two weeks underground in makeshift basement shelters, he said Tuesday. He said as many as three families would crush into a single room to escape the violence, often going without water, basic sanitation and little food.

Thousands have been uprooted in the territory as the constant airstrikes have emptied out entire towns, while so-called humanitarian corridors that are supposed to provide a safety route for people to evacuate were impossible to reach.

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A Syrian man pulls a wagon filled with belongings as he flees his home in Douma. (Abdullah Hammam /AFP/Getty Images )

Krzysiek said the people in Ghouta he spoke with dont really care about politics and affiliations and loyalties. They really want this to stop.

They want this to be over. They just said, Make the [warring sides] reach any agreement to just stop this hell.

The escalation in the attack was accompanied by a government thrust into the Ghoutas eastern edge, with troops less than a mile from meeting their counterparts on the enclaves western flank, pro-government activists said. Many posted pictures and videos depicting soldiers cheering in what were said to be former rebel-held territories in Ghouta.

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But Wael Olwan, a spokesman for the Rahman Corps [Faylaq al Rahman], one of three of the Islamist factions that dominate the Ghouta, denied that the government had divided the territory.

Very violent battles are still underway, Olwan said Thursday, adding that the rebels had taken back land from loyalist forces.

The revolutionaries are still there and pushing the regime back.

Meanwhile, a number of sources reported negotiations were underway to secure a safe passage for the rebels out of Ghouta; a repeat of a similar deal offered to besieged opposition-held bastions in the past, including Aleppo.

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Abdul Rahman, of the Observatory, and Nicholas Zaher, a Damascus-based analyst, said aid deliveries had been postponed because of the negotiations.

Omar Rahmoun, a former rebel turned negotiator for Damascus, confirmed that talks were taking place between Damascus and the opposition.

There are many sons of the Ghouta in Damascus, local elements, who are opening channels of communication, and Ive spoken to the factions publicly and secretly. But they will delay until the very last minute, when they lose all hope of any external or political cover, he said.

But the decision has been taken by the government that Ghouta will be taken. The matter is clear: When a man finds himself unable to continue then surrender is not shameful.

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Bulos is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @nabihbulos
Iranian police on Thursday arrested several people outside the Labor Ministry building in Tehran, blocking a rally that activists had organized to mark International Womens Day.

Uniformed and plainclothes officers cited women for violating the Islamic dress code requiring them to cover their hair, according to the Kargari news channel, an opposition media outlet based outside Iran.

The channel described a heavy crackdown by police, and Iranians on social media reported large numbers of security officers in vans and motorcycles in central areas of Tehran.

Iranian authorities have sought to quell any large demonstrations in recent months, following the anti-government protests that broke out in dozens of cities in late December. Thousands were reportedly jailed as demonstrators railed against official corruption and economic mismanagement.

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Outside the Labor Ministry building at midday, a Times reporter saw at least two women being detained inside a police van, and officers who were capturing video of bystanders.

One police officer grabbed a womans cellphone; the woman said she had come to the Labor Ministry to seek information about her unemployment insurance and demanded, I want to call my husband!

The arrests came a day after Iranian news media reported that a woman had been sentenced to two years in prison for participating in a growing movement opposing the Islamic Republics law requiring women to wear the hijab, or headscarf.

Tehrans public prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said the woman encouraged corruption by removing her hijab in public, according to the official Mizan news agency.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer, identified the woman as her client, Narges Hossaini, and said she planned to appeal the verdict.

Dozens of women have been arrested since December, when a 31-year-old mother, Vida Movahedi, removed her hijab in Tehrans Enghelab Square and waved it like a flag, sparking a social media campaign and scattered copycat protests.

Outside a French-themed coffee shop where Movahedi stood, police vans and officers were stationed Thursday to deter demonstrators.

Sotoudeh, who said 14 women had been arrested outside the Labor Ministry, questioned the Iranian authorities focus on moral policing.

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I wonder why, in a crime-ridden megacity such as Tehran, with lots of pickpockets and burglaries and shoplifting cases on a daily basis, why our respected public prosecutor is only thinking about a half-meter piece of cloth on womens heads, Soutoudeh said.

Irans state-run media did not report any arrests Thursday. Many instead quoted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying, on the occasion of International Womens Day, that women are the managers of the home and a source of peace in the minds of men.

Irans theocracy has also declared its own womens day, to be observed March 9, commemorating what it says was the birth of Fatimah, the daughter of the prophet Muhammad.

Special correspondent Mostaghim reported from Tehran, and staff writer Bengali from Mumbai, India.

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shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Twitter: @SBengali
UPDATE: 'Very proud ... very sorry,' Ed Pawlowski is resigning as Allentown mayor

A week after being convicted of selling his office for campaign contributions, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski is giving up the office at the top of City Hall, media reports say.

Pawlowski is set to resign Thursday, following years of calls for him to step down after the federal investigation was revealed.

He is in the first year of his fourth term, after being re-elected while under federal indictment. A news conference is set for 2:30 p.m. outside his home.

Pawlowski, his attorney Jack McMahon and city spokesman Mike Moore did not return messages seeking to confirm the planned resignation.

Pawlowski was found guilty March 1 of 47 counts of rigging city contracts for those who gave him money for his political campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate.

Pawlowski is awaiting sentencing in his case, and federal prosecutors said they plan to seek "substantial" jail time for him.

U.S. Attorney Lou Lappen also called on Pawlowski to resign last week.

"It would be the smart thing for him to do," Lappen said at a Friday news conference.

The mayor asked supporters to write letters to the judge on his behalf.

Have a great day..Be strong  Posted by Ed Pawlowski on Thursday, March 8, 2018

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Allentown police are looking for a 16-year-old girl and a 45-year-old man who have been reported missing and may be together.

The department posted a missing person's alert onto its Facebook page Wednesday afternoon that indicates Amy Yu and Kevin Esterly were last seen or or about Monday and they could possibly be endangered.

They may be traveling together in a 1999 red, two-door Honda Accord with a Pennsylvania license plate registration of KLT 0529, the alert states.

Allentown police Capt. Steve Vangelo said that Yu has been reported as a runaway and is believed to be with Esterly. He did not know the nature of their relationship.

Police are hoping that putting their photos out to the public will help them locate Yu and Esterly, he said.

Amy is described as a 4-foot-11-inches Asian woman weighing about 90 pounds. Esterly is a white man standing 5-foot-9-inches and weighing 185 pounds, police report.

"If seen or located you are strongly urged to call 911, your local police department, or the Allentown Police Communications Center at 610-437-7751 and report their location to the Allentown Police Department," police said in the Facebook post.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! PLEASE SHARE! Amy Yu age 16 and Kevin Esterly age 45, have been reported missing and could possibly... Posted by Allentown Police Department on Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A week after his conviction in a federal pay-to-play corruption trial, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski announced Thursday his resignation, effective at 5 p.m. Friday.

The Democrat spoke briefly outside his North 11th Street home, flanked by supporters and facing media from the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia.

"I'm very proud of the part that I played in the unparalleled revitalization and massive rebuilding of this great city," said Pawlowski, elected last November to a fourth four-year term despite being under indictment. "And we worked really hard together, all of us, taking this dying Rust Belt city and turning it into a great example of success.

"Allentown has been my passion and I've given all my heart and my soul for the betterment of this community. And that's why the events of last week are so very, very difficult for me and for my family."

Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, outside his home Thursday, March 8, 2018, announces his resignation effective at 5 p.m. Friday following his conviction in a federal pay-to-play corruption trial. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Pawlowski said he's disappointed in, but respects, the jury's verdict. He was convicted on 47 counts following a six-week trial in the federal courthouse on Hamilton Street in the city.

"And to the residents of Allentown I want to say I'm so very sorry that you and the city had to endure this long, drawn-out saga," he said Thursday. "Over the following months, we're going to be appealing the decision to the courts."

Allentown City Council President Roger MacLean will take over as interim mayor for 30 days, during which time council will consider Democratic residents to be appointed mayor, according to the city clerk's office. Whoever is appointed will serve until a new mayor is elected in 2019 and sworn-in in 2020.

Pawlowski must resign upon his conviction under the city's Home Rule Charter. But, his defense attorney John "Jack" McMahon said Thursday, that is not triggered until the mayor is sentenced.

Pawlowski is free on bail pending an appeals process prior to being sentenced. Prosecutors say he faces "substantial prison time."

"I know it's going to be just a tremendous, tremendous hardship while I await this appeal process for me and my family," Pawlowski said Thursday. "I feel in the best interests of the city, its residents and the hard-working employees of Allentown, it is with great sadness that I will be resigning from my position as mayor effective at 5 p.m. tomorrow."

Pawlowski did not take questions at Thursday's announcement. Speaking to reporters afterward, McMahon said he hasn't spoken with the mayor about what's next for him professionally after 12 years as mayor, a possible prison sentence notwithstanding.

McMahon indicated he is representing Pawlowski in the appeals process for free.

"Nobody's paying the bill," the Philadelphia-based attorney said. "I'm doing it because I think it's the right thing to do."

"I will represent him to my last breath," McMahon also said, before agreeing with a reporter: "That is a strong statement. I believe in him very strongly."

The mayor gave city contracts to law firms and businesses that gave him money for campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate. He retaliated against companies that refused to play along or didn't give sufficiently, according to prosecutors.

Pawlowski denied those claims when he took the witness stand Feb. 21 in his own defense.

He'd been indicted last July 25, more than two years after an FBI raid on City Hall as part of an investigation into city contracting.

He was running for U.S. Senate at the time the search was executed July 2, 2015, but announced he was suspending his campaign four days later.

A series of guilty pleas followed: Lehigh Valley developer Ramzi Haddad in September 2015, to conspiracy to commit bribery; ex-assistant city solicitor Dale Wiles that November, to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud; former city finance director Garret Strathearn in January 2016, also to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud; and former city controller Mary Ellen Koval, also that January, to conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

Mike Fleck, political consultant to Pawlowski and Reading Mayor Vaughn Spencer, pleaded guilty in April 2016 to two federal charges in the investigation into bribery and extortion used to raise campaign funds in both cities. Matthew McTish, president of the engineering firm McTish, Kenkel & Associates that was named in an FBI subpoena, pleaded guilty in April 2016 to conspiracy to commit bribery.

Ex-Allentown Managing Director Francis Dougherty, Pawlowski's former right-hand man, pleaded guilty in March 2017 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in connection with a $3 million street light contract with the city.

Two more contractors, executives from the New Jersey engineering firm T&M Associates and The Efficiency Network, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in June 2017, also in relation to the street light deal.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Bob Donchez has never heard of the group that's buying the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, but knows the group that's selling it quite well.

Las Vegas Sands Corp., which opened the casino on former Bethlehem Steel land in 2009, has delivered on its promises to the city and will be missed, the Bethlehem mayor said Thursday.

"I really want to commend the Sands for their development of the site over the last 10 years and for providing jobs for 2,500 people," Donchez said. "And for being so involved in the community, especially the schools in the South Side. They have been a good corporate citizen."

The company earlier Thursday announced it plans to sell its Bethlehem casino to Wind Creek Hospitality, an affiliate of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians of Alabama, for $1.3 billion.

Donchez met with Sands officials about the deal on Thursday morning. He said he's unsure at this point what the "substantial" sale price covers.

Today, Las Vegas Sands is the majority owner of Sands BethWorks Gaming LLC, which owns the events center, casino and surrounding land totaling about 56 acres.

The mayor is hopeful the new owners continue to redevelop the site. Some of the old Steel buildings have sat dormant for years. Among them is the massive No. 2 Machine Shop, which at one point was being targeted for a convention center and Bass Pro Shops. Those plans stalled out.

He said he's eager to have the buyers visit Bethlehem so he can extend them a friendly handshake.

"I certainly would like to meet with them to educate them about how good our city is and the importance of the historical nature of that site," Donchez said.

The Poarch Band of Creek Indians is the only federally recognized Indian tribe in Alabama. Wind Creek operates nine gaming properties, in Alabama, Nevada, Florida and the Caribbean.

Nick Falsone may be reached at nfalsone@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @nickfalsone. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Another New York City fugitive was arrested Thursday morning in Easton's West Ward, city police Lt. Matthew Gerould reports.

Michael Martin. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Michael J. Martin, 32, was taken into custody after a short foot chase at 9:38 a.m. in the 900 block of Butler Street, Gerould said. Easton's vice unit had been assisting the New York Police Department's Bronx Warrant Squad in searching for Martin in recent days, Gerould said.

A surveillance team saw Martin and after the chase, patrol and vice personnel made the arrest, Gerould said.

Martin was freed Jan. 1, 2016, from prison in New York, about eight months ahead of his scheduled release date, records show. He was convicted of robbery in the Bronx, records say.

The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervisor listed Martin as absconded.

Martin was arrested on charges of robbery, assault and resisting arrest on Sept. 7, 2010, after he punched a woman in the chest and took her cellphone, the NYPD reports. He was arrested May 27, 2009, on a charge of robbery after putting a male in a choke hold and taking his iPod, the NYPD said.

Martin was arraigned later Thursday on charges of being a fugitive from justice, providing false identification to law enforcement, resisting arrest, possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, records show. He was jailed on the local charges in lieu of $45,000 bail, records show.

Darrel Lebrun, a 48-year-old fugitive from Brooklyn living in the West Ward, was arrested Feb. 28 in the 1000 block of Spruce Street. His case was tied to a 1993 robbery in Brooklyn and he was on parole.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Courtey photo | For lehighvalleylive.com

The Northampton County Sheriff's Department was involved in the arrests of six people during the week of Feb. 25-March 3, Sgt. George Volpe reports.

Five of the arrests were made when the department's Criminal Warrant Unit made sweeps throughout the week seeking fugitives, Volpe said in a news release.

The other arrest, of Randy Shepperson, 40, was made as part of the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force, which includes the sheriff's department's Criminal Warrant Unit, Pennsylvania State Police and Pennsylvania Probation and Parole agents, Volpe said.

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James Piperato, 28.

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James Piperato

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James Piperato, 28, was arrested in the 300 block of Main Street in East Greenville, Montgomery County, Volpe said.

Piperato three times violated a protection order "and continually contacted the plaintiff after the order was issued," Vople said.

Piperato was found hiding in a bathroom, Volpe said. Piperato was arraigned before county Judge Jennifer Sletvold and sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail, Volpe said. Piperato remained jailed on Thursday, records show.

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Zane Elshinawi, 29.

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Zane Elshinawi

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Zane Elshinawi, 29, was picked up without incident on South Locust Street in Easton, Volpe said.

Elshinawi was wanted by the Lehigh County Sheriff's Department after failing to appear at his arraignment involving drug possession charges, Volpe said. Lehigh County deputies assisted and Elshinawi was taken to Lehigh County Jail, from where he was freed Wednesday on $1,000 unsecured bail, Volpe said and records show.

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Kevin Billy, 26.

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Kevin Billy

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Kevin Billy, 26, was arrested without incident in the 1500 block of Livingston Street in Bethlehem, Volpe said.

Billy was wanted for violating terms of his supervision on initial charges of terroristic threats and resisting arrest, Volpe said. He remained Thursday morning in Northampton County Prison, records show.

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Brianna Smith, 21.

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Brianna Smith

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Brianna Smith, 21, was arrested without incident in the 2500 block of Nazareth Road in Palmer Township, Volpe said.

She was wanted for violating terms of her supervisor on charges involving receiving stolen property, Volpe said. She was taken to Northampton County prison, where she remained Thursday morning.

Smith and Lyle Jones were charged after the theft of handguns and $15,000 in jewelry in January 2017 from a home in Bethlehem Township.

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Lyle Jones, 21.

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Lyle Jones

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Lyle Jones, 21, was arrested without incident along with Brianna Smith in the 2500 block of Nazareth Road in Palmer Township, Volpe said.

In addition to the Bethlehem Township burglary, Jones was wanted by Colonial Regional police on a Nov. 19 warrant involving receiving stolen property and conspiracy to commit retail theft, Volpe said. Bail was subsequently set at $5,000 on the arrest warrant, Volpe said.

Jones had marijuana and drug paraphernalia and the sheriff's department charged him with those possession crimes, Volpe said. Jones remained Thursday morning in Northampton County prison, records show.

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Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com

Randy Shepperson

Randy Shepperson, 40.

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Randy Shepperson, 40, tried to flee from the rear of a residence in the 1200 block of Ferry Street in Easton, but was arrested by the marshals task force, Volpe said.

Shepperson was sought by Northampton County Adult Probation after allegedly violating his conditions of supervision.

His original felony conviction involved possession with intent to deliver drugs, Volpe said. Shepperon was also in violation of a protection order, Volpe said. Shepperson was subsequently charged by the sheriff's department with "on site contempt of the PFA," Volpe said. Bail was set at $25,000 and Shepperson remained jailed Thursday morning in Northampton County Prison.

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12 fugitives nabbed in latest warrant sweep by sheriff's office

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Have you seen these suspects?

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Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Even though it's known as the Sunshine State, Florida has had it with winter hours. State legislators appear ready to abandon standard time during the winter months in favor of year-round daylight saving time.

We all know what that means -- December sunsets at 6 p.m., instead of 5 p.m. Kids waiting for school buses in the dark in the morning. And for people traveling to or from Florida, adjusting the time at the Georgia border, since Florida would be divorcing itself from the rest of the eastern time zone for several months.

Unless, that is, other states see the benefit and join the trend.

This might seem enticing to those of us in the Northeast, who are about to lose an hour of sleep this weekend with the shift to Daylight Savings Time. Still, there are complications, especially if varying time zones become a north-south proposition as well an an east-west adjustment.

It's not a done deal. Florida needs permission from Congress to secede from the union of time-shifters.

What do you think? Is year-round daylight saving time a better option? Should other states petition Congress to stay on one schedule? Check out how other readers are voting in our informal poll, and feel free to join the discussion in the comments section.
Contempt for politicians  how might we improve their standing? - The Good Oil by Rod Brown

Its difficult to overstate the sense of contempt I have for many politicians  the sense of entitlement, the egotistical attitude of superiority, the double standards, the doublespeak.

This is not my rant, but that of a recently-retired, former senior executive in the federal government. His venom intrigued me because hes not prone to harsh assessments. But he now lives interstate, so he can sit back and watch the circus with clinical detachment.

My mild-mannered friend went on, There are some exceptions, but as a whole, set fire to the bastards. The continuing narrowing of backgrounds from which our politicians are drawn is serious cause for concern. Youre a lawyer, a unionist, a farmer, a political staffer/lobbyist/researcher, or a greenie. Thats pretty much it.

Where are the scientists, the artists, the architects, the engineers, the boilermakers, the IT experts? Maybe most people with real jobs or any sense of principles or integrity cant see the point of politics.

He referred to the table below to underpin his argument.

Business executives, self-employed business owners 57 Political consultants, lobbyists, advisers 32 Party/union officials & administrators 36 Lawyers 30 State politicians 13 Public service 10 Other admin and consultants 9 Farmers, graziers etc. 8 Researchers, project officers 8 Lecturers, tutors, teachers 5 Doctors, dentists, nurses 4 Local government officials 3 Other 11 Total 226



Source: The 43rd Parliament; traits and trends Parliament of Australia (October 2013)

Politicians backgrounds would indeed explain some of their egotistical attitudes of superiority e.g. lawyers subconsciously adopt an air of superiority. But in my 40 years of watching them at close quarters Ive concluded that the key factor is the Queen Bee treatment they get from sycophantic bureaucrats and sections of the media. As a result they get consumed with their own self-importance and power  they forget that their real job is advancing the nation.

A related problem are political donations and the factions, which are not restricted to Labor. By reducing the freedom of expression of individual MPs, factional politics strip away representative democracy and turn almost every issue into a dog fight. Allied to this is the hectoring style of ministers such as Dutton, Morrison and Cash. And opposition leaders are not blameless e.g. Shorten and Burke. It arguably stems from their deep insecurities and a desire to project a tough, confident image to TV audiences. These same individuals are also not averse to deceitful conduct. Little wonder politicians are poorly regarded.

Solutions?

How might we address this behaviour?

Reducing factionalism and the in-fighting lies at the heart of it. Facilitating the entry of more Independents into the process is one way, and voters can do that without any governance changes.

Another step would be to encourage politicians to coordinate across and within portfolios. An example  the Inland Rail project is trumpeted as a legacy of Barnaby Joyce. On current policy settings this is going to be a bigger white elephant than the Adelaide-Darwin railway. If the federal government was operating optimally it would have (i) a cluster program building productive capacity and freight traffic in cities and towns along the route, (ii) policies to shift freight from road to rail, and (iii) road rules requiring large and/or dangerous goods to be moved by rail. There is nothing remotely like this.

Allied to the above is the need for politicians to paint the big picture in order to properly explain things. A recent example was Treasurer Morrison shooting down Abbotts call for immigration cuts on the basis that it would damage his Budget. That is a sliver of an argument.

Another step would be for voters to support the decent politicians, who turn down the volume and speak in measured terms and who look for collaborative outcomes for the national good. Examples to my mind are Porter, Hunt, Birmingham, Cormann, Keenan and Scullion, while on the opposition side Id suggest Dreyfus, Plibersek, Macklin, and Bowen.

And finally lets encourage the media to call out bad and arrogant behaviour, and bring politicians down a peg or two. TV programs like Q&A, The Project and the 7.30 Report are very important in this regard.



Pop up cities

There is a great website featuring innovations in urban development. It features things like autonomous supermarkets, street art, graphic design, street lights to charge your car and DIY urban forests! The website was brought to our attention by Narelle McMurtrie, originally from Junee but now the owner of the classy Bon Ton resort (Langkawi island) and ChinaHouse (Georgetown). The latter has different spaces, including a gallery, pool, bookstore, local art and craft, a daytime cafe with a huge range of homemade cakes, and a night time bar with live music. A huge success. Are you looking to brighten up your community? Get on a plane and tell her I sent you. www.popupcity.net



Trucking industry enquiry needed!

NSW truck deaths up 86 per cent in twelve months, trucks ploughing into cars at traffic lights, trucks travelling unhindered at 120km per hour. The Transport Workers Union calls it a cocktail of death and blames economic pressure. Others point to cowboy truck companies and a drug culture. A reform agenda led by Michael McCormack, the new federal transport minister, is desperately needed. It would impress the nation.

Rod Brown is a Canberra-based consultant and lobbyist specialising in industry/regional development, investment attraction and clusters, and accessing federal grants. He also runs the Cockatoo Network.

Phone: (02) 6231 7261 or 0412 922 559

Email: apdcockatoo@iprimus.com.au

Blog: investmentinnovation.wordpress.com (750+articles)
































Food vans are tailor made

Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council has recently granted $50,000 to the Cootamundra Lions Club through the New South Wales (NSW) Governments Stronger Communities Fund.

The grant enabled the purchase of two catering vans which made their debut at the recent Australia Day celebrations. The vans are kitted out with a number of features including power outlets, stainless steel benches, fridges and water tanks. Complying with NSW food safety regulations, and present a professional standard.

Lions Club members were involved with the design and the vans were constructed by Sydney based company Lukes Food Vans, tailor made to suit the local clubs requirements.

President of the Cootamundra Lions Club, Mr Hugh Roberts said the vans will assist the club and local community organisations with their fund raising ventures.

The mobile street stall van is used on a weekly basis by various community organisations, and will now have the capacity to ensure the weekly street stalls are taking place in a safe, comfortable and up to date facility.

Catering at events and functions is becoming a big part of the activities our local Lions Club is called upon to do, the new catering van will put the club in a better position to cater for events and functions and be equipped to meet food hygiene, OH&S and industry standards.

Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council Mayor, Abb McAlister, said, The Lions Club movement across our region does a great job, they contribute so much to our communities, these vans will ensure the future fundraising needs of the Cootamundra Lions Club.

Council is currently investigating appropriate locations to install power outlets in the street to facilitate the supply of power to the new vans to service the community, instead of relying on the generosity of retailers. The provision of dedicated power outlets will also reduce the public risk factor of running cables across pedestrian traffic ways.

Member for Cootamundra, Steph Cooke, said, Im so pleased this project has been made possible and is another example of how the Stronger Communities Fund has benefitted local organisations.
Small beginnings

City of Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, has re-opened the popular playground on Redferns Kepos Street, following upgrade work over summer.

The Lord Mayor said the little corner park on Kepos Street was her first community campaign and really set her on the path to Town Hall.

When my husband and I moved to Redfern in the late 70s with our two young children, I was shocked to find our local park completely covered in asphalt and surrounded by cyclone wire fencing. When I called the Council at the time, they told me it was easier to sweep up the broken glass that way.

I set off down the street and gathered the local community behind the cause  and eventually we got grass in our little corner park!

A lot has changed since then and the City of Sydney now has some of Australias finest parks and green spaces, with more on the way.

The land this playground sits on was occupied by glass work factories from 1905 to 1933 before being leased to Cinesound Studios. It was vacant from 1947 until 1952 when it became public land.

The playground upgrade is part of an ongoing small parks and playgrounds renewal program by the City.

Five new medium size trees were planted to increase shade at the 480 square metre park, which is already home to a number of mature exotic and native trees.

The upgrade also included new play equipment, a raised deck, covered sand pit, see saw, swings, speaking tubes, shade trees and seating.

With three quarters of our residents living in apartments and our population growing, the citys parks and playgrounds are our backyards.
Wright Book Box opens the next chapter

Canberras newest Book Box has been officially opened in Wright, creating an inviting space for people from the southern reaches of the Molonglo Valley to meet new people and to share their favourite books.

A Book Box is a free book swap system where members of the community leave one book in a safe space in exchange for another.

Wrights Book Box was developed and physically built by two local residents, who have worked with the ACT Governments Mingle program to promote a sense of community and ownership within the Molonglo Valley.

As long as you have a book to swap, this project is open to the entire Wright community free of charge. It is a fantastic example of the sort of community building outcomes Mingle continues to achieve in Canberras newest suburbs.

The Wright Book Box is a community-led project which has been supported by the ACT Government, with a sister system also in operation in neighbouring Coombs.

The Suburban Land Agencys Mingle program aims to build vibrant communities through a range of activities such as new resident programs, events, community working groups and more.
Business NHAI To Incorporate Online Dispute Resolution Mechanism



08.03.2018 13:11:02 - NHAI has initiated Online Dispute Resolution System to resolve the pending claims and cases that worth crores of rupees.



(live-PR.com) - The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), an autonomous agency of the Government of India, responsible for the management National Highways network, has come up with an innovative and new dispute resolution mechanism called Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). In order to have a simpler and smoother way to resolve the pending claims and cases that worth crores of rupees (and - The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), an autonomous agency of the Government of India, responsible for the management National Highways network, has come up with an innovative and new dispute resolution mechanism called Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). In order to have a simpler and smoother way to resolve the pending claims and cases that worth crores of rupees (and also the future cases), the NHAI is testing the new ODR mechanism.



The ODR mechanism comes with certain advantages which can ease the whole process of dispute resolution in a much better and faster way than the traditional litigation system and consumer protection methods, like alternative dispute resolution. Under this mechanism the contractor and authority both need not to engage with an advocate. The primary idea is to achieve a prompt and in-agreement settlement between the parties and avoid all the unnecessary litigations. If this mechanism succeeds in the testing phase then it will be implemented in its full capacity in NHAI. It has the potential to play a constructive role in taking forward all the highway development projects with ease.



How does Online Dispute Resolution work?



There are multiple methods in Online Dispute Resolution to resolve the disputes from automated to crowd-justice. When the ODR is incorporated to resolve the disputes, the cases are referred to a panel of experts who will help the parties involved in the dispute to come to a common understanding and draw a solution. The case will reach the panel only when both the parties, i.e. NHAI chairman and the chief of contractor board of directors, exhaust all the scope of conciliation and settlement.



As this is a modern litigation system, the older cases, which are already in front of the courts and tribunals, can only be shifter to ODR is if both the parties are willing to involve the ODR expert panels for settlement. The private player needs to explicitly submit the request to the court or tribunal to put the hearing in abeyance.

The NHAIs Chief General Manager (IT & Highway Operations) Mr Akhilesh Srivastava is one of the founding members of the High powered committee on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). He has developed an online portal for ODR that is due for the demo to UNCITRAL. CGM Mr Akhilesh Srivastava believes that there are great opportunities for India in ODR and it can create a significant amount of jobs, especially for the software engineers and law graduates. The ODR has the potential to India the favourite destination for dispute resolution in future.



As of now the idea of Online Dispute Resolution if very new in India but it already has started to gain the awareness among the stakeholders. In coming days, the ODR methods and cyber arbitration can create a potent scenario that will help the consumers and e-commerce portal owners to resolve their disputes in a quick, timely, cost-effective and more transparent for the new age technology-driven markets. In this spree of development around the globe, it is important to innovate continuously to stay above the pack. The Indian Government has already launched the "Digital India" initiative to promote digital and internet-based services and increase digital literacy among citizens. The ODR is also the part of the digital initiative and has the potential to make India technologically empowered so that it can stand at par with the developed countries and also ensure that the Government services are making their way to the citizens smoothly and electronically via an improved online infrastructure and strong Internet connectivity.



For More Details -

also the future cases), the NHAI is testing the new ODR mechanism.The ODR mechanism comes with certain advantages which can ease the whole process of dispute resolution in a much better and faster way than the traditional litigation system and consumer protection methods, like alternative dispute resolution. Under this mechanism the contractor and authority both need not to engage with an advocate. The primary idea is to achieve a prompt and in-agreement settlement between the parties and avoid all the unnecessary litigations. If this mechanism succeeds in the testing phase then it will be implemented in its full capacity in NHAI. It has the potential to play a constructive role in taking forward all the highway development projects with ease.How does Online Dispute Resolution work?There are multiple methods in Online Dispute Resolution to resolve the disputes from automated to crowd-justice. When the ODR is incorporated to resolve the disputes, the cases are referred to a panel of experts who will help the parties involved in the dispute to come to a common understanding and draw a solution. The case will reach the panel only when both the parties, i.e. NHAI chairman and the chief of contractor board of directors, exhaust all the scope of conciliation and settlement.As this is a modern litigation system, the older cases, which are already in front of the courts and tribunals, can only be shifter to ODR is if both the parties are willing to involve the ODR expert panels for settlement. The private player needs to explicitly submit the request to the court or tribunal to put the hearing in abeyance.The NHAIs Chief General Manager (IT & Highway Operations) Mr Akhilesh Srivastava is one of the founding members of the High powered committee on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). He has developed an online portal for ODR that is due for the demo to UNCITRAL. CGM Mr Akhilesh Srivastava believes that there are great opportunities for India in ODR and it can create a significant amount of jobs, especially for the software engineers and law graduates. The ODR has the potential to India the favourite destination for dispute resolution in future.As of now the idea of Online Dispute Resolution if very new in India but it already has started to gain the awareness among the stakeholders. In coming days, the ODR methods and cyber arbitration can create a potent scenario that will help the consumers and e-commerce portal owners to resolve their disputes in a quick, timely, cost-effective and more transparent for the new age technology-driven markets. In this spree of development around the globe, it is important to innovate continuously to stay above the pack. The Indian Government has already launched the "Digital India" initiative to promote digital and internet-based services and increase digital literacy among citizens. The ODR is also the part of the digital initiative and has the potential to make India technologically empowered so that it can stand at par with the developed countries and also ensure that the Government services are making their way to the citizens smoothly and electronically via an improved online infrastructure and strong Internet connectivity.For More Details - www.nhai.gov.in Author:

sandhya sandy

e-mail

Web: http://nhai.gov.in/index.htm

Phone: 9573832216 08.03.2018 13:11:02 -

Disclaimer: If you have any questions regarding information in this article please contact the author. Please do not contact Live-PR.com. We are not able to assist you. Live-PR.com disclaims content contained in this article. Live-PR.com is not authorized to give any information about content and not responsible for content posted by third party.
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Stock Market News

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I have nothing to hide; I hope that the one who did it pays for it". These are the resounding words of J. L. O., from Coana, the last person with whom Paz Fernandez, the woman who was killed on Tuesday in the Arbon reservoir, was seen last February 13th before her disappearance. "We were very good friends for years, I lived in Gijon, I worked there and she had a store nearby", JLO explains, who acknowledges that people in Navia are suspicious of him because he was seen that afternoon with his friend Paz, having some drinks in two bars: San Francisco and Cantabrico.

J. L. O. speaks with LA NUEVA ESPANA and defends himself. He explains that the aforementioned afternoon, like many others, the two of them met. "We met in San Francisco and then we went to the Cantabrico bar, we were together until six p.m. and then I told her to come in for dinner with my mother and me, but she never arrived". They had to meet around nine p.m. so that the woman from Gijon would have dinner at JLOs, but a little before the agreed time she texted him on WhatsApp and "she seemed upset, nervous, and she had an evident change of attitude". Even so, her friend insisted, told her to calm down and encouraged her to meet him for dinner. "But I realised she was not coming, so I started to call her and she did not answer, after insisting several times she picked up the phone, but another call came in and she hung up, that was the last thing I knew about her", JLO explains, adding: " As I have to follow a medical treatment to the letter because I had surgery in my leg, and seeing that she was not coming, I fell asleep right away".

The day after the disappearance of the woman from Gijon, J. L. O. received a phone call from the San Francisco hostel. "They told me that my girlfriend's dog was wandering around, I told them she was not my girlfriend, if she was so, she would be with me at home". The data about the wandering dog and that Paz Fernandez still did not answer the phone made J. L. O. to be alarmed and decided to go to the hostel where his friend had supposedly slept.

Once at the San Francisco hostel, JLO asked one of the employees to "please check if she was in her room". They came in and she was not there, indeed, "I had lent her a heater so that she would not be cold and it was melted, she hadnt spent the night there. Then I started to be really worried", J. L. O. says. The man from Coana explains that Paz Fernandez and he were just friends". I already told the judicial police: we never had a relationship other than a friendship. I feel a huge respect for Paz and her family; also we both have children of similar ages and that's why we used to meet when I went to Gijon to see my son. A normal relationship between friends", he specifies.

The judicial police are close to the murderer or murderers of Paz Fernandez, in fact JLO said that the agents showed him a robot portrait of a person that he has not been able to identify and that could coincide with the author of the call that the victim received while talking with her friend, with whom she never came to have dinner that night.

The last sign of Paz Fernandez's mobile phone appears in Busmargali, eight kilometres away from the Arbon reservoir, where the corpse of the woman from Gijon appeared floating on Tuesday, with her skull shattered.
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
Christ the King Parish in McFarland has entered into a sister parish relationship with St. Benedict Parish in Ilungu, Tanzania. Fr. Abdon Mapendo Minde, the parish priest, left, is pictured with Bishop Evaristo Marc Chengula, IMC, of the Diocese of Mbeya, Tanzania. (Contributed photos)

MCFARLAND  How can we as Catholics in the U.S. become more aware of the economic and social disparities of underdeveloped countries? To what extent can we live out the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy with less-privileged individuals?

In what ways can we share information about our cultural differences, develop and maintain real and personal relationships, and exchange spiritual and materials gifts with our brothers and sisters-in-Christ?

In early November 2017, Christ the King Parish in McFarland took measures to respond to these questions. Christ the King Parish has entered into a sister parish relationship with St. Benedict Parish in Ilungu, Tanzania, in East Africa.

About St. Benedict Parish

Fr. Abdon Mapendo Minde is the parish priest of St. Benedict Parish. Father Minde provided a description of his parish and an overview of the unique challenges that he faces and the goals that he envisions.

St. Benedict Parish is a newly established parish in the Catholic Diocese of Mbeya, Tanzania. It was inaugurated on February 10, 2013, by Bishop Evaristo Marc Chengula, IMC, of Mbeya.

The parish is located in Ilungu Ward in the Mbeya Rural District. Ilungu Ward is made up of seven villages.

St. Benedict Parish serves nine outstations, which are the small churches in the various villages. It is in a remote and mountainous area, 43 miles from Mbeya City, and 19 miles from a paved road.

Limited resources, unpaved mountainous roads, worn vehicle, etc. make ministry to the outstations difficult. Father Minde explains, As the sole priest in the parish, and the remote geographical location of the outstations, I am able to go to each outstation only once every one or two months to celebrate Mass, administer the sacraments, and address other Church issues. To supplement my visits, the parish has appointed catechists in each outstation to provide Sunday prayer services, but without Holy Communion.

The total population of Ilungu is about 12,000 people, of whom only 1,800 are Catholic. Paganism is the dominant religion; however, Pentecostal and Evangelical churches are mushrooming in the area, drawing Catholics away from St. Benedict Parish. Some Catholics are also returning to their pagan roots.

The Wasafwa people are the major ethnic group in the area. They sustain their livelihood by engaging in subsistence farming on small plots of land, growing Irish potatoes, maize, and beans in small quantities. A few of them raise livestock on a small scale.

Facing many challenges

St. Benedict Parish is extremely needy. The nine outstation churches are in very poor condition. The low and declining number of Catholics and their hand-to-mouth existence make their financial support of the parish difficult.

Construction of the buildings at the new parish has not yet been completed. The parish infrastructure is still lacking a parish office, a pastoral hall for seminars and meetings, facilities for priests and the seminarian assigned during the summer months, as well as development projects to sustain the parish.

Father Minde said, Financially, the parish per month gain is no more than $50, which I must use for food, travel to required diocesan meetings, contributions to the town, and to help with the basic needs of lay faithful including the elderly and children. There are not enough resources to reach to all the churches in the parish.

These challenges have not deterred Father Minde from his vision and mission for the Catholic Church in Ilungu. He acknowledges that because Ilungu is in a mountainous area and has been difficult to reach, it has been neglected and thus lacks most of the infrastructures it needs such as roads, schools, health care centers, etc. Illiteracy is a major social concern of the area.

Father Minde is adamant that the Catholic Church has moved to this area, not in a short-term fleeting way, but to stay and to offer Ilungu residents various forms of apostolate and programs of ministry fittingly adapted to the exigencies of time and environment.

Mission and objectives of St. Benedict Parish

The mission that Father Minde has for St. Benedict Parish is to exercise pastoral as well as social services such as education, health, women development, agriculture, water for domestic use, and animal husbandry in area.

Objectives of St. Benedict Parish include:

 To preach the Word of God to all people of God that they may inherit the kingdom of God.

 To run educational institutes from the grassroots level, that is, nursery school, primary school, secondary school, vocational training school, etc.

 To assist the marginalized sectors of the community by providing them with relevant education and information in order to assert their rights and seek improvement of their living conditions with particular emphasis on women, street children, orphans, the disabled, and HIV/AIDS victims.

 To improve access to clean and adequate quantity of water with increased access to sanitary facilities and hygiene education by building the capacities of communities and local groups.

 To promote health and nutrition in rural areas and to improve the standard of living for rural women by training them and integrating them into economic and social life.

Developing relationship

Christ the King Parish became aware of the opportunities for its parishioners to support and learn from Fatger Minde and the parishioners of St. Benedict Parish, when Frater Peter Kazimoto, seminarian at the Peramiho Major Seminary in Tanzania, was assigned to St. Benedict Parish for the summer of 2017.

Through Divine Providence, Frater Peter contacted Marys Rosary Assemblers of Christ the King Parish for Rosaries to distribute to the parishioners of St. Benedict Parish. This encounter led to meeting Father Minde, via email.

As pastor of Christ the King Parish, I believe that first and foremost, the two sister parishes need prayers to determine the Lords will for this relationship, including the role that Christ the King Parish should have in addressing the needs of St. Benedict Parish and the greater Ilungu community; and the development of real and personal relationships between the parishioners of both parishes.

Father Minde has identified illiteracy as the premier social issue to be addressed. I would like to see our parish support the building of schools, beginning with the primary level, where children can learn but also receive nourishing meals and have other needs met to the extent possible.

Children and their parents from both parishes could then begin developing relationships by learning about each others culture, language, etc.

In the next several months, Christ the King parishioners will be learning more about St. Benedict Parish and the people of Tanzania through bulletin articles, discussion groups, etc.

On June 10, seminarian Francisco Ogbonna of the Diocese of Madison will speak on the behalf of Father Minde at all the Masses at Christ the King Parish. All are welcome to attend.

For questions or information about supporting these efforts, contact Fr. Steve Smith, pastor of Christ the King Parish, at P.O. Box 524, McFarland, WI 53558, or call 608-838-9797.
While the sign has only been flipped in one location, Maccas is planning on turning it's logo upside down on its social media platforms too.

In celebration of women everywhere, and for the first time in our brand history, we flipped our iconic arches for International Womens Day in honour of the extraordinary accomplishments of women everywhere and especially in our restaurants.
New Delhi: The Border Security Force on last day withdrew an order to deduct a week's salary from a jawan for showing 'disrespect' towards the PM, after Prime Minister expressed displeasure over the punishment.

Modi directed the BSF on Wednesday to immediately withdraw the order, a spokesperson of the paramilitary said

A BSF jawan who forgot to affix honorable 'Shri' while referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been penalised by the force, terming the mistake as disrespect to the Prime Minister.

The constable was handed down a seven day pay cut. The incident took place on February 21 inside the BSF's 15th Battalion headquarters in Mahatpurm Nadia, during a zero parade.

During the parade, Constable Sanjeev Kumar used the word Modi programme while giving a report, which resulted in the disciplinary action.
Details Sara Mondragon 26 May 2020

In Ecuador, where the impact of the coronavirus has been especially severe, the government is cynically using the emergency as a cover for a swathe of attacks on the working class. But the workers and youth of the country are...
Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart told reporters Wednesday he plans to appeal the fine he received for publicly criticizing officials after a recent loss to the Houston Rockets.

Marcus Smart says he will appeal his $15,000 fine from the league for being critical of the officiating after the loss in Houston.  Steve Bulpett (@SteveBHoop) March 7, 2018

After the Celtics' 123-120 loss to the Rockets Saturday night, Smart told the Boston Globe's Adam Himmelsbach that superstar James Harden "gets the benefit of the doubt" from referees.

"You get certain players who get calls that other guys just wouldn't get," Smart told Himmelsbach. "We all know the rule. We all understand it. Superstars are going to be superstars. We get it. It is what it is. We've just got to play."

Smart added: "When you're playing a guy like that who gets those types of calls, it's pretty much like you're playing in foul trouble. You've got to play really certain. You have to be really solid. You can't really play the defense that you want, because you know nine times out of 10 he's going to get those calls. It doesn't matter whether your hands are up or not. He still gets them. We saw that here tonight a few times, and we've seen that every other game. He has a way of using his hands, grabbing us, pulling us into him and drawing those fouls. He's been doing it for a long time. He gets the benefit of the doubt."

That quote actually sounds like a pretty accurate description of what it takes to defend Harden. One of the NBA's best at drawing fouls, he puts a load of pressure on defenders just about every time he touches the ball. It's not all about the referees -- Harden's just a maestro at creating contact on his drives to the hoop. Smart might have been best to avoid the "benefit of the doubt" line or the "you get certain players who get calls that other guys just wouldn't get" statement, but he really didn't say anything overly controversial. Players have said a lot worse about referees.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes that rival team Red Bull have made a mistake by opting to go its own way with its selection of fuel and oil supplier.

Renault and McLaren both use BP/Castrol, but Red Bull have signed up with ExxonMobil instead. They're the only customer team in 2018 to differ from their engine provider's works team.

"Strategically you need to make sure that you are on the same performance levels," he explained. "And therefore have the same fluids as the works team."

Mercedes is quite insistent about Williams and Force India also using Petronas in their cars. Similarly, Ferrari stipulates that Haas and Sauber should use Shell.

Wolff explained that the power unit package was optimised for use with a particular fuel and oil.

By going a different way, Red Bull has to pay extra to conduct dyno running when there is a new specification from ExxonMobil to sign off.

McLaren was signed up with ExxonMobil in 2014 when it used Mercedes engines prior to its ill-fated switch to Honda. The common consensus is that it cost the team in on-track performance.

Wolff stressed he had nothing against ExxonMobil or any other oil and fuel supplier, and that it was just down to consistency.

"If you have a different spec of fuel, you need a completely different engine calibration," Wolff told Motorsport.com.

"You're running different calibrations on track, which doesn't give you any learning," he continued. "You're making your life complicated if you're having different specs. It's a philosophy."

Wolff felt that Red Bull had made a "strategic mistake" going for the cost-cutting commercial deal. He said that overall any cost savings would be swallowed up by extra dyno testing.

"The net number will be much lower than the value of the overall commercial deal," he insisted. "The relationship between a works team and a works team supplier of fuel and oil is always going to be more intense."

Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter
SPRINGFIELD -- Donors pledged $245,367 toward Baystate Children's Hospital during this year's 17th annual 94.7 WMAS Radiothon, which ran Tuesday and Wednesday.

"The tremendous response from listeners to the 94.7 WMAS Radiothon is a testimonial to our talented staff of caregivers who are dedicated to improving the lives of children throughout the region," said Dr. Charlotte Boney, chair of pediatrics at Baystate Children's Hospital.

"It takes a team effort to hold a successful Radiothon even before the first telephone rings. We couldn't do it without the many listeners who called in to pledge their support to our Children's Hospital, or without the assistance of the volunteers, corporate sponsors, Baystate staff and the Kellog Krew at 94.7 WMAS who all gave so generously of their time," she added.

The 94.7 FM WMAS on-air personalities, led by the Kellogg Krew featuring Chris Kellogg, Dina McMahon and Lopez, continued with their regular radio formats throughout the Radiothon interspersed with live and taped interviews featuring young patients and their families, as well as staff, from Baystate Children's Hospital.

"You never expect your child to have a cancer diagnosis or a broken leg, but if it ever happens, there is comfort in knowing that quality pediatric care is available right in your own backyard at Baystate Children's Hospital. It is for that reason that each year we see so many people calling in and pledging their support to the region's only comprehensive children's hospital," Kellogg said.

"It's all about doing good for the community. We had a very positive response from listeners whose generous pledges reflect their realization for what a priceless gem Baystate Children's Hospital is to the community," McMahon added.

"For more than a decade, the Kellogg Krew has brought their enthusiasm and talent to making the 94.7 WMAS Radiothon to benefit Baystate Children's Hospital such a success. Thank you to everyone who pledged their support to the doctors, nurses and other caregiving staff who help make miracles happen every day at Baystate Children's Hospital," said Scott Berg, vice president, Philanthropy at Baystate Health and executive director of the Baystate Health Foundation.

Baystate Children's Hospital is one of 170 fundraising Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Children's Miracle Network Hospitals are unique in that 100 percent of all money raised locally goes directly to Baystate Children's Hospital in Springfield in support of children's health programs and services.

Presenting sponsor for this year's Radiothon is Health New England, Miracle Maker sponsor is Cartamundi, and Change Hero program sponsor is Pioneer Valley Credit Union. Other sponsors include Compass One as the Red Carpet sponsors and Freedom Credit Union as the Giggle Break sponsor and Costco and as Hospitality sponsors.
Norwell authorities have identified a man found floating in a South Street brook Monday as Christopher Tusi of Norwell, the Patriot Ledger reported.

Police Chief Theodore Ross said Tusi's body was seen floating in a small brook near 350 South Street at about 4:30 p.m. Monday. There were no signs of foul play, Ross told reporters but did not say how Tusi died.

Tusi was last seen at a business near his home Saturday night.

The Norwell Fire Department, the Hanover Police and Fire departments and Massachusetts State Police all assisted in the recovery.
Jason Englen will have plenty of time to brush up on his spelling after he was sentenced to serve seven years in federal prison Wednesday after he entered guilty pleas to four counts of bank robbery.

According to prosecutors, investigators began calling Englen the "Spelling Bee Bandit" after the first note he left at the TD Bank in Arlington in Oct. of 2016 had to word "robbery" misspelled.

Three other banks in the metro-Boston area were robbed by a suspect using the same method within a few weeks. Based on witness descriptions Englen was identified as the robber and he later confessed.

Judge Richard Sterns sentenced Englen in U.S. District Court in Boston to 84 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
AMHERST - With the Florida school shooting still on people's minds, Amherst Pelham Regional School Superintendent Mike Morris sent a letter to parents this week addressing school safety.

The Amherst Regional School Committee will talk about safety at its rescheduled meeting set for Monday at 7 p.m. at the Amherst Regional High School.

"Since the recent tragedy in Parkland, Florida, we have received numerous emails, phone calls, and correspondence from families, students, and staff members concerned about two separate (but connected) items: school safety and political advocacy. We understand these concerns and want to address them for the ARPS community."

Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder, 17 counts of attempted murder for the Valentine's Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Cruz, 19, was a former student.

Morris outlined what the district has done in the schools over the last five years "to provide a safe and secure learning environment for our students and staff."

Those include safety drills with and without students, "conducted in a manner consistent with recommendations from the Amherst and Pelham Police Departments."

School officials regularly take "safety walks" inside and outside their buildings with the facilities director and police "to identify areas that need to be addressed with regard to safety."

Officials have integrated the Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evaluate) response framework, considered the best practice in the field "to enhance our safety planning at the High School and Middle School level."

Elementary school personnel will be trained.

He wrote the schools have well- trained staff and report anything they see that concerns them. He also wrote that the have mental health professionals who also support students and have been trained in Dr. Dewey Cornell's threat assessment protocols.

Cornell is a forensic clinical psychologist and Professor of Education in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

Although not mention specifically in the letter, last month Morris informed the community that a police officer will be stationed at the Crocker Farm during school hours on election day March 27 after police did a safety assessment of all schools.

Morris asked the police department for a safety analysis of the three elementary schools used as polling sites after parents and guardians raised concerns.

Police Lt. Brian Johnson wrote that Crocker Farm posed the biggest security issue.

"Due to the configuration of the gym and the way voters enter and exit the building there is definitely the opportunity for people to stray to other parts of the building," he wrote.

Johnson recommended having a constable at a table by the exterior door closest to the preschool entrance and a uniformed police officer elsewhere nearby.

10.1.1.177.426 by ledermand on Scribd

3-12-18 RSC Agenda Packet by ledermand on Scribd
A California-based genetic-testing company has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to provide information directly to its consumers 18 years and older on their results for three genetic mutations associated with higher risks for breast, ovarian and prostate cancer.

The three variants have been found to be most common among Jews of Eastern European heritage. Their presence in any population is a risk factor and not a cancer diagnosis, and something discussed, along with other risk factors, with health care providers and genetic counselors.

23andMe is the first company to be granted FDA authorization to directly provide genetic test results on cancer risk to consumers who submit a self-collected sample of saliva for such DNA testing and do so without a prescription.

Cautions on what the testing indicates were issued by both 23andMe, which is particularly popular for its ancestry testing, something that can be subjective, too, as well as the FDA.

In its statement 23andMe referenced that a genetic test initially done for ancestry might make an individual aware for the first time of their link to a certain ethnic population with an increase risk for certain cancers associated with an inherited mutation.

"This authorization is incredibly valuable for those who might not be aware of their Ashkenazi Jewish descent or aren't familiar with their family history of cancer," said Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe CEO and co-founder, in a statement on the company website.

"But it's important to understand that the majority of cancer is not hereditary, our test does not account for all genetic variants that can cause a higher risk of cancer, and people should continue with their recommended cancer screenings."

In its March 6 statement the FDA notes that the test "only detects three out of more than 1,000 known BRCA mutations. This means a negative result does not rule out the possibility that an individual carries other BRCA mutations that increase cancer risk."

"This test provides information to certain individuals who may be at increased breast, ovarian or prostate cancer risk and who might not otherwise get genetic screening, and is a step forward in the availability of DTC genetic tests. But it has a lot of caveats," said Donald St. Pierre, acting director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, on the FDA website.

"While the detection of a BRCA mutation on this test does indicate an increased risk, only a small percentage of Americans carry one of these three mutations and most BRCA mutations that increase an individual's risk are not detected by this test. The test should not be used as a substitute for seeing your doctor for cancer screenings or counseling on genetic and lifestyle factors that can increase or decrease cancer risk."

The FDA release also cautions that consumers and health care professionals "should not use the test results to determine any treatments, including anti-hormone therapies and prophylactic removal of the breasts or ovaries. Such decisions require confirmatory testing and genetic counseling."

It also notes that the test "does not provide information on a person's overall risk of developing any type of cancer. The use of the test carries significant risks if individuals use the test results without consulting a physician or genetic counselor."

In granting authorization to market its Personal Genome Service Genetic Health Risk Report for BRCA1/BRCA2 (Selected Variants), the FDA said that 23andMe provided "sufficient data to show that the test is accurate (i.e., can correctly identify the three genetic variants in saliva samples), and can provide reproducible results."

It also said the "test report provides information describing what the results might mean, how to interpret results and where additional information about the results may be found."

The report is said to be part of the company's $199 package providing information about an individual's health and ancestry as part of their DNA testing.

The company had been granted previous FDA approval to issue health risk reports to consumer indicating their risks as carriers for diseases that may be passed to offspring.

According to statistics quoted in the FDA release, the three BRCA1/BRCA2 hereditary mutations detected by the test are present in about two percent of Ashkenazi Jewish women.

BRCA stands for BREast CAncer.

It is estimated that less than one percent of the general population has a mutation in either of BRCA1 or BRCA2.

It is also estimated that only between 10 to 15 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have a mutation in either BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

It is estimated as well that only 5 to 10 percent of cancer is caused by gene mutations inherited from a parent.
A Massachusetts man who a year ago was involved in fatal Groton crash in a stolen Vermont pickup as he tried to outrun police is being charged with manslaughter, according to Connecticut State Police.

Valery Laboissiere, 28, of Medford has been in custody in Connecticut since the March 30, 2017 crash in Groton that killed 22-year-old Deion A. Pittman of Waterford. Pittman was a passenger in a car that was struck that had just exited a parking lot into the path of the speeding truck, which ran through a red light, according to police.

Moments before, a pursuing state police trooper clocked his truck at 97 mph.

Laboissiere was arrested at the time of the crash and charged by Connecticut State Police with four motor vehicle offenses: reckless driving in excess of 85 mph, engaging police in pursuit, disobeying the signal of a police officer, and driving without a license.

NBC5 in Burlington reported that days after the crash, the state of Vermont also filed a warrant for his arrest, charging him with possession of a stolen vehicle and burglary. The truck had been reported stolen in Newbury, Vermont.

On Tuesday, Connecticut filed additional charges related to the crash, as a result of an investigation by the Connecticut State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Squad.

The additional charges include three felony charges: first-degree manslaughter, grave risk of death, second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle, Assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, an automobile, causing injury. He is also now charged with four misdemeanor offenses related to the police pursuit: two counts of speeding, failure to drive in the proper lane, and failure to obey traffic control signals.

Since his arrest, he had been held in lieu of $200,000 bail, but with the filing of the new charges, an additional bail amount of $300,000 was assessed by the court. He is due to appear in New London Superior Court on May 4.
"This is the library, somebody is stabbing someone. Please come, hurry."

That statement started the frantic calls from people working or studying inside the Winchester Public Library when authorities say 23-year-old Jeffrey Yao fatally stabbed 22-year-old Deane Kenny Stryker from behind with a hunting knife.

The 911 calls and police transmissions from the February 24 stabbing around 10:30 a.m. were released by the Middlesex County District Attorney's office.

Yao was charged with murder and assault with intent to murder in court after the killing. Police say Yao stabbed Stryker several times in the head and torso with a hunting knife.

A 77-year-old man who attempted to intervene was also stabbed, suffering non-life-threatening injuries.

Workers and a man studying inside the library began calling police. The workers were clearly upset and frazzled as Stryker was on the floor in the main section of the building, suffering from the stab wounds.

"There's a lot of blood. She lying down on her back," one worker told police. "Oh my God, there's a lot of blood."

The woman told police someone is trying to help Stryker. Police then learned a second person was stabbed as well.

As a Winchester Police dispatcher worked to relay information to officers, she continued to ask one of the callers for a description of the suspect.

"What does he look like?" the dispatcher asked.

The caller described Yao as an Asian male with short, dark hair.

"He's been disarmed I think. Is someone on the way please?" the caller said.

Yao was cornered and subdued by a group of patrons inside the library.

A man who called police said the suspect in the stabbing was still in the library. He asked police for an ambulance.

"He's kneeling down. He's got his hands up," the man told police while describing Yao.

Stryker, a first-year medical student at the University of New England's College of Osteopathic Medicine, in Biddeford, Maine, was studying at the public library when she was attacked. They both attended Winchester High School, but is unclear if they knew each other well.
As Massachusetts emergency service agencies and road crews clean up from Wednesday's nor'easter, the Lowell Police Department is asking the public for a favor.

Please --- please -- do not drive like this guy.

"Please clear snow from you car before driving, this driver will receive a citation and fine," the department wrote on Facebook alongside a photograph of a vehicle transporting a miniature snow bank on its hood.

The department appended a couple of choice hash tags to the post: #dontbethatguy and #keeplowellsafe.

The vehicle was stopped by police on Father Morissette Boulevard and the driver was cited for impeded operation, failure to remove snow from windows, Lowell Police told MassLive.

In recent years, police departments across the state have used social media to remind drivers that it is against the law to drive in a snow-covered vehicle. While no Massachusetts law specifically addresses snow clearing, officers can impose a $40 fine for impeded operation if a driver has obstructed windows and a $200 fine for driving with an unsecured load, which can include heavy sheets of snow or ice on a car's roof.

If snow or ice falls from a car and causes a crash, drivers can face additional civil or criminal liability. The state's criminal negligent operation statute covers those cases, State Police have told MassLive.

There has been a steady drumbeat of similar warnings by police departments following recent snow storms.

In December, Dover Police posted a photo on Twitter of a sedan with snow on its roof and rear window.

Completely clearing snow and ice from your vehicle before heading out is your responsibility as a vehicle operator. Snow and ice left on vehicles cause accidents every year on our roadways. Please, don't be like this guy who needed a personal reminder. pic.twitter.com/AdzTeawJJ4  Dover PD (@dovermapd) December 26, 2017

In March of last year, State Police posted a photo of a car with only a narrow band of windshield cleared of snow.

And in December of 2016, State Police Trooper Dustin Fitch posted an image of a car with its rear window almost entirely obscured.
SPRINGFIELD -- When the 5-year-old boy was taken to Baystate Children's Hospital he had a broken nose, extensive bruising to his face and chest and other injuries.

Yohnee Berry, his former stepmother, on Thursday admitted to causing the injuries during various times in 2015 when she was married to his mother.

Berry, 34, of Springfield, was sentenced to two years in the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee followed by two years probation.

Assistant District Attorney Eileen Sears had asked Hampden Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney to impose that sentence. Defense lawyer Aliki Recklitis asked for a sentence of two years probation with no jail time.

Berry told Sweeney she was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was sent for a mental health evaluation after being charged with harming the boy.

The boy said Berry hit him in the face with a skateboard, a milk crate, a cable cord and a television remote, as well as punching him in the stomach, Sears said.

Those assaults happened when Melissa Reid, the boy's mother and Berry's wife at the time, was not home, Sears said. It was a relative who sought medical care for the boy after seeing the injuries, Sears said.

Berry told the boy that if he told anyone, he could be taken away and the family could be broken up, Sears said.

Berry pleaded guilty to assault and battery on a child with injury, three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and one count of assault and battery.

Reid, 30, of Springfield, pleaded guilty Feb. 22 to one count of permitting injury to a child. Hampden Superior Court Judge David Ricciardone sentenced her to three years probation, saying she can petition the court after a year and a half of successful probation to have the case continued without a finding.

The child is now in the custody of a relative and the state Department of Children and Families is overseeing the situation.
SPRINGFIELD -- Lewis Starkey III will be arraigned March 27 in Hampden Superior Court in a case related to shooting and injuring a man in Chicopee.

Police said that shooting happened in the hours after Starkey, 53, fatally shot his girlfriend, Amanda Glover, at their Wendell home shortly after midnight on July 5.

The murder case is proceeding in Franklin Superior Court, where Starkey has denied a murder charge and is held without right to bail. Starkey is also charged there with armed assault with intent to murder for attempting to kill Glover's son.

First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Steven E. Gagne told reporters in July that the son -- who witnessed his mother's shooting -- fled into a bedroom, then escaped into the woods and called 911.

According to police, Starkey appeared at Specialized Trucking in Chicopee at about 1:30 a.m. on July 5 and fired a shotgun through a window. A male employee was seriously injured, and Starkey, reportedly an employee of the company, fled the scene.

The case stemming from the Chicopee shooting charges Starkey with armed assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, and assault and battery with a firearm. All charges list the same man as victim.

Starkey was caught in Orange after a four-day manhunt, and surrendered without resistance to Orange Police Sgt. Jamie Sullivan.
A Worcester resident has been indicted on federal charges in connection with an alleged scheme to made fraudulent credit card purchases and pick up the illicit packages using fake identifications.

Yaw Okyere, a Ghanian national who told investigators he had overstayed his visa, was charged with aggravated identity theft and unlawful possession of five or more identification documents.

His indictment comes months after an alleged accomplice in the scheme, Roukayatou Damerogo, pleaded guilty to identity fraud and began cooperating with federal authorities.

She was arrested in September after being caught picking up a box of Fitbit watches allegedly purchased using a Brewster man's stolen credit card information.

After her arrest, Damerogo told federal investigators she had done at least six similar jobs for a man she knew only as Nana Yao -- a pseudonym federal authorities linked to Okyere during their investigation.

According to an affidavit filed by Postal Inspector Emily S. Burke, Okyere would provide fake identifications to Damerogo.

In the Brewster case, a fraudulent "mail hold" was placed for victim's address with the U.S. Postal Service, causing postal workers to hold all packages in the post office. Damerogo then picked up the illicit box of Fitbits using a fake ID.

Damerogo said she would pick up ID's from Okyere's place of employment -- the J&W Aseda Plaza market, whose owner Vida Cousey was indicted in a $3.6 million food stamp scheme in 2015.

"[Damerogo] also claimed NANA provided ID's to other people, which she knew because she had seen other names on ID's inside of NANA's house," the affidavit said.

Okyere also allegedly attempted to convince Damerogo not to cooperate with

"[Damerogo] said NANA sent people to visit her in jail and told her not to talk about NANA and the illegal acts in which NANA instructed [her] to participate," Burke wrote. "[Damerogo] said one of the visitors claimed to be a lawyer and offered to represent [her,] an offer which R.D. declined."

In December, investigators began surveillance of Okyere's home, watching him drive his black Mercedes and go to work at the J&W Aseda Plaza.

On one occasion, investigators called the number listed for "Nana Yao" in Damerogo's cell phone while watching Okyere at work; his phone began to ring and he answered, helping authorities confirm his identity.

United States Postal Service Inspectors executed a search warrant at Okyere's home on Wednesday and seized dozens of boxes allegedly containing six new computers, tablet devices, high-end women's clothing, watches, pocketbooks and luggage.

"Okyere stated that the computers in the apartment were his," Burke wrote in her affidavit. "The agents asked Okyere about the other property in the apartment and Okyere stated in substance that he was confused and gave evasive answers to the agent's direct questions."

On one of the computers, agents allegedly found files containing over 193 Massachusetts drivers with "various names and photographs."
Some Webster residents are stuck at their houses Thursday morning with no way out of the neighborhood as a downed utility pole is blocking traffic in both directions.

The utility pole fell in the area of 20 Wakefield Avenue, according to Webster police.

Traffic cannot get by on either side of the road.

"The road is impassable in both directions, which leaves residents who are on the interior stranded," police said.

National Grid has been notified of the downed pole multiple times, police said. The company is prioritizing its response.

It is not yet clear when National Grid will arrive.

Snow totals across Worcester County ranged from 6 inches to 16 inches, according to the National Weather Service. An exact snow total for Webster was not immediately available.

"It has been a busy night as you can imagine," police said. "For now please use caution and common sense and stay away from this area."
Worcester Public Schools Administration is asking for community input as it prepares to update its brand, logo and website.

The administration is hoping that students, teachers, staff, families, community members and local businesses will offer feedback through a survey.

The survey closes on March 16 and is available in seven languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Albanian, Twi, Vietnamese and Arabic.

"This work is in response to feedback the district has received from school committee, families and community members to increase access to information and provide improved communication," Superintendent Maureen Binienda said.

Worcester Public Schools is working with MRW Connected and Opus Design for the rebranding.

The brand is expected to be complete by April and the new website should launch late this summer.
Is labeling someone a "globalist" an insult?

It is in Trump world.

After President Donald Trump's top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, announced his plans to leave the White House, Trump reportedly spent some time badmouthing Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs. According to a report in The New York Times, Trump repeatedly dismissed Cohn, disparaging him as a "globalist."

To the provincialists inside the White House, that's a derogatory term.

To most everyone else, however, it's effectively a synonym for someone who understands the workings of the contemporary world.

There are those who vehemently dislike our era's increasingly interconnected, global economy. What they want, simply put, is for things to be once again more like they'd been back in the good old days. (Whether things back then were actually as rosy as some like to think is an entirely separate question, of course.)

Trouble is, wanting things to be as they were is a wish that will never be fulfilled. History does not move backward. No matter how much some would like it to.

Hoping to roll back globalism is akin to wishing to turn back time. It's like believing that things would be so much better if only we didn't have all those pesky computers mucking everything up.

Cohn, who plans to stick around for a brief time before packing it in, had fought against Trump's plans to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. He lost that battle, of course, but he is planning to try to win some concessions -- beginning with exemptions for Canada and Mexico, most notably -- as he prepares to take his leave.

Good for him. Any progress he can make will be better than nothing, and keeping our North American neighbors from being hit with the tariffs is worthy, indeed. More exemptions would be even better.

Though it was disappointing to see Cohn lose the battle over steel and aluminum tariffs, the worst may be still to come, as the president's top economic adviser was widely viewed as one of the few adults on the scene inside the White House. His departure will likely allow the Luddites and flat-earthers to have freer rein in the West Wing.

With reports that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Chief of Staff John Kelly have also had an eye on the door, two more of the soberest voices around Trump could soon enough be joining Cohn.

Though it's easy enough to understand their desire to leave the craziness behind, more defections by the grownups would be bad news for the nation as a whole.
By Ed Rogers

Special To The Washington Post

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration are going about the sanctuary city issue in the right way. The very idea of so-called sanctuary cities is offensive to a lot of law-abiding Americans. Taking action against the liberal politicians who want to give safe harbor to illegal immigrants is a slow, easy pitch from the Democrats, and Republicans everywhere should take advantage.

The Justice Department is now challenging several laws in California that not only interfere with the nation's immigration policies but also place American citizens and law enforcement personnel at risk. The idea that laws can be ignored and that state and local politicians can affirmatively warn lawbreakers of how to escape apprehension is incredible. It is indefensible. We either have laws, or we don't. And if our elected leaders don't want to uphold the law, they can either change them or resign. The law is not optional once you have made a pledge to uphold the duties of your office.

Open-border radicals in California and other liberal strongholds must be held accountable. Of course, liberals would have you believe that they are only interested in protecting the poor, the oppressed and the hardworking who have nowhere else to go. But in many cases, their actions allow dangerous and sometimes repeat criminals to be shielded from deportation or prison. In California, good Samaritans who value the rule of law are even prohibited from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials who are trying to uphold the law and make communities safer.

Anyway, Democrats and their allies in the media will say otherwise, but nothing about this conversation is even in the slightest bit hyperbolic. Local politicians are actually warning illegal immigrants of impending enforcement actions. In Oakland, Mayor Libby Schaaf went so far as to issue a press release and accompanying tweet alerting illegal immigrants in the Bay Area of an impending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation last month. According to ICE Deputy Director Thomas D. Homan, what the Oakland mayor did "is no better than a gang lookout yelling 'police' when a police cruiser comes in the neighborhood."

The fact that a politician who presumably swore to uphold the Constitution could feel so emboldened to undermine an active law enforcement operation and place those officers in harm's way cannot go unanswered. And according to what Sessions said on Wednesday, it won't. Specifically, speaking before the California Peace Officers' Association, Sessions said: "We are going to fight these irrational, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you and our federal officers. We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. We are fighting to have a lawful system of immigration that serves Americans. And we intend to win." Well said.

Republicans can only hope that liberals running in 2018 will make an issue of the Justice Department lawsuit. After all, do Democrats really want to be on the side of shielding illegal immigrants - many of whom have outstanding warrants and criminal records? When the Oakland mayor alerted an entire community of illegal immigrant criminals that ICE was coming, she reportedly allowed about 800 to escape. According to ICE officials, almost half of those who were arrested "had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors."

Are those really the people Democrats want to defend? I hope so. I can already see the campaign ads that Republicans will be running. The Democrats' position on sanctuary cities will not play well in flyover America.

Last month, plenty of Democrats and liberal outlets pushed the idea that somehow, in some bizarre twist of reality, Republicans had split with law enforcement and were no longer the party of law and order. The Huffington Post even pronounced that Republicans had "unleashed an extraordinary attack on law enforcement" by criticizing a few senior FBI officials. With the Democrats' position on sanctuary cities, that argument should not be too difficult to dismiss.

Anyone who supports illegal aliens and opposes law enforcement's efforts to protect communities from criminals should be shown no quarter - not in the media, not in the courtroom and not in our political campaigns. In the case of the administration's policy on sanctuary cities, good policy is also the best politics.
The Trump administration just lifted the Obama-era ban on importing elephant trophies. Hunters will now be able to bring back the body parts of African elephants shot for sport, although such imports must be approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The ban had been challenged in court by Safari Club International and the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association. Elephants are a threatened species, and conservationists condemned the decision. Should we ban elephant trophies?

PERSPECTIVES

Trophy hunting is unpopular, but many hunters argue they are actually helping preserve these threatened species.

Critics say this is just one more example of Trump caving in to wealthy interests, anti-conservationists and the NRA.

BREAKING: Trump & @SecretaryZinke reverse Obama ban on importation of endangered elephant heads, tusks and feet. Trump put a hold on Zinke's plan in January, but predictably, crumpled under lobbying of @nra and wealthy international trophy hunters. https://t.co/UK8kascglW  Kieran Suckling (@KieranSuckling) March 6, 2018

Some argue that the profits from trophy hunting are what will preserve these animals' habitat and actually allow them to survive as a species.

The administration tried to lift the ban put in place by President Obama several months ago, but Trump agreed not to in light of the public outcry. Critics accused him of going back on his promise.

The Trump admin is reversing course again, plans to grant and deny permits for importing trophies of elephants hunted in Zimbabwe and Zambia on a case by case basis.



That's a change from Trump's statements that he'd keep an Obama-era ban on such imports.https://t.co/KMvuifXsbo  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 6, 2018

Trump has already broken his promise to maintain the ban on elephant trophy importsand he's trying to hide it from the public. We see you Trump, and we'll fight to stop you: https://t.co/UDMXGiyZRw https://t.co/IOfVDxr6ye  NRDC  (@NRDC) March 6, 2018

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State Rep. James Cantwell, D-Marshfield, announced Thursday that he is leaving his seat in the Massachusetts legislature to join U.S. Sen. Ed Markey's staff.

Cantwell, who has represented the state's 4th Plymouth District on Beacon Hill for nearly a decade, will officially resign his Statehouse seat and begin work as Markey's Massachusetts state director later this month.

The Democrat takes over for Mark Gallagher, who moved to Maine to do government relations work for a law firm.

Cantwell, who called Markey a "demonstrated leader on issues not just impacting Massachusetts, but every family in our country," said he looks forward to joining the senator's staff.

"As a state legislator I turned to Sen. Markey and his staff for help time and again with numerous individual constituent matters and regional issues, including funding for coastal infrastructure, combating substance misuse and fighting for affordable flood insurance," Cantwell said in a statement. "I am honored to join him and his extraordinary staff to continue his unmatched commitment to protecting the values and priorities of the Commonwealth."

Cantwell thanked his constituents for "their friendship, support and civic engagement all these years." He said he looks forward to serving them and all Massachusetts residents in his new role.

Markey touted Cantwell's work on Beacon Hill and contended that he "combines the selflessness of a public servant, the experience of a small business owner and the commitment to social justice of a lawyer."

"I am fortunate to have such a leader for my office in Massachusetts," he said in a statement. "Jim joins our team at a critical moment in our country's history. ... With decades of experience building coalitions, helping constituents and crafting impactful policy, Jim shows he has the experience, integrity and energy to direct my office."

Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo congratulated Cantwell on his new position and said he looks forward to seeing the work he does for Markey and the state in that role.

The speaker's office told State House News Service that he doesn't plan on holding any additional special elections this year.

On Beacon Hill, Cantwell pushed for legislation to create a coastal protection and seawall fund, combat opioid abuse, promote the Massachusetts seafood industry and protect disabled individuals' civil rights, among other things.

Cantwell previously served as chairman of the Marshfield Board of Selectmen, worked as an assistant district attorney in Norfolk Country and co-founded a law firm in Quincy.

After leaving the DA's office, he joined U. S. Rep. William Delahunt's, D-Quincy, staff, where he worked on issues relating to the coastline and pharmaceutical drug costs for senior citizens.
SPRINGFIELD -- U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, will meet with Western Massachusetts residents Friday, as she holds her annual "Open House" in Springfield.

Warren, who is up for re-election this fall, is expected to discuss her work in Congress and take questions from area constituents during the afternoon event at Springfield Technical Community College's Scibelli Hall.

Warren's campaign, which is organizing the "Open House," said the Democrat will specifically address "how she's holding the Trump administration accountable and fighting for Massachusetts families in the Senate."

It will also allow supporters to meet members of Warren's team "and learn how (they) can get in this fight in 2018," the campaign noted.

Doors for the event which is free and open to the public, will open at 1 p.m. It is set to begin at 1:30 p.m.

Admission will be given on a first come, first served basis, organizers said. No signs or posters will be allowed inside the event.

Warren, during her 2017 Springfield open office hours event last March, touted her efforts to stand up to President Donald Trump and encouraged supporters to join her in fighting back against Republican policies.

She further urged constituents to pressure Republicans to join Democrats in pursuing an independent investigation into Trump's alleged ties to the Russian government.

The senator, who has become a well-known figure in Democratic politics an oft-rumored 2020 presidential contender, will likely again touch on such topics at Friday's event.

Warren's stop in Western Massachusetts comes nearly two weeks after she traveled to Holyoke for a fundraiser and Holden, where she held her 20th Massachusetts town hall in 20 months.

Several Republicans have announced bids to unseat Warren in 2018, including: Beth Lindstrom, a former aide to Mitt Romney and manager of Scott Brown's 2010 Senate bid; John Kingston, a Winchester businessman; State Rep. Geoff Diehl, R-Whitman; Allen Rodney Waters, of Mashpee, Darius Mitchell, of Lowell, and Heidi Wellman, of Braintree.

Shiva Ayyadurai, an entrepreneur who filed to run as Republican, meanwhile, announced in November that he would cut ties with the GOP and run as an independent.
Director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development Liu Yongfu answers questions at a press conference on the "battle" of targeted poverty alleviation during the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 7, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- China has vowed to make increased efforts to eliminate poverty, after significant progress has been made in the past five years, an official said Wednesday.

China will allocate 106.1 billion yuan (about 16.8 billion U.S. dollars) in funding for poverty alleviation work in 2018, some 20 billion yuan more than last year, said Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

China has lifted more than 68 million people out of poverty over the past five years, Liu told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's national legislature.

Experience should be accumulated and lesson be drawn in poverty reduction work in order to establish a more sustainable mechanism that can increase safety and reduce corruption in the future, according to Liu.

Since November 2015 when China decided to launched a campaign to eliminate poverty, more than 400 people fulfilled jobs at the cost of their lives.

Meanwhile, over 80,000 people were investigated and punished for misconduct during the poverty elimination campaign, including 450 accountable for fraudulent claims or misappropriation of totally 730 million yuan in an inspection of 28 provinces last year, according to Vice Finance Minister Hu Jinglin.

The country has set 2020 as the target year to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, which requires all citizens to be living above the poverty line -- per capita annual income of 2,300 yuan, a standard set in November 2011.

China plans to lift at least 10 million people out of poverty this year, according to the annual government work report made by Premier Li Keqiang on Monday.

There were around 30 million Chinese living below the national poverty line at the end of last year.

To win the fight against poverty, China should carry out the agenda on time, ensure a high quality of targeted work, and maintain continuity of the process, as "relative poverty" will still exist even after the country eliminates "absolute poverty" by 2020, according to Liu.

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[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Many villagers in a remote village in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality have moved to two-floor houses from shabby hovels, as they have become richer through growing chilies in recent years.

Shangjin Village is in a poverty-stricken and mountainous area in Shizhu County, a national-level poor county with more than 70 percent of its population being ethnic Tujia people.

Nearly 400 households of the village have participated in a chili planting cooperative, established by Tan Jianlan with the support of the local government.

"Chili plantation has played an important role in reducing poverty in the county. I would like to share my experience with more people," said Tan, a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), the national legislature.

At the ongoing NPC session, she will suggest encouraging capital flows from cities to rural areas to bring more rural people out of poverty.

So far, Tan's cooperative has covered 10 neighboring impoverished villages including 840 households. The chili industry has helped increase the average income of each poor household to 11,000 yuan ( U.S. dollars).

In addition, the county has explored various ways to fight against poverty. Planting herbs and promoting rural tourism also benefit rural residents.

Seventy out of 85 impoverished villages have been lifted out of poverty there. The remaining 15 poor villages including over 13,000 people are expected to escape poverty by 2020.

China has made decisive progress in fight against poverty. More than 68 million people have been lifted out of poverty over the past five years, approximately equals to the population of France.

This year, China will reduce the poor rural population by over 10 million, Premier Li Keqiang said Monday when delivering a government work report at the first session of the 13th NPC.

Li emphasized that China would do more to support areas affected by extreme poverty, and the central budget's newly enlarged poverty reduction funds and related transfer payments would be weighted toward these areas.

By the year 2020, all rural residents living below the current poverty line will be lifted out of poverty.

The largest poverty alleviation campaign in the world's most populous country has been affirmed by the international society.

More than 760 million people, or around one in 10 people in the world, are estimated to be living below the international poverty line of 1.9 U.S. dollars per day.

The UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 shows that the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in China fell by half from 61 percent in 1990 to below 30 percent in 2002, and on down to 4.2 percent in 2014.

"China's experience in innovation and its successful track record in poverty alleviation can provide invaluable lessons for other developing countries," said Bill Gates, co-chair of Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, noting that China was the largest contributor to the UN's Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people in poverty worldwide.

According to the UN's sustainable development goals, eradicating extreme poverty globally need to be realized by 2030.

Wang Sangui, a professor with Renmin University, said those achievements in poverty alleviation that China has made were due to the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China and governments at all levels, who have been upholding the people-centered philosophy and pursuing the goal of building of a moderately prosperous society and common prosperity for everyone.

"With a clear goal, the central government and relevant departments can focus their efforts on solving the problem," Wang said, adding that more than 100 policies related to poverty relief had been rolled out.

"Meanwhile, the whole society has been taking part in the battle against poverty, including the private sector, NGOs and individuals," he said.

Wang said the government had been adjusting and improving anti-poverty policies in different periods and strengthening supervision over the anti-poverty work, which also ensured that the country would achieve its goal by 2020.

"China has provided a solution to the issue of poverty for the world. Many countries in South Asia and Africa have been inspired," Wang said.

Besides poverty alleviation, China could also share its experience in tackling financial risks and pollution.

Premier Li on Monday expressed strong confidence in the nation's economy and its ability to prevent systemic risks.

"China's economic and financial risks are on the whole manageable ... We are fully capable of forestalling systemic risk," Li said.

China will also continue efforts to prevent and control air, water and soil pollution in 2018.

Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the annual session of the country's national legislature, said Sunday that China would build a stringent legal system to protect the environment.

[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The draft revision to China's Constitution, which is under deliberation and discussion at the ongoing national legislative and political advisory sessions, has won support from Chinese leaders, lawmakers and political advisors.

Joining a panel discussion with deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) Wednesday, President Xi Jinping said that he totally endorsed the draft constitutional amendment.

Revising part of the Constitution is a major decision made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) from the overall and strategic height of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, stressed Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC).

Hailing it a major move to advance law-based governance and modernize China's system and capacity for governance, Xi said the drafting process of the bill has fully practiced democracy, pooled wisdom from various sectors and embodied the common will of the Party and the people.

Other Chinese leaders, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng, all members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, also expressed their endorsement of the draft while joining NPC deputies in panel discussions Wednesday.

The lawmakers and political advisors agreed that the constitutional revision, which accords with the aspiration of the Party and the people and has won approval from both inside and outside the CPC, is of historic significance for ensuring prosperity and lasting security of both the Party and the country.

The current draft was proposed by the CPC Central Committee and adopted by the NPC Standing Committee in January.

It was submitted to the first session of 13th NPC for deliberation on Monday and is scheduled to be put to vote on March 11.

If adopted, this will be the Constitution's first amendment in 14 years.

The bill suggests giving Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era constitutional authority.

NPC deputy Li Jiancheng believed enshrining Xi's thought as a new guiding theory for the country is a core revision in the draft amendment.

"The Thought is vital for the nation's future and destiny," Li said.

The following sentence is also supposed to be included in the Constitution: "The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics."

For Long Xiang, another NPC deputy, the addition has strengthened the CPC's leading status in the country from the perspective of the very nature of China's socialist system, laying down a fundamental institutional guarantee for upholding and strengthening overall Party leadership.

A revision to a clause concerning the Chinese President's term of office was also in the draft.

"Such a revision doesn't mean there will be a change in the retirement system of the Party and state leaders or a lifelong tenure for these officials," said Lyu Hongbing, a political advisor at the ongoing session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

"This institutional arrangement is conducive to upholding and strengthening the overall Party leadership, improving the leadership system of the Party and the country, and safeguarding the authority of the CPC Central Committee as well as its centralized and unified leadership," said Lyu, vice head of the All China Lawyers Association.

According to the bill, a new section about supervisory commissions is suggested to be added to lay down a constitutional basis for an upgraded anti-graft taskforce under the CPC leadership.

Other additions for inclusion are the goal of a "great modern socialist country"; an oath of allegiance to the Constitution; a vision of a community with a shared future for humanity; core socialist values; and granting more cities legislative power.

The bill proposed enriching clauses about the patriotic united front, harmonious relations among ethnic groups, and peaceful foreign policies.

It also adds a new vision of innovative, coordinated, green and open development for everyone; and the five-sphere integrated plan for coordinated economic, political, cultural, social and ecological advancement.

Deputies from the PLA and the armed police Wednesday also expressed their firm support to the bill during their panel discussions.

"The draft revision is significant for ensuring the Party and the country's sound governance and lasting security," said Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of the CMC.

Xu called for thorough implementation of the constitutional spirit in the military, and advancement of law-based and strict governance of the armed forces.

A constitutional change is either proposed by the NPC Standing Committee or by more than one-fifth of all NPC deputies, and then requires the approval of two-thirds or more of NPC deputies during the annual session.

The PRC enacted its first Constitution in 1954. The current Constitution was formulated in 1982 and amended in 1988, 1993, 1999 and 2004.

[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
Ukraine reports three attacks on its troops in Donbas, one Ukrainian soldier wounded in past day

Illegal armed formations mounted three attacks on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas, one Ukrainian soldier has been wounded in the past 24 hours, the press center of the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations has reported.

"In general, over the past day, the aggressor conducted three targeted attacks at the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and one Ukrainian soldier was wounded by enemy fire. The state of our defender's health is satisfactory. He was taken to a military mobile hospital and provided with the necessary amount of medicines," the press center said on Facebook page on Thursday morning.

In the Luhansk section, the enemy fired using heavy anti-tank grenade launchers and large-caliber machine guns near Luhansk and large-caliber machine guns near Troitske.

In the Donetsk section, militants from the temporarily occupied Staromykhailivka fired the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Krasnohorivka using small arms.
The Ukraine-NATO joint working group at a meeting on March 5 and March 6 in Brussels discussed the pace of reforms in the defense industry of Ukraine, the press service of the Ukroboronprom State Concern has reported.

According to the report, the program of Ukroboronprom reformation was discussed at the meeting, as well as the reforms conducted by the concern.

Meeting participants discussed plans on the creation of transparent vertically integrated industrial clusters in the Ukroboronprom. They would include state-owned enterprises of the concern and private defense companies.

The press service said that meeting participants paid special attention to corporatization of Ukroboronprom's enterprises with their transformation into joint-stock companies, 100% of shares of which will belong to the state. These measures include development of transparent governance structures and attracting private investors, in order to integrate Ukrainian defense industry into the global production system.

A U.S. representative to NATO took favorable view of Ukraine's defense reform during the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine joint working group devoted to the defense reform, the concern said.

The press service said that the decision on holding seminar entitled "NATO Experience in Procurement of Armaments and Military Equipment, Pricing and Price Control" in Ukraine was made.

Ukroboronprom Concern Head Pavlo Bukin, who took part in the meeting, said that the top priority tasks of the concern are ensuring the smallest production cost of armaments and military equipment.

"For this purpose, the pricing procedure in Ukraine should be brought to standards used in NATO countries. This will allow accelerating development of enterprises and directing funds to modernization of production facilities of defense enterprises," he said.
Eleven vehicles carrying humanitarian aid from the mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have crossed into Donetsk region through the Novotroitske checkpoint, the Ukrainian State Border Service said in a statement.

"In the past 24 hours eleven vehicles carrying over 220 tonnes of food, healthcare sets and construction goods from the mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross have crossed the Novotroitske checkpoint in the direction of the temporarily occupied area of Ukraine," the Ukrainian State Border Service said in a statement released on Thursday.
Under the agreement, which was signed in Vinh Phuc on March 7, the provincial Peoples Committee will create all favourable conditions for Mizuho business customers to make investment in the province.

Local authorities will enable the Japanese bank to join investment promotion events to seek partners and promote its products and services.

Meanwhile, Mizuho will send experts to Vinh Phuc to offer advice on financial and banking services to support investors if requested.

The bank will support the provincial Peoples Committee in hosting activities to promote investment.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Vice Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Vu Viet Van said the province has seen strong socio-economic development in recent years thanks to significant contributions by foreign invested firms, including those from Japan.

As of February 2018, the province counted 278 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects worth over US$ 4 billion from 15 countries and territories. Japan ranked second with 31 projects with registered capital of US$ 816 million and led in business-production efficiency, he noted.

Seiji Imai, a representative from the bank, said Mizuho wants to expand its operation and provide the best services to customers.

In the coming time, the bank will introduce the investment environment in Vietnam and Vinh Phuc in particular to Japanese enterprises as well as provide financial assistance for firms to operate effectively in Vietnam, he added.
The signing will be an important starting point for establishing a potential free trade area with a population of nearly 500 million people and a GDP of around US$10 trillion, or 13% of the global GDP.

According to Steward Beck, President and CEO of the Asia-Pacific Fund Canada, the pact is really important for Canada because it will gain access to the Japanese market, Canadas fourth largest market, as well as well as others like Vietnam, Singapore, and ASEAN, which are important markets with which the north American country does not yet have trade arrangements.

It is going to give Vietnam advantages, he told Vietnam News Agencys correspondent on the eve of the official signing ceremony. For Canada, it gives us advantages in places like Vietnam, he added.

He highlighted Vietnams potential with a young labour force and half of the population being under 25 and well educated. Once you start marketing CPTPP with the Canadian business community, they will start focusing on the opportunities Vietnam has to offer them.

Beck identified fields the two sides have opportunities for cooperation on, such as technology, which, he said, will become much more important in doing business today through e-commerce, finance technology, and services, along with Vietnams export of more seafood and other products to Canada.

In the next two-three years, once the agreement is enforced, we will see more engagements with Vietnam in areas important for Vietnam and Canada.

He believes more people will seek out Vietnam and more people will see what opportunities it will create for that type of business.

Besides, there is a large Vietnamese community in Canada, they will help because they know what business opportunities are in Vietnam. They will be able to make those connections, Beck affirmed.
At the meeting, the leaders of the organising board of GMS-6 and CLV 10 and the relevant ministries and agencies reported on the results of the work that needs to be done.

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc praised the efforts of the organising board of GMS-6 and CLV 10, as well as the ministries, sectors and localities concerned in effectively preparing for the hosting of the events over the past while.

He stressed that after the success of APEC 2017, it is one of the three largest multilateral events to be held in Vietnam in 2018 and an opportunity for the leaders to discuss issues of mutual concern, including strengthening their cooperation in investment, trade promotion, security and the sustainable use of the Mekong River. It is also an opportunity for Vietnam to strengthen its cooperation towards the goal of socio-economic development.

In order to ensure the successful organisation of the GMS-6 and CLV 10, preparation should be in alignment with the intended purpose, requirements and motto pursued, the PM said, asking the the relevant ministries, branches and localities should coordinate closely in the preparation and organisation of the activities to ensure the effectiveness, safety and security for the event.

The authorities concerned should also pay attention to information and communication work for people and businesses to ensure they are aware the role and benefits of the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle on Vietnam's economic development, thereby promoting their responsibility and actively contributing to the promotion of the image of Vietnam as a dynamic and integrated country with a friendly, hospitable and modern Vietnamese people.
Showing her delight at the effective cooperation between Vietnam and the WB, the top legislator said that Vietnam needs the support of the international community, including the bank, to fulfill its goals amidst many difficulties and challenges.

She affirmed that the NA of Vietnam will closely supervise the management and use of WB assistance, ensuring it is used effectively to bring added value to the local socio-economic development.

She also spoke highly of the cooperation and support that the WB has given to NA agencies, which she said helped improve the legislatures supervision over finance, budget and economy.

She lauded the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the WB and the NA Finance and Budget Committee in 2017, aiming to enhance the committees capacity in monitoring financial and budgetary issues.

Over the past years, the WB has also given consultations to Vietnam on important strategic issues, she added.

NA Chairwoman Ngan proposed the WB continue aiding Vietnam in building and completing legal framework to stabilise the macro economy, promote growth, develop human resources and ensure social harmony and sustainable use of natural resources.

She asked for the WBs assistance for major infrastructure, human resources development and climate change response projects.

She also called for support from the Parliamentary Networks members to activities of the WB and IMF in Vietnam.

Hailing the Parliamentary Network as a bridge to enhance cooperation channels among parliaments, NA Chairwoman Ngan stressed that the Vietnamese NA is ready to join and make active contributions to the network.

The host discussed with the networks parliamentarians about gender equality, job creation for women and young people, changes to tax policy once the WB cuts investment assistance, population aging, public debt limit, the legislatures role in budget allocation, climate change response, the NAs supervisory role and relations between the law-making body and the government.

According to her, the rate of Vietnamese female lawmakers reaches 26.7 percent, still below the targeted 30 percent.

Vice President of the Parliamentary Network Soukri Cherif and WB Country Director in Vietnam Ousmane Dione thanked NA Chairwoman Ngan for practical discussions.

Dione said the working trip is part of cooperation programmes between WB, IMF and member nations, adding that the discussed matters will be reflected in the next agenda.

The delegation comprises parliamentarians from Australia, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Kenya, Laos, Latvia, Morocco, Myanmar, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda and Ukraine.

The delegation will visit on-going projects in Vietnam and discuss with leaders of State agencies and representatives from the private sector during the four-day trip.

Founded in 2000 with the engagement of parliamentarians from over 140 countries, the Parliamentary Network seeks to engage lawmakers from around the globe in the common mission of addressing good governance and poverty challenges in both their home countries and abroad.
Le Thanh Liem, Standing Vice Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee, made the statement while hosting Deputy Governor of Gyeongsangbuk-do province Joo Joong Chul in Ho Chi Minh City on March 7.

Ho Chi Minh City asked the RoK side to support and facilitate connectivity activities of relevant agencies in making specific plans on organising economic and cultural activities of the Vietnamese southern hub in the RoK in 2018, Standing Vice Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Liem said.

He expressed his delight over effective cooperation between the two localities in the past time, especially the successful organisation of the Ho Chi Minh City-Gyeongju World Cultural Festival in 2017.

Joo Joong Chul, for his part, said that the festival was a significant milestone for both sides to boost collaboration in various fields.

He stressed that the RoK side stands ready to support Ho Chi Minh City to organise Vietnamese cultural festival in Gyeongsangbuk-do as well as exchange experience in improving the quality of human resources with the city to enhance mutual understanding and solidarity.
The statement was made by Senior Lieutenant General To Lam, Politburo member and Minister of Public Security at a ceremony held by the Womens Association under the Ministry in Hanoi on March 8, to celebrate its 35th founding anniversary.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Minister congratulated the female staff and soldiers of the Ministry for their outstanding achievements in contributing to enhancing the patriotic emulations and building a professional, elite, and gradually modernized police force.

He asked that all officials and soldiers in the force, including policewomen, continue to uphold their role and responsibility in protecting national security and maintaining social order and safety.

The Womens Association under the Ministry should pay close attention to protecting the legitimate interests of its members, contributing to efforts for gender equality, added Minister To Lam.

On the occasion, under the authorisation of the President, Minister To Lam presented the National Protection Order, first class to the association.
ANN ARBOR, MI - The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority wants to allow curbside parking on Huron Street during off-peak hours, meaning outside of weekday rush-hour times.

But whether that will happen is up to the Michigan Department of Transportation to decide, as the state controls the corridor.

The DDA board voted Wednesday, March 7, to approve a resolution urging MDOT to consider a series of proposed changes to how Huron Street functions, including a reduction from four to two travel lanes downtown during off-peak hours.

MDOT is aware of the proposal and has no position on it at this time, said Mark Sweeney, MDOT's regional manager.

The tentative idea, as outlined by a DDA consultant at Wednesday's meeting, is to allow on-street parking on Huron on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and from 6:30 p.m. to 3 a.m.

That's based on a review of traffic counts showing when rush-hour traffic peaks.

"And as is typical for most communities, the rush hour in the morning tends to be a little more spread out," said Bob Doyle, a consultant with SmithGroupJJR. "The rush hour in the evening hours is more compact because everybody wants to get home and start their evening."

All four lanes would be open to traffic between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 3:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. But during other off-peak times, the curbside lanes would become available for parking, as well as possibly some loading/unloading and transit stop areas.

Doyle said traffic studies show Huron Street's four-lane capacity is used quite well during rush hours, but other times there's excess capacity allowing for on-street parking. He said there are examples of this type of idea working in other communities, including Richmond, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Miami, Florida.

Doyle said it looks like there would be room for 50 to 60 on-street parking spaces on Huron Street between First and Division.

Red bricks can be seen under the crumbling asphalt on Huron Street west of Fifth Avenue in downtown Ann Arbor on March 7, 2018. (Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News)

The on-street parking idea is coming forward as part of the DDA's plan to undertake a major streetscape improvement project on Huron Street between Third and Division next year.

With the resolution approved on Wednesday, the DDA is asking MDOT to consider the following changes to Huron Street:

On-street parking during off-peak hours to not only provide more parking but also provide a substantial buffer to make pedestrians feel more comfortable on Huron Street sidewalks.

A permissive/protected left-turn phasing for westbound traffic on Huron at Fifth Avenue to reduce conflicts between vehicles turning left and pedestrians crossing the street.

Restricted right turns on red along the corridor to prevent vehicles encroaching into the crosswalk before turning.

A fully signalized intersection at Third and Chapin to provide clarity for pedestrians and motorists using the intersection, addressing concerns from vulnerable users at the YMCA and Lurie Terrace and implementing near-term Treeline urban trail elements.

Overall signal timing adjustments to ensure adequate pedestrian walk time and visibility.

Huron Street is owned by MDOT, which according to the DDA has asked for a resolution of support from the Ann Arbor City Council in order to consider approving the changes.

The DDA's resolution on Wednesday was a first step and the City Council has not yet taken up the issue.

"MDOT will need additional time to review these elements ahead of the development of the final Huron Street design, which is why this matter is being considered at this time," the DDA resolution states.

DDA officials say public input has called attention to concerns about Huron Street, including fast-moving traffic and an uncomfortable and unprotected experience walking along and crossing the corridor.

According to minutes from the DDA's Capital Improvements Committee meeting from Feb. 21, the DDA's team working on the Huron project has met with MDOT to get feedback on early design alternatives, including using larger trees in the streetscape design and parking on-street at all times except during rush hours.

"MDOT conveyed that they will be reviewing proposed design alternatives based on a traffic growth projection 6x's greater than assumed by WATS, which will impact the project such as limiting the extent of time on-street parking may be permitted," the minutes state.

The DDA is now finalizing its design for a $5.6 million makeover of the Huron streetscape. The project is expected to go out to bid in November with construction starting in spring 2019.

"We're seeking transformational change for the corridor, so we want it to be more comprehensive than a simple streetscape improvement project," said Doyle, the DDA's consultant.

"We'd like to celebrate the unique role that Huron Street plays in the community. It is, I believe, a symbolic street that's rich with potential, as it is your front door and path into downtown."

If MDOT allows it, Doyle said case studies show there may be an adjustment period of about a month or two as people get used to the idea of on-street parking on Huron Street, requiring community education, monitoring and enforcement.

After that adjustment period, he said, case studies show it's a change that's generally very well received, with the on-street parking spaces being used and pedestrian activity in the area increasing.
Students from Milan, Dearborn, Plymouth and Royal Oak are among the winners in C-SPAN's national 2018 StudentCam competition.

Gabrielle LaFuente, Holly Rossetto and Amanda Buie, students at Milan High School, will receive $750 for their third-prize winning video, "A Threat to the Internet," about net neutrality.

The following Michigan students won $250 honorable mention prizes:

Harold Nunlee, Christian Diaz and Joel Hill, of Milan High School: "

Leyan Haidous, Deena Beydoun and Tanya Hammoud, of Dearborn High School: "

Claire Swadling, of East Middle School in Plymouth: "

Zoe Kernohan, of Royal Oak High School: "

Since 2006, C-SPAN has partnered with its local cable television providers in communities nationwide to invite middle school and high school students to produce short documentaries about a subject of national importance.

This year's theme was "The Constitution & You: Choose a provision of the U.S. Constitution and create a video illustrating why it's important to you."

In response, C-SPAN received a record 2,985 video submissions from more than 5,700 students in 46 states and Washington, D.C. Students worked in teams or as individuals to address a wide range of public policy issues, from the freedoms of the First Amendment and the right to bear arms, to equality and the powers of Congress.

"With so much national debate about government power and personal freedoms, we were eager to hear students' perspectives on what the Constitution means to them," said C-SPAN's Manager of Education Relations Craig McAndrew, in a press release. "Students across the country engaged in conversation on the local level with elected officials, experts, community leaders and educators to explore how national issues impact their daily lives."

The most popular provisions of the Constitution explored by students were the First Amendment (26 percent), followed by the Second Amendment (16 percent) and the 14th Amendment (11 percent).

C-SPAN is funded by America's cable television companies, which support StudentCam. In Milan, Dearborn, Plymouth and Royal Oak, C-SPAN is available locally through Comcast.

"C-SPAN's StudentCam gave these students the opportunity to learn more about - and deeply appreciate - the U.S. Constitution and its impact on our local community," said Matt Kelley, Comcast Senior Manager of Government and Regulatory Affairs. "That's the sort of educational opportunity we all can be proud of. We are pleased to partner with C-SPAN and celebrate these students on this terrific recognition. Comcast congratulates them as prize winners in C-SPAN's national StudentCam documentary competition."

These winners from Michigan are among more than 300 students across the country winning a total of $100,000 in this year's competiion, including one grand-prize winner, four first-prize winners, 16 second-prize winners, 32 third-prize winners and 97 honorable mentions.

The annual competition is sponsored by the C-SPAN Education Foundation. Videos were evaluated by a panel of educators and C-SPAN representatives based on the thoughtful examination of the competition's theme, quality of expression, inclusion of varying sides of the documentary's topic, and effective incorporation of C-SPAN programming.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Former University of Michigan professor Farnam Jahanian has been named the president of Carnegie Mellon University, the school announced Thursday, March 8.

Jahanian, who arrived at Carnegie Mellon in 2014 as vice president for research, previously served as provost for two years before taking over as Carnegie Mellon's interim president last July.

Jahanian was a professor at UM for 21 years, where he held the Edward S. Davidson Collegiate Professorship in the College of Engineering. He served as director of the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997 to 2000 and chair for Computer Science and Engineering during a period of growth for the department, from 2007 to 2011.

"It's a remarkable honor and privilege to work with the students, faculty and staff who are seizing the possibilities of this century and solving its problems," Jahanian said in a news release. "As data and digital technology transform our world, Carnegie Mellon is positioned like no other institution to bring about world-leading breakthroughs in those realms, but also in the fields that help humanity benefit from this revolution, from policy to ethics, business to the arts and humanities. There's no other place like this."

Jahanian is a published expert in cybersecurity and networks, with scholarly work focused in distributed computing and network protocols and architectures. He also is recognized nationally as a computer scientist and successful entrepreneur.

He previously worked with former graduate students from UM, founding Arbor Networks to commercialize scalable, service provider-class solutions for network security. Today, technology created by Arbor Networks has been widely implemented by hundreds of major companies and government organizations around the globe. In 2008, the research behind Arbor Networks was recognized with the ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award.

In 2011, Jahanian was approved to lead the National Science Foundation Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). He oversaw presidential initiatives, such as the National Robotics Initiative and the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative, as well as championed the US Ignite and I-Corps public-private partnerships.

"The trustees of Carnegie Mellon have made a wise decision in selecting Farnam Jahanian as president," said Mary Sue Coleman, currently president of the Association of American Universities and former UM president from 2002-14. "He brings deep scholarly expertise, real world experience, and federal government leadership, all qualities of which are ideal for a university with global reach."

Jahanian's appointment is effective immediately, with a formal inauguration scheduled for fall 2018. Carnegie Mellon University is a private research institution based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, enrolling nearly 14,000 students.
James Davis Jr.

MOUNT PLEASANT, MI -- Accused Central Michigan University shooter James Eric Davis Jr. had escaped from an area hospital a few hours before he allegedly killed his parents in his dorm room.

According to Isabella County Dispatch recordings archived on Broadcastify.com, 19-year-old Davis Jr. fled from MidMichigan Medical Center, 4851 E. Pickard Road in Mount Pleasant, around 3 a.m. on Friday, March 2. Davis Jr. had been brought to the hospital after having two odd interactions with police in the preceding hours.

About 3:10 a.m., radio chatter between police searching for Davis Jr. and dispatchers indicates he was last seen heading "towards the woods, north of the helipad."

"I'm on National Drive or National Road back here," one officer tells a dispatcher. "Just came across one of the hospital workers who said the last time they saw him was on this road, going through the woods. Not sure which direction he went after that."

One voice on the recordings advises that hospital staff described Davis Jr. as having "mental issues."

A civilian in the 1600 block of Belmont Drive had called 911 after her dogs began barking and she stepped outside to see a hospital employee with a penlight. The worker had been attempting to find Davis Jr., according to the recorded chatter.

At about 3:16 a.m., an Isabella County Sheriff's deputy notifies dispatchers that he has located Davis Jr. near a landscaping business in the 4600 block of East Airport Road, a distance of 0.6 miles from the hospital. The deputy states he's taking Davis Jr. back to the hospital.

Speaking with MLive, a hospital spokeswoman said she could not divulge how Davis Jr. had managed to escape the facility.

Police had brought Davis Jr. to the hospital in the first place about 1:30 a.m. after they spotted him sitting with luggage in the lobby of Campbell Hall. Approached by police and staff, a disoriented Davis made statements that he was under the influence of drugs. As a result, police took him to the emergency room.

A few hours before that, Davis Jr. had approached a community policing officer, claiming someone was trying to kill him. An investigation was conducted, with police determining Davis Jr. was not the subject of a valid threat.

Later on the morning of March 2, hospital staff discharged Davis Jr. into the care of his parents, James E. Davis Sr. and Diva J. Davis. The parents took their son to his fourth-floor dorm room in Campbell Hall and were helping him pack for spring break.

Surveillance footage and witnesses revealed Davis Jr. later left the hall and went to his family's vehicle, where he apparently retrieved his dad's handgun. He then used his CMU ID to return to the residence hall, police have said.

Davis Jr. shot and killed his parents on returning to his room, police have said. He left the gun at the scene and fled. About 15 hours later, the crew of a Great Lakes Central Railroad train spotted a boxer-short-wearing Davis Jr. standing near tracks about a half-mile from campus and called 911. Police responded and arrested Davis without incident.

Police again took Davis Jr. to the hospital for treatment of hypothermia. He was still confined to a hospital bed on Tuesday, March 6, when Isabella County Chief Circuit Judge Paul H. Chamberlain arraigned him closed-circuit television on two counts of open murder and one count of felony firearm.

The following day, Davis Jr. was transferred from the hospital to Isabella County Jail, where he remains lodged on a $1.125 million bond.

MLive has been unable to reach Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main for comment on how authorities managed to keep Davis Jr. from escaping from the hospital during his five-day stay there.

The Davises resided in Plainfield, Illinois. Davis Sr. was a part-time officer with Bellwood Police Department, a village near Chicago, and had been a longtime member of the Illinois Army National Guard and served in the Iraq War.

Davis Jr. is to appear for a preliminary examination before Chamberlain at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, March 27.
A 17-year-old high school student is accused of threatening terrorism against two Detroit-area high schools.

Brendan J. Sibel is accused of writing bomb threats on bathroom walls in multiple buildings at Canton and Salem high schools, which are operated by the Plymouth-Canton Community School District, according to Canton police.

Sibel is charged with two counts of making threats of terrorism, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and two counts of making a bomb threat, a crime punishable by up to 4 years in prison.

It was determined by school officials and police that the threats were not credible.

A $250,000, 10 percent bond was set during Sibel's arraignment Wednesday, March 7. He is expected to appear for another bond hearing Thursday.

"We are evaluating these very serious cases on an individual basis," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said. "In this case, we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt alleged bomb and terrorism threats. "We urge anyone that has any information on any potential school threat case to notify law enforcement immediately."
A 17-year-old is facing a felony charge after investigators say he emailed a threat of violence to the Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine in Detroit on March 1.

Randall Bowen is charged with making a false report or threat of terrorism, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and malicious use of telecommunications services, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison.

"On March 1 at approximately 3:30 p.m., an email was sent to Ben Carson High School issuing a threat against the school," the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office said. "It is alleged that defendant Randall Bowen sent the email. Investigation by the Detroit Police Department led to the arrest of Bowen."

The specifics of the threat, and whether Bowen attended the school, haven't been revealed.

Benjamin Carson High School, located at 571 Mack in Detroit, is a public school focused on preparing students who would like to pursue careers in science or medicine. The school's website says:

The school is named in honor of the acclaimed Detroit-born, African-American pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson. As a pediatric neurosurgeon formerly on the staff of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Carson was honored with the 2008 Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions. The school aims to honor the contributions Dr. Carson has made not only to the global medical community, but also as a role model for Detroit students with aspirations and interests in science and medical fields.
GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- A search party set to venture out this weekend to look for two missing Genesee County women has been pushed back by seven days due to the wintry conditions leaving several inches of snow in the area, police said.

Flint Township and Burton police along with the Genesee County Search and Rescue Team have teamed up with search groups Bring our Missing Home and the Midwest Chapter of Texas Equusearch to try and find Teresa Woolard and Brianna Vibert.

Originally scheduled for March 10, the search party is now scheduled to gather from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, March 17 at the command center at Kearsley High School, 4302 Underhill Drive, in Genesee Township and be sent out in small groups to individual assignments across the county.

Burton police Detective Don Schreiber said Woolard was last heard from Dec. 10, 2016, in a text message to her daughter. She was last seen Dec. 5, 2016, at Kings Lane Apartments off Hemphill Road where she lives.

"We've got some investigative leads that we are going to focus on," he said, but Schreiber declined to comment on where the search groups would head. "We're working different angles and avenues now."

With the search teams coming in, Schreiber added it's "somebody giving a different perspective on it, a different point of view."

Bring our Missing Home is a nonprofit group based out of Georgia. Texas Equusearch, a horse-mounted search and recovery team, was founded in 2000 after multiple missing person cases arose in the Houston and Galveston areas.

The search will include officials and volunteers seeking Vibert, a 25-year-old woman that was last seen around 2:45 a.m. July 15, 2017, at the Mobil gas station in the 3800 block of South Saginaw Street.

She has tattoos including the word "Savannah" and "Maddox" on her wrists, a skeleton key on her right foot, the word "Family" on her back, and a Mad Hatter on her right shoulder. Vibert is 5-feet-9 inches tall and weighs 120 pounds.

Anyone with information on Vibert's whereabouts may contact Flint Township police Detective Doug Hart at 810-600-3250. Burton police Detective Don Schreiber may be reached at 810-742-2542 on the Woolard case.

Those looking to take part in the search party may visit bringourmissinghome.org and fill out a volunteer form.

Volunteers must not wear flip-flops, shorts, or T-shirts. No cameras or dogs are allowed and no one under 18 years old can participate. No children are allowed.
FLINT, MI - Cindy and Patrick West shared 75 days together while Patrick was in a hospital bed at Hurley Medical Center after being shot in Flint.

But the college students, who were married just six months earlier, had no idea their union would abruptly end when Patrick eventually died from his injuries.

On Dec. 23, 1971, Patrick called Cindy from the 7-11 store on Western Road where he worked and let her know he was going to be working later, altering their plans to meet up with some friends to play euchre and eat brownies.

He wasn't supposed to be working at the time, but the chance for a double shift made itself available and the couple attending Flint Community College could use the extra money for bills.

But during the shift, Patrick saw a pair of men enter and exit the store multiple times.

It wasn't until the men came around the counter and toward the register where the 25-year-old Vietnam War veteran sat on a stool that he knew something was wrong.

Passing by the store on her way home around 9:30 p.m. that night, Cindy's sister noticed several police cars and ambulances outside the store.

"Now don't get upset, but Pat's been shot" were the words Cindy heard from her sister a short time later over the phone.

One of the men inside the store fired a single blast from a sawed-off shotgun, striking Patrick in the abdomen before they fled with some fistfuls of cash from the register and a six-pack of beer.

Neighbors took Cindy up to the hospital, where her mother served as the nursing instructor in the intensive care unit.

Eight hours later, Patrick came out of surgery.

"It did a lot of damage, but he survived that night and we thought he would continue to survive," she said at a March 7 press conference by Crime Stoppers of Flint & Genesee County in the Flint Police Department roll call room.

The procedure was the first of six he'd undergo in attempts to save his life, to give him a chance to continue studying to become a lawyer, spend more time with his siblings, go hunting and fishing with friends, listen to music while dancing or playing drums on his steering wheel.

"Each time he came out, they had removed more and I thought once again, good he'll be better now, he'll survive this, but the shotgun blast took too much, it was too dirty, and things being what they were 46 years ago in the medical community ... they did their very best. They tried," Cindy said.

On March 7, 1972, she was pulled aside for a private conversation at the hospital.

"My mother, who was very involved in his care in the intensive care unit, took me into a little room and told me that he was going to die that day, to be prepared for it, to understand it, and to go in there and be with him," she said.

Watching him takes his final breaths, Cindy told Patrick she loved him.

"How much do you love me?"

"I said 'I love you this much,'" she uttered, stretching out her arms wide open, mimicking the small, white statue she propped up on the podium Wednesday at the press conference that was emblazoned with the same words, a gift Patrick had bought her for a Valentine's Day.

Cindy asked him the same question.

Too weak to lift his arms, Patrick answered back.

"How far can you reach?"

"That's the last thing he ever said," said Cindy. "This (statue) is kind of a good luck (charm) and I'm hoping it brings good luck today and some of God's grace here and invites people who know what they know to come forward."

Anyone with information about Patrick West's death can report an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-422-JAIL (5245) or via the P3tips app.

A cash reward of up to $5,000, with $2,500 coming from Crime Stoppers and $2,500 from his widow, is available for a tip leading to a felony arrest in the murder case.
Speaking at the ceremony, Politburo member Thuong described Nhan Dan Newspaper as a chronicle of the Vietnamese revolution.

He also spoke highly of the newspaper as a flag of thoughts in Vietnams revolutionary press as many of its articles deal with important scientific evidence on Party guidelines and the States legal policies.

Politburo member Thuong emphasised that since its establishment, thanks to the attention of the Party and State, and the efforts of the newspapers staff to overcome all difficulties, Nhan Dan Newspaper has significantly contributed to the revolutionary cause of the Party and nation.

Politburo member Vo Van Thuong take photos together with the Editorial Board of Nhan Dan Newspaper.

The newspaper has also contributed to promoting major national movements and fighting against red tape, corruption, negative phenomena, and hostile forces, he added.

The leader suggested further improving the quality of publications to increase readership and building a workforce with political firmness and professionalism.

He also urged Nhan Dan Newspaper to continue improving the performance of its political tasks, raise public awareness of the Party guidelines and State policies, as well as covering domestic and foreign affairs.
GREENVILLE, MI -- Authorities have arrested and charged a 35-year-old Greenville man who is accused of possessing and distributing child sexually abusive material.

Kevin Joseph Moore has been arraigned on charges of child sexually abusive activity (distributing), and possessing child sexually abusive material, according to Michigan State Police.

He's also charged with two counts of using a computer to commit a crime -- a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Police began investigating Moore's online activity after receiving several tips from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. Their investigation led officers to Moore's residence, where he was arrested after police said they conducted a warranted search.

The investigation and arrest were conducted by state police with assistance from the Greenville Police Department.

Police encourage parents to speak to their children about the safe use of the internet. A list of resources for parents can be found at the NCMEC website.

If you have information regarding possible child sexual exploitation, police ask you to report it to the CyberTipline.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- The community had a chance this week to contribute to the efforts of a city-appointed task force with the ambitious goal of reducing bias in policing outcomes.

The task force was formed in the wake of a traffic stop study that showed evidence of bias in the Grand Rapids Police Department. Among its findings, the analysis of traffic stops showed black drivers were twice as likely to be stopped by police, and were also much more likely to be searched during those stops.

Last August, the 14 members appointed to the new Grand Rapids Police Policy and Procedure Review Task Force began their work. The task force is made up of seven members of the police department -- one representing each rank -- and seven citizens -- two from each of the city's three wards and one appointed by Mayor Rosalyn Bliss. Consultants from Chicago-based firm 21st Century Policing were hired to help guide the task force through the process.

Task force co-chairs Eric Payne, deputy chief of the city's police department, and Raynard Ross, a Grand Rapids Community College dean and 3rd Ward representative, welcomed residents who gathered Wednesday, March 7, for the second of four community forums.

Raynard explained the group has identified the following topic areas for review:

Policing strategies

Accountability/Internal Affairs

Training

COP/Crime Reduction

Recruitment/Hiring

A timeline distributed at the meeting shows community input will be sought on those topic areas during forums in December 2017, March 2018, June 2018 and September 2018.

It predicts recommendations in each area will be forwarded individually to the City Commission for review beginning in May and stretching through November -- though only after the community has an opportunity to provide input and the police department itself has a chance to respond to the recommendations.

Citizen input

Facilitator Jim Coppel, part of the consultant team from 21st Century Policing, explained the forums are a crucial part of the process.

"Your voice influences the outcomes and helps shape them," Coppel said.

About 100 people -- including police officers, local officials, hired consultants and ordinary citizens -- packed tightly into the Ryerson Auditorium on the second floor of the main Grand Rapids Public Library building downtown.

Mayor Rosalyn Bliss remarked how attendance at Wednesday's forum easily doubled what the group saw at its first such event, held in December.

"This is what's going to strengthen our community," Bliss said. "This is exactly what we have to be doing a lot more of."

The large group was eventually divided into several smaller work groups. Each led by a member of the task force, those small groups were asked to answer three questions.

Coppel explained the intent was to solicit and collect a flurry of suggestions.

"We want to capture as many ideas as we possibly can in this process," he said.

Participants were asked which action steps already identified by the task force will be most effective, whether there were any other areas that should be examined by the group and what further advice they would like to give the task force.

Out of a chorus of responses, only a few were given voice Wednesday, though 21st Century Policing promised to collect and compile notes taken from each small group.

Racial bias

Many speaking for their groups suggested the department increase outreach to local youth and improve its communication about police policies and about the good things officers do in the community.

Others suggested there should be acknowledgement that the black community faces oppression the white community cannot imagine, and that there is a need for the minority community to be both consulted and heeded on the issue of police bias.

Referencing well-known events in 2016 and 2017, resident Frank Lynn pointed to the inequity on display when black youths are held at gunpoint while, at the same time, phone recordings came to light revealing that city officers discussed in depth how to avoid charging an assistant prosecutor with drunk driving.

"There has to be equal application of the law," Lynn said. "I don't know how you go about it, but we have a lot of work to be done."

He said he is hopeful the efforts of the task force will help, but admitted feeling a sense of deja vu when remembering similar efforts to lauch community-policing programs under a previous police chief -- programs that were later dismantled.

"Understanding a little more of the history of race in our city would, I think, really help the police," resident Martha Cooper said.

Cooper was also troubled by the March 24, 2017, incident, in which five young men ages 12 to 15 were stopped at gunpoint by police, handcuffed and questioned. Police said the youths fit the description of a group with a gun -- but the five youths stopped were innocent.

"There's got to be a way to do things safely that's not so over the top," Cooper said.

Others suggested ensuring police officers receive training in recognizing internal bias and discriminatory behavior and de-escalation techniques.

The department implemented cultural competence and implicit bias training for its officers in 2016.

During an introduction of the process, 21st Century Policing consultant Ronald Davis said rather than looking for individuals at the root of issues of inequity, communites should instead attack systemic issues that contribute to disparate outcomes like those shown in the city's traffic stop study.

"Too often, we blame individuals," said Davis, a former police chief and former director of the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

"That cop is a racist," Davis said. "The community members are suspects. And we don't look at the systems, the systems in which they operate in. If our systems are not correct, which is why we're here, then even good cops will have bad outcomes and even good people will be treated as suspects."

More officers

Lansing Police Chief Michael Yankowski was in attendence Wednesday and participated in one of the group discussions. The police chief talked of a need to hold police officers to a high standard, but also to understand they are human beings and should also be commended when serving admirably.

"They might do 100,000 things right, if they do one thing wrong it doesn't mean the whole organization is messed up," Yankowski said.

He said bias cuts both ways, saying officers can also face bias because of the uniform they wear.

Yankowski said he thinks very highly of the Grand Rapids Police Department and is impressed by the process the task force and city has begun.

"I think what you're doing here is really admirable," he said.

More than one small group suggested that more police officers are needed to achieve the task force's stated goals -- bolstering community policing efforts and allowing all officers to spend more time building bridges within the community they serve.

The need for more officers is something the police chief has longed stressed. Rahinsky said it was rewarding to hear community members echoing that refrain.

"Now they realize what it's going to take for us to reach those plateaus," he said. "And, in this instance, it is going to be more personnel."

None of the issues Grand Rapids is facing are unique, Davis said.

But taking the time to examine itself is the right choice for the community, he said.

"What is unique is how you're responding," he said.

Davis spoke optimistically about a future date when his team of consultants might hold up Grand Rapids as a model for the self-review process currently being undertaken.

Rahinsky said he was encouraged by the turnout and the ideas he heard Wednesday.

"What I heard really went to the core of what we're trying to accomplish, which is improving the legitimacy in the eyes of the community, working closer together, forging alliances and alignment and getting stronger as a department and a community," he said.

The members of the Grand Rapids Police and Procedure Review Task Force are:

Police Chief David Rahinsky

Deputy Chief Eric Payne (co-chairman)

Capt. Michael Maycroft, command officer union president

Lt. John Bylsma

Sgt. Jana Forner

Detective Dan Adams

Officer Andrew Bingel, police officer union president

Ed Kettle (1st Ward)

Maria Moreno-Reyes (1st Ward)

Sonja Forte (2nd Ward)

Janay Brower (2nd Ward)

Raynard Ross (3rd Ward, co-chairman)

Marques Beene (3rd Ward)

Huemartin Robinson (Mayor's appointment)

Though the group itself is expected to meet again next month to continue its work, the next community forum, focused on the topic of "accountability/internal affairs," is slated for June.
PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI -- About 350 Northview Schools students left school or didn't attend Tuesday because of a threat rumor that apparently gained steam on social media but was never credible.

A spokesperson for Northview Schools in Plainfield Township released the student estimate Wednesday, March 7.

The number represents just under 30 percent of the district's student population.

Most of the students were from the high school, although some from the middle school also left.

Information about the Northview Schools incident comes to light as many other area schools, and across the state, are dealing with potential threats. Wyoming police were dealing with one Thursday, March 8 at Godwin Heights Learning Center.

Threat causes increased police presence at Kent County school

At Northview Schools, an automated alert about the rumor was sent to Northview Schools families Tuesday morning -- about 8:20 a.m. after students arrived at school -- and explained there was no credible threat.

The spokesperson said that many students were already leaving when the alert was sent out, however.

It's not clear if the alert caused any additional confusion.

Kent County sheriff's Sgt. Joel Roon said he believes the rumors started with a Feb. 22 hallway fight between two students. One teen threatened to shoot the other.

But deputies investigated the incident at the time and found the teen did not own a gun and had no plans to acquire one.

The high school resource officer, a Kent County sheriff's deputy, talked with the teen's mother at his home.

"There was never a threat against the school," Roon said.

A report was submitted to Kent County prosecutors for review and they determined no charges were warranted.

Roon said he's not sure what happened between Feb. 22 and Tuesday, March 6.

He speculated that a rumor took root on social media.

Northview Schools Superintendent Scott Korpak posted a message Tuesday morning to the district's web site about the rumor.
WYOMING, MI -- A Wyoming school is experiencing a larger-than-usual police presence after threats were made following an altercation between two students.

Police placed Godwin Heights Learning Center on lock-down Wednesday, March 7, after learning that a student made threatening statements to another student following an assault, according to the Wyoming Department of Public Safety.

Before leaving the school, one of the involved students made a threat about returning to the school.

Investigators made contact with the student at his residence. Police said he admitted to making the statement "out of anger" and said he had no intention of following through with the threat.

Later that evening, officers received a report of information being shared via social media that encouraged Godwin students to take any lock-down at the school seriously on Thursday, March 8.

Police have not determined the source of the post, but have made further contact with the students involved in the altercation. Additionally, police are taking precautionary measures by placing additional officers in the school Thursday.

The incident remains under investigation.

The Godwin Heights Learning Center, located at 3333 Division Ave. S, is a small alternative high school within Godwin Public Schools. It sits next to Godwin High School.
Seven more people - five of whom are facing felony charges - were arraigned Wednesday in an East Lansing courtroom following violent protests that erupted at Michigan State University prior to a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer.

That brings the number of people to 10 who were arraigned since Tuesday in 54-B District Court in East Lansing on charges ranging from resisting and obstructing police to carrying a concealed weapon following Spencer's appearance. Eight of those arraigned are facing felony charges.

Spencer gave a speech at about 5 p.m. Monday at the Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education.

In addition to the arraignments, 10 people received tickets to appear in court at a later date for misdemeanor charges, such as disorderly conduct, urinating in public, or failing to obey a police officer, according to information provided by the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office.

The prosecutor's office also said four people arrested were released from custody pending further investigation by police. Prosecutors did not pursue charges against one person taken into custody.

All told, 25 people were arrested during Monday's protests, which took place in the area surrounding the pavilion, which is located at the southern tip of MSU's campus, near the intersection of Farm Lane and Mt. Hope Road.

MLive, along with other major news organizations, was denied credentialing and access to the event by its organizer, the National Policy Institute. But in a livestream, Spencer referred to the protesters as "Antifa sick freaks" and said their presence was a sign his movement was gaining traction.

Though the area in the pavilion where Spencer spoke could accommodate up to 364 people, just a few dozen people attended the event. Spencer blamed the small crowd on protesters limiting the entrance of his supporters who had tickets to attend.

Here's the list of people, provided by the prosecutor's office, who have been arraigned and ticketed in connection with the event:

"John Shade III, a 37-year old resident of Thornville, Ohio, charged with MSU trespassing ordinance and MSU weapons ordinance." (misdemeanor)
LANSING, MI -- Lawmakers leading an inquiry into Michigan State University's handling of ex-Dr. Larry Nassar are asking the university for more documents, they announced Thursday.

MSU employed Nassar for nearly two decades as he sexually assaulted hundreds of girls and women under the guise of providing medical care.

Rep. Klint Kesto, R-Commerce Twp., and House Appropriations Higher Education Subcommittee Chair Rep. Kim LaSata, R-Bainbridge Twp., have already gotten 1,500 pages of documentation from MSU.

House attorneys are still reviewing that material, according to a press release, but lawmakers are looking for more.

"Michigan State has supplied a lot of information, but we need more to paint a clearer picture as to how the school addressed the Nassar accusations," Kesto said.

House Speaker Tom Leonard, R-DeWitt, said Kesto and LaSata would begin hearings on the issue in the next couple of weeks.

The documents will not be made public, Leonard said, because of a request from Bill Forsyth, the special prosecutor hired by Attorney General Bill Schuette to investigate the university's handling of Nassar.

"We have been asked by the independent prosecutor not to release those documents at this time. He believes that they could compromise his investigation," Leonard said.

The legislature will leave it up to Forsyth, Leonard said, to determine what documents, if any, are released.

LaSata said lawmakers still had questions for the university.

"There are questions we need answered to take the necessary steps to protect current and future students at Michigan's colleges and universities," LaSata said. "We've reviewed a lot of information, but we owe it to the victims to get these last questions and details resolved before proceeding with appropriate measures."
KEWEENAW POINT, MI - With debris from thousands of shipwrecks littering the bottom of Lake Superior, the November 1926 stranding of the City of Bangor might have been chalked up to just another freighter that foundered in a blinding snowstorm along the shore of the Upper Peninsula.

But what cements the Bangor in Great Lakes lore isn't the wreck itself - it's the epic, months-long effort to recover about 230 brand new Chrysler cars that were on the ship's deck and parked below when it grounded near Keweenaw Point. The rows of shiny sedans were bound from Detroit to Duluth, Minn. when the cargo carrier went up on the rocks, its battered hull making it a total loss.

It was a Herculean task. The recovery effort was undertaken during the worst months of winter, on the state's northernmost peninsula. Snow was hip-high in spots, and access was a big obstacle.

Workers had to wait for the lake to freeze around the ship so they could reach the vehicles. Cars still fastened to the deck had to be hacked out of 4 to 10 feet of ice that encased the ship. There were no plowed roads on that end of the peninsula. So once freed, the cars were driven along the shore and around the peninsula to Copper Harbor.

All this so the line of Chryslers eventually could be driven to the train station in Calumet and loaded into boxcars for the long trip back to Detroit.

"They needed to get them back, get them refurbished, get them back to the dealers," said Mark Rowe, trustee and maritime chairman of the Keweenaw County Historical Society. Rowe, a scuba diver, does presentations on the area's shipwrecks, including the Bangor.

This spring marks 91 years since the Chrysler recovery effort wrapped up. It's a story that continues to be shared among ship lovers, wreck divers and locals. And at least one of the cars driven off that ship still can be seen on the peninsula - the imprint of an axe head visible on a rear door frame from where it may have been hewn from the ice.

Photographs from the collections of the Michigan History Center's Archives of Michigan, Michigan Tech University Archives and the Keweenaw National Historical Park are being brought together to help tell the story.

Cars aboard the deck of the wrecked City of Bangor

A NOVEMBER SNOWSTORM, QUESTIONS ARISE ABOUT WRECK

Built in 1896, the 445-foot City of Bangor was repurposed at least once during her 30-year career on the Great Lakes.

Initially a bulk cargo carrier, she hauled heavy loads. She was later converted into a car carrier. Workers installed an inner deck level, a deck elevator, and she had space for plenty of cars on her upper deck, Rowe said.

But it turns out hauling cars made her less able to handle heavy seas in a storm.

"Cars were much lighter than cargoes like iron ore and coal," Rowe said. Thus, a ship carrying cars rode higher on the water. "Even with the load of cars on, with a northwest storm, it could not make headway."

Accounts of the wreck talk about how Capt. William Mackin left the safety of Whitefish Point to travel toward Duluth in November, 1926. Finding the storm too fierce after he rounded the north side of the Keweenaw Peninsula, he turned the Bangor back toward the protection of the south side. But the Bangor lost its steering gear and drifted until she ran aground. A gaping hole in her stern flooded the engine room.

The details match the official account from the U.S. Lifesaving Service post at Eagle Harbor, Rowe said. For decades, no one had a reason to doubt it. Until a phone call made Rowe wonder what actually led the ship to run up on the rocks.

Emory Massman Jr. called, saying he was writing a book that included the Bangor's story, and he'd heard the Keweenaw County Historical Society's museum at Eagle Harbor had a copy of the ship's log.

In his book, he wrote about what he thinks really happened the night the Bangor ran aground, based on a story Mackin had told Massman's father, also a laker captain, in a St. Ignace bar about a decade after the wreck.

Mackin told the elder Massman the ship had been sailing for 12 hours since leaving Whitefish Point and because of the blinding snowstorm, he'd misjudged the Bangor's position.

"He was actually far beyond Manitou Island and even beyond Copper Harbor," according to Massman Jr.'s book, "The Nicholson Lines and Their Captains."

"In the snow, he had missed both locations. The course change he made took him back to Keweenaw Point, where he ran aground near the end of the point."

The Bangor ended up 200 feet offshore at 6 p.m. on Nov. 30. She would never sail again.

The City of Bangor came to rest on a rocky reef about 200 feet from shore at Keweenaw Point.

A CHANCE RESCUE, SEVERE FROSTBITE

Mackin's 29 crew members waited until the next day to leave the ship. Using a lifeboat to reach the shore, they set out to find help. Instead they got lost in deep snow, brush and swampy areas. They backtracked to the shore. The sailors weren't dressed for U.P. weather. Some had cut strips of clothing and wrapped them around their legs for extra protection, but ice still formed on their skin, local accounts said.

"A fire was built and the crew spent a miserable night on the beach," according to Massman.

Meanwhile, the Lifesaving Service at Eagle Harbor was nearby rescuing the crew from the steamer Thomas Maytham, which had also foundered in the storm. This group passed Keweenaw Point and saw the stranded Bangor, then saw its crew gathered on the beach.

The rescuers made a return trip for the Bangor crew. They got them to Copper Harbor. Crew members suffering from severe frostbite were taken to a local hospital, while others were put up with area families and in boarding houses until they could be moved to Calumet.

Rowe talked to a woman who had been a nurse at the hospital where the Bangor's sailors were being treated. It was her first job.

"Those guys that they brought to the hospital had the worst cases of severe frostbite," she told Rowe, adding that they ate a lot during their convalescence: A big glass of milk and a loaf of bread a day, toasted.

SALVAGE: A PRICEY CARGO

After the wreck, the ship's owners and insurance adjusters came to size up the Chrysler cargo. Eighteen of the cars had been sent overboard when a deck cable snapped in the storm, loosening an entire row, Massman said.

The remaining 230 would need to be driven off and loaded on rail cars back to Detroit. But it would be an enormous job considering many of the $800 sedans were coated in ice, and there were no plowed roads for most of the route between the Point and Calumet.

So the Duluth salvage company hired for the job had to get creative. And they had to remove them carefully if they wanted to get their agreed-upon $117 per car, Massman said.

Once the water around the ship froze solid, a ramp was built and the cars inside were driven off the Bangor. Axes and other tools were used to break several feet of ice encasing the cars on deck.

"They had to chop them all out," Rowe said.

Horse teams created a "snow road" along the shoreline, and the cars were carefully driven over the ice from Keweenaw Point to Copper Harbor.

Once in Copper Harbor, photos show the Chryslers were lined up in long, neat rows to await the plows needed to open the 20 miles between Copper Harbor and the town of Phoenix.

The State Road Commission hired 30 men to open a road, with plows creating banks of snow 10 feet high along some stretches. It took plow operators two weeks of working around the clock to finish the corridor, Massman's book said.

About four dozen men and boys were hired to drive the cars from Phoenix into Calumet, where they were loaded onto rail cars for the return trip to Detroit. Locals later described most of the area's boys missing school to help drive the sedan caravan. They pocketed $5 for the adventure.

And, of course, a few tall tales persist decades later. Cars that were being driven to Calumet taking a turn and "disappearing" down an old forest road. Locals driving away in cars that later washed up on the beach.

But salvage workers likely had to account for each car, ensuring those driven off the ship did arrive in Calumet.

"By the first of April, all but two cars had been loaded in flat cars and shipped back to Detroit," according to a local account.

BANGOR REDUCED TO BITS OF METAL

The Chryslers were the priority, and the Bangor's owners didn't seem to be in any hurry to haul away the wreck. Some of her parts were salvaged in 1927. After that, she was left as a hulking presence on the Point for roughly 18 years.

"The ship just sat on that reef. It was one of the most photographed shipwrecks on the Keweenaw," Rowe said.

It the mid-40s, salvagers returned to take her metal for the war effort. Her wreck site is now part of the Keweenaw Underwater Preserve. But divers today don't find much to mark her spot.

"All you do is find bits and pieces," he said.
A Michigan company is partnering with Microsoft to get broadband internet access to residents of northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula in the coming years.

Using TV white spaces, wi-fi hardware and other technologies, Microsoft recently announced it would work with Iron Mountain-based company Packerland to expand its existing reach - the companies expect to expand broadband internet access to about 33,750 additional people by the end of 2019 and about 82,000 people in the region by 2022.

"Partnering with Microsoft allows us to bring new services and push our services further into the rural landscape in our region and beyond," Cory Heigl, vice president of Packerland Broadband said in a statement announcing the agreement. "We are the people we serve, and in this part of the world, we want to make an impact for the better."

The partnership comes as businesses and politicians look to address broadband internet access in rural communities, where options for increased connectivity can be more limited or difficult to access.

It's part of Microsoft's Rural Airband Initiative, which aims to bring broadband to an additional 2 million people across the country by 2022 and provide digital skills training in those communities. In a statement, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said the partnership will help bring "the electricity of the 21st century" to northern residents.

Federal lawmakers and members of the Trump administration are also looking to make internet access more reliable in remote locations.

During the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual meeting in Nashville, President Donald Trump praised farmers and said he'd act on issues brought up in an agriculture task force he created last year. As part of that, he signed presidential executive orders to "provide broader and faster, and better internet coverage."

The Federal Communications Commission currently tracks data on broadband options in the U.S., but some lawmakers are hoping to improve that system.

Legislation sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and cosponsored by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, passed last week in the Senate aims to improve the reliability of mobile wireless coverage data available to "reflect the real-world experiences of consumers in rural America," according to a March 2 release from Manchin's office.

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Michigan U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, called broadband a priority when addressing members of the Michigan Agri-Business Association in January.

"If we want to truly expand and create jobs all over Michigan and the quality of life that we want in small towns as well as big cities, you have to have high speed internet," Stabenow said at the time.

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, has called broadband access a growing need for farms and businesses in Michigan that contribute more than $101 billion to the state economy.

In a recent statement, Bergman's office applauded the partnership between Packerland and Microsoft and said the Congressman would continue to support policies to make high-speed broadband more affordable and accessible.
MICHIGAN CENTER, MI -- Wilbur took in his surroundings as he was mobbed by a class of kindergartners at Michigan Center's Arnold Elementary School.

Wilbur, a Boston terrier who is known as the Art Dog, was brought to the school by Amy Fracker on Thursday, March 8.

Fracker was talking to the students about the upcoming Art Dog event at the Jackson School of the Arts, 634 N. Mechanic St., on Sunday, March 11.

The 1 to 3 p.m. event features reading with art and dogs. This is the second year for the event and is featuring the book "Why is the Blue Dog Blue" by George Rodrigue.

The all-ages event also offers a chance to read with therapy dogs, create dog inspired art and shop in the Pooch Plaza.

Dogs will also be available for adoption from the Cascades Humane Society.

And if nothing else, you can also meet Wilbur.
JACKSON, MI - It's never too early to start thinking about a career.

The Jackson YMCA and Shop Rat Foundation are teaming up to help Jackson middle school students do that in a new after-school program offering hands-on career training.

The Future Leaders program allows Middle School at Parkside sixth, seventh and eighth graders to attend after-school classes, five days a week at the YMCA, 127 W. Wesley St.

Classes are from 2:45 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Transportation from Parkside to the YMCA is provided.

Classes on Mondays and Wednesdays will focus on teaching life skills such as CPR, babysitting skills and more, YMCA officials said in a release.

Shop Rat instructors will lead classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that explore facets of the manufacturing industry and other skilled trades through hands-on engagement.

On Fridays, students will partake in a community service activity.

The program runs in two four-week sessions.

The first is April 9 to May 4 with registration underway now. The second session is May 7 through June 1, with registration opening April 9.

The cost for YMCA members is $100 per session. It is $150 for nonmembers.

Click here to download a registration form.

For more information, call the YMCA at 517-782-0537.
The PM made the request while chairing a meeting with several ministries and sectors on the management of ODA and preferential loans on March 8.

Attendants were in agreement that foreign ODA and preferential loans must be used only for development investment purposes and not for regular expenses. However, the distinction between regular expenses and investments for development remains unclear in ODA projects.

They said that expenses for development investments should cover projects on "soft infrastructure" including capacity enhancement, technical support, and human development but not only "hard infrastructure" development.

The PM emphasised the important role of ODA for socio-economic development of Vietnam but also admitted inadequacies in ODA management over the past.

The Government leader agreed that clearer criteria for development investments and regular expenses must be set out in ODA projects to avoid mistakes.

The PM confirmed that ODA loans signed after 2017 will only be used for development investments and not for regular expenses. He also told ODA management agencies to review and reduce inefficient spending and report the results to the government.
GRASS LAKE, MI - Police investigated a potential threat made by a student to "shoot up" Grass Lake Middle School Wednesday morning.

Deputies were called to the school at about 10:30 a.m., March 7, after the student made a comment in front of other students regarding "shooting up the school," according to an email from Grass Lake Community Schools that was sent to parents.

Police questioned the student and determined he did not have a weapon at the school, nor did he have access to a weapon outside of school, school officials said.

The Jackson County Sheriff's Office handled the investigation and it is up to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office to determine if the student is to be charged.

The sheriff's office is still investigating the incident, Undersheriff Christopher Kuhl said.

Federal law prohibits school official from releasing information regarding disciplinary actions for the student.

"Grass Lake Community Schools will consistently respond aggressively by notifying the authorities of any threats of violence toward other students or staff," school officials said in the email.

Grass Lake Community Schools Superintendent Ryle Kiser wishes to remind parents that the school district also performs state-mandated readiness drills to know what to do if there is crisis on school grounds.

Michigan's OK2SAY student safety program received a record-breaking 670 tips in February, the most tips received in one month, 119 of which relating to planned school attacks, according to a statement form the Michigan Attorney General's Office.

By comparison, there were 560 tips left in October, and only 146 tips relating to planned school attacks were received in all of 2017, officials said.

OK2SAY, launched in 2014, is a student safety program that acts as an early warning system in Michigan schools to prevent tragedies before they occur.

It works by allowing anyone to confidentially provide tips on criminal activities or potential harm directed at students, school employees, and schools, the Attorney General's Office said.

Tips are forwarded to appropriate local agencies for investigation and appropriate response.

Tips can be submitted by any of the following ways:
COLDWATER, MI -- Embattled Branch County Prosecutor Ralph Kimble II, the defendant in a sexual harassment lawsuit, has been ordered to stay out of some areas of the courthouse unless he has permission from the court.

Kimble is also not allowed to have any contact with a female employee of the judiciary unless a male employee or a sheriff's deputy is present, an order signed by four judges states.

District Court Judge Brent Weigle, Probate Judge Kirk Kashian, Circuit Judge William O'Grady and District Judge/Magistrate David Coyle signed the order dated Feb. 22, restricting Kimble's movement in the courts.

The judges determined "the judiciary has an inherent right and statutory duty to protect the employees of the various courts," the order states.

"It was further determined that it has become necessary to institute remedial measures in order to protect those employees from inappropriate conduct on the part of Ralph Kimble II," the order states.

Kimble is "restricted and absolutely barred from any area of the second floor judicial corridor of the Branch County Courthouse and any area maintained, occupied or assigned to Branch County Circuit Court and District Court, except in courtrooms or judicial chambers upon request of the court for matters with opposing counsel present and all lobbies/hallways otherwise open to the general public."

The order places a similar restriction on Kimble's movements in probate court.

It bars Kimble from entering any area maintained, occupied or assigned to Branch County Friend of the Court.

The order states it will be in effect until it is rescinded by the chief judge.

A lawsuit filed by Evon Staley alleges she and other employees of the Branch County Prosecutor's Office were subject to discrimination by the sexually hostile work environment "created and maintained by Kimble." It alleges a violation of the Michigan Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Kimble has not responded to MLive's requests for comment and did not immediately return a message left for him on March 8.

A panel of Branch County judges formed in 2017 to interview employees about Kimble determined there was sufficient evidence of inappropriate conduct by the prosecutor, according to a news release from the judges.

The Michigan Attorney General's Office has previously confirmed there was an investigation of Kimble going on by responding in December to a Freedom of Information Request for complaints against Kimble, saying information could not be released because it is part of an open department investigation.

On Feb. 13, the State Board of Canvassers approved language in a recall petition submitted against Kimble.

Below is the order:

Branch County court order by Brad Devereaux on Scribd
VICKSBURG, MI - Police arrested a Vicksburg Middle School student on Wednesday for making a threat of violence against the school.

Vicksburg Community Schools administrators stated in a March 7, press release that the Vicksburg Police Department arrested a student and the student is to be charged with making a threat of potential violence against the school.

It marks the second time in less than a month that a student in the school district has allegedly made a threat of violence.

Steve Goss, assistant superintendent of Vicksburg Community Schools, said the arrest at the middle school is related to a verbal threat that a young male student allegedly made about two weeks before the Feb. 14 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.

"A student reported hearing a threatening verbal statement a few weeks earlier," Goss said. "The student didn't really think much off it."

But, Goss said, after the shootings in Florida, "the student reconsidered and said, 'I need to tell somebody.'"

School officials and the police became aware of the threat during the weekend of Feb. 17-18, Goss said. An investigation was conducted the following week and, Goss said, "The preliminary investigation was there was no credible threat."

And no arrest was made.

The school administration was notified Wednesday morning that law enforcement planned to make an arrest, however. Goss said he does not know what additional information officers obtained that resulted in the arrest of the student.

He said he was unable to offer specifics about the threat. And police have not said what type of violence was allegedly threatened or whether the suspect was found in possession of a weapon or objects that could harm others.

An attempt was not successful Wednesday to contact Scott Sanderson, chief of the Vicksburg Police Department.

Goss said he doubts that students at the middle school were aware that the arrest occurred. He said a message was forwarded Wednesday about the incident to parents of students in the district.

In its press release, school administrators acknowledged, "This is the second time in less than a month that the school district has worked closely with authorities to assist in this type of situation. There will be an increased presence on campus for the rest of the week.

Police arrested a Vicksburg High School student on Feb. 22 after the student allegedly made a threat of violence against the school using social media.

At the time, Chief Sanderson said police had determined that students were not in danger. Officers have still not described the nature of the threat in that incident or provided specifics about the suspect's intentions.

Sanderson stated at that time that police would be seeking charges against the juvenile subject involved. Goss said Wednesday that, to the best of his knowledge, no charges have been filed against the suspect in that incident."

Seventeen people died and 14 were seriously injured when a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., (northwest of Fort Lauderdale), shot up that school using an AR-15 assault rifle.
LANSING, MI - A bill requiring defendants to stay and listen to impact statements from their victims that was introduced after murderer Jeffrey Willis walked out of the courtroom passed the state House Thursday with minimal opposition.

Family members of Willis' victim, Rebekah Bletsch of Muskegon County, were in the House chamber for the vote on the bill that will be named after Bletsch if it passes muster in the Senate.

House Bill 5407 passed by a vote of 105-2, with Rep. Frank Liberati, D-Allen Park, and Rep. Rose Mary Robinson, D-Detroit, casting the only no votes.

The bill amends three sections of the William Van Regenmorter Crime Victims Rights Act, and requires that defendants remain in the courtroom to listen to victim impact statements unless they are determined by the court to be disruptive or a safety risk.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Holly Hughes, R-Montague, who addressed her colleagues prior to the vote. She recounted how "a monster was convicted of murdering a lovely young woman," and then requested he be allowed to leave the courtroom before her family members gave impact statements.

"Because the judge was unable to find any law requiring that (Willis) stay, his request was granted," Hughes said. "Because of the lack of a law, a convicted murderer was given more rights than a grieving family."

Willis was convicted in November 2017 for the June 2014 murder of Bletsch, who was shot to death as she jogged along a rural Muskegon County road. The prosecutor's office believes that Willis was trying to kidnap Bletsch, but killed her when she fought back.

In May, he faces trial for the sexually-motivated kidnapping and murder of Jessica Heeringa, who disappeared in April 2013 and has never been found. Willis also faces trial for the alleged kidnapping in 2016 of a teenager whose escape led to Willis' arrest.

Bletsch's sisters and mother were mortified when Willis left the courtroom prior to their statements.

"The fact that Jeffrey Willis walked out of the courtroom and wouldn't hear any of us, it just goes to show what a coward he really is," Bletsch's sister Jessica Josephson said at the time.

As he was led out of the courtroom, Willis blew a kiss to Bletsch's family members - an action that "revictimized" them, Hughes said.

Willis ended up being forced to listen to a recording of their statements that was repeatedly played in the Muskegon County Sheriff cruiser that transported him to prison.
FREELAND, MI -- In the wake of a Freeland priest charged with sexual assault, the bishop for the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw has encouraged victims to come forward, and he expressed his solidarity with the parish where the priest ministered.

"I have publicly expressed my commitment, on behalf of the Diocese of Saginaw, to cooperate fully with law enforcement in this most serious matter," Bishop Joseph Cistone said. "In the meantime, we encourage any victims to come forward to the civil authorities in charge of this investigation."

Cistone gave those remarks over the weekend at St. Agnes church, where 71-year-old Rev. Robert DeLand Jr. preached until he was charged last week with sexually assaulting a man and a teen.

Bishop Joseph R. Cistone

Cistone, who is battling lung cancer, began his remarks apologizing to the crowd for his voice, according to a transcript of the speech.

He told those gathered that the allegations against DeLand were the "first indication we had of this issue involving Father Bob."

"On one hand, I know the good that Father Bob has done for so many people throughout his years of priestly ministry," Cistone said. "However, being made aware of these allegations, like many of you, my emotions have moved back and forth from compassion, sadness and concern to anger, betrayal and a sincere desire for justice."

DeLand, a longtime area priest, was charged Feb. 26 with three felonies on accusations he sexually assaulted a 21-year-old man and 17-year-old boy in his Saginaw Township condominium.

Since his arrest, nearly half a dozen more people have told investigators stories of alleged sexual abuse, attempted or otherwise, at the hands of DeLand, Tittabawassee Township Detective Brian Berg previously said.

The Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, where DeLand has worked in a variety of roles and parishes since his ordainment in 1973, denies any knowledge of past sexual assault accusations against the pastor.

Erin Looby Carlson, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, said the diocese has received two allegations since DeLand was arrested.

One parent of an alleged victim told the diocese about "sexual misconduct" by DeLand, Carlson said. The victim is no longer a minor, and they were told to contact police, she said.

The diocese also received an allegation over email about "sexual misconduct" by other priests in the diocese, she said. DeLand was not mentioned. Carlson said the email was reported to police.

After DeLand was charged, the diocese placed him on administrative leave and forbade him from working or posing as a priest until the criminal case concludes.

Among the tips pouring into the Tittabawassee Police Department are allegations of sexual abuse by five to six other area clergymen, Berg previously said. If the allegations are verified, an official investigation will launch, the detective said.

Carlson said the diocese reports allegations to police if a minor comes to them with claims of sexual assault.

If the alleged victim is not a minor, the diocese "strongly encourages" the person to report it to police themselves, Carlson said. The diocese will make a report, too, unless the alleged victim requests them not to or if the alleged offender is dead.

She advised victims to contact police or the diocese.

Anyone with information about DeLand or other tips is asked to call Tittabawassee Township police at 989-695-9623 or Saginaw Township police at 989-791-7226.

DeLand's next court appearance is March 12 for a pre-examination conference.

He remains released from custody on GPS tether. Because he's court-ordered to have no contact with anyone under 21, he is prohibited from going on school properties and attending church functions.
BRIDGEPORT TWP, MI -- Bridgeport Township officials honored two officers who saved a woman from a burning building last month.

Officer Eric Myczkowiak from the Bridgeport Township Police Department and Michigan State Police Trooper Darrell Wynkoop were given awards by township trustees on Tuesday, March 7, which were signed by David Duffett, chief of Bridgeport police.

Myczkowiak and Wynkoop arrived at 2822 Germain Street in Bridgeport Township after midnight on Saturday, Feb. 17, on a fire call and heard someone inside the residence.

The officers entered the home and located a 56-year-old woman who they dragged to safety outside of the residence.

"I am very proud of Officer Myczkowiak and also Trooper Wynkoop," Duffett said.

The victim was transported by Mobile Medical Response to Covenant HealthCare and then transferred to Hurley Medical Center for treatment of smoke inhalation.

Myczkowiak and Wynkoop were treated and released from St. Mary's of Michigan Hospital for smoke inhalation.

Bridgeport Township Fire Department the Buena Vista Township Police Department assisted at the scene.

"I'm thankful for the standing cooperation we've had with all law enforcement in Saginaw County," Duffett said.
SAGINAW, MI -- Some students and schools from the Mid-Michigan area are joining others across the nation to acknowledge the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida.

On March 14, students are planning to participate in a national school walk out for 17 minutes.

Each minute pays homage to the 17 people killed on Feb. 14 at the Florida high school.

Students from Caro High School are participating in the event, but their focus is less on gun control and more about honoring the victims, said Caro Community Schools Superintendent Bob Smith.

"I would say the students have organized it with feedback from staff and administrators," Smith said.

He said during the gathering, students plan to release balloons and return to class.

"Women's March Youth Empower is calling for students, teachers, school administrators, parents and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. across every time zone on March 14, 2018, to protest Congress' inaction to do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to the gun violence plaguing our schools and neighborhoods. We need action," reads a statement from the Women's March website.

According to the Women's March website, Midland High School and H.H. Dow High School are planning to participate as well, but will remain in their classrooms.

"Our high school principals will work with our student leaders to have the gymnasium be used to honor Stoneman Douglas High School with a letter-writing promotion that has been requested by Stoneman Douglas High School administrators. This will be student-led, but supervised by staff for safety. Students may choose to participate or remain in their classrooms," Midland Public Public Schools Superintendent Michael Sharrow said in a March 5 communique.

Sharrow said a walkout would cause the district and schools several problems:

Our concern for the safety of our students marching out at a specific time when the campus is closed with building access only at the secure entrance.

Michigan weather in March may also be a factor.

School precedent-setting for other requests for student walkouts.

A 17-minute delay in the middle of a class period.

A Facebook page titled "March For Our Lives - Saginaw, MI," created by Kaylin Bradshaw, a junior at Heritage High School, is organizing an event for students to participate off-campus.

"The 'March for Our Lives - Saginaw' campaign is our local branch of the national movement striving to put an end to the mass school shooting epidemic, along with support for victims of the Parkland, FL, high school massacre. Take a stand against violence in schools to create the safest environment for our future leaders to prosper in!," the statement read on the Saginaw March for Our Lives event page.

The event will be held on Saturday, March 24, at Krossroads Park, 5656 Bay Road, at 11 a.m. Bradshaw said the march will be open to the public.

"The March is more of an outlet for our voices to be heard by the world, since this walkout is a private event ... it will just be to encourage our peers to join us in our call to action," Bradshaw said via Facebook Messenger.

She said one of the main goals is to acknowledge the that threats circulating the high school are not OK.

On Monday, Feb. 26, Saginaw Township schools closed due to a threat on social media. In recent weeks, several Saginaw-area schools have closed due to some sort of threat.

Bradshaw said the walk out event is not open to the public. "This is a student-led event and no outside media, parents or even staff are allowed," Bradshaw said.
SAGINAW, MI -- Katie Leuenberger has not seen her remaining five children since they were removed by state officials in January after her son, Jordan "Baby J" Brown, 3, was allegedly beaten to death by her live-in boyfriend Tavaris J. Williams.

With a trial to determine if she will lose her parental rights on the horizon, Leuenberger is asking a family court referee to let her visit her children.

According to Katherine Baluha, Freeland-based court-appointed attorney to Leuenberger's custody case in family court, Leuenberger was granted supervised parenting time on Jan. 3.

However, Leuenberger was arrested on one count of first-degree child abuse on Jan. 10 and bonded out before facing a judge for arraignment.

Leuenberger, who had 10 days to appear for arraignment, was arraigned by Saginaw County District Court Judge David Hoffman on Monday, Jan. 22.

As a condition of her bond, Leuenberger, who said she lives with her mother, could not have contact with anyone under the age of 18 except for her 15-year-old brother.

On Feb. 2, Hoffman revised the bond order to allow Leuenberger supervised parenting time, according to Baluha.

During a Wednesday, March 7, family court hearing, Baluha told Attorney Referee James Perry that, "To this date, my client has not been given any parenting time. It's been a long time since she has seen her children."

Baluha stated that there were no allegations that her client has harmed the children in any way.

Amanda Moran, a foster care worker for the State of Michigan, said that part of the reason she has not ben allowed to see her children was that they were trying to get therapists for each of the children so that the supervised visits can be conducted in a therapeutic setting.

The three oldest children have therapists and Moran said they expect the younger children will have therapists sometime this week.

Perry urged Moran and other officials to try to get Leuenberger a visit with her children before the March 26 trial in family court concerning her parental rights begins.

"I think it is important that they see their mother in some capacity after what happened," Perry said.

Baby J was brought to Covenant by Mobile Medical Response on Jan. 1 after authorities responded to Leuenberger's Saginaw Township home for a report of a child who was unresponsive.

Leuenberger said she was at Kroger at the time, and had left her six children at home under the watch of Williams, who she met in August and moved into her home in October.

Baby J was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries that doctors said he would not recover from. He was placed on life support while waiting to donate his organs.

On Jan. 5, he was removed from life support and died.

Williams is charged with first-degree felony murder and first-degree child abuse. He is lodged in the Saginaw County Jail without bond.
NASA launched its Juno mission with the goal of unlocking Jupiter's secrets, and new data sent home shows that the spacecraft is accomplishing exactly this.

The U.S. space agency reports in a news release that the Juno spacecraft found that atmospheric winds on Jupiter "run deep into its atmosphere" and could be considered unearthly.

NASA says its Juno's mission is to try and determine how much water is in the planet's atmosphere and to measure its composition, temperature and cloud patterns. It will also attempt to map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields.

The #Jupiter youve never seen. New science results reveal massive cyclones that surround the planets north and south poles are lasting atmospheric features and unlike anything else encountered in the solar system. https://t.co/ZJfdARnSRe pic.twitter.com/IDnDu73rHd  NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) March 7, 2018

Before the Juno mission was launched, studies had only covered the planet's surface, giant red storm as its interior was somewhat of a mystery.

"On a gas planet, such an asymmetry can only come from flows deep within the planet; and on Jupiter, the visible eastward and westward jet streams are likewise asymmetric north and south," NASA reports.

"The deeper the jets, the more mass they contain, leading to a stronger signal expressed in the gravity field. Thus, the magnitude of the asymmetry in gravity determines how deep the jet streams extend."

--

--

"These astonishing science results are yet another example of Jupiter's curve balls, and a testimony to the value of exploring the unknown from a new perspective with next-generation instruments," Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator, said in the release. "Juno's unique orbit and evolutionary high-precision radio science and infrared technologies enabled these paradigm-shifting discoveries.

"Juno is only about one third the way through its primary mission, and already we are seeing the beginnings of a new Jupiter."

NASA notes that other discoveries made by Juno concern the eye-grabbing cyclones on the giant planet's poles are "enduring atmospheric features and unlike anything else encountered in our solar system."

These cyclones, included in the photos at the top of this page, are said to range in diameter from 2,500 to 4,300 miles. The Juno spacecraft launched on Aug. 5, 2011 and arrived to Jupiter in July of 2016. Juno will orbit the planet for 20 months, and de-orbited into the planet in February 2018.

The mission is part of the space agency's New Frontiers program, which is managed out of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The findings released on Thursday, March 8 match up with previous findings that our solar system's largest planet is a turbulent and energetic one, with a "complex interior structure."

"Galileo viewed the stripes on Jupiter more than 400 years ago," Yohai Kaspi, Juno co-investigator, said in the release. "Until now, we only had a superficial understanding of them and have been able to relate these stripes to cloud features along Jupiter's jets.

"Now, following the Juno gravity measurements, we know how deep the jets extend and what their structure is beneath the visible clouds. It's like going from a 2-D picture to a 3-D version in high definition."

Another Jovian curve ball.



Astonishing findings reveal that #Jupiter's atmospheric winds run deep into the planet's atmosphere and last longer than similar atmospheric processes found here on Earth.



Watch the full animation: https://t.co/rwIv6SbXfG pic.twitter.com/FP8iv2NdIg  NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) March 7, 2018

Back in July 2017, Juno flew over Jupiter's Great Red Spot and offered humanity its first-ever up close view of the storm.

The Great Red Spot storm has been monitored by astronomers since 1830, and has been measured at 10,159 miles in width. The U.S. space agency says in the release that it is believed the storm has existed for more than 350 years.
A storm system will come from an odd direction, the east. This storm will produce heavy snow in northeast Lower Michigan Thursday. As a result, a winter storm warning has been issued for tonight and Thursday, March 8, 2018.

The winter storm warning is in effect now through 5 p.m. Thursday, March 8, 2018 for Alpena, Tawas City, Rogers City, Harrisville, Petoskey and Cheboygan. The winter storm warning area has a good shot at another 6" to 9" of snow tonight and Thursday.

Update at 10:30 p.m. March 7, 2018: Winter weather advisories have been upgraded to winter storm warnings for Tuscola, Huron and Sanilac Counties for tonight and Thursday. The warning signifies areas should get 6" or more of snow in the Thumb.

Here's the always updated radar animation over the Great Lakes:

Surrounding the winter storm warning area is a large area under a winter weather advisory. Some of the counties in this winter weather advisory are Midland, Bay, Saginaw, Shiawassee, Genesee, Lapeer, Huron, Tuscola and Sanilac. The Saginaw Bay area and the Thumb are in the winter weather advisory.

The winter weather advisory area should have 2" to 4" of snow Thursday.

But I have a concern for the Thumb. There could be areas with much heavier snow. Some localized areas could have more than 6" of snow as some lake enhancement moves into the northern Thumb from Lake Huron.

Here's a computer model that shows total snowfall tonight through Thursday. I like the shape of the snowfall totals. The amounts in the northern Thumb could be a little overdone and maybe look too widespread.

Total snowfall forecast from Wednesday night through Thursday evening, March 8, 2018.

It certainly will be wintry during Thursday. Temperatures will be colder, in the upper 20s. So the snow could stick on roadways, as opposed to melting off pavement like the past few days.
Negri Quintana expressed the wish during a meeting with President Tran Dai Quang in Hanoi on March 8.

President Quang congratulated the ambassadors successful term of office in Vietnam and spoke highly of his significant contributions to promoting the traditional friendship between the two nations.

The diplomat coordinated with Vietnamese relevant agencies to arrange many high-level visits between the two countries, notably Chilean President Michelle Bachelet Jerias State-level visit to Vietnam and attendance at the 25th APEC Economic Leaders Week in Da Nang city in November 2017.

The Vietnamese President also hailed the ambassadors efforts to develop bilateral economic, trade and investment relations.

The signing of the free trade agreement between Vietnam and Chile has helped increase two-way trade rapidly, while the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which is scheduled to be signed in Chile on March 8, demonstrated the contributions of Vietnam, Chile and member countries in boosting global trade, he said.

President Quang expressed his hope that the ambassador, in his new position, will continue making more contributions to the reinforcement and enhancement of friendship and collaboration between Vietnam and Chile.

Negri Quintana said within the CPTPPs new cooperation framework, the future will belong to Asia with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) playing the core role and Vietnam being one of the most important links in the bloc.

This will open up new potential for bilateral cooperation, he said, adding that Chile wants to push cooperative ties with Vietnam in all realms.
[March 07, 2018] Bell Canada announces offering of MTN Debentures This news release contains forward-looking statements. For a description of the related risk factors and assumptions, please see the section entitled "Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements" later in this release. MONTREAL, March 7, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - Bell Canada (Bell) today announced the public offering of Cdn $500 million of MTN Debentures pursuant to its medium term notes (MTN) program. The $500 million 3.35% MTN Debentures, Series M-47, will be dated March 12, 2018, will mature on March 12, 2025, and will be issued at a price of $99.851 per $100 principal amount to yield 3.374%. The MTN Debentures will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed by BCE Inc. The net proceeds of the offering are intended to be used to fund the redemption of Bell Canada's $300 million principal amount of 5.52% Series M-33 Debentures, due February 26, 2019, and for the repayment of other short-term debt. The MTN Debentures are being publicly offered in all provinces of Canada through a syndicate of agents. The MTN Debentures offering is expected to close on March 12, 2018. There shall be no offer, solicitation or sale of securities of Bell in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The MTN Debentures have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell securities in the United States. The MTN Debentures are being issued pursuant to a Short Form Base Shelf Prospectus dated September 20, 2016 ad a Prospectus Supplement dated September 30, 2016. Bell will file a pricing supplement relating to this issue with the securities regulatory authorities in all provinces of Canada. Caution concerning forward-looking statements

Certain statements made in this news release are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements relating to the expected timing and completion of the proposed sale of MTN Debentures, the intended use of the net proceeds of such sale and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties and are based on several assumptions, both general and specific, which give rise to the possibility that actual results or events could differ materially from our expectations expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. As a result, we cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize and we caution you against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release describe our expectations at the date of this news release and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, we do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this news release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are provided herein for the purpose of giving information about the proposed offering referred to above. Readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The timing and completion of the abovementioned proposed sale of the MTN Debentures is subject to customary closing terms and other risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that the proposed sale of the MTN Debentures will occur, or that it will occur at the expected time indicated in this news release. About Bell

Bell is Canada's largest communications company, providing advanced broadband wireless, TV, Internet and business communication services throughout the country. Bell Media is Canada's premier multimedia company with leading assets in television, radio, out of home, and digital media. Founded in Montreal in 1880, Bell is wholly owned by BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE; NYSE: BCE). To learn more, please visit Bell.ca or BCE.ca. The Bell Let's Talk initiative promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day, and provides significant Bell funding of mental health care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk. Media inquiries: Jean Charles Robillard

514-870-4739

jean_charles.robillard@bell.ca Investor inquiries: Thane Fotopoulos

514-870-4619

thane.fotopoulos@bell.ca SOURCE Bell Canada

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[March 08, 2018] Ireland Telecom Market Report 2018: Analysis & Outlook Report (2005-2025) - Leading Companies Along with Their Market Shares are Identified DUBLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "2018 Ireland Telecom Market Analysis and Outlook Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The research work strategically analyzes Ireland telecommunications market, examining the recent trends, drivers and challenges across diverse dimensions such as growth, demand, pricing, competition, consumer behaviour, infrastructure, policies and others. The study also provides in-depth analysis of segment wise telecommunications including mobile, fixed line and fixed broadband services. The number of subscribers and penetration rates are forecast for each of the sub-segment including mobile, fixed landline and broadband segments from 2005 to 2025.



Ireland telecommunication revenues, investment and infrastructure details are also covered in the report. Further, emerging business environment in Ireland together with comparison to five competitive benchmark countries are included, to assess the country's prominence on regional front.



On the competitive analysis front, leading companies along with their market shares are identified. Further, key business strategies of market leaders, their tariffs and SWOT profiles are included. In addition, the research work forecasts the demographic and economic drivers of Ireland that enable strategy planners to formuate their pricing and branding strategies.



The report also includes latest telecommunication market developments, mergers, acquisitions and launches, spectrum availability, tenders and other aspects are analyzed.



Key Topics Covered:



Executive Summary Key Findings

Ireland Telecom Market Overview Ireland Telecom Market-Strategic Analysis Trends Shaping the Future of Ireland Telecom Industry

Key strategies being Implemented by Market Leaders

Telecom Revenues in Ireland

Telecom Investments in Ireland

Market Drivers

Market Restraints Ireland Telecom Market Outlook Fixed Line Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Mobile Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Fixed Broadband Subscriber and Penetration Outlook Ireland Telecom Competitive Environment Market Shares by Company

Major Operators-Domestic vs International

Regulatory Body and Its Role in Industry Ireland Telecom Industry Benchmarking Overall Ranking as Compared to Peer Markets

Demand Index

Infrastructure Index

Growth Index Ireland Economic Outlook to 2025 GDP Forecast, 2005-2025

GDP per Capita Forecast, 2005-2025

Inflation Trends Ireland Demographic Outlook to 2025 Population Forecast, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Gender, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Age Group, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Location-Rural Population: Urban Population, 2005-2025

Unemployment Trends in Ireland Competitor Analysis Company A: Profile and operations in Ireland

Company B: Profile and operations in Ireland

Company C: Profile and operations in Ireland Recent Industry Developments



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6l55q5/ireland_telecom?w=5 Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ireland-telecom-market-report-2018-analysis--outlook-report-2005-2025---leading-companies-along-with-their-market-shares-are-identified-300610675.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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[March 08, 2018] 2018 United States Telecoms Market Report (2005-2025) - Revenues, Investment and Infrastructure Details DUBLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "2018 United States Telecom Market Analysis and Outlook Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The research work strategically analyzes United States telecommunications market, examining the recent trends, drivers and challenges across diverse dimensions such as growth, demand, pricing, competition, consumer behaviour, infrastructure, policies and others.



The study also provides in-depth analysis of segment wise telecommunications including mobile, fixed line and fixed broadband services. The number of subscribers and penetration rates are forecast for each of the sub-segment including mobile, fixed landline and broadband segments from 2005 to 2025.



United States telecommunication revenues, investment and infrastructure details are also covered in the report. Further, emerging business environment in United States together with comparison to five competitive benchmark countries are included, to assess the country's prominence on regional front.



On the competitive analysis front, leading companies along with their market shares are identified. Further, key business strategies of market leaders, their tariffs and SWOT profiles are included. In addition, the research work forecasts the demographic and economic drivers of United States that enable strategy plannrs to formulate their pricing and branding strategies.



The report also includes latest telecommunication market developments, mergers, acquisitions and launches, spectrum availability, tenders and other aspects are analyzed.



Key Topics Covered:



Executive Summary Key Findings

United States Telecom Market Overview United States Telecom Market - Strategic Analysis Trends Shaping the Future of United States Telecom Industry

Key strategies being Implemented by Market Leaders

Telecom Revenues in United States

Telecom Investments in United States

Market Drivers

Market Restraints United States Telecom Market Outlook Fixed Line Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Mobile Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Fixed Broadband Subscriber and Penetration Outlook United States Telecom Competitive Environment Market Shares by Company

Major Operators-Domestic vs International

Regulatory Body and Its Role in Industry United States Telecom Industry Benchmarking Overall Ranking as Compared to Peer Markets

Demand Index

Infrastructure Index

Growth Index United States Economic Outlook to 2025 GDP Forecast, 2005-2025

GDP per Capita Forecast, 2005-2025

Inflation Trends United States Demographic Outlook to 2025 Population Forecast, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Gender, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Age Group, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Location-Rural Population: Urban Population, 2005-2025

Unemployment Trends in United States Competitor Analysis Company A: Profile and operations in United States

Company B: Profile and operations in United States

Company C: Profile and operations in United States Recent Industry Developments



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cbp5g4/2018_united?w=5 Media Contact: Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

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Chairwoman Ngan congratulated Myanmar on its recent socio-economic achievements, voicing her belief that the country will succeed in promoting national reconciliation and harmony and improving its stature in the region and the world.

She expressed her delight at the increasingly strengthened friendship and cooperation between the Vietnamese NA and the Myanmar parliament, as seen in an official visit to Vietnam by Speaker of the Assembly of the Union Mahn Win Khaing Than in May 2017 and another trip to Myanmar by a high-ranking delegation of the Vietnamese NA in September 2016.

Deputy Speaker Aye Thar Aung highly valued Vietnamese peoples heroic struggle in the resistance wars to liberate the country in the past, as well as its achievements in social affairs, economy, political stability and external work at present.

He said Vietnam is increasingly affirming its stature, and Myanmar wants to learn from Vietnams precious experience to develop the country.

Vietnam and Myanmar boast traditional friendship and close cooperation, which were built by late President Ho Chi Minh and leader Aung San, and have been nurtured by generations of the countries leaders and people, he added.

At the meeting, the two sides noted the wish to enhance cooperation in all aspects, between their Parties, parliaments, Governments, and peoples. In particular, they will increase delegation exchanges at all levels, between their parliamentarians as well as between parliamentary committees.

Stressing the countries comprehensive cooperative partnership, set up in 2017, and many similarities, Chairwoman Ngan said Vietnam is ready to share development experience with Myanmar.

She asked both sides to soon establish a defence policy dialogue mechanism at the deputy ministerial level, and continue to negotiate and accelerate the signing of cooperation deals in the agro-forestry-fishery, transport, and justice sectors. She also called on Myanmar to continue providing optimal conditions for Vietnamese firms in the banking, telecommunications and business sectors.

For his part, Deputy Speaker Aye Thar Aung said Myanmar wants to attract more foreign investment. Its parliament has exerted efforts to make investment attraction policies and is working to remove obstacles to foreign investors, including Vietnamese businesses.

Lauding bilateral cooperation at regional and international forums, especially in ASEAN and the United Nations, the host leader asked both sides to keep intensifying cooperation within the ASEAN framework and other international and regional forums while working together to use the Mekong River water in a sustainable and effective manner. She also expressed her hope that Myanmar will soon become a member of the Mekong River Commission (MRC).
The activities include an arts programme entitled Water and Life, a seminar on green solutions for water resources, an exhibition of paintings and photos on water, nature and the environment, and a display of the latest water saving tech products.

Trailers and reports on the 2018 World Water Day will also be broadcast to raise public awareness of the event and water-related issues in particular, thus calling on their actions to protect and conserve water sources.

Celebrations will be scheduled in centrally-run cities and provinces throughout the country to mark the occasion.

The International World Water Day was first formally proposed in Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1993, the first World Water Day was designated by the United Nations General Assembly and each year since then it has focused on a different issue.

Under the theme Nature for Water, the 2018 event explores how people can use nature-based solutions to overcome water challenges and the affects of climate change in the 21st century.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi introduced the main highlights of four events to be held in China this year at a press conference Thursday on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

First, Boao Forum for Asia annual conference will take place in Hainan this April, and focus on reform and opening-up.

Second, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit will take place in Qingdao this June, and focus on revitalizing the Shanghai Spirit.

Third, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit will take place in Beijing this September, and focus on the Belt and Road Initiative.

Fourth, the First China International Import Expo will take place in Shanghai this November, and focus on further market opening.
March 07, 2018

No, Russians Do Not Hack The FCC's Public Comments

A member of the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post.

It is unlikely that the headline was chosen by the author of the op-ed. The editors of the Washington Post opinion page wrote it. I also doubt that she would have chosen a picture of the FCC head to decorate her piece.

For the record: The headline is false.

The op-ed is about a request for comments the Federal Communications Commission issued last year in preparation of its net-neutrality decision. Anyone, and anything, could comment multiple times. Various lobbying firms, political action groups and hacks abused the public comment system to send copy-paste comments via single-use email accounts or even without giving any email address.

But this had and has nothing to with Russia or Russians.

Here are the top graphs of the the WaPo op-ed with the "Russia-did-it" headline:

What do Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), deceased actress Patty Duke, a 13-year-old from upstate New York and a 96-year-old veteran from Southern California have in common? They appear to have filed comments in the net neutrality record at the Federal Communications Commission. That ought to mean they went online, submitted their names and addresses, and typed out their thoughts about Internet regulatory policy. But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, each of these individuals  along with 2 million others  had their identities stolen and used to file fake comments. These fake comments were not the only unnerving thing in the FCC net neutrality record. In the course of its deliberations on the future of Internet openness, the agency logged about half a million comments sent from Russian email addresses. It received nearly 8 million comments from email domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com with almost identical wording.

I have emphasized the only words in the whole op-ed that are related to Russia. They are wrong. The author of that op-ed does not understand the FCC public comment system. Public comments are made by filling out a form on the FCC website leaving ones comment, some address data and an email address. Public comments are not "send" by email. Thus the FCC did not log any comments "sent from Russian email". It logged comments made in a web form where the human (or program) making the comment provided a Russian email address as a means of contact. (It is obviously not expertise on communication issues that qualifies Jessica Rosenworcel for her position as FCC commissioner.)

At least 12-13 million of the 21.7 million comments to the FCC were fake. 8 million email addresses entered in the form the FCC had set up were generated with www.fakemailgenerator.com, half a million were entered with *.ru Internet domains.

FakeMailGenerator can use foreign domains for generating throw-away email addresses. In the screenshot below it generated an Hungarian one for me.

If I would comment at the FCC and enter Reephy@fleckens.hu into the FCC form I would be counted as Hungarian. I would not have "send" that comment from an Hungarian email address. Nor would entering the comment make me Hungarian. Neither do *.ru email domains mean that the people (ab-)using them have anything to do with Russia.

The Pew Research Center analyzed the 21.7 million comments the FCC received:

Fully 57% of comments used temporary or duplicate email addresses, and seven popular comments accounted for 38% of all submissions

The FCC and other agencies are required by law to accept public comments. But, as the op-ed says, it is utterly useless to request such public comments on the Internet without having some authentication system in place. The FCC had some email address verification system in place, but it did not use it. As the Pew Center writes:

[T]he Centers analysis shows that the FCC site does not appear to have utilized this email verification process on a consistent basis. According to this analysis of the data from the FCC, only 3% of the comments definitively went through this validation process. In the vast majority of cases, it is unclear whether any attempt was made to validate the email address provided. As a result, in many cases commenters were able to use generic or bogus email addresses and still have their comments accepted by the FCC and posted online.

It is obvious that the FCC had no interest at all in receiving legitimate public comments. But the FCC at least did not blame Russia. The Washington Post editors do that when they chose a headline that has no factual basis in the piece below it. They abuse the op-ed which has the presumed authority of an FCC commissioner to reinforce their anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

C. J. Hopkins notes that the cult of authority is systematically used to make the lunatic claims of Russiagate believable.

Matt Taibbi writes that the aim of the Russiagate campaign was and is to target all dissent:

If you don't think that the endgame to all of this lunacy is a world where every America-critical movement from Black Lives Matter to Our Revolution to the Green Party is ultimately swept up in the collusion narrative along with Donald Trump and his alt-right minions, you haven't been paying attention. That's because #Russiagate, from the start, was framed as an indictment not just of one potentially traitorous Trump, but all alternative politics in general. The story has evolved to seem less like a single focused investigation and more like the broad institutional response to a spate of shocking election results, targeting the beliefs of discontented Americans across the political spectrum.

Some commenters here lamented about my posts about the Steele dossier and or Russiagate issues. "It's enough already." But the issue is, as Taibbi points out, much bigger. In November 2016 the Washington Post pushed the ProPornOT campaign which denounced some 200 non-mainstream websites as "Russian propaganda". This website is an "primary initial" target of that campaign.

If the campaign succeeds to its full intent, Moon of Alabama will no longer be accessible.

The Russiagate nonsense has do be debunked at each and every corner to prevent its further abuse against dissent on everything else.

Posted by b on March 7, 2018 at 21:17 UTC | Permalink

Comments
Four years ago, students, staff and faculty within the Gilroy Unified School District collaborated with more than 15 law enforcement agencies to help produce a Run, Hide, Defend training video.

Since then, just about every school district throughout Santa Clara County has shown the CMAP-produced training video to provide school communities with the best possible tactics and procedures to follow if there is an active shooter at a school.

Santa Clara County Police Chiefs Association used funds from the state Homeland Security Grant Program to finance the video, which casted Gilroy students in an active-shooter-on-campus dramatization and informed viewers of the appropriate actions to take in such a case.

Weve been taking this serious for a long time and do everything we can possibly do to prepare for the unlikely event of a school shooting in Gilroy, said Gilroy Supt. Debbie Flores, who also offers up the school campuses to Gilroy police officers to carry out their own live-training drills when school is out. It is the top priority in this district to make sure our students are safe and that weve done everything to make sure they are safe.

In preparing for the worst case scenarioone that no school employee hopes to ever encounter but must be prepared forarea school districts such as those in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister have long-established, state-mandated, comprehensive school safety plans that are revisited on an annual basis with assistance from local police, sheriff, fire and other emergency response agencies.

Anytime we have an incident, whether it be local or a national type like in Florida, we have a sit-down to take a look at what the initial findings were and look at our procedures to see are there any gaps based on that, said San Benito High School Principal Adrian Ramirez, who conducts an active shooter drill each semester on his campus so staff and students are equipped to handle such a situation.

Unfortunately, each of these incidents gives you some sort of insight into different behavior and tactics being used. We always have to make sure were on top of everything, he said.

On Feb. 14 in Parkland, Fla., a single-shooter entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 students, injuring many more, in one of the nations deadliest mass shootings. Shortly after, police officers arrested 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, a former student who had been expelled from the high school. Cruz, who is alleged to have used a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle, has since been charged with multiple counts of murder.

For any school to think that something like that could not possibly happen on their campus is being naive, Ramirez added.

Immediately after the Parkland tragedy, State Schools Supt. Tom Torlakson sent thoughts and prayers to the families of those killed and wounded in this horrible mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and also reminded school districts to update their school safety plans.

In Morgan Hill, one day after the Florida shooting, Supt. Steve Betando, along with Morgan Hill Unified principals, met with School Resource Officer Jeff Brandon of the Morgan HIll Police Department to debrief on the latest mass shooting.

We discussed the circumstances about the Parkland incident known to us at that time, said Betando, who sent out a letter to Morgan Hill families notifying them of the extensive measures taken to assure student safety at local schools. The group discussed our safety protocols, the site plans and the intruder response training that was put in place in 2014.

San Benito High School District Supt. Shawn Tennenbaum described the high schools safety plan as a work in progress since they are continually making upgrades and incorporating best practices.

Unfortunately, the most recent tragedy in Florida, it heightens the alarm bell. [School shootings] are more frequent now than ever in our country, more devastating, Tennenbaum said. Our utmost charge as a school district is to ensure a safe environment for not only our students but our staff as well.

School resource officers and juvenile detectives joined teachers, administrators and counselors at a four-hour workshop on School Violence and the Active Shooter at the Gilroy Police Department this week.

The March 5 training session for 60 people from throughout the Bay Area was presented by the Public Safety Training Institute and paid for by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The attendees included representatives from Gilroy Unified School District, San Benito High School, San Juan Bautista Unified School District, Morgan Hill Unified School District, and the Gilroy, Hollister and Morgan Hill police departments.

This is a tough topic, but we have to talk about it, said Mike Elerick, who led the session.

The classroom workshop discussed best practices, identifying behaviors, reporting procedures and security systems.

The most important thing for schools is they need a plan in place to make sure they have a single point of contact for parents, students and stafffrom janitors to teachers, said Elerick.

He said he has conducted about 40 active shooter workshops in California since the program began three years ago.

Many school districts, like those in Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Hollister, employ school resource officers who are assigned to one or more campuses and are another line of defense in the case of emergency.

We have a great collaboration with the Hollister Police Department, Tennenbaum said. Our school resource officer is invaluable.

Officer Juan Guevara, with the Hollister Police Department, has been the resource officer for San Benito High School for more than two years. Guevara is one of three Hollister police officers (the other two are assigned to middle and elementary schools) working in partnership with San Benito schools to help ensure a safe school environment. Morgan Hill has one resource officer, while Gilroy employs two resource officers at each of its high schools who are also in charge of their respective feeder schools.

Through the partnership between police and schools, Guevara said they have established a uniform response among the many sites for emergency situations.

The responsibility of the resource officer is to be on campus, assist the schools, evaluate any suspicious activity that may be going on, patrol the area and just show a strong presence that you are there, said Guevara. He parks his squad car in the front of the high school, like most resource officers assigned to schools, so anyone who drives by can see me there.

Officer Jeff Brandon is in his fourth year as the resource officer in Morgan Hill, dividing most of his time between Live Oak and Ann Sobrato High Schools. He is also assigned to Britton and Martin Murphy Middle Schools, and Central Continuation School. Brandon said hes built invaluable relationships with both staff and students over his tenure that have helped in his job of making safer schools.

A lot of students seek me out to discuss problems they may be having. They know they can report things to me and come to me if they have any personal issues that they dont want to follow them later on in life, Brandon said.

Brandon and Guevara said they havent received any threats at their respective school districts in any form since the Florida mass shooting. If anything theres been a heightened awareness of security, Brandon noted.

Local school districts installed multiple security measures at their schools to ensure safety long before the Parkland shooting. In Gilroy, along with active shooter training for staff and bi-annual code red drills, some of those practices include school safe locks installed at the middle and high schools, perimeter fences and single point of entry for all school sites.

Anytime a major school shooting occurs, we take a look at our safety plan again and ask ourselves, Is there anything more we can do to assure our schools are safe as possible? said Flores, who was set to meet this week with district administrators and local law enforcement to go over their plan with insights from the Florida shooting.

At Morgan Hill Unified, which includes Morgan Hill, San Martin and South San Jose, Betando notified parents and families of the Five Powerful Strategy Fields to Improve Student Safety of Campus, which are Prevention, Policy, Protocol, Practice and Public Information. The Morgan Hill school board adopted a resolution March 6 calling for stricter gun laws.

We have made a commitment to making school safety the first priority and worked hard over the past four years to make improvements in our school safety and security, Betando said. We wont stop improving.

Run

If it is safe to do so for yourself and those in your care, the first course of action that should be taken is to run out of the building and far away until you are in a safe location.

Students and staff should be trained to

Leave personal belongings behind;

Visualize possible escape routes, including physically accessible routes for students and staff with disabilities as well as persons with access and functional needs;

Avoid escalators and elevators;

Take others with them, but not to stay behind because others will not go;

Call 911 when safe to do so; and

Let a responsible adult know where they are.

Hide

If running is not a safe option, hide in as safe a place as possible. Students and staff should be trained to hide in a location where the walls might be thicker and have fewer windows. In addition:

Lock the doors;

Barricade the doors with heavy furniture;

Close and lock windows and close blinds or cover windows;

Turn off lights;

Silence all electronic devices;

Remain silent;

Hide along the wall closest to the exit but out of the view from the hallway (allowing for an ambush of the shooter and for possible escape if the shooter enters the room);

Use strategies to silently communicate with first responders if possible, for example, in rooms with exterior windows make signs to silently signal law enforcement officers and emergency responders to indicate the status of the rooms occupants; and

Remain in place until given an all clear by identifiable law enforcement officers.

Fight

If neither running nor hiding is a safe option, as a last resort when confronted by the shooter, adults in immediate danger should consider trying to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter by using aggressive force and items in their environment, such as fire extinguishers, and chairs.

In a study of 41 active shooter events that ended before law enforcement officers arrived, the potential victims stopped the attacker themselves in 16 instances. In 13 of those cases they physically subdued the attacker.

While talking to staff about confronting a shooter may be daunting and upsetting for some, they should know that they may be able to successfully take action to save lives. To be clear, confronting an active shooter should never be a requirement in any school employees job description; how each staff member chooses to respond if directly confronted by an active shooter is up to him or her. Further, the possibility of an active shooter situation is not justification for the presence of firearms on campus in the hands of any personnel other than law enforcement officers.

Courtesy of Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) per California Department of Education

We have made a commitment to making school safety the first priority and worked hard over the past four years to make improvements in our school safety and security. We wont stop improving.
China's Ambassador to Syria Qi Qianjin(Left) attends a delivery ceremony of donating mobility aids to a hospital in Damascus, capital of Syria, March 7, 2018. [Photo: chineseembassy.org]

China has donated mobility aids to a Syrian hospital in Damascus, as part of its ongoing humanitarian assistance to the war-torn country, the Chinese embassy said Wednesday.

The recent donation included 100 wheelchairs, 100 walkers and 200 pairs of crutches delivered to the Assad University Hospital, one of the biggest government-run medical facilities in Damascus, the embassy said.

It is the latest in a series of medical aid supplies to Syria provided by China, which last month funded the renovation of the emergency department of the al-Muwasat University Hospital in Damascus.

During the delivery ceremony held on Wednesday, China's Ambassador to Syria Qi Qianjin underlined the Chinese government's commitment to delivering more aid to the Syrian people and government in 2018.

"We want this aid to mitigate the suffering of the Syrian people, and we will continue to implement projects to deliver humanitarian and economic aid this year to the Syrian people," the Chinese envoy said.

Jaber Ibrahim, head of the Assad University Hospital, said he was appreciative of the help offered by China.

"In the Assad University Hospital, we are satisfied with all the help we get from friendly countries," he said.

In January 2017, the Chinese government donated 1 million U.S. dollars to the World Health Organization (WHO) to fund a humanitarian project addressing the health issue of Syrians.

The project included providing health care services for Syrian refugees and improving primary health care and outreaching health services in Syria.
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China has come to the end of its travel rush for the 2018 Spring Festival, the most important occasion for family reunions. New technologies are doing their part to make the annual rush less onerous for hundreds of millions of passengers.

Bullet trains in Shanghai Hongqiao Train Station, Chinas largest railway station, ready to set off. (Photo by Pan Xiaofan from Peoples Daily)

Over 250 million train trips were made in the past 27 days since the travel rush of 2018 Spring Festival started, up 14.92 million, or 6.3 percent, from last year, according to the latest data from the China Railway Corporation. The eight days between Feb. 20 and Feb. 27 witnessed more than 10 million daily journeys.

During the Spring Festival, railway authorities added train services and launched more measures for the convenience of passengers, in a bid to cope with the rising demand for transportation.

They also provided more comfortable rail tours by introducing new technologies and services like big data-based monitoring, mobile payments and more accurate allocation and connection of trains.

In south China's Guangdong Province, big data analytics and some other new technologies were adopted to monitor the businesses and vehicles with weak safety management, and the findings will be sent to the traffic departments for study.

Traffic police of Lujiang county, Anhui province are monitoring and managing traffic by applying new technologies, February 11, 2018. (Photo by Zuo Xuechang from Peoples Daily Online)

Passengers in east China's Jiangsu Province no longer needed to fall in line for a paper ticket, but booked tickets via mobile apps, thanks to the online services launched by local transport departments.

Major stations across the country have applied facial recognition for ticket checks, and the gates allow passengers to pass through automatically if their faces are recognized as the same as photos on their ID cards.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the U.S. stock market over the past several years knows the biotechnology sector has been one of the best-performing industries. Over the past decade, the S&P 500 biotechnology subindustry index has surged 344%, compared with a 102% rise for the overall index as of this writing. The biotech index has done nearly 100 percentage points better than the technology index, which counts Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), and other high-flying tech operations among its constituents.

Over the past three years, though, the sector has taken a bit of a step back, underperforming the S&P 500. Since Feb. 1, 2015, the biotech sector has returned a paltry 5.3%, while the broader index has delivered a 34% return. While the two indexes are moving more in line today--the biotech sector is up 16.8% compared to the S&P 500's 14.8% since Feb. 21 of last year--investing experts think the once-mighty industry could soon outperform again.
Stocks listed in emerging markets tend to be riskier than those focused on developed markets, and a number of these risks are prevalent in low-cost index-tracking funds from Vanguard, iShares, and Schwab. Country biases, volatile currency movements, and state-owned enterprises are among the risks investors need to be mindful of in developing nations. Broad diversification is a starting point, but further steps can be taken to reduce risk and volatility. A minimum volatility strategy, like iShares Edge MSCI Minimum Volatility Emerging Markets ETF (EEMV), is a compelling alternative that should provide investors with more stable results over a cap-weighted, index-tracking fund.

IShares Edge MSCI Minimum Volatility offers a well-diversified and low-cost portfolio that should provide a smoother ride and better risk/reward profile than most of its peers in the diversified emerging-markets Morningstar Category. It earns a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Silver.
During Chinas most important annual political meetings, the Two Sessions this year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivered a government work report, which summarized Chinas achievements in the past five years, set economic and social development targets and policy directions, and highlighted focuses of the government work in 2018. One of the proposals is to have all-around opening up.

How is China going to do it?

One of the concrete steps is that China will completely open up the general manufacturing sector, and will ease or lift restrictions on the shares of foreign-owned equity in companies in sectors including banking, securities, fund management, futures and financial asset management.

Moreover, China will simplify procedures for setting up foreign-invested enterprises, and lower import tariffs on automobiles, some everyday consumer goods, etc.

What is more, China is preparing to host the first ever China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

The point is to encourage trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. In 2017, China has become the largest trader in the world, with a total trade volume of 27.79 trillion yuan. Thats about 4.4 trillion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 14.2%.

As 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of Chinas launch of reform and opening up, youll see more progress to be made in international cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, more industrial capacity cooperation between China and other countries, and simply more to be done by China to foster a world-class business environment.
The ongoing two sessions, namely the first session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), and the first session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) serve as a window for the world to learn more about China.

The most important annual political meetings have also attracted the whole world to discuss on Chinas wisdom, solutions and achievements the country displayed in an intensive way.

The world wants to know the secrets of Chinas success through the two sessions. Reports come one after another, recognizing that the two sessions are influencing global affairs profoundly, suggesting the world be clear about Chinas rapid development, and regarding the Chinese approaches as role model for the world.

More than 3,000 journalists are in Beijing to cover the congress, and the number of foreign journalists is on the rise from previous years. The world is fixing its attention on the meetings, in hope of understanding China in the new era.

As the largest developing country and second largest economy in the world, China is continuously creating earth-shaking miracles during mankinds development course.

The country is the biggest contributor to global economic growth and global poverty reduction. It is also home to worlds largest social insurance network and largest high-speed railway network, as well as a forerunner in some sectors of scientific innovation.

It is universally believed that with a view to modernizing its system and capacity for governance, China is making increasingly important contributions to global governance.

The country is also an important contributor to the recovery of global economy. Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that Chinas GDPexpanded 6.9 percent from a year ago to 82.7 trillion yuan ($12.8 trillion) in 2017, making up around 15 percent of the world total.

"The Chinese success story is deeply intertwined with the fortunes of the world economy," said David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The World Bank is confident that China will remain a major contributor to the global economy, said Ayhan Kose, director of the World Bank Development Prospect Group.

Many foreigners believe that the world very much needs a country like China to continuously create success stories, especially in a world that some countries are dragged into the vicious circle of conflicts and chaos.

At the Davos World Economic Forum annual meeting and the Munich Security Conference held earlier this year, some Western participants shared their concerns over the rise of social division, political polarization and populism.

The chaos in international political and social order has reflected the pain of losing direction and the difficulty of exploring a path.

Chinas steady development and prosperity, against such background, has undoubtedly injected impetus into this world with grave challenges.

The Chinese success story reveals the source of the countrys confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture. Furthermore, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in last October has set a course for building a great modern socialist country and made an overall plan for revitalizing the Chinese nation.

The world is closely watching how the first two sessions held after the 19th CPC National Congress make plans for work such as anti-corruption, social insurance, education equality, medical reform, poverty reduction, rule of law and reform and opening-up, as well as how the countrys wisdom will provide inspiration for the world to solve shared challenges.

Government must make policies according to the rules and enforce them in an orderly fashion. Chinas strong leadership in national governance and advancing reform is an important experience for the world to learn from, European think-tank experts believe.

Seeing how deputies to the NPC and members of CPPCC National Committee diligently fulfill their duties and present proposals to develop the country, many foreign journalists deeply feel the strengths of the system of peoples congresses and the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC.

They also realize that this Chinese system is much different from some Western systems under which ruling parties and opposition parties debate endlessly for their own political interests.

China is ready to embark on a new path from the new historical starting point. The world sees the two sessions as a force that unites the Chinese people. The meetings not only manifest Chinas high spirit and vigor in the new era, but also add vitality and new impetus to the world.
Mercury, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) make their way into Great Lakes fish. Chronic exposure is a problem for Indigenous communities.

Not many people think about fish consumption advisories. If they do, it's a quick glance at a map, a sobering reminder that invisible pollutants are still among us, a sideways look at a can of tuna, and then move on. But not all people have the luxury of occasionally eating smoked fish at a tourist stop and not considering contaminants in their food. Especially for fish-reliant tribal communities around the Great Lakes, fish consumption advisories are tied to present and future balancing acts around food choice. Eliminating the need for fish consumption advisories requires coordinated action at regional, national and international scales.

A team led by Michigan Technological University and Northwest Indian College released a policy brief outlining what it would take to create a future where fish consumption advisories are no longer needed in the Great Lakes region.

Their policy brief, available in full at mtu.edu/asep-policy, provides historical and cultural context, and is part of a larger transdisciplinary project focused on atmosphere-surface exchangeable pollutants (ASEPs). Mercury, PCB compounds, PAHs, POPs and other pollutants are tasteless ASEP chemicals that migrate around the world and are deposited through complex geochemical processes in the atmosphere, water bodies and land; mercury is a particular challenge in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Global ASEP pollution impacts local Great Lakes communities.

All 50 states, many Native American tribes, and federal agencies have established more than 4,000 fish consumption advisories in the United States; they're an important tool to help consumers make informed choices about where to fish and how much. But the policies established in the 1970s and beyond were meant to be temporary.

All 50 states, many Native American tribes, and federal agencies have established more than 4,000 fish consumption advisories in the United States; they're an important tool to help consumers make informed choices about where to fish and how much. But the policies established in the 1970s and beyond were meant to be temporary.

Participants in the ASEP closure event discussed next steps in the project, which includes six institutions, 36 researchers and 11 partnering organizations.

For the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC), the Indigenous community that worked with the researchers studying ASEPs in the Great Lakes, fish consumption advisories that place limits on safe consumption raises the obvious question: When will it be safe to eat as much fish as one wants without having to worry about health effects? The practice is an important part of cultural identity and treaty rights, and because the KBIC and other fishing-reliant communities eat more fish than other people, they are more vulnerable to long-term exposure to the pollutants. On top of that, the KBIC as Anishinaabe people see themselves as stewards of the land and water.

For communities heavily dependent on fish consumption, "Advisories have been shown to have a minimal impact, especially when they impede tribal treaties and reserved fishing rights," says Valoree Gagnon, social scientist at Michigan Tech and one of the policy brief co-authors, adding that "birds do not read fish consumption advisories" and pollution knows no political boundaries.

Gagnon and her co-authorsHugh Gorman, chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Tech, and Emma Norman, chair of the Native Environmental Science Program at Northwest Indian Collegediscuss six policy points to help overcome the obstacles in ASEP-related policy (refer to sidebar).

Connect policy frameworks and create a future where fish advisories are not needed.

The team's final policy point discusses global actions that could make a local difference for the KBIC and other vulnerable communities; their work focuses on the Great Lakes but is applicable for basins worldwide. Connecting those basins through coordinated actions is crucial. A simple example that is often overlooked in policy discussions is explicitly identifying the goal of eliminating the need for fish consumption advisories.

The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) runs a small fish hatchery where they raise trout, whitefish and other species to release back into Lake Superior and inland lakes.

Its hard to pursue a goal when its not fully articulated, Gorman says, adding that the goals will take multiple generations of commitment and will require the tools of adaptive governance to ensure that policies scale effectively.

As Gorman, Gagnon and Norman write, "the tools of adaptive governance are nested within the United States-Canada system of water quality governance for the Great Lakes. These tools help to ensure that lessons learned and research conducted in one cycle of action are integrated into the next iteration of strategy making." The key is taking those lessons and coordinating policies through regional, national and international frameworks.

Other tactics the team points to include supporting and strengthening existing efforts: global air monitoringa better environmental indicator than fish tissue samplingalong with eliminating sources through adequate soil and sediment remediation, restricting POPs entering the marketplace and restricting mercury pollution with a planetary "Total Maximum Load" strategy. Another piece is developing consistent human health criteria worldwide to standardize how countries calculate exposure risk.

In total, the Great Lakes are not isolated from the rest of the worldmercury, POPs and other ASEPS are a global pollution problem that the team has examined through a local lens to better understand the impacts on Indigenous communities and other fish-reliant populations.

Grants and Funding The research is funded by the National Science Foundation, NSF ICER-1313755

Policy Points The following is an excerpt from "Eliminating the Need for Fish Consumption Advisories in the Great Lakes Region," a policy brief co-authored by Valoree Gagnon, Hugh Gorman and Emma Norman. Toxic contamination is an invisible health concern made visible by fish consumption advisories, and as long as fish contain unsafe levels of contaminants, the need for advisories will remain. Fish consumption advisories are not a permanent policy solution to address health concerns associated with fish contamination. Actions at all geographical scalesregional, national, and internationalare essential if we are to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories. Eliminating the need for fish consumption advisories is a long-term goal that will take multiple generations to accomplish. Tools of adaptive governance are required to coordinate and sustain the efforts needed to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories. The path forward necessitates a global policy framework that links regional, national, and international efforts and unites ecosystem and chemical-based goals. Read the policy brief mtu.edu/asep-policy

Michigan Technological University is a public research university, home to more than 7,000 students from 54 countries. Founded in 1885, the University offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, and social sciences. Our campus in Michigans Upper Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway and is just a few miles from Lake Superior.
China provided financial support for 95.9 million students including preschool children in 2017,or 1877 yuan (297 dollars) every student , according to data released by Chinas Ministry of Education (MOE) at a press conference on March 1.

Chinas Ministry of Education presents the student financial aid work at a press conference on March 1, 2018. (Photo from the official website of the Ministry of Education)

Last year was also the 11th consecutive year of growth in the number of students who were sub-sidized, the spending of financial aid, and amount of funds from government, school and society, said the ministry.

Financial aid for students in 2017 exceeded 180 billion yuan (about $28 billion), an 11.45-percent growth over the previous year, according to the MOE data.

Chinas aid system is available to all students from pre-schoolers to post-graduates , from public to private schools, and those in financial difficulties, with an aim to ensure every student has access to education.

Left-behind children, whose parents have left rural areas to become migrant workers in towns or cities, enjoy their free lunch in the school canteen in central Chinas Anhui province. (Photo from Peoples Daily Online)

In 2017, tuition and fee exemptions and the free textbook policy have benefited all students en-rolled in compulsory education. Moreover, 37 million students benefited from fiscal support for school meals.

Chinas government, in its report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), stressed the importance of improving student financial aid system.

Targeted financial support will remain at the top of the student aid agenda this year to make sure that students from poor families are subsidized in time and with full amount that well satisfy their needs.
The system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), as Chinas basic political system, is a great contribution to the political civilization of humanity, Chinese President Xi Jinping said last Sunday, adding that the party system steers away from defects of old-fashioned ones.

It fits China's reality and fine traditional culture of the pursuit for the common good, inclusiveness, and seeking common ground while shelving differences, he added.

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks at a joint panel discussion with political advisers from the China Democratic League and the China Zhi Gong Party, those without party affiliation and those from the sector of returned overseas Chinese, at the first session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The basic political system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC is a new type of party system growing from China's soil, he stressed.

It is a great political creation by the CPC, Chinese people, democratic parties and those without party affiliation, he added.

The system is new because it combines Marxist political party theories with China's reality, and truly extensive and in the long term represents the fundamental interests of all people and all ethnic groups and fulfills their aspirations, the President elaborated, adding that it avoids the flaws of the old-fashioned party system which represents only a select few or vested interests.

The Chinese system is new, according to Xi, because it effectively prevents the defects of the absence of oversight in one-party rule, or power rotation and nasty competition among multiple political parties by uniting all political parties and people without party affiliation toward a common goal.

The Chinese system is new since it pools ideas and suggestions through institutional, procedural, and standardized arrangements and develops a scientific and democratic decision-making mechanism, Xi stressed.

This way, the system steers away from the weakness of the old-fashioned party system, in which decision-making and governance, confined by interests of different political parties, classes, regions and groups, tears the society apart, he said.

Xis definition of the system as a new type of party system reflects the full confidence toward the Chinese path, said Peoples Daily in a commentary published on Tuesday.

The CPPCC is an organization in the patriotic united front of the Chinese people, serving as an important organ for multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC, and an important means of promoting socialist democracy in China's political activities.

The system of the multi-party cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC will exist and develop for a long time to come, according to Chinas Constitution.
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 screenshot of the 27-second video for the new Haier Brothers cartoon posted on the official Sina Weibo account for Haier Brothers. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

"When thunder crashes, it will rain, leiou; when it rains, you have to hold an umbrella, leiou; when it's cold, you have to put on a heavy jacket, leiou."

From the lyrics, can you tell what song it is?

It's the theme song for the 1995 hit cartoon Haier Brothers, which may still be familiar to many Chinese in the post-1980 and post-1990 generations. Hearing the song, many can't help but imagine the iconic Haier Brothers, two little boys wearing only shorts.

Twenty-three years after Haier Brothers first premiered, Zhou Yunjie, CEO of the Haier Group, recently said during an interview that the new Haier Brothers cartoon is expected to air this summer.

However, a 27-second video of the new cartoon, released several days earlier, has made waves on the social media. The new images of the Haier Brothers are a far cry from those in the memories of devoted fans.

Many netizens responded in the comment section of the video, saying they really looked forward to the new cartoon. But more people ranted about the alteration of the images and some even questioned why the original Haier Brothers were not kept.

"The video online is not yet an official trailer," said a staff member for the cartoon's production when he responded to the complaints.

He said that the new cartoon is also targeted at a young demographic and the images were also developed in accordance with this marketing purpose. But for the time being, they would not make the new images public.

Meanwhile, the news has sparked a wave of nostalgia among many people. Some said that the Haier Brothers theme song was their "childhood favorite" on Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter. In the video's comment section, a Weibo user's comment that "those who grew up watching Haier Brothers, please give me a tight hug" attracted hundreds of likes.

Haier Brothers, a 212-episode animation, is a corporate promotional cartoon produced in 1995 by Haier Group, a multinational consumer electronics and home appliances company based in East Chinas Qingdao city, Shandong province.

Haier Brothers, a pair of robots created by the Wizard, travel around the world with their friends to explore the stories of nature and overcome all kinds of difficulties on their journey.

The new Haier Brothers cartoon will continue to "popularize science and wisdom" and the core value of the Haier Brothers has always been "imparting knowledge in a fun way," according to the staff member for the production.

"The new cartoon looks to create a total science fiction environment for children based on the intellectual property of the Haier Brothers, which will help promote the healthy development of a domestic children's culture," added the staff member.

It's reported there will be 54 episodes in the new Haier Brothers and one-third of the animation has already been completed.
Tuesday, March 13 marks Election Day for several local Orange County municipalities, where some races for mayor, city council seats and commissions are already making a splash.

Apopka has a packed ballot in 2018, with some candidates vying for reelection, while others are fighting fellow opponents for an open seat.

Orange County Commissioner Bryan Nelson is challenging incumbent Apopka Mayor Joe Kilsheimer for his seat in an already contentious battle.

Kilsheimer, who has lived in Apopka for the past 30 years, assumed his role as mayor in April 2014 when he was elected to replace 61-year incumbent John Land. Nelson was elected to the Orange County Board of County Commissioners in 2014 in District 2. He was also previously a state representative for Districts 31 and 38.

Spectrum News 13 reporter Julie Gargotta spoke exclusively with both of the candidates, who have two unique visions for the city. Kilsheimer views investing in "critical infrastructure" as vital to the city's growth, while Nelson called Kilsheimer's spending as mayor "irresponsible" -- he said he wants to fix the city's financial situation.

In Apopka City Council, Suzanne Kidd, Gene Knight, Theresa Mott and Alexander Smith are competing against each other to win a currently empty Seat 1.

Incumbent Apopka City Commissioner Diane Velazquez faces three opponents as she vies for a second term in Seat 2. Leroy Bell, Alicia Koutsoulieris and Alice Nolan are challenging Velazquez. Bell has been vocal about his criticisms of the city's government, telling The Apopka Voice that he wants to fix its integrity and apparent deficit.

In Winter Park, incumbent Mayor Steven Leary, elected in 2015, is being challenged by U.S. Navy veteran and former Haines City official Jim Fitch. Fitch is a relative newcomer to Winter Park, moving to the city in 2016, while Leary has been a resident since 2004.

Leary has an edge on Fitch in regards to campaign funds. According to The Orlando Sentinel, Leary has raised $86,700 as of Feb. 23, while Fitch has raised $11,300.

Belle Isle has a crowded 13 charter amendment questions on the ballot regarding City Council procedures and employment policies, and mayoral duties and powers.

Ococee District 2 Commissioner Rosemary Wilsen is being challenged by Robert Rivera, while District 4 Commissioner Joel Keller is being challenged by George Oliver III.

Early voting ends Friday, March 9. Registered voters can cast their ballots early at the county's Supervisor of Elections office on 119 W. Kaley Street.

Regular voting commences March 13 at 7 a.m. Polls will be open until 7 p.m. Tuesday night. To find your polling location, visit the Orange County Seupervisor of Elections website.
A former Florida Sheriff's Association Law Enforcement Officer of the Year was arrested Thursday morning on drug and child neglect charges.

Former Officer of the Year arrested on drug, child neglect charges

Brevard Deputy Nicholas Worthy, girlfriend arrested Thursday

Sheriff: Deputies found him, woman, child in deplorable conditions

Brevard County Deputy Nicholas Worthy and his girlfriend, Rachel Trexler, both face charges of child neglect and cocaine and marijuana possession.

Worthy has been fired, the Sheriff's Office said.

Deputies were dispatched to the couple's Rockledge home Wednesday night after someone reported hearing screams and gunshots, Sheriff Wayne Ivey said in a news conference Thursday afternoon.

When the occupants of the home refused to respond, deputies obtained a search warrant and returned at 6 a.m. Thursday and breached the home.

At the home, the deputies found Worthy, Trexler, a 2-year-old child and three dogs living in "disgusting" conditions, Ivey said. Ammunition, food, trash and dog feces were inside, as well as evidence of gunshots.

The investigators found the drugs in the home and in a vehicle at the home, the Sheriff's Office said.

. @BrevardSheriff Ivey said they arrested Deputy Nick Worthy and his girlfriend on child neglect and drug charges. He has since been fired. Sheriff Ivey said the home conditions were disgusting. @MyNews13 pic.twitter.com/LC5fm8RAnR  Erin Murray News 13 (@emurray1) March 8, 2018

The toddler was unharmed, but Worthy and Trexler are being charged with child neglect for leaving ammo, drugs and firearms within reach of the toddler as well as allowing the child to live in deplorable conditions, Ivey said. The child is in the care of the Department of Children and Families, and the dogs were taken in by animal control.

Despite charging one of their own, Ivey said the agency will ask the State Attorney's Office to fully prosecute.

Worthy began working for Sheriffs Office in August 2012, the agency said. He was recognized by the Florida Sheriff's Association as their 2016 Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. On March 9, 2015, he was the first deputy to arrive at the scene after a report of man repeatedly firing a gun in a Cocoa residential area. When the man turned the gun on Worthy's patrol vehicle and ignored commands, the deputy fired back, killing him.

Worthy and Trexler were taken to the Brevard County Jail and held on $5,000 bond. Worthy bonded out Thursday afternoon.


SYDNEY, Mar. 6 -- During the 17 days of Chinese New Year, there is a significant air of festivity in Australia.

The biggest Dragon Boat Race in the Southern Hemisphere (People's Daily Online Jing Li)

Between 16 February and 4 March, the city of Sydney celebrated the Lunar New Year by decorating its streets with fireworks and giant lanterns.

With over 80 events this year, Sydneysiders celebrated the Year of the Dog by visiting many of the citys cultural events, markets, and exhibitions.

There are a number of distinctive cultures that celebrate the Lunar New Year, and we are holding festivities right across the city to celebrate, said Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney.

he biggest Dragon Boat Race in the Southern Hemisphere (People's Daily Online Jing Li)

On the first night of the New Year festival, fireworks were rampant in the night sky. The Harbour Bridge was lit red for ten minutes, as a symbol of good fortune.

Having first arrived in Australia during the Gold Rush in the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese people have introduced their culture into Australia for over a century. Today, Chinese New Year is a widely celebrated event within the Chinese-Australian community.

There are many events on offer, including art, food, performances, and Dragon Boat Racing on Darling Harbour, Mr Xiaojie Gu, the Chinese Consul-General in Sydney has also extended his best wishes to all Chinese people living in Sydney.

One of the most popular events was the Dragon Boat Race at Cockle Bay, as more than 3000 boats race each other to the beating of drums. This is the biggest Dragon Boat Race in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Chinese New Year celebrations in Sydney (People's Daily Online Jing Li)

Prior to the race, the waters were blessed by Taoist monks to ensure safety. The figureheads of each boat then had their eyes painted red, which is believed to awaken the dragons.

The Chinese New Year celebration in Sydney is the largest Lunar New Year celebration outside Asia, with more than a million people attending the events. Festivals and celebrations were rampant in Chinatown, along with lion dance performances and firecrackers. (Peoples Daily Online/ Roger Liu)

The latern of dog decorating streets in Sydney (People's Daily Online Jing Li)
China is planning more launches of Long March rockets than ever in 2018 as the 36 missions on the agenda constitute the lions share of the countrys space program efforts.

The Long March-2F carrier rocket that was used to carry China's second space lab, Tiangong-2. (Photo from spacechina.com)

The series will be tasked with missions including sending BeiDou satellites into space to form a network for the domestic BeiDou navigation satellite and launching the Chang'e-4 lunar probe, said Li Hong, director of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a subordinate of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

Of the 36 planned missions, 14 will be carried out by Long March-3A rockets and six by Long March-2C series, according to Li, a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which opened its annual session on March 3 in Beijing.

The Long March-3A series, which is usually used to carry navigation and communications satellites, will launch 14 times this year, with 10 carrying BeiDou navigation and positioning satellites, Li said, adding that 8 of the 10 missions would put twin satellites into orbit.

The Long March-11 rocket, a solid propellant carrier developed by China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, a division of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), succeeded in sending six small satellites into orbit from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China. (Photo by Xie Shangguo from Peoples Daily Online)

According to the schedule, Long March-3A carriers need to send 18 BeiDou satellites into space by the end of 2018 so that the BeiDou system will be able to provide navigation and positioning services to countries along OBOR. The carrier is lined up for 40 launches from 2018 to 2020.

The Long March-8 series China is now developing is expected to have its maiden flight in 2020 as the work on its prototype has begun, the director said, elaborating that this new medium-lift carrier rocket is projected to fill Chinas blank by increasing its payload capabilities for solar-synchronous orbit from 3 to 4.5 tons.

Launches of the Long March-5 series, with the strongest payload capability among Chinese carriers, have been scheduled for the latter half of this year in preparation for China's manned space, lunar probe and Mars probe missions.
China on March 1 issued the countrys first three road test licenses to smart car makers, meaning that Chinese autopilot vehicles can get out of enclosed fields and hit the real roads for tests.

Shanghai-based SAIC Motor received two of the licenses and the electric vehicle startup Nio obtained the other one.

The licenses allow the operators to use a 5.6-km public road in Jiading District of Shanghai for testing smart cars.

Shanghai also issued a regulation on road tests of smart cars on the same day, requiring vehicles to test in both autonomous and manual modes. In addition, the vehicles must be able to switch to manual mode under every circumstance.

Shanghai has secured progress in building National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Shanghai) Pilot Zone in Jiading, also Chinas first demonstration area for intelligent and connected cars.

Last year, the enclosed testing field of the demonstration area witnessed over 300 field tests, 500 exchanging visits, racings and other activities related to intelligent and connected vehicles.

Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in June, 2017 that intelligent and connected vehicles will be a vital field for future automobile industry, and the sector will foster new opportunities for the countrys car industry to advance.

A smart car connected to mobile application is exhibited at the China International Industry Fair which opened in Shanghai on November 7, 2017. (Photo by Long Wei from Peoples Daily Online)

In the same month, an industry innovation alliance for the intelligent and connected vehicles was established in Beijing to back China's automobile industry.

It is estimated that the market size of Chinas intelligent and connected vehicles, which stood at $58.4 billion in 2017, will reach $109.7 billion in 2020 with a compound growth of 23 percent.

Beijing announced in January that the first public road to test autonomous driving would be built in the citys Yizhuang economic development area.

Photo taken on December 20, 2017 shows a sanitation worker and a driverless street sweeper in the Xiongan New Area, north Chinas Hebei province. (Photo by Yan Yuxiao from Peoples Daily online)

Chinas National Development and Reform Commission also released a draft plan of smart vehicle development for public review in the same month. The strategy encouraged the in-depth integration between automobile and other industries, in a bid to propel the development of intelligent vehicles under Chinese standards.

The draft plan made clear that China aims to make intelligent car production account for half of the countrys total new vehicles by 2020, and will become a global leader in the intellligent vehicle industry by 2035.
Chinese President Xi Jinping praised Comrade Zhou Enlai as an outstanding example of self-discipline and integrity, at a symposium to commemorate the 120th birthday of the late Premier in Beijing on March 1, urging all Party members to learn from him.

Zhou Enlai arrives in Geneva on April 24, 1954 to attend the Geneva Conference held from April to July as head of Chinese delegation. (Photo from Peoples Daily Online)

While delivering a speech at the symposium, Chinese President Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, highlighted the "Ten family rules" that Zhou required his relatives to strictly abide by.

Zhou never extended any privileges to himself or his family, Xi stressed, elaborating that Zhou encouraged his relatives to restrain from seeking personal gains with ties of kinship, explore their own careers independently in a confident fashion, and keep a low profile on all occasions.

The Party's work style reflects its image, Xi stressed, calling on the whole Party to learn from Zhou by keeping in mind that their power is entrusted by the Party and the people and should be exercised in the interest of the people.

Xi asked every Party member to be "a dignified and honest communist" who resists corruption and privilege, consciously accepts oversight of the people, and reveres the people, the Party, and the law.

Zhou was against factionalism, small cliques, decentralism, sectarianism and departmentalism, Xi said, adding that never a supporter of small cliques, Zhou ordered Party members and officials to adopt strict standards regarding political integrity under any circumstance.

The President also referred the late Premier as an outstanding role model who remained true to the original aspiration and kept the faith, as well as a loyal Party member who championed the big picture and served the public with great dedication.

Zhou is also an outstanding example as he always sought self-improvement, kept fighting, dared to shoulder responsibility and fully dedicated himself to missions, Xi said.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the Partys Central Committee, with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, has devoted great energy in construction of the Partys conduct and honest, clean government, as well as fight against corruption.

Corruption cases, including those of Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Guo Boxiong, Xu Caihou and Ling Jihua were unfolded, and the corrupt officials were punished in accordance with laws, ensuring that special privileges are eliminated.

China's anti-corruption campaign is always on track, a Peoples Daily commentary said.
The Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 conference, held from February 26 to March 1, highlighted 5G technology market in a big way. Taking place every 12 months in Barcelona, the gigantic tech show is a chance for new gadgets to be unveiled.

A ZTE employee introduces the companys mobile phone to an attendee at the ZTE exhibition hall of the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Jiang Bo from Peoples Daily)

5G is the next generation of cellular networks, and it promises to be a considerable leap in speed beyond the current LTE networks. The Global System for Mobile Communications Association said in a report that broad application of 5G will soon be realized. By 2025, the 5G network is expected to cover 40 percent of the global population, with its users accounting for 14 percent of total mobile internet users.

Huawei unveiled its first 5G chip in Barcelona. The company claims that its Huawei Balong 5G01 chip is the first to support the new 3GPP standard for 5G networks, and that it should be able to download data at 2.3Gbps. This Chinese tech giant also released a complete range of full-scenario 5G wireless product solutions. These products support all 5G frequency bands and cover different types of sites including tower sites, pole-mounted sites, and small cells to suit deployment needs in diverse scenarios.

Going full blast into 5G technology, Chinese enterprises represented by Huawei, China Mobile and ZTE have joined the top ranks of the worlds telecommunications companies.

At MWC, China Mobile announced its plan to build the world's largest 5G test network. The company also disclosed that it would start field tests in five Chinese cities this year: Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Wuhan. By 2019, the new generation of communications technology will be launched for pre-commercial use.

China will be able to reach a pre-commercial level of major links on the 5G industrial chain by the end of 2018, start the construction of 5G networks in 2019 and begin commercial use in 2020, according to the plan of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as the countrys three major telecom carriers.

Photo shows the exhibition hall of the 2018 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo: CFP)

The three major carriers China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have all unveiled 5G pilot projects in Chinese cities.

In November 2017, Qualcomm Technologies, ZTE and China Mobile announced they had achieved the worlds first end-to-end 5G NR Interoperability Data Testing (IoDT) system demonstrating a data connection based on 3GPP R15 standard. This further accelerated the commercialization of 5G technology.

From the development of 3G, 4G to 5G technologies, Chinese enterprises have been playing a bigger role in upgrading the industry and have become forerunners in the field, said ZTE chief scientist Xiang Jiying.
By Online Desk

Notorious underworld kingpin Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla was arrested in New Delhi on Thursday by the CBI after he arrived from Dubai.

He will be produced before TADA court in Mumbai. Takla was brought to Mumbai in Air India flight AI 996 on Thursday morning.

Mustak Mohammad Miya alias Farooq Takla had fled from India after the 1993 blasts in Mumbai.

According to PTI, Takla was at the immigration office of the Indira Gandhi International Airport when a CBI team arrested him as an Interpol Red Corner notice had been issued against him.

He was arrested at the Delhi airport and will be produced before a designated court later today, the CBI spokesperson said.

According to the officials, in the know of developments, central intelligence agencies were working in securing arrests or deportations of close aides of Dawood, who has been designated by the US authorities as a global terrorist and faces sanctions in the United Nations.

While the CBI declined to comment on how he reached Delhi as an Interpol red Corner notice was pending against him, officials said Farooq was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi.

The role of Farooq in the D-company was not clear, but some officials said that he used to look after the Dubai operations of the underworld don.

India's sustained campaign against Dawood was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US Treasury department declared him a global terrorist having links with al-Qaeda.

He also faces sanctions from the United Nations under its anti-terror resolution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the Treasury Department had said he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.

Earlier, a Red Corner Notice was issued against him in 1995. Apart from this, Takla also faces criminal conspiracy, murder, attempt to murder and several other charges.

At least 27 other accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, continue to elude and are declared as absconders.

In 2017, Dawood's brother, Iqbal was arrested in Mumbai in connection with a case of extortion.

ALSO READ: Fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim keen to return to India, government spurns 'preconditions'

Majeed Memon, NCP leader & senior criminal lawyer said that the fact Takla has returned shows he has expressed his willingness to come back for trial.

"He'll certainly be remanded to custody, there's no question of bail being granted to him. Till next development he'll be in jail", said Memon.

"This is a huge success. He was involved in 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts the links of which can be traced back to Dubai. This is a big-blow to D-Gang", said senior advocate Ujjwal Nikam on the extradition of Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla.

ALSO READ: Dawood Ibrahim linked to British properties

On a related note, criminal lawyer Shyam Keswani had said that the fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar is reportedly "keen to return to India" but with certain preconditions which are not acceptable to the Indian government.

The lawyer on Tuesday also said that Dawood has stipulated are that he should be lodged only in the high-secure precincts of Arthur Road Central Jail (ARCJ) in Mumbai.

Ibrahim is the key accused in the case of 1993 Mumbai serial blasts that left nearly 257 people dead, 713 seriously injured and destroyed properties worth Rs 27 crore.

(with inputs from agencies)
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: After the Supreme Court stayed FIR against army into the killing of three civilians by army men in south Kashmir Shopian district on January 27 this year, former Chief Minister and opposition National Conference Working president Omar Abdullah on Thursday said Jammu and Kashmir government under pressure wants to push the probe of the incident into cold storage.

VIEW PHOTOS | Curfew imposed in Kashmir to prevent protests called by separatists

I think the state government has come under pressure and wants to push the probe into Shopian killings into cold storage, Omar told reporters in Anantnag in south Kashmir.

He was referring to the J&K governments statement in Supreme Court in which it had stated that FIR into Shopian killings does not mention Major Aditya Kumar, who was leading the troops when the incident took place on January 27.

Three civilians were killed in army firing in Ganowpora village of Shopian on January 27 and army had claimed that the soldiers fired in self defence after their vehicles came under stone pelting and an attempt was made to lynch a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO).

Major Adityas father, also a serving army officer, moved the Supreme Court to get the FIR quashed. The apex court has stayed further proceedings on FIR.

Omar said everybody has a copy of FIR of the Shopian killings. The FIR is available on social media and everybody knows what has been written in it.

He said he was surprised to see the stand taken by government on the case in the SC.

CM Mehbooba had twice made a commitment in State Assembly that FIR against army will be taken its logical conclusion. But her government has talked different thing in SC, Omar said.

When asked what is his partys stand on the issue, the former CM said, We want this incident to be properly investigated as there is a contradiction in the statement given by army and government.

People want that facts about the incident should be made public. We want that if a mistake has been committed, then people should be held accountable for it, he said.

Meanwhile, police has registered an attempt to murder case into the Sunday evenings shootout at Pahnoo, Shopian, in which two militants and four civilians were killed.

A police official said that the FIR bearing No 54 under Section 307 of Ranbir Penal Code and sections 7/27 of the Arms Act has been registered after army filed complaint that militants travelling in two vehicles fired on their armoured vehicle in Pahnoo, Shopian on Sunday night and in the retaliatory firing six persons including two militants and four civilians, suspected to be Over Ground Workers (OGWs) of militants were killed.

Army has said there is a very thin line between a civilian and OGW.

A police official said they are investigating whether the civilians killed in the incident were wilfully travelling in the vehicles or forced into it.

Police has asked witnesses of the incident to come up with their statements to help in the probe.




By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: With Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley making it crystal clear that nothing more would be granted to Andhra Pradesh other than what had already been offered in the form of a special package, TDP, a partner of the BJP-led NDA, decided to pull out of the Union government.

Its senior leaders, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Union Minister of State for Science and Technology YS Chowdary, will resign Thursday.

Announcing the decision at a press conference at the Interim Secretariat late Wednesday night, TDP president and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said, Its painful that Arun Jaitley said sentiments do not determine quantum of funds... It looks like they (Central government) do not want to help. They appear pre-determined. Power is not important for TDP. Since the State was in difficulties post division in 2014, we joined the Central government believing that it could help the State. That purpose not being served, we have decided that it is better if our two Central Ministers resign. They will resign tomorrow.

ALSO READ: 'Weve waited enough', Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh on alliance with BJP

The Chief Minister said he had tried to inform Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his decision but that the latter did not come on the line.

To a query, Naidu clarified that the TDP was not immediately walking out of the BJP-led NDA. This is a first step. We will decide what to do next. We will see how the Centre responds. Terming Jaitleys remarks an insult, Naidu said, It pains me. He said they have to take care of Indias security as if we were asking for defence funds. After division, we have no capital, we have revenue deficit, there is no infrastructure. This is an insult.

ALSO READ: Rajya Sabha's who is who, GOPs RS trapeze and AP CM Chandrababu Naidus ultimatum

The BJP was a key player in the division process. They also demanded special status to the State. Today, it is not proper on their part to compare AP with other states, saying if AP is given the concessions, other states like Bihar will also ask. All these demands of ours are included in the Reorganisation Act and promised to us in Parliament. It is our right.

He also found fault with Jaitley for stating that special status was only about Central share in core Central schemes and pointed out that he did not talk about tax concessions etc. The late-night announcement came after Naidu held talks with party MPs and senior ministers.

Timeline
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: From Thursday, Banaswadi will become the first railway station in South Western Railway Zone to be fully managed by women. Very few stations in the country have achieved this distinction.An official release said, On the occasion of International Womens Day, we take the opportunity to pay tribute to the women workforce that forms an intrinsic part of the great Indian Railway.Chief public relations officer, Bengaluru railway division, N R Sridharamurthy told The New Indian Express on Wednesday that all the ten staff to be deployed at the station would be women. There will be three clerks booking unreserved tickets, three pointswomen (those who change railway tracks) and three station masters who will work round-the-clock. In addition, the station will have a clerk to take care of booking of reserved tickets from 6am to 2pm.

On February 20, Gandhi Nagar in Rajasthan became the first mainline railway station in the country to be managed entirely by women. Matunga in Mumbai was the first suburban railway station to attain this distinction.Asked about the safety aspects, Banaswadi is in the heart of the City only. We do not anticipate any major safety problems.

There is no Railway Protection Force or Government Railway Police outpost here. The GRP or the RPF would keep visiting the station, he said. Senior divisional security commissioner of RPF was unavailable for comments.For the second consecutive year, an all-women crew will work on Bengaluru-Sanghamitra Express between the KSR Bengaluru and Chennai Central railway stations. It will comprise an assistant loco pilot, a trainee guard, three security personnel and six ticket checking staff.
Nationwide innovations in toilet technologies are offering strong support to Chinas toilet revolution campaign. Toilet civilization has gradually formed across the country, and the citizens and tourists satisfaction with the countrys toilets increases noticeably.

Photo taken on December 31, 2017 shows tourists have a rest at Changlu Tourism Leisure Expo Park in Foshan, southern Guangdong province. Toilets in the park were renovated and upgraded several years before, and they are now clean and odor-free. (Photo from CFP)

Toilet revolution is now a buzzword in China. Tourists wont feel very surprised if they walk into a toilet that greets them with music, is decorated with green plants and even has a smart monitoring system.

Thanks to toilet revolution, many new types of toilets, such as water- and energy-saving toilets, anti-freezing and self-deodorizing toilets, and convenient,comfortable and user-friendly toilets emerged one after another.

The toilet issue is no small thing, it's an important aspect of building civilized cities and countryside, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, pointed out previously.

Toilet revolution should be carried out not only in scenic areas and cities, but also in rural areas, Xi said, stressing that this work should be advanced as a specific task of rural revitalization and such shortcomings that affect the quality of peoples life should be filled with great efforts.

A national toilet revolution meeting was held in Zhengding County, north Chinas Hebei province on Feb. 23.

A cleaner toilet had already been on Xis agenda when he worked in Zhengding in the early 1980s. Back to those days, he led the county to renovate open pits next to pigsties and proposed a strategy of invigorating the county by tourism.

A resident scans her face for toilet paper at a public restroom in Nanjing, capital of east Chinas Jiangsu province, December 23, 2017. The newly-established facial recognition machine attracted many curious citizens to experience. (Photo from CFP)

The countys tourism, thanks to his efforts, drove the tertiary industry, served the provincial capital and finally made Zhengding the nearest travel destination to the provincial capital Shijiazhuang.

In 2015, China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) launched a three-year action plan for toilet revolution. By the end of 2017, about 70,000 toilets at tourist sites were built or renovated, overfulfilling the plan to construct 57,000 toilets within three years by 22.8 percent.

In this year, 24,000 restrooms are planned to be built, renovated or upgraded, and in the next three years, 64,000 new ones will be constructed at nationwide tourist sites.

Toilet revolution, first proposed by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), is an important measure to improve sanitation in developing countries across the globe. Toilets are an important indicator to measure civilization, and improving toilet sanitation is directly related to publics health and the environment of the developing countries.

Currently, Chinas toilet revolution has reached 3,000 nationwide 4A level and above tourist sites, expanded to over 370 major tourism cities and 500 national-level demonstration tourism destinations.

A bunny-shaped public toilet, which is under construction, has become a special attraction at a park in Zhenghe County, southeast Chinas Fujian province, December 31, 2017. (Photo from CFP)

Under the campaign, southwest Tibet Autonomous Region and northwest Qinghai province have adopted biological ways to process water at tourist sites in remote and plateau areas. Xinjiang and Ningxia have introduced automatic flushing and washing facilities, as well as biological technologies for water processing, at tourist sites with scarce water resources.

To solve the difficulty of finding a toilet, the CNTA launched a toilet-finding platform on one of the countrys most popular GPS applications Gaode Map, allowing tourists to see all public toilets within two kilometers of their locations.

The service includes location and direction information for nearly 500,000 public toilets, and that number is expected to reach one million by the end of this year.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI/COIMBATORE: On a day when two persons were arrested in Tirupattur for vandalising a Periyar statue following BJP leader H Rajas Facebook post, the State saw widespread protests and stray incidents of violence on Wednesday.

The damage was already done, though Raja disowned his Facebook post that said the late Dravidian leader Periyars statues would be pulled down in Tamil Nadu soon.

I was travelling in a flight to Delhi when my Facebook admin uploaded the post. Soon after I landed and saw it, I deleted it... If the post had hurt anybody, I express my heartfelt regret, Raja told reporters in New Delhi.

But this was too late.

READ: Attacks on statues | After Lenin in Tripura, Periyar in Tamil Nadu, Ambedkar bust vandalised in Meerut

The damaging of a Periyar statue at Tirupattur in Vellore district on Tuesday night by a few BJP members fuelled the protests by various political parties across the state.In the wee hours on Wednesday, petrol bombs were hurled in front of the BJPs office in Coimbatore. Three members of the Thanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam (TPDK) later surrendered to police in connection with the incident.

In Chennai, a group of men reportedly snapped the holy poonool (sacred thread) of eight men who were walking around 7 am near the Raghavendra temple at the junction of Singarachari Street and Nalla Thambi Street at Triplicane. While no police complaint was lodged, eyewitnesses told Express the men who snapped the poonals raised slogans hailing Periyar and later four members of the Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam surrendered at the Royapettah police station.In Chennai city alone, 708 people were detained for the protests.

Police personnel guarding the Thanthai Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam office and a Periyar statue at Gandhipuram in Coimbatore on Wednesday | EPS

A senior police officer said that around 2,098 people from 36 political parties, 1,693 men and 405 women staged protests on Wednesday over the issue. Traffic was affected in many of the areas. Similar protests were organised in almost all districts.

While a few like MDMK leader Vaiko and actor Sathyaraj challenged the BJP men to attempt to damage a Periyar statue by announcing in advance the venue and time, actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan said the issue was raked by the BJP only to divert attention from its responsibility of forming the Cauvery Management Board. Periyars stature was so high that we need not be worried about him... We should remain undistracted from the Cauvery issue, he told reporters at a press meet.

There were many who demanded Rajas immediate arrest. We will not be content with Rajas regret. He should be arrested immediately because he has been indulging in denigrating the great leaders of the Dravidian movement, Tamil language and the people, said DMK South Chennai district secretary and MLA Ma Subramanian, who led a demonstration at Saidapet.The three allies of the AIADMK - actor S Karunas, U Thaniyarasu and Thameemun Ansari, in a joint statement, condemned Raja for his FB post and demanded that he be arrested under the National Security Act.

Party disapproves of remark

The BJP party leaders have distanced themselves from this issue and from the issue of pulling down the Russian Communist leader Lenins statue in Tripura.The partys state president Tamilisai Soundararajan expelled the two members of the party who were arrested for damaging the Periyar statue. The partys national leadership too expressed strong disapproval.

BJP national president Amit Shah tweeted expressing his disapproval of Rajas remark. I have spoken to the party units in both Tamil Nadu and Tripura. Any person associated with the BJP found to be involved with destroying any statue will face severe action from the party.

Shah also said the BJP would always remain committed to the ideals of openness and constructive politics through which the party could positively impact the peoples lives as well as build a new India.

Meanwhile, the BJP national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao, who is in charge of Tamil Nadu State, condemned Raja for making such statements. But he did not mention the name of Raja. Muralidhar Rao, in his twitter post, said The BJP does not subscribe to any kind of provoking or disrespectful statements and actions of vandalism towards leaders like Periyar. We condemn outright those people who are indulging in such actions.

Announce time, venue in advance

A few like MDMK leader Vaiko and actor Sathyaraj challenged the BJP men to attempt to damage a Periyar statue by announcing in advance the venue and time

None will dare say it again: Stalin

Chennai: Complimenting the activists of various political parties and organisations following the ideals of social reformer and founder of Dravidar Kazhagam Periyar EV Ramasamy for their spirited protests that forced senior BJP leader H Raja to take back his flagrant message posted on Facebook, DMK leader MK Stalin said none would hereafter dare say to remove his idols. If anyone still having (such) a view, DMK cadre will show them who we are, Stalin said in a letter to his partymen. He noted that Periyars ideals were still serving as weapons to Tamil people who love self-respect but the enemies of the race tremble out of fear when hearing his name itself.

Statue removal is part of BJP policy: Pon Radhakrishnan

Nagercoil: Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan said that the removal of statues in Tripura and Tamil Nadu was part of party policies. The minister, in a press release issued here on Wednesday, said that the statements released by Modi and Amit Shah regarding the removal of statues would be supported by the cadre. Its due to Amit Shah that the party had won elections in over 20 states. Cadre will respect his decision, he said. In Thoothukudi, VCK and Adi Tamilar Katchi submitted a petition to SP, demanding the arrest of Raja.

Ensure peace in state, HC tells govt

Chennai: Madras High Court Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose, directed the State government to ensure peace in the State when hearing a PIL filed by an lawyer over the tense situation created by a irresponsible political leader.
Countess Sophie of Wessex is making a three day working visit to Malta between the dates of March 7-9 as the Global Ambassador for 100 Women in Finances Next Generation. On March 8, 2018, the Countess opened the Stock Exchange for International Women's Day and attended the Business Professional Women Careers Day at the Mediterranean Conference Centre. The Countess also visited the University of Malta Valletta Campus and attended a reception at Casino Maltese as the Global Ambassador for 100 Women in Finances Next Generation Initiative.
From masks to vaccine policies, what to know about Newport Co. schools
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(BALTIMORE) -- A Baltimore FBI agent apparently stabbed his estranged wife to death before committing suicide at her Maryland home, according to police.



A woman reported to 911 at about 8 a.m. Wednesday that Donna Fisher had asked her to call "because she was being threatened by her recently estranged husband," the Anne Arundel County Police Department said Wednesday.



Officers responded to Fisher's Crownsville home where they found Fisher, 54, with apparent stab wounds and David Raynor, an FBI Baltimore field office employee, with apparent stab wounds and a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.



Fisher and Raynor, 52, were declared dead at the scene, police said.



The apparent murder-suicide occurred on the day Fisher and Raynor were expected back in divorce court, according to court records. The two appeared in court Tuesday and were set to return Wednesday and Thursday, the records state.



Fisher had filed for divorce in March 2017, according to The Baltimore Sun. Court records showed child support was one issue in the divorce, the Sun reported.



Raynor joined the FBI in June 1993. He joined the Baltimore Field Office in February 2003.



Autopsies will be completed to determine the exact cause and manner of death, police said.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
A piece of wetland located in eastern China's Anhui province has now grown into a paradise for birds after efforts of four decades, adding evidence to the countrys stride toward a beautiful China with better ecological environment.

A bird view of core wetland at Chishanhu, literally translated as Pond Cypress Lake, in eastern China's Anhui province. (Photo provided by Laian County)

It takes one hours drive from Laian County in Chuzhou, Anhui province, to reach the wetland in Chishanhu, literally translated as Pond Cypress Lake, what is now a national pilot wetland park since the end of last year.

Covering an area of 5,600 mu (3.7 million square meters), the wetland boasts the largest size of pond cypresses in southeastern China.

Its also hailed as a bird paradise with over 100,000 birds inhabited here or migrated over, according to Ling Hongbao, director of Laian forestry bureau.

The large tract of pond cypresses were planted in the lake in 1970s to slow water down, and finally stretched up to a forest of over 1,000 mu (about 666 thousand square meters). The cypresses not only stop water and soil from going away, but also attract various kinds of birds.

A total of 98 kinds of birds inhabit in the reserve, where a complete eco-system has formed with rich resources of plants, fishes and amphibians, said Cheng Yongzheng, official of Leiguan Town at Laian County.

Wild cormorants constitute the largest number of birds in the wetland, and other inhabitants or regular visitors include wild ducks, night herons and cattle egrets, according to Cheng.

The wetland park, following the rule of comprehensive protection, scientific restoration, proper exploration and sustainable development in construction, divides the whole area into five function zones for ecological conservation, restoration and reconstruction, rational utilization, education, management and service.

Nearly 1,000 egrets play among the pond cypresses in winters lake. (Photo by Han Junjie from Peoples Daily)

The block for rational utilization will be developed into a destination of ecotourism and related experience activities, and demonstrate how to raise and plant in wetland in an ecological way.

We hope to build the wetland park into a science education base, providing children with an access to nature and ecological knowledge, and make the beautiful scenery known through photographers, said general manager Zhang Jianguo of the wetland park.

It will not only boost the popularity of the lake, but also give an impetus to local development, Zhang added.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policy and external relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, March 8, 2018. [Photo by Kuang Linhua/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met the press Thursday morning on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress.

Wang briefs journalists from home and abroad on China's foreign policies and answer questions on a wide range of diplomatic issues.

China-LAC cooperation does not target anyone

The cooperation between China and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) does not target or seeks to replace anyone, Wang Yi said.

"China will not move anyone's 'cheese,'" Wang said on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress. "China and LAC are helping and supporting each other as fellow developing countries."

Wang hopes nations behind Indo-Pacific Strategy will honor their promise

China hopes that the four countries involved in the Indo-Pacific Strategy will honor their pledge that the strategy targets no one, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

Wang made the remarks when asked to comment on the strategy that involves the United States, Japan, India and Australia, and whether he believes it aims to contain China or offset the Belt and Road Initiative.

"Contrary to the claims made by some academics and media outlets that the Indo-Pacific Strategy aims to contain China, the four countries official position is that it targets no one," Wang said. "I hope they mean what they say and their action will match their rhetoric."

Stoking a new "Cold War" is past its time, Wang said, adding that there is no market for forming little blocs and inciting confrontation.

Wang seeks stronger China-EU relations

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that he hopes the China-EU relations will be as strong at the end of the year as they were at the start of the year.

"China and EU share the responsibility to safeguard the global free trade system and negotiation needs to be speeded up to conclude a China-EU investment agreement," he said.

"There are some disagreements between China and the EU, but both sides have realized the need to put themselves in the each other's shoes and to be more open, tolerant and understanding of one another," he said.

Adhering to one-China principle in other countries interest

It is a correct choice and an "overriding and unstoppable" trend for countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish relations with the government of the People's Republic of China, the sole legal representative of the whole China.

The move also conforms to the long-term interests of those countries and their people, Wang added.

"There is only one China in the world. Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. This has been the consensus of the international community for decades. Adhering to the one-China principle and not having official ties with Taiwan has become a generally observed norm in international relations," the foreign minister said.

"The key to unlocking the cross-straits stalemate lies in recognizing the 1992 Consensus and acknowledging that the two sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one and the same China," Wang said urging the Taiwan authorities to return to the consensus as soon as possible.

Chinese FM calls for mutual trust with India

Foreign Minister Wang Yi called mutual trust "an issue that needs to be addressed urgently" between China and India.

"With political trust, not even the Himalayas can stop us from friendly exchanges. Without it, not even level land can bring us together," Wang said.

When China and India, the two largest developing countries in the world, each with a population of more than 1 billion, become modernized,the two countries must do everything to empathize with and support each other, he said.

Chinese and Indian leaders have developed a strategic vision for the future bilateral ties, which is the Chinese "dragon" and the Indian "elephant" must not fight but dance with each other, he said.

Stressing that shared understanding between the two countries far outstrips difference and common interests far outweigh frictions, Wang said China is willing and ready to carry on traditional friendship.

He said he hopes the two sides will replace suspicion with trust, manage differences through dialogue and build a future through cooperation.

Inciting bloc confrontation will find no market

Wang Yi said Thursday that stoking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting bloc confrontation will find no market.

Wang made the remarks in response to media reports on the "Indo-Pacific" strategy, which claimed that it was introduced to contain China.

Wang cited the official positions of the United States, Japan, India and Australia as "it targets no one."

"I hope they mean what they say and their actions match their words," said Wang at a press conference.

"There's never a shortage of headline-grabbing ideas, but they are like sea foam in the Pacific or Indian Ocean," said Wang.

"They may get some attention but will be short-lived," he said.

Japan urged to see China as partner, not threat

Wang Yi said that Japan should earnestly implement the political understanding that "China and Japan see each other as partners, not threats".

China is willing to work with Japan to restore the relationship to healthy and steady growth, as long as Japan "does not prevaricate, flip-flop or backpedal and instead accepts and welcomes China's development," Wang said.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

"Never forget why you started, and you can accomplish your mission. At this important juncture, we ask Japan to have political credibility and act accordingly to cement the political foundation of its relations with China," Wang said.

China to boost ties, advance Belt and Road Initiative in Africa

China will step up cooperation with African countries and will jointly advance the Belt and Road Initiative to help Africa address challenges of maintaining peace and security and promoting development, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

Wang said that the profound friendship between China and Africa will remain unbreakable, quoting President Xi Jinping's statement that China and Africa are friends tested by adversity and such friendship must not be forgotten.

"Africa faces challenges of maintaining peace and security, and of promoting development and revitalization. In response to the needs, China will step up mediation in regional hotspots as well as cooperation with African countries on unconventional security threats such as terrorism, piracy and natural disaster," Wang said.

The Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation will be held in September in Beijing where Chinese and African leaders will discuss their cooperation in the new era and focus on jointly advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and turning China and Africa into a community with a shared future, according to Wang.

"Africa is an indispensable partner in our effort to build a global community with a shared future. China welcomes our African brothers and sisters in getting on board of the fast train of development," the minister said.

China determined to maintain peace in South China Sea

China always firmly and consistently deals with the South China Sea issue by taking into account the interests of its people, the facts of history, the regional peace and the international law, Wang Yi said.

China's determination to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea is unshakable and sincere, Wang said.

"The situation in South China Sea is turning better, China and ASEAN countries have reached a consensus on maintaining the hard-won tranquility through making the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea," the minister said.

China and ASEAN countries have conducted the first round of consultation about the COC text and have made positive progress, he said, adding that the two sides agreed to conduct at least three rounds of consultations this year.

Wang said that "China and ASEAN countries are willing and able to independently draft regional rules that meet the reality and be adhered to by all parties".

There are challenges, he said, noting that some outside forces are not happy with the calm and try to stir up trouble and muddy the waters by sending aircrafts and vessels to the sea to show off their military power, which are the biggest destabilizing factors in the area.

China and ASEAN countries will seize the opportunity, broaden cooperation, prevent interference and overcome challenges, and speed up the consultation and explore a cooperation mechanism with coastal countries for the peace and cooperation in the South China Sea, he said.
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Moussa Mustafa Moussa, the head of the Ghad Party, held a large rally at the partys headquarters in Downtown Cairo attended by supporters and leaders of the Union of Arab Tribes, the only organisation to publicly announce its support for Moussa.

Ahmed Nassar, Moussas spokesperson, says campaigning is mainly focused on Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities. We are using our provincial offices to host our rallies, said Nassar. And we plan a major public rally the day before campaigning ends on 24 March.

Moussa said the decision to limit campaigning to major cities was due to the high costs of staging public rallies. Everybody knows I have very restricted funds, he said.

Adel Esmat, Moussas campaign spokesperson, said Mondays march, which covered downtown Cairo and neighbouring districts, was the first of its kind. It lasted for four hours, managing to attract a lot of audience and interest, said Esmat.

Moussas election platform was modified Saturday to stress the importance of reforming religious discourse.

The Ghad Party believes reforming religious discourse must include regulating Friday sermons and prayers, said Esmat.

Clerics delivering Friday sermons tend to mix religion with politics, manipulating religion in line with whatever ideology they profess. The Ministry of Religious Endowments should move to stop this.

In addition to public rallies, billboards featuring Moussa appeared in Cairos streets this week. At Tahrir Square and in downtown Cairo some buildings are festooned with giant pro-Moussa placards and billboards.

Al-Sisis campaign continued to receive wide-scale support from political parties, MPs and volunteers.

The Free Egyptians Party led by Essam Khalil told Al-Ahram Weekly the party will step up its pro-Sisi activities throughout the coming 20 days.

We plan to hold rallies across the Delta and in Upper Egypt to drum up support for Al-Sisi, said Khalil. During rallies we plan to distribute thousands of flyers, leaflets and CDs featuring the achievements of Al-Sisi in his first four-year term.

The partys Media Committee is currently responding to Western media outlets, particularly in the US and UK, which are targeting Egypts presidential election, and anti-Sisi Arab satellite channels broadcasting from London and Doha, said Khalil.

The party also plans to sue London-based Amnesty International which issued a statement highly critical of the election process.

I think the decision of most political parties, including the Wafd and Nour, to support Al-Sisi reflects the majority of the public who believe they need another four years of stability and economic development, said Khalil. This is what Western media circles do not want to understand.

Khalil told the Weekly pro-Sisi rallies will be also used to mobilise citizens to vote in the coming poll.

The Wafd Party has also joined the pro-Sisi campaign. Deputy Chairman Bahaaeddin Abu Shoka said the party is preparing a massive public rally at its headquarters in Dokki.

The heads of most of Egypts political parties, professional syndicates and trade unions will be invited to address citizens at the conference. The rally, which we hope will be aired live on TV, will urge citizens to turn out and vote.

The Wafd Party is a major sponsor of the pro-Sisi campaign Egypt First...Turn out Participate and Vote. Yes we are an opposition party, but given current economic and security conditions we have chosen to support President Al-Sisi to continue his policy of reforms, say Yasser Qoura, the Wafd Partys assistant chairman.

The Salafist Nour is also mobilising in support of Al-Sisi.

President Al-Sisi has become a symbol of stability, argued Younis Makhioun, head of the Nour Party.

Nours Deputy Chairman Galal Al-Morra told a public rally in Menoufiya on Sunday that there is a wide-scale belief among citizens that voting for President Al-Sisi is necessary to ensure the country remains stable and grows economically.

It is not a question of a personality cult as some Western media outlets claim but a matter of strategic importance, concerning national security and the future of the nation.

The Future of the Homeland Party has also intensified its pro-Sisi endorsements, holding 14 rallies that attracted thousands of citizens in 16 governorates. The party holds 50 seats in parliament.

Another pro-Sisi campaign, All With You For The Sake of Egypt, held dozens of conferences and has undertaken door-to-door canvassing in rural areas and small villages.

Mohamed Abu Shoka, spokesman of Al-Sisis official election campaign Long Live Egypt, announced in a press conference that four political parties and four public campaigns have already merged with Al-Sisis official campaign.

The four pro-Sisi public campaigns are In Order to Build it, We Are All with You, For the Sake of Egypt and Women Support the President.

The majority Support Egypt parliamentary bloc led by businessman and MP Mohamed Al-Sewidi has been busy drumming up support for Al-Sisi.

In Cairos 6 October City it organised a major public rally in cooperation with the industrial citys investors and businessmen. Addressing the rally on 27 February Al-Sewidi said there is a real consensus that Al-Sisi is the only person capable of leading Egypt in the coming stage.

Al-Sewidi praised the presidents November 2016 decision to float the Egyptian pound, saying that the move was necessary to wean the country from its dependency on imports.

The Support Egypt bloc comprises 11 political parties including the Free Egyptians, Future of the Homeland and the Guardians of the Nation parties, as well as independent MPs. The coalition holds more than 370 of parliaments 596 seats.

President Al-Sisi, whose current term ends in June, won the 2014 presidential elections with 97 per cent of the vote. Egypts presidential poll is scheduled for 26 to 28 March.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Vice President Constantino Chiwenga was yesterday rushed to hospital after suffering a dramatic fall at the Zanu PF headquarters  forcing him to cancel his politburo attendance.





The 61-year-old tripped and fell and badly hurt his hand just after arriving for yesterdays conclave, whose agenda included election preparations, mobilisation of voters, party regalia and the threat of defections ahead of the crucial mid-year general election.





The former commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces reportedly missed a step and slipped, before injuring his hand.

He sustained a mild sprain that could limit his function for a few days.





Chiwenga was mobbed by concerned staffers and colleagues at the Zanu PF headquarters foyer, who commiserated with him as he was being rushed to hospital.

He was whisked away in his Range Rover, escorted by the police.





We were all worried when he slipped and hurt his hand but, as you saw, he is a fighter. He just had to be excused earlier to get his hand looked at, said a staffer at the ruling party offices.





The politburo continued with its deliberations without Chiwenga who, along with Vice President Kembo Mohadi, flank party leader and President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the top table.

Chiwenga is not the first high-profile official to fall in public under varying circumstances.





Former president Robert Mugabe became the butt of jokes and mimicry in February 2015 when he missed a step and tumbled off the podium at the then Harare International Airport moments after arriving from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.





The incident caused a witch-hunt within Mugabes inner circle, resulting in the removal of some of his close aides from the security team.





In May 2014, former police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri collapsed at a parade at Morris Depot soon after Mugabe had addressed graduates.

He was quickly wheeled off on a stretcher.





He later attributed his blackout to working long hours and a mix-up in the shoes he wore for the occasion.





I have been working overnight for quite some time. The situation has been exacerbated or worsened by the fact that there was a mix-up of my shoes. The right shoe was mixed up with the left one. The right shoe is a bit small and it is an old shoe so my toes were burning because of the tightness of the shoe and there was no circulation (of blood) in that leg that caused me to be dizzy and then fell down.





I had this small blackout because of what I have explained, lack of circulation but checked the blood pressure is ok you can ask Dr Mombeshora, he also checked the sugar levels, they are fine and that coupled with the heat and the type of clothing and what I also had inside because in the morning it was a bit chilly, so I had put on some T-shirt as you can see so that caused that (collapse), he said. Daily News
President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday said his administration is closely monitoring former President Cde Robert Mugabes manoeuvres and will take appropriate action if it is proven that his actions undermine the cohesion of the State.



Addressing the first Zanu-PF Youth League national assembly under the new dispensation, President Mnangagwa said his administration was not happy with Cde Mugabes alleged shenanigans as reported in the media.



He said if true, the ploy would soon play out in the open. Cde Mugabe is reportedly behind a new political outfit, National Patriotic Front (NPF), a grouping of disgruntled members of the G40 cabal.





The former President is alleged to have anointed Brigadier-General Ambrose Mutinhiri (Retired) to lead the political project after meeting him at his Borrowdale residence in Harare last week in a desperate bid to protect his unravelling sprawling business empire that includes 21 farms, local and foreign investments.





Said President Mnangagwa: The former President, paita nyaya! Currently we see in the media various speculations about his activities. I have no doubt that in no time the facts and reality will be made known and we will only take a position when reality and the issues are known and if it is factual.





But currently we are not happy with what the media is saying. We dont know whether its correct or not, but it is an issue we are examining.





The voice of the people is the voice of God. So if the voice of the people says this is wrong, then we also say it is wrong. If an individual or group of individuals goes against the current of the voice of the people, then we say you are lost. My message is that we must be peaceful, united and loving.

President Mnangagwas remarks came as the Zanu-PF Youth League hinted on cutting ties with Cde Mugabe for his continued links with counter-revolutionaries in the expelled G40 cabal.





Addressing the meeting, Youth League leader Cde Pupurai Togarepi said in reference to Cde Mugabe: Mukuru ngaazive kuti anonyarwa. We know a lot he has done. His problem with us did not come out of the blue. He was aware of what was happening mumba mavo neshamwari dzavo dzaivafurira.





We are glad you said let bygones be bygones, but if he is not responsible we are going to look at him as a new enemy and we will go for him.





The national Youth League assembly was dominated by slogans denouncing Cde Mugabe.

President Mnangagwa said Zanu-PF would romp to victory in the forthcoming harmonised elections.

We, as Zanu-PF are confident, he said. If anyone of you is not confident, get it from me, we are confident that Zanu-PF will romp to victory hands down.





There is no need (for violence), we are assured of romping home, crossing Jordan to Canaan. Hapana akamira munzira. The elections will be peaceful, credible, free and fair. We must earn the mandate to continue to govern the people of Zimbabwe at the ballot box, where people freely make their choice.





Victory is certain! Let us refrain from any form of violence, intimidation, hateful and hurtful speech.





President Mnangagwa urged the youths to use platforms such as social media to attract a broad support base for the revolutionary party ahead of the harmonised elections.





Imi tambai navo musocial media imomo, President Mnangagwa said. Pindai, morakasha vanhu musocial media. I should commend you for spear-heading the social media campaign blitz you christened #EDhasMyVote.





The Youth League should now focus on voter education with the ballot box in mind. Dzidzisai mayouth kutsepetera paMasvingo.





President Mnangagwa said every Zanu-PF cadre should observe and abide by the policies, rules and regulation of the party.





He said the Youth League leadership in liaison with the partys commissariat department should ensure youths constantly received appropriate ideological grounding and teachings for the party to remain disciplined.





As youths, you must shun immorality, corruption, tribalism, factionalism and regionalism, said President Mnangagwa.





The party will no longer tolerate people who use their party membership for personal self-enrichment through extortion and abuse of the party name.





President Mnangagwa said his administration would prioritise economic resuscitation to create employment and empowerment opportunities for the people.

He said more youths stood to benefit from the land audit and farm downsizing being carried out by Government.





There are people of my grade who have more than one farm, said President Mnangagwa. Tirikuuya!





President Mnangagwa challenged the Youth League to establish a comprehensive data base of young people, highlighting their age, gender, skills and profession.





This, he said, would be vital for deployment into strategic institutions.

President Mnangagwa took time to respond to the challenges the youths forwarded to him.





The challenges included extending the tenure of the Youth League national executive, corruption, request to be considered in the awarding of tenders, National Youth Service resuscitation and gold panning.





On the lifespan of Youth League national executive, the President said: You said that I extended the life of Central Committee and Politburo members until the next Congress which will come after five years and you are pleading that the same applies to the national executive of the Youth League.





I dont see any contradiction when the mother body has benefited from my pronouncement for me do the same for you.





Yesterdays national assembly was attended by youth provincial members from all the partys 10 provinces. Herald
TOURISM and Hospitality Industry Minister Prisca Mupfumira says the problems bedevilling Air Zimbabwe are a result of mismanagement, which the new Government is working flat out to address.



Speaking in London this week where she met the Zimbabwean diaspora community and foreign delegates during a tourism engagement event, she said resuming Air Zimbabwes international flights to major tourism source markets is a top priority as Government moves to ensure the country is a favourable tourism and business destination. The Minister said Government was seized with capacitating Air Zimbabwe to ensure it meets service efficiency and business requirements that compete with its global peers.



We are working on re-establishing Air Zimbabwes direct flights. I admit that we mis-managed our own airline. We destroyed it, its us who destroyed it and Im taking ownership, said Min Mupfumira.





So Im saying infrastructure is a key issue for us to be able to get to our major source markets. For one to go to Spain, you have to go through Dubai and other areas making the total 24hrs. China is one of the biggest source markets in tourism, we used to have a direct flight that took only 12 hours but now it takes over 36 hours as you go through other countries. That is not acceptable.





Saddled with a $300 million debt burden, Air Zimbabwes top executives have come under fire in the last few years on accusations of corruption, mismanagement and nepotism. Between 2009 and 2013, Air Zimbabwe lost nearly $10 million in a well-planned and well- executed aviation insurance fraud, which a magistrate said was pre-planned by its top executives who circumvented laid-down procurement procedures.





This saw the two former Air Zim executives being arrested for bringing the company to its knees in one of Zimbabwes biggest corporate fraud scandals.





Last year, the state owned airline was said to be reporting huge losses of $2 million every month as mismanagement, high operating costs, old equipment and aircraft that were no longer profitable to fly weighed on its bottom-line.





Min Mupfumira said the absence of Air Zimbabwe on international routes was a cause for concern and that Government was seriously looking into the matter.

Im trying to underline the problem of flight connectivity. We are losing business as a nation and this is something which is a priority to the Ministry of Transport.





We want to have intra-African airlines. We need to sort out air connectivity and direct flights to major areas where there is a tourism source market and to areas where there is a good population of Zimbabweans, so its work in progress, bear with us, she said.





The minister also called on the Zimbabwean Diaspora to bring back the intellectual capital acquired from their experience in other countries for the re-building of the countrys economy and job creation.





Last year, the ailing flag carrier mooted re-establishing long-haul flights, particularly the Harare-London route, as part of measures to increase its revenue.





The airline last operated the route in 2012 when it was expelled from the International Aviation Transport Association (IATA) clearing house after accumulating fee arrears. Herald
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(Newser)  Feelings of heartbreak in the wake of a horrifying incident at a New York City crosswalk Monday have turned to feelings of outrage with new details emerging about the driver who allegedly struck and killed two young children and critically injured a pregnant Broadway star. As SILive.com reports, the white Volvo sedan driven by 44-year-old Dorothy Bruns has been cited in 12 "open parking and camera violations"four for running a red light and four for speeding through a school zonein Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island since 2016. However, Bruns' license, suspended Tuesday, showed a clean driving record ahead of Monday's incident, in which she allegedly crept into an intersection before suddenly accelerating through a red light, report People and the Wall Street Journal.

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Twenty-month-old Joshua Lew, who was dragged in a stroller, and 4-year-old Abigail Blumenstein were killed. Blumenstein's pregnant mother, 2015 Tony Award winner Ruthie Ann Miles, was injured, in addition to Lew's mother. Miles is currently in stable condition, with no harm done to her unborn child, per the New York Daily News. Bruns, who claims to have had a seizure and was reportedly foaming at the mouth, hasn't been charged, as it's unclear if a medical condition should've kept her from driving. But "I wish she was under arrest right now," NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, per the AP. "She should never have been allowed to have been driving a car after what we know of these other violations," he added. "Measures need to be taken to ensure she will not drive a car anymore." (Read more car accident stories.)
We can enjoy the right of having a say in our country. I will head to the embassy next Friday to participate in the presidential elections, said Dina, a teacher who has been living in Kuwait for more than 15 years.

Between 16 and 18 March Egyptian expatriates will be able to cast their ballots at 139 polling stations located in embassies and consulates of 124 countries.

The greatest number of Egyptian expatriates lives in Saudi Arabia, followed by Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar.

Dina lives close to the Egyptian Embassy in Kuwait which will make voting for her easy. In countries such as Canada or the US those who want to vote could face long journeys.

I appreciate that the election is being held from Friday to Sunday which covers the weekend in both Arab and Western states. I am a four-hour drive at least from the nearest polling station and it would be much better for me if postal votes were allowed, says Rasha, a secretary living in the north of Canada.

Postal votes were allowed in the post-25 January Revolution parliamentary elections and the 2012 presidential poll.

Their cancellation has been attributed to a desire to ensure Egyptians living inside and outside the country enjoy the same rights. People inside Egypt must cast their votes in person after presenting a valid national ID card.

The absence of postal voting is a hurdle for Ali, a doctor who lives in northern England who wont be able to travel to London to vote at the Egyptian Embassy.

Polling stations abroad will be manned by diplomatic, consular and administrative embassy staff.

The Foreign Ministry, in conjunction with the National Electoral Commission (NEC), has held a series of workshops to train staff, and foreign missions have been provided with electronic scanners so voters ID cards and passports can be quickly scanned.

The whole expatriate voting process will be monitored from an operations room at the Foreign Ministry.

Minister of Immigration and Expatriate Affairs Nabila Makram Ebeid said in a press conference in January that all Egyptian expats  regardless of their legal status  will be allowed to vote in the presidential elections.

Egyptian expats must bring their national identification card or valid computerised passports in order to vote at embassies and consulates in their host countries, she said. As in other recent elections there will be no voting for expats in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen because of security issues.

The poll in Egypt will take place between 26 and 28 March. Any run-off vote will take place between 19 and 21 April for expatriates and on 24 and 26 April in Egypt. The winner will be announced on 2 April.

The expatriate vote is held in advance of the domestic ballot to allow the NEC to exclude any names from voter lists who have already cast their ballots abroad, and to give sufficient time for foreign missions to count the cast votes and forward the results to the NEC.

It was in April 2011 that amendments to the law on political participation were drafted allowing Egyptians living overseas to vote in presidential elections and referendums at embassies and consulates abroad.

In October of the same year an administrative court ruled that expatriates should also be allowed to vote in parliamentary polls.

A month later the then ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces passed a law regulating expatriate voting in parliamentary and presidential elections and in referendums.

Since then several measures have been taken to make the voting process easier. Pre-registration, viewed as an obstacle in previous elections, has been cancelled and expatriates can use their passports to cast their ballots, allowing those who do not have national IDs to take part in elections.

In 2017 the government estimated the number of Egyptians living abroad at 9.4 million though the figure could reach 10 million if illegal immigrants are counted.

In the 2014 presidential elections 317,109 expats took part. More than 90 per cent of them chose Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi.

In the 2012 presidential elections 314,000 expats cast votes while 287,000 took part in the last parliamentary elections.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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(Newser)  A student was fatally shot Wednesday at an Alabama high school, AL.com reports. The Birmingham City School system says the shooting happened during dismissal at Huffman High School. Two students and an employee were injured. One student is in critical but stable condition; the other died on the way to the hospital. According to the AP, police identified the dead student as a 17-year-old girl. Police initially described the shooting as "accidental," though details are scarce, WVTM reports. "I was just hoping my baby was OK, that everybody was OK," says one mother whose daughter was stuck inside the school when it was locked down. "I was nervous. This is so sad."

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Meanwhile, authorities in Mississippi are investigating a shooting Wednesday on the Jackson State University campus, Mississippi News Now reports. According to the Jackson Clarion Ledger, a student was shot in the leg inside a dorm and is expected to recover. One dorm resident says the student accidentally shot himself, though police haven't confirmed that and the student hasn't been forthcoming with details. (Read more school shooting stories.)
(Newser)  Twice recently, President Trump has asked key witnesses in the Russia investigation about their conversations with special counsel Robert Mueller, three sources tell the New York Times. One alleged conversation involved White House counsel Don McGahn; Trump told an aide that McGahn should deny a January Times article that said Trump had asked McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn didn't deny it, and he ultimately reminded Trump that he had, in fact, asked McGahn to contact Rod Rosenstein and make sure Mueller was dismissed. The other alleged conversation involved Reince Priebus; the sources say Trump asked his former chief of staff in December how his interview with Mueller's investigators went and whether they were "nice." Sources tell Fox News the latter conversation included "nothing" of substance and Trump just felt bad Priebus had been questioned for hours.

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Fox's sources also deny Trump ever "ordered" McGahn to see Mueller fired; they say Trump simply directed McGahn to see what could be done about Mueller. But sources confirm the Times' version of events to Politico. Legal experts tell the Times the conversations probably don't meet the definition of witness tampering, but the paper notes Trump appears to be ignoring advice from his lawyers to avoid appearing to interfere with Mueller's investigation into Russia's tampering with the 2016 US election. Witnesses and lawyers who learned of the two conversations told Mueller, who's also investigating whether Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation, about them. Legal experts say Mueller will likely now direct an increased focus toward Trump's interactions with witnesses in the probe, and that the conversations with McGahn and Priebus could be evidence in a possible obstruction case. (Read more Robert Mueller stories.)
(Newser)  What went down in a Texas courtroom in 2014 was literally shocking enough to result in a man's conviction being overturned late last month. As originally reported by the Texas Lawyer website Tuesday, Terry Lee Morris, who'd been found guilty of sex crimes against a child and given a 60-year prison sentence, will receive a new trial after the 8th Court of Appeals in Texas found Judge George Gallagher ordered his bailiff to administer electric shocks to Morris for not answering questions the way Gallagher wanted, per the BBC. The shockswhich the court's Feb. 28 ruling on Courthouse News Service says were delivered three times "as a show of the court's power"were administered via a stun belt, a device the BBC and Washington Post report is sometimes used in courtrooms in Texas' Tarrant County if defendants become violent or try to flee.

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Per transcripts cited by the Post, Gallagher warned Morris during the trial about his "outbursts" and finally ordered the shocks with a "Hit him" to the bailiff when Morris wouldn't stop talking. Morris says he was so frightened by the experience he never went back to court for the rest of his trial or sentencing, which the appeals court notes was a violation of his Sixth Amendment rights to be present at his own trial. Morris' attorney, meanwhile, tells the Texas Lawyer he didn't think his client was really getting shocked, and that Morris had acted "like a loaded cannon ready to go off." The attorney adds to the Star-Telegram that he had tried to calm Morris down and was "scared to death of what Morris might do." But the appeals court disagreed it was OK to shock Morris, noting that courts must not "allow practices like these to ... lead our courts to drift from justice into barbarism." (Read more overturned verdict stories.)
(Newser)  Pope Francis has cleared the way for Archbishop Oscar Romero to be made a saint, declaring that the churchman murdered in El Salvador for standing up for the poor and oppressed should be a model for today's church. Francis signed a decree confirming a miracle attributed to Romero's intercession on Tuesday, the same day he approved a miracle for another important figure for the 20th century Catholic Church, Pope Paul VI, the Vatican said Wednesday. No date was set for either canonization, the AP reports. Romero was gunned down by right-wing death squads on March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel. The country's military dictatorship had vehemently opposed his preaching against the army's repression of the poor at the start of the country's 1980-1992 civil war.

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Romero's sainthood case had been held up for years by the Vatican, primarily due to opposition from conservative Latin American churchmen who feared Romero's perceived association with liberation theology would embolden the movement that holds that Jesus' teachings require followers to fight for social and economic justice. But Pope Benedict XVI unblocked Romero's stalled sainthood case and Francis pushed it through, declaring him a martyr for the faith in 2015. The miracle that cleared the way for Romero's sainthood concerned the medically inexplicable cure of a pregnant, terminally ill Salvadoran woman who was "condemned to death" by illness but lived, and gave birth to a healthy child. (Read more sainthood stories.)
(Newser)  A city worker at St. Petersburg's Lake Maggiore Park heard moans around 11:30am March 1, ultimately following them to an injured and bloody woman lying at the base of a group of trees. Responding police found that she'd suffered "severe trauma," per investigators; she was taken to a hospital, but she died Wednesday morning. She has been identified as Christie Lynn New, a 43-year-old mother of a 9-year-old girl, and Florida authorities are now asking the public for help with the investigation, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Evidence shows she "didn't do this to herself," a police spokesperson tells WFLA. The worker who found New thinks she may have been beaten elsewhere and left in the park after 7:30am, since he didn't see her on his morning rounds.

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Police aren't sure why New was in St. Petersburg; her family says the stay-at-home mom, who also owned horses and took part in equestrian competitions, lived in Key West and also spent time at a home her family owns in North Carolina. Her family says she had recently driven her horses to Ocala to see a trainer, and they believe she met with a male acquaintance there; he may have been the last person to see her alive. Police have spoken to him, FOX 13 reports. New had also been spotted Feb. 28 in an area around 8 miles from where she was found injured. "If you saw her or have any information about Christie New, you could be eligible for a cash reward (of up to $3000) from Crimestoppers (1-800-873-TIPS), if your tip ... leads to an arrest in this case," the St. Petersburg Police said on Facebook. (Read more unsolved mystery stories.)
(Newser)  Robert Mueller's Russia investigation has a complex new focus: a meeting between Trump ally Erik Prince and a Russian businessman that took place in the archipelago nation of Seychelles just a few days before President Trump's inauguration. The meeting has been previously reported. In fact, Princefounder of the security firm Blackwater and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVostestified to a House panel about it last year. But Democrats now think that Prince misled them about the meeting's importance, reports CNN. Prince told lawmakers that the meeting came about by chance while he was there on his own business to meet with officials from the United Arab Emirates. But the Washington Post reports that the meeting appears to have been arranged in advance as a way to set up a "back channel" between the Trump White House and the Kremlin.

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The key new player that has emerged in all this is Lebanese-American businessman George Nader. He set up the meeting between Prince and Kirill Dmitriev and is now cooperating with Mueller's investigation, per the Post. If that name rings a bell, it's because the New York Times just reported on Nader, and on how Mueller is interested in whether the UAEyes, the nation Prince was meeting with on businesstried to "buy political influence" with the incoming Trump administration. If Prince was actually trying to set up a back channel to the Kremlin after the election, so what? For one thing, "it would demolish months worth of denials from both him and the White House that he was doing any such thing," notes Vox. "And it would raise serious questions about just why, exactly, all parties involved were so set on keeping the Seychelles meeting secret." (Read more Erik Prince stories.)
(Newser)  It all started with a Georgia woman griping about her ex-husband. He apparently told her he wouldn't pick up the medicine her sick son needed, and Anne King vented about it on her private Facebook page, writing, "Feeling overwhelmed. That moment when everyone in your house has the flu and you ask your kids dad to get them (not me) more Motrin and Tylenol and he refuses." One of her friends commented in solidarity, "POS." But unlike most Facebook complaining, the 2015 exchange turned into a "criminal matter," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionbecause King's ex happens to be Capt. Corey King, a Washington County deputy.

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Anne King deleted the post upon her ex-husband's request, but he and Capt. Trey Burgamy filed an incident report against her and her friend, reports WRDW, which led to both women being arrested and charged with criminal defamation of character. Anne King's case was dismissed in State Court (the Journal-Constitution has more on the issue with the charge itself and how it came to be), with WRDW reporting the judge commented, "I don't even know why we're here." She then filed a federal lawsuit in January 2017 that accused the deputies of using their power to violate her civil rights. "Corey and Trey thought I was too dumb and too broke to do anything about it," she says. Her case will go before a federal judge Thursday, who will determine whether the case will proceed to trial. (A Facebook photo of this man's tattoos led to his arrest.)
(Newser)  Meghan Markle is following in the footsteps of her future sister-in-law, having been baptized and confirmed into the Church of England ahead of her marriage to Prince Harry. Fiance Harry, Prince Charles, and his wife, Camilla, attended Markle's intimate baptism and confirmation Tuesday in the Royal Chapel at St. James' Palace in London, People reports, citing a report in the Daily Mail. Prior to her marriage to Prince William, Kate Middleton was also confirmed into the Church of England in a private service at St. James' Palace.

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Joining the Protestant Anglican church, which recognizes Queen Elizabeth II as its head, is "basically a right of passage in the Royal Family," per Bustle. In Markle's case, the ceremony was performed by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who is helping prepare Prince Harry and Markle for their May 19 wedding at Windsor Castle's St. George's Chapel, which is where Harry was baptized. Markle, who was raised Episcopalian before attending Catholic school, can now take part in Holy Communion. (Read more Meghan Markle stories.)
(Newser)  Two SWAT officers who dropped everything to respond to the Feb. 14 Parkland school shooting in Florida have been punished as a result. Miramar Police Department's SWAT team was placed on stand-by in the chaos of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in case it was needed to assist the Broward County Sheriff's Office. As the Sheriff's Office had its own SWAT team on the move, the Miramar team ultimately wasn't needed, per the Miami Herald. But detectives Jeffrey Gilbert and Carl Schlosser, who were near the school at the time, responded anyway, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel. A memo sent to the officers a week later says they acted "without the knowledge or authorization from your chain of command" and created an "officer safety situation due to dispatch not knowing your location or activity."

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Too many officers on scene can create confusion and block access for other first responders, a former detective tells the Herald. But even if it was "a violation of policy to not notify their supervisors that they were going there," the officers' "intentions were brave and heroic," says their union president. While the officers remain on active duty, they were suspended from the SWAT program and ordered to surrender their SWAT-issued rifles, per the Sun Sentinel. The Herald describes the suspension as temporary. A third SWAT officer, Kevin Gonzalez, suffered the same punishment over accusations of involvement in social media posts about the shooting that reflected negatively on police and the city. The posts reportedly questioned why Miramar's SWAT team wasn't dispatched and may have been written by Gonzalez's girlfriend, per the Herald. (Read more Parkland school shooting stories.)
(Newser)  After just six months on the job, the head of the US Forest Service is stepping down after a PBS probe revealed not only claims of sexual harassment and assault throughout the agency in general, but also accusations of misconduct against Tony Tooke himself, PBS reports. Tooke's retirement, which is effective immediately, comes just a few days after a PBS NewsHour investigation into both the Forest Service and Tooke, who informed his staff he'd be leaving in a Wednesday email obtained by Politico and BuzzFeed. While Tooke didn't confirm or deny the allegations against himallegations that the New York Times says haven't yet been spelled outhe says, "I cannot combat every inaccuracy that is reported in the news media," and therefore feels it's best to "make way for a new leader that can ensure future success for all employees and the agency."

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PBS talked to 34 current and former Forest Service female workers, who described a hostile work environment that included everything from bullying and sexual harassment to groping and rape. Many women also allege retaliation after they reported these incidents. The Forest Service says its parent agency, the Department of Agriculture, has "engaged an independent investigator" to look into specific allegations against Tooke, who has been with the Forest Service since he was 18. Tooke wrote in his email that "I admire the courage" of the women who've come forward about the Forest Service and that "each employee deserves a leader who can maintain the proper moral authority to steer the Forest Service along this important and challenging course." Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue thanked Tooke in a statement for "his decades of service to this nation and to the conservation of its natural resources." (Read more US Forest Service stories.)
Al-Hussein claimed that the upcoming elections have been marked by "arrests, torture of detainees and silencing of independent media."

In an annual report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ra'ad said that "potential candidates have allegedly been pressured to withdraw, some through arrests. Legislation prevents candidates and supporters from organising rallies. Independent media have been silenced, with over 400 media and NGO websites completely blocked."

Egypt has frequently stressed the integrity of its upcoming presidential elections, scheduled 26-28 March, which is entirely supervised by the judiciary and monitored by many state and foreign media as well as international organizations.

The country has described international reports on its human rights record as "biased and politicised."

International condemnations of the human rights situation in Egypt has been increasing recently as the country approaches its presidential elections this month.

Addressing the UNs Human Rights Council in Geneva Earlier this month, Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said Egypt has made progress in the field of human rights but warned the UNs rights council against applying double standards and politicisation" in its judgments.

The minister highlighted the latest improvements in human rights in Egypt, including amendments to the controversial protest law, under which many peaceful demonstrators have been jailed, and the presidential pardon committee assigned to review the status of young detainees.

Shoukry stated that the country had achieved much in its democratic transition despite the increase in security challenges and the spread of terrorism in the region and the world.

In the few weeks preceding the elections, some hopeful candidates withdrew from the elections race for several reasons, while the Egyptian government dismissed accusations that it had applied pressure on them to withdraw.

The Egyptian government has frequently responded that the withdrawn candidates were not excluded for political reasons, but rather for legal violations or not having fulfilled the presidential elections' requirements.

On 23 February, Egypt's National Elections Authority (NEA) approved current President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Moussa Mostafa Moussa, a low-profile politician and head of the Ghad Party, as the final candidates.

President El-Sisi, whose current first term will end in June, won the 2014 presidential elections in a two-man race with nearly 97 percent of the vote over leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahi.

The elections are scheduled to start nationwide on 26-28 March, with runs-offs, if they are to take place, scheduled for 24-26 April.

If no run-offs are necessary, the winner will be announced on 2 April.

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(Newser)  With the coming of spring, people will be putting away the extra blankets that kept them warm through a chilly winter. Others in Switzerland will be blanketing a glacier. As E&E News reports, huge white blankets of canvas will be used to cover the Rhone Glacier in the Swiss Alps this summer, as in the previous eight years, to slow its rapid melt. In the last century and a half, Rhone Glacier has retreated 4,600 feet, per Live Science. It's continuing to shrink by as much as 8 inches on a hot day, and has retreated some 20 feet in the last three weeks, Swiss glaciologist David Volken tells AFP. The dirty blankets, easily mistaken for ice from afar, reflect sunlight and may help reduce melting by up to 70%, per Quartz.

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They allow Rhone Glacier's ice grotto, a major tourist attraction, to remain open through the summer. But they're only a temporary fix to a larger environmental issue. "By the end of the century, only about 10% of the current ice volume will remain," Volken says. Researchers are working on solutions. According to E&E, a recent proposal on reducing ice melt suggests blowing artificial snow across a glacier to reflect sunlight. Another proposes using large wind-powered pumps to cover Arctic ice in seawater that would then freeze and add to ice depth. A third proposal suggests an artificial sill could be built on the ocean floor to block the melting of glaciers from below. However, scientists warn these short-term fixes will only put off the inevitable unless greenhouse gases are largely reduced. (This glacier recently gave up three roped-together bodies.)
(Newser)  "It is a coincidence," says Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Bill Lowe, and a deadly one. After a 911 call Tuesday in which women were heard screaming, police were dispatched to a home in Clinton, Mo., where all were shot, one fatallyand it was the wrong home. Lowe says the officers should have been sent to an entirely different town, Windsor, some 20 miles away, reports the Kansas City Star, which notes it's unclear if the error was made by human or computer. A news release from the Missouri Highway Patrol states, "After confirming with dispatch the address of the residence, officers entered the house where they encountered the suspect," who shot at them, and later, "Further investigation revealed the phone number from the original 911 call came from an address in Windsor." Clinton police officer Christopher Ryan Morton, 30, was killed.

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Lowe notes that while the officers were sent to the wrong house, "the fact is [the residents] were in the act of committing crimes within that house." The AP explains the series of events: Tammy Widger, 37, greeted the arriving officers and said nothing was amiss and no one else was home. The officers entered the house anyway to verify all was well and found James Waters inside; the 37-year-old began firing at police and was later found dead by the SWAT team that arrived on the scene. Widger was charged Wednesday with possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver after drugs were allegedly found in the home. One more tragic twist: Morton, an Afghanistan veteran, switched his status with the Clinton PD from reserve to full time in Septemberto fill the hole left by Officer Gary Michael, who was killed during a traffic stop. (Read more 911 call stories.)
(Newser)  If you happen to come across any McDonald's ads online Thursday or visit the company website, one thing will look a little oddthe iconic arches will be flipped to form a W instead of an M. The reason? To honor International Women's Day, reports CNN. In fact, the arches are flipped in the real world outside a restaurant in Lynwood, Calif. The chain is boasting that six in 10 of its restaurants are owned by women, including the one in Lynwood.

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"Everyone is doing it, so they want to jump on board," a marketing professor tells USA Today. "At the same time, when I see something like that, it's nice for International Women's Day, but what is McDonald's doing the other days of the year?" The newspaper notes that McDonald's has three women on its 12-person board and three women among its top 10 corporate positions. (Read more McDonald's stories.)
(Newser)  Democrats are expected to make big gains in the House when the midterm elections take place later this year. A new poll, however, suggests the party might actually lose ground in the Senate. In the poll for Axios, Survey Monkey looked at 10 races where Democratic incumbents are fighting to retain their seats in states won by President Trump in 2016. Trump may have low approval ratings nationally, but in six of those states, he is more popular than the Democratic senator. Of the 10 races, a Republican would currently win five of them (Montana, West Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, and North Dakota.)

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Democrats lead in the other fiveWisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Floridabut only in the latter two races do the Democratic incumbents (Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Bill Nelson of Florida) have leads bigger than 5 points. Democrats will head into the election hoping to pick up two seats to take control of the Senate, but the poll suggests it's a tough fight. As Neil Stevens of RedState puts it, "the House may be at risk of a bloodbath for Republicans, but the Senate looks like a rock for the GOP this year." In the New York Times, an op-ed by Columbia University's Musa al-Gharbi takes note of high GOP turnout in the recent Texas primaries and writes that the 2018 "blue wave narrative" so prevalent among pundits might need some reassessment. (Read more Senate Democrats stories.)
(Newser)  A woman who disappeared in January after removing her hijab and using it as a flag in protest of Iranian law was sentenced to two years in prison Wednesday, the BBC reports. The unnamed woman, previously described as a 31-year-old mother, whose protest spread across social media was found guilty of "encouraging moral corruption." The majority of the woman's sentence was suspended, and she will serve three months without parole. According to the Guardian, Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, was unhappy with the "light" sentence given to the woman, who he says removed her hijab to "encourage corruption." Dolatabadi says the woman is "in need of long-term medical treatment and has to be seen by a psychiatrist."

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Sources say the woman wasn't sorry for removing her hijab in public and attempted to convince the judge that it was the law, not her, that was wrong, Deutsche Welle reports. Iranian law says all women must have their heads fully covered at all times while in public. While enforcement of the law has relaxed in recent years, Dolatabadi says they are cracking down. "We must act with force against people who deliberately question the rules on the Islamic veil," the Guardian quotes him as saying. More than 30 women have been arrested since the end of December for removing their hijabs in public. Dolatabadi says the woman sentenced Wednesday plans to appeal. (Read more Iran stories.)
(Newser)  Prosecutors say all the evidence shows that Danish inventor and submarine owner Peter Madsen tortured, murdered, and dismembered Swedish journalist Kim Wall last summer, but Madsen could not have been any clearer as his trial started in Denmark on Thursday: "I deny that I am guilty of the murder of Kim Wall," he said, per the Guardian. Madsen then laid out his version of events, saying that Wall died inside the submarine because of a sudden pressure problem while he was on deck, reports the AP. "I could not open the hatches," he said. "I heard Kim, it was not good." Madsen says that when he finally reached Wall, he tried to resuscitate her but couldn't stay for long because of the pressure problem. "There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths," he said.

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At that point, Madsen says he dismembered Wall's body and disposed of it at sea. He would later give authorities ever-shifting accounts of what happened, saying first that he had dropped off Wall safely. On Thursday, he said he lied for Wall's family's sake. "I was only thinking about Kim Walls relatives," he said. "I wanted to spare the world and her family from the terrible thing that had happened," he added, per the Cut. The lead prosecutor on Thursday detailed Madsen's apparent obsession with torture videos and his searches for terms such as "girl" and "pain" just ahead of Wall's visit. He also said bits of Wall's blood were found in Madsen's nostrils, and semen was found in his underwear after his arrest. In a photo shown to the court, marks on Wall's arms match a strap with a ratchet buckle found on the sub. (One of Wall's friends spent months investigating her death.)
(Newser)  President Trump bid farewell to Gary Cohn on Thursday, two days after the chief economic adviser resigned, while leaving the door open for Cohn to return to the White House in the future. "He's been terrific," Business Insider quotes Trump as saying during Cohn's final Cabinet meeting. "He may be a globalist, but I still like him. He's seriously a globalist, there's no question. But you know what? In his own way he's a nationalist because he loves this country." Cohn resigned after losing his fight against the president's planned tariffs on steel and aluminum, which he argued would hurt the US economy. "I have a feeling you'll be back," CNBC quotes Trump as saying. "I don't know if I can put him in the same position, though. He's not quite as strong on those tariffs as we want, but that's OK."

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For his part, Cohn said he would "absolutely" return to the White House. There's been some speculation Cohn could replace John Kelly as chief of staff should Trump decide to remove the latter. Politico reports Republican lawmakers are worried about the loss of Cohn, who they saw as a moderating influence on Trump's economic plans. He was around to be whispering in the presidents ear. And he wont be now, says Sen. Bob Corker. Republicans are concerned Trump will tank the US economy through protectionist measures just in time for the 2018 midterms. Trump continued to allow himself flexibility in his planned tariffs during Thursday's Cabinet meeting, according to ABC News. Ill have a right to go up or down depending on the country and Ill have a right to drop out countries or add countries, Trump said. I just want fairness." (Read more Gary Cohn stories.)
(Newser)  Michael B. Jordan, obviously in need of some good press after indirectly breaking that poor woman's retainer, has announced his production company will require inclusion riders for all of its projects, Mashable reports. According to the New York Times, the Black Panther star is the first major actor to publicly adopt inclusion riders following Frances McDormand's call for them during Sunday's Oscars ceremony. Inclusion riders are contractual clauses that require a certain level of diversity among cast and crew for film productions. In an Instagram post Wednesday, Jordan says his Outlier Society Productions will use inclusion riders "in support of the women & men who are leading this fight." "Ive been privileged to work with powerful woman & persons of color throughout my career & its Outliers mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward," he says.

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Jordan's announcement was met with applause online, including from his Creed costar. "YES," Tessa Thompson tweets. "This is how change happens. When we commit to making it." It's unclear what Outlier's diversity requirements will be or if Jordan will also require inclusion riders in his personal contracts, something a major movie star has yet to do. Outlier is currently producing a Netflix series about the mother of a superhero in which Jordan will appear, as well as a reboot of The Thomas Crown Affair. "This is a win on every level," says Stacy Smith, who studies gender equality in film and television. "We're hopeful this is one of many to come." And, again, it's the least Jordan could do after his shirtless torso broke that woman's retainer (which, in fairness, he offered to replace).
(Newser)  A 17-year-old student is in custody as a person of interest in Wednesday's fatal shooting at an Alabama high school, AL.com reports. According to ABC News, police are pursuing charges against the teen but aren't releasing any additional information on his or her identity until charges are filed. The person of interest was also one of the two students injured in the incident, which happened during dismissal in a classroom at Huffman High School in Birmingham. The teen reportedly shot themselves in the leg. They were released from the hospital and into police custody.

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The 17-year-old killed in the shooting has been identified Courtlin Arrington. She was set to graduate in May, had been accepted to college, and hoped to become a nurse. A third, non-student person was injured in the shooting and treated at the scene, WBRC reports. Police initially called the shooting "accidental," though the cause is still under investigation. Officials decided to pursue charges after watching video of the incident. "At this particular time, we consider it accidental until the investigation takes us elsewhere,'' acting Birmingham police chief Orlando Wilson says. "We have a lot of unanswered questions. There are so many unknowns at this time." (Read more school shooting stories.)
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Egypt has dismissed as "baseless allegations" the UNs human rights chief criticism of the political climate in Egypt in the run-up to this month's presidential elections.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the high commissioner of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said Wednesday there was a "pervasive climate of intimidation" in Egypt ahead of the vote, marked by arrests, "silencing" of independent media and torture in detention.

Egypt's foreign ministry described the remarks as unfounded and misleading.

"The foreign ministry calls on the high commissioner for human rights to stop attacking the Egyptian state without any right, and to instead adopt a professional and objective approach, and pay attention to the progress achieved in the field of democratisation," the ministry said in a statement released on Wednesday.

The ministry said that the UN official based his remarks on "politicised reports" and "alleged" information.

In an annual report submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Al Hussein also said that "potential candidates have allegedly been pressured to withdraw, some through arrests."

The ministry responded by saying that potential challengers dropped out either voluntarily or because they failed to complete their official papers, adding that authorities dealt with those who committed violations "in accordance with sound legal procedures" and with transparency.

In January, rights lawyer Khaled Ali quit the presidential race, claiming a lack of guarantees of a fair contest. His announcement came days after authorities detained former army chief of staff Lieutenant General Sami Anan after the army accused him of forgery and of running for office without permission.

Other challengers who have dropped out include former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and former MP Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat.

In its statement, the foreign ministry criticized what it called the UN chief's "covert support" for a terrorist group, in reference to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Al Hussein had said that supporters of the Islamist group have been targeted by authorities along with human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society campaigners.

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The men had been charged with squandering EGP 660 million of public funds in the case, known in the Egyptian media as the steel licences case.



Last month, Egypt's prosecutor-general Nabil Sadek announced Ezz will pay EGP 1.7 billion as part of a reconciliation deal with the Egyptian government.

Sadek, who heads the national committee tasked with recovering funds from abroad, said that the payment includes EGP 600 million of Ezz's funds which have already been recovered from abroad.

The case was the last ongoing criminal case against Ezz, according to legal sources.

Following the 2011 uprising, the steel tycoon was sentenced to prison after conviction of a number of different corruption charges, but most of the verdicts against him were later overturned.

He is the former chairman of Ezz Steel, the largest steelmaker in the Middle East and North Africa, which controls some 50 percent of Egypt's steel market.

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Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Cloudy this evening with periods of light rain and snow after midnight. Low 31F. Winds light and variable. Chance of precip 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy this evening with periods of light rain and snow after midnight. Low 31F. Winds light and variable. Chance of precip 40%.
FAIRBANKS  For the past two decades, Jerry Evans has been tickling the funny bones of Interior Alaskans by bringing national touring comedians to the Last Frontier. It seems the joke is on them, however. Comedians who think getting stuck in Los Angeles traffic is normal have gotten stranded in the Aleutians, caught in blizzards in Nome, gotten up close and personal with sled dogs, met moose, been awed by the aurora and hobnobbed with random Alaskans. And they cant wait to come back.

I love Alaska! said former MADtv cast member and Shameless co-star Arden Myrin. It was unlike any road gig I have ever done. I think The Blue Loon is the most magical theater Ive ever been in. The crowds were so welcoming, and then the city of Fairbanks kept taking me on adventures.

To celebrate the 20-plus years of comedy and the dozens of comedians who have journeyed north, Evans is planning a special 20 Years of Alaska Comedy show on March 16. He has invited five of the most accomplished comedians who have performed here, loved it and couldnt wait to come back to talk about it. The shows will be professionally recorded and edited into a DVD, including interviews with other comedians about their stints in Alaska, and shopped for national distribution.

Talk about fish out of water, Evans said. Alaska is normal to us, but strange and foreign to them. The show will be a little ripping, a little roasting, along with some hilarious stories about their time in Alaska and the people that call it home.

+4 What top comedians say about performing in Fairbanks, Alaska Ian Bagg - "I love Fairbanks, it is awesome up there. I tell people about the time I came to Fairbanks and Jerry took me on a trip to Nome in 

Myrin will perform, along with Jeff Dye, who is starring in NBCs Better Late Than Never; Jamie Lissow, who co-stars in the Netflix series The Real Rob; Last Comic Standing finalist Chris Porter; and comedic game show host Bil Dwyer, who has played more weird Alaskan rooms than any national comedian, Evans said.

The Blue Loon will be gussied up for the shows with professional stage lighting, an audio specialist and a professional four-camera crew. Evans will emcee and long-time partner in crime Glenner Anderson will do an abbreviated warm-up set.

I love Jerry and Glenner, Myrin said. They really set the tone. You can tell (Evans) loves comedy. Theyre both so funny. You can tell that people really have a loyalty to his shows. That was clear at all the shows. They know that if Jerry is putting it on, its going to be good.

Lissow said he had just gotten a new agent when he was booked for his first comedy show in Fairbanks a few years ago. On that trip, he met Jessica who is now his wife. And now every time I call my agent, hes like Dude, Im not going to be able to top that.

Unlike the other comedians who went back to Los Angeles or New York, Lissow wound up moving to Alaska to raise his family. He still travels Outside frequently for stand-up shows or to Los Angeles to work on The Real Rob.

I actually talk about Alaska a ton in my act, he said. Im probably the only comedian working the road that has a Netflix show that lives in Alaska. Thats become a big part of my act.

Life in Alaska is so different from his life in Los Angeles, Lissow said.

Fairbanks moves much slower than L.A., and Lissow said his pace has slowed, too.

When I first got here, within a few weeks, I beeped at someone, he said. I dont know if youve noticed, but it is really rare to use your horn in Fairbanks. It wasnt a mean beep, the guy was at a red light and the light turned green and I wasnt really being impatient, I was just letting them know it was green. Looking back, I dont think Ive heard a horn since.

His dog Dexter, a Bernese Mountain dog he got in Texas, hasnt quite embraced the Alaska ethic.

Its so unique owning an animal here, he said. I feel just like compared to everyone elses dog, (Dexters) just so lazy. Hes not productive. I feel like everyones dog has a job. Theyre like pulling sleds or in war games or theyre super well-trained. My dog, he just doesnt do anything. I took him to the dogsled races to show him what he could do in a day, if he put his mind to it. Its very disappointing.

A couple of the visiting comedians have unfinished business in Fairbanks. Dwyer still hasnt seen a moose and Myrin is hoping the skies will clear so she can see the aurora. Shes knocked a couple of other only-in-Fairbanks things off her list, though.

On her last visit, Myrin went to visit the Santa Claus House with a couple of random Fairbanksans and joined the party at the Fairbanks Curling Clubs annual Bonspiel. The entire weekend felt like a fever dream, she said.

It was truly my most fun road show, Myrin said. So when Jerry asked (her to perform next week), I couldnt not do it. I was delighted to be included. Im so excited!

Contact staff writer Julie Stricker at 459-7532.

If You Go

What: 20 Years of Alaska Comedy

When: 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Friday, March 16

Where: The Blue Loon, 2999 Parks Highway

Tickets: $35 general admission; $65 VIP. Available at Gullivers Books and theblueloon.com

Info: Alaskacomedy.com
In his capacity as supreme commander of the Armed Forces, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi last week approved Chief of Staff Mohamed Farid Hegazis request to extend the three-month deadline originally set for eliminating terrorism from Sinai.

Fielding questions during a press briefing with military correspondents, Army Spokesman Tamer Al-Rifaai said operations will continue until Sinai is completely free of terrorism.

Comprehensive Operation Sinai (COS) 2018 differs significantly from earlier counter-terrorism operations.

Unlike the Eagle and Martyrs Right campaigns, artillery forces have been engaged in the bombardment of terrorist lairs and assembly points in the Gabal Al-Halal area in Central Sinai.

In an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly counter-terrorism expert Brigadier General Khaled Okasha said: After a month of military operations we have, perhaps for the first time, struck deep into the infrastructure of Sinais terror groups.

COS 2018, says Okasha, has taken on board the lessons learned during earlier campaigns.

The army has consolidated its resources after months of piecemeal counter-terrorism operations which were generally under-resourced. The inroads the operation has made in destroying the terrorists infrastructure has revealed how deeply terrorist groups had penetrated the area. There was an urgent need to use overwhelming force, including aerial and artillery bombardment, to eliminate them.

It was also necessary to eliminate obstacles to the movement of forces, which entailed combing operations to clear explosive devices and destroy terrorist operations rooms, hideouts and communications centres.

The military spokesman has continued to furnish regular updates on the progress of COS 2018. By the time this report was filed he had issued 14 communiques and held three press conferences during which details have been given of the huge amounts of weapons and military machinery discovered and destroyed.

A lieutenant colonel who serves with the artillery told the Weekly that targets subjected to artillery strikes are outside of inhabited areas.

If command is notified of a terrorist lair in a residential area other forces, such as the commandos, deal with it, he said.

Protecting innocent people is our primary mission. We do not endanger civilians lives. I cant tell you how many times weve had to cancel raids on terrorist lairs because civilians were in the vicinity.

Al-Rifaai, too, has stressed how the welfare of civilians and human rights have been protected during the ongoing operation.

Salah Salem, a member of the National Council for Human Rights, says Sinai residents continue to support the army in Sinai.

Morale is high and there are no problems with the availability of food and fuel subsidies, he said.

However, there are still obstacles to movement and transport, both within Sinai or between Sinai and the rest of the country, due to military operations. A source in Arish said that thanks to the military operations homes and buildings have been recovered from the terrorist elements that had occupied them and expelled their inhabitants.

Meanwhile, Bedouin tribes in Ismailia convened a rally in support of President Al-Sisi in the elections. During the event, which was attended by many Sinai tribal elders, speakers lauded the ongoing counter-terrorist operation.

Sheikh Eissa Al-Kharafin, head of the Association of Sinai Tribal Leaders, welcomed Al-Sisis announcement that the New Rafah City would be ready by the end of December and residents of the peninsula were being offered real work opportunities through the national Sinai development project for which the government has earmarked LE274 billion.

Many military experts and observers foreground the links between COS 2018 and Sinai development plans.

As of Sunday, when the 14th communique was released, COS 2018 had yielded the following results: 209 targets destroyed by the Air Force, including six booby-trapped vehicles and two four-wheel-drive vehicles; 777 targets eliminated by artillery forces; 105 terrorists killed (including a seven-member cell in Arish) and 91 arrested.

There have been a total of 2,850 arrests of people wanted on criminal charges or suspected of aiding and abetting takfiri groups. Of these, 1,447 were released following the prerequisite security procedures. A total of 2,252 hideouts, lairs, weapons and ammunitions depots, storehouses for communications or medical supplies and explosive manufacturing labs have been eliminated, including a complete underground warehouse.

Two communications centres and three signal dispatch centres were discovered and destroyed; 510 explosive devices were disabled and 129 firearms confiscated.

An explosives manufacturing workshop containing large quantities of C4 and TNT was discovered and destroyed; 164 vehicles and 413 motorcycles used by terrorists were disabled or confiscated (including a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying arms and ammunitions near the border with Libya); and five tunnel openings have been filled by the military engineering corps.

Four migrant smuggling attempts were intercepted and 461 illegal migrants have been arrested. Eleven vehicles carrying arms and ammunition were destroyed as they attempted to infiltrate the border.

Ten security personnel have been killed in the course of combat.

Al-Rifaai also revealed that an attempted suicide bombing attack targeting soldiers had been prevented when four terrorists, described as highly dangerous, were arrested wearing explosive belts.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574.

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New Delhi:

Fans literally adore and worship their favourite Bollywood actors and go to any length to express their love for them. From standing outside their houses to getting a tattoo of the celebrity they love, fans are known to do anything.

Sanjay Dutt who has impressed millions with his power-pack performances recently had an overwhelming experience when a fan left all her money and belonging to the Munna Bhai MBBS actors name.

According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, a 62-year old woman from Mumbais Malabar Hill named Sanjay Dutt as the inheritor of all her valuables. The woman named Nishi Harishchandra Tripathi died on January 15 after suffering from a terminal illness and issued scores of letters to the bank, willing all she had to the actors name, as per the report.

The Khalnayak actor is said to be shooting in Kolkata when Mumbai Police informed him about the same. Dutt who was last seen in Bhoomi said that he is shocked and surprised by the sweet gesture of the deceased lady.

The 58-year-old star politely declined to have any of her belongings and told Mumbai Mirror,  As actors, we are used to fans naming their children after us, chasing us down the street and even giving us gifts. But this has shocked me. I will not be claiming anything. I did not know Nishi and I am very overwhelmed by the entire incident to speak about it.

The Sajan actors attorney told Mumbai Mirror, We have communicated that Sanjay Dutt will be seeking no claim on the belongings and will adhere to any legal proceedings necessary to transfer the valuables back to the family.

Sanjay Dutt will soon be back in action with 'Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster 3' which is slated to hit the silver screens on July 27.

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New Delhi:

Zoya Akhtar, who is currently busy shooting Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh satrrer Gully Boy, has claimed to start working on the sequel to 2011 Indian comedy drama 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara'.

If latest media reports turn out to be true, the film will be coming with all the main leads, comprising Hrithik Roshan, Katrina Kaif, Farhan Akhtar, Kalki Koechlin and Abhay Deol.

"Zoya feels that the audience would be keen to know what the characters are up to in todays time. The sequel will retain all the characters and the story will take a 10-year leap," a source close to Zoya told a leading portal.

"It is too early to talk about the same. Although the basic premise has been locked, Zoya will start working on the screenplay by end of this year once the final cut of Gully Boys is ready. If all goes as planned, the film would go on floors in the second half of 2019," the source added.

Also Read: Meghan Markle baptised at Chapel Royal ahead of royal wedding with Prince Harry

The story of 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' revolves around the lives of three friends, Arjun, Kabir, and Imraan who have been inseparable since childhood. The movie showcases the love story between Arjun and his lady love Laila, who helps him overcome his problem of workaholism. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is being shot in the gorgeous locales of Spain, India, Egypt and the United Kingdom.

Mde on a budget of Rs 550 million, the mvoie received critical acclaim for its outstanding performance in story, music, humour and direction. It has also bagged sever awards in various categories, including two National Film Awards.

On the work front, Katrina Kaif is currently working hard for Anand L Rai's upcoming romantic drama Zero. Also starring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma in key roles, Zero will hit the theatres on December 21, 2018.

Also Read: Boney Kapoor to make a documentary on Bollywoods Chandni- Sridevis life?

Zero also marks the last film appearance of Sridevi, who died on February 21 due to accidental drowning in a bathtub in Dubai.

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New Delhi:

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday moved to the Supreme Court challenging Rajesh and Nupur Talwar acquittal in Aarushi Talwar and domestic help murder case.

The investigating agency told the Apex Court that Talwar couple have been wrongly cleared of charges that they murdered their 13-year-old daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

In its appeal against Talwar couple acquittal by the Allahabad High Court last October, the CBI said that the courts conclusion stated that there was no evidence to prove that the Talwars were guilty was wrong on many counts.

Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court in the sensational Aarushi-Hemraj murder case in October, 2017.

Hemrajs wife last year in December approached the Supreme Court, challenging the acquittal of the dentist couple in 2008 Aarushi murder case. Then, Hemraj's wife Khumkala Banjade said that the high court has accepted that her husband was killed and the CBI cannot abandon its responsibility to uncover the murder.

Also read : Talwars acquitted by Allahabad High Court in Aarushi Murder Case- 5 points from the judges



The Allahabad High Court had said neither the circumstances nor the evidence were enough to hold them guilty. The Noida couple were sentenced to life by a Ghaziabad CBI court on November 28, 2013 for the double murders that not only transfixed but also shook the nation with its element of filicide.

Rajesh and Nupur's daughter Aarushi, 13, was found dead with her throat slit in her bedroom at Jalwayu Vihar in Uttar Pradesh's Noida. A day later, the body of Hemraj, who was from Nepal, was found on the roof of the house.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Two BJP ministers in TDP-ruling Andhra Pradesh government handed over their resignation to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday morning, a day after the party chief hinted of parting away from NDA and asked its two Union Ministers to hand over their resignation to the Prime Minister.

BJP to prevent TDP from pulling away its support from the NDA, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday announced special package for Andhra Pradesh.

Reliable sources confirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed the issue with Chandrababu Naidu.

Sources added that TDP ministers who resigned in the morning will meet the Prime Minister in the evening.

Early in the day Naidu targeting the BJP said that the Centre for behaving callously over special status for Andhra Pradesh as Congress did in 2014.

Here are the LIVE updates

# 6 : 33 PM : Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju's hands over resignation to PM Narendra Modi

# 6: 34 PM : Union Minister YS Choudhary's resignation to PM Narendra Modi

# 5:21 PM : TDP Ministers to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi

# 5:20 PM : TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju arrives at MP YS Chowdarys residence.

# 5:15 PM: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu explains reasons behind resignation of TDP MPs in centre.

# 1:57 PM: Chandrababu Naidu took a historical step, says RJDs Manoj Jha.

# 1:30 PM: TDP MP and Union aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju and YS Chowdary sought an appointment with PM Modi for handing over their resignations.

# 12:20 PM: YSR Congress chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy says his party will support the party that promises Andhra Pradesh special category status.

# 12:15 PM: Lok Sabha adjourns for the day.

# 11:45 AM : Lok Sabha adjourned till noon. TDP parliamentarians demand special status for Andhra Pradesh.

# 11:19 AM : Other parties are lending support to our cause have also started protesting on various issues, says TDP leader Jayadev Galla.

# 11:15 AM: What Arun Jaitley said yesterday is not good. They are holding hands of the North Eastern states why not Andhra Pradeshs. Industrial incentives are being provided to them but not to Andhra Pradesh. Why this discrimination?, says Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu at Assembly.

# 10:41 AM : TDP MPs protest inside Parliament over non-granting of special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Hyderabad:

A man brutally thrashed his wife allegedly after she switched of the WiFi connection in the midnight to make him go to sleep on Wednesday evening in Hyderabads Somajiguda.

Hyderabad police said, the victims mother lodged a complaint with police. The victim of domestic violence has been identified as Reshma Sultana. She is undergoing treatment at a private hospital.

Doctors of the hospital said that Sulatana has suffered injuries in chest, face and head.

According to reports, Reshma reportedly switched off the router as her husband, Omer Pasha, was surfing the internet after midnight. Agitated with his wifes action Pasha punched his wife.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Islamabad High Court on Thursday paves the way for Mumbai terror attack mastermind and banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba founder member Hafiz Saeed and members of its newly formed political party Milli Muslim League (MML) to contest election in the upcoming 2018 general elections.

The court directed the Pakistan Election Commision to allow the registration of MML. The poll conducting body had been refusing to register the Mumbai terror attack masterminds political party for contesting 2018 Pakistan general elections.

August last year, Saeed had launched MML and announced to contest Pakistan assembly elections. He opened the party's first office in former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs parliamentary constituency.

The Pakistan Election Commission last year had cancelled the application for registering MML as political party after the countrys Interior Ministry had written to the ECP and told it not to register any banned terror outfit having links to the MML.

Also read : Fearing FATF, Pakistan amends Anti-terror law to ban UN-listed terror groups

MML is a sub-branch of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JUD), both founded by Hafiz saeed. The two groups have been spearheading terror attack in India. LeT has carried out attack on the Indian Parliament in 2008 and Mumbai attack in 2008, which had claimed lives of at least 150 people and injured another 250 persons.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Neiphiu Rio took oath as the new Chief Minister of the Nagaland on Thursday. Rio's Nationalist Democratic People's Party which formed an alliance with the BJP won 29 seats in the recently held assembly elections.

BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh attend the ceremony in state capital Kohima. The BJP's Y Patton also took oath as the state's deputy chief minister.

Rio has to prove his majority on the floor of the House on or before March 16, according to a media release issued by the office of Governor P B Acharya Tuesday evening.

Source said that Meghalaya's newly-appointed Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and his counterparts from Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Manipur too will be present at the swearing-in ceremony.

This will be Neiphiu Rio's fourth time as the Chief Minister of Nagaland. Mr Rio was the Chief Minister of Nagaland for three terms between 2003 and 2014, making him the only Nagaland Chief Minister to have served three consecutive terms.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Egypt's Armed Forces spokesman Tamer El-Refaie said that Egyptian army and police personnel carrying out Operation Sinai 2018 are performing their duties with high morale,adding that 105 takfiris have been killed since the anti-terrorism operation started on 9 February.

The Arabic word "takfiri" refers to extremist Sunni Muslims who accuse other Muslims of being infidels, often as a justification for using violence against them.

El-Refaie added that there is no time limit on the operation, which will conclude when it achieves its goals.

Operation Sinai 2018 was launched to implement the plan of comprehensive confrontation of terrorist and criminal elements and organisations in North and Central Sinai, and in other areas in the Nile Delta and desert areas west of the Nile Valley, according to the Armed Forces.

The spokesman said during a press conference that 16 army personnel have been killed and 19 others have been injured during operations.

The army has also located and destroyed five tunnels, two communication and broadcast centres, 41 4x4 vehicles, 387 motorbikes, 471 IEDs, in addition to large amounts of TNT and plastic explosives.

El-Refaie added that 461 people have been arrested while trying to illegally migrate.

Another 2,829 people were arrested for being wanted in criminal cases or on suspicion of providing logistical assistance to terrorists. Many of those arrested have been released after being cleared of any charges, according to the military spokesperson.

The army has also destroyed 1,907 targets used as shelter by terrorists, as well as storehouses containing medical equipment, weapons, ammunition, mines and materials used in manufacturing improvised explosive devices.

Operation Sinai 2018 involves land, naval and air forces, as well as police and border guards.

The military spokesperson said that all measures are being taken to prevent any attempt to breach the country's land and maritime borders.

El-Refai said that naval forces are imposing full maritime control over the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to prevent any possible infiltration by terrorist elements or logistical support across the coast.

He also stressed Egypts respect for the sovereignty of all countries sharing its geographical borders, and that Egypt is fully coordinating with its neighbours to secure the borders and exchange information on the presence and movement of terrorist elements.

The military spokesman stressed the states commitment to human rights and providing full protection to civilians in areas where operations are taking place as well as across the country.

He also said that the army is carrying out its duties in cooperation with the Ministry of Supply to provide necessary food and other supplies to Sinai residents in the areas of operation.

Border guards, in cooperation with forces tasked with securing the Suez Canal waterway, are continuing their mission to protect navigation and tighten security measures at the crossings leading to the Sinai Peninsula, El-Refai said.

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Noida:

A deputy general manager (Dy GM) of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) was shot dead by unknown criminals on Wednesday night in Uttar Pradeshs Noida Sector 105 while he was returning home, police said on Thursday.

A senior police officer deployed at Noida said, We are treating the incident as a case of murder for robbery.

The victim has been identified as Amit Pandey, an employee of BHEL office in Lodhi Road in New Delhi. He is from Benaras but stayed in his apartment in Sapphire Tower 2 in Sector 104.

Police said, Pandey had gone missing since Wednesday evening. A missing report was filed by his brother-on-law Prabhat Dwivedi at Sector 39 police station on Thursday morning.

A manhunt by Pandeys colleague and relatives was launched on Thursday afternoon. Around 4:40 PM on Thursday, they found Pandeys mutilated body in a drain near Sector 105, hardly a kilometer from his residence.

Also read | Mumbai: Robbers gang rape woman, kill friend on protesting in Thane



According to Pandeys friends and colleagues he use to walk back home from Noida City Centre Metro Station, a stretch of 8-kilometers, for health reasons.

An officer stationed at Sector 39 police station said, His wallet, phone and wrist watch is missing. We have found a bullet injury between chest and neck.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The Delhi Police has beefed up security around key statues in the national capital as a precautionary measure following the vandalizing of statues of communist icon Vladmir Lenin and Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar.

A senior police officer said the force had taken note of the incidents and SHOs of various police stations had been alerted to keep a vigil. He said no specific alert had been received about the possibility of such incidents here but the move was a precautionary measure.

The bust of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged by activists of Left-leaning outfit 'Radical' in south Kolkata. The incident came close on the heels of the razing of statue of Lenin in Tripura and the desecration of a bust of Periyar in Tamil Nadu's Vellore.

A statue of B R Ambedkar was damaged by unidentified people in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut yesterday, triggering protests by Dalits.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
On Sunday the House of Representatives approved amendments to the law governing the Egyptian Railway Authority (ERA), giving a green light to private sector companies to build, manage, operate and maintain the railway network.

The amendments give the ERA the right to establish joint-venture companies that can be listed on the stock market.

Parliamentary Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal described the move as a crucial step in relieving the problems  huge debts, outdated operating systems and dilapidated locomotives crippling the ERA.

He stressed, however, that the changes did not amount to privatisation of the railway network and were fully in line with Article 32 of the constitution which allows the private sector to operate public utilities for up to 15 years at a time.

The approval of the amendments came days after a deadly train collision in Beheira governorate left 12 dead and tens of injured.

Prosecutor-General Nabil Sadek has ordered an examination of the trains black boxes in an attempt to determine the cause of the crash.

A committee of experts in engineering and railways from several institutions, including the Armed Forces Engineering Authority and the State Railway Authority, has been formed to investigate the incident.

Initial investigations suggest the crash was caused when a mistake in track changes led to a passenger train being on the same track as a cargo train.

President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has charged Ibrahim Mahlab, the presidential aide for mega-projects, to form a committee to review the status of the railway network and develop it.

Between 2004 and 2016, 13,539 train accidents occurred on the network according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). In 2016 alone, 1,249 accidents were reported.

Egypts railways need massive upgrading. According to Hani Sobhi, professor of railway engineering at Ain Shams University, safety on Egyptian trains has been compromised by the systematic failure to maintain equipment.

Osama Okail, professor of road and railway engineering at Ain Shams University, claims the entire domestic railway network is moribund and needs to be radically upgraded.

Eighty-five per cent of the network still uses mechanical signalling systems.

Signals at crossings still depend on the telephone. Ninety per cent of engines still run on diesel. The sector is long overdue an overhaul. Modern electrical signals need to be put in place and diesel engines should be replaced with electric ones, says Okail.

Addressing MPs following last weeks accident Minister of Transport Hisham Arafat said: The real problem is not the engines or carriages but signals and infrastructure. Eighty five per cent of the signalling system depends on employees.

Some 98 per cent of train accidents in the last 30 years were caused by the outdated signalling system, claimed Arafat.

He added that upgrading the network would cost $1 million a kilometre.

The network has remained all but unchanged since the 1950s.

From 1950 until today the length of the network has been the same  5,200km. It used to carry 440 train journeys per day, transporting 10 to 12 million passengers annually. In 1970 the same network had 490 trips a day, carrying 22 to 25 million passengers. Now there are 922 train journeys timetabled daily, and 350 million passengers use the network in the course of the year, Arafat said.

Egypts railway network is among the worlds oldest. It transports 500 million passengers annually, an average of 1.4 million passengers each day, according to ERA.

According to Arafat, LE55 billion has been allocated for the development of Egypts railway infrastructure in a five-year overhaul programme. In addition, a new high speed line is being constructed linking the ports of Ain Sokhna and Alexandria at a cost of $4 billion.

The idea of allowing the private sector a role in running the railways was first mooted in August when a train crash in Alexandria left 42 people dead. At the time Arafat said there was an urgent need for new legislation to allow the private sector to participate in upgrading rail services.

The ERA is expected to do everything, from operating, constructing and investing in the rail network to ensuring it is maintained. It is overstretched and overworked. We need to introduce the private sector to the industry, Arafat said in a televised interview in August.

Last year the ERA entered into a deal with US-based General Electric to supply 100 new locomotives and refurbish 81 old engines. The $575 million deal includes a 15-year technical support contract and training programmes for more than 275 engineers and technicians.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Nearly 7 years after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan's chief nuclear regulator says the 2011 accident is not over.

Toyoshi Fuketa, Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman, held a news conference on Wednesday, 4 days before the 7th anniversary of the severe accident.

He suggested the perceived magnitude of damage from the accident can change based on many factors that will influence future judgment. He cited decontamination and radioactive waste disposal efforts, areas where evacuation orders can be lifted, and the reconstruction of affected areas.

Fuketa also said that attitudes towards regulation have changed since the accident but he suggested that people should not forget what happened 7 years ago.

He predicted there would be almost no risk of any new problems affecting areas outside the compounds of the nuclear plant in the decommissioning process.

The biggest challenge of the decommissioning is said to be the removal of fuel debris, a mixture of molten nuclear fuel and broken interior parts, from the 3 reactors.

He said the removal work has not yet reached a point where "exit is in sight."
The Japanese government presented Wednesday an action plan to promote "awamori" distilled spirits, aiming to double exports of the specialty of the southernmost Japan prefecture of Okinawa in three years and triple them in five years.

The action plan was submitted to a public-private meeting attended by distillers and other businesses.

Awamori exports are estimated to have totaled 33 kiloliters for 2017. The government set a goal of increasing overseas shipments to 70 kiloliters in 2020 and 100 kiloliters in 2022.

In order to achieve this, the government and businesses will work together to improve the environment for exports and boost promotion activities targeting visitors to Japan.

The government plans to hold negotiations on tariff cuts with export destinations.
Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday, a few days after France's visiting foreign minister sought to raise Tehran's role in regional conflicts.

Jean-Yves Le Drian flew to Tehran on Monday with a brief to reaffirm European support for a 2015 nuclear deal that opened up Iran's economy while echoing U.S. concern about Tehran's missile programme and its influence in the region.

"European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It is none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here?" Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Khamenei, a Shia cleric who is Iran's ultimate authority on all major matters of state, said the Islamic Republic would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have sent weapons and thousands of soldiers to Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad in the country's seven-year-long civil war. Israel has accused Tehran of seeking a permanent military presence in Syria.

Khamenei described the presence of U.S. military forces in various regions of the world as "malicious and seditious" and said Iran would not ask for permission from Washington to be active in the Middle East.

"We will negotiate with America when we want to be present in America," he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull Washington out of Iran's nuclear agreement with world powers, forged before he took office, unless three European signatories help "fix" the accord by forcing Tehran to limit its sway in the Middle East and rein in its ballistic missile programme.

French President Emmanuel Macron has criticised the programme and raised the possibility of new sanctions.

Iran has one of the Middle Easts largest missile programmes and some of its precision-guided missiles have the range to strike Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed Tehran's military activities in the region with Trump in Washington this week.

Iran has also been aiding the Shia-led government of Iraq in its fight against the Sunni militant Islamic State group.

Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency Tehran was also ready to offer "military advisory and security" help to Afghanistan in that state's fight against terrorism - an allusion to the Islamic State fighters and also Sunni Taliban insurgents.

President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Iran's military might posed no threat to any country in the region.

"Our weapons are meant to promote peace, strengthen stability and security and to prevent others from invading our country. No one should be concerned about Iran's weapons and missiles," Rouhani was quoted as saying by the state media.

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Coca-Cola plans to launch its first ever alcoholic drink in Japan, in a surprising departure for a U.S. company identified with cola and other non-alcoholic beverages.

While Coca-Cola dabbled in the wine business in the 1970s, the Japanese experiment is "unique" in the company's 125-year history, said Coca-Cola Japan president Jorge Garduno.

The new offering will be in Japan's growing "Chu-Hi" category of beverages, Garduno said in a recent interview posted to the company's website.

"This is a canned drink that includes alcohol; traditionally, it is made with a distilled beverage called shochu and sparkling water, plus some flavoring," he said.

Chu-Hi drinks come in a range of flavors such as grape, strawberry, kiwi and white peach and sometimes replace shochu with vodka.

The drink, which usually has between three and nine percent alcohol and is marketed by leading Japanese beverage companies such as Asahi, Kirin and Takara, is especially popular with young consumers and women.
If you've ever visited Tokyo Tower, one of the most famous landmarks in Japan's capital city, you've probably admired the expansive view from the viewing platforms, marvelled at the feat of engineering...and felt somewhat underwhelmed by the outdated interiors.

Having been constructed in 1958, some might argue that the staid and dated interiors are all part of the toweras charm, but this year, to celebrate its 60th anniversary, Tokyo Tower is bringing its image firmly into the present with some brand new refurbished areas featuring modern and futuristic designs.

While sections of the 150 metre-high Main Deck viewing area are currently undergoing a facelift, the 250-metre high Top Deck is now open for business, after being closed for renovations since October 2016. The whole visitor experience has been overhauled as well, with the journey up to the toweras highest viewing point now being rebranded as the aTop Deck Toura.

The Top Deck Tours run every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. every day and require an advance reservation, which can be made online or in person at the reception desk on the ground floor of the tower.

Tickets, which include admission to both the main deck and the top deck, cost 2,800 yen for adults (aged 16 and over), 1,800 yen for children (7-15 years of age) and 1,200 yen for children (aged 4-6).
Chiba Prefectural Police have launched an investigation after a corpse was found in a burned-out container on a property in Sodegaura City on Tuesday, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Mar. 7).

At around 2:20 a.m., a security guard on patrol alerted emergency services after seeing flames emanating from the property of a used car exporter. About one hour later, a fire crew extinguished the blaze, which burned about 100 square meters on the property.

According to the Kisarazu Police Station, a charred corpse was found inside one of two containers. Due to the condition of the body, the approximate age and gender of the person are not known.

Police are now working to identify the body and determine the cause of the fire.
The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $197 million sale of equipment to upgrade the Qatar Emiri Air Force's air operations center, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

A statement about the order for global positioning equipment and information distribution systems said the prime contractor will be Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon.

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Syria's army is poised to slice rebel-held eastern Ghouta in two as forces advancing from the east link up with troops at its western edge, a pro-Damascus commander said on Thursday, piling more pressure on the last major rebel enclave near the capital.

The government, backed in the war by Russia and Iran, is seeking to crush the enclave in a ferocious campaign that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says has killed 909 civilians in the last 18 days, including 91 on Wednesday.

Rebels, who accuse the government of "scorched earth" tactics, said they were deploying more guerrilla-style ambushes in lost territory, trying to stop further advances.

"We came because of the intensity of the bombing," said Abu Mohammed, a 32-year-old famer who left his cows, sheep and farm equipment to flee to Douma, further into the rebel enclave.

"It was a miracle that we made it here," he said, speaking of the heavy air strikes. As for his former home town of Beit Sawa: "It was totally destroyed. Burnt," he said.

Defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the worst setback for rebels since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing and ground assaults.

The pro-Damascus commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media, confirmed a report by the Observatory late on Wednesday that the enclave had effectively been sliced in two.

But Wael Alwan, the Istanbul-based spokesman for Failaq al-Rahman, one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, denied that the territory had been cut in half. "No" he said in a text message when asked if the report was correct.

CONVOY

In northern Syria, rebels began to bombard two government-held villages besieged by insurgent forces, killing two children, the Observatory reported.

An aid convoy that intended to go to Ghouta later on Thursday was postponed, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations said.

The United Nations says 400,000 people are trapped in the towns and villages of eastern Ghouta. They have been under government siege for years and were already running out of food and medicine before the assault.

"We are dying of hunger and our children are dying of hunger. Have pity on us," said a woman reached in Douma by a voice messaging service, who identified herself as Um Mahmoud.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's most powerful ally, has offered rebels safe passage out with their families and personal weapons. The proposal echoes previous agreements under which insurgents, in the face of military defeat, were permitted to withdraw to opposition-held areas along the Turkish border.

Syrian state news agency SANA reported that a second safe route out of eastern Ghouta, along with one near Douma, had been opened in the southern part of the enclave.

Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday some rebels wanted to accept the proposal to evacuate. So far rebels have dismissed it in public and vowed to fight on.

BATTLES RAGING

Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussam Aala, told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday the assault targeted "terrorist organisations in accordance with international humanitarian law".

Moscow and Damascus say the Ghouta campaign is necessary to halt deadly rebel shelling of the capital.

Rescue workers and opposition activists in eastern Ghouta meanwhile have accused the government of using chlorine gas during the campaign.

The government firmly denies this. Damascus and Moscow have accused rebels of planning to orchestrate poison gas attacks in order to accuse Damascus of using banned weapons.

A Syria-focused medical aid group said there reports from doctors of a chlorine attack on Wednesday evening. Local rescue workers said gas had affected 50 people. Social media activists shared videos and photos, which Reuters could not verify, of people with signs of breathing difficulties.

The opposition-run rescue service also said two of its rescuers were killed when their ambulance was hit last night adding its teams were hampered from reaching many victims under rubble with extensive destruction in many areas.

The narrow point linking rebel territory in north and south parts of eastern Ghouta is all within the range of government fire and impossible for insurgents to cross, meaning the enclave has in military terms been bisected, the commander said.

A rebel fighter with Jaish al-Islam, one of the main factions in eastern Ghouta, said intense fighting was underway.

"Nothing is secure and battles are raging and it's difficult to predict what will happen," the fighter, who gave his name as Abu Ahmad al-Doumani, said in a text message to Reuters.

The United Nations had hoped to deliver aid to eastern Ghouta on Thursday after a convoy on Monday was unable to fully offload, but it was postponed.

"We continue to call on all parties to immediately allow safe and unimpeded access for further convoys to deliver critical supplies," said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA).

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that African countries should weigh Chinese loans carefully, while adding that Washington was not trying to keep Chinese investment away from the continent.

Tillerson, a former Exxon chief executive, is seeking to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade.

The top US diplomat may also seek to smooth relations after US President Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as "shithole countries" in January. Trump later denied making the comment.

"We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa," Tillerson told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital during his first diplomatic trip to the continent. "(But) it is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty."

Though the United States is the leading donor of humanitarian aid to Africa, China surpassed the US to become Africa's largest trading partner in 2009.

Beijing has pumped billions into infrastructure projects, though critics say there is often little upside for local economies because Chinese firms and labour build the roads and rails.

Tillerson took that line on Thursday, saying that Chinese investments "do not bring significant job creation locally" and criticised how Beijing structures loans to African government.

If a government accepts a Chinese loan and "gets into trouble", he said, it can "lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default." He did not give examples.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting Zimbabwe on Thursday, told reporters he did not think it was appropriate for Tillerson to criticize Chinas relationship with African countries.

"It was not appropriate to criticise the relations of his hosts when he was a guest there with another country," he said.

"Opaque Contracts"

Tillerson arrived in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous nation, on Wednesday and visited the African Union headquarters on Thursday.

The complex was fully funded and built by China and is seen as a symbol of Beijing's thrust for influence and access to the continent's natural resources.

Ethiopia is home to some of Beijing's biggest investments, from a railway to Djibouti that opened last year to factories and industrial parks.

His comments followed a speech earlier this week in which he criticised "China's approach" to Africa which he said encouraged dependency through "opaque contracts" and "predatory loan practices".

"We welcome Chinese participation, but we hope they will follow international rules, international norms and respect the sovereignty of countries," he said on Thursday.

He made no mention of the political situation in Ethiopia. The prime minister resigned suddenly last month in what he described as a bid to smooth reforms. A state of emergency was swiftly imposed but protests in the restive Oromia region have continued.

Tillerson was due to meet with Ethiopian officials on Thursday afternoon before flying to tiny Djibouti, host to sprawling military bases owned by the US, China, Japan, France, and Italy.

He will then visit Kenya, a key US ally in the fight against al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia, before travelling to Chad and Nigeria, which are also battling to contain Islamist insurgents.

Analysts say Trump has focused mainly on security concerns in Africa at a time when China, Turkey and other nations are ramping up diplomatic and business links.

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Four Egyptian banks started issuing life insurance certificates called Aman (security in Arabic) on Sunday with the aim of providing a safety net for temporary labourers.

The certificates, designed on the directive of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi to provide decent incomes for the families of marginalised groups, are available at the National Bank of Egypt, Banque Misr, the Banque du Caire and the Agricultural Bank of Egypt.

One certificate is worth LE500, and up to five can be bought on the presentation of ID to any of the four banks. The three-year life insurance certificates can be renewed twice.

The scheme covers individuals between the age of 18 and 59 who do not fall under the current social security umbrella, including temporary workers, labourers with unfixed incomes, and working single mothers, and it aims to provide stability for their families in the case of the death of the policy-holder, whether the cause of death is accidental or natural.

Beneficiaries can choose between cashing in the entire amount of the life insurance and receiving a monthly pension.

In the former case, and in which the policy-holder died of a natural cause, the beneficiaries receive between LE10,000 and LE50,000, depending on the number of certificates the policy-holder had bought.

In cases of accidental death, the beneficiaries receive between LE50,000 and LE250,000, depending on the number of certificates the insured person had bought.

According to a bulletin released by the National Bank of Egypt, a death by accident is a death caused by physical injury that results from sudden, severe, external incident and solely leads to death.

The scheme also provides monthly pensions for four to 10 years. In cases of natural death, beneficiaries receive between LE200 and LE1,000 per month if the instalments are paid over five years and between LE120 and LE600 if paid over 10 years.

Hazem Hegazi, vice president of the Banque du Caire, explained that the three-year certificates can be renewed twice, which means they can be valid for a maximum of nine years.

The certificate is worth LE600 after three-year interest and the deduction of LE4 per month insurance, he added.

If the policy-holder is employed after buying the certificates, they remain valid with their banking and insurance merits, Hegazi said.

They become invalid if the policy-holder chooses to redeem their cash value or if they reach the age of 60. They are also not designed to provide financial compensation in cases of injury or for purposes of medical insurance.

The scheme does not provide pay-outs if the death of the policy-holder is caused, directly or indirectly, by suicide within the first two years of the validity of the certificates, military operations, or incidents that are a direct or indirect result of a local or foreign war.

Deaths during civil disturbances, if the policy-holder is serving in the military or out of service, owing to capital punishment, or in riots and terrorist operations if the policy-holder positively participated in such events are also not covered.

The four banks that issue the certificates have specified that deaths by accident are treated as natural deaths if they happen within the first six months of the certificates being issued.

Since the certificates were released on Sunday, demand has been slow because, said Hegazi, of the lack of publicity on television and in the newspapers.

He said that Al-Sisi has asked companies affiliated to the Armed Forces to insure their labourers, and he anticipated that other companies would also buy Aman certificates for their workers.

In Alamein last week to inaugurate various projects, Al-Sisi directed the Armed Forces to coordinate with companies working on national projects to buy Aman certificates, to a total value of LE5 billion, for two million labourers within the next two weeks.

The companies would then be paid back in instalments.

According to a statement by Hisham Okasha, president of the National Bank of Egypt, Aman certificates have been given to temporary workers with companies that the bank deals with.

These include labourers in the cleaning, security, maintenance and storage sectors who do not have social security coverage.

The intention was to provide insurance for these workers and their families, giving them decent living conditions and incomes, the National Bank of Egypt, which employs 2,800 such workers, said.

It had issued certificates for each individual worth LE2,500, the bank statement said. The bank will bear a share of the cost of the certificates and the rest will be paid over 10 months by the workers.

Prime Minister Sherif Ismail attended the signing of the contract for the new scheme between the Misr Life Insurance Company and the four banks last week.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Wednesday marked the closing ceremony of the first regional conference on the role of media in the protection of cultural heritage to be held in Egypt.

The conference was organised by the Swedish Institute in Alexandria in partnership with Welad El-Balad Media, and was held on the institutes premises.

The role of media tends to be marginalised when it comes to heritage topics and the narratives of heritage tends to be written by the experts, in isolation, hence came the idea to bring media centre focus on heritage topics and help attract the publics attention towards heritage preservation, explained Fatemah Farag, the founder and CEO of Welad El-Balad, to Ahram Online.

Among the key figures who participated in the conference were media figures Mohamed El-Moslemany and Samir Omar, journalist Karima Kamal, head of the Egypt media development programme Tarek Atia, the head of the culture section at Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper Maher Hasssn, cinema director Ayman Makram, renowned writer Khaled El-Khamisy, professor of architecture and urban design Soheir Hawas, and associate professor of the archeology of cultural heritage Monica Hanna.

Over the three-day workshop, the workshops and seminars that focused on architectural heritage, as a main theme, brought the best of both worlds, that of media and that of heritage, into an inspiring dialogue that opened numerous windows of opportunities for collaboration in order to preserve our heritage.

Egyptian and Arab heritage is our responsibility as well as our wealth because it creates economic dynamics; unfortunately there is a gap between how little awareness is of such heritage and the greatness of such heritage, explained Sonia Ramiz, head of the heritage promotion unit at UNESCO, and founder of the Network of Heritage Defenders Journalists International Network.

France Desmarais, director of programmes and partnerships at the international Council of Museums, told attendees about the crucial need to allocate enough time for journalists interested in heritage, because cultural heritage is all about grey areas that needs to be well-researched, and journalists should focus on good news regarding heritage.

We ask the media to tell the truth, for when heritage disappears, it is as if the people who lived here once, were wiped out, with no trace, explained Galila El Kadi, an UNESCO expert on the conservation of the urban architectural heritage in the Arab world.

Samar Haddadin, a Jordanian journalist, commented that the main two challenges that faces the journalists are sources of information and information verification.

What media can do is stop talking about the golden boy, (Tutankhamun) the treasure, and focus more on the historiography, on the common life of ancient Egyptians, explained Daniele Salvoldi who holds a PhD in Egyptology, and teaches history of architecture at the Arab Academy of Science and Technology.

On a positive note, the heritage media participating in the conference had several successful models to share. One of the most outstanding was Lebanese newspaper Lorient du jour, and how they helped save a 90-year-old building from being demolished in Beirut by publishing a social history narrative of the place that inspired community members.

Another good case study is Rawi magazine, which focuses on Egyptian heritage.

Another inspiring session included info on the click funding technique, which could be put to use in the service of heritage causes; funds are raised when users click the like button on social media websites.

Many cities want to have the biggest building in the world, just to show that they have the biggest building in the world, but Egypt is blessed with a gorgeous cultural heritage. History is juxtaposed at the end of your street. From the Pharaonic ages to socialist modernist architecture, Egypt has a tremendous amount of treasures waiting to be rediscovered, explained Salem Meselha, co-founder of click funding, as he explained how his new tool could help save heritage sites.

However, one of the most interesting speakers at the conference was Alexandrian archeologist May El-Tabbakh. Through numerous photographs from her own personal archive., El-Tabbakh took attendees on a heartbreaking tour of the architectural gems of Alexandria and their current state: left to decay, with total negligence of the fabric of the historic building, as she puts it.

While showcasing the architecture of three famous Alexandria buildings that are locally known as little Venice because their architectural designs reflect Italian heritage, she explained in a nutshell the importance of such heritage: These buildings simply show a time in our history where this town was the cradle for all the people of the Mediterranean who could not live in their own countries at that time, and how this town told them that they were welcomed with all their cultural diversities.

El-Tabbakh also highlighted a common mistake where we often victimise our own heritage by showcasing the current negligence instead of highlighting the social history of such heritage and its importance and function in previous eras.

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WESTMORELAND, N.Y. -- A note left in a Westmoreland Middle School bathroom with a "concerning message" was investigated Wednesday, according to the Oneida County Sheriff's Office.

The investigation revealed that no students were in danger, though the investigation is ongoing, the sheriff's office said.

At noon, units from the sheriff's office were dispatched to Westmoreland Middle School after the tattered note was found in the restroom, deputies said.

K-9s from the sheriff's office, the New York State Police and the Utica Police responded to the school and swept the building, though nothing out of the ordinary was found, deputies said.

The sheriff's office is asking that anyone with information about the incident to call investigator Justin Copperwheat at 315-765-2767.
Wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, on Thursday, urged Nigerian women to make the abduction of girls in parts of the country the focus of the International Womens Day.Mrs. Buhari made the call in a message she posted on her Facebook page, Aisha Muhammadu Buhari. She described this years celebration as one with a difference especially coming not long after 110 girls were abducted in their school in Dapchi, Yobe State.She said she has decided to develop a local theme, #LeaveOurDaughtersAlone, as a strong call for the end to abduction.The Presidents wife wrote, Today, I congratulate Nigerian Women on the occasion of International Womens Day. For us in Nigeria, this years #InternationalWomensDay comes with a difference.We have to reflect the sad incidences of the abduction of our daughters, especially the recent one in Dapchi Yobe State.This for us should take center stage. That is why we decided to develop a local theme: #LeaveOurDaughtersAlone as a strong call for the end of this national disaster and hope for their release.
Parents of the 110 abducted Dapchi schoolgirls on Thursday sent a delegation to Abuja in continuation of their clamour for the release of the pupils abducted by Boko Haram over two weeks ago.Secretary of the parents association, Bukar Kachalla, told our correspondent in a telephone interview that the Dapchi delegation was expected to meet with the Bring Back Our Girls campaigners and other womens groups in Abuja at the World Womens Day celebration to help expand the clamour for the release of the girls.Kachalla said the girls, who have been in captivity for the past 18 days, express belief that the victims have been passing through horrifying experience, hence the need to increase efforts to press for their release.Most of these girls are between the ages of 11 and 15 years and they dont know anything. Allowing them to pass through this kind of experience at this age for long will affect them greatly.Aisha Wakil, who participated in the negotiation between Boko Haram and the Federal Government in the past, has come out to say she has been in touch with the abductors of our girls.So, the the Federal Government should contact her to help bring back our girls, he said.Kachalla also told our correspondent that the Federal Government committee on the rescue of the girls had, on Tuesday, visited the parents in Dapchi with assurance that the girls would be rescued by all means.According to him, the visit was the first of its kind since the girls were abducted on February 19.We appreciate the visit because it availed us the opportunity to speak out our minds.They interacted with us and from the discussion, we tend to believe them that government is doing its best to rescue the girls.Its a security issue and they didnt tell us when the girls will return. Even though we believe them, we will only be satisfied when our daughters are brought back, he said.
The Federal Government has ordered a complete audit of Dana airline. The airline has recently been involved in some incident. One of i...

The Federal Government has ordered a complete audit of Dana airline.The airline has recently been involved in some incident. One of its planes overshot the runway in Port Harcourt and the door of another one flung open while taxing at the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.Senior Special Assistant on Media and publicity to the President Mallam Garba Shehu told reporters after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, that the audit would cover the personnel and assets of the airline.Also at the briefing were Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, Minister of Budget and National Planning Udoma Udo Udoma, and Minister of Niger Delta Affairs Usani Uguru Usani.Shehu said: A lot of quality time was spent discussing air safety. The government of Nigeria is very much concerned about safety and the lives of Nigerians; this is following the recent air incidents.Minor as they were because there were no fatalities, the government did feel concerned and the Minister did the report to the Council on steps that were taken following the last incident in Port Harcourt, Dana aircraft overshooting the runaway. As soon as that happened, a few seconds, a rescue team was there on the ground and few moments thereafter every passenger on board was evacuated. There was no harm to persons and this is something that should be celebrated.Within 24 hours an official investigation had commenced because investigators arrived in Port Harcourt and began work. One week after, that a preliminary report was prepared and it was about this that the Council was briefed.Consequently as announced by the aviation authorities, the engineer and pilot of that particular aircraft got their licences suspended and beyond that the government has ordered a complete audit of Dana airlines in terms of personnel, operations, and technical capacity. he saidHe said the Council had approved the augmentation of the contract sum for the rehabilitation of the burnt Marina Bridge and the Maintenance of Eko (Apobgbon) and Iddo bridges in Lagos State, in Favour of Messrs. Buildwell Plant and Equipment Industries Limited, in the sum of N114,424,225.05.The amount, he said, represented 12 per cent of the original contract sum.He said that the contract sum was reviewed from N957,053,316.45 to N1,071,29,541.40 with additional completion period of six months.The Council, he said, also approved augmentation for Mangu Dam, in Plateau State to N7.66 billion from original cost of N5.66 billion increasing the total contract sum to N13.2 billion.Dan-Ali said that his Ministry presented to the Council the status of the implementation of approved capital projects and achievements of the Ministry of Defence from 2015 to 2017.Some of the facilities renovated were neglected for over forty years. Between 2015-2017 a total of 18 rehabilitation works have been carried out in various barracks across the six geo political zones by the Ministry. Similarly Defence Headquarters also approved 36 capital projects within the period.The Nigerian Army embarked on 68 approved projects. Nigerian Navy implemented 31 projects while a total number of 64 projects were also implemented by the Nigerian Air force. he saidUdoma said he briefed the Council on the NBS recent report.He said: You will recall that it indicated that in the last quarter of 2017 the economy had continued its positive growth trajectory by growing by 1.92%. This is higher than the previous quarter when it grew by 1.40%. And higher still from the 2nd Quarter, when it grew by 0.72%.The numbers clearly show that the economy has fully exited recession.Capital inflows in 2017 were US$12,228 million, a growth of 138.6% over the total inflow in 2016 of US$5,124 million. This has been a factor in the build-up of our foreign reserves which have grown from US$23.81 billion in September 2016 to almost US$42 billion.And, of course one of the ways we are intensifying implementation of the ERGP are the ERGP focus labs which will be launched next week Tuesday, 13th March, by Mr President. he statedUsani Uguru, said the Council approved the design of section five of East  West Road meant to link Oron in Akwa Ibom to Calabar in Cross River State.




Movement for the Actualisation of South-East Presidency (MASEP) has called on Nigerians to re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 to enjoy more dividends of democracy.Mr Humphrey Onyima, the leader of the group, made the call in an interview with Newsmenon Thursday in Abuja.Onyima said Buhari deserved a second term because of the good works the president is doing.He flayed the negative opinions expressed over Buharis re-election by some Nigerians.We want to categorically state here and now, without recourse to what anyone thinks or has thought, that we back President Buhari for the 2019 presidency.We also call on others to do same because so far, President Buhari has done well; the construction of the three-phase Second Niger Bridge is on course.The bridge will by-pass Onitsha and Asaba to connect to the Owerri-Onitsha Expressway at Nkwerre-Ezunaka and then, cross Atani to the Asaba-Benin Expressway at Okpanam, with a total length of 44kms.Also, to the credit of this government, between June 2015 and July 2017, it had earned $58 billion in oil revenue, according to the OPEC, Onyima stressed.The leader of the group noted that while the payment of contractor liabilities running into trillions of Naira was ongoing, insecurity was being given the desired attention.According to him, massive development of rail transportation is ongoing; the age-long, clash between herdsmen and farmers is also being addressed by the government, among others.He explained that the Buhari administration had in 2017 issued a N100 billion bond with a 7-year term, so as to facilitate the rehabilitation of 25 key economic road projects across the country.Onyima said the roads include the Oyo-Ogbomosho Expressway, Ofusu-Ore-Ajebandele-Shagamu dual carriageway, Yenagoa Road Junction-Kolo Otuoke-Bayelsa Palm, Enugu-Port Harcourt Dual Carriageway and Onitsha-Enugu Expressway.Others, according to Onyima are the Kaduna Eastern By-pass, Dualisation of Kano-Maiduguri Road, Dualisation of Abuja-Lokoja-Benin Road, dualisation of Suleja-Minna Road with each geo-political zone benefiting.Power generation is on the increase as more power plants are coming on stream. This government has set a target of ending fuel importation by 2019.Also, licenses have been issued to 10 modular refineries with a refining capacity of 30,000 barrels per day and total refining capacity of 300,000.Without mincing words, this government has given Nigerians more hope and reasons to believe in our future as a nation, than we have ever had at any time in our history.For many years, we were led down dark paths by a misguided few and today, everything is being done to reverse that disgraceful, obnoxious phase in our democracy.To be honest, this cannot happen overnight, not even in four years. Thus, we want to call on Nigerians to get behind the president and vote him into office come 2019.We therefore issue a rallying cry to every Igbo man, woman and youth to support President Buhari for 2019, as we prepare our house to present ourselves for election in 2023, Onyima said.He emphasised that the likes of Orji Uzor Kalu, Rochas Okorocha, Ken Nnamani, Chris Ibe and Gbazuagu Gbazuagu were willing to lead the South-East to support Buhari and also occupy Aso Rock in 2023.
March and April are among the most dynamic months on Egypts cultural calendar. It is a time of festivals, theatre, music and dance. Depending on their themes and missions, the festivals bring different components into their repertoires, many of them focusing on younger or older audiences.

In the arts world, and especially in Egypts culture sphere  with a population of over 100 million the youngest audience, toddlers, small children and teenagers are the least fortunate when it comes to what is on offer. Even in Cairo what few stage plays and other sporadic events are held leave children thirsty for culture and parents unaware of their needs; the situation is of course much worse outside the capital.

But there is one cultural player, Mohamed El Ghawy, who many years ago decided to challenge the status quo by establishing 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.

In 2011, AFCA launched the Hakawy International Arts Festival, an annual event that brings Egyptian and international theatre for children and other activities to Cairo and the provinces.

The first round of the Hakawy festival took place in June 2011 at the College du Sacre-Coeur in Heliopolis, and it brought together troupes from Egypt, Croatia, Ireland and Finland. The second round took place in March 2012 at Al-Ghad, Al-Gomhoureya and the Cairo Puppet theatres in AFCAs first large-scale cooperation with the Ministry of Culture. In March 2013, Hakawy started taking place at the Hanager Arts Centre with some troupes visiting other venues, such as the Childrens Cancer Hospital (57357).

As the festival started carving its own unique position in the cultural field, each year it presented captivating performances and attracted a growing audience. Over time, Hakawy hosted performances from 15 countries in four continents, with several of them showcasing their work in several consecutive years.

Having attended the festival for a few years now, Ive noticed a change taking place, slowly but surely, reflecting not only the founding directors dedication and perseverance but also his meticulous strategic planning which, as he mentions, relies on a scientific approach that includes research, implementation and assessment.

Ive noticed children who, as spring approaches, start asking about Hakawy and its programming; at times they ask about the troupes they saw in previous rounds. Equally, parents or caregivers express an increasing interest in involving children in Hakawys events, whether through attending plays or participating in workshops and other activities offered by the festival. Indeed, a lot of work is done each year; El Ghawy never ceases to surprise us.

The eighth Hakawy International Arts Festival will take place between 8 and 13 March with most of its activities held within the Hanager Arts Centre. The festival will host four international performances: H2ommes from France (8 and 9 March), The Secret Life of Suitcases by Unicorn Theatre, UK (several performances between 8 and 13 March), Kite Without String from the Netherlands (8 and 9 March) and Lula Del Ray from the USA (several performances between 10 and 13 March).

Though the plays take place inside Hanager, Hakawys practice of reaching out to children outside the theatre will also be implemented this year with two performances going to the Childrens Cancer Hospital.

Apart from international plays, this year we added a lot of new elements to the festival, El Ghawy reveals, starting with a film screening: the first such activity in a festival dedicated to theatre and storytelling.

Produced in France in 2014, and directed by Christian De Vita, the animated movie Yellowbird (Gus  Petit oiseau, grand voyage) tells the story of a teeny tiny orphaned bird that has never left the nest, has no family, yet desperately wants one. That is, until he finds himself leading a flock on their migration to Africa, as the IMDb synopsis describes it. The film targets children six years old and above and will be screened on six consecutive days at the Hanager cinema.

Among the new additions to the festival are two seminars organised for the parents at the Higher Council of Culture in Hanagers vicinity, El Ghawy continues.

One seminar will discuss aspects of positive parenting and how to immerse children in the arts through parenting. The seminar will take place on 9 March and will be led by Sara Seif. The second seminar, held by Zahraa Rizk on 10 March, will tackle the issue of multiple intelligence and how we can discover our children. Any child should not be expected to excel in everything, each has their strong side in which we can invest and which we can develop. Both seminars will be moderated by author Ahmed El Fiky.

Also on the fringe, Hakawy will include a second phase of the Culture is a Field of Work seminar (11 March); this is an event that brings together El Ghawy, Azza Kamel from Alwan wa Awtar, Omar Al Moataz BAllah from Osiris and Teatro troupe, Heba El Cheikh from Mahatat for Contemporary Arts, May El Ibrashi from Megawra-Built Environment Collective, Saeed Kabeel from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Rasha Najdi from the Al-Ismailia for Real Estate Investment. The seminar will be moderated by an HR Specialist, Bassel Fassih.

Targeting university students, the guests will talk about their practices within the field of culture and introduce their respective institutions to attendees. They will also offer internships in their respective institutions so young people can get better acquainted with the functioning of the arts field and how they can become a part of it, expanding the field while building their own fruitful careers, El Ghawy explains.

Also among the new concepts this year is the focus given to the professional storytellers from Egypt. The festival will give a platform to six young people who specialise in storytelling. These include Hadotet Rania (8 and 10 March), Leila Abdel Hady (8 and 9 March), Yo7ka Anna (8 and 10 March), all presenting their work for toddlers aged four and above.

We will also have a mime workshop (8 and 10 March) held by Mohamed El Seidy for children five years old and above, El-Ghawy adds. Following its success last year, the Bibliotheksbus, the Goethe Institute in Cairos mobile library  featuring the storyteller Haitham Shoukry  will introduce book world to children and youth at the open area in front of the Hanager Arts Centre. The Bibliotheksbus will then move to schools and clubs in the Nile Delta.

With all those activities and an expected high turnout at the Hanager Arts Centre and its vicinity, once again Hakawy will bring a lot of joy and values to the attendees. It also brings hope that while the Cairo International Film Festival for Children has stopped and activities for children can be almost counted on the fingers of one hand, Hakawy manages to reinvigorate the scene and fill the void.

In this context we might do well to recall the charter of Childrens Rights to Art and Culture, a list of 18 principles published in 27 languages which denotes the right of children all over the world to enjoy art and culture, and highlights the importance of exposing all children to art. The charter was introduced to Egypt during the 2015 Hakawy Festival when it was presented in a form of an exhibition of artworks and illustrations inspired by its principles. The drawings were generated by the non-profit initiative of the Italian theatre for children La Baracca  Testoni Ragazzi, in coordination with a group of children and parents, Italian artists and illustrators.

Whenever he speaks of Hakawy, El Ghawy mentions the first principle of the charter which states that children have the right to access art in all its forms: theatre, music, dance, literature, poetry, cinema, visual and multimedia arts.

And this is exactly what Hakawy and indeed El Ghawys life and work are all about.

Over the past seven years, the festival has already achieved a lot and as El Ghawy puts it the sheer fact that we manage to continue and expand is an achievement, something we do often against all odds. We work with a very small team, facing many challenges, the same that other festival organisers and cultural players deal with in Egypt. But it is all worth it, especially when you see all those people coming together, El Ghawy concludes in a voice that projects his hallmark zeal: the audience, the performers and all kinds of supporters...



Check the full programme of 8th Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children here

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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The Academic Staff Union (ASUU) of IBB University Lapai, has embarked on a one week warning strike over non-payment of N530 million accrued academic allowances.Dr Salahu Lawal, the ASSU Chairman of the institution said in an interview in Lapai on Thursday that the strike was also a protest over other unresolved issues.According to him, the union and Niger Government had agreed on the payment of the N530 million accrued allowances in January.We had an understanding with the state government that from January 2018 they will start off setting the accrued allowances consecutively for a period of time.We are telling Niger Government by this warning strike that they have reneged on the agreement we reached with them in August 2017 and this a breach.This money is overdue and had accrued since 2009, nine years now he said.Lawal noted that such alleged breach of agreement would not augur well for the university which, he said, has shortage of manpower, infrastructure and basic amenities such as water and electricity.He claimed that the institution lacked basic needs for proper teaching and learning.We want to graduate students that will be at par with their international counterparts to compete with them comparatively.We do not want to graduate students that will lag academically, psychologically, socially and otherwise.Our graduates should be our ambassadors anywhere they find themselves, this is why we are striving for a better institution.Our utmost demand is a better teaching and learning environment to produce the desired graduates for Nigeria and the world.Lawal threatened that the union will proceed on indefinite strike if nothing is done by the government at the end of the warning strike.
The Federal High Court, Abuja, on Wednesday, sentenced Charles Okah and Obi Nwabueze to life imprisonment for masterminding the Oct. 1, 2...

The Federal High Court, Abuja, on Wednesday, sentenced Charles Okah and Obi Nwabueze to life imprisonment for masterminding the Oct. 1, 2010 Independence Day bombing near Eagle Square, Abuja.Justice Gabriel Kolawole handed down the sentence while delivering judgment in the five counts of terrorism charge preferred against the duo by the Federal Government.The Judge held that the prosecution, through the plethora of exhibits tendered and witnesses called, was able to prove its case beyond reasonable doubts.I find the defendants guilty as charged and they are accordingly convicted,Kolawole said.The judge said having handed down a life sentence earlier in 2013 to Edmund Ebiware, who had initially stood trial with the convicts; he could not give a lighter sentence to Okah and Nwabueze.He said that it was necessary for the maximum sentence to be given in order to ensure that justice was served in the eyes of families of those who died or sustained injuries.The judgeo noted that the judiciary could not be aloof to the increasing wave of kidnapping and acts of terrorism, citing the recent abduction of the 110 school girls from Dapchi in Yobe.Counsel to Okah and Nwabueze, Emeka Okoroafor and Oghenovo Otemu had prayed the court to show the convicts mercy, owing to the fact that they were first time offenders.The prosecuting counsel, Mr Alex Iziyon, (SAN), however, asked the court to give the convicts the maximum sentence prescribed by Section 15 (1) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Act on which they were tried.Okah, Nwabueze, Ebiware and Tiemkemfa Francis-Osvwo (aka General Gbokos) were initially arraigned before the court on Dec. 7, 2010.They were arraigned for their alleged involvement in the bomb blast which left about 12 people dead and several others injured.Francis-Osvwo later died in prison custody, while Ebiware, who had his trial conducted separately, is serving life sentence upon his conviction in 2013.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the judgment which lasted about six hours has finally brought to an end litigation which started about eight years ago.NAN also recalls that in the course of the trial, the prosecution called 17 witnesses to prove that the defendants actually committed the crime.Okah called two witnesses including himself, Nwabueze called four witnesses.
Sequel to its rejection of the tenure elongation approved for National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, ...

Sequel to its rejection of the tenure elongation approved for National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, the Lagos chapter of the party has resolved to petition President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter.

The leader of the APC in Lagos Central senatorial district, Chief Tajudeen Olusi, confirmed this yesterday.





Olusi said the Lagos chapter was prepared to register its displeasure with President Buhari and other appropriate organs of the party.





The option available to us is that we are going to make representations to all organs of the party.





We are going to talk with the national leadership, the national executive and President Buhari, he told Thisday.





Olusi, who earlier faulted the tenure elongation, quoting Section 223 of the 1999 Constitution as amended which stipulates elections at interval and Article 17 of the APC constitution, which stipulates a four-year tenure for its national and state executives, said it amounts to depriving other aspirants to the post.





The tenure elongation is against the constitution of Nigeria and the party. It is a means of depriving aspirants who want to aspire.





We think we should allow democracy to thrive in the party, he added.




President Muhammadu Buhari has reiterated that the priority of his administration was mainly to secure the country, ensure a viable economy and rid the country of corruption.President Buhari who stated this Thursday when he received a delegation from King Salman of Saudi Arabia at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, said his administration was mindful of the three-pronged promises made to Nigerians before the 2015 elections.He said Nigerians in the areas affected by Boko Haram insurgency were in the best position to provide correct assessments of the changes that have taken place since he assumed office in 2015, assuring that he remained undeterred and focused on securing the lives and properties of all NigeriansAccording to him, From the very time we came until now, we have been able to do our best, and we remain focused on delivering on our promises.President Buhari in a statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu told the Saudi Arabian delegation that the priority of his administration had so far been on securing the country, buoying the economy and curbing corruption so that Nigerians would start benefitting from the rich natural and human resources of the country.He expressed appreciation to the King Salman Aid and Relief Centre, and the Saudi Development Fund for providing relief materials, worth 10 million dollars, to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North East.In his remarks, the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Dan-Ali said the delegation from Saudi Arabia had already visited the Ministry of Defence, Defence Headquarters and taken a tour of IDP camps in Maiduguri as part of their schedule.The Leader of the Saudi Arabian delegation from King Salman, Nasser Bin Mutlaq, said the visit and the donation of materials was an extension of the good relations both countries had shared over the years.He said, We are directed to offer materials and food for the displaced persons in the North East worth 10 million dollars. We have had a field visit to the places and seen the humanitarian situation ourselves.
The National Assembly Thursday promised to look into the allegations of corruption in the Nigerian Universities in order to sanitize the system.This is as the non teaching staff in the universities under the umbrella of Joint Action Committee, JAC, has accused the university administrations of indulging in corrupt practices while the government appears not to be disturbed with the ugly situation despite the Federal Government anti-corruption fight.Meantime, the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has accused the Federal Government of always breaching agreements it freely entered into with workers.JAC comprising the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, Non Academic Staff Union of Universities and Educational Institutions, NASU and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, staged a protest at the Ministry of Education and the National Assembly over the alleged decay in the universities.Security operatives had a hectic day at the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, when they tried to stop the protesting university non teaching staff to have access to the Ministry of Education where they had gone to register their protest with the Minister, Malam Adamu Adamu.The protesting workers had to use all their strength to force the gate that was locked with heavy presence of the policemen to open for the workers led by the National President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba and the Chairman of JAC, Comrade Samson Ugwoke to gain access to the ministry.Infuriated by the development, the workers chanted anti Adamu songs and even called for his resignation.At the National Assembly, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki represented by Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim from Yobe East assured the protesting workers that the National Assembly would look into their grievances especially the allegation of corruption in the universities.Senator Ibrahim flanked by Senators Shehu Sani and Ahmed Sani Yerima as well as Rep Jarigbe Agon Jarigbe said, impunity brings anarchy, so I want to assure you that we are going to fight corruption in the universities squarely..I also want to assure that every worker will get its allowances. All the demands that you have made will be tabled before the house.Also speaking, Senator Sani Shehu, assured the non academic teaching staff that in the name of the struggle and in the name of the Nigerian people that he will peruse their demand to logical conclusion.Presenting their grievances, the Chairman of JAC and National President of SSANU, Comrade Samson Ugwoke said, We need to let the National Assembly to know why we are sad, we need to let them know and sentizes them on the injustices that are going on the university system.We need to let them know the plight of the Nigerian universities and also workers in the system. We want them to come in and investigate the universities and find out why our graduates are not employable. We are not pleased with the state of affairs and strongly believe that with your intervention, all matters that led to the current industrial action of the Joint Action Committee unions shall be address.We also deem it imperative to humbly draw the attention of His Execellency on the ongoing strike action embarked upon by the non teaching staff unions based on our demands for the full proper implementation of our 2009 agreement. We have also had several meetings with the federal government.The specific issues are one, the reinstatement of our members in the university staff schools, who were removed from the budget of the universities based on obnoxious budget call circular from National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission in gross contravention of the 2009 agreement with federal government which also the National Industrial Court has ruled in our favour.Two, the issue of payment of Earned Allowances where a sum of N23 billion released by government in September 2017, was skewed in favour of a sister union by some government officers thereby leaving 11 percent of the said amount to the non teaching staff.Three, the issue of shortfalls in salary payment where our members have been receiving fractions of their salaries for upward of a year now. Four, the issue of career progression for Technologists to CONTISS 14 and 15, in line with the agreement reached with NAAT.Five, Usurpation of non teaching career positions by academic staff and six corruptions in the universities system. We also want to state that we have signed two different MOUs with government through the Minister of Labour, yet to no avail. Nothing tangible on ground except verbal assurances. But rather a segment of university system was being favour to our detriment. So we want you to intervene.The NLC President, Comrade Wabba said, The rally has become necessary as government keeps reneging on its promises. So, the strike must continue until justices is done because the sector need more attention as they have not been able to receive the desired attention it deservesSo everything possible needs to be done for this sector because of our future generations. So it must be a priority of government and all stakeholders We must also ensure that the right thing is done.Speaking earlier at the Ministry of Education, the Director, Tertiary Education in the ministry, Mr. Joel Ojo who stood in for the Minister said, The ministry is doing all to ensure that the issues affecting the university system is resolved immediatelyThe ministry is interfacing with the National Assembly and modalities have been put in place to resolve the ongoing strike and make sure normalcy returns to the universities. I want to assure you that the Federal government is committed and I want to plead with you to give us some time.
When Michael B. Jordan isn't offering to pay for replacement retainers for teenagers who have clenched their teeth too hard during his shirtless "Black Panther" scene, he's working to make Hollywood more inclusive.

At the Oscars on Sunday, Frances McDormand, who won an Academy Award for "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," delivered a rousing acceptance speech that ended with the term "inclusion rider" (and a mic drop). Her mention of the term -- a practice that involves writing a requirement that a cast and crew be diverse into an actor's contract, or asking the same of the film's producers -- drew a wave of interest after the awards show.

Jordan, 31, has pledged to apply the practice to all of the projects that come out of his production company, Outlier Society.

"In support of the women & men who are leading this fight, I will be adopting the Inclusion Rider for all projects produced by my company Outlier Society," he posted on Instagram Wednesday. "I've been privileged to work with powerful woman (sic) & persons of color throughout my career & it's Outlier's mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward."

McDormand, who asked all female nominees in every category to stand during her Oscars acceptance speech, has certainly done a lot in just a few days to popularize the idea of the rider, even without defining the term for the audience. But Stacy Smith, director of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, is credited with introducing the term and helping actors work such agreements into their contracts alongside civil rights attorney Kalpana Kotagal.

"It stipulates that in small and supporting roles, characters should reflect the world we live in," Smith told Vanity Fair after the Oscars. The requirement would also apply to "below the line" (non-acting, writing and directing) positions on a film's crew.

Jordan directed his followers to a link to the Inclusion Initiative in his Instagram bio.

The actor, who grew up in Newark, plays villain Erik Killmonger in the Marvel movie "Black Panther" and will return as Adonis Johnson in "Creed II" this fall opposite Tessa Thompson, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren and Florian Munteanu. He started Outlier Society in 2016.

Outlier Society productions currently include the upcoming "Thomas Crown Affair" remake that will have Jordan starring the the lead role, the forthcoming Netflix series "Raising Dion," in which he will have a role, and a film adaptation of the YA novel "The Stars Beneath Our Feet" that will see Jordan in the director's chair for the first time.

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
It's not Amazon's coveted HQ2, but a project under way in West Deptford Township is expected to be good news for job seekers in the region.

Amazon is constructing a 650,000-ssquare-foot fulfillment center on Mantua Grove Road, according to company spokeswoman Rachael Lighty.

When operations begin, the center will employ 1,000 full-time workers, she said.

Construction is already well under way on the massive building at 240 Mantua Grove Road on a 60-acre tract, just east of Interstate 295.

Amazon will lease the building. The fulfillment center will handle smaller items that are available for sale online on Amazon.com.

"We are excited about our upcoming facility in West Deptford and our ability to create more than 1,000 full-time jobs for residents in the region," Lighty said.

Amazon officials aren't yet ready to announce an estimated date for the opening of the fulfillment center or when the company will begin to recruit employees.

The e-commerce giant already has a presence in Gloucester County, with one fulfillment center and two sorting centers in operation.

Across the state Amazon has eight fulfillment centers and the two sorting centers which employee an estimated 14,000 workers.

Lighty said Amazon chose West Deptford because it believes the area has a "dedicated workforce" and there was "great local support" from the township.

"We are thrilled to join the community and look forward to building relationships and being a good neighbor for years to come," Lighty said.

Amazon said the new full-time employees receive "competitive hourly wages" along with a benefits package that includes healthcare, a 401(k) plan and stock awards, maternity and parental leave tuition reimbursement.

Last year when the Seattle, Washington-based company said it was seeking a site for a second company headquarters which became referred to as HQ2, Gloucester County made a bid to host the project.

After sorting through the 200-plus proposal received, Amazon announced Newark was the only New Jersey finalist in the location search.

Neighboring Philadelphia and New York City were also being considered, the company announced, as potential locations for HQ2 which the company promises will produce some 50,000 high-paying jobs along with billions in other investments.

Officials from West Deptford and Gloucester County didn't return inquiries about how the new local fulfillment center would impact the area.

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 south Jersey hospital chains announced Thursday they are exploring a merger, a deal that would make them one of the most formidable health care networks in the outer-Philadelphia region.

Virtua Health, which owns three hospitals in Burlington County, would acquire the two hospitals in the Lourdes Health System in Camden and Burlington, according to an announcement Virtua released on behalf of both systems.

The news comes three months after Cooper Health backed out of a deal to buy the Lourdes hospitals, as well as St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton. All three are owned by Maxis, a division of Trinity Health which operates 93 hospitals in 22 states. Cooper filed a lawsuit in December to regain the $15 million it placed in escrow when the two were exploring the deal.

"Maxis Health System, an entity of Trinity Health, and Virtua Health have entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent regarding the possible acquisition by Virtua of The Lourdes Health System, including Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County," according to a statement Virtua spokeswoman Peggy Leone released Thursday.

"The parties hope that they will be able to complete this transaction, which has the potential to achieve great benefits for healthcare in South Jersey. Further review is underway; there is no final agreement."

Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden is renowned for its heart care and its treatment programs of the elderly. Virtua's hospitals dominate obstetrics care in the region, delivering 8,000 babies a year.

If they agree to join forces, they would continue a decade-long pattern of mergers and acquisitions, in New Jersey and across the country, driven in part by the Affordable Care Act's emphasis on hospitals and doctors curbing long hospital stays.

Mergers also give cover to smaller hospitals, shoring up their negotiating power with insurance companies, and giving them access to money to make building and other capital improvements.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
The Jersey City middle school teacher arrested yesterday and accused of numerous sex crimes has been identified as a 42-year-old Bayonne man.

Sean Lora, a teacher at School 7 in the Jersey City Heights, is accused touching a student in a classroom on Tuesday, according to a statement from Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez.

Detectives investigating the incident found more students who said Lora touched them in the past, according to Suarez's statement. They arrested him at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, Suarez said today.

When the Tuesday incident occurred, there were a total of seven children in the classroom with Lora, according to Suarez.

Lora has been charged with three counts of second-degree sexual assault by contact, one count of third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact and five counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.

News of yesterday's arrest had School 7 parents panicked. The prosecutor's office announced on Twitter that they had arrested a teacher but did not disclose his identity until this morning.

Lora has been a school district employee since 2008. He taught English as a second language.

The Laidlaw Avenue school has about 900 students in grades six through eight. It has a high percentage of students learning English: 35 percent, compared to 11 percent districtwide, state education records say.

A school district spokeswoman could not provide detailed employment records  the district is closed today  but said teachers accused of abuse or inappropriate behavior are removed from the classroom until their cases are closed

Yesterday Sudhan Thomas, the school board president, said he is calling for a closed-door meeting with School Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles next week to discuss Lora's arrest.

"I would like to assure Jersey City that we will take this up as an immediate, urgent priority to not only address the current situation but to prevent any further occurrences of crime of any nature against our children," Thomas said.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
The intramural war over the Hudson County executive seat took an awkward turn Thursday when both sides claimed the endorsement of Freeholder Jerry Walker.

At 2:38 p.m., Mark Albiez, chief of staff to Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, emailed a list of local officials who back a Fulop-led move to oust Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise next June. The list includes Jerry Walker.

An hour later, DeGise spokesman Phil Swibinski emailed the names of officials who back DeGise's bid for re-election. At No. 3 on the list: Jerry Walker.

Both sides claimed they had spoken to Walker and obtained his support. Walker, 47, a former hoops star who runs afterschool program Team Walker, muddied the waters further when The Jersey Journal reached him by phone.

"I support Brian Stack to be the chairperson," he said, referring to Stack's bid to become the Hudson County Democratic Organization chair in June.

Asked again whether he has taken a side in this fight, Walker paused, sighed and said, "I'm on the organization's side, OK?"

He added: "I didn't really authorize anyone to release a statement. I don't want to get caught between anyone else's fight ... This is crazy. Since when did I become the kingmaker here?"

The war over DeGise erupted yesterday after Fulop and Union City Mayor Brian Stack announced they want a new county executive when DeGise's fourth term expires in December 2019. DeGise countered with a pledge to seek a fifth term, starting a contest between both camps to prove who has the biggest list of supporters.

Fulop and Stack released a statement claiming the support of the Hoboken and West New York mayors. DeGise fired back saying he has the mayors of Bayonne, East Newark, Guttenberg, Harrison, Kearny, North Bergen and Secaucus on his side, plus U.S. Rep. Albio Sires Jr.

This afternoon came Albiez's email, which touts 11 Jersey City officials' support for finding a new county executive, followed by Swibinski's email, which claims support from nine officials, including DeGise's daughter Amy, a Jersey City school board member.

This turf fight between Hudson County's Democrats will go on for a while: the primary is not until June 2019. In this liberal county, the winner of the Democratic primary is expected to win the November general election handily.

Fulop and Stack have not announced who they plan to back in a primary against DeGise, though sources believe Freeholder Bill O'Dea will be their choice.

Walker today expressed astonishment that a turf war over a 2019 primary has already begun, a sentiment shared by other Democrats who spoke to The Jersey Journal. He said he did not speak extensively to the Fulop/Stack camp about their DeGise challenge.

"They haven't sat down and talked to me. I don't know what's their intentions .. have they identified somebody already?" he said. "What's going on here? What's really going on?"

Walker, who ran for mayor against Fulop in 2013, won election to the freeholder board in November with the support of both Fulop and DeGise. He represents Jersey City's third district, which includes portions of the Downtown, Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville.

He also works for the city's recreation department.

O'Dea told The Jersey Journal yesterday he has not made any plans for 2019 yet. He was among the 11 officials in Albiez's email today.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
In celebration of International Women's Day, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing today three displays in its foyer highlighting the role of women in ancient Egypt.

Elham Salah, head of the Museums Department at the Ministry of Antiquities, explains that the first display is a collection of jewellery that was owned by Queen Keramama, the mother of 23rd dynasty King Osorkon III (8th century BC).

The collection was originally discovered in Tel El-Muqdam (Leontopolis), and includes a necklace with the image of the deity Khnum, a cobra diadem, scarab bracelets, the Eye of Horus, as well as a necklace in the shape of a scorpion with a human head wearing a Hathor headdress.

The second display, which is on show at the third gallery on the museums ground floor, is a red quartzite head from a composite statue of Queen Nefertiti, the wife of the 18th dynasty monotheistic King Akhenaten (14th century BC). The artefact was excavated by C. Fisher in 1916 in Mit Rahina.

The third display is a limestone Greek-Roman statuette of a woman that was repatriated from France in 2017.

Museum curator Sabah Abdel-Razek said that the activities of the day include a presentation on a large monitor at the entrance of the museum relaying the history of women in ancient Egypt and their role in various aspects of life, in addition to a free evening guided tour accompanied by museum curators.

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JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City man was found guilty today of murdering a man whose spinal cord was severed when he was shot in the neck in 2016.

"Oh Jesus. Thank you, God," whispered Tameeka Murray, the mother of Javon Murray, 28, as 26-year-old Jersey City felon Justin Garcia was found guilty of executing her son on July 21, 2016 on Clinton Avenue.

Garcia, of Garfield Avenue, shot Murray with a single bullet that entered the back of his neck and exited his cheek. Murray, a Stegman Street resident, was lured into an alleyway, where he was murdered, Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Lynne Seborowski said during the trial.

"There's no words that can ever bring him back but it's a joyful occasion to get justice for him," said the mother who hugged the victim's aunt as both cried after hearing the verdict.

Garcia showed no reaction to the verdict but family members on his side of the courtroom fell tearfully into each other's arms.

"I feel sad because they are also losing a son," Tameeka Murray said of Garcia's family. "They are losing him to prison and I have to see my child at his graveside, but I can't even bring myself to go to it."

Finally, speaking of Garcia, Murray's mother said: "I have to pray for him and someday I will forgive him but I can't forgive him right now. No mother ever expects to bury their child. A child is supposed to bury his mother."

Garcia was also convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and possession of a weapon by a felon. He has five previous convictions including one for aggravated assault and a number for drug offenses.

A key witness at trial testified that she heard a gunshot, saw Murray fall and then saw Garcia drop a gun. The 21-year-old admitted she did not give police a detailed or accurate statement after the shooting because she was "terrified." She knew both the victim and killer.

On the day of the homicide, police were dispatched to Clinton Street between Kennedy Boulevard and West Side Avenue at 2:45 a.m. on a report of shots being fired. There, they found Murray, who had been shot once and was was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said.

Of her son, Tameeka Murray said: "He was amazing. Very generous. He would give someone the last dime in his pocket. He was very funny -- always smiling. He was a lady's man."

The charge of murder carries a possible sentence of 30 years to life in prison. Garcia will be sentenced by Hudson County Superior Court Judge Nesle Rodriguez on April 20 in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.
JERSEY CITY -- The 42-year-old Jersey City school teacher arrested on sex charges this week is accused of molesting four boys between the ages of 11 to 13 years old and showing one of the boys pornography inside a classroom, authorities said.

Sean Lora, of 39th Street in Bayonne, is charged with criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of two 11-year-olds, a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old for allegedly touching their genitals through their clothing, according to the criminal complaint.

Lora, who teaches English as a second language at School 7 in the Jersey City, is also charged with a second count of endangering the welfare of the 13-year-old boy for allegedly showing him pornography, according to the complaint.

On Tuesday, the principal of School 7 in the Jersey City Heights called the Hudson County Prosecutor's Special Victim's Unit after the 12-year-old and one of the 11-year-olds told a teacher that Lora had shown the 13-year-old pornography while touching the boy at his desk that day, the complaint said.

The principal told SVU detectives there were seven students in the classroom at the time and all were still at the school. When investigators spoke to the students, the three other alleged victims said Lora had done similar things to them, the complaint says.

A girl told authorities that Lora had told her to remain seated because he was doing something important with the 13-year-old on Tuesday. She said Lora told a boy to sit down when he got up to see what was going on that day, the complaint states.

Lora was arrested early Wednesday morning and made his first appearance on the charges today 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 Lora through the course of his prosecution and a detention hearing is set for Tuesday before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.

All of the charges against Lora are second-degree offenses, which carry a possible prison term of five to 10 years in prison upon conviction.
HARRISON  It's not often people bring cutout photos taped to Popsicle sticks into council chambers, but Tuesday night was an exception.

Dozens of family members, friends, and police officers attended the ceremonial swearing in of Chief David Strumolo. The 23-year veteran of the department emerged as the top contender among four applicants to replace now-retired Chief Derek Kearns.

Mayor James Fife administered the oath at the beginning of the council meeting with Strumolo standing beside his four children and wife. Many held up photos of the new chief as he was sworn in. His proud mom, Marie, sported a "chief's mom" hat.

After he was sworn in, Strumolo invited everyone to a catered dinner across the street. He exited the chambers with a salute from the department.

Strumolo told The Jersey Journal that community policing and strengthen relationships with new residents in the quickly developing town are among his top priorities.

"It's an honor to do this job," Strumolo said of his career. "Being chief is one of the greatest honors that I've ever had because now, instead of talking about what I would have done all these years if I was the person making the choices, now I'm in the position and I plan on working with community constantly through partnerships, work in collaboration with the fire department and welfare department to collaboratively to bring the people together."

Strumolo said he wants his officers out of the patrol cars more often and interacting with residents, specifically children.

Kearns' retirement pitted the police union  which adamantly fought for Strumolo's appointment  against officials, with the PBA fearing the town planned to appoint a less qualified candidate. A planned protest turned into a meet and greet with Strumolo after he was offered the job.

Caitlin Mota may be reached at cmota@jjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitlin_mota. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
The Jersey City woman who made headlines when she climbed through a fast food restaurant's drive-through window to assault workers is now in trouble with the feds.

Shahouna "Oopie from Bullet Town" Dutton has been charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office with possession of a weapon by a previously convicted felon, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced.

She was charged with a similar offense, plus witness tampering, by authorities in Hudson County on Feb. 22; and the federal charge was a result of the Prosecutor's Office investigation into witness tampering in a murder case. The trial has been postponed.

When she appeared in Superior Court in Hudson County last week, Dutton was ordered to home confinement electronic monitoring.

Dutton was then arrested at her home by special agents of the FBI and she was detained after making her initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Falk in Newark federal court.

Hudson County Prosecutor's officers investigating the witness tampering executed a search warrant at Dutton's home and found a loaded .22 caliber handgun in Dutton's bedroom, authorities said.

Since Dutton has two prior felony convictions in New Jersey, she is prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal law. The felon in possession of a firearm charge carries a maximum potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Dutton was convicted on aggravated assault on Oct. 7, 2013; and she was convicted of attempted aggravated assault on May 3, 2016.

Dutton's attorney questioned the feds' involvement in the case.

"Last week, a state judge ruled wisely that Ms. Dutton was not a threat to the community and ordered her on home detention while she awaits trial," attorney Jake Hudnut said. "Instead of living with this ruling, the Hudson County Prosecutor arranged to have her case handed over to the federal government, where Ms. Dutton will not have the benefit of pre-trial release."

The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment.
As the nor'easter intensified shortly after noon Wednesday, Darral Connor's company told employees to hit the road in the hopes they would avoid the worst of the storm.

Connor didn't get very far. Just 15 minutes into his drive, the blinding snow prevented Connor from seeing the sides of Route 280 in West Orange. He skidded into a ditch and got stranded.

For 10 hours.

Connor, 33, soon had plenty of company. Similar plights played out on routes 287, 78 and 280 as bands of heavy snowfall swept through North Jersey, causing hundreds of crashes.

A couple of wrecked tractor trailers on Route 78 were all it took to freeze traffic for hours. It got so bad on Route 280 that the State Police resorted to snowmobiles to rescue stranded drivers and ferry them off the highway to get warm.

Connor said he didn't want to risk leaving his car and having it towed. Instead, he waited. And waited.

"I was a little angry, I guess, but I had to understand what was going on with the situation," said Connor, of Jersey City. "I kind of accepted the fact that nothing was going to happen at that moment and I just had to sit there and wait."

Finally, a tow truck pulled his car from the ditch around midnight. By then his battery was dead and the tow truck provided a jump.

The damage report from the State Police on Thursday was staggering. Troopers responded to 530 crashes and helped 1,017 motorists with spin outs, flat tires and other breakdowns. And that's just on the major highways and some local towns patrolled by the State Police.

Those totals don't include folks like Brian Silverman. He was headed home to Jersey City when his 2017 Volkswagen Passat could no longer handled the fast-accumulating snow on Route 280 east.

He was stranded for nine hours.

"Never seen it accumulate so fast," Silverman said Thursday. "I was alone and concerned I would be stuck in the car overnight and run out of gas."

Drivers started to panic and things went from bad to worse.

"I was also very worried people were going to crash into me," Silverman said. "People were driving erratically to try and get their cars [unstuck from the snow]."

Around 11 p.m., a plow came by and cleared the snow and he was able to move again without spinning his tires or skidding, he said.

For Ken Foster and girlfriend Michelle Wei, New Jersey's highways should have just been another link in their trek for a five-day snowboarding trip in the Catskills. The drive from their Washington, D.C., home should have taken six hours.

Instead, they spent six hours stranded on Route 287 north near Morristown.

"All of a sudden, four miles south of Morristown, we hit a standstill," Foster said Thursday. "We just sat there. For six hours."

Luckily, their Honda Civic was packed for the long weekend with thermal gloves, thick socks, and supplies. But ultimately, the journey for Foster, 30, and Wei, 28, went no farther Wednesday night.

"We took turns sleeping in the car - one of us monitoring in case anything happened like if we moved or if the police or someone told us anything," Ken said. "We were definitely bored. The weirdest part was there was no information."

When traffic began inching forward about 2 a.m., police guided cars toward an opening in the median and to Route 287 south. They retreated and stayed a motel in Edison - the only place they could find for under $300 a night.

They were waiting on Thursday morning for the roads to clear before resuming their trek.

"We're hoping to spend at least two or three days in the Catskills at this point," Foster said.

At the very least, there should be plenty of snow.

Traffic came to halt for six hours Wednesday night on Route 287 North near Morristown, said Ken Foster and his girlfriend, Michelle Wei, snowboarders who took turns sleeping until the nightmare was over.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Fire crews on Wednesday battled a fast-spreading blaze at a Lakewood building, at least the second major fire that came as a powerful winter storm brought snow and lighting to the region.

The blaze at the Cross Street small business complex, near Damiano Way, continued to burn around 4:30 p.m., about two hours after authorities received a call from a man who reported the fire and said he heard a "loud explosion," according to police.

Lakewood firefighters quickly called for backup from Jackson, Toms River, Brick and Point Pleasant, police said in a statement. The facility houses a welding shop, among other businesses.

Video and photos from TheLakewoodScoop.com showed a portion of the building's roof had collapsed in the blaze.

A police spokesman did not immediately have an update late Wednesday afternoon and the cause of the fire remained unclear.

At least one person reported seeing a lighting strike in the area before the fire broke out.

This building was struck by lightning. In Lakewood NJ pic.twitter.com/8RFe9VArMG  Weatherstone (@yechielwaldman) March 7, 2018

I was sitting at my desk in another building down the road when the lighting struck. Huge sparks flew out of my routers near my computer. They got fried. No cable service in the entire area.  Weatherstone (@yechielwaldman) March 7, 2018

The National Weather Service in Mount Holly reported more than a dozen lighting strikes in Central and Southern New Jersey Wednesday afternoon.

In Ship Bottom, a lighting strike sparked a house fire, according to the Ocean County Sheriff's Office and weather service.

This house in back of my office just got struck by lightning.... Posted by Raymond Ciccone on Wednesday, March 7, 2018

"We definitely had quite an unusually high number of lighting strikes for a storm like this," said National Weather Service Meteorologist Al Cope, of the agency's Mount Holly office.

A middle school teacher survived after she was struck by lighting outside a Manchester school around 2:30 p.m., according to township police.

In Burlington County, there were 13 lighting strikes between 2 and 3 p.m., he added. Ocean County reported four strikes, and forecasters said some reports might not be tallied yet.

"There were quite a few between south and central New Jersey," Cope said.

In an alert issued around 2:40 p.m., the Ocean County Sheriff's Office warned of "numerous lighting strikes" in the area and urged people to seek shelter.
More than 240,000 homes and business remained without power in New Jersey after a nasty nor'easter churned out wet, heavy snow and utility companies warned it could take days to get everyone back on line.

JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano said crews were still assessing the damage from the second big storm to pummel the region in less than a week.

"This is a restoration that can take up to several days and we'll know better when we do our assessment," Morena said Thursday morning. "We'll tell people estimated times of restoration as they become available."

At the peak of the storm, more than 320,000 power outages were reported. As of 8 a.m., JCP&L had 133,000 customers in the dark and PSE&G had 85,000 outages.

POWER OUTAGE TRACKER

Keep track of power outages, from the major utility companies as they happen across the state using the N.J. Outage Tracker below.

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PSE&G offered a similar assessment for the length of the recovery.

"We are mobilizing additional employees to help with damage assessment so that we can better determine restoration times," John Latka, senior vice president of electric and gas operations at PSE&G said in a statement Wednesday night. "We ask our customers to be patient as we deal with these difficult conditions and work to safely restore power."

The latest wave of outages hit even as about 25,000 JCP&L customer were already without power from last week's storm. Those customers will be given first priority for power restoration, Morano said.

JCP&L crew members were pulled from treacherous roads on Wednesday as the snow fell due to safety reasons, but were back in action on Thursday, Morano said.

Morano urged customers to avoid downed, dangerous wires and instead alert the power companies.

"Please, stay away," he said.

To report downed wires or power outages:

PSE&G: Call the utility's customer Service line at 1-800-436-PSEG. Click here to view the company's live outage map.

JCP&L: Call 1-888-LIGHTSS (1-888-544-4877) or click "Report Outage" link on www.jcp-l.com. In the event of downed wires, customers should immediately contact the utility or their local police or fire department. Click here to view JCP&L's live outage map.

Atlantic City Electric: Customers can report outages by calling 1-800-833-7476, visiting www.atlanticcityelectric.com or through the utility's mobile app, available for download here. Click here to view ACE's live power outage map.

Rockland Electric Co: The utility, which serves customers in northern Passaic and Bergen Counties, can be reached at 1-877-434-4100. To view Rockland Electric's live outage map, click here.

Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.

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By Jennifer Rubin

The Quinnipiac University poll finds:

If Trump is using tariffs as a way to influence the special election in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District or to shore up his base more generally, he will need to look elsewhere.

When it comes to the National Rifle Association, it "has too much influence over politicians, 60 percent of American voters say, while 7 percent say it has too little influence and 26 percent say it has the right amount of influence. Republicans in Congress are afraid of the NRA, voters say 54-42 percent. Democrats in Congress are afraid of the NRA, voters say 49-45 percent." Strangely, even though Trump seems to have retreated from gun proposals after a private meeting with the NRA, 65 percent say he's not afraid of the NRA.

On various gun measures, voters come down heavily against the NRA's positions with the exception of a ban sale of semiautomatic weapons, on which they are split 48 percent to 48 percent.

However, 61 percent say they support a ban on "assault weapons," which may point to a definitional problem for gun-safety advocates. Voters overwhelmingly back a ban on high-capacity magazines (63-34 percent), a 21-year-old age requirement to buy guns (78-20 percent), allowing police or family to "petition a judge to remove guns from a person who may be at risk of violent behavior" (89-8 percent) and prohibiting someone with a history of domestic violence from owning a gun (91-6 percent). Voters oppose arming teachers 58 percent to 40 percent.

And yet Trump and GOP members of Congress are using the tried-and-true technique -- foot-dragging -- to avoid moving forward on gun legislation. Voters are prepared to blame Republicans (57-18 percent). And in good news for Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods and other retailers who have gotten out front on guns, "American voters say 81-14 percent it's a 'good thing' that some private companies now require people to be 21 years old or older to purchase a gun.

Support is 65 percent or higher among every listed group. If a company says it will no longer sell assault weapons, 33 percent of voters are more likely to shop there, as 12 percent are less likely and 53 percent say this will have no effect."

A few caveats are in order.

First, the poll does not assess the intensity of voters' views, which is a critical factor when the NRA has an army of one-issue voters. Second, like polls on virtually every topic, trade and gun polling generally track how voters feel about Trump's performance. The same one-third/two-thirds split reappears no matter what the question. Third, the national deadlock may prevent Congress from moving forward, but that doesn't mean the states are paralyzed.

In Florida, for example, the Tampa Bay Times reports:

Strong opposition to the provision that would allow teachers to arm themselves resulted in significant changes to narrow its application. ("The bill was amended to bar most teachers from being able to participate," the Orlando Sentinel reports.)

Only classroom teachers who were part of a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, members of the U.S. military or former police officers could participate.

Democrats wanted to go much further, but a flurry of amendments"banning assault weapons, creating a registry for guns, allowing local governments to pass stronger gun laws and requiring background checks for gun purchases outside of the state, to prohibiting the sale and transfer of large-capacity magazines" were all rejected by the GOP majorities, according to the Miami Herald.

Nevertheless, Florida has been an exceptionally pro-NRA state with some of the more pro-gun laws in the country. Even a partial curb on guns would make a remarkable reversal in opinion and political sentiment. It is a reminder that ultimately voters' opinions do matter.

For Republican candidates on the ballot for the House and Senate, that may be worrisome.

Jennifer Rubin is a Washington Post columnist, writing from a conservative perspective.

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By Staci Berger

New Jersey's diversity is one of the many things that makes this a great place to live. Unfortunately, there's a lot of toxic rhetoric and policies coming out of the White House that threatens that diversity as well as our economy.

It's going to be up to our state leaders to implement policies and programs that are inclusive and helps us thrive and with a new administration, we hope it will.

Nonprofit community developers are on the ground daily working directly with residents from all walks of life. They're providing job training, education, housing counseling, financial assistance, and just about whatever is needed for the communities they serve. For the last decade, despite the Recession, Superstorm Sandy, and the foreclosure crisis, the Christie administration failed to make public investments in those communities, threatening our economic prosperity.

During that time, investments that expanded affordable homes, prevented homelessness, protected health, and revitalized neighborhoods were drastically reduced and cut. For example, over the past six years, the state has not used its Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) to support housing starts as intended.

When last used in 2008, the state spent $50 million for the production of affordable homes, but from 2011 to 2017 that investment dropped dramatically to only $2 million. At the same time, the Special Needs Housing Trust Fund, which began in 2005 with $200 million, ran out of money in 2011. These funds are crucial to create a variety of affordable homes for our diverse population in a state that's the seventh most expensive place in the nation to rent.

The Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey (the Network) has proposed a plan to invest in proven mechanisms that can turn our economy around. More than 100 nonprofit community developers and housing advocates have endorsed a set of recommendations aimed at addressing affordability and boosting the state's economy.

They focus on six areas including:

Producing more affordable homes and improving neighborhoods

Reducing the impact of foreclosures

Preventing and ending homelessness

Fostering healthy homes and communities

Supporting the critical role played by the non-profit sector in both keeping people in a home and providing affordable homes

Tenants' rights

Specifically, advocates are urging Gov. Phil Murphy and legislative leaders to restore $600 million annually into a strategic set of housing and community investments that have been siphoned away in recent years.

New Jersey's economy has grown at a snail's pace compared to the rest of the country. We rank at the top for foreclosures and more millennials are staying in the nest because they can't afford to live on their own. Too many residents are struggling to make ends meet and when people are barely able to afford their rent or mortgage, they don't spend on activities that stimulate the economy. New Jersey's has plenty of luxury homes but we need more modest affordable rentals and starter homes for our diverse population.

Making investments that create affordable homes and revitalize communities delivers big returns.

Recently, the National Association of Home Builders found that building 100 multi-family homes generates $11.7 million in local income, $2.2 million in taxes and other revenue for local governments, and 161 local jobs in the first year. Another investment making big returns is the Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit (NRTC) program. This $10 million dollar per year program leverages over $5 per dollar invested in some of New Jersey's most distressed communities. Since its inception in 2002, it's generated 2,524 jobs and over $3.9 million in property taxes. Imagine what can be accomplished if New Jersey were to expand that program.

During his campaign, Murphy outlined a plan to make homeownership in the state more affordable and accessible. He also pledged to end the practice of diverting affordable home funding to other parts of the state budget, to expand counseling programs to keep people in their homes and repurposing foreclosed properties as affordable homes, and to increase tax credits to create new homes.

We can achieve these objectives. We can make New Jersey a place that thrives and where we can all afford to call home.

Staci Berger is the the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey president and CEO.

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Democrats in Hudson County are not all playing nice.

Four of the county's mayors, including Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop and Union City Mayor Brian Stack, announced yesterday that they will not back Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise for re-election next year.

DeGise says he will go ahead with the re-election bid anyway, with the support of North Bergen Mayor and state senator Nicholas Sacco. Stack is also a state senator.

Stack's influence is expected to rise next year when he takes control of the Hudson County Democratic Organization from Vincent Prieto.

Other Hudson politicians came out in support of DeGise after yesterday's announcement.

"While we are grateful for County Executive DeGise's service, we look forward (to) working with new county government leadership that will complement shifts related to a growing and changing population, as well as an increased regional influence," the joint statement said.

DeGise endorsed Fulop's successful re-election bid last year.

"I have run and won seven elections in Jersey City and five countywide elections, and I'm confident that Hudson County residents know my record and will continue to give me their support," DeGise said in response to the announcement.

The statement came just a day before DeGise is expected to deliver his annual state of the county address.

With the new opposition, should DeGise go forward with his re-election bid?

Vote in our informal, unscientific poll and tell us how you voted in the comments.

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The stereotype of the poor, uneducated jihadist is largely incorrect, and this does not surprise anybody who has looked closely at the matter. At least a half of international jihadists have a solid upper-middle class background, and around 15% are even richer. The poor are a significant minority, except in the Maghreb region (which includes Western Europe, for Sageman). Most of the converts, however, are from disadvantaged classes.

Sageman also says international jihadists are neither ignorant nor deprived from access to education. Their level of education is well above the international average, and well above the average in the Global South. Moreover, if we ignore the Maghreb region, the average education level of jihadists is even higher.

The author also makes some interesting points: most international jihadists are better educated than their parents, who did not became jihadists. In addition, many of them are well-travelled, so Sageman assumes they know the world and are definitely not narrow-minded ethnocentrists. He adds, therefore, that we cannot say they were brainwashed.

Let us pause for a moment. Sageman claims more than once his research destroys the stereotypes. He may be destroying the medias discourse. However, for anyone who has carefully studied the issue, all this is banal stuff -- there is until now nothing new under the sun. Most of his findings can be found in Kepels early works.

Kepel, if my recollections are correct, said the jihadists had a problem with the kind of modernisation that occurred in their countries. He never said they did not know what it is.

Sageman underlines the centrality of Egyptians in international jihad. Anybody who knows Egyptian history knows a specific group played an important role in this countrys political life: the university students with rural middle-class backgrounds, who were newcomers to the city and its unique way of life. They were bachelors, separated from their family, with little access to women.

The real question is why these students opted for almost fifty years for nationalist and leftist ideologies, and then, starting from the second half of the seventies, preferred Salafist ideologies. Many obvious answers can be proposed, but this would lead us too far astray.

Suffice to say that a colleague, Selma Belaala, conducted a study on jihadism in Algeria and reached a conclusion of the same type, but with some significant differences. If my recollections are correct, she found that most jihadists were from families which were newcomers to the areas where they lived. This affected their social cohesion. I dont say this to score petty points, but to underline the necessity of better academic cooperation in studying jihadism.

A very interesting finding by Sageman uncovers a huge difference between the Maghreb and Southern Europe, versus the Middle East and Asia. The jihadists from the first two zones are more often than not later converts to religious practice, while Asian and Middle Easterners were often devout as children.

The paradoxical consequence is that the Al-Azhar argument, that we need more religious teaching to counter extremism," will raise a red flag in western countries, and is opposed by many secularists in our country.

In addition, and more generally, this warns us against universal remedies. Countering extremism requires approaches that differ from one country to another. However, studying the others experiences is necessary.

Sageman also tells us that three quarters of his sample are married. This only partially contradicts the conventional wisdom. It proves you can be involved in terrorist activities while being married, but we should add most terrorists were recruited by the movements before the marriage. The organization provided them with values, goods, meaning -- and wives.

Then, Sageman focuses on the psychological explanations. This is his own specialisation, and he warns us against the advice of other experts who know nothing about terrorism nor about psychiatry. He pointedly tells us many would like to explain the jihadists' bestial crimes by depravity, mental disease or psychological disorder. Those who perpetrate such crimes and who willingly kill themselves to achieve these crimes are surely psychopaths or sociopaths. Unfortunately, this is not the case, says Sageman.

The main problem is his sample is too small (ten cases) to be significant, but his discussion is nevertheless interesting. In his sample, no one has significant mental illness. Two or three have mild troubles, but this is the average in any population. The jihadists are not different.

Are they psychopaths or sociopaths? This means they are recidivists and they had already abnormal behaviour during their childhood. Sageman was able to gather data on 61 jihadists. Fifty seven were normal.

By itself, the sample is too small to be relevant. Nevertheless, Sageman has a powerful argument. Terrorism is a collective activity, and a risky one. Terrorist movements cannot afford the luxury of hiring abnormal people, with a proven record of strange behaviour, unforeseen initiatives, and inability to work within a team. When they discover that a recruit suffers from that kind of trouble, they sideline him.

This was the case with the missing terrorist, Zakarias Moussawi, of September 11 infamy. His participation could have compromised the success of the operation, so the leaders decided to expel him. The conclusion is staggering, but logical: those are the most unlikely to do evil alone are the most likely to do it collectively. Alas, this sounds plausible.

Are terrorists criminals who looked for a religious legitimation of their lust and hatred? Many European terrorists were petty criminal before their conversion to Salafist ideology. Nevertheless, this ideology brought solace and meant redemption. They were, in a way, born again." True, they still perpetrated crimes, but the goal was no longer the same. Instead they tried to fund jihad.

Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence, many psychiatrists try to salvage the mental illness paradigm. They opt for three different explanations: pathological narcissism, paranoia and authoritarian personality.

Sageman scrutinizes the three explanations. There are many forms of pathological narcissism, but the result is aggressiveness against a scapegoat, who is identified as the cause of the pain and failings. This behaviour can be a kind of unconscious revenge against parents, or a revenge for their parents or a mix of both. Sageman claims this does not apply to international jihadists. But are his arguments convincing?

TO BE FOLLOWED

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For too long, the office of New Jersey's State Medical Examiner has been a toothless manager of a fragmented system with no central oversight, inadequate staffing, meager funding, egregious standards, and horrendous quality control.

By now, you probably have read about the consequences, thanks to the extraordinary 18-month examination from NJ Advance Media: New Jersey has the most dysfunctional ME system in the country, one known for bungled crime investigations, people wrongly jailed, homicides wrongly classified, corpses being mangled, body parts being lost, criminals roaming free, and families left without answers.

The latest horror show featured a defrocked funeral director named Joe Fantasia, who has been paid $643,000 with taxpayer money since 2013 to deliver bodies to the lab despite 70 violations, such as stacking corpses in the back of a filthy, unrefrigerated vehicle and needing 8 hours to take a 30-minute trip.

Such tales of the macabre are by no means uncommon in our state, and they scream out for measures such as the "State Medical Examiner Act," which is working its way through the Legislature this month.

The bill will bring organization, funding, and probity to our biggest bureaucratic embarrassment, and it starts by giving actual authority to the state's ME, Dr. Andrew Falzon.

Under the current system, suspicious deaths are investigated by one of 10 offices. Falzon controls two regional offices - one in the north, one in the south - but counties or independent contractors control the rest.

All these operations are under the jurisdiction of the state Attorney General, yet they aren't required to meet a set of standards, and the ME himself has limited control over the county facilities. Funding, meanwhile, is a political adventure.

The result: "Most places are an institutional fiasco," said bill sponsor Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex. "The attorney general's office hasn't shown the proper respect for the ME office, and the last administration had no interest in changing anything. Read the newspaper to see how that's working out."

Vitale's bill will shift oversight to the state Department of Health and give Falzon the authority to maintain oversight for all 10 offices, establish statewide standards, and make changes or fortify staff whenever those standards aren't met.

It also establishes a network of accredited pathologists and other medical professionals to carry out death scene investigations, with new requirements for performing autopsies.

Joseph Fantasia photographed outside his home on Steeplechase Way in Hackettstown on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018. (Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

So New Jersey has a chance to bring its Medical Examiner system into the 21st century, but only if it isn't nickel-and-dimed to death again. Whereas the ME has been funded through multiple budget lines, this bill grants Falzon "responsibility for ensuring that the entire ME system is adequately equipped and staffed" and provides the ME with its own toxicology lab.

"That means if the ME needs five more guys, we get five more people who are fairly paid this time," Vitale said. "The ME makes his case before the Budget Committee rather than going to the Attorney General hat in hand."

New Jersey's last two MEs quit in protest over the lack of funding and authority. Our government didn't seem to notice. Nor did it notice that our medical examiners take an average of 100 days to complete a postmortem investigation. Ten years ago, it took only 20 days. The national average is 60.

Such failure does real harm to a criminal justice system, because if you want to convict someone of murder and give comfort to bereaved families, you tend to rely on a death-investigation protocols. It becomes even more important if you want to convict someone who is actually guilty.

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
For New Jersey's new governor, it was a tale of two storms.

With a powerful nor'easter set to pummel the state Wednesday, Gov. Phil Murphy held a news conference Tuesday afternoon to announce he was declaring a state of emergency hours before the snow began.

And when the storm arrived -- canceling school, disrupting transportation, causing widespread power outages, and leaving up to two feet of snow in some places -- Murphy was visibly active Wednesday. He visited command centers across the state, met with officials, and gave press interviews urging motorists to stay off the roads -- all of it catalogued on his social media pages.

"Please stay safe, stay home," Murphy said during an on-camera interview with CBS-2 TV in which his blue State Police hat and jacket was pelted by snow.

But that came after Murphy, a Democrat, faced some criticism from Republican state lawmakers for not declaring a state of emergency after a nor'easter last Friday that left tens of thousands of people in north Jersey without power for days -- specifically Hunterdon, Morris, Somerset, and Warren counties.

"It's blatantly obvious residents living in Republican counties are not a high priority for this governor," Assemblyman Erick Peterson, R-Hunterdon, said in a statement Tuesday.

For many New Jerseyans -- especially those who don't follow politics -- this week was the first chance to get a first-hand glimpse of Murphy in action.

Major weather events are often high-profile tests for political leaders, as Murphy's predecessor, Republican Chris Christie, knows well.

Christie was heavily criticized for remaining in Florida on a family vacation to Disney World at the end of his first year in office while the state was blasted with a blizzard in 2010.

But his response to Hurricane Sandy was one of his most vaunted moments as governor, as Christie, dressed in what became his trademark blue fleece, traveled up and down the state to oversee recovery.

"It's important to be very visible," said Carl Golden, a former press secretary to former Republican Gov. Tom Kean and Christie Whitman. "The image that it projects is: It's gonna be difficult, but we're on top of this. People want to hear their leaders are doing something. It alleviates their anxieties."

All you had to do Wednesday was log onto Murphy's Twitter page to see his response Wednesday:

At the @NJSP in Holmdel as we monitor the storm. NJ residents are urged to stay indoors and keep the roads clear. If you need to go outside, use extreme caution. Visit https://t.co/W8V3Qz3blA for more info. pic.twitter.com/QdxWbImFbR  Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) March 7, 2018

Here at the Statewide Traffic Management Center in Woodbridge, where we are constantly monitoring roughly 300 miles of roadway in real-time. pic.twitter.com/SRuhuhlodL  Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) March 7, 2018

Golden gave Murphy a passing grade for Wednesday's response, saying he "got out in front of it very early."

But critics say that wasn't the case this past weekend. Nearly 100,000 homes lost power after Friday's nor'easter, many for days.

Republican Assemblymen Anthony M. Bucco, R-Morris, and Parker Space, R-Sussex, chastised Murphy for not declaring a state of emergency that time.

"Like most of my neighbors, the lights in my business remain off and my wife said she's sitting in a dark, cold office," Space said in a statement.

State of emergency declarations do not give towns money, though they do authorize state personnel and equipment to be sent to areas that need help.

But Golden and others say a state of emergency would not have helped much because the power companies -- not Murphy -- have control over the outages.

"He can jump up and down on JCP&L all he wants, but that's not gonna get the power restored quickly," Golden said.

Ben Dworkin, director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship, dismissed Republicans' qualms as "political rhetoric."

Murphy said Tuesday that he and state officials deemed a state of emergency was "not warranted" for last Friday's storm, but Wednesday's storm had "a different requirement and a different potential."

He apologized to residents during a radio interview Wednesday morning, saying the state and power companies "should have been better prepared" for last week's storm.

"Those people are frustrated and mad as heck, and I don't blame them," Murphy told WCBS 880-AM. "And I am, too. God willing, we're gonna do a post mortem and learn from this."

More than 20,000 homes and businesses were still without power as Wednesday's storm hit. That number jumped to more than 300,000 by the end of the night.

Murphy is scheduled to meet with residents in Sussex County on Thursday and discuss efforts to restore power. And later in the day, he'll hold a press briefing on storm recovery at the State Police compound in West Trenton.

Dworkin said Murphy's handling of both storms has been "fine"-- but the "final verdict" will come over the next few days.

"How quickly does power get back on? How quickly do the roads get plowed? How quickly do things get back to normal?" Dworkin said. "He'll be judged on that."

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
With hundreds of thousands of New Jersey homes and businesses still without power in the wake of back-to-back nor'easters, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday he's ordered a state investigation into how utility companies responded to the winter storms.

Murphy said about 225,000 customers remain in the dark after the second storm slammed the state Wednesday -- down from about 350,000 at the height of the nor'easter.

About 17,000 are still powerless since the first storm last Friday.

"That is completely and wholly unacceptable," Murphy said during a news conference at the State Police compound in West Trenton. "You can imagine how they're feeling."

Murphy said he's instructed the state Board of Public Utilities -- which regulates the private power companies that service New Jersey -- to examine "what went wrong" and if "all preparedness measures were taken."

"My gut tells me they were not," the governor said. "And if they've not been, that is entirely inexcusable."

Murphy also announced there will be hearings in areas served by Jersey Central Power & Light, the company with the most outages.

In addition, BPU President Joe Fiordaliso said all utilities based in New Jersey must have their crews in state until power has been restored to all customers.

Murphy said he and Fiordaliso held a conference call Thursday with the heads of the four companies that provide power in the state: JCP&L, PSEG, Orange & Rockland, and Atlantic City Electric.

The governor said he and Fiordaliso expressed "deep frustration -- frankly, it turned from frustration to anger on my part -- at the uneven preparedness and uneven response."

Gov. Phil Murphy holds a news conference Thursday at the New Jersey State Police compound in West Trenton.

Murphy said JCP&L has 125,000 customers still without power but does not have a timeline yet for when all electricity will be restored.

PSEG has 80,000 customers without service and is projecting power to be back as soon as midnight Saturday.

Atlantic City Electric Company has 8,000 and is expecting power as soon as midnight Friday.

Orange & Rockland has 20,000 but no timeframe yet.

Murphy said other than schools, police stations and hospitals, the 17,000 JCP&L customers without power since Friday "will be prioritized."

Some Republican state lawmakers on Thursday called for Murphy to activate the National Guard to help the state recover.

"All available resources should be made available to assist residents and businesses," state Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, R-Union, said in a statement.

Assemblyman Kevin Rooney, R-Passaic, said it's needed because "clearly JCP&L isn't equipped to handle these outages."

Murphy added that "JCP&L's apparent lack of readiness remains a major issue that must be and will be looked at further."

Doug Colafella, a spokesman for JCP&L, said: "Right now, our focus is on restoring our customers."

"When that job is done, we'll cooperate fully with any investigation," Colafella added.

PSEG spokeswoman Karen Johnson said the company will work with Murphy and the BPU to "determine how we can enhance our storm hardening and response on behalf of our customers."

Murphy said JCP&L operates in "some of most wooded and rural areas of the state" and that winds, downed trees, and blocked roads have made restoring power difficult.

"But that's five, six days ago," he added.

Fiordaliso said there were "steps" instituted after Hurricane Sandy that utility companies must take to prepare for storms, and part of the investigation will focus on if they were followed.

"If they have not, they'll be held accountable for it," the BPU president said.

Because the utilities are private companies, the state does not have a direct hand in restoring power. But the BPU can put pressure on the companies and punish them.

Asked what punishment they could face, Murphy said it's "too early to speculate."

Fiordaliso said the BPU can order the companies to perform certain tasks and then follow their progress.

Murphy said the state wants to make sure the state and utilities are "better prepared" for the next storm.

For Murphy, the storms were the first major weather events since he took office Jan. 16.

"You live and you learn," he said. "We want to be self-critical and look in the mirror and say, 'What could we have done better?'"

State Police Superintendent Patrick Callahan said there were 715 car accidents as a result of Wednesday's storm, though none of them were fatal.

Murphy said there appears to be one death related to the storm: a man who died in a burning car Thursday after driving his vehicle around a barricade in Franklin Lakes and striking a live power line that had been knocked down.

Asked why there was so much trouble with stalled and abandoned vehicles, Murphy noted there were 149 trees down on state and interstate roads.

"We had pleaded with people to stay home," Murphy said. "The fact that it rained longer probably lulled people into thinking this was not what they thought it was gonna be."

Murphy said his state of emergency declaration stays in effect until at least the end of Thursday night.

He also stressed that melting snow is expected to turn to ice as the temperature drops overnight.

"If you're going out after dark, please, please, please be careful," Murphy said.

Jersey digs out after 2nd winter nor'easter 70 Gallery: Jersey digs out after 2nd winter nor'easter

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Led by health insurers and power companies, special interest organizations spent more than $90 million on lobbying efforts in 2017, a year marked by a government shutdown over the governor's demands of a leading insurance company and a clash over a $300 million nuclear energy subsidy.

The latest lobbying totals come from an Election Law Enforcement Commission analysis of company and industry group's spending on in-house lobbyists and outside agents, advertising and other costs of doing business.

"In a democratic society, policy-making often doesn't come easy or quietly. And the most intense debates often lead to heavy lobbying activity," said Jeff Brindle, ELEC's executive rirector.

"In 2017, several issues that are still on the hot burner in 2018 led to record spending by some of the parties with the biggest stakes."

It comes as no surprise that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, targeted by former Gov. Chris Christie last year as he searched for money to fund his fight against the state's opioid epidemic, was 2017's biggest spender.

Horizon insures 3.8 million people in New Jersey, including roughly 400,000 who obtained coverage after Christie agreed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Christie spent the first half of 2017 attacking the nonprofit for not parting with $300 million from its reserves to help fund addiction treatment. The company argued its reserves were not a surplus and would only be sufficient to cover total claims of its some 3.8 million members for 75 days in the event of a calamity like a hurricane or flu epidemic.

Christie accused Horizon's executives of taking advantage of the needy to line their pockets. The money grab led to a shutdown of state government over Fourth of July weekend.

And Horizon didn't stay silent. The Latino Consumer Alliance launched a campaign called Hands Off Healthcare, funded by the insurer, that held rallies and parked a truck airing videos opposing the money grab outside the Statehouse in Trenton.

The Latino Consumer Alliance received $1.4 million from Horizon, according to the ELEC report.

Horizon spent $2.5 million in 2017, compared with $778,000 in 2016, ELEC said.

Horizon was followed closely by the Public Service Enterprise Group, of which PSE&G is a subsidiary. The utility company spent $2.35 million last year, as lawmakers considered a $300 million annual subsidy for its nuclear plants.

PSEG claims its plants are going to start losing money and without help it will have to take them off line, costing south Jersey thousands of jobs.

The bill under consideration at the end of last year included a $0.004 per kilowatt hour surcharge that would cost the typical New Jersey household about $3.40 a month, or $40.80 a year, according to the state Division of Rate Counsel. PSEG said it would be closer to $31.

With a new governor, 2018 saw a new version of that subsidy, rewritten to include clean-energy programs.

According to ELEC, a co-owner of two of the three Salem County plants, Exelon Generation Company LLC, spent another $194,000 to boost the proposed subsidy.

An opponent, New Jersey Coalition for Fair Energy, reported to ELEC that it spent $939,000 on its efforts. The recently formed group includes Texas-based Calpine Corp. and Dynegy Inc., Washington, D.C.-based Electric Power Supply Association, and Princeton's NRG Energy Inc., ELEC said.

At $1.2 million, the fourth-biggest spender was the Occidental Patroleum Corporation, which, ELEC said reported meeting "with several administration and legislative officials over a hearing on superfund legislation."

Under a settlement with the state Department of Environmental Protection, Occidental is paying $190 million stemming from its contamination of the Passaic River.

The NJ Food Council also dramatically kicked up its spending last year to $1.15 million in its campaign against a $15 million wage. It directed $920,000 to Protect New Jersey Jobs, which opposes the minimum wage hike.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
Before a snow storm, everyone loads up on what grocers call the Holy Trinity -- bread, eggs and milk.

But what we lob into our carts after we've pried that last loaf of Home Pride Wheat Bread from the cold, dead hands of a rival shopper varies greatly.

An informal supermarket survey covering a five-mile radius in Essex County in the 24 hours preceding Winter Storm Quinn proves that we all stress-eat, albeit differently.

At City Supermarket in Maplewood, which specializes in ethnic products from Central and South America Eastern Europe, its best sellers after eggs (43,000, to be precise), bread rolls and milk were snacks, some savory, some sweet.

City's customers raced to stock up on Russian tea cookies, Polish wafers and, of all things, seltzer water, said Juan Gualdarrma, but also on chili-lemon flavored tortillas, plantains and Wise Variety Pack chips.

Just a mile away in South Orange, a different scene was unfolding at a local Stop & Shop, where it was rotisserie chickens that flew out the door in fourth place behind bread, eggs and milk.

"It was incredible," said Joe Heiser, Stop & Shop's store manager, who marveled at selling 300 rotisserie chickens in just 24 hours on Wednesday. "But if you don't have power..."

If another winter storm threatens, Heiser said he isn't sure if distributors can keep up with demand.

Heiser says he has only two cases of chicken left to last him through the rest of the week, having run through 25 cases in the last 24 hours.

Given that PSEG's outage map shows more than 1,500 customers still without power in Newark Heights, Maplewood and South Orange, Heiser might be right to be concerned.

Meanwhile, just another mile down the road, at Kings in Maplewood, the top sellers -- after the usual trio of bread, eggs and milk -- were actually breakfast foods. The bacon sold out first. So did pancake mix, frozen waffles, sausages and hot chocolate mix.

"People have this fantasy," said Ed Greenwald, King's general manager, "of sitting in front of a fire, under a blanket with their kids, drinking hot cocoa."

Greenwald says that regardless of whether that happens, "it becomes a excuse to shop, driven by a combination of panic and the need for a sense of accomplishment."

Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
A ban on trucks in New Jersey during Wednesday's winter storm would not necessarily have avoided the chaos created when jack-knifed and disabled tractor trailers blocked traffic and prevented crews from plowing highways, state officials said Thursday.

Motorists were stranded for hours on Routes 287, 78 and 280 Wednesday, in part due to jack-knifed trucks bringing traffic to a complete stand still. Some motorists had to be rescued by state police via snow mobile.

Out of "thousands of tractor trailers" passing through the state during the storm, "six or so caused the biggest headaches," including one truck that tried to pass a group of plows working on Route 287, Gov. Phil Murphy said in explanation of the decision.

"We thought of it, but a truck ban is very rare here," Murphy said during a news conference in West Trenton on Thursday afternoon. "It cuts both ways."

New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut all enacted some type of truck ban ahead of the massive storm that hit the Northeast Wednesday, but New Jersey does not often ban trucks from its highways during inclement weather, officials said.

In fact, the state has only has only banned trucks twice in the last several decades during storms in 1996 and in 2015, said State Police Superintendent Colonel Patrick Callahan.

The 2015 ban was lifted "as fast as it was put on," Murphy said. Such a ban affects shipments of vital goods such as food, Murphy added.

Disabled vehicles and tractor-trailers prevented plows from keeping up with the storm on many highways, said Stephen Schapiro, a New Jersey Department of Transportation spokesman.

Jack-knifed tractor trailers were reported on Routes 78, 80 , 287 and the New Jersey Turnpike on Wednesday. Some of those tractor-trailers were still blocking traffic on Route 287 on Thursday morning.

New York State and Pennsylvania banned specific trucks from highways and some toll roads before the ferocious nor'easter that dumped more than two feet of snow in northern and western New Jersey counties.

Pennsylvania's ban covered tandem trucks with two trailers and empty trucks that could over turn easily, said Dianne Gutierrez-Scaccetti, acting state transportation commissioner. New York's truck ban, ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was more comprehensive but was not stringently enforced, she said.

"It's not an easy thing to do or an easy thing to enforce," Gutierrez-Scaccetti said, adding that officials may stage more heavy duty tow trucks to remove disabled trucks in future storms.

Pennsylvania officials declare truck bans on a case-by-case basis, sometimes with the governor's office and PennDot working together, said a PennDot spokeswoman. Predominately truck bans are declared by the DOT in that state, she said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy declared a ban on truck pulled trailers on Wednesday evening after New York officials requested it, said an Associated Press report.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Cherry Blow Dry Bar, an express service hair salon that offers memberships, is looking to set up shop in Metairie. It will be the New Jersey-based franchise's first salon in Louisiana.

The salon is scheduled to open in May and will be located at 210 Veterans Memorial Blvd. The owners, cosmetologist Shalanta Jackson and her husband, Oliver Jackson of New Orleans, said the salon will be one of three they hope to open over the next few years.

"We are thrilled to bring Cherry Blow Dry Bar to Metairie," Shalanta Jackson said in a news release. "We look forward to introducing our specialty services along with our affordable and convenient membership model to local consumers."

The salon offers services including blowouts, hair extensions, makeup services and treatments. Customers can choose from a menu of nine hairstyles and offers three types of memberships at various cost levels, starting at around $60 for two monthly blowouts.

The Cherry Blow Dry Bar brand was founded in 2013 and has salons operating in eight other states.

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Instacart, which picks up groceries and other items and delivers them to shoppers' homes, is starting up its service in the New Orleans area on Thursday (March 8).

The company says it offers same-day delivery on items from "trusted local stores." New Orleans area residents will be able to order goods from Rouses Market, as well as Costco and Petco.

Ethan Mergen, a spokesman for the company, said Instacart made its move into New Orleans after receiving requests from locals and securing a partnership with Rouses. The company's areas of service include New Orleans, Metairie, Houma, Thibodaux, Covington, Gretna, Slidell, Marrero, Mandeville, Belle Chasse, Schriever, Kenner and Lockport.

Customers can use Instacart's mobile app to add items to a virtual cart and choose their delivery window. Options range from within one hour to up to five days in advance. An Instacart "shopper" then navigates the parking lot, swoops through aisles and waits at check out, picking up the items the customer requested.

For orders of $35 or more, the delivery fee is $5.99. Members can also opt to sign up for the Express membership, which costs $149 a year and covers unlimited, same day-delivery on orders of $35 or more.

The company aims to hire at least 100 shoppers in the New Orleans area.

Apoorva Mehta, a former Amazon employee, pioneered Instacart in 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the last six years, the company has garnered big name investments from the likes of Whole Foods Market Inc. and Comcast Ventures.

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Its rise has not been without setbacks, however. Last spring, the company shelled out $4.6 million to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from its alleged treatment of the employees who shop for customers' groceries. That fall, a slew of Instacart workers participated in a strike against the company, reporting wages as low as $1 an hour.

Instacart has continued to expand despite the controversy, setting up shop in major metropolises like Los Angeles and small South Carolinian cities like Anderson.

Target will launch a similar service in New Orleans on March 13. Their same-day delivery options run through Shipt will cost $99 a year.

Instacart believes their local relationships and varied marketplace options separate their service from that of the supermarket giant.

"There is something for your animal at Petco. There are club options for bulk goods at Costco. And there is a one-stop shop option like Rouses," Mergen said.

Instacart users can add goods to their cart from Costco without a membership, permitting a whole new group of buyers to access its vast miscellany of groceries and everyday essentials, said spokeswoman Andrea Toch.

However, Instacart shoppers are limited to grocery-type items at Costco, so those who want a 7'6" teddy bear will have to shop the old-fashioned way.
Southwest Airlines' new plane puts the state bird in flight, with a nurturing pelican spreading her feathers over a Boeing 737-700 dedicated to the Bayou State.

Southwest unveiled Louisiana One on Wednesday (March 7) in New Orleans, which in 1979 became the first destination served beyond Southwest's home state of Texas, according to a news release from the company. Louisiana One features an artist's rendition of the state flag, complete with a large mother pelican and her trio of hungry young.

Southwest introduced the plane with a Carnival-inspired event with local musicians at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The airline also released a time-lapse video showing the painting of the plane's design.

The airport's largest carrier, Southwest Airlines continues to expand its offerings in New Orleans, according to Kevin Dolliole, aviation director for Louis Armstrong International.

The airline, which began service with a daily nonstop departure to Houston, now operates more than 50 daily nonstop departures to 21 destinations from New Orleans. This spring, Southwest plans to add three new flights from New Orleans to Sacramento, San Jose and Cancun.

Louisiana One joins 11 other state-themed 737s in the Southwest fleet. Other states represented include Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Texas, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico and Tennessee.
The Times-Picayune is accepting nominations for the 2018 T.G. Solomon Award for Entrepreneurship and Civic Engagement.

Awarded annually since 2015, it recognizes individuals who have achieved success as entrepreneurs while dedicating themselves as engaged citizens in our community.

"This award memorializes our grandfather by embodying the values that his life represented: business acumen, creativity and devotion to the community," Gary Solomon Jr., T.G. Solomon's grandson, said.

Tim Williamson, president of NOLA Media Group, describes the award as forward-looking.

"The T.G. Solomon Award for Entrepreneurship and Civic Engagement is not a lifetime achievement award but an award for what you will do in your lifetime to make New Orleans a better place," Williamson said. "This is our highest honor for entrepreneurship in New Orleans."

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The 2017 recipient of the honor was Matt Schwartz, partner and co-founder of the Domain Companies.

To qualify for the T.G. Solomon Award for Entrepreneurship and Civic Engagement, the candidate must be a resident of the New Orleans metropolitan area and founder of a for-profit venture launched in 2000 or later.

Nominations should include a brief description of the nominee's entrepreneurial accomplishments, civic activities, character and why they are worthy of recognition. Explain how the nominee honors the tenets of the award, with regard to conducting themselves with passion, courtesy and respect, honesty and integrity and a dedication for serving customers and the well-being of the community (not solely as a job-creator).

Submit nominations via email to nominate@nola.com. Nominations should be received by the end of the day Sunday, March 25.
Authorities were searching for a 14-year-old boy Thursday (March 8) who they believe jumped into the Mississippi River after a police chase, according to the St. Bernard Sheriff's Office.

The boy was driving a car that had been reported stolen from Orleans Parish two days earlier, a sheriff's office news release said. Officers tried to stop the Infiniti FX35 for a suspected moving violation near the intersection of Paris Road and Casa Calvo Street in Chalmette shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday.

The car's driver refused to stop, "and fled at a high rate of speed" southbound on Paris Road, heading onto the Chalmette Ferry landing. The car then crashed into the guardrail of the ferry landing, and with the car stuck, the driver -- believed to be the 14-year-old -- ran southbound on the ferry landing. He was last seen in the Mississippi River, on the east side of the Chalmette Ferry landing, according to the sheriff's office.

Officials did not name the boy. Search and rescue efforts are underway, and the sheriff's office is working with the U.S. Coast Guard and the New Orleans Harbor Police.

The car had a passenger, a 15-year-old boy who ran from the car but was detained by deputies. He was booked with resisting arrest, possession of stolen property and obstruction of justice, according to the sheriff's office.
Two charter schools in New Orleans were closed and a 15-year-old boy arrested Wednesday (March 7) in connection with a social-media post involving threats against both schools, according to New Orleans police.

Administrators at The NET Charter High Schools called the NOPD about 8 a.m. regarding an Instagram post including threats "to shoot up" The NET schools in Gentilly and Central City--that day.

Officers were immediately dispatched to both schools, police said, and the city's Office of Homeland Security was notified. The campuses are at 6601 Franklin Ave. and 1614 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.

"Out of an abundance of caution, school administrators chose to close both campuses for the day," according to an NOPD news release issued late Wednesday.

The 15-year-old boy, a student at the NET's Central City campus, was booked into the juvenile jail with terrorizing, intimidation and interference with the operation of schools, police said.

The boy was arrested after detectives, along with NOPD Tactical Intelligence Gathering and Enforcement Response Unit officers, executed a search warrant at his home in the 2500 block of Thalia Street. The search turned up "several electronic items commonly used in posting to social media," police said.

Local schools, along with schools across the state and country, have been contending with a series of threats in the wake of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 dead.

Anyone with further information on the threats to The NET Charter High Schools is asked to call NOPD 3rd District detectives at 504-658-6030.
A man arrested in December in connection with a 7th Ward murder was indicted Thursday (March 8), while charges against two others initially accused in the killing have been refused.

An Orleans Parish grand jury indicted Tyrone Myles, 23, on second-degree murder and obstruction of justice charges in Antoine Brumfeld's death.

Brumfeld was fatally shot Nov. 26, 2017, in the 1900 block of North Rocheblave Street.

Police initially arrested Derrick Truehill, 39, and Dytrell McEwen, 19, and booked them with second-degree murder.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office refused the charges against Truehill and McEwen on Feb. 26, according to spokesman Ken Daley.

Detectives found Truehill's driver's license near Brumfield's body at the scene, and later learned he had called 911 and requested homicide detectives come to his home a few blocks away.

According to a warrant for Myles' arrest, Truehill told investigators he was physically fighting with Brumfield, whom he believed stole money and a gun from his house, and witnessed his slaying. He denied killing Brumfeld.

Truehill said McEwen and Myles came over during the fight.

Myles' arrest warrant said he was seen removing a gun from his waistband and running toward the scene. Myles then fired, hitting Brumfield more than once, according to the warrant.

Brumfield was the father of an 8-month-old daughter, and worked as a security guard on Bourbon Street, his uncle said. His brother described him as a "good little dude," who never got into trouble."

Myles was being held on a $350,000 bond, but Criminal District Judge Robin Pittman increased it to $1.25 million after the indictment was read, according to the district attorney's office.

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Jail records show McEwen is still in the Orleans Parish jail, being held on a warrant. Truehill is no longer listed as an Orleans Parish inmate.

Other indictments handed up Thursday include:

- Terrance Crawford: Crawford, 26, was indicted for second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder in connection with a double shooting in the Desire area in October.

Police responded to a shooting inside a home in the 2900 block of Oliver White Avenue just before 8 p.m. on Oct. 21, 2017. Two victims inside were taken to the hospital.

Anthony Adams, 34, died of his injuries. A 25-year-old man survived the shooting.

Crawford was arrested in December in Houston. He is being held on a $1.5 million bond.

He is facing two armed robbery and a felon in possession of a firearm charges in a separate case.

- Roosevelt "Gigi" Rumbley: Rumbley, 30, was indicted for second-degree murder in connection with a shooting that occurred around 10 a.m. in the 1100 block of Louisa Street near the corner of St. Claude Avenue, on May 12, 2017.

The shooting victim is listed as John Doe because investigators determined identification found on the deceased man was falsified, according to the district attorney's office.

Rumbley has previous convictions in Orleans Parish for marijuana possession, illegal carrying of a weapon and cocaine distribution.
A Gulfport, Miss., man and woman were booked on drug charges after deputies in Texas stopped their recreational vehicle and found nearly 500 pounds of marijuana inside, the Times Record News reported.

The suspects, Jake Phong To, 39, and Loan Thi Tran, 60, own hair and nail salons in Harrison County, Miss., according to the Biloxi Sun Herald, citing police sources.

To was driving the RV 7 mph over the speed limit in Wichita County in north Texas on Friday (March 2) when deputies pulled him over, the Times Record reported. The deputies observed "deceptive behavior" consistent with narcotics smuggling.

A Sheriff's Office police dog found the marijuana in cardboard boxes and suitcases in the rear bedroom of the RV, according to the Times Record story. To and Tran were arrested and taken to the Wichita County Jail. Their bonds were set at $150,000 each.

Harrison County, Miss., Sheriff Troy Peterson said the suspects are also wanted on fraud charges in Mississippi, the Sun Herald reported.

Click here to read the entire Times Record News story and here to read the Biloxi Sun Herald version.
A 19-year-old man was booked Wednesday (March 7) with second-degree murder in a January killing that occurred during a gun purchase on an Algiers street, according to New Orleans police.

Alquan Johnson was arrested by the NOPD's Violent Offenders Warrant Squad in the 1100 block of Clouet Street, in the St. Claude area, and booked about 5:15 p.m. into the Orleans Justice Center jail.

Johnson, who was wanted by NOPD Detective Joseph Jefferson, is accused in the Jan. 11 fatal shooting of 20-year-old Kwame Morris on Flanders Street.

According to the NOPD, officers called to the scene about 8:20 p.m. found Morris lying face-down in a ditch in the 1700 block of Flanders Street, next to a running vehicle. Morris was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

The shooting, initially reported in the 1600 block of Flanders, took place when Morris and another person met up with two other people to buy a gun, New Orleans Police said Friday.

"An argument ensued and one of the subjects pulled out a gun and shot the victim," police said in an initial report.

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The night of the shooting, as family members of the victim began grieving, investigators scoured the roadway for evidence, spreading more than 15 lime-green evidence cones across the Flanders Street near Bringier Street.

Another evidence cone sat away from the others, placed in front of a pickup near the body shield. Several more cones were placed further toward Lawrence Street, in a driveway and on nearby sections of grass and road.

By about 10 p.m., roughly 30 people, many of them family, had gathered by the police tape on Flanders Street. A line of five officers stood in a line behind the tape, as a man shouted at police to tell him if the victim is his son.

"They just doing their job," another man said, trying to lead the first man away.

"I'm his dad -- I'm just doing my job," the man responded.

Anyone with information on the fatal shooting is asked to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-STOP.
A Metairie doctor who admitted to plotting to illegally dole out narcotics, threatening to kill law enforcement agents and scamming health care providers was sentenced to 10 years in prison Wednesday (March 8), according to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Shannon Christopher Ceasar, 45, formerly co-owned and operated out of Gulf South Physician's group in Metairie. Police arrested him in July 2016 after using a confidential source to expose the doctor's drug scheme.

The 120-month sentence is the latest in a long legal saga involving the physician, who peddled opioids for sex and money, used proceeds from narcotics sales to purchase an arsenal of weapons, and raved that he would kill Drug Enforcement Administration agents, according to court documents.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman also ordered Ceasar to pay back more than $150,000 swindled from Medicare, Medicaid and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana.

"Dr. Ceasar was extremely remorseful and accepted responsibility for his actions," his attorney, David Courcelle, said Wednesday in response to the sentencing. "He is happy to put this matter behind him and move forward with his life, for both him and his family."

Ceasar surrendered his medical license and forfeited a stockpile of 33 firearms, including four Glock pistols, four shotguns and seven rifles, that were seized during his original July 2016 arrest.

"Threats of violence against law enforcement agents will not deter us from our commitment to pursue and bring to justice the providers who are contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic for their own enrichment," said Special Agent C.J. Porter in a news release Wednesday.

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Court documents released in July alleged Ceasar ranted about the DEA's efforts to "---- with doctors trying to help people" and warned that "if they come into my ------- clinic they're going to get a big surprise, because I'm going ------- kill them and send them home in a body bag."

Ceasar pleaded guilty in April 2017 to charges of conspiracy to distribute and dispense Oxycodone, threatening to assault or murder federal law enforcement officers and committing and attempting to commit health care fraud.

He had faced up to 20 years in prison for drug conspiracy and 10 years each on the threats to agents and the healthcare fraud.

Ceasar's office manager, Stephen Guilbault, pleaded guilty in November 2017 to using Ceasar's pre-signed prescription forms to dole out narcotics to himself, a girlfriend and a relative, as well as conspiring to issue prescriptions to patient without a license.

Guilbault's sentencing is set for May 2.

Update: This report has been updated with comments from Ceasar's attorney.

NOLA.com|The Times-Picayune's Laura McKnight contributed to this report.
A New Orleans man who previously pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography was sentenced Thursday (March 8) to serve five years in federal prison.

Tim Nall, 62, also will have to pay $5,000 in restitution to victims and register as sex offender, per the sentence imposed by United States District Judge Carl J. Barbier.

According to U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans' office, authorities found approximately 2,080 images and 2 videos of children engaging in sexually explicit conduct on digital devices seized from Nall's home.

Investigators said Nall searched for, downloaded, and saved images and videos of children younger than 2 years old engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

The FBI investigated Nall's case and determined that between 2005 and 2017, Nall visited a website dedicated to the advertisement and distribution of child pornography, as well as the discussion of the sexual abuse of children.

The website also served as a place to discuss the security of individuals who seek to sexually exploit children online, according to the U.S Attorney's Office.

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One of four teens accused of firing shots at undercover Louisiana State Police troopers in 2015 has pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Quincy Shaw, 17, accepted a plea deal minutes before his trial was scheduled to start Wednesday (March 7) in Criminal District Judge Camille Buras' courtroom, according to District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's office.

Shaw and three other teens were arrested following a Dec. 11, 2015, incident in which shots were fired from a stolen Chevrolet Silverado at state troopers who were in an unmarked car.

A passenger in the pickup fired at the troopers, who were following the truck, District Attorney's Office spokesman Ken Daley said.

The troopers were following the truck, waiting for backup from marked police units to make a traffic stop.

One bullet struck the troopers' front bumper, and three others went through the windshield. Shrapnel hit one trooper, and two others were injured by shattered glass, Daley said. The troopers did not return fire.

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Investigators found the abandoned truck two days later, and forensic fingerprint and DNA evidence helped them identify Shaw and his three co-defendants as suspects, Daley said.

Shaw's co-defendants, Robert LeBlanc, 19, Damond Scott, 18, and Anthony Crawford, 20, are awaiting trial on attempted second-degree murder charges.

Scott also is awaiting trial on unrelated second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder and obstruction of justice charges. He is accused of firing a rifle-style gun at an SUV as the victims were driving in the 1700 block of Mandeville Street in St. Roch last year.

The Orleans Parish Coroner's Office said 29-year-old Tommie Wimberley died from his injuries a week after the Jan. 17, 2017, shooting.

Police said at the time that Wimberley and a wounded man were found inside a stolen black Hyundai SUV that crashed after the driver lost control.

The Hyundai crashed into a white Buick SUV, which was then pushed against a house on the block. A woman standing near the intersection was injured in the crash, police said.
Two St. Bernard Parish men were charged with unlawfully dredging oysters from a private area Monday morning, according to a release Wednesday (March 7) from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF).

LWDF agents arrested Nicholas Russell, 21, and Dalton Kieff, 21. The men did not have written permission to dredge in the privately leased area, the release said.

Agents were on patrol when they saw Russell in a boat scooping up oysters. They returned a half sack of oysters to the water and seized an oyster dredge and Russell's boat, the release said.

Upon talking to the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office, the agents discovered that both Russell and Keif had active warrants for their arrests. They were booked into the St. Bernard Parish Jail.

Unlawfully dredging oysters from a private lease without written permission can carry up to a $950 fine and 120 days in jail. The men also could have their oyster harvester license revoked for up to a year.
Two local nonprofits are taking over schools that failed to maintain the standards required for charter renewal. The Orleans Parish School Board in January selected Firstline Schools to operate ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy, and InspireNOLA Charter Schools was selected to run Dwight D. Eisenhower Academy of Global Studies.

OPSB only received one application to take over each school. Cultural Arts Academy at 3128 Constance Street dropped from a C to a D in November. Eisenhower at 3700 Tall Pines Drive maintained a D last year, but state-authorized charters have to obtain a C grade or higher to receive a second renewal as of December 2015.

Charter schools privately operate schools using public funds according to contracts they sign with school boards. An OPSB spokeswoman Wednesday (March 7) stated the new charter contracts with Firstline and InspireNOLA will begin on July 1.

FirstLine currently operates Samuel J. Green Charter, Arthur Ashe Charter, the Phillis Wheatley Community School, Langston Hughes Academy, and Joseph S. Clark Preparatory High School. Four of the operator's schools earned a C-grade last year, while the Clark campus earned a D-rating.

A Firstline spokeswoman stated Tuesday that Cultural Arts Academy students will be automatically re-enrolled unless their parents choose otherwise. Heather Muntzer said they are in their initial phase of parent outreach, which will culminate this week with Firstline's final two of seven parent meetings at the Constance Street building.

InspireNOLA currently operates Alice M. Harte Elementary Charter, Edna Karr High, Wilson Charter, Eleanor McMain Secondary, and McDonogh No. 42 Charter School. Two of InspireNOLA's schools maintained their A-grades last year, and McMain and Wilson earned a C. McDonogh No. 42 received an F in 2017, according to Louisiana's Department of Education.

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InspireNOLA stated Wednesday that all current Eisenhower students will be automatically re-enrolled once the nonprofit operates the school, according to Emily Hartnett, InspireNOLA's executive director of strategy and advancement. Hartnett stated the nonprofit has been instructed to coordinate parent outreach efforts through the Parent Advocators organization, which has helped the nonprofit host an initial parent information meeting at Eisenhower.

"Additionally, we will be hosting school tours of Harte and Wilson for current Eisenhower parents and hosting multiple meetings and community events for the parents and community of Eisenhower in the upcoming months to fully engage with them and build a strong foundation for next year," Hartnett stated.

Meanwhile, less than four months remain until all state-run public schools in the city return to the jurisdiction of OPSB. The district currently oversees 41 schools, including 37 charters. It remains to be seen what OPSB will do with Sylvanie Williams College Prep after the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last December decided not to renew its charter. State school performance scores showed College Prep received an F in 2017.

Although a move out date has not been set yet for College Prep, a New Orleans College Prep spokeswoman Tuesday stated the school will close in June. The charter operator is already assisting parents with finding a new school for its 420 students.

. . . . . . .

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
Classes will resume Thursday (March 8) at The NET: Central City and The NET: Gentilly after an online threat to the schools spurred closures at the school buildings Wednesday.

A released statement from The NET Executive Director Elizabeth Ostberg stated an anonymous threat was posted to the school's Instagram account Wednesday morning. She said her staff has been working with the New Orleans Police Department to investigate the threat.

Ostberg stated police have traced the IP address associated with the person who made the threat. Authorities currently "are in the process of apprehending the individual" behind the threat, she stated.

The NET: Central City is located at 1614 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, and the The NET: Gentilly is located at 6601 Franklin Avenue.

The threat follows the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people. Several threats have been made in the New Orleans metropolitan area since the Florida shooting, though police have found most of those threats weren't credible. A Sophie B. Wright School student was arrested Tuesday, after she made the threats via a restroom wall at the school, according to NOPD.

NOPD Tuesday stated the 17-year-old suspect confessed to the crime and stated the threats were a prank. She was booked with criminal mischief and disturbing the peace by threats.

. . . . . . .

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
It wasn't 48 hours after Dylann Roof slaughtered nine people inside Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, that some of the relatives of the people he killed were telling him that they forgave him.

That those grieving family members got to a place of forgiveness at all is remarkable. That they got to that stage in a matter of days seems all together shocking.

However, the grieving family members' willingness to forgive doesn't surprise Hannibal Lokumbe. Having sat at the feet of Mamie Till Mobley (whose son Emmett was lynched in Mississippi in 1955) and having sat at the feet of Mabel Steele, who attended a Philadelphia, Miss., church the Ku Klux Klan firebombed to lure civil rights workers to their deaths, Lokumbe has learned that forgiveness is the only path from such tragedies.

On Saturday, after a silent procession from St. Louis Cathedral to St. Augustine Church in Treme, Lokumbe, a trumpeter, will perform his composition "Crucifixion Resurrection: Nine Souls A Traveling" with Anthony Wonsey on piano, Rachel Jordan on violin, Herlin Riley on drums and David Pulphus on bass. Janice Chandler Eteme will be singing soprano, Rodrick Dixon tenor and Jonte Mayon alto.

Lokumbe refers to the nine souls lost -- Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, the Rev. Daniel Simmons Jr., the Rev. Sharonda Singleton and Myra Thompson -- as not just martyrs but as saints.

Local artist Steve Prince has painted each of them in a way you might expect to see the images of saints painted on a church's stained-glass window.

Prince's paintings will be unveiled the evening before the performance at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz and Heritage Center at 1225 North Rampart Street. At that same event, the Amistad Research Center will present "I Remember Birmingham," a panel discussion moderated by retired UNO history professor Raphael Cassimere and that includes Janice Collins, whose sister Addie Mae was killed in the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church.

For Saturday's performance, four young women from McDonogh 35 -- Jasmine Boskent, Nyla White, Aisjah Hicks and Kaitlyn Perkins -- will serve as narrators for the program. They will represent the four girls who were killed in Birmingham, provide guidance to the nine people killed in Charleston. The performance, raising funds to support St. Augustine, is sponsored by the Philadelphia Orchestra, where Lokumbe is the composer-in-residence. The work debuted in Philadelphia, Pa., in June 2017. "Crucifixion Resurrection" is a free performance, but those who attend are asked to consider making a donation to St. Augustine Church.

"Everyone, at some point, is crucified," Lokumbe said in a Feb. 21 interview. And everyone has the potential, he said, "to be resurrected. Even the lost soul that slayed our angels in Charleston."

A musical prodigy, the trumpeter formerly known as Marvin Peterson played behind soul and blues legends Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Lightning Hopkins, Etta James. Later he played with jazz heavyweights Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Charles Mingus. But there was a superficiality about the nightclub scene that the young performer couldn't abide. Back in the fields of east Texas, where he'd been raised, his grandfather had showed him that to get a good crop you have to plant a seed six inches deep. That's what he's been doing ever since he left the night clubs, he said: trying to plant six inches.

Forgiveness is a running theme in his work. In 2004, when he was the composer-in-residence at the Contemporary Arts Center, he performed "Trilogy" in honor of the previously mentioned civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964. As he was writing that piece, he invited me to travel with him to meet Mabel Steele, a then-86-year-old woman who was at Mount Zion Methodist Church the night the Klan burned it.

Edgar Rae "Preacher" Killen was the Klan leader who had masterminded the attack on the church and the subsequent murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerne. Lokumbe wanted to arrange a meeting between Killen and Steele. He wanted to help foster some healing. But a source in Mississippi said Killen was evil and that there was no chance he'd talk knowing that anything he said could lead to him being charged with murder.

Indeed, two years after we traveled to Philadelphia, Killen was indicted and later convicted of manslaughter. Sentenced to 60 years, Killen died in prison in January.

But Lokumbe was trying to broker forgiveness. That explains why he wasn't shocked that some of the relatives in Charleston were willing to forgive.

"Isn't there a place for anger?" I asked him during a visit to New Orleans Feb. 21. I was remembering stories from some relatives of the Charleston 9 who had fallen out with their kin who seemed to leap to forgive Roof.

"Anger has no spiritual benefits," Lokumbe said. "Anger is like a drug. It only satisfies the physical realm. It deals with the finite. That's why the only thing that ever comes from anger is destruction."

He thinks forgiveness is necessary not for the person who has offended, but for the person who has been harmed. "There is no way you can hear the Creator," he said, "with an angry heart or an unforgiving spirit."

I asked him how long after the June 2015 massacre it took him to start composing his piece. "After it happened, it took me three or four months to mourn." Then he began working.

"Like my grandmother said, 'When you get through crying, get to plowing.'"

IF YOU GO

Crucifixion Resurrection: Nine Souls A Traveling

Saturday: After a silent procession at 1:30 p.m. from St. Louis Cathedral to St. Augustine Catholic Church in Treme, Hannibal Lokumbe will perform his composition at 3 p.m. Attendees are asked to wear white for the procession.

Friday: At 6:30 p.m., Steve Prince's paintings will be unveiled at the George and Joyce Wein Jazz and Heritage Center at 1225 North Rampart St. The Amistad Research Center will present "I Remember Birmingham," a panel discussion moderated by retired UNO history professor Raphael Cassimere.

Admission: Performance is free, but those who attend are asked to consider making a donation to St. Augustine Church.

Jarvis DeBerry is deputy opinions editor for NOLA.COM | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com or at twitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
A federal judge in Baton Rouge on Thursday (March 8) denied a request by the owner of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline to suspend her own Feb. 23 preliminary injunction temporarily blocking construction of the pipeline across the Atchafalaya Basin.

Bayou Bridge Pipeline and its contractor, Stupp Bros., asked that U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick's ruling be stayed until the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals considers their appeal of her ruling. A three-judge panel of the appeals court will hear arguments on the matter Tuesday (March 13).

Both sides in the appeal have been given until April 16 to file written briefs with the 5th Circuit.

"The court finds that BBP's requested relief would turn the court's ruling on its

head," Dick wrote in denying the stay. "The court has already weighed the potential harm to BBP and found that the public interest and threat of harm to the environment outweighed the purported economic harm to BBP."

Dick said the companies had failed to present "any justifiable reason" to change her ruling while the case is on appeal.

"The court maintains its finding that such a considerable project - that will have

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permanent damaging environmental impacts to the Atchafalaya Basin - should at least be halted until this matter can be tried on the merits," the ruling said.

Dick's preliminary injunction applies only to construction within the Atchafalaya Delta, and allowed the company to continue to build portions of the pipeline elsewhere along its proposed 163-mile route from Lake Charles to St. John Parish.

Grow America's Infrastructure Now, which represents a variety of oil and gas industry and construction industry groups nationwide, including the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, issued a statement saying that Dick had ignored the negative impact on the state's economy and on workers because of the work stoppage.

"The GAIN Coalition is hopeful that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will give thoughtful consideration to the continuing effects of the preliminary injunction against the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, and to the reality that the project has already been fully approved and permitted by the appropriate federal and state regulatory authorities," the statement said.

The construction halt was requested by the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Gulf Restoration Network, Waterkeeper Alliance and Sierra Club and its Delta chapter. They contend the pipeline project will permanently harm ancient cypress trees in its path and the pipeline will disrupt water flow through the swamp.

The groups also claim that the potential for oil spills is significant, and that mitigation projects required by the Army Corps of Engineers are inadequate.
While winter's freakishly cold weather shut down roads and burst water pipes, a few Louisiana scientists rejoiced. They hoped the freezing temperatures would give them an edge in a losing battle against a plague of insects sucking the life out of roseau cane, a wetland plant that holds large areas of the coast together.

"We thought the freezes would kill the them," Louisiana State University biologist Rodrigo Diaz said. "But guess what? They're still alive."

Winter appears to have hardly fazed the scale, a tiny Asian bug that appeared on Louisiana's coast a few years ago. The scale was kept warm and cozy by the very plant it's attacking. Tucked in the narrow space between leaf and stem, the scale enjoyed a "microclimate" within the cane, Diaz said.

Roseau also shields the scale from chemical bug killers the LSU AgCenter has tested as a possible solution to the outbreak.

"It is like a fortress," Diaz said. "They are very well protected."

Roseau is one of Louisiana's best natural defenses against coastal land loss. Its thick roots grab and hold soil while its densely-packed stalks build new land by trapping passing river sediment. Predictions are dire for Plaquemines Parish if it loses roseau. The parish is already converting from land to water faster than other parts of Louisiana's coast.

Even without the rapid die-off or roseau, Plaquemines could lose half its land area within 50 years due to erosion and sea level rise, according to the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

"Without roseau, we're going to wash away twice as fast," said Earl Armstrong, a Plaquemines cattle rancher and former parish conservation district official.

The loss of roseau will make oil and gas infrastructure more vulnerable to storm surges and hurricanes, scientists say. Rapid erosion in the lower delta could imperil busy shipping channels and require more dredging, say river pilots and members of the shipping lobby.

In July, the AgCenter estimated that the scale had damaged or killed about 225,000 acres of roseau. The AgCenter doesn't have an updated estimate, but one is clearly overdue.

"We're seeing a lot more thin cane (stands) and more open water," Diaz said.

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Observed from the air in February, much of the remaining cane in the lower Mississippi River Delta looked brown and lifeless. Close-up, the cane was brittle and without leaves. Many plants had the residue of scale egg casings, indicating the insect had recently hatched and was on the move in search of greener cane.

Roseau normally browns during winter, but it's never looked as weak and thin as it does now, said Robert Perez, a board member of Port Eads, a fishing outpost at the Mississippi River's mouth.

"It's brown but usually so thick in winter," he said. "It's never, never been like this."

Diaz is predicting an explosive spring for the scale population. The density of scales on roseau cane has increased in recent months. Scientists were counting a few dozen insects per stem in May. By September, the count had risen to about 350. Female scales go dormant in the fall but not before converting their bodies into egg incubators. Each flea-sized female is loaded with about 100 eggs.

The AgCenter had hoped to use satellite imagery to assess the size of the damage and die-off but funding never materialized. Also falling short of dollars is the AgCenter's research and restoration plan, which is still seeking support from several coastal parishes. The plan's proposed budget has grown in recent months, and is now in need of $450,000.

It's unclear how or when the scale, a native of China and Japan, arrived in Louisiana. Extensive damage was first investigated by state agencies at Armstrong's behest in 2016.

The scale feeds exclusively on the sap of roseau cane. Roseau, known as reed or phragmites outside the Gulf states, is common in Asia, Europe and North America. The lower Mississippi Delta has one of the world's largest and most diverse stands of roseau, with at least four varieties, including a European strain that the scale avoids. Like the scale, the European roseau is considered an invasive species. Millions of dollars are spent keeping it in check on the East Coast, where it clogs waterways and crowds out native plants.

Fighting the scale plague with controlled fires is a non-starter because roseau wetlands are crowded with hundreds of oil wells and miles of pipeline. Insecticides would likely be ineffective thanks to the protection afforded by the plant, and they would harm other wetland and aquatic species, including shrimp and crab.

Fostering the growth of European roseau is the most promising idea so far, but it would require expensive control measures to keep it from becoming the problem it is in other parts of the country.

Tristan Baurick covers Louisiana's coastal environment for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Email: tbaurick@nola.com * Twitter: @tristanbaurick * Facebook: Tristan Baurick and Louisiana Coastal Watch.
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The New Orleans VA hospital is looking to hire 107 registered nurses.

The Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System will hold a recruitment event for registered nurses Saturday (March 10) at the Veterans Medical Center at 2400 Canal St., Building Q. The hiring event will go from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Free parking is available in the garage at the corner of Galvez Street and Tulane Avenue.

"We are hiring registered nurses to work in medical, surgical, operating room, ICU, community living center and mental health," Brinda Williams-Morgan, the VA's associate director for patient care services, said in a press release.

Williams-Morgan said recent nursing graduates with experience in the medical and surgical areas will be considered for positions as well as licensed practical nurses. Applicants should bring a copy of their resume and license.

Human resources and hospital nursing staff will be on site for interviews and will be extending same-day, preliminary job offers to qualified candidates. Information will also be available on existing and upcoming vacancies within the regional VA health care system and how to apply for positions. Applicants can also look at all available positions at www.usajobs.gov or contact the VA recruitment center at 504-507-7627.

The hiring event comes as open nursing positions continues to outpace the number of qualified nurses available in the United States. The Louisiana Center for Nursing has warned of potential registered nurse shortages across south Louisiana by 2020, including in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

One factor contributing to the boom in nursing positions is the country's population of aging adults, which continues to grow and demand more care. The population of American seniors is expected to grow 60 percent by 2030, from 43.1 million in 2012 to 69 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects there will be more than 1 million jobs available for registered nurses in the U.S. by 2022.

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.
Self-described "transracial'' Rachel Dolezal now has a documentary, coming out April 27 on Netflix. Dolezal resigned as president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, in 2015 amid a furor over racial identity that erupted when her parents said she had been posing as black for years when she is actually white.

The film, which Netflix describes as an "intimate documentary," is called "The Rachel Divide.''

Vulture.com has a first look at a trailer for the documentary, and it shows Dolezal and one of her sons. Filmmaker Laura Brownson spent two years following Dolezal and her two sons, Vulture reports. The documentary is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival before appearing on Netflix. Read the full Vulture report here.

In the trailer, her son says, "I resent some of her choices, and I resent some of the words she's spoken in interviews.

"She can identify whatever she wants to be because it's her business," her son says. "But when it's put in the limelight, I don't think you should be pissing people off more than they already are..."
A Wall Street Journal story titled "There's a Tuba Crime Wave Sweeping America," seeks to demonstrate that, despite the challenge of swiping the biggest brass band instrument, tuba thefts are a thing. The story hinges on the Feb. 24 theft of New Orleans tuba player Ben Jaffe's instrument, which has provided the Preservation Hall Band's bass line for 12 years.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Levitz suggests that tubas, which range in value from $2000 to $20,000, are stolen from high school band rooms and garages mostly for their resale value.

As previously reported, Jaffe said the tuba was taken as the band was packing up after a Saturday night performance with drummer Tony Allen at the popular Music Box Village in the Bywater neighborhood. The car where the instrument had been stowed was parked a few blocks away from the venue, Jaffe said, and was unattended as the band members gathered their belongings. Jaffe said he didn't know the instrument was missing until the car was unloaded late Sunday and early Monday morning.

Jaffe's sousaphone tuba, manufactured by Mario Corso, is boldly marked with the name Preservation Hall on the bell. The band is offering a reward for the return of the tuba or for anonymous tips. Call 504.418.0367.

Doug MacCash has the best job in the world, covering art, music, and culture in New Orleans. Contact him via email at dmaccash@nola.com. Follow him on Twitter at Doug MacCash and on Facebook at Douglas James MacCash. As always, please add your point of view to the comment stream.
A Mississippi woman faces numerous charges after leading police on a multi-jurisdictional, two-state car chase that hit speeds of more than 100 mph and finally ended when her vehicle ran out of gas, St. Tammany Parish authorities said.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office said its deputies joined the chase around 7 p.m. Tuesday (March 6) after being alerted that the Pearl River County, Miss., Sheriff's Office and Picayune, Miss., Police Department were chasing a stolen blue Nissan Altima south on Interstate 59. St. Tammany deputies jumped in as the chase crossed the West Pearl River and entered the parish.

At various points, the chase included officers and deputies from the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Office, the Slidell Police Department, Louisiana State Police, Pearl River County Sheriff's Office, Hancock County Sheriff's Office and Picayune Police Department.

The chase ended when the driver of the vehicle, Kacy Nix, 29, of Picayune, crossed back into Mississippi on Interstate 10 and the Nissan ran out of gas. She was taken into custody at around 7:30 p.m. by the Pearl River County Sheriff's Office.

Nix led a chase that went from southbound I-59 i to Orleans Parish, then included a U-turn and sped back across the lake on eastbound I-10 before heading back into Mississippi, the St. Tammany Sheriff's Office reported.

Speeds exceeded 100 mph and at one point Nix crashed the Nissan into a St. Tammany deputy's vehicle, the Sheriff's Office said.

In St. Tammany Nix faces charges of reckless driving, hit and run and aggravated flight from an officer. She also faces charges from the other jurisdictions involved in the chase, the Sheriff's Office said.
A man described by authorities as an "extremist'' was arrested in Robert last week on weapons charges out of the state of Missouri, Ponchatoula police said.

Phillip Anthony Guidry, 48, who has an address in Loranger, was arrested March 2 on a fugitive warrant by Ponchatoula police, the department said in a news release.

During a search of what police said was Guidry's "fortified residential compound," officers seized a number of firearms, including a "suspected illegal fully-automatic rifle," the news release said.

"Guidry is considered a domestic extremist and is self-identified as a sovereign citizen," the news release said.

Guidry was booked into the Tangipahoa Parish Jail, the news release said.

Ponchatoula Police Chief Bry Layrisson said Thursday that Guidry is wanted in Missouri on a charge of being a convicted felon in possession of a gun. Layrisson said Guidry had also been booked on Louisiana charges after the firearms were found in his home, which he described as being surrounded by a tall fence topped with razor wire and having bullet-proof roll-down window covers.

Layrisson said the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office arrested Guidry during a stop in Robert because authorities were concerned about trying to arrest him at his home. Layrisson also said the fully-automatic rifle did not have a serial number.

The Ponchatoula Police Department's news release said the police department was assisted by the Sheriff's Office, Louisiana State Police and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
A Mandeville woman pleaded guilty Wednesday (March 7) to tax evasion for failing to report nearly $500,000 in income in 2011. Marcia Denise Jordan, 46, will be sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle on June 6, according to U.S. Attorney Duane A. Evans.

Jordan was charged Feb. 16 with tax evasion in a one-count bill of information. In an effort to avoid taxes, she filed Internal Revenue Service form 4868 - an application for automatic extension of time to file U.S. individual income tax returns - falsely stating her total estimated tax liability was $0 and that she had made $10,000 in payments to the IRS, despite knowing that she had received $493,266 in taxable income that year, according to the bill of information.

Based on the $493,266 income, Jordan owed $157,579 to the federal government for 2011, the bill of information reported.

As part of her plea agreement, Jordan agreed to pay $313,899 to the IRS for taxes she owes for the 2009-2014 tax years, according to a news release from Evans' office. She faces a maximum prison sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000.

Evans praised the work of the IRS, U.S. Secret Service and the Slidell Police Department for their work in investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Maestri and Department of Justice Tax Division trial attorney Grace Albinson are in charge of the prosecution.
The people of Louisiana should know that when the Zombie apocalypse comes, Baton Rouge offers the best chance of survival in this state, according to an analysis of a report by the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
Roseburg, OR (97470)

Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 47F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 47F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
In the very last years of his leadership, deposed police chief Gen Kale Kayihura was lurched into a full-blown war with top-ranking police officers, several police insiders interviewed over the last two days have revealed.

According to the officials, who asked not to be named so as to speak freely, Kayihura, who was sacked on Sunday, had become deeply suspicious of all his senior officers. Even his guards largely drawn from the Counter Terrorism Unit were out of favour.

Gen Kale Kayihura (2nd L) talking to his junior policemen

Kayihura believed, the officials said, that his people were leaking damaging information about the force, himself and were out to fail him. To secure himself, the inspector general of police reportedly dropped his police guards and had them replaced by personnel from the Police Presidential Guards (PPG).

The PPG is trained by the elite army formation Special Forces Command. They are assigned to protect the Vice President, First Lady and Prime Minister.

Kayihura, according to the interviewed officials, also carefully avoided engaging with his police directors numbering about 25. Many are assistant inspectors general of police. He preferred to work with juniors who took orders without question.

If he fell out with a particular director, according to the interviewed officials, Kayihura would create a parallel department. This is what happened to the sidelined but once cherished Grace Akullo, the director of the Criminal Investigation Directorate.

When the two clashed, the general ignored the directorate and created multiple investigative arms including Special Operations Unit, Compliance Unit, Witness Protection, etc. All these were doing CID work. This, the sources said, severely demoralised staff at CID. Out of frustration, some asked for early retirement, which the police chief readily granted.

Some officials who have worked closely with the outgoing IGP said he now spent very little time in his official office at Naguru police headquarters  and avoided meetings. His unavailability made consultation with his directorates impossible since he also rarely answered telephone calls.

On Tuesday police spokesman Emilian Kayima stoutly defended his outgoing boss. On the charge of inaccessibility and deep-seated suspicion of ranking officers, Kayima said, In my view, he [Kayihura] was more accessible to all officers who wanted to see him much as he chaired many meetings outside his office such as the Police Advisory Committee (PAC) and Joint Intelligence Operations Committee (JOC), which took some of his time. He could meet officers.

Kayihura chaired so many meetings and had a lot of work. If people believed [he had little time for his office], they would have brought that issue before to find a solution. But bringing such issues now cant help, and police will remain with so many challenges, Kayima added.

Kayima further noted that if Kayihura was suspicious of police personnel around him, it was down to individual character. He also insisted that Kayihuras guards were largely policemen although he was unsure whether they were trained by SFC.

By the time Kayihura was sacked after 12 years at the helm of police, the force was the most indebted government institution. During the recent Police Council meeting at Kigo, Kayihura revealed that Shs 125 billion is owed to various suppliers. Currently, the force is severely short of fuel and food.

Kayima acknowledges they are grappling with lack of food and fuel but insisted that Kayihura cannot be blamed for their indebtedness. He said some issues are a shared responsibility.

On budget matters, police officials told The Observer that Kayihura preferred to work with just three people; Under Secretary Rogers Muhirwa; Director, ICT, Amos Ngabirano; and former Parliamentary Police commander, now director of Welfare and Production, AIGP Lemy Twinomugisha.

Within police circles, these men were referred to as the three pigeons. They reportedly made most of the financial decisions, side-stepping most directors.

Another official talked about how Kayihura pumped a huge chunk of the police budget into his pet project; Mayumba kkumi community policing, crime preventers, buying motorcycles for crime preventers, and dishing out money to civilian functionaries.

He encountered stiff opposition for this style from many directors. For instance, at the height of police scandals and the mysterious murders of women last year, Kayihura had numerous run-ins with police spokesman Asan Kasingye. Kasingye was ultimately fired.

When women were being killed in Nansana, Katabi and Entebbe, and the public criticism of polices handling of the situation grew louder, Kasingye and Kayihura disagreed on how to communicate to the public.

Kasingye, an official said, refused to parrot Kayihuras narrative of cause and effect. Kasingye wanted to present a near-to-the-truth narrative, a suggestion roundly rejected by Kayihura. Frustrated, Kayihura reportedly accused Kasingye of failing him.

An angry Kasingye in one heated meeting, according to a police official familiar with this incident, asked Kayihura whether he was the same spokesman who failed him in the aftermath of Andrew Felix Kaweesis murder.

In March 2017, police struggled to find a coherent message and response to the shocking broad daylight assassination of the assistant inspector general of police, his driver and bodyguard.

Kasingye reportedly asked the general, When you were sick [last year] and I covered for you, was I failing you then?

Last year, Kayihura spent some time out of the public eye, prompting speculation that he was critically ill. Kasingye went to a great length at the time, reassuring journalists and the public that his boss was fine and in good health.

To counter the speculation, Kasingye released pictures of the police chief away in Turkey, looking in relatively good health. Kasingye laughingly declined an interview yesterday. He said he didnt want to appear in the newspapers.

Kayihuras almost weekly reshuffles and deployments of officers also injected a heavy dose of confusion in the force. The communication department, which he considered a total disaster and his weakest link, was in disarray in his last days.

The same could be said of many other departments and police regional offices. Consider how Kayima, the police spokesman is a Senior Superintendent of Police, yet he was deputised by Polly Namaye who holds the higher rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police!

And Fred Enanga, the former spokesman himself, who is even more senior than both Kayima and Namaye, being a Commissioner of Police, was rendered redundant in the same department.

Elsewhere, dubious deployments and redundancies became commonplace and a source of tension and discontent.

Inside sources say the last nail in the coffin was driven by the circular he issued directing police officers summoned by any sister security agencies; CMI, ISO, to share security information to first seek permission from headquarters.

This was understood by many sister security agencies as an attempt to isolate police as an institution and as a snub to the presidents call for joint operations by security agencies.

Other sources have pointed to the kidnap and handover of refugees to Rwanda, for which some of Kayihuras closest allies in the police were arrested by soldiers, as the last straw that broke the camels back.

The endless feuding with other security bosses, his close association with tainted Boda Boda 2010, and the security agencies collective failure to rescue Susan Magara who was last week murdered by kidnappers must have left the appointing with no choice but to act.

ACHIEVEMENTS

But all was not gloom and doom during Kayihuras reign. He got rave reviews for increasing the police purse, force strength through training, and increasing its mobility. One interviewed official said at least every police post in the country, including in hard-to-reach areas, now has at least a motorcycle.

Go to any remote place, you wont fail to see a police motorcycle, he said. The police patrol fleet increased tremendously with the only drawback being the lack of fuel.

And in terms of human resource, under Kayihura, they grew from about 14,000 men to 43,000 strong. However, many cadet officers, even though university graduates, returned from training with their shiny three-stars only to remain undeployed.

And relatively fewer lower cadre police constables were recruited yet it is they who do most of the leg work. Nevertheless, many police officers have undergone specialised training in Italy, China, Ireland, Rwanda and Kenya, among other countries.

Many others have trained at Gadaffi Junior Staff College in Jinja and at Bwebajja, along Entebbe road. The police budget also swelled five-fold under Kayihura, from less than Shs 100bn to Shs 570bn.

Kayima noted that Kayihura has midwifed the construction of decent police housing in the expected 1,020 housing units in 17 blocks at Naguru police headquarters.

Seven blocks are about to be completed; each block has 60 units he said.

spinmukasa@gmail.com

Additional reporting by Zurah Nakabugo


David Cicilline

Congressman David Cicilline introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act on March 7 to exempt publishers from antitrust laws so they can negotiate collectively with tech platforms (Facebook, Google) over the terms regarding distribution of their content.

The Rhode Island Democrat said his bill would ensure consumers have access to the best journalism possible.

He noted that Facebook and Google control about 75 percent of the US digital advertising market.

If passed into law, Cicilline said his bill would address the imbalance in the marketplace brought on by the platforms dominance and help trusted news publishers protect themselves and their readers.

His bill would provide a 48-month window for newspaper companies to iron out terms for the flow of subscription and ad dollars back to publishers.

The National Newspaper Assn., American Society of News Editors and National Media Alliance are among groups to back Cicillines measure.

David Chavern, CEO of the NMA, commended the Congressman for his commitment to ensure fair competition with the platforms and for his work to preserve quality journalism.
SEND IN THE GOATS SEND IN THE GOATS  Glinda, one of several goats from Lets Goat Buffalo in Orchard Park from Sept. 8 through Sept. 10. The goats were at the Birdsong Preserve...

BOE meeting spirals out of control as mask debate rages on Tuesdays board of education meeting marked one of the most contentious in recent memory, as the issue of masking children during the school day was once again on the minds...

Art festival, health fitness business expo set for this weekend Two long-awaited gatherings will finally occur in Orchard Park this weekend as one mega event for the community to enjoy. The Orchard Park Chamber of Commerce will present the Orchard...
Oregon parents won't get a state tax break on money they save to pay for K-12 private schooling, lawmakers have decided. That's despite a federal tax break approved in December as part of a congressional tax overhaul.

Traditional college savings plans  known as 529 accounts  have offered an incentive for families to save for college. Parents and students invest in 529s and, if the accounts increase in value, they can withdraw that increase  tax free  to pay for college expenses.

Oregon has an additional incentive: people who put money into a 529 account can deduct that contribution from their taxable state income  up to $4,660 in 2017, for married couples filing jointly.

The tax cuts President Donald Trump signed in December expanded 529s to apply to private, K-12 schools, too. But Oregon has opted not to extend its own tax break to private K-12 education.

Oregon Democrats, including state Treasurer Tobias Read and some lawmakers, said they opposed using the state's college savings plan for private education.

House Bill 4080, passed during the just-completed legislative session, disconnects Oregon from that part of the federal tax code. The bill is awaiting Gov. Kate Brown's signature.

James Sinks, communications director for the Oregon State Treasury, said 529 withdrawals for K-12 expenses will still receive the federal tax break on their earnings.

"However, for Oregon tax purposes, the taxpayer will need to add back to their taxable income any amount of that K-12 distribution that received the state tax deduction," Sinks wrote in an email. Additionally, he said, that taxpayer would need to add any earnings from that 529 to their state taxable income.

Census data shows that Oregon had close to 60,000 private school students in 2016, the latest year for which numbers are available. That's 9.4 percent of all Oregon schoolchildren, just below the national average for private school education.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699
WASHINGTON  Unswayed by Republican warnings of a trade war, President Donald Trump ordered steep new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the U.S. on Thursday, vowing to fight back against an "assault on our country" by foreign competitors. The president said he would exempt Canada and Mexico while negotiating for changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The new tariffs will take effect in 15 days, with Canada and Mexico indefinitely exempted "to see if we can make the deal," Trump said. NAFTA talks are expected to resume early next month.

"The American aluminum and steel industry has been ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices. It's really an assault on our country. It's been an assault," Trump said at the White House. He was joined by steel and aluminum workers holding white hard hats.

American steel and aluminum workers have long been betrayed, but "that betrayal is now over," Trump said. The former real estate developer said politicians had for years lamented the decline in the industries, but nobody was willing to take action.

As he has indicated previously, Trump said he would levy tariffs of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum. But he said during a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day that the penalties would "have a right to go up or down depending on the country and I'll have a right to drop out countries or add countries. I just want fairness."

Business leaders, meanwhile, have continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce raising the specter of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trump's rollback of regulations.

"We urge the administration to take this risk seriously," Donohue said.

The president suggested in the meeting with his Cabinet that Australia and "other countries" might also be spared, a shift that could soften the international blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners.

"We're going to be very fair, we're going to be very flexible but we're going to protect the American worker as I said I would do in my campaign," Trump said.

People briefed on the plans ahead of the announcement said all countries affected by the tariffs would be invited to negotiate with the administration to be exempted from the tariffs if they can address the threat their exports pose to U.S. manufacturers.

he exemptions for Canada and Mexico could be ended if talks to renegotiate NAFTA stall.

The process of announcing the penalties has been the subject of an intense debate and chaotic exchanges within the White House, pitting hard-liners against free trade advocates such as outgoing economic adviser Gary Cohn.

The fight over tariffs comes amid intense turmoil in the West Wing, which has seen waves of departures and negative news stories that have left Trump increasingly isolated in the Oval Office, according to two senior officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

Congressional Republicans and business groups are bracing for the impact of the tariffs and the departure of Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed them.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, appearing at a session with Home Depot employees in Atlanta, said ahead of Trump's announcement, "I'm just not a fan of broad-based, across-the-board tariffs." He pointed to the store's many products that rely on steel and aluminum.

More than 100 House Republicans wrote Trump on Wednesday, asking him to reconsider "the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences" to the U.S. economy and workers.

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, said he plans to introduce legislation next week to nullify the tariffs though he has acknowledged that finding the votes to stop the president's actions could be difficult.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminum industries and protect national security.

-- The Associated Press
The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday threw out the conviction of a Wilsonville methamphetamine dealer because his defense attorney didn't tell him that he faced mandatory deportation.

Javier Garcia-Navarro, 48, had lived many years in the U.S. as a permanent legal resident when he was caught in 2012 selling methamphetamine to an informant and had two small baggies in his car while returning from a trip visiting family in Mexico, investigators said.

Garcia-Navarro pleaded guilty to a pair of felonies and was sentenced in Clackamas County Circuit Court to more than two years in prison.

At some point after that, he was deported.

Garcia-Navarro appealed, saying he hadn't realized that the law required his deportation. The married father of three who worked as a granite-counter installer said if he had known, he would have gone to trial to fight for his ability to stay in the U.S.

According to the summary of the case, his defense attorney, John Terry, informed Garcia-Navarro before his plea hearing that if a judge sentenced him to probation, he might fly under the radar of immigration officials. But if the judge sentenced him to prison, he would be head to deportation court and his deportation would be "essentially guaranteed," Terry said.

The lawyer said he was basing the advice on his real-world experience that a defendant who gets probation "never" gets deported.

Garcia-Navarro appealed his conviction. A post-conviction judge, William Horner, found the defense lawyer's advice good enough notice to let Garcia-Navarro's conviction stand.

But the Appeals Court disagreed, saying that a defense attorney must tell defendants convicted of most any drug crime that they will be deported. The Appeals Court said it's not good enough to warn a defendant that they might be deported because the law says deportation is mandatory.

In making its ruling, the Appeals Court cited a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case, Padilla v. Kentucky, in which another drug crimes defendant's conviction was overturned based on similar circumstances.

Reversals such as Garcia-Navarro's are rare, although part of the reason might be that defendants who are deported find it difficult to appeal convictions if they're back in their home countries and have few resources to launch an appeal.

The Appeals Court summary of the case doesn't make clear whether Garcia-Navarro actually was deported, but an attorney who represented him on his appeal told The Oregonian/OregonLive Wednesday that Garcia-Navarro was deported.

It's unclear if Garcia-Navarro has returned to the U.S.

If Garcia-Navarro is within U.S. borders, the Clackamas County District Attorney's Office in all likelihood would retry him. But if he's out of the country and remains there, there may be no point to prosecuting him again.

The ruling was made by a three-judge panel of the Appeals Court: Roger DeHoog, Erika Hadlock and Robyn Aoyagi.

-- Aimee Green
Portland's chamber of commerce still isn't convinced that Better Naito, which turns one lane of vehicle travel into a bike and pedestrian pathway, doesn't add to congestion despite a recent city analysis showing marginal effects for downtown drivers.

The Portland Business Alliance believes the city cherry-picks travel-time data to paint the project in a favorable light while not doing enough to evaluate the potential ripple effect on downtown congestion.

"We continue to be concerned about the impacts of Better Naito," said Marion Haynes, the Portland Business Alliance's vice president of external affairs. "And as we've evaluated some of the data that's been presented, we find that it lacks the type of thorough analysis that we would hope would occur on this project and others throughout the city."

Haynes said the Better Naito analysis raises questions about how the city will handle changes to major arterials elsewhere.

Portland transportation officials stand by the traffic analysis and point to a separate traffic survey commissioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2016, which documented similar delays on the much-used road running along Waterfront Park.

"All of this analysis has consistently shown less than two minutes of delay for northbound drivers when Better Naito is in season," Dylan Rivera, transportation spokesman, said in an email.

Portland will once again convert one northbound lane of traffic between the Hawthorne and Steel bridges into a bike and pedestrian path starting May 1. The path will remain until Sept. 30 to coincide with the major festival season at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. The goal is to shift bikes from the path along the Willamette River to the Better Naito lane on the street, relieving dangerous congestion between pedestrians, joggers and cyclists on the path.

The city used "trained observers," pneumatic tube counters in the road and third-party 24-hour videos, to measure ridership. Those counting methods produced an average daily bike volume of 2,587 one-way trips, which the city used to estimate total ridership at 393,173 one-way rides during the 2017 season.

This would be the second time Portland converts the vehicle lane into a multi-use path for a five-month period. A volunteer group ran a smaller version of the travel project, which temporarily separates the pathway from the other northbound travel lane, in 2015 and 2016.

The city's report indicated travel times jumped by 1 minute and 28 seconds during the hours of 7 and 8 a.m., and 1 minute and 33 seconds from 4 to 5 p.m.

But chamber officials said those travel times were counted in an area from Southwest Clay Street to Stark Street. The Better Naito project areas stretches to Davis Street, another eight blocks north.

The Portland Business Alliance, which functions as the city's chamber of commerce, was skeptical enough of the city's analysis that it, along with the Building Owners and Managers Association of Oregon, hired a traffic consultant to review the city's data.

Sorin Garber & Associates determined the city's report was "incomplete." Transportation officials appeared not to look at longer lines backing up on Naito, nor the effect of traffic diverting onto other city streets to avoid the area.

The analysis also didn't examine travel times on adjacent streets or establish whether traffic was affected by the Morrison Bridge construction project or other developments in 2017.

"We hope to have better data collection, a more thorough data collection, so that the community can have a more thorough discussion about some of the tradeoffs and whether there are other alternatives," Haynes said.

Rivera said the business group shared the Sorin Garber report with city leaders. Transportation officials already continues to do "extensive analysis" of traffic volumes and times, he said.

Portland didn't look at the stretch of road from Stark to Davis because it didn't gather data from those areas during the first two years of the project. But Rivera pointed out The Oregonian study did look at that areas and found similar travel delays, and the city will analyze the entire stretch in its 2018 report.

The city didn't look at adjacent street congestion, Rivera said, because a 2015 report found "no diversion." Additionally, the traffic counters are in high demand elsewhere.

"Many of these suggested analyses would be quite costly, exceeding the cost of implementing Better Naito," he said.

Rivera added that traffic queues up on Naito because of train crossings on the Steel Bridge and drivers using the ramp to head east on the Hawthorne Bridge - not Better Naito.

The city plans a significant project to address the Hawthorne backup during weekday afternoons.

Large-scale work is scheduled to begin in 2019 on an estimated $6.7 million overhaul of the half-mile stretch of Naito from Interstate 405 to Jefferson Street.

The project includes grinding and repaving the road, adding a traffic light for merging onto the Hawthorne Bridge and constructing a separate bicycle greenway.

That project doesn't include extending the separated pathway north of the Hawthorne Bridge.

An unaddressed question is whether the city will make Better Naito permanent, an idea for which Rivera said the city has received vocal support.

Haynes said the business association is not against bike and pedestrian projects generally, or a separate pathway on Naito in particular.

"There needs to be additional discussion about whether there are alternatives to provide the kind of safe bike access that people clearly want, while not having undue impacts on other parts of the transportation system," she said.

Haynes called the bikeway project south of Hawthorne, which maintains two vehicle travel lanes, "kind of a win-win."

"We should be looking for those types of opportunities," she said.

Rivera said the city has looked at that option.

Cost estimates for making Better Naito permanent range from $4 million to more than $13 million. Keeping the second travel lane would the most expensive option, Rivera said, because the city would need to carve into Waterfront Park and work around existing street lights, utilities and traffic signals.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
Pok Pok, Portland's bi-coastal Thai restaurant chain, looks to be opening its first suburban location, according to a liquor license application filed last month with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission.

According to the application, a Pok Pok Pub is expected to open at 1 Bowerman Drive, aka Nike's Beaverton campus, specifically in the Dan Fouts building. It appears that the restaurant will be open to employees only.

Toby Roberts, president of Pok Pok restaurants, declined to answer questions about the new restaurant, but said more details could be forthcoming within the month.

Willamette Week, which first posted about the pub, points out that the opening comes in the wake of Pok Pok consolidating its New York operations and closing its Los Angeles location. The pub will be the third Portland-area location to open in the past two years, following the Brooklyn neighborhood's Pok Pok Wing in 2016 and Slabtown's Pok Pok NW in 2017.

Eater PDX, which also spotted the application, notes that the pub opening comes soon after the release of Ricker's second book, focused on the drinking food of Thailand.

-- Michael Russell
The school calendar for Portland Public Schools is official after a Tuesday school board vote. Parents will notice several changes.

School will start on a Monday, giving students a rare five-day week at the opening of the year.

Gone are late starts and early dismissals, a move that the district accomplished through a new teacher contract. In addition, there's now a fall break the week of Thanksgiving. That's accomplished by moving the parent teacher conference days held earlier in November this year closer to the holiday.

Presidents' Day, which has been a holiday in the past, is now being reserved as a potential make up day in case snow shutters schools. The decision on whether or not Presidents' Day will be a holiday or a make up day will be announced by Jan 18.

Want to peruse the calendar? You can do that here.

 Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools?

Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com
By Dr. Rahel Nardos

When I first learned how the president described us, me and my fellow immigrants from Africa, my first reaction was not anger or surprise. Rather, I was saddened by how others in the room with him, and those outside, like myself, enabled this through our collective silence.

So I can either continue to partner with the president through my silence, or I can tell my story. A few recent incidents at work have opened my eyes to our current reality: Even when you achieve the highest academic or economic standards, you aren't protected from racial bias.

The first incident was a couple of months ago. I had just finished examining my patient when her husband asked me where I was from. I get asked that question a lot and struggle to find the right answer.

I grew up in Ethiopia until I was 18, then I came to the U.S. on a college scholarship. I have now lived in America for 25 years. Through my educational journey, including an Ivy League medical education, Americans have believed that I add value to their institutions. I identify with my American way of life as much as I do with my Ethiopian heritage. I have now lived in four different states and am just beginning to feel that Portland could be my home.

So I told my patient's husband, a retired member of the Portland Police, that I am originally from Ethiopia, a country in Africa, but I am also an American. He couldn't hide his surprise. "I thought you were from an island nation," he said, "You don't look like the typical negro I am used to seeing. You are too good looking."

I was shocked to hear this. I wondered how this interaction would have gone if I'd looked more like the "negros" he had in mind? Would I have been good enough to care for his wife? My reflex was to educate him about Africans, how we are not from one country and that we come in different colors, cultures, languages.

I walked out of the room, my heart racing. Even the most difficult surgery I've done in my last seven years hadn't rattled me that much.

Later, I realized something good may have come from this. I may have shaken his perception of an "African." He'll have to reconcile that someone can be an African, a female surgeon and also meet his standard of beauty. The more we interact with people like my patient's husband, the more we are likely to change these biases. We need to be visible. When President Obama was in office, my son's 6-year-old friend told his parents he wanted to be an American like my son. Confused, they told him he already was an American. "No!" he replied. He wanted to be black like my son so he could be an American. In his mind, to be an American was to look like the president.

The second incident was a few weeks ago, when a patient was given an appointment with my Iranian American colleague. The patient didn't like the sound of her name. She was then offered an appointment with me. She did not like how my name sounded, either. She insisted on seeing an "American doctor" to which my staff responded that we are all Americans. She wanted a white doctor, born in America. She got one.

My staff has been trained to provide patient-centered care, but they haven't been given the tools to know when and how to draw the line. This incident saddened me as I've put in four years of college, four years of medical school, four years of residency training and three years of fellowship so that I can provide the care for my patients that I would want for myself and my family. The patient couldn't tell from my name that I have the most years of experience in our office and have trained many of those "white" doctors she prefers.

Despite these incidents, the real story I wanted to tell is that when I'm in a room with my patients, listening to their distressed voices or when they trust me with their lives in the operating room, they do not care that I'm from a "shithole" country. I know this because I hear the words "I trust you, doctor," multiple times a day. And, my office is overflowing with thank-you cards.

Being an immigrant has given me enough outsider perspective to understand that I don't always know what is best for the patient. When I start from that place, it forces me to listen to what matters to them. When you earn their trust that way, they don't notice or care whether you are black or white.

-- Dr. Rahel Nardos is the lead urogynecologist at Kaiser Permanente NW in Portland; at OHSU, she is an assistant professor in the division of Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery and director of Global Health in Obstetrics and Gynecology. The opinions expressed here are her own.
Steve Tuttle wrote in the March 2 letter, "NRA members saddened too," that he finds the most recent shooting in Parkland, Florida, to be a tragedy. He says that members are saddened, as they are "mostly law-abiding people who have a common interest in lawful shooting."

Well, Tuttle, that's nice. And really, I do agree with your characterization of NRA members. However, your letter rates right up there with the "thoughts and prayers" and other crocodile-tear nonsense we get out of the conservative politicians every time this happens. It doesn't accomplish -- or even suggest -- anything to prevent a repeat of Parkland, Las Vegas, Pulse, Sandy Hook or the many other mass shooting sites.

As far as the NRA as an organization is concerned, apart from the philosophies and interests of its members, there appears to be no such thing as any kind of sensible gun-control legislation. In fact, the NRA, in the person of Wayne LaPierre and his flunkies, has consistently fought even the slightest effort to keep guns away from the manifestly unfit.

No one is challenging the rights of the mentally-healthy and law-abiding to own and shoot guns. But the NRA as an organization is not speaking with the voice of its law-abiding and responsible membership. No, not with the kind of money it's spending to fight stricter gun-control. That voice comes from the firearms manufacturers, and is why the NRA is viewed as being an "unsympathetic bully" (Tuttle's words).

-- Ellen Cameron, Milwaukie
Six people allege in lawsuits filed Thursday that Portland police assaulted them, sometimes using batons and pepper spray, during a series of turbulent protests that gripped the city over eight months.

The suits contend that the Police Bureau has become "increasingly militarized in its tactics, deploying droves of officers wearing tactical dress, including helmets, carrying batons and full-body riot shields, and using chemical agents as crowd-control weapons.''

They cite police actions during a protest of a closed-door City Council vote on the police union contract at City Hall in October 2016, a youth-led protest after the presidential election in November 2016, a Don't Shoot Portland and Not My President's Day protest in February 2017 and a counter-protest to the June 2017 Patriot Prayer rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza.

The people allege battery by officers and seek between $10,000 and $200,000 in damages. Several of them were arrested at the protests, only to have their charges dismissed by prosecutors.

Instead of claiming unconstitutional police practices in federal court, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and the plaintiffs chose to file the lawsuits in Multnomah County Circuit Court to resolve them faster.

The legal action is intended "to hold the Portland Police Bureau accountable for their violent response to protests in our city,'' said Mat dos Santos, legal director for the ACLU of Oregon.

"Portland police must end its disproportionate response to protests,'' dos Santos said at a news conference with the plaintiffs. "Today we demand from our city and our police that they do better.''

Sgt. Chris Burley, Police Bureau spokesman, said the bureau does not comment on pending litigation, but takes all complaints of alleged misconduct seriously.

The ACLU has released photos and video that captured the plaintiffs' arrests and injuries.

The six people who filed the suits and their allegations:

-- Patricia Barger, 55, alleges battery during the Oct. 12, 2016, protest and is seeking up to $10,000 in damages. She stumbled upon the gathering as she was headed to catch a MAX train. While watching the it unfold from the sidewalk across Southwest Fifth Avenue from the City Hall entrance, she contends Officer Timothy Paolini struck her twice with a baton, first in the chest and then on the forearm, without any warning. At the time, officers in riot gear were clearing demonstrators from the street, but Barger said she was on the sidewalk when she was hit.

-- On Nov. 21, 2016, Kathryn Stevens, one of the founders of Portland's Resistance with her boyfriend, Greg McKelvey, contends an officer struck her in the face as she was being arrested during a march from Holladay Park in Northeast Portland to downtown. Once the march crossed the Burnside Bridge into downtown, Stevens was separated from McKelvey and then spotted him "being escorted by police,'' her suit says.

Stevens, 31, was concerned McKelvey was injured, so she ran up to him and hugged him from behind. At the time, however, McKelvey was being arrested. Without warning, officers pushed Stevens to the ground, she says, and then lifted her up by her jacket, choking her, the suit says. Officers took her and McKelvey to an alley, where one held her down, pushed on her face and taunted her, asking, "Do you like this? Are you enjoying things? You're going to get arrested.''

Stevens was arrested but the charges were dropped.

-- On Feb. 20, 2017, Charles Stubbs, 39, says he was knocked to the ground as officers tried to arrest him during a Don't Shoot Portland demonstration outside the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. People had gathered to protest the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes 12 days earlier during an armed robbery investigation.

Officers, at one point, decided the demonstration, which had spilled into Southwest Third Avenue and was blocking traffic, was illegal and ordered everyone back onto the sidewalk. As Stubbs moved to the sidewalk, officers tackled him, he says. He landed face down beside a bush and then was lifted and dragged into the street and handcuffed by police, his suit says. He was accused of disorderly conduct, interfering with an officer and resisting arrest, but prosecutors dismissed the charges.

-- During the same protest, participant Tristan Romine-Mann, 27, says he was standing by the sidewalk with his bicycle when an officer suddenly grabbed his bicycle and knocked him to the ground. The officer struck him with the bicycle five to six times, his suit says. He was later sprayed with pepper spray while he was on his knees, his hands behind his back.

-- Margaret Zebroski, 67, a retired physician's assistant, was holding a Don't Shoot Portland banner across the street in front of the federal building the morning of Feb. 20, 2017. Officers on bicycles tried to push the protesters back onto the sidewalk, but Zebroski and others held their ground, remaining in the street.

When officers in riot gear arrived, Zebroski returned to the sidewalk and went to help her 75-year-old friend, who got knocked to the ground, the suit says. Suddenly, Zebroski was slammed to the ground by police. One officer placed his knee on the back of her head, forcing her face into the pavement, breaking her nose, the suit says. Charges of second-degree disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and interfering were ultimately dismissed against her.

"All the marchers were dealt with as criminals for the actions of a few,'' she said Thursday. She's seeking $200,000 in damages.

ACLU staff attorney/legal observer Kelly Simon at June 4, 2017 protest becomes plaintiff in lawsuit against police: No Oregonian should be afraid to make their voice heard. https://t.co/4J8SLNWsCl pic.twitter.com/N9VYViFdWz  Maxine Bernstein (@maxoregonian) March 8, 2018

-- Kelly Simon, an ACLU staff attorney and legal observer to the June 4, 2017, counter-protests on the perimeter of a Patriot Prayer rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza, contends police fired an impact munition at her leg as she had her back to officers and was walking out of nearby Chapman Square as ordered by officers. Simon was wearing a bright blue ACLU legal observer vest over her jacket that clearly identified her, the suit says.

"The police tactics created a sense of confusion and fear,'' Simon's suit says.

She said she was shot by Portland police in the middle of the day in downtown Portland "doing exactly'' what they asked her to do.

In a letter to the mayor, then-Police Chief Mike Marshman defended the response to the dueling June 4 protests downtown, saying officers needed to wear riot-control gear for protection as demonstrators hurled bricks, fireworks and other objects.

He said police would prefer not to use any crowd-control devices but did use flash-bang grenades to clear the park when they saw bricks, bottles, rocks, ball bearings, marbles, urine balloons, feces balloons, chemical balloons and small explosives thrown or slung at officers and the public using slingshots.

Oregon State Police, who were helping out Portland police, fired pepper-spray balls toward a parking garage that day because people "were advancing up the garage, into a position where projectiles could be thrown, putting the public and police officers at risk,'' a deputy city attorney wrote in response to a separate lawsuit filed over police actions during the June 4 protests.

Police said officers have used tear gas, pepper spray and rubber ball distraction devices during some protests. They also have allowed officers to use "non-lethal force'' without warning in response to specific threats.

Portland's new Police Chief Danielle Outlaw told The Oregonian/OregonLive in October when she first started that she wanted to go through the bureau's training on crowd control herself before she passed judgment on how police have handled city protests.

"I haven't had a chance to do a critical review of past incidents. That's certainly on my radar,'' she said then. "Bottom line is we're here to protect people's First Amendment right to free speech.''

The ACLU's dos Santos said he has noticed some improvements by police at recent protests, but said he also has found people have been more reluctant to take to the streets.

Attorneys from the law firm Tonkon Torp are working pro bono to help represent the plaintiffs.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
Prosecutors will ask for a year of probation for an Iraqi national living in Beaverton who misrepresented himself as a U.S. intelligence officer in a letter to the prime minister of Iraq and in a phone call to an Iraqi member of parliament.

The Nov. 8, 2015, letter, written on a fraudulent letterhead from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, urged Iraq's leader to appoint a certain man as director of Iraq's intelligence service, pledging U.S. support for the candidate. It was signed, "William J. Peterson.''

In a phone call to a member of the Iraqi parliament during the spring of 2016, a man who identified himself as "Dr. William'' from the U.S. government said he was interested in getting the member appointed as speaker of the Iraqi parliament.

Iraqi officials alerted the U.S. ambassador in Iraq, who contacted the FBI, concerned the caller and letter writer was interfering with U.S. political initiatives in Iraq, Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel wrote in a sentencing memo filed Wednesday.

The FBI traced the phone call to Wathiq Al-Ibraheemi, 34.

Al-Ibraheemi in January pleaded guilty to unlawfully using the official insignia of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a misdemeanor.

He served as an interpreter for U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq about 10 to 12 years ago. In 2009, he immigrated to the United States, sponsored by an Army officer with whom he had worked in Iraq, under the U.S. Significant Public Benefit Parole Program. The program allows the homeland security secretary to temporarily admit foreign nationals into the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.

Al-Ibraheemi lived with the U.S. officer and his family. In 2012, he moved with the officer to Oregon.

Al-Ibraheemi moved to Beaverton and enrolled as an engineering student at Portland State University, according to court papers.

Last March, the FBI raided Al-Ibraheemi's home and seized his laptop and other belongings. A forensic analysis revealed that Al-Ibraheemi had downloaded the insignia of the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence before the date when the fraudulent letter was sent to the Iraqi prime minister, according to prosecutors.

A witness interviewed by the FBI said an image of the national agency's official seal was taken off the internet for use on the letter and that Al-Ibraheemi created the document with another, unidentified individual, attempting to pass it off as an official document, the prosecutor's memo says.

In the letter, Al-Ibraheemi passed himself off as the U.S. chief of the Middle East Section in the Office of the Deputy Director for Intelligence. He wrote, or had written, that it was a critical time for Iraq, that its government could not fail and the United States fully supported its efforts to eliminate corruption.

He wrote that he cared deeply about Iraq after spending a career trying to shape a stable, Democratic Iraqi government. He was very critical of Gen. Zuhair al-Gharbawi, who was director of Iraq's intelligence service, at the time, and said the United States supported appointing Dr. Mosdeq Al-Janabi in his place.

"Gen. Zuhair is ineffective in his position to the detriment of Iraq's national security,'' the letter said. "It is our assessment that Dr. Mosdeq is very capable to perform the duties of INIS (Iraq National Intelligence Service) Director. He is not a member of any political party, and has no record of corruption or allegiances with foreign governments.''

The writer noted that the letter should be considered highly classified and not shared, and asked that it be returned, without copying it.

The letter instead was forwarded to the U.S. ambassador in Iraq. A short time later, the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community verified the letter was fraudulent.

"A communication to a head of state would be undertaken only by the Director of National Intelligence or his designee,'' wrote an assistant inspector general of investigations. There was no "William J. Peterson'' employed with the U.S. intelligence office and no such "Middle East section'' in the office.

When Al-Ibraheemi entered his guilty plea, he initially told U.S. District Judge Michael A. Mosman that he "didn't know at the time'' that possessing the official insignia was illegal.

"Now I do know it, and am taking full responsibility,'' he said, at the plea hearing.

He later clarified in the hearing, saying, "I know at the time I shouldn't have downloaded it, possessed it, yes ... I'm not an expert in the law, even close.''

Under the plea agreement, both Al-Ibraheemi's lawyer Colin Hunter and prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of probation. Sentencing is set for Tuesday.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
Linfield College on Thursday announced a $6 million gift, one of the largest in the school's 160-year history, that administrators hope will help produce the state's next generation of wine leaders.

The school publicized the donation from Grace and Ken Evenstad, the founders of Domaine Serene winery in the nearby Dundee Hills, at an event at Portland's Sentinel Hotel. School officials, winery staffers and other industry representatives celebrated the gift with an early glass of Domaine Serene's R 10 rose in a new Domaine Serene tasting room set to open to the public in April.

With the gift, the small, private school in the heart of Yamhill County's wine country will create a new Center for Wine Education named after the Domaine Serene owners, and it will design and build a wine laboratory on campus. Linfield now only offers a minor in wine studies, but it is creating a standalone major in the discipline expected to be offered starting this fall.

Linfield's outgoing president, Thomas Hellie, said the gift is the largest single donation to wine education in Oregon history.

"We're thrilled and we're deeply grateful," he said to Grace Evenstad.

The school says its program, led by Linfield wine climatologist Gregory V. Jones, will differentiate from traditional viticulture and enology programs, which historically have focused on growing wine grapes and producing wine. Linfield says its program will include aspects of that but will focus more on building skills to create new wine industry employees in business, social media and other skills.

The program will also look at the environmental factors at play in growing grapes, the history of the industry and other aspects of running a successful and sustainable enterprise.

"I would love to see a program that has at least 50 students who are pursuing wine studies in one way shape or form," Jones said. He believes the program will serve the state's 725 wineries well with internships and future employees.

In a statement, Grace Evenstad said that was one of the reasons the winery was drawn to Linfield's approach. "The real benefit is that it focuses on building a high level of quality throughout the entire business of wine  in winemaking, management, accounting, sales, marketing, etc.," she said in a statement.

"This gift will enable thousands of future students to follow their passions in the wine business. It will prepare them for success and will enable the American wine industry to benefit for generations, even centuries, to come."

Ryan Harris, Domaine Serene's president, said the winery has 50 employees in Oregon and 10 more at its winery in France. Hiring qualified employees can be a challenge, he said.

"They either learn on the job or we recruit them from elsewhere," he said.

The McMinnville school already has connections to the wine industry. It houses the state's Wine History Archive and hosts the International Pinot Noir Celebration.

The family doesn't have a connection to the college, but Ken Evenstad said in a statement the family is on a "never-ending quest" to grow and produce the world's best chardonnay and pinot noir.

"By making this donation to Linfield College, we are investing in the future thought-leaders of the global wine industry," he said. "With this partnership, it is our hope that the newly endowed wine studies program acts as a magnet to attract the brightest minds from around the world to further propel our industry to even greater heights on the world's stage."

Oregon State University has a Wine Research Institute, and Umpqua Community College has its Southern Oregon Wine Institute, which offers certificates and two-year degrees as well as classes for community members.

THe school hopes to create easy pathways for students at Chemeketa Community College, which also has a wine studies program, to transfer to Linfield and obtain a four-year degree.

Jones started a certificate program at Southern Oregon University focused on wine business before he left for Linfield last year. He said Linfield is not trying to play on the same field -- initially -- as wine-making juggernauts like the University of California Davis.

He said Linfield is modeling its program in some ways on Sonoma State University's approach to building the industry's next managers and leaders.

"We're trying to address the kind of needs that a student would have in management, marketing, social media, interpersonal skills, economics, finance, environmental science," Jones said.

The event ended with a toast, cheering on the program's future.

-- Andrew Theen

The Oregonian/OregonLive
Charles Longjaw killed a man with a chunk of concrete in 1986, beat and raped a woman in 1998, then stabbed a man to death near a downtown Portland hotel in 2016.

The last killing came about a year after Longjaw was released from the supervision of Oregon's Psychiatric Security Review Board. It was one of a few recent high-profile cases of deeply troubled people accused of violent crimes after leaving the board's control.

A judge on Wednesday sentenced Longjaw to at least 25 years in prison after a Multnomah County jury found him guilty Monday of killing 43-year-old Mark Whelan near the Embassy Suites.

Longjaw, 51, was homeless and free to roam the streets of downtown at the time he attacked Mark Whelan, who also was homeless. Prosecutor Melissa Marrero said the killing was unprovoked.

"Mr. Longjaw is extremely dangerous -- one of the most violent and dangerous individuals that I've come across," Marrero told the judge.

"The community is safer with him behind bars," she added.

Longjaw was placed under lifetime supervision of the psychiatric board after he was found guilty except for insanity in the 1986 murder and for a 1986 attempted murder, in which he struck another man on the head with a car battery and a stick.

The state board oversees the re-entry of offenders into the community after they've been found guilty except for insanity. It can decide, for instance, whether they should stay at the state mental hospital or be allowed to live within the community, at a secured group home or elsewhere.

It's unclear how long Longjaw stayed locked away at the state mental hospital after his 1986 crimes. Different sources refer to his release in the early 1990s or as late as 1998, which is the same year he was sent to prison for raping a woman and knocking out some of her teeth. He was released in 2015.

Thats when the psychiatric board determined that it could no longer supervise him because a change in the law meant that Longjaws disorders -- anti-social personality disorder and a substance abuse problem -- no longer qualified him for lifetime supervision, Marrero said.

About a year later, Longjaw was living in shelters and on the streets, doing methamphetamine whenever he could get his hands on some, according to court documents. Longjaw, Whelan and a third man had tried to get a hotel room for the night of Nov. 20, 2016, at the Embassy Suites.

A front desk clerk declined to give them one, and the men were escorted out by a security officer. Immediately after that, Longjaw pulled out a knife and stabbed Whelan twice in the abdomen and twice in the arm.

Whelan died in the hospital six days later.

Investigators don't know what caused Longjaw to suddenly lash out. Prosecutors presented no motive during trial.

Judge Cheryl Albrecht sentenced Longjaw to life in prison with the possibility of release after 25 years. Thats the sentence outlined by Oregon law.

Marrero said her office had hoped it could secure a longer prison sentence for Whelans murder, but saw no legal options.

Little is publicly known about the life of Whelan.

We know that he had a troubled life, Marrero said. He was adopted around the age of 4 years old.

Whelans adoptive mother wrote a letter to Longjaw, saying she hopes he can dig underneath his anger to find love in life.

Charles, when I saw your photo, I saw eyes filled with fierce anger, she said.

Longjaw declined to make any statements during the hearing.

The other recent cases involving the psychiatric board:

Anthony Montwheeler

The board last year determined that it no longer needed to monitor

-- Aimee Green
Portland police responding to an early morning shooting just west of Providence Park have closed streets in the Southwest Portland neighborhood including a portion of West Burnside between 20th and 23rd avenues.

TriMet's busy #20 bus line is detoured in the area as well as routes #18 and #15. Avoid West Burnside around Providence Park. We'll update this space when the police activity clears.

UPDATE 8:28 a.m.; West Burnside Street has reopened, but is down to one lane, according to Portland police. Southwest King Avenue south of West Burnside will remain closed for the majority of the day as the investigation continues. Area residents no longer need to shelter in place. TriMet bus lines returning to regular routes.

Large police presence -- including a crisis negotiation team truck -- at West Burnside and 21/22nd Avenue. @shanedkavanaugh says shots fired. pic.twitter.com/2CbOBbuOaB  Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) March 8, 2018

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TANNASBOURNE 7:50 a.m.; Crash on U.S. 26 westbound prior to 185th exit has westbound traffic backing up to Cedar Hills.



***

U.S. 101

N. of LINCOLN CITY/ U.S. 101 7:30 a.m.; U.S. 101 is closed in both directions about three miles south of Cloverdale in Tillamook County following a crash involving a pickup into a power pole. The utility company is on the scene. The crash resulted in major injuries and the road could be closed for a long while. A detour has been set up using Brooten and Resort roads. Travelers should expect delays.





Hwy 101 still closed. Tillamook Public Power on scene & working on power issue. pic.twitter.com/P5Q55de9SF  Oregon State Police (@ORStatePolice) March 8, 2018

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OREGON CITY 7 a.m.; Crash reported on OR 213 north of Redland Road.



Update 8 a.m.; Finally cleared to the shoulder.

***



Drivers on both directions of SR 503 in Vancouver, between Northeast 71st - 95th streets may be shifted to a single-lane, with flaggers, 6:30 a.m.-5 p.m., daily through Friday, March 9 for the installation of license plate readers.

According to WSDOT, license plate readers have several uses. They're used to screen commercial vehicles on the highway ahead of weigh stations so the driver and weigh station both know if trucks can bypass the weigh-in. They're also used to improve the efficiency of roads by collecting real-time traffic data.

Check back throughout the morning for the latest commuting updates and follow us on Twitter: @trafficportland
Courtlin Arrington

A Huffman High School senior was killed and another injured when gunfire erupted inside a classroom at the east Birmingham school in Alabama on Wednesday afternoon.

Killed was a 17-year-old girl who was going to graduate in May, had already been accepted into college and had dreams to become a nurse. "We're not just talking about some person, we're talking about losing a part of our future,'' said Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. "Our hearts are heavy."

She was identified on multiple social media accounts as Courtlin Arrington. However, her name was not confirmed by authorities because officials said some of her family had not yet been notified.

Arrington was given CPR at the scene and en route to the hospital, but the efforts to revive her failed.

Also wounded in the shooting was a 17-year-old boy, a junior and member of the football team. Both were rushed to UAB Hospital in separate Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service trucks.

The boy was initially said to be critically injured, but hospital officials by 7:30 p.m. said he was seen in the emergency department and was no longer at the hospital. He was shot in the leg, and was later questioned at police headquarters.

School officials announced late Wednesday night that school will be closed on Thursday. The delay will provide an opportunity for the system to conduct a thorough safety sweep of the school, and also allow the system to collaborate with organizations in the community to provide counseling support to both students and staff, said Superintendent Lisa Herring.

"The magnitude of this event causes us to pause," Herring said. "However, we want to assure our parents, students, staff and community that safety and security are a top priority for Birmingham City Schools."

Live at Huffman High School in Birmingham where three people were injured this afternoon in what authorities have called a possible accidental shooting. One student has died on the way to the hospital, and another is critically injured but stable. Posted by al.com on Wednesday, March 7, 2018

A school employee was evaluated by paramedics on site, and released at the scene.

The shots erupted shortly after 3 p.m. as school was dismissing for the day. Students who were still inside the school were ushered into classrooms or other secure locations during a temporary lockdown.

The scene at the school shortly after the shooting was relatively calm, considering what had happened inside. Many of the students, taking part in after-school athletics and other activities, said they didn't hear the shots and didn't know what happened until later.

One mother, who asked that her name not be used, said she was waiting for her daughter outside the school and called her child's cell phone to ask what was taking so long. Her daughter, a basketball player, replied, "Mom, we're on lockdown."

They quickly learned of the shooting. "I was just hoping my baby was OK, that everybody was OK,'' the mother said. "I was nervous. This is so sad."

Police said at least two shots were fired but are still trying to sort out a timeline of events and what led to the gunfire. The gun used in the shooting was recovered from inside the school and Acting Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson said they still believe the shooting may have been accidental.

"At this particular time, we consider it accidental until the investigation takes us elsewhere,'' Wilson said. "We have a lot of unanswered questions. There are so many unknowns at this time."

The chief made it clear the Huffman shooting was not similar to other recent school shootings across the country. "It's not where someone from outside came into the school,'' he said.

Wilson said there are surveillance cameras inside the school and police will be reviewing the footage to try to piece together what happened. "We're hoping if we have footage, that it will reveal it,'' he said. "If we have witnesses, we're hoping they will tell it."

There were multiple possibilities for what may have happened.

Sources said a male student was "showing off" his gun when it discharged, striking the female student. He then accidentally shot himself as he was putting the gun away, according to sources. Police officials did not confirm that account, or any of the other stories making the rounds.

"We're not saying he shot her, we're not saying he didn't shoot her,'' the chief said. "We're asking those questions ourselves so we can determine exactly what happened."

The chief said he had not been told of any kind of argument, fight or struggle preceding the shooting incident.

Wilson said multiple students were questioned as witnesses. As of 8 p.m., interviews were still ongoing at Birmingham Police Department headquarters downtown.

The chief appeared emotional while talking about the fatal shooting. "I'm deeply moved by what has happened here,'' Wilson said. "This should not happen in schools."

The chief did not give a timeline of when more information would be released. "What I will say here is let us do our job. We'll give you the answers as they come,'' he said. "Let us do due diligence and due process."

Herring said she knows there are many tough days and tough questions ahead.

"Our goal is to reassure our parents that, as much as we can, we will work to keep our schools safe. But our hearts and our minds are on the families tonight,'' she said. "How do we tell parents that their school is safe after an event like this and how do we reassure our children? That is the work we will take on every single day."

Herring at first said security will be heightened at the school on Thursday and in the days to come but later Wednesday night said classes would be cancelled Thursday.

The beefed-up security presence will not take place just at Huffman High School, but at all city schools. Just last week, police and school officials investigated a reported threat at Huffman Middle School. While the threat was not deemed valid, a gun was found on school property outside one of the entrance door, believed to have been put there when police and school officials were scanning students and checking backpacks.

"This is not a Birmingham City Schools dilemma alone, it's much broader,'' Herring said.

Herring said Huffman High School does have working metal detectors in use but declined to comment further as it is part of the ongoing investigation. In addition to increased security at the school Thursday, the superintendent said said there will be a full crisis team on hand to help students and faculty.

She praised the school officials on hand during Wednesday's shooting. "For as much as they've had to tackle on a very difficult day, they have done an exceptional job of trying to provide care and concern for those who were in the building and for those who had exited out,'' she said.

Wilson, Herring and the mayor all said it's important to think about all of those involved. All were planning to meet with the families of those involved in the shooting.

"We had two victims today, regardless of the circumstances,'' Herring said of both students. "We are most concerned about our families and the child who is no longer with us. We will not only pledge every effort to support the family, but we will do that for every child in Birmingham City Schools."

"I think it's really important we find a way to mourn with the family. That we wrap our arms around the Huffman High School community,'' Woodfin said. "Our entire Birmingham community is in mourning and grief right now. While there are many questions ...we need to take to the time realize that a life was lost. "

The shooting sparked concern statewide.

"I am saddened to learn about the death of the Huffman High School student. I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early,'' said Gov. Kay Ivey. "Every life is precious and, even though this was an accident, it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus."

The shooting took place the day after Ivey created a school safety council in Alabama to make recommendations on security. The security plan would ensure schools have an updated security response plan for sharing information about potential threats. It also would require schools to train students and school employees on how to respond to an emergency situation.

Multiple bills have been proposed in the Alabama legislature after 17 people were killed last month in a shooting rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school. Varying proposals by Republicans would arm either teachers or volunteer security forces in schools. Measures sought by Democrats would seek to limit or ban the sale of assault weapons. They all face a tight deadline before the end of Alabama's legislative session this election year.

"My heart is breaking for those hurt and killed in the shooting at Huffman High School." said U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell. "I cannot imagine the grief of the parents who lost their little girl today to gun violence. She was a part of our community's future. Tonight, my prayers are with her, the other victim, and their families."

"We have a responsibility to protect our schools from gun violence, accidental or otherwise,'' Sewell said. "Every year more students and teachers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters are killed in school shootings - we need to do everything in our power to make this incident the last. We cannot settle for symbolic gestures in Congress when our children's lives are at stake."

The shooting came exactly three weeks after police say a former student opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in south Florida, in what was one of the worst school shootings in history, The Washington Post reported.

The Huffman shooting is the first school shooting since that incident, and the third this year that left students dead, that report stated. An ongoing Washington Post analysis has found that more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
On the last morning of their lives, Charlie and Francie Emerick held hands.

The Portland couple, married for 66 years and both terminally ill, died together in their bed on April 20, 2017, after taking lethal doses of medication obtained under the state's Death With Dignity law.

Francie, 88, went first, within 15 minutes, a testament to the state of her badly weakened heart. Charlie, 87, a respected ear, nose and throat physician, died an hour later, ending a long struggle that included prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease diagnosed in 2012.

"They had no regrets, no unfinished business," said Sher Safran, 62, one of the pair's three grown daughters. "It felt like their time, and it meant so much to know they were together."

In the two decades since Oregon became the first state to legalize medical aid-in-dying, more than 1,300 people have died there after obtaining lethal prescriptions. The Emericks were among 143 people to do so in 2017, and they appear to be the only couple to ever take the drugs together, at the same time, officials said.

The pair, early members of the 1980s-era Hemlock Society, had supported the choice for years, and, when their illnesses worsened, they were grateful to have the option for themselves, family members said.

"This had always been their intention," said daughter Jerilyn Marler, 66, who was the couple's primary caretaker in recent years. "If there was a way they could manage their own deaths, they would do it."

Before they died, the Emericks agreed to allow Safran and her husband, Rob Safran, 62, founders of the Share Wisdom TV Network, of Kirkland, Wash., to record their final days and hours. At first, the video was intended just for family, but then Safran asked her parents for permission to share it publicly.

"I think it can help change the way people think about dying," she said.

The result is "Living & Dying: A Love Story," a 45-minute documentary that details the background of the Emericks' final decision and their resolve in carrying it out.

Shot mostly with handheld smartphones, the video captures the intimate moments of the couple's preparations in their last week of life.

Charlie Emerick was a former medical missionary in India and chief of ENT at a Portland-area Kaiser Permanente hospital. (Kaiser Health News is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.) He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2012, after dealing with symptoms of the disease for years. He suffered from prostate cancer and heart problems and learned in early 2017 that he had six months or less to live. In the documentary, he described his thoughts as he pondered whether to use aid-in-dying.

"You keep going, Charlie, you're going to get worse and worse and worse," he explained to Sher Safran, in a quavering voice. "The other can't be worse than this."

Francie Emerick, who handled marketing and public relations for the hospital in India, appears vital and articulate in the video. Her daughters, however, say that her energy was fleeting and that it masked years of decline following multiple heart attacks and cancer.

In the video, Francie acknowledged that she could have survived a bit longer than her husband. But, she said, she didn't want to.

"Charlie and I have a rather unique relationship in that we have done and been so much to each other for 70 years," she said.

The pair carefully followed the specifics of the law, which requires examinations by two different doctors to determine a prognosis of six months or less to live, multiple confirmations of intent and the ability of patients to ingest the lethal drugs themselves. The process takes a minimum of 15 days.

"We do want it to be legal," Francie said.

The video traces the arc of the couple's lives. The Emericks met as college students in Nebraska, married on April 4, 1951, and spent years in the 1960s as medical missionaries in Miraj, India. Dr. Emerick's career took them to Southern California and then to Washington state, to India and ultimately to Oregon, all while raising three girls. In 2004, they moved into an apartment in a retirement community in Portland.

That's where the Emericks died on a cloudy Thursday last spring, six days after a family celebration that included their children and grandchildren -- and, at Francie's request, root beer floats. The gathering was happy, but bittersweet, family members said.

"There were moments that they expressed great sadness at the goodbye that was coming," Marler recalled.

The Emericks sought help from Linda Jensen, a veteran team leader with End of Life Choices Oregon, a nonprofit agency that supports people seeking to use the state's Death With Dignity law.

"They were pretty well informed," said Jensen, who has assisted with dozens of deaths in 13 years. "What they wanted to understand was what a planned death really looks like."

The video includes a meeting between Jensen and the Emericks two days before they died. It would be nothing like dying on TV, she told them.

"You do not lose control of your bowel or bladder. You do not gasp for breath," she explained. Instead, she said, they would simply go to sleep.

The Emericks went over the plan: no breakfast, just pills to calm their stomachs at 9 a.m., followed by the lethal drugs an hour later.

Safran and Marler appear calm and determined as they help finalize their parents' arrangements.

"There was a lot of grieving ahead of time because we knew it was coming," Marler said.

Some members of the family disagreed with the couple's decision, but the Emericks were determined.

"You two have never wavered?" Safran asked her mom.

"We have not," Francie replied.

The video captured details of the final morning: Charlie saluting the camera farewell as he's wheeled down the hall, Safran's tearful last hug from her mother, Charlie and Francie clasping hands after they swallow the drugs.

"It just takes such a huge amount of internal strength and self-knowing to face that choice, to make that choice and then bring along all the people that love you and are going to miss you," Jensen said.

There was no funeral after the deaths. The Emericks had donated their bodies for research through a program at the Oregon Health & Science University and any remains wouldn't typically be returned for two or three years, a spokeswoman said.

In the interim, the video has become comforting and precious to the family, said Safran.

"It's very lovely, just to hear their voices," she said.

The documentary also serves a larger purpose: helping others to understand how aid-in-dying works, she said.

Carol Knowles, 70, was a member of Francie Emerick's book club. The Emericks didn't tell other residents about their plans. Knowles said she was surprised when they died the same day -- until she saw the documentary.

"I thought it was brave and beautiful," she said. "You could see the care with which Charlie and Francie had made that decision."

Another member of the group expressed concern, however, saying her religion prohibited any efforts to hasten death. Knowles said she plans to take the documentary to the retirement center's social worker before showing it more widely.

"We want to do it in a way that will not scare them or make them feel uncomfortable," she said.

Stephen Drake, research analyst for the disability rights group Not Dead Yet, had serious reservations about making the video public. He worried that presenting aid-in-dying in a positive light "changes the expectations; this romanticizes the idea of not just suicide, but a double suicide," Drake said.

Safran said she expects strong reactions -- including criticism -- for chronicling her parents' final days. But she said the documentary honors the Emericks' belief that, if possible, everyone should have a say in when and how they die.

"We have a faith that says life is not to be worshipped," Francie said. "It's the quality of life that counts."

--Kaiser Health News
Watch your back, Queen Elizabeth! The beloved British monarch gazes benignly from the Royal Mint's new 10-pence piece, apparently oblivious to the possibility that a monster might be on the flip side.

The British mint is celebrating the Loch Ness Monster with a nickel-plated steel coin, the BBC reports. It's one of 26 new 10-pence pieces in production. Some of the subjects being featured: King Arthur, James Bond and London's iconic double-decker bus.

But "Nessie," the rarely-spotted beast from the depths of a Scotland lake, appears to be getting the most attention from collectors, who reportedly crashed the Royal Mint's website when the new wares were announced.

"Celebrate a Scottish mythical beast which has captured Great Britons' imagination," The British Royal Mint states in its sales pitch for the new Nessie coin.

The mint calls the new coin series "quintessentially British."

They certainly are very British (one coin features fish and chips), but putting a fantastical creature like "Nessie" on currency isn't a novel idea. Canada set the standard a few years ago with a series of coins depicting mythical beasts -- including Bigfoot.

Offered the website i09 when the Canadian coins hit the market in 2011: "Canadian cryptid coins are the most bad-ass currency in the history of legal tender."

The new coins are already beginning to circulate in Great Britain.

-- Douglas Perry
One of Portland's own is penning the history of one of DC Comics' biggest heroes.

Kelly Sue DeConnick, known for her "Bitch Planet" series and her work on "Captain Marvel" as well as her contributions to "Guardians of the Galaxy," will write "Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons," which will chronicle how Princess Diana's mother rose to power in the character's fictional home of Themyscira.

The book is part of a new imprint, DC Black Label, which will also launch with a Superman story by Frank Miller and a Batman series written by Brian Azzarello. The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news Thursday morning.

"Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons" will chronicle Queen Hippolyta's rise to power on the island of Themyscira.

The new stories will take place outside of each characters' current DC canon, which means creators will have the license to work independently of established storylines and fans can jump in without needing to read several back issues to catch up on plot lines.

DeConnick's series will focus on Queen Hippolyta, mother of Wonder Woman. The story, spanning three books, chronicles the creation of the Amazons and caps off when Steve Trevor  the American war spy played by Chris Pine in last year's "Wonder Woman" film  washes up on Paradise Island.

Phil Jimenez has been hired as the book's artist. He illustrated the main "Wonder Woman" series from 2000 to 2003 and worked on DC's "Infinite Crisis" as well as Marvel's "The New X-Men."

DeConnick has drawn accolades for her work on female-driven series.

In 2015, Vanity Fair called her "the future of comics."

Shortly after the Portland-based writer began working on Captain Marvel, she mobilized the series' loyal fanbase by tweeting the hashtag #carolcorps and enlisting avid readers to voice their support of the character, whose books sold an estimated 20,000 copies per week compared to Spider-Man's 100,000.

"You've got 20,000 monthly readers ... in the comic market that's not that much, but 19,000 of them have tattoos of the main chracter on their arm," DeConnick told the magazine. "It's something else. It's a vocal, committed, and supportive fanbase."

Many credit that support to Marvel's decision to commit to adding a "Captain Marvel" movie to its Marvel Cinematic Universe lineup and cast Brie Larson in the title role.

Now, DeConnick is penning a new origin story of sorts for the sole female member of DC's Trinity, the comics company's three most prominent characters. (That's Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman, of course.)

The first of the new DC Black Label series will launch in August with "Superman: Year One."

--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344

ecampuzano@oregonian.com
Friday 9 March 2018 10:47am



Otago's Dr Monasterio argues the CPTPP, which is set to be signed by 11 countries in Chile today, is geared fundamentally towards the interests of transnational corporations and foreign investors at the expense of concerns about human and environmental health.

A University of Otago health expert is calling for an independent assessment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pacts potential impacts on climate change and health.

Dr Erik Monasterio, a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch, is concerned about the potential consequences of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), an economic treaty, originally called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

Dr Monasterio argues the CPTPP, which is set to be signed by 11 countries in Chile today, is geared fundamentally towards the interests of transnational corporations and foreign investors at the expense of concerns about human and environmental health.



Dr Erik Monasterio, a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch

Dr Monasterio, a consultant in forensic psychiatry, is one of the authors in an editorial Climate change, human health and the CPTPP in the latest issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal, released today, which calls for an independent assessment of parts of the treaty.

An assessment of the CPTPPs anticipated impacts on climate disruption, and on mitigation strategies, should be undertaken and released for public discussion before the treaty is ratified, the editorial states.

It says the Labour-led Government has launched into its first term with bold plans to align New Zealands economy with priorities dictated by the urgency of the climate crisis, yet its ambitions would be undermined by signing the treaty.

Ironically, the Governments ambition in this regard would be seriously undercut by signing a treaty that underwrites the economic status quo and creates strong legal headwinds for essential regulatory action.

Dr Monasterio is backed by a team of co-authors in the editorial  Wellington solicitor Oliver Hailes, public health physician and University of Auckland Senior Lecturer Dr Rhys Jones, University of Auckland academic psychiatrist Associate Professor David Menkes and Canterbury DHB consultant clinical microbiologist, Dr Joshua Freeman.

They say there is a considerable body of scientific evidence on the harmful impacts of climate change on health. So much so, that climate change has been identified as the most serious threat to global public health this century.

Direct impacts include death, illness and injury due to heat waves and extreme weather events. While powerful indirect impacts are mediated by a complex interaction of social, environmental and economic factors including shifting patterns of infectious disease, air pollution, freshwater contamination, impacts on the environment from sea level rise, forced migration, economic collapse, conflict over scare resources and increasing food insecurity.

In New Zealand, these adverse health events are most likely to impact on those already suffering: children, the elderly, low-income, Maori and Pacific populations, the editorial states.



Dr Monasterio says benefits can be achieved for New Zealanders health through a range of initiatives from reducing emissions in sectors such as transport, housing, energy and agriculture.

But, under the proposed CPTPP it will be increasingly difficult for the Government to make bold changes in social and economic policy.

For further information please contact:

Dr Erik Monasterio

Senior Clinical Lecturer

Christchurch School of Medicine

Tel 64 3 339 1148

Mob 64 27 218 8497

Email erik.monasterio@cdhb.health.nz

Liane Topham-Kindley

Senior Communications Adviser

Tel 64 3 479 9065

Mob 64 21 279 9065

Email liane.topham-kindley@otago.ac.nz
Friday 9 March 2018 10:57am



Professor Richard Edwards

A new study on smoking trends among doctors and nurses in New Zealand finds smoking has declined steadily within these healthcare professions. Researchers say this shows that very low smoking rates can be achieved in large occupational groups, suggesting that New Zealands Smokefree 2025 goal is reachable.

The study published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal, was led by researchers at the University of Otago, Wellington (UOW) in collaboration with the Health Promotion Agency. Lead author Professor Richard Edwards from the Department of Public Health at UOW says the findings illustrate that New Zealands Smokefree 2025 goal can be achieved among health care workers  doctors are already there, and generally nurses are well on the way.



By 2013, just two per cent of New Zealand doctors were regular cigarette smokers, well below the New Zealand Smokefree 2025 goal of five per cent or less, Professor Edwards says.

New Zealand nurses in general are also well on track to achieve the Smokefree goal figure, with nine per cent of male and eight per cent of females still smoking.

The researchers used 2013 New Zealand Census data to examine recent smoking trends among doctors and nurses in New Zealand.

The study showed that smoking is more common among Maori doctors and Maori nurses, and also for psychiatric nurses, although smoking was also decreasing among these groups.

We found that 19 per cent of Maori nurses and seven percent of Maori doctors still smoked, and 15 per cent of male psychiatric nurses and 18 per cent of female psychiatric nurses smoked, Professor Edwards says.

We believe there is a case for developing targeted smoking cessation support for high smoking prevalence occupational groups, particularly those like nurses and teachers who have great potential to provide positive smokefree role models to patients, schoolchildren and within their communities, he says.

A good place to start would be to work with Maori nurses and mental health care nurses to explore their needs and develop appropriate smokefree interventions.

For further information, contact:

Professor Richard Edwards

Department of Public Health

University of Otago, Wellington

Email richard.edwards@otago.ac.nz

Alternative contact:

Greg Martin, Health Promotion Agency

Tel 04 912 0323

Email g.martin@hpa.org.nz
Friday 9 March 2018 11:05am

Otago researchers are helping lead a major international project to determine what the main causes of fever in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are and how they should be treated.

The project is believed to be the largest study of its kind, aiming to tackle antimicrobial resistance and develop a blueprint for treatment.

The research team will investigate whether pathogens are developing resistance to drugs used to treat patients with fever in these parts of the world. This NZ$18 million global study is coordinated by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.



Professor John Crump

The four-year FIEBRE (Febrile Illness Evaluation in a Broad Range of Endemicities) project is funded by the UK Department for International Development. It will be conducted by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the Universities of Oxford, Barcelona, and Otago, as well as partner institutions within five study countries  Laos, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

Co-Director of the Otago Global Health Institute (OGHI), Professor John Crump, is an investigator in the project and will work closely with long-standing collaborators at University of Medicine 1 in Myanmar to study how best to combat the burden of illness from infections that cause fever in that country. The project also involves University of Otago researchers supporting reference laboratory testing for some infections.



By identifying the treatable and preventable causes of febrile illness in the region, and how patients with fever are cared for, the researchers aim to design new evidence-based guidelines for the management of fever. This will ensure patients receive drugs that give them the best chance of recovery, as well as help stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance  a major global health problem.



Professor Crump says fever is one of the most common symptoms that leads people living in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia to seek healthcare or be admitted to hospital.



However, very few studies have examined the causes of fever in a standardised way across many sites, he says.

Until recently, most febrile illness in Africa and Asia was attributed to malaria, but wider access to improved diagnostics has revealed that most patients with a fever do not have malaria.



FIEBRE is a multi-disciplinary project that brings together laboratory science, clinical epidemiology, social science, and data management and archiving. It will investigate the leading causes of fever in children and adults attending primary healthcare services and those admitted to district and provincial hospitals in the five study countries.

The OGHI, designated as a University of Otago research centre last year, facilitates multi-disciplinary research in global health between collaborators in low-resource areas and researchers at the University.

FIEBRE exemplifies the kind of work that OGHI strives to catalyse in order to contribute to health improvements worldwide, Professor Crump says.



Another arm of the study will involve interviews and focus group discussions with local adults and families, prescribers, and workers who generate and implement clinical guidelines. The aim is to reveal how fever is treated at health facilities at a local level, including the use of antimicrobial drugs.



Professor of Communicable Diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Principal Investigator of the FIEBRE project, David Mabey, says the world has made great strides in tackling malaria. However, there has been limited research on other potential causes of febrile illness, such as infections by bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

We want to identify the treatable and preventable causes of fever in children and adults in Africa and Asia, and to identify those most at risk of different infections. Our goal is to develop guidelines that can be a blueprint for the effective management of patients with fever in different settings, Professor Mabey says.



The researchers believe these new treatment protocols will have the potential to safely reduce prescription of antimicrobial drugs and improve patient care.



Professor Mabey says antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest health challenges of our time.

Tackling it means solving a wide-range of issues, including the culture of prescribing drugs just in case which exists in many countries around the world, he says.

By studying outpatients we can look at who needs antimicrobial drugs and from whom they can safely be withheld, while our inpatient study hopes to reduce deaths by making sure patients receive drugs which will hopefully treat their illness.



FIEBRE will also see the development of the first bank of biomedical samples collected from a large group of fever patients from diverse settings in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. This unique archive will give researchers the tools to evaluate new diagnostic tests that differentiate between bacterial and viral infections. These could have a major global impact on antimicrobial resistance by limiting the unnecessary use of antimicrobials.

Related link: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/fiebre#where-we-work

For more information, please contact:

Professor John Crump

Co-director Otago Global Health Institute

Tel 63 3 479 9460

Mob 64 21 0221 1425

Email john.crump@otago.ac.nz

Liane Topham-Kindley

Senior Communications Adviser

Tel 64 3 479 9065

Mob 64 21 279 9065

Email liane.topham-kindley@otago.ac.nz
China's economy is expected to overtake that of the eurozone in 2018, which means it has to assume more responsibility on global issues. China's GDP is forecast to reach about $13.2 trillion this year, beating the $12.8 trillion combined total of the 19 countries using the euro, Bloomberg said Wednesday.

In 2013-16, China's annual average contribution to global economic growth stayed above 30 percent, more than the contribution by the US, eurozone and Japan combined.

China has become too big to simply comment on global issues from the sidelines. The country's huge economy makes it an important participant in the global market. China must engage itself further in the international economic system to provide more public products to the global community. This is a reality we cannot evade.

Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, said Wednesday during the two sessions that cooperation in poverty alleviation could be strengthened under the framework of the Belt and Road (B&R) initiative.

Social welfare is an effective way to reduce poverty in developed countries, while development itself is the real engine that can successfully lift less-developed countries out of poverty. The B&R framework can serve as a new platform to bring more development opportunities to underdeveloped countries and regions along the route and raise living standards in those economies.

As the world's second-largest economy, China must be at the forefront in taking on more responsibility for global economic governance. For instance, with a bigger role being played by China in international trade, the country is speeding up its process of fostering a high-standard global free trade network. It seems the country is unlikely to shut the door to multinational corporations, as China's economy transitions toward a consumption-led growth model.

China has no intention to seek hegemony or subvert the global order. The government has reiterated China will stick to the road of peaceful development and will never become a threat to other nations. China's rise will not be a smooth process due to the complexity of global geopolitics. But we believe China won't use this as an excuse to evade its obligations.
COVID-19: Boynton gave out 29% of $100 gift cards it offered for shots

A Broward County doctor brought a "strike force" to a Boynton gym to take on the low rate of Black COVID vaccinations.
National lawmakers from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police Force have suggested a motivational mechanism and more frequent military training exercises to further prepare them for combat.

A key issue is to unleash the potential and motivate people, which calls for awards and motivational systems to personnel to prepare them for battle, Tan Min, the deputy chief of staff at the PLA Central Theater Command, also a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), said during an interview with China National Radio (CNR).

The mechanism could allow involved personnel to better conduct their duties, Tan said, noting that the reform is expected to bring a new look and changes to the military.

Training exercises for the armed police force have been put at the center of strategies, Bao Yingxiang, commander of the armed police corps of Tianjin Municipality as well as an NPC deputy, said, CNR reported.

"We added mobile forces and anti-terrorism forces to deal with emergencies, rescues and terrorist attacks, so that the armed police force could better fulfill its duty," Bao said.

Fu Guoqiang, another NPC deputy from the military and head of the Aviation University Air Force, noted that through military reform, education and fostering talent from military colleges the needs of the forces could be better reflected, CNR reported.
Everyone's favorite dream-pop cry-along band, Beach House, announced their new album today. The Baltimore-based band will be releasing their seventh album, appropriately titled 7, on May 11. Devotees of the many occult traditions recognize the number 7 as being very significant  in Kabbalah, 7 represents the concept of netzach, which symbolizes victory through endurance. The seventh card of the Tarot's Major Arcana, the Chariot, echoes this dynamism. Coincidentally, the band released a song called "Chariot" last year  maybe they've been studying up on their practical magic?

The band described the album's simple title as a call to explore the songs piece-by-piece. "We hoped its simplicity would encourage people to look inside. No title using words that we could find felt like an appropriate summation of the album," they wrote, as part of their album statement. They've already released two singles from the album, "Lemon Glow" and "Dive," which you can listen to below.

Beach House also described a different recording process from their previous works. The band indicated that the songs were recorded in groups of 3-4, rather than in one long recording stretch. They also experimented with their instrumentation, straying away from their minimal guitar and keyboard format. "As a result, there are some songs with no guitar, and some without keyboard," they wrote. "There are songs with layers and production that we could never recreate live, and that is exciting to us."

Speaking of live shows, they will also be embarking on a headlining tour. Interestingly, it appears that the band will be skipping the requisite summer music festival dates. If you're looking to cry along to their enchanting music, you'll have to catch them at a live show. Tickets go on sale on March 9, 2018, at 10 AM local time.

Apr. 30 - Chattanooga, TN - The Signal

May 01 - New Orleans, LA - Civic Theatre

May 02 - Little Rock, AR - Metroplex Live

May 04 - Oxford, MS - The Lyric

May 05 - Tulsa, OK - Cain's Ballroom

May 07 - Albuquerque, NM - Sunshine Theatre

May 08 - El Paso, TX - Tricky Falls

May 11 - Mexico City, MX - Auditorio Blackberry (album release show)

May 13 - Mayer, AZ - Form Arcosanti

Jun. 02 - Barcelona, ES - Primavera Sound

Jul. 26 - Philadelphia, PA - Tower Theatre

Jul. 27 - Raleigh, NC - The Ritz

Jul. 28 - Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theatre

Jul. 30 - Dallas, TX - Bomb Factory

Jul. 31 - Austin, TX - ACL Live at the Moody Theatre

Aug. 02 - Tucson, AZ - Rialto Theatre

Aug. 03 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fairbanks Lawn at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Aug. 05 - San Diego, CA - The Observatory at North Park

Aug. 07 - Oakland, CA - Fox Theatre

Aug. 10 - Portland, OR - Keller Auditorium

Aug. 12 - Vancouver, BC - Orpheum Theatre

Aug. 14 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot

Aug. 15 - Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre

Aug. 17 - St. Paul, MN - The Palace Theatre

Aug. 18 - Chicago, Il - Chicago Theatre

Aug. 19 - Detroit, MI - Royal Oak Music Theatre

Aug. 20 - Toronto, ON - Sony Centre

Aug. 22 - New York, NY - United Palace Theatre

Aug. 23 - Brooklyn, NY - Kings Theatre

Aug. 24 - Boston, MA - House of Blues

Aug. 25 - Washington, DC - The Anthem

Sep. 25 - Lisbon, Portugal - Coliseu dos Recreios

Sep. 26 - Porto, Portugal - Teatro sa da Bandeira

Sep. 30 - Lyon, France - Epicerie Moderne

Oct. 01 - Koln, DE - Gloria

Oct. 02 - Berlin, DE - Huxleys

Oct. 04 - Lund, SE - Mejeriet

Oct. 05 - Gothenburg, SE - Tradgar'n

Oct. 07 - Oslo, NO - Rockefeller Music Hall

Oct. 08 - Stockholm, SE- Munchenbryggeriet

Oct. 09 - Copenhagen, DK - Forum Black Box

Oct. 11 - Hamburg, DE - Kampnagel

Oct. 12 - Utrecht, NL - TivoliVredenburg

Oct. 13 - Brussels, BE - AB

Oct. 15 - Paris, FR - Olympia

Oct. 18 - London, UK - Troxy

Oct. 19 - Manchester, UK - Albert Hall

Oct. 20 - Dublin, IE - Vicar Street

Photo Courtesy of Beach House
Sex work and human trafficking are not same thing. It's a notion that seems basic, but Congress is attempting to pass legislation that will conflate the two  with disastrous consequences for the millions of public and anonymous sex service providers. CNN reports that the Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act, or SESTA, will be voted on the Senate as soon as next Monday. A similar bill, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, or FOTSA, has already passed the House of Representatives.

The crux of the legislation entails holding websites criminally liable for any paid sexual activity that is knowingly advertised or arranged by its users. While sites like Craigslist and Backpage have shuttered their "adult services" sections, providers still use them to advertise sex services. This bill targets such sites, along with a litany of other advertisement sites and screening resources. The bill would allow federal attorneys general to criminally prosecute such sites; at that point, it is only a matter of time before they wiped off the web.

Sex workers use a myriad of web tools to enable to advertise and conduct their services, screen potential clients, and receive financial compensation. For many providers, these sites are their primary vehicle to make a living; if they can't safely advertise their work, they cannot work  or worse, they are forced into the streets, which only increases their likelihood of being victimized by johns (the very violence the bill purports to ameliorate). Social media behemoths, such as Twitter and Instagram, would be under pressure to ban users that advertise sex  and many sex workers rely on their social media presence for their brand. Additionally, some sites also offer anonymous services to coordinate payment for labor if both the worker and john are wishing to avoid traditional banks. Screening and review sites allow workers to post information about clients before they schedule a session. This information ranges from "tried to lowball my fee" to potentially life-saving warnings about dangerous clients.

The implications of the SESTA and FOSTA legislation would, first and foremost, cut off workers' access to the online sex market, resulting in a crippling financial blow to their livelihood. Many could turn to less-safe means of procuring clients. If screening sites are shut down, workers will take a gamble with their safety. The result is that the sex trade will become less safe, which is the opposite effect of the intended bill.

Sophie B, a writer, former sex worker, and organizer for sex worker rights, is particularly worried about the impact on the LGBTQ community. Transgender and gender nonconforming individuals (especially those of color) often face discrimination in the workplace; many use the sex trade to make ends meet. "These bills would have devastating effects on my community," she says. "Any time an online platform is removed or made illegal, sex work gets pushed further underground and into more dangerous avenues, and sex workers die."

Related | Stoya Take the Wheel

Porn performer and writer Stoya argues that the bills could also target sex workers in legal industries. She is concerned that "the major social media platforms could ban us in response to this law." Instagram is already fussy about nipples on breasts; major social media sites could impose blockades on any sex work-adjacent content to avoid prosecution. Although porn performers, strippers, sugar babies, and non-sexual fetish workers use these sites, Stoya notes that their activism could be subject to scrutiny. "As some of the most publicly visible sex workers, our own organization efforts and our solidarity with our sisters and brothers may be criminalized," she says.

Everyone wants to stop the sexual exploitation of trafficked children and adults. That is not up for debate. The trouble is, when the law casts too wide a net, sex workers who wish to stay in the trade will also be targeted. Stigmatization and criminalization are the primary forces that keep victims of trafficking from reaching out to law enforcement. Only full decriminalization of sex work will allow sex workers to come out the shadows and report violent pimps and johns. It's a platform that is supported by Amnesty International and the World Health Organization.

The bill will be debated on the Senate floor as soon as March 12, 2018. You can use this database to call your Senators and encourage them to rethink the scope of the legislation.

Photo via Getty
Designer duo Cami James and Nadia Napreychikov (of Discount Universe) first met Bria Vinaite through Instagram, before the 24-year-old actress landed her breakout role as Halley in The Florida Project. To celebrate International Women's Day, the three have come together to talk about the significant changes Vinaite is experiencing with her blossoming career, but also, unavoidably, the heartbreaking truths of being women in industries that don't always support them.

Their friendship grew as did both Vinaite's career and the DU fanbase, which originated in 2009, well before the e-commerce boom in the midst of early blogging. Comically, their bond was solidified when the three attended the film's NYC premiere, and Willem Dafoe (Bobby in The Florida Project) nicknamed them "The Three Musketeers," and called them all "trouble." This label, especially given that it came from Dafoe, secured a lasting connection for the trio.

In a way, DU and Vinaite have "all felt like underdogs, creating our own paths that's not always approved of by the industry or critics," the designers say. In just 2017, Vinaite transformed her Instagram persona into an acting career, while almost a decade ago DU became a fashion fixation through online buzz  not exactly classic routes to industry success.

Discount Universe: We noticed a tendency in your interviews for people to focus on the fact you were discovered on Instagram  almost implying that it was luck, as if you don't deserve to be where you are. How does that make you feel?

Bria Vinaite: At first it used to bother me, but now not as much. There were so many people saying I got "lucky." For a moment it even made me think, "Wow, maybe that is the case, maybe I just got lucky." In time the people close to me made me realize that sure, luck gets your foot through the door, but it's up to you to actually show up and do the work. And that's what's really helped me be at peace with it all, knowing I could have fucked it up and it could have gone in so many different ways. I got an opportunity that I never thought I would get, and I'm willing to work however hard it takes.









The thing with that is, yeah, you could have fucked it up, but you nailed it. We know for a fact you work 14-15 hours days and it didn't happen by chance. Fine, you don't have acting experience, but shouldn't we be celebrating that you did an incredible job? For putting yourself in a situation that 99 percent of people could not pull off?

One of the craziest moments to me was not even being on set. It was doing a speech in Toronto in front of 300+ people  it's terrifying. In front of camera, you're in a scene, like, you can lose yourself in it and of course, retake. While standing on a platform in front of X amount of people was so crazy to me  every single time that I practiced, I stuttered. Then when I got on stage, I didn't. I called all my friends and was all, "I didn't stutter," and they were like, "Of course you didn't." Honestly, it's so incredible to have that support of people around me; they believe in me. They don't make my success out to be luck; they see me practicing and working it.

As young women in business, we are acutely aware of the emotional chaos and havoc that can be wrecked by the infamous "Imposter Syndrome"  that fear that someone is going to expose you as a fraud, or you don't deserve your achievements, even though you've forged your own path, and really have as much right as any to be where you are. It tends to be a product of an inability to internalize your successes. How do you deal with this?

I feel like every woman is somewhat conditioned to feel that way. I really respect every single person that has put in all the years of schooling and training for their career. I'm definitely considering [going back to school]. I wish I had known this was what I wanted to do before, but luckily I'm still 24. Sometimes when I get compliments about the film, I almost feel the need to diminish them or redirect them because I'm like, "Oh yes.. but..."

See even now! It's so easy to be self-deprecating  to default to reducing yourself or your work, but it really has long-term implications.

It's hard to go from no one really caring about you to everyone being like, "Oh my God, Bria!" It's just weird getting complimented all the time. Isn't it weird that it's actually more strange to have people come up to you and tell you nice things? It takes a while to get used to it or figure out a way to approach the whole [change] when nothing much has really changed on the inside, only outside.

Let's talk about role models. When your visibility increases in such a dramatic way, people tend to assume you have to take responsibility for how you impress upon other young women who might be struggling to get their break, or looking for someone to inspire them. Even though you may not represent the typical youth, you certainly represent a growing number. We feel like we are seeing a shift towards an alternative career path arch; more and more we see superstars getting their start on YouTube etc. In a way, this has been happening for a while, and yet you're still facing the challenges of the new frontier. To us your journey is just as valid as the next, but how do you feel about representing the vanguard?

My main goal is that I want to make an effort to inspire young women, and to show them that being yourself can actually get you really far. I want to show them that working hard on something that you love, even before it's making you money can still be so fulfilling.

If you had any advice for anyone out there that could be in a similar position to where you were not long ago, what would it be?

To really appreciate any platform or opportunity you may get, and when people see you being grateful, that's when things keep coming. The smallest things mean the world to me, and I don't think that'll ever change, which is why I hope my career will continue to grow. I don't believe in god, but I do believe that there is a higher power  Mother Nature or something in the earth that can feel your wants and desires, and when you believe in them is when you're really able to achieve them. I can barely sleep every night because I toss and turn, and I'm having these dreams where I see myself in these crazy situations living out my wildest dreams. I see it so vividly; I can just feel myself being there.

The power of manifestation. It's especially important to continue positive reinforcement when we are always overcoming challenges.

It's crazy hard to trust my intuition, but deep down, I do  I have to, you know?

Of course. You are challenged by just being a woman day-to-day, especially entering the industry at such a spectacularly charged time.

A lot of the scripts that I read, I'm like, "Really? Really?!" So many roles for women don't have substance, even still. I think that's what makes me so grateful that in The Florida Project (and my roles since then), I've been able to play characters that have such a broad range of emotion and depth. So many roles are the bimbo blonde girl or the cute girlfriend etc. I'm none of those roles. One of my biggest inspirations in general are women who make their own scripts. I read this article that Brit Marling wrote about her sexual assault with Harvey Weinstein; the way she articulated it was like, "If I had just been an actor instead of an actor/writer, I might not have left the hotel room." It just makes me so emotional. The fact that she was able to create her own scripts if he blacklisted her  create her own shows and roles and didn't have to rely on someone else, that's so powerful to me. "The part of me that walked out was the writer." I feel like that sparked such a big change in me because seeing these types of roles all the time, I'm like, you know what, if I had to wait forever, I'm willing to wait [for the right role], even if I have to fucking create it [Bria is crying at this point]. I'm such an emotional ass bitch [Laughs].

Loaded. We could talk about the issues with the role of women in film (and fashion for that matter) for hours. But let's swing it back to Bria for a minute. What's been your favorite failure thus far?

My favorite failure was school. I've always thought school is so important and that it should definitely be the main thing young people are focused on. But my whole [issue] was that I couldn't find a place to learn that was appropriate [to me], and that taught me in the way I was able to learn. I think it's really important to understand that not all people learn in the same way and I couldn't do it in an overcrowded 32+ kid classroom where people are throwing papers at each other, talking and passing notes  and that I'm [somehow] supposed to listen. I became aware that I couldn't learn that way. Instead, I used to read a book a week and I would teach myself. That was the biggest gift I think my mom ever gave me; she instilled in me a love of reading from a young age.

So important. Recognizing the need to educate yourself outside of the system at that age shows some pretty amazing initiative.

I'm like 9 or 10, and I'm standing in front of a bookshelf and I'm so happy. Under every book was a number and a different color  I had them categorized. I'd read a book a week and write my mom a book report.

Surely you're interest in that would funnel into your capacity to be a great actress, in relation to narrative and a thirst for adventure  a great resource for your career to draw on.

Yeah. And you know, what's crazy too is I feel like because written word means so much to me, when I read The Florida Project script, I cried. That's how I knew I needed to do it.

Ok so, what book would you most gift others then?

I feel corny saying it, but The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I feel like it's one of those books that no matter what point you're at in your life, you could always draw something different [from it]. Sometimes the words just hit me so hard that I have to put it down and try to take it all in because it touches me on so many levels.

Should we start a book club?

Yes! Can we? Oh also, you have put in Augusten Burroughs' This Is How. He's my favorite author. I feel like books are so important for mental health, offering a new perspective on something and making you feel you are represented. There are chapters in there that changed my life.

Other Bria recommendations:

Winner Stands Alone & Adultery by Paulo Coelho

The Lovers Dictionary - A Novel by David Levithan

Literally Show Me a Healthy Person by Darcie Wilder

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby

Photography: Zac Stone

Styling and Art Direction: Cami James and Nadia Napreychikov

Makeup: Lauren Searle

Clothing: Discount Universe
A door fell off an Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) transport helicopter and landed on a remote island in the southwest of Japan, the defense ministry said Wednesday.

The accident, which involved a large rear cargo door which weighed just over 30 kilograms plumetting from a CH-47 transport helicopter on Tuesday and onto a field, caused no injuries or damage according to the latest reports.

The incident occurred as the large transportation chopper was flying over Okinoerabu Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan's Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told a press briefing on the matter on Wednesday morning.

Onodera said he has ordered the ASDF and the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) to carry out safety checks on the cargo doors of all its CH-47 helicopters.

The ASDF said it is looking into the reason why the cargo door fell off.

The CH-47 transport helicopter which lost its door was carrying 4 crew members when the incident occurred at about 6:50 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

The transportation chopper was undergoing training drills at the time of the accident, involving taking off and landing at a small base on Okinoerabu Island.

The helicopter belongs to Naha Air Base in nearby Okinawa Prefecture.

Kagoshima Gov. Satoshi Mitazono referred to the latest military mishap as "extremely regrettable" and called for a thorough investigation.

"I want the ASDF to do its utmost not to impact the safety of the people of this prefecture," he said.

This is the latest in a string of accidents and mishaps involving SDF aircraft recently.

On Feb. 5, a GSDF attack helicopter nose-dived into a residential house in Saga Prefecture in Japan's southwest, killing both crew members and setting the house ablaze.

The fatal accident may have been as a result of the helicopter's main rotor becoming detached mid-flight.
Aside from the time he chose to have dinner in public and was subsequently slapped by a fellow diner, Harvey Weinstein has been laying pretty low since 90 women came forward to accuse him of sexual abuse  something that's about to come to an abrupt end.

Related | Harvey Weinstein and 'Casting Couch' Appear in Hollywood

The NYPD are apparently just waiting on the District Attorney's say-so to do the damn thing and arrest Weinstein, cutting his luxury rehab retreat for sex addicts (with Kevin Spacey, no less) short. That's right, officers are reportedly standing by to take Weinstein down for felony sexual assault.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told the New York Daily News that they're still accumulating evidence, before referring the outlet to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance: "It's his case right now. I would ask you to ask him what his schedule is."

Weinstein apparently did a lot of bad in the state of New York, as he's being investigated for five counts of sexual assault. Two cases in particular, however, have apparently stick out to law enforcers: Lucia Evans, who told the New Yorker Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004 and actress Paz de la Huerta, who alleged she was raped by Weinstein in 2010. The remaining cases are reportedly "still developing."

Related | Harvey Weinstein Cites Jennifer Lawrence As a Woman Who Still Likes Him

Who knows what might happen to Weinstein when the LAPD gets hold of him, but let's not forget that sex trafficking accusation.

Image via Getty


I think it's safe to say that we are all in love with openly gay figure skater Adam Rippon: he who, at age 28 (which is like, octogenarian status in fucked up figure-skating years) competed at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea; he who was the first openly gay American man to compete in the Olympic games; he who said during those games that he'd love "a Xanax and a quick drink" before his skate; he who wore a HARNESS to the OSCARS (by Moschino, no less) a mere few days ago.

Related | Adam Rippon Brings Moschino Bondage to the Oscars

Need another reason to be in love with the outspoken American icon? Speaking with CNN, Rippon said that Vice President Mike Pence, known anti-LGBTQ deplorable, first developed an interest in meeting with the skater after an article surfaced in which he shared his thoughts on what it meant for the then newly-minted candidate to lead the Senate. (And of course, we now have actual proof that the arch-conservative Pence has used his leadership status to oppose rights supporting the LGBTQ community and those affecting women, so Rippon wasn't wrong in his initial criticisms).

At first, Rippon said that Pence's initial request to meet  which, of course, his communications team categorically denied attempting to set up  did not come at the right time.



Interestingly, and in characteristically patriotic fashion, Pence tweeted his support for the American competitors in the Olympics, then eventually tweeted Rippon to voice his support.

This is where I fall in love with Rippon all over again. In an effort to continue using the platform granted him by his participation in the recent games, he told CNN: "He tweeted at me and he said I want you to know that I'm for you and I'm for all the Olympians, which I think that's great, but I don't believe it because when I go home, are you still for me? Are you still for other LGBTQ Americans? Are you still for that trans man or woman that wants to join the military? Are you still for that lesbian couple that wants to get married? That's where I feel like the tweet is almost disingenuous." Say it for the back row!

What's really great about this is now Rippon is making it clear that he'd like to have a conversation with Mike Pence now. And it also represents a wonderful example of what to do when you have a platform of power, recognition, and privilege. It also is worth mentioning that in the fight for equality, white bigots listen best to white people, bigoted or not. We know it's true that if Rippon were, for example, a person of color, there would be no room for said conversation. Rippon seems to know this, and is playing his cards right, which in itself deserves acknowledgment.

Anyway, elsewhere in the interview, Rippon said that meeting with Pence wouldn't just satisfy him; it would be a discussion for all whose lives have been negatively impacted by Pence's policies. After all, let's not forget that LGBTQ rights, women's rights, and civil rights are human rights. Our lingering million-dollar question: can this convo be broadcast for us all to see? Seeing Mike Pence become shook, bothered, and bewildered by what would most certainly be Very Direct Questions (TM) by Rippon would be the true Olympic gold medal that Rippon didn't take home. Except, we'd all get get some gold.

"Now is the right time," Rippon said. Let that ring in your ears a minute. Because is it ever.
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Four Deaths in State Custody in Iran in Two Months Heighten Grave Concerns for Detainees

03/07/18

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Gonabadi Dervish Detainee Died From Blows to the Head, Says Daughter

The recent death of a devotee of Irans largest Sufi order in Tehran marks the fourth known death of a detainee in state custody in Iran in two months.

Its outrageous that detainees in Iran keep dying in state custody, said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

These people are arrested, they die, and nobody knows what happened, added Ghaemi. This lack of transparency is unacceptable.

The daughter of Mohammad Raji, the Gonabadi Dervish who died in police custody in Tehran sometime between February 20 and March 4, is planning to sue the authorities, she told CHRI.

We got a lawyer to follow up on the case because my fathers death was caused by blows they struck to his head, said Tayebeh Raji. We need to shed light on this crime. We are demanding an autopsy.

I thought they would take him to a hospital for treatment and take care of him-at least out of respect for the years he spent defending this country [in the Iran-Iraq war], she added.

She continued: But on the night of March 3, we were contacted by the police and asked to bring his photo and papers to identify him. Today [March 5], [my fathers] son-in-law went there and he said my father had gone into a coma and died from injuries caused by blows to the head.

Iranian officials have claimed that Raji was injured during protests in Tehran in February 2018 but have refused to take responsibility for his death. It remains unclear exactly when Raji died and whether he died at a detention center or at a hospital-regardless, his family says he died in state custody.

On March 5, the Fars News Agency, which maintains close relations with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported that An informed source denied reports about the death of a dervish in Evin Prison or in police detention and said: We have not had any deaths among members of this cult during investigations. He added: This person was injured on the night of clashes on Pasdaran St. and was taken to Baqiyatallah Hospital but he died.

On March 4 the Tehran prosecutor denied that Raji died during the investigation process or while under interrogation but did not address the fact that Raji was in state custody at the time.

How many more people will die before Iranian officials listen to calls from inside and outside the country for an independent investigation into these deaths? asked Ghaemi.

Family Denied Access to Raji Until After His Death

Tayebeh Raji was detained the same day as her father on February 20 but released late that evening. The authorities refused to give the family news about her father until after he had died, she told CHRI.

My father was arrested on the morning of February 20, [2018], she said. I was there when it happened. He was taken into custody ahead of me. I saw that my father was injured; he was on the ground [on 7thGolestan St.] with a bloody face. But I saw his hand move and realized he was alive.

She continued: I was detained at 4:30 in the morning [February 20] and taken to the Vozara Detention Center and they released me at 12 midnight. We had no information about what had happened to our father and he didnt contact us. Anywhere we went, no one had any information.

Tayebeh Raji also told CHRI that she has no information about her brother, Mohammad Ali Raji, who was also detained on February 20.

Mohammad Raji was one of more than 300 members of Irans Sufi Gonabadi Order who were reportedly arrested after clashes between the religious order and the police became violent in Tehran on February 19.

Three policemen and two members of the Basij volunteer militia were killed after a bus allegedly driven by a dervish ran over them. Friday prayer leaders have since referred to the dervishes as terrorists and spies in their sermons.







Funeral of policemen killed during the protest by Gonabadi Dervishes

(photos by Mehr News Agency)



...[T]hey caused these riots to cover up the enemys espionage operations against our missile sites under the guise of environmental protection, said ultra-conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader of Mashhad, on February 23. These [dervishes] must be uprooted for harming peoples security.

The Gonabadi Dervishes interpretation of Islam differs from that of Irans ruling Muslim Shia establishment. The Islamic Republic views any alternative belief system, especially those seeking converts, as a threat to the prevailing Shia establishment and has imprisoned members of the Sufi order and expelled them from universities for their faith.

According to Mazjooban, a website devoted to news about Irans Gonabadi Dervishes, the clashes began when police attacked a demonstration by the dervishes on February 19, 2018, outside a police station as the dervishes were demanding the release of a fellow devotee.

The website also reported that Mohammad Raji was a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) during which he commanded several battalions of Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Kurdistan Province. In 2004, he left the IRGC and became a farmer in Mazraehabad, a village near the city of Aligoudarz, Lorestan Province, according to the report.

Farhad Nouri, a spokesman for the dervishes, told CHRI on February 23 that approximately 170 followers of the group had been hospitalized at the time because of injuries caused by beatings by the police and plainclothes agents.

The recent multiple deaths of detainees under highly suspicious circumstances have raised concerns regarding fatal ill-treatment in Iranian prisons, particularly after swift official statements that the detainees committed suicide and the refusal of authorities to allow any independent investigations.

Iranian officials claimed that the deaths of Sina Ghanbari in Evin Prison on January 7, 2018, and Vahid Heydari at a detention center in the city of Arak that same month were suicides.

Kavous Seyed-Emami, a prominent Iranian academic and environmentalist who had Canadian citizenship, also died in Evin Prison allegedly by suicide on February 9, 2018. Calls by his family and UN human rights experts for an independent investigation have gone unheeded in Iran.

Friday prayer leaders are using the clashes with the dervishes in February to paint the entire religion as violent, which can only inflame tensions and lead to more abuses, said Ghaemi.

Now more than ever, influential voices in Iran should be calling for the protection of the dervishes and all detainees instead of giving security forces a carte blanche to use excessive force against detainees with impunity, added Ghaemi.
Netanyahu launches another tirade against Iran at AIPAC

03/07/18

Source: Press TV

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that Iran is responsible for "darkness descending" on the Middle East, hailing the US administration's threat to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.



Israeli PM Netanyahu pointing at a explosive Iranian FM Javad Zarif!

(cartoon by Bozorgmehr Hosseinpur)



"Iran is building an aggressive empire. Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, more to come," Netanyahu claimed in a hawkish address in Washington on Tuesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a day after a meeting with US President Donald Trump.

He alleged that Iran is increasing its influence in the Middle East and seeks to dominate regional countries such as war-ravaged Syria and Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.

He presented an ominous map of the Middle East with the countries he claims Iran seeks to dominate colored in black.

Netanyahu, who faces an intensifying corruption probe at home, claimed that the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), had made Tehran's atomic program more dangerous.

Iran and the P5+1 countries - namely the US, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany - finalized the nuclear accord in July 2015 and started implementing it in January 2016.

Under the deal, Iran undertook to apply certain limits to its nuclear program in exchange for the termination of all nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran.

Netanyahu described the agreement as a great threat to peace in the region and claimed that Tehran is seeking to develop nuclear missiles.

He said Israel and its Arab allies would support a possible move by US President Donald Trump to tear up the JCPOA if it is not strengthened in a way to prevent Tehran from resuming its alleged quest for atomic weapons.

The Israeli premier threw his weight behind a "right policy" adopted by the US president to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

"We will never let Iran develop nuclear weapons - not now, not in 10 years, not ever," Netanyahu told the pro-Israel lobby group.

Iran has in the past repeatedly denied similar allegations by Netanyahu and his allies as baseless.

President Trump has repeatedly described the JCPOA, which was negotiated under his predecessor, Barack Obama, as the worst and most one-sided transaction Washington has ever entered into, a characterization he often used during his presidential campaign, and threatened to tear it up.

Trump has threatened to pull out of the JCPOA unless Congress and America's European allies help "fix" it with a follow-up agreement within a 120-day deadline.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday everyone will regret the possible collapse of the landmark nuclear agreement as the US continues its efforts to sabotage the deal and issues threats to pull out of it.

In a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Tehran, the Iranian president added that it is imperative to save the nuclear agreement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also in February rejected as "improper" the conditions set by the United States for upholding the multilateral nuclear agreement, urging Washington to immediately fulfill its commitments under the deal.

"A party to a multilateral agreement cannot set conditions for the deal. They [the Americans] have previously set some conditions that were improper. Their new conditions are improper as well," Zarif told reporters in Tehran.
Helicopters take off near Tianshan Mountains

EditorHuang Panyue Time2018-03-08 WZ-10 attack helicopters attached to an army aviation brigade under the PLA Xinjiang Military Command (MC) lift off at a military airfield successively during a recent flight training exercise near the Tianshan Mountains in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Yu Guangtong) 1 2 3 4 5 Next Source China Military Online

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Outspoken Iranian Professor Sadegh Zibakalam Fined as Noose Tightens Around Freedom of Speech in Universities

03/08/18

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Sadegh Zibakalam, a Tehran-based reformist political analyst and academic known for his criticisms of Iranian state policies, has been fined for telling a foreign newspaper that the majority of Iranians do not support the Islamic Republic. The Tehran University political science professor told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) on February 28, 2018, that he was questioned at Branch 2 of the Culture and Media Court in Tehran after he made the comments in an interview with Deutsche Welle.



By Bozorgmehr Hosseinpur, Sazandegi magazine



In an interview about recent disturbances in early January (2018), I said if a referendum was held today, a considerable number of Iranians would not vote for the Islamic Republic; perhaps only 30 percent would, Zibakalam told CHRI. The prosecutor has taken my words to be propaganda against the state and weakening the state.

It has become a trend; they really want to force me to stop giving interviews, he added. This is a violation of freedom of speech. Its the third time I have been taken to court for giving an interview. Just two weeks ago, the Appeals Court issued a final ruling against me.

The political analyst told CHRI that ultimately the Appeals Court ordered him to pay four million tomans (approximately $1,069 USD) for disturbing public opinion for saying that the Iranian judiciary had not been impartial in trying to prosecute President Hassan Rouhanis brother, Hossein Fereydoun.

The ruling that has been issued to me says the decision is final, he said. But I still havent paid the fine because I really think that someone who says the judiciary is not acting independently should not be charged with disturbing public opinion.

In my statements in my own defense and in a letter to the judiciary chief [Sadegh Larijani], I said I agree that my intention was to disturb public opinion but I want to know, how does the judiciary measure such things? he added.

Even if what I did was a crime, what did I do that convinced you I was disturbing public opinion? said Zibakalam. How did you know? Did you conduct a poll to measure how the people were disturbed by my interview? There really isnt any framework or discipline for measuring disturbances of public opinion. Propaganda against the state? What are you talking about? Even more interesting is charging me with weakening the state!

Contract Suddenly Canceled

Zibakalam also told CHRI that his contract was recently canceled by Tehrans Islamic Azad University (IAU), where he had been working as a professor for a decade.

The IAU has unilaterally canceled my contract after 10 years without any prior notice, he said. One of my colleagues, whos a legal expert at Tehran University, told me I should file a complaint with the Labor Ministry because employers cannot break a contract without prior notice and they should pay compensation for all my years of work.

The political scientist added: Expelling professors who teach humanities and rewriting their contracts are attempts by the IAU to make universities more Islamic and inject the states ideology into the curriculum. But this method has been tried and has failed in Eastern European countries [under communism] and China. It will also fail in Iran.

On February 5, 2018, the Shargh newspaper reported that the IAU had altered its contracts with many of its teaching staff. In the Science and Research Department alone, about 170 professors had been demoted to part-time positions.

The word going around is that some of the IAUs prominent law and political science professors... have been expelled, tweeted former student activist Hasan Asadi Zeidabadi on February 5, 2018.

Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has often called on Iranian universities to avoid teaching Western ideas in the humanities and instead focus on Islamic sources.

Individuals both inside and outside the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution are working in this area. Different organizations are working on humanities, said Khamenei during a speech in May 2017.

He added: They have the same goal. Of course, they have not referred to their work as The Quran and Humanities or other such titles. However, they are working in the direction of developing a link between humanities and Islamic teachings.

In June 2014, Zibakalam was sentenced to 18 months in prison for criticizing Irans nuclear program policies and the states handling of financial corruption cases by the judiciary. His sentence was later reduced to a fine of five million tomans (approximately $1,530 USD).

Before the 1979 Revolution, Zibakalam served two years and one month in prison for his membership in the outlawed Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MEK, also known as MKO or PMOI). He was released in September 1976.
CAMA Gallery of Iranian Art announce opening of London gallery on April 5th, 2018

03/08/18

Source: CAMA Gallery

CAMA Gallery London

19 Dacre Street, London, SW1H 0DJ

Opening Ceremony 6pm-10pm







Following the success of their space in Tehran, CAMA Gallery, the new international market leaders in Modern and Contemporary Iranian art, have announced the opening of their London gallery on the 5th of April with an inaugural exhibition of 19 Contemporary Iranian artists.

The exhibition, entitled "Sensation", is dedicated to contemporary luminaries from Iran. Whilst the works of all the artists are vastly diverse in theme and style, ranging from hyperrealistic painting to calligraphy, each piece selected aims to stimulate the senses of the viewer. The 19 artists are Bita Vakili, Meghdad Lorpour, Behrang Samadzadegan, Mojtaba Tajik, Flora Feizbakshsh, Samira Alikhanzadeh, Azra Aghighi Bakhshayeshi, Saeid Ahmadzadeh, Morteza Pourhosseini, Elham Yazdanian, Babak Roshaninejad, Ali Nedaei, Tahereh Samadi Tari, Ojan Shirozhan, Mostafa Nourbakhsh, Fereydoon Omidi, Maryam Salour, Mohsen Jamalinik and Mohammad Tabatabai.

Notable artists include Bita Vakili, considered one of the most sought after young female artists in the Middle East. At only 40 she recently broke records at Christie's Dubai when a piece estimated at 20,000 USD was sold for 45,000 USD at auction. Renowned sculptor, painter and ceramist Maryam Salour is also of interest as in addition to having had her own gallery and having been director of numerous art fairs in Iran, she has produced several programmes on Iranian artists for the BBC World Service. Morteza Pourhosseini has also been highly regarded for his work that criticises the current repressive treatment of women in Iran, and despite having never left Iran has had paintings bought by Sotheby's London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Iran's contemporary art market is outperforming that of any other Middle Eastern country. Works by Iranian artists shone at Sotheby's in 2017, grossing over 60% of the 2.7 million USD generated by the 20th Century Art: Middle East auction. In the the spring 2017 sales, the combined results of Bonhams, Christie's, Sotheby's and Tehran Auction produced $11,912,150 in sales of Iranian artists; the next largest nationality was Egyptian with $2,585,657. Persian/Iranian art has one of the richest art heritages in world history, with a distinctive hold on various artistic disciplines including architecture, painting, weaving, pottery, calligraphy, metalworking and sculpture.

CAMA Gallery aims to be a leading force in the growth and expansion of the art industry in Iran and the Middle East and the only gallery in London to showcase exclusively Iranian art. CAMA presents all genres of Modern and Contemporary Iranian art in international exhibitions, online, and now their London gallery, and offers contemporary artists exposure and global recognition.

With over twenty years of experience in the Iranian art market as an art manager, curator, illustrator, editor and author, Mona Kosheghbal is CAMA's female founder. Based in Iran, she has curated the exhibitions at the Tehran gallery, including the recently successful exhibition featuring contemporary female Iranian artist Tara Khoshenshin entitled The Pattern of the Imagination, and for the London opening has hand-picked an outstanding selection of contemporary artists to best introduce the UK to the work of Iranian artists. Founder of the Naghayesh Artistic Group, Kosheghbal provides extensive connections to the Iranian art market, playing a crucial role in CAMA's mission to cross cultural and artistic boundaries.

CAMA Gallery will open with a welcome reception on 5th of April 2018 from 6-10pm. Please RSVP to rsvp@damsonpr.com.

For more information please contact Anna Beketov, Damson PR on anna.beketov@damsonpr.com or +44 (0)20 7812 0645.

Artist Biographies:

Bita Vakili

Born in 1973 in Tehran, Bita Vakili has been painting for over 25 years, mostly working with mixed media on canvas. lnspired by images of nature, Vakili brings together paint and other mediums in this artistic practice and abandons them on the surface of canvas. In her recent work, she has moved away from nature and towards the abstraction of scent, space and corporal elements. She holds a bachelor's degree in painting from the Faculty of Art at Azad University and a master's degree from the Faculty of Art at Tehran University. Vakili has showcased her work at more than 70 group exhibitions in Iran, United Arab Emirates, Canada, USA, China, Monaco, France and more. Her sale at the 12th Christie's Dubai auction made her one of the most expensive female artists in the Middle East.



Artwork by Bita Vakili



Meghdad Lorpour

Born in 1983 in Shiraz, Iran, Meghdad Torpor holds a bachelor's degree in painting from Shaded University, Tehran. He creates hyperrealist paintings often depicting natural landscapes and engaging with the representation of texture through line, light and soft-spoken palettes. He has held four solo exhibitions in Tehran, as well as numerous group exhibitions across Iran. He works mostly with acrylic on canvas.

Behrang Samadzadegan

Behrang Samadzadegan is an artist, critic and curator born in 1979 in Tehran, Iran. His works are versatile and range from symbol to historical paintings, to include sculpture and installation pieces. His works questions cultural and social identity through found sources, examining the legitimacy of normative values and systems of authority. He holds a bachelor's degree in Painting from Iran Art University and a master's degree in painting from Tabriat Modares University, Tehran. He has held several solo exhibitions in Tehran, and been part of many international group exhibitions, ranging from Armenia to the Philippines, from Greece to Chicago. He is a member of the Association of Iranian Painters and a digital visual editor for the Tehran Avenue magazine. Samadzadegan is also an arts teacher at various institutions, including Sooreh University of Tehran and the Tehran branch of TAFE programme of New South Wales University. Additionally, he has also published several critical essays in various newspapers, sites and journals, such as Bidoud and The Report.

Mojtaba Tajik

Born in 1966 in Tehran, Iran, Mojtaba Tajik is a self-taught artist, later trained by Iranian master painter Aydin Aghdashloo. His works are hyper-realist paintings, inspired by photographs used as sketches. He held his rst solo exhibition in 1995 in Tehran's prestigious Seyhoun Gallery. He has held several solo shows in Iran, USA and Qatar, as well as group shows worldwide. Tajik's works have been regularly presented in international art fairs. A book was published on his collection of works in 2007 entitled: Boxes, available at Assar Art Gallery. His works have also been included in a book by Lorena Kloosterboer entitled 'Complete guide to painting in acrylic.'

Flora Feizbakshsh

Flora Feizbakshsh was born in 1958 in Babol, Iran. With over 15 years of experience working as a professional artist, she mostly uses acrylic on canvas. She holds a bachelor's degree in Social Economy from the University of Tehran. She has held eight solo shows in Iran, and has been part of many group shows across the country. She is a member of the Iranian Painter's Association.

Samira Alikhanzadeh

Born in 1967 in Tehran, Iran, Samira Alikhanzadeh creates confrontational portraits, often incorporating acrylic on printed board with mirror fragments. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in Painting from Azad University, Tehran. She has held solo exhibitions in Tehran, Boston, Dubai and London. She has also been part of various international art fairs, including the 2015 Venice Biennale in Italy and the 2016 Kunst Zurich 16 in Switzerland.

Azra Aghighi Bakhshayeshi

Azra Aghighi Bakhshayeshi was born in 1968 in Qom, Iran, and is an award-winning calligraphist. She creates suggestive calligraphy compositions using acrylic on canvas. She has held solo shows across Iran and has been part of many international shows and fairs in Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Kuwait, and beyond. In 2006, she won the rst round of Sa'adi Prize in New Delhi, India. She is also a former calligraphy teacher at The Calligraphers Association of Iran and a former Art Advisor for the Women Affairs Department at the Kish Free Zone Organisation in Iran.

Saeid Ahmadzadeh

Born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran, Saeid Ahmadzadeh is a painter who creates bold representation artworks and portraits using acrylic on canvas. He holds a bachelor's degree in painting from Azad University in Tehran and a master's degree in painting from Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran. He is the Dean of Visual Arts Department, and a Professor of Visual Arts at Azad University, Bouin-Zahra. In 2008, he was a selected artist in the 7th National Painting Biennal of Iranian Contemporary Art at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. He has held several solo and group exhibitions across Iran.

Morteza Pourhosseini

Born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1985, Morteza Pourhosseini has been the recipient of numerous accolades and awards, and his paintings have sold at Sotheby's London auction house and bought by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A child of the revolution who has never left Iran, Pourhosseini's artistic expressions courageously express the denigration of women in Iran today and capture the foundational precepts of a patriarchal order enshrined since the ascension of the Safavid Dynasty (1501-1722) and the declaration of Shi'ite Islam as the ofcial state religion.

Elham Yazdanian

Born in 1979 in Tehran, Elham Yazdanian received her masters in painting from Tehran Art and Architecture University in 2005. Playing with light and shadows, her paintings feature gure less spaces and attempt to reveal consciousness concealed in the darkness of a space by an illuminating light. Her choice of medium in her paintings is acrylic while she uses a wide range of materials in her smaller scale drawings. Since 2003, she has participated in numerous exhibitions and biennials. In addition to being part of several private collections, her works are kept in the collection of Imam Ali Museum in Tehran.

Babak Roshaninejad

Born in 1977 in Hamedan, Iran, Babak Roshaninejad has been inspired and inuenced by social philosophy and the global language of visual arts. A self-taught painter, he uses painting not only to express his views on culture and in particular the social effects of visual culture, but to also emphasis on the power of art as an expressive tool in creating cross cultural dialogue. Known for his large and limited colour canvases, Roshaninejad is particularly concerned and pays special attention to form, composition and the aesthetics of his paintings. Roshaninejad lives and works in Tehran. As well as being part of some prominent private collections, his work is in the permanent collection of The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. His art has been exposed in a number of art fairs and has been the subject of several exhibitions worldwide. He has also published several books of ction and aphorism.

Ali Nedaei

Ali Nedaei was born in 1957 in Abadan. Mostly working with acrylic on canvas, he paints in various styles, ranging from bold gurative representations to more symbolic variations. He is among the most inuential realist painters in Iran. He has obtained a master's degree in painting from Tehran Art University. He is a member of the society of Iranian painting and has held solo shows in Iran and Turkey, as well as group shows across the globe, including Italy, Japan, Armenia and France.



Artwork by Ali Nedei



Tahereh Samadi Tari

Born in 1981 in Tehran, Iran, Tahereh Samadi Tari is a painter who mostly works with acrylic on canvas. She creates hyperrealist, even futuristic paintings, often depicting solitary gures in ambitious urban settings. Inuenced by photography and even cinematography, her canvasses exhibit a concern with geometric abstraction and spatiality. She holds a bachelor's degree in Painting, Art & Architecture from Azad University and a master's degree from the Tehran Art University. She has held several solo and group exhibitions in Tehran, as well many several international group exhibitions in Qatar, USA, and London. Tahereh Samadi Tari is the only Iranian artist who has participated in Volta Art fair New York.



Artwork by Tahereh Samadi Tari



Ojan Shirozhan

Born in 1977 in Iran, Ojan Shirozhan is a painter who mostly works with oil on canvas. Shirozhan creates painterly portraits, denoted by a suggestive use of shading, a warm palette and a dreamlike aura. He learned painting from Iranian masters Mehdi Marzban and Babak Etminani and later obtained a master's degree in Art, Theatre and Fine Arts in the Republic of Maldova. He has participated in more than 40 individual and group exhibitions, within and outside Iran.



Artwork by Ojan Shirozhan



Mostafa Nourbakhsh

Mostafa Nourbakhsh was born in 1968 in Shahr-e Kord, Iran. He is a painter who prefers mixed media on canvas. Often working with a dark palette, he creates abstract calligraphy designs. Highly introspective, they explore forms of interiority through moment, shape and shading. He has held several solo shows and group exhibitions in Iran. He has also won rst place 'for the modern trend of calligraphy' in the Second Festival of Art Centre Works and Productions in Tehran in 2008.



Artwork by Mostafa Nourbakhsh



Fereydoon Omidi

Born in 1967 in Roudbar, Iran, Fereydoon Omidi is a calligraphist who mostly works with acrylic on canvas to creative striking calligraphy designs. He is concerned with speed and rhythm, and his work exhibits a desire to confront and reshape traditional calligraphy techniques through a contemporary and often shocking approach. He holds a master's degree in painting from Azad University and has since held more than 23 solo exhibitions in Iran, Dubai, Paris, London, Venice, among other places. He has hold held various group exhibitions both within Iran and beyond. He also teaches art at Azad University.

Maryam Salour

Born in Tehran in 1954, Maryam Salour is a sculptor, painter and ceramist, with an in-depth knowledge of Iranian contemporary art and a varied portfolio, ranging from bold mixed media paintings to abstracted ceramic sculptures. Although she began studying computer science and informatics in London and Paris, she discovered painting at the Savini Sculpture and Painting School of Paris. She opened her own gallery in 1987, where she held her rst solo show. She has since been the director of the Eighth Biennial of Art of Poetry and Ceramic and Contemporary Glassware of Iran, and has prepared eight programmes for BBC world service, including 2 on young blind Iranian painters.

Mohsen Jamalinik

Born in 1979, Iranian Mohsen Jamalinik graduated in Jahad Daneshgahi University in 2005. He primarily works with acrylic on canvas, working with a pastel palette. He has been one of the Member of "Iranian Institute of Visual Arts" since 2006, and currently lives and works in Karaj. Jamalinik has been very active in Tehran. In 2007, he had his rst solo exhibition at the Homa Gallery. His works were also displayed in the Sa'd Abad Palace Museum in 2008. After a few years, Jamalinik's works appeared in China, France and England. In 2014, he was one of the artists in a group show at Nicolas Flamel Gallery in Paris. He is the youngest Iranian artist to be selected for the Beijing International Art Biennale.



Artwork by Mohsen Jamalinik



Mohammad Tabatabai

Born in 1987 in Tehran, Iran, Mohammad Tabatabai holds a bachelor's degree from Tehran University of Art. Through ghostly gures and ominous abstracted landscapes, he explores the intersection between stillness and silence, the sacred and the secular. He has held several solo and group exhibitions across Tehran. He has also won rst prize in photography at Tehran's School of Fine Arts and third prize in painting at Iran's School of Fine Arts.
Government has stated that its offering tax amnesty to all defaulting businesses and persons operating in the country for the last time.



Emmanuel Kofi Nti, Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), who disclosed this to the media in Accra, called on all persons earning income who have defaulted in the submission of their tax returns and payments or who had not previously registered with GRA to take advantage of the amnesty, come clean and regularise their tax affairs.



Let me emphasise and please note that GRA has the capacity to identify all potential taxpayers. I wish to say that being outside the radar is not an option because GRA will vigorously pursue all tax defaulters, including prosecuting them after the expiration of the amnesty period that is, 30th September, 2018. Thereafter, GRA will apply all the sanctions under the law.



The Tax Amnesty Law (Act 955, 2017) passed by Parliament in December 2017 is a limited-time opportunity for taxpayers and potential taxpayers, who have defaulted in either their registration with GRA, filing of tax returns by due dates, paying taxes on due dates and making full disclosure (complete and accurate) of financial reporting.



Mr Nti said the exercise was also aimed at updating the GRAs database, improving the tax compliance culture and broadening the tax net.



Also, the GRA expected to rake in over GH300 million from the exercise, Mr Nti has said.



The Tax Amnesty Act, 2017 (Act 955) is specifically designed to afford taxpayers already registered with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) the opportunity to voluntarily submit their outstanding tax returns and pay the relevant taxes on all previously undeclared taxes without being made to pay the penalties and interest that otherwise would have been imposed for such default under the provisions of the Revenue Administration Act, 2016 (Act 915) and other tax laws.



Also, potential taxpayers, who are not registered with the GRA, but who earned profits or other incomes in previous years will also have the opportunity to register with the Authority and submit all outstanding tax returns for the relevant period without payment of the relevant tax, penalties and interest that will otherwise have been due on those incomes.



He noted that under the provisions of the Tax Amnesty Act, 2017 (Act 955), tax amnesty was available to a person, who was registered with the Ghana Revenue Authority but had not submitted all returns or amended returns, containing a full disclosure of all previously undisclosed liabilities up to 2017 year of assessment and paid up all assessed and outstanding taxes.



A previously unregistered person who registers with the Ghana Revenue Authority before 30th September, 2018 will file income tax returns for 2014, 2015, 2016 years of assessment, he added.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) says it has lifted the suspension of trading in the shares of the Agricultural Development Bank (adb) with immediate effect.



In a press release Thursday, GSE said, the investing public and all stakeholders are to note the information released in the Press Release numbered 073/2018 and be advised accordingly.



Ghanaians woke up to the news about the sale of the local bank after a consortium of financial institutions that control 51 percent shares in adb reportedly willed their rights to uniBank.



The consortium is led by Belstar Capitala turnkey project finance and implementation institutionalso includes Starmount Development Company Limited, EDC Investments Limited and SIC-FSL, a local newspaper, B&FT reported.



uniBank Executive Director, Clifford Mettle, confirmed the takeover to Joy FM, describing it as a strategic move that will inure to the benefit of both banks.



Consequently, the GSE suspended trading in the shares of adb saying the suspension is to allow the GSE clarify the news on a purported take-over of ADB.



With reference to section 7 of the GSE Automated Trading Rules (ATS), the Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), in consultation with the Chairman of the GSE Council has suspended trading in shares of ADB effective March 7, 2018, the statement said.



It explained that the investing public would be informed in due course of the outcome of the clarifications.



But the Bank of Ghana (BoG) later dismissed as false the alleged takeover of the Agricultural Bank by an indigenous bank, uniBank.



BoG Governor, Dr Ernest Addison said the Central Bank has neither sanctioned the change of adb ownership nor the willingness of the majority shareholder's rights to uniBank.



uniBank also came back to explain that there is no arrangement for it to take over another indigenous bank, adb despite reports to the contrary.



The bank in a statement Wednesday said moves to make it the majority shareholder of adb does not amount to a complete takeover of the bank.





Source: JFM/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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As a young journalist, one of the most intriguing, important,yet unpleasant subjects I covered was crime. During this period, I have met suspects who have confessed to various degrees of crime ranging from murder to stealing.



The hardened suspects were always lucky to return alive. Those who dared to challenge the police in a gun battle mostly returned as dead suspects. I always broke down whenever some of these suspects succeeded in killing police officers in the gun battles.



In one such case, about 15 armed robbers were on a robbing spree at Weija in Accra. They had two vehicles, one mini bus and a pickup. The police upon a tip-off pursued the robbers in their dragon  the Tundra. The robbers after a hot chase engaged the policemen in a shootout. After about 20 minutes of gunfire exchange, one policeman was gunned down, but the police managed to kill about four of the suspects and arrested the remaining suspects. On that day, there was so much anger within the service at the Accra Regional Police Command. One policeman said to me, Franklin this suspect killed one of us. So I dont understand why my colleagues killed only four and brought the rest. They should have killed all of them and leave only two for purposes of prosecution. This is to make the point that the issue of discretion when it comes to the use of force can be very controversial.



Over the last two months, there has been a worrying trend which may appear very unprecedented and unusual. During that same period, I have read and seen a consistent campaign both on social media and on prime radio for the appointment of some very senior police officers to the position of the Inspector General of Police. While this trend may form part of the democratic privileges of the authors, it is a very dangerous trend to see and hear such publications.



It possibly reflects serious reservations made by many people that the police institution has become heavily politicized. A quick assessment of appointments in the Ghana Armed Forces will reveal that at no point have the appointments of Chiefs of Defence Staff and other senior appointments, become a subject for political scrutiny and discussions.



This does not even happen in the Prisons Service or the Immigration Service. Appointments and promotions are made without any evil partisan scrutiny or assessment. It appears to be a professional exercise, but can same be said with the Ghana Police Service?



Note that two months before this whole sense of insecurity, similar campaigns were being run on social media on two persons, Commissioners of Police, Kofi Boakye and Christian Tetteh-Yohuno. There were consistent campaigns on social media for their appointment to either act as IGP, Director General Operations or Director General CID (when the CID job became vacant).



In my opinion, these three positions are the most important positions in the Police Service. These campaigns came in the form of well-designed posters and carefully created graphics intended to solicit for public support. What a way to take advantage of the heightened insecurity to get the job done. There was no way their supporters or assigns would have campaigned for them to occupy the Technical Department or the Services Department. Interestingly some persons I know or do not know or who may not have taken a position on this matter, did so because of the sense of insecurity in the past few days. But I cannot blame them. A problem has been created and a messiah is being projected as the sole deliverer so why wont they fall for the wind?



I have argued that the Service is suffering from years of neglect. I can bet you that the Komenda Edina Eguafo Assembly, KEEA, is more resourced than any of the police commands in the country. Less than 20% of the budget demands are given to them. The best the politicians have done is to throw vehicles at them, thinking that is the solution to their challenges. Cells are poorly constructed; many cells havent seen any renovation for more than 40 years. The Kalashnikov rifle (AK 47) is believed to be the best weapon ever to have been manufactured. But how can our service men be using rusty AKs bound by brown and black cellutapes and other adhesives in 2018? Not half of service men can use a rifle and that is a fact. Never assume that every police man or woman you see around is capable of handling a weapon.



Yes; it is part of the six months training regime but if what a former Police Commissioner said on UTV last week is anything to go by, then they spend only two days on weapon training. However, it must be noted that members of the anti-robbery squad and other combat teams are regularly trained to handle the weapon for operational purposes.



Men and women continue to live in dire situations and yet, we expect to wave a wand and expect a magical operational action from them. Trust me, so many police officers havent set sight on a bullet proof vest before; and I have seen so many of them who cannot even fix a handcuff on a suspect.



There are real problems from recruitment to leadership (at the highest level) in the service, so I cannot blame the current insecurity on the lack of resources. The current insecurity has nothing to do with strategy and that is why every single security expert who has been interviewed hasnt complained about the lack of strategy.



I would usually ignore such uninformed posts largely being circulated by known group of people until two weeks ago when these disingenuous campaigns became widespread and gained traction. It was obvious that such persons were taking advantage of the sense of insecurity to promote these two men for these jobs.



DCOP Kofi Boakye as he then was, was transferred to the Ashanti Region as the Regional Commander. It is a clear fact that during his tenure, armed attacks increased exponentially. I personally worked on stories about the insecurity in the region especially after the killing of a police officer. This insecurity was so serious that the National Operations Command despatched more than 100 police officers to quell the deadly menace. The then IGP had to visit the region to assess the operational structures in the region.



The brutal attacks became a national issue and occupied our media space for many weeks until the additional men from Accra and the complementary works of the Northern Command of the Ghana Armed Forces made a difference. Could we have blamed the then regional commander for the insecurity or could we have rightfully claimed that he lacked leadership and operational skills, thereby causing the feared deaths and attacks?



The Kofi Boakye analogy



There is this myth about COP Boakye and the arrest of Ataa Ayi. His supporters appear to use the arrest of this serial killer and robber as the reason behind their demand for his appointment to the high office of IGP. From the social media messages, some are also infatuated about his public show of force, mostly with broad biceps, thick black shades and his use of security dogs as a sign of strength capable of sending fears down the spine and mind of criminals.



Crime in the modern day is fought with the use of technology, modern resources (personnel and equipment) and data and not through superhero fiction images. These images were available and seen, but criminals in the Ashanti Region somewhat had the freedom and boldness to operate. The point I am making is that, our current threats cannot be solved by any single individual, not even the revered five star U.S General, David Patraeus or the C.I.A Director Mike Pompeo, if the police institution is under-resourced.



If you want me to be very realistic, COP Kofi Boakye may never be appointed as IGP under an NPP government and this is why. He was put on indefinite suspension pending the final determination of possibly the biggest cocaine scandal in our history. The state did not bring any charges against him after years of investigations, but was still not in active service. President John Mahama reinstated him, and years later promoted him to the coveted rank of Commissioner of Police.



Three years prior to the general elections, videos and pictures were widely circulated depicting a rather harmonious and what appeared to be a very personal relationship between COP Boakye and the former President. In fact, we all saw the mistrust between the then opposition NPP, now the ruling party in the region, and the then regional commander ahead of the elections. That mistrust is still very much alive in my opinion. Let us not kid ourselves, when you speak to NPP functionaries they are very bold and convinced that COP Boakye may never be appointed IGP under this government.



Possibly it explains why many NPP functionaries on social media mock at this campaign for him to become IGP, and why some NDC functionaries also openly support a campaign bid to see him appointed as IGP. I am not in any way doubting any professional value he may have.



As for COP Yohuno, I was lucky enough to have covered crime in the region during his tenure as Accra Regional Police Commander. When I saw campaigns being circulated for his appointment as IGP, I hissed at those calls. My moments as a journalist who reports mostly on security, was during his tenure. Criminal activities in Accra bi what? From Teshie, Amasaman, Achimita, Kaneshie, Amanfrom, Weija, Dansoman, Tsui Bleo, Spintex, I mean you just name it  these areas were constantly under attack. As journalists, we always expected an attack for purposes of our reportage because we could predict them. You could not see any clear vision and strategy to eliminate those crimes. Once Mr. Kudalor was made IGP, I knew he was going to be appointed as Director General Operations of the Service due to their close relationship, when Mr. Kudalor served in that capacity.



During AFAG and LMVCA demonstrations, we could easily see the security lapses during his tenure, and it was at that time I duffed my heart to the then Nima Divisional Commander ACP Jango for showing a lot of leadership. And of course, proponents reserve the right to embark on this unethical path of clamouring support for him to be appointed IGP.



An incapable IGP?



I branded and referred to the current IGP, as incompetent and ineffective in an article published more than seven months ago. I may have been justified on hindsight. As usual, an IGP who was some few weeks away from his retirement was appointed and is now on a two-year contract. Trust me, nothing will change under him. He is still clueless as I predicted many months ago. His latest reshuffle clearly showed how tactless he is and how he lacks ideas. Either ways his days to step down or be sacked as IGP are very much numbered, and already lobbying for his successor has begun in earnest. This is what Former President Rawlings tweeted some days ago;

Let us hope the recent robbery and killings is downright plain robbery and not a politically motivated action from within or without, calculated to undermine those in charge of the security machinery in order to pave the way for certain parochial ambitions.



In Ghana, we clearly rubbish these very peculiar observations but easily accept them in movies. Commanders at all levels access information to arrest the bigger criminals and this includes suspects of murder, drugs among others. Many of these informants are smaller criminals who are used to fish out the bigger criminals. They are rewarded for the kind of intel they give and have a strong bond and relationship with these commanders.



I am aware of many popular and serious criminal cases that were unraveled due to the information given by these guys. What is the point I want to make? Are we saying that it will be out of place for these informants to be used to perpetuate some crimes such as the ones we are witnessing in order to undermine some persons in authority within the security service? Until some confession statements were made via popular social media activist David Papa Bondze-Mbir, many people wouldnt have believed the things people could do, to achieve what they want even if it involves the loss of lives and property. Nothing is impossible and the world as we see it today is really dark.



May our President take the best security decisions and make the best security appointments in our interest as a nation and not because of the partisan interest of a select few. If anything, Martin Amidus appointment as Special Prosecutor suggests that there are still incorruptible and very honest people to serve the countrys interest.

Source: Franklin Badu/Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Presiding Bishop of Gospel Light International Church has bashed the leadership of the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Parliament, asking it to refrain from using unprintable words to describe the Speaker of Parliament.



Bishop Addae-Mensah, who appears to be unhappy with the conduct of the Minority in the august house, has called on the Minority leader Haruna Idrisu and the Asawase Member of Parliament (MP), Muntaka Mubarak and the other young minority MPs to show respect to the Speaker of the House.



In an interview, the man of God said he was amazed to hear Hon Haruna telling the Speaker that he (Haruna) would disrespect him, if he dared him.



I have also on several occasions heard Hon Muntaka and some of his colleagues on radio using unprintable words in an attempt to accuse the Right Honorable Speaker of Parliament, Prof Aaron Mike Oquaye of deliberately trying to frustrate and prevent the minority from contributing to issues on the floor of parliament.



Bishop Addae-Mensah said: Even in the wake of such disagreements, resorting to acidic and insulting words to humiliate the leader of such house is unparliamentarily and portrays insincerity and hypocrisy.



Even though the house has its own rules and procedures, there are avenues where grievances of such nature could be channeled for redress rather than rushing to the radio and TV with stinking language to describe a well respected personality like Prof Oquaye, he added.



What kind of morals are these minority members showing the current generation of our children? For me, leadership of parliament must be with brains and not brawn. It is unacceptable in our culture to look at a man old enough to be your father and call him names, he said.



Hon Muntaka Mubarak likened the Speaker of Parliaments actions in the house to that of Iddi Ammin or Mobutu and its an insult to himself and the party he belongs to. It tells the kind of training he had at home.



If someone looks him in the face and calls him a fool or stupid will he master the courage or the moral right to drag such a person to the privileges committee? he quizzed.



According to the Presiding Bishop, leadership is a seed, what one sows is what he reaps.



He said minority leaders like J.H Mensah, Paapa Owusu Ankomah and Kingsford Alban Bagbin in the same parliament performed creditably.



Bishop Addae-Mensah believes the performance of the particular minority group in parliament might be the worst in history.



It appears since the emergence of the fourth Republic in our current democratic dispensation, I think this batch of Minority group in parliament is the most awful I have ever seen.



Though I know there are a lot of descent and well respected men and women among the NDC MPs, there are also few young ones who are trying to become hawks overnight with egoistic intent of wanting to gain popularity.



Meanwhile, Bishop AddaeMensah has also called on Nana Obiri- Boahen to honourably resign his post owing to the unguided comments he made about his own party.









Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Wednesday, swore in three new Ambassadors, who are to safeguard and promote the image and interests of Ghana outside her shores in Japan, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.



They are Mr. Frank Okyere, Ghanas Ambassador to Japan; Eric Odoi-Anim, Ghanas Ambassador to Zimbabwe; and Mrs Amma Adomaa Twum-Amoah, Ghanas Ambassador to Ethiopia.



Reminding the Ambassadors about their roles, President Akufo-Addo told the three envoys and High Commissioners that they must bear in mind the fact that they have a responsibility of preserving and promoting the image of a country whose reputation amongst the comity of nations is high.



President Akufo-Addo told the new envoys that his government has made it a policy to seek more private sector equity financing for infrastructure projects.



This, he added, means that the new envoys have a responsibility to drive private sector investment into Ghana.



The President admonished them to work closely with the Ministries and Agencies in Ghana whose role it is to generate investment in the country, urging them to remember vividly the slogans of the governments flagship programmes, 1-District-1-Factory; 1-Village-1-Dam; Planting for Food and Jobs.



Additionally, President Akufo-Addo advised the 3 new envoys to develop cordial working relations with the professional Foreign Service officers they will find at their duty posts, and also with members of the Ghanaian communities in their respective countries.



Ghana is on very good and cordial terms with all the countries to which you have been posted. Our bilateral relations span several decades, and our ties of co-operation remain strong. Your role is to deepen these even further, as well as explore other areas of effective co-operation, which will inure to the mutual benefit of our respective populations, President Akufo-Addo added.

Source: Graphic.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Some Ghanaians have set up camps across the Sahara desert where they exploit and traffic fellow Ghanaians as slaves in Libya, according to a report of a fact-finding team.

The 5-member fact-finding team from Ghana, which visited Libya from February 5 to 10, 2018, comprised representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, the Ministry of the Interior and the research department of the Ghana Immigration Service.



According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, the team came to the conclusion after holding extensive discussions with a number of Ghanaians in Tripoli.



Ghetto leaders



Ms Botchwey, who was delivering a statement on the alleged sale of African migrants in Libya in Parliament on Wednesday, said during the course of the journey, Ghanaians who were unable to afford the cost from one point to the other were handed over to "ghetto leaders."



She said the ghetto leaders, who were mostly Ghanaians, had set up camps or ghettos along the routes, which they operated in collaboration with their partners in Ghana.



"Per their modus operandi, when a migrant is handed over to them, he will be made to call his family back home in Ghana. His family will then be directed to contact the agent/partner of the ghetto leader to settle the indebtedness, after which the migrant is released to continue the journey to the next town.



"Where there is delay in the settlement of the migrant's debt, the migrant is tortured and the abusive act video recorded and sent home to his family. However, in the event that a migrant is unable to settle his or her indebtedness, he or she is sent to Ben Wahlid, another city in Southern Libya, and offered for sale to those in need of cheap labour. This is done in collaboration with some Libyan nationals," she said.



Ms Botchway said between 10,000 and 18,000 Ghanaians were currently resident in Libya.



She said a sizable number of the Ghanaians were legally resident with some having lived in Libya for more than two decades.



Ghanaians on detention



Ms Botchway said the team had confirmed that 72 Ghanaians has been arrested and detained in Libya for various offences including entering Libya illegally, possession of fake Ghanaian passports and attempting to embark on the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean to Europe.



She said the team had issued travel certificates to all the 72 identified Ghanaians, and indicated that Ghana's mission was liaising with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) "to ensure their repatriation to Ghana as soon as possible."



Minority's call



Speaking with journalists, the Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, urged the government to send a team to Libya to identify and repatriate the Ghanaians who had been sold into slavery.



He said those Ghanaians were being held in Libya against their will and so the state must intervene to secure their freedom.

Source: Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, in a parliamentary briefing yesterday, said that 151 migrant Ghanaians in Libya had opted for voluntary repatriation.



She maintained that the International Organisation for Migration (IMO) in a letter dated March 5, 2018 to the ministry said those 151 Ghanaians would be brought to Ghana by a chartered flight.



A five-member investigative team set up by her ministry to probe a CNN report that some Ghanaian migrants are being brutalised and sold as slaves in Libya, has confirmed the report.



According to the team, some Ghanaian migrants are being offered for sale in that country to those in need of cheap labour by other Ghanaian ghetto owners in collaboration with their Libyan accomplices.



The team, made up of officials from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Interior, as well as the research department of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), went to Libya and carried out the investigation from February 5 to 10, 2018.



They claim to have interviewed 72 Ghanaians from six different detention camps in Tripoli accused of various offences, including entering Libya illegally, using fake passports and attempting to embark on dangerous voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.



After the interaction with the 72 people, 70 of them indicated their willingness to return to Ghana and the ministry of foreign affairs is therefore, liaising with the IMO to repatriate them.



But two of them said that they were still bent on seeking greener pastures in Europe and so they would not return home.



According to Ms Ayorkor Botchway, with this information, the ministry also told the Ghana Immigration Service and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) about the imminent repatriation of these Ghanaians and would need to prepare for their arrival.



She told parliament that out of the 72 Ghanaians held up in detention camps, 16 are from the Central Region, 15 from the Brong-Ahafo Region, 11 from the Western, nine from the Ashanti, eight from the Northern, six from the Greater Accra, four from the Upper East and three from the Eastern Regions, while the other three could not tell which regions they come from.



Ms Ayorkor Botchway indicated that the team further established  after consultations with leadership of the Ghanaian community in Tripoli  that there are between 10,000 and 18,000 Ghanaians in Libya with a sizeable number legally resident.



Mr Speaker, with regard to involvement of Ghanaians in the trafficking and exploitation of other Ghanaians, the team observed that our nationals have set up camps along the routes across the desert where they exploit and traffic fellow Ghanaians, the minister said



She, therefore, issued a stern warning to all those Ghanaians involved in the crime that very soon the law would catch up with them.



She also indicated that in order to protect Ghanaians travelling to Libya through Niger and other bilateral engagements with Libya and Niger, Cabinet had given approval to the ministry to open consulates in Tripoli, Libya and Niamey.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Supreme Court has set aside an order by an Accra High Court for the restoration of the residence and work permit of embattled Indian businessman, Ashok Kumar Sivaram.



According to the justices of the Supreme Court, the High Court judge erred in granting the order and also exceeded her jurisdiction in making the order.



This follows a suit filed by the state praying the court to quash the order of the High Court directing the Comptroller of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) to restore the businessmans residence and work permit.



An Accra High Court in August 2017 ordered the GIS to issue Mr Sivaram, a temporary residence permit.



Justice Naa Adoley Azu, who presided over the case on Friday, 25 August 2017, advised that the rights of Mr Sivaram be respected so far as he remains in the country.



An Accra High Court had earlier quashed the deportation of Mr Sivaram by the Interior Minister, Ambrose Derry, after the Ministry had accused him of fraud.



He had been deported on allegations of fraud relating to his acquisition of a fake marriage certificate to enable him stay in Ghana  a claim the Indian denies.



Mr Sivaram later petitioned President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, saying he was being harassed by Mr Dery, as well as the Comptroller of the Ghana Immigration Service, Kwame Takyi, and Deputy Comptroller General in charge of Operations, Laud Afrifa.



Mr Sivaram accused the three men of conspiring to dispossess him of his own firm, Jai Mai Communications Limited, and hand it over to his business partner, thus, doing everything possible to deport him from Ghana.



Meanwhile, the three Ghanaian officials have rejected claims they are harassing Mr Sivaram.









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.

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A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against the U.S. government by 21 young people who say climate change deprives them of their constitutional rights.

The youngsters, between the ages of 10 and 21, sued the Obama administration in 2015. They have carried their case over to the Trump administration, which is seeking to have it tossed out.

The three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the administration failed to meet what they call the "high bar" under federal law to have the case dismissed.

The group said U.S. administrations as far back as Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s have ignored the dangers caused by carbon emissions and pollution -- including climate change -- taking away from their constitutional right to life, liberty and the ability to pursue wealth.


The New Patriotic Party has temporarily banned its Deputy General Secretary, Nana Obiri Boahen, from speaking to the media in an official capacity on any matter until a disciplinary case against him is resolved.



The decision was taken by the partys National Steering Committee at its meeting on Wednesday, which considered a leaked audio tape of Nana Obiri Boahen in which he made some serious allegations against the NPP.



The deputy general secretary claimed in the audio that the party received an amount of GHC50 billion from Ghanas presidency for the organisation of its national annual delegates conference in Cape Coast last year.



He further claimed that though hes an executive of the party, he has not been given an office, adding he had at most times used his own resources to conduct party businesses.



The leaked tape, which went viral, attracted criticisms from the public who were shocked by the revelation from the deputy general secretary.



The party on February 28 denied the allegations and indicated the matter had been referred to its National Steering Committee to look into the matter and make appropriate recommendations.



The ban



A statement issued by the general secretary of the party John Boadu on Wednesday said the Steering Committee met on the matter and considered the leaked tape as well as its related matters.



It said the Committee gave him a hearing and also took notice of Mr. Boahens public apology for the false allegations he had made against the Flagstaff House and the party leadership.



The statement said the National Steering Committee has thus referred his conduct to the partys disciplinary committee in accordance with Article 4 of the party constitution.



The committee has further instructed the Deputy General Secretary, Nana Obiri Boahen to refrain from speaking to the media in any official capacity until his issues with the disciplinary committee have been fully resolved, it stated.



Meanwhile the Steering Committee has reminded members of the party of their duties under Article 3(D) of the partys constitution that enjoins them to protect and promote the good name of the party and also remain loyal and truthful to the partys cause at all times.



Background



Nana Obiri Boahen had suggested in a leaked private conversation with a supposed National Democratic Congress (NDC) member that he was given a paltry GHC3,000 from the GHC50 billion which the Flagstaff House gifted the party with for the congress.



Even when we went to Cape Coast recently on an official assignment, as a member of the resolution committee, they gave me only GHc 3000, and received a paltry sum of GHc 2000 for fuel. So in all I was given just GHc5000, while the Flag Staff House had given headquarters an amount of about GHc 50 billion. Im only watching them; what is happening now is called grabbing, grabbing that is what they are doing, Mr. Obiri Boahen said in the said audiotape.



But the NPP issued a statement Tuesday to rebut the claims contained in the said tape, describing the allegation by Mr. Obiri Boahen as palpable false, indicating no such thing happened.



The statement signed and issued by the general secretary John Boadu said Nana Obiri Boahen himself has subsequently admitted to the falsity of his baseless allegation.



It said the party has taken serious exception to the unfortunate comments by Mr. Obiri Boahen.



Prior to the NPPs denial of the claim, Mr. Obiri Boahene admitted on an Accra-based radio station that the conversation was indeed between himself and an NDC member, but explained what he said in the tape was not a true reflection of what is happening in the NPP.



He said he had to exaggerate what he said so he could get the NDC member whose name has been given as Kwaku Skirt to also open up and divulge sensitive NDC information to him.



What i said in that conversation is not true reflection of what is going on in my party. But sometimes as mature politician, if you want to squeeze information out of people you need to exaggerate something, because when you show disinterest in what hes saying, he will not give you enough information.



But lying and giving him false information, he was able to give me detailed information. Infact the information I had from him has been very beneficial to me as an individual and to my party as well. What he said about the NDC concerning the plans and strategies of the NDC party, I have it all and I wont discuss on the airwaves; Im too mature as a politician, he claimed.



On March 2, however, asked President Akufo-Addo and the NPP to forgive him for lying about some 50 billion cedis he claimed the presidency gave for the organisation of the partys annual delegates conference in Cape Coast last year.



He issued a statement on his private companys letterhead  Obiri Boahen and Associates, a law firm  claiming the tape was tampered with, therefore invalidating the contents.



This heavily doctored and fraudulent, voice-mimicked tape, which the contents thereof are untrue; and incorrect ought not to be given any credence and attention, Obiri Boahen said.



He noted, I have learnt much lessons from this unfortunate incident, from this heavily edited; secretly recorded; intentionally mutilated and doctored audio recording or cassette, I vow not to find myself under such circumstances again. My loyalty and commitment with/to the New Patriotic Party, shall ever continue to be resolute and firm. To err is human; and to forgive is divine says the sages.

Source: 3news.com









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Pennsylvania Regional Ballet is proud to have shared 30 years with the central Pennsylvania community.

This weekend, it will celebrate its anniversary with a Spring Gala Concert performance featuring special guests from the Philadelphia Dance Theatre. PRB students will showcase original choreography by nationally-known choreographers. The show will highlight works by by Christine Aumiller Chandler, Lauren Eichelberger, Jeffrey Gribler and Victoria Silva.

The event will be held Saturday, March 10, at 7 p.m. in the Harrisburg Area Community College's Rose Lehrman Arts Center, 1 Hacc Drive, Harrisburg.

"I'm so proud that for 30 years, we've seen young people excel beyond their goals as they challenge themselves and each other daily, while collaborating as an extraordinary dance company," said Sandra Carlino, artistic director, Pennsylvania Regional Ballet, in a news release late last year. "We are thrilled to offer intensive, superior classes for serious, dedicated ballet students through our versatile curriculum which enhances other areas of our students' lives. Our exceptional teachers hail from around the dance world. Our 30-year history brings a wealth of high quality training and high energy performing opportunities."

Pennsylvania Regional Ballet, located at 211 N. Enola Drive, Enola, was established in 1988 and offers professional training in classical ballet, modern, tap and jazz relative to musical theatre, and contemporary ballet style, introduced through the company's repertoire.

"To watch the dancers grow into successful young adults with confidence and discipline for the past 30 years, is truly rewarding," says Wendy Mowery, president of the board, Pennsylvania Regional Ballet, in a news release. "Thousands of dancers have had their lives touched and changed through the art of dance for three decades. We've witnessed incredible talent blossom and aspirations achieved through the program and its internationally renowned mentors who are master instructors in our studios."

For more Pennsylvania life & culture news:
The iconic West Shore Theatre in New Cumberland has been sold, just months after it closed.

"It's a done deal," said Don Kibler, New Cumberland borough council member. "There is a bona fide buyer that has tendered an offer."

Kibler would not identify the new owner, only saying New Cumberland Mayor Doug Morrow will be meeting with them in the coming days.

In December, theater owner Fred Bollen announced the official closing, citing Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings and health challenges and the fact he was eyeing retirement.

Bollen, who's owned and operated the theatre in the heart of New Cumberland since December 1986, put the building up for sale in December 2015. However, he continued to operate it over the last two years.

"I can't handle the stress anymore," he told PennLive in December. "It's one nightmare after another. It's like, I'm afraid to go around the next corner to find out what bad stuff is going to happen."

The theatre had been in operation for about 78 years and is beloved among residents who say they have fond memories of going to the movies there.

In a Facebook post on March 6, Mayor Morrow thanked the buyer and said he looks forward to their "quest to make it a community theatre." He told PennLive he could not confirm the name of the new owner.

However, last week Morrow said the theater was in bankruptcy court and several bids had been made on the property with one party interested in turning it into a community theatre.

"I will jump in and help facilitate the non-profit community theatre portion," Morrow said.

A potential revitalization of the theatre would be another plus for New Cumberland, where renovations are underway at the former Coakley's Restaurant & Irish Pub on Bridge Street.

Dead Lightning Still Works opened March 3 selling cocktails and bottles of its spirits including flavored vodkas, rums and whiskey. Also, Comfort Keepers has leased a space in the building as a satellite office for the in-home care business.

They will be joined by Bridge Street Brew Works, a brewery and restaurant due to open by late summer. At least three spaces are available for lease in the building.

"It's huge. You think about what the two or three biggest drawing cards in New Cumberland are in all these years, and to get this back into play is huge. That's what brings people back into town. It's a big piece of the revitalization process," Kibler said.
Pennsylvania is looking at having one of the largest number of state legislator retirements this year that it has seen in over a quarter of a century.

With 26 representatives and four senators choosing not to seek re-election, it ties the number of lawmakers who chose to call it quits in 2006, the year after the controversial double-digit pay raise vote. That year was the largest number of retirements since 1992.

About two-thirds of the departing lawmakers hold leadership posts or committee chairmanship positions. All but six of them are Republicans, which currently hold the majorities in both chambers.

The reasons for the high number of departures vary. Some are leaving to run for higher office or pursue other career opportunities. At least one term limited himself. Some have health issues that contributed to their decision. Some simply are ready to spend their days doing something else besides the people's business.

Here is a look at who is leaving.

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Rep. Robert Godshall's website

Rep. Robert Godshall, R-Montgomery County

Godshall has served in the House of Representatives since 1983. He is leaving as chairman of the House Committee on Consumer Affairs.

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Rep. Joe Markosek, D-Allegheny County

Markosek has served in the House of Representatives since 1983. He leaves as chairman of the House Democratic Appropriations Committee.

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Rep. John Taylor's website

Rep. John Taylor, R-Philadelphia

Taylor has served in the House of Representatives since 1985. He is leaving as chairman of the House Transportation Committee.

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File photo/Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com

Rep. Ron Marsico, R-Dauphin County

Marsico, R-Dauphin County, has served in the House of Representatives since 1989. He leaves as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

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Rep. Curtis Thomas' website

Rep. Curtis Thomas, D-Philadelphia

Thomas has served in the House of Representatives since 1989. He leaves as the ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee.

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File photo/Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com

Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Clinton County

Hanna has served in the House of Representatives since 1991. He leaves as whip of the House Democratic Caucus.

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Rep. Bill Keller's website

Rep. Bill Keller, D-Philadelphia

Keller has served in the House of Representatives since 1993. He leaves as the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee.

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Rep. John Maher, R-Allegheny County

Maher has served in the House of Representatives since 1997. He is leaving as chairman of the House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee.

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Rep. Katharine Watson's website

Rep. Katharine Watson, R-Bucks County

Watson has served in the House of Representatives since 2001. She is leaving as chairwoman of the House Children & Youth Committee.

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Rep. Mark Mustio, R-Allegheny County

Mustio has served in the House of Representatives since 2003. He leaves as chairman of the House Professional Licensure Committee.

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Rep. Adam Harris, R-Juniata County

Harris has served in the House of Representatives since 2003. He is leaving as chairman of House Liquor Control Committee.

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File photo/Mark Pynes | mpynes@pennlive.com

Rep. Dave Reed, R-Indiana County

Reed has served in the House of Representatives since 2003. He is leaving as House Majority Caucus leader.

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Rep. Florindo Fabrizio's website

Rep. Florindo Fabrizio, D-Erie County

Fabrizio has served in the House of Representatives since 2003. He leaves as the ranking Democrat on the House Health Committee.

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Rep. Marguerite Quinn's website

Rep. Marguerite Quinn, R-Bucks County

Quinn has served in the House of Representatives since 2007.

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File photo/Daniel Zampogna | dzampogna@pennlive.com

Rep. Will Tallman, R-Adams County

Tallman has served in the House of Representatives since 2009.

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Rep. Jim Christiana, R-Beaver County

Christiana has served in the House of Representatives since 2009.

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Rep. Rick Saccone, R-Allegheny County

Saccone has served in the House of Representatives since 2011.

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Rep. Eli Evankovich's website

Rep. Eli Evankovich, R-Westmoreland County

Evankovich has served in the House of Representatives since 2011.

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File photo/Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.

Rep. Stephen Bloom, R-Cumberland County

Bloom has served in the state House of Representatives since 2011.

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Rep. Kevin Haggerty, D-Lackawanna County

Haggerty has served in the House of Representatives from 2012 to 2014 and was re-elected to serve in a term that began last year.

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Rep. John McGinnis' website

Rep. John McGinnis, R-Blair County

McGinnis has served in the House of Representatives since 2013.

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Rep. Judy Ward's website

Rep. Judy Ward, R-Blair County

Ward has served in the House of Representatives since 2015.

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Rep. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York County

Phillips-Hill has served in the House of Representatives since 2015.

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Rep. Harry Lewis, R-Chester County

Lewis has served in the House of Representatives since 2015.

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File photo/Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County

Greenleaf served in the House of Representatives from 1977-1978 and then began his service in the Senate in 1979. He leaves as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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File photo/Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

Sen. Charles McIlhinney, R-Bucks County

McIlhinney has served in the Senate since 2007. He leaves as Senate Republican Caucus Administrator and as chairman of the Senate Law & Justice Committee.

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Sen. John Eichelberger's website

Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair County

Eichelberger has served in the Senate since 2007. He leaves as chairman of the Senate Education Committee.

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File photo/PennLive.com

Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York County

Wagner has served in the Senate since 2014. He leaves as chairman of the Senate Local Government Committee.

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House Republican Caucus website

Rep. Matt Baker, R-Tioga County

Baker's service in the House of Representatives began in 1993 and ended on Feb. 19 when he resigned to take a job as the regional director of the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services office in Philadelphia. He was chair of the House Health Committee when he left.

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House Republican Caucus website

Rep. Scott Petri, R-Bucks County

Petri's service in the House of Representatives began in 2003 and ended on Jan. 2 when he resigned to become executive director of the Philadelphia Parking Authority. He was chairman of the House Gaming Oversight Committee when he left.
A new streetscape retail center in the heart of Hershey is under construction and rising at West Chocolate Avenue and Ridge Road.

Hershey Towne Square is reshaping the downtown and will be home to several shops and restaurants including Primanti Bros. and Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant.

All together, the redevelopment project carves out 32,000 square-feet of space for tenants.

The project has been years in making and is centered around the former Hershey Post Office building. Three additional commercial buildings were constructed to create the streetscape style town center. It is located next to The Hershey Story Museum and includes a 300-car parking garage.

Lancaster-based TONO Architects and RVG Management & Development Company in Wormleysburg have collaborated on the complex.

Ed Fetter, senior vice president of real estate for RVG Management, said construction is expected to be done in May with the first tenants opening this fall.

Iron Hill has leased a nearly 9,000 square-foot space that will encompass a brewery, dining rooms, bar and outdoor dining. Primanti Bros. will bring its oversized sandwiches, some stuffed Pittsburgh-style with french fries and cole slaw, to a 5,500 square-foot space it is leasing.

Other tenants include Starbucks, Great Clips, Beef Jerky Outlet, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Jersey Mike's, Freshido, United States Post Office and Iron Valley Real Estate.
Police say an 88-year-old woman has been killed by a tree that fell and crushed her as she shoveled snow in the New York City suburbs.

Suffern Police Chief Clarke Osborn tells the Journal News that Barbara Suleski was injured around 5 p.m. Wednesday and died at a hospital.

Neighbors were trying to help her when police arrived. Live wires wrapped around the tree made the rescue more difficult.

Another large branch broke and fell with wires near emergency workers.

Wednesday's nor'easter brought varying amounts of snow - and problems - to the Northeast.

Montville, N.J., got more than 26 inches. North Adams, Mass., registered 24 inches, and Sloatsburg, N.Y., got 26 inches.

Major cities along the Interstate 95 corridor saw much less. Philadelphia International Airport recorded about 6 inches, while New York City's Central Park saw less than 3 inches.

A train carrying more than 100 passengers derailed in Wilmington, Mass., after a fallen tree branch got wedged in a rail switch. Nobody was hurt.

In New Hampshire, Interstate 95 in Portsmouth was closed in both directions because of downed power lines, leaving traffic at a standstill for hours.

Amtrak restored modified service between New York City and Boston on Thursday after suspending it because of the storm.

New York City's Metro-North commuter railroad, which had suspended service on lines connecting the city to its northern suburbs and Connecticut because of downed trees, restored partial service Thursday.
Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski will resign from office Thursday, according to a Morning Call report.

The resignation will come a week after Pawlowski's six-week trial, which ended with him being convicted of 47 counts of rigging city contracts for donors to his political campaigns. The city's home rule charter requires the mayor to leave office if convicted of a felony.

Allentown City Council President Roger MacLean will serve as acting mayor, according to the report. Some were concerned Pawlowski wouldn't leave the office until after he had been sentenced.

Prosecutors case against Pawlowski was that he retaliated against companies that didn't pay or give sufficiently. Pawlowski testified, claiming he wasn't aware of the pay-to-play scheme. Ultimately, a jury found him guilty.

Allentown's City Council had already deemed Pawlowski unfit for the job in 2016, but the embattled mayor continued to hold the office and won his fourth term in November 2017.
The merger of the 100-year-old United Methodist Home for Children in Mechanicsburg with a Maryland-based agency will bring the potential to serve more children, officials say.

The United Methodist Home for Children will be merging with the Board of Child Care, and will be called United Methodist Home for Children, a Program of the Board of Child Care. The merger is expected to occur by fall.

The Mechanicsburg home, which serves about 35 children daily, will remain open, and there is the potential to increase the population into the 40s and add services, said Dan Brannen, president and CEO of UMHC.

"It's going to strengthen the opportunities for kids in Pennsylvania," Brannen said. With the opioid epidemic, he said there is the need for more services for children and families.

"As parents are struggling with addiction, more kids are in foster care around country. The more services we can provide, the better we can support families," he said.

The merger is also about "trying to be competitive in the marketplace," Brannen said. Mechanicsburg, which has a $5 million budget, will be merging with a $35 million operation in BCC, which has a larger roster of programs and accreditations.

Both agencies, which are non-profit corporations, are part of the social justice ministry of the United Methodist Church, but are not owned by the church.

Two senior positions in Mechanicsburg will be eliminated in the merger - the CEO, and the vacant human resources/chief financial officer position.

There are a few open positions that will not be filled and a few people moving into new assignments.

The CEO of BCC will oversee the Mechanicsburg facility, Brannen said.

Currently the Mechanicsburg home is the only children's home in Pennsylvania connected to the Methodist church.

The Mechanicsburg home, serves children 12-20 using a collaborative trauma-informed approach to care. It contracts with county Children, Youth and Family agencies to provide safe residential care to young people and supportive services to their families.

It was founded in 1917 by the Central Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Church (now the Susquehanna Conference of the United Methodist Church) as an orphanage.

Board of Child Care began as three orphanages operated by the United Methodist Church in Maryland and the District of Columbia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, it provides early learning, mental health and therapeutic residential services to more than 700 children and families across the mid-Atlantic.

Bishops of the governing United Methodist Conferences, along with the boards of directors of BCC and UMHC, support the merger. The merger needs the approval of the Pennsylvania attorney general and Cumberland County orphan's court.
The night before today's winter storm hit, the Pennsylvania Office of Administration announced that the Capitol Complex would be closed Wednesday.

Was that necessary, many wonder, after snowfall estimates dropped today?

During a late-morning briefing Wednesday, Gov. Tom Wolf said the closure was to ensure the safety of workers who travel from various parts of the state.

"Our caution may be a little overdone today," Wolf said, but added that he was "trying to anticipate the safety of all folks."

"An abundance of caution is better," he said.

The Capitol closure today affected those who work in the administrative branch.

Non-essential employees were told they didn't have to report to work Wednesday, and other state offices in the Harrisburg area, Reading, Scranton and Philadelphia were closed as well.

But House employees are working today, and some Senate employees are at their jobs, although budget hearings were called off due to the weather.
A Franklin County man is facing a slew of charges after leading police on a pursuit and crashing into a state police cruiser.

Loren Ryan Stains, 27, of Saint Thomas, was observed in a drug transaction at approximately 11:29 p.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of a Rutter's Store on Lincoln Way West in Saint Thomas Township, according to state police.

Stains then got into his 2004 Nissan Maxima and left the lot, and is accused of nearly striking a marked patrol car. He then committed a number of traffic violations, prompting officers to initiate a traffic stop.

Stains is accused by police of failing to stop, and a pursuit ensued. During that pursuit, Stains struck a fence and traveled through several yards before striking a state police cruiser, according police.

After that impact, Stains then struck a parked car on Coldbrooke Avenue before fleeing the scene. A front seat passenger was also found in Stains' vehicle, and officers had to use spike strips during the pursuit, according to police.

Stains was taken into custody a short time later.

The trooper involved in the crash was taken to the hospital for precautionary measures and later released.

Among Stains' charges are aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle while DUI, fleeing police, recklessly endangering another person, criminal mischief, resisting arrest, and a slew of traffic violations.

Stains was remanded to the Franklin County Prison on $1 million bail.
National security adviser Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon fly to Washington on Thursday to brief U.S. President Donald Trump on their meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Chung and Suh met Kim in Pyongyang on Monday and said later that he is willing to talk about giving up his nuclear weapons.

"Chung will give Trump a detailed briefing on what Kim Jong-un said about denuclearization and U.S.-North Korea talks," a presidential official said on Wednesday.


ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Police say a 45-year-old man managed to sign a 16-year-old girl out of her Pennsylvania school 10 times in the last few months and now the two are missing.

Allentown police issued a missing person alert Wednesday for Kevin Esterly and Amy Yu. They say the pair was last seen Monday.

The Morning Call reports police filed a warrant for Esterly's arrest for interference with the custody of a child.

According to the warrant, Esterly signed Amy out of school 10 times between Nov. 13 and Feb. 9 without her parents' permission. Police said Yu's mother called Feb. 9 to report Esterly had signed her child out of Lehigh Valley Academy earlier that day.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! PLEASE SHARE! Amy Yu age 16 and Kevin Esterly age 45, have been reported missing and could possibly... Posted by Allentown Police Department on Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Records show police told Esterly and his wife, Stacey, on Feb. 15 to stay away from the teen's home.

According to the Morning Call:

On Monday, Yu's mother reported the girl as a runaway. Police said Yu was believed to have last been seen with Esterly about 7:09 a.m. at North 15th and West Allen streets. Yu's personal documents and jewelry had been taken from her room, her mother said.

Police contacted Stacey Esterly, who said she last saw her husband about 6:05 a.m. Monday. Kevin Esterly's personal documents were missing and, she said, he had withdrawn $4,000 from his wife's bank account.
HARRISBURG -- Cynthia Wilson, 62, had safely crossed State Street in Harrisburg hundreds of times in the dozen years she had lived on the block.

But Monday night, she didn't make it across alive. She was struck by an eastbound car after trying to cross five lanes of traffic at dusk.

Police said she may have been trying to walk to the store. Her upstairs neighbor, Jace Murtiff, said she left her lights and television on inside her apartment, anticipating that she would be right back.

Her death marked the fifth pedestrian or bicyclist fatality along that stretch of State Street in Harrisburg in 17 months, resurrecting serious concerns about the design of the state-owned road by residents and city officials.

"We're sick to our stomach," said City Engineer Wayne Martin. "This is a state route and I just don't know where to go with it. I need the state to understand what's happening on these roads."

The driver stayed at the scene after the 6:48 p.m. accident in the 1400 block of State Street. Police have not released additional details, but noted that a lack of visibility, lighting and marked crosswalks had contributed to the deadly trend of pedestrians being killed on State Street.

The street represents a perfect combination for tragedy, according to neighbors, with its five lanes of traffic, which makes it difficult to cross or illuminate for pedestrians, and sparse crosswalks, which encourages jaywalking and limited parking, which can force residents to park across the street. And then there are the speeders.

"They come down here like they're on Interstate 81 or 83," said Lisa Jenkins, one of Cynthia Wilson's neighbors. "I'm just so afraid they're going to get one of the kids" from the block or a nearby school.

Jenkins' adult son in fact was struck on State Street last year while trying to retrieve something for his baby from his parked car.

As Russell Jenkins III stood next to his driver's door, another car plowed into him, sending him flying into the center of the road in August. The driver kept going, leaving Jenkins III with a concussion, three broken bones in his left arm and a tear in his right shoulder.

So when Lisa Jenkins heard there was another pedestrian hit Monday night, she panicked.

"I started screaming," she said. "Where is Russ? All the memories were coming back."

As it turned out, it was her neighbor who was killed.

Wilson retired last year after working as a computer specialist with the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. She didn't have children or very many living relatives, but was close with her apartment mates at her home.

She had four cats and also took care of all the neighborhood cats by feeding them and providing milk and shelter on her front porch.

Murtiff said Wilson would greet her apartment mates when they returned home, because she lived on the first floor and could hear the front door open. Wilson would either open her door to say hello or shout a greeting through her closed door.

"She was pretty outgoing," Murtiff said. "She was very caring."

Wilson had been in a bad car wreck earlier in her life so she was afraid to drive, Murtiff said. Instead, she walked everywhere. She was typically cautious about crossing State Street, because everyone knows how dangerous it is, Murtiff said.

Murtiff said she likely crossed the road in the middle of the block to get quickly on the other side, where the sidewalk is more open and well-lit with fewer parked cars and bushes.

"She probably felt safer over there, especially if she was walking alone," he said. "I see a lot of people cross where we live to avoid walking on our side of the street."

Nearly everyone who lives on the section of State Street from 13th to 17th streets knows someone who has been hit or killed. The Jenkins' next-door neighbor also has been struck but survived.

After a pedestrian and bicyclist were killed by vehicles on the State Street bridge within two months last year, city officials said they were going to ask for a traffic safety study.

City officials asked for that stretch of road to be included in a study of State Route 3014, which includes Forster Street and across the Harvey Taylor Bridge into Camp Hill's Cumberland Boulevard.

Camp Hill officials raised concerns after a 66-year-old woman was killed along with her two dogs by an impaired driver as she tried to cross Cumberland Boulevard. Since then, a 74-year-old man died in January after being hit by a tractor trailer near the shopping center after he got out of his car for a fender-bender.

While some of Harrisburg was included in the original scope of the study, it was going to stop at Seventh Street, meaning that the State Street Bridge and beyond would not have been included despite numerous recent deaths.

But the city engineer called officials Tuesday with Harrisburg Area Transportation Study, a regional planning group tasked with identifying needs and priorities for transportation projects, and pointed out the omission.

"The study will include the area of the fatalities," said Martin. "I did confirm that."

It's unclear how long the study will take, but it could take up to a year to complete and come up with recommendations.

During a regional transportation meeting last year, when Martin first asked for State Street to be included in the study, he said PennDOT had added adaptive traffic signals along State Street, which helps to move motorists through corridors more quickly by timing the green lights to benefit the heavy traffic.

But Martin noted that no additional provisions were added for pedestrian safety.

"That never occurred in this place," he said at the September televised meeting. "It was just, 'Let's speed up traffic along this corridor with no return on pedestrian investment.'"

The $3.6 million project with adaptive cameras to monitor traffic and adjust the timing of the green lights started in February 2016. Since then, there have been five pedestrian or bicycle fatalities on State Street in Harrisburg.

Before that, the city logged one pedestrian fatality on State Street in January 2011.

Camp Hill's two pedestrian fatalities along Cumberland Boulevard also came after the traffic control change, but PennDOT spokesman Greg Penny said he didn't believe the system was connected in any way. He did cite "excessive speed, poor visibility in the roadway (i.e., difficulty seeing the bicyclist in the left lane at night), and DUI," as contributing factors for recent fatalities in Harrisburg.

But city officials think there are fundamental flaws in how State Street, and other major thoroughfares are set up.

The city's streets are too "auto centric," said Mayor Eric Papenfuse, noting that 40 percent of residents don't have regular access to motor vehicles.

"Our focus with present and future infrastructure projects is squarely on pedestrian safety," he said.

But State Street is a state-owned street, so the city must defer to PennDOT for any changes.

Possible solutions to decrease the danger on State Street could include reducing the number of lanes or reducing the amount of time pedestrians must spend in the roadway through bumpouts or other traffic calming measures. A light study could help determine ways to illuminate pedestrians without creating unneccessary glare for drivers.

Even low-cost solutions such as painting a giant "35 mph" in the middle of the asphalt could help, Martin said.

"There are designs that could work, like boulevard-type designs," he said. "You've got schools, churches and residences all along that corridor. But it's a struggle to get things changed."

A nationwide program to reduce traffic fatalities called Vision Zero, that promotes integrating human failings into road planning, has made impressive strides in other cities.

In New York City, Queens Boulevard was once known as the "Boulevard of Death," according to an article in City Lab, because of the ultra-wide artery's staggering toll: 185 deaths between 1990 and 2015.

But since a $100 million ongoing overhaul to narrow lanes, widen sidewalks, and protect cyclists--zero pedestrians or cyclists have died.
President Donald Trump's threat of tariffs on imported steel and aluminum has some native appeal in Pennsylvania, where about one in seven of the nation's steel workers reside.

American producers, the United Steelworkers union and others have long contended those imports have been choking the domestic steel industry.

But you don't have to step too far outside of the steel mills to get a far more muddled view of whether this new policy - which may be formally introduced as early as Thursday - is a sure winner.

In Pottsville, managers of the Yuengling Brewery say they are worried about higher prices for the aluminum that is used for its beer cans.

Similarly, at The Hershey Company, executives expressed worry this week about the cost of steel for capital improvements, and the tin foil used in packaging like the iconic silver wrap on the Hershey's Kiss.

And at many other places, managers were simply taking a wait-and-see approach: Will the tariff's have exclusions? What specific products will be covered? How long are they expected to stay in place?

Even the political universe was somewhat scrambled, with policy strangers like Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf and U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, expressing similar concerns about the administration's move.

Trump is expected to sign his final order by the end of the week, with potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada, among others, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

There are public relations wins. Especially for a president eager to live up to his "Make America Great Again" campaign promises.

U.S. Steel, headquartered in Pittsburgh, threw a bouquet to the plan Wednesday, announcing its intent to rehire up to 500 workers at a steel plant in Illinois, starting this month.

President Donald J. Trump at the White House with United States Steel CEO David Burritt, right, on March 1.

The company said the additional steelmaking capacity will be needed to help meet demand from the Trump Administration's plan to impose a 25 percent tax on foreign-made steel.

But most economists reached for this story said tariffs generally mean price increases for the economy as a whole. They can be harder to capture in headlines than a blast furnace reopening, but they're there nonethless.

It works like this.

If I'm buying steel from a Brazilian company now, it's likely because their price is beating that of a domestic manufacturer. The tariff may swing the price point back in the domestic plant's favor, but my firm is still paying more.

As that steel becomes a finished product - be it construction materials, household goods or a car - that's an initial push toward either higher prices or lower profit.

That's just half the battle.

The other fear that's out there is, what if America's trading partners retaliate? Already, leaders of the 28-nation European Union rolled out a "provisional list" Wednesday of American products that it could impose tariffs on.

Adam Ozimek, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, noted Wednesday there are 34,000 Pennsylvanians employed in some form of primary metals manufacturing - which includes steel.

But that's only about 6 percent of the 550,000 manufacturing jobs in the state.

So you can see, Ozimek said, that "the number of workers potentially negatively affected is an order of magnitude larger than the number of workers potentially positively affected."

And if you think that 34,000 is going to grow substantially, even in Pennsylvania, don't hold your breath, says University of Pennsylvania finance professor Jeremy Siegel.

On a Tuesday podcast about the tariffs, Siegel noted while Trump's play will resonate with some of his political base - though not most mainstream Republican political leaders - it's hard to see it working economically.

"It's sort of a time past," Siegel said, noting that even in places like Pittsburgh, where U.S. Steel is still headquartered,. "The (economic) adjustment has been made... and the jobs have been lost."

In the current recovery, Siegel added, new manufacturing jobs of all types are accounting for only about 5 percent of the total domestic job market growth, and its hard to see that changing in an age of advanced technologies and global markets.

Ryan Sweet, director of real-time economics at Moody's, said his firm's cost-benefit projection is the tariff plan would actually provide a small drag on the overall American economy, equating to about .1 percentage point of gross domestic product.

Toomey, the Wall Street professional-turned-senator, said he prefers more targeted actions at trade law cheaters than an industry-wide tariffs.

"If a country is engaging in illegal trade practices, such as dumping steel or illegally subsidizing it, we should use existing tools in federal law to address these actions--and we have been doing so," Toomey said in a recent statement.

"Changing course from this approach by invoking national security as a means of imposing new, huge tariffs on all kinds of imported steel," Toomey continued, "is a big mistake that will increase costs on American consumers, cost our country jobs, and invite retaliation from other countries."

Wolf voiced concerns Wednesday about threatened EU actions against that could affect Pennsylvania manufacturers, like Harley-Davidson.

There are supporters of the move, however, both within and outside the steel industry.

Katherine Miller, a spokesman for Nucor Corp., currently America's largest steel producer with five plants in Pennsylvania, said it is pleased Trump "has decided to use all the tools at his disposal to send a clear message to foreign competitors that dumping steel products into our market will no longer be tolerated.

"We are only asking for fair and balanced trade," Miller said. "We've been in a trade war for more than 30 years, and we've been losing."

Some critics have argued Trump's policy will hurt valued trading partners like Canada, the top source of foreign steel (16 percent of the total U.S. import market in 2016), in an effort to get at "dumping" by rivals like China, which only accounts for about 2 percent of all U.S. imports.

A look at the top exporters of steel to the United States last year.

One leading industry voice, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, called for a carve-out for Canada.

"Canada is not the problem," Gerard said, noting the steel industry there is intertwined with the United States' from firms that own plants in both countries to common union representation.

But Nucor's Miller noted the export stats aren't always a straightforward barometer.

She contends that much of the steel coming in from places like Korea and Turkey originates in China, but receives further processing in those countries before being exported here.

And for David Taylor, president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, the national security theme resonated.

"If we believe in a market economy, then a commodity can't be sold at less than the cost of production," Taylor said, but that is exactly what he believes China is doing through low-cost energy and other subsidies.

If those policies cause the United States to lose its steel-making capacity, he said, it would be very damaging to our economic independence and national security in the long-term.

"I believe this is a form of economic warfare that is being applied to strip away American industrial capacity," Taylor said. "We are in a situation where business as usual just cannot continue."

Penn's Siegel, however, was skeptical on the Knowledge@Wharton podcast whether Trump would actually push through a plan that is significantly scaled back from the descriptions in some of the president's initial Tweets.

"A lot of Republicans are not happy about this," Siegel said, "so he's getting very different feedback from moving on with the corporate tax cut, which Republicans and corporate executives were very much in favor of."
FILE - In this July 25, 2017, file photo, Express Scripts prescription medication bottles are arranged for a photo in Surfside, Fla. Health insurer Cigna will spend about $52 billion to acquire the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts, announced Thursday, March 8, 2018, the latest in a string of proposed buyouts and tie-ups in a rapidly shifting landscape for the health services industry. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
Shayne McGenn pokes his head out a door at the Penticton courthouse in 2016 before being led away by sheriffs. He was arrested at that time in Penticton in connection with a murder in Abbotsford.
According to the Korea International Trade Association, the country's exports to China stood at US$142.1 billion last year, accounting for 24.8 percent of its total exports. Exports to the U.S. totaled $68.6 billion or 12 percent, and to the EU $54 billion or 9.4 percent.

China and the European Union are gearing up for a trade war with the U.S. that raises fears for massive Korean exports of intermediate goods to those regions.

So a full-blown trade war between the U.S. and China and the EU, whose prospect has already prompted the resignation of U.S. President Donald Trump's economic adviser, could have a direct impact on Korea's exports.

Hit hardest would be intermediate goods like steel, auto-parts and other half-made products which make up most of Korea's exports.

Intermediate goods accounted for 78.9 percent of Korea's total exports to China last year, 58.8 percent of exports to Germany, 53.34 percent of exports to France and 49.4 percent of exports to the U.S.

KITA said that a 10-percent drop in China's exports to the U.S. after the imposition of high tariffs would lead to a quarter-percent decline in Koreas exports to China due to decreasing demand for intermediate goods.

Korea's trade-to-GDP ratio stood at a massive 68.8 percent in 2017.

Chung In-kyo at Inha University said, "If the U.S., China and the EU launch a trade war, Korea will inevitably take a huge hit, since its GDP is relatively small and the country is highly dependent on those regions for exports. The high proportion of intermediate goods in total shipments will make the impact even more severe."
In this March 6, 2018, photo, President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Gary CohnAos departure as chief Trump economic adviser heightens doubts about the direction of the administrationAos economic policies just as Republican lawmakers prepare for midterm elections. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Accused serial killer Bruce McArthur made a brief appearance in a Toronto court Wednesday where his case was put over for another two weeks. Bruce McArthur, of Toronto, is shown in this image posted to his social media page. Multiple media outlets report that Toronto police had interviewed and released an alleged serial killer years before he was arrested. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Facebook *MANDATORY CREDIT*
President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday reiterated that it is "unacceptable" for North Korea to possess nuclear weapons and said he has no intention of "easing sanctions for the sake of an inter-Korean summit."

Moon made the pledge in a meeting with the heads of the five major political parties at Cheong Wa Dae when he briefed them on a visit to the North by a five-member South Korean delegation. "Easing sanctions may be possible under an international agreement only when there is concrete progress" in U.S.-North Korean dialogue, he said. "The South Korean government is not in a position to unilaterally unravel the standalone sanctions."

North Korea is clearly cozying up to South Korea to buffer the impact of the sanctions and buy more time to develop its nuclear weapons, so Moon's latest comments are very welcome. Since the 1990s, North Korea has kept not a single promise to the U.S. or South Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program. From 2003 to 2008, it dragged out multilateral talks over the scrapping of its nuclear program while secretly bolstering its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

In 2008, it staged a show of destroying the cooling tower at its nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, which got it removed from Washington's list of terrorism-sponsoring states. But shortly afterward, North Korea walked away from the six-party talks. And despite signing an agreement to allow nuclear inspectors into its borders to verify denuclearization, it conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.

U.S. President Donald Trump said, "Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. May be false hope, but the U.S. is ready to go hard in either direction!" He is right to be skeptical. A high-ranking White House official said, "Talks will not continue if North Korea intends merely to buy more time to develop nuclear weapons. We all know we shouldn't make a sequel to a bad movie." And U.S. defense and intelligence officials all voiced skepticism during a recent Senate hearing.

North Korea has gone all out to develop nuclear weapons, an ambition that dates back to nation founder Kim Il-sung. It would be extremely naive to think that it will give them up. Kim Jong-un has embraced dialogue only because intensifying international sanctions now threaten to sink the impoverished country's economy, and dialogue with the U.S. and an inter-Korean summit will delay any immediate American preemptive attack. And if dialogue can ease sanctions, Kim will gladly buy more time.

The only leverage Seoul has against Pyongyang right now is sanctions. They must remain firmly in place as Seoul engages the North in dialogue to prevent Kim from making the wrong decisions. If he believes he can achieve both nuclear armament and the scrapping of sanctions, the crisis on the Korean Peninsula will only worsen. Kim must be forced to choose. That is the only way to achieve peace. And Moon must live up to his word that sanctions will not be eased for the sake of an inter-Korean summit.

National security adviser Chung Eui-yong visits the U.S. on Thursday and must clearly explain Moon's intentions to Trump. That will bolster trust between the two allies as they engage North Korea in talks. Close cooperation must continue as Seoul gears up for an inter-Korean summit, and Moon must let Trump know that he will not be left on the sidelines. The two allies must also discuss a joint response to North Korea's possible demand for a U.S. troop withdrawal. What is needed now is calm and unshakeable resolve. North Korea's true intentions will become clear soon enough.


This 2016 photo provided by the U.S. Navy, shows a base camp for submarine sea ice exercises in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast. The U.S. Navy has kicked off biennial submarine testing and training under sea ice off Alaska's north coast--the exercises are dubbed Ice Exercise 2018, or ICEX18, and will include maneuvers by three submarines under Arctic ice, including a British vessel, over five weeks. (U.S. Navy via AP)
FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2007 file photo, Stormy Daniels arrives for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. A proposal to name a Utah highway after President Donald Trump is getting pushback from state Democrats, including one suggesting a ramp should be named for porn star Stormy Daniels. Sen. Jim Dabakis on Tuesday, March 6, 2018, said he's trying to show lawmakers that many people would be offended by the idea to honor Trump for his decision to shrink two national monuments. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles,File)
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., joined from left by, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., meets with reporters following a closed-door Republican strategy session on Capitol Hill as they face how to deal with President Donald Trump's impending trade tariffs, in Washington, Tuesday, March 6, 2018. President Donald Trump isn't budging on his international tariff stance so far despite remarkably public pleadings from Speaker Ryan and other Republican allies to back off his threat and avoid a possible trade war. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In this Jan. 18, 2018, photo, U.S. Navy YN1 Suraya Mattocks, one of the first female enlisted sailors to be selected to serve on submarines, poses for a portrait at the U.S. Naval Undersea Museum near her base in Keyport, Wash. The Navy began bringing female officers on board submarines in 2010, followed by enlisted female sailors five years later. Their retention rates are on par with those of men, according to records obtained by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
FILE - In this Nov. 20, 2013, file photo, letters spell out Meadowlands over top the new grandstand at the race track in East Rutherford, N.J. The CEO of Meadowlands, Jeff Gural, has been among the leaders in harness racing in trying to curb doping. Meadowlands revealed that Tag Up and Go had tested positive for EPO in 2016. The Tag Up and Go doping case emerged through one of his initiatives, establishing "out of competition" drug testing, which means horses can be subject to testing at any time, on the track or off. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
In this photo taken June 21, 2015 and supplied by B-Active Sports, Mhlengi Gwala competes in an event in Durban, South Africa. Assailants attacked Gwala, a top athlete, Tuesday, March 6, 2018, while he was cycling to a training session and cut into his legs with a blunt saw, causing severe injures. (B-Active Sports/Jethro Snyders via AP)
According to North Korea experts, the monthly spending of the North's poorest households stands at only US$10-20, barely enough to scrape a living. Middle-class households spend $50 to $100 a month, and a new class of wealthy market traders probably spend twice as much. But high-ranking Workers Party and military officials, who have nothing to sell, live like kings even though the party officially pays less than a dollar a month.

They get their money from bribes, which are graded from light gray to black. North Korean officials skim off money from trade with China, and the money apparently goes into the pockets of party officials. This is quasi-legitimate form of bribery amounts to an estimated $300-500 million a year. Around 50,000 to 60,000 North Korean laborers abroad all paid hefty bribes to get that chance, and some of the hundreds of dollars these workers send home to their families each month is siphoned off by officials.

But everyday corruption is also thriving. There are now about 1,000 small and large open-air markets in North Korea with hundreds of thousands of stalls. Since state distribution of goods has collapsed, these markets account for 90 percent of people's incomes. North Korean men go to work in sputtering state-run collectives only to keep jobs that pay less than a dollar month so their wives and children can sell goods in open-air markets. Some market traders have grown rich, but everyone has to pay bribes up the chain of command. This is the basic structure of the new North Korean economy.

It is this frail ecosystem that is being threatened by the latest UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea. By blocking trade with China, the kickbacks disappear, resulting in a shortage of hard currency in state-run businesses. But shrinking trade also impacts market traders and the amount of bribes they can pay. When North Koreans who paid bribes to work overseas are forced to return home, as the sanctions mandate, that flow of money into the pockets of party officials also stops. As a result, workers become increasingly disgruntled, and it is easy to picture the sense of crisis a party official feels if his monthly income of $100-200 from bribes comes to a screeching halt and he or she is forced to subsist on 50 cents a month.

North Korea frantically boosted imports last year as it braced for the coming sanctions. That is why experts believe the North will only feel the full-blown impact this year, when the reserves run out. Kim Byung-yun at Seoul National University described the situation in North Korea right now as the "calm before the storm."

North Korea's foreign-currency income earned from exports is expected to drop by up to 90 percent this year. High-ranking party officials are growing increasingly nervous about their future. They stand in principle by their leader and his push for nuclear weapons, but their real concern is their shrinking income. This is why Kim Jong-un is now embracing South Korea. He is struggling to shield himself from the impending maelstrom.

Kim has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons. He knows that doing so will lead to the collapse of his regime. He believes he will be able to keep ruling if he makes it through the next two years to complete his nuclear arsenal. That is why he wants to buy time by holding talks with the U.S. and a summit with President Moon Jae-in. Two years is all he needs to perfect his nuclear arsenal and develop more than 100 warheads. Once his nuclear arsenal reaches that level, the crisis will reach a whole new dimension. This is a race against time and a war of wills is raging.

The key is how long the world can maintain the intensity and momentum of sanctions and how to fix any loopholes. Kim's nuclear ambition will be crushed only when more and more North Korean officials begin to believe they will starve to death as long as they support that twisted dream. Right now, discontent seems to be spreading. That is the only way Kim will start to rethink his nuclear game plan.


FILE- In this Feb. 27, 2018 file photo, Florida Gov. Rick Scott talks alongside Andrew Pollack, right, whose daughter Meadow was murdered in Parkland during press conference at Miami-Dade Police Department in Doral, Fla. The mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has put guns at the forefront, for now, in the U.S. Senate campaign in Florida. Republican Gov. Rick Scott, is expected to mount a campaign to oust incumbent Democrat U.S. Bill Nelson from his Senate. (C.M. Guerrero/Miami Herald via AP, File)
Personnel in hazmat suits walk away after securing the covering on a bench in the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury, England on Thursday March 8, 2018, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent on Sunday. (Andrew Matthews/PA via AP)
The first thing Charlotte Hoiosen did when she moved to Alaska in 1960 was have dinner with the governor.

Hoiosen was 38 and married with two kids. The family loaded a van and started a one-way trip from Southern Minnesota to Petersburg. Her husband, Roscoe, would be a teacher there.

The family camped along the way. Not for leisure. Money was tight back then.

"I remember waking up one morning and finding a nice little nest of baby rattlesnakes not far from our tent," said Hoiosen, who turned 95 in December.

The first stop in Alaska was Haines, where they would stay overnight in a hotel a...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Alaska legislators are considering a bill that would require smaller boats to obtain a title issued by the state Division of Motor Vehicles.

The bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Peter Micciche is aiming to reduce the number of vessels becoming derelict and abandoned along the states waterways, KTOO Public Media in Juneau reported Friday.

Micciche told the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday that the bill intends to help officials track ownership of the boats, so they can address the issue before boats become abandoned. The titles would be tracked through a state...
ExxonMobil claims to have utilised 309 local Guyana's companies

By Kaieter News



GEORGETOWN

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018 The Guyana Oil and Gas Energy Chamber (GOGEC) is one of the many stakeholders, which called for local services and products to be significantly utilised in the oil sector.



As such, when the GOGEC's Chairman, Manniram Prashad, learnt on Tuesday that ExxonMobil has made use of 309 Guyanese-owned suppliers and has 605 Guyanese businesses registered, he was obviously elated.

But the businessman is curious to know the names of these businesses as well as the areas in which the suppliers served ExxonMobil.



Prashad told Kaieteur News yesterday, If these figures are accurate then we would obviously be happy about it; but 309 Guyanese-owned suppliers?

That is just concerning when there is no evidence provided at the same time to support it. Hence, we would like the evidence of this.



We would like to have a list of the companies and the services they provided and when.This information was not provided on Tuesday when ExxonMobil's Public and Government Affairs Advisor, Kimberly Brassington, delivered a presentation on the work being done by her company thus far.



Her delivery took place at an oil and gas seminar that was hosted by the Private Sector Commission at Duke Lodge Hotel. Local Content was just one of the topics Brassington touched on.



Brassington said that Local Content is important and critical to ExxonMobil's success in Guyana.



The Public Affairs Advisor said that 605 Guyanese businesses have registered in ExxonMobil's supplier database. She said that those are companies, which have expressed interest in being part of the supply chain.



She said that 70 of them are taking courses in order to build capacity in areas like procurement and safety.



Last year, Brassington said that ExxonMobil and its contractors provided 30,000 hours of capacity training to Guyanese.

Story from Kaieter News



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Guyana's Business Minister Gaskin belittles gold sector to please Exxon throws it under the bus, even before a barrel of oil is produced  Nigel Hinds

By Kaieter News



GEORGETOWN

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018 Vacuous!That was just one of the kind words that flooded the minds of listeners who recently heard Business Minister , Dominic Gaskin belittle the contribution of Guyana's gold sector to the economy.



At an oil and gas seminar that was hosted by the Private Sector Commission (PSC), the Business Minister was in high praise of the economic benefits to come from oil. He did this by comparing it to the gold sector.



Gaskin commented that indeed, the last eight years has been the best for gold production in Guyana both in terms of the amount of gold produced, the gold exported and the value of royalties and taxes collected by government.



The politician said that the government has collected just over US$300M in royalties and taxes from all the gold produced in Guyana over the last eight years.



While that may seem impressive to some, Gaskin stated proudly that in the first year of oil production, the Government will earn just about the same volume of revenue. But local commentators are not pleased with the nexus Gaskin drew between the two sectors.



Specifically, Chartered Accountant Nigel Hinds believes that Gaskin was out of line. He said that Gaskin is palavering about economic issues and industries of which he has minimal knowledge just to please the Exxon Overlords of Business in Guyana.



Hinds added that Gaskin simply engaged in a fruitless attempt to rationalise an illogical contract that the Government signed with Exxon.

Hinds told Kaieteur News that Minister Gaskin has belittled and understated the contribution of the of the Guyana Gold industry with his statements. The businessman emphasised that in the gold industry, operators are made to pay a five percent royalty plus two percent taxes.



He said that the industry has seen production of close to 700,000 ounces.

In the meantime, ExxonMobil will be allowed to pay a mere two percent royalty on more than 3.2 billion barrels of oil.



The Chartered Accountant said that the Business Minister also fails to consider other key points.



Hinds said, Gold has been the trump card for the economy for years. The gold sector ensures a significant employment of Guyanese labour. Guyanese Miners and Traders keep and invest their money in Guyana.



The Minister also forgets to take into consideration that tax concessions to Guyanese Miners and Traders are insignificant in comparison to the all-inclusive Tax Concessions enjoyed by ExxonMobil.



The Chartered Accountant said, too, that over 100,000 Guyanese benefit directly and indirectly from the Mining Industry, when considering the Miners and their family.



Hinds also cited the notes from the World Bank, which indicate that mining plays a crucial role in raising income levels and driving economic growth in Guyana.



In fact, mining's contribution to the Gross Domestic Product in 2015 was 11percent. Its share of Exports for 2015 was 52%, and its contribution to the employment rate in 2013 was 17,363 in direct employment and 21,626 in indirect employment. This makes for a combined 14 percent of the total labor force.



The Chartered Accountant continued, Let us bear in mind, too, that mining equipment is generally sourced locally, adding to Guyana's economic growth and development.



The list can easily be extended to show that Minister Gaskin's glad handing behaviour is most is most disingenuous, unpatriotic, premature and immature.



Hinds articulated that Gaskin is throwing the Guyana Gold Mining Industry under the bus, even before a barrel of oil is produced in Guyana by ExxonMobil.



This was just a terrible attempt to defend an atrocious contract, the Chartered Accountant concluded.

Story from Kaieter News



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Signals to be better and faster on board

From:ChinaDaily | 2018-03-08 09:26

As many an international flyer can testify, Wi-Fi service on board jets isn't nearly so fast as the sort of service people are used to on the ground.

That's about to change.

The internet has become such an indispensable part of life in China, and the idea of in-flight Wi-Fi is so popular among Chinese passengers, that 90 percent of those surveyed said the availability of onboard connectivity would influence their choice of airlines, according to Inmarsat, a London-based provider of global satellite communication services.

Currently, in-flight Wi-Fi mostly relies on the KU band, which makes it susceptible to instability and lost connections during a flight, especially when the airplane is flying over oceans. Such Wi-Fi service is acceptable for sending text messages and photos, but not ideal for, say, watching videos.

The latest high-speed in-flight Wi-Fi operates on the KA band, and the internet speed of such Wi-Fi will be 10 to 100 times faster than what's currently available, providing the same internet speed and reliability that passengers can get in their homes and offices.

US aerospace company Honeywell said it is in talks with Air China and Hainan Airlines about upgrading Wi-Fi services on their commercial flights in China, though the Chinese authority has not yet approved the use of such Wi-Fi in the market.

"Passengers will be able to watch videos during a flight, and have access to real-time TV, high-speed broadband internet, video conferencing, emails and other applications," said Andy Gill, senior director of business and aviation in Asia-Pacific at Honeywell Aerospace.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore Airlines, Vietnam Airlines, New Zealand Airlines and SriLankan Airlines have installed such Wi-Fi services on their flights.

Many other airlines have already or are about to use it, including Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, Caribbean Airlines, Ethiopian Airlines, Norwegian Air Shuttle and Air Astana, according to Honeywell.

"In the long term, the in-flight Wi-Fi services will not only bring benefits to customers and airlines, it could be an important opportunity for the aviation industry and is expected to leverage the improvement of industry data processing and information sharing," said Paul Nef, director of ATM initiatives and services and connectivity at Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific.

A modern aircraft could produce about 20TB of data per hour, and most data is not used effectively now. In the future, high-speed and stable in-flight Wi-Fi is expected to help connect, process and utilize those data and information to make an aircraft more intelligent, Nef said.

By 2035, connected aircraft will become universal, and the market is expected to be worth $130 billion, which will benefit airlines, hardware equipment providers, content providers, retailers and advertisers, according to a research by Inmarsat and the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Also by 2035, the auxiliary income of airlines in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to increase by $10.3 billion, European airlines are set to gain $8.2 billion and US airlines are expected to net $7.6 billion, the research found.
BP in TT for the long run, not using transfer pricing to cut taxes - Norman Christie





By TT Guardian



PORT SPAIN

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018

Outgoing president Norman Christie: Oil company bpTT has not been robbing the government of money by using transfer pricing to avoid paying correct taxes on LNG exports.

So says outgoing president Norman Christie who, in his exit interview with Business and Money, admitted that the country has not earned as much money from LNG but maintained it was not a result of transfer pricing.

In its simplest form, transfer pricing refers to the rules and methods for pricing transactions between enterprises under common ownership or control. An oil and gas company may have a trading company that's part of its group and may agree to sell LNG from Point Fortin to its trading arm for a particular price. That trading arm may resell the same LNG at a higher price and the government only gets taxes based on the lower price. This results in the company's profits increasing and a loss of taxes to the state.

The Rowley administration claims transfer pricing has resulted in billions of dollars of losses to the State.

However, Christie said the matter is misunderstood. He explained that in Train 1 there can be no transfer pricing because all of the companies that buy LNG have no relationship with the owners of the train or bpTT, the sole provider of gas to the Train 1 plant.

In Trains 2 and 3, close to 90 per cent of the LNG going to parties with no relationship to the shareholders. The only difference is Train 4 which was set up as a processing facility, and the matter is very complicated.

Christie said the government will earn more money from Train 1 when the contracts are renegotiated.

He explained that 20 years ago the Train 1 contract was negotiated tying T&T to LNG prices at the Henry Hub in the United States. With the shale gas revolution prices became depressed and T&T's earnings from Train 1 plummeted.

That is mainly because of the contractual arrangements that were made 20 years ago. As time has moved on, some of those contracts have exposure to Henry Hub which, at the time, was the preferred market.

Henry Hub is now not as favoured a market. Had we known 20 years ago what we know now, we would not have set ourselves up for the exposure, Christie said.

When Atlantic was initially constructed you needed 20-year contracts because you could not get short-term finance. Train 1 needed secured supply contracts and off take contracts because the length of the loans were also long

We now have trains that have been heavily depreciated, not burdened by debt and in a market that is far more liquid. You can now do shorter-term contracts.

Asked if he could guarantee more revenue to the state after the Train 1 negotiations Christie said: Yes it will be better. The markets have changed. It is no longer buyer's market, so the structure we are proposing will lead to greater net back to the country. I can say without reservation that the country will benefit.

Christie expects there will be need for fixed contracts and room for spot sales of LNG.

Asked if in the negotiation bpTT would want the contract extended beyond five years bearing in mind, it was only willing to provide the NGC with a five-year gas agreement, Christie said: I am not talking terms here but what I will say is that we will use the same logic with Atlantic that we used with the NGC. We will not get ahead of ourselves in terms of the developments that we currently have.

Commenting on the NGC contract, he said: We have done a term of a contract consistent with the resources that we currently have and then we will asses as we continue, so you can have extensions as we find more but you don't want to get ahead of yourself and contract what you don't have.

Christie said he was proud of the team he built with 95 per cent of bpTT's staff being locals and representing more than 75 per cent of the leadership team.

Reminded that under his watch 10 per cent of the staff was sent home, Christie admitted that was a difficult decision.

We did what was necessary to ensure that we had a stronger organisation, he explained.

He said the bpTT is committed to being in T&T for the long run and was shooting seismic last year as they continue to look for opportunities in the Columbus Basin.

We have strong confidence in the Columbus Basin and then we look at other options, he said. We have our sights set on deep water as well but I don't want to undermine what we have in our heartland which is significant.

At the end of the month will leave T&T for London to head the office of BP Plc's global CEO. He will be replaced by the first female CEO of a major oil and gas company in this country.




CERAWeek: WednesdayDay 3: Natural gas day, Secretaries of Energy: Canada, Mexico and the USA By Todd Peterson



HOUSTON

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018



Wednesday - Day 3



CERAWeek by IHS Markit  and its natural gas day. The theme is a bit of a continuation of previous days were natural gas is the cleanest fuel to transition the world to renewables. LNG will be one of the main ways to deliver natural gas to the market. The main market for natural gas going forward will be for power generation.



Today we heard a lot about the growing production of LNG from the USA and its impact on developing trading hubs in world markets. This new production is a result of the shale gail a term coined by Daniel Yergin several years ago. This new production from developers like Freeport LNG with no destination restrictions, I repeat, with no destination restriction, will be the reason for LNG truly becoming a commodity. This might worry traditional LNG producers with destination restrictions but will certainly help grow the market which is good for everyone.



We also got the opinion from several end users. Japan is still the largest buyer of LNG in the world. Companies like TEPCO, Chubu and Osaka Gas have invested large sums in gas distribution and power generation. To justify these investments both the buyer and producer needed long term contracts with no destination flexibility. They feel that because of traditional contracts it will be hard to develop trading hubs and futures trading in Japan.



Two opinions but it is trending to LNG becoming a commodity and just a matter of time?



There seems to be little doubt that the North America including Canada and Mexico have the natural gas reserves to support the LNG demand for millenniums.



There was also a presentation by GM and the future of electric cars and autonomous driving cars. GM is currently producing electric cars like the Volt and will be ramping up with new versions in the coming years. They also think that the carbon foot print of an electric car will come down as more power generation will come from renewables. In addition, GM expects to be producing a self-driving car by 2019.



NAFTA was center stage when the Secretaries of Energy from Canada, Mexico and the USA were together on the same panel. All agreed that there are long and strong relationships. Besides history, we marry each other, we study together, we live together. Rick Perry former Governor of Texas and current Secretary of Energy stated that we are stronger together than divided but that NAFTA needed to be updated.



Sec. Perry was asked about the USA leaving the Paris Accord and he explained President Trumps position as being a moral one. That making America great meant that the US having a strong economy is not only good for the US but also for the rest of the world. That the US reducing its carbon foot print by using more natural gas on its own and not being mandated by others is the moral way to act.



Separately, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, Secretary of Energy from Mexico pointed out the importance of the energy reform and how that is attracting foreign investment. Thanks to the vision of President Pena Nieto, there is now a clear and stable legal and regulatory system to protect investors. As for NAFTA, he pointed out that this agreement is not one taking advantage of another but creates a mutually beneficial inter dependence.



There were no alarms today.



Story Todd Peterson special correspondent from Petroleumworld





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BASF's Wintershall looks to Brazil for new oil production ventures





By Vera Eckert

KASSEL, Germany

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018

BASF's oil and gas subsidiary Wintershall announced plans on Wednesday to expand into Brazil's growing offshore oil sector as part of a drive to boost sales and profit this year.

Chief executive Mario Mehren told reporters his company, which is due to merge with Russian-owned German rival DEA , would compete in upcoming offshore licensing rounds in Brazil, possibly with partners.

We have been very Norway-focused which is good, but we want to have another area of exploration success, he said.

The Brazilian coastline is viewed as one of the world's most promising oil regions, he added.

Wintershall's assets so far stretch from oil field concessions in Libya to subsea fields in the North Sea and to Russia's Arctic regions.

It has studied geological data and is ready to co-operate in various arrangements for various assets in Brazil, as is customary in the oil and gas industry, Mehren said.

Foreign companies such as Exxon and Statoil , as well as Brazilian firms, could be open to partnerships, he added.

For Wintershall, Brazil would add to its activities in Russia, Argentina, Norway, Libya and Germany. Across the world last year, it repeated 2016's record output of 165 billion cubic metres (bcm) of oil equivalent (boe).

Wintershall expects significant rises in sales and earnings before special items in 2018, after increasing both steeply in 2017, thanks to higher volumes and higher commodity prices.

Oil prices last year increased 23 percent to $54 per barrel on average for North Sea grade Brent. Wintershall's internal company planning is based on an average price of $65 this year and an exchange rate of $1.2 per euro.

It also sees gas prices remaining at current levels in north-western Europe in 2018, after spot gas at European trading hubs rose 24 percent last year.

The merger with DEA, which BASF said last week would likely close by the end of the third quarter, will bring synergies in German and Norwegian oil and gas ventures where the two operate separately, and in administration costs, Mehren said.

This would likely affect the two headquarters at Kassel and Hamburg, Mehren said, mentioning that Frankfurt, Germany's business capital, could become an option for moving certain operations.

The merger will be followed by an initial public offering of the merged entity, which BASF said it did not expect to happen before 2020.

$1 = 0.8057 euros




CERAWeek-U.S. Energy Secretary Perry unsure if Trump's views on tariffs are final





By Reuters

HOUSTON

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Wednesday he was not sure if President Donald Trump had made up his mind about levying tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

Trump wants to protect American workers against countries that engage in unfair trade practices, but I'm not sure he has made up his mind on the tariffs, Perry said on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference.

The key issue for the administration was putting together a plan that strategically deploys tariffs and regulations, said Perry, who addressed conference executives on the global role of a U.S. energy resurgence.

The proposal, which involves imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, has been criticized by Republican lawmakers and U.S. trade allies since the president first tweeted his intentions last week.

Gary Cohn, the president's top economic adviser and a free trade advocate, resigned on Tuesday in a sign of an internal clash on the issue within the administration.

Perry suggested the proposal could unleash a backlash that draws in other sectors.

If you change one rule, it probably has an effect. Does it have unintended consequences? It may do that.




CERAWeek: Mexico's energy reform is hard to reverse - Pemex CEO

Bloomberg



Pemex will bid in shallow water oil auction this month. Play video: Pemex CEO Carlos Trevino says the company is trying to become "more flexible."

By Adam Williams and Lucia Kassai



HOUSTON

Petroleumworld 03 08 2018

Mexico's 2013 decision to end the government monopoly on energy has resulted in billions in investment and the arrival of dozens of international oil companies.

Carlos Trevino, Petroleos Mexicanos's new chief executive officer, thinks it would be unfortunate for that to be interrupted by the next administration.

The top concern of Trevino, who took over at Pemex in November, is that Mexico will elect a president in July that will slow down the energy reform pace, he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit event in Houston.

Someone who doesn't believe in the energy reform may reduce the speed very much and I think that would be a shame in Mexico, Trevino said. The energy reform has a lot of benefits to the country, to the people, so the the worst case scenario in my point of view is that the speed that we are implementing the energy reform will be reduced.

Trevino's concern matches that of many energy industry leaders in Mexico, which has signed more than 90 oil and gas production contracts with international majors such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. since a landmark 2015 crude auction. Presidential front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who leads polls ahead of the July 1 election, has vowed that his administration will slow the pace of the current oil auctions and review contracts signed by the current government.

A reversal or significant modification to the overhaul would be almost impossible because to change the energy reform you will need to change the constitution, Trevino said. It would require a majority in Mexico's upper and lower houses and it is really difficult for any president to have that amount of support.

It is possible but improbable, Trevino said. We have a lot of certainty on what is going to happen in the future no matter who wins the election.

Refining partner

Pemex, which has reiterated that partners will improve crude production and refining margins, will formalize a joint-venture agreement with Mitsui & Co. at its flagship refinery this month, Trevino said. The partnership with Mitsui is an estimated $2.6 billion deal that will increase production to help reduce the nation's reliance on imported fuels.

Pemex also expects to sign at least one additional refinery partnership as soon as this summer, Trevino said, without providing additional details. The company continues to seek partners for refinery auxiliary services in areas such as power generation, water treatment and steam generation, he said.

The company's Salina Cruz refinery, which was offline for several months last year following a series of natural disasters, is operating at half of its capacity, processing around 150,000 daily barrels, according to Trevino. Pemex's Madero refinery, which is in the process of a restart, is currently processing between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels, he said. The Madero refinery, which has the capacity to process 190,000 barrels per day, should ramp up to normal rates at the end of the month.

Oil Auctions

Pemex, which won rights to develop four deep water areas in Mexico's Jan. 31 auction, is going to bid for a few block in the March 27 tender of 35 shallow water zones, he said. Pemex would prefer to bid in partnerships but is willing to go it alone if need be, Trevino said.

The company, which launched its own oil hedge last year to safeguard against a potential price drop, will continue the program next year, Trevino said.




Xi calls upgrading economy crucial

From:ChinaDaily | 2018-03-08 05:31

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, stressed on Wednesday the importance of improving the economys structure and developing the real economy as the country is in a crucial period of upgrading the driving force of its economic growth.

Xi made the remark while speaking at a panel discussion with deputies to the National Peoples Congress from Guangdong province.

During the discussion, eight lawmakers gave their advice on issues including speeding up the construction of a modern economic system, the development of the internet economy, industrial innovation, the education of migrant workers children and military-civil integration. Xi listened carefully to the suggestions and exchanged views with the deputies.

In his speech, Xi said it is a systematic project to build a higher-quality economy, and one that requires comprehensive planning and long-term vision.

Xi urged pushing forward on institutional innovation, making the resources available for premium enterprises and promoting the free flow of innovative factors.

He required the government to increase the attractiveness and competitiveness of the development environment by providing excellent administration, services and a complete market system.

Building a modern economic system is essential for China to take the lead in the global scientific revolution and in industrial reform trends, and for China to fulfill its Two Centenary Goals, Xi said.

Xi paid great attention to the development of new strategic industries in such areas as the new generation of IT technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, low-carbon development, biologically based pharmaceuticals, the digital economy, new materials and the oceanic economy.

Xi called for firm determination and great courage in phasing out industries and companies with high levels of pollution and emissions, which reserves space for the development of new industries.

He stressed the importance of promoting scientific innovation, attracting top-level scientific talent from both home and abroad, supporting innovation by small and medium-sized companies and cultivating more innovative companies that develop and own their own intellectual property and focus on core competitiveness.

Xi required the opening-up of all areas with a broader vision, higher goals and more effective measures. Guangdong province should speed up building open economies at a higher level, proactively taking part in building the Belt and Road, and turning the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into a world-class city cluster, Xi said.

Xi urged more efforts to improve social governance and promote justice to ensure the stability, happiness and security of the people. The people should sense justice and fairness in every single judicial case, he said.

Xi also highlighted the importance of building a stronger Party organization at all levels and implementing the Partys frugality rules.

Contact with the writer at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn.
In a 2017 ceremony at Dobbins High, James Beard Award-winners (from left) Greg Vernick, Michael Solomonov, and Stephen Starr taste-test dishes made by students in the culinary-arts program. Read more

Philadelphia's standing as a national food and restaurant destination will be front and center over the next week.

On Sunday and Monday, Drexel University will host its annual Philly Chef Conference, which draws top names in food and restaurants to appear in panel discussions primarily aimed at the trade and students in its Center for Food and Hospitality Management.

Dovetailed on this, the James Beard Foundation will set up at Parc on Rittenhouse Square to announce the finalists for its annual chef, restaurant, and media awards in a ceremony Wednesday morning. The New York-based foundation moves its announcements from city to city.

Last year was Philadelphia's year at the Beards, with locals winning awards in major categories including restaurateur of the year (Stephen Starr), chef of the year (Michael Solomonov of Zahav), and best chef in the mid-Atlantic region (Greg Vernick of Vernick Food & Drink). Further, Starr won the award for best new restaurant for his intimate Le Coucou in New York City. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head in Delaware won the nation's top award for "wine, spirits or beer" professional.

Philadelphia also was represented last year by other finalists: Rich Landau from Vedge (best chef, mid-Atlantic) and Zahav (for outstanding service; pastry chef Camille Cogswell was nominated for rising-star chef).

The Beard committee chose Philadelphia as the setting for the announcement because its scene "continues to transform and create buzz-worthy experiences for its city and visitors," Anne Quatrano, chair of the awards' restaurant and chef committee, said in a statement. The awards ceremony will be May 7 in Chicago. The Beard's media awards will be handed out on April 27 in New York.

The foundation also will benefit from a private dinner on Tuesday at Osteria, hosted by its new owners, Jeff Michaud, himself a Beard winner, and Michael Schulson.

At Drexel, professor Michael Traud  a lawyer turned chef who founded the annual conference five years ago  has set up two days of programming that will cover such hot-button topics as "The Current State of Women in the Restaurant Industry" and "The Responsibilities of a Food Critic."

Traud's reach is extensive, and Drexel is flying in experts from all over. For Sunday's keynote discussion of women in the industry, he booked Jen Agg (the Toronto restaurateur and author of the memoir I Hear She's a Real Bitch) and Brett Anderson (the New Orleans Times-Picayune writer who blew the whistle on restaurateur John Besh's transgressions).

Other topics Sunday are "GenZ Appetites" with food ethnographer June Jo Lee; "X-Ray Vision for Cooks" with culinary scientist Ali Bouzart; and "Food: A Tool for Change" by Lara Gilmore, author of Food for Soul and wife of restaurateur Massimo Bottura.

For Monday's panels, Traud will import such names as Brad Kilgore of Miami's red-hot Alter restaurant to cover "Familiar Ingredients in an Unfamiliar Form: Utilizing Dessert Techniques for Savory Dishes" and Rob Levitt (of the Butcher & Larder at Local Foods Chicago) doing a demonstration called "Chop Chop: Butchering for Curing," in which he will break down a pig into traditional cuts for salumi.

Corporate sponsors also get on board. Acqua Panna and S.Pellegrino are contributing to secure the services of Mitsuharu "Micha" Tsumura, whose Maido restaurant in Lima, Peru, is ranked eighth on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list and first in Latin America.

"We thought it would be a neat idea to have the top Latin chef and the No. 1 James Beard chef collaborate on a dinner," said Susannah Mauro, who oversees the Nestle water brands' sales in Pennsylvania. "It just makes sense for them to cook together."

Working with Dani Mulholland at Zahav, Mauro set up a now-sold-out collaborative dinner to link Tsumura's Nikkei (Peruvian-Japanese) cuisine and Solomonov's modern spin on Israeli cuisine. Tsumura and Solomonov also will sit on a Drexel panel on Monday called "Taking Cuisines Across Continents," about the influence of travel on cuisine.

Tickets for Sunday's program are still available, via www.phillychefconference.com. Monday's programming is sold out.
Becky MacDicken (center) educates inmates on financial literacy so they can re-enter society at the State Correctional Institution in Chester. Read more

Becky MacDicken loves to educate Pennyslvanians on personal finance, credit reports and scores, and her audience embraces her classes  especially the inmates at the Department of Corrections' SCI Chester prison, many of whom have never opened a bank account, instead storing their cash savings in a safe or under the mattress.

An outreach specialist with the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities, she has visited every prison or correctional facility in the commonwealth at least once in the last year. Her work stems from the Department of Corrections' formal partnership with the Department of Banking and Securities to teach workshops on budgeting, predatory loans, and other topics to people in the corrections system.

"I encourage inmates to begin their financial education before they get out of prison," she said while setting up for her workshop in a noisy cell block.

At SCI Chester prison, soon-to-be-released inmates are hungry for knowledge  roughly 35 inmates, or half the unit, sit patiently and listen intently during the two-hour session. Some are senior citizens, receive disability or benefits, and own property or other assets in the outside world. Others are in their early 20s and want to start fresh financially and in life.

"I know nothing about banking, savings, or retirement," said Andre, an inmate in what's known as the Transitional Housing Unit of SCI Chester, a stone's throw from Harrah's casino and the industrial highway alongside I-95. Last names of inmates and their ages are withheld. Andre has already completed the FDIC Money Smart curriculum, 12 modules in all, and "I'd like to go to community college when I get out, maybe start a carpentry and construction business. This stuff is all new to me. I dealt in cash only, I ate out every night, paid cash for clothes, cellphone, my rent. I even paid cash for my car, which I bought at an auction. My mom had a bank account and credit cards, but I didn't."

Since this prison unit posts high turnover, with 60 or so prisoners rotating out every few months, MacDicken is called back routinely for financial-education workshops. The prison's general population tops 1,600 or more inmates at any one time, according to Louisa Perez, superintendent's assistant for SCI Chester.

Today's class: What is a credit score and how to access credit to start a business, get a loan, or refinance existing debt.

"Is CreditKarma.com better than the annual credit report you can get for free?" asks one man in the audience during her PowerPoint presentation.

"Great question," MacDicken answers. "I'll get to that after we talk about what are the components of a credit report vs. a credit score. But the most important thing is, try to order copies of your credit report before you get out of here."

Another inmate, Rolando, may want a line of credit "to open a barbershop or tattoo parlor. I don't know anything about credit, I never had a bank account or a credit card." Before prison, Rolando banked most of his money using prepaid debit cards and added value using cash.

In the gray cell block, two stories high with black painted numbers, inmates sat in similarly gray plastic chairs perusing MacDicken's handouts: a paper copy of a form to request one's credit report (free on annualcreditreport.com, but inmates don't always have access to the internet or a computer) and information about the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities.

"We regulate state-chartered banks, the credit unions, and the check-cashing companies. I'm here to give you some knowledge about them," she told the crowd, echoing in the concrete hall.

Finance tips from prison

If you don't have credit, a great way to start building it is establishing a regular payment history so lenders see you are creditworthy and will pay your debts.

One option: Open a prepaid bank account with a credit line that you pay for up-front.

"Go to a bank and ask for a secured credit card that has collateral, say, starting with $500 or $1,000," MacDicken recommends. Pay the bill every month on time and establish a payment history, and do the same with a cellphone and other utility bills, if you can.

Do you owe court fines or restitution? That can affect your credit  even something as minor as a library book late fee or parking ticket or as major as medical debt shows up on your credit.

"Medical debt is the number-one reason for bankruptcy in America," MacDicken said. "It really hurts a lot of people's credit scores. If you can establish a payment plan, even $5 a week, and negotiate down the debt with the hospital or doctor, they'll take the payment. They know it's better than discharging that debt in bankruptcy."

Behind on student loans? Contact your lender or the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (www.pheaa.org) and ask for help. If you're in default and your lender won't budge, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency that can intervene on your behalf (www.consumerfinance.gov) and refer you to a local, nonprofit credit counselor. Don't fall for those ads on television promoting student-loan consolidators; you can solve your issues for free.

"If you want a business loan when you get out, make sure to pay down or address personal debts first," she told the audience.

Finally, prison inmates are definite targets for identity theft, MacDicken said.

"I've given workshops with juvenile lifers who checked their credit, only to find out an uncle had gotten a loan in their name." Check with all three credit bureaus to find out whether anyone has opened an account in your name  whether you're in jail or not.
Owners of the 2116 Chestnut high-rise apartment building are among the investors who have directly benefited the most from the 10-year-tax abatement program. Read more

Philadelphia's financial watchdog is exploring whether to recommend changes to a much-used tax break for new construction that backers credit with sustaining the city's building boom but that critics say has starved public coffers to disproportionately aid the wealthy.

City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart said that she is analyzing the impact of adjusting or ending the city's 10-year property tax abatement, which waives city taxes on increased real-estate values generated through new construction or renovations.

The move comes amid mounting skepticism of the 18-year-old abatement program, as Mayor Kenney pushes to raise property taxes for school funding and other priorities. Some officials are questioning the wisdom and fairness of continuing to exempt new construction from the real estate levy while other properties get a tax hike.

"When the tax abatement was created, Philadelphia needed it. We needed development and to attract new residents to the city," Rhynhart, who hopes next month to release her report on the program, said in an email Wednesday. "But the city isn't in the same place as it was when the policy was created."

Rhynhart said her study would consider options such as limiting the tax break to improvements valued at $500,000 or lower, or continuing it only in neighborhoods most in need of investment.

Since starting in 2000 with the aim of reversing a decades-long slide in the city's population and economic fortunes, the abatement has been claimed by owners of 20,000 properties, 15,607 of which continued to qualify for the break as of March 2017, when the Building Industry Association of Philadelphia released a report promoting the program.

The report, compiled by Kevin Gillen, senior research fellow at Drexel University's Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, credited the abatement for a 376 percent increase in home building within Philadelphia, compared with an average decline of 11.3 percent in the city's suburbs.

Taxes on properties with abatements that have elapsed were contributing about $48.1 million a year to public coffers at the time of the study, with the city due to realize a total of $169.4 million in annual real estate taxes when all abatements then in effect expired, the report said.

Leo Addimando, managing partner of developer Alterra Property Group and vice president of the BIA's Philadelphia chapter, said the program has brought the city fiscal benefits beyond property tax revenue, such as increased sales tax receipts from purchases by residents living in abated properties who might otherwise have settled elsewhere.

"We believe that the vast majority of projects built under the abatement over the last 20 years or so would not have gotten built, but for the abatement," he said. "If there's any substantial change to the real estate tax abatement that isn't looked at in the context of the total cost of development in the city of Philadelphia, and the fact that that cost has increased substantially, you risk killing the golden goose."

Others, however. say the abatement might be getting credit for encouraging development that would have happened without it and point to cases where wealthy buyers of new multimillion-dollar properties have been able to keep taxes that would have gone toward city schools and services.

According to a survey released last month by a research group at the University of Pennsylvania's Urban Studies Department, the 12 residential properties receiving the highest abatement amounts in the real estate tax year starting April 1, 2017, had an aggregate property value of nearly $1 billion, amounting to more than $13 million in forgone city property taxes.

Most of those properties are in Center City and University City, with the biggest break  worth $1.68 million  going to the owners of the 2116 Chestnut high-rise apartment building, according to the Penn researchers.

"At some point in time you have to say, we don't need the incentive because the market is carrying itself," said Phil Goldsmith, a now-retired former Philadelphia official who has served as city manager and as an interim chief executive for the city's public schools. "The tax abatement merely eats into the finances of the school district, and I don't think the school district should be subsidizing development."

In a January opinion piece published by the Inquirer, City Council President Darrell L. Clarke also cast the program as a drain on vital city revenue. "It is time to revisit the 100 percent, 10-year tax abatement in its current form as part of a broader conversation about equitable growth," he wrote.

In addition to Rhynhart's coming study, Philadelphia's Finance Department is refreshing a 2014 market analysis that predicted a phase-out of the abatement would result over time in a 30 percent decline in development, city spokesman Paul Chrystie said. The new analysis, which will be updated to reflect recent growth in the city's real estate market, is to be released by late April "so that it can inform this year's budget discussions," he said.

Rhynhart said the point of her study was to answer whether "we still need the abatement in the same way we did and does keeping it intact prevent much needed funding from flowing to the school district.  We can't know any of this without a fair, independent analysis."
Phoenixville Hospital, assessed at $32.26 million, is the largest property tax payer in the Phoenixville Area School District. The new owner, a nonprofit, is fighting for an exemption to those taxes in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas. Read more

Tower Health, a West Reading nonprofit, is facing stiff resistance in its bid for property tax exemptions at the four hospitals it bought in Chester and Montgomery Counties.

"We can't give them an exemption now for something they're going to do in the future," said Lisa Longo, president of the Phoenixville Area School District board, referring to a Pennsylvania legal standard that a nonprofit must donate a substantial portion of its services to qualify for property-tax exemption. "They have the burden to actually prove that first."

For Longo, installing new ownership is not like flipping a switch. The hospitals Tower bought in October were operated as for-profits for years, she said. Before getting an exemption, Phoenixville Hospital needs to establish a history that its operations have changed, Longo said.

Tower provided $3 million in uncompensated care, or 0.3 percent of the $997 million in net patient revenue, in fiscal 2017, its audited financial statement showed. Comparable figures were not available for its new hospitals.

Tower's $418 million deal, which also included Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, was a rare case of a nonprofit buying for-profit hospitals, and the potential loss of revenue set off alarms in communities where the hospitals were among the top taxpayers when they were owned by Community Health Systems Inc.

In Chester County, the Board of Assessment Appeals denied Tower's applications for tax exemptions for Brandywine Hospital, Jennersville Regional Hospital, Phoenixville Hospital, and a small clinic in Coventry Township connected to Pottstown Memorial Medical Center, which is in Montgomery County.

Tower appealed that decision to the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, but no hearing has been scheduled.

The Montgomery County Board of Assessment Appeals granted Tower an exemption for Pottstown Memorial, but the Pottstown School District intends to contest that decision in the Court of Common Pleas, a district spokesman said.

Philadelphia's Office of Property Assessment in December received Tower's application for a property-tax exemption at Chestnut Hill Hospital. The agency has yet to make a ruling.

It is too soon to say how the disputes will turn out. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court standard of five tests, established in 1985, to determine whether a nonprofit gets an exemption is "very subjective with no objective standards to measure against," said Stewart M. Weintraub, a lawyer in the Philadelphia office of Chamberlain Hrdlicka.

In central Pennsylvania, UPMC Pinnacle received property tax exemptions for three hospitals in Lancaster and Cumberland Counties that it bought last summer from Community Health Systems "without contest or appeal," a UPMC spokeswoman said. The nonprofit did not apply for a facility in York County, where a replacement hospital is under construction.

Tower, which undertook a huge expansion when it purchased the hospitals from Community Health Systems, declined to comment, citing the litigation. The system aims to become what it called an "integrated provider/payer system" through a joint venture with UPMC Health Plan to sell health insurance in nine eastern Pennsylvania counties, excluding Philadelphia.

The outcome of the property-tax fight could be financially significant for Tower, which had an operating income of $9.725 million in the year ended June 30, 2017, on $1.052 billion in revenue. The aggregate annual property tax tab for the five hospitals is more than $3.5 million, public records show.

Tower knew it could be in for a fight over property taxes, warning investors in a bond-offering statement last fall that its bids for tax exemptions at its new hospitals could be challenged and that it "might consider entering into a payment in lieu of taxes agreement and agreeing to make some payments to the taxing authorities."

Reading Hospital, Tower's legacy facility, already has such an arrangement with the Wyomissing Area School District, where it is located. Alan D. Fegley, Phoenixville's superintendent, said he believes the annual payment to that school district  which did not respond to a request for comment  is in the $500,000 range.

Other school districts that are home to the new Tower hospitals either did not respond to a request for comment or merely confirmed that they are contesting the exemption for the Tower hospitals in their areas.

Fegley said he had maintained a close working relationship with the leader of Phoenixville Hospital when it was owned by Community, but so far he has been rebuffed under Tower ownership, being told he has to deal with executives in West Reading.

On Feb. 1, Fegley and Longo sent a letter to Clint Matthews, Tower's president and chief executive, as well as to Brent J. Wagner, Tower's chairman, asking for a meeting by the middle of last month, explaining that they were under pressure to establish a budget for the coming school year. They would have to raise taxes by 1.72 percent just to make up for the loss of $950,000 in taxes from the hospital.

"We have heard nothing," Fegley said Tuesday. "We do know they received the letter because we sent it certified return receipt."

It's possible that, depending on how a decision is made on a property-tax exemption, a hospital might not pay any taxes to a local school district.
Virtua Health has a preliminary agreement to acquire Lourdes Health Systems, which includes Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County in Willingboro, Virtua said Thursday.

The announcement comes about three months after Cooper University Health Care backed out of its nonbinding letter of intent to acquire Lourdes and St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton. Trinity Health, of Livonia, Mich., one of the nation's largest nonprofit health systems, owns both Lourdes and St. Frances.

Virtua said in an emailed statement: "The parties hope that they will be able to complete this transaction, which has the potential to achieve great benefits for health care in South Jersey. Further review is underway; there is no final agreement."

Reginald Blaber, president of Lourdes, told staff in an email that he was happy about the letter of intent, but cautioned that talks with Lourdes were in the early stages. "Given our previous experience, you can imagine why we all wish to be more cautious in our approach this time around," Blaber's note said.

Virtua had been in the mix as a potential acquirer of the Trinity properties last summer (and preferred by some at Lourdes) before the preliminary deal with Cooper was announced on Aug. 31.

Under Cooper's preliminary agreement with Trinity, Cooper was going to pay $150 million to Trinity, which Trinity was going to use to pay debts and other obligations of Lourdes and St. Francis, according to a document filed in court. Cooper also agreed to spend $135.5 million on capital expenditures at the two hospitals in its first five years of ownership.

Cooper and Trinity (through a subsidiary, Maxis Health System) are now in litigation over Cooper's demand that Trinity return Cooper's $15 million deposit. During due diligence, Cooper said it found three problems that would have put it at risk financially. Only one of them had a dollar figure attached to it. That was "an uninsured potential exposure in excess of $20 million" from unresolved litigation with real estate developer Joseph Gonnelli.

The combined Virtua and Lourdes operations would have about $1.8 billion in annual revenue and about 1,500 beds in five hospitals.
I wanted to list female political leaders to watch in 2018, in honor of International Women's Day, but the list is sadly disappointing.

Currently, there are only 20 women holding the office of head of state or head of government  which equals 6.3 percent of the 315 international leaders. And two of the heads of state  Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Denmark's Margrethe II  are hereditary queens.

No wonder the World Economic Forum's 2017 Gender Gap report predicts that it will take 99 years to, maybe, reach political parity between male and female leaders. (Will it take that long, I wonder, after the Hillary debacle for the United States to elect a woman president?)

Nor have women leaders fared particularly well in recent years. Several female prime ministers lost elections during the last decade. Brazil's Dilma Rousseff was impeached for budget malfeasance, South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye was impeached for corruption in 2016 and is awaiting trial, and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was defeated in 2015 and found guilty of abusing power by the country's constitutional court. Given the political history of those countries, it's not clear whether these leaders would have been treated better if they were male.

In one happy contrast, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the world's first elected black female president and Africa's first elected female head of state (in 2006), survived some dips to step down with dignity in 2018.

Of those female leaders now in power, Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been state counsellor (equivalent to prime minister) since 2016, has been the biggest disappointment. A heroic fighter for democracy and human rights, she suffered 15 years of house arrest and won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. But she has refused to criticize Myanmar's military for its massive ethnic cleansing and brutalization of 500,000 members of the ethnic Muslim Rohingya minority, who have fled to Bangladesh.

So whom, among the remaining 18 non-queenly female leaders, should you watch in 2018?

First and foremost is the indomitable Angela Merkel, German chancellor since 2005. In her final term, her power has dipped and her party's parliamentary bloc shrunk, but she just concluded a difficult coalition accord with the Social Democrats. This will provide some vital stability in a Europe shaken by a populist surge in Italy and Central Europe. Merkel is still an anchor for Europe, which the continent badly needs.

Which brings us to the second European leader to watch: Theresa May, the weakened prime minister of the United Kingdom. The U.K.'s drawn-out Brexit is further destabilizing Europe. This year will reveal whether May can negotiate a divorce from the European Union without crashing her island's economy and sparking new strife in Northern Ireland.

Then I would watch the two female Baltic presidents, Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia and the reelected Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania. It takes particular skill to manage Baltic affairs with Vladimir Putin's Russia breathing down their necks and seeking to manipulate their politics, but the Baltic leaders have been managing astonishingly well.

Speaking of Russia, I would watch Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, a 36-year-old former TV star who has had the gall to challenge Putin in the March 18 presidential election. She will probably draw only a tiny percentage of the vote but has at least managed to insert some real issues into state-controlled TV coverage. (She is tolerated as a candidate, unlike the banned and far more potent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, because her dad was a friend of Putin's and her unthreatening presence gives Putin cover to claim the election is free.)

I would also recommend watching Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who is not recognized as a sovereign leader by China or the United Nations. She has had to govern with a strong and steady hand to balance Beijing's constant pressure and President Trump's Taiwan gaffes. (By the way, you won't find any senior female leaders in Beijing, where President Xi Jinping will be confirmed as virtual president for life this week.)

And finally, it's worth paying attention to the talented Michelle Bachelet, first Chilean president since 1932 to win twice in the presidential elections, as well as New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, who at 37 is the youngest prime minister in the world.

With such a tiny sample of women leaders, it's hard to tell whether their performance is truly affected by gender or whether it reflects their countries' cultures and histories in the same way it does for their male counterparts.

But we will never know until the sample is vastly expanded. And, if the Gender Gap report is correct, that won't happen in my lifetime or yours.
It may have been the most productive snow day in American history. Back in January, with their mountain-rich state of West Virginia socked in by a blizzard, snowbound teachers started a rapidly escalating conversation on Facebook, complaining about the lack of action from state lawmakers on their frozen-in-time paychecks and their worsening health benefits. The chatter snowballed, so to speak, into the defining work stoppage of the 2010s.

"We called it 'the Facebook strike,' " Adena Barnette, president of the teachers' union in rural Jackson County and a member of the statewide union's executive committee, told me this week by phone  back in school after the nine-day wildcat strike that pressured lawmakers into approving a 5 percent pay raise and other concessions.

Barnette told me how the epic strike was powered by all the indignities of teaching school in a state where government  drunk on the influence of Big Energy  has largely ignored public education for years. Certainly the dearth of pay increases  which had forced some of Barnette's colleagues to flee to neighboring states and others to take a second job such as working the cash register at Hardee's  was a factor. But so was mounting resentment over health insurance that was not only offering teachers fewer benefits but doing so in ways that seemed a form of, well, harassment.

Many teachers fumed over a letter from the Public Employees Insurance Agency saying they'd be penalized $500 if they didn't download a health app called Go365 and earn points by wearing a Fitbit  in part because some live in isolated communities where cell service is still spotty to nonexistent. As part of the process, the educators were also asked to fill out a questionnaire that then told some of them they ate or drank too much. The Facebook rage caused Gov. Jim Justice to make the app optional, but by then an anger-fueled movement had too much momentum. Said Barnette: "I think that people just woke up."

But the other truly remarkable thing about West Virginia is that the people who woke up there were mostly women. Nationally, about 79 percent of classroom educators are female  and the Mountaineer State is no different. If you're wondering if it's a coincidence that this sudden tsunami of female power in organized labor comes at the exact same moment that the so-called #MeToo movement is reinventing workplace dynamics while a record number of women candidates is rocking the 2018 midterm elections, the short answer is  no, it's not at all a coincidence. Not at all.

Indeed, you can tie together the simmering rage over the confessed p-word grabber and alleged porn-star-funder in the White House, the powerful pushback over sexual harassment, assault, and unchecked patriarchy from Hollywood to Madison Avenue and now the rising up of underpaid and disrespected schoolteachers with one simple word.

Enough!

And the implications of the teachers' big win in West Virginia are huge. In the short term, there is a slew of other states and smaller jurisdictions in the same boat  where teachers have seen their paychecks stuck and their benefits shrinking thanks to budget-cutting, pro-business politicos  and so the likelihood of similar strikes is rising in places like Oklahoma, where some 80 percent of teachers have voiced support for a proposed walkout over GOP-fed austerity.

But consider the longer term: Much of the excitement over the last year over a new wave of female empowerment  the Trump "resistance," women running for Congress, accusations against business and media moguls  has tilted white, suburban, and upscale. Some critics have noted that the indignities heaped on working-class or poor women  unequal pay, horrible working conditions, crummy health care, sexual degradation  don't get the same hype. Thus, a broader social movement modeled after West Virginia could be a game-changer.

The thing is, women power has been sneaking up on organized labor for years. The 20th-century stereotype of a West Virginia strike  remember the blood-on-tracks drama of John Sayles' classic film Matewan, with violent clashes between sooty miners and armed guards?  has little meaning for the 21st century. The union movement in America is finally catching up to a world in which male-dominated mining and manufacturing shrink while the jobs in gender-diverse health care and education rise.

This decade, labor leadership has increasingly fallen to outfits like the SEIU  representing cleaners, home health-care workers, and the like  and teachers and other public-sector employees. New, unconventional movements like the pro-living-wage Fight for $15 and fast-food workers' protests reflect the new realities  and their workforces that are increasingly female. So did the boost that unionized nurses gave to the 2016 presidential ambitions of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Kati Sipp  a Philadelphia-based veteran union organizer, now a consultant  said the rise of unions and workers' groups with more women members and with female leadership also means more willingness to experiment in areas like smarter use of social media or other new tactics for a labor movement that had been steadily losing ground with the stodgy old ways. "Organizations led by women," said Sipp, "are more willing to collaborate and to experiment."

Those qualities were very much on display in West Virginia, where thousands of teachers relied on Facebook and Twitter to quickly drum up enthusiasm for a job action that spread successfully to all 55 counties in the sprawling, mostly rural state  a task that might have taken weeks or months a generation or two ago. The internet also helped build national support even when the big mainstream media outlets were slow to cover the strike.

But there was also a striking difference in style. Despite thousands off the job, there was no violence and no arrests. The strikers scored a major PR coup by making sure that kids in the Appalachian state with its high rate of poverty continued to get free lunches. Public support soared to a level that recalcitrant conservative lawmakers saw little choice politically but to meet the main demands for a 5 percent pay raise and a study of ways to improve insurance. That workers' rights could claim a near-total victory in a state that in 2016 went gaga for the nationalism and culture wars of Donald Trump (who got 69 percent of the vote) raises the possibility of a stunning swift reversal in American politics.

And those immediate gains could be dwarfed by the opportunity for a new kind of intersectionality, in which the initial excitement over hashtags like #MeToo and Time's Up and the downfall of some power brokers like Harvey Weinstein could prove to have been merely the spark for more massive social change, where women from all social classes can gain both equality (including, but hardly limited to, pay equity) and respect in the workplace and in other tired institutions mired in patriarchy.

In little Ripley, W.Va., where Barnette lives and teaches ("believe it or not," she adds), the 36-year-old educator and now "woke" labor activist said the next focus will be consolidating March's big win with action at the ballot box in November, to get support for a county tax that subsidizes schools and for new legislators  regardless of party  who will support the middle class. "We won a battle," Barnette said, "but we have not won the war."
Haverford College soon will launch a search for a new president to replace Kim Benston, who plans to step down in July 2019 after four years at the helm.

Benston, an English professor who has been on Haverford's faculty since 1984, plans to return to the classroom, the college said. He became president in 2015, replacing Daniel H. Weiss, who left to become president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Before becoming president, Benston had served as provost for three years.

"With a successful fundraising campaign in our wake and the completion of our ambitious strategic plan in view, Kim makes this decision in full confidence that Haverford is in a position of strength," said Rick White, chair of the college's board of managers. "He considers the timing ideal for us to begin looking to our next chapter."

Benston's initial presidential appointment at the highly selective liberal arts college with about 1,300 students on the Main Line was for two years. His term then was extended for two more years. Weiss had served two years and the previous president, Stephen G. Emerson, about four.

The college plans to establish a search committee before the end of the semester.
At first, Raul Reyes, 26, thought it was a blister from an injury at work. Then a yellowish mass spread across his right foot.

The Houston day-care teacher is now coming to terms with the ravages of a flesh-eating infection that burrowed into his appendage.

"He woke up the next day and the blister was covering his entire foot so he went to the clinic, where they told him to get to the emergency room immediately," his wife, Joseline, told the Houston Chronicle. He was admitted Feb. 23 at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston.

An x-ray revealed the disturbing possibility of a deadly infection, spurring a race to stop the bacteria before it entered Raul's bloodstream, which would accelerate the spread of the disease.

A surgeon reassured Joseline that doctors would try everything they could to keep her husband whole.

That optimism did not last long.

"Thirty minutes pass and I see the doctor come out," Joseline said. "She tells me that she tried to get as much bacteria out but that they had to amputate his foot to save his life."

But the couple already faced another challenge. Raul does not have health insurance, she told the Chronicle, making a prosthetic foot a costly proposition. A high-end device can be as much as $5,000, and costs vary depending on the design and other concerns such as fittings and maintenance.

It appears that Reyes may be a victim of necrotizing fasciitis, commonly called a flesh-eating infection. The rarely contracted bacteria kills the body's soft tissue and can be "deadly in a very short amount of time," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 700 to 1,100 cases have occurred each year in the United States since 2010, though there are probably more cases that go unreported.

>> READ MORE: Kenney aide recalls fight with flesh-eating bacteria

The bacteria is commonly acquired via salty or brackish waters through four organisms coming into contact with open wounds or cuts. It was not clear which Reyes encountered. The CDC warns against numerous types of necrotizing fasciitis by cautioning people with open wounds or skin infections to avoid whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools and natural bodies of water such as lakes and rivers.

Doctors believe Reyes contracted the bacteria through an open wound from an ingrown toenail. Houston is on the Gulf of Mexico, though Joseline said she is confused about where her husband might have contracted it.

"We were like, 'No, he's perfectly healthy. We haven't gone to the beach in a year.' So, it's just weird how all of this happened," she told local station KTRK. She and her husband could not immediately be reached for comment.

Houston was the scene of a more tragic bacterial infection in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Josue Zurita was helping repair damaged homes two months after the hurricane made landfall. He died six days after necrotizing fasciitis entered his bloodstream through an open wound from what doctors believe was debris or floodwater.

But luckily for Reyes, he survived after doctors intervened. His family started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $11,000 for the prosthetic, the page says.

The campaign has drawn donations from sympathetic people, including one man who says he was in a similar situation in August, when the flesh-eating bacteria tore into his foot.

Doctors told him that he would lose his leg, but four surgeries later, his limb was saved, the man  identified as John Stewart Jr.  wrote Sunday. "Best Wishes for a speedy adjustment to your new leg!" he wrote.
China boosts development, mutual benefits

From:ChinaDaily | 2018-03-08 09:26

The nation will host four major international events this year, as Zhang Yunbi reports.

China is honoring its commitment to boost reciprocity and mutual benefits with the world as it offers a slew of original ideas and fresh action for the four major diplomatic events it will host this year, according to senior diplomats and experts.

The insiders, who are also political advisers attending the ongoing two sessionsthe annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conferencemade the comments as the world's second-largest economy marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the reform and opening-up policy.

This year, China will host the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia, the Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and the China International Import Expo.

The gatherings will be spread across the year and will cover all four seasons, and the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang on Monday requested that all efforts be made to ensure they are successful.

Li Baodong, vice-foreign minister, said preparations for the events are progressing smoothly and the global community has responded warmly, with many countries consulting with and contacting Beijing.

"We take hosting these events very seriously, and they will be wonderful. We are full of confidence in this regard," Li said.

New contributions will be made by the nation toward building a new kind of international relations as well as "the Community of Shared Future for Mankind", he added, referring to one of President Xi Jinping's signature concepts.

"I believe all four diplomatic events will achieve bumper harvests and great success."

Li Ruiyu, ambassador to Italy, noted that this year marks not only the first opportunity for translating into reality the blueprint rolled out by the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October, but also the fifth anniversary of the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.

"The transformation and upgrading of China's economy has started a locomotive of growth opportunities for a number of countries, and China's all-out opening-up signals the pathway to greater opportunities," he said.

Improved ties

Many of China's neighbors will be directly involved in, and will benefit from, the first two of the four events because the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia will be held in April, while the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be held in Qingdao in East China's Shandong province in June.

Founded in 2001, the Boao Forum for Asia has become a high-end platform for dialogue about key Asian issues among political and business leaders, and senior think tanks.

Vice-Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou, a veteran diplomat in charge of Asian affairs, noted that this year's forum "carries unprecedented significance".

It will be the first major diplomatic event held in China since the 19th CPC National Congress, Kong said, adding that China will project a "new look" in diplomacy.

As China holds the rotating chair of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this year, the summit will be the first of its kind convened after India and Pakistan officially joined the regional organization last year.

"The SCO, founded by China and Russia and the Central Asian member countries in 2001, has become a role model for seeking greater security through cooperation," said Ji Zhiye, president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The organization has built a system of mutual trust regarding regional security, and member states have jointly cracked down on separatists, extremists and terrorists, as well as championing regional peace and stability, Ji said.

Reaching out

Leaders from the African continent are expected to gather in Beijing in September for the third eventthe Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

The forum, initiated in 2000, has become a major platform for dialogue between China and more than 50 African countries to promote cooperation and joint development.

It routinely convenes a ministerial-level gathering, and China and African nations have agreed to upgrade this year's meeting to a leaders' summit. The last time the forum convened a summit was in South Africa in 2015.

For his first overseas trip of the year, Wang Yi, foreign minister, visited Africa, traveling to Rwanda and other countries, and the forum's summit was a major topic of conversation on each leg of the trip.

Qu Xing, ambassador to Belgium, noted that when China takes the chair of international meetings, it always works hard to ensure that new ideas can be found to deal with demanding issues facing the international community.

The forum is an important venue for catalyzing the pursuit of mutual development and greater win-win cooperation among China and African countries, Qu said.

In November, business and trade delegations from countries across the world will arrive in Shanghai to attend the China International Import Expo, the first of its kind to be held by a major country.

Many leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have pledged to send delegates to participate in the event, which will run from Nov 5 to 10.

Zhang Ming, ambassador and head of the Chinese Mission to the European Union, said the expo will be the first to focus on imports, and "it will be a major, groundbreaking move by China to actively open its market to the world".

China will conduct more proactive import policies and try to achieve balanced development of its imports and exports, he added.

He noted that China has updated the ratio of tariffs, involving 187 types of consumer goods, on imports valued at $13.9 billion.

Behind the scenes

China has hosted a number of leaders' gatherings focused on multilateral diplomacy, and has promoted cooperation with groupings such as the G20, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the BRICS countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

In the past five years, President Xi Jinping has put forward a number of original ideas related to international relations at international conferences and translated them into reality.

"By hosting diplomatic events at home, Beijing shows its resolution and ability to fly the banner of globalization and lead the process of multilateral cooperation," said Ji, from the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

In four decades of reform and opening-up, China's GDP has risen to the second-highest on the globe as the country integrates with the world economically, and transitions from being "the world's factory" to become "the world's market", he said.

With reference to developing countries, China is promoting the Belt and Road Initiative, helping to introduce new financing channels and looking to assist those countries in the development of the infrastructure facilities they most need, he added.

The four events China will host this year will effectively boost economic reciprocity between the country and the rest of the world, and will "serve as stabilizing factors that will strengthen the community economically with a shared future", said Qu, ambassador to Belgium.

"Every party involved with the community shares both opportunities and risks, and any unilateral action should take the other parties into consideration because everyone's interests are intertwined."

In addition, China will project gravity and consistency as it hosts the events to honor and update the visions it has proposed, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Qu.

Through these gatherings, China will tell the world that its proposals are not a piecemeal approach, and they will be updated constantly to effectively motivate and encourage other countries and international organizations to become part of the vision, he added.

Contact the writer at zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn
Rapper Meek Mill was arrested for a parole violation by an officer who reportedly was on a District Attorneys Office list of bad cops. Read more

Reverend Al Sharpton and Meek Mill's mother, Kathy Williams, are among a list of panelists for an upcoming event that will examine the Philly rapper's ongoing case and call for criminal justice system reform.

REFORM: Bringing Injustice to Light will take place at the University of Pennsylvania's Irvine Auditorium (3401 Spruce St.) on Tuesday, March 13 at 4 p.m. The event is presented by Justice League NYC and various student organizations from Penn, Temple University, and Drexel University. Those who cannot make it to the event can stream it via Tidal.

Organizers hope the event will "inspire attendees to positively push for nationwide reform" of the criminal justice system.

In addition to Sharpton  who visited Mill in prison last year  and Williams, the event will feature panels from Equal Justice Initiative director and activist Bryan Stevenson, rapper Mysonne Linen, Penn professor Marie Gottschalk, and attorney David Rudovsky. Mill's attorney Joe Tacopina, along with Williams, will give updates about the rapper and his case.

Organizers also expect members of the Philadelphia Eagles and 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin to appear at the event as spectators.

Mill, 30, is currently serving a two-to-four-year prison sentence at SCI Chester in Delaware County in connection with probation violations stemming from a 2007 arrest on gun and drug charges.

In that arrest, Mill was booked by Philadelphia Narcotics Field Unit officer Reginald V. Graham, who also testified against the rapper in court. As the Inquirer recently reported, Graham's name was included on a list of about two-dozen potentially tainted police officers kept by the District Attorney's office as a way to prevent them from testifying in court.

Federal authorities investigated Graham for "several alleged acts of corruption" in Nov. 2013, the Inquirer reported this week. Graham retired before his hearing.

"The release of the so-called 'Do Not Testify' listwhich includes Mill's arresting officer, Reginald Grahamsupports everything in the motions filed by Mill and others wrongfully arrested by Officer Graham for post-conviction relief," Tacopina said via a release. "We are hopeful that this is the final step in the process to get Mill and the other defendants released on bail and to have their convictions overturned."
For most people in the Philadelphia area, Wednesday's storm was an inconvenience: a wet, miserable day better spent inside. But for people in treatment for opioid addiction, severe weather  or anything that keeps them from the medication they need to stave off painful withdrawal symptoms  can become a life-or-death challenge.

That's why housing staffers, outreach workers, and doctors across the city scrambled on Tuesday to prepare for the storm. Making sure patients could get to methadone clinics or pick up their suboxone prescriptions was paramount as the forecast worsened. Both medications are themselves opioids, carefully administered to help a patient gradually get out of addiction. Such medication-assisted treatment, or MAT, has been found in studies to offer patients the best chance at long-term recovery.

"If you can't find suboxone somehow, you risk severe withdrawal," said Lara Weinstein, a professor at Thomas Jefferson University who prescribes suboxone to patients at Project HOME's Stephen Kline Wellness Center. Some patients, in desperation, might turn to heroin to fight withdrawal symptoms, she said. "And every time you go back to heroin, you risk overdosing," especially now that it's often impossible to know if a dose of heroin contains the far more potent fentanyl.

So she and her staff spent Tuesday making contingency plans, such as getting some patients to the clinic early, prescribing others an extra dose to get through Wednesday's storm, or even sending a car to bring a patient to the clinic during the storm. "We have to do whatever it takes," she said.

By noon Wednesday, she said, all her patients had been accounted for.

After they've been in treatment for some time, patients on suboxone can get prescriptions for larger amounts of the drug  a few days', a week's, a month's supply  that require fewer visits to treatment clinics. But methadone, a similar but heavily regulated medication, requires patients to take the dose at a clinic under supervision every day.

At Kensington Hospital, which hosts the only methadone clinic in the neighborhood, clinic workers said they had to close at 11 a.m. Wednesday, but had worked for the last few days to make sure all their patients got in before then.

The scramble to accommodate patients, advocates say, underscores the need for more treatment options around the city, and easier access for patients in neighborhoods like Kensington where opioid use is most concentrated.

But the storm's impact is harder still on addicted people living on the streets of Kensington. Though the city doubled its homeless outreach teams as the storm came in, many people in encampments under the Lehigh Avenue train bridges are reluctant to go to Center City shelters where they could be cut off from their drug supply and forced into immediate and dangerous withdrawal. There are only 40 shelter beds in the neighborhood itself, all usually full. The local needle exchange program, Prevention Point, is opening a respite center Wednesday night.

Under the bridges, people living in the camps picked their way around deep puddles to accept care packages from outreach workers who pulled up to the curb.

"Everything is so much harder" when the weather turns bad, said Mike Wrobel, 29, who spent Tuesday night on a sodden sheet at the end of the bridge. "It's harder to sleep at night. Everything gets soaking wet. Your hands are wet and cold. Your veins don't pop." Injecting heroin that morning with numb fingers, he said, he had missed a vein, potentially creating an abscess that could easily become infected.

He said he and his girlfriend would be trying to seek drug treatment; the conditions under the bridge had been the last straw.

Down the block, Josh, a 23-year-old who spends his nights working in a restaurant and his days under the Kensington Avenue bridge, said the weather had persuaded him, too, to seek a detox bed. "I've been out here a week or two," he said. "And I can't take it." Next to him, a woman named Julie, originally from Norristown, said she had spent the last few nights napping on a cardboard pallet inside a Christian ministry down the street. "There are a thousand abandoned places around here  houses, warehouses. If the city could just open a few up," she said, "where we could sit and have a cup of coffee."
Officer Robert Esack twice rammed his knee into someone's face in 2016, shattering facial bones.

Officer Angel Ortiz mishandled evidence in a 2011 narcotics investigation and falsified police reports.

Both last year were deemed guilty of misconduct by a police disciplinary board and suspended for five days. And both were subsequently placed on a list of officers the District Attorney's Office considered too untrustworthy or problematic to call as witnesses in future criminal cases. The list, acquired this week by the Inquirer and Daily News, detailed their alleged transgressions and discipline.

Esack and Ortiz remain on the police force.

They are part of a dubious group: officers disciplined by the Police Department and essentially neutered by prosecutors, yet still on the job and collecting a taxpayer-funded salary.

In total, nine of the 29 officers placed on the DA's "Do Not Call" list made public this week are still on active duty. Last year, the nine were paid more than $740,000.

That expense and futility is the price paid, critics say, for a police disciplinary system that all too often makes it difficult to punish problem officers  and even harder to fire them.

And that same system provided prosecutors the list of questionable police officers considered too tainted to count on in court. The list was developed by former District Attorney Seth Williams and released this week under court order by new top prosecutor Larry Krasner.

For decades, Philadelphia police commissioners have joined independent analysts in complaining that union rules had stripped them of the power to effectively discipline bad cops. Former Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, who ran the department from 1998 to 2002, called the city system a "joke."

"In New York, if the commissioner fires you, you're done. You never get [your job] back," said Timoney, once second-in-command of the New York City force. "In Philly, it's like a game. Everyone understands it."

Said former Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey: "It's very hard to maintain discipline in a police department especially when at every turn you have cases that wind up getting overturned, people brought back, and in many cases for some very, very serious allegations."

Alan Yatvin, a Philadelphia lawyer expert in challenging police misconduct in civil cases, said police commanders often find their hands tied in disciplinary matters, unable to even transfer officers in some instances.

"The collective bargaining agreement with the Police Department is very skewed in favor of the police officer," he said. "It's very hard to fire a cop."

The Fraternal Order of Police, the union for the department's 6,300 officers, and others reject those criticisms.

"The arbitration process as it applies to the discipline of police officers is a common punching bag for outsiders who are not familiar with the process," said Marc L. Gelman, a lawyer hired by the FOP to represent officers. "Nevertheless, it is, without question, the fairest, most effective and efficient means of resolving labor disputes between the FOP and the City."

Still, in a succession of critiques over the years, independent analysts have found serious fault with every facet of the police disciplinary system. In a scathing 2003 review, Ellen Ceisler, now a state appellate judge but then the department's internal integrity officer, wrote: "There are simply too many ways to manipulate the system and too little accountability at each step of this inscrutable process to generate confidence in the integrity of the system."

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice studied Philadelphia's response to use-of-force incidents and again called out a lack of consistency, noting that two different internal review boards often gave conflicting determinations. In a follow-up report the next year, the Justice Department blamed the city police labor contract for blocking reform.

In a recent article, the website City & State PA reported that Internal Affairs investigators found evidence of wrongdoing in only 15 percent of 8,555 civilian complaints filed against officers in the last five years.

In the time-consuming and complex disciplinary process, a finding of wrongdoing by Internal Affairs may be only the first step in a long road. After that, a case is reviewed by the Police Board of Inquiry. And after that, an officer can seek yet another review by an arbitrator.

Much about the disciplinary process is cloaked in secrecy.

The department posted citizen complaints against police online last year. Yet at the same time, the department removed critical information that had previously been available, including the names of the officers, witnesses, and people who brought the complaints.

And the online information only includes complaints brought by citizens. City officials have never made public the accusations of misconduct against officers brought by the department itself.

All of these issues came into high relief after the 2015 acquittal of six narcotics officers on federal corruption charges, including allegations they had framed suspects. Ramsey fired the officers before trial, saying their conduct represented "one of the worst cases of corruption I have ever heard." Two months after their acquittal, an arbitrator ordered the officers back on the force and awarded them $90,000 in back pay.

The ruling in the case was made public, but only after most of its reasoning was redacted.

After returning to work, the officers were put back on street duty, although they were not returned to the narcotics squad. Despite their acquittals, the officers found their past made it difficult for prosecutors to use them as witnesses in criminal cases.

In some instances when the officers made arrests, the District Attorney's Office quietly dismissed the cases. In others, prosecutors found a way to go forward, using other officers involved in an arrest as witnesses.

One of the six, Sgt. Michael Spicer, landed on the "Do Not Call" list of 29 officers. Though not on the narcotics unit, he continued to make drug arrests, which, a source said, were in some cases viewed as problematic.

Active-duty officers

In all, the nine active-duty police on the "Do Not Call" roster made 41 arrests last year. Esack led the group with 14 arrests. Ortiz was second with 13.

Ortiz made more than 30 arrests between 2012 and 2017 for offenses including possession of marijuana, drunken driving, and aggravated assault, according to court records. Even after he was disciplined by the department in March 2017 over the paperwork associated with a drug bust, he continued making arrests, the records show. He could not be reached for comment for this story.

His misconduct stemmed from a suspicious drug bust in 2011, which netted thousands of dollars' worth of heroin. Ortiz's partner later accused him of filing paperwork filled with falsehoods to justify the arrest. In March 2017, the Police Board of Inquiry found Ortiz guilty of making false entries in a police report and failing to follow procedures for handling narcotics, according to the district attorney's list.

Esack, meanwhile, was found guilty by the inquiry board in July of conduct unbecoming an officer for using excessive force and striking a person twice with his knee, according to the DA's list. He could not be reached for comment.

Esack, too, continued racking up arrests after he was suspended. Within a month, he arrested Jae Un Lee for counts including simple assault, though charges were eventually dropped when the complaining witness failed to appear.

Esack has made four additional arrests since then  including last month, when he arrested Patricia Bradley for aggravated assault and related counts. Bradley is to face a preliminary hearing next week  a hearing that apparently may not include testimony from the man who arrested her.

Staff writers Mark Fazlollah, Dylan Purcell, and Michele Tranquilli contributed to this article.
Olivia Sandom, left, 17, of Masterman and Bryan McCurdy, right, 18, of the Academy at Palumbo lead the crowd in a chant  Hold hands not guns  during the student walkout at City Hall on March 14. A subsequent rally for gun control is scheduled for Saturday. Read more

Students from across the country are expected to take to the streets Saturday in a nationwide march against gun violence, about a month after 17 people were killed during a mass shooting at a Florida high school.

>> READ MORE: Live updates from the marches in Philly and D.C.

"March for Our Lives," an event spearheaded by survivors of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, is expected to bring huge crowds to Washington to rally over gun issues and school safety. "Sibling marches" are being held in cities across the United States, including Philadelphia.

Here's what you need to know ahead of time.

What is March for Our Lives?

The "for kids and by kids" event in Washington will be held March 24 on Pennsylvania Avenue between Third and 12th Streets Northwest, beginning at noon.

The event is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of participants, according to the Washington Post. More than 800 sibling marches, which are also student-led initiatives, according to the march's website, are expected to be held across the country, including in Philadelphia.

>> READ MORE: Meet the students helping organize Philadelphia's 'March for Our Lives'

The march was organized to "end the epidemic of mass shootings," according to the event's Twitter profile.

Survivors of the Parkland shooting recently appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to promote the event.

"You know, the thing that inspired us to create the march was people saying, 'You are all talking about gun control, and this is not the time to talk about gun control. This is the time to grieve, a time to mourn.' And we understand that," Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, said on the show. "And we said, now might not be the time to talk about gun control, here's the time to talk about gun control  March 24."

The mission statement on the march's website says that while "school safety is not a political issue," the focus of the event is "to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues."

The website reads: "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."

A handful of celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and George and Amal Clooney, have donated to the event's funding efforts.

What do I need to know about the Philadelphia event?

Philadelphia's sibling march will happen on the same day, March 24, kicking off around 9:30 a.m. at Fifth and Market Streets where thousands expected to attend will snake through Old City before ending up at Lombard Circle along Columbus Boulevard. Speakers include Sen. Bob Casey (D, Pa.), Mayor Kenney and Jami Amo, a Columbine High School massacre survivor, as well as other activists and representatives from other groups.

Three student march leaders, two in high school and one who is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, are organizing Philly's event, said Gigi Peterkin, a spokeswoman for the march.

"The fact that this march and movement called for legislative action, that appealed to them," she said.

Organizers submitted a permit application to the Office of Special Events, city spokeswoman Ajeenah Amir confirmed. The Philadelphia Police Department said it was aware of the event.

A GoFundMe page for the Philadelphia event had raised more than $10,600 of its $50,000 goal as of Wednesday morning. About 3,400 people are "going" to the event, according to the Philadelphia march's Facebook page.

What is going on in the suburbs?

Interest for the march is also strong in the suburbs. Sibling rallies have been organized in West Chester, Norristown, and Doylestown, according to a map of marches on the event's website.

A "Suburban Support for the March for Our Lives" has also been organized by Indivisible Chester County and State Sen. Daylin Leach (D., Montgomery), according to its Facebook event page. But that march also will be held in Philadelphia, beginning at Independence Hall, at 10 a.m.

Marches are also planned throughout New Jersey, including in Haddon Heights, Ocean City, and Princeton.

What about bus trips to D.C.?

Bus trips to Washington and marches in other major cities are being organized across the country. But it may be too late to save a seat if you haven't done so already.

The Lutheran Episcopal Advocacy Ministry of New Jersey is organizing bus trips to Washington, departing from Marlton, Montclair, Newark and Hamilton Square. The trip is $25 for adults and $15 for teens 13 to 18.

The ministry quickly filled up four buses but added two more, the Rev. Sara Lilja said. Registration has closed.

"Anything we can do to eliminate sources of violence is critical in our understanding of what it means to be a faithful person of God," Lilja said.

Delaware County United for Sensible Gun Policy is also sending students to the Washington march. Those interested can donate to the organization to sponsor a student.

Bryn Mawr College is also organizing a bus trip for students, faculty, and staff.

What sparked all of this?

Fourteen students and three staff members were killed at Douglas High after gunman Nikolas Cruz, 19, opened fire on his classmates with an AR-15 on Feb. 14, one of a growing list of mass shootings in the United States.

Politicians, activists, and school-shooting survivors quickly began calling for gun reform. Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Douglas, led hundreds in chants of "no more guns" and "not one more" during a large rally days after the shooting.

Students have since met with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), President Trump, and Dana Loesch, a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, to address their concerns.

Earlier this month, the Florida House passed a school-safety bill that is now awaiting approval from Gov. Rick Scott. The march is an outgrowth of efforts to raise awareness about gun violence and school safety.

In another event planned as a result of the Florida school shooting, some students and teachers in the region walked out of classes for 17 minutes last week, part of a nationwide observance on the one-month anniversary.
Manchester Township Police said a teacher was struck by lightning during Wednesdays winter storm. Read more

A 33-year-old middle school teacher suffered non-life-threatening injuries when she was struck by lightning Wednesday afternoon in Ocean County, police said.

The woman was performing bus duty at the end of the school day, around 2:30 p.m., at Manchester Middle School in Manchester Township when lightning struck the umbrella she was holding, police said.

She was standing and alert after the strike, but reported tingling in her arm and hand. She was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation and treatment, police said.

The lightning came amid a nor'easter that moved through the Philadelphia region on Wednesday, prompting a significant number of transit delays, closings and power outages.
A former deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections, who resigned seven years ago under the cloud of an FBI probe, is alleging in a lawsuit against the city that he was persecuted  and eventually prosecuted  by powerful political enemies he made in the course of doing his job.

Dominic Verdi, who resigned in 2011, maintains that higher-ups in the department manufactured the scandal that drove him from his post as retribution for his decision to shut down a politically connected and unlicensed social club in Old City in early 2009.

His lawsuit, filed Feb. 21 in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, seeks more than $150,000 in damages for wrongful termination and malicious prosecution and comes little more than a year after a federal jury acquitted Verdi in a bribery and extortion case. Prosecutors had accused him of shaking down bar and club owners to buy beer from a distributorship in which he owned a secret stake.

"Dominic put in almost four decades with the city and lost nearly everything as a result of this," his lawyer Benjamin J. Simmons said Thursday. "We're just trying to make it right for him."

In court papers, Verdi directs his ire at his boss, Frances Burns, who had been appointed by then-Mayor Michael Nutter to lead L&I in the years before Verdi's departure. The two clashed from the start, he says, and Burns quickly transferred him to the Public Nuisance Task Force, a joint team of police officers and L&I inspectors that used city code violations to shut down problem bars, drug houses, and brothels.

In that role in 2009, Verdi shut down Girlfriends, a club near Third and Chestnut Streets, for failing to obtain an occupancy license. But, he alleges, Burns pressured him to reopen the nightspot to appease several of its patrons who "had close personal relationships with members of the Philadelphia city government."

Verdi does not identify those patrons in his suit but says his refusal to buckle under their pressure prompted Burns to demote him two years later.

Reached Thursday, Burns declined to comment on Verdi's claims. City lawyers said they still were reviewing the lawsuit.

Verdi also alleges that Burns took further retaliatory measures, including reporting to the FBI his secret ownership stake in Chappy's Beer, Butts & Bets, the South Philadelphia beer distributorship at the heart of the indictment that eventually was filed against him.

However, news reports from the period show that the federal investigation was well underway by 2011 when Burns demoted Verdi and that the decision came shortly after he had been publicly named as a potential target of the probe.

At his 2016 trial, several bar owners testified that Verdi often used his clout at L&I to push local bar and club owners to buy their beer at Chappy's. He cut breaks for loyal customers, they said, warning some of impending task-force raids and clearing away red tape for others facing shutdowns for failed inspections.

Verdi, testifying in his own defense, admitted that he hid his ownership stake in the beer business but insisted that he had never extorted anyone to boost his sales.

A hearing on his suit against Burns and the city has not yet been scheduled.
Under president pro tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, the Pa. Senate stalls on the state budget. When it comes to punishing the states Fish and Boat Commission director, they move swiftly. Read more

They can't pass a budget without months of noise, nonsense, and no-no-no's. They can't find money to adequately fund public schools or fix Pennsylvania's highways and bridges. They can't even act swiftly on a no-brainer bill to keep guns far from the clutches of suspected domestic abusers.

But a biologist ticks off Pennsylvania's Republican-dominated Legislature over a $6 increase in state fishing license fees  and legislative action becomes laser-fast and certain.

The power of revenge is without boundary.

Lawmakers draft a bill to oust the scientist from the helm of the Fish and Boat Commission. They move as fast as a Hatfield or McCoy pulling the trigger on a double-barrel shotgun. They pledge to sack the biologist. And the bill for new money to keep streams clean and stocked with trout  that will take a back seat while the political assassination of a trout-fishing and streams bureaucrat becomes top priority.

These, dear readers, are the people you elect  and probably don't even know by name, shame on you  who not only draw Pennsylvania's gerrymandered congressional districts but who control so much else about life in this state.

It's a crew of 50 senators and 203 representatives who'd mostly have us believe that they're powerless pawns in a merciless political system of give and take. But my colleague Justine McDaniel's scoop about the unfolding drama over recreational fishing fees shows that to be a bunch of malarkey (rhetorical hat tip, ex-vice president and onetime Scranton boy Joe Biden.)

During this age when partisan toxicity is blamed for legislative inaction on issues across the spectrum, we see in McDaniel's story that good old-fashioned vengeance is the Magic Drano capable of clearing the clogged lawmaking sewer that Harrisburg has become.

In this case, politicians have pointed their legislative fire toward one foe: Fish and Boat Commission director John Arway.

The foe's fatal faux pas?

For several years, Arway had been unsuccessfully prodding the tea party-beholden Republican majority, whose leaders are from the state's more rural or uber-conservative counties, to pass a law so that fishing license fees would rise from $21 to $27. The fee hasn't budged since 2005, resulting in scores of job and program cuts and now threatening fish hatcheries.

Last fall, Arway, a longtime presence on the commission, dropped the diplomatic gloves.

Saying he had no choice but to soon make $2 million in cuts, Arway told lawmakers he would have to destock streams in districts belonging to the bill's opponents if action wasn't taken to pass the new law. Several hatcheries were also on the chopping block.

He cast for a big fish  but ended up reeling in Jaws.

Influential lawmakers are now looking to annihilate Arway by passing a law to limit his tenure. The bill on new fishing fees? That will wait, they say, until the job is done on Arway.

"Even if the cure for cancer was within that licensing bill," York County Republican Rep. Keith Gillespie said, "I don't think there would be the motivation for the members of the committee or the House to pass it."

This is no small-time spat. The president pro tempore of the Senate himself, Jefferson County Republican Joe Scarnati, sponsored the bill seeking to limit Arway's term to eight years. (Scarnati was one of the lawmakers whose district Arway targeted with threats of no trout.)

Arway's eight-year anniversary was Friday. Funny how the bill's math works out so nicely. Arway gets fired immediately if it passes. GOP committee chairs in both chambers say they'll push the term-limit bill after the Assembly returns to session later this month.

No wonder Pennsylvanians have so strongly disapproved of their state lawmakers in poll after poll that the question doesn't even get asked anymore by pollster Christopher Borick of Muhlenberg College.

"Talk about the pettiness," Borick told me this week. He'a a fisherman himself and finds it absurd that license fees haven't gone up in 13 years.

But this is an ideological battle at its core. Extreme-right-wing, anti-government lawmakers have consistently shown they will do anything to defund government. Harrisburg has become a Thunderdome-like chamber where hard conservatives win battle after battle.

"There are in leadership right now lots of individuals that believe you should not raise any government tax or fee at any time," Borick says. "How are you to manage the resources of the state .. with a stagnant revenue source? The aversion is ideological. It starts ideological and then it becomes personal when you have a bureaucratic figure really push hard."

What really gets Borick in this go-round is Gillespie's statement about how Republicans wouldn't even cure cancer if it meant giving Arway a pass.

"Really? Really? And the reason why you wouldn't pass the cure for cancer is that you're pissed at the director of an agency?" Borick exclaims.

Here's an idea. Let's start a group activity in the name of democracy. You, readers across Pennsylvania, open a web browser and go to this address  www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/  and see who represents you in Harrisburg.

After that, tell your neighbors. After that, vote.

Then see who else is running for that seat. If you're not sure whom to pick, send me an email. Let's try to size it up together. This is a giant election year.

Could be fun. And most definitely worth it if it means killing off a few sharks.
19,653 new COVID cases in Kerala after 1.13L tests on Sunday

With this, the number of active COVID cases in the state fell to 1,73,631. Of the new cases, 18,657 contracted the virus through contact while 105 came from outside the state.
Philadelphia radio legend Frank X. Feller died Tuesday at age 91.

Feller first made his name locally at the long-gone 990 WIBG-AM, better known as "Wibbage" in the Philly area, from 1963 to 1968. A trailblazing rock-n-roll format radio station at the time, WIBG featured Feller on-air from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weeknights.

Feller was one of several extremely popular DJs at WIBG at the time, which was known for its "Good Guys" roster of talent. The list included legendary radio personalities like Joe Niagara, Dean Tyler, Jerry Stevens, and Hy Lit.

Today, the WIBG call letters are used by a Ocean City, New Jersey-based station that plays Spanish hits. WNTP-AM, a conservative talk-radio station, now broadcasts on WIBG-AM's former 990 frequency.

Prior to joining at WIBG, also known as Radio 99, Feller also had stints at radio stations in North Carolina and New Jersey, as well as Stroudsburg, where he began his career in the 1950s, according to the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia website.

Through the 1970s, Feller helped build the then-newly established 94.1 WYSP-FM, first serving as program director and then as the station's general manager. Then known as a rock station, WYSP changed to the sportstalk-oriented WIP-FM in 2011.

Feller, however, departed from the station long before that change, having joined 860 WWDM-AM in the early 1980s as a host. He also became the president of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia during that period, serving in the position from 1981 to 1982. He retired from radio in 1990.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
Anne Brancato became the first-ever woman elected as a Democrat in the Pennsylvania State Legislature in 1932. Read more

This year marks the 115th anniversary of the birth of Anne Brancato, among the most accomplished and fascinating Philadelphians from 20th-century political history. Overcoming social and political barriers during the Great Depression, Brancato became the first-ever woman elected as a Democrat in the Pennsylvania state legislature. She fought passionately for the rights of the poor and dispossessed while challenging machine politics and advocating for women's empowerment long before the feminist movement of the 1960s.

Brancato was born on Jan. 17, 1903, to Italian immigrant parents and exhibited precociousness throughout her youth. She studied at Banks Business College, the Academy of the Sisters of Mercy, and took classes at Temple University, studying a variety of languages including Italian, French, and Japanese.

She found her calling in politics. After cutting her teeth in a Democratic club in South Philadelphia in the late 1920s, Brancato aimed her sights on a seat in the General Assembly. Living in a district dominated by Philadelphia's Republican political machine, Brancato  a 29-year-old unmarried Democratic woman of Italian descent  faced tough odds. Only one other Italian American Democrat had ever held a General Assembly seat, and no woman had ever been elected to the legislature as a Democrat.

Without a large-scale organizational infrastructure, Brancato walked door-to-door, personally disseminating campaign literature and even presenting speeches in flawless Italian to enthusiastic Italian American voters. Her efforts paid off. For the 1933 term, the young Brancato went to Harrisburg as a representative for the Fifth District.

"The party needs women, and I am the best vote-getter that they have," Brancato reportedly said during the 1932 campaign. Her 1,500-vote edge over Republican Joseph Argentieri may very well have been the result of a female electorate eager to see women in power.

The Great Depression bore on as Brancato commenced her political career. Part of a larger national movement for poverty relief, Brancato pursued a host of social-welfare laws designed to support the most vulnerable of her constituents. She sponsored the Mothers' Assistance Fund Law, which aided impoverished mothers, and advocated for short-form birth certificates, which eliminated the word illegitimate from the birth certificates of children born out of wedlock. Her appropriations bills benefited poor people with vision and hearing impairments and she sponsored legislation that curtailed predatory loan-shark behavior.

"We must make our women conscious of their responsibilities in government," Brancato once said. She lived this mantra through her political career, demonstrating that politically active women could bring about positive change on behalf of their communities. She sponsored legislation that raised wages for women and limited abusive workplace practices. Brancato not only fought for pro-women policies, but proudly broadcast her political priorities, referencing them on campaign materials. In a political and cultural climate that permitted her colleagues in the legislature to openly ridicule her as a woman on the floor of the General Assembly, this was no small gesture.

After four successful terms, Brancato relinquished her seat in 1940 before briefly returning to the legislature in 1944. After her last term, she started a successful business  the Anne Brancato Telephone Answering & Secretarial Service  and married Augustus Wood, adopting the name Anne Brancato Wood. In 1956, she attempted one last foray into politics with a failed campaign for a state Senate seat.

During the final 15 years of her life, chronic laryngitis greatly diminished Brancato's ability to speak. Despite her ailment, she continued to write pleas to prominent national political figures to support young upstarts and worked on behalf of a staggering number of civic organizations, including the Navy League, the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the Pennsylvania Constitution Commemoration Committee, the Alliance of Catholic Women, St. Bernadette's Home of the Aged and Convalescent, among scores of others.

She passed away on Aug. 22, 1972.

Patrick Glennon is a communications officer at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. pglennon@hsp.org
Rapper Meek Mill was arrested for a parole violation by an officer who reportedly was on a District Attorneys Office list of bad cops. Read more

The fact that Philadelphia prosecutors kept a secret list of police officers suspected of lying about arrests and other misconduct is a sad indictment of the city's criminal justice system. It screams for the umpteenth time that this city's elected officials need to put police reform above politics.

The list reportedly was compiled months ago by former District Attorney Seth Williams, who ironically sits in prison following a corruption conviction last year. The list served as a cheat sheet of sorts to help prosecutors avoid calling cops to the witness stand whose testimony couldn't be trusted.

Sources told reporters Mark Fazlollah, Craig R. McCoy, and Jeremy Roebuck the list addressed a problem seen in many cities, "testilying," which includes falsifying evidence, framing suspects, and lying about it in court. Reportedly on the list was the officer who arrested rapper Meek Mill in 2007 for violating his parole on earlier gun and drug charges.

Revelation of the bad cop list spurred calls by criminal defense lawyers for it to be made public by District Attorney Larry Krasner, who until his election last year was a prominent member of their collective. Krasner, as a defense attorney, was an outspoken critic of police abuse and ran for office promising to attack it.

Prosecutor Krasner has been a bit more circumspect, saying his office needs time to consider the ramifications of releasing the list, including the impact that could have on criminal cases that were resolved based on testimony by officers whose integrity was questionable.

Whether cops on the list are guilty of crimes, ethical lapses, or other breaches also must be considered in releasing their names. However, almost any document prepared by officials who work for taxpayers eventually should be made public. A good first step was Krasner's acknowledging the existence of Williams' secret list.

More important than the list itself is what Mayor Kenney and City Council are going to do about a Police Department with rogue cops who remain on the force even when the District Attorney's Office believes they can't be trusted.

This isn't a new problem. A Task Force on Police Discipline set up by Mayor John Street in 2001 admitted that it was repeating similar reform efforts that had occurred at least six times over the previous 35 years. Each time those efforts fell short.

Repeated corruption and civil rights violations led to creation of a Police Integrity and Accountability Office, but Street disbanded it in 2005. Every attempt since to reform the department has been met by a brick wall called the Fraternal Order of Police, whose political strength mushroomed in 2011 when it won a lawsuit allowing it to form a political action committee that directly contributes to candidates.

Just as the knee-jerk NRA opposes any attempt at gun control, the FOP defends any cop, good or bad, and elected officials dare not risk challenging the FOP's clout. Kenney and Council need to negotiate contracts with the union that limit its ability to influence disciplinary decisions. Do that and prosecutors wouldn't have to keep a secret list of which cops can't be trusted.
As we enter the home stretch of the 64th Wyoming State Legislature Budget Session, the House of Representatives continues to work on legislation important to every Wyoming citizens. There are still dozens of bills under consideration in the House to protect personal freedoms and Second Amendment Rights, improve our education system and diversify our economy while advancing existing industries including energy and agriculture.

The legislature is working on a number of bills in support of Governor Matt Mead's ENDOW (Economically Needed Diversity Options for Wyoming) initiative. Last year, the legislature passed a bill authorizing ENDOW to make lasting and meaningful gains in diversifying Wyoming's economy. We are considering legislation this session to help train Wyoming workers; expand and sustain air service; improve access to high-quality broadband; implement aggressive computer science standards; and build out Wyoming's entrepreneurial network.

Bills championed by the House Transportation, Highways and Military Affairs Committee, which I am honored to chair, also continue to move forward. House Bill 36, Move Over Requirement, was passed by the House and awaits further consideration in the Senate. The bill would expand requirements for passing emergency vehicles to include road construction employees, snowplows and public utilities.

Senate File 31, Veterans' skilled nursing center, which would provide a facility for Wyoming veterans who need nursing care, has been approved by both the House and Senate. The chambers are now considering differences between their passed versions of the bill.

Both the House and Senate have passed Budget bills, as well as legislation funding school capital construction. The two chambers have appointed conferees who are working together to iron out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bills. Once an agreement is reached, the two chambers will each take an up or down vote on the measures.

I encourage you to listen live to the session, track bills and follow the ongoing work of the House and Senate online at lso.wyoleg.gov. We are hopeful the last day of session will be this Saturday, although we may go longer if additional time is required. If you have any questions, please feel free email me at [email protected]
Pine Bluffs Distilling's 'Rock Ranch Vodka' a hit with guests attending Wyoming Governor's Tourism and Hospitality Conference

Pine Bluffs, WY (February 27, 2018)  Hospitality and Pine Bluffs Distilling's 'Rock Ranch Vodka' flowed freely at the Wyoming Governor's annual Tourism and Hospitality Conference in Cheyenne February 26-27.

Instead of tending bar, Pine Bluffs Distilling owner and operator Chad Brown along with master distiller Erica Unruh and Michael Davidson tended their display booth mixing a custom Moscow Mules for more than 300 guests.

Earlier this year, Pine Bluffs Distilling released 'Rock Ranch Vodka' which is made entirely with local grains that are grown and harvested from fields less than 25 miles from the distillery.

Mixologists describe Rock Ranch as the "Swiss Army Knife" of vodkas because it works just as well in a Bloody Mary or Moscow Mule as it does in a basic dry martini, making it the only vodka a person will ever need.

The distillery's tasting room is located just 30 miles east of Cheyenne at 322 N. Beech in Pine Bluffs and is open Monday through Friday from noon to 5 p.m. and on Saturday from 3 p.m. to 7pm. Visitors can tour the facility, taste and purchase Rock Ranch Vodka and purchase premium gifts.

About Pine Bluffs Distilling

Pine Bluffs Distilling (PBD) is owned operated by Chad & Kathy Brown and Gene Purdy. PBD's mission is to distill and distribute premium local spirits showcasing the taste of farm-to-distillery products. PBD operates in the fertile high plains of southeast Wyoming and has created a unique farm-to-distillery partnership with local farmers and producers. All PBD spirits are hand-crafted from natural ingredients in small batches for unparalleled quality and taste. PBD partners with Wyoming Malting Company which provides malt for local home, industrial brewers, and distilleries. PBD is the first licensed distillery in Laramie County and is a member of the American Distilling Institute and the Wyoming Distillers Guild. PBD promotes responsible drinking habits. For more information about Pine Bluffs Distilling visit https://www.pinebluffsdistilling.com.
Pine Bluffs municipal court is returning to its old home at the historic high school.

Municipal court was historically held at the old Pine Bluffs High School prior to the start of construction at the new elementary school. In order to make room for elementary school students, court was moved to Pine Bluffs town hall.

With students moving into the new school late last year, court was able to move back to its original home.

The town will pay the Pine Bluffs Heritage Society, which operates the building, $300 per month.

Mayor Alan Curtis said the town holds court in the facility for security reasons. It also prevents court from conflicting with other activities at town hall, he said.

Town to assess credit card fees next month

Late last year, Pine Bluffs Town Council members authorized assessing credit and debit card fees.

The the new policy was solidified Monday night in a 4-0 vote from the council.

Curtis said operating the necessary equipment and software to use credit card machines is "quite the expense for the town."

Town Clerk Kim Patterson added that the town spends thousands each year so that it can accept credit card payments.

"We're just passing through the fee that we have to pay to accept that transaction," she said.

Initially, the town will assess a 2.5 percent fee for electronic transactions, but Patterson said she sees that decreasing to 1.75 percent.

"We just need to have it implemented for a few months to get some averages,' she said.

Residents also have the option of using their checking account to pay bills online without being assessed a fee.

The new fees will take effect April 1.
Rhonda A. Rasgorshek was raised in a military home. She was born at Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota, went to school at Edwards AFB in California, and then transferred down to Howard AFB, Panama with her father, James Merryfield. Merryfield was active duty in the United States Air Force.

Rasgorshek moved again, but this time to Kimball, Nebraska, while her dad finished his tour in Panama. Upon his completion, Rasgorshek and her family joined her father in Illinois, where her dad would be stationed at Scott AFB.

This military influence would put a call into her years later. She graduated from high school in Belleville Illinois and headed back to Nebraska to attend college at Chadron. She would also attend classes at WNCC.

Rasgorshek enlisted in the Air National Guard in Cheyenne, Wyoming on June 23, 2010. She would serve her term in active guard.

After her basic training, she headed to Kessler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi for tech school. Upon completion of her eight month schooling Rasgorshek would return to base in Cheyenne assigned to Cyber Transport.

While in the active guard, Rasgorshek learned how to drive big trucks for transportation of equipment and was thrilled to have earned her CDL license.

"My job was with computers and in the event of war, I would find myself working on security for our country." stated Rasgorshek. She went on to say, "Following in my dad's footsteps by serving in the military was a goal I set at a young age, and I was determined to complete this mission!"

Penny Merryfield/Pine Bluffs Post Airman R. Rasgorshek plays taps during Memorial Day ceremony.

"Being in the Military helped me with many life lessons. How to push you rself, dedication, work ethic and pride." she said.

Upon serving her tour, Rasgorshek settled back into civilian life and is currently employed with Clean Harbors as Regional Container Coordinator. She is a member of Kimball Volunteer Fire Department Auxilliary and is serving her third year as their president.

"My experience in the military continues to serve me, and I would tell anyone considering joining the Military should definitely look into which branch they want to join. Find a job you want to do. They will teach you everything you need to know and more. Never be afraid and be proud to want to serve our country." she smiled and said with pride.

Thank you for serving our country.
Lynn Edwards passed away on February 24, 2018. His friends knew him as Lennie. He lived on Pine Island for over 30 years. Lynn considered the community his home and his friends as his family. He was known by his outgoing personality and his big heart.

Born in Canton, Ohio on January 31, 1944 Lynn grew up in Westerville, Ohio. He graduated from Georgia Military Academy in 1962 and attended Georgia Tech. He joined the U.S. Air Force in 1964 and served in the U.S. and Japan. After leaving the Air Force he briefly lived in Louisiana and Ohio before moving to Florida.

Lynn never knew a stranger. Although suffering from disabling arthritis, he was always positive. His answer to how he felt was an enthusiastic, Fantastic! and his Happy Happy, Joy Joy greeting was unmistakable. Lynn was involved in local activities and cared deeply about his neighbors and friends. They helped him in unselfish ways and have continued with great kindness.

Lynn will be missed by his brother Jim and his wife Sharon, along with his nephew Mike and his wife Tiffany and their children Isaac, Grace and Eve. Mike, Tiffany and the children joined Lynn last year for Thanksgiving which Lynn said it was his best ever.

Lynn cared deeply about his friends and the Pine Island community. He will be missed. An informal get together will occur in April at the Low Key Tiki to remember his life.
When you think of Egypt, you might not immediately associate it with ballet. But during the late 1950s and 1960s, the country worked hard to establish its own world-class ballet company. With the help of the Soviet Union, Egypts then minister of culture Dr. Tharwat Okasha established Cairos Higher Institute of Ballet in 1958, bringing in teachers from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy to train the countrys first generation of ballet stars. In 1963, five female students from the Institutes inaugural class were invited to finish their training with the Bolshoi in Moscow.

One of them, Magda Saleh, would become Egypts first prima ballerina, and go on to perform with the Bolshoi and Kirov (now Mariinsky) Ballets as a guest artist during her career. Young girls in Egypt live a very sheltered life, and even to be studying ballet was exceptional, Saleh said in a phone interview last week. Their time studying abroad in Cold War-era Moscow was character forming, she says. Life was tough then for the majority of Russians, but it became very helpful for us during our careers, where we had to overcome many obstacles. In 1966, shortly after the women returned, the Cairo Ballet Company produced its first ballet, Boris Asafievs Fountain of Bakhchisarai, in which Saleh starred. The performance was enormously successful, and for the next several years the new company enjoyed an exciting golden era.

Film clip courtesy of 

A Footnote in Ballet History?



The above clip of Saleh in The Nutcracker is one of the only preserved recordings of her dancingand her Russian training is undeniable. In true Bolshoi style, she dances fully and fearlessly, eating up the space around her with gusto. Her grand jetes are both powerfully high and light as a cat, and she attacks the variations quick transitions with laser precision. And I especially love her Spanish flair during a sweeping passage of ballones and deep lunges (starting at 0:44). Indeed, at the Bolshoi Ballet Academys graduation performance, Saleh notes proudly that she and her fellow Egyptians were singled out as the best class in character dance.

Salehs story is the subject of A Footnote in Ballet History?, a documentary directed by Hisham Abdel Khalek. It follows her and other founding members of the Cairo Ballet Company through its formative years, as well as the difficulties they faced as war, social pressures (especially for women), and the 1971 fire that destroyed the companys opera house forced many to leave Egypt or end their careers. As the school and company went into decline, Saleh moved to the U.S. to study modern dance, earning a masters degree from UCLA and a PhD from NYU on Egypts ethnic dance traditions. She returned to Cairo in the 1980s, where she briefly served as dean of the Higher Institute of Ballet and then as the founding director of the new Cairo Opera House. She now lives in New York City, where she works to present Egyptian art to American audiences. Im a big believer in the benefits of culture for building bridges, nationally and internationally, she says. Ive witnessed the effects, so I know it works and brings people closer together.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZD5l6bmEHO8



From the Horses Mouth

, a legacy-based dance theater project, is honoring Saleh next week in a special program at the 14 Street Y in New York City (March 15-18). Among the performances and events will be a screening of A Footnote in Ballet History? on March 13, as well as Egypt Dances, a 1977 documentary narrated by and starring Saleh, on March 17. For more information, click here. Happy #TBT!
A North Carolina prison inmate who escaped in a work truck February 26 before dying in a crash along Interstate 85 had a suicide note with him.

David Woods, 46, was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder at the Gaston Correctional Center after pleading guilty in 1992 for killing an elderly woman with a hammer in Harnett County.

Officials said Woods was driving a Ford pickup truck that belonged to the city of Lowell when it crashed at Exit 14 off I-85.

He was considered a minimum custody inmate and was part of a city work detail when he got behind the wheel of the truck and took off at speeds that reached over 100 mph, WSOC TV reports.
A teenage student at a southern Utah high school has been charged with bringing a homemade bomb to the school that was discovered in a backpack emitting smoke and prompted an evacuation, police said Tuesday.

The boy was arrested Monday night after Pine View High School in the city of St. George was evacuated for two hours that afternoon while the FBI and a bomb squad investigated. Police declined to identify the arrested teen or give his age, reports NBC News.

Authorities said additional charges also are pending against the teen as a suspect in the raising of the Islamic State group's flag on a pole at another Utah high school last month just after the Florida mass school shooting that was followed by numerous other threats to schools around the U.S.

No one was hurt Monday after the backpack was found in a common area of the school by a student who reported it to a teacher.

The boy was arrested and booked into a detention center on charges of manufacture, possession, sale, use or attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, St. George police said in a statement.

"Based on our investigation we can confirm this was a failed attempt to detonate a homemade explosive at the school. It was also determined that the male had been researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization," police said.
BulletSafe says its new Bulletproof Bandana protects the wearer's face and neck from handgun bullets. (Photo: BulletSafe)

A new invention by a 12-year-old in Michigan could offer ballistic protection for officers' faces and necks when they are in dangerous situations such as active shooter response.

BulletSafe Bulletproof Vests says Michael Nardone, son of company president Tom Nardone, was 9 when he came up with the idea for the BulletSafe Bulletproof Bandana.

It protects your neck, your upper chest, and your lower face from bullets. says Michael. It looks cool too. You can duck down into it like a turtle or stick your neck out of it to be friendly and talk to people.

Michael says this idea combines his ski mask and the body armor made by his Dads company. He and his dad started building prototypes. It was like Goldilocks, this ones too big, this ones too small, this ones just right. says Tom Nardone.

The BulletSafe Bulletproof Bandana weighs 1.8 pounds and is easy to put on, the company says. BulletSafe says the bandana, which is made of the same material as the company's soft body armor, will stop almost all handguns rounds including a .44 Magnum. It is now in production and lists for $129.

The Nardones hope police officers keep these bulletproof bandanas handy and deploy them under dangerous circumstances. BulletSafe also plans to show the design to the U.S. military.

Michael says he would like to see a few things happen. I cant wait to get the patent with my name on it. Then I hope it saves some lives. Im also going to get some royalties. Some of the money will go to my college fund and I get to spend the rest.
Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) has responded to the line-of-duty death of a law enforcement officer in Clinton, MO, just a few communities away from the C.O.P.S. National Office in Camdenton, MO.

C.O.P.S. issued this statement:

On Tuesday, March 6, Clinton (MO) Police Officer Christopher Morton was shot and killed when he and two other officers responded to an unknown situation as the result of a 911 call at approximately 9:20 pm. The other two officers were both shot and are being treated at area hospitals.

This marks the second line-of-duty death for the Clinton Police Department and falls exactly seven months to the day of the death of Clinton Police Officer Gary Michael, Jr., who was shot and killed on August 6, 2017.

The Missouri C.O.P.S. Chapter has sprung into action and will be assisting the department, as well as working with the surviving family members. Chapters are all organized and ran by survivors who have experienced a line-of-duty death in their own families.

Wendy Viers, surviving sister of Missouri State Trooper Frederick Guthrie who died in the line of duty on August 1, 2011, is a representative of Missouri C.O.P.S. and gave the update that family members are still being contacted and the agency is working with C.O.P.S. Right now we are traveling to get to the families. The immediate need is for us to support them, love them, and cry with them, Viers said. The sad thing is we have all been through it and we were just doing this in Clinton seven months ago. Its our mission to let them know they are not alone in this.

On behalf of the entire organization of C.O.P.S., Executive Director Dianne Bernhard said: Our hearts are with the family of Officer Morton and the entire Clinton community as they suffer another loss of a hero. Our prayers are with the injured officers and their families. Every time an officer dies in the line of duty, the entire law enforcement community mourns and pulls together to support our amazing blue family. C.O.P.S. will take care of these families whose lives have been turned upside down. They will never be alone and their hero will never be forgotten.
Las Vegas Metro Police Det. Rick Golgart was off-duty on October 1 at the Route 91 Harvest Festival with family and friends when the shooting started.

Initially I thought it was fireworks, said Golgart. It wasnt until a gentleman walked up to us with a gunshot wound to the leg that I realized there was something more serious happening.

Golgart is now being honored by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund for his selfless actions during the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

On October 1, Golgart rushed to help the wounded, piling people into the back of his truck and driving them to the hospital. While doing so, he received a call from his daughter saying she had been shot. Like any father he wanted to go to her, but he decided to continue driving toward the hospital with the wounded.

His daughter was hit in the lower back. She survived. But she faces a long recovery, News 3 LV reports.

Det. Golgart will be honored at a special awards ceremony along with other Officer of the Month Award recipients for 2018 in Washington, D.C. next year.
VIDEO: Man Charged with Killing Indiana Deputy Says "No Remorse"

The man accused of killing Boone County (IN) Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Pickett arrived at the Boone County Courthouse Wednesday afternoon for his initial hearing.

Anthony Baumgardt, 21, faces murder, drug, and gun charges after police say he shot Pickett last week.

Investigators were chasing Baumgardt and two other men after they fled the site of an unrelated attempted arrest last Friday. Prosecutor Todd Meyer says Baumgardt jumped from a fleeing car, and he ran around the corner of an apartment building in Lebanon with Deputy Pickett and his K9 partner Brik in pursuit.

Pickett was shot once in the head. Officers returned fire, wounding Baumgardt before taking him into custody.

While officers walked Baumgardt into the courthouse ahead of his initial hearing, he was asked if he was sorry for killing Pickett. Baumgardt said "nope," and he repeated multiple times he has "no remorse," Fox 59 reports.
Clinton Police Officer Ryan Morton was killed Tuesday night while responding to the street address he was told to go to  but the dispatch center had mistakenly sent him to the wrong city.

He should have been dispatched to an address in Windsor, 25 miles away, where the call originated, the News-Leader reports.

The apparent mistake at the dispatch center is being investigated, said Sgt. Bill Lowe, spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Lowe spoke at a press conference at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

At the house in Clinton, the three officers encountered James E. Waters, 37. He was alone, Lowe said.

Waters, who died Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, was out on bail after he was arrested and charged in Cass County in November after police say they found him with a gun and meth.

But in addition to that, said Richard Shields, prosecuting attorney in Henry County, police were looking for Waters in connection with a reported rape that had occurred earlier this week.
Dark Storm Industries (DSI), a New York-based firearms manufacturer, has released the 2018 edition of its Signature Series rifle, the DS-15 Freedom Flag 5.56. The DSI Signature Series is produced by combining Dark Storm's precision engineered and manufactured parts with some of the industrys top stock and grip manufacturers. The DSI Signature rifles are limited edition, custom rifles designed and built by serious shooters for serious shooters.

The rifles heart and soul are the DS-15 7075 billet aluminum lower receiver and DSI 7075 forged upper receiver with a forward assist and ejection port cover. The rifle features a charging handle with an extended tactical latch and a billet ambidextrous 90-degree safety selector. The NiB bolt carrier group provides improved reliability and reduced maintenance, the company says. The DSI 16-inch 5.56 threaded (1:9) stainless steel barrel and spiked CQB compensator are both finished in the Signature Series brush stainless finish.

A Signature Series drop-in trigger offers a nice, crisp 4-pound trigger pull and short reset. The 15-inch extended length Signature Series M-LOK forearm and full-length Picatinny top rail provide the user with plenty of options for lights, sights and laser combinations. Dark Storms Freedom Flag 5.56 rifle is built with a Magpul CTR adjustable stock, an ambidextrous sling plate,a Hogue rubberized pistol grip and comes with an Amend2 MOD-2 30 round magazine. A custom battle-worn Cerakoted American flag caps off the look of this rifle.

The DS-15 Signature Freedom Flag rifle proved to be quite popular at our booth this past SHOT Show, Ed Newman, co-owner and founder and owner of Dark Storm Industries, commented. No matter what state you live in or do business in, Dark Storm is the one company you can go to for the largest choice of rifles available to California and other restricted states, including our new Signature Series.
Commission assesses how Hungary fulfilled previous recommendations

Hungary's steady economic recovery offers a window of opportunity to ensure sustainable growth in the coming decade, the European Commission said in its latest country report of the 2018 European Semester. The EU executive examines how the cabinet fulfilled previous recommendations.

Complex tax system

While decreasing, the tax wedge on labour, especially for certain low-income groups, is still high in EU comparison.

The complexity of the tax system, coupled with the continued presence of sector-specific taxes, remains a weakness.

Administrative burdens of tax collection are still significant, but considerable efforts have been made to address this.

Some indicators suggest that Hungary's tax rules may be used by multinationals in aggressive tax planning structures. It is shown by the large capital flows as a share of GDP through special purpose entities, combined with the absence of withholding taxes.

State still too big

Measures needed to lower public debt

After a temporary lull, the Hungarian economy grew strongly in 2017, employment reached record-highs, bank lending picked up, the fiscal stance is loosening, the EC summed up the key changes.Albeit contained at this stage, risks to a balanced growth path may start to emerge. High capacity utilisation suggests that the economy is now moving above potential. Particularly, labour supply may soon reach its limits, adding to the already considerable wage pressure.Strong growth is set to continue. Real GDP growth is projected to increase by 3.7 % in 2018, butas capacity constraints emerge on the back of a gradually widening positive output gap. HThe EC also said several measures have been implemented to improve the tax system, but some problems remain.Hungarys public expenditure is high relative to its income level. The government expenditure-to-GDP ratio was hovering around 50% of GDP in the last decade, somewhat above the EU average. EU fund absorption has played an increasing role in shaping the level public spending since 2004. However, Hungary's level of public expenditure remained well above its regional peers even after filtering out the effect of EU funds.The EC believes Hungarys debt trajectory could flatten out in the medium term without further fiscal adjustment. According to the Commission's no-policy-change scenario, the public debt ratio is projected practically to stagnate at somewhat below 70% over 2019-2028.It also warned that the debt reduction is hindered by an estimated slightly negative primary balance throughout the nine-year period. The closing of the positive output gap (and thus the cyclical fiscal component) contributes to an increasing primary deficit. However, the deterioration of the primary balance is projected to be moderated by declining age-related public expenditure.

By contrast, if the structural balance was gradually improved to the country's medium-term objective, the debt ratio would fall below 60% by 2028.

To-do list

Hungary faces a pronounced productivity challenge. Productivity growth has been slow for a decade now compared to peer countries. Although potential growth estimates show some recovery, the challenge is becoming more pressing as labour reserves diminish.There are wide and persistent productivity differences between export-oriented, mainly foreign-owned companies and smaller domestic firms, with limited positive spill-overs from the high-productivity segment. The propensity of SMEs to innovate is low and Hungary remains a moderate user of digital technologies. Regulatory barriers in services and retail trade and unpredictability of regulation hamper the efficient reallocation of resources. Institutional weaknesses and human capital inadequacies also constrain productivity growth.The next warning was made over Hungarys institutional system.

Weaknesses in institutional soundness and governance could weigh on the country's economic convergence.

Limited transparency and quality of policy making is a source of uncertainty for investors.

There are deficits in evidence-based policy formulation and stakeholder engagement.

Social dialogue structures and processes remain underdeveloped.

Hungary performs weakly on the accessibility and quality of public information.

Challenges concerning the functioning of the justice system require close monitoring.

Available indicators point to notable corruption risks, and there are gaps in the anti-corruption framework.

Important measures were taken regarding public procurement, but there remains scope to further improve transparency and competition in tendering processes.

Education outcomes in basic skills are significantly below the EU average.

The impact of socioeconomic background on education outcomes is among the highest in the EU.

Disadvantaged students, in particular Roma, remain concentrated in certain schools.

The health system is faced with high risks from unhealthy lifestyles, uneven quality of care and disparities in access.

While showing improvements, health outcomes lag behind most other EU countries reflecting also the limited effectiveness of healthcare provision.

Despite reform efforts, the setup of service delivery remains strongly hospital centred, with weaknesses in primary care and care coordination of chronic disease patients.

The EC also warned that theOverall, the situation regarding poverty improved notably, but vulnerable groups continue to face high risk of poverty, the Commission concluded.
The Justice Department has filed suit against the state of California over its policies that protect illegal immigrants from U.S. immigration authorities. The lawsuit challenges the legality of three separate California laws.

First, the California Values Act (SB 54) strictly limits state and local agencies from sharing information with federal officers about criminals or suspects unless they have been convicted of serious crimes. Second, the Immigrant Worker Protection Act (AB 450) prohibits local business from allowing federal officers to gain access to employee records without a court order or subpoena. Third, the state budget bill (AB 103) prohibits new contracts for immigration detention in the state and gives the state attorney general the power to monitor all state immigration detention centers.

The U.S. alleges that all three laws violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. SB 54 and AB 450 do so by, among other things, constituting an obstacle to the United States enforcement of the immigration laws and discriminating against federal immigration enforcement. In addition, SB 54 violates 8 U.S.C.  1373(a), which bars federal, state, and local entities from prohibiting or restricting any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, [federal immigration authorities] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

AB 103 violates the Supremacy Clause by, among other things, constituting an obstacle to federal enforcement of the immigration laws and by discriminating against the United States. California does not require any local detention facility to comply with section 12532s heightened inspection regime when it houses detainees for other federal or California entities. AB 103s requirements apply only when local detention facilities house federal civil immigration detainees.

Under the Supremacy Clause, states cannot interfere with the federal governments exercise of its constitutional powers. Nor can states assume functions that are exclusively entrusted to the federal government.

The Obama administration successfully relied on the Supremacy Clause to negate most of an Arizona law aimed at discouraging and deterring the unlawful entry, presence, and economic activity of illegal immigrants. In that case, the Supreme Court stated that [t]he Government of the United States has broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens, and [t]he Supremacy Clause gives Congress the power to preempt state law.

In the California case, the Justice Department relies on this power. It states: the United States has broad authority to establish immigration laws, the execution of which the states cannot obstruct or discriminate against. It argues:

The provisions of state law at issue have the purpose and effect of making it more difficult for federal immigration officers to carry out their responsibilities in California. The Supremacy Clause does not allow California to obstruct the United States ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution.

In a speech today hosted by the California Peace Officers Association, Attorney General Sessions denounced the barriers California has erected to federal enforcement of the immigration laws:

In recent years, California has enacted a number of laws designed to intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration enforcement officersto intentionally use every power it has to undermine duly-established immigration law in America. California wont let employers voluntarily allow ICE agents on their property. And California requires employers to give notice to employees before ICE inspects their workplace. When this law was before the California General Assembly, a Judiciary Committee report explicitly stated that its goal was to frustrate an expected increase in federal immigration enforcement actions. ICE agents are federal law enforcement officers carrying out federal law. California cannot forbid them or obstruct them in doing their jobs. Just imagine if a state passed a law forbidding employers from cooperating with OSHA in ensuring workplace safety. Or the EPA, looking for a polluter. That would obviously be absurd. But it would be no different in principle from this new law enacted by California. And just think about the situation it puts California employers in. They want to help law enforcement. They want to do their civic duty. We ought to encourage that. But your state attorney general has repeatedly said his office will prosecute these business owners. Let me quote: ignorance of the law is no excuse if you violate it and you are subjecting yourself to up to $10,000 [in fines] for violations. California has also claimed the authority to inspect facilities where ICE holds people in custody. Already this year, California has specifically and in a discriminatory manner targeted six facilities and demanded documents and other material from the Department of Homeland Security. California wont let law enforcement officers like you transfer prisoners into ICE custody or even communicate with ICE that youre about to release someone theyre looking for. Remember that California found these people dangerous enough to detain them in the first place, but then insists on releasing them back into the community instead of allowing federal officers to remove them. And rather than allow ICE officers to do their jobs at the jailhouse, they force these officers to conduct far more dangerous arrests elsewherewhere violent criminals may reside and where children can be caught in the crossfire. Thats not just unconstitutional, its a plain violation of federal statute and common sense.

Of the lawsuit, Sessions said:

Contrary to what you might hear from the lawless open borders radicals, we are not asking California, Oakland, or anyone else to enforce immigration laws. . . . We are simply asking California and other sanctuary jurisdictions to stop actively obstructing federal law enforcement. Stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else for the purpose of eviscerating border controls and advancing an open borders philosophy shared by only the most radical extremists. Stop protecting lawbreakers and giving all officers more dangerous work to do so that a few politicians can score political points on the backs of officer safety.

California may not be the judicial friendliest jurisdiction in which to bring an anti-sanctuary cities lawsuit. However, the DOJ has picked an egregious set of laws to challenge, and this may stand it in good stead when, as seems extremely likely, the U.S. Supreme Court becomes involved.
In his Wall Street Journal column earlier this year, Jeryl Bier reported that Minnesota Fifth District Rep./Democratic National Committee Vice Chairman Keith Ellison and Nation of Islam Supreme Leader Louis Farrakhan had a reunion of sorts in September 2013 with a follow-up meeting in Farrakhans hotel room when Farrakhan visited Washington in 2015. I noted Ellisons responses in Ellison speaksa little and Ellison speaksa little more.

Ellison subsequently appeared as a guest of Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Blitzer asked him about the Farrakhan meetings. Ellison avoided any explanation of what he was doing with Farrakhan. He responded in his accustomed style, turning the question into an attack on his critics. Among other things, Ellison asserted: I have always been a fierce opponent of anti-Semitism. This is  whats the word?  a lie. Blitzer let him rattle on and close out the segment with a classic Ellison routine.

The routine has served him well. Farrakhan appears to have a following among a subset of the Congressional Black Caucus. Indeed, we recently learned, a smiling Barack Obama turned up at a CBC meeting with Farrakhan in 2005. The long-suppressed ocular proof was only revealed early this year.

The Washington Posts Dave Weigel talked to Ellison this week about Ellisons sponsorship of the Democrats bill implementing the full socialization of health care (the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act). Weigel wondered if the association with Farrakhan had come up in the Democrats decision to let him take over the bill from John Conyers. Weigel quotes Ellisons response: None of my colleagues ever asked me about that, only reporters, I am telling you, no one cares. Ive been all over Minnesota, all over Alabama, all over Missouri, all over Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and nobody ever asked me about this. People ask me about wages, about pay, about health care, about guns, about immigration. They ask me all kinds of challenging questions. But for some reason, some folks in the Fourth Estate think that this Farrakhan thing needs to be inquired about instead. For some reason.

Weigel signs off with Ellisons conclusion about the attitude of his Democratic colleagues toward his Farrakhan question: Ive said all I need to say about it.

David Rutz focuses on Ellisons response to Weigel in the Washington Free Beacon story Ellison says his Democratic colleagues never ask him about his Farrakhan connection: No one cares as does Peter Hasson in the Daily Caller story Ellison says other Democrats dont care about ties to anti-Semite Farrakhan.

Perhaps some enterprising journalist will seek a comment on Ellison and Farrakhan from Minnesota Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith. Whatever it is, their response would be newsworthy. It would be of public interest. We all could learn something from it.
Jane Mayers 15,000-word New Yorker profile of Christopher Steele reads in part like the stuff of breathless teen girl fan magazines of old  Tiger Beat, say, or 16. Mayer presents Steele as a left-liberal heartthrob. She has fallen for the guy and she wants you to fall for him too. The profile also reads like the tendentious brief of an extraordinarily dishonest lawyer  perhaps a lawyer who has fallen for his client  or a lawyer turned politician, selling a pile of goods in the service of a blinding cause. Here Adam Schiff is the incomparable model.

Mayer drones on at eye-glazing length. Having suffered through Mayers profile, I want to address Mayers ploys and maneuvers in bite-size portions. I will take it up in pieces that struck me as representative of Mayers slippery dishonesty.

In this installment I want to highlight two moments in which I hear the clock striking 13. In these moments our reporter reveals herself as highly invested in her story. She all but declares that she is not to be trusted.

Mayer makes a point in passing on the adoption of pro-Russian positions on many issues which seemed to a Clinton foreign policy adviser to be inexplicably outside the Republican mainstream. Mayer swallows and regurgitates whole the canard that the Trump team appeared to play a role in modifying the G.O.P. platform so that it better reflected Russias position on Ukraine policy. Mayer quotes the Clinton adviser: It was all beginning to snowball.

There is at least one problem with this account. The modification of the Republican platform has been exposed by Bryon York as one of the enduring misconceptions of the Trump-Russia affair. York published his Washington Examiner column exposing the misconception in November 2017. A journalist peddling it as fact in March 2018 is peddling a lie; she is up to something other than journalism.

Perhaps more than anything else, Mayer seeks to vindicate the Steele dossier in her article. If youre going to fall in love with Steele, youre going to have to love the dossier with which he sought to save the republic. Mayer does what she can (and what she cant or shouldnt) on this score.

It struck me when I came across Mayers reference to Michael Cohens defamation lawsuit against Fusion GPS: On January 9th, Trumps personal attorney, Michael Cohen, filed a hundred-million-dollar defamation lawsuit against Fusion. He also sued BuzzFeed. Cohen tweeted, Enough is enough of the #fake #RussianDossier. Here she comments: Steele mentioned Cohen several times in the dossier, and claimed that Cohen met with Russian operatives in Prague, in the late summer of 2016, to pay them off and cover up the Russian hacking operation. Cohen denies that hes ever set foot in Prague, and has produced his passport to prove it.

It sounds bad. This is the best Mayer can do: A congressional official has told Politico, however, that an inquiry into the allegation is still active. And, since the dossier was published, several examples have surfaced of Cohen making secretive payments to cover up other potentially damaging stories. Translation: Im pretty sure that the truth defense wont prevail against Cohens claim. Mayers apologetics are something worse than pathetic.

This is Mayers only reference to a defamation lawsuit in her profile. In England, however, Steele is himself the defendant in a defamation lawsuit or two based on that dodgy dossier. Mayer doesnt even mention them. And the reason for her omission has nothing to do with saving space. The space devoted to her profile by the New Yorker is wide as the plains.

Faced with a defamation claim in a forum where it was clear to him that making exaggerated or false claims could cost him dearly, [Steele] decided his allegations were not of such huge significance after all. The quote comes from Andrew McCarthys National Review column (the internal quote is from Rownan Scarborough). McCarthy continues:

One of the libel suits against Steele was filed in London by Aleksej Gubarev, whom Steele accused of participating in Russian intelligence hacking. To defend against the suit, Steele and his attorneys had no choice but to respond to interrogatories. In answering, Steele markedly downgraded the seriousness of his dossier reports. According to Steeles courtroom version, the dossier is merely a compilation of bits of raw intelligence that were unverified and that he passed along because they warranted further investigation  i.e., not because he could vouch for their truthfulness. He gave them to American and British government officials, he maintains, only because they raised potential national-security threats, not because they actually established any such threats. That, he now says, was for government investigators to figure out. In sum, Steeles defamation defense is not that what he wrote was true but that his reports must be critically viewed in light of the purpose for and circumstances in which the information was collected. There is laugh-out-loud stuff here: Steeles declamation of his profound commitment to discretion and secrecy lest his raw, unverified, and possibly false reports defame anyone. He claimed that he and Fusion GPS had a solemn agreement not to disclose his work . . . except for whenever they decided to disclose his work  including to Fusions clients and to major press organs during the stretch run of a contentious presidential election. But not to worry: These discussions were off the record, a term Steele claims to have understood to mean to be used for the purpose of further research but would not be published or attributed. Right. Somehow though, when his briefings to journalists about his reports were published, he kept doing the briefings.

Mayer should have been especially interested in Steeles disclaimer of the veracity of his dossier. She represented the New Yorker among the major press organs who met with Steele during the stretch run of a contentious presidential election.
When it was published in 1967, Norman Podhoretzs memoir Making It met with the publishing equivalent of a lynch mob. It included Podhoretzs friends and fellow members of the New York literary/intellectual establishment. They found Podhoretz guilty of crimes against taste and discretion.

Among the lynch mob was the New York Review of Books. The NYRB set out to get the job done killing the book. Its first choice to review Making It, the prominent critic Hilton Kramer, disliked the book, and was afraid he may have been overly harsh in the draft he submitted. When I sent it on to the New York Review, Kramer subsequently told Podhoretz biographer Thomas Jeffers, he was amazed to hear that the New York Review wasnt interested in publishing a valentine to Norman Podhoretz! Seeking something tougher still, the editors called on sociologist Edgar Z. Friedenberg (whom Podhoretz had discovered for Commentary in 1960, Jeffers dryly noted). Friedenberg delivered the desired pan.

When Making It was restored to print last year in an attractive paperback edition  by the New York Review of Books, under its NYRB Classics imprint  I celebrated. NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank commented on my celebration: Making It is a remarkable bookit has a great deal of character and it is of undeniable historical significanceand Im pleased to publish it in the NYRB Classics series.

Contrary to what I wrote at the time, Frank added: It should be clear, however, that the NYRB publishing program does not in any sense exist under the auspices of the New York Review of Books. The publishing program is editorially entirely separate from the paper, and none of the editors of the Review had anything to do with the decision to publish Podhoretzs book. (I greatly appreciate Franks literary judgment and service to literature, but I should add that Franks edition of the book states on the copyright page in caps: THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.)

So I celebrate again now that the New York Review of Books itself has published Janet Malcolms generous review/tribute to Making It. A shrewd observer notes that Malcolm is normally a killer. Her tribute goes further than she could reasonably have been expected to go. She is not easily pleased, yet she rightly lauds Podhoretz as a writer and a storyteller. She chides the original books contemporary reviewers: Writing as lucid and vital as Podhoretzs is not often encountered and should have been acknowledged.

Despite her candid enthusiasm for Making It, Malcolm is unusually discreet in her review. Her review requires a little background and close reading for full enjoyment. She observes at the top of her tribute: Making It was almost universally disliked when it came out in 1967. It struck a chord of hostility in the mid-twentieth-century literary world that was out of all proportion to the literary sins it may or may not have committed. The reviews were not just negative, but mean. She makes no mention of the NYRB, of Hilton Kramer, or of Edgar Friedenberg.

Malcolm even admires the narrator of Making It. In another exercise of discretion, Malcolm treats the narrator as a literary construct, not to be confused with Podhoretz himself. She therefore praises Podhoretz as the protagonist of Making It while not necessarily approving of the man. In her concluding paragraph Malcolm can accordingly cough up the obligatory if perfunctory disapproval.

Make no mistake. Malcolms essay is perceptive. It helps to heighten our appreciation of a book I believe to be a classic of American autobiography. It makes a contribution in its own right to our understanding. Its appearance in the NYRB simply adds to the delight we can take in it. You dont have to be Leo Strauss to understand Malcolms artistry, but Malcolms review deserves a close reading for more reasons than one and I recommend it unreservedly.
University of Minnesota Law School Professor Richard Painter has announced the formation of an exploratory committee for a possible Senate candidacy. He is interested in the seat held by the appointed Democratic incumbent, Tina Smith. According to the Star Tribune, Painter is unsure whether he would run as a Republican, Democrat or independent. Hes funny-peculiar that way.

John would prefer that Painter not run for the Republican nomination, and that is a completely reasonable position. It is not clear if he is a Republican, though he found it useful to identify himself as such when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. He would not find it useful if he were to seek the Republican nomination. I doubt that is what he has in mind. He would be crushed by Karin Housley if he were to contest the nomination with her. If that is what he has in mind, however, I urge him to go for it. I would enjoy watching him be crushed.

Holding himself out as a Republican is not the only funny-peculiar thing about Professor Painter. He also holds himself out as an ethics guru. If he took the ethics shtick seriously, he wouldnt go around calling conservative Republicans like us far-right extremists. That is a profoundly pathetic ploy of the mindless left. Painters belief in ethics is approximately as serious as his Republican bona fides. He is  how to put it?  a phony.

Far right extremists are getting worried  A Fake Republican Runs In Minnesota https://t.co/bo3GFrzigV via @powerlineUS  Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) March 8, 2018

Painter might be able to give Tina Smith a run for her money in Minnesotas DFL Party, though it would be difficult for him to get to Smiths left, where the action is. They are both left-wing urban liberals. Painter, however, just might be able to do it. He is a popular MSNBC guest who has built up his name identification in the course of several appearances on the nutters favorite cable channel.

In the DFL-heavy Fifth District, where the law school is located, for example, Painter could appeal to the 30,000 voters who opted in 2016 for the Legal Marijuana Now congressional candidate in addition to the voters who stuck with Keith Ellison. He is second to none in his criticism of Donald Trump and the Trump administration. Painters wild-eyed denunciations of Trump would go down very smoothly indeed with the Legal Marijuana Now crowd as well as the DFL regulars.

Yet Painter probably best fits the profile of an Independent candidate. He presents a sort of intellectual counterpart to Jesse Venturas act. As an Independent, Painter would not be hobbled by the constraints of any party line. He would be free to call the shots as he sees them. He can hold himself out as a good-government type. After a fundraiser with Legal Marijuana Now crowd, he might even fantasize that he could win the race as an Independent.

On a personal note, I offer one additional ground for urging him to run in whatever party he sees fit. As an alumnus of the University of Minnesota Law School, I would dearly love my fellow Minnesotans to see the sort of nutter who holds an endowed chair at my alma mater. There are more where he came from. His candidacy would provide a useful education for Minnesota taxpayers.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Thursday that the events of March 1968 "were undoubtedly the struggle for independence without censorship as there was no full independence in those days; there was censorship."

The President made the statement during observances marking the 50th anniversary of the March 1968 student protests at the University of Warsaw. The protests were followed by an anti-Semitic campaign which forced many of Poland's Jews to leave the country.

See also: Address by the President of the Republic of Poland at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of March 1968 at the University of Warsaw "There was no full independence in those days; there was censorship. (...)Today, Poland is independent; there is no censorship. There is bread and freedom and everything the generation of my parents and grandparents were fighting for, President Duda went on to say.

"All those who showed great bravery during the March 1968 events are heroes of Polish freedom," the President said.

The head of state stressed that protesting students demanded independence without censorship from communists. "Of course, communists could not accept this demand, and that is why they ruthlessly crushed the student protests," Andrzej Duda said, adding that some of the protesting students were later imprisoned, like, for instance, Karol Modzelewski and Adam Michnik.

The President stressed that "we should never forget all these acts of courage", and explained he had in mind the years 1968, 1980 and 1981, and the entire 1980's marked by activities of independence and Solidarity underground organisations.

"The University of Warsaw site is a place marked by the heroism and courage of Polish youth," President Duda said, stressing that students protesting in 1968 were "the heroes of Polish freedom."

"You are the heroes of our freedom, like the Solidarity trade union of the 1980's, like the Cursed Soldiers (soldiers fighting against the communist regime after the end of WWII - PAP), like the heroes of the worker protests of 1956," Andrzej Duda said.

President Duda, who earlier on Thursday laid a wreath at a plaque commemorating Poles of Jewish descent who left Poland in 1968, asked people who were forced to leave Poland in March 1968, people who were killed and their families, for forgiveness.

The plaque is placed on the wall of the Gdanski railway station in Warsaw. "I am asking you to forgive the then Poland for this hideous act," Duda said, stressing that Poland of today was not responsible for this and did not have to ask for forgiveness.

Referring to the tragic protests of 1970, when people were shot dead, of 1976, and 1981, the president repeated that Poland of today, which is free and independent, was not responsible for any of them, and did not have to apologise.

The President asked for forgiveness for the then Poland. "I am speaking in the name of Poland, I am asking you for forgiveness, asking you to forget and believe that Poland is sorry today as you are not here," he said.

The head of state regretted that Poland of today suffered a loss because of their absence. "(...) you are the elite of intelligentsia in other countries, you are successful and respected people living in other countries, your achievements are not the achievements of the Republic of Poland," he said.

"Lessons on the Republic of Poland"

In the afternoon the president was taking part in a special meeting, held within the framework of an educational project of the President's Office called "Lessons on the Republic of Poland". Taking part in the "Lesson," held at Warsaw's Belweder Palace, were direct participants in the events of March '68 - Irena Lasota, Petruska Sustrova, Zofia Romaszewska and Barbara Fedyszak-Radziejowska, as well as young people from schools in Radom (central Poland), Sosnowiec (southern Poland) and Warsaw.

"I still remember those times (...) although I was still a boy at the time," the president recalled. "But I know what it means to live in a country that's not really free, really sovereign; I know what it means to live in a country which is subjugated, whose government is subjugated."

"And that's why I always say: I will never be subjugated by any external government. If someone expects it to be different, let them not choose me as president of the Republic. Because I will not listen to any government - from this side or that, from the East or from the West," Andrzej Duda stressed. "Fortunately, we have arrived at a time when it is possible to say such things in Poland with confidence, and to hold such a position without risking your life."

President Andrzej Duda went on to speculate that in March '68 people were conscious of Poland's 50th anniversary of regaining independence. "I don't know whether that had any importance then or not, whether the participants remembered it or not, but from our point of view today (...) it is symbolic," he declared.

The president added that his generation had no need to apologise for the events of March '68, though he sought the forgiveness of Polish Jews who had suffered as a result. "My generation has no reason to apologise for what happened in March '68 to Polish Jews, who were simply expelled from Poland by the communist authorities. They were persecuted and expelled. My Poland has no reason to apologise, but I ask them to forgive Poland generally," he concluded.

The March 1968 events embrace a series of major protests against the government of the Polish People's Republic launched by students, intellectuals and other social groups. The countrywide student protests, initially called out against the authorities' ban on an anti-Russian drama by Poland's national bard Adam Mickiewicz and the expulsion of two Jewish-Polish students - one of them later anti-communist opposition leader Adam Michnik - from Warsaw University, were suppressed by security forces in all major academic centres across the country. The government responded with a mass anti-Jewish campaign branded as "anti-Zionist," which resulted in the mass emigration of Jews from Poland. (PAP)
Polish President Andrzej Duda paid a working visit of several hours to the General Staff of the Polish Army on Thursday, in the company of Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak, head of the National Security Office (BBN), Pawel Soloch said.

Among the subjects discussed were changes to the armed forces' command and control structures.

"As is already known, we want to bring back the commanding role of the head of the General Staff. In this context, the president acquainted himself with the work done by the general Staff," Minister Soloch explained. He pointed out that joint teams made up of representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the BBN are working on concrete propositions. "If the pace of work is maintained, we will shortly present the first concrete solutions," he said.

"We want to break the whole process into stages to avoid the risk of disrupting the functioning of the armed forces," Pawel Soloch continued. "Revolutionary reforms do not serve the army."

He underscored that "very good co-operation between the president and the defence minister as well as between the Ministry of Defence and the BBN, are conducive to introducing changes." (PAP)
Honourable Prime Minister,

Your Magnificence, the Rector,

Honourable Ministers,

Distinguished Professor,

Honourable Chairman,

Excellencies, Heads of Diplomatic Missions,

Honourable Members of Parliament and Senators,

Distinguished Professors,

All Distinguished Guests!

This year we celebrate unique occasions: the centenary of regaining independence and the 50th anniversary of the March Events of 1968. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight of those 50 years, we could say that sweet-bitter days and months are to be commemorated. This is how we could try to define them in my generation: of the people who do not recall those days, not being born yet. Some of us were already born - they were but young children. These experiences belong to my, to our parents, grandparents.

The Hebrew version of the Address

See also: President: March 1968 a struggle for independence Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not for me to say whether those students protests of 1968 were fuelled by the fact that this was the semicentennial of regaining independence. I do not know that. Even historians or authors of memoires of those days and months, do not say so nor make such implications. Was there a realization back then that in 1918 Poland regained independence and that 1968 was the 50th anniversary of that event?

But undoubtedly, 1968 was about fighting for independence, freedom from censorship. Those days, with no full independence, with censorship in place, were completely unlike today. Nowadays, Poland is independent, with no censorship, there is bread and there is freedom, and all the things which the generation of my parents and grandparents stood up for. And this is the reason why we are meeting today right here, this is why I am here today as President who represents a younger generation: we want to bow to and to pay tribute to all of them who fought for a free and independent Poland, first in the dynamic upheaval of 1956, and then in 1968.

Nowadays historians prove that there was no division between students and workers those days, it was not so that workers were reluctant to come to the aid of students. Obviously, as we do all recall, communist party activists in factories were mobilised and here, at the University of Warsaw, and also in other places, there were workers beating students with clubs. One cannot claim, however, that it was the whole workers community: people back then knew better and realized that there was no freedom and there is no independence at home and that young people stood up to claim them. And they did claim them, shouting out the same way, as you do right now.

Independence without censorship, this is what they stood for then, demanding it from the communists. Obviously, this could not be palatable to the communists  that is why they ruthlessly crushed students protests. For some of them, as it was the case with the personages famous in our history: Karol Modzelewski and Adam Michnik both of whom were imprisoned, the repercussions were atrocious.

Thank you very much for your presence here, Ladies and Gentlemen. We always need to remember what happened: all these acts of courage, like the one of 1968, independence struggle, pursuit of sovereignty, as the ones of 1980-1981, and the whole decade of 1980s independence conspiracy, the Solidarity underground, and then the break-through of 1989; all of them have added together to our freedom and independence. All of them who distinguished themselves with their great courage, indeed, emphatically, in 1968, they are the persons of monumental merit to our Polish freedom. I wish to emphasize that point.

Finally, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish to emphatically dwell on the sweet aspect of those events. Even if some of them had to suffer, some were sentenced to prison, some forced to work in coalmines, some expelled from their universities, today  looking through the prism of history  we can say: Yes, they were the heroes of our freedom. And this is the sweet aspect of it: there were people who had courage to oppose the communists.

In that sense, the grounds of the University of Warsaw and this very place are sanctified by the heroism and courage of the Polish youth of those days. As President, I bow to them today and I pay them my respects. You are the heroes of our freedom. As much as Solidarity of 1980s, as much as Indomitable Soldiers, like the heroes of 1956, you are the same way the heroes of our freedom, you are the heroes of our todays independence in Poland. No matter what you think today, what kind of views you have and profess. For Polish freedom, for Polish independence, you are monumental characters.

There is another aspect of those days to it: the bitter one, the unspeakably sad one, the one to be grieved over today and in the future. There are people who say that todays Poland should apologise for the act of anti-Semitism back then, committed by the authorities then in power. Also, for the complicity of those Poles who joined in. For having expelled, for expulsion it must be called, several thousand people!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the free Poland of today, and my generation, do not to bear responsibility and do not have to apologize, as much as they do not have to apologize for December 1970, nor for the shooting at people in Gdansk, Gdynia, nor for developments in Radom, Pock, Ursus of 1976, nor for the action in the coalmine Wujek of 1981, nor for what was done to Blessed Father Jerzy Popieuszko, nor for the people who were murdered by the communists.



That being said, I want to stress that it is with profound grief that we bow our heads, that I, as President, bow my head before those who were then expelled, before the families of those who were killed then. I want to tell them: please forgive, please forgive the Republic of Poland, please forgive the Poles, please forgive Poland of the time, for having perpetrated such a shameful act.



Nowadays, as I look at my contemporary Poland, at our Poland of the 21st-century, I think to myself: what a pity, what a loss was inflicted on the present-day Republic of Poland, now that you are gone, and some may have lost their lives because of 1968, now that you are no longer here with us today. You are the elite of the intelligentsia but in other countries, you are people of remarkable success, respected, but in other countries, your creative powers, your scientific output, your splendid achievements have not done credit to the Republic of Poland. What a shame! I am so sorry!



Today, just a moment ago, I have been to the Dworzec Gdanski railway station to bow my head and to lay a bunch of flowers at the commemorative plaque. From there you were leaving, your parents were leaving. I spoke to Goda Tencer, and she told me: You know, I myself have not left, but the biggest sorrow that there is in our hearts, is the sorrow we feel because of our parents. And then I have realized: my goodness, the very people were also then expelled, of whom I have spoken: the ones who fought for independent Poland one hundred years ago, who fixed bayonets as Legionaries of the Republic of Poland. Their friends with the Stars of David are buried in the tombs of Polish soldiers, the defenders of Poland from 1920 and 1939.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask their forgiveness for Poland, for the Republic of Poland, for those who perpetrated it. And I ask them to pass on this request for forgiveness also to their parents, any way they can: in their thought, in their prayers. Poland with my lips is asking forgiveness of the people back then. May they forget, may they accept that Poland is grieved not to have them on her soil right now.

Honour and glory to the heroes of 1968!
The Polish-American alliance is as strong as ever, we can talk about the prospects for the development of relations, head of the Polish President's Office Krzysztof Szczerski said after a meeting with Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell.

On Thursday, Minister Szczerski began a working visit to the US, where he will meet, among others, representatives of the US State Department.

After talks with Mitchell, he told reporters that it was a good hour-long conversation, and the message is singular - "the Polish-US alliance is as strong as ever".

"The strategic Polish-US alliance in the field of security, economic development, energy co-operation, economic co-operation that is sustainable, strong, very rich in content, is gaining new content, such as our membership of the Security Council, which also gives us new areas for co-operation, for Polish-American talks," said Krzysztof Szczerski.

He emphasised that all of these issues were discussed in detail. "They concerned Ukraine, Russia's policy, the NATO summit in Warsaw, this year's NATO summit in Brussels, Polish-American military co-operation and energy."

Minister Szczerski added that the parties have outlined areas in which they can discuss prospects for the development of Polish-American relations, about deepening the alliance. "We may speak about the development of Polish-US relations, about the deepening of those areas that are most important, i.e. NATO's presence in our region, the US military presence, the situation in the field of energy," added the minister.

He said the second issue that had been raised during the meeting was "differences of opinion on the evaluation of the law on the Institute of National Remembrance".

The minister stressed that opinions on the amended anti-defamation law are very critical in the US, but the decision to refer it to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal has calmed the situation. He also stressed that the discussion on the matter has no impact on the Polish-US alliance.

"These differences of opinion, this tension here is expressed by various milieus, but I want to say very clearly, discussion on this law has no influence on the Polish-US alliance, on diplomatic relations, does not affect official relations between our countries in any way," Minister Szczerski stressed.

He added that "the alliance's lasting elements are rich and stable", and that "dialogue is being continued in a natural and intact way."

From Washington, Minister Szczerski will go to New York, where on Friday he will discuss issues and plans related to Poland taking over, in May, chairmanship of the UN Security Council. (PAP)
A 47-year-old woman was arrested March 3 for drunken driving after police observed her going 25 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Police pulled the woman over at 2 a.m. near Outer Drive and Pelham in Dearborn for driving extremely slow and for having a suspended license plate.

As they talked with the woman, police observed her eyes were bloodshot and her speech was slurred. They could also smell alcohol on her breath.

She said she had been at a party earlier that evening and had drank two glasses of wine, police said.

She also said she had smoked marijuana and took a prescription pain pill while at the party, police said.

After she blew a 0.09 into a Breathalyzer, she was arrested for operating while intoxicated and was transported to Beaumont Hospital-Dearborn for a blood test. The legal limit for driving in Michigan is 0.08.

Scott Bolthouse
NEW DELHI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

On the occasion of the visit of the President of France, Business France accompanies a delegation of 18 French companies wishing to develop and strengthen their activity in India.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651714/Business_France_Logo.jpg )





All sectors are represented: Industry, Energy, Infrastructure, Environment, Services, Health and Agriculture through the following companies: 2PS; ABSOGER; ACCUWATT; DE VIALET; ECM TECHNOLOGIES; ELDIM; ELISATH; FAMOCO; KERLINK; LABORATOIRE GILBERT; LYRA NETWORK; MCA PROCESS; QOS ENERGY; SOLEAN; SIGFOX; STERELA; VALECO; VIEUX POINTET.

Each of these companies will benefit from a specific Business Meeting program organized by Business France India. It is a huge opportunity for them to have more visibility, to participate in the highlights of the visit, to access key contacts, to accelerate their business relations and to develop technological partnerships.

As of the top 10 largest economies today India is a driving force of global growth with the highest growth rate of the BRICS, which is expected to continue growing in the future (around 7.6% per year versus 3.5% for global growth). Moreover, the country is also committed to new important measures such as the standardization of the indirect taxation (Goods and Services Tax) which came into effect on July 1, 2017 as well as the reform of bankruptcy law to improve the ease of doing business in India (ranked 100th out of 188 countries according to the World Bank in 2018 and with an improvement of 30 places in a year).

India is a growing market for our French companies with a potential to generate employment and is a huge added value and potential; in services, in the manufacturing sector and in high growth sectors like technology, software, energy and urban development. "Already over 400 French companies are in India, there is a potential for many more to come and develop business ties here," said Sophie Clavelier, Senior Trade & Investment Commissioner for India based in New Delhi.

French companies are looking forward to forging many partnerships and trade ties with their Indian counterparts in the public and private domain and this State Visit will be a huge opportunity to capitalise on for both parties.

About Business France

Business France is the national agency supporting the international development of the French economy, responsible for fostering export growth by French businesses, as well as promoting and facilitating international investment in France. It promotes France's companies, business image and nationwide attractiveness as an investment location, and also runs the V.I.E international internship program. Business France has 1,500 personnel, both in France and in 70 countries throughout the world, who work with a network of public- and private-sector partners. For further information, please visit: http://www.businessfrance.fr and http://www.youbuyfrance.com/in/.

About Business France India

The Business France offices in India, established in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai, offer you proactive assistance at every step of your export plans: identifying your prospects and potential partners, organizing prospection, providing you with market access information, advising you on setting up operations in India, etc.

Equipped with a bicultural team, Business France offices in India are at your service for your development projects in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Business France India team combines skills and experience in order to facilitate commercial relations between French and Indian companies with a focus on two particular missions: facilitating the investments of Indian companies in France and supporting French companies as they develop their projects in India.

Media Contact :

Shilpa Patil

[email protected]

+91-9833902260

Head Marketing and Communications

Business France

SOURCE Business France
"Eden Fine Art was the evident choice after we had already worked together successfully for some years. Their galleries are the most spectacular I've been inside, they are professional and their approach is global," says Alec, the rebellious mind and art provocateur of Tag Heuer, part of LVMH.

Eden Fine Art, a major International Art Gallery, initiated and owned by Cathia Klimovsky, has accomplished much since its inception in 1997. Its exposure has expanded multi-continentally through the launch of 10 galleries in the world's most prime locations and though high-profile partnership developments with independent galleries that distribute artworks by gallery-represented artists. Eden Fine Art successfully operates two NYC flagship galleries in SoHo and on Madison Ave, 25,000 square feet in Soho and 10,000 square feet on Madison Ave corner of 50th St. Among other international spaces, Eden Fine Art also operates a 12,000 square feet London Gallery on New Bond Street, in what was until last year the Christies building in Mayfair. The gallery's chain promotes a consistent artistic direction by curating a unique and diverse contemporary expression that conveys an optimistic and colorful view of life.

About this collaboration with Alec Monopoly, Gallery owner Cathia Klimovsky says, "The gallery is proud to have the opportunity and challenge of representing one of the most successful artists of our time. Renowned all over the world, Alec is one of the only artists whose intergenerational language speaks to audiences ranging from young teenagers to exclusive and experienced art collectors."

For any additional information, please contact: [email protected].

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Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651258/Alec_Monopoly_artworks.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651259/Alec_Monopoly_and_Eden_Fine_Art_Owner_Cathia_Klimovsky.jpg

SOURCE Eden Fine Art
MUMBAI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

As a part of their Women's Day campaign, Candere by Kalyan Jewellers have created #Pledge2Change, a video that opens everyone's minds to how society follows traditions and why people need to constantly upgrade and change them for the benefit of those they love. 'Kanyadaan se badke Kanyamaan hai', a tagline that forces the society to re-evaluate the custom of Kanyadaan.

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According to the true meaning and customs of Kanyadaan, Kanya or 'daughter' is given as Daan, meaning to 'donate', in a marriage. It is appropriate to embellish the idea of women empowerment and upgrade the thoughts to stay in sync with the moving trends of today's generation.

Candere's #Pledge2Change is an attempt to create awareness in society and ask questions on what governs the daily lives. The change people need to make is 'Kanyamaan', a tradition that can replace a social custom to a more meaningful experience.

Watch the #Pledge2Change video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yee-83LB2bM

About Candere.com:

Candere.com is India's growing e-commerce company dealing majorly in diamond jewellery and has shot to limelight with its recent merger with Kalyan Group. Candere commenced business with a vision of bringing the offline diamond industry to the online market, making it available to the masses in India.

To visit the website, click on: https://www.candere.com/.

Media Contact:

Naushaba Ara

[email protected]

+91-22-61066202

Content Head

Enovate Lifestyles Pvt. Ltd.



SOURCE Candere.com
Comviva and Cassava Fintech have jointly won the GSMA GLOMO Award in the 'Best Mobile Innovation for Women in Emerging Markets' category for the EcoCash Savings Club service powered by Comviva's mobiquity Money platform. The award was presented at the MWC 2018, Barcelona, Spain.

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EcoCash Savings Club, developed and managed by Cassava Fintech and powered by Comviva was recognized for its ability to increase digital and financial inclusion for women in Zimbabwe, as well as supporting the United Nations SDG 5: 'To achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls'. The competition this year was huge, with strong participation from across the globe. In the judges' opinion, "Increases access to savings and financial security for women. Innovative, with a clear business strategy, commercial viability, sustainability and thoughtful implementation" made EcoCash Savings Club a wining product.

"We are truly honored to win this prestigious award second time in a row. The award recognizes our technology leadership in digital payments as well as our continuous effort to innovate and make an impact towards the overall betterment of society," said Manoranjan Mohapatra, Chief Executive Officer at Comviva. "Moreover, the win is especially significant, as it coincides with mobiquity Money's ten-year milestone."

Darlington Mandivenga, Group Chief Executive Officer at Cassava Fintech said, "The impact of community-based savings schemes on the well-being of African communities cannot be overstated especially in resource-poor environments. The concept of savings clubs is well established across Africa. Supporting such initiatives, which promote a savings culture has become an economic imperative as the money proceeds from these savings is used to feed and educate children. As a business, which has its roots on the African continent, Cassava Fintech is committed to supporting these groups by providing them with innovative ways of strengthening their saving clubs, making it easier and convenient for them to operate not only in Zimbabwe but also in the rest of Africa. Whilst we are grateful for having been recognized for this award the real accolade belongs to the women who strive each and every day to create a better life for themselves and their communities."

Media Contact:

Sundeep Mehta

[email protected]

+91-9910030732



SOURCE Mahindra Comviva
PORTLAND, Oregon and PUNE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, "Cognitive and Memory Enhancer Drugs Market by Product and Application: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023," the global cognitive and memory enhancer drugs market was valued at $3,680 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $6,598 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 8.6% from 2017 to 2023. Namenda held more than one-fourth share of the total market in 2016.

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Cognitive and memory enhancers are the drugs or supplements, which help to improve the cognitive functions such as memory, creativity, and others in patients suffering from diseases such as neurological disorders as well as in healthy individuals. The major factors that contribute to the market growth include growth in geriatric population prone to neurological disorders such as Alzheimer. Moreover, rise in adoption of cognitive drugs owing to its benefits such as improved physical and mental performance boosts the market growth. However, the ethical issues related with the use of such drugs restrain the growth of this market.

Request for Sample Report at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/4556

Namenda generated the maximum revenue in the global cognitive and memory enhancer drugs market in 2016, and is expected to dominate the market till 2023. Exelon segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 10.9% during the forecast period, owing to increase in awareness among people towards improved physical performance.

Disease treatment application segment is expected to dominate the market in the future, owing to increase in the number of patients suffering from neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's. On the other hand, academic performance segment is estimated to exhibit a CAGR of 10.2% during the forecast period

Key Findings of the Cognitive and Memory Enhancer Drugs Market:

Razadyne contributed for more than one-sixth share of the global cognitive and memory enhancer drugs market in 2016.

Provigil is projected to grow at a significant CAGR of 10.4% during the analysis period.

Athletic performance is expected to grow at a significant CAGR of 9.8% from 2017 to 2023.

Germany and France were the major shareholders in 2016, together accounting for more than one-third share of the European cognitive and memory enhancer drugs market.

and were the major shareholders in 2016, together accounting for more than one-third share of the European cognitive and memory enhancer drugs market. Japan was the major shareholder in 2016, accounting for more than one-third share of the Asia-Pacific market.

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The Asia-Pacific market is projected to grow at the highest CAGR of 9.6% during the forecast period, owing to improvement in healthcare infrastructure and rise in expenditures in the emerging markets (such as India and China) to cater to the unmet medical needs.

The major companies profiled in the report are Pfizer Inc., Eisai Co., Ltd., Allergan, Inc., Novartis AG, Shire, Johnson & Johnson, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, AlternaScript LLC, Cephalon, Inc. (Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.), and Ceretropic.

Access KNOWLEDGE TREE (Premium on-demand, subscription-based pricing model) at: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/knowledgetree

Knowledge tree is a cloud-based intelligence platform that offers more than 2,000 selective, off-the-shelf reports on niche markets to enable our clients gain deep insights on the latest trends, dynamic technologies, and emerging application areas.

About Us

Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.

We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.

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Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com

SOURCE Allied Market Research
BENGALURU, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Infosys (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services today announced that it has been positioned as a Leader in the 2017 NelsonHall NEAT vendor evaluation for Digital Marketing Services. Infosys has been acknowledged for its prowess in delivering immediate client benefits and ability to meet timely client requirements.

The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation & Assessment Tool (NEAT) analyzed the performance of 11 vendors offering digital marketing services and their ability to anticipate future client requirements. Infosys has been ranked as a Leader for its next generation digital transformation services.

Key strengths mentioned in the report:

Infosys was acknowledged for its strong commitment to enhance overall client experience and efficiency through personalized and segment specific data analytics

Infosys' endeavor in developing a cognitive digital marketing toolbox utilizing home grown solutions like Customer Genome, Infosys NIA, and other tools and frameworks help in driving effective digital spending and decision making for clients

The report also highlighted the company's focus on transformational marketing design programs, and consulting services to identify client requirements and provide recommendations

Infosys was recognized for scaling up its onshore, nearshore, and offshore delivery network across North America , EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies

, EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies An ecosystem of digital marketing partnerships and strategic alliances along with Infosys' IT outsourcing capabilities were acknowledged for rapidly implementing digital marketing infrastructure for clients

Ravi Kumar, President & Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Infosys, said, "This recognition as a leader in digital marketing services is testimony to the company's continuous progress and success in implementing digital marketing infrastructure for our clients. We have a strong global team that works on digital marketing services offering analytics, consulting and operational support. Last year, our strategic acquisition of Brilliant Basics, a product design and client experience innovator, further expanded our worldwide connected network of digital studios and sharpened our focus on fulfilling global client requirements for end-to-end digital transformation solutions."

Ivan Kotzev, Research Analyst, Customer Experience (CX) Services, NelsonHall, said, "Infosys has once again proven its ability and emerged as a leader in digital marketing services. The scoring methodology is a combination of analyst assessment, principally around measurements of the ability to deliver immediate benefit; and feedback received during interviews of vendors' clients. Infosys' continuous dedication to deliver immediate benefits through investments in digital marketing consulting, content management and campaign management has not only elevated its position in the industry but has also helped in the growth of clients."

About NelsonHall

NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next generation IT and business services. With analysts in the U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe, NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. And for vendors, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies. NelsonHall's research is rigorous and all-original, and widely respected for the quality, depth and insight of its analysis.

About Infosys Ltd.

Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 200,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Media contacts:

Asia Pacific EMEA Americas Sarah Gideon Margherita Di Cerbo Chiku Somaiya Infosys, India Infosys, Europe Infosys, USA +91 80 4156 3998 +44 2075162748 +1 408 375 2722 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.

SOURCE Infosys Limited
BENGALURU, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Lymbyc enables real-time predictive decision-making across enterprise, consumer space

Lymbyc harnesses Artificial Intelligence for predictive decision inputs including w hat if scenario building

Quick and cost-effective, Lymbyc mimics the capabilities of a human analyst while delivering the benefits of rapid scalability at fractional cost

Allowing organizations to harness all their data including syndicated and custom market research data

In a bid to empower the business leader with the decision-making process and also democratize data science, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. launches 'Lymbyc'- world's first virtual data scientist. It takes inspiration from the limbic brain that helps guide humans on 'why' we do things.

Lymbyc is a self-service, predictive, insights platform that is driven by an adaptive machine learning engine. It helps improve decision-making in organizations by curating embedded intelligence across all data sources, while tackling enormous amounts of data, organizational silos and information complexity. Data science is a growing market and Lymbyc is all set to grab its market share. According to Statistics MRC, the global data science platform market was accounted for $19.75 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $128.21 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 36.5% during the forecast period.

Speaking at the launch Mr. Satyakam Mohanty, Founder, Lymbyc Solutions, said, "Big Data Analytics have often been used as a validation resource and existing solutions help organizations answer the 'what' and 'how' kind of business queries at best, but cannot help them understand the 'why'. We wanted to create a solution that truly mimics analysts and data scientists and does not stop at being just an intuitive BI system. Lymbyc enables organizations to undertake data discovery and predictive insight generation through a proprietary NLP-based querying language that harnesses Artificial Intelligence, thus helping them to take strategic decisions in real-time across enterprise and consumer spaces. It automatically learns what is relevant for your business with every interaction and continually curates information for future sharing."

Lymbyc is a cost-effective solution that can be deployed fast, has the capacity exceeding entire teams of data scientists to help companies deal with complex and time consuming business queries in real-time. It is especially designed for business leaders - to make insights available to them at the point of decision making.

About Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Previously known as Ma Foi Analytics, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. was founded in 2012 to build robust analytical products that melded advanced technology to strong data science foundations to help organizations deal with these core fundamental problems. With a vision to empower the business leader at the point of decision making and to elevate analytics from just being a validation resource to an intervention mechanism with foresight, Lymbyc was conceptualized. Headquartered in Bangalore, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a leading edge innovator in advanced analytics solutions serving varied clients across India, the US, Singapore and in the Middle East.

Founded by Satyakam Mohanty, the organization has come a long way from providing traditional consulting services to building world class solutions rooted in AI and Big Data.

Media Contact:

Krithika Rao

[email protected]

+91-9739373689

Senior Executive-Brand Communication

PRHUB Integrated Marketing Communication Pvt. Ltd

SOURCE Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Industry outlook on how airlines, hotels, financial services companies and other travel merchants can align technology, data and travel inventory to transform travel, and grow profits

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Switchfly, a global technology partner specializing in ecommerce and ancillary merchandising for travel merchants, has released a new industry outlook report that examines the role travel technology will play in generating revenue and brand loyalty as 2020 approaches.

The report, "The Future of Travel & Loyalty Outlook 2020," offers insights on how suppliers and distributors across the airline, hotel and financial services industries can leverage new technology, data and inventory to recalibrate their loyalty strategies, facilitate higher revenue generating opportunities and create better user experiences. In the report, Switchfly analyzes the current state of the travel landscape, including the threats, challenges and opportunities that travel merchants face. Switchfly also provides commentary on how to overcome these complexities.

According to Switchfly's Chief Executive Officer Daniel Farrar the travel industry is experiencing a digital transformation, and the opportunities for revenue and loyalty have never been greater. "The future of travel depends on the industry's ability to re-imagine how it connects loyalty with data and inventory, so travelers can spend more on travel products and services that appeal to themin less time and with less effort," says Farrar. "Those who are successful will present the right inventory to the right customer at the right time, while building loyalty rewards and incentives right into the booking process."

Key insights from "The Future of Travel & Loyalty Outlook 2020" include:

The "platformization" of travel and why merchants should view the industry as a holistic, interconnected environment for ecommerce to drive revenue

How new technologies, like artificial intelligence and virtual reality, will disrupt the travel ecosystem, strengthen loyalty programs, and give rise to new distribution models

The evolution of travel distribution channels and the content offered across platforms

How the intersection of travel ecommerce and loyalty presents new opportunities for financial services companies

A look at New Distribution Capability (NDC) and how a shift in data management will enable airlines and hotels to bypass legacy systems

The growth in mobile ecommerce and the importance of creating technology-rich, engaging user experiences

"For travel loyalty, success lies in adding value beyond the price of a room or ticket," Farrar continued. "There is a bigger connection between travel loyalty, travel technology and revenue generation that suppliers and distributors must consider going forwardand the opportunities are ready for the taking."

To learn how travel technology will create new opportunities for the airline, hotel and financial services industries over the next few years, download "The Future of Travel & Loyalty Outlook 2020" report today.

For more information on "The Future of Travel & Loyalty Outlook 2020," or to speak with Switchfly CEO Daniel Farrar, please contact Vanessa Horwell at [email protected]. For more information about Switchfly, please visit www.switchfly.com.

About Switchfly

Switchfly, Inc., is a travel ecommerce platform for direct channel booking that drives maximum loyalty and revenue for its clients. Through the company's global network of ancillary merchandise for activity, air, car, hotel and insurance, Switchfly facilitates the redemption of more than 40B points and miles and generates over $3B in revenues for customers each year. The company's global customer base includes American Airlines, JetBlue and LATAM Airlines; IAG Avios and United MileagePlus; InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Starwood Hotels and Resorts; Groupon and Living Social; and MasterCard and VISA. For more information, visit www.switchfly.com.

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Media Contact

Vanessa Horwell

[email protected]

+1.305.776.8817

Related Links

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SOURCE Switchfly
BANGALORE, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Nitesh Estates is set to bring luxury living to downtown Bengaluru with Nitesh Madison Square, an $18 Million USD, competitively priced luxury residences located in the prime location of Cunningham Road.

As the dust settles post demonetization and RERA, the Luxury Real Estate market has seen a steady upswing in demand. When combined with the demand for luxury housing that Bengaluru generates, a luxury residential complex in the vicinity of the Central Business District was the need of the hour, and it is this vacuum that Nitesh Madison Square breathes life into.

Comprising 18 units spread over half an acre, Nitesh Madison Square draws inspiration from the street front buildings of Boston and New York by combining the Neo Georgian architecture style with a more modern, minimalist aesthetic. The solid brick structure featuring French windows and a gabled roof are designed to complement the greenery that surrounds the complex.

With 5-star amenities such as a swimming pool, fitness center, billiards room, an inviting lounge, recreation area, poolside lounge area, and terrace; Nitesh Madison Square residents will always live in the lap of luxury.

Speaking on Nitesh Estates and its latest addition to the luxury residential segment, Mr. Pradeep Narayan, EVP - Sales & Marketing, said, "While we have residential projects both in Uber luxury and mid-segment, we consider ourselves more of Luxury specialists. We were also the first ones to bring the Ritz-Carlton, a 5-star hotel, to India. Nitesh Madison Square is the latest addition to our Luxury portfolio, offering great amenities at a competitive price. There really is no competition for it."

Starting from $1 million onwards, Nitesh Madison Square is Nitesh Estates' latest iconic project in the city of Bengaluru and continues their raison d'etre of making significant and iconic architectural contributions to India's urban landscape.

About Nitesh Estates

Nitesh Estates, one of India's most well recognized luxury real estate brands, is a first generation Real Estate company headquartered in Bangalore. Known for its superior designs, cutting-edge facades, classy interiors, sophisticated landscaping and attention to detail across its developments, Nitesh Estates' portfolio includes Office Buildings, Hotels, Homes and Shopping Malls. Founded by first generation entrepreneur Nitesh Shetty in 2004, Nitesh Estates has earned a stellar reputation for its dedication to the development of superior quality properties distinguished by sophisticated design and First class amenities.

Media Contact:

Namita Solanki

Manager - Digital Marketing

[email protected]



SOURCE Nitesh Estates
Literacy Pro Recognized for Matching Students with High-Interest, Authentic Titles to Raise Reading Achievement while Providing Educators with Data to Differentiate Instruction

NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Literacy Pro, an innovative digital reading and assessment program from the international division of Scholastic, the global children's publishing, education and media company, was named the Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year by the 2018 GESS Education Awards. The GESS Education Awards recognize high-quality and diverse educational products, resources, service and people as well as the best educational establishments and the most dedicated members of the teaching profession.

For more information about Literacy Pro, visit scholastic.com/literacypro.

As the Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year, Literacy Pro was recognized for its strength in guiding educators to support students in grades 212 in reaching reading proficiency goals, connecting them to authentic books that will maximize their achievement, and building a culture of reading within a school.

Currently used in 47 countries, Literacy Pro provides an online adaptive assessment that measures students' reading comprehension and generates a personalized book list that matches each student's reading level and individual interests. Each title includes a comprehension quiz that provides an opportunity for students to earn points towards certificate levels in the program. Educators also have access to dashboards where they can view detailed reports that inform instructional decisions and ensure students are reaching required levels of proficiency, all of which can be customized within the program to support different curriculum benchmarks.

Literacy Pro Library, an enhancement of the program, offers an interactive ebook library consisting of more than 900 titles including popular series Goosebumps, Discover More, A True Book, and more. The Library includes resources such as audio books, interactive vocabulary, and a student recording feature to provide a personalized experience for all readers. Additionally, educators can assign books to students using reading levels and content areas and monitor their reading progress.

QUOTES:

Anne Boynton-Trigg, VP, Export Sales and Marketing at Scholastic

"We are honored that Scholastic Literacy Pro has been named 'Primary Resource/Equipment Supplier of the Year' and is receiving recognition as a program students and educators can depend on to inform classroom instruction and independent reading. The program's ability to effortlessly match students with engaging, authentic texts they want to read creates a culture of reading that engages every child while building the foundation they need to become lifelong learners.

Leticia Becerril, Educator and Literacy Pro user, Colegio Cuernavaca, Mexico

"Literacy Pro and Literacy Pro Library provide teachers with evidence-based data so we can make the best teaching and learning decisions to develop our students into successful, proficient readers."

Since 2017, Scholastic Literacy Pro has received the BESSIE award for Best Primary Literacy Resource Website and was a finalist for the 2018 BETT award for Best Primary Content Resource.

For more information about Scholastic, visit http://mediaroom.scholastic.com.

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Related Links

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SOURCE Scholastic
BANGALORE, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

COMPUTEX 2018, to be held in Taipei from June 5th to 9th, 2018, will attract more Indian visitors this year

SMART ASIA India 2018 to be held in Bangalore from October 4th to 6th, 2018

The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the foremost non-profit trade promotion organisation in Taiwan, today announced COMPUTEX 2018, to be held from June 5th to 9th, in the capital city of Taiwan, Taipei, and the Second Edition of the 'SMART ASIA India 2018-Expo & Summit' to be held from October 4th to 6th in Bangalore. The announcement was made in the presence of key dignitaries including Mr. James M. S. Kuo, Deputy Executive Director of Exhibition Department, TAITRA; Mr. M. N. Vidyashankar, Former Additional Chief Secretary to Govt. of Karnataka and Mr. Mohan Rajamani, Vice Chairman, American Chamber of Commerce.

Welcoming the audience at the conference, Mr. James Kuo said, "TAITRA is glad to announce COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India 2018 here. Taiwan has been making a drastic shift from high-tech manufacturing to an innovation-driven economy. Our advanced ICT capabilities have earned us the status of a global leader in smart technologies and smart city solutions, and we want to extend this expertise to our Indian counterparts." He added, "India is not only one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also witnessing an exponential growth in information technology sector. We value India's market potential, its globally competitive ICT industry, its rich talent resources and the vision led by Honourable Prime Minister Shree Narendra Modi for the Smart Cities Mission. With both COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India 2018, we are hoping to create more opportunities for trade, industry collaboration and knowledge partnerships between India and Taiwan."

SMART ASIA India 2018 is a B2B trade show initiated by TAITRA to facilitate India's ambitious 'Smart Cities Mission'. The themes for 2018 focus on three major aspects, namely, Smart City Solutions, Smart Technology Applications, and City Development Product and Services. SMART ASIA India will demonstrate cutting-edge technologies and solutions available to tackle challenges that Indian cities are facing as a result of urbanization and increasing population.

Sharing his vision for SMART ASIA India 2018, Mr. James Kuo stressed, "We received a significant level of recognition and active participation from industry stakeholders in the first edition. This year we are expecting the number of visitors to the show to increase by 30 percent." He continued, "Taiwan has been utilizing smart technologies in building efficient modern cities for many years now and SMART ASIA India provides an excellent platform to connect Taiwan's competence in this domain and India's opportunities to build intelligent, robust and efficient smart cities."

While SMART ASIA India 2018 is seeking a long-term partnership with the South Asian country to realize the Smart Cities vision, COMPUTEX 2018 is looking forward to attracting more Indian visitors to enhance the India-Taiwan trade relationship.

COMPUTEX is the world's leading B2B ICT/IoT and start-up exhibitions. With a new positioning, COMPUTEX 2018 will be focusing on AI, 5G, Blockchain, IoT, Innovations & Start-ups, and Gaming & VR. Taiwan is ranked number 1 in Asia for the Global Entrepreneurship Index in 2017, which makes the best endorsement for start-ups to expand their business in Taiwan. To further boost this idea, COMPUTEX will set up InnoVEX, a prevailing start-up event in Asia which is a networking platform for aspiring newly established businesses across the globe. The theme for InnoVEX exhibit 2018 is 'Finding the RIGHT FIT' and it is set to host more than 300 global start-ups and accelerators.

With 1600 exhibitors and 5010 booths, last year the response for COMPUTEX was overwhelming. COMPUTEX 2017 was a host to 41,378 international visitors from 167 countries. Speaking on COMPUTEX 2018, Mr. James Kuo commented, "The result of an effective transformation brings more buyers and opportunities for COMPUTEX exhibitors. Industry leaders such as Acer, Adata, Asus, Coolermaster, Gigabyte, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Supermicro, Thermaltek and many others are looking to showcase the latest innovations this coming June. COMPUTEX 2018 will not only serve as a platform for procurement, but also a hub for established brands and start-ups to interact, connect and cooperate." India stood among the Top 10 visitors for COMPUTEX 2017 and the footfall from Indian visitors is expected to grow to 20% this year."

COMPUTEX also recently made its presence at Convergence 2018 in Delhi starting from 7th to 9th March, showcasing the winning products of the COMPUTEX d&i Awards and the response has been tremendous.

About TAITRA

The organiser of COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India is the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, TAITRA, the foremost non-profit trade promotion organisation in Taiwan. Founded in 1970, TAITRA assists Taiwanese businesses and manufacturers in strengthening their international competitiveness, and dealing with challenges in foreign markets.

TAITRA boasts of a well-coordinated trade promotion and information network of over 1,200 trained specialists, stationed throughout its Taipei headquarters, five local branch offices in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, and more than 60 overseas branch offices worldwide. Together with its sister organisations, Taiwan Trade Center (TTC) and Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), TAITRA has created a wealth of trade opportunities through effective promotional strategies. In addition to organising trade delegations and providing customised procurement services, TAITRA also hosts more than 40 international trade shows annually, both in Taiwan and abroad.

Media Contact:

Hesha Parekh

[email protected]

+91-9833113169

Senior Executive

Communicate India



SOURCE TAITRA
According to a new market research report " Wire and Cable Management Market by Product (Trays & Ladders, Raceway, Connectors, Ties, Conduit), Cable Type (Power Cable, Communication Wire & Cable), Material (Metallic and Non-Metallic), End-User, and Region - Global Trends and Forecasts to 2023 " , published by MarketsandMarkets, the global market is estimated to grow from USD 16.91 Billion in 2018 to USD 25.26 Billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 8.36%, during the forecast period. The market is set to witness growth due to the rising demand from data center and IT facilities and the growing construction sector.

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Browse 75 Tables and 39 Figures spread through 135 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Wire and Cable Management Market"

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/wire-cable-management-market-69412008.html

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Power cable segment is expected to be the largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by cable type, in 2018.

The power cable segment is expected to be the largest segment of the Wire and Cable Management Market, by cable type, in 2018. Power cables are widely used in the power distribution sector to distribute power, and can be installed overhead as well as underground in the industrial, commercial, and residential sectors. High demand for electrification of homes, increased investment in power distribution, and growth in the household sector in developing countries are the key drivers for the growth of the power cable Wire and Cable Management Market.

Ask for PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=69412008

Conduits & trunking segment is expected to be the second largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by product, during the forecast period.

Conduits & trunking are used to protect cables from damage and can be used in almost any location including homes, commercial spaces, and industrial sectors. Rising urban population and need for advanced infrastructure in regions such as Asia Pacific and the Middle East are thrusting the deployment of conduits & trunking system.

Asia Pacific: Largest Wire and Cable Management Market during the forecast period.

In this report, the Wire and Cable Management Market has been analyzed with respect to five regions, namely, Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and South America. Asia Pacific is the largest Wire and Cable Management Market, by region, during the forecast period. Rising urbanization and proliferation of electrification, demand from the construction and mining sectors, growing awareness of energy savings, and supportive government plans are expected to drive the market for wire and cable management in this region. China, India, and Japan are the leading countries among others which would contribute to the growth of the Wire and Cable Management Market in Asia Pacific.

To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes the profiles of some of the top players in the Wire and Cable Management Market such as Legrand (France), Eaton (Ireland), Hellermann Tyton (England), Atkore (US), Panduit (US), and Obo Bettermann (Germany).

Know more about the Wire and Cable Management Market

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/wire-cable-management-market-69412008.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:

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MarketsandMarkets INC.

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USA: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]



Visit Our Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/energy-and-power

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
MUMBAI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Founded by Harsh Mariwala, ASCENT Foundation is a peer-to-peer platform that enables high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and to grow their enterprise and enrich their entrepreneur journey

ASCENT Foundation, a not-for-profit, peer-to-peer learning platform for entrepreneurs founded by Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico Ltd., hosted its first edition of ASCENT Women BizMakers conference, on Thursday, 08 March 2018 at St. Regis, Mumbai. The half day conference witnessed some of India's most inspiring and recognised women leaders share their entrepreneurial journey over the years, learnings and success stories.

Leveraging the 'power of the collective' ASCENT identifies high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their enterprise. ASCENT Foundation aims to be a building block that enables women leaders to scale to the next level of business and developmental growth through peer-to-peer learning.

The ASCENT Women BizMakers event started with a key note speech by Ameera Shah, Managing Director, Metropolis Healthcare Limited on her journey as an entrepreneur with key lessons learnt over the years. This was then followed by Anjali Bansal's speech, a former global Partner and MD with TPG Private Equity and a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York and Mumbai which delved on how entrepreneurs can 'Step-Up and Scale-Up'. Lastly, the event had a panel discussion on the topic of 'Hustling Your Way to Success' that was moderated by Swati Khandelwal, Chief of Bureau, BTVi. The panel discussion saw a confluence of views shared on different leadership styles and techniques towards entrepreneurial growth by Chetna Gala Sinha, Founder-Chairperson, Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank and Mann Deshi Foundation, Preeta Sukhtankar, Founder, The Label Life and Neha Motwani, Founder, Fitternity.

The ASCENT Women BizMakers Conference brought about several interesting discussions on the evolving role of women entrepreneurs leaving audiences enthralled with insights on topics such as:

Importance of mentors and peer-to-peer learning platforms such as Empoweress and ASCENT Foundation;

Scaling-Up;

Different leadership styles and

Work-life blend

"Women in leadership positions have shown to have a positive impact on the growth of a company, which in turn has caused a ripple effect on the development of an economy. There has been a significant shift in the role of a woman in the board room, which exemplifies how women entrepreneurship has positively evolved over the years. Although we are seeing a spike in the number of women leaders, we still need many more women entrepreneurs at the helm of their businesses. In this endeavour, ASCENT Foundation is committed to building a strong network of like-minded women entrepreneurs who are ready to scale to the next level of business and personal growth. I hope to see a lot more women entrepreneurs take lead and shine as business leaders," said Harsh Mariwala, Founder, ASCENT Foundation and Chairman, Marico Ltd.

"Men and women today stand shoulder-to-shoulder and are driving our country towards boundless growth. It is heartening to see how women are excelling in such diverse sectors and spheres. This being said, women still need to be further encouraged for them to be believe that nothing is beyond their reach. This is where ASCENT Foundation and Empoweress play a catalytic role. With ASCENT Foundation's Women BizMaker's event today, we are taking one such step. Congratulations to ASCENT for this initiative and bringing us all together," said Ameera Shah, MD, Metropolis Healthcare Ltd.

About ASCENT:

ASCENT is a not-for-profit expression of Harsh Mariwala (Chairman, Marico Ltd. and Founder, ASCENT Foundation) and his passion to identify high-potential growth-ready entrepreneurs and enable them to grow their enterprise. Launched in 2012 and active across Mumbai, ASCENT is designed as a unique, powerful peer-to-peer platform that leverages the 'power of collective' through self-facilitated Trust Groups and enables entrepreneurs to share and exchange experiences, ideas, insights and create a healthy ecosystem to learn from each other. Additionally, ASCENT provides peripheral access to relevant growth enablers like service providers, investors and banks, industry role models and domain experts.

For more details please visit: http://www.ascentfoundation.in/

Media Contact:

Shivani Divecha

[email protected]

+91-9821879331

Manager

ASCENT Foundation

Bhakti Dalal

Independent Communications Consultant

+91-9819118807



SOURCE ASCENT Foundation
WASHINGTON, March. 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Envirotainer, the global market leader in providing secure cold chain solutions for the pharmaceutical supply chain, recently signed a Global Master Lease Agreement (MLA) with Ethiopian Airlines. This is the first time Envirotainer partners with an airline that is based in Africa. The partnership will greatly enhance the connectivity for pharmaceutical companies and their customers in Africa.

Mr. Fitsum Abady, MD Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services, said: "We are very pleased to be the first African airline partnering with Envirotainer. In this highly lucrative market the application of active temperature controlled containers play vital role for the protection and safety of time & temperature sensitive healthcare products both onboard and on the ground throughout the supply chain. This commercial partnership with Envirotainer significantly fuels our aim on providing superior protection and seamless connectivity through our sales networks stretched across the five continents."

Bourji Mourad, Head of Global Partner Management at Envirotainer, said: "This newly signed Global Master Lease Agreement with Ethiopian Airlines is very welcomed, particularly since it is our first with an African based airline that has invested so much in newly built facilities and services for the safe handling of pharmaceutical and life sciences products."

Jorg Krings, Global Partner Manager at Envirotainer further said: "The on ground training for how to handle our Envirotainer units went really well. It's a key element to guarantee the correct process implementation."

Ethiopian Cargo & Logistics Services, one of the seven business centers of Ethiopian Airlines, with the recently inaugurated state-of the- Art cargo terminal II together with the existing Terminal will give us a total tonnage capacity of around 1 million ton per annum which is the largest in the continent of Africa.  The new terminal fitted with enhanced cold chain facility will boost the airlines' capacity for storage and handling of temperature sensitive and life Science products.

Moreover, the completion of the second phase, which adds 600, 000 tones annual uplift capacity, Ethiopian Cargo and Logistics Services will have one of the world's largest cargo terminals capability equivalent to cargo terminals in Amsterdam Schiphol, Singapore Changi, or Hong Kong. This investment and the resulting massive cargo facilities along with the 6 modern B-777F fleet, 2 B-757F on service and ordered 4 B777F & 2B737F will create adequate air cargo transporting capacity for the fast growing export and import demand of the continent.

CONTACT:

Mrs. Aniley Eshetu

A/Manager Corporate Communications, Ethiopian Airlines

Tel :( 251-1)517-89-07/656/165/913/529

CorporateCommunication@ethiopianairlines.com

www.ethiopianairlines.com

www.facebook.com/ethiopianairlines

www.twitter.com/flyethiopian

Bourji Mourad

Head of Global Partner Management, Envirotainer

+44-7879-428-428

bourji.mourad@envirotainer.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/r/ethiopian-airlines-signs-global-master-lease-agreement-with-envirotainer,c2467283

The following files are available for download:

http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/i/training-of-using-containers-1,c2358624 Training of using containers 1 http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/i/signing-of-mla-agreement,c2358625 Signing of MLA agreement http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/i/training-of-using-containers-2,c2358626 Training of using containers 2 http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/i/envirotainer-rkn-e1-container,c2358627 Envirotainer RKN e1 container http://news.cision.com/envirotainer-ab/i/ethiopian-logotype,c2358965 Ethiopian Logotype

SOURCE Envirotainer AB
It's been created for (and endorsed by) International Women's Day and launches today, Thursday 8 March.

(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651282/FCB_Inferno_Claudia_Winkleman.jpg )



(Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/651287/FCB_Inferno_Holly_Willoughby.jpg )



To celebrate some of the UK's queens of TV, bespoke cards have been created depicting (pictured) Holly Willoughby and (pictured) Claudia Winkleman, as well as others including Alison Hammond, Tess Daley, Victoria Derbyshire and Janet Street-Porter.

And there's also a new deck of cards created by some of the world's leading women illustrators (from womenwhodraw.com) which celebrate women of all shapes, sizes and colour.

The project is the brainchild of agency FCB Inferno, inspired by a five-year-old girl asking why a king should be more powerful than a queen in a card game. Queen Rules is the result, designed to create awareness of unconscious gender bias and get the conversation on the table.

With support from Unibet, the campaign will launch with simultaneous live events and tournaments of Queen Rules poker today, March 8th in London and Europe.

A social experiment film will be released simultaneously.

All proceeds from the live events and merchandise, including T-shirts, art prints and playing cards, will be donated to HeForShe, a solidarity campaign for the advancement of women initiated by UN Women.

For examples of how to play, and which games work with Queen Rules, visit queenrulesproject.com or join the conversation with #QueenRules.

FCB INFERNO

FCB Inferno is the London agency of global advertising network FCB. The network dates back to 1873, and now has 9,000 employees in 90 countries, with 200 at FCB Inferno.

One of London's leading advertising agencies, FCB Inferno focuses on creating 'Never Finished' campaign ideas for clients that reflect a deep understanding of the brand's past, a respect for the present and an anticipation of the future potential.

FCB Inferno's clients sit across industry sectors and currently include the UK Government (for which they created the This Girl Can brand), BMW, NIVEA, Sky, Huawei and UEFA. FCB Inferno received two Grand Prix awards at Cannes International Festival of Creativity in 2015 and 2016.

FCB Inferno has been voted the top UK agency promoting good causes in 2016 by The Good Report, ranking third overall in the list of international agencies.

For more information contact Julie Pickford / jpkfrd@aol.com / +44-07899-920623

For images and merchandise contact CC Clark / cc.clark@fcbinferno.com / +44-07583-041722

SOURCE FCB Inferno
BENGALURU, India, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Infosys (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services today announced that it has been positioned as a Leader in the 2017 NelsonHall NEAT vendor evaluation for Digital Marketing Services. Infosys has been acknowledged for its prowess in delivering immediate client benefits and ability to meet timely client requirements.

The NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation & Assessment Tool (NEAT) analyzed the performance of 11 vendors offering digital marketing services and their ability to anticipate future client requirements. Infosys has been ranked as a Leader for its next generation digital transformation services.

Key strengths mentioned in the report:

Infosys was acknowledged for its strong commitment to enhance overall client experience and efficiency through personalized and segment specific data analytics

Infosys' endeavor in developing a cognitive digital marketing toolbox utilizing home grown solutions like Customer Genome, Infosys NIA, and other tools and frameworks help in driving effective digital spending and decision making for clients

The report also highlighted the company's focus on transformational marketing design programs, and consulting services to identify client requirements and provide recommendations

Infosys was recognized for scaling up its onshore, nearshore, and offshore delivery network across North America , EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies

, EMEA, APAC, and ANZ marking its expertise in digital marketing services across these geographies An ecosystem of digital marketing partnerships and strategic alliances along with Infosys' IT outsourcing capabilities were acknowledged for rapidly implementing digital marketing infrastructure for clients

Ravi Kumar, President & Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Infosys, said, "This recognition as a leader in digital marketing services is testimony to the company's continuous progress and success in implementing digital marketing infrastructure for our clients. We have a strong global team that works on digital marketing services offering analytics, consulting and operational support. Last year, our strategic acquisition of Brilliant Basics, a product design and client experience innovator, further expanded our worldwide connected network of digital studios and sharpened our focus on fulfilling global client requirements for end-to-end digital transformation solutions."

Ivan Kotzev, Research Analyst, Customer Experience (CX) Services, NelsonHall, said, "Infosys has once again proven its ability and emerged as a leader in digital marketing services. The scoring methodology is a combination of analyst assessment, principally around measurements of the ability to deliver immediate benefit; and feedback received during interviews of vendors' clients. Infosys' continuous dedication to deliver immediate benefits through investments in digital marketing consulting, content management and campaign management has not only elevated its position in the industry but has also helped in the growth of clients."

About NelsonHall

NelsonHall is the leading global analyst firm dedicated to helping organizations understand the 'art of the possible' in next generation IT and business services. With analysts in the U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe, NelsonHall provides buy-side organizations with detailed, critical information on markets and vendors that helps them make fast and highly informed sourcing decisions. And for vendors, NelsonHall provides deep knowledge of market dynamics and user requirements to help them hone their go-to-market strategies. NelsonHall's research is rigorous and all-original, and widely respected for the quality, depth and insight of its analysis.

About Infosys Ltd.

Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 200,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit http://www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this press release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at http://www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. In addition, please note that any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Media contacts:

Asia Pacific EMEA Americas Sarah Gideon Margherita Di Cerbo Chiku Somaiya Infosys, India Infosys, Europe Infosys, USA +91 80 4156 3998 +44 2075162748 +1 408 375 2722 Sarah_Gideon@infosys.com Margherita.DiCerbo@infosys.com Chiku.Somaiya@infosys.com

This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire.

SOURCE Infosys Limited
SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A global leader in corporate and consumer foreign exchange solutions, OANDA recently released a new version of its trusted Exchange Rates API, which has been updated to include real-time currency rates. The rates available on the new API are updated every five seconds, providing a more accurate reflection of current market prices. In addition to providing live rates, the new API also offers 96 fixing rates daily  more than any other currency data feed on the market. Available at 15-minute intervals, each fixing rate provides bid, ask, and midpoint rates. Customers also have access to daily and period average rates aligned to their time zone and can now access open and close prices.

The new API aims to provide corporate treasurers and finance directors with a greater degree of visibility over the FX market, helping them mitigate risk, reduce currency exposure and improve cash flow. The API will also be of value to product managers and application developers who require reliable forex data to power their web services, pricing engines, and digital products. Simple to use, extensive API documentation is available on OANDA's website, including easy-to-follow instructions in order to ensure the seamless integration with ERP, TMS, billing software and more.

Vatsa Narasimha, President and Chief Executive Officer, OANDA Corporation, commented, "As an over-the-counter market, there is no central exchange for currency pricing, which can make it difficult to gauge accurate FX rates. However, because OANDA has been collecting FX data for more than 20 years, we are uniquely positioned to combine this knowledge with access to a full range of interbank liquidity, proprietary trading technology, and pricing algorithms in order to create an accurate market consensus across a wide range of FX instruments, including real-time foreign exchange rates. Trusted for accuracy and reliability, our rates are acknowledged by several tax authorities and governmental agencies around the world, and are widely considered to be the gold standard in exchange rate data."

The new API is already proving to be of value to OANDA clients. Keara Killian, Treasurer at AppNexus, a world-leading independent advertising technology company, explained, "Ad tech is becoming increasingly more sophisticated, and platforms must serve millions of buyers and sellers that transact in the billions of dollars. As such, we are always searching for opportunities to create efficiencies in the marketplace. In addition to connecting our platform to real-time FX market data, we leverage OANDA's API to enable currency options for our customers. As a result, our customers enjoy increased precision in our pricing models."

OANDA Exchange Rates API has long provided historical daily average rates to top audit firms, leading brands, and thousands of small and medium-sized companies around the world. These rates are used for financial reconciliation, tax and audit, as well as to power digital products, apps and pricing engines.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

About OANDA

A global leader in online multi-asset trading services, OANDA combines award-winning technology and institutional-grade execution across a wide range of asset classes, enabling clients to trade global market indices, commodities, treasuries, precious metals and currencies on one of the world's fastest platforms. The company also offers OANDA Rates, a set of corporate solutions that help the world's leading audit firms, taxation authorities and MNCs mitigate currency risk, improve efficiencies and optimize working capital. Established in 1996, OANDA has offices in the world's most active financial markets including New York, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto and Sydney and is fully regulated by six major authorities. For more information, please visit oanda.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

SOURCE OANDA
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Bhopal, March 4 : Batting for simultaneous elections, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Sunday announced that his government will form a committee to discuss it.

Headed by state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra, the committee will talk to all the political parties, voters and other people on the issue and then submit a comprehensive report to the government.

"In our country, elections are always taking place in some or the other part. Because of this, development work gets hampered," Chouhan told reporters here.

"That is why the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and the President (Ram Nath Kovind) have talked about holding all the elections simultaneously. The state government is also in favour of this."

The Chief Minister also expressed happiness on the Bharatiya Janata Party winning elections in the northeast.
Rome, March 5 : Italy is on course for a hung parliament after voters backed right-wing and populist parties in Sunday's general elections, vote projections based on partial results suggested on Monday.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition looks set to win the most seats in the lower house of parliament, BBC reported.

It is tipped to get 248-268 seats - below the 316 needed for a majority.

Forming a government may now take weeks of negotiation and coalition-building.

Alternatively, fresh elections could be held in a bid to produce a more decisive result - though there is no guarantee that would happen.

Public anger over unemployment and immigration appears to have battered the ruling Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Its centre-left coalition is projected to come a distant third, with an estimated 107-127 seats.

"It is clear to us that this is a blatant and clear defeat," said Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina.

However, final confirmed results are not expected until Monday night.

Other exit polls by Mediaset, which is owned by Berlusconi, and by SkyTG24 obtained similar percentages.

Some 46 million Italians were eligible to vote in the elections held on Sunday.
Mumbai, March 6 : Veteran character actress for nearly six decades, Shammi Rabadi passed away at her home here late on Monday, a family friend said. She was 87.

According to Bollywood personality Ashok Shekhar, she had been ailing since some time. She breathed her last at her Juhu Circle home.

Her funeral shall be performed at the Oshiwara cemetery later in the day, Shekhar told IANS.

Shammi, whose real name was Nargis, was a Parsi and the former wife of legendary Bollywood filmmaker, the late Sultan Ahmed.

She became a popular character artist portraying supporting roles of aunt, granny, elder spinster in the family, et al, besides acting for television serials.
Mumbai, March 6 : Reliance Infrastructure won its case against the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in the Delhi High Court on Tuesday.

"The Delhi High Court has upheld the arbitration award of Rs 2,950 crore as compensation along with interest to Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), a subsidiary of Reliance Infrastructure Limited (RInfra), by a three-member Arbitration Tribunal," a company statement said here on Tuesday.

Reliance Infrastructure stands to get Rs 5,060 crore from the award, which it would entirely utilise to reduce its consolidated debt. This amount is arbitration award amount plus interest till March 31, 2018, the statement said.

Delhi High Court has directed DMRC to deposit Rs 3,502 crore in escrow account within four weeks.

Following the judgment of the Delhi High Court in the matter, an Reliance Infrastructure spokesperson said: "Now that the Delhi High Court has upheld the award by the arbitration tribunal, we expect the compensation to be paid expeditiously, which we shall utilise to retire the outstanding debt of RInfra and DAMEPL."

"The High Court upheld the validity of the award granted by the three-member arbitration tribunal unanimously on the basis of termination provisions of the concession agreement, which DAMEPL had utilised to terminate its agreement with Delhi Metro Rail Corporation," the statement said.

The three-member Arbitration Tribunal, was formed out of the DMRC-nominated panel as per the Concession Agreement in September 2013. It gave its award in May 2017 after hearing the case for almost four years.

The tribunal heard the submissions made by both the parties and after detailed proceedings in 68 hearings, it had issued its final order whereby it had awarded the compensation to DAMEPL.
Srinagar, March 6 : Normalcy appeared to be returning to the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday even as clashes erupted between security forces and protesters in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district amid a crippling shutdown there.

Youths clashed in Shopian town with security forces who used tear smoke shells to disperse the protesters.

A large number of people gathered at the house of a militant killed in a gunfight with the security forces along with five other persons in Pahnoo village on Sunday.

The protesters were agitated over the killing of two militants and four civilians in Sunday's gunfight.

Authorities have suspended Internet services in south Kashmir areas to prevent the spread of rumours.

Elsewhere in the Kashmir Valley, life limped back to normal after Monday's protest shutdown.

Shops and businesses opened while public transport was normal in Srinagar and other places. But educational institutions have been closed till Thursday as a precaution.
Mumbai, March 7 : An explosion followed by a massive fire ripped through a container ship with several Indian crew on board, off the Agatti Islands, an Indian Coast Guard official said here on Wednesday. Four crewmen are reported missing.

Casualties are feared in the disaster that struck on the high seas around 9.45 p.m. on Tuesday. The cause of the incident which occurred off the south-west coast of India, is not yet known, the official said.

The ICG's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Mumbai, received a distress call from the Singapore-flagged 330 m long container ship "Maersk Honam".

The ship had left Singapore on March 1, on way to Suez in Egypt and has a crew of 27, including 13 Indians and the rest of different nationalities.

The captain is also an Indian and the remaining crew are Philipino, British, Romanian and Thai.

At the time of the distress call, the ship was at a distance of 340 nautical miles from Agatti Isles in Lakshwadeep Islands.

The MRCC alerted all merchant ships near the location, through the satellite based communication network, the International Safety Net (ISN).

A merchant navy ship MV Als Cicero, which reached Maersk Honam at about 11.25 p.m., reported that the container vessel was blazing with flames from the main deck of the ship leaping upto the ship's bridge height of about 25 metres.

The crew had abandoned the ship as fire spread beyond their control.

Mearsk Honam had 27 crew onboard, out of which 23 have been rescued by Als Cicero. The remaining four whose nationality is not clear, are reported missing.

Simultaneously, the ICG Shoor, patrolling near Lakshadweep Islands was diverted to assist the distressed vessel.

ICGS Shoor is an Offshore patrol vessel with specialised fire fighting equipment on board.

On Wednesday, the ICG plans to deploy its Dornier D-228 maritime reconnaissance aircraft from Agatti Island for search and rescue.

Inspector General K.R. Nautiyal, the Coast Guard Commander (West) said: "Search Operations are on and ICG assets have been pressed into action."

"It is our priority to save and rescue the four missing crew and also continue our efforts to salvage the vessel with assistance of specialised vessels which is being arranged in co-ordination with the Ship agency."

The ICG has diverted four merchant navy ships near the location to assist the distressed ship.

At present, the search operation is in progress by merchant vessels Als Cicero, Seaspan Zambezi, Navigator Centauri and Al Jasrah.
New Delhi, March 7 : The students union of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) here on Wednesday held a referendum over the attendance issue to show the strength of their support to the administration.

JNU has seen a number of protests by the union and other political factions since January, when the administration stipulated a minimum attendance criterion, making 75 per cent attendance mandatory for all students.

The referendum, which will be conducted in two phases in the campus, began at 9 a.m. and will continue till 8 p.m.

The decision to hold the democratic exercise was taken by the union after administration's labelling of the past agitations, a handiwork of few students and which did not have the support of majority.
Mumbai, March 7 : An explosion followed by a massive fire ripped through a Singapore-flagged container ship with 13 Indian crew including the captain off Agatti Islands, the Coast Guard said on Wednesday. Four crewmen, including an Indian, are reported missing.

Casualties are feared in the disaster that struck on the high seas around 9.45 p.m. on Tuesday. The cause of the incident, which occurred off the south-west coast of India, is not yet known, the official said.

The Coast Guard's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) at Mumbai said it received a distress call from the Singapore-flagged container cargo ship "Maersk Honam".

The vessel had left Singapore on March 1, on way to the Suez in Egypt, and had a crew of 27 including 13 Indians.

The captain is an Indian. The remaining crew are from the Philippines, Britain, Romania and Thailand.

At the time of the distress call, the ship carrying unspecified cargo in 7860 TEU containers was at a distance of around 650 NM (1,300 kms off west of Kochi, near the Agatti Isles in Lakshwadeep Islands.

Coast Guard Inspector General K.R. Nautiyal, the Coast Guard Commander (West), said: "Search Operations are on.

"It is our priority to save and rescue the four missing crew and also continue our efforts to salvage the vessel with assistance of specialised vessels, which is being arranged in co-ordination with the ship agency," he added.

The Indian Navy launched a Boeing P8i aircraft from Tamil Nadu to search for the missing crew. The MRCC alerted all merchant ships near the location.

A merchant navy ship, MV Als Cicero, which reached Maersk Honam at about 11.25 p.m., reported that the container vessel was consumed in flames.

The crew had earlier abandoned the ship as the fire spread beyond their control.

Mearsk Honam had 27 crew, out of which 23 have been rescued by Als Cicero. The remaining four include an Indian and others whose nationality is not clear.

Coast Guard ship Shoor, patrolling near Lakshadweep Islands, was diverted to assist the distressed vessel. Shoor is an offshore patrol vessel with sophisticated fire fighting equipment.
Tehran, March 8 : Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent claims that the Islamic republic is a "threat" to the region.

Israel cannot call Iran a threat to the Middle East, as Israel has driven the region to the brink of destruction, Press TV quoted Rouhani as saying during a cabinet session on Wednesday.

"Those who have over the past 70 years created tension, launched wars and caused destruction in the region and have committed genocide and caused Sabra and Shatila (massacre) are in no position to portray Iran as a threat," said Rouhani.

"Iran is no threat to anyone. Iran is (the pillar) of stability and security for the entire region," Rouhani said.

Also, he maintained that the development of Iran's missile program is aimed at safeguarding peace and security in the region, and "it will strongly defend its rights."

On Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Iran was responsible for "darkness descending" on the Middle East.

Netanyahu also said that "Iran is building an aggressive empire."

He made the remarks in Washington addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands had been disastrous to the Middle East region.

"Despite Netanyahu's claims, the fact is that illegal occupation lies at the heart of most of the calamities in our region," Zarif tweeted on Tuesday.

"Historically, occupying another's land has never been sustainable. This occupation, too - and the apartheid system that perpetuates it - will not last long," Zarif said.
Washington, March 8 : The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has stripped Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a human rights award over the ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslim minority, the media reported.

On Wednesday, the Museum announced that it was rescinding Suu Kyi's Elie Wiesel Award, which they presented to her in 2012, reports CNN.

In a letter to Suu Kyi, Museum Director Sara Bloomfield insisted that they "did not take this decision lightly", but were compelled to act in light of mass displacements and killings of the Rohingya attributed to Myanmar's security forces.

The Nobel Laureate has been widely criticized for not taking a stronger stand in support of the Rohingya following mass displacements and disproportionate violence, particularly given her global standing.

"As the military's attacks against the Rohingya unfolded in 2016 and 2017, we had hoped that you -- as someone we and many others have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights -- would have done something to condemn and stop the military's brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population," Bloomfield wrote in the letter.

Instead, Bloomfield concludes, Suu Kyi's political party "refused to cooperate with UN investigators, promulgated hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya community, and denied access to and cracked down on journalists trying to uncover the scope of the crimes in Rakhine state".

In November 2017, Suu Kyi was stripped of the Freedom of the City of Oxford award, which honoured her in 1997 for "her opposition to oppression and military rule in Burma".

Suu Kyi studied at Oxford University's St Hugh's College as an undergraduate. Her portrait in the college has since been removed.

The Elie Wiesel Award is named for the late Holocaust survivor and author who, like Suu Kyi, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, CNN reported.

More than 688,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August 2017.

Myanmar's military has repeatedly denied claims it deliberately attacked Rohingya civilians, insisting instead that it is combating a terrorist insurgency in the province.

The US State Department has labelled the violence in Myanmar as ethnic cleansing.
New Delhi, March 8 : Low cost carrier AirAsia India will focus on expanding its domestic network and increase its flight frequencies, before commencing international operations to Southeast Asia by early next year, the airline's chief, Amar Abrol, said.

Just a few days ago, the budget passenger carrier announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its network, effective March 17. It will also introduce new routes connecting Bengaluru, Kolkata, Goa, Indore and Nagpur.

In addition, the airline will operate daily flights connecting its two hubs -- Bengaluru and Kolkata -- which will become operational from March 25.

"We are not shying away from India. We will first commence flight operations to new domestic destinations and increase frequencies. In all we are looking at starting flights to four to five new cities in this year," Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Abrol told IANS in an interview.

"We are making the preparations for international operations but it will most probably take place by the first quarter of 2019," he added.

Currently, the airline operates to Bengaluru, Kochi, Goa, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Pune, New Delhi, Guwahati, Imphal, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Srinagar, Bagdogra, Ranchi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bhubaneshwar with a fleet of 16 A320 aircrafts.

When asked about the first international port of call, Abrol said: "It can be anywhere from India's eastern seaboard to Southeast Asia, particularly to Thailand and Malaysia."

According to Abrol, apart from adding more domestic flight frequencies, the airline is "steadily working" towards "break-even" by the year-end.

On the perils of high crude oil prices denting the airline's ability to offer lower fares, Abrol said AirAsia India will continue to offer "lowest possible fares" to its customers.

"We don't control oil prices. But we do control other aspects; we are good at one thing and that is to provide affordable flying. AirAsia India will continue to offer the lowest possible airfares," Abrol said.

The airline, like many of its peers, has been known to offer promotional airfare schemes. It recently started the "Big Sale" promotion with all-in one-way fares starting at Rs 799 for domestic travel.

AirAsia India is a joint venture between Tata Sons and Malaysia-based AirAsia, with a small stake held by two individuals. It commenced operations on June 12, 2014.

(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)
Hyderabad, March 8 : The Civil Aviation Ministry is hopeful of getting expression of interest (EoI) to buy Air India and Pawan Hans in the next couple of weeks.

Civil Aviation Secretary R.N. Choubey revealed this at the inaugural of the Wings India 2018 at Begumpet old airport here on Thursday. The theme of the biennial event is 'India - Global Aviation Hub'.

Choubey said India, which had only 395 aircraft in 65 years, is poised to add 900 aircraft and the orders have been placed.

The country added 56 airports in two years, contrary to the practice of opening one airport every year earlier.

"The challenge is we need to double the capacity of our airports every five years to sustain the additional passenger footfall.

"To beat the land constraint we hope to bring in wide bodied aircrafts like Airbus 380 and making airports more efficient," he added.

Choubey said India had witnessed the highest growth of 17.5 per cent in domestic aviation sector during the past three years in terms of Revenue Passenger Kilometres.

"If the oil prices are soft, we will grow at the rate of 15 per cent for the next 20 years," Choubey said. He urged the state governments to reduce VAT on aircraft fuel to encourage the aviation sector.

He said that under the UDAN scheme the Ministry will be renovating 400 airstrips and will keep the airfares low, enabling common man to fly.

Choubey said that the Ministry of Aviation has calculated that the airlines could sell eight million tickets every year with the addition of those who never travelled in a flight before the coming of the UDAN scheme.

Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju was to inaugurate the four-day event. He, however, did not turn up as he would be quitting the Narendra Modi cabinet following the Telugu Desam Party's decision over the Centre's refusal to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Telangana IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao has attributed the tremendous growth in the aviation sector to Ashok Gajapathi.

India's first ever e-cargo platforms Cargo-eGo a single window communication platform and Rigel an e-booking platform were also launched on the occasion.

As many as 125 exhibitors and 25 aircrafts were taking part in the event. Representatives from 25 states, 10 countries will partake in the discussions.
Mumbai, March 8 : A container ship off the Agatti island in the Arabian Sea continued to burn after more than 36 hours on Thursday, even as the condition of a rescued Thai sailor is reported to be "critical", an official said here.

The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has deployed a high speed interceptor boat from Vizhinjam Port to pick up and rush the Thai crewman to a hospital on Thursday.

Late on Tuesday, following a massive explosion, a fire broke out on the Singapore-flagged vessel, Maersk Honam, carrying a cargo of chemicals en route to Suez in Egypt, an ICG spokesperson said.

Since Wednesday, of the 27 crew members, including 13 Indians, 24 have been rescued. The Thai national, rescued by a foreign merchant vessel MV A.L.S. Ceres, has been in a serious condition.

The rescued sailors were en route to Thiruvananthapuram, around 90 nautical miles from the disaster site.

Four more, including an Indian sailor, are still missing and a maritime and aerial search with helicopters and an aircraft has been undertaken to trace them.

The ICG said that the intensity of the blaze, with flames leaping more than 25 metres into the air, was so strong that the high temperature has melted many of the containers on board.

A special fire fighting vessel, ICG Shoor has already reached the Maersk Honam and begun efforts to control the conflagration from which thick toxic fumes were emanating.

The ICG teams found some empty lifeboats floating in the vicinity but no sign of the missing crewmen so far.

The explosion and fire rocked the Maersk Honam, a 353m long and 54m wide ship carrying 7,860 containers around 1,300 km off the west of Kochi in Kerala, near the Agatti Isles in the Lakshadweep Islands, off the south-west coast of India.

Shortly thereafter, the crew had abandoned the Maersk Honam as the blaze went out of control and were rescued by MV A.L.S. Ceres after a few hours.
Hadiya, a 24-year-old Hindu woman from Kerala who converted to Islam comes out of the Supreme Court as the court allowed her to walk free from the custody of her parents and directed that ... Image Source: IANS

New Delhi, March 8 : The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the marriage of Hadiya with Shafin Jahan, setting aside a Kerala High Court order annulling their wedding.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, in a brief operative order, however, said that an NIA investigation into the criminal dimension into the case, if any, would continue.
New Delhi, March 8 : The Rajya Sabha was on Thursday adjourned till Friday after members of different political parties including the TDP and the AIADMK trooped near the Chairman's podium raking up issues of concern from their states.

Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien adjourned the House, minutes after it met at 2 p.m., as the protesting members gathered near the podium, shouting slogans and carrying placards. TDP and AIADMK members were also raising their demands.

The House witnessed similar scenes in the morning after a brief discussion on International Women's Day, forcing its adjournment till 2.

Soon after the House met in the morning, Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu greeted the women members and through them all the women across the country and allowed members to speak on issues concerning women.

Naidu expressed hope that the government will respect the sentiments of the House and take care of the unfulfilled agendas of women empowerment.

He said the Women's Reservation Bill should be accorded top priority and urged the political parties to refrain from politicising the issue.

He also expressed his concerns over gender equality, safety of women and discrimination against the girl child.

"With women constituting about 50 per cent of our population, social, economic and political empowerment of women, including providing reservation in Parliament and state legislatures, has to be accorded top priority to achieve rapid progress," Naidu said.

Congress member Ambika Soni urged the House to pass a resolution to provide 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies.

She was supported by fellow women members including Renuka Chowdhury, Kumari Shailja, Rajni Patil and K. Kanimozhi.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj mentioned the achievements of women in different fields and urged the members and the people of the country to take the pledge of women safety and providing justice to them.

"Women's Reservation Bill is important. But there are achievements by women even without reservation."

The Minister said India was a country where women had become President, Prime Minister and twice the Speaker of a House.

"Today, women are doing combat duty in the Army, flying planes in the air force. But there are crimes against women which bring shame to us. Which is why this day is one on which we should take a pledge to end such crimes," she said.

Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad supported the long pending demand for women reservation and sought stringent action against those who rape.

Speaking for the government, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel said the Modi government had taken up many programmes for women empowerment. But he gave no assurance on Women's Reservation Bill.

As soon as the debate ended, members from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu rushed towards the Chairman's podium.

Sensing the situation, Naidu adjourned the House till 2 p.m.

The Rajya Sabha has been witnessing ruckus on a range of issues being raised by the Congress, the TDP and the AIADMK.

The Budget session will conclude on April 6.
Canberra, March 8 : An Australian farmer found six cows lying dead in a row in what experts have attributed to a lightning strike, the media reported on Thursday.

The animals were discovered next to a barbed-wire fence on a paddock in Queensland last week, a few days after a heavy storm, reports the BBC.

The cows' owner, Derek Shirley, said he was "stunned".

Sabrina Lomax, a livestock expert from Sydney University, said she believed all six animals had been touching the fence when they died.

"In these sort of freak accidents, it was just an inconvenient placement of the animals in regards to the (lightning) strike," the BBC quoted Lomax, an animal behaviour and welfare researcher, as saying on Thursday.

"They would have died instantly from a massive heart attack."

Shirley, whose farm is about 70 km south of Brisbane, said he initially thought the cows had been poisoned.

In 2016, more than 300 reindeer were killed in a lightning storm in Norway.
Thiruvananthapuram, March 8 : The Congress party in Kerala is confronted with a long list of hopefuls for the Chengannur assembly bypoll which it views as a game-changer in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Chengannur, in Alappuzha district, lost its incumbent CPI-M legislator K.K. Ramachandran Nair, who passed away in January following an illness.

Although the Election Commission is yet to give any indication of the by-election, the three rival fronts have already started zeroing down on their nominees.

While the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Communist Party of India-Marxist have almost zeroed down on theirs, the Congress is finding its selection a "tough proposition" as the list of hopefuls was getting longer by the day.

The top state leadership of the Congress is now having a tough time as this is one election which the party cannot afford to lose.

Those desirous of contesting the poll include Vijaya Kumar, whose name has surfaced every time elections have come around in the past two decades but who has yet to make it to the list.

This time, along with him, his daughter's name Jyothi Vijayakumar has also come up. She is a much sought-after translator from English to Malayalam in public party meetings addressed by former party chief Sonia Gandhi and Congress President Rahul Gandhi, whenever they visit the state.

The name of Jyothi gained strength when she was spotted at the state party headquarters, especially when former Defence Minister A.K. Antony visited.

Among others is four-time party legislator from neighbouring assembly constituency M. Murali, who represented Mavelikara constituency for four successive terms before losing in the 2011 polls from Kayamkulam constituency. He did not contest the 2016 polls.

Another two-time legislator K. Sivadasan Nair, who lost in the 2016 polls from another neighbouring constituency -- Pathanamthitta -- is also trying hard to get the nod.

There are also half a dozen party veterans who have been for long pushing for a seat and they include senior leader Abey Kuriakose besides several energetic youth Congress leaders who are also in the fray.

Over the years, the Chengannur seat has always gone to the nominee of former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, as in Kerala all along, seats and posts are always divided on the basis of the factions in the party.

With just two factions, -- of Chandy and Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala -- in operation in the state, whosoever gets Chandy's nod would become the candidate.

When Chandy was asked whether he has made up his mind about who the candidate was going to be, his reply came through in his characteristic smile and a wink. Implying that, in his party no quick decisions are taken.

"If there is going to be a consensus in the candidature, then there will be just one name that will be put up to the party high command and would get the instant approval....

"But if there is not going to be a consensus from here and a list of names is given, then the final call will be made by Rahul Gandhi with the concurrence of Antony," said another senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be identified.

State party President M.M. Hassan, however, is hopeful that they will be able to zero down on the nominee in a day or two.
New Delhi, March 8 : The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the marriage of Kerala woman Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, with Shafin Jahan, setting aside a Kerala High Court order annulling their wedding.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said in a brief operative order that a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the criminal aspect of the case, if any, would however continue.

Shafin Jahan had challenged the High Court order that nullified the marriage.

On October 3, the Supreme Court had said it would examine whether the High Court could annul the marriage following a petition by her parents.

Hadiya, 24, earlier Akhila Ashokan, embraced Islam and married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim. Hadiya's father alleged that she was forcibly converted by groups with links to terrorist outfits.

Reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on Thursday, Hadiya's father Ashokan said he "respects the court order but will seek legal recourse on the verdict".

"The verdict has only cleared that her marriage is in order. The court has asked for the NIA probe to continue as the larger question we raised is that Shafin Jahan is a terrorist," he told the media at his house near Kottayam in Kerala.

"We accept the apex court's order as the law has to be respected. A father is in pain to hear that his daughter has gone with a terrorist. We still maintain the marriage was stage-managed... We will seek legal recourse," Ashokan added.
Singapore, March 8 : Asserting that there is a general atmosphere of intimidation that exists in India, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying an extremely nasty form of politics was taking root in the country and that "we will defeat him in the next election".

"We have been fighting the BJP and RSS since the beginning. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India. We will fight this nasty form of politics. We will defeat him in the next election. Very soon you will see India where everybody is loved," he told a gathering at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Gandhi was answering a question concerning the minorities during an interaction on the topic `India at 70.'

"Currently, there is a general atmosphere of intimidation that exists in India...We do not like an India where people are persecuted for what they eat, drink, wear, or think. Where we are running into trouble now is in the levels of violence that we are seeing in the country," Gandhi said.

"If you ask me what am I proud of country, it is the idea of plurality and freedom. That is being challenged...hate and anger are being used by some as a tool for dividing people and winning elections. Our vision, however, is one of bringing people together," he added.

The Congress chief, who is on a three day visit to Singapore and Malaysia as part of his outreach to the Indian diaspora, said normally in India people go to the judges for justice. "For the first time in my life I saw four SC judges actually go to the people for justice," he said.

Taking another dig at Modi, Gandhi said: "I feel no animosity towards anyone who opposes me. This is what makes me different from PM Modi."

He also attacked the BJP-led government over its record of creating jobs. "We have the highest record of unemployment in India today in the last eight years," he said.

The Congress leader gave people credit for India's success and said the Congress has contributed immensely to it.

Gandhi also took a dig at the BJP-led government's policies and decisions in Jammu and Kashmir. "In 2014 when I went to J and K I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can do to years and years of policy-making," Gandhi said.

He said the Congress-led UPA's policy in the state was about building bridges with the people and it worked to a plan for nine years.

He termed the BJP's foreign policy as tactical and episodic rather than strategic. On China, he said India has to have a peaceful and co-operative relationship with the neighbouring country.

Answering queries, he said the real magic in India can take place in the healthcare sector.

Gandhi said he did not buy the idea that India can't challenge and compete with China in manufacturing. "India can really get aggressive in the manufacturing space because technology is actually an enabler. I see a tremendous opportunity coming for India with 4th generation manufacturing," he said.

The Congress chief said knowledge is currently trapped in India within closed networks. "If we connect these networks together, the resulting skill development will be transformational."

To a query on International Women's Day on the pending Women's Reservation Bill, Gandhi said the Congress had sought to pass it but it was opposed by other parties.

"I think not having women play a role in politics is a tragedy," he said, adding that the foundation of women's empowerment in politics was laid with the Panchayati Raj institutions.

Gandhi earlier met Indian-origin CEOs of companies in Singapore and discussed jobs, investments and the prevalent economic conditions.

He said the Congress saw the society as a system that has to be kept in balance. "The BJP on the other hand is less concerned about peace and tranquility. We see very serious dangers of polarising society and risks arising from them," he said.

Apparently referring to the alleged 2G spectrum scam in which the BJP had consistently targeted the previous UPA government, Gandhi said the system was destabilised between 2012 and 2014.

"We faced a storm in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014 the system was destabilised and we saw the consequences. We have a clean slate now, and a new opportunity. We will present you with a new Congress party that envisions the values you were born with," he said.

Gandhi also met the CEO of Temasek Ho Ching and its board and discussed a plethora of issues including quantum computing, robotics, Chinese manufacturing and big data.

The Congress leader also paid homage to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and interacted with the people at the Singapore Indian Association.
Ankara, March 8 : Turkey and Iraq will carry out a joint cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.

"Even if the Afrin operation has not yet been completed, we have the capacity to carry out both operations simultaneously," Cavusoglu was quoted by the CNN Turk as saying in Vienna during his visit to Austria.

The operation may start after Iraq holds parliamentary polls scheduled for May, Xinhua quoted Cavusoglu as saying.

On January 20, Turkey had launched "Operation Olive Branch" to clear Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militants from Afrin in northwestern Syria.

The YPG is regarded by Turkey as the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and European Union.
New Delhi, March 8 : The government's thrust on organic farming, wherein biopesticides have a major role to play, will not just ensure chemical-free food but also increase the prospects of agricultural exports, a crop protection expert said on Thursday.

Bangalore-based Clement Peter said there was no proper guidelines on the use of chemical pesticides and insecticides, which had caused many deaths in the country.

"There is no proper guidance on the use of pesticides. Many toxic pesticides, banned in other countries, are being used by Indian farmers. There have been a lot of deaths on this count," Peter told IANS.

"Biopesticides are on the other hand safe -- There are no health hazards involved."

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), as many as 7,060 persons died in 2015 due to accidental intake of insecticides/pesticides. The number was 1,624 for food poisoning the same year.

Peter said he had so far published over 100 scientific papers on biological pest control, agrochemicals and plant protection.

The concerns raised by the US and European Union over higher levels of pesticide residues can be addressed by biopesticides, he said.

"There is a good demand for India agricultural commodities like grapes and coffee. These (foreign) countries are strict about pesticide residue levels. If they find it worrying, they reject our exports. To avoid such a situation, biopesticides will be of great help," he said.

There is even scope for the export of biopesticides as the government has been encouraging their production and promotion, the expert said.

The share of biopesticides use was just five per cent at present and it is expected to reach 10 per cent in 10 years.

However, the government schemes like Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana and awareness about organic food can bring good news for biopesticides, which are safe and chemical- free, Peter said.

"The government is giving encouragement. It is all set to replace chemical pesticides with biopesticides. It has made the registration process simple and offered subsidies as it wants farmers to go for safer crop protection practices," he said.
Shillong, March 8 : Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid will arrive in Meghalaya on Friday and visit Balat, a border town near the India-Bangladesh border, an official said on Thursday.

Hamid is on a five-day visit to India. He will later visit New Delhi to attend the International Solar Alliance (ISA) Summit to be held on March 11.

"President Hamid will visit Balat area where he set up a camp for Bangladeshi youths taking part in the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971," Peter S. Dkhar, the District Magistrate of East Khasi Hills, told IANS.

Balat is 74 km by road from Meghalaya's capital Shillong.

"Two helicopters of Indian Air Force will take President Hamid and his entourage to Balat and then to Shillong," the official said.

After his arrival in Shillong, Hamid is scheduled to visit the bungalow of Bidhan Chandra Roy (Bengal Chief Minister between 1948 and 1962) and Sidli House, where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore stayed during his third visit in 1927.

Hamid will spend the night at Meghalaya Raj Bhavan, wherein Governor Ganga Prasad will host dinner for the visiting guest.

Chief Minister Conrad Sangma will meet the Bangladesh President and hold discussions on business trade relation between Meghalaya and Bangladesh.
Kolkata, March 8 : The Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) is working on a plan to execute an "Extended Gates Project" at Balagarh in West Bengal's Hooghly district to facilitate faster and smoother movement of cargo, an official said on Thursday.

"With National Waterways-1 (NW-1) connecting Haldia with Varanasi and Allahabad (in Uttar Pradesh) coming up, we plan to build the cargo terminal at Balagarh, which is 40-45 km from Kolkata. The aim is to facilitate faster and smoother movement of containers, and also reduce congestion for north-bound cargo from Haldia and Kolkata docks using the NW-1," KoPT Chairman Vinit Kumar said.

"Since the KoPT has 300 acres of land at its disposal at Balagarh, it can also serve as an industrial zone, and we plan to invite the industry to set up their operations here."

A detailed project report will be prepared in three months, he said. "The facility will be a win-win situation for both industry and the port."

According to him, the proposed extended terminal gateway can serve as a storing hub for cargo from Haldia and Kolkata docks for their onward journey via waterways, or by road, and the facility will also bring down the turnaround time due to vehicular movement restrictions in the city. It will also decongest the city.

Extended Gates is a concept that helps reduce congestion and environmental impacts from heavy vehicles adjacent to ports and terminals.

Kumar said a RoRo (roll on, roll off) service is expected to commence shortly after successful trials.

"The service will ferry about 150-180 Howrah-bound trucks from Kiderpore docks. This is aimed at decongesting the city and overcoming vehicular movement restrictions during day time," he said at a session titled "West Bengal - Poised to Lead" organised by CII West Bengal as part of its Annual Day programme here.

The KoPT has already seen healthy response in use of waterways and expects greater traction when Haldia terminal by Inland Waterways Authority of India will be completed.

The port trust said its bulk cargo terminal project at Haldia and liquid cargo terminal at Salukhali, Haldia, will add to eight million tonne capacity and help quicker turnaround of vessels.
Kolkata, March 8 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday condemned the acts of vandalism on the statues of prominent personalities including Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee's bust here.

"Some may support Lenin, some may support Ho Chi Minh, some may support Karl Marx, some may support Syama Prasad Mookerjee. One may not agree with them but no one should show disrespect or destroy the statues," Banerjee said at a public meeting here.

"I condemn those who attacked Syama Prasad Mookerjee's statue here. I also condemn those who razed the Lanin statue in Tripura or vandalised the statue of Periyar in Tamil Nadu. This is not our culture," she said on the occasion of International Women's Day.

Banerjee asked people not to defame entire Bengal for an act by Maoist elements.

"Entire Bengal cannot be held responsible for what five or six Maoist boys have done. I deplore their attack on Mookherji's statue. They are not our pride, they are the shame of Bengal," she said.

Lashing out at the new BJP government in Tripura, Banerjee said she had no knowledge about anyone being arrested in that state for the vandalism while the police had arrested all seven vandals here.

She claimed that the BJP would be "finished" in the 2019 general elections.

"Can you (BJP) hear what Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra or Rajasthan is saying? Weren't the TDP, Shiv Sena your partners?" she asked.
New Delhi, March 8 : In a jolt to the BJP, the TDP on Thursday quit the Modi government with its two ministers - Ashok Gajapati Raju (Civil Aviation) and Y.S. Chowdhry (MoS Science and Technology) - tendering their resignation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who made a last-ditch attempt to stave off the development.

However, the two ministers said the party was still part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance and it was hopeful that the promises made to Andhra Pradesh at the time of its bifurcation like grant of special category status to the residual state and other financial demands would be met.

"The party took a decision last night that we should resign. We have resigned now. It was a matter of courtesy that we met the Prime Minister and presented our resignation," Raju and Chowdhry told the media after meeting Modi at his residence.

Their resignation came shortly after Modi spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu over telephone and reportedly urged him to reconsider pulling out of the NDA government. But Naidu apparently told him of his compulsions.

In a related development, the BJP pulled out its two ministers from the Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday morning.

The action by the TDP, which has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in Rajya Sabha, will have no impact on the stability of the Modi government which has sufficient numbers in parliament but will be seen as a big political setback because TDP is the first pre-poll ally to pull out of the Centre in nearly four years.

"We are continuing as part of the NDA. The problems are well known and we are hopeful that the committments made by the national parties at the time of bifurcation will be met. Everyone in Andhra Pradesh wants that the promises should be implemented. Solutions are being attempted. We are trying to get solutions. We hope solutions will come. We have resigned in a cordial atmosphere," Chowdhry said.

Both ministers said they know that the clock cannot be put back on the bifurcation but there are sentiments and emotions in the state which are to be addressed.

Asked what was the Prime Minister's response, they quoted him as saying it was unfortunate but he understood that it was a party decision. "I am with the state of Andhra Pradesh and for the people of Andhra Pradesh," Modi told them.

Chowdhry said it was wrong for the media to expect that they went to negotiate with the Prime Minister. "It is for various departments of the Centre to work for fulfilling the demands of Andhra Pradesh.

"The major sentimental issue has not been addressed well in time. At least the special package should have been implemented by putting time-lines. People of Andhra Pradesh are very emotional. One national party has deceived us and the other has cheated us," he said.

Asked about the deadline for the Centre to meet the TDP demands, he said, "16th Lok Sabha."

He also said the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act should not have been passed amid din in Parliament.

Chowdhry conceded that the Centre did meet some demands but Andhra Pradesh needed a lot of hand-holding because demands like special category status were major emotional and sentimental issues.

In his resignation letter, Raju expressed his gratitude for the cooperation extended to him as a member of council of ministers. Chowdhry, in his letter, said he had enjoyed working with Modi and appreciated the suppport given to him.

"However, with due respect to the prevailing public sentiment in my constituency as well as the circumstances that led to that situation, and in adherence to the decision taken by my party (TDP) president, I am hereby tendering my resignation as Union Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences," Chowdhry said.
New Delhi, March 8 : The CBI has decided to call diamond jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi to join an ongoing probe into the Rs 12,600 crore Punjab National Bank fraud after the absconding businessmen failed to appear before the agency on Wednesday.

A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official on Thursday said the agency received separate emails from Nirav Modi and Choksi on Wednesday expressing their inability to return to India.

"We shall be writing to them again to join the investigation," the official said.

He said the CBI had written to Nirav Modi and Choksi first on February 19 for an appearance on February 20. The second summon to Choksi was issued on February 23 asking him to appear on February 26. The agency then summoned both on February 28 to appear on March 7.

Nirav Modi and Choksi have both responded to the CBI, saying they won't be able to join the investigation because their passports have been suspended.

The CBI official said in their email replies the accused have not shared the "details of the countries where they are currently based" and also not "contacted the nearest Indian embassy".

On February 24, the government revoked their passports.

Meanwhile, the CBI on Thursday carried out searches at over eight locations of the officials of Choksi's Gitanjali Group in Mumbai and Chennai.

"The searches in Chennai and Mumbai were carried on the leads that we gathered during ther questioning of the arrested" bank officials and others allegedly involved in the fraud.

The agency has arrested over 19 persons so far. The Enforcement Directorate, separately probing the case, has attached properties of both the businessmen worth Rs 6,000 crore across the country.
Chandigarh, March 8 : Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal said on Thursday that a high-level delegation of the party will meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti soon to apprise them of the problems being faced by the Sikh community in J&K.

In a statement here, Badal said the delegation will urge both the leaders to get these issues resolved soon.

Badal gave this assurance to a visiting delegation of Sikhs from the troubled state in New Delhi.

The delegation pointed out that the Jammu and Kashmir government was completely ignoring the Sikh community.

They said the Sikh youth from the state were excluded from the Prime Minister's employment package for non-migrant Kashmiri Pandits, the Anand Marriage Act was not yet implemented there and the state did not have a Minorities' Commission.

The delegation said the Sikh community was facing many serious problems, including non-recognition as a minority community in the state because of which they were not getting the facilities meant for the minorities neither were they getting any benefit in government recruitments.
Palo Alto (California), March 8 : In an effort to empower womens voices, HP Inc on International Womens Day released a short film "Paro" shot in Kolkata and introduced multiple social impact programs.

"Paro" follows a girl's journey as she discovers her passion for storytelling.

The company said its other programs were rooted in the belief that technology can be a democratising force in telling and sharing stories that matter.

"At HP we are celebrating the women who drive us forward and empowering the next generation of female leaders," Dion Weisler, President and CEO of HP Inc said in a statement released on Thursday. "Together we must take action and propel the industry forward through diversity and inclusion. This is more than a week to celebrate women, it's an ongoing movement," Weisler added.

"Paro" is produced by HP Studios, and was created to inspire school children to celebrate their differences and show how technology can reinvent and make life better.

To encourage the creation of more stories like "Paro", HP is partnering with Girl Rising -- a global campaign for girls' education and empowerment -- on a seven-month story-driven challenge.

The challenge will run from April through June 2018, with winners announced on International Day of the Girl Child on October 11.

"We believe powerful stories -- told vividly and authentically -- can change minds and spark action. International Women's Day is a perfect reminder to always inspire action and stories are a perfect vehicle to touch hearts," said Antonio Lucio, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at HP Inc.

HP has also launched 'Stories of Advocacy', a partnership with Women Deliver and its Young Leaders program leading up to the 2019 Women Deliver conference. The company will provide support and technology to drive the young leaders' advocacy platforms forward.

A third program is Disney and HP's co-sponsored 'Warriors Who Code Challenge', an all-day coding platform with NGO Black Girls Code to celebrate the premiere of the film "A Wrinkle in Time".
Bhopal, March 8 : The Madhya Pradesh government has set up a fund to provide pension to spinsters above 50 years, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced on Thursday.

Addressing a gathering here on the occasion of the International Women's Day, Chouhan, who was accompanied by his wife Sadhana Singh, said the government would set up the "Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh", which will be used to give pension to elderly unmarried women in the state.

"Why should women be honoured on just one day, why not every day? In India, women have been considered to be Godessess since time immemorial. Even Gods are known to have sought help of 'Shakti' in times of extreme crisis," he pointed out.

The Chief Minister said that a number schemes aimed at women empowerment were going on in the state.

"Several programmes have been launched in the state for the welfare of girls and women. The government will set up Mukhyamantri Mahila Kosh, which will be utilised for women empowerment and provide for pension to unmarried women above the age of 50 years," he added.
Mumbai, March 8 : A designated TADA Court on Thursday sent to police custody absconder Mohammed Farooq Yasin Mansoor alias Farooq Takla, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and a close aide of mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, to police custody till March 19.

Extradited from Abu Dhabi, following a request made by India last year, the accused, who eluded the law for a quarter century, was finally arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at the Delhi Airport around 5.15 a.m. and later brought to Mumbai.

Farooq Takla - against whom there were several non-bailable warrants of arrest and for whom the InterPol had issued a Red Corner Notice way back in 1995 - was tracked to the UAE where he was believed to be holed up.

At least 257 people were killed and over 700 injured and properties worth crores of rupees were destroyed in the March 12, 1993 blasts, the 25th anniversary of which falls next Monday.

In the remand plea, the CBI's Deputy Superintendent of Police of the Special Task Force, Shiv Kumar, said the accused was "deeply involved in the criminal conspiracy to commit terrorist acts" including carrying out the serial explosions that day.

The CBI said Farooq Takla was an active conspirator in the conspiracy along with other accused including Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and Anees Ibrahim Kaskar.

He provided logistics support to at least five other co-accused like arranging their air tickets, documentation and their accommodation in Dubai from where they were to travel to other places for getting arms and ammunition and sending them from Dubai to Pakistan for training in handling explosives, said CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal.

Interestingly, Farooq Takla's arrest comes just two days after well-known criminal lawyer Shyam Keswani reiterated in Thane that Dawood Ibrahim was reportedly ready to return to India and face trial but the Indian government had rejected some of his preconditions.

Considered one of the biggest terror strikes in the world, as many as 13 locations were strategically targeted for their economic or political or commercial importance.

They included the Air India Building, the Bombay Stock Exchange, Zaveri Bazaar, Sahar International Airport, Centaur Hotel (Juhu), Centaur Hotel (Airport), the now demolished Hotel SeaRock, the Century Bazar and other major sites.

Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy on Thursday congratulated National Security Advisor Ajit Doval for the success in getting back Farooq Takla to face trial.

"We need to compliment NSA Doval... Dawood not far off?" Swamy tweeted.
New Delhi, March 8 : The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday said a day-long "Delhi Trade Bandh" will be held on March 13 to protest against the sealing drive across the national capital.

"The sealing of commercial establishments in Delhi is gaining momentum, as a consequence of which the Delhi traders are highly perturbed. They have called for a day-long trade bandh on March 13 to lodge a strong protest against sealing drive," CAIT said in a statement here.

The decision was taken at a meeting of trade leaders of Delhi, convened by the CAIT, which was attended by leaders of more than 250 prominent trade associations of the city.

The CAIT said traders demanded presentation of a bill in the current Parliament session by the Centre to put an end to the sealing of business establishments operating from residential premises.

"... on the other hand, the Delhi Chief Minister should convene a one-day special session of the Assembly and get passed a bill to stop the sealing drive in Delhi and forward the same to the Union government for approval," it said.

Earlier, the CAIT had declared that markets in the national capital would remain open till midnight on March 8 as a mark of protest against the sealing drive.

On February 2-3, the traders union had called for a 48-hour 'Delhi Trade Bandh' over the sealing drive, which CAIT dubbed as "in violation of statutory provisions of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act".
New Delhi, March 8 : With vows to close the gender gap in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday led the nation in marking International Womens Day -- a day to celebrate and refresh commitments towards social and economic emancipation of nearly half of the world population.

Across the country, a host of events were held, new programmes launched and women achievers awarded to recall the nation's commitment towards women's empowerment and ending gender disparity.

The Prime Minister marked the day with a visit to Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district, which was in the news recently for a remarkable transformation in closing the gender gap.

According to 2011 census, the ratio was 837 girls per 1,000 boys. Now it is 955 girls per 1,000 boys -- the best in the state.

Modi, addressing a large gathering, comprising mostly women, called for a mass movement to protect the girl child in India and expanded his government's flagship "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP)" campaign from the existing 161 to cover all districts of the country.

The Prime Minister said it was about the mindset and that society needed to unitedly battle the problem of the disturbing sex ratio in the country.

"This cannot happen with the government budget alone. This will happen when there is a mass movement. People are to be educated, made to understand. It is unfortunate that we have to plead with people to save the girl child, and use funds from budget separately for creating awareness. Nothing can be more disgraceful for a society than unequal sex ratio.

"We have to make it a revolution that number of girls taking birth should be equal to that of boys, the education provided to boys should also be given to girls, then only we can move ahead."

Modi lamented how preference for male children had made 21st century India worse than what it was in the 18th century when a girl child was at least allowed to take birth before being drowned in a milk tub.

"Today, the daughter is killed in the womb without either the mother or the daughter seeing each other's face."

As Modi spoke about bridging the gender gap, his parliament colleagues, cutting across party lines, raised the long pending demand of Women's Reservation Bill -- which seeks to reserve one-third of all seats for women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assemblies.

The bill was introduced in parliament in May 2008. In 2010, the then UPA government adopted it in the Rajya Sabha to keep it alive on the legislative agenda. The bill, however, failed to get passed in the Lok Sabha.

Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu, also the Vice President, suggested that the government should accord the stalled legislation the top priority.

"With women constituting about 50 per cent of our population, social, economic and political empowerment of women, including providing reservation in Parliament and state legislatures, has to be accorded top priority to achieve rapid progress," Naidu said.

MPs, particularly women, spoke in favour of the bill, urging the government to ensure its passage.

President Ram Nath Kovind presented the Nari Shakti Puraskar to women from fields as diverse as sports, art, social work, science, conservation, agriculture, education, security, handicrafts and defence.

Many of those awarded have themselves faced severe discrimination and tragedies in their lives but have still risen above these to empower themselves and help others along their journeys of empowerment, according to a statement. Some 39 women received certificates and cash prize of Rs 1 lakh each.

Away from the power corridors, industry lobby Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) said it has tied-up with NITI Aayog for the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP).

The initiative will provide women entrepreneurs a platform where various stakeholders will connect to give a boost to their initiatives.

Commemorating International Women's Day, Skill India said it has transformed lives of over 35 lakh women through skill training, empowering them for better and secured livelihood over the last three years.

To mark the day in Bengaluru, Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal announced that Banaswadi railway station in the city will be run entirely by women.

"This is the fifth all-women-run railway station in the country, in which all activities at the station will be carried out by women," Goyal told the media.

Apart from this, other all-women-run railway stations are located in Matunga in Mumbai, Gandhinagar in Jaipur, Chandragiri in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district and Ajni in Nagpur, Maharashtra.
New Delhi, March 8 : The Supreme Court on Thursday restored the controversial marriage of Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, with Shafin Jahan, setting aside a Kerala High Court order annulling their wedding.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said: "Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law."

But the court said the National Investigation Agency (NIA) would continue its probe into the criminal dimension of the case, if any.

"We clarify that the investigation by the NIA in respect of any matter of criminality may continue in accordance with law," the court said.

Pronouncing a brief operative order after lunch, Chief Justice Misra said the high court should not have annulled the marriage, following a Habeas Corpus petition, by exercising its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Misra said: "We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between Shafin Jahan and Hadiya."

The order also referred to Hadiya personally appearing before the Supreme Court on November 27 and admitting to her marriage with Shafin Jahan, who had challenged the High Court order that nullified the marriage.

Hadiya, 24, embraced Islam and married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim. Hadiya's father alleged that she was forcibly converted by groups with links to terrorist outfits.

In the course of the arguments on Thursday, senior counsel Kapil Sibal, appearing for Shafin Jahan, submitted nine propositions of law to be addressed before looking into the case on facts.

He said that the right to choose a life partner is part of right to life and the marriage can only be dissolved by any one of the two in wedlock.

Asserting that in certain cases the high court can annul a marriage, senior counsel Shyam Divan, appearing for Hadiya's father Asokan K.M., said "Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan was to defeat the proceedings before the high court".

He said that all this was backed by well-oiled machinery which was alluring and trafficking people to Syria.

Observing that they (the couple) can't go without the passport and the government had powers to prevent them from leaving the country, the court asked if NIA investigation has found any offence against the couple.

The court made it clear that the NIA could continue with its investigation but without interfering in their married life.

On October 3, the Supreme Court had said it would examine whether the high court could annul the marriage following a petition by her parents.

Reacting to the Supreme Court verdict on Thursday, Hadiya's father said he "respects the court order but will seek legal recourse on the verdict".

"The verdict has only cleared that her marriage is in order. The court has asked for the NIA probe to continue as the larger question we raised is that Shafin Jahan is a terrorist," he told the media at his house near Kottayam in Kerala.

"We accept the apex court's order as the law has to be respected. A father is in pain to hear that his daughter has gone with a terrorist. We still maintain the marriage was stage-managed... We will seek legal recourse," Asokan said.
Gandhinagar, March 8 : Suspended Gujarat cadre IAS officer Pradeep Sharma was granted bail by the Gujarat High Court on Thursday in a money laundering case being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), his lawyer said.

Rejecting the central government's request for a stay on the bail till it approaches the Supreme Court, Justice A.J. Desai ordered for Sharma's release on bail, advocate H.B. Champavat said.

Sharma was arrested on July 31, 2016, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after the Supreme Court vacated an interim stay on his arrest.

A special PMLA court had denied bail to Sharma on January 4, after which he approached the High Court.

Sharma got bail as the Supreme Court had read down Section 45 of the PMLA for laying down stringent bail conditions.

Based on the cases lodged by CID (Crime) and Anti-Corruption Bureau of the state government, the ED had registered a case against Sharma.

The cases relate to an alleged sanction of government land at cheaper rate to Welspun India Limited and its group companies Welspun Power and Steel and Welspun Gujarat Style Rohran in Kutch district as part of the suspected quid pro quo.

According to the probe agency, Sharma had allegedly sanctioned the land to Welspun in 2004 when he was the Collector and Chairman of District Land Evaluation and Pricing Committee of Kutch. This allegedly caused a loss of Rs 1.2 crore to the state exchequer.

The ED alleged that the IAS officer received Rs 22 lakh in his wife Shyamal P. Sharma's name in lieu of clearing the land sale.

The ED's charge sheet names five others who allegedly helped in transferring this money into Sharma's wife's account through hawala channels.

In his plea in the Supreme Court earlier, Sharma had claimed he was being victimised by the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat and had sought a CBI probe. The plea was rejected by the apex court.
New Delhi, March 8 : French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the Rafale deal with India was a win-win approach and its details could not be revealed for commercial reasons.

"The negotiation was a win-win approach. Your government made very good negotiations in the interest of India," Macron said in an interview to India Today news channel ahead of his maiden visit to the country.

"You have commercial agreement and you have competitors. And these competitors are not supposed to know some details of the deal because it will not be good for the company for commercial reasons."

The interests of people of India were "well defended" by the Indian government "from economic point of view and strategic point of view" in the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets, Macron added.

"It is a very good agreement. It is for your security because it is best aircraft. And it is best way to be protected in the current environment," he said.

About the demand by the opposition in India to disclose details of Rafale deal, Macron said: "In our alliance between Indian and France, we don't reveal some information when they are sensitive for business reasons. The absence of answers on some technical issues is due to commercial agreements for the interest of different companies."

"You have some discussions to be organised by the Indian government and (it) reveals some details of the deal, they consider which could be revealed to the opposition and Parliament. I am not the one to interfere in such issues. But definitely you have commercial sensitivity."
Guwahati, March 8 : The Assam government on Thursday accorded a warm welcome to the President of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, Md. Abdul Hamid, on his arrival in Guwahati.

The President of Bangladesh, who is on a three-day visit to Assam and Meghalaya, arrived at the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Borjhar near Guwahati.

On his arrival, Assam Governor Prof. Jagdish Mukhi, state PWD Minister Parimal Suklabaidya, state Irrigation Minister Ranjit Dutta and Assam Chief Secretary T.Y. Das received the Bangladesh President with traditional Assamese 'gamosa' and bouquet.

Later in the evening, the visiting President along with his entourage paid a visit to the Kamakhya temple. He also enjoyed the scenic beauty of river Brahmaputra boarding cruise vessel 'Al-Fresco Grand'.
Kolkata, March 8 : Apparently wooing the Congress for the upcoming panchayat polls in West Bengal, state CPI-M leadership on Thursday said they would join hands with any force that is ready to be a part of the bigger platform to counter the attacks of the BJP and the Trinamool Congress.

"The CPI-M will fight the panchayat elections in Bengal with rest of the Left Front members, other leftist forces outside the Front and anyone who is ready to counter the attacks and atrocities of the BJP and the Trinamool Congress in line with our party ideology," Surjya Kanta Misra, who was re-elected as CPI-M state secretary, said at the end of party's 25th state conference here.

To a question on whether the Congress can be a part of the anti-BJP-Trinamool platform, that the LF spearhead is planning to float, Misra said: "It can be anyone."

"If they agree to our ideology and our agenda of protest, they can come. There has been many such platforms where forces have united without a political banner," he said.

However, he refused to confirm any electoral understanding with the Congress, stating things like that would be decided in the upcoming party Congress in Hyderabad.

Dubbing the BJP and state ruling party Trinamool Congress as two sides of the same coin, Misra said it would be impossible to combat the rise of the BJP and the RSS in West Bengal without the downfall of Trinamool regime.

"The Trinamool and the BJP are like a two-headed snake. They can have two faces but their heart is one. Trinamool Congress' political stand here is helping in BJP's ascendancy. Without the fall of this government it would be impossible to stop BJP-RSS here," he said.

Terming RSS as the biggest threat, the veteran left leader said the Centre is conducting a "four-pronged attack" on the country.

"There has been a four-pronged attack on people's life and livelihood, democracy, secular structure of the society and country's integrity through internal and external policies taken up by the Centre."

About CPI-M's resolution in the state committee meet, Misra said the party has decided not be content with just protests but would look for alternative policies for the fulfilment of their demands and be prepared to face "unforeseen incidents and situations".
Jalalabad (Afghanistan), March 8 : At least five Taliban militants, including their local commander, were killed and three others wounded during an operation by Afghan intelligence special forces in Nangarhar province, an official said.

"Special Operations Forces of National Directorate of Security (NDS) raided to a hideout of Taliban militants in Sorkh Road district on Wednesday night, as a result five insurgents including their local commander were killed and three others wounded," Ataullah Khogiani, spokesman for provincial governor, told Xinhua news agency.

During the operation, 12 suspected militants were also arrested, he said, adding the security personnel also eliminated a vehicle, four motorbikes and an ammunition cache.
Lucknow, March 8 : BSP chief Mayawati on Thursday demanded registration of sedition cases against miscreants vandalising statues of various known personalities across the country.

In a statement issued by her Bahujan Samaj Party, the former Chief Minister also demanded that the central and state governments ensure no harm comes to statues of eminent persons at various public places, including parks.

The Dalit leader demanded that such statues be protected.

She claimed that some divisive and casteist forces were out to wreck havoc on the social fabric of the country and demanded that such people be brought to book at the earliest.

She mentioned the damage to Russian leader Lenin's statue in Tripura, social activist Periyar (Erode Venkata Ramasamy) in Tamil Nadu and similar such incidents in other parts of the country.

The BSP President said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should not restrict himself to issuing statements of displeasure over such incidents but direct governments and authorities concerned to "ensure at all costs" that there is no recurrence of such crime.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath earlier in the day shot off a missive to all District Magistrates and police officials to ensure that incidents like damage to a statue of Dalit icon Dr B.R. Ambedkar in Khurd village in Meerut were not repeated.
Kolkata, March 8 : The expression of interest (EoI) has been invited from investors for acquisition of assets of the city-based Nicco Corporation and the reserve price for sale has been set at Rs 231.48 crore, according to the document.

The Kolkata bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in October 2017 had ordered for "liquidation" proceedings against the debt-laden Nicco Corporation Ltd after its lenders voted against the resolution plan.

"Regulation 32 of the regulations permits the liquidator to sell the assets of the Company in a slump sale... the liquidator invites EoI for the acquisition of the sale assets, by way of slump sale," the document said.

It is to be expected that the applicants acquiring the assets of the company will endeavour to run the concern or business of company after acquisition of the sale assets, it said.

Slump sale implies that all assets will be sold as a single unit.

The company is one of the oldest cable manufacturing companies in India engaged in the business of manufacturing and marketing various types of power, electrical and specialty cables.

According to the document, company's manufacturing unit in West Bengal's Shyamnagar, Odisha's Baripada, and office spaces in Kolkata and Mumbai, among others, are listed for sale.

The company's 25 per cent holding in Nicco Parks and Resorts Ltd (NPRL) is also listed for sale but the sale of NPRL shares is subject to the rights of West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation Ltd and West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Limited under the joint venture agreement.

In the sale process, investors can submit bids for acquiring the assets including the 25 per cent share in NRPL or excluding it.

"The reserve price of the sale assets as a whole exclusive of all taxes, levies, duties or any registration fees or any other fees/ charges is as (i) where the bid pertains to the sale assets excluding the NPRL shares, the reserve price shall be Rs. 184.98 crore; (ii) where the bid pertains to the sale assets including NPRL shares, the reserve price shall be Rs. 231.48 crore," the document said.
New Delhi, March 8 : Demanding CBI inquiry in alleged irregularities and corruption in SSC examination, a group of women students protesting outside the SSC headquarters in south Delhi on Thursday called for nationwide protests by wearing black clothes to examination centres on Friday.

On the 10th day of their protest, the women candidates tied their hands and mouths with black ribbons outside the CGO complex and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into all examinations conducted by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC).

"We demand an investigation into the deep-rooted corruption in recruitment for government jobs through the SSC. And from day one of the protest, the government has either been dodging the demand or trying to mislead the agitating students," a protester Ferdoz told IANS.

"We are getting support from various states on social media platforms and through other channels," she said.

"The students will hold another protest against SSC's decision to reschedule the exam cancelled on February 21 and rescheduled for Friday. The protesting students have given a call to all candidates appearing in the exams to wear black dresses to the examination centres to protest against corruption in the SSC," she added.
New Delhi, March 9 : Hoping to use private pathology labs to reach out to people, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Thursday licensed a private lab for 27 genetic tests it has developed over years.

Officials said that the CSIR's Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) has entered into partnership with Dr Lal PathLabs, a private chain of labs, and licensed it with technology.

These tests are expected to be launched over the period of one year.

"Genetic diseases, though are individually rare, cumulatively affect a large number of individuals -- an estimated 70 million Indians.

"It is anticipated that the wide network of Dr Lal PathLabs would enable easy access to the genetic tests to large number of patients across the country and potentially enable wide utility of genetic tests by clinicians," said a statement from the CSIR.

According to the CSIR, mostly an appropriate diagnosis is not arrived at due to lack of general awareness on genetic diseases, lack of access and high cost of appropriate genetic diagnostic services.

"It is estimated that an average patient with rare disease has to go through multiple healthcare visits and diagnostic tests and takes approximately seven years to arrive at a precise diagnosis," the CSIR said.

Genomics, however, look at the individual case and figures out a personalise case for better treatment.

It added that so far through the CSIR-IGIB's previous efforts, over 14,000 genetic tests have been carried out, benefiting over 4,000 needy patients from across the country through a clinical network encompassing over 25 major medical centres spanning the length and breadth of the country.

"CSIR has a major focus on R&D pertaining to Affordable Health Care... The tests developed and licensed to Dr Lal PathLabs would provide a much needed support system to the doctors in diagnosing the identified genetic disorders," said Dr Girish Sahni, Director General, CSIR.
Chicago, March 9 : A mural painted by artist Alexander Tadlock on a wall in Chicago urges Mexican immigrants living in the US to exercise their right to vote from abroad in this year's general elections.

"Mexico is where you are," the mural in La Villita neighbourhood says.

The 27-year-old Tadlock was commissioned by the Mexican National Electoral Institute (INE) to travel to the Windy City and paint the mural, Efe reported.

"It's a mural intended to remind Mexican immigrants that they can vote from abroad, to inform them about the proposals and who the candidates are," Tadlock said on his tenth day of work in Chicago.

"We want to have people informed, aware that the immigrants themselves can make a difference, that they, with their vote, can change life in their own country," Tadlock, a Mexico City resident, said.

The mural, 8-meter-long and four meters tall depicts four hands raised, two of them with the thumbs up sign, another with a clenched fist and the last holding an open book.

"The hands mean to send the message that only education and arts can change a society," Tadlock said of his mural, which is part of an INE project that has also covered walls in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Los Angeles, March 9 : German designer Karl Lagerfeld says he calls his fashion industry girl gang the "Choupettes".

"My favourite girl of the moment is a Dutch girl called Luna," Lagerfeld told Vogue magazine.

The model has recently become a regular on the catwalk for Chanel, for whom she has starred alongside Grace Elizabeth in a spring/summer 2018 campaign, reports femalefirst.co.uk.

Lagerfeld also revealed the nickname of his favourite models was inspired by his beloved feline companion.

"There are people I call my Choupettes. She, and the daughter of Vanessa Paradis, Lily-Rose Depp, they are my Choupettes," he added.

Lagerfeld has also recently collaborated with up-and-coming star Kaia Gerber, who is the 16-year-old daughter of catwalk icon Cindy Crawford.
Tel Aviv, March 9 : The US and Israeli military officials said on Thursday they have launched a month-long joint military drill that simulates a missile attack on Israel.

The "Juniper Cobra 2018" exercise was launched on Sunday, Xinhua quoted a military spokesperson as saying. He added that it was the largest drill of its kind.

The biennial drill is jointly held by the Israeli military and the US European Command (USEUCOM).

As part of the exercise, some 2,500 US troops routinely based in Europe were deployed in Israel as well as about 2,000 Israeli Aerial Defence troops, logistics units, medical forces and other Israel Defence Forces (IDF) units.

"For more than four weeks, they will train shoulder to shoulder, the same as we will fight in times of crisis. It's not just about an exercise," Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, Israel's air defence commander, said.

The exercise simulates a scenario in which Israel is being attacked on several fronts, including by precision-guided ballistic missiles from Iran.

Two US vessels arrived in Israel to participate in the drill. On Tuesday, the USS Iwo Jima took position off the coast of Israel. On Thursday, the Mount Whitney command and control ship docked at the Haifa port, the spokesperson said.

Aboard it, there were more than 500 servicemen and women, half of them from the senior command of the US sixth fleet.

It is the ninth Cobra exercise that has taken place.

A military notice said that the participators are performing together computerized simulations of a variety of rocket threat scenarios in different regions.

The simulations include testing of the anti-ballistic missile system Arrow, Iron Dome anti-rocket system, the medium-range interceptor Patriot missile system, and David's Sling, which was designed to intercept medium-range missiles from southern Lebanon's Hezbollah militants and became operational in April 2017.
Press giant manroland is launching the Varioman, a new flexible packaging press, and is premiering the device at a customer event in Augsberg, Germany.

The pilot press, called the Varioman f:line is an offset gravure hybrid press, which the company says prints films and provides mature design, system integration and comprehensive service and maintenance packages. The company says the device embodies the benefits of varied technologies and processes and simultaneously provides benefits, with high substrate and production flexibility and process integration, making for faster, more efficient and cost-reduced packaging printing.

The Varioman is said by manroland to be able to print on substrates including films or paper from 10 to 300 m. The product range is said to enable solutions for different web widths and a production speed of up to 400 m/min. Modular offset printing units offer highest flexibility. The company says due to the proven sleeve technology, the printing unit is format-variable and job changes can be carried out quickly.

The company says the new press shows its complete performance when printing films and paper with high grammages, with the variable sleeve offset printing units being the base in circumference and width. They supposedly can be individually designed for printing films and combined with several other components. The company claims that thanks to a combination of variable sleeve offset printing units, a corona treatment, EB- or UV-drying and gravure printing units with dryers, different films can be printed in high quality and variability.

[Related: Goss and manroland to merge]

Alexander Wasserman, CEO of manroland says on the printers world debut, We are happy about the keen interest for the new Varioman. The event was a great success. We are moving on with the important and considerable discussions that came up at the event. We will use this for constantly meeting the market demands and the demands of our customers to be and stay the high performing business partner for the printing industry even in the future.

With the Varioman, we want to provide a new production system to our customers  at the first configuration level for flexible packaging printing, The market asks for press systems that meet the demands for brand differentiation, enhanced comfort and additional packaging sizes. Therefore, we have developed the Varioman."

The company claims the devices integrated presetting- and control systems from manroland web systems considerably reduce waste rates  especially in comparison to press lines without these control systems. The device is said to have quick finishing is enabled by a long-lasting drying of the offset ink and electron Beam Systems help to make photo initiators, as used for UV-colour, redundant. Additionally, manroland says the printing press can be additionally equipped with UV-drying.

A main focus according to manroland web systems is the efficient networking of the entire printing room. The company says the Varioman can make use of its drive-, operation- and workflow management system Pecom-X, which integrates the different components from manroland web systems to one systems solution. This supposedly allows for steady reporting and controlling, making the networked production of the packaging press guarantees a faster process  from the packaging design up to printing the product.

The company says customers can benefit from calculable costs and a 24/7 access to the remote maintenance system TeleSupportCentre  over the entire lifecycle of the press along with wear- and spare parts delivery being provided from its online store.

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Melbourne printer Southern Colour now has what it calls one of the most automated platemaking lines in the southern hemisphere, with no human interaction apart from bringing in unexposed plates on pallets.

The process uses Fujifilm plates, Heidelberg printers and Nela technology, with one employee being present in the plateroom, ready to replace the 660-plate skid when it runs low. Southern Colours Heidelberg XL 106-10 colour and XL 106-6 colour with coater operate for 24 hours four days a week, along with 12 hour shifts for the other two days. Around 42 plates per hour are run through the companys Suprasetter and Superia ZAC processor.

The company says a constant uninterrupted plate supply is called for to keep up with the Autoplate changing, on-the-fly register control and piped-in Technotrans/ToyoInk automatic ink delivery for the presses. The entire Prinect workflow is JDF-driven, integrated with Heidelbergs Business Manager and Job ID information is Data Matrix (QR) coded and tracked throughout the entire production workflow.

Southern Colour decided to make the step towards fully automated plate production at the drupa exhibiton two years ago, with the new XL 1-6s already having been ordered by managing director Rod Dawson at drupa 2012.

[Related: Fujifilm swallows Xerox in US$6.1bn deal]

Allan Gardiner, prepress manager at Southern Colour says, We happened to see an Auto Pallet Loading device made by German company Graphoteam, on the Heidelberg stand. It was automatically lifting plates from a skid, removing interleaves and feeding them into a Suprasetter CtP device which in turn transported the exposed, punched plates into a Fujifilm lo-chem processor and onwards to Nela bending. What impressed us was the complete absence of human intervention, apart from removing empty pallet skids of plate and placing a fresh one ready for uninterrupted supply. All this was at a rate of 42 B1 plates per hour.

Gardiner says there has been a reduction in plate scratching, due to less human intervention with the Graphoteam APL automating slip sheet removal and plates being suction-fed to the Suprasetter.

The company says its offset litho plate production can rise to 8,000 sqm or more per month in peak times. Southern Colour also says it manages colour precisely to ISO 12647-2 standard, and additionally extended-gamut custom profiles for specific clients such as the Dulux Group, who awarded the company the Supplier of the Year trophy last year.

Southern Colour says the six month project has resulted in an integration of technologies that has also delivered significant environmental benefits in that the Suprasetter 106 is certified CO neutral and the Fujifilm Superia system delivers savings in water, energy, emissions, labour and chemistry, a ZAC lo-chem processor for the Superia LH-PJE positive working plates. The ZAC system is said to use a fraction of the chemistry and water of the previous Agfa-based system by accurately sensing developer bath conductivity and pH and injecting only the exact amount of replenisher, rather than a fixed dose every so often.

[Related: Blue Star inhales Oxygen]

Gardiner says, We prefer to see a latent image on the plate and the positive Fujifilm plates provide this for quick recognition. Weve noticed a reduction in plate processor maintenance and down-time for cleaning and chemistry changes. The Fujifilm ZAC system runs a lot cleaner and therefore requires only routine service calls about every three months. This in turn increases productivity and uptime of the entire system.

Our press operators receive plates on a trolley that are in the correct colour sequence, for the correct press and for the next job shown on their production screen and ready to be queued in the Autoplate loader. If, on a long-run, a plate wears out the printer can easily order a replacement on-screen. The system then knows what plate/s are needed, sends the data to the plate line and within minutes the replacement plate is stacked and ready for loading. If this happens at 2am on a night shift, its no problem as there is no need for people to be present in the plateroom.

Throughout the whole process, the job I.D. is there and constantly updated, such as adding the press operators name and time taken on press. This greatly helps with MIS.

Richard Timson, managing director for Heidelberg Australia says, Its a purpose-built plate production system unlike any other. There are only a handful of similar installations in the world, in places like Switzerland and Austria.

Southern Colour has 74 employees and is part of Southern Impact Holdings along with Impact Digital, Intelligent Media and label printer Onpack.

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Matt Clark Tile & Stone works with clients to create one of a kind tile and stone projects.

Matt Clark Tile & Stone, a tile and stone design company that provides custom tile to Santa Maria and the Central Coast, is the exclusive dealer for Oceanside Glasstile products. Owner, Mattias Clark said he first became acquainted with Oceanside Glasstile in 1994 while working for Hastings in New York city. Hastings was the first tile company to represent Oceanside Glasstile. Matt Clark became the exclusive Central Coast dealer of Oceanside Glass Tile in 2008. Today, Matt Clark Tile & Stone is the only dealer for Oceanside Glasstile on the Central Coast and for providing tile to Santa Maria.

The Roman Pool at Hearst Castle was restored by 1x1-inch smalti, cobalt blue, exact reproduction tiles made by Oceanside Glasstile. The company was created when the founders were awarded the restoration project in 1994. Since then the Oceanside, California company has produced a wide range of glass tile, mostly from recycled glass.

Clark was one of the installers of the Hastings showroom for their grand opening in 1988 and was asked by the owners to install many glass mosaic jobs throughout the 1990s. One of those projects for Clark was installing tile for a brownstone owned by Stephen Sondheim, including all five bathrooms and the vaulted barrel ceiling in the foyer.

Matt Clark was recently brought in to restore the tile in the Julia Morgan built Hearst beach home in San Simeon 2017. Clark is currently creating reproductions of the original Julia Morgan tile patterns for the kitchen of the private Hearst family residence. Julia Morgan. Morgan (1872-1957) designed the San Simeon residence. Over her professional lifetime, Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in California, the YMCA building in Honolulu, Hawaii and was the architect employed by William Randolph Hearst and Hearst family members for building designs. Although Morgan designed many well-known buildings, Hearst Castle is the most famous.

Matt Clark Tile & Stone works with clients to create one of a kind tile and stone projects, from fireplaces and fountains, to patios, kitchens and baths. Matt Clark has worked with tile since 1977, working with industry notables such as Armand Agresti, Ann Sacks, David Garbo and Jed Johnson and a number of outstanding architects, designers, craftsmen, artists and clients on both coasts. Clark and Katie Franklin opened their design studio in San Luis Obispo in 2002.

Matt Clark Tile & Stone

181 Tank Farm Road #140

San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

(805) 543-7600

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The top retirement home in San Luis Obispo has an excellent history that both residents and their families can trust.

The Manse on Marsh has been voted the best retirement home in San Luis Obispo by the San Luis Obispo Tribunes Readers Choice Awards. Family owned and operated by Chris Skiff, the top retirement home in San Luis Obispo has an excellent history that both residents and their families can trust. The beautiful Central Coast of California is full of a rich history and natural beauty and nature. Centrally located in downtown San Luis, The Manse offers its residents a mansion-like exterior with one and two bedroom bungalows and exclusive luxury lifestyles and accommodations for residents in a relaxed, enjoyable location. Planned events, musicians, movies, and much more keep residents busy and active. Physically, emotionally, and mentally supported by staff, in a family like environment, this retirement home in San Luis Obispo is a safe and secure home for any retiree. Whether searching for respite care, hospice care, or assisted living care The Manse does it all.

The enriching atmosphere at The Manse provides numerous amenities and activities to its residents. Caring and courteous staff members are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure anything needed by residents is accommodated. The Manse has the perfect balance of independence, privacy, and social opportunities. Residents can choose from to visit a movie theater, salon and restaurant, all inside the Manse. For seniors dealing with memory issues, or just daily tasks and tidying up, this retirement home in San Luis Obispo provides a vibrant living environment, always striving to go above and beyond for residents. Focusing on cleanliness, and personalized services, the Manse has three meals served daily from 7a.m.-7p.m. at two on-site restaurants. Fresh fruits and baked goods, room service, weekly housekeeping and bed making, laundry services, a barbershop/ beauty salon, movies in the spacious theater, and pet-friendly living environments are just some of the accommodations offered at The Manse.

San Luis Obispo, CA is located halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, close to the beautiful Pacific coastline. Also known as the Happiest city in the United States, San Luis Obispo is also known for its historic Mission De Tolosa, California Polytechnic University, and is located in prime wine producing country. A small town feel with a bountiful tourist industry help keep the city vibrant and youthful. Beautiful natural abundance around the Central Coast makes the area a special home to many people and popular destination for international travelers.

The Manse on Marsh

475 Marsh St.

San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

(805) 541-4222

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Palm Air, celebrating 10 years in business! Im really proud of what we did here at Palm Air in the last 10 years, its been a pleasure working with Everett and I couldnt have done it without him. David Jenkins, Co-Founder & Co-Principal of Palm Air AC

2018 marks the 10th anniversary in business of everyones favorite local AC firm, Palm Air. Palm Air was founded in March 2008 by Everett Hill and David Jenkins. Palm Air AC for the past 10 years has offered a better quality of service to residents and businesses in South Florida. Their goal remains the same today as when they started 10 years ago, to improve the quality of the air their customers breathe as well as the quality of service and equipment available in the market. Their mission to change the way South Florida residents think about HVAC contractors is well underway and has been well received these past ten years. This is evidenced by simply doing a Google search for their business name and being presented with over 100 authenticated Google reviews at a whopping 4.9+ out of 5 stars rating. Additionally, just last week, Palm Air officially launched their brand new website, a resource intended to offer clear and detailed information about Palm Air, their services and products.

Palm Air is based in Boca Raton, FL and provides HVAC installation, maintenance and repair to businesses and residential properties. They service related items such as heaters and pool heaters. While Palm Air is a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer they also are very adept at servicing, repairing and maintaining any unit from any manufacturer. That said, over the past 10 years, Palm Air has already received the Presidents Award from Carrier three times (2013, 2015 and 2017). The Presidents Award is the highest Carrier honor bestowed upon Factory Authorized Dealers who exemplify leadership and management, customer satisfaction, expertise, business growth and operational excellence. It is an annual award designed to encourage self-analysis and reward those who have exceeded high expectations.

Palm Air prides themselves in being a breath of fresh air to their South Florida clients. They differentiate themselves from other HVAC contractors by taking a whole-home approach. They evaluate and take into consideration the entire building structure and indoor air environment to better identify underlying issues that can have significant impacts on the performance of the HVAC system. Palm Air has a unique and thorough training process for new technicians. Their emphasis is on ensuring that technicians get the job done right the first time and that they leave the clients home cleaner than they found it. Their team of friendly, certified, experienced, knowledgeable and hard-working staff continues to grow and improve every day.

Speaking about the team that helped them accomplish this milestone, owner David Jenkins related, Weve got some of the best people, and the best team assembled that I could possibly imagine and we cannot do what we do today without them.

Commenting whimsically on how it feels to be celebrating 10 years, owner Everett Hill said, Well the first ten years went by in the blink of an eye, so Ive gotta imagine that the next 20+ years are gonna be two blinks of an eye.

Reflecting on the partnership that is Palm Airs foundation, David Jenkins was quoted as saying, Im really proud of what we did here at Palm Air in the last 10 years, its been a pleasure working with Everett and I couldnt have done it without him.

Palm Air is excited to celebrate this significant milestone and looks forward to the opportunity to continue to provide Cleaner, Colder, More Comfortable Air to South Florida for many more years to come. Their new website alongside the fact that they also offer their services 24/7/365 is a testament to their customer first philosophy. Congratulations to Palm Air AC!
Kinhaven Music School announced that an endowed scholarship has been created in memory of former Kinhaven student and award-winning musical theater composer and lyricist Michael Friedman. The endowment, known as the Michael Friedman Scholarship, will help cover tuition and other costs to increase diversity among the Kinhaven student body.

Endowing this scholarship in Michaels memory made a lot of sense to Michaels family, colleagues, and friends, said Michaels father, John Friedman, because it combines one of Michaels longtime concerns  increasing diversity in the music and theater world  with his longtime passion for the musical experience Kinhaven makes possible for young people.

Kinhaven Co-executive Director Tony Mazzocchi thanked the Friedman family and other donors on behalf of the entire Kinhaven community. We are very grateful for this important gift and will put it to work immediately to help make this transformative musical experience accessible to even more qualified students who would otherwise not be able to afford to attend, Mazzocchi said.

Michael studied piano at Kinhaven from 1989 to 1991 and was a staff member for several years in the mid-1990s. In a recent interview, Michael said he wrote his first compositions at Kinhaven. The first was a deeply embarrassing orchestral work called Overture de la vie et de la mort, or something to that effect, he said. Michael said that at Kinhaven, I learned to explore the repertoire in ways I'd never understood before. I started writing music and was encouraged. I learned Bach chorales and the orchestral repertoire and about collaboration and how to enjoy the process of working on a piece as much as the performance.

Michael, a prolific composer and lyricist, wrote the music and lyrics to the 2010 musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which the New York Times characterized as sharp, sexy and satirical. His collaborator on that show, Alex Timbers, said, If you look at how diverse his shows were and how prolific he was, you see what a restless mind he had. He would write shows where he was quoting Kurt Weill one moment, Sondheim the next, and then John Philip Sousa. Michael won an Obie award in 2007 for Sustained Excellence in Music.

Michael died in September 2017 in New York City at age 41 and is deeply missed by his family, friends, and the entire Kinhaven community. Donations to the Michael Friedman Scholarship fund may be made by contacting admin (at) kinhaven (dot) org.

ABOUT KINHAVEN: Kinhaven Music School is a nonprofit organization located in the rolling green hills of Weston, Vermont, that fosters high-level music-making experiences in which shared learning, mutual support, friendship, and community are always present. Kinhaven was founded by visionaries David and Dorothy Dushkin and cultivated by pioneering music educators Jerry and Nancy Bidlack. In 2011, Kinhaven welcomed executive directors, Deborah Buck and Tony Mazzocchi.
"Green Health Docs is on a mission to end the nation's opioid epidemic and give patients back control of their lives with natural medications such as medical cannabis. With this video, we can simplify the entire process."

Green Health Docs has been instrumental in making the Maryland Cannabis program a success by certifying and educating over 5,000 patients in just 12 months! With locations in Waldorf, Baltimore (Dundalk), Rockville, Frederick, Hagerstown and Cumberland, most residents of Maryland are close to a Green Health Docs evaluation center. However, most people don't know that medical marijuana is now legal in Maryland and that there are over 20 dispensaries in the state to purchase this life-saving medication. Dr. Shivangi Amin, CEO of Green Health Docs says, The majority of Americans are in favor of medical cannabis, so we need to make sure that patients in Maryland understand how their medical cannabis program works.

How to Get a Medical Marijuana Card in Maryland:

To help patients understand the steps required, Dr. Amin and her team at Green Health Docs have created a simple, 60 second video explaining the process. Mike Woolf, Chief Operations Officer and a medical cannabis advocate, says, At least 5-10 people per day tell me that they didnt even know Maryland had a medical cannabis program. At Green Health Docs, our goal has always been to educate our local communities on the benefits of this medicine and this video is a simple to way to get the discussion started.

Green Health Docs is Not A Typical Doctors Office:

When thinking of a typical doctors office, most people probably don't think of Green Health Docs. And most doctor's offices won't release a commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyyqIl2q_Qc&t=5s) like this. Dr. Anand Dugar, an anesthesiologist and co-owner, says We like to have fun and try new things with our videos and awareness efforts. The goal right now is to make sure everyone in Maryland knows that medical cannabis is a legal option for them and sometimes a shocking or funny video can really help in spreading the word.

Green Health Docs Mission: To Combat the Nations Opioid Epidemic!

Green Health Docs owners, physicians, and employees all share in the same mission and feel strongly about the use of medical cannabis in healing patients: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyn7CwaCxFA.

Dr. Shivani Amin, states that "The Maryland Cannabis program is off to a roaring success and we are excited to help patients with the first step: seeing a registered medical cannabis provider. Most physicians are reluctant to provide medical cannabis as an option to their patients because of federal illegality. At Green Health Docs, we think differently and see cannabis as the primary way to combat the nation's opioid epidemic."
Forward and Into The Light: an honest account of the struggle with PTSD is informative and touching. Forward and Into The Light is the creation of published author, Kenny Higgins, who served a four-year tour in the Marine Corps. The book is an accounting of how Higgins, who was once a vibrant CEO and millionaire, was reduced to a seclude because of the PTSD depressions. The book explains his modality based on 32 years of research, personal experience, education, and interviews with disabled veterans that he used to return to a productive and joyful life. The book is written in laymens terms so as to fully engage the reader. Higgins has his degree in alcohol and drug counseling from Bethany College and his Bachelor of Science in Human Service Professional with a focus on Addiction from the University of Phoenix.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Kenny Higgins new book is undeniably emotional and a great map to the recovery of a happy, full life for those who suffer from PTSD.

Higgins describes the ups and downs of his experience with post-traumatic stress disorder in raw detail that is sincere and helpful to those struggling with PTSD. This is a book that can teach compassion for people facing misunderstood demons.

View a synopsis of Forward and Into The Light on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Forward and Into The Light at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Forward and Into The Light, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Forward Momentum: The Art of Winning in Life a compelling material filled with a message of hope that prompts individuals forward in life. Forward Momentum is the creation of the published author Francis Herras, a certified elder planning counselor, a certified temperament counselor and a minister engaged in leadership development, education, community outreach, pioneering and management, vision, and process development and assessment.

Francis shares, You feel the real pressure, pain, difficulties, and all kinds of testing that life brings you as you pursue and move forward to your desired future. The reality of the current of life, the blows of life, the ditches and mountains of life are undeniably unstoppable. The only way to win and move forward in life is to learn from the salmon  you must swim against the tide and the current of life in any form designed to slow you down or hinder you from reaching your goals and accomplishing your God-given purpose.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Francis Herrass new book discusses winning principles that push readers to a higher purpose, shepherded by the wisdom and truth inculcated within the biblical texts.

Forward Momentum: The Art of Winning in Life is the perfect tool to uplift people who have faced disappointments, and help awaken the dreams of those who have met failures in their lives.

View a synopsis of Forward Momentum: The Art of Winning in Life on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Forward Momentum: The Art of Winning in Life at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For more on information or inquiries on Forward Momentum: The Art of Winning in LIfe, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Todays business owners face security threats from many diverse sources and sorting through the available options for addressing these threats can feel daunting. For March 2018, Texas Premier Locksmith offers all Austin businesses a free commercial security consultation.

Commercial Security Hardware

There is a seemingly endless list of commercial security hardware devices, but all can be categorized into three basic types. Most companies require items from all three categories to fully secure their data and equipment.



Door Hardware: Door hardware items include door closers that prevent accidentally leaving a door standing open, as well as ADA-approved panic bars that ensure critical exits open quickly during an emergency. Depending on the nature of a particular business, both may be necessary for safety.

Door Locks: Commercial door locks come in a wide array of styles and types. Interchangeable core locks are highly desirable for companies that experience frequent employee turnover, as they are easy to re-key. However, many companies also employ high-tech options such as ID scanners or keypads.

Locking Items: Businesses are legally liable for protecting their employees and customers personal information, credit card data, and other sensitive information. Locking safes, filing cabinets, and desk drawers can boost information security, especially when large numbers of employees and customers are regularly coming and going.

Locksmith Services

Even the best commercial security system is not impervious to emergencies. An employee might forget her keys, a lock could break, or someone might leave with an ID badge. When these problems occur, it is vital to have an existing relationship with a skilled and trustworthy locksmith. All businesses should build a relationship with a locksmith who can complete repairs on a variety of locks in a timely manner.

Austin business owners who wish to take advantage of the free commercial security consultation should call (512) 893-5811 and mention this offer.

About Texas Premier Locksmith

Texas Premier Locksmith has established a strong reputation as one of the top-rated Austin locksmiths. For immediate assistance, call the Texas Premier Locksmith Austin location at (512) 893-5811. For more information, visit the storefront at 600 W 28th St #105, Austin, TX 78705 or visit the website at http://www.txpremierlocksmith.com/.
The oldest baby boomer turned 72 in January and expects technology solutions to assist them as they age, said Orlov. With the cost of long-term care out of reach for many, older adults and those who care for them will seek for solutions that make lives easier and more fulfilling."

TECHNOLOGY FOR AGING BABY BOOMERS HIGH GROWTH INDUSTRY

Updated 2018 Research adds 2018 trends and more than 25 new companies

The marketplace for technology to assist aging adults is growing and incorporating the latest technology trends according to a new report by Aging in Place Technology Watch. The aging of the more than 75 million baby boomers plus their increased awareness of technology solutions will drive sales, according to Laurie M. Orlov, founder of the market research firm.

The oldest baby boomer turned 72 in January and expects technology solutions to assist them as they age, said Orlov. With the cost of long-term care out of reach for many, older adults and those who care for them will seek for solutions that make lives easier and more fulfilling."

The industry projections are part of a new market overview report, 2018 Technology Market Overview from Aging in Place Technology Watch. The document highlights technologies for communication and engagement, safety and security, health and wellness, and learning and contribution, with an overlay for caregiving that touches all categories.

This is the leading market research report to take a comprehensive look at technology for older adults. Long-time Forrester and tech industry veteran Laurie M. Orlov launched the market research company in 2009 with a blog, product, and industry information which can be found at http://www.ageinplacetech.com.

Headquartered in Port St. Lucie, Florida, Aging in Place Technology Watch provides thought leadership, analysis and guidance about technologies and related services that enable boomers and seniors to remain longer in their home of choice.

Laurie M. Orlov, a tech industry veteran, writer, speaker and elder care advocate, is the founder of Aging in Place Technology Watch -- market research, trends, blogs and reports that provide thought leadership, analysis and guidance about technologies and services that enable boomers and seniors to remain longer in their home of choice. In her previous career, Laurie spent many years in the technology industry, including 9 years at analyst firm Forrester Research. Her segmentation of this emerging technology market and trends commentary have been presented in the Journal of Geriatric Care Management. Her perspectives have been quoted in Business Week, CNBC, Forbes, Kiplinger, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, where she was profiled as well. She has a graduate certification in Geriatric Care Management from the University of Florida and a BA in Music from the University of Rochester. Laurie has provided testimony about technology at a Senate Aging Committee hearing, consulted frequently to AARP, and served on the Think Tank for The Philips Center for Health and Well-Being. She was one of the judges for the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit in 2017 and a 2016 Stanford Longevity design challenge. Her latest reports were Tech-Enabled Home Care 2017 and the Future of Voice First Technology 2018.The site was selected as one of CDW's Top 50 Health IT Blogs in 2016 and in September, 2017, she was named one of the Top 50 Influencers in Aging by Next Avenue.
Buyatab Online Inc., a leader in digital gifting, and TriNimbus, one of Canada's leading Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partners, will be presenting at CAMSS Canada on March 14, in Montreal, Quebec and on September 19, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Buyatab CTO Chris Falk and TriNimbus CEO Jarrod Levitan will speak on the topic of Cloud Migration and will discuss ways companies can leverage Cloud technologies to successfully stay ahead of the curve.

CAMSS (Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Security, Social) Canada is the nation's leading event for IT and Line of Business executives. In partnership with the CAMSS Executive Council, CAMSS Canada has been designed to provide the optimum learning and networking environment for senior executives across IT, Security, Governance, Data, Analytics, Digital, Marketing and Customer Experience to gather and share insights on digital innovation and business strategy.

This year's agenda will focus on strategy, innovation, culture and leadership. Falk and Levitan will discuss best practices of Cloud Migration and ways to continually build and work innovation into your Cloud strategies to stay competitive in the industry. CAMSS Canada will also be taking place in Calgary and Toronto this year.

For more information or to view the full agenda, please visit http://www.camsscanada.com/

About Buyatab

Buyatab is a leading provider of advanced online gift card infrastructure solutions for medium- and large-sized businesses. Buyatab provides a seamless solution for gift cards to be purchased from a merchant's online properties (website, mobile site, Facebook page, etc.) and delivered to recipients via email or text message, leveraging the rapid growth in mobile device and social media use, and with full compatibility to mobile wallets such as Apple Wallet. With clients in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia, Buyatab provides eGift Card services to merchants in a wide variety of sectors, including retail, hospitality, restaurant, shopping, hotel and others.

http://www.buyatab.com

About TriNimbus

TriNimbus is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner and leading DevOps service provider. The team focuses exclusively on AWS and its surrounding ecosystem to support customers who are using the cloud to elevate their culture, environment and operations to the next level. TriNimbus combines their software engineering background with 24/7 operational support (DevOps) to help their customers successfully increase agility, availability, tighten security, optimize performance, automate deployments and manage costs. With a focus on fostering education both internally and externally, TriNimbus hosts AWS User Groups across Canada bringing together members in various cities building the AWS community.

http://www.trinimbus.com/
Everyone has stories, and I think that to the extent that we share them, it just makes us stronger, added Sarah Craig, Chief Financial Officer of FBHL.

In honor of Womens History Month, Flat Branch Home Loans is publishing a roundtable discussion paired with a weekly blog series written by the companys female leaders.

At the roundtable, director of sales and marketing, Mary Ropp, discusses leadership with eight of the companys most influential women. Each woman gives advice, tips, and shares personal stories from helping lead a growing, fast-paced business.

The discussion is directed at young women pursuing leadership roles in the mortgage industry. A transcript and video of the roundtable, along with several supporting blog posts will be spread across multiple during the month of March.

One of the fastest growing businesses in the country, Flat Branch Home Loans is a mortgage lender with over 20 branches in the Midwest. The company prides itself on its steady investment to help women find professional success.

Todays workplace is abuzz with strategies on how to ascend women to the boardroom and C-suites. Flat Branch Home Loans already has hungry, humble, and people-savvy women standing up as leaders.

Two-thirds of Flat Branchs more than 250 employees are women. Women also make up half of the managerial team, and a majority of the firms mortgage bankers. They represent some of the highest-producing Mortgage Bankers, and fill leadership roles including Chief Operations Officer, Chief Financial Officer, in addition to many more management titles across all of the companys regional locations.

The Missouri-based company has built competitive teams by broadening the composition of its boardrooms and offices across the Midwest. In each new location, it champions its deep-rooted business model: listening-up. This has resulted in speedy and sustained growth over the Midwestern-mortgage sector.

You come to Flat and theres so many females through all different stages of their life who have walked the same path as you, said Jamie Pandolfo, Saint Louis Sales Manager of FBHL. And its just a really cool, amazing place to be. You flourish.

Companys influencers dig into difficult conversations in honor of balance, both at work and home.

Its listening up when an employees spouse lost their job, or its their sons first Christmas recital but their pipeline is holding them back from cheering him on. We not only encourage outspokenness, but team-up when someone needs support. In other words, were a family working for families, said Emily Harvey, Director of HR. Just like the families we serve, theres a benefit from having core values of commitment and openness.

Everyone has stories, and I think that to the extent that we share them, it just makes us stronger, added Sarah Craig, Chief Financial Officer of FBHL.

Read and hear their voices of Honoring Women in Leadership here: https://www.flatbranchhomeloans.com/women-in-leadership
Dan French, Founder and CEO of Consider Solutions has been invited to speak at SharedServicesLink European Shared Services Leaders Summit 2018, 14th-16th March in London.

Dan's session, entitled 'Automation Makes Bad Worse Faster? - The Role of AI in Shared Services', will discuss RPA and Machine Learning in the Shared Services world. Machine learning has had a lot of publicity in the past 12-18 months and the hype isnt waning. So, what is it good for and when should companies exploit it? These questions will be answered and Dan will also address the challenge of 'roboticizing' the right things. This session will explore the capabilities that meet the needs of the GPO, and show some exciting results and case studies of what the future may hold for Shared Services and RPA & AI.

For more information on Dan's session and the Summit as a whole, please click here
Classic films to be screened for free

VietNamNet Bridge  A number of classic Vietnamese films will be screened for free to celebrate 65 years since the day President Ho Chi Minh founded Viet Nams revolutionary cinema.

Celebrating cinema: A scene in the film Suoi Dau Nguon.  Photo courtesy of the Cinema Department



The film week will be organised on March 9-14 at the National Cinema Centre, Hanoi, and Cinestar Hai Ba Trung, HCM City. Free tickets can be collected at the cinemas.

The films to be presented range from old films such as Bao Gio Cho Den Thang 10 (When Will October Come, 1984), Em Be Ha Noi (Girl from Ha Noi, 1972) and Chi Tu Hau (Mrs Tu Hau, 1963) to films made more recently such as Dung Dot (Dont Burn, 2009), Toi thay hoa vang tren co xanh (I See Yellow Flowers on Green Grass) and Em Chua 18 (Jaibait, 2017).

The films cover topics like resistance, wartime, life during the doi moi (renewal) era, and modern society. They all received awards and have been honoured at national and foreign film festivals.

For the occasion, the Department of Cinema has also released the film Suoi Dau Nguon (The Headwaters) depicting the efforts of a mobile cinema group to present films for ethnic people in remote areas.

Director Nguyen Anh Tuan said the mobile cinema groups play an important role in bringing knowledge and promoting cultural and spiritual life to people in rural and mountainous regions.

Thanks to them, peoples lives are enriched and they come closer to the Governments policy, he said.

The film stars veteran actor Bui Bai Binh and young actors Nguyen Xuan Luyen and Tran Anh Thu who are unfamiliar faces for audiences.

It will be screened at cinemas nationwide.

Source: VNS
Robotics Accreditation Team We are proud to be among SRCs Centers of Excellence, a designation that recognizes our unparalleled commitment and ability to consistently deliver safe, effective, evidence-based robotic surgery, said Marla Koroly, MD, Chief Medical Officer

Northern Westchester Hospital (NWH) has been designated a Center of Excellence in Robotic Surgery by the Surgical Review Corporation (SRC), an independent, nonprofit, patient-safety organization and the leading administrator of quality improvement and accreditation programs for surgeons and hospitals around the world.

NWH was an early adopter of robotic technology, purchasing their first da Vinci Surgical System, the S model, in 2007. NWH has upgraded the system several times as advancements continue to benefit patient care and now has two (2) Xi Surgical Robots. Since 2007, highly-skilled, board-certified surgeons have performed over 4,000 robot-assisted surgeries at NWH.

The da Vinci System utilizes high-definition, 3D imaging that provides surgeons with a magnified view and greater visualization of the surgical site. Coupled with the flexible, wristed instruments, precision and accuracy are improved. In addition, incisions are smaller. Robotic surgery patients often experience less pain, decreased risk of infection and dramatically faster recovery.

We are proud to be among SRCs Centers of Excellence, a designation that recognizes our unparalleled commitment and ability to consistently deliver safe, effective, evidence-based robotic surgery, said Marla Koroly, MD, Chief Medical Officer. We join three other Northwell Health hospitals that hold the same recognition, Dr. Koroly added.

Surgical Review Corporation also awarded Surgeon of Excellence in Robotic Surgery designations to five NWH robotic surgery team members, including:

Warren Bromberg, MD, FACS, Chief of Urology; Co-Director of the Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery and Director of the Prostate Cancer Program at NWH, who serves as the Physician Director of the Hospitals Center of Excellence;

Elisa Burns, MD, gynecologic surgeon, Director of Quality and Outcomes for the Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery at NWH;

Darren Rohan, MD, FACS, Westchester Regional Director of the Thoracic Surgery Program, Northwell Health, who treats patients at both Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco, NY and Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, NY;

Iris Wertheim, MD, gynecologic oncology surgeon, Co-Director of the Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery at NWH;

Jerald Wishner, MD, FACS, FASCRS, Co-Director of the Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery and Medical Director of the Colorectal Surgery Program at NWH, who is designated a Master Surgeon in Robotic Surgery, one of 10 in the world.

The Center of Excellence designation provides patients with confidence that they are receiving the best possible care from physicians at an institution with a track record of safety, and proven outcomes that has met rigorous standards for delivering safe, effective, evidence-based care, says Warren Bromberg, MD. The Center of Excellence could not exist without our multidisciplinary team of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and surgical technicians, all of whom are committed to the health and well-being of our patients.

Before awarding the designation, SRC evaluated all aspects of care, including pre-operative evaluations and procedures, the OR, and all post-operative units, including the surgical floor, anesthesia, intensive care units, the emergency room, and discharge procedures. An assessment of medical record keeping, surgical data, outcomes and high case volume is also a critical component of the designation process.

Through its accreditation, NWHs Center of Excellence for Robotic Surgery becomes part of SRCs international data base and will continuously collect and share data with SRC in order to benchmark outcomes and costs with other Centers of Excellence. This information will enable clinicians, patients, payers and policymakers to make informed decisions that can improve healthcare and the patient experience.

The Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery at NWH includes surgeons with highly specialized expertise with the da Vinci Surgical System to perform robot-assisted surgery with proven outcomes for patients. In addition to the Center of Excellence, the Institute for Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery includes a dual training Epicenter for colorectal surgery and hernia surgery which is led by Dr. Jerald Wishner, one of three designated dual epicenter surgeons in the nation. Dr. Wishner teaches the practice of robotic surgery using the da Vinci robot to surgeons throughout the region and across the country, extending NWHs expertise and best practices. The Hospitals Institute for Robotics includes surgeons and expertise in the following areas of specialty: urology, gynecology, gynecologic oncology, single-incision gynecologic procedures, colorectal, thoracic, and general surgery.

Northern Westchester Hospital is among nine hospitals in the Northwell Health network that offers a comprehensive Robotic Surgery program and one of Northwells four Centers of Excellence for Robotic Surgery. Southside Hospital, Huntington Hospital and LIJ Hospital are designated Centers of Excellence for Robotic Surgery, with several more currently in the process of obtaining their designation. Northwell Health is a leader in robotics, committed to improving outcomes for patients by meeting high standards for clinical excellence and has been designated by SRC as a Network of Excellence in Robotic Surgery.

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About Northern Westchester Hospital:

Northern Westchester Hospital (NWH), a member of Northwell Health, provides quality, patient-centered care that is close to home through a unique combination of medical expertise, leading-edge technology, and a commitment to humanity. Over 650 highly-skilled physicians, state-of-the-art technology and professional staff of caregivers are all in place to ensure that you and your family receive treatment in a caring, respectful and nurturing environment. NWH has established extensive internal quality measurements that surpass the standards defined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) National Hospital Quality Measures. Our high-quality standards help to ensure that the treatment you receive at NWH is among the best in the nation. For more information, please visit http://www.nwhc.net and connect with us on Facebook.

About Northwell Health

Northwell Health is New York States largest health care provider and private employer, with 23 hospitals, more than 650 outpatient facilities and nearly 15,000 affiliated physicians. We care for over two million people annually in the New York metro area and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Our 66,000 employees  15,000-plus nurses and 4,000 employed doctors, including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners  are working to change health care for the better. Were making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. We're training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Graduate Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu.

About Surgical Review Corporation:

Established in 2003, Surgical Review Corporation (SRC) is an internationally recognized patient safety organization dedicated to recognizing and refining surgical care. SRC is the patient safety organization dedicated to recognizing and refining surgical care. SRC is the leading administrator of quality improvement and accreditation programs for surgeons and hospitals worldwide. SRCs proven methodology, known and the Cycle of Excellence, results in quantifiable and unparalleled improvements in outcomes, patient safety and costs across surgical specialties. To measure improvement and develop best practices, SRC offers a multispecialty outcomes database that is the worlds largest repository of clinical patient data for minimally invasive gynecologic and bariatric surgery. For more information, visit http://www.surgicalreview.org.
Provincetown Art Association and Museum Provincetown's unique blend: America's oldest active art colony mixed with a flourishing contemporary art scene.

The natural beauty of Provincetown calls to visitors and residents alike, including the many artists and art admirers who pass through this historic place each year. A stroll through town reveals Provincetown's unique blend: America's oldest active art colony mixed with a flourishing contemporary art scene. Visit Provincetown Art Museum (PAAM) for a taste of local artistic flavor, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) for a contemporary flare, or the many art galleries that line the streets for a little of both. This art guide will take a look at all the exciting new and upcoming exhibits and events that are not to be missed.

The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center is a cornerstone for contemporary art in Provincetown with a focus on developing and encouraging emerging artists and writers. From readings and art talks to exhibitions there are tons of opportunities to meet the artists and learn more about their work. Readings include poet Jill McDonough and fiction author Hasanthika Sirisena on March 24th. Exhibitions throughout March will feature work from painters, sculptors, and animators, with original work by Anne Clare Rogers (March 9-14), Peter Glenn Oakley (March 16-21), and Jacob Rivkin (March 23-28).

After celebrating its centennial year in 2014, the Provincetown Art Museum (PAAM) has cemented itself as a cultural institution and a year-round destination for local and regional art. The permanent collection at PAAM includes over 3,000 works by more than 700 artists, including hundreds who have called Cape Cod home. Current featured work from the collection includes drawings by Edward Hopper, watercolors by his wife, Josephine Hopper, and 22 diary entries between them (now extended through April 1st).

The permanent collection at PAAM is largely made up of generous donations by those dedicated to showcasing regional art. Other current exhibits include Recent Gifts: Part II (through March 11th, 2018), which showcases some of these latest donations, and PAAM and the History of the Provincetown Art Colony (through June 30th, 2018), which details the unique relationship between visiting artists and the Provincetown community members who welcomed and inspired them. PAAM, along with the Provincetown Film Society, also produces the annual Provincetown Film Arts series, led by former editor of Premiere magazine, Howard Karren. In March the series will feature four films: Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words (2016), Women Art Revolution (2010), I Killed My Mother (2009).

A walk down Commercial Street will reveal over 60 art galleries to peruse for local art. Not to be missed are the weekly Friday night art openings - a perfect setting to meet the artists and gallery owners. Kick back, relax, sip some wine, and enjoy all Provincetown artists have to offer, now and all year round.

For a full list of galleries see the Provincetown gallery guide: http://provincetownartistregistry.com/gallery_guide.html

About Provincetown

Provincetown, Massachusetts is a true melting pot. Located on the tip of Cape Cod, Provincetown boasts beautiful beaches, top-rated restaurants, art galleries and charming shops. A top LGBTQ destination, this open-minded community celebrates individuality and freedom of expression. Provincetown has a rich creative history and is home to one the oldest continuous art colony in the country. The diverse population of artists, sailors, fisherman, authors, and more, makes Provincetown unique. From Carnival in August to Women's Week in October and First Light at year's end, Provincetown is thriving 365 days of the year.
ATOM provided a deep knowledge base of both the Allegro system and the oil and gas marketing business. Resources from ATOM have consistently delivered high quality work with a focus on meeting and beating the project milestone dates

ATOM Solutions, LLC (ATOM), a premier provider of energy software consulting services and solutions, has announced that it has successfully implemented, on time and under budget, Allegro Developments CTRM software for California Resources Corporation (NYSE: CRC) to manage its energy marketing business.

CRC is an oil and natural gas exploration and production company that also markets crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. The company was previously using a combination of legacy off-the-shelf software and custom systems to manage its marketing operations for different commodities. As a result, disparate systems and a multitude of integration points led to inefficiencies. By implementing Allegro; a single CTRM platform, CRCs trading, risk management, logistics, accounting, credit risk management, and reporting functions are now consolidated in one system across all commodities. The new system eliminated multiple legacy applications and data integration points.

Using Allegro CTRM as one integrated system to manage all commodity marketing activity has increased our internal efficiencies, said Carlos Contreras, VP Commercial at CRC. Time previously spent on reconciliation by mid and back office support teams is now re-directed to analysis and foresight.

ATOMs efforts on this project included the delivery of implementation, integration and training services. The project was conducted in multiple phases, with the final phase involving the implementation of the crude marketing business, emissions management, and credit functionality.

ATOM provided a deep knowledge base of both the Allegro system and the oil and gas marketing business. Resources from ATOM have consistently delivered high quality work with a focus on meeting and beating the project milestone dates, said Cynthia Johnson, VP and CIO at CRC.

By utilizing our proprietary OnTarget Project Delivery Methodology, we were able to provide value to the business quickly and avoid typical CTRM software implementation challenges, said Stacey Coates, Director of CTRM Solutions, who served as project manager for ATOM. Our focus on scenario modeling and close collaboration with CRC enabled us to get to the heart of the solution quickly. We are very pleased with the outcome of this effort and believe the savings realized by CRC along with the efficiencies gained will be very beneficial to the organization.

Firoz Jhaver, CEO of ATOM added, I am proud of our team for having exercised a disciplined approach in delivering a high-quality implementation to CRC in an expeditious manner while working aggressively to keep costs in check. We anticipate these improvements will lead to tangible business benefits for our client which is always our ultimate goal.

About CRC

California Resources Corporation is the largest oil and natural gas exploration and production company in California on a gross-operated basis. The Company operates its world class resource base exclusively within the State of California, applying complementary and integrated infrastructure to gather, process and market its production. Using advanced technology, California Resources Corporation focuses on safely and responsibly supplying affordable energy for California by Californians.

About ATOM Solutions

ATOM Solutions is an IT consultancy focused on delivering innovative solutions and services to companies in the commodities space. ATOMs employees have performed virtually every business, project management and IT function as either a part of the industry, or as consultants and vendors. By leveraging deep domain expertise and employing industry best practices, the company works with clients to develop IT strategy and to craft and implement technology solutions. The companys proprietary OnTarget Project Delivery Methodology employs industry and IT best practices to enable consistent delivery of high quality projects. ATOM is passionate about adding value to their customers business and is hyper focused on helping them realize a rapid return on their investments. For more information, please visit http://www.whoisatom.com.

About Allegro Development

Allegro Development Corp. is a global leader in commodity trading and risk management software for power and gas utilities, crude oil refiners, chemical manufacturers, oil and gas producers, agriculture companies, traders, and commodity consumers. Allegros software is built to provide users with position visibility, risk management, comprehensive controls, and regulatory compliance. With over three decades of industry experience, Allegros enterprise platform drives profitability and efficiency across front, middle, and back offices while managing complex logistics associated with physical commodities.

Headquartered in Dallas, TX, Allegro also has offices in London, Singapore, Calgary, Dubai, Houston, Jakarta, and Zurich, along with a global network of partners. For additional information about Allegro and its capabilities, visit our home page at https://www.allegrodev.com/.
Florida Funders, a firm providing early-stage capital to Florida technology companies, announces a $735,000 investment in Miami-based ClassWallet, a highly practical and powerful web-based spend management tool especially designed for the vast educational market. More than 2,000 schools nationwide currently use ClassWallet to automate processes for transactions for over 63,000 teachers and principals, freeing up tens of thousands of man-hours.

Its particularly exciting for us to support a project that employs the latest technology to solve a very practical problem that ultimately has such meaningful impact on real people, and ultimately and especiallykids, said Tom Wallace, Managing General Partner Florida Funders. ClassWallet is a uniquely high value product with great potential.

One of the most relevant initiatives the new funding will help empower is developing and implementing functionality to support management of education funding to families for tuition payments and other educational services and needs, a widely used educational model in Florida and other states. Another exciting initiative the new funding will support is the implementation of a statewide rollout of ClassWallet in New Mexico as part of a new contract with the New Mexico Public Education Department. Ultimately, ClassWallet is poised to help address a $23 billion problem nationwide.

After creating AdoptAClassroom.orga portal that allows anyone to donate classroom supplies for participating schools, and considered by many as the first crowdfunding websiteinventor Jamie Rosenberg found that the mechanics of getting and tracking money for teachers and school systems was time-intensive, diverting precious time and energy from their core mission. He conceived ClassWallet as a tailored solution.

Like many large bureaucracies, school systems have a complex web of transactions and expenses administered by countless teachers, administrators, support staff, foundations and PTAs. Ordering classroom supplies, stocking offices, paying for conference expenses, or running the latest PTA fundraiser, hardworking educational staff spend countless hours processing receipts for even the smallest transactions. On the other end of the process, bookkeepers are burdened with processing mounds of messy paperwork.

School districts, state government, K-12 scholarship organizations and related non-profits use ClassWallets simple, consolidated platform that includes a virtual wallet, integrated eCommerce marketplace, reimbursement management, declining balance reloadable debit card, and integrated crowdfunding powered by GoFundMe.

Some of ClassWallets features include digital receipt capture for debit cards and reimbursements, transactions with electronic review workflow, automated invoice payment, automated direct deposit reimbursement and automated reconciliation. In addition to maximizing efficiency of this time- and cost-intensive process, ClassWallet saves bookkeepers and teachers countless hours while mitigating risk and fraud with built-in safeguards.

ClassWallet has attracted extensive media attention including a Wall Street Journal article by Leslie Brody that recognized the products impact, stating, About 2,600 district teachers and 58 principals can tap into the gifts from $100 to $7,500 through ClassWallet, which gives access to vendors and tracks spending.

Florida Funders support has come at a most fortunate time when the Company is experiencing explosive growth. The additional capital will enable us to accelerate our product roadmap, and to expand our sales and business development resources, said Jamie Rosenberg, ClassWallet Founder & Chief Executive Officer. Were especially pleased to be working with a funding partner right here in the Sunshine state, and hope that our joint success can attract more investors and entrepreneurs to Florida.

Other ClassWallet investors include Brentwood Associates, Sinovation Ventures, Techstars Ventures, NewSchool Venture Fund, Corigin Ventures, and Vaizra Investments.

For more information on Florida Funders, please visit http://www.floridafunders.com. To learn more about ClassWallet, visit https://www.classwallet.com.

About Florida Funders, LLC: Florida Funders is a hybrid of a venture capital fund and crowd-funding platform that invests in early-stage technology companies in Florida. The firm is led by an experienced team of serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and experienced angel investors with proven track record of successful exits and a shared passion for growing the next generation of Florida tech companies. Learn more at http://www.floridafunders.com and check out our explainer video on YouTube.
BrightWave, the leading email and eCRM agency, today announced that its President, Raj Choudhury, has been named the Marketer of the Year by the Atlanta Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA). He will be presented this prestigious honor at the AMY Awards in Atlanta this evening at its annual awards gala where the AMY Awards will recognize companies and individuals whove made their mark on the Atlanta marketing scene during the previous calendar year.

Choudhurys track record as a digital marketing star is widely recognized. He co-founded Spunlogic in 1998, leading it to become one of the largest privately held digital agencies in Atlanta. It was acquired in 2008 by Halyard Capital to form Engauge. That agency was acquired with its 275 employees in 2013 by Publicis Groupe and then merged internally with Moxie, creating the largest digital agency in the Southeast. In 2014, Raj was hired as a CEO for the award-winning social Ad Tech company BLiNQ Media, providing new vision and rebuilding its technology teams.

Choudhury formally joined BrightWave as President in 2016, helping the company reach new heights in revenue, industry recognition and helping the company continue to develop and expand its end to end services within email and eCRM. BrightWaves growth has exceeded 70% during this tenure. More recent highlights can be found at https://www.brightwave.com/2017-year-review-infographic/

AMA is thrilled to honor this years brightest and best in the Atlanta Marketing area, including Raj Choudhury as the Marketer of the Year. The AMA Atlanta mission is to elevate the field of marketing in our local community by producing events and connections for marketers that provide inspiration, direction and leadership, commented Jana Ferguson, Chief Client Officer at Drum Agency. She added, Raj is the epitome of that vision, and were thrilled to recognize him for all his achievements.

Im incredibly honored to be recognized by the AMA and grateful for the support of my colleagues at BrightWave, stated Choudhury. He added, Over the years Ive been fortunate to work with incredible people. Atlanta is a unique city for this market and has enabled me to accomplish a great deal.

BrightWave has been recognized as the leading independent email agency and ranked #1 for client satisfaction and platform expertise, according to industry analyst The Relevancy Group. This award helps further strengthen BrightWaves reputation as the preeminent email agency with a plethora of thought leaders driving client success and innovation as well as moving the industry forward.

About BrightWave

BrightWave is the leading email marketing agency. With over 15 years of experience managing the best email programs in the country, BrightWave elevates eCRM and cross-channel programs through industry-leading innovation, relationship orchestration and pioneering inbox experiences. Learn more at http://www.brightwave.com.

BrightWave also is the creator of EiQ, the intelligent email gathering. This one-day event on April 19, 2018 is where the industry community convenes and focuses on innovation and business impact. For more information on the event, please visit http://www.eiqgathering.com.

About AMA Atlanta

AMA Atlanta is the go-to source for marketing knowledge, events, resources and networking in Atlanta. At almost 1,000 members strong, we are the largest marketing organization in the city and the third largest AMA chapter nationwide. That means AMA Atlanta members have access not only to an incredible amount of local talent, but also to the international reach of the entire AMA organization.

Our members include professionals across the spectrum of the discipline: research, non-profit, public relations, advertising, branding, direct marketing, interactive, creative, multicultural and so much more.

For more information on AMA Atlanta, visit us at AMAAtlanta.org.
A small family mortgage business can run with this intensity, trust, values and transparency.

American Dream Residential (ADRMortgage.com) provides residential mortgages to the military (VA), conforming (Fannie/Freddie) and jumbo borrowers, as well as FHA and USDA residential borrowers. For 13 years, since inception, the company has been trusted to be transparent, be extraordinary in rates and costs, and most importantly, to be the consumer's fiduciary throughout the mortgage process.

This month ADRMortgage.com begins its' 14th year of serving the North Carolina and Virginia markets without a single BBB complaint. In the mortgage industry, this is unheard of. How does ADRMortgage.com do it? According to Andy May, owner and licensed loan officer, "We simply do the right thing every single time. If it costs us more, that's fine. We respect our customers by not wasting their time and by telling our customers exactly what to expect every step of the way".

A small family mortgage business can run with this intensity, trust, values and transparency. Afterall, all 30 year fixed mortgages go to the US Government. The consumer needs the best cost proposition, which often times is not the bank or in-house unlicensed loan officer. Larger companies somehow lose the respect for the customer that is required, don't educate the people that work for them, and avoid the state laws and regulations by not getting a mortgage license in the state in which the entity operates.

For a simple and easy discussion with no obligation ADRMortgage.com is happy to discuss financing needs and explain the process in transparent terms. Most clients spend under 10 minutes on the phone with ADRMortgage.com and come away feeling a breath of fresh air, and 30+ years of mortgage experience for company loan officers. Trust, integrity, transparency, and most importantly, 13+ years of no BBB complaints making sure the consumer is happy with the process. That's what ADRMortgage.com stands for.

If the Real Estate Agent recommends an in-house person, give us a call and within minutes the consumer will see clearly why ADRMortgage.com has the best price and service. "At ADRMortgage.com we don't have clandestine deals with Realtors that cost the consumer a heck of a lot more".

ADRMortgage.com is owned by Andy May Group, LLC and is a state licensed mortgage company in North Carolina and Virginia since 2005 (NMLS #88010, MLO #103418). Since 2005 the company has received Zero BBB complaints and treats customers as family. Family owned and operated from Raleigh, North Carolina the company serves military (VA mortgages), Jumbo, conventional, FHA, USDA and other families looking to obtain the lowest financing costs available. ADRMortgage.com competes on rate and service and is located at 8522 Six Forks Road, Suite 201, Raleigh, North Carolina 27615. Andy May may be reached at 919 771 3379.
CLEARWATER, Florida - March 6, 2018 - New Nautical Coatings, Inc. today announced the appointment of Michele Durham as operations support specialist. Based at the companys headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, Durham will report to Mike Detmer, chief operating officer, Sea Hawk Paints. Her responsibilities include business process improvements consisting of enterprise resource management, key account support, pricing and purchasing analysis, order flow advancement, reporting and customer experience enhancement.

As Sea Hawk continues to expand in the marine coatings market, well managed, constantly evolving business processes are critical to meeting the companys goals, said Erik Norrie, CEO. Michele will leverage two decades of experience in business analytics with her MBA and project management skill set to drive the Sea Hawk brand above all others, Norrie added.

Prior to joining New Nautical Coatings, Inc. and the Sea Hawk brand, Michele spent thirteen years as senior business analyst/project manager at Ford Motor Company and four years as IT analyst/coordinator with Blue Cross Blue Shield. Michele holds a MBA from Baker Colleges Center for Graduate Studies and was honorably discharged from the Army with top-secret/secret-background investigation security clearance.

A trendsetter of marine bottom paints, New Nautical Coatings, Inc. and the Sea Hawk brand was established in 1978 and is dedicated to bringing only the highest quality products and customer satisfaction to todays mariner. New Nautical Coatings is family owned and operated with a commitment to excellence. It provides a wide array of application specific marine coating products that include antifouling systems, primers, solvents, and resins. Now offering innovative products globally, the Sea Hawk brand has enjoyed unprecedented growth and continues to grow as its products become more in demand worldwide. For more information, contact Michael O'Keene at (727) 523-8053, MichaelOKeene(at)SeaHawkPaint(dot)com or visit http://www.seahawkpaints.com.
CounterTack, the leading provider of Predictive Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) technology for the enterprise and Maroc Cyber Security, the first pure Managed Security Service Provide (MSSP) based in Morocco and North Africa, today announced a partnership to broaden Maroc Cyber Securitys Managed Endpoint Detection and Response Service with CounterTacks Endpoint Threat Platform (ETP). CounterTack ETP enhances Maroc Cyber Security service offering with proven capabilities that allow enterprises worldwide to detect and respond to unknown malware, insider threat, data loss prevention, fileless malware, forensics and more.

Maroc Cyber Security delivers an end-to-end solution enabling customers to seamlessly secure critical information. The platform provides its security analysts with an investigation and analysis environment based on well-defined procedures such as investigation, circumvention, actions, intelligence and feedback. The platform also gives customers a portal in which they can view their network security posture. The addition of CounterTack ETP provides Maroc Cyber Security customers the most comprehensive managed end point detection and response available today.

We thoroughly evaluated multiple endpoint detection and response products to extend our end-to-end security platform, stated Samir Boukharta, CEO of Maroc Cyber Security. We knew we needed an innovative, high-performance, scalable solution for our customers. Not only did CounterTack exceed our technology requirements, they have an outstanding team that understands the needs of our customers. CounterTack brings the depth of security and the customer experience that is consistent with Maroc Cyber Security. Together, we will provide best-of-breed technology to protect our customers against current and future endpoint threats.

CounterTack ETP has established itself as the only truly predictive enterprise endpoint detection and response solution with a comprehensive suite of features. ETP includes Digital DNA with its one-of-a-kind, patented real-time binary analysis for processes running in memory. With the ability to behaviorally detect and act on advanced malware, zero-days, insider threats, movement of sensitive files, multi-tenancy, cloud or on-premise deployment, an easily scalable infrastructure that supports deployments of hundreds of thousands of endpoints, and an underlying architecture that can ingest and process massive volumes of endpoint telemetry data with real-time analytics, ETP was the clear choice for Maroc Cyber Security.

As more and more companies are being hit with serious security threats such as Ransomware, it is becoming clear that all companies  regardless of size  need a comprehensive end-to-end security solution that requires minimal resources, said Neal Creighton, CEO of CounterTack. By joining forces with Maroc Cyber Security, we are providing a comprehensive endpoint detection and response platform and the needed cybersecurity experts to help companies keep todays top threats at bay.

About Maroc Cyber Security

Maroc Cyber Security is the first pure Managed Security Service Provider based in Morocco and North Africa, it is powered by a strong harness of technology, processes and well trained people. Maroc Cyber Security offers to customers an end-to-end solution for securing their information and let them focus in growing their business. Maroc Cyber Security SOC platform is hosted in its own Secure Data Center which is among the first Certified Uptime tier 3 Data Centers in Morocco.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.maroccybersecurity.com

About CounterTack

CounterTack is the leading provider of Predictive Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) technology for the enterprise. CounterTacks Endpoint Threat Platform (ETP) delivers multi-technique detection, prevention, and response by applying a unique combination of behavioral analysis, memory forensics, machine learning, and reputational techniques to counter the most advanced threats. CounterTack detects and analyzes threats based on behaviors observed in the operating system and in memory, leveraging algorithms that examine the cause and effect of endpoint state changes. CounterTack empowers security teams with the tools, information, and context they require to prevent and neutralize advanced threats before they damage their business. CounterTack currently has relationships with over 250 customers globally and powers the Managed Detection and Response offerings of a growing ecosystem of the worlds leading MSSPs.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.countertack.com or follow us on Twitter at @CounterTack.
We see tremendous opportunities for our digital identity-based solutions in KYC, AML, and fraud prevention for cryptocurrencies and ICOs, money service businesses (MSBs), digital marketplaces, and, traditional financial institutions. - Garrett Gafke, CEO, IdentityMind

March 8, 2018  IdentityMind Global, the leader in Digital Identities You Can Trust, today announced that it will exhibiting in Booth E42 at the March 13 - 15, Money 20/20 Asia, at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore. IdentityMind provides a SaaS RegTech platform that builds, maintains and analyzes digital identities worldwide, allowing companies to perform identity proofing, risk-based authentication, regulatory identification, and to detect and prevent identity fraud.

The global digital economy continues to accelerate  specifically in the Asian markets  and weve made significant investments in people, offices, partners and our digital identity-based solutions to capitalize on those opportunities, said Garrett Gafke, CEO, IdentityMind Global. We see tremendous opportunities for our digital identity-based solutions in know your customer (KYC), anti money laundering (AML), and fraud prevention for cryptocurrencies and ICOs, money service businesses (MSBs), digital marketplaces, and, traditional financial institutions.

According to Gafke, Asia remains one of the largest unbanked or underbanked populations in the world, including thin file consumers who dont have enough information on their credit report to generate a score. This makes it challenging for legacy systems to identify them or even understand whether or not they represent a business risk. IdentityMinds all-in-one risk and compliance platform leverages digital identities to help provide money service businesses (MSBs), money remittance providers, and lenders with the most accurate risk assessment in the market.

IdentityMind has customers on six continents and is growing exponentially in Asia, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. IdentityMind recently opened an office in Beijing, China and secured the participation of Eastern Link Capital, a China focused private equity fund, in IdentityMinds Series C financing. Eastern Link Capital provides deep domain experience and knowledge of the Chinese and the overall Asian markets.

IdentityMind also recently announced the creation of a new business unit specifically dedicated to providing know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) solutions to address the regulatory and compliance requirements of the rapidly growing global Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and cryptocurrency markets. In the last six months, IdentityMind has worked with over 50 ICO customers, evaluating more than 250,000 users around the world who contributed more than a billion dollars in tokens and digital currencies.

Resources



For more information, visit IdentityMind on Web, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blog, Google+ .

About IdentityMind Global

IdentityMind Global, the leader in Digital Identities You Can Trust, provides a SaaS platform that builds, maintains and analyzes digital identities worldwide, allowing companies to perform identity proofing, risk-based authentication, regulatory identification, and to detect and prevent identity fraud. Built-in transaction monitoring enables e-commerce fraud prevention, anti-money laundering (AML), and counter terrorism financing (CTF). Our patented eDNA technology securely tracks the entities involved in each transaction (e.g. onboarding, account origination, money transfers, online payments, etc.) to build unique digital identity trust reputations. This reputation is anonymously shared between customers in IdentityMinds Global Identity Network.

 2018 IdentityMind Global. All rights reserved. IdentityMind Global and the IdentityMind logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of IdentityMind Global in the United States and other countries. All other brand, service or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or owners.

Media Contacts

Dan Rampe

Director of Corporate Communications

IdentityMind Global

Tel: 415-205-9378

Email: drampe(at)identitymind(dot)com
The submissions are always incredibly inspiring  whether its a big, new wellness idea or a focus on social and economic benefits offered by the wellness industry.

The Global Wellness Summit (GWS), the foremost gathering of international leaders in the $3.7 trillion global wellness economy, today announced that submissions for its 3rd annual Shark Tank of Wellness student competition will be considered until June 1, 2018. The unique global challenge is open to undergraduate and post-graduate students (18+) around the world  and the top three finalists (student and professor/mentor) will be flown to this years Summit at Technogym Village in Cesena, Italy (Oct. 6-8, 2018) to present in front of a live audience and compete for $10,000 in prize money. There is no fee to enter and complete rules and regulations can be found on the Global Wellness Summit website.

Contestants will be judged on the business viability of their concepts by a panel of real-world wellness experts (aka Wellness Sharks) who will question the students in front of a live audience of business and thought leaders in global wellness. Concepts can serve any aspect of wellness, including architecture/design, beauty, education, fitness, hospitality, medicine, nutrition, real estate, spa, technology, workplace wellness, and tourism.

Wellness innovation is moving at a rapid pace and the Summits shark tank-style competition gives us a chance to highlight up-and-coming, passionate entrepreneurs who want to make a difference, said Susie Ellis, GWS Chairman and CEO. Year after year, Summit delegates express their delight in having a first-look at new concepts and meeting the students behind these innovative investment opportunities.

Interest for wellness-related start-ups, especially those offering tech-based solutions, is on the rise among the investment community and the Shark Tank of Wellness offers a unique platform for start-up ideas that might make the mainstream. For example, the popular meditation app, Headspace, has raised $75 million in venture capital to date; Happify Health raised $25 million in 2017, while Grokker, which delivers online yoga, meditation and fitness lessons, landed $22 million, to name a few.

One of last years finalists, Habit Nest, a habit-forming journal and app, successfully launched in 2017; and last years winner, Florida State Universitys Jarrod Luca, will join the 2018 Summit via video link to give an update on his winning concept  a new therapy to treat sufferers of anxiety and post traumatic stress using virtual reality.

Returning sponsors of the Shark Tank of Wellness include Circadia by Dr. Pugliese (USA) and ResortSuite (Canada). Executives from each sponsoring company receive the coveted Wellness Shark title and are on stage to ask questions and test the viability of each finalists concept.

Circadia has a rich history and foundation in education and we want to stay connected with students worldwide. Theres no better way to do that than by partnering with the Global Wellness Summit and the Shark Tank of Wellness competition, said Michael Q. Pugliese, CEO of Circadia by Dr. Pugliese.

As a spa and wellness entrepreneur, I feel that its extremely important to support the next wave of innovators in our industry through the Shark Tank of Wellness competition, said Frank Pitsikalis, Founder & CEO of ResortSuite. The submissions are always incredibly inspiring as the contestants bring big ideas for the wellness industry that can have massive economic and social benefits to our world.

In addition to the $10,000 in prize money (1st prize $5,000; 2nd prize $3,000; 3rd prize $2,000), airfare and hotel accommodations, the Shark Tank of Wellness finalists and their professors also take part in the premiere, three-day wellness conference, including all general sessions, breakout discussions, industry forums and social events.

Student submissions will be accepted from Thursday, March 1, 2018 to Friday, June 1, 2018. Students must register for the competition prior to submitting their concept on the Summit website here. Winning entries will be selected based on project innovation, visual appeal or design, relevance and importance to the wellness industry, viability as a business, and quality of the project presentation.

For more information about the unique opportunity to become a Wellness Shark and to be one of the sponsors of this years Shark Tank of Wellness competition, contact Michelle Gamble: michelle.gamble(at)globalwellnesssummit(dot)com.

The Global Wellness Summit is an invitation-only gathering for senior executives. Ellis noted that first-time delegates should apply to attend as soon as possible as the Summit is always a sold-out event.

About the Global Wellness Summit: The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) is an invitation-only international gathering that brings together leaders and visionaries to positively shape the future of the $3.7 trillion global wellness economy. Held in a different location each year, Summits have taken place in the U.S., Switzerland, Turkey, Bali, India, Morocco, Mexico and Austria. The 12th annual Summit will be held at Technogym Village, Cesena, Italy from October 6-8, 2018.
DRYKORN Partners with Centric Software Creative product design and development are the foundation of our enterprise and we need the right tools to help people involved in those areas in order to support our future growth.

Centric Software announces that DRYKORN, the German clothing brand known for its progressive metropolitan style, has selected Centric Software to provide its Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to fashion, retail, footwear, outdoor, luxury and consumer goods companies to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

DRYKORN was founded in 1996 in Germany and initially made collections of tailored pants. DRYKORN expanded its lines over the years, and now produces full ranges of smart-casual clothing and accessories for men and women. High-quality suits and blazers, on the entry price point of the premium segment, are DRYKORNs trademark products. DRYKORN now has over 1000 international retail and wholesale customers, and is sold in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, and Israel as well as the US and Canada.

In the past decade, DRYKORN has expanded rapidly. As Florian Reusch, Chief Digital Officer at DRYKORN explains, the company outgrew its existing systems for managing merchandise planning and product development.

We were working with a combination of Excel spreadsheets, email, Word documents, PDFs and a PDM system which our needs had outpaced, says Reusch. Information was distributed across different formats and channels, which made it difficult for people to access the data they needed. There was no centralized database, and our existing system was not set up to handle timelines, merchandise planning or workflows.

We used to just produce two big collections a year, but now the market demands more segmented collections within smaller windows. Every time we did a pre-collection or a trend update, it had to be handled using a new set of documents and spreadsheets. This created a lot of inefficiency and trouble for our product development teams.

DRYKORN spent two years carefully evaluating PLM solutions and Centric Software immediately won favor with their teams.

According to Christian Oertel-Korfhage, from DRYKORNs IT team, After the first Centric presentation, people were so excited by it they said, When can we start? The interface is modern and easy to understand, with a very strong IT platform behind it. Centric offers everything we wanted from a PLM system. Centrics customer references are very convincing, as they include some of the biggest players in our market. Also, Centric is extremely communicative with customers about the latest updates and trends in the industry. They have a lot of expertise in fashion.

Creative product design and development are the foundation of our enterprise and we need the right tools to help people involved in those areas in order to support our future growth, says Reusch. We anticipate having more transparency and streamlining our operations, making it possible for everyone to access the correct information instantly from a centralized database.

The Centric team has been absolutely professional to work with, Reusch concludes. We look forward to beginning the implementation  were working together in a nice atmosphere and Centric really understands the needs of their customers.

We are very happy to welcome DRYKORN as our latest customer in Europe, says Chris Groves, President and CEO of Centric Software. DRYKORN is an established German brand with a strong international presence, known for its smart style and high-quality fabrics and workmanship. Were delighted partner with them as they continue to grow.

DRYKORN (http://www.drykorn.com)

Founded in 1996, DRYKORN has developed within a few seasons into an international fashion label, which is characterized by selected fabrics, high-quality workmanship and a consistently fashionable statement.

Metropolitan, achievable and progressive are the characteristics that define the label mainly. DRYKORN appeals to individualists who are self-confident and independent. A certain sense of style and self-awareness of the trend are required. The label's collections always pick fashionable themes without giving up the brand's personality and signature.

DRYKORN is distributed internationally and now serves more than 1000 customers worldwide. Corporate management, administration and design, product management and logistics are located at the company headquarters in Kitzingen in southern Germany. The fabrics are mainly sourced from Italy and France.

Product expertise, a nationwide distribution system and personal customer service make DRYKORN one of the most up-and-coming companies in the textile industry.

Centric Software (http://www.centricsoftware.com)

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices in trend capitals around the world, Centric Software provides a Digital Transformation Platform for the most prestigious names in fashion, retail, footwear, luxury, outdoor and consumer goods. Centric Visual Innovation Platform (VIP) is a visual, fully digital collection of boards for touch-based devices like iPad, iPhone and large-scale, touch-screen televisions. Centric VIP transforms decision making and automates execution to truly collapse time to market and distance to trend. Centrics flagship product lifecycle management (PLM) platform, Centric 8, delivers enterprise-class merchandise planning, product development, sourcing, business planning, quality, and collection management functionality tailored for fast-moving consumer industries. Centric SMB packages extended PLM including innovative technology and key industry learnings tailored for small businesses.

Centric Software has received multiple industry awards, including the Frost & Sullivan Global Product Differentiation Excellence Award in Retail, Fashion, and Apparel PLM in 2016 and Frost & Sullivans Global Retail, Fashion, and Apparel PLM Product Differentiation Excellence Award in 2012. Red Herring named Centric to its Top 100 Global list in 2013, 2015, and 2016.

Centric is a registered trademark of Centric Software. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Media Contacts:

Centric Software

Americas: Jennifer Forsythe, jforsythe(at)centricsoftware(dot)com

Europe: Kristen Salaun Batby, ksalaun-batby(at)centricsoftware(dot)com

Asia: Lily Dong, lily.dong(at)centricsoftware(dot)com
Vicon Industries, Inc. (VII: NYSE-MKT) (Vicon), designer and manufacturer of video surveillance and access control software, hardware and components, will showcase at ISC West 2018, Booth 10077, many additions and enhancements to its suite of end-to-end video surveillance offerings. Through a partnership with the industry leading global provider of video analytics solutions, Agent Vi, Vicon will preview new video analytics capabilities within its Valerus VMS platform for real-time monitoring and video search. In addition, visitors will be among the first to see the companys expanded line of H.265 cameras and newly released versions of its Valerus VMS software and VAX Access Control Software and hardware. These enhanced and expanded offerings span every category of Vicon product and reflect the Companys renewed commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions that have been engineered to simplify the entire user experience. These include:

Video Analytics: Vicon now offers a range of video analytics tools that can immediately detect and extract events and valuable data from surveillance footage.

H.265 Cameras: Vicons extensive line of ONVIF indoor and outdoor cameras, for every application, now includes even more H.265 models that can reduce demands for storage and bandwidth by 50%.

Valerus 18: The latest update to Vicons popular VMS software provides enhancements to its user interface, new data backup and security options and support for H.265 cameras.

Valerus/ViconNet Gateway: A new module for use with Valerus 18 provides a migration path for users of Vicons legacy ViconNet platform to benefit from all of Valerus features.

VAX Access Control: Updated software provides an enhanced monitoring interface and more flexibility in customizing automated functions. Expanded hardware includes Panel Room Style Master Controllers.

In addition to showcasing our many new products and product enhancements at ISC West, Vicon will be highlighting the many successful, high-profile installations that are employing our new generation of end-to-end Valerus VMS and VAX Access Control solutions that deliver unprecedented ease-of-use and performance flexibility. Visitors will learn how our unique, thin-client, true-open-standards approach to physical security is supporting customers in a wide range of verticals, including city-wide surveillance, government institutions, real estate developments, schools and healthcare, said Bret McGowan, Senior V.P. of Sales and Marketing.

Visit Vicon in Las Vegas at ISC West, Sand Expo Center, April 11-13, 2018 at Booth 10077. Learn more now by visiting Vicons website at: http://www.vicon-security.com.

About Vicon Industries, Inc.: Since 1967, Vicon has been a leading provider of mission-critical security surveillance systems. Today we are focused on providing solutions that have been engineered not just for performance and features, but for simplicity in deployment, operation and maintenance. Our goal is to serve as a valued security technology partner to our customers by reducing security solution complexity, ensuring a superior experience and future proofing our solutions. Vicon and its leading-edge systems are trusted by a customer base that spans the globe, representing every type of industry.
3DConfigure - Weldmarx XV The ability of our clients to see exactly what their order will look like is a real game changer, says Turk.

Formaspace Office has launched a free 3D configurator web application, available on both PC and mobile devices, allowing online visitors to view and sample detailed office furniture configurations in real-time.

Weve seen a real shift in the office furniture market, says Jeff Turk, CEO of Formaspace. Often the commercial contract furniture purchasing cycle is slowed down by hardcopy catalogs, requests for material samples and renderings. We know from our research that furniture professionals are hungry for self-service tools to give them fast, efficient ways to visualize the different options available to them. So thats what weve given them with 3D Configure.

Formaspaces 3DConfigure joins the forefront of digital solutions currently meeting the challenges of a transforming industry. These transformations are occurring both with the rise in demand for ancillary office furnishings, which compounds the volume of product information dealers must manage, as well as the advent of digital native millennials moving into purchase decision-making roles.

With 3DConfigure, architects, interior designers, dealers and manufacturers representatives can visualize the different options of Formaspaces introductory line of commercial office furniture, the Weldmarx series of office desks, workstations, and tables.

3DConfigure allows users to view how different configuration options work together, as well as streamlining the decision-making process when specifying color, finish, surface treatments, and material choices. Dealers and manufacturers reps will be able to significantly speed up the sales cycle of their projects, with list price built into the tool, and the ability to share their own private, custom configurations with their clients directly.

The ability of our clients to see exactly what their order will look like is a real game changer, says Turk. 3DConfigure removes the margin for error and miscommunication from the furniture specification process.

To experience the 3DConfigure tool, visit https://formaspaceoffice.com/3d-configure/

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact marketing team at mktg(at)formaspaceoffice(dot)com.
The Spalding Enigma - Cover "The Spalding Enigma" makes important contributions to the history of Mormonism... [and] American history as a whole. - Dr. Gene Edward Veith (from the Foreword)

St. Polycarp Publishing House is pleased to announce the upcoming release of "The Spalding Enigma: Investigating the Mysterious Origin of The Book of Mormon" by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Arthur Vanick, and Howard A. Davis. It also features a Foreword by Dr. Gene Edward Veith. The book will be published on May 15th, 2018 and is available for pre-order now.

Where did "The Book of Mormon" come from? Who was Solomon Spalding and what connection did his manuscript have with Joseph Smith? To answer these questions, this book critically examines key historical documents, personal testimonies, and records of 19th-century Mormon history to examine this Spalding Enigma.

The authors have spent decades collecting and analyzing evidence to conclude that "The Book of Mormon" is an adaptation of an obscure historical novel written by Revolutionary War veteran Solomon Spalding during the War of 1812. They assert that Mormon founders Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, and Joseph Smith Jr. adapted and embellished the Spalding manuscript to create "The Book of Mormon."

Follow along with Wayne Cowdrey (a relative of Oliver Cowdreys family), Arthur Vanick, and Howard Davis as they pursue this enigma and present the evidence for you to draw your own conclusion.

The book is available in two editions:



Readers' Edition: Presents the authors' research and findings in a concise manner. Great for most readers who want the main points in an accessible format. Available as a 248 page paperback as well as an ebook (Kindle, iBook, Nook).

Scholars' Edition: Provides additional material, references, and appendices. Perfect for scholars and researches who are interested in the detailed sources available in the book. Available as a 620 page hardcover as well as an ebook (Kindle, iBook, Nook).

Additional information and details are available at thespaldingenigma.com
More than 2,250 student leaders gathered for the second Leadworthy Live event to learn we all have a story to write - and the importance of making it a good one.

On March 7, 2018, New York Times best-selling author, Flip Flippen, joined with other special guests to charge these young leaders to live remarkable lives. Students from across the country gathered in the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie, Texas to imagine the possibility of making a lasting difference in their communities. Flippen established LeadWorthy as an initiative with a goal of encouraging students to pursue excellence in their relationships, leadership positions, and future careers. LeadWorthy is building a generation of remarkable leaders!

Flip inspired participants to be bold enough to rewrite their life stories. Entrepreneurial illusionist, Vinh Giang, and Guinness World Record holder, Gabi Ury, captivated students with personal and sometimes humorous messages to be deliberate in setting and reaching goals. And energizing performances from Courtnie Ramirez (NBC's The Voice contestant) and two stomp teams (the 5th Ward Men of Distinction and Sisters of Distinction) founded by Dallas DJ, Rock-T, brought the audience to its feet! Students departed with a farewell challenge to #BeRemarkable in all walks of life.

The third LeadWorthy Live event will take place in Houston, Texas in November 2018.

http://www.leadworthy.org
EXACOM, an industry leader in advanced communications recording solutions, is announcing the release of the EARS Mobile, a compact, mobile recording solution. EXACOM has developed this latest version of EARS to meet the needs of mobile recording applications such as Fire Ground recording, Tactical and Command Vehicle recording. This mobile version of EARS is the latest element of EXACOMs distributed recording architecture and will be showcased at this years 2018 IWCE show in Orlando, FL.

The EARS Mobile is a Fire, Police and Incident Command recorder, that provides for a unique recording solution to meet the rigorous demands of Fire Ground, Tactical and Command Vehicle recording requirements. With playback available via a Mobile Phone/Tablet and ease of recording file mobility with a USB off-loader, the EARS Mobile delivers a powerful and compact recording solution developed specifically for the mobile environment. The EARS Mobile recorder also features full and seamless integration with the HINDSIGHT G3 multimedia recorder. Together both platforms form a flexible and complex recording solution with long term storage retention and a full range of communications integrations for the Dispatch and 911 environment.

EXACOM will be demonstrating the new EARS Mobile along with the G3 software featuring Quality Assurance and Screen Capture options in the EXACOM booth (#1959) at 2018 IWCE in Orlando, March 7 -8. Please visit us to see how these new products can meet and exceed your needs!

About EXACOM:

EXACOM, Inc., based in Concord, New Hampshire, is a leading manufacturer of communications recording solutions for public safety, government and DoD applications since 1986. EXACOM provides audio, video, data and text to 9-1-1 recording solutions for communications and dispatch centers in many countries, including some of the largest centers in the U.S. and Canada. EXACOMs solutions are designed to meet the demanding needs of todays complex, rapidly advancing and mission critical communications environments. EXACOM is now an employee owned company. For more information, visit: http://www.exacom.com.

EXACOM, HINDSIGHT, EARS ExaCare are trademarks of EXACOM.
Kadan Homecare, a provider of quality home care to Atlanta area families for nearly 35 years, announced today that it received the distinguished Best of Home Care  Leader in Excellence Award from Home Care Pulse, the leading firm in quality assurance for home care. The Leader in Excellence Award is the highest recognition presented by Home Care Pulse and is given to select agencies that consistently rank among the very highest in 15 or more quality metrics. As a Leader in Excellence, Kadan is now ranked among the top five percent of home care providers participating in the satisfaction management program.

This accomplishment demonstrates Kadans long-term dedication to excellent care and quality improvement. To be eligible for this award, ten percent of Kadans clients and caregivers were interviewed each month by Home Care Pulse. Over a twelve-month period, Kadan received high client and caregiver satisfaction ratings in areas such as caregiver training, compassion of caregivers, communication, scheduling andclient/caregiver compatibility. Feedback from this program, as well as quality benchmarks from Home Care Pulse, enables Kadan management team to set goals, make improvements and provide outstanding care.

We are pleased that our dedication to fostering quality professionalism and expertise in home care is recognized by the Best of Home Care  Leader in Excellence Award, said Linda Kadan, founder and CEO of Kadan Homecare. Since these awards are based on real, unfiltered feedback from clients and caregivers, we have affirmation that we provide a great work environment and solid training for our team, while maintaining our focus on client satisfaction.

The Best of Home Care  Leader in Excellence Award highlights the top-performing home care businesses in the nation. Home Care Pulse believes that by honoring these providers, families looking for in-home care for a loved one will be able to recognize and choose a trusted home care provider.

Our goal at Home Care Pulse is to empower home care businesses to reach their goals and deliver the best home care possible, says Aaron Marcum, CEO and founder of Home Care Pulse. We are happy to recognize Kadan Homecare as a Leader in Excellence. Weve been impressed by their commitment to their clients and caregivers,

as well as the quality of the overall care they provide. They really stand out in their market as a top home care provider.

To find out more about Kadans commitment to excellence, please visit http://www.kadan.org.

About Kadan Homecare

Kadan Homecare is a 34-year old, family owned home healthcare agency that provides companion and personal care, as well as skilled nursing, to help support families with short and long-term needs. Kadans comprehensive C.A.R.E. Transitions program enhances post-discharge monitoring to help minimize hospital readmissions. Kadan currently provides caregiver services ranging from post hospitalization and respite relief to hospice assistance for families spanning 16 metropolitan Atlanta counties. For more information about Kadan, please visit http://www.kadan.org or call 770-396-8997.

About Home Care Pulse

Home Care Pulse is the home care industry's leading firm in satisfaction research and quality assurance. On behalf of home care businesses across North America, Home Care Pulse gathers unbiased satisfaction ratings from clients and caregivers and detailed feedback to ensure the best in-home care possible can be provided. Powerful online reports allow businesses to identify needs and take action to increase satisfaction, reduce caregiver turnover, and address client needs. For more information, please call Home Care Pulse at (877) 307-8573 or visit homecarepulse.com.
Marguerite McDonald, MD Looking back on the procedure we performed on Mrs. Cassady so many years ago, I am so proud and excited to see how far laser vision correction has come

March 25, 2018 marks the 30th anniversary of this extraordinary advancement in vision correction history. The worlds very first laser vison correction procedure was performed by Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Islands own Marguerite McDonald, MD in 1988. Dr. McDonald found herself fascinated by Steve Trokels 1983 AJO paper in which he used an industrial excimer laser to make patterns in cadaver animal eyes. So much so that, starting in 1984, Charles Munnerlyn, PhD, Steve Trokel, MD, and Dr. McDonald began working together to develop laser vision correction. Steve Klyce, PhD, was also an important member of the research team.

This team of innovators began their arduous journey, ablating thousands of plastic test blocks before moving on to cadaver animal and human eyes. As they progressed they next performed the procedure on living rabbit and monkey eyes. Through their years of work they were able to refine the hardware, software and surgical technique.

Progress was arduous for the team, but an unexpected opportunity arose in 1988. Alberta Cassady was a 62 year old woman with cancer of the orbit, requiring exenteration, which is essentially the removal of the eyeball and the contents of the eye socket. With a massively disfiguring procedure looming, and a poor prognosis even with the surgery, Mrs. Cassady bravely offered to let the team perform experimental surgery on her eye.

After receiving permission from the Food & Drug Administration, Dr. McDonald had the honor of performing the first laser vision correction procedure in the world, PRK, on Mrs. Cassady on March 25, 1988 at the Delta Primate Center in Covington Louisiana, which was the vivarium used by the LSU Eye Center in New Orleans. The team rushed Mrs. Cassady past the monkey cages, as time was of the essence. Dr McDonald was the surgeon for the procedure. The research team watched her heal on a daily basis, right up until the exenteration 11 days later. The pathology report showed the healing pattern that we now know so well.

Sadly, Mrs. Cassady lost her battle with cancer. Her remarkable bravery and generosity in the face of such tragedy provided vital information that allowed the FDA to accelerate the approval process. Even though it is usually only wealthy donors who have facilities named after them, Dr. McDonald and her team demanded that LSU allow them to name their laser facility after such a brave and selfless woman.

The FDA was so impressed by the daily postop evaluations and histological specimen that they allowed the team to start human trials immediately. Laser vision correction has come far, but it all started with Dr. McDonald and her colleagues, and the selfless act of one brave woman. Looking back on the procedure we performed on Mrs. Cassady so many years ago, I am so proud and excited to see how far laser vision correction has come, says Dr. McDonald.

Since that first PRK procedure was performed back in 1988, the original team has contributed to, and still contributes to, significant advances in laser vision correction. PRK has evolved dramatically and is popular all over the world, including the U.S.; in some countries, it is the most popular form of laser vision correction. The most prevalent type of laser vision correction, however, is LASIK, which was introduced after PRK; it is one of the most commonly performed elective surgeries, with more than 28 million procedures performed worldwide. Now, LASIK is most commonly performed using all-laser femtosecond technology. When combined with advanced wavefront, topographic, or customized technology, laser vision correction---both LASIK and PRK--- can provide visual results that often surpass 20/20.

About Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island

Founded in 1997, Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island, a Spectrum Vision Partners partner, (http://www.ocli.net) is one of the leading ophthalmology practices in the United States. OCLI boasts 14 state-of-the-art medical facilities across Nassau and Suffolk counties, housing the most advanced technology available to offer patients a variety of ophthalmic services and treatments. OCLI is led by 33 highly skilled eye surgeons in each major sub-specialty of eye care, providing comprehensive eye care services, including treatment for cataracts, corneal disease, refractive surgery, glaucoma, oculoplastics, retinal disease, neuro ophthalmology and optometry.

About Spectrum Vision Partners

Spectrum Vision Partners is a leading management services organization serving the ophthalmology sector. Spectrum Vision Partners has over 400 employees providing world-class practice management solutions to a network of nationally renowned multi-specialty ophthalmologists in the Tri-State region. Spectrum Vision Partners provides a comprehensive set of business support functions, including billing and collections, marketing, financial and accounting services, benefits and payroll management and information technology.
Until people start enjoying scrubbing their toilets and cleaning the baseboards, our business will continue to grow! - Mark Kushinsky, CEO

MaidPro, a home cleaning franchise corporation, was recently named to Entrepreneur's Fastest-Growing Franchises list, a highly competitive ranking that recognizes the companies with the greatest franchise unit growth in North America, based on data submitted for Entrepreneur's Franchise 500 ranking.

"It is very rewarding to see steady growth in our mature franchise," notes Mark Kushinsky, CEO of MaidPro Franchise. "Until people start enjoying scrubbing their toilets and cleaning the baseboards, our business will continue to grow!"

Entrepreneur's 2018 Fastest-Growing Franchises ranking is based on each company's net franchise-unit growth in the U.S. and Canada from July 31, 2016, to July 31, 2017, with ties broken based on percentage growth. MaidPro's position on the ranking demonstrates the brand's rising popularity with both franchisees and customers.

"For business owners who want to grow their brand quickly, franchising is a compelling and often effective option," says Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur. "The companies on this list prove that well, having opened a combined total of more than 10,000 new franchises in just one year."

To view MaidPro in the full ranking, visit entrepreneur.com/franchises/fastestgrowing. Results can also be seen in the March issue of Entrepreneur, available now on newsstands.

MaidPro was also recently named one of Entrepreneur's Top 500 Franchises and Top Franchises for Veterans. MaidPro is actively seeking new, qualified owners looking to join the growing franchise.

About MaidPro

MaidPro is a Boston-based franchisor of house cleaning services with over 225 locations in 38 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. The company, which began franchising in 1997, takes pride in its strong owner community, cutting-edge technology, and creative marketing. It has been honored with the Franchise Business Review's Four-Star Rating and Franchise 50 awards every year from 2006 to 2018 for owner satisfaction. MaidPro was also named a Best Franchise to Buy by Forbes in 2015 and 2016. The company can be found online at http://www.maidprofranchise.com.

To get a free estimate for housecleaning services from MaidPro please visit http://www.maidpro.com.
Event Speakers gathered to cut the ceremonial ribbon We are pleased that our team was able to play a role in delivering a final product that was meet with such enthusiasm and one which will bring benefit to the residents and the larger community of Framingham. -Keith Shaw COO Delphi Construction

Members of multi-market general contractor Delphi Construction gathered with representatives from Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), MassHousing, City, and State Government Officials and members of the community for a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony to celebrate the completion of the Tribune Apartments Renovations.

Tribune Apartments are a 53-unit, affordable housing development in Framingham, MA. The units are housed in what was two separate buildings, The Tribune Building, and the Victory Building. The Tribune building was originally built in 1890 and housed the Framingham Tribune Newspaper. While the Victory building was not built until the early 1900s. In 1982, both buildings were converted into their current use of affordable housing for disabled adults and senior citizens. POAH acquired the property in 2013, with plans to make significant repairs and renovations, and invited Delphi to complete the rehabilitation.

Project Owner, Preservation for Affordable Housing organized the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony. Charlie Dirac Project Manager for Preservation for Affordable Housing orchestrated the program. Excitement for the community and the completion of the project was shared by Aaron Gornstein, President and CEO of Preservation for Affordable Housing, Wade Blackman from the Office of Congresswoman Katherine Clark, Senator Karen E. Spilka of the Massachusetts State Summit, Representative Jack Lewis from Massachusetts House of Representatives, Tom Lyons, Acting Executive Director of MassHousing, Roger Herzog, Executive Director of Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation, Joe Flatley President and CEO of Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation, Mayor Elect of the City of Framingham, Yvonne Spicer, and resident of Tribune Apartments Samuel Salguero.

Delphi Construction Chief Operating Officer, Keith Shaw added a word of congratulations to all involved.

We appreciated the opportunity to work once again with our client, POAH. We are pleased that our team was able to play a role in delivering a final product that was meet with such enthusiasm and one which will bring benefit to the residents and the larger community of Framingham, Shaw said.

The scope of work completed by Delphi on Tribune Apartments includes the full renovation of 53 Units, interior common areas, exterior repairs, and site work. Tribune Apartments vary in size from studio units to 2 bedroom apartments. Included in the total number of units are 3 handicapped accessible units. All units and common areas received electrical upgrades, as well as a new fire alarm and fire suppression systems. In the common areas, new compliant handrails in the stairwells have been installed. Exterior renovations include new windows, masonry repair, roof replacement and entry doors. The site work consists of new ADA ramp, sidewalks, curbing and asphalt patching.
A recent study by the Journal of College Access titled, Increasing College Access through the Implementation of Naviance: An Exploratory Study,[1] found that using college and career planning platform Naviance by Hobsons is a stronger predictor of college application rates than other factors such as gender, academic achievement (GPA), or socioeconomic status.

The study was authored by representatives of the University of Arkansas and the Denton (TX) Independent School District based on Denton ISDs archived student data. The study explored how Naviance influences high schoolers college application rates by pursuing two research questions: (1) Does the length of time students have access to Naviance predict their college application rate?, and (2) Does the number of times students access Naviance predict their college application rate?

Results demonstrate the direct effect of Naviance technology on leveling the playing field for all students -- regardless of socioeconomic status -- by increasing access to college and career information in middle and high school, helping students create individualized learning plans, and establishing a college-going culture.

At Hobsons, we believe in helping students explore their strengths, interests, and opportunities that put them on the path to meet their goals. The findings from this independent research demonstrate the direct effect that Naviance has in helping students gain access to college, said Hobsons CEO Kate Cassino. As educators seek strategic partners to prepare their students for life after high school, were honored to work with more than 13,000 schools and districts across the United States and impact over 10 million students with the resources to realize their full potential.

The study examined five variables that were likely to be good predictors of college application rates: gender, socioeconomic status, GPA, number of years of using Naviance, and the average annual logins to Naviance. Findings indicated that the average number of times a student logged into Naviance accounted for the largest variance in the college application rates. Counselors who participated in the study utilized Naviance for an increasing number of tasks including career interest assessments, searching for colleges, creating individualized course plans, and submitting high school transcripts to support their students applications.

The Naviance platform has been vital in our mission to empower lifelong learners to be engaged citizens who positively impact their local and global community. The results of this effectiveness study further reinforce our commitment to making college and career readiness - and access to Naviance- a top priority for all our students, said Denton Independent School Districts Superintendent, Dr. Jamie Wilson.

Naviance is the global leader among college and career readiness platforms and is used by 40 percent of students grades five through 12 nationwide. The technology enables districts and schools to align student strengths and interests to their post-secondary goals, improving student outcomes and providing a clear, personalized pathway to success.

To download the full report, click here. To learn more about Naviance by Hobsons, visit Naviance.com.

About Hobsons

Hobsons helps students identify their strengths, explore careers, create academic plans, match to best-fit educational opportunities, and reach their education and life goals. Through our solutions, we enable thousands of educational institutions to improve college and career planning, admissions and best-fit matching, enrollment management, and student success and advising for millions of students around the globe. Our leading college and career readiness platform Naviance was named the 2017 SIIA CODiE Award winner in the Best College and Career Readiness Solution category.

[1] Christian, David; Lawrence, Amy; and Dampman, Nicole (2017) "Increasing College Access through the Implementation of Naviance: An Exploratory Study," Journal of College Access: Vol. 3 : Iss. 2, Article 4.
Hood College will host a portal March 19 through April 11 to connect students, faculty and staff with individuals from more than 12 countries on every continent.

Operated by Shared Studios, portals are gold spaces equipped with immersive audiovisual technology. Upon entering the portal, users come face-to-face with someone in a distant portal, live and full-body, as if in the same room. This opportunity will allow users from Hood College to discuss politics, education, criminal justice, the environment and share art, poetry and other forms of creative expression with people from around the world.

The portal will be located on the residential quad near Coblentz Hall. Several Hood College classes are using the portal to enhance instruction and give students the unique experience of talking to people in other cultures.

Drop-in times, when anybody may come by, include:

March 20 from noon to 1 p.m. with Hariwa University in Herat, Afghanistan, and from 6 to 7 p.m. with the Centro de Cultura Digital, a museum in Mexico City, Mexico, that investigates the cultural, social and economic implications of the daily use of digital technology.

March 26 from noon to 1 p.m. with the Mercy Corps in Gaza, Palestine, and from 6 to 7 p.m. with the University of San Pedro Sula in Honduras.

April 5 from 1 to 2 p.m. with Impact Hub Rwanda, a public arts social enterprise in Kigali, Rwanda.

April 6 from noon to 1 p.m. with the Harsham Camp for Internally Displaced Persons in Erbil, Iraq, and from 6 to 7 p.m. with Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City, Mexico.

The only other higher educational institutional in Maryland to host a portal to date has been the University of Maryland at College Park. For more information, contact Paige Eager at eager@hood.edu or 301-696-3699. For additional information about the portal, visit http://www.sharedstudios.com.

In the photo: A group in San Francisco speaks with new friends in Herat, Afghanistan.

Hood College is an independent, liberal arts college, offering 32 undergraduate majors, four pre-professional programs, 19 graduate programs, two doctorates and 10 post-baccalaureate certificates. Located in historic Frederick, near Washington, D.C., Baltimore and the I-270 technology corridor, Hood gives students access to countless internships and research opportunities.
Academic Award winner Stacey Burkholder (center holding check) Its rare that we get recognition and its nice when people and companies like California Casualty let us know that they care.

This means so much for me and for my students, said Stacey Burkholder after she received a $2,500 Academic Award from California Casualty. Its been a stressful year for our school and this will help bring some fun to my classroom.

Ms. Burkholder, who teaches a combined 3rd and 4th grade class at Del Roble Elementary School in San Jose, California, is thrilled with the resources the money will allow her to bring to her students. We are learning about Californias Gold Rush, and Im thinking of bringing in a performance group that re-enacts that period to make it interactive and real for my students, she said.

After a career in the high-tech industry, Ms. Burkholder became a teacher and has been at Del Roble Elementary for 12 years. I wanted to make a life change that would make a difference for others, she said. Its rare that we get recognition and its nice when people and companies like California Casualty let us know that they care, she added.

National surveys find educators spend an average of $500 of their own funds each year, with many spending much more, for classroom supplies and materials. The California Casualty Academic Award was created to increase the opportunity for instructors to bring innovative projects and educational opportunities to their schools. This was the 15th Academic Award given since the program began in 2012.

California Casualty will be enhancing the working lives of educators with an upcoming $7,500 School Lounge Makeover this summer. Information and the entry form can be found at http://www.schoolloungemakeover.com.

Headquartered in San Mateo, California, with Service Centers in Arizona, Colorado and Kansas, California Casualty provides auto and home insurance to educators, law enforcement officers, firefighters and nurses across the country. Founded in 1914, California Casualty has been led by four generations of the Brown family. To learn more about California Casualty, or to request an auto insurance quote, please visit http://www.calcas.com or call 1.800.800.9410.
10 Lessons from the 2018 Green Industry Benchmark Report Our goal with the webinar is to leverage the data in the benchmark report to improve a business.

HindSite Software, the premier provider of field service software to the green industry, recently announced a new webinar designed to help green industry businesses understand the results of a recent survey. Scheduled from 1 to 2 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, March 13, 2018, 10 Lessons from the 2018 Green Industry Benchmark Report, will analyze data from the recently released 2018 Green Industry Benchmark Report.

The 2018 Green Industry Benchmark Report is the culmination of a two-month-long surveying effort that reflects the opinions of nearly 300 green industry business owners and managers who provide services like lawn maintenance, irrigation service, landscaping and snow removal. This is the sixth year HindSite has released the Green Industry Benchmark Report.

The Green Industry Benchmark Report contains a wealth of data, explains HindSites Marketing Manager, Chad Reinholz. What weve found is it can be overwhelming. In this webinar, we try to break down some of the key findings into actionable tasks green industry businesses can leverage to be more competitive.

Among the topics covered in the webinar include:



How to overcome the labor shortage prevalent in the green industry

Tips for being more profitable

Why training matters and how to build a great training program

How to systematize your sales process to improve close rates

Our goal with the webinar is to leverage the data in the benchmark report to improve a business, explains Reinholz. So well go a step beyond explaining the survey results, and deliver in-depth solutions to some of the issues discovered in the survey."

The 10 lessons will be presented over the course of an hour and will be followed by a 15 minute question and answer session. Green industry business owners interested in attending the free webinar can register at http://info.hindsitesoftware.com/10-lessons-from-the-2018-green-industry-benchmark-report

About HindSite Software

HindSite Software has helped green industry contractors better manage and grow their businesses with field service management software since 2001. HindSite today sells two software solutions. The HindSite Solution is designed for field service businesses while FieldCentral is lawn maintenance software. Both solutions help businesses market, sell, schedule, route, manage their field employees and invoice. To learn more, visit http://www.hindsitesoftware.com.
Sunrise Hitek have just released their newest power bank offering. This Power Bank 5000 model features Qi wireless charging. The charger has a high capacity; its 5000mAh battery provides extra battery life for all USB powered devices. The dual input ports  8-pin Lightning and Micro USB can both be used at the same time for fast charging of the power bank. At a mere 5 ounces, this is one of the thinnest and lightest power banks on the market.

While being at the forefront of the newest technology is obviously important, a perhaps less discussed aspect of tech devices is safety. According to a recent article on CNET, a power bank caught fire on an airplane flight in China. The bank was not in use at the time and had been stored in an overhead bin. Sunrise Hiteks Wireless Power Bank 5000 Charger is UL Certified for safety and reliability. Having been around for over 100 years, UL certifies billions of products.

In addition to the UL certification, Sunrise chooses to use lithium-polymer batteries in their products over lithium-ion. While lithium-polymer batteries are more costly to produce, they are more lightweight and significantly safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. This is probably why more luxury companies like Apple choose lithium-polymer.

The Wireless Power Bank 5000 is compatible with all mobile phones including Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel, OnePlus, Huawei, LG, iPad, tablet, or basically any USB powered device. This chargers large surface area make it optimal for logo branding. As with most of their products, Sunrise offers optional full customization on this power bank. Simply upload full color logo or photo, and Sunrise does the rest. These make for a functional gift for clients and colleagues.

About Sunrise Hitek

Sunrise Hitek is a leading maker of protective gear for schools 1:1 technology programs. HITEK has been designing tech accessories since 2013 and expanding ever since. Their primary customer are K-12 schools, leading them to recently develop the hitekcases website specifically for the educational sector. Sunrise Hitek Group, LLC, also operates Sunrise Hitek, a leading color printing company based in Chicago. As a G7 Qualified Master Printer, Sunrise is uniquely qualified among protective gear makers to offer a wide array of customization options, ensuring the most consistent and accurate color reproduction. Sunrise is an Inc. 5000 company established in 1988 and employs the most advanced equipment and technology, such as G7-certified HP Indigo and UV flatbed presses, and digital die-cutting, to create best-in-class products. A privately-owned enterprise, the company is based in Chicago and sells products worldwide.
ImpactPPA announces today the addition of Vinay Gupta, CEO of Mattereum.com and former release coordinator for the Ethereum Foundation, to their board. Built on the Ethereum platform, ImpactPPA is creating the SmartPPA (Power Purchase Agreement) which will be designed to allow projects to find the right funding and resources to fuel the development of decentralized renewable energy resources solutions. ImpactPPAs aim-- solving some of the globes most pressing environmental issues by rolling out wind, solar, battery and microgrid technologies, tied together and coordinated with Ethereum smart contracts.

ImpactPPA is a growing venture designed to leverage the power of Ethereum to spark and cultivate renewable energy initiatives across the globe. Guptas vast experience and insights into decentralized ledger and distributed renewable energy solutions have solidified his status as one of the worlds foremost leaders of decentralization and the use of the blockchain.

Through ImpactPPAs decentralized distribution, the ImpactPPA Community will have the opportunity to purchase MPQ Tokens and, subsequently, among other functions, vote on sustainable projects that have been proposed on the network. We believe that the use of crypto-based funding (in the form of MPQ tokens) incentivizes players and stakeholders across the globe to proactively contribute to projects that will radically affect how we as a global community consume energy.

Dan Bates, President and CEO of ImpactPPA believes that smart contracts and decentralization are the keys to sparking a sustainable revolution. Too often, projects with the best of intentions, are held up by red tape and bureaucratic processes. Leveraging the global reach and unadulterated transparency the blockchain gives Bates and his company the chance to lead this movement that will incentivize players of all communities and professional backgrounds to step up and contribute viable environmental solutions. As the coordinator of Ethereums 2015 launch, Guptas deep expertise on the blockchain and unparalleled insights into its potential future will guide the development of ImpactPPAs reach on the network.

Bates says, I have followed Vinay Guptas work for the past several years and could not be more thrilled to officially bring him onto ImpactPPAs growing team. Vinays past work in developing nations and his unique understanding of how to positively impact the lives of billions of people around the world by using the blockchain will be a huge benefit to ImpactPPA as we grow and expand our reach. Furthermore, he understands that the power of what we are doing will create healthier and safer lives for this planet and its people. His work with Hexayurt, a refugee shelter and decentralized infrastructure project, demonstrates his commitment to serving people, a commitment that also serves as the foundation of ImpactPPA. His work as CEO of Mattereum directly supports our mission too --the roll out of smart contracts which are legally enforceable all over the world directly facilitates the global adoption of our technology platform.

For his part, Gupta is energized by the prospect of building a global, transparent platform that will rely on the contributions of many to spark progress, not just institutions in power.

Before I was a blockchain guy, I was a decentralized renewable energy guy, says Mr. Gupta. I first started work on energy decentralization in 2002, at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and I worked on Small is Profitable, The Economists 2003 Book of the Year, on the economics of renewable energy decentralization. A few years ago, I arranged the roll out of 100,000 small solar lights in refugee camps in Pakistan with UK Department for International Development, the first project of its kind. I put this work on pause when the time came to work on the blockchain, but its always been close to my heart. I worked extensively on decentralized access to water with Akvo.org (a water and sanitation charity), and Ive always had a long term vision of coordinating global access to decentralized infrastructure for power, water, sanitation, health and more using the ever-growing power of the internet. ImpactPPA is a vast forward step in the concrete realization of those dreams, and the blockchain is the right technology to tie together identity, finance and hardware in the field to bring essential services to billions of people. Im very pleased indeed to be with ImpactPPA at the vanguard of this revolution.

To learn more about ImpactPPA, please visit: http://impactppa.com/ or join their Telegram channel: https://t.me/impactppa_official

Disclaimer:

ImpactPPAs tokens are utility tokens and are not intended to be securities in any jurisdiction or intended to be sold in any jurisdiction in which crypto assets are prohibited, including but not limited to the Peoples Republic of China and South Korea. This press release does not constitute an offer or solicitation of an investment in a security of ImpactPAA. The token sale described in this press release will only be made by means of ImpactPPAs sale materials, which include its white paper.

Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented herein constitutes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. securities laws. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, targets, intends, anticipates, believes, or variations of such words and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results to be taken, occur or achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the ImpactPPA to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Also, forward-looking statements represent estimates and assumptions only as of the date hereof. Except as required by law, no person assumes any obligation to update any forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in any forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

For media inquiries, please contact Chris Bibey of Verma Media at Chris(at)vermamedia(dot)com
The Virginia center is home to the fourth embryology lab operated by Shady Grove Fertility, joining the largest freestanding IVF laboratory in the United States.

Shady Grove Fertility announced today the grand opening of its newest full-service IVF center in Fairfax, VA coming this April. In the past, Virginia residents had to travel to SGFs Rockville, MD location for procedures. The new 19,000 square foot space in Fairfax will be home to physician offices for patient consultations, a high-tech embryology laboratorylocated adjacent to a spacious procedure center with an operating room, five recovery bays, and three embryo transfer roomsas well as a dedicated andrology laboratory for sperm preparation.

Shady Grove Fertility is the largest fertility center in the nation and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and has been serving Northern Virginia with patient-centric fertility care for the past 25 years. SGF Virginia offers seven locations, nine reproductive endocrinologists, and one reproductive urologist, many of whom were named Northern Virginia Magazines Top Doctors for Infertility.

The opening of an IVF center in Fairfax, VA is especially significant for two reasons. Its in response to tremendous patient need and represents our continued growth in the region. As well, it significantly eases the travel required of nearly 30% of our patients who historically traveled to Rockville for procedures, says Chief Executive Officer of Shady Grove Fertility, Mark Segal. Our Virginia patients will now have the added convenience of accessing the care theyve come to expect from our center in a location much closer to home.

The Virginia center is home to the fourth embryology lab operated by Shady Grove Fertility, joining the largest freestanding IVF laboratory in the United States in Rockville, Maryland as well as Towson, MD; Atlanta, GA; and Chesterbrook, PA.

The lab is equipped with the very latest technology including anti-shake tables, special ventilation, state-of-the-art air filtration systems, advanced incubators and media, and inverted microscopes to evaluate embryo growth, development, and quality, to name a few. The lab will operate under the distinct leadership of nationally and internationally known Jim Graham, Laboratories Director, and Michael J. Tucker, Ph.D., Scientific Director of Shady Grove Fertilitys IVF and Embryology Laboratories.

Through Shady Grove Fertilitys dedicated research and continuous innovation, our center stays at the cutting-edge of reproductive science to improve outcomes for our patients and help even more people conceive, says Eric D. Levens, M.D. of Shady Grove Fertilitys Fairfax, VA location.

Located at 8501 Arlington Boulevard, Fairfax, VA 22031, patients may now schedule an appointment at this location or any other throughout Virginia by calling the Shady Grove Fertility New Patient Center at 888-761-1967.

About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF)

SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with 50,000 babies born and counting. With 41 physicians and 28 locations throughout MD, PA, VA, GA, and D.C., we offer patients individualized care, innovative financial options, and pregnancy rates among the highest of all national centers. More physicians refer their patients to SGF than any other center. Call 1-888-761-1967 or visit ShadyGroveFertility.com.
Travelers and travel professionals can visit to learn more about the new and different ways of traveling and our services

Charming Travel Destinations (CTD) will participate in the Philadelphia Travel & Adventure Show on March 10th-11th and the Denver Show on 24th-25th. The company joined the show to demonstrate its latest offers full of multi-country, niche and value tours.

In support of their motto, Time to Travel, Charming Travel Destinations will provide its visitors with the information and deals necessary for travelers to go on the best tours of 2018. Packages will include multi-country tours to Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, China, Korea and more. Director Mariam Jimenez explains that the company has put in strong efforts to create tours for unforgettable memories in time for the shows.

This year, we hope to help travelers find the perfect tours to the best destinations, says Jimenez.

In order to provide these tours to a nationwide audience, we are participating in shows in different coasts. Travelers and travel professionals can visit to learn more about the new and different ways of traveling and our services.

Charming Travel Destinations will also showcase their newest services and programs including their loyalty club, air fare, early bird specials and Spanish tours. Attendees can stop by the booth to learn more about these programs from travel professionals.

The annual Travel & Adventure Show is currently one of the top travel shows in the U.S. that provides attendees with performances, seminars, celebrity speakers, hacks, opportunities and delights all related to traveling.

With the success of the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show this past February, Charming Travel Destinations seeks to help more clients to tap into their passion for travel.

The Philadelphia Travel & Adventure show will be taking place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on March 10-11 and the Denver Show will take place in the Colorado Convention Center on March 24-25.

To learn more about Charming Travel Destinations, visit https://charmingtraveldestinations.com/

To learn more about the Travel & Adventure Trade Show, visit

https://travelshows.com/

About Charming Travel Destinations

Charming Travel Destinations is a major tour operator in North America arranging exclusive group, independent, student and corporate travels. With over 25 years of knowledge and experience, Charming Travel Destinations promises the best quality performance, service and products in the travel industry. For more information, please visit https://charmingtraveldestinations.com/
Micozy seems like the most fundamental piece of studio equipment, but its often the first piece overlooked. Please, dont let your microphones suffer an early grave. Protect and love them with a quality cover.

Jupiter Accessories is announcing a sale on its Micozy brands of microphone covers. Each cover is made of a proprietary three-layer design that protects microphones from the hidden particles that damage and erode sound quality over time. The sitewide sale includes many colors of Micozy fitted for almost any microphone in the world, old or new.

Dust buildup and humidity are some of the fastest ways to turn a very expensive investment in high-quality sound recording into a pile of junk. Micozy is designed as an easy solution to the age-old problem of protecting your microphone. No more questionable socks, kitchen towels or Ziplocs for your local sound engineers, the Micozy covers are designed for the perfect fit.

Ive seen so many studios struggle with this fundamental problem: how do you keep your mic protected, says Avli Avliav of Jupiter Accessories. Micozy seems like the most fundamental piece of studio equipment, but its often the first piece overlooked. Please, dont let your microphones suffer an early grave. Protect and love them with a quality cover.

The Micozy microphone covers are available at up to $5 off the list price, directly from the manufacturer. These covers extend the life of the most valuable investments in any recording studio, with a discount that makes it easy to say yes to proper protection.

Order your Micozy microphone cover and save while supplies last.

About Jupiter Accessories

Jupiter Accessories makes musical accessories designed to improve the studio experience and protect your most valued recording tools. Avli, the companys founder, created Micozy after finding himself fed up with age old solutions that felt like stop gap measures.

Every Micozy model was carefully measured and designed to protect almost any condenser microphone out there, old or new, so theres no doubt youll be able to find the Micozy that fits your microphone.
Impact Pediatric Health hosts an interactive pediatric healthcare innovation pitch competition at SXSW and is announcing 10 finalists have been selected to pitch their pediatric technologies at SXSW Conference, March 9, 2018. Participating companies compete in digital, devices, and global areas of need for pediatric technologies.

Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, Boston Childrens Hospital, Cincinnati Childrens Hospital, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Seattle Children's Hospital, Stanford Childrens Health and Texas Children's Hospital came together to create Impact Pediatric Health, a one-of-a-kind pitch competition to help showcase, and support, the best pediatric healthcare innovations. SXSW Conference is working with the leading pediatric hospitals on this event which is part of Startup Village, http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/startup-village, at the Hilton Downtown Austin.

Competing companies:

DEVICES



BABYBEMEDICAL: Family centered neonatal care through clinically tested touch telepresence.

Green Sun Medical: Tech-enabled dynamic scoliosis brace

NAVi MedTech: NAVi Medical Technologies is looking to improve the way vascular access procedures are performed in critically ill newborns.

NFANT: NFANT Labs helps preterm infants struggling with feeding navigate home from the hospital through objective data and predictive analytics.

DIGITAL

CancerAid: is an app that empowers cancer patients and their caregivers.

Open Health Network: On a mission to transform healthcare by enabling healthcare organizations to help patients to manage their health via smart maintainable mobile health offerings & share their data in secure and controlled way.

Tueo Health, Inc.: An asthma management service built on passive sensing and targeted coaching

GLOBAL

GoCheck Kids: Disruptively-priced and FDA-cleared screener that detects vision disorders early, when they can be treated, and enables pediatricians to meet their Academys guidelines.

mOm Incubators: An incubator built for low resource environments to help give 1 million babies that might die from being born prematurely every single year a chance.

Tasso Inc.: Tasso has created HemoLink, a virtually painless device that uses microfluidic technology and allows patients to collect their own blood sampleenough blood to allow third-party labs to run a broad range of diagnostic tests.

ALTERNATES

Globin Medical: Portable solar-powered oxygen concentrator

Nicolette: We build empowerment applications for patients fighting acute health battles.

PolyVascular: PolyVascular is creating polymeric transcatheter valves for children with congenital heart disease

Co-Emcees

Andrey Ostrovsky, CEO' Concerted Care Group

Robin Farmanfarmaian, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor' Invicta Medical & Actavalon

Participating Judges

Patrick Wayte SVP, Center for Health, Technology, & Innovation, American Heart Association

Bill Chambers SVP of Extramural Research, American Cancer Society

Dave Chan Vice President of Strategic Planning at Sesame Street Ventures

Andrew ElBardissi Principal, Deerfield Venture Capital

Eric Frans Vice President Vision Partners, World Vision Canada

Iana Dimlova Director, Healthcare Investing, GE Ventures

Stephen Michener Head of Strategy, Partnering, and Operations, Novartis Oncology US

Impact Pediatric Health showcases technologies that will deliver solutions specifically created for young patients. Startup CEOs have three minutes to pitch how their company is solving unique healthcare needs of children, from babies to teens. The Friday, March 9th stage presentation is followed by questions from the emcee and judges. Winners in each category will be announced at the end of the event. All participating companies will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the presenting pediatric hospitals. You must have a SXSW Interactive or Platinum badge to attend this March 9 event.

Impact Pediatric Health is produced by http://EnergizingHealth.org

For more information go to http://impactpediatric.health

About Impact Pediatric Health:

Now in its fourth year, Impact Pediatric Health hosts a one-of-a-kind pitch competition held annually at SXSW Conference dedicated to showcasing and supporting the best pediatric healthcare innovations. Several of the largest and top ranked (according to US News and World Report) childrens hospitals in the U.S. came together to create Impact Pediatric Health. These leading hospitals collaborate to help next generation pediatric healthcare companies, especially those focused on digital health and medical devices, accelerate their businesses. For more information see http://impactpediatrichealth.com/

About SXSW:

SXSW dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. The event, an essential destination for global professionals, features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. SXSW 2018 will take place March 9-18, 2018.

Contact: Eddie Gonzalez-Novoa, for Impact Pediatric Health

eddie(at)energizinghealth(dot)org
Glue Board's anonymous reporting app dashboard makes it easy for students and parents to report bullying, threats, and other issues as well as view current school policies and available resources with To do our part we have decided to act now to get technology into schools that will help prevent bullying and reduce threats

Former bullying victim turned anti-bullying crusader Derek Peterson, CEO of Soter Technologies, a cutting-edge technology and software developer focused on school safety solutions, announced today that the companys Glue Board mobile reporting app and incident management solution will be provided license-free for one year to 10 schools in every state. Glue Board, part of the companys Digital Fly suite of school safety products, gives the power of anonymous bullying and threat reporting to students, parents, teachers and school administrators.

Students across the nation are facing unprecedented combination of threats. As a former bullying victim, I know what it is like to be scared at school. No student should ever be in fear at school. All too often we are seeing students who are victims of bullying turn to violence and suicide. This must be stopped. To do our part we have decided to act now to get technology into schools that will help prevent bullying and reduce threats, said Derek Peterson, CEO of Soter Technologies. With stopping bullying and enhancing school safety being urgent imperatives that are core to our mission, we are offering the Soter UP50 Incentive Program that empowers Upstanders in all 50 states to help conquer bullying. The first 10 school districts in all 50 states that sign up under the UP50 Program will receive Glue Board license-free for the first year. We are doing this today because we know with tight budgets, red tape and other hurdles, it may take months or years to get lifesaving technology into schools.

Situational awareness and rapid emergency response are critical for saving lives. School officials can use the Glue Board tool to communicate with students and parents via the Push Soter Alert (PSA) feature which allows important safety and security notifications to be quickly given to all Glue Board subscribers, including students, parents, teachers, administrators, members of law enforcement and others. These subscribers are given an easy-to-use, real-time mobile reporting and communication tool which can send emergency alerts to school administrators  adding an additional layer of protection before and during incidents.

Glue Board is a comprehensive bullying, cyberbullying and threat reporting tool and mobile app. Users can report incidents with their name or anonymously, making it easier for students to alert administrators that they or another student has been bullied or is a potential threat to themselves or others. Through the app, users are able to submit text, images, and screen captures of social media or text messages. With this solution, officials can follow up with an anonymous reporter to request more information or inform the individual that the matter is being addressed  while maintaining complete anonymity. and removing any fear of reprisals.

In terms of bullying prevention, the technology gives school administrators a comprehensive tool that pairs a smart and powerful, cloud-based incident management system with a mobile bullying app. Incident management is critical for holding responsible parties accountable, especially when early warning signs appear. With Glue Board, reported incidents will never be overlooked because they must be addressed and resolved in order to be removed from the system.

Saint Paul the Apostle Catholic School has a commitment to creating a safe environment for our students. The only way for us to address issues is to be aware of them in the first place. The Glue Board App gives Saint Paul School students and parents a tool to report to the school what they see or hear. School personnel can act on that information in a timely manner, reinforcing the dignity of every student in our building, said Principal Darbie Dallman Safford of Saint Paul the Apostle Catholic School in Richardson, Texas.

Glue Board technology is effective in assisting school districts to achieve goals set forth by governmental mandates. In New York State, for example, The Dignity Act, otherwise known as the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), New York States Anti-Bullying Law, was established to protect all students from harassment, bullying and discrimination.

School administrators are under tremendous pressure to address bullying incidents rapidly and effectively. Students who are bullied or see other children bullied need to have a way to anonymously report these cases. Glue Board is the solution. Our system empowers and protects students, stops bullies and gives administrators the tools that they need, said Derek Peterson, CEO of Soter Technologies.

Our system allows for anonymous reporting. This eliminates the potential for a parent or child who witnesses bullying to be identified and risk repercussions. We see this as a critical step in reducing bullying in schools across the nation, said Peterson.

With the Soter UP50 Program, the first 10 school districts  in all 50 states  that sign up will receive Glue Board license-free for the first year. (Note: a small onboarding fee and limited terms and conditions apply.) For more information or to arrange a Glue Board system demonstration, or for information about the Digital Fly portfolio of school safety solutions, including the Fly Sights social media awareness platform and Fly Sense bullying and vaping detector, visit http://www.digitalfly.net or http://www.sotertechnologies.com.

About Soter Technologies

Based in Hauppauge, New York, Soter Technologies is devoted to the practical application of technology to improve and save lives. The Soter name is inspired by the ancient Greek god of safety, deliverance and preservation from harm. Using advanced sensor technology and software, Soter Technologies develops and delivers innovative solutions for environmental intelligence  to make the world a safer place, from schools to enterprises to public spaces. The companys Digital Fly suite of school safety and security tools includes software and applications that monitor and prevent bullying, cyber- bullying, vaping and smoking in schools. Digital Fly is used by more than 400 schools internationally as an early warning system to improve school safety and has a proven record of identifying and preventing threats. For more information, visit http://www.digitalfly.net or http://www.sotertechnologies.com.
Maryland International Film Festival Red Carpet Board President Tom Riford, This film festival has become a great Downtown Hagerstown tradition, and we thank all of our sponsors and fans! Thank you also to the more than 300 submissions from filmmakers from around the world. This festival has become very popular on the film festival circuit.

The Seventh Annual Maryland International Film Festival-Hagerstown has selected 106 films from 13 countries for the 2018 festival! MDIFF Festival Director, Tracie Hovey said, After a meticulous selection process, we are so grateful to have the opportunity to screen all these fabulous films at our festival. It becomes more difficult every year to pick our slate of films because we enjoy them all.

This year the festival will play host to filmmakers from around the world screening 106 films ranging from features, shorts, documentaries, animation, and student films. MDIFF will also have acting classes and after parties after each night of screenings. The screenings will be held at four locations this year: the Historic Maryland Theatre, the Hagerstown-Washington County Chamber of Commerce, the Washington County Free Library, and the Grand Piano Ballroom.

MDIFF Festival Director, Tracie Hovey said, We have witnessed a rise in the level of competition over the past seven years. The local filmmaker submissions have grown and their films are definitely some of the best in the festival. We look forward to continuing our expansion of the festival and in future years increasing the number of distributors that attend so the festival becomes a market as well.

The Maryland International Film Festival-Hagerstown partners with several local organizations, businesses, individuals, and major sponsors which include the City of Hagerstown, the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Washington County Government (Office of Grant Management), Nora Roberts Foundation, Horizon Goodwill, Ovation PR & Advertising, Hagerstown Magazine, Herald Mail, WAYZ, Tom Riford, RBC Wealth Management, and Jay Frantz, along with several others.

According to Board President Tom Riford, This film festival has become a great Downtown Hagerstown tradition, and we thank all of our sponsors and fans! Thank you also to the more than 300 submissions from filmmakers from around the world. This festival has become very popular on the film festival circuit. The Maryland International Film Festival-Hagerstown has been voted among the Top 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry fee by Movie Maker Magazine. The magazine said, this festivals line-up is very indie, with the occasional festival circuit darling Students submit for free to its high school shorts contest. The magazine also commented that having Hollywood A-List Director Joe Carnahan as the Creative Director allows for wonderful opening night festivities which makes for a great networking opportunity.

The Maryland International Film Festival  Hagerstown is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and is organized by filmmakers and marketing executives who understand the power of film and support the talent of the independent filmmaker. One of the film festivals goals is to encourage the development of filmmaker networks including media, distribution and the association with other artists. MDIFF-Hagerstown, believes in the importance of giving back to the community and donates a portion of the proceeds to charities around the globe.
Mayor Sylvester Turner and Nina Vaca, CEO Pinnacle Group

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner proclaimed March 8, 2018 Nina Vaca Day at the 11th annual Tribute to the Hispanic Woman, organized by the newspaper Sucesos and the magazine Solo Mujeres. The mayor surprised Vaca with the recognition before she was named Woman of the Year by the publications, which hosted the event in commemoration of International Women's Day.

The city of Houston commends and congratulates Nina Vaca on this momentous occasion and extends best wishes on her continued success, and therefore I, Sylvester Turner, mayor of the city of Houston, hereby proudly proclaim March 8, 2018 as Nina Vaca Day, Turner said.

Vaca is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Pinnacle Group, one of the largest Latina-owned workforce solutions providers in America. The daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants, Vaca returned to her mothers adopted hometown for the celebration, which honors the accomplishments of women who have broken barriers, become proven entrepreneurs, committed themselves to the community and set the course for future generations.

Since founding Pinnacle Group in her mid-20s, Vaca has strategically developed it into the powerhouse that it is today, earning it a ranking as the fastest-growing women-owned/led company in the nation by the Women Presidents Organization in 2015, as well as being named among the top two in 2016 and 2017.

Vaca also serves on the board of directors of three publicly traded companies. She has been a strong advocate for more women in the C-suite and at the boardroom table through the At the Table: Women in Business and Leadership initiative that she founded. The program is housed at the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) Foundation, which Vaca serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors. As a dedicated civic leader and philanthropist, Vaca works tirelessly to expand opportunities for Hispanics and women in business, and most recently to expand opportunities in STEM fields for women and girls. In 2014, Vaca was appointed as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship program and in that capacity, has traveled extensively to inspire entrepreneurs worldwide. Last year, she created the Nina Vaca Foundation and also launched her own website, NinaVaca.com, as a resource and source of inspiration for entrepreneurs.

It is such an honor to receive this award from two publications that are at the heart of Houstons Latina community, Vaca said. Im constantly reminded that nobody does anything alone. Thats why this recognition belongs to the many women who have blazed trails before me and made a difference in their own backyards. They inspire me to do the same.

The luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel celebrated the important roles and contributions these women have made in the areas of politics, entrepreneurship, education, culture, arts, mass media, science and sports.

Vaca used the platform as an opportunity to help other Latinas grow in their industries. After Vaca received her award on stage, she presented Solo Mujeres nonprofit, the LatinWE Foundation, with $11,000 raised by the Nina Vaca Foundation in honor of the 11th annual Tribute to the Hispanic Woman. Thanks to the 75 people who contributed to the fundraising campaign, deserving Latinas will receive more of the tools they need to grow their businesses or to advance their careers, helping to propel their families and their communities forward.

Nina Vaca is the epitome of a leader both in business and civic life, who makes it her mission to invest in the community with every decision she makes, Lizzette Diaz, Executive Director of Penta Communications, said. She has not only inspired women in Texas and around the world, she has paved the way for the next generation of women leaders to find success in whatever they choose to do.

About the Nina Vaca Foundation

The Nina Vaca Foundation supports community-building in underserved populations locally, nationally, and globally, primarily through education and entrepreneurship, as well as through home-building and infrastructure development. We are particularly committed to creating brighter futures for women and minorities through STEM education and careers and we are passionate about helping inspire and grow the next generation of entrepreneurs globally. We believe that when you build and support local businesses, you build and support entire communities. For more information, visit http://www.ninavaca.com.
Posted Tuesday, March 6, 2018 7:00 pm

James Kennedy, currently a Clallam County deputy prosecuting attorney and a former Jefferson County deputy prosecuting attorney, has registered as a Democrat interested in unseating current Prosecuting Attorney Michael Haas.

Haas acknowledged Monday that he is planning to seek a second term.

Kennedy, 37, has put together a campaign team that includes himself and two former employees of the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorneys Office. Former Jefferson County Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Alvarez is serving as Kennedys treasurer, and Wendy Davis, who had been working in the office as well, is serving as Kennedys campaign chair.

All three quit the office after Haas was elected in 2014. Alvarez and Kennedy currently are working in the Clallam County Prosecuting Attorneys Office. Davis is working for her husbands firm, Brent Davis Construction.

Kennedy was hired by former Prosecuting Attorney Scott Rosekrans in May 2014; he left in July 2016 after working for Haas for a year and a half. Alvarez had worked in the prosecuting attorneys office for 17 years before exiting after Haas was elected.

My main goal in running is to bring the office up to where it needs to be in order to serve the needs of the community, Kennedy said of why he is interested in the job.

EXPERIENCE

Kennedy, who was born and raised in Bellevue, has a bachelors degree from Ithaca College in New York and a law degree, with honors, from Seattle University School of Law in 2012.

Before law school, Kennedy served nearly six years in the U.S. Army, having been in ROTC in college.

Kennedy led convoys in and around Iraq for a year and served a second 15-month tour of duty coordinating logistics in northern Iraq.

I firmly believe I have the most leadership experience of anyone in the race, Kennedy said, acknowledging that he expected Haas to seek re-election.

Attorneys dont get a lot of experience early on, and I have a lot of experience leading people in high-stakes circumstances, Kennedy said of his military experiences, which also included time in Mannheim, Germany, during the six years he was in the military.

Kennedy interned in the King County Prosecuting Attorneys Office as well as the Skagit County Prosecuting Attorneys Office, and worked in Yakima County, prosecuting adult misdemeanors and juvenile everything, before former Prosecuting Attorney Rosekrans hired him in 2014.

Kennedy said he left the Jefferson County office, under Haas, because I wasnt comfortable with some of the things I was asked to do.

Kennedy did not want to go into detail about specific incidents between himself and Haas, but acknowledged that would likely occur during the campaign.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, CHILDREN

Kennedy said one of the issues he plans to raise in the election is how the office is prosecuting certain crimes, particularly domestic violence, crimes against children and sex crimes.

I dont think we are prosecuting with best practices in mind, he said, adding that he believes the department should take advantage of training opportunities that he believes would pay off in the future.

Theres a lot of things a prosecutor can do before the case gets filed, including working closely with investigators in the case, Kennedy said. In a lot of these cases, particularly sex crimes, were limited in our ability to do good follow-up.

Specifically, Kennedy said, he would like to see a childrens advocacy center in the county that could be used by law enforcement in investigating crimes against children.

I know Dove House [Advocacy Services] has been used, but I think we need to do a better job of incorporating that, he said of concerns that prosecutors arent involved in interviews with victims earlier in investigation.

Kennedy also said he would like to see child support enforcement back in the office.

Shortly after I left the office, the longtime legal assistant that handled support enforcement for the county retired, he said. Since then, the job has been handled as a sort of ad hoc afterthought, Kennedy said, adding he would like to ensure that single parents who rely on support payments get the help when they need it.

Kennedy also said he would like to see more cross-training in the prosecuting attorneys office so that if someone does need time off or takes a vacation, the communitys needs are met.

He noted that it took Haas about nine months to fill the civil deputy position that Alvarez had held once Alvarez had quit.

Thats not OK. Thats not excusable. We are there to serve the public and to serve the community, Kennedy said of the delay.

Kennedy said his current boss, Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols, is aware of his plans to seek office and is supportive. Kennedy said that during filing week, which is May 15-19, he would file as a Democrat.

Asked what it means for a prosecuting attorney to be a Democrat, Kennedy said, I think it means a little more balance in how we treat people. Its not simply a matter of locking everyone up for the longest term possible. Its focusing on treatment and engaging in restorative justice and integrating victims into the process so they know their voices are heard.

Kennedy lives in Port Ludlow, with his wife, Krystal Kennedy, who works for the Port Townsend Cooperative Playschool. The couple has two children, 7 and 4 years old.

HAAS DECISION

Haas said in a March 4 email that he had decided to run and intends to file the necessary paperwork this week with the state.

It was not an easy decision to make, Haas wrote. I love the job and particularly the team weve put together. I think were doing a great job, he said, noting that it does take a toll on ones family.

Still, I love what we do, the challenges we face, and the opportunities to problem solve for the county and people that live here, Haas wrote.

Haas indicated he would make a formal announcement soon.

DISTRICT COURT

A race for a seat being vacated by retiring District Court Judge Jill Landes also has emerged.

Attorney Mindy Walker has filed paperwork with the state Public Disclosure Commission indicating she plans to seek that office. Last month, attorney Noah Harrison announced his intentions to see that office.
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Jackie Appiah is ranked amongst the richest female celebrities in Ghana and is really making an impressive statement on the celebrity rich-list in West Africa.

She is totally now a queen on an entirely different level.

READ ALSO: How Ebony Reigns made and spent her money

Jackie officially has the tag as the Ghanaian female actor with the most expensive car.

With her pretax earnings of thousands of dollar, one cant just make a bed from all that cash and roll around in it all day, as fun as that sounds.

So how does Jackie Appiah spend and earn all that money? Here is how she earn the cash.

Acting

Jackie hasn't just feature in movies from her home country but also across the African continent. Apparently, she started acting at a very tender age and shot to fame in her adulthood. Jackie makes tons of dollars from her acting profession.

For her work as an actress, she has received several awards and nominations, including the awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role at the 2010 Africa Movie Academy Awards; and Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2007.

Endorsement deals

Jackie definitely has a lot of endorsement deals to her credit and they are all good monies. The actress is now an ambassador for the Pan-African Hair Growth brand;HairNowNow Africa and she couldnt be happier. She has several others to her credit.

Fame is such a big bag that attracts a lot of items. Jackie makes good money from commercials and modeling products. Jackie Appiah is the only actress in Ghana to have signed a long lasting endorsement deal with Computer firm, IPMC.

READ ALSO: How Serena Williams makes and spends her millions

She takes amazing vacations.

We can't talk about Jackie without stressing on her vacations. Follow her up on social media and you get a good treat of her vacations. She makes time and money for wonderful travels.

READ ALSO: How Stephen Appiah spends his money

She buys some amazing outfits.

From Alexander McQueen, Hugo Boss, Gucci to Robert Cavalli, Jackie has a thing for shopping.

She buys insane cars
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is a sycophant.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is a sycophant.

The White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is a sycophant.

And now, in an effort to please the president of the United States, they will put on a show in the White House, billed as one about the US economy, of which they are all now in charge.

But it will really be a show about victimization, revenge, and some really good sound bites. That's the kind Donald Trump likes.

There will be no facts. There will be fewer figures. They'll tell Americans that trade wars "are easy to win" and have no consequences. They'll say debt and deficits don't matter. They'll say whatever Trump, who thinks people still get milk from the "local milk people," tells them to say.

The healthy debate Trump claims to foster in his White House is part of the joke. The debates will all end in agreement with him, and that means we're in danger of starting a trade war that could spike prices at a time when the economy is already inflating.

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.

The 3 stooges

All of these men are ridiculous for their own reasons. I can't even rank them.

Despite his lightly used Harvard Ph.D. in economics, Navarro is what economists would impolitely call "a crank." The Trump administration apparently found him after Jared Kushner, most likely thirsting for knowledge, searched for books about China on Amazon. There, he found Navarro's "Death by China."

To give you a sense of its contents: An expert interviewed in the documentary made from the book said that "China is the only country in the world that is preparing to kill Americans."

So when Gary Cohn, the administration's soon-to-be-erstwhile economic adviser, sidelined Navarro last year, Wall Street cheered. According to The Daily Beast, Navarro could be seen wandering the halls of the White House with a copy of his own book in hand.

"The thing about Peter Navarro is that he was never a part of the group of economists who ever studied the global free-trade system," Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie Mellon, told me last year.

With Navarro elevated and Cohn out, expect the administration to take aggressive action  especially against China  every chance it gets. Navarro, like Trump, sees the US, the richest country in the world, as a global victim.

Despite his years making money all over the world as a private-equity globalist, Ross has taken up that mantle as well. He spearheaded the White House's investigation into aluminum and steel, which resulted in the market-scaring tariffs the administration is set to impose.

The investigation frustrated Cohn and other members of the administration, according to the news website Axios. That's because Ross left out all the bad repercussions of steel and aluminum tariffs  he wrote the narrative Trump wanted to hear. And now we're here.

It's unclear why Ross is doing what he's doing, but we do know he has deep ties to the steel industry. In 2004, he made $2 billion selling his steel businesses to ArcelorMittal. He sold his stake in the company and stepped down from the board last year.

ArcelorMittal executives, however, contributed heavily to the testimony leading up to Ross' report. Naturally, they were in favor of steel tariffs.

It is here that we should also note that Trump and Ross have been friends for years. One thing they have in common is their tendency to grossly exaggerate their wealth. Trump sued a journalist who said it was about $250 million (not the billions he claims) and lost. Ross was recently caught in his lie  his financial disclosures showed he had been inflating his wealth to make Forbes' billionaires list for years.

This kind of deep-seated insecurity should be examined by a psychologist, not a journalist.

Finally, there's Mnuchin.

Relying on him to counter Trump is like relying on a wet blanket to keep you warm on a camping trip through Siberia. He comes from a line of rich Wall Streeters, and his resume includes a solid contribution to the mortgage crisis, as well as production credits on movies like "The Lego Batman Movie" and "Suicide Squad."

Despite being groomed at the free-trade global-facing firm Goldman Sachs, he has been parroting Trump's nonsense on trade, just as he was the administration's nonsense on deficits and tax cuts.

He's also married to this woman, so I imagine he hasn't practiced saying "no" in a long time.

This is for the cheap seats

Republicans, desperate to win an election, have fallen in line behind Trump. Their foolishness has a price. They thought they could have their base and eat it too  that is to say, they could keep the mass of Trump voters in their bloc but legislate to their detriment (see: tax cuts that benefit the wealthy more than anyone else).

But that was not the deal they made. They voted for a showman who basks in the adoration of his base, and now they have a show where he will respond in kind.

That means his populist rhetoric will now take center stage. It doesn't matter that the content lacks any kind of substance or disagrees with the GOP's leadership.

The result of this will be an extension of lost years. When the bottom fell out in 2008, the world was forced to put progress on hold and row in the same direction toward recovery just to stay afloat. Ten years later, we've begun to turn the corner. We can invest in growth and progress again. But that's not what we're doing.

Instead, we're fighting with our allies and denying climate change. We're supporting dying industries and starving growing ones.

The clearest illustration of this waste and regression comes from comparison.

In August, the White House initiated an investigation into China's theft of US intellectual property. It's a real problem that requires a globally coordinated solution.

No matter  with Navarro at the helm, we will go it alone, most likely putting tariffs on a swath of Chinese goods in the next few weeks, resulting in a trade war.

China's foreign minister has vowed to retaliate in the event of a trade war, but that's just half the story. The other half is what China is already doing. On Monday, the country kicked off its Communist Party meeting of the year, the National People's Congress, during which its leaders outlined their goals for the future.

Their goals make our goals look stupid.

While our president is extolling the virtues of "beautiful, clean coal" and "loving" trade action, China is vowing to cut down on air pollution and investing in teaching young people about artificial intelligence. We are not even competing with that, which is almost to say we've already lost.

Mnuchin, Navarro, and Ross are hardly the men to set this right. They are clowns performing slapstick economic policy for an audience of one.
LONDON  There is a growing concern among British medical specialists that leaving the European Union threatens the supply of cancer treatment.

Medical experts and charities have told Business Insider that Theresa May's plan to leave Euratom  the EU's atomic energy agency  will disrupt the inward flow of isotopes used for cancer treatment and put thousands of patients "at risk" of delays to treatment.

Nuclear material used in cancer treatments rapidly loses its radioactivity and cannot be stockpiled. Experts therefore believe that the prime minister's plan to leave Euratom and increase border checks with the EU carries a real risk to patients.

"Fracturing our relationship with Europe is not a good thing for patients, research or the supply of materials," Professor Michael Rees of the British Medical Association told BI this week.

"Any barriers to anything which is urgently required in healthcare is going to put patients at risk."

The prime minister confirmed earlier this week that the UK would cease to be a member of Euratom after Brexit.

"Membership of Euratom is an integral part of membership of the European Union. We are coming out of Euratom as we are coming out of the EU," May said in response to a question from Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP.

The government has reassured the medical community that leaving Euratom will not put an end to close ties with the treaty. In a technical note published on Tuesday, it said it wants to remain "as close as possible" to Euratom, and is seeking a "regime that provides coverage and effectiveness equivalent to existing Euratom arrangements."

However, leading medics and charities are concerned that the government will fall short of replicating the benefits of Euratom membership, and as a result, put new, potentially-dangerous pressures on cancer treatment.

"I gathered in Mrs Mays speech that she wants to participate in agencies covering drugs and medical devices, but she didnt mention Euratom," Professor Rees told BI.

"I was very disappointed and I continue to be disappointed that we seem to be wanting to go down the route of leaving Euratom, and not developing as close a relationship as we possibly can."

Euratom is an agency for nuclear regulation which oversees the speedy, smooth and safe movement of nuclear materials between European states. The nuclear material moved to and from countries mainly takes the form of fuel for power stations, and radioactive isotopes, which are used to perform cancer treatment and diagnosis.

Up to 80% of radioactive isotopes used in UK hospitals are imported, the Financial Times reported last year. The vast majority of these isotopes are imported from EU member states, "largely from the Netherlands, France and Belgium," the BMA stated in its October briefing on Brexit and Euratom. NHS England data shows that these isotopes are used to perform over half a million diagnostic scans every year.

Any barriers to anything which is urgently required in healthcare is going to put patients at risk.

And while isotopes can be imported from outside the EU, Britain's reliance on products from within the bloc means failure to either remain inside Euratom after Brexit, or at least be closely wedded to it, will "

He added: "You can get supplies from outside of Europe but transport delays mean they would be less effective. You can get isotopes from South Africa, but they are 20% less effective. 20% less effective means 20% more expensive."

The isotope most commonly used in diagnosis is molybdenum-99. This isotope loses half of its radioactivity every 66 hours, meaning it must be moved as quickly as possible in order to be effective. "As isotopes have a short half-life and cannot be stock piled, continuous and timely access is vital for patient safety," the BMA said in October.

Professor Rees said that in an ideal world, the UK would remain both in Euratom and the customs union, in order to maintain the prompt and frictionless inward flow of isotopes from the EU. Isotopes reach the UK by road and increased customs checks on the borders would significantly slow down the transportation process.

The BMA has warned that increased customs checks pose a grave threat to the "consistent and timely access to radioactive isotopes," potentially causing "delays in diagnosis and cancelled operations for patients."

Labour MP Ian Murray, who has been in dialogue with cancer charities throughout the Brexit process, told BI there is growing alarm among charities over the apparent lack of government preparation for increased customs checks on isotopes coming into the country.

"There are no transitional or emergency plans being put in place by the government on what happens if we fall out of the EU without a deal or there are changes to customs at the borders," Murray, a supporter of the Open Britain group, told BI.

"A 30-second delay per movement would create 17 miles of tailbacks at the border. None of that has been thought through. Isotopes would be part of that process and even more complicated given the sort of material it is."

Josh Buscombe, president-elect of the British Nuclear Medicine Society, warned last November that the government had provided no answers on post-Brexit arrangements.

"We need more detail than just being told it will not be a problem," Buscombe told a House of Lords committee.

Moran, MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, who quizzed the prime minister about Euratom in the House of Commons this week, accused the government of being "in denial" about the real implications of leaving Euratom.

"They persistently accuse industry and MPs of scaremongering and then bat the issue away,"

"They persistently accuse industry and MPs of scaremongering and then bat the issue away"

Moran, a member of anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, told BI.

"The government desperately needs to listen to the concerns on industry or patients will suffer. Perhaps now that Theresa May has conceded some role for the ECJ this should unlock a more common sense approach."

A spokesperson for Department for Exiting the European Union described concern over the UK's relationship with Euratom after Brexit as"scaremongering," in a written statement sent to BI.

They said: "As we have said previously: While medical isotopes are covered by the Euratom Treaty, Euratom places no restriction on their export outside the EU. The UKs ability to import medical isotopes from Europe and the rest of the world will not be affected by withdrawal from Euratom.

"As the Prime Minister has said, we are committed to a far-reaching science and innovation pact with the EU which would enable the UK to engage in key programmes with our EU partners."

Professor Rees was hopeful that political will on both sides will lead to an arrangement which comes close to replicating Euratom. However, even in this scenario, the industry would be left frustrated, he said, because an "awful amount of time, energy and money" would be spent on "trying to duplicate something which already exists."

Regulatory divergence would "halt" vital research

The CEOs of several cancer charities will next week make a direct appeal to government ministers to ensure cancer treatment is prioritised in the second phase of Brexit negotiations with the EU.

Charities welcome May's commitment to exploring how the UK can stay in EU agencies like the European Medicines Agency but want her to go further to retain prompt access to cancer treatments and drug development schemes.

One of the CEOs is Sarah Lindsell of The Brain Tumour Charity. Lindsell is worried that regulatory divergence, as advocated by the Cabinet's chief Brexiteers, would cut the UK from vital supplies and research.

Brexit must not halt the vital progress we are making.

A particular area of concern for The Brain Tumour Charity is on cross-border clinical trials. In many rare and childhood cancers, patient populations are too small to conduct clinical trials solely in the UK, so cross-border trials are carried out under the EU's Clinical Trials Directive, in order to maximise the patient population. This vital practice of trialling cancer treatment hinges on close regulatory alignment between member states.

"Cross-border cooperation is absolutely crucial to our vision to defeat brain tumours  the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40 in the UK," Lindsell told BI.

79% of the charity's research funding in 2016/17 was directed to projects involving global collaboration, as opposed to collaboration solely between UK partners. The Brain Tumour Charity fears divergence from EU regulations after Brexit would undermine cross-border clinical trials for some of the deadliest diseases affecting Brits.

An example Lindsell gave was BIOMEDE, a pan-EU clinical trial currently being conducted for Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, an aggressive childhood brain tumour, for which there is no effective treatment currently available on the NHS.

"This is why we want to see the Government negotiate an arrangement of regulatory alignment with the EMA and EU clinical trials regulation to ensure that vital research can continue," Lindsell said.
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The special counsel Robert Mueller has learned from a witness that a 2017 meeting in the Seychelles islands between an associate of President Donald Trump and a top Kremlin ally was arranged in order to establish a backchannel of communication between the US and Russia, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Mueller is investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 US election, including whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the race in his favor.

The meeting in question was between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev. George Nader, a Middle East expert and an adviser to the United Arab Emirates' Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, was also in attendance as the crown prince's representative.

Nader testified before a grand jury about the meeting earlier this year, and according to The Post, a witness told Mueller that the Seychelles meeting was set up in advance to discuss US-Russia relations. The testimony appears to contradict Prince's account of the meeting before the House Intelligence Committee last year, when he told the panel that it had occurred by chance.

Prince reportedly approached Crown Prince Mohammed, with whom he has a long business relationship, following a December 2016 meeting between the prince and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Prince told the Emirati crown prince he was authorized to act as an unofficial surrogate for Trump, and then asked whether Crown Prince Mohammed could set up a meeting with Dmitriev, who heads a sanctioned Russian investment fund and is closely allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Prince told the House Intelligence Committee last year that he knew Dmitriev was a Russian fund manager but did not know it was a sanctioned fund that was controlled by the Russian government.

Prince also denied that he attended the meeting as an official representative of the incoming administration, saying instead that he traveled to the Seychelles to meet with potential business customers from the UAE.

Prince resides in the UAE and has been associated with Nader for over a decade. It is unclear why, if he was interacting with potential Emirati customers, he had to travel to the Seychelles to meet them.

During the meeting, Prince told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, the customers "mentioned a guy who I should also meet who was also in town," who turned out to be Dmitriev.

When he met Dmitriev, they discussed a range of topics, and Dmitriev stressed that he wished Russia and the US could resume normal trade relations, Prince said. He added that they spoke for no more than 30 minutes.

After the Seychelles meeting, Dmitriev also met with Anthony Scaramucci, who would later become the White House communications director, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Russian state media quoted Scaramucci as saying, after his meeting with Dmitriev, that the Obama administration's new sanctions on Russia  which were imposed that month to penalize it for interfering in the 2016 election  were ineffective and detrimental to the US-Russia relationship.
Voters headed to polling stations across the country of seven million to pick a successor for President Ernest Bai Koroma, who is stepping down after two five-year terms, in line with the countrys constitution.

READ ALSO: The first job of 8 African presidents

By midday long queues had formed under the boiling sun in the capital, Freetown, as party leaders cast their votes and one party complained of irregularities in the northern provinces.

"So far voting has been peaceful and I'm satisfied with the process," said Julius Maada Bio, presidential candidate for the main opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).

"I will only accept a free, fair and credible election," he told journalists at the barracks where the former military leader voted.

President Ernest Bai Koroma, who cannot run again after consecutive five-year terms, has anointed former foreign minister Samura Kamara as his successor for the ruling All Peoples Party (APC).

READ ALSO: Liberian president pledges salary cut as economy stutters

Kamara's running mate Chernor Maju Bah said the vote seemed "well organised" and reports were "all good" as he voted in the capital.

The APC and SLPP have dominated Sierra Leone's politics since independence in 1961.
US officials say South Korean National Security adviser Chung Eui-yong will make an on-camera announcement from the White House on Thursday night. The announcement is widely expected to signal new diplomatic developments between the US, South Korea, and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

A South Korean delegation met with Trump administration officials this week and passed along a letter from Kim Jong-un, a CNN international correspondent said. That follows what had been weeks of fresh interactions between the North and South  and hints of new diplomatic engagement between the Koreas and the US.

Despite the apparent progress, US officials have mostly remained cautious.

Asked if the announcement was about talks with North Korea, Trump reportedly said "It's almost beyond that."

"Hopefully, you will give me credit," Trump said, according to ABC News journalist Meredith McGraw.

A senior US official reportedly said that the announcement would include an invitation from Kim Jong-un to meet with Trump, according to Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. The senior US official added that Kim Jong-un indicated a commitment to stop nuclear and missile testing.

Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon arrived to Washington, DC this week to brief their counterparts, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and CIA director Mike Pompeo on new diplomatic overtures from North Korea.

Their talks followed an unprecedented face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un, where they discussed the possibility of future talks with the US. The meeting helped establish a rough outline of a possible summit meeting between North and South Korea in April  the third summit since the Korean War.

"The most urgent issue is to make sure the United States and North Korea will engage in talks," Chung said on Wednesday.

Following North Korea's recent calls for peace, South Korean President Moon Jae-in indicated his administration was proceeding with caution against the North.
Formal wear rental startup The Black Tux has raised $30 million in a new round of funding.

The company, started in 2012 by Andrew Blackmon and Patrick Coyne, has grown to 150 employees and is based in Los Angeles. Blackmon was displeased with the rental options available when he got married and decided to invent something new.

The Black Tux takes a different approach to the rental garment, creating one made from higher-quality fabrics that are sourced from Italian mills, and that is designed to be worn fewer times than a traditional rental. Suit rentals start at $95, and customers get two-weeks with the garment before the event they plan to wear it to. The company also offers home try-on.

The latest Series C raise brings the total amount of money raised by the company to $60 million. The round was led by TZP Group, with previous investors Stripes Group, Menlo Ventures, and Raine Ventures also participating.

Blackmon said the company has a "really strong engine" and the capital "is really just to grow and to meet the continued demand that we have for the service."

The money will primarily be used to scale the business, which has seen 200% growth year over year. It opened a 50,000 square foot warehouse in LA to service its customers in 2016, and the new funding will go towards an East Coast-based operation double that size. Blackmon said about 60% of its customers are already on the East Coast, and a facility on that side of the country can reduce shipping costs and make it easier to serve customers faster.

As part of opening the new warehouse, the company will also "substantially" increase inventory to meet demand.

The company is also planning on increasing its physical presence, doubling down on a partnership with Nordstrom and opening its own stores in major cities around the country. Currently, the company has five standalone showrooms and six locations in Nordstrom stores, and Blackmon said the company expects "well over" 20 physical locations by the end of the year. Much of that will be shops in Nordstrom stores, which Blackmon said was successful from both company's perspective.

Blackmon said the company is also considering testing new initiatives, like a subscription model or a multi-rental package, which would serve as the perfect antidote to wedding season.

Blackmon said he's seen a marked change in how guys use the business since it started. When it first started, men would ask a lot of questions and need help. Now, they know exactly what they want, and are more invested

"We're finding men are renting from us for a lot of other occasions as well whether it's a job interview or even a date and they just want to wear something nice," he said, noting that the company has expanded its styles to fill this demand.

There's also a change in how men feel toward formal clothing in general, and a general feeling of experience over ownership, according to Blackmon.
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This comes at a time when the world is celebrating International Womens Day with the theme Press for Progress.

According to the BBC, the decision was revealed in a closed press conference on Wednesday (March 8, 2018), with the first reports emerging on Thursday morning  International Womens Day.

READ ALSO: GSE suspends ADB from listed entities

The governments spokesperson, Bruno Kone, explained that the jobs Ivorian women have been banned from includes work that exceeds the ability and physical capacity of women, or work that presents dangers which is likely to undermine their morality, for example, working underground or in the mines.

When asked if the law will not deny women some freedom, Kone insisted that this decision is to protect women.

He added that if a woman wants to do any work on the prohibited list, she would have to contact an inspector at the Ministry of Work and simply get them to come and do a survey to ascertain if the woman is able to do the job.
In a statement released by the Department, the 7 accused were charged on February 14 and are now indicted.

The statement said, "individuals committing fraud created several profiles on online dating sites. They then contacted men and women throughout the United States with whom they cultivated a sense of affection, and often, romance."

Those indicted include: Kwabena M. Bonsu, Kwasi A. Oppong, Kwame Ansah, John Y. Amoah, Samuel Antwi, King Faisal Hamidu, Nkosiyoxoxo Msuthu and Cynthia Appiagyei.

After establishing relationships, perpetrators of the romance scams allegedly requested money, typically for investment or need-based reasons, and provided account information and directions for where money should be sent. In part, these accounts were controlled by the defendants. Typical wire amounts ranged from $10,000 to more than $100,000 per wire.
The preacher said the Ghana and most African countries would virtually be empty if the United States Embassy decided to give free visas for just a week.

Delivering a sermon during last Sundays service, Pastor Otabil said the huge number of people who risk their lives on the Sahara desert just to make it to Europe is testament that many people from Africa are yearning to travel abroad for greener pastures.

Look at the number of our people who try to cross the Sahara Desert to go to Europe.

And believe you me, if that way were open, Africa would be empty. It would be empty, Dr Otabil stated.

He attributed the situation to the lack of hope by citizens of African countries, insisting the quest to move overseas is borne of hopelessness rather than adventure.

According to him, there are many places in Ghana like the Mole national park and other sceneries that are perfect for adventure yet most Ghanaians have no sense of adventure.

If the American Embassy today decides: this week is free visa for everybody, Ghana would be empty, Nigeria would be empty, he continued.Why are we travelling? Its not because we have a sense of adventure, because if we had a sense of adventure, we would have travelled to Mole, we wouldve gone to Kintampo, we have no sense of adventure, its a sense of hopelessness. Its not adventure, its hopelessness. Its a sense where you feel nothing good will come from here.

About 127 Ghanaian immigrants in Libya returned home in November last year following reports that they were being maltreated in the North African country.
The youth in the regional capital of HO came out dressed in red and black attires with several placards in hand communicating various messages.

Some of the placards read: Volta needs development, not division, Dont insult our intelligence Mr., One Volta, one people, Dont take our tolerance for our weakness and Save Volta now!, among other messages of discontent.

Most of the protestors who were from the southern part of the Volta region explained that they will be denied the economic benefits of the resource-rich northern part if a new region is created.

They pointed to the fact that the northern part of the region has cash crops like cocoa, coffee and cola, whiles the southern part cannot boast such cash crops.

The protestors marched through Ho all the way to Regional Coordinating Council to present their petition to the Regional Minister, Dr. Archibald Letsa.

The two main groups that led the demonstration  Asogli Youth and Volta Youth  said the creation of a new region would divide the Volta region rather than bring development.

Some of them blamed the Chiefs in Volta, insisting they have not shown enough commitment to suggest they are committed to uniting the region.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs up north of the Volta region have welcome the idea of carving out a new region.
The suspect, named Osmane Salame, stormed the North Industrial based automobile company with other accomplices to rob the company of their previous day sales.

READ MORE: Kwesi Pratt chides Bawumia over incessant armed robbery attacks

He was picked up by the police last week at Ashalaja in the Ga West Municipality of the Greater Accra Region.

On March 2, Osmane and his gang snatched a Toyota Camry around the Industrial Area and headed to Royal Motors to rob a bullion van that was about to pick the sales of Royal Motors.

Osman Salame was arraigned before the court yesterday on the charges of conspiracy and robbery.The facts of the case are still scanty as the police are further probing the matter, so his plea was not taken.

So far three persons have been arrested in connection with the daylight robbery.
He said if not for a last minute intervention from the Presidency, they would have been left with no option but to import the flags from China due to cost.

He also disclosed that the quantity they were looking for also created problems for the local suppliers. He said, "But we couldnt bring them down from there so we had to fall on local printers and they couldnt meet the quantities they wanted.
READ ALSO: Road contractors accuse politicians of giving contracts to political friends who do shoddy jobs

He said this includes pulling down structures erected on waterways, removing silt from major water courses, construction of drains and dredging of the Odaw River.

The Minister said this while answering questions from Parliament on the preparedness of his Ministry for this year's raining season.

He said they were also updating the hydro and urban geographical map and would be conducting hydro-geological studies on a basin by basin basis.

Mr. Atta Akyea indicated that if Ghana should have a permanent solution, we should go to places where you would not see filth floating in drains, where you would not see any sewage - everything is underground.
Minister of Aviation, Cecilia Abena Dapaah has said women perform important roles in the building of the family and the society, therefore they should be cherished and pampered by men.

She said "All over the world women are playing important roles in their families and the society in general, and, so, we deserve to be pampered. We acknowledge the role of the men but today is for women, and, so, the women should be pampered."

Her comments come at the back of the International Women's Day.

The International Women's Day was first celebrated in 1910 in New York, a year after garment workers in the US went on strike over poor working conditions.

The United Nations has explained the Day is marked to recognize the achievement of women regardless of nationality, ethnicity, cultural, economic or political background or affiliation.

READ ALSO: In awe of Ghanaian women and the indispensable treasures they are

The global theme for this year is "Press for Progress."
This was revealed by sector minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, when she appeared before Parliament on Wednesday, 7 March 2018.

The minister said the return of the Ghanaian migrants from the North African country will be sped up with assistance from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

She said the IMO on March 5 2018 wrote a letter informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration about an upcoming evacuation and voluntary return of approximately 151 Ghanaians by charter.

Ms Botchway noted that her Ministry has accordingly informed the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and the Ghana Immigration Service to stand by for the repatriation exercise.

This comes after government facilitated the return of some 127 Ghanaians from Libya last year following reports that they were being maltreated in the North African country.

These Ghanaians and many other African nationals were reported to have been subjected to inhumane treatment after spending huge monies to make the journey through the Sahara desert all in the hope of making it to Europe.
He believes 'Men of God' are not helping with the development of Ghana as most of their sermons are about fear and not development oriented.

According to him, God gave everyone a brain to think and protect oneself as well as work to feed himself or herself but many have ignored these gifts and banked their hopes on prayer which is why the country is not developing.READ ALSO: I was supposed to be murdered like J.B Danquah - Ken Agyapong reveals

How can we develop when we spend most of the time in churches praying? God gave you the brain to think, protect yourself and work to feed yourself but every day you are in the church praying in tongues, how can you develop with such a mentality, he asked.

The 'controversial' NPP MP is noted to be a fierce critic of prophets in Ghana and their pronouncements. He believes most of them are not real and shouldn't be taken serious.
Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, was accused of not recognising the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu.

Haruna Iddrisu was on his feet to ask a Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, a follow-up question when he appeared before the House.

READ MORE: Minority calls Speaker of Parliament threat to democracy

The question to be asked was related to an answer the deputy minister had provided on the Export Trade, Agriculture and Industrial Fund (EDAIF) funding for irrigation infrastructure for horticultural crops production.

They said the Speaker again failed to recognise Haruna Iddrisu when he rose to his feet to make a point as to why the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyeremarten, did not appear to answer a question on the One District, One Factory' initiative.

The Minority told journalists that the Speaker went ahead to invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, to present a statement on the alleged sale of African migrants in Libya.

The Minority leader stood for a while Ms Botchway was presenting the statement before he resumed his seat.

Moments after, the Minority members staged a walk out of the House, till their seats became vacant with only the Majority members in the House.

READ ALSO: Speaker of Parliament hits back at Minority over bias claims

The business of the House continued till the adjournment of the House.

However, deputy Minority Leader, Jame Klutse Avedzi, described Mike Oquaye as the worst Speaker of the Fourth Republic.

He said the Minority has been responsible adding that the Speaker has not been fair to them in the House.

"We have always been responsible as a Minority. In fact, Ghanaians should know that the NDC Minority is responsible. We want the Ghanaian people to be the judges, they should see what is happening.

"We have had a number of Speakers in this country. Weve had DF Annan, Peter Ala Adjetey, Sekyi Huges, Bamford Addo, Doe Adjaho and now we have a Reverend Speaker and this is the way hes behaving. If you want to rank him among the six so far, hes the worst," he told journalists.

Speaker of Parliament is bias

The Minority on numerous occasions has accused Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye, describing him as a threat to democracy.

Member of Parliament for Asawase, Muntaka Mubarak has said he is just like Idi Amin, one of history's repressive leader.

He made the explosive comments after he was denied by the speaker to make a comment during voting for the adoption of the report of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee of parliament on the Legal Profession Regulations 2017 on Friday.

The committee had recommended that entrants into the Ghana Law School should be made to write entrance exams.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and AU commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat discussed security and counter-terrorism, trade and development, corruption and conflict in an hour-long meeting at the continental body's headquarters in the Ethiopian capital.

Faki, however, insisted the slur was now in the past.

"I received a letter written by President Trump to myself and I shared that with other African leaders. I believe this incident is of the past," he said.

Tillerson's five-nation Africa tour -- to include Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria, all key allies in fighting Islamic extremism -- has been described by analysts as a "listening tour", with no deals or initiatives due to be announced.

"The purpose of my trip is to listen to what the priorities of the countries here on the continent are and see where there is good alignment," said Tillerson.

Focus on security

Analysts highlight the choice of countries visited by Tillerson as a sign of the United States' focus on security issues on the continent.

Chad, Kenya and Nigeria are all battling Islamic extremism, with help from the United States, while Djibouti hosts the only permanent US military base on the continent.

Tillerson and Faki discussed continued US support to African counter-terrorism forces in the Sahel and Somalia but no new concrete commitments were given.

"We have not yet won that battle in Somalia and we must stay at it," Tillerson said.

His visit is also a bid to counter the mounting perception that the continent is a low priority for the Trump administration, with US-Africa policy ill-defined and key ambassadorial and State Department posts unfilled.

Tillerson's department, meanwhile, submitted a 2019 budget request that would cut US health programs in Africa by a fifth and diplomatic programs by more than a third.

However he said his visit was "an indication of the importance the continent plays in the future of the US, both in security and from the economic standpoint."

Also looming over the journey is the rise of China as an economic and diplomatic power to rival the West.

Tillerson warned against blind acceptance of booming Chinese investment in Africa.

He said the US was "not in any way attempting to keep Chinese investment dollars out of Africa" but urged governments to "carefully consider the terms of those investments" so they do "not forfeit any elements of your sovereignty".

He also solicited African support in pressuring North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Lavrov meeting?

Tillerson's trip to Ethiopia is scheduled to briefly overlap with a visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said he had requested a meeting. Washington denied receiving an invitation to talks.

"We sent proposals to the Americans and they said they will think about that but later. As you know, they announced that there will be no meeting and that no discussions (about it) have taken place at all," Lavrov said in Zimbabwe.

Tillerson, in Addis Ababa, called the idea that he had rejected a meeting with Lavrov "silly."
"There are so few leadership roles currently available to women. Women do not have strong role models in the Church they can look up to," McAleese told reporters in Rome.

McAleese will be speaking at the annual "Voices of Faith" conference on Catholic women's rights in Rome on Thursday for International Women's Day.

Chantal Goetz from Germany, one of the organisers, said: "It's urgent to include women in the Church.

"We feel we have reached a crisis point. Young people leave the Church in alarming numbers. We watch the exodus of talented, educated young women," she said.

The conference is traditionally held in the Vatican itself.

But it is moving to another location in Rome outside the Vatican walls this year after a conservative US cardinal requested that three gay rights campaigners including McAleese be excluded from the programme.

Irish-born US cardinal Kevin Farrell, a senior Vatican official, said it was "not appropriate" for the three to be taking part in the conference.
Both Britain and the EU have vowed to avoid the return of customs checks to the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of Britain, and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

They reached an interim deal in December leaving some flexibility on the issue, but an EU text putting the agreement into law has sparked a fresh row with London.

Britain intends to leave the EU's single market and customs union, which suggests the need for border controls somewhere.

The EU text says Northern Ireland must stay in a customs union with the rest of the bloc if no better way is found to avoid a hard Irish border -- which Britain rejects.

"While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border," Tusk said in Dublin.

"As long as the UK doesn't present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations."

Varadkar said: "We must have certainty that, if a better option proves unachievable, the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland will apply."

Britain hopes to begin talks on the future trading relationship with Brussels next month, and Prime Minister Theresa May set out her proposals for a new wide-ranging free trade agreement (FTA) in a speech on Friday.

Finance Minister Philip Hammond set out more detail this week, saying it would be in both sides' "mutual interest" to include the financial services industry in the deal.

The EU has repeatedly rejected this, although its draft guidelines for the trade talks published on Wednesday made no overt mention of the issue.

Tusk repeated Thursday that a free trade deal could reduce or eliminate tariffs on goods, but services required common rules to ensure there was a level playing field.

"This is why we cannot offer the same in services as we can offer in goods. And it's also why FTAs don't have detailed rules for financial services," he said.
He sat alongside US President Donald Trump and spoke of the "historic" White House decision to designate the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a major diplomatic coup for Netanyahu that enraged the Palestinians.

Trump said he may attend the opening of the new embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of the creation of Israel.

A day later, receiving a warm welcome from some 18,000 people at a conference for pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, Netanyahu spoke of what he describes as his achievements at home and abroad while pledging to "stop" Israel's greatest enemy, Iran.

But even as he prepared to meet Trump, a former aide who had been among his close allies was signing a state witness agreement with the police to testify against him.

He is the third Netanyahu associate to do so in a matter of months.

The attorney general is now weighing whether to follow a police recommendation to indict Netanyahu for bribery in two of the four cases, with investigations continuing into the others.

As the investigations close in, there has been widespread speculation that Netanyahu, prime minister for a total of 12 years, will opt for early elections to bolster his standing ahead of a decision on indictments.

Some accuse Netanyahu of allowing a political crisis to brew within his coalition to enable elections soon -- or to at least give himself options.

'Play this game'

His right-wing coalition has been split over a bill to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious students from military service, with the issue threatening to pull apart the government.

"If he wants to solve it, he can solve it. There is no real crisis here," a source in the opposition said on condition of anonymity.

He said politicians were assuming the attorney general would reach a decision on indictments in the summer.

"It makes sense for him to go to elections before that," the source said of Netanyahu. "That's our working analysis."

Some polls suggest Netanyahu could remain in power after fresh elections even with the investigations hanging over him. He is not required to resign if indicted.

Netanyahu, a savvy campaigner with long experience in the raucous world of Israeli politics, says he wants his coalition to last its full term, due to expire in November 2019.

"If the coalition leaders agree, that is what will happen," Netanyahu told journalists in the United States on Wednesday.

"If they don't, then we'll have early elections."

He has publicly stuck by what many analysts see as a three-prong strategy.

He has sought to portray business as usual when it comes to his work while denigrating the investigations as a bid by enemies to force him out.

Meanwhile, he has sought to burnish his credentials to convince Israelis he is the best option for prime minister.

"This is his approach and he must stick to it," said Gideon Rahat of Jerusalem's Hebrew University and the Israel Democracy Institute think tank.

"One option is to play this game and the other is what? To resign and to take the risk of going to jail like Ehud Olmert?" he added, referring to the former Israeli premier who served prison time for corruption.

Huge gamble

The graft probes are varied but amount to allegations Netanyahu granted financial or other benefits to businessmen in exchange for gifts or favours.

In one of the cases in which police have recommended his indictment, he and his family are accused of receiving gifts such as expensive cigars, jewellery and champagne from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer.

The other alleges he sought to negotiate a deal with the publisher of a top-selling newspaper for favourable coverage.

Two other cases still being probed also centre on allegations of bribery.

Further adding to the pressure facing him, there are two additional cases indirectly linked to Netanyahu -- accusations of corruption in the purchase of German submarines and alleged misuse of public funds by his wife.

Elections would be a huge gamble, Rahat said, though victory would cement his argument that he is being hounded by the country's elites but supported by the public.
The symbolic mark was reached "after forces retook Al-Ashaari and Beit Sawa towns as well as farmland in the centre and north of Eastern Ghouta," he told AFP.

After attacking mostly from the air -- in a campaign that involved Russian warplanes and saw Syria aircraft using barrel bombs -- pro-government forces launched a ground offensive.

They have moved rapidly from the east, taking mostly farmland and punching westward down the middle of the enclave in a bid to split it in two.

Regime forces have yet to take on the two main towns of Douma and Hammuriyeh or any of the most populated areas of the enclave on the capital Damascus' outskirts.
Over the next four years, he would survive seven Nazi concentration camps by swapping sketches of his captors and their families for scraps of food.

And he lived to become a prominent American portraitist. He died at 93 on Feb. 24 in Santa Monica, California, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust said.

Aron was born near Riga on Sept. 24, 1924. His mother, Sonia, was from Lithuania; his father, Chaim, a custom womens shoe designer, was from Russia.

After the German invasion, Kalmans father was conscripted for a work detail and never seen again. Kalman was herded into Rigas Jewish ghetto with his older brother and his mother. She was killed later that year in the massacre of 25,000 Jews near the Rumbula forest.

Kalman was shipped to perform slave labor in camps in Latvia, Poland, Germany (where he was sent to Buchenwald) and what was then Czechoslovakia.

I survived by disappearing, he told Susan Beilby Magee, author of the book Into the Light: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron (2012). As an artist, I had always been in my own territory, if you will.

In the camps, he added, we never knew when a friend might be struck down and die. So one way to protect yourself, to insulate yourself, was to be alone. A deep, stark place of loneliness is where I was.

After Nazi guards discovered his artistic ability, he would be temporarily relieved of hard labor and hidden away in a barracks to sketch their portraits or copy photographs of their families. He might be rewarded with a moth-eaten blanket or a morsel of food.

They wouldnt pay me anything, but I would get a piece of bread, something to eat, he was quoted as saying last year in The Jewish Journal. Without that, I wouldnt be here.

I made it through the Holocaust with a pencil, he told Steven C. Barber, who is adapting Magees book into a documentary, Into the Light, for Vanilla Fire Films.

His brother survived World War II, but they lost touch when the Iron Curtain descended on Eastern Europe. Fleeing the advancing Soviet army as the war wound down, Aron was briefly consigned to a displaced-persons camp.

A U.S. soldier whose girlfriend he sketched was impressed with the young mans talent and brought Aron to the attention of a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Aron soon enrolled on a scholarship and went on to earn a masters degree.

He moved to the United States in 1949, newly married, unable to speak English and, by his account, carrying only $4.

Settling in California, he began illustrating maps for a living but also completed a pastel portrait drawn from an indelible, haunting memory: of a mother clutching her child so tightly to her face that they are almost fused together. He later made a painting of the image, measuring 8 feet by 3 feet; it hangs in the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

One day in 1951, when Susan Magees mother, Marichu Beilby, an interior decorator, stopped by her regular picture-framing store, she was struck by a pastel drawing of a black-eyed 9-month-old baby in the window. It reminded her of the baby she had lost at the same age.

When Beilby learned that the artist was a refugee who had drawn portraits from photographs, she invited Aron to her home to paint a portrait of 6-year-old Susan, Susans sister and, from a photo, the lost baby.

Beilby so admired Arons talent that she referred him to her wealthy clients, and his work began metamorphosing  from forbidding images evoked by vivid memories of the camps to cathartic vibrant landscapes and portraits commissioned by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Andre Previn and Henry Miller.

In 1956, Art in America magazine ranked him as one of 100 outstanding American artists.

Aron, who lived in Beverly Hills, California, was married four times. He is survived by his wife, the former Miriam Sandoval, and a son, David, an artist, from his third marriage, to Tanis Furst.

Aron explained that his four years in captivity had provided a unique dimension to his portraiture: He was able to transform his isolation and endurance as a prisoner into an opportunity to delve into the personality of his subjects. Some critics later described his work as psychological realism.

In the camps, I looked at and studied people, he told Magee, adding, The Holocaust gave me an understanding of people that most people wont understand.

He continued: My situation may be a little bit better than some people who came out of the camps. They may have nothing else to do but watch television and think about those bad days in the camps. I did that in the beginning, but I got away from thinking about it by doing portraits, landscapes, traveling and painting. I think that kept me away from all this agony of How did I survive? or Why did I survive?'

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
On Wednesday afternoon City Hall was planning to name her as New Yorks first Nightlife Mayor, its ambassador-at-large to the late-night world of bars, burlesques and cabarets. Soon enough, she would be back in the bacchanal. For now, it seemed like a prudent move to be in bed before dawn.

Ive always been a nocturnal person, Palitz said, sipping her Manhattan, the only drink she has ordered for months in a superstitious effort to secure the job. Nocturnal people just sort of gravitate toward night life. But I dont think that will change even if I have to be in the office at 9 a.m.

Since September, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was forming an Office of Nightlife to promote the industry and soothe the strained relations between the citys night spots and the neighborhoods that complain about their merriment, the local demimonde has been wondering who might nab the glamorous position. Would de Blasio appoint a modern-day Tex Guinan, someone who would quaff Champagne in the small hours of the morning under the trapezes of the erotic circus scene?

In her first interview since accepting the post, Palitz suggested that her stint as the Nightlife Mayor would be slightly more sober and focus less on carousing than on conflict mediation. In todays New York, gentrification has pitted partygoers against the settled residents of neighborhoods like the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. In her first official act, Palitz promised to hold a series of listening tours and entertain the gripes of those who are bothered by the vomit on their streets or the noise at 3 a.m.

Both sides feel unheard, she said. Both sides feel that things are unfair. I think the grievances are almost the same but there havent been any practical real-world solutions to address them.

As a fifth-generation New Yorker, Palitz, 47, claims to be of a broad enough mind to discern those solutions and to ably serve as advocate for the after-hours set while remaining responsive to community concerns.

Though she was raised on 86th Street on the Upper East Side, she moved to the East Village in 1996 and has lived there ever since. In her early 20s, she took her first night life job, managing the guest list at the old Club Mars. Soon she was producing the Soulution Spontaneous Groove Open Jam  a night of hip-hop, spoken word, gospel, rock and drag  at clubs like Nation, SOBs and the Tunnel.

In the early 2000s, a friend from grade school asked Palitz to invest in a bar near her apartment called The Flat. (It was briefly famous as a rendezvous that actors Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher used for their romance.) But in 2004, The Flat went under and Palitz took it over. She turned it into Sutra, which for the next 10 years until it closed, was known for Toca Tuesdays, an old-school hip-hop party overseen by the DJ Tony Touch.

It was during that period that Palitz joined Community Board 3, a fractious body that includes the East Village, Chinatown and the Lower East Side. There, she was introduced to the brass-knuckle politics of night life  chiefly through her dealings with what she has called the no-more bar contingency.

In an interview in 2012, Palitz told The Daily News that the area was ripe for the picking by high-end nightclub entrepreneurs  a remark that did not endear her to local residents and bloggers. Though she later claimed she was misquoted, the comment triggered a firestorm and some in the neighborhood called for her removal from the board.

Now in charge of a mayoral office with a 12-person advisory board, a $300,000 budget and a salary of $130,000 a year, Palitz seems to have realized that even a doyenne of New York night life must make a few concessions when joining city government. On her Tuesday evening drink, she was accompanied, for instance, by a minder from City Hall. While she admits that there were times in her career when she personified what the no-bar movement rejected, she also claimed that she has always tried to find solutions that work for everyone.

Among those who will be watching her as she begins her job is Rafael Espinal, the Brooklyn city councilman who sponsored the law that created the position. Espinal, whose district includes the night life neighborhood of Bushwick, said he was excited by Palitzs appointment, but hoped that she would not be too Manhattan-centric.

I would love it if she were sensitive to the DIY underground in Brooklyn too, Espinal said. Thats the scene that has set the trend for years and has made things in the city so interesting.

Palitz acknowledged that the scene had changed from her day in the mix and that the once-cool clubs of the Meatpacking District had moved to Queens and Brooklyn.

You cant crush culture  or subculture  in New York, she said. It just goes deeper and longer. New York culture and night life still thrive in a very real way. Its just going to find its new place.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
As Nigerians and the world celebrate the International Womens Day, Nigerias Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo has turned 61.

The legal luminary is the 14th Vice President and currently the second man to 75-year-old President Muhammadu Buhari.

Osinbajo, who was a Senior Partner with SimmonsCooper Partners, a commercial law practice, before his inauguration as Nigerias 14th VP, is married to Dolapo Osinbajo, one of the granddaughters of late sage, Obafemi Awolowo.

The Vice President is also the Pastor in charge of the Lagos Province 48 (Olive Tree provincial headquarter) of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria.

Senate President wishes Osinbajo great wisdom

As Vice President Yemi Osinbajo turns 61, the Nigerian Senate President, Bukola Saraki has wished him great wisdom.

In a tweet on March 8, 2018, Saraki said: Happy Birthday to our Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo. I pray that the Almighty continues to give you good health, great wisdom and abundant grace. Amen!

Meanwhile Laolu Akande, the Senior Special Assistant Media and Publicity to Vice President,Osinbajos media aide, has taken to social media to felicitate with his boss.
This recognition is given to this struggle as part of 2018 celebration of the International Women Day (IWD) whose theme is : Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming womens lives.

Aba Women riot is a revolt by women in the eastern Nigeria city of Aba against exploitative tax regime of the colonial masters. This struggle forms an important part of the nationalist movement in Nigeria.

The body said about the event: Incensed by their social standing under colonial rule, the Igbo women send palm leaves, similar to todays Facebook invite, to their fellow sisters across Southeastern Nigeria.

Together they descend in the thousands to sit on or make war on undemocratically appointed chiefs by publicly shaming them through singing, dancing, banging on their walls and even tearing down roofs.

Although the backlash against protests turns deadly, it eventually forces the chiefs to resign and market tax impositions on women to be dropped, the UN Women said.

International Women Day is an annual event which holds on March 8. It is used to celebrate women across the globe, especially those that played role in the society.

This event has taken the form of global marches and campaigns. And now served as an avenue to discuss issues ranging from women rights and participation in governance.
This request was made by the Head of Economic Affairs of the Indonesian Embassy in Nigeria, Mr Dwiyatna Widinugraha, during a courtesy call on the Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr Baru Maikanti, on Wednesday, March 7.

Widinugraha commended NNPC for helping to meet the energy need of Indonesia and called for more assistance in the form of increased crude oil allocation to the country.

Mr Anizar Burlian, the Vice President of Pertamina - Indonesian national oil company, also reiterated the appeal of Widinugraha.

"Over the years, we have bought a huge amount of crude oil from Nigeria. We are extremely happy to buy more Nigerian crude oil which is globally rated to be of a very high grade and which is very suitable for our refineries," Burlian said.

He said disclosed that the Indonesian government willing to invest in the Nigerian upstream, midstream and downstream petroleum sectors.

As at 2017, the population of Indonesia was estimated at 250 million people and require about 1.6 million barrels of crude oil daily to meet its energy need.

Just like other emerging economies, the demand for energy is usually high and the main reason for this government-to-government arrangement requested for by the Indonesian government.
To measure the world's progress toward gender equality, the

Camilla Hodgson contributed to an earlier version of this story.

15. Qatar  This country has never elected a woman to parliament.

14. Turkey  The vast majority of legislators, senior officials, and managers in this country are men. There are nearly no women in ministerial positions.

However, Turkish law mandates equal pay for men and women.

13. Mauritania  Women do not have the same rights as men in marriage or after divorce, and companies are not required to pay men and women the same amount here.

12. The Ivory Coast  In the past 50 years, there has not been a female head of state in this country.

11. Egypt  This country does not have non-discrimination laws in hiring and does not mandate equal pay.

10. Jordan  Women only received the right to vote here in 1974, and there are hardly any women working in ministerial positions today.

9. Morocco  Daughters do not have inheritance rights in this country, and there have been no female heads of state to date.

8. Lebanon  There are nearly no women working in parliament or ministerial positions in this country.

7. Saudi Arabia  Women could only vote and enroll in municipal elections starting in 2015. In June 2018, they will be permitted to drive for the first time.

Source: and

6. Mali  In this country, women only have partial rights to land use, control, and ownership.

5. Iran  Women have just partial access to financial services here.

4. Chad  Women in this country are much less likely to be literate or educated than men.

3. Syria  The vast majority of Syria's workforce and those with political power are male.

2. Pakistan  This country does not have anti-discrimination hiring laws, nor does it require equal pay.

To date, Iran has elected one female prime minister: Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007 at the age of 54.

1. Yemen  This country has no women in parliament and has never had a female head of state. The law does not mandate equal pay, and women only have partial access to financial services.
Members of Pentecostal churches are usually taught to give either their first earnings or all of their first salaries at the beginning of the year.

Bishop Okonkwo is seen discussing this practice in a new video. In it, he confesses that he has been asked to enforce the payment of first fruit in his church.

However, he reveals that he does not support the popular practice.

In his words, Can you imagine all the businessmen, all the profit you made and you bring them to my feet. Even if I did not read it in the Bible, my conscience will not allow me.

It is not all the gifts you take, take only the one you will be able to go to bed.

This is his second confession in recent times. The first was about the tactics used by his colleagues to frighten church members to pay tithe.

On First Fruit

In January 2018, this offering became the subject of debate after Daddy Freeze shared his thoughts on the issue.

He referred to this practice as a foolish and sinful one, encouraging Christians to stop giving their first fruit to pastors.

According to the OAP, Collecting the salaries of your congregation in January is Fraud! Stop this unchristian practice that creates slavery and poverty.
While this may be true in certain cases, the Quran and Prophet Muhammads sayings prove otherwise.

On this years International Womens Day, Pulse Religion seeks to change this narrative by revealing the truth and honoring Muslim women in the process.

Here is what the Quran and the religion have to say about womens rights:

Women and men have similar rights

The Holy Book says: and women have rights similar to those against them in a just manner, (Holy Quran, 2:228).

Whoever does good, whether male or female, and is a believer, We shall certainly make him live a good life, and We shall certainly give them their reward for the best of what they did. (Holy Quran, 16:97).

Fun Fact: Islam is regarded as the first religion to give women rights to own and inherit property.

Islam makes the education of girls a sacred duty

It is the duty of every Muslim man and woman to seek knowledge, the prophet is quoted as saying.

Women have the right to choose their partners.

Without the womans consent, any marriage contract or negotiation is considered illegitimate.

ALSO READ: Islam does not oppress Muslim women

The girl child is considered more important

Prophet Muhammad said: "He, who brought up two girls properly till they grew up, he and I would come (together) (very closely) on the Day of Resurrection, and he interlaced his fingers (for explaining the point of nearness between him and that person)."

In pre-Islamic times, history says girls were hated and the news of the birth of female child was considered the worst news ever. This was rejected by the Prophet, according to the Quran.

When one of them gets a baby girl, his face becomes darkened with overwhelming grief. Ashamed, he hides from the people, because of the bad news given to him. He even ponders: should he keep the baby grudgingly, or bury her in the dust. Miserable indeed is their judgment. (Quran, 16: 5859)

If anyone has a female child and does not bury her alive, or slight her, or prefer his children (i.e., the male ones) to her, Allah will bring him to Paradise," one verse reads.

The Prophet also said, If anyone has suffered at all respecting these girls and treats them well, they will be a covering for him from Hell.

Islam recognizes that women deserve respect

The Quran says: And for women are rights over men similar to those of men over women. [Noble Quran 2:228]

The Prophet told the Muslims: Fear Allah in respect of women. He also said: The more civil and kind a Muslim is to his wife, the more perfect in faith he is.

Before his death, he kept repeating, I command you to be kind and considerate to women.

Quran warns men not to oppress or ill-treat women

O you who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should you treat them with harshness, that you may take away part of the dowry you have given them  except when they have become guilty of open lewdness. On the contrary, live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If you take a dislike to them, it may be that you dislike something and Allah will bring about through it a great deal of good. [Noble Quran 4:19]

In one Hadith, the prophet said, It is only the generous in character who is good to women, and only the evil one who insults them.

Mothers are highly revered

On many occasions, the Prophet was quoted saying that the rights of the mother are paramount.

Abu Hurayrah reported that a man came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) and asked: O Messenger of Allah, who is the person who has the greatest right on me with regards to kindness and attention? He replied, Your mother. Then who? He replied, Your mother. Then who? He replied, Your mother. Then who? He replied, Your father.

Note: In the 7th century, women in Arabia and early Islam had more rights than women in other societies across the world.
For their strides and achievements, March 8 of every year has been chosen to celebrate the valour of womanhood.

As we mark this years Womens International Day, Pulse celebrates five (5) women of substance who through sheer zeal, diligence and resilience have played significant roles in the education sector.

These women defied status-quo and have shown to the world that what men can do, women can do as well, if not better.

1 Oby Ezekwesili

Obiagelli Katryn Ezekwesili Madam Due Process, clearly needs no introduction as one who wears a cap with many feathers.

As Minister of Education, she championed a developmental reform of the restructuring and refocusing on education for all (EfA) in line with the Millennium Development Goals. She also launched the Adopt-A-School program, an initiative that fosters philanthropy by corporations, community groups and individuals towards education.

She is undoubtedly a woman of substance and well deserving of the national honour of Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR) of Nigeria.

2 Grace Alele Williams

In a country, where academic environments are largely dominated by men an time when cultism was a thing in Nigerian universities, Prof Grace Alele Williams defied the odd and became the first female Vice-Chancellor in 1985.

Williams proved to be of equal measure in the endeavour men are believed to be the main actors. In 1963, she became the first Nigerian woman to be awarded a doctorate degree.

Williams made her mark as a first-class academician and Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Lagos.

She also proved herself as a skilled administrator when she became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin and served in that position for six productive years.

3. Prof. Rukayyah Rufai

When the time to profile men and women, who have genuinely contributed to the development of education sector in Nigeria comes, Professor Ruqayyah Ahmed Rufai's efforts will never go unmentioned.

In April 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Rufai as the Minister of Education after serving as the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology in Jigawa State.

Apart from taking charge of the education ministry at both state and Federal level, Rufai is one of the women who stood their ground to fight for the girl child education in Northern Nigeria.

Denying the girl child formal education is a common practice in the North and Rufai, who was born in Jigawa state, had PhD in Education from the West Virginia University, US, in 1991 once said she could not stand that practice.

Rufai is very passionate about being in the classroom, teaching and grooming the younger generation. This is evident in her response to journalists September 11, 2013.

When she was relieved of her job in the Ministry of Education with nine other Ministers, Rufai announced to the pressmen that having served as a Minister for three years, she would go back to the university to continue her teaching job.

4. Dr Omanhe Phillipa Idogho

Before June 2010, the Rector's seat in Nigerian Polytechnic seemed to be exclusively meant for men, even when competent male staffs of a polytechnic aren't qualified enough for the position, a male acting Rector is usually installed. That was the practice until Dr Omanhe Phillipa Idogho broke the jinx.

Idogho, popular for not taking nonsense from students and staff made a name for herself by sweeping the polytechnic clean of cultism.

On becoming the Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi, Idogho introduced some policies to better the image of the institution which was already battered by students cult activities and lecturers ineptitude and negligence.

Before her intervention, many graduates of the Polytechnic for decades had graduated without being offered diploma certificates or statements of results.

ALSO READ: Auchi student makes amazing sculpture of the Oba of Benin

Idogho also changed the way teachers handle students examination scripts and ensured that results were released as soon as students complete the examination.

5. Professor Fatima Batul Mukhtar

Professor Fatima Batul Mukhtar is the current Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Dutse.

Mukhtar rose through the ranks in her teaching career in the university, starting as an Assistant Lecturer, to through senior lecturer to Head of Departments, to becoming a Dean of a Faculty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and finally becoming the Vice Chancellor of a university in a region where women hardly rise to such level in academic environment.

Mukhtar is one woman who is not intimidated or feel threatened by the position she holds in academia. She walked her way to the top and deserves to be decorated for her achievement.

All these women are models, achievers and source of encouragement for thousands of other women who aspire to attain the best in their chosen fields. We really can not but celebrate women who made effort to break barriers and make the needed change in the society.
Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMBs Head of Media, made the call on Thursday during a courtesy call on Mr Bayo Onanuga, the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

Benjamin said that JAMB was in the NAN premises to familiarise with the organisation, ahead of its Computer-based Test (CBT) examination scheduled to begin nationwide on March 9 and last till March 19.

He said that NAN was doing a wonderful job in terms of dissemination of news, especially in realisation of the Federal Governments change agenda.

NAN has played major role in the nation building processes. Whoever initiated the idea of establishing the organisation must have thought it very well.

Once you give NAN any news it gets across the nation; we commend the leadership of NAN for what it is doing in this direction.

We are starting our UTME tomorrow and in our policy of inclusiveness, we want to carry people along, because we want to run a transparent system and we have nothing to hide.

We invite all Nigerians, particularly the media to participate and see what we are doing; examination is all about trust, so we are opening the platform for everybody to see what we do.

We believe that if people know what is done and how to go about it, they will have confidence in the outcome, particularly in conduct of public examination, Benjamin said.

He described NANs reach as wider, when compared to other media outlets.

Benjamin also appealed to the management of the organisation to help in the dissemination of news about the examination.

Responding, Onanuga thanked the delegation for the visit, urging them to always harness the organisations reach to gain impact.

He commended JAMB for the use of CBT to conduct public examinations, thereby contributing to the reduction of examination malpractices.

NAN managing director also lauded the examination bodys remittance of funds to the government, describing it as right steps in the right direction toward nation building.

If all examination bodies can emulate such practices our country will improve.
50 outstanding currently serving or recently finished serving members of the National Youth Service Corps are selected through a rigorous process to go through the residential program at LBS where they are exposed to lessons on Strategy, Business Management, Finance, Corporate Governance, Ethics and Leadership as well as MBA modelled business cases.

These lessons prepare the participants to become ethical business leaders who will go on to run their own businesses or manage already established businesses and social enterprises.

This years program ran from February 19 through February 23. After a tour and brief history of LBS, participants settled in for lectures on Writing an effective CV & Preparing For an Interview and Entrepreneurship in an Uncertain Economy both delivered by LBS faculty members on Day 1.

The week long activities at LBS also featured interactive sessions with business leaders such as Kunle Elebute, Chairman, KPMG Africa, Chienye Ogwo, ViMP alum and CEO Africa Initiative for Governance as well as Tunji Elesho, ViMP alum and Managing Partner, Growth Capital Fund.

On Wednesday, February 21, participants began the day teaching JAN programs on entrepreneurship and financial literacy in primary and secondary schools in the Ajah axis of Lagos. This activity is a part of the week-long ViMP program that exposes participants to the need to always give back to society either as individuals or business entities, teaching the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR.

Later that evening, participants convened at the Maison Fahrenheit Hotel, Lagos, where they got a chance to network with ViMP alumni, program sponsors, JAN board members and staff as well as local media correspondents.

On Friday, February 23, 2018, participants listened to Paul Kokoricha, Executive Partner, ACA, who delivered a powerful graduation lecture focusing on ACAs 5 core values Integrity, Humility, Excellence, Discipline and Contribution, all of which he noted were relevant to any potential business leader.

Thereafter, the most outstanding male and female participants were recognized and awarded. Caleb Adebayo, a lawyer and graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University and Elohor Udubrae, a Chemical Engineer and graduate of Caritas University won this recognition based on their participation and contribution to in-class activities.

The week ended on a high note as participants were treated to a movie night experience, of the movie. Once again, everyone left feeling like super heroes and ready to take over the world for good. #WakandaForever

On Saturday morning, two ViMP 2018 participants, Caleb Adebayo and Esther Adelaja, along with Executive Director, JAN, Simi Nwogugu and Vice President, Investor Management ACA, Ogedi Onyeama, featured as guests on the Channels TVs Saturday Sunrise Show to discuss the weeks highlights and shed more light on the programs objectives and impact.

It was certainly a whirlwind of activities and in the words of the ViMP 2018 president, Joseph Emeka Okoroafor, participants have been equipped to go take over every sector of the economy and inspire the change they desire to see.

We look forward to ViMP 2019 and we invite potential participants to visit our website at www.ja-nigeria.org and follow us on social media for more details in the coming months.

Thank you to our sponsors and supporters:  Africa Capital Alliance Foundation; Lagos Business School and Accenture PLC as well as our media partners:  Channels TV; BellaNaija; Pulse TV; Punch and BusinessDay.

Junior Achievement Nigeria is a not-for-profit educational organization that teaches financial literacy and entrepreneurship programs to young people aged 5  27 in order to prepare them for the work life.

JAN programs seek to bridge the gap between the classroom and the workplace. To support the work we do at JAN, please visit our website at www.ja-nigeria.org for more details on how to get involved. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Represented by his deputy, Dr Idiat Oluranti Akinbule, in a meeting with the principals and head teachers of public schools in Lagos, Ambode said the Yoruba language would also be made a compulsory subject for students.

Adebule while delivering the governor's message said, Gov. Ambode wants me to pass this message to you, that henceforth, be made compulsory in both private and public schools,

The national anthem must be sung in Yoruba on a daily basis too'' she added.

The National Anthem has been translated into Yoruba

The governor also said that the National Anthem has been translated into Yoruba by the Egbe Akomolede.

The Egbe Akomolede has done the translation and we will send the copies of the Yoruba version to your schools by Monday so you can begin to teach the students.

I have also met with the owners of private schools and we have relayed this directive to them.

We are also considering translating the textbooks of other subjects into the Yoruba Language because I believe that when students are taught in their mother language, learning will be easy and their level of performance will improve.

ALSO READ: Is LASU truly the best state university in Nigeria?

The state government is passionate about this Law, so we do not lose our language, culture and heritage.

In February, Lagos State Government made a law that makes having a credit in the Yoruba language compulsory for all candidates seeking admission into all state-government controlled tertiary institutions in the state.
He made the announcement on behalf of Zenith Bank Board of Directors during the recently-concluded parley with the Governor of Lagos State, His Excellency, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode on 6 March 2018 at the Lagos Means Business forum at Eko Hotels & Suites.

Mr. Ovia commended the Government of Lagos under Governor Ambode, for encouraging enabling environment for businesses in Lagos State, particularly pointing out the remarkable improvement in security across the state. According to Mr. Ovia, the Lagos State Security Trust Fund has become a model for other states across the federation. He thus encouraged other private sector stakeholders to increase their contribution in funding the security initiative.

While stating the nature of security in Lagos State, Mr. Ovia lauded the leadership style of Governor Ambode, likening the state to an incorporated enterprise being so efficiently run by its Chief Executive Officer, in this case, Executive Governor Ambode.

The Lagos State Security Trust Fund was established on 3 September 2007 by the Lagos State Government as a public-private partnership for the improvement of security in Lagos State. Since its inception, Zenith Bank Plc has made contributions amounting to cumulative total of 650 million to the Lagos State Security Trust Fund.
To this end, Kadaria Ahmed hosted the Honourable Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the Executive Chairman of the FIRS, Mr Tunde Fowler, as well as analysts, members of the press and an online audience, in a televised panel discussion on the program, The Core, which aired on Channels Television at 8pm on Wednesday the 7th of October, 2018.

The Honourable Minister stated that only 6% of Nigerian citizens currently remit tax, a staggeringly low statistic that the scheme is determined to increase.

When questioned about the sustainability of the tax scheme  especially considering that these tax laws have always been in existence, but have hitherto been unenforced  she stated that the increase in the availability of data via national schemes, such as the BVN and the Automatic Exchange of Information Scheme with the United Kingdom and other participating countries has made it easier to track income and assets owned by Nigerians who reside in Nigeria and have assets both within and outside the country.

Questions were also raised concerning the use of the data gathered, and the challenge of corruption within the MDAs, who often collect taxes but dont remit them.

The Executive Chairman of the FIRS assured the audience that the data collected is strictly confidential.

He also stated that the FIRS has invested largely in technology, and that the agency is looking into implementing cashless tax remittance to minimise leaks and increase efficiency of tax collection.

For me, this is about building Nigeria, stressed the Minister of Finance, We must stop relying on oil. This is one of the things we must get right, and it could transform this country.
Punch News reported that the victim who teaches at a secondary school has been admitted at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, (LASUTH), where doctors are exploring means to resuscitate her life.

A three-hour surgery two days after the maid assault had failed to revive her it was gathered.

She became the subject of domestic violence involving Samson after discovering that the help who allegedly poured blended pepper on her while sleeping, had been stealing from her.

She reportedly found some stolen money in a bag located in a room assigned to her assaulter for resting. The latter had reportedly smashed a bottle on the teacher's head leaving her in a pool of blood.

An agent brought her to my wife on February 4, 2018. The girl said although she was from Ogoja, Cross River State, she had her primary and secondary education in Ikorodu, Lagos State, where she had lived the better part of her life.

I had gone to work around 6am on Monday when my wife was attacked. But when I was called, I went to make a statement at the Ejigbo Police Station where the girl was being detained. That was where she told me everything that happened.

She said last Friday, my wife accused her of stealing some money. Again on Saturday, there was an allegation she stole another money. I was surprised because my wife did not tell me that the maid she employed was stealing her things.

After I left the house on Monday, my wife asked her to buy balm for her down the street. While she was away, my wife went to her room and found the stolen money in her bag, including some other items which she (Samson) stole from her shop.

My wife called the agent that brought her and asked him to come over to the house. The agent immediately called the girl to know what happened. The girl said she didnt know why she (Mistura) called him.

At this time, she had become suspicious. So, when she got back to the house, she went to her bag and discovered that the stolen money and other items had been recovered by my wife.

When the girl saw that her secret was about to be exposed, she wanted to escape. On discovering that the pedestrian and drive gates had been locked, she became desperate.

She went to the kitchen, took a bowl of blended pepper, and poured it on my wife on the bed. My wife could not see again, but she groped to the main gate. She started calling for help because she could not also open the gate.

The girl went inside the house and found a bottle of champagne, which I had kept for an occasion. She smashed it on my wifes head five times. And she collapsed.

Some residents, who had gathered outside the gate after hearing my wifes call for help, caught her as she tried to escape. They also found my wife in a pool of blood and rushed her to a hospital," says victim's husband, Alhaji Sikiru in a conversation with Punch.

The concerned spouse displayed a skeptical mood about the recovery of his wife who suffered a huge blood loss. Professor Wale Oke, a Chief Medical Director at LASUTH however expressed optimism having recorded a successful surgery.

Oke explained that the patient only needs to undergo healing in the brain following heavy hits received on the head.

Lagos police commissioner, Edgal Imohimi, has ordered a thorough investigation according to the command's spokesperson, SP Chike Oti.

Housemaid begs for mercy as boss calls her out for stealing

In Lekki, Lagos, a housemaid was at the mercy of her boss lady who called her out for stealing from her apartment despite having access to many privileges.

A video shared on Instagram showed the help, Victoria Ogbu pacing about her employer's living room while asking to be pardoned.

The latter disclosed that she was caught after taking an amount of Dollar currency on Wednesday, January 24, 2018.
It is one of the newer, refurbished models of the machines, where customers can make cash deposits and transfers. Potential users itch with impatience, one of whom is a man standing behind a Hijab wearing lady. The man in question reads the womans hesitation and orders her to leave the queue if she is unable to operate the machine.

She ignores him, waits her turn and then completes her transaction. As she turns to leave, the same man stops and requests that she help him with his.

It turns out he is unable to use the machine. Its difficult to tell if his earlier rudeness was because she was wearing a Hijab or because shes a woman. Unknown to him, he had been standing behind a seasoned and educated electrical engineer, if he had known, perhaps he might have held his tongue.

A Female software engineer shouldnt be an oxymoron in 2018, but they are. There are quite a number of them yet not enough, breaking stereotypes and changing perceptions one source code at a time, to increase women participation in Tech and evidently challenge their status quo as the minority in those industries.

Enter Tomiwa, a married Muslim woman seeking to be all that she can be as a Software Engineer. In her case, the hurdles shed have to contend with, are being a Woman, a hijab wearing Muslim and a doting Mother. According to her There has to be a balance- as a married woman for instance, I have to work really, really hard at maintaining that balance, I dont want people at work looking at me like being a mother and married is some sort of shortcoming.

These are not roles you would easily find in Tomiwas impressive resume. She is quite used to the surprised look of recruiters and in other cases, employers, when shes the Software Test-Analyst that walks into the room to be interviewed; Positive or negative, she adds, I dont really let their reactions or expectations influence me, I let the work I do, speak for itself - and when the work speaks, this is what Yewande Odumosu, Principal Solutions Architect, Softcom says, Tomiwa has exceptional interpersonal skills. She is a great team player and ensures everyone in the team is properly equipped to deliver as required. She is result oriented and ensures that whatever task she manages is done efficiently and in a timely fashion. She is always willing to go above and beyond for the success of any task and the team as a whole.

Tomiwa is more than happy to be working in one of the organizations with cutting edge employee practices, where productivity and deliverables are not shaped by gender roles. They instead allow their employees to prove themselves by attempting to provide equal gender opportunities. Tomiwa who is building a fledgling career, is particularly happy to be seen for her productivity. At work, I have a dual role working as a Test Analyst & Systems Administrator, I especially like that the challenges keep coming.

From speaking with Tomiwa, it is easy to tell that growing up in a home where chores and activity where never gender-specific reinforced the backbone with which she tackles the challenges of her career. This in turn, fuels her other dual role of being a working professional and a married, religious woman. Tomiwa describes her love for engineering as a zeal  this is a feat I never considered impossible despite naysayers who were quick to point out that engineering is not a girls job.

It is difficult not to admire the resilience and dexterity of Tomiwa watching her in her office space, surrounded by fellow Engineers and executing task after task. Tomiwas Colleague, Kabolobari Benakole , UX/UI design lead agrees,  I can't quite imagine how the Engineering team would fare without Tomiwa... She mixes a rare grasp of engineering with the delicate art of a leader, ensuring every sub-team aligns with the overall goals of the Engineering team.

This place gives me a sense of career growth. I dont want to be in a position where I know it all. I like the feeling of overcoming new challenges. Here, we are allowed to dream and plan for the future so Im not even thinking about exit plans."

The ATM incident earlier mentioned isnt a one-off experience for Tomiwa. The man in question is not the first person to make an assumption about her intellectual capacities as a woman but, she doesnt dwell on such things. On a daily basis, she is dispelling such perceptions by informing innovative changes with other female engineers and their male counterparts.

ISACA is an international professional association focused on IT governance, conducted a study of women currently working in technology fields around the globe. Several issues emerged in the study as particularly significant concerns: The two biggest barriers women say they face in the technology workplace are lack of mentors (48 percent) and lack of female role models (42 percent).

Its clear that women hunger to learn and benefit from the presence of other women in technology. But at the top of the list of barriers for women in the ISACA survey are limited networking opportunities and lack of a strong professional network.

Every year, the International womens day celebration regales women with praises and congratulatory endearments. This year, its a call to action. The time for platitudes is over. We must now see every woman in the full range of her capacities and achievements.

Ernst & Young for example, is the first of the Big Four to assign full- time, partner-level leadership to diversity recruiting. Ever since, the number of women in top executive management positions has increased by more than 20%. They also introduced EY Launch, a programme for ethnically diverse college freshmen, sophomores and transfer students, it builds awareness of accounting as a major and professional services as a profession.

The workspace is clearly the most urgent and necessary environment to enforce the equal capabilities and opportunities between men and women.

Women like Tomiwa exist to eliminate the element of surprise, proving that equal opportunities in the Tech industry is not merely on the horizon, but is gradually becoming attainable. In admiration of Ire Aderinokun, Nigerias first female Google Developer Expert, Aisha Bello, a virtual systems Engineer at Cisco Nigeria, Zainab Ahmed, a software Development Manager at Konga amongst other women in Technology, shattering the glass ceiling by being pillars of Tech and software engineering- an understated fact. in light of their achievements, Tomiwa only wants to do her best.

Softcom is a thinking Company that over the last 10 years, connected people and businesses with meaningful innovation for business and social impact. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and on Web
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Not everyone throws bouquets and cut cakes, other cultures have different ways to go about celebrating the big day.

1. Shooting the bride, China

In China's Yugur culture, grooms shoot their future brides with a bow and arrow three times. The groom then breaks the arrows to ensure the couple stay in love forever.

2. Fat farms, Mauritania

In Mauritania, girls aged between five and 15 are sent to "fat farms" before their wedding to gain some weight. If a bride had stomach rolls, stretch marks and overlapping thighs, it signalled her husband was wealthy enough to keep her satisfied.

3. Blackening of the bride, Scotland

Scottish brides-to-be are taken by surprise by their friends ahead of the big day, and stoned with all sorts of rubbish such as bad milk, dead fish, spoiled food, tar and feathers. She is then tied to a tree. The belief is that if she can withstand this kind of treatment, she can handle anything that comes her way in her marriage.

4. Marrying a tree, India

In parts of India women born as Mangliks (an astrological combination when Mars and Saturn are both under the 7th house), are said to be "cursed" and thought to cause their husband an early death. In order to counter this, they must first be married to a tree and the tree cut down to break the curse.

5. Drinking from the toilet, France

Newlyweds in France are forced to drink leftovers from their wedding out of a toilet bowl.
According to various sources on social media, the hunter killed an elephant in a forest in Idanre, Ondo state. Comments under the post on Facebook revealed the elephant destroys crops in the state and the hunter who felled the beast is named Ajaja.

Many Nigerians have called on the Ondo State Government to arrest and prosecute him, noting that elephants and other wildlife are endangered species in the country.

Forest Elephants

It is very likely this endangered forest elephant wandered from the Oluwa Forest Reserve in Ondo State, Nigeria and rather than informing a government official about the whereabouts of the lost animal, Mr hunter decided to kill it.

It is important to note that the forest elephants in Nigeria found in Ondo, Osun and Ogun states are more threatened by deforestation. Experts fear that about 40 forest elephants (minus one now) are remaining in Omo, Shaha and Oluwa forest reserves. Hunting, logging and farming methods used in the forest have affected them and depleted their population over the years.

The elephants in these states could be extinct in five years if the problem of logging and poaching in their natural habitat continues.

What does this mean for wildlife conservation in Nigeria?

It is very simple! The government pays little regard or no attention to it at all.

The illegal killing of African elephants for their ivory seems to have fallen from record peaks but poaching of the animal is still far too high.

We should take our cue from the Pendjari National Park in Benin, West Africa who place satellite tracking collars on every elephant in their reserve. If one elephant wanders off, officials are able to quickly trace, tranquilise and transport him back.

The government should also provide more patrols in wildlife parks to limit the slaughter of these endangered species.

Only organised conservation, public support, enlightenment and good habitat management are capable of saving the forest elephant species from extinction in Nigeria.
Ambode said this at the International Womens Day celebration organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA), in Lagos.

He was represented by a former Secretary to the State Government, Mrs Adenrele Adeniran-Ogunsanya.

Some measure of progress has been recorded in the country, due to the sustained advocacy by Government and non-governmental organisations.

Our potential as a nation would be fully realised when the potential of women are fully harnessed.

Our administration is commited to protecting and upholding the dignity of women in the State.

 We will also continue to support all agencies and institutions promoting the welfare and economic empowerment of women, he said.

Also speaking, Wife of the Lagos State Governor, Mrs Bolanle Ambode, urged women to press forward, challenge stereotypes and question old practices that are not women-friendly.

We must remove barriers that stand in the way of the progress of women.

When we stand together, we can achieve anything and any obstacle can be pulled down.

We must nominate and support women for emerging opportunities, whenever they arise. Supporting one another is a duty we owe and must carry out everytime for women to move on.

Gender parity cannot be achieved overnight, it requires diligent committment from us, so that gradually, we move inch closer to our ultimate destination,  she said.

In her remarks, Dr Lola Akande, Commissioner, WAPA, said that the celebration should propel women to press for progress politically as another election year was approaching.

We should remember that much of our progress and opportunities as women are determined by those in the corridors of power.

This is why we need to increase our involvement in politics and earn our own deserved quota,  she said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the International Womens Day is marked worldwide every March 8, to celebrate womens achievements  from the political to the social  while calling for gender equality.
The engineer said that the section had been completed and was being cleaned to be opened to traffic tomorrow.

Section One is completed and will be opened to traffic tomorrow. This job is a very careful project and a lot of work has gone into it.

We are working on Section 2 and we have started placing concrete. On Sections 3 and 4, we are doing earthworks, the engineer who preferred anonymity said.

NAN reports that Mr Babatunde Fashola, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, had on June 17, 2017, signed a N4.34 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AG Dangote Construction Company Ltd., and other stakeholders for the reconstruction of the four-kilometre Apapa-Wharf Road.

The road was however closed to traffic to allow for construction on July 7, 2017, after deliberations with various stakeholders.

The project is being funded by AG Dangote Construction Company Ltd., the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Flour Mills of Nigeria.

The engineer, however, noted that the challenges on the project were still the same, that of utility relocation on the Right of Way (RoW).

A NAN correspondent who visited the site reports that Section One which is a distance of about 500 metres had been cleaned from rubbles and construction materials.

Crash barriers had been painted with red and white colours to demarcate the entire lane on the Ijora/CMS bound carriageway.

On Section Two of the project which is another distance of about 500 metres, workmen were seen using concrete laying machines to lay cement mix over iron rods on the same carriageway.
According to a report by TheCable, Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, presided over Thursday's session with only a few senators president.

Saraki is standing trial for alleged failure to declare some assets while he was Kwara State governor in a reduced 3-count charge.

The Senate President had earlier been cleared of all charges in June 2017 by the Justice Danladi Umar-led tribunal citing the prosecution's failure to prove the allegations, but a December 2017 ruling by the Court of Appeal in Abuja had ordered him back to the tribunal to answer for three of the original 18 charges.

When the case recommenced on February 6, 2018, Saraki's counsel, Kanu Agabi, had asked for an adjournment to give him more time to respond to the written address of the prosecution.

Saraki's 'crimes'

The Court of Appeal had directed Saraki to defend counts 4, 5 and 6 of the original case brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in relation to his alleged failure to declare some assets.

In Count 4, he is accused of making false assets declaration at the end of his tenure as Executive Governor of Kwara State in 2011 and on assumption of office as a Senator in 2011 in respect of a property at 17A McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos.

In Count 5, the prosecution accused Saraki of making false asset declaration at the end of his tenure as Executive Governor of Kwara State in 2011 and on assumption of office as a Senator in 2011 when he declared that he acquired No. 17B McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos, on September 6, 2006 from proceeds of sale of rice and sugar.
Buhari, who is on a two-day visit to the state, gave the commendation at a town hall meeting with Plateau stakeholders after inaugurating some of the projects inherited and completed by the Lalong administration.

Among the inaugurated projects were the Mararaba JamaaSecretariat British American Way, the Miango-Rafiki road, and the Secretariat junction flyover bridge

The three projects were started by Lalongs predecessor, Sen Jonah Jang.

Buhari, who lauded Lalong for completing the projects, said that his spirit of continuity was worthy of emulation by all leaders.

By completing projects you inherited, you have saved Plateau from massive waste and the menace of abandoned projects, he said.

Lalong advised leaders to complete and put to use, projects that had the potential to improve the living standards of the people irrespective e of those who initiated them.

Buhari called on Plateau people to embrace the spirit of love, tolerance and kindness to all, urging them to accommodate each other.

He commended Lalong for paying salaries and entitlements of workers and pensioners promptly, and attributed the return of peace in Plateau to such kindness by the governor.

The President challenged other governors to emulate such gesture, and described governors not paying salaries as leaders without conscience.

Honestly, I wonder how governors, who do not pay salaries, are able to sleep knowing very well that the workers are helpless, hungry and angry, he said.

The President warned leaders against abusing the trust and confidence of the people, and urged those in authority to always keep it in mind that they would give account of their actions before their creator.

Buhari lamented the incessant attacks on rural communities in some states, and promised to address the issue with utmost zeal.

He promised to consider Plateau leaders request for more slots in political appointments, and pledged to be fair to all Nigerians in the allocation of resources.

The President also promised to consider Plateau womens complaints of marginalization in political appointments, noting that women serving in his administration had done well.

Earlier, Lalong had thanked Buhari for the visit, and urged him to consider more Plateau indigenes for political appointments to enable his people feel the impact of his administration.

Among those that spoke at the town hall meeting were Sen Joshua Dariye, former Plateau deputy governor Jethro Akuns, religious leaders as well as representatives of women, youth and elders.
In a message posted on his official Twitter account on Thursday, the president posted, "Happy 61st Birthday, . Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well-wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, to Nigeria, and to humanity."

The relationship between both leaders was tested in 2017 when the president was notably absent as he was away in London to treat an undisclosed illness for several months, leaving Osinbajo in charge as Acting President.
Habila, who spoke to newsmen in Damaturu, said he was in Yobe to meet with the State Government and education stakeholders in the state.

The meeting is to address the rescue efforts and other areas of threat, it is also to look at security in the schools and ensure learning is not interrupted, Habila said.

The said the Police and the Civil Defence Corps had already deployed their personnel to schools in the state.

According to him, the meeting will include the state Commissioner for Education, other principal officers of the ministry, Rectors and Provosts of tertiary institutions, Principals of post-primary schools, headmasters and teachers of primary schools.

ALSO READ:Rep reveals location of abducted Dapchi schoolgirls

The DIG charged officers and men of the Police Command in the state to sit up and confront challenges that were detrimental to security in the state.

He also urged the police to build good relationship and trust with the public to enable them to obtain intelligence reports for proactive approach to avert such ugly occurrence.
Nigerian women are not left out of the conversation as they've made exploits that have made impact on the national and international stage for as long as we can remember.

In honour of what the day represents, we recognise a few Nigerian women who, over the past few months or years, have inspired other women to be more than what the world demands of them.

Despite how hard it is to limit the list to just five, here are some of our favourites:

1. Aisha Buhari

Love her antics or hate her for them, but the First Lady of Nigeria refuses to remain in the kitchen or the 'other room' where the president, her husband, would prefer her to be miserably silent.

Ever since her outburst against President Muhammadu Buhari's chaotic administration in 2016 that drew the president's unfortunate joke, Aisha has refused to be cowed into silence.

The First Lady has spoken truth to power against her husband's tenure that she deserves to be honoured with Wailer-in-Chief.

On January 19, 2018, the First Lady took to her official Twitter account (@aishambuhari) to share videos of a plenary session of the Senate where Senator Isa Misau claimed that the president is not in charge of the country.

The lawmaker slammed the president's ineffectual role in checking his cabinet that's full of incompetent people and said a cabal was controlling his government.

The First Lady didn't have to say a thing to ruffle feathers; just a few Twitter subs was enough to put her unyielding husband on the spot.

2. Oby Ezekwesili

If Aisha is the country's First Lady inside the government, then former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, is the First Lady outside of it.

The former minister has become a constant thorn in the flesh of the country's government that she's had a few brushes with security agencies.

Ezekwesili is the co-convener of the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) movement that has campaigned relentlessly for the return of the Chibok schoolgirls that were kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists in 2014, as well as other hostages of the sect.

While the campaign continues to burn a hole in the government's rear, the former minister has recently targeted her activism at the country's entire political structure.

She has declared a total clear-out of agents of bad governance both from the current government and the previous ones in which she served as a public servant.

Her Red Card movement is still gaining traction and God helps whoever stands in her way.

3. Amina Mohammed

After only one year as the Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed rose to become the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), an unprecedented feat for a Nigerian of any gender.

The Gombe State native had previously served as the Special Adviser to former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Post-2015 development planning.

Mohammed was named by Foreign Policy magazine as 2017 Diplomat of the Year and named as one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2015, 2016 and 2017 by New African Magazine.

It's probably a testament to the power of her influence that the president has not been able to effectively replace her after a year of leaving her post as minister.

4. Aisha Alhassan

From a close shave at becoming the first elected female governor in Nigeria, to raising blood pressure in the Presidential Villa, it's hard to argue against Aisha Alhassan's place on this list.

The current Minister of Women Affairs has remained a colossal figure in Nigerian politics for the past four years.

After losing the Taraba gubernatorial seat to Darius Ishaku in a dogged fight, the woman popularly known as Mama Taraba has been elevated to the national spotlight where she has not shied away from standing up for herself.

Remarkably, in September 2017, the minister engaged in open rebellion against President Buhari's government by vowing to back his possible opponent in next year's election.

Despite the public backlash at her 'disloyalty', Alhassan doubled down on her stance and doesn't appear to have altered them for anyone's sake.

5. Professor Moji Adeyeye

In 2017, Prof. Moji Adeyeyetook over as the Director General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

The Professor of Pharmaceutics, Manufacturing Science and Drug Product Evaluation is the founder of Drugs for AIDS and HIV Patients, a non-profit organization committed to prevention, education, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS children in Nigeria.

Since she took over, she has kick-started an active information technology system in the agency by making sure all staff of NAFDAC use an organised emailing system and other ICT innovations to make work easier.
According to Daily Post, the Deputy Senate President also said that democracy is receding.

He said this while reacting to Senator Ahmed Ogembes report of how the Kogi state Governor, Yahaya Bello allegedly organised thugs to disrupt an empowerment program he organised for his constituents.

Ekweremadu said Governor Bello should retrace his steps, otherwise he will not return to power in 2019.

He said So today I am advising the governor again, that road he is travelling will not lead him to anywhere. Ultimately, these people he is seeing here will be back here and he will leave office.

If he doesnt stop, there is no how he will come back in 2019, never, no he will not. God will show him that he is a God of justice and this is a message to all those people who have caused all kinds of problem in Nigeria at different level. The problem in Nigeria is that our democracy is receding. Who says army cannot take over, let us not joke with our democracy that is the issue.

The house of a senator was destroyed in Kaduna state, we are talking about Kwankwaso who was stopped from going to his state where he ruled for eight years. In Kaduna, Shehu Sani cannot organise a meeting and we are about a democracy? The international community needs to know this because they helped us install democracy.

You will recall that sometime last year when they wanted to recall Dino I advised the governor that they are wasting the resources of that state, that it is mission impossible.

ALSO READ:Ike Ekweremadu promises good times for Nigerians

They took three pages in the newspaper abusing me. Are we still hearing the recall today? Money has been wasted. Money that has been used to pay salaries of people in Kogi state was used to mobilise people to recall senator Dino yet those people have not been paid and Dino is still here, he added.

Dino Melaye Vs Gov Yahaya Bello

Senator Dino Melaye also accused recently, of planning to poison him using men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
Okei-Odumakin, who is the President, Women Arise for Change made the call in Lagos at the 2018 International Womens Day celebration with the theme: Press for Progress.

The event was organised by All Nigerian Council for women (ANCW) in various labour unions in the country.

Reviewing attacks on women, the activist expressed concern that Nigerian women had continued to suffer various abuses because of inadequate laws to protect them.

According to her, inadequate implementation of gender violence laws has made it difficult to abate violence against women in homes.

There should be gender parity and government at all levels must address the insecurity in the country as women and children are at the receiving end, she said.

Contributing, Mr Issa Aremu, President of Industrial Global Union urged women unite and ensure the protection of their rights.

Aremu said political leaders should endeavour to deliver on good governance and improve common wealth rather than allow the populace to suffer.

He said women were being disenfranchised in so many ways, adding that the economic status of Nigerian women must be transformed for the better.

Aremu also said efforts should be made to protect the nations territorial integrity by ensuring the safety of all citizens.

The Federal Government should ensure that the kidnapped Chibok and Dapchi girls are rescued without further delay, Aremu said.

Mrs Oluchi Amaugo, Chairperson of the NUPENG Women Commission, said International Women Days celebration sought to recognise exploits and achievements of women.

Amaugo said such recognition had acted as catalyst to spotlight gender equality.

She also urged the women to continue to press for progress toward gender parity and fight against violence and harassment.

She said that all women should continue to speak against killings and kidnappings of women and girls going on across the country.

International Womens Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8 every year to commemorate the movement for womens rights.
Saraki is standing trial for alleged failure to declare some assets while he was Kwara State governor in a reduced 3-count charge.

The Senate President had earlier been cleared of all charges in June 2017 by the Justice Danladi Umar-led tribunal citing the prosecution's failure to prove the allegations, but a December 2017 ruling by the Court of Appeal in Abuja had ordered him back to the tribunal to answer for three of the original 18 charges.

When he resumed trial on Thursday, his counsel, Kanu Agabi, urged the tribunal to adjourn the trial pending the resolution of an appeal before the Supreme Court.

Agabi had sent a letter, dated January 19, 2018, to the tribunal on behalf of Saraki to get a stay in the criminal proceedings until the Supreme Court case is resolved.

Even though prosecuting counsel, Rotimi Jacob, objected to the indefinite adjournment, the tribunal conceded to the defendant's request.

Justice Umar said, "Since the supreme court is giving an accelerated hearing of the appeal, we will be hesitant to proceed pending when the appeal is determined.

"To be on the safer side, the tribunal has decided to tarry for a while so that the integrity of the court will not be tampered with."

Saraki's Supreme Court case

To express his dissatisfaction at the order to return to the tribunal, Saraki filed a notice of appeal at the Supreme Court against the Court of Appeal judgement which directed him to answer to three charges over failure to disclose his assets.

His notice of appeal was filed on December 27, 2017 and contains four grounds on which he objects to the December 12, 2017 ruling of the Justice Tinuade Akomolafe-Wilson-led appeal tribunal.

Saraki's 'crimes'

The Court of Appeal had directed Saraki to defend counts 4, 5 and 6 of the original case brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in relation to his alleged failure to declare some assets.

In Count 4, he is accused of making false assets declaration at the end of his tenure as Executive Governor of Kwara State in 2011 and on assumption of office as a Senator in 2011 in respect of a property at 17A McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos.

In Count 5, the prosecution accused Saraki of making false asset declaration at the end of his tenure as Executive Governor of Kwara State in 2011 and on assumption of office as a Senator in 2011 when he declared that he acquired No. 17B McDonald, Ikoyi, Lagos, on September 6, 2006 from proceeds of sale of rice and sugar.
Senators also summoned both Buratai and Idris to explain the circumstances surrounding the abduction of 110 students of Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State, by Boko Haram on February 19, 2018.

The Senates decision was sequel to a motion by Binta Garba and eight others, to commemorate the 2018 International Womens Day on Thursday, March 8, 2018.

Presenting the motion, Senator Biodun Olujim said expressed concerns over the implementation of policies that prohibit violence against women and girls, and promote the girl-childs education was still poor.

Practices such as violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking, sexual and other types of exploitation, early child and forced marriage, female genital mutilation are still being practised, Olujimi said.

The Senate is further concerned that the spate of girl-child kidnapping in Nigeria has assumed an alarming dimension. On the 21st of February, 2018, the nation was shocked with the news of the kidnap of 110 schoolgirls from Government Girls Science Technical College, Dapchi, Busari Local Government Area of Yobe State. This incidence is reminiscence of the 2014 Chibok girls abduction in which 113 of the girls are still in captivity almost four years after.

The Senate is worried that a pattern is gradually being established which clearly indicates that the objectives of the Boko Haram insurgents is to deprive young girls of school age from pursuing education.

The Senate is further worried that if this ugly trend is not checked, the girl-child education, which is part of the objective of goal Number 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals would have been lost in Nigeria, even before the 2030 target year, she added.
Relying on a Point of Order at the plenary, Ogba claimed to possess documented evidence to prove the allegation.

He presented the acclaimed evidence, accusing the lawmakers of mobilising the civil society groups and market women to demonstrate against the leadership of the senate.

I rise to inform this senate of a plan to destabilise it, including the senate leadership through demonstrations.

I believe that all of us are leaders in this country and anybody who sees what will destabilise this country, the senate or democracy should avoid it.

As we are here, if there is any issue bothering you, you have the opportunity to raise it.

You should not to go outside the chambers to start planning for civil organisations and market women to demonstrate against the leadership of the senate, he said.

Ogba alleged that money has been exchanging hands towards the plan.

He urged the red chambers to investigate the allegation and not to treat it with a kid glove.

I want this matter to be investigated properly. I have evidence to show what I am saying.

There is a record of a telephone discussion between Sen. Abdullahi Adamu and some other people which every other person can also print out.

This is a very serious issue. When Sen. Isah Misau raised it in January, we didnt take it as anything. We must stand up to look into this. Ogba said.

The Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, reiterated the need to preserve the sanctity of the legislature and protect the countrys democracy.

ALSO READ:Emmanuella gets invited to senate house by Bukola Saraki

Ekweremadu noted that the difference between the military regime, autocratic regime or any other kind of repressive regime and the democracy was the parliament.

According to him, once the parliament was not present in governance there would be problem.

Whatever we do, we must continue to preserve the sanctity of the parliament.

So I want to stress again that any person interested in destabilising this country is not doing us any good.
Mrs Gloria Akobundu, the National Coordinator of NEPAD Nigeria, made the observation at the grand finale of a four-day Capacity Building Workshop for Imo Women and Youths in Owerri on Thursday.

She said the Nigerian economy was shifting from dependence on oil to agriculture, which before the advent of oil, was the main stay of the economy and had contributed immensely to the nations GDP.

Akobundu said that over 800 women and youths were empowered in various training on poultry, fishery, piggery and food processing during the workshop.

She said that there was the need to engage women and youths in modern farming for food security, which she said, would translate to economic development.

According to her, implementation of modern farming techniques will lead to reduction in unemployment, poverty and youth restiveness.

Akobundu said that the the Federal Government was prepared to sustain the programme.

The programme is designed to be sustained so that more people will benefit from it.

There are people mandated to monitor the performance of the beneficiaries. We will ensure sustainability and progress of the programme,  she said.

The Wife of Imo Governor, Mrs Nkechi Okorocha, who officially closed the programme, said that skill acquisition and agriculture were now the in thing.

She said that Imo government had initiated many agriculture programmes like Have You Planted Palm Tree (Ikuala Nkwu) and empowered Imo youths and women in various skills as well as made financial donations for them to start businesses.

Agriculture is where people are now focusing in Imo. The present Imo government is passionate about youth and women empowerment, she said.

Okorocha commended NEPAD for organising the programme and called on participants to effectively use the token they were given as start ups to practise what they had learnt.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the highpoint of the programme was the presentation of certificates and starter packs to the participants drawn from various parts of the state.

Some of the participants, who spoke to NAN, commended the Federal Government for initiating the programme and promised to put what they had learnt into practise.
According to a report by the BBC, Johnson noted that the 112-bed annex will help both governments to expedite the transfer of Nigerian offenders from British jails back to the country.

In a statement written to Parliament, Johnson said, "The provision of this assistance is in line with the government's security and stability objectives in West Africa."

The annex will be paid for out of the UK government's Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, which provides development and security support to countries which are at risk of conflict or instability.
Head of the mission and former President of Nigeria, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, gave the advice in an interview with newsmen while monitoring the voting process on Wednesday in Freetown.

Jonathan said it was important for NEC to ensure that the collation of the results followed due process and laid down rules and regulations.

He said recording peaceful voting was just one aspect of election, the process of collating the result was also critical.

If you look at the problem that we have in Kenya, it is not the voting per say, it was the transmission of results that people challenged in the court and the election was nullified in Supreme Court.

He said once the guidelines were followed, the process and the results would be accepted by all.

Jonathan also called on the contestants of the general elections and their supporters to respect the results, when announced.

He expressed satisfaction with the turnout of voters and advised them to accept the results when declared.

We plead that if there is no major incident, at the end of the day people should be able to accept the result of the elections.

Where you feel aggrieved in one way or the other, people should follow the elections guidelines.

Commending the voting process, Jonathan said he monitored it, interacted with other observer missions, both foreign and local, adding that the information so far is identical.

People are impressed with the turnout and the commitment of the ordinary people to vote.

Some of the voters came out as early as 12 midnight to vote, queue, wait patiently for the poll to start in the morning by 7 a.m.

Jonathan said though there were about 15 to 30 minutes delay in some polling units, most polling stations commenced early.
Gabriel himself had announced that the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had decided that he would not have a ministerial post in Merkel's fourth-term government to be launched next Wednesday.

If the reports are confirmed, Mass "will do an excellent job," said Gabriel, the current head of German diplomacy, at a press conference.

Maas has no particular diplomatic experience but has earned a solid reputation in the past four years as justice and consumer affairs minister.

He is known as an outspoken critic of the far right and online hate speech and has forced Internet giants to take down incendiary posts that breach German laws, with the threat of heavy fines.

Merkel's next cabinet will include five more SPD ministers under a coalition deal that ended six months of political stalemate following inconclusive elections last September 24.

German media have also reported that the post of finance minister and vice chancellor will go to Olaf Scholz, the SPD mayor of the city-state of Hamburg.

Merkel drew much criticism from within her Christian Democrats for handing the SPD the finance portfolio, traditionally the preserve of her conservatives.
The state chairman of the party, Mr Moshood Salvador gave the description while speaking at the party s General Assembly in Lagos on Thursday.

He said the new charge was an attempt to impoverish residents.

Salvador said residents had had enough of hikes in charges and fees by the state government ,describing them as excessive.

Just recently, the Lagos State government introduced a new land use charge which requires that Lagosians pay more on their property.

Defending the new charge, the Commissioner for Information ,Mr Bamgbetan and his Finance counterpart yesterday granted a press interview and said the the new charge accommodates both the the tenement rate and the neighborhood improvement levy.

They said the amount is payable by real estate property owners in the is charged based on the market value of the property multiplied by 40 per cent, multiplied by the applicable rate, he said.

Salvador said the new charge was a justifiable reason to vote out the APC for PDP in the state in the 2019 elections.

He said the PDP was the only party that meant well for the well-being of residents.

Salvador however said the only way to ensure the PDP takes over government to deliver good governance was for the residents to obtain their Permanent Voter Card and vote the party.

The party chairman said said the assembly was organised to show how serious the party was for the 2019 general elections.

Salvador said he was impressed by the turnout of party members, saying it reflected his promise to grow the membership of party in leaps and bounds in the state.

I made a promise to attract one million members to the party. People thought I was joking. What we have seen today is a reflection that our party is growing.

This is just our first major assembly. And you can see the crowd. By the time we have the next one. I am sure the crowd will be more than this; this is what we are talking about. This is the new spirit in PDP. he said.

Salvador urged party members to work in unison for the progress of the party to further strengthen it.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that prominent members present at the assembly included the governorship candidate in the 2015 election, Mr Jimi Agbaje, and a member of the party s Board of Trusteee(BOT),Mrs Aduke Maina.

NAN reports the chairmanship candidate of the KOWA party in the last council polls in the state, Mr Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour defected to the party with his supporters at the event.

Meanwhile at the same time the party assembly was holding, some chieftains and members in East Senatorial District met in Ikorodu to express their reservation to Salvadors leadership.

They demanded that he should vacate the office based on what they called failureto honour and implement the 65/35 sharing agreement for offices in favour of the Makarfi group as reached sometime ago.

Among chieftains at the Ikorodu meeting were former Deputy Chairman of state chapter, Prince Ola Apena; former organising secretary for the party, Prince Abayomi Kuye;Chief Kehinde Koku, Chief Aderibigbe Shitta, ,Prince Niyi Aborishade and Chief Babatunde Agbaje.
Hassan, who arrived in Britain in October 2015, denies attempted murder and using the chemical compound TATP to cause an explosion on a packed Tube train on September 15.

Many commuters suffered serious burns or were crushed in the stampede after the blast during the morning rush hour, at Parsons Green station in south-west London.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan said it could have been far worse, telling jurors: "Had the device fully detonated, it is inevitable that serious injury and significant damage would have been caused within the carriage."

Hassan claimed asylum when he arrived in Britain on the back of a lorry travelling through the Channel Tunnel from France, saying he was in fear of the Islamic State group.

He revealed his recruitment and training -- as part of a group of around 1,000 people -- in an interview with British interior ministry officials in 2016, the court heard.

Hassan was living with foster parents in Surrey, outside London, when he decided to attack the train, prosecutors said.

He researched online how to make explosives, ordering an ingredient on Amazon, and bought screwdrivers, knives and nails for shrapnel from supermarkets.

He set a timer and left the bomb before getting off one station before Parsons Green, the court heard.

Hassan was arrested at the southern English port of Dover, with 2,320 (2,595 euros, $3,218) in cash, and told police he was responsible for the device, prosecutors said.
The Russia-backed Syrian army and allied militia began a campaign on February 18 to retake the last opposition bastion near Damascus with devastating aerial bombing.

They launched a ground offensive a week later and have since taken more than 40 percent of the enclave in an assault that has killed more than 800 civilians.

Heavy air strikes battered several key towns in the zone on Wednesday, as Syria's government dispatched hundreds of pro-government militiamen to the front.

"At least 700 Afghan, Palestinian, and Syrian loyalist militiamen came from Aleppo and were sent late Tuesday to Ghouta," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based war monitor said the reinforcements were deployed to two battlefronts on the western side of the enclave.

Government troops in military vehicles were seen on Wednesday patrolling Al-Mohammadiyeh, an agricultural zone in the southern part of Ghouta recently retaken by the regime.

Across some green farmland, columns of thick smoke rose from an urban skyline.

Government troops on Wednesday seized the town of Beit Sawa and were within firing range of another, Misraba. They had also taken up positions at the edges of Jisreen and Hammuriyeh.

Wednesday's bombardment left at least 12 civilians dead including one child, the Observatory said, bringing the total toll in more than two weeks of bombing to more than 810 civilians, including 179 children.

'Apocalypse' in Syria

The bombardment has continued despite a one-month ceasefire demanded by the UN Security Council more than a week ago.

The council met behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss the failed truce, after France and Britain requested urgent talks.

Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog, who negotiated the ceasefire resolution along with Kuwait, told reporters that implementation of the truce remains "totally and completely inadequate."

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the Syrian regime and its foreign allies were already planning their next "apocalypse."

"This month, it is Eastern Ghouta which is, in the words of the Secretary General, hell on earth; next month or the month after, it will be somewhere else where people face an apocalypse -- an apocalypse intended, planned and executed by individuals within the government, apparently with the full backing of some of their foreign supporters," said Hussein.

Eastern Ghouta's roughly 400,000 residents have lived under government siege since 2013, facing severe shortages of food and medicines even before the latest offensive began.

Forty-six aid trucks entered the area on Monday for the first time since the offensive, but had to cut short their deliveries and leave due to heavy bombardment.

Nearly half of the food aid could not be delivered and Syrian authorities removed some medical and health supplies from the trucks, the UN said.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all warring sides to allow aid trucks to return for a planned second delivery to the enclave's main town of Douma on Thursday.

Linda Tom, spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian coordination office OCHA in Syria, said the aid would aim to reach 70,000 people in Douma and would include medical supplies not allowed in Monday's delivery.

Rebels deny talks with Russia

Inside Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday, AFP correspondents heard warplanes carrying out a barrage of strikes on the battleground towns.

Residents in Douma were driving frantically through the streets to escape from bombing zones, with cars brushing by each other in close calls.

Wednesday's raids came despite a daily "humanitarian pause" announced by Russia last week that is meant to bring calm to Eastern Ghouta between 9:00 am (0700 GMT) and 2:00 pm each day.

During that pause, Moscow said, it would guarantee safe passage to civilians and rebels wishing to flee the enclave.

No Syrian civilians are known to have used the "humanitarian corridor".

The two main rebel groups in Eastern Ghouta -- Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman -- deny the exit routes or the pauses have been coordinated with them.

"There is no communication with the Russians, directly or indirectly," said Wael Alwan, spokesman for Faylaq al-Rahman.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in Syria since the civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

Most Western countries have cut off diplomatic ties with Syria, but some of their officials have continued to make trips to Damascus.
Outspoken lawyer, Nelson Havi who is representing the family in the case to find justice for Njoroge, revealed that a heavy contingent of GSU police were deployed to the institution on the day the student leader was shot dead.

The lawyer also disclosed that the police officer who pulled the trigger was known and identified by name.

"A contingent of 50 GSU policemen from Meru County were deployed to Meru University on the day Evans Njoroge was murdered. The killer has been positively identified as Kiptanui. Why would JBoinnet claim he doesnt know him, unless he is covering up? JusticeforEvansNjoroge," Havi tweeted.

The lawyer further appealed to the Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet to charge the rogue officer, Kiptanui, who is stationed in Meru with murder and gave the police boss seven days to take action.

Read Also: Popular university student leader shot dead

The report showed that the student leader was shot through the back of the head and the bullet exited through the ear causing instant death.

Earlier this week, Education Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed sent Meru University Vice Chancellor Japheth Magambo on terminal leave pending expiry of his term in June.
The new proposal wants the eight provinces retained, and that former Rift Valley and Eastern Provinces should be split into upper and lower counties  Upper Rift Valley, Lower Rift valley, Lower Eastern and Upper Eastern Counties - in a bid to reduce the ballooning wage bills.

If effected the full list would be:

Consequently the lobby group has said, IEBC should consider the proposal in its role to review boundaries which is set for next year, in preparations for the 2022 elections.

Pay cut

The group now wants the current crop of political leader to take a huge pay cut and that each MP should earn not more than Sh200,000 and that the 10 governors should get at most Sh300,000 each.

ALSO READ: Impeachment of Health CS takes new development after Jubilee MPs act

"We are utterly disturbed by the huge wage bill and continued extravagance of politicians in the country. Over Sh35 million is spent on MPs' meals and accommodation, over Sh12 million on flights and more than Sh20 million on allowances, said Haki Kenya Executive Director Mr Hussein Khalid.

The lobby group, on the other hand, has demanded an increase in the number of special interest MPs to a tune of 30, in addition to the 120, to technically make it 150.

Currently, every MP earns a basic salary of about Sh740,000 but with allowances, the amount goes to more than Sh1 million per month. Governors earn a monthly basic pay of Sh1.11 million.
Speaking at State House on Wednesday, Uhuru confessed that he first met Margaret while he was a young boy and had gone swimming with his father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

He added that it was his father who pushed him to start a friendship with Margaret and ultimately to their marriage which started in 1989.

"I first met Margaret when I was out swimming with my father and he nudged me to befriend her. I have now known her for most of my life. She is my friend, partner and strong supporter. Strong and successful women make a strong and successful Kenya. Happy International ," Uhuru stated.

In a past interview, the President had admitted that it took many years to convince Margaret to be his wife after their first meeting in Mombasa.

"When I met her she wasn't the First Lady, she was just another wonderful, beautiful girl," he stated of his beloved wife.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Skyepack Inc., a Purdue-affiliated company that offers an affordable alternative to college textbooks, announced plans Thursday to expand operations in Indiana, creating up to 51 new positions by 2022.

Brady Kalb, Skyepacks CEO, said the digital content curation and delivery platform company, which recently moved into the Kurz Purdue Technology Center in the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette, will receive up to $814,000 in incentives.

These incentives will be very helpful as we move into our next hiring phase, Kalb said. It also will help with employee training.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered Skyepack up to $725,000 in conditional tax credits based on the companys job creation plans. These tax credits are performance-based, meaning until Hoosiers are hired, the company is not eligible to claim incentives.

"Indiana is committed to fostering an entrepreneurial ecosystem where companies like Skyepack can scale up their business and create jobs for Hoosiers," said Elaine Bedel, president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. "It's evident that Skyepack continues to find a winning solution here in Indiana, taking advantage of our state's business-friendly environment, growing tech sector and skilled workforce supported by world-class universities."

Skyepack is receiving $89,000 from Tippecanoe County.

Tippecanoe County is honored to be able to partner with Skyepack and offer them job training funds for their expansion, said Tom Murtaugh, president of the Tippecanoe County Commissioners.

To support increased demand and planned growth, Skyepack plans to invest nearly $295,000 in its Tippecanoe County operations and create up to 51 new, high-wage jobs. The company has already added three team members toward its goal and is hiring for positions in management, product development, sales and marketing. Interested applicants may apply online at https://www.linkedin.com/company/skyepack/

Skyepack was created with the goal of cutting textbook costs for students at universities nationwide by creating a web and mobile platform that is more engaging and helpful to learning than other options, and by providing services to faculty to help them break away from the traditional textbook ecosystem. The goal was to create a digital tool that could deliver custom instructional material that used media beyond just static text and images. That includes interactive features, video, embedded course discussions, customized HTML, student feedback and question-and-answer functions. The average course material price is $35.

We work with faculty to first understand their course, what they are teaching and what the key objectives are. Then we learn about their assessment strategy, the teaching methodologies they are using and other aspects of the class, Kalb said. We also work to understand the needs of students. The needs of the students at Purdue, for example, are different from the needs of students at Ivy Tech. So we take all of those things into account.

Skyepack, which was nominated for a TechPoint MIRA Award that recognizes the Best Tech in Indiana, helps make high-quality education more affordable with an innovative approach, Kalb said.

Skyepack stays in touch with faculty and can make changes when necessary.

They might say, Hey, this great discovery just happened and we want to include a paragraph. Well add that for them, he said.

Skyepack has instructional designers who work directly with a faculty member to help them transition their courses from using expensive traditional textbooks to something more engaging and affordable for students while professors can tailor material to their needs and retain copyrights to their materials.

Skyepack works with traditional face-to-face classes, with online classes or blended classes.

Skyepack curates its content from four sources:

Open educational resources material freely available for anyone to use.

Content created by the instructor, which could include textbooks, PowerPoint slides and other material.

Content Skyepack custom creates for a class with its team of writers, copy editors, media designers and videographers.

Copyrighted material from third parties that Skyepack licenses.

Theres a lot of frustration with the traditional textbook publishers because faculty need to re-think their courses every time a new edition is released, which is often every two years. They hear from students and parents about the rising costs of textbooks and they hear from college administrators who hear the complaints. The professors really dont have many good options. Thats where we come in.

Kalb said that working with Skyepack allows professors to spend more time on instruction and research, rather than wasting valuable time dealing with a traditional publisher.

Skyepack currently works with instructors at more than 60 campuses across the country, including Texas A&M, California State, Illinois, and Iowa State.

About Purdue Research Park

The Purdue Research Park is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation and is the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country. The Purdue Research Park manages the Purdue Technology Centers in five sites across the state of Indiana with locations in West Lafayette, Indianapolis, Merrillville and New Albany. The more than 260 companies located in the park network employ about 5,000 people. In 2016, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities co-named the Purdue Research Park a top recipient for an Innovation and Economic Prosperity Universities Designation for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about leasing space in the Purdue Research Park, contact 765-588-3470 or click Purdue Research Park.

Purdue Research Foundation contact: Tom Coyne, 765-588-1044, tjcoyne@prf.org

Sources: Brady Kalb, 765-323-8568, brady@skyepack.com

Indiana Economic Development Corporation: Abby Gras, 317-232-8845, agras@iedc.in.gov
Opinion

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Within a budget of 65m, tenders have been called for civil works on the first 205 km between Evora and Freixo, where construction is expected to begin in March 2019 and take 18 months to complete. According to Infraestruturas de Portugal, tenders are to be called later this month within ...
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Double tax exemption on wages paid to women can encourage companies to hire, retain and compensate women better, argues Nitin Pai.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

The single biggest policy challenge staring India in the face is that of creating 20 million formal jobs every year for the next two decades, starting yesterday.

There's some debate about how well we've done so far -- some estimates say it's less than 500,000 per year while others suggest we've done as well as 6 million in one year -- but no one really knows for sure.

Even if we take 6 million, the highest estimate, it's still less than one-third of what we need.

Remember we are talking about real jobs here, or what we in India call 'formal jobs', and not paid activities that we pass off as 'informal' jobs.

It's a long way to 20 million per year.

Wait, you might say, where did that 20 million number come from?

At the rate our population is growing, around 12 million people are entering the working age every year. According to Credit Suisse economist Neelkanth Mishra, to raise agricultural productivity to levels that begin to be internationally competitive and relieve the crisis in Indian agriculture, we need to be pull out 6 to 7 million surplus agricultural workers out of the countryside and into jobs in other sectors.

Round it off and you get the scale of the challenge.

So how do we get the Indian economy to shift to an altogether different gear and generate formal jobs on such a scale?

We are working on it, but what we do know is that it cannot be done by business as usual.

Incremental improvements and policy tweaks will not create millions of new jobs quickly, or at all. We have to work along multiple fronts.

In a discussion one morning at Takshashila, we hit upon a simple but potentially very powerful insight: Every time a woman gets a job, she creates more jobs in the overall economy. How?

If a woman goes to work, she is more likely to employ a domestic help, a cook and send her children to child care.

The higher the woman's income, the greater are the number of jobs she is likely to create.

Our very rough estimate gave us an average multiplier of 1.3, which is huge.

Indian men, unfortunately, do not create the same multiplier because they leave the housework to women. (According to data compiled by Oxford University's Our World In Data, Indian women spend nearly 10 times as much time as men on unpaid care work, among the highest in the world.)

Yet India's female workforce participation rate is low and falling.

Overall, it has fallen from 36.9 per cent in 2005 to 27 per cent in 2013, in both rural and urban areas, despite a period of moderately high economic growth.

The multiplier works the other way too: Each woman who drops out of the workforce takes away 1.3 other jobs with her.

Therefore, getting more women to join and remain in the workforce ought to become a top national policy priority.

Indeed, unless women get on the escalator of jobs, careers and livelihoods, initiatives such as 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' will not yield intended outcomes.

Incentives matter, and good jobs are a powerful incentive for families to nurture, educate and value their girl children.

What can be done?

Stop taxing women, for a start.

Too few Indians pay personal income tax, and the number of women taxpayers is disproportionately small. It won't hurt the exchequer much if -- to make a statement -- personal income tax is waived completely, or at least for incomes below a high level (say Rs 5 million per annum).

As my taxman friend immediately said, some men will try to take advantage by routing incomes in the names of female members of their family. Fair enough, but the thought of more money in women's bank accounts is appealing.

Second, double tax exemption on wages paid to women can encourage companies to hire, retain and compensate women better.

This exemption can apply up to the point where the company achieves gender balance. Most of the women CEOs I bounced this idea off thought that it would work, but in the same breath worried that it could create a "quota mentality" and set back the cause of gender equality.

Hema Hattangady, who used to run a successful energy technology company, warned that "If you bring in women with inadequate skills, you set them up for failure and cause men to complain of discrimination."

My normally equanimous colleague Pranay Kotasthane violently objected to the abuse of good public finance principles by using tax to achieve a policy objective.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said he wants to phase out corporate tax exemptions. Even I am silencing my inner fiscal conservative in arguing for this because of the job creation potential.

Third, since the 'informal sector' can employ a lot more women in both rural and urban areas, Union and state governments should introduce a scheme that allows the private sector to employ women for not more than 120 days in a liberalised labour environment.

The economist Ajit Ranade thinks companies in construction, textiles and tourism for instance can hire tens of thousands of women under such a scheme, ring-fenced from the morass of self-defeating labour laws of our country.

Finally, empirical studies in many societies show that good child care facilities have an important effect in ensuring women don't drop out of the workforce. Yet, child day care services attract 18 per cent tax rate under the goods and services tax regime.

There is a strong case to eliminate this altogether. We need both the government and private sector to build more anganwadis and child day care centres.

A prudent way to attempt these measures is to impose a five-year sunset clause on all of them. They can form the nucleus of a National Mission for Womens Employment Promotion, NARI. I am sure someone can make the acronym fit properly, but the logic already does.

Nitin Pai is Co-Founder and Director, Takshashila Institution, an independent think-tank and school of public policy.
Lakshmi Venu, daughter of TVS Motor Company chairperson Venu Srinivasan and TAFE chairperson Mallika Srinivasan, on Thursday tied the knot with Bengaluru-based tech entrepreneur Mahesh Gogineni at a private function in Jodhpur.

The wedding, a traditional South Indian ceremony, was attended by close family and friends, said a statement from the family.

Lakshmi Venu, granddaughter of T S Srinivasan (TVS) and A Sivasailam (The Amalgamations Group), is managing director of Sundaram Clayton Limited (SCL) and director of TAFE Motors and Tractors Limited (TMTL).

She holds a doctorate from the University of Warwick and is a graduate in economics from Yale University.

She spearheads Sundaram Clayton, which has global auto majors, including Cummins, Volvo, Hyundai, Daimler and Paccar, as its customers. Lakshmi Venu is also credited with SCLs foray into the US with the setting up of a greenfield factory in Charleston, South Carolina, to manufacture high pressure die-cast and gravity cast parts.

Gogineni, the great grandson of Swatantra Party president and Padma Vibhushan awardee N G Ranga, is the son of Suguna and Dr Kamalendra Gogineni.

A graduate of BITS Pilani and the London School of Economics and an MBA from Stanford, Gogineni returned to India after he was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. The tech entrepreneur made a successful exit from his first start-up and is currently pursuing his second start-up, Gifskey.

IMAGE: Newly-wed couple Dr Lakshmi Venu and Mahesh Gogineni in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Photograph: PTI Photo
'If, as appears to be the case, India is on way to 'mending fences' with China, and China is equally desirous to 'reset' the relationship, this could be a self-reflexive moment in India's positioning vis-a-vis not just the Dalai Lama, but also the Tibetan issue and China as a whole,' points out China expert Alka Acharya.



IMAGE: The Dalai Lama during his visit to Arunachal Pradesh in April 2017. His Holiness stopped between Tawang and Bomdila to consecrate the Thupsung Dhargyeling monastery in Dirang and and deliver teachings. Photograph: PTI

The Note

A day before India's new foreign secretary made his first standalone visit to Beijing from February 23-24, 2018, he sent out a note to the Cabinet secretary, requesting him to issue a 'classified circular advisory advising all Ministries/Departments of the Government of India as well as State Governments not to accept any invitation or to participate in the events being organised by the 'Dalai Lama set-up' to commemorate the start of the sixty years of exile of the Dalai Lama in India.'

The Cabinet secretary in turn issued a Circular/Advisory to the 'senior leaders' and 'government functionaries.'

Interestingly, this Circular, as reported in a Indian Express article (external link), said it was 'not desirable' to participate in the events of the 'Tibetan leadership in India. (Emphasis added.)

The newspaper report does not quote the entire Cabinet Circular, but says It refers to the 'events planned for March-end and early April'. The Note from the forreign secretary, however, refers to the 'large public event titled "Thank You India" slated for 1st April,' to which a large number of Indian dignataries would be invited and these was 'likely to be followed up by additional events in Delhi as well as other states of India.'

Two questions came to mind as one read the selections from the MEA note and juxtaposed it with the Circular. Are such Notes usual/normal? Have they been issued in the past as well?

Quite clearly, the 'sensitive' nature of the subject of the Note is neither new nor is the fact unknown that this is a 'core' concern for the Chinese.

Ever since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, there has been no occasion when Beijing's reactions have not been over the top, so to say, whenever there is any move by anycountry, which has implications for the PRC's territorial integrity and sovereignty (most categorical when it involves Taiwan and Tibet) and when they feel that their interests in this regard are affected in any way.

It stands to reason that the government would, in a general way, issue such advisory notes from time to time, when matters of grave importance were involved and it would not be surprising if notes on this specific issue were sent around occasionally by the MEA in the past as well, possibly on the eve of State visits or when some very high profile functions were organised.

The foreign secretary's note had particularly referred to the 'large public event' as also 'additional events'. In the Circular, as reported by the Indian Express article, there does not appear to be any further elaboration regarding the nature of the 'proposed commemorative events' in which there should be no participation.

Prima facie, this would appear to include all categories of events pertaining to the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's arrival in India.

The Directive from the Cabinet Secretary specifically instructs the secretaries and heads of government departments that 'participation in these events should be discouraged' and 'accordingly (you are) requested to ensure appropriate action on the matter.'

More significantly, the foreign secretary's note emphasised that the 'proposed period' (would) be a very sensitive time in the context of India's relations with China.' This was equally stressed in the Circular.

That the message was not lost on Dharamsala emerged in the comment made by Ngodup Dhongchung, the Dalai Lama's representative in Delhi, when he confirmed that the event has been rescheduled and shifted to Dharamsala.

'Some people may be disappointed. But we are guests of India. Indian people have been very generous to us. We understand the compulsions,' Dhongchung said.

Sonam Dagpo, spokesperson for the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, told the Indian Express: 'India is host to Tibetan refugees. We respect the Indian government's decision. We have no further comments.'



IMAGE: Among the Indian officials who received the Dalai Lama, centre, when he arrived in India in March 1959 was Har Mander Singh, left, the political officer responsible for the Kameng Frontier Division, and P N Menon, second from right, who served as India's consul general in Lhasa, and as intermediary to the Dalai Lama during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. Ambassador Menon's son Shivshankar Menon later became India's foreign secretary and national security adviser. Photograph: Kind courtesy Claude Arpi

Anniversaries are certainly very significant for the Chinese -- and they would be aware of the celebrations being planned by the Tibetan exile community in India. In the backdrop of the developments in the past few years, they would certainly observe New Delhi's handling of the matter.

Undoubtedly, the Note and its fallout would have been duly noted by Beijing and given the reported fact that it 'was sent a day before the Beijing visit of the Foreign Secretary, there seems to be a prima facie case for a quid pro quo having occurred, with China removing its objection to placing Pakistan on the grey list of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering).



IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra D Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Benaulim, Goa, October 2016. Photograph: PTI Photo

The Context

The official Indian position, as enunciated in the Joint Declaration issued on the occasion of then Chinese president Hu Jintao to India in 2006, stipulates that India has 'recognised the Tibetan Autonomous Region as part of the territory of the People's Republic of China', and that it 'does not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities in India'. (Emphasis added.)

However, the phrasing provides scope for a degree of ambiguity, within which the government as also various political parties, have often operated.

The Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala is registered under the Registrar of Societies Act which enables it to receive foreign funding. While there would be no official sanction or any endorsement of Tibetan activities bearing a 'political' nature, cultural, religious and other non-political activites have been regularly patronised by a wide range of politicians and civil society peronalities.

The Dalai Lama is invariably addressed as 'Your Holiness' at all public events. This is problematic for the Chinese who have employed an amazing array of epithets to describe him, the least offensve of which is 'splittist' and 'dangerous separatist.'

Thus the formal stand on the Tibetan issue and the nature of the relationship with the Dalai Lama is fairly straightforward; the Note/Circular by themselves do not amount to any dramatic shift or change.

What we are looking at is not so much a downgrading of the affairs of the Tibetan exile community, as reverting to the earlier approach of distancing the government from events and activities organised by the Dalai Lama or the Central Tibetan Administration.

The interesting historical footnote here is that as the joint secretary of the East Asia division in the MEA, the current foreign secretary had ensured that there was no government participation in the '50 Years in Exile events' organised in 2009.

In fact, there have been numerous other occasions in the past when the government has taken a step backwards or reconsidered its decision with regard to either hosting specific events or cancelled meetings scheduled with the Dalai Lama. Often to our discomfiture.

Take, for instance, the cancellation of the Dalai Lama's meeting with the BJP president, at the eleventh hour, on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's visit to China in 2016.

The question thus arises whether this note and circular indicates that the government is being cautious and circumspect, in view of the strong protests by China over the last few years involving the Dalai Lama's activities and in view of the tensions and strains that had begun to emerge between the two Asian giants.

This formulation would, however, appear to suggest that circumspection was somewhat in abeyance earlier. To some extent, if we look at the various developments over the past few years, there has certainly been a hardening of views on the Tibetan issue, within the strategic community.

Equally, we saw some rethinking taking place within official circles, viz the invitation to Lobsang Sangay -- president, Central Tibetan Administration -- to particiapte in the swearing-in of the Modi government on May 26, 2014.



IMAGE: The Dalai Lama arrives at Bomdila in West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, April 4, 2017. Photograph: PTI Photo

It may be useful to recall that since 2010, the Joint Statement issued at the India-China summit meetings ceased to include the customary reference to Tibet as part of China. In fact, even the joint statement issued during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit in 2008 did not mention Tibet, though there was a reference to the one-China policy and India's commitment to oppose any 'activity that is against the one-China principle.'

There is however, no gainsaying the fact that throughout 2016-2017 we witnessed a steady increase in the Dalai Lama's profile within India, which led to angry exchanges with China.

To be sure, the prime minister himself has never met with the Dalai Lama though other political personalities have. Let us not forget that when then President Pranab Mukherjee hosted the Dalai Lama along with other Nobel Prize winners in December 2016, the Indian side had to issue an explanation as regards the the 'non-political' nature of the event.

In October 2016, in a first, the then US ambassador to India, Richard Verma, visited Tawang, described by India as 'routine', which was criticised by the Chinese as 'interference.'

Thereafter, the 17th Karmapa was also given permission to visit Tawang, following a decision by the Cabinet Committee on Security to lift the existing travel restrictions on the Karmapa.

In October 2016, the Dalai Lama was given the go-ahead to visit Arunachal Pradesh for a religious festival in April 2017, inviting a furious objection from China.

It may be recalled that the Dalai Lama had been extended permission to visit Arunachal Pradesh for the first time in 2009 by the Manmohan Singh government. But the visit in 2017 went further when he was welcomed there by the chief minister of the state and the central minister of state of home affairs Kiren Rijuju, which made a qualitative shift as far as the Chinese were concerned.

The Dalai Lama on his part has not hesitated to laud the shedding of India's 'over-cautious' behaviour vis-a-vis China and the Tibetan issue has undoubtedly become embroiled in the politics within Arunachal Pradesh.

Reacting to Beijing's furious reaction during the Dalai Lama's April 2017 visit, the chief minister of the north eastern state declared that Beijing had no right to meddle since India shared a border with Tibet and not China.

And above all, it would be well to recall the diplomatic fiasco that ensued following the Dalai Lama's visit to Mongolia in November 2016. China censured the Mongolian government and demanded an apology from the Mongolian government on pain of losing financial assistance and cancelled bilateral talks.

India did not have the capability to step in and offer to bail the Mongolians out -- and it would certainly be counterproductive to wade into Sino-Mongolian waters. Despite Prime Minister Modi's visit to Mongolia in May 2015 and the extension of a line of credit, subsequent actions on the part of the Mongolian government made it crystal clear who was calling the shots.

Over the past few years, we have been witness to a plateau-ing of the momentum in India-China ties and despite the oft-repeated, rather vacuous homily, that 'both sides should not let differences become disputes', we have regrettably been unable to move forward.

Thankfully, that pointless phrase does not figure in the MEA press release following Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale's February visit.

The tripwires generating the tensions are China's consistent 'technical' opposition to the UN Security Council resolution to place (Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist) Masood Azhar on the UN Terror list; going ahead with the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in the territory claimed by India, its veto on the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver and the dragging of its feet on the issue of India's permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Cumulatively, these have amounted to a blatant lack of 'sensitivity' to India's 'core' concerns.

The general strategic discourse and commentary on China has also acquired rather tense overtones, and it is in that context in which many analysts have sought to justify the use of the 'Tibet card', thus giving some degree of credence to the PRC's accusation.

Some have even gone to the extent -- rather erroneously -- of equating our Pakistan problem with China's Tibet problem. This is not tenable in any sense whatsoever -- and there should be very little doubt that while India and China would conceivably not go to war over Pakistan -- they could certainly do so, over Tibet.

It is hoped that Abba Aban's pronouncement is not headed towards fulfillment: 'History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.'

It is clear that both sides have attempted to exert pressure on each other in different ways -- but a fundamental fact emerges with all this fencing -- it would not be possible for either side to secure their respective 'core' interests by being at odds with each other. It has only resulted in a vicious cycle and escalating costs.

The 'core' interests of both countries are now intersecting in a manner that requires not just India and China -- but Pakistan as well -- to be on the same page and work in tandem, however unpalatable it may appear to certain sections of the strategic community on ether side.

The gulf between the perception and the reality on the so-called 'non-negotiables', has to be narrowed for any quid pro quo to be realistically considered -- and this is not beyond the grasp of far sighted and creative diplomacy.



IMAGE: The Dalai Lama greets then President Pranab Mukherjee at the first Laureates and Leaders for Children Summit in Rashtrapati Bhavan, Dece,ber 10, 2016. Photograph: Kind courtesy@Office of Dalai Lama

The Questions

In the backdrop of the past few years, we need to take a long hard look at what we have gained, and stand to gain by playing the so-called 'Tibet card' and ask some tough questions.

In fact, to take a step back, we need to thoroughly re-examine the significance and nature of the Tibetan question and its implications for India-China relations in the present political and and strategic context.

The first set of questions pertain to the Tibet issue. Does our Tibet policy come across as consistent and firm, with regard to both the interests of the Tibetan exile community as well as our own interests?

Very few would contest the fact that it has not taken India anywhere closer to establishing its own credentials and soft power in the Buddhist world.

On the other hand, as has been pointed out by scholars, China has managed to reactivate its Buddhist Association of China, set up in originally in 1953, into a dynamic window of outreach and patronage to Buddhists all over the world.

Have we managed to convince any section of world opinion -- leave aside those significant powers who could make some kind of difference -- to exert pressure on China in this regard?

The most that happens is that foreign governments send delegations to visit Dharamsala or meet the Dalai Lama, but generate no policy impact in those countries. US President Donald J Trump, in fact, announced that he would give zero aid in 2018 to the Tibetans, which is actually a reversal in US policy.

And on the other hand, the bilateral India-China distrust is further fuelled, reducing any reasonable prospects for an Indian role in resolving some of the genuine issues of Tibetan cultural and spiritual autonomy.

Do we adequately factor in the Dalai Lama's communications/messages to Beijing or the dynamics of Sino-Tibetan negotiations?

Does our handling of the Tibetan protests during any State visit by Chinese leaders to India redound to our credit at all?

Is this the best way to further and promote the cause of the Tibetan exile community?

In fact, there are some interesting questions that have been raised with regard to the 'unintended consequences' of India's policy on citizenship for Tibetan refugees.

Secondly, we need to examine the actual efficacy of the so-called 'Tibet card'. Has it resulted in any quid pro quo on the question of our 'core' interests listed above?

Have we managed to convey to the Chinese that we could really queer their pitch with regard to Tibet, a la comments from the highest levels in the army about our readiness to fight a two-front war?

Have we convinced the Chinese of the need to accommodate India's concerns or are we, more often than not, on the backfoot in terms of having to offer explanations about our actions with regard to the Dalai Lama?

Does it appear to have given us any deterrent capabilities or leverage vis-a vis the boundary dispute or has it only increased the pressure points on the borders?

The argument that China can do nothing about India permitting the Dalai Lama to go about his agenda is valid only up to a point, as Dokalam brought home rather dramatically.

For this one so-called card that we appear to hold, the Chinese have six in their hand.

Are we giving serious thought to a post-Dalai Lama scenario and the complications that could emerge, given that Beijing has already announced its readiness to select the next Dalai Lama?

For argument's sake, even if we were to go along with the suggestion that we are displaying spineless pacifism, then it is necessary to answer the question whether we are willing and able to take a call on reversing our official policy.

Typical critiques of this policy demand that India should 'rein in China's dangerous antics in Tibet', but do not answer the question: How?

Would we have the necessary support from not just the Tibetans in India but other major powers as well?

Does it effectively increase our bargaining position in any objective manner?

Harder positions actually border on the reckless, blithely unmindful as to whether we are indeed ready, if push comes to shove. The strategic arguments, in fact, often come across rather in rather cynical manipulative terms and appear at total odds with the lofty spiritual objectives in providing refuge to the exile community.

Leave aside the hawkish writing which reflects an intensified distrust on both sides, what we have been witnessing -- and are likely to witness -- is a hardening stance from the Chinese, than what we saw in the past.

Furthermore, China continues apace with consolidating its infrastructure and military strength along the Tibet border, now extending it to Nepal and of late, also augmenting its infrastructure along its border with Bhutan.



IMAGE: Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, February 23, 2018. Photograph: PTI Photo

Re-set of Ties?

The gains to be had from a profitable partnership are conspicuously obvious, especially when we consider the developmental tasks crying out to be done.

Realistically, Chinese investment in India's infrastructure development and manufacturing plans is way ahead of the other possibilities before us and would prove the proverbial shot in the arm for Modi's growth agenda, while China would have access to the truly substantial market in Asia.

India needs China as much as the Chinese need India at this stage of their respective growth and rise. But beyond that, it is possible to make a case that a far more creative intervention can be made by India by considering joint developmental activity in Tibet, with gainful fallouts for all three parties.

Some such possibilities had actually been suggested and it is well worth a shot to take the matter further.

A major 'reset' in the ties had occurred with then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit in 2003 with the setting up of the Political Representatives and the Agreement that followed in 2005. Matters however slackened.

With the coming to power of the National Democratic Alliance under Modi, there had been great expectations once again that the two Asian giants would sort out their differences and open a new -- economically beneficial -- chapter in their relationship.

The last three years have however brought about a new low, culminating in Dokalam. But some key summit meetings are coming up ahead, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit three months down the road could be a useful opportunity.

The need for circumspection -- as also introspection -- could not be greater -- and if, as appears to be the case, India is on way to 'mending fences' with China, and China is equally desirous to 'reset' the relationship, this could be a self-reflexive moment in India's positioning vis-a-vis not just the Dalai Lama, but also the Tibetan issue and China as a whole.

It bears repeating that situations appear intractable not because we are unable to see the solution; rather, we are unable to see the problem.

Alka Acharya is the Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is the former director, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.
Two Bharatiya Janata Party ministers in the Andhra Pradesh government submitted their resignation at the chief ministers office on Thursday, amid the deteriorating relations between Telugu Desam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The ministers, who have submitted their resignation are State Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and State endowment minister Pydikondala Manikyala Rao in N Chandrababu Naidus cabinet.

The BJP MLAs were given ministerial berths as coalition partner.

Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party leader PVN Madhav categorically stated, Our ministers will resign from Telugu Desam Party Cabinet.

We have decided that our ministers will resign from the TDP cabinet. We will be going to the people and telling them all the things Centre has done for the state. Since independence till date, no state has received as many favours as that were given to Andhra Pradesh, Madhav said.

We consider Andhra as a special state and have provided it with all development that was needed to be done in all factors. Also, the moment our minister comes out from the cabinet we will break the news to all, he added.

Madhav further noted that injustice was not done to the state by Centre, but by other things related.

This statement came hours after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked the TDP ministers to resign from the Union Cabinet.
Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party leader Neiphiu Rio was on Thursday sworn in as Nagaland Chief Minister by Governor P B Acharya at a public function in Kohima.

IMAGE: Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party leader Neiphiu Rio took the oath of office on Thursday at the Kohima Local Ground. Photograph: ANI/Twitter

This is Rio's fourth term as the chief minister of the northeastern state.

Rio is heading the People's Democratic Alliance government in partnership with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state.

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"We will bring change, we will work for all sections and we will leave no one behind. Thank you for your blessings and your support," he said in his address to the crowd after taking oath.

BJP's Y Patton took oath as deputy chief minister.

Ten other ministers were also administered oath by Acharya.

IMAGE: This is Rio's fourth time as CM. Ten other ministers -- including 5 from BJP, 3 from NDPP, 1 Independent and 1 JD-U MLA was sworn in. Photograph: ANI/Twitter

Of them, six are old-timers - Janata Dal-United's K Kaito Aye, Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party's C M Chang and Neiba Kronu and BJP's S Pangnyu Phom, P Paiwang Konyak and N Jacob Zhimomi.

The first-timers, who were sworn in to the council of ministers, include Metsubo Jamir of the NDPP, Tongpang Ozukum, an independent MLA, Temjen Imna Along and V Kashiho Sangtam of the BJP.

Tongpang and Along, both 37, are the youngest among the newly-appointed ministers.

Rio had staked claim to form the government on March 4 with the support of 32 legislators in the 60-member House ---18 MLAs of the NDPP, 12 of the BJP, one of the JD-U and an independent MLA.

The governor has asked the newly-elected chief minister to prove his majority on the floor of the House by March 16.

IMAGE: Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union minister Kiren Rijiju, BJP president Amit Shah attended the swearing-in ceremony. Photograph: ANI/Twitter

A galaxy of central leaders and the chief ministers of northeastern states descended on the Kohima Local Ground here to attend the swearing-in ceremony.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union minister Kiren Rijiju, BJP president Amit Shah and the party's general secretary Ram Madhav were among those present at the function.

Outgoing Chief Minister T R Zeliang also attended the event.

This is the first time common people were invited to the ceremony through newspaper advertisements, issued by the state department of information and public relations.

More than 25,000 people, including workers of political parties, witnessed the oath-taking ceremony, official sources said.
First it was Lenin, then Periyar, followed by Ambedkar.

In what is being seen as a statue vandalism wave, an idol of Mahatma Gandhi in Keralas Kannur district and a bust of Baba Ambedkar in Periyar Nagar, Tiruvottiyur, in Chennai were vandalised on Thursday morning.

IMAGE: The spectacles on the Gandhi bust were broken.

The spectacle carving was damaged and a garland on the statue was lying nearby, an official said.

The Gandhi statue was close to the Taliparamba Taluk office, the official said, adding that a probe was on to identify those behind the incident.

A CCTV visual showed the suspected man behind the incident walking away from the site.

Some locals on the spot were reported as saying that they saw a man hurling a stone at the statue before fleeing the spot.

A complaint was received from Deputy Tahsildar C V Prakasan, based on which investigations are on, the official said.

The attacks come a day after a statue of Sangh ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee was damaged in Kolkata. The bust was defaced with black ink and de-shaped with a hammer and the right side of the face damaged.

On Wednesday, following the incidents, Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly disapproved incidents of vandalism of statues in certain parts of the country and spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the matter.

IMAGE: Red paint was splashed over the Ambedkar bust in Chennai.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi strongly condemned the incidents of vandalism of statues and warned of stern action against those found guilty.

The prime minister also spoke to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh about it and expressed his strong disapproval of such incidents, according to an official statement in New Delhi.

The home ministry said it has taken serious note of such incidents of vandalism and has directed state governments to take strong action.

Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah termed the desecration of Lenins statues in Tripura and Periyars bust in Tamil Nadu extremely unfortunate, and asserted that any party member found involved in destroying a statue will face severe action.

All of this began on Monday with the destruction of two Lenin statues in Tripura following BJPs historic win in the state. It was followed up by the vandalism of a bust of Dravidian movement founder E V Ramasamy Periyar in Tamil Nadus Vellore after a Facebook post by a senior BJP leader.

On Wednesday, seven people belonging to a Left-leaning group called Radical vandalised the bust of Mookerjee in south Kolkata. All the seven, including a woman, were arrested, Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar said.

A statue of Dalit icon Dr B R Ambedkar was also vandalised and replaced later in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh.

-- With inputs from PTI
On the occasion of International Womens Day, women from all over the world are taking out marches to call for change.

Interestingly, this year the theme is #pressforprogress.

Here are images from across the globe.

Women attend a protest as a part of the #MeToo movement on International Women's Day in Seoul, South Korea. During the protest, women called for bringing alleged sexual offenders to justice, as well as action on other issues such as closing a gender pay gap. Photograph: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

Various messages propagating equality among the genders onto the Houses of Parliament in London, UK. Photograph: Nicky J Sims/Getty Images for GladLife Ltd

A protester carrying a placard that says "Increase women's education and end violence against women' takes part in a rally in Kathmandu, Nepal. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

Women in Spain are taking part in the countys first nationwide feminist strike to mark International Womens Day. Some are downing tools for the whole day, while others are stopping for a two-hour stretch. Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters

In Portugalete, Spain, protesters held up gloves while taking part in a strike for women's rights. Photograph: Vincent West/Reuters

A woman places names of missing girls at a memorial with a message that reads "Not One More", marking the women who have gone missing or found dead, during a protest to mark International Women's Day at Paso del Norte international border crossing, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Photograph: Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Women's rights activists display streamer that reads "Women's Empowerment" while marching along a busy street during a celebration of the Women's International Day in Quiapo city, metro Manila, Philippines. Photograph: Romeo Ranoco/Reuters

Activists holding red carnations gather to promote an International Womens Day rally in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Photograph: Sertac Kayar/Reuters
According to the trafficking protocol by the United Nations, human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal, manipulation or implantation of organs.

Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim's right to movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation.

In 2014 the International Labour Organization estimated $150 billion in annual profit is generated from forced labour alone.

India is also a destination for human trafficking. In the year 2016 alone, 8132 human trafficking cases have been reported in India.

Cases Reported:

Rediff Labs analysed the human trafficking section from crimes data 2016 by National Crimes Record Bureau, India.

The map above shows the state wise number of human trafficking cases reported in 2016.

Here the size of the circle represents the mid-year population of 2016.

The states where the cases reported high are West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

The states where the cases reported low are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram.

Purpose:

Human trafficking is the trade of humans for various purposes like forced labour, sexual slavery or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. It can occur within a country or trans- nationally. The main purposes for human trafficking given in the NCRB report are Sexual exploitation, Forced Marriage, Forced Labour and Domestic servitude.

The chart above shows the purpose of the human trafficking and the top ten states for each purpose. For the purpose Sexual exploitation Madhya Pradesh is in the top place followed by Tamilnadu and Maharashtra. For the purpose of Forced Marriage the state West Bengal is in the top place followed by Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. For the purpose of forced labour the state Rajasthan is in the top place followed by Madhya Pradesh and Tamilnadu and for the purpose of domestic servitude Madhya Pradesh is in the top place followed by Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

People Trafficked and Rescued:

When there is multiple purpose for trafficking the people are also getting rescued. The below charts shows the percentage of people trafficked and rescued in 2016 in India.

Trafficked:

The above chart shows that the females of age below 18 years or above 18 years are trafficked more than males irrespective of their age. But males at the age less than 18 are more vulnerable towards human trafficking compared to the males above 18 years.

Rescued:

The above chart shows the percentage of people rescued in 2016. For the people age below 18 years males are rescued more than females. But it is opposite in the case of people of age above 18 years where females are rescued more than males.

The females below age 18 years were majorly rescued from sexual exploitation in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim.

The other reasons from which the females below 18 years were rescued are forced labour in the states Jharkhand and Kerala and from domestic servitude in the state Chandigarh. And the males below 18 years are rescued from forced labour in the states Bihar, Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The females above 18 years were majorly rescued from sexual exploitation in the states of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Telangana and Uttarakhand. And the males above 18 years are rescued from forced labour from the state Odisha.

So the major reason for trafficking females is for sexual exploitation and in males is for forced labour irrespective of their age.

Measures taken to reduce human trafficking:

In India, the trafficking in persons for commercial sexual exploitation, forced labour, forced marriages and domestic servitude is considered an organized crime.

The Government of India applies the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013, active from 3 February 2013, as well as Section 370 and 370A IPC, which defines human trafficking and "provides stringent punishment for human trafficking; trafficking of children for exploitation in any form including physical exploitation; or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude or the forced removal of organs."

Additionally, a Regional Task Force implements the SAARC Convention on the prevention of Trafficking in Women and Children.

R.P.N. Singh, India's Minister of State for Home Affairs, launched a government web portal, the Anti-Human Trafficking Portal, on 20 February 2014.

The official statement explained that the objective of the on-line resource is for the "sharing of information across all stakeholders, States/UTs[Union Territories] and civil society organizations for effective implementation of Anti Human Trafficking measures."

The key aims of the portal are:

Aid in the tracking of cases with inter-state ramifications.

Provide comprehensive information on legislation, statistics, court judgements, United Nations Conventions, details of trafficked people and traffickers and rescue success stories.

Provide connection to "Track child", the National Portal on Missing Children that is operational in many states.

Also on 20 February, the Indian government announced the implementation of a Comprehensive Scheme that involves the establishment of Integrated Anti Human Trafficking Units in 335 vulnerable police districts throughout India, as well as capacity building that includes training for police, prosecutors and judiciary.

As of the announcement, 225 Integrated AHTUs had been made operational, while 100 more AHTUs were proposed for the forthcoming financial year.
In early 2017 Amit A Shah warned Nara Chandrababu Naidu that Narendra D Modi was not like Atal Bihari Vajpayee to yield to pressure tactics.

Soon, Naidu was to discover this for himself, reports R Rajagopalan.



IMAGE: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu. Photograph: Kind courtesy N Chandrababu Naidu's Twitter account

Miffed over what it called the Centre's refusal to fulfil the promises it made, the Telugu Desam Party announced that its two central ministers -- Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary -- would quit the Union council of ministers even while the TDP continues to remain within the National Democratic Alliance.

On Wednesday, March 7, TDP supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said, 'This is the first step, we will go ahead with other actions later.'

The period after the 2014 Lok Sabha and assembly elections was a honeymoon phase for the BJP and TDP, which extended to 2015 as well. Matters soured from 2016 onwards.

All along, the state government and Centre had held official deliberations on a special status and special grants for Andhra Pradesh.

Things began to go bad when the Centre felt that the grants from New Delhi were not being spent properly and no utilisation certificates were being submitted.

This approach of the Modi government was on par with its attitude towards the other southern states -- Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Prime Minister Narendra D Modi understood the political games Chandrababu Naidu was playing -- now that his arch-rival Jagmohan Reddy of the YSR Congress was catching up -- when the TDP raised the ante over central funding to the state.

The TDP, on the other hand, felt the Centre and BJP were going slow on the CBI and income-tax investigations into Jagmohan Reddy, Naidu's major political foe, and suspected that the BJP was negotiating with the YSR Congress behind its back.

Complicating matters was the incident in early 2015 when Naidu was embroiled in a controversy over the alleged buying of MLAs, with a criminal case filed against Telangana Rashtriya Samiti leader and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for tapping Naidu's telephone, leading to Modi's intervention to sort out the matter between the two warring chief ministers.

Naidu also suspected that Governor E S L Narasimhan -- a former director of the Intelligence Bureau -- was acting on the Centre's behalf and against the state's interests, and wanted him removed.

He requested Modi at least five times to replace the governor, but the prime minister did not agree, which led to a further strain in BJP-TDP ties.

On the contrary, by allowing Narasimhan to continue in Raj Bhavan, Modi brought counter-pressure upon Naidu by continuing to get hardcore political inputs from the governor.

What further rattled Naidu was BJP President Amit A Shah's tours of the state to build up the BJP, during which he freely criticised the state government.

Adding fuel to the fire was the presence of BJP state chief Daggubati Purandeswari -- whose sister is married to Chandrababu Naidu -- who went hammer and tongs at the government over alleged corruption and the delay in building the state capital Amravati.

In early 2017, Shah warned Naidu that Modi was not like Atal Bihari Vajpayee to yield to pressure tactics.

The chief minister was soon to find this out for himself. For the last year, ever since Naidu started putting pressure on the government over the grant of special status, there has been no exchange between Modi and Naidu, a fact the chief minister acknowledged on Wednesday when he spoke of the PM not granting him an appointment for the last year.

The crux of the dispute between the state and the Centre was money.

In the 16 meetings between Modi and Naidu between 2014 and 2016, the chief minister sought lakhs of crores of rupees as special grants. But the Centre was mindful of its responsibility to the 28 other states as well, a fact it made known to him.

Apart form this, the Centre had stood guarantor with the Andhra government in its many memoranda of understanding with Singapore, Korea and Japan for mega projects.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Centre was happy to give Andhra Pradesh funds equivalent to what a special category state receives, but giving it 'special category status' as Naidu demanded was not possible as the 14th Finance Commission had scrapped the scheme for all but the north eastern and three hill states..

This upset Naidu who felt Jaitley's words were 'hurtful and insulting', and seemed to suggest that the TDP was 'asking for money at the expense of the country's defence budget.'

'Jaitley spoke like we asked for all the money, we felt insulted,' he said angrily.

The TDP's unhappiness peaked after the Union Budget and it complained bitterly that it neglected Andhra Pradesh.

All of the above contributed to Modi-Shah feeling that Naidu had crossed the Lakshman Rekha of Coalition Dharma.

Since its founding in 1983 by the late Telugu superstar Nara Taraka Rama Rao, the TDP has withstood many storms, and perhaps the latest political turbulence can also be effectively tackled. But the options before it are limited.

The TDP cannot go with the Congress nor can it align with the YSR Congress in the state. The only option available before it is the third front, but even here KCR has stolen a march over Naidu by positioning himself as a fulcrum for a non-BJP, non-Congress, front.

Will Naidu then be forced to align with Rahul Gandhi?

It is obvious that the TDP faces extreme pressure in the state ahead of next year's assembly and national elections, with the Opposition accusing Naidu of failing Andhra Pradesh despite being an NDA ally.

The BJP may not be an entity in Andhra, having bagged only four seats in the assembly in 2014, but it will pay Naidu to bear in mind that unlike then, Modi will now be approaching voters with a five-year record in office, during which time his personal connect with voters, especially the younger ones, remains unparalleled.
The Telugu Desam pulled its ministers out of the Modi ministry last week.

'After the creation of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh has been left as an agrarian state.'

'Therefore, the special category status to this residual state was imminent and necessary for its development,' YSR Congress MP V Vijayasai Reddy explained in the Rajya Sabha.



IMAGE: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu, right, met Prime Minister Narendra D Modi for the first time in several months, January 12, 2018. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Sir, the Presidential address does not mention the grant of special category status to the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and I would like to explain the facts.

The then honourable prime minister of this country on 20th February 2014 had assured on the floor of this august House that the special category status would be granted.

Though it is not incorporated in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, it is an assurance that has been given by the then honourable prime minister which has not been adhered to.

The second point is the Union Cabinet on 3rd March 2014 had taken a decision to grant the special category status to the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh and decided that the matter be referred to the then existing Planning Commission.

Sir, whether the matter had to be referred to the Planning Commission or not, it was the prerogative of the government. It was not mandatory.

It was well within the purview and jurisdiction of the Government of India to grant the special category status and the Union Cabinet, on its own, would have granted the special category status even without referring it to the Planning Commission by way of an Executive Order

Sir, in fact, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is ruling now, had included this in their manifesto in 2014 and it is part of their manifesto.

Sir, why are we clamouring for special category status?

It is not merely for the sake of asking 'special category status' that we are asking it. Sir, when the state was divided, when the Congress party had decided unilaterally and damaged the interest of the people of Andhra Pradesh, it was the decision taken then, and in the light of the fact that the capital of Hyderabad was going to Telangana.

Sir, Hyderabad, which was the capital of composite Andhra Pradesh, had the film industry there, had the software industry there, had the majority of the public sector undertakings; and the software industry had an annual turnover of approximately Rs 80,000 crores.

All these institutions have gone to Telangana and the residual part of Andhra Pradesh has been left as an agrarian state. Therefore, the special category status to this residual state of Andhra Pradesh was imminent and necessary for the development of Andhra Pradesh, in order to have development of the state of Andhra Pradesh on par with the neighbouring states and other states of this country.

Sir, the honourable finance minister, while making a reply on this issue, has pointed out several times that the 14th Finance Commission has prohibited granting of special category status to any of the states after the Planning Commission was abolished.

This is the reply that he had given, but that is not so.

I have gone through the 14th Finance Commission Report and, to the best of my knowledge, nowhere has the report stated that special category status should not be given to any state.

In fact, they have no jurisdiction in this matter. They have not dealt with this matter at all.

Further, I would like to point out in this august House that the Finance Commission's recommendations can only be recommendatory in nature and those cannot be binding on the government.

Sir, coming to the second issue, it has been categorically stated in Schedule XIII of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act that a separate railway zone, with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters, would be granted and would be constituted.

Sir, four years have gone. What happened to the provisions? Is it not the responsibility of the government to implement the provisions of the Act?

Sir, similarly, it has been categorically stated that a steel plant would be set up in Cuddapah district of Andhra Pradesh. It has not been implemented.

In the same Schedule, it has further been stated that a sea port would be constructed at Durgarajapatnam, close to Chennai, on the Andhra Pradesh-Tamil Nadu border.

Similarly, it has been stipulated in the Act that a petro-chemical complex would be constructed in Visakhapatnam.

There is nothing. Four years are over.

Then, there is the Vizag-Chennai Industrial Corridor that has been promised in the Act, and it has not been implemented so far.

Sir, apart from this, the last item, which is also very important, is that the Act also provided that a metro rail project would be considered and constructed, both at Visakhapatnam as well as on the Vijaywada-Guntur-Tenali route. What happened to that?

Sir, if the provisions of a particular Act are not implemented, where should we go? Whom should we ask?

SubSection(iv), Section 90 of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act is very clear that the Polavaram dam would be implemented by the central government and also the cost would be borne by the central government.

In fact, subsequently, there was a proposal that post-2014 increase in the prices should be absorbed by the state. This was the proposal that was mooted. Of course, it is not tenable and, as per the Act, it is the responsibility of the central government to complete the Polavaram Project, whatever the project cost.

Whether it is pre-2014 prices or post-2014 prices, it does not make any difference.

Sir, in the same Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, it has been categorically stated that seven districts in Andhra Pradesh have been identified as backward districts -- Vishakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam and, on this Rayalaseema side, Cuddapah, Kurnool, Chittoor and Anantapur.

For these seven backward districts, a package has been announced and the package would be similar to that of the Bundelkhand special package in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and that of Koraput-Bolangir-Kalahandi. This is the package which has been stipulated in the Act.

Sir, let me be very frank in saying that the honourable members of the Congress party while participating in the Motion of Thanks for the Presidential address have referred to the interference by the government in the working of the investigating agencies like the CBI, ED and Income Tax.

I have no hesitation in saying that it is the Congress party which has nurtured and established a very bad precedent of interfering in the working of these investigating agencies. I fondly hope that the successive governments would not follow the bad precedent which has been set up.

Edited excerpts from the speech by V Vijayasai Reddy, YSR Congress Party MP, in the Rajya Sabha, February 6, 2018.
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Title Brazil: Interministerial Ordinance No. 3 on Residency, Registration and Issuance of National Migration Register Card for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Stateless Persons and Interministerial Ordinance No. 5 on the Status Determination Procedure and Naturalization of Stateless Persons (2018)

Publication Date 27 February 2018

Country Brazil

Other Languages / Attachments Portuguese

Cite as National Legislative Bodies / National Authorities, Brazil: Interministerial Ordinance No. 3 on Residency, Registration and Issuance of National Migration Register Card for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Stateless Persons and Interministerial Ordinance No. 5 on the Status Determination Procedure and Naturalization of Stateless Persons (2018), 27 February 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5aa154744.html [accessed 20 September 2021]

Comments This document is only available in its original language. You can also find it on the Spanish Refworld.
Title UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria: Amid the ruins of Ar-Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr, calls for justice and accountability by victims and families must be urgently addressed

Publisher UN Human Rights Council

Author Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

Publication Date 6 March 2018

Country Syrian Arab Republic
Union Pacific

Union Pacific plans to invest $122.3 million into its California network in 2018. The Class 1 says the investment will safety, operating efficiency and support customer service.

Union Pacifics planned investment covers a range of initiatives, including $90.8 million to maintain track and $14.2 million to maintain bridges in the state. Key projects planned this year include a $10.1 million investment in the rail line between McFarland and Bakersfield to replace 20 miles of rail along the Fresno Subdivision; a $7.4 million investment in the rail infrastructure in West Colton and a $4.8 million investment in the rail line between Newark and Aromas to replace more than 33,000 railroad ties along the Coast Subdivision.

This years planned $122.3 million capital expenditure is part of the companys $3.3 billion capital program and is in addition to the $985 million the company has invested in the state during the past five years.

Our targeted investments support customers and enhance our efficiency to deliver the goods American businesses and families use daily, said Wes Lujan, Union Pacific assistant vice president  Public Affairs, Western Region.

Earlier this week, the company announced plans to invest $450 million into its Texas network, which includes $320 million to maintain the states track and $94 million to maintain bridges.
Four rail specific and rail related projects have been awarded a total of $54.5 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants. This represents about 10 percent of the $500 million available in the latest round of TIGER funding.

The largest grant, $20 million, was awarded to Baltimore County in Maryland to help TradePoint Atlantic redevelop the former Sparrows Point steel mill site. Officials said this project will help increase commerce and create jobs locally, regionally and nationally. Specifically, TradePoint will make structural upgrades to the terminals East-West Berth, add an upgraded crane rail system to allow direct transfer of cargo from vessels to rail or trucks, design changes to facilitate transfer of liquid commodities, strengthen the bulkhead and dredge the turning basin and approach channel, in addition to other improvements.

Sparrows Point was at the center of Baltimores economic history, and this grant will enable redevelopment that helps ensure that the site is central to the citys economic future. This strong federal investment in TradePoint Atlantic will bring with it greater economic growth, new shipping capacity and job creation, said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), who is also Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee.

New Mexicos Colfax County was awarded a $16 million grant to replace segments of aging rail line on which Amtraks Southwest Chief operates. The grant will fund critical repair work in New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to Los Angeles, and stops in several New Mexico communities.

The project will build on previous awards made under TIGER 6 and TIGER 7 by replacing 60-year old bolted rail, associated turnouts and crossings for a net gain of 42 miles of Class 4 rail in the La Junta subdivision between Hutchinson, Kan., and Las Animas, Colo. The project will also replace older crossties in a 200-mile section of rail between Lamy, N.M., and Trinidad, Colo. Finally, the project will construct a series of improvements to the New Mexico Rail Runner Express commuter rail route including the replacement of the signaling system, replacement of a damaged culvert, replacement of a half-mile of track along the Devils Throne curve and installation of a rock slide fence and warning signal at the Devils Throne Curve.

Officials say initial estimates indicated that more than $100 million was needed to upgrade the portions of the line operating in New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado to meet passenger train standers. Two former TIGER grants enabled large sections of the Southwest Chiefs rail line to be repaired. This final TIGER grant will provide the funding needed to repair and rehabilitate this last rail line section, based primarily in New Mexico, with the same updates installed on the rest of the line.

The Indiana Department of Transportation was awarded a $10 million grant to rebuild approaches to the Maunie Railroad Bridge in Posey County. The Maunie Railroad Bridge was built in 1926 and timber approaches on both the Indiana and Illinois sides of the bridge are in dire need of replacement. The bridge provides a critical link between coal miners, farmers, refiners, manufacturers and river ports located along the Evansville Western Railway.

In Arkansas, Fort Smith will receive approximately $8.5 million to repair and rehabilitate three rail bridges that cross Clear Creek and the Arkansas River.

One bridge spans the Arkansas River, and the project will rehabilitate many of its structural components, along with the electrical and mechanical systems controlling the lift span. The other two bridges cross Clear Creek, and the project will replace timber trestles approaching their spans, improving their safety and reliability.

More than 50 Natural State businesses rely on these rail bridges for sending and receiving goods and this funding will ensure that their products are able to move with greater efficiency, ultimately growing our local, regional and national economy. I am confident it will have a positive impact on our communities, Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR-03) said.
Nearly half of the stolen coins from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox ended up with one of its rivals based in the UK, BBC reported.



The now defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, which was run by the London-based Always Efficient LLP, helped to launder 650,000 stolen bitcoins worth GBP 4.5 billion, an investigation by BBC Radio 4 found.

The Tokyo-based Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange failed in February 2014. The exchange was the biggest at the time, handling around 70 percent of all Bitcoin about a year earlier.

The collapse of the prominent bitcoin exchange wiped thousands of clients' as well as its own holdings of around 850,000 bitcoins, then worth nearly $500 million, owing to theft that went unnoticed for several years.

Later, Mt Gox said it recovered 200,000 Bitcoins.

Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles apologized to investors and said he is co-operating with investigators, BBC Radio 4 report said.

Started in 2011, BTC-e was notorious as a hub for cyber crime and helped to launder money, including ransom, received from cyber attacks. The operator of the exchange, Always Efficient LLP, is run anonymously.

UK law requires companies to publish the names of "persons with significant control" or "PWSC".

The Companies House service of the UK government shows that Always Efficient does not have anyone listed as PWSC as of now.



An Alexander Buyanov, based in Moscow, ceased to be a PWSC of the firm in July 2017. According to the BBC, a Russian journalist traced the name to a DJ in a Moscow nightclub who claimed to know nothing about the firm.

The BBC report cited the FBI as saying that a Russian national Alexander Vinnik was the man behind the BTC-e. He was arrested in Greece in July 2017 and now detained in Thessaloniki.

The US Justice Department is seeking his extradition and he faces 21 counts of money laundering and other financial crimes in the US. Russia is also seeking Vinnik's extradition.

Vinnik denies being an operator of BTC-e, which in turn has rejected the claim that he was an employee of the site.

The Greek Supreme Count cleared the extradition of Vinnik to the US in December 2017. The Justice ministry is yet to take a final decision between the two extradition requests.

In September 2017, BTC-e had rebranded itself as WEX to launch a new bitcoin exchange platform after it was raided and fined by US authorities in July. The new website was strikingly similar to the old one and even migrated all the BTC-e's users.

WEX, however, said that it did not cooperate with Always Efficient LLP. The website also claimed to comply with anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules.

Karpeles was also arrested for money embezzlement that was unrelated to the Mt Gox theft, the report added.

Thanks to the strong appreciation of Bitcoin, Mt Gox creditors who lost their stash, could still turn a profit, the report said.

Nobuaki Kobayashi, a Tokyo attorney who is the bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox and known as a "Bitcoin whale", said on Wednesday that he sold about $400 million worth of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash since late September.

The sale happened as Kobayashi raises cash to distribute among Mt. Gox's creditors. The lawyer still has $1.9 billion worth of tokens and will consider selling those too.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
French shares were trading higher on Thursday as trade tensions showed signs of easing amid expectations that U.S. trade tariffs are likely to be differentiated by country and product.

Investors looked ahead to the European Central Bank's closely watched policy decision later in the day, although no major change in policy is expected.

The benchmark CAC 40 was up 26 points or 0.50 percent at 5,213 in opening deals after rising 0.3 percent on Wednesday.

Plane maker Airbus rose 0.2 percent after announcing production cuts.

Gecina added half a percent after successfully completing a new bond issuance program.

Supermarket giant Groupe Casino slumped 5.6 percent after its full-year net profit fell to 120 million euros from last year's 2.68 billion euros.

Engie, formerly called GDF Suez, jumped 4.5 percent. The natural gas and electricity supplier reported net income Group share for fiscal year 2017 of 1.4 billion euros, compared to net loss of 0.4 billion euros last year.

Outdoor advertising firm JCDecaux tumbled 2.8 percent after its 2017 profit fell 14 percent due to a tax charge.

Air France-KLM lost almost 4 percent after reporting passenger traffic figures for February.

In economic news, France's is forecast to grow at a slightly slower pace in the first quarter, a survey from Bank of France revealed. The central bank kept its growth forecast for the first quarter unchanged at 0.4 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Taiwanese airline company FAT Taiwan Inc., the parent company of Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT), announced recently that it would start accepting payments in encrypted digital currencies such as bitcoin for the purchase air tickets and related services. FAT will become the first airline operator in Taiwan to accept cryptocurrencies.

Passengers will be able to use encrypted digital currency to enjoy more than 20,000 domestic and foreign flights and related travel products provided by Far East Airlines for a more convenient and preferential transaction experience.

The Taipei, Taiwan-based airline flies to many destinations including Siem Reap, Chengdu, Guilin, Haikou, Hefei, Nanning, Taiyuan, Wuhan, Yichang, Zhengzhou, Kaosiung, Kinmen, Magong, Taipei and Da Nang.

The airline also operates in some international routes, with services from Taiwan to Mainland China, Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.

FAT is setting a trend among airlines and airports to provide its customers with as many convenient payment options as possible.

In May 2017, Japanese low-cost airline Peach Aviation Ltd. had announced its plan to accept bitcoin through a partnership with Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, Bitpoint Japan, by the end of the year. But in December, they decided to postpone it to March this year.

Australia's Brisbane airport in early February partnered with local start-up TravelbyBit to launch the world's first digital currency airport terminal. Travelers will soon be able to use TravelbyBit's cryptocurrency payment system, including Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum, and other digital currencies, at the airport.

Latvia's AirBaltic had become the first airline in the world to accept Bitcoin, in 2014.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
(Agencia CMA Latam) - The Foreign Affairs and the Budget Commissions of the Argentinean Senate agreed to discuss the protocol to amend the agreement to avoid double taxation with Brazil.

The move is part of the agreement signed on last July, during the Mercosur Summit, held in Mendoza.

With the agreement, the expectation is to benefit more than 46 thousand Argentinean companies providing services such as accounting, legal advisory, architecture, engineering, audiovisual, advertising, information , research and development, consulting and services.

The agreement states that Argentinean entrepreneurs and companies that export services to Brazil can discount taxes that they pay for profits, and avoid the payment of the tax to both countries.

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
After closing roughly flat for two consecutive sessions, treasuries moved to the upside during the trading day on Thursday.

Bond prices moved notably higher in morning trading but gave back some ground in the afternoon. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, dipped by 1.7 basis points to 2.866 percent.

The early strength among treasuries came as traders digested the European Central Bank's latest monetary policy decision, with the ECB leaving rates unchanged, as widely expected.

The ECB's accompanying statement removed a phrase indicating a willingness to increase its asset purchase program if necessary.

"The change is arguably the ECB's first cautious step along a path of gradual policy normalization, which explains the immediate rise in the euro," said Jennifer McKeown, Chief European Economist at Capital Economics.

She added, "But it won't have come as a complete surprise given the ECB's earlier warning that it would 'revisit' its forward guidance early this year."

Trading activity was somewhat subdued, however, as traders looked ahead to the release of the Labor Department's closely watched monthly jobs report on Friday.

Employment is expected to jump by 200,000 jobs in February, matching the increase seen in January. The unemployment rate is expected to dip to 4.0 percent from 4.1 percent.

Ahead of the monthly report, the Labor Department released a report this morning showing a bigger than expected rebound in initial jobless claims in the week ended March 3rd.

The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 231,000, an increase of 21,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 210,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to rise to 220,000.

The bigger than expected increase came after jobless claims fell to their lowest level since December of 1969 in the previous week.

Uncertainty about the details of President Donald Trump's planned tariffs on steel and aluminum imports may also have kept some traders on the sidelines.

The monthly jobs report is likely to be in focus on Friday, overshadowing a report on wholesale trade and comments by some Federal Reserve officials.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
President Donald Trump reiterated Thursday that he plans to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports but stressed that the U.S. would be "very flexible."

Trump suggested during a Cabinet meeting that countries such as Canada, Mexico, and Australia could be exempt from the tariffs.

"We're going to be very flexible," Trump said. "At the same time, we have some friends and some enemies where we have been tremendously taken advantage of over the years."

The comments from Trump come as he due to sign a formal proclamation on the tariffs at a White House meeting with steel and aluminum industry workers at 3:30 pm ET.

Details of the policy are reportedly still being finalized, and a White House official told NBC News the proclamation would largely be "symbolic."

The president announced last week that he plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports.

Trump asserted Thursday he would have the "right to go up or down depending on the country" as well as the "right to drop out countries or add countries."

The exemptions for Canada and Mexico would depend on the successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump said.

Trump also noted that the U.S. has a "very close relationship" and a trade surplus with Australia, which he called a "long-term partner."

The announcement of the tariffs raised concerns about retaliation by U.S. trade partners such as the European Union and China sparking a global trade war.

(Photo: Michael Vadon)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Vladstudioraw/iStock/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) -- Lawyers for a Chicago police officer accused of murdering a Chicago teen in a shooting captured on dashcam video that ignited protests in the city and around the country are arguing their client will not be able to get a fair trial in Chicago.



Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke was back in court Thursday as his lawyers argued extensive media coverage of the October 2014 incident in which Van Dyke shot and killed 17-year old Laquan McDonald means Van Dyke will not be able to get a fair trial in Cook County where Chicago is the county seat.



In court, Judge Vincent Gaughan set March 28 as a deadline for Van Dykes layers to bring in an expert who has conducted polls, analyzed media coverage and collected data about why the trial should be moved, ABC station WLS reported.



Van Dyke fired 16 rounds at McDonald, killing the teen in an incident that was captured on dashcam video. That video inflamed tensions between Chicago police and the communities they patrol when the tape was released in 2015 after a year-long attempt by the city to keep the video private.



Van Dyke is currently out on bond nearly two-and-a-half years after he was charged with murder in McDonalds death.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Its arguably the most talked about topic of the day.

Chinas influence whether its aid, diplomacy or just the influx of its people and businesses into small countries, the issue is as universal as the internet. It is what the world is talking about.

Here on the remote shores of our small island country, we are not immune for the simple reason that without China, our Government would be struggling with a number of development programmes they are planning. Which is the undisputed truth.

It is why our Government leaders will forever defend their presence in these parts of the world. It is safe to say it is the lifeblood that is sustaining developments at this point in time. And you dont need to be a rocket scientist to work that out.

But nothing comes for free, does it? It goes without saying that in this world, contrary to what the politicians will have you believe, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Folks all that aid and so-called goodwill comes at a price. A hefty one too.

And given the smallness of our country, any movement for whatever reason, is hard not to notice. Which is why the growing number of Asian businesses, mostly Chinese businesses, popping everywhere continues to raise eyebrows. It is happening all over Samoa.

Vaitele for instance is increasingly becoming Chinatown with shops, wholesales, restaurants and much, much more. Some of them are even beginning to open up motels on street corners and anywhere they can squeeze a business. Its astonishing.

But we saw it coming, didnt we? Indeed, the shift in Chinese businesses taking over from local businesses didnt just happen overnight. Weve watched the business landscape change during the past years. And its not going to stop. Thats a fact.

The question is; where do we draw the line? When do we say enough is enough? Where do our people stand in all this? What is the future for them?

These are uncomfortable questions and some might sneer at us for asking them. Thats fine. But they are questions we need to ask. This is why we are here. We exist to ask questions many people are afraid to ask.

Now here is another factor we need to consider. Apart from the fact that they are growing in such huge numbers, we know the Asians are naturally gifted with business skills and acumen. It is something they are born with.

And they have the money and resources our people simply cannot compete with.

Take for example those shops popping up all over the place. Under previous ownership, we saw that the shelves were empty and that hardly anyone entered those stores.

Now having being taken over by the Chinese, we suddenly see that business is booming and that there is life to these buildings. This just makes things even harder.

Whether we like it or not, they are here to stay. What do we do? Do we embrace the status quo or do we resist change?

Sometime ago, Cabinet Minister Lautafi Fio Purcell was asked about the issue.

I feel for those (local business) people because its quite obvious, Lautafi told the Sunday Samoan. It doesnt take long for a Chinese shop to come in then (local) business goes out.

Lautafi described Asian retailers as ruthless in business.

They are in your face suggesting things you should buy, he said. They are business orientated people. They make sure you will not go out of the shop without buying something and its part of their business ethics that draws people to their shops.

That is the philosophy that has not clicked on our people. As opposed to our shops you go inside and they look at you as if they dont want you there.

The Minister is correct in that regard. Weve always known that one of the biggest problems in Samoa is that everyone thinks they are a king/queen. Perhaps its a case of having too many chiefs and no Indians

Still, think about the future of Samoa if whats happening today is an indication of whats to come? When our businesses have been bought out and land becomes accesible to any foreigner with monies, what is there for us? Where do all these poor Samoans stand?

Is money really the root of all evil? Or is it corruption and greed that is associated with money?

Have a safe Friday Samoa, God bless!
The hearing of the Tokuma Family land claim at Sogi against the Samoa Land Corporation continued yesterday.

The matter was adjourned from last week for the lawyers to have their submissions on whether the evidence of hearsay is admissible and relevant.

Justice Leiataualesa Daryl Clarke is presiding.

When the hearing proceeded yesterday, Liutofagaomataafa Nanai Tokuma took the stand to tell their story about the land they claim is rightfully theirs.

Every time my father, the late Turaroa Tokuma finishes work, he would tell me to go with him to the mangroves to get crabs and so its there that he would tell me these stories, Nanai told the Court.

This was when I was about 12 to 13 years old. My father passed away on September 5, 1957.

Lawyer representing the Turaroa descendants, Pau Tafaogalupe Mulitalo, questioned Nanai if he had remembered what his father told him.

My father said that one night while he was driving from Vaitele heading to Sogi, he got to Lepea and he heard noises coming from inside the Chinese businessmans shop.

He said he just drove by and when he got home, the old lady who was there asked my father of his whereabouts.

My father told her that he was at Vaitele. Not long after my father arrived home, Police officers came to his house again and arrested him and they took him away.

On the following Monday, a trial was held and the decision came and said that my father was to be hanged because he was the one who killed the Chinese businessman.

According to Nanai, his father told him that he was ready for the execution.

Everything was ready for the execution on that day, but somehow two Chinese men interrupted the Court and told them that Turaroa didnt kill the Chinese businessman, but it was them who did it.

So thats how my father became innocent of that matter.

Nanai said while growing up, his mother told him about the land that they live on.

My mother told me when she saw that we were growing up, she told our father to ask the late Percival Patrick, who was the head of the Government S.T.E.C. at the time, for a place to build a house for us.

She said Mr. Patrick showed them the land at the back and told them to build a house at the back.

They went and cleaned up the whole space and cut the grass and then they built a house there.

That is what I was told by my mother. But one thing I do know is that our parents had never told us that the land in question belongs to us or it is our land, no; they never said anything like that.

During cross examination, lawyer Tafailagi Peniamina of the Attorney Generals Office, who represented the Samoa Land Corporation and the Ministry of Public Enterprise, asked the plaintiff whether his testimony was all from his late father.

So you werent there when these things happened? You were only 12 to 13 years old when your father told you these?

So your mother was the one who was talking to Mataafa? You werent there when the event they were talking about happened?

Nanai responded yes.

Ms. Tafailagi then asked Nanai about his testimony where the late Patrick Earnest Percival offered them the land they claimed.

Patrick Percival was the one who showed your parents the land that you and your family are living on?

Do you know if he had the authority to give you this land?

Nanai said he doesnt know.

I dont know about that, the only thing I know is that he was the one who was looking after the Government S.T.E.C. at this time, Nanai told the Court.

He only told us to go and build a house on the land in question, he added.

So he only told you guys to go build a house on this land? Ms. Tafailagi asked.

Justice Leiataualesa questioned Nanai about the land.

What land are you referring to, asked Justice Leiataualesa.

Sogi is quite a large place but where about is the land that you are referring to?

Nanai said the land in question is where the Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi Building is and there is a road that goes to the back.

The land at the back is right next to the T.A.T.T.E. building, he responded. Its right behind the Tanoa Tusitala Hotel.

Justice Leiataualesa then asked the plaintiff whether they had any survey conducted on the land in preparation of the matter.

Did you prepare a survey of this land prior to this case, asked Justice Leiataualesa.

Did you engage a surveyor to prepare a survey for this case?

To your knowledge, has your family or your parents ever engaged a surveyor to survey this land in question?

Nanai said nothing was done.

All our lives we had never had any surveyor come around to conduct a survey on the land, he said.

Our parents never mentioned anything as well about surveys conducted on the land in question.

Nanai was also asked whether he knows the boundaries for the land.

What do you say are the boundaries of the land in question, asked Justice Leiataualesa.

Are there any other people living on the land that you claim?

What do you say are the boundaries of those 40 to 50 acres, because there are businesses, hotels and some families located there?

It includes the petrol tanks, hotels and people residing there as well.

Are there any other businesses or family included in the land that you are claiming?

According to Nanai, the land in question is about 40 to 50 acres.

At the moment its just us and some families, he said. The only business is where the T.A.T.T.E. Building is.

So it goes all the way to the back where the Tanoa is right now, we used that land for our plantation and it is included in the land that we are claiming.

How long have you been living at Sogi?

All my life and I am 78 years old now.

Nanai also told the Court that he and his siblings have been living in the area all their lives.

Since you live there prior to these proceedings before the Court, have you or your family taken any legal proceedings in respect of these other people for instant T.A.T.T.E., Government or Tanoa, asked Justice Leiataualesa.

Nanai said they havent had any proceedings before Court against other businesses.

The matter continues today with the final submissions.
More than 50 members of the Samoa Police Womens Advisory Network (S.P.W.A.N.) yesterday joined the rest of the world in celebrating International Womens Day.

This years theme is Press for Progress and it marks the social, economic cultural and political achievements of women in all levels of society.

Among them were, Police Commissioner, Fuiavailili Egon Keil, Australian High Commissioner, Sara Moriarty, and C.E.O. of Samoa Tourism Authority, Papalii Sonja Hunter.

The day also marked a call to action for accelerating gender parity. President of Samoa Police Womens Advisory Network, Senior Sergeant Efo Moalele Tuua said the celebration is about honouring womens rights and their role in societies.

The significance of this day has emerged with diverse cultures and backgrounds across the world and is celebrated in different forms, she said.

The yearly celebration is a driving factor for S.P.W.A.N. to address issues that are relevant to their contribution to policing.

Also, to recognise the strength and the power of womens effort in the Samoa Police Service every year, to ensure safety and the security of our people.

Women in policing organisations are often intimidated by the fact that they work in a competitive environment with male colleagues.

Women are slowly moving into areas that have often been dominated by men in the Samoa Police Force and there are growing number of women making history by experiencing areas such as maritime, investigations and many more.

She also believes celebrating International Womens Day is an opportunity for external partners locally, regionally and internationally to realise the support of women.

This is the fifth time that we celebrate this special event with our colourful activities and programs which clarify the significance of women within families, workplaces religious and communities.

S.P.W.A.N was established in 2001, and there are 114 sworn members and 24 non-sworn members.

Theres a strong call to press for progress motivating and uniting friends, colleagues and communities to think, act and be gender inclusive.

S.P.W.A.N acknowledged everyone who participated in the event, especially the assistance of the Samoa Australian Police Partnership.
San Diego-based Sempra Energy wrapped up a massive $9.45 billion deal to acquire Oncor, the largest utility in Texas on Thursday.

Members of the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved the deal unanimously.

The deal will greatly expand Sempras corporate presence in the massive Texas energy market.

Sempra is the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric and Sempra officials say the funding of the acquisition will not result in any risk of higher bills for ratepayers.

Sempra makes a big move into Texas. Heres the full story:

The biggest deal in the 20-year history of San Diego-based energy giant Sempra wrapped up Thursday morning with a Texas-style pronouncement.

Yall are done, Public Utility Commission of Texas chairman DeAnn T. Walker told the parties after all three commissioners voted to approve Sempras acquisition of Dallas-based Oncor, the largest utility in the Lone Star State.

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The OK marked the clearing of the final regulatory hurdle in the $9.45 billion mega-deal that took nearly six months to wrap up. Sempra officials said after the vote that customary closing conditions to make the deal official should be completed shortly.

In a statement, Sempra CEO Debra L. Reed called the approval a significant milestone for both Oncor and Sempra Energy. We are pleased the Commission has found our transaction to be in the public interest. Sempra Energy is committed to being a good partner for the state and is supportive of Oncors mission to provide Texans with safe, reliable and affordable electric service.

Under the terms of the deal, Sempra will assume 80 percent ownership of Oncor, buying out the utilitys previous owners, Energy Futures Holdings, which declared bankruptcy in 2014.

Energy Futures Holdings was beset by a number of financial problems, including complications due to falling natural gas prices. By contrast, Oncor has been a consistent money-maker, posting a $431 million profit in 2016.

We believe this is an excellent outcome for our company, our customers and our employees, said Oncor CEO Bob Shapard in a statement. Sempra Energy is a well-run company, and we believe they will be a strong, stable majority owner for Oncor and an excellent partner for Texas.

Sempra officials have promised to keep Oncors headquarters in Dallas and maintain the independence of the utilitys board of directors.

The deal has an enterprise value of about $18.8 billion, including debt. Sempra has received financing commitments from RBC Capital Markets and Morgan Stanley to help fund the acquisition.

Sempra is the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas. Company officials have said the deals $9.45 billion price tag will not lead to any increase in bills from ratepayers, saying the Oncor acquisition is strictly a Sempra transaction that has no impact on rates among California utilities.

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Ten days ago, a federal bankruptcy judge signed off on the deal.

Sempra already has a number of assets in Texas  the company has an office in Houston with about 200 employees  but picking up Oncor will greatly expand its reach in the massive Texas energy market.

The deal adds another earnings stream for Sempra and its just transmission generation, which is about as low-risk as you can get, really, said Andy Smith, senior analyst who follows utilities for Edward Jones. We think there are good opportunities to add to Oncors infrastructure in Texas.

In addition to the size of the deal, Sempras bid for Oncor drew national business headlines. Last August, it appeared investment and business guru Warren Buffetts company, Berkshire Hathaway, was on track to pick up Oncor.

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But Sempra swooped in and bested Berkshire Hathaways $9 billion offer.

Oncor has consistently generated good profits and we would expect that to continue, Smith said, pointing to the rapid growth in wind energy in Texas as one area that may make the deal a winner for Sempra.

I dont the deal will be that big in terms of synergies (for Sempra and Oncor) or cost-cutting or those types of things, Smith said. I just think Texas is inherently a good market.

The search for a new majority owner of Oncor has taken four years. During that time, the Texas utility commission rejected offers from two other companies, citing concerns ranging from financing to increased risks to Texas ratepayers.

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But Sempra executives in recent months assiduously garnered support from all 10 intervenors  such as consumer advocates, business interests and government groups  to help smooth the way for the commission to approve the deal.

Oncor operates the largest distribution and transmission system in Texas, delivering power to more than 3.5 million homes and businesses while operating more than 134,000 miles of power lines.

Formed in 1998, Sempra boasts 32 million natural gas and electricity consumers worldwide. In addition to SDG&E and SoCalGas, Sempra has subsidiaries and assets in Mexico and South America. The company is also active in developing liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the Gulf Coast.

Sempra is one of only two Fortune 500 companies based in San Diego. The other is Qualcomm.

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rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski

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Sempra anticipates bigger returns on LNG project, thanks to tax reform

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President Trump is expected as early as Thursday to sign off on his controversial plan to slap stiff tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, but in a surprise reversal the White House opened the door to exemptions for products from Canada, Mexico and other U.S. allies.

Carve-outs for certain countries from Trumps proposed double-digit duties would mark a retreat from the presidents insistence earlier that the levy would be across the board.

And that could mollify leading U.S. trading partners and allies that have roundly criticized the tariffs and threatened to respond with retaliatory measures.

Excluding allies from the tariffs also could help Trump better focus on his intended target, China, especially at a time when the U.S. and other Western powers have begun to take a more skeptical view of Beijing in light of the Chinese leaderships increasingly assertive and expansionist activities.

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Though Chinas overproduction of steel is seen as the primary cause of a global glut, the United States gets a relatively small amount of imported metals from China. Instead, most U.S. steel and aluminum imports come from Canada and other allies.

So sharp opposition and threats of retaliation have come not from Beijing, but from Washingtons staunchest allies. European Union leaders Wednesday endorsed a plan to target for counter-tariffs items such as American steel, chewing tobacco and orange juice.

Right now what this is doing is getting all of Europes attention and energy, [and a] focus on pushing back against the United States, not pushing on China, said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown University law professor and former member of the World Trade Organizations appellate body.

Trumps announcement last week that he would apply blanket tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminum shocked trading partners and led to the resignation of the White House National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn.

As the White Houses top economic advisor, Cohn had been a moderating influence on Trumps protectionist impulses, but the president went ahead with the tariff proclamations despite Cohns advice and that of congressional Republicans and business leaders that such action could hurt economic growth and lead to a trade war.

On Wednesday, 107 House Republicans sent Trump a letter urging him to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trumps proposed tariffs would be formalized by weeks end. She said the final plan could allow countries to be excluded.

There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security and possibly other countries as well, based on that process, Sanders said. She added that decisions would be made on a case-by-case and country-by-country basis.

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Previously administration officials had resisted any exemptions, warning it would open a Pandoras box.

Trumps tariff authority comes from a U.S. law that allows the president wide discretion to apply duties or other restrictions if the Commerce Department has found imports present a threat to national security. That determination was made  the first time a U.S. president has done so under the law in decades.

After formally being announced by the president, the tariffs must be implemented within 15 days, Hillman said. That window would give nations and companies time to request exemptions.

The Commerce Departments report to Trump said exclusions from the tariffs could be made based on national security or if there was a lack of sufficient American production capacity.

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Canada is by far the largest single shipper of steel and aluminum to the United States. And Mexico, South Korea and Japan, as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organization members such as Germany and Turkey, stand to be among the biggest losers if the tariffs take effect.

China, by contrast, accounted for just 2.4% of all iron and steel imports to the United States last year, thanks to many prior American dumping duties placed against various Chinese steel products in preceding years.

I think ultimately that Mexico and Canada are part of the solution on steel, whether thats declared later this week or down the road, said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a group that has advocated for strong actions to protect U.S. steel producers.

Paul added, however, that we must ensure that the governments of Mexico and Canada are vigilant against circumvention, join the U.S. in active trade actions to keep excess steel out of the North American market, and renegotiate NAFTA to work better for workers in all three nations.

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Trump this week linked the metals tariffs to the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggesting that Canada and Mexico could get a pass only if they offered concessions on NAFTA renegotiations. Canadian and Mexican leaders rejected the connection.

China, for its part, has said very little about the proposed tariffs, apparently having decided to wait until the duties are finalized and made public. The Chinese know that Trump in the past has said one thing and changed his mind later.

The Chinese are trying to play the long game, whereas the EU and allies are frustrated, said Andy Rothman, a former economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and now an investment strategist for Matthews Asia in San Francisco. Their rhetoric was quite calm and restrained, he said, although prior to the tariff announcement, Beijing sent a warning that U.S. protectionist measures could be met with limits on American imports of sorghum and other farm goods to China.

In the last year, the administration has issued anti-dumping and illegal subsidy duties on individual Chinese products, as it has on those of other countries. Trump has also opened an investigation into Chinas theft of intellectual property and forced technology transfer, which could result in significant punitive actions such as large tariffs or restrictions on imported electronics from China.

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But many viewed across-the-board tariffs as a blunt instrument that would miss the target and undercut a united front with allies to tackle the problem. In short, analysts said, with the proposed tariffs, Trump was picking a fight with the very people he needed to help him pressure China.

It seems to almost target our friends more than China, said David M. Lampton, director of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

Lampton saw the tariffs as particularly ill-timed and counterproductive because the United States and others in the West have undertaken a broad reassessment of their approach to China after Beijings retreat from a 2013 pledge to liberalize its markets, as well as its aggressive actions in the South China Sea and at home to snuff out dissent.

And this week Chinas parliament began the process that would allow Chinese President Xi Jinping to rule for life, raising concerns in and outside of China of a return to dictatorship.

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Even as Trump himself has sent conflicting messages on China, excoriating Beijing on trade while praising Xi and his bid to eliminate term limits, the Trump administration has singled out China, along with Russia, as a major threat to American security and prosperity.

Before, the posture of the U.S. and many of its allies was largely to co-opt China into the global system on the presumption that its development would lead to a convergence with democratic institutions and open markets styled in the West. The American strategy had earlier sought to divide Russia and China in ways that might be in the U.S. national interest, Lampton said.

It seems to me that we have an overall national strategy that takes China and Russia to be co-equal, big-power competitors, [but] were alienating all the allies we need to deal with it, he said. What I see is this tariff thing comes in the context of redefining the era where we need friends.

China experts said the Obama administration had pressed Beijing to open Chinas financial services market, among other areas, only to see Chinese leaders drag their feet. Trump had said he would treat China more lightly on trade if Beijing cooperated with the U.S. in pressuring North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. The Chinese have helped but not as much as Trump has wanted.

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There are a lot of areas Beijing has not done what its supposed to do, Rothman said. The question is, whats the right mechanism for that? And going after steel and aluminum is not it. Thats not really where we will make the most gains that benefit most Americans.

don.lee@latimes.com

Follow me at @dleelatimes
Three months after pledging to finally resolve the long-running debate over how to regulate short-term rentals, Mayor Kevin Faulconers office says it is working on a proposal that could reach the City Council by April.

Whether Faulconer can craft a deal, though, that will win majority support after three years of failed efforts by the council remains uncertain.

The community debate over the proliferation of short-term rentals advertised on platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway is no less divisive than it was when the public hearing process began three years ago.

While some some council members have shown a greater willingness to back away from initial hard-line positions, consensus has been elusive.

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The council, in a day-long public hearing in December, appeared close to reaching a compromise on permitting short-term rentals while limiting the rise of commercial operators. But ultimately that consensus fell apart when a majority of council members could not agree on who could and could not rent out entire homes on a short-term basis.

The city attorneys office has concluded that rentals for periods of less than 30 days are illegal under the citys municipal code, but it is an opinion that is not being enforced.

Faulconers office confirmed that it is at work on drafting a proposal following meetings with more than two dozen stakeholders, including short-term rental platforms, as well as with various council members. But representatives said they were not ready yet to divulge details of what that proposal will say nor the outcome of their many meetings over the last few months.

Elyse Lowe, Faulconers staffer who is working on the short-term rental issue, said she is hopeful a plan can be crafted that will be supported by a majority of the council. A proposal could be completed as early as this month.

The plan is to first send the draft legislation to the councils Smart Growth and Land Use Committee for consideration before moving it to the full council.

One possible proposal that some believe may emerge from Faulconers office would allow San Diego residents to rent out their primary residence on a short-term basis plus one other home they own. It is unclear whether a mayoral proposal would allow for the operation of vacation rentals by non-residents.

Whatever proposal is advanced it will include a permit-based system, along with fees to cover administration and enforcement costs, said Christina Di Leva Chadwick, a spokesman for the mayors office.

We plan to add additional staff positions to handle enforcement so that the city can increase its responsiveness to calls on nuisance properties, she said in an email.

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Councilwoman Barbara Bry, whose district includes coastal communities that have attracted a large number of vacation rentals, said she is standing firm on her original proposal that would allow individuals to rent out only their primary residences and for no more than 90 days a year. She does support unlimited home-sharing where residents rent out a room in their home.

Bry had shown a willingness to compromise further in the December council meeting, partly in response to warnings from the California Coastal Commission that cities not overly restrict what it says is a form of affordable lodging on the coast.

But in an interview Wednesday, Bry said she is heartened by a California appellate court decision in January that effectively upheld a ban on short-term rentals in the city of Hermosa Beach. She pointed out that the ruling concluded that the citys ordinance did not violate the California Coastal Act, which governs new development projects, but not cities zoning rules.

Im still optimistic we can reach a compromise, said Bry, who met Wednesday with the mayors office about proposed short-term rental legislation. Im optimistic theyre putting together a proposal that protects our precious housing stock and has an effective enforcement method.

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Councilman David Alvarez says he would support regulations that would allow San Diego homeowners to rent out their primary residence on a short-term basis, plus one other unit. He is insistent, though, on securing an agreement with home sharing platforms to provide data on who their hosts are and how often they are renting out their units so that regulations can be better enforced.

You should be able to do whatever you want to do with your house, Alvarez said, but I think a second unit should be allowed because we have duplexes and triplexes in my community and people use that to help with their ever increasing cost of living.

Pressure is building to put in place regulations to tame the growth of such rentals. Last month the San Diego Unified School District board weighed in, passing a resolution urging the city to pass appropriate regulations.

And on Thursday, a coalition of town councils, largely representing the beach communities, is holding an evening forum to discuss ideas for regulating vacation rentals. The group supports rules customized for different communities in the city, some affected more than others by home sharing.

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Our message is that town councils are joining together and we are going to make our voices heard and if not now, then in the (council) elections, said Ann Kerr Bache, who is chairing a recently formed vacation rental working group.

Councilman Chris Cate, who has been pushing for a more permissive approach to regulating vacation rentals for the last several years, says he is willing to compromise but has grown weary of the failed efforts to do anything.

Im still skeptical but trying to remain optimistic, Cate said of a compromise. We want to end this but theres only so far Im willing to go to impede on someones rights to take part in this activity.

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lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com

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Twitter: @loriweisberg
Five months after they were forced to close their popular Hacienda de Vega restaurant in Escondido, the family behind the popular Mexican eateries will open a new location today on the border of Rancho Santa Fe and Encinitas.

The new Hacienda de Vega, at the intersection of Rancho Santa Fe Road and Manchester Avenue, is located in the Rancho Santa Fe Plaza shopping center. Company founder and president Alonso Vega-Albela said its been a challenging time, but hes happy with the result.

We are very happy to be back doing what we enjoy, he said. It certainly has been one of the most difficult transitions of my professional career, but the support of our Escondido fans and the trust and willingness of my staff to take this leap of faith with me got us through it.

Hacienda de Vega Restaurants president Alonso Vega-Albela, center, with his daughters Joselle, left, and Jovanna, right, inside the new location on Rancho Santa Fe Road. (Pam Kragen/San Diego Union-Tribune )

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Hacienda de Vega takes over the space formerly occupied by Bentleys Steak & Chop House, which closed in December when its owner retired.

Vega-Albela said he gutted the former Bentleys space and put in all new furnishings, including a new wood floor and new furniture and decor from Mexico.

The dining room now features a burbling fountain, hanging lanterns and illuminated faux trees that re-create some of the outdoor charm of the companys Escondido location, which closed on Sept. 30.

The former location at 2608 S. Escondido Blvd. was one of the citys most popular restaurants for 15 years. It was known for its scenic dining deck surrounding a large pond and waterfall.

The building in Escondido was built in 1948 as the model home for a community of adobe home properties in the area. In 1962, it was converted into a Mexican restaurant that changed hands several times. Vega-Albela leased the space and gave it his family name in 2003.

Last year, negotiations for a lease extension on the property fell through, and Vega-Albela stunned the community when he announced the closure on Facebook just hours before its final dinner service. More than 100,000 Facebook followers viewed the post over the next 24 hours and more than 600 people posted comments on their heartbreak and memories.

Vega-Albela, who lives in 4S Ranch with his family, said it was heartbreaking to close his first restaurant  they also have a 4-year-old location at 5806 Van Allen Way in Carlsbad  but he was overwhelmed by the publics response.

We were very humbled to see what happened. Our customers really responded to our news and have been so supportive, he said.

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Almost all of the Escondido locations employees were given temporary jobs at the Carlsbad location until the new Rancho Santa Fe restaurant was ready. Carlsbad employees offered to work reduced shifts over the past several months to accommodate the Escondido workers, many of whom have been with the company for 10 or more years, Vega-Albela said.

Although the new 4,200-square-foot Rancho Santa Fe location has a smaller footprint than the former 1-acre Escondido location, it has more seating, with 114 seats indoors and 115 on the patio. It also has a private dining room with a communal table and a full bar.

The restaurant serves the same menu, developed by family matriarch and executive chef Patricia Vega. She was raised in Mexico City and her dishes reflects the cuisine and ingredients of that region. There are no combination plates or American-style yellow cheese on the dishes.

Vega-Albela said his goal with the new location is to upgrade the experience for diners.

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Were elevating our brand, he said.

Bentleys was known for its extensive wine list. Vega-Albela said he wont try to compete with that, but he is bringing in a selection of 35 fine wines from Latin America. He is serving Monte Xanic wines from Mexicos Valle de Guadalupe and Maestro Dobel tequila from Jalisco, Mexico. There are also wines from Chile, Argentina and elsewhere in South America.

I dont want to pretend to be something that we are not and a wine destination we are not, he said. But I do know that our guests (here) are used to a good variety of styles and complexities in their wine so Im trying to make that available.

The restaurant is now serving lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch.

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Hacienda de Vega

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to close (around 10 p.m.) daily. Sunday brunch service from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Where: 1621 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road, Encinitas (at Manchester Avenue)

Phone: (760) 738-9804

Online: haciendadevega.com

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The new Hacienda de Vega restaurant in Rancho Santa Fe Plaza replaces one that closed last fall in Escondido. (Pam Kragen/San Diego Union-Tribune )

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pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
As executive director and founder of Brother Bennos, Harold Kutler got paid $1 a year. He used to joke that he was overpaid.

He felt he was overpaid because he loved what he was doing, said his son, Jim Kutler.

Harold and his late wife Kay started the nonprofit as a soup kitchen in 1983. He opened it in a cottage he owned on Minnesota and Cleveland Avenues in Oceanside.

With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the small soup kitchen grew into a nonprofit serving thousands of the areas poor and homeless, helping them turn their lives around.

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Kutler, who spent most of his time over the last three decades at the soup kitchen, died of complications after a fall on March 6 in his home in Oceanside. He was 91.

At the first meal the Kutlers served, they brought their teenage kids and their friend Brother Benno, who cooked up a large kettle of soup. Benno, a Benedictine monk at Prince of Peace Abbey, gave out bread to the areas poor and inspired the Kutlers in their efforts.

When 18 men who lived on the streets started lining up for soup that first day, his wife went over and gave each one a hug. Kutler was set on making folks feel like family.

He came every week to the store and went around and gave everyone a hug, said Brother Benno thrift shop manager Michelle Hoppe. He wanted us all to feel appreciated and part of the Benno family.

He once said, We want to give respect and love to people who come, Its not tough love, its unconditional but there are rules.

He taught so many of us the meaning of unconditional love,  said longtime volunteer Helen Parsons.

He loved everyone and was able to see value in each individual regardless of who they were or what they may have been, said Suzy Martinek, a volunteer and board member of the Brother Benno Foundation. He listened to what a person was saying, considered the message, and his response was caring, meaningful and sincere.

Kutler traced the spark for his soup kitchen to hearing a talk by Mother Teresa in 1976 and meeting Brother Benno. Kutler wanted to start a ministry to help the poor while he was still working, but the idea didnt come to fruition until he retired.

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In reality, I wasnt ready for the challenge of loving service to Gods poor. I had to do a lot more growing and wait patiently for Gods call, he said in his book Soup, Soap, Hugs and Hope: The Story of Brother Bennos Life-Changing Soup Kitchen, written with help from Barbara Ladwig, a longtime Brother Benno volunteer.

The nonprofit runs a 26-week, 12-step recovery program and operates seven recovery homes. Participants work at the thrift store at 3955 Mission Ave., in exchange for food, housing and clothing while attending AA meetings and receiving mentoring.

At the heart of the program is a hot breakfast served six days a week to some 200 folks of all ages who line up before 6 a.m. for what for many is their only warm meal for the day. The meal is cooked by graduates of the recovery programs and served by community volunteers in the dining room of the main center on Production Avenue, which is lined with picnic benches. The nonprofit served its 4 millionth meal last year in February.

Harold dedicated his life to serving the poor and the downtrodden. He was a good man and a good friend. He will be greatly missed, said former Oceanside Mayor Jim Wood.

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Kutler, who was born on Sept. 22,1926, was raised by a Catholic mother and Jewish father. He was about to become a priest, but he had to help his father out after an illness running the familys vitamin business.

He quietly counseled everyone and his door was always open, said Parsons. He made people feel comfortable and he had wisdom.

He wanted to make sure to leave a kind word and spiritual encouragement with everyone who crossed his path, said his son Jim Kutler.

Kutler is survived by his sisters, June Bently and Patricia Brotman, both of San Francisco; his sons, Jim Kutler and Kevin Kutler, both of Oceanside; his daughter Cayley Kutler; and his grandchildren, Brandon Kutler Beveridge and Blake Kutler Beveridge, all of Carlsbad.

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A funeral will be held at 1 p.m., following a Rosary at 12:30 p.m., March 17 at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church, 609 Pier View Way, Oceanside. A reception will be held afterwards at the Brother Bennos Center.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Brother Bennos Foundation. Visit brotherbenno.org or call (760) 439-1244.
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. David Brahms, who fought in Vietnam, is slated to speak at the Veterans Association of North County resource center at a ceremony to honor local Vietnam veterans.

The Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans event, slated for March 30, is the first of its kind hosted at the VANC center in Oceanside and hearkens back to the day that the last American troops left Vietnam March 29, 1973.

It is all about giving a Welcome Home salute to all the service members who got a less than welcome when they came back, said Vietnam veteran Scott Wolf, a member of the Veterans Association of North County.

The inaugural Welcome Home commemoration is a collaboration between the Oceanside-based nonprofit Veterans Association of North County and Carlsbad-based Hospice of the North Coast

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Each veteran will be recognized with an honorary lapel pin provided by the U.S. Department of Defenses Vietnam War Commemoration.

Special recognition will be given to the more than 1,600 Americans who remain missing in action in Southeast Asia as a result of the Vietnam War.

Veterans will be encouraged to wear military-related attire and bring photos and mementos of their service days.

This is a chance for our veterans from around North County and throughout the region to come together, receive recognition and share memories of their service days, said Hospice of the North Coast Executive Director Sharon Lutz, whose brother-in-law John Trowbridge served in the Vietnam War.

The event planning committee is led by VANC President Chuck Atkinson, who serves on Hospice of the North Coasts Board of Directors and is chairman of its Veterans Committee.

Brahms, a Carlsbad resident, served with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Danang, Vietnam. His military awards include the high Legion of Merit Bronze Star with Combat V. Since retiring from active military service in 1988, Brahms, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been a strong advocate for veterans.

The event includes lunch and is free to Vietnam-era veterans and their families.

A social hour begins at 9 a.m., followed by the program at 10 a.m. and lunch at 11:30 a.m. at the center, 1617 Mission Ave.

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Reservations are recommended. Sponsorships are available. RSVP at (760) 722-1277 or hospicenorthcoast.org. Also, visit vancnorthcounty.org
National City police will have access to personal information collected by the state Employment Development Department to help track down a person during the course of an investigation.

The information  such as a persons phone number and address  will be made available to the National City Police Department under a three-year contract with the EDD.

State law requires employers to pass along to the EDD the personal information of an employee when he or she is hired.

The information is considered confidential. However, state law allows the EDD to share with a law enforcement agency the address, telephone number, birth date, Social Security number and physical description of a current or former employee who has a felony arrest warrant or is considered by police to be a victim, suspect, missing person or potential witness.

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The personal information must be requested as part of an investigation into a missing persons case or a suspected felony.

The National City Police Department has obtained personal information from the EDD in the past, mostly in missing persons cases, officials said.

While the practice is not new, the EDD has made it a requirement for law enforcement agencies to agree to a contract. The change came in 2015 after the EDD began to charge reimbursement costs for the sharing of data  a move allowed by law.

Under the contract with the EDD, National City police will pay up to $2,436 for the data-sharing services, including $1,500 in administrative fees. The city will use money from its general fund to pay for the costs, according to a city staff report.

Approved by the City Council last month, the contract began March 1.

Lt. Graham Young, of the National City police investigations unit, said he anticipates the vast majority of the cases will involve a missing person.

In many of these types of cases, the missing person doesnt have a criminal history and, as a result, is not in other databases available to law enforcement, leaving police with minimal information and leads.

Young said the EDD database is yet another investigative tool in the departments toolbox.

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The Police Department, like other agencies, has access to law enforcement databases such as National Crime Information Center records and the California Law Enforcement Telecommunication System.

The NCIC database, which is maintained by the FBI, includes a variety of records, including files on missing or wanted persons and registered sex offenders.

CLETS also comprises a variety of databases. In addition, it allows agencies the ability to send one another messages.

Although the databases exist, Young said the information oftentimes is not complete.

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The system is only as good as the information thats put in, and sometimes the information that is put in isnt complete, he said.

He added of the EDD contract: Its widening the net so we can get as much information as we can when we need it.

To submit a request to the EDD for information, the National City Police Department will use a secure file transfer system, which the EDD then will use to share the data. The information will be automatically deleted from the system 21 days later, according to the contract.

The contract calls for the Police Department to implement safeguards.

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Young said the Police Department plans to have one investigators request and handle the information. He said the Police Department will do periodic checks and require that passwords for the secure system be changed periodically.

Under the contract, the EDD has the right to audit the police departments handling of information and safeguards.

Young noted it is a crime for an officer to misuse confidential information.

Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

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Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
If anyone wonders why so much attention is being focused on the 100th birthday of the late Leonard Bernstein, the American musical multi-hyphenate, a clear explanation was offered by accomplished clarinetist David Shifrin.

Bernstein was arguably the most important musician of the 20th century. Its as simple as that, said Shifrin, who is part of a Curtis Institute of Music tour that will stop for a tribute concert Sunday afternoon at the Athenaeum Chamber Series in La Jolla.

He did everything. He was a brilliant composer, first-class conductor and a fine music director.

The classically trained Bernstein was conversant in many musical styles, ranging from symphonies and chamber music to jazz, ballet and Broadway. Perhaps his most popular work was the score for West Side Story, but hes remembered for so much more.

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As an educator, I dont think anybody has done more to promote music to the masses, said Shifrin, who, like Bernstein, is an alumnus of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. At the beginning of his great career, he developed the Young Peoples Concerts television series. Its worth watching them on YouTube.

He did more than anyone in my generation  or probably in history  to bring the joys of music to so many people.

Shifrin said he was thrilled to be invited for Curtis on Tour, which annually features alumni and students from the prestigious music school. This year, the performers include alumni Shifrin and tenor Dominic Armstrong with the Zora String Quartet (Curtis quartet in residence) and competition-winning student Jiacheng Xiong on piano.

Its absolutely the greatest idea for musicians who have proven they can play, but need to start the performance part of their careers, Shifrin said. Mixing faculty and students helps them make the transition from the classroom and studio to the stage. It provides experience that is often elusive for students. And its a terrific opportunity for audiences to hear unbelievably talented musicians.

Sundays concert will also provide a sense of Bernsteins evolution as a composer and demonstrate his remarkable versatility.

The program is likely to begin with Bernsteins first published piece, Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. Shifrin noted that the eclectic piece reflects the influences from Bernsteins mentors, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith.

The linear melodic lines remind me of Hindemith and the fourth and fifth interval harmonies that you hear in both, said the clarinetist, who is also a solo performer and a longtime professor at the Yale School of Music. The second movement has spicy rhythms and jazz inflections Bernstein picked up while staying in Key West.

Shifrin said he expects the program to include a work by Copland. And he promises that all the musicians will collaborate on Maria and other pieces from West Side Story in the second half. Another Curtis alumnus, John B. Hedges, was commissioned to arrange the songs into a chamber-music suite.

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Its very successful, in that the arrangement has so much of the color of the full instrumentation and the intimacy of chamber music, Shifrin said. It serves as a vehicle of the voice. (Tenor) Dominic is remarkable.

In the case of Maria, its up there with any of the famous arias by composers like Verdi and Puccini. It is the most gorgeous thing.

2017-2018 Chamber Series: A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein

When: 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla

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Tickets: $40-$45

Phone: (858) 454-5872

Online: ljathenaeum.org/chamber-concert-series

More Bernstein: The San Diego Symphony will present several tribute concerts to Leonard Bernstein, including May performances conducted by Maestro Jahja Ling, who studied with the famed musician. In August, the Symphonys Bayside Summer Nights will feature music from West Side Story and the La Jolla Music Societys SummerFest will present a program titled Late Night with Leonard Bernstein.

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Wood is a freelance writer.
The Ten Tenors, one of Australias most successful touring troupes, bring their new spring show, Wish You Were Here, to San Diego on Saturday. Hitting 22 cities worldwide, the vocal wonders from down under celebrate their 20-year anniversary and the release of their latest album  Wish You Were Here  an homage to the lives and legends of classical and contemporary musics greatest performers who are no longer with us. The album includes the songs of John Lennon (Imagine), Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah), David Bowie (Heroes) and Michael Jackson (The Way You Make Me Feel). The New York Times wrote: If you thought the sound of three tenors was impressive, just wait until you hear The Ten Tenors.

The Ten Tenors Wish You Were Here Tour: 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., San Diego. Tickets start at $36 (includes a $2.50 facility fee.) (619) 570-1100. sandiegotheatres.org

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carolina.gusman@sduniontribune.com
Police shot an armed man who threatened to blow up the federal building in Long Beach on Wednesday, ending a standoff that triggered a lockdown at City Hall, authorities said.

The suspect died at a local hospital, according to the Long Beach Police Department. No officers were injured.

The incident began shortly before 4 p.m., when a woman reported that her husband was making the threats and was armed in a white Chevy van, said Long Beach Police Sgt. Bradley Johnson.

Officers spotted a vehicle matching the description parked in the 300 block of West Ocean Boulevard, near City Hall. SWAT officers and crisis negotiators were called to the scene.

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The man, who was not identified, was not complying with orders to put down the weapon.

Authorities closed Ocean Boulevard in both directions from Magnolia to Pacific avenues.

Before the shooting, Mayor Robert Garcia on Twitter said he was at City Hall with his staff and advised people to avoid the area. He tweeted that police were escorting city employees out of the building.

Everyone in the building is safe, he said.

We have a barricaded suspect with a gun near City Hall. Police are on the scene. City Hall is on lockdown and everyone in the building is safe. Im here at City Hall with the team. Please stay away from Ocean and Magnolia.  Robert Garcia (@RobertGarciaLB) March 8, 2018

Overnight, Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department bomb technicians investigated the van along with two other vehicles associated with the suspect, a Long Beach garage and a box cargo truck in Granada Hills, said Deputy Grace Medrano, a department spokeswoman. They did not find any explosives or suspicious items.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek

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UPDATES:

March 8, 8:50 a.m.: This article was updated with confirmation of the suspects death.

March 8, 7:15 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the suspects status and the bomb technicians investigation

March 7, 6:40 p.m.: This article was updated with information about the shooting of the suspect.

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5:40 p.m.: This article was updated with new details from Long Beach police.

This article was originally published at 5 p.m.
In the days before a man allegedly fired guns from a sixth-story Bankers Hill condo during a police standoff in 2015  leading authorities to briefly divert plane landings at San Diego International Airport  his friends found he was not himself, his attorney said.

Some of those who talked with Titus Nathan Colbert Jr. were taken aback by the nonlinear conversations, the rambling, the mentions of the Illuminati, defense attorney Melissa Tralla told a San Diego jury Wednesday.

He was paranoid. He was delusional. He was psychotic, Tralla said. And he was not the Titus Colbert they knew.

Authorities say Colbert, now 35, knew what he was doing on Nov. 4, 2015, when they say he armed himself with two rifles and a pistol, broke into his ex-girlfriends top-floor condo and later exchanged gunfire with police.

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He faces a slew of charges, including four counts of attempted murder on a peace officer. Opening statements and trial testimony got under way Wednesday in the courtroom of San Diego Superior Court Louis Hanioan.

Colbert is looking at multiple life terms if convicted.

We believe the evidence will demonstrate Mr. Colbert was aware of what was going on around him, aware of what he was doing  and able to form decisions, Deputy District Attorney Michael Runyon told the jury during his opening statement.

And that, he said, is the case even if Colbert had a mental health issue or suffered a psychotic episode.

What started with initial gunfire, turned into a five-hour standoff that briefly made national news when flights were diverted from busy San Diego International Airport. The standoff on Brant Street also led to temporary closures of streets and schools in the area.

Runyon told the jury that, in the days before the incident, none of Colberts friends noticed that his behavior was odd.

Two days before the shooting, Colbert  who had been living in Las Vegas  showed up unannounced at his ex-girlfriends place in Bankers Hill, Runyon said. She shooed him away.

But she was so unnerved by him, she and her daughter stayed the night at her sisters house, Runyon said.

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Through a series of calls and texts, she came to realize he had broken into her home. She texted that he was going to go to jail. Among his replies: I am going to be a star, Runyon said.

She called police, met up with them near her condo and handed them her keys.

At least two officers and a police dog entered the home. When they reached the master bedroom door and tried to push it open, Colbert fired at them through the barricaded door, Runyon said.

One of the officers fired back, and they retreated and took cover. Thats when the lengthy SWAT standoff began.

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No one was wounded during the exchange.

The first witness on the stand Wednesday was Jessica Almazan, who is the mother of Colberts two children. She said they started seeing each other about a decade ago, and dated off and on for the next five years.

During a brief bit of testimony outside the presence of the jury, Almazan said she became aware of the standoff after a friend tipped her to the media coverage.

She called Colbert at least three times while he was holed up.

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In the third call, she told Colbert to toss the guns and surrender himself. Colbert told her he was hearing voices.

Authorities say he did toss one of the rifles and the pistol out of a bedroom window later. The third rifle was found underneath a pile of clothes in the room.

The long guns, it would turn out, were not his. Authorities say he swiped them from his roommate in Las Vegas before heading to San Diego.

In previous court appearances, Colbert has sang and shouted, sometimes mentioning the Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society.

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During opening statements, Colbert had a few relatively small outbursts  each time to refute statements the prosecutor made as he gave the jury an overview of the case and anticipated evidence.

Colbert stayed quiet after a warning from the judge.

His attorney, Tralla, told the jury that he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and bipolar by the time he was 16. She said a doctor would testify that Colbert had suffered a psychotic break before the standoff.

Colberts trial could run an estimated three weeks.

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teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
A Tijuana municipal judge is charged with drug smuggling after 38 pounds of cocaine were found hidden in his Jeep Liberty while crossing the border, according to a complaint filed in San Diego federal court.

Eduardo Francisco Sais Peinado was arrested Feb. 10 at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, according to the complaint and jail records.

A Tijuana city official said Sais was fired from his judicial post that same day for a work-related matter but declined to elaborate further, including if the arrest had anything to do with the dismissal.

Sais was alone in his Jeep when crossing about 6:20 p.m. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer conducting inspections approached him as he waited in the pre-primary lanes. Sais presented his border crossing card and said he was headed to Chula Vista, according to the complaint. He said he had nothing to declare and that the only people who use the Jeep are him and his girlfriend, the complaint states.

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The officers used a device that tests the density of vehicle parts and got a high reading on the door panels, the complaint says. Sais again said he had nothing to declare.

Officers became more suspicious when a drug-sniffing dog alerted to a door, and an X-ray found anomalies in passenger doors, the complaint says.

An officer eventually found 11 packages of cocaine hidden in the front and rear passenger doors, as well as five packages in the rear door.

Sais has pleaded not guilty. He has agreed to remain in federal custody without bail.

Sais had been working as a municipal judge in the city since the previous administration, the official said. Municipal judges oversee cases involving violations of city law, including traffic infractions.

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kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
Lindsey Philpott leaned over the lifelike female mannequin, modestly draped in a white sheet, and wrapped a cord around its ankles.

He explained his knots to jurors as he wove the red polypropylene rope in figure eights until the mannequins heels and ankles were held firmly together.

A little later, he performed similar maneuvers with another length of cord, tying the mannequins wrists together.

The retired charter boat captain from Long Beach, who described himself as a forensic knot analyst, testified Wednesday in the wrongful death lawsuit against Adam Shacknai.

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Shacknai is accused by the family of Rebecca Zahau of possibly sexually assaulting and strangling her, then hanging her body from a balcony at the Coronado mansion of her millionaire boyfriend, Jonah Shacknai.

The nude body was bound hand and foot, and a T-shirt was used as a gag in her mouth.

Defense attorneys have said there is no DNA or fingerprint evidence to place Shacknai at the scene, except at the guest house where he had spent the night before finding Zahaus body.

Philpott testified that he believes Zahau was hogtied originally, with the rope from her ankles connected to the rope at her wrists. The ropes were not connected when authorities collected their evidence.

Sheriffs officials and the county Medical Examiners office ruled that her July 13, 2011 death was a suicide. Zahaus family contends it was murder and that Adam Shacknai was the only other person present at the mansion.

Plaintiffs attorney C. Keith Greer hired Philpott as a knot-tying expert to demonstrate how Zahaus hands and feet were bound in intricate knots.

Philpott described the overhand and clove hitch knots found on the body as common in nautical uses. Shacknai, from Memphis, works as a tugboat captain.

Under cross-examination from Shacknai attorney Dan Webb, though, Philpott acknowledged that both knots are simple and widely used.

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Describing the overhand knot  the kind used to tie shoelaces  Philpott noted, Children can do it, gorillas can do it, birds can do it, people of all kinds can do it.

Webb also noticed that when Philpott finished tying up the mannequins ankles, the knots were not facing the same way as shown in an autopsy photo of Zahaus body. Philpott agreed that his knots are in the wrong place.

He said the wrist knots he made were tight, while it was apparent that the original knots on Zahaus wrists were loose enough for authorities to slip them off intact, without cutting the rope.

Webb asked Philpott if he could tell, from the crime scene photos of the knots, whether Shacknai had tied them.

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I was not trying to identify the individual, Philpott said.

The realistic mannequin was made with simulated musculature under its skin. Fingernails and toenails were coated in fingernail polish to closely match what appeared on Zahau in crime scene photos.

When Greer laid the mannequin on a table, with jurors out of the courtroom, Judge Katherine Bacal ordered that its female form be disguised better beneath its sheet. The legs were seen only from the knees to toes, and arms from the elbows to hands.

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pauline.repard@sduniontribune

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Twitter: @pdrepard
A woman who was separated from her young daughter after asking for asylum at the San Diego border has been released from detention after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on her behalf.

Her seven-year-old daughter remains at a facility in Chicago. The ACLU hopes the family will soon be reunited and is working to find the mother a place to live in Chicago.

Immigration officials did not give the womans attorneys much notice before releasing her from Otay Mesa Detention Center, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLUs Immigrants Rights Project.

Everything was very abrupt, and she was released without warning, Gelernt said. They said it was mandatory release because of the lawsuit, and they were letting her out.

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An attorney picked the woman up and got her a hotel until she can go to Chicago, Gelernt said.

Shes overwhelmed with emotion and happiness, Gelernt said. I think shes basically in shock, just trying to get her bearings.

Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed the womans release.

This individual is no longer in ICE custody, Mack said. No other details are available in light of pending litigation.

According to court documents filed by the government attorneys on Wednesday, the woman withdrew her asylum claim in January and was ordered removed from the U.S.

Her immigration attorney then asked for a judge to reconsider her case, and ICE granted a stay on her deportation on Tuesday, the filing says. Then, officials released her from detention.

The court document also says that ICE officials have doubts that the woman and child are related and that they are in the process of getting DNA testing for the case.

The woman and then-six year old asked for asylum from the Democratic Republic of Congo at the San Ysidro port of entry at the beginning of November. They were held a few days together before officials sent them to different long-term custody facilities.

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When the officers separated them, Ms. L. could hear her daughter in the next room frantically screaming that she wanted to remain with her mother, the complaint says, using the lawsuits nickname for the Congolese woman.

The daughter has since turned seven.

The lawsuit, which argues that the government should not be able to split families without a court hearing where officials have to justify the reason, is ongoing at least until the mother is reunited with her child, Gelernt said.

There remain many other families who have been separated, and we will continue to attack this horrific family separation practice, Gelernt said.

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Federal officials have floated the idea of separating families at the border as a deterrent but have not made an official policy change.

Along the southwest border, various human rights groups have spotlighted individual cases, including four fathers whose children were taken from them after they came to the San Ysidro port of entry to ask for asylum.

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Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
President Donald Trump will visit California next week, the White House confirmed Wednesday afternoon.

Trump is expected to spend part of Tuesday in San Diego visiting the prototypes for his border wall, a key component of his campaign platform, before going to a Republican fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Opposition to Trumps border wall has become a frequent talking point for California politicians eager to show their progressive state that theyre standing up to the Republican leader.

The San Diego City Council approved a resolution in September opposing the wall.

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Though officials anticipated protests while the prototypes were under construction, the area near the Otay Mesa port of entry has seen little activity beyond specially-trained groups evaluating the walls.

Other than a group projecting images with lights from south of the border that supported immigrants and refugees, the only organized action at the prototypes was a December pro-wall rally. A counter-protest temporarily interrupted that rally.

Jeff Schwilk, founder of San Diegans for Secure Borders and one of the organizers of the pro-wall rally, said hes planning another event in support of Trumps visit to the prototypes.

We welcome President Trumps visit to San Diego to inspect his new border wall prototypes and to see how our existing secure double fence in San Diego has reduced illegal border crossings here by over 90 percent during the past 10 to 15 years, Schwilk said. San Diego is living proof that border fences and walls keep us safe and we look forward to President Trump fulfilling his main campaign promise of finally securing our border.

Ben Bergquam, one of the founders of Fight Sanctuary State and one of the organizers of the Build the Wall rally, said he planned to return to San Diego for Schwilks event.

We will be supporting every effort to build the wall and secure our borders, Bergquam said. Its time to protect American dreamers.

When asked about possible protests and what security would be required for the presidents visit, a representative for the Sheriffs Department said, We are in the planning stages.

Though border officials initially said they would set up a free speech zone for protests during prototype construction, the Sheriffs Department told the San Diego Union-Tribune in late September that such an area didnt exist.

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Michael Workman, a spokesman for the county, said he anticipated that officials would put a temporary area restriction in place, which they have used in the past to ban implements of riot when they anticipated large groups might gather at the site, but he did not know details yet.

San Diego police did not respond to questions about preparations.

Security for the prototypes cost the city of San Diego $278,000 and the sheriff nearly $900,000.

The last time Trump was in San Diego, police in riot gear dispersed the large crowds that gathered downtown, some in protest and others in support of the controversial then-candidate.

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Andrea Guerrero, executive director of Alliance San Diego, an organization that has staunchly opposed Trumps wall and other immigration policies, said she hoped that Trump would realize that hes coming to a place where immigrants make up a significant portion of the population.

Hes coming to the land of immigrants, and he would do well to be respectful and recognize the dignity of the people who have built this state and contributed to the national economy and to understand that our border region in particular is a gateway to trade and opportunity, Guerrero said.

She hoped he would listen to local perspectives on the border when he comes.

Were concerned about his myopic obsession with the wall, and were concerned about what happens in the shadow of that wall, which is the further militarization of our region, Guerrero added. We need to be more than a talking point in his fantastical world view. We should be considered a real stakeholder that provides input into decisions made about the border.

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She didnt think that was a likely outcome.

Given that he has waited more than a year to come down to visit the border, the place hes spent a year talking about, it is unlikely that he will be open to listening, Guerrero said.

Construction began on the prototypes in September and evaluation began at the end of November. Officials tested how easily someone could climb, break through or dig under the barriers.

None of the eight prototypes has yet been chosen by the Department of Homeland Security.

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A recent construction project on border barriers in Calexico hailed by some as the first part of the border wall is not based on any of the prototypes.

Some have speculated that a visit from the president would be part of the final selection process.

When asked why it had taken Trump so long into his presidency to visit the Golden State, the press secretary for the White House, Sarah Sanders, responded, I think its because hes been busy growing the economy, creating jobs, defeating ISIS, remaking the judiciary. Id be happy to name off some other successes.

Trumps visit will come days after his administration sued the state of California over immigration policy.

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Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

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Follow me on Facebook for live updates about immigration news

kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
San Diego Fire-Rescue Chief Brian Fennessy is leaving the job after two-and-a-half years for a position leading the Orange County Fire Authority.

He will be replaced on an interim basis by Kevin Ester, who has been serving as assistant chief of business operations.

The city plans to launch an open recruitment next week for a permanent replacement for Fennessy, whose last day will be April 13.

Fennessy, 58, was the driving force behind upgrading the citys helicopter program, which now has two firefighting and rescue helicopters with night-flying capability that are available for water drops and rescues throughout the county.

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He has also focused on building new fire stations, reducing emergency response times and boosting the diversity of new firefighters.

Chief Fennessy has been an outstanding leader of our Fire-Rescue Department and we wish him well as he takes on this great opportunity, Mayor Kevin Faulconer said in a news release.

Fennessy and Faulconer said the department is in good hands with Ester.

Hes the right person for the job, Fennessy said.

Fennessy, who joined the department in 1990 and was appointed chief in September 2015, said he is looking forward to his new position.

My family and I view this next chapter in our lives as an outstanding opportunity for personal and professional growth, he said in the city news release.

Fennessy said he didnt seek the job in Orange County.

I was actually approached multiple times, he said.

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His pay appears likely to increase sharply. His base salary as San Diegos fire chief is $180,000. The salary of the previous chief in Orange County was $245,000.

Fennessys new salary hasnt been disclosed because his hiring wont be official until the fire protection board in Orange County approves it next week.

Fennessy will take over a department in some turmoil. The Orange County Fire Authority is in an escalating battle with the Orange County Sheriffs Department over helicopter jurisdiction.

Fennessy said he wasnt hired specifically to solve those problems, but added that hes confident he can help.

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Theyre solvable, he said. This is just one of those situations where relationships need to be built and they need to get better.

Ester, 53, has been with the department for nearly 33 years, climbing the ranks as a firefighter, engineer, captain, battalion chief and deputy chief. He has worked a wide range of assignments across the city and in several administrative positions, including the departments logistics division.

In 2016, Ester became assistant chief of business operations where he oversaw community risk reduction, the emergency command and data center, professional standards and human resources.

I am humbled and honored to be given this opportunity to lead the men and women of our Fire-Rescue Department, Ester said in the city news release. We have a workforce that gives their all in service to the citizens of our city, and have every day since 1989.

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Ester said at a news conference on Thursday morning that he is a candidate to become Fennessys permanent replacement.

His annual salary will increase from $157,000 to $180,000 when he takes over as interim chief.

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david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick
A 10th-grade Olympian High School student was arrested Wednesday evening on suspicion of posting a school shooting threat on social media, Chula Vista police said.

School officials at the Magdalena Avenue campus alerted police to the threat around 3:30 p.m. Police released few details about what it depicted, saying only that it was spotted on on Instagram.

Employees were able to determine who the student was, and officers went to the girls house, police Lt. Eric Thunberg said.

She was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats about 6:20 p.m. Officers did not find any weapons in her home.

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Local schools have been confronting a wave of school threats in the weeks following a deadly school shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead. Some contained violent images or messages while others were shared online or scrawled on school property.

Wednesdays arrest is at least the fifth police have made of a juvenile suspected of making criminal threats in recent weeks.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
Asking Republican lawmakers Wednesday about the hush money that President Donald Trumps lawyer paid to an adult film star shortly before the 2016 presidential election and the lawsuit it spawned this week tended to generate terse, uninterested and/or sheepish replies.

To me, it has nothing to do with me being a congressman, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., in one representative response.

Not so for Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., who has shown an unusual willingness to speak up about Trumps alleged misdeeds.

Its nefarious, its awkward, its unpleasant, its unseemly, he said Wednesday. Its not something people feel that comfortable talking about, but frankly its something we ought to talk about, because it is a big deal.

In this case, Sanfords decision to speak out could be seen as surprising, given his personal history. Sanford admitted to having an affair in 2009 while serving as South Carolinas governor under dramatic circumstances that nearly led to his impeachment and the end of his political career.

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While acknowledging the irony posed by his past, Sanford said Wednesday in two interviews with Washington Post reporters that he could not ignore the issues raised by the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn star in question.

People make mistakes, and they do things that they regret, he said. That said, hush money is a big deal, particularly if its not ancient history. Were talking about a payment in October of 2016. That is not a long time ago. Were talking about money that was exchanged in the midst of a presidential campaign. I think thats problematic, and I think it needs to be viewed for what it is.

Sanford said the essential issue is fairness.

If the shoe were on the other foot and there was a Democratic presidential candidate who had done the same, Republicans would probably be holding hearings right now, he said. So what we cant do is circle the wagons based on tribalism and say were gonna protect those in our tribe. ... That doesnt work and its part of what drives a lot of people away from politics. I think we have to be evenhanded in condemnation of things that people get wrong. We need to offer grace in the process, but we also need to be evenhanded in calling an ace an ace. And what went on here  because it is in fact part of a larger pattern on this front  strikes me as wrong, troublesome, and something worthy of both further study and condemnation.

Earlier in the week, Sanford criticized Trump on another front  blasting his decision to impose wide-ranging tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. In a wide-ranging conversation with a reporter he compared the decision to the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which was economically disastrous for the South, and the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which helped deepen the Great Depression.

Were playing with absolute fire here, he said. I mean, I think it is a bad idea of epic proportions.

The Washington Posts Erica Werner contributed to this report.
Politics is a dirty business. An open question is just how much dirtier it will become.

When word spread in February that little-known Amanda Renteria  a failed Central Valley congressional candidate and former aide to Hillary Clinton  had filed paperwork to run for governor without any money or campaign structure, Politico wrote a 1,100-word article that focused on speculation she had been put up to running by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and/or his campaign. In it, backers of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa  Newsoms main rival and fellow Democrat  cried foul as her entry meant he would no longer be the only Latino on the ballot.

In an interview for a KQED podcast, Villaraigosa consultant Mike Madrid said he thought ...

something just doesnt smell right with what happened. ... We know something else is afoot. ... You dont run for office and file 30 days out [before the filing deadline] with no endorsement, no infrastructure and no campaign website. ... I think the dots are there.

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A Newsom aide called it severely sexist for team Antonio to paint an accomplished woman as the naive rube manipulated by a bunch of dudes. Renterias history of working for state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Goldman Sachs  and her Stanford and Harvard degrees  certainly gave the 43-year-old some credibility. So did her recent appearance at a San Francisco event at which she convincingly spoke of her hope to become a positive influence on policies affecting those neglected by government.

But history promotes a cynical view of what California politicians will do to get elected  especially the history of former Gov. Gray Davis.

By late 2001, Davis re-election bid was in deep trouble, only starting with the fact many voters blamed his incompetence for fueling the states 2000-01 energy crisis, which was marked by the rare spectacle of rolling blackouts that winter. Some insiders saw Davis as a political hack who was better at fund-raising (and rewarding donors) than governing.

Davis seemed doomed in the general election if he went up, as expected, against former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, an affable Republican moderate and wealthy businessman with plenty of Democratic friends. But in January 2002, according to a Los Angeles Times article published after the November election, Davis got some crucial advice: Former Democratic President Bill Clinton told Davis he should use his large campaign war chest on ads hammering Riordan as untrustworthy and unfit for office. Clinton insisted he just wanted Davis to soften up Riordan for the general election. But with its focus on conservative red meat issues like abortion and crime, Davis blitz looked far more like an attempted knockout as it unfolded. This is from a Contra Costa Times analysis on Feb. 11, 2002:

[The] magnitude of the attacks on Riordan are leading some analysts to believe that Davis is doing everything he can to eliminate his most threatening opponent in the primary. Riordan, who is the GOP front-runner, is thought to be better positioned to take on Davis in the general election because of his moderate and liberal views, many of them considered unorthodox within the Republican Party.

Its a bad and obnoxious thing, [GOP analyst Tony] Quinn said of Davis assaults. It degenerates the process and is a blatant attempt to influence the primary. This is just like Richard Nixons dirty tricks.

Dirty or not, it worked. Los Angeles businessman Bill Simon, an awkward, arch-conservative, often tongue-tied political novice, came from 42 percent down to clobber Riordan 49 percent to 31 percent in the March 2002 GOP primary. The ploy worked perfectly for Davis, whose unpopularity didnt prevent him from defeating Simon 47 percent to 42 percent in the November general election. (The next year, however, Davis was ousted in a recall election by another moderate Republican, albeit one far different from Riordan  movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

This history may or may not be relevant to the 2018 gubernatorial candidacy of Amanda Renteria. But you can bet that Villaraigosas supporters will scrutinize every last contribution Renteria gets for evidence of a political conspiracy and spoon-feed their findings to the media.

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Yet theres also a very good chance that before long, this sort of election intrigue seems primitive. The fallout over Russian operatives attempts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election has focused on geopolitical intrigue. But at least as interesting an angle is the fact that this campaign of social media agitation, disinformation and incitement was so easy to undertake.

This suggests there are no obstacles to attempts at political manipulation by sharp people with access to big data, artificial intelligence and technologies that make creating fake Facebook groups with inflammatory names seem like childs play. All told, at least $2.4 billion was spent on the 2016 presidential campaign, reflecting how high the stakes were for warring interest groups. What if the groups spending these vast sums  or wealthy, stealthy individuals within these groups  began thinking of deceptive media campaigns as Moscow and Washington thought about the ever-escalating arms race in the 1970s and 1980s?

What if they are already doing so? Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, writing in the Boston Globe in November, suggested theres an unappreciated reason why corporate power seems so entrenched: the unseen clout of Big Money and Big Data. Sachs cited not just the usual suspects  Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft  but privately held, little-scrutinized companies like Koch Industries. Its not much of a stretch to think that a company with money to burn and few scruples could play havoc with conventional politics going forward, muddying politics in ways that make what happened in 2016 seem mild.

So what might we see, say, in October 2020? How about an online video in which a smiling Barack Obama praises President Donald Trump and urges his re-election? Or an online post in which a vulnerable-looking woman describes being assaulted by a political candidate with a reputation for sanctity, illustrated with a violent, cinema verite-style clip of the attack? Or how about an underground whisper campaign putting out 15 fake corruption allegations against a politician up for re-election, each backed by seemingly credible photos of official documents and audio and video recordings?

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Its already well within reach. In September, the ExchangeWire website  which focuses on innovation in marketing technologies  focused on how the use of artificial intelligence in computer-generated imagery had wiped out the limits on what synthetic video could show.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed an AI system that can create real-time facial re-enactment and animated facial expressions. ... Adobe has experimented with replicating background imagery, potentially removing the need for screens in the future ... .

You can see the appeal these advancements hold with creatives in the advertising industry, who are always looking for new ways to engage with audiences. The idea of having the ability to take separate images and audio and bring them together opens up the potential for plenty of fun possibilities.

Victor Riparbelli, CEO at Synthesia, who are developing AI to generate synthetic video, thinks the possibilities to take advantage of these methods indicates exciting times. We are not far from being able to easily generate artificial media that is indistinguishable from the real thing. In the future, music, pictures, and videos will increasingly be created by computers, and we will not be able to tell the difference.

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That may offer the potential for fun possibilities in the advertising world. In the larger world, however, it means that being able to recognize fake news is only going to get progressively harder.

So much for the hope of leaving 2016 behind. Instead, having to wade our way through a barrage of manipulative, dishonest, ever-more-sophisticated falsehoods is going to be a daily challenge in the 21st century.

Reed, whose favorite authority figure is Sir Topham Hatt, is deputy editor of the editorial and opinion section. Email: chris.reed@sduniontribune.com. Twitter: @chrisreed99. Column archive: sdut.us/chrisreed.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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As Californians up and down the coast rebuild from last years devastating wildfires and mudslides, it is time to both understand and help friends and neighbors, but also crucial that we assess and prepare for what Gov. Jerry Brown calls the new normal. Topics such as infrastructure resilience and curbing the driving forces behind climate change are important, yet there are also very practical steps we can take to better prepare for the inevitable re-occurrence of wildfire in our state.

While Californians have become accustomed to living with the threat of earthquakes  duck and cover could practically be the unofficial state motto  wildfires may present a greater threat, as population growth and the search for affordable housing pushes residents further and further into wilderness areas. Yet while earthquakes strike without warning, the fire danger presented in our changing climate paradigm should be treated as equally dangerous. Lives and treasured possessions of many could be spared with the construction and deployment of a multifaceted statewide alert system.

Currently, disaster alerts on the federal level are overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, an effort launched in 2006 after harsh criticism of the federal governments efforts after Hurricane Katrina. While a lot of progress in combining a myriad of systems has been made, gaps remain. Residents affected by recent mudslides in burn affected areas said that they received little to no warning in advance and some officials familiar with the situation said some carriers were unable to deliver messages on their network.

Within the state itself, there is no centralized point for issuance of these alerts. Moreover, early warning systems are often opt-in only, meaning users must both sign up for alerts and often manually change their cell phone systems to receive them, limiting both reach and effectiveness. Additionally, most of these alerts lack specificity, often identifying large geographic areas, such as entire counties, which can cause unneeded panic. Yet perhaps the greatest danger is akin to what happens when a car alarm sounds in a parking lot  people simply learn to tune it out.

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Currently, there are several bills working their way through the Legislature which would address some of these critical issues. One in particular would require that cell phones automatically come with an opt-out feature instead of the opt-in. This means that when you purchase your cell phone, the emergency alert system is already activated. People who are concerned about their privacy would be able to opt-out.

Improving this crucial tool will require a collaborative public-private partnership among telecommunications, technology and public service companies combined with elected officials at all levels. Their goals should be threefold:

Study early warning systems that work. Every year during the hurricane season in the United States, we observe early warning systems that not only allow the people to evacuate in a timely manner but also allow them to prepare their structures for the impending impact of the storm. This demonstrates that we have the proactive capability and template to utilize for predicted weather events

Develop a centralized system for emergency alerts that goes beyond wireless phone alerts. A patchwork system as is currently in place will inevitably endanger those who dont use wireless phones, are unfamiliar with how to sign up for alerts, or worse yet, simply ignore them. Developing a regional system for disseminating alerts provides protection for populations, especially our most vulnerable.

Tie infrastructure resilience upgrades to home building permits for developers. A study done by Headwater Economics found that since 1990, 60 percent of homes have been built adjacent to wildfire-prone areas. While this is understandable in a state with so little affordable housing, developers should be forced to offset the risk to communities and firefighters by footing the cost of infrastructure resilience and early warning system upgrades. Their financial incentive is understood, but it shouldnt come at the risk to our citizens and emergency personnel.

Upon these types of early warning notifications being issued, the state must enhance local governments ability to preposition additional resources to better address any fires that do occur.

While these solutions arent a cure-all, they provide at least a starting point for the state to better protect residents and emergency personnel in this shifting weather paradigm. The stakes are too high and the danger is too real for political gridlock or corporate reluctance to slow the development of these tools any further.

Henke, former fire chief for the Sacramento Metro Fire District, works as a consultant to major fire departments around the country.
The inevitable showdown between California and the Trump administration over immigration is at hand. On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sued the state over laws that limited how much state and local law enforcement agents could work with federal immigration authorities in transferring or assisting in detention of unauthorized immigrants; cleared the way for state officials to inspect federal immigration detention facilities; and required employers to warn workers if there will be immigration enforcement operations at job sites

Sessions said California is risking agents lives and seeking to nullify federal law by undermining federal immigration enforcement. Gov. Jerry Brown said the U.S. Justice Department is basically going to war with California over its immigrant protections so Sessions could boost his standing with President Donald Trump. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra said the 10th Amendment gives the state to right to pass on assisting enforcement.

No one should pretend to know what the courts will do. But apart from the inflammatory rhetoric, The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board welcomes this development. Its not healthy for Americas richest, most populated state to be at odds with the federal government over an issue as crucial as immigration. Having federal judges review and referee this important fight is a good thing.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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In a bold speech in Sacramento on Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he is suing California over what he calls irrational, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that threaten the safety of Americans.

Sessions pointed the finger at state and city officials over sanctuary state laws that prevent federal agents from enforcing immigration laws. But his emphasis on reducing homicide and violent crime rates echo claims President Donald Trump and members of his administration have made that correlate crime with immigration.

What exactly does the Trump administration say?

You can read Sessions full remarks from Wednesday here, but heres a bit of wha the said about immigration and crime:

California is using every power it has  and some it doesn't  to frustrate federal law enforcement. So you can be sure I'm going to use every power I have to stop them.

We are going to fight these irrational, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you and our federal officers. We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. We are fighting to have a lawful system of immigration that serves Americans. And we intend to win.

Those remarks go hand-in-hand with the language in an executive order Trump signed in January 2017 aimed at boosting immigration enforcement:

Many aliens who illegally enter the United States and those who overstay or otherwise violate the terms of their visas present a significant threat to national security and public safety.

Trump has previously cited the 2015 killing of Kathryn Steinle, a San Francisco woman who was shot by an unauthorized Mexican immigrant who had previously been deported, as an example because the immigrant had a criminal record. A San Francisco jury eventually found Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez not guilty of homicide charges.

And most recently, at a listening session at the White House in late February, Trump said crime would increase if federal immigration agents were not present in California.

"Frankly, if I pulled our people from California, you would have a crime nest like you've never seen in California. All I'd have to say is, 'ICE, Border Patrol, leave California alone, Trump said.

What does the research say about crime and immigration?

There is, however, vast amounts of research that does not concur with the views of the Trump administration.

For one, immigrants tend to have lower incarceration rates than native-born residents in the U.S., according to a 2007 research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Then, in 2015, another report by the American Immigration Council reached a similar conclusion:

[R]oughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born. The disparity in incarceration rates has existed for decades, as evidenced by data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial census. In each of those years, the incarceration rates of the native-born were anywhere from two to five times higher than that of immigrants.

Alex Nowrasteh of the CATO Institute concluded in an essay that a number of factors could help explain this data.

One explanation: Immigrants who commit crimes face harsher penalties that include deportation and are therefore motivated to avoid breaking the law. Another one is that immigrants self-select for those willing to work rather than those willing to commit crimes.

And what are the crime rates in California?

Crime in California remains at historic lows, the Public Policy Institute of California concluded in its most recent analysis of crime trends in the state.

A few highlights:

Violent crime rates went up by 3.7 percent  thats 444 for every 100,000 residents  in 2016, but historically the rates have been down since peaking in 1992 when there were 1,104 reported violent crimes for every 100,000 residents.

Property crime went down by 3.3 percent in 2016, thought slightly up from a historic 50-year low for California.

Only two counties in the state, Los Angeles and Kern counties, saw increases in both violent and property crime. Most counties experienced drops in property crime. San Diego County experienced a drop in both.

NOTE: Violent crime includes homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; property crime includes burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny theft (including non-felonious larceny theft). Courtesy: Public Policy Institute of California

Are border cities safer?

Several news organizations including Politifact and The Texas Tribune have concluded that border cities like San Diego and El Paso, Texas, are some of the safest cities in the nation.

A 2013 Congressional Quarterly report citing FBI statistics found that San Diego and El Paso have, in fact, the lowest crime rates in the nation. And theyre both on the border.

Ironically, Indiana where Vice President Mike Pence comes from had one city that was ranked among those with the highest crime rate: Indianapolis.

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.
A Southern California McDonalds restaurant is celebrating International Womens Day like only McDonalds could.

In Lynwood, California, one restaurant  owned and operated by a woman  flipped the iconic golden arches of the McDonalds sign upside down to become a W instead of an M.

Without women, there would be no McDonald's, the companys website said on Thursday.

The restaurant is owned by Patricia Williams, who opened her first McDonalds location in 1987 and has since grown her business to run 18 locations along with her daughters. Hear more about her story in the video below.

Today, on International Womens Day, we flip our Golden Arches to celebrate the women who have chosen McDonalds to be a part of their story. In this video, we are proud to share t ...

The McDonalds website on Thursday also highlighted the stories of seven other women with connections to the company, including three who own or manage McDonalds restaurants in California.

In the U.S., we're proud to share that six out of 10 restaurant managers are women, the company said.

In Lynwood, Mayor Jose Luis Solache posted a photo of the sign on Instagram, praising Williams.

A former employee of McDonald's myself (at this exact McDonald's), and a huge advocate of WOMEN everywhere, and knowing Patricia personally, words cannot express how amazingly beautiful this advertising gesture is for women everywhere, Solache wrote. How lucky are we in Lynwood that our McDonald's is the only one in the country whose M's are being turned upside down?

People driving through Lynwood on Wednesday and Thursday snapped pictures of the sign and shared their own tributes on Instagram.

Around the world, people shared their thoughts about the gesture on Twitter.

Some found it an impressive move and others called out McDonalds for various issues.

To read more about the McDonalds International Womens Day celebration, go here.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin


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When Diane Selkirk searched for information about her grandfather, she uncovered a scandalous family secret and a whole new branch of her family tree.

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Ever since I could recall, there was a family photo that intrigued me: It showed my dad at about 10 months old, sitting on the grass, dressed in a fancy outfit, looking up at someone who was torn from the picture. Beside him, all that was left was a set of legs wearing pressed slacks and boots polished to a military shine.

Over the years, I asked my grandmother about the man missing from the picture. Her answers  hes no one or he doesnt matter  betrayed just enough emotion that I couldnt let it go. Later, when I asked yet again, she said the man was called Lorris and then snatched the photo from me and replaced it with a much coveted, but completely off-limits, Harlequin Romance.

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Growing up in western Canada, I had grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and a plethora of more-distant relatives, all of whom gathered regularly for a progression of holidays, weddings, baptisms, graduations, and funerals. Im not sure when I started to notice that one segment of my family was entirely absent, but I learned if I asked my grandmother about my dads father, I got a blistering silence or a mind your own business in response.

One day, when I asked why she became a nurse, she explained that when she was young, women could be schoolteachers, nurses, nuns, or wives, and she hadnt been in a hurry to marry. When I tried to ask her about a bombshell a second cousin had dropped  that Grandma wasnt just a nurse but also a nun  she ignored my question by reaching high up on her bookshelf and letting me look through her much-loved book on the royal family. We debated whether Prince Andrew or Prince Edward was more handsome.

Because she was always reluctant to talk about herself, I had to piece together my grandmothers story through rumor and family lore. She entered the convent as a young woman and became a nursing sister during World War II. Through the war, she was stationed at the University of British Columbia and worked with young soldiers. While there, she wrote her sister that shed fallen in love with a soldier named Lorris Selkirk. Sometime later, she bore his child. The relationship didnt last, and she was left with a fatherless son and a harsh bitterness that followed her through life.

She was excommunicated by the church for refusing to give her son up for adoption, and my dads early years were a blur of constant movement as she traveled to a series of remote northern Canadian communities under assumed identities. To hide her shame, sometimes she claimed to be a war widow; other times, she posed as a nun and found work in hospitals where the need for nurses was so great no one asked questions. To maintain this fiction, of course, she couldnt have my dad around. Theyd move into a boarding house and, having secretly made arrangements with the proprietors, she would disappear in the middle of the night without a goodbye, sometimes not returning for months. Later, she told my mum she did it this way so he wouldnt notice and be sad.

As an adult, I visited a Catholic hospital on a remote First Nations reserve were shed worked for a year or two. Sure enough, I found her name in the records  as a nun. My dad would have been 6.

By the time my dad was 12, their peripatetic lifestyle came to an end. My grandmother married and started a new life with the kind pharmacist I knew as my grandfather. She died when I was a teenager, and with her went the answers to many questions I would like to have asked.

Years later, I was assigned a magazine story on how to use the internet for genealogical research. All I knew about my paternal side was the Selkirk name. So I visited my dad to see what he knew. He cheerfully unearthed a baby book showing a family tree with both his fathers and paternal grandparents names. I was surprised these mysterious names even existed. But when I asked him about them, he said, They didnt want me and my mother. So I dont need to know anything about them.

The first few times I found new information, I shared it with him. He was fascinated to learn our Canadian history began with the arrival of Robert Selkirk, a Scottish farmer born in 1812. Robert, along with his wife Catharine, raised at least five Quebec-born children on an Ontario farm; one of them was my direct ancestor James.

But when I started to tell him about James, who was his great-grandfather and who was still alive when he was born, my dad said he didnt care. When I offered to send links to the high school picture of his father Id unearthed, he told me he didnt need to know what his father had looked like. We were hurt enough by that family. I prefer to respect my mothers memory, my dad wrote back. So perhaps you could leave me out of your genealogical research.

I thought I was done. Genealogy had given me what I expected: It had connected me to the long-dead past. But then modern media did its thing, and a surprise connection to a present-day relative arrived in my inbox:

Dear Diane, I am a great grandson of James and Wilhelmina Selkirk. My Grandma was Ola, who was born the year after Earle, your great-grandfather. Tom

The fact that my grandmother gave my dad his fathers surname has always puzzled me. If she wanted, she could have easily hidden that information. But both my sister and I got the impression that, despite her reticence to talk about it, the Selkirk name was important to her. So much so that we both kept the name when we married and then passed it on to our own children.

So I quickly emailed Tom back. After all, he was family. And within a few minutes, thanks to a link he had sent, I was looking at photos from five generations and 150 years of my familys life in Canada.

Then I got another note from Tom, apologizing for letting the cat out of the bag. He explained hed been at a family gathering and mentioned meeting me to my dads 82-year-old aunt Marilyn, who was shocked. She told him shed tried for years to find her older brothers unacknowledged child.

Marilyn and I exchanged emails for several months. Hers were long, breathless streams of consciousness which jumped from childhood memories to old ancestral history to current stories about relatives I didnt know. She would also send me packages in the mail filled with exuberant sketches, photos of her paintings, and other keepsakes. My letters back were briefer  the only history I had to share was my own.

I forwarded my dad all the emails, telling him he could always delete them if he really didnt want to know anything. Marilyn had told me her deepest wish was to meet her long-deceased brothers son. When my dad refused, I arranged for my sister and me plus our two teenaged daughters to meet her in his place.

When we arrived, Marilyns makeup was impeccable, and her clothes looked like theyd come off a fashion runway. She surprised us by planning a party for that first meeting. Her house was full of flowers and food, as well as a constant stream of people. I expected to encounter suspicion  or at least questions  about how I knew we were family, but instead we got a warm and happy welcome. It was joyful, but also heartbreaking. I couldnt understand why my father and grandmother had never been wrapped into this loving family.

As the party slowed, Marilyn became pensive and nervous. Showing me photos, she told funny stories about her brother, including the fact that he hated sandwiches (a quirk that matched my own). She explained where my height, hair color, and love of bagpipes came from. My father, we discovered, looked remarkably like his father, putting to rest doubts no one seemed to have.

After asking our girls to leave the room, Marilyn finally filled me in on the details of the scandal. Her mother, it seemed, had been horrified her 19-year-old son had fathered a baby with a much older woman. (Not only was my grandmother 32 at the time, but she was of a different faith  its not clear if they even knew she was a nun.) While Lorris had initially taken responsibility for his son, his mother suggested he might not have been the only man in my grandmothers life.

A humiliating court case followed. This was well before the era of paternity tests, and my grandmother was forced to swear in open court that Lorris was indeed her sons father. Even with the court finding in her favor, the Selkirk family wouldnt accept her. Lorris had child support garnished from his army wages, and his mother blamed my grandmother for the black mark this left on his record. Because of the dishonor, he never advanced the way he was expected to in the army. He went on to marry and have five other children  keeping my dad a secret from them all. My grandmother refused to ever let Lorris see his son again.

I had a new empathy for my grandmother. I could easily imagine her  that shed found love and then had to go through such public rejection. Marilyn, who was only a child when my dad was born, felt guilty by association. The impropriety, which Marilyn thought was too racy for the girls to hear, seemed so insignificant in light of all the pain it caused.

People are warned when they reach out to solve family secrets that they might not always like the answers. Adoption agencies, genealogists, and now some of the companies that provide DNA tests caution that not all connections turn out to be happy ones. Love and forgiveness seem like such simple answers in retrospect  but it still took more than 75 years for my aunt to find her family.

Recently I sent my dad a note with a phone number, reminding him his aunt is now elderly and that if theres a part of him that wonders about her, he might want to get on with it. I thought that my email would end up wherever the other ones about his family went, but instead, a few days later, I got a brief response back: I called. Shes a fascinating lady. I dont know why I waited so long. Thank you.

Have you uncovered amazing tales about your ancestors? Leave your stories in the comments below.

Diane Selkirks last article for the Post was Our Life on the Water in the March/April 2015 issue. For more about the author, visit dianeselkirk.com.

This story appears in the March/April 2018 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
Carolina changes the world

Former adversary becomes a partner in developing mutually beneficial programs

In January, President Harris Pastides signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Vietnam National University in Hanoi.

Growing up in North Vietnam, Huong Nguyen saw the problems surrounding her: The neighbor who drank too much, the childhood friend in an abusive relationship.

And the help they received was minimal  coming in the form of an admonishment from representatives of the womens or veterans unions.

They would approach it morally. You shouldnt do that, especially because youre a member of the Communist Party  and you should not have these behaviors,  Nguyen says. Even as a child, I found that moral scolding was not working.

Little effort was made to find the root cause of behavioral problems such as addiction or domestic violence. In the 1980s, poverty was widespread; people didnt have enough to eat. There was no clean water and electricity was available only three nights a week.

I always wanted to go into what I thought was community development, she says. We needed to change the communities in Vietnam.

At that time, Vietnam didnt even recognize social work as a profession  or even offer it as a course of study, so Nguyen went to college to study economics. Her hope was that an improved economy that was creating jobs would increase the standard of living. Because many social problems were linked to poverty, it was only natural to believe this was the solution.

As Vietnam emerged from a decades-long civil war, the country did become richer, but new wealth didnt solve its social problems. Thats when Nguyen came to the United States to study. In 2010, she became the first person in Vietnam with a Ph.D. in social work.

Now an assistant professor in the College of Social Work, Nguyen also is the regional director for Vietnam and Southeast Asia for Global Carolina, an initiative of the provosts office to increase the universitys international outreach.

The largest hurdle for the country is finding trained social workers. To that end, Nguyen is helping universities develop their social work programs. Last year, she reviewed six textbooks for Hanoi National University of Education to help enhance the colleges curriculum.

(L-R) Huong Nguyen, social work professor, President Harris Pastides, Haemoon Oh, dean of the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management and Kendall Roth, associate dean of the Darla Moore School of Business.

Collaborations with Carolina already have led the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs to change services for people with disabilities.

They told me that they applied ideas they learned from training courses at Carolina and changed policy, she says. In the past few years, more than 40 top government officials from Vietnam have visited Columbia for courses in social policies and programs. Faculty from a number of disciplines, seven S.C. state departments and local service organizations have participated in this training.

In January, Nguyen traveled to Hanoi with a small university delegation, including President Harris Pastides, Haemoon Oh, dean of the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, and Kendall Roth, associate dean of the Darla Moore School of Business, to form a partnership between Carolina and three universities: Vietnam National University, Foreign Trade University and National Economics University.

Were proud of the work through our Global Carolina initiative to bring the world to Carolina and Carolina to the world, Pastides says. Im excited about our recent Memorandum of Understanding with Vietnam National University and all the outstanding global and comparative teaching, research and service opportunities it will provide to our entire Carolina community.

The agreement calls for an exchange between students in the Moore School and business programs in Vietnam, a beneficial proposition given a recent study that shows the country has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

For Nguyen, the potential partnerships with her native country are endless, not just in social work, but also in areas of public health, hospitality, culture and the arts.

I hope we continue to expand this relationship, she says. Learning from each other  it just makes the world better.

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Cruisers originated from international markets, mainland China and Hong Kong. The Hong Kong domestic market made up 42% of arrivals, the mainland for 23%, and short- and long-haul international markets contributed 35%.

Since Kai Tak Cruise Terminal opened in 2013, Hong Kong has amassed a compound annual growth rate of 29% for ship calls and 47% for passenger throughput.

Hong Kong Tourism Board executive director Anthony Lau briefed media on this growth at Seatrade Cruise Global, where Hong Kong has a high proile this week, also sponsoring the keynote session, the State of the Global Cruise Industry, and hosting a cocktail reception for the Asia Cruise Cooperation, an organization it co-founded in 2014.

Lau noted Hong Kong last year scored homeporting operations for notable ships including Royal Caribbeans Voyager of the Seas and Ovation of the Seas and Dream Cruises' new World Dream, which was christened there and sails from Kai Tak Cruise Terminal year-round.

In 2018, Hong Kong again will be the homeport for Ovation of the Seas, from May to June, and Voyager of the Seas, from July to August. The two ships will sail varied itineraries, while World Dream continues two- to seven-day sailings.

Lau pointed out that Hong Kongs connectivity, with more than 1,100 daily flights to over 220 destinations and a visa-free policy for over 170 countries, creates vast opportunities to develop fly-cruises. Hong Kong in 2017 received more than 14m international visitors, a huge source of customers for fly-cruise packages.

Lau also delivered details on opportunities resulting from Hong Kongs new infrastructure developments, which will usher in a new era of fly, rail and cruise tourism. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge will shorten the distance from most areas located in Chinas populous western Pearl River Delta to within a three-hour commute, and journeys between Hong Kong and Zhuhai or Macau will be reduced to within an hour. Scheduled to open in 2018, the bridge will add convenience for mainland travelers to take a cruise from Hong Kong.

Another major infrastructure project that will positively impact the cruise sector is the building of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL). With the XRL, Hong Kong is poised to become part of Chinas fast growing nationwide high-speed rail network, which spans 29 of the countrys 33 provincial-level administrative divisions. Visitors will be able to travel between Hong Kong and the mainland with unprecedented convenience and speed, opening opportunities for rail-cruise business.

'Overall, Hong Kong has seen a remarkable performance in the cruise travel sector in the past few years,' Lau said. 'Hong Kongs state-of-the-art cruise terminals and operational support, together with the diverse visitor experiences and ongoing development of new infrastructure, have firmly established our position as one of the world's leading cruise destinations for years to come.'

Support from the Hong Kong SAR Government, he added, has already earmarked additional funding for the HKTB to elevate the promotion of fly-cruise and rail-cruise itineraries with its cruise line partners, and the close collaboration of all members of the Asia Cruise Cooperation is crucial for promoting Hong Kong as a world-class cruise hub.

Visitors will continue to discover the myriad experiences that have made Hong Kong one of the world's most exciting and sophisticated destinations. Spectacular events throughout the year include the International Chinese New Year Night Parade in February, the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Carnival in June and the Hong Kong Cyclothon and Wine and Dine Festival in October, to name a few.

Late last year, the HKTB debuted a new version of the internationally acclaimed nightly multimedia light show 'A Symphony of Lights,' which travelers can see free of charge from various vantage points including the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront outside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the promenade outside the Golden Bauhinia Square in Wan Chai.
The University of Michigan-Dearborn College of Business has developed a way to encourage its students to think entrepreneurially. It's called the UM-Dearborn Business Idea Pitch, and it is accepting submissions until 11:59 pm on Sunday, March 11. An Ideation workshop on February 19 will help students learn to craft a pitch.While the event is, on its surface, a business pitch contest, Director of iLabs at UM-Dearborn Timothy Davis stresses that it's much more. The Business Idea Pitch is a way to provoke students to understand real-world problems that people are having and figure out how to solve them.Davis and his team aren't looking for a business plan for a pooper scooper with a wine bottle holder, he says, but instead solutions to issues like health and mobility. Organizers would like to see students focus on either of those two issues, but the contest is open to any idea.Another thing that separates the Business Idea Pitch event from more traditional "Shark Tank"-like contests is that organizers aren't interested in specifics, and they aren't interested in things like budgets and business plans. All Davis and his team want to hear are students' ideas."In today's gig economy, a lot of students are going to have to think entrepreneurially, even if they end up working for someone else," says Davis. "So this is a place for them to go ahead and try. This is a safe space to give it a whirl.""That's what schools are for: To provide a safe space for students to try and experiment and learn."Organizers are currently accepting applications. A social media voting campaign will then be considered along with reviews from local entrepreneurs and academics in the choosing of ten to twelve finalists. At the event, which takes place on Wednesday, March 28, students will then present their ideas in five-minute lightning rounds. The winning student receives scholarship money.Click HERE to learn more about the submission process.Got a development news story to share? Email MJ Galbraith here or send him a tweet @mikegalbraith
Stacey Grant expected Made Metro Collective, the local artisan marketplace she and partner Amanda Lawson opened up in West Downtown Dearborn last December, to be closed by the end of January. But strong sales and a connection with the community have kept their doors open. The shop will now stay open in its current spot until the end of March. After that, Grant is hoping to continue operation as a nimble, responsive business that reflects the evolving model for retail businesses.

Grant first established the Made Metro Collective with her friend and former business partner, Amanda Lawson, initially dedicating two months to the experiment. Then, the landlord offered them a month to month lease until he could find a long-term tenant.

Lawson stepped down, but Grant decided to keep the shop running on a month-to-month lease.

We had an intention when we first opened, and then the store took on a life of its own, Grant said. When you fill a store with a hundred peoples products, theres enough energy and momentum, that maybe theres something more here than a popup for two months.

The shop located on Michigan Ave. next to Bar Louie sells a variety of locally made products, like clothing, handbags, jewelry, art, prints, photography, vinyl records, coffee, foodstuff, as well as merchandise from Ford Motor Company and all three of Dearborns museums, Henry Ford, the Dearborn Historical Museum and the Arab American National Museum. Its not a vendor fair, but rather a store with an event area.

Weve hosted over 15 events in the last two and a half months, Grant says. Our mission is to build community and create an authentic conversation between people Were trying to create opportunities for [them] to showcase their talent and to draw in the community.

Grant made some time in her busy schedule to speak to Metromode in detail about Made Metro Collectives current location in West Dearborn, its future, her new findings as the city develops, and more.

Stacey Grant. Photo by Zahraa Farhat Why did you choose to open your business in West Dearborn?

Amanda and I are both moms of three kids. We both live here, and our kids go to school here, so we wanted to invest in the community. We also saw that there was a gap in local retail in downtown Dearborn. We said we could either let another holiday season pass where everybody is shopping elsewhere, or we could open up a store and see what happens.

What have you learned about the Dearborn community?

Right off the bat when we opened up the store, we realized there is an awesome, dynamic, creative, diverse community in Dearborn. We know that theres diversity, but regarding a networked, interconnected creative community, that wasnt something I was plugged into.

I realized that it is here, but also recognized a need for a marketplace for these artists and makers to be able to connect with customers. Plus, the feedback weve gotten from the community is that customers want to connect with these makers and artists as well. They want to support local.

Which demographic do you think your shop has attracted the most?

Whats interesting is when we opened up the store, one question we got quite frequently was who we were going to be marketing to. The whole ideation until opening was about six weeks, which is crazy. So, we didnt really have time to develop this deeply researched marketing plan about our target demographic. We have something for everybody. From every business book that you read, thats a terrible way to open up a store. You really need to target a market.

But, weve had people from all demographics and backgrounds come into the store. The one that surprises us the most is the older generation of Dearbornites, who come in and are really excited that we are here. It surprised me the most because we have this dynamic urban vibe going on, and so youre not really sure what the response is going to be. To have that generation of residents come in and be really happy that were here, remembering the days when downtown Dearborn was really thriving, is exciting.

As the city continues to transform, what are some of the most significant trends youve noticed?

I think that there is a positive attitude shift around Dearborn. There's this sort of tacit understanding or feeling of excitement and energy that good things are happening. People are naturally curious to want to navigate that and figure out how to contribute and be a part of it. I think that residents are self-organizing to figure out how to support local businesses, how to open them; theres a sort of a new entrepreneurial spirit.

When you first opened Made Metro Collective back in December, you werent sure if it could stay open. Now that it will, how do you plan to keep it open throughout the year?

We plan to be polymorphic, which is that were going to be responsive and nimble to the market. I think thats the future of local retail. The store will be open the rest of February and March, but theres a really good chance that were going to be shutting down our doors at the location that were at. But, that doesnt mean that as a business and as a collective of a 100 makers, that were not going to be able to continue in other forms and fashions in other spaces.

Its the responsive food truck model for retail, which is that its a lot of money just to operate a brick and mortar store and to sign on a two or five-year lease. If you can be responsive to the needs of the customers and makers, that means were popping up at events, and were going to be hopefully partnering with other businesses that would be interested in hosting us. Hopefully, Made Metro Collective will be that kind of secure independent landing place for anybody who is interested in local retail in Dearborn.

In what ways, do you feel your business has enhanced the local economy so far? How has the local community developed?

One of the benchmarks for contribution for a retail store would be the economic contribution. We feel like weve been able to write checks to a hundred vendors month after month, selling products that hopefully have benefited them and that the investment in local is really that those local makers turn around and invest it right back into the city.

On the community development side, weve hosted storytelling nights, organized the Winter Music Mash in partnership with seven other businesses and invited 17 local musicians. Were trying to demonstrate to the community what is possible, so were not doing everything perfectly, and there are lots of different ways that we could be doing things better.

But, we are just piloting lots of ideas around community development. Even though our doors might be closing at the end of March, were going to be racing to the finish line. Were not just kind of like petering out, opening our doors and then shutting them and saying thats it. Were trying to capture all the synergy that we can.

For example, our entrepreneurship networking event next month will hopefully help our vendors connect with designers, filmmakers, and photographers who are themselves trying to build their businesses. Were going to be inviting Amazon to come in to talk to vendors about how to sell their products on Amazon, and businesses that best fit that model.

Many businesses in the area use social media as a marketing platform. However, your shop advertises for local businesses on the ground. What makes your strategy more effective?

Good relationships. Its a different thing to put something out on Facebook or Instagram and just hope that people will be responsive, and then its another thing to be able to have conversations with people. I can walk customers around the store and tell you a little bit about the maker, their product, where theyre from, what motivated them to start and be like an ambassador for them. In turn, we have vendors who are helping operate the store for the last month. Thats purely based on relationship building. It takes time, and it takes on the ground connection.

What is the application process like for those interested in becoming vendors?

Its straightforward. Anybody who is interested can either walk through our door with their product just to show us or go on the contact form on our website, www.mademetro.com. As long as there is a unique difference between their product and another vendors, then they are welcome to show up, and we can display their products. Its very simple.

Relationships are the shortest distance between two people, where if you have this conversation and connection, it is not bureaucratic. Weve only had to turn away I think four vendors out of fairness to vendors who had similar products, but I encouraged them to go to Dearborn Novelty Art, a great local store in Dearborn.

What kind of relationship does Made Metro Collective hope to build with local businesses and the Dearborn community at large as the city develops?

From our business standpoint, wed love to continue partnering with businesses that would be interested in partnering with us. Its not completely defined right now. For example, if there was a business that said they have space and would love for us to come in to do a pop-up shop in their space, and we can show up and showcase products, that would be fantastic. If theres a long-term partnership with other businesses, that would be great. It might be that there are other smaller businesses that cannot afford storefront on their own, where we could all partner together, almost like a business or an innovation lab, where we can have a co-working space, kitchen area, retail space, conference space, etc. The possibilities are endless. Its a matter of finding businesses, organizations, and other individuals interested in laying out a pathway to developing a space like that. Were hoping we can be a part of that if that happens in the city.

What do you hope for the future of Made Metro Collective?

I hope that doors stay open. Even if were closing our doors at the end of March, that as a collective, were still able to stay connected and that hopefully, were planting seeds of ideas of whats possible.


Stable and changing. Thats how Warren Mayor Jim Fouts, whos serving his 11th year as mayor following 26 years on the city council, describes Michigans third-largest city.

Its a diverse place. The north side of the city has a large population of seniors and long-time residents, many who come from Polish, Italian and German descent, while the southern portion has seen more African American residents moving in from Detroit, as well as people with Middle Eastern and Asian backgrounds.

And as automakers and other businesses make new investments in the city, with billions of dollars set to bring thousands of jobs to Warren, city leaders want to ensure theyre also attracting residents to Michigans third-largest city.

Warren has become a renewed hotspot of industrial activity largely thanks to Big Three automakers General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, who are retooling and/or expanding their existing facilities in the city. In 2016, even before the latest $1 billion investment announcement from Chrysler, Warren surpassed Detroit and Auburn Hills for the highest assessed industrial property value in Metro Detroit at more than $578 million, according to Bridge Magazine.

Warren is the center of the action, boasts Fouts, also pointing to smaller industrial and commercial business expansions along with civic developments in the works.



Warren Community Center vPhoto by David Lewinski.

Fouts says he hopes the jobs and developments help convince more people to move to the city, which had a population of about 135,000 in 2016, down from its peak of nearly 180,000 in 1970. But the city has recently begun gaining population, and Fouts wants to see that trend continue.

The city is working on an aggressive campaign to encourage people to move to Warren through television and internet advertisements. Wed like to encourage younger families to move into Warren, he says.

Rebuilding a downtown for workers and residents

Bret Kuhnhenn, co-owner of Kuhnhenn Brewing at Mound and Chicago roads in Warren, wishes Warren had more of a downtown area like Royal Oak. Hed like to see somewhere where people can park and walk to different places. Hed welcome more breweries, too.

We have a lot of population in Warren; theres no reason why we shouldnt have more breweries, he says.

Kuhnhenn is not alone in this wish.

In January, Fouts says the city would soon begin taking bids from developers for a proposed $125 million downtown development project that he hopes will include a hotel, nightclub, lofts, upscale grocer, specialty shops, and eateries.

The project would bring life to a strip of Van Dyke Avenue between city hall and the GM Warren Tech Center thats currently home to a lot of vacant lots. Similar plans have been in the works since at least the early 2000s to no avail.

Fouts says hes optimistic this time around since the economy is doing better. He says a planning consultant was set to give a presentation on the project in late January and at least half a dozen developers are interested in the project.

While that didnt progress as rapidly I think as the city officials would have hoped, I think its still viable for that use, and I think its still intended for that use, says Grace Shore, CEO of the Macomb County Chamber of Commerce.



Grace Shore. Photo by David Lewinski.

Fouts hopes to partner with GM on the downtown development, which he wants to include a pedestrian bridge from the Tech Center. The Detroit automaker is investing $1 billion to renovate and expand its Tech Center. In 2015 GM said it would add 2,600 jobs over five years as part of the investment.

In January, Fiat Chrysler announced it would invest $1 billion in its Warren Truck Assembly Plant as it moves production of Ram Heavy Duty trucks there from Mexico. The news comes a year after the automaker said it would invest a combined $1 billion in the Warren factory and a plant in Toledo for Jeep production. Both projects should be complete by 2020.

The Warren plant, which employs roughly 6,300 people, is shifting some of its workers to Sterling Heights but should also get 2,500 jobs as a result of the latest investment announcement, according to The New York Times. The new Jeep manufacturing is expected to add 2,000 jobs between Warren and Toledo.

The move should encourage more small businesses to open and give a push for new development on the citys south end, Fouts says, noting that the area has a lot of older homes and could use some major investments such as a veterans housing development.

With the new jobs, hopefully, these people will decide to move to Warren and move into those neighborhoods and that area, Fouts says.

Southwest Warren resident Dave Gifford said hes glad to see the city investing in the area.



David Gifford. Photo by David Lewinski.

Gifford, who moved to Warren with his wife in 2014 from Rochester, said he enjoys that his neighborhood is affordable, diverse and is within walking distance to a grocery store, eateries, a library, and schools.

A public transit advocate, hed like to see more robust bus service and bike lanes throughout the city as well as a trail connecting the community center and civic center. The area between the two centers encompasses Warrens old village, much of which was razed to make way for the Davison freeway, which never materialized, and became modern-day Mound Road. Business growth in the district includes Kuhnhenn Brewing and several other small businesses, including the Village Vinyl record shop that opened last spring.



Theyre actively trying to find ways to reinvent the south side of Warren and bring it back, Gifford says. "While Oakland has done a good job at retaining many of its original downtowns, Macomb did not. Many of them were lost to road widening and shopping centers like Warren, Centerline, Fraser, Eastpointe & Roseville."

Theres a lot of life in that area  it could be developed more, Gifford says.

Civic investment & public safety



While the city cut down on overtime and left vacant positions unfilled during the recession, it also has generated revenue through industrial property taxes, millages, drug forfeiture money and other sources. This has allowed new investment in public infrastructure and amenities.

The south side also will be home to a new civic center at 9 Mile Road and Van Dyke, which should be complete by spring 2019. The project includes a new mini-city hall, police station, revamped library, special needs accessible playground and eventually a new fire station. Last summer the city reopened the renovated Dorothy Busch Branch Library on Ryan Road north of 9 Mile.

The city is installing new LED street lights and repaving residential streets that havent been repaved in decades. Its been able to fund improvements while maintaining a budget surplus thanks to a variety of factors:

In addition to more business investment, Fouts major goals for the city include fighting blight, crime, drugs, and elder abuse. Warren has been the epicenter of a lot of heroin overdoses, Fouts says, so the police department equipped its officers with emergency overdose medication to save lives.

The department also started a program that offers a $500 reward for tips on drug dealers and has a hope not handcuffs policy that welcomes addicts to come to authorities for help getting counseling and medical assistance.

The city tackles property maintenance problems by conducting blight sweeps from April through October where staff go door-to-door issuing warning tickets as a way to clean up older sections of the city.

A blightless, crime-free neighborhood would be ideal, he says. Its not a perfect goal, but its a goal that Id like to see happen.
Sandra "Sam" Lealofi has been chosen to be the next CEO of the residential treatment facility and school Lakeside for Children . Lealofi will take over from Don Nitz who is retiring as CEO after 12 years.The 111-year old Lakeside helps vulnerable boys and girls in Kalamazoo ages 12 through 17. Its mission is to prepare children to lead responsible and fulfilling lives by providing mentoring, education, living skills, and support within a safe, structured, dynamic environment. Up to 124 youths live and attend school year-round on Lakesides 48-acre campus, supervised and cared for by 145 teachers, counselors, and administrators.We picked a winner, says Joe Brogger, longtime Lakeside board member who led the search process for the new CEO. Sam is a natural leader with a deep commitment to helping vulnerable kids succeed. Her experience in teaching, working with diverse populations, and building partnerships, will combine well with her background in organizational, board, and fund development. Shes just the right person to lead Lakeside forward.Since 2011, Lealofi has served as executive director of Eastside Youth Strong, a nonprofit organization serving marginalized youth in the Eastside and Eastwood neighborhoods of Kalamazoo. She previously served as executive director of Eastside Neighborhood Association, as child and family advocate program manager for a community initiative serving the Eastside neighborhood, as both director of vocational education for the Work First Program and supervisor of Michigan Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative with Goodwill Industries of Southwest Michigan, and as a program officer with Kalamazoo Community Foundation.She also spent 12 years in the U.S. Air Force as an academic instructor and law enforcement specialist.She earned a B.S. degree in occupational therapy from Western Michigan University (WMU) and has completed masters degree coursework in development administration, also at WMU.In 2016, she received a Woman of Achievement award from the YWCA of Kalamazoo for outstanding leadership and community involvement. In 2017, she was named an Outstanding Alumnae by the WMU College of Health and Human Services for significant contributions to the youth and families of Southwest Michigan.Lealofi will work alongside Don Nitz until his April 1 retirement.Im honored to help carry forward the legacy and mission of Lakeside, said Lealofi. There is such enthusiasm and energy on campus. I want to spread the word about this vital community asset and invite the community here to see it for themselves. Lakeside is changing lives. Who wouldnt want to be part of that?Source: Lakeside for Children
Press Release

March 7, 2018 Transcript BBL Interpellation Term of office

Senate of the Philippines WIN: On the political aspect of the law Mr. President I just want to clarify in Article 7 section 13, term of office Mr. President, it states here the initial term of office of the members of the parliament shall be three years without prejudice for the Bangsamoro Transition Authority to include in the election code a term of office. Does this mean that term of office can be more than three years Mr. President? ZUBIRI: No sir, it should be considered one full term once the parliament is dissolved or when they are elected to that position. So if it was dissolved mid-term that is still considered one full term. I agree that--the question of the good gentleman of Valenzuela is a valid question because we have a mechanism here Mr. President wherein we can dissolve parliament under no confidence code to the Chief minister pag nangyari yun may tanong si Senator Sherwin sakin kahapon, does that mean that they can go back to zero and they can run again? As far as the BBC are concerned here, it is considered one full term. However, we can strengthen it further by stating so that if parliament is dissolved mid-term that their first election to that parliament is considered one full term. WIN: Mr. President I actually have two questions regarding that, that is actually section 37 in which the Chief Minister shall advise the Wali to dissolve the parliament and call for a new parliamentary election. Yesterday, I brought this up to the good gentleman form Bukidnon, pag dinissolve ho ba yung parliament does this mean it is an uninterrupted term or an interrupted term? Because if it's a uninterrupted term then hindi pa ho counted yan sa term niya? ZUBIRI: It's an uninterrupted term sir-- WIN: So hindi pa counted sa term niya? This might lead to a scenario wherein the Chief Minister might dissolve the parliament and the members of parliament will say na wala na ko sa trabaho, my term was interrupted so meaning I can run again? Zubiri: My colleagues are explaining to me that an uninterrupted term is a full term. That's counted as a full term and the honourable senators that is an expert on election related matters-- SP: but the problem is the parliament is a new feature that's the problem so we need to discuss Zubiri: Maybe the Senate President can discuss in the proper time to make it clearer so that Comelec could be guided-- Win: Because if it's an interrupted term meaning they can run again balik sila sa original term nila so kung 3 term ka and dinisolve yung parliament 3 term ka ulit--actually it's a perpetual term already. SP: Is there a prohibition as to when you can dissolve parliament? It can happen anytime right? Zubiri: But it still needs a two thirds vote of parliament-- SP: let's say 5 months to go before the end of term and the parliament is dissolved-- Zubiri: Uninterrupted po yan sir, so its counted as their first term. It's counted as a full term, first full term. Win: At a proper time Mr. President we'll suggest--we just need to clear this up very well because it's something that can be abused in the future Mr. President and in Sec. 13 Mr. President that's Article 7. It states here the initial term of office of the members of parliament shall be 3 years without prejudice for the Bangsomoro Transition Authority to include in the election code a new term of office so does this mean Mr. President--my reading of this--initial term of office is 3 years? So does it mean that it can be more than 3 years? Article 7. Sec. 13 Mr. President. Zubiri: The initial term of office of the members of the parliament shall be 3 years without prejudice to the power of the PTA to include the election code a new term of office-- Win: A new term of office-- Ano po big sabihin nun? Zubiri: According to the BBC what they are proposing is that the parliament can also come up with longer terms, the members of parliament. Hindi clear lang yung three years-- Win: Ang hindi clear yung three years-- Zubiri: but In a later period the parliament can propose longer terms, it's up to the body would want to--I personally feel that we should just follow the constitution provison on the three year mandate. Win: Yes in section 8 article 10 of constitution Mr. President, the term of office elected officials except Barangay officials shall be determined by law shall be 3 years. No such official shall serve for more than 3 year consecutive term Mr. President. Zubiri: Although arguably Barangay officials have been elected for 5 year terms-- Win: Because it is allowed by the constitution Mr. President, but the other elected positions are fixed in 3 years 3 terms. Zubiri: what one Supreme Court justice said in a hearing; what is not expressly denied by the constitution may be allowed but again as expressed by the sponsor I don't mind that we just trim it down to 3 years - Win: Maybe just to be consistent to the constitution Mr. President because as stated in article 7 section 13 and as manifested earlier it can be longer than a 3 term-- Zubiri: In a proper time we will put that in- Win: Yes I just think we need to be consistent and clear in the term of office and as well as the lead of term Mr. President. Zubiri: Yes I agree-- Win: And at the proper time Mr. President I suggest some terminology to make it even more clear Mr. President. for me that's it for part 1 meaning there are other more parts, clarificatory parts lang.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 Sen. Leila M. de Lima's Message on EveryWoman's Bantay Bastos Campaign On the occasion of the launch of EveryWoman's #BantayBastos Campaign in partnership with the University of the Philippines College of Social Work and Community Development Patio, UP Hotel

UP Diliman, Quezon City 8 March 2018 MESSAGE HON. LEILA M. DE LIMA

Senator Good morning and a very empowering International Women's Day celebration to "EveryWoman" present here today! And when I say "EveryWoman", first of all, I mean to acknowledge the coalition of organizations and individuals who make up "EveryWoman", and their partner in today's event, the University of the Philippines College of Social Work and Community Development. Thank you for leading this endeavour, and unifying all of us in asserting and defending the Filipino woman's dignity and human rights. So, too, when I say "EveryWoman", I mean to refer to every person, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, who defends and supports women against all forms of abuse, violence and oppression, whether it be physical, psychological, emotional, economic, political, or otherwise. We all are EveryWoman because all women's issues are human rights issues, and all human rights issues are women's issues. I feel the need to emphasize the universality of so-called "women's issues" because I want to expose the truth about these attacks against women. They do not only attempt to weaken women's sense of self-worth, or undermine their contributions to society, but, most insidiously, it makes it difficult - if not impossible - for them to fight for themselves and for others. These attacks want women to be relegated to one role only: victims. They don't just call to mind the image of a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued, defended and protected by a man; but, also, a victim who can't defend herself, much less others. These attacks are, therefore, both an end in itself and a means to an end: to make us passive objects in our own lives, and in our own families and communities, unable to make any meaningful difference. That we are all here today is a statement that we will not let ourselves be pigeonholed into the role of victims. That we will do more than just cry foul about misogynistic attacks, and the other degrading and humiliating treatment of women in society today. In the words used by the organizers, this a "call for actions that go beyond token celebrations." What I like best about the campaign called #BantayBastos is that it is, at its simplest, a way to hold people, especially public figures, accountable for their words and actions. Yet, it is the kind of innovative, self-empowering and community-building solution that we need to explore to overcome the obstacles that we face - primarily, the power wielded by those who commit these affronts against women that make them almost immune from any real consequences for their actions. Sa perpektong mundo, hindi na dapat natin kailangan ng #BantayBastos campaign, dahil sa perpektong mundo, siguro'y may kahihiyan, delicadeza, dignidad at pagrespeto sa karapatang pantao sana ang ating mga tinatawag na "pinuno" at "lider" ng bayan. Kung hindi man, siguro'y may kahihiyan man lamang silang magpanggap na sila'y mga disente pang tao. But ours is not a perfect world, and these are especially trying times. And we must enforce consequences and accountability in creative ways, if we are to preserve our hope for a better future with better leaders. This is ground-breaking and I congratulate those who are responsible for formulating and launching it today. But I must ask everyone here to take caution in this action we are taking. Essentially, what we are harnessing is the power of media and social media. #BantayBastos could be a powerful weapon, but that only means we have to wield it responsibly. We must not descend to the level of those we are trying to defend against. We must make sure that the actions we take are above reproach, and that there are mechanisms in place to guard against false accusations that have the potential to ruin lives. I would also ask that #BantayBastos be more than just a way to collect and document gender insensitive, misogynistic and otherwise abusive actions and speech. There must be active and thoughtful discussion as to why we believe that these attacks are dangerous and hurtful to the persons involved and to society at large. Take, for instance, misogynistic comments made by certain public servants in the past. We cannot ignore the fact that there are those who are much too willing to give such comments a pass as being "harmless" or, as is the trend these days, "a joke". It is this mentality that we have to change: no, these are not harmless, for it implies that a woman's worth is tied to her reproductive organs or her relationship to a man. In my own case, what I had hoped for, at the very least, was for a discussion as to why ad hominem attacks have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of my claims of human rights abuses; why a person's whole humanity and public service record, and the validity of her claims should not be negated by simply slut-shaming her. We must take away this weapon by making it impotent. We cannot do this simply my making a list. We must engage those who need to understand the harmful impact of these acts. Finally, let us not forget that a "Misogynist List" could possibly become a double-edged sword: it can be used as documentation against the person making the misogynist statement, but it can also be used to further hurt and vilify the subject of the statements. I say this from the perspective of one who has been on the receiving end of misogynistic attacks. I have been slut-shamed, with my personal life being dragged through the mud in no less than the Halls of the House of Representatives. There is no lack of documentation of the slurs that were hurled against me. They were, and still are, hurtful. But since I know that I was victimized because I stood for what I believed was right, I somehow find the strength to grit my teeth and hold my head up high. But I am, after all, a public figure myself, and a sitting Senator of the Republic. My power is in my continued public presence, championing the causes of human rights. Not all victims are as fortunate as I am. We must take care that our solution will not just hold perpetrators accountable, but will also help their victims heal, move on and become stronger and more productive citizens. In this information age - where anyone can peddle their own version of so-called "truths" - it is becoming a luxury to be able to have control of the narrative of our own lives. I hope that #BantayBastos becomes a powerful tool in helping victims - women or otherwise - reclaim control of their lives, as well as demand accountability from public figures. On a personal note, I am very grateful to the organizers for your continued support throughout my ongoing ordeal. My persecutors may believe that they have caused me to suffer so many losses these past twenty months, but, in truth, it only made me see just how many blessings I have gained, especially in the form of allies, who are tirelessly committed in defending human rights and dignity - even, and especially, under difficult and dire circumstances. Ika nga, sa pagsubok tunay na nalilinang ang matatag na samahan at pagtutulungan. Kayo at ang suporta ninyo po - para sa akin, para sa pagtatanggol sa karapatang pantao, at para sa paglaban sa mga mapang-abuso - ang silver lining at blessings sa buhay ko ngayon na bumubuhay sa aking pag-asa. I have full faith and confidence that this campaign, in the able and compassionate hands of EveryWoman will be a success and will be the source of hope for other victims of misogyny and other abusive conducts. Thank you and good morning!
Press Release

March 8, 2018 Dispatch from Crame No. 255:

Sen. Leila M. de Lima's statement in support of Vice Admiral Ronald Mercado 3/8/18 Former Navy Flag Officer-in-Command Vice Admiral Ronald Mercado should not despair over the deplorable turn of events in the controversy surrounding the Frigate Acquisition Project. From the very beginning, he has taken the right path in exposing the administration's choice of an unproven and inferior weapon system, at the risk of his own career. Instead of keeping silent, he chose to speak his mind and stand for what he thinks is best for his men and the country he served his entire life. All of a sudden, Mercado, who has called out irregularities in said project, has been made the scapegoat by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in yesterday's House hearings. This is how Malacanang, together with the DND and some navy officials, is covering up its role in the lobbying for an inferior and unproven combat management system (CMS). Rather than disclose what transpired in the Malacanang meeting between Bong Go's undersecretary and the Navy, Sec. Lorenzana instead chose to sacrifice Mercado by turning the tables on him and calling out his supposed inordinate interest in the choice of the CMS. This is not the first time that this happened. In the span of this administration's 19 months in office, it has brooked neither dissent nor complaints. Those who dare raise a protest on government irregularities or anti-people policies are vilified and crucified. Those in the executive are fired or forced to resign. Those not under the executive, like the Chief Justice, are impeached, or worse, imprisoned like me. This is a scorched earth strategy on dissenters, non-conformists, or just plain decent public officials who can no longer take the corruption in the system that Duterte, instead of eradicating, has encouraged. This is the consequence of the breakdown of the rule of law and the reign of impunity that he has promoted. This is the kind of government and leaders that men and women of integrity and principles are facing. Former Navy FOIC Mercado is just the latest among their victims, after myself, the Chief Justice, the Vice President, the Ombudsman, and members of the opposition. That it would happen now in the AFP is certainly disheartening. It seems that in line with its commander-in-chief's policy of capitulation to China, the AFP is now defending the purchase of an inferior combat system for its warships. Because of this, we must put forward the question of whether or not our defense establishment is still interested in defending this nation against its external enemies. Is it the case that the few good men defending our nation have finally been overwhelmed by those driven by nothing but ambition and the promise of promotion? Vice Admiral Mercado is retiring soon. During his appearances at the Senate and the House, he has the bearing of a man who no longer has anything to lose, after his own officers have turned their backs on him. With nothing to lose, he must harness his remaining strength. He must continue to bear the integrity and courage that has guided him to act with selflessness and sacrifice. He could have stayed silent and retired without his reputation being tarnished by the Secretary of Defense. But instead he chose to do the right thing, as any officer and a gentleman would, as any of the other good men and women of our armed forces would. Vice Admiral Ronald Mercado should take heart in the fact that in all that he fought for against all odds, he has become the officer's honor code in flesh and blood. This completes his lifetime of service to the nation.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 Resist 'victim' label, De Lima urges women As the nation commemorates International Women's Day today, Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has urged Filipino women to work together and resist being victims of gender-based abuses by misogynists in power. In a message read during the launch of #EveryWoman's #BantayBastos Campaign, De Lima said women should make a meaningful difference by defending dignity and human rights without being cowed. "These attacks against women [do] not only attempt to weaken women's sense of self-worth, or undermine their contributions to society, but, most insidiously, it makes it difficult - if not impossible - for them to fight for themselves and for others," she said. "That we are all here today is a statement that we will not let ourselves be pigeonholed into the role of victims. That we will do more than just cry foul about misogynistic attacks, and the other degrading and humiliating treatment of women in society today," she added. The launch of #BantayBastos Campaign by #EveryWoman in partnership with the University of the Philippines-College of Social Work and Community Development was held at the UP Hotel in Quezon City and attended by women from various sectors. In fighting for justice and equality, De Lima said women should hold people accountable for their words and actions even as they engage the citizenry in healthy discussions on gender-based issues hounding the patriarchal society. "Take, for instance, misogynistic comments made by certain public servants in the past. We cannot ignore the fact that there are those who are much too willing to give such comments a pass as being 'harmless' or, as is the trend these days, 'a joke.' It is this mentality that we have to change," she said. "We must take away this weapon by making it impotent. We cannot do this simply my making a list. We must engage those who need to understand the harmful impact of these acts," she added. The former justice secretary clarified, however, that defending human rights and women's dignity does not end with promoting awareness and accountability. She noted, "we must take care that our solution will [also] help their victims heal, move on and become stronger and more productive citizens." De Lima said she hopes EveryWoman's #BantayBastos campaign becomes a powerful tool in helping victims - women or otherwise - reclaim control of their lives, as well as demand accountability from public figures. "I have full faith and confidence that this campaign, in the able and compassionate hands of #EveryWoman, will be a success and will be the source of hope for other victims of misogyny and other abusive conducts," she said. After all, she added, "we all are EveryWoman because all women's issues are human rights issues, and all human rights issues are women's issues. De Lima, who was recognized by Amnesty International as one of the notable Women Human Rights Defenders Under Threat, is a staunch defender of women's rights and gender equality. She has already authored and co-authored several bills and resolutions advocating women's rights, including Senate Bill No. 1438 focusing on the protection of women in state custody and Senate Resolution No. 670 calling for a Senate inquiry into the implementation of the GAD plans and programs under the present administration.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 Legarda Vows to Fund More Local Climate Action

Hails Signing of P192M in Grants from People's Survival Fund Senator Loren Legarda today said she will ensure that more climate action plans of local governments can be supported by the People's Survival Fund (PSF) after yesterday's signing of the first four PSF financing agreements, totaling P192 million. The landmark move affirms the Duterte administration's commitment to building the country's resilience to both extreme weather events and the creeping impacts of climate change, said Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committees on Finance and Climate Change, principal author and sponsor of the Climate Change Act of 2009, and principal sponsor of the PSF, which was passed into law in 2012 as Republic Act No. 10174. "Our local officials have struggled for years to secure our people's lives and livelihoods in the face of climate change. I championed the establishment of the People's Survival Fund because with enough funding and research support, these same officials could and would rise up to the challenge," Legarda said. "Now that the funds for our four pioneering local government units are already moving, and more projects in the PSF pipeline are being considered, we hope the rest of Congress also sees the clear need not just to increase the funding for the PSF but to also climate-proof the national budget," she added. "The Philippine government must mobilize its own resources even as we demand the international community to honor their climate finance commitments." Nine more projects totaling P980 million are under consideration by the PSF Board, which is chaired by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez. Legarda, UNISDR Global Champion for Resilience and UNFCCC National Adaptation Plan Champion, also thanked the mayors and other local government officials of the first four LGUs to receive PSF funding - Del Carmen, Siargao Island, Surigao del Norte; Lanuza, Surigao del Sur; Gerona, Tarlac; and San Francisco, Camotes Island, Cebu - for committing to the application. "I salute our pioneering local chief executives for keeping the faith in us and in the process, and for paving the way for all other LGUs to also craft and implement climate-resilient programs," she said. "I want to thank in particular Lanuza mayor Salvacion Azarcon this International Women's Day for proving that women are leading in the frontlines of the climate crisis." "I also laud the combined leadership of Secretary Dominguez of the Department of Finance; Commissioners Emmanuel De Guzman, Rachel Herrera and Noel Gaerlan of the Climate Change Commission; and all the other members of the PSF Board for leading us to this moment," she added. "Our hard work is not over to be sure, as the impacts of climate change worsen. Yet with all these climate champions from government, civil society, academe and the business sector, I am confident that we can also seize the opportunities of climate action," Legarda concluded.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 OPENING STATEMENT SENATE HEARING ON CHARTER CHANGE

Cotabato City

8 March 2018 Maayong aga, Cotabato City! Assalamualaikum sa lahat! Thank you for hosting this seventh hearing of the Senate Committee on Constitutional amendments on the proposals to amend the 1987 Constitution. These are interesting times for the people of Cotabato and the ARMM as you are faced with two very crucial issues: the Bangsamoro Basic Law and Charter change. Bangsamoro, Christians, Indigenous Peoples -- are at a crossroads between the promise of change and its perils if gone awry. Several years ago, there were attempts to pass the BBL, but Congress ran out of time. It has been resurrected this 17th Congress with the hope that this would be acted upon favorably to address the pressing issues of the Bangsamoro region. As we tackle BBL, we are also confronted with moves to revise the current 1987 Constitution. Some are of the view that both issues are intertwined and should move at the same parallel path simultaneously. We hope today's discussions will help bring about clarity and will lead to a concrete plan of action that is a product of many voices of the very people who have always aspired for a peaceful and progressive region. We have resource persons invited today, whether in favor or against Charter Change and believe in democracy that all views should be given the opportunity to be heard and respectfully. As in the previous hearings, we will ask the following questions: Una: Kailangan bang amyendahan o baguhin ang 1987 Constitution? Ikalawa: Ano ang mga dapat baguhin sa Konstitusyon at bakit? Ikatlo: Ito ba ay gagawin sa pamamagitan ng isang Constitutional Convention o "Con-con", o sa pamamagitan ng Kongreso mismo bilang isang Constitutional Assembly o "Con-ass"? Ikaapat: Kung "Con-ass" ang magaganap, boboto ba ang Senado at ang House of Representatives nang hiwalay, o iisa? But we are here in ARMM, Cotabato City, let us also try to discuss and provide answer to these questions: - Is the BBL version that we have constitutional? Can it pass constitutional scrutiny? - Do we need Charter change so that the BBL would be realized in a federal context? What do we need to change in the 1987 Constitution in this regard? - How will Charter change address the challenges of Mindanao and ARMM? - Will Charter change, or even federalism, be the answer to the region's problems on poverty, lack of jobs and opportunities, lack of access to education, and armed conflict and violence? I'm certain we will all agree: the goal of Charter change should neither be to gratify the political ambitions of the few nor put in place a new oppressive, exploitative system, but to rectify and address the underlying problems of the country. The aim should be peace, justice, progress and prosperity for all. I am looking forward to hearing the voices of all the people here in Cotabato City and in the ARMM, Bangsamoro. Daghang salamat!
Press Release

March 8, 2018 COTABATO WANTS BBL, ANTI-DYNASTY, PRO-IP BILLS PASSED FIRST BEFORE CHA-CHA COTABATO CITY -- Congress should act on bills on the Bangsamoro Basic Law and other urgent measures before working to shift to a federalist form of government, said various resource persons here at the Senate's third Regional Consultative Hearing on Charter Change. Sophia Paguital of the Mindanao People's Caucus said Congress should pass the BBL first before acting on the proposed shift to a federalist form of government. She said her organization is not opposed to Charter change and may even support it "if it would give voice to the minorities." "Sana po supportahan po ng Senate ang pagpasa po ng BBL before federalism. Lahat po kami ay naniniwala na makatutulong ang pagpasa ng BBL before federalism (We hope Senate would support the enactment of BBL before federalism. We all believe that passing the BBL first before federalism would help)," Paguital said. Laida Musa of the Kilusan ng mga Lumalabang Mamamayan para sa Pagbabago ng Bayan (Kilos-Bayan) said that aside from BBL, bills on anti-political dynasty and pro-indigenous people should also be passed first. Kilos Bayan, a group representing marginalized sectors in Cotabato City and Maguindanao, is against attempts to change the 1987 Constitution. "Ang pagbabago ng Saligang Batas ay hindi para matugunan ang mga pangangailangan ng mga karaniwang mamamayan (Changing the Constitution will not address the needs of ordinary citizens)" she said. "Ayaw po namin ng Charter change. Ang 1987 Constitution ay hindi perpekto subalit ito ay sumasalamin sa mga mithiin ng sambayang Pilipino (We don't like Charter change. The 1987 Constitution is not perfect but it reflects the aspirations of the Filipino people)," Musa added. The present BBL draft is constitutional and there is no need to change the Constitution to pass the BBL, said Atty. Mohammad Muktadir Estrella. "The draft Bangsamoro Basic Law, specifically the version of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, is constitutional under the 1987 Constitution. Hence there is no need for charter change to have enacted into law," said Estrella, a lawyer and a professor at the Notre Dame University College of Law. However, Atty. Michael Mastura, former representative of the 1st District of Maguindanao and Cotabato City, disagreed and pointed out that the need for Charter change to bring about proportionate government representation for the Bangsamoro people. "There is a flaw in the structure of government. It is not possible for a senator from the Moros to be elected without assistance," said Atty. Mastura. Changing the Constitution should allow Moro leaders to have a voice in the proposed parliamentary government, he said. "This is a core argument for opening the 1987 Constitution if only to answer the aspiration of our people," said Atty. Mastura. Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments, headed by Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan, said he organized the hearing here because the voice of Muslim Mindanao should be heard on the issue of Charter change. "Sinadya po nating pumunta sa ARMM dahil napakahalaga ng usapin po ng constitutional change hindi lamang sa Luzon, hindi lamang sa Visayas, kung hindi pati na rin sa Muslim Mindanao (We intended to go to ARMM because the issue of constitutional change is important not just in Luzon, not just in Visayas, but also in Muslim Mindanao)," Pangilinan said. "Matagal na po ang kawalan ng kapayapaan, matagal na po ang armed conflict na siyang nagiging dahilan kung bakit nagkakaroon ng problema (Peace has long been absent here, and the long-standing armed conflict has been the reason why there is a problem in Congress)... And that's why we are going, we will be there to listen to the voices of our countrymen, our Muslim brothers and sisters on the issue of Charter change," he added. Vigilance needed as 'Cha-cha may lead to abuse of power' At the same time, Estrella warned that bills pushing to amend or revise the 1987 Constitution may lead to abuse of power. "Almost all of the present bills are characterized by legal loopholes, which will open the floodgates for abuse of power and lack of public accountability," said Estrella. "In a country where authorities always abuse their powers, we cannot afford to lose provisions that promote checks and balances," he added. The law professor also urged the public to keep a vigilant eye on efforts to revise or amend the constitution. "There is a need to exercise the highest form of vigilance in attempting to revise or amend the 1987 Constitution. We have to be reminded of our obligation that amending or revising the constitution should be made beyond the vaults of political affiliation and patronage politics," said Atty. Estrella. "The Constitution serves our social contract with the government. It protects us from the abuses of the government. It provides for mechanisms to ensure public accountability for people serving in the government," he added. Con-Con, not Con-Ass On the manner of changing the Constitution, most of the resource persons here said that they prefer a constitutional convention (con-con) over a constitutional assembly (con-ass). "The creation of a constitutional convention is more in keeping with our democratic history and our democratic values as a nation," said Atty. Estrella. Timuay Santo Unsad, who represented the municipality of Upi in Maguindanao, also preferred con-con, emphasizing the need for indigenous peoples to be represented in such a body. A dozen resource persons attended the hearing to present their positions on Charter change. Their insight and inputs will form the basis of the committee report. Senator Pangilinan, who is also vice-chair of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms, noted that while some are in favor of federalism and some are not, most don't have an idea about it. "Sa usapin ng pederalismo, mayroong pabor, mayroon ding kontra pero pinakamarami ata yung kulang ang kaalaman (On the issue of federalism, there are those in favor, there are also those who are against it, but mostly, a lot know little about it)," he said. "May mga nagsasabi daw na kung gusto ninyo kumain ng tatlong beses sa isang araw, iboto natin ang pederalismo. Pero may mga debate tungkol dito, at lumalabas yung pinakadebate, kailangan ba ng pederalismo o kailangan lang tiyakin na yung bulto ng pondo ng gobyerno ay ilaan sa mga lokal (There are those who say that if you want to eat three times a day, let us then vote for federalism. But there are debates about this, and it shows that the most debated is: do we need federalism or do we just need it to ensure that the bulk of the funds of government is allocated to the local governments?)," he added.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 MOVING FLIGHTS FROM ONE TERMINAL TO ANOTHER WON'T SOLVE NAIA CONGESTION--POE Relocating flights from one terminal to another will not ease airport congestion and may further exacerbate problems hounding the country's main gateway, Sen. Grace Poe said today. In her report to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III and members of the Senate panel after she wrapped up hearings on airport concerns, Poe emphasized that congestion will still exist even after the Manila International Airport Authority implements its rationalization plan at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). "With the pending proposals of interested parties to expand NAIA, the MIAA should endeavor to assess these submissions as these offer promising remedies which not only resolve current issues but also provide for the exponential growth of the aviation industry as well as the national economy. As it is, expanding the capacity of the country's main gateway would be the main solution to decongest the NAIA," said Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services. Poe acknowledged the existence of bids to improve NAIA's services such as the P350 billion unsolicited proposal of a group consisting of the country's largest conglomerates dubbed as "super consortium" and the $3-billion or P156.2-billion bid of Megawide Construction Corp. and its India-based partner GMR Infrastructure Limited (also the joint venture behind the construction of a new Cebu International Airport terminal) that promise to transform the airport into a world-class regional aviation hub. "This expansion of NAIA may more likely resolve existing constraints similar to the upgrading of terminals in Cebu. Contrasting these ventures with the intended terminal rationalization reveals that the planned redistribution of domestic and international flights may only be a band-aid solution to the continuing problems in NAIA," the senator added. Under the rationalization plan, Terminals 1 and 3 will be exclusive for international flights while Terminals 2 and 4 will be for domestic flights. Airlines were told to comply within six months. Poe, however, stressed that this would not solve terminal congestion as Terminal 2 has a capacity of only 9 million passengers, as against the combined number of domestic passengers of more than 16 million. Similarly, the six-month deadline for airlines to comply with the airport rationalization plan may be arbitrary and the rationalization plan's implementation done in haste. She urged MIAA to review its rationalization plan "with the view in mind of not prejudicing the interests of Filipino passengers." "The MIAA has been inclined to execute the proposed terminal rationalization without conducting a detailed study on whether this would be the soundest approach to the current situation in NAIA. Neither has there been a concrete plan formed to ensure the smooth execution of the rationalization," she added. "The Committee is giving time for the MIAA to consult with various stakeholders in the industry to solve the congestion problem in NAIA and to serve the public with utmost attention. By then, a full committee report will be issued for the purpose," Poe said.
Press Release

March 8, 2018 STATEMENT OF SENATOR JUAN MIGUEL F. ZUBIRI ON THE FILING OF CASES AGAINST THE SUSPECTS IN THE KILLING OF ATIO CASTILLO We welcome the news that the DOJ has filed a criminal suit for hazing against 10 members and officers of the Aegis Juris Fraternity for the death of Atio Castillo. This action was one of the recommendations included in the committee report that was filed following the inquiries conducted by the Senate. We have done our part in passing as well a stricter Anti-Hazing Law and so we thank the DOJ for acting on this matter, as we all continue to hope for justice to finally be served to the family of Atio. At this point, I urge all the parties involved to cooperate fully and finally tell all in order to clear their conscience and aid in the swift resolution of this case.
Mr. Ciruli is the Director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He is an adjunct professor teaching public opinion and foreign policy. The Crossley Center conducts research and presents live and virtual programs on foreign policy, politics, public policy and public opinion.





Mr. Ciruli holds a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelors degree cum laude in political science from UCLA. He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and is the past-president of the Pacific Chapter of AAPOR (PAPOR). Mr. Ciruli is a board member of the Social Science Foundation of the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies and past-president of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board and the Denver Athletic Club.




Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
The Commerce Commission has cleared US food company Kraft Heinz to buy Cerebos Food & Instant Coffee and Asian Home Gourmet from Japan's Suntory Beverage & Food, subject to the divestment of some sauce brands.

Japan's Suntory put the units on the block in April last year and announced it had reached a deal with Kraft Heinz in October. The Commerce Commission today granted clearance for the New Zealand part of the global deal on the condition that Kraft's local unit Heinz Wattie divest the licences for the Gregg's brand for the New Zealand supply of red sauce (tomato sauce and ketchup), barbeque sauce and steak sauce, and the F. Whitlock & Sons brand for the supply of Worcestershire sauce in New Zealand.

The regulator said its ruling was based on competition issues in the national markets for the manufacture, importation and wholesale supply of a number of table sauces to supermarkets and the food service industry.

We believe the merger of the number one and two wholesale suppliers to supermarkets of red sauce, barbecue sauce, steak sauce and Worcestershire sauce would be likely to result in a substantial lessening of competition in each of these markets," Commission chair Mark Berry said in a statement. "However, we consider the divestment offered by Heinz Watties is sufficient to remedy the competitive harm the merger would cause and we have given clearance to the merger subject to the divestment undertaking.

The commission is satisfied there are no competition concerns in the markets for Asian sauces, condiments, chilli sauce, gravies, powdered beverages, and soy sauce due to a range of factors, including low levels of overlap and the presence of competitive constraint from other suppliers.

(BusinessDesk)

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Commerce Minister and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi rejected New Zealand Steel's second application to get duties imposed on imported Chinese steel products, saying they have minimal government subsidies and aren't being dumped on the local market.

Faafoi chose not to impose anti-dumping duties on steel reinforcing bar and coil from China and Malaysia, finding the products weren't being dumped in New Zealand, and separately found Chinese subsidies on those products to be "de minimis levels" meaning they weren't causing material injury to domestic rivals. The March 3 decisions were published in the government's New Zealand Gazette today.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment started investigating the products after getting an application from Australian-owned New Zealand Steel last year with enough evidence to warrant a probe. The ministry's early work found no grounds to impose provisional measures, which needed "reasonable cause" to believe Chinese subsidies were causing material injury to local industry.

MBIE's preliminary investigation reports said it needed "to establish to a higher standard of proof that dumped imports are causing material injury" to recommend imposing duties.

The application was NZ Steel's second, with the local unit of ASX-listed BlueScope Steel last year seeking to have duties imposed on Chinese imports of galvanised steel. Former Commerce Minister Jacqui Dean, on the advice from MBIE, turned down that application, which NZ Steel is appealing via a judicial review in the High Court.

MBIE's final report into the earlier complaint found Chinese imports were undercutting NZ Steel prices, but that it couldn't be blamed on government support for Chinese manufacturers, which was minimal at most.

Chinese steel exports have been a bone of contention around the world as US and European producers accused the Asian nation's subsidies and overproduction of undercutting their local industries, and last week US President Donald Trump announced plans to impose a 25 percent tariff on imported steel in an effort to support American industry and deliver on his Make America Great Again rhetoric during his 2016 presidential campaign.

(BusinessDesk)

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The Rail and Maritime Transport Union says Lyttleton Port Cos decision not to pay workers over the weekend is an illegal lockout.

The two sides were in mediation today to try to resolve a dispute over late-night rosters. Although they didnt come to an agreement, progress was made, union organiser John Kerr says, and the union called off planned strike action ahead of more talks on Monday.

However, Kerr said Lyttleton Port is refusing to pay some of the RMTU workers for their scheduled shifts, saying it has diverted ships away from Lyttleton because of the strike threat, and now there isnt any work for them to do.

Kerr said he has taken legal advice and has been told the companys actions amount to an illegal lockout.

By law they have to give 14 days notice of a lockout. By saying they arent going to pay the workers, it's an illegal lockout. Its not that they cant pay them because they told us if we had reached an agreement today they would have paid them.

Kerr said he doesnt accept Lyttleton Port needs seven days' notice to divert ships back to the port.

Shipping changes all the time.

Hes told union members to turn up for work tomorrow and will meet with them at 10am.

While not commenting on the issue of an illegal lockout, Lyttleton Port spokesman Paul Monk said the company had warned the RMTU if it didnt give seven days' notice of withdrawing strike action it was likely there would be no work for them.

Monk said he believed the new offer on the table for unions today was very generous and he was disappointed it hadnt been accepted.

We offered RMTU members a 3 percent salary increase for three years with no changes to their terms and conditions of work. This means we are no longer asking for the roster changes that would allow the port to offer customers more flexibility in servicing vessels.

Because our new offer asks for no changes to their roster there can be no concerns about any roster associated fatigue or safety issues.

Lyttleton Port is owned 100 percent by the Christchurch City Council. In 2017 the company generated a net profit of $14.4 million on revenue of $114.4 million. It paid the council a dividend of $8 million.

(BusinessDesk)

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On the complaint of the victim, the police registered a sexual molestation case under section 354 (assault on woman) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), in New Shimla.

The Shimla Police on Wednesday booked veteran actor Jeetendra after his cousin lodged a complaint accusing him of sexual assault.

As per the complainant, Jeetendra sexually assaulted her in Shimla, in January 1971. At that time the actor was 28 years old and the complainant was 18.

She said that the actor "arranged" for her to join him on a film shooting schedule in Shimla where he later assaulted her in an inebriated state.

Jeetendra, a well-known name in the Hindi film industry, is also a film producer and has daughter Ekta and son Tusshar with wife Shobhaa.
Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory Schifter and Paris Hilton

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Not only is Cory Schifter of Casale Jewelers one of the most philanthropic business guys on Staten Island, he's also one of the luckiest guys

He just returned from a star -- and diamond -- studded experience in honor of the 90th annual Academy Awards.

Schifter got to rub elbows with celebrities at an after-party following ABC's Oscar telecast, which bestowed Hollywood's highest honors on Sunday, March 4.

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Schifter and Oscar winner Jamie Foxx

The after-party was held at one of the celebrity's homes, secretly tucked away in the beautiful Hollywood Hills. The host wished to remain anonymous.

"No, I did not attend the actual Oscar ceremony," explained Schifter. "Only 3,400 celebrities get to go to the Oscars, which is something I found out. But the festivities surrounding the Academy Awards and the after parties were fantastic."

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory with Matthew Modine of 'Stranger Things'

"It was a thrill to be at an Oscars charity event, hosted by the celebrities to raise money for a Los Angeles hospital," said Schifter. "It was pretty amazing. I also got to see Forevermark diamonds that were worn by celebrities on the red carpet. It was a great experience."

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory and NFL player Ray Lewis

The experience was "surreal," said Schifter, who considered himself lucky to be a part of a special event that "raised $1.5 million for an LA hospital in one night."

Schifter himself is a ubiquitous fixture on the Staten Island charity and non-profit social scene, donating thousands in jewelry which are raffled off to guests, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the causes. In addition, he and his staff donate hundreds of hours hosting the raffles personally.

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory poses with actor Paul Sorvino, of "Goodfellas" fame.

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Keep scrolling for a glimpse at some of the diamonds worn by celebrities at the party -- and on the actual red carpet at the Oscars.

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Allison Janney, winner of Best Supporting Actress for "I, Tonya," wore this 128-carat, $4 million Forevermark necklace to the ceremony.

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AP Photo | Jordan Strauss

Janney poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

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Cory, far right, and Forevermark Diamond personnel.

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory walks the red carpet with spokespeople from Forevermark Diamonds,

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Courtesy Casale Jewelers

Cory with actor Tom Arnold

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(Editor's note: This is part of "The United States of Weed," a series on the movement to legalize marijuana for recreational use in New Jersey, and the potential impact it could have on Staten Island. Click here for additional stories in the project.)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Should New Jersey legalize marijuana for recreational use, the decision could impact neighboring New York's marijuana industry -- both the legal medical field as well as illegal operations.

To get a sense of what could happen, the Advance spoke to "Joey," a 25-year-old lifelong Staten Islander who has been illegally selling large quantities of weed for the past nine years. (Joey's name has been changed to protect his identity.)

While the Advance does not condone drug dealing, Joey offered a unique perspective on how the illegal distribution of weed could be affected by legal marijuana dispensaries.

Watch our exclusive interview above to learn what Joey thinks about the future of weed in New York.
NEW YORK CITY -- The corruption trial of a Joseph Percoco, a former Huguenot resident and one-time top governor's aide -- resumes today after court was cancelled due to weather.

The trial left off Tuesday with three jurors begging to be let off the case. The jury of seven women and five men has deliberated about 21 hours. The trial is now in its seventh week.

Percoco and Syracuse businessmen Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi are accused of bribery.

Aiello lawyer Steve Coffey unsuccessfully asked for a mistrial because of the jurors' letters to the judge.

"You're going to have a revolt," he told U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni. She denied his motion.

Caproni suspended trial Wednesday, citing forecasts of severe wind and around a foot of snow.

Manhattan was pelted with heavy slush and rain Wednesday. Parts of Westchester County, where five jurors live, have gone days without power due to severe weather.

Syracuse.com, an affiliate of SILive, is covering the trial from New York City. Check back for updates.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- At 40 years old, Jodi Kenny enrolled in a Master of Divinity program at New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Jersey with hopes of becoming a pastor.

The former owner of a children's theater company -- called the Jellybean Production Company -- Kenny said she got a calling to pursue a new life path.

But soon after starting school, she opened her first thrift shop in Huguenot. That's when she started to think differently about her future.

"I thought I was going to be a pastor. But this [the thrift shop] kind of morphed from that," said Kenny, noting that she has donated more than $100,000 of her thrift shop proceeds to charity over the years.

"I saw there was a need in my community and I wanted to fill it. ...I have to say it's a labor of love," said Kenny, who is also vice president of the Reformed Church of Prince's Bay.

AN EXPANDED STOREFRONT

Now, three locations later, she is the owner of a 3,000-square-foot shop -- appropriately called Nothing New Thrift Shop -- in Richmond Valley. The large storefront is a far cry from her first shop on Huguenot Avenue in a small building less than 500 square feet.

"I thought [being a pastor] was what God was leading me to, but instead he gave me all this. ...When this storefront came up, I felt it was suited for my personality. This is everything I love wrapped up into one," said Kenny, noting she moved into the new Richmond Valley location two years ago.

"I wanted a store big enough to have furniture and a large selection of stuff," she added.

The two-level storefront is packed with every item imaginable -- from vintage toys and collectibles, to handbags, jewelry and clothing. She also has a large selection of costume jewelry, some of which she buys from wholesalers.

"A thrift shop is a great equalizer. Everyone can have nice things, feel good, buy nice gifts for their friends, and help take care of others because you have a thrift shop in the community. I feel like every community should have a good thrift shop," said Kenny.

MORE THAN A THRIFT SHOP

Kenny says in her short time in Richmond Valley she has created a "community." Many people stop in regularly to browse the many store racks, as well as enjoy time in a homey, comfortable environment.

"This store is more than just a thrift shop. It's a community-builder. ...People come in to just relax in a stress-free environment where they can afford anything," she added.

NOT JUST ITEMS

Kenny also hosts an open mic night on the first Friday of every month in the shop.

"You have eight minutes to share yourself," said Kenny. "We put out snacks and people can come and express themselves. A woman who is an artist runs it for me; she is linked into the artistic community."

A peek inside Nothing New Thrift Shop 42 Gallery: A peek inside Nothing New Thrift Shop

NOTHING NEW THRIFT SHOP AT A GLANCE

Address: 4916 Arthur kill Rd., Richmond Valley

Website: www.nothingnewwarehouse.com

Social Media:

Instagram: @Nothing New Thrift Shop



Facebook: www.facebook.com/NothingNewThriftShop/

New Businesses in Focus is a weekly column that relates the stories of new Staten Island businesses owners.

If you have a new business on Staten Island, e-mail porpora@siadvance.com.

FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK and TWITTER
China urges US, N.Korea to hold talks 'sooner than later'



Beijing, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



China's foreign minister urged the United States and North Korea Thursday to start talks as soon as possible, stressing that "the sincerity" of all parties to solve the nuclear crisis would be tested.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi cautiously welcomed Seoul's announcement that Pyongyang had offered to hold denuclearisation talks with the United States in return for security guarantees.

The North also agreed to hold a historic summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April.

"The Korean peninsula issue has finally taken an important step in the right direction," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of annual parliamentary session.

"These initial steps must be followed up by corresponding and concerted efforts by the parties. We call on the parties, particularly the United States and the DPRK, to engage in dialogue sooner rather than later," he said.

But Wang issued a word of caution, noting that breakthroughs on the North Korean nuclear issue had collapsed in the past.

"Of course it takes more than one cold day to freeze three feet of ice," he said.

"Despite light at the end of the tunnel, the journey ahead won't be smooth. History has reminded us time and again that whenever tensions subsided on the peninsula the situation would be clouded by various interferences," he said.

"Now is the crucial moment to test the sincerity of the parties to solve the nuclear issue."
China plans panda park that will dwarf Yellowstone



Shanghai, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



China will create a bastion for giant pandas three times the size of Yellowstone National Park to link up and encourage breeding among existing wild populations of the notoriously slow-reproducing animal, state media reported Thursday.

At least 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) has been secured over the next five years for construction of the Giant Panda National Park in mountainous southwestern China for the nation's favourite creature, the China Daily reported.

Plans for the park -- which would cover 27,134 square kilometres (10,476 square miles) -- were first put forward early last year by the ruling Communist Party and the State Council, China's cabinet, the paper said.

Yellowstone, established in 1872 as the first US national park, spans 8,983 square kilometres.

The Chinese park plans are aimed at enabling wild pandas that are currently isolated in several different areas of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces to mingle and hopefully breed.

Giant pandas have a notoriously low reproductive rate, a key factor -- along with habitat loss -- in their status as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of threatened species.

More than 80 percent of the world's wild pandas live in Sichuan, with the rest in Shaanxi and Gansu.

The funding was secured via an agreement signed Tuesday by the Bank of China and the Sichuan provincial Department of Forestry, the paper said.

The bank is to secure the financing by 2023, to go toward poverty alleviation among people living in the remote area and necessary infrastructure and other construction for the park.
The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College will host an exhibit by multimedia artist Matthew Bollinger from March 22 through April 22.



Matt Bollinger: DIY is a solo exhibition of paintings, drawings and videos, including stop-motion animations. There will be an opening reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, March 22 and an artist's talk from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, March 29 in the Somers Room of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. The artist will critique the work of Skidmore art students on Friday, March 30.



Based on invented narrative and memory, Bollinger's work depicts moments from the everyday lives of semi-fictional characters. His paintings are rich with the kind of detail we tend to ignore or rejectPost-it notes stuck to a computer screen, drunken graffiti scrawled on bathroom tiles. They're suffused with moody light, marked by unexpected bursts of color, and enriched by subtle complexities, such as a silhouette in a doorway or a figure reflected in rippling water.



A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Bollinger received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003 and his MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007. He is an assistant professor of art and design at the State University of New York College at Purchase.



The Schick Art Gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, call 518-580-5049 or visit www.skidmore.edu/schick.
GREAT BAY(DCOMM):--- The St. Maarten Tourist Bureau (STB) which falls under the Ministry of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transportation and Telecommunications (Ministry TEATT), recently attended the ANATO Tradeshow in Bogota, Columbia together with Anguilla.

This show is one of the largest tourism tradeshows in South America. St. Maarten shared a booth with Anguilla as part of the partnership in marketing the destination to the tourism travel trade.

Though updates are being sent to a lot of the destination partners in the Latin market, it is imperative that St. Maarten remains visible even if only on a small scale, STB pointed out.

One of STBs main agenda points were to meet with Copa airlines regarding the return of flights to St. Maarten.

We are happy to announce that during the meeting with Copa Representatives and a visit from the Sales Vice President, it has been decided that Copa will resume flights to St. Maarten as of June 2 this year. The flights will commence with two flights and then up to four flights. The new Sales Vice President wants that by the end of next year, to have daily flights to St. Maarten, STB said on Wednesday.

All of the tour operators are anxious for St. Maarten to re-open and flights with Copa Airlines to resume. They understand our situation, but at the same time are looking forward to a new St. Maarten and new products on the Island.

Both destinations intend on making this a reality. The tour operators were very glad that we were present at ANATO and they are looking forward towards further updates and a continued relationship. Now it is up to us to do our part to make this happen, STB concluded.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The process to form the next government as initiated by the Governor, H. E. Eugene Holiday is taking its course. In fact, the information phase is nearing its end. We must also recognize though, the political reality of government formations and the role of political parties in this process says Member of Parliament Sarah Wescott Williams in a press release.

The election results are clear. The UD is by far the biggest party. The people have spoken and want a government that has the stamp of the UD. Needless to say, this will require the support of at least one other party with one or more seats in parliament.

While the buzz is a national government, this term is used by some to describe different political scenarios, which are not necessarily qualifiable as a national government.

The governors mandate included a government that can rely on the largest parliamentary support possible.

A national government is usually a government on a higher level or a national coalition, one in which mostly the bigger parties participate and historically this happens in times of crises; A broad base government is a government that includes the views of different political parties or groups and possibly include political representatives who articulate these views.

A broad base government is a representative government; representative of different views, groups or parties.

While the governors mandate to explore a government formation based on the broadest possible support in parliament can be understood and might even be desirous, a legitimate parliamentary majority is 8 or more seats. More importantly than the number of seats is the commitment of the supporting party/parties to a clear vision for St. Maarten. Stability is a focal point of this vision. Parties should have a shared vision and be committed to its execution. As to the so-called Free Mandate of Members of Parliament, I dont believe this is as sacrosanct as some hold it to be. What needs to be addressed is whether we will promote a party political system or a personal system, where the emphasis will be on the individual running for or holding office.
The Case of the Martian Boulder Piles







Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 07, 2018





This image was originally meant to track the movement of sand dunes near the North Pole of Mars, but what's on the ground in between the dunes is just as interesting! The ground has parallel dark and light stripes from upper left to lower right in this area. In the dark stripes, we see piles of boulders at regular intervals. What organized these boulders into neatly-spaced piles? In the Arctic back on Earth, rocks can be organized by a process called "frost heave." With frost heave, repeated ... read more
Syria regime captures half of Ghouta enclave as death toll climbs



Hammuriyeh, Syria, March 7 (AFP) Mar 07, 2018



Syria's government has recaptured half of Eastern Ghouta, battering the shrinking rebel enclave on Wednesday with air strikes that killed dozens and defying UN calls for a halt to violence.

The blistering onslaught has prompted international outrage, including accusations by the United Nations that the government was orchestrating an "apocalypse".

The Russia-backed Syrian army and allied militia began a fierce bombing campaign on February 18 on Eastern Ghouta -- the last opposition bastion near Damascus -- then launched a ground offensive a week later.

The campaign has so far left at least 867 civilians dead, including dozens of children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Towns and villages have fallen in quick succession in recent days.

On Wednesday, government forces captured Beit Sawa, Al-Ashaari, and nearby farmland, the Britain-based Observatory said, putting them in control of more than half the territory once held by rebels.

Heavy air strikes, mostly by Russian warplanes, left at least 62 civilians dead including four children across the enclave, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

An AFP correspondent in the battered town of Hammuriyeh saw the bodies of two men engulfed in flames lying near an overturned motorcycle, as a rescue worker tried frantically to put out the fire.

More than 50 air strikes pummelled the town on Wednesday. A wounded woman could be seen stuck under the rubble of a collapsed building.



- Ceasefire 'inadequate' -



The advance came after hundreds of Afghan, Palestinian, and Syrian loyalist militiamen arrived in Eastern Ghouta to bolster the ground push, according to the Observatory.

Government troops in military vehicles were seen on Wednesday patrolling Al-Mohammadiyeh, an agricultural zone in the southern part of Ghouta recently retaken by the regime.

Across some green farmland, columns of thick smoke rose from an urban skyline.

The bombardment has continued despite a one-month ceasefire demanded by the UN Security Council more than a week ago.

The council met behind closed doors for three hours on Wednesday to discuss the failed truce, after France and Britain requested urgent talks.

Dutch Ambassador Karel van Oosterom, who holds the council presidency, told reporters that members had "expressed concern about the humanitarian situation" and reiterated calls for the ceasefire resolution to be implemented.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed the meeting and offered to help broker a deal with Russia to allow fighters in Eastern Ghouta to leave, a diplomat said, adding that diplomats supported the idea as a way to halt the violence.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the Syrian regime and its foreign allies were already planning their next "apocalypse".

"This month, it is Eastern Ghouta which is, in the words of the Secretary General, hell on earth," he said.

"Next month or the month after, it will be somewhere else where people face an apocalypse -- an apocalypse intended, planned and executed by individuals within the government, apparently with the full backing of some of their foreign supporters."

Eastern Ghouta's roughly 400,000 residents have lived under government siege since 2013, facing severe shortages of food and medicines even before the latest offensive began.

Forty-six aid trucks entered the area on Monday for the first time since the offensive, but had to cut short their deliveries and leave due to heavy bombardment.

Nearly half of the food aid could not be delivered and Syrian authorities removed some medical and health supplies from the trucks, the United Nations said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all warring sides to allow aid trucks to return for a planned second delivery to the enclave's main town of Douma on Thursday.

Linda Tom, spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian coordination office OCHA in Syria, said the aid would aim to reach 70,000 people in Douma and would include medical supplies not allowed in Monday's delivery.



- Thousands scrambling for cover -



The offensive has displaced more than 10,000 people in Eastern Ghouta, according to the Observatory.

Outside of Douma on Wednesday, dozens of residents could be seen pushing wheelbarrows and carts piled high with mattresses, rugs, and cardboard boxes.

They have opted to flee deeper into the rebel-controlled enclave, despite a so-called "humanitarian corridor" announced by Moscow last week.

Russia said it would guarantee safe passage to civilians and rebels wishing to flee the enclave during a "pause" that is meant to bring calm to Eastern Ghouta between 9:00 am (0700 GMT) and 2:00 pm.

No Syrian civilians are known to have used the "corridor".

The two main rebel groups in Eastern Ghouta -- Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman -- deny the exit routes or the pauses have been coordinated with them.

"There is no communication with the Russians, directly or indirectly," said Wael Alwan, spokesman for Faylaq al-Rahman.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in Syria since the civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Seoul envoys leave for US with Pyongyang talks offer



Seoul, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



Two South Korean envoys left for Washington Thursday to brief US officials on their landmark visit to Pyongyang and the North's offer to talk about giving up its nuclear arsenal.

Chung Eui-yong, head of Seoul's National Security Office, will meet top US officials including National Security Advisor HR McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Yonhap news agency said.

"We have a separate message from North Korea for the US," Chung told journalists after revealing details of his meeting with the North's leader Kim Jong Un.

In a surprising turnaround, Kim said -- as relayed by Seoul -- that the North wanted to talk to the US and would not need nuclear weapons if the country's security was guaranteed.

The two Koreas also agreed to hold a third inter-Korean summit in late April at the southern side of the border truce village of Panmunjom.

Chung was accompanied Thursday by Suh Hoon, the chief of South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, who was also part of the delegation to Pyongyang.

After Washington, Chung will later visit China and Russia to brief officials, while Suh will travel to Japan.

The three countries, along with the US, are involved in six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear drive which have stalled since 2008.

US President Donald Trump welcomed this week's developments as "very positive" and said the North's talks offer appeared to be "sincere", adding: "We'll soon find out."

The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted an unidentified senior official of the presidential Blue House saying that Kim had not made any specific "give-and-take style" demands concerning dialogue with the US.

"He is apparently drawing a big picture," the official was quoted as saying.

"Kim has expressed his willingness to make his country a normal state" instead of a pariah state under sanctions, he added.

Analyst Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute said the landmark visit to Pyongyang had provided "key momentum" to contain the North's nuclear and missile threats, prevent conflict on the Korean peninsula and and start building trust.

"However, the path toward denuclearisation will be very rough," he said, forecasting that the North would continue missile production this year even if it stops nuclear and rocket tests.

And he added: "Even if an agreement is reached on freezing the North's nuclear programmes, complete verification would be next to impossible."
UN aid convoy to make fresh attempt to reach battered Syrian rebel enclave



Hammuriyeh, Syria, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



A second aid convoy will attempt to reach desperate residents of Syria's Eastern Ghouta rebel enclave later Thursday after weeks of pummeling by government forces and Russian warplanes in defiance of UN calls for a halt to violence.

The blistering Syrian government onslaught, backed by Moscow, has prompted international outrage, including accusations by the United Nations that the government was orchestrating an "apocalypse".

The Syrian army and its allied militias began a fierce bombing campaign on February 18 on Eastern Ghouta -- the last opposition bastion near Damascus -- then launched a ground offensive a week later.

The campaign has so far left at least 867 civilians dead, including dozens of children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Towns and villages have fallen in quick succession in recent days with troops taking back half the enclave.

The UN has been pushing for aid convoys to alleviate appalling conditions for the estimated 400,000 civilians trapped there.

But they have had little success.

Forty-six aid trucks entered the area on Monday for the first time since the offensive, but had to cut short their deliveries and leave due to heavy bombardment.

Nearly half of the food aid could not be delivered while the US said Syrian authorities removed some medical and health supplies from the trucks.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all warring sides to allow aid trucks to return for a planned second delivery to the enclave's main town of Douma on Thursday.

Linda Tom, spokesperson for the UN's humanitarian coordination office OCHA in Syria, said the aid would aim to reach 70,000 people in Douma and would include medical supplies not allowed in Monday's delivery.



- Buried under rubble -



Wednesday saw renewed heavy fighting break out as government forces captured Beit Sawa, Al-Ashaari, and nearby farmland, the Britain-based Observatory said.

Heavy air strikes, mostly by Russian warplanes, left at least 62 civilians dead including four children across the enclave, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

An AFP correspondent in the battered town of Hammuriyeh saw the bodies of two men engulfed in flames lying near an overturned motorcycle, as a rescue worker tried frantically to put out the fire.

More than 50 air strikes pummelled the town on Wednesday. A wounded woman could be seen stuck under the rubble of a collapsed building.

The advance came after hundreds of Afghan, Palestinian, and Syrian loyalist militiamen arrived in Eastern Ghouta to bolster the ground push, according to the Observatory.

Government troops in military vehicles were seen on Wednesday patrolling Al-Mohammadiyeh, an agricultural zone in the southern part of Ghouta recently retaken by the regime.

Across some green farmland, columns of thick smoke rose from an urban skyline.

The bombardment has continued despite a one-month ceasefire demanded by the UN Security Council more than a week ago.



- 'Apocalypse' -



The council met behind closed doors for three hours on Wednesday to discuss the failed truce, after France and Britain requested urgent talks.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed the meeting and offered to help broker a deal with Russia to allow fighters in Eastern Ghouta to leave, a diplomat said, adding that diplomats supported the idea as a way to halt the violence.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the Syrian regime and its foreign allies were already planning their next "apocalypse".

"This month, it is Eastern Ghouta which is, in the words of the Secretary General, hell on earth," he said.

"Next month or the month after, it will be somewhere else where people face an apocalypse -- an apocalypse intended, planned and executed by individuals within the government, apparently with the full backing of some of their foreign supporters."



- Thousands scrambling for cover -



The offensive has displaced more than 10,000 people in Eastern Ghouta, according to the Observatory.

Outside of Douma on Wednesday, dozens of residents could be seen pushing wheelbarrows and carts piled high with mattresses, rugs, and cardboard boxes.

They have opted to flee deeper into the rebel-controlled enclave, despite a so-called "humanitarian corridor" announced by Moscow last week.

Russia said it would guarantee safe passage to civilians and rebels wishing to flee the enclave during a "pause" that is meant to bring calm to Eastern Ghouta between 9:00 am (0700 GMT) and 2:00 pm.

No Syrian civilians are known to have used the "corridor".

The two main rebel groups in Eastern Ghouta -- Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman -- deny the exit routes or the pauses have been coordinated with them.

"There is no communication with the Russians, directly or indirectly," said Wael Alwan, spokesman for Faylaq al-Rahman.

More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in Syria since the civil war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
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US veterans join forces for gun reform



Washington, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



Dave Baril has served in the US Marine Corps for over 18 years, deployed twice to Iraq, and is a gun owner.

But after a teenager killed 17 people in Florida last month -- the deadliest school shooting to hit the country over five years -- he took his personal AR-15 rifle to a local police station and turned it in for destruction.

Baril is one of a group of US military veterans calling for tighter firearms regulations in an effort to reduce gun violence in America, bringing their knowledge of weapons and war -- and accompanying credibility -- to the contentious debate.

Shootings at a Las Vegas concert last year and at the Parkland, Florida high school "really woke me up the most," he said.

The 42-year-old said he is "all for the 2nd Amendment" to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms.

"But that doesn't mean that... we should all be driving around in tanks just because... the military has tanks," he said.

And without changes to current gun laws, Baril believes the current pattern of mass shootings will continue -- or get worse.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," he said.

Both the Las Vegas and Parkland shootings were carried out with AR-15-style rifles, which are similar to military-issue M4s but lack a burst-fire mode.

"If I'm gonna say that... we shouldn't have these things out there, I can't have one myself and say, 'Well, I'm special,'" said Baril.

So he decided to turn in his rifle.



- 'Amplifying' survivors' voices -



After the Parkland shooting, Baril started the Twitter hashtag #VetsForGunReform and asked a few other veterans if it was something they would support.

They said yes, and it has since taken off, becoming a rallying point for like-minded veterans on social media.

"This has really coalesced the group, and the reach that it's gotten has been incredible," Kyleanne Hunter, one of the primary Vets for Gun Reform organizers, said of the hashtag.

"Right now, we're just sort of a little bit of a ragtag group of volunteers who also all have other jobs, and so we're getting this going as we can," said Hunter, a former Cobra helicopter pilot who served in the Marines for nearly 12 years, deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and is a gun owner.

"What we really want to focus on right now is amplifying the voices of these students who are driving the movement," she said, referring to survivors of the Parkland shooting, some of whom have become prominent advocates for tighter firearms laws.

"We volunteered to go into harm's way, they didn't, and they shouldn't have to experience this," said Hunter.

She and fellow veterans aim to be "a voice of reason" in the debate on gun regulations and "bridge the gap between the left and the right," she said.

"We're keeping a close eye on the policy debates that are happening right now and being very deliberate as to how we want to proceed."

Pete Lucier, who served in the Marines from 2008 to 2013, deployed to Afghanistan and was a marksmanship instructor, said he was once a "pretty strong believer" in the idea of a "good guy with a gun" countering those who would do harm in the US.

Gun violence in America played a role in changing his views, but so did his time at war.

"Seeing the chaos of a real combat environment and the difficulties involved in gunplay and in real combat hedged a lot of my views about what was possible with a gun," said Lucier.

He no longer owns a gun but still shoots periodically, and said that veterans' knowledge of firearms is something important they bring to the conversation.

"A lot of us come from homes or backgrounds where we appreciate firearms. We don't necessarily villainize or demonize people who own guns. We understand guns," Lucier said.

"Our identity as veterans... informs our position," he said. "But it's not in any way trying to be a shield from criticism... or represent veterans as a monolith."



- 'They didn't sign up' -



For Dennis Magnasco, who served in the US Army from 2006 to 2015, deployed to Afghanistan and is a gun owner, the shooting in Las Vegas -- where the gunman used a "bump stock" device to drastically increase the rate at which he could rain bullets down on concert-goers -- encouraged him to speak out.

"I saw the video of the shooting. When I heard the fire from that rifle with the bump stock on it, it sounded very similar to a machine gun. It sounded like combat," he said.

"I had this feeling of just, this isn't right, we've gotta make some changes."

As a medic in an infantry unit, Magnasco treated a wide variety of injuries, which is "something that I carry with me, and something that I remember."

"When I think about middle school students and high school students in the United States seeing these types of injuries in their schools to their friends, they didn't sign up for that," he said.

"That shouldn't be the way things are."
S. Korea to probe plans for military crackdown on protests



Seoul, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



South Korea will investigate allegations that ousted president Park Geun-hye planned to send military troops to quash the candle-lit protests that culminated in her impeachment last year, the defence ministry said Thursday.

Activist group the Centre for Military Human Rights Korea (CMHRK), citing multiple leaks, said top military leaders had studied plans to crack down on demonstrators calling for Park's resignation over a corruption scandal.

South Korea was ruled by military dictators for decades -- one of them Park's own father Park Chung-hee -- and only fully embraced democracy in the 1990s, making such issues highly sensitive.

"The defence ministry will immediately launch a probe," the ministry said in a statement.

"We will announce the results of the investigation in a transparent manner and take follow-up measures", it added.

According to the CMHRK the plans were only set aside after the country's top court endorsed the National Assembly's decision to impeach Park.

The former president has been in custody since May and is awaiting a verdict after prosecutors called for 30 years in prison.

"The presidential Blue House, the military and judicial authorities were planning a pro-Park coup," the CMHRK said in a statement.

It would have been "another bloody crackdown on protestors", it said, after the 1980 Gwangju massacre in which some 200 pro-democracy protestors were killed by martial law troops.

The CMHRK called for a thorough investigation and punishment for those responsible, including the then defence minister Han Min-koo and a former commander of the capital's defence garrison.
US to upgrade Qatar air ops center despite Gulf crisis



Washington, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



The United States has approved a request from Qatar to upgrade the emirate's air force operations center, officials said Thursday, despite the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

Qatar has fallen out with fellow US allies in the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Araba Emirates, over its alleged support for militant groups and ties with Iran.

The United States is trying to broker an end to a Saudi-led diplomatic and economic embargo on gas-rich Qatar, and still maintains a huge air base of its own on its territory.

On Thursday, the State Department approved a plan for Qatar to spend $197 million upgrading the technology and logistics capabilities of the Qatari Emiri Air Force operations center.

A statement said the sale would help "the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country."

Qatar, it said, "has been and continues to be an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Persian Gulf region.

"Our mutual defense interests anchor our relationship and the Qatar Emiri Air Force plays a predominant role in Qatar's defense," it said.

The deal underlines the balancing act that Washington is performing in the Gulf as it tries to end in-fighting between Arab monarchies while maintaining a common front against Iran.

Three minutes after issuing a statement approving the Qatar deal, the State Department also approved a $270 million deal to sell Sidewinder air-to-air missiles to the United Arab Emirates.

And, using near identical language as before, it described the UAE as "a friendly country" and "an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East."

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut all diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar last June, closing its only land border and banning all flights to and from the emirate.

Qatar denies claims that it supports Islamist extremist groups, but fellow Gulf monarchies remain annoyed that it hosts the outspoken Al-Jazeera satellite network and has warmer ties with Iran.

President Donald Trump initially took the Saudi side in the dispute, but the US military relies on Qatar for its biggest base in the region and American diplomats have sought to reconcile the parties.
Israel ultra-Orthodox Jews rally against military service



Jerusalem, March 8 (AFP) Mar 08, 2018



Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested Thursday in Jerusalem against compulsory military service, clashing with security forces and paralysing traffic by blocking a major road.

The demonstrators blocked a major road linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv, before the security forces dispersed them and the artery was reopened, police said in a statement.

Thursday's protest came a day after the arrest of a young man who failed to show up to request an exemption after being conscripted.

Hardline Jews have staged a series of demonstrations in recent months spurred by arrests of young ultra-Orthodox men accused of dodging military service.

A hardcore group of seminary students have even refused to request exemptions from military service under the influence of Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach, who died in February.

Israeli law requires men to serve two years and eight months in the military on reaching the age of 18, while women must serve for two.

Ultra-Orthodox men are exempt from military service if they are engaged in religious study, but must still report to the army to receive their exemption.

In September, a decision by Israel's supreme court struck down the law exempting them. But the court suspended its ruling for a year, giving the government time to pass new legislation.
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Plastic-Choked Seas Marcella Hansch Wants to Save the Ocean

Up to 13 million tons of plastic wind up in the ocean each year. German architect Marcella Hansch has developed a platform designed to remove that waste from our seas. But it wasn't something she planned.
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Every year on the 8th of March, the world takes a moment to recognize both how far we have come, and work still to be done when it comes to gender pairty and equity.

We asked our entire staff to reflect on women that inspire them in their work and why, as well as the importance of including all voices in sustainability science.

Below are some some of the women that SRC staff are inspired by:

Anzurat Akobirshoeva

Anzurat Akobirshoeva has worked for the Aga Khan Foundation (Afghanistan) for more than ten years. As a Natural Resource Management Officer, she devotes her time and skills to supporting women farmers in a border district of Badakhshan Province in the north of Afghanistan.

Xuemei Bai

Xuemei Bai is a Professor at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on several frontiers of urban sustainability science and policy. She has authored/co-authored over 100 publications, including in Nature and Science.

Brigitte Baptiste

Brigitte Luis Guillermo Baptiste, Ph.D. is a transgender Colombian cultural landscape ecologist and an expert on environmental issues and biodiversity in Colombia. She has been director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute since 2011.

Bonnie Bassler

Bonnie L. Bassler is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University.

Sallie Chisholm

Sallie W. Chisholm is a U.S. biological oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an expert in the ecology and evolution of ocean microbes.

Sarah Cornell

Sarah Cornell works in global sustainability science, coordinating Stockholm Resilience Centre's research and international collaborations on Earth resilience



Beatrice Crona

Beatrice Crona is one of the leaders of the Patterns of the Anthropocene research stream at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. She also leads a research programme, Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere, at the Royal Academy of Science with a focus on global economic dynamics and the biosphere.

Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer, a former judge and human rights activist and founder of Defenders of Human Rights Center in Iran.

Malin Falkenmark

Professor Malin Falkenmark is a globally renowned water expert whose career spans over 60 years during which she has contributed to more than 400 publications and some 20 books.

Dominique Goncalves

Dominique Goncalves currently works at the Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. She does research in Elephant Ecology and Behaviour, Socio-Ecological Systems

Ellika Hermansson Torok

Ellika Hermansson Torok was Stockholm Resilience Centre's first head of communications and now a senior advisor for the SwedBio programme at SRC working with urban challenges and opportunities in developing countries

Nur Izzati Roslan

Nur Izzati Roslan is the Operations Manager at the Juara Turtle Project on Tioman Island and a marine biologist by training. She works tirelessly to conserve and protect the sea turtle population off the east coast of Malaysia.

Jennifer Jacquet

Jennifer Jacquet is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies; Affiliated Faculty Stern School of Business; Affiliated Faculty Center for Data Science at New York University.



Ann-Mari Jansson

AnnMari Jansson known as one of the founders of the field of ecological economics, coming to this from her own background in ecology.

Ursula Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American novelist. She worked mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. Her writing was first published in the 1960s and often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography.

Ada Lovelace

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace was an English mathematician and writer, sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer.

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights.

Donella (Dana) Meadows

Donella H. "Dana" Meadows was a pioneering American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer. She is best known as lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth and Thinking in Systems: a Primer.

Mary Musgrave

Mary Musgrave was a Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UMass Amherst and spent much of her career studying the physiology of plants in space. Her research received continuous funding from NASA for two decades.

Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom was an American political economist who shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver E. Williamson for her "analysis of economic governance, especially the commons". To date, she remains the only woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Susan Parnell

Susan Parnell is Associate Professor in Geography, University of Cape Town, and has taught at University of the Witwatersrand and SOAS, London, and Oxford.

Maria Schultz

Maria Schultz is the director of SwedBio, a knowledge interface that enables knowledge generation, dialogue, and exchange between practitioners, policymakers and scientists.

Karen Seto

Karen Seto is the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale School of Forestry of Environmental Studies.

Maria Sibylla Merian

Maria Sibylla Merian was a German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator. She was one of the first naturalists to observe insects directly.

Colette Wabnitz

Colette Wabnitz is a research associate at the University of British Colombia
Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
Some posters here fit this description, except that the ones here do this willingly, and without financial compensation. :lol: As is evidenced by this article, Mueller is not doing so well. Those damn Russians!---Employees at nondescript St. Petersburg office building wrote stories or posted comments- Chris Brown, CBC NewsWhen St. Petersburg journalism grad Vitaly Bespalov answered an online ad for a writer in 2014, he thought the gig at Russia's Internet Research Agency might help his fledgling career.As he quickly learned, what he really signed up for was a job as a paid internet troll."They pose as people who are not really them," he told CBC News at his apartment in St. Petersburg. "By the second or third day, it was clear where I had landed and what this was actually."Last month, U.S. special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals who worked at the so-called "troll factory" in St. Petersburg, accusing them of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election. The allegations include fabricating news and using false identities to sow discord in the United States ahead of the vote.Bespalov left long before that period  after just three months on the job."It was really bothering me what I was doing. I knew I had stayed to get more information [on the operation] but this feeling of disgust stayed with me."He says he's sharing his story now with the hope that it makes people more aware of how the "fake news" business works and in the hope that the operation will be shut down.The rest here:
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Ithaca Police Department is investigating social media posts that show a person holding a gun and referencing a school, the police department said Wednesday.

No charges have been filed, the posts do not reference a school in the Ithaca City School District and there is no immediate threat, police said.

A "youth" who lives in Ithaca created the posts, police said.

The Tompkins County Sheriff's Office is also investigating the posts, police said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A second man was charged Wednesday evening in connection with a robbery at Destiny USA where a woman says she and a friend were jumped and called a gay slur.

Two women were walking at 8:24 p.m. Feb. 22 on the upper floor in the Macy's wing of the mall when they were approached by a group of young men that they didn't know. Within moments, the men jumped the women and took money from one of them, according to police and Rahzie Seals, 34, one of the women.

During the attack, one of the men called Seals a "f*cking dyke," she told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.

Syracuse police arrested Teon Jacobs Jr. hours after the incident for taking money from one of the women, police said. Jacobs, 17, was charged with second-degree robbery.

Shakur Wingate, 21, of Liverpool, was also charged with second-degree robbery Wednesday evening, police said.

Syracuse police officers spotted Wingate in the 100 block of West Calthrop Avenue at 5:05 p.m. Wednesday. Wingate was with other males, who were not connected to the robbery.

As the officers approached the group, Wingate and another male ran from police. Officers gave chase and Wingate was taken into custody by officers Joel Dorchester and Brendan Cope, police said.

Wingate was also charged with resisting arrest, police said.

The other man was identified as Demetrius Gilbert, 26, of Syracuse. He was observed discarding a firearm as he ran from police, police said.

Officer Leonard Brown apprehended Gilbert in the 100 block of West Ostrander Avenue. Gilbert also fought with officers as they took him into custody, police said.

Demetrius Gilbert

Police conducted a ground search of Gilbert's path of flight and located a loaded 9 mm Kel-Tec PF9 handgun. The handgun had been reported stolen in Florida, police said.

Gilbert was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a firearm, fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, resisting arrest and unlawful possession of marijuana, police said.

Wingate and Gilbert are at the Onondaga County Justice Center pending their arraignments, police said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Officials and lawmakers are working on two fronts to overhaul how Syracuse code officials inspect homes and punish delinquent property owners.

Here are brief updates on each measure, based on a Common Council study session Wednesday.

1. A bill to beef up housing inspections won't go to a vote until at least March 26.

Councilor Khalid Bey is sponsoring a new law, which would mandate inspections on one- and two-family rental properties every other year. This is the second attempt at passing such a bill -- the first one failed in 2016.

Bey said last month he thinks he has the votes to get the bill passed this time. He had planned to put it to a vote next week. He said Wednesday, however, he will delay the vote another two weeks while he continues to talk with the administration.

The next council meeting is March 26.

2. A new code violation bureau should be operational by July

City officials are working to install a new department to handle the most serious code violators -- the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication.

New York State approved Syracuse's request to create that new department last July, after the council and administration wrangled together a proposal for it.

The legislation to build the new bureau was passed on former Mayor Stephanie Miner's watch, but it will be up to Mayor Ben Walsh to build it.

Code Enforcement Director Ken Towsley said Walsh is looking for someone to head the new bureau. That person will be tasked with building a staff.

The bureau is housed under the city finance department.

Towsley said the goal is to be up-and-running by July 1, which is the start of the next fiscal year. The 2018-19 budget will need to include funding for the bureau.

In addition to the new housing violations bureau and the rental inspection law, City Hall's Office of Innovation recently announced it would study and seek solutions for housing stability in the coming year.

Read more about each of those housing efforts below:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- One of Central New York's top elections officials is rallying support for an effort to give people more time to vote each November.

Onondaga County Democratic Election Commissioner Dustin Czarny asked the Syracuse Common Council Wednesday to support a state initiative to implement 12 days of early voting.

Limiting voting to just one day forces some people to choose between their daily obligations and getting to a polling place, Czarny said.

"We work longer hours, we have multiple-income households, we have to balance childcare, we have to balance school activities," Czarny said. "People get sick and all kinds of others things happen when elections happen on just one day. We need early voting to ease that burden."

Democratic Onondaga County Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny

Czarny, who is also chair of the New York State Election Commissioners Association's Democratic Caucus, is part of a group of Democratic elections commissioners and legislators backing an early voting bill.

In his proposed budget, Gov. Andrew Cuomo allocated $7 million to counties in order to alleviate the financial burden of early voting. Czarny said that funding eliminated one of the biggest concerns about early voting -- the cost.

Onondaga County's Republican elections commissioner, Michele Sardo, said that money doesn't change the fact that taxpayers would be footing the bill for poll inspectors and other election costs.

"It's still county taxpayer money," she said.

Sardo doesn't support early voting. She said it will significantly increase the cost of elections without improving turnout. She said turnout can be improved by "get out the vote" efforts.

The proposal Czarny is backing would allow for 12 of voting prior to Election Day, which is the first Tuesday in November. That number may change, since there are several versions of a reform bill floating around the legislature in Albany.

Nationwide, 37 states offer some version of early voting.

New York has some of the lowest voter participation rates in the United States. In the 2016 presidential election, 57 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. That was the eighth-worst turnout in the country.

Turnout tends to be even lower for state, local and midterm elections. In a hotly contested Syracuse mayor's race last fall, for example, 35 percent of registered voters went to the polls. That means fewer than 25,000 of the city's 144,000 residents cast a ballot.

Early voting needs to be approved by the state legislature during the budget process this month. Czarny's pitch to the Common Council was to ask for a resolution supporting the effort. Councilor Latoya Allen sponsored the resolution.

The council consists of eight Democrats and one Republican, as well as a Democratic president who does not get a vote. The council will vote on the measure Monday.

If passed this year, early voting would be implemented in 2019. Czarny said it's ideal to first offer early voting in a local year in order to perfect it before the 2020 election.

"I'd much rather implement early voting in a local year for the first time to get ready to perfect it for the big 2020 presidential election that could be one of the biggest elections of our lifetime," he said.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- All Syracuse City School District staff will receive active shooter response training Wednesday afternoon led by the Syracuse Police Department.

The district announced students will have a half day of school to allow time for the training.

The district said on its website the training will cover shelter-in-place procedures and active shooter/emergency response.

The training comes a month after a shooting rampage at a high school in Parkland, Florida left 17 dead. In the wake of that shooting, there's been a spike in active shooter training at schools and other organizations nationwide.

Cayuga Community College plans to offer active shooter training on its campus in the next few weeks.

Cicero is offering active shooter training to people who live and work in the town.

And Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick is chairing a school safety task force to look at how to keep local schools safe from attacks such as the one in Parkland.
The old Hafner's Red Barn and Country Store in its heyday.

The Brooklyn Pickle deli/restaurant - a Central New York institution since 1975 - is proposing a third location.

The new restaurant would be on a portion of the site of the former Hafner's Red Barn at 7175 Buckley Road in Clay.

Hafner's Red Barn, which closed in 2008, was a popular landmark itself in its heyday. The country store sold collectibles, Christmas items, Christmas trees, food and more.

In 2010, a plan to build two office buildings near the property was vigorously opposed by neighbors, and resulted in Red Barn LLC withdrawing its proposal. Later, single-family homes were built on nearby land.

Since it closed, the old country store has remained vacant, its paint peeling and faded.

Craig Kowadla, who runs the Brooklyn Pickle along with founder Ken Sniper, said the restaurant would be on a piece of the Hafner property. The proposal still must be approved by the town of Clay, and financing secured, Kowadla said.

The location is perfect, Kowadla said, because of all the traffic that drives by the site.

"You've got North Medical there, and a lot of doctors' offices and a lot of people that we think would like our place,' he said.

The menu would be the same as the other Brooklyn Pickles. The deli/restaurant, which has dine-in seating at both its locations, offers homemade deli sandwiches, subs, soups and more.

One of its signature sandwiches is called the Brooklyn Pickle: It is a combination of corned beef, layered on the bottom, and pastrami, layered on top. It comes on dark rye with Swiss cheese and the shop's own Russian dressing.

The Brooklyn Pickle sandwich.

The original Brooklyn Pickle opened in 1975 at 2222 Burnet Ave. in Syracuse.

A second location opened two years later in a portion of the Byrne Dairy building on the west side, and then moved in 1984 to its present site at 1600 W. Genesee St.
STC musical to be featured at Iowa Thespian Festival

Into the woods, its time, and so I must begin my journey. Into The Woods by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. And so, the STC Music ...
Many people may think that guinea pigs make cute and cuddly pets, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the animals may be linked to a multistate salmonella outbreak.

Fortunately, there are some things that guinea pig lovers can do to make sure that they will not be infected by the disease.

Guinea Pigs Linked To Salmonella Outbreak

In a report published by the CDC, it revealed that it was investigating a multistate salmonella outbreak alongside the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The CDC started investigating the salmonella outbreak in December 2017, when three different salmonella infections were revealed to be closely related to each other genetically. A review of the CDC PulseNet database revealed six more infections dating back to 2015, with the nine cases reported from eight states and with one hospitalization.

According to the CDC, evidence points to the likelihood that the salmonella outbreak was caused by pet guinea pigs. Four out of seven victims who were interviewed said that they came into contact with a guinea pig or its habitat. The strain of the salmonella was also identified in a sample that was collected from a guinea pig in Vermont, and it was discovered to be closely related genetically to the salmonella bacteria that were acquired from the infected people.

For guinea pig lovers, the CDC advised that the animals may still carry salmonella even if they look healthy and clean. Guinea pigs, like other rodents, may carry and transmit the bacteria even if they are raised as domestic pets.

The CDC said that guinea pigs and other rodents are not recommended for children who are younger than 5 years old, due to their susceptibility to sicknesses such as salmonella. In addition, guinea pig owners are reminded to always wash their hands after coming into contact with their pets.

Recent Causes Of Salmonella Outbreaks

Guinea pigs are not the only pets that have been recently linked to salmonella outbreaks. In August 2017, the CDC revealed that a rare strain of the disease that does not usually infect humans was linked to contact with pet turtles.

Last month, the CDC linked a salmonella outbreak to kratom supplements. The CDC had previously warned consumers against using the unregulated herbal supplement, and its connection to salmonella added to the list of reasons for recommending against the usage of kratom.

A few days after the CDC published its report, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration opened a campaign to wipe the market clean of products that use kratom as an ingredient. In addition to its link to salmonella, kratom has also been proven to be addictive like other opioids.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Samsung's highly-anticipated Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ Android flagships are now up for preorder at all major carriers as well as from Samsung itself.

Pricing and availability vary based on where users make the purchase, so here's a compiled comprehensive buying guide to list available options. It should help users get a better idea of what's on offer, and make a more informed decision.

AT&T Galaxy S9/ Galaxy S9+ Prices And Deals

AT&T is offering the latest Galaxy flagships on its Next installment plan, allowing existing customers to get either handset and pay for it in 30 monthly installments. With this plan, the Galaxy S9 costs $26.34 per month, amounting to a total of $790.20 while the Galaxy S9+ costs $30.50 per month, for a grand total of $915.

It's worth pointing out, however, that AT&T's prices are higher than Samsung's, as it is only offering the Galaxy S9 at $719 or $30 per month for 24 months, and the Galaxy S9+ at $839.99 or $35 per month for 24 months.

On the other hand, customers can get up to $350 in credits at AT&T if they trade in another phone. The value of the credits will depend on the phone being traded in, but AT&T guarantees a minimum credit of $200 if the phone being traded in is worth at least $20.

On top of this, AT&T is also throwing in an extra $150 bill credit for those who switch over from a competitor, allowing savings of up to $500.

Verizon Galaxy S9/ Galaxy S9+ Prices And Deals

Verizon is offering the latest Samsung flagships in 24 monthly installments, at $33.33 per month for the Galaxy S9 and $38.74 per month for the larger Galaxy S9+. The totals amount to $800 for the Galaxy S9 and $930 for the Galaxy S9+, which is the most expensive of all options and carriers.

On the other hand, Verizon is also offering various promotional deals, including up to $350 off the price of the Galaxy S9 or Galaxy S9+ with a device trade-in. Again, the value of the credits will vary based on the device being traded in. Verizon will spread the credits over a 24-month period.

Big Red is also offering a $150 prepaid MasterCard for those who switch to its network and open a new line of credit. Customers can take advantage of both this offer and the trade-in one, for cumulated savings of up to $500.

Verizon customers can also get half off select Samsung tablets with a two-year contract, and $100 of a Samsung Gear 3 with a two-year contract when purchasing one of the latest flagship smartphones. Verizon is further offering a Samsung Fast Charge Power Bundle at $99, and a $10 discount on select accessories for Verizon Up clients.

T-Mobile Galaxy S9/ Galaxy S9+ Prices And Deals

T-Mobile, the self-proclaimed Un-carrier, is offering the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ at the lowest prices of all carriers. Purchasing the phones outright requires $720 for the Galaxy S9 and $840 for the Galaxy S9+. Those who don't want to buy the phones outright, meanwhile, can get them at $30 per month for 24 months, with the larger Galaxy S9+ also requiring $129 up front.

T-Mobile is also offering up to $360 off the price of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ with a phone trade-in, with the value of the credit varying based on the phone.

Sprint Galaxy S9/ Galaxy S9+ Prices And Deals

When purchasing the smartphones outright, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ cost $792 and $912, respectively, at Sprint. The carrier is also giving up to $350 in credits for an eligible smartphone trade-in and through its Sprint Flex 18-month program.

The discount means that customers could pay just $13.55 per month for the Galaxy S9, or $18.55 per month for the Galaxy S9+. Sprint's Galaxy Forever program, meanwhile, allows users to trade up once a year to a new Galaxy smartphone. Opening a new line with Sprint also nets customers a $150 prepaid Visa card.

Galaxy S9/ S9+ Prices And Deals At Samsung And Best Buy

Samsung itself is selling the Galaxy S9 at $720 and the Galaxy S9+ at $840, the same prices as T-Mobile. However, getting the Galaxy S9+ in monthly installments from Samsung is slightly more expensive, at $35 per month for 24 months.

On the other hand, Samsung doesn't require a $120 down payment like T-Mobile does. The Galaxy S9, meanwhile, costs $30 per month for 24 months.

Lastly, Best Buy shaved $100 off the price of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ for preorders placed on March 2, but it also has more deals in place for those who missed the initial discount. Smartphone trade-ins will net up to $350 in credits,however, only high-end smartphones will get top dollar.

Best Buy is offering either carrier options, or the unlocked Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+. The unlocked versions start at the same prices as at Samsung and T-Mobile, meaning $720 for the Galaxy S9 and $840 for the Galaxy S9+.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Juno probe uncovered massive cyclones swirling near Jupiter's north and south poles. This breakthrough glimpse of the giant gas planet's interior shows there is more to Jupiter beyond its spectacular bands of clouds.

NASA's Juno mission has come up with significant information about the planet. Four international research teams documented their observations and discoveries about Jupiter in a series of studies. Four new papers detailing Jupiter's wonders are now published in the Nature International Journal of Science.

Geometric Storms

Among the scientific mysteries uncovered are bizarre geometric constellations of cyclones on both of Jupiter's poles. At the south pole, five massive storms are arranged in a pentagon-like shape around a storm. The north pole also featured the same pattern with eight storms swirling around each other.

Each cyclone spans thousands of miles each with wind speeds reaching 220 mph, exceeding the strength of a Category-5 hurricane. All cyclones lasted for seven months.

The storm formations are unlike anything already seen in the universe.

"They are extraordinarily stable arrangements of such chaotic elements," says Morgan O'Neill, a University of Chicago postdoctoral scholar and a coauthor on paper "Clusters of cyclones encircling Jupiter's poles."

"We'd never seen anything like it," O'Neill said.

What's Beneath Jupiter's Zones And Belts?

Before the Juno probe, there was no way to determine what lies beneath Jupiter's famous longitudinal bands.

The light bands called zones and the darker bands called belts are clouds of high-speed winds flowing in opposite directions. These bands rotate at speeds that differ by up to 100 meters per second.

Two other papers detailed what lies beneath them.

To study what's beneath the surface of massive clouds, the scientists measured Jupiter's gravitational field. It revealed the asymmetrical flow in the north and south hemispheres, a signature of the planet's atmospheric and interior flows.

Likewise, observations of the atmospheric motions concluded that the planet's crisscrossing jet streams of winds extend some 3,000 kilometers (1,865 miles) deep, way much deeper than scientists expected. These atmospheric winds last longer than similar atmospheric processes found on Earth. This jet stream contains an estimate of 1 percent of the planet's entire mass.

"The result is a surprise because this indicates that the atmosphere of Jupiter is massive and extends much deeper than we previously expected," says Yohai Kaspi of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences of Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

These initial findings about Jupiter's jet streams and gravity field are basis for the deeper understanding of the planet's core and could answer other questions on deep planetary dynamics.

The final paper looked further deep into Jupiter's core. Based on Juno's measurements, the scientists found out that hydrogen and helium gases make up the planet's core and beneath the layer of atmosphere, Jupiter rotates as a solid mass of ball.

Juno Probe

NASA launched the Juno mission on Aug. 5, 2011 to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter, look for solid planetary core, map magnetic field, measure water and ammonia in deep atmosphere, and observe auroras.

On July 4, 2016, the Juno spacecraft finally reached the planet's orbit. On Feb. 7, Juno completed its 10th science orbit of Jupiter.

"Juno is only about one third the way through its primary mission, and already we are seeing the beginnings of a new Jupiter," says Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Louisiana's attorney general sued a local school board Thursday over a meeting disrupted by the video-recorded arrest of a teacher being roughly handcuffed on a hallway floor after she criticized the district superintendent's pay raise.

Attorney General Jeff Landry's lawsuit accuses the Vermilion Parish School Board and its members of violating the state's Open Meetings Law by stifling public debate at the Jan. 8 meeting.

+6 No charges for Vermilion teacher cuffed after questioning boss's raise; supporters say it's not over The arrest of a teacher who had just been kicked out of a Vermilion Parish School Board meeting Monday after criticizing a vote to give the su

The suit asks a state court to nullify all actions taken by the board during that meeting, including its vote to raise Schools Superintendent Jerome Puyau's salary by roughly $30,000.

Landry's suit seeks civil penalties against any board members found responsible for violating the Open Meetings Law and says the school system should be reimbursed for any extra money the superintendent received under his raise.

"Every community has a stake in the performance and the governance of its public schools, and the community's views and thoughts should be taken into account before any action or discussion on an agenda item occurs," the suit says.

Deputy City Marshal Reggie Hilts arrested middle school English teacher Deyshia Hargrave after escorting her out of the meeting room and handcuffing her on the hallway floor. A viral video of the arrest sparked widespread outrage.

Hilts arrested Hargrave on charges of "remaining after being forbidden" and resisting an officer, but she hasn't been prosecuted. Ike Funderburk, the prosecutor and city attorney in Abbeville, decided in January not to pursue any criminal charges against her.

Can't see the video below? Click here.

+4 Vermilion teacher who was arrested still weighing options on legal action The Vermilion Parish teacher whose shocking arrest at a School Board meeting triggered widespread outrage was still considering on Friday whet

Hargrave has said the incident violated her First Amendment right to free speech.

"And I'm appalled at this, and you should be too," she said in a video posted on the Louisiana Association of Educators' Facebook page in January.

Landry's suit says the school board conducted the meeting "in an atmosphere that was hostile toward and contemptuous of" parish residents who attended it.

Video of the meeting shows Hargrave addressed the superintendent directly, asking him how he could accept a raise when teachers haven't received a pay increase in 10 years.

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Anthony Fontana, the school board's president at the time, then banged his gavel, told her to stop and said her comment wasn't "germane" to the vote on the contract. Hargrave countered that she was directly addressing the matter.

At that point, according to school board member Kibbie Pillette, Fontana beckoned to the officer, who interrupted Hargrave while she was speaking and ordered her out.

"I'm going," she said, making her way out. The officer followed her into the hallway, where a camera recorded her on the floor with her hands behind her back as the officer handcuffed her.

"Stop resisting," the officer said, lifting Hargrave to her feet.

"I am not. You just pushed me to the floor," Hargrave said.

Hargrave told The Associated Press in January that she blamed Fontana for the incident.

Fontana, who served six terms on the board, announced his resignation less than two weeks after the Jan. 8 meeting. He had announced last year that he wouldn't run for re-election.

The board voted 5-3 to approve a new three-year contract raising Puyau's salary to about $140,000 annually, with incentive targets that could add 3 percent a year. Puyau has said the raise matches what school officials in similar jobs make.

The superintendent has said he began receiving hate mail and threatening phone calls as the video spread on the internet. He said the school system offices went into temporary lockdown, and his daughters had to delete threats on their social media.

Puyau told the AP in January that he wasn't happy with how things played out.

"It was not good in any way," he said. "We are a good community. It took everybody by surprise. I'm having a hard time with this, but we care about our teachers and our support staff."

Gov. John Bel Edwards chimed in after the video went viral online. The Democrat, who is married to a teacher and gets support from teachers unions, said he "didn't see anything that warranted that type of action" and thought it "cast a negative light" on the state.

Landry, a Republican, was elected to his first term as attorney general in November 2015.

___

Associated Press writer Kevin McGill contributed to this report from New Orleans.
PORT ALLEN  The future for the nearly 90-year-old, dilapidated D'Agostino building that once served as the cornerstone of downtown business doesn't have to look so bleak, said the executive director of a historic preservation organization.

Brian Davis, head of the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation, on Wednesday informed city leaders that his statewide, nonprofit organization could likely help restore the building, which is on the verge of demolition. That's good news to city leaders and residents who don't want to see the building torn down by its owner.

"This is an informational opportunity," Councilman Garry Hubble told the council before Davis' presentation Wednesday night. "I was just really impressed with what he had to offer."

Outcry to save the building sparked after the city issued a demolition permit to its current owner last month.

With nearly 90-year-old Port Allen building up for demolition, a mad scramble to preserve it PORT ALLEN  The city's issuance of a demolition permit for a building that has stood downtown for nearly 90 years is being questioned by som

The two-story building, commonly referred to as the D'Agostino building, is at 110 N. Jefferson Ave. A portion of the bricked structure stretches nearly a block down Court Street, where it intersects with Jefferson Avenue.

Erected in 1929, the building is named after the family that originally ran a hotel upstairs and a restaurant on the first floor.

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Throughout the years the building has been home to various short-lived commercial businesses, including a clothing store and a bakery. But it's stayed mostly vacant for the past 20 years, Genre said.

The now boarded structure has been in a steady decline due to massive roof leaks.

City officials have previously said their options are limited in terms of trying to intervene and save the building using public funds, something state law forbids for privately-owned properties.

Davis described his organization as a real estate program for endangered historic buildings. The LTHP purchases blighted historic properties and then flips them to sale with protective covenants on the open market once they're in better condition. Some of the rehab work is funded through grants, but the organization mostly uses a revolving pool of funds it accumulates through the sale of other rehabbed properties it spearheaded.

"This is an easy save," Davis said about the D'Agostino building. "It's such a great landmark, especially being in that commercial corridor. It's definitely worth looking into."

"I'd sure like to see something productive done to that building," Councilwoman Ray Helen Lawrence said.

City Coordinator Rose Roche also revealed she is still in talks with the building's owner and that an application for historical designation has been submitted to the state's tourism department. Roche also said there could be some historical tax credits in play that could help with rehabilitation work on the structure.
Ricko Canaz Ball is a career criminal undeterred and unrehabilitated by years behind bars. Twenty years ago, his crimes included stealing a minivan, stereo equipment and guns  not to mention endangering lives by leading police on a high-speed chase. More recently, he graduated to robbing so many automobile-related businesses that he was nicknamed Oil Slickster.

Ball was able to commit his latest string of crimes because Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act freed him early from prison. Personally, we think the act should be called the Louisiana Prisoner Release and Public Safety Be Damned Act.

We are on a dangerous trajectory in this country. Because we cant make priorities in government spending, we want to slash prison costs by opening the prison gates and reducing probation oversight. The result is innocent people are becoming victims to offenders who should be in jail instead of on the streets. Criminals have all the rights. Victims have none. The inability of government to live within its means is creating more Get Out of Jail Free cards than the makers of the Monopoly game.

The Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act has been a disaster. In fact, now the governor is throwing up his hands and accusing district attorneys and judges of forcing him to free criminals. Thats a sharp turnaround from just a few months ago when he used words like historic, data-driven and works better for everyone to describe the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act.

We do not dispute that the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act was crafted with bipartisan support and the best of intentions. The fact of the matter is that even the most well-crafted henhouse will fail to protect the chickens if theyre guarded by foxes. The Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety is completely incapable of competently executing any type of criminal justice reform. Officials at the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety are too intent on covering up their own misdeeds to ensure public safety.

Dan Fagan: Paying the price for "justice reform" We are getting a better idea of how well criminal justice reform is working in Louisiana. The state released early 1,900 prisoners three month

Those misdeeds include a litany of corruption that has spawned investigations and indictments. Underneath all of that is a layer of incompetence so deep that the Corrections Department doesnt know where a prisoner is on any given day of the week or when he should actually be released from prison.

Its partly because of the failure of Edwards prisoner release program that we opposed sweeping changes to federal sentencing laws. No doubt the federal legislation is well-meaning, but it could slash sentences for people who committed horrible crimes. Our federal prisons are not populated with people who jaywalked or tossed a gum wrapper on the ground. Our federal prisons are populated with drug traffickers, gang members and weapons offenders.

Yet another problem with Edwards Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act is that it is cost-driven. Prisoners arent being freed because theyve been rehabilitated. Theyre being freed because its cheaper than paying their room and board. Thats why Ricko Canaz Ball was unleashed to burglarize businesses in north Louisiana.

Texas took a very measured approach to criminal justice reform. The Pew Charitable Trusts looked at changes to the states juvenile corrections system and concluded that Texas was able to cut costs while protecting public safety. One of the tools that Texas created was a program that helps judges determine a youths recidivism risk.

Amid big budget hole, Louisiana officials trying to maintain savings from criminal justice revamp The head of the states prisons said Friday hes concerned legislators facing a massive budget deficit may tap into the savings that came from

Texas is actively helping offenders through substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment and community engagement. In Louisiana, freed offenders get a bus ticket. Its no wonder that Tyrone White quickly robbed two roofers at gunpoint shortly after Edwards prisoner release program set him free. Of course, White  all of 24 years of age  also had more than 60 arrests on his record. He didnt deserve a "get out of jail free" card in the first place, but Edwards temporarily saved money by letting him loose.

Weve got to be smarter about this. We cant let prisoners go simply to cut down on the cost of bologna sandwiches. Public safety needs to come first.

John Kennedy is one of Louisiana's U.S. senators. Jeff Landry is Louisiana's attorney general.
Every time we get a new president, it sets off a conversation about which locals are likely to play the biggest roles in the administration. And while President Donald Trump hasn't exactly mined Louisiana for talent, a few familiar names have seen their profiles rise in the Trump era.

There's House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the chief vote counter for the chamber's Trump-friendly Republican majority. There's Scott Angelle, who parlayed losses for governor and Congress into a big-time appointment overseeing offshore oil drilling.

More of a household name than either of them these days, though, is another native Louisianan, Baton Rouge-born porn star Stormy Daniels.

A few years back, Daniels was a brief blip on the political radar when she teased a run against then-U.S. Sen. David Vitter after his prostitution scandal. When she emerged more recently as one of many unsavory characters in Trump's orbit, it seemed like she might grab another 15 minutes in the spotlight.

But it's turning out to be well more than that. For several months now, reporters have been probing the details of the $130,000 in supposed hush money she got from Trump's lawyer, and they keep coming up with new, damning revelations.

Lawyer: Louisiana porn star Stormy Daniels sues to clarify record on Trump affair LOS ANGELES (AP)  A porn star who has said she had sex with Donald Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement and 

Just this week, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Daniels and the president had entered what she called "arbitration," after the The New York Times revealed that Trump had obtained a restraining order blocking her from speaking about their alleged affair, which Trump denies. Daniels also filed a lawsuit arguing that the nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the six-figure payment is invalid because Trump never signed it

Basically, she doesn't look like she's going away any time soon, and nor is this particular storyline.

Whether this will affect Trump's standing in the long run is, as always, not remotely a sure bet. Already this president has survived incident after incident that would have tanked any other politician. But it does make things awkward for his defenders.

Take U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, the current go-to politician for Capitol Hill journalists in search of a pithy quote. Asked by the Washington Post about how he would have reacted had the president at the center of the scandal been Barack Obama, not Donald Trump: Kennedy hedged a bit then delivered a blanket statement on sexual harassment: "This is no country for creepy old men."

Kennedy then started to walk away, the paper reported, before returning to offer what it termed an "urgent clarification." He said his comments were not intended to reflect poorly on Trump.

If he says so.
Tortillas make the taco, and these days it helps that theyre flexible.

Serving as both framework and delivery system, one tortilla might enclose traditional Mexican flavors while the next has to handle whatever imaginative chefs can cook up.

That range will be on edible display when Top Taco returns to New Orleans next week, on March 15.

The festival and competition are back after a sold-out debut in 2017, and this year, the event itself is growing to accommodate more people, more restaurants and more of the tequila-fueled revelry that made the inaugural edition a hit.

This years Top Taco moves from its original site at Spanish Plaza to a larger riverfront location at nearby Woldenberg Park. And this time its preceded by a progression of events dubbed Agave Week, a new and first-of-its-type showcase for the shared ingredient in tequila and mezcal and a whole heady family of related liquors. Those events begin Sunday (March 11).

Whats staying the same is the festivals all-inclusive format, which taps the tacos natural role as easy, quick, one-after-another street food snack. Admission includes all the tacos from more than 50 restaurants and drinks from local bars and liquor brands across the festival grounds.

People love tacos, thats what it comes down to, said Shane Finkelstein, founder of Top Taco in New Orleans and proprietor of the Harahan restaurant Nacho Mamas. And the beauty of it is that you can sample so many.

The local Top Taco event is a spin-off from a similar festival that debuted in Denver in 2014. Finkelstein worked with its producers to bring the concept to New Orleans.

A portion of the proceeds from the local event benefit One Heart NOLA, a nonprofit that supports New Orleans foster children and families.

During the event, chefs and bartenders compete for awards from judges and the crowd, who rank top tacos and cocktails in traditional and creative categories.

Last year, the Kenner eatery Taqueria Chilangos swept the taco awards, surprising many by beating out much better-known chefs and larger restaurant groups. Chilangos won for its traditional tacos al pastor, and perhaps for some of the flair that proprietor David Montes de Oca brought to the presentation on his custom-made taco trailer (in a tragic postscript, he died a few months later at age 36).

A hallmark of the event, however, is the wide range of flavors different contenders bring to the table. The first New Orleans edition saw tacos made with everything from grilled alligator with charred okra to Texas-style brisket.

People understand a taco can be made with anything inside, and chefs love that kind of challenge, Finkelstein said.

The restaurants tend to keep their taco particular under wraps until the competition, but the range of contenders gives a clue to the diversity of flavors to expect.

Restaurants participating this year include plenty of Mexican eateries, from the traditional, like Chilangos, Casa Borrega, Del Fuego Taqueria, El Pavo Real, Felipes and Los Jefes, to the less-traditional, like Juans Flying Burrito and Rum House. But the line up extends far beyond Latin American-style restaurants, running through examples as varied as Blue Oak BBQ, Balise, Peche Seafood Grill, Sac-a-Lait and SoBou. See the full list at toptaconola.com.

Bands slated to perform include the Iguanas, Latin rock ensemble Los Poboycitos, Afro-Cuban jazz and groove band Otra and Margie Perezs Latin band Muevelo.

Agave Week

Top Taco has this year expanded with Agave Week, a series of dining and drinking events at different venues around the city leading up to the main event on Thursday night.

On Sunday (March 11), Superior Grill will chase the record for worlds largest bloody Maria bar at a brunch-time event featuring the tomato-and-tequila cousin to the bloody Mary (tickets are $25).

Later that day, theres a bar crawl and scavenger hunt in the French Quarter, beginning at the eatery St. Lawrence (online registration required).

Monday has a five-course cocktail dinner at Casa Borrega showcasing the cuisine of Mexicos Oaxaca region with Suerte tequila drinks (tickets are $75).

On Tuesday (March 13), theres a bar crawl and margarita contest at a circuit of Warehouse District spots, dubbed the Hornitos VIP Margarita Mix Off. It begins at Mannings (register online). A bar crawl post-party at El Patio includes a pig roast with all-you-can-eat taco deals.

Tuesday also has a launch party for new tequila brand Blue Nectar at Baru Tapas Bistro, with samples and tapas.

Wednesday brings an all-day agave seminar and tasting, aimed at industry professionals and aficionados, held at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas (tickets start at $150).

On Wednesday night, the Caribbean Room serves a cocktail-paired dinner ($100) with El Tesoro tequila, followed by drinks at the rooftop Hot Tin Bar.

That same night, Del Fuego Taqueria hosts a happy hour that day (4-7 p.m.) with Religion Tequila (tickets are $20), and Tequila House on Bourbon Street has a free Ghost Tequila party with fire-breathing and live music on the patio.

Also on Wednesday, Ohm Lounge hosts a pop-up dinner from the Denver restaurant Senor Bear ($40, or $50 at the door). Ohm Lounge and its neighbor Barcadia will also throw a Top Taco pre-party that night, from 9 p.m., with DJ Mannie Fresh and cocktail samples (free, register in advance).

Lucy's Retired Surfers Bar closes out Agave Week with a Farewell Fiesta on Friday, March 16, from 1-4 p.m. with specials on boiled crawfish, margaritas and the restaurant's Top Taco creations (free).

Get details and tickets for these events at toptaconola.com.

Top Taco

March 15 at Woldenberg Park

Tickets are $69 for general admission (from 7 p.m.), $89 for first tasting (from 6 p.m.) and $125 for VIP

See details and Agave Week event schedules at toptaconola.com.

+19 Warehouse District food hall Auction House Market opens with flavors local and global The Warehouse District has been a magnet for new restaurants and bars in recent years, and one new project is now introducing a whole clutch o
After losing a wallet during Mardi Gras, one tourist got a heck of surprise in the mail, courtesy of a Louisiana State Trooper.

According to a post on Reddit by user Wardo613, a wallet lost in New Orleans returned home with a note from trooper John Jett, who was working the area.

The note, according to the Reddit post, reads:

"My name is John Jett, I am a trooper with the Louisiana State Police. While working Mardi Gras, I found your wallet on Bourbon St. at St. Louis St. I intended to leave it at a lost and found at the NOPD 8th District, however they really did not have one set up. I decided to mail it to you. I did go through your wallet in an effort to make sure the address on your [driver's license] was your correct address. Everything in your wallet is exactly as it was when I found it."

It's unclear where the wallet was shipped to, but it was confirmed that the money was still inside.

The Reddit user said he intended to get a gift for Jett, and at the suggestion of others said he would buy pizzas for the department.
Jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield won't be taking trips abroad any time soon. A federal judge rejected his request for permission to play at a South Africa jazz festival on Tuesday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Knowles rejected the plan from Mayfield and his partner Ronald Markham to perform at the Soweto International Jazz Festival in June. Mayfield and Markham are awaiting an October trial on charges that they stole $1.4 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation while serving as board members.

The pair's defense attorneys said the ten-day trip would allow them to earn money to support their children as well as bolster the city's image abroad. Mayfield was set to earn $7,500.

However, prosecutors opposed the request to modify the conditions of Mayfield's bond, which was set after his December indictment. They deemed Mayfield a flight risk and noted that extraditions from South Africa can take years.

"Mayfield has performed internationally for years, and therefore can draw on a substantial source of future income outside of the United States should he choose to flee," the government said in court papers. "Allowing these defendants the privilege to leave the jurisdiction of the United States, especially in light of the significant charges, high-profile nature of the case, and resources put into this matter, is not warranted."

Prosecutors also noted that Mayfield and Markham are free to travel within the United States.
Since 2015s Halloween strip club raids, the count of such clubs in the Vieux Carre in New Orleans has gone from 23 to 14. The Adult Live Performance Venues Study lays out this process as a form of natural attrition. My colleagues and I, Bourbon Street strippers and nightlife workers, are certain it is not natural at all.

Adverse zoning, contact and distance laws, discriminatory legislation by age and gender, undercover surveillance and overt police raiding are part of a feedback loop that entrenches itself in the public imagination, spurred on by the concept of trafficking. The definition of trafficking, as it stands, can have many contexts in labor and migration, but here, it is used as a euphemism for prostitution. Prostitution, in the latest series of raids, was extrapolated into any gesture or conversation lewd enough to be construed as an "ask." No actual sex acts were documented, no victims of trafficking or underage workers were found. The ATC charged the clubs for women touching their own bodies, or touching customers: the kind of "show and tell" that is enjoyed and expected during carnival, across a variety of streets and other social spaces. But Bourbon Street is considered a de facto red light district: both symbolizing vice and transmuting anything within it into vice. The district can then be attacked by anyone who stands to benefit from appearing to fight social ills.

New Orleans has had many such places in its 300 years, each wiped out through the methods of its own time. Today, the process is to contain, then isolate and break apart, small networks of venues, erode the economy and culture of the street, causing all the venues to close one by one. One law firm, adultbusinesslaw.com, specializes in this method: the secondary negative effects doctrine. It suggests that strip clubs contaminate a city with a variety of ills, worst of all, trafficking. Litigating in more than 20 states, and backed by Christian Right activist organizations, this firms sole purpose is to eradicate adult businesses, as if their lead attorney, Scott Bergthold, were an exterminator specializing in a single class of endangered animal.

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The secondary negative effects method has been shown, over and over, to be rife with un-empirical data and unethical ways of collecting it, yet it continues to re-emerge. It works through the collusion of organizations and institutions that each share partially overlapping motivations. A politician bent on cleaning up a part of town, a nonprofit formed to help young people, a police department tough on crime, a publication attempting to uncover vice, can all appear valuable and virtuous by fighting secondary negative effects, without the risks required to actually restructure and heal a violent, unjust world. This is what makes anti-trafficking rhetoric so routine: no one would argue that trafficking (defined as the use of force, fraud, or coercion to make someone work) is wrong. To do so would align oneself with the worst kind of people.

Bergtholds cases, when they reach federal court, are routinely thrown out for violating the First (and often the Fifth and Fourteenth) amendment. Meanwhile, his targets are buckling under the time and money involved in defending against his bottomlessly funded attacks. Bergthold is defending the state (initially the ATC, now, the attorney general) against three Jane Doe plaintiffs who lost their jobs during the 18-20-year-old stripper age ban, while fighting to lift the federal injunction against that same age ban, and while advising on the ALPV Study: three birds, one stone. He is supported by, and supports, the mayors office, the local police department and wider human trafficking task force collaborations, the Covenant House and the members of its board, who double-dip on the city council and beyond.

The three women are likely to be tied up in court for years to come. Whether they win or lose, they have lost energy, money, time and labor. So have I, taking hours and hours of meetings with people who insist they act independently, innocuously, while revealing the links in their daisy chains. Recently, I sat in a city council member's office, arguing that lifting the ALPVs zoning cap would allow my colleagues to open our own clubs someday, a shared dream. She compared the strip club Id worked in to a restaurant serving rats. Id take working in a rat restaurant over working with those who insist they know whats best for others, without questioning their own motives and methods. Force, fraud, coercion: three birds, one stone.

Lyn Archer is a New Orleans stripper.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Trogarzo (ibalizumab-uiyk), a new type of antiretroviral medication for adult patients living with HIV who have tried multiple HIV medications in the past (heavily treatment-experienced) and whose HIV infections cannot be successfully treated with other currently available therapies (multidrug resistant HIV, or MDR HIV).Trogarzo is administered intravenously once every 14 days by a trained medical professional and used in combination with other antiretroviral medications.

"While most patients living with HIV can be successfully treated using a combination of two or more antiretroviral drugs, a small percentage of patients who have taken many HIV drugs in the past have multidrug resistant HIV, limiting their treatment options and putting them at a high risk of HIV-related complications and progression to death," said Jeff Murray, M.D., deputy director of the Division of Antiviral Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Trogarzo is the first drug in a new class of antiretroviral medications that can provide significant benefit to patients who have run out of HIV treatment options. New treatment options may be able to improve their outcomes."

The safety and efficacy of Trogarzo were evaluated in a clinical trial of 40 heavily treatment-experienced patients with MDR HIV-1 who continued to have high levels of virus (HIV-RNA) in their blood despite being on antiretroviral drugs. Many of the participants had previously been treated with 10 or more antiretroviral drugs. The majority of participants experienced a significant decrease in their HIV-RNA levels one week after Trogarzo was added to their failing antiretroviral regimens. After 24 weeks of Trogarzo plus other antiretroviral drugs, 43 percent of the trial's participants achieved HIV RNA suppression.

The clinical trial focused on the small patient population with limited treatment options and demonstrated the benefit of Trogarzo in achieving reduction of HIV RNA. The seriousness of the disease, the need to individualize other drugs in the treatment regimen, and safety data from other trials were considered in evaluating the Trogarzo development program.

A total of 292 patients with HIV-1 infection have been exposed to Trogarzo IV infusion. The most common adverse reactions to Trogarzo were diarrhea, dizziness, nausea and rash. Severe side effects included rash and changes in the immune system (immune reconstitution syndrome).

The FDA granted this application Fast Track, Priority Review and Breakthrough Therapy designations. Trogarzo also received Orphan Drug designation, which provides incentives to assist and encourage the development of drugs for rare diseases.

The FDA granted approval of Trogarzo to TaiMed Biologics USA Corp.

[Note from TheBody: This article was originally published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on March 6, 2018. We have cross-posted it with their permission.]
Ganges Part 9: The Tortuous Trail For many long stretches we were alone. The Ganges River was on our right. Beyond it were mountains scarred with landslides and avalanches. Streams leapt over waterfalls and tumbled into...

Ganges Part 8: The Trail Begins The journey to the source of the Ganges River began with 220 steps from the Temple of Mother Ganga to the beginning of the trail. At an altitude of 9,813...
Stories surfaced recently about Married at First Sight's Nasser with claims that he shamed his wife Gabrielle for having alopecia - a condition where hair loss occurs.

In an interview with NW, Gabrielle explained that he didn't want to know about her illness at all.

"He was telling producers, 'I don't wanna know about that, it's her stuff to deal with.

"There were two reactions from Nasser. There was his initial one [on camera] and then another one the next morning  and they were quite in contrast, to be honest, which was really upsetting.

"His tone was just so... It made me feel shame all of a sudden for having alopecia."

Now Nasser has addressed these claims by Gabby, commenting on Facebook on an article about the incident saying that Gabriell's claims were "100% rubbish".
In the past couple of weeks, 35,000 school employees in West Virginia engaged in a 9-day strike. Though they are not represented by a single union, all school employees in every county participated in the strike. The teachers retained their solidarity, and won a 5 percent pay raise for all state public workers. The teachers success was unexpected given the hostile legal environment for labor in West Virginia.

West Virginia prohibits government workers, including teachers, from engaging in collective bargaining. It is also illegal for public employees to strike in West Virginia. The teachers only means of bargaining is political pressure on the state legislature, which sets the terms of their employment. Thus, the West Virginia teachers victory represents a rare and surprising success for the labor movement at a time when labor is under siege.

Last week, the United States Supreme Court considered the case of Janus v. AFSCME, which will determine whether government unions can continue to collect agency fees from all of the workers that they represent. Like Janus, the West Virginia teachers strike also brings to light the role of public sector unions in our country. To help me understand the West Virginia teachers strike, I talked with my colleague, Joe Slater. The author of Public Workers: Government Employee Unions, the Law and the State, Joe is one of the foremost experts on public sector unions in the country. The following is a transcript of our conversation:

Zietlow: Apparently the West Virginia teachers were not allowed to bargain collectively. Why would they want to join a union?

Slater: Public sector unions are not governed by the federal National Labor Relations Act, but by state laws which regulate public sector workers. Around 10 states, including West Virginia, do not allow government workers to engage in collective bargaining. In those states, unions represent employees in other contexts. They help their workers to assert their rights under other employment laws such as Title VII, the Fair Labor Standards Act and civil service laws. Some unions also provide benefits, such as health insurance and pensions. In states which do not allow collective bargaining, unions tend to be smaller and weaker than in other states. Nonetheless, some workers still join those unions.

Zietlow: How could the West Virginia teachers strike when West Virginia law prohibits public workers from striking?

Slater: I do not know why the state of West Virginia did not sue to stop the teachers strike. Most likely, state officials thought it would be politically costly to do so. Also, there were no replacement employees who could have filled in for the striking teachers.

Zietlow: In the Janus case, most observers think that the Supreme Court is going to strike down agency fees and weaken public-sector unions. Public sector unions in West Virginia are already prohibited from charging agency fees. Should we expect more massive strikes after Janus?

Slater: Some people have argued that workers are likely to be more militant after Janus, and that the West Virginia teachers strike reflects this militancy. However, I am skeptical. Janus would effectively impose a right to work regime on public workers. Weve had a lot of historical experience with right to work laws, and by and large they have not radicalized labor. Instead, right to work laws have weakened labor, and I expect Janus to do the same.

Also, teachers tend to be a reliably popular set of public workers. Similar strikes in other states, involving other, less popular, public employees are unlikely to succeed. Still, I never would have predicted that the West Virginia teachers would succeed, yet they did so against all odds. Who knows what the future will bring?
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Linkedin Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 08:44 1292 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8dfa36 1 Opinion women-empowerment,gender-equality,women-in-politics,democracy,Indonesian-politics,#commentary Free

Of 1,140 candidates contesting the simultaneous regional elections in June, only 101, or a paltry 8.85 percent, are women. Of these female candidates, 52 are running for deputy positions, which means that if elected they will play second fiddle in local decision-making.



Another piece of bad news on womens participation in the upcoming elections is the absence of gender equality and women issues from their platforms, according to the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem).



Worse still, some of the female candidates may have got on their tickets thanks, at least in part, to the existence of political dynasties. One example is Sitti Rohmi Djalilah, who is running for deputy governor of West Nusa Tenggara and is the sister of outgoing Governor Muhammad Zainul Majdi.



There are hopeful signs, however. One example is Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who is running for the East Java gubernatorial office. Having served as womens empowerment and child protection minister she at least has a track record on womens issues. Another with such a track record is Ida Fauziyah, who is running for deputy governor of Central Java. Like Khofifah she was a legislator and once chaired the Womens Caucus at the House of Representatives.



There should be more aspiring women leaders.



The recent Womens March in several cities across Indonesia showed that when women speak up and fight, they fight not only for issues strictly relating to women. Their concerns encompass issues anyone should care about: human rights, opposition to violence against women or anyone, labor issues, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, child protection, food security, land-tenure issues and the environment.



There have been studies about the huge role women play around the world in contributing to development. Bipasha Baruah of Western University in Canada studied how womens groups in Gujarat, India, calling themselves the Self-Employed Womens Organization, partnered with the public and private sector to develop and deliver housing, water and sanitation programs for low-income urban families.



Baruah and Kate Grantham from McGill University wrote last December inThe Conversation that womens NGOs are changing the world. Grantham herself studies womens NGOs in Tanzania, noting the role of womens NGOs as intermediaries in development projects.



Sri Wiyanti Eddyono completed her dissertation from Monash University on her investigation into womens roles in urban disadvantaged communities when they were facing eviction threats. Sri said the neighborhood women fought for their land every day. Her study found the women had a bigger role than men because they were more concerned about their childrens future.



In August 2016, Azriana, the chairwoman of the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan), faced the Constitutional Court in a hearing concerning a judicial review filed by The Family Love Alliance (AILA), a group of academics, who filed a petition seeking to outlaw any sexual relationships outside of marriage, including same-sex relationships.



She told the venerable justices that peoples sex lives were none of their business.



Komnas Perempuan itself is a state institution that has been diligently monitoring the 2009 regional bylaws perceived as discriminating and promoting intolerance, not only against women. They had listed 421 discriminatory bylaws as of July 2017. In the name of religion and morality, the bylaws, frequently inspired by sharia, put not only women at a disadvantage but sometimes other minority groups like non-Muslims, Ahmadis and Shiites.



No other institution has done that, not even the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).



It is often alleged, even by many women, that feminists are a group of man-haters. Such an ill-founded assertion arises as a result of cherry-picking and highlighting one or two cases to diminish a whole group of women who actually fight for universal issues.



After all, men fighting for womens rights are still outnumbered, and overwhelmed, by men and women who sideline women. We live in a world where it is much more common to find a woman who fights for both men and womens interests than a man who fights also for womens rights. The world has more Donald Trumps than Justin Trudeaus, and even the latters feminist credentials are debatable.



The target for female House legislators currently stands at 30 percent and even this has been difficult to achieve. Of course there should be many more women representatives and leaders everywhere, including in regional positions. Men and women should go all out to make it easier for women by removing discriminatory practices and providing facilities for women (and men) who have children.



It would be better for the world because women are more likely to speak up and fight for not only about their own issues but also for those of all humankind.
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Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 08:15 1292 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8de08b 4 Editorial #Editorial,women-empowerment,international-womens-day,gender-equality,women-in-politics,child-marriage Free

Elections provide another shot for constituents to live better, happier lives. As half the voters are women, this years aspiring governors, mayors and regents should share a fervent hope to end problems stemming from outdated views on women.

International Womens Day on March 8 falls in the early weeks of the campaign period between Feb. 15 and June 23, ahead of the simultaneous regional elections on June 27. The time available must be used to push male and female candidates, their political parties and campaign teams to address some of the most crucial issues in their respective regions  and rush to create specific programs to resolve them.

In the elections across 17 provinces, 115 regencies and 39 mayoralties, out of 1,140 candidates, only 101 or 8.85 percent are women, including two gubernatorial candidates. Women make up around half of the 160 million eligible voters, and despite a slight increase in the number of female candidates from the previous simultaneous regional elections in 2016 and 2017, they are still hugely underrepresented. Many still consider women less qualified for and less interested in politics.

All candidates thus need to tackle issues such as low female participation in the local labor force, high maternal mortality rates, child marriage and violence against women. Such problems are detrimental to all.

As the International Monetary Fund recently noted, more women in the labor force, for instance, could boost national economic growth. The large number of high school students who drop out for marriage is blamed for domestic violence, unhealthy pregnancies and infants, high mortality rates among young mothers and children and intergenerational poverty.

Low access to quality health care for pregnant women, particularly in remote areas, has also contributed to the persistently high maternal mortality rate. But election watchers say even female candidates do not necessarily offer programs to better ensure regular check-ups for pregnant women, for instance.

Therefore, although only East Java and West Kalimantan have female gubernatorial candidates in former minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa and Karolin Margret Natasa, respectively, all candidates need to find breakthrough policies to improve the lives of their constituents.

Culture and poverty, for example, are no longer acceptable excuses for marrying off girls, some even before 16, the legal marriage age. Even if the Constitutional Court has accepted fear of sin arguments to reject appeals to increase the legal age of marriage for women from 16 to 18, local leaders could follow outgoing West Nusa Tenggara Governor Muhammad Zainal Majdi, a local Islamic leader who issued in 2015 a progressive circular urging all authorities to increase the minimum age of marriage to 21 to ensure that couples mature physically and mentally.

Critics cite election fatigue and continued corruption among female and male leaders. But as decentralization has opened up space for innovative leaders, some jewels might emerge in the next shot at democracy and equality.
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Linkedin Seth Hays (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Thu, March 8, 2018 16:04 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f7af0 3 Opinion trademark,tech-companies,#technology,startup,digital-technology Free

The number of Indonesian tech unicorns is growing and the start-up scene in Jakarta is fast becoming the regions hottest. But if Indonesian companies want to reap further gains from this innovative industry -- they need to think internationally, and protect their brands abroad. After all, the internet has no borders and e-commerce is bringing faster, more international trade.

Fortunately, Indonesia recently joined an international treaty that will make protecting Indonesian brands easier. But foresight and proactive thinking is needed to prevent troubles in the future.

The basis for protecting a brand, such as a name or logo, is through a trademark filing with the intellectual property office. This trademark filing allows a company to stop others from using or abusing their brands. But trademarks filed in Indonesia will only protect a company inside Indonesia, leaving most of Indonesias youngest and hottest brands susceptible to abuse abroad.

Last year, Indonesia became the 100th member of an international treaty called the Madrid Protocol. This treaty, managed by the U.N.s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), allows companies to take advantage of a quick, efficient and, most importantly, cost effective means to register trademarks outside their home country.

The Indonesian government is training officials at the Directorate General of Intellectual Property Rights (DGIPR) on how to operate this system and is working with international partners to gather best practices and lessons learned. For example, on Feb. 28, the DGIPR and the International Trademark Association (INTA), conducted a training on the Madrid system for government employees with experts from around the globe.

If asked on the street what the worlds most recognizable tech brand is, many people will point to the sleek Apple logo. This symbol lets consumers know immediately what to expect when buying an Apple branded product, from practical considerations such as quality, to emotional and aesthetic considerations. That brand is probably the most valuable asset in all of Silicon Valley or at least Cupertino. It draws in consumers year after year to buy new products, and is the siren call for many young, talented employees, who churn out innovation after innovation.

So, when talking about the future of tech companies in Indonesia  brands need to be part of the conversation.

For the Indonesian economy, brands play an even bigger role. Research conducted by INTA last year shows that Indonesias trademark-intensive industries, defined as industries that file more trademarks than average, contribute to 21 percent of GDP, 27 percent of exports and 26 percent of employment. Indonesia has room to grow by focusing more resources on brands.

While the new and up-coming tech unicorns expand market share within Indonesia, and consolidate this large and dynamic market, they should not ignore the prospect of markets in ASEAN neighbor countries, and further afield such as China and India. Indeed, even the US and Europe should be in the sights of ambitious Indonesian companies. Why not?

But, as many companies find out, trademark squatters have gotten there first, stolen their brand, and are waiting for a big payout when the time comes for these companies to enter foreign markets.

A little foresight goes a long way, and with the new tools coming to Indonesian companies through the Madrid Protocol trademark filing system, truly an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

***

The writer is chief representative at the International Trademark Association (INTA)s Asia-Pacific office.

---------------

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Batiks complex techniques and its rich visual vocabulary set Maria Wronska-Friend off on a journey to study every aspect of Javanese batik.



With over 30 years of researching Southeast Asias textiles, she went on to write several books and one of her best-sellers, which was published in Jakarta in 2016, is Batik Jawa bagi Dunia (Javanese Batik to the World).



Javanese batik, the pride of Indonesia, has been the subject of research by many historians from around the world. It is so exceptional that in 2009 it was placed on UNESCOs List of Intangible Heritage.



Historical records and archaeological findings suggest that the wax-resist dyeing technique or batik may not be unique to Indonesia because for thousands of years it was practised in countries like China, Greece, India and South America.



However, it is Javanese batik that stands out as the most advanced form, both in terms of design and workmanship.



Studying peoples relationship with its material culture is indeed a very interesting approach to understand the history of mankind. The significance of material culture in Indonesia has been remarkable.

Classic: A dress from fashion house Lafarriere in Paris (1910) is decorated with two rows of elongated triangles that mirror the arrangement of a Javanese sarong skirt. (Maria Wronska-Friend/File)

Indonesia developed a very rich material culture and its elements became an important aspect of the countrys national identity, said Wronska-Friend who is currently a senior research fellow at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.



The author was recently in Jakarta to deliver a lecture at the Indonesian Heritage Society on the topic, Inspiration and Innovation: Javanese batik in the Netherlands and Poland.

Wronska-Friends PhD thesis was on Javanese batik and European art in the late 19th and early 20th century from the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw.



She is a powerhouse of energy traversing continents from Africa to Asia in her quest for more knowledge on the impact of Javanese batik on textile traditions outside Indonesia. Yet, she humbly admitted that how even after so many years, she was still in the process of fully understanding the meanings and philosophy of Javanese batik.



Elaborating on how the batik technique reached Europe, Wronska-Friend said the credit for introducing Javanese batik to Europe in the last decade of the 19th century belonged to the Dutch, the then-colonial rulers of Indonesia. From Holland it spread to other countries, especially France, Germany and Poland.



The interest in Javanese batik technique was immense across Europe. In the 1920s, thousands of artists, some of them very famous, practised the batik technique. It also became a fashionable female hobby, she said.

Chris Lebeau, the Netherlands (1905). Batik on silk made using the 'sogan lorodan' method of Central Java. The cloth was used as one panel of a three part room divider. (Provincial Museum van Drenthe, Assen/File)

In the second half of the 19th century many artists and craftsmen started to oppose the outcomes of the industrial revolution and the initial excitement about machine-made products was waning. This trend resulted in the appreciation and revival of handmade objects.



Due to the Netherlands relationship with Indonesia, a group of Dutch artists started to practice Javanese batik and introduced the technique into their projects, especially interior decoration.

The batikomania, as it was called, swept Europe in a big way. Books on Javanese culture have been published in almost every European language. Museums across Europe began to curate Javanese art.



Many well-known European artists, who had no experience of the batik technique, became interested in Javanese batik and textiles, Wronska-Friend said.



Artists like Henri Matisse, Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Belgian designer Henry van de Velde are known to have used Javanese batik motifs in their work.

Ragnhild dAilly, the Netherlands ( 1928 ). Batik on silk shawl in Art Deco style. (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam/File)

However, the adaptation of the Javanese technique in Poland has a very interesting history.



In Eastern Europe there is an ancient tradition of decorating eggs with wax-resist dyeing  a technique very similar to Javanese batik.



Unlike the rest of Europe where batik fabrics resulted from the fascination with Oriental art, in Poland it was an ancient local technique that was transferred to cloth, said Wronska-Friend.



The Poles consider batik on cloth to be an adaptation of this ancient, local tradition to a new material  from an egg shell to cloth.



Yet, the Poles studied Javanese batik very closely. Polish batik created around 1910 to 1925 had an unmistakable Javanese character, she added. These works were created by young art students who happened to visit an exhibition displaying Javanese batik.



It may be worth mentioning that batik is still very popular among the youth in Poland.

Up close: A woman stands in front of batik portraits of jazz musicians created by Polish teenagers from the Przasnysz Art Center in Przasnysz, a small town in north-eastern Poland. The portraits were made in 2015. (Maria Wronska-Friend/File)

Regarding the difference between Javanese batik and batik in Europe, Wronska-Friend said, While Javanese batik masters try to control the wax resist dye technique, in Europe the artists preferred to improvise.



Batik is still hugely popular in Europe. Outside Indonesia, the batik technique, today, is estimated to be practiced by around 1,000 artists and craftsmen around the world. They have their own organization based in the United Kingdom  the Batik Guild.



The works are very interesting in their own right, but in terms of aesthetics or technology, there are no Javanese connections, Wronska-Friend said of batik practiced in Europe nowadays.



As a museum curator, she has organized over 10 major exhibitions to showcase Javanese batik. Today, for many people, it is quite incomprehensible that one may spend weeks or even months to decorate one piece of cloth.



Major museums in Europe have digitized their collections of Indonesian textiles to ensure that the art survives for years to come.



I hope that one day museums in Indonesia, which have an excellent collection, will join this international movement, Wronska-Friend said.
After gracing our screens for decades, flying cars are about to shift gears from dream to reality, with the unveiling of a commercial model in Geneva this week.

From James Bond to The Jetsons, flying cars have long captured our imaginations, but now a Dutch company says they are almost ready to take to the streets, and the skies.

Pal-V unveiled its Liberty Flying Car -- a sleek, red three-wheeled gyrocopter-type vehicle -- at the Geneva Motor Show and vowed that client deliveries could start next year.

This kind of transportation, which allows drivers to both zip through traffic on the ground or simply fly above it, has never ceased to inspire engineers.

As a sign that this technology is not only being toyed with in the start-up realm, an alliance between Airbus, Audi and Italdesign also presented a concept flying vehicle, "Pop.Up Next", at the Geneva show.

That modular system, made up of an electric car with a huge quadcopter fastened to the roof, is expected to be commercialised starting in 2025, the companies said.

Read also: Dutch firm aims to deliver first flying car in 2018

Inspired by 'frustration'

For Pal-V (Personal Air and Land Vehicle), it was "frustration" that sparked the idea for Liberty.

In a plane, "you start at a point where you don't want to start and you end up in a place where you don't want to be," company chief Robert Dingemanse told AFP.

"The Pal-V is the perfect product for city-to-city mobility," he said, pointing out that "outside the cities you fly, inside the city you drive."

The vehicle, which seats two, has retractable helicopter blades and is powered by a gasoline-fuelled engine.

It can fly for 500 kilometres (310 miles), or can drive for nearly four times that distance without refuelling, reaching a maximum speed of 160 kilometres per hour.

Buyers are already lining up: For now the expected waiting time for delivery is around two years.

For take-off, "you can use the 10,000 strips available in Europe, and because you can drive, that's already enough," Dingemanse said, adding that "every German will have a small airport within 10 or 20 kilometres of his home".

But Pal-V's Liberty will not be a vehicle for everyman: Future drivers should expect to dish out between 10,000 and 20,000 euros ($12,000-$25,000) for pilot training, in addition to the anticipated 300,000-500,000-euro cost for the machine itself, Dingemanse said.

That is the same price range as a small helicopter, he said, stressing though that Pal-V's flying car is "easier, maintenance costs are much lower, (and) it's much more useful than a normal plane or helicopter."

Read also: Riding high: Toyota eyes 'flying car' future

Public transport on the fly

While also falling into the flying vehicle category, the modular Pop.Up Next is based on a radically different design.

The passenger capsule looks like a futuristic gondola lift, with a giant quadcopter attached to the roof.

The motorised base of the vehicle, which drives, and the upper part, which flies, can be detached and can move autonomously.

The Pop.Up Next is fully electric and was conceived for mass transport in an urban setting.

"This vehicle was not conceived to be sold to individuals, (but) as a shared means of transport," Mark Cousin, the project chief at Airbus, which developed the flying portion of Pop.Up Next.

Volkswagen's Italdesign unit meanwhile developed the passenger capsule while the motorised underbelly of the vehicle is based on Audi technology.

"I don't know if you would use it every day," Cousin said, pointing out that the vehicle would be practical for instance "going to the airport (at a price) hardly more expensive than a taxi", without needing to worry about traffic jams.

Airbus wants to launch the first urban trials by 2022, and is also looking into other uses, including transferring patients between hospitals and goods transport at night.

"The convergence today of certain technologies, especially in batteries and electric engines, is making it possible to develop this kind of vehicle -- something that was impossible five or 10 years ago," Cousin said.

Not everyone is convinced that flying cars will soon be darkening our skies.

"It's a beautiful idea," Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, who heads the Center for Automotive Research in Germany, told AFP.

But in light of the current air traffic density, "it is difficult to imagine that there will be lots of additional flying saucers" filling the skies, he said.
More and more elementary school teachers in Japan are turning to English language schools with native speakers as they seek to gain confidence teaching the language before it is formally added to their school curriculums in the academic year starting in April 2020.

Many teachers admit to lacking confidence in their English in everything from vocabulary to grammar, expressiveness to pronunciation. Elementary schoolteachers such as Yuko Shigematsu say they are afraid of teaching their students "the wrong thing."

Now the ministry of education is providing a roadmap to develop competent English teachers and a growing number of local education boards are expanding their teacher training programs through outreach to foreign language institutes.

"It is a heart," the 34-year-old Shigematsu said while trying to describe the shape of a necklace at her English conversation school in Oita, southwestern Japan. "Heart-shaped," corrected her teacher, a woman from Britain.

Read also: Essay: English as a hybrid language

Shigematsu has been practicing English conversation while taking lessons on grammar and pronunciation for the past two years, partly because in 2011 Japan made English compulsory for fifth and sixth graders as part of their extra-curricular "foreign language activities".

Last year the guidelines were further revised to start English education from the third grade as part of foreign language activities, and make English a formal subject from fifth grade, starting in 2020, in an effort to enhance the nation's global competitiveness.

The education ministry has also called for the number of English teachers to be raised, while hiring 20,000 native speakers and Japanese fluent in English as assistant language teachers by fiscal 2020.

Shigematsu said she always felt the need to work on her English skills but struggled, having specialized in mathematics education.

"I knew English words, but they would not come out of my mouth as a sentence," she said.

Today, her students say her pronunciation is "cool" and try to mimic her. "I am more confident now," Shigematsu said.

Japan's English education at elementary schools began experimentally at two schools in Osaka in 1992. Other schools started teaching it as part of an overall curriculum at their own discretion from 2002, but it only became compulsory in the last decade, meaning many teachers did not have an early start at English education.

Of the 346,000 elementary school teachers giving English lessons in Japan, only 5.1 percent have teaching licenses for English at junior high schools and high schools, where it is on the curriculum, according to the education ministry's latest data for fiscal 2016.

Aeon Corp., a major English language school operator based in Tokyo, said the number of elementary school teachers learning at their 250 schools nationwide has increased by about 8 percent in the last five years, with many of them saying they do not know how to teach the language.

Currently, fifth and sixth grade students in the country are learning simple English about once a week through games and songs. The hours spent on the language will double once it becomes a formal subject in 2020.

To accommodate the future changes, the education ministry has come up with a five-year roadmap for providing training and raising "leaders" in English education at elementary schools in each of Japan's 47 prefectures. But the pressure is on for teachers.

For the past few years, a local education board in Akita Prefecture in northeastern Japan has expanded the scope of short-term language training from only the leaders to teachers in charge of fifth and sixth grade students.

Read also: Shanghai tries to tame wild Chinese-English translations at public places

The board assists teachers on how to teach English by providing mock classroom lessons through collaboration with Akita International University and its foreign students.

The education board of Fukuoka city has also tied up with the Fukuoka International School and has started English conversation classes targeting teachers.

The lessons, taught by native speakers, are held once per week for one hour. Aid is provided for tuition fees. Roughly 400 people have attended the classes so far and recently about 80 percent of the attendees are elementary school teachers, according to the board.

Many of those who have taken the lessons say they now find it easy to understand subtle differences in English nuance.
Technological progress should benefit all members of the public. However, there are still limitations in access to technology, especially for women.



The world of technology is still widely dominated by men and offers limited opportunities for women.



In most schools, for instance, male students receive electronic or computer courses, while their female peers get sewing lessons, thus creating the mindset that women are not suited for technology.



The current discrimination against women in technology is an irony, considering the fact that the early invention of computers involved many women, such as Ada Lovelace and Grace Hooper, according to Kathleen Azali, a researcher at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and founder of C2O Library and Collabtive web-based project management.



Ada Lovelace was a mathematician of the British nobility, who in the 19th century created the worlds first computer program, and Grace Hopper was a Harvard computer scientist working with the US Navy during World War II and afterward.



The marginalization of women in technology began in the western educational world, particularly when computer programming entered the campus.



The first campus opening a computer program was Princeton University, which banned women from taking part in this program, Kathleen said.



A number of female programmers involved in the early work on NASAs space shuttles found their names were not mentioned in any publication on the effort.



Although women did eventually gain access to the information technology (IT) industry, sexist barriers are still encountered.



A case in point is that of James Damore, a Google technician criticizing Googles nondiscrimination policy in recruiting employees.



Damore said that, by nature, men were better than women at computer programming, and there was no reason for Google to employ more female technicians.



Damore was fired for his

opinion.



The discriminatory situation in education and industry seems to make women reluctant to study anything related to technology, while in reality, technology is inseparable from life.



Understanding and utilizing technology means not only possessing the latest gadgets, but also being familiar with coding, security of surfing the virtual world as well as empowering women and communicating their aspirations.



With this objective, Anantya van Bronckhorst and several partners have introduced Girl in Tech to Indonesia, an initiative to bring women closer and deeper into the technological world.



Girl in Tech is a global organization with branches in various countries. One of Girl in Techs activities is Women Win, which is a contest to initiate womens empowerment through technology.



With the contest, Girl in Tech is supposed to help realize two ideas, Kostoom and Help Nona. The former concerns online dressmaking services and the latter constitutes an online education and discussion forum dealing with violence in dating.



Girl in Tech also provides training in coding, web analytics and a hackathon for women.



Anantya acknowledged that many women were still unwilling to learn new things related to digital technology, for various reasons, from their busy daily routines to their lack of confidence in womens ability to study IT.



As pointed out by Kathleen, Anantya also witnessed the strong perception regarding the sphere of technology as an uncommon field of study for women.



Anantya has thus adopted the strategy of conducting roadshows in high schools introducing alternative skills besides those of a feminine nature. In this way, women are expected to get accustomed to deeper involvement with technology, while becoming aware that technology can be utilized for different purposes rather than just for consumption.



In the era of ever-prevailing digital technology, expertise in the digital field is highly beneficial for occupations, Anantya said.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 08:00 1292 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8dd2c0 1 City child-abuse,exploitation,Central-Jakarta Free

A middle-aged woman allegedly abused her five adopted children while living in three different hotels over the past 10 years.

An investigation by the Central Jakarta Police into the 60-year-old woman reportedly found that she had been paying for the hotels using inherited money from her parents and her late husband, police chief Roma Hutajulu said on Wednesday.

One of the children ran away and went to his former nanny. He told the former nanny and her relative [identified only as R] that he and his four adopted siblings had endured abusive parenting, Roma said.

The woman was arrested on Feb. 28 in a hotel room in Central Jakarta where she was staying with her five adopted children. The children were not sent to school, the police said.

We have just handed over the case to the Jakarta Police, Roma said as quoted by kompas.com.

With support from the Indonesian Child Protection Institute (LPAI), R reported the mother to the police.

The mothers lawyer, Eddi Danggur, said that he would hold a press conference to explain his clients side of the story. (vla)
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Linkedin Hotli Simanjuntak (The Jakarta Post) Banda Aceh  Thu, March 8, 2018 13:32 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8efdb4 1 National teenage-delinquency,aceh,persecution Free

Residents of Ingin Jaya in Aceh Besar, Aceh province, allegedly poured sewage over two teenagers who were reportedly caught alone together in a house.

Ingin Jaya Police chief Adj. Corm. Nazarul Fitra confirmed the incident, saying that H, 18, had been visiting her boyfriend, AR, 19, when they were dragged out of the house.

H came to the house when no one else was there. The neighbors thought they were committing immoral acts, he said, adding that investigators found no evidence to prove the allegations.

Nazarul said the police arrived late to the scene.

The angry mob had doused [the victims] with sewage when we arrived, he said.

The couple is currently being held by sharia police Wilayatul Hisba for further legal proceedings.

Read also: Q&A: What you need to know about sharia in Aceh

We are coordinating with the sharia police to process the case, Nazarul said.

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia to enforce sharia law, which was formally introduced in 2003 with the enactment of three bylaws banning alcohol, gambling and khalwat (socializing in secluded places). (gis/dmr)
Dozens of women and several men marched in Jayapura, Papua, to show their support for the fight against gender-based violence on International Women's Day on Thursday. They gave flowers and areca nuts to people driving around Abepura traffic circle in Jayapura, Papua, on Thursday.

The areca nuts are the symbol for peace. We appeal to people to communicate and interact peacefully with women, said Vien Yarangga, the coordinator of the march.

She said gender based violence in Papua had increased significantly. Violence against women in Papua used to happen in the home by family members. Now violence against women also happens outside the house, she said.

"Children have been raped on their way home from school. Some were even raped by their school friends, she added.

Vien appealed to all women in Papua to stop being afraid of speaking out against violence. All women who have fallen victim to violence should be brave and report it. Dont be afraid! she said.

Nur Aida Duwila, director of Legal Aid Institute Apik in Papua said there had been eight cases of violence against women and children in 2018. I believe there are many more unreported cases, she said.

Maria Woisiri, an activist, appealed to men to end violence at home. Husbands, please stop beating your wives at home. Stop drinking alcohol, your wives will be the victims of your behavior! she said. (gis/evi)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 12:47 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8ed6c4 1 City Polwan,student,shopping-mall Free

The Central Jakarta Polices women corps (Polwan) will have the additional task of monitoring students spending time at shopping malls during and after school to prevent crimes against children.

The program, dubbed Polwan Sahabat Remaja (Policewomen Are a Friend to Teenagers) also aims at encouraging students to go straight home after school.

Insp. Rasilin Nur Afriani from the Central Jakarta Polices narcotics unit said the first operation would be conducted at Gajah Mada Mall in Gambir.

We found that students like to hang out there after school instead of going home. They say that they only want to hang out, but dont tell their parents about their plans. We tell them to be careful and not to trust strangers, Rasilin said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Wednesday.

She added that criminals lure children by giving them presents or food and beverages that may contain drugs.

The police are also urging parents to monitor their children.

We encourage students to go back to their homes first, and not hang out in malls or crowded places. Most of [these students] are underage and need to be accompanied by parents, Rasilin said. (wnd)
The Jakarta Center for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC) and the Bali Police, supported by the British government, held a counterterrorism drill at Benoa seaport in Denpasar, Bali, on Thursday.

Bali Police chief, Insp. Gen. Petrus R. Golose said the drill was in preparation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Meeting in Bali in October this year.

"We guarantee that the meeting will be safe on the island," Petrus said after the drill.

Dozens of Bali Police personnel took part, including the counterterrorism squad and water police. The drill also involved other stakeholders like the Disaster Mitigation Agency and the fire brigade.

However, Petrus emphasized that there was no threat of a terrorist attack on the island.

"We are just preparing to enhance the capability of the Bali Police and other related stakeholders," he added.

Juliet Maric Capeling OBE, the British Embassys deputy head of mission, said the embassy supported the drill. She added that the number of people from the United Kingdom visiting Indonesia, and vice versa, was increasing.

She said the embassy was confident that the police have the ability to keep Bali safe and secure. (evi)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 13:14 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8ee94d 1 Business stock-market,weakening,DMO-domestic-market-obligation,coal-price,ignasius-jonan Free

The Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) on Wednesday dropped by 2.03 percent to 6,368.27 as Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Ignasius announced the governments plan to immediately decide a domestic coal price under the domestic market obligation (DMO).

Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) director Tito Sulistio said the mining sector dropped 3.56 percent, the biggest loss, followed by consumer goods, which fell by 3.02 percent.

"The market responded to the plan for DMO coal negatively, as this could decrease the revenue of coal mining companies," Tito said at the IDX building in Jakarta.

Ignasius previously signed a decree on a domestic coal price fixed under the DMO, a move that is expected to ease the financial burden of state-owned electricity company PLN.

He said the decree had yet to be issued, however, pending the issuance of revised Government Regulation (PP) No. 1/2017 on diversified mineral resources businesses, a draft of which has been sent to the Presidential Office.

Meanwhile, Tito said the price drop in the consumer goods sector was affected by the decline of cigarette producer PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoernas share price by 4.25 percent.

The company's net profit in 2017 increased 0.7 percent year-on-year to Rp 12.67 trillion (US$885.9 million).

"The company is still profitable, but the share price was corrected, and it contributed around 8 percent to JCIs movement," the IDX chief added. (bbn)
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Linkedin Aman Rochman (The Jakarta Post) Malang, East Java  Thu, March 8, 2018 18:05 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c903f69 1 National stunting Free

Unequal parenting and lack of knowledge from parents are among the major causes of stunting in Indonesia, an official has said.

An official with the Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Ministry, Lenny N. Rosalin, said unequal parenting had made mothers the sole person responsible for their childs nutritional intake.

According to Lenny, one out every three Indonesian infants aged 0 to 2 years old was stunted. Adults who suffered from stunted growth are likely to get lower incomes in the future compared to those who had optimal growth. Stunting also causes Rp 300 billion (US$21 million) in state losses annually, she said.

In an effort to address the issue, the ministry launched a pilot project aiming to boost the role of fathers. The ministry has chosen Malang, East Java, as the first city to develop the project. Part of the initiative is establishing training for counselors as well as producing digital and printed modules on stunting. The ministry is collaborating with the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) Indonesia to run the project.

We chose Malang because this city was recognized for its achievement in reducing malnutrition in 2017, she said in Malang on Thursday.

MCA Indonesia director for social and gender inclusion Dwi Rahayu Yuliawati Faiz said the project encouraged fathers to play a bigger role starting from pregnancy, considering the gender-based role division within Indonesian society. (swd)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggin Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 19:55 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c90782d 1 City RPTRA-Jakarta,green-space Free

The Jakarta administration should create more green spaces in the city instead of more integrated child-friendly public spaces (RPTRAs) as the former plays an important role in urban ecology, an expert has said.

An urban analyst at Trisakti University, Nirwono Joga, said even though both green spaces and RPTRAs were open spaces, they had different functions.

An RPTRA is a public place that can be used for social interaction. Meanwhile, green spaces are also public places but they have ecological functions such as to absorb water, prevent floods and eliminate pollution, Nirwono told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Currently, the city only has 3,131 green spaces, amounting to 9.98 percent of total land in the city, far below the requirement of 30 percent as stipulated in the prevailing Spatial Planning Law.

The law stipulates that the city administration is in charge of providing 20 percent of land for green spaces while private sectors are responsible for 10 percent.

Meanwhile, the administration has developed 290 RPTRAs in 267 subdistricts in the city.

Nirwono said green spaces were dominated by plants, which was different from RPTRAs in that the latter can also have some facilities and buildings.

The administration could create more green spaces, among others, by restoring the green space areas on the riverbanks, reservoirs, lakes and beside railways, he added.

Previously, Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno said the city would create more RPTRAs next year.
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 18:52 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c90508e 1 Business FreeportIndonesia,smelters,Sumbawa Free

Gold and copper miner PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) is still open to build a new smelter in Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, even though the company has officially submitted a proposal to the government to develop such a facility in Gresik, East Java.

PTFI has pledged to develop the new smelter, worth US$2.2 billion, inside the Java Integrated Industrial and Port Estate in Gresik by 2022. The facility will have an annual input capacity of 2 million tons of copper concentrate.

However, PTFI also signed a memorandum of understanding with another gold and copper miner, PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara, on Aug. 31, 2017 to conduct a joint study on the prospect of jointly developing a new smelter in Sumbawa near the latters mining sites.

We have proposed a plan to the government to develop our new smelter in Gresik. But we have also reached an agreement with Amman to conduct a joint study. So, its still possible [to develop it in Sumbawa], PTFI executive vice president Tony Wenas said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Amman has started developing its own copper smelter with an input capacity of 660,000 tons in Sumbawa. As of mid-February, the development progress of Ammans smelter had reached 10.1 percent, higher than PTFIs facility in Gresik of only 2.4 percent.

If Amman jointly develops the new smelter with PTFI, the planned input capacity of the two companies will be combined, Amman smelter project coordinator Lukman Mahfoedz said.

But it is up to PTFI whether it will continue this cooperation or not. (bbn)
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Berlin  Thu, March 8, 2018 09:59 1292 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8e0c12 2 World Germany,Vietnam,abduction,Cold-War Free

German prosecutors Wednesday laid charges against a suspected Vietnamese agent over last year's Cold War-style kidnapping of a fugitive state company official in Berlin which has badly strained bilateral ties.

The 47-year-old man -- identified only as Long N.H. in keeping with German privacy rules in judicial cases -- was charged with working for a foreign intelligence service and aiding in an abduction.

The charges each carry up to 10 years' prison. No trial date has been announced.

Germany believes Long N.H. took part in the brazen kidnapping, denied by Hanoi, of state company executive Trinh Xuan Thanh, who has since been sentenced to two life terms in Vietnamese high-profile corruption trials.

Thanh, who was in Germany seeking asylum, was snatched last July 23 while walking in Berlin's central Tiergarten park and reappeared days later, in police captivity, on Vietnamese state TV.

Vietnam has insisted he voluntarily turned himself in, but Germany says he was abducted in a "scandalous violation" of its sovereignty in a kidnapping that Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said evoked "thriller movies about the Cold War".

German federal prosecutors charge that the detained suspect rented a Volkswagen van in Prague and drove it to Berlin, where several armed men dragged Thanh and a female companion into the vehicle.

The prosecutors said Thanh and the woman were first taken to the Vietnamese embassy in Berlin before she was flown to Hanoi and Thanh "was abducted to Vietnam by unknown means".

The kidnapping "was carried out by Vietnamese intelligence officials and other Vietnamese embassy staff in Berlin and several Vietnamese nationals living in Europe, including the accused," said the prosecutors.

Long N. H. was tasked with renting the abduction van in Prague and later returning it, and with also driving back a rented BMW sedan that had been used for observation, they said.

He was arrested in the Czech Republic on August 12 and extradited to Germany on August 23.

The one-party state of Vietnam has waged an aggressive anti-corruption purge but analysts say it is often driven by infighting within the wealthy business-political elite as much as a true commitment to ending graft.

Thanh, the former head of PetroVietnam Construction Corporation, in two high-profile trials early this year received two life prison sentences for embezzlement and causing losses to the state.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 15:44 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f6474 2 National yacht,bali,1MDB,Malaysia,FBI Free

A luxury yacht linked to allegations that $4.5 billion was looted from Malaysia's state investment fund 1MDB is being handed over to the FBI, which is probing the scandal, Indonesian police said Thursday.

US and Indonesian authorities last week searched the Cayman Island-registered Equanimity, reportedly worth some $250 million, which was moored off the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

"(The handing over) is in the process of being done," national police senior detective Daniel Silitonga told AFP.

The US Justice Department alleges in civil lawsuits that $4.5 billion was stolen from 1MDB -- set up by Prime Minister Najib Razak -- in a campaign of fraud and money-laundering. Najib and the fund deny any wrongdoing.

The suits list $1.7 billion in assets allegedly bought with the stolen funds, which US officials are seeking to recover.

Those assets include the 300-foot (90-metre) yacht which US officials said was purchased by Malaysian financier known as Jho Low, an unofficial adviser to 1MDB.

The ship's captain and about three dozen crew had been questioned but no one has been arrested so far, Silitonga said.

"Regarding the crew, we are still discussing it," he said, when asked if they would be taken into the FBI's custody.

Built in 2013, the Netherlands-made yacht has nine bedrooms, including a master suite with a hot tub, a helipad, a gym and spa, and a movie theatre, according to yachtcharterfleet.com.

Low, whose full is name Low Taek Jho, was said to have made key financial decisions linked to 1MDB, although he did not hold any official positions in Malaysia.

He has denied any wrongdoing and his current whereabouts are unknown.

After the boat seizure, a spokesman for Low noted that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had officially delayed its efforts to seize assets last year.

A US court reportedly granted a stay after a request from authorities, as they believed the civil proceedings could affect a criminal probe they are also conducting.

Low's spokesman said last week that the DoJ had "still not taken any steps to prove that any impropriety has occurred".

"It is therefore disappointing that, rather than reflecting on the deeply flawed and politically-motivated allegations, the DoJ is continuing with its pattern of global overreach -- all based on entirely unsupported claims of wrongdoing," he said.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 16:44 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f9914 1 City transgender,punishment,raids Free

The Jakarta Social Agency has classified waria, or transgender women, as people with social dysfunctional traits, which has led to many waria being rounded up and sent to rehabilitation centers.

The agency's head of rehabilitation affairs, Chaidir, told The Jakarta Post that the agency regularly conducted raids against transgender women. Soon after we have a waria admitted to a social house, we will notify her family or her community to organize her release, he said.

Families of the detained waria must meet all administrative requirements to secure their release, Chaidir added, which consisted primarily of an official letter verifying the waria's place of residence to prove that she was not homeless.

If she came from outside Jakarta, the agency would notify the social agency of the province where she was registered, he said. The move was intended, Chaidir explained, to create a deterrent effect, so that [the province] will know that one of their residents has become Jakartas social problem.

Last week in West Jakarta, Duri Kosambi subdistrict head Irwansyah Alam hindered a mothers attempt to secure the release of her detained transgender daughter from city-owned rehabilitation center Bina Insan Bangun Daya in Kedoya.

(Read also: Mother's request to release arrested transgender daughter ignored)

Irwansyah refused to sign a draft letter of domicile and instead tore up the document so that Tarnisem, the mother of transgender Neneng, originally called Ahmad Sehu, had to remain in the rehabilitation center.

Eventually, Tarnisem was able to secure her daughter's release by attaining the necessary document from Cengkareng district officials. The district officials have the authority to issue the letter because Duri Kosambi subdistrict is part of Cengkareng.

Chaidir had also explained that anyone  transgender people, homeless people, street buskers and beggars  who were detained at a rehabilitation center were required to sign a statement that they would not repeat the violation.

Once or twice is still OK, but if we catch them a third time, they can be sent to jail for committing the same violation over and over, he said. (vla)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 12:33 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8ec6d1 1 Politics megawati-soekarnoputri,honorary-title,International-Women-Day Free

The Institute of Public Administration (IPDN) will award former president and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri with an honorary degree in politics as part International Womens Day, an official has said.

The presentation ceremony is scheduled to be held on Thursday at the institute's campus in Jatinangor, Sumedang, West Java.

Megawati is an important political figure who is always consistent in implementing democracy for a better Indonesia, IPDN rector Ermaya Suradinata said in a written statement.

She is a strong, decisive figure, but at the same time, also shows her essential womanly nature in respecting humanity and cultural values.

Meanwhile, PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto welcomed the honorary title for Megawati.

This honorary degree is another recognition for her greatness as a politician, he said.

Megawati, who dropped out of Padjadjaran Universitys School of Agriculture in Bandung and the University of Indonesias (UI) School of Psychology in Depok, both in West Java, has previously received honorary degrees from various universities, including those in Japan, South Korea and Russia. (gis/dmr)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 17:45 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c903a3b 1 City RPTRA-Jakarta,development,Sandiaga-Uno Free

Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno has called for the development of integrated child-friendly public spaces (RPTRAs) next year despite a lack of vacant land in the city.

Previously, Jakarta Public Housing and Public Buildings Agency head Agustino Darmawan said the city might stop developing the public spaces next year as there were enough of them.

There are 290 RPTRA in 267 subdistricts in the city, meaning some subdistricts have more than one park.

The administration might focus on developing more green urban spaces as the percentage of them in the city was considered low, Agustino said.

Sandiaga said on Thursday that RPTRAs, which were developed in a program started by former Jakarta governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, were positive for residents and should be further developed.

However, due to a lack of vacant land, the city administration would team up with private parties to provide the facilities, Sandiaga said.

Were formulating policies that can give incentives for private parties, Sandiaga said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com, adding that the incentives could include the reduction of property taxes or placement of advertisements at the public spaces.

Green spaces occupy roughly 10 percent of land in Jakarta, even though the prevailing law requires that the city allocate 30 percent of land for green spaces.

Sandiaga said the residents did not have to differentiate between RPTRAs and green spaces as both were needed. (cal)
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 15:39 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f6092 1 National setya-novanto Free

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors have indicted Bimanesh Sutarjo, a doctor working at private hospital Medika Permata Hijau, for allegedly hindering the antigraft body's investigation into former House of Representatives speaker and graft defendant Setya Novanto in the e-ID case.

"[The defendant] has been accused of fraudulently admitting Setya Novanto to Medika Permata Hijau Hospital in order to [help him] evade KPK questioning," prosecutor Kresno Anto Wibowo read out in the indictment on Thursday.

On Nov. 16, Bimanesh allegedly granted a request from Fredrich Yunadi, Setya's former lawyer, to have the politician admitted to the hospital for hypertension, as stated in a medical record from Premier Jatinegara Hospital, where Setya was previously treated.

The defendant responded by asking another doctor to reserve a VIP room for Setya even though Bimanesh had yet to examine him.

"When Setya was admitted to the hospital, the defendant ordered nurse Indri Astuti to wrap Setya's head with a bandage due to a request from the politician and pretended to connect him to a small IV needle commonly used for children," prosecutor Takdir Suhan stated.

Graft busters raided Setya's house on Nov. 15 to arrest him after he had failed to answer a KPK summons, only to find he had left his home hours before the raid.

A day later, the embattled politician was reportedly involved in an accident. He was admitted to Medika Permata Hijau Hospital before the KPK detained him on Nov. 19.

The antigraft body also named Setya's former lawyer Fredrich Yunadi a suspect in the case. He is currently standing trial at the Jakarta Corruption Court. (swd)
BERKELEY, Calif. and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 07, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR OVER U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES

BriaCell Therapeutics Corp. ("BriaCell" or the "Company") (TSX-V:BCT) (OTCQB:BCTXF), an immuno-oncology focused biotechnology company with a proprietary targeted immunotherapy technology, announced today that it expects to enter into a securities purchase agreement of convertible notes with a leading group of Institutional and Family Office funds focused on investments in the biotech sector for an investment of US$800,000 (the "Note Offering").

Under the terms of a securities purchase agreement expected to be entered into between the Company and the purchasers of Notes (as defined herein), the Note Offering will consist of a: (i) 5.0% unsecured convertible note of BriaCell in the principal amount of US$800,000 (each, a "Note") which will be convertible at the option of the holder of the Note into common shares of BriaCell for so long as the Note is outstanding, at the holders sole option, at a fixed conversion price of C$0.10 per common share of BriaCell (each, a "Common Share"), subject to adjustment in certain events for a period of six months from the date of issuance, which may be extended by the applicable holder for up to six additional six month terms at the holders sole option; and (ii) one common share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant"). The Warrants will be valid for 36 months following the date of closing of the Note Offering and each Warrant will be exercisable for one Common Share at an exercise price of C$0.14.

Concurrent with the Note Offering, the Company also announced today that it intends complete a non-brokered private placement (the "Non-Brokered Unit Offering") of units of the Company (the "Units") at a price of $0.10 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of up to C$4,000,000. The Non-Brokered Unit Offering is in addition to BriaCells proposed strategic US$800,000 Note Offering and also includes an investment from a recognized Biotech Family office in the United States. Under the Non-Brokered Unit Offering, each Unit shall consist of one Common Share and one Warrant. The Warrants will be valid for 36 months following the date of closing of the Non-Brokered Unit Offering and each Warrant will be exercisable for one Common Share at an exercise price of C$0.14.

The Company intends to use the proceeds from the Note Offering and the Non-Brokered Unit Offering to: (i) finance the Company's Phase-2a clinical trial; (ii) to finance the Company's pursuit of other research opportunities; and (iii) for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The Note Offering and Non-Brokered Unit Offering are expected to close on or about March 14, 2018, and is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and other customary closing conditions.

All securities issued under the Note Offering and Non-Brokered Unit Offering will have a four month and one day hold expiring on the date of issuance of such securities.

The Company also announced that it has granted incentive stock options of 3.4 million common shares exercisable on or before the expiry of March 1, 2021 from the date of grant at a price of $0.15 per common share. This event follows the recent expiration of 11.87 million warrants at an exercise price of $0.25 (such warrants expired on November 27, 2017), and 0.45 million warrants at an exercise price of $0.35 (such warrants expired on December 2, 2017, and February 5, 2018), and the expired Stock Options of 2.4 million (at exercise prices of $0.22, and $0.255) on January 31, 2018.

About BriaCell

BriaCell is an immuno-oncology focused biotechnology company developing a targeted and safe approach to the management of cancer. Immunotherapy has come to the forefront in the fight against cancer, harnessing the body's own immune system in recognizing and selectively destroying cancer cells while sparing normal ones. Immunotherapy, in addition to generally being more targeted and less toxic than commonly used types of chemotherapy, is also thought to be a potent approach with the potential to prevent cancer recurrence.

Bria-IMT (SV-BR-1-GM), the Company's lead product candidate, is derived from a specific breast cancer cell line. It is genetically engineered to release granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), a substance that activates the immune system. We believe that Bria-IMT helps the body to recognize and kill tumor cells by activating T cells that attack the tumor and B cells that produce anti-tumor antibodies.

The results of two previous proof-of-concept clinical trials (one with the precursor cell line not genetically engineered to produce GM-CSF and one with Bria-IMT) produced encouraging results in patients with advanced breast cancer. Most notably, one patient with metastatic breast cancer responded to Bria-IMT with substantial reduction in tumor burden including breast, lung, soft tissue and brain metastases. The company is currently conducting a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for Bria-IMT in patients with advanced breast cancer. This trial is listed in ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03066947. The trial is being conducted along with the co-development of BriaDX, the Companys companion diagnostic test. The interim data for the first 6 patients was the subject of a press release in early 2018. Additionally, the FDA recently approved the roll-over combination study of Bria-IMT with pembrolizumab [Keytruda; manufactured by Merck & Co., Inc.] or ipilimumab [Yervoy; manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb Company] for patients previously treated with Bria-IMT in the Companys ongoing Phase I/IIa clinical trial in advanced breast cancer. The roll-over trial is listed in ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT03328026.

BriaCell is also developing Bria-OTS, an off-the-shelf personalized Immunotherapy. Bria-OTS consists of 14 individually pre-manufactured genetic alleles. BriaCells BriaDX companion diagnostic reveals a patients specific HLA-types and the 2 best matching alleles are administered to the patient. BriaCells 14 alleles (8 Class I and 6 Class II) cover approximately 90% of the Breast Cancer population while eliminating the complex manufacturing logistics required for other personalized immunotherapies. Bria-OTS is a personalized therapy without the need for personalized manufacturing.

Yet another item in the BriaCell pipeline is a novel, selective protein kinase C delta (PKC) inhibitor. PKC inhibitors have shown activity in a number of pre-clinical models of RAS genes transformed cancers including breast, pancreatic, non-small cell lung cancer and neuroendocrine tumors (such as carcinoid tumors).

For additional information on BriaCell, please visit our website: http://briacell.com.

The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the Company has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The securities offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Except for the statements of historical fact, this news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation which involves known and unknown risks relevant to the Company in particular and to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries in general, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual events to differ materially from current expectation. These risks are more fully described in the Company's public filings available at www.sedar.com.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation, except to the extent required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact Information

For further information, please contact:

BriaCell Therapeutics Corp.:

Farrah Dean

Manager, Corporate Development

Email: farrah@BriaCell.com

Phone: 1-888-485-6340
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Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Thu, March 8, 2018 16:16 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f84bd 1 National assault-case Free

A Singaporean national received a sentence of 13 years imprisonment and a Rp 100 million (US$7,000) fine for sexual assault in Batam on Thursday.

The man, Mohammad Asri bin Sapuan, 46, was found guilty of assaulting three minors in September 2017.

His victims, aged 12, 15 and 16, previously took art courses at Mohammads house in Batam.

The parents of one of the children grew suspicious of Mohammad after reading a text message in their childs cellphone. Following a discussion with their child to find out more information about Mohammad, the parents filed a police report.

He was arrested in October 2017.

Judges found him guilty of violating Article No. 76/2014 on child protection.

He was also found guilty of overstaying his visa while in Batam. The police said his passport was last stamped by the immigration office on Jan. 30, 2014.

Mohammad, who fell into tears after the sentence was read, said he was ready to accept his punishment. (gis/swd)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 12:20 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8ebf64 1 City embezzlement,arrest,Tangerang Free

The West Jakarta Police arrested on Monday a woman who had been hiding in a house on Jl. Komplek Kenanga in Tangerang, Banten, after allegedly embezzling Rp 623 million (US$43,610) from her place of employment.

It took us a week to finally arrest her, after the company reported that she had caused hundreds of millions of rupiah in losses, West Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr. Hengki Haryadi said on Wednesday as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

Based on an initial investigation, the woman had been stealing the funds over an extended period, according to West Jakarta Police crime unit chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Edy Suranta Sitepu.

She allegedly requested money several times to procure items for the office, but then she used the funds to have fun, he said, without elaborating on what "fun" encapsulated.

The police, Edy added, had confiscated the womans pay slips, forged invoice receipts and her employment contract. (vla)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, March 8, 2018 13:49 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8f0817 1 City smoking,driving,Jakarta-police Free

The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) have called on the police to ticket motorists who smoke while driving, citing the number of traffic accidents that mostly affect motorcyclists.

YLKI chairman Tulus Abadi said that at least 30,000 motorists die each year due to human error.

Smoking while driving, he added, reduces concentration and could result in an accident.

The accident would not only put the driver in harms way, but others as well. Cigarettes thrown haphazardly out of car windows have been known to cause fires, Tulus said as quoted by kompas.com on Wednesday.

Tulus cited research conducted by the London-based Institute of Advanced Motorists on the effects of smoking while driving, saying that 56 percent of 3,016 respondents agreed that smoking while driving should be made illegal.

Forty-eight percent of respondents believe that smoking while driving is an irresponsible act, while 46 percent believes that it is as dangerous as using a mobile phone while driving, he explained.

Tulus further said that the police should enforce the law consistently.

The Jakarta Police previously planned to roll out a regulation that would make smoking and listening to music, among other things, while driving illegal. After massive outcry from motorists, the plan was reworked to target those using their mobile phones while driving, including using their phone as navigation. (jlm)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 9 2018

The Kuwaiti Embassy in Jakarta launched the Diwaniyah Kuwait event on Tuesday evening to foster closer ties between Indonesia and the Arab world toward common welfare and progress.



Kuwaiti Ambassador Abdulwahab Abdullah Al Sager hosted a dinner at the embassy to mark the launch, which was preceded by discussions among guests on various issues in a relaxed manner.



The diwaniyah is a feature of Kuwaiti political culture in which people sit together to discuss various things.



Envoys from most of the Arab world, such as Bahrain, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, attended the launch, as well as the Foreign Ministrys protocol director, Akio Alfiano Tamala, and the Jakarta Police officer who oversees the security of foreign embassies, Comr. Endang Wahyu Kinasih.

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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 9 2018

Switzerland, a small but prosperous country in Central Europe, is ready to work with all ASEAN countries, including Indonesia, in the field of Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), a senior Swiss official has said.

It is in our long tradition that TVET is perceived as a means for poverty alleviation, integration and is meant for economic development. What is unique about Switzerlands TVET system is that the private sector plays such a crucial role. I sincerely hope that this workshop will be the first step for a closer collaboration with ASEAN, and that we will be able to generate common ideas for joint actions in the field of TVET. Tim Enderlin, Director of Cooperation for Laos and the Mekong Region (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam).

He was referring to the recently he...
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Linkedin Martin Carvalho, Hemananthani Sivanandam, Rahimy Rahim and Loshana K. Shagar (The Star/ANN) Petaling Jaya, Malaysia  Thu, March 8, 2018 10:22 1291 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9c8e1c33 2 SE Asia #Malaysia,#Palestine,#Jerusalem,#embassy Free

Any decision to set up a Malaysian embassy in Palestine can only be determined once the final status of Jerusalem is determined under the two-state solution plan, says Reezal Merican Naina Merican.

The Deputy Foreign Minister said if Malaysia decides to take similar action like the United States and set up its embassy in Jerusalem, it would be akin to giving a signal to legitimise the action made by the United States, which had received international backlash.

As a country that holds firmly to international principles and the United Nations Charter, we must continue to respect the UN resolution on the status of Jerusalem, he told Datuk Kamaruddin Jaffar (PKR-Tumpat) during Question Time.

Kamaruddin had asked Wisma Putra whether the Government has any intention to set up its embassy in Jerusalem to prove its commitment towards the Palestinian struggle.

In December last year, the UN General Assembly decisively backed a resolution calling the United States to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The non-binding resolution was approved by 128 states with 35 abstaining and nine others voting against.

Reezal said Malaysia was among the countries to vote for the resolution, in line with its strong commitment to see the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The resolution, among others, insisted that any decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem are null and void, and must be rescinded.

All parties must respect the UN resolution, including not to set up their embassies in Jerusalem.

But it is the hope of all Malaysians to see the establishment of our embassy in Jerusalem and that has been one of our final aims, said Reezal.

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This article appeared on The Star newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
Bali might be well known for its party nightlife, but the island is also beginning to bloom as a center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers where youll find thriving clean and sober communities of both expats and locals who offer each other support and friendship.



A quick search in Google on alcohol rehab in Bali will result in dozens of rehab centers offering addiction-recovery services and therapeutic communities.



There are some practical reasons why the island is gaining popularity for drying out and cleaning up beyond its strong spiritual roots and stunning natural beauty. The cost of drug and alcohol rehab in Australia, the United States and Europe make it financially out of reach for many and the added anonymity of traveling to another country is a big attraction for those who want to keep their private life exactly that.



Rehabilitation centers in Bali offer a range of programs, with by far the most popular being 28-day options in group facilities, which include an initial detox period followed by rehabilitation including counselling, exercise regimes and getting started on a 12-step program. Almost all rehab centers work closely with their local AA and NA (Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous) groups and take clients to regular meetings.

Read also: Substitute Phone relieves addiction to fiddling with smartphones

The majority of 28-day programs in Bali follow a similar method that involves clients giving up their cell phones and laptops in order to step away from the distractions and triggers of everyday life to focus completely on their recovery program. Prices and policies vary from center to center, as do the levels of personal focus and facilities.



Bali-based American rehabilitation expert, Alice Dill Prasetyoko, who has 23 years of sobriety and experience in both US and Southeast Asian treatment facilities, said people were all different and so were their recovery needs.



Its important to take into account individual needs and tailor-make a persons recovery path around them. Not everyone can afford unlimited time away from the office, be offline and out of contact, she said.

More basic programs include the cost of living in a communal rehab facility, which offers simple accommodation and a strong focus on group activities and participation, which reduces operational costs compared to those providing one-on-one support.



The success rate for those attending rehab centers in Bali and staying off drugs or alcohol for the initial 28 days is high compared to other areas world-wide. Some facilities have strict schedules for attending fitness classes, group sessions, group activities, communal meal times and set bed times.

Read also: Tips for a beginners solo trip to Flores

Venturing outside of the facility is allowed on a restricted basis only and always with a staff member to ensure no slip ups along the way. However, the success rate for those remaining clean and sober after they return home is difficult to gauge. Reverse culture shock, sudden integration back into old lifestyles and habits can possibly be followed by a relapse.



Alice believes that the more a person is closeted away and removed from their daily life, the more they risk being shell shocked when they inevitably return to it.



Gradual re-integration is key to ongoing success beyond the rehabilitation facility, she said.



Jakarta expatriates are also among those who are trading their party trips to Bali for time away from the city in order to overcome addiction problems and embark on paths of healthier (and happier) living.



An ex-Jakarta expat who asked to remain anonymous said life in Jakarta was not easy and relocation could be extremely stressful. She said that at first she was terrified of admitting to having a problem but once it was out, the relief was immense.



I am now five months sober after my initial recovery in Bali and I have never looked back. My life has changed beyond recognition, I am happy and I have the respect of family, friends and peers, she said.

A view of a villa at The Lighthouse Bali rehab center. (The Lighthouse Bali/File)

She didnt want to attend a group facility, so she took a private rehab in The Lighthouse Bali Rehab in Sanur, which offers personalized programs.



I could actually keep working too and was able to keep my phone and laptop. I had an amazing team around me who also helped me with getting back into daily living, she said.



Accommodation in The Lighthouse is offered in private villas according to clients budgets and needs. Counseling and therapy is on a one-on-one basis and clients are able to maintain contact with the outside world. Schedules are made in partnership with the client and allow for office work and other commitments.



Alice said the thought of giving up alcohol or drugs can be terrifying and when coupled with the knowledge of inability to be able to give up through willpower alone, a person can begin to feel imprisoned and at a loss.



If anyone is struggling with controlling their drug use or drinking they should seek immediate help. Its a difficult step to take but one which ultimately saves relationships, families and lives, she said.
To commemorate International Womens Day, Dubai-based Emirates airline shared its story of how women have been part of the companys success from the start.

Every flight that we operate needs an entire ecosystem of staff from a number of business units to come together and work seamlessly. Emirates is proud that we have women represented in all these key functions, said Abdulaziz Al Ali, Emirates executive vice president of human resources.

He went on to say that on International Womens Day, the airline celebrates womens extensive contribution to Emirates and to the broader aviation industry.

As part of the celebration, Emirates is highlighting the integral role played by its female employees through a special video that documents the breadth and diversity of the operational and technical roles performed by women in the group.

The video gives the audience a behind-the-scenes look at women employees from various Emirates Group business units, carrying out all key activities for the operation of flight EK 225 from Dubai to San Francisco. The Emirates A380 aircraft was piloted by captain Patricia Bischoff from Canada and first officer Rebecca Lougheed from the United Kingdom, with cabin crew led by the purser Weronica Formela from Poland.

In addition to the flight crew, an all-woman team worked on all above-wing and below-wing activities in the lead-up to departure. Their roles span customer service in the airport, ramp operations, technical services and a myriad of other duties.

The EK 225 operational team also included Emirati women working in the engineering, flight dispatch, security and cargo operations.

Read also: Emirates to launch new Dubai-Bali-Auckland service

In total, a team of more than 75 women of some 25 nationalities worked on the flight.

Meanwhile, the Emirates Group employs women from more than 150 countries, including close to 1,150 Emirati women who work in diverse functions across the business. They are also represented in senior managerial and executive roles.

Overall, female employees constitute more than 40 percent of the workforce at Emirates, with the majority working as cabin crew. (mut)
Jakartans traveling to Bandung in West Java can now opt to enjoy a more convenient mode of transportation following the availability of a "priority class" train service.

Departing from Gambir Station in Central Jakarta, the service will be available starting Friday.

"This priority class used to be offered by a subsidiary of [state-owned railway operator] PT KAI, PT Kereta Api Wisata, to cater to [VVIP passengers like] the President or a group of travelers. However, to improve our service, we will open it to individual passengers," Edy Kuswoyo, senior public relations manager for KAIs I Regional Operation (Daop) Jakarta, told kompas.com.

The priority car will be connected to the Argo Parahyangan train and operate every day, departing from Gambir at 8:45 a.m. and 6:45 p.m., and from Bandung at 5 a.m. and 2:45 p.m.

Read also: New Bandung train cars boast enhanced facilities

Passengers are seen traveling in the priority train carriage. (kompas.com/Andreas Lukas Altobel)

With tickets priced at Rp 200,000 (US$14) per person, only one car is available for this service, which can accommodate 28 passengers. Among the facilities provided are Video on Demand, Wi-Fi, coffee and snacks, baggage storage and a toilet.

Ticket reservation is currently available on the mobile app KAI Access and the companys website kai.id.

The service is currently in its trial run, which will continue until March 31.

"If the response is good, we may continue [the service] in April, and perhaps in the months after," Edy added.

The priority class was launched in August last year on Central Java trains, such as Taksaka (Jakarta-Yogyakarta) and Argo Lawu and Argo Dwipangga (Jakarta-Surakarta).

However, all three services only operate on weekends. The Yogyakarta train travels every Friday on 8:45 p.m. from Jakarta, and returns to Gambir on Sunday at 8 p.m. Meanwhile, the Surakarta train departs from Jakarta on Friday at 8:15 p.m. and returns on Sunday at 8 p.m. (kes)
Posted Wednesday, March 7, 2018 11:00 pm

By a 3-2 vote, with Mayor Brian Sullivan casting the deciding vote, Hillsboro's city council authorized a letter of intent to sign a contract with Woodward & Curran, a water system management service located in St. Charles, MO, during a special council meeting held Tuesday evening, March 6.

Also voting yes on the motion to hire the consultants were Commissioner Michael Murphy, who made the motion, and Commissioner Danny Robbins, who seconded it. Voting against the motion were Commissioners Don Downs and Katie Duncan.

The council discussed the issue for an hour before the vote was taken; present were 25 or so city workers, spouses, and residents and three representatives of Woodward & Curran.

Mayor Sullivan pointed out the need for outside help with the local systems as the discussion began, describing water distribution problems that persist at least partially because a master plan for maintenance and development has never existed.

The (relatively) new plant has technological features that the city hasn't fully utilized, and the water mains are problematic with no one sure of which valves are open, half-open, or stuck. "We depend on the memory of past workers, but they won't always be available; if we can hire someone to do a hydrologic study, to implement a GIS system that will permanently record the features of the system, it would be beneficial. As it is, we're not sure which direction the water flows in certain locations around town."

The mayor introduced Marc Thomas of Woodward & Curran to answer the specific questions of Water Commissioner Downs, who seems to be the opposition leader on the council.

Thomas told those assembled that he couldn't give specific answers until his firm has studied the system, but he cited successes they've had across the bi-state area, including in nearby Carlinville.

Finance Commissioner Duncan asked if a GIS mapping was necessary before the system could be mapped; Thomas said no -- but it's a service his firm could help implement through the use of summer interns.

Downs asked about booster pumps that city engineers Hurst-Rosche had recommended (Scott Hunt was there to represent Hurst-Rosche); the city hadn't acted because of the expense involved. The plant, with technology designed to not need 24-hours-a-day operation, is currently producing water for 20-hours-per-day, according to employee Clark Cameron, in order to provide adequate pressure to the Kinkead Hill area, and booster pumps would reduce hours of operation of the plant.

Hunt said flow tests were definitely needed, but costs for that can be prohibitive too if done independently.

Cameron added, in response to a question from the mayor, that a valve study hadn't been done for 35 to 40 years. Thomas again emphasized he couldn't provide cost estimates until his company had access to the system, but GIS, valve studies, and water flow/pressure studies are within the scope of service his company can provide.

Sullivan said the city needs the expertise the company has to provide a structured approach to the infrastructure problems -- what has to be done within one year? five years? ten years? -- with a cost analysis provided. "We just can't realistically do that locally," he argued.

Downs said money for more than stop gap repairs wouldn't be available until the water tower construction bill is paid; Thomas and Brian Bzdawka of Woodward & Curran said they prefer to be proactive to problems, to stop them before more extensive repairs are necessary, which happens if one is reactive.

Mayor Sullivan asked how the employees would be affected; by law, they would become employees of the management firm rather than the city. The mayor stated, "We want the employees to be compensated equally if not better than before if we make the transition." Councilman Murphy echoed those concerns.

Greg Frieden, the assistant area manager, said most instances where they have taken over, the employees were happier after the transition was complete. He said that always fear of change exists in the beginning, but they have a Human Resources Department that will sit individually with each employee to answer questions and to make the transition as painless as possible. Union affiliation can remain the same.

Bzdawka said the company views employees as their customers/clients too. "If the labor force isn't happy, our management job becomes much more difficult."

Cameron pointed out a major concern of his. "This is personal to me (and to any other employee well-vested in the IMRF system).

"I've worked for the city for quite a while; if I change employers now, my anticipated retirement income will be about $1,000 less per month when I retire in six years."

The mayor admitted that was one of the problems with the transition; the other is the additional cost for the expertise the city needs. A company rep. said they began services to Carlinville on August 1, and that the department budget is considerably less for the coming year, citing savings in chemical costs and sludge removal as contributing factors. "We emphasize worker safety, regulatory compliance, and a capital plan. Those are the reasons to outsource public works."

As moderator of the discussion, Mayor Sullivan re-opened the format for questions from employees, but none responded at that time. Commissioner Downs commended the water department employees for their work over the last 40 years. "We've had people who have been quick to help whenever problems arise," he said.

The mayor agreed, but said in his opinion they had reached that point in time when the city needs help from a service that can prioritize capital investments, bring more resources to the table, and develop and use a computerized maintenance program. He hopes a management group would help pursue grants, particularly USDA funds of which the city may not be aware.

Commissioner Murphy commented that when an outside management team was suggested as a possibility that he had two criteria: that employees not be harmed, and that the city be insulated from the changes in the department. He and Parks Superintendent Jim May had discussed the need to no longer depend upon "tribal memory" when an emergency occurs; he feels contracting with Woodward & Curran would help the city in the long run.

Commissioner Robbins asked what the negatives would be; the mayor's immediate response was, "Cost; it'll be more expensive than now."

Frieden said the team would look closely at the department's budget, suggesting that current chemical costs seem high in comparison to money spent in other towns. The mayor thought more water sales might be in the future, so revenue improvement is a possibility. "Besides, we need to collect good data and then have someone who can help us base our decisions on that data. We need a company with the expertise to do what we need done."

Before the vote was taken, Commissioner Downs asked if the city needed to put the proposal out for bids; the answer was no, because the company is offering services and not material.

The meeting was adjourned immediately after the vote. Despite some obvious tensions in the room during discussion, no open animosity was expressed in the aftermath as pledges of working together and handshakes were prevalent.

The council meets in regular session next Tuesday, March 13, at 7 p.m. in city hall. The public is welcome to attend.
PARIS, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Although legal standards such as the European Unions new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aim to strengthen protections for consumers data privacy, a substantial mismatch exists between what companies think consumers care about in the realm of data privacy and what consumers actually want, according to a report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and global law firm DLA Piper. The report, titled Leveraging GDPR to Become a Trusted Data Steward, is being released today.



BCG conducted research in five European countriesFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKand in the US to test consumer confidence about data privacy. The research showed that consumers are increasingly uneasy about sharing personal data, whether it be financial, familial, locational, or use based. Moreover, the research indicated that certain industries, including online companies, financial companies, and governments, are especially suspect in consumers eyes.

But this research also uncovered a counterproductive tendency on the part of many companies to collect and use customer data in recklessly conservative ways. On one hand, they avoid using data in ways that consumers feel least hostile to; and on the other, they fail to inform consumers about or ask their permission for data use, even though consumers clearly want to be asked.

Companies were substantially less likely than consumers to think that third-party use of consumer data is acceptable, noted Elias Baltassis, a BCG director and coauthor of the report. These results suggest that companies are being unduly conservative in their pursuit of new data uses, in the hope that their caution will insulate them from riskbut then they turn around and antagonize their consumers anyway by not informing them of the uses they do make of the data.

Preparing for the GDPR

A major regulatory effort to address the collection, handling, and sharing of consumer data, the GDPR sets detailed standards for appropriate use of such data. The regulation will come into force in May 2018 and will apply to virtually every company or organization that handles data on citizens of the EU.

The new regulation requires that consumer consent be explicit, and it stipulates that consumers have the right to be forgotten and the right to data portabilityrights that make companies more accountable for how they process personal data under privacy by design and privacy by default principles. To enforce these changes, the GDPR gives the regulator power to levy financial sanctions of up to 4% of a companys annual worldwide revenue or 20 millionwhichever is higher.

From Simple Compliance to Smart Complianceand Beyond

The report by BCG and DLA Piper examines key features of the new regulation, considers the readiness of companies to meet its provisions, and inquires into the mismatch between what many companies imagine to be the sources of consumer mistrust over data use and consumers actual concerns. By aligning the companys data use practices with consumers real-world views on how their data should be treated, businesses can differentiate themselves from their rivals in terms of trustworthiness.

The BCG/DLA Piper report outlines a straightforward process by which companies can move swiftly from simple compliance with the GDPR (satisfying the letter of the law) to smart compliance with it (adopting a suite of best practices to foster consumer trust), and from there to truly trusted data stewardship in the estimation of their customers.

One essential consideration here is the importance of achieving compliance early. A recent survey by DLA Piper found that many organizations across the EU are unprepared on multiple points to meet the express terms of the new data privacy regulation when it rolls out.

The average alignment of survey respondents to the GDPRs provisions was just 34%, said Patrick van Eecke, a DLAP partner and report coauthor, meaning that most organizations have not yet resolved numerous compliance gaps.

Being ahead of the curve could be a major source of competitive advantage for companies that are ready to comply in full. And the benefits of consumer trust can be very large: BCG research shows that consumers are at least five times as likely to share data with a company they trust as with one they do not.

A copy of the report can be downloaded at http://on.bcg.com/2Havptr

To arrange an interview with one of the authors, please contact Eric Gregoire at +1 617 850 3783 or gregoire.eric@bcg.com and Helen Scott at + 44 207 796 6111 or helen.scott@dlapiper.com

About The Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the worlds leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with offices in more than 90 cities in 50 countries. For more information, please visit bcg.com.

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, positioning us to help clients with their legal needs around the world. We strive to be the leading global business law firm by delivering quality and value to our clients. We achieve this through practical and innovative legal solutions that help our clients succeed. We deliver consistent services across our platform of practices and sectors in all matters we undertake. Our clients range from multinational, Global 1000, and Fortune 500 enterprises to emerging companies developing industry-leading technologies. They include more than half of the Fortune 250 and nearly half of the FTSE 350 or their subsidiaries. We also advise governments and public sector bodies.

The Boston Consulting Group

Eric Gregoire

Global Media Relations Manager

Tel +1 617 850 3783

gregoire.eric@bcg.com

DLA Piper

Helen Scott

Press Relationship Manager

Tel + 44 207 796 6111

helen.scott@dlapiper.com
The Department of Buildings DOB) last month gave Slate Property Group the go-ahead to proceed with its luxury condo conversion at Rivington House. But local activists (Neighbors to Save Rivington House) have not given up their campaign to block the transformation of the former Lower East Side nursing home.

Earlier this week, they got a boost from Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Councilmember Margaret Chin. The elected officials Monday sent a letter to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, urging her to put a hold on any DOB permits at 45 Rivington St. Heres part of that letter:

As has been stated numerous times by our offices, the loss of a skilled nursing home facility at this site has been a devastating blow to our constituents, and we remain deeply concerned about a flawed City process that has paved the way for the closure, sale, and now potential conversion of this building into luxury condos. As the elected representatives of the community, we demand a clear and transparent process for the future of this site.

During a town hall meeting in June of last year, de Blasio reluctantly agreed to set up a meeting between the new owners and concerned members of the community about potentially creating a new community facility in the building. The mayor has repeatedly called his administrations decision to lift deed restrictions at Rivington House a mistake, but has contended theres no legal way to take the building back from private owners. Brewer and Chin wrote:

Eight months have passed since that promise (of a meeting), and the property owner has been granted the ability to conduct structural probes and tests, and has filed plans with the DOB to convert the building; however there has been no meeting with the public about the future of the site. This is especially disheartening since we have yet to see a replacement-in-kind of nursing beds or the full allocation of the proceeds from the sale price to the community. Our offices are moving forward to schedule this meeting, and urge you to join us.

The administration has claimed that a proposed senior housing project on Norfolk Street and a new nursing wing at Gouverneur Health help make up for the loss of Rivington Houses 219 nursing home beds. But as we have previously reported, those projects were in-the-works long before the Rivington House scandal broke. The city pocketed $16 million from the former property owner, the Allure Group, in exchange for dropping the deed restrictions.

The elected officials made the case to Glen that the historic former school building is ill-suited for a condominium conversion:

we remain convinced that the proposed use is inappropriate for the site. The existing building was built as a school at the turn of the twentieth century, and predates the existing zoning regulations. As such, the site was never contemplated for permanent residential use. Additionally, the Lower East Side rezoning (080397(A) ZMM) adopted in 2008 explicitly reinforces the built context. While the rezoning does allows for conversions, they cannot create new non-compliances. We lack confidence that the developer will comply with this rule; in general, we believe the conversion rules unreasonably burden local infrastructure and day-to-day services such as on-site garbage collection.

Slate filed DOB applications for the condo conversion on Feb. 9. A Buildings Department spokesperson told The Lo-Down last month that the applications will go through the agencys plan exam process, where they will be reviewed for compliance with the citys construction codes and zoning regulations. The work permit was rejected Feb. 15 because drawings were incomplete.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- International Cobalt Corp. (CSE:CO) (the Company or International Cobalt) is pleased to announce that it has received and compiled data from the Idaho Geological survey branch that had previously been confidential on the Companys Blackbird Creek Cobalt Project (Blackbird Creek or The Project).



The recently released data relates to historical exploration work completed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although some of this data was previously known to the company, the entirety of the reports have never been made public. The company has compiled the information along with soil sampling data from the USGS and has been able to relate it to airborne geophysics recently completed by the company. (see figure below)

The compilation work has greatly assisted the company in the design of a field program for spring and summer of 2018. The field program will consist of property wide soil program with a more concentrated focus on target areas that have been developed through our compilation work. Channel sampling will be completed on a number of tourmaline breccias identified in and around the Ludwig showing and other mineralized outcrop as they are encountered. The company will also complete geological mapping and sampling of targeted geophysical anomalies along the eastern portion of its claim group including newly acquired claims (see news release dated February 21). The area of these anomalies although well within the geological unit hosting most of the known showings and mines within the Idaho Cobalt Belt has had little or no known sampling or detailed geological mapping.

UPDATED WEBSITE

The company would also like to direct the reader to our website where an updated investor presentation with further information on our Idaho Cobalt Projects may be downloaded.

http://internationalcobalt.com

ABOUT THE BLACKBIRD CREEK COBALT PROJECT

The 4,235 Acre (1,714 ha) Blackbird Creek Cobalt Project is located adjacent to and along strike from eCobalt Solutions advanced stage Idaho Cobalt Project (ICP) as well as the former producing Blackbird Co-Cu-Ag Mine. Despite cobalt mineralization having been recognized at Blackbird Creek as early as the 1940s, the area only witnessed intermittent exploration in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Blackbird Creek Cobalt Project contains several historical cobalt showings including the Ludwig Main prospect, where surface sampling of an exploration adit returned 0.71% cobalt over 7.0 meters and a historic drill hole returned 0.4% cobalt over 7.9 meters. In addition to the historical showing several newly discovered geochemical anomalies require immediate follow-up.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3a87deaf-2d68-4de5-93e4-c86640544bc6

ABOUT THE COBALT MARKET

Cobalt prices recently reached a ten year high of over $80,000 US per tonne and have shown a steady increase since the mid point of 2015. Cobalt is an important component of many of the lithium-ion batteries used in a wide range of applications from cell phones to electric vehicles (EV) and the home energy storage market. Driven primarily by the EV market, demand for cobalt is expected to remain strong for the near future. Currently over 60% of the global supply of cobalt is sourced from mines operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Political instability in the DRC coupled with social-economic issues surrounding mining in the country including reports of child labour have led many tech companies to seek supplies of the metal from more stable jurisdictions.

ABOUT INTERNATIONAL COBALT CORP

International Cobalt Corp. (CSE:CO) is a Canadian based mineral exploration and development business focusing on the burgeoning cobalt sector. The rapidly growing large battery industry, a major consumer of cobalt, makes cobalt an appealing sector of focus. The Company seeks to add shareholder value by sourcing and developing projects in safe, progressive jurisdictions adhering to strict environmental and social standards. The Company is well financed to pursue their objectives with approximately $11 million in treasury as at March 2018.

The technical information in this news release has been reviewed by Neil McCallum, P.Geol., of Dahrouge Geological Consulting Ltd., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

On behalf of:

INTERNATIONAL COBALT CORP.

Timothy Johnson

Timothy Johnson, President

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address future production, reserve potential, exploration and development activities and events or developments that the Company expects, are forwardlooking statements. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see our public filings at www.sedar.com for further information.

Timothy Johnson

T: 604-687-2038

F: 604-687-3141
This one should come as no surprise considering that I just wrote an article on w hy you should all read A Darker Shade of Magic , one of her books. I only discovered Victoria two years ago, but since then she has become a massive inspiration in my writing, with her candid and truthful tweets about life as an author and her truly brilliant books. This woman is an NYT bestseller, a USA bestseller and an Indie bestseller and recently got a six figure book deal for four upcoming books. Her books are creative, complex and no two are ever the same and I can only dream that I could be that amazing one day. I've been lucky enough to meet her a couple of times now and am going to an event she is doing in London in a few weeks time!I've been reading Sarah's books since I was eighteen and eagerly await every new release. Sarah is an inspiration for me as a young writer, because she wrote what would become the Throne of Glass series when she was just 16, and now it's a NYT bestselling series and there's nothing better to see as a young writer than people who also started out young achieving their dreams. Sarah's books show many powerful women, including her lead character assassin Celaena Sardothien, who in no small part inspired the main character in my own novel. I can't wait to read the final instalment in the Throne of Glass series when it comes out this October! I met her at an event in 2016 with my friend (who is also a massive fan) and it was hard to tell who was more starstruck!Samantha Shannon is a newer discovery of mine, I only read her books last year, but I loved them so much that I read all three in the space of three months! My friend recommended her books to me and I'm so glad that she did, because The Bone Season is one of the most creative worlds and magic systems that I have ever read. I'm so excited for her epic fantasy Priory of The Orange Tree next year because I have been saying for years that I've wanted to read more dragons in fantasy and one of my favourite authors is giving me dragons! Samantha is an inspiration to me for much the same reasons that Sarah J Maas is, she got The Bone Season published whilst she was still in University and it's so great to see a writer relatively close in age to me (she's only five years older) doing so well! I met her at YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) last year and she was so lovely, which is always nice to find out!My friend and I met Alwyn Hamilton in 2015, before her debut novel, Rebel of The Sands came out, which is probably one of my favourite stories, it must be what people who knew actors and actresses before they were famous feel like when they star in major films! Alwyn's trilogy Rebel of The Sands is one of my favourites of recent years, the cross of Wild West and Arabian Nights feels so fresh and different and I can't wait to see how the trilogy wraps up when I read Hero At The Fall next month. Alwyn writes such strong and powerful female characters, who give me something to aspire to, and I hope that I can do the same thing, if I ever get published as an author.Malorie Blackman was one of the first YA authors I ever read and certainly the one who really got me into YA books, so I have her to thank for the fact that I am now a mostly YA book blogger. Blackman's Noughts and Crosses series was one of the first series I read that ever addressed racism in a serious way and is certainly one that has stuck with me through the years. I also have Malorie to thank for the fact that I now go to YALC every year as she was the one who created the event in 2014. I got to meet her at the event in 2016 and had a very embarrassing moment where I sent an incredibly fangirly text to my friend that I was sitting behind her in one of the panels!Jodi Picoult's books were my first foray into Adult fiction, back when I was thirteen, and My Sister's Keeper is still one of my favourite books that I've ever read. Jodi writes such thought provoking, amazing books and her book events are some of my favourites that I have ever been to, she's such an engaging speaker and an incredible writer, her last eight books have debuted at #1 on the NYT list, that's seriously amazing.I suspect I speak for many here when I say that Jacqueline Wilson was one of the authors of my childhood, she was one of the few authors of realistic fiction whose books I devoured when I was a kid, I used to borrow as many of them as I could from the library. I liked that her books didn't try to sugarcoat anything just because they were for kids, she showed the world as it was, with all the gritty details. I admire her so much because she has touched so many children's lives, including my own and I hope that I can do the same one day.Despite some of the recent controversies that have surrounded her, and my personal dislike of some of her recent decisions, I can't deny that the reason that I am a writer, the reason that I want to be a published author one day, is JK Rowling. She enchanted me with the Wizarding World when I was younger, opened up the magic of reading for me and I aim to one day inspire kids in the same way that JK Rowling inspired me when I was younger.I first read Maggie Steifvater's books when I was 16, and they were so wonderfully weird that I was immediately entranced. Maggie Stiefvater is an inspiration, yes because her books are brilliant but also because she's incredibly funny and reading her Twitter feed always lifts me up when I'm having a bad day. I waited for three hours in line to meet her for like two minutes at YALC in 2016. Totally worth it.I first read Leigh Bardugo's books last year and plan on devouring the rest of them this year. I admire Leigh Bardugo because her Six of Crows duology is so amazing and inclusive and her Grisha Trilogy has sold over a million copies-no mean feat for an author! As well as her writing being incredible, her sense of style is pretty awesome too (and totally matches the aesthetic of her books, which pleases me greatly). She also includes disabled characters in her books, which is wonderful considering the awful lack of representation of disability in YA fiction.
One fateful night in 2013, shortly before starting college, I sat down and had a talk with someone really important to me.

Throughout my childhood and young adult life I had conditioned myself to avoid, suppress and ignore even the mere concept of my sexuality - but that night I decided I had enough of my own anti-gay propaganda and that I had to at least make an attempt to be honest.

Once I came to terms with it and gave myself my own blessing, I was free to have this conversation with the people closest to me.

So, what was so special about that night? Did my brain just flip the gay switch or was coming out a long-term process, a culmination of experiences and ideas that got me to the point in my life where I could just look into my mirror and be happy with who I was?

Ive never thought of my coming out story as particularly brave or worthy of praise - but a coming out story should mean something regardless of how tough it is. Coming out stories collectively are greater than the sum of their parts because they mean something to all of us.

I could use any number of Disney songs to describe what this felt like, so perhaps the entire Disney corporation is to thank for my coming out, since all their songs are so gay: Part of Your World, Let it Go, I See the Light. Lets go with How Far I'll go: I am Moana, the sea is homosexuality and it was really only a matter of time before I took my raft and sailed amongst the gays to save my village, against my father's wishes (Love you Dad).

What shocked me is that all the giant gay flags were somehow lost on most of my friends. I watched Pretty Little Liars religiously. So when I messaged my then (and current) three best friends and told them I elicited sweet, thoughtful, and weird reactions. One was super happy about it, the other thought it was all part of a ploy to get with more girls by pretending I was gay and the third was like "oh... actually so am I, I think?" (And yes, shes totally queer.)

Coming out can be a means of emancipation, but being visible also makes you a target - it's opening a vulnerable part of you for the world to see and depending on your environment and the stage of your life this can have wildly different consequences.Theres never any reassurance it will turn out the way you want it to, which is why I avoided it. You think procrastinating a few hours to escape revision is bad, wait until you put off being gay for two and a half decades (which is not even that much, really).

The reality is that some kids weren't dealt the same hand I was, being a white and cis-gendered male with a family that loves and supports me. LGBT kids make up 24% of the homeless youth in the UK. Some are often abused, ostracised, or simply ignored and forced to stay invisible.

I never really experienced the whole coming out in high school cliche. I came back to school and nothing had really changed. Adolescence had been stressful enough, and I finally didnt have to worry about every little thing I said or did that could indicate I was gay. Instead, I just let my self be. I am a little annoyed I had more relationships as a straight-pretending teen than I have as an adult gay male - but you cant have it all, can you?

I am eternally grateful that I wasnt subjected to bullying in the form of slurs or physical violence, but I still could never quite get over the backhanded comments about how we should only tolerate gays and lesbians as long as they don't get in our way by showing public affection, appearing in the media, or pretty much existing.

Some completely miss the point and think coming out is "not even necessary anymore - but as long as there's a society that treats one sexuality as natural it will always drive you to step out of the shadows of gender stereotypes and heteronormative rules.

What does natural mean, anyway? To me natural means existing in the world and if I exist, I am as natural as any and I will continue to have to clear the error when someone assumes Im not based on my mannerisms or my outward appearance.

My coming out was a positive experience, and as I grew up and went to university, coming out to new people became an optimised and fully choreographed ritual I could do with my eyes shut. My most meaningful conversation was one I had with my two favourite girl cousins, with whom I grew up, went to school and spent all my holidays. It was a particularly impactful moment because I just didnt see it coming, and even after I said the words everything stayed exactly the same between us.

My third cousin (Im Greek, I have lots of them ok?) didnt get a proper coming out from me, despite us having been close like brothers - so Ill dedicate this essay to him: youre my favourite too, maybe even more so than all the others; dont be jealous and thank you for being the supportive, smart, and funny young man you are.

Ever since then Ive taken a specific approach when trying to tackle tasks that seem mountainous: I make my voice heard before fear can swallow it and I go from there, straight into the unknown ready for anything - even if it all falls apart.

If I could choose to change who I am would I rather live a simpler heterosexual life, or would I rather be faced with people who would rather see me dead than get married or adopt a child? The truth is I've spent so much time and energy on self improvement, on looking after my mental health and on working on my confidence in my own skin that I wouldn't ever want to throw all that away.

Even if you're not gay, I suggest you practice being more honest and learn how to appreciate your own company. Just as long as you don't have to ask why you dont get an annual straight Pride.

I couldnt possibly ever regret making this choice, and I can proudly say it was because of my own hard work and most importantly because of thousands of others who had the courage to do it even when they were being prosecuted. I came out to celebrate myself, but also all those other faces in the sea, those who came out before me, those who plan on doing it soon, those who felt estranged and lonely because they did, and all those who grew stronger in the face of adversity. They all deserve the same amount of love.

I implore people to listen more and spend less time doubting, belittling, or erasing such celebrations and that also applies to the LGBT community itself (and shout out to the bi community - you ain't gotta pick a side).

Shop Jack Wills online here. Students get 10% off with a Unidays code or an NUS extra card.
Bristol students have ended their three-day occupation of Vice Chancellor Hugh Bradys office after the University responded to their demands and agreed to write in support of its striking lecturers.

The students took over the fifth floor of Senate house - where Professor Bradys office is located - on Monday morning, in protest of the university's failure to support its lecturers in the ongoing pensions dispute.

Several meetings were held between the students, the Vice Chancellor and other senior staff across Tuesday and Wednesday.

During these meetings the students, who are part of the 'Student-Staff Solidarity' group, outlined their demands and concerns.

In the end they successfully negotiated and persuaded the VP to pledge to lobby the Government to address the situation.

Professor Brady also promised to write to UUK asking for an "independent, expert advisory board to bring fresh thinking to the issue.

Occupation of management floor at University of Bristol! #USSstrike #ucustrike pic.twitter.com/DyNx5ULDVT  Student Solidarity Action with UCU Strike (@occupation_hub) March 5, 2018

In a statement released last night, the students said:

After meetings yesterday and today, following discussions around the UCU pension dispute with UUK, we announce that we as a group will be ending the occupation of the fifth floor of Senate House, University of Bristol.

We are satisfied that our position and demands have been well represented to the Vice Chancellor and members of the Senior Management Team, who have made concessions on their position due to our actions and negotiations.

The jublient students left the building last night to cheers from staff and students who had gathered outside.

Earlier this week Professor Brady confirmed no students would face any disciplinary action, as long as the occupation was a peaceful one, and even welcomed the students sleeping in his office.

Speaking to the Bristol Post he said:

We have welcomed the students to stay in Senate House where they are safe and comfortable, with access to meeting rooms, kitchen and bathroom facilities and balcony."
yoo Im fuming, the way people in the same uni halls as me are chanting we hate the blacks outside my bedroom door. Words cannot describe how sad this makes me feel, in this 2018 people think this is still acceptable pic.twitter.com/XUiYqNIWQT  Ruu (@rufarochisango_) 7 March 2018

Please contact the Police and your Member of Parliament and cc me in. All my love and solidarity.  David Lammy (@DavidLammy) 7 March 2018

Good evening. If youve not already done so, please can you give us a call on 101 to report this.



Our team will be able to take the details of this incident and see what can be done.  Notts Police (@nottspolice) 7 March 2018

In the video, voices can be heard singing "fuck the blacks," "we hate the blacks" and "blacks and whites were never meant to be together" before going on to mock Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech. Chisango wrote that the video did not catch everything that was shouted, including a reference to slavery "blacks would go back to picking cotton." "Im the only black person on my floor," she wrote. "They were chanting this outside my door so dont be surprised to why I didnt leave my room."The incident was reported to reception on Tuesday but no contact was made by Trent until last night when the post went viral. Chisango has received support from David Lammy MP who urged her to contact her MP and include him in the email.NUS President Shakira Martin also reached out, telling Chisango that her team would investigate the incident.In a statement, Nottingham Trent University said the "suspected perpetrators" had been suspended pending further inquiries. The university is investigating the incident as a matter of urgency. Trent also confirmed that the police have now launched a criminal investigation into the matter, two arrests were made today. This morning, the students' union said they were "shocked and disturbed" by the racist incident. They also criticised the "behaviour and the response of the housing provider" as being "absolutely unacceptable."
Last year we suggested some documentaries

to see in order to celebrate International Women's Day by learning something new. This year we are bringing you an updated list with new titles to choose from!

Women's world is massively diverse and interesting and it has stayed in the background of history for far too long! Here are some of our stories:

1 The Hunting Ground

Suggested by Jo Bullen

The Hunting Ground is about the prevalence of sexual assault on US college campuses and 2 alumni of University of North Carolina who are helping others to bring legal cases against their universities for failing to look after women on campus. The exploration of how (in particular) sporting heroes are practically untouchable was eye-opening and makes us really root for the girls throughout it.

2. Advanced Style

A rather more light-hearted one, Advanced Style brings to light the seven women in their 60s to 90s, who have simply refused to adhere to social norms. The documentary was first a blog, started by Ari Seth Cohen, who found a distinct lack of older people in the fashion industry, and sought to remedy that by capturing the sartorial savvy of the senior set.

3 Growing up Coy

Suggested by Sneh Rupra

The transgender bathroom debate finds its home in a landmark 2013 case in Colorado. Coy Mathis, a six-year-old transgender girl was banned from using the girls bathroom when she entered first grade. The principal warned her parents that from now she can only use the boys or the nurses toilet, but rather than listen, her parents worked to fight that decision.

Growing up Coy tells the story of Coys upbringing and how her family worked towards challenging the schools unconstitutional decision.

4. Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

Suggested by Sneh Rupra

Gracing us a couple of weeks after the tragic demise of both icons, Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds explores the relationship between the mother and daughter. Even now, Rotten Tomatoes keeps a rare 100% score for the film. It promises to be a bittersweet watch for any fan of either one of the two women.

5. 13th

Suggested by Sneh Rupra

Written and directed by Ava Duvernay, 13th isnt necessarily feminist, as we would immediately think of, but rather sits at various intersections.

The brilliant exploration of the 13th amendment, and the argument being made that the prison industrial complex stems directly from it is a must-see for any American feminist, as its vitally important to understand the various historical oppressions in that country.

6. Indias daughter

Brutal and sparing no detail, Indias daughter tells the story of the gang rape and murder of 23-year-old physiotherapy student Jyoti Singh in Delhi in 2012.

The documentary is part of the BBCs Storyville series and proved very controversial to the point it got banned in India.

7. Very Young Girls

Very Young Girls documents and exposes human trafficking in New York, where 13- and 14-year-old African-American girls are seduced, abused, and sold on the streets by pimps, while being treated as adult criminals by police.

It follows the work of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS), a recovery centre founded and run by Rachel Lloyd, who is herself a survivor of sexual exploitation. Directed by David Schisgall and Nina Alvarez, the documentary hopes to challenge the way society views street prostitution and human trafficking that is happening even in one of the most developed countries.

8. Dark Girls

Dark Girls is a documentary that explores colorism based on skin tone among African Americans, which is a subject still considered taboo by many black Americans. The film touches on many overlooked topics and features interviews with notable African Americans including Viola Davis.

More importantly, it raises awareness of the growing trend of skin bleaching creams, which is now a multibillion pound business industry. Filmmakers Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry explore how black women try to look more Caucasian, and risk their health doing so.

9. Girl Rising

Produced by Kayce Freed, Tom Yellin and Holly Gordon, Girl Rising tells the story of nine girls from nine countries: Sierra Leone, Haiti, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Peru, Egypt, Nepal, India and Cambodia.

Each of these stories reflect the societal and cultural difficulties they have to work against. The film has kickstarted a movement and it also features narration from Anne Hathaway, Cate Blanchett, Selena Gomez, Liam Neeson, Priyanka Chopra, Chloe Grace Moretz, Freida Pinto, Salma Hayek, Meryl Streep, Alicia Keys and Kerry Washington.

10 !Women Art Revolution

!Women Art Revolution explores the "secret history" of feminist art, building an impressive collection of conversations, observations, archival footage, and works of visionary artists, historians, curators and critics.

First, the film focuses on 1960s anti-war and civil rights protests before moving onto major developments in feminist art in the 70s in a lovely, colourful and meaningful watch.
. The Autofac is a fully automated and self-sufficient factory that was set in motion before the war broke out and has since continued unstopped, expanding, and stripping the land, producing unwanted and unnecessary goods ever since.The settlement needs to shut the Autofac down in order to stop it polluting the water, the land, and encroaching on their small pocket of the earth. This episode of Electric Dreams is stylistically beautiful, drawing upon old-school science fiction images such as a beautiful female android, 90s styling of the survivors, the unknown alien backlit as she steps off a flying ship, towering monolithic architecture, and technological wastelands. The score marries magnificently with the cinematography, but thats not in the least to say that this episode was another style-over-substance instalment (looking at you, The Father Thing). Its science fiction cinema pastiche, hailing back to the genres golden age; what it is not, is a cliche. Its a dynamic tale that pivots upon good plot twists, and Travis Beachams interpretation of the PKD story brings new layers to the original short, whilst keeping the same themes. One of the best ways in which the episode has been updated is a lovely bit of gender bending. The entire story relies on the protagonist Emilys skills with engineering and coding, or as she describes it, tinkering. PKDs stories might have been ahead of their time in many ways, but when it comes to gender they are very much of-their-time; in the original short story, the only woman is the wife of the main character, and she is kept out mostly out of the primary narrative.Electric Dreams corrects this, even giving the traditional role of wives and female love interests being left behind by their male counterparts to Emilys boyfriend, Avishai. It might still be gender stereotyped, but at least its gender-flipped. The casting is truly one of the episodes strongest assets, with Juno Temple as Emily and Janelle Monae as Alice, the PR android sent from the Autofac to speak to the men and women fighting for their survival. Casting Monae was a tour-de-force; her Afrofuturist concept albums already pay tribute to the science fiction genre, and android portrayals were already something she had experience with in her music, drawing upon their symbolism to explore otherness and alienation. She was simply magnificent in the role. Where Autofac falters is in its approach to reveal-based storytelling. It puts off addressing strange moments until the big twist reveal at the end, rather than constructing an initial story that by itself makes total sense, only until the twist reveals the truth: humans died out during the war, and those pockets of civilisation are just the last components of the assembly line, consumers created by the Autofac itself, droids themselves but unaware of it (double twist, Emily did know and was waiting for her moment to download a virus into the Autofacs code).Its an effective and impactful commentary on the dangers of a consumerist society, which values convenience over anything, and which innovates for the sake of innovation. Of course, like most of PKDs work, its also about what defines humanity and self-consciousness, but its also about what society values in an age of mass consumerism, and its a commentary that still resonates in our time of climate change. The greatest thing about Autofac is that it avoids being another take on apocalypse porn. The fantasy of the apocalypse isnt that humanity is doomed, its the idea that even then, humanity would survive being taken to the brink. Autofac has the courage not only to accept complicity in the end of civilisation, it also turns around and announces that humans as a species have indeed, become extinct at their own hands. Electric Dreams latest episode is a great exploration of the dangers of convenience automation and blind consumerism, an hour that is beautifully stylistic, that is both an homage to classic science fiction and its own story. Its full of thoughtful writing and effectively subverts expectations, successfully forcing audiences to re-evaluate what they thought to be fact.
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FORM 8.3

PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY

A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE

Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code")

1. KEY INFORMATION

(a) Full name of discloser: OZ Management LP and

Och-Ziff Management Europe Ltd (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a):

The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates:

Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Melrose Industries plc (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken:

For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 07 March 2018 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer?

If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" NO

If YES, specify which:





2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security.

(a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any)

Class of relevant security:



48/7p ordinary (GB00BZ1G4322)



Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives:



47,916,725 2.468 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell:



TOTAL: 47,916,725 2.468

All interests and all short positions should be disclosed.

Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions).

(b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options)

Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages:

3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE

Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in.

The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated.

(a) Purchases and sales

Class of relevant security Purchase/sale



Number of securities Price per unit





(b) Cash-settled derivative transactions

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. CFD Nature of dealing

e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit 48/7p ordinary CFD increasing a long position 300,000 GBP 2.13 48/7p ordinary CFD increasing a long position 432,399 GBP 2.12

(c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options)

(i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying

Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type

e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit

(ii) Exercise

Class of relevant security Product description

e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit





(d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities)

Class of relevant security Nature of dealing

e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable)





4. OTHER INFORMATION

(a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements

Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer:

Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"









(b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives

Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to:

(i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or

(ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced:

If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none"









(c) Attachments

Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? NO





Date of disclosure: 08 March 2018



Contact name: Janine Frederick Telephone number: 02077584420

Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service.

The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129.

The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk.
PALO ALTO, Calif., March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Announced today, leading connected car cloud platform company, Mojio, has secured new investment from strategic partners to accelerate the global adoption of its connected car solutions for mobile network operators and automotive manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic. Adding to the companys $30M CAD Series B raise in late 2017, Mojio welcomes Iris Capital and TELUS Ventures to its growing roster of strategic backers.



We are thrilled Iris Capital and TELUS Ventures are fueling this stage in our growth, stated Mojio CEO, Kenny Hawk. After a breakthrough year connecting more than half a million cars to our platform, this strategic funding adds fuel to our tank as we drive toward additional launches with major mobile network operators globally.

On a mission to give every vehicle a voice, Mojio has rapidly connected over 500,000 vehicles via its growing portfolio of mobile network operator customers, including Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US Inc., and TELUS. After partnering with a mobile network operator, Mojio delivers immediate and affordable connected car features to subscribers through the combination of a plug and play device and a handy mobile app and built-in services.

Mojio is the first international investment outside of Europe for IrisNext, Iris Capitals latest $280M USD fund. As an independent multi corporate fund supported by Orange, Publicis Groupe, Valeo, BRED and Bpifrance, IrisNext will fuel Mojios growth in Europe by leveraging their strong network.

Iris Capital is one of the leading European venture firms, supporting high tech companies across the world. We are proud to join Mojios funding round and support their business acceleration in Europe. Mojios technology has great potential and Im very happy to hop on the adventure to work with them and join the board as an observer, adds Bernhard Gold, Partner at Iris Capital.

TELUS Ventures, the strategic venture investment arm of TELUS, is reinforcing the Canadian telecommunications brands commitment to Mojio following the successful roll-out of TELUS Drive+, the operators connected car service, powered by Mojio.

TELUS connected car strategy builds upon our successful Internet of Things (IoT) business which includes developing innovative solutions for both the business and consumer markets across Canada, said Rich Osborn, Managing Partner, TELUS Ventures. Through venture investments in emerging technology leaders like Mojio, we not only bring better solutions to market more quickly for our customers and drive better connections, but also help propel the Connected Car market in Canada and internationally with complementary telecom carriers around the world.

Mojio is connecting cars all over the world, from a 1996 Audi A4 to a brand new 2018 Volvo V60, helping drivers and their families stay coordinated, while keeping their vehicles safe, and cutting down on costly, time-consuming issues associated with car ownership. Common use cases include:

Getting notified about engine issues to make informed decisions on service and repairs

Monitoring vehicle location and status to help with ride coordination and family safety

Locating a stolen vehicle to inform the authorities and have it recovered

Receiving critical recall notices to ensure remedial action is taken to ensure safety

Logging business trips to maximize mileage expensing and tax returns

Using on-demand roadside assistance to get help fast

In addition to delivering frontline services for consumers through their mobile networks, Mojio has already collected over 6 billion miles of driving data. Mojio uses machine learning to generate insights that will shape the future of mobility, making the driving experience smarter, safer and less expensive.

About Mojio

Open, scalable and hardware agnostic, Mojio is the cloud platform of choice for the deployment of secure connected car apps and services. Mojios platform delivers a smarter, safer and more convenient driving and vehicle ownership experience to subscribers of major network operators, including Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom, Rogers Communications, T-Mobile and TELUS. With real-world data gathered from more than 6 billion miles of driving, Mojio provides a big data analytics framework that uses machine learning to generate actionable insights and unlock new revenue streams for companies throughout the automotive value chain.

Founded in 2012, Mojio has growing teams in Vancouver, Palo Alto and Sofia, and some of the worlds biggest brands as customers, partners and investors, Mojio is a career-accelerator for driven tech professionals looking to shape the future of mobility. To learn more about joining our team please visit Mojios careers page.

About Iris Capital

Iris Capital is a European venture capital funds manager specialized in the digital economy. It fuels entrepreneurs at various stages of maturity, from early-stage to growth equity. With its deep sector specialization and extensive experience acquired over 30+ years, as well as the backing of its corporate sponsors, Iris Capital provides active support to its portfolio companies, through its presence in Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Dubai.

IrisNext, Iris Capitals new fund, includes for its first closing industry leaders such as Orange, Publicis and Valeo, joined by financial investors and institutions such as Bpifrance and BRED Banque Populaire. Iris Capital investments include, among others, companies such as Adjust, Careem, Kyriba, Marco Vasco, Mister Auto, Mojio, Mopub, Netatmo, ReBuy, Shift Technology, and Talend.

For more information, visit www.iriscapital.com.

About TELUS Ventures

TELUS Ventures is the strategic venture investment arm of TELUS. TELUS Ventures looks to support management teams developing leading technologies in the areas of AI, IOT, 5G Networks and HealthIT. The team is based in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver but invests globally and was named one of the Top 100 Corporate Venture Funds in the world in 2017 by Global Corporate Venture Magazine. For more information, please visit: http://ventures.telus.com.
Palo Alto, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Announced today, leading connected car cloud platform company, Mojio, has secured new investment from strategic partners to accelerate the global adoption of its connected car solutions for mobile network operators and automotive manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic. Adding to the companys $30M CAD Series B raise in late 2017, Mojio welcomes Iris Capital and TELUS Ventures to its growing roster of strategic backers.



We are thrilled Iris Capital and TELUS Ventures are fueling this stage in our growth, stated Mojio CEO, Kenny Hawk. After a breakthrough year connecting more than half a million cars to our platform, this strategic funding adds fuel to our tank as we drive toward additional launches with major mobile network operators globally.



On a mission to give every vehicle a voice, Mojio has rapidly connected over 500,000 vehicles via its growing portfolio of mobile network operator customers, including Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US Inc., and TELUS. After partnering with a mobile network operator, Mojio delivers immediate and affordable connected car features to subscribers through the combination of a plug and play device and a handy mobile app and built-in services.



Mojio is the first international investment outside of Europe for IrisNext, Iris Capitals latest $280M USD fund. As an independent multi corporate fund supported by Orange, Publicis Groupe, Valeo, BRED and Bpifrance, IrisNext will fuel Mojios growth in Europe by leveraging their strong network.



Iris Capital is one of the leading European venture firms, supporting high tech companies across the world. We are proud to join Mojios funding round and support their business acceleration in Europe. Mojios technology has great potential and Im very happy to hop on the adventure to work with them and join the board as an observer, adds Bernhard Gold, Partner at Iris Capital.



TELUS Ventures, the strategic venture investment arm of TELUS, is reinforcing the Canadian telecommunications brands commitment to Mojio following the successful roll-out of TELUS Drive+, the operators connected car service, powered by Mojio.

TELUS connected car strategy builds upon our successful Internet of Things (IoT) business which includes developing innovative solutions for both the business and consumer markets across Canada, said Rich Osborn, Managing Partner, TELUS Ventures. Through venture investments in emerging technology leaders like Mojio, we not only bring better solutions to market more quickly for our customers and drive better connections, but also help propel the Connected Car market in Canada and internationally with complementary telecom carriers around the world.



Mojio is connecting cars all over the world, from a 1996 Audi A4 to a brand new 2018 Volvo V60, helping drivers and their families stay coordinated, while keeping their vehicles safe, and cutting down on costly, time-consuming issues associated with car ownership. Common use cases include:

Getting notified about engine issues to make informed decisions on service and repairs

Monitoring vehicle location and status to help with ride coordination and family safety

Locating a stolen vehicle to inform the authorities and have it recovered

Receiving critical recall notices to ensure remedial action is taken to ensure safety

Logging business trips to maximize mileage expensing and tax returns

Using on-demand roadside assistance to get help fast

In addition to delivering frontline services for consumers through their mobile networks, Mojio has already collected over 6 billion miles of driving data. Mojio uses machine learning to generate insights that will shape the future of mobility, making the driving experience smarter, safer and less expensive.



-30-

About Mojio Open, scalable and hardware agnostic, Mojio is the cloud platform of choice for the deployment of secure connected car apps and services. Mojios platform delivers a smarter, safer and more convenient driving and vehicle ownership experience to subscribers of major network operators, including Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom, Rogers Communications, T-Mobile and TELUS. With real-world data gathered from more than 6 billion miles of driving, Mojio provides a big data analytics framework that uses machine learning to generate actionable insights and unlock new revenue streams for companies throughout the automotive value chain.

Founded in 2012, Mojio has growing teams in Vancouver, Palo Alto and Sofia, and some of the worlds biggest brands as customers, partners and investors, Mojio is a career-accelerator for driven tech professionals looking to shape the future of mobility. To learn more about joining our team, please visit Mojios careers page.



About Iris Capital

Iris Capital is a European venture capital funds manager specialized in the digital economy. It fuels entrepreneurs at various stages of maturity, from early-stage to growth equity. With its deep sector specialization and extensive experience acquired over 30+ years, as well as the backing of its corporate sponsors, Iris Capital provides active support to its portfolio companies, through its presence in Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and Dubai.

IrisNext, Iris Capitals new fund, includes for its first closing industry leaders such as Orange, Publicis and Valeo, joined by financial investors and institutions such as Bpifrance and BRED Banque Populaire. Iris Capital investments include, among others, companies such as Adjust, Careem, Kyriba, Marco Vasco, Mister Auto, Mojio, Mopub, Netatmo, ReBuy, Shift Technology, and Talend.

For more information, please visit www.iriscapital.com.



About TELUS Ventures

TELUS Ventures is the strategic venture investment arm of TELUS. TELUS Ventures looks to support management teams developing leading technologies in the areas of AI, IOT, 5G Networks and HealthIT. The team is based in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver but invests globally and was named one of the Top 100 Corporate Venture Funds in the world in 2017 by Global Corporate Venture Magazine. For more information, please visit: http://ventures.telus.com.
NAPANEE, Ontario, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ABcann Global Corporation (TSXV:ABCN) (ABcann or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has retained VIRTUE, the creative agency powered by VICE Media, as its agency-of-record. VIRTUE, on a category-exclusive basis, will coordinate a full rebrand, and create consumer facing sub-brands for both the medical and adult-use cannabis markets. VIRTUE will also assist ABcann with creative and production services spanning across all major consumer touch points as well as an integrated launch strategy for its new brands. The account will be serviced out of VIRTUEs Canadian headquarters in Toronto.



VIRTUE is an award-winning marketing agency with an unwavering commitment to bold ideas. They are the ideal partners to help us to transform the Companys brand and convey the purpose behind our current medical and upcoming adult-use cannabis businesses, stated Sung Kang, Chief Marketing Officer of ABcann. In addition to having first-class veterans from some of the top traditional agencies in the business, VIRTUE, the agency powered by VICE, is uniquely qualified to help by leveraging their years of insight related to cannabis. In our collaboration with VIRTUE, I look forward to building one of the most powerful brand portfolios in the industry.

Were thrilled to be working with ABcann. Its a huge opportunity for VIRTUE to leverage our years of experience connecting with Canadas emerging legal cannabis market. Our unique insights and experiences  knowing the end users as well as the key players  positions us to help ABcanns brand breakthrough in this uncharted and rapidly-growing marketplace, stated Badr El-Fekkak, Vice-President of VIRTUE Canada.

About ABcann

ABcann holds production and sales licenses from Health Canada. Its flagship facility in Napanee, Ontario contains proprietary plant-growing technology, centred on its specially designed, environmentally-controlled growing chambers. This approach results in the production of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products. ABcann is expanding its production capacity and pursuing partnerships and product development opportunities domestically, as well as in select international markets, including Germany, Australia and Israel.

About VIRTUE

VIRTUE is the global creative agency, born inside of VICE Media developing content programs and platforms for the worlds largest brands. VIRTUE develops programs and campaigns that are culturally rooted and millennial-audience focused. VIRTUE acts as lead creative, content, and cultural agency and engages on project-based assignments for our clients. VIRTUE has worked with clients such as AB-InBev, Coca-Cola, Google, Bacardi and Lululemon.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider has reviewed or approved this news release.
Ryall joined IDW in 2004.

IDW Publishing Editor-in-Chief and former Chief Creative Officer Chris Ryall has stepped down from the publisher today. He joined the company in 2004 and lead the company's steady growth, in addition to writing various titles for the publisher including Zombies vs Robots, Groom Lake, The Hollows, The Colonized, Onyx, and Transformers.

Ryall's departure is only the latest in a season of high turnover for the company. In the last few months, the publisher has seen staff leaving positions such as graphic design, accounting, editing, and public relations. IDW has also seen some involuntary departures in positions including graphic design and gallery managing in the same period of time.

Meanwhile, IDW's remaining executive team includes Associate Publisher David Hedgecock, CEO Ted Adams, and President Greg Goldstein who promoted himself to Publisher last November.

As of now, it's unclear where Ryall will end up, but it's likely that he'll stay in comics. IDW had multiple entries in Bleeding Cool's Top 100 Power List of 2017, with Ryall ranking #27, ahead of Goldstein at #48 and Scott Dunbier at #51.

Ryall's entire company-wide email regarding his departure and his thoughts on Vero is below.

Hey, everyone

Today's my last day with IDW so wanted to send a final note of love, appreciation and goodbye to all of you.

I started here just about 14 years ago, back when David Mariotte's dad was the editor-in-chief and his son David was just learning to say his first word (it was "Big the Cat!"). There was maybe 6 or 7 of us in an office space roughly the size of the gallery. Including the warehouse space. The entire office complex shared a single bathroom that was a little less clean than your average gas station.

So to see us grow from that to where we are now, a company situated in this beautiful space and 70+ people strong, with multiple divisions all doing interesting and exciting projects is a thrill to see. It's weirdit feels like a long time ago but that time also feels like it's passed quickly. Either way, it's been time well spent thanks to all of you.

Through it allthrough the deadline craziness, market fluctuations, assorted business challenges, social-media storms, new faces, new projects, and new challengesit's all served as a constant reminder how lucky I've been to contribute to this industry that I love so much. And I plan to keep making contributions outside these walls. But for now, I'm stepping aside to take a break, get off the never-ending-deadline train and see what new challenge makes the most sense as my next move. It might seem short at times, but 14 years is a long time to do anything  I've certainly never done anything else in my life for this amount of time.

There's not enough time or space to catalog the various successes that have happened here in that time and really, there's no need  they've all been parts of a whole that has made this place such a thrill to work at for as long as I have. The successes and fun vastly outweighed the stresses, which is really a testament to the place that Ted and Robbie and company built in the first place. I'm appreciative as can be for all the opportunities IDW has afforded me. It's just time to figure out my next move, that's all.

I remain excited about comics, about creating, and about giving people good reasons to keep reading and, separately, about seeing everything IDW is going to do next. I first noticed IDW's books in its earliest days, impressed by the care and uniqueness that those early titles offered, so it's been a thrill to join all of you to build things out in an even bigger way. And I look forward to once again being able to experience IDW's output with a fresh eye.

I'm not leaving SD and will no doubt see all of you at gallery events, conventions and assorted drinking holes around town. In the meantime, if you need to get ahold of me, best to reach me at **********. Or the myriad of social-media platforms other than Vero, which sucks.

No final parting GIF here since there's not really one that sums up how much I love working with all of you and how much I'll miss you. Instead, I'll leave you with this picture from my first year on the job2004, back when I thought it was still cool to walk around with a goatee... and don't even ask about the company tiki shirts...

Best to all'a you!
Watertown's game-winning kicker leads the Week 5 list of top area football performers

Kickers need love too. Dont be shocked that the player leading the Public Opinions Week 5 list of top area high school football performers is kicker Andrew Czech.
BOSTON, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Battery Ventures, a global technology investment firm, announced it has acquired Plixer, a 19-year old company based in Kennebunk, ME that makes mission-critical technology to help companies better analyze their computer network traffic in todays cloud and hybrid-cloud environments, including information flows related to security breaches. As part of the transaction, Battery General Partner Russell Fleischer; Battery Principal Jordan Welu; and Battery Vice President Sabrina Chiasson are joining Plixers board. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.



Battery also announced that longtime networking-industry executive Jeff Lindholm will join Plixer as CEO. Lindholm was most recently the senior vice-president of worldwide sales at Brocade Communications, and previously held senior sales and marketing roles at Arbor Networks and Juniper Networks.

Plixers two founders, Michael Patterson and Marc Bilodeau, will remain active with the business. The companys employeesalmost all of whom work out of an office on Main Street in Kennebunkwill remain in their current locations.

We are thrilled to partner with Plixer, a bootstrapped company that Michael and Marc have built into a robust business attuned to solving the complex networking and security challenges modern companies face, said Batterys Fleischer. We look forward to working with them, and Jeff, to augment the companys growth organically and through potential acquisitions. Were also excited to back a growing technology firm based nearby in New England.

Lindholm said: Im also excited to partner again with Battery, which was an investor in Arbor Networks. Specifically, I look forward to tapping the firms networking and enterprise-IT expertise to further innovate and expand Plixers product line, align with new technology partners, aggressively attract new clients and further enhance the value we are delivering to existing customers.

Plixerknown for easy-to-deploy, highly intuitive and effective networking software--helps companies identify reasons for slowness in their networks, as well as potential security breaches and hacks. The company has over 3,000 customers in industries including finance, government, technology, retail, healthcare and education. Through its flagship Scrutinizer product and others, the company helps organizations reduce risk, improve operations and lower cost while improving application performance.

About Plixer

Plixer provides a network traffic analytics system that supports fast and efficient incident response. The solution allows you to gain visibility into cloud applications, security events, and network traffic. It delivers actionable data to guide you from the detection of network and security events all the way to root-cause analysis and mitigation. Network and security incidents are inevitable. When they occur, Plixer is there to help you quickly return to normal and minimize business disruption. Thousands of organizations rely on Plixer solutions to keep their IT infrastructure running efficiently. Learn more at Plixer.com, stay connected with the Plixer blog, and follow us @Plixer.

About Battery Ventures

Battery strives to invest in cutting-edge, category-defining businesses in markets including software and services, Web infrastructure, consumer Internet, mobile and industrial technologies. Founded in 1983, the firm backs companies at stages ranging from seed to private equity and invests globally from offices in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Tel Aviv and London. Follow the firm on Twitter @BatteryVentures, visit our website at www.battery.com and find a full list of Battery's portfolio companies here.

CONTACT:

Rebecca Buckman

Battery Ventures

becky@battery.com

650-292-2077

650-703-0364

Jan Wiedrick-Kozlowski

Eskenzi PR for Plixer

585-392-7878

Jan@eskenzipr.com
GME reports that crop to be harvested in 6 weeks has projected revenue of 160,000 ($198,585)

LAS VEGAS, NV, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Freedom Leaf, Inc. (OTCQB: FRLF), a group of diversified, international, vertically-integrated cannabis/hemp businesses and media companies, today announced that its Co-Founders, CEO Clifford J. Perry and Richard Cowan, are currently in Spain to visit newly acquired Green Market Europe S.L. hemp cultivation operations and explore new business opportunities at the Spannabis Expo.

On March 6, Cowan visited two of the flowering greenhouses operated by Green Market Europe S.L. in Spain. (See photos and videos from the trip.) Green Market Europe is a b2b cultivator and has an indoor greenhouse grow area of 43,000 sq. ft. (4000 m2), plus a light deprivation greenhouse with an area of 21,000 sq. ft. (2000 m2), and outdoor cultivation and production capabilities of 240 acres (over 100 hectares).

Luis Miguel Santos, managing director of Green Market Europe S.L., reported, The greenhouse HEMP crop to be harvested in 3 weeks has a projected revenue of approximately 160,000 ($198,585). There is an ever-growing demand for our high-quality hemp products.

As in their United States operations, Freedom Leaf Europe will seek to vertically integrate its production with the quality CBD Freedom Leaf branded products, especially targeting the Latin American markets and Cannabis Light (CBD Hemp Flower) boom in Europe. FRLFs branded CBD and industrial hemp products sold directly to consumers can be considerably more profitable than wholesaling to distributors.

Freedom Leaf Executives will also be attending the Spannabis Expo (March 9 - 11) has grown to over 18,000 square meters (193,750 square ft.) and expects more than 30,000 visitors at the fairgrounds of Cornella de Llobregat. http://spannabis.com/barcelona/en/



Clifford Perry explained, Spannabis is a great place to network and find new opportunities and meet the leaders of the cannabis industry from around the world alongside all of our new Spanish business partners.

Federico Pando, Freedom Leaf Licensee in Spain and Portugal, states, We are confident with the current and upcoming acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships, Freedom Leaf will be a major international company leading the medical cannabis industry, industrial hemp research, and CBD production, with lifestyle brands catering to sophisticated and mainstream consumers.

Last year, Freedom Leaf also acquired LaMarihuana.com, the worlds leading Spanish language cannabis portal with an average 1.7 million hits a month and 1.2 million likes on Facebook. As part of the acquisition, Freedom Leaf additionally acquired www.Marihuana-Medicinal.com, which is one of the largest medical cannabis information website in Spanish with over 122,000 page visits a month.

La Marihuana was founded in 2001 and currently has more than 12,000 articles published and over 1 million visitors per month, making it the most visited online portal by the Spanish-speaking community with 73% of its traffic coming from Latin America, and the rest of the world.

Perry explained, This year we are focusing on upgrading our online technology to increase traffic, monetizing our current traffic, and build our e-commerce sites to maximize our profit margins and revenue generation.

In January, Freedom Leaf completed its acquisition of Green Market Europe S.L. and intends to become a global leader in mass production of highest quality EU certified industrial hemp and related research.

Just this week, FRLF signed an Asset Purchase Agreement to acquire Irie CBD, a California-based product line that has been operating since 2015. Irie CBD formulates, manufactures and distributes CBD tinctures, CBD edibles, CBD topicals and CBD concentrates to retail markets across the country. Irie boasts a large inventory of more than 25 different products and recorded approximately $1.5 million of revenue in 2017. Irie also leases a full manufacturing and processing facility in Oakland, California that is included in the acquisition.

About Freedom Leaf

Freedom Leaf, Inc., The Marijuana Legalization Company, is a fully-reporting and audited, publicly-traded company trading under the symbol (OTCQB: FRLF), a group of diversified, international, vertically-integrated Cannabis/Hemp/CBD businesses and media companies

Freedom Leaf, Inc. is a leading, go-to resource in the cannabis, medical and recreational marijuana, CBD and industrial hemp industries. It is involved in mergers and acquisitions in these industries, including acceleration and spin offs of new companies involved in those industries.

Freedom Leaf Inc.'s flagship publication is Freedom Leaf Magazine, The Good News in Marijuana Reform. The company produces a portfolio of news, print and digital multi-media verticals, websites, and web advertising, for the ever-changing emerging cannabis, medical marijuana and industrial hemp industry. The Company also controls LaMarihuana.com, the worlds leading Spanish publication focused on these industries.

Freedom Leaf, Inc. does not handle, grow, sell, or dispense marijuana or related products.

All of our European activities are in full compliance with relevant EU laws.

Investor relations information can be found on the FreedomLeafInc.com company website.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this press release that are not strictly historical are "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements generally can be identified by phrases such as Freedom Leaf, Inc. or its management "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "foresees," "forecasts," "estimates" or other words or phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements herein that describe the Company's business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions or goals also are forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to differences include the uncertainty regarding viability and market acceptance of the Company's products and services, changes in relationships with third parties, and other factors described in the Company's most recent periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K dated June 30, 2016 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
LAWRENCE, Mass., March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Boston Therapeutics, Inc announces their new participation in MassBIO, an unparalleled network of innovative companies and industry thought leaders dedicated to advancing cutting-edge research and development for patients lives improvements. Expanding operations in the US, the company is participating locally in MassBIO where the vibrant Massachusetts biotechnology industry can help build company value with networking and events, visibility, information resources and access to capital.



Through the recent acquisition of CureDM, the company also enjoys membership in New Mexico BIO. With BIO participation in two states, Boston Therapeutics will be able to identify and network with the best local partners in the strategic planning of the upcoming clinical trials for both BTI-320 and BTI-420 in 2018. CEO Carl Rausch explains, Building operations in the US is part of our strategy to leverage our strong relationship with our partners throughout Asia, including China, and we believe MassBIO is a great place to start. As a small yet global presence, it is our intention to provide unique solutions to the worldwide epidemic of diabetes and its complications.

The company intends to participate in upcoming BIO events and form new partnerships as they continue to develop treatments, technology and innovative approaches to diabetes and related pathologies.

About Boston Therapeutics, Inc. www.bostonti.com

Boston Therapeutics, headquartered in Lawrence, MA (OTCQB:BTHE) and with an office in Albuquerque, NM is an innovator in design, development and commercialization of compounds to treat diabetes and diabetes related complications.

Forward Looking Statement

This press release includes forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by words such as "feel," "believes," expects," "estimates," "projects," "intends," "should," "is to be," or the negative of such terms, or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to: our limited operations and need to expand in the near future; risks associated with obtaining regulatory approval of our products; the ability to protect our intellectual property; the potential lack of market acceptance of our products; potential competition; our inability to retain key members of our management team; our inability to raise additional capital to fund our operations and business plan; our ability to continue as a going concern; our liquidity and other risks and uncertainties and other factors discussed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. Boston Therapeutics expressly disclaims any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
Heavy snow piles up in Morristown, New Jersey Wednesday night. The second storm in less than a week, dumped over 60cm (2 feet) of heavy wet snow on the region. The system has largely avoided southwestern Quebec so far, with only a few centimetres falling.


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Job Title: Construction Engineer

Organisation: Nsamizi Training Institute of Social

Development

Funding Source: United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR)

Duty Station: Uganda

About UNHCR Project:

Nsamizi Training Institute of Social Development is an Implementing

Partner for UNHCR that positively contributes toward improving sustainable

living standards of refugees and other Persons of Concern in Nakivale, Isingiro

District. This is being achieved by implementing livelihood support with

skills development, environment conservation, Safe Access to Fuel and Energy

(SAFE), and WASH so that people live in satisfactory conditions of sanitation

and hygiene, amongst other disciplines. Self-reliance by all the people is one

of the key targets during planning and implementation of the activities.

Job Summary: The

Construction Engineer will: produce drawings and BoQs, supervise and monitor

foe technical aspects of all construction works ensuring quality implementation

of all civil engineering construction as guided by the standards. The position

holder is responsible for providing technical supervision to ensure quality

construction and value for money.









Qualifications, Skills and Experience:



The applicant for the UNHCR Project job

placement should hold a Bachelors

Degree in Civil Engineering or any other related;



At least three years of relevant work experience



Background

in humanitarian work is an added advantage;



Knowledge

of either ARCHICAD or AutoCAD is a MUST.



Possession

of a valid riding permit.





applicant must be fluent in written and spoken English Theapplicant must be fluent in written and spoken English

How to Apply:

All qualified candidates should send an application letter, curriculum

vitae and other supporting documents to:

The Principal, Nsamizi Training Institute of Social Development,

P. O. Box 149, Mpigi. Uganda

Deadline: 16th March 2018 by 3:00PM








Job Title: Driver

Organisation: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR)

Position No.: 10028933

Vacancy Notice: 010/2018

Reports to: Administrative Assistant

Duty Station: Uganda

Post Grade: GL2

About UNHCR:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was

established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly.

UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High

Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for international

protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems of refugees

and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate

concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a designated role under

Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Job Summary: The Driver is mainly responsible for up keep

and maintenance of the assigned UNHCR vehicle(s) as per technical guidance and

specifications established by the organisation. The incumbent will be required

to follow strict instructions and security guidance provided by the supervisor.

While the basic function of a driver is to drive the official vehicles of

UNHCR, he/she may be called upon to perform minor maintenance and repair of

UNHCR vehicles. The incumbent has regular contacts with staff within UNHCR

office and with service providers outside UNHCR involving a limited exchange of

information The Driver is mainly responsible for up keepand maintenance of the assigned UNHCR vehicle(s) as per technical guidance andspecifications established by the organisation. The incumbent will be requiredto follow strict instructions and security guidance provided by the supervisor.While the basic function of a driver is to drive the official vehicles ofUNHCR, he/she may be called upon to perform minor maintenance and repair ofUNHCR vehicles. The incumbent has regular contacts with staff within UNHCRoffice and with service providers outside UNHCR involving a limited exchange ofinformation .

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Drive UNHCR vehicles

for the transport of authorized passengers and delivery and collection of

mail, documents, UNHCR pouch and other items.

Meet official

personnel at the airport and facilitate immigration and customs

formalities as required.

Carry out the

day-to-day maintenance of the assigned vehicles; check oil, water,

battery, brakes, tyres, etc. and ensure that the assigned UNHCR vehicles

are road worthy and maintained up to the established security standards.

Conduct minor repairs

and arrange for other repairs and ensure that the vehicle is kept clean.



required by rules and regulations are taken in case of involvement in

accident Ensure that the stepsrequired by rules and regulations are taken in case of involvement inaccident .

Log official trips,

daily mileage, gas consumption, oil changes, greasing, etc.

Perform any other

related duties as required by the Administrative/Finance Associate

Key Performance Indicators:

Assigned UNHCR

vehicles are properly maintained and equipped as per technical guidance

and specifications established by the Organisation.

Local traffic rules

and regulations are strictly observed.

Instructions and security

guidance provided by the supervisor and security focal point are strictly

followed by the Driver and the passengers during the journey









Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

The ideal candidate

for the United Nations UNHCR Driver job vacancy should have completed

Primary Education or equivalent technical or commercial school.

At least two years of

previous job experience relevant to the function.

Driving licence,

knowledge of driving rules and regulations and skills in minor vehicle

repair.

Good knowledge of

English and local language i.e. Runyakitara

Good mechanical skills

are desired

Ability to work in

remote areas.

How to Apply:

All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are

encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application instructions

after reviewing the job details.

Deadline: 12th March 2018
Notice to convene an

extraordinary general meeting in

Lauritz.com Group A/S

Company registration no. 37627542

(the "Company")

Friday 23 March 2018, 10:00 am CET at the Company's address at Dynamovej 11, 2860 Sborg

AGENDA:

Election of chairman of the meeting

The Board of Directors proposes election of Henrik Mgelmose, attorney-at-law, Kromann Reumert.

Proposal to amend Article 5.1 of the Company's Articles of Association on authorization to issue shares

The Board of Directors proposes to replace the Board of Directors' existing authorization in Article 5.1 of the Articles of Association to issue new shares, with a new authorization to increase the Company's share capital with up to 50,000,000 shares of nominally DKK 0.10 each (i.e. a nominal increase of the share capital of DKK 5,000,000), without preemption right for the existing shareholders, for a period of five (5) years from this general meeting.

Following adoption of this proposal, the amended Article 5.1 will have the following wording:

"Until and including 22 March 2023, the Board of Directors shall be authorised to increase the Company's share capital in one or more transactions by up to 50,000,000 shares of DKK 0.10 at market value without the existing shareholders having any pre-emption rights. Such increase in share capital can be by cash payment, conversion of debt or by contribution of other assets than cash. Partial payment for the new shares is not possible. The new shares shall be non-negotiable instruments and shall be registered in the name of the holder."

Proposal to authorize the Board of Directors to enter into a Share Issue Arrangement Agreement

The Board of Directors proposes to authorize the Board of Directors to enter into a Share Issue Arrangement Agreement ("SIAA") with one or more shareholders of the Company (the "Shareholder").

The purpose of the SIAA is to facilitate a simple procedure whereby the Company at any time during a one-year period, in relatively small proportions suitable for smaller investors and on a low-cost basis can issue new shares and thus raise additional capital.

The proceeds received by the Company will be used to reduce the bond debt and for general corporate purposes.

The SIAA must have the below main terms and features. However, the Board of Directors shall be entitled to deviate from these terms and features to a reasonable extent, if considered appropriate.

The SIAA shall apply for a period of one year. Thereafter, the Board of Directors may enter into an equivalent agreement with the same or another Shareholder for a subsequent one-year period.

For a period of one year, the Company is entitled - but not obliged - to initiate one or more sales processes during which the Company is authorized on behalf of the Shareholder to sell shares in the Company belonging to the Shareholder.

At the same time, the Shareholder agrees to be obliged to apply the resulting sale proceeds to subscribe for such number of new shares issued by the Company which equals the number of shares sold. As a result of a sales process, the Shareholder will not increase or decrease its shareholding or make a gain or a loss.

The sales may take place through the Nasdaq Stockholm First North trading system or in any other manner deemed appropriate by the Company, including by way of establishing safe harbor procedures.

The Company decides on (i) the number of sales processes it wishes to initiate during the one-year period, (ii) the duration of each sales process, however only up to a maximum of 20 business days, and (iii) the number of shares sold in each sales process, however up to a maximum equivalent to 3% of the share capital.

If and when the Company decides to initiate a sales process, a company announcement will be made in that regard.

The total sale of shares during the one-year period under the SIAA will not exceed 50,000,000 shares, provided that the general meeting has adopted the proposal in item 2 of the agenda, or 9,874,125 shares (corresponding to the current remaining authorization) if proposal no 2 is not adopted.

Each time a sales process is initiated, the Board of Directors will decide an appropriate increase of the Company's share capital.

The proceeds received by the Shareholder from the sales of shares arranged by the Company shall be deposited on an escrow account and applied to subscribe for new shares in the Company.

The new shares must be listed on Nasdaq Stockholm First North.

The Company must ensure that relevant prospectus rules are complied with.

The Shareholder will not receive any consideration. However, all direct costs related to the sales processes, including trading fees, will be borne by the Company.

The Shareholder undertakes to retain a holding of shares equivalent to at least 3% of the share capital throughout the one-year period.

Blixtz Holding A/S (owned fully by Bengt Sundstrom) and Mette Rode Sundstrm have both offered to enter into an SIAA with the Company. However, both Blixtz Holding A/S and Mette Rode Sundstrm have stated that they will, wholly or partly, give way for any other shareholder(s) offering to enter into an SIAA with the Company.

Election of a member to the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors proposes to elect the Company's CFO, Preben Vinkler Lindgaard as a member to the Board of Directors.

Preben Vinkler Lindgaard does not hold managerial posts in any other businesses except for in the Company's subsidiary.

Approval requirements and share capital

Approval, adoption and election of items no 1, 3 and 4 of the agenda takes place by a simple majority of votes. Approval of item no 2 of the agenda takes place by a qualified majority of two-thirds of both the total number of votes cast and of the share capital represented at the general meeting.

The share capital of the Company is DKK 4,079,254.20 divided into shares of DKK 0.10. At the general meeting each share of nominally DKK 0.10 will carry one vote.

Registration date, participation and right to vote

Shareholders, who on the registration date owns shares in the Company, or from whom the Company on the registration date has received a request for entry into the shareholders' register, has the right to participate in and vote at the general meeting.

The registration date is Friday 16 March 2018, cf. Section 11(1) of the Company's Articles of Association.

Admission card

Shareholders, proxyholders and any accompanying advisor must have an admission card in order to attend the general meeting. Admission cards can be requested electronically via shares@lauritz.com no later than Monday 19 March 2018 at 23:59.

Proxy

Shareholders may vote at the general meeting by granting proxy to the Board of Directors or to a named third party. The proxy can be downloaded by clicking here. The proxy can be submitted by sending it by email to shares@lauritz.com.

Any proxy must be received no later than Monday 19 March 2018 at 23:59.

Postal vote

Shareholders may vote at the general meeting by postal vote. The postal vote form can be downloaded via www.lauritz.com or by clicking here. The postal vote form can be submitted by sending it by e-mail to shares@lauritz.com.

The postal vote must be received no later than Thursday 22 March 2018 at 12:00.

Any proxy or postal vote can be submitted for shares owned on the registration date (i.e. Friday 16 March 2018) calculated on the basis of the registration in the Company's shareholders' register and requests for registration of ownership received by the Company but not yet registered in the shareholders' register, cf. Section 11(1) of the Company's Articles of Association.

Further information

The following material will be available on the Company's website www.lauritz.com no later than 8 March 2018:

The notice convening the general meeting including the agenda and the complete text of any proposal(s);

Information on the total number of shares and voting rights at the date of notice;

Proxy and postal vote form.

Shareholders are welcome to submit questions in written form to the Company regarding the agenda prepared for the general meeting.

Sborg, 8 March 2018

The Board of Directors in Lauritz.com Group A/S
Job Title: Head

of Operations

Organization: Compuscan

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Managing

Director

About Compuscan CRB:

Compuscan CRB is an international credit bureau organisation providing

credit risk services to the financial sector in Uganda under license by Bank of

Uganda.

Job Summary: The Head of

Operations will provide oversight of all the operational aspects of the

institution in regard to card creation and delivery



Key Duties and Responsibilities:



Provide leadership, strategic and operational

directions to the Information Integrity Department.



Drive operational effectiveness and efficiency

of processes within the organisation.



Manage the performance of employees in the

Helpdesk, Card creation, Information Intergrity and Tele-support sections of

the business processes against financial and non financial operational targets.



Responsible for formulating personnel activities

and commitment. Is involved in operational and strategic management of the

divisions under supervisor



Responsible for control and direction of the

activities in Helpdesk, Tele-support Consultants, Information Integrity and

Card creation. This may include analysis, monitoring and managing variations

from expected service level performance and departmental risk management.

Responsible for meeting budgets, cost savings and setting of targets.











Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:



The applicant must preferably hold a Bachelors

Degree in the Business Administration/Social Sciences/Finance or any other equivalent

and relevant qualification from a recognized University.



Five years of working experience in a senior

management position in Industry related areas like banking /credit



A Masters Degree qualification will be an added

advantage



Self-motivated, and self-starter individual who

has ability to work in flexible, unstructured, entrepreneurial and team- based

environment;



Ability to interact effectively at all levels

within and without the organization



Good communication skills



Conflict Management skills



Personal Leadership / Ability to self- motivate



Personal impact



Prioritizing and multi-tasking ability



Passion for customer service and maintaining

excellent business relationships



Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to

influence different stakeholders;

How to Apply:

All interested and suitably qualified candidates should send their

applications and updated CVs (concise and not more than 4 pages) via E-mail

only to: careers@compuscan.co.ug and the subject line must be HOPS002.

Deadline: 9th March, 2018
How can I get my brother to produce documentation that reveals how much he sold my mother's house for, where he put the money and how much, if any, is left?

He was given power of attorney to sell my mother's house, which was in the Caribbean.

Since my mother has died he is reluctant to let us know any of the above details and is making no arrangements to split the remainder of the money, in accordance with her will.

Power of attorney: Brother sold mother's home in the Caribbean on her behalf several years before she died (Stock image)

The house was sold several years ago and mum died last year.

My oldest brother and sister are the executors of the will. The brother who had power of attorney was our younger one. My mum's children inherit under the will.

Can I take my brother to court over this? If so how?

Gary Rycroft, partner with Joseph A. Jones & Co Solicitors, replies: A financial power of attorney gives the named attorney legal authority to deal with the property and finances of the donor of the power.

It does not confer on the attorney any entitlement to personally benefit from the donor's assets.

When your younger brother acting as attorney for your mother sold her house several years ago, he should have accounted to your mother for the money released by the sale.

Gary Rycroft: 'As you are one of the beneficiaries of the will this does give you the legal right to ask the executors to pursue a claim against your brother'

Following your mother's death last year the money from the house sale should be part of her estate being dealt with by the executors of her will.

Your younger brother apparently keeping the money from the house for himself amounts to financial abuse of your mother and possibly theft.

If the power of attorney and house sale had happened in England and Wales you would be able to report your concerns to The Office of The Public Guardian (OPG) Safeguarding Unit, which investigates situations where attorneys have not acted or are continuing to not act properly.

In many cases investigated by the OPG a criminal conviction against the wayward attorney will follow.

In your case the power of attorney was held in respect of property owned by your mother outside the UK. It is always more complicated to enforce legal rights across jurisdictions.

You may have to contact a lawyer in the country involved to assist with issues which occurred there. In addition, the person whom an offence seems to have been committed against is your mother. So whilst she was alive it was she who had the right to pursue any remedy.

Your mothers death last year casts a different light on the situation. The executors of her will (who you say are your elder brother and sister) have the legal right and indeed duty to call in the assets of her estate to distribute between the beneficiaries chosen by your mother and named in her will.

As you are one of the beneficiaries of the will this does give you the legal right to ask the executors to pursue a claim against your brother for the monies not accounted for from the house sale.

If there are other assets in the estate apart from the missing money, the executors could simply deduct the missing money from your younger brothers share of the estate.

If the figures do not add up to allow that, the executors have power to bring a claim against your brother in court for the missing money.

They will need to collect evidence such as copies of documents from the lawyer abroad to show your younger brother dealt with the sale in his capacity as attorney.

The executors of your mothers will have the right to obtain these papers, which were previously confidential to your mother.

If the executors will not co-operate with you in terms of pursuing your younger brother, you could argue they are not fulfilling their duty and ultimately you could take steps to have them removed and for you to be appointed as executor instead.

It is all very sad for your family and maybe getting all of you together (including your younger brother) may serve to resolve matters without having to go down the various legal routes set out, which will be long winded and costly.
MBABANE  Swazilands major source of revenue, SACU, continues to improve competitiveness. This has been done through the signing of a Cooperation Framework Agreement for the implementation of the World Customs Union (WCO) - Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Connect Project which has, among other things, helped in the development of a Regional Customs Risk Management Strategy and three joint enforcement operations targetting illicit trade in tobacco, alcohol, and textile and clothing industry.

Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Communications Manager Kungo Mabogo has reported that SACU Executive Secretary Paulina Elago and Secretary General of WCO, Dr Kunio Mikuriya, signed the agreement expected to greatly improve efficiency in many other areas on Monday at the Headquarters of the WCO in Brussels, Belgium.

Mabogo explained that SACU and WCO had established and maintained a long standing partnership under the framework of the WCO-SACU Connect Project that focuses on IT Connectivity; Risk Management and Enforcement; Trade Partnership; and Legislative Framework.



Elago reportedly said; The signing of the Cooperation Framework Agreement signals the commitment by the WCO and SACU to continue working together to strengthen the relationship and partnership in order to derive tangible benefits that will improve the trading environment in SACU.



In the 2017 report, the Swaziland Revenue Authority (SRA) reported that in spite of the parties engaging in discussions about introducing changes to the Revenue Sharing Formula (RSF), this initiative had not been concluded and funds in the Common Revenue Pool (CRP) continued to be shared in accordance with the existing formula. It was stated that SACU receipts amounted to E5.25 billion compared to receipts of E6.9 billion in 2015/16 owing to the variances between the projected CRP and audited actual collections. The receipts reportedly declined by 25 per cent compared to 2015/16.



This source of revenue remains unreliable given the uncertain global and regional developments coupled with the global trade liberalization agenda, with prospects being highly unfavourable in the medium term, noted SRA. It should be mentioned that the country is on a policy drive to reduce the heavy reliance on SACU remittances.

SRA reported that internally, revenue mobilisation efforts had been strengthened to support domestic revenue mobilisation as shown by the continuous decline in the share of SACU in total revenue.

This ratio of SACU receipts to revenue has been reduced from 60 per cent in 2012/13 to 40 per cent in 2016/17, added SRA.






MBABANE  Being shocked over model Snowees triumphs is becoming a rumour as achieving is all she is doing these days.



Top Model Swaziland model Snowee, real name Nolwazi Simelane, is set to take part in the Accra Fashion Week which is scheduled from March 29 to April 1.



Confirmed



The model confirmed this. She also revealed that she is due to be on the ramp at the annual Mpumalanga Fashion and Design Week this weekend.

A letter from Accra Fashion Week Managing Director Nana A. Tamakloe confirmed the models invitation. This is a letter to confirm that Nolwazi Simelane from Swaziland has been invited as a model to Ghana to represent her country at the next Accra Fashion Week 2018 in Ghana, reads the letter from Tamakloe. After her stunning rendition during the Soweto Fashion Week in September 2016, the model has been getting international invites.



She has been back to the Soweto Fashion Week runway and she was also part of Fashion Without Borders, an initiative where fashion shows are hosted around the SADC region, especially in Gaborone in Botswana.

Snowee said by hook or by crook, she will make it to Ghanas most respected fashion show.



Honoured



I am very honoured to be part of a huge show like this one. The fact that I was shortlisted means I am on the right track. This is the only beginning of greater shows and I will make Swaziland proud, said the model.

Top Model Swaziland Director said she is happy and excited about Snowees achievement.

This simply means we are steadily getting there as a modelling agency. I am honoured to be grooming models of international standards, she said.
PIGGS PEAK  Could some police officers be giving dagga growers tough competition in growing the illicit herb?



Some dagga growers have expressed concern that certain police officers were also engaged in the growing of the illegal drug.

These concerns were raised by the Deputy Police Information and Communications Officer, Assistant Superintendent Phindile Vilakati yesterday.



She was speaking during a press briefing in which the police revealed that dagga valued at E2 411 185.20 would be destroyed.

Vilakati wanted to know if it was true that the police were only destroying dagga because they were also in competition with criminals who were growing it.



Narcotics



Vilakati posed this question to Inspector Samuel Mamba, who was representing the head of the Royal Swaziland Police Drug and Narcotics Unit.

Mamba, however, said police officers were not currently aware of any of their colleagues who were engaged in dagga growing. He said the police would not hesitate to arrest anyone dealing in dagga, regardless of whether they were law enforcers or not.

Mamba also warned that dagga trade was a serious concern because it also affected children.



He urged parents to monitor their children because they were being influenced by dagga.

He also commended the National Commissioner of Police Isaac Magagula for ensuring that police had the chemicals as well as transport to reach the areas that were dagga infested, to destroy it.

The dagga which was destroyed yesterday weighed 4 018.642 kilogrammes while about 5 571.551 was destroyed in October 2017.




LOBAMBA  They are not a popular bunch, but this time around they have come through for the nation.



This is none other than Members of Parliament (MPs), who yesterday unanimously voted against the 15 per cent VAT on electricity tariffs.

As a result, the proposal has been removed for now from the 2018/19 Budget that was presented by the Finance Minister Martin Dlamini last Thursday.



This happened in the House of Assembly yesterday afternoon when acting Finance Committee Chairperson, who is also Lobamba Lomdzala MP Marwick Khumalo, presented a report yesterday.

This follows the rejection of the budget by MPs on Monday, where the minister was instructed to meet with the Finance Committee to revisit the provisions of his speech and return with a people-friendly one.

It would seem the minister and the committee had successful deliberations as they reached some compromise, especially on the hot potato of the electricity tax.



The 15 per cent on electricity tariffs has been deferred pending a study to be undertaken by the ministry on a cost-benefit analysis. So, it has been removed for now, said MP Khumalo. In 2017, the budget was also initially rejected as the legislators also felt it was not for the people. The MP said the minister and his team were convinced by the committee that at the moment, no one would entertain the electricity tax and therefore, a further study would be conducted and perhaps the ministry would at a later stage try to convince them.



However, for now that tariff is removed, said Khumalo.

Another victory for the MPs was them being able to reach a consensus with the minister on the budget allocation to Micro Projects.

It was agreed that the budget allocation would be increased to E180 million from the E100 million that had been previously given to the institution.

Although the MPs had initially demanded E250 million and then lowered it to E200 million, the meeting eventually settled on the E180 million.



The MPs further scored a small victory as it was agreed that the allocation for the Regional Development Fund (RDF) would be increased to E118 million, with each inkhundla to be allocated E2 million.

It was agreed that since Tinkhundla centres were expected to increase to 59, then the money allocated should be equal to all, said MP Khumalo.

It was not an all loss scenario for the finance minister, as the legislators also agreed to the increase of Value Added Tax (VAT) by one per cent to become 15 per cent, not only to be at par with the countrys major trading partner South Africa, but also not to collapse the Sekulula drive or initiative.



The MPs agreed with Khumalo that if the local tax was different to that of South Africa, then it would be tedious to declare goods at entry points and therefore, it should be left at the same percentage.

However, although Manzini North MP Jan Sithole agreed with the 15 per cent VAT, he said this should not apply to basic food baskets such as mealie meal, bread, beans and rice.

The MPs said they were not happy that there was no mention of the allocation of any funds to buy tractors to fix roads under the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.



Matsanjeni North MP Phila Buthelezi said it was a pity that Minister Lindiwe Dlamini and her Principal Secretary Makhosini Mndawe were not in the House, as he wanted to praise them for failing to do their job. He wondered why the Mbadlane-Manzini road was being constructed as he argued that there were literally two roads in one area that were being made.
Titusville resident Retina Mitchell displays her handmade creations  handbags and jewelry  that she makes and sells at her new business, Chameleon Candi Designs. Mitchells products are on display at Twisted Wicker on East Spring Street, in Titusville.
[March 07, 2018] Bell Canada announces offering of MTN Debentures

This news release contains forward-looking statements. For a description of the related risk factors and assumptions, please see the section entitled "Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements" later in this release. MONTREAL, March 7, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - Bell Canada (Bell) today announced the public offering of Cdn $500 million of MTN Debentures pursuant to its medium term notes (MTN) program. The $500 million 3.35% MTN Debentures, Series M-47, will be dated March 12, 2018, will mature on March 12, 2025, and will be issued at a price of $99.851 per $100 principal amount to yield 3.374%. The MTN Debentures will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed by BCE Inc. The net proceeds of the offering are intended to be used to fund the redemption of Bell Canada's $300 million principal amount of 5.52% Series M-33 Debentures, due February 26, 2019, and for the repayment of other short-term debt. The MTN Debentures are being publicly offered in all provinces of Canada through a syndicate of agents. The MTN Debentures offering is expected to close on March 12, 2018. There shall be no offer, solicitation or sale of securities of Bell in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The MTN Debentures have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell securities in the United States. The MTN Debentures are being issued pursuant to a Short Form Base Shelf Prospectus dated September 20, 2016 ad a Prospectus Supplement dated September 30, 2016. Bell will file a pricing supplement relating to this issue with the securities regulatory authorities in all provinces of Canada.



Caution concerning forward-looking statements

Certain statements made in this news release are forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements relating to the expected timing and completion of the proposed sale of MTN Debentures, the intended use of the net proceeds of such sale and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties and are based on several assumptions, both general and specific, which give rise to the possibility that actual results or events could differ materially from our expectations expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. As a result, we cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize and we caution you against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release describe our expectations at the date of this news release and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Except as may be required by Canadian securities laws, we do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained in this news release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are provided herein for the purpose of giving information about the proposed offering referred to above. Readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The timing and completion of the abovementioned proposed sale of the MTN Debentures is subject to customary closing terms and other risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, there can be no assurance that the proposed sale of the MTN Debentures will occur, or that it will occur at the expected time indicated in this news release. About Bell

Bell is Canada's largest communications company, providing advanced broadband wireless, TV, Internet and business communication services throughout the country. Bell Media is Canada's premier multimedia company with leading assets in television, radio, out of home, and digital media. Founded in Montreal in 1880, Bell is wholly owned by BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE; NYSE: BCE). To learn more, please visit Bell.ca or BCE.ca.

The Bell Let's Talk initiative promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day, and provides significant Bell funding of mental health care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk. Media inquiries: Jean Charles Robillard

514-870-4739

jean_charles.robillard@bell.ca Investor inquiries: Thane Fotopoulos

514-870-4619

thane.fotopoulos@bell.ca SOURCE Bell Canada

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[March 07, 2018] BlueCross Chief Medical Officer Honored with Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare Recognition from Modern Healthcare

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is proud to announce that senior vice president and chief medical officer Dr. Andrea Willis was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of 2018's Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare. The profiles of all the winners were featured in the Feb. 26 print issue of Modern Healthcare and can be found online at ModernHealthcare.com/Top25Minorities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180307006439/en/



Dr. Andrea Willis of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee was recognized by Modern Healthcare as one of 2018's Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare. (Photo: Business Wire)

In its seventh edition, the biennial recognition program honors the top minority health care executives who are influencing policy and care delivery models across the country. In doing so, they are also highlighting the continued need to nurture diversity in our organizations. "From leaders of health systems who are actively working to make sure that communities of color have access to affordable and high-quality health care to heroes who protected victims of natural disasters and violent protests, this year's Top 25 Minority Executives in Healthcare exemplify resilience and tenacity," said Modern Healthcare Editor Aurora Aguilar. "These leaders have produced incredible results by elevating the quality of patient care at their organizations while supporting and advancing their peers to boost diversity in the C-suite. As Modern Healthcare's first Latina editor, I take special pride in this program and look forward to seeing the Top 25 and the 10 To Watch honorees grow in their roles and their influence." Dr. Willis was recognized for leading efforts to improve the quality of care BlueCross members receive. She oversees the company's initiative to combat the opioid crisis in the state and has also led efforts to partner with churches to develop a series of health screening events across Tennessee. As part of her commitment to support community health, she serves on the NashvilleHealth governing board and the Governor's Foundation for Health and Wellness. "We are so pleased to see Dr. Willis honored in this way," said Scott Pierce, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee chief operating officer. "Her passion and commitment to advancing a culture of health are truly exceptional, and it is a privilege to work with her to improve the lives of those we serve." Sponsored by The Companies of MPI: FurstGroup and NuBrick Partners View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180307006439/en/

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[March 07, 2018] ClinOne Announces Release Online Patient Matching to Improve Access to Clinical Trials

DENVER, March 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ClinOne, a mobile clinical trial management solution, will soon add another technology into its product suite  the ability to reach and match patients to clinical trials online. While there are other solutions that offer online patient matching, ClinOne's approach is unique because it's a part of their integrated clinical trial solution. "We want to provide every patient with a clinical trial option. We can do this through their existing institutions, their referring physicians with our MD Referral technology, and now with direct online engagement," said Rob Bohacs, CEO of ClinOne. "The majority of patients identify a clinical trial of interest online versus their current providers. It's the first step in understanding treatment options for patients in through web searches." Starting in June, ClinOne will automatically link an active clinical trial to its online patient-matching website as an integrated solution, eliminating the duplication of costs and administration. Research institutions occasionally provide a list of their clinical trials on their websites; however, te information is typically manually updated and with significant delays. ClinOne's central information source for patients allows patients to quickly and easily search clinical trial options, without the burden of searching institution by institution.



"Think of this as an Expedia or Kayak for clinical trial offerings," Bohacs says. "When you are facing a medical illness and are seeking additional treatment options, the last thing you want or need is to be burdened by an arduous search process." Investigator-initiated studies rarely have the financial resources to involve direct-to-patient matching companies. This capability will be included in ClinOne's clinical trial suite, which will position ClinOne as a leader in online-sourced patient matching to clinical trials.

In addition, clinical trial sponsors often make significant investments to match patients online, instead of being a part of a single, integrated platform to match patients directly. ClinOne anticipates the cost savings to clinical trial sponsors could be 80-90 percent of their current recruitment costs. About ClinOne The ClinOne solution and its suite of products were created to improve clinical trial enrollment, retention and research site compliance. The company's sole mission is to allow important trial details to be at the fingertips of participating researchers and patients. Currently, more than 2,600 active clinical trials in 50 countries rely on ClinOne's suite of technologies. Visit www.clinone.com for more information. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clinone-announces-release-online-patient-matching-to-improve-access-to-clinical-trials-300610403.html SOURCE ClinOne, Inc.

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[March 07, 2018] INS Ecosystem Signs Memoranda with the Netherlands Largest Postal Operator PostNL, Gears Up for Dutch Roll Out

The Netherlands premier postal services provider will be distributing the goods sold on INS Ecosystem blockchain-based marketplace HONG KONG, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- INS Ecosystem, the world's first decentralized grocery marketplace today announced that PostNL, the leading e-commerce logistics provider in the Netherlands, has confirmed its intention to distribute the goods sold on INS Ecosystem marketplace. PostNL will thus endorse INS Ecosystem 2018 major roll out into the Netherlands that has a grocery market turnover of EUR35.7 billion. INS Ecosystem Co-founder, Peter Fedchenkov said, "In order to revolutionize the direct-to- consumer interaction and make it the first option model for manufacturers globally, we need to ensure that goods reach their intended destinations, managing the supply chain as accurately and efficiently as possible. PostNL is constantly improving its excellence with the delivery of on average 675,000 parcels and 8 million letters on weekdays throughout the Benelux. We are admiring the partnership with such an outstanding organization, looking forward to the launch date."



Founded by Peter Fedchenkov and Dmitry Zhulin, INS Ecosystem enables grocery manufacturers to address consumers directly bypassing the retail intermediaries, therefore saving up to 30 percent on everyday grocery e-shopping. With INS Ecosystem, consumers will have unimpeded access to both global and local manufacturers, including farmers, significantly reducing shipping distances and cutting the costs. Aimed at reducing waste throughout the supply chain, INS Ecosystem will also leverage blockchain to ensure more efficient shipping practices while implementing effective pull systems, decreasing product inventories and saving space. Postal and logistic solutions provider, PostNL is the link between the physical and the online world as it facilitates the communication between consumers and companies. PostNL delivers parcels seven days a week and letters five days a week. The organization offers more and more new services through the combination of smart networks, digital applications and the right communications channels. As the first listed postal company, it has the largest and most modern network for letters, parcels and e-commerce in the Benelux countries. PostNL aims to become the food logistics provider in the Benelux. The company employs a total of 44,000 people.

With seven of the top twenty FMCG global manufacturers having expressed their strong interest in selling their goods directly to consumer, INS Ecosystem will begin its project roll out in the Netherlands this year: "Our strategic and influential agreements within the Netherlands are a sign of many great things to come, while MoU with the region leading logistics operator is a huge leap forward in our ambitious journey to transform the consumer goods industry worldwide," concluded Fedchenkov. For more information visit https://ins.world/ INS Ecosystem Co-founder Peter Fedchenkov is available for interview About INS Ecosystem: INS Ecosystem is a decentralized blockchain-based platform that enables consumers to buy groceries directly from manufacturers at lower prices, with convenience. Aiming to disrupt the $8.5 trillion global grocery market, INS Ecosystem connects manufacturers directly with consumers with an aim to overcome retailer domination. INS Ecosystem has received interest from a number of large manufacturers who are looking at the option of joining the ecosystem in the future. Manufacturers will be able to list and sell products directly to consumers, gain customer feedback and reward loyal customers. INS Ecosystem's smart contracts power loyalty programs and their innovative use of blockchain enables an efficient, transparent supply chain. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180301/2055978-1

Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180301/2055978-1LOGO SOURCE INS

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[March 08, 2018] INNATE PHARMA: consolidated financial results for the year ended December 31, 2017

2017: CLINiCAL PROGRESS, Portfolio expansion and financial strength create the foundation for future growth Cash, cash equivalents and financial assets [a] amounted to 176.6m (million euros) as of December 31, 2017 Revenue and other income amounted to 44.0m (65.7m in 2016, including a 13.8m milestone payment from Bristol-Myers Squibb) Operating expenses amounted to 84.0m (58.2m in 2016), driven by continued investment in preclinical and clinical portfolio

Significant progress across Innate Pharma's partnered and proprietary clinical programs, with new focus on clinical development in tumor microenvironment Dose-escalation data show favorable safety profile and promising clinical activity for IPH4102 in patients with Sezary syndrome, an advanced form of cutanous T-cell lymphoma - cohort expansion ongoing Acquisition of anti-C5aR, now called IPH5401, a clinical-stage antibody, strengthens Innate's proprietary pipeline targeting the tumor microenvironment - a clinical collaboration is now underway with MedImmune

World renowned immunologist, Professor Eric Vivier, joins Innate Pharma as Chief Scientific Officer

Innate Pharma will hold a R&D Day for institutional investors and sell-side analysts in London today, to update on its clinical development activities Marseille, France, March 8, 2018 - 07:00 AM CET Innate Pharma (the "Company" - Euronext Paris: FR0010331421 - IPH) today reports its consolidated financial results for the year ended December 31, 2017. The consolidated financial statements are attached to this press release. During 2017, Innate Pharma has made significant progress across its portfolio of partnered and proprietary programs and has laid the foundations for continued clinical development during 2018. The Company reported a favorable safety profile and encouraging clinical activity for IPH4102 in monotherapy in a Phase I trial in patients with Sezary syndrome, an advanced form of cutanous T-cell lymphoma. First data from a cohort expansion part of the ongoing trial are expected in 2018. In June 2017, the Company strengthened its proprietary pipeline with the acquisition of IPH5401, a first-in-class anti-C5aR antibody targeting the tumor microenvironment, from Novo Nordisk A/S for a total of 40.0m (2.8m in cash and 37.2m in new Innate Pharma shares). IPH5401 is a clinical-stage, proprietary product that reinforces Innate Pharma's position in the field of antibodies targeting the tumor microenvironment beyond the Company's existing activities in the adenosine pathway. Preclinical findings suggest that C5aR blockade increases immune-mediated tumor killing and efficacy of checkpoint inhibitors. IPH5401 will enter first clinical studies in oncology in 2018, as part of a non-exclusive clinical collaboration with MedImmune/AstraZeneca. The Company also continued to advance its portfolio of early stage programs targeting the tumor microenvironment with two antibodies directed against enzymes in the adenosine pathway, CD39 and CD73, respectively. Preclinical experiments have demonstrated superior blocking activity of IPH52 (anti-CD39) and IPH53 (anti-CD73) for both the cell surface and soluble forms of the enzymes. Significant progress could also be recorded in the Company's collaboration with Sanofi on NK-cell bispecific engagers, who bring together tumor cells and NK cells and trigger NK cell killing of tumor cells. While the project on a first tumor target is on the way to lead candidate selection, Sanofi decided to include a second target into the framework of the collaborative agreement. During 2017, the Company announced results from the EffiKIR study which evaluated the efficacy of lirilumab as a single agent for maintenance of remission in patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The study did not meet its primary efficacy endpoint of leukemia-free survival. Towards the end of the year, Innate's partner Bristol-Myers Squibb updated on the lirilumab program in combination with Opdivo (nivolumab) in patients with solid tumors. The assessment of efficacy did not provide an obvious development path. Discussions are ongoing regarding next steps. After the period, Eric Vivier was appointed Chief Scientific Officer on January 8, 2018. In his new role, Professor Vivier will lead Innate Pharma's science and technology platforms as well as the development of collaborations between fundamental, translational and clinical research. Mondher Mahjoubi, Chief Executive Officer of Innate Pharma, said: "During 2017, Innate Pharma has made significant clinical advances, within both its wholly-owned and partnered portfolios, laying the foundations for the future focus of our immuno-oncology development strategy. We expect clinical read-outs for both our monalizumab and IPH4102 program in 2018. Moreover, we are very pleased with the acquisition of IPH5401, a first-in-class anti-C5aR antibody, which strengthens our portfolio in the tumor microenvironment." He added: "We have a robust financial position, giving us the flexibility to invest for future portfolio growth. With multiple value catalysts ahead in 2018, we believe we are poised for a pivotal year." *** Innate Pharma will host a R&D Day for institutional investors and sell-side analysts on March 8 from 1:30 to 5:00 pm GMT (8:30 to 12:00 pm ET) in London. To join the live webcast today at 1:30pm (GMT) please use the following link: https://www.innate-pharma.com/en/news-events/events/rd-day-2018 To join the event by conference call only, please use the following dial-in numbers: USA: +1 646-828-8156 INTERNATIONAL: 0800 279 7204 PIN code: 3997784 The presentation will be made available on the Company's website 30 minutes before the start of the event. A webcast replay will be available on Innate Pharma's website after the event. *** Financial highlights for 2017: The key elements are as follows: Cash, cash equivalents and financial assets amounting to 176.6m (million euros) as of December 31, 2017 (230.7m as of December 31, 2016), including non-current financial instruments (60.5m). At the same date, the financial liabilities amounted to 5.9m (5.3m as of December 31, 2016).

Revenue and other income amounting to 44.0m (65.7m in 2016). This amount mainly results from licensing revenue (32.6m) and from research tax credit (11.0m). Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements mainly results from the spreading of the initial payment received by Innate Pharma in the context of the agreement signed in April 2015 with AstraZeneca/MedImmune (32.3m in 2017 and 41.6m in 2016). The 2016 revenue also included a $15m (13.8m) milestone payment received from Bristol-Myers Squibb for the continued exploration of lirilumab in combination with nivolumab. The milestone payment followed the presentation at the SITC annual meeting (November 2016) of encouraging preliminary activity results from the cohort of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) of a Phase I/II trial. The payment was received in January 2017 and has generated an exchange gain of 0.3m.

Operating expenses amounting to 84.0m (58.2m in 2016) of which 80% related to research and development. The majority of the rise results from the increase in subcontracting costs in relation with the clinical development of the Company's drug candidates (+ 9.7m), in share-based payments (+ 9.0m) and in staff costs (+ 2.4m).

A net financial loss amounting to 8.0m.

As a consequence of the items mentioned previously, the net loss for 2017 amounts to 48.4m to be compared to a profit of 12.6m for 2016. The table below summarizes the IFRS consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2017, with a comparison to 2016: Year ended December 31 In thousand euros (IFRS) 2017 2016 Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements 32,631 56,159 Government financing for research expenditures 11,402 9,561 Revenue and other income 44,033 65,721 Research and Development expenses (67,000) (48,628) General and Administrative expenses (17,015) (9,522) Operating expenses (84,015) (58,150) Operating income / (loss) (39,983) 7,571 Financial income / (expenses), net (8,034) 5,370 Income tax (368) (301) Net income / (loss) (48,385) 12,640 Pipeline update (second half of 2017): IPH4102 (anti-KIR3DL2 antibody): IPH4102 is a first-in-class anti-KIR3DL2 humanized cytotoxicity-inducing antibody, designed for treatment of CTCL, an orphan disease, and in particular, its most aggressive subtypes, Sezary Syndrome and transformed mycosis fungoides. In October 2017, the final results of the dose-escalation part of the ongoing Phase I study investigating IPH4102 in patients with relapsed/refractory cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL), an orphan disease, were presented by Pr. Martine Bagot, Principal Investigator and Head of the Dermatology Department at the Saint-Louis Hospital, Paris, in an oral session at the EORTC CLTF in London. These data confirm the good safety profile and promising activity of IPH4102 in this elderly and heavily pretreated patients population (n=25). The objective response rate in the 20 patients with Sezary syndrome was 50%; the rate of response lasting at least more than 4 months (ORR4) was 40%, the disease control rate (DCR), 90%, the median duration of response (DOR), 9.9 months and the median progression free survival (PFS), 10.8 months, respectively. Data on pruritus were reported for the first time and show substantial improvement in patients having a global clinical response but also in patients with stable disease. The Recommended Phase 2 Dose (RP2D) has been identified at 750 mg, a fixed dose equivalent to 10 mg/kg. Expansion cohorts started, including 2 cohorts of 15 patients each in two CTCL subtypes: Sezary syndrome and transformed mycosis fungoides.

Biomarker results were presented in an oral presentation by Dr. Maxime Battistella, Assistant Professor Pathology and Dermatopathology at St Louis Hospital and Universite L. Diderot.

Data from a cohort expansion part of the ongoing phase I trial in patients with Sezary syndrome are expected in 2018 and will be presented at an upcoming medical conference. IPH5401 (anti-C5aR antibody): IPH5401 is a first-in-class fully human therapeutic antibody that specifically binds and blocks C5a receptors (C5aR) expressed on subsets of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and neutrophils. In September 2017, at the third CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy conference, Innate Pharma has presented preclinical data that reinforce the IPH5401 rationale. This data show the selective expression of C5aR on myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and neutrophils. These cells accumulate within the tumor microenvironment and secrete pro-angiogenic factors which promote tumor progression. They also inhibit NK and T cells and suppress anti-tumor immunity. In this poster, the data demonstrate that IPH5401 selectively inhibits the activation of neutrophils. Moreover, the data show that the combined administration of anti-C5aR with anti-PD-1 synergistically reduced tumor growth. Taken together, these data suggest that C5aR blockade may result in a more permissive environment for immune-mediated tumor killing and treatment with checkpoint inhibitors.

IPH5401 will enter clinical studies in oncology in 2018. Monalizumab (anti-NKG2A antibody), partnered with AstraZeneca/MedImmune: Monalizumab is a checkpoint inhibitor targeting NKG2A, an inhibitory receptor expressed on tumor infiltrating cytotoxic CD8 T lymphocytes and NK cells. This monoclonal antibody is currently being tested in an exploratory program of Phase I or I/II clinical trials in various cancer indications in combinations in solid tumors. In September 2017, the Company presented new preclinical data at the third CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy conference that reinforce the rationale, that combined NKG2A/HLA-E and PD-1/PD-L1 blockade enhance CD8+ T Cell-mediated killing of tumors.

First clinical data read-outs from the Phase I/II trial in advanced solid tumors are expected in the course of 2018 and will be presented at upcoming medical conferences. Lirilumab (anti-KIR antibody), licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb: Lirilumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody that is designed to block the interaction between KIR2DL-1,-2,-3 inhibitory receptors and their ligands. Blocking these receptors facilitates activation of NK cells and, potentially some subsets of T cells, ultimately leading to destruction of tumor cells. In November 2017, Innate Pharma provided an update on the clinical study program of lirilumab, licensed to Bristol-Myers Squibb. While lirilumab was shown to be well-tolerated, the assessment of efficacy from the ongoing exploration of doublet combinations, notably the nivolumab combination in an extended population of SCCHN patients, did not provide clear evidence of benefit to patients or an obvious development path. Discussions are ongoing regarding next steps for the program.

In December 2017, full data for EffiKIR[b] study have been disclosed in an oral presentation by Pr. Norbert Vey, Team leader Translational Medicine - Hematology at the Paoli-Calmettes Institute (IPC), at the ASH annual meeting. These data suggest that alternate dosing regimens, where KIR receptors are not permanently occupied and allow the interaction with their cognate ligands during maturation, could be worth exploring. IPH52 (anti-CD39 antibody) and IPH53 (anti-CD73 [c] antibody): CD39 and CD73 are membrane-bound extracellular enzyme which play a major role in promoting immunosuppression through the pathway degrading adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into adenosine. The blockade of CD39 and CD73 has the potential to promote anti-tumor immune responses across a wide range of tumors. In November 2017, preclinical data for IPH52 and IPH53 were presented at the Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Summit in Munich. These data demonstrate the expression of CD39 and CD73 in the tumor microenvironment, the blockade rationale in tumor models, especially in combination with checkpoint inhibitors, as well as the efficacy in blocking the ATP/Adenosine pathway. Corporate update: In January 2018, Innate Pharma announced the appointment of Prof. Eric Vivier as Chief Scientific Officer of the Company. Also in January, the Company announced the appointment of Prof. Jean-Yves Blay to the Innate Pharma's Supervisory Board. Additionally, Marcus Schindler, SVP and Head of External Innovation and Strategy at Novo Nordisk A/S has replaced Karsten Munk Knudsen as Novo Nordisk A/S' s permanent representative on the Supervisory Board effective March 7, 2018. Karsten Munk Knudsen was appointed Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of Novo Nordisk A/S on February 15, 2018. In 2017, Innate Pharma recruited 34 new people, mostly in research and development, to support the expansion of the preclinical portfolio and the increase in the number of clinical trials performed by the Company. As at December 31, 2017, the headcount was 188 employees. Post period events: Clinical collaborations: On January 30, the Company announced a non-exclusive clinical trial collaboration with MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca. The Phase I/II study (STELLAR-001) will evaluate the safety and efficacy of durvalumab, an anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, in combination with Innate's investigational first-in-class anti-C5aR monoclonal antibody, IPH5401, as a treatment for patients with selected solid tumors. Innate will sponsor the study with costs equally shared by both parties. Next scientific publications: Innate Pharma will present a broad range of preclinical and clinical data on on its development portfolio at the AACR 2018 Annual Meeting being held April 14 - 18, 2018, in Chicago, Illinois. Abstracts will be available on the conference website on March 14 after 4:30 p.m. U.S. ET . About Innate Pharma: Innate Pharma S.A. is a clinical-stage biotechnology company with a focus on discovering and developing first-in-class therapeutic antibodies that harness the innate immune system to improve cancer treatment and clinical outcomes for patients. Innate Pharma specializes in immuno-oncology, a new therapeutic field that is changing cancer treatment by mobilizing the power of the body's immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells. The Company's aim is to become a fully-integrated biopharmaceutical company in the area of immunotherapy and focused on serious unmet medical needs in cancer. Innate Pharma has pioneered the discovery and development of checkpoint inhibitors to activate the innate immune system. Innate Pharma's innovative approach has resulted in three first-in-class, clinical-stage antibodies targeting natural killer cell receptors that may address a broad range of solid and hematological cancer indications as well as additional preclinical product candidates and technologies. Targeting receptors involved in innate immunity also creates opportunities for the Company to develop therapies for inflammatory diseases. The Company's expertise and understanding of natural killer cell biology have enabled it to enter into major alliances with leaders in the biopharmaceutical industry including AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi. Based in Marseille, France, Innate Pharma has more than 180 employees and is listed on Euronext Paris. Learn more about Innate Pharma at www.innate-pharma.com. Information about Innate Pharma shares: ISIN code

Ticker code FR0010331421

IPH Disclaimer: This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Although the company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the company's actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors ("Facteurs de Risque") section of the Document de Reference prospectus filed with the AMF, which is available on the AMF website (http://www.amf-france.org) or on Innate Pharma's website. This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to shares in Innate Pharma in any country. For additional information, please contact: Investors







Innate Pharma



Markus Metzger / Jerome Marino

Investor relations



Tel.: +33 (0)4 30 30 30 30



investors@innate-pharma.com



International Media







Consilium Strategic Communications



Mary-Jane Elliott / Jessica Hodgson



Tel.: +44 (0)20 3709 5700



InnatePharma@consilium-comms.com French Media







ATCG Press



Marie Puvieux



Mob: +33 (0)6 10 54 36 72



presse@atcg-partners.com







APPENDIX Innate Pharma SA Consolidated financial statements

at December 31, 2017 The following consolidated balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards. The audit procedures on the consolidated financial statements have been performed. The auditors' report will be issued after the finalization of the required procedures relating to the filing of the annual report ('Document de Reference'). The consolidated financial statements were approved by the Company's Executive board on March 7, 2018. These statements were reviewed by the Company's Supervisory board on March 7, 2018 and will be submitted for approval to the Shareholders' General Meeting on May 29, 2018. Innate Pharma's financial annual report, included in the reference document, will be available during the second quarter of 2017. Statement of financial position

(in thousand euros) Year ended December 31, 2017 2016 Assets Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 99,367 175,906 Short term investments 16,743 21,782 Current receivables 21,412 32,390 Total current assets 137,521 230,078 Non-current assets Intangible assets 46,192 9,075 Tangibleassets 10,729 9,094 Non-current financial assets 60,469 32,975 Other non-current financial assets 111 355 Total non-current assets 117,501 51,499 Total assets 255,023 281,577 Liabilities Current liabilities Trade payables 24,657 20,265 Financial liabilities - current portion







1,343 1,264 Deferred revenue - current portion 47,909 54,912 Total current liabilities 73,909 76,441 Non-current liabilities Financial liabilities - non-current portion 4,521 4,063 Defined benefit obligations 2,621 2,418 Deferred revenue - non-current portion 87,005 112,348 Provisions 1,012 136 Total non-current liabilities 95,158 118,965 Shareholders' equity attributable to equity holders of the Company Share capital 2,880 2,696 Share premium 234,874 187,571 Consolidated reserves (103,595) (116,235) Net income (loss) (48,385) 12,640 Other reserves 180 (503) Total shareholders' equity attributable to equity holders of the Company 85,956 86,169 Total liabilities and equity 255,023 281,577 Statement of income (loss)

(in thousand euros) Year ended December 31, 2017 2016 Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements 32,631 56,159 Government financing for research expenditures 11,402 9,561 Revenue and other income 44,033 65,721 Research and development (67,000) (48,628) General and administrative (17,015) (9,522) Net operating expenses (84,015) (58,150) Operating income (loss) (39,983) 7,571 Financial income 2,482 7,327 Financial expenses (10,516) (1,957) Net income (loss) before tax (48,016) 12,941 Income tax expense (368) (301) Net income (loss) (48,385) 12,640





Net income (loss) per share attributable to equity holders of the Company: Weighted average number of shares (in thousand): 54,352 53,869 (in  per share) - Basic loss per share (0.89) 0.23 - Diluted loss per share (0.89)



0.23

Statement of cash flows

(in thousand euros) Year ended December 31, 2017 2016 Net income (loss) (48,385) 12,640 Depreciation and amortization 4,393 3,263 Provisions for defined benefit obligations 381 609 Provisions for charges 877 136 Share-based compensation expense 9,829 1,031 Change in valuation allowance on financial assets (26) (826) Gains (losses) on financial assets 3,381 (834) Change in valuation allowance on financial instruments (204) (183) Gains on assets and other financial assets (1,442) (1,699) Interest paid 113 124 Others - (324) Operating cash flow before change in working capital (31,080) (13,937) Change in working capital (16,980) (50,788) Net cash generated from / (used in) operating activities (48,060) (36,851) Acquisition of property and equipment (2,964) (1,350) Acquisition of intangible assets (3,062) (8,043) Purchase of current financial instruments (2,543) (16,629) Purchase of non-current financial instruments (40,729) (1,525) Disposal of current financial instruments 5,646 78,565 Disposal of non-current financial instruments 12,750 7,793 Gains on assets and other financial assets 1,442 1,699 Net cash generated from / (used in) investing activities (29,460) 60,510 Proceeds from the exercise / subscription of equity instrument 491 193 Proceeds from new loans 1,739 - Repayment of financial liabilities (1,202) (685) Interest paid (113) (124) Purchase/sale of treasury shares - 14 Net cash generated from / (used in) financing activities 915 (602) Effect of the exchange rate changes 68 (23) Net increase / (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (76,539) 23,036 Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year 175,906 152,870 Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year 99,367 175,906 Management discussion on annual results for 2017: Revenue and other income Revenue and other income result from government financing for research expenditure and collaboration and licensing agreements. The Company's revenue and other income were 65.7 million and 44.0 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, from the following sources: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements 32,631 56,159 Government financing for research expenditures 11,402 9,561 Revenue and other income 44,033 65,721 Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements Revenue from collaboration and licensing agreements amounted to 56.2 million and 32.6 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. These revenues result from the agreements signed with Bristol-Myers Squibb in July 2011 (for 2016 only) and AstraZeneca in April 2015. Following the licensing agreement signed with Bristol-Myers Squibb for the development and commercialization of the drug candidate lirilumab (July 2011), the Company received an upfront payment of 24.9 million ($35.3 million). This upfront payment, which is non-refundable and non-creditable, was recognized in turnover during the expected period of duration of the clinical program in course at the date of the contract. The amount recognized as revenue amounted to 0.4 million for the fiscal year 2016. This payment was entirely recognized in revenue as of June 30, 2016. Following the presentation at the SITC annual meeting (November 2016) of preliminary activity results from the cohort of patients with SCCHN of a Phase I/II trial, the Company has been eligible to a milestone payment of $15 million (13.8 million). The consideration was received in January 2017 but principaly recognized as revenue in 2016, since the trigger event occurred in 2016. The payment received in 2017 has generated an exchange gain of 0.3m. The Company entered into a global co-development and commercialization agreement with AstraZeneca for monalizumab in April 2015. The Company received an initial payment amounting to $250 million on June 30, 2015. The recognition of this amount is based on the costs Innate Pharma is engaged to bear in the context of the agreement. The amount recognized for the fiscal year 2016 amounts to 41.6 million and 32.3 million for the fiscal year 2017. The percentage of completion has been determined on the basis of the costs recognized during the period compared to the total expected costs. As of December 31, 2017, the amount not yet in revenue amounts to 134.9 million (47.9 million as "Operational liabilities" and 87.0 million as "Other non-current liabilities"). Consequently, the fall of the turnover in 2017 results from both the revenue relating to Bristol-Myers Squibb agreement (14.3 million decrease) and the AstraZeneca agreement (9.2 million decrease). Government funding for research expenditures The table below details government financing for research expenditure for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 Research tax credit 11,041 9,082 French and foreign public grants 361 479 Government financing for research expenditures 11,402 9,561 The calculation of the research tax credit is based on 30% of the amount of eligible expenses for the fiscal year. The table below shows the amount of R&D expenses (net of grants) eligible for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 R&D expenses eligible for the research tax credit 37,074 30,203 Grants received, net (334) - Net expenses eligible for the research tax credit 36,740 30,203 Net expenses eligible for the research tax credit increased by 23% compared to the fiscal year 2016 whilst the R&D expenses increased by 38%. This results from the fact that, since the fiscal year 2015, the Company reached the cap of the subcontracting expenses eligible to the calculation of the research tax credit. For the fiscal year 2017, the rise of the eligible expenses mainly results from the amortization expense relating to the anti-NKG2A intangible asset and the staff costs. In the absence of corporate tax to pay, the research tax credit is generally reimbursed by the French government four years after the fiscal year for which it is determined. However, since 2011, companies that meet the definition of small and medium sized enterprises (SME) according to European Union criteria are eligible for early reimbursement of their research tax credit receivable. The status of SME is lost when the criteria for eligibility are exceeded during two consecutive years. For the fiscal year 2016, for the first time, the Company exceeded all the criteria (including a turnover higher than 50 milion). For the fiscal year 2017, the Company is below the criteria and will therefore continue to benefit from the status of SME and the corresponding benefits, especially the early reimbursement of the research tax credit. Innate Pharma qualifies for early reimbursement of the research tax credit and received the 2016 amount in July 2017. During the fiscal years 2016 and 2017, the income resulting from grants relates to an European grant in the context of the FP-7 program and a grant under the FEDER Program. These grants directly impact our income statement, as opposed to repayable loans which are recorded as debt and thus only impact our balance sheet. Operating expenses by business function The table below gives a breakdown of net operating expenses by business function for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 Research and development expenses (67,000) (48,628) General and administrative expenses (17,015) (9,522) Net operating expenses (84,015) (58,150) R&D expenses include the cost of employees assigned to research and development operations (including employees assigned to work under the collaboration and licensing agreements), product manufacturing costs, subcontracting costs as well as costs of materials (reagents and other consumables) and pharmaceutical products. R&D expenses amounted to 48.6 million and 67.0 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively representing 84% and 80% of net operating expenses. The rise in R&D expenses between 2016 and 2017 mainly results from an increase of subcontracting costs related to the progress in the development of the preclinical and clinical programs and a staff growth. General and administrative expenses include expenses for employees not directly working on R&D, as well as the expenses necessary for the management of the business and its development. General and administrative expenses were 9.5 million and 17.0 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively representing 16% and 20% of the net operating expenses. This increase mainly results from the growth in staff costs (especially the IFRS 2 expense relating to share-based payments), lawyers and audit fees due to the Company's structuring in a context of strong expansion and a provision for late payment interests relating to the late payment of a withholding tax in the context of the purchase of the antibody anti-NKG2A (monalizumab) in 2014 and 2016. Operating expenses by nature The table below gives a breakdown of net operating expenses by nature of expenses for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 Cost of supplies and consumable materials (4,287) (2,852) Intellectual property expenses (1,499) (1,235) Other purchases and external expenses (47,609) (36,022) Employee benefit other than share-based compensation (15,163) (12,796) Share-based compensation (9,985) (1,032) Depreciation and amortization (4,396) (3,263) Other income and (expenses), net (1,076) (950) Net operating expenses (84,015) (58,150)

Cost of supplies and consumable materials The cost of supplies and consumable materials amounted to 2.9 million and 4.3 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. The increase in this line item results from the growth in purchases used in the Company's laboratories, which is mainly due to the rise in staff. Intellectual property expenses Intellectual property expenses amounted to 1.2 million and 1.5 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. These expenses include the cost of filing and protecting patents (including patents that were acquired from third parties and where the agreements specified that Innate Pharma is responsible for the relevant costs) as well as the costs for obtaining an option or license for intellectual property. In accordance with IAS 38, considering the degree of maturity of the Company and the uncertainty that exists as to the outcome of its research and development projects, intellectual property expenses are recorded in expenses. Other purchases and external expenses Other purchases and external expenses amounted to 36.0 million and 47.6 million during the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively, broken down as follows: Year ended December 31 (in thousand euros) 2017 2016 Sub-contracting (37,996) (28,329) Non-scientific consultancy (4,357) (3,371) Leases, maintenance and utility (1,781) (1,418) Travel and conference costs (1,294) (1,223) Scientific consultancy and services (845) (585) Marketing, communication and public relations (649) (508) Attendance fees (205) (200) Insurance (169) (140) Others (313) (248) Other purchases and external expenses (47,609) (36,022) Sub-contracting expenses involve discovery research costs (financing of research conducted externally, particularly academic research, antibody humanization technologies, manufacturing process development, etc.), preclinical development (pilot manufacturing, tolerance and pharmacology studies, etc.) and clinical costs (clinical trial management, etc.) outsourced to third parties. The increase in these costs mainly results from the growth and progress of the portfolio of preclinical and clinical programs. Non-scientific consultancy expenses are mostly fees paid to audit firms, to our certified public accountant for his assistance in accounting, tax and employee matters, to our lawyers, to business strategy or development consultants and recruitment fees. The increase in these expenses between 2016 and 2017 mainly results from lawyers and audit fees due to the Company's structuring in a context of strong expansion. Leases, maintenance and utility costs are mainly maintenance costs for laboratory equipment and the building. Travel and conference costs mainly include expenses for employees travelling and attending conferences, particularly scientific, medical, business development and financial conferences. Scientific consultancy and services consist of costs related to external consultants assisting in the research and development of our products. It also covers fees paid to members of our Scientific Advisory Board. Employee benefits other than share-based compensation Employee benefit expenses other than share-based compensation came to 12.8 million and 15.2 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. This includes salaries and social benefit costs. On average, Innate Pharma had 133 employees during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 and 171 employees during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017. The proportion of total staff, excluding Executive committee members, allocated to R&D operations was 77% and 80% for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017 respectively. The average amount of staff costs per employee was 96 and 95 thousand for fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017 respectively. Share-based compensation Share-based compensation amounted to 1.0 million and 10.0 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. In accordance with IFRS 2, these costs correspond to the fair value of the equity instruments allocated to directors and employees. The costs recognized in 2016 and 2017 mainly result from the issuance during the fiscal year 2016 of warrants for shares not including a condition requiring presence. As a consequence, the fair value of these instruments were recognized as expenses on a straight-line basis in the income statement over the acquisition period. Depreciation and amortization Depreciation and amortization amounted 3.3 million and 4.4 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. This variance mainly results from the amortization of the intangible asset relating to a price complement to be paid to Novo Nordisk A/S following the agreement signed with AstraZeneca. The related amortization expense amounts to 3.0 million for fiscal year 2017 compared to 2.4 million for the fiscal year 2016. Other income and expenses, net Other income and expenses amounted 1.0 million and 1.1 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. Net financial income The net financial income amounted to 5.4 million for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, to be compared to a 8.0 million loss for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2017. This adverse variance mainly results from foreign exchange losses on our financial assets held in U.S. dollars resulting from the variance of the Euro / U.S. dollar exchange rate. The Company's cash investment policy is preferentially directed to instruments with an absence of risk on principal and, whenever possible, guaranteed minimum performance. Only a small fraction of its investment portfolio (2.3% as of December 31, 2017) includes some financial instruments presenting a level of risk, which is considered as very low. The balance of cash, cash equivalents and short term investments was 197.7 million and 116.1 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. In addition, the Company held 33.0 million and 60.5 million of non-current financial assets at December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. This decrease in our cash position in 2017 resulted from the financing of our activities and especially our R&D expenses. Income tax expense For the first time, the taxable income of the company was positive for the year ended December 31, 2016. The tax payable in respect of this exercise amounts to 301 thousand. According to the nature of its revenues, the Company concluded in 2016 that it was subject to the regime of capital gains income from intellectual property and therefore benefits from the reduced 15% tax rate. In 2017, the Company eventually concluded that it was not eligible to this regime and recognized an additional 368 thousand income expense, which corresponds to the difference between the standard 33.33% and the 15% rate. In the absence of a sufficient probability for recovering, no deferred tax asset was recognized. In accordance with IFRS, the research tax credit is classified as an 'Other revenue' and not in the line 'Income tax expense'. Net income/(loss) per share The net loss per authorized and issued share came to a gain of 0.23 per share and a loss of 0.89 per share for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2016 and 2017, respectively. Balance sheet items Cash, cash equivalents and financial instruments (current and non-current) amounted to 176.6 million as of December 31, 2017, including non-current financial instruments (60.5 million), compared with 230.7 million as of December 31, 2016. The cash assets held by the Company are composed of current accounts and fixed term accounts. Current financial assets are mainly composed of shares of mutual funds and bonds. Their purpose consists of financing our activities, including our research and developemnt costs. Since its incorporation in 1999, the Company has been primarily financed by partnerships and by issuing new securities. The Company has generated cash flow from its collaborations, from repayable financing and grants received from various French and foreign public organizations (including Oseo, become Bpifrance) and from research tax credit. The other key balance sheet items as of December 31, 2017 are as follows: Deferred revenue for 134.9 million relating to the remaining of the initial payment from AstraZeneca not yet recognized as turnover (including 87.0 million booked as 'Other non-current liabilities');

Receivables from the French government in relation to research tax credit for the year 2017 (11.0 million);

Intangible assets for a net book value of 46.2 million, mainly corresponding to the rights and licences relating to the acquisition of the anti-NKG2A, anti-CD39 and anti-C5aR antibodies;

Shareholders' equity of 86.0 million including the net loss for the period (48.4 million). Cash-flow items Net cash flows used over the fiscal year 2017 amounted to 76.5 million, to be compared to net cash flows used for the fiscal year 2016 amounting to 23.0 million. The cash flow used during the period under review mainly results from the following: Net cash used in operating activities of 48.1m, mainly resulting from research and development activities and personel expenses;

Net cash used in investing activities for an amount of 29.5 million, mainly resulting from: The purchase (net of disposal) of non-current financial assets for an amount of 28.0 million, The purchase of intangible assets for an amount of 3.1 million, mainly corresponding to the purchase of anti-C5aR (2.8 million paid in cash); The purchase of tangible assets for an amount of 3.0 million.

Net cash from financing activities for an amount of 0.9m. Post balance sheet events On January 30, the Company announced a non-exclusive clinical trial collaboration with MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca. The Phase I/II study (STELLAR-001) will evaluate the safety and efficacy of durvalumab, an anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, in combination with Innate's investigational first-in-class anti-C5aR monoclonal antibody, IPH5401, as a treatment for patients with selected solid tumors. Innate will sponsor the study with costs equally shared by both parties. Risk factors Risk factors affecting the Company are presented in Paragraph 1.8 of the latest "Document de Reference" submitted to the French stock-market regulator, the "Autorite des Marches Financiers" on March 31, 2017. Annual financial report for 2017 and "Reference Document" The Company intends to file its 2017 annual financial report as well as its "Reference Document" for the year so that these documents are made public during the second quarter of 2018.





[a] current and non-current [b] Phase II trial testing the efficacy of lirilumab as a single agent maintenance treatment in elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia. [c] This program is developed within the TumAdoR project (www.tumador.eu), coordinated by Dr C. Caux (Centre Leon Berard and Centre de Recherche en Cancerologie, Lyon, France), and funded under the European Community's seventh framework Program (European Community's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n602200).

Attachment: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b1ab7eb6-bfec-47a5-9498-ec845cee9d82

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[March 08, 2018] Lymbyc Solutions Creates World's First Virtual Analyst - Lymbyc

BENGALURU, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lymbyc enables real-time predictive decision-making across enterprise, consumer space

Lymbyc harnesses Artificial Intelligence for predictive decision inputs including w hat if scenario building

Quick and cost-effective, Lymbyc mimics the capabilities of a human analyst while delivering the benefits of rapid scalability at fractional cost

Allowing organizations to harness all their data including syndicated and custom market research data In a bid to empower the business leader with the decision-making process and also democratize data science, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. launches 'Lymbyc'- world's first virtual data scientist. It takes inspiration from the limbic brain that helps guide humans on 'why' we do things. Lymbyc is a self-service, predictive, insights platform that is driven by an adaptive machine learning engine. It helps improve decision-making in organizations by curating embedded intelligence across all data sources, while tackling enormous amounts of data, organizational silos and information complexity. Data science is a growing market and Lymbyc is all set to grab its market share. According to Statistics MRC, the global data science platform market was accounted for span >$19.75 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $128.21 billion by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 36.5% during the forecast period.



Speaking at the launch Mr. Satyakam Mohanty, Founder, Lymbyc Solutions, said, "Big Data Analytics have often been used as a validation resource and existing solutions help organizations answer the 'what' and 'how' kind of business queries at best, but cannot help them understand the 'why'. We wanted to create a solution that truly mimics analysts and data scientists and does not stop at being just an intuitive BI system. Lymbyc enables organizations to undertake data discovery and predictive insight generation through a proprietary NLP-based querying language that harnesses Artificial Intelligence, thus helping them to take strategic decisions in real-time across enterprise and consumer spaces. It automatically learns what is relevant for your business with every interaction and continually curates information for future sharing." Lymbyc is a cost-effective solution that can be deployed fast, has the capacity exceeding entire teams of data scientists to help companies deal with complex and time consuming business queries in real-time. It is especially designed for business leaders - to make insights available to them at the point of decision making.

About Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Previously known as Ma Foi Analytics, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. was founded in 2012 to build robust analytical products that melded advanced technology to strong data science foundations to help organizations deal with these core fundamental problems. With a vision to empower the business leader at the point of decision making and to elevate analytics from just being a validation resource to an intervention mechanism with foresight, Lymbyc was conceptualized. Headquartered in Bangalore, Lymbyc Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a leading edge innovator in advanced analytics solutions serving varied clients across India, the US, Singapore and in the Middle East. Founded by Satyakam Mohanty, the organization has come a long way from providing traditional consulting services to building world class solutions rooted in AI and Big Data. Media Contact:

Krithika Rao

krithika@prhub.com

+91-9739373689

Senior Executive-Brand Communication

PRHUB Integrated Marketing Communication Pvt. Ltd



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[March 08, 2018] Japanese leaders in innovation to join GREAT Festival of Innovation in Hong Kong this month

Top industry leaders and innovators announced to take part in the GREAT Festival of Innovation 2018 HONG KONG, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading Japanese innovators will represent the country's global strengths in innovation and technology on an international stage at the GREAT Festival of Innovation, taking place in Hong Kong this month. The Festival, which forms part of the UK government's GREAT Britain campaign, will be a platform to connect cutting-edge businesses and brilliant thinkers from around the world who will drive trade partnerships of the future, while highlighting the UK's position as a global centre for innovation. Speakers joining the GREAT Festival of Innovation from Japan are leading experts in their fields and come from companies who are pioneering advancements in technology to create more connected, innovative and intuitive societies. The first round of announced speakers from Japan includes: Eiji Uda, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for Tokyo 2020, and Chairman and CEO of Yext. Working with the International Olympic Committee to make Tokyo 2020 the most technologically advanced Games to date, Uda will be at the GREAT Festival of Innovation discussing the Future of Sports and how the advances in technology are being used to improve both participant and spectator experience. For Tokyo 2020, Uda is overseeing innovation including the use of fuel cells as a source of clean energy, advanced security systems, enhanced accuracy in judging, improved user experience, improved technologies for the Paralympics and incorporation of robotics and AI. Shinya Kukita , Chief Engineer of NEC Corporation Global. Having worked with the Tokyo -based IT services and products corporation for nearly four decades, Kukita will be joining a distinguished panel of high-profile, international speakers who will explore the forward-facing technologies developing smarter cities for a better quality of life. A leader in forward-facing technologies, NEC recently entered into a long-term partnership with " Bristol is Open", the UK's flagship digital smart city initiative furthering Bristol's goal to be "the world's first open programmable city". The project commenced in 2016 with a focus on traffic congestion, waste management, entertainment, e-democracy, and energy supply. Takashi Yoshizawa , VP of R&D Autonomous Driving, Nissan. A front-runner in the autonomous drive technology realm, Japanese car manufacturer Nissan recently announced plans to introduce fully autonomous cars to the market by 2022. Nissan performed the first on-road autonomous vehicle tests in Europe in London in 2017, and has this year introduced a single-lane autonomous driving technology for highways to the UK and European market after a successful launch in Japan . At the GREAT Festival of Innovation, Yoshizawa will form part of a panel exploring the future of personal transport, allowing audiences a glimpse into what roads might look like in the near future. Naomi Kurahaa , Co-Founder/CEO, Infostellar. An electrical engineer by trade, in 2016 Kurahara established Infostellar, a cloud-based software platform company that aims to connect satellite operators with antenna owners who can rent or sell their idling time, laying down a communications infrastructure for business expansion in space. Guided by technology-driven decision making and software-driven product development, Infostellar is passionate about creating a new status quo for space communications.



Shinya Kukita, Chief Engineer of NEC Corporation Global who will speak in the session "Smart Cities: From Simulations to Citizens", says: "NEC's in-house R&D team devises world-class technology, but we also need to be open to other ideas. Innovation comes from different ideas, so we always keep ourselves open to opportunities where we can share knowledge and ideas. With an international audience of innovators, thought leaders and decision makers, the GREAT Festival of Innovation is a very good opportunity for us to widen our views to help foster our innovative spirit."

The GREAT Festival of Innovation will provide a unique platform for reinforcing the strong ties between Japan and the UK. Recent successful partnerships include Japanese robotics maker tmusk, who opened their first UK office in Bristol in 2017. The pioneering developer have created more than 60 types of robots to service industries including medical, communications and disaster relief, and opened their UK office thanks to the country's open testing regulations for autonomous vehicles, innovative R&D opportunities and support for SMEs, with a vision to help promote joint research and development between Japan and Britain. Her Majesty's Ambassador to Japan, Paul Madden CMG says: "GREAT Festival of Innovation will bring together world-leaders in innovation from the UK and across the North Asia region, and I am delighted to see such high quality speakers representing the very best of Japanese innovative business. The UK and Japan enjoy an extremely strong partnership and we look forward to increased collaboration to unlock new ideas and opportunities." The UK and Japan enjoy a strong trading relationship which the Festival will look to further strengthen through connecting the cutting-edge businesses and brilliant thinkers who will drive trade partnerships of the future. In 2016, Japan was the UK's: 11th largest trading partner (accounting for 2.1% of total UK trade)

11th largest export market (accounting for 2.3% of all UK exports)

12th largest import market (accounting for 1.9% of all UK imports) The top 5 UK services exported to Japan in 2016 were: Financial (61.9% of all UK services exported to Japan )

) Other business services (14.9%)

Transportation (7.6%)

Travel (3.7%)

Telecommunications, computer and information services (3.3%) Attending the Festival will be a strong delegation of business leaders and decision makers from Japan looking to create new business partnerships with their Asia and UK counterparts. Alongside engaging sessions, panels and workshops, there will be a showcase of some of the UK's leading technology. Travelling to Asia for the first time is UK-designed and developed autonomous robot dog MiRo, the creation of designer-in-residence to the University of Sheffield engineering faculty, Sebastian Conran CEO of London/Bristol based Consequential Robotics. A companion robot with six senses capable of emotional engagement, MiRo has been developed in conjunction with Sheffield Robotics to enhance quality of later life. Also showcasing will be McLaren Design Studio who will present their VR technology that allows customers to design their own driving experience and interiors. For more information please visit great.gov.uk/innovation or follow the hashtag #GREATinnovation. High-resolution images can be downloaded here: Link: http://gallery.sinclaircomms.com/gallery/GREAT+Festival+of+Innovation

Password: talkofthetown Media Contacts:

For interviews with speakers or GREAT Festival of Innovation spokespeople, please contact

Sinclair at (852) 2915 1234:

Emma Williamson | emma@sinclaircomms.com

Nikki McLucas | nikki@sinclaircomms.com

Jessica Man| jessicam@sinclaircomms.com About GREAT Festival of Innovation 2018 The GREAT Festival of Innovation, to be held at Asia Society Hong Kong Centre from 21 to 24 March 2018, is the third of its kind after the success of the GREAT Festivals of Creativity in Istanbul (2014) and Shanghai (2015). Its vision is to share innovation and create life-long partnerships that will drive the future of free trade and prosperity between the UK, Hong Kong and the region. The Festival will explore the latest in cutting-edge innovation and the future of how we work, live, play and learn through a series of talks, panels and interactive workshops over four days. Bringing together some of the world's brightest minds, business leaders and policy makers, the Festival will provide a unique platform for powerful future partnerships. The GREAT Campaign Bringing the best of Britain to the world The GREAT Britain campaign showcases the best of what the whole nation has to offer to inspire the world and encourage people to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK. It is the Government's most ambitious international promotional campaign, uniting the efforts of the public and private sector to generate jobs and growth for Britain. The campaign has already secured confirmed economic returns of GBP3.1bn for the UK. The UK has a huge amount to offer, with world-class universities, ground breaking research, high tech start-ups and entrepreneurial business people. Global leaders in the creative industries like music, fashion, design and film, the UK can offer visitors unforgettable experiences, breath-taking landscapes and iconic attractions. The GREAT Britain campaign captures the best of all that is familiar about the UK, but also what is new and surprising about the country. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075312-1-a

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075312-1-b

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075312-1-c

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075312-1-d

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075312-1-e

Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180105/2026066-1LOGO

SOURCE GREAT Festival of Innovation

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[March 08, 2018] The Cochin Chamber of Commerce & Industry Adopts Adobe Sign to Simplify Digital Documentation Process for its Members

NEW DELHI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cochin Chamber of Commerce & Industry today announced integration of Adobe Sign into their digital documentation process, in partnership with Docswallet, a blockchain digital locker services provider. With the use of Adobe's e-signature solution, the Cochin Chamber is looking to ease the distribution process of digital documents for its members, make them legally valid and add a security and compliance layer. The Chamber offers several documentation services such as certificates of origin, visa invitation letters, no objection certificates, attestations and more. These documents are then used by the Chamber members to apply for visas, export goods, register a foreign branch of the company etc. The new process will help reduce the complexity in export documentation, logistics, sending documents to multiple agencies for signing etc. With the implementation of Adobe Sign, the Chamber has witnessed greater efficiencies for its member community, with 90% reduction in turnaround time for document processing. "We are committed to providing the highest quality of service in the most professional manner to our members and the business community in Kerala, and are pleased to partner with Docswallet for our end-to-end digital documentation process. With the recent implementation of Adobe Sign, we have been able to make the entire process of digital documentation easy, legal and reliable for our members," said Shaji Varghese, President of the Cochin Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Commenting on the potential of e-signatures and its partnership, Sunil Kumar Mohapatra, Director - South Asia Region, Adobe, said, "The market for e-signatures in India is growing at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 57% and is expected to cross over 90 million transactions by 2020. With the digitization drive in full swing in the country, we are happy to have a trusted partner like Docswallet to further the Digital India vision and provide convenient and secure digital documentation services to customrs across industries." He further added, "We are happy to support The Cochin Chamber in taking their digital documentation process to the next level and providing an enhanced experience to their members and business partners."



Adobe has partnered with Docswallet Digital Locker Services for providing end-to-end document solutions to its clients. Adobe's globally compliant signature solution, along with Docswallet Digital Locker Services, aims to ease the way of doing business for clients, especially in trade. Docswallet provides digital documentation solutions to the trade businesses, enabling exporters to share confidential and critical documents such as invoices, certificates etc. with importers in a timely and cost-efficient manner. The Adobe Sign solution will enable exporters along with other government agencies, accredited labs and others to transact documents digitally, thereby creating a paperless process, saving time, effort and money for businesses. Commenting on the implementation, Avira Tharakan, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Locker Services, said, "We are glad to associate with The Cochin Chamber and help them reach faster turnaround time for documents, allowing their members to track as well as manage the entire process electronically. We are hopeful to take this service to other State Chambers soon to truly help achieve the Digital India dream." He further added, "We are happy to provide a full range of digital documentation services to our customers, from storing of official documents to issuing and exchanging them with other parties. Due to our strong partnership with Adobe, we are able to deliver the highest levels of security, efficiency and legal compliance to our customers."

Adobe Document Cloud helps organisations drive business faster and deliver superior customer experiences, on any device, by making paper-based processes 100% digital. At the heart of Document Cloud is Acrobat DC, the world's best PDF solution; Adobe Sign, the leading e-signature solution that allows anyone to sign and send documents from any device; and powerful companion mobile apps. Document Cloud offers integrations with industry leaders like Salesforce, Microsoft, Workday, Dropbox and Box, so people can work the way they're accustomed to working. About The Cochin Chamber of Commerce and Industry The Cochin Chamber of Commerce and Industry is one of the oldest Chambers of Commerce in the country having completed 160 years of service to the trade and commerce. They are also a promoter chamber of ASSOCHAM - the apex industry body of the country. The Chamber is committed to providing the highest quality of service in the most professional manner to its members and the community that it aims to serve. The Chamber acts, advocates and liaises promptly and efficiently with the Government, other agencies, organizations and the society at large to promote the cause of its members. For more information, visit http://www.cochinchamber.org. About Docswallet Docswallet enables users to get digitally certified copies of documents on blockchain from their official sources, store and organize them in a locker, and submit them as required. A large number of universities and other organisations in India have already adopted DocsWallet. About Adobe Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit http://www.adobe.com/in Press Contacts:

Tanvi Maheshwary

Adobe

+91-9654022951

tmaheshw@adobe.com Advait Soman

The PRactice

+91-9717106056

advait@the-practice.net



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[March 08, 2018] School of Communication, Atma Jaya Catholic University, in cooperation with APAC PR Research and Education Network, discusses on Navigating our Cyber-Worlds in Public Relations

JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- School of Communication, ATMA JAYA Catholic University of Indonesia will hold ASIA-PACIFIC PUBLIC RELATIONS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORK (APPRREN) CONFERENCE and 2nd INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ROUNDTABLE on 8-9 March 2018 with a theme "Navigating our Cyber-Worlds: Multiple Perspective Approaches to Communication." The increasing usage and ubiquity of online media technology presents many opportunities and benefits, especially for marginalised communities that previously had limited access to information. Several sources report a marked surge of online activity particularly in the Asia Pacific region, many in countries where the infrastructure and regulatory environment have not kept apace. The access to overwhelming amount of information by massive numbers of the population provides opportunities for many private and public-sector representatives. For corporations, they can leverage their brands to new markets. For government, they can offer services and key government information more efficiently. But the open access to information without the necessary media literacy and regulatory frameworks can also pose major risks. Communication practitioners find themselves in he middle of these challenges and opportunities. Engaging with virtual and real stakeholders require various skills and knowledge. Moreover, handling crises in the digital space take new meaning. For instance, cyber crises represent new forms of engagement with often 'unseen' actors. At the same time employees and communities become more empowered to express their voices as they are armed with digital media technologies.



To investigate these current changes, we gather people from various backgrounds to share their critical thoughts and ideas on a two-day conference. The conference will start with Keynote speech by Prof. Anne Gregory entitled Big Picture of Cyber-world: PR Dialogue. And the proceeding program consists of three sessions, which are plenary, discussion, and workshop sessions. Plenary session:

Agung Laksamana: The Cyber World Challenges: How PR Practice Evolves

Marianne D. Sison: The Need for Advanced PR Research and Education in the Cyber World

Nia Sarinastiti: Improving PR Competence in the Cyber World: Educators and Practitioners Collaborative Approach

Discussion session: Ann Thebaut: Ethics in Public Relations Academic Work Workshop session: Andre Hardjana: The Value of Academicians as Communication Auditors Venue:

Yustinus Building 14th Floor, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia

Jl. Jenderal Sudirman No.51, Jakarta 12930 The School of Communication at UNIKA ATMA JAYA was established in 2009 with the aim to produce graduates to become professional with the ability to develop strategic and practical concepts based on ethics and international insights. The school offers concentrations on Corporate Communication, Marketing Communication, and Media and Communication. For further information, visit www.atmajaya.ac.id; FB: Komunikasi Atma Jaya; Twitter: @komunikasi_uaj; Instagram: @komunikasi_uaj; prodi.komunikasi@atmajaya.ac.id Contact:

Lisa Esti Puji Hartanti

+62 81328777463

lisa.esti@atmajaya.ac.id Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20180308/2075234-1LOGO SOURCE School of Communication, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia

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[March 08, 2018] Huntkey Showcases Multiple Intelligent Electronics at AWE 2018

SHANGHAI, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Huntkey, a global leading provider of power solutions, is present again from Mar. 8 to 11 at Appliance & Electronics World Expo (AWE) showcasing a wide range of its intelligent electronic products including an air purifier, an LED desk lamp, an LED bulb, USB power stations, wireless chargers, tea makers, etc. AWE is a world-class information and communication platform for appliances and electronics, through which numerous well-known exhibitors will display their newest technologies and most innovative products to the world. As a pioneer in China's power supply and electronics sectors, Huntkey has been attending AWE for many years and showcasing a large amount of its creations each year. Designed with ultra strong air cleaning performance, the Huntkey air purifier is well suited for schools, hospitals, nursing homes, kindergartens and offices. It can intelligently detect air quality and eliminate the airborne hazards, including germs, viruses, odors and chemical gases to ensure users can breathe the healthiest, cleanest air possible. It has a double-layer and high-efficient purification system. It can capture particles smaller than 2.5 microns with the first layer of medical grade 5-in-1 HEPA pre-filter. With the second layer of photocatalyst filter, it is able to remove odors, as well as chemically decompose living organisms such as bacteria and viruses into carbon dioxide and water instead of absorbing them, leaving no secondary pollution. In addition, it will release negative ions that are scientifically proved to be good for health. LED lightning, Huntkey's new product category, is also being presented at the trade show. Designed for home and office use, the Huntkey LED desk lamp is foldable for easy use and equipped with a touch sensitive dimmer that allows users to adjust the brightness of the light. It features a hi-resolution LCD display to show the date, time, temperature; an alarm clock; and 2 built-in USB ports to charge devices such as smart phones, tablets and power banks.



The Huntkey dimmable LED bulb is designed with a long lifespan up to 30,000 hours, which means it can be used for nearly 27 years based on 3 hour daily use. This super durable feature will not only reduce the hassle of replacing bulbs so often for users but also save money along with its 86% energy efficiency. Furthermore, its Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) can be remote controlled from 3000K to 6500K using an app on a smart phone. The plant grow light is designed to give off the perfect wavelength of light for all growing stages of plants, including seeding, germination, vegetative and flowering. It is suitable for both hydroponics and indoor plants in soil.

For more excellent product experience, please visit the Huntkey booth. Date: Mar. 8-11, 2018

Address: Shanghai New International Expo Center, Shanghai, China

Booth No.: 3E86 Huntkey at AWE 2018: https://en.huntkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/huntkey-awe2018-01.jpg

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https://en.huntkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/huntkey-awe2018-02.jpg About AWE Appliance & Electronics World Expo is organized by the China Household Electrical Appliances Association (CHEAA). Relying on China's household appliance industry with global attention and the stably-developed household appliance consumer market, AWE has become one of the world's 3 biggest exhibitions in this area. Based on Asian and global markets, AWE will become an industrial event leading the trends of international household appliances. About Huntkey Huntkey Group, founded in 1995 and headquartered in Shenzhen, is a member of The International Power Supply Manufacturer's Association (PSMA) and a member of The China Power Supply Society (CPSS). With branch companies in the USA, Japan and other areas, and cooperating factories in Brazil, Argentina, India and other countries, Huntkey has specialized in the development, design, and manufacturing of PC power supplies, industrial power supplies, surge protectors, adapters and chargers for many years. With its own technologies and manufacturing strength, Huntkey has served Lenovo, Huawei, Haier, DELL, ZTE, Bestbuy and many other large enterprises for years, and has received unanimous recognition and trust from many customers. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/huntkey-showcases-multiple-intelligent-electronics-at-awe-2018-300610539.html SOURCE Huntkey

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[March 08, 2018] TAITRA Announces COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India 2018

BANGALORE, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- COMPUTEX 2018, to be held in Taipei from June 5th to 9th, 2018, will attract more Indian visitors this year SMART ASIA India 2018 to be held in Bangalore from October 4th to 6th, 2018 The Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the foremost non-profit trade promotion organisation in Taiwan, today announced COMPUTEX 2018, to be held from June 5th to 9th, in the capital city of Taiwan, Taipei, and the Second Edition of the 'SMART ASIA India 2018-Expo & Summit' to be held from October 4th to 6th in Bangalore. The announcement was made in the presence of key dignitaries including Mr. James M. S. Kuo, Deputy Executive Director of Exhibition Department, TAITRA; Mr. M. N. Vidyashankar, Former Additional Chief Secretary to Govt. of Karnataka and Mr. Mohan Rajamani, Vice Chairman, American Chamber of Commerce. Welcoming the audience at the conference, Mr. James Kuo said, "TAITRA is glad to announce COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India 2018 here. Taiwan has been making a drastic shift from high-tech manufacturing to an innovation-driven economy. Our advanced ICT capabilities have earned us the status of a global leader in smart technologies and smart city solutions, and we want to extend this expertise to our Indian counterparts." He added, "India is not only one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also witnessing an exponential growth in information technology sector. We value India's market potential, its globally competitive ICT industry, its rich talent resources and the vision led by Honourable Prime Minister Shree Narendra Modi for the Smart Cities Mission. With both COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India 2018, we are hoping to create more opportunities for trade, industry collaboration and knowledge partnerships between India and Taiwan." SMART ASIA India 2018 is a BB trade show initiated by TAITRA to facilitate India's ambitious 'Smart Cities Mission'. The themes for 2018 focus on three major aspects, namely, Smart City Solutions, Smart Technology Applications, and City Development Product and Services. SMART ASIA India will demonstrate cutting-edge technologies and solutions available to tackle challenges that Indian cities are facing as a result of urbanization and increasing population.



Sharing his vision for SMART ASIA India 2018, Mr. James Kuo stressed, "We received a significant level of recognition and active participation from industry stakeholders in the first edition. This year we are expecting the number of visitors to the show to increase by 30 percent." He continued, "Taiwan has been utilizing smart technologies in building efficient modern cities for many years now and SMART ASIA India provides an excellent platform to connect Taiwan's competence in this domain and India's opportunities to build intelligent, robust and efficient smart cities." While SMART ASIA India 2018 is seeking a long-term partnership with the South Asian country to realize the Smart Cities vision, COMPUTEX 2018 is looking forward to attracting more Indian visitors to enhance the India-Taiwan trade relationship.

COMPUTEX is the world's leading B2B ICT/IoT and start-up exhibitions. With a new positioning, COMPUTEX 2018 will be focusing on AI, 5G, Blockchain, IoT, Innovations & Start-ups, and Gaming & VR. Taiwan is ranked number 1 in Asia for the Global Entrepreneurship Index in 2017, which makes the best endorsement for start-ups to expand their business in Taiwan. To further boost this idea, COMPUTEX will set up InnoVEX, a prevailing start-up event in Asia which is a networking platform for aspiring newly established businesses across the globe. The theme for InnoVEX exhibit 2018 is 'Finding the RIGHT FIT' and it is set to host more than 300 global start-ups and accelerators. With 1600 exhibitors and 5010 booths, last year the response for COMPUTEX was overwhelming. COMPUTEX 2017 was a host to 41,378 international visitors from 167 countries. Speaking on COMPUTEX 2018, Mr. James Kuo commented, "The result of an effective transformation brings more buyers and opportunities for COMPUTEX exhibitors. Industry leaders such as Acer, Adata, Asus, Coolermaster, Gigabyte, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Supermicro, Thermaltek and many others are looking to showcase the latest innovations this coming June. COMPUTEX 2018 will not only serve as a platform for procurement, but also a hub for established brands and start-ups to interact, connect and cooperate." India stood among the Top 10 visitors for COMPUTEX 2017 and the footfall from Indian visitors is expected to grow to 20% this year." COMPUTEX also recently made its presence at Convergence 2018 in Delhi starting from 7th to 9th March, showcasing the winning products of the COMPUTEX d&i Awards and the response has been tremendous. About TAITRA The organiser of COMPUTEX 2018 and SMART ASIA India is the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, TAITRA, the foremost non-profit trade promotion organisation in Taiwan. Founded in 1970, TAITRA assists Taiwanese businesses and manufacturers in strengthening their international competitiveness, and dealing with challenges in foreign markets. TAITRA boasts of a well-coordinated trade promotion and information network of over 1,200 trained specialists, stationed throughout its Taipei headquarters, five local branch offices in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, and more than 60 overseas branch offices worldwide. Together with its sister organisations, Taiwan Trade Center (TTC) and Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), TAITRA has created a wealth of trade opportunities through effective promotional strategies. In addition to organising trade delegations and providing customised procurement services, TAITRA also hosts more than 40 international trade shows annually, both in Taiwan and abroad. Media Contact:

Hesha Parekh

hesha.parekh@communicateindia.com

+91-9833113169

Senior Executive

Communicate India





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[March 08, 2018] BePear Celebrating International Women's Day

AUSTIN, Texas, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Women are revolting against stereotypes and breaking free from the boundaries many factions place around them. No longer are women accepting the sour pill of unrealistic societal norms. To this end, they instead celebrate the feminine spirit and strength on International Women's Day taking place on March 8, 2018. With this revolution, comes the body positive movement and a new clothing brand created by Bella Pear LLC out of Austin, Texas. Bella Pear has conceived the BePear Brand, a novel perspective on fashion. "As an entrepreneur and founder of Bella Pear, and as a woman, I am passionate about disrupting the fashion industry that for so long has ignored the needs of women of different shapes and sizes," said Frances Pinedo, founder and CEO of Bella Pear. The BePear Brand is focused on providing garments to the pear-shaped figure and curvy bodies in all sizes. Fashion is about art and beauty, but sometimes unreasonable expectations are piled on women. The average woman in the USA is 5'4", 160 pounds and wears size 14. However, typical industry designs are often based on a 5'10" and 110-pound straight body. Pinedo believes the fashion industry needs to acknowledge that women come in different shapes and sizes, all of which are beautiful. BePear brings a change to this methodology with its proprietary size chart and designs that have been specifically created for the curvier body. The BePear approach first designs for the average-sized pear and curvy figures - simple elegant pieces which are versatile and timeless. Keeping true to the BePear philosophy, the sizes are adjusted up and down based on this body type. Initial designs centered on the straight figure which are then sized down on height and outwards on shape are not necessarily complimentary for a curvy body. The garment will pull and tug in the wrong areas and ill-fitting clothing will make a huge difference in a woman's appearance and level of comfort. Bella Pear believes womn should feel comfortable with their bodies while embellishing their curves.



BePear arose after extensive research over the last three years on the beautiful pear-shaped figure and the needs of this market. The overriding "problem area" was the waist to hip ratio. The pear-shaped and hour-glass figures naturally have a smaller waist and are hip-endowed with the hips being up to two sizes larger than the waist under today's standard size charts. This presents a challenge when shopping as these customers may find that garments will either fit too loose at the waist or too tight at the hips. Shopping for clothing turns into a scavenger hunt regardless of a size 4 or size 24 for this figure. Consequently, the BePear brand was launched to cater to the needs of this group during the summer of 2017 through its e-commerce site www.bepear.com. BePear has two product lines: an exclusive collection of designs specifically created for the pear-shape and curvy bodies, as well as the BePear Approved collection, which are garments and accessories that have been vetted by the BePear team as harmonizing with this body type. With the latter, the BePear team strives to standardize the sizing such that a re-calculated BePear size is provided to the customer for best-recommended fit. BePear ships in the USA only at this time, but incredible opportunities exist in other regions of the world, and the team is assessing next markets.

In celebration of International Women's Day, the BePear team is collaborating with Texas A&M's MS Marketing Program on a "My Body Shape is...Mine" campaign. This initiative is designed around women's empowerment and will take place at the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas, leading up to International Women's Day on March 8. Bella Pear firmly supports the body positive movement and women's embrace of their uniquely beautiful bodies, pushing the norms towards a more accepting and progressive world. About Bella Pear Frances Pinedo is the CEO and founder of Bella Pear LLC based out of Austin, Texas. She has been a cutting-edge entrepreneur for over 20 years across many industries, some of which include financial services, restaurant, consulting and fashion. Ms. Pinedo is a problem-solver having graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Operations Research and Stanford University Graduate School of Business in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. #MYBODYSHAPEIS #INTERNATIONALWOMENSDAY #PRESSFORPROGRESS #BEPEARFASHION #BEPEAR Media Contact: Rene Gonzalez

512-809-0863

rene.gonzalez@bellapear.com Related Images celebrating-international-womens.png

Celebrating International Women's Day image2.png Related Links BePear View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bepear-celebrating-international-womens-day-300610499.html SOURCE Bella Pear

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[March 08, 2018] comScore Releases New 'Global Digital Future in Focus' Providing Snapshot of International Multi-Platform Consumption

Increased Mobile Measurement Footprint Allows Global Perspective on Mobile Audiences, Apps and Content Categories LONDON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. today published its 2018 international digital overview, titled 'Global Digital Future in Focus'. This new report provides a snapshot of desktop, smartphone and tablet usage around the globe, examining how audiences and content consumption changed over the course of 2017. The report uses multi-platform data from USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, India, Indonesia and Malaysia to demonstrate global commonalities and local nuances. To download a copy of the report, please visit: www.comscore.com/GlobalDFIF2018. "Global digital landscapes continue to evolve in often surprising ways," said Will Hodgman, executive vice president of international sales at comScore. "This report demonstrates how consumers are making platform decisions based on content types, as well as unique factors in their markets. It's clear that blanket assumptions do not apply at either a global or local level, and this report provides a top line view of how brands and marketers can benefit from a more granular understanding of digital consumption." The Global Digital Future in Focus coves topics including:



Mobile (and apps') share of overall digital time and audiences in international markets, including how 'mobile only' usage has evolved

The platform choices and demographic balances of individual content categories, including an update on where 'mobile first' behaviours are most pronounced

Where consolidation of digital is occurring, and why that is not necessarily cause for alarm for the mid- and long-tail

The international app landscape, and where growth is occurring

A spotlight on multi-platform video consumption To download The Global Digital Future in Focus, please visit www.comscore.com/GlobalDFIF2018. About comScore

comScore is a leading cross-platform measurement company that measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. comScore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016, to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, comScore's data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers' multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and a global footprint in more than 70 countries, comScore is delivering the future of measurement. Shares of comScore stock are currently traded on the OTC Market (OTC:SCOR). For more information on comScore, please visit comscore.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including, but not limited to, expectations regarding the impact and benefits to comScore from the MMX family of products, financial or otherwise. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially, including, but not limited to: the features and characteristics of the products, the rate of development of the digital marketing intelligence, Internet advertising and e-Commerce markets; the growth of the Internet as a medium for commerce, content, advertising and communications; and the acceptance of new products and methodologies by the industry, including existing and prospective clients.

For a detailed discussion of these and other risk factors, please refer to comScore's most recent respective Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and from time to time other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which are available on the SEC's Web site (http://www.sec.gov). Stockholders of comScore are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date such statements are made. comScore does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or new information after the date of this press release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/327730/comScore_Logo.jpg

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[March 08, 2018] Joe Benz Named Director of Operations for Leading-Edge Electronics Manufacturer Intervala

Intervala, LLC, a full-service manufacturer of high-reliability, precision electronic and electromechanical products, announced today that Joe Benz has joined the Company as director of operations. Benz's career in operations management and engineering spans more than 30 years in a variety of technology driven industries, including medical, industrial, commercial, and military. In this newly created role, Benz will lead Intervala's electronics manufacturing operations with responsibility for production, production control, and manufacturing engineering, and will direct continuous improvement initiatives and programs for the Company. He reports to Chief Operating Officer Scott Gustafson. Benz joined Intervala from Conelec Electronic Manufacturing where he served as vice president of operations. He previously was employed as operations manager for Ducommun LaBarge Technologies, Inc., an its predecessor LaBarge, Inc. During his extensive career, Benz also held operations management and engineering positions with Sound Technology Inc., C-COR (News - Alert) , Inc., and Moog Inc. He earned a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.



"We are excited that Joe has chosen to join our team and put his significant leadership and operations experience to work for Intervala," said Teresa Huber, president and CEO. "Joe's background and expertise will help us take our manufacturing operations to the next level. In addition, his commitment to customer satisfaction and continuous improvement will allow us to enhance our partnerships with customers and continue to grow and compete in our target markets." About Intervala

At Intervala, we create customized, intelligent solutions for each customer's unique requirements. We are a full-service manufacturer of high-reliability, precision electronic and electromechanical products for companies in industrial, medical, transportation, and other technology-driven markets. Customers choose Intervala because we understand their complex product and service needs. Our team draws on decades of experience to bring a fresh approach to problem-solving, combining turnkey manufacturing capabilities and engineering, materials management, and global fulfillment services to deliver smart, innovative solutions. Total customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of our business. To learn more about Intervala, visit www.intervala.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005325/en/

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[March 08, 2018] Pareteum Enters Mexican Market in a 5 Year $4.5 Million MVNO Agreement

NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Pareteum Corporation (NYSE American: TEUM), ("Pareteum" or the "Company"), the rapidly growing Cloud Communications Platform company, announced today that it has signed a 5-year contract to provide its Global Cloud Services Platform (GCSP) and Connectivity for roaming, airtime, voice and SMS to a National Mobile Virtual Network Operator who will provide services throughout Mexico. The contracting service provider is a joint venture among a long established social entrepreneur organization and a social capital business focused locally in Mexico, that operates worldwide with a mission aimed at bringing financial inclusion to the most remote and economically disadvantaged regions of the globe. This new agreement in Mexico represents their first-time inclusion of affordable mobile and broadband services. Pareteum is powering this new customer to build their subscriber revenues with applications addressing: Mobile Money, Mobile Banking, E-Commerce, Education, Healthcare, Financial Inclusion, and Emergency Management. Using the Pareteum Global Cloud solution means that there is no heavy infrastructure or software investment for the JV and more of their investment will go to serving the underserved. Under the terms of the contract, Pareteum will be paid monthly for every subscriber on the platform and additionally for connectivity services. This new brand is expected to go live by the end of Q2 2018 and is further expected to generate $2.7 million over the next 36 months in contractual revenue backlog. Vic Bozzo, CEO of Pareteum commented, "Last year we set in motion a strategy to acquire customers in every corner of the globe by giving them one simple platform and connectivity in as many places as we could through partnerships with incumbent Mobile Network Operators and Carriers. This latest win is specifically a result of the hard work of our talented sales force and market leading technology with simple interfaces and bundled connections." Hal Turner, Executive Chairman and Principal Executive Officer of Pareteum stated, "Our participation in bringing greatly needed communications services to an underserved area is most gratifying. It is the affordability of our Global Cloud Services Platform which is makin this possible for social entrepreneurism at its best. The network effect continues with this announcement but even more significant is the recognition that the merging of Connections, relevant new technology delivered through platform as a service, and the power of the cloud to connect anywhere, is creating new streams of revenue for Service Providers, Branded companies, and serving a greatly needed public service."



About Pareteum:

The mission of Pareteum Corporation (NYSE American: TEUM) is to connect "every person and everything". Organizations use Pareteum to energize their growth and profitability through cloud communication services and complete turnkey solutions featuring relevant content, applications, and connectivity worldwide. Our platform services partners (technologies integrated into our cloud) include: HPE, IBM, Sonus, Oracle, Microsoft, and other world class technology providers. All of the relevant customer acquired value is derived from Pareteum's award winning software, developed and enhanced for many years. By harnessing the value of communications, Pareteum serves retail, enterprise and IoT customers. Pareteum currently has offices in New York, Sao Paulo, Madrid, Barcelona, Bahrain and the Netherlands. For more information please visit: www.pareteum.com. Forward Looking Statements:

Certain statements contained herein constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements may include, without limitation, statements with respect to Pareteum's plans and objectives, projections, expectations and intentions. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about Pareteum's industry, management's beliefs and certain assumptions made by management. Readers are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Because such statements involve risks and uncertainties, the actual results and performance of Pareteum may differ materially from the results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Given these uncertainties, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise required by law, Pareteum also disclaims any obligation to update its view of any such risks or uncertainties or to announce publicly the result of any revisions to the forward-looking statements made here. Additional information concerning certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested in Pareteum's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available from the SEC or may be obtained upon request from Pareteum Corporation.

Contractual Revenue Backlog Definition:

Contractual revenue backlog is measured on a forward looking 36 month snapshot view monthly, and, is generated by each of the Company's Managed Services, Global Mobility Cloud, and Application Exchange & Developer's Platform customers. The Pareteum multi-year Software-as-a-Service agreements include service establishment and implementation fees, guaranteed minimum monthly recurring fees, as well as contractually scheduled subscribers, in some cases including subscriber usage, during the term of the agreement, and, their resulting monthly recurring revenue. There can be no assurances that we reach the total revenue backlog. The revenue backlog assumes timing of revenue recognition that may vary from actual results. Pareteum Investor Relations Contact:

Ted O'Donnell

Chief Financial Officer

(212) 984-1096

InvestorRelations@pareteum.com

Hayden IR

(917) 658-7878 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pareteum-enters-mexican-market-in-a-5-year-45-million-mvno-agreement-300610468.html SOURCE Pareteum Corporation

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[March 08, 2018] Nokia Bell Labs Prize competition seeks disruptive technology ideas with potential to power the fourth industrial revolution

Press Release Fifth annual global competition provides the opportunity to present game-changing innovations to leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics



Opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs researchers and scientists to refine and enhance proposals



Finalists compete for cash prizes of up to $175,000 8 March 2018 Espoo, Finland - Nokia Bell Labs opens its fifth annual global Prize competition, inviting innovators to submit their disruptive innovations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The Prize process provides contestants with direct access to Nokia Bell Labs researchers and leading luminaries to help refine and develop the full potential of their ideas, to maximize their potential to change the world. Innovators may submit their idea proposals until April 25, 2018. The Nokia Bell Labs Prize competition seeks disruptive innovative proposals that address the grand human challenges that drive and will underpin the fourth industrial revolution, and enable an enhanced ability to sense, control and automate everything. We see this revolution as being driven by augmented intelligence systems connecting to a trillion sensors, systems, platforms and automata/robots over a massive scale distributed network infrastructure, supporting ultra-low latency and ultra-high capacity, reliability and security. The ultimate human goal of this technological revolution is to create and/or save time spent on mundane or repetitive tasks, by creating new knowledge for intelligent control of autmated systems.



Prizes up to $175,000 will be awarded to the first, second and third place winners, who will also be rewarded with an opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs researchers and interact with a luminary judging panel. Marcus Weldon, president of Nokia Bell Labs & CTO for Nokia, said: "We are at the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution that will transform human existence in previously unimaginable ways.The Bell Labs Prize seeks innovators who will power this revolution, with an interest in collaborating with a wide diversity of intellects, disciplines, backgrounds, skills, geographies, philosophies...everything - that's the classic 'Bell Labs way', and the secret of our success."

Apply to the Bell Labs Prize by April 25, 2018 at https://bell-labs.com/prize Connect with Nokia Subscribe to receive information on specific areas of interest

Website

Blog

Twitter

LinkedIn

Facebook About Nokia Bell Labs

Nokia Bell Labs is the world-renowned industrial research arm of Nokia. Over its 90-year history, Bell Labs has invented many of the foundational technologies that underpin information and communications networks and all digital devices and systems. This research has resulted in 8 Nobel Prizes, two Turing Awards, three Japan Prizes, a plethora of National Medals of Science and Engineering, as well as an Oscar, two Grammys and an Emmy award for technical innovation. Nokia Bell Labs continues to conduct disruptive research focused on solving the challenges of the new digital era, defined by the contextual connection and interaction of everything and everyone. www.bell-labs.com About Nokia

We create the technology to connect the world. Powered by the research and innovation of Nokia Bell Labs, we serve communications service providers, governments, large enterprises and consumers, with the industry's most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and licensing. Nokia is enabling the infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of Things, and shaping the future of technology to transform the human experience. www.nokia.com Media Inquiries:

Nokia

Communications

Phone: +358 10 448 4900

Email: press.services@nokia.com

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[March 08, 2018] Ireland Telecom Market Report 2018: Analysis & Outlook Report (2005-2025) - Leading Companies Along with Their Market Shares are Identified

DUBLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "2018 Ireland Telecom Market Analysis and Outlook Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The research work strategically analyzes Ireland telecommunications market, examining the recent trends, drivers and challenges across diverse dimensions such as growth, demand, pricing, competition, consumer behaviour, infrastructure, policies and others. The study also provides in-depth analysis of segment wise telecommunications including mobile, fixed line and fixed broadband services. The number of subscribers and penetration rates are forecast for each of the sub-segment including mobile, fixed landline and broadband segments from 2005 to 2025.



Ireland telecommunication revenues, investment and infrastructure details are also covered in the report. Further, emerging business environment in Ireland together with comparison to five competitive benchmark countries are included, to assess the country's prominence on regional front.



On the competitive analysis front, leading companies along with their market shares are identified. Further, key business strategies of market leaders, their tariffs and SWOT profiles are included. In addition, the research work forecasts the demographic and economic drivers of Ireland that enable strategy planners to formuate their pricing and branding strategies.







The report also includes latest telecommunication market developments, mergers, acquisitions and launches, spectrum availability, tenders and other aspects are analyzed.



Key Topics Covered:





Executive Summary Key Findings

Ireland Telecom Market Overview Ireland Telecom Market-Strategic Analysis Trends Shaping the Future of Ireland Telecom Industry

Key strategies being Implemented by Market Leaders

Telecom Revenues in Ireland

Telecom Investments in Ireland

Market Drivers

Market Restraints Ireland Telecom Market Outlook Fixed Line Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Mobile Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Fixed Broadband Subscriber and Penetration Outlook Ireland Telecom Competitive Environment Market Shares by Company

Major Operators-Domestic vs International

Regulatory Body and Its Role in Industry Ireland Telecom Industry Benchmarking Overall Ranking as Compared to Peer Markets

Demand Index

Infrastructure Index

Growth Index Ireland Economic Outlook to 2025 GDP Forecast, 2005-2025

GDP per Capita Forecast, 2005-2025

Inflation Trends Ireland Demographic Outlook to 2025 Population Forecast, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Gender, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Age Group, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Location-Rural Population: Urban Population, 2005-2025

Unemployment Trends in Ireland Competitor Analysis Company A: Profile and operations in Ireland

Company B: Profile and operations in Ireland

Company C: Profile and operations in Ireland Recent Industry Developments



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6l55q5/ireland_telecom?w=5 Media Contact:

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ireland-telecom-market-report-2018-analysis--outlook-report-2005-2025---leading-companies-along-with-their-market-shares-are-identified-300610675.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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[March 08, 2018] Colombian Telecoms Market Report 2018: Analysis & Forecasts 2005-2025 - Market Developments, M&A, Launches, Spectrum Availability, and Tenders

DUBLIN, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The "2018 Colombia Telecom Market Analysis and Outlook Report" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The research work strategically analyzes Colombia telecommunications market, examining the recent trends, drivers and challenges across diverse dimensions such as growth, demand, pricing, competition, consumer behaviour, infrastructure, policies and others. The study also provides in-depth analysis of segment wise telecommunications including mobile, fixed line and fixed broadband services. The number of subscribers and penetration rates are forecast for each of the sub-segment including mobile, fixed landline and broadband segments from 2005 to 2025. Colombia telecommunication revenues, investment and infrastructure details are also covered in the report. Further, emerging business environment in Colombia together with comparison to five competitive benchmark countries are included, to assess the country's prominence on regional front. On the competitive analysis front, leading companies along with their market shares are identified. Further, key business strategies of market leaders, their tariffs and SWOT profiles are included. In addition, the research work forecasts the demographic and economic drivers of Colombia that enable strategy planners to formulate theirpricing and branding strategies.



The report also includes latest telecommunication market developments, mergers, acquisitions and launches, spectrum availability, tenders and other aspects are analyzed. Key Topics Covered:





Executive Summary Key Findings

Colombia Telecom Market Overview Colombia Telecom Market - Strategic Analysis Trends Shaping the Future of Colombia Telecom Industry

Key strategies being Implemented by Market Leaders

Telecom Revenues in Colombia

Telecom Investments in Colombia

Market Drivers

Market Restraints Colombia Telecom Market Outlook Fixed Line Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Mobile Subscriber and Penetration Outlook

Fixed Broadband Subscriber and Penetration Outlook Colombia Telecom Competitive Environment Market Shares by Company

Major Operators-Domestic vs International

Regulatory Body and Its Role in Industry Colombia Telecom Industry Benchmarking Overall Ranking as Compared to Peer Markets

Demand Index

Infrastructure Index

Growth Index Colombia Economic Outlook to 2025 GDP Forecast, 2005-2025

GDP per Capita Forecast, 2005-2025

Inflation Trends Colombia Demographic Outlook to 2025 Population Forecast, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Gender, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Age Group, 2005-2025

Population Forecast by Location-Rural Population: Urban Population, 2005-2025

Unemployment Trends in Colombia Competitor Analysis Company A: Profile and operations in Colombia

Company B: Profile and operations in Colombia

Company C: Profile and operations in Colombia Recent Industry Developments



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/j7l489/colombian?w=5 Media Contact: Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/colombian-telecoms-market-report-2018-analysis--forecasts-2005-2025---market-developments-ma-launches-spectrum-availability-and-tenders-300610710.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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[March 08, 2018] Grand Rounds Announces Launch of Grand Rounds Summit, A Comprehensive Clinical Navigation and Network Optimization Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- During a presentation at the 18th Annual Employer Health Care Conference, Grand Rounds, the leader in matching employers and employees to high-quality care, announced the launch of Grand Rounds Summit. With Grand Rounds Summit, employees get the means to more readily navigate their care, while employers gain a high-performance network at national scale. This clinical navigation and network optimization solution is powered by Grand Rounds mobile technology, award-winning care team, and its proprietary engine for matching patients to providers.

Grands Rounds has always focused on matching employees to high-quality physicians who are shown to deliver superior patient outcomes. Were taking all weve learned and are intercepting people earlier, from their first interaction with the system, said Grand Rounds CEO and co-founder Owen Tripp. By connecting to more people sooner, we avoid more waste and complexities later. Were using technology to do this efficiently, while our care team  our doctors, nurses, care coordinators and records specialists  are here to get to know each member inside out. Grand Rounds currently reaches over 3.5 million covered lives through its two core product offerings: Beacon, its complex care solution (launched in 2014), and Grand Rounds Summit, a singular clinical entry point for all health care needs across the employee population. Grand Rounds Summit is immediately available to all large employers that seek a comprehensive clnical navigation and network optimization solution.



News Corp first partnered with Grand Rounds on its complex care offering, Beacon. Streamlined access to high-quality physicians drove instant impact for our highest cost claimants. Yet, it was clear that we were just scratching the surface, said News Corp SVP and Global Head of Benefits, Marco Diaz. We launched Summit to our entire population to improve the holistic health care experience for each of our employees, while helping them become savvier consumers of care with each Grand Rounds interaction. No one wants to be a patient. To me, efficient care means getting real help in the hands of employees, on their terms, without them having to think about it, said Diaz.

With clinical navigation, the employee gets expert guidance on where to receive care and on how best to engage with their health care benefits  no matter how complex or straightforward their health care need. With network optimization, the employer gets a virtual network optimized for quality, and the means to seamlessly guide employees to the most appropriate resources within it  all while operating within the employers existing carrier and benefits ecosystem. Grand Rounds is a proud partner to over 100 progressive employers and thousands of premier providers. Grand Rounds aims to make extraordinary care and outcomes an everyday thing. For everyone. About Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds vision is to create a path to great health and health care, for everyone, everywhere. Founded in 2011, the company provides an employer-based solution that connects members and their families to high-quality care. With Grand Rounds, employers get a personalized, high-performance network at scale, while their employees get the tools and support needed to navigate their care on their own terms. Named Rock Healths 2018 Fastest Growing Company and second among Glassdoors 2016 Best Places to Work, Grand Rounds helps restore individual health and quality of life, and offers employers lower health care spend and higher employee productivity. For more information, please visit www.grandrounds.com. Press Contact:

Robin Suchan

Corporate Relations

415-792-5322

robin.suchan@grandrounds.com



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[March 08, 2018] Klick Recognized as a Best Managed Company for 10th Consecutive Year

Klick Inc. was today named a 2018 Best Managed Company for the 10th consecutive year, reaffirming its ongoing commitment to delivering excellence in business performance. The company was also included in the prestigious Best Managed Companies' Platinum Club for the fourth year in a row for its longstanding exceptional management practices. Klick CEO Leerom Segal said, "As a fearlessly independent company, we are thrilled to have been recognized as a Best Managed Company for the last decade. We have an amazing team, committed to ensuring we nurture and grow our Klickster community while delivering exceptional client experience and new innovative offerings." Now in its 25th year, Canada's Best Managed Companies is one of the country's leading business awards programs recognizing Canadian-owned and managed companies for innovative, world-class business practices. Every year, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies compete for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates the caliber of their management abilities and practices. "Best Managed Platinum winners have exceptional insights and knowledge into business management practices. They are an inspiration and really take their game to a new level," said Lorrie King, Partner, Deloitte (News - Alert) and Co-Leader, Canada's Best Managed Companies program. "Companies that earn Platinum Club status, exemplify exceptional vision and leadership and a sustained commitment to growth and innovation," added Dino Medves, Senior Vice President and Head, CIBC Commercial Banking. As part of Klick's mandate to foster leadership and development, the company introduced its new KlickU people management curriculum and hosted its Step it Up Leadership Offsite featuring workshops with New York Times bestselling leadership author and former U.S. Marine Angie Moran. In 2017, Klick also organized a series of leadership pipeline trips to Kenya with WE Charity to build schools, including a women's college. Focused on the future, Klick companies have also made a number of recent innovation announcements, including: Klick Health's Klick Labs and Boston Children's Hospital last week unveiled their HealthVoyager TM medical education and patient experience platform - a proof-of-concept that uses Virtual Reality to bring patients' individual medical findings to life and which, according to Fast Company "...creates a personalized, explorable 3D model of a kid's own body that makes it much easier for them to understand what's going on inside."

medical education and patient experience platform - a proof-of-concept that uses Virtual Reality to bring patients' individual medical findings to life and which, according to "...creates a personalized, explorable 3D model of a kid's own body that makes it much easier for them to understand what's going on inside." Klick Labs also introduced the SymPulse TM Tele-Empathy Device, a first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept, which transmits tremors from patients to physicians and caregivers to help foster clinical empathy and better care for people living with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. The device has been profiled in media outlets around the world, including the CBC , CNBC , Globe and Mail , and New York Times , and The Royal College of Physicians' Future Healthcare Journal .

Tele-Empathy Device, a first-of-its-kind proof-of-concept, which transmits tremors from patients to physicians and caregivers to help foster clinical empathy and better care for people living with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. The device has been profiled in media outlets around the world, including the , , , and , and The Royal College of Physicians' . Sensei Labs, Klick's collaborative work management company, launched Conductor, the first enterprise project management solution to orchestrate large, complex projects with ease.

Sensei Labs was named global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney's Enterprise Collaborative Work Management Partner and was listed on the Constellation ShortList for work coordination platforms.



About Canada's Best Managed Companies

Canada's Best Managed Companies continues to be the mark of excellence for Canadian-owned and managed companies with revenues over $15 million. Every year since the launch of the program in 1993, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies have competed for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates their management skills and practices. The awards are granted on four levels: 1) Canada's Best Managed Companies new winner (one of the new winners selected each year); 2) Canada's Best Managed Companies winner (award recipients that have re-applied and successfully retained their Best Managed designation for two additional years, subject to annual operational and financial review); 3) Gold Standard winner (after three consecutive years of maintaining their Best Managed status, these winners have demonstrated their commitment to the program and successfully retained their award for 4-6 consecutive years); 4) Platinum Club member (winners that have maintained their Best Managed status for seven years or more). Program sponsors are Deloitte, CIBC, Canadian Business, Smith School of Business, TMX Group and MacKay CEO Forums. For further information, visit www.bestmanagedcompanies.ca.

About Klick Inc.

Klick operates with a fiercely independent spirit at the intersection of technology, creativity, and strategy. The Klick family is a diverse group of people who are driven and connected by a shared culture and commitment to the relentless pursuit of awesome at Klick Health, Katalyst Advantage, and Sensei Labs. Established in 1997, Klick has teams in Atlanta, Connecticut, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, and Toronto. Klick has been consistently recognized as a leading Great Place to Work, Best Workplace for Women, Best Employer, Employee-Recommended Workplace, Fastest Growing Technology Company, and Best Managed Company. Klick's co-founders wrote the New York Times Bestseller The Decoded Company, the award-winning book on how to use data to empower and engage employees. For more information on joining Klick, go to http://careers.klick.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005695/en/

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[March 08, 2018] YouTube Surges into the Top 10 and Ranks Third Most Intimate Brands among Millennials, According to MBLM's Brand Intimacy 2018 Report

NEW YORK, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- YouTube ranked as the third most intimate brand among millennials, according to MBLM's Brand Intimacy 2018 Report, which is the largest study of brands based on emotions. Brand Intimacy is defined as a new paradigm that leverages and strengthens the emotional bonds between a person and a brand. "We were surprised and pleased to see YouTube as an addition to the top three most intimate brands for millennials this year," stated Mario Natarelli, managing partner, MBLM. "We believe its rise is due to our culture's continued need for escape and the brand's immediate, diverse content, personalities and growing offerings in movies and live TV. YouTube is clearly an established ritual in the lives of many millennials today." Apple and Disney ranked as the first and second most intimate brands for millennials. Comparatively, in MBLM's 2017 report, Disney plaed first, followed by Amazon and Netflix.



The other brands that round out the top 10 are: Target, Amazon, Nintendo, Google, Xbox, Netflix and Whole Foods. The age group of 18-24 year-olds had a slightly different mix of top companies. The top 10 for the group are: Apple, Amazon, YouTube, PlayStation, Starbucks, Nintendo, Google, Netflix, Coca Cola and Walmart.

The Brand Intimacy 2018 Report contains the most comprehensive rankings of brands based on emotion, analyzing the responses of 6,000 consumers and 54,000 brand evaluations across 15 industries in the U.S., Mexico and UAE. The full report will be released on March 13, 2018. About MBLM: MBLM is the Brand Intimacy Agency, delivering expertise and offerings across three areas of focus: Agency, Lab and Platform. With offices in seven countries, our multidisciplinary teams help clients build stronger bonds and deliver optimized marketing outcomes and returns for the long term. To learn more about how we can help you create and sustain ultimate brand relationships, visit mblm.com. RUBENSTEIN PUBLIC RELATIONS

CONTACT: KATI BERGOU, 212-805-3014

KBERGOU@RUBENSTEINPR.COM View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/youtube-surges-into-the-top-10-and-ranks-third-most-intimate-brands-among-millennials-according-to-mblms-brand-intimacy-2018-report-300610770.html SOURCE MBLM

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[March 08, 2018] Home Instead Senior Care Recognized for Excellence in Senior Care, Franchisee Satisfaction

Home Instead Inc., recently received two notable accolades, reinforcing the franchise network's commitment to serving seniors, their families and caregivers. The organization was recognized by both J.D. Power for our commitment to caring for older adults and exceeding customer expectations and Franchise Business Review as a top franchise business. "Our priority is to empower our franchise network to provide older adults with personalized, high-quality care," said Jeff Huber, president and chief executive officer of Home Instead, Inc. "It is because our franchise owners and their teams put their hearts into the business and work tirelessly to serve seniors that we are successful. These awards are truly a reflection of that dedication to service throughout our network." J.D. Power, a global leader in consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics, presented the President's Award to Huber at their corporate headquarters in Costa Mesa, Ca. The President's Award recognizes individuals or companies demonstrating dedication, commitment and sustained improvement in serving customers. During the 50-year history of J.D. Power, only 13 companies have received the award. Additionally, Franchise Business Review named Home Instead the top franchise in the senior care category in its 13th annual list of top franchise opportunities, based on franchisee satisfaction and performance. Home Instead also ranked seventh in the enterprise 300+ category and ninth in the best of the best category. "As an independent research firm, we rate the franchise companies in the marketplace today and identify those that have the highest levels of satisfaction and performance among their franchisees in order to help entrepreneurs when choosing which franchise to invest in," said Eric Stites, CEO of Franchise Business Review. "The companies on this year's list are the top performing brands in the areas critical to their franchisees' success."



Home Instead Senior Care, founded in 1994, was one of the first franchise business models focused on in-home care for aging adults. The company's innovation in empowering older adults to age in the comfort of their homes has created a burgeoning industry - one in which Home Instead remains committed to being a leader. "These recent awards are testament to the commitment of Home Instead Senior Care to create a future where all people can age the way they want to," said Huber. "We look forward to continuing this mission through excellence and innovation in quality care for seniors for years to come."

For more information, see J.D. Power President's Award or Franchise Business Review survey. ABOUT HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lori and Paul Hogan, the Home Instead Senior Care network provides personalized care, support and education to help enhance the lives of aging adults and their families. Today, this network is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for seniors, with more than 1,100 independently owned and operated franchises that provide more than 60 million hours of care throughout the United States and 11 other countries. Local Home Instead Senior Care offices employ approximately 70,000 CAREGiversSM worldwide who provide basic support services that enable seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. The Home Instead Senior Care network partners with clients and their family members to help meet varied individual needs. Services span the care continuum - from providing personal care to specialized Alzheimer's care and hospice support. Also available are family caregiver education and support resources. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005724/en/

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[March 08, 2018] Cogeco Connexion Named 2018 Company of the Year by Women in Communications and Technology

MONTREAL, March 8, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - On this International Women's Day, Cogeco Connexion is proud to announce that it has been named Company of the Year for 2018 by the Canadian organization, Women in Communications and Technology. Each year, the prestigious award honours the Canadian company that has made the most significant contribution to industry practices in equity and diversity, creating a workplace that supports women's advancement. "We are very proud to accept this honour," said Liette Vigneault, Vice President, Human Resources and Communications at Cogeco Connexion. "Cogeco is a conscientious company that recognizes that its success depends on the success of its female employees. Year after year, we make an effort to develop and implement initiatives based on our three-year plan for promoting and integrating employment equity and diversity. These initiatives include creating an environment and culture favourable to the professional success and progress of women as well as all employees at Cogeco," Ms. Vigneault added. "I am very proud of this recognition of our tangible commitment to making Cogeco Connexion a diverse andinclusive organization," said Ken Smithard, President of Cogeco Connexion. "Diversity and equity are core principles with deep roots in our corporate culture. I am particularly proud of Cogeco Inc. and Cogeco Connexion's initiative to put together the Cogeco Women's Network, which spearheads initiatives that allow all of our female colleagues to develop their skills and enhance their career path, thus leading to significant contributions to Cogeco's growth."



The Company of the Year award will be officially presented at the Women in Communications and Technology's Annual Awards Gala on April 16, in Gatineau. Held each spring, the gala recognizes the exceptional contributions and achievements of women and men on matters of diversity, equity and the advancement of women in the communications and technology sectors. ABOUT COGECO CONNEXION

Cogeco Connexion regroups the Canadian cable operations of Cogeco Communications Inc. Cogeco Connexion is the second largest cable operator in Ontario and Quebec in terms of the number of basic cable service customers served. It provides its residential and small business customers with Internet, video and telephony services through its two-way broadband cable networks. Cogeco Communications Inc. is a communications corporation and is the 8th largest hybrid fibre coaxial cable operator in North America operating in Canada under the Cogeco Connexion brand name in Quebec and Ontario, and in the United States through its subsidiary Atlantic Broadband in 11 states along the East Coast, from Maine to Florida. Through Cogeco Peer 1, Cogeco Communications Inc. provides its business customers with a suite of information technology services (colocation, network connectivity, hosting, cloud and managed services), through its 16 data centres, extensive FastFiber Network and more than 50 points of presence in North America and Europe. Cogeco Communications Inc.'s subordinate voting shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CCA).

SOURCE Cogeco Connexion

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[March 08, 2018] Julia Coronado Joins Protiviti Advisory Board

MENLO PARK, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Protiviti announces that former Federal Reserve Board of Governors economist Julia Coronado is joining the global consulting firm's advisory board. Coronado brings 20 years of public and private sector experience to assist Protiviti and its clients with maneuvering changing economic and business environments. Coronado is the president and founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives, which provides economic research on monetary policy and global macroeconomic developments. She is a member of the Economic Advisory Panel at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the Advisory Board of the Pension Research Council at Wharton, and she serves on the board of the National Association of Business Economists and is a director and head of the compliance committee for MTGE, a public REIT. Coronado is also a regular commentator for NPR's "Marketplace," Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. "From its inception, Protiviti's Advisory Board has been designed to assist Protiviti and our clients with anticipating and adapting to change," said Joseph Tarantino, Protiviti president and CEO. "Julia's insights on the global economy and her monetary policy experience will play an important role in helping Protiviti and our clients interpret and address economic developments." Coronado joins current Protiviti Advisory Board members Dirk Kempthorne, president and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, U.S. senator and governor of Idaho; Frances Townsend, former Assistant to President George W. Bush for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and former chair of the Homeland Security Council; and Evelyn Dilsaver, the former president and CEO of Charles Schwab Investment Management.



"The U.S. and global economies are humming along now, but business leaders know that prudent planning requires them to consider the potential longer-term challenges and opportunities of a changing global economy," said Coronado. "I'm looking forward to joining the other members of the Advisory Board and sharing my perspectives with Protiviti and its clients." Prior to founding MPP, Coronado was chief economist for Graham Capital Management, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas and senior U.S. economist at Barclays Capital in New York. Before that, she served as an economist for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington D.C. for eight years. Coronado earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas and holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois Urbana  Champagne. Currently, she is an Executive in Residence at Rutgers University's Business School and blogs for its Center for Real Estate.

About Protiviti Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Through its network of more than 70 offices in over 20 countries, Protiviti and its independently owned Member Firms provide clients with consulting solutions in finance, technology, operations, data, analytics, governance, risk and internal audit. Named to the 2018 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, Protiviti has served more than 60 percent of Fortune 1000 and 35 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies. Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index. Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services. Editor's note: Photos available upon request. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/julia-coronado-joins-protiviti-advisory-board-300610723.html SOURCE Protiviti

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[March 08, 2018] iRewardHealth To Be A Premier Sponsor of Appcues' First West Coast Drunk User Testing Event

SAN FRANCISCO, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- iRewardHealth, today announced it will be a premier sponsor of Appcues' first west coast Drunk User Testing event happening in San Francisco on March 15, 2018. This event, inclusive of great food, drinks, and networking, is designed to help companies build products that users not only love, but can effectively navigate. At the event, attendees will have the opportunity to interact with iRewardHealth's mobile application and provide valuable, honest feedback to help shape future product decisions and create a more intuitive, enjoyable user experiences.







Event Details:

Who: iRewardHealth and Appcues What: Drunk User Testing San Francisco Where: Covo SF

981 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA

94103 When: Thursday, March 15, 2018

6:00pm - 9:00pm PT Why: Shape the future technology and network with the local San Francisco tech community Includes: Open bar, appetizers, a Lyft credit, and a photo booth to capture the festivities Tickets: Visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/drunk-user-testing-tickets-41970683444 to purchase your ticket!

About iRewardHealth

iRewardHealth is a mobile application built to revolutionize preventative health in the workplace. Using a proprietary algorithm, iRewardHealth rewards employees' healthy actions with cash to help them build healthier habits over time. iRewardHealth uses a personalized and flexible approach, working closely with companies to effectively motivate long-term behavior change. iRewardHealth was founded in 2014 by a team of behavioral scientists looking to expand their impact beyond an office. You can learn more at www.irewardhealth.com or follow iRH on Twitter @irewardhealth. About Appcues

Appcues is a user engagement platform that accelerates growth for companies by helping them put their products to work. By creating unique user interface patterns that are customized and on-brand, Appcues enables anyone to improve conversion and reduce churn by making their product experiences user-friendly and personalized. With Appcues, any company that is investing in its product can make it more usable and feature-rich for customers. Founded in 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts, companies depend on Appcues to improve user engagement and product adoption rates. Learn more at www.appcues.com and follow us on Twitter @Appcues. Media Contact:

Alexandra Brillaud

Alexandra@iRewardHealth.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/irewardhealth-to-be-a-premier-sponsor-of-appcues-first-west-coast-drunk-user-testing-event-300610402.html SOURCE iRewardHealth

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[March 08, 2018] Outreach to Host Local Women Empowerment Panel in Celebration of Women's History Month at Fremont Office

SEATTLE, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Outreach, the leading sales engagement platform, will host its first ever women empowerment panel for local professionals in celebration of Women's History Month at the Outreach office, located in the Fremont neighborhood, on March 22. The event is projected to bring together more than 200 professionals from around the Seattle area for an opportunity to hear powerful personal stories from panel speakers, participate in inspiring discussion groups, and network with like minds. Attendees must visit the official event website to register for the RSVP only event. Refreshments and food will also be provided onsite. The Women Empowerment Panel is the first of its kind sponsored by Outreach's Women Network, an internal committee instituted within the company last year in order to further promote women within the organization, as well as women in the technology industry at large. Traditionally a male dominated spacethere are three times as many men as women working as computer scientists in the U.S.Outreach as an organization is committed to not only leveling the playing field between the sexes, but continually empowering and elevating women into positions of leadership. The Women Empowerment Panel is a direct response to this commitment, as it allows leading women within the community to share intimate stories on their entrepreneurial journey, the challenges they faced, and the tools they used to overcome them.



Outreach's Women Empowerment Panel Date: March 22, 2018

Time: 5:00 - 8:30pm

Location: Outreach office, 3400 Stone Way North, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98103

Speakers:

Deena Pierott , CEO & Founder, iUrbanTeen

, CEO & Founder, iUrbanTeen Karen Okonkwo , Founder, TONL

, Founder, TONL Rosalyn Arntzen , President & CEO, Amaxra

, President & CEO, Amaxra Terri Chan , Senior Systems Integrator, Boeing

, Senior Systems Integrator, Boeing Coach Carla Wilcox , Chief Energy Officer, COACHCARLA Wilcox LLC For more information about the conference and to register for the event, visit the official event website. About Outreach

Outreach, the leading sales engagement platform, automates and prioritizes customer touch points throughout the sales process, resulting in increased productivity for sales teams. Thousands of customers rely on Outreach to transform the sales process, drive collaboration between sales and marketing, and deliver higher revenue per sales rep. Outreach is a privately held company based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more, please visit www.outreach.io. CONTACT:

Barokas PR for Outreach

Kristin Sandberg

1-206-264-8220

Outreach@barokas.com View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/outreach-to-host-local-women-empowerment-panel-in-celebration-of-womens-history-month-at-fremont-office-300610733.html SOURCE Outreach

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[March 08, 2018] Berkeley Research Group Launches Strategic Collaboration with Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

EMERYVILLE, Calif., March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Global strategic advisory and expert consulting firm Berkeley Research Group is pleased to announce the launch of a strategic collaboration with the Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy (Hitotsubashi ICS) in Japan. BRG has a strong presence in Asia Pacific with offices in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore, Beijing and Tokyo. Hitotsubashi University was founded in 1875 and is home to the prestigious Hitotsubashi ICS global MBA program. Hitotsubashi ICS offers a world-class curriculum that combines best practices in business education from all over the world, with a focus on Japan and Japan's role in global and Asian economies. BRG and Hitotsubashi ICS are cutting-edge organizations seeking to provide clients and students with the knowledge and tools to thrive in the rapidly changing global business environment. BRG Chairman and Cofounder David Teece said, "This collaboration is a natural coming together of two organizations that place a premium on innovation and staying ahead of the curve by maximizing the knowledge potential of our clients, whether they be current or future industry leaders." Hitotsubashi ICS Dean Kazuo Ichijo said, "BRG and Hitotsubashi have been informal partners for years through the decades-long friendship between David Teece and Ikujiro Nonaka, professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi, both recognized leaders in the field of knowledge management. I am proud to help take this relationship to the next level. The synergies that will result from the knowledge sharing between our two organizations will benefit not only Hitotsubashi students and alumni, but the broader efforts of Japanese firms."



BRG Director Larry Futa, a representative of BRG Japan, said, "This collaboration with Dean Ichijo and Hitotsubashi ICS will further strengthen our ability to provide expert support to our clients and stakeholders in Japan and abroad. I am very excited for the opportunity to work with Dean Ichijo and the world-class programs he and his team are building at Hitotsubashi ICS." About Berkeley Research Group, LLC

Berkeley Research Group, LLC (www.thinkbrg.com) is a leading global strategic advisory and expert consulting firm that provides independent advice, data analytics, authoritative studies, expert testimony, investigations, and regulatory and dispute consulting to Fortune 500 corporations, financial institutions, government agencies, major law firms and regulatory bodies around the world. BRG experts and consultants combine intellectual rigor with practical, real-world experience and an in-depth understanding of industries and markets. Their expertise spans economics and finance, data analytics and statistics, and public policy in many of the major sectors of our economy, including healthcare, banking, information technology, energy, construction and real estate. BRG is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices across the United States and in Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East and the United Kingdom. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/berkeley-research-group-launches-strategic-collaboration-with-hitotsubashi-university-graduate-school-of-international-corporate-strategy-300610881.html SOURCE Berkeley Research Group

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[March 08, 2018] The Olympic False Flag: Infamous OlympicDestroyer Malware Designed to Confuse Cybersecurity Community

Kaspersky Lab's (News - Alert) Global Research and Analysis Team has published the results of its own research into attacks by the OlympicDestroyer malware, providing technical evidence of a very sophisticated false flag placed inside the worm by the malware creator in order to knock threat hunters off the trail to its real origin. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005167/en/ The history of the OlympicDestroyer malware's propagation, based on the results of Kaspersky Lab research. (Graphic: Business Wire) The OlympicDestroyer worm made headlines during the Winter Olympic Games. The Pyeongchang Olympics experienced a cyberattack that temporarily paralyzed IT systems ahead of the official opening ceremony, shutting down display monitors, killing Wi-Fi and taking down the Olympics website so that visitors were unable to print tickets. Kaspersky Lab has also found that several ski resort facilities in South Korea suffered from this worm, which disabled the operation of ski gates and lifts at the resorts. Although the actual impact of attacks with this malware was limited, it clearly contained the capability to be devastating. Nevertheless, the real interest of the cybersecurity industry lay not in the potential or even actual damage caused by the OlympicDestroyer's attacks, but in the origin of the malware. Perhaps no other sophisticated malware has had so many attribution hypotheses put forward as the OlympicDestroyer. Within days of its discovery, research teams worldwide had managed to attribute this malware to Russia, China and North Korea, based on a number of features previously attributed to cyber-espionage and sabotage actors allegedly based in these countries or working for these countries' governments. Kasperky Lab researchers were also trying to understand which hacking group was behind this malware. At some point during their research, they came across something that looked like evidence connecting the malware to Lazarus - an infamous nation-state backed group linked to North Korea.



This conclusion was based on a unique trace left by the attackers. A combination of certain features of the code development environment stored in the files can be used as a 'fingerprint,' in some cases identifying the malware authors and their projects. In the sample analyzed by Kaspersky Lab, this fingerprint gave a 100 percent match with previously known Lazarus malware components and no overlap with any other clean or malicious file known to date to Kaspersky Lab. Combined with other similarities in tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), it drew researchers to the preliminary conclusion that OlympicDestroyer was yet another Lazarus operation. However, the motives and other inconsistencies with Lazarus TTPs uncovered during the investigation by Kaspersky Lab onsite at the compromised facility in South Korea made researchers revisit the rare artifact. Following another careful look at the evidence and manual verification of each feature, researchers discovered that the set of features didn't match the code - it had been forged to perfectly match the fingerprint used by Lazarus.

As a result, the researchers concluded that the features' 'fingerprint' is a very sophisticated false flag, intentionally placed inside the malware in order to give threat hunters the impression that they had found 'smoking gun' evidence, knocking them off the trail to more accurate attribution. "To our knowledge, the evidence we were able to find was not previously used for attribution. Yet the attackers decided to use it, predicting that someone would find it. They counted on the fact that forgery of this artifact is very hard to prove," said Vitaly Kamluk, head of the APAC research team, Kaspersky Lab. "It's as if a criminal had stolen someone else's DNA and left it at a crime scene instead of their own. We discovered and proved that the DNA found on the crime scene was dropped there on purpose. All this demonstrates how much effort attackers are willing to spend in order to stay unidentified for as long as possible. We've always said that attribution in cyberspace is very hard as lots of things can be faked, and OlympicDestroyer is a pretty precise illustration of this." Kamluk added: "Another takeaway from this story for us is that attribution has to be taken extremely seriously. Given how politicized cyberspace has recently become, the wrong attribution could lead to severe consequences and actors may start trying to manipulate the opinion of the security community in order to influence the geopolitical agenda." The accurate attribution of OlympicDestroyer is still an open question simply because it is a unique example of the implementation of very sophisticated false flags. However, Kaspersky Lab researchers found that the attackers used privacy-protecting service NordVPN and a hosting provider called MonoVM, which both accept Bitcoins. These and some other discovered TTPs were previously seen to be used by Sofacy - the Russian-speaking actor. Kaspersky Lab products successfully detect and block the OlympicDestroyer malware. Read more about how Kaspersky Lab researchers investigated the OlympicDestroyer attacks in South Korea and Europe in the blogpost on Securelist. About Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab is a global cybersecurity company, which has been operating in the market for over 20 years. Kaspersky Lab's deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into next generation security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company's comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky Lab technologies and we help 270,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180308005167/en/

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[March 08, 2018] Long View achieves Platinum Club Member status with Canada's Best Managed Companies program

CALGARY, March 8, 2018 /CNW/ - For the seventh straight year, Long View (longviewsystems.com), one of North America's most powerful providers of Hybrid IT solutions and services was honoured by achieving Platinum Club Member status with the Canada's Best Managed Companies program by retaining its Best Managed designation for seven consecutive years. The 2018 Best Managed program recognizes the best-in-class of Canadian-owned and managed companies with revenues over $15 million demonstrating strategy, capability and commitment to achieve sustainable growth. "At Long View, we are very proud to be recognized for 7 years in a row as one of the Best Managed private companies in Canada! On behalf of the 1,000 plus Long View team members, Thank You! Each of us loves to create WIN-WIN-WIN situations for our clients, staff and Long View itself," said jointly Don Bialik, Chairman and Brent Allison, CEO. Over the last 36 months, Long View has pivoted to build solutions underpinned by partners such as Microsoft, Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise but defined and differentiated by Long View. Solutions such as OneCloud, which provides companies with hybrid cloud-based solutions, and Ultimate End User Experience that improves workplace productivity for employees while reducing organizational IT costs are all backed by an unsurpassed Long View managed service experience.



"Best Managed Platinum winners have exceptional insights and knowledge into business management practices. They are an inspiration and really take their game to a new level," said Lorrie King, Partner, Deloitte and Co-Leader, Canada's Best Managed Companies program. In 2017, Long View won Microsoft Canada's Enterprise Cloud Partner of the Year award, Cisco Canada's Software/Lifecycle Partner of the Year and for the fifth year in a row was named a Niche Player for Managed Workplace Services in North America on Gartner's Magic Quadrant.

Now in its 25th year, Canada's Best Managed Companies is one of the country's leading business awards programs recognizing Canadian-owned and managed companies for innovative, world-class business practices. Every year, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies compete for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates the caliber of their management abilities and practices. 2018 winners of the Canada's Best Managed Companies award will be honoured at the annual Canada's Best Managed Companies gala in Toronto on April 11, 2018. On the same date, the Best Managed symposium will address leading-edge business issues that are key to the success of today's business leaders. The Best Managed program is sponsored by Deloitte, CIBC, Canadian Business, Smith School of Business and MacKay CEO Forums. About Canada's Best Managed Companies

Canada's Best Managed Companies continues to be the mark of excellence for Canadian-owned and managed companies with revenues over $15 million. Every year since the launch of the program in 1993, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies have competed for this designation in a rigorous and independent process that evaluates their management skills and practices. The awards are granted on four levels: 1) Canada's Best Managed Companies new winner (one of the new winners selected each year); 2) Canada's Best Managed Companies winner (award recipients that have re-applied and successfully retained their Best Managed designation for two additional years, subject to annual operational and financial review); 3) Gold Standard winner (After three consecutive years of maintaining their Best Managed status, these winners have demonstrated their commitment to the program and successfully retained their award for 4-6 consecutive years); 4) Platinum Club member (Winners that have maintained their Best Managed status for seven years or more). Program sponsors are Deloitte, CIBC, Canadian Business, Smith School of Business and MacKay CEO Forums. For further information, visit www.bestmanagedcompanies.ca. ABOUT LONG VIEW: Long View is one of the most powerful IT solutions and services companies in North America, with offices across the continent. With a clear focus on combining business and technology through our Hybrid IT solutions, including cloud, IT infrastructure, managed services, and end user support, Long View is able to define and customize what the future of IT looks like for our clients. Innovative, flexible, cost-effective, and business focused . . . that's Long View. SOURCE Long View Systems

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[March 08, 2018] Norwich University Crowned Champion of NASA 2018 BIG Idea Engineering Design Challenge

CLEVELAND, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a fierce competition against four other contenders, Norwich University emerged as the winning team in NASA's third Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge. The University of Colorado Boulder team was awarded second place. In this engineering design competition, NASA enlists university teams from across the nation to develop creative solutions to some of the agency's most relevant challenges. In 2017, NASA called for proposals for large power systems that could be used on the surface of Mars. Because these systems need to be in place before humans ever arrive on the Red Planet, teams were required to propose robotic or autonomous solutions for deployment and sustainable operation. The Norwich University team, led by Brian Bradke, proposed an innovative flexible solar array design using inflatable booms to provide a compact stowed configuration and low launch mass. The team made an impressive inflatable model that validated their packing and deployment concept. The University of Colorado Boulder team, led by Kyri Baker, developed an autonomous foldable solar array concept that secured them the runner-up position. Their approach leveraged extremely lightweight/flexible composite booms that could be wrapped around a centralized hub and then unwound for deployment on the Martian surface. The five finalists each proposed completly different, unique and viable concepts. Students from Norwich University, Princeton University, Texas A&M University, the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Virginia presented their concepts to the judges in an intense design review during the 2018 BIG Idea Challenge Forum held March 6 and 7 in Cleveland, Ohio.



"This year's Big Idea Challenge brought some fresh and exciting ideas on Mars solar arrays that gives us greater confidence to move forward toward human Mars missions," said Lee Mason, principal technologist for power and energy storage with NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, and a Big Idea judge. "The two winning teams provide a nice diversity in their design and operational construct: one focusing on inflatables, the other on composite booms." The BIG Idea Challenge is aligned with NASA's goal to increase the capabilities of the nation's future workforce through participatory, immersive educational experiences. This includes the challenge prize, which offers NASA internships to members from the winning team.

In a surprise twist during this year's competition, a new industry collaboration led to even more opportunities for the finalists. Bao Hoang of SSL served as an industry judge, and was so impressed with the quality of work and caliber of students that his company will be making internship offers and possibly job offers to those who participated in the final stage of the challenge. "It has been an honor for SSL to collaborate with NASA and the NIA in helping to judge the 2018 BIG Idea Challenge," said Dario Zamarian, group president at SSL, a Maxar Technologies company. "The student teams have developed innovative concepts that reflect exceptional technical capabilities. In support of the program, SSL will invite multiple BIG Idea Challenge participants to join our summer internship program, where they will have the opportunity to work with a leading technology company that brings a commercial mindset to the development of next-generation space infrastructure." The BIG Idea Challenge is sponsored by NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Development Program, and managed by the National Institute of Aerospace. For more information about NASA's Space Technology Mission directorate, go to: http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech For more information about the 2018 Big Idea Challenge, please visit: http://bigidea.nianet.org/ View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/norwich-university-crowned-champion-of-nasa-2018-big-idea-engineering-design-challenge-300610962.html SOURCE NASA

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[March 08, 2018] Streaming Video Alliance Holds First Quarterly Member Meeting of 2018 in Silicon Valley

FREMONT, Calif., March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Streaming Video Alliance (the Alliance), an industry forum comprised of leading companies from the online video ecosystem, convenes today in Silicon Valley at Western Digitals Milpitas, California, campus. Highlights from the agenda include a keynote from Chris Bergey, GM Embedded Systems Group at Western Digital; a presentation from the Alliances Executive Director Jason Thibeault about online video trends and industry happenings for 2018 and beyond, including the global impact of 5G, blockchain, machine learning, AI, automation and more; a talk on Unified End-to-End Quality-of-Experience Monitoring, Optimization and Management Framework by Professor Zhou Wang, University Research Chair from the University of Waterloo, Canada; and the introduction of new Open Caching specifications.

Were happy to welcome NTT East and Beamr to the ranks of the Alliance. 2018 is off to a strong start, and we look forward to diving into todays meeting, Thibeault said. As the Alliance enters its fourth year, Im inspired by the contributions of our members and the impact weve made to date. That being said, theres still a lot of work ahead of us, and Im confident that our Q1 discussions will help lay a successful groundwork for our 2018 initiatives. The next wave of streaming video technology is upon us, and the high bit-rate requirements of features like VR, AR, 360 live video, HDR and expanded color space require that the industry scale the performance, bandwidth and intelligence of the streaming infrastructure, said Scott Vouri, VP Strategy and Business Development, Client Soltions, Western Digital. Our membership in the Alliance and collaboration in the Working Groups help us solve these challenges for our customers.



Todays meeting will also introduce new Open Caching Specifications, including the Open Caching Content Management Functional Specification and Open Caching Logging Integration Functional Specification. This brings to five the total number of Open Caching Specifications published. In addition, both the Advertising WG and the VR Study Group have documents in Straw Ballot for member review. Throughout the year, the Alliance will be participating in industry events around the globe. During NAB in April, the Alliance and Light Reading are cosponsoring a breakfast seminar, The Reality of VR Video. The seminar, which takes place on April 8, 2018 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, will examine the potential of VR video and the hurdles to bringing top-quality VR video to consumers.

Members of the Alliance include companies and individuals from across the streaming video ecosystem such as network operators, technology providers, service providers, and content owners. Current members are: Adobe, Amazon Web Services, Anevia, Arris, ATEME, Bamtech Media, Beamr, Blue Frame, CBC, Cedexis, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Ciena, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Concurrent, ContentArmor, Conviva, Digital Element, Dolby, Edgeware, Encompass TV, Ericsson, Espial Group, FOX Networks, Friend MTS, Harmonic, Hughes Satellite Systems, IBM, IneoQuest, Intel, Interra Systems, Irdeto, Ketan Bhardwaj, Liberty Global, Limelight Networks, MediaMelon, Mobolize, NBCUniversal, NCTA, NeuLion, Nexguard, Nice People at Work, Nokia, NTT East, OWNZONES, Phenix, Qwilt, Rob Dillon, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Sky, SSIMWAVE, Tektronix, Telecom Italia, THX, Touchstream, Unified Streaming, Verimatrix, Verizon, Viacom, ViaSat Inc., Viavi Solutions, Western Digital Corp., and Wowza Media Systems. For more information on the Alliance, the Working Groups, or to inquire about becoming a member, visit www.streamingvideoalliance.org. About the Streaming Video Alliance

Founded in 2014, the Streaming Video Alliances charter is to encourage deeper collaboration across the entire online video ecosystem, which will include the development of standards and best practices for an open architecture that will operate across the entire online video value chain. The Alliance is currently focused on identifying issues and solutions related to open architecture, quality of experience, and interoperability. For more information, please visit www.streamingvideoalliance.org. Press Contact

Amber Winans

Bhava Communications

(510) 984-1526

SVA@Bhavacom.com

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[March 08, 2018] Universal mCloud Completes the Purchase of NGRAIN, a Leader in Artificial Intelligence and 3D Augmented Reality Software



Expect to apply AI to wind turbine blade inspection with drones and 3D laser scanners in Q2 2018

Carries over existing contracts into 2018 valued at $700K CAD

Will target the over 70% of wind turbines currently off warranty worldwide

Solutions will maximize ROI through AI and analytics backed by in-house wind turbine technology expertise VANCOUVER, March 8, 2018 /CNW/ - Universal mCloud Corp. (TSX-V: MCLD) ("mCloud" or the "Company"), a leading provider of IoT-connected asset care technology solutions, today announced the closing of its Share Purchase Agreement ("SPA") for 100% of NGRAIN (Canada) Corporation ("NGRAIN"). NGRAIN brings revolutionary Artificial Intelligence ("AI") and 3D/Augmented Reality technology to mCloud's AssetCare Cloud Solution. This transaction adds 10 patents in applied 3D technology to mCloud's product portfolio, supplementing mCloud's existing patents in HVAC diagnostic technology. NGRAIN's AI and 3D technology, which currently serves numerous aerospace and military applications demanding high precision and reliability, will now enable mCloud to offer these same military-grade capabilities to maximize the performance of critical energy assets. Lockheed Martin is just one company among many that currently benefits from NGRAIN's technology. NGRAIN supplies the Battle Damage Assessment and Repair capabilities used by Lockheed Martin for maintenance, sustainment, and readiness of their F-35 and F-22 stealth fighters deployed worldwide. mCloud plans to go live in Q2 2018 with NGRAIN's AI-powered damage assessment technology, deploying drones to conduct high-resolution aerial surveys of wind turbines and will use NGRAIN's sophisticated computer vision capabilities to semi-autonomously inspect turbine blades for damage, correlate blade condition with turbine energy output and provide guidance on all required repairs. With the ability to assess entire wind farms at scale, and at a fraction of the cost of traditional inspections, mCloud expects these capabilities will dramatically influence the economics of owning and operating wind assets around the world. "According to research studies, turbine blade damage can result in annual energy production losses of up to 25%," said Russel McMeekin, President and CEO of mCloud. "We will be the industry's only provider of an AI-powered Digital Blade Inspection capability, setting new standards both in terms of how the industry will conduct inspections going forward and how asset owners will ultimately profit from the optimized performance of their assets. As we head into the second half of 2018 and lead up to 2019, NGRAIN's AI technology, combined with our in-house wind expertise, will allow us to further optimize customer's asset care budgets." "Feedback from wind technology providers, suppliers, service organizations, and other key stakeholders has been overwhelmingly positive. AI-powered inspections are an incredible market opportunity as the vast majority of turbine assets today operate with no scalable strategy to maximize their energy output, and ultimately their ROI," continued McMeekin. "We expect this to enhance our ability to scale in North America and Europe and accelerate our entry into new markets such as China. Since acquiring the joint technology rights of Norwin wind turbine technology and adding Ole Sangill and Yan ZhaoChina expansion strategy, these global market opportunities have become increasingly compelling."



Dr. Barry Po, NGRAIN's Senior Director, Product and Business Development added, "We have been working closely with the mCloud team since announcing this transaction earlier this year. We have made great progress in defining and getting ready for a very aggressive roll-out of our AI-powered damage assessment capabilities as part of the AssetCareTM Wind solution." The NGRAIN acquisition will contribute to mCloud's culture of continuous innovation. It is expected that NGRAIN's AI and 3D technology will expand beyond wind turbine inspection to other asset classes that make up the rapidly-growing mCloud portfolio of assets under management, which currently stands at well over 10,000 connected assets worldwide. Plans are already underway to bring new capabilities and services to the ever-increasing number of connected assets. For wind turbines, this includes AI-backed certification. In addition to its use with wind assets, NGRAIN's capabilities will also enhance how mCloud intelligently manages the energy consumption of smart buildings as well as the performance of distributed electrical transformers.

About Universal mCloud Corp.

mCloud is headquartered in Vancouver, BC with technology and operations centers in San Francisco, CA and Bristol, PA. mCloud is an IoT connected asset care cloud solution company utilizing connected IoT devices, leading deep energy analytics, secure mobile and 3D technologies that rally all asset stakeholders around an Asset-Circle-of-Care, providing complete real-time and historical data coupled with guidance and advice based on deep analytics and diagnostics resulting in optimal performance and care of critical equipment. It's all about the asset. The powerful and secure AssetCare environment is accessible everywhere, 24/7 through standard mobile devices, ruggedized headsets, and web browsers. For more information, visit www.mCloudCorp.com. About NGRAIN

NGRAIN brings artificial intelligence to damage assessment, serving customers in insurance, aerospace, and defense. Since 2000, the company has helped organizations transform their maintenance and inspection practices through the use of AI and 3D. With proprietary technology developed in-house, NGRAIN helps organizations settle insurance claims faster, get every inspection right the first time, and create opportunities to serve customers better. The company is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada with satellite offices in Ottawa, Canada and Des Moines, USA. Forward-Looking Information and Statements This press release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and may also contain statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking information and forward-looking statements are not representative of historical facts or information or current condition, but instead represent only the Company's beliefs regarding future events, plans or objectives, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and outside of the Company's control. Generally, such forward-looking information or forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or may contain statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "will continue", "will occur" or "will be achieved". The forward-looking information contained herein may include, but is not limited to, information concerning the Company's ability to save customer budget costs, the ability to roll out the damage assessment technology in a timely manner, the ability to expand the asset base of the Company, the future business prospects and the potential revenue of the Company. By identifying such information and statements in this manner, the Company is alerting the reader that such information and statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such information and statements. An investment in securities of the Company is speculative and subject to a number of risks including, without limitation, the risks discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" on pages 29 to 46 of the Company's filing statement dated October 5, 2017. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. In connection with the forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release, the Company has made certain assumptions. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing, and the expectations contained in, the forward-looking information and statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and statements, and no assurance or guarantee can be given that such forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information and statements. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and/or forward-looking statements that are contained or referenced herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. All subsequent written and oral forward- looking information and statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf is expressly qualified in its entirety by this notice. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE Universal-mCloud Corp

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A man who had a stolen gun with him when he exposed himself and masturbated on a Kansas City bus was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in federal prison. Roscoe D. Teagues III, 40, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Kansas City where he pleaded guilty in November to illegal possession of a stolen firearm.
(Mayor Sly) James also addressed the scheduled closing of Harley-Davidsons Kansas City assembly plant.





He says Harley-Davidsons decision was a corporate one, based on sales. James also says city leaders were told after the announcement that there was nothing they could have done to prevent the closing.





But the good news is that Kansas City is moving forward, were creating jobs and well work hard to make sure that the people who are no longer going to be employed there have other options, says James. Thats what were going to do.

Here's a bold statement in passing that considers local political reaction to recent high-profile layoffs . . .So far, other than generic economic development hype, there's no word onthe Mayor will provide those options.Developing . . .
"The court is not just for dreamers, but kids with a vision. Words to live by from a Phillips 66  Live to the Full Hero, Pat Clarke. Watch to learn more about how his incredible impact is changing lives throughout Kansas City."

He has been a lifelong advocate for the East Side and over the past few years has dedicated most of his energies to providing a safe place for youngsters to play in the urban core . . .His efforts were recently recognized in this, here's the description and a glimpse at some good news for change . . .Mr. Clarke has recently launched a council run in the 3rd District and so far he's a leading candidate for the job.Developing . . .
Kansas City Weed Package Consequences

Colorado man who shipped $3 million of pot to Kansas City gets five-year prison sentence A Colorado man was sentenced in federal court Tuesday for his role in a conspiracy to ship $3 million of marijuana through the mail for distribution in the Kansas City area. James Mack, 38, of Westminster was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Howard F.

Show-Me Rape Daddy Crackdown

Missouri Senate passes bill affecting rapists' parental rights Breaking News JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Missouri Senate has passed a bill that would make it easier to terminate a father's parental rights if the child was the result of rape. The proposal, approved 31-1 on Wednesday, would allow judges to terminate a father's parental rights if there was "clear, cogent, and convincing evidence" that he raped the mother, resulting in her pregnancy.

Kansas Illegal Alien Servitude

Immigrants say working at Kansas ranch was 'like slavery' Wed., March 7, 2018, 1:34 p.m. SYRACUSE, Kan. - Immigrants working on a remote Kansas ranch toil long days in a type of servitude to work off loans from the company for the cost of smuggling them into the country, according to five people who worked there.

Kansas City Runaround

One man in custody after police chase ends when suspect crashes into innocent family's car KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Police say one man is in custody Wednesday night after leading officers on a chase that ended in a crash. Around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, police told FOX 4's Robert Townsend the suspect sped though KCK and led officers on a pursuit on northbound Interstate 635 into Riverside, Missouri.

Local Foodie Internets Celebrity

Rock Chalk Booze News

Pour-Your-Own Pubs Bill Gets Push In Kansas Legislature Ryan Cavanaugh has a vision for downtown Topeka: a restaurant and pub called Brew Bank, where customers can access a wall of 20 electronic, self-serve beer taps as a way to mingle and try local brews. "It's just about a community experience," he said.

Tribute After Tragedy

Slain Clinton police officer was 'a model soldier' who served his community, country Along with serving his community in Clinton, Officer Christopher Ryan Morton served his country. For eight years, Morton served in the Missouri Army National Guard. He served as a combat engineer with the 110th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade in Kansas City and served as a bridge crew-member with the 1438th Multi-Role Bridge Company in Macon.

We start our morning with Heather then and now . . .and so this morning we remember her better days, move forward and look at news links closer to home.Checkitis the song of the day and this is thefor right now . . .
EXCLUSIVE - Kobach: The Gun Confiscation Crusade Begins Quietly, but quickly, a raft of identical gun confiscation bills have been filed by liberal politicians in states across the country. They are all copies of a ballot measure that passed in Washington State in November 2016. And that ballot measure was loosely based on a California gun confiscation law enacted in 2014 and a much older Connecticut law from 1999.

Here's a word of warning from the leading right-wing dude in the Sunflower State probably penned a few days before he wason his way to a federal trail over voting rights. Read more:
Independence won't stop doing business with a 'rent-a-vet'-affiliated contractor City of Independence When it awards contracts, the federal government by law grants preferred status to certain groups, such as businesses owned by women and minorities. Such quotas also apply to veteran-owned businesses. This is a good thing.

Here's the "alt." newspaper working diligently on a story that might not get a lot of play . . . Still offering a worthwhile look at the underworld of local municipal bidding that's worth a read:
CLINTON, Mo. - He's accused of killing Clinton Police Officer Christopher Ryan Morton and injuring two other officers before fatally shooting himself. James E. Waters, 37, of Clinton has a long criminal history dating back to his late teen years.
Kansas City Logo Comes Cheap

Why The Designer Of Kansas City's Official Seal Only Charged The City One Dollar To Make It City of Fountains. Heart of the Nation. For more than 25 years, those words and an illustration of a blue and fuchsia fountain have served as the official seal of Kansas City, Missouri. It's been such an enduring logo that its designer, Patrice Eilts Jobe, was honored with a proclamation from Mayor Sly James on March 2.

Dead-Tree Tax Break Equivocation

KC Council shouldn't subsidize Three Light apartments without affordable housing plan The Kansas City Council is headed toward a collision over public subsidies for luxury apartments downtown. Council members should take their time before reaching a decision. The city needs to get this right. The controversy surrounds a proposal by The Cordish Companies to build a third apartment complex - Three Light - at Truman Road and Main Street.

Meth Town Police On The Lookout

Independence Police searching for person of interest after gunshot victim was found inside a stolen car The Independence Police Department is asking for help to locate a person of interest in an overnight shooting incident. Officers were conducting an area check on an unrelated call around 2:42 a.m. Wednesday when officers located a stolen vehicle near 18th Street and Waubesa Avenue.

Teachable Moment On KCMO Violence

Big Money Local List

Several Missouri, Kansas residents land on Forbes' billionaires list - Kansas City Business Journal Several Missouri and Kansas residents are among the world's billionaires, including one with Olathe ties. Forbes released its 2018 ranking, which had a record 2,208 billionaires. Their total net worth is $9.1 trillion, an 18 percent boost from last year.

Talking Missouri Racial Drama On Campus

Green Duck Lounge - Being a Black Student on a Majority-white Campus Being a black student at MU, or any majority-white campus or institution, isn't easy, but the culture is slowly changing for the better. That's the takeaway from a recent in-studio conversation with MU Education professor Adrian Clifton and Law professor S. David Mitchell.

EXCELSIOR Kansas City Neighborhood Crime Writing From Northeast News

Hot night in the old town last night. Things were certainly hopping last night about 7:30 pm on Independence Avenue between Maple Boulevard and Garfield Avenue. In the picture on the Left, four KCPD vehicles can be seen in the parking lot of the BP at Independence and Maple.

Right now we admire visions ofinand share all of these somewhat important Kansas City afternoon news links.Checkit:And this is thefor right now . . .
Kansas City Fruit & Veggie Progress

Murder Tonight across State Line

KCK Police investigating homicide near 26th and Quindaro The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department was called to investigate a homicide Wednesday evening. Police Chief Terry Zeigler said that incident happened near 26th and Quindaro. One person was rushed to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries. They were pronounced dead a short time later. No word yet on any suspect information.

Fair Housing Off-Site???

Cordish agrees to affordable housing, but not at Three Light Power & Light District developer Cordish offered Wednesday to cut by half its 99-year deal with the city for luxury apartment construction and commit to setting aside 10 percent of future units for low and moderate income tenants. The measure falls short of a resolution introduced earlier this week by two City Council critics of subsidies to the Baltimore company.

Would You Advise A Youngster To Pursue Career As Cop???

Blue River Public Safety Institute sees shrinking class size KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The three officers shot in Clinton, Missouri sheds light on a dismal reality for law enforcement and cadets all over the nation. Policing is a dangerous career and fewer people are willing to do it. The MCC-Blue River Public Safety Institute started its Police Academy Certificate program in 1995.

More Bad News For 'Never Was' Bubba

Talking With Native Prof

For Dean At Lawrence's Haskell Indian Nations University, Tribalism And Twitter Are Teaching Tools In her Twitter bio, Julia Good Fox says she's "unapologetically tribalist." "I love tribalism, and that might be shocking," she told host Gina Kaufmann on KCUR's Central Standard. People have been taught that it's a negative word, she added, "which is very interesting, considering how many American Indian tribes we have here, and considering that this is an indigenous area."

Kansas City Good Life Foodie Honors

The James Beard Foundation Just Named Its 2018 "Design Icon Award" Feast your eyes on The American restaurant in Kansas City.

Theon the way this weekend and their dedication to their craft inspires this quick update featuring all the local worthwhile news tonight.Checkit:And this is thefor tonight . . .
NOTICE ALL OF KANSAS CITY CORPORATE MEDIA HIDING THE PHOTO OF AN ACCUSED KCFD WORKER WHILST SOCIAL MEDIA AND NATIONAL BLOGS PUT PIX ON BLAST AMID STUNNING ALLEGATIONS!!!

"Skeen, Who Has Worked for the KC Fire Department Since 2002, Wrote on Facebook He Would Unfriend Anyone Who Makes Inappropriate Comments About Someones Race, Religions, Sexual Orientation or Beliefs"

ACTIVISTS AND WITNESSES TO THE HOOTERS CLASH MAKE ASSERTIONS DAMAGING TO THE REP OF 1ST RESPONDERS ACROSS THE METRO!!!

"If we would've reacted in violence the headline would've read totally different!!! We reacted with dignity and class!!! Ain't no telling how many people he hurt or let die because they were a kid or black!!!!"

IS THE MEDIA KEEPING KANSAS CITY STUPID OR ARE THEY RIGHT TO TRY AND HIDE WIDELY AVAILABLE PIX OF THE ALLEGED KCFD WORKER CONFRONTING SERIOUS RACIAL AND YOUNGSTER ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS?!?!

















The fallout in the aftermath of a racially charged dispute at an Overland Park Hooters continues to impact the local discourse.More to the point . . .As always, our blog works to remain agnostic, objective andin all things related to Kansas City and so we merely want to share the facts and perspectives as we see them . . .is a national blog and news organization that quickly complied deetsregarding the KCFD workerinvolved in this racial culture warbattle royale . . .A fun fact from their coverage that we found under-reported . . .Meanwhile . . .Personal bloggy aside . . .I have some experience with this and from my vantage this fear isunrealized . . . Over the course of this blog I've viciously debated policy with both KCPD & KCFD and I've found that hateration from leaders ismatched by the rank & file who have always been really nice, helpful, professional and even downright friendly . . . It's important to address the idea at the heart of the concern: Workers get into these professions because their desire to help people is stronger than any logical reasoning regarding compensation, personal risk or petty politics. 1st responders on the street level really are some of the most dedicated people in Kansas City and it's unfair to them to hide from this debate or let these remarks go unchallenged.Just my 2 cents.Nevertheless . . .Check the links and as of this writing notice pix and more serious accusations are completely absent from local MSM reporting:Developing . . .
Banks must take advantage of the current financial disruption and collaborate with FinTech companies to sustain and expand their business, said the chairman of Arab Financial Services (AFS) and deputy group CEO of Bank ABC.



Sael Al Waary was delivering his opening address at the 2nd Middle East and Africa FinTech Forum, entitled Beyond Disruption, held in Bahrain today (March 8).



Al Waary illustrated the elemental shift in the way financial services industry is now responding towards FinTech. Banks have shifted their mind-set and are viewing FinTech as an opportunity rather than a threat. More and more banks are embracing FinTech and are catching up very quickly, he said.



Al Waary added that many traditional or legacy banks are still responding with a defensive strategy by creating mobile only banks or app only banks, leveraging their existing infrastructure and regulatory status to enhance the customer experience and attracting new customer segment.



On a related front, he explained that central banks around the world are getting increasingly supportive of FinTech innovation and are establishing regulatory Sandboxes to enable firms to test new financial products with real customers.



Almost $100 billion has been invested in FinTech globally since 2010. In 2017 alone $ 27.4 billion was invested, an 18 per cent increase from 2016, driven by the surge in US, UK and India, said Al Waary, highlighting the rapid increase in financial services start-ups in Mena and leveraging technologies and innovation to tap in the un-banked, underserved and unsatisfied customers.



Al Waary predicted a number of key developments in the industry in 2018; one of them is that greater governmental support to promote FinTech innovation will be generated. Many governments will encourage conventional banks to take a more active role in utilising FinTech sandboxes, he said.



He also noted that going ahead, customers will set the agenda to shape the future of banking, reiterating Bill Gates words We need banking but we do not need banks. In addition, he predicted an explosion of frictionless payments in the region, as initiated by AFS and Batelcos bWallet service in Bahrain. Such wallets will soon be launched in Oman and Libya.



While all of this is happening, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will find application in almost all areas of banking, from front-office, to credit scoring to even advisoryand cloud banking will bring more scalability and agility at a lower cost, said Al Waary. He predicted that Blockchain technology will soon become mainstream, revolutionising banking operations, and financial inclusion for the two billion unbanked people around the world.



Al Waary concluded by emphasising on the need for collaboration between banks and FinTech start-ups, which would combine capital and innovation, economies of scale and agility, customer data and customer experience, regulatory and technical know-how. I have always believed that disruption is a catalyst of change and opportunity. at AFS we are optimistic about what lies ahead, he said.  TradeArabia News Service
Nearly 4,000 geoscientists and oil and gas professionals from around the globe converged this week at Bahrains International Exhibition & Convention Center for the 13th Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition (GEO 2018).



Held under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, Prime Minister of Bahrain, and sponsored by Saudi Aramco and other global energy leaders, the bi-annual event addressed the theme, Pushing the Technical Limits: Shaping the Energy Landscape.



Mohammed Y Al-Qahtani, Saudi Aramco senior VP of Upstream, gave the keynote speech, Reshaping the Landscape in Industry 4.0, in the first plenary session on overcoming barriers for future energy, noting that the rapid transformation required of the industry is happening at a time when the Fourth Industrial Revolution makes almost anything seem possible  although the enabling scope of technology makes it easy to settle for immediate gratification.



Unfortunately, much of petroleum R&D investment is in shorter-term improvements with quick pay-outs, as opposed to groundbreaking research. And while incremental improvement plays a role, investing solely in low-hanging fruit and short-term pay-offs will fall short of transformation, Al-Qahtani warned.



Al-Qahtani went on to discuss long-term technological investments that are proving to be game-changers for Saudi Aramco, increasing discovery and recovery, reducing costs, enhancing safety and protecting the environment.



Its no coincidence that these investments fit nicely with GEOs focus on moving beyond technical boundaries, new opportunities in unconventional resources, and how Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things impact exploration and production, because Industry 4.0 is the catalyst for major leaps forward in all these areas, he said.



Al-Qahtani highlighted the importance of technologies like Spice Rack, a robotics-based innovation that increases data acquisitions by 50 per cent while cutting costs by 30 per cent; and AI and Deep Learning processes that determine rock types and geological features for better well placement and field development.



Inviting attendees to visit Saudi Aramcos pavilion to learn more about the companys proprietary technologies like TeraPOWERS, the worlds first trillion-cell reservoir simulator whose clear imaging aids increased discovery and recovery, Al-Qahtani emphasized the importance of cooperation within and beyond the traditional industry ecosystem, continued investment in training and development, and ensuring that technology is scalable, affordable and adaptable for continuous innovation.  TradeArabia News Service
Acwa Power, a leading developer of power and water desalination projects, has announced the launch of its greenfield Salalah 2 IPP (independent power project) which boasts an aggregate capacity of 445 MW in the Salalah region of Oman.

The greenfield poject, built at an investment of $465 million, was inaugurated by Sayyid Shihab bin Tariq Al Said, advisor to His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said today (March 8) in the presence of several high-level dignitaries, including government officials and other senior public representatives.

The plant consists of four gas turbines with four heat recovery steam generators and two steam turbines, and was completed ahead of schedule with zero hours of lost time injury.

Thamer Al Sharhan, managing director at Acwa Power, said: We are pleased to launch the Salalah 2 IPP project, a significant milestone which adds to our portfolio in Oman. The project has enhanced the efficiency of Omans power grid, and 23 per cent of the project budget was allocated to local companies and contractors, contributing significantly to the local value chain. The projects completion was achieved with the support of engineers and technicians from Oman.

The project recorded 6.4 million hours of safe work in all stages of development with zero injuries or accidents, and was accomplished ahead of time, with the highest level of quality, safety, and security, said a statement.

Paddy Padmanathan, president and CEO of Acwa Power, said: We are pleased to have achieved commercial operations ahead of schedule and to begin to supply much-needed additional power to the region. Power demand in Oman is rapidly increasing and we look forward to continuing our work with OPWP (Oman Power and Water Procurement Company) and our partners to reliably and cost-effectively deliver power in Oman.

The project, owned by the Dhofar Generating Company, was developed by a consortium of Mitsui, Acwa Power and Dhofar International Development and Investment Holding Company.

Eng Naef bin Mohammad Al Awaed, CEO of Dhofar Generating Company, said: The Salalah 2 Independent Power Plant contributes to the development of the local community and meets the steady increase in industrial, economic and social activity in the province and the sultanate as a whole.

He added that the project will help in attracting more investment to the region in various fields such as import and export, infrastructure construction, projects that require significant electrical power, tourism, as well as improving the electricity supply in the province of Dhofar, keeping up with the pace of urban expansion in the area.

The greenfield plant has been designed for a lifecycle of 30 years and adds to the capacity of the existing 273 MW plant in Raysut. - TradeArabia News Service
Oman is stepping up investment in air transport, announcing the arrival of a new fleet of aircraft, routes to North Africa and Europe, and an expansion of existing flight services as part of a strategy to support growth in tourism and logistics.



According to a report published by Oxford Business Group, Oman Air said it would initiate three new routes as part of its 2018 expansion plan, with flights to Casablanca, Istanbul and Moscow to commence in June, July and October, respectively. The announcement follows the launch of connections to Manchester and Nairobi last year.



The airline is also looking to strengthen its position in the Indian aviation market and aims to more than double flights to the country, and explore the feasibility of opening new routes to Ahmedabad, Kolkata and Mangalore.



The expansion drive is part of a strategy that aims to expand the airlines footprint to 39 million passengers by 2030.



To achieve this goal, the carrier has invested in a new fleet of airliners, unveiling the arrival of a Boeing 737 Max in February. The 737 Max is the first of 30 it has purchased directly from Boeing. A further five are scheduled for delivery this year, with the remainder to join the fleet in the coming years.



To expand long-haul capacity and target more destinations in Europe and East Asia, in December 2017 the carrier also purchased one Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner; four more are expected for delivery in 2018.



Airline expansion key to tourism growth

The investment being channelled into Oman Air is central to the sultanates wider plans to spur tourism growth in line with its ninth five-year development plan, covering the 2016-20 period, and broader economic diversification strategy, which identifies tourism and logistics, along with manufacturing, as three sectors with strong expansion potential.



By adopting a destination-oriented business model, Oman Air is hoping to emulate the recent success of Iceland, which successfully catalysed tourism growth by investing in its national carrier, Icelandair.



The results so far have been promising. Passenger numbers grew by 10.9 per cent last year to reach 8.5 million, and the number of flights more than doubled from 31,000 to 68,500.



Airport infrastructure upgrades to support increased services



Increased investment in air links is also being supported by infrastructure expansion at airports.



A $1.8 billion development at Muscat International Airport (MIA), which involves the construction of a new 580,000-sq-metre terminal, is set to open on March 20. While some 14 million people passed through the airport last year, up 17 per cent on 2016, the project will initially boost annual capacity to around 20 million.



A four-phase expansion schedule has been outlined for the terminal, which will see capacity rise to 48 million once all construction is completed.



This development follows the opening of a new terminal at Salalah International Airport in 2015, which has increased passenger traffic at the site from 841,000 in 2014 to 1.5 million in 2017. Sohar Airport, meanwhile, which opened in 2014, has added further capacity to the national system through the launch of international flights in July last year.



In addition, a new 8,500-sq-metre terminal at Duqm is scheduled to open this year, boosting annual capacity by 500,000 passengers.



Infrastructure growth to boost logistics



Along with supporting the tourism industry, the expansion of Omans air transport capacity is also expected to complement growth in the logistics sector.



Freight transport at MIA increased by 24 per cent last year, with cargo volumes exceeding 200,000 tonnes. This is likely to rise further, as global delivery firm DHL has started running weekly freighter operations between Muscat and Bahrain International Airport.



Expanded air connectivity has coincided with a series of investments in domestic road infrastructure. Recently completed projects include upgrades to the Batinah Coastal Road and the Bidbid-Sur dual carriageway, designed to improve traffic flows around the country, while work is continuing on the Batinah Expressway  connecting Muscat to the UAE border  and the 240-km Adam-Thumrait road dualisation project.



Speaking at the Oman Ports Conference in Muscat in January, Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Salim Al Futaisi, minister of transport and communications, said that as part of the Oman Logistics Strategy 2040, the government was aiming to expand the logistics sectors contribution to GDP to $7.8 billion by 2020. If achieved, this would make of the logistics sector the second-largest economic contributor after hydrocarbons. - TradeArabia News Service
DigiCor Announces Institutional Grade Cryptocurrency Index Funds

DigiCor has announced the launch of its two institutional-grade digital assets passive funds.

The first new fund is the DigiCor90, which tracks a market-cap-weighted index. The second is the DigiCorEW, an equal-weighted version of the DigiCor90.

Both index Funds are built to meet the highest fiduciary, security, and compliance standards. For instance, 100% of the assets are held in cold storage vault with a qualified custodian and have management fees comparable to traditional high-risk index funds (e.g. 0.5% for DigiCor90 vs 0.69% for the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF).

According to CoinMarketCap, the digital assets market expanded by over 30-times in 2017 and added as many as 300 new cryptocurrencies. Investors understand the large disruptive potential from blockchain technology and how it could translate into higher prices for digital assets in the long run. However, accessing this investment opportunity remains difficult, risky, and expensive. Those willing to invest despite these challenges have to manage multiple cryptocurrency wallets, keep their coins secure, find liquidity in a fragmented market, and deal with high trading fees. Critically, for most investors, the expertise required to perform due diligence is technologically complex, expensive, and time-consuming.

DigiCor addresses these problems by providing two simple, secure, and cost-efficient index Funds that facilitate diversified broad market exposure to digital assets without the need of complex due diligence. The investment vehicles are built with risk management in mind and all holdings are deposited with a qualified custodian in cold storage vaults and subject to yearly audits. In addition, all investors receive monthly performance updates and the necessary tax documentation at the end of the year. The Funds provide monthly liquidity at low management fees between 0.5% and 0.6%, which decrease with larger investment amounts. Furthermore, in their ambition to create the highest quality indexes in the digital assets space, the company is in the process of implementing the IOSCO principles for financial benchmarks.

The DigiCor team is made up of:

Matias Antonio, the CEO, is a mathematician and macroeconomist with seven years of experience in buy-side investing and macroeconomic policy. Matias has been involved in the development and deployment of tactical and strategic asset allocation models to manage $25bn in AUM and the successful reconstruction and management of a $2bn emerging market equities portfolio at the World Bank Pension Fund. In addition, Matias has been engaged in the construction and deployment of various World Bank and International Monetary Fund macroeconomic stabilization programs.

Kamran Jiwani, CTO, has over 12 years of experience in enterprise-grade software development in a wide-range of areas including finance and human resources. During his career, Kamran has been involved as a software developer and technical lead in numerous implementation, conversion and upgrade projects. He has worked for corporate clients such as The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the World Bank, Citigroup, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Navy Federal. Additionally, Kamran has extensive knowledge of numerous open source and proprietary technologies and his skill set includes machine learning tools (including predictive analysis, supervised, and unsupervised learning algorithms), big data, full stack development, and PeopleSoft.

Solomon Stavis, CFO, has eight years of experience in international trade, financial regulation, and macroeconomic policy. At the International Finance Corporation, Solomon assessed the export and import markets of country economies and developed reform initiatives based on good international practices. Prior to the IFC, Solomon worked at World Bank where he engaged in policy dialogue with local authorities to harmonize financial sector regulations across ASEAN countries.

Their combined knowledge enables them to understand the technology behind blockchain and build products which meet the needs of the most sophisticated asset allocators.

In addition, as of March 1st, Marc Tabah will join the advisory board of DigiCor. As the companys first advisor, Marc brings over 30 years of experience at three of the most prestigious firms in the financial services industry: Lazard, Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley. His experiences in distribution, client relationship management, and capital raising will be particularly valuable to us.

DigiCor is based in Washington, D.C., and its goal is to provide institutional-grade products that investors can use to understand and gain exposure to digital assets, and the companys products reflect this objective.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:
Thomson Reuters Partners with DealVector to Enhance LPC Desktop Capabilities

Thomson Reuters and DealVector have partnered to integrate access to certain DealVector identity-protected messaging capabilities with Thomson Reuters Loan Pricing Corporation (LPC) desktop products. The integration will enable LPC clients viewing CLO and loan data to connect to holders of those specific assets.

Thomson Reuters LPC is a global provider of information on the syndicated loan and CLO markets. DealVector is the fixed income electronic asset registry which allows market participants to source liquidity, communicate, and exercise governance rights by connecting directly to other market players affiliated with a specific bond, loan, or other financial asset.

In addition to being able to connect on an asset-specific basis to holders in the DealVector Network from LPCs LoanConnector and LPC Collateral products, LPC clients can receive notifications of outstanding corporate actions and recent pricing activity on loans and bonds through DealVector. DealVector clients will be able to extend their reach with a network of networks effect, as messages posted to bondholders on the DealVector Network will now also have the ability to reach LPC clients. DealVector members will receive access to certain key LPC data fields to facilitate detailed filtering for bonds that come out for bid or offer on DealVectors BondTalk liquidity platform and may receive news alerts from LPC that could impact their holdings.

Bringing DealVectors information and connectivity to our LoanConnector and LPC Collateral users is an important step forward to deliver greater transparency and communication to the loan and CLO markets, said Mike Lavin, Global Head, Capital Markets Insight, Thomson Reuters. This furthers Thomson Reuters commitment to enhance the capabilities we deliver to our clients through partnerships and collaboration.

This partnership and integration with LPC is the first step in our Network of Networks strategy to deliver greater market connectivity, facilitate introductions, and to make data more immediately actionable, and therefore valuable, said Mike Manning, CEO and Co-Founder of DealVector. We look forward to working together with Thomson Reuters and their clients to develop additional features.

By providing a platform to communicate with noteholders and other deal parties, DealVector seeks to drive efficiencies in corporate actions, new issuance, surveillance, and governance. DealVectors ultimate goal is to create a market that is more resilient, transparent, and attractive to a wider range of investors.

Since 1985, Thomson Reuters LPC has been a premier information supplier to the syndicated loan market, providing extensive global loan pricing and editorial coverage, plus comprehensive data and analysis. LPCs publications, end of day valuations, online news, analysis and interactive databases are used daily by banks, asset managers and more to drive valuation, syndication, trading, research, and portfolio management activities.

Thomson Reuters LPCs CLO offering, LPC Collateral, provides a broad view of the CLO market, with detailed data and analytics on the underlying loans including exposure and overlap analysis, market value, trade history and more from a single platform. To learn more visit loanpricing.com.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:
4-star Hotel Husafell welcomes independent travellers to enjoy horseback riding and nature hiking on a flexible 4-day adventure package in solo-friendly Iceland.



(TRAVPR.COM) ICELAND - March 8th, 2018 - Four-star Hotel Husafell in West Iceland welcomes solo travellers with 'Hiking and Horses,' a new four-day adventure package available until October 31.



Amidst volcanic and glacial landscapes in West Iceland, guests travel on horseback, hike nature trails, experience backcountry hospitality at a family-run horse farm, and mingle with fellow travellers on a nature and heritage walk around Husafell.



Independent spirits can customize their journey with trips to nearby Langjokull glacier and the world's largest lava cave, as well as on-property activities like outdoor thermal swimming, Northern Lights hunting and mountain biking.



Icelands small size, low crime-rate, friendly citizenry of English-speaking residents and transformative travel experiences make it an attractive destination for the rapidly growing solo travel trend.

HIKING AND HORSES SOLO PACKAGE

Tailor-made for solo wanderers and discounted 30% off regular rates, the package includes:

3 night stay at Hotel Husafell, a member of National Geographic Unique Lodges of the World

Private hiking in Husafell Nature Reserve with local expert guide

Visit to family-run Sturlureykir Horse Farm in Reykholt for an introduction to the Icelandic horse and brief riding lesson

Horseback riding with fellow travellers along a unique hot-spring river

A taste of geothermally baked earth bread

An evening stroll with your fellow hotel guests on a heritage walk around Husafell

Soak in Iceland's spa culture and mingle with the locals at the outdoor Husafell thermal baths

Experience Float water wellness therapy

Mountain bike rental

Daily breakfast

Wi-fi, parking & taxes

Ice cave and lava cave excursions available upon request and bookable from the hotel.

For a complete list of activities click here: https://www.hotelhusafell.com/offers/hiking-and-horses-solo-adventure .

Package rate for three night stay from $1,310 available through October 31, 2018. For pricing based on double occupancy or to book email: bookings@hotelhusafell.is.

Images available for download: https://www.hotelhusafell.com/press/media-kit

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editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 8

A day after a naked womans body was found in a tube well room in Butar Kalan village, the police today claimed to have identified the victim.

Amandeep Singh, investigating officer, said she was Amarjit Kaur, wife of Avtar Singh, a resident of Lohgarh village that falls under the Beas police station. Her husband, a labourer, informed the police that she had gone to Rayya to take medicines but did not return. He doesnt suspect anyone. The body of the deceased was handed over to the family after postmortem examination.

He said that her mobile phone was missing and the police were trying to scrutinise her call details to find any clue about the culprits behind her murder.

Amarjit, who is in her late 30s, was found murdered in a tube well room at Butar Kalan village falling under the Mehta police station here on Tuesday evening. She was spotted by Avtar Singh, the owner of the fields, who found the locks of the room broken.

The police said the victim may have been strangled to death and there were no signs of injuries on other parts of the body. Investigation into the case is on. The police said it was hopeful of identifying the people who committing the crime.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

As many as 75 employees of The Tribune Trust donated blood at a camp organised by The Tribune Employees Union to mark International Womens Day on the office premises here today.

This was the 49th blood donation camp organised by the union.

Inaugurating the camp, The Tribune Trust members Justice SS Sodhi (retd) and Gurbachan Jagat congratulated the union for contributing towards the noble cause. It is a matter of pride for all of us that the next year will see the 50th camp. It is perhaps the only organisation to have conducted this many blood donation camps so far, said Justice Sodhi. He called upon all present to give due respect to all women  mothers, sisters and daughters.

Women deserve to be treated with great respect and dignity. Our Constitution provides equal opportunities to men and women, he said, adding that women must have confidence in themselves and believe that there was no such field or work that they cannot foray into or do.

Jagat congratulated the blood donors and organisers of the camp. He exhorted the union to work towards promoting the noble cause of organ donation, as suggested by him during the last blood donation camp.

Vinay Verma, General Manager of The Tribune Trust; Surinder Singh Tej, Editor, Punjabi Tribune; Raj Kumar Singh, Editor, Dainik Tribune, and Anil Kumar Gupta, president, The Tribune Employees Union, were also present on the occasion and congratulated the donors.

A team of doctors from the Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, conducted the camp. Anil Kumar Gupta and Ashok Kumar donated the blood for 52nd and 49th time, respectively.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

A local court today dismissed a discharge application filed by owners of Inscol hospital in a medical negligence case. The charges will now be framed against them on the next hearing scheduled for March 15. The case has been going on since June 2008.

As per the application, the accused had said that the allegations levelled against them are false and that complainant JS Arora had forged documents. It also said that Arora being a lawyer used his legal acumen to falsely implicate them.

The complaint against the three accused was filed under Sections 120-B, 420, 326, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC along with Section 15 of the Medical Council of India Act, 1956.

The case

As per the complainant, JS Arora, in 2005, his wife, then 65-year-old Indrajit, went to Inscol hospital in Sector 34 to get a mole on her leg checked. Indrajit was physically fit at the time barring diabetes. Doctors there told her that she may have pulmonary embolism, which is actually blood clotting in the lungs. The hospital asked them to purchase a Tissue Plassiminogin Activator injection to treat it which cost Rs 81,600 at the time.

The high potency injection is to be given by a qualified cardiologist in a medical facility, which has a ventilator. However, the hospital ignored the procedure and Indrajits condition worsened, as per the complaint. The hospital could not control the situation and asked them to take Indrajit to another private hospital which they did. They spent over Rs 8 lakh there but her condition did not improve and she was referred to the PGI.

Indrajit stayed there for a month, but her eyesight had deteriorated and her body had lost strength. The civil suits that began in 2007 were settled in April last year and Jagjit received around Rs 33 lakh as compensation in total. The criminal case against the then owners of Inscol hospital and the doctors is on at the district courts here since 2008. However, Indrajit died in August last year.
editorial@tribune.com

Mohali, March 8

In yet another case of gold seizure, the Customs Department today caught a Maharashtra-based man for carrying 180 gm of gold, reportedly worth Rs 5.6 lakh, in his rectum at the Chandigarh international airport.

According to sources, the 38-year-old passenger arrived at the airport on an IndiGo flight from Dubai.

An official said a gold biscuit, weighing over 180 gm and wrapped in an adhesive tape, was found concealed in his rectum. Customs officials apprehended him as his body language appeared suspicious. He was subsequently frisked and the gold found concealed in the body.

The passenger was not arrested since the value of the gold was less than Rs 20 lakh. The passenger was let off after completing the formalities and the gold was seized, the official said.

This is the third case of gold seizure at the airport this month and comes two days after two women were caught with over 800 gm of gold, worth Rs 25 lakh, in their rectum.

On Holi, a 20-year-old college student from Punjab was held for concealing three gold biscuits, weighing 228 gm, using the same modus operandi. TNS
vinaymishra188@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 7

The police claimed to have cracked four cases of snatching with the arrest of two persons.

A team of the Maloya police station arrested the miscreants, identified as Suraj (22) and Sumit (20). The accused used to commit snatchings on a stolen motorcyle. They were involved in snatching incidents in different parts of the city, including Maloya and Dadu Majra.

The accused will be produced in court on Thursday.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

The India-Pakistan saga has taken many strange twists and turns. One of them would be Indias sudden offer to break bread with Pakistan on humanitarian issues even as soldiers take potshots at each other along the border in J&K. Equally surprising is Pakistans quick acceptance of the offer to de-escalate the hostilities on the border. It may not be hard to detect the inspiration behind the abrupt realisation that the border needs peace and that women and the elderly are the worst sufferers in the absence of regular diplomatic relations. The US is trying to regain its lost geopolitical footing following quicksilver moves in the region by the Chinese. Washington allows New Delhi to do the heavylifting in the contest with Beijing for island-nations in the Indian Ocean or the countries between Tibet and India. But it has taken matters in its own hand to check the Af-Pak drift away from the Western camp.

The US interest in easing tensions between India and Pakistan is obvious. It has just offered an olive branch to the Taliban and warm words to coax Pakistan into relocating bulk of its army on the Afghanistan border to bottle-up militants out to sabotage the talks. A prime requirement for the US game in Afghanistan to succeed is peace on the Indo-Pak border. For both countries uninterested in normalising ties because of the divergence in their core concerns, the humanitarian angle is a convenient cover to announce a break from the mutually unhelpful and endless skirmishing on the border.

Appearances can be deceptive but Pakistan has offered more than a formal breaking of bread by dangling the prospect of a comprehensive dialogue. This is the ideal opening for diplomats to step in. India needs space to strengthen its internal political processes in J&K as well as allow smooth implementation of its Iran trade corridor and the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, even as it keeps turning the screws on Pakistan for harbouring militants. A stoppage of dialogue has so far only added more files to the folder of bilateral negativity.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

US President Donald Trump appeared to be at his wits end when he made a rash comment after his chief economic adviser Gary Cohn put in his papers: Will be making a decision soon on the appointment of new chief economic advisor. Many people wanting the job  will choose wisely! It is both a confession of his poor judgment and a desire to have a yes-man. This is an ominous sign of rising protectionism that threatens to disrupt global trade. Although, China appears to be in the President Trumps direct firing line, India needs to be prepared for collateral damage. The signs are there when the US President in an emotional outburst hauled up India for high import duties on the iconic Harley-Davidson motorbike despite its insignificant contribution in the total bilateral trade. Indeed, jingoism in any form is irrational.

President Trumps protectionism may, however, hamper the American economy the most. In a last-ditch effort, adviser Cohn tried to make Trump understand that undue tariff protection to domestic steel and aluminum makers would hurt upstream manufacturers like cars and cans. It is unfortunate that the US, which once championed free trade ring-fenced by WTO, is resorting to unilateral trading barriers instead of sharpening the competitiveness of the domestic industry. Apparently under pressure, India has already started importing energy all the way from America, which makes little commercial sense, especially when such resources are freely available in the neighbourhood. Indian airlines have placed orders worth several billions of dollars to purchase more than 300 American aircraft.

President Trumps decision to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports is primarily targeted at Canada and China but the impact will be felt by steel and aluminum producers across the world. The decision has the seeds to unleash a global trade war as the US imports steel from more than 100 countries. China has already communicated that it would retaliate if its interests were harmed. For Indian manufacturers, it is the time to become more competitive. Once the US market gets closed, Chinese exporters would turn towards India in a big way.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

Led by legislators of the Treasury Benches, MLAs from Faridabad, cutting across party lines, demanded that the district get its due and be developed to restore its lost glory here today.

Taking on the BJP government, Mool Chand Sharma raised the issue of the Ballabhgarh auditorium lying incomplete and demanded a time frame for its completion during the Question Hour of the Budget session of the Assembly.

Dissatisfied with Urban Local Bodies Minister Kavita Jains reply that it would be completed with the funds from the municipal corporation, Sharma said that the MC would never be able to generate those kind of funds.

He added that only the Chief Ministers announcements were being taken up in Faridabad in the name of development and not one project had been completed so far.

He was seconded by MLA Seema Trikha, who sought support from MLAs of other parties to demand development and completion of all ongoing projects.

Health Minister Anil Vij said that appointment letters had been issued to 157 doctors who were in the waiting list which was prepared during the previous recruitment. He said 386 doctors had already joined their duty under this recruitment.

Replying to a question, he said that appointment letters to 543 doctors had been issued. He added that the doctors had been posted.

In reply to another question, the minister said that according to national standards, blood bank could be opened in those places where blood transfusion of more than 2,000 units took place. On this basis, blood bank has been established in all districts of the state, he said.

He said transfusion of less than 1,000 units of blood took place in Dabwali, yet a blood bank would be opened there due to demand of people and geographical conditions there. For this, the officials had been directed to take necessary action and take stock of the situation, he said.

Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Om Prakash Dhankar said that a provision of Rs 300 crore had been made under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana in 2017-18. The claim process for kharif 2017 was under process and would be finalised by April 2018, he said in response to a question.
In February, Hetq sent milk samples of thirteen Armenian manufacturers for testing, and five of them were found to contain Escherichia coli bacteria, staphylococcus aureus, vegetable oil, and higher than acceptable levels of MAFAM.

The testing was carried out jointly with the State Food Security Service (SFSS).

Hetq purchased the samples from shops, while the SFSS got samples from workshops.

Milk is used in almost every Armenian household. Normally, it should contain a number of essential ingredients such as proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.

There are several decisions and legal acts regulating the safety of dairy products in Armenia, like RA Government Decision N 1925 on Milk, Dairy Products and Their Production of December 21, 2006 and several technical regulations.

Vegetable oil shouldnt be used in the production of whole milk: it is not easily digested by the human body, though its cheaper for producers who want to make more money.

A EAC (Eurasian Conformity) label is necessary for the sale of goods within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), particularly important in case of high-risk food. According to a decision of the Armenian government, milk is high-risk food. (Armenia is an EAEU member).

Yerevans Standard Dialog LLC Laboratory did the testing for Hetq. None of the milk samples had passed its expiration date. The preliminary list of samples had been clarified with the SFSS.

The SFSS did the sampling a few days earlier. Their testing was carried out in the Republican Veterinary-Sanitary and Phytosanitary Laboratory Services Center (RVSPCLS) SNCO.

SAMPLE N1

Doustr Mariannas pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk, and 3.2% fat.

The label says the product is made according to technical conditions, where the manufacturer can set any requirements for the quality and composition of the product. In addition, it complies with the Armenian requirements and has a EAC conformity mark.

The testing showed that Marianna's pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food.

The SFSS testing showed that this product has a discrepancy only in the fat content (Hetq did not check this indicator), which was actually 2.4% - 0.8% lower than written on the label.

This is a violation of the Law on Food Safety, since the ingredients dont correspond to what appears on the label.

Thus, it is considered a bogus product.

SAMPLE N2

Biokat companys pasteurized milk is labeled as "100% natural", containing pure cow's pasteurized milk, 3,5% fat, corresponding to Armenian standards. However, it has no EAC conformity mark, which is a violation of requirements.

The testing showed that Biokat milk contained Escherichia coli bacteria, which indicates non-compliance with sanitary and hygienic norms during production.

Thus, this sample doesnt comply with the prescribed norms and is unfit for human consumption.

The SFSS testing also showed that this product does not meet the established norms, containing Escherichia coli bacteria and higher than acceptable MAFAM (Mesophilic aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms) levels.

SAMPLE N3

Chanakh companys pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.2% fat.

The label says the product complies with Armenian technical requirements. It also has a EAC conformity mark.

The testing showed that Chanakh's pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food, confirmed by the SFSS testing.

SAMPLE N4

Tamaras pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.2% fat.

The label says the product complies with Armenian technical requirements. It also has a EAC and ISO 9001:2008 conformity marks.

The testing showed that Tamara's pasteurized milk is also in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food, confirmed by the SFSS testing.

SAMPLE N5

Bonilats pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk, 100% natural, and 3.6% fat.

According to the label, the product complies with Armenian technical requirements. It also has a EAC conformity marks.

The testing showed that Bonilats pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food, confirmed by the SFSS testing.

SAMPLE N6

Aparan-Groups pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.2% fat.

It says to comply with Armenian Standards (AST), but has no EAC mark, which is a violation of requirements.

In addition, the milk has two different expiration dates, one printed for four days, and another one - below, on the label, saying "keep at 2-6  C, for 10 days."

This is also a breach of a technical regulation, as well as violation of the Law on Food Safety.

"Enjoy the pure dairy products," says the manufacturer, while the testing result reveals the presence of Escherichia coli bacteria.

Moreover, MAFAM levels exceed norms by a factor of 20.

Thus, this sample doesnt comply with the prescribed norms and is unfit for human consumption.

The SFSS testing showed that this product has a discrepancy only in the fat content, which was actually 4.9% - 1,7% higher than written on the label. Thus, it is considered a bogus product.

SAMPLE N7

Marilas pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 2.5% fat.

According to the label, the product complies with Armenian technical requirements. It also has a EAC conformity marks.

The testing showed that Marilas pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food, confirmed by the SFSS testing.

SAMPLE N8

Tamara and Ani companys pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk, and 3.2% fat.

According to the label, the product complies with Armenian technical requirements. It also has AST, ISO 2200: 2005 and EAC conformity marks.

The testing showed the presence of vegetable oil, which is not mentioned on the label.

Thus, it is considered a bogus product.

The SFSS testing, however, found no vegetable oil in the sample of the same date and said it was in line with the prescribed norms.

Tigran Shaljyan, Deputy Director of Production at Tamara and Ani, told Hetq he didnt believe in any of these testings and claimed that they did not use vegetable oil, otherwise they would mark it on the label.

However, one frozen sample of the same milk is still stored and, if necessary, it will be sent to another country, to a reference laboratory. We have also informed Tigran Shaljyan about this.

SAMPLE N9

Ashtarak Kats pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.2% fat.

According to the labeling, the product is made according to Armenian technical requirements and has a EAC conformity mark.

The testing showed that Ashtarak Kats pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food.

The SFSS testing showed that this product has a discrepancy only in the fat content, which was actually 2.9% - lower than whats written on the label.

Though the deviation is quite small, it is still considered to be a violation of the Law on Food Safety, since the ingredients dont correspond to what appears on the label.

Thus, it is also considered a bogus product.

SAMPLE N10

Arzni Kats pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.2% fat.

According to the labeling, the product is made according to Armenian technical requirements and has an AST and EAC conformity marks.

"Our job is fair," notes the manufacturer of Arzni Kat, while the results of the testing show that the product contains Escherichia coli bacteria and staphylococcus aureus, which is already a pathogenic microorganism. Doctor-bacteriologist Marina Oganova says, "The presence of staphylococcus aureus indicates a poor sanitary and hygienic condition. The main cause of staphylococcus is mastitis. If the cow isnt cured, naturally, staphylococcus gets into the milk.

Plus, here MAFAM levels exceed norms by a factor of 15.

Thus, this milk doesnt comply with the established norms and is not suitable for use.

The SFSS testing showed that Arzni Kats pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food.

SAMPLE N11

Bandivan Kats pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.6% fat.

According to the labeling, the product complies with Armenian technical requirements and has a EAC conformity mark.

100% natural milk is written on the bottle.

The testing showed that Bandivan Kats pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food.

The SFSS testing showed that this product has a discrepancy only in the fat content, which was actually 4% - a bit higher than whats written on the label.

Though the deviation is quite small, it can also be considered a bogus product.

SAMPLE N12

Mer Yerkirs pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk and 3.5-4.5% fat.

According to the label, the product complies with GOST requirements. It also has a EAC conformity marks.

The testing showed that Mer Yerkirs pasteurized milk is in line with the established norms and is suitable for use in food, confirmed by the SFSS testing.

SAMPLE N13

Multi Group companys Multi Agro pasteurized milk is labeled to contain cow's normalized milk, dry whole milk and 2.5% fat.

According to the label, the product complies with Armenian technical requirements, but has no EAC mark, which is a violation of requirements.

The testing showed the presence of Escherichia coli bacteria.

Thus, this sample doesnt comply with the prescribed norms and is unfit for human consumption.

The SFSS didnt test this sample because of a change in the preliminary agreed list. They tested Igit milk instead, finding a fat amount discrepancy.

The SFSS did not want to publish the results of its laboratory findings, and provided only 6 out of the 13 sample results to Hetq.

Readers can access Hetqs laboratory findings here (in Armenian)

Photos: Saro Baghdasaryan
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

The INLD today staged two walkouts during the reply to the debate on the Governors Address by Manohar Lal Khattar even as the Chief Minister favoured an all-party meeting on the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue and asked the Opposition not to politicise it.

The Opposition should refrain from using the SYL issue as a ladder to climb to power as the public is well aware of its political gimmicks. For the Opposition, the SYL only means Satta Yun hi Lunga, Khattar said.

Amid interruptions by INLD and Congress members, Khattar reiterated the resolve of the state government to get every single drop of its share in the river waters through the SYL. He offered to convene an all-party meeting to draw a line of action on this issue.

Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala had, in Delhi yesterday, threatened to launch a jail bharo andolan on May 1 if the government failed to start the canals construction.

Meanwhile, Khattar said the three-and-a-half-year-old BJP government had ensured equitable development, brought transparency in recruitment and curbed corruption.

A strong message has gone out that now jobs are given only on merit. This government represents 2.5 crore people of Haryana. We believe in sabka saath sabka vikas, he said.

Khattar said that his government had ensured equitable development. Earlier, there was a perception that more development works remained concentrated in regions from where Chief Ministers came, he said.

Khattar claimed that of the 4,500 CMs announcements, work on 3,200 had either been completed or was nearing completion. Abhay demanded that complete record pertaining to these announcements be placed before the House.

When Khattar tried to put the blame of non-payment of electricity bills by people on Abhays statement, the INLD members staged a walkout.

The INLD staged the second walkout as it said it was not satisified with Khattars reply on the law and order situation, which it alleged was going from bad to worse.
editorial@tribune.com

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

Leader of Opposition Abhay Chautala was cornered on more than one occasion by the Treasury Benches, especially Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu, on the fourth day of the Assembly here today.

During his reply to the debate on Governors Address, Khattar targeted Abhay repeatedly, forcing the latter to beat a hasty retreat.

Apparently hinting at the INLDs rally on the SYL issue in New Delhi yesterday, Khattar advised the Opposition to refrain from using it as a ladder to climb to power.

Abhay was again in the firing line on his reported statements urging the people not to pay power bills.

Abhay was at a loss for words when Khattar retorted that Sirsa, the fiefdom of Devi Lal clan, was one district where people had started paying pending power arrears despite Abhays efforts to the contrary.

This prompted Capt Abhimanyu to take a dig at Abhay, saying that even the people of Sirsa, the pocket borough of the Chautalas, had now starting refraining from heeding to the Chautalas advice, a sign of Devi Lal clans reducing influence.

On another occasion, when Khattar was bragging about transparency in government job recruitment, Abhay was on his feet, raising a point of order. Khattar outsmarted him again, asserting that he could not afford to bend rules for a particular section of society and risking a jail term, hinting at INLD supreme Om Prakash Chautalas 10-year jail term in the JBT teachers recruitment scam.

Abhay, on his part, disrupted the Chief Ministers address many a time, putting across his point of view. However, Khattar and Capt Abhimanyu clearly outwitted him time and again.
editorial@tribune.com

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

A rancorous debate between members of the opposition and Treasury Benches was witnessed on the fourth day of the Budget session of the Assembly here today.

It started when Congress MLA from Hodal Udai Bhan alleged during the debate on the Governors Address that the state government was delaying constitution of the Scheduled Castes Commission and was not doing enough for the welfare of Dalits. This enraged Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Krishan Bedi, who alleged that the MLA was ignorant of facts.

Perhaps Udai Bhan had also gone with his leader, who went to his grannys place in Italy, said Bedi, in an obvious reference to Rahul Gandhis current visit abroad.

A slip of tongue by INLD MLA from Dabwali Naina Singh Chautala, who inadvertently said children aged 12 years old would face death sentence due to a new law the state government proposed on rape brought a majority of BJP MLAs on their feet.

Though she tried to clarify that she did not mean that and was not against death sentence to perpetrators of rape with minors, ruling party members continued targeting her.

As Minister for Women and Child Development, I will like to enhance her knowledge on the Cabinet decision on the issue of death penalty for rape of minors, said Kavita Jain. When Naina tried to continue, Jain interrupted her again and asked her not to place wrong facts in the Assembly.

Ministers Bedi and Nayab Singh Saini and MLA Kulwant Ram Bazigar joined the debate and accused Naina of putting wrong facts in the Assembly. The Dabwali MLA read out dates of recent months when women, including minors, had been raped and kidnapped.

Children are not safe even at home and school. In Rewari district, several girls had to quit studies due to incidents of molestation, she alleged, triggering noisy scenes from Treasury Benches again.

The BJP members again resorted to shouting when Congress MLA from Jhajjar Geeta Bhukkal alleged that the state government was spending crores on Gita Jayanti, Saraswati and golden jubilee celebrations, but had no money to pay salary to employees.

Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu asked her to clarify when employees had not been paid their salaries in time. She alleged that despite its slogan of Sabka saath sabka vikas, the state government had been neglecting her segment Jhajjar in development.

Bhukkal castigated the government for wrong claims on improved sex ratio and said that the Niti Aayog had already exposed the state governments falsehood.

Health Minister Anil Vij clarified amid the ruckus that the Niti Aayog report was based on a sample survey while the governments figures were real and based on sex ratio at birth data. We have lodged our objection before the Niti Aayog, he maintained.
editorial@tribune.com

Naveen S Garewal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

The opposition took on Manohar Lal Khattar government on the issue of law and order on the occasion of International Womens Day today.

Reading out from the long list of crime against women during the beginning of the current year, INLD and Congress legislators alleged that incidents of rape and violence against women were on the rise.

Quoting statistics from different sources, they said that the situation had worsened over the last few years and women were feeling unsafe in the state.

To protest repeated injunctions by way of raising point of order on taking the government to task, Congress legislator and former minister Geeta Bhukkal and MLA Shakuntla Khatak walked up to Deputy Speaker Santosh Yadav and demanded protection from ministers and legislators on Treasury Benches alleging threats. We feel intimidated inside the House. What would be the plight outside? Bhukkal told the Deputy Speaker.

INLD legislator Naina Singh Chautala told the House during a debate on the Governors Address that the incidents of gang rape and violence this year had been heart-rending.

She mentioned cases of crime against women starting with January and read out a long list mentioning incidents that involved rape and burning of a Dalit in Panipat while the body of woman was found in a canal in Kurukshetra. She said that most of the crime has been perpetuated against Dalit women.

Naina went to the extent of saying that the widow of a martyr had to get her head tonsured to catch the attention of the government.

If widows of martyrs have to resort to such extreme steps, what are the chances of a common woman being heard? she asked. She repeatedly said, I am not naming anyone, but all of you in this House who talk of Womens Day will react strongly if I were to mention some deeds pertaining to women.

Bhukkal was no less furious on the issue of the deteriorating law and order. She said that the Governors Address did not mention many incidents of crime against women by brushing aside all that had been happening to women in the state.

She referred to Parkash Singh Committee report on Jat violence and said that the leadership in the state had totally flopped. She mentioned Dera Sacha Sauda violence in Panchkula and said the law and order situation had completely collapsed.

Blaming bad governance for the deteriorating law and order situation, the Congress leader said that the records of the National Crime Bureau had put Haryana among the top states in terms of recording crime against women.

She said incidents of kidnapping were on the rise, but the state government had been trying to act as if nothing had happened. Minister Krishan Bedi was so uneasy with the allegations of rising crime against women that he repeatedly raised a point of order against almost anything Naina and Bhukkal raised.

He was supported by some other members of the Treasury Benches in debunking the allegations made by opposition members. The Chief Minister, also the Home Minister and incharge of law and order, was not present in the House to defend the allegations against his government.
vinaymishra188@gmail.com

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 8

Highlighting the significance of synchronising the old tenets of education with the fast-moving digital era, a conglomeration of school principals from across Himachal Pradesh deliberated on the theme Foundation for professional success for the millenials at the Principals Meet organised by The Tribune Group of Newspapers in association with Chandigarh University here today.

Attended by 63 principals from across the state, the seminar dwelt upon the challenges encountered by the academicians in imparting school education at a time when the digital media had revolutionised the education system. Manoj K Sharma, professor and ex-dean, Panjab University Business School, RS Bawa, Vice-Chancellor, Chandigarh University, and CS Talwar, retired IAS officer, were the key speakers.

Drastic changes in the education system are required to suit current trends in the academic curriculum. Manoj K Sharma said there was a need to introduce need-based modifications in the education system while keeping team management as a key tool to attaining success.

He said developing intelligence, emotional, physical and digital quotients could help Gen Z become successful. It is significant to cultivate virtues and bridge the gap between the teacher and the taught, he said.

He highlighted the importance of befriending the younger generation and also put forth the concept of reverse mentoring that flips the classical roles. Teachers could learn about the fast-changing technological advancements from the millennials. He said the teaching-learning process needed to be evolved and technology could help bridge this gap to a great extent.

Principals play a crucial role in laying the foundation of successful professionals. Quoting renowned personalities such as Pluto, Socrates and Swami Vivekananda, CS Talwar, said success could be achieved by adopting good values and ethics.

RS Bawa, also the guest of honour, said the reading habit had declined as students were spending too much time on the Internet. A teacher should lead by example by accepting the changes and introducing transformation in the education system. Speaking on the need for a practical approach, he said, Teachers should use latest technology to make the teaching-learning process more effective. There is a need to blend technology and curiosity-based learning to get best results. The principals were all praise for the event as they said they got to know various methods by which they could teach the students.

Principal speak

There is a need to blend the traditional and modern system of education as students are the ones who will eventually contribute to the countrys development . Mohit Chugh DAV, Sundernagar

The digital revolution has transformed the way students access information. Inculcating book-reading habit is the need of the hour.  Kamna Beri DAV, Lakkar Bazar, Shimla

There are constraints such as lengthy syllabus and issues like using a dictionary or Google to look up a meaning. An integrated approach of parents and teachers can help bring out the best in a child.  Sunita John Auckland House, Shimla

Disciplining a pampered child is a challenge often encountered by teachers. Therefore, it is important to inculcate moral values in a child right from an early age.  Purinder Rana Gurukul Public Sr Sec School, Mandi

Ancient educational tools have become redundant in the digital era. Students energy should be channelised in a positive direction. Research on problems plaguing the modern system is the need of the hour.  Mandeep Rana Saraswati Paradise, Shimla

Both parents and teachers should work in tandem. Students addiction to gadgets have been increasing. Parents should keep a tab on their wards activities and control them.  SK Sharma RK International, Sarkaghat
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 8

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur today assured the House that the issue of rehabilitation of the Pong Dam oustees would be expedited. He would take it up with Rajasthan Chief Minister after the session

Replying to a query by independent MLA Hoshiyar Singh during Question Hour, he said 20,722 families had been uprooted of which 12,041 had been granted land. He said land allotment for re-settlement in 4,128 had been cancelled. It is unfortunate that the issue of re-settlement of the Pong Dam oustees is pending even today, but I assure the House that it will be expedited, he said.

He said he had taken up the matter with his Rajasthan counterpart, Vasundhra Raje Scindia during a meeting in Delhi on February 28. After the budget session, I will speak to her and, if possible, meet her so that the long-pending issues of the affected families can be resolved, he said.

Thakur admitted that at times the Himachal Government had been lax in providing names, address and other details of the left-out oustees. There is also another problem that many of the oustees do not wish to move to the allotted areas because of psychological and cultural factors, he said.

Rakesh Pathania drew the attention of the Chief Minister towards misuse of money meant for rehabilitation of oustees and the fact that some of the oustees were being threatened and forged wills being prepared. The people are aggrieved that they got uprooted to pave way for the Pong Dam yet their problems were not being addressed, he said.

Rakesh Singha, CPM MLA, also urged the Chief Minister to ensure that the distress cost being paid in the form of 12 per cent distress power is used for oustees benefit.

Replying to a query raised by Col Inder Singh and Sukh Ram regarding afforestation, Forest Minister Govind Thakur said that the endeavour of the Forest Department was to ensure that quality saplings, raised in 728 department nurseries, were planted and taken care of for better survival.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 8

First Lady Usha Vohra participated in a function organised by the J&K Police for celebrating the International Womens Day in Jammu this evening.

She lauded the cultural programme, comprising songs, poem recitation, skits and folk dances, besides the presentations made by lady officers Anita Sharma and Sargun Shukla on the Role of women police in J&K and Legal provisions/laws provided for the protection/empowerment of women, respectively.

Observing that ensuring the safety of women was a worldwide concern, the First Lady emphasised the need to make women feel safe and secure, for which the police have to play a crucial role.

She said despite constitutionally and legally guaranteed rights and privileges relating to gender parity, a lot needed to be done to empower women. She said a change in the mindset had to be brought about to ensure that women are respected and treated fairly in every walk of life.

She launched the Jammu and Kashmir Polices Women Safety App and felicitated wives of police martyrs and women police officer achievers on the occasion.

Earlier, Director General of Police SP Vaid, too, spoke about the need to make women feel safe.
editorial@tribune.com

Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, March 8

The family of a slain Shopian youth who had completed his masters in physical education from Nagpur allege that their son was killed in cold blood.

Two militants and four civilians were killed in a shootout with the Army in Shopian on last Sunday. While the Army claims they fired in self-defence when militants opened fire from their vehicles, locals say the four civilians were killed in cold blood.

At Mool village in Shopian, people are mourning the death of Gowhar Ahmad Lone, one of the four civilians killed in the incident. After spending eight years outside the Valley, Gowhar had returned home last year and opened a shop for selling pesticides in the apple-rich Shopian. He had completed his masters in physical education from Nagpur.

For half of the day, he was with me, says Gowhars father Abdul Rashid Lone. We had gone to Pulwama. When we returned home, he told me that he had to go to Shopian to get pesticides for his shop.

Gowhar left his home on Sunday afternoon with a promise to return early in the evening. But when he got late, his mother called him but he didnt respond.

He knew his mother would be anxious so after around 10 minutes he called back. He said he will return home in half-hour, says Lone. But he didnt.

The anxious Lone family spent the night hoping against the hope. In the morning, the sad news was broken by neighbours. Gowhars body was found inside his car just a few hundred metres from the shootout site.

His body was found in his car. He was on the steering wheel but there was no blood inside the car. A bullet had pierced his back. There was no bullet mark in the back of his seat. I think, he was killed and then his body was put back in the car, says Lone.
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Melbourne, March 8

Russell Crowe is selling off items that he collected while working on films such as "Gladiator" and "Cinderella Man" in a new auction.

The auction, titled "The Art of Divorce", will be held on April 7, which marks the actor's birthday as well as wedding anniversary with ex-wife Danielle Spencer, according to Sotheby Australia.

"The sale represents the dispersal of a highly personal collection that was assembled by Crowe over many years, including those shared with his former wife," said Sotheby's.

Crowe and Spencer had separated five years ago and their divorce will soon be finalised.

"We've been separated over five years now, our divorce should be finalised around the time of the auction. Just as we collaborate on the upbringing of our kids, it's easy for us to work together on something like this," Crowe told Australia's Daily Telegraph.

"I think she feels the same way I do in regards to just moving on things that help create space for the future," he added.

A total of 225 items will be up for grabs that includes fine art, antique vehicles, furniture, jewellery, musical instruments, and film paraphernalia.

An important stunt cuirass that Crowe wore in Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" is expected to fetch between US$ 20,000 to 30,000.

A pair of black leather wrist cuffs and a wooden training sword from the film has also been put up for auction.

From "Cinderella Man", a blue satin robe and a pair of Everlast blue satin trunks, worn by Crowe as the character 'James J Braddock' will also be up for grabs. PTI
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 8

The CBI on Thursday moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

The move by the agency came months after Hemrajs wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of October 12 last year acquitting the couple.

The agency filed an appeal challenging the high court order acquitting the Talwar couple, CBIs spokesperson said.

The high court had freed them of the charges on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

A CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013, in connection with the case.

Before the high courts order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabads Dasna Jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over a shoddy probe into the case, which was making national headlines, the case was handed over to the CBI on a recommendation by the then Chief Minister Mayawati. PTI
The Kapan Municipality has fined a company owned by Prosperous Armenia party leader Gagik Tsarukyan AMD 600,000 ($1,250) for going ahead with construction work on a cement crushing plant without first obtaining the proper permits.

Kapan Mayor Ashot Hayrapetyan says that the company, AraratCement, never informed the municipality about its plans to build the plant near the towns airport.

Hayrapetyan says that he isnt aware if the company has stopped work on the proposed plant after being fined.

This is more than a bit surprising since the construction site is located in a busy part of town.

Photo (from left): Hayrapetyan, Tsarukyan
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Shimla, March 8

Bollywood actor Jeetendra has been booked by the Shimla Police after he was accused by his cousin of sexually assaulting her 47 years ago, police said.

The woman, in a complaint to the Director General of Police, in February had alleged that the incident took place in Shimla in January, 1971, when she was 18 and the actor was 28.

Superintendent of Police Omapati Jamwal said an FIR had been filed against the star and investigations into the case were underway.

Police officials are likely to summon the complainant in the case as they have only received her complaint on e-mail and are yet to record her version, sources said.

Later, the actor, whose actual name is Ravi Kapoor, may be summoned to record his version in the case, they said.

The woman said that Jeetendra, who is her aunt's son, had "arranged" for her to join him from New Delhi to Shimla on the sets of a film he was shooting for.

She alleged in the complaint that after reaching Shimla at night, the inebriated actor went to her room, joined two twin beds and sexually assaulted her.

The actor denied that any such incident had taken place. PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 8

Amid several protests, the Lok Sabha was adjourned till noon on Thursday, making it the fourth consecutive day of protests.

Members were agitated over separate issues, including Nirav Modis bank scam, Cauvery water sharing and special status to Andhra Pradesh, among others.

At 11 am Speaker Sumitra Mahajan read a message to mark the womens day. She recited a couplet in Hindi which was appreciated by the House.

Mahajan said she wished women across the world a happy womens day.

Protests erupted the minute Mahajan ended her brief message.

The Lok Sabha had reassembled on Monday from a recess to conduct the second half of the Budget session. Since then protests have marred the functioning of the House.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which on Wednesday night broke away from the NDA alliance, held placards asking the BJP to fulfil its obligations to grant special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Among other protestors, the Telangana Rashtriya samiti (TR) wanted the Constitution to be amended to allow states to increase quota of reservation.

Two days ago, TRS boss K Chandrasekhar Rao had hinted at forming a non-BJP non-Congress third front.

The AIADMK from Tamil Nadu protested seeking the immediate setting up of a board to manage waters of the Cauvery.
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 8

The CBI on Thursday said that it has registered a fresh case against diamantaire Nirav Modi for causing a loss of Rs 321 crore to Punjab National Bank (PNB) by availing different credit facilities between 2013 and 2017.

According to a Central Bureau of Investigation official, the case was registered after the bureau received a fresh complaint from the PNB on Sunday.

Former finance president of Nirav Modi' Firestar Diamonds International Ltd. Vipul Ambani, chief finance officer Ravi Gupta, other directors and officials of the company, and unidentified public servants of the bank were also named in the complaint, they said.A This is the second CBI case in which Nirav Modi has been named by the investigating agency.

In its complaint to the CBI, the bank alleged that during its internal investigation it had spotted circular transactions between the diamantaire promoted partnership firms namely -- Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds and Diamond R Us -- and Firestar group of companies.

The head office of the bank had declared the accounts of Firestar Diamonds and Firestar International as fraud and reported it to the Reserve Bank of India on Sunday, it said.

Nirav Modi, along with his uncle Mehul Choksi of Gitanjali Group, has been accused of defrauding the PNB of Rs 12,600 crore, with Rs 1,300 crore being added to the fraud kitty on February 26.

The CBI had filed the first FIR in the scam on February 14 against Nirav Modi, his wife Ami, brother Nishal, Choksi and his firms Diamond R US, Solar Exports and Stellar Diamond.

Modi, his family and Choksi had left the country in early January.

The CBI filed a second FIR on February 15 over a Rs 4,886.72-crore fraud against Choksi's Gitanjali Group.

To date, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has carried out searches at over 198 locations across the country and seized properties worth nearly Rs 6,000 crore, while the CBI has arrested at least 19 persons in the case so far.

IANS
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Mumbai, March 8

Twenty-five years after his escape, the CBI has arrested absconder Farookh Takla, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and a close aide of fugitive mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, from Dubai, official sources said on Thursday.

He was brought to Mumbai earlier on Thursday and whisked off to the CBI offices for questioning. He will be produced before a Special TADA Court later in the day for remand.

Takla, against whom the Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice in 1995 was finally tracked to Dubai where he was believed to be holed up, and later extradited to India to face the law.

At least 257 people were killed, over 700 injured and properties worth crores destroyed in the March 12, 1993, blasts.

Takla's arrest comes just two days after wellknown criminal lawyer Shyam Keswani reiterated in Thane that Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was reportedly willing to return to India and face trial, but the Indian government had rejected some of his preconditions.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy on Thursday congratulated National Security Advisor Ajit Doval for the success in getting Takla back to face trial.

"We need to compliment NSA Doval for Farooq Takla coming in the CBI kitty. Dawood not far off?" Swamy tweeted.

IANS
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 8

Noted lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Thursday questioned the official version of the CBI Special Judge Loyas death, saying the report of an ECG conducted on the judge published by an English daily did not show any signs of heart attack.

It needs to be probed how a story based on the ECG report was planted in the newspaper, Bhushan told a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra.

Loya had died of a cardiac arrest on December 1, 2014, in Nagpur where he had gone to attend the wedding of a colleagues daughter. He was handling the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case in which various police officers and BJP president Amit Shah were named. Shah was later exonerated in the case.

His death has been hitting headlines since November 2017 after media reports quoting his sister raised questions about the circumstances surrounding his death and its alleged link to the Sohrabuddin case. After Loyas death, special judge MB Gosavi had discharged Shah and some other accused.

Bhushan, who has filed a personal affidavit in the case, told the Bench that he had taken opinion of several cardiologists on the said ECG report and all of them said there was nothing in the ECG to indicate that the patient had suffered a heart attack within one or two hours.

He also sought to contradict the heart attack theory by contending that the histopathology report too did not support the official version of Loyas death.

Both these reports had not been submitted by the state of Maharashtra to the court, Bhushan told the Bench, which also included Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud.

As his arguments remained inconclusive, the CJI ordered the matter to be posted for hearing on Friday, when it will reserve its order on petitions seeking an SC-monitored independent probe into Loyas death. On Friday, it will also hear senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi on behalf of state of Maharashtra, besides some other counsel.

Earlier, the Bench took strong exception to certain remarks made by senior counsel Dushyant Dave, representing petitioner Bombay Lawyers Association, indirectly questioning its impartiality.

Dave said the Bench was posing too many questions to him while it did not ask any questions to Rohatgi.

We do not have to show veneer of justice to you. Justice lies in our conscience and hearts. We do not want certificates from arguing counsel, said Justice Chandrachud.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, March 8

The mounting pressure from within his Telugu Desam Party and growing belligerence of the opposition over the demand for Special Category status to Andhra Pradesh has prompted Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to finally call it quits and pull out his representatives from the Union Cabinet.

The next logical step before the TDP, the biggest southern ally of the BJP, is to exit from the NDA.

Naidus latest gambit is expected to herald re-alignment of political forces ahead of the 2019 elections and hasten the process of forging the Third Front as an alternative to Congress and BJP. The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitleys categorical statement on Wednesday evening, ruling out Special Category status, has come as the last straw for the TDP which has been nursing a strained relationship with the BJP over the inadequate release of central funds to the successor state grappling with post-bifurcation blues.

The crux of the TDPs contention is that the successor Andhra Pradesh had lost out heavily due to clumsy and unscientific division of the state nearly four years ago and that the NDA government had done precious little to undo the damage.

The central funds for building the new state capital Amaravati, completion of Polavaram irrigation project, bridging the revenue deficit and creation of a separate railway zone for Visakhapatnam are some of the key demands of the TDP. It has been insisting on implementation of all promises made in the AP Bifurcation Act of 2014 and assurances given on the floor of Parliament by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

On its part, the BJP leaders have been arguing that granting Special Category status to any state prospectively is untenable in the light of the 14th Finance Commission report. However, the Centre has offered to fulfil the monetary equivalent of the special status and honour every commitment made in the bifurcation act.

Offering to fund all of APs programmes to the tune of 90% which is equivalent to the aid that the special category states get through other means like external agencies, Jaitley assured that the Centre was even willing to accept the state governments suggestion of routing such funds through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). Last month, the Centre had suggested creation of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) with the funds from NABARD flowing into it.

Interestingly, Naidu and his party leaders had agreed last year to accept the special package in lieu of the Special Category status and took pains to explain how it would benefit the state in the long run. However, the public mood on the ground appears to have changed in the last few months.

The opposition YSR Congress, headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, has upped the ante and launched an agitation asserting that nothing short of Special Status would satisfy the people.

Jagan, who is currently on a state-wide walkathon to highlight the issue, has issued an ultimatum to the Centre, saying its MPs would quit the Lok Sabha if the government failed to announce Special Category status by April 6.

The ruling party is facing flak from the opposition for failing to extract adequate funds from the Centre despite being part of the NDA.

The BJP-TDP alliance came under severe strain soon after presentation of the Union Budget, the last full-fledged budget of the NDA government before it goes to the polls. The TDP leaders felt extremely disappointed over the neglect of the APs demands. The party MPs lamented that none of the promises made in the bifurcation act found any mention in the budget. There was no mention of the promised railway zone for Visakhapatnam nor was there any reference to allocations for the construction of the new capital Amaravati and Polavaram project.

On their part, the BJP leaders maintain that the Centre has released sufficient funds for infrastructure development and building human capital, sanctioned a string of new educational institutions and has gone much beyond what was contained in the Bifurcation Act to handhold the state and ensure its allround development.

The saffron party has dubbed as propaganda the criticism that the Centre had meted out a raw deal to AP and asserted that it had gone way beyond to fulfil all the obligations under the Reorganisation Act and would look into the issues sympathetically.

For Naidu, who had played a key role in the national coalition politics in the past, the latest decision comes after careful political calculations with an eye on the next years elections.

An astute strategist that he is, Naidu was once the toast of the national media and hailed as a kingmaker during the formation of United Front and NDA-I governments in the past. His partys political pendulum had swung from right to left when he fought the 2009 election in alliance with the left parties. Earlier, his party provided crucial outside support to the BJP-led alliance at the Centre from 1998 to 2004.

However, he ended the alliance with the BJP after losing power in the 2004 Assembly elections, went on an image makeover exercise and even apologised to the minorities for committing the biggest mistake of his life by aligning with the saffron party. Making a U-turn, he revived the alliance with the BJP in 2014 in what was clearly a do or die battle for his party after being out of power for a decade.
editorial@tribune.com

Suresh Dharur

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, March 8

The mounting pressure from within his Telugu Desam Party and growing belligerence of the Opposition over the demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh has prompted Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu to finally call it quits and pull out his representatives from the Union Cabinet.

The next logical step before the TDP, the biggest southern ally of the BJP, is to exit from the NDA. Naidus latest gambit is expected to herald realignment of political forces ahead of the 2019 elections and hasten the process of forging third front as an alternative to the Congress and the BJP. The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha.

The crux of the TDPs contention is that Andhra Pradesh lost out heavily due to clumsy and unscientific division of the state nearly four years ago, and that the NDA government had done precious little to undo the damage.

The opposition YSR Congress, headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, has upped the ante and launched an agitation asserting that nothing short of special status would satisfy the people. Jagan, who is currently on a statewide walkathon to highlight the issue, has issued an ultimatum to the Centre saying its MPs would quit the Lok Sabha if the government failed to announce special category status by April 6.

The ruling party is facing flak from the opposition for failing to extract adequate funds from the Centre despite being part of the NDA.

The BJP-TDP alliance came under severe strain soon after presentation of the Union Budget, the last full-fledged budget of the NDA government before it goes to the polls.

For Naidu, who had played a key role in the national coalition politics in the past, the latest decision comes after careful political calculations with an eye on the next years elections. An astute strategist that he is, Naidu was once the toast of the national media and hailed as a king maker during the formation of United Front and NDA-I governments in the past. His partys political pendulum had swung from right to left when he fought the 2009 election in alliance with the left parties. Earlier, his party provided crucial outside support to the BJP-led alliance at the Centre from 1998 to 2004.

However, he ended the alliance with BJP after losing power in the 2004 Assembly elections, went on an image makeover exercise and even apologised to the minorities for committing the biggest mistake of his life by aligning with the saffron party.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 8

Amid several protests, the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned for the day, making it the fourth consecutive day of protests and adjournments.

Members of various parties were agitated over several issues, including Nirav Modis bank scam, Cauvery water sharing and special status to Andhra Pradesh, among others. The Congress today did not join in with the protesters in the Lok Sabha.

At 11 am, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan read a message to mark International Womens Day. She recited a couplet in Hindi which was appreciated by the House. Mahajan said she wished women across the world a happy womens day. Protests erupted the minute Mahajan ended her brief message.

The Lok Sabha had reassembled on Monday from a recess to conduct the second half of the Budget session. Since then protests have marred the functioning of the House. The Budget session is slated to end on April 6.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which on Wednesday night withdrew its ministers from the NDA alliance, held placards asking the BJP to fulfil its obligations to grant special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Among other protesters, the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) wanted the Constitution to be amended to allow states to increase quota of reservation.

Two days ago, TRS boss K Chandrasekhar Rao had hinted at forming a non-BJP non-Congress third front. The AIADMK from Tamil Nadu protested seeking the immediate setting up of a board to manage waters of the Cauvery.

In Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien adjourned the House, minutes after it met at 2 pm, as the protesting members gathered near the podium, shouting slogans and carrying placards. The House witnessed similar scenes in the morning after a brief discussion on International Womens Day, forcing its adjournment till 2 pm.

Soon after the House met in the morning, Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu greeted the women members and through them all the women across the country and allowed members to speak on issues concerning women. Naidu expressed hope that the government will respect the sentiments of the House and take care of the unfulfilled agendas of women empowerment. He said the Womens Reservation Bill should be accorded top priority and urged the political parties to refrain from politicising the issue.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Toronto, March 8

The recent visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to India has deepened and strengthened bilateral relations, Union Minister for Mines Narendra Singh Tomar has said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a joint statement have reaffirmed their commitment to the ongoing diversification and growth of the strategic partnership, based on shared values of democracy, diversity, pluralism and the rule of law, Tomar said here.

The joint statement shows that both countries resolve to realise the full potential of bilateral trade and investment, expand and diversify bilateral economic and commercial relations, and enhancing people-to-people contacts, Tomar said.

He was addressing an event organised by the Consulate General of India, at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) 2018 Conference in Toronto on Wednesday.

More than 25,000 mining executives, investors, prospectors, government officials and analysts from 125 countries attended the six-day-long global conference, according to PDAC president Glenn Mullan.

Describing India as a land of opportunity, Tomar said the government had taken several steps, including e-auctions for allotment of mining blocks lease for 50 years.

He also said that steps had been taken for stronger legal provisions for illegal mining, establishment of National Mineral Exploration Trust, and District Mineral Foundation for welfare of local population affected by mining. PTI
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Beijing, March 8

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi today said that China and India should be free of mental inhibition and build mutual trust, which is a precious commodity in their ties.

Speaking at a press conference on the sidelines of the Chinese parliament session, Wang said both countries, which nearly came to war over a two-month military standoff along their border last year, should replace suspicion with trust.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Sounding positive on bilateral ties in the coming year, the minister said: The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other, but dance with each other.

India-China ties took a nosedive after their militaries faced-off each other in their worst standoff at Doklam. Chinas opposition to a UN ban on Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar and Indias entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has also tested their relationship.

Despite some tests and difficulties, the China-India relationship continues to grow. In the process, China has both upheld its legitimate rights and interests and taken care to preserve the relationship. Chinese and Indian leaders have developed a strategic vision for the future of our relations. The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other, but dance with each other, Wang said.

China and India must do everything to empathise with and support each other and avoid mutual suspicion and attrition. Mutual trust is the most precious commodity in China-India relations. With political trust, not even Himalayas can stop from friendly exchanges. Without it, even level land cannot bring us together, Wang said.

Let me put this to our Indian friends, our shared understanding far outstrips our differences and far outweigh our frictions. China is ready to forward traditional friendship.  IANS
Author: Khazhak Drampyan

This article is an effort to study and to bring back to life the traditional attire of the people of Agn through successive historical periods. Agns sartorial traditions, and the daily attire worn in the area, were influenced regularly by migration patterns and population movements, interactions with neighboring national and ethnic groups, etc. The scant information we have on the attire and sartorial culture of Agn District allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the lifestyle, customs, and traditions of the area.



After the wave of immigration to Agn from two of the largest population centers of historic Armenia, Vaspurakan and Ani (which occurred, according to Arakel Kechian, in 1021 and 1300-1321, respectively), immigrants brought with them their unique sartorial customs and traditional attires, which they preserved for some time in Agn. But in later years, the influence on the district often came from more foreign sources. After the conquest of Constantinople, residents of Agn began visiting the Constantinople more frequently, and some even held high positions in the Ottoman government. The people of the district began adopting the fashions of the capital and to dress in official attire.

This type of attire consisted of flat collars and fringed jackets; the shalvar (sagging trousers); the hermani (long coat); the djyubbe/cubbe (gown of coarse cloth); and furs. Headgear included the pagegh and the kavouk, belts were worn at the waist, and footwear included the mest and the lapchin (half boots), and in later years the potingalosh (galoshes). Over time, the jackets and the shalvars were gradually replaced by the European stanbolin (a type of frock coat), the redingote (a long and wide coat for men), and the bonjour (suit reserved for social calls). The kavouk and the pageghwere replaced by the Ottoman fez

Therefore, there were two types of attire in Agn  modern attire imported from Istanbul, and traditional attire. The latter consisted of the shalvar, the entari (long overcoat worn by both men and women) or the zboun (womens overcoat), the hermani or the salta (short overcoat for girls, young brides, and young grooms), and the choubba for the winter, the latter sometimes lined with fur.



According to Kechian, during the era of the Amiras (16th-18th centuries), the men of Agn began paying more attention to the attire and appearance of their wives than to their own. When they married, women left their maternal home with valuable dowry that included clothing and jewelry. They would also collect additional items that they received during celebrations, upon their husbands returns from abroad, and on other occasions. They would wear these items for many years thereafter. These included various heavy furs, dresses made of wool or silk, undergarments, and gowns, which were often adorned with needlework of golden thread. A woman gifted her daughter most of her wardrobe and jewelry upon the latters marriage.



Womens attire usually consisted of the following elements: undergarments that compressed the torso, covered by a delicate gown of silk thread. This gown covered the entire body, from shoulder to foot, with the exception of the breasts and the arms. Over this gown women wore the heavy badmudjan (overcoat), decorated with floral themes or needlework, and which also covered the entire body except for the breasts and arms. The edges of womens undershirts would extend beyond the hems of their gowns, and would be starched and embroidered with patterns of lacework, which would blend in with the lower halves of their badmujans. The badmudjans, in their turn, would be embroidered with golden thread all the way down to the hems. The embroidered patterns in their attire, usually of red or yellow thread, gave women an exquisite appearance

Children tied silver- or gold-colored belts around their waists. They would wear short fur jackets with fringes embroidered with golden thread, and which covered their abdomens and waists. In the frigid winters, on top of these jackets they would wear longer coats lined with the valuable furs of white or red sables, white martens, and foxes.



The women of Agn decorated their hair by hanging golden tassels from it. They covered their heads with delicately woven caps, which were decorated by gold coins hanging from the front and strings of pears on top, with gold-laced fringes and diamond-fringed patterns.



The chests of the jackets they wore were decorated with gold-threaded embroidery, and women also wore golden necklaces, which were called hink megnots [a fiver], hink ankam him megnots [five times fiver], or mahmoudie (mahmoudia or mahmoutia: a circular Turkish coin traditionally used as an ornament of gold on headbands that women wore around their foreheads) ferendez (one-quarter pound) coin. These ornaments were affixed to the embroidered fringes of clothing with the use of diamond stars. Ears were adorned with gold or diamond earrings; and the fingers with heavy rings, each with its own long history (a present from a father or a husband, who had brought it as a gift from Constantinople on the occasion of their engagement or their wedding, etc.).



But eventually, the era of the Amiras came to an end, and their authority was replaced by that of the Esnaf (this was the name given to guilds in the Ottoman Empire, from the Arabic word esnaf, meaning craftsman or workman). The people of Agn immediately felt their burdens increase, and became more inward-looking. As a result, they moderated their extravagances and altered some of their customs

Traditional attire of Agn in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 8

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said his party is a clean slate now and he will present a new Congress party which envisions the values that Indians are born with.

While addressing students at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, Gandhi said: We faced a storm in 2012. The system was destabilised between 2012 and 2014, and we saw the consequences. We have a clean slate now, and a new opportunity. The Congress president said he would present a new Congress party that envisions the values you were born with.

Launching an attack on the BJP, Gandhi said there is a general atmosphere of intimidation in India, where there is politics of dividing people and using their anger to win elections.

Speaking at a panel discussion at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Gandhi also said that there is a challenge to the institutional structure of India.

There is a particular type of politics thats not only happening in India but in a number of places - of dividing people, of using (their) anger to win elections and thats what is happening in India, he said.

If you ask me what am I proud about my country...It is the idea of plurality. Its the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they wont face any problem and that is being challenged..., he said.

Commenting on the recent controversy of four senior Supreme Court judges holding an unprecedented press conference, Gandhi said, they actually went out to the press and said listen, we need the people to hear our voice because there is something fundamentally wrong. I dont know if you know the details about the comments they (judges) were making but the centre of the issue is the case of (BJP president) Amit Shah. So, there is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country, he said, apparently referring to the issue of alleged mysterious death of special CBI judge BH Loya, who was hearing the sensitive Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case.

Shah was discharged as an accused in the case.

He alleged that there is a very, very aggressive and organised attack on the system and on the judiciary. If you speak to the press, if you talk to business people, they will also tell you that we feel intimidated. So there is a general atmosphere of intimidation. The Congress president said that the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned was that an India where everybody is comfortable regardless of religion, community, regardless of state.

The idea that anybody coming to India, even the foreigner coming to India, feel comfortable in the country and that idea is being challenged now, he asserted.

Where we are running into trouble now is the levels of violence and anger that you are seeing in India and this to me is a syndrome, he said, adding that Im proud to say that our vision is bringing people together. Responding to a question from the audience, Gandhi accused the BJP and the RSS of indulging in anti-minorities politics.

Mahatma Gandhi died protecting minorities. We, the Congress Party, have been protecting minority people for the last 70 years. We dont like India where people are persecuted, where people are being beaten up for what they eat, what they say and what they wear, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi controls the law making, he controls the UP police, he controls the Haryana police, he controls these things. An extremely nasty form of politics is playing out in India, Gandhi said, without elaborating.

He asserted that we will fight him and we will beat him in the election.

The Congress President also met Indian-origin CEOs of various companies in Singapore and discussed issues such as jobs, investments, and the prevalent economic condition in India.

We are seeing the biggest migration of rural people in India. We have challenges. Broadly our view is we want a peaceful transition that carries everybody together, Congress twitter handle quoted Gandhi as saying.

Gandhi is on a three-day visit to Singapore and Malaysia from March 8 to 10.  Agencies
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Kochi, March 8

Hours after Supreme Court upheld his daughters marriage, Hadiyas father KM Asokan says he would move a review petition in the countrys highest court against its judgement.

(I) Will consider a review petition, Asokan told reporters on Thursday, claiming that the marriage was an act of adjustment done by a group.

"It was a kind of an adjustment marriage. There is no doubt. I will try to convince the court about it once again," he said.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra set aside Kerala High Courts order annulling Hadiyas marriage to Shafin Jahan.

Asokan , a resident of Keralas Kottayam, said he appreciated the Supreme Courts decision to allow the National Investigation Agency to investigate claims of love jihad.

Love jihad is a term that some Hindu leaders use to claim that Muslim men target Hindu women to convert them to Islam by feigning love. Some Hindu leaders claim there is an active campaign in some parts of the country to proselytise Hindu women.

Asokan has claimed that his daughter was forcibly converted and compelled to marry, and accuses Shafin Jahan of being an extremist. Hadiya however has said the marriage was her choice. PTI/Agencies
editorial@tribune.com

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

The crackdown on illegal mining, ordered by Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, has triggered a blame game within the ruling Congress. Three party MLAs and a Cabinet minister  accused of patronising mining contractors in Nawanshahr, Ropar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana  have, in turn, alleged that six other Congress legislators are involved in the malpractice.

The allegations and counter-allegations have led to the suspension of mining operations, even as civil and police officers in Nawanshahr have reportedly informed the CM that the mining witnessed by him during a chopper ride on Tuesday was legal. The quarries in question were auctioned by the government, but earth-moving machines were used without authorisation for excavating sand and gravel.

They reiterated their claim here this evening during a meeting of top civil and police officers and members of the Cabinet sub-committee newly set up to check illegal mining.

The minor illegality of using earth-moving machines could soon be legalised by making amendments in the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act. Though the Act forbids the use of heavy machinery for extracting sand and gravel in mines that are less than 62.5 hectares, the state government is considering allowing the use of excavators for the purpose as officers pointed out that it was impossible to do the same manually. The officers are also learnt to have pointed fingers at officials of the Mining Department for failing to give figures of the actual sand and gravel allowed for excavation from an auctioned quarry. Some DCs said the government should let the legal quarries run, otherwise the chances of price of sand and gravel escalating were high. Suggestions of GPS tracking of tippers and scientific demarcation of sites were also made.

Official sources said the Chief Minister listened to the officers for almost two hours and reiterated that they need not tolerate political interference in their investigation or action against those indulging in illegal mining. He announced that a Guardian of Governance would be deputed at each mining site to check and report illegal activity and the government would address all shortcomings in the mining policy.

SDM, 2 police officers under scanner

Capt Amarinder Singh has marked a Vigilance inquiry into the alleged nexus between officers and the mining mafia in Dera Bassi block of Mohali. He has ordered the immediate shunting out of SDM Paramdeep Singh, DSP PS Bal and SHO Pawan Kumar for their alleged complicity with those indulging in illegal mining.
editorial@tribune.com

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 8

Amid the state governments efforts to crack the whip on the mining mafia, The Tribune investigates how the illegal activity is being carried out in the state even by authorised contractors.

Modus operandi

Sources say many politicians, who have stakes in the mining business, have bought land around marked quarries and are working hand in glove with the contractors to dig out sand in their respective areas.

A mining official says the contractors during the SAD-BJP rule had been paying a compensation of Rs 60 per tonne directly to the farmers for quarrying on their land. But now the compensation is being paid through the Mining Department.

The sources claim: Instead of digging out sand from the allotted quarry, the contractors take out more sand from the adjoining area by paying a meagre amount to the land owner and avoid paying hefty compensation for legal mining. They also happily shell out goonda taxat exit points at the rate of Rs 100 per tractor-trailer. Since the money earned this way is much higher (up to Rs 50,000 a day), illegal mining is flourishing across the state.

Loss to state exchequer

The sources allege some mining officials in connivance with politicians do not mention potential mining sites in government records, causing a heavy loss to the state exchequer. Some officials even reported to have connived with the sand mafia and got stakes in these sites. The sources allege that some panchayats are also involved in sites located in their area.

Unregistered vehicles

The sand mafia and contractors transport mining minerals on tractor-trailers, which in most cases are unregistered.

In the absence of a mining official at quarries, the contractors, in sole possession of the official stamp, misrepresent facts about weight loaded on a vehicle. They also mention chassis number on the challan slip instead of the vehicle registration number. With no check by either the mining official at the site and by police en route, these unregistered vehicles reach the destination without much hassle.

The fact was revealed during checking online details of vehicles issued challans by the district mining officer in Jalandhar. It was found that a majority of the challan slips carried only chassis numbers.

When contacted, Mahesh Khanna, GM (Industries)-cum-Mining Officer, Jalandhar, confirmed that only the chassis number was mentioned on the challan slips as these vehicles did not have a registration number.

Eco agencies under lens

Agencies like the Punjab Pollution Control Board, State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority and the Central Environmental Agency, too, have come under the scanner for their alleged failure to stop illegal mining that has eroded the natural resources of the state. Sources say the Chief Minister is planning to crack the whip on some officials of these agencies as well.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 8

Adding more fuel to the illegal mining issue, Leader of Opposition Sukhpal Khaira on Thursday asked Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh to make public the names of those running the illegal mining cartel in the state.

Addressing a press conference here, Khaira demanded that as the CM had highlighted the illegal sand mining issue on Twitter, he should also tweet about the follow-up action and name those behind the illegal mining cartel.

How is it possible that only truck drivers and a handful of workers have looted the natural resources of the state worth Rs 10,000 crore and robbed the riverbeds of its precious minerals, asked Khaira.

Slamming the inaction of the police officials who had registered cases and arrested only tipper drivers and some workers of the mining mafia, Khaira said it is unfortunate that despite the CM himself flagging the issue, the police could not expose those behind the sand mining.

Khaira also accused the Congress government of being hand-in-glove with their Akali counterparts in the lucrative trade whose profits ran into crores.

It seems like a deal between the two parties as the Akalis just before the end of their tenure gave a clean chit to Amarinder Singh in the Ludhiana city centre and Amritsar Improvement Trust scams, Khaira alleged, adding that the CM even applauded the role of former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal for conceptualising the Jung-e-Azaadi memorial at Kartarpur, which is nothing but a white elephant.

He said that in a recent Vidhan Sabha session, the CM had accepted the fact that he had the complete list of MLAs behind the illegal mining cartel. He demanded the list to be made public and strict action against those behind ruining the state of its natural resources.

Khaira also demanded the constitution of a Vidhan Sabha committee consisting of all-party members to check illegal mining. He said the committee by conducting surprise checks would be able to expose those behind it.

Heritage monument scam runs into crores: Khaira

Terming the construction of heritage monuments by the SAD-BJP and Congress governments as a big scam running into crores, Khaira demanded a probe into the matter.

The previous government constructed around 10 heritage memorials in the state amounting to Rs 10,000 crore and gave the entire contract to a single company, which has earned Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore from it, Khaira alleged, adding that the monuments were nothing but white elephants.

He said the government is crying financial crunch and did not have money to pay salaries; the schools did not have furniture and children did not have books. What is the need to have a white elephant like Jung-e-Azaadi at Kartarpur on which Rs 200 crore was spent, Khaira wondered.
editorial@tribune.com

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 8

A week before Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh ordered action against illegal mining on the Sutlej riverbed, a member of the Punjab State Board for Wildlife red-flagged the threat to the Shivalik foothills from about 100 illegal stone crushers installed by influential politicians in Anandpur Sahib subdivision.

In a letter to the CM on February 26, Anandpur Sahib-based Tikka Shiv Chand, a long-time aide of Capt Amarinder, alleged that illegal mining was taking place on the riverbed of the Sutlej and its main tributary, Swan. The number of crushers on the riverbanks has increased alarmingly after the Congress came to power last year, he had claimed.

He said, As sand and gravel are available in limited quantity, the crusher owners have started digging the Shivalik foothills, especially from Kahanpur Khoohi village to Khera Kalmot village. At the forefront of this illegal activity is Ganga stone crusher, owned by close relatives of a top politician of the ruling party.

He alleged that illegal mining in the subdivision was started by the owners of this crusher at Khera Kalmot village a decade and a half ago. Ganga stone crusher is owned by the family of Dhruv Singh Kanwar, son-in-law of Vidhan Sabha Speaker Rana KP Singh.

When contacted, Dhruvs father Ram Sarup Kanwar said the crusher was not being used for any illegal activity. He claimed that there were hundreds of crushers in the area, but he was being targeted due to his political links.

Others involved in illegal mining are Dashmesh stone crusher, Mahavir stone crusher, Ludhiana stone crusher and Grewal stone crusher, all located at Khera Kalmot village, Tikka alleged.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 8

Cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu today visited the Indo-Pak border fence to celebrate the International Womens Day with bravehearts guarding the borders.

The minister went to the fence at Pul Moran border outpost to interact with BSF women soldiers. He was welcomed by JS Oberoi, DIG, BSF.

Sidhu lauded the BSF women constables, who had shot dead Pakistani drug smugglers in the past, saying they were capable enough for combat duties. Sidhu said: My sister Simran was in Amritsar some time back and she told me that seeing two BSF girls leading the retreat ceremony was the finest memory of her visit. So I decided to meet these brave girls and salute them on their day. Being here gives me great satisfaction and I am inspired by the courage of these girls.

Terming them perfect role models, Sidhu said: These girls are the pride of the nation. On the International Womens Day, I salute them for their commitment towards ensuring that our borders are safe. They are capable enough to give a strong reply to any mischief by enemy at the border. They are the finest example of women empowerment.

Sidhu said these bravehearts came from all over the country and face tough conditions to serve the nation. They could have chosen any career, but these girls chose the toughest one. They are our pride and we must take inspiration from them, he said.

The women constables appreciated the ministers gesture and said it felt great when someone motivated them for their work.

State gets Nari Shakti Puraskar

Chandigarh: President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday presented the National Nari Shakti Puraskar to Punjab for making outstanding contribution towards women empowerment at a function in New Delhi specially organised on the occasion of International Womens Day. Social Security and Women and Child Development Minister Razia Sultana received the award. Razia Sultana said the state won the award for its consistent efforts and work demonstrating improvement in sex ratio at birth under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme. Tarn Taran district has been selected among the best 10 districts of the country where sex ratio at birth has improved remarkably in a limited span of time. TNS

PM honours ex-DC under Beti Bachao

Chandigarh: Director, Industries & Commerce, Punjab, DPS Kharbanda, who served as Deputy Commissioner in Tarn Taran in 2017, was awarded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan on Thursday for taking effective steps to increase the sex ratio in the district. The sex ratio of the district in his tenure increased from 880 to 899. During his stint as district magistrate, the Tarn Taran district achieved the distinction of entering the list of first 10 districts of the total 707 districts in the country that excelled in the Centres Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao programme. Ten district magistrates were awarded on International Womens Day by the Prime Minister. TNS
editorial@tribune.com

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Mohali, March 8

After training 14,000 youths and farmers spread across five states, a 36-year-old Stanford graduate in social entrepreneurship from Batala (Gurdaspur) has plans to tackle social issues confronting Punjab and the country as a whole.

Param Singh, founder of Monsoon Impact Incubator and UDAY, a social enterprise, intends to set up first-of-its-kind social impact incubators in the state.

He has signed an MoU with the state government for setting up two incubators in Mohali and Amritsar.

The first incubator will come up in Amritsar in the next three months, followed by Mohali. The incubator will select, support and scale impact-driven entrepreneurs to solve societys most pressing challenges. The company intends to incubate 50 social impact entrepreneurs by 2020.

Monsoon Impact Incubator will be the states first-of-its-kind profit with purpose social impact incubator. Our vision is to incubate 50 social impact entrepreneurs who will collaboratively change 10 million lives before 2025.

Aiming gender equality, the impact incubator will also encourage women social entrepreneurs, said Param Singh on the sidelines of TiECon 2018 Summit organised by the Chandigarh Chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur).

He added, The social entrepreneurs will tackle social issues such as raising farmers income, agriculture (ensuring zero farmer suicide in Punjab before 2022), food processing, livelihood, child education, health and nutrition, women empowerment, clean energy, water and soil health and sustainable development goals.

Param Singh said, The idea behind setting up these incubators is to assist social entrepreneurs from tier 2 and 3 cities in Punjab. We will collaborate and network with highly qualified and successful mentors from around the globe, including Australia, Singapore, US, Canada, UK and Hong Kong.

We will also help them grow by providing access to finance from the growing global impact investment funds, he added.

His social enterprise, UDAY, has trained around 14,000 youths, including farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh. For training individuals, it has entered into an agreement with National Skill Development Corporation. UDAY will soon enter Himachal Pradesh to train the youth.

Tech way to tackle shortage of teachers

Navdeep Singh Gill, founder of software company Xenon Stack, proposed to Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh a way of dealing with the shortage of teachers. He said, Using cloud technology, a maths or science teacher in Ludhiana can simultaneously deliver a lecturer to students in a Tarn Taran school where there is no teacher. He added, We intend to set up a lab in Mohali if the state government provides us infrastructure. It will help the government save the expenditure on setting up computer labs in various schools, besides monitoring attendance.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Mohali, March 8

Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh today projected the state as an incubator for promoting entrepreneurship, even as the Industries Department signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an Australian company to incubate 50 social impact entrepreneurs by 2020.

Delivering the keynote address on the first day of the two-day TiECON Entrepreneurship Summit 2018, the CM said the states first-of-its-kind social impact incubator would encourage women social entrepreneurs.

The MoU was inked by Industries and Commerce Secretary Rakesh Verma and Param Singh, Director of Goodles Pty Ltd. The Australian company will set up four monsoon impact incubators with 50 social start-ups at a proposed investment of Rs 5 crore and with an employment potential of over 1,000.

Punjabis are entrepreneurial by nature. That remains our biggest advantage, Capt Amarinder said, adding that Punjab had huge potential in leading the next wave of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country.

He urged young entrepreneurs, whom he described as the harbingers of growth, to explore the investor-supportive environment in Punjab and set up more industrial units here.

He stated that with the launch of the Punjab Start-up Hub here, the state was gradually emerging as a fertile ground for start-ups to grow and thrive.

The Chief Minister said Punjab offered the cheapest and most affordable power to the industry at Rs 5 per unit. We have successfully addressed most of the concerns in the new industrial policy and would further strengthen the ecosystem to attract more industry, he added.

Job creation resulting from industrial development would act as a catalyst for the unemployed youth, which was the only way to prevent them from falling prey to drugs and crime, he said.

If we dont keep pace with growth, we would be left behind. Punjabs growth rate is around 5.6 per cent, which is below the projected average growth rate of the country at 7.4 per cent, he said.

Capt Amarinder said Punjab would soon have a Skill University.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, March 8

Leader of Opposition Sukhpal Khaira today demanded the setting up of an all-party committee which should be authorised to inspect all mining sites in the state. Alleging that Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh had failed to reveal the names of influential MLAs or ministers primarily responsible for illegal land mining, Khaira said after the CMs tweet, merely some truck drivers and company functionaries were nabbed.

He said: The Aam Aadmi Party is firmly of the opinion that the Mining Department and the police will not be able to act since powerful people and huge money is involved. We met the Speaker on February 6 and demanded that an all-party committee of the Vidhan Sabha be formed.

He further alleged that Akali leaders were part of the mining mafia and the Congress had been shielding them too. While the Congress leadership has taken the frontal role, the Akalis are sleeping partners in the Rs 10,000 crore mining industry, he alleged.

Cong MLAs involved: CPI

Chandigarh: The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Thursday flayed the Punjab Government for failing to protect the state from the mining mafia. In a press note, CPIs National Executive member Dr Joginder Dayal said that the Congress came to power on the promise of finishing off the mining mafia. But under the present rule, the mafia has crossed all limits when compared to the previous government, he said. He said that it is an open secret that the mines are owned by front men of MLAs from SAD as well as Congress.  TNS
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

Washington

Coca-Cola has announced plans to launch an alcoholic drink for the first time in the company's 125-year history -- with an alcopop-style product in Japan.

The company is experimenting with the creation of a popular type of Japanese alcopop known as Chu-Hi, containing distilled shochu alcohol mixed with flavoured carbonate water, the BBC reported.

Confirming the plan in an interview on the company's website, Coca-Cola's Japan president Jorge Garduo said: "This is a canned drink that includes alcohol. Traditionally, it is made with a distilled beverage called shochu and sparkling water, plus some flavouring.

"We haven't experimented in the low alcohol category before, but it's an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas." He said the move was a "modest experiment for a specific slice of our market".

The move came amid a difficult time for the soda industry. In 2016, soda consumption in the US fell to a 30-year low as people started turning to healthier alternatives, the Daily Mail reported.

In order to cater to the health conscious younger consumers, Coca-Cola has been diversifying from fizzy drinks, including buying water and tea brands.

At the beginning of 2018, Coca-Cola announced that it would sell smaller bottles at higher prices rather than tinker with its famous recipe in order to conform to the new sugar tax that comes into effect in April.

IANS
harinder@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 8

Boney Kapoor immersed the ashes of Sridevi in the Ganga today. He was accompanied by his brother-in-law Anil Kapoor, senior politician Amar Singh and other close family friends.

They arrived at the Jollygrant airport at 12.50 pm, from where they left for Haridwar. After performing rituals, they immersed the ashes in the VIP ghat.

Uttarakhand Cabinet minister Subodh Uniyal also reached Haridwar and expressed his condolences to the bereaved family. After the immersion of the ashes, the grief-stricken family left for Dam Kothi. Later in the evening, they left for Mumbai. On February 24, Sridevi died of accidental drowning in Dubai. Her last rites were performed in Mumbai on February 28.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Seoul, March 8

South Koreas president said on Thursday that many critical moments still lay ahead to end the nuclear crisis despite North Koreas recent outreach to Seoul and Washington.

Moon Jae-in spoke before two senior Seoul officials headed to the United States later on Thursday to brief officials about the outcome of their recent visit to North Korea.

The Seoul officials said North Korea offered talks with the United States over normalising ties and denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul said the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks.

Some experts question how sincere North Korea is about its reported offers, citing what they call its track record of using past disarmament talks to wrest aid and concessions while covertly continuing its bomb programme.

According to the South Korean officials, North Korea said it had no reason to possess nuclear weapons as long as military threats against the country were removed and its security is guaranteed.

Thats the same position North Korea has long maintained to justify its nuclear programme or call for the withdrawal of 28,500 US troops and a halt to annual US-South Korean military drills as a condition for scrapping its nuclear programme. The North sees the allies drills as an invasion rehearsal.

Weve overcome one critical moment. But there are many critical moments that we still have to go through before reaching the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and a permanent peace, Moon said in a meeting with church leaders.

Moon still described the outcome of his envoys North Korea trip a big step towards denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula that was possible with a strong support by the US government.

Its unclear whether the United States would accept the Norths reported offer for talks. President Donald Trump expressed both hope and skepticism, calling it possible progress that also may be false hope.

Seoul and Washington plan to kick off their delayed springtime drills next month, and how sensitively the North would react would affect the current reconciliation mood flared after the Norths participation in last months Winter Olympics held in the South.

The North responded to past joint drills by the allies with its own weapons and fiery rhetoric.

Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are to meet at a border village in late April, when the South Korea-US drills would likely be still under way. If realised, the Moon-Kim meeting would mark the rivals third-ever summit talks since their 1945 division, according to Moons office. AP
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Washington/Paris/Beijing, March 8

President Donald Trump promised on Thursday to show great flexibility and cooperation towards the United States real friends as he prepared to impose import tariffs that have provoked warnings of a trade war from Europe and China.

Trump had been expected later in the day to sign a proclamation imposing 25 per cent tariffs on steel imports and 10 per cent on aluminium, but this could slide into Friday.

A White House official also said on Wednesday night that Trump planned to offer Canada and Mexico, fellow signatories of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the possibility of a 30-day exemption from the tariffs. But both Brussels and Beijing made clear they were ready for any trade war, with one European Union official saying retaliation could also target goods from areas governed by Trumps Republican Party.

Trump tweeted that he was looking forward to a meeting at the White House. He did not say whether he would sign the proclamation then. However, he added: We have to protect & build our steel and aluminium industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real...and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.

Trump did not name the countries he regarded as friends, or say what he had in mind for them. However, he has argued that the tariffs would counter cheap imports, especially from China, which he says are undermining US industries and jobs.

The European Commission raised the prospect that Trump could also consider exempting the EUs 28 member states.

Some countries advised against any overhasty reaction to Trumps tariff plan, which has drawn fire at home as well as rattled global financial markets, particularly Canada which as a close trading partner of the United States has perhaps most to lose.

But the EU talked tough. If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal with which to respond, European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.

Counter-measures would include European tariffs on US oranges, tobacco and bourbon, he said, adding that some products under consideration for an EU riposte were largely produced in constituencies controlled by Trumps Republicans. We want Congress to understand that this would be a lose-lose situation, Moscovici told BFM TV.

The EU is by far the biggest trading partner of the United States by value and, after China, member states have together the biggest trade surplus with the country. Once approved by Trump, the tariffs would go into effect after two months.

In Beijing, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said history showed that trade wars were not the correct way to resolve problems. Especially given todays globalisation, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful, he said on the sidelines of an annual meeting of Chinas Parliament.  Reuters
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Washington: US President Donald Trump has denied accusations by a porn star that he had sexual encounters with her, the White House said on Thursday, a day after she sued him to invalidate a deal that prevented her from discussing the alleged relationship. Stephanie Clifford, who is known as Stormy Daniels in the adult film industry, filed a lawsuit in a California State court on Tuesday.

The President has denied the allegations against him and again this case has already been won in arbitration, the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference. PTI

Fresh violence erupts in riot-hit Kandy

Colombo: Fresh violence on Thursday erupted in Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lankas hilly district where communal clashes have destroyed shops and homes, on a day when President Maithripala Sirisena divested the law and order portfolio from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims has not subsided despite a state of emergency in riot-hit Kandy district. Petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque even as armoured vehicles and heavily-armed troops fortified the troubled district, where anti-Muslim violence has left two persons dead. PTI
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

London, March 8

The wife of an Iranian-Canadian environmental activist who died in prison in Tehran last month was barred from leaving Iran, one of her sons said, in an unexplained move that drew an angry response from Canada.

Raam Emami said in an email to journalists that security forces had not allowed his mother Maryam Mombeini to get on a plane to Vancouver with him and his brother on Wednesday night.

Mombeini is the widow of Kavous Seyed-Emami, an environmental activist and sociology professor who was arrested on Jan. 24 and died in prison. Irans judiciary said Seyed-Emami, 63, had committed suicide.

The family has called for independent probe into his death.

Canadas Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, said in a message posted on Twitter that she was outraged to learn that Mombeini had been barred from leaving Iran.

We demand that, as a Canadian, she be given the freedom to return home, she added.

Iranian judiciary officials were not immediately available for comment.

Seyed-Emami was the managing director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, which seeks to protect Irans rare animals. Irans judiciary said he had set up the NGO as a cover to collect classified information on Irans missile programme.

Raam Emami said the family decided to leave Iran after being constantly harassed.

The government raided our home and seized all of our valuables (most importantly deeds to our homes), we can no longer stand this state of constant terror, he said.

Raam Emami has previously said that the family was under pressure from authorities not to publicise the case of Seyed-Emami.

The authorities told our lawyers to tell the brothers to shut up or well shut them up, Emami said, adding government agents had told him they were watching him.

Human rights activists have reported that at least six detainees have died in prison in the last two months in Iran.

The judiciary has confirmed three deaths in custody but said all three had committed suicide.

Bilateral ties between Iran and Canada worsened in 2003 when an Iranian-Canadian photo journalist, Zahra Kazemi, died in Tehrans Evin prison while in custody.

Canada cut all diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012. Reuters
Truck and engine manufacturer Navistar International Corp. on Thursday reported its net loss grew during its fiscal first quarter compared to a year ago, but one top official insisted the company is headed in a positive direction.

The net loss totaled $73 million, or 74 cents per share, for the three months ending on Jan. 31, compared a net loss of $62 million, or 76 cents per share, a year earlier. The latest results include $46 million of charges as a result of the company's debt refinancing in Nov. 2017.

Revenues in the quarter were $1.9 billion, a 15% increase compared to $1.7 billion in the first quarter last year, driven by a 24% increase in the company's core market (Class 6-8 trucks and buses in the U.S. and Canada), according to Navistar.

First quarter 2018 EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $55 million, compared to first quarter 2017 EBITDA of $63 million. First quarter 2018 includes $49 million in net adjustments, including the debt refinancing and other items. Adjusted EBITDA was $104 million versus $55 million in first quarter 2017.

"We are off to a strong start in 2018 thanks to our ability to grow Navistar's position in a strengthening market," said Troy A. Clarke, chairman, president and CEO. "We grew our Class 8 market share and improved our margins, on the way to delivering our best first quarter on an adjusted EBITDA basis since 2011."

Navistar's first quarter core chargeouts (trucks that have been invoiced to customers, with units held in dealer inventory) were up 2,400 units year-over-year led by Class 8, which was up 56% compared to first quarter last year.

The company's Class 8 market share was up 1.2 points versus the same period one year ago.

Navistars truck segment first quarter 2018 net sales increased to $1.3 billion, primarily due to higher volumes in the company's core markets, an increase in military sales, and production of GM-branded units manufactured at Navistar's Springfield, Ohio plant, which launched in the second quarter of 2017. This was partially offset by a decline in the company's Mexico and export truck volumes.

The truck segment loss was $7 million in the first quarter 2018, versus a loss of $69 million in the same period one year ago. The improvement was primarily driven by the impact of higher volumes in the company's core markets, a decrease in used truck losses, and an increase in military sales, partially offset by higher structural costs.

In the first quarter of 2018, the parts segment net sales were $568 million, slightly lower than the prior year primarily due to the expected runoff in Blue Diamond Parts (BDP) sales, partially offset by higher U.S. and Canada parts sales related to the Fleetrite and ReNEWed brands.

The parts segment profit was $137 million, down 8%, primarily due to lower BDP margins and higher freight-related expenses.

The global operations segment saw net sales increase 62% in the first quarter, totaling $81 million, primarily driven by higher engine volumes in the company's South America engine operations due to improvement in the Brazilian economy.

For the first quarter 2018, the global operations segment loss was $7 million versus a $4 million loss in the first quarter 2017. Higher engine volumes and a benefit recognized as an adjustment to restructuring charges only partially offset a one-time benefit in the first quarter of 2017 of $9 million related to an adjustment to pre-existing warranties.

In the first quarter of 2018, the financial services segment net revenues increased to $59 million primarily due to higher portfolio yields, higher overall finance receivable balances in Mexico and favorable movements in foreign currency exchange rates impacting the company's Mexican portfolio. Its profit increased to $20 million primarily due to a decrease in the provision for loan losses in Mexico and improved interest margins.

Based on stronger industry conditions, Navistar raised its 2018 full-year guidance:

Retail deliveries of Class 6-8 trucks and buses in the U.s. and Canada are forecast to be in the range of 360,000 units to 390,000 units, with Class 8 retail deliveries of 235,000 to 265,000 units.

Revenues are expected to be between $9.25 billion and $9.75 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $700 million and $750 million.

Year-end manufacturing cash is expected to be about $1.1 billion.

"We expect market conditions to remain robust and we are determined to take advantage of opportunities to grow share while delivering strong margin performance," Clarke said. "Given the progress made in first quarter, and our positive outlook for the remainder of the year, we are confident that 2018 will be the breakout year for Navistar."
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Published March 08, 2018

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MONROE  Following the retirement of Dean Sandra Lemoine, the University of Louisiana Monroe is proud to welcome Dr. John M. Pratte as the newest addition to their administrative staff. Pratte will take over the duties as Dean of the College of Arts, Education, and Sciences on July 2, 2018, and will oversee the schools of Education, Humanities, Sciences and Visual and Performing Arts. A total of 13 undergraduate degree programs and 12 graduate degree programs are offered through the College.

Pratte joins ULM with 25 years of experience in higher education, most recently as Professor of Physics at Arkansas State University. Before that, he served in increasingly more responsible administrative positions at ASU and as a faculty member at both Kennesaw State University and Clayton State University. Prattes professional career began as a geophysicist with Shell Oil Company. His work to improve science education has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement.



ULM Vice President for Academic Affairs Eric Pani stated, I am pleased that we have hired someone with Dr. Prattes experience and success. His background in education and the sciences is well suited for the College and his administrative experience has prepared him to assume his duties quickly and carry them out skillfully.



"It is a tremendous honor and privilege to be selected as the ULM Dean of Arts, Education, and Sciences. Over the past decade, ULM has been one of the rare institutions that have successfully navigated the hurdles that face modern academia while forging a mission that fits the needs of both the students and the region and state," Pratte said. "I look forward with great anticipation to joining this great learning community to help continue this success over the coming decade and beyond. As a native of Louisiana, I also look forward to having great gumbo once again."

About ULM

ULM is a member of the University of Louisiana System and a Doctoral Research University with over 80 degree programs available on campus, online, and in a hybrid format. It seeks students who find value in its programs and prepares them to compete, succeed, and contribute in an ever-changing global society through a transformative education.
New York, 8 March 2018 - The Government of India, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) signed, on 8 March, a partnership agreement to expedite the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Nepal.

Under the agreement, the Government of India will provide a US$ 16.2 million grant to the two UN agencies (US$ 8.79 million to UNDP and US$ 7.41 million to UNOPS) to support safer reconstruction of 50,000 houses in Gorkha and Nuwakot, two of the districts hit hardest by the 2015 earthquake.

The grant assistance from the Government of India will allow UNDP and UNOPS to provide socio-technical facilitation to help quake-affected families rebuild their houses. While UNDP will provide this facilitation to 26,912 houses in Gorkha, UNOPS will cover 23,088 houses in Nuwakot. The three-year project will help house-owners ensure that their new structures comply with government norms and are earthquake resilient.

With the Government of Nepal having adopted an owner-driven reconstruction approach, support to house-owners in ensuring access to finance, materials, knowledge, technologies, skills and landsocio-technical facilitation, in other wordsbecomes critical to promote safer reconstruction. Experiences from the reconstruction of quake-affected areas underway since 2015 show that a significant number of households, who are entitled to receive the housing grant provided by the Government, require hands-on socio-technical assistance to build safer and code-compliant structures. The project is expected to address this need at the household level through deployment of trained engineers, architects, masons and community facilitators.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, UN Resident Coordinator Valerie Julliand thanked the people and the Government of India for extending the support, and entrusting the UN system with delivering the services. We have learned from the experiences around the world that disasters like this tend to disproportionally affect socially and economically vulnerable people. These projects will address the special needs of those populations and make them more resilient to disasters in the future, she said.

Ambassador of India to Nepal H.E. Mr. Manjeev Singh Puri said, "The partnership agreement with UNDP and UNOPS will enhance the availability of technical knowhow and expertise to house owners in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts to reconstruct their homes with earthquake-resilient features.

The project will be implemented in close coordination with the Embassy of India, Kathmandu, the National Reconstruction Authority, the Central Level Project Implementation Units of the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration, the Ministry of Urban Development, and concerned local government offices, municipalities and rural municipalities in the two districts.

With the generous assistance of the Government of India and in close partnership with the Government of Nepal, we will all be working together to support those families in greatest need, safely rebuild their homes and their lives. This is critical to sustainable development and we are proud to be a part of this effort, said Sanjay Mathur, UNOPS Asia - Regional Director.

We look forward to making this partnership a success to ensure that the poor, vulnerable and marginalized households who need our support the most are able to reconstruct resilient houses speedily while leaving no one behind, said Renaud Meyer, Country Director, UNDP Nepal.

In the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, GoI had provided a grant of US$ 250 million and a US$ 750 million Line of Credit for post-earthquake reconstruction of houses, schools, hospitals, heritage structures and other affected infrastructure.
When Nomzmo Mbatha encountered a group of refugee children frolicking at a water collection point in Kenyas Kakuma camp, her first reaction was of delight.

She could not hide her inner child as she easily joined in on the fun. She spent time joking and chatting with the children, who were in clear awe of her attire  a bright orange, checked kaftan tied at her waist with a beaded belt.

I believe making a personal connection is key to fully championing the plight of refugees, she said, during her week-long trip in Kenya.

And she did connect  from meeting and exercising with members of Team Refugees at their training centre in Nairobi to helping South Sudanese girls carry water in jerricans in Kakuma. Nomzamo comes across as truthful and undeterred in her role as an advocate for UNHCRs LuQuLuQu campaign

As International Womens Day is marked today, Nomzamo reflects on her Kenya trip and on the impact that the refugee women she met has had on her. She considers the Womens Day theme, The Time is Now, a rallying call for people to change their attitudes and the overall narrative of Africas displaced.

All I know is that it is more necessary than ever that we take care of each other.

Born 27 years ago in the townships of Durban, she grew up experiencing varying degrees of poverty and now, as an actress, model and advocate for the UN Refugee Agency, she believes that its time for refugees, especially women to be empowered.

All I know is that it is more necessary than ever that we take care of each other, she says. That we become each others refuge.

The time she spent with young girls and women at a safe space in the camp was especially moving for her. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, works with other aid agencies to identify such safe areas in the camp where young girls who are at risk of sexual and gender based violence, early marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) are accommodated.

Nomzamo spoke to the women who, despite the challenges theyve undergone, maintain a positive outlook towards life.

Their strength, their ability to overcome and their ingenuity for making the best of a difficult situation is what I celebrate.

"Women are often not the warmongers, but invariably, they beat the trauma of war, she says. Their strength, their ability to overcome and their ingenuity for making the best of a difficult situation is what I celebrate.

Nomzamo Mbatha sits with refugee children at Morning Star Primary School in Kalobeyei settlement near Kakuma camp in Turkana, northern Kenya.  UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

Nomzamo Mbatha sits with refugee children at Morning Star Primary School in Kalobeyei settlement near Kakuma camp in Turkana, northern Kenya.  UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

Nomzamo Mbatha sits with refugee children at Morning Star Primary School in Kalobeyei settlement near Kakuma camp in Turkana, northern Kenya.  UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

Nomzamo Mbatha sits with refugee children at Morning Star Primary School in Kalobeyei settlement near Kakuma camp in Turkana, northern Kenya.  UNHCR/Samuel Otieno

Calling on the world to witness the strength and resilience of refugees, she especially calls for increased support for refugee womens rights, equality and justice.

"My hope is that we begin to remove the mental borders that we have put up in our minds, she says. We can only change the narrative by having more conversations on how we can truly come together.

Her encounters and conversations with refugees in Kakuma, which hosts over 185,000 refugees from 13 African countries, have further cemented her belief that refugees have admirable strength and resilience.

Nomzamo now has a strong, impassioned message to convey to the world: Africas refugees are not poor people.

We need to bring refugees back to a place of self-reliance because before they fled, they were able-bodied, respected members of their communities.

Needa Mazou, UNHCRs Head of Private Sector Partnerships in Africa and Curator of the LuQuLuQu campaign agrees.

Refugees, especially women and children are often perceived as helpless faceless aid-dependent people, she says. This is grossly inaccurate.

We need such advocates and emissaries like Nomzamo who can drive our campaign as a vehicle of empowerment and celebration.

She adds that partnering with celebrities like Nomzamo helps shine a light on the incredible abilities of refugees, particularly women, who more often than not, bear the brunt of war.

We need such advocates and emissaries like Nomzamo who can drive our campaign as a vehicle of empowerment and celebration.

Prior to her trip to Kenya, Nomzamo also visited Dzaleka camp in Malawi.

Her role as a UNHCR supporter will see her make trips to various refugee hosting countries in the region to familiarize herself with the plight of Africas displaced and call for increased support and empathy.
Members of a women's choir group meet at the Human Resource Development Foundation (HRDF) Refugee Support Office in Istanbul where they see for the first time, a CD they've recorded.  UNHCR/Claire Thomas

With conflict, violence and human rights violations forcing record numbers of people from diverse backgrounds to flee their homes UNHCRs international protection chief today renewed the UN Refugee Agencys commitment to integrate age, gender and diversity factors in all aspects of its work.

On the margins of the 71st meeting of UNHCRs Standing Committee, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Volker Turk, formally presented the UNHCRs updated policy on Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD).

Building on long-standing commitments and lessons learned, the policy aims to further enable displaced and stateless women, men, girls and boys to enjoy their rights on an equal footing, and to ensure that they are better able to participate fully in the decisions that affect them.

Turk noted that, over the last decade, significant progress has been made to address the unique experiences, protection challenges and risks which arise from the intersections of age, gender, and diversity in displaced communities. However, challenges still remain to achieving equality, including societal attitudes that are often difficult to change.

UNHCRs updated policy brings together all the essential components for change: stronger and clear accountability, defined responsibilities across the organization, as well as consistent monitoring which can lead to evidence-based and regular reporting, Turk said today at a panel including a representative of UNHCRs partner CARE International, as well as talented and resourceful refugees.

This mandatory policy outlines 10 core actions that UNHCR will take to apply a Age, Gender and Diversity approach in its work. Among them is the desegregation by age and sex of all collected data, as well as the use of participatory methods in order to incorporate in UNHCR programmes the capacities and priorities of women, men, girls and boys.

All UNHCR operations will make sure that these displaced and stateless people will have access to timely, accurate and relevant information on their rights and on UNHCRs work. They will also be able to systematically provide feedback and receive a comprehensive response. UNHCRs operations will adapt their programs and strategies on the basis of their inputs.

The AGD policy also updates, deepens, and reaffirms UNHCRs five Commitments to Refugee Women, which include provisions to support their economic empowerment or prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence.

The policy is in line with UNHCRs Strategic Directions 2017-2021, which emphasize the need of putting people first.
This years International Womens Day comes on the heels of a powerful global movement for womens rights, equality and justice.

Its theme  Time is Now  comes at the right moment. And it also echoes UNHCRs firm commitment to uphold the rights of women and girls, and to ensure that our work to secure protection and solutions for displaced and stateless people takes full account of age, gender and diversity.

Our aim is to build on the rich experience, capacities and aspirations of women and girls, and to help them realise their full potential  through better access to education, decent work, and legal and health services.

We at UNHCR do very concrete work to advance these goals. In Lebanon, women represent over 50 percent of our outreach volunteers. In the Central African Republic, three centres are now helping displaced women to improve their literacy skills, address sexual and gender-based violence, and earn a living for themselves and their families. And in Malaysia, sustained investments in leadership, communication, and gender equality training, have boosted the number of refugee women taking part in community decision-making by 43%.

There, and in the rest of our operations across the world, UNHCR is taking action.

See also: Displaced Colombian women fight sex abuse

We believe that we have a profound responsibility to make sure that the distinct voices of women and girls are heard and reflected at every step, and in all aspects of our work.

We have taken our long-standing commitments on Age, Gender and Diversity, and deepened and updated them in a new policy, to reflect the lessons we have learned and to make sure that we are fully accountable to women, girls and all those whom we serve. We will invest in better monitoring, so that we can mark our progress in pursuing gender equality in our operations  and towards reaching planet 50/50 by 2030.

:zap: UNHCR are celebrating refugee women on #IWD2018 See what amazing refugee women, our wonderful staff and teams around the world are up to:https://t.co/kBJ82ZDLJC  UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) March 8, 2018

International Womens Day is also the right moment to redouble our commitment to stamping out sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. These are inexcusable. We at UNHCR, have been at the forefront of this fight and will continue to be. There is no place in our organization for those who do not share and respect our core values. I urge victims to speak out and stand for their rights. And I appeal to anyone who has witnessed sexual misconduct in the context of UNHCR operations to come forward and report it. We will continue to step up our support for victims and will strive to improve even further the ways in which we prevent, report and deal with cases of sexual misconduct.

See also: Rohingya refugee women stitch new lives in Bangladesh

Societies that benefit from the full potential of women and men alike, and where the rights of displaced women and girls are fully upheld, are not just a distant aspiration.

It is up to all of us to make them a reality, now.


United Nations/Brazil Symposium on Basic Space Technology

"Creating Novel Opportunities with Small Satellite Space Missions" Natal, Brazil, 11 - 14 September 2018 Co-organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Government of Brazil

Updates:

Thank you for your interest in our Symposium. We reviewed over 350 applications during the registration process, and hosted 200 participants from 27 member states in the event. The programme consisted of opening and introductory sessions, keynote addresses, four technical sessions, two panel discussions, six poster sessions and a final session for discussion of observations and recommendations, followed by closing remarks by the co-organizers.

The oral and poster presentations delivered during the Symposium have already been made available online. The report of the Symposium will also be made available here when the editorial process is concluded.

Invitation Message from UNOOSA Director Simonetta Di Pippo

Background

Space technology and its wide range of applications contribute essential information and services to many aspects of sustainable development, that is, economic and social development and environmental conservation and protection. Small satellite missions, which provide an affordable and low risk means to developing and using space technologies, are therefore becoming increasingly important in supporting sustainable development, as well as in the advancement of basic space science and technology, notably through capacity-building. Recognizing this opportunity, the Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which is implementing The United Nations Programme on Space Applications (PSA), launched Basic Space Technology Initiative (BSTI) in 2009, in support of capacity-building for the development of basic space technology.

UNOOSA held a series of three United Nations/Austria/European Space Agency Symposiums on Small Satellite Programmes for Sustainable Development in Graz, Austria from 2009 to 2011. Starting from 2012, the Office has organized international symposiums on basic space technology under BSTI in the regions that correspond to the UN Economic Commissions for Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia.

The first Symposium was held as the United Nations/Japan Nano-Satellite Symposium, hosted by the University of Tokyo and the University Space Engineering Consortium (UNISEC) in Nagoya, Japan, on 10-13 October 2012. The second Symposium was held as the United Nations/United Arab Emirates Symposium on Basic Space Technology, hosted by the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on 20-23 October 2013. The third Symposium was held as the United Nations/Mexico Symposium on Basic Space Technology hosted by the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education (CICESE) and the Mexican Space Agency in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, on 20-23 October 2014. The fourth Symposium was held in Stellenbosch, South Africa on 11-15 December 2017 as the United Nations/South Africa Symposium on Basic Space Technology hosted by the Stellenbosch University, organized in cooperation with the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry on behalf of the Government of the Republic of South Africa, and co-sponsored by the European Space Agency.

The present and fifth Symposium will be held as the United Nations/Brazil Symposium on Basic Space Technology in Natal, Brazil with a special focus on the Latin America and the Caribbean region. It is organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in cooperation with the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN) and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), on behalf of the Government of Brazil.

Symposium Objectives

The Symposium objectives will build on the outcomes of the aforementioned BSTI Symposiums held from 2009 to 2017. The relevant symposium reports, containing the objectives, symposium summaries, observations and recommendations made by participants are available from the BSTI Events page.

The objectives of the UN/Brazil Symposium will be to: Review the status of capacity-building in basic space technology for small satellites including lessons learned from the past and on-going development activities with focus on regional and international collaboration opportunities, in particular for countries in Latin America and Caribbean; Examine issues relevant to the implementation of small satellite programmes, such as organizational capacity-building, development, testing infrastructure and launch opportunities; Review evolving capabilities and state-of-the-art applications of small satellite programmes and technological developments associated with them, with particular focus on applications for agriculture, environment and urban monitoring, and education that support sustainable growth, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; Elaborate on regulatory issues related to space technology development programmes, such as frequency allocation, space debris mitigation and other issues that may arise with the newly emerging trend of small satellite constellations; Elaborate on legal issues and responsibilities related to space technology development programmes, such as those that arise from the sources of international space law; Discuss the way forward for the Basic Space Technology Initiative (BSTI), and its capacity-building and international cooperation activities in support of UNISPACE+50.

Symposium Programme

The Symposium programme will be structured around a series of dedicated topical sessions. In addition, renowned experts in the field will be invited to give presentations. The participants will consider specific topics and discuss observations and recommendations for consideration by COPUOS. Appropriate time will be set aside for discussions and for short presentations by the participants on their own relevant activities.You can access the preliminary programme here.

The following topics will be considered in dedicated sessions:

Small Satellites and Capacity-Building in Basic Space Technology with a Focus on Latin America and the Caribbean

Space technology has a huge potential to contribute to the development of Latin America and the Caribbean. This session will address space technology development and capacity-building activities, including know-how transfer programmes and opportunities for regional and international cooperation with a focus on, but not limited to, activities in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Moreover, this session will provide a review of small satellite projects worldwide in support of capacity building and engineering education. Challenges such as testing facilities and launching opportunities will also be discussed from a capacity-building and education perspective.

Space technology has a huge potential to contribute to the development of Latin America and the Caribbean. This session will address space technology development and capacity-building activities, including know-how transfer programmes and opportunities for regional and international cooperation with a focus on, but not limited to, activities in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Moreover, this session will provide a review of small satellite projects worldwide in support of capacity building and engineering education. Challenges such as testing facilities and launching opportunities will also be discussed from a capacity-building and education perspective. Evolving Capabilities and Operational Applications of Small Satellite Missions

Small satellites have been developed for a wide range of applications, including telecommunication, navigation, earth observation services and scientific missions. They can offer cost-efficient solutions to replace or complement more expensive, larger satellite missions, and even realize an increased level of temporal resolution that was not feasible with their larger counterparts. This session will consider both advances and challenges that have a determining role on the extent of operational and commercially viable services that can be provided by small satellites and their constellations (i.e. standards, infrastructures, development costs, specialized launch services, reliability issues, etc.).

Small satellites have been developed for a wide range of applications, including telecommunication, navigation, earth observation services and scientific missions. They can offer cost-efficient solutions to replace or complement more expensive, larger satellite missions, and even realize an increased level of temporal resolution that was not feasible with their larger counterparts. This session will consider both advances and challenges that have a determining role on the extent of operational and commercially viable services that can be provided by small satellites and their constellations (i.e. standards, infrastructures, development costs, specialized launch services, reliability issues, etc.). Legal and Regulatory Issues

Legal and regulatory considerations play an important role in the conduct of outer space activities. The session will cover registration, space debris and issues that may arise with the newly emerging trend of small satellite constellations, in addition to the relevant national and international legal and regulatory frameworks. Furthermore, the session will include a workshop on frequency coordination offered by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Kindly note that the Symposium organizers may modify the number and themes of sessions in the final programme.

In addition to the topics described above, there will be panel discussions to share experiences and lessons learned through capacity-building activities in space technology development as well as to promote opportunities for international and regional collaborations among the participants. The sessions will be supplemented by a poster session as well as by an exhibition, demonstrations of relevant software tools, technical visits and practical hands-on exercises.

The co-sponsors will also organize an attractive programme of side-events for all Symposium participants. The detailed Symposium programme will be made available on this website.

Location and Date

Dates: The Symposium will be held from 11-14 September 2018 in Natal, Brazil. Invited participants will receive a formal invitation letter with further information on available accommodation, logistics and other local arrangements prior to the Symposium.

Venue: The symposium venue will be the Natal Central Campus of the Federal Institution for Education, Science and Technology of the State of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN). For photographs of the venue: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6



Accommodation: The Local Organizing Committee has provided a list of recommended accommodation alternatives.

For logistics related questions like hotels, transfers and the city of Natal, please refer to the Logistics Package prepared by the local organizing committee. In case of unanswered questions you may also get in contact with the local organizing committee directly through:

Logistics Focal Point

E-mail: un.bsti.brazil2018@gmail.com

Language of the Symposium

Applicants must have a good working knowledge of English, which will be the official working language of the Symposium.

Participants

Symposium participants should be involved in the planning or implementation of space technology development activities in international or national space agencies, governmental or non-governmental organizations, research institutions, industry, universities or other academic institutions. Participants are expected to have obtained university degrees in relevant fields of study or should be enrolled in relevant studies. Professional working experience in one of the fields related to the theme of the Symposium is desirable. Applications from qualified female applicants are particularly encouraged.

Support to Qualified Applicants

Applicants and their nominating organizations are strongly encouraged to find their own sources of sponsorship to participate in the Symposium. However, within the limited financial resourcesavailable to the co-sponsors, a number of qualified applicants from developing and emerging economies expressing the need for financial support will be offered financial support to attend the Symposium.

Support may include the provision of a round-trip air ticket between Natal Airport and the applicant's international airport of departure and/or room and board for the duration of the Symposium. En-route and other expenses or any changes made to an air ticket provided by the co-sponsors must be borne by the participants. Selected applicants will be notified in June-July 2018.

Life and Health Insurance

Life and major health insurance is the responsibility of each selected participant or his/her nominating institution or government. The co-organizers will not assume any responsibility for life and major health insurance, nor for any expenses related to medical treatment or accidents.

Deadline for Submission of Applications

Applications for participation in the Symposium have to be submitted online through this webpage ( see top of this page).

The completed applications including the signature page with signatures and seals must be received by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs no later than 15 May 2018 from applicants seeking funding support, and no later than 1 August 2018 from self-funded applicants. Only complete applications received by these deadlines will be considered.

Contact

For latest information and updates on the Symposium, it is advised that you frequently visit this webpage.

For questions related to the Symposium programme in general and international applications:

Mr. Medeni Soysal

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs

E-mail: medeni.soysal@un.org

For logistics related questions like hotels, transfers and the city of Natal, please refer to the Logistics Package prepared by the local organizers. In case you need more information, you may get in contact with the local organizing committee directly through:

Mr. Giuliani Garbi (Local Organizer Focal Point)

Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)

Email: giuliani.garbi@gmail.com

Field Trip

In addition to the Symposium programme, an optional field trip to the will be organized on 14 September 2018.

As indicated in the symposium website, there will be a field trip to the Hells Barrier Launch Site and the Space Visitor Center in Natal on the afternoon of the last day of our Symposium (14 September 2018). Hells Barrier is a high security military facility operated by the Brazilian Air Force. We were recently informed that an extra information form is required for our participants to be granted access to this facility.

This field trip will have a limited capacity of 100 people. If you would like to attend, please download and fill the form in the following link digitally. Ignore the signature part and send it together with your passport photo page to Mr. Philipe Freire de Araujo PATRICIO (patriciopfap@fab.mil.br) by 20 August 2018.

Link to the form: https://goo.gl/iyosWy

Should you have any question regarding any process, please contact Mr. PATRICIO. Thank you for your understanding.

Hands-on Workshop

A hands-on workshop on nanosatellite mission design and testing was provided for a limited number of selected participants in the Brazilian Space Agency facilities by trainers from INPE.

Exhibition

An industry exhibition will be organized by the Local Organizers in conjunction with the Symposium. Information on the exhibition opportunities are provided here. For more information on the exhibition please contact:

Mr. Moises Souto

Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN)

E-mail: moises.souto@ifrn.edu.br

Useful Links

Reference Materials

Symposium Report

Symposium report with the document code A/AC.105/1194 will be presented to the 56th Session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee (STSC) of the Committtee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Link to the report will also be provided here.

Group Photos

High resolution versions of the photos can be accessed from these links: Group Photo 1, Group Photo 2.






March 8 2018

AMA are spearheading plans to reinvigorate Edinburghs Springwell House , a C-listed vacant office building on Gorgie Road, by way of conversion to 39 apartments, seven townhouses and two detached homes.This will see a n umber of rear extensions demolished to clear the path for a comprehensive refurbishment and redevelopment, with a range of two and three-storey apartment buildings occupying the current footprint.These will be joined by seven contemporary townhouses and full refurbishment of the existing gate house and construction of a new detached home, with each new addition intended to contrast and enhance qualities of the existing buildings.Finished in brick and timber the homes will sit within private landscaped grounds with car parking to the south supplanting rear outbuildings.
March 8 2018

Jonathan Reeve, an architect at the Voigt Partnership, has branched out from Arbroath for an exotic commission in Africa after designing a school and cultural centre for the Maasai tribe in Kenya.Reeve has designed a building split into three parts; a school, cultural centre and office, to help educate local children and adults.Drawing inspiration from Maasai jewellery the project, specifically intricate beading and colours, by making use of recycled glass bottles arranged around three interlocking hexagonal spaces, resembling a bracelet.Reeve wrote: Even at an early stage I realised this was a special project. Almost everyone around the world has heard of the Maasai tribe, and to incorporate elements in a design brief such as views to Mount Kilimanjaro and walls to deter elephant stampedes are not what you are used to working with in my day job!Reeve will travel to Kenya on 13 March to oversee arrangements for an anticipated August build.
(March 8,2018) -- At 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 11, clocks will be set forward by one hour in observance of the beginning of Daylight Saving Time (DST). As a result, employees whose work schedules fall within the time change will lose one work hour.

Supervisors and employees should work together to determine how to best accommodate this time change so employees are credited for working a full 40 hour workweek, to include flexing work schedules, allowing employees to make up the time, or using available leave time within the same work week.
Cloud Peak Energy Days at UW College of Business

Cloud Peak Energy personnel are visiting the University of Wyoming this week to meet with College of Business students and UW representatives.

Cloud Peak Energy, headquartered in Wyoming, is one of the largest U.S. coal producers, employing about 1,300 workers.

As a part of Cloud Peak Energy Days, various events are planned at the College of Business through Thursday, March 8. In addition to special events, Cloud Peak representatives will visit a number of classes across the UW campus to speak with students.

The Cloud Peak group will meet with MBA students and College of Business faculty members Thursday for the groups annual luncheon. Todd Myers, Cloud Peaks senior vice president of marketing and business development, will lead the discussion with MBA students and faculty members.

Myers has extensive expertise in coal and energy industries, and has served as senior vice president of business development at Cloud Peak. Before joining Cloud Peak, he was president of Westmoreland Coal Sales Co. During his 14 years with Westmoreland, he held senior leadership positions in business development, strategy and marketing. He also spent five years with RDI Consulting, a leading consulting firm in the coal and energy industries.

For more information, call the UW College of Business at (307) 766-4194. To learn more about Cloud Peak Energy, visit the website at www.cloudpeakenergy.com/.
University of Wyoming Calendar for March 12-18

These are among the activities scheduled March 12-18 at the University of Wyoming:

Monday, March 12-Friday, March 16 -- UW classes are dismissed for spring break, but most business and administrative offices will remain open.

Tuesday, March 13, 7 p.m. -- UW Planetarium show, From Earth to the Universe. Tickets cost $3 for students and $4 for non-students, Physical Sciences Building basement. Advance tickets are available in the Physical Sciences Building, Room 204, or by going online at www.uwyo.edu/physics/ and clicking on Planetarium Schedule.

Friday, March 16, 8 p.m. -- UW Planetarium show, The Science of Science Fiction. Tickets cost $3 for students and $4 for non-students, Physical Sciences Building basement. Advance tickets are available in the Physical Sciences Building, Room 204, or by going online at www.uwyo.edu/physics/ and clicking on Planetarium Schedule.

Friday, March 16, 8-10 p.m. -- UW Planetarium staff members will offer a free tour of the planetariums STAR Observatory, weather permitting, on the roof of the Physical Sciences Building.
UW Energy Resources Council to Meet March 23

The University of Wyoming Energy Resources Council (ERC) will meet at 8 a.m. Friday, March 23, at the BP Collaboration Center in the Energy Innovation Center on the University of Wyoming campus.

Council members will discuss budget preparations for the 2019 fiscal year; hear division updates and a legislative update; and review the School of Energy Resources collaborations with UW colleges and programs.

The ERC was established by the Wyoming State Legislature in 2006. Made up of representatives of industry, state government and academia, the council advises the School of Energy Resources on priorities for research and outreach.

The School of Energy Resources provides undergraduate and graduate education; conducts research on existing and emerging industry resources; and disseminates scientific, engineering and economic information to support Wyomings near- and long-term energy future.

People with disabilities requiring special accommodations to attend this meeting should call the School of Energy Resources at (307) 766-6897. Information about the School of Energy Resources is available at www.uwyo.edu/SER.
Sr Anne Gardiner has been recognised as Senior Australian of the Year for her work in the remote Tiwi islands (Photo credit: David Hancock)

Sr Anne Gardiner is in Rome at the Australian embassy to the Holy See to talk about her work on International Women's Day

By Philippa Hitchen

Supporting indigenous women in a remote Australian island community is the topic of a talk being held here in Rome to mark International Womens Day on Thursday March 8th.

Australias embassy to the Holy See is sponsoring the event and has invited a missionary sister who was recognized by the government in 2017 as Senior Australian of the Year because of her work with the Tiwi island people.

Sr. Anne Gardiner, a Daughter of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, first travelled to the islands, off Australias Northern Territory coast, in 1953.

Since then, she has devoted her life to the community, as school principle, setting up support groups and founding a museum to showcase indigenous history and culture.

Listen to the interview with Sr Anne Gardiner

Sr Anne talks about the two islands, Melville and Bathurst, located about 20 minutes by plane or two hours on a ferry, north of Darwin.

History of the mission

She recounts the history of the mission there, started by Frenchman Francis Xavier Gsell, who arrived in 1911 and learned the local language to be able to teach them about Christianity.

It remained a Catholic mission until 1970, when the Tiwi people were given self-determination, but, unlike other parts of Australia, they asked the sisters and the priest to remain on islands. We missionaries could be blamed for many things, Sr Anne says, but I believe that the foundation set by the early missionaries has helped that place to be as strong as it is today.

Tackling social problems

She also talks about the problems of alcohol abuse and marijuana, which, she says, is wrecking the place as increasingly young people are trying it. The Church runs programmes to try and care for addicts, but she says the problem is getting worse and there is a lack of employment opportunities for young people.

Helping women to succeed

Sr Anne also talks about the challenges of mentoring Tiwi women into leadership positions, first in the school and also in the museum which she set up and has now handed over to the local community. While the women initially resisted the idea of running the museum, she says they have had remarkable results.

Women, she says, have more stickability than the men do, and I want to see those women succeed.
Police stand guard outside a restaurant in England where a former Russian spy was believed to have been poisoned (AFP or licensors)

A former Russian spy and his daughter are in hospital in England, after an apparent attempt on their lives.

By Stefan J. Bos

British police say a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned in Britain with a nerve agent amid rising tensions with Russia.

Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley told reporters that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were specifically targeted.

He said they collapsed in Salisbury on Sunday after they became victims of a chemical attack. "This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent," he confirmed.

"As you know these two people remain critically ill in hospital. Sadly, also, a police officer who was one of the first to attend the scene and respond to the incident is now also in a serious condition in hospital."

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd later explained that the former Russian spy and his daughter remain in a critical but stable condition.

Russia behind attack?



She declined to say if she believed Russia was behind the attack. But the official warned that Britain would "have a plan in place" if that is the case. Moscow has denied it was involved and even offered to cooperate in the investigation.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned.

He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicized spy swap in which the U.S. agreed to hand over ten members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

The Skripal case resembles the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy. Alexander Litvinenko. He was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.

The banned VX nerve agent that is believed to have been used against Skripal was also administered to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader last year in Malaysia.
Looking Back at the Music of the Last 66 Years
Homestay service has recently developed in BacKan, especially after the launch of the Greater Mekong Subregion Sustainable Tourism Development Project with loans from Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet

Trade ministers of other countries negotiating the trade pact, namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, will attend the event.

CPTPP was launched a year ago after the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. It sets high criteria in numerous fields, including labour, the environment, intellectual property, digital economy and cyber security.

Twenty-two provisions of the CPTPP, including sensitive ones related to intellectual property, were suspended or changed in comparison to the TPP.

The pact is expected to facilitate for the promotion of economic growth and job generation, poverty reduction, and improvement of peoples living conditions.

It will be a strong message against protectionism, while proving that an opening economy will benefit member nations, according to experts.

The pact, once signed, will create one of the worlds largest free trade blocs with a combined market of 463 million people and GDP of around $10 trillion, accounting for 13 per cent of the global GDP.

It will bring about important commitments involved in non-tariff barriers, services, investment and other fields.

The pact will come into force 60 days after it is fully ratified by six of the 11 members.
Steward Beck, President and CEO of the Asia-Pacific Fund Canada (YouTube)

The signing will be an important starting point for establishing a potential free trade area with a population of nearly 500 million people and GDP of around $10 trillion, or 13 per cent of the global GDP.

According to Steward Beck, President and CEO of the Asia-Pacific Fund Canada, the pact is really important for Canada because it gets access to the Japanese market, Canadas fourth largest market, as well as well as others like Vietnam, Singapore and ASEAN, which are important markets but the northern American country does not have trade arrangement.

It is gonna give Vietnam advantages, he told Vietnam News Agencys correspondent on the eve of the official signing ceremony. For Canada, it gives us advantages in place like Vietnam, he added.

He highlighted Vietnams potential with a young labour and half of the population being under 25 and well educated.

Once you start marketing CPTPP with the Canadian business community, they will start focusing on opportunities Vietnam offers to them.

Beck pointed out fields the two sides have opportunities for cooperation such as technology, which, he said, will become much more important in doing business today whether e-commerce, finance technology, and services, along with Vietnams export of more seafood and other products to Canada.

In the next two-three years, once the agreement is enforced, we will see more engagements with Vietnam in areas important for Vietnam and Canada.

He believed more people would go to Vietnam and more people will see what opportunities are it will create that type of business.

Besides, there is a large of Vietnamese community in Canada, they will help because they would know what the business opportunity is in Vietnam. They will be able to make those connections, Beck affirmed.

After the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the predecessor of the CPTPP, in 2017, the remaining 11 countries -Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam- agreed to maintain the deal and rename it CPTPP.

It sets high criteria in numerous fields, including labour, the environment, intellectual property, digital economy and cyber security. Twenty-two provisions of the CPTPP, including sensitive ones related to intellectual property, were suspended or changed in comparison to the TPP.

The pact will come into force 60 days after it is fully ratified by six of the 11 members.
Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh

Therefore, economic sectors should prepare and take the initiative in economic restructuring in order to maximise the pact, which is scheduled to be inked in Chile on March 8 (local time) by ministers from its 11 member countries, Anh told VNA.

The minister said such sectors as garment-textiles, footwear, food processing, beverage, confectionery, tobacco, wine and beer will benefit most from the deal.

He cited a research jointly conducted by the World Bank (WB) and the research institute under the Ministry of Planning and Investment as saying that Vietnams GDP would be 1.1 per cent higher in 2030 thanks to the CPTPP.

Like other member countries, Vietnam has committed to market opening and trade facilitation and liberalisation towards lifting non-tariff barriers.

Like other member countries, Vietnam has committed to market opening and trade facilitation and liberalisation towards lifting non-tariff barriers, the minister said.

At the same time, the country will continue to streamline state management of market development, he said, stressing that through the agreement, competitiveness of the national economy as well as businesses will be likely improved.

Citing $36 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) poured into Vietnam in 2017, Anh said the pact would lead to breakthroughs in the flow of investment into the country.

Domestic businesses, therefore, will have more resources to develop further and access technologies as well as quality human resources, the minister emphasised.

However, apart from opportunities, the agreement would pose challenges to both the business circle and people if less attention was paid to fulfilling integration commitments, the minister warned.

He cited lessons withdrawn from Vietnams joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and signing of the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) with the US to clarify his views.

The official said a number of fields in the agriculture sector like sugarcane exploitation and sugar industry have remained slow in restructuring, as compared with other sectors like telecommunications, e-commerce, garments-textiles and footwear.

According to him, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has designed specific communications projects in order to help businesses and people grasp opportunities generated by the agreement.

The ministry will also submit an overall action plan to the government in preparation for the implementation of Vietnams integration commitments while reviewing its legal framework.

The CPTPP is set to take effect in early 2019 after it is ratified by at least six member countries. Its member economies make up about 13 per cent of the global GDP.

The CPTPP is set to take effect in early 2019 after it is ratified by at least six member countries. Its member economies make up about 13 per cent of the global GDP.

After the US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the predecessor of the CPTPP, in 2017, the remaining 11 countries (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam) agreed to maintain the deal and rename it CPTPP.

They agreed on the revised content of the agreement on January 23, 2018.

On February 21, the full text of the CPTPP was announced, which is considered a sign showing that the 11 countries are ready to sign the agreement.

According to Reuters, more than 20 provisions of the CPTPP were suspended or changed compared to the TPP.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump said his country would consider re-entering the CPTPP if the US could get a better deal.
"My proposal shows that we don't want to build a wall between the EU and Britain," Tusk said. (Photo: AFP/Emmanuel Dunand)

Tusk's draft plans rebuffed many of the demands that Prime Minister Theresa May made in a long-awaited speech on the post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the EU after 2019.

The former Polish premier said he wanted a standard free-trade deal with Britain after 2019, insisting that Britain could not "pick and mix" the benefits of EU membership.

"My proposal shows that we don't want to build a wall between the EU and Britain. On the contrary, the UK will be our closest neighbour and we want to remain friends and partners," Tusk told a press conference in Luxembourg.

Tusk, who met May last week, said the EU would aim for an agreement "covering all sectors and with zero tariffs on goods", but said it must include access for EU fishing boats to British waters - a highly sensitive issue for hardline Brexit supporters.

And on services - vital to Britain's crucial financial sector - Tusk simply indicated the deal should "address" the issue.

'DRIFTING APART'

But he said the red lines laid down by London - that Britain must leave the EU's single market and customs union, and no longer submit to rulings by the European Court of Justice - meant a free-trade deal was the only option.

"Because of Brexit we will be drifting apart. In fact, this will be the first FTA in history that loosens economic ties, instead of strengthening them," the former Polish premier added.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel insisted there could be "no cherry-picking" by Britain, adding that "Brexit is a damage limitation exercise".

Tusk's guidelines, which are expected to be adopted by leaders of the remaining 27 member states at a summit on Mar 22, said that Britain's own red lines "will inevitably lead to frictions."

"This will unfortunately have negative economic consequences," they said, adding however that the EU would be ready to "reconsider" its offer if Britain's positions were to "evolve."

May's spokesman said Britain hoped the final guidelines "will provide the flexibility to allow the EU to think creatively and imaginatively about our future economic partnership."

May used her speech last week to call for an EU-UK deal that worked "more fully than any free-trade agreement anywhere in the world today", while acknowledging it was time to face "hard facts" about the economic consequences of Britain's shock 2016 vote to leave.

'MUTUAL INTEREST'

Her finance minister Philip Hammond was to tell the EU in a speech later on Wednesday that including financial services in any trade deal was in the "mutual interest" of both Britain and the union.

In his keynote speech, Hammond will "address the sceptics who say a trade deal including financial services cannot be done", according to excerpts of the address released by his office on Tuesday.

"Every trade deal the EU has ever done has been unique," he is expected to say, pointing to prior agreements with Turkey, Canada and South Korea.

A leaked EU report quoted by the Guardian newspaper dismissed similar demands laid out by May in her speech last Friday as "double-cherry picking", and more about managing her restive Conservative party than proper negotiating.

The EU's tough stance is partly inspired by fears that if Britain gets a bespoke deal it could inspire the 27 remaining member states to leave the EU and demand special treatment themselves.

The European Parliament - which will have the final veto on any Brexit deal - is set to publish its own demands for trade talks later on Wednesday in Brussels.

A political declaration on future relations will be attached to the Brexit divorce agreement between Britain and the EU, which Barnier wants in place by November at the latest.

Any actual trade deal will have to wait until after Brexit day on Mar 29, 2019.
A street hawker sells household appliances in Ha Noi. Street hawkers in Viet Nam belong to the informal sector whose jobs are unprotected and unmonitored by the State. - VNS Photo oan Tun

The job search was tough. She found several well-paid jobs with reasonable work hours, but the recruiters specified that they would only hire male candidates.

A lot of jobs had physical requirements for female candidates, like you have to be at least 1.5-metre tall and weigh at least 42kg, Mai told the Lao ong (Labour) newspaper. I weighed about 40kg at that time, so I was unqualified right from the start.

Female labourers in Viet Nam face gender discrimination in work and life, according to a recent report published by the Network of Actions for Migrant Workers (M.net). Several employers deliberately recruit either only male candidates, or female ones that have already had children so that they will not have to pay them their birth allowance, the report said.

A recent study conducted by the network shows that despite having the same qualifications and job levels, the average income of female workers in Viet Nam is 10.7 per cent lower than their male counterparts.

The discrepancy is wider in jobs that require higher levels of education. In 2016, while the difference between the incomes of male and female high school graduates was 8.1 per cent, it stood at 19.7 per cent for those with university degrees. The income of women in managerial positions is about 12 per cent lower than their male counterparts, according to the report.

More women are working in more hazardous environment than men, the report said. About 59 per cent of waged male workers have labour contracts, while only 50 per cent of their female counterparts do. More than 68 per cent of female workers in shoe export factories have had gynecological infections due to the hot, unhygienic environment, high work pressure and the lack of hygiene facilities for women, according to the report.

The working conditions are worse for female workers in the informal sector, such as domestic helpers and street hawkers. Earning only VN4-6 million (US$176-264) per month, more often than not, these workers are unaware that they need to have labour contracts and that they have other rights and benefits apart from getting paid.

We dont know about the different types of insurance. No one ever told us about them, said Tran Thi Chuc, 37, a domestic helper in Ha Noi.

I do wonder how I will make a living 10 years from now when I lose all my physical strength, she added. But I did not dare ask my employer for anything more than salary.

Duong Thi Van, 36, a street hawker selling flowers in Bac GiangProvince, said that she thinks only women would agree to the menial jobs such as housekeeping, hawking and washing dishes at restaurants.

The nature of these jobs make us more self-deprecating and suffer from more disadvantages than men, she said.

Ngo Thi Ngoc Anh, director of the Community Development and Family  Gender Research Centre (GFCD), said that a fair and just perspective from policy makers is much needed to create equal opportunities for all labourers in the country.

It is absolutely important to give informal labourers access to social security policies such as social insurance and voluntary life insurance, she said.

Pham Minh Huan, former Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said that ensuring the rights for formal and informal labourers is a long-term problem that needs to be tackled thoroughly.

He advised that the scope of the Labour Code be expanded to the informal sector so as to better protect informal labourers.

The employers play a major part in ensuring equal opportunities for female labourers, he added.

They should embrace social responsibility, and not think of using female labourers without considering how they would ensure their benefits, he said.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned on Wednesday a trade war will have a fearsome impact on global growth. (Photo: AFP/Eric Piermont)

"If international trade is called into question by these types of measures, it will be a transmission channel for a drop in growth, a drop in trade and it will be fearsome," Christine Lagarde said on RTL radio.

"In a trade war that will be fed by reciprocal increases of customs tariffs, no one wins," she added.

Trump boasted last week on Twitter that trade wars are "easy to win" after his initial announcement of 10 per cent tariffs on imports of aluminium and a 25 per cent levy on steel brought into the United States provoked a global outcry.

US allies have threatened to retaliate by slapping tariffs on US goods entering their markets. The EU is expected to detail its retaliatory measures on Wednesday.

"We are anxious that these are not triggered, we are urging the sides to reach agreements, hold negotiations, consultations," said Lagarde.

The IMF chief said that to a certain extent she understood the US president's frustration with the global trade system.

Trump "has good reasons to protest against the current situation. There are countries that don't always respect WTO agreements, which have technology transfer requirements, one thinks naturally of China, but China isn't the only country to have such practices," said Lagarde.

The Trump administration has made the World Trade Organization (WTO) a preferred target of its "America First" policy, threatening to pull the US out of the trade body it says is hampering its ability to compete.
K-water will launch Vietnam's first smart water management project

The 10 small and medium-sized venture companies include Dongwoo Engineering Co., Mirae E&I Co., Samsung Instrument Co., Samjin Precision Co., Scotra Co, USOL Co., EcoEnergy Solutions Inc., Fieldsolution Co., Hydronet Co., and Hitec EPC Co.

At the event, K-water introduced advanced water management technologies, including smart water management solutions, to the Vietnamese water market and help the task force expand its overseas markets.

Smart water management ranges from monitoring water resources, flood disaster management, and improving water flow rates to smart water purification plants and water and energy nexus technologies.

At the event, K-water held a business conference for 100 Vietnamese buyers. It will help the 10 small- and medium-sized venture firms promote their products and sign export contracts with new buyers.

It also took part in the Water EXPO for two days on March 4-5 and run its promotion hall with a theme of smart water management in cooperation with the venture companies in order to introduce their water management technologies and solutions.

During a visit to Vietnam, K-water is planning to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with three Vietnamese water management agencies, including National Centre for Resources Planning and Investigation, Vietnam Water Supply and Sewage Association, and Ninh Binh Water Supply and Sewerage Co., to pilot Vietnams first smart water management project.

This project is co-funded by the Ministries of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, and K-water to help small- and medium-sized domestic water companies to break into the Vietnamese water market.
Primary children in northern Hoa Binh Province sit for an outdoors activity at school. MoET Minister Phung Xuan Nha said that the key character of the general educational reform of Viet Nam was to transform from a knowledge-based education to competency development and providing more soft skills to students.

The statement was madeat a bilateral talk between MoET and the delegation of the Parliamentary Network on the WB and IMF in Hanoi on Wednesday.

The talk was part of the delegations working visit to Vietnam between Monday and Wednesday.

MoET officials briefed the delegation on Vietn am s achievements in general education and higher education in particular, strategies of educational reform in the time to come as well as Viet Nam s efforts to create conditions for the private sector to take part in the fields of education and technical transform.

Nha said that the key character ofthegeneral educational reform of Vietn am was totransform fromaknowledge-based education to competency development and providing more soft skills to students.

To link students withthejob market, wearetryingto enhancethesoft skillsofstudents, teach them how to know, how to apply and how to make decisionsto continue their studies.

Soft skills are a very important factor inthecurriculum. At universities, wearepayingattention toinvitingmore entrepreneurs to come and work together to designthecurriculum and the process of training. Wearealsoprovidingmore information to young students aboutthefuture job market, he said.

Olfa Soukri Cherif,Member of the Parliamentof Peoples Representatives in Tunisia , head of the delegation andVice Chairwoman of the Parliamentary Network on the WB and IMF, congratulated Viet Nam foritseducational achievements and praised the MoETs efforts to create educational opportunities for everyone.

WB reports show progress made by Vietn am in terms of educational quality at all levels. Vietn am s efforts have focused on linking education and training with the demands of the countrys socio-economic situation and scientific and technological fields.

The MoET proposedthat theWB promotingWB expert exchange inconductingresearch andcraftinghigher education policies, focusing on international experience and experimental research.

The ministry also hoped thattheWBwouldsupport Viet Nam toactively participateintheinitiatives oftheInternational Education Committeetodevelopthecapacity of teachers and management officials.
Vietnam has been 24th since the first ranking

This was the result of the 2018 Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, a flagship study that assesses cloud computing policies around the globe, released by BSA/The Software Alliance on March 8.

The 2018 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecardthe newest version of the only report to rank countries preparedness for the adoption and growth of cloud computing servicesfeatures an updated methodology that better reflects the policies that have helped the exponential growth of cloud computing over the past five years, putting additional emphasis on countries privacy and cybersecurity laws and broadband infrastructure.

In 2018, most countries continue to make improvements, but some markets are falling further behind. Germany scored the highest on the Scorecarddue to its national cybersecurity policies and promotion of free tradeclosely followed by Japan and the United States. Bringing up the rear is a small group of nations that has failed to embrace the international approach: Russia, China, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Scoreboard highlights continuing improvement in policy environment for cloud computing

Scorecards first key finding is that advanced privacy and security policies set leading countries apart from lagging markets. Countries continue to update and refine their data protection regimes, most often in a way that enables cross-border data flows. Several countries, however, still have not adopted adequate privacy laws.

The second result is that emerging markets continue to lag in the adoption of cloud-friendly policies, hindering their growth. Examples include regulations that impose significant barriers for cloud service providers, data localisation requirements, and a lack of cybersecurity protection.

The third result is that deviations from widely adopted regimes and international agreements hold back key markets. Internationally accepted standards, certification, and testing help improve the security environment for cloud computing, but not every country recognises such best practices as meeting local standards.

The fourth is that those few countries that have embraced localisation policies pay a heavy price. Data localisation requirements act as a barrier to cloud computing, causing negative financial impacts for local markets.

The fifth is that increased emphasis on IT readiness and broadband deployment leads to interesting results. The ability of countries and companies to leverage cloud computing for growth requires access to a powerful network. While almost all countries continue to work to improve broadband access, the success of these efforts remains very inconsistent.

By examining the legal and regulatory framework of 24 countries, Scorecard aims to provide a platform for discussion between policymakers and cloud service providers. This dialogue can help develop an internationally harmonised regime of laws and regulations that facilitate cloud computing.

The ranking rate various that are essential to the improvement of the cloud computing environment

Scorecard is a tool that can help countries constructively self-evaluate their policies and determine next steps to increase adoption of cloud computing, said Victoria Espinel, president and CEO of BSA/The Software Alliance.

Cloud computing allows anyone to access technology previously available only to large organisations, paving the way for increased connectivity and innovation. Countries that embrace the free flow of data, implement cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions, protect intellectual property, and establish IT infrastructure will continue to reap the benefits of cloud computing for businesses and citizens alike, Victoria Espinel added.

BSA/The Software Alliance is the leading advocate for the global software industry before governments and in the international marketplace. Its members are among the worlds most innovative companies, creating software solutions that spark the economy and improve modern life. With headquarters in Washington, DC and operations in more than 60 countries, BSA pioneers compliance programmes that promote legal software use and advocates public policies that foster technology innovation and drive growth in the digital economy.

The fifth is that increased emphasis on IT readiness and broadband deployment leads to interesting results. The ability of countries and companies to leverage cloud computing for growth requires access to a powerful network. While almost all countries continue to work to improve broadband access, the success of these efforts remains very inconsistent.

By examining the legal and regulatory framework of 24 countries, Scorecard aims to provide a platform for discussion between policymakers and cloud service providers. This dialogue can help develop an internationally harmonised regime of laws and regulations that facilitate cloud computing.

Unlicensed software use slightly down in Vietnam: BSA survey Computer users in Vietnam use unlicensed software at an alarming rate, despite being well aware of the associated cyber-security dangers, said a survey released yesterday ...

BSA releases pirate software threat survey The Software Alliance, a leading advocate for the global software industry, last week released its latest survey on the security threats posed by illegal software ...
Business is war as many would agree. Men have once acted as the head of the family, taking responsibility to bring home the bacon at the end of the day, while their wives stayed at home to take care of their children and housework. Things have changed considerably, particularly in since it emerged as a new tiger of Asia. Amongst the thousands of businesses currently listed on the local stock exchanges, many have been led by bold and talented female leaders.

These women are not ordinary. They are strong on their own, intelligent, and lenient. They have all helped Vietnamese businesses to go far beyond the countrys borders. Their strength comes from their will and the talent of Vietnamese women who can overcome difficulties in any circumstances. At home, they are mothers and wives, yet when it comes to business, they are great warriors.

Mai Kieu Lien - CEO of Vinamilk

Mai Kieu Lien, CEO of Vinamilk

Dubbed as the Vietnamese Margaret Thatcher, Lien has made a bold mark in the development path of Vinamilk following its equitisation. As soon as she graduated from Moscow University in 1976, Lien joined the dairy giant as an engineer in charge of the condensed milk unit of Truong Tho Milk Factory. 16 years later she became the CEO of Vinamilk.

Dedicating 42 years of her life to milk, she has helped turn Vinamilk from a state-owned enterprise into a regional dairy empire exporting products to 43 countries around the globe. Vinamilks market capitalisation has reached over $13 billion by far and Lien holds some 4 million shares, equivalent to VND847 billion ($37.2 million), at present.

Le Thi Bang Tam - Chairwoman of Vinamilk and HDBank

Le Thi Bang Tam, chairwoman of Vinamilk and chairwoman of HDBank

Chairwoman Tam deserves an elevated place on this list, who serves as the chairwoman at not only Vinamilk, but HDBankone of the fastest growing banks in Vietnamas well. Tam does not show up often in the media and with her soft and reserved appearance, hardly anyone would know that she has once held several senior state positions in finance-related government agencies in Vietnam. Her resume includes posts like the State Treasury director general, deputy minister of Finance, and chairwoman of State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC).

Given her operating experience at the macro level, Tam and her associates have been able to bring HDBank from a small-size bank to one of the eight largest commercial banks in the country in merely five years.

HDBanks outstanding loans have grown over 40 per cent on average over the last five years, while profit has grown at some 28 per cent a year. In 2017 alone, the lenders profit has doubled on-year and according to local securities firms, its profit in 2018 will be up some 63 per cent.

Its total assets as of December 31 has added up to over VND191 trillion ($8.68 billion), and total deposits were reported at VND168.8 trillion ($7.67 billion), with more than 11,000 employees at the time.

The cooperation of the two female leaders, Lien and Tam, has elevated Vinamilk to become the largest company in terms of market capitalisation in the stock market and the only local firm made it among the top 50 listed companies in the Asia-Pacific, as voted by Forbes Asia.

Nguyen Thanh Ha - Chairwoman of Vietjet

Nguyen Thanh Ha, chairwoman of Vietjet

Born to a family of reputation and great contributions to the country, prior to joining Vietjet, Ha had held an important role as deputy director of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam. Under Has leadership, Vietjets very first flight took off in November 2011 and after seven years, Vietjet now has a fleet of 51 aircrafts flying on 82 routes, including 44 international ones.

It is little known that Ha picked the colour of the national flag and the golden star to be printed on the aircraft engines. She was also the one who accompanied the first Vietjet Air aircraft to Noi Bai International Airport. The ladies in lead at Vietjet have strengthened the values of the new-generation airline in the local market and helped it improve its image in the international one.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao - CEO of Vietjet Air and vice chairwoman of HDBank

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, CEO of Vietjet Air and vice chairwoman of HDBank

On board with Tam at HDBank, Thao acts as vice chairwoman of the board of directors. However, Thao is more associated with Vietjet. For those who have met her, it might be hard to believe that a small and delicate woman like her could have such energy to do almost everything: she could sing on the stage for her staff, dedicate a lot of time for philanthropic works, and at the same time be one of the few local businesspeople to have met big names like US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama.

She spoke before many global business leaders at the APEC CEO Summit 2017 in Furama Danang Hotel: We ought to lead and create a trend with a global perspective in mind, in a bid to build multinational companies and a multinational environment to take on what is most advanced.

I dont think global connection is overly ambitious, she shared her vision of being globally connected. Someone has told me to dream big and act like an angel. And indeed, we have made the impossible possible, made our dream come true. Millions of people have enjoyed travelling for the first time on an airplane and we are even happier when they are not just Vietnamese. I have seen many Korean or Chinese passengers on board at Vietjet to travel by air for the first time in their lives.

The female billionaire has over 25 years of business experience in Vietnam and other countries in different areas, particularly finance and banking.

At the age of 26, the vice chairwoman of HDBank was also the founder and director of a number of commercial banks across the country. She also took part in the management of several banks overseas.

Her talent in the financial sector, as such, has been tested over time prior to joining HDBank, where Thao is the architect who builds the management team for the lenders operations, which includes the parent bank and its consumer finance unit HDSaison, recruiting a great deal of bankers from local and international peers.

Nguyen Thi Mai Thanh - Chairwoman and CEO of Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation (REE)

Nguyen Thi Mai Thanh, chairwoman and CEO of Refrigeration Electrical Engineering Corporation

At the age of 30, Thanh was given the most important role at REE: the CEO. Responsibility, burden, and pressure were thought to weigh her down, yet during some 33 years at the wheel, Thanh has helped turn a small electrical factory into a VND11.6-trillion ($527.27 million) market capitalisation group. People call her a pioneer woman as she dares to think, act, and change things. REE was one of the first two businesses listed on the stock exchanges, receiving attention from foreign funds like Dragon Capital and VinaCapital at the early stage.

At REEs annual general meetings, Thanh is often overshadowed by the westerner shareholders that have accompanied the company since the early days. She shared her vision by saying, Doing business is similar to riding a bike, if we stop at any point, the bike may fall.

REE, as such, has turned into a big player in the Vietnamese energy sector after it expanded to hydropower, clean water, and coal.

According to Thanh, being a woman has its advantages, such as the knowledge harmonised by sophistication, thoughtfulness, and gentleness. Yet when it comes to decisiveness, women can be unwavering.

Truong Thi Le Khanh - chairwoman of Vinh Hoan Corporation

Truong Thi Le Khanh, chairwoman of Vinh Hoan Corporation

Khanhs assets so far have soared to VND2 trillion ($90.9 million), ranking 33rd on the stock exchanges rich list. Khanh has been with Vinh Hoan for 20 years, driving the company to stand among the countrys top 10 pangasius exporters, accounting for 15 per cent of the market segment, with a network of 300 clients in 40 countries.

In 2017, Vinh Hoan reported a revenue of VND8.173 trillion ($371.5 million), up 10 per cent on-year. Its post-tax profit was recorded at VND539 billion ($24.5 million) and total exports added up to $299 million.

Talking about Vinh Hoans mission, Khanh said, I started my career with a passion for food processing, bringing high-quality and wholesome food to consumers, and this remains the companys mission until today.

I believe in the potential and the future of sustainable farming practices that will supply a healthy food source without having to compromise the environment. Vinh Hoan, therefore, believes that consumers do not have to choose between good food and environmentally friendly food, we should bring together the two to stand apart from others.

These women are not ordinary. They are strong on their own, intelligent, and lenient. They have all helped Vietnamese businesses to go far beyond the countrys borders. Their strength comes from their will and the talent of Vietnamese women who can overcome difficulties in any circumstances. At home, they are mothers and wives, yet when it comes to business, they are great warriors.
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Jesenia Flores holds her son Jose, both of Aibonito, Puerto Rico, on Feb. 28, as they wait to enter her mother-in-laws hotel room, in Dedham, Mass. Flores, 19, has been living in a hotel on the outskirts of Boston since she fled Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit the island Sept. 20.
Eleanor Langhoff, age 95, of Villard, formerly of St. Paul, died Monday, September 6, 2021. A memorial service will be held at 11 AM, Wednesday, September 22, 2021 at First Lutheran Church in Alexandria. Visitation will be from 10 to 11 AM Wednesday at the church. Arrangements are with the A
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My names Will Capers. For almost nine years, Ive blogged on various topics. I blogged as Blaque Ink first, and as Brotha Wolf second. The latter had a mu...

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A criminal investigation for corruption brought against the former President Lee Myung-bak (see photo), charged with corruption, has brought to light the existence of a secret military pact between South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.

Under this pact, concluded in the period 2009  2011 (which was during the presidential mandate (2008 to 2013) of Lee Myung Bak) South Korea undertook to defend the United Arab Emirates if a war broke out; an undertaking which it has only, to date, agreed to, with the United States.

This treaty forms part of a sales agreement for a nuclear centre to the Emirates. In December 2009, the South Korean company, Electric Power Corporation was victorious in its tender offer, prevailing over Areva (a French company), General Electric (a US company) and Hitachi (a Japanese company) to build a nuclear complex worth 40 billion dollars. Two of the four 1 400 megawatts reactors, provided for in the agreement, are almost complete. Indeed, the whole complex should be delivered before the end of 2018.

South Korea has deployed peace troops in the following countries:

 in South Sudan (the Hanbit unit);

 in Lebanon (the Dongmyung unit);

 in Oman (the Cheonghae naval unit); and

 in the United Arab Emirates (the Akhl (which means brother in Arabic) unit. Only 1600 of these men are authorized to fight.

The former President Lee Myung-bak has refused to comment on the revelations about the secret military pact with the United Arab Emirates.

South Korea is in the process of negotiating the construction of other nuclear centres in the region, specifically in Saudi Arabia.

The Emirates is militarily engaged on Saudi Arabias side in Yemen. The Saudi King is the leader of the Arab Coalition involved in the war against Yemen and the Emirates is a member of this coalition.
On receiving the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed ben Salmane, the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, announced that Egypt was joining the Saudi project Neom.

In October 2017, Saudi Arabia announced its wish to build a high-tech mega city, to be called Neom, targeting luxury tourism. The region in which the city would be built would be governed by a specific legal regime geared for a Western lifestyle. This legal regime would be completely insulated from Wahhabism specifically and Islam generally.

The name of the project, Neom is derived from two words: the Greek word neo which means new and the Arabic word mostaqbal which means future.

The zone chosen for this project lies on the coast of the Red Sea, in the Saudi region of Tabuk, on the Jordan border and opposite the Egyptian coast. It covers an area of 26,000 km2, which is almost the size of Belgium.

This project has a provisional budget of around 50 billion dollars. The Project Manager is the German, Klaus Kleinfeld, former boss of the transnational Alcoa-Arconic and administrator of the Bilderberg Group.

The Egyptian President al-Sissi has decided to incorporate into the project part of South Sinai, including the town of Sharm el-Sheikj and part of the continental territory, including the Egyptian city of Hurghada. This involves setting up a system of extra-territoriality in this entire area, in the Saudi region of Tabuk. A common investment fund of 10 billion dollars (funded entirely by Saudi Arabia) has been established.

In April 2016, President al-Sissi transferred to Riyadh the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which enclose the Gulf of Aqaba between the Egyptian Sinai and Saudi Arabia. While al-Sissi had presented this gesture as a territorial restitution, under the 1840 London Convention, which is the only valid document, these islands form part of Egypts territory. This transfer allows Saudi Arabia to include them in project Neom and to transform the entire region.

Furthermore, this transfer of sovereignty over the two islands involved a de facto recognition by the Saudis of the Camp David Egyptian-Israeli agreements. [1] These agreements granted freedom of movement to the Israeli navy in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. Therefore it is highly likely that Israel is a stakeholder in Plan Neom.

In any event, Neom will no longer be a Saudi mega city but an Egyptian-Saudi archipelago, from which Israel will still be able to control maritime communications.
The German army is setting up in Rostock both a Nato headquarters (photo), tasked with coordinating a potential naval war against Russia and the joint headquarters of the German and Polish fleets.

Poland, which has a coast on the Baltic Sea, has entrusted the management of its navy to Germany.

The German firm, Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems, should sell three new submarines to Poland for about 2.4 billion euros. However, the European rules on tender offers force Poland to take into consideration the French proposals (Naval Group, ex-DCNS) and the Swedish proposals (Kockums, a subsidiary of Saab).

In January 2002, thanks to advice from Christine Lagarde, who was then a lawyer with the law firm Baker & McKenzie, Poland had withdrawn from negotiations with Airbus and Dassault, preferring to negotiate instead with the US firms, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. The result? The European funds which had been granted to increase Polish agriculture to the European Union level ended up being used to purchase US aircrafts and to pay for the Polish contingent of the US operation against Iraq.

At the end of 2016, the Polish army suddenly broke off negotiations with Airbus Helicopters on the deal to buy 50 Caracal helicopters, preferring instead to deal with Boeing, the US manufacturer. As Airbus considered the tender offer to be rigged, it brought the matter before the Stockholm Chamber of Commerces Institute of Arbitration, claiming that there had been a breach of due process.
Statement by Minister for Equality on International Womens Day

"Today is International Womens Day. 2018 is a very important year as it marks the centenary of womens suffrage in the UK. The celebrations of International Womens Day this year are, therefore, particularly poignant as we reflect upon the struggles that women endured in order to secure equal voting rights and all the progress made since."

"In so reflecting, on this day we must consider the challenges that still lie ahead for women and how we can each contribute to a more inclusive and gender equal society.

As we look to the future, it is important that we recognise and promote the many achievements by women and for women locally, as well as recognise those who have influenced the gender equality trajectory through Gibraltars history.

Establishing a new ministry such as the Ministry for Equality from scratch is not easy, especially when we are dealing with concepts that have not been given much attention or importance in the past. I am fortunate to have a dynamic and motivated team who work on these important issues all year round. Our job is to look at the challenges that women face in our community and make it a fairer, more inclusive Gibraltar.

The theme that has been set by the United Nations this year is Press for Progress. We ask ourselves: What are the relevant womens issues today? What do they mean for us in reality? How do we press for progress in Gibraltar? While of course my responsibility as Minister for Equality is to promote diversity and inclusion of all the equality strands, on a day like today we consider specifically the issues that relate to woman because of the particular struggles what women endure.

Globally, one of the issues that continues to affect women is gender based violence and domestic abuse. It is estimated that 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced some form of physical or sexual abuse. Like every other country in the world, Gibraltar is not free from domestic abuse and this has been an important part of the work that has been carried out by the Ministry for Equality. We are in the final stages of publishing a national strategy which will be a five year plan so as to ensure that the strategic focus by all relevant stakeholders as longevity. The strategy is ambitious in its aim and will introduce a number of new measures across a range of departments to better support victims and help break the cycle of abuse.

We have of course also been looking at the economic progress of women. Over the past year we embarked on an exercise to look at the gender pay gap in our economy. We have already drawn our initial conclusions from the data that we have available and we wish to develop these preliminary findings further and enable us to focus on particular industries. We are therefore working on designing the collection of future data in a different way and will be looking to modify this years employment survey so as to achieve more detailed results to analyse. In addition to this, my Ministry and I are looking at a programme of training initiatives on gender diversity in the workplace that we will make available to the public and private sector with a view to developing a workplace that is fairer to women and encourages progression.

We must move away from stereotypes as these are incredibly damaging for meaningful progress, setting boys and girls on gendered paths merely imposes unnecessary barriers and is something that all too often hold many women back.

Gibraltar has an excellent education system, which gives every child the right start in life. This Government is in the process of implementing a radical reform of education in Gibraltar, which will take leaps forward to ensuring fully inclusive education for girls and boys. This aims to solve an issue that historically has been perceived as discriminatory due to the inability of girls and boys to access the same subjects at comprehensive level, particularly regarding the sciences.

The unequal representation of women in certain fields such as STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is a challenge. I have established a close relationship with the local branch of Girls in Tech this past year and look forward to further collaboration to secure higher levels of participation in this field. I am delighted that this year we have an all-girls team reaching the CyberCenturion finals. Challenges like these develop students personally and socially but also send an important message that girls are just as inherently capable in this field as boys.

It is important that women are equally represented at all levels in our society. Raising the profile of women in public life and public office plays an important part in sending the message that women have an equally important part to play in shaping society. It is time that more women feel encouraged to take the step into public office and I would personally love to see greater representation of women in Parliament.

It gives tremendous satisfaction to see that since we started marking International Womens Day in 2012, the momentum for celebrating gender equality on this day has grown from strength to strength. It is wonderful to see the community taking ownership and playing a role in raising awareness and there are various events taking place this week.

Personally, I believe that progress is palpable, but we each have an individual and collective responsibility to continue to progress by awareness and action. As Minster for Equality, and as a woman, I would encourage everyone to break the barriers and shatter those invisible ceilings as we continue to press for progress."
University of Gibraltar Explores Links with Universities of Small Countries and Territories

Representatives from the University of Gibraltar attended a meeting designed to strengthen links between universities in small countries and territories. The meeting was at the direct invite of Miquel Nicolau i Vila, Vice-Chancellor (Rector) of Universitat dAndorra who hosted the event.

The meeting, which took place on the 2nd and 3rd March, explored opportunities for the exchange of staff and students, the promotion of international placements and the unique ability that smaller universities have to drive change in their communities. Christian Camilleri, International and Student Experience Manager and Amaia Fernandez, European and International Funding Officer from the University described their visit to Andorra as positive, especially as it provided pathways for collaboration in research projects as well as a forum in which to share best practice and enhance the student experience.

The meeting also aimed to establish a formal Network of Universities of Small Countries and Territories (NUSCT) which would tackle common challenges affecting small universities, like Schengen visas and access to public research funding. It was attended by senior delegates from the University of Greenland, the University of Liechtenstein, University of the Republic of San Marino and University of Malta.

The University of Malta will host the next meeting in the spring, and the University of Gibraltar is planning to welcome the network to Gibraltar in 2019.
Govt 'Delighted' at UK Package of Brexit Linked Measures

The Government have said it is delighted that the United Kingdom Government has guaranteed the continuation of market access for Gibraltar financial services and online gaming firms into the UK once we have both left the European Union.

They also said this will serve to reassure the business community and will contribute to encourage the growth of these sectors.

Todays agreements have come about as a result of the close cooperation and positive discussions between the two Governments since the referendum of June 2016.

A wide package of measures was agreed at a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Council (JMC) which took place this morning in London and it also covers University tuition fees, Health, Transport, the Environment and Fishing.

The JMC was chaired by Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union Robin Walker MP and included Minister for Europe Sir Alan Duncan MP and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen MP. The Gibraltar delegation was led by the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and included the Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for EU Exit Dr Joseph Garcia, Attorney General Michael Llamas, Financial Secretary Albert Mena and UK Representative Dominique Searle.

The United Kingdom has agreed to guarantee Gibraltar financial services firms access to UK markets as now until 2020. Ahead of this, the UK has committed to work closely with the Government of Gibraltar to design a replacement framework to endure beyond 2020 similarly based on a shared, high standard of regulation, and enforcement of this regulation, and underpinned by modern arrangements for information-sharing, transparency and regulatory cooperation.

On on-line gaming, the UK have provided an assurance that gambling operators based in Gibraltar will continue to access the UK market after we leave the EU in the same way they do now - and they are working towards agreement of a MOU which will enable closer working and collaboration between gambling regulators in Gibraltar and the UK.

The UK have also provided an assurance to the Government of Gibraltar that, following EU Exit, British Citizens resident in Gibraltar will continue to be eligible for higher education Home fee status at English Institutions (both during the Implementation Period and afterwards) subject to concluding a reciprocal agreement for English students studying at Higher Education Institutions in Gibraltar.

On Health, the United Kingdom has agreed to maintain the current reciprocal arrangement between the UK and Gibraltar. This means that Gibraltar can continue to refer an unlimited number of our patients to the UK for free elective treatment.

Gibraltar and the UK have also agreed to recognise the importance of enhancing our liaison on all of the environmental and fisheries implications of EU exit that are relevant to Gibraltar, whether by sharing information as openly as we can, by providing specialist expertise across a range of policy areas to support Gibraltar with its own preparations, or by considering with Gibraltar where its interests might be promoted in future through regional or international agreements.

Finally, on transport matters, the UK has expressed its commitment to work closely with the Government of Gibraltar towards transport arrangements post EU Exit that support Gibraltars prosperity.

Following the meeting, Minister Robin Walker said:

It was good to meet with Chief Minister Fabian Picardo today, and continue our ongoing constructive engagement with Gibraltar on the process of our EU exit. We agreed a positive package deal on issues surrounding our exit from the EU which ensures that the relationship we have built over hundreds of years remains solid and undented.

The Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said:

"The work we have done with the teams led by Secretary of State David Davis at DeExEU and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at the FCO is bearing fruit today. The UK - and in particular Mr Davis and Mr Johnson - has recognised the importance of market access for Gibraltar and Robin Walker and Sir Alan Duncan have worked hard with us to make the announcements today a reality. Great care has rightly been taken by the UK and Gibraltar to ensure regulatory standards will be maintained between us in a manner than will de designed to assure customer protection and equivalence on regulatory outcomes going forward. Today our bilateral relationship grows stronger and the terms for it to endure are further cemented as we realise the commitment to maintain and enhance market access for Gibraltar service providers into the UK post-Brexit. There is a lot to celebrate in this and a lot of hard work to recognise on the part also of the team in Gibraltar, in particular the Deputy Chief Minister and the Attorney General, and in the UK FCO, DeExEU, Treasury, DCMS, Cabinet Office and Downing Street. I extend the gratitude of Her Majesty's Government of Gibraltar and the people of Gibraltar to all involved."
Photo: Ray Mickshaw/FX

The second season of Ryan Murphys American Crime Story anthology series, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, explores the titular designers brutal 1997 murder at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan. Were walking through all nine episodes with Miami Herald editorial board member Luisa Yanez  who reported on the crime and its aftermath over several years for the Sun-Sentinels Miami bureau  in an effort to identify what ACS: Versace handles with care versus when it deviates from documented fact and common perception. The intention here is less to debunk an explicitly dramatized version of true events than to help viewers piece together a holistic picture of the circumstances surrounding Versaces murder. In other words, these weekly digests are best considered supplements to each episode rather than counterarguments. Yanez was on assignment and unavailable this week, but below is a summary of our independent research into the veracity and potency of events and characterizations presented in episode seven, Ascent.

What They Got Right

Donatellas dress

Donatella may have creatively emancipated herself from Gianni by 1992, but she made her biggest splash that year by fashioning her brothers risque bondage dress. Her arrival at that years Vogue anniversary gala was indeed headline news, whether or not one ultimately thought Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington wore modified versions of the provocative piece better. It is also true that critical opinion about Versaces S&M look was polarized, although in retrospect, its clear that  par for Giannis career  he was ahead of his time.

Gianni grooming Donatella to run Versace

Whether it was due to his illness or simply being a long-term planner, Gianni very much prepped his younger sister to run the label. As a CNN style editor told People nearly 20 years ago, Before his death, Versace had already begun ceding a bigger role to his sister  He wanted more time to play. As Donatella recently recalled, the abrupt transition to power following Giannis murder was marred by her drug abuse and grief. Although given that the company was valued at more than $1 billion as of 2014, its apparent that  as her brother anticipated  she eventually rose to the occasion.

The cancer timeline

A slight caveat here: The chronology of Giannis reported bout of inner-ear cancer is rather murky. Ascent pegs 1992 as the period in which he began suffering unbearable symptoms, and 1993 as when Donatella shared news of his condition with employees. In a 2006 New York interview, she referred obliquely to how the cancer had decimated him during the last two years of his life before it went fully into remission, though without a precise moment of diagnosis. Yet a New Yorker feature that ran shortly after Giannis death suggests he fell ill in 96 (though it may have been conflating what Orths later reporting alleged was a separate bout with cancer in his cheek around that time). Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal ran a profile on the Versace business in 2003 that stated Gianni was stricken with a rare ear cancer in 1995. Short of obtaining official medical records, were inclined to defer to a a 1997 New York Times obit, which not only published that the ear cancer was identified in 93, but supported the assertion with a quote from Versace about how There were a lot of tests and scans and treatments that were hard. In turn, that would authenticate ACSs timeline of his malady as fairly precise.

Merrill Lynch in Manila

In this case, it would be apt to credit the Cunanan character with telling the truth, albeit couched in a falsehood about his father resuming successful financial work overseas. When he insists that Merrill Lynch has had offices in Manila in the Philippines since 1957, predating the corporations Tokyo HQ, he isnt fibbing. An informational web page on Bank of America Merrill Lynchs Asia Pacific operations confirms that its presence in the region dates back to 1957 when we opened offices in the Philippines and then in Japan. If youre ever in the area, heres where you can visit for yourself.

Cunanans ex-wife

Sort of, at least based on an interview that Miami PD conducted with Andrews close friend Steven Nauck. A police-file summary of key Cunanan facts and rumors leads off with the notion that Cunanan possibly has an ex-wife and child and divorced approximately seven to eight years ago. (Nauck also mentioned an ex-lover named none other than David Gallo.) While dining with Norman and friends after the opera, Cunanan says his ex was named Lizzie, and proceeds to pass around a wallet-size pic of his friend Elizabeth. Since no marriage certificate for the two, nor any confirmation from Cote, has ever surfaced, we can deduce that Nauck was repeating a lie Cunanan spread to many in his orbit  including, perhaps, his ill-fated benefactor Lincoln Aston. (More on him further down.)

What They Took Liberties With

Mr. Mercado

As discussed last week, all empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that Cunanan worked for a substantial period of time at his local San Diego Thrifty pharmacy. As far as why Ascent depicts the location as Mercado Drug Store, whose namesake owner lectures Andrew about wasting his time with glamorous magazines and daydreams, one might assume the show had difficulty securing use of Thriftys name and likeness. But thats not the case, according to executive producer Brad Simpson. This [Thrifty] franchise was owned by Filipino Americans and was located in an area near San Diego  National City  that has a large Filipino immigrant population, he wrote in an email. We did not seek to use the Thrifty name. Like so many of Cunanans own tales, Mr. Mercado is just a dramatic invention.

The escort service dressing-down

The scene of Andrew being degraded and rejected by a mercenary escort-service owner who cant sell a clever Filipino, even one with a big dick served its purpose, i.e., motivating Cunanan to set out on his own in search of wealthy older men he can seduce. But theres nothing to verify that such a specifically humiliating encounter occurred. In fact, Orth reported that Cunanan was in the employ of an escort service circa the early 90s, working in both California and Florida. Contrarily, a cringingly dated Washington Post story subsequent to Cunanans death on Andrew and other trophy boys puts forth that he was primarily an independent contractor. Either way, the job interview portrayed in Ascent appears to be more of a storytelling contrivance than concrete catalyst.

Andrew and Davids instant tryst

Once more, Ascent takes liberties with Orths source material, which concludes its secondhand account of Andrew and Davids San Francisco meet-cute by affirming they had a nonsexual sleepover. Given the episodes explicit themes of gay alienation and the necessity of keeping sexual liaisons a clandestine matter, the images of Cunanan and Madson showering and lying together (presumably) post-coitus may have been a kind of rebuke  a refusal to castrate their intimacy. As for their place of lodging, however, the Mandarin Oriental is more than plausible. According to the FBI, it was one of his favored hotels. All of this presupposes, of course, that Orths anonymous eyewitness to the pairs supposed first brush is to be believed. Interestingly, at the dinner scene in question, Andrew introduces his friend Eli to David  as in (more than likely) Eli Gould, an attorney pal of Cunanans whom Orth claims was present when Andrew allegedly crossed paths with Versace in 1990.

Lincoln Astons murder

A la the escort-service scene, Andrew looking on as Kevin Bond bashes Lincolns head with a stone obelisk (that part is, gruesomely, accurate) does what it needs to: earmarking the first instance when Cunanan is riveted by bloodlust. But did he actually observe the killing, never mind cover for Bond, a deranged loner who was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years? Firstly, per the testimony of Astons friend James Michael Hays, Aston met his future assailant at a club called Caliph, not Flicks. Although more broadly speaking, The Advocate and others reported accounts that Cunanan and Aston were intimate with each other, but also  along with Norman  immersed in a secretive gay social club known as Gamma Mu. This conflicts, however, with Cunanans friend Nauck telling Miami PD he was unaware of Andrew and Lincoln being more than platonic. In any event, we came up empty in our efforts to find a shred of documentation that Andrew watched in horror and then calm collectedness as Bond committed his savage act. Regardless, he was still on course to replicate it at David Madsons apartment exactly two years later.

Andrews assault of his own mom

Did Cunanan get so fed up with his mothers clinginess that he slammed her into a wall and fractured her shoulder blade? As Ascent would have it, he did just witness a brutal murder, awakening his latent, violent tendencies. And it all fits Orths narrative, which attributes details of the incident to quotes from Mary Anns parish priest. Its a sensational scene, but one with no additional corroborative evidence. Whats undeniable is the damage Cunanan caused his doting mother in the wake of killing five men, and the far-from-globe-trotting circumstances he left her to get by in on her own.
American Crime Story Ascent Season 2 Episode 7 Editors Rating 2 stars * *  Previous Next Photo: Ray Mickshaw/FX/Copyright 2018, FX Networks. All rights reserved.

Ill just say it: This was my least favorite episode of the series so far. First of all, it looks so cheap. Versaces Milan office looks like it was hastily assembled from a bunch of plywood and a rough coat of paint by four guys named Ted who do all the sets for regional productions of Brigadoon. And the dress that Donatella wears to the Vogue anniversary party? The original dress was dainty, chic, and had just a touch of the S&M about it. The one in Ascent looks like it was made out of a bunch of clearance belts that someone in the wardrobe department scooped up at Marshalls. This is probably because Gianni later throws a fit and chops it to bits, but also because the production couldnt get access to the Versace archives. Still, everything that isnt shot on location looks straight out of a Lifetime movie.

The real reason why this episode is boring is due to the shows structure of telling the story backward. Initially, this was a very interesting and original way for the series to play out, but now were so deep into it that weve intuited everything that we didnt already know. We already knew that Andrew met David for one great night in San Francisco, took him to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental, and fell in love with him. Does it matter that he met him by calling him over at a fancy restaurant because he thought David was lonely? Not really. Do we need to see them getting busy in the shower? No, but Im never going to tell attractive people to have less sex and be less naked on my television screen.

We also already knew that Andrew was working in a pharmacy in San Diego and that his mother was crazy and needy. Did we need to know that his mother thought she was going to travel around the world with him as he assisted Signore Versace? No. Did we need to know that he insisted she buy Haagen-Dazs and when she bought the cheap generic ice cream that comes in a tub so big that it has its own handle, he threw it on the ground in a fit of pique? Not really, even though it sure is fun to watch.

We also already knew that he stalked his sugar daddy Norman and convinced him to build a life for them both in San Diego. Do we need to know that it was at the La Jolla playhouse? Not really. Do we need to know that he was first with Normans friend Lincoln Aston, who was murdered by a piece of trade that he picked up at a local bar for hustlers? Actually, yeah, we do need to know that.

The few bright spots in the episode are the surprising details that we didnt know at all. Lincoln being beaten to death by someone who had a case of gay panic actually happened (heres a great article about it), but whether or not Andrew witnessed the crime and didnt report it is up to interpretation. It certainly helps Andrew get what he wants, and it happened through violence and deceit, which seems to be Andrews M.O. But while Andrew and Norman say that they can get murdered and people get away with it, Lincolns killer went to prison for 15 years, so that seems a little blown out of proportion.

Lincolns murder and that conversation do set the tone for the gay community that Andrew was living in at the time. With the rise of AIDS and homophobia at its height, he was living in a time where fear and violence seeped into everything about the gay community, sometimes when they least expect it, like when Lincoln brought that man home. No wonder it managed to warp Andrew into thinking that was the only way he could get ahead. It was almost as if he was taking revenge for the way straight people were treating gay people, except his crimes were against those wouldnt (or couldnt) love him the way he wanted.

Another surprising and humiliating moment is when Andrew goes to the escort agency and the madam tells him that she cant sell an Asian with a bad attitude, even if he does have a big dick. We already knew Andrew worked as an escort, but this scene reveals how hard it was for him to be seen as worthy, even as a sex worker. It also shows how he learned to manufacture his own identity and where those details came from  saying he was Portuguese rather than Filipino, for example.

The one bonus of the scene between Andrew and David at the hotel is that David tells Andrew the story of his friend Leah: She was always getting picked on, so David promised to build her a house that they could live in together. Andrew then takes that same story, embellishes and exaggerates the details, and uses it to sell Norman on a move from Phoenix to San Diego. It is a nice glimpse into how Andrew is always connecting the dots, grabbing the things that make him feel emotion and adjusting them to manipulate other people.

But even thats something weve seen plenty of times on this show. As the story starts to come close to its end  or in this case, the beginning  its reaching a sort of anticlimax.

So, yeah, I found this chapter of the Versace story dreadfully boring and a total rehash. It also lacked the glamour and opulence of the first episode, when we got to see Gianni lolling around his villa in all of those very expensive fabrics. A lot of people have called for more Versace in this show that bears his name, but cutting their story out of this already bloated episode might have been what it needed to move along more briskly.

Its just so much of the same. We already knew that Donatella was always going to be in charge of the business after Gianni was gone. We learn that the plans were put in motion before his assassination, but still, the plan was the plan. Maybe some of Dontellas anger and resentment for her brother and his partner comes from thinking that shed be in charge. She had that yanked away from her, only to have it return in such a tragic and unexpected way.

The one good thing about knowing the ending before the beginning is that it offers instances of dramatic irony. For instance, the only good part of Gianni and Donatellas story line is learning that, at one point, Diego actually stood up for Giannis sister. Sure, she would eventually come to despise him (and lock him out of the company), but initially he was her champion.

The ultimate instance of dramatic irony, however, comes at the end. Andrew is furnishing Normans house and says to him, like the old Carnival Cruise commercial, If they could see me now. Norman asks who they are. Everybody, Andrew says, thinking that he finally played being rich and sophisticated long enough that he achieved it. He actually faked it until he made it. But hes staring off of the balcony not into a bright future, but a sad fall into drug addiction, obsession, and death.
The Death of Stalin. Photo: Courtesy of IFC Films/Nicola Dove

Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, In the Loop, and a small battalion of British shows marrying cringe comedy and machine-gun cursing, was working on season four of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss blackhearted White House satire when a French producer sent him a copy of The Death of Stalin, a graphic novel about the aftermath of the Soviet dictators 1953 demise. Veeps surprising success had forestalled Iannuccis pursuit of an ambitious series of film projects (including a modern adaptation of Charles Dickenss David Copperfield), but after four seasons, he was ready to rejoin his family in a London suburb and to expand his scope beyond television  and democracy. Part of the reason I wanted to stop doing Veep was that politicians have less power than they want, he says on a call from his home. Power now lurks in cyberspace, multinationals, social media, fake news.

The Glasgow-born, Oxford-educated son of an Italian anti-Fascist, Iannucci, 54, has always been a few steps ahead of the pack. In the early 90s, he created Steve Coogans offensive talk-show host, Alan Partridge, a character Ricky Gervais cites as a major influence on The Office. In the aughts, Iannucci took his carving knife to the reign of political spin doctors  first in British government (The Thick of It), then in an Iraq Warlike fiasco (In the Loop). And then he set a show in Veeps Washington, the worlds grandest stage for ambitious creeps. But in recent years, Iannucci began to notice that something odd was happening: From Turkey to Russia and even in pockets of the West, populism was on the rise and democracy in retreat. Trump and Brexit were, to steal a quote from a stammering In the Loop official, unforeseeable but then  suddenly very real and inevitable.

So Iannucci was already reading around classic dictators, hoping to make a movie about a fictional Western strongman, when The Death of Stalin fell into his lap. I dont really do other peoples work, but I was instantly hooked, he says of Fabien Nurys graphic novel. I love that it starts off with this innocuous little phone call  Stalins request for a recording of a concert. The terrified orchestra has to repeat its performance, and the pianist tucks a hateful note to Stalin in the record sleeve. He reads the note, falls over; no one will knock on the door until the next day  One thing leads to another, and it just gets more and more claustrophobic and terrifying  and yet funny.

The graphic novel isnt very funny at all, but Iannuccis movie is  until it really, really isnt. Its a hybrid of slapstick and horror, authenticity and camp. Iannucci stuck faithfully to the basic timeline and the look of postwar Moscow, but not much else. The accents in the Central Committee of the Communist Party range from the staccato cockney of Joseph Stalin (played by Adrian McLoughlin) to Nikita Khrushchevs Brooklyn squawk (Steve Buscemis signature blend of whine and rage). Red Army general Georgy Zhukov (Jason Isaacs) seems to be from Yorkshire.

The Kremlin was full of dialects and languages, Iannucci explains. The mix of accents and moods also lays bare the improvised mess behind the facade of a monolithic police state, setting a tone that falls somewhere between Chaplins The Great Dictator and Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds. As Khrushchev and secret-police chief Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) struggle for power under the vain and waffling interim leader Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), theres room for pratfalls, set pieces, and backstabbing banter among the midnight raids and massacres.

Its not Veep in the Soviet Union, says Iannucci. I didnt want anyone to think that the comedy was about what happened to the Russian people. Its still, like his other work, a comedy about the moral failures in charge. Only this time, the terror is real. Iannuccis most memorable creation, Downing Street flack Malcolm Tucker (as immortalized by Peter Capaldi), was a virtuoso of obscenity, floridly describing the disembowelment of his enemies, but the worst thing he ever actually did was leak information. Stalins Beria, meanwhile, orders torture and murder with the distracted air of a customer at Starbucks: Shoot her first, but make sure he sees it, he tosses off to a subordinate.

Iannucci was surprised how well the structure of comedy suited the movies darkest moments. A sample punch line: Stalins ministers drive away from his dacha, jockeying comically for position behind the truck carrying his coffin. Seconds after they leave, a secret-police cleanup crew arrives to wipe out every trace of the country house  carpets, papers, and especially people. Finally, the officer leading the cleanup is shot by his superior. You shouldnt feel it as a joke, says Iannucci, but its how I would cut together a lot of funny visuals.

The actors improvised as much as they would on any Iannucci set. For one of the movies most horrifying scenes, I said, Just go in there and get him tried and shot in two minutes. Just get through it because I want it to be an ugly mess.  (Beale, a theater veteran, calls it one of the most thrilling scenes Ive ever done.) Stalins succession was indeed an ugly mess, but the true version was purged from Russias official history. As Khrushchev warns Stalins daughter, People get killed when their stories dont fit.

Two days before The Death of Stalins release in Russia, Putins government withdrew the movies permit, calling it a mockery and abomination. Its the most ham-handed way of censoring something, which is drawing attention to it, Iannucci says. This is what makes evil so dangerous, he adds: how improvised it is. Its not that somebody just says What evil thing will I do today? Its somebody trying to hold on to power and becoming paranoid and then deciding that the best way to survive is to kill those hes suspicious of. It sickens the mind and the personality.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. Im not comparing Trump to Stalin, says Iannucci, but he really does believe that everything hes done got universal praise  apart from the naysayers  Hes not saying Im lying to these people, and I think I got away with it. Hes saying Im telling these people what I see; why dont they believe me?  Its not Trumps behavior that surprises Iannucci but the complicity of his party, closing ranks like Stalins henchmen in return for a tax cut. Thats the real scandal, he says.

In Britain, Iannucci is a regular presence in newspapers and on political shows, as much a pundit as an entertainer. But future projects will take him ever further from the subject. Hes working on a series for HBO called Avenue 5, about a futuristic tribe of space tourists. Hes writing a dystopian novel, a decade in the making. What he cant imagine doing is running for office, which would require rhetorical gymnastics even he cant master. You have to be able to argue your point even when you dont believe it, he says. I wouldnt survive.

*This article appears in the March 5, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
David Oyelowo in Gringo. Photo: Gunther Campine/Courtesy of Amazon Studios

When people bemoan the fact that nobody makes movies for grown-ups anymore, theyre usually not thinking about movies like Gringo. R-rated, movie-star movies with a more nuanced treatment of adult relationships than the latest Mission: Impossible that also get the full backing of a major studio are rare specimens these days. But as much as were missing the Fargos of the world, were also missing the Out of Sights. Gringo, the feature directorial debut of veteran stuntman Nash Edgerton, aspires to the existential tangle of the former and the pulp of the latter, and while it doesnt exactly reach either films heights, its still an engaging ride through all its needlessly but enjoyably convoluted twists and turns.

The script, by Anthony Tambakis and Michael Stone, follows hapless do-gooder immigrant Harold Soyinka (David Oyelowo), who is in middle management at the confidently misspelled Promethius Pharmaceuticals. Harold gets word of a merger that might put his career in jeopardy, right as hes scheduled to go on a trip to Mexico with his two callous and narcissistic bosses (Joel Edgerton and Charlize Theron). On one terribly unfortunate night, he receives confirmation of his pending unemployment, and the news that his wife (Thandie Newton) has been having an affair. Personally and professionally humiliated and with nothing to lose, he goes rogue and stages his own hostage kidnapping in order to bilk his employers out of $5 million. As you might guess, nothing goes as planned.

Nash Edgerton, for those who havent looked up his photo on IMDb and confirmed as much, is the brother of Joel, whose Richard Rusk is the amoral centerpiece on a table full of all manner of cowardice and greed. I wonder if Joel would have gotten the chance to play so unrepentantly nasty a part as he does here without Nashs support; at any rate, its a welcome change of pace after a long run of beleaguered nice-guy casting. But even more of a revelation is Oyelowo as a very different kind of beleaguered nice guy  Harold Soyinka is good but emphatically not boring or saintly, and his scenes where hes faking his kidnapping are the funniest in the entire film. (Give David Oyelowo more comic roles!) Theres also nothing accidental about his Nigerian heritage; its all baked into the movies themes in a surprisingly smart way.

Theron, on the other hand, is doing something a little more in line with what weve seen from her before  Elaine is basically her character from Young Adult reimagined as a high-powered ladyboss. There are moments of brilliant derangement  upon discovering that the man shes having an affair with has himself been having an affair, she sits stewing in her car outside his building, muttering that shes Daddys blue-ribbon girl, a scene as ridiculous as it is terrifying. Elaine  I think, rightfully, given her characters actions and profession  steps into the realm of straight-up unlikability about halfway through the film; theres not much coming back after her grotesque, drunken impersonation of a deaf person. But strangely, the script thinks we might still be rooting for her  because shes not as bad as Richard? Because shes a woman?  and hers is the most tone-deaf resolution of the film.

The film is also weighed down a bit by a subplot involving Amanda Seyfried and an unbeknownst-to-her drug-running boyfriend (played by the very good and continuously underused Harry Treadaway), whose paths inevitably collide with Harolds. Seyfrieds Sunny represents a kind of reassurance of the goodness of humanity incarnate for Harold, but she doesnt really have much to do herself; she basically gets taken on a confusing vacation, then goes back home. Sharlto Copley also shows up as Richards ex-mercenary brother (there are a lot of people in this movie) and its one of his better performances in recent years, but gets pretty easily lost in a movie full of big performances and set pieces.

But both Seyfried and Copleys characters, in addition to being cogs in Gringos enjoyably impossible-to-follow plot, also serve as bounce boards to further shade in Harold, and by the end, Oyelowo has earned the otherwise-hacky spiking of the lens in the final shot. Gringo is a slightly above-average crime farce with a way above-average protagonist  both in terms of writing and performance, and especially given the genre. Its a surprising high point in Oyelowos already distinguished career, and a not-at-all shabby directorial debut for Edgerton.
Bloodwulf, an Extreme Comics character. Photo: Rob Liefeld

There are only so many comic-book superheroes left to go around. Studios are desperate to make spandex-clad flicks and shows, but film and TV rights for most of the good intellectual property is already spoken for. Disney, Fox, and Sony have the Marvel Universe; Warner Bros. has the DC Universe; Sony has the Valiant Universe  whats left? Why, the Extreme Universe, of course. The brainchild of Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld, Extreme is a little-known and not terribly well-respected collection of IP including series with charming titles like Bloodstrike, Bloodwulf, Cybrid, and Re-Gex. And now, Netflix is their proud stepparent.

Deadline has reported that the streaming giant is paying out seven figures for the privilege of producing a series of interconnected Extreme Universe movies. Theyre set to come out of a writers room helmed by veteran screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind). Netflix seems ravenous for comics material  less than a year ago, they snatched up writer Mark Millars Millarworld comics mini-empire, too. Itll be fascinating to watch Netflix try to sell the public  even the hard-core geek public  on Liefelds ultraviolent antiheroes, which had mostly gone into the dustbin of history (though, to be fair, a Bloodstrike revival from indie sensation Michel Fiffe has certain sectors of the comics world abuzz). That superhero bubble  it just keeps inflating, doesnt it?
Weinstein. Photo: Walter McBride/WireImage

The NYPD is prepared to arrest Harvey Weinstein for felony sexual assault, an official has told the Daily Beast. Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told the site that the investigation into Weinstein is going very, very well. Weinstein is currently being investigated for five separate sexual assault allegations. Were ready to go with an arrest, another official told the site. To move forward, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance  who has passed on prosecuting Weinstein in the past  must approve. Weinstein is currently the subject of several other sexual assault investigations in Los Angeles and abroad. He has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. Weinstein was last seen in Scottsdale, Arizona, where a restaurant patron slapped him in his face.
Crews. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

TMZ reports that Terry Crewss sexual-assault case against WME agent Adam Venit has been rejected by the L.A. County district attorney. The case, in which Crews alleges that Venit groped his genitals at a party in February 2016, had been filed as a criminal charge. However, after being sent to the city attorney, it was decided the case was past the statute of limitations which expires for misdemeanors after one year. The district attorney reportedly did not consider the alleged crime at the level of a felony, which would have made it within the statute of limitations. Venit will not be charged, but a civil lawsuit against him is still pending. Crews recently revealed that he is still having to pay WME throughout the legal proceedings despite having dropped the agency, where Venit remains; Venit has denied the allegations.
Photo: Film Factory Entertainment

One of the biggest names in modern Spanish horror cinema, director Paco Plaza (co-creator of the [REC] films), released his latest movie, Veronica, on Netflix this week with zero advance notice. Based on a true story, Veronica is a Ouija-board-based horror movie, following a 15-year-old girl named Veronica (excellent newcomer Sandra Escacena) who sneaks into the basement of her Catholic school while all the other students are on the roof watching a solar eclipse (cosmic! spooky!) so she and two friends can hold a seance. Veronica supplies the dreaded Ouija board  and becomes the accidental vessel of a malevolent spirit when their quick-and-dirty ritual goes better than expected. Thus kicks off an hour of various supernatural terrors torturing our heroine and her family, a trope thatll feel familiar to connoisseurs of Ouija-based horror.

But maybe not too familiar: Veronica has been making mini-waves among horror fans for its supposed shocking, paralyzing, too-scary-to-be-believed plot. In fact, theres a rumor going around that this is the scariest movie on Netflix. (In our estimation, Veronica is not that scary. Its a worthy effort, but as far as witch-board movies go, youll get more out of Ouija 2: Origin of Evil.) That said, Veronica does have some great set-piece scares, and the movies most disturbing moment is pretty damn good.

When Vero and her classmates start losing control of their basement seance, she quickly becomes the demons unwilling vessel. For whatever reason, it has chosen Veronica, and when the lights stop flashing and everything goes dark, the two other girls use flashlights to search for her in the black. They find her on the floor. Unresponsive and murmuring something indecipherable, Veronica snaps back to consciousness with a deep-throated, monstrous wail. Her face is the only thing spotlighted by the flashlights, and even though you know its coming  even though youve seen the image on the damn poster!  the satanic shriek will throw you back in your chair.

When combined, the contorting and screaming are jarring enough, but what makes this scene so scary is a little trick thats often deployed in jump-scare horror films  and its executed expertly in Veronica. Veros mouth isnt just opened wide as she screams. Its been widened just enough to turn it into an unnatural, gaping maw (made even more dramatic by the metal braces running the length of her teeth). Even though the tight shot on Veronicas screaming face moves quickly, the distinct stretch of her lips  like that Twitter macro of Meryl Streep shouting at the Screen Actors Guild Awards  is enough to tip your brain off that things have gone seriously wrong, and these characters are headed to the hurt locker fast. Youll recognize the effect from movies like Origin of Evil, where it was a little too touched:

And in The Grudge, the American adaptation of the classic Japanese horror film, Ju-on. (Toshios greatest weapon of terror is the circular black void he so often opens up in the middle of his face, and his cat scream is in the fear-inducing hall of fame.)

Obviously, the effect has a bigger impact when its used on kids, because if adults shouldnt be able to reticulate their jaws far enough to swallow human arms  or human heads  then kids definitely shouldnt be able to. The mouth stretch is so terror-signaling, its even used to make monsters that are already scary  even more scary! Just consider The Taking of Deborah Logan.

Or the moment when the Predator takes it to 11 in Predator.

Or when Pennywise grows a mouth to match his forehead in It.

The mouth stretch works so consistently because it escalates the terror twinge from simple shock to the threat of something unnatural. When a mousy teen girls mouth expands enough to accommodate a large mans fist, you know that whatever darkness has arrived is beyond the powers of responsible adults or law enforcement to fix. And when done well, like it is in Veronica, the effect is just close enough to real that your brain accepts it as possible, and you wonder, Jesus, what would I even do if I actually saw that happening?!

So, should you find yourself in a dank basement with a Ouija board and your friend starts convulsing, alert medical professionals immediately. But if that friends jaw drops four inches and their mouth opens wide enough to fit a babys head, then get your ass directly to a priest.
In the summer of 2015, Rachel Dolezal exploded out of anonymity, transforming from a public figure of limited local impact  a civil-rights activist and branch president of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington  into one of the millenniums most racially controversial people. At issue: the revelation that she lied for years about her African-American ancestry, and had been born to European-American parents. Whats more, Dolezal continued to stoke outrage by refusing to back down on her self-identification as trans-black. Some people called her a race traitor. Others called her mentally ill. And others lambasted the gross overstep of Dolezals cultural appropriations, her use of blackface, and remarks that race is a social construct.

Related Stories See the Tribeca Film Festival 2018 Lineup

Filmmaker Laura Brownson (behind the award-winning 2011 documentary Lemon) spent two years filming Dolezal and her two sons to reveal the complex personal motives behind Dolezals transracial identity  while also chronicling the fury and disapproval that continue to follow her every move. And next month, the directors verite-style feature documentary The Rachel Divide is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival before arriving on Netflix on April 27. In making the film, I came to a deeper understanding of the raw nerve that Rachel hits in our society, but I also learned that her motivations to identify as she does are far more complicated than most realize, Brownson tells Vulture. Regardless of how people feel about Rachel, I hope the film will challenge audiences to think more deeply about race and identity in America.
Three people are behind bars for the murder of a 3-year-old girl in a drive-by shooting Wednesday night.

Dominique Marshawn Russell, Brittany Nicole Kingston and Martin Arrendondo Evenes, all 26, were booked into the Madison County Jail early Thursday morning on capital murder charges. Russell also was charged with shooting into an occupied dwelling.

They are accused of opening fire at a home on Murray Road around 7 p.m. Wednesday. Livia Robinson, 3, who was sleeping in the home on a couch, was hit by a bullet. Robinson was taken to Huntsville Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Huntsville police said the shooting stemmed from an ongoing argument that began during the day and continued through the event on social media. The argument involved acquaintances of the child's mother, police said.

Russell, Kingston, and Evenes are being held in the Madison County Jail without bond.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle's office released a statement on the shooting.

"An innocent child is dead because of a senseless shooting evolving from an argument among reckless adults," Battle's statement read. "No matter the root cause, this is criminal behavior, which we will not tolerate in Huntsville."
Huntsville terror suspect Aziz Sayyed pleaded guilty Thursday morning to a federal charge related to planning attacks on Madison County authorities.

Sayyed, 23, agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 15-year sentence recommendation from prosecutors, followed by lifetime supervised release.

The judge in the case said he would review Sayyed's case and sentence him June 20.

Sayyed was accused of plotting to make explosives and use them in local police departments in an effort to support the terror group ISIS. He was arrested in June 2017 after meeting with what authorities said he thought was an ISIS operative. The person was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Prosecutors said Sayyed, who worked at an IHOP in Madison prior to his arrest, watched ISIS propaganda videos of bombings and executions. He also expressed support for the terror group and at one point when asked if he would ever participate in beheadings, prosecutors said he responded "Is there any higher honor?"

Sayyed researched how to make explosives and told others he wanted to make explosives to use in an explosive belt or car bomb, according to court documents. He also bought some of the materials to make the explosives, prosecutors said.

In federal court Thursday morning in Birmingham, Sayyed was arraigned on a charge of providing material resources or support to terrorists. He pleaded guilty about half an hour later.
Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, filed suit against Trump this week alleging he hadn't signed a nondisclosure agreement that would have prevented her from discussing their alleged sexual affair.

On Wednesday, Sanders told reporters that the arbitration was won "in the President's favor." The statement is an admission that the nondisclosure agreement exists, and that it directly involves the President. It is the first time the White House has admitted the President was involved in any way with Daniels.

"POTUS is very unhappy," the source said. "Sarah gave the Stormy Daniels storyline steroids yesterday."

This week's developments are the latest installment in a continuing controversy for the White House involving Daniels, and a distraction from Trump's attempted rollout of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Just weeks before the 2016 election,Trump's legal counsel Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 of his own money, which he admitted to in February. Cohen has said the President "vehemently denies" any sexual encounter between the two.

The-CNN-Wire

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First Presbyterian as it looks today. Senior minister is Rev. Susan Phillips, who joined the staff in July 2017.

The current First Presbyterian Church building at Seventh and Capitol in Springfield was purchased from Third Presbyterian in 1872. The magnificent steeple towers were struck by lightning and demolished in the early 20th century.

Early Illinois settlers established sites of worship, first holding services in someones home and later building a church. Each year across Illinois these early churches reach a milestone, their 150th year, and the Illinois State Historical Society (ISHS) holds a luncheon to honor them every three years. This year 28 churches will be honored in Springfield on March 10. Two in Springfield and several in central Illinois have reached this milestone.Large red front doors distinguish the First Presbyterian Church at the corner of Capitol and Seventh streets, Springfield. The church is often visited by tourists wanting to see the pew where Abraham Lincoln sat. Actually, the Lincolns never worshipped in this building. Instead, they would have attended church at Third and Washington Streets, in a building which was used from 1843-1872 and is now gone. After Lincolns son Eddie died in 1850, James Smith, the minister of First Presbyterian, conducted the funeral service. The Lincolns started attending the church in 1851. Mary became a member in 1852; son Tad was baptized there in 1855, but Abraham Lincoln never joined the church. The current church building on Seventh Street was purchased in 1872 from the Third Presbyterian Church.The Lincolns had rented a pew  number 20  in the church on Third Street. It was special to Mary Todd Lincoln. Today, the red upholstered pew stands in the current churchs sanctuary. Number 20 is visible under the left armrest.Temple Brith Sholom was established in 1858 by Jewish settlers. Its first president was Lincolns friend, Julius Hammerslough, and the congregation met in the various homes of 25 families. A temple was built in 1876 on Fifth Street, and the current synagogue at 1004 S. Fourth was built in 1915-1917. It has been the site of worship for over 100 years.Other central Illinois churches that will be honored:The Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Bloomington was established in 1853, primarily by Irish immigrants. The church had to be rebuilt two times  once after a tornado in 1869 and again after a massive fire in 1932. Todays structure is known for its Art Deco style.St. Marys Roman Catholic Church, founded by German immigrants, was built in 1886. It has gone through remodeling but the original structure remains.Wayman African Methodist Episcopal Church in Bloomington was organized in 1843 with 20 members. The members later purchased the Congregational Church and moved it to their lot. This church stood for over 100 years but moved to a new building in 1993.The First Presbyterian Church in Lincoln celebrated its 160th year in 2017.The New Lebanon Baptist Church in Kilbourne has been expanded, but the original sanctuary of the 1869 church is still used.The first minister of the Rock Creek Presbyterian Church of Tallula, established in 1822, was Rev. John Berry, whose son later ran a grocery store in New Salem and knew Abraham Lincoln.In 1909, on the day of the dedication of the new Mackinaw Christian Church, near Peoria, a sleet storm made trains unable to run. Sixteen-year-old Mabel Broyhill (this writers grandmother) was to sing at the service so she and her father made the long slippery trek from Allentown by walking down the railroad tracks. The church is still in use.The luncheon honoring sesquicentennial churches begins 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 10 at Westminster Presbyterian Church. Tickets are $40 at www.historyillinois.org. The program includes a recital by Dr. Paula Pugh Romanaux, concernt organist and liturgical music historian, playing selections written 150 or more years ago.The Illinois State Historical Society, founded in 1899, promotes the study of Illinois history. In addition to honoring churches, the society places markers on historical sites. To date there are over 400 across Illinois.ISHS is involved in many historical events throughout the year, publishes a magazine and a quarterly journal that highlights Illinois history, and sponsors several awards and contests for high school students, graduate students, professional writers, and teachers. Information can be found on the website www.historyillinois.org.
Depending on which side of the gun control debate youre on, Eli Roths remake of Death Wish couldnt have come at a better or worse time. Fresh on the heels of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting tragedy, the film will play to viewers as either the ultimate justification for fewer gun regulations or a reason for a stricter crackdown where gun ownership is concerned. Of course, this hinges on where you land on the subject of vigilante justice and committing cold-blooded murder.



Bruce Willis steps into Charles Bronsons shoes as Paul Kersey, a shattered husband with a grudge. This time out, he happens to be a surgeon with a loving wife (Elisabeth Shue) whos about to get her doctorate and a teenage daughter (Camila Morrone) who has a promising future. That is, until their upper middle-class Evanston home is invaded by thieves who leave mom dead and daughter in a coma. What with slow, ineffectual police detectives on the case (Dean Norris and Kimberly Elise), Kersey becomes impatient and takes matters into his own hands, deciding to clean up the mean streets of Chicago on his own. Sporting a hoodie and made famous on social media thanks to witness-made videos that are immediately posted to the internet, the vigilante becomes known as the Grim Reaper and sparks a debate over whether hes a righteous avenger or public menace among the good citizens of the Windy City.

There are no shadings of grey where director Eli Roth and screenwriter Joe Carnahan are concerned, which relegates the film to being just another Hollywood action flick, albeit one the NRA could easily use to promote its agenda. (Note the scene in which the sexy saleswoman at a gun store dispenses with the paperwork to get a gun with a wave of her hand.) Kerseys motivation is beyond reproach; his revenge is just as he manages to (luckily) track down the criminals who destroyed his family, and there are no loose ends or charges filed, as the cops in charge just give him a wink and send him on his way.A far more interesting approach would have been to take character actor Vincent DOnofrio (Law and Order: Criminal Intent), used here as Kerseys brother, and put him in the lead role. Willis has become known for his man-of-action persona whereas DOnofrio has an everyman quality that would have made the characters reaction to this tragedy much more interesting. What would a normal man do in this situation? How clumsy and conflicted would a run-of-the-mill Joe be when faced with his first shooting victim? DOnofrio, a much better actor than Willis, would have been able to effectively delve into this, grounding the film in a firm reality that may have sparked some meaningful conversation.This is a standard middle-age male fantasy as our heros sense of ineffectualness and frustration is easily rectified with a gun, his confidence restored and his manhood in tact. Roth cant be bothered with looking at the psychological effects Kerseys actions would have on himself while those voicing outrage over his vigilante methods are given short shrift. Unlike last years excellent In the Fade, Death Wish isnt interested in looking at the long-term effects of a victims grief or what embracing violence does to ones soul. No, this is an old-fashioned shoot em up that exists only to provide cathartic kicks for those viewers looking for an easy fix to a complex problem.
Former Springfield cop Samuel Rosario might become a defendant in a new court established to handle

Sangamon County State's Attorney John Milhiser

charges against veterans.

The Seventh Judicial Circuit on Monday got Supreme Court clearance to set up a court designed to help veterans instead of treating them as ordinary criminals. A law that took effect in January requires such courts throughout Illinois.

Sources confirmed that Rosarios case may be diverted to the new court, which has yet to convene. States attorney John Milhiser, a candidate to become U.S. attorney in Springfield, will neither confirm nor deny that hes considering such a move.



The case has everything no ambitious prosecutor wants. Allegations of racism and police brutality. A community split between those who say Rosario should be prosecuted so that he can never again wear a badge, and those who see extenuating circumstances. Plus more than 1.8 million views of a YouTube video that shows Rosario repeatedly punching Robert Humes, who was then 19, after challenging him to throw hands.

Is your camera on? Humes asked before Rosario first chest bumped, then pummeled him in February of last year. You see that red dot? Rosario replied, referring to his body camera. Its on. Its on. Its on with your scary ass.

Humes had raised Rosarios ire with a stream of critical banter while police were responding to a call on East Stuart Street in Springfield. Thats the mouth of the south, observed Humes mother, who stood nearby while her son hurled insults and f-bombs at Rosario, who responded in kind.

Before throwing hands, Rosario promised Humes that he wouldnt be arrested, and he offered to put his gun in his car. This was no back-alley beating. Humes got his butt kicked in a front yard while neighbors watched fuck-yous devolve into fisticuffs. That little kid across the street is ready to whip your ass, so dont even try, man, Rosario said after the blows ended and Humes loudly demanded another crack at the officer.

Later in his shift, Rosario returned to Humes home and apologized. Humes said everything was cool, and the two spoke as if friends. Humes praised Rosario when police visited later that evening to take photos of his face, saying that the cop whod beaten him up deserved a promotion.

Rosario never worked another shift. He was fired last May, after being charged with official misconduct and battery. Now, sources say, Milhiser is mulling meetings with civic leaders prior to deciding whether Rosario, who was an Army reserve sergeant when he joined the force in 2015, should be moved to the new veterans court. Suzann Maxheimer, Seventh Circuit trial court administrator, said the first session could be held as early as next week. Defendants in other veterans courts typically plead guilty and are placed on probation while undergoing treatment or otherwise completing programs. They can have convictions expunged if they successfully complete probation.

Does Rosario deserve a break? Depends on whom you ask  disagreements begin with whether he did anything wrong in the first place.

Humes sister, who saw the whole thing, told internal affairs investigators that Rosario acted appropriately, noting that her brother was mouthy and had pointed a stick at the officer. But Humes, notwithstanding statements he made within hours of the fight, told internal investigators that Rosario was in the wrong. Humes mother also blamed the officer.

Teresa Haley, president of the Springfield NAACP, says that she was reminded of Rodney King when she saw the video. We want to see him prosecuted and convicted, Haley said. If he gets off on it, it sends a signal to others that they can get away with it as well. And create racial tensions in our community.  Not only did he harm this kid, it harmed our community.

Haley acknowledges that Humes was out of line by berating Rosario, but thats no excuse. No one would want to see their child or family member abused like that, regardless of the situation, Haley says. I also believe the officer egged the situation on. Throw hands? If youre an adult, you dont fight with children. If Humes had been white, Haley doesnt think there would have been a fight. I dont think it would have happened  I dont think it would have happened to that extreme, she says.

Thats nonsense, counters Kelvin Coburn, chairman of the citys Police Community Review Commission, which is charged with reviewing complaints against cops but hasnt heard a case since Coburn was appointed by Mayor Jim Langfelder last year. It was a matter of bravado, not race, Coburn says. Thats what we call it in the hood: a shot at the title.

Haley dismisses post-fight videos that show Humes praising Rosario. I think that comes from the young kid being afraid and trying to soothe over the situation, and lack of knowledge, and nerves, she opines. But Coburn, who says that Rosario shouldnt have been fired, draws a different conclusion. I saw the video, he says. I saw the escalation. I saw the reconciliation. I was fine with it.  Thats a young man in an urban area who didnt press charges. He knew what he was getting into. If Rosario stands trial, Coburn predicts hell be fine, so long as he gets the right jury.

If you get six old-school police officers and six black men who understand the black community and street life, he walks, Coburn says.



Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com
I viewed each work individually and did not look for synergies or other characteristics that might have established relationships, aesthetic, thematic or otherwise. That said, I sensed a clear celebration of ways of looking and seeing and of the role of the viewer, the artist as auteur/controller and the power of the photographic gaze.

The View from Here is a PhotoAccess Members' exhibition showcasing the work of 37 artists. Artists were "invited to look through their viewfinder to creatively explore unique perspectives of the place and spaces they encountered". As one would expect from an exhibition such as this the overall effect is an eclectic one. That said, the 37 individual aesthetic personalities are each deserving of attention and it is this combined eclecticism that gives the exhibition its dynamic energy.

The View from Here. Various artists. Horizons  Earth and Water. By Marie Lund. PhotoAccess at the Manuka Arts Centre, cnr Manuka Circle and NSW Circle, Griffith. Until March 25, 2018.

In relation to this Brian Stewart's Painted Canyon (Cat. 3) is especially apposite. Here we have the viewer looking at the artist looking at the image he is making of a real landscape that lies in front of him. This is a clever and pointed statement about the contrasts and elisions of artifice and reality, of what we see and what the artist makes us see. In a sense this work provides a manifesto for the whole exhibition as stated in the exhibition premise above.

Ulli Brunnschweiler's Sunrise after the Storm (Cat. 11) may not have had the same theoretical premise as Stewart's piece but I find the pair of chatting kangaroos silhouetted against the Romantic seascape to be both funny and telling. The concept of "nature naturans" ie "nature being nature" fits well here and as one set of the natural world (the kangaroos) views another (the seascape) the omission of humans says a lot.

The evocative use of black and white in Andrew Robert Morgan's landscape (Cat. 1) found equivalents in a number of other works. The stilled image of Maria Island by Jacqui Doyle (Cat. 12) held a stark beauty as did Luke Power's The Cabin (Cat. 29) and Angus Kendon's untitled rocky outcrop (Cat. 31).

The use of architecture as frame or matrix provided a number of excellent examples. Kleber Osorio's Circle of Sight (Cat. 2) used a circular, tunnel-like structure to direct the viewer while other artists such as Richard Glover (Cat. 2) and Christine Mogg (Cat. 20) placed a linear grid over the image, both screen and filter simultaneously stopping the viewer but then inviting him in. Kathryn Leo's A Path to Parliament (Cat. 9) had a striking and dynamically angled viewpoint, the viewer's eye forcefully directed through a narrow opening to the flagpole dominating the centre of the image (and indeed the building itself).

Beautiful atmospherics are also present for me most beautifully in Boys from St Malo (Cat. 6) where the marvellous serpentine curve of the sea wall falling away into the background mist, creates an image of quiet seduction. The evocative light and chiaroscuro of a part of Venice not full of tourists as captured by Geoffrey Dunn (Cat. 18) also holds a particular attraction.
At 511 of the companies that did not add a woman, meanwhile, the firm voted against that board's chair of the nominating committee, which selects new members. It plans to expand its campaign to Japan, Canada and Europe this year and push companies, particularly those in Europe where there are quotas on the number of women at the board level, to disclose their numbers of women in executive management jobs, too.

State Street Global Advisers , the investment firm behind the Fearless Girl statue, is expected to announce Wednesday that of the 787 all-male boards in the United States, Britain and Australia that it identified and then pressured to add women, 152 did so. Another 34 said they plan to in the near term.

When the Fearless Girl statue turns one this week, she'll have inspired more than legions of selfies with tourists and controversies over a corporation's role in public art. The investment firm behind her says that since it placed the defiant bronze little girl in New York's financial district under the cover of night last year, it has pushed more than 150 companies to add women to their previously all-male boards.

"Only when they're aware of what the numbers are can they think about longer term goals," said Lynn Blake, an executive vice president at State Street, noting that data on managers below the very highest ranks is usually hard for investors to get.

While the research showing the financial impact of diverse boards is interesting, she said, "the research we find even more compelling is research that goes down to senior management levels," and shows that more women can make an even greater impact on long-term financial results.

The announcement comes as other large asset-management firms have been more vocal about taking an active stance on social issues or governance reforms at the companies where they invest. In January, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink, which manages nearly $US6.3 trillion ($8.1 trillion) in investments, put CEOs on alert that they would be expected to answer questions such as how they plan to use savings from the tax reform law and whether they are creating a diverse workforce. State Street manages $US1.8 trillion in equity assets, Blake said, nearly all of which is passively managed in vehicles such as index funds, which hold stocks that cannot be sold if investors are unhappy with management's strategy or the diversity of a company's board.

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The firm is not shying away from its campaign despite plenty of controversial headlines since the statue's launch - including having to pay $US5 million in fines over its own gender pay practices and criticism that the bronze girl facing down the "Charging Bull" statue is "corporate feminism" and even "everything that's wrong with our society," in the words of one critic. (The statue only has a permit for its current spot on Broadway through March 8, but will soon find a new home in New York. A query to the mayor's press office was not immediately returned.)
If you were to plot the past year for women on an emotional seismograph, it would trace a wildly oscillating line, with sexual harassment and violence the overarching preoccupation.

Our hearts leapt as millions of women marched against the elevation of a sexual predator to the White House, and extraordinary journalism exposed the monstrous Harvey Weinstein and his ilk, dozens of men, across many industries.

A sign of the times: a placard from the women's march in Melbourne in January.

What feminist wouldnt feel a certain schadenfreude at this watershed cultural moment? There was blood in the water and, to be honest, it was bracing.

But this year has also held pain. The #metoo disclosures were a global keening, which rent a hole in the collective inertia.
The Turnbull government is renewing its campaign for Australia to be exempt from US President Donald Trump's steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports after the White House revealed there could be reprieve for select allies based on national security considerations.

Defying intense domestic and international pressure to completely abandon the import taxes, Mr Trump is pushing to formalise the measures by the end of the week. But the potential exemptions represent a shift from the President's previous insistence that the tariffs apply to all countries.

"There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday morning, AEDT.

Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Australian government ministers have mounted an urgent lobbying effort since the President last week announced the 25 per cent tariff on steel and 10 per cent tariff on aluminium but have been generally pessimistic about the likelihood of special treatment.
Samsung has unveiled its television lineup for 2018, showcasing a feature that makes your TV blend into its surroundings like a chameleon and another that de-clutters cables.

At its "First Look" event held at the American Stock Exchange in New York City, the South Korean technology giant unveiled a lineup of new TVs across several different ranges, with screen sizes from 55 inches to 88 inches.

'Ambient Mode' helps your TV blend into its surroundings and displays handy info.

The new QLED range has a feature called "Ambient Mode", which acts as a smart display when not in use, for example by showing traffic, weather or news. If you take a picture of your wall after you mount or set up the TV, it can process and display this image during Ambient Mode in a way that makes the TV appear as a transparent floating rectangle.

"Customers tell us that they try to hide their TV inside their cabinet," says Jae Julien, vice president of Samsung's visual display user experience team, explaining why Samsung built the new feature. It was designed because TVs were turned off 80 per cent of the time, making them big black rectangles that didn't look aesthetically pleasing on walls, she says.
An eight-year-old boy was found dead at an Alma Street home on Thursday afternoon. Credit:Joe Armao

A 41-year-old woman has been charged with murder after the death on Thursday afternoon of an eight-year-old boy at Tootgarook on Melbournes Mornington Peninsula.

The woman faced a closed out-of-sessions hearing on Thursday evening and was refused bail. She will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday morning.

The woman cannot be named as next of kin overseas are yet to be notified.

The boy's body was found at a property on Alma Street, Tootgarook, shortly after 1.30pm on Thursday, police said.
The Minerals Council of Australia submission gave two positive examples of rehabilitation in WA: this, the first, was Alcoa's Huntly and Willowdale Mines, but the committee learnt that the company failed to provide corrective action when the restoration was failing. Kimberley Diamond Company left the government with up to $40 million in rehabilitation costs via this loophole when it abandoned its Ellendale mine in 2015. Worse, the miner had in 2013 cashed out $12 million in bonds, which it had paid the government as a surety in case of unexpected mine closure but that the government had refunded when it retired the bonds system. The second example given in the paperwork was of a seed management program run by BHP Billiton in the Pilbara. The inquiry also heard that while a national standard for ecological restorations of mine sites was launched in 2016 by Perth's ARC Centre for Mining Restoration, examples of such standards being met were rare across Australia.

The Minerals Council of Australia's submission to the inquiry said the high returns and relatively short durations of mining as a land use provided perfect opportunities for excellent environmental management. Scars on the landscape: the Roy Hill mine in the Pilbara. Credit:Roy Hill But when senators asked representatives of the Council and the CME to point to an example of best practice in rehabilitation in WA they could not. They mentioned BHP Billiton often showed off a Kimberley site that had been well looked after but they did not have any specific knowledge of why. They also mentioned a well known example from Victoria but could not give an equivalent from WA. Centre for Mining Restoration director Kingsley Dixon said the scientific community was already aware there were limited examples. He said the hearing showed the committee had a fairly clear understanding that the industry was "struggling to find an exemplar among existing restoration efforts".

He said while many sites in WA could potentially be restored to the level of a functioning ecosystem, some had so dramatically changed the landscape that restoration on this level was impossible. Prof Dixon described coal pits in Collie as "voids to the horizon" and said "backfilling" such pits was, at this stage, beyond current technical ability. "I frankly don't know what we should do with holes that now measure in the cubic kilometres," he said. "Pit voids, ecologically and naturally, don't provide a surface for the environment to return." Professor Dixon said the iron ore industry in the Pilbara alone had a 2000-3000-square-kilometre footprint, when all mining infrastructure was totalled up.

Back-of-the-envelope reckoning estimated single mines could cost up to a billion dollars each to rehabilitate. "There are very significant issues around self-regulation and adherence," he said Prof Dixon told the committee companies including Rio Tinto, Alcoa and BHP were operating under state agreement acts that set up contradictory situations in environmental planning in WA, and in some cases silenced federal environmental controls. This had significance when some of the environmental assets at stake, such as nesting hollows for endangered black cockatoos, took hundreds of years to develop. The committee discussed at length how Alcoa could not restore aged forest  the prime habitat for black cockatoos.

Alcoa was the only company in WA that could remove potential habitat for the species without recourse to the federal act applicable companies not operating under state agreement acts. "There is more loss of habitat on this continent than ever before," Prof Dixon said. "You cannot restore ancient systems ... this will resonate in future generations." The Senate inquiry is tasked with finding out total liabilities for current projects. In giving evidence, WA's Department of Mines acting deputy Director General Phil Gorey could not be drawn on an estimate of the total liability the state could face.

But he believed the Mining Rehabilitation Fund, which began in 2013, and collected levies from industry for the government to carry out rehabilitation for unsafe sites, was sufficient. The pool totalled $122 million and was collecting almost $30 million a year. A handful of pilot projects, including the Black Diamond Pit Lake in Collie, had ranged in cost from tens of thousands to the "single millions". Dr Gorey said there was potential for a national approach to legal reform, to avoid a repeat of the Ellendale situation. He also wanted increased transparency from mining companies over cost projections. This would also be best with a uniform approach, so companies could not push back with a claim that meeting different requirements for different states was too hard. The Minerals Council of Australia and the Chamber of Minerals and Energy submitted that there was no need for increased regulation, saying existing jurisdictional systems "sufficiently and comprehensively" regulated the sector and safeguarded the state from liability.
Washington: Amelia Earhart's story is revolutionary: She was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean, and might have been the first to fly around the world had her plane not vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

After decades of mystery surrounding her disappearance, her story might come to a close.

American aviator Amelia Earhart, the first woman to complete a solo transatlantic flight, waves as she emerges from the cockpit of a rotorcraft, Newark, New Jersey, circa 1935. Credit:Hulton Archive

A new scientific study claims that bones found in 1940 on the Pacific Island of Nikumaroro belong to Earhart, despite a forensic analysis of the remains conducted in 1941 that linked the bones to a male. The bones, revisited in the study "Amelia Earhart and the Nikumaroro Bones" by University of Tennessee professor Richard Jantz, were discarded.

For decades they have remained an enigma, as some have speculated that Earhart died a castaway on the island after her plane crashed.
Washington: The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Donald Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.

In one episode, the President told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said McGahn told investigators that the President once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller. McGahn never released the statement.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied colluding with Russia during the 2016 Presidential race. Credit:AP

In the other episode, Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the investigators and whether they had been "nice," according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The episodes demonstrate that even as the special counsel investigation appears to be intensifying, the President has ignored his lawyers' advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering.
Washington: Special counsel Robert Mueller has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin - apparently contradicting statements made to legislators by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater (since renamed as Academi), met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of US-Russia relations.

Erik Prince, chairman of Blackwater USA, allegedly met with a Russian official in the Seychelles with the intention of setting up a back channel for communications. Credit:AP

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who helped organise and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller's investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.
New York: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has revoked a prestigious human rights award it had given to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, now Myanmar's de-facto leader, faulting her for failing to halt or even acknowledge the violence against her country's Rohingya Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi, who endured 15 years of house arrest for taking on the military dictatorship in Myanmar, was only the second person to receive the award, in 2012.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with President Htin Kyaw, right, and Vice President Henry Van Hti Yu, left. Credit:AP

It is named after Elie Wiesel, a fellow recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, a Holocaust survivor who was one of the museum's founders, and the award's first recipient.

The award, according to the museum, is given annually "to an internationally prominent individual whose actions have advanced the Museum's vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide and promote human dignity."
Pontiac Correctional Center





Care for the mentally ill in Illinois prisons may not be ideal, but it isnt so bad that it violates constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections and the company that provides care under a state contract.

Thats the crux of the states effort to refute arguments by lawyers for inmates who claim that the state has violated terms of a 2015 settlement agreement designed to improve care for the mentally ill in state prisons.

Under federal law, the plaintiffs must prove that the state, and by extension the company that provides care to inmates, has been deliberately indifferent to the needs of prisoners. In laymans terms, it means that the accused knew there was an issue but didnt do much, if anything, to address it.

Its regarded as a high hurdle, which plaintiffs say theyve more than met in the course of a lawsuit filed to force the state to make improvements. The state and Wexford Health Sources, which provides health care to inmates via contract, disagrees, saying that steps taken to improve substandard care shows that no one turned a blind eye to the plight of hundreds of inmates whom everyone acknowledges havent received the care that they should.

We only have a finite number of psychiatric providers, Elaine Gedman, executive vice president and chief administrative officer for Wexford, said last week during a Peoria hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mihm, who reserved rendering a decision until sometime after April 6, when the parties must submit summaries of legal arguments. And in corrections, you cant just go out and grab someone. Theres a clearance process.

Gedmans testimony came after the plaintiffs in December presented their case, calling witnesses who testified that mental health care in state prisons is a disaster and that seriously ill inmates are routinely kept in isolation cells, strapped down to beds. The state did not present its case at that time and was granted leeway to call its own witnesses last week.

Gedman told the court that it takes as long as six months for the clearance process to be completed, and so data on staff shortages documented during Decembers hearing could be outdated. Harold Hirshman, an attorney for inmates, leaped.

There has not been a single year since 2014 that Wexford has provided the number of psychiatrists required, correct? the lawyer asked.

Correct, Gedman answered.

While focus is shifting to care and rehabilitation, Gladyse Taylor, a Department of Corrections assistant director who oversees mental health services, testified that the culture of the department is old school. Historically, the department has focused on security, she told the court.

It can be a vicious cycle, according to testimony by Sandra Funk, chief of operations for the department of corrections. Pablo Stewart, a psychologist appointed by the court to monitor care for inmates, testified in December that the prison system for mentally ill inmates is in crisis, with care so poor that inmates are suffering real harm. Mentally ill inmates who need treatment are prone to act up, which results in being placed in isolation cells where symptoms of mental illness worsen and appropriate care isnt available.

So, when somebody acts up during treatment, their punishment is no more treatment? Hirshman asked.

Yes, Funk responded.

A lack of bed space for mentally inmates is an issue. Marcus Hardy, an assistant director to corrections director John Baldwin, said that the state is taking steps to improve facilities. Construction of treatment centers for the mentally ill are underway at three prisons, including Pontiac Correctional Center, Dixon Correctional Center and Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. The projects, which collectively cost $21.5 million, asre scheduled for completion in May, Hardy testified.

But staffing, not buildings, is the biggest challenge in providing treatment for mentally ill inmates, according to testimony last week.

At Pontiac Correctional Center, 328 inmates with mental health issues didnt receive the care they were due within timeframes set by the settlement agreement, Amy Cantora, medical quality assurance coordinator for Wexford, testified. Some had waited longer than 60 days to see mental health care providers. Pontiac inmates had the longest lag time to see a psychiatrist or other mental health professional, according to Cantoras testimony.

Still, more than 1,000 inmates with mental health issues havent been seen by psychiatric providers, according to testimony last week.



Megan Swett is an editorial intern for Illinois Times through the public affairs reporting program of University of Illinois Springfield. Contact her at intern@illinoistimes.com.
The 17th session of the WCO Integrity Sub-committee was held on 1 and 2 March 2018 with the theme "SECURITY AND INTEGRITY: Curbing Threats, Leveraging Opportunities". Approximately 150 delegates representing Member administrations and stakeholder organizations took part in the 17th session of the Integrity Sub-committee (ISC).

In his welcome address, the Deputy Secretary General Mr. R. Trevino Chapa stressed the role of integrity and its financial including security repercussions in the supply chain for traders. He also emphasized the need for continuous discussion of integrity issues in all spheres of customs. He outlined several steps to address this problem in customs administrations and cited some examples of Mexico's anti-corruption strategy.

The ISC benefited from two keynote addresses. The first was delivered by Mr. Tim Steele of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on the main threats and strategic decisions for customs with regard to organized crime. He cited two main drivers for corruption: the number of rules and regulations that need to be applied and the multiplicity of border operations which increases the likelihood of criminals finding ways to circumvent the system. Mr. Steele stressed the use of risk management in the fight against corruption and informed that UNODC is preparing a Guide on Corruption risk management at an organizational level.



Mr. Patrick Moulette, Head of Anti-Corruption Division, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), delivered the second keynote address on the threat that corruption poses to peace and security worldwide. He outlined the OECDs work to set international standards on combatting corruption, in particular via the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, which has 43 signatories to date.

The ISC then welcomed and/or endorsed a number of documents/initiatives, including:

Information security & data management to address integrity

Integrity testing as a preventive measure

Fighting international bribery and illicit financial flows

New Private sector initiatives to prevent bribery when interacting with Customs

TFA implementation as a new impetus for Integrity development

Best practices on Internal Controls and relationship with external controls

This session of the ISC was chaired by Ms. Sigfriur Gunnlaugsdottir (Iceland). This marked her last time as Chair of the ISC. The Director of Capacity Building expressed the WCOs sincere appreciation for the dedication and hard work of the outgoing Chair. The ISC then elected Mr. Carlos Enriquez Montes of the Mexican Customs Administration (Servicio de Administracion Tributaria (SAT)) as Chair and Mr. Hendra Prazmono of Indonesian Customs as Vice-Chair. The next 18th session of the ISC is tentatively scheduled to take place in April 2019.
As part of the COPES[1] Programme, a second Train-the-Trainer Workshop was held from 19 to 23 February 2018 in Paris, organized in partnership with French Customs.

This event is part of the process of broad promotion of the COPES concept in the six WCO regions, and this workshop included 12 French-speaking participants from Benin, Burkina Faso, Haiti, France, Niger and Senegal. It was an opportunity for them to gain high-level experience in the techniques of running courses, facilitating learning and teaching. The participants were also called upon to demonstrate their strategic and operational competencies in enforcement and their ability to work in an international environment.

The COPES Expert Trainers are specialized in Customs issues. They must have strong expertise in risk analysis, intelligence gathering, field operations, fraud detection, evidence collection, seizures and administrative and/or judicial investigations. With their experience as trainers, they must also be capable of presenting and promoting good professional practice in line with WCO standards.

In accrediting COPES Expert Trainers, the ultimate objective is to provide the organizations Members with robust support for building the capacity of their staff. In this case, it is a question of sharing expertise with services that are keen to perfect their skills in the area of border security and the associated challenges, or seeking to boost their enforcement regime. The services concerned are all those that are active in the control of the movement of goods, people and capital at the borders.

For more information on the COPES Programme, please contact Mr. Gilles Thomas (gilles.thomas@wcoomd.org).
The World Customs Organization (WCO) is pleased to join the international community in celebrating the International Womens Day 2018 with the theme The Time is Now, which acknowledges the rural and urban activists who have transformed the lives of women around the world.

Each year, International Women's Day celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, and also marks a call to action by the international community in dealing with womens rights, while highlighting gender parity gains and accelerating gender equality.

Celebrated by the United Nations (UN) since 1975, this special day on the UN calendar is an occasion to reflect on the importance of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, which is listed as Goal No. 5 among the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that form part of the UNs 2030 Agenda.

As part of his official message in honouring International Womens Day 2018, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, "At this crucial moment for womens rights, it is time for men to stand with women, listen to them and learn from them, adding that transparency and accountability are essential if women are to reach their full potential and lift all of us, in our communities, societies, and economies.

WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya added, WCO has a crucial role to play in promoting gender equality and diversity in all Customs administrations and throughout the wider Customs community, highlighting that the International Womens Day 2018 provides another opportunity to encourage WCO Members to actively engage in these issues as a matter of urgency.

The 9th session of the Capacity Building Committee held from 26 to 28 February 2018 also discussed about the promotion of gender equality and acknowledged the importance of engaging men in the conversations. The case of Iceland, particularly the new equal pay law was presented. This law mandates equal pay for equal work with a State certification required for employers with 25 or more employees.

Gender equality and diversity are considered a prerequisite for achieving sustainable development and growth. Customs have an important role to play in this process. In their role as employers, Customs can promote gender equality in areas such as recruitment, career development, training and work-life-balance.

Furthermore, by facilitating trade, Customs opens up opportunities for women entrepreneurs and traders to access new markets, which in turn leads to better incomes, contributes to changing attitudes and norms, improves employment conditions and creates new partnership opportunities. In this regard, Customs can support women entrepreneurs by involving groups representing women traders in the stakeholder consultations to better understand their needs.

Moreover, through implementing trade facilitation measures which enhances transparency, predictability, automation and standardization, Customs can contribute to improving the conditions and ensure safety for women traders at the border which can have large impacts, especially in developing countries where women constitute an important part of the informal cross-border traders.

The WCO has engaged in a number of activities to promote gender equality. With the hosting of its Women in Customs, Trade and Leadership Conference in July 2013, the WCO embraced gender equality as an important topic, and developed a Customs-specific diagnostic tool known as the WCO Gender Equality Organizational Assessment Tool (GEOAT).

This tool can be used by WCO Member Customs administrations to assess their policies, practices and activities and provides guidance on how to address gender equality in different areas including Human Resources, Governance and in Stakeholder relations. The concept of gender mainstreaming, is on the agenda of the WCO Capacity Building Committee, and is considered in the WCO Leadership and Management Development (LMD) Programme which includes a full module dedicated to gender equality and diversity and addresses the importance of preventing stereotypes.

To further promote an exchange of practices in this area, the WCO launched a Virtual Working Group on Gender Equality and Diversity, in March 2017, accessed via its CLiKC! Platform. The objectives of this working group are to gather best practices in the field of gender equality and diversity, provide a forum for exchange on this topic, raise awareness about the GEOAT, and collecting ideas on how the WCO further can promote these issues in its work.

Moreover, a training package on advancing Gender equality as part of Customs reform and modernization is currently being developed under the framework of the Finlands capacity building programme for East and Southern Africa. This training package will include an e-learning module, and is expected to be available to WCO Members via the CLiKC! Platform by the end of 2018.

In keeping with the spirit of International Womens Day 2018, the WCO also fully supports the December 2017 Buenos Aires Joint Declaration on Women and Trade endorsed by 118 members and observers of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that outlines actions to increase the participation of women in trade, in order to help them reach their full potential in the world economy by removing barriers to foster their economic empowerment.

The WCO reiterates its strong and unwavering commitment to remain proactive in finding ways to raise awareness on the importance of achieving gender parity within the global Customs community and in working closely with its international partners on gender equality, thereby contributing to its Members efforts and those of others towards ensuring sustainable development across the globe.
Robin Schmidt, a member of the Springfield Park Board and widow of the late John Schmidt, will start work next Monday as a prosecutor in the Sangamon County states attorneys office.

click to enlarge Robin Schmidt





Schmidt will be an assistant states attorney and will be handling felony cases, said states attorney John Milhiser. Schmidt previously worked for the office for several years in the 1990s, starting out as an intern while still in law school and becoming head of the traffic and misdemeanor section before leaving to take a job with the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Milhiser said that Schmidt approached him about a job prior to her husband's unexpected death in December. The late John Smith had been Sangamon County state's attorney prior to becoming a circuit court judge. He had been appointed an appellate court judge shortly before his death. Robin Schmidt is replacing an assistant states attorney who has left the office, Milhiser said.

Were very excited about having her back in the office, Milhiser said.

Schmidt said that she will continue to serve on the park board.

I love prosecuting, Schmidt said. Ive always looked for an opportunity to get back to the states attorneys office.  Obviously, Ive had some pretty significant life changes the last few months. This isnt exactly the way Ive planned things. Its a good time for me.

Milhiser is believed to be a leading candidate to become U.S. attorney in Springfield. If Milhiser moves on, would Schmidt be interested in replacing him as states attorney?

I would never say never to anything like that, Schmidt said. Its always been a lifelong goal of mine to be a top prosecutor.  I serve at the pleasure of John Milhiser. Im very fortunate that hes given me this opportunity.

Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
Kimball Mayor, Keith Prunty, appointed Annette Brower to the position of City Treasurer, and council approved the appointment at a special meeting on Monday, March 5, at noon.

Brower is expected to assumer her new role on March 26, and she brings several years of experience to the position, according to a news release from the City of Kimball.

Her experience includes work for the Ft. Collins, Colo., Police Department and she was the Technical Communications Supervisor for the Ventura County Sheriff in California.

Brower, who has served as Kimball Countys Deputy Assessor since 2014, replaces former treasurer Laurie Sisk whose reappointment to the position was not approved by council at the beginning of this year.

Annette is a self-starter and we look forward to getting her on board as soon as possible, Prunty said.
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Williamson, WV (25661)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable.
By Jina Belcher Ground zero for federal efforts to boost communities reeling from the downturn[Read More]
Insurance Back Forum of Insurance Innovations - InnoIns - to be held in Moscow, April 17, 2018

This year's InnoIns-2018 (Forum of Insurance Innovations) organized by MIG Insurance Today (MIG) with support and participation of the All-Russian Insurance Association (ARIA) will review positive international and domestic experience and discuss recent achievements in new technologies.



Modern technologies produce a steadily increasing impact on the insurance business across the globe thus giving rise to altogether new business models and services. Insurers who fell behind bankers at the start of the next stage of technology revolution are now easily catching up with the latter and even outpace them thanks to implementation of a much wider range of innovations in all insurance business processes, which are more sophisticated and versatile, and in all spheres of activities. Indeed, many novelties become obsolete by the time of implementation of the same; one witnesses a real technology boom which radically changes perceptions both of the insurance market and insurance as such. The crisis in economy and in the insurance industry prompts domestic insurers to explore emerging opportunities in detail and to implement innovations in their operations in a more decisive manner and on a wider scale. This interest is driven by a huge potential of insurance high-tech to reduce loss ratio, to improve sales, to create new products and to increase clients' loyalty.



InnoIns Mission - putting together a new strategic vision, contributing to development, promotion and implementation of more promising advanced information and business technologies in Russia's insurance market.



InnoIns-2018 goals and objectives:



- to introduce Russian insurers to progressive experience of use of high-tech both in this country and abroad;



- to discuss amendments to the legal framework, practical aspects of regulation and insurance supervision which would help implementation of innovations in the insurance market and activities of insurance organizations;



- to establish close and day-to-day interaction between insurers and the Association for the Financial Technologies Development (the FinTech Association);



- to help providers of technologies and off-shelf solutions to obtain deeper understanding of insurers' problems and needs, and to help insurers in their turn to have a realistic assessment of prospects of mastering advanced developments and technological novelties.



Topics for discussion :



Digital era in insurance - prospects and obstacles.

Rulemaking and insurance innovations - removing barriers.

Risk office of the digital era. New and old risks - cartography, analysis, prevention.

XBRL - a new language for communications between insurers and the regulator.

Insurance lines where new technologies are introduced more actively (motor, life and health, individuals' property, agriculture, etc.).

Insurers and start-ups - how to find each other.

Insurance accelerators - what is required for successful prolongation.

Telematic solutions in insurance - implementation experience and potential for development.

Insurance applications for electronic gadgets - achievements and prospects.

Insurance marketing - digitalization and human centricity.

Distributed registers - what is it and how it will change the insurance sector.

Crypto-insurance - insurance without insurers?

Space and satellite technologies in insurance - expanding offer and steady growth of demand.

High-tech and CMPTL - what has been implemented, what is under development and what is planned.

Insurance history bureaus - what BigData already gives to insurers and why this benefit is yet so small.

Insurance of pilotless cars - hull insurance and liability (foreign experience).

Loss settlement 2.0 - bots, drones and black boxes.

Insurance intermediaries - evolution trends in the age of revolution.

Regional aspect of innovations in insurance. Participation



Organizers of InnoIns-2018 issued invitations to senior executives of the Bank of Russia, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the Association for the Financial Technologies Development (the FinTech Association), deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, senior managers of the Russian and foreign insurance organizations and associations, specialists of consulting and high-tech firms, journalists of interested mass media.



More information about Forum of Insurance Innovations InnoIns-2018 you can get by writing to mail: eshipitsina@insur-info.ru.



We will be glad to see you among the participants of the Forum!



Published on 08.03.2018





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Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon: "The American steel industry has been under pressure for decades from unfairly traded products from China and elsewhere, as well as global overcapacity. I am pleased that the president recognizes the importance of addressing these challenges and finally intends to take action.
As protests continue to erupt in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and across the world in outrage against the horrific shooting of Jacob Bla Read more
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Rebuilding trust is Ramaphosas next struggle

Ramaphosa will have to take control of the economic, justice, security and intelligence, infrastructure, mining and energy clusters of the cabinet.

On the steps of Cape Town City Hall on 11 February to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in Paarl, African National Congress (ANC) president Cyril Ramaphosa promised a new beginning for the party and the country under his watch. But Ramaphosa will be in the state presidency for less than a year before the 2019 national elections, and this means he will have to choose carefully the priorities that will deliver maximum impact over a short period.

There are some critical immediate steps Ramaphosa will have to take to kick-start such a new beginning and deliver a real a break from the corruption, public service failures and incompetence of Jacob Zumas era. The first will be to get a new cabinet team: fresh ideas, energy and confidence are critical. This may not be so straightforward, however. Support for Ramaphosa and the Zuma camp are about evenly split, so for the sake of unity Ramaphosa will be under pressure to include members of the Zuma faction in his cabinet.

At a minimum, Ramaphosa will have to take control of the economic, justice, security and intelligence, infrastructure, mining and energy clusters of the cabinet. It is not only the ministers in charge that should be replaced, but also the executive management.

As he makes new appointments, Ramaphosa should bring talents from the wider ANC and non-ANC communities  for example, experienced cadres such as former finance ministers Pravin Gordhan and Nhlanhla Nene, and former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas.

Zuma has blocked investigations into his own corruption and that of his allies by controlling the crime, intelligence, prosecuting and revenue services. Zuma loyalists in these crucial agencies have also tripped up critics of the President, conscientious employees and whistleblowers. This means that Ramaphosa will have to bring honest managers to run these agencies from top to middle management.

The South African Revenue Service has been particularly gutted under Zuma. Ramaphosa may have to appoint a big-hitter such as Nene to run the agency in order to restore public confidence.

Ramaphosa will have to be seen actively dealing with widespread corruption that erodes state efficiency, crushes investor and public confidence, and depresses the economy. Although prosecuting Zuma for grand corruption, incompetence and abuse of his power is an obvious pillar of the anti-corruption fight, there are a number of Zumas powerful cabinet, ANC national executive committee, government and business allies who are deeply implicated in wrongdoing. Of them, the Gupta family are just the most publicly talked-about individuals linked to corruption.

Ramaphosa will also have to bring down a couple of untouchable ANC and business figures to show the public his anti-corruption fight will not only focus on the small-time criminals. He should seriously consider establishing a truth and reconciliation-like commission to tackle pervasive corruption in the public and private sectors.

Ramaphosa will also need a big-bang plan to improve execution of key government programmes, projects and public services. One way to do this is setting up a government-wide task force to monitor delivery bottlenecks in priority programmes, infrastructure projects and public services that are critical to lift growth, create jobs and boost development.

Ramaphosa will also have to clean up the governance, corruption and inefficiencies in the countrys money-guzzling state-owned enterprises (SOEs), especially the large, growth-critical ones such as state energy utility Eskom, logistics utility Transnet, arms manufacturer Denel and oil company PetroSA. The procurement chains of these SOEs are particular sites for corruption, wastage and patronage. This will mean firing Zuma-aligned allies on boards and executives, cancelling contracts with their companies and bringing in new fresh blood.

It is crucial that Ramaphosa focuses on boosting investor goodwill. Zumas wayward leadership, mismanagement and corruption have eroded business and public confidence. Companies have hoarded savings or invested abroad rather than using it locally to create bricks-and-mortar businesses.

This means he will have to take up the work that former finance minister Gordhan initiated before he was fired by Zuma last year, in building a partnership for investment, growth and job-creation between government, business and civil society. Ramaphosa has already created a platform through his initiative last year when he united business and labour around the adoption of a minimum wage.

Ramaphosa will also have to review the controversial third version of the mining charter  steered by mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane, a Zuma loyalist. The charter sets the black economic empowerment priorities for the mining sector and is now the subject of a court battle.

Ramaphosa will have to call a land summit to bring all stakeholders to map out a policy that looks at all three forms of landholdings: state-owned land, communal land under the trusteeship of traditional authorities, and commercial land (see page 22). What is crucial is for the government to use state-owned land better and to parcel out communal land that is mostly controlled by traditional leaders by giving it to individual households, to provide the poor with assets.

He will also have to deal with the dramatic decline in public education in black communities  and this will bring him valuable, mass credibility. He will have to organise a summit bringing together all stakeholders, from parents and teachers to communities and students to map out a plan to boost state schooling.

Ramaphosa needs a couple of big symbolic gestures: such as agreeing that all new cars for members of parliament and cabinet ministers would cost, say, less than R400,000 ($33,000); insisting that ministers convoys consist of only one vehicle; and ensuring that big government junkets, such as conferences, will take place in ordinary community halls or on government premises.

Finally, it may not be sexy, but Ramaphosa will have to make a big part of his presidential focus just getting the state to do the things it is expected to do, getting current projects and programmes on track. The equivalent of a programme of fixing broken windows in a bad neighbourhood, it is more necessary and will be more effective than coming up with new, big-bang policies, strategies and projects.
HOLLAND PATENT, N.Y.  The Oneida County Sheriffs office says they have made an arrest following a threat made on social media against Holland Patent Middle School.

Authorities are not releasing the identity of the person arrested and are not saying whether the juvenile is a student at Holland Patent. The juvenile is charged with making a terroristic threat, a class D felony.

The sheriffs department was called to the school at approximately 1:10 PM on Wednesday to respond a reported social media threat. The social media threat forced school officials to put the school into lockout mode as a precaution. Authorities later determined the threat to be non-credible. No students were in any danger and no students were hurt.

Officials say the investigation is ongoing.
The Boilermaker Road Race has determined its 10 Charity Bib partners for the 2018 race.

The organizations include:

- Abraham House

- Compassion Coalition

- Food Bank of CNY

- Griffins Guardians

- Johnson Park Center

- Joseph Michael Chubbuck Foundation

- The Root Farm

- Salvation Army

- Stanley Theatre

- Young Scholars

Upon registration, Boilermaker runners can choose with charity organization to raise funds for. Since the Boilermaker Charity Bib program was founded in 2013, it has raised more than $500,000 for local non-profit organizations.

This year the Boilermaker will also be conducting its second Run for U fundraiser campaign. While registering, Boilermaker runners will have the option to make a donation, which will then support the Boilermaker Urban Initiative. Last year the Run for U campaign raised more than $25,000.

Early access registration opened at 12 p.m. Thursday, and open registration will open at 12 p.m. March 17. To register for the Boilermaker, click here.
HOLLAND PATENT -- The Oneida County Sheriff's Office arrested a 14-year old following a threat made on social media against Holland Patent Middle School.

Authorities have not releasing the identity of the teen and have not said whether the juvenile is a student at Holland Patent.



The juvenile is charged with making a terroristic threat, which is a class D felony.



Holland Patent discussed the threat at its regularly scheduled school board meeting Wednesday, but no one spoke up with concerns.



The superintendent says students told staff about the threat.



Law enforcement determined there was no credible threat or danger to staff and students.



The superintendent says he has recieved phone calls and emails with concerns about the incident.



He says the district is moving forward in the safest manner possible.



"Anytime a safety concern is brought to us, we don't take it lightly," Superintendent Jason Evangelist said. "We take it to the fullest extent of investigation and then work through that process to help make determinations working wth law enforcement, and moving forward to show that we are safe for our students and for our faculty and staff and our community."



This is the second incident involving a social media threat in the Holland Patent School District in the past week. Emergency protocols were taken during both threats.



Law enforcement says despite an arrest being made they will continue to look into the threat.
NEW YORK (AP) - New York City's top police detective says the department has gathered considerable evidence in the rape investigation of Harvey Weinstein. But it's up to the district attorney whether the case makes it to a grand jury.

Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters Wednesday that investigators have been working diligently with women who made allegations in the fall that they were raped by Weinstein.

He says witnesses are prepared to go before a grand jury which would decide whether to indict.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance hasn't commented, saying only that the investigation is being handled seriously.

Weinstein's attorneys have said he has done nothing criminal and reject any allegation of non-consensual sex.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
WEST LAFAYETTE  A West Lafayette median is a cause for concern among area drivers.

The city engineer said several complaints have been received about a lack of visibility, but that's not the only problems drivers have with the median on Salisbury Street.

News 18 spoke with several drivers who told me they've either hit it themselves or saw someone else do it.

Now the city is working to fix the problem by making it more visible, but drivers say they'd like to see more done.

"It's been a change that's been a little confusing," said driver Melissa Flack.

It's a change that has only been in place since November, but drivers in West Lafayette said something needs to be done about this median on Salisbury Street.

"They need to have some kind of lights or paint it neon pink so drivers can see it during the night or whatever since there's no lighting around here," said driver Eric Carney.

West Lafayette Engineer Ed Garrison said the city is on it.

"We addressed it with the developer already," said Ed Garrison. "That these need to be taken care of, but now we're going to be meeting with them again to rehash everything that needs to be done and start talking about an action plan."

Yellow paint on the median's edges and striping will allow for better visibility.

In the meantime, Garrison says he is working to get cones placed, but the lack of visibility isn't the only thing bugging drivers.

"It's difficult to get into these businesses," said Flack. "I've seen other people swerve around it as well. So, I can see where it's an issue."

"If people are trying to get into like Greek's Pizza or CVS, they need to have some kind of cut out for them or something because it's illegal to make a u-turn," said Carney. "You have to pull into somewhere and turn around then turn around."

Garrison said there is a reason for that--considering the median's proximity to Sagamore Parkway.

"It's strictly to be able to keep traffic moving in and out of the intersection as smoothly as possible," Garrison added.

Garrison said he plans to have a formal meeting with the developer as early as this week.

Crews have not been able to paint due to the weather, but he said he hopes to have the new lines done within the next few weeks.
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Three school districts in Tippecanoe County met Wednesday night for what state leaders call a unique partnership.

It was the annual Joint Meeting with superintendents and school board members from the Lafayette, West Lafayette and Tippecanoe School Corporations.

They talked about a variety of issues, including diploma requirements, legislation at the Statehouse and the career academy.

Leaders with the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents spoke and praised the schools for their willingness to work together.

"In my 12 years on the board, it's just something that we do. It really spills over, not just this meeting, but just a general feeling of cooperation amoung the superintendents, board members. We seem to really work well together," said Alan Karpick with the WLCSC board.

The corporations will continue to watch legislation as this year's session wraps up.
Poet Nikki Giovanni to keynote Lemon Project & 50-Year Commemoration Symposium

Award-winning poet, activist and educator Nikki Giovanni will speak at William & Marys 2018 Lemon Project Symposium next Saturday.

Organized around the theme of Desegregating Higher Education in Virginia: William & Mary in Historical Context, the March 16-17 symposium will also offer a number of performances, discussions and other interactive opportunities, including a workshop with artist Steve Prince March 16. It is free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to register online.

Named for a man who was enslaved by the university, the Lemon Project is a long-term research initiative to examine W&Ms history with slavery and segregation and its ongoing relationship with the African-American community. This years spring symposium coincides with the 50th anniversary commemoration of W&Ms first African-American residential students, a commemoration that also serves to recognize and celebrate the contributions of all African-Americans to the university since its founding in 1693.

I am excited to have had the opportunity to join forces with the 50th Anniversary Committee this year, said Jody Allen, Lemon Project director and co-chair and visiting assistant professor of history. The symposium has expanded and the focus is on the dismantling of segregation in higher education, one of the legacies of slavery.

The symposium will begin Friday, March 16, in the Sadler Center atrium with breakfast at 9 a.m. and a 9:30 a.m. lecture in the Commonwealth Auditorium by Prince on The Second Line: Redressing American Systems of Education. A roundtable discussion about the current relationship between W&M and the local African-American community will follow.

After lunch, a 1 p.m. roundtable discussion will explore Giovannis work in context. Giovanni, a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, became well-known in the 1960s and early 1970s for her poetry and advocacy for the black community. Her published works include Re: Creation, Racism 101 and The Collected Poems of Nikki Giovanni. She has received numerous recognitions, including seven NAACP Image Awards and a Grammy nomination for the recording of one of her books. She was also a finalist for the National Book Award.

Following the discussion of Giovannis works, Prince will host a 3 p.m. workshop in which participants will create communal artwork to honor Lemon. Registration for that opportunity is required. Last summer, Prince worked with students to create a mural to honor W&Ms first African-American residential students. It was unveiled Aug. 31, 2017, in Swem Library to help kick off the 50th anniversary commemoration, which is being observed throughout the 2017-18 academic year.

Friday night, Valerie Gray-Holmes, a historical interpreter and performer for Colonial Williamsburg, will perform The New Gatekeepers in the Sadler Centers Commonwealth Auditorium at 7 p.m.

The symposium continues Saturday, March 17, in the W&M School of Educations Matoaka Room, with an 8:30 a.m. breakfast. W&M President Taylor Reveley will deliver remarks before Professor of English and Africana Studies Hermine Pinson introduces Giovanni. Leah Glenn Dance Theatre will perform Stifled, Sorrowed  Sustained with choreography by Associate Professor of Dance Leah Glenn and poetry by Giovanni before the poet begins her keynote address at 9:45 a.m.

A panel discussion about the desegregation of the University of Richmond will follow at 10:45 a.m. After lunch, the communal artwork Lemon Revival, which was created by Prince and his students on Friday, will be unveiled.

At 2:30 p.m., a panel discussion will focus on how universities should move forward as they continue to confront their past and current relationships with the African-American community.

The symposium will conclude Saturday night at 7 p.m. in Small Hall room 110 with an open mic event hosted by Students of Hip-Hop Legacy.

A complete schedule may be found on the Lemon Project website




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Tianwan 3 enters warranty period

08 March 2018

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Russia's ASE Group has handed over unit 3 of the Tianwan nuclear power plant in China's Jiangsu province to the customer for a two-year warranty period of operation. The Russian-supplied VVER-1000 is scheduled to enter commercial operation later this year.

Tianwan unit 3 (Image: CNNC)

Rosatom announced on 6 March that operation of the unit had been transferred to the plant owner and operator, Jiangsu Nuclear Power Corporation (JNPC). JNPC is a joint venture between China National Nuclear Corporation (50%), China Power Investment Corporation (30%) and Jiangsu Guoxin Group (20%).

"The Protocol of Provisional Takeover of Unit 3 Tianwan NPP was signed during the course of 25th Joint Coordination Committee Meeting at Tianwan NPP construction site in China," said Alexey Bannik, ASE Group's director of projects in China.

Tianwan 3 and 4 are AES-91 VVER-1000 units designed by Gidropress and supplied by Rosatom. AtomStroyExport is the main contractor, supplying the nuclear island. First concrete for unit 3 was poured in December 2012, while construction of unit 4 began in September 2013. Two similar VVER-1000 reactors (units 1 and 2) began operating at the site in 2007.

The process of loading the 163 fuel assemblies into the core of Tianwan 3 got under way last August. The start-up process began on 27 September, with the reactor achieving criticality two days later. Following the completion of commissioning tests at 25% capacity, the unit was connected to the grid on 30 December. Dynamic tests were later performed at 50%, 75% and 100% of capacity. The unit completed demonstration operation at nominal capacity for 100 hours on 15 February.

Rosatom noted that Tianwan 3 had been put into operation "on time and under all the contractual obligations in the framework of construction of the second stage of Tianwan NPP".

China's State Council gave its approval for the third phase of the Tianwan plant (units 5 and 6) - both featuring Chinese-designed 1080 MWe ACPR1000 reactors - on 16 December 2015. First safety-related concrete was poured for unit 5 later that month and for unit 6 in September 2016. Unit 5 is expected to enter commercial operation in December 2020 and unit 6 in October 2021.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Russia discusses African nuclear power prospects

08 March 2018

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is this week discussing the prospect of closer economic and political ties, including nuclear energy projects, in a number of African countries. Lavrov has so far visited Angola, Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and will complete his trip to the region in Ethiopia tomorrow.

Lavrov and Augusto, in Luanda on 5 March (Image: Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) said that, following talks with his Angolan counterpart, Manuel Augusto, in Luanda on 5 March, Lavrov had told reporters their two countries are developing cooperation in mineral resources, that "good prospects are taking shape" in the oil and gas sectors, and that they have "ambitious plans" for the high-tech industries and in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. He also met with Angolan President Joao Lourenco.

In an interview with the Hommes dAfrique magazine the same day, Lavrov said: "Our economic cooperation is not as far advanced as our political ties. However, it has improved over the past few years. Our trade with Sub-Saharan countries amounted to USD3.6 billion in 2017, compared with USD3.3 billion in 2016 and USD2.2 billion in 2015."

Lavrov said his tour is aimed at strengthening links in various fields and searching for new opportunities for cooperation in trade, science, technology and humanitarian work. He also said Moscow placed great importance on boosting ties with Africa's regional and sub-regional organisations, first and foremost, the African Union. He added that economic cooperation between Russia and African states was "not as active as political interaction [but] our economic cooperation has shown some growth in recent years".

Russian companies are working in the exploration, mining, energy and petrochemical sectors in Africa and are taking part in national programmes to build natural gas pipelines and storage facilities and provide technical maintenance for hydropower plants, he said, as well as carrying out feasibility studies for the construction of nuclear power plants and nuclear research and technology centres.

"In addition to mining, Russia and African countries are cooperating in high-technology. Rosatom is considering a number of projects of interest to Africans, for instance the creation of a nuclear research and technology centre in Zambia. Nigeria has a similar project. There are good prospects for cooperation with Ghana, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Talks are under way on the construction of a nuclear power plant in South Africa," Lavrov said.

Also on 5 March, Lavrov held talks in Windhoek, Namibia, with that country's deputy prime minister, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. According to the transcript of Lavrov's opening remarks, published on MID's website, the foreign minister said the Joint Russian-Namibian Intergovernmental Commission for Trade and Economic Cooperation is working well, adding, "We would like it to be action-oriented".

Addressing Nandi-Ndaitwah directly, he noted Namibia's interest in uranium mining and that the African country and Rosatom are finalising their agreement on cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. This will open up opportunities for the two countries to cooperate not only in the uranium sector, but also in medicine, technology and the potential construction of a nuclear power plant, Lavrov said.

Namibia holds about 7% of the world's uranium reserves, which are mined to fuel nuclear power stations around the world. Now the government has committed to a policy position of supplying its own electricity from nuclear power. The country faces severe challenges in power supply.

In January last year, the Namibian government announced the lifting of a ten-year moratorium on new applications for exploration licences on nuclear fuel minerals. Referring to this decision, Nandi-Ndaitwah said Namibia was looking forward to the implementation of joint projects in exploration, mining and processing of uranium ore in the country.

She thanked Lavrov for Russia's support of Namibia's application to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, adding that she looked forward to continued assistance as Namibia positions itself to optimise the advantages of its natural resources.

"In this context, we welcome the ongoing negotiations between Namibia and Russia to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy," she added.

During his visit to Addis Ababa tomorrow, Lavrov is to hold talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn Boshe, President Mulatu Teshome Wirtu and Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu. He is to meet with the chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, at the African Union Headquarters.

MID said: "There are plans to discuss a wide range of bilateral cooperation issues with the Ethiopian leaders while focusing on the trade and economic components, including the implementation of joint energy, nuclear energy, high-tech, science and education projects in Ethiopia."

Lavrov told The Ethiopian: "Our plans include organisation of an Ethiopian centre for nuclear science and technology, based on a Russian research reactor."

Lavrov noted that Ethiopia and Russia have enjoyed 120 years of diplomatic relations.

"We are pleased to see that Russia and Ethiopia are paying special attention to this anniversary and celebratory events will continue throughout the year," he said.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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India plans tenfold uranium output growth

08 March 2018

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India is planning a tenfold increase in uranium production over the next 15 years, Minister of State Jitendra Singh told the country's parliament yesterday. State company Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL) has outlined expansion plans to meet the Department of Atomic Energy's (DAE) vision of achieving self-sufficiency in uranium production.

In answer to questions in the Lok Sabha, Singh said UCIL, which is a public service undertaking with the DAE, has outlined a plan for "massive expansion" leading to a tenfold rise in uranium production by 2031-2032. The plan includes maintenance of sustained supply from existing facilities, capacity expansion of some existing units and construction of new production centres (mines and plants) in different parts of the country, he said.

"Considering the resources already identified in different geological basins by Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD), a constituent unit of DAE, UCIL's major production centres are planned in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan and Meghalaya," Singh said.

The expansion is planned in three phases, with the first expected to increase uranium production to 3.5 times existing levels by the "12th year". Completion of projects in the second phase is expected to achieve a sevenfold expansion over current production, with the third phase of projects leading to a tenfold increase over current levels by 2031-32.

According to the 2016 edition of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and International Atomic Energy Agency joint report on uranium resources, production and demand (the 'Red Book'), India's known conventional uranium resources - reasonably assured resources and inferred - were estimated to be 181 606 tU as of January 2015. Uranium mills currently operate at Jadugudah and Turamdih, both in Jharkand, and Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh. India produced 385 tU in 2015. The AMD claimed to have established domestic uranium resources of 232,315 tU as of November last year.

India operates 22 nuclear reactors, eight of which are fuelled by indigenous uranium. Fourteen reactors are under international safeguards and use imported uranium. Six units - four indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors, a fast breeder reactor and a Russian-designed pressurised water reactor - are currently under construction. Construction is planned to begin on 19 further units within the next few years, including ten indigenously designed PHWRs which are scheduled to start up by 2031. Agreements envisage the import of uranium up to 2020, Singh said.



Researched and written

by World Nuclear News



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A man was placed behind bars after ordering a child sex doll from another country and arranged for it to be delivered to his home, according to police in the United Kingdom.

The Avon and Somerset Constabulary said that they have arrested the 45-year-old man and he is due to appear at the Taunton Crown Court after being charged with an offense linked to the importation of a child sex doll.

Sean Julian Doel of Bridgwater has been charged with one count of improperly importing goods to which a prohibition or restriction applies.

The offense comes under Section 50 of the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.

The charge relates to an investigation that began last year after Border Force officials seized a package containing the child sex doll, which had been sent to Doels home from China.

Doel denied the allegations.

In another case, the National Crime Agency said that Brian Hopkins, 40, ordered a 3 foot 9-inch sex doll from Hong Kong, which Border Force officers at the Stansted Airport seized it before it was delivered to his home.

The flat-chested sex doll was addressed to Hopkinsa home in Mannamead, Plymouth, Devon.

As a result, National Crime Agency officers searched his home.

Officers found hundreds of indecent images of children on his cell phone.

He had 247 category A images and videos, which are the most serious, 341 category B, and 196 category C.

During an interview, Hopkins admitted knowing he should not have had the images but said he found it exciting to possess them.

He also admitted buying the doll to have sex with it but claimed he did not know importing it was illegal.
Federal agents were shocked to find an armed police officer helping a human smuggling operation at the Texas-Mexican border, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

Corpus Christi border agents said that they have arrested Valeria Rivas, a Brownsville Police Department police officer, for trying to smuggle her boyfriend into the United States from Mexico.

Rivas was charged with human smuggling.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jason B. Libby set bail at $20,000.

She was ordered to report the arrest and charge to her supervisor.

The Brownville Police Department placed Rivas on paid administrative leave.

According to the investigation, Rivas was a police officer and was employed by the Brownsville Police Department for several years.

Rivas boyfriend of 12 years, Alfredo Salazar Hernandez, lived in Mexico and he sought to enter the United States illegally.

Rivas arranged for her boyfriend to be picked up and brought to Brownsville.

When he didnt show up, Rivas went to the border to look for her boyfriend.

When she heard helicopters flying overhead, she hid in the bushes.

Border patrol agents eventually found Rivas and the illegal immigrant.

She was armed and on duty at the time of her arrest.

Rivas admitted to trying to smuggle her boyfriend into the country.
Come to Wrexham, see Wrexham, spend some money and also charge your car!

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Mar 8th, 2018

Wrexham Council are set to approve plans to install electric vehicle charging points as part of an initial two year phased programme of works that could see 10 points across the borough.

We are told around 3500-4000 people have electric or hybrid vehicles in Wrexham County Borough, and across the UK the number of electric cars went from 3,500 in 2013 to more than 130,000 by the end of December 2017.

Lead Member for Place  Environment and Transport, Councillor David A Bithell set the scene for the future of car usage in town: If you park say in Waterworld, you pay your fee and if you have one of these electric or hybrid cars you can plug in, and there is then a charge for the electric. My understanding is the charge for the electric is very very low.

Phase 1 will be focused on Council operated car parks, with the 132,500 cost funded through the Councils existing cash limited carbon budget which is supplemented from green revenue, and a second phase subject to Welsh Government grant funding that would be focused on sites of strategic transport importance.

19 sites have been assessed alongside Scottish Power who understand the existing power capacities and suitability for connection to the network  and as a result the five sites selected are:

 Waterworld Car Park

 Ty Pawb (old Peoples Market carpark)

 Ty Mawr Country Park

 Alyn Waters Country Park

 Pontcysyllte Aqueduct (Trevor Basin).

The report before councillors notes: For Phase 1 of the project we have taken the decision to install the Fast 7kW chargers, as these are the most cost effective and can connect to the grid for a lower connection cost. We have also based this decision on the concept of destination charging, as the car parks we have chosen for the installation are where EV drivers are planning on staying for around 2-4 hours, either for shopping, leisure or tourism. The 7 kW chargers also support this concept. Each Charging point can charge 2 cars simultaneously, therefore approximately 1 charging point will utilise 2 parking bays.

Welsh Government have allocated a 2m pot for this type of roll out across Wales, and Wrexham is looking to get 180,000 via an application. If successful the second phase would happen and Wrexham Industrial Estate  Redwither Tower, Llay Industrial Estate, Ruabon Train Station, Chirk  Glyn Wylfa and Wrexham Bus Station would get the charging points. Cllr Bithell told us he was hopeful of getting Wrexhams share of the 2m fund from Welsh Government.

The charging points will be via a third party supplier who will install and manage the ongoing operation of them. Through this model the Council will maintain ownership of the infrastructure and the charging points allowing for further expansion and development of the network in the future.

Cllr Bithell added they had been speaking to Wrexham Council about electric buses, and seemed keen for future bus station developments

Top pic:  Oast House archive shot of a car charger in an Ikea car park

We asked Cllr Bithell if he had an electric car, and if not, would this type of facility make it more likely for him to get one in the future.

Cllr Bithell explained he is currently not driving an electric car, although Wrexham Council do have two, but was keen to point out the BlueMotion VW is very energy efficiency. Explaining how by 2040 there is a UK wide phase out of petrol and diesel cars it would be something he is looking at in the future, as will all drivers eventually.

We have had representations from a number of people to install these points, and unless there are the facilities to charge it could be hard to purchase one. So Phase 1 of this is to promote the move to electric, with a mix of our and Welsh Government money to do it. It wont happen overnight, but 2040 is the national agenda so we have a bit of time yet.

Wrexham Council have two Nissan Leaf vehicles that are charged at the Abbey Road point, but are of older technology. Cllr David Kelly who spoke from a motor trade background pointed towards the work by Tesla on electric cars and battery technology, There has been issues around the life of batteries and the cost of replacing them, if you can. But battery technology is moving so fast, so in four to five years time you will not be looking at the same vehicles that you are now. If you look at Tesla, they are making performance electric cars, it is unbelievable, it is such a fast changing market.

Council Leader Mark Pritchard said: We in Wrexham are leading the way, now is the time for this to come and we are not waiting for Welsh Government, we are spending our own money. We have to start now, the electric car is the future and diesels and petrols of this world will not be around.

I know Welsh Government will have to come back in the future with more money, 2m divided between the authorities is not a lot of money, they are dipping their toe in the water. They will need to come back and seriously look at this.

What we have to do is start now to make sure we have the charging points for the demand.

We are telling people outside of Wrexham we have charging points, and hope that this will boost the economy as well.

Come to Wrexham, see Wrexham, spend some money and also charge your vehicle at the same time!
Mens lives at risk as Health Board refuse to fund new prostate scans that are available in south wales

This article is old - Published: Thursday, Mar 8th, 2018

North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called for the Health Secretary to address the postcode lottery which is denying men in North Wales access to a new scanner for Prostate cancer that is available free in South Wales and England.

Raising the issue in this weeks Business Statement, Mr Isherwood said he has been contacted by men who are having to fund the scans themselves because they are not available on the NHS in North Wales.

He said: I call for a single Welsh Government statement, hopefully from the Health Secretary, on multiparametric  or mp  MRI scans for suspected prostate cancer patients from NHS Wales. When I wrote to the Health Secretary regarding this, he wrote back to me last week saying that the current guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellenceor NICEdoesnt recommend pre-biopsy mpMRI, and theres no clinical consensus on the optimum design of a prostate cancer pathway including this.

When the Community Health Council for North Wales wrote to him, welcoming his commitment to expect Health Boards to revise their diagnostic pathways to incorporate these scans, if recommended by NICE in revised guidelines after April 2019, they also expressed concern that this would be too late, that patients in North Wales will continue to be left behind, and that their discussions with Urologists in North Wales suggest that we need to be developing the service now, in preparation for NICE accreditation.

The reply on this occasion was, Once the clinical benefits have been assessed, and if the guidance is updated, I would expect health boards to revise their diagnostic pathways. However, the key priorities for implementation in the current Clinical guideline on Prostate cancer diagnosis and management, from NICE, include: Consider multiparametric MRIfor men with a negative transrectal ultrasound 1012 core biopsy to determine whether another biopsy is needed.

Well, last Friday, I met patients who have had to spend large sums of money after that guidance was followed by a consultant in Wrexham, but the NHS in North Wales would not fund the essential scans that they ultimately received across the border in England.

One told me hed spent 1,020. He also told me that these scans were more than twice as accurate as those currently available. That gentleman was from Flintshire. Another gentleman from Llangollen said that the buck stops with the Welsh Government because they put the Health Board into Special Measures, and that he is amongst nine men from North Wales who have now had to pay for this despite it being available in England and south Wales. They want to meet the Minister. They say that they want him to accept that the same should be happening in North Wales, and they ask why people like him arent being refunded when theyve had to pay for this potentially life-saving procedure themselves.

Waiting for 2019 is not good enough, Cabinet Secretary. These mens lives are at risk. Its available in parts of Wales. You say you believe in a single NHS Wales. Well, please deliver on that now.

Mr Isherwood added: It is not acceptable that men from North Wales who do not have the ability to pay are left wondering whether they have cancer. As one North Wales patient told me, last Fridays announcement by NHS England that it was launching a one-stop service using MRI techniques to revolutionise prostate cancer treatment and slash the time taken for a diagnosis there was a game changer, and patients across Wales should not be left behind.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis government, working in conjunction with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Internet technology companies, is intensifying its censorship of selected websites and social media accounts.

According to recent data, 1,329 social media URLs were blocked on the recommendations of a government committee dealing with objectionable content during the first 11 months of 2017. That was an almost 38 percent increase on the 964 URLs blocked or removed for the whole of 2016. In 2014, 10 URLs were blocked, followed by 287 in 2015.

Attempting to justify the censorship, an internal note from Indias Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, declared: While social media sites are a good medium to share and exchange information, some miscreants are also using this platform to spread rumours and posting objectionable content thereby causing disturbance in the society.

Elected in 2014, Modis Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)-led government has implemented pro-investor economic reforms, including privatising public sector enterprises, slashing subsidies and further opening sectors of the economy to foreign investors.

To divert the growing opposition to its big business policies, the Modi government is whipping up Hindu communalism and ultra-right chauvinist elements to be used against the working class in general, and its political opponents in particular. Extreme-right Hindu fundamentalists have been mobilised to intimidate or silence anti-government sentiment among university students.

The ministerial notes reference to causing disturbance in the society, indicates that New Delhi is acutely nervous about the mounting dissent and any exposure of its promotion of Hindu communalism and complicity in the communal violence.

Facebook and other social media giants are fully cooperating with the governments censorship demands. According to Facebooks latest Government Requests Report, the government made 9,853 requests for data in the first half of 2017, a more than 30 percent increase from the 6,324 requests in the first half of 2016.

The company admitted restricting access to 1,228 pieces of content in response to legal requests from law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology during that time.

Facebook claimed that the majority of content restricted was alleged to violate local laws relating to defamation of religion and hate speech. But how far Facebook jumps to the governments political demands is indicated in the following:

* On September 26, 2017, Facebook blocked the account of journalist Mohammad Anas for 30 days after he shared a photograph of a traders cash memo with a message at the bottom that read: It was our mistake to vote for the lotus [BJPs symbol]. The post had been widely commented on and shared, another indication of the opposition to the government.

* The next day, the Humans of Hindutva Facebook page, which shares satirical posts criticising the government, was blocked.

* Facebook suspended the account of graphic designer and documentary film-maker Gautam Benegal in September after he shared someone elses post, entitled: Ways to identify a Hindutva [ideology of far-right Hindu extremism] sympathizer. The post criticised the BJPs promotion of Hindu extremism.

Twitter also has admitted receiving numerous requests from the government asking it to block over 100 accounts and tweets that have been found propagating objectionable content.

Most of these accounts were maintained by journalists, human rights activists and seemingly unaffiliated individuals. They included political criticism, and video and photographic exposures of government repression in Kashmir, the countrys only Muslim-majority state.

Indias Internet censorship is carried out via the Information Technology Act (ITA), passed in 2000. Section 69A is entitled power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource. Under the legislation the government can censor the Internet in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order.

Under ITA amendments passed in 2011, Internet companies must remove content deemed objectionable within 36 hours of being notified by authorities. Internet cafe owners must photograph their customers, keep copies of client IDs and browsing histories for one year, and forward this data each month to the government.

Modis government has transformed India into a frontline state in Washingtons drive to militarily and diplomatically encircle and prepare for war against China. Military and intelligence ties have been strengthened with Washington. Workers, youths and rural toilers widely oppose this shift, which poses the danger of nuclear war. The governments escalating censorship and other attacks on democratic rights seeks to suppress anti-war opposition.

Indian governments also frequently shut down public access to the Internet in parts of the country. According to internetshutdown.in, which tracks these closures, authorities cut off Internet access 70 times last year, more than double the number from 2016. Jammu & Kashmir state was subjected to the largest number of shutdowns.

These measures are part of growing attacks on democratic rights, free speech and Internet access by governments around the world.

Last July, the World Socialist Web Site revealed that Google had changed its search algorithms in order to block out left-wing, anti-war, and progressive websites.

The only way to fight Internet censorship is to mobilise the international working class. The WSWS has called for an international coalition of socialist, anti-war, left-wing and progressive websites, organizations and activists to take up this struggle. Indias censorship underscores the urgency of developing this campaign.

The author also recommends:

India increases its censorship of the Internet

[29 July 2006]
PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

This is the second part of a three-part article. The first part was posted on March 7.

There are 57 candidates for the Democratic nomination in 44 congressional districts who boast as their major credential their years of service in intelligence, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the State Department, or some combination of all three. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries that began March 6 in Texas and extend through mid-September, selecting the candidates who will appear on the general election ballot on November 6.

Aside from their sheer number, and the fact that more than 40 percent, 24 of the 57, are women, there are other aspects worth considering.

Agents, but no longer secret

First: The number of candidates who openly proclaim their role in the CIA or military intelligence. In years past, such activities would be considered confidential, if not scandalous for a figure seeking public office. Not only would the candidates want to disguise their connections to the spy apparatus, the CIA itself would insist on it, particularly for those who worked in operations rather than analysis, since exposure, even long after leaving the agency, could be portrayed as compromising sources and methods.

This is no longer the case. The 2018 candidates drawn from this shadow world of espionage, drone murders and other forms of assassination positively glory in their records. And the CIA and Pentagon have clearly placed no obstacles in the way.

Weve already reviewed the cases of Elissa Slotkin, running in Michigans 8th District, who served three tours with the CIA in Baghdad, and Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, running for the Democratic nomination in the 23rd District of Texas. There are many others.

Abigail Spanberger, seeking the Democratic nomination in a district in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, has the following declaration at the top of her campaign website: After nearly a decade serving in the CIA, Im running for Congress in Virginias 7th District to fight for opportunity, equality and security for all Americans. My previous service as a law enforcement officer, a CIA officer, and a community volunteer has taught me the value of listening. Indeed!

Spanberger worked for the CIA as an operations officer, in which capacity, She traveled and lived abroad collecting intelligence, managing assets, and overseeing high-profile programs in service to the United States. Her opponent for the Democratic nomination is a career Marine Corps pilot, Dan Ward, in one of nearly a dozen contests involving multiple military-intelligence candidates.

Jesse Colvin, running in the 1st District of Maryland, spent six years in Army intelligence, including four combat deployments to Afghanistan and a year near the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. According to his campaign biography, I am a proud graduate of the US Armys Ranger Course, the premier leadership school in the military. I am even more honored to have served in the 75th Ranger Regimentthe Army Rangers. Rangers lead in many key roles throughout the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community, and I am lucky to have served and led with men and women of this caliber.

His biography continues: As a Ranger, my four combat deployments in Afghanistan took place within a Joint Special Operations Task Force. I led intelligence teams whose work facilitated capture/kill missions of Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist leaders. I managed a lethal drone program. I ran human intelligence sources. Every day, my team and I made dozens of decisions whose outcomes carried life and death consequences for my fellow Rangers, our Afghan partners, and Afghan civilians.

Jeffrey Beals, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 19th District of New York, is now a school teacher, but writes on his website, After beginning my career as a CIA intelligence officer, I joined the State Department  I answered the call to help our country in Iraq in 2004 and became one of the longest serving US diplomats of the Iraq War. Fluent in Arabic, I faced down insurgents to set up the first diplomatic talks between our ambassador, our generals and the insurgency. I helped bring warring factions together to create a constitution for Iraq and was decorated by both the US Army and the State Department.

Unfortunately for Beals, his fundraising, $174,000 by December 31, 2017, is dwarfed by that of another military-intelligence rival for the nomination, Patrick Ryan, a West Point graduate with two tours of duty in Iraq, including a tour as the lead intelligence officer for an infantry battalion of 1,000 soldiers and officers responsible for ground operations in Mosul, according to his campaign website. Ryan had raised $906,000 by December 31, and two other candidates in that district, a politically connected lawyer and a medical device manufacturer, had raised more than one million dollars each, all seeking to challenge two-term Republican incumbent John Faso in the Hudson Valley district.

Jonathan Ebel, running in the 13th District of Illinois, served four years as a naval intelligence officer, including on the staff of the US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He now teaches religion at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Then there is Shelly Chauncey, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 5th District of Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Her website strikes a feminist note:

Shelly served her nation for more than a decade with the Central Intelligence Agency. She began her career as a secretary and worked her way up to become a counter-intelligence officer. Shelly served as an undercover officer with the CIA in Latin America, East Asia and throughout the United States, providing logistical and counter-intelligence support to operatives abroad.

The reference to undercover operations throughout the United States underscores the role of the intelligence apparatus in spying on the American people, although the CIA is, by law, prohibited from such activity.

Another campaign website touches on the domestic operations of the US spy machine. Omar Siddiqui, running in Californias 48th District, describes his background as follows: On the front lines of national defense, Mr. Siddiqui serves as a private advisor and consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on issues of national security and counter-terrorism and was formerly an advisor and community partner with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mr. Siddiqui is presently director of special projects of the FBI National Citizens Academy Alumni Association

Commanders and planners of the Iraq War

Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination and the 2008 election in large measure by presenting himself as an opponent of the war in Iraq launched under George W. Bush. Once in office, however, he retained Bushs defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert Gates, and continued the war for another three years, as well as escalating the long-running US war in Afghanistan.

It is noteworthy in this context that so many of the military-intelligence candidates for Democratic congressional nominations boast of their roles in the war in Iraq and even, in some cases, present it as the high point of their professional and even personal lives.

Thus Elissa Slotkin, already referred to above, met her future husband, the pilot of an Apache helicopter gunship, while working as a CIA agent in Baghdad. Dan McCready, a Marine Corps veteran turned clean energy multi-millionaire, backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the Democratic nomination in the 9th District of North Carolina, even claims to have found Jesus in Iraq, where he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River.

The Iraq War veterans are either officers, giving them command responsibility in one of the great crimes of the 21st century, or served in special forces units like the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs, engaging in covert operations that were among the bloodiest and most brutal of the war, or had high-level responsibility at the Pentagon or the National Security Council.

Daniel Helmer, running in Virginias 10th Congressional District against five other well-financed candidatesincluding former State Department official Alison Friedman, who has already topped the $1 million marksays remarkably little about what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, although his photograph in military fatigues is on the front page of his website. But Helmer boasts perhaps the most extensive list of endorsements by retired national security officials of any candidate in the country, including eight generals and admirals, two former deputy directors of the CIA, Avril Haines and David Cohen, and Michele Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy. What he did to earn their support is left to the imagination.

Richard Ojeda, elected as a West Virginia state senator in 2016, is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 3rd Congressional District, covering the southern third of the state. As the WSWS has reported, Ojeda has based his political career on more than two decades in the US Army Airborne, including repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he reached the rank of major. His last post was as executive director of Army recruiting in Beckley, seeking to convince youth in West Virginia and Virginia to become cannon fodder for the Pentagon.

Josh Butner, running in the 50th District of California against Republican Duncan Hunter, Jr., served for 23 years in the United States Navy where he saw multiple combat deployments, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The career Navy SEAL says almost nothing about what he actually did in the top military assassination unit, but that is to be expected. His campaign website features the slogan Service, Country, Leadership, alongside a photograph of Butner in desert fatigues.

Dan Feehan is running to succeed incumbent Democrat Tim Walz in the 1st Congressional District of Minnesota, after Walz announced his candidacy for governor of that state. From 2005 to 2009, according to his campaign biography, Feehan served as an active duty soldier and completed two combat tours of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He then joined the Obama administration, first as a White House aide, then as an acting assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon.

Andy Kim, running in the 3rd District of New Jersey, has actually raised more money than the incumbent Republican, Tom MacArthur. Kim worked at the Pentagon and as a strategic adviser to generals David Petraeus and John Allen while they were in command of US forces in Afghanistan. He then moved to the National Security Council, where he was Obamas director for Iraq for two years.

Maura Sullivan, seeking the Democratic nomination in New Hampshires 2nd District, where incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter is retiring, was a Marine Corps officer, rising to the rank of captain and deploying to Fallujah, Iraq, scene of some of the bloodiest battles and most horrific US war crimes of that war. She too joined the Obama administration as a civilian administrator at both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Pentagon.

Jason Crow is running in Colorados 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Mike Coffman, where he was selected by the DCCC as one of its top candidates in the Red-to-Blue program. He is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, leading a paratrooper platoon during the invasion of Iraq. He then joined the Army Rangers and served two tours in Afghanistan as part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force, where he rose to the rank of captain.

Matthew Morgan had a 20-year career in the Marine Corps where I would deploy routinely overseas, culminating in several senior staff roles where Id provide counsel to numerous military leaders, including the secretary of defense. He did two tours in Iraq and also worked in counterterrorism on the Horn of Africa. Now he is the unopposed candidate for the Democratic nomination in Michigans 1st Congressional District, which has switched back and forth between the two big business parties and is currently held by first-term Republican Jack Bergman.

To be continued
A much-promoted book published this week calls for Australia to join a US-led war against China, supposedly as the only way to stop the country from becoming a tribute state of the resurgent Middle Kingdom.

Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia is written by Clive Hamilton, a former Greens candidate, now university professor. The book suggests that the majority of Australia's 1.2 million people of Chinese descent are not loyal to Australia; casts suspicion over many of the country's 130,000 Chinese students, as well as many individually named academics, scientists and researchers of Chinese descent, and alleges that numbers of prominent business and political leaders are fifth columnists.

Silent Invasion

The book even claims that China plans to stake a formal territorial claim over Australia, on the spurious basis that former Chinese President Hu Jintao, addressing the Australian parliament in 2003, said a Ming Dynasty voyager discovered and settled the continent in the 1420s. China is using fake history to position itself to make a future claim over Australia, Hamilton insists.

The danger is extreme, Hamilton declares, because the two main political parties have been severely compromised by their links to Chinese benefactors and their infiltration by people whose loyalties lies in Beijing.

Hamilton also asserts that his usual publisher, Allen & Unwin, pulled out of a contract to publish his book because they were afraid of retaliation from Beijing, thus painting a picture of a sinister Chinese assault on free speech in Australia. In reality, Allen & Unwin said it was concerned about possible defamation suits.

Hamiltons extraordinary claims can be understood only in the context of preparationsmilitary, political and ideologicalbeing made for a US-led war against China. The Australian ruling class is being increasingly pressured to ramp up its involvement in these plans, as underscored by Prime Minister Malcolms Turnbulls trip to Washington last week.

Hamilton insists that Australia has no choice but to join what would almost certainly be a nuclear war by US imperialism to assert its hegemony over China.

A military standoff or engagement between the United States and China is quite possible in the foreseeable future, Hamilton states. It may be the only way to stop China annexing and controlling the entire South China Sea right down to the coast of Indonesia. A conflict in the East China Sea is perhaps even more likely, as China pushes its demand to incorporate Taiwan and take islands claimed by Japan. In these circumstances Australia would be under an obligation to back the United States.

Hamilton goes further, accusing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of seeking global domination by eclipsing the United States as the dominant economic, political and, eventually, military power.

The books language closely resembles that of the Trump administrations new National Defense Strategy, which signals war against both Russia and China. The Pentagon document alleges that China is a strategic competitor using predatory economics to intimidate its neighbors while militarizing features in the South China Sea. It accuses China of seeking Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global pre-eminence in the future.

Hamiltons book first and foremost targets Chinese Australians. Only 20 to 30 percent of them are loyal to Australia, he declaresa guesstimate supplied by a couple of unnamed Chinese-Australian friends. Hamilton warns that in the event of a war with China, local Chinese people, citizens and non-citizens alike, would create ongoing and potentially severe civil strife orchestrated by the Chinese embassy in Canberra.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that many thousands of Chinese Australians should be rounded up and detained arbitrarily, as were Australians of German, Italian and Japanese descent during World Wars I and II.

Hamiltons reliance on a handful of anti-Beijing sources typifies the books methodology. In similar unsubstantiated slurs, he brands Australias elitesincluding business leaders, former prime ministers, university vice-chancellors and journalistsas Chinas stooges who are robbing Australians of their sovereignty for economic gain.

Anyone with a commercial link to Chinas massive economy, or who even voices concerns about the ever-increasing pressure from Washington for an unconditional alignment behind war preparations against China is labeled a panda hugger. Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr is branded Beijing Bob for urging the US to accommodate to Chinas rise and for heading a university Australia-China Relations Institute that takes a positive view of the relationship between the two countries.

Those accused include a string of former prime ministers. Labors Bob Hawke allegedly laid the foundations for Beijings plans to have Australia conform to its wishes by granting asylum to Chinese students after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Hawkes successor Paul Keating frequently echoes CCP propaganda. By signing a deal to export gas to Guangdong province in 2002, Liberal-National Prime Minister John Howard shot the starting gun for the China is our future craze that now dominates elite thinking in this country, exactly as Beijing planned it. Another, Kevin Rudd, is among frequent flyers to Beijing.

Australias corporate fifth column features mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who was the greatest advocate for a 2013 northern Australia development plan that Chinese President Xi Jinping later said Chinese companies would be encouraged to participate in. Other powerful pro-Beijing voices are mining billionaire Andrew Forrest and Seven West Media proprietor Kerry Stokes. Stokes is condemned for a 2015 editorial in his West Australian newspaper that criticised the US for blatantly provocative so-called freedom of navigation operations inside the territorial waters of Chinese-held islets in the South China Sea.

Whipping up anti-Chinese chauvinism

Hamiltons book is part of a broader political and media campaign, which has escalated over the past 18 months against alleged Chinese interference in Australia. This offensive has already claimed the scalp of one Labor Party senator, Sam Dastyari, who was forced to resign over his links to a prominent local Chinese businessman. Based on this witch hunt, Turnbulls Liberal-National government is currently pushing through parliament a package of five draconian bills to outlaw any political activity connected to an overseas person or organisation, which would eviscerate basic democratic rights and prohibit many forms of anti-war dissent.

The tone was set in September 2016, when Fairfax Media senior journalist Peter Hartcher charged many business and political leaders with being pro-Beijing rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. Likewise, Hamilton denounces capitulators, appeasers and amigos.

Hamiltons book is laced with bigoted language. Chinese newspapers have fishy smells. Universities that accept donations from local Chinese businessmen are stained by dark money. Cashed-up Chinese bidders are taking homes from Australians. Too many Chinese immigrants are being allowed in, so that parts of Sydney no longer feel like Australia.

The books purpose is evident. It is to whip up anti-Chinese chauvinism to prepare for war, brand any dissent as treasonous and insist on unconditional commitment to the US, whatever the damage to economic relations with China, Australias largest trading partner.

Drawing on unverified allegations by US and Australian intelligence agencies and think tanks, Hamilton paints an absurd picture of Australia, whose military, economic and political establishment is closely integrated into that of the United States, being well on the way to becoming a puppet state of China.

We are being robbed of our sovereignty, the book claims. Australian institutionsfrom our schools, universities and professional associations to our media; from industries like mining; agriculture and tourism to strategic assets like ports and electricity grids; from our local councils and state governments to our political parties in Canberraare being penetrated and shaped by a complex system of influence and control overseen by agencies serving the Chinese Communist Party.

This stands reality on its head. The Australian ruling class has been militarily dependent on the United States since World War II. The US, not China, has Marines rotating through Darwin, bases such as central Australias Pine Gap satellite facility, which directs US bombings and other military activities from the Middle East to the Pacific, and access to all Australias air force, naval and army bases.

Washington, not Beijing, has intervened repeatedly in Australian politics, including by triggering the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975, orchestrating the ousting of Rudd in 2010 and barring Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from supplying equipment to Australian networks. Hamilton actually concedes US meddling in Australian politics but dismisses it as childs play compared to Chinas full court press.

Likewise, according to Hamilton, the flood of Chinese capital into Australia is the real threat to our sovereignty. Yet the US far outweighs China on that front also. The Department of Foreign Affairs calculates that, as at 2016, of the $3.2 trillion in the total stock of foreign investment in Australia, 27 percent was from the US and 16.1 percent came from the UK. This dwarfed China and Hong Kong combined, on 5.9 percent, even though Chinese investment had grown in recent years, from a low base.

Hamilton claims that Chinese investment is different because whatever their faults, American companies are not dictated by US strategic interests and, in any case, are constrained by a vigorous American democracy and inquisitive media holding them to account. What a lie! The US corporate and financial elite, aided by a complicit media, has been at the centre of unending wars, coups, assassinations and regime-change operations around the world for decades, and is increasingly turning to military and authoritarian methods to try to shore up its position.

Echoing Washington, Hamilton demonises the Chinese regime as a communist dictatorship. In fact, it is a capitalist government, representing the interests of billionaires, and maintaining a police state over the countrys super-exploited working class.

However, while claiming to favour freedom over authoritarianism, he calls for anti-democratic measures against Chinese workers and students in Australia. These include bans on permanent residency in Australia for anyone who engages in political agitation that favours Beijing, and the disbandment of Chinese student associations in Australia.

Moreover, in the name of democracy, Hamilton demands foreign interference laws that are even more repressive than those proposed by the Turnbull government.

Hamiltons book displays the political trajectory of an entire social layer, particularly associated with the Greens and their increasingly wealthy upper middle class constituency. The Greens once postured as an anti-war party in order to politically exploit the widespread opposition to the criminal 2003 US invasion of Iraq. But the Greens opposition to Australias involvement in that war was always based on insisting that the troops were needed in the Asia-Pacific region to defend the interests of Australia, which is an imperialist power with predatory corporate operations throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

This milieu has since continued to shift sharply to the right, openly embracing the drive to war by the US and its allies against Washingtons rivals, particularly China. Hamiltons book, and its promotion in the media, is a warning of the type of wartime hysteria that the Australian ruling class and its political servants, including the Greens, will seek to foment as the US moves to eliminate China as a strategic competitor.
An estimated 1,000 people gathered at a public meeting on February 19 in the industrial city of Newcastle, two hours north of Sydney, expressing discontent and frustration over the privatisation of the citys buses. It was standing room only, with residents spilling outside the hall.

The meeting was held just days after the New South Wales (NSW) state government announced the extension of the bus privatisation program to inner-western Sydney. It handed a major contract to private operator, Transit Systems, deepening the attack on public transport services and workers across the state.

The Newcastle meeting was organised by the opposition Labor Party, with the support of the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), in an effort to cover over their own role in the privatisation of the citys bus service and divert the hostility of the residents toward the re-election of another pro-business Labor government.

The meeting was called after numerous complaints surfaced over a new timetable in January that resulted in a further reduction in the reliability of services. One high school student told the meeting it now takes him one hour and 50 minutes to get to school in the morning and two hours and 15 minutes to get home. Yet his school is only a 40-minute drive from his house.

Bec Cassidy, who cannot drive due to a medical condition, said that the timetable change means she will have to send her daughter to another primary school for her final year.

The promised on-demand bus system was also condemned. A mother with a three-month-old son said she had ordered a bus for between 9am and 9:30am, four days before an important 10am appointment. She lives outside the on-demand area, so had to walk 20 minutes in the rain with her son to reach the bus stop, only to receive a message at 9:02am that her bus was cancelled. It took numerous phone calls before a bus finally turned up at 9:45am.

In 2016, the state Liberal-National government awarded Keolis Downer, a joint venture between Keolis, a large French transport group, and Downer Rail, an Australian railway engineering company, a 10-year contract to run Newcastles buses, ferries and a proposed light rail system. The consortium has been granted similar contracts across the country.

Since Keolis Downer took over the Newcastle operations last July there has been a sharp fall in on-time services. According to the companys own statistics, from July to November the proportion of on-time bus services dropped dramatically, from 95.24 percent to 79.08 percent. Mid-trip measurements fell from 86.92 percent to 51.93 percent.

This has particularly affected school children, university students, people with a disability and residents who cannot drive. Many people depend on the buses because Newcastle, Australias seventh largest city, with nearly half a million people, has only two train lines, neither of which now reaches the city centre since the state government shut the downtown line in 2014.

The first official speaker, RTBU division secretary Chris Preston, told the meeting that bus drivers had been underpaid since Keolis Downer took over. This was in reference to media reports last August of around 70 drivers being underpaid. Some were owed $200 from the previous fortnight, and others said they were underpaid $600 in a month.

From the drivers point of view, Preston said, the company has been in for eight months and were still trying to get drivers paid for the hours they work. Preston finished his speech by appealing to Keolis Downer management, declaring: This company has to listen to the people, it has to listen to workers.

The reality is that the trade union has played the key part in suppressing its members opposition to the privatisation. When the sell-off plans were announced in 2016, the RBTU released a statement saying it cautiously welcomed the news.

In the statement, Preston said: Its a great step forward for Newcastle transport workers who can now finally put a face to their future employer We look forward to this being a positive project for the people of Newcastle and the Hunter, with smoother public transport integration and much needed revitalisation.

The Labor Partys claims to defend public transport are no less of a fraud. Addressing the meeting, state Labor Leader Luke Foley likened Newcastles public transport to that in a third world country. Yet he merely urged the government to conduct a damn urgent review of the transport system.

At the end of the meeting, Newcastle Labor MP Tim Crakanthorp proposed a motion to reject the timetable changes and call on Transport Minister Andrew Constance to conduct a review. Significantly, no call was made to oppose the bus privatisation itself.

While in office from 1996 to 2011, state Labor governments spearheaded the sale of state assets, including freight train operators and the electricity distribution network.

In 2004, Premier Bob Carrs government commissioned a review of bus services statewide, conducted by former Labor Premier Barrie Unsworth. It recommended the expansion of private contractors, with lucrative government subsidies, in order to boost corporate profits while cutting jobs and costs.

The bus privatisations are part of a broader assault on the jobs and conditions of transport workers and the entire working class. The state government, working hand-in-glove with the RTBU, is currently trying to impose a new enterprise agreement on 9,000 NSW rail workers and Sydney train workers that will further erode basic conditions, destroy more jobs and pave the way for the contracting out of rail services.

The Newcastle meeting shows the potential for, and necessity of, a unified struggle by transport workers and passengers, and the entire working class, against this assault. That will require breaking out of the grip of the trade unions and Labor Party, which are working to continue isolating and wearing down the struggles of bus and rail workers.

The author recommends:

Australia: NSW government privatises Sydneys inner-west bus services

[16 February 2018]

Australian rail union prepares sellout in NSW train dispute

[2 March 2018]
Two recent reportsfrom the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)reveal that hospital emergency departments in the United States continue to see increases in opioid overdoses. Moreover, the population most at risk of opioid poisoning appears to be children under the age of six years old.

The AAP study begins with a dire summary, noting: The number of deaths in the United States that are attributable to opioid medications has doubled since 2000. Prescription drug poisoning has become the primary cause of injury-related deaths in the US, and prescription drug poisoning continues, despite prevention strategies, to be a major cause of morbidity among children.

Published this month, the AAP report highlights worrisome trends in the continuing opioid epidemic, especially amongst the youngest. Between 2004 and 2015, there were 3,647 opioid-related hospitalizations of children; of this number, 42.9 percent required treatment in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs). Hospitalizations requiring PICU care for opioid poisoning doubled, with 37 percent of these cases requiring mechanical ventilator support.

The AAP highlights the extensive impact of the opioid crisis, explaining, [Emergency department] visits for prescription-opioid overdose, abuse, and misuse now rival those of illicit drugs, including heroin and cocaine. While this fact has been supported by numerous studies over the past decade, the AAP report brings to light a disturbing and previously underreported facet of the burgeoning opioid crisis: among children under the age of six, opioids now account for the majority of drug poisonings.

During the study period, the mortality rate for children visiting the hospital for opioid poisoning was 1.6 percent. While deaths decreased from 2.8 percent in 2004 to 1.3 percent in 2015, the incidence of pediatric opioid exposure increased, with significant intervention required by PICUs. The AAP notes that, among those ages 1 to 19 years, the incidence of prescription opioid poisonings nearly doubled between 1997 and 2012, with the greatest increase occurring among children between the ages of one and four. This increase was accompanied, the authors point out, by an increase in adult deaths from opioid overdose.

The report concludes by pointing out that the rate of hospitalization and PICU admission for pediatric opioid ingestions is increasing. Furthermore, it asserts, measures taken to reduce opioid abuse among adults have not curtailed the incidence of pediatric opioid ingestions, and additional efforts are needed to reduce preventable opioid exposure in children.

The AAPs preliminary findings support the report released by the CDC this month which found that emergency department treatments for opioid overdose increased by 30 percent between July of 2016 and September of 2017. Increases occurred among both men and women among all age groups during this period, with the greatest rise36 percentseen among adults ages 35-54. The CDC also found that those who required emergency department care for opioid use were likely to overdose again at some point.

Urban centers witnessed the highest percentage rise in opioid overdoses, with an increase of 54 percent. Rural areas did not see the same rate of increase, but still saw a 21 percent increase in overdoses. The Midwest, which has fallen prey to sustained deindustrialization and prolonged joblessness over the past decade, saw the most startling rate of increase in overdoses at 70 percent.

In response to its findings, the CDC has outlined steps to address the rising incidence of overdose. Among its suggestions are allowing emergency department care providers to give overdose victims naloxone for future emergencies, equipping states with tools to address opioid use disorder (OUD), increasing funding for non-addictive pain management treatments, greater coordination between mental health providers and emergency care providers, and the creation of harm reduction programs.

These suggestions in and of themselves indicate that the opioid crisis will continue unabated over the next period. Community mental health care systems are virtually nonexistent in economically depressed areas. The price of Naloxone, an effective opioid antagonist, has risen sharply in step with the overdose mortality rate, as pharmaceutical companies seek to profit from the national emergency.

At the same time, the Trump administration has targeted scientific research for funding cuts and the CDC itself has had its funding slashed. Moreover, right-wing politicians, especially those in areas most profoundly affected by the opioid crisis, have framed the pandemic as a moral issue which can be resolved through law and order. These politicians do not merely ignore the social issues that contribute to opioid usethey act to dismantle the social infrastructure that would forestall and interrupt opioid use.

Just prior to releasing its report on pediatric opioid poisoning, the AAP released a separate report in response to a sharp rise of pediatric depression and suicides in recent years. The group now advises that all children ages 12 and above receive yearly depression screenings as part of their wellness visits with physicians. They also outline steps to take to create safety plans for severely depressed children that would limit their access to firearms and dangerous drugs in their homes, and ensure that they receive psychiatric treatment. Taken alongside the recent reports on opioid overdoses, this makes it clear that the social crisis in America is continuing to take a devastating toll, including in its very youngest members.
Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, was shaken on March 2 by an attack by two heavily-armed commando squads on the French embassy and the headquarters of the Burkinabe army in the center of the city. For several hours, the Burkinabe army and French special forces were locked in a firefight with the assailants. According to eyewitnesses, approximately 30 people died in the attack, including 8 Burkinabe soldiers, and 85 were wounded including civilians.

A newly-formed jihadist group, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday evening, stating the attack was retaliation for French military operations Barkhane and Sabre. The French intervention has claimed the lives of 20 GSIM members in the north of Mali. The group had already claimed responsibility for the death of two French officers in the east of Mali on February 21.

What I saw here were truly apocalyptic scenes, said Paul Kaba Thieba, the prime minister of Burkina Faso, after a visit to the army headquarters, which had been heavily damaged by a car bomb. He paid tribute to the memory of our brave soldiers who fell  arms in hand.

According to Security Minister Clement Sawadogo, the vehicle was stuffed full of explosives, the charge was enormous and caused enormous damage to the army headquarters. There was a meeting about the G5 Sahel  maybe it was being targeted, he declared during a press conference.

Press reports indicated that the explosion in fact destroyed a room where the G5 alliance of five Sahel countries aiding France in its war in Mali (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali) was supposed to meet. The location of the meeting was reportedly changed at the last minute.

The attack caused panic in the city, which returned to calm only late in the afternoon. The armed forces were deployed across the capital.

Whereas in the last two years, two previous terror attacks had claimed numerous victims in a restaurant and a hotel in Ouagadougou, the latest attack targeted some of the most heavily protected sites in the country.

It was aimed at the G5 armies that France is trying to build up as a counter-terrorist force operating across the entire Sahel region, and that Paris wants to associate to the 4,000 French troops who have for four years been in the region for Operation Barkhane, located primarily in Mali.

We have the impression that this attack was an act of retaliation by these groups, just as [French President] Emmanuel Macron is putting pressure on the G5 Sahel to organize an offensive in the border area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, declared political commentator Antoine Glaser.

Shortly after the attack, Macron stressed his determination and the full engagement of France, at the sides of its partners in the G5 Sahel organization, in the struggle against terrorist movements.

After this latest attack, it was widely remarked in the press that Burkina Faso has become a terrorist target since the removal in 2014 of former President Blaise Compaore in a French-backed putsch. Compaore relied above all on negotiations to avoid the spread of attacks by terrorist groups in the Sahel into Burkina Faso. The former president still has many supporters inside the army, which launched a putsch in 2015 and briefly toppled the transitional government supported by Paris, which then intervened militarily to re-impose it.

GSIM was created by a merger in March 2017 between several Islamist movements including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine and Al Mourabitoun, which were able to spread across the Sahel region after NATO backed Islamist militias in its 2011 war in Libya to topple Muammar Gaddafis regime. This war devastated the oil-rich country and divided it into zones dominated by rival warlords in shifting alliances with various imperialist powers. Its consequences have been to destabilize the entire Sahel.

Libya now has become an internment zone for countless thousands of refugees who are locked up in European Union-sponsored camps in horrific conditions, tortured or even sold as slaves.

Macrons reaction makes quite clear that Paris is preparing a new intensification of the war it has been waging across its former colonial empire with conditional assistance from Washington. This region, whose surface is as large as Europes, is rich in mineral and energy resources that Paris and the EU consider to be essential to the profits of European transnational corporations. This war policy led to street protests against Macrons visit in Ouagadougou on November 27, the day before the Abidjan summit announced an intensification Frances war in the region.

Like the other European powers, Paris sees the militarization of the Sahel was an important way to stop the flood of refugees who want to cross the Mediterranean. In January, the German parliament voted to increase from 350 to 1,000 the number of German soldiers deployed to the region, making Mali the largest foreign deployment of the German army.

The army of Burkina Fasoa country of 19 million people that, like Mali and Niger, are among the 20 poorest in the worldis supposed to provide a substantial portion of the new anti-terror forces of 10,000 men that France is demanding be set up.

Last weeks terror attack in Ouagadagou underscores how the neo-colonial policy of France and the EU threatens to unleash an even greater disaster across this entire region of Africa. Its population is being offered only the choice of greater misery, losing their lives in a terror attack or being used as cannon fodder in an army unit supporting the European imperialists.
Success for the national strike by 40,000 lecturers depends on mobilising the support of students as part of a struggle to win support in the working class as a whole in defence of education as a social right for all.

Solidarity pickets and protests have been organised, including occupations by students at nine universities such as Leicester, Bristol, University College London and Liverpool. They are protesting their vice chancellors role in the pension cuts proposed by Universities UK (UUK). A Twitter account, Student Solidarity Action with UCU Strike, has been created to share news of these eventstestimony to the desire for a combined fight of students and their lecturers in defence of the higher education sector.

The protests repudiate the reactionary campaign by the Conservative government and right-wing media encouraging students to enforce their rights as consumers against the lecturersincluding docking the pay of strikers to compensate for lost lessons. Most students understand that it is precisely this corporate model which underpins not only the assault on lecturers working conditions, but the introduction and hiking up of tuition fees as part of the wholesale marketisation of education. They recognise that the fight to defend lecturers conditions is bound up with a defence of education as a social right.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) supports all efforts to demonstrate solidarity between lecturers and students. But a successful struggle to build such solidarity involves a political struggle against the University and College Union (UCU), National Union of Students (NUS) and other false leaderships whose programme offers nothing to their members and the broader layers of the working class whose future depends on a defence of education.

There is a great deal of pressure being placed on young people, many of whom are entering social struggles for the first time, to identify support for the lecturers with backing the UCU, under whose auspices the strike has been called. But the UCU bears direct responsibility for the calamitous position in which lecturers now find themselves.

Whatever militant language it may be employing today, the unions record speaks for itself. UCU enabled two previous pension cuts in 2011 and 2015 and has allowed the sweeping casualisation and underfunding of the higher education sector to proceed unopposed outside of a few token strikes and protests. The issues raised in the present strike are being confined to the undoubtedly precarious position of the pensions of a small section of the workforce in order to better isolate the struggle. Not a finger is being lifted against the sweeping casualisation of academiasecond only to the hospitality industry. And no mention is made by the UCU of the broader issue of the marketisation underpinning all attacks on higher education staff.

Yet, according to a host of self-professed left and socialist groups on campus, the UCU must be seen as the unchallenged representative of lecturers and must not be criticized, let alone opposed.

Among UCUs champions is the NUS, which is little more than a stepping-stone for various well-paid opportunists and careerists to a future career in politicsespecially the Labour Partyor business. The NUS has its own filthy record of betrayal: from scrapping opposition to tuition fees to presiding over sweeping attacks on students.

In the run-up to the present strike, the NUS disgraced itself by signing up to the governments privatisation agenda for higher education to be administered by the Office for Students (OfS).

After working with the Labour Party in constructive engagement with the Higher Education and Research Bill last year, the NUS has been given places on an advisory panel to the OfS, led by NUS President Shakira Martin. Martin now complains that the governments higher education review has no student representation yeti.e., no opportunity for NUS members to embellish their CVs with yet another consultative role. Martins statement was posted on the front page of the NUS website alongside an article titled, Have you considered a career in students unions?

Given its complicity in attacks on education, the last thing the NUS intends to do is expose the UCU for its deplorable role. Both have accommodated themselves fully to the dismantling and privatisation of higher education and are primarily concerned with finding their own niche in the new order.

They are supported in these efforts by a whole range of pseudo-left tendencies masquerading as socialists and which function as an auxiliary staff to the trade unions, attempting to prop up these moribund organisations.

The International Marxist Tendencys Socialist Appeal urges the UCU to join in struggle with other public-sector unions and mobilise for a general opposition to privatisation and marketisation of public services and for the NUS to bring its membership out onto the streets to keep fighting until this vision is achieved.

The Labour Party should give political leadership to this movementputting into practice [Jeremy] Corbyns promise for free, cradle-to-grave education for all.

In a similar vein, the Socialist Workers Party lauded the presence of Frances OGrady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and Labours Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell at a UCU rally in Londondespite neither the individuals nor the organisations they represent doing a single thing on behalf of the lecturers. The TUC has presided over the most prolonged decline in living standards in generations and done everything it can to isolate disputes, from the junior doctors, to school teachers to rail conductors. The other education unionsUnite and Unisonhave limited themselves to purely verbal solidarity with the UCUs action.

Labour has said and done nothing to concretely support the strike. The Socialist Party (whose youth wing is the Socialist Students) was forced to reference the case of a single Labour MP not crossing a picket line in its desperate attempt to bolster the partys image.

For all these organisations, every reference to the class struggle is identified with a call to get behind the unions, which only paves the way for betrayal. Recently in West Virginia, more than 20,000 struck and rejected a sell-out deal agreed by their unions that various pseudo-left groups hailed as a victory. The unions then went and engineered an end the strike on virtually the same rotten terms, a betrayal which the pseudo-left groups proclaimed as a victory.

The trade unions, like the Labour Party, cannot be reformed or pushed to the left by militant pressure. They are pro-capitalist and nationalist organisations led by bureaucracies whose substantial privileges are based on their ability to police the struggles of the working class on behalf of big business. To the extent that lecturers seek to actively broaden their strike, the unions work to suppress and betray the action.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality, youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, insists that the necessary extension of the lecturers struggle throughout schools, colleges and universities as well as among public sector workers, transport and industrial workers more broadly, demands the building of independent rank-and-file committees of education workers and students, acting in opposition to the UCU, the NUS, the TUC, the Labour Party and their political apologists. It must be based on a socialist programme of opposition to all forms of marketisation and privatisation and their consequences. We call on all students, working youth and the unemployed to contact us and to join our work.
The Trump administration is expected to announce today how it will apply the tariffs on steel and aluminium outlined last week. While a full-scale global trade war has yet to break out, the major powers are manoeuvring for an impending conflict.

Yesterday, European Union Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the EU would take the case to the World Trade Organisation and work with others if Trump went ahead. The EU, she confirmed, has drawn up a list of products that would be subject to tariffs to the tune of 2.83 billion if the US proceeds. The targets could include certain types of bourbon, and food products such as peanut butter, cranberries and orange juice, as well as Harley Davidson motorbikes.

Malmstrom said she was reluctant to use the term trade war and the EU did not want this to go out of proportion. But she added: [W]e need to take certain measures if this [happens]. It risks a serious blow to the European economy and to our workers.

The European powers hope to be excluded on the basis that they are strategic allies of the US, so the national security grounds on which Trump announced the measures do not apply to them.

However, this argument, which was advanced by the now former head of Trumps National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, who resigned on Tuesday, is not cutting much ice as the America First economic nationalists assume greater control in the White House.

Trump used a press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Tuesday to single out the EU for attack. The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States, he said. They make it almost impossible for the United States to do business with them. And yet they send their cars and everything else 

This was a clear threat that if the EU responds to the steel and aluminium tariffs, then the US will hit back with moves against cars.

Canadathe largest exporter of steel to the USand Mexico have also called for exemptions from the tariff plan. The Trump administration said any such exclusion depended on the two countries bowing to US demands in the ongoing renegotiation of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC yesterday there was a mechanism for a carve out of countries from the tariffs. But that would only apply to the extent that the US was successful in renegotiating NAFTA.

In a television interview yesterday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross tried to sound a conciliatory note. Were not trying to blow up the world, he said. Theres no intention of that.

Yet the administrations actions have very definite global consequences, as the US Chamber of Commerce, one of the countrys largest business lobby groups, noted.

The US Chamber is very concerned about the increasing prospects of trade war, which would put at risk the economic momentum achieved through the administrations tax and regulatory reforms, an official statement declared. We urge the administration to take this risk seriously and specifically to refrain from imposing new world-wide tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The US actions have caused consternation in ruling political and financial circles around the world. Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe attacked the Trump measures and warned that escalation and retaliation would produce a very big shock for the world economy.

Lowe said the moves were highly regrettable and bad policy but were manageable for the world economy, provided they were confined to two industries. He expressed the hope that other countries would just sit still and do nothing, saying: Thats the hardest thing to do in some cases, because theres a political imperative in some countries to kind of respond to what is seen as an unjust action.

An emerging theme from opposition in the United States is not a repudiation of trade war as such, but concerns that the Trump administration has used a blunt instrument that hits US strategic allies rather than the real opponent, China.

In the Wall Street Journal, Greg Ip noted that the US was not the only country with a chip on its shoulder about trade. There were countless others when it came to China.

For President Donald Trump, this could be an opportunity to lead a coalition against Chinas predatory trade behaviour. Instead, he is threatening trade war with the countries that would make up such a coalition, over commodities that are much less vital to the US economy and national security than the sectors threatened by Chinas expropriation of intellectual property.

This approach was reflected in a letter from 107 House Republicans sent to Trump yesterday, expressing deep concern about the prospect of broad global tariffs on steel and aluminium.

Warning of unintended negative consequences for the US economy, the letter said: We support your resolve to address distortions caused by Chinas unfair practices, and we are committed to acting with you and our trading partners on meaningful and effective action.

Last August, the office of the US Trade Representative launched an investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act to determine whether Chinese actions in relation to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation were unreasonable and detrimental to US interests.

The investigations report is expected within weeks. Under the legislation, the president has the power to retaliate for what are deemed to be unfair trade practices. A US investigation conducted last year claimed the annual loss to the US economy from counterfeited goods, pirated software and the theft of trade secrets was at least $225 billion and could go as high as $600 billion. It designated China as the main culprit.

Bloomberg reported that under the most severe scenario being weighed, the US could impose tariffs on a wide range of Chinese imports from shoes and clothing to consumer electronics. It cited two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

China has so far adopted a low-key approach to the steel and aluminium tariffs, largely because it is well down the list of countries that export the metals to the US. But it is almost certain to respond to measures under Section 301.

Signalling that his administration is gearing up for action, Trump declared in a Twitter post yesterday: The US is acting swiftly on intellectual property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!

Financial Times economics columnist Martin Wolf this week noted that Trumps action on steel and aluminium was unlikely to be the last. It was more likely to be the beginning of the end of the rules-governed multilateral trading order that the US itself created.

This assessment is borne out by Cohns resignation after he had failed to at least moderate the measures. It is a sure sign that, whatever the final form of the steel and aluminium tariffs, their imposition signifies the start of a descent into global trade war on a scale not seen since the disastrous conflicts of the 1930s, which played a major role in creating the conditions for World War II.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, Indias principal Stalinist parliamentary party, has suffered a humiliating defeat in state elections in Tripura, losing power after 25 years in office to the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which hitherto had never been a significant political force in the state.

When the last state assembly election was held in 2013, the BJP polled less than 2 percent of the vote and all of its candidates, save one, lost their deposit.

CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury was quick to blame BJP money power and muscle power for the defeat of the CPM-led Left Front. To be sure, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP used all the tricks at their disposal to gain power in Tripura, a north-eastern state with a population of slightly under 4 million.

But the overriding reason for the CPMs defeat was it pursuit of rightwing, pro-business policies in those states where it has held office over the past quarter-century; and its support for a succession of governments at the Centre, most of them Congress Party-led, that spearheaded the Indian bourgeoisies drive to transform India into a cheap-labour haven for global capital and forge a military-strategic partnership with US imperialism.

In nearby West Bengal, like Tripura a majority-Bengali speaking state, a more than three decade-old Left Front government was ousted from office in 2011, after implementing what it itself touted as pro-investor policies. This included banning strikes in IT-enabled industries and using police and goon violence to suppress peasant opposition to the seizure of their lands for business development projects.

The CPM-led Left Front, which held 50 of the 60 seats in the outgoing Tripura assembly, has been reduced to just 16. It polled about 45 percent of the vote, down 6 percentage points from the previous election. The BJP captured 35 seats and its electoral ally, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), eight. Together they polled almost 51 percent of the vote, as support for the Congress Party, long Tripuras second party, collapsed. The Congress saw its share of the vote fall from 36 percent in 2013 to less than 2 percent.

The Tripura election leaves the CPM and its allies holding power in just one of Indias 29 states, Kerala. In the national parliament, where the Left Front was the third largest political force as recently as a decade ago, it now holds less than a dozen seats.

Since 1991, the Stalinists principal declared aim has been to thwart the rise of the Hindu communalist BJP. They have justified their systematic subordination of the working class to the bourgeois political establishmentto Congress, the Indian bourgeoisies traditional party of government, and to a slew of reactionary caste-based and regional bourgeois partiesas the only means of keeping the BJP, and its mentors in the shadowy fascistic RSS, at bay.

The end result of this policy is that the BJP is stronger than ever. With the addition of Tripura and Nagaland, another northeastern state which just held its state assembly election, the BJP holds power (or at least a share of it as part of a coalition government) nationally and in 21 of Indias 29 states, as well as the presidency and vice-presidency.

As in the 2014 national election, in which it stormed to office, winning its first-ever parliamentary majority, the BJP exploited popular anger over mass unemployment, and deep-rooted and rising poverty.

Under Left Front-rule unemployment in Tripura rose to 19.7 percent, the highest jobless rate in all of India, according to the national Labour Bureaus 2016 survey. Among tribal peoples, who make up close to a third of the states population, the unemployment rate is substantially higher.

In the aftermath of the election, Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, the general secretary of the Stalinist Communist Party of India (CPI), the CPMs principal Left Front ally, conceded, Tripuras economy is bad. Misery and poverty are increasing. So, people (were) unhappy and angry with the government.

The Left Front also invoked draconian lawsthe Disturbed Areas Act and Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)giving Indian security forces sweeping repressive powers, including immunity from prosecution for criminal acts, so as to suppress ethno-nationalist insurgencies by multiple tribal groups. The AFSPA was lifted only in 2015.

The BJP, which under Modi has imposed sweeping austerity measures, while accelerating privatization and gutting labor standards and environmental regulations, cynically promised that it would bring development to Tripura. Its 30-page manifesto, Vision Document Tripura 2018, promised Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for sectors such as food processing, bamboo and IT; employment to every household; free smartphones for youth; free education for women; free health insurance to all BPL (Below Poverty Line) households; and clean drinking water for all.

The BJP, as its wont, made various communal appeals. With the aim of bolstering its electoral fortunes in the northeast, the national BJP government amended the citizenship law to give citizenship and voting rights to Hindu migrants from Bangladesh, while systematically denying them to Muslim migrants and labelling them as invaders and potential terrorists.

Another factor in the BJP victory was its electoral alliance with the IPFT, which claims to speak on behalf of the states impoverished and historically marginalized tribal population and campaigns for a separate state within the Indian Union, Twipraland. Though the BJP was careful not to endorse the demand for a separate state, it made demagogic promised to improve the conditions of the tribal people. While all 20 reserved constituencies for Tribals were won by the Left Front in the 2013 elections, in 2018 it captured just one.

There is no doubt the BJP national leadership invested considerable political and material resources in unseating the Left Front government in Tripura. Last year it enticed 7 of the 10 Tripura state legislators who has been elected in 2013 on the Congress ticket to defect to the BJP. In the run-up to last Saturdays vote count, Modi said a BJP victory in Tripura would occasion an even bigger party celebration than did its victory last year in Uttar Pradesh, which with more than 200 million people is far and away the countrys biggest state.

As with the 2014 national election, the BJP victory in Tripura is not the product of a mass groundswell of support for the Hindu right among Indias workers and toilers. Rather it was a cry of anguish over deepening economic hardship and mounting social inequality, and a vote of non-confidence in the parties traditionally identified as progressive or leftthe Congress, as well as the Stalinistswhose promises of neo-liberal reform with a human face have proven utterly hollow.

At the same time, the growing power of the Hindu supremacist BJP, which has now clearly supplanted the Congress as the bourgeoisies principal party, must be taken as a salutatory warning as to the urgent need for the working class to take a new roadbreaking from all sections of the bourgeois political establishment, including the Stalinist CPM and CPI, and mobilizing the toilers behind it in the fight for a workers government committed to socialist policies.

The Stalinists, for their part, intend to use their debacle in Tripura as an argument to move still further right, with the claim that the growing political power of the BJP shows the need to unite all secular forcesthat is to harness the working class to the BJPs rightwing political opponents and the putrefying state institutions of democratic India.

In the run-up to the CPM national congress, which is to be held in Hyderabad next month, the party leadership is deeply divided over how far to go in renewing their alliance with the Congress Party, which the Left Front sustained in power both between 1991 and 1995 and again from 2004 to 2008.

General Secretary Yechury favours an understanding with the Congress along the lines of the explicit electoral alliance that the CPM formed with the Congress in the 2016 West Bengal state elections. He is opposed by his predecessor Prakash Karat and the majority of the outgoing CPM Politburo. They favour a different rightwing coursean alliance with various regional parties, such as the DMK in Tamil Nadu, including if these parties themselves form an electoral bloc with the Congress Party.

Both factions have declared the defeat of the BJP government is their principal immediate goal, signaling their readiness to help bring power to a Congress-led government. But the Karat faction wants the support for the Congress to be less public until the votes are counted, fearing otherwise that the Stalinists oppositional credentials will suffer further grave damage.

A senior leader of the CPMs West Bengal state complained bitterly to the press about the failure to ally with the Congress Party. The Tripura results, he declared, clearly show that the Left Front should have tried to bring together all the anti-BJP forces to defeat the BJP.

The CPI, meanwhile has stepped up the pressure on its Left Front ally, to once again explicitly align with what until recently was the premier ruling party of the bourgeoisie. As Communists, declared CPI National Secretary D. Raja, we must understand changing times and challenges. We have to change our strategy accordingly to defeat the BJP-RSS combine. Thats why we need a broader anti-BJP front.
Ursula K. Le Guin, the enormously popular writer of numerous works of fantasy and science fiction, died at her home in Portland, Oregon on January 28. She was 88 years old.

Many obituaries of Le Guin have appeared in the media, where she is rightly celebrated as a talented and original writer of science fiction and fantasy. She is also often touted as a significant subversive writer, as a feminist and as the author of one of the few utopian novels (The Dispossessed, 1974) written in the second half of the 20th century.

Ursula K. Le Guin

These accolades, for the most part, however, do not delve deeply into Le Guins work and the complexities and challenges of the period in which it was produced. It is difficult to seriously address her writing without considering the relationship of art to politics and the devastating decline in left-wing social thought over the last 40 years. Some explanation is necessary.

Le Guin was born in 1929 and raised in Berkeley, California. Her parents were both anthropologists. Her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber, was noted for his work on Native American cultures in California. Her mother, Theodora Kracaw Kroeber, wrote Ishi in Two Worlds (published in 1961 and a bestseller), about the last wild Indian in California (later made into a 1992 film, The Last of His Tribe, with Graham Greene as Ishi and Jon Voight as Alfred Kroeber). For years the book was widely read in American undergraduate anthropology classes.

Ursula attended Berkeley High School where a classmate of hers was the innovative science fiction writer Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle, 1962). She was exposed through her parents and their friends to some of the finest achievements of 20th century art and literature. When she was nine or 10, she watched Diego Rivera on a scaffolding, painting murals at the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939 and 1940). As a young woman, she met writer John Steinbeck, the uncle of a close friend, whose The Grapes of Wrath (1939) late in life she referred to as the great American novel.

She attended Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she obtained a masters in medieval literature. On a Fulbright residence in Paris she met and married Charles Le Guin, who survives her, and with whom she raised three children.

In 1966 Le Guin published her first novel, Rocannons World, at a time when science fiction was rapidly changing under the influence in part of a New Wave (imagistic, highly metaphoric  inclined more towards Psychology and the Soft Sciences than to Hard SF [science fiction], The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction), identified with authors and editors such as Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, and Philip Jose Farmer. These writers were testing out new themes and paying more attention to aesthetics.

This was also the period in which J. R. R. Tolkiens work reached a broad audience and fantasy began to grow as a genre. Two other Le Guin novels, Planet of Exile (1966) and City of Illusions (1967) followed, and then in 1968, her fantasy A Wizard of Earthsea, appeared, written, at the suggestion of her publisher, for a younger audience.

This launched the Earthsea series, which is widely regarded as her best work, or, at any rate, the most popular, and included after A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), Tehanu (1990), and The Other Wind (2001), along with related short stories. They tell the story of a wizard, Ged and his travels in a giant archipelago called Earthsea, populated by peoples of many cultures and languages, intelligent dragons and creatures from the darkness. The books relate Geds deeds from his beginnings as a goat-herd to an archmage [powerful magician or learned person] in old age.

J. R. R. Tolkien

The Earthsea novels can be read by adults with pleasure: they possess the charm of fairy tales, and Ged encounters many fanciful places and people. Le Guin brought to bear on these books much of her knowledge of early human cultures and mediaeval romance. They are some of the first works to assimilate and attempt to duplicate the type of fantasy Tolkien produced: highly developed worlds that had a history and an internal logic to their religions, cultures, and practice of magic.

Ged moves over the course of the novels from a youthful egotism and bravado to a patient understanding of people and places later in life. The lives of ordinary peasants and fisher-people are treated with sensitivity. Le Guin gave play to her best qualities as a writer: an eye for fictional detail and rhythmic language, and a general compassion for people. After Tolkiens The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and T. H. Whites The Once and Future King (1938-58), the Earthsea novels remain the best works in modern heroic fantasy in the English language.

Le Guin is also well known for several works of science fiction that exhibit serious social concerns, beginning with her novella The Word for World is Forest (published in 1972 but written in 1968), The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Lathe of Heaven (1971) and The Dispossessed.

The Word for World is Forest treats a brutal colonial invasion by Earths humans of a culture on a less developed planet, and the resulting war of liberation by the latters native species. The novella originally appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), the second volume of the anthology of innovative and experimental science fiction edited by Harlan Ellison. Le Guin wrote it out of disgust with the American war in Vietnam.

Le Guin and Harlan Ellison in 1984 (Photo credit Pip R. Lagenta)

She later worried that the novel was too preachy. It does strike one today as being aesthetically marred by simplistic and single-note earthling characters and overly noble and sympathetic native rebels, whose cultures resemble those of Native American and Australian peoples, borrowed somewhat uncritically.

But it was with The Left Hand of Darkness, which she termed a feminist work, that Le Guin began to suggest that gender played a prominent, if not the determining, role in social development.

In the novel, an emissary from Earth makes first contact with the inhabitants of a planet, Gethen, whose inhabitants are normally asexual except for about once a month when they can become sexually active, sometimes as males, sometimes as females.

Le Guin says that she began the book as a thought experiment. I eliminated gender to find out what was left, she wrote in an essay about the work, Is Gender Necessary? (1976). But far from eliminating the role of gender in society, or at least in the society she and her readers inhabited, the novel elevates it to world-historical proportions.

For example, while there is personal, and sometimes even localized, violence on Gethen, there are no large-scale wars because male aggression is missing. As she remarked later, To me the female principle is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic  It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.

Writers with left-wing views certainly faced difficulties in the 1960s and early 1970s. Socialism was still largely identified with the USSR and the Communist Parties (and perhaps Maoist China), or the social democratic parties and unions. Powerful bureaucracies by and large sat on the working class and prevented its independent activity.

The radical artist, not entirely due to his or her fault, was largely cut off and distant from broad layers of the population. The left intellectual atmosphere was dominated by a search for some substitute for the working class as the agent of social changestudents, intellectuals, Third World peasants, Castroite guerrillas, etc.or, in Le Guins case, the pacific-anarchistic female principle.

At the same, these were also years of substantial struggles by the working class and by colonial peoples against imperialism, above all in Vietnam. The imperialist bloodletting in that country had a radicalizing influence on the thoughts and feelings of many writers and artists. Le Guin herself refers to her anger and frustration with the world in 1968, whose first product was The Word for World is Forest.

In a significant remark about The Left Hand of Darkness in 1988, Le Guin said, I was interested in writing a novel about a society that had never had a war. That came first. The androgyny came second.

The Left Hand of Darkness

As a work of art, the novel is damaged by its feminism. The genderless society doesnt seem much different from our own, but the novel constantly strains to elevate gender through the eyes of its Earthly protagonist, who is trying to understand Gethen sexuality. The existence of repressive monarchical and totalitarian states makes no sense given the absence of male-generated violence, a fact Le Guin herself recognized later.

But other aspects make the novel good science fiction: the means by which Gethens cultures have adapted to a perpetual winter, for example, is effectively drawn. Le Guin also writes with a genuine sensitivity to her protagonist, the emissary from Earth, a man who must come to an alien world by himself and attempt to persuade its leaders to join a peaceful league of worlds. There are dramatic scenes of adventure and survival, a trip in subzero temperatures across a glacier, a prison camp.

The novel struck a chord. It won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the top honors in the science fiction world, in 1969 and established Le Guin as a major figure in the genre.

Le Guins failed search for the social axis on which society turns is even more pronounced in The Dispossessed. The novel about the human physicist Shevek is told in the form of alternating chapters about his life in two different civilizations. One set of chapters takes place on his home world, the anarchist society on Anarres, a moon of the planet Urras, from which the anarchists, followers of a theorist named Odo, emigrated about 200 years before the start of the novel. The second set takes place during Sheveks visit on a scientific mission to a university in A-Io, a wealthy capitalist nation on Urras itself.

The Dispossessed

The scenes on Anarres describe the childhood and youth of a precocious boy growing up and becoming a leading scientist in an anarchist-communalist society. Le Guins depiction of Sheveks challenges of career and personal relationships are well drawn. But none of the characters on Anarres strikes one as being a new kind of person molded by new kind of society. Anarresti society, overall, seems to resemble an Israeli kibbutz or one of the utopian experiments of the 19th century.

That is, the conceptions about life and society in Anarres and Urras are entirely divorced from a genuine understanding of social development, both by the characters and by the author. The material and historical foundations of Urresti and Anarresti society are not so much as hinted at.

On Anarres, there is no private property and work is regulated by a combination of personal preference and lottery-type assignments. What holds this society together, though, is not material realitybecause this is a desert planet on which there is often scarcitybut good intentions and ideas. And even with those, certain syndicatesvoluntary associations of peopleplay more important roles than others and greed and privilege enter through the back door, despite peoples best efforts.

The nation-state of A-Io on Urras, on the other hand, resembles the America of the 1970s, or rather, what a middle-class radical observer found especially objectionable at the time: its consumerism, its gender roles, its unjust foreign interventions. Compared to A-Io, the communal austerity on Anarres appears to be a virtue.

There is one set of scenes, though, that would be unlikely to find its way into the fiction of the last ten or twenty years. One of the servants assigned to Shevek at the university tells him that the working people find Anarres a political inspiration. We had about enough, the man says. Let somebody go free from this goddamned prison we live in.

Shevek finds out from this man that there are revolutionaries among the poor of A-Io. He then escapes from his university handlers and contacts the working-class anarchists who are motivated by Odos ideas. He speaks at a mass workers antiwar demonstration that is bloodily suppressed by the police. Shevek is nearly killed, too, and hides for days in a cellar with a wounded demonstrator.

These scenes do show an active, political working classvirtually absent from art and literature today. But it is doomed to defeat. Shevek then makes his own way with an invention, based on his theories, that will help unite the inhabited planets in the galaxy.

As with The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guins revulsion with the Vietnam war was a starting point for this book. She noted in a 2017 introduction to the work, I started by reading a whole mess of utopias and learning something about pacifism and Gandhi and nonviolent resistance. This led me to the nonviolent anarchist writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman. With them I felt a great, immediate affinity.

Le Guin in 2008 (Photo credit Gorthian)

The great historical problem of the nature of the Soviet Union and the role of Stalinism lurk in the background here as well. Besides wealthy capitalist A-Io, Urras contains another nation-state, Thu, that speaks in the name of the working class, but is a totalitarian regime. Anarchist Anarres itself, established peacefully by emigrants from Urras, implicitly raises questions about the validity of revolution, the working class, and Marxism.

The work, as a modern utopia, has sparked a small academic industry that extols precisely the weaknesses of Le Guin as an artist. Unfortunately, Le Guins work has popularized utopianism and anarchism far more and longer than they deserve.

It cant be said that her social conceptions helped her develop as an artist. One later novel, Lavinia (2008) is a feminist retelling of scenes from Virgils Aeneid from the point of view of Lavinia, the Italian princess whom Aeneas eventually marries when he founds Rome. While it is faithful to Virgil in many ways, the novel tends to fall flat when Lavinia has conversations with the poet, and apparently sees herself as a character in a poem.

Le Guin continued to associate herself with feminism and anarchism: In 2011 she wrote an introduction to a collection of essays of the anarchist Murray Bookchin that was suffused with pessimism about the possibility of changing the world.

Nevertheless, Le Guin was a talented and sincere artist, and many of her works, particularly those that are less self-consciously political, such as her Earthsea books, will no doubt continue to please readers for a long time to come.
SNYDERPhi Theta Kappa has again awarded Psi Zeta, the Western Texas College chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, five star status.

The Psi Zeta chapter of Phi Theta Kappa here at WTC has been extremely active this year, noted Jennifer Evans, Psi Zeta Chapter Advisor and Director of Library Services.

The students devoted a lot of time and energy to reach this status with the organization.

According to Phi Theta Kappas website, chapters must complete the honors societys Five Star Chapter Plan to achieve five star status. The Plan has five levels of engagement that progress from local, campus involvement to regional involvement to international involvement. This plan, which reflects the scholarly ideals of Phi Theta Kappa, serves as a blueprint for developing a strong chapter and for earning local, regional, and international recognition.

It took a lot of time, but it was worth it, said Stephanie Stephens, WTCs Psi Zeta chapter president.

On a personal level, involvement in the program educates chapter members in the importance of deadlines and organizational skills.

Especially at WTC, many people are working and involved in sports, added Stephens. Its hard to find time to work together, but we do. Plus, its fun!

Psi Zeta is also taking their involvement a step further: the chapter President is running for the office of Texas Regional President. The election will be held during the 2018 Phi Theta Kappa Texas Regional Convention in Houston March 8-10. If Psi Zeta wins, Stephens will represent the chapter.

Phi Theta Kappa is the international honors society for community colleges and two-year academic programs. Membership in the organization is by invitation only. Students invited to join have attained a 3.5 GPA and must maintain a cumulative average 3.0 to remain in good standing.

The Psi Zeta chapter at Western Texas College was chartered on February 11, 1972. 2017 marks the third consecutive year that Psi Zeta has achieved five star status.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - The man police named as the suspect in Monday's shooting incident on Putnam Street in Terre Haute has a lengthy criminal history. Also, a man has been arrested by Terre Haute Police for lying to detectives about what happened that afternoon.

Tersh Scamihorn, 44, will be charged with False Informing when he returns to court on Monday, March 12th. We obtained a copy of the probable cause affidavit filed in his case.

On Tuesday the 6th, Scamihorn requested to speak with detectives about the shooting. Scamihorn indicated to police that he has only been at the home at 2124 Putnam a short time. He also said that he was speaking with Ronald "RD" Lawrence when someone knocked at the back door. Scamihorn said he answered the door and was brushed aside by a man with lots of tattoos who went by "Mikey." Scamihorn said RD and Mikey began arguing, so he left as he wanted no part of it.

It was after he left the home Scamihorn told police he heard shots fired, so he left the residence. Scamihorn said he was not aware that a woman was at the house.

Lawrence told a much different story from the hospital on March 5th. He said Scamihorn and another man came over that day to help him move. Amanda Kerns came later that morning to talk to Lawrence. She told him that her ex-boyfriend, Mikey Reynolds, had threatened to kill her because she had broken up with him.

Lawrence said he answered the door, not Tresh. He also said Reynolds fought with him upon entering the house and shot him. As Lawrence tried taking the gun from Reynolds, he was shot two more times, including once in the back. Lawrence was making his way out of the home when he saw Reynolds go into the bedroom where Kerns was. Lawrence told police he heard several gunshots from that room.

Lawrence said he saw Tersh was driving in his pickup with another man when he asked them for help and that he had been shot. Lawrence then said Tersh drove away, forcing Lawrence to seek help from a neighbor. He did see Reynolds get into a gold Saturn and drive off from the scene.

Kerns died as a result of this shooting. Coroner Dr. Susan Amos said she died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

So far, police have only confirmed that Mikey Reynolds, 36, is the suspect in the shootings that killed Kerns and left Lawrence critically injured. Police Chief John Plasse did tell us they suspect Reynolds is the man behind the 20 hour standoff with police between two homes: Reynolds's home on First Avenue and another home on Fourth Avenue.

Reynolds has a lengthy criminal history, including three crimes that left him incarcerated.

In January 2000, he was arrested after a botched armed robbery attempt at a home in northern Vigo County. He and another man dressed in black and wore ski masks. The homeowner told police she recognized Reynolds by his eyes and voice.

He was also armed with a rifle. A man who lived in the home tried taking the weapon from Reynolds, who fired several rounds inside the home, striking no one. Reynolds and his accomplice left with nothing, however, they were arrested a short time later.

According to records from the Indiana Department of Corrections, Reynolds served time from September of 2000 until May of 2005 for burglary, attempted armed robbery, and criminal recklessness charges.

He also served time for a 2014 conviction for Dealing Methamphetamine. In 2011, he also spent considerable time in jail awaiting a charge of possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. The case resolved with Reynolds being sentenced to time served and probation.

Reynolds was also on probation at the time of the shooting on Putnam Street. In fact, Division 5 Judge Michael Rader issued a warrant for the arrest of Reynolds in December of 2017. Reynolds was accused of violating the terms of his probation.

According to court records in that case, Reynolds tested positive for methamphetamine four times during November and December of 2017. He also tested positive for opiates in November. Reynolds' probation officer also said he failed to show up for urine screens four times in those same two months. Reynolds also missed an appointment with the probation officer on December 6th.

According to Reynolds' Facebook page, he and Kerns started dating not long after his second release from prison in January of 2016. Kerns indicated on Facebook she ended the relationship on March 1st. She also said she "hadn't felt this happy" in months.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WTTV)  Hoosiers can pay their respects Thursday to a fallen Boone County deputy.

The visitation for Deputy Jacob Pickett is from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Crown Hill Cemetery Funeral Home, 700 W. 38th St. in Indianapolis. Pickett was wounded Friday and kept on life support through the weekend for organ donation.

Pickett will be laid to rest Friday. Organizers expect 2,000 people at his funeral service, which is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at Connection Pointe Christian Church in Brownsburg. Gov. Eric Holcomb will be among those in attendance.

After the funeral, a procession will transport Pickett through many communities where he served as well as past White Lick Creek Elementary, where his widow is a teacher. The governor directed flags to be flown at half-staff in in Boone, Hendricks, Tipton and Marion counties in honor of Picketts sacrifice.

The deputy will be laid to rest in the Heroes of Public Safety section of Crown Hill Cemetery.

This story was originally posted by our news partner WTTV CBS 4 in Indianapolis
BRAZIL, Ind. (WTHI) - Another scam is hitting the Wabash Valley, and this time it's targeting business owners.

Scammers are becoming more and more brave, finding out where business owners operate, and how they can steal their money.

John DeWeese Senior from John & John Associates in Brazil says he fell victim to a scam on Wednesday morning.

"She said 'This is just a courtesy call, but we are letting you know that your electric is about ready to be shut off today'," said DeWeese.

A notice from someone who claimed to represent Duke Energy.

The person on the phone said DeWeese's company would soon lose all power if he didn't pay right away.

DeWeese was afraid of what could happen to his business, so he immediately paid the $800 they had asked for.

Normally, his secretary would have taken care of the bills. She would have known if they were overdue.

However, his secretary was not at work that day, so he had no way of knowing for sure.

The scammers were brave enough to call back within an hour, saying DeWeese owed even more money.

"'You're going to need to pay us about another $2700', and I said, 'Oh my gosh'," said DeWeese.

DeWeese went back to the bank to withdraw the money to pay.

"About that time it dawned on me, and I looked at her and I said, 'I'm getting scammed'," said DeWeese.

Rick Burger from Duke Energy says the company does not call for money.

"Duke Energy never calls up and says 'We demand a payment now or you're going to be shut off'," said Burger.

Burger also says customers will receive a notice by mail or e-mail if their bill is overdue.

If you do get a call like this, it's important to call Duke Energy yourself and make sure.

"I'd just say 'Okay give me ten to fifteen minutes and call me back'. They may not call you back, or if they do, at least you're going to check with us and confirm. Most of the time it's going to be a scam," said Burger.

DeWeese said while falling victim is upsetting, it served as an important reminder for others.

"It hurt knowing that I lost eight hundred bucks at the moment," said DeWeese.

Duke Energy offers a hotline you can call if you are questioning a call.

That number is 1-800-521-2232.

It's also important to report a scam to local law enforcement.
13 Action News spoke with a relative of Kuwait Abdul-Rahim. The man did not want his identity released because of his job. The family is grateful the child was found safe.

"I'm pretty sure he doesn't know exactly what's going on, but I'm sure he feels it," said the relative.

The relative also provided new details about what occurred in the moments before Amir Abdul-Rahim allegedly shot a neighbor.

"He mentioned to him... you probably want to take the baby inside," said the relative, "...he just flipped a switch."

Right now, police continue to search for the suspect. The relative wants Abdul-Rahim to surrender to detectives.

"The sheriff in Clark County has promised to catch criminals who commit violent crimes and it could end a nasty way," he said.
JACKSON, Miss. (WTVA) -- A Clay County man has lost an attempt to have his life sentence in a murder conviction thrown out because the judge didn't properly review the court records.

Joey Montrell Chandler, 32, was convicted of murder in the 2004 shooting death of his cousin, Emmitt Chandler.



Investigators say the shooting happened after Joey confronted Emmitt about marijuana stolen from his vehicle and shot him twice.

He disposed of the weapon in a pond.

Chandler was 17 at the time of the shooting and in 2014 appealed the sentence because of rulings about sentences when the offense was committed by a juvenile in federal court.

The Mississippi Supreme Court allowed Chandler to pursue a hearing in Clay County Circuit Court on resentencing.

Following the a 2015 hearing, the judge once again sentenced Chandler to life in prison.

Chandler appealed again claiming the judge didn't properly look at his case and take into considerations all the factors before handing it down.

On Thursday, the Mississippi Court of Appeals says the judge was thorough in the six page sentencing document filed in the court record and upheld the court's ruling.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  The Mississippi Legislature is considering a bill to set criminal penalties for people who make terroristic threats.

The Senate passed House Bill 1264 Wednesday. The Mississippi Terroristic Threats Law defines terroristic threats and establishes felony charges.

Terroristic threats are defined as threats of violence with the "intent to terrorize, intimidate or disrupt a governmental function." Such threats could be punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Senate amended the bill to include threats against schools and school functions. The bill heads back to the House for more debate.
GRENADA, Miss. (WTVA) -- Charges have been filed against a Grenada County man who was shot by a deputy during a weekend chase in parts of Webster and Grenada County.

Webster County Sheriff Tim Mitchell says Robert Salley, 44, of Gore Springs landed his vehicle in a ditch during a high speed chase.

When his deputies went to arrest him, Mitchell says Salley attempted to run over then and that's when the deputy opened fire.

Salley suffered a gunshot wound to the shoulder following the Saturday incident.

He says Salley managed to drive to his mother's home and was found hiding underneath a truck.

He was treated for the injury and released to Grenada County authorities who carried him to jail.

Mitchell says the pursuit started when Salley drove through a checkpoint on Old Walthall Road.

He says Mitchell is charged with felony fleeing and is currently free on bond.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident.

The deputy has been placed on restricted duty while the investigation is underway.

Attorney Carlos Moore says he is representing Salley and questions the need for a deputy to use his weapon in the incident.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (The News Service) - Floridians will change their clocks this Sunday.

But that could become a thing of the past under a proposal that cleared the legislature this week.

The Senate voted 33-to-2 to give final approval to a measure intended to eventually keep Florida on daylight-saving time throughout the year.

The next stop is the desk of Governor Rick Scott, whose office said he will review the proposal after formally receiving it.

If Scott signs the bill, Congress would ultimately be responsible for approving the proposed change.

Bill Sponsor Greg Steube says the idea of year-round daylight-saving time will help the state's tourism industry, as people would be able to stay out later with the additional sunlight.

"Once we move the clocks forward in March, if then Congress amends the US code to allow states to opt into Daylight Saving Time, then when we move the clocks forward in March," Steube said. "We would stay in Daylight Saving Time."

Hawaii and most of Arizona currently don't participate in switching from standard time to daylight-saving time and back.

They stay on standard time throughout the year. Daylight-saving time will start Sunday this year and end Nov. 4.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Florida Sheriff's Association sent a letter to lawmakers, calling for more state funding.

The funding is to ensure schools have a certified law enforcement officer on site.

We spoke with Leon County Sheriff, Walt Mcneil, who says, all Leon County Schools currently have an assigned officer.

He says, it's important to dedicate law enforcement officers for all school grounds.

"The fact of the matter is that you need trained persons who are specifically gauged with taking care of issues of security," Mcneil said. "And protecting folks as opposed to someone whose job really is to educate and to teach and not so much involved in law enforcement."

This request is in response to legislation filed after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month.
KENNESAW, GA (CNN)  As the debate over guns continues in Washington, DC, theres one city in the United States where technically the law says a gun is a requirement: Kennesaw, GA.

A suburb of Atlanta, Kennesaw has a law on the books that reads every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm.

"If you're going to commit a crime in Kennesaw and you're the criminal, are you going to take a chance that that homeowner is a law-abiding citizen?" Mayor Derek Easterling said.

The law, however, isnt actually enforced, and even though some assume its ancient, it passed in 1982.

It was meant to be kind of a crime deterrent, and it was also more or less a political statement because the city of Morton Grove, IL, had passed a city ordinance banning handguns from their city limits, said Lt. Craig Graydon, commander of the Kennesaw Polices Criminal Investigations Division.

Thirty plus years later, the law is still on the books, and some residents, like Wayne Arnold, are grateful.

"It gives me the ability to protect myself as opposed to being somewhere where you weren't allowed to have a firearm or it was frowned upon, Arnold said.

As communities across the country are re-examining their relationships with guns in the wake of deadly mass shootings like Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs and Parkland, Graydon says its all about whats best for the residents.

While Kennesaw is one of Georgias safer cities  with only one murder in the last six years  Graydon says the gun law may only be one reason why.

"We can't say that just that gun law contributes 'x' number of percent to why we have a low crime rate. It may be part of it, but it needs to be looked at from a whole picture, he said.

City officials say their relationship with the community is a big factor in public safety.

"They choose to carry, or they choose not to, Easterling said.

Kennesaw receives calls from places all over the country and as far away as Norway, with everyone curious about a place where firearms are literally written into its existence.

"People would get the image that it's the Wild West, where everybody walks around with a firearm strapped to their side, and it's not like that, Arnold said.

In fact, Easterling says in Kennesaw, the residents love everybody.

Copyright 2018 CNN. All rights reserved.
Parkland, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - A grand jury in Florida has returned a 34 county indictment against Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz.

He's charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder in the first degree and 17 counts of attempted murder in the first degree.

Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14th with an AR-15 and started shooting, killing 17 people.

Police say Cruz confessed to the mass murder.

The couple Cruz had been living with was in court on Wednesday after being subpoenaed to testify.

An attorney for the Snead family says they were just trying to help Cruz when they took him in.

"They tried to do the right thing," Attorney Jim Lewis said. "They tried to provide a home to this young man who lost his mother, didn't have a home, and nobody saw this coming."

Cruz's public defender says he will plead guilty if prosecutors take the death penalty off the table, which would mean a life prison sentence.

The Broward County State Attorney has not announced a decision on the death penalty.

Cruz remains behind bars in the Broward County Jail, segregated from the other inmates for the time being.
BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) - Police confirm that a person of interest is in custody after a Huffman High School student was killed during a shooting at the school.

"Detectives of the Birmingham Police Department have been working through the night reviewing evidence, video and statements on the tragic incident that took place at Huffman High School yesterday," Lt. Peter Williston said in a statement. "Due to their diligent work a person of interest has been taken into custody."

Birmingham Police Chief Orlando Wilson confirmed that 17-year-old senior Courtlin Arrington was killed. Another 17-year-old was shot. Both were sent to UAB Hospital, where Arrington was pronounced dead.

The male was treated and released.

Huffman High School is closed as officers review the school's security strategy.

Birmingham police are calling the incident a death investigation.

"We are not saying he shot her or did not shoot her. We are saying shots were fired," Wilson said during a press conference.

Wilson said the firearm used is in police possession. The Chief said it is unknown what caused the alleged shooting.

Huffman High School, Wilson said, has cameras inside the school.

Students interviewed by WBRC said the bell rang at 3:40 p.m. and the gunshots occurred around 3:45 p.m. The school was placed on lockdown.

A third person, who is not a student, was injured, but it is unknown to what extent.

Huffman High School is closed Thursday.

Birmingham City Schools released the following statement:

Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal today at Huffman High School. The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene. Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting.

Governor Kay Ivey released the following statement:

I am saddened to learn about the death of the Huffman High School student. I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and, even though this was an accident, it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus.

Congresswoman Terri A. Sewell, D-AL, released the following statement.

My heart is breaking for those hurt and killed in the shooting at Huffman High School. said Rep. Terri Sewell. I cannot imagine the grief of the parents who lost their little girl today to gun violence. She was a part of our communitys future. Tonight, my prayers are with her, the other victim, and their families. We have a responsibility to protect our schools from gun violence, accidental or otherwise. Every year more students and teachers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters are killed in school shootings  we need to do everything in our power to make this incident the last. We cannot settle for symbolic gestures in Congress when our childrens lives are at stake.

This is the second shooting at Huffman High School in the last two years.

Please check back for updates as we gather additional information.

Copyright 2018 WBRC. All rights reserved.
MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - A shocking turn of events in the Madison County deadly shooting.

According to investigators, the woman shot dead and the man shot in the leg, were shot by a homeowner they were trying to rob.

The female victim was tied up and the suspects beat the male victim. The male victim was able to retrieve his gun and shot two of the suspects.

Of the four suspects involved Keosha Lewis and Selena Murray were uninjured. Jeremiah Davis was found away from the house on Mandina Avenue with a gunshot wound to the hip. Jamescya Pringle, was driven to the hospital by a bystander, but was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Police tell me that this type of criminal activity is unusual for Madison, but law enforcement was able to handle it well.

"The publics really had not much of an idea as to what was going on. Everything was happening so fast," said Madison County Police Chief Reggie Alexander. "We got the calls and due to the professionalism of the communication center and our officers on the street responding, everything kind of worked out."

This is still an ongoing investigation, but charges are pending for Lewis, Murray, and Davis.

Davis, the suspect who was shot in the hip is expected to make a full recovery. The male victim is also recovering from his injuries, but not hospitalized. The female victim was uninjured.

MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The Madison Police Department has released the names of the three people in connection to Wednesday's fatal shooting in Madison County.

Keosha Lewis, 20, and Selena Murray, 18, are charged with armed burglary. While, charges of felony murder and armed burglary are pending against Jeremiah Davis, 21.

Yesterday morning four suspects entered a home on Mandina Avenue occupied by a male and female victim. The suspects tied-up the woman and beat the man.

Davis was armed with a gun and threatened the victims. The male victim was able to retrieve his firearm and shoot the suspects, killing one and injuring another.

Lewis and Murray were not injured, fled the home and were arrested a few hours later.

A bystander drove suspect Jamescya Pringle, 19, to Madison County Memorial Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. Davis, who was shot in the leg, was later located and transported to the hospital.

Lewis and Murray were booked into the Madison County Jail. Davis remains hospitalized and is expected to make a full recovery.

The male victim is recovering from his injuries, while the female victim was not injured.

MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Authorities have arrested three people in connection to Wednesday's fatal shooting in Madison County.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says that the arrests come after a woman was found shot to death in an car abandoned at the Madison County Memorial Hospital.

A second victim also was found injured.

FDLE has not identified those arrested but the Madison Police Department is expected to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. Thursday regarding the investigation.

We are sending a reporter to the press conference. Stay with us for updates.

MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Authorities are investigating the death of a woman who was found shot in parked car outside the Madison County Memorial Hospital Wednesday morning.

The Madison Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are heading up the investigation. They say the incidents started at a home on Mandina Avenue around 10 to 11 a.m.

Residents say they heard gunshots several streets away. MPD then began investigating the scene and questioning neighbors.

Local schools, daycares, and even the hospital were put on lock down as a precautionary measure, but that was soon lifted.

At Madison County Memorial Hospital, however, law enforcement remains on scene after finding a deceased woman who had been shot and abandoned in a vehicle.

Shortly after, police were able to catch a man hiding in a resident's yard, only blocks away from Mandina Avenue.

"We had no idea. No idea. My daughter was downstairs. I had fixed her breakfast. I was upstairs getting ready," said Shay Bridges, a Madison resident. "I was just blown away. Absolutely blown away Just traumatizing, devastating experience. I was so thankful he didnt try to come into the house thankfully he hid."

Investigators note the man had a gunshot wound and is now being treated at the hospital for a non-life-threatening injury. The incidents appear to be related.

Police are continuing to search for two others they believe were involved in the incident. The investigation is ongoing.

We will provide additional information as it becomes available.

MADISON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Schools in Madison County were on lock down following a fatal shooting.

The lock downs have since been lifted.

The Madison Police Department says they got the call about the shooting at 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday. They say it happened at a home on Mandina Street.

Police say one is confirmed deceased and another is in critical condition after being shot in leg.

Victims of the shooting have arrived at the hospital and as a precautionary measure lock downs were initiated in the immediate area surrounding the the Madison County Memorial Hospital to include James Madison High School, NFCC, and daycares.

The lock downs have since been lifted. The Madison County Sheriff's Office stresses that there is no active shooter and say that there is no identifiable threat in the area.

Both MPD and FDLE are currently investigating.

This is a developing story. We have a reporter on the way to the scene. Stay with us for details.
THOMAS CO., GA (WALB) - Thomas County officials have found a woman wanted for stealing more than $31,000 from a Parent - Teacher Organization.

Lesley Christmas, 30, is in custody in Wakulla County, Florida, according to Captain Steve Jones of the Thomas County Sheriff's Office.

Christmas was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison after she stole more than $31,000 from the Jerger Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization in Thomasville.

Christmas only had to serve four years behind bars, and the rest of her sentence on probation.

Deputies said she has since left the Thomasville area without notifying proper authorities and has failed to pay restitution.

Copyright 2018 WALB. All rights reserved.
Bill allowing hunters to wear florescent pink up for second reading today

WORLAND  Wyoming Senate File 61, a bill which would allow people hunting in Wyoming to wear either florescent orange or florescent pink passed through the Senate on Feb. 19.

On Wednesday, according to Rep. Jamie Flitner, the bill was laid back one day on second reading in the House. It will be considered today on second reading.

Flitner said Wednesday, For me honestly, this bill is about safety and possible dollars injected into our retail sector.

LEGISLATOR COMMENTS

During the Committee of the Whole [first reading] co-sponsor Rep. Flitner (R-Greybull) explained that scientific data supports that florescent pink in the field is more visible to the human eye. She quoted University of Wisconsin-Madison textile science professor Majid Sarmadi, who studied the matter to say, A dead hunter is not a macho hunter, and that he would personally wear florescent pink out into the field.

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According to information from Sarmadi, It is well known that blaze orange provides a very good contrast in the wooded areas in the spring and summer. However, when visually compared to the orange colors found in the fall leaves, blaze orange was harder to detect than the pink colors that were tested.

Rep. Jim Allen (R-Lander) added, Since Im such a fashion forward guy, I just wanted to add, vote your conscience on this but the testimony from the textile professor on the phone during committee was pretty compelling and he has done the research and he found that the human eye can detect pink far better than orange and this is a permissive bill and deer cant see it as well as orange. He also said, a dead hunter isnt a very good hunter, so I will leave it at that.

Rep. Bill Pownall (R-Gillette) urged House members to vote no on the bill. He stated he didnt see the need to add another color even if pink stands out. I am kind of curious why we want to change a standard color thats been there for years, the standard color of orange. Scientific information may say that pink really stands out, Im sure it does; you look into a crowd, audience; pink stands out. But I think orange has been the standard for years and I would hate to add another color while we are hunting. I would urge a no vote on this, he said.

Prior to the Committee of the Whole vote, Rep. Stan Blake (R-Green River) said, Whats the harm, somebody wants to wear pink, thats fine, its just as visible as the orange, let the people wear them, whether its men, women it doesnt matter. It is about freedom and choice.

The law, if passed, will go into effect July 1.
WORLAND - Democrats from all across Wyoming met in Cheyenne last weekend to attend the annual Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner. The event is held in honor of the state and nation's first female governor, and an award in her name is given to a Wyoming Democrat who embodies her spirit of service and desire to pave new paths forward.

WORLAND - Democrats from all across Wyoming met in Cheyenne last weekend to attend the annual Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner.

The event is held in honor of the state and nation's first female governor, and an award in her name is given to a Wyoming Democrat who embodies her spirit of service and desire to pave new paths forward. This year's recipients included Washakie County Democratic Party Chairwoman Mandy Weaver.

"Mandy is doing incredible work in Washakie County. She jumped right into her role as chairwoman and brought new energy to the local Democratic party. Under her leadership there are now regularly scheduled meetings, members are engaged in public service projects, and the party is receiving recognition for their efforts. I'm grateful to Chairwoman Weaver for everything she puts into this job and thrilled to see her honored for her work with a Nellie Tayloe Ross Award," said Joe M. Barbuto, Chairman of the Wyoming Democratic Party.

Weaver said, "I am super proud of the incredible work Washakie County Democrats have done to make our community a better place, and it was a thrill to be recognized. This award was earned through the hard work and dedication of our entire group of wonderful Democrats, not just me."

She added, "We've got a really welcoming, active group of Democrats. The reason that I got the award is because of everyone who works hard. We're trying to do community service and make our community a better place. It's fun, we have an absolute blast. It's an awesome group of people, everyone won this award."

The award comes almost a year to the date when Weaver helped reorganize the Washakie County Democratic Party.

In an interview in 2017, Weaver, who was born and raised in Ten Sleep and has lived in Worland the past several years, said, "I wanted to get involved in politics and make my voice heard." She said the Democratic Party in Wyoming is small but she still wants her voice heard. "It's the saying 'be the change you want to see.' If no one's doing it I said I'll do it," Weaver said.

On Wednesday she said, "We went from having no party at all, it was a dark county, to having a decently-sized group of people who are really active."

She added that the party now has have monthly meetings and are active in several service projects. Funds raised from two baked sales were donate to O.W.L. Unlimited and Disabled Hunters and a portion of the winnings from the Washakie County Chamber of Commerce Hunter Fest chili cookoff will be donated to the Crisis and Prevention Center.

"One of our main goals is to do community service," Weaver said.

She said this year the party will be holding a convention on March 31 and they anticipate several statewide Democratic candidates attending. She said with an active party in Washakie County, they can lend support to state and local candidates.

Marci Shaver of Goshen County was also a recipient of the Nellie Tayloe Ross Award.
WORLAND  Representatives from the City of Worland, Town of Ten Sleep and Washakie County will meet with the Washakie Development Association today to discuss a new federal program to allow reinvestment in rural communities, under federal legislation passed in 2017.

WORLAND  Representatives from the City of Worland, Town of Ten Sleep and Washakie County will meet with the Washakie Development Association today to discuss a new federal program to allow reinvestment in rural communities, under federal legislation passed in 2017.

Opportunity Zones are a community development program established by Congress in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to encourage...
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-07 14:44:15|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Chinese Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu anwsers questions at a press conference on implementation of the rural revitalization strategy and promotion of transformation and upgrading of agriculture during the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 7, 2018. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- China is willing to share its experiences with African countries in securing food supply and reforming rural sector, Agriculture Minister Han Changfu said Wednesday.

Han made the remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the national legislature's annual session, when he was asked what Africa can learn from China's food self-sufficiency.

Food security has been a top priority for China, a country of more than 1.3 billion people. The Chinese government attaches great importance to food security and has adopted a series of policies and constantly advanced technology, which resulted in more than 600 million tonnes of grain output in 2017, he said.

He cited the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN as affirming China's role in addressing food security issues globally.

Talking about China-Africa cooperation in food supply and food self-sufficiency, the minister said China has set up agricultural technology promotion centers in 14 African countries, and Chinese experts have been to the least developed African countries to train local people.

Meanwhile, African technicians and officials working for agricultural departments have been invited to China to research and study, according to Han.

"China plays an active role in addressing the problem of food security in African countries, and we will continue to strengthen cooperation with them," he said.

"Since we have different national conditions, we can only offer our experience for reference. We hope that African countries, particularly the least developed ones, can find solutions to food supply problems as early as possible, and that African people can enjoy a better life," he said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met the press Thursday morning on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress.

Wang briefed journalists from home and abroad on China's foreign policies and answered questions on a wide range of diplomatic issues.

The following are the highlights of this news conference.

Diplomatic agenda in 2018

First, Boao Forum for Asia annual conference will take place in Hainan this April, and focus on reform and opening-up.

Second, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit will take place in Qingdao this June, and focus on revitalizing the Shanghai Spirit.

Third, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit will take place in Beijing this September, and focus on the Belt and Road Initiative.

Fourth, the First China International Import Expo will take place in Shanghai this November, and focus on further market opening.

Head-of-state diplomacy

President Xi's leadership and charisma has earned him and his country many good friends, among foreign leaders who represent a diverse range of cultures and social systems.

Belt and Road Initiative

Everything is in the open. There is no backroom deal, and every step is transparent. It would be high-standard and economically viable, beneficial to the world as well as to China.

China-U.S. relations

Despite elements of competition, China-U.S. ties are defined more by partnership, not rivalry. China has no need or intention to replace the United States' international role.

Trade war is never the right solution, as it will harm both the initiator as well as the target country in a globalized world. In the event of a trade war, China will make a justified and necessary response.

China-Russia relations

The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is as stable as Mount Tai. "Sky is the limit" for bilateral cooperation. There is always room to make the relationship even better.

China-EU relations

China would always support European integration and had faith in Europe's future. China wants to partner with Europe to create a more stable world in what are uncertain times.

China-Japan relations

China is willing to work with Japan to restore the relationship to healthy and steady growth, as long as Japan "does not prevaricate, flip-flop or backpedal and instead accepts and welcomes China's development."

China-ASEAN relations

China will continue to put the cooperation with ASEAN high on its agenda of international cooperation this year. China looks to upgrade the strategic partnership and build a closer community of shared future with ASEAN.

China-India relations

The Chinese "dragon" and the Indian "elephant" must not fight but dance with each other. With political trust, not even the Himalayas can stop us from friendly exchanges. Without it, not even level land can bring us together.

China-Africa relations

Africa's concerns are China's concerns. Africa's priorities are China's priorities. As we work together for a community with a shared future for humanity, African brothers and sisters are welcome to get on board China's fast train of development.

China-LAC relations

Wang Yi cited a Chinese proverb: "Nothing not even mountains or oceans can separate those with a shared goal."

South China Sea issue

China has strong resolve and deep commitment to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea. China's position is firm and consistent.

Korean Peninsula issue

All relevant sides, particularly the U.S. and the DPRK, should make contact and conduct dialogue as soon as possible based on the "dual-track approach," advance denuclearization of the peninsula and promote peace mechanisms.

Here comes another moment of truth for the parties to demonstrate their seriousness about resolving the issue.

We must not let the opportunity slip by.

Helping settle regional flashpoints

In helping to settle regional flashpoints, China has its do's and don'ts. China takes a peaceful, justifiable and constructive approach to help settle regional flashpoints.

Refuting "China threat theory"

As China grows, the China collapse theory has collapsed and become an international laughing stock. Meanwhile, the China threat theory with its various sensational versions is losing market.

Refuting "Indo-Pacific" strategy

Stoking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting bloc confrontation will find no market.

Trade liberalization

China is positive about any open, transparent and inclusive agreement that reinforces regional economic integration and the WTO-centered global free trade system.

Xiongan New Area development

China will promote the Xiongan New Area to the world this year.

Consular protection

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working on drafting legislation on consular protection and assistance. Public consultation will start after the two sessions.

SCO summit

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao this year will be "a new milestone in the history of the SCO".

Countries breaking so-called "diplomatic ties" with Taiwan

Adhering to the one-China principle and not having official ties with Taiwan have become a generally observed norm in international relations.

It is a correct choice in line with the tide of history to establish diplomatic relations and carry out regular cooperation with the government of the People's Republic of China, the sole legal representative of the whole of China. Such a choice would best serve the long-term interest of these countries and their people. Of course this is the overriding trend and an unstoppable one.
BUKAVU, DR Congo, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 2,500 Burundian refugees from a transit camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Wednesday crossed the border to arrive in Rwanda, according to DRC border authorities.

An official from the DRC's migration service said the Burundian refugees, previously settled in Kamanyola in South Kivu, are currently in Bugarama, Rwanda.

The UN mission in the DRC claimed to have escorted these Burundian refugees to the border with Rwanda for the crossing.

"They told us that they wanted to leave the Kamanyola transit camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and asked the MONUSCO force to accompany them to the border with Rwanda, which we accepted in accordance with our mandate of protection of civilians on Congolese soil," said MONUSCO spokesperson in the DRC, Florence Marshall.

In a statement on Wednesday, an adviser to DRC President Joseph Kabila said Rwanda had agreed to host these refugees on its territory.

"They were not refugees but asylum seekers, and they did not escape. The reality is that the Congolese government has decided not to grant them asylum following their refusal to comply with certain requirements on this matter," the adviser said.

The presence of these Burundian refugees in the province of South-Kivu has been at the root of several controversies between the authorities and the local population. The Burundian government has also repeatedly requested their extradition to Burundi.

According to sources close to the UN Mission in the DRC, these Burundian refugees had decided to go to Rwanda for fear of being forcibly extradited to Burundi by the DRC authorities.
TIRANA, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Albania saw a decline in electricity production during 2017, down by 36.6 percent compared to previous year, Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) said in its energy balance released Wednesday.

INSTAT experts noted that the drop in energy production came mainly as a result of the prolonged drought in the country last year.

The fall in production also lead to the increase of energy imports to cover the country's needs, INSTAT experts said.

INSTAT data showed that Albania's energy imports soared 86.3 percent.

According to the Energy Balance, the domestic net production during 2017 was 4,525 GWh, from 7,136 GWh of energy produced in 2016.

Given the low production, gross imports grew by 86.3 percent, while the amount of gross exports decreased by 73.9 percent compared to 2016.
BRUSSELS, March 7 (Xinhua) -- An ad hoc delegation of the European Parliament packed up for Slovakia on Wednesday to look into the murder of Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova.

In the following two days, the fact-finding delegation consisting of six Members of European Parliament (MEPs) is set to meet with big wigs of the country, as well as anti-corruption NGOs and journalists.

They will also head to Velka Maca, the village in the Western Slovakia where the journalist and his fiancee were murdered in February, followed by a press conference on Friday at the European Parliament's liaison office in Bratislava.

Base on the two-day probe, the delegation will draft a report and forward it to the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents, which is made up of President of the House and leaders of all political groups.

Each of the MEPs are from different political groups in the European Parliament and from Hungary, Poland, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy.

Kuciak, 27, was an investigative reporter for the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk and wrote about suspicions of major tax fraud. He was shot and killed along with his fiancee in his house in Velka Maca in late February. The case is under investigation.

In the wake of the murder, the European Parliament will debate the protection of journalists in Europe during its plenary session in Strasbourg, France, next week.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 06:03:32|Editor: ZD

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BRUSSELS, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The European commissioners on Wednesday gave political endorsement to a proposal aiming to counter the possible U.S. steel and aluminium tariffs, saying the EU stands ready to react "proportionately and fully" in line with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules once the U.S. measures affect EU's interest.

The proposal was presented by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Vice-President Jyrki Katainen and Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom, according to a statement.

"The motivation behind the US measures appears to be an economic safeguard measure in disguise - not a national security measure," Malmstrom said at a press conference.

"That means that the EU is entitled to make use of the WTO Safeguards Agreement to rebalance benefits that we have given to the U.S. in the past. This would be done by carrying out measures that match the economic loss suffered by us because of the U.S. move," she added.

An earlier report by the Politico Europe said the EU is ready to roll out countermeasures against U.S. exports worth 2.8 billion euros (3.48 billion U.S. dollars), including Levi's jeans, Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon whiskeys.

Malmstrom confirmed that the EU has prepared a list of products including a number of steel products, agricultural products and consumer goods, for imposing reciprocal tariffs if needed.

"Certain types of bourbon are indeed on the list as are other items such as peanut butter, cranberries, orange juice etc," she said.

But the commissioner still hoped that "as a U.S. security partner, the EU would be excluded" from the U.S. tariffs target.

"We also hope to convince the U.S. administration that this is not the right move. Protectionism cannot be the answer, it never is," she added.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday last week that the United States is set to impose 25 percent of tariff on steel imports and 10 percent for aluminum.

Trump also tweeted on Friday that "When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win".

World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Roberto Azevedo on Monday called on members to avoid triggering an escalation of global trade barriers, urging them to reflect on the matter.

"In light of recent announcements on trade policy measures, it is clear that we now see a much higher and real risk of triggering an escalation of trade barriers across the globe," said Azevedo.

French President Emmanuel Macron's remarks in Paris on the same day echoed Azevedo's call.

If U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to slap new tariffs were to be confirmed and implemented, "it is clear that they would violate the rules of the WTO," said Macron.

"If the current 'tit for tat' rhetoric between the U.S. and EU really results in a trade war, neither will walk away scot-free," ING Senior Economist Bert Colijn and Raoul Leering, Head of International Trade Analysis said in an coauthored article.

"As the impact of a trade war reaches well beyond trade volumes, the losers far outnumber the winners," they said.
UNITED NATIONS, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A UN envoy has expressed concern over the political, security and humanitarian situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) despite progress in the electoral process.

Briefing the Security Council, Leila Zerrougui, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the DRC, reported that "notable progress" had been made in the past weeks in the preparations for presidential and legislative elections, including the completion of voter registration.

More than 46 million potential voters, 47 percent of them women, have been registered for Dec. 23 elections, she told the council.

However, she warned that major challenges remain in the country. It is important to establish confidence of parties in the Dec. 31, 2016 political agreement with regard to the political process and to the electoral process, she said.

The political agreement allowed President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, to stay on after his term of office expired, on the condition that elections would be held within 2017. But elections were delayed on the grounds of logistic difficulties. On Nov. 5, 2017, the country's electoral commission published an electoral calendar for the combined presidential, legislative and provincial elections for Dec. 23, 2018.

"A failure to generate confidence in the full and faithful implementation of the Dec. 31 agreement will only serve to heighten political tensions, and to fuel the risks of inciting violence for political ends, particularly within the context of renewed and increased armed group activities," she warned.

She also voiced concern over the disproportionate use of force by the security forces against peaceful demonstrators, and over the country's security and humanitarian situation.

The security situation has continued to deteriorate, bringing increased risks for renewed instability in many parts of the country and posing serious threats to the civilian population, she said.

More than 7.7 million people face severe food insecurity throughout the country and more than two million children are severely malnourished, she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 07:03:49|Editor: Xiang Bo

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GENEVA, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A prominent Chinese scholar on Wednesday said that the Chinese central government and the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have made great efforts in respecting, preserving, inheriting and promoting outstanding traditional Tibetan culture and have made remarkable achievements.

Zheng Dui, also Director-General of the China Tibetology Research Center, said that in the contemporary era, Tibetan culture is rejuvenated through "cultural integration of tradition and modernity".

Speaking during a side-event of the 37th UN human rights council session here in Geneva titled "protection and development of Tibetan culture", which was sponsored by China Society for Human Rights Studies, Zheng said that the preservation of Tibetan culture is a systematic project which should be based on a full, accurate and in-depth acquaintance and understanding.

"The real preservation is rooted in cognition and comprehension. It means to respect Tibetan culture based on comprehension, to carry out preservation measures based on respect, to achieve inheritance in the preservation process, and to inherit and promote at the same time," he explained.

"The ultimate purpose of inheriting and promoting is to achieve continuous development for Tibetan culture in the changing world so that it can make further contributions to the living and thinking of mankind and to the preservation of human civilization," he added.

According to him, the study and use of Tibetan language is under effective protection, and the government has set up a batch of educational training bases and various comprehensive research institutes, such as Tibet University, Tibetan Traditional Medicine College, China Tibetology Research Center and Tibet Academy of Social Sciences.

He told the audience that the Chinese central government and the government of TAR always see Tibetan Buddhist culture as an important component of traditional Chinese culture, give it effective preservation all the time and constantly strengthen efforts in collection, collation, and publication of religious classics.

For example, he said, it takes over 100 experts on Tibetan language and 20 years to finish the collation and publication of Tibetan Tripitaka Kangyur and Tengyur with huge financial support from the Chinese central government.

"Tibetan culture is an important part of Chinese culture. The inception and development of Tibetan culture enrich Human culture," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 07:37:02|Editor: Xiang Bo

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A staff member of the booth of China makes a paper lantern for a visitor during ITB Berlin in Berlin, capital of Germany, on March 7, 2018. The international travel trade show, ITB Berlin, kicked off here on Wednesday, drawing around 10,000 tourism companies from 186 countries and regions worldwide. China National Tourism Administration led a delegation of more than 100 members representing different localities, tourism businesses and aviation companies to the ITB Berlin. They will promote a slew of tourism brands such as "Beautiful China-the Great Wall." (Xinhua/Shan Yuqi)
WASHINGTON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Two students were shot Wednesday in an reportedly accidental shooting at a high school in the southern U.S. state of Alabama.

One of the students died on the way to hospital, CBS affiliate WIAT-TV reported. The other was reportedly critically injured, but is in stable condition. A third person was evaluated from Huffman High School in Birmingham.

"Two students were involved in a shooting during dismissal today at Huffman High School," Birmingham City School system said in a statement.

"The school was placed on a brief lockdown, and police were called to the scene. Students have been released and police are actively investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting," said the statement.

Birmingham Police Sgt. Bryan Shelton told WIAT that investigators believed the incident was accidental.

It's not clear if a suspect was in custody.
LUSAKA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's Luapula Province and South Africa's NorthWest Province on Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen working partnership and collaboration.

The agreement follows a four-day visit by a delegation from the Zambian province led by provincial minister Nixon Chilangwa, which toured various projects in the South African province and held talks with the leadership of the province.

The agreement was signed by Chilangwa and South Africa's NorthWest Premier Supra Mahumapelo, said a statement released by the Zambian embassy in South Africa.

According to Chilangwa, the agreement will promote collaboration in investment and exchange programs related to agriculture, livestock and fisheries, forestry, tourism and mining.

He added that the agreement will cement the existing cooperation between the two countries.

Mahumapelo said the province was excited about the relationship between the two provinces and that his team was impressed with the resource endowment of the Zambian province during a visit last year.

The two provinces, he said, are eager to explore possibilities of improving and diversifying bilateral relationship in various sectors for mutual benefit.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 10:19:22|Editor: Liangyu

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GENEVA, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The concept championed by Chinese President Xi Jinping of building "a community with a shared future for mankind" corresponds to the situation in today's world, where nobody can prosper alone, said the chief of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

In the current world, "you can only prosper if those around you are prospering," IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Since Xi expounded the idea in a landmark keynote speech at the United Nations Office at Geneva in January 2017, the vision has gained broader international recognition for offering Chinese solutions to global challenges.

"This concept is commensurate with the global thinking today," Chungong told Xinhua at the Geneva headquarters of the IPU, a long-standing international organization that will mark the 130th anniversary of its founding next year.

"The world is no longer a conglomerate of individual countries or nation states. We all belong to one community today," he said. "When we look at the challenges that are facing us today, we cannot say they are particular to China, or Switzerland or Cameroon or other countries."

For instance, what is happening in Cameroon may have ramifications in China or in Europe, said the IPU chief, a national of the west African country of Cameroon.

He pointed out that there are many problems that concern all nations, such as migration and the fight against terror, and that must be taken as global issues instead of local ones.

"When you look at climate, I think of a former UN secretary-general who said climate change has no national passport. It has no borders. So, I am very supportive of this notion," said Chungong.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, he said, is consistent with the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

"If you build a railway that goes from Europe to eastern Asia and people along the route can benefit from this, why not?" he said.

Brushing away allegations that the rise of China might be a threat to the outside world, the IPU head said the ascent of China as a major global player is a "legitimate ambition."

"It is legitimate for any country or for any leaders to make their country great," he said. "What is important here is to promote cooperation in a win-win environment, as President Xi has promised."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 10:24:24|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi extended greetings to women on Thursday, International Women's Day.

At a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress, Wang extended greetings to women including female journalists present and expressed gratitude to Chinese and foreign journalists for their support of China's diplomacy.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 10:24:25|Editor: ZD

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NEW YORK, March 7 (Xinhua) -- An elderly Chinese couple has been hospitalized with serious head trauma after getting hit by a pick-up truck when American Airlines (AA) diverted their flight to Baltimore, the U.S. Mid-Atlantic state of Maryland, local media reported on Wednesday.

The Chinese Embassy in the United States, which was informed by local police of the incident early Saturday, has arranged helping hands for the couple who are now treated in a hospital in Baltimore and their injuries are not life threatening, according to a report by New York-based Chinese newspaper Qiao Bao.

The couple's ordeal was first reported by fellow passenger Stefani Kuo on her Facebook account on Saturday. And many netizens have left their comments criticizing the U.S. airlines' poor service.

Kuo deleted the post the following day out of privacy concerns for the family of the injured couple, who did not want their names to be released. Yet the story has caught the attention of U.S. media including the Washington Post, NextShark, and The Voice of Global Asians.

The couple's nightmarish travel began on Friday, when their scheduled AA flight from Minneapolis in the midwestern U.S. state of Minnesota to New York was diverted at the last minute to Baltimore.

Upon arrival, AA instructed all the passengers to get onto a bathroom-less bus to New York. Yet the company failed to inform all the passengers about details like where the buses were located, their travel time, and where they were going, according to Kuo's 2,500-word narration.

"Ten hours into the bus ride, we had only traveled 30 miles. Two trucks had flipped over the bridge because of winds, so all the bridges were closed. We were stuck in traffic and not moving a single inch. At this point, a passenger went up to the bus driver to ask what was going on, and we were informed, by a PASSENGER that we were turning around and going back to the BWI airport at Baltimore, MD," wrote Kuo, who got to know the Chinese couple speaking no English.

The bus eventually made a stop at a McDonald's parking lot where the couple, who was to visit their son in New York, got off for food and were struck by an oncoming vehicle.

"When I ran back to the bus, I was in hysterics. I was crying and blurted out the news. The bus was confused, the bus driver was shocked. But then we left. No one contacted American Airlines. The bus just picked up and drove away, back to the BWI airport. I called the hospitals in Baltimore. I finally got in contact with Bayview hospital where I tracked the couple down," Kuo recounted.

"When we got off, their checked baggage was just left on the sidewalk. No one took care of it, so I did. I took all of their belongings along with mine and went into the airport where I tried for fifteen minutes to tell someone, 'two of your passengers were run over by a truck,'" she said.

"I was told I would be given a ride to the hospital but would have no way back. I was told they had an interpreter at the hospital present. I was told to take a train instead of a flight out," she added.

Finally Kuo located the couple in the hospital. The husband and wife were put in separate rooms in the Emergency Room unit. There was no interpreter present in the room, and no one was helping the couple either.

The husband, who kept asking where his wife was, had not been informed about his condition or even his wife's. The hospital did not even identify them.

Kuo spent 40 minutes helping the doctors by translating for the husband, telling them where the pain was located as well as the details of their injuries.

"The husband had suffered severe fractures to his spine and neck and the wife had been hit straight in the head and was unconscious. She was going to need eye surgery among other procedures," said Kuo.

"I left them their belongings, left my phone number as the primary contact, and told them to call me if they needed any help with translation or anything. American Airlines had not contacted them or sent anyone," she added.

Kuo left the hospital at around 4:00 a.m. local time (GMT 0900) on Saturday. She gave her information to the couple's son after they spoke on the phone.

"American Airlines had told them nothing and had not even attempted to locate them. Why would they have? They had no idea where their passengers were," said Kuo.

Kuo got back home in New York on Saturday afternoon. She had been in direct contact with the Bayview hospital and the couple's son for the 24 hours after the accident. At the time, American Airlines still failed to show any signs of concern by contacting either her or the couple.
PARIS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Tariq Ramadan, a well-known Islamic studies scholar and Oxford professor, was charged here with another case of rape on Wednesday.

A 45-year-old woman filed the case against the Swiss academic, according to media reports. The woman accused Ramadan of multiple sexual assaults in 2013 and 2014.

The 55-year-old Swiss national had previously faced two charges of raping two women in French hotels in 2009 and 2012. Following the accusations, he was ordered to remain in custody in France.

A preliminary probe was opened in October 2017 after the two women filed complaints.

Ramadan was arrested last month by French police and after 48 hours of questioning, a judge ordered him to be held in custody.

The Geneva-born professor has denied the accusations that forced him to take leave of absence from Oxford since November 2017.

Ramadan is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian imam who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s. Ramadan has written several books on Islam and the Western world which, according to experts, project a moderate and tolerant view of Islam.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 10:54:32|Editor: Yurou

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A staff member works in the DNA laboratory in Tripoli, Libya, March 11, 2018. Libya's first DNA analysis laboratory has been opened here to help identify bodies recovered from mass graves. The laboratory, opened Tuesday and run by the General Authority for the Care of the Families of Martyrs and Missing Persons (GACFMMP), is sponsored by oil company Repsol and the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC). (Xinhua/Hamza Turkia)

TRIPOLI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Libya's first DNA analysis laboratory has been opened here to help identify bodies recovered from mass graves.

The laboratory, opened Tuesday and run by the General Authority for the Care of the Families of Martyrs and Missing Persons (GACFMMP), is sponsored by oil company Repsol and the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC).

"The laboratory will contribute to ending the suffering of thousands of families of martyrs and missing people all over Libya," the NOC said in a statement.

Khaled Bokhotwa, the NOC's officer of health, safety, environment, security and sustainable development, said the laboratory will ensure "the links between the martyrs and missing persons with their families" through the advanced technology of DNA tracing.

"The laboratory will help identify their families in these difficult times, especially with many bodies extracted from mass graves that have not been identified so far," Bokhotwa said during the opening ceremony.

Mahmoud Al-Herri, head of the GACFMMP, said the laboratory will be used on all mass graves in Libya.

The Libyan Ministry for Martyrs and Missing Persons announced in June 2013 that there had been 2,516 people missing since the 2011 uprising, which toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The ministry announced that 110 mass graves have been reported in the country so far, and more than 5,000 people were killed during the 2011 uprising.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:09:34|Editor: ZD

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi answers questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi introduced the main highlights of four events to be held in China this year at a press conference Thursday on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

First, Boao Forum for Asia annual conference will take place in Hainan this April, and focus on reform and opening-up.

Second, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit will take place in Qingdao this June, and focus on revitalizing the Shanghai Spirit.

Third, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit will take place in Beijing this September, and focus on the Belt and Road Initiative.

Fourth, the First China International Import Expo will take place in Shanghai this November, and focus on further market opening.

Related:
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:14:36|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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TORONTO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The China Brand Show will make its Canadian debut as part of the Apparel Textile Sourcing Canada (ATSC) event in the second half of this year, drawing visitors from a wide variety of industries, said the ATSC Wednesday.

The three-day international trade show ATSC scheduled to begin from Aug. 20 at the International Centre in Toronto, will double in size for 2018 with some 600 booths and exhibit the latest manufactured goods from more than 20 countries.

"The growth of ATSC, which debuted in 2016, is the result of increased interest among the Canadian public in manufacturing and importing apparel and textiles, as well as the general growth of international trade of higher-quality, ethically-manufactured products," said Jason Prescott, ATSC producer.

Taking 150 booths in an area of about 3,000 square meters, the China Brand Show will bring to Canada a range of high-quality and environmentally-friendly "made in China" goods from more than 100 Chinese enterprises, covering the fields of light manufactured products and household electronics.

"The introduction to Toronto of the China Brand Show, which has seen huge success in the United States after launching in 2002 in cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is a major feat for local businesses that are poised to benefit from making unprecedented connections and securing deals with top-rate international suppliers right on their home turf," said Prescott.
HOUSTON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Terminal C of the George Bush International Airport in Houston was shut down Wednesday evening after police found a "suspicious package," the authorities said.

The Houston Police Bomb Squad has been called to the airport to check the abandoned bag.

The airport is the second largest air facility in the state of Texas after Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

With five terminals, the airport served more than 40 million passengers in 2017, making it among the 10 busiest airports in the United States.
YANGON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) has implied to join in signing the Myanmar government's Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) and take part in the peace process, Myanmar News Agency reported Thursday.

According to U Zaw Htay, Director-General of the Union Peace Implementation Department, an unofficial meeting between the government's Peace Commission and the KNPP was held in Yangon Wednesday with open discussions.

The two sides agreed to hold an official meeting on KNPP's intent which is expected by late March or early April with the KNPP proposing the meeting venue as in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state.

KNPP signed the state level bilateral agreement six years ago, while Wednesday's meeting was the first ever between the new government, led by the National League for Democracy (NLD), and the KNPP.

On Feb. 13, the incumbent government and two ethnic armed groups - the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU) signed the NCA, bringing the total of such signatories to 10 since the first signing with eight armed groups in 2015 during the previous government.

Following the 2015 initiation of the NCA, the 21st Century Panglong Peace Conferences were held twice during the incumbent government in August 2016 and May 2017 respectively.

The third meeting of the Panglong Peace Conference is set for April/May for further discussion of unfinished fundamental principles on federalism as well as the formulation of new principles.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:19:37|Editor: Liangyu

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NEW YORK, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Among a dozen Barbie's new role models released before 2018 International Women's Day, three are modeled after Chinese female icons Hui Ruoqi, Tan Yuanyuan and Guan Xiaotong.

Hui is a volleyball champion who announced her retirement last month. Tan is the prima ballerina of the San Francisco Ballet where she holds the rank of principal dancer. Guan is one of the most popular Chinese actresses who became the UN ambassador for "World Life Day" in 2017.

On its website, the doll-making company posted pictures of 19 extraordinary women, after whom the new dolls are made. It said in the poster that the roles were chosen from a survey of mothers across the world in a bid to inspire more girls.

"This #InternationalWomensDay, we are honoring more female role models than ever before," Barbie company tweeted on Wednesday.

The new roles are composed of two series "Sheroes" and "Inspiring Women."

The "Shero" dolls, which include the three Chinese icons, are modeled after women currently making headlines, while the "Inspiring Women" series are of women who have made lifelong contributions to the world.

The three "Inspiring Women" in the 2018 series are Frida Kahlo, an artist from Mexico; Amelia Earhart, an aviation pioneer from the United States; and Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician and physicist also from the United States.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:24:39|Editor: Liangyu

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BRUSSELS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The idea put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping on building a community with a shared future for mankind will provide the world with a new vision and opportunity to solve various crises, Belgian members of parliament (MPs) have said.

"China is willing to establish genuine cooperation with the rest of the world," MP Filip Dewinter said in a recent interview with Xinhua at the Belgian parliament.

Xi's proposal "will provide a new vision and opportunity to mutually resolve a range of crises affecting the world," he added.

"China is an important partner for the European Union, including Belgium, which has close economic and cultural ties with China," said the MP, who has visited China many times in recent years.

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Xi with an aim to realize common development along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes also presents "a fantastic opportunity for Europe," added Dewinter.

Noting that many European countries "were skeptical of this" in the past, he pointed out that "in reality, China is just demonstrating that it is willing to establish genuine cooperation with the rest of the world and that the Chinese are willing to create a common future with all countries."

Dewinter also spoke highly of China's reform and opening-up policy, which launched the Asian country's integration with the outside world 40 years ago, saying the policy has been a main driver of the deep changes in the Chinese society today.

Belgian Senator Anke Van Dermeersch shares the view. "Protecting our planet is easier said than done, and we are very pleased with the proposition put forward by Xi," she told Xinhua.

The senator, who has also made many trips to China in recent years, noted that there are still many Europeans "whose understanding of China remains at the very beginning of China's opening to the outside world."

"Frankly, at present, there are still many people in the West who are still looking at China with an outdated attitude," she said.

The senator vowed to help strengthen communication and understanding between China and the West and urge Westerners to portray China in an objective and positive light.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:29:40|Editor: Liangyu

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WASHINGTON, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Americans' favorable views of China jumped above 50 percent for the first time in almost three decades, U.S. public opinion polls conductor Gallup said.

Gallup reported Tuesday that China's positive rating reached 53 percent, the third time in the poll's four-decade record that a majority of U.S. adults have a positive view of the Asian country.

Views toward China differ significantly by age, Gallup said, with 67 percent of people aged 18-34 rating positively, compared with favorable ratings of 54 percent from people aged 35-54, and 39 percent from those above 55.

Democrats have a more favorable view than Republicans, as 59 percent of Democrats held a favorable view compared with 42 percent of Republicans in the past two years.

The previous two high ratings occurred in 1979, with 64 percent of people having a favorable view when the United States established diplomatic relations with China, and in early 1989, with a positive rating of 72 percent when former U.S. President George H. W. Bush visited the country.
CANBERRA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers have developed a drone capable of measuring a person's breathing and heart rate from 60 meters away.

The team from the University of South Australia (UniSA), led by sensor systems and engineering expert Javaan Chahl, created the drones in conjunction with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to be deployed during humanitarian crises.

Chahl said that the drone is able to measure a subject's heart beat by using a camera to sense the top a person's head pulsing by approximately one millimeter with each beat.

"Basically in a disaster, unfortunately you have to prioritise who's living, who's dead and perhaps who's dying, and this might allow a drone to map a scene and establish the general condition of people," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday.

Despite the good intentions of the device, Chahl acknowledged that it could be used for darker uses- including spying or weaponization.

"If we can start doing these things, so can somebody who has a bad agenda," Chahl said.

"The same software could do facial recognition, measure their heart rate after climbing up some stairs in the subway, and you could do that for 100,000 people a day.

"Somebody could take their data and do something with it, you could try to sell them something, you could deny them insurance, you could tell their employer."

Developing drones for humanitarian purposes has become a major focus of robotics experts with the Australian Red Cross in 2017 partnering with technology experts to provide aid in the wake of cyclones in Queensland and New South Wales.

WeRobotics, the firm that partnered with the Red Cross, is currently working on training governments and non-government organizations (NGOs) to use robotics in crises.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:44:46|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday voiced strong confidence in China-Russia relationship, saying "sky is the limit" for bilateral cooperation.

"The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is as stable as Mount Tai," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

"There is always room to make the relationship even better," said Wang.

The confidence comes from the strong trust and friendship between the heads of state of the two countries, which is fundamental to the further development of the bilateral relationship, he said.

It also comes from the deepening of cooperation in many fields, the firm support for each other's core interests, the close coordination in international affairs, and the growing exchanges between the two sides, said Wang.

Commenting on the upcoming presidential election in Russia, the minister said China believes the Russian people will again make a right choice and advance steadily towards national revitalization.

"The Russian people are resilient, committed, and able to stand pressure," he said, extending best wishes for Russia and the Russian people.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 11:59:50|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China's exports of goods increased by 36.2 percent in February year on year to 1.11 trillion yuan (176 billion U.S. dollars), compared with a rise of 6 percent in January, the General Administration of Customs reported on Thursday.

Imports fell 0.2 percent to 888.16 billion yuan in February. That left the monthly trade surplus to 224.88 billion yuan, an reversal from a trade deficit of 72.99 billion yuan in the same period a year ago.

In the first two months, exports rose 18 percent while imports were up by 15.2 percent. Trade surplus expanded 37.2 percent to 362.2 billion yuan.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 12:09:53|Editor: Xiang Bo

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China urges the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to hold talks sooner rather than later, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday in Beijing at a press briefing.

All relevant sides, particularly the U.S. and the DPRK, should make contact and conduct dialogue as soon as possible based on the "dual-track approach," advance denuclearization of the peninsula and promote peace mechanisms, Wang said.

He also called for resolving the legitimate security concerns of all sides including the DPRK on an equal footing.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula is easing as the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been engaged in a series of contact thanks to the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, according to Wang.

China's suspension-for-suspension proposal has proven to be a right prescription for the problem in creating the basic conditions needed for improving inter-Korea relations, Wang said.

The next step is to bring the situation on the Peninsula back to the track of peace, and the nuclear issue back to the track of dialogue, he said.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel, but it will not be all smooth sailing ahead of us," Wang said, as various disruptions could occur when tensions ease off.

China will continue to make relentless efforts in promoting all necessary contact for the goal of solving the Korean Peninsula issue peacefully through dialogue and negotiations, he said.

"Here comes another moment of truth for the parties to demonstrate their seriousness about resolving the issue," Wang said, adding "We must not let the opportunity slip by."
MANILA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A Philippine congressional committee found on Thursday probable cause to impeach Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, who was accused of violating the law and criticized of discrediting President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.

Voting 38-2, Rep. Reynaldo Umali, the chair of the House Committee on Justice, said the panel voted to remove Sereno based on the complaint filed by lawyer Larry Gadon.

"This committee found probate cause to impeach the chief justice," Umali said, adding the impeachment complaint contains four grounds, culpable violation of the constitution, corruption, betrayal of public trust and other high crimes.

The complaint also alleged 27 acts constituting the offences charged against Sereno, such as falsification of manipulated judicial nominations and proceedings and failed to file a Statement of Assets, Liability and Net Worth from when she was a professor at the University of the Philippines.

Last year, President Duterte said he wanted Sereno and another anti-graft prosecutor impeached and accused them of discrediting his administration.

However, Duterte this Tuesday denied any involvement in the ouster of the Chief Justice, saying he had once called her attention to her supposedly changing stance on the cases pending before the Supreme Court.

The complaint will be submitted to the plenary later this month for voting before congress goes on recess on March 22.

At least a third of the members of the House of Representatives is needed for the complaint to be transmitted to the Senate for trial.

Sereno said she is ready to face the impeachment proceedings should it reach the senate.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 12:19:56|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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SEOUL, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Two South Korean special envoys, who visited the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) earlier this week, left for the United States Thursday to explain the result of their two-day visit to the DPRK, the Blue House of South Korea said.

Chung Eui-yong, top security adviser for President Moon Jae-in, and Suh Hoon, director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), left for Washington to stay there till Saturday morning.

During their stay in Washington, Chung and Suh will meet senior U.S. officials on security and intelligence affairs.

The DPRK leader told the South Korean envoys that he was willing to talk with the U.S. side about denuclearization and normalized relations between Pyongyang and Washington.

If military threat toward the DPRK is removed and its security is guaranteed, the country had no reason to keep its nuclear program, the DPRK leader said.

Chung told reporters at the airport in Incheon, west of Seoul, that it would be the most urgent task to encourage the DPRK and the United States to come to a dialogue table.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 12:29:57|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday that Japan should earnestly implement the political understanding that "China and Japan see each other as partners, not threats."

China is willing to work with Japan to restore the relationship to healthy and steady growth, as long as Japan "does not prevaricate, flip-flop or backpedal and instead accepts and welcomes China's development," Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People's Congress.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

"Never forget why you started, and you can accomplish your mission. At this important juncture, we ask Japan to have political credibility and act accordingly to cement the political foundation of its relations with China," Wang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 12:55:02|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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JERUSALEM, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A note written by Albert Einstein in 1921 to a young Italian female scientist was sold for 6,100 U.S. dollars at an auction in Jerusalem.

The note was written to Elisabetta Piccini, a 22-year-old chemistry student who had declined to meet the renowned Nobel-winning physicist.

"Einstein was very interested in meeting her. But Ms Piccini was too shy to meet with such a famous person," said Winner's Auctions & Exhibitions in Jerusalem.

In the letter written in Einstein's native German, he used an idiom implying his affection.

"To the scientific researcher, at whose feet I slept and sat for two full days, as a friendly souvenir," reads the note, which was signed and dated October 1921.

The note was sold alongside a number of other letters from Einstein, including a 1928 note in which Einstein set out his thoughts for his "Third Stage of the Theory of Relativity" that was auctioned off for 103,000 dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 13:25:10|Editor: Lifang

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Valerie Julliand, UN Resident Coordinator for Nepal, speaks during an interview with Xinhua in Kathmandu, Nepal, March 7, 2018. "Women's fight for equality is a constant fight, which can never end so has to be guarded very safely," Valerie Julliand told Xinhua exclusively on the eve of International Women's Day 2018. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)

KATHMANDU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- "Women's fight for equality is a constant fight, which can never end so has to be guarded very safely," Valerie Julliand, UN Resident Coordinator for Nepal, told Xinhua exclusively on the eve of International Women's Day 2018.

Nepal is among a few countries in the world to have women as head of state and also has remarkable women representation at the parliament.

Moreover, Nepal's constitution promulgated in September 2015 is regarded as very progressive when it comes to inclusion not just of women but of other disadvantaged and under privileged communities.

"Politically, Nepali women have 40 percent power in local level and 30 percent in central level. I must say It's a big progress. Now, the constitution and its provisions should be implemented," Valerie, who has been working in Nepal since last two years, told Xinhua.

She was of view that women should be given every opportunity and access to education and economy for empowerment. Stating that men and women are two legs of the country, Valerie stressed that both the legs are equally important for any country to prosper and move forward.

Though the women's movement expedited after restoration of the democracy in 1990 in Nepal, the inclusion agenda was institutionalized only after 2006 people's movement.

Nepal set a milestone in the field of women rights after appointing the first female President, Speaker and Chief Justice after 2015. Currently, out of 275 lawmakers in the House of Representatives, 90 are women while 22 among 59 members of National Assembly are women.

With the significant reservation, women are moving forward in the leadership positions in different sectors, which is commendable. Besides politics, Nepali women have taken a leap forward in civil service among many, which is often termed as secure and stable job.

According to Public Service Commission, a constitutional body responsible for recruitment, there were only 67,435 women applicants in the fiscal year 2007-2008, however the number has surged to 383,485 in the year 2016-2017.

"Awareness and advocacy are very important. If women are intellectual and have access to education and economic opportunities, empowerment is possible," said Valerie, who have travelled to various districts of Nepal including the remote villages of far western region.

She also noted that the United Nations has been working with Nepali government, lawmakers, judiciary and executives and with national and international civil society in laws, policies and capacity building in community level.

She informed that UN has been working closely with authorities to ensure that the new civil code and criminal code is amended in a proper way that it will reflect necessary measures that should be taken if the rights of women are violated.

With an experience of 23 years in UN system, the French born country representative accepts that that even in the modern era of 2018, there are still so much inequalities in regards to men and women.

While sharing her personal experiences, the single mother Valerie said that women really have to work hard, as twice as the man to achieve the best in both family and career together.

"My message for Nepali women on the occasion of this International Women's Day would be please continue the fight and never ever give up. It is important to understand that women are equal as men and you have the same human rights," Valerie said.
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LONDON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Former Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter are in a coma after exposure to a suspected nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury, local media Sky News reported on Wednesday.

Skeipal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping center on Monday and still in a coma. They were believed to be hurt by a highly toxic chemical, according to Mark Rowley, an assistant commissioner who heads a counter-terrorism policing unit.

The Russian Embassy in Britain made a statement on Wednesday saying that Russia still has not received any further information on the incident from Britain, which is "rather worrying."

The statement also said that British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's recent speech is strongly anti-Russian and "looks more like an attempt to send the investigation upon a political track."

Johnson made a speech earlier this week, saying Britain "will respond robustly "if the attack is found to be the result of hostile activity by another government."

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had no information on the cause of the incident and that Moscow was open to cooperation.

Skripal, now 66, was sentenced in Russia in 2006 to 13 years in prison for cooperating with the British Secret Intelligence Service MI-6 and releasing names of Russian intelligence agents working undercover in Europe. In 2010, Skripal was pardoned by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and then moved to Britain.
WASHINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump may exempt Canada, Mexico and other countries from stiff tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum that he is expected to sign this week.

"There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, a reversal from the policy articulated by the White House just days ago that there would be no exemptions from Trump's plan.

"That would be case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption," she said at a press briefing.

The White House said Trump was expected to make a final announcement as early as Thursday and officials were working to include language in the tariffs that would give Trump the flexibility to approve exemptions for certain countries.

"He's already indicated a degree of flexibility, I think a very sensible, very balanced degree of flexibility," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC.

Trump announced last Thursday that the United States is set to impose 25 percent of tariff on steel imports and 10 percent for aluminum.

He also tweeted on Friday: "When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win."

Trump's tariff plan has sparked worldwide criticism and retaliatory intentions from its allies.

U.S. tariffs could cause "drastic consequences" for the German and European steel industry, German Steel Federation warned on Wednesday.

Even though German steel exports to the United States are comparatively low, Trump's proposal still threatens to divert a large amount of steel and cause a spiral into protectionism, German news agency dpa quoted federation president Hans Juergen Kerkhoff as saying.

Kerkhoff said that he hopes to avoid trade diversions and that now is the time to make quick decisions.

The European commissioners on Wednesday gave political endorsement to a proposal presented by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Vice-President Jyrki Katainen and Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom which is aimed at countering the possible U.S. tariffs.

"The motivation behind the U.S. measures appears to be an economic safeguard measure in disguise - not a national security measure," Malmstrom said at a press conference.

"That means that the European Union (EU) is entitled to make use of the WTO (World Trade Organization) Safeguards Agreement to rebalance benefits that we have given to the United States in the past. This would be done by carrying out measures that match the economic loss suffered by us because of the U.S. move," she added.

An earlier report by the Politico Europe, a Brussels-based European affairs weekly newspaper, said the EU is ready to roll out countermeasures against U.S. exports worth 2.8 billion euros (3.48 billion U.S. dollars), including Levi's jeans, Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon whiskeys.

Malmstrom confirmed that the EU has prepared a list of products including a number of steel products, agricultural products and consumer goods, for imposing reciprocal tariffs if needed.

"Certain types of bourbon are indeed on the list as are other items such as peanut butter, cranberries, orange juice etc," she said.

But the commissioner still hoped that "as a U.S. security partner, the EU would be excluded" from the U.S. tariffs target.

"We also hope to convince the U.S. administration that this is not the right move. Protectionism cannot be the answer, it never is," she added.
NEW DELHI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- India's Central Bureau of Investigation has launched a fresh case against billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and top officials of his companies in connection with the country's biggest-ever bank fraud of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars.

"This is the third information report (FIR) lodged against Modi and top executives of his Firestar group for defrauding the state-owned Punjab National Bank by availing different credit facilities between 2013 and 2017," a senior official said Thursday.

An FIR is the first and the most important document to initiate criminal proceedings. And all the three FIRs have clearly established the fraud of 1.8 billion U.S. dollars, he added.

But Modi is yet to be arrested by Indian investigators who have so far taken into custody nearly 20 people, including some senior executives of companies owned by the jeweller and his uncle Mehul Choksi as well as high-ranking officials of the Punjab National Bank, in the probe.

While India's External Affairs Ministry has revoked Modi's passport as well as his uncle and business partner Mehul Choksi's for their involvement in the scam, law enforcement authorities have seized 10,000 luxury watches and nine luxury cars, apart from freezing his bank accounts.

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 said that he owed the bank only 775 million U.S. dollars, in a letter shot to the bank's management.

The celebrity jeweller - the mastermind of the massive fraud - is said to have fled the country and was reportedly last seen in New York after his appearance at World Economic Forum in Davos as a part of an Indian delegation.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 13:50:13|Editor: Yurou

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RIO DE JANEIRO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A former president of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for corruption and money laundering, official sources said.

In what was the latest development of the sprawling investigation into the Petrobras corruption ring, federal Judge Sergio Moro found Aldemir Bendine guilty of receiving bribes from state construction giant Odebrecht when he was president of Petrobras from February 2015 to May 2016.

"The condemned took the responsibility of president of Petrobras amidst a corruption scandal and with the expectation that he would resolve existing problems. The last behavior expected of him was that he would become corrupt, putting in jeopardy once again the reputation of the company," Moro said.

Bendine ran the state-owned Bank of Brazil from 2009 to 2015, before being appointed by former President Dilma Rousseff to head Petrobras.

Bendine was arrested last July during a criminal investigation coded Car Wash. He was accused by Odebrecht's former President Marcelo Odebrecht of receiving bribes worth around 1 million U.S. dollars in exchange for the construction firm winning Petrobras contracts.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 14:00:15|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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by Misbah Saba Malik

ISLAMABAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Maria Mehmood chose to become a police officer in 2005 when Pakistan, her motherland, was combatting serious threat of terrorism.

Mehmood is the first woman in the conservative Pakistani society who opted to join the country's police forces. In the 13 years, she accepted all challenges in the post and, now, the senior superintendent police feels that she had made a perfect career choice for herself.

"I faced many challenges from the society when I joined the police forces, but I successfully overcame them all and now after all these years, I feel that the society on the whole is becoming more understanding and tolerant towards women working in uniform," she told Xinhua recently.

In Pakistan, about 6,000 women working at different ranks in the police forces, striving together with men for maintaining law and order situation in the terrorism affected country.

Though the number of female police officers and rankers in the country's police force only takes about 2 percent, the government is planning to induct more women into the forces gradually.

In December last year, the government of the country's south Sindh Province increased women quota in the uniform from 2 percent to 5 percent and local watchers are crediting it as a very positive step towards women empowerment.

Pakistan is not a safe country for army soldiers and police members. The law enforcement forces, including police and army, have worked to bring down terrorism in the country through tough combating, but despite all efforts and strategies, there were still over 400 major and minor terror attacks in the country last year.

Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province had been at the frontline in combatting terrorism for being the closest settled area to the lawless tribal agencies. Deputy Superintendent Police Rozia Altaf is one of the few policewomen in the area who have tried to maintain the law and order there, together with her male counterparts.

She said that posting of women officers on operational seats is a milestone that will lead to illustrious career progression for the in-service female officers.

Altaf told Xinhua that sometimes she got scared before leaving for some "dangerous" assignment, but when she put on her uniform all her fears got vanished.

"I ask my mother to pray for my safety whenever I leave for some crime scene. I know every minute of my job is risky, but I love my job every single day," Altaf said.

Despite all risks, many less educated women in the country want to join the police forces at low ranks, though there are not many vacant posts for them, but contrary to it, the highly educated women do not choose this profession after passing competitive exam which is the only way for young graduates to get an officer rank in the police service.

Women rights activist Farzana Bari told Xinhua that women's quota should be at least 10 percent in the police forces so that female volunteers from all provinces of the country could get a chance.

"Policewomen are not considered at an equal standing like men. That is the reason that highly educated women opt for other groups. They don't get main stream postings, they don't get chance to showcase their full talents, they don't get equal privileges like men," Bari said.

Nadia Riaz, a female police constable in a small town in the country's east Punjab Province, said that owing to peculiar conservative parameters of the society, police service sometimes is considered as a taboo for women.

"When I joined police eight years ago, people looked down upon me. However, over the years, their attitude towards me and my profession is becoming better, but the overall mindset has not been changed yet," Riaz told Xinhua.

She said that when people especially women came to police stations and saw policewomen, they will feel more comfortable to share their problems, but on the other hand, sometimes, the society doesn't give much respect to policewomen which they deserve.

Altaf commented that there are many laws to protect women in the country, but the society is male-dominated and many women hesitate to discuss issues like domestic violence, sexual harassment and others with male police officers.

"If there are more women officers in the police stations, the incidents of domestic violence at homes will reduce to a great level," Altaf said.

The profession sometimes takes a toll at the personal lives of the policewomen, as people believe that they are way too busy in field duties and catching the criminals that they don't get time to see their families and raise their kids.

"Many policewomen do not get good suitors, because of the scary profession and they prefer lecturers or doctors over them as they believe it is the respectable job for women," Mehmood told Xinhua.

Shehla Qureshi, first female police officer of Sindh Province, said that the impediments pertaining to women training and inadequacy of infrastructure should be addressed to help enhance productive outcome of the female cops.

She said that though there is still a long way ahead to traverse on mainstreaming of female cops in police service, it is heartening that women police officials are witnessing inclusiveness by the police authorities.

In her opinion, better-equipped service structure will not only accentuate capacity building of the in-service female officials but also attract other females to swell ranks of police forces to the serve the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 14:10:17|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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RIO DE JANEIRO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Statistics show violence against women has been on the rise in Brazil, with killings of women rising by about 6.5 percent in 2017 in comparison with 2016, said local news website G1 on Wednesday.

According to a study published by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, women were murdered at a rate of 4.3 per 100,000 in Brazil last year.

The study said out of the 4,473 cases of violent deaths of women registered in Brazil last year, a total of 946 were caused by femicide, the gender-motivated killing of women, adding that the number of femicide has seen an increase even though tougher penalties have been set for those responsible for such crimes.

Brazil approved a law that criminalizes femicide in 2015 by former President Dilma Rousseff.
HAVANA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Cuba on Wednesday deported former Colombian President Andres Pastrana and former Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga, who visited the island to "stage a serious provocation" by receiving a human rights award from an illegal opposition group.

According to local media, Pastrana and Quiroga were denied entry into Cuba by local authorities and were later deported to Colombia as their arrival were part of an attempt to "damage Havana's international image and destabilize the government."

"The island's authorities complying with and enforcing the nation's laws thwarted this provocation, which sought to destabilize, damage the international image of the country and affect the progress of Cuba's diplomatic relations with other countries in the region," said a report by local news agency Prensa Latina.

Pastrana and Quiroga arrived here from Colombia to attend the "Paya Awards Ceremony" on Thursday. The award is granted by illegal opposition group "Latin American Youth Network for Democracy," founded by Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a staunch critic of the Cuban Revolution who died in 2012.

But they were, as they posted on their Twitter accounts, "detained" at Jose Marti International Airport.

An hour later, both published a picture inside a plane on their way back to Bogota after being deported.

This year's award was given to the "Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas" (IDEA), a group that includes 37 former presidents from Latin America and Europe.

"It is no coincidence that this group hands out its annual prize to right-wing presidents who have come together to undermine progressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean," according to Prensa Latina.

Cuban official media rejected the intention of Luis Almagro, secretary general of Organization of America States (OAS) to visit the island for the award ceremony and called his plan a "total show."

"Almagro is not welcome in Cuba," said the state daily Granma, adding that Cubans will decide their own future "without external interference."

Havana has accused Paya and her illegal organization of sponsoring the annual event along with other foreign institutions financed by the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Cuba was suspended from the OAS in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, and has declined to return despite having been readmitted in 2009.

Since Cuba's suspension, the only OAS secretary general to visit the island was Jose Miguel Insulza, who attended a Latin American summit in Havana in 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 14:40:21|Editor: Liangyu

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GENEVA, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Experts on Wednesday expounded efforts and achievements in the cultural development in China's Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) during an event on the sidelines of the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council here.

The event held at the building of the United Nations office at Geneva was sponsored by the non-governmental organization China Society for Human Rights Studies. More than 60 experts, government officials, representatives from international and non-governmental organizations as well as media reporters took part in the symposium titled "Protection and Development of Tibet Culture."

Zheng Dui, director-general of the China Tibetology Research Center, told participants that both the local TAR and Chinese central governments deem the traditional Tibetan culture as an important component of the traditional Chinese culture, and have provided effective preservation for its varied heritages.

For example, he said, it took 20 years and more than 100 Tibetan language experts to accomplish the collation and publication of Kangyur and Tengyur, or the Tibetan-language Buddhist scriptures Tripitaka, a project funded mainly by the central government.

"Tibetan culture is an important part of Chinese culture," Zheng said, adding that inheriting and developing it helps promote the human culture.

Meanwhile, Zheng noted the study and use of the Tibetan language in TAR schools, as well as the central government's efforts to boost education and academic research in Tibet, including the founding of Tibet University, Tibetan Traditional Medicine College and Tibet Academy of Social Sciences.

Answering question on the freedom of religious belief in Tibet, Zheng said it is "obvious" in the everyday sight of prayer flags almost everywhere and praying walks often in size as massive as of several hundred people.

China's central government has been subsidizing the livelihood of Tibetan monks and nuns, and funding the maintenance of Tibetan temples since the 1980s, he added.

Jinmei Wangcuo, secretary-general of the Tibet Association For International Cultural Exchange, said there are today more than 1,700 religious facilities in Tibet, one for every 1,800 Tibetans in average; and there are currently some 46,000 registered monks and nuns, one in every 70 Tibetans.

He said that as a native Tibetan, he witnessed and experienced the remarkable progress made in Tibet, "seen in both the protection of traditions and the development achievements," thanks to government policies fitting Tibet's realities.

Zha Luo, a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said great importance has been attached to highlighting the traditional Tibetan culture in local education, such as in school textbooks and Tibet University's subjects.

Tibetan children from the families of farmers, herdsmen or the urban poor can enjoy 15 years of free education through high school, a welfare "unimaginable by the former generations" in Tibet, he added.

Kelsang Droma, a researcher from the China Tibetology Research Center, said that thanks to Tibet's cultural development strategy, "currently there are 4,680 various cultural enterprises in Tibet, employing 32,000 people; and the contribution of the cultural industry to local economy is becoming increasingly prominent," now boasting a growth above the national level.
LUSAKA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Zambia's First Lady Esther Lungu on Wednesday attended the celebrations to mark the upcoming March 8 International Women's Day held by an association of Chinese women living in the African country.

During the celebrations held at the Lusaka National Museum in the capital, Lungu urged the Zambian women's participation in the country's efforts to promote gender equality and protect women's rights.

She said more need to be done in Zambia including reducing violence against women and ensuring women's access to economic empowerment.

Her remarks highlighted the focus of Women's Day celebrations this year in Zambia, with the theme "Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women's Lives."

On behalf of the Chinese women association, Geng Hailing, wife of the Chinese Ambassador to Zambia, lauded the progress made in Zambia in promoting gender equality and the implementation of various programs for women's economic empowerment.

The celebrations on Wednesday featured performances by Chinese women and school students. Chinese Ambassador Yang Youming was also present.
WASHINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- As talks between Pyongyang and Seoul start to yield results, experts on Wednesday urged the White House not to rock the boat.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) made a tension-easing gesture earlier this week during a two-day visit by a high-level South Korean delegation to Pyongyang.

The DPRK showed willingness to talk "candidly" with the United States on issues including denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and normalization of ties with Washington. It also agreed to hold the third inter-Korean summit in late April.

"Seoul's immediate objective is to buy time and create the conditions necessary to bring Washington and Pyongyang together," noted Scott A. Snyder, a senior fellow for Korea studies at Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),a New York-based think tank.

CFR President Richard Haas said that it is time for Washington to step up to the plate to further de-escalate tension in the region.

"The United States needs to decide what it would offer North Korea (the DPRK), ie, security assurances, adjustments to U.S.-South Korea exercises, reduced economic sanctions," Haas said.

"We need to get (U.S.) professionals there to talk about talks," Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.

However, so far little concrete change has been detected on the Trump administration's policy on the DPRK.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence kept a harsh tone in a statement released on Tuesday, saying a "maximum pressure" strategy against Pyongyang to seek an end to its nuclear program will continue.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department said no "play-by-play" will be provided about the U.S. response to the Pyongyang meeting before they are briefed by Seoul.

Two senior South Korean officials who met with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un left for Washington on Thursday to brief U.S. officials on the outcome of their meeting.

The White House has announced that routine U.S. military exercises with allies in the region would resume, casting cloud on the current situation.

The next U.S.-South Korean drill is expected in April.

If U.S. President Donald Trump has indeed decided to require "complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization" of the DPRK before "meaningful dialogue" can occur, it is safe to say such dialogue will never happen under this administration, said Bonnie Kristian, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

"The Trump administration should support our ally's interest in negotiations, not undermine it," Kristian added.
Thursday, March 08, 2018 Does NM Owe Trump A "Thank You?" Plus: Carr Convention Power? Pushing Pat, A Shocker In Espanola And Keller Vs. Lewis (Redux)



We didn't see any thank you notes to Trump



The U.S. Energy Department released more details of how it hopes to fund nuclear weapons projects in New Mexico, outlining a combined request of $4.2 billion for nuclear security spending at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The request for fiscal year 2019, which relies on congressional appropriations, represents an increase of about $249 million for Los Alamos and $377 million for Sandia over the labs budgets for fiscal year 2017.



CARR POWER?



Dem Lt. Governor candidate Jeff Carr of Taos pushes back against Alligator analysis that has him fighting to get 20 percent of the delegate vote at Saturday's Democratic pre-primary convention. He says he will get 30 percent and says if he does we have to buy him dinner. And if he doesn't, he buys.



Where should we take Jeff to dinner? How about some chicharrones at Barelas Coffee House? As for us. don't fret, Jeff. We're easy. If we win, just book a table at



PUSHING PAT



Supporters of ABQ congressional candidate Pat Davis note that we did not mention him in the blog that gamed the convention action. They say Davis has a strong grassroots organization and look for him to surprise at the meeting.



Maybe Davis' foes are getting nervous. One of them takes this dig: "Someone should point out that Pat's new campaign office is on Central Avenue, right in the heart of the ART project that he voted for as a city councilor but that isn't running."



AND PUSHBACK



And more pushback against claims that there was hanky-panky at some of the county conventions that sent delegates to the pre-primary. BernCo Dem Chair Bill Peifer writes:



Claims of rigging the process by me or the party in favor of any of the campaigns fall somewhere between pure political posturing and absurdly ridiculous. I have been meticulously careful about any semblance of partiality in this primary race, to the point that I dont even attend events of, or sign petitions for, even the unopposed candidates. When we selected site coordinators for each of the eight locations where ward meetings were held we chose individuals who did not have direct ties to any of the campaigns and eliminated a few of our best volunteers who had gone public with who they were supporting.



REALLY?



Espanola, in the heart of the Democratic north, has elected a Republican mayor? Really?



Espanola voters elected Javier E. Sanchez to replace Mayor Alice A. Lucero, who opted not to seek a third term. Sanchez won with an overwhelming majority over Robert J. Seeds and Adrianna Ortiz.



Locals say Sanchez is the first GOP mayor in the city in decades.



(That sound you just heard is



TWO NEWBIES



So who wins the popularity contest? Santa Fe Mayor-elect Alan Webber or ABQ Mayor Tim Keller? Both are progressives now at the helm of the state's two most prominent cities. (Sorry Cruces and Rio Rancho). Webber managed to get 66% of the vote Tuesday. in a five way race to win the Santa Fe contest and Keller was elected in a two way runoff in November with 62%. But Webber was elected under the "ranked" system where he was picked by many voters as their second choice which made his big percentage possible. Still, quite an accomplishment as was Keller's. However,



In the first round of four rounds of voting--before he was awarded second choice votes--Webber garnered 39% of the vote. In the October ABQ election featuring 7 candidates Keller had an identical amount--39 percent. But because he faced more candidates he ekes out a win in the popularity contest.



The bad news for this political duo, who are good friends, is that often a mayor's popularity peaks on the day he is elected.



KELLER VS. LEWIS (REDUX)







What do you expect from a sore losing conservative Republican who lost the mayoral election in a landslide? Same old Republican policies which havent worked for the past eight years under ex-mayor Berry--cut services and middle class city jobs to balance a budget--and Berry still left the city with a deficit and a disastrous ART. I really dont see that as competent leadership. Let's remember that the deficit has come from a Republican administration and not a "progressive liberal" one. I guess Lewis thinks the crime wave will just go away all by itself.



It's a wish list deficit to want to invest in the city by hiring more police officers to alleviate some of the crime we are experiencing? Balancing the budget and investing in our police force costs money. We want to attack the crime wave and balance the budget but we dont want to pay for it? As they say everything costs and we are paying the price. I agree that the gross receipts tax is not the best way to solve the deficit and invest in our depleted police force. It needed to be done and Keller and the city council were willing to take the political hit to pursue and pass the increase.



Tax increase or no tax increase, for ABQ, as the



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here.



( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2018 Welcome back. Let's check out the latest La Politica. . .We didn't see any thank you notes to Trump for this from Senators Udall or Heinrich, but:Dem Lt. Governor candidate Jeff Carr of Taos pushes back against Alligator analysis that has him fighting to get 20 percent of the delegate vote at Saturday's Democratic pre-primary convention. He says he will get 30 percent and says if he does we have to buy him dinner. And if he doesn't, he buys.Where should we take Jeff to dinner? How about some chicharrones at Barelas Coffee House? As for us. don't fret, Jeff. We're easy. If we win, just book a table at Ruth's Chris . Make sure your credit limit isn't capped.Supporters of ABQ congressional candidate Pat Davis note that we did not mention him in the blog that gamed the convention action. They say Davis has a strong grassroots organization and look for him to surprise at the meeting.Maybe Davis' foes are getting nervous. One of them takes this dig: "Someone should point out that Pat's new campaign office is on Central Avenue, right in the heart of the ART project that he voted for as a city councilor but that isn't running."And more pushback against claims that there was hanky-panky at some of the county conventions that sent delegates to the pre-primary. BernCo Dem Chair Bill Peifer writes:Espanola, in the heart of the Democratic north, has elected a Republican mayor? Really? Yep Locals say Sanchez is the first GOP mayor in the city in decades.(That sound you just heard is Emilio Naranjo rolling over in his grave.)So who wins the popularity contest? Santa Fe Mayor-elect Alan Webber or ABQ Mayor Tim Keller? Both are progressives now at the helm of the state's two most prominent cities. (Sorry Cruces and Rio Rancho). Webber managed to get 66% of the vote Tuesday. in a five way race to win the Santa Fe contest and Keller was elected in a two way runoff in November with 62%. But Webber was elected under the "ranked" system where he was picked by many voters as their second choice which made his big percentage possible. Still, quite an accomplishment as was Keller's. However,In the first round of four rounds of voting--before he was awarded second choice votes--Webber garnered 39% of the vote. In the October ABQ election featuring 7 candidates Keller had an identical amount--39 percent. But because he faced more candidates he ekes out a win in the popularity contest.The bad news for this political duo, who are good friends, is that often a mayor's popularity peaks on the day he is elected.The man Keller defeated in November--former City Councilor Dan Lewis--lambasted the new mayor for supporting a tax increase this week that was approved by the city council and for doing so without the public vote he promised. Reader Ken Tabish has the inevitable pushback:Tax increase or no tax increase, for ABQ, as the old country song says, "It's time to pay the fiddler."This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 15:05:26|Editor: Lifang

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GENEVA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The idea of building a community with a shared future for humanity is "a fantastic concept" for the world, and it matches what the UN intends to achieve, said a senior official with the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Geoffrey Hamilton, head of the Cooperation and Partnerships section of the Economic Cooperation and Trade Division in UNECE, said in an interview with Xinhua that the United Nations also wants "to create a shared community and a shared humanity."

Hamilton's group focuses on nurturing public-private partnerships. He spoke to Xinhua as the annual sessions of China's top legislative and political advisory bodies are underway in Beijing.

He said the UNECE is involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, seeing a lot of positivity, adding that the initiative is in line with the UN goals.

Proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes, thus building a new platform for international cooperation to create new drivers of growth.

"I see a very close similarity between the Belt and Road (Initiative) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as I believe both these initiatives are trying to improve the prosperity of the world and the future of the planet. It is a real win-win," said Hamilton.

He said "it is a very, very challenging agenda" and both have "very ambitious targets" that are realizable.

"We definitely need the support of countries like China," said the UNECE official.

He said the projects within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and SDGs "cost a huge amount of money" and China cannot raise that amount of cash "by itself," he said.

"Where the private sector is asked to provide inputs to its finances, I think it is a very sensible approach and a very necessary one" for both the Belt and Road Initiative and SDGs, said Hamilton.

He also said the Belt and Road projects would need to be feasible and acting to stimulate local economies.

"The business community -- both Chinese and foreign -- are very adept in assessing the viability of, and feasibility of projects," he said.

"I think with their contribution, the Belt and Road (Initiative) can be more successful," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 15:15:27|Editor: Lifang

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CARACAS, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The attempt to exclude Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from the upcoming Summit of the Americas only serves to "weaken" the summit, according to one analyst.

"The fact that today there is an attempt to isolate Venezuela from the 8th Summit of the Americas, far from weakening Venezuela, what it does is weaken the summit itself," said Tony Boza, an economist and political observer, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

This year's summit is scheduled for April 13 and 14 in Peru's capital Lima.

With Venezuela and the United States at loggerheads, Peru's Foreign Affairs Minister Cayetana Aljovin recently announced that her country was withdrawing Maduro's invitation to participate in the gathering.

Organized by the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), the summit periodically gathers leaders from throughout the Western hemisphere, but has traditionally shunned those at odds with the White House, most famously Cuba.

Boza pointed out that dis-inviting Maduro, who has announced his plan to attend the summit, "is something that is going to weaken the OAS" by exposing Washington's regional ambitions.

The dispute is bound to "reveal what the true intentions (of the United States and its regional allies) are towards our country" and Latin America in general, the Venezuelan analyst said.

Their ultimate goal is "to not allow Venezuela to be autonomous, to not allow us to have self-determination, to prevent the vigorous democratic processes that we have been undergoing in the past 20 years," Boza said.

Maduro has received support from regional allies, namely the member countries of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and some island nations in the Caribbean.

On Monday, the ALBA members signed a declaration in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, defending "Venezuela's right to participate" in the summit and pledging to "take diplomatic and political measures to guarantee it."

"We believe this summit should be a meeting point for all the countries on the continent, and a venue where we can all express our ideas, build consensus, disagree and debate, with respect for diversity," the declaration stated.

Boza said the show of solidarity provided Venezuela "the chance to put forward our vision, our grasp of the problem, which is ... the permanent interference of the United States in the internal politics of our country."

Venezuela's Minister of Communication and Information Jorge Rodriguez on Tuesday confirmed Maduro will be attending the summit.

Maduro will be vying against four other presidential hopefuls as he runs for re-election in May as the candidate of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 16:05:33|Editor: Mengjie

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by Levi J Parsons

SYDNEY, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Although Australia has a resource-based economy with mining and agriculture at the forefront of the country's past successes, business leaders are continuing to search for new opportunities to sustain growth and compete in the ever changing economic landscape.

While many Aussies argue about the best way to steer the transition out of minerals and manufacturing and into the digital workplaces of the future, it seems there's one thing everyone can agree on -- All roads lead to China.

As Australia's largest trading partner and No. 1 market for tourism and education, China's surging consumer base presents itself as an abundant area of growth if Aussie companies can figure out how to target them and what exactly it is.

So this week, the top brass of the Australian business community met in Sydney at a high-level summit to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing their industries.

With keynote speeches from Australia's Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe, CEO of the nation's largest mining company BHP Andrew Mckenzie and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, there was no shortage of good advice on offer for Aussie entrepreneurs.

A common theme echoed throughout the meeting was that if Australian businesses want to keep thriving on the world stage, they will need to become more innovative, more specialized and more focused on pursuing ever expanding global markets like China.

CHINA'S NEXT PHASE OF GROWTH

While China's manufacturing sector has been the core engine which has driven global growth for the past number of decades, the domestically-led industrial economic model that China has used is changing.

The emergence of online e-commerce platforms like Alibaba and JD.com are perhaps the most obvious examples of this transformation.

"I have a lot of respect for the tenacity and entrepreneurialism that China has tackled the online market with," CEO of Australia's leading data innovation group Data 61, Adrian Turner, told the forum.

"They began by using western technology and innovating around business models and not the other way round."

The success of these digital giants has not only revolutionized the retail space for both buyers and sellers in the marketplace, but the development of the underlying technology appears to have awoken the country and given its digital creators a new found confidence on the world stage.

"In mid 2017 China came out and said, we are going to be the leader in artificial intelligence," Turner said.

"By 2030, they think it's going to be a 150-billion-dollar market in China. They think it's going to reframe the basis of competition worldwide and add a trillion dollars to China's GDP."

It seems that venture capitalists agree, with investment into China's AI startup sector eclipsing those in the United States.

And with this increase in "high value growth" and productivity, a sharp rise in domestic personal income is invariably set to follow.

"The combination of talent, of wealth, of infrastructure, of manufacturing capability, research and development and design capability is quite unique and all of that has the effect of creating consumption," director of the McKinsey Global Institute in China, Jonathan Woetzel, told the summit.

"And those new consumers in China, the new middle class, are importantly very different from today's middle class, they have different tastes, different expectations and different price points."

"So there is a huge new wave of consumption about to break over the world and of course Australia knows that better than anywhere else."

WHERE DOES AUSTRALIA FITS IN

But of course the reality is most of that market growth is going to be captured by companies inside of China, not outside.

In fact, it's forcast that by 2025, China will be home to one in four of the world's billion-dollar companies.

So will China's booming marketplace and increasing global buying power simply be a "China for China goal?" Or is there a role to play for foreign enterprises?

Woetzel believes the answer is definitely yes.

"But to participate in China they will have to be competitive in China and being competitive in China means being as innovative, as productive and digital as Chinese enterprises are," Woetzel said.

In order to achieve this however, Australian businesses need to identify areas where they have a natural competitive advantage.

"Either you have scale as a platform or you can present as a differentiated entity," Turner explained.

"Taking a hardline, you could say that Australia is neither of those right now."

"We don't have the scale globally that China, India or the U.S. has and we're not highly differentiated in a lot of areas, we are in some however a lot of them are analogue era areas."

But one space where Australian does have a substantial competitive advantage is the healthcare sector as the future of the industry moves from "crisis driven care" into highly personalised, data-driven "wellness management."

China, like Australia, has an aging population and in the future both nations will have to design strategies to manage this issue.

"Australia has such a good healthcare system, this is such a good opportunity for us," Turner said.

COOPERATION IS KEY

For global businesses to operate smoothly however, global relationships must be maintained.

While whispers of protectionist rhetoric have grown louder in the U.S. and some parts of Europe, China and Australia have reaffirmed their position as outward looking trading nations seeking to do business with the rest of the world.

"Free trade is self-evidently the lifeblood of the global economy, and we expect it to flourish," BHP CEO Mackenzie said in his address at the summit.

But looking beyond free trade and economic development, there is also something to be said about investing in people-to-people links.

The Torch Innovation Precinct at the University of New South Wales for example has been a huge boost for Sino-Australia business ties, with the Chinese and Australian government-backed tech facility developed to strengthen cooperation between the two countries and spark growth in the startup sector.

Other similar partnerships include the Australia-China Natural Gas Technology Fund and the Center for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research in Tasmania -- a collaboration between Australia's national science body, the CSIRO, and China's Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology.

So for Australia enterprise, it would appear there are numerous opportunities to collaborate with it's regional partner in the Asia Pacific.
KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Malaysian government reiterated its commitment to find the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 on Thursday, as efforts to solve one of the largest mysteries in human aviation history enters the fifth year.

Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai, when attending an event at Port Klang, said that the newly launched search for MH370, led by U.S. firm Ocean Infinity, has completed 16,000 square km out of the total 25,000 square km search area.

"So far we haven't got any details or anything of the wreckage of MH370," said Liow, noting that they will continue the search for the next three months.

In January, the Malaysian government signed Ocean Infinity to continue the search efforts, giving the U.S. firm 90 days to locate the wreckage of the Boeing 777 aircraft.

A Malaysian official said earlier that due to refuel and supply reasons, Seabed Constructor, the vessel the company uses for the search, has to report to the port roughly every 26 days, leading the search to finish in early June or mid-June.

Liow also said that a relevant report pertaining to the investigation of MH370 will also be released.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 people onboard, disappeared when it was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
COLOMBO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan Police on Thursday temporarily lifted a curfew in Kandy, central Sri Lankan, after three days, following deadly communal clashes which left three dead and several injured.

A police official told Xinhua that with the presence of heavy security across the district, tensions had eased with no major incidents reports on Wednesday night.

The government information department said the curfew was lifted at 10 a.m. (local time) Thursday morning, but would be re-imposed at 6 p.m. (local time) in order to maintain law and order.

The curfew had been in place since Sunday evening.

The government on Wednesday established special hotlines for public to launch complaints if they have information on any individuals promoting racism or inciting communal violence.

The military also said that additional army had been deployed in Kandy and its suburbs, but they would work in using minimum force to restore law and order.

Deadly communal clashes erupted in Kandy on Sunday evening after a 41-year-old man succumbed to his injuries after being attacked by a group of people on Feb. 22.

The violence has left several homes, shops, temples and mosques burnt and damaged.

Due to the escalation of violence, President Maithripala Siriena on Tuesday declared a week-long, nationwide state of emergency, the first since the country ended a civil war in 2009.

In a national address, the president appealed for calm and peace and warned of "stern action" against anyone spreading violence and rumors with the intention of provoking communal violence.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 17:00:43|Editor: Mengjie

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The wine industry in the U.S. state California is enthusiastic about expanding sales and tourism in the lucrative China market, an expert said Wednesday.

Christopher Beros, Asia director of the Wine Institute of California (WIC), told Xinhua that the market for California wines in China was growing very rapidly.

"The number of imported wine drinkers in China has increased from 19 million in 2011 to 48 million in 2016, and I see that trend continuing over the foreseeable future," he said.

"I think that's going to happen in the next 10 years at a very rapid growth rate," Beros added.

"Ten years ago, a lot of wine sales in China were focused much more on business gifting, weddings on that kind of thing, and it wasn't really what I'd call a consumer-driven market," he noted.

Today the market is much more focused on consumers, he explained, saying wine has become more popular during dinner.

"They have it at home, they have it with their friends, do it for themselves, not doing it to show face," he said of the change in the lifestyle of young Chinese people.

"Even there are many young professional women who are really interested in wine and drinking wine. They are very experimental, and they are trying a lot of different types and they are very open-minded about it," Beros said.

He said the market for California wines is growing very rapidly and in 2016 there was a 48 percent increase in the value of California wines being exported to China.

Beros was leading a group of professionals on a promotional tour to a winery in Napa Valley, a renowned Californian wine-producing region, about 107 kilometers north of San Francisco in western California.

He said the WIC is an association of 1,000 California wineries and wine-related businesses that initiate and advocate public policy to enhance wine culture among local and foreign visitors.

Connie Gabriel, a wine educator with the Robert Mondavi Winery in Napa Valley, said more and more Chinese tourists were coming to visit the winery, and their sales were so brisk that they had to provide two Chinese-speaking staff members to cater to the increasing needs of visitors from China.

A tour guide from a travel agency West Coast Holidays in San Francisco said she takes busloads of tourists from China and other regions in Asia to Napa Valley, where they can savor the unique taste of premium California wines.

"Even those who do not drink wine are happy to come and have a look at the famous home of California wines," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 17:10:46|Editor: Mengjie

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LANZHOU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Zhu Cailing, 50, thinks her work is making a difference, though she has had her share of disappointments as a female village official.

In 2013, Zhu was elected director of the Village Committee of Houwan Village, Dingxi City, in northwest China's Gansu Province, making her the first female village chief in Houwan.

"At first, some villagers were skeptical of what a female official could do for them," Zhu recalled.

She realized that to win people's trust, she must earn it.

When Zhu took up her post, 22 households lived in homes that were in a state of disrepair. Renovating the old houses was her first endeavor.

Filling application forms and preparing all the needed documents, Zhu took on the work by herself to get subsidies from higher-level governments.

Her hard work paid off when town authorities approved subsidies of 220,000 yuan (about 34,800 U.S. dollars) for an old house renovation project in the village.

From 2014 to 2017, a total of 83 dilapidated houses were renovated. Seeing the new houses being built, the villagers began to have faith in Zhu.

"I am not worried anymore that my house will collapse one day. I feel my life has bright prospects," said villager Jing Jiang.

Every year, Zhu cycles a total of around 1,800 kilometers between her home and the town government to deal with a range of issues for villagers.

"Applying for government subsidy projects and mediating disputes are trivial things I can do for villagers," said Zhu. "Gaining their trust cannot be achieved through empty words but must be carried out step by step."

BUILDING ROADS AND TRUST

Zhang Chunling was appointed Communist Party secretary of Chuangjiacha Village, also of Dingxi City, in 2007.

"At first, I did not believed in her. How could an ordinary rural women run a village?" said Zuo Tingyuan, Zhang's husband.

At that time, Chuangjiacha was ranked last among 14 villages in Ningyuan Town on infrastructure construction, poverty relief and environmental protection.

The main road from the village to the town was muddy and bumpy when rain and snow hit the mountain village.

Fixing the road became the top priority for Zhang.

She took every chance to ask for funds from higher authorities. Since 2015, the village has got more than 4 million yuan, paving not only the road to the town, but also the lanes in the village.

"New asphalt roads have been built to link us with the outside world. It is really convenient for villagers," said Li Keyi, a villager.

In 2016, Chuangjiacha ranked the first among all villages of the town in an comprehensive assessment.

"It is a stereotype that a woman cannot be a good village official," said Zhang. "I believe we can contribute to people's well-being."

Zhu and Zhang are among hundreds of thousands of women to serve as village officials at the grassroots level in China.

According to a government white paper released in 2015 by the State Council Information Office, women accounted for 22.7 percent of the total members of village committees in China in 2013, up 7 percentage points from 2000.

"Female village officials are more approachable to villagers and better at communicating with them," said Sun Shufang, a Communist Party official from Dingxi. "They are playing a bigger role in grassroots governance in China."
BANGKOK, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) dismissed on Wednesday criticisms that it will be disadvantaged by the private sector in a high-speed train project to link the country's three international airports.

Acting SRT Governor Anon Luangboriboon said in a statement that the high-speed train project was estimated to bring huge economic benefits as much as some 650 billion baht (about 20.3 billion U.S. dollars).

It is designed to link Don Muang airport on the northern outskirts of Bangkok with Suvarnabhumi airport in eastern suburban Bangkok and U-tapao airport in Rayong province under the Eastern Economic Corridor project, which is to develop the eastern three provinces of Rayong, Chonburi, and Chachoengsao into a modern, high-tech, innovative industrial urban area.

The SRT has followed risk management policy to see to it that the state firm will not be disadvantaged to the private concessionaires in the implementation of the high-speed train project.

The SRT will be responsible for the construction of infrastructural systems and land eviction and management in support of the high-speed train project whereas the private sector will be given concessions to build rail tracks, procure locomotives and carriages as well as run train services, repairs and maintenance, according to the SRT statement.

The concession period is 50 years, which Anon said it is reasonable and necessary based on the huge investment and comparatively high risk.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 17:25:51|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday that Japan should earnestly implement the political understanding that "China and Japan see each other as partners, not threats."

China is willing to work with Japan to restore the relationship to healthy and steady growth, as long as Japan "does not prevaricate, flip-flop or backpedal and instead accepts and welcomes China's development," Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People's Congress.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

"Never forget why you started, and you can accomplish your mission. At this important juncture, we ask Japan to have political credibility and act accordingly to cement the political foundation of its relations with China," Wang said.

He said the treaty had confirmed political principles agreed upon the normalization of Sino-Japanese relationship, such as handling historical issues correctly and upholding the one-China policy.

He said China noticed that Japan's policies towards China became clearer and more positive in recent days. "We welcome such a hard-won momentum of improvement in our relationship," he said.

"I am hopeful that with a steady improvement of our relations, high level visits will naturally come about and peace and friendship will again be the dominant theme of Sino-Japanese relations," Wang said.

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Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 17:45:54|Editor: pengying

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HANGZHOU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese food brand Wufangzhai has opened an unmanned restaurant in Hangzhou, capital city of east China's Zhejiang Province.

Wufangzhai is a 97-year-old brand and is a famous producer of Zongzi,glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in leaves.

The company collaborated with Koubei, a food and dining service operated by e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba, to launch its first unmanned restaurant, where customers can order and take meals on their own.

Without waiting in line, customers can order meals through self-service machines or by scanning a quick response code on a table with their smart phones, and take their meals from cupboards at the restaurant.

The restaurant has a 24-hour service, along with dish recommendations for customers based on big data provided by Koubei.

"It is very convenient to use a phone to order meals with the recommendation service," said a man surnamed He from Hangzhou. "It only takes about a three-minutes wait for the meals."

Dining in the unmanned restaurant is "a fresh experience," said another resident. "The self-service process is easy and smooth."

"The restaurant mainly depends on the big data of Koubei, which can improve its running and management," said Koubei CEO Fan Chi.

Turnover of the restaurant has increased by 40 percent over the past month. "Labor costs have declined on the other hand, said Wang Shuying, manager of the restaurant. "The number of staff has decreased to about six from the previous 13."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 18:06:00|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Qingdao this year will be "a new milestone in the history of the SCO," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday.

"We welcome the SCO back to China, and expect it to embark on a new journey in Qingdao," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

Slated for June in east China's Qingdao City, the summit will be the first of its kind after a membership expansion last year. The SCO now has China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan as full members.

Wang said China expects to work with other SCO members at the summit to make the organization more cohesive, effective and influential.

With a focus on revitalizing the Shanghai Spirit, the summit will enhance trust and solidarity between the member states and build a closer SCO community, said the minister.

Participants in the Qingdao summit will work on a five-year outline for implementation of the Treaty on Long-term Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, as well as a number of resolutions or documents concerning security, economic, cultural and environmental cooperation, according to Wang.

They will also advance Belt and Road projects in SCO member states, he said.

China and other SCO members will help the organization take a clearer stand on major international and regional issues and play a more active role in regional cooperation and global economic governance, said Wang.

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ULAN BATOR, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The citizens of the capital of Mongolia are allowed to own land in rural areas for free, the Department of Land Privatization Management of the Ulaanbaatar Property Relations Agency said in a statement on Thursday.

The citizens of Ulan Bator will be able to privatize up to 5,000-square meter land in rural areas free of charge.

Since 2013, a total of 191,276 residents of the Mongolian capital privatized 100.872 square km of land for family needs. Therefore, it is now impossible to privatize land in Ulan Bator.

The total land area of Mongolia is 1,564,116 square km. But more than half of its three million population live in the capital.

According to law on land allocation, the size of land parcels allocated for ownership for family needs vary depending on location.

In Ulan Bator and along the national level main roads connecting provinces with Ulan Bator, individuals are entitled to up to 0.07 hectares or 700 square meters, while in the province centers up to 0.35 hectares or 3500 square meters, and in administrative subdivisions centers and villages up to 0.5 hectares or 5,000 square meters, respectively.

Foreign citizens and companies can only use land under definite conditions and terms. They are not permitted to own land.
MEXICO CITY, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. plan to impose "seasonal windows" on agricultural produce within the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) could make future negotiations even harder, said a high-ranking Mexican negotiator on Wednesday.

The United States suggested creating seasonal windows during the fourth round of the NAFTA talks last October, which would restrict agricultural imports from Canada and Mexico and impose tariffs on certain products based on volume and time of year.

Bosco de la Vega, president of Mexico's Agricultural National Council (CNA), told Xinhua that the topic has not been discussed since then due to Mexico and Canada's categorical rejection.

However, de la Vega said he is concerned that the proposal could return to the table and may become another obstacle to the modernization of NAFTA.

The negotiator added the proposal is fully supported by farmers in the U.S. states of Florida, South Carolina and Georgia but is "a non-negotiable topic" for Mexico and Canada. "The danger is that the United States is going to wade into a very complicated area and lengthen it," he said.

The CNA leader said the thorniest topics will be left for last since they could include the involvement of heads of state.

The talks to modernize NAFTA began in August 2017, with the original goal of being finished by the end of the year. However, talks have been prolonged over major differences concerning rules of origin for the automotive industry, among others.

The three countries, Canada, Mexico and the United States, just concluded the seventh round of talks on Monday with only six chapters closed out of 30 under discussion.
Hijjo, 90, dries up the leftover bread pitas collected from other residents in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza Strip on March 7, 2018. She earns her own living by selling the pitas to livestock owners. (Xinhua Photo)

GAZA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Khadija Hijjo, a 90-year-old Palestinian woman in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza Strip, is always proud of herself as she earns a living by selling leftover bread to fight extreme poverty.

"I'm very proud that I rely on myself at this age to earn my own living," Hijjo told Xinhua.

The lady lives in her tiny run-down home in the overcrowded Shati refugee camp of Gaza city, where poverty and deprivation are trademarks for the residents.

Despite their own struggle in life, the refugee camp's residents extend a hand to Hijjo to help her make a living with their very limited resources.

The residents collect their leftover bread pitas everyday for the old lady, who then dries them up before selling them to livestock owners.

Everyday, Hijjo hangs the leftover pitas on the ropes in her room, and break them into small pieces after they become dry.

"I later put the bread in bags and sell it to shepherds or owners of livestock farms ... This helps me get money to survive," Hijjo said with a proud smile.

Hijjo has been living alone for 20 years. Her husband passed away 30 years ago, and her four daughters are now all married.

"Being alone makes me stronger and more self-reliant," she said.

Years ago, Hijjo was a sewing woman, but as time went by, her age and deteriorating health condition failed her in her job.

Now, she also sells candies and snacks to children who visit her to bring their families' leftover bread. She has been living like this for more than a decade.

Despite the extreme poverty, smile never disappears from Hijjo's wrinkled face, which tells the stories of the years of hardship she has been through.

"I always urge young girls and women to take responsibility and never think negatively," she said.

Gaza has been placed under a tight Israeli blockade since Islamic Hamas movement seized the territory by force after routing forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

The blockade has pushed Gaza's 2 million population deeper into poverty as the unemployment rate hits 45 percent, according to official figures.

International organizations and United Nations agencies say that over 60 percent of the Gazan people live in food insecurity, with hundreds of thousands relying on foreign food aid.

A recent World Bank report has also said the Gaza Strip ranks third across the Arab region in terms of poverty rate after Sudan and Yemen.

Moreover, women in the Gaza Strip, like those in the West Bank, suffer from restrictions and discrimination.

To ease this reality, the Ramallah-based consensus government approved on Monday a number of law amendments and regulations that protect women's civil rights.

The moves were taken days before the International Women's Day, which falls on March 8.

The new law changes will allow Palestinian women to apply for passports, open bank accounts and change schools for their children. These rights were only enjoyed by Palestinian men before.

A new law amendment has also been submitted to President Abbas to stop reducing punitive measures for those indicted of women "honor killing."

Figures suggest that women represent 49.2 percent of the Palestinian society. However, the representation of women in public life has been very low, as they are still struggling for civil, social, economic and political rights.

Such moves were widely welcomed and applauded on the social media as well as by pro-women organizations.

"These decisions represent progress in empowering Palestinian women," said Zainab Al-Ghunaimi, director of Gaza's Center for Women's Legal Researches and Consulting.

Al-Ghunaimi described the recent moves as an achievement for Palestinian women rights institutions, which have been struggling to eliminate the discrimination against women.

She urged the Palestinian Authority to come up with more policies to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which was signed by it about a year ago.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 18:21:03|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday that the Taiwan authorities should return to the 1992 Consensus as soon as possible.

"The key to unlocking the cross-Strait stalemate lies in recognizing the 1992 Consensus and acknowledging that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China," said Wang at a press conference at the annual session of the National People's Congress. "This correct move will create a bright future for the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations."

"Adhering to the one-China principle and not having official ties with Taiwan have become a generally observed norm in international relations," he said.

"It is a correct choice in line with the tide of history to establish diplomatic relations and carry out regular cooperation with the government of the People's Republic of China, the sole legal representative of the whole of China.

"Such a choice would best serve the long-term interest of these countries and their people. Of course this is the overriding trend and an unstoppable one," he said.

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ADDIS ABABA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) and the United States have discussed ways of strengthening their partnership.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, on Thursday met and held talks with the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, at the headquarters of the pan-African bloc in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

After their meeting, the two officials told the press that they have discussed ways of strengthening partnership between Africa and the U.S. in trade, peace and security, health, fight against corruption and illicit financial flow.

Tillerson has appreciated the efforts and role the AU plays in economic regional integration of Africa and ensuring peace and stability on the continent, as well as strengthening the African Center for Disease control, on which he said U.S. is keen to forge closer collaboration.
ISLAMABAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani security officials have confirmed that a U.S. pilotless aircraft fired missile on a camp of Pakistani militants in Afghanistan's border region and killed 21 militants.

Intelligence officials said on Thursday that a U.S. drone fired two missiles on the militants of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Shaltan area of Kunar province of Afghanistan on Wednesday.

Abdullah, son of the TTP Chief Maulvi Fazalullah, was among the dead, according to a list shared by the security officials with the media. Senior TTP commander Yasin was also among those killed. He was the teacher of the suicide bombers, according to a Taliban source.

They said the drone struck the camp of suicide bombers when they were busy in physical training in the rugged mountainous region, bordering Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region.

Pakistani officials have long been saying that members of the TTP and other Pakistani groups have fled to Afghanistan following major military operations in the country's tribal regions and Swat Valley in the northwest.

Intelligence officials said that those killed in the Wednesday's strike belonged to different areas of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The TTP Chief for Bajaur tribal area Gul Muhammad was running the camp. TTP has not commented on the reports.
WELLINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand is interested in strengthening economic ties with the Mercosur trading bloc, a South American regional economic organization, Minister for Trade and Export Growth David Parker said on Thursday.

Parker made the statement after he visited Paraguay, the current president of Mercosur, on March 6-7. He held talks with Paraguay's agricultural officials and foreign minister. He also held a working lunch with Paraguay's new generation of leaders to discuss sustainable economic growth.

"As part of my visit I registered with Paraguay New Zealand's desire to begin exploratory discussions with the Mercosur trading bloc," Parker said, adding these exploratory discussions would identify joint interests and strengthen New Zealand's understanding of the benefits of a potential free trade agreement.

"An agreement with Mercosur could contribute to New Zealand's track record of comprehensive and high quality free trade agreements," Parker said, adding there is also considerable potential to use a trade agreement to enhance cooperation across a range of important areas, including agriculture, labor and environmental standards.

A New Zealand-Mercosur agreement would also send an important signal about the value on a strong, rules-based international trading system, the minister said.

Taken as a whole, Mercosur countries, which include Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and other associated and observer countries, have a combined GDP of 2.42 trillion U.S. dollars. New Zealand and Mexico are Mercosur's only two observer countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 18:51:09|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China and the European Union (EU) should speed up negotiations on a bilateral investment protection treaty, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday.

"Global governance has emerged as a new dimension of China-EU cooperation. The two have a shared responsibility to safeguard the global free trade system," Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the country's annual legislative session.

China wants to partner with Europe to create a more stable world in what are uncertain times, according to the foreign minister.

"In spite of some disagreements, both sides have realized the need to put oneself in the other's shoes, be more open, tolerant and have more understanding of each other," Wang said.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. Earlier this year, both French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May paid visits to China.

"We hope at the end of the year China-EU relations will be as strong as when we started it," Wang said.

He also stressed that China would always support European integration and had faith in Europe's future.

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Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 18:56:12|Editor: Liangyu

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The graphic shows the four events to be held in China this year, of which Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi introduced the main highlights at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress in Beijing, China, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Lu Zhe)

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China is hosting four events this year which feature highly on the country's diplomatic agenda, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a press conference Thursday on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

First, the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference will take place in Hainan in April, and focus on reform and opening-up.

Second, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit will take place in Qingdao in June, and focus on revitalizing the Shanghai Spirit.

Third, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit will take place in Beijing in September, and focus on the Belt and Road Initiative.

Fourth, the First China International Import Expo will take place in Shanghai in November, and focus on further market opening.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, emphasized in his report to the 19th Party congress last October that China will work with other countries to foster a new type of international relations, and to build a community with a shared future for humanity.

"This is the aim of China's major country diplomacy in the new era," Wang said.

Xi also stressed in the report that the CPC strives for both the wellbeing of the Chinese people and human progress. To make new and greater contributions for mankind is the CPC's abiding mission, according to Wang.

A committed and responsible China will adopt a more visionary foreign policy, said Wang. "We are determined to build world peace, contribute to global prosperity, and safeguard the international order."

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MOGADISHU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations senior envoy in Somalia on Thursday praised the role of Somali women in promoting a more inclusive and equitable Somali society.

Michael Keating, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Somalia, also congratulated Somali women for achieving significant progress in recent years, especially in the political and economic affairs of the country.

"Women kept Somali families together during their country's long years of chaos and armed conflict," Keating said in a statement issued in Mogadishu to mark the International Women's Day.

The theme for this year's observance is: "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women's lives."

During the 2016 electoral process, Keating said, Somali women made history when female candidates won 24 percent of the seats in the federal parliament.

However, the UN envoy warned that women and girls still face widespread discrimination and numerous obstacles to their professional and educational advancement.

He said these challenges must be addressed and overcome through vigorous legislation, government policies and effective programs.

"Increased participation of Somali women in decision-making and leadership positions is essential," said Keating.

An estimated 98 percent of all Somali women and girls have been subjected to female genital mutilation, according to the UN.

"Sexual and gender-based violence is a harsh reality for millions of women across the country, and young Somali women have far less access to resources and opportunities than their male counterparts," said the UN.

Keating called for empowerment of women which he said continues to be a central feature of the UN's efforts to address social, economic and political challenges in Somalia and around the world.
YANGON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's Fishery Products Processors and Exporters Association has called for government-to-government negotiation over Saudi Arabia's suspension of fishery imports from Myanmar which will start from April 1, the official Global New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday.

Saudi Arabia's imposition of ban on fishery imports from Myanmar along with Bangladesh and India came after its suspension of seafood imports from Vietnam following the detection of two prawn diseases during an inspection tour by Saudi officials.

U Win Kyaing, general secretary of Myanmar Fishery Federation (MFF), urged the government on Wednesday to take action to get access to the market again, saying that Saudi Arabia's embargo on Myanmar seafood will affect not only the prawn but also the fish industry and asking Saudi authorities to come and examine the cold storages.

Myanmar trade officials assured MFF of initiating a negotiation through Saudi's embassy in Myanmar.

Myanmar exports farmed fish to Saudi Arabia which accounts for 30 percent of the farm-raised fish exports and 40 percent of rohu exports.

According to U Win Kyaing, Myanmar's fisheries have never been rejected in international markets nor have they received a complaint.
SINGAPORE, March 8 (Xinhua) -- "A sudden turn" by USS John S. McCain triggered its deadly collision with an oil tanker in the eastern waters of Singapore last year, an investigative report said Thursday.

The U.S. guided-missile destroyer and the Liberia-registered oil tanker Alnic MC ran into each other on Aug. 21, 2017, killing 10 American sailors and wounding five others.

At the time when the incident occurred, the U.S. warship made a sudden turn, causing it to "head into the path" of the oil tanker, said the report released by the Transport Safety Investigation Bureau of the Singapore Transport Ministry.

The action by the U.S. vessel was due to "a series of missteps that took place after a transfer of propulsion controls," which led to a confusion as to which station had steering control, and an unintentional reduction of the port engine throttle which increased the rate of the vessel's turn to port, the report added.

The crew did not recognize the processes involved in the transfer of propulsion and steering control, the report said.

They were "likely to have lacked the requisite knowledge of the steering control system due to inadequacies in training and familiarization," the report noted.

Several sailors on watch during the collision with control over steering were temporarily assigned from another U.S. naval vessel which had steering control systems that were "significantly different" from the McCain, the report said.

The crew on the oil tanker had presumed that the U.S. warship would pass by safely and the actions they took were insufficient to avoid the collision, as it happened within three minutes of McCain's turning to port, said the report.
COLOMBO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Minister of Public Administration and Management Ranjith Madduma Bandara was sworn in as the new law and order minister on Thursday in the wake of deadly communal clashes in Kandy, Central Sri Lanka.

Bandara, who is a senior member from the ruling United National Party, took oaths in front of President Maithripala Sirisena, at the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo.

Bandara took over the portfolio from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who temporarily took over the Law and Order Ministry last month.

President Sirisena declared a week-long nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday after violent communal clashes erupted in Kandy, leaving three dead and several injured.

The state of emergency is the first ever declared since the country ended a civil war in May 2009.

Mobs have burnt homes, businesses, temples and mosques after a 41-year-old man succumbed to his injuries on Sunday after being attacked by a group of people on Feb. 22.

The police said 24 people had been arrested over the killing.
HARARE, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A 31-year-old serial rapist has been sentenced to an effective 72 years in jail by a regional court in Zimbabwe.

The state-run Herald newspaper reported Thursday that regional magistrate Dambudzo Malunga had sentenced Charles Magombedze of Chikova Village in Masvingo Province to 78 years in prison, but conditionally suspended six years.

During his initial appearance in court on Tuesday, Magombedze said he was a member of a satanic cult which was bent on spilling blood and having unprotected sex and sire children with the same inclination.

Magombedze acknowledged guilty to eight counts of rape and pleaded with the courts to hand him a death sentence.

Zimbabwe's constitution may only permit the death penalty to be imposed on a person convicted of murder committed in aggravating circumstances.

Malunga said Magombedze deserved severe punishment because he had behaved like a beast by committing the offences.

Armed with dangerous weapons such as iron bars, axes and machetes, Magombedze molested more than 10 victims, including a 14-year-old girl and a police constabulary's wife.

Magombedze also faces attempted murder charges after he allegedly stabbed a woman five times in an attempt to rape her and other charges related to unlawful entry and theft.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 19:16:16|Editor: Lifang

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Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa (R) meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Harare, Zimbabwe, March 8, 2018. Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday met Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa to discuss ways of boosting bilateral ties between the two countries. (Xinhua/Shaun Jusa)

HARARE, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday met Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa to discuss ways of boosting bilateral ties between the two countries.

During the visit, the two countries signed three cooperation agreements on industry and trade, modernization of Zimbabwe agriculture and establishment of a Russian industrial zone in the southern African country.

Russia's deputy minister of trade and industry Georgy Kalamanov signed the three agreements on behalf of Russia while Zimbabwe's ministers of industry and agriculture signed the agreements.

Addressing a joint press conference after the meeting, Lavrov said he was on a five-nation tour of Africa to cement ties between Russia and Africa.

Lavrov has been to Namibia, Angola and Mozambique and is expected in Ethiopia Friday for talks with that country's leadership and AU officials.

"We have joint cooperation with our African counterparts and we want to elevate our trade, economic and investment ties to a level which corresponds with the level of our political interaction," said Lavrov.

He said he delivered a special message to Mnangagwa from Russian President Vladimir Putin in which he expressed Russia's support to the new administration's efforts in stabilizing the internal political situation and rebuilding the economy.

The two sides also discussed the 4 billion U.S. dollars Zimbabwe-Russia joint venture platinum project launched in 2014 and prospects about cooperation in the diamond industry.

"We laid particular emphasis on the implementation of the joint venture project of exploring platinum in the Great Dyke, which is going to be biggest platinum venture in the world," he said.

The two sides, Lavrov said, also discussed military and technical cooperation.

Lavrov stressed that Russia upholds the policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of any nation and would therefore not interfere in the domestic, political affairs of Zimbabwe which is due to hold polls mid-year.

"We believe it is up to the people of Zimbabwe to determine their future and I believe this is what they are going to do and express themselves in the upcoming elections," Lavrov said.

Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Minister Sibusiso Moyo said the visit by the Russian foreign minister has re-energized and escalated the level of bilateral ties between the two nations.

"We are hoping to increase the inflow of Russian tourists into Zimbabwe as you know we recently changed their visa category from category C to B," Moyo said.

The new category allows Russian visitors to Zimbabwe to obtain their visas on arrival.

Moyo also urged closer cooperation between the private sectors of the two countries.
KAMPALA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan Members of Parliament have asked the government to allocate 20 billion Uganda shillings (5.6 million U.S. dollars) towards the marketing of tourism in the next financial year.

According to recommendations drawn by the budget committee of Parliament and forwarded to the Executive, the money will be used to promote the country's tourism potential, especially on the international scene.

In allocating the money, the committee quoted last year's budget statement which noted that "Uganda has a huge tourism potential, but is constrained by poor infrastructure to access tourism sites, inadequate skills in the hospitality industry and low visibility to attract national and international tourists".

In an earlier interview with Xinhua, the chairperson of Uganda Tourism Board, Daudi Migereko, had said the government plans to hire private companies to promote the country's tourist attractions on the international scene.

"Our country has both cultural and religious tourism, where tourists come to the martyrs' shrine in Kampala and also to experience the different cultural practices in the diverse kingdoms in Uganda," Migereko said.

He added that last year alone, three million people from across the world visited the Namugongo Martyrs Shrine.

Uganda is targeting tourist arrivals to increase to 4 million visitors per year, and double tourism earnings from the current 1.5 billion U.S. dollars to 2.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2020.

A team of technocrats and other tourism players will also be heading to China on March 11 to promote tourism.
JOHANNESBURG, March 8 (Xinhua) -- South Africans and other well-wishers from all around the world on Thursday have donated over 19,000 U.S. dollar towards the payment of medical bills for a South African triathlete competitor.

Mhlengi Gwala (26) is in a Durban Hospital after he was attacked with a chainsaw on Tuesday.

Gwala, a Durban-based triathlete has competed in two international triathlons. He underwent a surgery after robbers tried to saw off his legs with chainsaw.

Gwala was training near the University of KwaZulu-Natal at about 03:15 (CAT) on Tuesday when three men dragged him into the bushes during his morning cycle.

Gwala's sponsor and friend Sue de la Porte said in an attempt to save himself from the violent crime, the triathlete surrendered his phone, watch and bicycle, but the three attackers seemed intent on sawing off his legs.

Lieutenant Colonel Thulani Zwane told local media on Wednesday that security guards came to Gwala's rescue and he was taken to hospital.

"He was fortunate as his main artery was not damaged, but he has a lot of muscle damage," De la Porte said.

South Africa police confirmed that a case of attempted murder has been opened at the Umbilo Police Station.

The crowd-funding campaign for the promising triathlon competitor is running on the BackABuddy website, titled "Get Mhlengi on his bike."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 19:54:27|Editor: Lifang

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Relatives carry the coffin of a provincial government official who was killed in a blast in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, March. 8, 2018. Two people including a provincial government official were killed as a blast rocked Jalalabad city, capital of eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, on Wednesday, a local official said on condition of anonymity. (Xinhua/Saifurahman Safi)
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 19:51:23|Editor: Lifang

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DOHA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Qatar and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have signed an agreement on increasing military and security cooperation, the state-run Qatar News Agency (QNA) reported Thursday.

The agreement was signed on Wednesday in Brussels by Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, and Deputy Secretary-General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller.

The agreement would allow NATO forces and personnel to enter and transit Qatar, and use the Al-Udeid Air Base.

It would facilitate NATO's missions and operations in the region, including the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan, the QNA quoted a NATO statement as saying.

The signing of the agreement came during the official visit of Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani to Belgium, which aims to enhance the bilateral relations between Qatar and European countries.

Qatar has been fighting a full blockade imposed on it since last June by the Arab quartet led by Saudi Arabia that also includes Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

The quartet severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, citing Doha's interference in their domestic affairs and supporting extremism and terrorism. But the tiny oil-rich Gulf nation has strongly denied the charges.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:06:24|Editor: Lifang

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BAGHDAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi court on Thursday sentenced the sister of the former leader of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq to death over terrorism charges, a judicial spokesman said.

Abu Omer al-Baghdadi's sister was sentenced by the Iraqi Central Criminal Court after found guilty for joining the extremist group and providing logistical support to the terrorist organization, said Abdul Sattar al-Biraqdar, spokesman for Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council.

Biraqdar said in a statement that the woman, whose name was not given, was also found guilty of distributing money for some IS militants in Mosul when the city was under control of the terrorist group.

The woman's husband was one of IS group's leaders and was sentenced to death earlier by the court, the statement added.

Abu Omer al-Baghdadi was reportedly killed during an operation in the Tharthar area north of Baghdad in 2010, and was replaced by the current top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After IS was defeated by Iraqi forces, hundreds of its loyalists were killed or captured, with many others still at large either in hideouts in Iraq or abroad.
COLOMBO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A statue of late South African President Nelson Mandela will be erected in Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka, where battles were fought between the Sri Lankan military and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) before 2009.

Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray told Xinhua on Thursday that South African High Commissioner in Sri Lanka Robina P. Marks made the request to put up the statue.

Cooray said that he was delighted to receive such a proposal from South Africa at a meeting he had with the high commissioner. Mandela was a symbol of peace in the world, and therefore he would take steps to implement the request.

Sri Lanka fought a war with the LTTE rebels for 30 years until it ended in 2009. According to the governor, efforts were underway to bring about reconciliation among different communities living in the country.

"We can learn lessons from South Africa which ended apartheid. The Sri Lankan political and civil society leaders have visited South Africa to learn from their experience," he said.

"I am happy that South Africa offered to put up a statue of Mandela in the city of Jaffna," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:11:25|Editor: Jiaxin

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Rebel-held areas in the town of Jisreen are seen from a Syrian military barrier in the government-controlled Mlaiha town in Eastern Ghouta, Syria, on March 8, 2018. The Syrian government on Thursday prepared a second humanitarian corridor for evacuating civilians from the rebel-held areas in Eastern Ghouta, the state-run Ekhbaria TV reported. (Xinhua/Ammar Safarjalani)

DAMASCUS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian government on Thursday prepared a second humanitarian corridor for evacuating civilians from the rebel-held areas in Eastern Ghouta, the state-run Ekhbaria TV reported.

The new corridor is from the Mlaiha-Jisreen area east of Damascus, with civilians expected to leave on Thursday, after ten days of failed attempt to receive civilians from the first designated crossing in Wafidin area in northeast of Damascus.

The civilians' evacuation from the rebel-held areas in Eastern Ghouta is an essential part of the Russian-backed daily humanitarian pause, which has so far seen the evacuation of only a few civilians from Eastern Ghouta. Syrian government accuses the rebels of preventing the civilians from leaving.

The Syrian army has captured 52 percent of Eastern Ghouta in recent days, as part of an ongoing large-scale offensive to dislodge the rebels from the area.

UN humanitarian agencies have sounded the alarm about the worsening humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta, where activists said over 800 people have been killed since late last month by intensified shelling and fighting between government troops and the rebels.
SOFIA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and his visiting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani here on Thursday discussed strengthening bilateral ties.

The two heads of state shared the position that Bulgaria's establishment as a regional center for information technologies in Southeastern Europe and the rapid development of telecommunications and tourism in the country created conditions for attracting Qatari investment in these emerging sectors of the Bulgarian economy, Radev's press office said in a statement.

Radev and Al-Thani also discussed a number of projects of mutual interest in areas such as agriculture and food production, transport infrastructure, energy, science, education and sport, the statement said.

During the meeting, it was stressed that Bulgaria was interested in using Qatari experience in the construction of intermodal ports and attracting investment in the construction and development of infrastructure, the statement said.

Bulgaria's efforts for energy diversification and supply of natural gas from Qatar were also discussed, it said.

Later on Thursday, Al-Thani will meet with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, and a number of bilateral cooperation documents in the fields of energy, youth, culture and sport, education, science and entrepreneurship will be signed.
Photo taken on Aug. 16, 2017 shows zebras and gnus in the Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. (Xinhua/Lin Hongyu)

NAIROBI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A senior Kenyan official said Wednesday Kenya is targeting 100,000 Chinese tourists per year in the medium term, as it embarks on a campaign to sell its safari and beach offerings to the Chinese.

Najib Balala, Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that the East African Nation is embarking on a major online and media marketing campaign in China and has already appointed a new representative there.

Kenya is going into digital marketing to promote Kenya in the Chinese market, said Balala, adding Kenya's tourist industry is eager to tap into the Chinese market.

"We had previously a representative of Kenya Tourism Board in China," he said. "We have appointed a new person to represent us in China. The key Chinese market that we want is that we want it to be top three."

Kenya currently receives some 69,000 Chinese tourists annually, according to 2017 government statistics, representing about 6 percent of total tourist arrivals last year.

"We hope we can get at least 100,000 Chinese into Kenya in the next one two years," Balala said, stressing the appeals of the Kenyan market to Chinese tourists, despite it being a long-haul destination, including groups of well-trained people who can speak the Chinese language.

In addition, the visa is online and the weather is good for Chinese visitors, said Balala.

"Everywhere you go in Kenya, there is wildlife. We have Lake Nakuru National Park, Meru National Park, Amboseli National Park, Masaai Mara, Tsavo National Park, Mount Kenya National Park, and Nairobi National Park," he said.

The CS said Kenya has already acted on complaints by Chinese tourists over being coerced to give bribes at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.

"We have heard of those complaints. We have put a new structure at the airport under the leadership of the CEO of the airport. Everything must work." said Balala, stressing that actions have been taken to ensure a seamless non-corruption process, with major improvements already hailed by tourists.

Noting there are travel agencies and hotels run by Chinese in Kenya, the CS also called for more Chinese investments in Kenya's tourism and wildlife sectors, saying Kenya is ready to give incentives, including duty free on facility refurbishment, to investors in the industry.

China has honored its commitment to ending commercial processing and sales of ivory by the end of 2017. Balala said the move was a noble thing done to Kenya and Africa.

Balala said Kenya is ready to deepen cooperation with China on tourism and wildlife sector to cement bilateral relations. "The policy of China to work with the rest of the world is a win-win policy, so we want to encourage it and, definitely, we think our tourist industry and wildlife sector will benefit from the visiting of Chinese tourists in Kenya."
ANKARA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey and Iraq will carry out a joint cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Thursday.

"Even if the Afrin operation has not yet been completed, we have the capacity to carry out both operations simultaneously," Cavusoglu was quoted by the CNN Turk as saying in Vienna during his visit to Austria.

The operation may start after Iraq holds parliamentary elections scheduled for May, Cavusoglu said.

On Jan. 20, Turkey launched "Operation Olive Branch" to clear Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militants from Afrin in northwestern Syria.

The YPG is regarded by Turkey as the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and European Union.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:21:28|Editor: pengying

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ZHENGZHOU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Rural land ownership reform, which is under way across China's vast countryside, will unleash the productivity of the rural economy and help advance the nation's rural revitalization strategy.

In the 1950s, Chinese farmers turned over their lands to the people's communes. The reform in the early 1980s known as the household responsibility system redistributed the lands to farmers in the form of contracts, though legally the lands are still collectively owned.

Starting in 2014, China began piloting a reform to separate farmland ownership rights, contract rights, and management rights. The reform allows farmers to retain the contract rights but transfer the management rights. They can mortgage it to banks or invest it in a cooperative in exchange for fees or shares.

In Henan Province, one of the largest agricultural bases in China, the reform will be finished in two years. Counties have explored different ways of carrying out the reform.

In Linying County, central Henan, a government-controlled "land bank" was set up in 2015 to contract land from individual farmers. The "land bank" then leases it to more productive farmers or agricultural companies.

Farmer Dai Taoli, 63, in Nizhuang village of Fancheng township, had 0.3 hectares of farmland but became physically unfit for toiling in the field.

"I have spent my whole life working on the farm. My daughter and son have settled in the city and will not come back. I put the land in the bank and get 4,000 yuan (about 634 U.S. dollar) every year, without having to do farm work," said Dai.

Dai's land is contracted through the "land bank" to Wang Wuchuang, a highly capable farmer in the area.

"The land bank is the government's bank, which is a great assurance. I trust the government more than I trust anyone else to tend my plot of land. I receive my fee on time after I sign the contract," said another farmer, Liu Baoli.

The bank has collected more than 17,330 hectares of rural land, accounting for over half of the county's farmland in circulation. Farmers are paid 12,000 yuan (about 1,900 U.S. dollars) every year per hectare. The duration of the contracts are from five to 10 years. Farmers sign the contracts on a voluntary basis.

In areas where rural land is less fertile, the government has invested millions to improve the conditions of the land before it is made available for use.

Menglou township in Dengzhou City is located in a hilly part of Henan with poor rural infrastructure. Starting in August 2016, the city government founded an agricultural development company to contract land from farmers.

The township signed 5,966 contracts with farmers for 3,800 hectares of land. The agricultural development company then invested 136 million yuan (about 21 million dollars) to dig wells, build roads and improve land conditions, said Li Shuang, Communist Party chief of the township.

Menglou township government then invited researchers from Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry to help plan farming. Now around 10 companies grow peanuts, sorghum and other crops on the field.

"The reform is a key to solve the predicament of China's countryside. It is expected to greatly boost efficiency, strengthen the collective economy, develop productivity and help modernize agriculture," said Song Xiangqing, deputy director of the public management institute at Beijing Normal University.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:21:28|Editor: pengying

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KABUL, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China has donated education supplies to an Afghan girls' high school in Kabul on the eve of the International Women's Day which falls on March 8.

Political Counselor of Chinese Embassy Zhang Zhixin attended a donation ceremony on Wednesday and said the Chinese Embassy gave donations to the teachers and students of the Malalai High School based on the tradition of friendship and mutual assistance between China and Afghanistan.

Zhang said he hoped the donation would help the female students get better education as the educational ties between the two neighboring countries are improving.

Speaking at the address, Shafiqa Wardak, principal of Malalai High School, said it is well-known that the status of education for Afghan women is in a difficult situation.

This donation brings Chinese people's enthusiasm and kindness to the teachers and students of the school as they were marking the women's day, the principal said.

The school will use and keep the equipment donated by China so that teachers and students can learn more about Chinese culture, history and development achievements, she said.

Malalai High School was founded in 1931. It is Afghanistan's first women's high school and currently has more than 3,200 students enrolled.
NEW DELHI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi won 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize for his pioneering work in the field of architecture.

The 90-year-old is being known for his innovative work of designing low-cost housing in a career spanning over seven decades.

The Pritzker Prize is regarded as architecture's equivalent to the Nobel Prize and Doshi is the first Indian to have won this award.

Doshi studied in Mumbai before moving to Paris in 1950s to work closely with Le Corbusier, a pioneer in modern architecture.

The veteran architect will be awarded 100,000 U.S. dollars as part of prize during a ceremony in Toronto in May this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:26:31|Editor: pengying

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CHENGDU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A delivery station with only female couriers has caught public attention, as China observes International Women's Day Thursday.

Chen Yu, 37, and her team of female couriers have made sufficient preparations for the shopping spree on Women's Day, when e-commerce websites in China typically tout special offers to grab a share of the market.

Chen is the boss and one of the couriers at her own package delivery station in Qingshen County, southwest China's Sichuan Province. For years, her courier station has been recruiting only female employees.

"Women are typically better in communication and are more patient," Chen said.

In an industry that mainly relies on male couriers, Chen's team of 17 female couriers has been the subject of local attention.

Before the Women's Day shopping bonanza, Chen arranged vacations for her employees.

"On Women's Day there are usually a large number of packages, so I want to make sure everyone is ready," Chen said.

The female-only courier team was not intentional, however. Chen said that at the beginning, she also hired male couriers, who are physically stronger than women.

"At the time, locals here did not know much about the courier business, but the male couriers lacked the patience to explain the business to our customers," she said.

Chen said that women employees "promote the business better," and even require lower salaries.

The female team helped Chen's station become one of the most popular, and in 2015 the station was named an "Excellent Courier Station" in Meishan City, which administers Qingshen County.

"Up to 70 percent of the local individual courier business is done in my station," Chen said.

She joined the business 10 years ago when she first heard about the earning potential from a friend who was working in Zhejiang Province. China's e-commerce giant Alibaba is based in Hangzhou, capital city of this eastern province.

"I closed my snack bar and switched to it," Chen recalled. "My family all shook their heads at my decision."

Chen got a business license in 2009, when there were only two courier stations in the county. She had two employees: one looking after the station, and the other delivering packages.

Courier delivery is heavy labor. Chen still remembers taking a box to the fifth floor of a building without an elevator.

"It was so heavy that I stopped at the third floor and cried desperately," she said.

But a strong sense of perseverance helped Chen carry on. And things are completely different today.

China's digital economy totaled 26 trillion yuan (4.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, accounting for around 32 percent of national GDP, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Its 18-percent growth substantially outpaced the overall economy, which grew 6.9 percent in 2017.

The trend is likely to continue in the future and the value of China's digital economy is expected to hit 16 trillion U.S. dollars by 2035.

"China is already more digitalized than many observers appreciate and has the potential to set the world's digital frontier in coming decades," the McKinsey Global Institute said in a recent report.

China is the world's largest e-commerce market, accounting for more than 40 percent of the value of worldwide transactions, up from less than 1 percent a decade ago. In terms of mobile payments, China has a transaction value 11 times that of the United States, according to the report.

In the past decade, Chen's station expanded by three times in area, and daily deliveries increased from 20 on average to more than 2,000.

"People can buy almost anything on the Internet, and business has been soaring," Chen said. "On big shopping days like Singles' Day, we have to get up around 5 a.m. and work until dark."

Chen's employees have worked in the station for a long time.

"This is like their second home," Chen said.

Of the 16 female couriers, 13 are mothers. Chen often asks them to leave off work early to take care of their children.

"I used to work in a shoe factory, and there was a lot of work to do, and I could barely go home to take care of my child," said Wen Yuhua, an employee at the station. "Now I can both do my work and attend my child at home."

Wen said that she and her colleagues usually work together to deliver heavy packages.

For this year's Women's Day, Chen has prepared gifts for every employee. Wen cooked for the staff.

"I hope the best for them," Chen said.
PARIS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) is planning "a whole arsenal" of counter-measures if U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead with imposing new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum amid global opposition, an official said on Thursday.

"Donald Trump is wrong. All war is bad and in trade war there would be only losers ... The commission is preparing a riposte," European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a French television news channel.

"If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal," he said.

The former French economy minister said that "immediate" retaliatory measures would include European tariffs on U.S. exported oranges, tobacco and bourbon, and goods which he said were mainly produced in constituencies held by Trump's Republican party.

Europe would also take measures to limit eventual excess of imported steel and aluminum into Europe in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules while filing a complaint before the WTO, he added.

Moscovici said Europe "wants to avoid escalation" but "must keep the multilateral framework" because "protectionism is never the answer: protectionism is nationalism, nationalism is war and the war only makes losers."

Trump announced on Thursday last week that the United States was set to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports.

Trump is expected to sign the text on new duties later Thursday.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:36:34|Editor: Lifang

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RAMALLAH, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riad Malki blamed the failure of Arab states to implement their past decisions for emboldening the U.S. to continue its approach toward Jerusalem, local media reported Thursday.

"Our failure as Arab states has encouraged the United States to continue with its unfortunate approach and to make its decision on Jerusalem," Malki said in statements to the official Palestinian radio Voice of Palestine.

Malki made the remarks after the end of the 149th session of the Arab League meeting in Cairo Wednesday, the report said.

Mentioning that there is an Arab consensus on the Palestinian cause, Malki criticized the Arab League for not carrying out its resolutions, which would have halted the U.S. and Israeli moves toward Jerusalem.

"Our failure has also encouraged a small country like Guatemala to decide to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem," he said, adding that this is simply because Arab countries do not have any means to pressure Guatemala to rescind its decision.

There is a former Arab League decision to cut diplomatic ties with any country that recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel or move its embassy there, Malki said.

The Palestinian minister has required Arab countries to activate this resolution, but the league failed to reach a consensus on the decision.

Regarding the international conference proposed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Malki said that the proposal has not yet crystallized and that the Palestinians are seeking a wider coalition before holding the conference.

On Dec. 6, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced to recognize the disputed holy city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered the relocation of its embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.

Israel took over East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later declared the united city as its eternal capital, while the Palestinians hope to establish a future independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

On Feb. 20, Abbas presented a peace initiative in a speech before the UN Security Council, proposing to hold an International peace conference in mid-2018 to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian final status talks based on the two-state solution and UN resolutions.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:41:34|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China is looking to upgrade its strategic partnership and build a closer community of shared future with ASEAN, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday.

China will continue to put cooperation with ASEAN high on its agenda, Wang said at a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

A new blueprint for cooperation between the two sides will be fostered this year.

"The proposed China-ASEAN strategic partnership vision 2030 will lead to better coordination between the Belt and Road Initiative and ASEAN's development plans," Wang said.

Meanwhile, cooperation will be broadened in political, security, economic, trade, social and people-to-people fields, according to the minister.

Additionally, more efforts will be made to build a Lancang-Mekong economic development belt. China will support ASEAN community building and work for the early conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, he said.

The year 2018 marks the 15th anniversary of the China-ASEAN strategic partnership.

"China-ASEAN cooperation is the most successful and dynamic in the Asia-Pacific region," Wang said.

China has been the largest trading partner of ASEAN for nine consecutive years. Last year, trade between the two sides exceeded 500 billion U.S. dollars, and two-way visits totaled 40 million, benefiting nearly 2 billion people, according to Wang.

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WARSAW, Mar 8 (Xinhua) -- Poland has launched the "Dairy Treasures" campaign aimed at promoting Polish dairy products in China, said Polish Chamber of Milk.

Polish Press Agency reported Wednesday that the "Dairy Treasures" campaign is aimed at raising the awareness concerning high-quality Polish milk products in China, including flavored milk, milk powder, yoghurts and ripening cheese.

According to Polish Chamber of Milk, the campaign is a continuation of the three-year "Trade Milk" information and promotion program implemented between years 2014-2017.

The chamber said that the program's main goal is to increase the acceptance of Polish products, establish relationships with potential business partners and promote information on high standards of dairy product production in Poland.

China is one of the world's largest importers of dairy products, especially butter and milk powder. In recent years, dairy exports from the European Union to China have observed a significant increase.

China is also one of the largest importers of Polish dairy products from outside the EU.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 20:56:38|Editor: Mengjie

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XI'AN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A collection of 798 cultural relics dating back to Zhou Dynasty (1046 BC-256 BC) are on display at a museum in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The artifacts were unearthed from a massive complex of tombs in Liangdai Village, which is close to the Yellow River and famous for its long history and culture. The discovery predates the nearby Terracotta Army by more than 300 years.

Some of the tombs are believed to be that of a ruler of a vassal state in Zhou Dynasty and his wife who lived more than 2,800 years ago.

The 70-plus tombs in the area were excavated between 2005 and 2009, and more than 26,000 artifacts including jade, gold and bronze items were unearthed.

Some of the burial objects found had never been seen before and are the oldest and best preserved of their kind in China.

Over 20 pieces classed as national treasures, including a wooden figurine and a trapezoidal piece of jade jewelry, are making their public debut in this exhibition.

"The piece of jade jewelry is decorated with 20 small jade accessories on the top and bottom, and is by far the most luxurious decorative ancient jadeware in China," said deputy curator Cai Haipeng.

A jade animal sculpture, called "yuzhulong" in Chinese and with a history of more than 5,000 years, is the highlight of the collection, according to Pang Youxue, curator of the museum. "Yuzhulong" is a typical item from the Hongshan culture, an important part of the Neolithic Age in northeastern China, some 5,000 years ago.

"This means the owner of the sculpture, whose name is Zhongjiang [wife of the ruler], was also a collector. The jade piece was already over 2,000 years old before it belonged to Zhongjiang," said Pang.
KATHMANDU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 100 Nepali women from different walks of life marched on the streets of Kathmandu on Thursday morning with the theme "Rage against rape".

On the occasion of the 108th International Women's Day, these women from different professions came under a same roof through a social media campaign.

Individuals of all ages participated in the walkathon, raising their voices against the increasing rape incidents across the country.

Wearing white t-shirts with "#RageAgainstRape" written on it, they hoped to draw attention of the government and stakeholders to take strong action against the rising rape cases.

Hima Bista, a social media campaigner, told Xinhua on the spot, "We don't belong to any organization but have come together to raise the cross-cutting issue that has been alarming our society lately. We are voicing against injustice and are pressurizing the authorities for prompt action against culprits."

According to data released by Nepal Police, five rape cases are reported every day on an average in the country. In the last fiscal year alone, over 1,600 rape cases were filed across the country.

The participants marched silently on the streets holding placards written "Women's body is women's right," "Unsafe and insecure, how long?" "I will challenge stereotypes and bias," among others.

"We hear about rape incidents almost every day, its horrific. We are witnessing such but I don't want the next generation of my little daughter to live amid such fear," Anita Thapa, another campaigner, shared with Xinhua.

Most of the participants shared that they feel unsafe within the community owing to incidents of sexual violence against women. Many complained that there is no strong mechanism of justice system for the victims.

"Lately, many of the victims are struggling to life and death while the culprits are running freely. The government must act soon and ensure safety for all women and girls," another campaigner Luna Bhattarai told Xinhua.

The social media campaign plans to continue to raise their voice against rape cases and stand by survivors.
Source:Xinhua| 2018-03-08 21:01:54|Editor: Mengjie

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Photo taken on March 8, 2018 shows the scene of a plenary meeting of deputies from Tibet Autonomous Region at the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China. The meeting was opened to media. (Xinhua/Liu Jinhai)
JAJALABAD, Afghanistan March 8 (Xinhua) -- At least five Taliban militants, including their local commander, were killed and three others wounded during the operation conducted by Afghan intelligence special forces in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, a local official said.

"Special Operations Forces of National Directorate of Security (NDS) raided to a hideout of Taliban militants in Sorkh Road district of Nangarhar province on Wednesday night, as a result five insurgents including their local commander were killed and three others wounded," Ataullah Khogiani, spokesman for provincial governor told Xinhua.

During the operation, 12 suspected militants were also arrested, he said, adding the security personnel also eliminated a vehicle, four motorbikes and an ammunition cache.

Taliban militants who are fighting against government forces in Afghanistan have not made comment about the report so far.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 21:01:40|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- As a senior banking executive, David Li has already witnessed dramatic changes in China since its opening up decades ago.

After hearing the government work plans this year, the chairman and chief executive officer of J.P. Morgan China was still excited about new measures to further open the world's second largest economy to overseas investors.

"We are excited about the opportunities to be created in China's development in a 'new era,'" said Li, who just started his second five-year term as a national political advisor.

Li is in Beijing for the ongoing session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which runs almost in parallel with the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature.

Together dubbed the "two sessions", the March meetings of more than 2,100 national political advisors and about 3,000 legislators are crucial venues where political and economic developments are reviewed and discussed, and key policies and laws adopted.

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China last October said the country is entering a new era, with comprehensive opening up as an important goal. To that end, the government has formulated new policies and put them high on the agenda.

The country will open its doors wider to foreign investors and further liberalize and facilitate trade and investment, Premier Li Keqiang said Monday when delivering the government work report in front of thousands of lawmakers and political advisors.

China will phase in opening up of bank card clearing, remove restrictions on the operation scope of insurance agencies, and ease or cancel limits on foreign holdings in companies in banking, securities, funds, futures, and financial asset management.

For David Li, the measures will be beneficial for the bank's business in this strategically significant market. The company will continue to strengthen its position in China, he said.

Chase Manhattan Corporation, the predecessor of JPMorgan Chase, set up an office in Beijing in 1983, betting on the potential of the world's most populous country which had shut out foreign businesses for decades but was changing rapidly. The return has been fruitful: the bank became the first foreign lender able to register in Beijing 24 years later and has now extended its business to major cities including Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Suzhou.

The bank was among hundreds of thousands of foreign businesses from across the world that sought for opportunities in the modernization and transition of the country. From car makers to internet companies, numerous bold and farsighted investors reaped in huge benefits.

China will open up its general manufacturing sector and expand foreign investment access to sectors like financial services, telecommunications, medical services, education, elderly care, and new-energy vehicles, according to the government work report.

"As more and more areas are liberalized to foreign investment, businesses from almost every industry can find their own growth points," Yang Decai, a national political advisor and professor of economics from Nanjing University, said when discussing the report.

Some 35,652 foreign-funded businesses were established and foreign direct investment in the Chinese mainland hit an all-time high of 878 billion yuan (around 140 billion U.S. dollars) last year against a grim global climate.

Analysts believe more measures are in the pipeline. The negative list that determines where foreign participation is prohibited or limited is expected to become shorter. Foreign investors will see more favorable policies in taxation, less red tape in investment approval, and stronger protection of intellectual property rights.

Ahead of the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up this year, China's move set an example for a world plagued by protectionism and showed the willingness to share its success with rest of the world, no matter developed or developing countries.

The unwavering stance in openness sent a signal to the world and boosted confidence in free trade and investment, said Zhang Yuyan, director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "It is invaluable to global long-term growth," he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to build trade and infrastructure networks connecting Asia with Europe and Africa and promote industrial cooperation, has emerged as an important means to seek reciprocal development.

From infrastructure builders to financiers, Chinese businesses are looking for win-win opportunities in countries and regions along the routes.

"Our business strategy must fit into the development of host countries and address their problems," said Zou Lei, national political advisor and chairman of Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC).

With leading clean energy technology, the power generator manufacturer helped build green and efficient power plants in less prosperous countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world. A DEC-contracted 1.87 GW-capacity hydropower station doubled Ethiopia's power generation, solving the electricity shortage and bolstering the local economy.

DEC will partner with global peers to increase its presence in the Belt and Road regions, Zou said. The company has more than 80 GW of installed capacity in over 70 countries and regions.

China's non-financial investment to countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative totaled 14.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, up from 8.5 percent in 2016.

The CPPCC National Committee's session started Saturday and will run for nearly two weeks. As a national political advisor, Zhang Yuyan plans to propose accelerating the revision of the foreign trade law.

"As China has become a major trade nation for both goods of services, the current law amended in 2004 cannot meet the changing global circumstances," Zhang said. "The revision will help China better integrate into the world economy and smooth trade frictions."
ISLAMABAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- An arrested militant of proscribed militant organization Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) confessed to investigation teams in Pakistan's Karachi that he trapped young, educated girls through social media and brainwashed them to join the group, local reports said Thursday.

A resident of the country's southwest Balochistan province, the militant Imran alias Saif-ul-Islam was arrested by pakistani Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) from Karachi a few days ago for managing social media pages to preach ISIS ideology and luring young people to militancy in the country.

FIA officials said that the terrorist is fluent in Persian language and is also good at information technology for which he got training from some handler of the outlawed group.

The militant told police that he used lesser known social media applications like Telegram to brainwash young people, especially women, after authorities started strict monitoring.

The Authority also seized ISIS flags, a laptop, internet devices and mobile phones from the militant.

The arrested insurgent reportedly told the investigation team that the group's social media network is being operated from some unknown place along Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and he was only an administrator of the group.

Pakistani law enforcement agencies have expanded the probe to other parts of the country after Imran's arrest.
JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Indonesian government has banned shipments of rock melons from Australia following the deaths of several people there after eating the fruit contaminated by bacteria, government officials said Thursday.

Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman said that the ministry has unveiled a ministerial decree to prohibit importation of rock melons from Australia to Indonesia.

"Rock melons from Australia is not allowed to enter Indonesia. This aims to protect our consumers," he said at the Jakarta Convention Center.

The ban has been effective since March 3 and the decree has also been coordinated with the Australian embassy in Jakarta, according to him.

The minister stressed that should a shipment of the horticultural commodity to Indonesia be found after March 3, the fruits would be destroyed.

In Australia, four people have died with scores of others affected after consuming rock melons contaminated by the listeria monocytogenes bacteria.

Listeria is classified as a common bacterium that does not affect most people, still the bacteria is a threat for the elderly, pregnant women, and those suffering from diabetes or cancer.

The bacteria requires up to 70 days for its incubation.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 21:31:51|Editor: Jiaxin

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Two girls hold a slogan which says "I'm not the woman of your life, I'm the woman of mine" in the manifestation of International Women's Day in Madrid, Spain, March 8, 2018. The feminist strike in defense of women's rights both in the workplace and society took place in Spain on Thursday to coincide with International Women's Day. (Xinhua/Guo Qiuda)

MADRID, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The country's first feminist strike in defense of women's rights both in the workplace and society took place in Spain on Thursday to coincide with International Women's Day.

The strike, organized by Comision 8M and supported by Spain's trade unions and other civil rights groups, is backed by the majority of Spanish society.

Earlier in the week, 82 percent of respondent of a poll published in El Pais newspaper said they understood the reasons for it.

With a slogan of "When we stop, the world stops," the strike aims to show the vital role women play in society, despite average earnings between 13 to 15 percent less than men who do equivalent tasks.

Marches and demonstrations are planned for Thursday evening in over 120 Spanish towns and cities, with the most largest ones to be held in Madrid and Barcelona.

As a result of the strike, minimum services are being provided in sectors such as health care and education while public transport has been affected with local trains running between 50 to 75 percent normal capacity.

Air travelers also face delays with the Spanish media reporting that only 35 to 65 percent of regular activity has been guaranteed on domestic flights and 56 percent on outbound international flights.

The strike has been made more visible by several female TV presenters, such as the popular Ana Rosa Quintana, deciding not to work, leading to their live mid-morning shows being replaced by pre-recorded programs. Many female radio presenters are also not working.

Women protesters in Barcelona attempted to cut off traffic on some of the city's major thoroughfares which led to minor incidents.

In politics, women members of the Coalicio Compromis party in the Valencia regional assembly were on strike, while in Madrid, women Podemos councilors also respected the strike action.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose People's Party (PP) had opposed the strike, tweeted that his government was "working for true equality and is counting on everyone's collaboration."

Meanwhile, Socialist Party Leader, Pedro Sanchez said "today, March 8 will change history," while Albert Rivera wrote an editorial from El Mundo newspaper entitled "For women's equality," and Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias posted a series of tweets from female members of his party, supporting the strike.
NAIROBI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's agenda for talks with United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday will be dominated by economic and trade issues, the country's top diplomat said on Thursday.

Monica Juma, Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International Trade , said other issues in the agenda will include regional security, wildlife management and deepening participation of U.S. in African Union affairs.

"Deepening and growing bilateral relations will be key part of the discussion. The talks will focus on how we can grow AGOA [Africa Growth and Opportunity Act]," she told media in the capital Nairobi.

AGOA allows non-reciprocal free access of selected goods from Africa to the U.S. market. Kenya is among the beneficiary countries, with others having been lobbying to have the trade opportunity extended beyond 2025.

Juma said the talks will be cordial and about mutual interest of the two countries, terming U.S as an important partner for Kenya.

"We shall also be seeking to tap U.S. support for the Big Four Agenda. We believe this is a worthy investment because it will lead to the betterment of living standards of Kenyans," she said.

The Big Four Agenda refers to the four sectors that President Uhuru Kenyatta has committed the largest share of investment in his current term in office.

They include increasing manufacturing contribution to the economy from 9 percent to 15 percent, achieve universal access to health insurance, achieve food security status and construct new 500,000 homes.

Another agenda will be on regional security, said Juma.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 21:51:59|Editor: Lifang

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ADEN, Yemen, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Airstrikes launched by fighter jets of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition killed eight Yemeni civilians in the war-torn Arab country on Thursday, a medical official told Xinhua.

The first airstrike was carried out against Shiite Houthi rebels in the western port city of Hodeidah, but mistakenly hit a chicken run and killed three workers at the scene, the local source said on condition of anonymity.

According to the Yemeni medical source, five other civilians were killed when another airstrike targeted a farm and a market in Zabeed area of Hodeidah province.

The Saudi Arabia-led military coalition has intensified military air campaign against Houthi positions in and around the Houthi rebels-held capital Sanaa and other northern provinces since Houthis killed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Dec. 4 last year.

The coalition has intervened in the Yemeni conflict in March 2015 to roll back Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels, and backed internationally recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi whom Houthis forced into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The war has killed over 10,000 Yemenis, mostly children, displaced 3 million, and triggered the world's most serious humanitarian catastrophe.
PHNOM PENH, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian security forces clashed with hundreds of villagers in eastern Kratie province's Snuol district on Thursday afternoon, leaving nine people injured, a local official said.

The clash broke out when the authorities went to the Memot Rubber Plantation to demolish huts that had been illegally erected by villagers on a disputed land, said governor of Snuol district Kong Kimny.

He said about 200 villagers, armed with machetes, slingshots with metal balls, home-made guns, gasoline-filled bottles and rocks, blocked a road and attacked security forces in protest against the demolition of their huts.

"To control the situation, our security forces opened fire into the air to disperse the protesting villagers," he told Xinhua, adding that seven security forces and two villagers got wounded during the clash.

He said the two villagers sustained injuries on thigh and buttock.

"We don't know yet whether the two villagers got wounded from our bullets or from the weapons of their fellow villagers," Kimny said.

Other eight villagers were detained for questioning, he added.

Meanwhile, Kimny denied a local media report that six villagers were shot dead during the clash.

The land dispute between villagers and the Memot Rubber Plantation Company dated back to 2015 when the company accused the villagers of illegally clearing a part of its 9,000-hectare land and building huts on it.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 21:57:01|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A draft amendment to the charter of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's political advisory body, was submitted for deliberation Thursday at the ongoing session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee.

"New content includes the new important thinking, views, judgments, and measures proposed at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC)," said Zhang Qingli, vice chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, when briefing political advisors on the revision.

Major decisions and plans concerning the CPPCC's work made by the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core since the 18th CPC National Congress, as well as the CPPCC's achievements in theoretical, practical and institutional innovation are also planned to be added, he said.

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era has been incorporated into the guiding theories of the CPPCC. Scientific Outlook on Development has also been added, according to the draft amendment.

The definition of the CPPCC's nature and tasks has been enriched.

Expressions, such as "[the CPPCC] is an important component of China's governance system and an institutional arrangement unique to China," have been added, the draft read.

In addition, the draft said a new paragraph on socialist consultative democracy has been added.

"Consultative democracy is a model and strength unique to China's socialist democracy. The CPPCC is a major channel for socialist consultative democracy, and its committees are specialist consultative bodies," part of the paragraph read.

Wang Yang, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and host of the presidium meeting of the session of the political advisory body, was present at Thursday's meeting.

The CPPCC is an important organ for multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC.

The current CPPCC charter was adopted in 1982 and has undergone three amendments in 1994, 2000, and 2004.

The session, which opened on March 3, will run until March 15.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:07:04|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China's securities regulator Thursday gave the green light for the stock market listing of Foxconn Industrial Internet, a subsidiary of the Taiwanese manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd.

The approval came a month after the company filed its prospectus with the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) for its Shanghai listing review, a speedy process, which normally takes more than a year.

Foxconn Industrial Internet plans to use the proceeds of the flotation to fund eight new projects, including 5G, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, according to the the prospectus.

The total investment for the eight projects will reach 27.3 billion yuan (4.3 billion U.S. dollars).

The prospectus gave no details on share pricing and the number of shares to be listed.

In 2017, Foxconn Industrial Internet posted revenue and net profit of 354 billion yuan and 15.9 billion yuan, respectively, rising from 273 billion yuan and 14.4 billion yuan in 2016.

China's security regulator has been taking steps to reform the stock exchange listing mechanism in an effort to invigorate the country's capital market and foster the new economy.

The CSRC will reform the listing mechanism, deepen reform of the main board and ChiNext board, and give more support to "new technology, new industry, new industry forms and new business models," Wednesday's Securities Daily cited CSRC Vice Chairman Jiang Yang as saying.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:12:07|Editor: Jiaxin

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Romanian President Klaus Iohannis (2nd L) and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (3rd L) view the guards of honor during a welcoming ceremony at Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest, Romania, March 8, 2018. Klaus Iohannis Thursday told a joint press conference with his visiting Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic that any solution to Kosovo should satisfy all the parties concerned as much as possible. (Xinhua/Cristian Cristel)

BUCHAREST, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Romanian President Klaus Iohannis Thursday told a joint press conference with his visiting Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic that any solution to Kosovo should satisfy all the parties concerned as much as possible.

"Kosovo is a complicated subject," Iohannis told the press conference, stressing that he can not imagine a solution to Kosovo rejected by the Serbs.

"A solution can not be imposed from outside, but can be discussed with relevant actors," he said, adding that Romania is willing to engage in finding good solutions for the whole area.

Vucic also expressed the willingness to seek a compromise solution to Kosovo, saying "For us, the Kosovo issue is a very big issue, but we will strive to find a compromise solution."

He thanked Romania for not recognizing the independence of Kosovo.

"I am grateful to President Klaus Iohannis and the Romanian people for the support Romania is giving for the European path of Serbia, for the desire to reach a compromise on the Kosovo issue," said Vucic.

He hoped that Romania, during the Presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2019, will raise among the top issues that Western Balkan countries will face in the European Union.

Vucic arrived in Bucharest for his first official visit in Romania as President of Serbia.

The visit follows intense bilateral contacts in recent years and confirms the very good character of the relations between the two countries, according to the Presidential Administration.

President Iohannis paid an official visit to Serbia in July 2015.
COLOMBO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) on Thursday said the present state of emergency had no impact on tourism.

An official from the SLTDA told Xinhua that tourist arrivals continued without hindrance into the country, and except for the "minor inconvenience of not being able to travel freely in some parts of Kandy district at the present time," there was no other issue concerning tourism.

"We want to assure that all tourists in the country are safe and there is absolutely no threat of harm to any of them," the official said.

A statement from the SLTDA said members of tourism and travel industries worked with local police authorities on Wednesday to facilitate issuance of passes for tourists who chose to move out of Kandy in central Sri Lanka, due to the curfew.

Kandy is a famous tourist hotspot in Sri Lanka and visited by thousands of tourists per annum.

The SLTDA said the situation in Kandy however, had no impact whatsoever on other parts of the country and day to day affairs and activities took place smoothly outside the Kandy district.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:22:08|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese legislator Liu Li relaxes at the end of a busy day by soaking her feet, a simple habit which reminds her of the days when she worked as a foot masseuse.

Liu has never concealed her humble beginning of working as a migrant worker. In fact, the 38-year-old feels privileged to speak for the 286-million-strong group at the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, which opened earlier this week in Beijing.

"We must provide migrant workers with equal opportunities to achieve their dreams in the cities," she said, adding "the well-being of farmers and the development of rural areas must not be overlooked in the process of urbanization."

Liu is one of the 742 female deputies to the 13th NPC working hard on Women's Day, which falls on March 8 and usually coincides with the country's two biggest annual political meetings.

"THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FOOT MASSEUSE IN CHINA"

Liu has a rags to riches story that has touched hearts across the country, not because of how much money she earned but how much she gave away.

Unlike philanthropists who lavish money on charities, Liu donated from her meager migrant worker income to sponsor poor children to return to school.

Born in a poor rural family in east China's Anhui Province, Liu quit primary school at the age of 14 and worked to support the schooling of her four siblings, a common practice at that time in rural China. ( Leaving home penniless, she worked as a waitress and then a nanny before finding the job as an apprentice in a foot massage center in Xiamen, east China's Fujian Province.

It was hard work, causing blisters and enlarged knuckles on her hands. But she loved it, as she felt the job was similar to her childhood dream of working as a traditional Chinese medicine doctor.

Although she received little formal education, she yearned to learn more. She developed the habit of reading at least two pages a day.

"I always find her reading in her office when I leave after night shifts," said Zhang Ning, a young masseuse.

"I have loved reading since I was a child," Liu said. "I remember my mom always scolded me for forgetting to turn off the kerosene lamp at night."

This explains why the keen learner wanted to help poor students. In 2000, Liu began to donate a sixth of her 36,000-yuan (about 5,600 U.S. dollars) annual income to some 50 children living in remote villages, giving them a chance to realize the college dream she never achieved.

Her goodwill made her a national celebrity. She was called "the most beautiful foot masseuse in China" and eventually earned the public's trust to become a spokesperson for the migrant workers and the rural population in China's top legislature body.

In 2012, Liu was elected a deputy to the local legislature in Xiamen and became an NPC deputy in 2013. Her name was once again on the NPC deputy list in February 2018.

Unlike legislators in the West who make a career of politics, NPC deputies work part-time and many of them are ordinary citizens from all walks of life, including farmers, factory workers, craftsmen, and even street cleaners.

A LAWMAKER

As a migrant worker and a national legislator, Liu said she shoulders greater responsibility to represent grassroots' voices.

When she took up the post in 2013, she submitted motions concerning the schooling of migrant workers' children, and integration of urban and rural health insurance.

She also called for solutions to social problems such as increasing rates of divorce and extramarital affairs in rural areas due married couples living apart as migrant workers.

Her concerns were addressed by the NPC. She was later informed of the measures that had already been taken and those soon to be adopted.

The next year, she called for more protection and better welfare for older migrant workers as they are more likely to encounter labor rights abuse due to age issues and poor educational background.

As a national legislator, Liu is very diligent. She receives phone calls and messages from fellow migrant workers. When the NPC is not in session, she visits their homes and collects their opinions online. She also listens to comments on society from her clients who come from all walks of life.

"People asked me to convey their messages to the NPC session," she said, adding "I hope more attention will be given to migrant workers and their living standards through my endeavors."

AN ENTREPRENEUR, A PHILANTHROPIST

Liu established her own massage company in 2014, "with the aim to attract more investors for the charities and help more people," she said.

As a rule, a quarter of the company's annual profit is put aside as a charity fund, which has sponsored schooling of more than 1,000 children.

The company is now funded by more than 70 investors, who can take back their share from the profit, while the rest of the profit is used to help poor families.

"When we have 100 investors, each investing 50,000 yuan, the profit of one branch can help a whole poverty-stricken village," she said. "It is not practical to ask people for donations, instead I can now support charities with my business."

In spare time, Liu also encourages her employers to provide foot massages for the elderly in local nursing homes.

When some people suggested she does charity work as a publicity stunt for her business, her employees felt offended.

"I always get angry when someone questions her motives," said Zhang.

Zhang has a strong reason to defend her boss. "She treats us like family and cares about us, and has given us every opportunity we needed," said Zhang, who now earns 10,000 a month.

She remembers when Liu took her to a training program in Guangzhou, south China. "It was my first time travelling in a plane. Only then did I realize the world was so big."

Liu admits that she's not good at business management, so she leaves it to the professionals and focuses on massage techniques.

Liu's company has four branches and she aims to open ten more this year. She even wants to build a primary school for poor students.

"I cried like a baby when I gave up school and left home at the age of 14," she said. "At that time, I was determined to help every poor student to go to school. I will do it, even if it will take me a lifetime."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:37:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Astronaut Wang Yaping is in the spotlight again, but this time not for space travel. Instead, she debuted in a new role -- lawmaker -- at the annual session of China's national legislature.

With her signature ponytail, a neat military uniform and a wide smile, Wang, together with another nine deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), met the press for the first "passage interview" arranged for the opening day of the annual political meeting on Monday.

On the path leading toward the main hall of the Great Hall of the People, Wang described her experience of giving a televised science lesson to Chinese students in 2013 as "an unforgettable moment."

Wang's appearance at the political session has attracted extensive media coverage.

Some netizens praised Wang for her devotion and perseverance. Some called her a "space heroine" and referred to a poem by Chairman Mao to depict her as a female soldier who loves "to face the powder and not to powder the face."

As China's second female astronaut to enter space, Wang was elected from the country's armed forces as one of 2,980 deputies to China's 13th NPC. Before that, China's first female astronaut in space, Liu Yang, served for a five-year term as a deputy to the 12th NPC.

During the ongoing first session of the 13th NPC, Wang, along with other deputies elected from all walks of life, will elect state officials, review the government work report and discuss the Constitution revision.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Wang said that she and other astronauts are preparing for work on the space station, as China plans to build a permanent manned space station by 2022.

Wang Yaping became a well-known figure in June 2013 after travelling for 15 days on the Shenzhou-10 spacecraft with two male crewmates, Nie Haisheng and Zhang Xiaoguang.

In one of the highlights of the mission, Wang delivered China's first televised science lecture to an audience of over 60 million schoolchildren and teachers across China. The lecture on basic physics principles lasted for 40 minutes and ignited the space dreams of millions of Chinese students.

Teacher and former NASA astronaut Barbara Morgan wrote a letter to Wang to express her pride and joy upon hearing the news.

Wang joined the Taikonaut Corps of the People's Liberation Army as part of China's second group of astronauts in 2010. The corps recruited its first group of 14 male astronauts in 1998 when it was founded.

During the past 20 years, 11 Chinese astronauts have completed six manned spaceflights, conducted over 100 experiments and orbited the earth for a total of 68 days and nights.

Born with a love for challenge, Wang recalled that she felt no fear returning from space.

"I just felt an overwhelming sense of achievement. I had fulfilled my dream," she said.

She can trace her bravery back to her childhood experience in a quiet village in east China's Shandong Province, where she developed a love for running.

"I always ran for the challenge and for the great joy after running over hills and across fields," she said, recalling her childhood.

Wang continued her path of bravery and was enrolled in 1997 as a pilot at an Air Force flight academy, where she tasted the excitement of sending a plane into dive for the first time during training.

Looking toward the future, Wang said that if she has the chance to land on the moon, she would like to dress like Chang'e, the moon goddess in a Chinese fairy tale, with a pet rabbit in her arms.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:37:12|Editor: Jiaxin

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A Turkish-backed Free Syria Army fighter is seen in Afrin, northern Syria, on March 8, 2018. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that the country's ongoing military operation in Afrin northern Syria might be completed in May, Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk quoted him as saying during a visit to Vienna. (Xinhua)

ANKARA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that the country's ongoing military operation in Afrin northern Syria might be completed in May, Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk quoted him as saying during a visit to Vienna.

Speaking at a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl, Cavusoglu told reporters that Turkey wants the operation to end as quickly as possible so that Afrin can "embrace stability and civilians can return."

Cavusoglu also said Turkey and Iraq reached a consensus to carry out a joint cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), after Iraq holds parliamentary elections scheduled for May.

On Jan. 20, Turkey launched "Operation Olive Branch" to clear Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militants from Afrin.

The YPG is regarded by Turkey as the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:42:14|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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XIAMEN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A cruise route passing through six countries along the Maritime Silk Road was launched Thursday.

The Costa neoRomantica, a 220.6-meter-long, 30.8-meter-wide cruise liner, began its maiden tour from Xiamen, east China's Fujian Province with 1,800 passengers on board.

It will make a loop and visit attractions in the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia and Vietnam before heading back to Xiamen over the next 15 days.

The route was jointly launched by Xiamen Port Holding Group, China International Travel Service and Costa Cruises.

Singapore Consul-General in Xiamen Chi Chiew Sum welcomed the launch of the new route and hoped it can help promote cooperation in cruise services between Xiamen and Singapore.

"Many overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia came from Fujian, so we have a lot in common in culture," said Cai Siwei with Xiamen Port Holding Group. "We hope to bring out local culture and enhance cultural exchanges through the trip."

China's cruise industry has experienced rapid development over the past decade. According to China Communications and Transportation Association (CCTA), 15 cruise ports in China received 5,807 passenger liners with 18.1 million outbound and inbound tourists in 2017.
NAIROBI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Kenyans are facing a shortage of timber and charcoal as the government moves to save forests from depletion.

The government placed a three-month ban on logging and charcoal burning two weeks ago at the height of a biting dry spell that had led to major water crisis across the country.

The move was not only to protect forests but also water catchment areas and save the country from sliding into a desert.

The ban has been followed by the launch of nationwide tree planting campaign as the East African nation seeks to plant 235 million trees in the next five years to raise forest cover to 15 percent.

Kenyans have lauded the two developments but they have to contend with higher timber and charcoal prices.

In the capital Nairobi, the price of a bag of charcoal has increased sharply from an average of 20 U.S. dollars a bag in the last one week to between 22 dollars and 25 dollars.

Traders blame the increase on the ban on logging and charcoal trade in some counties, with the restrictions putting their businesses at risk.

"There is no charcoal. Supply has dropped drastically because of the ban on logging," Moses Ngunjiri, a charcoal trader in Komarock on the east of Nairobi, said Thursday.

He noted that he bought his last stock of 50 bags a week ago and had to look for a different supplier.

"Before the ban, I would buy the produce from Narok but last week I sourced from Kajiado, and the trader told me the product had come from Tanzania through the Namanga border point," he said.

However, while he remains optimistic, he is aware that he may be forced to close business due to shortage. He is currently selling a bag of the product at 23 dollars, up from 20 dollars.

The high prices have hit harder households and businesses like food kiosks that rely on charcoal and firewood for cooking.

"I have no choice but to switch to cooking gas which is expensive because both supply of charcoal and firewood is low. We are buying a bag of charcoal more expensively than that of a 13kg cooking gas cylinder, which goes at 19 dollars," said Simon Mwale, a food kiosk operator.

For households, low and middle-income families that rely on charcoal for cooking have turned to kerosene, whose prices have equally risen to 0.76 dollars per litre.

Charcoal is used by thousands of people, with high demand of the fuel remaining the biggest threat to forests in the East African nation as tree cover stands at less than 10 percent. The ban has, therefore, created a ripple effect as the shortage is felt far and wide.

For timber, the favorite trees include cypress, blue gum, mahogany and gravellia. They are sold in sizes ranging from 4 by 2 inches, 3 by 2 inches, 8 by 1 inches and 6 by 1 inches and round polls.

Initially, prices ranged from 0.34 dollars per foot to 0.70 dollars but a survey showed they have risen to 0.50 dollars and 0.90 dollars.

But even as they grapple with the shortage, Kenyans support the ban noting that it is the only way to improve forest cover and stop the country from becoming a desert.

Like charcoal, traders have resorted to importing the timber from Tanzania. Latest statistics from Forest Department in the Ministry of Environment show that Kenya spends up to 40 million dollars annually on timber imports, mainly from Tanzania and Democratic Republic of Congo to meet rising demand that stands at more than 40 million cubic meters annually.

Environment minister Keriako Tobiko on Wednesday said the country would set a tree planting day to boost forest cover.

"We plan to have a day set aside for National Tree Planting season sometime in April depending with the availability of rain," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 22:52:20|Editor: Yamei

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi takes questions on China's foreign policies and foreign relations at a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, capital of China, March 8, 2018. China on Thursday gave outsiders an inside look at how the country intends to tackle diplomacy as its global influence grows. Taking questions at an annual press event, Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a rough sketch of "major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics," which embodies championing peace, being non-threatening, standing up for the small and weak, and sharing development opportunities. Major-country diplomacy rose to prominence under President Xi Jinping's leadership. The concept involves building a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for humanity to truly benefit the world. (Xinhua/Li Xin)

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday gave outsiders an inside look at how the country intends to tackle diplomacy as its global influence grows.

Taking questions at an annual press event, Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a rough sketch of "major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics," which embodies championing peace, being non-threatening, standing up for the small and weak, and sharing development opportunities.

The two-hour press conference, held on the sidelines of the annual session of the national legislature, is known for explaining China's take on the latest world issues.

Major-country diplomacy rose to prominence under President Xi Jinping's leadership. The concept involves building a new type of international relations and a community with a shared future for humanity to truly benefit the world.

XI THE ARCHITECT

Wang credited Xi as being the chief architect of the major-country diplomacy concept and said the president had been personally involved in planning and conducting "brilliant" head-of-state diplomacy.

Wang said head-of-state diplomacy was the highest form of international exchange and had irreplaceable advantage and strategic value over other forms of diplomacy.

As top leader, Xi has visited 57 countries and received more than 110 foreign heads of state, deepening the world's understanding of China, enhancing China's profile and influence, and helping find solutions to many global problems.

Xi's concept of building a community with a shared future for humanity has received worldwide recognition and plaudits. It was even included in a number of United Nations resolutions.

Ruan Zongze, executive vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, pointed out the significance of the concept and what it could achieve.

"The notion has enriched the theoretical system of international relations and provided a new, Chinese perspective on how countries get along with one another," he said.

This year, Xi will host four global events in China: the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference in April, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in June, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in September, and the First China International Import Expo in November.

He will also attend the BRICS summit in South Africa, the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Papua New Guinea and the G20 summit in Argentina.

"President Xi's leadership and charisma have earned him and the country many good friends, among foreign leaders who represent a diverse range of cultures and social systems," Wang said.

BIG, NOT THREATENING

This year, Wang met the press at a time the term "sharp power" has been conjured up to invoke concern about the growing influence of China and Russia in the world. On being asked about this term, Wang did not mince his words.

"It is time that the China threat theory was laid to rest," Wang snapped. "Those who do not have bias or practice double standards will see China's development as an opportunity instead of a threat."

He said China's contribution to the global economic growth was bigger than that of the United States, Japan and the euro zone combined, and that China accounted for more than 70 percent of poverty reduction worldwide.

On whether China posed a challenge to the United States, Wang was clear. Brushing off such anxieties, he said China had "no need or intention of replacing the United States" in its international role, and that it was "fundamentally wrong" for anyone to say that China would replace America's role in the world.

Despite some elements of competition, Wang said that China-U.S. ties were defined more by partnership than rivalry.

He also noted the steady improvement in China-Japan relations, calling for mutual trust with India, and saying that the "sky is the limit" for China-Russia cooperation.

There is a hard-won tranquility in the South China Sea. China has strong resolve and deep commitment to maintain peace and stability there, Wang said.

The de-stabilizing factor, Wang noted, comes from outside the region with frequent show of force with fully-armed aircraft and naval vessels.

He said after the "China collapse theory" collapsed, various forms of "China threat theory" were now losing steam.

HELPING AND SHARING

China's major-country diplomacy is not about dealing only with the developed and the powerful. China is still the world's largest developing country, and it stands up for the weak and small, playing a constructive role in solving regional problems.

Wang pointed out that China today was in a much better position to help resolve various regional and international issues.

On the Korean Peninsula, China's suspension-for-suspension proposal has proven the best way to create the basic conditions for improving the peninsula situation.

Last year, China proposed a three-phase solution to help settle the issue in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Beijing also held a Palestine-Israel peace symposium and a meeting to improve Afghanistan-Pakistan relations.

He said Beijing would respect the wishes and sovereignty of other countries, not meddle in their affairs, nor impose its views on others.

China's major country diplomacy is also about helping the least developed.

Even as it has rapidly developed, China remains a good brother and partner of Africa.

"Africa's concerns are China's concerns. Africa's priorities are China's priorities," Wang said, adding that African countries are welcomed to board China's fast train of development.

This year, a focus of the FOCAC summit will be sharing the opportunities presented by the Belt and Road Initiative.

Into its fifth year, the initiative aims to benefit the world using trade and infrastructure cooperation. More than 80 countries and organizations have signed deals with China.

Wang said the initiative was a transparent one that followed the "golden rule" of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.

"Everything is in the open. There are no backroom deals and every step is transparent," Wang said.

China had been a strong advocate of trade liberalization.

"The more China develops, the more it can contribute to the world," he said.

Envisioning a community of shared future for humanity, Xi has said China is committed to building an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity.

William Jones, Washington Bureau chief of the U.S. publication Executive Intelligence Review, said Xi's proposal is an attempt to overcome and replace the traditional notion of "geopolitics", in which there are always "winners" and "losers", and in which the principle of "might makes right" tends to predominate.

"In this new concept, everyone plays a role and the benefits achieved by any one nation can be shared by all," Jones added.
LUSAKA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Zambia joined the rest of the world in commemorating the International Women's Day with Vice-President Inonge Wina reaffirming government's commitment in ensuring gender equality and equity at all levels.

The Zambian vice-president, in remarks delivered at the main event held in Lusaka, the country's capital, said the government will do this by promoting programs that will enhance women participation in national development.

"Government will continue to work hard to remove all forms of discrimination against women and promote policies that will promote women empowerment," she said.

She however said promoting gender equality and equity should not be left to government alone as this requires concerted efforts of all stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society organizations and cooperating partners.

According to her, civil society activism was required in igniting innovative action aimed at bringing positive changes and in speaking out against vices hindering women participation.

While commending efforts made so far in promoting women participation, the Zambian vice-president expressed sadness that women were still being marginalized and excluded in various areas.

She especially singled out women in rural areas who she said were still faced with various challenges.

Sara Longwe, the chairperson of the Non-Governmental Coordinating Council, an umbrella body of women organizations said it was unfortunate that many countries have failed to achieve gender equality 23 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action.

She said despite women representing 51 percent of the population in Zambia, women still faced challenges, adding that it was evident that society still has a bias towards men.

According to figures provided by the women's body, women only represent 18 percent of the Zambian parliament, 9 percent of local government seats, 29 percent in formal employment and represents 55 percent of the poor people in the country.

She added that the local theme for this year comes at a right time as it calls for enhanced activism in promoting gender equality and equity in the country.

Janet Rogan, representative of the United Nations (UN) in Zambia, said time for silence in speaking against vices hindering women empowerment was long gone and urged the women to speak out and be heard.

Held under the local theme, "Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women's Lives", the celebrations were characterized by a march past from the grounds of the High Court along the Independence Avenue to the Freedom Statue.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:07:24|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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by Mahmoud Fouly, Emad al-Azrak

CAIRO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Arab Women Organization (AWO) has set strategies to stop violence against women and boost women's role in achieving peace and security, the organization's chief told Xinhua on the occasion of the International Women's Day (IWD).

"Arab women are subjected to massive threats particularly in the regions of conflicts and political disputes in several states in the Arab world," said Egyptian renowned ex-diplomat Mervat Tallawy, the AWO Director General.

The United Nations set March 8 to mark the IWD every year to show world respect for women and their social, cultural, economic and political roles and achievements. The theme for the IWD 2018 is "Time is Now: Rural and urban activists transforming women's lives."

Tallawy said that the AWO achieved several accomplishments, including the strategies it set for preventing violence against women and to promote their roles in peace and security in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 1325.

"The organization also provides a service called 'A-B: Women's Rights in the Arab Legislations,' where it questions and answers women-related law articles and get them explained by legal experts," the AWO chief told Xinhua.

She added that such a legal effort is meant to shed light on and simplify the legal issues related to women that might take long to research and understand. "It's a very useful service," she said.

Founded in March 2003, the AWO is an inter-government organization that operates under the umbrella of the Cairo-based Arab League (AL). It emerged from the Cairo Declaration issued by the first Arab Women Summit held in November 2000 and co-organized by the AL, Egypt's National Council for Women and Lebanon's Hariri Foundation.

Tallawy pointed out that the AWO has recently paid more attention to refugees and displaced people as a phenomenon that rose with the political developments in some Arab states like Syria, Yemen and Libya.

"The AWO visited refugee camps in Arab states, prepared a report and presented it at the 2017 summit of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in New York on the status of refugees, which in turn endorsed 10 recommendations stated in the AWO report," Tallawy told Xinhua.

She said that the AWO drew world attention to the destiny of women and children in war-torn and conflict-stricken regions.

"After visiting refugee camps in the Arab world, we found that 80 percent of the refugees are women and children. We are working on issuing indicators and statistics to show policymakers and politicians the graveness of the tragedy," she said.

The Syrian crisis, for instance, displaced half of the population whether domestically or abroad since it started in March 2011, including more than five million refugees who fled to neighboring states, including Lebanon and Jordan. Lebanon alone hosts about a million Syrian refugees.

Tallawy lamented that the world did not pay attention to the conditions of the Syrian refugees unless they started to go to Europe and they used to only focus on fighting the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

"The neighboring states hosting Syrian refugees are small with humble economies while receiving large numbers of refugees compared to their population," she said, urging the international community to provide assistance and aid to refugee hosting states.

The AWO chief stressed the necessity to find "political solutions" for the crises in the region, particularly the Syrian one.

Tallawy also warned that at times of natural disasters, female victims are 14 times those of males "due to women's lack of trainings required to deal with such disasters."

She stressed that Arab governments and policymakers used not to consider the status of women in their policies but the attitude has gradually changed thanks to the AWO's efforts.

"The AWO also exerts massive efforts to help developing states achieve the 17 sustainable development goals set by the UN, particularly those concerning women," the AWO chief told Xinhua.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:17:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TEHRAN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday rejected the West's demands for talks on Iran's influence and presence in the region.

Iran's presence in the Middle East does not concern non-regional countries, particularly the United States, said Khamenei. It is "the United States (which) has a corrupt and seditious presence everywhere," he said.

"Iran would not seek U.S. permission for its role and presence in the region" and would not negotiate over it, Khamenei said.

Iran's regional presence concerns the regional states and "we make arrangements with regional nations," he stressed.

The United States and its European allies have criticized what they have called "Iran's destabilizing role in the region."

The Islamic republic has denied the allegations, saying that the cause of the Middle East problems is the presence of non-regional states in the region.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:17:30|Editor: Zhou Xin

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PARIS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientist Mee-Mann Chang made the list of five laureates of the 2018 L'Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science Awards, an initiative to promote greater gender equality in science, the UN agency said on Thursday in a communique.

At a ceremony scheduled for March 22 at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization "will recognize five leading women scientists and shine a spotlight on 15 talented young female scientists."

This year, the organisers "have recognized five exceptional female scientists," among them Chang, a Chinese professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

She was nominated for "her pioneering work on fossil records leading to insights on how aquatic vertebrates adapted to life and land," UNESCO said in a statement.

The other four laureates are Heather Zar from South Africa, Caroline Dean of Britain, Amy Austin from Argentina and Canada's Janet Rossant.

"Each of the five laureates will receive a prize of 100,000 euros (124,170 U.S. dollars) and be honored for her contribution in the fields of medicine, palaeontology, molecular biology, ecology and developmental biology," it added.

The five scientists were selected by an independent jury of 10 high-profile members of the international science community, chaired this year by Elizabeth Blackburn, laureate of the 2008 award and of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009.

For almost 20 years, the L'Oreal Foundation, in partnership with UNESCO, has celebrated five exceptional female researchers every year and has been committed to promoting equality between women and men in science.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:32:33|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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TAIYUAN/SHENZHEN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Li Qiuxi remains chairperson of a provincial state-owned enterprise (SOE), thanks to the fulfillment of the annual revenue and profit growth targets set in a letter of responsibility last year.

Under the contract Li signed with the Shanxi state-owned assets watchdog in February 2017, one target for Fenjiu Group, the first pilot SOE in the contractual management reform in the province, was to increase its annual profit of the liquor sector by 25 percent. Otherwise, Li would be dismissed from his post with the company.

Far above the target, the profit of the liquor sector of Fenjiu Group, one of the country's leading liquor brands, increased by 68 percent year-on-year last year. Other major performance targets in the contract were also achieved.

The pilot reform has been extended to 17 SOEs in coal-rich Shanxi, including Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Co., Ltd and Shanxi Coking Coal Group.

Contractual management is a major SOE reform in Shanxi, prompting SOEs to speed up structural adjustment for high-quality development through clear and scientific performance assessment, said Wang Yixin, vice governor of Shanxi.

Reforms will be advanced in state capital and SOEs, according to the government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang to the first session of the 13th National People's Congress(NPC), China's top legislature, on March 5.

"Our SOEs should, through reform and innovation, become front-runners in pursuing high-quality development," said the report. Reforms introducing mixed ownership in SOEs will be carried forward prudently.

Chinese SOEs saw 23.5 percent profit growth last year thanks to continued reform to boost efficiency and vitality, official data showed.

SOE reform, aimed at improving efficiency and competitiveness through innovation, remains a priority for local governments this year. The southern coastal city of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, has targeted growth of 9 percent or more in the total profit of municipal SOEs this year.

The city will comprehensively push ahead mixed ownership reform this year and develop first-class enterprises with global influence, according to Peng Haibin, director of the Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

In northeast China, progress in SOE reform has bolstered the economy in the old industrial base which has experienced difficulties in recent years.

In Liaoning Province, Liaoyang Petrochemical Company reported profit for the first time in 13 years in 2017 and Ansteel Group also turned losses into profit last year.

After dealing with zombie businesses, Ansteel ended losses for the past five consecutive years and achieved profit of 1.5 billion yuan (237 million U.S. dollars) in 2017.

"The cutting of low-efficiency production capacity has provided room for Ansteel's shift from survival to development," said Yao Lin, general manager of Ansteel.

It is important to build a diversified shareholding structure, accelerate innovation, and foster high-end talent for better development of firms, said Dai Jishuang, chairperson of state-owned Shenyang Blower Works Group in Liaoning.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:52:38|Editor: Yamei

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (Xinhua file photo)

HARARE, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday that the United States does not have authority to criticize the relationship that China has with African countries.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is on a five-nation African tour, was quoted by media criticizing the way Beijing structured loans to African countries.

He also claimed that Chinese investments did not lead to significant job creation in Africa.

Lavrov, who was visiting Zimbabwe, said Tillerson's words were inappropriate, state news agency New Ziana reported.

"I did not know that Rex Tillerson was a specialist in China-Africa ties. But I do not think it is entirely appropriate if he indeed said that," said Lavrov.

"We never meddle within the domestic affairs of any other country, even though we hear allegations to the contrary on a daily basis from Washington and other Western countries," Lavrov said.

Zimbabwean Foreign Affairs Minister Sibusiso Moyo weighed in saying the remarks by the United States were misplaced.

"Africa has its own self determination in terms of charting its own course, in terms of economic co-operation with any member of nations in the international arena," he said.

China has stepped up economic cooperation with Zimbabwe and is funding investment projects across different sectors of the Zimbabwean economy.

The deals include financing for the expansion of the Hwange Power Station, the construction of a new parliament building and a pharmaceutical warehouse, the expansion of a national fiber optic broadband project and the provision of wildlife monitoring equipment.

China has promised sincerity, real results, friendship and good faith to Africa and "work together for a community with a shared future for humanity," as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it on Thursday.

"African brothers and sisters are welcome to get on board China's fast train of development," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress. Changes in the world will not break China-Africa friendship.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-08 23:57:39|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A senior Chinese military officer on Thursday defended the proposed rise of China's annual defense budget against a new round of "China threat theory."

Whether a country is a threat to others or not is not determined by its national strength and armed forces, but by the policy it adopts, said Lieutenant-General He Lei, deputy head of the Academy of Military Science of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

He made the remarks at a group interview on the sidelines of the annual session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC).

"China has always followed the path of peaceful development and pursued a national defense policy that is in its nature defensive," said He, who is also a deputy to the NPC.

Therefore, China's development does not pose a threat to any other country, said He, stressing that no matter what stage of development it reaches, China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion.

In addition, it will never engage in "arms race" with any other country, said He.

China plans to raise its defense budget by 8.1 percent to 1.11 trillion yuan (about 175 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, according to a budget report submitted to the NPC session on Monday.

China's defense budget is objective, authentic, and transparent, said He, adding that the increase is legitimate and prudent.

He explained that a large part of the increased spending is for upgrading equipment, supporting military reforms, and improving the training conditions and welfare of servicemen and women.

Hyping up the "China threat theory" is an outdated trick aimed at inciting confrontation between China and its neighbors, said He.
by Yu Qianliang, Abu Hanifah

JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia is seeking more investors and trade improvement with China so as to attain higher growth, mutually benefit the two economies whose bilateral ties are in its most dynamic condition at present, an Indonesian minister said here on Thursday.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Xinhua at his office, Indonesian National Development Planning Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said that by promoting bilateral cooperation, Indonesia and China would get concrete benefits.

Indonesia is now experiencing trade deficit with China, but at the same time China is expanding the consumption-side to boost growth, he said.

To address the deficit issue, Indonesia has offered to boost the export of biodiesel product considered relevant to China's green economy drive. Indonesia's biodiesel can replace China's fossil-based diesel fuel, particularly for its transportation sector, the minister said.

In the investment sector, Indonesia invites more Chinese investors to invest in its manufacturing and infrastructure sectors in Indonesia's provinces along the route of China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, including Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Bali.

"The Chinese investors can establish partnership with (Indonesia's) domestic partners which already have the operation licenses, areas to carry out their investment operations there. So they won't need to take 100 percent efforts of their own to start their business there," the minister said.

The infrastructure projects offered for the Chinese private and state-owned investors in those Indonesian provinces consist of seaports, airports, industrial zones, power plants, toll roads and hospitality accommodations in the tourism sector.

In terms of manufacture investment, Indonesia expects Chinese investors capable of running smelters and other facilities to process raw commodities into value-added products, so as to eventually help improve the quality of Indonesia's export products as well as realize technology transfer over the process of production, Brodjonegoro said.

Should those projects be materialized, it would eventually give significant benefits to the Chinese investors as well as the economy and tourism sectors in the designated provinces.

"We can imagine that if they take part in those investments, we would eventually see North Sumatra, North Kalimantan and North Sulawesi become new growth centers. It would give significant economic opportunities for the country," he pointed out.

China overtook Japan to become Indonesia's second largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2017 with only Singapore ahead.

In the consumption sector, the minister said that Indonesia should export products needed most by Chinese consumers and tap more Chinese tourists to visit Indonesian destinations.

Indonesia has set tourism as a leading industry of the nation's economy, he noted. The Indonesian government is now intensifying efforts to develop the new ten destinations across the country, which are expected to par with foreign tourists' favorite destination of Bali.

"Indonesia has the world's fourth largest population whose economy and per capita income continue to grow," the minister said.

Indonesia posted a four-year high 5.07 percent growth last year. It has targeted to see a 5.4 percent growth this year and between 5.6 to 6 percent next year, he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 00:07:40|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ISTANBUL, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Dilara Kandak was only 23 years old when she was found dead early this week in southern Turkey.

Her shallow grave gave away the location of her half-buried body in a woodland area. Her body was naked and wrapped in a blanket.

A mother of two, Kandak had been living separated from her husband for two years before her father reported her as missing last month.

Another incident happened the same week in Istanbul, Turkey's most populous city, in which a woman was shot dead by her estranged husband at her office in a district municipality.

In the southwestern province of Mugla, a man committed suicide after killing his father-in-law, brother-in-law and wounding his wife who wanted a divorce.

Details of the murders are not clear yet, but the victims' bitter stories are just a few examples of millions of women being subject to male violence in the country.

According to the latest data, in February alone, 47 women were murdered by men across the country, against 28 in the same month in 2017.

"This is actually the highest number of fatalities we have ever recorded in a month so far," wrote an article published on the website of We Will Stop Femicide Platform that tracks the number of homicides against women.

In 2017, a total of 409 women were killed by men, up from 328 in 2016, while 387 children were sexually abused and 332 women were subject to sexual violence, the platform said.

For women rights groups, the inadequacy of the law and regulations that are supposed to protect women from male violence and the scarcity of women shelters are the main reasons behind the rising figures.

"Most of the time, we are witnessing penalty reductions in violence cases against women and children," Busra Gundogdu, a representative of We Will Stop Femicide Platform, told Xinhua.

Under the Turkish penal code, judges can reduce sentences by up to one sixth considering the suspect's past, social relations and behavior during the trial period.

The platform publishes a monthly list of court cases pertaining to abuse of women so as to establish a strong public awareness.

Over rising public outrage, the Turkish government has now started to work on a new regulation which could eliminate the reduction of sentences over good conduct.

The ruling Justice and Development Party has also announced to consider chemical castration for those convicted of sex offenses against children.

"We see that in some countries, abusers of children under 12 or nine years old receive heavier penalties. We are working on similar regulations," Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, Turkey's minister of family and social policies, said recently.

Gundogdu urged the authorities to adopt more tangible solutions to better protect women and children rather than endorse old-fashioned practices like castration, as it is against human rights.

In her view, the protection law is not effectively implemented in Turkey.

"The murdered women either had no protection orders or the orders could not be detected," she said, adding in some cases the victims were not even protected at all although they had demanded it.

Meanwhile, the Foundation for Women's Solidarity, an independent organization, appealed to the state institutions to increase the number of shelters and counseling centers for women.

The group is providing free legal and psychological counseling and guidance on shelters, health and work to applicants. In 2016, a total of 336 women turned to the foundation for help.

"It is clearly not sufficient," the foundation said in a statement posted on its website, noting that both the quality and quantity of these services should be improved throughout the country with the contribution of public officials.

For 55-year-old Zeynep Bayburtlu, state authorities should launch an initiative that includes a series of training programs on combating violence against women as well as awareness-raising activities.

Bayburtlu herself was subject to male violence 10 years ago when her husband started to beat her after she sought a divorce.

"When you experience something like that you don't know what to do, where to go or what to say," she said. "Even your closest ones, your mother or your father, keep their distances as if it is your fault."

She described her feeling at that time as "pure despair."

"That is why I strongly insist on the necessity of establishing training centers that can tell women how to protect themselves before it is too late," she explained.

To mark the International Women's Day on Thursday, women across Turkey are set to organize events like night marches, concerts and demonstrations to raise their voices against violence.

"They will once again shout out loud 'another world is possible,'" said Bayburtlu.
CAIRO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi stressed on Thursday his country's keenness to guarantee the national security of Bahrain and the Gulf region.

Sisi's remarks came during his meeting in Cairo with visiting Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled Bin Ahmed Bin Mohamed Al Khalifa, Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said in a press statement.

Sisi reiterated that the security of the Gulf region is an integral part of the national security of Egypt, said the statement.

The meeting tackled a number of regional issues such as combating terrorism as well as efforts to reach settlements on ongoing crises in the region, according to the statement.

In June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed relations with Qatar, accusing the oil rich Gulf country of supporting "terrorism." Qatar rejects the allegations as "baseless."

The four Arab countries also issued a list of 13 demands for Doha to end the crisis, including reducing its ties with Iran and closing the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV station.

Under the list, Qatar is also required to immediately terminate its construction of a Turkish military base in addition to severing all ties with "terrorist organizations" including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State, al-Qaida, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Nusra Front, which were labeled as terrorist groups.
KIGALI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Trade ministers from the African Union (AU) member states on Thursday started a meeting in Kigali to discuss the concluded legal instruments to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The two-day meeting in the capital city of Rwanda was held ahead of the AU's extraordinary summit on the AfCFTA scheduled for March 17-21 in Kigali. Rwandan President and AU Chairperson Paul Kagame in February said a "historic pact" on the free trade area "will be signed" at the summit.

It is important to speed up negotiations towards the agreement of the AfCFTA in order to realize the continent's vision of single and larger market for African economies, said Vincent Munyeshyaka, trade minister of Rwanda at the meeting.

Legal instruments are critical to the AfCFTA negotiations and future implementation, said Munyeshyaka, adding that Africa needs to enhance competitiveness at the industry and enterprise level through exploiting opportunities for scale production, free continental trade market access and better reallocation of resources.

Achieving Africa's rightful place in the global economy, single continental market for goods and services and as well as investments will play a vital role for the continent, said Burkina Faso's trade minister Harouna Kabore.

A continental free trade area will not only offer a larger and single market for African economies, but will contribute significantly to sustainable economic growth, poverty reduction and better integration of the continent into the global economy, said Kabore.

The decision to form the CFTA was adopted in January 2012 during the 18th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Head of States and Government of the African Union.

The CFTA is aimed at creating a single continental market for goods and services with free movement of businesses and investments. This, according to AU, will pave the way for accelerating the establishment of the Continental Customs Union and the African Customs Union.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 00:22:43|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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CAIRO, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit urged Thursday Guatemala to retrieve its decision to relocate his country's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed city of Jerusalem.

Gheit sent an urgent letter to Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, in which he regretted Guatemala's intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem, spokesman for the AL chief Mahmoud Afifi said in a statement.

In his letter, the Secretary-General said "it is really sad that Guatemala is the only country joining the United States in this move," adding that the pan-Arab organization remains keen to maintain cordial ties with Guatemala to avoid any measures that may influence these ties.

Guatemala's decision came after the United States announced last month it would relocate in May its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which U.S. President Donald Trump recognized as the capital of Israel last December amid regional and international uproar.

The Palestinians consider East Jerusalem, which was seized by the Israel in the 1967 war, as the capital of their future independent state, while the Israelis insist that the entire city is their eternal capital.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 00:22:43|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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BEIRUT, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced Thursday that Gulf states may soon lift the travel bans they had imposed on Lebanon in recent years.

"Gulf states are mulling re-allowing their citizens to visit Lebanon," Hariri was quoted as saying by the Annahar daily.

"This would reflect positively on the tourism sector and on the economy in general," the prime minister added.

Hariri visited Saudi Arabia last week.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait in last November warned their citizens against traveling to Lebanon, amid a Lebanese-Saudi crisis sparked by Hariri's controversial resignation announcement in Riyadh which he rescinded soon after.

Saudi Arabia said at the time that it considered Hezbollah's engagement in the Lebanese government an "act of war" against the kingdom.
LONDON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Terror arrests have risen to a record high in the wake of the attacks in London and Manchester with more than 400 suspects held by British police in the past year, official figures revealed Thursday.

The British Home Office statistics showed that 412 terrorism-related arrests were made during 2017, an increase of 58 percent over the 261 people detained in the previous year.

The record figures included 12 people arrested for the Westminster attacks in March, the 23 people linked to the attack in Manchester in May, 21 arrests connected with the London Bridge attack in June and one person arrested in connection with the Finsbury Park mosque attack later that month.

A further seven arrests were made in connection with the attack on Parsons Green tube station in September.

The vast majority of those held in 2017 were linked to either international or domestic terrorism.

There were 300 arrests in the international category, which covers suspected activity linked to or motivated by terrorist groups based outside the UK, such as Islamic State.

In the domestic category, which relates to cases where there is no connection to either Northern Ireland-related or international terrorism, there were 71 arrests.

The figures reflected the growing threat from Jihadists in Britain. The director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, spoke in October of "a dramatic upshift in the threat this year" to the "highest tempo I've seen in my 34-year career."

The detailed Home Office figures showed that of the arrests, 135 people were charged, 110 of them for terrorism-related offences. Of these, 29 had been prosecuted and convicted by the time the latest data was compiled.

More than half -- 228 or 55 percent -- were released without charge while a further 33 were released on bail pending further investigation, and 13 faced alternative action.

So far 29 of the 110 people charged with a terrorist offence in 2017 have been prosecuted. All of them were convicted. A further 76 are awaiting prosecution. The remaining five cases have either not proceeded or are pending.

The latest figures showed that by the end of 2017 there were 224 terrorist prisoners in jails in Britain, an increase of 24 percent, or 43, over the previous year, and continuing the upward trend seen in recent years.

The overwhelming majority, 86 percent, held Islamic extremist views while 9 percent were rightwing extremists including from the recently banned National Action, and the remaining 5 precept classified as "other ideologies."

Of the arrests, 48 percent were of suspects aged 30 or over. There were 27 arrests of under-18s which was the highest number of juveniles held in a year since records began.

White people accounted for 145 arrests, the highest tally so far, and a third of suspects arrested were foreign, but 68 percent were Britain citizens.

The quarterly terrorism powers statistics also showed that the Metropolitan police have stepped up the use of their counter-terror stop and search powers. The number of searches carried out rose 59 percent in 2017 to 767 from 483 the year before.

However, the number of people stopped and examined at ports and airports under counter-terror powers continued to fall in 2017. There were 16,349 examinations last year, a fall of 16 percent compared with the previous year, reflecting the recent downward trend.

The number of people detained under these port powers, however, rose 10 percent in 2017 from 1,539 to 1,700.
A relative, carried by two men, reacts and mourns the death of a man who succumbed to a gun shot wound during a protest to push for the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo to step down on Feb. 25, 2018 in Kinshasa. (Xinhua/AFP)

UNITED NATIONS, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A UN envoy has expressed concern over the political, security and humanitarian situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) despite progress in the electoral process.

Briefing the Security Council, Leila Zerrougui, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for the DRC, reported that "notable progress" had been made in the past weeks in the preparations for presidential and legislative elections, including the completion of voter registration.

More than 46 million potential voters, 47 percent of them women, have been registered for Dec. 23 elections, she told the council.

However, she warned that major challenges remain in the country. It is important to establish confidence of parties in the Dec. 31, 2016 political agreement with regard to the political process and to the electoral process, she said.

The political agreement allowed President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, to stay on after his term of office expired, on the condition that elections would be held within 2017. But elections were delayed on the grounds of logistic difficulties. On Nov. 5, 2017, the country's electoral commission published an electoral calendar for the combined presidential, legislative and provincial elections for Dec. 23, 2018.

Protesters shout at police from Notre Dame Cathedral compound in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Feb. 25, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

"A failure to generate confidence in the full and faithful implementation of the Dec. 31 agreement will only serve to heighten political tensions, and to fuel the risks of inciting violence for political ends, particularly within the context of renewed and increased armed group activities," she warned.

She also voiced concern over the disproportionate use of force by the security forces against peaceful demonstrators, and over the country's security and humanitarian situation.

The security situation has continued to deteriorate, bringing increased risks for renewed instability in many parts of the country and posing serious threats to the civilian population, she said.

A refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo sits with her belongings near the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in Kiziba refugee camp in Karongi District, Rwanda Feb. 21, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

More than 7.7 million people face severe food insecurity throughout the country and more than two million children are severely malnourished, she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 00:42:49|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ANKARA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey said Thursday it could launch a cross-border military operation against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) elements in Iraq in cooperation with the Iraqi army.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed that common understanding has been reached between Turkey and Iraq, CNN Turk reported.

"We have reached to consensus with the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on the issue to carry out the offensive together," Cavusoglu said during his visit to Austria.

He said Abadi "wants to clear all terrorist organizations off the country," the minister said.

Cavusoglu warned against the PKK members' advance to the Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk provinces of northern Iraq, establishing canton-like structures in Iraq as Syrian Kurds did in Syria.

The PKK is a threat posed not only to Baghdad but also to the Iraqi Kurdish administration in the north of the country, he added.

The joint operation with Iraqi army may start after the elections in Iraq scheduled for May 12.

The foreign minister said "Operation Olive Branch" in Syria's Afrin against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) group may end by May.

He added that even if the current cross-border operation into Syria has not been completed, his country is capable of carrying out two cross-border operations simultaneously.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and the EU, resumed its 30-year armed campaign against Turkey government in July 2015 after a brief reconciliation period.

Turkish air forces regularly strike weapon depots and hideouts used by PKK in northern Iraq, where the group uses as a base for years.

The group uses Qandil Mountain near the Iraq-Iran border to launch attacks on Turkey.

Turkey has long been urging Iraqi government to take action against the PKK presence in northern Iraq, but for several years no Iraqi government did so.

Al-Abadi was against Turkey's military intervention into his country as bilateral relations hit new lows after the Turkish army deployed troops in Bashiqa region in northern Iraq in order to train Sunni local militia and Kurdish fighters as part of efforts to defeat Islamic State (IS).

Turkish ground troops, from time to time, enter northern Iraq for short-term operations in "hot pursuit" to hunt Kurdish militants in the border region.

The Iraqi governments since former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki do not favor Turkey's military operations involving ground troops.

Since early 2017, both Ankara and Baghdad are in process of restoring strained ties and seeking to boost cooperation in fields of economy, defense, politics and trade.

As the Syrian Kurdish group has advanced its influence in a war-torn country both in terms of militarily and territory, Turkey rang the alarm bells since the Turkish state assumes the YPG as an offshoot of the PKK and considers it as an existential threat for the unity of its own country due to its own Kurdish population.

Turkey has battled a decades-old insurgency in its mainly Kurdish southeast and sees the Syrian Kurdish group a growing power on its southern border threatening Turkish security.

Ankara has launched military incursion on Jan. 20 against Kurdish YPG fighters in Kurdish-led autonomous Afrin and declared that the military campaign will continue until all PKK related groups are cleared from Turkey's southern borders, all the way to Iraq.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly vows to "clean the region from this trouble completely," signaling that the offensive against PKK and the affiliated group will not remain merely with the operation in Afrin.
BERLIN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A large majority of Germans are worried about the implications of an aging population, a study published on Thursday by the think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, shows.

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Germans associated risks with demographic change, such as old-age poverty, having to work longer, and a need to pay higher salary contributions towards pensions.

The findings were based on a representative survey of 1,454 Germans above the age of 16 that was conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research on behalf of the Bertelsmann Foundation.

"The survey clearly shows that citizens experience demographic change as a significant and far-reaching trend which will significantly influence the future of Germany," a statement by Bertelsmann demography expert Andre Schleiter read. Comparatively, a study by the foundation in 2014 found that only 55 percent of respondents had indicated that they were concerned about the prospect of an aging population.

Schleiter highlighted that a failure to successfully manage demographic change was likely to result in an increase of social inequality in Germany.

He urged policymakers to "carefully monitor the social implications" of any reforms with regards to the pensions system and labor market.
KATHMANDU, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Nepal cannot prosper until women are ensured with full political, economic and social rights, and the country is willing to work with China in the field of women movement and rights, a government minister said here on Thursday.

Newly-appointed Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare Tham Maya Thapa made the remarks at the International Women's Day reception organized by the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu.

"Nepali women seek cooperation and exchange programs with China to attain economic, social, cultural and political rights. Nepali government wants to work together with Chinese government to achieve the goals and reach a new height," the minister said.

Congratulating the newly elected female politicians in the recent three-tier elections, Chinese ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong said that China will work continuously for women's development.

The ambassador said that the Chinese government attaches great importance to upholding women's rights and interests, keeping gender equity as a fundamental task.

As part of 100 health projects for other countries, China has been assisting Nepal in health projects for women and children, especially in rural areas.

The reception was attended by nearly 200 Nepali women guests, including leaders from various political parties, diplomats, business leaders, social activists and journalists.
by Olatunji Saliu

ABUJA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Some parents of the 110 abducted schoolgirls of Dapchi in northern Nigeria for the first time gathered in the nation's capital Abuja to publicly express sadness.

As the world marked the International Women's Day on Thursday, the parents staged a peaceful march to remind the Nigerian government of the tragedy that befell their daughters on Feb. 19, when terror group Boko Haram stormed an all-girl college in Dapchi, taking away at least 110 students.

Seventeen days after the incident, the parents traveled more than 833 kilometers to Abuja, by road, to express their worries as hopes of finding the schoolgirls begin to fade.

Wearing black robes to signify their mournful mood, the parents flooded the main entrance of the National Assembly, a gigantic building that houses the Nigerian Senate and the parliament.

Some were seen weeping uncontrollably and some singing dirges. Some lamented how the abduction has cut short the dreams of the young girls that led them to seek Western education.

Many of the parents said their hopes for the government to bring back the girls are beginning to fade.

"I am calling on the government to bring back the hope of seeing my daughter again," said one mother who spoke in tears.

"My life has been brought to a standstill. I can barely do anything without thinking of my missing daughter. When shall we see again?" the mother, simply called Hauwa, said in the local Hausa language.

The 2018 International Women's Day is themed "Press For Progress." But some parents said no progress in their lives seemed possible if their daughters do not return soon, safe and sound.

"I sent my daughter to school because I wanted her to make progress in life. But what progress can she press for now? As a mother, how can I move forward in life without knowing the whereabouts of my daughter?" said Zainab Mohammed, a 47-year-old mother whose only daughter is among the missing girls.

In Dapchi, the local authorities have hired at least 300 Muslim clerics to pray every day for the safe return of the schoolgirls.

The special prayers will continue until all the abducted schoolgirls return safely, Goni Bukar, a national lawmaker representing Dapchi and neighboring communities, said in the Nigerian parliament.

The abducted girls' ages range from 11 to 19 years, according to the Nigerian government.

The Nigerian military said they have deployed air assets, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms, in search of the missing schoolgirls.

So far, the Nigerian air troops had already flown hundreds of hours while conducting the search for the girls, the military said.

The country's air force chief, the police chief, and heads of other paramilitary agencies had also relocated to Yobe to superintend the search for the girls.

The tragedy of the missing girls has brought back memories of a similar occurrence four years ago, when more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram in the northeastern town of Chibok.

Only 107 of the Chibok girls have been rescued or returned amid ongoing government negotiation with Boko Haram.

The United Nations believes Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 innocent people since 2009 through terror attacks.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 01:07:55|Editor: Jiaxin

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By Xinhua writer Quan Xiaoshu

BEIJING, March 9 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified the crucial factor that activates gene expression in human embryos, bringing them a step closer to explaining the mystery of human development at a very early embryonic stage, according to a paper published on the website of the scientific journal, Cell.

Human life starts from a fertilized egg. However, in the first two days after fertilization, almost no genes are expressed in human embryos. Previously scientists did not know how genomes become active and start gene expression in early embryos.

"What activates gene expression? The puzzle has been troubling scientists around the world for a long time. We were the first to find it," said Liu Jiang, senior author of the paper.

During human growth, different genes must be expressed at the right time and right place. The genetic code stored in DNA is "interpreted" by gene expression, which gives rise to all the particular features of an individual.

A team from Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), led by Liu, together with a group from Center for Reproductive Medicine, Shandong University, under Chen Zijiang, and a group from Guangzhou Medical University under Liu Jianqiao, found that Oct-4, a transcriptional factor, plays a crucial role in activating zygotic genome expression.

In the first two days, a human zygote will grow into eight cells after three cell divisions. Once the embryo has eight cells, it will generate a sufficient amount of Oct-4, which will directly bind with DNA and switch on the gene expression, Liu said.

The research also found genome activation follows a particular sequence. "The older genes usually start expression at early embryonic stages, and younger ones at later stages," Liu said.

Humans have more than 20,000 genes, a reflection of a long chain of evolution. Some genes originated at the beginning of life on Earth, and are thus very old genes. Some originated in mammals, and are young ones. Some originated only in humans, and are deemed the youngest.

"We found that the expression of older genes usually occur at earlier embryonic stages, as these genes, shared by more life species, are needed during earlier development," Liu said.

But how human genome differentiates between old and young genes is still unclear and needs further study.

The study also found that transposons, a class of DNA elements, are very active in early human embryos, which might be a trigger of evolution.

"These transposons can jump from one position to another in a genome, and introduce DNA mutations. Since they are only active in early embryos, but not in differentiated tissues, the mutations caused by their mobility are more likely to be passed to the germ line, and then to the next generations," Liu said.

"As DNA mutations drive evolution, we believe that these active transposons have a big impact on human evolution," he said.

Before this study, the major hurdle in this research was the limited number of human embryos for experiment. Similar research would normally consume millions of animal embryos, but acquiring so many human embryos was neither possible nor ethical.

"We optimized the experiment methods so that the research could perform the assay with a very small number of human embryos," Liu said.

According to the paper, the scientists used just 50 to 100 cells, all derived from in vitro fertilization with written consent from donor couples.
Photo of Peter Wang, a Chinese American victim, is placed during a vigil for the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Pine Trails Park in Parkland, Florida, the United States, on Feb. 15, 2018. (Xinhua/Monica McGivern)

WASHINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Lawmakers in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida have passed a gun-control legislation in a bid to boost school safety, three weeks after 17 people were shot dead on a high school campus in Parkland, Florida.

The bill, the first major gun-control state law in Florida in decades, now goes to Republican Governor Rick Scott for his signature.

The measure narrowly passed the state Senate in a 20-to-18 vote on Monday before sailing through the House of Representatives on Wednesday in a 67-50 vote. Both the state House and Senate are controlled by Republicans.

A sign hangs on a fence one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 27, 2018. (Xinhua/AFP)

Under the bill, the minimum age to buy any type of gun is raised to 21 years old from 18, though with some exceptions. The buyers also need to wait for three days before receiving a firearm in most cases.

The measures also include banning the sale of bump stocks that can make semiautomatic rifles perform like fully automatic ones, investing 400 million U.S. dollars in improving mental-health services and boosting physical security of school buildings, as well as a controversial "guardian" program to train and arm some voluntary school personnel.

However, facing opposition from Governor Scott and many residents in Parkland, the "guardian" program will exclude people who exclusively perform classroom duties, said local media reports.

The legislation also excludes proposals to ban assault weapons like AR15 and other semiautomatic rifles.

Nikolas Cruz, facing 17 charges of premeditated murder in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, appears in court for a status hearing in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S. Feb. 19, 2018. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

Also on Wednesday, Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old suspected shooter, was formally indicted on murder charges over the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, leaving 17 killed and 14 others injured.
CAPE TOWN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Thursday tabled a substantive motion in Parliament against Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba over his alleged ties with the controversial Indian Gupta family.

The DA wants Gigaba to be referred to Parliament's Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests for misleading Parliament and the nation about the naturalization of the Guptas.

The motion will allow Parliament to sanction Gigaba after he was accused of lying about the South African citizenship of Gupta brothers, Ajay Gupta and Atul Gupta who are wanted by South African police for looting the state coffers in collaboration with officials.

The motion came after Gigaba stated on Wednesday that neither Ajay Gupta nor Atul Gupta are South African citizens as Ajay did not renounce Indian citizenship and Atul never applied for South African citizenship.

But several reports indicate that Atul Gupta does have a South African passport and identity number, ending in the digits 080 that are only assigned to South African citizens.

"The DA can also confirm that Atul Gupta, Arti Gupta, Shivani Gupta, Rajesh Gupta are all registered voters on our voter registration system," said DA Shadow Minister of Home Affairs Haniff Hoosen.

New information available to the DA also reveals that several more members of the Gupta family were granted South African citizenship, Hoosen said.

This was not revealed to Parliament as is required by law, he said.

Last December, the High Court in Pretoria found that Gigaba "deliberately told untruths under oath" about the Gupta citizenship.

The court ruled that Gigaba has committed a breach of the Constitution so serious that it can be characterized as a violation.

"South Africans have a right to know all information pertaining to the Gupta family citizenship fiasco and for those implicated to be held accountable," Hoosen said.

On Wednesday, Gigaba failed to appear before Parliament to answer questions, saying he was ill.
ISLAMABAD, March 8 (Xinhua) -- A court in Pakistan on Thursday ordered the government to arrest and confiscate the property of former President Pervez Musharraf as it resumed the high treason case against him after nine months of his absence.

Musharraf, who is presently living in self-exile in the United Arab Emirate, was accused of suspending the constitution when he imposed the emergency rule in 2007. He dismissed the government of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 and later sent him into exile.

When the three-member special court started the hearing, an official of the Interior Ministry produced details of Musharraf's properties.

Senior Prosecutor Akram Sheikh asked the court to direct the government to arrest the former army chief and confiscate all his properties in the country.

The bench headed by Justice Yahya Afridi instructed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to explain as to how Musharraf could be brought back to Pakistan. An FIA official said Pakistan could approach Interpol to arrest Musharraf if the Interior Ministry formally asks the agency.

Musharraf's defense counsel Akhtar Shah opposed the court's order to seize Musharraf's properties and said his client is abroad for treatment and he also faces security issues in the country. He also said Musharraf respects the courts and would appear on his return.

The court adjourned the hearing until March 21.
RUIRU, Kenya, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Thursday his government will release about 8,000 prisoners as part of efforts to decongest prisons across the country.

Kenyatta said investing more in the prisons and other security agencies will make Kenya more secure and attract investments.

"The government is currently processing 8,000 prisoners for alternative correctional programs outside prisons as part of plans to decongest the facilities," he said during the passing out parade of 3,198 prisons officers in Ruiru.

According to government statistics, prisons in Kenya are holding three times the designed capacity of such facilities and have been condemned for excessive congestion that violates basic human rights.

The East African nation has 89 prisons and a prison population of 50,000. Kenyatta has announced plans by the government to seek for alternative correctional programs as part of plans to decongest prisons.

He also directed the prisons department to launch income generating activities to help the government address the country's revenue challenge.
JUBA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan on Thursday joined the rest of the world in marking the International Women's Day amid calls for ending gender-based violence, sexual abuse, discrimination in the war-torn nation.

Hundreds of women marked the event by staging a peaceful procession in Juba carrying placards calling for empowerment and an end to all forms of women's rights violations.

Women interviewed by Xinhua said the civil war that is now in its fifth year and a biting economic crisis have caused a lot of suffering in their lives.

"Our children and husbands are dying daily. Women are being raped. How long will this continue? We want peace and reconciliation in our country," 55-year-old Jane Kaku told Xinhua.

According to a survey released in November 2017 by the International Rescue Committee and the George Washington University's Global Women's Institute, violence perpetrated against women and girls in war-torn South Sudan are among the highest in the world and twice the global average.

"Old women are being raped, small girls are being gang raped. Government must implement the law and punish these rapists because women in south Sudan are tired of suffering," said activist Sarah Keji.

Awut Deng Achuil, Minister of Gender and Social Welfare, said women who make up over 60 percent of South Sudan's population continue to bear the brunt of violence from armed groups, sexual violence and child marriage.

Achuil said immediate action focusing on investment in women's programs is needed for attainment of gender parity in the world's youngest nation.

"It is sad that our girls are booked for marriage when they are three years old. It is too much to bear. Time is now to take action to change the lives of women through silencing the guns," Achuil said.

According to the United Nations, gender-based violence (GBV) is persistent and a serious problem in the East African nation as 98 percent of GBV incidents reported in South Sudan in 2016 affected women and girls.

The UN said GBV includes rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, forced and early marriage that affect women, girls, boys and men.

David Shearer, head of the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), urged the government and development partners to invest more in women empowerment initiatives for realization of gender equality and socioeconomic progress for all women in south Sudan.

"This day is about women and girls, but is it also about peace. It is a chance to challenge ourselves to find other ways to transform their lives of women and girls in South Sudan and across the world," said Shearer.
KAMPALA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has assured the country that he will hunt down city murderers like he did with terrorists and rebels.

Speaking during celebrations to mark the International Women's Day on Thursday, Museveni said those behind the recent wave of killings in and around Kampala will have nowhere to hide "because we have bought new equipment and we shall soon install it in every town".

"We first concentrated on defeating terrorists in the bush. We did all that was necessary to successfully eliminate those rebels. No one should worry about security in Uganda," Museveni said.

His comments come after 26 women were murdered in and Kampala in the last six months, with the perpetrators still at large.

"Hunting for those murderers is like looking for needles in the bush. But now we have new strategies and we shall hunt them down. Those killing women, kidnapping women will be dealt with," Museveni vowed.

The President said he will not hesitate to dust the equipment he used to fight the rebels in order to deal with the murderers.

Uganda has in the past been attacked by different rebel groups such as Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).

The LRA operated in the north but have since been pushed into the Central African Republic jungles while the ADF who once operated in western Uganda were chased into the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 01:33:11|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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ISTANBUL, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Turkey on Thursday launched a new manhunt for 121 people suspected of links to an outlawed network for masterminding a coup bid in 2016, local media reported.

Operations were launched simultaneously in 29 provinces and 33 suspects have been detained so far under arrest warrants issued by the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in Istanbul, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Among the captured are Fatmanur Gulen, the niece of Fethullah Gulen, leader of the Gulen network who is living in the United States, and Belkis Nur Tetik, the sister-in-law of Adil Oksuz, an alleged mastermind of the failed coup, the agency said.

Turkey blames the Gulen network for the putsch in July 2016 that left 250 people dead and nearly 2,200 others injured, and has been pushing for Gulen's extradition.

More than 150,000 people have been dismissed or suspended from their posts while over 55,000 others were arrested in the ongoing investigation, according to press reports.
RABAT, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Malian Prime Minister Soumyelou Boubeye Maiga arrived on Thursday in Morocco for an official visit.

Upon his arrival at the airport, the Malian Prime Minister was welcomed by his Moroccan counterpart Saad Eddine El Othmani.

During his two-day visit, Maiga will discuss with Moroccan officials means to promote fruitful cooperation between the two countries in addition to issues of common interest such as security, fight against terrorism, climate change and illegal immigration.

On the occasion of this visit, the two countries are expected to ink several cooperation agreements in various areas.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 02:03:25|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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DAMASCUS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The armed rebels fired on the second humanitarian corridor that was established on Thursday to prevent civilians from leaving the rebel-held areas in the capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta countryside, said the War Media, the media wing of the Syrian army.

The rebels fired on the corridor between the town of Mlaiha and the rebel-held Jisreen area in Eastern Ghouta, said the report.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry was cited by local media outlets as saying that three cars were set ablaze when the rebels fired on a convoy transporting 300 people toward the humanitarian corridor in Mlaiha.

The attacks have obviously prevented the civilians from leaving, as no one left through the new humanitarian corridor on Thursday.

The Syrian government on Thursday prepared the second humanitarian corridor, after ten days of a failed attempt to receive civilians from the first designated crossing in Wafidin area northeast of Damascus.

The civilians' evacuation from the rebel-held areas in Eastern Ghouta is an essential part of the Russian-backed daily humanitarian pause, which has so far seen the evacuation of only a few civilians from Eastern Ghouta. Syrian government accuses the rebels of preventing the civilians from leaving.

The Syrian army has captured 52 percent of Eastern Ghouta in recent days, as part of an ongoing large-scale offensive to dislodge the rebels from the area.

UN humanitarian agencies have sounded the alarm about the worsening humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta, where activists said over 800 people have been killed since late last month by intensified shelling and fighting between government troops and the rebels.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 02:08:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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JERUSALEM, March 8 (Xinhua) -- U.S. and Israeli military officials said on Thursday they have launched a month-long joint military drill that simulates a missile attack on Israel.

The "Juniper Cobra 2018" exercise was launched on Sunday, a military spokesperson said, adding it is the largest drill of its kind.

The biennial drill is jointly held by the Israeli military and the U.S. European Command (USEUCOM).

As part of the exercise, some 2,500 U.S. troops routinely based in Europe were deployed in Israel as well as about 2,000 Israeli Aerial Defense troops, logistics units, medical forces and other Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units.

"For more than four weeks, they will train shoulder to shoulder, the same as we will fight in times of crisis. It's not just about an exercise," Brig. Gen. Zvika Haimovich, Israel's air defense commander, told reporters on Thursday.

The exercise simulates a scenario in which Israel is being attacked on several fronts, including by precision-guided ballistic missiles from Iran.

Two U.S. vessels arrived in Israel to participate in the drill. On Tuesday, the USS Iwo Jima took position off the coast of Israel. On Thursday, the Mount Whitney command and control ship docked at the Haifa port, the spokesperson said. Aboard it, there were more than 500 servicemen and women, half of them from the senior command of the U.S. sixth fleet.

It is the ninth Cobra exercise that has taken place.

A military notice said that the participators are performing together computerized simulations of a variety of rocket threat scenarios in different regions.

The simulations include testing of the anti-ballistic missile system Arrow, Iron Dome anti-rocket system, the medium-range interceptor Patriot missile system, and David's Sling, which was designed to intercept medium-range missiles from southern Lebanon's Hezbollah militants and became operational in April 2017.
RABAT, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Moroccan police arrested Thursday a Swiss national who was under an international arrest warrant for sexually exploiting minors.

According to a statement from the Moroccan police, the 58-year-old suspect was under an international arrest warrant over his alleged involvement in sexual exploitation of underage girls in his country of origin.

The arrest warrant was issued internationally by Interpol before the Moroccan judicial police managed to arrest him in Rabat, the statement noted.

He was remanded in custody and will be brought before the competent prosecutor's office, pending the examination of the extradition request made by the authorities of his country, it said.

The operation is part of the efforts to strengthen international security cooperation, particularly in the fight against all forms of cross-border crimes, the statement pointed out.
A woman holds a placard during a rally marking the International Women's Day with the theme of "Press for Progress" in Kathmandu, Nepal, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma)

UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for action to empower women and girls on the occasion of International Women's Day.

"Everywhere, women are saying 'The Time is Now.' Time for equality and opportunity, respect and equal representation. Time for an end to violence. Around the world, women and girls are calling out the abusive behavior and discriminatory attitudes they face everywhere and all the time. They are insisting on lasting change," Guterres told an event at UN Headquarters to mark International Women's Day.

Women participate in the "Beauty Run" to mark the International Women's Day in Minsk, capital of Belarus, on March 8, 2018. (Xinhua)

"This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want. And it is what every sensible man and boy should want," he said.

Gender equality is a fundamental human right and there is no better path to a more peaceful and prosperous world than the empowerment of women and girls, said the UN chief.

"Power is at the heart of the matter. As we still live in a male-dominated world with male-dominated culture and until power is fairly shared, the world will remain out of balance."

There is overwhelming evidence that investing in women is the most effective way to lift communities, companies and countries. Women's participation makes peace agreements stronger, societies more resilient and economies more vigorous, he said.

Indian women work in a Cashew nut factory on the International women's day, on the outskirts of Agartala, capital of the northeastern state of Tripura, India, March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Stringer)

"Gender equality is the unfinished business of our time. And so the time is now to change it," said Guterres.

Significant advances have taken place since the first International Women's Day in 1976, he said. But structural barriers remain: unpaid care work, unequal pay, harmful stereotypes, discrimination and violence.

He pledged his determination to achieve gender parity throughout the United Nations.

A woman works at a brick factory on the International Women's Day on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 8, 2018. (Xinhua/Saadia Seher)

For the first time ever, gender parity has become reality in the senior UN management team -- the top level of this organization, he said, adding that the world body is very close to reach gender equality among leaders of UN country teams around the world.

He reiterated his commitment to zero tolerance of sexual harassment.

"I am improving reporting and accountability and trying to establish confidence, empower people who experience or witness harassment to come forward and seek justice."
LAGOS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian police in the restive Borno state on Thursday confirmed that four policemen and six soldiers were killed in the Boko Haram attack in Rann area of the northeastern state.

The policemen are part of the counter-insurgency campaign to restore peace and stability, and were deployed to various locations, Damian Chukwu, the state police chief told reporters in Maiduguri, the state capital.

He added that over 500 men had been deployed to a military operation tagged "Operation Lafiya Dole," and reiterated the commitment of the command to the counter-insurgency campaign.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) had said three aid workers were killed and three injured while a nurse was declared missing during the terrorist attack in Rann on March 1.

The UN agency said the aid workers were providing humanitarian services to over 50,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled their homes due to the ongoing conflict in the region.

Meanwhile, Chukwu said he had deployed personnel to public schools in the state to enhance protection and security.

According to him, the police had directed all its units to strengthen and ensure protection of students and teachers in schools in their respective areas.
RIGA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Bank of Latvia Governor Ilmars Rimsevics is determined to stay in office even though the parliament is calling for his resignation amid an ongoing corruption probe against him, public media reported.

Latvian lawmakers on Thursday adopted an appeal to Rimsevics, asking him to resign as head of the central bank. The parliament passed the resolution by 55 votes, with nobody voting against it and two lawmakers abstaining.

The Latvian Corruption Prevention Bureau has already banned Rimsevics from acting as the central bank's head, but under the Latvian law he can only be removed from office at his own request or if convicted. The parliament's call therefore is not legally binding to him.

MPs of the ruling center-right Unity faction, who proposed the resolution calling for Rimsevics' resignation, argued that as an "institution that elected this man Bank of Latvia governor in 2013, the parliament has the authority and obligation to react" to the situation where the head of the Latvian bank is being suspected of soliciting and accepting a large bribe from bank executives.

"This is an international signal that we care for our financial system and its reputation," said Hossam Abu Meri, chairman of the parliament's Unity faction.

Responding to the calls for his resignation, Rimsevics said through his lawyer Saulvedis Varpins that he had no plans to stand down and that he considered the resignation call political pressure.

In February, the Corruption Prevention Bureau's operatives briefly detained Rimsevics in connection with a corruption probe launched by the Baltic country's anti-corruption watchdog. Rimsevics was later released on 100,000 euros bail. (1 euro = 1.23 U.S. dollars)
TRIPOLI, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The UN-sponsored campaign "Peace for Libya" was launched on Thursday in the Libyan capital Tripoli under the auspices of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).

A group of Libyan women organized the event under the auspices of the UN Women's Support and Empowerment Section of the UN Mission, a campaign calling for women to contribute to peace in Libya.

"This day serves as a reminder that women's role in public affairs is no less important than men's, even more, their role is distinguished," said the Head of the Mission Ghassan Salame during the launch of the campaign, which coincides with the International Women's Day.

"Women are more likely to commit to security and less likely to violate it. Libyan women's voice against the terrible proliferation of weapons must be heard, for they are affected the most by conflicts and weapons proliferation," Salame said.

"I came here to ask for your assistance, for I believe that women's role in resolving conflicts and ending suffering is incontestable. Building a nation requires living in harmony not only living in civil peace," Salame added.

Karima Rajab, coordinator of the campaign, stressed women's role in coexistence. "We count on the support of men to achieve participation and equality," She said.

A group of Libyan women gathered in Switzerland in November 2015 for the Libyan Women's Action Plan for Peace Conference, with sponsorship of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UN Women Regional Office of Arab States, and the Women's Empowerment Section at the UNSMIL.

The Conference provided a "safe space for Libyan women who agreed to come together at a very difficult time in Libya in order to discuss their vital role in peace-building in a transparent way," according to the UN Mission.
LISBON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese and Spanish police, working in conjunction with Europol, have broken up a counterfeit money ring based in Portugal, Spain's National Police force announced on Thursday.

Police swooped on five properties in Portugal, seizing 70,000 euros in fake 20, 50 and 500 euro notes, and 140,000 CFA francs.

Three men were arrested. A Portuguese man, the group's mastermind, employed a tactic known as the "drip system" to circulate the cash, making modest purchases in small shops unequipped with money authentication devices.

Notes manufactured by the gang thus showed up in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Police inquiries began in 2016 when the investigative branch of the Bank of Spain detected increased flows of false 20 and 50 euro bills passing through Badajoz, a Spanish town on the Portuguese border.

The Spanish police consulted their Portuguese counterparts and learned that the same false notes had been detected in Portugal. A joint investigation between the Spanish National Police force and the Portuguese Judicial Police began, culminating in the five house searches in Portugal.

In one, the mastermind of the operation was caught red-handed as he put the finishing touches to a new batch of forged notes.

Besides the counterfeit money itself, the police also seized a color stamping machine, dies, a guillotine, four ink-jet printers, a scanner, a computer and several rolls of metallic ribbon used to make holograms.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 03:28:45|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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WASHINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Japanese researchers have found a new kind of topological superconductor that can become a promising candidate in making the future quantum computers.

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, Zhang Peng, a post-doctoral researcher at University of Tokyo, and his colleagues attained three key types of measurement necessary to analyze the quantum phase of Fe (Te, Se) in detail.

They confirmed that the surface of the material is suitable to support an exotic quasiparticles called Majorana bound states (MBSs). The MBSs was first proposed by Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana. Utilizing the properties of MBSs is now believed as a promising path towards topological quantum computing.

According to researchers, the Majorana bound state, existing on edges of two-dimensional topological superconductors, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. An exchange of two MBSs can result in the change of the system state, thus offering possibilities for quantum computing.

Quantum computers are poised to revolutionize society by tackling problems that conventional computers cannot. But most quantum computers currently in development are susceptible to the problem of decoherence, where the quantum state that encodes information degrades, which causes intolerable computing errors.

Zhang Peng told Xinhua, "a solution would be to develop topological quantum computers, where the integrity of the quantum state is protected by the topological properties of the system."

"In topological state, the local noises cannot disturb the topological properties unless the noises are so loud to cripple the whole system," Zhang explained.

But identifying materials that would be suitable to host MBSs is extremely challenging, according to Zhang.

He said this is the first time that the topological superconducting is found on crystals of Fe (Te, Se).

Unlike other topological superconductors identified to date, Zhang's team created the topological superconducting in a single crystal, on which the stable MBSs can be achieved relatively easily.

"It can promote the development of quantum computing," he said.
WINDHOEK, March 8 (Xinhua) -- As the world advocates for gender parity, information communication technology (ICT) is enabling Namibian rural women to improve livelihoods and address socio-economic disparities.

Back in 2009, Penina Heita would travel about 25 kilometres from her far-flung village in Oshana region to nearest Oshakati town in northern Namibia to sell agricultural and traditional products like pearl millet, wild fruits and brew at an open market. The stall served as her sole trading spot.

Today, instead of solely relying on an open market stall to lure clients, the 45 years old is maximizing on mobile technology to expand her clientele.

"Before, I would be sitting at the stall waiting on clients in dismay. Today, I contact potential clients via my mobile phone and even take orders before I pack my stock," she said.

Since 2005, the smartphone has been instrumental in Heita's business growth, making it easier for her to communicate with clients and promote products.

"I even have WhatsApp. I take pictures of my products and share products on offer with clients. This saves me time and further helps me maintain business contacts," she said.

Cellphone banking, according to her, has also saved time and enhanced her financial management skills.

As business and earnings tripled over the years, with a monthly earning averaging 5,000 Namibian dollars ( 419 U.S. dollars), Heita has been able to independently take care her of her family.

"In any ordinary case, as for many other village women, I would probably be struggling to make ends meet or be dependent on a man if it were not for my business and technology skills," she said.

She is not alone. Nankelo Shilongo, 35, is now promoting pearl millet on popular Facebook groups and asking for referrals via her mobile phone.

"This has had a snowball effect on my business growth, all attributed to ICT," said Shilongo, also from Oshana region.

Shilongo also seeks new information online. "I have been able to support my household. ICT has certainly been aiding towards my empowerment as a women, and opposed to solely depending on my male partner," she added.

The rural women have since created a WhatsApp group via which they engage on the challenges they face with other women.

"We are in the same trade and face similar challenges. Thus it's important to caucus in WhatsApp inboxes," said Heita.

The group also enables the women to track goods and share tips on how to access advanced markets.

The younger generation is also helping the women like Heita who often have little access to social media platforms.

Willem Ashipala, a 23-year-old son of Heita, said he posts his mother's products on his Facebook page.

"Recently I posted that she is selling chickens. This make business easier as she does not have to carry stock in anticipation of clients, and thus reduces her burden," he said.

The engagement offered by ICT venture is unique with an element of sustainability and empowerment that lends itself to address gender disparities and social inequalities, Christine Hoebes, deputy minister of international relations and cooperation said Thursday.

"Plans are underway to establish a mentorship program for all women in efforts to address social inequalities women faces," said Hoebes.

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia, Thursday said that Namibia should strive and address social inequalities women faces.

"The theme for this year is encouraging us to move forward with commitment and determination to ensure that women empowerment and gender equality is realized," said Ndaitwah.

March 8 marks the International Women's Day 2018 campaigned under the theme "Press for Progress."
LONDON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- British industry celebrated International Women's Day Thursday by announcing a record number of women now serve on the boards of the top 100 companies.

But figures released by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) show it could be 2020 before a third of boardroom positions are held by women.

Analysis published to mark International Women's Day by the leading organization representing works, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), said gender pay gaps in the workplace effectively mean women in Britain work an average 67 days a year for free.

Government Business Minister Andrew Griffiths urged businesses to renew their commitment to tackling gender inequality.

New data reveals that a record 309 women serve in on FTSE 100 boards, and a quarter of FTSE 350 board positions are now filled by women

In FTSE 350 companies, the number of women chairs has risen from 17 to 20 while the number of women on boards has increased to 25.2 percent.

Business Minister Andrew Griffiths said: "I am delighted to see that a record number of our largest companies' board positions are now filled by women. There has been a lot of progress in recent years with high-flying women breaking down barriers but there is still a lot more to do to ensure that women are not held back in the workplace."

Under new laws in Britain over 1,400 companies have reported their gender pay gaps revealing an overall pay gap of 18.4 percent, said DBEIS.

All companies with more than 250 employees must report their gender pay gaps by April 4 or March 30 for the public sector.

Meanwhile an analysis published Thursday to mark International Women's Day by the TUC has revealed that the average woman has to wait more than two months of the calendar year before she starts to get paid, compared to the average man. It means women effectively work for free for 67 days of the year compared to men because of the gender pay gap.

"In some industries, where the gender pay gap is even bigger, women work for free for even longer and have to wait until April or even May for their Women's Pay Day," said the TUC.

The TUC, now headed by its first ever female general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "Britain still has one of the worst gender pay gaps in Europe. Women effectively work for free for two months a year.

"Companies publishing information on their gender pay gaps is a small step in the right direction but it's nowhere near enough. Women in the UK will only start to get paid properly when we have better-paid part-time and flexible jobs."
OTTAWA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Canada Thursday issued a travel advisory for Canadians who are going to Mexico, due to security threat in the Mexican resort city of Playa del Carmen.

According to the advisory, Canadians are advised to exercise a high degree of caution when visiting all parts of Mexico "due to high levels of criminal activity, as well as demonstrations, protests and occasional illegal roadblocks."

The Canadian government advises against non-essential travel to several northern and western states in the country.

"Avoid tourist ferries travelling in the region until further notice, be vigilant and monitor local media (including social media)," the advisory said.

The advisory said the U.S. Embassy in Mexico has already advised Americans that its consulate in Playa del Carmen has been closed until further notice. All U.S. government employees are now prohibited from travelling to Playa del Carmen until further notice.

Three Canadians were among 26 people injured when an explosion ripped through a tourist ferry in Playa del Carmen as it unloaded passengers on Feb. 21. Less than two weeks later, undetonated explosives were found on a second ferry on the same route between Playa del Carmen and the island of Cozumel.

Mexico issued a statement late Wednesday, saying that Playa del Carmen remains safe.

All tourism and economic activities in Playa del Carmen continue in a normal manner and hotel occupancy at the resort city was at 80 percent, said the statement.
VIENNA, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Austrian authorities have arrested the man who stabbed four people on Wednesday evening and left one in critical condition, local media reported on Thursday.

The 23-year-old Afghan national who does not have right of residency in Austria had stabbed three members of a family -- father, mother and daughter, as they had just left a restaurant in downtown Vienna.

The suspect fled, and later stabbed a 20-year-old person.

After a mass search of the area, the suspect was arrested later in the evening.

The man, reportedly already known to police, confessed to having committed the stabbings on Thursday, claiming he had done so in an aggressive state due to being angry over his life circumstances.

The attack against the family had been random, though he appears to have known the 20-year-old person, who he alleges had sold him drugs and blamed him for having developed an addiction in the past.

The 67-year-old father of the family remains in a critical condition in an induced coma in hospital, having received a stab wound to a kidney. The other three are no longer in critical state following hospital treatment.

Austrian leaders have denounced the attack. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said such incidents are "unacceptable and may not under any circumstances be tolerated," and expressed well wishes to the affected.
LONDON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has announced the launch of three new Chinese productions using the RSC's translations with Chinese theaters.

In an event to mark the first two years of its Chinese cultural exchange programme at London's Hackney Empire Theaters, Gregory Doran, RSC Artistic Director, said on Wednesday night following the successful first Chinese productions of Henry V and King Lear, three new productions using the RSC's translations will play in China in 2018: including The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Hamlet.

The three new productions are part of a program to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio in 2023. RSC started its Shakespeare Folio Project -- translating Shakespeare's work into Chinese in 2013 by creating actor and audience friendly translations, working with Chinese writers and translators embedded into the RSC's rehearsal process.

During the event, Doran also introduced renowned Chinese theatre artists, Li Liuyi, Pu Cunxin, Hu Jun, and Lu Fang, who perform their own production of Hamlet later this year, to company members from the RSC's current Hamlet.

Doran said it is a great honour to welcome Li Liuyi and his wonderful company to Britain and to share experiences of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays across the two cultures.

"We learn more about one another by telling and sharing our stories and, as we progress our two translation projects, we are discovering for ourselves the depth and artistic quality of China's own classical drama. It is great that Chinese companies have taken the cultural exchange programme to their hearts and we look forward to the three new Chinese Shakespeare productions taking place this year, using our new actor and audience friendly translations," he said.

Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming spoke highly of the program during the event, saying it is helping to "export" Shakespeare's plays to China for stage performance and "import" the Chinese classics created by Shakespeare's contemporaries to the British stages.

"The RSC Chinese Cultural Exchange Programme was launched in 2013, and is expected to be completed in 2023, in time to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's first folio. In China we have a saying: ten years are needed to forge the very best sword. This ten-year programme will surely have its place in the history of China-UK cultural exchanges," he said.

Li Liuyi, who staged King Lear at China's National Centre for the Performing Arts last year said that Shakespeare's translation program aims to make Chinese audiences learn more about Shakespeare and is a model of cultural cooperation and exchange between China and Britain.

Pu Cunxin, a famous performer who played Hamlet and King Lear in China before, has a deep understanding of Shakespeare's plays. He told Xinhua that he believed that China should have its own interpretation of Shakespeare on the basis of the Shakespeare's original text, which is given by RSC's program.

"We will have a lot of new feelings. To combine our own cultural interpretation and the living conditions of Chinese creators, this must be Chinese. However, we can not interpret it without Shakespeare's original intention, " Pu said.

Besides the Shakespeare Folio Project, RSC also announced that it will continue its Chinese Classics Translation Project to explore the enormous range of classical Chinese plays written or performed during the 16th and 17th centuries, with more than 45 titles nominated by academics, theatre makers, playwrights and translators across the world.

Working with translators and academics, the project will create up to ten new translations in English, as well as a collection of detailed plot summaries, in readiness for the creation of a digital archive in 2023. This will contribute to the increasing awareness within English-speaking theatre-makers and audiences of the wealth of stories told in China over the centuries, and the RSC hopes to encourage other companies to explore these remarkable texts.

In March 2018, the RSC will host a Chinese Classics Translation Workshop. Playwrights and classical Chinese translators who are creating new translations of Chinese classical dramas will travel from China, America and Europe to talk about and test the creative choices, possibilities and challenges of their work.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 05:04:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan

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UNITED NATIONS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- President of the UN General Assembly Miroslav Lajcak said Thursday that the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved if women's rights are denied.

"We cannot achieve the sustainable development goals, or peace, if half of our global population is denied both rights and opportunities," Lajcak told a large audience at a UN event marking the International Women's Day.

"This means that every effort, towards every sustainable development goal, must ensure women's participation and equality," he said.

The president noted the United Nations is observing the day at a time in which "inequalities are under serious threat," "power no longer guarantees impunity" and "silence is not as easily enforced."

While noting that "we are seeing more equality" thanks to efforts in this regard, he said "what we are doing is, still, not enough."

"One in three women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual abuse in their lifetime. More than 700 million women, living today, were married before their 18th birthday," he said.

"And, our world is still not led by as many women as men. Only 22 countries have women as their heads of state or government. And, women represent only 23 percent of all parliamentarians, worldwide," he added.

The president said that even at the United Nations, "when it came to appointing women, we had a small pool to draw from. Because, only 20 percent of the ambassadors sent to represent their countries at the UN are women."

"And we need to mainstream gender throughout everything else we do, from peacekeeping, to the promotion of human rights," he noted.

"There are too many women, particularly young women, and women in rural areas, who have innovative ideas and solutions. But they have not been given the platform to turn them into action," said the president.

Lajcak urged more action to be taken to reverse the trend. "We can no longer call for gender equality, without following our calls with action. We can no longer speak out for women's rights, without speaking out, even louder, when they are violated."

"I want to join other voices by saying: Time Is Now," the president concluded.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-09 06:14:26|Editor: Jiaxin

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An artist from China's Zhejiang province performs traditional Chinese puppet at Petra tourist center in Petra, Jordan, on March 8, 2018. The Department of Culture of China's eastern province of Zhejiang held on Thursday a culture festival in Jordan's world-famous heritage site Petra.(Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei)

AMMAN, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The Department of Culture of China's eastern province of Zhejiang held on Thursday a culture festival as well as celebration for Chinese New Year in Jordan's world-famous heritage site Petra.

The department held the event in cooperation with China's Ministry of Culture, the Chinese embassy in Jordan and the Petra Tourism Development Authority.

At the event, artists from Zhejiang performed Chinese flute, folk songs, moulding clay figures as well as Chinese puppet dancing.

A creative exhibition of traditional craft, with the theme of silk, porcelain and tea, was also displayed at the event, revealing a combination of Chinese culture and contemporary industrial designs.

Jin Xingsheng, Director of the Department of Culture of Zhejiang Province, introduced several cultural heritages and archaeological sites in Zhejiang.

He also reviewed the history of the province and key landmarks in the area, and highlighted the dynamic business activities in the province.

The cultural festival, first of its kind in Jordan, seeks to convey joy to the Jordanians as well as tourists from all over the world, said Jin.

Falah Abdullah al-Omoush, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Tourism Development Authority, voiced appreciation to China for holding such activities in Petra.

"Such kind of cultural activities will greatly help build bridges between Jordan and China and will boost tourism exchange between the two sides," the Jordanian official said.

"We are keen on attracting more Chinese tourists to Jordan and Petra in particular," he added.

Chinese Ambassador to Jordan Pan Weifang said China was keen on boosting ties with Jordan in various areas, and that there is a great potential for increased cooperation in tourism between the two countries.

Zhejiang Culture Festival is a brand project aimed at boosting culture exchange between China and other countries. It has been held in nations including the United States, Britain, France and Australia.
Background on Robert Perales

Robert Perales began with the Granger Police Department in 1996 as a police officer and was appointed chief in 2000. He retired from the department in August 2017 in the wake of his May 2017 conviction in Yakima County District Court for false swearing.

In a separation agreement with the city, Perales received $58,112 in accumulated sick, vacation and compensation pay.

This information has been updated to correct the year Perales was convicted and retired.
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

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Washington, DC - By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to maximize the impact of Federal Government resources to keep our communities safe, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose. The Federal Government must reduce crime, enhance public safety, and increase opportunity, thereby improving the lives of all Americans. In 2016, the violent crime rate in the United States increased by 3.4 percent, the largest single-year increase since 1991. Additionally, in 2016, there were more than 17,000 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in the United States, a more than 20 percent increase in just 2 years. The Department of Justice, alongside State, local, and tribal law enforcement, has focused its efforts on the most violent criminals. Preliminary statistics indicate that, in the last year, the increase in the murder rate slowed and the violent crime rate decreased.

To further improve public safety, we should aim not only to prevent crime in the first place, but also to provide those who have engaged in criminal activity with greater opportunities to lead productive lives. The Federal Government can assist in breaking this cycle of crime through a comprehensive strategy that addresses a range of issues, including mental health, vocational training, job creation, after-school programming, substance abuse, and mentoring. Incarceration is necessary to improve public safety, but its effectiveness can be enhanced through evidence-based rehabilitation programs. These efforts will lower recidivism rates, ease incarcerated individuals reentry into the community, reduce future incarceration costs, and promote positive social and economic outcomes.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to prioritize efforts to prevent youths and adults from entering or reentering the criminal justice system. While investigating crimes and prosecuting perpetrators must remain the top priority of law enforcement, crime reduction policy should also include efforts to prevent crime in the first place and to lower recidivism rates. These efforts should address a range of social and economic factors, including poverty, lack of education and employment opportunities, family dissolution, drug use and addiction, mental illness, and behavioral health conditions. The Federal Government must harness and wisely direct its considerable resources and broad expertise to identify and help implement improved crime prevention strategies, including evidence-based practices that reduce criminal activity among youths and adults. Through effective coordination among executive departments and agencies (agencies), the Federal Government can have a constructive role in preventing crime and in ensuring that the correctional facilities in the United States prepare inmates to successfully reenter communities as productive, law-abiding members of society.

Sec. 3. Establishment of the Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry. (a) There is hereby established the Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry (Council), co-chaired by the Attorney General, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and the Senior Advisor to the President in charge of the White House Office of American Innovation, or their respective designees. In addition to the Co-Chairs, the Council shall include the heads of the following entities, or their designees.

(i) The Department of the Treasury;

(ii) The Department of the Interior;

(iii) The Department of Agriculture;

(iv) The Department of Commerce;

(v) The Department of Labor;

(vi) The Department of Health and Human Services;

(vii) The Department of Housing and Urban Development;

(viii) The Department of Education;

(ix) The Department of Veterans Affairs;

(x) The Office of Management and Budget; and

(xi) The Office of National Drug Control Policy.

(b) As appropriate, and consistent with applicable law, the Co-Chairs may invite representatives of other agencies and Federal entities to participate in the activities of the Council.

(c) As appropriate, the Co-Chairs may invite representatives of the judicial branch to attend and participate in meetings of the Council.

(d) The Council shall engage with Federal, State, local, and tribal officials, including correctional officials, to carry out its objectives. The Council shall also engage with key stakeholders, such as law enforcement, faith-based and community groups, businesses, associations, volunteers, and other stakeholders that play a role in preventing youths and adults from entering or reentering the criminal justice system.

(e) The Attorney General, in consultation with the CoChairs, shall designate an Executive Director, who shall be a full-time officer or employee of the Department of Justice, to coordinate the day-to-day functions of the Council.

(f) The Co-Chairs shall convene a meeting of the Council once per quarter.

(g) The Department of Justice shall provide such funding and administrative support for the Council, to the extent permitted by law and within existing appropriations, as may be necessary for the performance of its functions.

(h) To the extent permitted by law, including the Economy Act (31 U.S.C. 1535), and within existing appropriations, other agencies may detail staff to the Council, or otherwise provide administrative support, in order to advance the Councils functions.

(i) The heads of agencies shall provide, as appropriate and to the extent permitted by law, such assistance and information as the Council may request to implement this order.

Sec. 4. Recommendations and Report. (a) The Council shall develop recommendations for evidence-based programmatic and other reforms, with consideration and acknowledgment of potential resource limitations, to:

(i) help prevent, through programs that reduce unlawful behavior (such as mental and behavioral health services), youths and adults from engaging in criminal activity.

(ii) improve collaboration between Federal, State, local, and tribal governments through dissemination of evidence-based best practices to reduce the rate of recidivism. In identifying these practices, the Council shall consider factors such as:

(A) inmates access to education, educational testing, pre-apprenticeships, apprenticeships, career and technical education training, and work programs;

(B) inmates access to mentors and mentorship services during incarceration and as they transition back into the community;

(C) inmates access to mental and behavioral health services;

(D) treatment of substance abuse and addiction for inmates.

(E) documented trauma history assessments, victim services, violent crime prevention, community-based trauma-informed programs, and domestic violence and sexual violence support services;

(F) family support for inmates;

(G) available partnerships with law enforcement, faith-based and other community organizations, businesses, associations, and other stakeholders, especially through indirect funding mechanisms; and

(H) incentives for the private sector, small businesses, and other nongovernmental entities to create job opportunities for individuals, before and after they enter the criminal justice system, using existing tax credit programs;

(iii) analyze effective ways to overcome barriers or disincentives to participation in programs related to education, housing, job placement and licensing, and other efforts to re-integrate offenders into society;

(iv) enhance coordination and reduce duplication of crime-prevention efforts across the Federal Government in order to maximize effectiveness and reduce costs to the taxpayer; and

(v) facilitate research in the areas described in this subsection, including improved access to data for research and evaluation purposes.

(b) The Council shall develop and present to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy:

(i) an initial report, submitted within 90 days of the date of this order, outlining a timeline and steps that will be taken to fulfill the requirements of this order; and

(ii) a full report detailing the Councils recommendations, submitted within 1 year of the date of this order, and status updates on their implementation for each year this order is in effect. The Council shall review and update its recommendations periodically, as appropriate, and shall, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, present to the President any updated findings.

Sec. 5. Revocation. The Presidential Memorandum of April 29, 2016 (Promoting Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals), is hereby revoked.

Sec. 6. Termination. This order (with the exceptions of sections 5 and 7) and the Council it establishes shall terminate 3 years after the date of this order

Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP
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Atlanta, Georgia - Federal and state agents arrested 23 leaders, members and associates of the Ghostface Gangsters prison gang pursuant to a 21-count indictment returned on February 8 and unsealed today. The crimes alleged in the indictment include conspiracy to commit racketeering, conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, carjacking, four counts of attempted murder, kidnapping, maiming, assault, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, and firearms offenses.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions; U.S. Attorney Byung J. BJay Pak for the Northern District of Georgia; Assistant Special Agent in Charge John Schmidt of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); Chief Michael J. Register of the Cobb County Police Department and Commissioner Gregory C. Dozier of the Georgia Department of Corrections made the announcement.

An attack on our law enforcement officers is an attack on all of us and can never be tolerated, said Attorney General Sessions. Law enforcement officers are the thin blue line standing between law abiding people and the violent gangs and criminals who peddle poison to our young people, terrorize our communities, and attempt to impose a false sovereignty over our neighborhoods. President Trump has ordered us to improve the safety of our law enforcement officers, and at the Department of Justice, we are carrying out that order. I want to thank everyone who helped make todays arrests possible, including ATF and the FBI, as well as more than a dozen state and local law enforcement agencies across Georgia and Alabama. Todays arrests will help us achieve justice for the officers who have sacrificed so much and to follow President Trumps order to back the men and women in blue.

The Ghostface Gangsters gang is very violent and their members will not hesitate to shoot at anyone, said U.S. Attorney Pak. Members have allegedly committed drug trafficking crimes inside and outside of prisons to make money, while committing violent crimes against each other, innocent citizens, and police officers. We are partnering with local and state law enforcement agencies, including the Georgia Department of Corrections, to stop this criminal enterprise. If convicted, the defendants will be removed to federal facilities all across the United States.

As a result of this operation, ATF has eliminated a dangerous and pervasive threat to the local community, said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Schmidt. The Ghostface Gangsters gang flourished through recruitment, intimidation and perpetration of heinous crimes, and it is critical that law enforcement agencies take aggressive actions against these criminals. This investigation is an example of ATF remaining on the frontline of preventing violent crime through excellent cooperation with our law enforcement partners.

The recent federal indictments of this dangerous gang demonstrates how effective and important interagency collaboration is between federal, state, and local partners, and also demonstrates the commitment of law enforcement entities at every level to keep the communities across this nation as safe as possible, said Chief Register.

As part of our commitment to ridding our prisons of criminal activity, we maintain a robust plan for identifying and managing those participating in gang activity, said Corrections Commissioner Dozier. The use of contraband cell phones by these individuals as a tool to carry out their crimes, is a fight we continue to battle. We appreciate the support and assistance of our law enforcement partners on every level, in our efforts to see that justice is being served on those who pose a threat to the safety of the public and the operations of our facilities.

According to the indictment, the Ghostface Gangsters is a whites-only prison gang formed in the year 2000 in the Cobb County, Georgia jail system. The gang has since expanded outside the prison system, and its membership is now estimated to include thousands of members throughout Georgia. The gang is highly organized into different positions of leadership, including, for example, the founding Pillars of the gang, those having a seat at the table, First Lady and numerous state-wide positions of governance. Members follow written gang literature, use violence to enforce gang rules, and facilitated the gangs criminal activities from within prisons using contraband cell phones.

Nine Ghostface Gangsters are charged with conspiracy to commit racketeering in furtherance of the gangs criminal enterprise, including two of the gangs founding Pillars. According to the indictment, these gang members murdered two correctional officers and a Polk County detective and also committed multiple attempted murders, kidnapping, firearm crimes, drug trafficking, assaults, witness tampering, wire fraud and other crimes in furtherance of the gangs activities. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act conspiracy charge names the following defendants:

Jeffrey Alan Bourassa, aka J.B., Babyface and Kid, 35, of Cobb County, Georgia. Bourassa is alleged to be a founding Pillar of the Ghostface Gangsters. He is also charged with aiding and abetting another person by kidnapping and maiming a fellow Ghostface Gangsters member;

David Gene Powell, aka Davo, 40, of Cobb County, Georgia. Powell is alleged to be a founding Pillar of the Ghostface Gangsters. He is also charged with aiding and abetting another person by kidnapping and assaulting a fellow Ghostface Gangsters member;

Victor Manuel Dejesus, aka VG Vic, 36, of Gwinnett County, Georgia. Dejesus is also charged with carjacking, attempted murder of a Cobb County deputy sheriff, and using a firearm during a crime of violence;

Richard Brian Sosebee, aka Dirty, 42, of Hall County, Georgia. Sosebee is also charged with attempted murder and other firearms charges;

Jonathan Stubbs, 29, of Hamilton County, Tennessee. Stubbs is also charged with aiding and abetting another by kidnapping and maiming a fellow Ghostface Gangsters member;

Cody Ryan Todd, 28, of Carroll County, Georgia. Todd is also charged with aiding and abetting another person by kidnapping and assaulting a fellow Ghostface Gangsters member;

Kevin Scott Sosebee, aka Sosa, 27, of Cobb County, Georgia, is also charged with the attempted murder of a Cobb County Police Officer;

Toby James Ogletree, 42, of Spalding County, Georgia; and

Cheri Lea Rau, 59, of Cobb County, Georgia.

Thirteen Ghostface Gangsters members and associatesincluding three founding Pillars and four female gang leaders who held the position of First Ladyare charged in a drug conspiracy involving distribution and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana and illegal pills. The following defendants are named in the drug conspiracy:

Joseph M. Propps Jr., aka P, 39, of Cobb County, Georgia;

Marc Avon Lefevre, aka Ghost, 32, of Cobb County, Georgia;

Christopher Lasher, aka Retta, 35, of Marietta, Georgia;

Genevieve Waits, 35, of Cleveland, Ohio;

Christopher Steven Jones, aka Red, 34, of Cherokee County, Georgia;

Samantha Miller, 26, of Cobb County, Georgia;

Hailey Danielle Sizemore, 27, of Douglas County, Georgia;

Kayli Brewer, 26, of Cobb County, Georgia;

Brittany Nicole Jones, 30, of Rockdale County, Georgia;

Powell;

Bourassa;

Rau; and

Ogletree.

Other gang members are charged with separate counts of violent crimes in aid of racketeering, including carjacking; four attempted murders, including the attempted murders of a Deputy Sheriff and a Cobb County police officer; kidnapping; assault with serious bodily injury; and maiming. Specifically, the indictment alleges:

On July 5, 2016, Dejesus violently carjacked a citizen using a firearm and threatened to kill her. He took the car, then picked up defendant Christopher Marlow, aka Loko, 28, of Cobb County, Georgia, and together they fled from a Cobb County Deputy Sheriff. Dejesus shot at the deputy from inside the car and later threw the gun out the window;

On Oct. 29, 2016, Richard Brian Sosebee shot a victim in the eye during a drug deal, causing the victim serious bodily injury;

On Dec. 2, 2016, Todd, upon receiving an order from Powell, joined other Ghostface Gangster members to kidnap one of their own members for violating gang rules. Todd and the other members of the Ghostface Gangsters beat the victim badly and tried to pull out his teeth with pliers;

In December 2016, Stubbs and Christopher Jarman Davis, 27, of Walker County, Georgia, under the orders of Bourassa, allegedly kidnapped another Ghostface Gangsters member, held the victim at gunpoint and cut off his tattoo with a knife, causing serious bodily harm;

On March 8, 2017, William J. Goodman, aka JBeenlivingood and JGood, 24, of Paulding County, Georgia, stabbed another Ghostface Gangsters member in the neck and back for violating gang rules, causing serious bodily injury;

In December 2017, Kevin Scott Sosebee shot at a Cobb County police officer who pulled over a car in which Sosebee was a passenger.

In addition, Kelly Ray Shiflett, 30, of Floyd County, Georgia, is charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and Randall Arthur Lee Chumley, 36, of Pickens County, Georgia, is charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and other drug and firearm charges.

Twenty-two indicted gang members are already in custody on state or local charges and will be arraigned in federal court in the next few days before U.S. Magistrate Judge Walter E. Johnson.

An indictment merely contains allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.

This case is being investigated by the ATF; the Cobb County Police Department with the assistance of the FBI; the Georgia Department of Corrections; and the following federal, state and local agencies: Marietta Cobb Smyrna/Cobb Anti-Gang Enforcement (CAGE), Cobb County Sheriffs Office, Marietta Police Department, Cobb District Attorneys Office, Criminal Investigations Division and Criminal Intelligence Unit of the Georgia Department of Corrections, Cherokee County Sheriffs Office, Ball Ground Police Department, Cherokee County District Attorneys Office/Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit, Douglas County Sheriffs Office, Douglasville Police Department, Douglas County District Attorneys Office, Floyd County Sheriffs Office, Floyd County Police Department, Rome/Floyd Metro Task Force, Floyd County District Attorneys Office, Carrollton Police Department, Carroll County District Attorneys Office/Coweta Judicial Circuit, Gainesville Police Department, Hall County District Attorneys Office, Pickens County Sheriffs Office, Pickens County District Attorneys Office/Appalachian Judicial Circuit, Jefferson County, Alabama Sheriffs Office, Metro Area Crime Center, Jefferson County, Alabama District Attorneys Office/Alabama Tenth Judicial Circuit, Georgia Department of Community Supervision, Walton County Sheriffs Office, Newton County Sheriffs Office, Covington Police Department, Walton/Newton County District Attorneys Office/Alcovy Judicial Circuit, Drug Enforcement Administration  Chattanooga Field Office, Murray County Sheriffs Office and the Catoosa County Sheriffs Office.

This case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney John Hanley of the Justice Departments Criminal Divisions Organized Crime and Gang Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Katherine M. Hoffer and Jolee Porter.
Latest News

Washington, DC - In honor of International Womens Day 2018, today, the Office of the First Lady announces Mrs. Melania Trumps participation in the 2018 International Women of Courage (IWOC) Celebration scheduled for Wednesday, March 21. Mrs. Trump will give remarks and present the International Women of Courage Award to an extraordinary group of women who have shown tremendous courage and leadership in advocating for womens rights around the world.

The IWOC Award began in 2007 to commemorate International Womens Day. It is the State Departments only all-female award. This year, the award will honor over 120 women of courage from more than 65 countries, who have overcome enormous challenges while continuing the advancement and support of women.

The fearlessness with which these women fight for equality and freedom in places far from the safety of their own homes, is remarkable, said First Lady Melania Trump. Their courage only furthers my belief in the powerful impact women can make through solidarity and support of one another. Our strength is something to be celebrated and I consider it a great privilege to have the opportunity to stand with these women and present them with awards they so justly deserve.
Muraturile mai asteapta! Preturile din piata, piperate

Este perioada din an in care gospodinele trebuie sa pregateasca de zor preparatele cu care vor umple camara pentru iarna. Insa, preturile din piata sunt cam piperate pentru cumparatori. De cealalta parte, vanzatorii spun ca muncesc prea mult si vand pe bani putini. In Piata Centrala [citeste mai departe]
In March 1968 Seweryn Blumsztajn was 22 years old. He was studding at the time a Political Economy at the University of Warsaw. He was one of the so-called 'commandos' - an anti regime student group, to which also belonged Adam Michnik, Barbara Torunczyk and Jan Litynski On the 8th of March, the University of Warsaw students organised a rally to defend Adam Michnik and Henryk Szlajfer, who were expelled from the University. - Young people generally lack imagination. We did not ask ourselves simplest questions. And what would happen next? Would someone follow us? What would they do to us? - he said. Subconsciously, we attempted to transform the university into a kind of an asylum of freedom. Did we really believe that Poland can become such a place? Supposedly not. But we believed that certain issues can be fought for. The imperative of the day was that it is necessary to keep trying.
PYONGYANG, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK)'s access to nuclear is a just option, which aims at defending its country from the U.S. nuclear threats, said a commentary article from the the official newspaper Rondong Sinmun on Wednesday.

The article said the United States has posed nuclear threats to the DPRK for several decades, adopting it as a policy to mount nuclear attack on the Asian country.

"There was no other option for the DPRK in the phase of acute confrontation in which it had to protect its system and destiny of the nation in one-on-one showdown with the world's biggest nuclear possessor, the United States," said the article.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula reached a precarious level in 2017, driven up by the sixth nuclear test and multiple missile tests by the DPRK and the relentless Washington-Seoul war games.

Military tensions, amplified by blustery threats from both the United States and the DPRK to conduct nuclear attacks against each other, rattled the nerves of the whole world.

Instead of releasing more bellicose statements and moves of brinkmanship, Washington and Pyongyang are better advised to engage in constructive talks and suspend provocations.
Coun Perez reiterates warning to barangay leaders involved in drugs

07 Aug 2017 Hits:37 Comments(0)

Liga ng mga Barangay President, Councilor Jerry Perez yesterday reiterated his warning to all barangay officials from using or selling drugs. Perez said he is closely monitoring the activities of all the barangay officials and vowed sanctions against erring leaders. Aqui gane na mio barangay ya quita ya iyo na puesto cunel dos barangay leaders quien mas temprano ya sale positivo na...
At least three persons were burnt to death while two others got injured as a car they were travelling in caught fire. The incident occurred near Bhadaj Circle on Ring Road in Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital.

According to local reports, the Volkswagen car met with an accident on the ring road with another car, following which a fire broke out trapping those inside the vehicle. While three of the five travellers were burnt to death, two managed to get out of the car but suffered serious injuries.

The deceased have reportedly been identified as Raraul Bard, Royal Patwah and Dhairy Patel.

More details are awaited.
Washington: Chelsea Clinton, the only daughter of former US President Bill Clinton and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, deemed the criticisms that were aimed at Ivanka Trump by the media as 'fair game'.

According to Fox News, the former first daughter appeared on Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" and told the host she hadn't "spoken to [Ivanka] in a long time."

"I think anyone who works for the president, should expect to be scrutinized for whatever decisions not only he or she is making, but whatever decisions the White House is making on any given day," said Clinton.

This comes after Ivanka was questioned by Chelsea's former employers NBC news about the sexual misconduct allegations levelled against her father, to which she responded by saying, "I think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he's affirmatively stated that there's no truth to it. I don't think that's a question you would ask many other daughters."

Ivanka, a senior adviser to the President, had earlier received a lot of flak by the media when she took her father's seat beside UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Germany in July 2017.

President Trump then took to Twitter to defend his decision of letting his daughter take his place, calling it a 'standard' move.

"When I left Conference Room for short meetings with Japan and other countries, I asked Ivanka to hold seat. Very standard. Angela M agrees!" he tweeted.

He also hit back at the media, questioning the double standard of the media between the two first daughters.

"If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!" read another tweet.
Amaravati: BJP ministers Kamineni Srinivas Rao and P Manikyala Rao tendered their resignations to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday.

Medical and Health Minister Srinivas Rao and Endowments Minister Manikyala Rao met the Chief Minister in his chamber in the Assembly and handed the letters of resignation to him.

They thanked Naidu for the opportunity and the Chief Minister also appreciated their efficient working.

Later, Srinivas Rao said: "I had the privilege of working with him for more than three-and-a-half years. I recently asked him about his opinion on my work. He gave me the certificate that I have no enemies," he said.

Manikyala Rao said he learned to operate a computer because of Naidu's stress on the use of technology in the administration.

"Earlier, I knew only making and receiving calls. I was never used to texting. Now, I operate a computer because of Naidu's thrust on the use of technology...," he said.

The resignation came ahead of the presentation of the budget for 2018-19 in the Assembly by Finance Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu, a party official said.

Both BJP ministers had stayed away from the cabinet meeting here that was convened to formally approve the budget.

Today's development comes after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Wednesday announced its decision to pull out of the Narendra Modi government in protest against refusal of the Centre to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, saying the Centre has done injustice to the state.

Naidu announced to the media that two TDP ministers - P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology) - will tender their resignations later today.

Addressing a press briefing, Naidu alleged that the Centre has done a huge injustice to the state.

The TDP is the second-largest party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In the Lok Sabha, the TDP has 16 members and six in the Rajya Sabha.

It is the first pre-poll partner of the BJP to pull out of the Modi government after being part of it for nearly four years.

His announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi told the media that granting of special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

Jaitley did not make any new commitment except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now.

Naidu said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the PM for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come online. My OSD informed the PM's OSD."
NEW DELHI: The Congress on Thursday claimed that both the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party are not serious in withdrawing support over the tussle for special status for Andhra Pradesh. "What crisis? This is like match-fixing. They are still pretending to withdraw from the alliance. What would happen if two ministers resign? If you are serious do it seriously," Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury said.

The Congress had earlier attempted to reach out to the TDP and extended support to its demand for special category status for Andhra Pradesh. Renuka Chaudhary had then said: "The so-called ally (BJP) has gone back on their promise. This is exactly we expected. These people will never stand by their allies. It is a good thing that they (TDP) have now realised the real nature of them (BJP)."

BJP's estranged ally Shiv Sena, on the other hand, said that like N Chandrababu-led Naidu TDP, other parties will do the same as well. ''Shiv Sena had expected this. Other parties have walked out of NDA too. Allies no longer have good relations with BJP. Gradually their grudges will spill out and eventually they'll walk out of the alliance,'' senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said.

The reactions are coming hours after the TDP announced its decision to pull out of the Centre over its refusal to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh. TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had announced on Wednesday that two TDP ministers - P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology) - will tender their resignations on Thursday.

Soon after, two BJP announced that two of its legislators from Andhra Pradesh - Kamineni Srinivas and Paidikondala Manikyala Rao - will resign from the state cabinet on Thursday.

BJP leader Krishna Sagar Rao called Naidu's announcement a 'political opportunism'. "BJP believes what has happened is a classic case of political opportunism and a case of compulsive politics," he said adding that Naidu's claiming that Centre is not standing up to support Andhra Pradesh is "a blatant lie".
Patna: Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi has said that better and faster roads are resulting in fatal accidents across the state.

The roads in Bihar are better than before and people were driving at higher speeds, Sushil Kumar Modi had said, according to a Hindustan Times report.

The Bihar Deputy Chief Minister made this remark in Purnia, nearly 360-km northeast of state capital Patna.

Modi apparently said that good and faster roads in the state are to be blamed for rising road accidents.

Modi said this while speaking to reporters after visiting the house of a woman, in Narpatganj in neighbouring Araria district, who was among five people killed in a fatal accident on Monday.

Stating reason for the accident, Modi said that the bus driver failed to check the speed and the vehicle hit the JCB machine on national highway 57 in Araria, resulting in the death of five people.

Such accidents are increasing as the roads of Bihar have become much better. But the government is very much concerned and it will soon come up with safety rules to rein in speed and discipline drivers, he assured.

He also informed that the Bihar government has allocated Rs 17,000 crore in the state budget to improve the road infrastructure.

The state government plans to open six mega bridges soon, he added.

At least nine students of a government school in Muzaffarpur were killed when a speeding SUV ran them over while they were crossing NH-77 on February 25.

Earlier, 10 people were killed and 35 others injured on the outskirts of Patna when a private bus carrying a marriage party overturned on the Patna-Gaya state highway on February 19.
New Delhi: After the successful first two edition of dance drama 'ABCD', well-known choreographer and filmmaker Remo DSouza is all set to return with the third edition of the franchise. And this time, he is planning to go bigger with the project.

A Pinkvilla report has claimed that the 'ABCD 3' will star A-lister stars such as Salman Khan, Varun Dhawan, Katrina Kaif and Jacqueline Fernandez.

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh had shared on his Twitter handle that a big announcement regarding D'Souza's film will be unveiled on 19 March. Calling it the 'biggest dance film ever', Adarsh also revealed that D'Souza will be collaborating with Bhushan Kumar from T-Series on the project.

#BreakingNews: Bhushan Kumar and Remo D'souza to produce the biggest dance film ever... Directed by Remo, the film will release on 8 Nov 2019... Featuring A-list actors, the cast will be announced on 19 March 2018.  taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) March 3, 2018

.@TSeries #BhushanKumar & @remodsouza to produce the biggest dance film ever. Directed by Remo, the film will release on 8th Nov'19. Featuring top A list actors the cast will be announced on 19th Mar '18.  TSeries (@TSeries) March 3, 2018

Since Remo D'Souza is currently occupied with 'Race 3' till June, ABCD 3 will go to floors only next year. And before they begin shooting, the entire cast of the film will undergo multiple training sessions and workshops.

The report also claimed that Katrina will once again be seen in a Pakistani character in the movie after 'Ek Tha Tiger' and 'Tiger Zinda Hai' whereas Jacqueline will be seen playing a British girl.

If things go as planned, this would be the first time Varun and Katrina will team up for a project. And we just can't wait to see this fresh pair romancing on the big screen!

On the other hand, Jacqueline has worked previously with Varun in 'Judwaa 2' and with Salman in 'Kick'.

She is also working with Salman in the third instalment of the 'Race' franchise, produced by Salman Khan Films and Taurani under the banner of Tips Films. The movie also stars Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol and Saqib Saleem and will hit theatres during Eid this year.


New Delhi: Coca-Cola has announced plans to launch an alcoholic drink for the first time in the company`s 125-year history  with an alcopop-style product in Japan.

The move comes amid a difficult time for the soda industry. In 2016, soda consumption in the US fell to a 30-year low as people started turning to healthier alternatives.

In order to cater to the health conscious younger consumers, Coca-Cola has been diversifying from fizzy drinks, including buying water and tea brands.

At the beginning of 2018, Coca-Cola announced that it would sell smaller bottles at higher prices rather than tinker with its famous recipe in order to conform to the new sugar tax that comes into effect in April.

Here's all you need to know about Coca-Cola's first alcoholic drink
New Delhi: State-owned SBI, United Bank of India and long-term infrastructure lender IFCI are looking for buyers to sell as many as 110 accounts that have turned dud to recover dues over Rs 16,349 crore.

All the three have invited bids from eligible banks, financial institutions, asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to prune such non-performing assets from their respective balance sheets.

SBI plans to sell a total of 15 such NPA accounts to recover Rs 988.95 crore, including the country's largest sweetener manufacturer Simbhaoli Sugars that has an outstanding of Rs 158.57 crore to the bank.

SBI has asked the bidders to submit expression of interest by March 9, 2018 and further to complete the due diligence by March 22.

Delhi-based IFCI Ltd has expressed interest to sell a total of 23 NPA accounts for recovery of Rs 13,667.50 crore and while Kolkata-headquartered United Bank of India has put up for sale 72 bad assets with combined dues of Rs 1,692.78 crore.

"SBI invites expression of interest from banks/asset reconstruction companies/NBFCs/FIs for the proposed sale of 15 non-performing assets (NPAs) with principal outstanding of Rs 988.95 crore," reads the SBI bid document published today.

Among other NPA accounts for whom SBI is scouting for buyers include Aksha Gold Ornaments, KBJ Jewels Industry India and KBJ Hotel Varanasi with a combined outstanding of Rs 164.30 crore. Shri Jalaram Rice Industries owes Rs 127.05 crore, while MCL Global Steel has loan outstanding loan of Rs 100.18 crore which the bank has failed to recover.

Eight companies based in Gujarat availed loans in the range of Rs 5.90-63.39 crore from SBI that have become NPA on the bank's balance sheet.

Continental Float Glass with dues of Rs 5,730.51 crore, Synthetics & Chemicals Ltd Rs 2,004.34 crore, Sanghi Polyesters Rs 1,964.38 crore, Kumar's Mettallurgical Corpn Rs 1,339 crore, Electrex India Rs 670.15 crore are among the major NPA borrowers, whose account IFCI has put up for sale, showed the bid document.

Among others Bakeman's Industries has an outstanding of Rs 148.63 crore on IFCI, Lavasa Corporation Rs 183.82 crore, Malwa Cotton Spg Mills Co Ltd Rs 171.81 crore, IVRCL Indore Gujarat Tollways Rs 251.26 crore and IVRCL Chengapalli Leisures Rs 233.47 crore and Jindal India Powertech Ltd Rs 277.90 crore.

IFCI will open the bids on March 26 while the declaration of successful bidders will be announced subsequently.

United Bank of India (UBI) said it proposes to sell 72 non-performing accounts having an outstanding of about Rs 1,692.78 crore.

"The non-performing loans (NPLs) offered for sale will consist of sale of individual/multiple and /or consortium corporate loans and their related security interest, accrued interest, guarantee and fee and other associated rights and privileges," United Bank of India said and the bid will close on March 29.

Hapur (Uttar Pradesh) based Simbhaoli Sugars, also has become an NPA for another state owned lender Oriental Bank of Commerce with outstanding of Rs 97.85 crore in an alleged fraud case.

Oriental Bank of Commerce has already filed a case with CBI against the sugar manufacturer and the investigation is on into the matter.

Public sector banks are under stress to recover their bad loans and they sat on bad loans of Rs 7.34 lakh crore at the end of second quarter ended September of the current fiscal, a bulk of which came from corporate defaulters.
Mumbai: The world celebrates International Womens day on the eighth day of March every year to hail womanhood and everything associated the power of the feminine. But do you know men too have a day dedicate to celebrate manhood? Well, if werent aware of it, then heres an interesting information for you.

International Mens Day in celebrated on November 19 in over 70 countries.

According to The Irish Sun, the special day for men focuses on raising awareness for discrimination and male health and this year, the theme for International Mens Day is positive male role models.

The official website of International Mens Day says, Objectives of International Men's Day include a focus on men's and boy's health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models. It is an occasion for men to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care while highlighting the discrimination against them.

The site stresses on the fact that not just mothers, even fathers play a pivotal role in childrens upbringing.

It says, No matter how great a mother is, she cannot replace what a father provides to a child. Irrefutable research shows that mothers are typically nurturing, soft, gentle, comforting, protective and emotional. Fathers tend to encourage risk-taking and to be challenging, prodding, loud, playful and physical. Children need a balance of protection and reasonable risk-taking. If a positive male role model isn't around, there is a void in this child's life. Children without positive male role models are more likely to be involved in criminal activity, premarital sexual activity, do poorer in school and participate in unhealthy activities.

The website also highlights the sacrifices a man makes in his life that more often than not go unnoticed.

Men make sacrifices everyday in their place of work, in their role as husbands and fathers, for their families, for their friends, for their communities and for their nation. International Men's Day is an opportunity for people everywhere of goodwill to appreciate and celebrate the men in their lives and the contribution they make to society for the greater good of all, the site adds.
Mumbai: The eighth day of March is celebrated as International Women's Day. And on this occasion, womanhood is rejoiced and the power of the feminine is acknowledged across the globe.

In India, women are traditionally referred to as Lakshmi, the one who symbolises goodness, prosperity and infinite power.

Though womanhood doesnt need a specific day for celebrations, March 8 asserts the importance of the presence of the femininity that not just gives birth to new life but also nurtures it with love, care and warmth.

On this International Women's Day, send these special messages to the lovely women in your life - she could be your mother, sister, friend, aunt, daughter, grandma or wife.

Check out some messages here and pick the ones that best suit your sentiments:

I cant really fathom life without you. Thank you for making me the person I am today. Heres wishing the most beautiful lady in my life a very Happy Women's Day.

You made me realise my own worth by adding values to my dreams and aspirations. I couldnt have asked for more. I thank God for making you a part of my life. A very Happy Women's Day to the feminine force that relentlessly nourishes me with goodness.

If ever I have hurt you with harsh words or bad behaviour, please accept my sincere apologies. When I look back, I realise what a waste my life could have been, had you not been there to pick me up from my slumber. Heres wishing my lifeline a very Happy Women's Day.

Dear women, you certainly are manifestations of the divine in human form. The way you effortlessly make even the toughest of jobs look like childs play, highlight your determination and will to overcome all odds no matter how adverse they are. Happy Women's Day to all of you.

I managed to exist until you walked into my life. I cant thank you enough for making me LIVE to the fullest. Heres wishing the soul of my life a very Happy Women's Day.

She plays a variety of roles in peoples lives and leaves distinct indelible impressions. None can replace her or step into her shoes! As a mother, sister, daughter, friend, aunt, grandmother and wife, a woman excels in the wide spectrum of characters during her lifetime and each of them has a matchless appeal. Heres thanking all the wonderful women in my life very Happy Women's Day.

On this International Women's Day, I would like to thank God for blessing me immensely loveable ladies who have helped me shape my life beautifully. A very Happy Women's Day to the lovely women in my life.

I succeeded in my life because I had faith in your faith. You showed confidence in my abilities and it is you who has made by success possible. Though I can thank you until my last breath, heres taking a lovely opportunity to thank you on International Women's Day.

I draw inspiration from all to the women in my life who have relentlessly supported me in all my endeavours and helped me realise my dreams. Heres wishing all the adorable women a Happy Women's Day.

On this International Women's Day, I vow to take a strong stand against those who abuse, ridicule, belittle and insult women. Chivalry is not about flaunting a toned physique but a lot about how a man conducts himself when women are around.
LUCKNOW: An AIMIM leader has filed a complaint against Art of Living founder 'Sri Sri' Ravi Shankar over his comment that a delay in resolving the Ram Janmabhoomi - Babri Masjid logjam would make India like Syria.

The complaint was filed by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Tauhid Siddiqui 9n Lucknow, news agency ANI reported.

Ravi Shankar has drawn flak from across the political spectrum for saying in a television interview that delays in resolving the Ram Janmabhoomi conflict could lead to violence that would create a Syria-like situation in India.

"If court rules against a temple, there will be bloodshed. Do you think the Hindu majority will allow it? They will garner resentment towards the Muslim community," Ravi Shankar had said.

These comments had been met with intense criticism from AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi as well as from the Shiv Sena.

"This is nothing but a threat against us After his open threat of infighting people saying that if the issue is not decided in favour of X group, then India would become like Syria, I think the Supreme Court should not hear this matter till the next Lok Sabha elections because politics is being done over it," Owaisi said on Tuesday. He also alleged that Ravi Shankar had intentionally made the comment ahead of the Supreme Court hearing on the matter, which is set to happen on March 14.

The Shiv Sena too had come down hard on Ravi Shankar's remarks, and said he should stay away from the Ayodhya issue. "In the Ayodhya matter, gurumaharaj has issued a threat. He has tried to create panic by predicting the future. He has given license to chaos by attaching ISIS to the Ram Mandir issue. This must be investigated. Such statements do not suit a spiritual guide," read an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

Ravi Shankar had responded to the criticism, saying his remarks were not a threat but a 'word of caution'.

The AOL chief has trying to broker a settlement in the Ayodhya dispute, and has said the issue cannot be resolved by the Supreme Court. To this end, he has met with leaders from the Muslim community.
Amaravati: Two BJP legislators from Andhra Pradesh will quit from state cabinet on Thursday, hours after Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N Chandrababu Naidu asked his ministers to resign from the Union Cabinet over Centre's refusal to grant special status to the southern state.

BJP MLA Akula Satyanarayana announced on Wednesday that the two BJP ministers in the state cabinet - Kamineni Srinivas and Paidikondala Manikyala Rao - will resign on Thursday morning.

He said both Srinivas and Manikyala Rao would not attend the cabinet meeting to be held on Thursday morning.

Echoing a similar sentiment, BJP leader Krishna Sagar Rao called Naidu's announcement a 'political opportunism'.

"BJP believes what has happened tonight is a classic case of political opportunism and a case of compulsive politics," Rao said.

He also called Naidu's statement that the central government was not standing up to support Andhra Pradesh, "a blatant lie".

The fast-paced developments took place after the N Chandrababu Naidu-led party announced its decision to pull out of the Centre over its refusal to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh.

TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had announced on Wednesday that the two TDP ministers - P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology) - will tender their resignations on Thursday.

Addressing a press briefing, Naidu alleged that the Centre has done huge injustice to the state.

The TDP is the second-largest party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In the Lok Sabha, the TDP has 16 members and six in the Rajya Sabha.

It is the first pre-poll partner of the BJP to pull out of the Modi government after being part of it for nearly four years.

His announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi told the media that granting of special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

Jaitley did not make any new commitment except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now.

Naidu said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the PM for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come online. My OSD informed the PM's OSD."

The drastic decision of the TDP may not have come as a shock to the BJP, which had earlier conveyed to its two ministers in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to be ready to quit any moment.

Accordingly, Dr Kamineni Srinivas (Medical and Health) and P Manikyala Rao (Endowments) will quit the Naidu cabinet on Thursday, hours before the budget presentation by Finance Minister Y Ramakrishnudu in the state assembly.

Naidu earlier held consultations with the party's MPs, ministers and important leaders before taking the decision and making it public.

The MPs, including the two ministers, expressed a unanimous opinion that Jaitley's statement on the demands of Andhra Pradesh was ''disappointing and discouraging.''

All parties in the state, including the ruling TDP and the main opposition YSR Congress Party, have been agitating in Delhi demanding grant of special status.

Agitations are also going on across the state.

Naidu said at the time of making the alliance, the BJP had said it backed the demand for grant of special category status for Andhra Pradesh but now it was singing a different tune.

He said the promises on statehood and other financial demands of the state have not been honoured by the BJP and he could not make any compromise on the state's interest.

"TDP is not for power but for self-respect. We decided there is no point in continuing in the government," he added.

Naidu said Jaitley's comments suggest that Andhra Pradesh is asking for too much.

He also slammed the Finance Minister for saying "sentiments will not decide the quantum of funds".

He said he made 29 trips to Delhi, met the Prime Minister and other ministers and tried to do his best to do justice for the state. "I am not angry with anybody," he added.

(With Agency inputs)
Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel has hit out at Narendra Modi over Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu claiming that despite reaching out to the Prime Minister to discuss the issue of special status to Andhra Pradesh, he was not given any time.

Calling it unfortunate, the Congress leader said that the Prime Ministers move does not augur well for the interest of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

It is very unfortunate that the Prime Minister couldnt take the Andhra Pradesh Chief Ministers phone call on such an important matter. This doesnt augur well for the interest of the people of Andhra Pradesh, said Patel.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, the TDP chief had said that he did try to reach out to PM Modi to inform him of his partys decision to pull out ministers of the Union Cabinet, but the Prime Minister had been unavailable.

Naidu said that while the TDP would continue to be a part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the party would pull out its ministers from the Union Cabinet over the demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu made the announcement in a press conference late on Wednesday night from his state's new capital, Amaravati. He said the TDP's two ministers in the NDA government - Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary - would resign on Thursday morning.

"They (ministers) will resign in the morning. What will happen after that, we will see to that later," he said.

"This is our right. The Centre is not fulfilling the promises it made. We have shown patience for four years. I tried to convince the Centre by all means," Naidu said, adding, "The reason we joined the BJP as part of the Central government has not been served. That is the reason we are pulling out of the government."
Mumbai: BJP's estranged ally Shiv Sena has now taken a dig at the saffron party after the N Chandrababu-led Naidu TDP decided to pull out its ministers from the Narendra Modi government over its refusal to grant a special status to his state Andhra Pradesh.

''Shiv Sena had expected this. Other parties have walked out of NDA too','' Sanjay Raut, a senior leader of the Uddhav Thackeray-led party said.

Slamming the BJP for not respecting ties with its allies, Raut said, ''Allies no longer have good relations with BJP. Gradually their grudges will spill out and eventually they'll walk out of the alliance.''

Before Raut, another Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant had too made similar statements.

"The BJP doesn't respect its allies. TDP is realising it now. We have been saying so for a very long time. BJP only says Sabka Saath but while deciding policies there is no Sabka Saath. They should take decisions unanimously by consulting all but they don't do that," Sawant had said.

In a related development, the Congress attempted to reach out to the TDP and extended support to its demand for special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

Congress Rajya Sabha MP Renuka Chaudhary said, "The so-called ally (BJP) has gone back on their promise. This is exactly we expected. These people will never stand by their allies. It is a good thing that they (TDP) have now realised the real nature of them (BJP)."

She added that Telugu people are very humble people and they gave TDP a long rope.

"It is for them (TDP) now (to decide) whether they want to hang with it or fight," Chaudhary said.

The reactions came hours after the N Chandrababu Naidu-led party announced its decision to pull out of the Centre over its refusal to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh.

TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had announced on Wednesday that the two TDP ministers - P Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and YS Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology) - will tender their resignations on Thursday.

Addressing a press briefing, Naidu alleged that the Centre has done a huge injustice to the state.

The TDP is the second-largest party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

In the Lok Sabha, the TDP has 16 members and six in the Rajya Sabha.

It is the first pre-poll partner of the BJP to pull out of the Modi government after being part of it for nearly four years.

His announcement came hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi told the media that granting of special status to Andhra Pradesh was not possible after the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

Jaitley did not make any new commitment except for reiterating that the Centre had extended all possible help to the bifurcated state.

Granting special category status was a promise made by the previous UPA government at the time of bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and creation of Telangana, which all the parties in the state are seeking now.

Naidu said a decision on TDP's continuation in the NDA would be decided after talking party-to-party (BJP and TDP). "This (quitting the cabinet) is the first step," he said.

"They (the Centre) are predetermined not to help the state. In the interest of our state, we have taken the decision," he said. I tried to inform the PM for courtesy's sake. But, he did not come online. My OSD informed the PM's OSD."

The drastic decision of the TDP may not have come as a shock to the BJP, which had earlier conveyed to its two ministers in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to be ready to quit any moment.

Accordingly, Dr Kamineni Srinivas (Medical and Health) and P Manikyala Rao (Endowments) will quit the Naidu cabinet on Thursday, hours before the budget presentation by Finance Minister Y Ramakrishnudu in the state assembly.

Naidu earlier held consultations with the party's MPs, ministers and important leaders before taking the decision and making it public.

The MPs, including the two ministers, expressed a unanimous opinion that Jaitley's statement on the demands of Andhra Pradesh was ''disappointing and discouraging.''

All parties in the state, including the ruling TDP and the main opposition YSR Congress Party, have been agitating in Delhi demanding grant of special status.

Agitations are also going on across the state.

Naidu said at the time of making the alliance, the BJP had said it backed the demand for grant of special category status for Andhra Pradesh but now it was singing a different tune.

He said the promises on statehood and other financial demands of the state have not been honoured by the BJP and he could not make any compromise on the state's interest.

"TDP is not for power but for self-respect. We decided there is no point in continuing in the government," he added.

Naidu said Jaitley's comments suggest that Andhra Pradesh is asking for too much.

He also slammed the Finance Minister for saying "sentiments will not decide the quantum of funds".

He said he made 29 trips to Delhi, met the Prime Minister and other ministers and tried to do his best to do justice for the state. "I am not angry with anybody," he added.

(With Agency inputs)
Singapore: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited the iconic INA memorial in Singapore and paid homage to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, besides holding talks with senior ministers including Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

He began the Singapore leg of his visit with an address to Indian entrepreneurs. He also addressed the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is scheduled to visit Malaysia too.

Talking about Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy at Lee Kuan Yew School, Rahul said, "To meet Mahatma Gandhi's expectations is difficult since he was known to be a hard taskmaster. You can always do better. I think often people take Gandhi ji literally. When he spoke about village economy, he was talking about Swaraj, which is all about decentralising power to the last Indian, and building an India where everybody feels they have space, a harmonious India."

He added, "We have done a pretty decent job. The first big step was 'One Person, One Vote', green revolution, self-sufficiency in food, the computer revolution, telecom revolution, the liberalisation of the Indian economy - so we've been pretty successful. We are one of the fastest growing economies. And all this, given the fact that we are not a small country, I would say it's been a decent show."

In a veiled attack at the Modi government, Rahul said, "Where we are running into trouble now is in the levels of violence, the levels of anger that you are seeing in India. This is central. The idea of India that Gandhi ji envisioned was an India where everybody felt they had a home, everybody felt comfortable, regardless of religion, community or state. That idea is now being challenged."

Answering a question on some of the key achievements of India since Independence, the Congress president said, "Whenever you are talking about India, you are talking about over a billion people. We have completely transformed over a billion people economically. Our GDP, when we started versus our GDP now, you can't even compare it. One of the big achievements, when we were in power, was increasing the school enrollment to 90%. It's not spoken of but it is a revolution. When we started, pretty much everybody said we are going to fail. World development community said it is impossible to bring so many people together. We disapproved the idea that you cannot take a billion people together and march along on a democratic path. That makes me very proud."



On the issue of 'revolt' by Supreme Court against the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, he said, "Normally in India, the people go to the judges for justice. For the first time in my life, I saw four Supreme Court judges actually go to the people for justice. They went to the press and said that they need the people to hear their voice as there is something that is fundamentally wrong. There is a challenge to the institutional structure of our country. When you are moving so many people, there are aspirations and also fear. You can use that positively, or you can make them hate other people. I am proud to say that our vision is to bring people together. That vision has served the country."

"The foundation of women's empowerment in politics was laid with the Panchayati Raj. We have tried to pass the Women's Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha numerous times. However, it was opposed by other parties. I think not having women play their due role in politics is a tragedy," Rahul said when asked about the contentious issue.

Taking on the BJP-led NDA government over job creation he said, "From the 1990s to today, you can see a tremendous increase in growth, but the job numbers are not there. That's a fact. Our record in the UPA was better than the BJP's, but it was not exceptional. The BJP's record is particularly bad. In fact, you have the highest levels of unemployment in India today, in the last 8 years. There is a disconnect between our skill system, finances, and technology. If we can take our skills, and connect them to finance, and to technology, you will get a complete transformation of India's manufacturing. It will look very different from China. It will be led by small and medium businesses, and entrepreneurs. But it will be transformational."

On competing with China, the Congress chief said, "I don't buy the idea that India can't challenge and compete with China in manufacturing. But what I will say is India cannot compete with China in terms of 50,000-100,000-men factories. Some of this is already happening in India. If you look at a Maruti, that is exactly what has happened. The Indian auto industry, the auto components industry, that's a success story. I can give you more success stories - the Amul movement, the sugar cooperatives in Maharashtra - these are all success stories. Where we can really get aggressive is now in the manufacturing space because the technology piece is actually an enabler. It wasn't an enabler 20 years ago."



Talking about how sees India in a collaborative partnership with ASEAN and China, he said, "What the Chinese have achieved is impressive. It is a manifestation of their culture and their way of doing things. I am no one to comment on how they choose to do things. I respect that. India has a completely different culture and society. We don't want to replicate China. We are different. Having said that, India has to have a peaceful, cooperative relationship with the Chinese. India has a strategic relationship with the US, but our country is big enough to have good relationships with all the countries. In an unconnected world, you can see Europe, America, and Japan have power. In a connected world, it is problematic to say that. In the new paradigm, the rules are going to be different. Cooperation is very important in the new paradigm. A hot war in the new paradigm is going to be suicidal for all."

On the issue of Kashmir, Rahul's take was, "One complaint I have against the BJP's policy is that it is episodic rather than strategic. When UPA came to power in 2004, we were handed a J&K that was burning, people dying, violence and terrorism. We made a plan and worked on it for 9 years, and the plan was to build bridges between people. We held local body elections in J&K where there were thousands of peoples representatives, we worked on connecting people to the banking sector, we brought businesses to J&K. We destroyed the terrorist movement in J&K - not by big talk, by fancy speeches. Hundreds of people were working quietly behind the scenes were responsible for this success. In 2014, when I went to J&K, I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can do to years and years of work. You engage with people, you bring people in, you work with people, you trust people. It works. I have seen it. It is very easy to pretend that you will have simple solutions. There are no simple solutions. You can divide people and play politics, but how is dividing communities going to give them jobs?"

Slamming the RSS he said, "We have been fighting the BJP and RSS since the beginning. An extremely nasty form of politics is currently taking root in India. We will fight this nasty form of politics and we will defeat the BJP in the next election. We do not like an India where people are persecuted for what they eat, drink, wear, or think. Very soon you will see an India where everybody is loved, respected and taken along."
(Reporting by Sanjay Singh and Rakesh Trivedi)

New Delhi: Farooq Takla, an aide of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, was on Thursday arrested in the national capital by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.

Takla arrived in New Delhi from Dubai and was arrested by the CBI when he was at an immigration counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

It is said that he was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi. Takla has been sent to police custody till March 19, 2018, by TADA court in Mumbai.

Following are some of the details of how he was brought back to India:

- Takla is the twin brother of Amjad Langda who resides in Mumbai. He was also an accused in 1993 blast case but was acquitted due to lack of evidence.

- Langda's daughter got married in April 2017. Later a party was held in Dubai which was attended by Dawood's relatives and family members of Taqla.

- As per photographs of the wedding accessed by Zee Media, Alishah Parkar (Dawood's nephew and son of Haseena Parkar) also attended the wedding.

- The high profile party attended by so many key contacts of the underworld don made the Indian intelligence agencies swing into action. As per Zee Media sources, the few calls intercepted by the investigative agencies resulted in the identification of Takla in a new role, living in UAE with a changed identity.

- Since then he was under continuous surveillance by the Indian agencies.

- Sources say that NSA Ajit Doval was given the task to bring Takla back to the country by the PMO.

- On July 27, 2017, the UAE ministry of interiors director general of security affairs was informed via Interpol (through IP message No 112220-2/62/IP/16378/10794) about the extradition of Takla. However, it is not known when he was detained/arrested by the UAE authorities.

- On August 8, 2017, the CBI got a non-bailable warrant issued from TADA court in Mumbai against Takla (number 0/w20072/17). It was sent to the UAE along with red corner notice (number A-385/7-1995), which was issued by Interpol in Lyons (France).

- On August 22, 2017, the Government of India made a formal extradition request to the UAE.

- According to Zee Media sources, Dawood, who is said to still enjoy a considerable clout in the UAE Royal circles, swung into action and Taklas Pakistani passport was given to the UAE authorities claiming that he was a Pakistani national.

- The UAE then reportedly became hesitant to handover Takla to Indian authorities, resulting in unexplained delay and zero-movement from their side.

- Then came Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tour of Abu Dhabi from Jordan on the second leg of his three-nation tour in February 2018. PM Modi was received by Mohammed bin Zayed and other members of the Royal family at the airport.

- It is said that PM Modi and his team held wide-ranging talks with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and his team over the issue of Takla among other things.

- Doval was also part of the team and he is said to have held a separate talk with Lt General Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan of UAE on the matter. An informal request was made to expedite the extradition in these talks.

- Agency sources attribute the success in bringing back Takla to efforts of PM Modi and Ajit Doval in forging security alliances with foreign countries.
Jaipur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday arrived in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu and expanded his government's flagship 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' program (BPBP).

PM Modi expanded the (BBBP) up from the existing 161 districts to 640 districts all over the country.

PM Narendra Modi's visit to Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu came on March 8 - the International Womens Day.

Speaking on the occasion, PM Modi said, ''With the power of technology the entire nation is connected with Jhunjhunu now. I am here in Jhunjhunu to commend this district for furthering Beti Bachao Beti Padhao movement.''

Giving a fillip to the Governments initiative to save and educate the girl child, the Prime Minister also called for equality between men and women for the society to move forward and and prosper.

''Equality between men and women make any society go forward and prosper. Let us resolve that there will be the same number of girls taking birth as the number of boys. Beta beti ek samaan (boys and girls are equal),'' PM Modi said.

Seeking a change in people's mindset towards the girl child, PM said, ''A mother-in-law can make a lot of difference. If she says she wants a daughter in the house, then no one will be able to hassle a daughter.''

''We will have to bring in a social revolution,'' PM Narendra Modi said.

''It is important to provide proper nutrition to children,'' PM Modi added.

The Prime Minister earlier interacted with beneficiary mothers and girl children of the program.

He also distributed certificates to best performing districts under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao program.

The Prime Minister honoured the district administrations of Sikar and Jhunjhunu for improving the sex-ratio.

Sex-ratio was alarming in Sikar before the campaign. In 2011, there were 848 females over 1,000 males.

"After innovative steps taken under the campaign, the sex ratio was registered at 930 females over 1,000 males," Sikar District Collector Naresh Thakral had said.

"Improvement in sex-ratio in the districts is a collective effort of people involved in the campaign, which improved sex-ratio in the districts," said Thakral.

In another landmark initiative, the PM also launched the National Nutrition Mission, (NNM) launched nationwide by the Prime Minister from Jhunjhunu.

He also launched NNM- ICDS Common Application Software.

The mission strives to reduce under-nutrition and low birth weight, bring down anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls and to reduce the prevalence of stunting among children.
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Congress leader Karti Chidambaram, who is in CBI custody in connection with the INX Media case, to approach the Delhi High Court for relief. The top court also requested the Delhi HC to set up appropriate bench to adjudicate the matter concerning Karti on Friday or Saturday.

This comes two days after the apex court on Tuesday refused to grant anticipatory bail to the Congress leader. Deferring the case for further hearing on March 9, the top court declared that it would not provide any interim protection from arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the alleged money laundering case.

On Monday, Karti had moved to the Supreme Court seeking the quashing of summons issued by the ED. Hearing the case, the court had also issued a notice to the ED on the PMLA case registered against him.

Karti is accused of allegedly receiving Rs 3.5 crore from the Mumbai-based INX Media, now known as 9X Media, for helping it get Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance in 2007 when it was run by Peter and Indrani - both accused in the Sheena Bora murder case.

On March 1, the Patiala House Court in Delhi had sent the junior Chidambaram to CBI custody for five days following which he was questioned for nearly seven hours by the CBI. He was arrested at Chennai airport on February 28 on his return from abroad.

The arrest of Karti came nine months after the CBI registered an FIR against him on charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, accepting gratification by corrupt or illegal means, influencing public servants and criminal misconduct.
The Karnataka government on Thursday approved a flag of the state. The state government will send the details of the flag to the central government, following which it will be announced as the flag of Karnataka.

In 2017, the Congress-led Karnataka government had set up a nine-member committee to design the state flag. The panel had later submitted a report to the Siddaramaiah government on the state flag getting legal sanctity.

Karnataka govt approves state flag. It will be sent to central govt for approval, after that it will be announced as the state flag. pic.twitter.com/BwidTfnyUb  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

The panel was constituted through an official order by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on June 6. The order nominated the principal secretary of the Kannada and culture department as the chairperson of the committee.

The flag still faces a major hurdle at the Centre, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power. While it was in power in Karnataka in 2012, the BJP had told the Karnataka High Court that it had not accepted the suggestions to declare yellow and red Kannada flag as the official flag of the state saying a separate flag would be against the unity and integrity of the country.

Several BJP leaders from Karnataka had termed the move as one against the integrity of India, saying that the party has always fought for one nation, one flag. They had said that working on a separate flag of the state was against the nation.

On the other hand the Karnataka Chief Minister had defended the move for a separate flag for the state, asking if there is any provision in the Constitution that prohibits the state from having its own flag. "Is there any provision in the Constitution which is prohibiting a state to have its own flag? Did BJP people come across any provision?" Siddaramaiah had said. Responding to allegations that it a political gimmick by the Congress, Siddaramaiah said BJP always makes such false allegations.
The Kerala Police on Thursday arrested one man for damaging a statue of the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, in Kannur district of Kerala. According to police, the man arrested in Taliparamba in Kannur district is mentally unstable. The police also ruled out any political connection in the incident.

The statue of Mahatma Gandhi was damaged at taluk office in Taliparamba in Kannur district of Kerala. The incident occurred at around 7 am on Thursday. Reports said that the unidentified miscreant broke the spectacles, damaged the garland and hurled stones on the statue. The police had launched an investigation into the case soon after it was reported.

Meanwhile, news agency ANI reported that unidentified people poured paint on the bust of Dr BR Ambedkar at Tiruvottiyur near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

This came a day after PM Modi strongly condemned such incidents and spoke to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over the issue.

"Incidents of toppling of statues have been reported from certain parts of the country. MHA has taken serious notes of such incidents of vandalism. PM also spoke to Home Minister in this regard and has expressed his strong disapproval of such incidents," the Ministry of Home Affairs had said in a statement on Wednesday.

The MHA also asked the states to take all necessary measures to prevent such incidents. "Persons indulging in such acts must be sternly dealt with and booked under relevant provisions of law," the MHA said.

There have been multiple incidents of statues being vandalised in various parts of the country. It started with the demolition of a statue of Vladimir Lenin with the help of a bulldozer in Tripura after Left Fronts debacle in the state Assembly elections. Another statue of Lenin was vandalised despite directives from the Centre.

Following this, a statue of Dravidian ideologue Periyar EV Ramasamy was damaged in Tirupattur in Tamil Nadu. Two persons  one from BJP and the other from CPI  were arrested in connection with the incident. Thereafter, statue of Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee was also damaged at Jadavpur University in West Bengal.
New Delhi: On March 8 - the occasion of International Women's Day - Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday paid tribute to Chhattisgarh's late social activist Kunwar Bai, who was chosen as a mascot for the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'.

Prime Minister Modi took to Twitter and shared his thoughts and experience of meeting Kunwar Bai.

"I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bai's blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapu's dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe," the PM tweeted.

I will always cherish the time when I had the opportunity to seek Kunwar Bais blessings during one of my visits to Chhattisgarh. Kunwar Bai lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who are passionate towards fulfilling Bapus dream of a clean India. #SheInspiresMe pic.twitter.com/Gdt5STszgr  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

The 'Clean India Mission' icon passed away at the age of 106 earlier this year.

Kunwar Bai had become an inspiration for millions after her story about the hardship she faced after she sold her goats to build a toilet grabbed headlines in 2016.

Inspired by the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, she had sold off eight to ten of her goats - her only assets - to raise Rs 22,000 to build toilets at her house.

She lived in the Kotabharri village in Dhamtari district of Chhattisgarh.

It was during his visit to Chhattisgarh that PM Narendra Modi had a chance to meet Kunwar Bai.

Paying respect to the departed soul, Prime Minister Modi further tweeted, "#SheInspiresMe- Kunwar Bai, who died earlier this year at the age of 106. Hailing from Chhattisgarh, she sold her goats in order to build toilets. Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat can never be forgotten. I am deeply inspired by her noble gesture". (sic)

''Kunwar Bai, who died earlier this year at the age of 106. Hailing from Chhattisgarh, she sold her goats in order to build toilets. Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat can never be forgotten. I am deeply inspired by her noble gesture,'' the PM tweeted.

#SheInspiresMe- Kunwar Bai, who died earlier this year at the age of 106. Hailing from Chhattisgarh, she sold her goats in order to build toilets. Her contribution towards a Swachh Bharat can never be forgotten. I am deeply inspired by her noble gesture. pic.twitter.com/eANQz01ZYE  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

Lauding several women who have left an indelible mark in the history of mankind, Prime Minister Modi added "Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind. They continue to inspire generations. I urge you to write about some women who inspire you. #SheInspiresMe" (sic)

Through their exemplary deeds, several women have left an indelible mark in the history of humankind. They continue to inspire generations. I urge you to write about some women who inspire you. #SheInspiresMe  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 8, 2018

Prime Minister Modi also shared a video where he felicitated Kunwar Bai at a function to mark 'Swachhta Diwas' and also touched her feet during a rally in Rajnandgaon.

The Prime Minister had addressed her as "Ma Kunwar Bai Yadav" during the Rajnandgaon rally.

(With ANI inputs)
New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi opened a new front in his war of words with BJP on Thursday when he said his party's hard-work in Jammu and Kashmir have been ruined by bad political decision in recent years. The BJP is in alliance with Mehbooba Mufti's People's Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.

Speaking at an event after meeting top global CEOs of Indian origin in Singapore, Rahul Gandhi lauded UPA's J&K' policy while berating policies which, according to him, have pulled back the state and its people. "Our Kashmir policy under Dr. Manmohan Singh was about building bridges with people. When UPA came to power in 2004, we were handed a J&K that was burning. We made a plan and worked on it for 9 years," he said. "(But) In 2014 when I went to J&K, I felt like crying. I saw what a bad political decision can to do years and years of policy-making."

The previous assembly election in the state had taken place in 2014 when Congress emerged a distant third and failed to prevent the top two parties - PDP and BJP - from partnering to form the government. Rahul, who has since taken over the reigns of Congress, felt that the current dispensation in the state and centre is not doing enough to engage with the people. "You engage with people, you bring people in, you work with people, you trust people. It works. I have seen it for myself," he said.

In recent days, Rahul has stepped up his attack on the BJP government at the centre - raking up issues of non-performing assets, bankings scams, providing special status to Andhra etc. His comments on J&K on Thursday too are not his first. Rahul had previously said that policies of PM Narendra Modi and his government have 'burnt' the state and even distancing himself from former state chief Farooq Abdullah's view that the Kashmir problem with Pakistan ought to be solved through dialogue alone. Abdullah's National Conference and the Congress have previously formed alliance in the state to form the government.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday met Indian-origin CEOs of companies based in Singapore. The Congress party posted on microblogging site Twitter that Rahul discussed a range of issues, such as job creation, investments and prevalent economic conditions, during his meeting with the CEOs.

During the meeting, the Congress chief conceded that the party faced a storm in 2012 and in the next two years the system was destabilised and we saw the consequences. He said, We faced a storm in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014 the system was destabilised and we saw the consequences. We have a clean slate now, and a new opportunity. We will present you with a new Congress Party that envisions the values you were born with.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi met with Indian-origin CEOs of companies in Singapore and discussed a range of issues including jobs, investments, and the prevalent economic conditions #RGInSingapore pic.twitter.com/VVjuLR8QKc  Congress (@INCIndia) March 8, 2018

The Gandhi scion also talked about the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), saying that while the Congress sees society as a system that has to be kept in balance, the ruling party is less concerned about peace and tranquillity.

We see society as a system that has to be kept in balance. The BJP on the other hand is less concerned about peace and tranquillity. We see very serious dangers of polarising society and risks arising from them, said Rahul during his interaction with the CEOs.

He further referred to the issue of rural-urban migration, terming it as a challenge. According to the Congress chief, We are seeing the biggest migration of rural people in India. We have challenges.

The Congress chief added that the view of the Congress party is that there is need of a peaceful transition, a transition that carries everybody together.

Later on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi is expected to address members of the Indian community living in Singapore. He is scheduled to stay in Singapore on March 8 and March 9, following which he will leave for Malaysia on March 10.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is slated to start his two-day visit to Singapore on Thursday. The Gandhi scion is likely to address a gathering of the Indian diaspora in the country. He is scheduled to stay in Singapore on March 8 and March 9, following which he will leave for Malaysia on March 10.

Apart from addressing members of the Indian community, the Congress president is also slated hold a closed-door meeting with Indian professionals and industrialists during his visit.

During his visit to Malaysia as well, the Congress president will address people of Indian origin living in the country. It must be noted that Malaysia has a considerably large number of Indian population. Rahul Gandhi is expected to meet businessmen as well as workers of Indian origin.

The itinerary of the Congress presidents visit to the country is believed to be similar to that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visits to foreign countries. Just like PM Modi addresses members of Indian community in different countries, Rahul has also been following a similar modus operandi in recent past.

In the recent past, the Gandhi scion addressed members of Indian diaspora in US and Bahrain. In Bahrain, the Congress chief had attended a meeting of Global Organisation of People of India Origin, where members from over 50 countries had participated. Addressing the gathering, Rahul had attacked PM Modi and his economic policies.

The Congress leader has often been criticised by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for targeting the Narendra Modi government on foreign land.

During his visit to Bahrain in January, he had criticised PM Modi over Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation. Highlighting how job creation in India was at an eight-year-low, the Congress president had said the two threats facing India under the Narendra Modi government are the inability to create jobs and the rise in the forces of hatred and division.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court is likely to pronounce on Friday its verdict on a plea to allow "living will" that will authorise the withdrawal of all life support systems if in the opinion of the doctors he has reached an irreversible stage of terminal illness.

While reserving the order on October 11, 2017, the Constitution Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AK Sikri, Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Ashok Bhushan had observed that the right to die in peace could not be separated from Right to Life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

This fuelled speculation that the court allow the right to make "living will", which allows a person to opt for passive euthanasia in the event of irreversible serious illness, by putting in place strict conditions including a medical board certifying that a person is in an irreversible state of terminal illness.

An NGO Common Cause had moved the top court way back in 2005 seeking right to make a living will authorising withdrawal of life support system in the event of will makers reaching irreversible vegetative state.

The central government had in the course of hearing of the matter by a five-judge Constitution Bench told the top court that passive euthanasia was the law of the land with safeguards by virtue of an earlier 2014 judgement of the top court in Aruna Shanbaug case.

The top court by its order on March 7, 2014, in Aruna Shanbaug case had permitted passive euthanasia under certain circumstances, provided it was backed by the permission of the high court.

The Centre had also told the Constitution Bench that a draft bill permitting passive euthanasia with necessary safeguards was already before it for consideration.

However, the Centre had opposed permitting a living will both on the grounds of "principle and practicality" as it expressed apprehension of its possible misuse.

Besides, NGO Common Cause, the Constitution Bench was addressed by a number of interveners who had supported permitting the living will.

A living will is made by a person in his normal state of mind that is to be executed in the event of a terminal illness if he reaches an irreversible vegetative state.

However, it was emphasised that living could only be executed after the opinion of the medical board certifying on the condition of the patient.


As the world marks International Womens Day, the Indian Air Force has released a video saluting the women in service. Every woman inspires, nurtures and supports, but some wear overalls and combats boots as well, said that IAF in the video, which features flying officer Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh, who have emerged as the most recognisable faces in the force.

Apart from flying jets, the video shows women IAF personnel attending classes at fighter training wing along with their male counterparts. It also features women personnel handling ground operations of the Indian Air Force.

The song titled zameen se chalein hum aasmaan ke kareeb runs a little over 2 minutes and captures everything from women officers flying IAF aircraft to taking part in parades.

This comes just days after flying officer Avani Chaturvedi created history by becoming the first Indian woman fighter to fly solo. She flew a MiG-21 Bison in her first training solo sortie in Jamnagar, Gujarat.

She is one of the three in the first batch of female pilots, besides Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh, who were inducted in Indian Air Force fighter squadron on June 18, 2016. The IAF had termed it as a unique achievement for the force and the country.

It was in October 2015 that the Government took the decision to open the fighter stream for women. Meanwhile, combat roles in the Army and the Navy are still off-limits for women, due to a combination of operational concerns and logistical constraints.

On December 16, 2017 two women from the second batch to enter the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force were commissioned after graduating from the Air Force Academy, Dundigul.

It was only in 1992 that the armed forces began recruiting women to streams, other than the Medical stream.
NEW DELHI: The two Union ministers of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) are set to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday evening. The meeting comes after a day of attempts at a rapprochement between the TDP, which announced that it would pull out of the Union Cabinet, but would remain in the NDA, over its demand for special category status for Andhra Pradesh.

The two TDP ministers - Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary - would resign on Thursday, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu had announced in a press conference late on Wednesday night.

TDP sources said Naidu had explained to PM Modi the reasons for the pull-out, news agency ANI reported. This exchange happened after Naidu complained that he had reached out to Modi to let him know of the TDP's decision, but PM had been unavailable.

I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform him about our decision. But sadly, he was unavailable.  N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) March 7, 2018

Naidu had also complained that he had made 29 trips to New Delhi in a bid to get special status for his state without success.

As a response to the TDP's announcement, two BJP ministers in Andhra Pradesh resigned from Naidu's cabinet.

The TDP-BJP relationship has been under strain for a while now over the demand for special status to Andhra Pradesh. The status would have meant a greater degree of financial support from the Centre to the state government. The TDP had reasoned that the people of his state had been against the bifurcation of undivided Andhra radish, and the new state is suffering financially as a result of the split.

However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said on Wednesday that the Centre is unable to give the special status to Andhra Pradesh as such a categorisation has been done away with under the 14th Finance Commission. Instead, he said, the Centre would ensure Andhra Pradesh get just as much funds as it would have received as a result of the special status.

Jaitley had also said granting any sort of a special categorisation to Andhra Pradesh would lead to a spate of similar demands from other states.
New Delhi: Online retailer Flipkart celebrating International Womens Day by offering attractive offers. The e-commerce site is giving big discounts on smartphones, women apparels, footwear, accessories, home decor items, beauty, kitchen appliances and more.

Flipkart has also launched an exclusive The Womens Store #ForEveryHer, giving between 40 to 80 percent discount on home decor, furnishing, kitchen and dining range.

On electronic and kitchen appliances customers can avail up to 80 percent discount.

Joining the initiative, smartphone brands like Samsung, Honor, Xiaomi and Oppo are also offering lucrative offers on Womens Day.

Check out the top deals

Honor 9 Lite

Instant 10 percent discount for HDFC debit and credit card users

Additional Rs 1,500 off on exchange

4+64 GB version of Honor 9 Lite

Starting at Rs 10,999

Xiaomi Redmi 5A

Starting at Rs 4,999

OPPO F3 (Gold, 64 GB) (4 GB RAM)

Extra Rs 8000 discount

40 percent off

Available at Rs 11,990

Google Pixel 2 and 2XL

Available at Rs 47,999

Extra Rs 5,000 off on exchange

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

Starting from Rs 57,900

Extra Rs 5,000 off on exchange
New Delhi: Google on Thursday dedicated the International Women`s Day with a very creative Doodle.

Last year, Doodle reminded of the female pioneers and their vast contributions in multiple fields - from arts to science via eight slide shows.

However, this year's Doodle is different from the ones Google has made so far. Google is celebrating the stories and voices of another group of extraordinary womenthe everyday women living all over the world.

Google has reached out to 12 female artists of all backgrounds to share their personal stories in a series of visual narratives.

These 12 female artists, took a different approach to narrate their story. Some Doodles are fictional, some are about family stories while some are very personal account.

Specifically, each story represents a moment, person, or event that has impacted their lives as women. While each artist tells a unique story, the themes are universal, reminding us of how much we often have in common. We hope that the combined power of words and images help bring these stories to life in a way that invokes feelings of understanding, empathy, and spirit of the day, Google has said.

On February 28, 1909, the Socialist Party of America observed the earliest Women`s Day in New York.

However, later on March 8, 1917, Women`s Day demonstration sparked the Russian Revolution and the day was eventually declared as national holiday in Russia in 1965.

In 1977, the UN adopted March 8 as the International Women`s Day and since then it celebrates women`s rights and world peace.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Vishwanath Shetty, who was stabbed inside his office in Bengaluru thrice on Wednesday, had written as many as 20 letters to the government demanding more security, according to former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde.

Shetty's letters were not acknowledged, justice Hegde was quoted as saying by ANI.

"20 letters were written by Lokayukta institution which weren't acknowledged. I hope the government wakes up soon," Justice Santosh Hegde.

Expressing concerns over the incident, Hegde said the attack on Karnataka Lokayukta was a "serious lapse of security" and that urgent measures were required to prevent the recurrence of such incidents in future.

Anguished by the incident, Justice Hegde also questioned the Karnataka government's attitude towards the institution of Lokayukta.

"I am more concerned about the attitude of the government towards Lokayukta institution. Metal detectors were not working for many years," Justice Hegde said.

The Karnataka Lokayukta was reportedly stabbed thrice inside his office premises in Bengaluru by an alleged contractor from Tumakuru over complaints regarding some tenders.

Bengaluru: Visual of the person who stabbed the Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Vishwanath Shetty at his office in Bengaluru. He has been taken into custody by the police. pic.twitter.com/QeaVd9QL6y  ANI (@ANI) March 7, 2018

Soon after the attack, he arrested by the Vidhana Soudha police.

There were multiple cases registered against the attacker in past, reports claimed.

Karnataka Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy later told reporters that Shetty is out of danger and undergoing treatment at the Mallaya Hospital.

State's Chief Minister Siddaramaiah also reached Mallya hospital to meet Justice Shetty, who is a former Karnataka High Court judge.

''The man (Tejas) had lodged a complaint with the Lokayukta about a corrupt official and later received an acknowledgement that the case has been closed. He came to meet the Lokayukta after this. He has carried a large weapon and had entered the chamber of the Lokayukta (whose gunman was outside) and stabbed him there, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said.

"He has now been picked up, and action would be taken if we find any lapse in security, the Chief Minister said.

(With ANI inputs)
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the investigating agencies to continue their probe into whether there was any criminality in the marriage of alleged 'love-jihad' victim Hadiya. However, the SC bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, asked the National Investigating Agency (NIA) not to intrude in Hadiya's marriage with her husband Shafin Jahan.

Appearing for the NIA, lawyer Maninder Singh submitted to the Supreme Court that the probe has almost been completed. It had said on Wednesday in its affidavit that it only needs to examine two more individuals, Fasal Musthafa and Shirin Shahand, who are material and crucial witnesses in the case.

The NIA had earlier denied the allegations that it had behaved with Hadiya with a prejudice as if she is a criminal or a terrorist. The NIA asserted that it conducted the investigation in a "fair, objective and impartial manner" based upon evidence and material collected so far.

It also denied the allegations that she was misled to portray her husband Shafin Jahan as a terrorist and that she was treated as a criminal, the agency said the allegations are "misconceived, entirely baseless, incorrect".

"The NIA has conducted the investigation in a fair, objective and impartial manner based upon the evidence/ material collected so far. There is no question of any personnel, who was entrusted with the investigation of the case, acting in a prejudicial manner, much less treating Hadiya as a criminal or a terrorist," stated the affidavit filed by the NIA.

Hadiya, in her affidavit before the top court, had earlier said that she converted to Islam and married Jahan on her own and wanted to remain like that. She had levelled allegations against her father and some NIA officials for being prejudiced.
Mumbai: Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla, who was arrested on Thursday by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, was sent to police custody till March 19 by TADA court in Mumbai.

Takla arrived in New Delhi from Dubai and was arrested by the CBI when he was at an immigration counter at the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

While the CBI declined to comment on how he reached Delhi as an Interpol Red Corner notice was pending against him, officials said Farooq was deported from the UAE with the help of central intelligence agencies and put on a flight to Delhi, PTI reported.

The role of Farooq in the D-company was not clear, but some officials said that he used to look after the Dubai operations of the underworld don.

Farooq was later taken to Mumbai and produced before the designated court hearing the case of 1993 serial blasts that left 257 dead beside damaging property to the tune of Rs 82 crore.

Immediately after the blasts, Dawood, who was the main accused in the case, and others escaped to Dubai and later to Pakistan.

India's sustained campaign against the underworld don was finally acknowledged by America in 2003 when the US Treasury department declared him a global terrorist having links with al Qaeda. He also faces sanctions from the United Nations under its anti-terror resoution.

Vindicating India's position that Pakistan has been sheltering Dawood, the Treasury Department had said he was in Karachi and possessed a Pakistani passport under the individual category.

(With PTI inputs)
Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party leader Neiphiu Rio, who won unopposed even before the voting in Nagaland Assembly elections, is slated to be sworn in as the Chief Minister of Nagaland on Thursday. The 67-year-old former Nagaland Chief Minister was elected unopposed in the Nagaland Assembly elections after his rival from the Naga People's Front (NPF) withdrew his nomination.

Preparations underway for oath ceremony of CM designate Neiphiu Rio in #Nagaland's Kohima pic.twitter.com/XDQTjnjd06  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Even before full results of the Nagaland Assembly polls were declared, Union minister Kiren Rijiju had announced that Rio would be the Chief Minister of Nagaland if the NDPP-BJP secured majority.

Having led Nagaland for 11 years, Rio has often been described as "the tallest leader in Nagaland". In January 2018, Nagaland's lone Lok Sabha member broke away from the ruling NPF after the party decided to sever ties with the BJP. He then joined the newly-floated NDPP saying that he was committed to finding an early solution to the vexed Naga insurgency problem.

Rio has maintained that he has been a supporter of the peace process between the Naga rebels and the Indian government and has always worked to resolve the standoff in a manner acceptable to the people.

Quitting the party, he had said: "I have been left with no option but to resign from the NPF in accordance of the wishes of the people and in the greater interest of the masses in collective endeavour to bring an early political solution."

After weeks of negotiation ahead of the elections, NDPP got into a pre-poll alliance with the BJP. The NDPP decided to contest on 40 seats while the saffron party agreed to field candidates in the remaining 20 seats.

Rio is also among the top three crorepati candidates in the state with assets worth Rs 36.41 crore.

Rio served three terms spanning 11 years as chief minister of Nagaland, from 2003 to 2014. After winning the Lok Sabha seat in 2014, he passed on the CM's office to TR Zeliang, a move that was criticised by many.

(With agency inputs)
NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of Nupur and Rajesh Talwar for the murder of their daughter, Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj.

The CBI is challenging the order of the Allahabad High Court acquitting the Talwars. The court had given the dentist couple the benefit of the doubt. The court had also criticised the CBI for tampering with evidence and chastised the trial judge for taking evidence for granted.

The Talwars had been convicted by the CBI court which tried the case, in November 2013. The next day, the CBI court sentenced them to life imprisonment.

14-year-old Aarushi's murder in 2008 had caught widespread attention for the bizarre twists and turns in the investigation. The initial suspect was domestic help Hemraj, who was at the time missing. However, his body was found on the roof of the apartment a day later, turning the case into a double-murder.

The Uttar Pradesh Police had accused Rajesh Talwar of killing his daughter in a fit of rage, and arrested him on May 23, 2008, six days after Aarushi's body was found.

On May 31, 2008, the case was transferred to the CBI. The agency initially absolved the parents but later held them responsible for the two murders.
Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Police has said that it can't take action against Bollywood actor Raveena Tandon for shooting an advertisement in the 'no camera zone' inside the Lingaraj temple premises in Bhubaneswar.

Stating the reason why it can't take any action against the actress, the Odisha police said the complaint filed against her was not a cognisable offence.

"There is no Act to take any action against videography. During Shivaratri, many gathered inside Lingaraj Temple and were seen taking photos and videos openly. There was live coverage by all Odiya channels also. So, in this case, though we have received a complaint from temple administration, we cannot take any action against Raveena Tandon or anybody else," Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Police Commissioner Yogesh Bahadur Khurania said.

Bhubaneswar's Lingaraj Temple authorities had filed a complaint against Raveena Tandon on Tuesday, accusing her of shooting for an advertisement in the 'no camera zone' inside the temple premises.

The temple authorities filed a complaint after a mobile video surfaced on the social media showing the actor discussing the beauty tips with fans surrounding her.

The actress, however, dismissed the allegations saying there was no shooting of advertisement at the temple.

It was no agency and no advertising. It was all locals and members of the Mandir Trust and some media who were filming on their mobiles phones and also taking selfies," she said.

Please see the lady in the picture . She is a local and had her mobile phone in her hand . While I did not . pic.twitter.com/w8Ld4awFj6  Raveena Tandon (@TandonRaveena) March 6, 2018

She further said that she was not aware of the phone ban in the temple, claiming that even local authorities did not alert her team or raised any objection when photographs were clicked.

I understand temple authorities are distraught as everyone around me (organisers, security, pandits, locals) were using cellphones, clicking videos, taking selfies. I was not aware of phone ban, hence the issue, said Raveena Tandon.

The Archaeological Survey of India too reportedly launched an investigation into the matter.

(With Agency Inputs)
New Delhi: Ever since classic actor Irrfan Khan disclosed about his health condition on Twitter, there have been numerous rumours doing the rounds. The actor in his post requested people to not speculate about the disease as he will reveal more once the doctors draw any conclusion.

However, there has been no stopping the wagging tongues. Another talented find from Bollywood, actor Manoj Bajpayee recently expressed his anger over such rumours and requested everyone to not speculate any further about Irrfan's health.

He took to Facebook and wrote: request all to stop speculations about Irrfan's health and wait for the official confirmation from his side.its quite insensitive to guess and spread rumour about anyone's illness.plz delete all the post and pray for his health.he will fight it out and come out of it like a champion .praying for his speedy recovery. Lets all respect his privacy.

A few days back Irrfan had revealed about his ill health and how he suffers from a 'rare disease'. Here's his tweet:

Manoj had replied to his tweet and wished him a speedy recovery.

After this shocking news, several reports carried different versions of what Irrfan was suffering from. However, soon his manager put all the rumours to rest requesting privacy at this hour of trouble. Khans manager refused to comment as the family awaits the final reports from the doctor.

Here's wishing Irrfan a speedy recovery!
New Delhi: Internet sensation Priya Prakash Varrier has become quite active on the photo-sharing site Instagram and fans are loving it. Recently, megastar Rajinikanth joined Insta and Priya made sure that she welcomes Thalaiva.

Priya took to her Insta story and welcomed the megastar.

Check out her post here:

Isn't it amazing? Earlier, a fan club of Priya had shared the teaser of Rajinikanth's upcoming venture 'Kaala' on Twitter.

Looks like the 18-year-old internet star is a fan of Thalaiva. Priya got her instant fame after a small clip from her debut Malayalam film 'Oru Adaar Love' went viral. It was a clip taken from the song 'Manikya Malaraya Poovi' where Priya got the big thumbs up from the viewers for her expressions. Her 'winking' act won many hearts in the song.

After making his starry presence felt on Twitter, megastar Rajinikanth finally joined the other two social networking sitesFacebook and Instagram.

Recently, Rajinikanth made his debut political speech after announcing his big decision to enter politics. The legendary star addressed to a huge gathering of students at a private university just outside Chennai. He even said there was a 'vacuum' in Tamil Nadu politics that he would try to fill it.
Jaipur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan on Thursday - the International Womens Day.

Giving a fillip to the Governments initiative to save and educate the girl child, the Prime Minister will inaugurate the pan-India expansion of ''Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' program, (BBBP) up from the existing 161 districts to 640 districts all over the country.

According to a government press release, the Prime Minister will also interact with beneficiary mothers and girl children of the program.

He will distribute certificates to best performing districts under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao program.

The Prime Minister would honour the district administrations of Sikar and Jhunjhunu for improving the sex-ratio.

Sex-ratio was alarming in Sikar before the campaign. In 2011, there were 848 females over 1,000 males.

"After innovative steps taken under the campaign, the sex ratio was registered at 930 females over 1,000 males," Sikar District Collector Naresh Thakral had said.

"Improvement in sex-ratio in the districts is a collective effort of people involved in the campaign, which improved sex-ratio in the districts," said Thakral.

In another landmark initiative, National Nutrition Mission, (NNM) will be launched nationwide by the Prime Minister from Jhunjhunu.

He will launch NNM- ICDS Common Application Software.

The mission strives to reduce under-nutrition and low birth weight, bring down anaemia among young children, women and adolescent girls and to reduce the prevalence of stunting among children.
Mumbai: Dancing legend Prabhudheva will appear in a spooky avatar in Karthik Subbarajs Mercury, a first-of-its-kind silent thriller. The teaser of the film was unveiled on Wednesday by Dhanush, Rana Daggubati, Nivin Pauly and Rakshit Shetty.

Subbaraj, who has written the film and the screenplay, took to Twitter Wednesday to share the teaser of the film which comes across as an extremely spooky one.

He tweeted: Excited to share the teaser of my next film #Mercury starring @PDdancing. Hope you are all as thrilled by it as I am! Thank you @dhanushkraja @RanaDaggubati @NivinOfficial and @rakshitshetty for releasing it! (sic).

Watch the teaser here:

Also starring Sananth, Indhuja, Deepak Paramesh, Shashank Purushotham, Anish Padmanabhan, the film is slated to release on Friday, the 13th of April, 2018. Well, the scary film is coincidentally releasing on Friday, the 13th!

Prabhudheva , a choreographer, actor and filmmaker said Mercury is a "unique experience" for him and described it as a unique film. Talking about Mercury while interacting with fans on Twitter in January, Prabhudheva said  Mercury' will be an interesting and exciting pan-India release.

He will be seen playing an antagonist for the first time in his career.

When another fan asked him how he feels when he has accomplished a task and gains appreciation for it.

He said, Success always gives happiness but it also brings the pressure of doing better... So I try to keep a cool, take success and failure with equal spirit.

Karthik is bankrolling the project under his home banner, Stone Bench Films. The film has music by Santhosh Narayanan.

National award-winning Tirru has cranked the camera.

(With IANS inputs)
Chennai: Rajinikanth on Thursday removed the 'superstar' tag from his Twitter handle. Now his handle is just - @rajinikanth.

However, his bio still says - 'The official handle of superstar Rajinikanth'.

Meanwhile, the Tamil actor on March 5, 2018, invoking the legacy of late AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran had said that he was confident of giving a good administration like the yesteryear matinee idol.

"Nobody can match MGR even in 1,000 years and that includes me," he had said referring to criticism, especially from the ruling AIADMK that not all can emulate the late CM's success in politics.

Ramachandran, popularly known as MGR, is often referred to as the benchmark of success in Tamil Nadu politics, especially for an actor, with many other cinema professionals trying to emulate him.

The 67-year old superstar, who has a large fan following, had said he would take recourse to technology besides assistance from experts and technocrats in delivering governance.

Rajinikanth had added that he would follow spiritual governance that would have no discrimination based on caste or creed.

In his over 30-minute speech, he had acknowledged he was "not MGR" and "If someone says he will be (like) MGR, he will only be crazy."

"But I am confident that I can give a rule like him, that will benefit the poor and the common man," he had said amidst loud cheers from the gathering at the ACS Medical College and Hospital after unveiling a statue of MGR.

In his first political remarks since December 31, 2017, when he had announced he will enter politics and contest all 234 Assembly seats whenever elections are held, Rajinikanth had also said there was a "vacuum for a good leader" in the state politics currently.

This was following the demise of late CM J Jayalalithaa and ill-health of 93-year old DMK president M Karunanidhi who has become inactive politically of late, he said.

"There is a vacuum for a good leader and a leadership... I am confident I will be able to give a good administration and spiritual governance," Rajinikanth had said.

(With PTI inputs)
San Francisco: Software major BlackBerry has sued Facebook and its subsidiaries -- photo sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp -- in a Los Angeles court, media reported.

The suit alleges that Facebook has infringed on some of BlackBerry's patents including security features, mobile notifications, and combining gaming with messaging, Axios reported on Tuesday.

"We have a lot of respect for Facebook and the value they've placed on messaging capabilities, some of which were invented by BlackBerry," the once-powerful phone pioneer was quoted as saying.

"However, we have a strong claim that Facebook has infringed on our intellectual property, and after several years of dialogue, we also have an obligation to our shareholders to pursue appropriate legal remedies," it added.

Facebook has made it clear that it intends to fight the allegations.

"Blackberry's suit sadly reflects the current state of its messaging business. Having abandoned its efforts to innovate, Blackberry is now looking to tax the innovation of others. We intend to fight," Paul Grewal, Deputy General Counsel for Facebook was quoted as saying.

BlackBerry is no stranger to litigation, having settled its own allegations of infringing on other tech patents with the likes of Nokia and NTP, CNET reported on Tuesday.

Last year, it turned around and accused Nokia of patent infringement, the report said.
New Delhi: Google has released the developer preview of its latest version of Android  Android P. The developers-only preview implies that regular users will not be able to download as yet.

Android P update is applicable only for Google's Pixel range of smartphones that include Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL.

But, if you don't have a Pixel device, you can use the Android Emulator to test your app and explore Android P.

To get started with a Pixel device, download a system image and flash it to your device. Then read the Program Overview for timelines and the migration guide for steps to compatibility and building for P. Use the links and instructions below to update your supported device to the latest milestone build.

You can get an Android P system image for development and testing in these ways:

a) Either download a Developer Preview system image and flash the device

b) Or set up an Android Emulator in Android Studio

Google explains that you can download the latest Developer Preview system image and manually flash it to your device. Manually flashing a device is useful if you need precise control over the test environment or need to reinstall frequently, such as for automated testing.

Manually flashed system images do not automatically receive OTA updates to later Developer Preview milestone builds or the final, production version. Make sure to keep your environment up-to-date and flash a new system image at each Developer Preview milestone, said the search engine giant.
Keeping the pressure up on Pakistan for committing atrocities against locals in Balochistan, the Baloch Republican Party on Wednesday took their protest right up to the doors of the United Nations office in Geneva.

Armed with Baloch flags and demanding freedom for Balochistan, the activists marched from Rive to the UN office in a protest held on the sidelines of the ongoing 37th UN Human Rights Council. It is reported that Baloch men, women and children from all walks of life joined to demand freedom from state-sponsored atrocities being committed back home. Interestingly, this is not the first time Balochi activists have made their presence felt in Switzerland. It is hardly the first time they have made international headlines either.

Posters splashed across buses and trams in Geneva in September last year showed the brutality of Pakistani establishment vis a vis Balochis. Slamming the country for allegedly committing genocide, the posters both embarrassed and infuriated Pakistan. A possible diplomatic row was eventually averted despite Islamabad summoning Switzerland's ambassador to register its strong protest. There has however been no let up in shame for Pakistan as more recently, 'Plight of Christians in Pakistan' posters appeared in Geneva in what was yet another attempt to showcase how the country treats minorities.

The strong protests have not just been restricted to scenic Switzerland as London and New York have seen an advertisement blitzkrieg from organisations like Baloch Republic Party and more so from World Baloch Organisation (WBO). WBO, in particular, has been responsible for putting up posters and hoardings across the streets of London and New York - even booking an ad space at the iconic Times Square.

The efforts of Baloch activists have repeatedly angered Pakistan but foreign countries have maintained they are helpless in doing anything about legitimately bought ad spaces. For instance, UK envoy in Islamabad had snubbed Pakistan last November and had said his government cannot control advertising. "I understand the strength of feeling about adverts in London. The British Government does not and cannot control advertising in the UK. But our own position is clear about the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan, of which Balochistan is and will continue to be an integral part," British High Commissioner to Pakistan Thomas Drew had said.

Other diplomats and envoys too have maintained similar position even as Baloch activists continue to raise the tempo of their protests.
In a bizzare incident in China, a local woman in Shiyan in the country's northwestern Hubei province assumed that her husband had died after finding him motionless on their bed, only for him to wake at the mortuary and then die momentarily after.

Local media reports quotes Chen as saying that since her husband - Huang - had long been suffering from terminal stomach cancer, she assumed he had died when his body lay motionless. Huang's body was promptly sent to the morgue but when a cosmetologist came in a few hours later, he noticed slight movement around the mouth and hand. He then informed medical officials but by the time expert help came in, Huang had indeed passed on.

Chen later reportedly said that her husband had been suffering for a long time and that her family had spent all its savings to cover the cost of medical treatment. She added that doctors had eventually said that no further treatment would work and that when she found that her husband was not breathing, she assumed he had died.

Interestingly, mortuary workers here said that they have seen such instances previously as well when a body appears lifeless but is still alive - in medical terminology. Its easy for a patient to be pronounced as dead if his limbs are cold, his body is stiff, his vital signs are weak," a mortuary worker called Ren was quoted as saying. "But this is not the first time we have noticed something like this. Unfortunately, though, by the time medical team arrived, Huang had lost his life and the death was formally pronounced."
Islamabad: US drone strikes killed 20 Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants and their trainer in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province on Wednesday, according to a Pakistan-based news website, the Daily Times.

"Militants of the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were running the camp in the mountainous Shaltan area of Kunar, bordering Pakistan," the website quoted its Taliban sources as saying.

The US drone reportedly fired five missiles on the training camp near Afghanistan-Pakistan border at the time when the terrorists were there for routine training.

According to some reports, Abdullah, son of TTP chief Fazalullah, might be among the dead.

The sources have described the strike as disastrous for the TTP, as their group might have lost some important members.

In addition to Abdullah, a senior TTP commander Yasin may have also died in the attack.

This, according to the Daily Times, is the second such attack in less than a month when the TTP militants came under drone attack.
Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday postponed the long-awaited reopening of a key border crossing with Afghanistan for unknown reasons, officials said.

Ghulam Khan border, the third major crossing point with Afghanistan in North Waziristan tribal region, was closed in June 2014 after the security forces launched a major operation against the Taliban militants and their foreign hosts in that area.

An official told Xinhua that it was planned to reopen the border on trial basis for a week on March 7 for trade and people, however, it was postponed for an indefinite period. He did not give any specific reason.

However, sources said Pakistani side needs more time to ensure the immigration, custom and other facilities are available at the time of the border reopening.

Pakistan had introduced passport and visa system for those who enter Pakistan in 2016 via Torkham, the biggest crossing between the two countries. Officials say the same system will also be introduced at Chaman, the second largest point, and other notified crossings.

(Also read: In trade with Afghans, India stumps Pakistan to take big lead)

Officials say the Ghulam Khan border point, which will have modern facilities, could become the biggest trade route as the containers that bring Afghan transit goods from Karachi port would use this crossing instead of Torkham.

North Waziristan border Afghanistan`s eastern Khost province and Pakistani trucks could move up to Kabul and other cities but it depends on the understanding between the two countries. Current political tensions have badly affected bilateral and transit trade.

Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a transit agreement in the 1960s and revised it in 2010 to allow landlocked Afghanistan to import through Karachi port.
Ceasefire was not violated on other sectors

Militants shoot at Ukrainian positions once on March 7. As a result, one Ukrainian soldier was wounded. This was reported by the press center of Donbas conflict headquarters on Facebook.

It is reported, that the militants opened fire from small arms near Krasnohorivka (Donetsk region) in Donetsk sector.

As a result of this firing one Armed Forces serviceman was injured, the message says.

Ceasefire was not violated on other sectors.

Besides, Ukrainian servicemen, who are carrying out tasks on the frontline, stay on their positions, fortify their defense works and supervise the militants.

As we reported earlier, Russian occupation troops had launched three adjusted fired at Ukrainian position on March 6.

Ukrainian news on 112.international
Open source

In the area of Donbas conflict (as of 18:00 today, March 8) the militants conducted one shelling. No losses in the ranks of Ukrainian armed forces reported. This was stated in the press center of the headquarters in Facebook.



"Since the beginning of the day, one firing of the positions of Ukrainian defenders has been registered. In particular, in the Luhansk direction the enemy from heavy machine guns fired at the fortifications of the Ukrainian forces near the settlement of Luhanske," the report said.



The headquarters added that as a result of the shelling, none of the Ukrainian soldiers were injured.



We recall, another truce, agreed by the participants of the Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine, came into force in tDonbas from midnight on Monday, March 5. Later it was reported that the militants fired our forces within an hour after the ceasefire began.

Related: Hungary supports introduction of OSCE mission in Transcarpathia
112 Agency

In the city of Slovyansk, Donetsk region, two soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine conducted a shooting. This was reported in the press center of the Donbas conflict headquarters in Facebook.



"On 8 March 2018 in the city of Slovyansk, Donetsk region, the hooligan actions of two servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine led to the use of firearms by them. The servicemen were detained, "the report said.



It is noted that at present the bodies of the National Police of Ukraine and the Military Service of the Law Enforcement of the Armed Forces of Ukraine within the framework of the official investigation are clarifying the circumstances that led to this. It is noted that upon completion of the official investigation, the perpetrators will be brought to justice.



Law enforcers did not comment on this information.



Earlier, the General Staff of the Armed Forces stated that non-combat casualties in the course of the Anti-Terrorist Operation amounted to 927 servicemen. It was also reported that since the beginning of the conflict in the east of Ukraine (since April 2014), 2,278 Ukrainian military personnel have died.

Related: Hungary supports introduction of OSCE mission in Transcarpathia
TASS

The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports the introduction of the OSCE mission in Transcarpathia. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Siyarto said this during a meeting in Budapest with the chairman of the Society of Hungarian Culture of Transcarpathia, Laszlo Brenzowicz, according to the official website of the Hungarian government.



"We are increasingly concerned about a series of attacks on the Hungarian minority, and we expect that the Ukrainian authorities will guarantee the security of the Hungarians from Transcarpathia, and we welcome the expansion of the presence of OSCE observers in Transcarpathia," the Foreign Minister said.



Let us emphasize that Siyarto said about the OSCE observer mission in Transcarpathia as a fait accompli, noting that such a step is welcomed in Budapest.



We recall, the case of the arson of the building of the Society of Hungarian culture in Uzhgorod was considered as a terrorist act.



On February 27, at night in Uzhgorod, the building of the Society of Hungarian Culture was set on fire. Fire damaged 25 square meters of the building area. No victims repotrd. It is noted that the police detained five people after the arson of the office in Transcarpathia. Initially, on the fact of arson, the police opened criminal proceedings in part 2 of Art. 194 of the Criminal Code, that is, intentional destruction or damage to property committed by arson, explosion or other generally dangerous method or caused property damage in especially large amounts.

Related: Participants of Women's March attacked in Kyiv and Uzhgorod
RIA news

The Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak visited Crimea for an independent report in late May - early June 2014, while the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on the order of visiting the peninsula was taken in 2015. This was stated in a comment to RIA Novosti by a representative of the politician Ksenia Chudinova.



The day before it became known that Sobchak was in the database of the Myrotvorets site for illegally visiting Crimean peninsula. Myrotvorets center is a non-governmental organization, which deals with the investigation of elements of crime against national security of Ukraine, peace, human security and international order.



"The site was opened in August 2014, Sobchak with (journalist Anton - ed.) Krasovsky went to Crimea for an independent report almost at the end of May - early June 2014. The decision of the Cabinet of Ministers on the order of visiting the Crimea - was approved in 2015," said the representative of the presidential candidate.



Earlier, presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak said that she sent an application to the Ukrainian embassy requesting permission to enter Crimea through the territory of Ukraine within the framework of the election campaign. Later, representatives of the Ukrainian embassy in Russia denied this information.



Speaker of the State Border Service of Ukraine Oleg Slobodyan said that if Sobchak appears on the Ukrainian border, State Border Service "will carry out a set of measures to verify the possible violation of its Ukrainian legislation."



Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin called "political schizophrenia" the intention of Sobchak to conduct pre-election campaign in the occupied Crimea.

Related: Ukrainian political parties to impede Russian elections in Ukraine
At the moment the creation of the autonomy in Zakarpattia is out of the question

There is nothing bad in the autonomy of the national minorities. Erno Keskeny, the Ambassador of Hungary to Ukraine claimed as Ukrainian News reported.

The ambassador provided South Tyrol in Italy, where the German national minority lives as the example. The teaching is held in German and the state Italian language is taught on the method of the foreign language. Herewith, in the case of Ukraine and taking into account the situation in the east of the country, the demand for the autonomy is out of the question.

Our politicians say that there is nothing bad in the autonomy, it is an acceptable model in the EU. But the Hungarians of Zakarpattia who are the citizens of Ukraine also take into account the situation in the east and nobody demands the autonomy now, Keskeny emphasized.

At the same time, the ambassador reminded on the results of the referendum that took place in December 1991. The citizens of Zakarpattia and Berehove region also dwelled on the issue of the creation of the autonomy, despite the question of the independence of Ukraine. 78% of the citizens of Zakarpattia and 83% of the citizens of Berehove supported the autonomy of the regions. And they still got nothing, he specified.

Also, the autonomy of Zakarpattia will only benefit as Keskeny think. The population will be able to decide on the issues concerning their interests. And in no case, it is the striving for the separatism as Keskeny is sure.

You should not see the separatism here. Even Hennady Moskal, the Governor of Zakarpattia said that there is no separatism here, he emphasized and added that there is no tension in the west of Ukraine.

Talking about the aid to the citizens of the region by Hungary, it is not a sign that Budapest attempts to reach the autonomy for Zakarpattia.

Should we percept our aid to Zakarpattia as the sign of the separatism? We just sent there 8, 000 vaccines against the measles. Is it a problem? Only 12% of the citizens of Zakarpattia are Hungarians. We help the whole population, not only the Hungarians.
112 Agency

Autonomy for Hungarians in the Transcarpathian region is impossible. This was stated by Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Bondar on his Facebook page.



"Unfortunately, Mr. Ambassador does not understand the clear, repeated and extremely official explanations that there can not be any autonomy in Transcarpathia," Bondar expressed regret.



He also noted that constructive proposals on the language issue also remain unanswered.



"It's parallel reality," concluded Bondar.



Second Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Olena Zerkal also commented on the statement of the Hungarian Ambassador.



"We have already planned a conversation with the Hungarians about the fact that the ambassador exceeds his powers in Ukraine," she said.



We remind you that yesterday the Hungarian Ambassador to Ukraine Erno Keskeny stated that he does not see anything wrong with the autonomy of Transcarpathia, but now the issue is not raised due to the situation in Donbas.

The ambassador provided South Tyrol in Italy, where the German national minority lives as the example. The teaching is held in German and the state Italian language is taught on the method of the foreign language. Herewith, in the case of Ukraine and taking into account the situation in the east of the country, the demand for the autonomy is out of the question.

Our politicians say that there is nothing bad in the autonomy, it is an acceptable model in the EU. But the Hungarians of Zakarpattia who are the citizens of Ukraine also take into account the situation in the east and nobody demands the autonomy now, Keskeny emphasized.
Open source

A police officer of the special purpose regiment committed suicide being on duty in the village of Kozyn near the residence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. This was stated by the speaker of the National Police in Kyiv region, Mykola Zhukovych. The incident occurred on February 23.



"There is a fact of this (the fact of suicide of a member of the special police regiment at the post near Kozyn village, near the Poroshenko residence - Ed.) Now an investigation is being carried out. A criminal proceeding is opened, "said a police spokesman in Kyiv region.



Answering the question, whether this policeman guarded the president's residence, Zhukovych replied that "it happened near the residence, but on the post."



It is also reported that, according to preliminary information, the police officer committed suicide from the service weapon.



As Strana website specifies, the deceased is the senior sergeant Serhiy Galasyuk. On the fact of his death, criminal proceedings on the article of the Criminal Code on premeditated murder were opened.



Note that the urban settlement of Kozyn is located 30 km from Kyiv and is known in many respects for the location of the residence in which the president lives.

Related: Ukrainian political parties to impede Russian elections in Ukraine
Open source

Heather Nauret, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, said that Gazprom failed to make Ukraine an unreliable partner. She wrote it on her Twitter.

#Ukraine citizens have inspired the world by pulling together to reduce gas consumption by 14% last week to ensure reliable gas delivery to European customers. @GazpromEN has failed in its attempt to portray #Ukraine & @NaftogazUkraine as unreliable transit partners. #UATransit  Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) 7  2018 .

As we reported earlier, after the ruling of the Stockholm Arbitration, Russia's Gazprom announced its intention to terminate gas contracts with Naftogaz Ukraine.

The Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce has granted the lawsuit of Naftogaz as to compensation for the volumes of transit gas that had not been delivered by Gazprom on February 28. According to the decision of the court, Naftogaz got a $4,63 billion compensation for the transit gas that had been agreed on, but not delivered by Gazprom. As a result of two arbitrations in Stockholm, Gazprom is to pay Naftogaz $2,56 billion. The court dismissed the demands of Gazprom that stated that the money hadnt been paid as it was considered the fines for what they called unlawfully seized by Naftogaz volumes of the transit gas. $526 000 of interest per day will be added to the debt from March 1.

As reported earlier, on March 1 Gazprom reported that Naftogaz-Ukraine has made an advance payment for the resumption of Russian gas supplies from March. At the same time, Gazprom refunded the money, stating that this was due to the lack of an agreed addendum to the current contract. Naftogaz called Gazprom's refusal to supply gas a violation of the agreement and failure to comply with the arbitration decision.

News on 112.international
The International Committee of the Red Cross sent more than 220 tons of humanitarian assistance to Donetsk region. The representatives of Ukraines Border Guard Service informed.

11 ICRC vehicles arrived to occupied territory thorough the Novotroitske checkpoint yesterday.

The vehicles transported more than 220 tons of humanitarian assistance for Donetsk region residents  foodstuff, medical supplies and construction equipment, Ukrainian border guards said.

As we reported earlier, one Ukrainian soldier was wounded over past 24 hours in Donbass. The militants have violated ceasefire three times.
For the time being, the state holiday in Ukraine on this day has not been cancelled. Read further about the reasons to do so, the history and theories of appearance of the International Women's Day

On March 8, Ukraine marks the International Women's Day. In 2018, this day remains a state holiday. Despite the proposals to cancel it.

"March Of The Empty Pots"

Open source

The most famous version of the beginning of the tradition to celebrated International Women's Day comes from New York on March 8, 1857. On this day, the so-called "March Of The Empty Pots" took place here. This was a demonstration of women working at textile dyeing plants.

Women demanded shorter work hours, better pay and voting rights.

The name of the demonstration is due to the form of protest: demonstrators were beating the pots, drawing attention.

In the end, police dispersed the rally, but after that, women created a labor union aimed at fighting for their rights.

50 years later

The situation repeated itself. On March 8, 1908, in New York, a new meeting with slogans on even rights for women, initiated by the local Social Democratic womens organization took place. It gathered 15,000 women and had the same demands as 50 years ago.

In 1909, the Socialistic Party of the United States announced national womens day, which was celebrated on the last Sunday of February until 1913. In 1090, it was the 28th of February.

And in 1910, the Second International Conference of Women was held in Danish Copenhagen, where the idea of International womens day received a strong push. It was due to the famous communist Clara Zetkin

Ich bin Zetkin. Clara Zetkin

TASS

German political activist and a prominent participant of international communist movement Clara Zetkin is believed to be an author of the idea to establish the International Womens Day.

At the conference in Copenhagen in 1910, she proposed to establish a Day of womens solidarity in a fight for political, economic and social rights. It was about the day on which women would hold meetings and marches, attracting more attention to their problems.

The resolution of Clara Zetkin said:

In agreement with the class-conscious political and trade organizations of the proletariat in their country, the socialist women of all nationalities have to organize a special Womens Day, which in the first line has to promote Women Suffrage propaganda. This demand must be discussed in connection with the whole womens question according to the socialist conception of social things. The conference must have an international character and be prepared with care.

Initially, the specific day has not been chosen, thats why in 1911, the first International Womens Day in many European countries was marked on March 19. On this day in 1848, the king of Prussia facing the threat of the armed uprising promised to conduct reforms  including the introduction of voting rights for women.

Later, the date was changing up until 1914. At that time, in many countries, the womens day was held on March 8 as it coincided with Sunday. So, the date became final.

Other Versions

Open source

Firstly, there is a version that in 1857 in New York, women indeed protested but they were not the textile workers, but the women rendering sexual services. Allegedly, they demanded to pay wages to marines who used their services but they had no money to pay for them.

The second version is the celebrating the IWD on March 8 was a wish of Clara Zetkin to link womens movement with the Jewish history, in particular, Purim holiday that in 1910 happened to be on March 8.

Another version is that number 8 was not chosen by accident as this number more than any other resembles womans body.

March 8 and United Nations

Open source

Since 1975, in connection with International Women's Year, the UN started holding International Womens Day on March 8.

In 1977, the UN General Assembly in its resolution proposed the countries to announce any day of this year a UN International day of the fight for womens rights and international peace in accordance with their traditions.

Events, dedicated to the UN International Day of the fight for womens rights and international peace were timed to March 8.

March 8 and USSR

The day of March 8 became an official holiday in USSR only in 1965. Before, it was a regular working day. There was a tradition: every year the politicians reported to people about the changes in state policy regarding women.

Which countries celebrate March 8?

Open source

There not many countries which celebrate the holiday, but still. For example, International Womens Day is a statutory holiday in North Korea, Mongolia, Angola, Zambia, Cambodia, Kenia, and Uganda.

In China, it is a holiday with a short working day for women.

Also, March 8 is marked in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Latvia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine.

March 8 and Ukraine

Open source

I think that it will be an important step forward for the country. This a continuation of the decommunization. Because we have to stop living synchronized with the aggressor-state, said Volodymyr Viatrovych, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory in September last year.

This is about the bill of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers for consideration. The document, in particular, proposes to cancel the state holiday on the International Womens Day and change the name to the Day of the fight for womens rights.

That doesnt mean cancelling this day as a holiday. It is proposed to cancel the day off and give the holiday a rights protection name. The document is still being considered by the government.
45,000 NATO member states will participate in the trainings, along with tens of ships and planes, which are used in maneuvers near Norway  trainings on countering simulated threat

Open source

NATO will conduct Trident Juncture trainings in Europe in autumn this year. This training will be the largest one since the Cold War. Robert Neller, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, said it during the hearings in the U.S. States House of Representatives.

We will hold large-scale NATO trainings in October this year. It will be the largest trainings since the Cold War, the Commandant said.

He added, that around 45,000 NATO member states will participate in the trainings, along with tens of ships and planes, which are used in maneuvers near Norway  trainings on countering simulated threat.

Yet I think that this shows the significance of our strategy, our European allies want to see our presence there (in Europe, -ed.) and our commitment to their security, he noted.

Trident Juncture trainings are held three times per year. Ukraine joined 36,000 of NATO member states in the last trainings, conducted in 2015.
Open source

Nationalists promise to block Russian presidential elections in Ukraine on March 18, 2018. This is said in the joint statement of Ukrainian political parties Svoboda, Right Sector and National Corps.

They stress that Russia intends to establish polling stations in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Lviv, where Russia has diplomatic representations.

Ukrainian nationalists consider it unacceptable regarding the common sense and morality. Because Kremlin will hold presidential elections in annexed Crimea and occupied Donbas. This is why Ukrainian nationalists will impede a peaceful voting for the president of Moscovia on the territory of Ukraine, the statement says.

Political parties intend to block polling stations and form corridor of shame for voters  Russian citizens.

As we reported earlier, Russian presidential elections will be held on March 18  the fourth anniversary of illegal occupation of Crimea. There are eight candidates, including the current president of the state.
Festival Ballet Albuquerque

Jock Soto has been dancing since he was 5 years old. He fondly remembered doing the Navajo hoop dance with his mother during his early years in Gallup, and later when the family moved to Arizona. These were the first times that Sotoa world-renowned ballet dancer and choreographer experienced the synergistic nature of music and dance. Soto has now danced in more than 40 ballets, and spent many years as a principal for the New York City Ballet, before retiring (mostly) in 2005 to teach and create new choreographies. Some of that new work by Soto, who now lives in Eagle Nest, will premiere during the Festival Ballet Albuquerque's Sacred Journeys, which will not only feature the legendary Soto, but the live music of another luminary, Robert Mirabal. Mirabal is a Grammy Award-winning musician and poet from Taos Pueblo who has long dedicated himself to creating genre-bending world music.

Yes, I suppose I do think my story is unusual, Soto told me over the phone a few weeks before the premiere of his new choreography, all set to recent arrangements by Mirabal. I wrote my memoir in 2011, and it was a very specific question in my book: How did this half-Puerto Rican, half-Navajo kid get to New York City and spend most of his life there? It is an unusual story. And of course, he spent that lifetime in the big city in the highly competitive world of ballet, meeting with success despite great odds.

So, how did his life take this course? Soto recalled a childhood morning watching ballet on TV. It just really struck me, he said, this gorgeous guy doing this ballet. Oh my Godthe smoothness of everything, and how high he could jump, and how many turns he could do. I was like, I want to do that. He told his mother about his ambitions, and she looked in the Yellow Pages for a ballet school. Soto's mother and father dutifully ferried him the more than 30-minute distance between Paradise Valley, Ariz., where they were living a the time, and Phoenix. The teachers auditioned me [and]  they took me right away because I was basically the only boy that auditioned. And they gave me a scholarship, too.

Having discovered his talent and love of the dance, at 16, he auditioned for the New York City Ballet and was accepted. He quickly integrated into that world, moving to the city and beginning to perform as much as eight times a week. I became an instant adult, he described. It was difficult, but it is where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.

Though Soto is now retiredand goes whole weeks without dancing a stephe frequently teaches, and develops dances. In the next year he will even return to New York to perform with a longtime collaborator and ballerina. People keep asking me to do things, and I say, 'Oh, God, I'm retired!' But I get sucked right back in, he explained. After teaching at Dance Theatre Southwest, the company's founder and organizer of Festival Ballet Albuquerque, Patricia Dickinson-Wells, invited Soto to collaborate with Mirabal for the festival. Soto's reply, as he remembers it: I said hell yeah! Why not? 

Soto has created four movements for the performance, featuring pieces called Skywatchers and Can't. Soto anticipates that these pieces will be a little different than what people usually see in New Mexico, favoring a more abstract, evocative approach to bringing forth emotion and translating that into dance. Also of note is that no one has ever performed ballet to Mirabal's music, some of which, keeping in step with the musicians multidisciplinary expression, is entirely spoken word. It's something never been seen before. I think it is really good to get this kind of thing going, to start something new, Soto observed.

In addition to Soto's work, new pieces by Dickinson-Wells, as well as Trey Pickett and Natalee Maxwell will take the stage. While Sacred Journeys as a whole will be performed just twiceSaturday, March 10 at 7pm, and Sunday, March 11 at 2pmSoto said that he will continue working in this vein, specifically collaborating with other Native dancers, musicians and choreographers. When I first went to the Taos Pow Wow after we moved back here, Soto remembered, just hearing those drums brought tears to my eyes because it reminded me of my mother and us dancing side-by-side.  I try to find music that moves me like that. That's why it is really cool to work with Robert Mirabal, because the music comes deep from him.

Find out more about the pioneering collaborative efforts being brought to the stage at this year's Festival Ballet Albuquerque at festivalballetabq. org. To buy tickets (starting at $12), visit nhccnm.org.
Tricklock Company's Revolutions International Theatre Festival returns, once again to bring voices of young, experimental artists to the forefront.

Tricklock Company's Revolutions International Theatre Festival returns, once again to bring voices of young, experimental artists to the forefront.

Annual international theater festival brings performance from around the globe to ABQ

Book Review

Magic in the Medium

Luis Urrea's novel works moving literary feats
Rob M.

So we missed our chance to vote for cannabis legalization last month. I know it will come up again next year, but my legendary optimism has begun to drift off distractedly here and there and engage in unhealthy, self-centered behavior. It's been quoting 18th century syphilitic poets for the last week. It rolls its eyes at everything. I'm getting worried.

After burning through the fastest year anyone can remember, 2018 has gotten off to a broken, dragging start, and even the good-natured cannabis proponents are starting to get antsy. My Buddhist friendwho has something nice to say about everybody (he once told me that President Trump is a man clearly in a lot of pain)called Attorney General Jeff Sessions a goddamn shit sucker under his breath the other day while we were talking about it. I've heard worse from others, but that one made me gasp.

It's a bummer. It seems like the entire cultureteased to glassy-eyed anticipation over the last couple of years with the tantalizing promise of real freedomis beginning to deflate right in front of me. I want to tell my brothers and sisters to stand tall, to perpetuate the momentum that's been gathered so far. But it's hard, dear reader. I'm very tired. And the blunt, cold wall of entropy threatens to blast us to smithereens when we crash into it.

Case in point 

Yes, CBD is Still Illegal

I was in a dispensary (I won't say where) and found out they were selling CBD extracts to customers who aren't patients in the medical cannabis program and was specifically saying it was federally legal to purchase and possess. Holy hell, did that turn me up.

This is absolutely false, and was even cleared up by the Drug Enforcement Agency a couple of years ago, but I've noticed CBD stores popping up all over the place and have overheard numerous professionals in the field repeating incorrect information.

So to clarify: All cannabis extracts are illegal according to the Controlled Substance Act. This includes CBD.

Some people will try to tell you that CBD is legal if it's extracted from hemp, which they will remind you has been distinguished from marijuana or cannabis by the 2014 Federal Farm Bill as cannabis with less than 0.3 percent THC. In other words, CBD extracted from hemp is different from that extracted from cannabis and is legal. The only problem with that logic: The Controlled Substance Act doesn't include a delineation between cannabis and hempand it overrules the hell out of the Farm Bill.

In December 2016, the DEA published a clarification on the matter, stating in plain text that all extracts derived from any plant of the genus Cannabis were illegal and that a separate code number was being created to classify them.

Now, according to High Times, the DEA has said that CBD users are not a priority, but I was worried more about health food chain and vitamin shop truck driverssome of which transport CBD to be stocked on store shelves along with other health supplementsgetting popped by the feds as they crossed state lines.

But it seemed like users and even these little CBD shops you'll find all over town were mostly safe. Despite openly trading in the contraband, no one was reporting run-ins with DEA stormtroopers, and the announcement started looking like an empty threat.

Until last month, when Circuit Court Judge Royce Taylor of Tennessee signed a court order allowing law enforcement officials to conduct a massive raid on retailers across the state who sold CBD. The effort, dubbed Operation Candy Crush managed to close 23 stores and threatened their owners with felony charges.

Luckily, the whole case was dropped because Tennessee law protects CBD extracted from hemp, (criminy) and the District Attorney apparently made the decision to go after the stores without realizing that it's impossible to test whether a compound comes from marijuana or hemp (because they're identical, of courseoh God, I think I'm getting a brain bubble). Since you can't test for it, you have to just take companies at their word.

Which means the story had a happy ending. But what if the thugs kicking in those doors hadn't been county police? What if it had been a federal prosecutor out for blood with the fullness of the law behind them? Things could have ended very differently, and it's probably a good idea to make people aware of the actual legality of CBD.

Big Money

But on a positive note: The cannabis market in the US is exploding. I still contend that the way to a man's heart is through his wallet, and I feel like every state with an eye on making some dough is sitting up and paying attention to all that sweet cash rolling in on the wave of cannabis sales.

Forbes reports that Nevada made $30 million in revenue derived from the taxation of cannabis during the first 6 months of legalization. Retailers sold more than $195 million worth in that time. And according to Juneau Empire, the state of Alaska made collected than $1 million dollars in cannabis taxes in January.

(Are we really still arguing over this? Egadsbrain bubbles everywhere!)
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!)
Newscity

New NMED Policies Criticized

Recently, the New Mexico Environment Department devised new policies on public participation in its permitting process. But local environmental groups say the new policies were drafted without public involvement.

Last month, NMED released its Public Participation and Limited English Proficiency (LEP) policies, outlining plans to include local communities in the process for permitting industrial facilities. The three new policies cover public participation, limited English proficiency and non-employee disability. According to Yale Law School's website, the policies were drafted as part of an informal resolution agreement with the US Environmental Protection Agency. The agreement was in response to complaints filed by environmental group Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping (CARD) and others alleging NMEDs public participation process violated federal civil rights laws by failing to provide translation services for Spanish-speaking citizens. NMED signed the agreement, promising to ensure its public involvement process is available to all persons regardless of race, color, national origin (including limited-English proficiency), age, disability and sex. The department recently hired a full-time translation and interpretation manager.

In a public statement, however, Deborah Reade, Research Director at CARD, noted that NMED did not seek public input while drafting the new policies. CARD legal representatives allege that the new policies definition of vital documents requiring translation are vague and that a loophole in the language will allow NMED to avoid providing adequate translation services if the cost is too high. They also allege NMED has proceeded with 200 public processes since the agreement without complying to its requirements.

NMED general counsel Jennifer Hower told the Albuquerque Journal that requests from CARD to participate in drafting the new policies were denied because outside groups are barred from involvement with internal policymaking.
Anglican Bishops from Angola, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe discuss the Anglican Church's role in malaria elimination. Pictured from Left to Right: Bishop David Njovu, Anglican Diocese of Lusaka, Zambia; Bishop Cleophas Lunga, Anglian Diocese of Matabeleland; Bishop Andre Soares, Anglican Diocese of Angola; Bishop Luke Pato, Anglican Diocese of Namibia.

Dr. Joseph Mberikunashi, Director of Zimbabwe's National Malaria Control Programme, urged malaria scientists, program managers, and faith leaders to curb the recent resurgence of malaria, a preventable disease that kills more than 400,000 people annually.

"There is great need to develop new tools and more importantly make use of the new technologies as they becomes available," he said during the formal opening of the Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative Round Table meeting, held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe on March 1st and 2nd.

The two-day meeting brought together more than 80 participants from diverse backgrounds. Malaria Field officers from remote communities along the borders of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, and Angola joined Anglican Bishops from the four countries as well as Ministry of Health representatives, researchers, and non-governmental partners to present new research and strategies for malaria elimination.

During the meeting, J.C. Flowers, Co-Founder of the Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative, stressed the important role of the Anglican Church in eliminating malaria from hard to reach, "last mile" communities.

"There is still much work to do, but the extensive focus on community engagement and ownership by the Anglican Church here in sub-Saharan Africa has contributed to significant advances in the fight against malaria."

Bishop David Njovu of the Anglican Diocese of Lusaka, Zambia, explained that the Church's active presence in communities most affected by malaria enables it to mobilize people around malaria prevention and treatment. In particular, the Anglican Church has been effective in engaging thousands of malaria volunteers who are responsible for delivering malaria education, testing, and treatment services.

"The Church is found in most communities of Zambia. This gives it a comparative advantage in the fight against malaria in the sense that people who volunteer to participate in the fight do so because they are motivated by love but also to protect their own community," he said.

Meeting participants came to a consensus that addressing the cross-border importation of malaria is a critical strategy for achieving malaria elimination in the SADC region.

About the Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative

The Isdell:Flowers Cross Border Malaria Initiative has supported malaria control and elimination programs in "last mile" communities for nine years. Recognizing the global commitment to eliminate malaria and the need to address malaria transmission across national borders, Isdell:Flowers focuses its efforts on border communities in Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe and Zambia. This partnership includes community and traditional leaders, the Anglican Church and faith-based communities, national governments, and multilateral donors.

Media Contact:

Name: Alexandra Gordon

Phone: +1 603 490 0692

Email: Agordon@jcflowersfoundation.org
Addis Ababa  "Considering the rapid growth of Zambia's cities and the reliance of the country on them for economic productivity, there is no choice but to give them a high priority in national development planning".

These were the views of Mr. Crane Muleya, Director Public Investment Planning Department, Ministry of National Development Planning (Zambia), during the recently concluded national training workshop on 'An Urban Lens in Development Planning: Integrating Urbanization in Zambia's National Development Plans', that was held from 26 to 28 February 2018, in Lusaka, Zambia.

Zambia's urban areas despite accounting for less than 42% of the population, contribute to more than 80% of the country's GDP. With urbanization proceeding at a swift pace in the country, profound opportunities are being presented for national level development as well as some significant challenges. One of the main tasks before policy makers is to start integrating urbanization into national development policy frameworks and processes in order to address challenges and capitalize on opportunities being presented. These issues were the focus of attention during the National Training Workshop on Urbanization and National Development Planning (26-28 February), organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa that that brought together key policymakers from different Ministries in Zambia

This workshop was organized under the auspices of the United Nations Development Account Project for 'Strengthening member States' capacities in designing and implementing strategies for inclusive and sustainable cities in Africa'. The national training workshop entailed senior planners who engaged in developing a National Action Plan for the integration of urbanization in Zambia's national development plan. Towards this end, the training was based on a training tool developed by UNECA's namely "Guidebook on integrating urbanization in national development planning", which has been developed to strengthen member States' knowledge and capacities in bringing to the fore the role of the cities into each stage of the planning process and in the process promote sustainable and productive cities for Africa's transformation.

During the National Training Workshop, Ms. Semia Tapia on behalf of the Director of ECA's Social Development Policy Division highlighted the work that UNECA has been doing to help member States better integrate urbanization in their national development plans and thus better harness this mega trend for Africa's inclusive and sustainable development. She also emphasized the critical importance of urbanization for Zambia's development in the years to come and advocated for its strategic alignment in the country's national development plan. The workshop was closed by Mr. Crane Muleya, Director Public Investment Planning Department, Ministry of National Development Planning (Zambia), who appreciated greatly the contribution of the ECA as well as the dynamic contribution of the national participants. He affirmed Zambia's commitment to giving a greater role to urbanization in national development planning and pledged to present the finalized action plan at a high level for its formal implementation and adaptation.
guest column

The visit to Africa by United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, his first since taking office 14 months ago, will do little to shore up the Trump administration's relations with, or reverse America's diminishing influence in the continent.

The administration has made a number of political faux pas on Africa during its first year in office, and Tillerson's goodwill trip, slated to include stops in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria, is not likely to erase them.

The visit has been billed by a senior State Department official as a follow-up to Secretary Tillerson's hastily-arranged and poorly-attended meeting with African foreign ministers in Washington in November 2017.

Focus on Security and Counter-terrorism

Although the ministerial meeting covered trade, development and security issues, Tillerson's current trip will probably be heavily focused on security cooperation and America's support to its key African partners in the fight against al Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region.

The one common denominator in all five countries he will visit is security and counter-terrorism.

Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya are all major security partners in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and all three have been key players over the past decade in AMISOM, the African Union force that has been fighting al Shabaab in Somalia.

Countering China in Djibouti

Djibouti, a tiny country with a population of less than one million, has served as the hub of American military operations in the region. Strategically located north of Somalia and across the Red Sea from war-torn Yemen, Djibouti is home to several thousand U.S. forces at Camp Lemonnier, the largest concentration of U.S. soldiers in Africa. As long as al Shabaab remains a threat in Somalia, Camp Lemonnier will be a keystone in the U.S. defense network in the region.

Tillerson's visit to Djibouti is also intended to counter China's growing influence and presence in that country. In the past decade, China has pumped millions of dollars into the tiny enclave and has been actively repositioning itself to be Djibouti's number one development and security partner. Beijing recently completed two major projects in Djibouti: a multi-million dollar rail line into landlocked Ethiopia and China's first overseas military base, a sprawling complex that rivals that of the United States.

The importance of Djibouti was signaled early in the Trump Administration when Secretary of Defense James Mattis travelled there in April 2017, just months after the administration took power. Although Tillerson should engage Djibouti's leaders about democratic backsliding and increasing corruption, he will probably concentrate on underscoring the importance Washington continues to place on this relationship.

Kenya, Ethiopia Key to Fight Against al Shabaab

Kenya and Ethiopia are also key regional partners in the fight against al Shabaab.

Kenya, which has been the target of several horrific al Shabaab terrorist attacks, has several thousand troops in Somalia as a part of AMISOM. Tillerson will want to reassure Kenya, America's oldest security partner in the region, of Washington's continued military and intelligence support. Although there are good reasons for Tillerson to have an expanded conversation with Kenyan officials about corruption, election reform and improving the country's political climate in the aftermath of the 2017 presidential elections, that is a conversation that is likely to be muted or non-existent.

Ethiopia, which has the region's largest and most effective army, has been fighting al Shabaab since 2008. The country is experiencing serious political tension and uncertainty, but Tillerson's focus in Addis will be dominated by security concerns. He will likely use his visit to reaffirm U.S. support for the government, and to caution the government not to allow domestic political issues to distract from its counter-terrorism efforts in the region.

Shoring Up Ties With Nigeria, Chad

In West Africa, Tillerson will use his stops in Nigeria and Chad to shore up and repair relations with the two countries that are leading the fight against Boko Haram.

U.S.-Nigeria security relations have not always been smooth and Nigerian officials have chafed at past American restrictions on the purchase and acquisition of U.S. military equipment, especially aviation assets. Tillerson will reaffirm American support for Nigeria while encouraging officials to intensify their fight against Boko Haram and to enhance their coordination with states in the Lake Chad region, where Boko Haram is operating.

The most difficult stop on Tillerson's trip will be Chad. Although it is the most effective member of the G-5, the five nation regional anti-terrorism network operating against Boko Haram in the region, Chad has been shamed and singled out by the Trump administration as one of the eight, largely Muslim states whose citizens are subject to a ban on travel to the United States.

Tillerson will be eager to thank Chadian officials for the role they are playing in fighting Boko Haram while quietly reassuring them that the State Department will do all it can to have Chad removed from the list of countries affected by the travel ban.

Talking Softly About Democracy and Governance

The secretary's trip to these five countries will probably not make much of a positive impression on most African governments, whose leaders will recognize the visit for what it is  an effort to shore up America's anti-terrorism security alliances while talking softly about democracy and governance, development and trade.

African leaders are keenly aware that President Trump and his administration have very little interest in the continent. They know that many of his global policies will have a negative impact on Africa, being aware of his administration's decision to pull out of the global climate change treaty, its assault on international trade agreements, cuts in the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and public health funding, the reduction of support for the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and the decline in resources for democracy and governance work.

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They also recognize Washington's expanded emphasis on military and security issues, which is a real priority for some countries but which perpetuates the erroneous impression that most of Africa is unstable and mired in conflict.

The Dark Cloud Hanging Over the Trip

And the heavy dark cloud hanging constantly over the Tillerson trip will be President Trump's disparaging and insulting remarks about Africans, his "Nambia" comments at an event at the United Nations and his dismissive treatment of African leaders at the 2017 G20 and G7 summits. African leaders are also aware of Tillerson's last-minute cancellation of a previous meeting with the chairperson of the African Union.

Tillerson will no doubt receive a friendly reception in the countries he visits. After all, Africans are extremely hospitable. But many of the leaders he meets will wonder  like many Washington political observers  how long he will actually remain in his job.

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.
Armed School Staff are the Last Responders

By Rob Morse. March 7th, 2018, 2018

Article Original

Murderers attacked our schools. That has been in the news and on our minds. Who are the first responders and who are the last responders? We'd like to think that the police will arrive to save us. Unfortunately, that isn't how crime and public violence works. The criminal is almost always gone when the police arrive minutes after we call. In cases of public violence, the murderer is stopped most of the time by people who are on scene when the attack starts..or the murderer commits suicide before the police arrive to physically stop him. So who is the first responder that will stop the attack?

What about parents? What about therapists..social workers..doctors..law enforcement..and judges? They are usually involved well before the problem arrives at the classroom door. Parents raise children who can control their own behavior. Sometimes that fails. Then, concerned parents hope that therapy will help their child. We contact social workers when the family breaks down. Criminals and mass murders usually have a violent history. The police are usually the next resort when individuals won't govern their own behavior. We want the courts to protect us from criminals and the mentally ill who are a danger to others. That only works some of the time. Sometimes we have advance notice that a person can turn violent. In the case of the murderer in Parkland, Florida, even the Federal Bureau of Investigation was involved..and failed. We saw deputies arrive at the Parkland high school and wait for the murderer to get tired of killing.

Do guns belong in our schools? Does a first aid kit? Does a fire extinguisher? The people who want every teacher disarmed say the problem of violence and injury shouldn't exist at school. Evidence shows us they are wrong. Violence comes to school despite the layers of things we've done to prevent it. That leaves school staff as the last responders, not the first. Everyone else had a chance to keep violence out of our schools. That works most of the time. Sometimes it doesn't. Do we need armed staff in our schools? Not usually, but we're not talking about a usual event.

What should we do when a murderer comes to a school? I think we should do the same thing we do when a murderer comes to our home. We do everything we can to keep the murderer outside. We defend our family any way we can if the murderer breaks in.

The first thing we do when violence comes is to call a good guy with a gun. How many students should we sacrifice while we wait for help to arrive from outside? I say none. Not one more student should die because we were waiting for emergency responders. If volunteer teachers want to take training and go armed to defend students then I say thank you.

That is how many of us protect our families at home. Almost 20 million of us have the legal permit to carry concealed in public. Suddenly it is a novel idea to have armed defenders at our school who are not in uniform. We've been doing that for years outside of schools. In fact, we've been doing it for years inside schools as well (and here.)

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YEREVAN, MARCH 8, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message on the occasion of Womens International Day. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Armenian Presidents Office, Serzh Sargsyans message runs as follows,

Dear women,

I cordially congratulate you on the occasion of Womens Day.

Taking advantage of this nice occasion, I address our beloved mothers, sisters, daughters and all our relatives: you bring harmony to the world with your warmth and beauty.

There is no such sphere or field of activity in our country where we could not feel womens favorable presence and active participation. You are teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs and public figures, mothers of soldiers and military. On behalf of our entire society, I thank you and bow before you.

Dear women,

Your professional achievements and progress, as well as your public and political activities are of exceptional importance for Armenias development and future. Your involvement is indispensable in the process of building a more equitable and free society, and a more powerful and prosperous country.



I wish you happiness in private life and every success in your professional career. The healthy and strong family is the wealth of our people and country, and you are the dear keepers of that wealth.



Reiterating my congratulations on this wonderful holiday, I wish you all love and prosperity.

English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 8, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan sent a congratulatory address on March 8 in connection with the International Women's Day.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the ARtsakh Presidents Office, the address runs as follows:

"Dear women,

On behalf of the Artsakh Republic authorities and personally myself I extend my cordial congratulations on the International Women's Day.

The nature has generously endowed you with warmth and care, delicacy and tenderness, beauty and charm, at the same time giving you boundless patience and great soul, endless power and strength to fulfill your life mission with dignity, carry the heavy burden on your shoulders.

The duty of men is to do everything possible to alleviate that burden, share your concerns, make your life happy and careless so that you always feel safe and secure, live quietly and peacefully, engage in your favorite work at home and outdoors. We are grateful to you for everything that you do for the sake of your families, for the sake of native country and people.

Dear mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sisters and wives, Artsakh women!

I sincerely wish that you, your relatives and friends be always healthy and happy, that your home hearths never extinguish, happiness and joy, love and wealth never diminish in your homes. Let success accompany you all your life!"

English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 8, ARMENPRESS. Armenian MP representing Georgian Dream party Ruslan Poghosyan made an announcement at the parliament condemning the Sumgayit massacres of peaceful Armenians 30 years ago.

ARMENPRESS reports Poghosyan saying, The collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it a number of tragic events. Bloody ethnic conflicts took place, many people fell victim. This year we mark the 30th anniversary of Sumgayit tragic events. This was the first massive bloodshed against peaceful population during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The tragedy in Sumgayit became the reason of strained relations between the Armenian and Azerbaijani people, which unfortunately even today are far from being called peaceful. I wish to remember those peaceful people with sorrow that died under the ruins of the USSR and I wish Sumgayit bloodshed not to be repeated anywhere else.

English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
NEW YORK CITYThe Kickstarter-funded documentary about the only American artist ever to have been convicted of obscenity will have its world premiere at New York City's IFC Center on March 31, as part of the inaugural What The Fest!? film festival.

Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana concerns the life and work of the underground comic book artist, whose series Boiled Angels was first targeted by the FBI in December of 1991. Diana had just lost his day job as a school janitor in Largo, Florida, and the FBI agents were particularly interested in the cover of Boiled Angels 6, which depicted the 1990 murders of five students in nearby Gainesville, which at that point was unsolvedand the agents wanted Diana to know that he was a "person of interest" in those murders, so much so that they actually forced him to have a blood test and compared the results to blood found at the scene of the killings.

Of course, the actual killer was eventually caught, but by then, Diana had attracted a little too much attention, and that led to undercover cop Michael Flores writing some complementary letters to Dianaand requesting that Diana send Flores copies of Boiled Angels 7 and ATE (pictured above). Once he received them, Flores promptly turned them over to Assistant State's Attorney Stuart Baggish, who just as promptly charged Diana with three counts of obscenity under Florida Statute 847.011, for publishing, advertising and distributing allegedly obscene comics.

Diana's trial in 1994 lasted about a week, and the elderly jury took just 40 minutes to convict him of all charges, despite an excellent defense by Florida First Amendment attorney Luke Lirot, with the backing of the then-new Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. After spending four days in jail awaiting sentencing, Diana was released on three years' probation, during which time he was ordered to stay away from all children, undergo psychological testing, enroll in a journalistic ethics course, pay a $3,000 fine, and perform 1,248 hours of community serviceand not to draw anything. Diana got permission from the court to spend the last part of his probation in his hometown, New York Citywhere he would often sneak out to his car to draw his comics, away from the possibly prying eyes of law enforcement.

But Diana never did complete all that community service, nor did he pay his fine, which led to a warrant being issued in Florida for his having violated his probationand until the stretch goal for the documentary's Kickstarter raised enough money to pay that fine, Diana couldn't set foot in the Sunshine State without fear of being arrested.

More information about Diana's life, artwork and trial can be found here.

Fast-forward about 20 years, and Frank Hennenlotter, director of such "underground classics" as Basket Case, Frankenhooker and Brain Damage, got the idea to create a documentary of Diana's trial, and the Kickstarter to fund the film concluded in mid-November, 2016, having raised in excess of $45,000.

"Does freedom of speech mean anything when authorities see only obscenity?" Hennenlotter asked as part of the Kickstarter plea. "Does an artists vision matter when community standards conspire to suppress it? In a small town in Florida back in 1994, Mike Diana learned that the answer was a resounding no. Freedom of speech doesnt mean anything when your art is declared obscene. And one mans art could be another mans obscenity."

As for Diana himself, he currently enjoys painting, and at last report, his comic art was being published by New Jersey-based Angry Drunk Graphics. However, Diana and Hennenlotter will be attending the documentary's premiere, along with its producers Anthony Sneed and Frank Hunchback. Tickets for the 4 p.m. showing are available here. The IFC Center is located at 323 Sixth Avenue, New York 10014.
CYBERSPACEReaction from Washington, D.C., to Stormy Daniels lawsuit against Donald Trump was swift on Wednesday, with Republicans and Democrats reacting in largely predictable waysthough even some in the opposition party were reluctant to discuss the suit in which the AVN Hall of Famer attempts to invalidate a hush agreement over her alleged affair with Trump a decade ago.

Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti claim in the suit that the agreement was never valid in the first place because, they allege, Trump refused to sign it.

But even as politicians attempted to find the right words to address the awkward and potentially criminal allegations that Trump not only cheated on his wife with Daniels just a few months after his son was born, Trumps own press secretary appeared to fumble her response, inadvertently confirming that a contract to buy Daniels silence does indeed exist, something that Trump himself has uncharacteristically never deniedor confirmed.

At her daily press briefing on Wednesday, Sanders asserted that the Daniels case has already been won in arbitration, making the clear implication that there was, indeed, a case between Trump and Daniels to arbitrate. Arbitration is generally cheaper, quicker and more private way to settle legal disputes compared to litigation in court.

Avenatti called Sanders claim ludicrous. But the more significant reaction, at least as far as Sanders is concerned, may have come from Trump himself, who according to a report by CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, was very unhappy with the way Sanders answered the questions about Daniels lawsuit.

Acostas source told him that Trump believes his press secretary gave the Stormy Daniels storyline steroids.

According to a report by NBC News, Trumps lawyer Michael Cohen, who has admitted paying $130,000 to Daniels out of his own personal funds, obtained a restraining order from a retired judge authorized to act as a private arbitrator. The order supposedly requires Daniels to refrain from any comment on her affair with Trump or the hush deal she struck with Cohen just days before the 2016 presidential election.

In the nations capital, most Republicans either shied away from commenting on the Daniels lawsuit, or attempted to downplay it.

When asked by a Washington Post reporter to comment on the lawsuit, Tennessee GOP Senator Lamar Alexander simply chuckled and walked away.

Another Republican senator, John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, initially told a Post reporter, This is no country for creepy old men.

But Kennedy quickly backtracked, adding that his comments were not intended to reflect poorly on President Donald Trump, the Post reported.

The one Republican who was critical of Trump was politician who has been involved in a somewhat similar situation himself. Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina who is now a House Representative from that state, called the hush money deal with Daniels deeply troubling. He also called the allegations against Trump part of a larger pattern ... not a one-off.

In 2009, when he was governor, Sanford was revealed to be involved in an extramarital affair with a TV news reporter in Argentina, Maria Belen Chapur. But unlike Trumps behavior with Daniels, Sanford sought a permanent relationship with Chapur, divorcing his wife and becoming engaged to Chapur in 2012only to break off the engagement in 2014, and then reunite as recently as last year.

Democrats were generally more forthcoming with comments about the Daniels lawsuit, with California member of Congress Brad Sherman telling the Post, If this was any other political figure, theyd be writing their resignation speech now.

Lanny Davis, a longtime Democratic party operative and former lawyer for President Bill Clinton, called Republican reaction to the Daniels lawsuit utter hypocrisy.

But Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York shrugged off the Daniels story. Im not going to comment on that issue, he said. We want to stick to infrastructure.
BROOMFIELD, Colo.Eldorado Trading Company has partnered with Germany-based manufacturer, Satisfyer, to bring Eldorado customers their newest release, the Satisfyer Pro Traveler.

We are glad to be offering this new item to retailers, said Jon Vogt, Eldorados director of purchasing. The Pro Traveler is compact and cute, with a magnetic cover that keeps it discreet, making it a great option for those on the go. We expect consumers to value the portable size.

The new Pro Traveler model features a sleek and elegant design, including a practical magnetic closure cap giving consumers a hygienic way to store the toy when not in use. This smaller device contains Satisfyers renowned pressure wave technology that enables multiple orgasms through contactless stimulation. The Pro Traveler offers users eleven stimulating settings and the powerful motor is quiet and waterproof, so it can be used in the bath as well. Additionally, the ring, which fits snugly around the clitoris, is made of skin-friendly silicone.

The Satisfyer brand entered the global market in 2016 with their stylish Satisfyer Pro 2 pressure wave stimulator. The Satisfyer line not only offers consumers a range of orgasmic models at different price points, but also award-winning design. Satisfyer won the coveted iF Design Award for its Pro Penguin and Pro G-Spot Rabbit toys as well as a Reddot Award for its Satisfyer 1 model.

The Satisfyer Pro Traveler is now is stock and ready to ship from Eldorado. For more information on the product and to place an order, call (800) 525-0848, email [email protected] or visit Eldorado.net.
If federal government won't act to protect power grid from potential attacks, states must, expert told lawmakers

Peter Vincent Pry - executive director of the task force on National and Homeland Security - is on a mission to educate people about the dangers of an electromagnetic pulse attack.Pry's recent stop on his educational tour was the Joint Legislative Emergency Management Oversight Committee where, on Feb. 15, he warned lawmakers about the real dangers of an EMP attack. Pry has a long history of experience with EMPs as the former chief of staff of the EMP commission.The threat is very real, he said.EMPs are bursts of electromagnetic energy which can disrupt or seriously damage electronic equipment. These bursts are not visible to the naked eye and don't cause physical damage to people, but they can wreak havoc on an electric grid.Pry said.An EMP burst could cause a widespread, protracted blackout and bring the United States to a standstill if it hit the right target. Pry said if an EMP burst hit a major civilian electric grids then anything that requires electricity would be shut down.Pry said.An EMP burst could come from a natural source such as a solar flare or from an unnatural source like a nuclear detonation.Pry said.Pry said there is a concern that North Korea could detonate a nuclear weapon with one of their two satellites as it passes over the United States. The detonation would generate an EMP field covering the entire country, Canada, and much of Mexico and cause the destruction of our electronic civilization.It is possible the United States wouldn't even know who launched the EMP attack because hundreds of satellites are orbiting the Earth. A satellite isn't necessary for the attack either. A short range missile launched off a freighter could do the trick, too.Pry said Americans need to start taking this threat seriously. That includes preparing by hardening the electric grids, in part by employing surge arresters to stop an EMP pulse from running through the entire grid.If the federal government is unwilling to commit the resources, then, Pry said, the states should act. Russia and North Korea, he said, are preparing for such an attack. We aren't.Pry said.Pry said hardening the grid isn't that expensive either and estimated protecting the entire country would cost at least $2 billion to $3 billion dollars. But the amount of protection is going to vary from state to state depending on their individual infrastructure, but Pry said every state's legislators should look at protecting their local grids.Pry said.
Open seats, competitive races, uncertain turnout add new levels of intrigue to midterm contests



Jonathan Kappler, executive director of the N.C. FreeEnterprise Foundation, previews legislative primaries at a March 5 event in Raleigh. (CJ photo by Dan Way)

The 2018 legislative primary, set for May 8, should provide more drama than usual. That's the initial assessment of Jonathan Kappler, executive director of the North Carolina FreeEnterprise Foundation, a nonpartisan group that tracks elections and campaigns.More than 500 candidates filed for the General Assembly, with Democrats and Republicans fielding hopefuls effectively in all 170 legislative districts. A higher-than-normal number of lawmaker retirements - along with incumbent House members seeking Senate seats - should boost the number of competitive races. Two races in particular, one involving longtime GOP Sen. Bob Rucho, should generate plenty of statewide interest.Kappler made these remarks to an audience of lobbyists, business representatives, and election watchers Monday in Raleigh.The headline for the open seat in Senate District 34 might be "The Return of Rucho," Kappler said.Rucho represented Mecklenburg County in the Senate from 1997-2004, and 2008-16. As co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he was a fierce advocate for Republican tax reform, and led Senate redistricting efforts. He said he has bought a home in south Iredell County to run for the newly configured seat.Rucho will face A.J. Daoud, who also might have residency issues, Kappler said. Legislative candidates typically must live in their district a year prior to election, but that requirement was waived because of court-ordered redistricting. Daoud, who has held various Republican Party positions and ran unsuccessfully for secretary of state in 2016, reportedly has moved into his funeral home in Yadkin County. Iredell County planning board member Vickie Sawyer and Bill Howell, a member of the Iredell-Statesville school board, are the other candidates.One unexpectedly contentious race could unfold in House District 11, where incumbent Wake County Democrat Duane Hall has been hit with a series of sexual harassment allegations. Hall has been considered a rising star in the Democratic Party with ambitions for higher office. Kappler said the harassment allegations could cause trouble for Hall, who drew two women challengers, Allison Dahle and Heather Metour.Hall has defiantly maintained his innocence. He announced Sunday he doesn't intend to bow out from the campaign or resign from the House despite demands from Gov. Roy Cooper, House colleagues, and party leaders to step aside.Hall contends N.C. Policy Watch, part of the liberal advocacy group N.C. Justice Center, is trafficking in gossip and untruths. He said the charges are a personal attack stemming from a former romantic relationship with Megan Glazier, daughter of Justice Center Executive Director Rick Glazier. Policy Watch Director Rob Schofield called Hall's comments outrageous and false, and stood by his organization's reporting.Kappler said Metour's candidacy adds intrigue to the race. Cary resident Brad Cooper said, during his murder trial, he was in a romantic relationship with her. Cooper was accused of strangling his wife Nancy in 2008. Her body was found at a Cary construction site. Metour didn't testify at the trial.Whoever emerges from the primary should be favored to win the general election, Kappler said. NCFEF rates the district heavily Democratic, based on voter registration and previous voting behavior.Kappler gave an overview of a number of legislative and congressional races, and said this election likely has the most participants ever - 325 House, 148 Senate, and 62 U.S. House candidates.Unaffiliated and write-in candidates will boost that number. Unaffiliated candidates must file their petition signatures by primary day. Write-in candidates must file by July 24 or Aug. 8, depending on whether they are running in a single-county or multi-county district.Democrats have candidates running for all 170 legislative seats. Republicans fielded candidates in 169 primaries, but Kappler said the GOP is backing unaffiliated candidate Kenneth Fontenot in House District 24, so effectively would have every race covered.There will be 51 contested House primaries - 26 Republican and 25 Democratic.There will be 23 Senate races with more than one candidate - 12 Republican and 11 Democratic.Those competitive races feature 18 Republican and seven Democratic incumbents in the House; nine Republican and three Democratic incumbents in the Senate.Because this is a midterm election, Kappler predicted uneven turnout.involving sheriffs and other officials that could drive voters to the polls more than national or state influences.While many districts continue to favor one political party or the other, Kappler said the trend in North Carolina has moved toward more competitive races. Half of N.C.'s voting population was not born here. Those transplants may be unaware of or unfazed by the state's political history. The historic West-East divide is being supplanted by a rural-urban split. The suburbs again will be the biggest battleground for swing votes.While many political observers believe the midterm election will follow historic precedent and be a good year for the party that does not control the White House, Kappler can't say how events will play out in North Carolina.so North Carolina might not follow national trends.Kappler said, and the side most invigorated by his politics - fans or foes - could sway outcomes.The shape of the economy, foreign affairs, and potential international crises could play an electoral role, Kappler said.At the state level, changing demographics, Cooper's potential to lure national party spending on Democratic races, and whether Republicans use the upcoming short session to place GOP-friendly constitutional amendments on the ballot to attract voters are worth watching, Kappler said.
Tariffs are taxes. They have always been. So when President Donald Trump announced plans to impose costly tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum into the United States, he was threatening to raise taxes on most American consumers and businesses in order to boost the incomes of special interests.Trade protectionism has been and will always be about a few using their political connections to steal resources from the many. The pioneer of economic analysis, Adam Smith , warned in 1776 against cabals of self-interested businessmen scheming against the public. His warning is just as valid today. North Carolinians, in particular, have good reason to take it seriously and to encourage their elected representatives to block Trump's proposed tax hike.Our state's economy thrives on international trade. During 2017, business operations in North Carolina exported nearly $33 billion worth of goods and services to consumers in other countries, of which about a third went to Canada and Mexico. This total understates the significance of worldwide commerce to North Carolina's economy, since interstate and international flows of inputs and outputs within supply chains are so complicated that they are hard to disentangle and measure separately.Even taking the official numbers at face value, however, we are talking about exports from North Carolina of, for example, $2 billion worth of aircraft and parts, $1 billion worth of motor vehicles and parts, and $732 million worth of other mechanical and machine parts.As should be obvious, I didn't pick random examples. These industries are all significant buyers of steel. Levying tariffs to jack up steel prices will hurt these firms, which employ vastly more North Carolinians (and other Americans) than the steel companies do.The New York Times recently reported on one such company: Insteel Industries, based in Mount Airy. Its plants in North Carolina and other states produce the rods and wires that reinforce concrete for construction projects. Insteel chairman H.O. Woltz III observed that he employs a thousand people, most of whom earn good money ($20 an hour) in jobs not requiring a college education.If steel tariffs go up by as much as the president wants and Woltz keeps his prices the same, his company will soon be out of business. If he raises Insteel's prices to compensate, he'll lose sales.he told the Times.The damage to North Carolina's economy won't end there. Raising the cost of construction will adversely affect business and governmental budgets. And as has happened during previous attempts to protect America's steel industry, other countries are likely to retaliate against U.S. imports. North Carolina enterprises export billions of dollars worth of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, tobacco products, swine, poultry, fabrics, fibers, and cables. Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians work in these industries, or in logistics, finance, insurance, maintenance, or other vendors serving them.In defense of Trump's scheme, administration officials and fellow travelers argued that raising business costs and consumer prices would be a small price to pay for protecting America's steel and aluminum sectors. Ironically, they were making the same kind of argument that Democrats and progressives made only a few weeks before against the federal tax cuts enacted by Congress and signed by the president: that if you divide the total savings - or total costs, in this case - by the entire population, the per-person effect isn't gigantic.Conservatives are usually adept at spotting the flaw in such arguments. Even if it costs only a few dollars per person to fund a government grant or subsidy to a few well-connected beneficiaries, we reject the idea as unfair and economically counterproductive.Trade policy is no different. No company has the right to force consumers to buy its product at inflated prices. No president or legislator should apply such force on the company's behalf. And no conservative should fail to condemn any politician who does.
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 issues.
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders

Press Release:



James S. Brady Press Briefing Room  2:45 P.M. EST



MS. SANDERS: Good afternoon. As you all saw, the President delivered remarks at the Latino Coalition Summit this afternoon. The business leaders in attendance are living proof that the American Dream is back and stronger than ever under President Trump's leadership.



As the President noted, last year Hispanic unemployment reached the lowest level in history. It has now remained below 5 percent for the longest period ever recorded.



Latino-owned businesses are thriving like never before, contributing nearly half a trillion dollars for our economy last year alone. And with the President's pro-growth policies, this is only the beginning.



The last couple of weeks, we have been highlighting Senate Democrats' historic efforts to obstruct the ability of the government to function. A stunning 43 percent of the President's highly qualified nominees are still waiting for confirmation in the Senate. Senator Schumer's tactics have led to 102 fewer confirmations than the next closest administration.



As I noted before, blocking Ric Grenell from serving as Ambassador to Germany is putting our national security in jeopardy.



Today, I'd like to highlight Yleem Poblete. It has been almost 150 days since Dr. Poblete was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance. She would work to verify compliance of arms control, including disarmament agreements and missile defense cooperation.



We need her in place so she's able to fully represent the United States at upcoming international meetings to discuss Syria's use of chemical weapons, and to participate in April's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meetings. Say that really fast.



And yet, Senator Schumer is holding her up, putting the safety and security of the American people and, frankly, the entire world in danger.



Senator Schumer is blocking nominees indiscriminately. He forces time-wasting procedural votes on nominees, and then eventually votes in support of them.



Just yesterday, the Senate had to waste precious floor time on a universally respected nominee, Terry Doughty, who was confirmed 98 to 0. Even Senator Schumer eventually voted in favor of the nominee, yet still demanded the Senate go through archaic Senate procedure that delays votes and wastes the American people's time. It's a disgrace, it's dangerous, and it must come to an end.



And with that, I will take your questions.



Q Sarah, on the tariffs. Does the President expect to sign the tariffs tomorrow? And can countries like Mexico and Canada and allies within the European Union expect to have a pathway to gain an exemption from the tariffs?



MS. SANDERS: We expect that the President will sign something by the end of the week. And there are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries, as well, based on that process.



Q Specifically, what would they have to do to -



MS. SANDERS: Again, that would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption.



Cecilia.



Q So far this year, six top White House staffers have resigned. The President says there are more names to come. Why are so many people leaving this administration?



MS. SANDERS: Look, this administration has had a historic first year. We're going to continue to do great things. This is an intense place, as is every White House. And it's not abnormal that you would have people come and go. But we're continuing to do great work. We're continuing to focus on the President's agenda. And that's what we're all here to do.



Q But, actually, it is actually abnormal. No administration in recent history has had this much turnover as in this administration.



MS. SANDERS: I said it's not abnormal to have turnover.



Q If this is not the definition of "chaotic," how would you describe what's happening in these recent weeks?



MS. SANDERS: If it was, then I don't think we would be able to accomplish everything that we've done. The economy is stronger than it's been in ages, ISIS is on the run, the remaking of the judiciary. Jobs are coming in at record numbers. There are historic things that have taken place in the first year. Sounds like a very functioning place of business to me.



Steve.



Q When you talk about potential carve-outs, are you also talking about NATO Allies as possibly getting this exemption?



MS. SANDERS: It would - again, it would be a country-by-country, and it will be based on national security.



Q Let me follow up. Today, the President tweeted, "China has been asked to develop a plan for the year for a One Billion Dollar reduction in the[ir]...trade deficit." What's he talking about? Did he make this recently, or has he been talking to the Chinese?



MS. SANDERS: We had conversations with officials last week, and we're going to continue those conversations with them. The President has been very clear that he wants to address the trade imbalance that the United States has with a number of countries. He feels like the United States has been taken advantage of for far too long, and he's not going to allow that to continue under his watch.



Q Have they responded, Sarah?



MS. SANDERS: I'm sorry?



Q Have they responded?



MS. SANDERS: We're continuing conversations with them.



Jeff.



Q Sarah, you've said repeatedly that we've addressed our feelings on that situation, in regards to the Stormy Daniels payment. But specifically, can I ask, did the President approve of the payment that was made in October of 2016 by his longtime lawyer and advisor, Michael Cohen?



MS. SANDERS: Look, the President has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true. This case has already been won in arbitration. And anything beyond that, I would refer you to the President's outside counsel.



Q When did the President address, specifically, the cash payment that was made in October of 2016 to -



MS. SANDERS: The President has denied the allegations against him. And, again, this case has already been won in arbitration. Anything beyond that, I would refer you to outside counsel.



Q But did he know about that payment at the time, though?



MS. SANDERS: Jeff, I've addressed this as far as I can go.



Q I'm not talking about the actual allegations, but about the payment. Did he know about the payment at the time?



MS. SANDERS: Not that I'm aware of. And, again, anything beyond what I've already given you, I would refer you to the President's outside counsel.



Q Has he talked to Michael Cohen about that, since this has become a news story this week? Has he talked to Michael Cohen about it, if I can just ask one more question?



MS. SANDERS: I'm sorry?



Q Has he talked to Michael Cohen about that this week since this has become news?



MS. SANDERS: I don't know. I'm not sure.



Q Yeah, Sarah, this administration has now imposed additional sanctions on North Korea after concluding that Kim Jong-un's government assassinated his half-brother using VX nerve agent in Malaysia. Now we have authorities in Britain have announced that a nerve agent was used to try to kill a former Russian double agent and his wife. Obviously, Moscow the prime suspect.



What does this administration have to say about this attempt at assassination in the UK? And are sanctions against Russia likely, as they were in the case of the North Koreans?



MS. SANDERS: This is currently under review, and I'll keep you posted as we have further information and developments on that front.



Margaret.



Q Thank you. A quick clarifying question on the China tweet, and then had an NEC question. Is there any chance that if China did respond on that $1 billion reduction plan, that that could assuage or affect the shaping of this tariff plan before it is announced at the end of the week? In other words, is China's piece of this tariff thing negotiable, or are we only talking about tweaking Canada, Mexico, EU countries?



And my other -



MS. SANDERS: Hold on. Let me address that first.



Q Okay.



MS. SANDERS: The President has been clear that he wants to address the trade imbalances and the unfair practices. And certainly, we would take anything into consideration. But as of right now, we're moving fully ahead. And anything that would change would be done so on a national security basis - any decision for carve-outs.



Q Okay. Obviously, you're going to take your time and space on making the next NEC decision. But can you give us, sort of, a scope of the short list? And there's two names in particular I wanted to bounce off of you in this room, just among friends here - (laughter) - Larry Kudlow and Andy Pudzer. Can you confirm that those two are among the names under consideration? And how much of a role is Gary Cohn himself going to have in helping the President make that pick to succeed him?



MS. SANDERS: I'm not going to get into any naming or a list, but I can tell you that the President has a number of people under consideration. And he's going to take his time making that decision.



Q With Gary Cohn leaving, Senator Cornyn - Republican Senator Cornyn said today, "I'm concerned who the President will turn to for advice." Should he be concerned?



MS. SANDERS: No. The President has got a number of very accomplished, smart, capable people around him. And he is going to continue to lean on a lot of those people.



But at the end of the day, the American people voted overwhelmingly for President Donald J. Trump. They voted for his policies, his agenda, and for him to be the ultimate decision maker. And I think that everyone can rest assured in the American people's choice on that front, and that they've made the right one.



Q You said earlier today that we're continuing to bring in new people every day. Could you tell us who has come in this week?



MS. SANDERS: We've made several personnel announcements. I'd refer you back to the press releases of nominations and personnel announcements that have gone out. I think there's been at least three that have gone out earlier this week.



Q Senior level in the White House?



MS. SANDERS: I'd be happy to forward those to you, if you're not receiving the White House press releases.



John.



Q The European Union is being very shrewd in its threats of retaliation against these tariffs, saying that they would slap tariffs on things like bed linens, which would include the swing states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; his manufacturers - chewing tobacco, which includes North Carolina; cranberries, the leading producer of which is Wisconsin; orange juice, again Florida. Is the President concerned that he could hurt his political fortunes in some of these swing states if he goes ahead with these tariffs?



MS. SANDERS: Look, the President has been talking about this for a long time. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Other countries have created unfair trade policies for decades that have harmed our national and economic security. The President wants a strong economy and a strong national security. And a strong U.S. economy benefits all Americans, particularly by helping us maintain a strong military and defend U.S. national security interests. And he's going to continue every day to fight for making sure that we have strong both national and economic security.



Q But the EU is going to hit him where it hurts. Is he prepared to take the hit?



MS. SANDERS: The President is prepared to protect our country. That is the number-one priority he has as President, is to protect our economic and national security interests. And that's exactly what he's doing.



Q And if I could ask one just about Gary Cohn. He was a noted free trader, a globalist. Will the President seek another globalist, another free trader for that position?



MS. SANDERS: I'm not going to get ahead of the President's announcement on who will replace Gary.



Q A follow-up on Gary Cohn. The President has often touted the strength of the markets. There has been some volatility today. The U.S. markets opened down; so did the Asian markets. Is he concerned about the volatility in the markets in the wake of Gary Cohn's resignation announcement?



MS. SANDERS: The President is focused on long-term economic goals. The economy is still infinitely stronger today than it was when the President took office. We're going to continue to fight for strong economic policy, job growth, wage growth, and, certainly, an increased number of people that are working in this country again, specifically some of the actions that you're going to see through the announcement later this week.


CW ANZ: Report data break-ins - it's the law

Cyber security is an increasingly global endeavour with threat actors who know no boundaries unleashing attacks from nearly anywhere in the world. In this months issue of CW ANZ, we look at how Australias mandatory data breach notification law underscores recent efforts to lift its cyber security game, both locally and internationally.

Also in this issue:

How some of the biggest cyber security disasters could have been avoided

The headline-grabbing breaches that hit Accenture and Equifax in 2017 could have been averted had basic cyber hygiene been in place, as could a major DDoS attack that brought down the US internet.

Perth airport security plans stolen by hacker using third-party credentials

Australian authorities have named a Vietnamese hacker they say was able to break into the IT systems at Perth International Airport and steal security information.

Australian businesses set to focus on cyber security and IT outcomes in 2018

Besides transforming themselves through artificial intelligence and automation, businesses will keep a closer eye on cyber security and the outcomes of their technology investments this year.
Fayaz Shah was killed in Indian armys custody, but 24 years on his brother wages a lone battle to get justiceBy Anando Bhakto06 Mar 2018SRINAGAR: At around 6:30am on January 20, 1994, the Indian Army cordoned off the Barzulla Baghat locality in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir. An announcement was made from the parapet of a nearby mosque, asking men to assemble at a ground behind the Saddar Police Station.

Under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a counter-terror law with sweeping provisions, security forces enjoy widespread impunity [Al Jazeera] in PIC: Imtiyaz Shah Brother of Fayaz Shah.

We shivered in cold, as the 5th Garhwal Battalion of the Indian Army checked our ID-cards, said Imtiyaz Ahmad Shah, a man in his mid-forties, as he sipped coffee at a Barista outlet at Rajbagh in the heart of Srinagar.

Of all the men, Imtiyazs 24-year-old older brother, was detained by the army. He was well-known in his locality as a boxer and was endearingly called Fayaz Boxer.

Of all the men, Imtiyazs 24-year-old older brother, was detained by the army. He was well-known in his locality as a boxer and was endearingly called Fayaz Boxer.

Few knew that his full name was Fayaz Ahmad Shah, reminisced Imtiyaz. He said his older brother had once been a rebel fighter.

In 1990 he joined the Hizbullah, an indigenous militant group in Indian-administered Kashmir. He then crossed over to Pakistan for arms training towards the end of 1990. When he returned to Srinagar after around three months, in March 1991, he was arrested from our residence in Baghat, Imtiyaz said.

Fayaz was then taken to Papa 2, the Border Security Forces (BSF) infamous interrogation centre, from where, locals claim, nobody returned alive. It was shut down in 1996.

Currently, it is the official residence of the Jammu and Kashmir state Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Fayaz was lucky, he was tortured brutally but not killed, his brother said. After a month or so, he was sent to the Jammu Central jail.

Those days the TADA [anti-terror] court was set up at the Central Jails premises itself. My brother was granted bail in December 1992, Imtiyaz recalled.

After being released from jail, Fayaz wanted to turn the page and start a new life at the age of 23. He took a loan from J&K Bank after his ageing parents agreed to mortgage a land they owned at Barzulla Baghat. He set up a poultry farm and looked to the future with hope.

Little did he know what awaited him on that frozen January day in 1994.

An hour after the 5th Garhwal Battallion, a unit of the Garhwal Rifles of the Indian Army, detained Fayaz, the news came that they had taken him to a makeshift interrogation centre at Jehangir Colony, close to the Saddar Police Station in Baghat, Srinagar.

In the 1990s, the forces often converted the abandoned houses of the Kashmiri Pandits [the Hindu minority group which fled the region] into interrogation centres. Udhar usko peet peet kar maar daala (they beat him to death there), said Imtiyaz with a palpable anger, and his voice choked for the first time.

Custodial killings were the order of the day during the peak of armed rebellion in early 1990s, allege rights group. It is believed hundreds, perhaps thousands, perished in the interrogation centres (locally known as torture chambers) run by the armed forces, though there is no official figure available.

Al Jazeera reached out to the state government but until the time of publication of the article no response was received.

It is difficult to provide a figure. Records had not been maintained; most of these cases were not even registered, said Zahoor Wani, senior campaigner, Access to Justice, Amnesty International India.

People didnt approach the court because there was lack of awareness of their legal rights, and, second, there was, and continues to be, a sense of insecurity.

In the 1990s, the police would shoo away the victims families when they approached them for registering a case against the armed personnel for alleged extortion or murder, he said.

Replying to a question posed in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Indias parliament, Subhash Bhamre, the deputy minister of defence, said that 50 such cases have been reported by the state government to the central government.

A total of 50 cases have been received by the Union Government from the Government of Jammu and Kashmir for Prosecution Sanction against Armed Forces personnel under AFSPA, 1990, Bamre said on January 1.

All these cases took place from 2001 to 2016. This suggests that the state government has not sought permission from the central government for prosecution of the accused Army men in any of the cases from the 1990s.

Only in three cases, which had taken place in 2006, 2011, and 2014 respectively, the decision is pending. In the remaining 47 cases, permission has been denied.

The defence ministry further apprised the Rajya Sabha: The reason for denial/pendency of prosecution sanction is on account of lack of sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case.

Under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a counter-terror law with sweeping provisions, security forces enjoy widespread impunity.

Under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a counter-terror law with sweeping provisions, security forces enjoy widespread impunity.

Wani said even when an Army man has been found guilty in a court-martial, he can make an appeal in the Armed Forces Tribunal in New Delhi for overturning the judgement.

The victim or his family has no access to this tribunal and they cannot make a representation there.

In one fake encounter case, a military court in 2014 found an Army colonel, a captain and three other security personnel guilty of killing three Kashmiri civilians in 2010 and sentenced them for life.

But in July 2017, the sentence was suspended by the Army Tribunal. The five Army personnel had branded the slain civilians as foreign fighters for the sake of rewards.

Did the Army pick Fayaz because of his past?

Imtiyaz strongly refuted that notion. They didnt know he was a militant, he pointed out.

Nasir Qadri, a well-known lawyer in Jammu and Kashmir High Court, says the grounds of detention are often flimsy.

In the 1990s, the forces enjoyed absolute impunity from the law. They still do. At the check-points, if anything, including ones appearance or manners, or expression, aroused suspicion, one could be arrested and taken to an interrogation centre.

In the 1990s, the forces enjoyed absolute impunity from the law. They still do. At the check-points, if anything, including ones appearance or manners, or expression, aroused suspicion, one could be arrested and taken to an interrogation centre.

The practice continued as late as the early 2000s, claimed Muhammad Raafi, journalist at Kashmir Life, a local English weekly in Srinagar.

He recounted an incident from 2004: Our KMD bus was stopped by the Armed forces at a bridge in Papchan village, Bandipora. They checked our heartbeats by placing their hands against our chest. One man was detained because his heart was beating faster than normal.

A teacher in J&K Sainik School, Manasbal, who declined to be named, said that in the 1990s the use of torch was banned as mines can be fitted inside a torch.

Even if one was going out in the dark of the night one was not allowed to carry a torch. If one carried a torch, one would be picked up by the forces at once. There was no guarantee the person would come back alive, as the forces had zero accountability, he said.

On the evening of January 20, 1994, Imtiyaz recalled, at around 4pm, the Army dropped Fayazs body at his Khacherpora residence near Barzulla Baghat. The horrifying sight was witnessed by his unwell mother alone, as everyone else had gone out to secure Fayazs release. The old lady broke into a piercing cry and dashed towards the uniformed men beating her chest.

On the evening of January 20, 1994, Imtiyaz recalled, at around 4pm, the Army dropped Fayazs body at his Khacherpora residence near Barzulla Baghat. The horrifying sight was witnessed by his unwell mother alone, as everyone else had gone out to secure Fayazs release. The old lady broke into a piercing cry and dashed towards the uniformed men beating her chest.

They didnt show any mercy. With one strong blow of their fist, they broke her tooth, Imtiyaz uttered the words painfully and sipped some water.

The 5th Garhwal Battallion had brought the Army doctor along with them, who proclaimed the death occurred due to poisoning. However, no death certificate was issued to them by the doctor. Imtiyaz said that after Fayazs burial, they received a death certificate from the Srinagar Municipal Corporation.

They told us that Fayaz had consumed poison, said Imtiyaz, spreading some court documents in front of him, and hoisting a piece of paper with both hands.

This is the post-mortem report. You can see the date. It was handed over to us in 2003. Can you imagine a post-mortem report being handed over after nine years? he asked.

Fayazs autopsy was conducted on January 21, 1994. The Sadar Police Station at Rawal Pora Chowk, Srinagar, had, on that day, registered a case of custodial death under Section 176 CrPC.

Imtiyaz said: We moved heavens and earth to get a copy of the post-mortem report. We received it in 2003, shortly after we published a letter to the then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in Srinagar Times, an English daily, seeking his intervention.

Imtiyaz said: We moved heavens and earth to get a copy of the post-mortem report. We received it in 2003, shortly after we published a letter to the then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in Srinagar Times, an English daily, seeking his intervention.

As pressure built, Imtiyaz was summoned to the police control room, where the chief medical officer asked him the name of the doctor who had conducted Fayazs post-mortem. It was GN Bhat, Imtiyaz told them. Bhat had become a member of the state legislature by that time.

Bhat was hesitant, but he handed over a copy of the post-mortem report. It said that Fayaz died of smothering, Imtiyaz said, adding that Bhat had signed the report on a back date, January 20, 1994. But I refused to accept it until he had mentioned on the report that the date of delivery was June 10, 2003.

Having succeeded in procuring this vital piece of information, Imtiyaz filed a petition in the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), seeking justice for his brothers custodial death. He also wrote an application to the then Deputy Commissioner of Budgam district.

We knew we may never get justice. But we wanted the court to proclaim that it was a case of custodial killing, Imitiyaz said.

But legal experts say the SHRC is a toothless body and doesnt have the power to prosecute the Armed forces.

The SHRC only makes recommendations to the state government to provide compensation, but examples galore where the state government ignored such recommendations, Amnesty International India official Zahoor told Al Jazeera.

In early 2005, when the SHRC sought police response, mysterious changes appeared in the FIR (First Information Report) which had been registered at the time of Fayazs death. The police, Imtiyaz alleged, transferred the charges from under Section 176 CrPC, applicable to custodial deaths, to Section 174, which deals with cases where the victim died on his own.

Such a change in the FIR cannot be made unless a written permission from the District Commissioner for the same has been granted. In this case, the police acted on its free will, Imtiyaz said.

The police told the rights body that it was during a crackdown on January 20, 1994, that the Army had gone to Fayazs house and found him lying dead.

It was found that the deceased subject was an ex-militant of Jihad force and was hiding in a hideout in his own house. The deceased was not killed in custody but has died due to Cardiaz failure.

The post-mortem report was obtained and the doctor has also opined the cause of death as Congestive Cardiac failure leading to shock and cardiorespiratory arrest. The proceedings was converted to 174 CrPC and was closed as accidental, deputy director, prosecution, on behalf of Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone Srinagar, wrote to the SHRC on May 26, 2005.

This was farthest from the truth. The 5th Garhwal Battalion had lifted Fayaz. The police had lied. And that proves how the Army and the police work in connivance, Imtiyaz said in disgust.

The autopsy report had confirmed that there were noticeable black marks on the back of Fayazs head. The report had acknowledged haematoma. But the police, in its written response to the SHRC, did not explain these injuries.

Imtiyaz was denied access to both the FSL [Forensic Science Laboratory] report and the histopathological (HPE) report although samples for the same had been taken at the time of Fayazs post-mortem.

The HPE is a microscopic examination of tissue done in order to ascertain the cause of death and cellular damage.

How could they hand-over those reports? The reports would have proven that their poisoning theory was a cock and bull story, Imtiyaz said.

On June 26, 2007, in what seems like a little consolation for the victims family, the SHRC pronounced that Fayaz had died in custody.

The SHRC judge recommended that Imtiyaz be given a government job and a compensation of $ 1,534.

The SHRC judge recommended that Imtiyaz be given a government job and a compensation of $ 1,534.

Over a decade later, Imtiyaz, a hand-to-mouth auto-rickshaw driver, is still awaiting that compensation.

As for comeuppance of those who killed his brother, he says, Allah sabka hisab karta hai (No one can escape Gods justice).

Courtesy: AL JAZEERA NEWS

Source Link
A war hero who saved American lives under fire deserves the best care our government can muster. It's the very least they deserve for bravely serving overseas. Unfortunately, not all soldiers returning from active duty have been paid this respect. Nor have the canine soldiers in their ranks.

Reuters reports that the the United State Army has admitted to mishandling its retired war dogs.

In a report released last week, it was revealed that many of the good puppers, who served overseas protecting service personnel, have been left to live in kennels for up to 11 months  well beyond the deadline for them to be adopted or re-upped for government use. The report stipulates that many of these dogs were mistreated through a "lack of care and attention," making it necessary to put many of the animals down. It gets worse: the doggos who were adopted may have gone to the homes of unscreened individuals mismatching a war pup with the wrong owner could mean that it doesn't have the room it needs to exercise or could wind up with small children who stand a chance of being bit. In some cases, soldiers who wanted to adopt the dogs that they'd worked with overseas were told that they had no right to do so.

For its part, having been caught red-handed on this bullshit, a Department of Defense spokesperson has assured Reuters that the U.S. Army is now taking better care of the animals. Too bad that a bunch of loyal, obedient dogs had to suffer first before the Army could get their shit together.

Image via U.S. Department of Defense
On March 7, the Florida legislature passed a gun control bill in a bipartisan 67-50 vote, banning bump-stocks and imposing a 3-day waiting period on long-gun purchases and raising the minimum age for their purchase to 21; the legislation is a mixed bag as it also includes millions to arm and train school employees.



Despite this sop to gunhumpers, the NRA ardently opposed the legislation, which would normally have guaranteed that it would die. Instead, student activists from across Florida marched on the Tallahassee legislature, pouring on pressure for three solid weeks to see the legislation passed. The bill does not include their key demand: a ban on assault-style weapons whose primary use is anti-personnel.

Florida governor Rick Scott says he opposes the legislation because of its provision for arming teachers, but has stopped short of promising to veto it.



In the days leading up to the vote, the NRA's Florida lobbyist, Marion Hammer, issued an "emergency alert" to members asking them to contact Republicans and demand they vote no. "Neither the 3-day waiting period on all rifles and shotguns, raising the age from 18 to 21 to buy any firearm, or the bump stock ban will have any effect on crime," she wrote. But Republican leadership did not bend. In the closing debate, many lawmakers made reference to the outpouring of public input they had received in recent weeks, and several House members struggled to hold back tears as they described what had happened in the school. "I have been called a murderer," said Rep. Thomas Leek (R), of Daytona Beach, who voted for the bill. "I have been told I don't respect the Constitution." He said he ultimately decided to block out the outside lobbying and make the decision alone.

Florida legislature backs new gun restrictions after Parkland school shooting [Reuters]

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)





(Image: Lorie Shauli, CC-BY-SA)
When a beloved teacher at Palmerston North Boys' High School in New Zealand passed away in 2015, young men from the school  both past and present  performed a rousing haka in his honor. Powerful, literally gave me chills!

A commenter explains:

A little background to this haka I'm apart of the school and new mr tamatea better than most at the school. He was originally one of the creators to this haka and this is our school haka. Only our school and the old boys of the school perform this haka so it is unique to us. Mr tamatea was the head of Maori achievement in our school and he would always try (and successfully so) uphold the Maori traditions not within our school but the entire community. He was involved in one of the leading kapa haka groups in the country i.e the world ( kapa haka group being a group in which perform traditional Maori songs and Hakas) and I believe the Maori culture and maintaining the culture was engrained in his life. So to farewell this awesome teacher we did this haka and the significance of this haka as a farewell and the passion in which the boys performed it with can only be understood by the people who really knew him. But I hope that this helps others around the world understand how fitting that we perform this haka for him.

The teacher, 55-year-old Dawson Tahana Tamatea, was head of Te Reo Maori and Dean of Student Achievement at the school and died in his sleep.

(reddit)


Ordinary scarecrows cower in fear at the Super Monster Wolf, an animatronic beast invented to protect rice and chestnut crops from wild boar. The Super Monster Wolf has proven its value during trails near Kisarazu City in Japan. When an animal approaches, sensors on the Monster Wolf trigger its creepy eyes and hellish howl. From BBC News:



The Japan Agricultural Cooperatives say that crop losses have noticeably decreased in areas where the Super Monster Wolf has been present. Beforehand, farmers around Kisarazu were resigned to giving up at least part of their crops to wild boar every year.





Speaking to the Chiba Nippo news website, Chihiko Umezawa of the agricultural cooperative says that the device has an effective radius of about one kilometre, suggesting it is more effective than an electric fence.





Now, the robot wolf is going into mass production, with units costing about 514,000 yen ($4,840; 3,480) each, but there are options for farmers to pay a far cheaper monthly lease on a wolf instead.
News / National

by Simbarashe Sithole

A Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS) officer at Guruve court responsible for Community service caused a scene at Guruve hospital on Tuesday after she impounded Bulawayo24.com's camera that had been used in an interview with her husband who was attacked by assailants in Mdindo.The officer only identified as PV Muringai who was clad in ZPS uniform grabbed the camera from the reporter and confiscated the camera only to surrender it after a few minutes of her drama.Apparently her husband Keith Rupende a teacher at Magaya Secondary was reportedly arm bushed by armed robbers who assaulted him with iron bars in demand of cash on Mondayaround 19:00hours.Speaking to Bulawayo24.com on his hospital bed Rupende said he was assaulted by four to five men who robbed him of his bag and phone."I met two men who greeted me pretending to go on an opposition direction and subsequently made a U-turn to assault me."I overpowered one of them who called for iron bars and their colleagues came and to assault me demanding cash, I told them l had $50 in the bag and after the serious thrash they varnished," revealed Rupende.He was seriously injured and a police report was filed at Mdindo police base before he was referred to Guruve hospital.Meanwhile, there is an increase in armed thugs in Guruve since another case was recorded at Chingwaro Secondary School in Kachuta area where 10 thugs armed with iron bars and clubs chased after school children and a teacher on their way to school around 7am, the matter was reported at Guruve police.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Cabinet has approved the upgrading of Beitbridge Border Post, with talks for a loan of $239 million already underway.Transport and Infrastructure Development minister, Jorum Gumbo confirmed that talks are underway for a loan deal so that the country's busiest border post could, be upgraded to international standards."The idea is to ensure we close leakages and improve trade. This project would facilitate improved movement of goods and people," he said.Gumbo said, already, Cabinet has approved that Zimborders, a local consortium, be the contractor for the project.Although he could not disclose the actual upgrading that is to be undertaken by his ministry, Zimborders was given the tender in 2016, but work could not start due to infighting within Zanu-PF and former President Robert Mugabe's government.After the ascendency of Emmerson Mnangagwa to the presidency last November, the local company has been mandated to undertake works on the country's busiest border post.Government insiders state that the upgrading works will include the construction of a new bridge, rehabilitation of the weighbridge and upgrading of communication and security systems.The project seeks to upgrade the road network to and from the bridge, installing gate control infrastructure and erecting a perimeter fence around the post. Other facilities to be upgraded include the parking areas, commercial centre and staff accommodation.The border post will also be computerised and have its lighting systems upgraded.Beitbridge Border Post is one of the busiest inland ports in sub-Saharan Africa and links the northern and southern corridors, with 500 vehicles and 10 000 travellers passing through the port daily.However, the port lacks soft and hard infrastructure that includes information technology and inspection bays, among others, to deal with high volumes of traffic have resulted in a lot of inconvenience to travellers.Travellers spend between six and 18 hours at the port of entry to complete immigration and customs formalities.The clearance of commercial traffic can take up to three days. The border is one of the most porous in the entire region, something which has made Zimbabwe's counterpart in South Africa uneasy.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga was yesterday rushed to hospital after suffering a dramatic fall at the Zanu PF headquarters - forcing him to cancel his politburo attendance.The 61-year-old tripped and fell and badly hurt his hand just after arriving for yesterday's conclave, whose agenda included election preparations, mobilisation of voters, party regalia and the threat of defections ahead of the crucial mid-year general election.The former commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces reportedly missed a step and slipped, before injuring his hand.He sustained a mild sprain that could limit his function for a few days.Chiwenga was mobbed by concerned staffers and colleagues at the Zanu PF headquarters foyer, who commiserated with him as he was being rushed to hospital.He was whisked away in his Range Rover, escorted by the police."We were all worried when he slipped and hurt his hand but, as you saw, he is a fighter. He just had to be excused earlier to get his hand looked at," said a staffer at the ruling party offices.The politburo continued with its deliberations without Chiwenga who, along with Vice President Kembo Mohadi, flank party leader and President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the top table.Chiwenga is not the first high-profile official to fall in public under varying circumstances.Former president Robert Mugabe became the butt of jokes and mimicry in February 2015 when he missed a step and tumbled off the podium at the then Harare International Airport moments after arriving from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.The incident caused a witch-hunt within Mugabe's inner circle, resulting in the removal of some of his close aides from the security team.In May 2014, former police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri collapsed at a parade at Morris Depot soon after Mugabe had addressed graduates.He was quickly wheeled off on a stretcher.He later attributed his blackout to working long hours and a mix-up in the shoes he wore for the occasion."I have been working overnight for quite some time. The situation has been exacerbated or worsened by the fact that there was a mix-up of my shoes. The right shoe was mixed up with the left one. The right shoe is a bit small and it is an old shoe so my toes were burning because of the tightness of the shoe and there was no circulation (of blood) in that leg that caused me to be dizzy and then fell down."I had this small blackout because of what I have explained, lack of circulation but checked the blood pressure is ok you can ask Dr Mombeshora, he also checked the sugar levels, they are fine and that coupled with the heat and the type of clothing and what I also had inside because in the morning it was a bit chilly, so I had put on some T-shirt as you can see so that caused that (collapse)," he said.
SRINAGAR(AP): More than a dozen protests erupted across Kashmir on Monday, with government forces firing tear gas and demonstrators hurling rocks as tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of the disputed Himalayan region after soldiers killed four civilians and two suspected militants.

The overnight shooting at a military checkpoint threatened to spark even more unrest in a region that in recent years has seen renewed rebel attacks and repeated public protests against Indian rule.

The authorities had put parts of the densely militarized region under lockdown after the late Sunday night shooting, deploying soldiers and riot police, shutting schools and internet service and ordering people off the streets in some places in an attempt to derail protests.



But widespread anger, along with funerals for the six killed and separatist calls for a business shutdown, helped ignite angry demonstrations, with thousands shouting slogans against Indias army and demanding the end of New Delhis rule over Kashmir.

Many protests centered around the town of Shopian, where the shooting occurred, an outwardly bucolic region of mountain forests and apple orchards.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the protests.

The trouble began late Sunday night, when officials say a car refused to stop at a checkpoint outside a Shopian military base and militants inside fired at the soldiers.

Indian army spokesman Col. Rajesh Kalia said a rebel and three civilians were killed when soldiers fired back. A fourth civilians body was recovered from a nearby car, officials said, and the body of another rebel was found a few kilometers (miles) away. Authorities said hed been injured in the shooting and died later.

Kalia called the slain civilians over-ground workers, a term that Indian security forces use for people who give support to the rebels.

Police, though, were careful not to use that term, calling them simply young men and saying they were investigating the incident. However, Kashmirs top elected official, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, termed them civilians. In a tweet, Mufti said she was deeply distressed by more deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire in Shopian.

But across the region, most people believed all were killed in cold blood. The soldiers shoot even at shadows, and theyre employing every tactic to suppress people, said Bashir Ahmed, a Shopian resident.

Separatists challenging Indian sovereignty over Kashmir called for a strike after the shooting, and shops and businesses slammed shut across the region.

Top separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq called the armys version propaganda and lies and said the soldiers had let loose mayhem at Shopian.

Authorities cut cellphone internet services in the most restive towns, and reduced connection speeds in other parts of the Kashmir Valley, a common government practice to calm tensions and prevent anti-India demonstrations from being organized.

Officials also ordered schools closed on Monday and suspended rail service in the region.

At one of the funerals for the dead rebels, army soldiers resorted to aerial firing to disperse thousands of mourners in a village in the Shopian area. No one was reported injured.

In January, anti-India protests erupted across Kashmir after army soldiers shot and killed three civilians during clashes in the same area.

Indian troops are covered by controversial powers that shield them from prosecution while serving in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, army and paramilitary officers can search homes and make arrests without warrants, shoot at people suspected of being separatists and blow up buildings or homes on suspicion that insurgents are using them.

Rights activists accuse Indian troops in Kashmir of routinely misusing their power, killing civilians in staged confrontations for promotions or rewards and to suppress public sentiment against Indian rule.

Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India with both nations claiming the entire region.  AP
News / National

by Staff reporter

FOR the first time in decades, state newspapers are no longer referring to Robert Mugabe as "comrade" after the 94-year-old former president reportedly expressed support for the country's newest opposition party.All of Zimbabwe's nationalists and former independence war heroes are referred to as "comrades", a title that harks back to the ideological training many got from the former Soviet Union and China.But Mugabe's reported foray into opposition politics appears to have cost him his own rank.Mugabe last week expressed support for the National Patriotic Front led by former cabinet minister and ally Ambrose Mutinhiri. Some officials in the ruling party have rounded on Mugabe for that, accusing him of trying to destabilise Zanu-PF.The state-run Herald and Chronicle newspapers were on Wednesday referring to the former president as plain "Mr Mugabe".The development left some on social media wondering if Mugabe might even one day be denied a final resting place at the National Heroes' Acre  the Harare shrine where many top former revolutionaries are buried.Said journalist Hopwell Chin'ono on Twitter: "When you become Mr from Cde in the Herald then your 'revolutionary' stock would have receded badly." He said Mugabe had himself "denied genuine heroes that status on the basis that they would have disagreed with him."Added @ali_naka: "When 'state' media in Zimbabwe starts calling you 'Mr' not comrade, next stop they will call you by First Name like Village twitter you might not make it to 'Heroes Acre'."
News / National

by Staff reporter

Russia's President Mr Vladimir Putin has praised President Mnangagwa for bringing political stability to the country and steering Zimbabwe towards economic growth.The message was delivered by Russia's Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov who met President Mnangagwa at Munhumutapa Offices today."As for the messages we conveyed from President Putin to the President of Zimbabwe, these messages are in support to the efforts of the President of Zimbabwe in stabilising the political situation in the country and consolidating society and developing comprehensive and multi-faceted cooperation with countries that are willing to help Zimbabwe in addressing its economy," he said.
Opinion / Columnist

Contact the author at mathewuniquedube85@gmail.com for further discussions.

Fellow Zimbabweans, it is with great concern that I have to write this article. I have noted how we easily get carried away in face of promises. Herein, I try to demonstrate how unchecked belief in promises has undermined progress in our country. It is not to rule out promises as the starting point of progress, but to illustrate how all the priority has been directed to, and therefore revolved within the sphere of promises.Let us start with ZANU-PF campaign manifesto of 2013 elections in form of ZIMASSET. One of the provisions in the ZIMASSET was that if ZANU-PF won the elections, economic growth will be stimulated, after which 2 million jobs were to be created. People celebrated the promises in the ZIMASSET, and indeed elections came where Zanu won. Did what was said in their manifesto come to pass? I think the answer is obvious to everyone. Instead, beyond the elections, the ruling party never ceased to be in the campaign mood. What bedevilled the party were internal factional fights that were perpetuated at the expense of the nation's welfare. Those in leadership positions never bothered do deliver as was outlined in ZIMASSET policy document but where in hyper hallucination of power struggles. Come 2018, a large number of people are still not employed, surviving through means way below the poverty line. If only we had waited until the results of the promises in the ZIMASSET to celebrate, the better.The promise of land redistribution. When our forefathers went to war against the rule of the white minority, one major problem to be redressed was that of Land issues. In the wake of independence, the ruling part waited until when their political grip was under threat to act on it. Clearly, those in government were never proactive on the land issue from Lancaster negotiations in 1979 to the year 2000. In Lancaster house they had given in to a clause that protect the dominance of a minority race in the economy and land issue to be particular. Because MDC threatened to take over in 2000, on a reactive move, the government engaged in the fast tract land reform program that was carried in a chaotic manner. After all, a very few ordinary Zimbabweans benefited from that land reform program. It is only the elite that managed to grab multiple farms rendering the exercise elitist. That promise of land redistribution has ignored us as the youths. There is a time I wanted to apply for a land portion at Mhlahlandlela in 2015 and to my disappointment, I was told that I should have done so around 2000. Now the problem is that in 2000 I was just a primary school going child. Thus, we as youth are effectively shut out as possible beneficiaries of Land distribution. Because it has not yielded as was intended land redistribution remains a promise that was just celebrated.Both the ruling party and the major opposition have continual professed to be parties that are eager to promote democracy. In that regard, the ruling party has failed dismal. We know how people were manhandled in the wake of 2008 presidential runoff. Our rights of freedom of expression are infringed even if we try to exercise them responsible. Is that what constitute democracy? Of late MDC-T has not been left behind. We read of the violence that took place at the People Hero funeral Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and the violence that took place in Bulawayo recently. All what it means is that democracy is a promise that has never materialised in our country. These parties should not stop at promising but should practise what they preach because the era of celebrated promises must stop.The second president of the Republic has joined in, throwing his weight behind the world of promises that never materialise. As a new president, H.E set 100 days as a time frame in which progress will be kick started. We all got eager as we had a myriad of problems that haunted us from the era of the previous dispensation. There was no cash, no employment, the environment for running business not conducive. 100 days are over we are still engulfed by the same problems which our president promised to check out. One wonders if his promises will ever materialise. Is there any reason to celebrate them?As a country, I think it is over for us to continue relying on promises as a means to determine leadership capacity. We should consider what one is able to do through his/her history of making things work in an altruist manner. If we are committed to building a better Zimbabwe, we should hold people accountable for what they promise (in reference to those that are in leadership) because the era of celebrating promises should come to an end.
By Toby Melville SALISBURY, England (Reuters) - A nerve agent was used to deliberately poison a former Russian double agent and his daughter, Britain's top counter-terrorism officer said on Wednesday, in a case that threatens to further damage London's ties with Moscow. Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English city of Salisbury on Sunday afternoon. Both remain critically ill and a police officer who attended the scene is also in a serious condition in hospital. "This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent," London Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley told reporters. "I can also confirm that we believe the two people originally who became unwell were targeted specifically." Rowley said government scientists had identified the specific nerve agent but he would not say what it was because it was part of the investigation. He also declined to give any details about how it was administered to Skripal, 66, and his daughter. England's chief medical officer said the incident posed a low risk to the wider public but anyone feeling unwell was advised to seek medical advice. While Rowley would not say any more about the investigation, a U.S. security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the main line of police inquiry was that Russians may have used the substance against Skripal in revenge for his treachery. Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest by Russian authorities in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006 after a secret trial and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies caught in the West as part of a Cold War-style spy swap at Vienna airport. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said if Moscow were behind the incident then Britain could look again at sanctions and take other measures to punish Russia, which he cast as a "malign and disruptive" state. Russia denied any involvement, scolded Johnson for "wild" comments and said anti-Russian hysteria was being whipped up intentionally to damage relations with London. "It's very hard not to assess this (speculation) as provocative black PR designed to complicate relations between our two countries," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday. "NEED TO DETER RUSSIA" Malcolm Sperrin, a professor at the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, said nerve agents could cause heart failure, respiratory arrest, twitching or spasms. "Im not aware of a nerve agent having been used in this way previously," he said. Britain has specifically drawn parallels with the 2006 murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko who was killed with the radioactive polonium-210 in London. A previous British inquiry said Russian President Vladimir Putin probably approved the murder of Litvinenko, who died after drinking green tea laced with the rare and very potent radioactive isotope at London's Millennium Hotel. Russia denied involvement in the death of Litvinenko, which the British inquiry said had been hatched by the Federal Security Service (FSB), main successor to the Soviet-era KGB. Litvinenko's murder sent Britain's ties with Russia to what was then a post-Cold War low. Relations suffered further from Russia's annexation of Crimea and its military backing for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Former British defense minister Michael Fallon called for a stronger response if it turned out that Russia had been involved in the Skripal affair. "Weve got to respond more effectively than we did last time over Litvinenko. Our response then clearly wasnt strong enough," Fallon told Reuters. "We need to deter Russia from believing they can get away with attacks like this on our streets if its proved." The British capital has been dubbed "Londongrad" due to the large quantities of Russian money which have poured in since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. It is the Western city of choice for many oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. BIG OPERATION Rowley said hundreds of detectives were now working on the Skripal case to build up a timeline of his movements over the last few days. Officers have sealed off the area of Salisbury where Skripal was found as well as the Zizzi pizza restaurant where they dined and the Bishop's Mill pub where they had a drink. They also set up cordons near Solstice Park, a business park, in the nearby town of Amesbury. Skripal's son, Alexander, died last year aged 43. British media have said his death occurred during a visit to St Petersburg, Putin's home town. Skripal's wife Liudmila died of cancer in 2012. Both Alexander and Liudmila Skripal are buried at the London Road Cemetery in Salisbury. The Skripal case has come shortly before Russia's presidential election on March 18, which Putin is expected to win comfortably, extending his rule by a further six years. The former KGB officer has been president since 2000. (Additonal reporting by Estelle Shirbon and Kate Kelland, Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Carleton University has dropped a policy that required graduate students to pay a fee when taking parental leave.

The policy raised eyebrows last December when CBC's Ottawa Morning interviewed a mother who had been charged $280 to retain her spot in the program.

Clare Glassco, 38, was pursuing a master's degree in social work at Carleton University when she got pregnant and gave birth to her son, Henrik Whamond, last spring.

In addition to being charged the fee, Glassco also lost benefits such as extended health coverage, gym and library access, and her student bus pass.

"Everything was taken away, and at the same time I was paying them," Glassco said Wednesday in a followup interview with Ottawa Morning.

Carleton's faculty of graduate studies and post-doctoral affairs has since dropped the fee, but too late for Glassco.

"It would be great if I got my $280 back, and I'm still waiting for that. But it's definitely worth it so that down the line nobody else has to pay."

Call for bursaries

Glassco is pushing Carleton to create a bursary for students who take parental leave, similar to other universities in Ontario.

The University of Waterloo has a parental leave bursary for students or their partners who give birth or adopt. Students there have access to a $5,000 bursary in their first term off, plus another $3,000 for a second term.

"We are looking for Carleton to implement a bursary along those same lines," Glassco said.

In a previous interview with Ottawa Morning, Jeff Casello, associate vice-president of graduate studies at the University of Waterloo, said the school saw their retention rate rise among students starting families.

According to Paul Keen, Carleton's associate dean of graduate studies, dropping the fee was "the right thing to do." However Keen said in an email to CBC that discussions on a bursary are in their early days, and any comment now would be "premature."
A YouTube account belonging to the 17-year-old girl who escaped the so-called House of Horrors has been found, offering a glimpse into what life was like in the home where 13 siblings were allegedly starved and tortured.

David and Louise Turpins daughter managed to flee the home in Perris, California, to alert authorities of the alleged abuse which was taking place.

As the parents await trial for a string of abuse and neglect charges, Good Morning America uncovered a YouTube account belonging the teenage girl in which she regularly uploaded videos of herself under an alias.

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turpin

Good Morning America

In many of the clips, the girl sings songs to camera. In another video, she can be seen playing with one of the familys pet dogs inside the house. During the clip, viewers can briefly see dirt smudges on one of the door, as well as a huge pile of clothes dumped in the corner of the room.

According to Good Morning America, the last time the girl uploaded a video of herself was seven days before she managed to break out. An Instagram account belonging to the girl was also found, featuring mainly selfies and pictures of pop star Justin Bieber.

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In a case which shocked the world, 13 siblings, aged between two and 29, were found inside the home padlocked to their beds on January 14 after the 17-year-old alerted authorities.

It later emerged that the siblings were so malnourished that police were shocked to find seven of them were actually adults, including the oldest child, a 29-year-old woman, who weighed only 82lbs (five stones) when she was rescued.

The siblings were allegedly chained to their beds for months at a time by their parents, only allowed to shower once or twice a year and denied access to a toilet.

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David_Allen_Turpin_Louise

Youtube

David and Louise Turpin were arrested and charged with 12 counts of torture, 12 of false imprisonment, six of child abuse and six of abuse of a dependant adult. David Turpin was later charged with one count of a lewd act on a child under the age of 14 by force, fear or duress. The pair were then charged with further counts of abuse, with one new count of felony assault also filed against Louise Turpin.

The pair, who face at least 94 years in jail in jail if found guilty, deny the charges.

The siblings are now recovering privately from their ordeal. Attorneys representing the adult siblings told CBS News they are planning for their futures.

"I just want you to understand just what special individuals they are," attorney Jack Osborn said. "They all have their own aspirations and their own interests and now they may have an opportunity to address those, which is really exciting."

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
By Bardh Krasniqi GRACANICA, Kosovo (Reuters) - Twelve years after he died during his trial for war crimes, Slobodan Milosevic, the one-time Serbian strongman, divided his audience again, this time as a character in a musical that made its debut on Tuesday. The Lift - The Slobodan Show, written by Belgrade-based writer Jelena Bogavac, focuses more on Milosevic's personal relationship with his powerful wife Mirjana, his daughter Marija and his son Marko than on the politics that made him infamous. Milosevic rode a wave of nationalism to power in Belgrade in 1989 as communism was collapsing across eastern Europe. He then led Serbia through a decade of wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Hailed by Serbian nationalists as their champion against Catholic Croats and Bosnian and Kosovar Albanian Muslims, Milosevic was seen as a brutal dictator by the West. Around 200 Kosovo Serbs attended the show at a theater in Gracanica, a Serb enclave just outside Kosovo's capital Pristina. They expressed mixed feelings about it. "There's nothing there, it's simply a great manipulation ... a political theater which actually tricked us," said Zivojin Rakocevic, a former journalist from Gracanica. In one scene Milosevic comforts his daughter over the poor financial state of her radio station. In another he tells Marko not to overheat the water in the family swimming pool. Milosevic lost power after a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 and popular unrest in October 2000. [nL8N1PH335] The play ends with his war crimes trial in the Hague, where he died of a heart attack in 2006. "I'm delighted ... the point of the whole show is in one sentence, when a young man says 'Sloba (Milosevic) didn't get under my skin'," said Viktorija Zivkovic, who works in a local school. "We tried to show through their personalities what happened both in Kosovo ... and in Serbia of the 1990s," Belgrade-based actress Tamara Tomanovic said. The play frustrated ethnic Albanians who form the majority in Kosovo, which declared independence from Belgrade in 2008 in a move still not recognized by Serbia and Kosovo Serbs. An estimated 800,000 ethnic Albanians were displaced and about 10,000 killed by Milosevics forces in the brutal 1998-99 counter-insurgency war. (Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
Federal Finance Minster Bill Morneau says Albertans can be assured that the dispute with British Columbia over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is a top concern in Ottawa, but that it's more likely to get resolved behind the scenes than through the media.

In January, the B.C. government sparked a skirmish with Alberta when it proposed to restrict any increase in diluted bitumen shipments through the pipeline until it conducts more spill response studies.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley denounced the B.C. proposal as unconstitutional and pre-emptively retaliated with a block on B.C. wine imports.

Several federal ministers and the prime minister reiterated Ottawa's position that Kinder Morgan has a green light and its project is considered to be in the national interest.

Morneau repeated that message to his Calgary business audience on Wednesday  and he hinted that there's a lot more happening on the issue than meets the eye.

'Not necessarily on the front page'

"What I would like people in the room to know is that everything that is going on is not necessarily on the front page of the newspaper," he said.

"And some of the things that are going on are not actually helped in terms of their effectiveness by being on the front page of the paper."

Asked by a reporter after his speech to clarify what discussions are underway, Morneau replied, "If I told you what we're doing behind the scenes, it wouldn't be behind the scenes, would it?"

"The point is that we are working hard," he said.

Morneau was in Calgary to talk about the 2018-19 federal budget, which he released last week.

He said that while the spending plan doesn't contain new tax measures meant to match recent corporate tax cuts south of the border  cuts some analysts say will put more of a dent in the already reduced capital investment in Canada's oil and gas sector  Ottawa is still studying the specifics of the new U.S. tax regime.

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"We'll continue to consider the broader competitive market," he said.

But Morneau says he believes Canada's business tax rate remains competitive with the U.S. when provincial and state rates are factored in.

"The headline is that the United States changed its corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. But it misses things, because, of course, in Canada we have both provincial and federal taxes, in the United States they have state and federal taxes," he said.

So, in fact, the net change in the United States is to about 25.8 per cent."

"And the average large corporation tax rate in Canada is 26.8 per cent."

Morneau argued that, for Alberta's oil and gas sector, the more important factors in attracting capital have been the price of oil and the differential in price between Alberta crude and WTI oil. That reality reinforces the importance of getting projects like Trans Mountain built, he said, so that Alberta's energy resources can get to world markets.

"We clearly know that for the sector to get the kind of investment it needs, we need to find ways to ensure we have access to market," he said.

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ISLAMABAD:The world is observing the International Womens Day, today, the miseries and victimization of Kashmiri women by Indian forces and police personnel continue unabated in Indian Kashmir.

According to a report released by a research institute based in Islamabad, on the occasion of the International Womens Day, today, thousands of women were among 94,930 civilians martyred by Indian troops and paramilitary personnel since January 1989 till date.

Tens of hundreds of unarmed Kashmiri youth, school boys and girls were injured by the bullets and pellets of the Indian forces while at least 67 young boys and girls including 16-year-old Insha Mushtaq and 14-year old Ifra Shakour lost eye-sight after killing of prominent young Kashmiri resistance leader Burhan Wani in July 8, 2016 in the territory.

It revealed that since January 1989 the state terrorism has rendered 22,866 women widowed while 11,043 were molested including those victimized in Kunun Poshpora Kupwara, Shopian and the recent abduction, rape and murder of an eight-year girl, Aasifa Bano in Kathua by the Indian forces personnel. Thousands of women lost their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers in the territory.

The report said that thousands of women lost their sons, husbands, fathers and brothers in the occupied territory who were subjected to custodial disappearance by Indian Army, police and paramilitary personnel. As per the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, more than 8,000 Kashmiris went missing in custody during the past 29 years, it added.

8,000 Kashmiris went missing in custody during the past 29 years.

The report further pointed out that majority of the Kashmiris suffering from multiple psychic problems was of womenfolk. Mothers in large number are waiting for their disappeared sons while widows and half widows are in pain. Dozens including 16-year-old Insha Mushtaq blinded.

Kashmiri people especially women had been made destitute and children orphaned and blinded was a question mark on the integrity of entire humanity.
People wait to apply for visas outside the U.S. Interests Section (background) in Havana on May 22, 2015. (Photo: Enrique de la Osa / Reuters)

Its no secret the Trump administration has been doing all it can to restrict and control immigration, in particular from certain Muslim-majority countries. The conversation thats been covered in the media and played out in the courts has concerned immigration leading to permanent residency, but that is only part of the overall immigration picture. What about the tens of millions who seek to come to the U.S. on a temporary basis for business, study or pleasure each year?

For an administration that wishes to restrict the flow of certain classes of foreigners into the U.S., the issuance of non-immigrant visas is much easier to control and scarcely requires new legal measures. The mechanisms for restricting non-immigrant visas have always been there.

I give you Sections 214(b) and 222(f) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the perfect tools for keeping non-immigrant visa decisions out of view of the public and even of the families of those affected by the decisions.

Section 214(b) of the INA instructs consular officers that non-immigrant visa applicants shall be refused as intending immigrants (someone who intends to overstay their visa and remain in the U.S. permanently) ... unless they can convince the consul that they are not. It has always been the most common reason for saying no to anyone hoping to come to the U.S. for a temporary stay. It can also be a thin screen for the biases that consuls bring with them to the visa window, where they conduct dozens and sometimes over a hundred interviews a day, deciding individual fates based not on extreme vetting but on little more than first impressions.

Lets consider a hypothetical scenario in which a woman comes to the visa window after two prior refusals. Lets say the consul who is about to interview her opens up the refusal notes that describe the applicant as young, unmarried and likely a sex worker. What would the interviewing consul do? The likely course would be for the consul just to confirm the earlier refusal unless something significant had changed.

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Lets say, however, that the young woman implores the consul to have another look. She has with her a CV showing that she is completing her doctorate in philosophy. She is going to the U.S. to complete her dissertation. She has copies of published papers, talks like an academic and is able to describe her dissertation research. Would the interviewing consul override the earlier refusals?

This is a hypothetical scenario, but its not far-fetched. Something rather like this confronted me when I did my time on the visa line as a first tour foreign service officer (FSO) many years ago. I knew well the instruction from ConGen, the crash consular training course that all FSOs go through: When in doubt, 214(b) the applicant. For consuls, 214(b) is a verb, shorthand for just say no. I chafed at that instruction when I first heard it, and I still do. As a woman who herself once worked hard on a dissertation, I leave it to the readers imagination to divine what I did when an applicant similar to the hypothetical one I just described faced me on the other side of the visa window.

I moved off the visa line long ago, but Ive recently had cause to remember that peoples lives are made or destroyed at the visa window. Three cases in particular come to mind from my three years at the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, where my work included outreach to the LGBT community.

The first was an out gay couple being threatened on social media. The couple went underground for several months but then resurfaced in the U.S. on tourist visas. They applied for and received refugee status in the U.S. If they had said a word during their initial visa interviews about being gay and under threat, the consul very likely would have refused them as 214(b) intending immigrants.

The second case was that of a transgender woman who wanted to visit the U.S. with her common-law husband. She worried what a consul would think when she presented a passport showing her as male. I told her Americans celebrate all letters of the diversity rainbow and that she should go as her genuine self to the interview. She ignored my advice. She cut her hair, put on a suit and tie, lowered her voice and got her visa. She later crossed into Canada, where she applied for and got refugee status.

The third case was that of a 19-year-old transgender woman who had been expelled from high school a year before graduating. Intelligent and with a supportive family, she wanted to complete her education in the U.S.

Ive told this womans story elsewhere, but in brief, she followed my advice and went to the visa interview as her genuine self. Her visa was refused. She tried a second time after an inquiry from Congressman Peter DeFazio. Refused again. She tried once more, this time after inquiries from Sens. Tammy Baldwin, Ben Cardin and Susan Collins. A college acceptance, winning scholarship essay and letters of recommendation made no difference to consuls who didnt give them a glance. Refused a third time.

Later, we learned 14 other Kazakhstani students accepted by the same college had received visas. In fact, this young woman was the first student since 2010 to be accepted by that college and refused a visa.

This raises a disturbing question. What if 14 students had received visas and only the student who is Jewish did not? Or Arab? Or a woman? Or black? Were the 214(b) refusals just cover for the consuls prejudices, a statement that the way to overcome 214(b) is to be someone else (someone who is not Jewish, not a woman, not Arab, not black or not transgender)? Could the prevailing anti-transgender winds from Washington in the summer of 2017  the time of presidential tweets calling for a ban on transgender persons in the military  have affected the refusal decision?

And what happens if anyone questions a 214(b) refusal? Nothing. There is no appeal process. The records of the interview are sealed and declared confidential by Section 222(f) of the INA. Together, Sections 214(b) and 222(f) can serve as cover for any and all visa decisions no matter what the basis for those decisions.

ConGen teaches new officers that being a consul is one of the most powerful positions in the Department of State  powerful in the sense of having a direct, palpable influence on the fate of individuals and families. It is a power invested in entry-level FSOs and their supervisors, a power that very few FSOs again experience in their careers unless they rise to the top of the diplomatic service.

Which brings me back to the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the current administration. Could changing the direction of the prevailing immigration winds coming from Washington be sufficient to change the way in which consuls make visa decisions? Just as with U.S. society at large, consuls reflect the full range of our current polarized political discourse. For those who sympathize with the policies of the Trump administration on immigration, increasing the 214(b) refusal rate would be a simple matter of just saying no in full confidence of never having to answer for that decision. If consuls hold negative views toward any minority group, they can incorporate that prejudice into visa decisions without ever having to justify the decision to anyone.

I remember many consuls from my time on the visa line who were educated and caring citizens of the world, striving to do a difficult job fairly and equitably. Still, for anyone of an authoritarian bent who doesnt have what it takes to become an authoritarian on a larger stage, the role of consul could be an attractive career choice.

One must also wonder about the reverse case, in which a consul inexplicably says yes. In recent days, we are led to ponder the case of the presidents wife, Melania Trump. As reported by The Washington Post, she came to the U.S. on multiple H1-B non-immigrant work visas in the 1990s before receiving immigrant status under the elite EB-1 Einstein visa program.

What was going through the minds of the consuls who said yes to Melania not once but multiple times? Was there nothing in her file hinting she might be an intending immigrant, or did the glamour of a supermodel at the visa window blind them? Did those same consuls say yes as willingly to the less-glamorous applicants who appeared at their windows?

My advice to those who asked me about coming to the U.S. for a temporary stay was always to come as you are to visa interviews, to be completely open and honest. Now, Im just silent, because I remember what happened in Kazakhstan, when the applicant who wanted to study was refused a visa likely just because she is transgender, and what happened to the others who covered up their status and got visas that allowed them to get refugee status once in the U.S.

To all who have received a 214(b) visa refusal from a U.S. consul, I am with you in your grief and in decrying a visa process that is anything but transparent  a process that at times may be little more than cover for the preconceived notions and even prejudices of those charged with implementing it.

In the age of Trump and anti-immigrant rhetoric, I fear those refusals will be even more common with the refusing consuls safe in the knowledge that the reasons for their decisions are protected behind the impregnable 222(f) wall of the INA.

Robyn Alice McCutcheon is a foreign service officer who has served in Washington, D.C.; Astana, Kazakhstan; Bucharest, Romania; Moscow; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Today she is a senior watch officer in the State Departments Nuclear Risk Reduction Center. Although McCutcheon is employed by the Department of State, the views expressed in this column are strictly her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of State or the U.S. government.

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Federal researchers have collaborated to develop a preventative vaccine for a potentially deadly bacteria that causes pneumonia, blood poisoning and meningitis in children and affecting predominantly children in northern and Indigenous communities.

Scientists with the Public Health Agency of Canada first identified Haemophillus influenza Type A (Hia) infections in the mid-2000s in Winnipeg, Edmonton and Montreal hospitals. Hia is not the common flu  which is caused by a virus, not bacteria.

Hia has become more common since then, evolving into an emerging public health concern among children under five and for adults whose immune systems aren't working properly, said Dr. Guillaume Poliquin, the senior medical adviser for the Public Health Agency of Canada at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg.

About 500 people are exposed to Hia every year, and about 10 per cent of those die.

"It can spread anywhere in the body and can cause things from pneumonia to skin, soft tissue and bone infections, but the complication we fear the most is when it gets to the lining of the brain and can cause  meningitis," Poliquin said during a recent tour of the Level 2 lab.

Poliquin bridges basic science and hands-on medicine. He is an infectious disease pediatrician who works in northern communities and has seen the devastation this bacteria can cause for patients and their families.

Children infected with meningitis can't be treated in their home community, so they have to be medically evacuated to hospitals, where they spend weeks on intravenous antibiotics.

"That means displaced child, displaced family in a foreign community away from all your support networks, and the story doesn't end there. Meningitis often has long-term impacts on the child's development so that means back and forth travel for years. The impact is immediate and long-term," Poliquin said.

"As to why specifically we're seeing it most in Indigenous populations at this point, it's an area of ongoing research. Certainly the living conditions in the North, crowding, poor access to nutritious foods, probably contribute to it, but we don't know for sure."

Story continues

Dr. Raymond Tsang's Winnipeg-based research team identified the Hia Type A bacteria as the one responsible for the cases they were seeing.

They isolated the piece of the bacteria most vulnerable to a vaccine and sent that to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in Ottawa.

Scientists there developed a vaccine using specialized chemistry and technology. It involves engineering a molecule called a carrier protein that they attached to the bacteria, making it easier for the vaccine to recognize and generates a stronger immune response.

It was found effective in tests on mice and rabbits.

"It looks very good," said Andrew Cox, senior research officer at NRC.

"The fact that it kills all the strains in our collection from different geographical locations establishes that we believe it would be a very good vaccine."

Antibiotics can treat Hia Type A infections, but this is the first vaccine developed to prevent it. A vaccine has been effective in preventing meningitis caused by Type B  in fact, it has almost disappeared as a result of immunization  but there's no cross-protection for Type A.

NRC recently gave the licence to manufacture the Type A vaccine to Vancouver-based InventVacc Biologicals Inc. The financial terms related to the licence agreement are confidential and cannot be disclosed.

However, the actual technology and intellectual property is still owned by the Government of Canada. Now, the company is looking for federal funding to conduct clinical trials.

"This particular disease isn't a commercially lucrative disease. It's only a niche population that seems to be suffering, so big pharma aren't interested, unfortunately, because they're not going to make a whole heck of a lot of money on it," Cox said.

He said researchers have reached out to the U.S. Centre for Disease Control to see if they can collaborate. Hia has been found in Indigenous populations in Alaska as well.

"To me, the bottom line is that Canadians are currently dying of something which we could prevent and I think the government has a responsibility to their citizens to look after their own. And so this is an opportunity to do just that."

Challenging with limited population

It will require public funding, agreed Dr. David Scheifele, a retired pediatric infectious disease specialist in Vancouver who founded the IMPACT surveillance network of pediatric hospitals across Canada.

"So in the northern parts of the provinces and in the territories it's almost as frequent or as frequent as Hemophilus Type B was back in the the bad old days," he said.

"The disease it causes is just as bad as Type B disease was back then. So causing meningitis, causing pneumonia, causing sepsis, causing death."

There may be an opportunity to work with governments in other countries, including the United States, Scandinavian countries and even Brazil, Scheifele said.

"It's not the sort of vaccine that you would want to administer to entire populations like all Canadian children. It would have to be a more targeted population. Like children in Nunavut, in the other territories maybe in the northerly Aboriginal communities but you know in total these are a relatively small population," he said.

"So any profit to be made on a vaccine with limited sales would be negligible  it would certainly be a very helpful vaccine to develop, but it's going to have to be done primarily by the public sector funded by governments and perhaps charitable foundations like the Gates Foundation."

'We're not rats'

Indigenous leaders say they welcome anything that will improve the health and quality of life for people in northern communities.

However, they said they need to be consulted about clinical trials involving their people.

The chief of Barren Lands First Nation in Northern Manitoba said he hopes the vaccine is tested and approved for use in humans before it's sent to communities like his.

"Prevention is always very important," John Clarke said, adding it's a burden to medevac patients south for treatment of pneumonia and meningitis.

"[But] we're not rats. They should test it on somebody else before they bring it to us. We're from the Far North, our health care has not always been that great, but that doesn't mean they should throw anything at us that they want to."

As chief, Clarke said he would want to know if any of his people are part of any clinical trials  partly to make sure they're providing informed consent. People in his community speak English, Cree and Dene.

'Hand-in-hand'

"As long as there's actual consent and we know what's coming, what it's for, and who's getting it.  I'd leave it up to the parents but for myself, if it was going to be brought to my kid or grandkid, I'd want to make sure that it's been proven or tested elsewhere," Clarke said.

The NRC's Cox said work is already being done to work with Indigenous communities on clinical trials, "but I emphasize, we'd only do this hand-in-hand with them, with their support and knowledge of what's involved."

A statement provided by Health Canada adds: "No trials in Indigenous communities would happen without express interest from those communities, along with their input into the design and implementation of the trial. Furthermore, clinical trials for this vaccine will adhere to the ethical guidelines for research studies that impact First Nations communities, as articulated by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research."

If approved by Health Canada, the vaccine could be available for use in Canada by 2022. The hope is to get it to children under the age of one, as part of their first vaccinations.
TripAdvisor.com, the popular travel review website, has ranked has ranked the Mombacho Cigars factory (Casa Favilli) as the top destination for tourists in Granada, Nicaragua. In addition, Casa Favilli was also awarded a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence in 2017.

While trips to cigar factories are common to many cigar enthusiasts, it isnt every day a cigar factory is recognized as a tourist destination. However, with Casa Favilli, Mombacho Cigars has gone out of its way to make its showcase factory as a leading tourist spot. Its a strategy that led to the factory being named the most visited cigar factory in Nicaragua for 2017.

At Casa Favilli, we want people to understand the way we make our cigars. Our top priority is to create a memorable experience our guests can share with the world, said Scarleth Castellon Yumankulova, Hospitality Manager of Mombacho Cigars in a press release.

Casa Favilli was the home of renowned Italian architect, Mario Favilli Bendichi. Bendichi designed and built Casa Favilli in 1925. It was purchased by Mombacho Cigars in 2014 and underwent a two-year restoration process. It has been designated as a historical landmark by the Nicaraguan government.

Casa Favilli is more than a cigar factory  it is a historical landmark. The building itself is almost 100 years old; when you step inside, its like visiting a museum, said Robert Rasmussen, Brand Manager of Mombacho Cigars. We receive guests from all over the world, many of whom have never smoked a cigar. We offer a unique blend of cigar culture and Nicaraguan history which is reflected in the reviews left by travelers on TripAdvisor.com. 

Mombacho plans construction of a rooftop lounge above Casa Favilli sometime in 2018. The factory is open 8:00 AM  5:30 PM and 8:00 AM  4:30 PM on Saturday. Visits can be coordinated by contacting Mombacho Brand Manager Rob Rasmussen via email at rob@mombachocigar.com.

Photo Credits: Mombacho Cigars
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New York, March 8, 2018Ukrainian authorities should allow Fikret Huseynli (Huseinli), a journalist of Azerbaijani origin and a Dutch national, to leave the country safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Unknown assailants on March 5 attacked Huseynli, a correspondent for the independent online television channel Turan, at an apartment building he was renting in Kiev, according to news reports and Huseynli who spoke to CPJ yesterday over the phone.

Ukrainian authorities on October 14, 2017, detained Huseynli, under an Interpol red notice requested by Baku, and confiscated his travel documents as he was attempting to fly out of Kiev, according to reports. A Kiev court on October 27 ordered the journalists release on bail, but ruled that Huseynli should remain in Ukraine for two months while the prosecutor generals office investigated Azerbaijans extradition request, the reports state. Ukrainian courts have twice extended the investigation term; the new deadline is March 20, 2018, according to the journalist.

In Azerbaijan, Huseynli is wanted for allegedly illegally crossing the border, fraud, and forgery. Speaking to CPJ, he denied all the charges, and said the prosecution was related to his journalism. Huseynli said he fears imprisonment if extradited to Azerbaijan. The journalist has covered the activities of the Azerbaijani opposition in exile and suspected corruption in the Azerbaijani government. He has also criticized Azerbaijans president, Ilham Aliyev.

The assailants who attacked Hyseynli spoke Ukrainian and Azeri, he said. They beat him with their hands and knocked him to the floor, bruising his legs and throat, and breaking his dental bridge, according to the journalist who sent CPJ pictures of his injuries.

We call on Ukrainian authorities to immediately return travel documents to Fikret Huseynli and allow him to leave Ukraine, said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova. Kiev must not be complicit with Azerbaijan authorities persecution of critics beyond its borders. We also call on Ukrainian police to investigate the March 5 physical attack on Huseynli, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Ukraines prosecutor general has not answered CPJs emailed request for comment.

Huseynli, who currently heads the Amsterdam bureau of Turan, arrived in Kiev on October 7, 2017, to explore opening a Turan bureau in the Ukrainian capital, according to a video report from his employer. The online television channel broadcasts mainly from Strasbourg and Amsterdam, and has correspondents in other parts of Europe.

Huseynli told CPJ he feared abduction from Ukraine. In May 2017, his colleague, the independent Azerbaijani investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli, disappeared in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he lived in exile, and re-emerged two days later in a detention center in Azerbaijan, CPJ reported.

Huseynli fled Azerbaijan in 2008 and was granted political asylum in the Netherlands where he has lived since. In 2006, while he was still living in Azerbaijan, unidentified masked men brutally attacked Huseynli, who was working for the independent newspaper Azadlyg at the time, CPJ documented.
According to data of Chinese General Administration of Customs, India-China bilateral trade has reached $84.44 billion last year, a historic high with 18.63% year-on-year growth rate.

This is regarded as historic landmark in bilateral relations of both countries, as volume of bilateral trade for first time has touched $80 billion, well above the $71.18 billion registered in 2016.

Key Facts

India has emerged as the seventh largest export destination for Chinese products, and 24th largest exporter to China.

Indias imports and exports: It has increased by 39.11% year-on-year to $16.34 billion in 2017. Indias imports from China have increased by 14.59% to $68.10 billion.

Significantly, diamonds along with copper, iron ore, organic chemicals and cotton yarn contributed to increase Indian exports to China. Chinas exports on other hand were dominated by electrical machinery and equipment,

Indias trade deficit: It continues to remain high at $51.75 billion, registering a growth of 8.55% year-on-year in 2017. To arrest it, India is pressing China to open its IT and Pharmaceutical sectors for Indian firms, fertilizers, organic chemicals and pharmaceutical antibiotics.

The bilateral trade has touched historic high despite bilateral tensions over number of bilateral issues including China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), China blocking Indias efforts to bring about UN ban on Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar and blocking Indias entry into Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as well as military standoff at Doklam plateau near Sikkim and Bhutan, lasting 73 days.

For several years, bilateral trade between India and China had stagnated around $70 billion, despite they had set target of $100 billion in 2015. Though it is still about $20 billion short, it is expect trade and Chinese investments in India to pick up further as both governments are trying to scale down tensions and step-up normalisation process.
Renewed search for missing flight MH370 to end in June

March 08,2018 | Source: Infosurhoy

Malaysian authorities have confirmed that a new hunt for flight MH370 is expected to end by mid-June. The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on 8 March 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people, mostly from China, on board. Malaysian authorities have confirmed that a new hunt for flight MH370 is expected to end by mid-June.



The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on 8 March 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people, mostly from China, on board. No sign of the plane was found in a 120,000 square sea search zone and the Australian-led hunt, which was the largest in aviation history, was suspended in January last year. But the Malaysian government struck a no find, no fee deal with exploration firm Ocean Infinity to resume the search in an area north of the original zone, that scientists now believe is the likeliest crash site.



The hunt restarted in January, with a research vessel deploying eight high-tech drones to scour the seabed. Officials had said the search would last a maximum of 90 days. Speaking as families of the disappeared marked four years since the plane vanished in the Malaysian capital, the countrys civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said that this would be spread over several months as the ship needed to stop sometimes to refuel.



The hunt is expected to end by mid-June, he said. Hopefully, we will be able to identify the location of MH370, he said at the anniversary event at a Kuala Lumpur shopping mall. By the end of February, research vessel Seabed Constructor had surveyed 8,200 square kilometres of the 25,000 square kilometre search area, according to Ocean Infinitys most recent update. At Saturdays event, relatives of the missing passengers spoke of their continuing sense of pain and loss.



But the new search meant there was also a glimmer of hope. Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was a steward on the flight, told the event she was grateful that the Malaysian government they had restarted the search. They have not given up hope, and neither have we.



K. S. Narendran, whose wife Chandrika Sharma (Executive Secretry, ICSF) was on the flight, was more cautious. Am I hopeful? Its hard to say  there are a number of ifs, he told AFP. If the data is right, if the analysis is right, if they are searching in the right area.
Kerala: Fishers seek revision of CZMP

March 08,2018 | Source: NYOOZ

The Thiruvananthapuram Matsyathozhilali Forum has urged the State government to exert pressure on the Centre to finalise the new Marine Coastal Regulation Zone notification at the earliest.



In a press note issued here recently, the forum said the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) had been prepared in haste and was not made available to local traditional communities. Demanding cancellation of the public hearing on the draft plan, it called upon the Kerala Coastal Zone Management Authority to seek more time for the preparation of a thorough CZMP.
A Minsk-based human rights group says that more than 4 months ago Belarusian authorities executed a man who had been convicted of killing his own children.





The Vyasna (Spring) human rights center quoted the mother of the convicted man, Kiryl Kazachok , as saying that she was only informed in recent days that he was executed in October.





Amnesty International in January had mentioned Kazachok's case in a statement urging Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka to abolish capital punishment.





Kazachok was sentenced to death in December 2016 after a court in the southeastern city of Homel found him guilty of killing his 17-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter in order to punish his wife for wanting a divorce.





The court found that Kazachok was drunk when he carried out the killings.





Kazachok refused to appeal the sentence.





Belarus is the only country in Europe that carries out the death penalty.





The European Union and rights groups have for years been urging Belarus to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.





Activists say there are currently 5 convicted murderers on death row in Belarus.





In January, 2 men who initially were handed life sentences on murder charges were sentenced to death after a retrial in Minsk.





The EU sharply criticized Belarus at the time and repeated its call for Lukashenka's government to the abolish the death penalty.





According to rights organizations, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in Belarus since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Belarus: rapporteurs strongly condemn the execution of Kiryl Kazachok in October 2017

Yves Cruchten (Luxembourg, SOC), General Rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on the abolition of the death penalty, and Andrea Rigoni (Italy, ALDE), former PACE rapporteur on the situation in Belarus, have strongly condemned the execution of Kiryl Kazachok, which allegedly took place in October 2017.





Mr Kazachok was sentenced to death in December 2016 for killing his two children during a family dispute, whilst intoxicated.





Once again we stand firm against any death sentence imposed by the Belarusian judiciary and any executions carried out in that country. The execution of Kiryl Kazachok is all the more shocking since it took place secretly in October 2017, while the relatives of the convicted were only informed recently, said the rapporteurs.





The death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment, which is no longer acceptable in Europe. We reiterate our call to the Belarusian authorities to urgently put in place a moratorium on executions and to abolish the death penalty both de facto and de jure, the rapporteurs concluded.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 7, 2018 Council of Europe , March 8, 2018
Absconding fraud convict Roma Neupane arrested

Sleuths deputed from the Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu, arrested a woman who was absconding after being convicted of fraud.
Congress

Senators demand answers on Russian cyber interference

The Director of National Intelligence was grilled by senators from both sides of the aisle about the apparent reluctance on the part of the Trump administration to respond forcefully to efforts by Russia to interfere in U.S. elections.

At a March 6 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, DNI Daniel Coats, who testified alongside Defense Intelligence Agency Director Robert Ashley, found himself frequently on defense, with senators expressing both impatience with the administration's lack of a cyber warfare doctrine and the lack of ownership of the election threat and information warfare issue inside government.

"The discussions, I think, are ongoing. It is just the plan of action and the direction to take action that seem to be missing," said Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.)

New Mexico Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich complained that he was weary of hearing the election interference problem requiring a "whole of government approach," a phrase that Coats leaned on in his response to member questions.

"I hear that the phrase 'whole of government approach' has become a catchall for 'it's someone else's job,'" Heinrich said. "Saying whole of government approach is not a substitute for action and not a substitute for real cyber doctrine."

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who chairs the defense panel's cybersecurity subcommittee, noted that despite legislative requirements, a policy to define military responses to cyberattacks has not been forthcoming.

"I dont think the progress has been made quick enough to put us in a position where we have a firm policy and understanding of not only ourselves but what our adversaries know relative to how were going to deal with this,

In his written testimony, Coats expressed concerns about U.S. retaliation and still developing adversary capabilities as well as the increasingly damaging effects of cyber operations and the apparent acceptance by adversaries of collateral damage, naming Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the greatest cyber threats.

Coats agreed with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that Russia was likely to repeat its 2016 efforts to disrupt U.S. elections with information warfare and social media campaigns during the 2018 election cycle, but he said that the intelligence community was not sure yet what form it would take.

"We have not seen evidence of a robust effort yet on the part of Russia, but we know their malign activities continue," Coats said. "It's highly likely that they will be doing something, we just don't know how much and where and when."
Cloud

MilCloud 2.0 gets IL5 authorization

Nine months after the Department of Defense awarded a potential eight-year, $498 million contract to CSRA for the next iteration of milCloud, the Defense Information Systems Agency granted CSRA a DOD Provisional Authorization Impact Level 5 for milCloud 2.0.

IL 5 authorization allows government users to hold unclassified national security systems, high-sensitivity systems containing controlled, unclassified, information as well as mission-critical Information in the cloud. DISA rolled out the first version of milCloud in 2014 as a government-operated private cloud with both classified and unclassified versions.

Operated by CSRA, MilCloud 2.0 includes a self-service cloud portal for real-time provisioning and management in addition to scalable deployment environments based on application requirements. Customers can also select from a joint pool of resources in an on-demand basis and tailor their virtual environments to meet mission needs.

For the next 60 days we will be working with our early adopters to fine-tune our business processes, Caroline Bean, DISA milCloud 2.0 program manager said in a statement. The next step will be to open the doors for business to everyone else who is waiting to onboard. Our target is early May.

CSRA is launching milClouds provisioning portal, which gives customers continuous monitoring of their usage and a cost estimator tool to help them estimate cloud computing costs in real time.

On March 6, DISA also announced Oracle has received DOD Provisional Authorization IL5 for its federal cloud managed service offering. The Oracle platform is a hybrid platform-as-a-service model that allows for shared service zones in a community cloud and individual zones for federal customers.
Ukrainian citizens have inspired the world by pulling together to reduce gas consumption by 14% last week, according to Heather Nauert.

An attempt by a Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom, to expose Ukraine and Naftogaz as unreliable partners has failed, that's according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, Heather Nauert.

"Ukraine citizens have inspired the world by pulling together to reduce gas consumption by 14% last week to ensure reliable gas delivery to European customers. Gazprom has failed in its attempt to portray Ukraine & Naftogaz as unreliable transit partners," Nauert tweeted.

The official underlined: "Gas supply and transit must never be a political weapon," adding that Washington expects that Gazprom will "supply gas to Ukraine's transit pipeline per Stockholm Arbitration decision".

Read alsoPoroshenko: Ukraine will "get everything to a penny" from Gazprom"Russia should prove it is a reliable gas supplier," Nauert stated.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Gazprom must pay Naftogaz of Ukraine $2.56 billion after losing a gas dispute heard by the Stockholm Arbitration.

A daily penalty of $500,000 is imposed until Gazprom launches corresponding payments to the Ukrainian company. As of March 7, some $3.5 million in penalties has been accumulated.

Against the backdrop of the latest defeat in the Stockholm Arbitration, Gazprom announced its intention to terminate in court all contracts with Naftogaz (on gas supply and transit), also moving to reduce the pressure in Ukraine's gas transmission system, which complicated gas transit to Europe. However, the European Commission said that Ukraine fulfilled all of its obligations on gas supplies.

Read alsoUkraine boasts tackling energy crisisThe government of Ukraine intends to collect from Gazprom a total of $8.5 billion in line with the award of the Stockholm Arbitration and the decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine ($2.56 billion and UAH 172 billion respectively).
Ukraine in global search of Gazprom's foreign assets; seizure in Ukraine launched

Diplomatic missions were instructed to locate the assets of Russia's Gazprom, said Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Olena Zerkal.

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After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings  though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.



Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance


As the fresh deadline set by US President Donald Trump to amend the Iran nuclear deal is approaching, three European allies, France, United Kingdom and Germany are eager to salvage the agreement. In doing so the Europeans have engaged in direct talks with the US; 3rd round of such talks is set to take place in Berlin Mid-March.

US says if flaws of the deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is not fixed, it will pull out of the deal. One of these flaws which Trump administration has highlighted since taking office, is the exclusion of Irans ballistic missile program from the deal. The issue has been addressed in the UNSC resolution 2231 which supported the deal.

In this resolution the Security Council has called upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology. However, Irans interpretation of this clause is that the country is not prohibited to engage in advancing its missiles program but rather it was simply called upon.

Now the EU3, mainly France, is trying to talk Iran into accepting limitations on its Missile Program in order to encourage US to preserve JCPOA; Iran has yet to give in.

Proliferation experts, such as Mark Fitzpatrick, Executive Director of International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS)Americas, believe this can be realized. In a recent article with his colleague Michael Elleman, Mr. Fitpatrick explains which missiles can be a subject of negotiation with Iran. He discussed the matter in an interview with Radio Fardas Hannah Kaviani.
Several women who had attempted to gather in Tehran to mark International Womens Day have been detained, reports said.

Sharq newspaper also reports the arrest of two journalists during the attempted gathering. One of the journalists, Ali Salem was badly assaulted during his arrest, according Free Trade Union of Iran and social media posts.

Womens rights activists had announced that they would stage a peaceful protest outside the Labor Ministry in the Iranian capital on March 8 to call for more rights.

On this one day, out of an entire year, we as women of this country should be able to make these cities our own, stay in the streets, and return to our homes at days end, without having our bones crushed, they said in a statement issued earlier this week.

Women and men who attempted to gather for the demonstration were confronted by security forces who dispersed them, according to social-media accounts.

Social media posts also speak of security personnel using force against the participants.

More than a dozen people were reportedly detained.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, the BBC, and Kalame


An unfinished agenda

We need to rethink the influence gender biased mythology plays on our treatment of women and girls
Irans prosecutor-general has officially called for those responsible for a ceremony celebrating Womens Day in Iran to be prosecuted. Reportedly, the ceremony, during which a group of small girls jovially danced in front of a mixed-gender audience in Tehran, has deeply angered conservatives all over the country.

The lawsuit against Tehrans municipality has been delivered to the capitals prosecutor's office, according to state-run Mehr news agency.

Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, Prosecutor General, insisted that all those responsible for the ceremony on March 6 at Tehrans Milad Tower should be charged and tried as soon as possible.

Mehrs report described the ceremony as in contradiction with public chastity and national standards.

The conservatives took aim at part of ceremony wherein girls performed a choreographed dance accompanied by live music in front of an audience, including reformist Tehran Mayor Mohammad Ali Najafi.

Without referring to the age of the dancers, several conservative media outlets criticized Najafi for attending a ceremony where women danced in front of a mixed-gender audience.

During the ceremony, a number of girls stepped onstage and started dancing in front of the mayor, reported Tasnim, a news agency affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Government-run daily Iran, quoting a tweet from a source close to Tehran City Hall, responded, These little girls performed in the municipalitys ceremony, but those who are worried [conservatives] claim women danced in front of men.

For his part, Najafi also wrote on Twitter, Islam is not a religion of mourning. Islam is a religion of mirth and liveliness. Nevertheless, the standards and frameworks should be respected in times of joy.

Meanwhile, to disarm his critics, he noted, Today, I issued a decree demanding that Islamic values and standards should be respected in ceremonies organized by the municipality.

The mayors adviser responsible for organizing the controversial ceremony, Fatemeh Rakeii, also rushed to defend her boss, saying she did not understand critics of a show starring girls under the age of 9.

Iran does not officially celebrate International Women's Day, marked by the United Nations on March 8. It celebrates its own Womens Day marking the (lunar) birthday of Fatemeh, the Prophet Mohammed's daughter and wife of Ali Bin Abi Talib, the first Shiite Imam, on March 9.
An Iranian woman who removed her Islamic head scarf on a Tehran street has been sentenced to two years in prison, local media report.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency on March 7 quoted prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying that the woman was attempting to "encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public."

The Iranian judiciarys Mizan Online news agency did not identify the woman, but said she had indicated she would appeal the verdict. Some reports said the woman was Nargess Hosseini, 32, who had been arrested during a recent wave of peaceful protests against compulsory veiling in Iran.

In the past, women arrested for appearing in public without what is considered proper covering have been quickly released or sentenced to short jail terms and fined about $25.

Earlier this year, Iranian authorities announced they had detained 29 women who removed their head scarves as part of a campaign against the country's mandatory Islamic dress code.

Police claimed the women had been tricked into removing their veil by a propaganda campaign being conducted by Iranians living abroad.

The U.S. State Department has condemned the arrests, saying the women were exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms by standing up against the compulsory hijab.

Amnesty International reiterated its calls on the authorities to end the persecution of women who speak out against compulsory veiling, and abolish this discriminatory and humiliating practice.

Women's dress has been heavily scrutinized in the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution, when adherence to an Islamic dress code became compulsory.

The dress code dictates that women's hair and body must be covered in public. Morality police launch regular crackdowns on those who are not fully respecting rules relating to the hijab. With reporting by AFP, dpa, and AP
In his first reaction to Iranian womens peaceful protests against compulsory hijab, Irans Supreme Leader has said these are the outcome of the enemys widespread propaganda, and spending hefty sums in order to influence Iranian womens attitude towards hijab.

Trying to undermine the protests against compulsory hijab that has grabbed international attention, ayatollah Ali Khamenei said All that propaganda and expenditure led to the insignificant result of a few girls taking off their headscarf.

He sad, however, that what has caused concern for him is that some insiders also talk about compulsory hijab.

Criticizing journalists, pseudo-intellectuals and some clerics for their comments about compulsory hijab, Khamenei quoted his predecessor Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini as saying, hijab must be there and attempts to abolish it must be strongly resisted.

Khamenei who has been refusing to talk to reporters for over three decades and his ideas have not been challenged stressed that hijab makes women immune to sexual harassment and gender inequality.

This comes while according to pro-administration news website Entekhab in a January 29 report, the age of prostitution in Iran has dropped to 16 years, and billboards disdaining sexual harassment in Tehran and other major Iranian cities indicate that despite four decades of forceful enforcement of compulsory hijab the issue of sexual harassment is still a major social problem in Iran.

Meanwhile Iranian laws systematically bar women from travelling independently, guardianship of their minor children, and rising to political status, and taking up leadership and military responsibilities.

Speaking only three days earlier on March 5 Irans Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that strict measures to enforce hijab have not been fruitful. Speaking at a meeting in Tehran on Sunday March 5, he called for thorough studies to find the root cause of the failure, reported the official government news agency IRNA.



He also said that dress code patrols, the police and the judiciary have not been able to enforce hijab rules following the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) further quoted Rahmani Fazli.



Khameneis made the comments against peaceful protest to compulsory hijab on the same day that reports from Tehran said the police used violence against a group of women protesters in front of Irans Labor Ministry in downtown Tehran.

Peaceful demonstrations by young women protesting against compulsory hijab gained a new momentum in late December, simultaneously with widespread protests against poverty and social inequality in over 80 Iranian cities.



Reports say at least 25 Iranian women protesting against hijab have been arrested, often violently, in Tehran and other cities.



In one of the most recent cases, an Iranian woman who removed her Islamic head scarf on a Tehran street has been sentenced to two years in prison.



The U.S. State Department has condemned the arrests, saying the women were exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms by standing up against the compulsory hijab.



In February, London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International reiterated its calls on the authorities to end the persecution of women who speak out against compulsory veiling, and abolish this discriminatory and humiliating practice".

New York-based organization Human Rights Watch has also called on Iran to drop charges against women peacefully protesting compulsory hijab and to stop prosecuting women over dress code.
Without directly using the term house arrest, the leader of the Gonabadi dervishes says he has been confined to his residence.

In a video message, the 91-year-old Nour Ali Tabandeh said he hoped the restrictions imposed on him and other Gonabadi dervishes would soon be lifted.

Calling his followers the faghir (poor) and soulmates, Tabendeh assured them he is physically well and that they neednt worry about his health.

I cannot get out of the house, but I am free inside the residence, he said in the video on March 6.

On February 16, for the second time in less than two weeks, plain-clothed officers affiliated with the intelligence organs swarmed Pasdaran Avenue in northern Tehran, where Tabandehs residence is located.

Gonabadi dervishes rushed to the scene to force the agents away.

After 7 a.m. on February 19, clashes broke out between the supporters of Tabandeh and security and Baseej (the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps militia) forces.

Hundreds of dervishes were detained while many more were battered. Footage of dervishes with head injuries and broken teeth and jaws were widely circulated on social media. Three policemen and a member of paramilitary Baseej were also killed.

Tabandeh, in written statements attributed to him, called on his followers to exercise self-restraint, stay calm, and keep away from his residence.

Nevertheless, many dervishes had already come from across Iran and assembled by Tabandehs house to defend him and stop intelligence agents from raising a checkpoint near their leaders residence.

Among them was an Iran-Iraq war veteran and former commander of the IRGC, Mohammad Raji, who was battered and arrested during the clashes and later died in custody.

Rajis daughter Tayyebeh told Radio Farda on March 5 that security forces had refused her hand over her fathers body to the family unless they agreed to have him buried at night without a ceremony.

The veterans relatives insist he died in police custody, but Irans judiciary has dismissed the claims, maintaining Raji died in clashes with security forces.

Meanwhile, the official website of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published footage of his meeting with the relatives of the Baseej member allegedly killed in the clashes.

The dervishes have at least twice, in 2005 and 2010, asked Khamenei to personally interfere and stop security and intelligence operations against their Sufi order.

The operation against Gonabadi dervishes, which began in early 2000 and led to demolishing their places of worship across the country, has intensified in recent months.

Many conservatives, including ayatollahs, officially recognized as Shiite sources of emulation accuse dervishes of being spies in collaboration with a foreign enemy.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 110 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 8.

Armenians were using large-caliber machine guns.

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 8

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister of Japan Tomohiko Taniguchi.

Tomohiko Taniguchi extended Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe`s greetings to the head of state. Tomohiko Taniguchi offered condolences to President Ilham Aliyev over the casualties caused by a fire at the Republican Drug Rehabilitation Center in Baku, and noted that people in Japan were deeply saddened by this incident. He said that Japan attaches special attention to Azerbaijan`s role in stability, security and mutual understanding in the Islamic world. Tomohiko Taniguchi described the Japanese government`s appointment of an experienced ambassador to Azerbaijan as a sign of high status accorded to the development of the bilateral ties.

President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the condolences. Touching upon Azerbaijan-Japan bilateral relations, the head of state praised the Japanese government`s support given to Azerbaijan since the country restored its independence. President Ilham Aliyev also emphasized the importance of the Japanese banking sector`s assistance in modernizing infrastructure in Azerbaijan, and noted that today the two countries enjoy very high-level bilateral ties based on mutual understanding and partnership principles.

The head of state said that the Japanese ambassador is a friend of Azerbaijan and has played an active role in realizing projects implemented in the country with the support of the Japanese government.

The sides exchanged views on cooperation in implementation of infrastructure projects in Azerbaijan, banking sector, diversification of economy, agriculture and other spheres.

The head of state thanked for Shinzo Abe`s greetings and asked Tomohiko Taniguchi to extend his greetings to the Prime Minister of Japan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

Trend:

President of the European Council Donald Tusk has offered condolences to President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev.

I was deeply saddened to learn of the tragic fire at a drug rehabilitation centre in Baku on Friday 2 March, in which unfortunately many lives were lost, said Tusk in his letter.

On behalf of the European Union, I would like to extend my heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims, and send my very best wishes to those injured, he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

Trend:

A delegation led by Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria will pay an official visit to Azerbaijan March 9, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said in a message March 8.

During the visit, the Georgian delegation is expected to meet with representatives of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry and other state organizations.

The visit will last till March 10.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

The management of Azerbaijans Rabitabank OJSC has undergone a number of changes, according to a message posted on the banks website March 8.

According to the message, the number of deputy chairmen of the banks Management Board has been increased. Orhan Gultekin has become a new deputy chairman.

Prior to that, Gultekin held executive positions in a number of banks in the country.

Meanwhile, Jeyhun Ibrahimov, one of the banks director generals, joined the board. He will simultaneously hold the post of general director.

Rabitabank has been operating in Azerbaijan since 1993.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Kazakhstan is becoming a key link in one of the most ambitious world initiatives - "One belt, one road".

On March 7, the port of Amsterdam hosted a solemn ceremony of sending the first-ever freight train from the Netherlands to China, Kazakh media reported.

The train, owned by the Dutch transport and logistics company Nunner Logistics, will travel 11,000 kilometers in 16 days and deliver cargo to the city of Iwu in eastern China.

This is where Kazakhstan fits in as an important transit territory.

"The first freight train starts its journey from Amsterdam to the Chinese port city of Yiwu. Almost 3,000 kilometers of the 11,000 kilometers that this train will run, passes through Kazakhstan," Kazakhstan's ambassador to the Netherlands Magzhan Ilyasov said.

The train with 41 freight containers will deliver equipment, mineral fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, medical products, optical devices and technical equipment to China.

Amsterdam will send three freight trains weekly to Iva, and by 2020 the total number of trains annually sent from the EU to China will reach 5,000.
Khokana residents protest against Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway

Locals of Khokana in Lalitpur, that has become a hotbed for major development projects, have come out protesting against the Kathmandu-Tarai Expressway, putting forth number of demands.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Uzbekistan and Russia will open a joint business incubator (organization that supports young entrepreneurs' projects) for young entrepreneurs, said Kamoliddin Beknazarov, deputy chairman of the Union of Youth of Uzbekistan during the Uzbek-Korean business forum, Uzbek media outlets reported.

Beknazarov stressed that this initiative is envisaged within the framework of the Memorandum concluded between the Union of Youth of Uzbekistan and the Russian Youth Union.

He added that Uzbekistan and Russian also plan to open a joint Youth Tourism Center.

These steps will contribute not only to strengthening the youth entrepreneurial movement in Uzbekistan, but also to the development of interstate relations between Russian and Uzbekistan, Beknazarov said.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 8

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend

A meeting has been held between Turkmen officials and Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Alexey Gruzdev at the Turkmen Foreign Ministry.

The results of the fifth meeting of the high-level group on trade and investment support held in Ashgabat within the intergovernmental Turkmen-Russian commission on economic cooperation were discussed at the meeting, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message March 8.

"The sides stressed the need to implement the agreements reached during the meetings of the Turkmen and Russian presidents in 2017," the message said.

The issues of development of trade and economic partnership, interaction in such spheres as industry, energy, construction, agriculture and fishery, scientific and technical cooperation were also discussed.

About 190 companies with Russian capital operate in Turkmenistan. ARETI International Group (former ITERA) has been operating in the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea on the basis of the production sharing agreement since 2009. Russias Gazprom completely stopped to buy Turkmen gas in 2016.

The strategic partnership agreement between Turkmenistan and Russia was signed following Russian President Vladimir Putins official visit to Ashgabat in early October 2017. The two countries also outlined an action plan for the development of economic partnership.

Turkmenistan also confirmed readiness to increase supplies of its agricultural products and textiles to Russia.

The priority areas of cooperation between two countries are banking-financial sector, support for export-import operations and joint foreign economic projects.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Kazakhstan will provide 65 percent of the residents of its northern Kostanay region with gas, said the head of the Kostanay region Archimedes Mukhambetov at meeting of the local executive body.

"Work on the construction of gas pipelines are conducted mainly in Astana. In the near future the pipelines will be constructed in Kokshetau, and then in Kostanai region," Mukhambetov said.

He stressed that the main reason for active work on provision of the northern regions with domestic gas is the high price of gas purchased from Russia.

The head of the region added that Kazakhstans government is also focusing on the arrangement of housing and housing complexes in Kostanay, with the establishment of favorable credit and mortgage conditions.

These steps also aim to maintain the population in the northern regions of Kazakhstan.

"Only in Kostanay in the past three years, the volume of investment in housing construction has increased 10-fold - from 2.8 billion tenge in 2015 to 27.8 billion tenge in 2018," Mukhambetov said.

He added that this program is included in the list of "Five social initiatives" of president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Three new water reservoirs will be built in Kazakhstan's Zhambyl region, Khabar TV channel reported.

Presently, the regional bodies prepare a feasibility study of the project worth 6 billion tenge. The construction of reservoirs will start in 2019, with further commissioning in 2021.

The authorities of the region expect that the construction of new reservoirs will solve the problem of irrigation water deficit.

In addition, the region plans to restore more than 280 wells, build more than 700 kilometers of collector-drainage networks, and reconstruct three more reservoirs.

The problem of water shortage remains relevant in the southern regions of Kazakhstan, which impedes the development of agriculture, as well as the stable water supplies to the population.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 6

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Oil contractors of Azerbaijan may take part in joint ventures on development of Kazakhstan's Kashagan field, a source in the Energy Ministry of Kazakhstan told Trend.

"The development of local (Kazakh) content in goods and services, used in several projects in Kashagan oil field is of particular importance, and the creation of Joint Ventures/Consortiums (JVs) between foreign and Kazakh companies also contributes to this development. In this regard, we do not exclude the participation of contractors from Azerbaijan in the mentioned projects, both as potential suppliers and JV members, in case of availability of competitiveness," the source said.

North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC) approved tender procedures according to which any suppliers have the opportunity to apply online for the pre-qualification and further participation in the operations of Kashagan oil field.

Touching upon the work, carried out on the transit of Kazakhstans energy resources through Azerbaijan, the source added that Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan formed a Working Group on transit of Kazakh oil and oil products through Azerbaijan in accordance with the Protocol of the 14th meeting of the Kazakh-Azerbaijani Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic and Cultural Cooperation, held on December 7, 2017.

Presently, the both sides consider the place and date of the first meeting of the above-mentioned working group, Trend was told.
Azercell Telecom LLC has recently participated in the 6th Career Fair at ADA University. With over 900 students and 105 companies joining the fair, Azercell representatives stood out with their active engagement and interesting stand.

The specialists of Human Resources Department of the company held information sessions for graduates and briefed the visitors about active vacancies in the company. They also instructed about the recruitment process and the Student Bursary and Internship Programs at Azercell and answered a number of questions of the career fair visitors. The students also got an opportunity to be informed about the existing demand for his/her field of specialization in labor market, build up first relations with employers while the latter had a chance to shortlist potential employees.

The event was aimed to provide some advice to the jobseekers in their field of specialization and help them build their future career. Notably, Azercell Telecom always supports the young in this regard. During the similar events held every year, the youth striving to join the company meet with Azercell representatives and get broad information about company activities. Under the Student Bursary program of the company, capable youth studying at Azerbaijani universities get a great opportunity to receive special bursary from Azercell and take internship at various divisions of the company.

The leader of the mobile communication industry, the largest taxpayer and the biggest investor of the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan Azercell Telecom LLC was founded in 1996. With 48% share of Azerbaijans mobile telecom market Azercells network covers 80% of the territory (excluding 20% of the occupied territories) and 99,8% of population of the country. Currently, 4,5 million subscribers choose Azercell services. Azercell has pioneered an important number of innovations in Azerbaijan, including GSM technology, advance payment system, mobile internet services, Metro coverage, 24/7 call centre service, 7 day/week Front Office service, M2M services, one-stop-shopping approach Azercell Express offices, Online Customer Care and Social Media Customer Care services, Mobile Customer Care office, mobile e-signature service ASAN Imza etc. Azercell deployed first 4G  LTE services in Azerbaijan in 2012. According to the results of mobile network quality surveys of Global Wireless Solutions company and international systems specialized in wireless coverage mapping such as Opensignal and Testmy.net, Azercells network demonstrated the best results among the mobile operators of Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

Irans exports to the US witnessed fall in 2018, meanwhile the US increased its exports to the Islamic Republic significantly.

Trade turnover between Iran and the US stood at $13.5 million in the first month of 2018.

The figure is 28.6 percent more compared to January 2017, according to the statistics of the United States Census Bureau released March 8.

The US exports to Iran accounted to $8.8 million in the 1-month period, which is 79.6 percent more year-on-year.

Meanwhile Iran's exports to the US decreased by 16.7 percent to $ 4.7million in the same time span, according to the report.

In December 2017, Iran and the US had a trade turnover worth $24.5 million, $16.1 million of which accounted for the US exports to Iran.

The US exports to Iran in 2017 reached $137.7 million, which is 19.9 percent less year-on-year.

Iran's exports to the US decreased by about 27.9 percent to $63.2 million in in January-December 2017.

During 2016, the US exported $172 million worth of goods to Iran, mostly agriculture products and medical equipment, and imported $87.7 million worth of goods from Iran, mostly pistachios and carpets.

Removal of international sanctions against Tehran in 2016 only contributed to Irans imports to the US, which experienced a 700-percent rise year-on-year, while the overall trade stood at $260 million, 11 percent less than the preceding year.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

A recent statistics by Cafe Bazaar, the largest local app store in Iran, indicates that Samsung enjoys a cracking share in Irans smart phone market.

Over 51 percent of Iranians who use android based mobile phones are using Samsung brands devices, according to the data.

Based on the Cafe Bazaars latest quarterly report, there are over 35 million users of Android phones in Iran.

Android devices are dominant in Irans smart phone market, with an estimated 87 percent share of total devices, followed by IOS (12 percent).

Samsungs Galaxy J5 (2017, 2016, Prime) series have the largest share in the market (9 percent), followed by Galaxy J7 (7 percent), Galaxy J1(4 percent), Galaxy A5(3 percent), Galaxy J3( 2 percent), Galaxy A3 and A7 each 2 percent.

Huaweis XE8 and X8D models jointly has a 3 percent share from market, meanwhile the share of the Chinese brands G7, G750, G730, G700 models account for 2 percent of the android device market in total.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

Irans police seized over four tons of various drugs from armed smugglers in the country's southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

The police forces seized 4,186 kilograms of opium and 73 kilograms of heroin from drug-traffickers in an armed clash, the police commander of Sistan and Baluchestan province, Brigadier General Mohammad Ghanbari said, the state-run IRINN TV reported March 8.

The police forces also seized an AK-47 and a colt, Ghanbari said, adding that four smugglers arrested in the operation.

Irans police have seized over 400 tons of various drugs during the first half of the current fiscal year (March 20-Sept. 22, 2017), which indicates a rise by 11 percent year on year, according to the statistics of Iran Drug Control Headquarters.

The country sits on a major drug route between Afghanistan and Europe, as well as the Persian Gulf states. The Islamic Republic shares about 900 kilometers of common border with Afghanistan, over which 74 percent of opium is smuggled.

The fight against drug trafficking annually costs Iran about $1 billion, according to the official estimates.

According to the statistics, there are about two million drug users in Iran.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The first prototypes of domestic Turkish cars will be presented at the Geneva International Motor Show, which will be held in 2019, the Turkish media reported March 8.

Currently, negotiations are being conducted with organizers of the Geneva International Motor Show.

On Nov. 2, 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the names of companies that will take part in manufacturing of domestic cars.

He said the companies are Anadolu Grubu, BMC, Kiraca Holding, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding.

Erdogan said that starting from 2021, Turkey will start exporting domestically-made cars to neighboring countries.

The purchase of a domestic car in Turkey will be exempt from paying a special consumer tax.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Nepali girl missing in Saudia Arabia reunites with family after 7-yrs

Saudi Arabia-based Nepali embassy has rescued and repatriated a Nepali woman who was forcefully employed as domestic helper in the country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army forces are 8 kilometers from the center of Syrias Afrin district, the Turkish media reported March 8 citing a military source.

A total of 720 square kilometers of the territory, including 156 settlements, were liberated from terrorists as part of the Operation Olive Branch.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the time has come for the offensive towards the center of Syrias Afrin.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 8

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Operation Olive Branch, directed against terrorists in Syria, will wrap up till May, the Turkish media reported quoting the countrys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying March 8.

He added that Turkey is resolute in the fight against terrorism.

Turkey and Iraq will conduct joint military operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Iraq in April, Cavusoglu added.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

F-16 fighters of the Turkish Air Force are involved in the operation, inflicting strikes on the positions of PYD/YPG on the Syrian-Turkish border.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Tesla's Elon Musk is complaining to President Donald Trump about China's car tariffs, CNBC reports.

"Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors," Musk said on Twitter in response to a Trump tweet about trade with China. "I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. It's like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes."

The auto executive said China puts a 25 percent import duty on American cars, while the U.S. only does 2.5 percent for Chinese cars. He added that no American car company is "allowed to own even 50% of their own factory" in the Asian country, but China's auto firms can own their companies in the U.S.

The Trump administration has asked Beijing for a $100 billion reduction in the U.S. trade deficit with the Asian country, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the talks.

The request to Beijing comes amid a heated debate over trade policy after Trump announced a proposal for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports last week.
President Donald Trump has signed an order imposing sweeping new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports despite protests from overseas and members of his own party, The Independent reports.

Prior to officially authorising the tariffs, Mr Trump promised to show great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military. After a week of intense lobbying from members of Congress, world leaders and other stakeholders, he has agreed to exempt, at least for now, Canada and Mexico from the tariffs.

He has also left open the possibility of later excluding allies such as Australia. But the order, which would go into effect in 15 days, could hit South Korea, China, Japan, Germany, Turkey and Brazil.

The actions we are taking today are not a matter of choice, they are a matter of necessity for our security, Mr Trump said in a ceremony at the White House that was attended by several steel and aluminum workers, some of whom spoke of how excessive dumping of steel and aluminum imports had negatively affected their jobs and families.

Mr Trump said he was fulfilling a campaign promise by imposing the tariffs, asserting that support from steelworkers was part of the reason why he won the presidency.

American steel and aluminum workers have been betrayed, Mr Trump added, but that betrayal is now over.
Two people died in a plane crash Thursday morning at the Laredo International Airport, Laredo Morning Times reports.

The twin-engine Piper PA-31 was attempting to return to the runway after smoke was reported coming from the aircraft's left engine, according to Lynn Lunsford, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

Two people were aboard the aircraft, Lunsford said. They have not been identified.

The Laredo Police and Fire departments, Texas DPS troopers, airport police and the Webb County Medical Examiner's Office were at the scene as of 11:30 a.m.

The airport has been shutdown as authorities investigate the crash. Flight delays are expected.

No further information was immediately available.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 8, 2018 - 14:00 | All, Local

Japan's financial watchdog on Thursday took administrative action against seven digital currency exchanges across the country, ordering two of them to suspend business in the first such penalty against cryptocurrency exchanges.

For the second time, the Financial Services Agency slapped a business improvement order on Coincheck Inc., the Tokyo-based operator at the heart of a massive digital money theft. It judged that risk management and consumer protection at Coincheck were insufficient.

The two virtual currency exchange operators -- Bit Station and FSHO -- were ordered to suspend business for a month through April 7 and enhance protection of customer information or assets.

An executive who is a major shareholder in Bit Station misappropriated bitcoin held by its customers, according to the FSA.

The seven operators were required to report back on how to improve their business operations by March 22. The other operators are Bicrements Inc., GMO Coin Inc., Tech Bureau Corp., and Mr. Exchange Inc.

Since the theft of 58 billion yen (about $543 million) worth of digital money from Coincheck in January, the FSA has been stepping up monitoring of virtual currency exchanges through on-site inspections and checking whether they have steps in place for their customer protection and anti-money laundering.

The latest heist from Coincheck came amid the growing popularity of virtual currencies and sparked debate about whether and how to regulate them.

Japan requires all virtual currency exchange operators to register with the government.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 8, 2018 - 13:17 | Urgent, All

Japanese police detected a record 2,413 child pornography cases in 2017, with many involving children tricked into sending nude selfies to perpetrators met online, a National Police Agency report said Thursday.

The police also took law enforcement actions against a record 1,703 perpetrators, up for the fourth consecutive year, with girls falling prey in most of the cases.

The production of child pornography accounted for more than half of the total at 1,414 cases, while the provision and public display of illegal photos by pedophiles stood at 798 cases. The possession of nude images nearly tripled to 201 cases.

Of the total, the biggest portion, at 42.4 percent, involved children coerced or tricked into sending nude selfies taken with smartphones while 16.0 percent involved child prostitution, 14.4 percent photographing or filming with spy cameras and 11.7 percent rape or indecent assault.

Hachiro Okonogi, chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, told a press conference Thursday, "Once (images) spread online, it is extremely difficult to delete them completely. We have to take measures for children who will lead the next generation."

Among selfie nude porn cases, children in 80.2 percent of them never met the perpetrators, with many of the victims approached through community websites. Friends or acquaintances accounted for 11.3 percent of the abusers and current and ex-boyfriends or girlfriends 7.4 percent.

An agency official advised caution, saying that "perpetrators might be disguising themselves as children of the same generation when they are communicating online."

Most of the 1,216 victims identified after image analysis were girls, with high school students accounting for 39.2 percent, junior high school students 36.3 percent, elementary school pupils 18.7 percent and preschoolers 3.0 percent, according to the report.

By region, the highest number of 239 cases was detected in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo, followed by 190 cases in Tokyo, 182 cases in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, and 129 cases in Fukuoka Prefecture in southwestern Japan.

Shimane Prefecture in western Japan had the lowest number of child porn detections with six cases while Yamanashi Prefecture in eastern Japan saw eight.
A research team from Western Sydney University, Capital Markets CRC, University of Sydney and University of Adelaide did an analysis of publicly available, linked patient records within the electronic databases of the Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme (PBS).

The results reveal:

49 per cent of patients on medications to lower their cholesterol did not have the recommended annual HDL-C test in a given year.

19 per cent of the same population received more HDL-C tests than were necessary.

the yearly expenditure associated with test overutilisation was approximately A$4.3 million, while the cost averted because of test underutilisation was approximately A$11.3 million per year.

Using the PBS data, the researchers collated the de-identified records of patients who received stable prescriptions of cholesterol lowering medications over a 7-year period from 2008 to 2014 - who could therefore be determined as being at high risk of developing heart disease.

As patient records are linked to the MBS, it was then possible to determine if these same patients received the recommended, annual High-Density Lipoprotein-Cholesterol (HDL-C) test from their GP.

Dr Evan Atlantis, from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University, says the results suggest that one fifth of patients are receiving too many, unnecessary tests - while half are not having their blood cholesterol levels sufficiently monitored.

"Cholesterol tests are being administered in a haphazard manner - with some patients being tested too frequently and others not enough," says Dr Atlantis.

The BMJ Open paper explores several possible explanations for this finding. One points to a lack in continuity of care and to the fact that often people see multiple practitioners at once.

"If there is no designated 'medical home' for the patient, it is not clear who bears the responsibility for managing cardiovascular risk. In this scenario, it is not surprising that many individuals may miss their annual cholesterol tests," says Dr Atlantis.

"Another contributing factor may be the lack of continuity in medical records. It is entirely possible that practitioners are not aware that some of their patients are on cholesterol medications and therefore do not take the recommended action in ordering tests.

"Another possibility is that medical practitioners are making a clinical choice not to follow the current guidelines on blood cholesterol monitoring."

Dr Atlantis - together with co-researcher Dr Katy Bell from the University of Sydney - suggests that medical practitioners' widespread non-adherence may be evidence that the guidelines warrant review.

"If there is high level evidence that the recommended frequency of tests leads to improved health outcomes, then the potential underutilisation of these tests in Australia warrants further attention," says Dr Bell.

The study also identified the Federal Health Budget implications of the underutilisation of cholesterol tests.

During the study period, the yearly expenditure associated with test overutilisation was approximately A$4.3 million, while the cost averted because of test underutilisation was approximately A$11.3 million per year.

"While cost-saving, the long term health consequences of under-utilising HDL-C test are unknown and any increase in heart disease in Australia would result in a financial burden that cannot be ignored," says Dr Atlantis.

Farshid Hajati - who developed the methodology to conduct the study and analysed the data - pointed out that there is great potential for data of this type to benefit the public.

"The next step is to quantify the consequences of not receiving the recommended level of cholesterol testing, to strengthen the current recommendations on testing frequency."

###
Cloud

DOD details its plans for JEDI cloud contract

Defense Digital Service director Chris Lynch tells vendors about a planned DOD cloud acquisition. (Photo credit: E.J. Hersom/Department of Defense)

The Defense Department shed some light on its much-anticipated Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud acquisition at a March 7 industry day, and outlined a surprisingly short timeframe for finalizing a multi-billion, single-award contract.

DOD officials hope to have a final request for proposals out by early May, and to make an award before the end of the September. Chanda Brooks, the contracting officer for JEDI, stressed that the timeline was "notional," but was equally emphatic that DOD is intent on moving quickly.

The morning event was high on enthusiasm from government officials, including acting DOD CIO Essye Miller, DOD Chief Management Officer John Gibson and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, but scant on specifics. Additional details came around mid-day, when the draft RFP was posted.

In keeping with the tight schedule, comments on that draft are due by March 21.

Several industry representatives at the event said they were skeptical that seven months was sufficent for such a massive acquisition. Brooks, however, said the in-house expertise that DOD now has in the Defense Digital Service and other components changes the equation.

"Often times, there are procurements where the technical requirement is ill-defined," Brooks said. "That is not this case with the JEDI procurement.  We are able to access advanced technical expertise that the government typically does not have access to."

Navy Capt. David McAllister, program manager for DOD's Strategic Capabilities Office, also stressed that cross-component collaboration. SCO already is working with DDS and the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental on plans for JEDI implementation.

Streamlined security and infrastructure management, migration of core DOD services, data management and advanced analytics should all come online in fiscal 2019, he said. More sophisticated capabilities will be added in 2020.

The three offices are really orchestrating a variety of projects, McAllister said. Over the course of several years were going to try to fully validate the capabilities within JEDI and see what we can achieve to deliver warfighting advantage and back-office efficiencies.

JEDI will cover Infrastrucure as a Service and Platform as a Service offerings, both non-classified and (eventually) classified.

Brooks emphasized that DOD needs technical feedback from industry over the next two weeks, with the hope that more input earlier on in the process could help the contract come together faster.

We believe we have compiled a very good foundation for the JEDI cloud infrastructure procurement," she said. "However, we do need industry feedback on several elements of the draft solicitation.

Industry discussion following the event also focused on whether smaller cloud entities could meet the DODs needs. The solicitation lays out a demanding "gate evaluation criteria" that proposers must meet to even be considered in the competitive stage of the procurement.

Lord and Brooks stressed that the single-award solicitation is a fully open and competitive process, where multiple sources are capable of satisfying the DODs technical requirements.

The JEDI effort is "being held to a higher standard and must more scrutiny than other contracts of similar size," Lord said.

But not everyone was convinced. John Weiler, executive director of the IT Acquisition Advisory Council, a public-private partnership, told FCW the presentation seemed very geared toward Amazon, making solicitation a no-contest competition.

"The articulation of the requirement and how this thing would be delivered is specific to Amazon. It is not a truly competitive procurement," he said.

DOD officials tried to address those concerns in a media call following the event. Tim Van Name, deputy director for the Defense Digital Service, told reporters the JEDI solicitation was about the proposal that best fits DODs needs. "We have no favorite," he said.

DDS General Counsel Sharon Woods added that while the contract would be a single award, that did not mean it would go to a single vendor. DOD is not telling JEDI proposers how to assemble teams, she said.

When pressed further on how many firms the DOD team believes could technically deliver on the solicitation, Van Name said, "We don't know -- and we won't know until we receive proposals from industry."
Next 5 yrs will be remarkable time for development: PM Oli

Newly appointed Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has said that the next five years will be a remarkable time for the development of Nepal.
VIENNA, March 8 (Reuters) - A1 Telekom Austria, part of Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim's America Movil, has been accused of violating the privacy of tens of thousands of its customers, Austria's data protection authority said on Thursday.

Austria's leading telecommunications and data services provider allegedly illegally stored user data of its own A1 mobile and fixed line services and its low-cost brand Bob as well as of Red Bull mobile customers, an authority's spokesman said, confirming an earlier report by Austrian daily Kurier.

A1 Telekom has been storing phone numbers, connection data and websites visited by the affected customers for an indefinite period of time with some data ranging back to as far as 2013, lawyer Ewald Scheucher said.

Scheucher flagged the issue to the data protection authority.

Private and business customers including the country's rail network provider and political parties were affected, Scheucher added.

A1 Telekom said it took the allegations very seriously and had set up an internal task force to deal with it.

"We are analysing the corresponding internal processes and will, if necessary, take the necessary measures," it said in a statement.

Connection data may only be collected for charging purposes and should be deleted within three months according to Austrian law, the lawyer said. If customers appeal an invoice or in cases of pending legal disputes, data can be stored longer.

A1 Telekom has about two weeks to submit an opinion and depending on that further steps will be considered, the data protection authority said. (Reporting by Kirsti Knolle Editing by Keith Weir)
Airline Stock Roundup: Pilots' Contract Ratified at SAVE, DAL Traffic & More The multiple flight cancellations and the resultant revenue losses might have contributed to the NYSE ARCA Airline index's decline over the past week.

In the last five trading days, pilots at Spirit Airlines, Inc. SAVE ratified the tentative five-year contract pertaining to a pay raise. As costs are likely to increase following the ratification, the low-cost carrier revised its current-quarter and year projections.

On the traffic front, Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL and Hawaiian Holdings, Inc.s HA subsidiary  Hawaiian Airlines  reported impressive numbers for February. Load factor (% of seats filled with passengers) increased at both carriers as traffic growth outpaced capacity expansion. Additionally, Hawaiian Airlines was in the news owing its fleet modernization efforts.

Alaska Air Group Inc.s ALK subsidiary  Alaska Airlines  also hit the headlines by virtue of its codeshare agreement with Fiji Airways  Fiji's national carrier. Furthermore, due to winter storm, U.S. carriers had to cancel multiple flights during the week, which might hurt revenues in the current quarter.

Transportation - Airline Industry 5YR % Return

Transportation - Airline Industry 5YR % Return

(Read the last Airline Stock Roundup for Feb 28, 2018).



Recap of the Past Weeks Most Important Stories

1. At Delta, consolidated traffic, measured in revenue passenger miles (RPMs), came in at 14.69 billion, up 3.8% year over year. Consolidated capacity (or available seat miles/ASMs) climbed 3.4% to 18.03 billion on a year-over-year basis. Load factor improved 40 basis points to 81.5% in February (Read more: Delta Reports Impressive February Traffic Figures).

On a separate issue, this Atlanta, GA-based companys decision to sever ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the wake of the shooting in a Florida high school, does not seem to have gone down well with Georgia lawmakers. During the week, they reportedly passed a tax bill that excluded jet fuel tax exemption. Inclusion of the said provision, would have boosted the bottom line of this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) carrier through significant savings per year. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Story continues

2. Pilots at Spirit Airlines ratified a contract pertaining to their pay, with 70% of them voting in favor of the deal. Following the ratification, wages of pilots increase by an average of 43% apart from other benefits. Subsequently, the carrier revised its current-quarter and year projections with respect to certain metrics. For example, cost per available seat mile (CASM), excluding fuel, is expected to decline 3% in the quarter compared with the prior projection of 5.5-6.5% (Read more: Spirit Airlines Revises View Post Pilot Contract Ratification).

3. Airline operations were severely disrupted for a couple of days from Mar 2, 2018 due to the deadly noreaster in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast of United States. Notably, this winter storm impeded travel plans and caused harassments to passengers. It caused heavy snowfall accompanied by hurricane-force winds in excess of 120 kilometers per hour in the affected areas (Read more: Nor'easter Cripples Airline Operations: What Lies Ahead?).

4 Alaska Airlines entered into a bilateral codeshare agreement with Fiji Airways. Per the deal, Fiji Airways can place its "FJ" code on Alaska Airlines operated flights from San Francisco to two popular destinations in the United States  Seattle and Portland. Additionally, the contract provides extended and seamless connectivity between flights of the two carriers. In fact, by inking this deal, Alaska Airlines and Fiji Airways have expanded their partnership (Read more: Alaska Air Group Arm to Share Codes With Fiji Airways).

5. In a bid to upgrade its fleet, Hawaiian Airlines executed a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) for buying 10 Boeing Dreamliners. The first of the fuel-efficient, lightweight Boeing 787-9 aircraft is expected to join its fleet in the first quarter of 2021. Moreover, Hawaiian Airlines has options to purchase 10 more such planes.

On a separate issue, February load factor at Hawaiian Airlines increased 190 basis points to 84.8% as traffic growth (7.4%) outpaced capacity expansion (4.9%) in the month.



Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major airline players over the past week and during the last six months.











The table above shows that most airline stocks traded in the red over the past week, though the losses were muted in nature. Consequently, the NYSE ARCA Airline index decreased 1.7% in the period. Over the past six months, the NYSE ARCA Airline index appreciated 10.5% backed by robust gains at the likes of Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A.



What's Next in the Airline Space?

Investors look forward to February traffic reports from the likes of Southwest Airlines Co. LUV in the coming days. Focus will also remain on updates on the disagreement between American Airlines Group Inc. AAL and United Continental Holdings, Inc. UAL pertaining to gate allocation at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport



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Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce ""the world's first trillionaires,"" but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.



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* Adds Trump comments

* Canada, Mexico exempted indefinitely

* Europe has "whole arsenal" for any trade war - official

* Beijing calls trade war a "mistaken prescription"

By David Lawder, Antonio De la Jara and Dave Sherwood

WASHINGTON/SANTIAGO, March 8 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump pressed ahead with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on steel imports and 10 percent for aluminum on Thursday but exempted Canada and Mexico, backtracking from earlier pledges of tariffs on all countries.

Describing the dumping of steel and aluminum in the United States as "an assault on our country," Trump told a news conference that the best outcome would for companies to move here and insisted that domestic production was needed for national security reasons.

"If you don't want to pay tax, bring your plant to the USA," he said.

Details of the plan came from a briefing by administration officials ahead of Trump's speech. Other countries can apply for exemptions, according to the administration, although details of when they would be granted were thin.

Trump has offered relief from steel and aluminum tariffs to countries that "treat us fairly on trade," a gesture aimed at putting pressure on Canada and Mexico to give ground in separate talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which appear to have stalled.

Trump has also demanded concessions from the European Union, complaining that it treated American cars unfairly and has threatened to hike tariffs on auto imports from Europe.

U.S. stocks extended gains ahead of the announcement, as the Associated Press reported key details. The benchmark Standard & Poors 500 index was last up 0.3 percent, but the S&P composite 1500 steel index was down 2.7 percent.

U.S. Treasury bonds yields rose slightly, with the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note at 2.86 percent. The Canadian dollar and Mexican peso gained against the U.S. dollar.

LINK TO NAFTA REJECTED

Mexico rejected any linkage to NAFTA in robust terms on Thursday. Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Reuters, "Under no circumstance will we be subject to any type of pressure."

Story continues

Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne told Reuters his country would not accept any duties or quotas from the United States.

Trump's unexpected announcement of the tariffs last week roiled stock markets as it raised the prospect of an escalating global trade war. He appeared to have conceded some ground after a campaign by legislators from his own Republican party, industry groups and U.S. allies abroad.

The president said he was pleased with progress in the NAFTA talks, although he repeated that he would be willing to terminate the agreement. The talks were launched after Trump took office last year saying that if the pact was not negotiated to better serve American interests, Washington would leave.

Many observers take a dimmer view of the six-month-old talks, saying little progress has been made and the negotiations are stalled over issues such as autos. Car manufacturing's contribution to the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies far outweighs that of steel and aluminium production.

COUNTERSTRIKE

Several major trading partners have said they will respond to the tariffs with direct action.

"If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal with which to respond," European Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.

Countermeasures would include European tariffs on U.S. oranges, tobacco and bourbon, he said. Harley Davidson Inc motorcycles have also been mentioned, targeting House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin.

Even as Trump threatened tariffs and prodded his NAFTA partners, 11 nations gathered in Chile to sign a landmark Asia-Pacific trade pact, one that Trump withdrew from on his first day in office.

Both Guajardo and Champagne were speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the signing ceremony in Santiago.

Trump, who won the White House after a career in real estate and reality TV, has long touted an economic nationalism, promising to bring back jobs to the United States and save the country from trade deals he views as unfair. That has put him at odds with many in his Republican Party.

Beijing, which until now had kept largely silent on the issue, sharpened its rhetoric significantly. One lever that China has is U.S. agricultural exports and it has said in the past that it could target soybeans.

"Especially given today's globalization, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on the sidelines of an annual meeting of China's parliament. "China would have to make a justified and necessary response."

China had a record $375.2 billion goods surplus with the United States last year.

Trade tensions between the world's two largest economies have risen since Trump took office, and although China accounts for only a small fraction of U.S. steel imports, its massive industrial expansion has helped create a global glut of steel that has driven down prices.

Most economists and trade specialists say they doubt the steel and aluminum tariffs alone would trigger a global trade war, but point to the risk of further U.S. measures against China as a major tipping point. Trump has also threatened to impose hefty tariffs on European car exports if the EU does take retaliatory measures.

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina, Elias Glenn, Kim Coghill, Brian Love, Nichola Saminather, Doina Chiacu and Andrea Hopkins; writing by David Stamp and David Chance; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Frances Kerry)
Elon Musk remembers the SpaceX of 10 years ago: We couldnt even reach orbit with little Falcon 1

Tuesday morning, SpaceX successfully launched into space its largest satellite ever  it was nearly the size of a city bus, according to founder Elon Musk .

Falcon 9 flight 50 launches tonight, carrying Hispasat for Spain. At 6 metric tons and almost the size of a city bus, it will be the largest geostationary satellite we've ever flown.

Successful deployment of Hispasat 30W-6 to a geostationary transfer orbit confirmed.

After the launch, Musk celebrated his team, congratulating them on the 50th launch of the Falcon 9 rocket , notable because it is reusable .

Very proud of the SpaceX team! Can't believe it's been fifty Falcon 9 launches already. Just ten years ago, we couldn't even reach orbit with little Falcon 1.

But Musk also reminded everyone that the recent success of SpaceX belies the struggle of its early days.

"Just ten years ago, we couldn't even reach orbit with little Falcon 1," Musk tweeted.

Indeed, SpaceX has come a long way.

"A lot of people really only heard of SpaceX relatively recently, they may think Falcon 9 and Dragon just instantly appeared and that's how it always was. But it wasn't," said Musk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) conference in Adelaide, Australia, in September.

"We started off with just a few people who really didn't know how to make rockets," the CEO of SpaceX recalled.

The Hawthorne, California-based aeronautics company was founded in 2002 to "revolutionize space technology" and enable multiplanitary human existence and the ability to live on Mars in particular.

To try and compete in the rocket industry was risky.

"I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy," Musk told Scott Pelley on CBS's "60 Minutes" in 2014. "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."

Story continues

Musk had made a reported $180 million when online payments company PayPal sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002 .



Early on, Musk had a hard time bringing on top talent.

"The reason I ended up being the chief engineer or chief designer was not because I wanted to, it was because I couldn't hire anyone. Nobody good would join. So I ended up being that by default," Musk said at IAC in 2017.

And in 2008, SpaceX almost died.

At the time, the company was trying to successfully launch the its first rocket, the Falcon 1.

"I messed up the first three launches. The first three launches failed," Musk remembered, speaking at IAC in Australia.

Plus, his electric automobile company, Tesla TSLA , founded in 2003 , was struggling. The U.S. economy was tanking. "And I'm getting divorced, by the way, add to that. That was definitely the worst year of my life," Musk told Pelley.

"A fourth [rocket launch] failure would have been absolutely game over," said Musk. "Yeah. It's bad enough to have three strikes, having four strikes is really kaput."

But finally, a ray of hope.

"[F]ortunately, the fourth launch, which was ... the last money that we had for Falcon 1  that fourth launch worked. Or it would have been  that would have been it for SpaceX. But fate liked us that day. So, the fourth launch worked," Musk said at IAC.

After SpaceX successfully launched its first rocket that September, the company got a government contract, which buoyed business.

"NASA called and told us that we'd won a $1.5 billion contract. And I couldn't even hold the phone, I just blurted out, 'I love you guys,'" Musk told Pelley.

Since the dark days of 2008, SpaceX has evolved from a near failure to a success story.

According to Musk, it's all driven by his desire to get to Mars , so that he can help build a better future.

"It's important to have a future that is inspiring and appealing," said Musk in a 2017 TED talk .

"I just think there have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Like, why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future?

"And if we're not out there, if the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multiplanet species, I find that it's incredibly depressing if that's not the future that we're going to have."

See also:

SpaceX launches its largest satellite ever which is nearly the size of a bus

9 years ago SpaceX nearly failed itself out of existence: 'It is a pretty emotional day,' says Elon Musk

Elon Musk reveals plan to transport passengers anywhere on earth in under 60 minutes, for the price of a plane ticket

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ExxonMobil Corporation XOM has outlined its growth strategy, which intends to more than double earnings and cash flow from operations by 2025 based on current oil prices.



Per the growth plans, the company expects earnings of $31 billion by 2025, up more than 100% from last years adjusted profit of $15 billion. The figure does not include the impact of U.S. tax reform and impairments.



ExxonMobil has set capital spending at $24 billion for 2018, $28 billion for 2019 and $30 billion from 2023 to 2025, to meet its target to achieve high growth. However, its peers including Chevron Corporation CVX are cutting down on spending and keeping budgets unchanged.



Darren W. Woods, chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, also emphasized that the plan estimates double-digit rates of return in all three segments of ExxonMobils business  upstream, downstream and chemical.



Upstream Growth Drivers: Guyana and the Permian



ExxonMobil expects to enhance earnings in the upstream sector by initiating various growth programs, including low-cost-of-supply investments in U.S. tight oil, deepwater and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Moreover, ramp up of existing projects and commissioning of around 25 new projects are likely to boost yield to about 5 million oil-equivalent barrels per day (MMBOE/D), up from 4 MMBOE/D. The company proposes to boost tight-oil production by five times from the U.S. Permian Basin. It also intends to increase LNG production to meet the growing demand worldwide.



ExxonMobils exploration successes and strategic acquisitions will benefit upstream growth. The testimony to this is the addition of 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels to its resource base in locations including the Permian, Guyana, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea and Brazil, in 2017.



Guyana and the Permian are key drivers of growth in ExxonMobils portfolio. In Guyana, the company has added 3.2 billion gross oil equivalent barrels of recoverable resource and plans development and exploration. In the Permian, the company expanded resource base to 9.5 billion oil-equivalent barrels from less than 3 billion in 2016. This was possible mainly because of acquisition of several entities in 2017 along with application of its expertise in technical evaluation and successful delineation. ExxonMobil managed to lower the acquisition cost to just above $1 per oil-equivalent barrel.



The New Mexico acquisition is estimated to hold over 4,800 drilling locations with an average lateral length of more than 12,000 feet. This will facilitate efficiency in execution of Permian volumes growth and enhance growth.



Downstream Growth Backed by Investing in Refineries



The earnings of downstream business of ExxonMobil are expected to increase two fold by 2025. The growth will come through strategic investments that will include upgradation at refineries in Baytown and Beaumont in Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Singapore, and Fawley in the U.K. The investments will boost yield of higher-value products  ultra-low sulfur diesel, chemicals feedstocks and basestocks for lubricants. These initiatives will lead the downstream margins to increase 20% through 2025.



The projected demand growth in the emerging markets will support the expansion. ExxonMobil is also venturing into new markets such as Mexico and Indonesia. Moreover, integration with chemical manufacturing and upstream production also support growth.



Chemical Segment to Increase Presence in America & Asia Pacific



In its chemical business, ExxonMobil is likely to increase manufacturing capacity in North America and Asia Pacific by about 40%. The probable growth can be attributed to the addition of 13 new facilities, comprising two world-class steam crackers in the United States. These investments will facilitate the company to meet rising demand in Asia and other emerging markets.



Conclusion



Overall, ExxonMobils growth strategy aims to fully leverage competitive advantages to boost shareholder value in three of its world-class businesses. The increased investments are expected to enhance and boost returns on capital employed to about 15% by 2025.



However, many analysts view the long-term goals of ExxonMobil as complex, thanks to the uncertainty in the oil and gas industry over the last few years. Shares of the company dropped 2.5% after the company announced that spending will not enhance near-term production.



Price Performance



During the last three months, ExxonMobils shares have lost 10.1% compared with the industrys 0.8% decline.

Story continues









Zacks Rank & Key Picks



ExxonMobil carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



A few better-ranked players in the same sector are Pioneer Natural Resources Company PXD and ConocoPhillips COP. The stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Headquartered at Irving, TX, Pioneer Natural Resources Company is an independent oil and gas exploration and production company. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 66.92% in the preceding four quarters.



ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, TX, is a major global exploration and production (E&P) company. The company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 144.45% in the preceding four quarters.



The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All



Last year, it generated $8 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $47 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce ""the world's first trillionaires,"" but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.



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[caption id="attachment_6753" align="alignnone" width="620"]

Norm Pattis, founder of Pattis Law Firm. Courtesy photo

Norm Pattis, founder of Pattis Law Firm. Courtesy photo[/caption] A Yale University student has been found not guilty of raping a female peer on Halloween night in 2015. A six-person jury deliberated three hours before rendering its verdict that 25-year-old Saifullah Khan had not raped the woman, who claimed Khan forced himself on her after the two had been drinking. New Haven attorney Norm Pattis notched the victory, telling the Connecticut Law Tribune Wednesday afternoon that the trial lasted seven days. "This was consensual. They had too much to drink and ended up in bed. The next morning, she claimed rape," Pattis said. "There is a lot of murky and ambiguous sexual conduct on campus." Pattis continued, acknowledging heightened awareness of sexual-assault allegations in connection with the #MeToo movement. "In our times, issues like this are being politicized and used as a weapon in identity politics. We were happy to beat back the powers of unctuous righteousness in this case." Pattis said Judge Brian Fisher disallowed use by the plaintiff of the constancy of accusation doctrine, an exception to the rules barring hearsay testimony, and that helped his client. People the victim told about the alleged sexual abuse were excluded from testimony. As a result, we were also able to prevent evidence that he was suspected of other acts of sexual misconduct while at Yale, Pattis said, adding, There were no other alleged rapes, but rather other women who claimed he had not respected their boundaries. Another hurdle in the case, according to Dan Irwen, Pattis co-counsel at Pattis & Smith LLC, was possible media bias in conjunction with the #MeToo Movement and the fact that Khan is from Afghanistan and of Muslim faith. It was a hard case to try and the stakes were high, Irwen said Wednesday. "We were concerned of what people might think--that theyd stereotype him as having misbehaved because of that. In addition, Irwen said, We were concerned with all of the #MeToo coverage as to whether our client would receive a fair trial or not. Pattis said Khan, who was charged with three felonies and one misdemeanor related to the alleged assault, had been studying neuroscience and wishes to be reinstated to the university immediately. Irwen said he will contact Yale in the coming days to have the suspension removed. Yales media department could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The plaintiff was represented by Maura Crossin, executive director of the Victim Rights Center of Connecticut, and the state attorneys office. Neither office responded to requests for comment.
NMC bars two Norvic doctors for 30 days

Nepal Medical Council (NMC) on Wednesday barred two doctors of Norvic International Hospital from practicing medicine for 30 days for their act of gross medical negligence.
JapanCrypt.jpg





In its most sweeping crackdown yet, a Japanese regulator has penalized seven cryptocurrency exchanges, requiring two to halt operations for one month. Japans Financial Services Agency (FSA) announced today, March 8, 2018, that it came down on the exchanges due to their failure to provide proper internal-control systems. All of the exchanges were ordered to step up efforts to improve security and prevent money laundering. Business suspension orders were issued for FSHO and Bit Station, effective today. The FSA said FSHO was not properly monitoring trades and employees at the exchange had not undergone proper training. The FSA also alleged that a senior employee at Bit Station had used customers bitcoin for personal use. The five other exchanges punished were GMO Coin, Tech Bureau, Mister Exchange, Increments and Coincheck. Coincheck was served with its second business improvement order since its security breach earlier this year, when $530 million worth of NEM (XEM) tokens were stolen. Coincheck to Repay Victims In a news conference today, Coincheck also announced that it will begin compensating users who had their cryptocurrency stolen, beginning as soon as next week. The exchange was hacked on January 26, 2018, after a hacker used malware to gain access to an employees computer. All of the 260,000 users impacted by the theft will be paid back in Japanese yen, based on NEM rates at the time of the theft, the Tokyo-based company said. At the root of the problem, the cryptocurrency exchange had been keeping all its NEM in a hot wallet connected to the internet. In contrast, at any one time, U.S.-based exchange Coinbase keeps 98 percent of its funds in a more secure cold wallet. The vice president of the NEM Foundation, Jeff McDonald, also told Bitcoin Magazine that if Coincheck had been using a multisignature wallet, the problem would not have occurred. It is still not clear who was behind the Coincheck hack. Tough Measures The Coincheck hack was one of the largest thefts of cryptocurrency in the world since Mt. Gox, another Tokyo exchange, was brought to its knees by hackers in 2014. What happened at Coincheck highlighted the risks of storing funds in cryptocurrency exchanges, and since then, Japans FSA has taken strong measures to protect its citizens and ensure the security of cryptocurrency exchanges across the country. Following the Coincheck breach, Japanese authorities announced on January 29, 2018, that they would investigate all cryptocurrency exchanges in the country for security gaps, and ordered Coincheck to, essentially, get its act together. The FSA gave Coincheck until February 13, 2018, to submit a report summarizing the actions it would take to improve security and customer support. Last year, Japan became one of the first countries to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges when it set up a licensing system. Some 16 exchanges in the country are currently registered, while another 16, including Coincheck, have been allowed to continue operating unregistered while they apply for licences. Five of the seven exchanges punished by the FSA are unregistered, including the two forced to suspend business. Subsequent to its business suspension, Bit Station withdrew its application for a license. Japans crackdown on exchanges follows a series of efforts by U.S. regulators to tighten reins on the industry. Yesterday, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proclaimed that anyone selling initial coin offering (ICO) tokens are unregistered money transmitters, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned that any exchange selling tokens deemed as securities must register with the agency. Overall, Japan remains one of the more cryptocurrency-friendly countries, distinguishing itself from crackdowns in South Korea and China.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.
Not Every Company Can Have a Steve Jobs. But Here's What They Can Do In The Meantime.

Every company wants to nurture the next Steve Jobs, or develop the next equivalent of the iPhone for their industry, but what should they do while waiting for a similar visionary to appear?

Instead of buying into the Moses myth  venerating a small cluster of genius individuals with the power to part waters  companies can tap on design thinking to systematically build a bridge, according to University of Virginia Darden School of Business professor Jeanne Liedtka, Its not one or the other  you can do both.

Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology used by designers and business consultants to resolve complex issues. It favors a human-centered and iterative approach designed around the user of the proposed solution.

When Liedtkas team recently tracked a U.S. government scheme to allow any employee anywhere in the country to submit ideas to improve their workplace, it found that one womans suggestion to reduce waiting times in her local hospital was potentially able to save the hospital a million dollars yearly.

Now multiply that by the number of employees youve got, Liedtka added. But we ignore that. Because we only want big, disruptive novel things and ignore all the other ideas that we could implement [if we could] engage the other 90% of the organization to create value in the meantime.

Likewise, implementing technology-led and design-led solutions within a company is not an all or nothing switch, says Derrick Kiker, a partner at McKinsey & Company and chief executive officer of design firm Lunar. The California-based design consultancy was acquired and folded into McKinsey, via its McKinsey Design Group, in 2015. The two disciplines are complementary, and design-led innovations can help to fill the space between disruptive ideas and technological upheavals, he says.

Kiker and Liedtka made their comments on a panel with Fortune president Alan Murray in Singapore, where more than 200 global designers, business leaders and entrepreneurs had gathered for the inaugural Fortune, Time, and Wallpaper* Brainstorm Design conference.

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According to Kiker, companies can better adopt design thinking by providing a safe space for designers to work independently and creatively, and creating opportunities for collaboration by enabling both business and design teams to challenge each other, without a feeling of superiority on either side.

When implemented well, design thinking can entirely shift the entire culture of an organization, both speakers agreed.

We found that design and that innovation doesnt just change the experience of the person you are designing for, it also changes your relationship with the person youre designing with, Liedtka added.

She recalled the time when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) approached her team to teach their scientists design thinking. Liedtka admitted being skeptical as getting to Mars is clearly a technical problem.

But the issue, according to NASA, was that their scientists could not communicate with each other, she recounted to laughter from the audience.

All the solutions happen in the space between their specialties, she explained. Every technology has human beings working within it, and design offers a language and a way of communicating to complement the rapidly evolving technologies.

Design is teachable and scalable, and it is an opportunity to include every single person in the company in the conversation, she said.

For more coverage of Brainstorm Design, click here.
March 8 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories on the New York Times business pages. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- Amazon has had no problem getting affluent households to buy from its online store. But people with low incomes have been less loyal to the retailer. Now, Amazon is taking another step to persuade them to spend their money on the site. Starting Tuesday, the company will offer a discount on its Prime membership program to the millions of recipients of Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income Americans. http://nyti.ms/2FA4pq5

- More than 100 Republican lawmakers implored U.S. President Donald Trump to drop plans for stiff and sweeping steel and aluminum tariffs as the White House prepared to formalize the measures on Thursday afternoon. Officials said late Wednesday that the plan would initially exempt Canada and Mexico and could ultimately exclude other allies. http://nyti.ms/2Fzex2x

- In Japan, a fiercely competitive market where Coca-Cola says it introduces 100 new products each year, the company plans to test a flavored, bubbly drink spiked with alcohol. http://nyti.ms/2FwCszH

- Giant chipmaker Broadcom pledged to keep the United States at the forefront of emerging mobile technology if it were to acquire Qualcomm, its latest effort to allay the Trump administration's national security concerns about its hostile $117 billion takeover bid. http://nyti.ms/2FwPRYz

(Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)
One arrested for spreading rumours about bandh

Police have arrested a man for allegedly circulating a post on social networking sites claiming that there will bandh on Friday and Saturday.
As promised, President Trump will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, starting March 22. But Trump has made significant concessions, in response to protests from some of Americas key trading partners.

The tariffs  25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports  will exclude Canada and Mexico. And there will be a provision allowing other trade partners to essentially appeal the tariffs, find ways around them, or make the case that their imports dont really harm the U.S. economy.

Any country with which we have a security relationship [can] discuss with the United States and the president alternate ways to address the impairment of our steel and aluminum industries, a senior Trump administration official told reporters on March 8. This administration has the ability to modify the order.

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, March 8, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Canada is the biggest source of steel imports to the United States, and Mexico is the fourth largest. With those two countries exempt, the burden will fall on imports from Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Turkey, Japan and a bunch of smaller producers. China is the worlds biggest steel producer, but it ranks 11th in terms of imports to the United States. And the United States has imposed a variety of tariffs on Chinese steel during recent years, which has led to a sharp reduction in imports.

The loopholes allow Trump to claim hes keeping a campaign promise, by going to bat for two heartland industries that have endured sharp cuts in production and employment. Yet theyre also likely to reassure investors and business people worried about trade wars, since there are ways around the tariffs for at least some importers. Those loopholes will blunt the price hikes some purchases of the metals are likely to face, and reduce the likelihood of escalating back-and-forth tariffs.

Trump seeking concessions

The exemptions for Mexico and Canada are contingent on the outcome of efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which are underway, with no conclusion imminent. Trump wants concessions from both countries that would boost American-made content in the thousands of products that cross the three nations borders every day. Trump may view the exemption from his metal tariffs as a carrot to be dangled during the negotiations, and the threat of ending the exemptions as leverage he can use.

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Trump will still have to deal with retaliatory measures imposed on U.S. exports by other countries, in response to Trumps steel tariffs. European countries are relatively small exporters of steel to the United States, yet they have still threatened proportionate tariffs on American products such as Kentucky bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles built in Wisconsin. Assuming they follow through, markets will be watching closely to see if Trump escalates furtherthe gloomy trade-war scenarioor backs away, content with his metal tariffs.

The United States routinely imposes tariffs on a wide range of imports, when theres evidence that foreign producers are selling those products in the United States at artificially low prices. But those tariffs normally apply to a narrow range of products form specific countries that in many cases are subsidized by the home government.

Trumps steel and aluminum tariffs are different. Theyre based not on any finding on uncompetitive practice by a foreign producer, but on a little-used law that allows the president to impose tariffs for national-security reasons  such as during a war. Theres obviously no war, but Trump claims the decline of the American steel and aluminum industries is a national security problem because it threatens critical infrastructureroads, bridges, power plants, water treatment facility, and the like. Trade experts think thats a stretch, but they acknowledge that Trump has the authority to impose the tariffs. And now, the loopholes give Trump a way of saying imports no longer threaten national security, if he feels like theyve accomplished their goal at any point in the future.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available.

Read more:

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman

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Twitter Is Trying to Halt Cryptocurrency-Related Scams on Its Platform

Twitter Inc. is attempting to halt alleged cryptocurrency-related scams spreading via its platform, joining fellow social media companies in striving to cut down on harmful content.

Twitter is aware of cryptocurrency-related manipulation, and is implementing measures to prevent these types of accounts from engaging with others in a deceptive manner, a spokesman told Bloomberg, declining to elaborate further.

Facebook Inc. recently banned ads tied to cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings and binary options, saying they were associated with misleading and deceptive practices. However cryptocurrency ads have still found their way onto Facebook.

Twitter issued its statement in response to a Bloomberg inquiry regarding the restriction of the @Bitcoin handle. It declined to comment on personal accounts for security reasons. Upon visiting the profile, a caution note appears saying: Caution: This account is temporarily restricted. Youre seeing this warning because there has been some unusual activity from this account.

The @Bitcoin account describes itself as a site for Bitcoin News, Information and Price Tweets.

The verified account that provides customer service to Kraken users said on Tuesday that it had been banned from Twitter for trying to alert its customers to the various ways thieves are stealing digital assets online. Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, later got its ban lifted for its customer support account.

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey has also waded in on the issue. In a response to a Twitter comment on March 6 by Emin Gun Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, regarding alleged cryptocurrency scams, Dorsey replied We are on it.

Crypto-spam reached untenable proportions recently, Sirer told Bloomberg. It was impossible to discuss any topic without having some spammer jump in, impersonate a cryptocelebrity, and try to collect coins from people with promises of easy gains.

Regulators have started to crack down on the cryptocurrency industry. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it got a court order freezing the assets of an alleged initial coin offering scam by AriseBank. On Friday Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, called for greater regulation to bring the era of cryptocurrency anarchy to an end.
By Jarrett Renshaw WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A delegation of workers from U.S. oil refining companies that oppose the nation's biofuels policy converged on Washington on Wednesday to lobby lawmakers to find a way to lessen the regulation's costs without hurting corn farmers and makers of the alternative fuels. The trip, organized by the United Steelworkers union, marks the latest move in a battle between Big Oil and Big Corn over the fate of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard - a law requiring corn-based ethanol in gasoline that the refining industry says is costing it hundreds of millions of dollars a year. More than two dozen workers from refiners Valero Energy Corp , HollyFrontier Corp , PBF Energy Inc and bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) are expected to meet with lawmakers, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, to seek support for changes to the RFS. "We are going to try to explain how the RFS hurts merchant refiners and how there are options on the table to reform the program that don't hurt the ethanol industry," said Ryan O'Callaghan, president of the United Steelworkers chapter that represents PES. He said the group would urge changes that could lower costs of the RFS to refiners, including potentially placing a price cap on the blending credits at the center of the program, or by shifting the responsibility for blending fuels off of refiners and further down the supply chain. The workers were expected to finish with a roundtable-style meeting hosted by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who has been the legislative face of the opposition in Washington. The meeting is closed to the press, the senator's office said. Rural biofuel plant workers and managers delivered a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, reminding him of their industry's economic importance to the nation's heartland. After four straight years of declining agricultural income, your steadfast support of homegrown biofuels has been a lifeline for the farm economy," the group wrote. We ask that you send a clear and final signal that this administration will no longer entertain misleading schemes designed to kill the RFS. The RFS currently requires refiners to cover the cost of blending increasing volumes of biofuels like ethanol into the nation's fuel each year. To prove compliance, refiners must earn or purchase tradable blending credits, known as RINs - the price of which has skyrocketed in recent years. The program, established in 2007 to help farmers and cut petroleum imports, has been an economic driver in corn-states such as Iowa, but merchant refiners say the increasing compliance costs are overly burdensome and put jobs at risk. PES, which employs more than 1,000 people in the key electoral state of Pennsylvania, in January blamed its bankruptcy on the costs of the credits. Reuters reported that other factors may also have played a role in its bankruptcy, including the withdrawal of more than $590 million in dividend-style payments from the company by its investor owners. The company's financial meltdown has heaped pressure on the White House and lawmakers to address biofuels policy. Last week, President Donald Trump waded deeper into the issue when he told rival groups gathered at the White House that he supported a compromise that temporarily caps credit prices to lower refinery costs, while also lifting restrictions on higher-ethanol blended gasoline to boost corn growers. The Environmental Protection Agency currently limits gasoline to 10 percent ethanol during the summer months, a policy intended to reduce ozone emissions and smog during the peak driving season. Like past efforts to overhaul the RFS, Trump's proposal faces political and legal challenges from ethanol industry advocates that worry a credit price cap would undermine the biofuels program. Another White House meeting initially planned for this week to further discuss the idea may be postponed for logistical reasons, two sources said. In the meantime, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are preparing an analysis of Trump's proposals for the White House, the sources said. (Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; editing by Richard Valdmanis, Lisa Shumaker and Steve Orlofsky)
(Corrects total amount of sale to $467 million in headline and lead paragraph)

WASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department approved a total of $467 million worth of potential foreign military sales to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon said in separate approval notices on Thursday.

Raytheon Co was listed as the prime contractor for both the foreign military sales.

The Qatar Emiri Air Force was approved for $197 million worth of equipment to upgrade its air operations center, according to the Pentagon statement.

Qatar was cleared to buy global positioning system equipment and information distribution systems, the Pentagon said.

Separately, the United Arab Emirates was approved to buy 300 Sidewinder missiles, training missiles, tactical guidance units, and spares and support. The total estimated cost of the sale to UAE was $270.4 million, the Pentagon said. (Reporting by Mike Stone and Susan Heavey in Washington Editing by Bernadette Baum)
The upper echelon of the Canadian banking sector doesn't get anywhere near as much attention as its much-larger U.S. counterpart. But most of the "big five" north-of-the-border incumbents are not only dominant players in their market -- they are also busy making coin in the U.S.

Of the five -- Toronto-Dominion Bank (NYSE: TD), Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Nova Scotia, and Bank of Montreal (NYSE: BMO) -- Bank of Montreal is a particularly interesting stock at the moment. Here's why.

Canadian banknotes and a wallet

Image source: Getty Images.

Southern exposure

These days, despite the name, Bank of Montreal is headquartered in Toronto, Canada's financial capital. It does plenty of business in Canada's huge neighbor to the south, though; beginning in 1984 with the acquisition of old-line Chicago lender Harris Bank (now known as BMO Harris), the company has built a set of American assets.

And the company's south-of-the-border personal and commercial (P&C) banking operations are sizable and growing. In its fiscal 2017 earnings digest, the bank revealed that they rose by 13% over the preceding two years, and contributed 1.4 billion Canadian dollars ($1.1 billion) to overall company earnings, or 25% of the total.

The numbers were even better in Bank of Montreal's recently announced Q1 results: In U.S.-dollar terms, total revenue rose by 11% over the same period the previous year, to $941 million. Adjusted net profit growth was a very vibrant 30%. This made up for the sluggishness of its Canadian P&C unit, which saw its performance in the two metrics slump by 2% and 13%, respectively, during the quarter.

This illustrates one of Bank of Montreal's strengths, which buy-and-hold investors, in particular, might appreciate. The company has five operating segments -- Canadian P&C, U.S. P&C, wealth management (like U.S. P&C, a standout performer in Q1), capital markets, and corporate services. If we strip out the small and not-very-significant corporate services, we see that none of the four remaining segments is overwhelmingly larger than the others.

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So the company can draw from four big and distinctive sources of growth. In Q1, all contributed between roughly CA$1.1 billion and CA$1.9 billion to total revenue. Collectively, they brought in almost CA$5.7 billion for Bank of Montreal, a 5% improvement on a year-over-year basis.

In addition to being one of the oldest financial institutions in North America-- it was founded in 1817 -- Bank of Montreal is also Canada's oldest dividend payer. Incredibly, it made its first shareholder distribution in 1829; these days, it pays a quarterly distribution of CA$0.93 ($0.72) per share.

At the current exchange rate, that yields 3.9% on the company's stock. That's more or less in line with the other Canadian big five (Toronto-Dominion's is 3.6%, for example), yet it's well above the rates of its U.S. Big Four peers, and those of plenty of regional American banks.

Another plus: In spite of the elevated yield, the company's payout ratio is 44%, indicating there's plenty of room for increases in the future.

Pumping out the profits

It's a good time to be a bank in North America; both the U.S. and Canada are doing fine economically, and the up cycle is having positive effects on the finance industry. Also, recent increases in the price of oil portend well for the resource-heavy Canadian economy, and by extension its banking sector.

Similarly, a recent decision by the World Bank not to invest in upstream oil and gas projects in the developing world could present opportunities for active Canadian lenders like Bank of Montreal.

This potential isn't reflected in share-price performance; investors have lately bid up top U.S. banking stocks, which post much-bigger numbers and grab most of the headlines. Compare the one-year performance of the Yankee Big Four (save for flailing Wells Fargo) with Canada's top five:

JPM Chart

JPM data by YCharts.

TD Chart

TD data by YCharts.

In short, Bank of Montreal is a steady operator, with fingers in enough pies to continue growing. That dividend is quite generous, too. The bank operates in a corner of North American finance that many investors are ignoring just now, which is why this might be a good time to snap up some shares.

More From The Motley Fool

Eric Volkman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Yale University

AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz

Yale student Saifullah Khan was arrested on Halloween 2015 for allegedly raping a female student.

The case has dragged on for years.

The ruling has broader implications for colleges as they try to address sexual assault.

A Yale student was found not guilty on charges of sexual assault Wednesday in a rare campus rape case that was tried in criminal court, The New York Times reported.

The plaintiff, Saifullah Khan, was arrested on Halloween 2015 for allegedly raping a female Yale student. The case has dragged on for years and was further postponed after a judge declared a mistrial in 2017.

Khan's defense lawyers argued that Yale made him a scapegoat for their larger problems handling sexual assault complaints, and alleged that Yale's private police force inappropriately collaborated with the university unjustly.

They also asked questions about what the complainant wore that night, asking why she hadn't chosen to dress more modestly, like "Cinderella in a long flowing gown," according to The Times. Activists say questions like those typically deter victims from reporting allegations of sexual assault.

Wednesday's ruling brings an end to Khan's case, but raises more questions as colleges grapple with handling sexual-misconduct cases.

Yale suspended Khan from the university in November 2015. Khan's lawyers are now calling for the university to readmit him as a student.

NOW WATCH: Gretchen Carlson's advice for her twenty-year-old self

See Also:

SEE ALSO: At Yale, students found to be sexual assailants return to campus
Farmer Najibullah Haidari, 38, is one of the countless victims of nearly four decades of war in Afghanistan.

Speaking with Gandhara RFE/RL from his hospital bed at Kabuls Jamhuriat hospital, Haidari said he was shot in the abdomen by local strongmen three months ago.

I was shot with a Kalashnikov assault rifle near my house at night, he said of the incident in his village, Freshqan-e Kalan. I was immediately rushed to the hospital, and parts of my intestine were removed. I am still being treated for my wounds.

Like countless other crimes in Afghanistan, Haidaris shooting in the Sancharak district in northern Afghanistans rural Sar-e-Pul Province is unlikely to be fully probed or its perpetrators punished. Several interviews with local officials established that even the initial probe into the attack has made little headway due to a local strongmans involvement.

Impunity, weak institutions, and a lack of accountability have prompted more than 1 million Afghans to submit statements on alleged atrocities to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is still weighing whether to initiate a war crimes investigation.

While Haidari, father of seven, recovers in the hospital, millions of Afghans are seeking justice for the death, injuries, displacement, and humiliation they or their loved ones have sustained at the hands of various regimes, global and regional powers, warlords, and extremist factions such as the Taliban and Islamic State (IS).

NAI, a Kabul-based media freedom organization, is one of the numerous Afghan organizations that has contributed to submitting 1.17 million accounts of atrocities submitted to the ICC.

Mujeeb Khalwatgar, director of NAI, says his organization has submitted 190 complaints to the ICC. He says the cases involve alleged atrocities against journalists by the Taliban, IS, and the Haqqani network between 2003 and 2017.

The cases are related to the killing, abduction, beating up, and harassment of journalists, he told Gandhara RFE/RL.

In the eastern province of Kunar, tribal leader Shah Mahmoud Qazikheil says he lost two brothers and hundreds other residents of his village, Kerala, in 1979.

I can recall that people were taken out of the prison at night, and we still do not know their fate, he said. We want the international court in the Netherlands to prosecute all those responsible for killing innocents in Kunar.

The ICC, however, can only investigate crimes in Afghanistan after May 2003, when the country ratified the Rome Statute, which established the ICC. This permanent international court was established in 2002 and can prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.

In Afghanistan, tens of thousands of victims expect the ICC to probe grave rights abuses from a series of decades. The once-peaceful society was first torn apart by the crackdown accompanying the communist coup in 1978. During the decades that followed, the Red Army committed atrocities, and Afghans suffered some of the worst abuses at the hands of rapacious factional leaders, former jihadist factions, and new hard-line groups such as the Taliban in the 1990s.

In November, the ICCs lead investigator, Fatou Bensouda, said the court is seeking the authority to investigate possible war crimes by Afghan forces, the U.S. military, the C.I.A., the Taliban, and affiliated armed groups.

During the next three months ending on January 31, the international court received 1.17 million accounts of atrocities from victims.

The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber will examine the Prosecutors request for authorization to open an investigation and consider the representations (testimonies) received from the affected communities, the ICCs public affairs wrote to Radio Free Afghanistan.

In due course, the Chamber will issue its decision. At this stage we cannot speculate on the decisions outcome and subsequent steps, it added.

Patricia Gossman, a senior Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, says an ICC investigation will send an important signal to Afghans.

The court will make a determination quite soon about whether to proceed with a full investigation. I think this would really be a serious step forward for transitional justice in Afghanistan, she said.

Gossman has probed right abuses in Afghanistan for decades. She says the adoption of an amnesty law in 2006 ended years of efforts by the Afghan government and international parties to begin a process of transitional justice. For more than 12 years, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has been unable to publish its report on past abuses.

I think many Afghans lost hope of seeing any kind of progress on transitional justice, she noted.

Washington, however, opposes the ICCs involvement in Afghanistan. "An ICC investigation with respect to U.S personnel would be wholly unwarranted and unjustified," the U.S. State Department said in A statement in November.

The statement added that the proposed investigation "will not serve the interests of either peace or justice in Afghanistan."

Kabul, however, has indicated a willingness to collaborate with the ICC.

We are committed to cooperating with the International Criminal Court. The majority of crimes preserved in the Rome Statute have been reflected in the new penal code of Afghanistan in 2017," Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said in February. "A channel of communication and collaboration with the International Criminal Court has been established in the last two years, and the government is committed to keeping it open and on track.

Ordinary Afghans are hoping the ICC will open an investigation. Ahmed Samim, a resident of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, wants the ICC to move forward.

Complaints filed with the International Criminal Court should be addressed seriously. This would help reduce [current and future] crimes in Afghanistan," he noted.
Educational research shows that students who attend schools with low f [ #permalink

While analysing an argument it is very important to understand what premise led to the conclusion. Here, the conclusion is: homeschooling is the best. Why? Because of smallest ratio of parent (teacher) and student. Note the causality: smaller ratio=better results. Considering this, let us look at the options:



A Standardized test results for homeschooled students show that scores are highly related to the parent-teachers level of education. This gives us another reason for good scores. That is, higher the education level=better the results. Weakens our causal relationship by some degree. Hold.



B Standardized test results from larger schools that require teachers to have a Masters degree are comparable to test results for students from smaller. Okay, but we are not concerned about large schools with specific set of requirements for teachers. We are looking at schools and ratios in general and if there are/is any other reason for the test results. Also, we have no idea about the requirements of smaller school and if the levels of education of teachers has any influence on scores of tests. Incorrect.



C Studies show that homeschooled students struggle socially. Irrelevant. Incorrect.



D Standardized test results for homeschooled students show the same range of scores as scores for students from large schools. Do large schools necessarily mean bigger or smaller teacher-student ratios? No information on this part. We cannot assume this as well. Incorrect.



E Private schooling is prohibitively expensive for many families. Irrelevant. Incorrect.



Hence, A.
Prez Bhandari likely to continue

Incumbent President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Nepali Congress (NC) leader Kumari Laxmi Rai have filed their nominations for the presidential election scheduled for March 13. Earlier, Bhandari was elected as President under the transitional provision of the constitution.
Qatari investors keen in importing mineral water

Qatari investors have expressed interest in importing mineral water from Nepal besides financing production plants. A group of potential financiers have launched feasibility studies to establish factories at a number of locations in Nepal.
Anup Ojha is a reporter for The Kathmandu Post primarily covering social issues and human interest stories. Before moving to the social beat, Ojha covered arts and culture for the Post for four years.
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SC justices split over CJ Parajulis judicial conduct

Opinions of 20-member Supreme Court justices are divided over the judicial conduct of Chief Justice Gopal Parajuli who is attempting to rally justices unanimous support as pressure mounts against him and his contentious stance that there is no difference between the SC as an institution and him as individual.
Writing news does not amount to contempt of court: FNJ

The Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) has said it stands firm in its belief that writing news report does not amount to contempt of court. The umbrella body of Nepali journalists has expressed its reservations over the contempt of court case against Kantipur daily for publishing news reports.
New York, Mar 7 (JEN): The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday denounced an attack against education workers that killed six, including one UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) consultant, who were traveling in the north-western prefecture of the Central African Republic (CAR).

In a statement issued to the press, the 15-member body condemned in the strongest terms the heinous and cowardly attack on 25 February by unknown assailants.

The other five victims were two officials of the countrys Ministry of Education, and three members of Bangui Sans Frontieres, a UNICEF partner.

The statement said that Council members were appalled that the victims were targeted while traveling to provide training for community teachers who were to start teaching in temporary learning spaces set up by UNICEF and partners for 2,000 crisis-affected children in Markounda.

The Council reiterated the urgent and imperative need to hold accountable all perpetrators of human rights violations and abuses and international humanitarian law violations, irrespective of their status or political affiliation, and demanded that all armed groups lay down their arms and engage constructively in the peace process immediately and unconditionally.



Credit IRIN/DFID
This message was reiterated during and after a visit to Tehran on Monday by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. That trip was described as part of a delicate French mission to reaffirm support for the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran while also conveying concerns over Irans threatening and destabilizing activities, including its development and testing of weapons that could be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

The January 2016 implementation of the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was governed by a United Nations Security Council resolution that called upon the Islamic Republic to avoid further work on such weapons. However, the JCPOA itself does not address this issue, which some critics consider to be inseparable from broader issues relating to Irans supposed pursuit of the capability of building a nuclear bomb. US President Donald Trump has cited Irans ongoing missile activities as a violation of the spirit of the nuclear deal, and he has identified the lack of ballistic missile provisions as a major flaw in that agreement.

In January, Trump renewed the sanctions waivers put in place by the JCPOA but warned that he would not do so again in May unless the US Congress and the deals European signatories established a plan for expanding or supplementing the agreement to address this and other flaws. Also of concern to the president and his fellow critics are the sunset provisions that allow Iran to begin resuming full-scale nuclear enrichment within 10 years, as well the current ability of the Islamic Republic to obstruct international inspectors access to its military sites.

The White House was joined in its criticism by two former prime ministers who jointly published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. In it, former Canadian PM Stephen Harper and former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar complained that the JCPOA, as currently written, constitutes a road map to Irans nuclear ambitions. Like Trump, they also cited Irans worsening aggression in the broader Middle East as further grounds for criticism of the agreement, the preamble of which declared that its signatories expected its implementation to contribute to regional peace and stability.

The editorial stands alongside Le Drians critical remarks and a number of other public statements on the same topic by Western officials. Taken together, these statements signify rising levels of political will for measures that would strengthen the JCPOA or otherwise take an assertive approach dealing with Irans persistent misbehavior on the world stage.

Within the United States, the push for such measures has come primarily from the Republic Party. But there has been some Democratic support for such endeavors since before the JCPOA negotiations concluded, and there have been recent signs of that support expanding as policymakers observe the actual effects of the deal. In one example of this trend, Maryland Democratic Representative Steny Hoyer told the American-Israeli Political Action Conference on Monday that although he initially supported the agreement, he now recognizes the need for tougher restrictions.

The Tower quoted Hoyer as saying: That agreement clearly should have dealt, in my opinion with the nonnuclear malign destabilizing activity that Iran precipitates. It also should have dealt with a permanent solution, not a temporary solution. So, Im supportive of us moving towards renegotiation, cooperating with our European partners.

Despite the recent growth in European criticism of Iran, the European Union member states overwhelmingly oppose the US presidents bid to effectively dismantle the existing nuclear agreement. This leaves observers uncertain about the prospects for an agreement that would satisfy President Trumps demands.

But while Congress negotiates with the Europeans for such an agreement, it is also pursuing its own independent means of exerting greater pressure on Iran. Prominent among these is pending legislation in the House of Representatives which would allow economic sanctions to immediately snap back if Iran continues to disregard UN Security Council resolution 2231 with its ballistic missile development and testing.

Even this measure faces obstacles on the way to adoption, but current trends suggest that support will continue to grow for assertive policies toward the Islamic Republic. This trend may be further encouraged by the recent threat assessment presented to US lawmakers by the Director of National Intelligence. According to the Washington Free Beacon, that report mentions Iran in a number of different sections, some of which predictably focused on the clerical regimes ongoing efforts to develop advanced ballistic missiles that are capable both of carrying a nuclear payload and reaching Western Europe.

Despite repeated boasting by Iranian officials about their advances in weapons technology, these capabilities are generally estimated to be many years away. But the DNI also noted that while Iran works on such enhancements to its military, it is also actively expanding its mechanisms for asymmetrical warfare, including through cyber terrorism and cyber espionage efforts targeting the West.

Iran will continue working to penetrate U.S. and allied networks for espionage and to position itself for potential future cyberattacks, the report declared, adding that Iran views these attacks as a versatile tool in responding to perceived provocations, which might include the Trump administrations ultimatums regarding the JCPOA.
The most recent news indicates that Mohammad Raji, a Gonabadi Dervish, died in Tehran while in police custody sometime at the end of February or beginning of this month. His daughter, Tayebeh Raji, said that the family have plans to sue the Iranian authorities and a lawyer is looking into the case. She said that they are demanding that an autopsy is carried out. She said: We need to shed light on this crime.

Authorities say that Raji was hurt during the recent protests and will not take responsibility for his death.

The daughter said that her fathers death while in police custody is a major blow to the family, especially considering her fathers service for the country during the Iran-Iraq war.

The Tehran prosecutor acknowledged that Raji has died but stated that it was because of the injuries sustained during the protests and not during an interrogation or investigation process.

Tayebeh Raji was also arrested in February but was quickly released. Her brother  Mohammad Ali Raji  was arrested too, and the family has had no information about his whereabouts since 20th February.

He is one of several hundred Sufi Gonabadi Order members that were arrested during clashes with the police in Tehran last month.

There are many people in Iran dying in state custody and it is unacceptable that the authorities are allowed to conceal the actual circumstances of such tragedies. One can only wonder how many lives will be sacrificed before independent investigations are carried out.

Clerics in Iran have supressed minorities in Iran for years and many have been arrested and put in jail for their beliefs. It has been reported that Friday prayer leaders are calling Dervishes spies and terrorists. One Friday prayer leader said in February: [The Dervishes] caused these riots to cover up the enemys espionage operations against our missile sites under the guise of environmental protection. These [Dervishes] must be uprooted for harming peoples security.

Many Dervishes have been denied university education and the authorities see their alternative beliefs as a threat to their rule.

In the clashes in February, there were reportedly almost two hundred Dervish activists that required medical attention after they were violently attacked by plain clothed officers and policemen.

The news of this suppression, and the general oppression faced by the wider public, is very worrying and numerous human rights organisations have called on the Iranian regime to immediately put an end to it.

Iran is notorious for arbitrary arrests and detainments and it executes thousands of prisoners every year. In Amnesty Internationals most recent report regarding the international human rights situation, a number of the regimes activities were highlighted.

Following the recent protests in Iran that started at the end of last year, millions of people in Iran are calling for regime change. It is very clear that this is the only viable solution for a peaceful Iran.
The claims were highlighted by a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran. Behrouz Kamalvandi said: If America pulls out of the deal  Iran could resume its 20 percent uranium enrichment in less than 48 hours.

US President Donald Trump has told Europe that the United States will pull out of the deal if the numerous flaws it contains are not fixed. He has spoken very frankly about this position regarding Iran  even before taking office.

He has described the nuclear deal as the worst deal and criticised his predecessor Barack Obama and his administration for being too lenient with Iran. He has vowed to take a tougher stance on Iran and, despite a slow start, he has taken several steps in denouncing Irans belligerence.

He wants the so-called sunset clauses of the nuclear deal to be removed. These clauses stipulate when several restrictions imposed on Irans nuclear program will expire and Trump has said that these make the long-term prospects of the agreement weak. Critics of the nuclear deal have also expressed their concerns about the sunset provisions, claiming that they provide Iran with a patient pathway to acquiring nuclear weapons.

Since the nuclear deal was signed, the Islamic Republic has fired numerous ballistic missiles. Experts say that at least 16 of them have been nuclear capable.

Trump has spoken extensively about, and criticised, Irans missile program and he would like to see this addressed more thoroughly.

European leaders, while maintaining that they are dedicated to keeping the nuclear deal in place, have also criticised Irans belligerence across the Middle East. Albeit with less strength that Trump.

The Iranian regime has maintained that its ballistic missile program is in place only for defensive purposes, but those who have any idea about Irans track record on telling the truth can see that this is certainly false.

The Iranian regime also denies that it supplies missile technology and weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen. However, evidence proves this is another lie and deception. For one, ballistic missiles launched from Yemen into Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels were proven to be Iranian made.

The evidence was presented by Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, to several other UN ambassadors. Irans response to this news was that she had fabricated claims about Irans involvement. To back up Haleys claims, the UN Security Council also announced that the remnants of ballistic missiles taken from Saudi Arabia were consistent with those reported for the Iranian designed and manufactured Qiam-1 missile.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the Foreign Minister of France, declared last week that France is greatly concerned about Irans ballistic missile program. He highlighted that Irans claims of having its program for defence purposes is unlikely because of the distances they can travel.
Alicia Boler Davis Honored with 2018 Black Engineer of the Year Award

The US Black Engineer & Information Technology (USBE&IT) magazine recently celebrated the history-making career of Alicia Boler Davis, the executive vice president of global manufacturing for General Motors, by honoring her with the 2018 Black Engineer of the Year Award, during the BEYA gala in Washington, D.C. Boler Davis is the sixth woman to receive the award.

USBE&IT magazine recognizes, Boler Davis as a global ambassador of goodwill for underrepresented minorities in science and technology, and for women in STEM, a press release about the award said.

USBE&IT magazine is published by the Career Communications Group, Inc., which was founded over 30 years ago to promote significant achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics professional careers, according to the groups website.

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Boler Davis began her GM career in 1994 as a manufacturing engineer at the Midsize/Luxury Car Division in Warren, Mich. She has held many positions of increasing responsibility in manufacturing, engineering and product development, according to her biography.

Boler Davis was the first African American woman to serve as the plant manager at a GM vehicle manufacturing plant at the Lansing, Mich., Consolidated Operations and Arlington Assembly in Texas. She also simultaneously served in roles as plant manager of the Michigan Orion Assembly and Pontiac Stamping facilities and vehicle chief engineer, and vehicle line director for North America Small Cars, positions she held until January 2012, according to the press release about the award.

The press release also noted that, in February 2012, Boler Davis was appointed U.S. vice president of Customer Experience. Later that year, her role was expanded to vice president of Global Quality and U.S. Customer Experience.

Under her leadership, GM improved vehicle quality and redefined customer care and its interaction with customers through social media channels and Customer Engagement Centers, the press release said. More recently, Boler Davis was senior vice president, Global Connected Customer Experience where she led the companys connected customer activities, including infotainment, OnStar, and GMs Urban Active personal mobility initiatives.

In June 2016, Boler Davis was named the executive vice president of General Motors Global Manufacturing.
Disney Film A Wrinkle in Time Comes to Compton

Magic, adventure, and excitement filled the air last week at Dollarhide Community Center where over 300 local middle school students arrived to watch a private screening of the new Disney film, A Wrinkle in Time. The event, which was held in Compton, was hosted by the citys very own Mayor Aja Brown and the films award-winning director Ava DuVernay.

The film, based on Madeleine LEngles classic quintet series, tells the story of a young girl and her life-changing journey of discovering her own light. The movie also explores the nature of darkness and light, good versus evil.

This film is for kids 13-18-years-old. It is really a film to talk about love and loving who you are. So often we see images where we are in turmoil or there is trauma around our children and this one is really about joy and Black girl and Black boy magic, said DuVernay a Compton native.

In this film, a little girl flies, she hops planets, she saves the universe and I really wanted to make the film because I think those images are important.

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The screening was a collaborative effort between the mayors office, DuVernays team, Disney, and other community businesses to help put on a one-of-a-kind movie going experience for students of color.

Recently, DuVernay made history herself after becoming the first Black woman to have a $100,000,000 budget to make the film A Wrinkle in Time.

I think it is so important for our young people to see amazing images and to recognize that someone that has come from these same communities has been able to break records and be a glass ceiling breaker and Ava DuVernay being the first woman of color to have a one-hundred-million-dollar budget to create the film and then for them to have the experience, said Brown.

I think this is a really important movie with a really important message and I was really blessed and honored that Ava also had the same vision to ensure that we can bring Disney and this film to Compton.

During the event, students from Barack Obama Charter School, Celerity Achernar Charter School, and Compton Youth Build were able to walk the red carpet and strike their best pose and enjoy a variety of snacks, drinks, and food from Dickeys BBQ. All of the food and beverages were donated.

Following the students red carpet treatment, Miss Compton 2017 title holder Maliyah Mason, moderated a special discussion between the mayor and director DuVernay, in which the two discussed the inspiration behind the film and the importance of representation in leadership.

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Mayor Brown also touched on the importance of exceeding your own limitations and the impact of seeing people of color exceling in different areas of life.

I remember being a young shy kid and so being able to see pictures with images of people who looked like me would have been transformative so I hope that they [the students] are able to see themselves in these characters and that they continue to strive and to really change barriers and change their lives, she said.

Hopefully one area of limitation or invisible ceiling or barrier that they once had will be shattered and that they will be challenged to be courageous to think outside the box, take chances and make choices that they otherwise wouldnt do.

A Wrinkle in Time, stars two-time Academy Award nominee Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which; Oscar, Golden Globe and Emmy winner Reese Witherspoon as Mrs. Whatsit; Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who; Storm Reid as Meg Murry; Levi Miller as Calvin; Deric McCabe as Charles Wallace; Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Mrs. Murry; Michael Pena as Red; with two-time Emmy winner Zach Galifianakis as the Happy Medium and Emmy nominee Chris Pine as Mr. Murry. The film hits theatres everywhere on March 9.
Two lawyers who once represented Marion Suge Knight in his murder case have been indicted on conspiracy charges to bribe potential witnesses and circumvent the justice system in hopes of freeing their one-time client, the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office announced.

A grand jury returned the indictment against Matthew Fletcher (dob 1/5/65) and Thaddeus Culpepper (dob 12/29/73) on Jan. 24 for one count each of conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit subornation of perjury, conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact.

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Culpepper also faces two other conspiracy charges, while Fletcher is charged with one additional count of perjury. The indictment was unsealed today. Arraignment is scheduled for March 16 in Department 100 of the Foltz Criminal Justice Center.

Deputy District Attorney Stefan Mrakich of the Public Integrity Division is prosecuting the case.

Knight (dob 4/19/65) is awaiting trial for allegedly killing 55-year-old Terry Carter and injuring Cle Bone Sloan who he hit with his truck in a Compton parking lot on Jan. 29, 2015. He also has pending robbery and criminal threats cases.

In the weeks following Knights arrest, Fletcher is accused of trying to pay off people who could provide favorable testimony at trial. In one instance, Fletcher allegedly told Knight it would take about $20,000 to $25,000 to secure his freedom, according to the indictment.

Fletcher also allegedly told Knight that Sloan, the surviving victim, should be paid off for his testimony.

In 2016, a confidential informant allegedly told Culpepper he would be willing to testify that he saw weapons at the murder scene, even though the informant wasnt there when the crime occurred, the indictment said. Culpepper and Knight allegedly agreed to use the informant as a defense witness at trial.

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Culpepper also is charged with violating a court order that restricted Knights phone privileges and prohibited phone calls where three people could talk to one another.

If convicted as charged, Fletcher and Culpepper face a possible maximum sentence of three years and eight months in jail.

The defendants are the latest Knight associates to face criminal charges in Los Angeles County.

In October, Knights girlfriend pleaded no contest to violating a court order by selling video evidence that was under seal. Last month, a judge sentenced her to three years in jail for violating her probation.

Knights business partner, Mark Blankenship, faces one felony count each of conspiracy to violate a court order, conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to commit grand theft. A pretrial hearing is set for March 12.

Case BA453095 remains under investigation by Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.
Haitian Artist Captures Haitis Global Significance

Haitian artist, Ulrick Jean-Pierre, shared his creative perspective with the Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper. Jean-Pierre paintings explore Haitian history. The art pieces range from Haitian historical figures to surrealist landscapes. His artwork has been featured at the Haitian National Museum sponsored by the United States Embassy of Haiti.

Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper: How did you begin your artistic journey?

Ulrick Jean-Pierre: In 1977, when I migrated from Haiti to Philadelphia, I was exposed to a treasure of historical documents on Haiti history. That was the genesis of my historical passion. When I lived in Haiti, I use to create art based on the Haitian lifestyle of people. It was really inspiring to me. Haiti is roughly the size of Maryland but has a huge global conscious. It was a treasure for me to explore the history.

LAS: Your artwork has unique beauty. Describe your creative flow?

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Jean-Pierre: As an artist, it is all about submission and research. I spend a lot of time reading and understanding what concept Im about to endeavor. After spending time reading, I start the physical process. My art does not randomly pop up into existence. I dont play with colors and hope something happens. I have an intention on what I want. The subject matter is something I think about first.

LAS: What do you want people to understand about Haitis global influence?

Jean-Pierre: They need to understand what Haiti has contributed to humanity. People only focus on Haiti when something terrible happens. Haiti was not always a third world country. Haiti was one of the richest lands, even richer than the original thirteen colonies of America. Haitis history helped shaped America. An example would be the Louisiana Purchase. I want people to understand that third world countries never began as poor. If Haiti didnt suffer from constant exploitation, it would not be a third world country.

LAS: You have passion for your art. What would you say is your artistic purpose?

Jean-Pierre: My purpose is to let people understand that Haiti is more than what is presented on television. My mission is to pay tribute to everyone who loves humanity and everyone who protects humanity. We are all created in the image of God. We should promote unity within one another. Thats my goal, to promote unity and understanding.

To view Jean-Pierres artistic contributions, please visit ulrickdoc.com for more information.
Kamala Harris at 53rd Anniversary of Bloody Sunday: Look to Selma

U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris delivered remarks at the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast in Selma, Alabama, as a part of the 25th Annual Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee. This is the 53rdAnniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March, and this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to the breakfast, Harris also attended service at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge alongside a congressional delegation.

Key excerpts from Harris remarks:

From all of that history, past and present, what is clear to me is that Selma laid a blueprint. The Selma marchers showed us that while they crossed that bridge, they also built a bridge. They showed the power of coalitions when they brought together the SCLC and SNCC, white marchers and Black marchers, rabbis next to ministers, and people from across the country. They marched that bridge and they built bridges.

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Selma, it is true we are indeed living yet again in difficult times. And, indeed, sometimes we are weary. But to any of us who feels daunted, or discouraged, or dispirited, I say if you need inspiration? Look to Selma. When we are pulled back and feel dispirited by an unjust Department of Justice as they escalate the War on Drugs and reinvigorate mandatory minimums and incarcerate instead of rehabilitate, look to Selma for your inspiration. When it feels impossible to make progress for young immigrants who are being targeted and threatened with deportation from the only country they have known and called home, look to Selma for your inspiration. When we are weary as we read that Black unemployment, homeownership, and incarceration rates are the same or worse today than they were the days of Dr. King, I say look to Selma for our inspiration. And when we are faced with a powerful lobby that encourages immoral inaction which prevents all of our children from being safe from gun violence in a classroom and on the street, from suburbs to the cities, I say look to Selma for our inspiration. For Selma, you taught us  they taught us our power and they taught us how to use that power. And yes, the challenges right now are tough. And yes, the road can seem long. But I say let us remember those famous words which I will paraphrase of Coretta Scott King, who reminded us that the fight for justice, the fight for Civil Rights must be fought and won with each generation.

Those marchers laid the foundation for the leaders of today. And we must carry on their work. They laid the foundation so that Hank Sanders could represent Selma for 35 years in the State Senate. And so Rose Sanders could become the first Black woman to be an Alabama judge. To carry on their work, to carry on that work. And they laid the foundation so that John Lewis and Terri Sewell and Barbara Lee can serve in the United States Congress. To carry on the work. Those marchers laid the foundation so that Barack Obama would be elected President of the United States and then re-elected President of the United States. To carry on the work. And they laid the foundation so that I could become only the second Black woman elected to the United States Senate, and serve alongside Cory Booker and Tim Scott. They laid that foundation. And they laid the foundation so that this community, and I will say with a particular point of pride, and so that the Black women of this community could replace Jeff Sessions with the lawyer who brought to justice the Birmingham bombers, Doug Jones.
Leimert Plaza Park To Be Enhanced and Restored



Leimert Plaza Park  located in the heart of the Crenshaw District  will undergo a series of enhancements this month as part of a partnership with the Office of Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, city of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, the LA Parks Foundation and City National Bank.

The enhancements will include construction and installation of an enclosure around the perimeter; restoration of the central fountain; new grass, flowers and plants, a state-of-the-art irrigation system; and general beautification and clean-up amenities.

Leimert Park is the center of the African-American community here in the Crenshaw District, said Los Angeles City Council President Herb J. Wesson, Jr. The planned enhancements to Leimert Plaza Park complement the development and investment in our community. This partnership between the city, the LA Parks Foundation and City National Bank is a great example for others. 

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The renovated Leimert Plaza Park will better serve the local community in this historic area, said Judith Kieffer, executive diretor of the LA Parks Foundation, a nonprofit started to support the citys department of Recreation and Parks. Were proud to have this public-private partnership with City National Bank and the Department of Recreation and Parks to improve Leimert Plaza Park.

Built in 1928 and designed by Walter H. Leimert, Leimert Park stands out as one of Los Angeles first planned communities. Leimert Plaza Park was designed by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, who was considered the father of American landscape architecture. Over a long and distinguished career, he designed New Yorks Central Park, San Franciscos Golden Gate Park, and many other important public spaces across the U.S. The park that the brothers built, Leimert Plaza Park, was the pride of the community  a gem of a park whose centerpiece was a majestic cascading fountain.

This investment demonstrates City Nationals deep commitment to support the social, cultural and economic prosperity of the Crenshaw District as it continues to undergo significant development, said Peter Jackson, branch manager at Crenshaw branch for City National Bank, the largest bank based in Los Angeles. We look forward to the multi-year promise to restore this park and make it a beautiful, safe and inviting place for residents to spend time.

City National Bank opened a full-service banking office in the Crenshaw District in 2017. Its team delivers relationship-focused personal and business banking capabilities to individuals and their families as well as small businesses, nonprofit organizations, professional and investors. The branch is located at 3739 South Crenshaw Boulevard.

The office enables City National to support the economic growth of the Crenshaw District and support opportunities there. With $48.7 billion in assets, City National Bank provides banking, investment and trust services through 72 offices in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada, New York City, Nashville, Atlanta, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. In addition, the company and its investment affiliates manage or administer $64.9 billion in client investment assets.

City National is a subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), one of North Americas leading diversified financial services companies. RBC serves more than 16 million personal, business, public sector and institutional clients through offices in Canada, the United States and 34 other countries.

Leimert Plaza Park has long been part of the African-American community in Los Angeles and is a frequent gathering place for community acitivism, culture and celebration. For nearly 10 years, Leimert Plaza Park has hosted the Leimert Park Art Walk, which highlights both contemporary and historic African-American art. Lemiert Plaza Park has also hosted the Kwanzaa Heritage Festival, held by the Kwanzaa Heritage Foundation every December, and the Louisiana to Los Angeles Festival, held by the Louisiana to Los Angeles Organizing Committee.

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The Los Angeles Parks Foundation is a nonprofit created to support the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The mission of the Foundation is to enhance, expand, preserve and promote recreation and parks for the people of Los Angeles. The Foundation is an example of the unique benefits that can be realized through public-private partnerships. The Foundation supports LA City parks through programs and initiatives such as Adopt-A-Park, Donate-A-Bench and Friend of the Parks. In addition, the Foundation raises funds for small and large projects throughout the city.
Mothers in Action Celebrate Read Across America Day



On Friday, March 2, Mothers in Action facilitated their 2nd annual Read Across America (RAA) Day event as part of the National Education Associations 21-year anniversary celebrating their signature reading program.

The fun-filled event held in honor of Dr. Seuss birthday took place at Danny J. Bakewell Primary Center where Karen Ward is the principal and Marcus Garvey School where Sister Saunders is the director.

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The event was created to provide local leaders, organizations, and politicians with the opportunity to stress the importance of reading. Additionally, the event allowed participants to give back to tomorrows leadersthe children.

The participants and invited readers at the Danny J. Bakewell Primary Center included: Danny J. Bakewell, Sr. Aline Bakewell, Danny J. Bakewell, Jr., Pamela Bakewell, Taelor Bakewell, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Sgt. Fountain, Ofc. Hines, Dr. George McKenna, Carolyn Fowler, and Mothers in Action President, Tracy Mitchell.

Having an opportunity to work with the children of our community about the importance of reading and supporting the schools efforts of helping provide the best education is always a positive experience for me and all of my family, said Los Angeles Sentinel Executive Editor, Danny J. Bakewell, Jr.

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To have the opportunity to do it at the school named in honor of my dad (Danny J. Bakewell, Sr.) is an absolute blessing. I have to thank Principal Ward and all of her staff, School Superintendent George McKenna, the California CHP and Councilman Marqueece Harris Dawson for all coming out and supporting this effort.

The invited readers and participants at the Marcus Garvey School included: Senator Holly Mitchell, Ofc. Hines, Ofc. Servio, Jamarah Hayner of JKH Consulting; Eulanda L. Matthews of Ivie McNeill & Wyatt; Los Angeles Sentinel and L.A. Watts Times Managing Editor, Brandon Brooks; Yvonne Wheeler of AFGE; and Brotherhood Crusade Board Member, Clifford McClain.

Mothers In Action is so proud of our village for coming out to bless our children at both schools. The Student Ambassadors did an excellent job of hosting and escorting our guest readers at both schools, who ranged in age from 4-13. Guest readers had a wonderful experience and felt just as blessed by the experience as the students. It takes a village to raise a child and we are honored that our village answered the call, said President of Mothers In Action, Tracy Mitchell.

Year after year, RAA increases the number of lifelong readers, inspires students to pick up books, and encourages them to use their imagination! For more information on Read Across America please visit www.nea.org .
Senator Kamala Harris Announces Support of the Re-Election of Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragan

Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragan (CA-44) kicked off her re-election campaign and announced a major endorsement from California Senator Kamala Harris.

It has been a great honor to represent this California district in Congress and I am humbly asking the people in our community to support me once again. We are facing great challenges here at home and an awful president in the White House who has kept our communities and our values under constant assault. We must continue the fight for economic equality, environmental justice, and protections for our Dreamers, said Congresswoman Barragan. In the short amount of time since my election, I have been working hard to make our airports safer, to create a path to citizenship for all of our veterans, and to help lead the way on congressional hearings into allegations of sexual misconduct in the national security community. Over the course of this campaign, I hope to earn the continued support of our community.

In announcing her endorsement, Senator Harris released the following statement:

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Californias families are fortunate to have a bold advocate and strong leader in Congresswoman Nanette Diaz Barragan. Nanette has shown a commitment to serving all our communities and is a tireless advocate for civil rights, criminal justice reform, and protecting our Dreamers. We need her in Congress.
State of Black California: 10 Years Later  We Still Have Work to Do

The California Legislative Black Caucus (CLBC) hosted an informational briefing on The State of California  10 Years Later an update from former Speaker and CLBC Vice-Chair Congresswoman Karen Bass, who commissioned the report in 2008. CLBC members gathered to start the morning with reporters across the state answering questions on the subjects presented at todays hearing. Topics included healthcare, education, voter engagement, and economics.

The State of Black California  10 Years Later gives insight to the areas that Black Californians have progressed and the shines light on the areas where there is work to be done to eliminate disparities. Caucus Chairman, Assemblymember Chris Holden (AD- 41), said: The CLBCs mission is to make strides towards implementing strategies and solutions that strengthen our African American community and bring about greater opportunities  especially as it pertains to the issues we are discussing at the Capitol.

Guest speakers, who served as subject matter experts, joined lawmakers for a healthy debate on The State of Black California. The takeaways were clear: we still have much work to do to achieve equity for all African Americans. The packed informational hearing shared how Black Californians earn less and are underperforming compared to other ethnic groups. Sen. Holly J. Mitchell (SD-30) of Los Angeles said: Our students are missing out. We have to figure out as a Caucus and community what we can do collectively to support and make sure Black students are aware of the resources California has for them.

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There were quite a few striking revelations including the Black Tax where Blacks pay a premium for services and experience allostatic loads as described by Dr. Nicki King. Prof. Mark Harris, an economics panelist, found that lending to African Americans for small businesses has fallen by 75% and continues to decline. Additionally, since the passage of fair housing laws, we saw an increase in homeownership (50% of Blacks owned homes) but that has all been erased over the last 12 years. The proceedings were live-streamed and are available on the Caucus website and Facebook pages along with the presentations and reports.

CLBC concluded the day with a panel discussion from California Black Judges as well as a showing of the movie, Marshall: The story about a young Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. CLBC finishes this years Black History Month looking at the work we must do to move Blacks forward for a better California and America and Reclaim our Influence.
Success On The Way Ask Dr. Jeanette: Parental Rights vs. Transgender???

Do Children Belong to Parents??? or To the State? If this policy spreads contagiously like a virus, parents will be stripped of cherished parental rights! Stay in the know! Five Ontario public school boards have policies/procedures accommodating transgender students from five-years-old to 12th grade; where parents cannot be told about the childs transition to another gender: Toronto District School Board (TDSB); Thames Valley District School Board; Greater Essex County District School Board; Upper Grand District School Board (504-C), and Waterloo Region (WRDSB ) District School Board. LifeSiteNews reports July 13, 2017 Campaign Life Coalition is raising the alarm that parental rights are threatened, this time by school boards defending transgenderism and gender confusion in students of any age behind their parents back. At least five Ontario school boards have quietly implemented directives that a school not tell parents when a child asks to transition to another gender at school, from kindergarten. [Jack Fonseca], senior political strategist for Campaign Life, told LifeSiteNews. A five-year-old or seven-year-old boy or girl asking a teacher about switching genders, or that they want to be another gender; the board says that teacher cant tell the parents. Fonseca says.What a tyrannical violation of parental rights! It amounts to institutional child abuse on the part of schools. Children are already subjected to gender identity theory in schools at too young an age, which can actually cause them to believe they might be transgender by producing sexual confusion that didnt exist before, he noted. These policies leave young kids without the protection of their parents against gender theory ideologues, [Fonseca]. An elementary school teacher spoke to LifeSiteNews [anonymously] confirmed her boards parental non-disclosure directive applies from kindergarten to Grade 12. Some other school authorities say its about safety and honouring a childs choice. We could be talking about a six-year-old here, the educator told LifeSiteNews. Fonseca dismissed the boards stated safety concerns as fear-mongering. It doesnt sound at all like what real parents would do, who overwhelmingly love their children. Fonseca believes the underlying motive behind the school boards directive to exclude parents is to indoctrinate the next generation with state ideology; contending its inculcating children from an early age in a view of human sexuality completely at odds with traditional morality. Dont believe these Marxist educrats give a damn about child safety. Their [underlying motive] is to eradicate the Judeo-Christian worldview from society. Children are merely collateral damage in their war. These Boards major assumption is that transitioning is in the childs best interest. The teacher said, I dont agree, Every parent has to be thinking seriously about their own child and whether public school is a good fit for them, especially if the child is at risk. [Article from LifeSiteNews&Campaign Life Coalition]

Teach the children at home.

Jeanette Grattan Parker, Ph.D., Superintendent Todays Fresh Start Charter School; author, speaker, All rights reserved copyright: Will You Marry Me; Inquiring Minds Want to Know. [email protected]

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Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas appointed to national leadership position

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has been appointed chairman of the Nominating Committee of the National Association of Counties (NACo), which unites officials from the United States 3,069 county governments to advocate with a collective voice on national policy.

At NACos Annual Conference in Nashville/Davidson County, Tenn., on July 13-16, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas will play an instrumental role in NACos governance process. The Nominating Committee is tasked with reviewing the credentials of candidates to NACos Board of Directors and the position of Second Vice President, who typically goes on to serve as President.

I am honored to represent Los Angeles County in this capacity at the national level, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas said. I look forward to chairing the committee that is essential in selecting NACos leaders, who work tirelessly to maintain healthy, vibrant and safe counties across the United States.

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County governments are on the front lines of delivering vital services, from healthcare to law enforcement to basic infrastructure and more, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas added. NACo gives us an opportunity to stand together around issues of national importance, and work together to better serve our constituents.

Last spring, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas partnered with NACo to host a forum in Washington, D.C. on the importance of counties collaborating to eradicate homelessness nationwide.

Supervisor Ridley-Thomas has long demonstrated sound judgment, integrity and fairness  all key virtues for this chairmanship and ensuring the vitality of NACos leadership for years to come, said NACo President Roy Charles Brooks, who announced the appointment. As the leader of the largest county in America, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas brings exceptional experience in governing and achieving results. We are pleased that he has accepted this mission-critical role and look forward to continuing to work with him in support of counties nationwide.
Tenants Facing Eviction in South L.A. Room-for-Rent Scam Not the Only Victims

It was the perfect place for me, laments Steven Jeter. That was my perfect opportunity to own something in Los Angeles.

A one time property owner, Jeter reminisces about purchasing his first property in Inglewood in 2005 on East 68th Street. Today he lives off of disability and in one of his mothers properties.

Jeters dream of home ownership soon turned into a nightmare after he rented the lot which contained a 2 bedroom home in the front and a separate 1 bedroom to a woman claiming to run a program for adults with developmental disabilities.

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I can remember it like it was yesterday, Jeter continues. I had an open house and she walked in all distressed. She said, I really need this place. They dont have a place to stay and I fell for it like a dummy.

The woman is Giovanna Wilkerson and shes currently the subject of an investigation after tenants say, she promised them transitional housing that included a clean living environment, meals and even job assistance. The tenants, who were paying to rent for shared rooms, are currently in the process of being evicted from a nearly 4,600-square-foot dilapidated house on the border of Inglewood in the city of Los Angeles after Wilkerson stopped paying rent to the propertys owner.

Jeter says that Wilkerson and her husband Rennis, approached him to rent his property in 2005. He remembers telling them that he was going to need certain information from them both to consider renting to them. He says that Ms. Wilkerson went to her car and returned with a printer and a copier.

Jeter confirms that Wilkerson signed a three-year contract with him for $4,000 per month in 2005. During that time he says that Wilkerson showed him proof that she was getting paid to care for adults with disabilities.

I believe she was getting paid by the Westside Regional Center, he says.

Jeter says that during the first three years of working with Giovanna Wilkerson that she would regularly bounce checks and pay the rent late, but he continued to try and work with them because he believed she was trying to provide a much needed community service.

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Jeter moved to Arizona and was unable to check on the property regularly.

The Wilkersons eventually entered into a five-year contract.

I believe that was one way she  again  tried to ease my stress, Jeter added. She said, you know Ill pay the $5,000 a month contract for five years. You dont have to worry. I am not going anywhere. The money is coming. He continues, You know some of her checks would bounce. But then shed make good on it but it would be late.

Jeter says shortly after the 5-year contract was signed that Wilkerson stopped paying him.

California was in the middle of a state budget crisis and I guess since she [Giovanna Wilkerson] was getting money from the government to take care of the people she couldnt pay the rent. I tried to work with her and in fact I did work with her. When the crisis was over and she got paid, she didnt pay me any of the rent she owed.

Shortly thereafter, a neighbor informed Jeter that Ms. Wilkerson had moved out of the property and left it abandoned for nearly four months.

When Mr. Jeter came back to California and to his property, he found there were people living there who claimed they had subleased it from Ms. Wilkerson and were paying her rent.

In the end, Steven Jeter says he lost the property that now sits just minutes away from where the Chargers will join the Rams at a a new stadium in Inglewood and where homeowners have seen a dramatic increase in their property values.

I loved that property, Jeter says thoughtfully. That was a property that I wish I could have been giving my son, you know. That should have been his inheritance. Because that was a nice piece of property.

Jeter sued the Wilkersons in court and won two judgements against them. In 2008, he was awarded $7,500 for late fees on rent, bounced checks, subletting, breach of contract, property damage and legal fees for their eviction. In 2012, after a default judgement against Wilkerson and her business Hands Helping Hands, he was awarded $232,650.00 for damages breaching the five-year- contract. He is still hoping to collect the money owed to him from the Wilkersons.

Maybe Ill get my money. Who knows?

Raymond Todd says that he never agreed to have a transitional housing program in his property in Compton.

Todd says that he rented the home he owned on Wilmington Ave. near Rosecrans Blvd. to Giovanna Wilkerson in 2014 for her and her immediate family to live in.

That was the agreement, he says absolutely. Two adults and two children, $2,100.

What he ended up with was over a dozen people living in his 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home.

Todd filed an unlawful detainer against Wilkerson in January 2015 and by March of that year a judgement was entered for restitution and possession of the property.

Todd says that Wilkerson abandoned the property with over a dozen tenants still living there tenants he says claimed they paid Wilkerson rent. He says that some tenants who were living in another property she was running a transitional housing program out of in Compton near his soon came over to his property after Wilkerson was evicted from that property as well.

According to court documents, in 2014 Yanyan Liu filed an unlawful detainer against Wilkerson for property located at 820 W. Compton Blvd. and was awarded restitution and possession of the property on Dec. 23 of the same year.

I tried to work with the tenants who were left behind, Todd says. Many of them didnt have anywhere to go. I tried to encourage them to get a job. I tried to help them get Section 8. I was helping them. I did the best that I could. Giovanna left them there so I had no choice but to help them in order to help me. They didnt want to pay me because they had already paid her.

Todd says that he understands that when the tenants destroyed his property, they werent mad at him but mad at Wilkerson and the situation. Still, it caused him to spend a lot of money to fix all of the damages.

On the subject of Ms. Wilkerson, he says, This lady is all about her money. Shes registered with these hospitals and these convalescent homes and she knows what shes doing. And shes putting herself under these different identities. And these hospitals are actually trying to get rid of people hospitals cant keep you anyway. Theres no way they can keep you and they are getting rid of people. So again, shes volunteering and saying hey Ill take them. I just find it pretty bad how shes treating people. Like shes enslaving these people and theyre living in filth. You know Giovanna just really played a cruel game.

Army veteran Antoine Brown met Giovanna Wilkerson outside of the Department of Social Services on Grand Ave. near downtown Los Angeles.

She was out there handing out her little papers asking if people needed affordable housing saying that she could help me out and get me back on my feet. So she asked me for my EBT card, the number, the pin number and everything. So she took out like $200 and told me to sleep on the couch and that if I didnt have the money, shed take the food stamps.

The house Ms. Wilkerson moved him into was the house she was renting from Raymond Todd in Compton.

We came home one day and there was an eviction notice on the door and we was like whats going on, Brown explained. So we tried to call her and she never picked up the phone. And then the landlord gave us a few months to get out of the house. All she does is just take peoples money and then go about her way.

Brown says that Wilkerson regularly mixed women who didnt have minor children together in the same room with men. Rooms that include mattresses lined up on the floor without a bed frame. Brown said that the front door wouldnt lock so he doubled as security for the house by sleeping on the couch. He only stayed there a few months before he moved into a place of his own.

A search of court documents shows that beginning in 2009, Wilkerson has had seven unlawful detainers filed against heralmost one every year.

As for the tenants in the house on Crenshaw Blvd., the angst and uncertainty will continue at least for another week before they learn their fate after a Fri. Mar. 2 court date regarding their eviction was continued. The tenants  some with autism and developmental and physical disabilities  all claim that Giovanna Wilkerson left them stuck facing an eviction after she didnt pay the rent.

At issue is not whether or not they can stay in the house thats without a working furnace, hot water, infested with bed bugs, roaches and mold and has tree roots bursting through the windowsbut rather how long they have before they have to vacate the premises and where exactly they will go when theyre forced to leave.

Wilkerson contends that residents are not tenants and therefore landlord-tenant law does not apply to them.

Im the Housing Director, they are participants, she said via text message.

Ms. Wilkersons scam is made possible by the failure of city and county governments to address the lack of truly affordable housing, commented civil and human rights attorney Nana Gyamfi. Because they have made no effort to control rents and regulate landlords and allowed the displacement of thousands of people by developers and gentrifiers, vultures like Ms. Wilkerson are continuously swooping in and taking advantage of desperate people who are trying to keep from sleeping outside. All of the cities where Ms. Wilkerson has properties should be considered the proud sponsors of her exploitive enterprise.

If you rented property to OR rooms from Giovanna Wilkerson, please email [email protected]
The Geneva Cooley Story

Black women represent 30 percent of all incarcerated women in the U.S. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), with one million women behind bars or under control of the criminal justice system, women are the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population at nearly double the rate of men since 1985.

Let me introduce you to Geneva Cooley. She is a 70-year-old woman who is behind bars at Julia Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka, Alabama. Her story begins with her arrest by an officer for trafficking in heroin, hydromorphone and failure to affix tax stamps.

On October 20, 2006, Cooley who had two prior felony convictions from New York, was sentenced to life without parole for trafficking in heroin in addition to life on the other charges.

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Later, she filed a pro se handwritten motion for a new trial accusing ineffective assistance of counsel for the October 2006 trial. However, court documents do not reveal a hearing on the motion or a ruling. The following year, Cooleys conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and the application for rehearing was overruled.

Today, Cooley is still behind bars at what is known to be one of the worst prisons in America according to nonprofit organization, Mother Jones. There she is set serve 999 years, 99 months, and 99 days. However, criminal justice and womens rights advocate, Susan Burton, wont allow Cooley to serve that full sentence without a fight!

Burton, who is also the founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, first met Cooley in November 2017 at Julia Tutwiler Prison after Burtons discussion on her newly released book, Becoming Ms. Burton. Shortly after the presentation, Cooley introduced herself to Burton and informed her that she would not be released from prison due to her conviction of carrying drugs on a train.

She said she was sentenced to life for drugs and I was blown away, said Burton.

Burton informed Cooley that upon her return to Los Angeles, that she would begin speaking with staff from the Equal Justice Initiative to see if there was anything they could do about Cooleys case.

I went over there and as soon as I said her name in their office they said they were familiar with her and her case but there was nothing that they could do for her under the law. That really distressed me. To be sentenced to life for a drug conviction, I dont care what the amount of drugs are she is a 70-year-old woman and she has been in there for 15 years and she is going to die in there for drugs if she doesnt get some help, said Burton.

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When people read or hear about Cooleys story, the number one thing Burton wants them to take away is the harsh penalty of our nation.

I want people to understand what we are still living under and how we waste resources not only in Alabama but across the nation, on punishment and not rehabilitation. What possibly could be achieved by giving a person life in prison for having some drugs on their person or on their body?

Although Burton and Cooley are more than 2,000 miles away from each other, Burton isnt letting that stop her from finding Cooley the resources she needs to get out of prison. Recently, Burton contacted Alabama University to see if the school would be able to assign someone who could help Cooley receive governors clemency.

It could have been me, and it wasnt me, so I have sort of committed myself to doing whatever I can to help her.
Ulmer to Co-Chair Empowered21 USA Cabinet

Empowered21, a global organization that resources the worldwide Spirit-empowered movement, announced that Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer, pastor of Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, will be among the next iteration of leaders of the E21 USA Cabinet.

According to Assemblies of God Assistant General Superintendent Alton Garrison and Seacoast Church Founding Pastor Greg Surratt, current co-chairs, Ulmer and The Oaks Fellowship Pastor Scott Wilson will assume the roles as co-chairs of the USA region of Empowered21beginning March 1, 2018.

In my entire ministry life, Ive always been passionate about seeing the Holy Spirit move in every person on earth, especially when it comes to reaching and mentoring this next generation of Spirit-empowered believers, said Ulmer. This is such a wonderful opportunity to help guide, develop, and deepen the vision of Empowered21 as we seek to hear and follow the Holy Spirit.

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A prolific author, gifted communicator, and accomplished theologian, Ulmer has a ministry sphere of influence that literally spans the globe and challenges the Body of Christ to victorious living through the power and presence of a living God.

For his part, Wilson is enthralled. Empowered21 plays such an important role in bringing together the Spirit-empowered community worldwide, he said, so being asked to be part of it at this level is a dream come true. I cant wait to begin contributing to this audacious goal as a leader.

In Wilsons book, Clear the Stage: Making room for God, he recounts how God unexpectedly spoke to his heart one Sunday to set aside personal and service agendas to make room for the Holy Spirit. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit transformed lives that Sunday morning and The Oaks Church was revived, and experienced tremendous spiritual growth and increased ministry reach.

Empowered21 has been experiencing tremendous spurts of growth and collaboration around the world, said Surratt, who will remain on the USA Cabinet. Its a movement of global proportions that continues to focus on raising up the next generation of Spirit-empowered leadership. This is the perfect time for us to welcome additional Kingdom influencers to the USA Cabinet.

This is exciting, said Garrison, who will also stay on and lend his support to the USA Cabinet. The passion and fervor that Ulmer and Wilson bring to their roles is contagious. I am confident that God has raised them up for such a time as this and that the USA Cabinet is in good hands.

I look forward to introducing Pastor Wilson and Bishop Ulmer as E21 USA Co-Chairs at the Empowered21 Africa Congress during the week of Pentecost 2018, said Dr. Billy Wilson, E21 Global Council Co-Chair and President of Oral Roberts University.

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Both have already made a multi-continent impact through their participation with E21, and I am confident that their leadership for the United States region will be instrumental in seeing the needed fresh outpouring of Gods spirit upon new generations.

Empowered21, a Kingdom initiative served by Oral Roberts University, aims to help shape the future of the global Spiritempowered movement throughout the world by focusing on crucial issues facing the movement and connecting generations for intergenerational blessing and impartation. Their vision is that every person on Earth would have an authentic encounter with Jesus Christ through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit by Pentecost 2033.

To learn more, visit empowered21.com.
Words of the Week  Meet the Greens: Part 2

The Greens are a group you would do well to avoid because they cause too much trouble. They dont bring anything positive to the table  just mess.

If youre coveting someones blessings, then Envy is sitting at your table, too  wanting your lunch instead their own. Envy is described as a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone elses possessions, qualities, or luck.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.- Proverbs 14:30

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How many people do you know that live in a funk, obsessing over what somebody in their circle has or owns? Envy has driven many to pursue careers, goals and others things in life, all the while, robbing them of enjoying those accomplishments. Envy is a shadow on the heart and blinds to the truth in life.

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a mans envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.- Ecclesiastes 4:4

Envy will rob you of your joy because your reasons for pursuing most things is due to what someone else possesses. It has destructive capabilities and is listed among several sins that we do well to rid ourselves of. People who harbor envy in their heart are dangerous people who might do anything to gain what someone else has or destroy it.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions , envy , drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.- Galatians 5:19-21

Envy will keep you out of heaven! I can understand why because it flies right in the face of how the Lord has called us to be to one another. God doesnt want us wasting time focused on what others have, but on what He has given us. God has blessed us with much and envy blinds us from seeing those blessings.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.-1 Peter 4:8

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We come back to love every time, well of course because God is love after all. Much like its siblings, Envy is a joy stealer and peace killer. Some research even shows that its bad for your health, possibly causing ulcers, headaches and other health disparities. We have to keep the magnifying glass on Jesus  keep Him bigger than our sins because He is.

But still though, out of all the Green siblings, Jealousy is a demon from hell

To Be Continued
Eleven countries in the Pacific region have signed a major Asia-Pacific free trade agreement in Santiago, Chile. The deal is a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership from which the U.S. withdrew last year.

The agreement is called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. The deal is aimed at reducing import taxes and putting in place trade rules for member nations.

The countries represent 500 million people and more than 13 percent of the world economy. With the U.S., the agreement would have covered 40 percent of the world economy.

US withdrawal from Trans-Pacific deal

U.S. President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal from the TPP trade pact soon after he took office. The move was a main campaign promise he made during the 2016 presidential election.

In January, Trump signaled the U.S. was reconsidering its policy at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said the U.S. would be willing to rejoin the agreement if the U.S. could get a much better deal than we had.

The Trump administration is currently renegotiating another trade deal, The North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. It is also set to approve taxes of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum imports in an effort to protect those industries.

The president has said he is willing to show flexibility to nations that are real friends on the proposed tariffs. Leaders of many nations, however, have criticized developing U.S. trade policy saying it is becoming increasingly protectionist.

Canada, Japan lead changes to trade deal

In the last year, Canada and Japan led the remaining 11 countries involved in the TPP to a revised agreement in January. The final version of the deal was released in New Zealand on February 21.

Reuters news service reports that more than 20 provisions have been suspended or changed in the final version of the CPTPP agreement.

These include rules on intellectual property which the U.S. objected to during the earlier TPP negotiations.

Kimberlee Weatherall is a professor of law at the University of Sydney. She says many changes have been made to provisions in the new CPTPP.

They have suspended many of the controversial ones, particularly around pharmaceuticals, she said.

New rules are believed to increase intellectual property protections for drug companies. Some governments and activists object to such rules because of concerns about increasing the cost of medicines.

Other countries signing the deal are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia and Mexico. New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are also included.

Heraldo Munoz is Chiles minister of foreign affairs. He called the agreement a strong signal against protectionist pressures, in favor of a world open to trade, without unilateral sanctions and without the threat of trade wars.

Once signed, lawmakers in each of the countries will have to approve the trade agreement. It will go into effect 60 days after at least six countries have approved the deal.

Im Mario Ritter.

Mario Ritter adapted this story for VOA Learning English from a Reuters report and additional materials. Hai Do was the editor.

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Words in This Story

region n. an area that is different than others for some reason

flexibility n. showing a willingness to change or try something different

protectionist adj. supporting businesses in ones own country while making laws to limit products from other countries

provisions n. conditions that are part of an agreement

controversial adj. describing a subject that is much debated or disagreed upon

pharmaceuticals n. medicines

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An Indonesian state Islamic university faced criticism this week after it barred female students from wearing full-face veils.

University officials say the veils were banned because of fears over the spread of extremist ideology at the school.

Many Muslim groups and activists object to the ban. They say the Quran, Islams holy book, requires women to cover themselves in public.

Indonesia is home to the worlds largest Muslim population. Religious experts say most Indonesian Muslims practice a moderate form of Islam. But the country has experienced a rise in the number of more conservative clergy and religious centers.

The full veil, or burqa, ban was announced at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Yogyakarta, on the island of Java. The university said it had 41 students who wore burqas. It said they would be offered guidance at meetings and asked to take off the veil if they wanted to graduate from the school.

Reaction to burqa ban

The Islamic Defenders Front campaigns against activities it considers un-Islamic. In a statement, the group said the policy did not make sense and was in conflict with Indonesias efforts to protect diversity.

At least one womens rights activist criticized what she described as a limitation on the freedom of women to wear what they want.

Using full-face veils is a choice and we cannot interfere in their choice and their freedom, said activist Lathiefah Widuri Retyaningtyas. She spoke to the Reuters news agency.

Yudian Wahyudi serves as rector at the Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University. He said radicalization of Islam, as evidence of the burqas, was harmful to learning.

Female students wearing the burqa, and radical groups, they are disturbing the teaching process, he said. We are putting moderate Islam forward. He added that the policy was a preventive action to save the students. University students would be permitted to continue using customary headscarves that do not cover the face, he said.

The French news agency AFP reports that another Yogyakarta-based school, Ahmad Dahlan University, has also proposed a ban on the veils. But there would be no punishment for students who refuse it.

A school official added, "But during exams, they cannot wear it because officials have to match the photos on their exam ID (identification) with them, which is hard if one is wearing the [veil].

A recent study showed that nearly a fifth of high school and university students support the establishment of a caliphate over the current government.

The finding has concerned many Indonesian officials. The government is struggling to contain the growing influence of both peaceful and militant Islamist groups in the worlds third-largest democracy.

George Grow adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on reports from Reuters and Agence France Presse. Hai Do was the editor.

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Words in This Story

veil  adj. a cloth worn by women as a covering for the face or head

practice  v. to carry out; to perform

graduate  v. to successful complete a study program

diversity  n. the state or condition of having many different forms or ideas; having people who are of different races or cultures in a larger group

rector  n. the head of a university or school; a member of the clergy

disturb  v. to interfere with

radicalization  n. to make people accept more extreme beliefs

headscarf  n. a cloth covering all or most of the top of a womans head

caliphate  n. a state or country under the leadership of an Islamic clergyman

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President Donald Trump has approved measures adding 25 percent tariffs on steel entering the United States and 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum.

The new taxes are to go into effect in 15 days.

The president signed the measures in a ceremony at the White House on Thursday. Workers employed by U.S. steel and aluminum manufacturers attended the event.

The president, however, is permitting exceptions to the tariffs for metal imports from Canada and Mexico. Both countries are currently negotiating with U.S. officials to change the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The president spoke at a cabinet meeting Thursday morning. He said U.S. officials have a right to drop or add countries to the list of exceptions. Officials said those exemptions would be made on a case by case and country by country basis.

Earlier, Trump wrote on Twitter, We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real...and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.

Talk of the tariffs brought warnings of a trade war from Europe and China. One European Union official even said the EU would target goods from areas governed by Trumps Republican Party.

Reaction from China

The president has argued that the tariffs would prevent low-cost imports, especially from China, from hurting U.S. industries and jobs.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned a trade war would hurt all parties and called for negotiations. He added, China will, of course, make a proper and necessary response.

China had a record $375.2 billion goods surplus with the United States last year.

Trade tensions between the worlds two largest economies have risen since Trump took office in 2017. Although China exports little steel to the United States, its huge steel production has driven down the price of steel across the world

European reaction

In Brussels, European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said the EU has told the U.S. that tariffs were a bad idea. He said the U.S. lost thousands of jobs when it ordered tariffs on steel imported from Europe in the 2000s.

Another official was firm in his response. If Donald Trump puts in place the measures this evening, we have a whole arsenal at our disposal with which to respond, said Peter Moscovici of France. He serves as the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs.

The European measures could include tariffs on American oranges, tobacco and bourbon, he said. Some of the goods are produced in parts of the United States where Trump is popular.

Moscovici said he wanted American lawmakers to know that imposing tariffs would be a lose-lose situation.

Internal opposition to tariffs

Trumps plan to tax steel and aluminum imports has faced growing opposition from congressional Republicans and American businesses. Many were worried about possible effects on the economy.

More than 100 Republican lawmakers wrote to Trump, We urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the U.S. economy and its workers.

Tom Donohue is president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, an organization representing American businesses. He said, We urged the administration to take this risk [of a trade war] seriously.

On Tuesday, Gary Cohn, the presidents chief economic advisor, announced that he would leave the White House. Cohn has long argued for free trade and against tariffs.

Hai Do wrote this story for VOA Learning English. His report was based on information from the Associated Press and the Reuters news agency. The editor was George Grow.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

tariff - n. tax on goods coming or leaving a country

basis - n. a fixed pattern or system of doing something

flexibility - adj. easily changed

response - n. something that is done as a reaction to something else

arsenal - n. a group of things or weapons that are available to be used

disposal - n. available for someone to use

negative - adj. harmful or bad

consequence - n. something that happens as a result of a particular action
This is What's Trending Today.

China is making plans to create a large protected space for one of its most famous creatures: the giant panda.

The planned Giant Panda National Park would be two times the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

The Bank of China has promised 10 billion yuan, or $1.5 billion, to set up the protective area. It will be in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Chinas forest ministry said Thursday.

The Sichuan office of the central bank signed an agreement with the provincial government to pay for the parks construction. The work is to be completed by 2023.

The Associated Press reports that the ministry said the park will measure 2 million hectares. The projects aims to help the local economy while also providing the endangered animals with a huge, unbroken area in which they can meet and mate with other pandas.

Zhang Weichao is a Sichuan official involved in plans for the park. Zhang told the China Daily newspaper that the agreement will reduce poverty among the 170,000 people living within the parks proposed territory.

Chinas Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council first suggested the idea for the park in January 2017, the newspaper reported.

Giant pandas are Chinas unofficial national animal. They live mainly in the mountains of Sichuan, with some also living in nearby Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.

An estimated 1,864 giant pandas live in the wild, where they are threatened mostly by loss of natural habitat. Another 300 live in captivity.

And thats Whats Trending Today.

Im Alice Bryant.

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

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Words in This Story

construction - n. the act or process of building something (such as a house or road)

endangered - adj. used to describe a type of animal or plant that has become very rare and that could die out completely
The following companies are subsidiares of Emerson Electric: A.P.M. Automation Solutions Ltd., AE Valves, AGI Mexicana S.A. de C.V., ALCO CONTROLS spol. s.r.o., APM Automation Solutions, ASC Investments Inc., ASCO (Japan) Company Limited, ASCO L.P., ASCO Numatics (India) Private Limited, ASCO Numatics Holding Inc., ASCO SAS, ASCO Valve (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ASCO/JOUCOMATIC s.r.o., ATX SAS, Advanced Protection Technologies, Aegir Norge Holding AS, Alliance Compressors LLC, American Governor, Aperture, Apple JV Holding Corp., Appleton Electric LLC, Appleton Electric S.A. de C.V., Appleton Group, Appleton Group Canada Ltd., Appleton Grp LLC, Appleton Holding Corp., Appleton Holding Sarl, Artesyn Embedded Technologies, Artesyn Hungary Elektronikai Kft., Artesyn Technologies, Asco AB, Asco Controls AG, Asco Controls B.V., Asco Joucomatic Ltd., Asco Joucomatic ZA B.V., Asco Magnesszelep Kft., Asco Numatics GmbH, Asco Numatics S.A., Asco Numatics Sirai S.R.L., Asco Numatics Sp. z o.o., Ascomatica S.A. de C.V., Ascomation (NZ) Ltd., Ascomation Pty. Ltd., Ascotech S.A. de C.V., Ascoval Industria e Commercio Ltda, Automatic Switch Company, Aventics, Aventics, Aventics AB, Aventics AG, Aventics AS, Aventics ApS, Aventics B.V., Aventics Corporation, Aventics Holding S.A.S., Aventics Holding S.a.r.l., Aventics Hungary Kft, Aventics Inc., Aventics India Private Limited, Aventics Limited, Aventics Ltd., Aventics Oy, Aventics Pneumatics Equipment (Changzhou) Co. Ltd., Aventics Pneumatics Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Aventics S.A.S., Aventics S.R.L., Aventics Services Germany GmbH, Aventics Singapore Pte. Ltd., Aventics Sp. z.o.o., Aventics Spain S.L., Aventics spol. s.r.o., Avtron LoadBank, Bannerscientific Limited, Beckman Industrial B.V., Beijing Rosemount Far East Instrument Co. Ltd., Bettis Canada Ltd., Bettis Holdings Limited, Bettis UK Limited, Biffi Italia S.r.l., Bioproduction Group, Branson Korea Co. Ltd., Branson Ultrasonic S.A., Branson Ultrasonics (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Branson Ultrasonics B.V., Branson Ultrasonics Corporation, Branson Ultrasonics a.s., Branson Ultrasonidos S.A.E., Branson Ultrasons SAS, Branson Ultrasuoni S.R.L., Branson de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Bray Lectroheat Limited, Bristol Babcock Limited, Bristol Inc., Buehler Europe Limited, Buehler UK Limited, CR Compressors LLC, CSA Consulting Engineers Ltd., California Emerson LLC, Cascade Technologies, Cascade Technologies Holdings Limited, Cascade Technologies Limited, Chemat GmbH Armaturen fur Industrie - und Nuklearanlage, Chloride Koexa S.A., Componentes Avanzados de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Computational Systems, Computational Systems Incorporated, Conception et Representation de Technologies de Controle C.R.T. Controle SAS, Control Products Inc., Controles de Temperatura S.A. de C.V., Cooligy Inc., Cooper-Atkins, Cooper-Atkins Corporation, Cooper-Atkins Pte. Ltd., Copeland Access + Inc., Copeland Compresores Hermeticos S.A. de C.V., Copeland Corporation, Copeland Corporation LLC, Copeland Limited, Copeland Redevelopment Corporation, Copeland Scroll Compresores de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Copeland de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Copesub Inc., Crosby Valve LLC, Damcos A/S, Damcos Holding A/S, Daniel Automation Company, Daniel Europe Limited, Daniel Industrial Inc., Daniel Industries, Daniel Industries Canada Inc., Daniel Industries Inc., Daniel Industries Limited, Daniel International Limited, Daniel Measurement Solutions Private Limited, Daniel Measurement and Control Inc., Daniel Measurement and Control S. de R.L. de C.V., Danmasa S.A. de C.V., Dar Ibtikar Al Iraq for General Services and General Trade LLC, Decision Management International, Dieterich Standard Inc., Digital Appliance Controls (UK) Limited, Dixell North America Inc., Dixell S.R.L., Do+Able Products, E. Business Development E.B.D.Com Ltd., E.G.P. Corporation, EECO Inc., EGS Comercializadora Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., EGS Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., EGS Private Ltd., EMERSON CLIMATE TECHNOLOGIES s.r.o., EMR (Asia) Limited, EMR (Mauritius) Ltd., EMR Emerson Holdings (Switzerland) GmbH, EMR Europe Holdings Inc., EMR Foundation Inc., EMR Holdings (France) SAS, EMR Holdings Inc., EMR Worldwide B.V., EMR Worldwide Inc., EMRSN HLDG B.V., EMRSN Process Management Morocco Sarl, ENPDOR2012A Limited, ENPESNA Inc., EPM Tulsa Holdings Corp., EPMCO Holdings Inc., ETC International Holdings Ltd., Easy Heat Europe SAS, Easy Heat Inc., El-O-Matic B.V., El-O-Matic Valve Actuators (F.E.) Pte. Ltd., Electrische Apparatenfabriek Capax B.V., Emerald Advanced Technology Limited, Emerson (Philippines) Corporation, Emerson (Taiwan) Limited, Emerson (Thailand) Limited, Emerson Arabia Inc., Emerson Argentina S.A., Emerson Asia Pacific Private Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Actuation Technologies Holdings Inc., Emerson Automation Solutions Actuation Technologies Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control (Sichuan) Co. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control (Taiwan) Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control (Thailand) Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Africa (Pty) Ltd, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Australia Pty Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Czech Republic s.r.o., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Denmark A/S, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control France SARL, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Germany GmbH, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Hong Kong Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Hungary Kft, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Italia S.r.l., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control LLC, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Middle East FZE, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Netherlands B.V., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Polska Sp. Z.o.o., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Sales Australia Pty Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Sales Holding LLC, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control Singapore Pte. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control UK II Ltd, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control UK Ltd, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control US LP, Emerson Automation Solutions Final Control de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Emerson Automation Solutions GmbH, Emerson Automation Solutions Intelligent Platforms (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Intelligent Platforms Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Emerson Automation Solutions Intelligent Platforms Private Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Intelligent Platforms do Brasil Ltda, Emerson Automation Solutions Ireland Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions Isolation Valves Inc., Emerson Automation Solutions SSC UK Limited, Emerson Automation Solutions UK Limited, Emerson Beijing Instrument Co. Ltd., Emerson Climate Services LLC, Emerson Climate Technologies (India) Private Limited, Emerson Climate Technologies (Shenyang) Refrigeration Co. Ltd., Emerson Climate Technologies (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Emerson Climate Technologies (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Emerson Climate Technologies (Suzhou) Trading Co. Ltd., Emerson Climate Technologies - Solutions (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Emerson Climate Technologies - Transportation Solutions ApS, Emerson Climate Technologies Arabia Limited Co., Emerson Climate Technologies Australia Pty. Ltd., Emerson Climate Technologies FZE, Emerson Climate Technologies GmbH, Emerson Climate Technologies Inc., Emerson Climate Technologies Limited, Emerson Climate Technologies Mexico S.A. de C.V., Emerson Climate Technologies Refrigeration S.A., Emerson Climate Technologies Retail Solutions Europe S.R.L., Emerson Climate Technologies Retail Solutions Inc., Emerson Climate Technologies Retail Solutions UK Limited, Emerson Climate Technologies S.A., Emerson Climate Technologies S.R.L., Emerson Climate Technologies Sarl, Emerson Commercial & Residential Tools LLC, Emerson Commerical & Residential Asia Limited, Emerson Comres de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Emerson DHC B.V., Emerson Dietzenbach GmbH, Emerson Dominicana Srl, Emerson Egypt LLC, Emerson Electric (Asia) Limited, Emerson Electric (China) Holdings Co. Ltd., Emerson Electric (M) Sdn Bhd, Emerson Electric (Mauritius) Ltd., Emerson Electric (South Asia) Pte. Ltd., Emerson Electric (Thailand) Limited, Emerson Electric (Tongling) Co. Ltd., Emerson Electric (U.S.) Holding Corporation, Emerson Electric (U.S.) Holding Corporation (Chile) Limitada, Emerson Electric (Zhuhai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Electric CR Limitada, Emerson Electric Canada Limited, Emerson Electric Company (India) Private Limited, Emerson Electric Company Lanka (Private) Limited, Emerson Electric Holdings (Switzerland) GmbH, Emerson Electric II C.A., Emerson Electric International Inc., Emerson Electric Ireland Limited, Emerson Electric Korea Ltd., Emerson Electric Nederland B.V., Emerson Electric Overseas Finance Corp., Emerson Electric Poland Sp. z o.o., Emerson Electric U.K. Limited, Emerson Electric de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Emerson Electric do Brasil Ltda, Emerson Energy Systems (UK) Limited, Emerson FZE, Emerson Final Control US Holding LLC, Emerson Finance LLC, Emerson Fusite Electric (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Emerson Gabon SARL, Emerson Hazardous Electrical Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Holding Company Limited, Emerson Holding Sweden AB, Emerson InSinkErator Appliance (Nanjing) Co. Ltd., Emerson Industrial Automation USA Inc., Emerson International Holding Company Limited, Emerson Japan Ltd., Emerson Junkang Enterprise (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Korea Limited, Emerson LLC, Emerson LLP, Emerson Machinery Equipment (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Emerson Mexico Finance S.A. de C.V. SOFOM ENR, Emerson Middle East Inc., Emerson Network Power DHC B.V., Emerson Paradigm Holding LLC, Emerson Process Management (India) Private Limited, Emerson Process Management (South Africa) (Proprietary) Ltd., Emerson Process Management (Tianjin) Valves Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management (Vietnam) Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management A/S (Denmark), Emerson Process Management AB, Emerson Process Management AG, Emerson Process Management AS, Emerson Process Management Angola Lda, Emerson Process Management Arabia Limited, Emerson Process Management Australia Pty Limited, Emerson Process Management B.V., Emerson Process Management Chennai Private Limited, Emerson Process Management Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management Distribution Limited, Emerson Process Management Europe GmbH, Emerson Process Management Flow B.V., Emerson Process Management Flow Technologies Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management GmbH & Co. OHG, Emerson Process Management Holding AG, Emerson Process Management Holding LLC, Emerson Process Management Kft., Emerson Process Management LLLP, Emerson Process Management Lda, Emerson Process Management Limited, Emerson Process Management Ltda, Emerson Process Management Magyarorszag Kft., Emerson Process Management Manufacturing (M) Sdn Bhd, Emerson Process Management Marine Solutions Korea Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management Marine Solutions Singapore Pte. Ltd., Emerson Process Management Marine Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management NV, Emerson Process Management New Zealand Limited, Emerson Process Management Nigeria Limited, Emerson Process Management Oy, Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions Inc., Emerson Process Management Power & Water Solutions India Private Limited, Emerson Process Management Qatar W.L.L., Emerson Process Management Regulator Technologies Inc., Emerson Process Management Regulator Technologies Tulsa LLC, Emerson Process Management Romania S.R.L., Emerson Process Management S.A., Emerson Process Management S.A. de C.V., Emerson Process Management S.L., Emerson Process Management S.R.L., Emerson Process Management SAS, Emerson Process Management Shared Services Limited, Emerson Process Management Sp. z o.o., Emerson Process Management Ticaret Limited Sirket, Emerson Process Management UAB, Emerson Process Management Valve Automation (M) Sdn Bhd, Emerson Process Management Valve Automation (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Emerson Process Management Valve Automation Inc., Emerson Process Management Verwaltung GmbH, Emerson Process Management d.o.o., Emerson Process Management de Colombia SAS, Emerson Process Management del Peru S.A.C., Emerson Process Management s.r.o., Emerson Professional Tools (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson Puerto Rico Inc., Emerson Retail Services Europe GmbH, Emerson S.R.L., Emerson Sales UK Limited, Emerson Saudi Arabia LLC, Emerson Scroll Machining (Thailand) Limited, Emerson Sice S.R.L., Emerson Sweden AB, Emerson TOV, Emerson Technologies GmbH & Co. OHG, Emerson Technologies Verwaltungs GmbH, Emerson Tool Company de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Emerson Tool and Appliance Company S. de R.L. de C.V., Emerson Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Emerson UK Trustees Limited, Emerson USD Finance Company Limited, Emerson Valves & Controls Japan Co. Ltd., Emerson Ventures Inc., Emerson Vulcan Holding LLC, Emerson Xi'an Engineering Center, Emersub 1 LLC, Emersub 10 LLC, Emersub 11 LLC, Emersub 12 LLC, Emersub 14 LLC, Emersub 15 LLC, Emersub 16 LLC, Emersub 3 LLC, Emersub 4 LLC, Emersub 5 LLC, Emersub 7 LLC, Emersub 8 LLC, Emersub 9 LLC, Emersub CII Inc., Emersub CV Inc., Emersub Italia S.R.L., Emersub LXXXIV Inc., Emersub LXXXVI Inc., Emersub Mexico Inc., Emersub Treasury Ireland Unlimited Company, Emersub XLVI Inc., Emersub XXXVI Inc., Emirates Techno Casting FZE, Emirates Techno Casting Holding Limited, Emirates Techno Casting LLC, Enardo, Endura-Greenlee Tools, Energy Solutions International (India) Private Limited, Energy Solutions International GP LLC, Energy Solutions International Ltd., Energy Solutions International SAS, Energy Solutions International Sub LLC, F-R Tecnologias de Flujo S.A. de C.V., FC QSF LLC, FMC Technologies, Fiberconn Assemblies Morocco Sarl, Fincor Holding LLC, Fire & Safety Group.Com Ltd., Fisher Controles de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fisher Controls International LLC, Fisher Jeon Gas Equipment (Chengdu) Co. Ltd., Fisher Regulators (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Sanmar Limited, Fisher-Rosemount Systems Inc., Flow Control Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Flow Control Holding Verwaltungs GmbH, Flow Control US Holding Corporation, Francel SAS, Fromex S.A. de C.V., Fusite B.V., Fusite Corporation, Fusite Land Company, GSEG LLC, General Equipment and Manufacturing Company Inc., Generale de Robinetterie Industrielle et de Sytemes de Surete, GeoFields, GeoFields Inc., Greenex Ltd., Greenfield (UK) Limited, Greenlee, Greenlee Communications, Greenlee Tools Inc., Gulf Valve FZE, Gustav Klauke GmbH, H.T.E. Engineering Limited, HD Electric Company, HTE Engineering Services Limited, Hindle Cockburns Limited, Hiross India Private Limited, Hiter Industria e Comercia de Controles Termo-Hidraulicos Ltda., Humboldt Hermetic Motor Corp., Hytork International Ltd., I Solutions Inc., ICC Intelligent Platforms GmbH, ISE-MagTech, Industrial Controls Canada ULC, Industrial Group Metran JSC, Instrument & Valve Services Company, Intelligent Platforms LLC, Intellution, International Gas Distribution SA, Intrinsic Safety Equipment of Texas Inc., JCF Fluid Flow India Private Limited, JSC Metran-Export, Joucomatic S.A., K Controls Limited, Keystone Germany Holdings Corp., Keystone Valve (Korea) LLC, Keystone Valve (U.K.) Limited, Klauke, Klauke (Jiangsu) Electrical Connection Technology Co Ltd., Klauke France SARL, Klauke Handelsgesellschaft mbH, Klauke Iberia S.L., Klauke Polska Sp. z.o.o., Klauke Slovakia s.r.o., Klauke UK Ltd., Knurr, Liebert, Liebert Swindon Limited, Locus Solutions LLC, Locus Traxx Worldwide, Locus Traxx Worldwide Europe BVBA, MDC Technology Limited, MDC Technology Trustees Limited, METCO Services Limited, MYNAH Technologies, Management Resources Group Inc., Mecafrance (Deutschland) GmbH, Metallurgical Services Laboratories Limited, Metaserv Limited, Metco Services Venezuela C.A., Micro Motion Inc., Mobrey Group Limited, Motores Hermeticos del Sur S.A. de C.V., NetworkPower Ecuador S.A., Nippon Fisher Co. Ltd., Novel Environmental Technologies Ltd., Novel Extinguishing Agent Technology Ltd., Numatics Incorporated, Nutsteel DHC B.V., Nutsteel Industria Metalurgica Ltda, O.M.T. Officina Meccanica Tartarini S.r.l., Open Systems International, P I Components Corp., PT Emerson Solutions Indonesia, PT. Emerson Indonesia, PT. Paradigm Geophysical Indonesia, Pactrol Controls Limited, PakSense, PakSense Inc., Paradigm, Paradigm (UK) Holding Limited, Paradigm B.V., Paradigm France S.A., Paradigm Geophysical (India) Private Limited, Paradigm Geophysical (KL) Sdn. Bhd., Paradigm Geophysical (Nigeria) Limited, Paradigm Geophysical (U.K.) Limited, Paradigm Geophysical B.V., Paradigm Geophysical Corp., Paradigm Geophysical Italy SRL, Paradigm Geophysical LLC, Paradigm Geophysical Limited, Paradigm Geophysical Pty Ltd, Paradigm Geophysical S.A., Paradigm Geophysical Sdn. Bhd., Paradigm Geophysical Spain S.L., Paradigm Geophysical de Venezuela C.A., Paradigm Geophysical do Brasil Ltda., Paradigm Geoservices Canada Ltd., Paradigm Geotechnology (Egypt) S.A.E., Paradigm Kazakhstan LLP, Paradigm Middle East FZ-LLC, Paradigm Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Parex Industries Limited, Pentair Valves & Controls, Pentair Valves and Controls India Private Limited, Permasense, Permasense Asia Pacific Sdn Bhd, Permasense Limited, ProSys, ProTeam Inc., Progea, RAC Technologies (Israel) Ltd., RIDGID Inc., RPP Europe GmbH, RPP LLC, Rey-Lam S. de R.L. de C.V., Ridge Tool (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Ridge Tool Company, Ridge Tool Europe NV, Ridge Tool GmbH, Ridge Tool GmbH & Co. OHG, Ridge Tool Manufacturing Company, Ridge Tool Pattern Company, Ridgid France SAS, Ridgid Italia S.R.L., Ridgid Online Inc., Ridgid Scandinavia A/S, Ridgid Werkzeuge AG, Rosemount China Inc., Rosemount Inc., Rosemount Measurement Limited, Rosemount Nuclear Instruments Inc., Rosemount Specialty Products LLC, Rosemount Tank Gauging India Pvt. Ltd., Rosemount Tank Gauging Middle East SPC, Rosemount Tank Gauging North America Inc., Rosemount Tank Radar AB, Rosemount Tank Radar Properties AB, Roxar, Roxar AS, Roxar Flow Measurement AS, Roxar Flow Measurement Sdn Bhd, Roxar Limited, Roxar Maximum Reservoir Performance W.L.L., Roxar Saudi Co., Roxar Services AS, Roxar Services OOO, Roxar Software Solutions AS, Roxar Technologies AS, Roxar Vietnam Company Ltd., Roxar de Venezuela C.A., Rutherfurd Acquisitions Limited, S.F.T. Group Ltd., SABO-Armaturen Service GmbH, Safety Systems UK Pte. Ltd., Sakhi-Raimondi Valve (India) Limited, Scroll Compressors LLC, Scroll Mexico LLC, Sempell GmbH, Shanghai Virgo Valves Technology Consulting Co. Ltd., Sherman + Reilly, Soluciones 0925 C.A., Spectra-Tek Holdings Limited, Spectra-Tek International Limited, Spectra-Tek UK Limited, Spectrex, Spectrex Inc., Spectronix Ltd., Spensall Engineering Limited, Steel Support Systems Limited, Stratos Lightwave, System Plast International B.V., System Plast Ltda, System Plast USA de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., TDM-avtomatizatsiya, TV&C GP Holding LLC, Taiwan Valve Co. Ltd., TechnipFMC, Termocontroles de Juarez S.A. de C.V., Tescom Corporation, Tescom Europe GmbH & Co. KG, Tescom Europe Management GmbH, The Automation Group Inc., The J.R. Clarkson Company LLC, Therm-O-Disc Europe B.V., Therm-O-Disc Incorporated, Thunderline Z Inc., TopWorx UK Limited, Tranmet Holdings B.V., Tranmet Holdings Limited, Verdant Environmental Technologies, Vilter Manufacturing LLC, Virgo Valves & Controls (ME) FZE, Virgo Valves and Controls Sdn Bhd, Von Arx AG, Vulsub 1 Limited, Vulsub Brasil Holding, Vulsub Brasil Ltda., Vulsub Chile SpA, Vulsub Gulf Holding Limited, Vulsub Holding III (Denmark) ApS, Vulsub Holding Ltd, Vulsub Holdings A LLC, Vulsub Holdings B LLC, Vulsub Holdings C LLC, Vulsub Holdings D LLC, Vulsub Italia S.r.l., Vulsub Middle East Holdings LLC, Vulsub Peru S.A.C., Vulsub Property Holding LLC, Vulsub Property Limited, Vulsub S.A., Vulsub South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Vulsub VZ C.A., Westinghouse Electric Pvt. Limited, Westlock Controls Limited, Westlock Equipamentos de Controle Ltda., Woodstock Land Company LLC, epro GmbH, iSolera Inc., iSolutions Private Limited, and intelliSAW.
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 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. Ltd., CompAir Acquisition (No. 2) Ltd., CompAir Acquisition Ltd., CompAir BroomWade Ltd., CompAir Canada, CompAir Finance Ltd., CompAir GmbH, CompAir Holdings Limited, CompAir Holman Ltd, CompAir International Trading (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CompAir Korea Ltd, CompAir South Africa (SA) (Pty) Ltd., CompAir UK Ltd, CompAir USA, Consolidated Distribution Holdings Ltd., DV Systems Inc., Emco Wheaton, Emco Wheaton GmbH Branch, Emco Wheaton Gmbh, Emco Wheaton UK, Emco Wheaton USA Inc, Enza Air Propriety Limited (South Africa), GD Aria Holdings #2 Limited, GD Aria Holdings Limited, GD Aria Investments Limited, GD First UK Ltd, GD German Holdings GmbH, GD German Holdings I Gmbh, GD German Holdings II GmbH, GD German Investments GmbH, GD Global Holdings, GD Global Holdings II, GD Global Holdings UK II Ltd., GD Global Ventures I B.V., GD Global Ventures II B.V., GD Global Ventures III B.V., GD Industrial Products Malaysia SDN. BHD., GD Investment KY, GD UK Finance Ltd., Gardner Denver (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Gardner Denver Austria GmbH, Gardner Denver Bad Neustadt Real Estate GmbH & Co KG, Gardner Denver Belgium NV, Gardner Denver Brasil Industria E Comercio de Maquinas Ltda., Gardner Denver CZ + SK sro, Gardner Denver Canada Corp, 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.
The first developer preview of Android P is now available for the Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2, and Pixel 2 XL. Notice anything missing from that list?

While google will continue to offer security updates for its 2015 phone lineup for at least another year, the company has no plans to bring Android P to the Google Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P.

The Pixel C tablet is also left out in the cold.

The move isnt a huge surprise: Google only promised 2 years of major operating system updates for those devices, which were released in 2015. But if youre still holding onto a Nexus 5X that hasnt bootlooped yet, the news has got to sting a little.

The good news is that were talking about developer-friendly Nexus devices, so even though Android 8.1 will be the last official update for these phones, its just a matter of time before custom ROM makers start offering unofficial builds.

via Ars Technica

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BMW AG would like to start offering up the back seat on motorbikes and scooters to get around congested cities  if the issue of helmets can be solved.

This is definitely an option, but we havent found the solution for the second helmet yet, Peter Schwarzenbauer, who heads BMWs Mini, Rolls-Royce and motorcycle brands, said in an interview at the Geneva International Motor Show. Theres the issue of sizing and then re-

using helmets in the summer heat  its not ideal.

BMW already offers car sharing via its DriveNow brand, where customers can rent vehicles like the Mini Countryman by the minute. As a first step to bring motorcycles to a broader audience, the Munich-based carmaker will start a pilot in May allowing people to rent motorbikes via an app from dealers for a few days at a time, starting in Germany, France and Austria. The potential broadening of services is a step in a plan to triple BMWs customer base to 100 million users by 2025.

To meet growing demand for agile two-wheelers skirting congestion in cities, BMW is considering a second electric scooter, Schwarzenbauer said. The new model would be smaller than the existing C evolution maxi-scooter that has a driving range of about 160 kilometers, he said, declining to give more details.

Quite aside from ride sharing, in many cities well see more mobility on two wheels, he said.

The most lively markets thus far for motorcycle ride-sharing have been in Southeast Asia. Honda Motor Co. invested in Singapore-based Grab in 2016 and partnered with the company that has offered motorbike-hailing services in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. PT Go-Jek Indonesia PT pioneered the business model and could become the countrys first $1 billion startup to hold an initial public offering.

BMWs Schwarzenbauer declined to comment on whether the company plans to combine DriveNow with Daimler AGs Car2Go service. The two carmakers have been in talks to put together their respective car-sharing units to gain scale, according to people familiar with the matter. Both have in recent weeks bought out their respective partners, marking steps toward a potential combination.

Size is the deciding factor with this kind of offering, he said. Were currently at a use rate of around 15 percent. From a rate of 30 percent, then it really gets interesting.Elisabeth Behrmann, Bloomberg
At least 45 people have died and 175 have been injured in a car bomb explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.

The bomb went off outside a block of flats and close to a mosque as worshippers were gathering for Friday night prayers in a densely populated Shia Muslim suburb.

It is the worst attack in the Lebanese capital since November 1983 when 61 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in the southern port of Tyre.

The bomb blew a huge crater in the street and destroyed two seven-storey blocks of flats, a mosque and a cinema. Many of the dead were passers-by.

The blast brought gunmen running on to the streets firing guns into the air to clear the roads for ambulances.

Radio stations broadcast appeals for blood donors as fire fighters and civil defence workers tried to remove bodies from under the rubble.

Fleets of ambulances jammed the entrance to west Beiruts main hospital. It was soon packed with wounded and dead.

The bomb went off near the home of a leading fundamentalist Shia Muslim cleric, Sheikh Muhammad Husain Fadlallah and it is thought he may have been the target  although he was not hurt in the attack.

Sheikh Fadlallah later accused Israel and its internal allies of being behind the explosion and he gave a warning to all those who are playing with fire that their hands will be burned by the flames.

The blast comes at a particularly sensitive time as the Israelis are trying to complete their withdrawal from Lebanon.

Anti-American feeling is also running high. In Shia minds, the US is linked with Israel and its occupation of southern Lebanon.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

From 1975 until the early 1990s Lebanon suffered a bloody civil war in which regional powers  particularly Israel, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organisation  used the country as a battlefield for their own conflicts.

Israeli troops invaded in 1982 before pulling back to a self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon in 1985.

The final death toll in the car bomb explosion was more than 80.

Some American press reports said the CIA was behind the attack, which was meant to kill Sheikh Fadlallah. He had been accused of supporting the suicide bombers who killed hundreds of US and French troops in attacks on military headquarters in Beirut in 1983  a charge he has always denied.

The kidnapping of American journalist Terry Anderson eight days after the bomb has also been linked to the attempt on the sheikhs life.
The old joke, put 10 economists in a room and you will find 11 opinions, can be applied to analysts too, who seldom agree on anything.

The exception in Macau appears to be the consensus view that the future of gaming belongs to the mass-market segment. In fact, the only controversial aspect of this supposed market shift concerns exactly when this inevitable future will take hold.

Some believe that Macau will experience the decisive moment this year, when the mass-market breaks out and becomes the dominant force in the gaming sector. These analysts point to data showing mass and VIP play each account for about half of the citys gross gaming revenue, and that the mass share is set to rise faster in the near-term.

But others say that the volatile VIP segment, still somewhat reeling from President Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign, will continue to be the key indicator of Macaus gaming strength this year, as it was in 2017.

VOLATILE VIP

The VIP segment grew approximately 26 percent in 2017, pulling aggregate gaming revenue up 19.1 percent year-on-year to approximately MOP265 billion, the highest posting since 2014. Considering the strength of the VIP segment in 2017, it is impossible to argue that VIP has become irrelevant.

Accordingly, operators that were orientated toward the VIP segment performed above expectations last year, while those more geared toward the mass-market felt the crunch, as their gaming growth edged up well below the territorys average.

The first two months of this year indicate that 2018 may follow suit, with VIP thus far up 26 percent and mass- market just 14 percent.

But VIP has its limitations.

It cannot deliver the sustainable growth so coveted by both the Macau government and local casino operators. It is inherently more volatile than the mass-market because of its small and limited number of participants. Moreover, attracting these few participants to Macau is a complex matter that requires the partnership of junket operators with the reach and necessary skillset. VIP players are not enticed by competitive room fares or improved transportation infrastructure links, like mass-market consumers.

Estimates for VIP and mass-market contributions to 2018 gaming growth vary broadly, with some analysts putting the divide at roughly 50/50 and others suggesting VIP growth could be double that of the mass market.

Union Gamings Grant Govertsen told the Times that he expects the two segments to hold around the 50/50 mark. He said that he expects low double-digit growth for mass, adding that mass-market might grow slightly faster than premium mass.

PREMIUM PROFITS

The mass-market segment can itself be divided into two components: the mass-mass and the ill-defined premium mass. Premium mass players wager considerably more than mass-mass ones and, although they are not technically VIP players, may be afforded similar high-end treatment.

Some analysts go as far as to suggest that there is no difference between what a premium mass player and a VIP player wagers. Vitaly Umansky, a gaming analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, has previously said that the major difference is whether the casino or the junket promoter controls the relationship with the gaming customer.

Junket promoters are used in Macau to provide liquidity to high-stakes gamblers who would otherwise be prevented from gambling large sums of money by Chinas currency controls that limit a maximum of RMB20,000 to cross the border.

The involvement of junkets complicates earnings for the casino operator.

Praveen Choudhary, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, told the Financial Times that mass-market profit margins are about 40 percent, while premium mass is around 25 percent. Once junket commissions, and other freebies are taken into account, VIP margins can be slimmer than 10 percent.

Gaming operators will go where the money is. Where there is a monetary incentive to chase the non-VIP player, gaming operators can be expected to be move quickly to position their resorts as attractive options for the mass- market consumer.

A DISAPPOINTING NEW YEAR

Though visitor arrivals are up this year, gaming results for the lucrative Chinese Lunar New Year period were disappointing, falling far short of the considerable growth seen in January.

Gross gaming revenue in February amounted to MOP24.3 billion, a 7.25 percent slowdown from the previous month, and up only 5.7 percent year-on-year, compared with Januarys 36.4 percent annual rise.

CNY this year fell in mid-February, whereas the holiday season last year was split between the months of January and February. A comparison of both months year-on-year usually provides a more rounded picture. For the first two months of 2018, gross gaming revenues were up 20 percent from a year earlier. In comparison, year-on-year growth recorded in the first two months of 2017 was just 10 percent.

Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong suggested last week that the February results were not that important and that the full-quarter figures will provide a clearer picture. That has not been the case in previous years.

It remains unclear why the typically profitable CNY holiday did not bring in the expected gaming take, especially given the strong visitor arrival figures posted by the Macau Government Tourism Office.

THE COTAI MIGRATION

Not all mass-market visitors are mass-market gamblers. So looking only at visitor arrival numbers is not representative of the strength of Macaus non-VIP gaming sector.

For Grant Govertsen, the difference is in the quality of the customer.

There is some degree of correlation between visitor numbers and mass-market strength, however what were seeing now is a higher quality visitor coming to Macaus casinos: a better customer rather than more customers. And that probably applies to all stripes of mass-market gamblers, he said.

This view is supported by the fact that the downtown area of the Macau peninsula has seen a considerable easing in tourist congestion in recent years.

But official visitor numbers show that the tourist keep coming in and this leads others analysts to speculate that visitors are migrating to the Cotai Strip, far away from the center of activity for Macau locals.

Integrated resorts on the strip have been designed with the mass-market gambler in mind. Newer properties like Studio City, The Parisian Macao and MGM Cotai offer non-gaming attractions and avoid putting the emphasis on casino activities.

The future payout of the Cotai wager may be measured in the gradual rise of the overnight visitor, who now accounts for approximately 55 percent of all tourists. This is good news for Cotai properties because overnight visitors are less time-sensitive and more prepared to travel the breadth of Macau from the Border Gate to the ship.

Tourism | Optimistic MGTO forecast has overstated visitor arrivals since 2014

Analysts who read last week that Macau welcomed 6.5 percent more tourists during the Chinese New Year Golden Week will have found more evidence to support the view that the mass-market segment is soon to take over as the key driver of future gaming growth.

According to the Macau Government Tourism Office, the city welcomed 963,265 visitors during the first week of the Lunar New Year, suggesting a sustainable expansion that builds on 2016 and 2017 growth of 4 percent and 6.3 percent respectively.

However, if the estimate this year is in line with those of previous years, the figure published last month is likely an overstatement.

Since at least 2014, MGTO has overstated the estimated number of visitor arrivals during the Chinese New Year holiday period, one of the busiest in the Macau calendar. The margin of error has ranged from 0.7 percentage points in 2016 to 4.1 percentage points in 2015, but has never fallen under that of the actual figure.

Prior to 2017, MGTO provided an estimate of Lunar New Year visitors that included non-resident workers and students. However, starting from 2017, Macau immigration authorities were able to provide the daily figure separating non-residents from visitors. This change explains why the estimate fell so sharply in 2017 and yet still predicted a 9.9 percent growth in visitors.

Irrespective of the whether non-residents are included or excluded from the estimate, MGTO has overstated visitor arrivals each year, allowing it report consistently exaggerated growth. This is because each year the inflated estimate is compared with the previous years actual number, which is always lower than the previous years estimate.

With this in mind, this years actual increase in the number of visitors is likely to be lower than the estimated 6.5 percent growth.

Asked about the discrepancy between the MGTO estimates and the official immigration figures, a representative of the Statistics and Census Bureau said, we cannot comment on this data [from other bureaus]. DSEC obtains [its] data from the Public Security Police Force [PSP]. MGTO also claims to source its data from the PSP, though concedes that the figures are often revised at a later date.

The PSP did not respond to a media enquiry by press time. It is scheduled to release the final figure on March 23. DB
At first glance it seems like a blockbuster: North Korea has reportedly offered up its nukes for negotiation, an abrupt reversal from its repeated vows never to relinquish the treasured sword it sees as protection against constant U.S. hostility.

Experts reading between the lines, however, believe the North may be falling back on a well- worn position when confronting the United States. Essentially: You want our nukes? Then give us credible security guarantees.

This has been seen in the past to mean the removal of the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed as a deterrent against the North in South Korea and a halt to annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that the North claims are invasion preparations.

Washington is unlikely to accept any of this, but momentum in inter-Korean ties  South Koreas president has agreed to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un next month  means theres a real chance that negotiations could take place.

Here then is a look at the Norths latest offer, which has raised hopes for better days on the Korean Peninsula after a year of nuclear and missile tests by the North and threats of war:

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

According to senior South Korean official Chung Eui-yong, who returned Tuesday from a rare two-day trip to North Koreas capital, where he met with leader Kim Jong Un, the North said its committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and that it has no reason to possess nuclear weapons as long as military threats against the country are removed and its security is guaranteed.

North Korea also said its willing to hold candid talks with the United States to discuss the issues of denuclearization and normalizing ties. It also promised to suspend nuclear and missiles tests during such future talks, Chung said.

Sounds good, right? After all, Kim has placed nukes at the core of his authoritarian rule over 25 million North Koreans and vowed not to abandon them at any cost.

But the sentences above may simply be a repeat of the way the North has always justified its weapons development: We only need nukes because of the hostile policies of the United States and its allies.

By floating a reported desire for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea could be pushing for its long-sought goal of removing U.S. military assets.

Seoul and Washington must also guard against the possibility that North Korea will try to use any talks to weaken economic pressure against it and buy time to further advance its nuclear weapons program, according to Kim Sung-han, a professor at Seouls Korea University and a former vice foreign minister.

Another important note: Everything were hearing about the Norths offer has come from the South. North Koreas state media havent said anything concrete about what was said during Chungs trip to Pyongyang.

In fact, the Norths main Rodong Sinmun newspaper yesterday repeated that the country must enlarge its weapons arsenal to deal with American nuclear threats and blackmailing.

WEVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

The complaint by many observers is that North Korea has repeatedly used disarmament talks as a way to ease outside pressure and win badly needed aid, while all the while secretly pressing its weapons development.

Under a 1994 deal with the United States, North Korea pledged to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid to build two power- producing nuclear reactors. The deal fell apart in 2002 when a senior U.S. official said North Korean officials admitted to having a secret nuclear program during his visit to Pyongyang.

On-and-off six-nation disarmament negotiations were later held in China from 2003 to 2008. Deals along the way saw North Korea begin to disable its main plutonium-producing nuclear complex as part of an agreement to eventually dismantle it in return for energy aid and other concessions. Those efforts fell apart amid disputes on how to verify the Norths atomic activities. In 2010, the country stunned the region by unveiling a small, industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility that could allow it a second route to manufacture nuclear weapons.

In 2012, a nuclear freeze-for-food aid agreement blew up when the North abruptly launched a rocket into space in defiance of U.N. resolutions.

The North Koreans have said many times that they dont oppose nuclear disarmament, but theyve also changed their positions so easily. The United States knows this very well, said Go Myong-Hyun of the Seoul- based Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed both hope and skepticism over the Norths reported offer, calling it possible progress that also may be false hope.

WASHINGTON AND PYONGYANG

The United States, Go said, may face a dilemma over whether to accept the Norths reported offer for talks, but, in the end, it may pursue exploratory talks to hear directly how far North Korea is willing to disarm.

The most effective way for Washington and Pyongyang to proceed might be an exchange of special envoys, who could work on a potential summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump, said analyst Hong Min at Seouls Korea Institute for National Unification.

It seems unlikely to many, however, that Kim will easily give up his nuclear program.

And what might the North demand in any talks?

Possibilities include that the United States modify its annual drills with South Korea, stop dispatching nuclear bombers, submarines and carriers to the region and declare that it wont attack the North.

The United States would need to enter any dialogue with very detailed ideas on where it will draw the line in talks with North Korea because there will be a mixture of demands it might be able to meet and those it cannot meet, Hong said. Its unclear whether the Trump administration is ready in this regard. MDT/AP
As the worlds largest economies stumble toward an all-out trade war, President Donald Trump is tweeting in all-caps, but carrying a small stick.

After White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn announced hes resigning, the Trump administration is considering tariffs on a range of Chinese imports from shoes and clothing to consumer electronics, people familiar with the matter told Andrew Mayeda and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News. China will take necessary measures if its interests are harmed, Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui said.

Which side has the divisions best-arrayed to bring victory in this conflict?

One lesson from real warfare is that battles tend to be won and lost on the home front  and in that respect, the U.S. is laboring under a significant handicap. Its major imports from China are overwhelmingly consumer goods, where the predictable effect of tariffs will be to increase costs to American citizens, as Gadflys Tim Culpan points out. The largest categories are computers, phones, knitwear, other clothing, and toys.

It wont be easy for U.S. retailers to replace these goods. In every one of the consumer sectors where Chinese exports to the U.S. were worth more than USD5 billion in 2016, China accounted for more than one-third of U.S. imports by value. Global supply chains cant source from rival regions fast enough to avoid a tax on shoppers wallets, should further tariffs be imposed.

The ideal solution, from Trumps perspective, would be for domestic production to come to the rescue  but that horse has long bolted.

In clothing manufacturing, the U.S. production-line workforce has shrunk by more than 90 percent since 1990, and the electronics industry has lost almost 40 percent of its jobs. With China itself seeing industries quitting for cheaper locations in South and Southeast Asia and Africa, the chances of those jobs coming back to the U.S. are slim.

By contrast, China imports mainly intermediate products and parts from the U.S., led by soybeans, aircraft, cars, integrated circuits and plastic. The cost of any retaliatory tariffs on those products will pass through a number of producers before any citizens feel it in their hip pockets  and dictatorships dont have to worry so much about popular backlash, anyway.

If Xi Jinping chooses to fight back, watch what happens to the semiconductor industry. A quarter of U.S. chip exports go to China, but that constitutes just 3.8 percent of the Peoples Republics total imports of integrated circuits. A relatively small shift in Chinese business patterns could deliver a devastating blow to one of Americas most successful export trades.

Soybeans, too, could come in the firing line. China swallows up more than 60 percent of Americas exports of the legume, but that trade accounts for only 12 percent or so of Chinese consumption, at least as measured by domestic production plus imports. Putting levies on those imports will turn up the heat at a time when global soybean prices are at a two-year high, raising pressure on the processors and farmers who use soy for animal feed  but prices for pork, the most critical end-use sector in China, have been declining for 12 straight months, so they could afford to rise a little.

The smarter move for China might be to stand pat. Despite Xis boasts at Davos and elsewhere, the countrys record on free trade is dismal, a potential handicap if matters degenerate into a wider trade war. The better policy would be to let Trump raise costs for American consumers with ill-advised tariffs; refuse to retaliate; then pose as the innocent victim.

Governments in Washingtons sphere of influence, motivated by strategic investments in the likes of Deutsche Bank AG and Brazilian utility CPFL Energia SA and taken aback by Trumps aggressive stance, may be persuaded to regard Beijing as the friendlier ally.

That would be the greater victory for a Chinese president without term limits and with a view to posterity: To subdue the enemy without fighting, as the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote, is the supreme art of war. David Fickling, Bloomberg
PEN Hong Kong, a bilingual society of journalists, writers and academics has expressed its dismay after three authors were not able to join the Macau Literary Festival. The attendance of the authors was canceled as their entry into the city could not be guaranteed due to the political content of their works.

On Monday, organizers of the annual festival issued a statement noting that authors James Church, Jung Chang and Suki Kim would be unable to attend this years festival. Program director Helder Beja told local press that authorities had officially warned them that they could not guarantee their entry in Macau.

Yesterday, Beja told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that they were informed informally, unofficially, that it was not considered timely that these guests would come to Macau.

PEN Hong Kongs statement yesterday strongly criticized the cancellation. We deem this to be a very worrying development, and one that infringes directly on the right to freedom of expression and on literary expression, which should be guaranteed in Macau as everywhere else, the PEN Hong Kong statement read.

To ban authors solely on the basis of the political acceptability of their writings, according to fuzzy standards that are not even publicly disclosed, is a very concerning development that cannot be defended.

Although the union acknowledged that immigration authorities have all the discretion to decide who to allow in, it called on the MSAR to not use access to their city as a covert tool of political control in determining what kind of books are deemed acceptable.

London-based Changs works, including a biography of Mao Zedong, have been banned in the mainland, while the other two have both written in depth about North Korea, and consider China its main ally and diplomatic defender.

In so doing, they are not only blocking internationally acclaimed authors from visiting Macau, and harming Macaus reputation as a city known for its cultural and creative industries, but Macau authorities are also limiting the cultural exchanges their citizenry is allowed to enjoy, PEN Hong Kong stated.

This is a censoring and authoritative move that we find deplorable.

Following yesterdays AFP report, the story has already been picked by several international media outlets, such as the Daily Mail and France 24.
1. Yes. Several other districts factor them in. It would provide a more complete picture.

2. Yes. Theyre not as accurate, but they can be useful in spotting a trend in infections.

3. No. The district is keeping tabs on those numbers, so the public doesnt need to.

4. No. As long as the public health district is aware of those stats, thats all that matters.

5. Unsure. The district isnt obligated to include them, but it might be helpful.

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Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker struck a defiant tone in the face of the continued sanctions against his country, calling them a challenge to civilization that has only strengthened his resolve to push for more growth and add destinations. Speaking at the annual tourism fair in Berlin, Al Baker blasted the measures as an assault on his nation, saying were not a grocery shop, were a sovereign country. Rather than curb growth last year, the embargo had the opposite effect, the CEO said as he announced higher frequencies to places like Barcelona and Madrid and a new twice-daily service to London Gatwick.

Investor group cancels deal to buy Weinstein Co.

A group of investors pulled out of a deal to buy the beleaguered Weinstein Co. on Tuesday after discovering tens of millions of dollars in undisclosed debt, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Businesswoman Maria Contreras-Sweet, who has been leading the group of buyers along with billionaire investor Ron Burkle, said in a statement that disappointing information about the viability of completing this transaction had led her to call off the sale.

Kia plans India push with small cars

The affiliate of South Koreas Hyundai Motor Corp. plans to make three or more models in the compact hatchback and sport-utility vehicle segments within three years of starting production in 2019, Manohar Bhat, head of marketing and sales at Kias local unit said in an interview. Hatchbacks account for almost two-thirds of Indias car market, which is poised to become the worlds third largest by 2020. About a dozen companies already make small hatchbacks in India where profit margins are relatively low, a key factor that led General Motors Co. to announce an exit from the market last year. Success in India is essential for Kia after losing ground in China due to political tensions and in the U.S. where consumers are increasingly lapping up big SUVs.

Swedish banks reject cashless warnings

Swedens biggest banks say warnings that the country might be running dangerously low on cash are overblown. The Swedish central bank has in recent weeks sounded the alarm, arguing that the largest Nordic economy may be going cashless too fast. Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves has even called for legal changes to safeguard the governance of Swedens payment system. But the industry says it still offers the cash needed and argues that theres little point in fighting a trend that bank customers themselves are driving, according to interviews with industry representatives conducted by Bloomberg.
The Transport Bureau (DSAT) has received suggestions from some people within the taxi industry to allow the use of hybrid vehicles in the upcoming transport initiative which will introduce 100 new taxis to Macau. Many other suggestions were strongly voiced by the taxi industry to DSAT yesterday, during a meeting where the bureau explained the reasoning behind the criteria of the 100 new taxis.

Approximately 80 people attended the meeting to present their fierce opposition to DSATs criteria during question time.

According to DSAT, the operations concerning the 100 new vehicles should begin in the second half of 2018. The price of an eight-year licence starts at MOP200,000. The vehicles must be exclusively electric-powered, four-seater cars (excluding the drivers seat). GPS devices should be installed inside the taxi as well.

Leng Sai Vai, president of the Associacao dos Comerciantes e Operarios de Automoveis de Macau, asked whether the related concession requirements were legal and whether hybrid vehicles could be used.

Many other speakers also voiced their opposition to the specific requirements for electric cars, chargers, and the brand of the electric vehicles.

A participant, surnamed Fong, responded that the most polluting vehicles are public buses. You have been working on [electric buses] for a long time. Any success so far? Macaus most polluting vehicles are the public buses and the casino shuttles. Why dont you [require] electric [vehicles] to replace these vehicles?

Another participant, surnamed Lau, wondered whether there would be sufficient time for taxis to fully recharge. He asked about the number of chargers and the number of electric taxis which are currently operating in Macau.

Another participant voiced his anger, saying, You [the government] ask the residents to balance [the situation] themselves. [] If the government and the public buses do it first, then we will have nothing to say.

The hybrid vehicles which we are using basically produce zero emissions. Now, the problem is that you are assigning that [one specific] brand. I think there are interests [involved in the decision], hinted another taxi driver.

A few other speakers asked whether it would be possible for drivers to know, at any given moment, which chargers were available. They also asked about the number of electric cars that the government is currently using.

Chan Io Fai, Chief of the Vehicles Division of DSAT, said that Macau currently has 119 chargers, including 28 superchargers. The city has also around 250 electric vehicles, 172 of which are private cars.

It was suggested that drivers call parking lots in advance to determine whether chargers were available as required.

In Chans words, those who are interested in bidding for the license, should consider themselves regarding charging conditions. The governments chargers are only for assistive measures. [] You should only bid after considering all factors.

When answering questions, Chan said that DSAT has already received more than 100 bids.

Regarding the brand of these vehicles, we have not specified any. [] Until the third quarter of 2017, the government has been using approximately 20 electric cars, Chan disclosed.

On the sidelines of the meeting, Chan noted that there are currently nine models from two brands available that meet the governments requirements.

There is a vehicle service group who will apply for another brand, said Chan.

Chan also disclosed that two casinos, Studio City and MGM, are applying to DSAT to use electric shuttle buses, and one of them has applied for eight electric buses.
Australia and East Timor signed a historic treaty drawing their maritime boundary yesterday [Macau time], ending years of bitter wrangling over billions of dollars of oil and gas riches lying beneath the Timor Sea and opening a new chapter in relations.

The agreement was doubly historic because it also marked the successful conclusion of the first-ever negotiations to settle maritime differences under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea  a process that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged other countries to use to peacefully resolve such disagreements.

Before a crowd of cameras, diplomats and officials, two copies of the treaty were signed by Australias foreign minister, Julie Bishop, and East Timors minister for delimitation of borders, Hermenegildo Augusto Cabral Pereira. The chairman of the independent Conciliation Commission that led negotiations, Danish Ambassador Peter Taksoe-Jensen, then signed as a witness.

It is a landmark event for our two nations, but also for international law, Bishop said. Both our governments have deemed this to be a just and equitable outcome.

Pereira agreed, saying: Today is indeed a momentous day that will be recorded in East Timors history and be remembered and celebrated. [] With the signing of this treaty today, we write a new chapter in the friendship between our two countries.

For East Timor, a half-island nation of 1.5 million people who are among the poorest in the world, the treaty is crucial to economic development and employment opportunities. Pereira said 65 percent, mostly young people, are looking for jobs.

Bishop told reporters that under the treaty East Timor will get the biggest share of revenue from exploiting the oil and gas. It will be split either 80-20 if gas is piped to Australia for processing or 70-30 if it is piped to East Timor, she said.

We are talking billions of dollars over the life of such a resource project, Bishop said.

Pereira said companies have told East Timor that it is feasible to build a pipeline to the country.

We believe seriously that a successful pipeline to the south coast of Timor would be a game changer and have a transformational impact on the socio-economic status of the country, he said.

The dispute has dominated and soured relations since 2002, when East Timor emerged as a fledgling nation independent of Indonesia.

The terms of the deal negotiated under the Conciliation Commission in The Hague, Netherlands, through the Permanent Court of Arbitration are expected to be made public shortly, Australian diplomats said.

East Timor achieving its ambition of a border midway between the two countries could encourage Indonesia to renegotiate its own much longer maritime boundary with Australia, agreed in 1971 under outdated international law. The Indonesian border with Australia extends east and west of the new East Timor-Australia boundary and the vast expanse Indonesia allowed Australia is a source of increasing irritation for the Indonesian government.

Bishop told reporters that she had kept Indonesian officials informed of the negotiations with East Timor on the maritime boundary. MDT/AP
A U.S. congresswoman whose Nevada district includes the Las Vegas Strip asked the federal government Tuesday to keep internet gambling legal.

Democratic Rep. Dina Titus wrote to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, urging the Justice Department not to reverse a ruling it made in 2011 that allowed internet gambling in individual states.

While there has been no public indication that the Justice Department is considering such a move, lawmakers from both parties have asked it to either outlaw internet bets or keep them legal. An aide to Titus said numerous gambling companies have expressed concern to her office about a possible reversal of the Justice Department ruling.

President Donald Trump, a former Atlantic City casino owner, told The Associated Press during the 2016 presidential campaign he had not taken a position on internet gambling, saying he has friends on both sides of the issue. One of the Republican presidents major donors, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is a staunch opponent of online gambling.

In 2011, President Barack Obamas Justice Department issued a legal ruling that said online gambling within states that does not involve sporting events would not violate the Wire Act, a law concerning illegal gambling.

In Las Vegas, we have seen that a regulated market is always better than an illegal one, Titus wrote. Internet gambling will not go away with a reversal of Wire Act guidance; it will merely push more consumers into black markets.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Tituss letter, and would not say whether the department is considering changes to its stance regarding internet gambling.

In January, New Jersey members of Congress from both parties urged Rosenstein in a letter to keep internet gambling legal.

That letter followed one in November from Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, of California, asking the Justice Department to change course and have Congress determine whether to permit online gambling.

Internet gambling is a thriving industry in New Jersey, helping Atlantic Citys seven casinos recover from a three-year period in which five of the citys 12 casinos closed. The additional money brought in online often makes the difference between an up month and a down month for Atlantic City casinos.

Atlantic Citys casinos won USD245 million online in 2017, an increase of nearly 25 percent from a year earlier. New Jersey is the largest online market of the four states that currently permit internet gambling. The others are Nevada, Delaware and Pennsylvania, which approved it but has not yet started taking bets through its casinos.Wayne Parry, AP
Credit: Keith Sergeant Source: Flickr

People are willing to travel 75 minutes longer for specialist cancer surgery if it reduces their risk of complications by 1%, according to new UCL-led research.

The study, published today in the British Journal of Surgery, and funded by the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research Programme, analysed patients' and health professionals' preferences for centralising specialist cancer surgery services. While the aim of centralising specialist services into fewer units is to reduce local variations in quality of care and improve outcomes, it could also increase demands on patients and families in relation to travel times.

"Our findings suggest that people are willing to travel longer if it means having better care and better outcomes. But, if services are not linked with better care and outcomes, people prefer to be treated by their local hospital," said senior author Professor Stephen Morris (Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care). "When planning changes of this kind, it is vital that improvements in care and outcomes are at the heart of proposals."

Professor Naomi Fulop (Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care) who was Chief Investigator of the study added, "These findings are part of a wider study, called RESPECT-21, which is evaluating the impact of centralising specialist cancer surgery. It is important to understand as part of that wider study what people value about both how care is provided and the outcomes of that care, and how far they are willing to travel to get these."

In the UK, the National Cancer Strategy is currently evaluating whether cancer surgery would benefit from moving towards a more centralised system. In London since 2011, and Greater Manchester since 2014, cancer care has been provided in 'integrated cancer systems', working towards centralisation of specialist surgical services for prostate, bladder, kidney and oesophagogastric cancers. The paper highlights that the rationale for centralising specialist cancer surgery services is to reduce unacceptable variation in quality of care and outcomes achieved by different centres.

Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones, chief medical officer, UCLH Cancer Collaborative commented: "This study underlines the importance of researchers partnering with NHS leaders to fully understand service improvement work. When we brought together several smaller centres in north central and east London to create larger specialist cancer teams providing complex cancer surgery, we involved patients, carers and health professionals in the service redesign. It is good to now see the evidence that patients and the public value these new services and are prepared to travel further to access the benefits they offer for a specialist treatment that is a planned part of their cancer treatment pathway."

Explore further Examining preferences for centralizing cancer surgery services
The sixth edition of The Tobacco Atlas and its companion website TobaccoAtlas.org finds the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting vulnerable populations in emerging markets, such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, where people are not protected by strong tobacco control regulations. The report was released at the 17th World Congress on Tobacco OR Health in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Atlas, which is co-authored by American Cancer Society (ACS) and Vital Strategies, graphically details the scale of the tobacco epidemic around the globe. It shows where progress has been made in tobacco control, and describes the latest products and tactics being deployed by the tobacco industry to grow its profits and delay or derail tobacco control efforts. In response to an evolving tobacco control landscape, the Sixth Edition includes new chapters on regulating novel products, partnerships, tobacco industry tactics and countering the industry.

In 2016 alone, tobacco use caused over 7.1 million deaths worldwide (5.1 million in men, 2.0 million in women). Most of these deaths were attributable to cigarette smoking, while 884,000 were related to secondhand smoke. The increase in tobacco-related disease and death has been outpaced by the increase in industry profits. The combined profits of the world's biggest tobacco companies exceeded US $62.27 billion in 2015, the last year on record for all the major companies. This is equivalent to US $9,730 for the death of each smoker, an increase of 39% since the last Atlas was published, when the figure stood at US$7,000.

"Every death from tobacco is preventable, and every government has the power reduce the human and economic toll of the tobacco epidemic," said Jeffrey Drope, PhD, co-editor and author of The Atlas and Vice President, Economic and Health Policy Research at the American Cancer Society. "It starts by resisting the influence of the industry and implementing proven tobacco control policies. The Atlas shows that progress is possible in every region of the world. African countries in particular are at a critical point - both because they are targets of the industry but also because many have opportunity to strengthen policies and act before smoking is at epidemic levels."

"Tobacco causes harm at every stage of its life cycle, from cultivation to disposal," said Dr. Neil Schluger, Vital Strategies' Senior Advisor for Science and co-editor and author of The Atlas. "It is linked to an ever-increasing list of diseases, burdens health systems, and exacerbates poverty, especially when a breadwinner falls ill and dies from tobacco use. At a conservative estimate, there are more than 7 million tobacco-related deaths and global economic costs of two trillion dollars (PPP) each year, not including costs such as those caused by second-hand smoke and the environmental and health damages of tobacco farming. The only way to avert this harm is for all governments to vigorously implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and to enforce the proven strategies that reduce tobacco use."

Tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke costs the global economy more than two trillion dollars (PPP) every year - equivalent to almost 2% of the world's total economic output. More than 1.1 billion people are current smokers, while 360 million people use smokeless tobacco. Low and middle income countries represent over 80% of tobacco users and tobacco-related deaths, placing an increased share of tobacco-related costs on those who can least afford it. A growing proportion of that burden will fall on countries across Africa in the future, if governments do not implement tobacco control policies now to prevent it.

Africa is at a tipping point

The Sixth Edition of The Tobacco Atlas reveals that the tobacco industry deliberately targets countries that lack tobacco control laws and exploits governments, farmers and vulnerable populations across Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, consumption increased by 52% between 1980 and 2016 (from 164 billion to 250 billion sticks). This is being driven by population growth and aggressive tobacco marketing in countries like Lesotho, where prevalence is estimated to have increased from 15% in 2004 to 54% in 2015. Economic growth has increased consumers' ability to afford tobacco products and there is a lack of tobacco control interventions to deter tobacco use. Furthermore, in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Senegal, smoking is now more common among youth than adults - potentially increasing the future health and economic burden of tobacco in these countries.

Yet Africa has also seen real successes in tobacco control recently, according to The Tobacco Atlas. Ghana and Madagascar have introduced comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Kenya, and Madagascar have implemented graphic warnings on cigarettes, an important intervention in countries with multiple dialects and for citizens in those countries who have low levels of literacy. South Africa has implemented consecutive tobacco tax increases to deter consumption and Kenya has implemented a highly effective track-and-trace system to track and reduce illicit trade. These countries are setting an example to others across the world.

Other examples of effective tobacco control policies

In spite of the tobacco industry's efforts to impede progress, global cigarette consumption and tobacco use prevalence have declined recently thanks to an overall increase in the adoption of proven and innovative tobacco control measures. Tobacco taxes alone could deliver a 30% relative reduction in smoking prevalence by 2025. This would save 38 million lives and $16.9 trillion, just from former smokers becoming healthier.

In 2013, the Philippines implemented one of the largest tobacco tax increases in a low and middle income country, leading more than 1 million smokers to quit. Kenya implemented a successful track and trace system for tobacco products, which helped to stem the illicit market.

Turkey's comprehensive tobacco control strategy reduced smoking prevalence from 39.3% in 2000 to 25.9% in 2015.

Analysis by Australia's government found that plain packaging alone resulted in 108,228 fewer smokers between December 2012 and September 2015.

Brazil has banned all tobacco additives such as flavors used to attract children. WHO predicts that there will be 3 million fewer smokers in Brazil between 2015 and 2025.

"We are proud that our two organizations have worked together for almost two decades to engender a healthier world," said Dr Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society. "The data in The Tobacco Atlas depict a sobering look at the daunting magnitude of the epidemic, but also show considerable progress in places where governments take up solutions that are proven to work. For the first time, more than two billion people are protected by at least one WHO MPOWER measure, but very few countries have taken up every measure. The data are clear that measures like raising taxes and enacting 100% smoke-free air laws indisputably work, but too many governments have not yet committed to adopting them. Our life-saving opportunity lies in that gap."

"The ultimate path to improved tobacco control is political will," said Jose Luis Castro, President and CEO, Vital Strategies. "Strong tobacco control policies deliver a significant return on investment, and The Tobacco Atlas offers the best and most recent data on the tobacco epidemic as a resource for governments to pursue effective strategies. The answer does not lie with the industry: as The Atlas makes clear, there is a complete disconnect between the tobacco industry's claims about harm reduction and its actual work to grow tobacco use among vulnerable populations. Governments must be accountable to their citizens in reducing tobacco use and improving health. They must prepare to rebuff the tobacco industry's challenges to legislation, seek the appropriate assistance to build capacity, and be transparent about the industry's inevitable approaches. We urge governments, advocates, organizations and people who care about health, the environment and development to stand together to reduce this man-made epidemic in pursuit of a healthier planet."
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers

When older adults suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI), they may benefit from aggressive treatment and rehabilitation, but the lack of evidence-based, geriatric-specific TBI guidelines presents barriers to optimal care. The urgent need for more clinical research, data, and prognostic models on TBI in the growing geriatric population is described in an article published in Journal of Neurotrauma.

In the article entitled "Geriatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Epidemiology, Outcomes, Knowledge Gaps, and Future Directions," Raquel Gardner, MD, University of California, San Francisco and San Francisco VA Medical Center, and coauthors from UCSF, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY) and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital review the medical literature on TBI sustained by adults 50 years of age or older. The researchers report on the prevalence and incidence of TBI in this population, what the initial clinical evaluation and array of diagnostic studies should look like, and issues related to neurocritical care and neurosurgical management. In addition, the article addresses the controversial issue of how age affects outcomes and the risks of death, post-traumatic neurological disorders, and chronic psychosocial and cognitive impairment. The role of rehabilitation and future directions for research are additional topics of discussion.

"The Journal is pleased to have the opportunity to publish this timely review that focuses attention on the significant problem of geriatric traumatic brain injury," says John Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma. "This important review is a must read for both basic and clinical scientists, confirming the gravity of this problem for our geriatric population, while highlighting a series of recommendations to improve the development of prognostic models and evidence-based management guidelines."

Explore further Changes in brain connectivity can help diagnose and predict outcomes of mild TBI

More information: Raquel C. Gardner et al, Geriatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Epidemiology, Outcomes, Knowledge Gaps, and Future Directions, Journal of Neurotrauma (2017). Journal information: Journal of Neurotrauma Raquel C. Gardner et al, Geriatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Epidemiology, Outcomes, Knowledge Gaps, and Future Directions,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/neu.2017.5371
In this June 30, 2015, file photo, razor grass and pro-choice signs limit the view of patients entering the Jackson Women's Health Organization clinic in Jackson, Miss. The facility is currently Mississippi's only abortion clinic. Abortion law experts say House Bill 1510, which passed the Mississippi Senate Tuesday, March 7, 2018, and is one House vote away from the desk of a governor eager to sign it, is an invitation to the Supreme Court to allow states to begin restricting abortion earlier in pregnancy. The law that passed the Senate would ban most abortions after 15 weeks. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Mississippi lawmakers on Thursday passed what would be the nation's most restrictive abortion law, making the procedure illegal in most cases after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The state's only abortion provider pledged to sue, and the attorney general said he expected a tough legal battle ahead.

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature appeared not only to expect, but to encourage such challenges in hopes the issue will eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It seems like a pretty simple bill designed to test the viability line that the Supreme Court has drawn," said David Forte, a law professor at Ohio's Cleveland State University.

The House voted 75-34 in favor of the measure, and Gov. Phil Bryant said again Thursday that he would sign it. The Senate passed the measure on Tuesday.

There are two exceptions to House Bill 1510: if the fetus has a health problem that would prevent it from surviving outside the womb at full term, or if the pregnant woman's life or a "major bodily function" is threatened by the pregnancy. Pregnancies as a result of rape and incest are not exempt.

It's unclear if a 15-week ban will move forward elsewhere. A bill has been filed for Louisiana's upcoming legislative session. Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson, a Republican from Braxton, said lawmakers in Texas, Georgia, and "some midwestern states" are exploring the idea. An appeals court in 2015 struck down efforts in North Dakota to ban most abortions after six weeks, when a fetus develops a detectable heartbeat, and in Arkansas after 12 weeks.

"The Supreme Court has said and resaid again and again that states cannot prohibit women from obtaining abortions prior to viability, which is what a 15-week ban would do," said Hillary Schneller, staff attorney for the national nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights. The New York-based group, which advocates for free access to abortion, called the bill unconstitutional and "medically unsound."

Mississippi's 20-week ban has never been legally challenged, in part because the state's only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization, doesn't perform abortions that late in pregnancy. According to state Department of Health statistics, 85 percent of abortions in Mississippi took place before 12 weeks in 2016.

But Diane Derzis, who owns the clinic, has said the clinic provides abortions as late as 18 weeks after pregnancy. Most of Mississippi's 2,500 abortions in 2015 took place at the clinic. She said before the bill was passed that she would sue.

Rep. Adrienne Wooten, D-Jackson, questions House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, R-Braxton, about House Bill 1510, on what is likely to be the nation's most restrictive abortion law, Thursday, March 8, 2018, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. The House voted 75-34 in favor of the measure, which would make most abortions illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said he'll sign the bill. The Mississippi Senate passed the measure on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood said Thursday that he expected legal challenges and he noted that less-restrictive measures banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy have been struck down in other states. The U.S. Senate earlier this year rejected such a ban nationwide when supporters couldn't reach a 60-vote supermajority to act. Mississippi has such a ban, but it has not been challenged yet.

Abortion opponents have been encouraged by a 2007 Supreme Court case, Gonzalez v. Carhart, that allowed bans on what some call partial-birth abortions, an abortion performed relatively late in pregnancy, in which the living fetus is extracted in stages through the birth canal. The opponents believe the decision opened a window for states to restrict abortion before a fetus is viable.

"We would welcome the court to clarify the extent to which states can regulate abortions, particularly with regard to maternal health," said Jameson Taylor, acting president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning group that helped lawmakers write Mississippi's bill.

Taylor said the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal advocacy group, was among those who vetted the bill's language. The Arizona-based alliance didn't respond to questions, with senior counsel Kevin Theriot saying only that the alliance "supports states' important and legitimate efforts to protect the health and safety of women and children."

Forte and University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone both said they believe the chances the court will consider a major abortion case are slim as long as the current justices remain, though a case could ascend quickly on an emergency appeal of a lower court ruling.

"I think the court wants to stay out of this for a while," Forte said.

The likely hope of Mississippi lawmakers is that one of the justices more favorable to abortion rights, such as Anthony Kennedy or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will have stepped down by the time the state's case reaches the Supreme Court.

Kennedy, for example, has twice in the past 26 years been part of a 5-4 majority upholding abortion rights.

"If Anthony Kennedy has already stepped down, this would make perfect sense," Stone said.

"They're playing the short, immediate game in circuit courts where they just try and try again, and then they're also playing the long game where they're trying to change the composition of the Supreme Court," said Leslie McGorman, deputy policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, a national group supporting abortion rights.

Explore further Mississippi governor says he supports 15-week abortion ban

 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Immunohistochemistry for alpha-synuclein showing positive staining (brown) of an intraneural Lewy-body in the Substantia nigra in Parkinson's disease. Credit: Wikipedia

Walking presents many challenges for patients with Parkinson's disease. Among the most burdensome of these challenges is "freezing of gait," the sudden onset of immobility mid-step. It often causes falls and leads to a reduction in quality of life.

A new Tel Aviv University study suggests a novel way of treating the affected areas of the brain that apparently cause freezing of gait. It proposes that transcranial direct-current electrical stimulation of the primary motor cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex significantly ameliorates the condition.

"The effects of multi-target simultaneous stimulation of motor and cognitive networks demand investigation," says Prof. Jeffrey Hausdorff of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine and the Center for Movement Disorders at Tel Aviv Medical Center, who led the research for the study, just published in the journal Movement Disorders.

Research for the study was also conducted by TAU neuroscience doctoral student Moria Dagan; Prof. Nir Giladi of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine and Tel Aviv Medical Center; Dr. Tali Herman of Tel Aviv Medical Center; and a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School led by Dr. Brad Manor and Prof. Lew Lipsitz.

Real and "sham" stimulation examined

The team of scientists examined 20 Parkinson's disease patients, who often experience freezing of gait. The patients received 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation via a cap that the subjects wore on their head on three separate visits. Transcranial direct current stimulation targeted the primary motor cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex simultaneously; the primary motor cortex only; or underwent "sham," placebo stimulation, where the subject feels some tingling sensation, but the amount of stimulation is negligible.

Before and after each round of stimulation, the participants completed a test that provoked freezing of gait, a static and dynamic mobility test (known as "Timed Up and Go"), gait assessment, and a cognitive test for processing speed, selective attention and inhibition control (Stroop test).

"What we found was quite encouraging," says Prof. Hausdorff. "The participants' walking improved after simultaneous stimulation of the primary motor cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, but not after primary motor cortex only or sham stimulation. The results of the study reveal that transcranial direct current stimulation designed to simultaneously target motor and cognitive regions apparently induces immediate aftereffects in the brain that translate into reduced freezing of gait and improvements in executive function and mobility."

Multi-site stimulation most effective

After 20 minutes of multi-site stimulation, the patients' freezing of gait was reduced and mobility and cognition improvedmore than that seen after stimulation of primary motor cortex only or through sham simulation.

"In other words, a larger, more positive effect is obtained when both motor and cognitive areas are targeted," Prof. Hausdorff concludes. "When thinking about treatments for freezing of gait, it is important to target both motor and cognitive functions.

"Even among patients with advanced Parkinson's disease and freezing of gait, it is apparently possible to improve brain function via non-invasive brain stimulation, at least in the short-term, and this has positive, functional consequences."

Together with their collaborators at Harvard Medical School, the TAU-TAMC team is currently conducting a randomized controlled trial to determine the long-term benefits of this multi-site stimulation on freezing of gait and related symptoms.

More information: Moria Dagan et al, Multitarget transcranial direct current stimulation for freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease, Movement Disorders (2018). Moria Dagan et al, Multitarget transcranial direct current stimulation for freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease,(2018). DOI: 10.1002/mds.27300
Credit: Louisiana State University

Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, has found a promising new treatment for allergic contact dermatitis that offers an alternative to corticosteroids and their possible side effects. The research is published this month in Dermatology and Therapy.

Working in an experimental model of allergic contact dermatitis, the research team developed a mixture of antioxidants and moisturizers, combined with potent free radical scavengers and inhibitors, which suppressed an inflammatory response to the irritant. The cream relieved itch, reduced swelling and protected peripheral nerves in the affected area.

Allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) is caused by exposure to an allergen in sensitive people. Sensitizing allergens include nickel and gold, perfumes, soaps or organic compounds. Although removal of the allergen reduces symptoms, recovery can take weeks. The authors also note that allergic contact dermatitis represents 5-10% of doctor visits.

One of the current primary treatments for severe allergic contact dermatitis is the use of corticosteroids. Long-term use of corticosteroids can result in skin atrophy, spider veins, loss of skin color or corticosteroid acne. They can disrupt the skin's barrier and lead to adrenal suppression, altered growth, hypertension, hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and cataracts, and they may increase the risk for certain cancers.

The experimental cream, on the other hand, successfully treated allergic contact dermatitis in mice, without the side effects of corticosteroids. The new cream works in a different way by preventing or stopping the process that initiates inflammation.

Credit: Louisiana State University

This project is part of a long collaboration that Dr. Bazan developed with Dr. Ricardo Palacios-Pelaez from Spain on inflammation, immunity and neurodegenerative diseases.

"Now with the new cream, we targeted some of those mechanisms in a relatively less complex condition in the skin, always with translational-enabling goals," said Bazan.

Other members of the research team included Drs. William Gordon, Surjyadipta Bhattacharjee and Bokkyoo Jun at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence, as well as Drs. Virginia Garcia Lopez, David Rodriguez Gil, Javier Alcover Diaz, Fernando Pineda de la Losa, Ricardo Palacios Pelaez, Concha Tiana Ferrer and Gabriela Silvina Bacchini from Madrid, Spain; along with Helene Varoqui at Ochsner.

"While our results are very promising, additional studies are needed to determine theideal duration of treatment and the most efficacious concentrations of the active componentsin the test formulations that will best alleviate ACD," Bazan concluded.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, as well as LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence.

This work is part of Bazan's innovative research searching for novel fundamental principles of tissue/organ injury involving inflammation, immunology, genetics and epigenetics. Most of his efforts are focused on responses to damage to the brain and retina and include Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, pain, Macular degeneration and traumatic brain injury, but as these findings demonstrate, fundamental discoveries have broad application.

Explore further Scratching the surface: why skin allergies make us itch

More information: William C. Gordon et al, A Nonsteroidal Novel Formulation Targeting Inflammatory and Pruritus-Related Mediators Modulates Experimental Allergic Contact Dermatitis, Dermatology and Therapy (2018). William C. Gordon et al, A Nonsteroidal Novel Formulation Targeting Inflammatory and Pruritus-Related Mediators Modulates Experimental Allergic Contact Dermatitis,(2018). DOI: 10.1007/s13555-018-0223-8
The potential of a method of replacing female genital mutilation as an initiation into womanhood with culturally sensitive alternatives is to be explored.

The University of Leicester is hosting a workshop on 'Alternative Rites of Passage: Their role in anti-FGM work in Africa' on 9 March. Organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies, the workshop coincides with the University's week-long celebration of International Women's Day.

Alternative rites of passage, or ARP, is touted by NGOs and international donors as an alternative to female initiation into womanhood but without female genital mutilation/cutting. In these ceremonies and the instruction that usually precedes them, girls' human rights (mainly to life, health, education, protection) and cultural rights (manifested in teachings and ritual elements that aim to mimic the cultural traditions of the community concerned) are intertwined in one social space. ARP is one element of longer-term strategies that can include community education and sensitisation, awareness-raising, the empowerment of girls and women, and law enforcement.

Alternative rites of passage are already combatting FGM in some parts of Kenya. However, there is currently very little understanding of a number of aspects of delivery, or the longer term implications. For example, do ARPs just delay FGM/FGC until later in someone's lives? How do those who previously made money from carrying out FGM/FGC (often female elders) now supplement their income?

The workshop will bring representatives from Egerton and Kenyatta Universities, and from AMREF, a large iNGO working on FGM in Kenya to consider some of these questions. The workshop aims to:

Increase awareness of ARP as a response to FGM/FGC in communities both in the UK and in Kenya

Increase the evidence about ARP and successful, sustainable delivery

Lay the foundations for a co-created evidence base to inform national and international policy and practice

Organiser Dr. Diane Levine, Institute Manager and Fellow in the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies, said: "Alternative rites of passage are a currently underexplored area. We want to build future collaboration around this topic, using Leicester's equitable, respectful approach to global partnership building. As a result of the research we co-produce, women and girls will be safer to lead happier, healthier lives.

"Leicester and Kenyatta are both HeforShe Impact Champion universities, and as part of that role we are working with our global partners to develop understanding of gender, society and justice through a range of projects."

Dr. Lisa Smith, Director of the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies, said: "The Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies provides a range of opportunities to bring together people from across disciplines and practice to address complex societal issues such as these that could not be solved by a single discipline alone. FGM/FGC is an excellent example of the kind of global challenge that requires collaboration across the social and life sciences and humanities working in partnership with NGOs."

Explore further Greater efforts are needed to eliminate female genital mutilation
Bitcoin has strayed from its original plan of being a peer-to-peer digital cash, according to Bankymoon CEO and Centbee founder Lorien Gamaroff.

Gamaroff was speaking on the Matt Brown Show, broadcast from an event in Johannesburg.

The topic of the show was Bitcoin and its forks, such as Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.

YouTube investor Adam Meister and derivatives trader Tone Vays also spoke at the event.

Gamaroff stated that Bitcoins reliance on second-layer solutions for scaling has detracted from its original purpose, and that Bitcoin Cash has the potential to overtake it thanks to its better design.

Bitcoin as cash

The narrative of Bitcoin enthusiasts has changed to investment, due to its increase in value and unusability as a currency, said Gamaroff.

The people who start using cryptocurrencies as a payment method will choose those that are cheap, easy, and convenient, he said.

Gamaroff said using a cryptocurrency is what makes it valuable, and investing in Bitcoin now is equivalent to betting that its will implement successful scaling solutions and become usable on a large scale.

Many Bitcoin backers have placed their hopes on the Lightning Network second-layer solution to solve the scaling problem, but Gamaroff said this defeats the original purpose of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Core needs to tear up the whitepaper, said Gamaroff.

With Lightning, we will bring the reliance on a trusted third-party back into the system and lose the concept of a peer-to-peer digital cash.

He added that Bitcoins mistake is wanting maximum decentralisation and avoiding block size increases to allow this.

You dont need maximum decentralisation, you need sufficient decentralisation.

When cryptocurrency is used as payment for everyday purchases, merchants and businesses will be the ones running a node, as they will have the biggest interest in verifying transactions, he said.

Gamaroff then backed Bitcoin Cash as a potential solution to cryptocurrency payments, stating that it is easier and cheaper to use than Bitcoin.

Heated debate

Adam Meister and Tone Vays disagreed with this evaluation of Bitcoin, and said Bitcoin Cash was just another fork which will not last.

Meister and Vays refer to the Bitcoin Cash fork as BCash, removing its link, in name at least, to Bitcoin.

They see Bitcoin as an investment vehicle and censorship-resistant value transfer system, and lauded its potential as a store of value.

Bitcoin is a savings account and forks are crypto dividends, said Meister.

He said that each fork of the Bitcoin blockchain will be less and less effective as an investment vehicle, until they all eventually lose to Bitcoin itself.

BCash is nowhere near as decentralised as Bitcoin. I am surprised it has lasted this long, said Meister.

Meister also shared his distaste of initial coin offerings, saying that most of them are total scams and he avoids them.

Investment

Vays then analysed Bitcoin from an investment perspective, saying it was at a critical point and could either skyrocket or plummet.

Bitcoin is at a critical juncture, which could take us back up to new highs or down to new lows, he said.

Vays refers to all other cryptocurrencies as altcoins, and stated that they were not worth purchasing as a long-term investment.

I dont think there is any other asset in the cryptocurrency market which is investment-worthy, said Vays.

All these altcoins and all these ICOs are penny stocks.

When asked about the potential of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Bitcoins biggest competitor, Vays said the technology was useless.

Ethereum is a completely useless technology. Ethereums only use case is to create other versions of Ethereum, on Ethereum.

The full broadcast of the Matt Brown Show is posted below.



Now read: Twitter implementing measures to prevent crypto scams
Dominik Schiener would have had 500,000 reasons to turn his back on cryptocurrencies. That is the amount of euros the young man from Berlin lost in 2013/2014 in an attempt to set up a trading platform for digital money.

But he remained true to the topic and helped to established IOTA in 2015. Today, that is the worlds eleventh largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of around $5 billion.

Following the involvement of some German companies such as Volkswagen AG, the next growth phase for IOTA is now starting, the 22-year-old said in an interview with Bloomberg. In addition to the Berlin base, offices are being set up in Toronto, Tokyo, Oslo and Taiwan. Many still perceive IOTA as a German cryptocurrency, and we want to change that, he said.

The IOTA Foundation, which is behind the currency and steers the development of the underlying technology, has the money to do so. Slightly more than 300 million euros are in the treasury, in the form of IOTA tokens, according to Schiener, who heads the foundation. They were donated by users.

Approximately 50 people work for the foundation in Berlin, including eight mathematicians They all receive their wages not in euros, but in IOTA tokens.

Schiener has been living in Berlin since the summer 2016, not without a reason. Here, we have the right ecosystem for cryptocurrencies, he said. From the German capital, he was also able to make contact with many companies which are now involved in the development of IOTA and its technology  for example, when it comes to automatic micro-payment transactions between machines.

Johann Jungwirth, Chief Digital Officer of Volkswagen Group, has recently been added to the supervisory board of the IOTA Foundation. He oversees the annual roadmap of the foundation, a spokesman for the car maker confirmed. Jungwirth is convinced of IOTA, the technology and its relevance for various applications in the context of mobility.

RBVC, the venture capital firm of Bosch Group, also works with IOTA and has invested money. Bosch sees several promising approaches in the IOTA architecture, especially with regard to the internet of things, according to Hongquan Jiang, Investment Partner at RBVC.

Neither Volkswagen nor Bosch wanted to comment on specific projects with IOTA.

At Deutsche Bank Wealth Management, crypto technologies are considered to be generally interesting. Crypto currencies make transactions even easier and cheaper, Markus Mueller, global head of Chief Investment Office for high net worth individuals, said. From his point of view, there is the potential to revolutionize some industries from the ground up.

Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies appear to be a marginal topic for most companies at the moment. With regard to cryptocurrencies, we see no need for consulting at larger companies, Jochen Schwabe, partner at Schwabe, Ley & Greiner in Vienna, said. Some customers are testing Bitcoin transactions, but only to be prepared in case of emergency  like blackmail.

Schiener himself firmly believes in his cryptocurrency and keeps his assets in IOTA tokens, he said. I did not want to be one of those who sell at a high and get rich quick, he added.

He blames the failure of his first crypto company, which he had founded at the age of 17 years in Switzerland, on the environment at the time. Digital currencies and the blockchain were not relevant enough yet, Schiener said. Many associated it with drug deals and other dark businesses, and no bank wanted to give me an account for the company.

After his entrepreneurial adventure in Switzerland, he returned to his native South Tyrol at the age of 18 and moved in with his parents. He did his high school diploma. Although I lost all my money, I was still convinced of crypto currencies, Schiener said.

This conviction eventually led to IOTA in early 2015. Together with David Snsteb, Sergey Ivancheglo and Serguei Popov, he launched the digital currency. But he also knew that South Tyrol was not the ideal location to advance such an ambitious project. Hence the move to Berlin.

At the German capital he does not only appreciate the eco-system for cryptocurrencies and the many contacts to companies. Schiener: In addition, Berlin is a great city to live in. Unlike in Switzerland, buying a beer in a pub does not make you poor.

Original Story: 22-jahriger Berliner hinter 5-Mrd-$-Kryptowahrung erst am Anfang

Now read: The top 10 cryptocurrencies explained
The National Assembly has approved legislation that aims to allow the FPB to regulate the distribution of online content in South Africa.

Known as the Internet Censorship Bill, the Film and Publications Amendment Bill includes provisions to give the FPB powers to have online content blocked in South Africa.

This includes user-generated content, such as posts published to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services.

According to reports, the National Assembly vote was 189 in favour, 35 against, and no abstentions.

Having gone through the National Assembly, the Bill must now be debated and approved in the National Council of Provinces before it can be sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa to be signed into law.

According to the government, the aim is to protect children from sexually-explicit material, and curb hate speech and revenge porn.

Opposition parties and detractors of the Bill have warned that it is unenforceable, however, and in many cases it is unconstitutional.
University of the Free State students are protesting over a revised tariff plan for Internet access, TimesLive reported.

The university has reportedly reduced the monthly Internet allowance for students from 5.5GB to 800MB.

The Student Representative Council previously spoke out against the revised Internet tariffs and rejected them as exploitation.

The SRC demanded that the university change the new data allocations and how much students are charged for Internet access.

We cannot accept the new tariffs on multiple reasons a fundamental one being that ours as the SRC is ensuring that the university provides unlimited access to Internet for our students in line with standard practice with other institutions of higher learning, said the SRC.

Videos of the protest have been published on Twitter.

UFS Students have launched a campus protest!! Students are protesting against the universitys decision to reduce the Internet allowance from 5.5GB to 800MB. The SRC has asked all students to gather at the Albert Wessel at 12PM for the Rectors address#UFS800MB#UFSAddress pic.twitter.com/dTbcNuFtX4  Tshiamo Malatji (@Tshiatji) March 8, 2018

Now read: How many South Africans were online in February
Women protest in Kabul in defense of their rights

Russia elections over

Those apprehended outside jewelry center in Yerevan are tourists from Iran, not Turks or Azerbaijanis

Frances Macron cancels Swiss counterparts visit

Manny Pacquiao to run for Philippine president

Yerkir.am: 2 Turks or Azerbaijanis apprehended outside jewelry center in Yerevan

Details of Iran nuclear physicists assassination by Israel intelligence are disclosed

France MFA announces crisis in US relations

UK lawmakers accuse Johnson of more casual approach to national security

Goris city deputy mayor: Azerbaijan military hit Armenian young man with handheld transceiver antenna

Khatibzadeh: Iran hopes Iranian truckers detained by Azeris in Armenia's Syunik will be released immediately

Turkeys Erdogan: Georgia premier conveyed Armenia PMs proposal to hold meeting

Australia plans to soon buy or lease submarines from US or UK

Protest being staged outside Armenia government building

Colorado killer sentenced to 1,282 years, in addition to life in prison

Armenia village mayor: Those who ended up in Azerbaijan-controlled territory are 20-, 21-year-old boys

Kazakhstan, Belarus to arm CSTO

Cement plant opens in Artsakh

Goris deputy mayor on probability of Armenia residents ending up in Azerbaijan: 4 people, they disappeared by car

Armenia National Security Service: 2 residents end up in Azerbaijan-controlled territory

Islamic State claims responsibility for Syria natural gas pipeline attack

507 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Final day of elections in progress in Russia

Birds dying en masse in New York

Armenia parliament to hold hearings on September 22

Drone mistakenly drops package of drugs into US schoolyard

Researchers uncover risk of mutated coronavirus

Several hundred people go on protest action at US Congress

France: One person dies in a fight with participation of 150 bikers

Nuclear Chief of Iran does not plan to negotiate nuclear transaction in Vienna

US Capitol is preparing for rally of Trump supporters

21 people detained in Yerevan protests

Armenia Parliament Speaker on yesterday's incident with children of Artsakh on Goris-Kapan road

8 new cases of COVID-19 reported in Artsakh

Karabakh President receives Deputy Director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund

Presidents of Tajikistan and Iran sign Memorandum of Cooperation

Situation at Charles Aznavour Square in Yerevan is tense, police are apprehending demonstrators

Yerevan citizens hold demonstration demanding cancelation of Independence Day event

Veterans of 44-day Karabakh war awarded

Erdogan to visit discuss situation in Idlib with Putin during visit to Russia

Opposition "Armenia" faction says authorities are leading session devoted to Syunik situation to failure

Explosion in Afghanistan's Jalalabad leaves at least 3 dead

Russia citizen breaks window of Yerevan bank and enters, police disarm him (PHOTOS)

Armenia police chief signs orders

Displaced residents of Karabakh's Shushi discuss Artsakh status and other issues during consultation

1,011 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Karabakh Parliament Speaker receives acting Rector of Yerevan State University

US Embassy in Armenia: Former Ambassador John Ordway is in Yerevan

Mined car explodes in Kabul

Karabakh President receives acting Rector of Yerevan State University

The Taliban draft new Constitution of Afghanistan

Thousands of Haitians are amassed near US borders

Azeri policeman threatens Armenian children on Goris-Kapan road - "There is no more Nagorno-Karabakh"

Turkey expects construction of first reactor of Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant to end in May 2023

Armenia PM's assistant and daughter of deceased serviceman get into dispute

Taliban forcing young Afghans to go to war

Karabakh National Security Service says news about Azerbaijanis working with Iranian passports is false

Armenia high-tech industry minister receives UK Ambassador

Opposition "Armenia" alliance cancels Robert Kocharyan's visit to Moscow due to court decision

Relatives of deceased Armenian soldiers demand that Independence Day event be canceled

Assistant to Armenia PM: There is no Turkish equipment at Republic Square

Azerbaijanis stop microbus transporting children of Artsakh, very obscenely tell them to get off

Digest: Karabakh soldier injured near border, Azerbaijanis stop car carrying bread to Armenia soldiers

Armenia PM's assistant to relatives of fallen soldiers: 30th anniversary of Independence Day event must be held

Deceased Armenian officer's daughter: Pashinyan is causing relatives of the fallen servicemen pain again

Armenia Freedom of Information Center hosts discussion on transparency of real owners

Parent of deceased Armenian soldier: There won't be a vivid fireworks display

Karabakh emergency situations service: Searches for remains of Armenian servicemen fruitless for 2 days

Armenian cross-stone consecrated in Mariupol

Armenia President at Summit of Minds: War was not only against Azerbaijan

Armenia official: No company with dominant position in countrys liquefied gas market

Kremlin assesses need for summit of "five" of UN Security Council

Fallen soldiers families protesting at Republic Square in Yerevan

Iran President: Countries of region need to create conditions for Afghanistan's development

Armenia, France FMs discuss Karabakh conflict

US Department of State approves defense treaty with Saudi Arabia

Putin to vote in Russian State Duma elections online

Armenia air defense trainings kick off

Dollar still going down in Armenia

Russia defense minister becomes a grandfather

Putin: Russia supports process of Iran's accession to Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Russian peacekeepers ensure safety during construction of road leading to mobile phone tower in Karabakh

Ombudsman briefs Baroness Caroline Cox on Azerbaijan violations against Armenia border residents

Armenia Deputy PM: I hope natural gas price stays the same

Pashinyan: Armenia interested in effective restraint of threat of terrorism in CSTO, SCO regions

Prosperous Armenia Party leader on upcoming local self-government elections

Artsakh MOD: Azerbaijan violated ceasefire, Defense Army soldier wounded

Russia company holding arms supply negotiations with Armenia

Azerbaijan nominates occupied Armenian Shushi for cultural capital of Turkic world

Armenia State Committee of Science has new General Secretary

Deputy PM: Armenia is considering possibility of importing natural gas from other countries, but...

Eurasian Economic Union minister: Armenia sees 19% growth of exports to EEU countries, 12% growth of trade

Armenia deputy PM is for starting border demarcation, delimitation with Azerbaijan

Azerbaijanis stop car carrying bread to Armenia soldiers

Armenia opposition MP: Border demarcation occurs when countries have no problems with each other

Armenia legislature majority faction: Yerevan, Baku must finally begin border delimitation, demarcation phase

Opposition Armenia Faction MP: Lawsuit filed with UN against Azerbaijan was correct, logical

Armenia deputy premier: Solution for unblocking regional communications more visible in terms of railways

GeoProMining announces completion of 2nd stage of Agarak Copper-Molybdenum Combine modernization project

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YEREVAN.  The government is attempting to keep as classified as possible the total amount allocated from the state budget for Prime Minister Karen Karapetyans visits to Switzerland and Kazakhstan, according to Zhoghovurd (People) newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA).

In response to our written inquiry, the government has informed that 6.7mn drams were allocated from the funds envisioned for the official foreign business trips of the budget for the expenses of members representing the government staff of the RA delegation in Switzerland.

And 1.1mn drams were spent from the budget to participate in the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union] Intergovernmental Council meeting in the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan.

[But] the government does not inform about the expenses of the PM himself, arguing that () protocol, living, [and] transportation service expenses are included in the plan of purchases containing state secrets and are not subject to making public, wrote Zhoghovurd.
Home | Latest Addition | Negotiating with terrorist a mistake Nigeria cannot afford to keep making  Reno

I have just watched a video by Shuaibu Moni, a Boko Haram commander who was reported by the media to have been freed in exchange for some 82 kidnapped Chibok girls in a deal allegedly brokered by the Swedish government.

The fact that a Boko Haram commander released by the Buhari government can threaten Nigeria proves that you should not negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms to them. By doing so, you become the major financier of terrorism knowingly or unknowingly!

In this video, Mr. Moni threatened Nigeria and vowed to show the country that Boko Haram is still fully in control of Sambisa Forest, contrary to claims made by the military and President Muhammadu Buhari.

This latest video proves the futility of negotiating with terrorists. Terrorists cannot be trusted and any negotiation or ransom payments will only come back to haunt you as we have seen in Mr. Monis latest video.

Under the Buhari administration, nearly a thousand so called repentant Boko Haram members have been freed. How many of them were truly repentant?

How does a government justify releasing hardened criminals who by the principle of Taqiyya, are permitted by their extremist interpretation of their religion, to deceive their enemies in order to undermine them?

Has the Buhari government offered the same liberty to repentant IPOB members, Shiites and other minority/religious activists?

What is so special to the Buhari administration about Boko Haram that this government keeps on releasing members of one of the most deadly terrorists in the world?

I hereby call on the Buhari administration to put a stop to this unusual practice of releasing deadly terrorists. I also call on the government to halt any payments to Boko Haram or any other terrorist group if they have been making such payments.

Who knows whether it was moneys paid as ransom to Boko Haram or individuals freed by the government that were used to facilitate the kidnap of the Dapchi Girls and the recent killings of United Nations staff in Rann.

Again I urge the Federal Government not to unwittingly become a lifeline to Boko Haram.

Reno Omokri

Number One Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years, Chibok, 2015 and the Conspiracies.

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Home | Latest Addition | Group urges Odumakin to support Police mop up of Illegal firearms, ammunition

A group, Civil Societies on Police Reform, has called on the Secretary of the Afenifere, Dr. Yinka Odumakin, to join the Inspector General of Police in bringing about relative peace in Nigeria rather than condemning the mopping up of illegal firearms and ammunition.

In a press release on Wednesday in Makurdi, Benue State, the Publicity Secretary of the group, Bright Ede, said for Odumakin to make reference to the 2015 elections in his criticism shows his immaturity on topical National issues.

Police

Accroding to him, Odumakin should have gone to court to challenge the results of the 2015 Kano State election and the death of Kano Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Alhaji Mukaila Abdullahi rather than lamenting.

He said further that, On the appointment of IGP Ibrahim K. Idris as the Inspector General of Police, President Muhammadu Buhari used the power conferred on him by the 1999 Constitution to make that timely appointment in July 2016 and IGP Idriss appointment was confirmed by the Council of State who are authorized by Law to do so.

On the World Internal Security and Police Index International report released late last year for the year 2016, the Nigeria Police has responded well on that and we advise Odumakin to call his private radio station in Ibadan to get him a copy of Police apt response to the report, if he is ignorant of the response.

Odumakin, in his usual trivial ways, went as low as saying IGP Idris denied his words of saying what happened in Benue State is communal feud. For the record, IGP Idris never denied that but rather for peace to reign, he only apologized to those who disagree with the statement while in real time, what happened in Benue State is purely communal clash between the community and the Fulani herdsmen who feel aggrieved that their cows were stolen and slaughtered unjustly, Ede said.

He further reiterated that just as they commended the Force PRO, CSP Moshood Jimoh on his statement on Channels TV, saying we still maintain our unflinching support to him for that statement. The Force PRO is still keeping his job because he is the best on it and remained loyal to his Boss.

Odumakin should be educated enough to know that the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim K-Idris, at the Northern States Security Summit held in Kaduna on the 28th of February, 2018 only SUGGESTED the State Governors to establish ranches for herders in their States.

Quoting the IGP, he said: it is my humble SUGGESTION that to reduce the incidence of clashes between Farmers and Herders in Nigeria, State Governments should ENDEAVOR to establish grazing ranches in their various states before enacting laws to prohibit open rearing and grazing.

It is when grazing ranches are established that herders can be arrested and punished for rearing and grazing on the open places.

For the ignorance of Odumakin, the advertorials placed in some national newspapers on February 22, 2018 is pointing to those in possession of illegal firearms and ammunition which includes herdsmen, vigilantes, criminals e.t.c.

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Home | News | Business | What are Spectranet Nigeria Internet plans and prices in 2018?

Internet connection in Nigeria has really improved over the years thanks to the Internet providing companies like Spectranet. Are you an existing Spectranet customer or an intending subscriber? This post contains the latest update on Spectranet data plans in 2018 for you.

Spectranet in one of the leading Internet service providers in Nigeria. It is the foremost Internet service provider to provide the 4G LTE Internet service to users in Nigeria. Over the years, they have provided Nigerians with world-class experience providing affordable, fast, and reliable broadband Internet services to home and offices.

Their data plans are designed to suit your pocket regardless of who you are (student or working class) and your financial status giving you the best value for your money. Currently, Spectranet is available across Abuja, Lagos, Ibadan, and Port Harcourt. Below are the Spectranet data plans and prices in Nigeria.

Spectranet data plans and prices

READ ALSO: How to unlock Spectranet modem

Unified Value 4GB

This is the cheapest of all Spectranet plans. The cost of this data plan is 3,000 Naira for 4GB of Internet data. No additional bonuses. Internet access for a month (24hours/7days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period.

Unified Value 7GB

This Spectranet data plan costs 5,000 Naira for 7GB of data volume with no additional bonuses. Internet access also for a month (24hours/7days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period.

Unified Value 15GB

The cost of this data plan is 7,000 Naira for 15GB of data volume with no additional bonuses. Internet access for a month (24 hours/7 days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period.

Unified Nite Value 20GB

The cost of this data plan is 7,500 Naira for 20GB of data volume with no additional bonuses. This Spectranet subscription plan gives you Internet access from 7 am to 7 pm for a month from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. But you will enjoy 24 hours Internet access during the weekends and on public holidays.

Unified Value 25GB

The cost of this data plan is 10,000 Naira for 25GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24hours/7days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am.

Unified Nite Value 40GB

The cost of this data plan is 11,500 Naira for 40GB of data volume with no additional bonuses. This is night plan which gives you Internet access from 1 am to 7 am for a month from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. But you will also enjoy 24 hours of Internet access during the weekends and on public holidays.

Unified Value 40GB

The cost of this data plan is 12,500 Naira for 40GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24 hours/7 days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am.

Unified Stay Connected 50GB

The cost of this data plan is 13,000 Naira for 50GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24 hours/7 days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am. Unified Stay Connected is available only to regular Spectranet users from Abuja. You will still be connected to the Internet after consuming the monthly volume data of 50GB. But there are specific terms that apply.

Unified Value 55GB

The cost of this data plan is 20,000 Naira for 55GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24 hours/7 days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am

Unified Value 110GB

The cost of this data plan is 40,000 Naira for 110GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24 hours/7 days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am.

Unified Value 200GB

The cost of this data plan is 70,000 Naira for 200GB of data volume. Internet access for a month (24hours/7days) from the day of subscription except exhausted before the end of the validity period. You will also enjoy free unlimited night browsing from 1 am to 7 am.

Unlimited Gold Plan

The cost of this data plan is 18,000 Naira for unlimited data volume for a month. Your Internet speed can be limited to 8Mbps by Spectranet. Also, Spectranet determines the unlimited burstable speed to all users between 0-100GB and they reduce the speed to 512 Kbps after 100GB is utilized. This simply means the Internet connection speed will not be as top speed as the other limited data plans.

If you are residing in any of the four locations mentioned above, you can subscribe to any of the listed Spectranet data plans for an awesome Internet experience.

READ ALSO: Internet service providers in Nigeria and their charges

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Source: Naija.ng
Home | News | General | Just In: Charles Okah sentenced to life imprisonment over 2010 Independence Day bombing

- An Abuja Federal High Court has sentenced Charles Okah to life imprisonment for his role in the 2010 Independence Day bombing in Abuja

- He was sentenced alongside his co-accused, Obi Nwabueze

- A dozen people were killed at the Eagles Square, in the bombing which took place during the GEJ regime

Charles Okah, the alleged mastermind of the 2010 Independence Day bombing in Abuja, has been sentenced to life imprisonment, Premium Times reports.

The sentence was reportedly handed out on Wednesday evening, March 7, by the Federal High Court in Abuja.

READ ALSO: 2018 UTME results will not be released immediately - JAMB

NAIJ.com gathers that Charles, the younger brother of Henry Okah, was sentenced alongside Obi Nwabueze, his co-accused for the crime.

Henry Okah had also been sentenced for a similar crime in South-Africa, where he resided.

The 2010 Independence Day bombing in Abuja led to the deaths of a dozen people at the Eagles Square.

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com previously reported that Charles Okah caused a stare in court as he attempted to take his life.

The mild drama occurred at the Federal High Court in Abuja, when the accused sought the permission of the trial judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, to speak on his trial.

He informed the judge that he had been incarcerated for a long time, and that he had a family to cater for; adding that his children would grow up without feeling the warmth of their father.

After he ended his emotional statement after speaking for about five minutes, Okah reached for a chair in the court and quickly moved towards a window. However, he was overpowered by lawyers and other litigants who prevented him from breaking the louvers.

What is the problem with Nigeria? - on NAIJ.com Street Gist:

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Source: Naija.ng

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Home | News | General | Election dates, sequence and cycle

By Josef Omorotionmwan

THIS large Debating Society called Nigeria has become one place where every policy initiative is viewed with suspicion. During the build-up to the 2015 general elections, the presidential election was fast-tracked to the number one position but not without the type of acrimony usually associated with World Wars. The opposition parties quickly saw in the new arrangement, a grand design to produce a band-wagon effect for the majority party.

Our contribution to that debate was titled Climbing a tree from the top, in apparent reference to the perceived anomaly in putting the election to the highest office in the land before the lower ones. We, however, concluded that hard-work remains the only antidote to harvesting the benefits of the band-wagon. After all, to the victor belongs the spoils of office.

Saraki

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, recently issued an election time-table for the 2019 contests. This conforms to the sequence for the 2015 elections. But the National Assembly, NASS, in a recent amendment to the Electoral Act, has reportedly re-ordered the sequence of the elections  placing the NASS elections first and that of the President last.

A storm of indignation has since burst forth, with a majority of those who were against the arrangement in 2015 now favouring it; and insisting that NASSs re-ordering is intended to benefit the NASS members at the detriment of President Muhammadu Buhari and his party.

Many argue vehemently that the action of the NASS is a total usurpation of the powers of INEC to conduct elections as provided for in our Constitution.

Clearly, the 249-page document called the Nigerian Constitution is already too voluminous for a countrys Constitution. A constitution is a skeleton that only sets out the major thrusts, in broad outlines, the ways of conducting the affairs of the nation, leaving it to Acts of the NASS, to supply the flesh for the skeleton. It would be unimaginable, the size and the number of volumes that we would have were we to include the minute details in the Constitution. That, for instance, explains why, in its original form, the American Constitution is less than 10 pages; and there are countries, like Britain, that do not have a written Constitution.

Admittedly, the Nigerian Constitution vests in INEC, the powers to conduct elections in Nigeria. In Section 158(1), the Constitution goes further to equip INEC with a degree of independence in some specific areas: In exercising its powers to make appointments or to exercise disciplinary control over persons, the Independent National Electoral Commission shall not be subject to the direction and control of any other authority or person.

At no time did the doctrine of separation of powers as enshrined in the Constitution envisage absolute independence for any branch or agency of government. Rather, the Constitution only strives to create a situation of healthy inter-dependence among the federating elements.

There are limits to independence. The fine details of how INEC discharges its functions cannot be found on the pages of the Constitution but in some other pieces of legislation by the NASS of which the Electoral Act and its subsequent amendments form the arrow-head.

It is right to say that the functions of INEC as granted by the Constitution are messengerial. In Section 4(1) of the Constitution, the NASS is charged with the responsibility for making laws for the peace, order and good governance of the country. To become law, bills passed by the National Assembly must be assented to by the President, except on those rare occasions where the presidential veto are over-ridden by the NASS.

INEC does not make laws but it could be empowered by the NASS to make some subsidiary rules and regulations for the smooth discharge of its functions. A delegated authority cannot be higher than the delegating Authority. Any INEC rule or regulation that conflicts with INEC law automatically drops dead.

The issues of Nigerias general elections stand clearly on a tripod  dates of elections; sequence of elections; and election cycles. This categorisation has become necessary to enable us understand where the INEC and NASS may have acted ultra vires their powers.

As currently situated, the determination of the dates of the immediate elections cannot be a matter requiring legislative enactment. It is a mere administrative issue that should be left with INEC.

Carefully considered, though, the sequence of elections bears some traits of legislative enactment; and rises above what one can easily classify as merely administrative, particularly against the back-drop that it sometimes swims in the murky waters of political argumentation. Essentially, therefore, the issue of election sequence ordering falls squarely in the legislative domain.

Penultimate Wednesday, the Mamood Yakubu-led INEC strayed off the path of law when it decreed an Election Cycle on the nation, far beyond the first half of this century. Perhaps, unwittingly, INEC threw caution to the winds by not realising that when it comes to legislating for the present and future INEC regimes, the NASS is the sole authority.

The opinion of the absolutists who claim that the NASS is an interloper when it comes to re-ordering the sequence of elections and establishing an Election Cycle takes some uncomfortable distance from legal realities and it simply crumbles.

Granted a free reign, the strict constructionists would insist that INECs independence on issues of election supersedes everything else, including the need for NASS to enact any law for INEC, such as the Electoral Act; as well as even the need for INEC to approach the courts!

The call on INEC to go to court is simply asking INEC to jump the gun. Since when did it become the vogue for the Federal Government or any of its agencies to go to court to stop the enactment of a law? We have heard of mounting pressure (like the 50 million-man match on Abuja) to get the NASS to have a re-think; and where that fails, shouldnt they begin to lay ambush at the presidency to get the President to veto the undesired measure? The courts should come as a last resort.

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Home | News | General | 2018 UTME: ATSO debunks Oloyedes claims on registration, Association

As examination begins tomorrow

Says, no malpractice without JAMB officials connivance

Laments 300,000 applicants registration denial

By Dayo Adesulu

AS the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, commences the conduct of 2018 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examinations, UTME, tomorrow, the Association of Tutorial School Operators, ATSO, in Nigeria has faulted claims by the JAMB Registrar, Professor Isaq Oloyede on candidates registration and the Association.

It lamented that while Oloyede claims to be assisting the candidates, he has indirectly denied over 300,000 applicants the chance of registering in the ongoing UTME examinations.

Speaking exlusively with Vanguard Learning, the President, Association of Tutorial School Operators, Comrade Sodunke Oludotun specifically faulted Professor Oloyedes claims in his interview with the Sunday Punch.

Oloyede

He said: Ordinarily, this rebuttal wouldnt have been necessary because we at the Association of Tutorial School Operators, ATSO, wouldnt want to join issues with JAMB registrar, but we realized that calculated and uncontroverted falsehoods and misrepresentations have a way of assuming a life of their own and we also realised that it is easier for Nigerian policymakers, especially those who have betrayed the mandate reposed in them, to splash mud on the integrity of others in order to hide the failure of their policies or to gain undue advantage.

They prefer to leave the message and attack the messenger. We will respond to each falsehood that emanated from the registrar in the interview he granted to the Punch Newspaper as follows:

JAMB Registrar: This year, we allowed free generation of profile codes

This is a blatant barefaced falsehood. Every candidate that generated profile code did so via SMS and had the sum of N50 deducted from his or her credit balance. It is not a secret that telecommunication companies charge N4 per SMS. I guess the N46 balance per SMS unaccounted for is so inconsequential to the JAMB registrar but of great value to the candidates and their poor parents.

According to JAMB, about 1.9 million candidates successfully generated profile code for the 2018 UTME. Based on this statistics, it simply means JAMB raked in more than N87.4 million from just profile code generation. One then wonders why the registrar was chest-thumping that the profile code generation was free. Was he trying to play to the gallery or hoodwink unsuspecting Nigerians? If not, can he kindly state publicly what the charges were for?

JAMB Registrar: Now we have 1,973,081 who have generated codes which is higher than last years. The number of those who actually paid is 1,662,778 who are those who bought the PIN for UTME

What would then account for the 300,000 difference between those who generated profile codes and those who actually paid for PIN? Are we supposed to assume that those who generated profile codes simply lost interest in the exam and refuse to proceed to registration stage? This assertion by the registrar simply corroborates our earlier stand that a whopping 300,000 applicants were denied the opportunity of registering for this years UTME when JAMB suddenly shut down the registration portal.

ATSO is the closest body to the applicants and we know for a fact that most of the applicants were still engrossed in one admission process or the other well into the month of February. When all hope of being admitted was dashed, they rushed to register, only for the door to be violently slammed in their face and their hopes and aspirations dashed the second time.

JAMB Registrar: This year, we said let us have two months for the registration. But for the first one month this year, we registered less than five per cent. So, all 95 per cent took place in the last one month, so when it was two or three days to the end, there was pressure on us and we extended

If JAMB and its registrar are research-oriented, they would have made attempts to find out why only a meager five per cent of candidates registered in the first month while 95 per cent preferred to rush to register in the last couple of days. If JAMB and its registrar were not totally disconnected from the grassroots, they would have realised that majority of candidates who wrote the 2017 UTME and who constituted the bulk of applicants for the UTME 2018 wouldnt have had time to register for another exam when they were still battling to secure admission in the 2017 process.

It only dawned on them that they wouldnt be admitted when most of the institutions matriculated the few candidates they admitted. It is in the public domain that most of the tertiary institutions conducted their admission far beyond JAMB deadline of January 25.

Panic and confusion

As we have stated earlier, they rushed down in panic and confusion to the few and far CBT centers. It was easy to generate codes but before they could register, the portal was shut. But of course, the registrar might not be aware of this fact, he is elitist, he only knows what is going down in the highbrow Abuja metropolis. If he got regular feedback from his handpicked CBT centers, he would have been aware that hundreds of applicants spent several days at the CBT centers from 7am to 6pm before some of them could be lucky enough to get registered, and yet, most couldnt register within the window.

JAMB Registrar: Some fraudsters under the Association of Tutorial Classes extort money from parents looking for original questions and claiming they would assist the candidates. But this year, because they failed and failed woefully in their illicit practices, they are looking for rooms for those candidates they promised manipulations to disrupt our activities

We are disappointed that a government official of the pedigree of our JAMB registrar, who had served in the highest office in a reputable tertiary institution (UNILORIN) and who currently serves in the foremost admission board in Nigeria could resort to rumours, half-truths and conjectures. If he had concrete evidence that some people engage in examination malpractice, what stops him from handing the evidence at his disposal to the security agencies so that those saboteurs can be brought to book? Of particular interest is this statement credited to the registrar But this year, because they failed and failed woefully in their illicit practices

Does it mean that those fraudsters had been having their way before this year? Have they been having unbridled access to original UTME questions before now? It is high time the board invited security agencies to investigate how UTME questions got to the hands of fraudsters before the present JAMB registrar sanitised the system.

Meanwhile, let us remind the registrar that there is no association registered in Nigeria that is called Association of Tutorial Classes. A visit to the office of the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, would have prevented this unforced error. 

JAMB Registrar: We have their files with us here and we are going to hand over all of them to the security agencies. They are professional blackmailers

Such files should have been in the custody of the police by now sir, if the registrar and the board have nothing to hide. No measure is too much to sanitise the admission process, but we doubt if the registrar will hand over the files he professed to be in his custody to the security agencies because he knows it might lead the security agencies back to the doorsteps of JAMB itself. No malpractice can be successfully perpetrated at any stage of UTME process without collusion or conspiracy between the perpetrators and JAMB officials.

The Association of Tutorial School Operators, ATSO, has compiled its own files and dossiers on the happenings and stakeholders in the educational sector, including JAMB and it would release them in due course. We hereby reiterate again that the tutorial school operators whom the JAMB Registrar is battling so hard to malign and vilify accounts for the training, counselling and orientation of more than 65 per cent of UTME candidates every year. Our products constitute not less than 55 per cent of admitted students to tertiary institutions every year, most of whom had given or currently giving a good account of themselves in their respective courses of study. Who knows, the JAMB Registrar himself might have benefitted from one form or the other of continuous education in the past before getting to the summit of his career?

Yes! we acknowledge the fact that the current Registrar, Professor Oloyede has brought in innovations since he mounted the saddle of leadership at JAMB, but it is obvious that his major preoccupation has been how to generate humongous revenue for the government even if such drive results in further impoverishing the already poverty stricken parents.

At every turn in the admission process, candidates are made to pay through their noses.

They pay N50 for profile generation, N6,200 for the main registration, N2,500 for the correction of every error committed, N2,500 for change of course/institution, N1,000 to print out what they call Original JAMB Result Slip, N1,000 to print out Admission letter, and other myriad charges in between. Why is JAMB bent on killing the parents financially and demoralising the candidates on the altar of revenue generation? Is the statutory role of JAMB revenue generation? When has JAMB become Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS)?

With the imperialistic manner the JAMB Registrar is handling the issue of UTME and the admission process in general; one wonders if his tendencies wont be tantamount to making education Haram (taboo) to Nigerian students. If he doesnt step down from his high horse and get in touch with realities at the grassroots, especially as it affects hapless Nigerian students and their poor parents, we might witness the metamorphosis of JAMB into a mild form of BOKO HARAM discouraging students from education, the exact opposite of its statutory mandate.

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Home | News | General | 127 African youths get leadership training

By Musbadeen Shekoni

A TOTAL of 127 youths from nine West African countries  Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone among others, who are currently participating in the 2018 Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI)-enhanced leadership skills training and African youths generally, have been challenged to exploit their youthful energy and abilities to work towards a promising future for the African continent.

Prof. Philip Simpson, Director of the Ghana Institute of Manmagement and Public Administration, GIMPA, issued the challenge during an opening ceremony which marked the start of the 4th Nigerian cohort of the YALI programme facilitated by the YALI Regional Leadership Centre (RLC), Ghana in close partnership with the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria, ASCON, on Monday, February 26, 2018 at ASCON facility in Badagry, Lagos.

He said: I wish to remind you that as young persons, you must draw upon your energy, drive and enthusiasm in a positive way. The evidence of your youthfulness is in your vitality and labour. The future of the continent is in your hands and it is important to remember that. You must remember that you are born Africans, you will remain Africans, you must not give up on Africa and you must raise the African cause.

YALI is an intervention programme by the US Government to invest in the next generation of African leaders through support from the United States Agency for International Development USAID, MasterCard Foundation and other private sector partners.

Dr. Shola Safo-Duodu, the Director, YALI Regional Leadership Centre (RLC), disclosed that 5,000 entries were received upon the commencement of the 4th Nigerian cohort application while 2,140 people scaled through the application stage to the online interview and only 150 applicants were shortlisted after the interview.

According to her: As part of our sustainability and making sure that many more people are trained, there is an online component developed to ensure selected participants have two weeks online work.

We put 150 people on the online programme and only 127 completed it within the deadline. So, within the two weeks, they covered leadership, ethics and accountability, and contemporary issues affecting Africa.

She explaind that the first three days of arrival will be spent recaping all the things that they learnt online while participants will spend ten days in their preselected specialisation trajectories and the last week will feature a simulation where real life case studies will be designed for which they would make presentations to determine what skills they have been able to acquire during the course.

Further, Shola said, After they are finished here, we will pair them with a mentor who will work with them for a while. And for those who are young enough and without work experience, we will give them internship opportunities and for those who are working or do not need internship, they need to undertake a community service project and write a report.

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The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has issued a 72-hour ultimatum to Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose to resolve issues that led to the closure of the State University (EKSU) in the past three months.



Lecturers at EKSU and the College of Education at Ikere-Ekiti are on strike in protesting their unpaid eight-month salary arrears.

The college teachers are also aggrieved with the state government over what they called outrageous taxes it imposed on them.

NANS also condemned exorbitant acceptance fees being charged at state-owned tertiary institutions.

It described the development as fraud.

The students body also said it would embark on a mass action to force the government to accede to their demands.

In a statement yesterday by NANS Zone D President, Lukman Adekitan and Treasurer, Ayodeji Amoran, the body expressed fear that EKSU students may miss their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) mobilisation.

The students body also demanded a reduction in school fees in the state-owned tertiary institutions, namely: EKSU, the College of Education at Ikere Ekiti and the College of Health Technology at Ijero-Ekiti.

It called for outright stoppage of acceptance fees in the institutions.

NANS said: Acceptance fee is a fraud. We are against N50,000 and N100,000 acceptance fees in EKSU; N50,000 in College of Health Technology at Ijero and N35,000 in College of Education at Ikere-Ekiti.

Acceptance fee is against the masses. We also demand immediate resumption of academic activities in our striking institutions in Ekiti State.
The U.S. Justice Department has agreed to provide congressional investigators confidential records on a failed gun-trafficking operation during the Obama administration known as Fast and Furious that long has been criticised by Republican lawmakers.



The Attorney-General, Jeff Sessions, said this in a statement issued on Wednesday in Washington. Sessions said the Justice Department would hand over documents to the Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that had been withheld by Democratic former President Barack Obamas administration.

The agreement reached by Republican President Donald Trumps administration will effectively end a six-year long legal battle in which the committee had gone to federal court to try to enforce a subpoena it had issued to obtain the records. Congressional Republicans have been pressing the Justice Department for years about the operation.

Named after a movie about car racing, the operation sought to curb gun-trafficking criminals, who were selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

In June 2012, the Republican-led House voted to hold Attorney-General, Eric Holder, an Obama appointee, in contempt for failing to turn over documents about the operation. The committee sued Holder for access to the documents in August 2012. Obama asserted executive privilege to block the disclosure of the documents.

Democrats at the time accused Republicans of engaging in a partisan witch hunt. In an effort to build bigger cases against major gun traffickers, who were selling arms to Mexican cartels, U.S. law enforcement officials elected not to prosecute lower-level offenders transporting more than 2,000 illegal guns. The operation and its flaws became public after two of those firearms were found in Arizona at the scene of a fatal shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

In September 2012, the Justice Departments inspector general released a report faulting 12 department employees for failures related to the operation. The report vindicated Holder, concluding he neither conceived the operation nor attempted a cover-up. Holder, now a partner at the law firm Covington and Burling LLP, could not be immediately reached at his office on Wednesday. (Reuters/NAN)
Companies in Nigeria, GENCOs, have dragged the Federal Government before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, over alleged preferential treatment to two of its competitors with intent to harm their business interests.

The GENCOs, which said members were on the verge of collapse over debts in excess of N1 trillion currently generate 80 per cent of the power consumed in Nigeria.

They accused the Federal Government of giving preferential treatment to Azura Power West Africa Limited and Accugas Limited to the detriment of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry and the power sector as a whole.

In a suit filed by 13 GENCOs, the defendants are the Federal Government, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, NBET, Azura and Accugas.

The GENCOs, represented by Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited (Mainstream), Transcorp Power Limited (Transcorp Power), Egbin Power Plc (Egbin) and Northsouth Power Company Limited (Northsouth), are arguing that the defendants, have continuously meted out unfair treatment to them, their investors and suppliers.

Specifically, the GENCOs stated that they had made huge sacrifices, bearing the excruciating burden of not being paid for electricity generated and sold to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading, NBET Plc and are facing the threat of business failure as a result of their huge indebtedness to banks and financiers, which provided the foreign currency-denominated acquisition loans with which the power plants were acquired from the Federal Government.

They alleged that NBET has consistently defaulted in paying them for electricity generated and put on the national grid in breach of its contractual obligation, which required that the GENCOs be paid in full (100 per cent) not later than 45 days of invoice submission and upon delay in payment, be paid with interest at the agreed rate.

Implication

The GENCOs noted that failure to pay them has caused them to default in meeting their obligations to their lenders, O&M contractors, equipment manufacturers, service providers and other persons and entities.

The GENCOs put the total amount owed them for electricity supplied at approximately N800bn, adding that when interest is added, it amounted to over N1trillion.

They stated that the N701bn Payment Assurance Facility could have enabled government to pay for all electricity generated and supplied from January 2017 to December 2018.

The GENCOs are aggrieved that the Federal Government has not kept faith with payments from the N701bn facility as payment timelines are not clear, regular or consistent.

Specifically, they stated that only 80 per cent of invoiced amounts are paid whenever the Federal Government chooses to pay, with 90 per cent of gas supply invoices paid directly to gas suppliers out of the said 80 per cent payment, adding that whatever is left of any payment tranche was hardly sufficient for any meaningful activities of the GENCOs.

Hopelessness

The GENCOs stated that payments are insufficient, adding that the outstanding payments owed the GENCOs before the introduction of the N701bn Facility and the monthly shortfall payment of 20 per cent of invoices have continued to pile up without any clear idea of how these will be paid.

They disclosed that even though they appreciate the introduction of the N701 billion, it was neither a privilege nor a favour to them as they are entitled to full payment for electricity generated and supplied.

The GENCOs stated that they took loans from Nigerian banks with some of the banks leaning on international banking institutions to provide support for them.

They argued that it will be destructive and quite discouraging because, these banks have empathised with us and the Federal Government in the last four years to realise that the Federal Government is supporting and paying new entrants in full with all risks covered without extending the same treatment to the GENCOs.

They said they are in a dire situation, adding that notwithstanding their commitment to the development of the power sector, not addressing the issues raised in their letter and their demands would inevitably affect the GENCOs capacity to continue to generate electricity.

Fasholas letter

The GENCOs attached, as exhibit, a letter they had sent to Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Minister of Power, Works and Housing on the various issues, including confirmation of a plan for 100 per cent payment of all outstanding indebtedness and interests due to the GENCOs for electricity supplied and ancillary services provided by them; 100 per cent payment (not 80 per cent payment) of all invoices to be submitted by GENCOs under the payment assurance programme and payment of all sums due as capacity charge to the GENCOs from 2013 till date.

The demands also included non-admission of any additional beneficiary into the N701bn assurance facility without corresponding increase in the facility amount, payment of the balance of N213bn from CBN Electricity Market Stabilization Fund, removal of all administrative bottlenecks delaying drawdown of payment assurance funds and provision of sovereign guarantee and/or partial risk guarantee for all payment obligations to GENCOs.

The GENCOs indicated that the suit became necessary as engagement with the minister, Fashola, did not yield fruits.

They are contending that the Federal Government and its agencies are duty bound to be fair, just and/or equitable in all their actions, dealings and directions as the same may relate or pertain to all actions, steps and/or directives given or enforced to the benefit or detriment of all persons and/or corporate entities engaged in the provision of power/and or electricity within the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

According to them, the ministry and agencies cannot lawfully and/or legally take any step, action or give any directives which have the effect of violating the legitimate expectations of the GENCOs to be treated equally, justly, fairly and reasonably as it relates to all policies and decisions which affect or have the possibility of affecting the business interest of the plaintiffs.

They want the court to restrain the government and its agencies from applying funds from the payment assurance facility for the payment of bills and invoices submitted by Azura and Accugas to NBET for payment/settlement.

The case, which came up before Binta Nyako on March 1, 2018 has been adjourned till April 16, 2018.

Skateholders react

Commenting on the development, Victoria Ibezim Ohaeri, Executive Director, Spaces for Change, disclosed that the GENCOs have taken the right step to go to court at this time.

I think the GENCOs have taken the right step to head to the court. Let the court decide or rule on the issues raised.

The former Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Engr. Oladele Amoda, said the development showed that the sector is passing through a challenging phase.

He said: All stakeholders, including the Federal Government, NERC, GENCOs, DISCOs and others should come together in order to rescue the sector from collapse. Indeed, if the allegations, especially unfair treatment against the GENCOs are true, something needs to be done urgently in order to tackle the liquidity and other problems that stare the sector in the face.

Mr. Olusegun Joseph Ajayi-Kadir, Director-General, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) stated that poor power supply has impacted negatively on the activities of manufacturers in the nation.

Ajayi-Kadir said many manufacturers incur huge costs in the process of generating their independent power.

He said the GENCOs and others should cooperate to solve the problems in order to improve power supply to all classes of consumers, including manufacturers.

However, a source in the Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, who preferred not to be named said the poor state of the sector may hinder the execution of Federal Governments Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) targeted at increasing power supply from 4,000mw to 6,000mw between 2017 and 2020.

The government had emerged with the PSRP, a series of policy actions, operational, governance and financial interventions for implementation over the next five years to restore the financial viability of Nigerias power sector, improve transparency and service delivery, and reset the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) for future growth.

The PSRP was intended to restore the sectors financial viability; improve power supply reliability to meet growing demand; strengthen the sectors institutional framework and increase transparency in the sector.

It was also targeted at implementing clear policies that promote and encourage investor confidence in the sector; establish a contract-based electricity market and bring about financial interventions to fully fund historical and future sector deficits.

The programme was also intended to fund future sector deficits from 2017 to 2021 and execute a plan to fund the required Electricity Market Support until tariffs attain cost recovery levels in the nation.
Ahmadu Ali says he was likened to Adolph Hitler, late German dictator, during the enquiry into the students unrest of 1978.

Ali was the federal education commissioner at the time.

Describing his account of events in his book, The many colours of a rainbow, Ali said he was made a scapegoat of the military governments plan to increase boarding and lodging fees across Nigerian universities.

Ali said this was despite the fact that he had no knowledge of the planned hike in fees. The former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said he was not consulted when the plan was initiated.

A commission of enquiry into the cause of the crisis under justice Mohammed was set up, he wrote.

It seemed everybody, including the government wanted a scapegoat and Ahmadu Ali, the commissioner of education was that convenient scapegoat.

When he attended the hearing to offer his testimony, one Ighodalo, Ali said, made the Hitler remark.

He quoted him as saying: Look at himlike Hitler. Small people are very dangerous!

Ali said he was cleared of any wrongdoing by the commission, but came under the spotlight once again after he issued a press statement condoling the student community over the loss of lives, and announced the indefinite closure of University of Lagos (UNILAG), University of Ibadan (UI) and Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria.

He said the students, the public, and the press were unanimous in their condemnation of him, as he was accused of arrogance and lack of sympathy for students who had lost their lives in the crisis.

The new government policy triggered violent protests across Nigerian universities, with lives lost and properties destroyed.

STALLED CAREER AND EVENTUAL RETIREMENT

Ali eventually relinquished his position and was posted to Kaduna as commanding officer and chief medical consultant, a deployment he felt was a demotion.

He said many of his combatant colleagues whom he was senior to had surpassed him and had become generals.

Ali wrote: It had become rather unwieldy to address them as sir, while historical and seniority reasons, they were also addressing me as sir.

He said despite the initial opposition from the then head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo, to his request to quit the army, he eventually got his wish in early 1979 and was honourably retired.
Former Senate President, Senator David Mark, has pleaded that enough of the killings in Benue State and other parts of the country against the backdrop that life is sacred.

In a statement, yesterday, by his Media Assistant, Paul Mumeh, Mark described as sad and frustrating, the unabating killings in parts of Benue State despite repeated peace moves between the indigenes and the herdsmen in the state.

Only on Monday, about 26 indigenes of Omusu community in Okpokwu Local Government Area of the state were murdered in cold blood by assailants believed to be herdsmen.

Mark in a reaction to the incident condemned the unwarranted killings of innocent citizens, pointing out that the crisis was degenerating to something akin to war without end, defying all peaceful approaches.

He said: Im aware of various peace initiatives over the incessant clashes resulting to loss of lives and property. That the killings continue unabated is something beyond the ordinary.

Let me once again appealed to the assailants to sheathe their swords and allow peace to reign. Whichever side of the divide and whatever vocation you are engaged in, no progress can be made in a crisis-ridden environment.

Mark who bemoaned the degenerating cases of insecurity in the land, said, From abduction of innocent school girls in Dapchi, numerous cases of kidnapping to outright terrorism against unsuspecting citizens, the situation is frustrating.

We must all make concerted efforts to achieve peace in our communities. Our security agencies should rise up to the challenges and protect lives and property. Life is sacred and we must not take it for granted.
The frosty relationship between National Assembly and the Presidency is increasingly creating a vacuum in many critical federal departments and agencies, due principally to the refusal of the Senate to screen and confirm nominees sent to it by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Apparently frustrated by the Senates refusal to confirm the chairman and board members sent by Buhari to the Senate last year, Secretary of Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, Dr. Musa Abubakar, yesterday, took over the management of the anti-graft agency in an acting capacity in a bid to stave off a vacuum.

The Senators had voted to reject all nominees by Buhari until he removes the acting Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Chairman, EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, from office, following their rejection of his nomination for the top job twice based on adverse security reports against him by Department of State Services, DSS, headed by another Buhari loyalist.

But the Presidency has said it will not remove Magu from office and that he will remain in that capacity as long as Buhari is the president of Nigeria.

The action of the presidency has pitted it against the lawmakers, most of who have outstanding financial crime matters pending in court or are currently being investigated by the operatives of the agency.

The lawmakers appear upset by Magus audacity to charge the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, to court over false declaration of assets and his insistence on charging ex-governors, now Senators, to court over alleged money laundering and breach of public trust.

But in a bid to avoid a vacuum at the ICPC, the acting Chairman of the commission, Alhaji Bako Abdullahi, yesterday, handed over the affairs of the agency to the Secretary, Dr. Musa Abubakar.

In a brief ceremony, which was witnessed by heads of departments and other senior management staff, the two-term board member, Abdullahi, said he was handing over to the secretary as his tenure as acting chairman and board member had ended.

He expressed his gratitude to the government for giving him the opportunity to serve as a board member and an acting chairman on two different occasions.
Home | News | General | Farmers-herdsmen clash: Governor Ortom calls for review of ECOWAS protocol

- Governor Samuel Ortom called for a review of ECOWAS protocol

- The Benue noted that foreign herdsmen were causing mayhem in the country

- He promised to protect the people of the state

Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue state has called for a review of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol saying it undermines Nigerias security.

Guardian reports that the Benue state governor made this comment when he received the comptroller-general of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammed Babandede, at the Benue Peoples House in Makurdi.

READ ALSO: Northern elders speak about adopting presidential candidate for 2019

Ortom said: If the ECOWAS protocol has become a cog in the wheel of progress of Nigeria, it is high time we reviewed it.

The Benue state governor urged that the trans-human movement procedures by member states should be followed..

He noted that security intelligence has shown that foreign herdsmen who gained access into the country without proper documentation were responsible for some of the attacks in the country.

He urged the agency to recruit more Benue indigenes and promised to provide land for construction of its office.

He promised to continue to support the agency and vowed to tackle insecurity in the state.

Babandede condoled with the governor and people of the state over killings and said he was there to patrol the border at Abande in Kwande council area with a view to checking the influx of illegal foreigners into the country.

Meanwhile, former Edo governor, Adams Oshiomhole, urged Nigerians not to politicise the herders/farmers problem affecting some parts of the country.

Oshiomhole spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the 26th Convocation Lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH).

He said a crime committed should be treated as a crime. The ex-governor said if a crime is committed by anyone, it should be dealt with as such. According to him, there is no need to mix crime with politics.

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Oshiomhole said that such problems become more difficult to resolve once they begin to assume political context, whipping up sentiments. He said that once people mix criminality with politics, then it becomes complex.

The former governor said that anyone who commits a crime, regardless of his or her trade, should be dealt with according to law.

Nigerian herdsmen vs Nigerian farmers - on NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | Senate, EFCC at loggerheads as upper chamber reveals that anti-graft agency has not submitted audits for years; takes tough action in retaliation

- The Senate has disclosed that the EFCC, BOI and other agencies have not submitted their audits to the auditor-general of the federation for years

- Consequently, the red chamber has resolved to stop further budgetary approval for the erring parastastals and agencies until they take the necessary steps

- The Senate Committee on Public Accounts urged parastalas and agencies to use one of the three auditors recommended by the AGF to audit their accounts

The Senate has issued a deadline of May 2018 to all government parastatals and agencies that have not submitted their audited reports and accounts for the past two years to the auditor-general of the federation (AGF), Vanguard reports.

The upper legislative chamber has also resolved to stop further budgetary approval for the erring parastastals and agencies until they do as directed.

READ ALSO: 2019: 3rd Force is irrelevant; Nigerians want Buhari to re-contest - Group

NAIJ.com gathers that the red chamber stated that by their action, these parastatals had contravened Section 85 of the 1999 Constitution.

The Senate disclosed that the status of compliance showed that while 47 parastatals have fully complied up to 2016; 85 have not submitted since inception and four are in arrears of 11 years and above.

Furthermore, 17 are in arrears of between six and 10 years; 103 are in arrears of between three and five years and 235 are in arrears of between one and two years.

According to the Senate, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Bank of Industry and Bank of Agriculture are among the agencies which have never submitted their audited reports to the AGF since inception.

The Senates decision came following the consideration of the Committee on Public Accounts, led by Senator Matthew Urhoghide (PDP-Edo South).

Urhogide stated: EFCC is of the opinion that once they come for budget defence, it amounts to submitting their audited reports. The EFCC Act itself says they have to submit their audited reports six months into the financial year.

He called on the parastalas and agencies to use one of the three auditors recommended by the AGF to audit their accounts.

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com previously reported that the Senate urged President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately terminate the appointment of Ibrahim Magu who currently serves as the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The upper chamber warned that it would henceforth not attend to nominations from the presidency if Magu is not sacked.

The Senate spokesman, Sabi Abdullahi, speaking to journalists, maintained that the Senate will not change its position on the acting EFCC chairman.

The EFCC stages a walk against corruption - on NAIJ.com TV:

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Home | News | General | Tinubu not part of rejection of Oyegun's tenure extension by Lagos APC - Aide

- Tunde Rahman, special adviser to Asiwaju Tinubu on media and publicity has said that he is not aware if his principal openly rejected the extension of John Odigie Oyegun's tenure

- Rahman said that he is only aware that Tinubu is a man who likes following due process

- He, however, said that Tinubu will always kick against any move by the APC that violates Nigeria's constitution

Tunde Rahman, the special adviser to Asiwaju Tinubu on media and publicity, has denied claims that Tinubu rejected the extension of the tenure of John Odigie-Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC) by the All Progressives Congress (APC)'s National Executive Council (NEC).

Rahman said that while he could not confirm if his principal was privy to the meeting where the decision was taken by the Lagos APC elders.

READ ALSO: My son in-law is a child of destiny, nothing will stop him from becoming Imo governor - Okorocha boasts

Rahman said: I dont know if Asiwaju Tinubu was privy to the meeting or whether he was consulted or not before the decision was reached. But I do know that he has always spoken in support of doing things constitutionally.Did the so-called elongation of tenure of the party executives follow the countrys constitution, and even the APCs constitution?

Section 223 of the 1999 constitution talks about election of executives of political parties periodically. And the section further explains that the election of the party executives will be deemed to be periodical if done every four years.

What is the fear of those behind the elongation? The executives can contest for re-election and if they are re-elected, so be it. No one can deny them that right, but why circumvent due process? Why thwart constitutional process?"

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Asiwaju Tinubu would wish that due constitutional process was followed because thats what has always made the difference between the APC and the other parties.

Tinubu insisted that the NWC and all those who benefitted from the extension should seek re-election when their tenure expires. He also said that the APC should always strive to do things in accordance with the constitution, adding that that was the only thing that separated the APC from other political parties.

Concerning the claim by the NEC that it decided to extend the tenure of the current executives because of the various crises in several chapters of the party, Tinubu argued that three conventions were conducted by the party in 2014 and yet nothing happened.

Tinubu remarked: In 2014, three conventions were done in a space of seven months, including the election of new party executives, presidential primaries, and even amendment of some aspects of the partys constitution, and heaven did not fall.

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that the APC had fixed another national executive council meeting for this month to fix the controversies arising from the one-year tenure extension granted the John Oyegun-led National Working Committee (NWC).

NAIJ.com gathered that Bolaji Abdullahi, the national spokesperson of the party and a beneficiary of the extension, confirmed the coming meeting.

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu speaks about the local government election in Lagos state - On NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | FG committed to end varsity workers strike - Official

- The director, press and public relations of federal ministry of education Ihuoma spoke about the on going strike by the non-teaching labour unions in Nigeria universities

- Ihuoma declared that the government is giving priority attention to the strike issue

- She maintained that the National Assembly too has stepped into the matter

The federal ministry of education on Wednesday, March 7, said it was committed to end the on-going strike by the non-teaching labour unions in Nigeria universities.

The director, press and public relations of the ministry, Priscilla Ihuoma, gave the assurance in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

Recall that the unions, comprising of the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU), the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAATs) had on December 4, 2017, embarked on an indefinite strike.

READ ALSO: IMF confirms Nigeria out of recession, applauds CBN

The unions, under the aegis of the Joint Actions Committee (JAC), are protesting the none implementation of an agreement they entered into with the Federal Government in 2009.

They are also agitating the sharing formula of the N23 billion released by the federal government as part of the earned allowance of workers of federal universities across the country, among other issues.

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Ihuoma said: ''Right now, the government is giving priority attention to the strike issue. There is a process in place to bring an end to the lingering strike. The National Assembly too has stepped into the matter.

''With this development, we are sure that very soon, the entire issue will be resolved and normalcy restored.''

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that the federal government and the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the non-teaching staff of Nigerian universities reached an agreement over the ongoing strike by the workers.

Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment, said this at a conciliatory meeting with the leadership of the JAC of the unions and other officials of the ministry of education on Friday, September 15, in Abuja.

The non-teaching staff of Nigerian universities under the auspices of JAC embarked on strike over non- implementation of the 2009 agreement.

Parents advice government over ASUU strike - on NAIJ.com TV:

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Home | News | General | Anyone fighting him is fighting God - Okorocha speaks on son-in-law's governorship ambition in Imo

- The Imo state governor has vowed that his son in-law, Uche Nwosu, will take over leadership from him come 2019

- Rochas Okorocha said Nwosu has been ordained by God to lead the state

- According to him, no amount of blackmail or tricks would change the plan of God on Nwosu to govern the state

The governor of Imo state, Rochas Okorocha, has said that there is nothing capable of stopping his in-law, Uche Nwosu, from succeeding in his governorship ambition.

Okorocha said Nwosu's emergence as a governor in the state come 2019 has already been ordained by God. The governor through his chief press secretary, Sam Onwuemeodo also said that 24 out of the 27 local government areas in Imo state are in support of Nwosu's ambition.

Okorocha said no level of propaganda and lies being peddled against him or Nwosu will overturn the decision of the people of Imo state.

READ ALSO: IMF confirms Nigeria out of recession, applauds CBN

The governor's reaction followed claims that Nwosu, who is currently the chief of staff to Okorocha, supervised the assault on a Catholic Archbishop of Owerri, Most Reverend Anthony Obinna.

Describing his son in-law as a child of destiny, Okorocha said: This time, it is Uche Nwosu because they have seen that he is the man for 2019 with God on our side. And no amount of blackmail or tricks would change the plan of God on the young man to govern the state.

"It takes someone alive in the things of the spirit to know that Uche Nwosu is a child of destiny. He has the divine mark; and anyone fighting him is fighting his God. And no one can battle with God.

READ ALSO: Governor Ortom to brief APC members about future plans at SEC

We do not intend to bore our audience with a lengthy story to show the reason behind this latest blackmail or onslaught until Archbishop Obinna himself talks on the claim.

However, we say this for posterity. Imo people, including youths, students, men and women have thrown their unalloyed support behind the youthful chief of staff, Uche Nwosu, for the 2019 governorship in the state.

"He has become the subject-matter as long as that issue is concerned, with APC officials and leaders from 24 out of the 27 local governments in the state having already endorsed him for 2019."

NAIJ.com earlier reported that Nwosu declared his intention to run for governorship in Imo state. He made the announcement in his country home, Eziama Obire, Nkwerre local government area of Imo state.

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His declaration to run for the highest position in the state has led to an outrage by the people of Imo, including a former aspirant, Ifeanyi Araraume, who said that the state cannot continue to be under the country of one family or individual.

What is cooking in Imo state? - on NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | Kwara Central Senatorial Poll: Court okays suit seeking to jail Sarakis agent

.fixes March 13 for hearing

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri

ABUJA  The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, on Wednesday, fixed March 13 to commence hearing on a suit seeking to jail one Ladi Hassan, who was agent of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, during the collation of results of the 2015 Kwara Central Senatorial District election.

President of the Nigerian 8th Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki

The suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/92/2018, is alleging that Hassan, alongside the collating/returning officer for the Kwara Central Senatorial poll, Mrs. Mulkah Ahmed, manipulated the outcome of the election.

The case was lodged before the court by a Chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Mr. Abdurahman Abdulrazaq.

The plaintiff is seeking an order of mandamus compelling the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which is the sole defendant in the case, to prosecute the duo.

Abdulrazaq who was the Senatorial candidate of the PDP in Kwara Central, told the court that Saraki was declared the winner of the election on March 28, 2017, when the results were only collated by just Ahmed and Hassan (Sarakis agent) at the district level on March 29, 2015.

The plaintiff attached to his suit, two sets of exhibits.

While Exhibit 1, showing that summaries of results from wards and local government areas that make up the senatorial district were finally compiled on March 29, 2015, as the date on each of these forms read the same collation date.

The second document marked Exhibit 2, was identified as INEC FORM EC 8E(1) being the Declaration of Results of Election compiled by by Dr. (Mrs.) Mulkah A. Ahmed (the returning officer) and Ladi Hassan, agent to Dr. Bukola Saraki.

The plaintiff alleged before the court that only Sarakis agent and the collation officer signed the form.

Besides, the plaintiff, in a supporting affidavit that was deposed to by his aide, Adebayo Oloyin, averred in part, That it is a common sense that collation date will always precede declaration date as the collation dictates declaration of results.

The deponent maintained that the offence committed by the persons indicted in the alleged electoral fraud, cost his boss the merit of a petition he filed at the Election Petition Tribunal to challenge Sarakis election.

Saraki had after winning the Kwara Central election, also contested and won the position of the Senate President.

Meanwhile, Justice Binta Nyako directed the service of all the court processes and hearing notice on INEC to enable it to respond to the suit before the next adjourned date.

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Home | News | General | INTL WOMENS DAY: IndustriALL urges FG to step up rescue of Dapchi girls

By Victor Ahiuma-Young, Josephine Agbonkhese, Prince Okafor & Precious Nicholas

LAGOSAS the world marks International Women Day today, women in trade unions in Nigeria, yesterday in Lagos, pleaded with the Federal Government and all the security agencies to step up efforts at rescuing about 112 school girls of Government Girls Science Technical College, GGTC, Dapchi, Yobe State, abducted by Boko Haram terrorist group since February 19, 2018.

Dapchi schoolgirls during the headcount on Tuesday.

Similarly, leading womens groups in the country have urged the Federal Government to take bold steps towards achieving gender equality, calling on the National Assembly to ensure passage of the Gender & Equal Opportunities Bill.

Under the aegis of IndustriALL Global Union, the women who marched round some Jibowu and Yaba areas of Lagos were unanimous that the abduction of the school girls even when those earlier abducted in Chibok four years ago, remained unaccounted for, had disrupted the peace in several homes as well as the country as a whole.

In a remark, Vice President of IndusriALL Global Union, Africa, Region, Issa Aremu, noted that whoever abducted the girls had abducted a nation, urging the Federal Government to show seriousness and work hard to bring back the abducted Chibok and Dapchi Girls.

Addressing the gathering Aremu said: Today we use International Womens Day to demand sensitivity and accountability on the part of all Nigerian and African Leaders to the plight of African girls including Dapchi and Chibok abducted girls. Whoever abducts girls has abducted a nation. An injury to Chibok and Dapchi girls is an unacceptable injury to humanity. Our leaders should acknowledge that we are not just facing a National Disaster but a National Catastrophe.

But regrettably, almost a month after, the girls are yet to be found. Indeed the body languages of the President, Governors and Legislators who are charged with the responsibility of protecting lives and rescuing the girls, show un-seriousness about the plight of the girls. Just last week, in a reported surprise attack on the 3rd Battalion in Rann headquarters of Kala-Balge, the terror inflicted damage, abducted three aid workers (two from ICRC clinic team, one from UNICEF) in addition to killing a UNICEF doctor, and two workers from the International Organization for Migration.

For the women group, they also urged women to remain resilient in their demand for equal opportunities, describing this years theme, Press for Progress, as a nod to the growing global movement of advocacy, activism and support surrounding gender parity.

Among the group were the Federation of Muslim Womens Associations in Nigeria, FOMWAN; Womens Wing of Christian Association of Nigeria, WOMICAN; Women Advocates Research & Development Centre, WARDC; and the Women, Law and Development Centre, Nigeria, WLDCN.

Nigeria is today joining the rest of the world to mark this day but the truth is that we cannot claim to be pressing for progress for women if we fail to support them with laws and actions that will better their lives. The Gender & Equal Opportunities Bill, for example, which is still at the senate, is a legal instrument that is bound to transform the lives of women and girls in Nigeria, Dr Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, Founding Director, WARDC, said yesterday, while speaking at a media briefing organised in partnership with the Kingdom of Netherland, to mark the day in Lagos.

However acknowledging that there had been marginal efforts at articulating policies and programmes that seek to reduce gender inequalities in socio-economic and political spheres, both at national and state levels, Akiyode-Afolabi lamented that several factors which have the potency of constraining their effectiveness, still existed.

Also, Executive Director, African Radio Drama Association, ARDA, Mrs. Alison Phido, called on Nigerian women to support their fellow women to surpass the 35 percent affirmative declaration made at the fourth World Conference on women in Beijing.

Mrs. Phido disclosed this during her presentation at a forum organised by ARDA in partnership with the Ikoyi-Obalende Local Council Development Area, LCDA, to mark the International Womens Day.

In her presentation titled: Women supporting women is good for the society , she noted that, with the population of Nigerian women averaged 50 percent of the its total populace, it would also be nice if there are more women manning the political and appointive public service positions of the country.

She quoted the National Gender Policy (NGP) saying that, In Nigeria, the extant NGP recommended 35 percent affirmative action instead and sought for a more inclusive representation of women with at least 35 percent of both elective political and appointive public service positions respectively, it will not be a bad idea if we surpass the percentage.

According to her, In 2007, there are eight female senator out of 109 available seat, while in the House of Representative, out of 360 available seat, we have 23 which are women. The number of female senators in the nation dropped to seven in 2011 while that of HOR increase by just three. Currently, we have only eight female senators, while in the HOR, the number declined further to 19.

The WLDCN, on its part, regretted that majority of Nigerians erroneously bear negative mindsets about the concept of gender equality.

According to its Founding Director, Dr Keziah Awosika, They think women are demanding equality with men, but that is not true; what we are asking for is equal opportunities. Why is it that only in Nigeria, at this age and time that girls are being forced out of school as a result of abduction? Is it not disgraceful? Why is it that we have never had an elected woman governor even when other countries are having Heads of States? Look at Rwanda. 70 percent of its parliament is female; but look at the structure of the Nigerian parliament. Even at the national level where Lagos State had several women representing it, now, it is only Mrs Remi Tinubu.

Unfortunately, we can all see the implications of relegating women in every facet of our lives. Ordinary yams that the country wanted to import could not be packaged well and therefore they became rotten. If women were carried along in the process, they would have employed better preservation methods. Look at our political and social lives?

Speaking on behalf of FOMWAN, Alhaja Daudu Zainab, Health Secretary, Lagos Chapter, urged Nigerian women to brace up to the challenges of Nigerian politics if they must get a chance to rewrite the history of the country, while also joining in the call for the passage of the Gender & Equal Opportunities Bill.

WOMICAN, speaking through Mrs Elizabeth Banke Bassey, one of its executives, advised womenfolk to ensure they abided by the fear of God in their pursuit for progress, even in politics.

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Home | News | General | IDP protest over food in Adamawa, as Police abort pensioners rally in Niger

By Wole Mosadomi

Hundreds of internally-displaced persons, IDPs, mostly women and children, from Fufore and Malkohi camps in Adamawa State, yesterday, staged peaceful protests over lack of food in their camps, appealing to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in their plight.

IDPs

Adamawa has two camps managed by NEMA and they are situated at Fufore and Malkohi villages, with about 3,000 IDPs mostly from Borno State, who have been in the camps for over two years.

Meanwhile, Niger State Police Command, yesterday, truncated a planned protest by pensioners in the state over unpaid pensions and gratuities.

On the IDPs protest, Adamu Bukar from Malkohi camp said he has one wife and three children and that they only eat once in a day.

His words: Since early January, when they distributed the normal 30 days food items, we have not received anything.

Also speaking, Haruna Bana, also in Malkohi camp, expressed fear of imminent starvation, saying they received the last food in December 2017.

A security officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity at one of the camps, also confirmed the situation.

Contacted, Abbani Imam, the state Coordinator NEMA in charge of Adamawa and Taraba states, confirmed the development, but said the challenge will soon be addressed.

Police, Niger pensioners

On the Niger States pensioners protest, it was learned that Police immediately moved in when they got wind that the pensioners, in their hundreds, had been mobilised and set for the protest.

The state Commissioner of Police, Paul Yakadi, it was gathered, personally intervened by inviting leaders of the union to his office and pleaded with them to shelve the protest, which he explained can be hijacked by hoodlums.

The Police boss also promised the union leaders that their grievances will be conveyed to the governor for quick intervention.

The state chairman of the union, Alhaji Isah Zhiliku and Secretary, Alhaji Abubakar Paiko, led the delegation of the pensioners to the meeting and finally succumbed to the demand of the Commissioner of Police after a long dialogue.

It was agreed that the meeting between the Police and the pensioners will come up again in two weeks for feedback from the government, after which the pensioners said they will take a final decision.

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Home | News | General | Scribe takes over ICPC as Senate refuses to screen chairman, board members

By Soni Daniel, Northern Region Editor

ABUJAThe frosty relationship between National Assembly and the Presidency is increasingly creating a vacuum in many critical federal departments and agencies, due principally to the refusal of the Senate to screen and confirm nominees sent to it by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Senate

Apparently frustrated by the Senates refusal to confirm the chairman and board members sent by Buhari to the Senate last year, Secretary of Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC, Dr. Musa Abubakar, yesterday, took over the management of the anti-graft agency in an acting capacity in a bid to stave off a vacuum.

The Senators had voted to reject all nominees by Buhari until he removes the acting Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Chairman, EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, from office, following their rejection of his nomination for the top job twice based on adverse security reports against him by Department of State Services, DSS, headed by another Buhari loyalist.

But the Presidency has said it will not remove Magu from office and that he will remain in that capacity as long as Buhari is the president of Nigeria.

The action of the presidency has pitted it against the lawmakers, most of who have outstanding financial crime matters pending in court or are currently being investigated by the operatives of the agency.

The lawmakers appear upset by Magus audacity to charge the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, to court over false declaration of assets and his insistence on charging ex-governors, now Senators, to court over alleged money laundering and breach of public trust.

But in a bid to avoid a vacuum at the ICPC, the acting Chairman of the commission, Alhaji Bako Abdullahi, yesterday, handed over the affairs of the agency to the Secretary, Dr. Musa Abubakar.

In a brief ceremony, which was witnessed by heads of departments and other senior management staff, the two-term board member, Abdullahi, said he was handing over to the secretary as his tenure as acting chairman and board member had ended.

He expressed his gratitude to the government for giving him the opportunity to serve as a board member and an acting chairman on two different occasions.

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Home | News | General | University unions protest over unpaid salaries in Abuja

- The university unions have reportedly staged protest in Abuja over unpaid salaries

- They protested to the ministry of education over an alleged complacency on the part of the federal government towards paying their salaries

- The director, press and public relations of the ministry Priscilla Ihuoma earlier said the government is committed to end the on-going strike

A Joint Action Committee of Non Academic Staff Union (NASU), National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT) and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) are converging on the unity fountain in Abuja for a protest to the ministry of education over an alleged complacency on the part of the federal government towards paying their salaries.

READ ALSO: APC govt has borrowed $11trn in just 3 years while PDP only borrowed $6trn in 16 years

Channel Television reports that the striking workers downed tools since December 4, 2017 over salary arrears, as well as a sharing formula for earned allowances between academic staff Union and the non-academic staff in the tertiary institutions.

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It was learnt that their protest is targeted at the education minister, with a letter also expected to be delivered to the President Muhammadu Buhari.

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that the federal ministry of education said it was committed to end the on-going strike by the non-teaching labour unions in Nigeria universities.

The director, press and public relations of the ministry Priscilla Ihuoma gave the assurance in Lagos state.

The unions, comprising of the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU), the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAATs) had on December 4, 2017, embarked on an indefinite strike.

Parents advice government over ASUU strike - on NAIJ.com TV:

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Home | News | General | APC govt has borrowed $11trn in just 3 years while PDP only borrowed $6trn in 16 years - Melaye fires at ruling party

- The Buhari-led APC federal government has been chided by Senator Dino Melaye for borrowing more in 3 years, than the previous PDP government did in 16 years

- The Kogi senator said while the current ruling party has already borrowed $11 trillion, the previous PDP government borrowed only $6 trillion in the 16 years it was in power

- He urged President Buhari to rescind his decision on the Peace Corps bill; stressing that the Senate would veto him if he fails to pass the bill

Senator Dino Melaye (APC-Kogi) has called out his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the huge amount of money it has borrowed in three years of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, NAN reports.

NAIJ.com gathers that he made the statement during plenary on Wednesday, March 7, as he called a Point-of-Order on the Peace Corps bill currently before the president for assent.

He stated: "Without fear or favour, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in 16 years, borrowed N6 trillion and this government in three years, has borrowed N11 trillion but there is no specific programme that will empower the youth.

''Also, N500 billion was earmarked for the social investment programme of the federal government but we have not seen any impact.

''If the Peace Corps is given an opportunity to exist, thousands will be employed and this will help to fight unemployment in this country.

''We may need to write president to review his position if not we have the power on behalf of the Nigerian youths who voted us to veto him so that people will become the ultimate beneficiaries of this bill. The youth of this country must be given priority and they must be respected."

The senator urged the president to review his position in withholding assent on the bill to establish the Peace Corps of Nigeria. Relying on the Senate rules, Melaye urged the Senate to revisit the bill with a view to veto the president if he failed to rescind his rejection of the bill.

READ ALSO: Ex-governor Aliyu Akwe-Doma of Nasarawa is dead

President Buhari had cited duplication of duty and funding challenges in declining assent to the Nigerian Peace Corps (Establishment) bill, recently passed by the National Assembly.

However, Melaye said that the bill should be given priority by Buhari. He said: "The same thing happened when the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) was to be established; there was also the same complaint that there was no money and all of that.

''But today we can see the advantages of the civil defence and how they have helped in safeguarding the government infrastructure.

About 5.5 billion dollars was borrowed from euro bond; what part of it will the youths of this country benefit from. About one billion dollars is to be spent on security and how does this affect the youth of this country."

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that a presidential aspirant under the NCP, Thomas Ikugbese, has urged President Buhari to reconsider signing of Peace Corps of Nigeria bill into law.

The non-signing of the Peace Corps of Nigeria bill by the president was generating ripples among stakeholders especially youths in Ondo state.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians on NAIJ.com TV:

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Home | News | General | 48 kidnappers arrested with exotic weapons, millions of fake dollars in Niger state (photos)

- 48 suspected kidnappers, armed robbers and cattle rustlers have been paraded by the Nigeria Police in Niger state

- Some of things recovered from the suspected criminals are guns, fake dollars and 35 exotic cars

- The suspects have reportedly confessed to the police

The Nigeria Police Force, Niger state command, has paraded fourty-eight (48) suspected kidnappers, armed robbers, car snatchers and cattle rustlers arrested with exotic weapons, expensive cars and fake dollars to the tune of N490million.

The suspects were paraded on Wednesday, March 7, at the Bosso Division of the Nigeria Police, Niger state command by the force public relation officer, CSP Jimoh Moshood.

Some of the weapons recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

READ ALSO: APC has borrowed $11trn in 3 years - Melaye

The suspects have reportedly confessed to the various criminal roles they played in the commission of the crime. Investigation is ongoing to arrest other members of the gangs still at large. All suspects would be arraigned in court on completion of investigation.

Communication gadgets recovered from the kidnappers. Photo source: NPF

Items recovered from the suspects are listed below:

Thirty Five (35) Exotic Cars Five (5) AK47 Rifles Three (3) Pump Action Guns Two (2) Single Barrel Guns Three (3) SMG Rifles One (1) Revolver Pistol Two (2) Locally Made Pistols 822 Rounds of AK47 ammunition 68 9MM ammunition Four (4) Live Cartridges. Five (5) Plasma TV Sets One (1) Home Theatre Radio Seven (7) Vehicle Trackers Demobilizes Seven (7) Wrist Watches Two (2) Laptops Women Wrappers. Four (4) Different Vehicle Number Plates One (1) Standing Fan Huge Sums of suspected fake US Dollars equivalent to about N490 Million

48 suspects paraded by the police. Photo source: NPF

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Fake dollars recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

Exotic vehicles recovered from the suspects. Photo source: NPF

NAIJ.com earlier reported that a suspected cult member and pipeline vandal, Temona Alison, who is said to be on the wanted list of the police in Bayelsa state, has been arrested.

Alison, who is in his 20s, was apprehended by the Bayelsa state police command strike force on Sunday, March 4, in his house on Tombia-Ammassoma Road by Boxi water.

See the faces of newly arrested criminals in Lagos state - on NAIJ.com TV

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Source: Naija.ng

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Home | News | General | Dogara salutes Osinbajo on 61st birthday

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, has felicitated with the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, on the occasion of his 61st birthday, describing him as an epitome of humility, intelligence and patriotism.

In a congratulatory message he personally signed to mark Osinbajos 61st birthday on Thursday, March 8, Dogara extolled the virtues of the vice president and saluted his unalloyed loyalty, dedication and commitment to the Nigerian project, Punch reports.

His message: You have demonstrated abiding faith in the unity and growth of this great nation, and exhibited unwavering loyalty. You have not left anyone in doubt about your impeccable leadership qualities and capacity to diligently handle matters of national interest, development and progress.

READ ALSO: APC govt has borrowed $11trn in just 3 years while PDP only borrowed $6trn in 16 years - Melaye fires at ruling party

As a legal luminary of great repute and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, you have brought your vast knowledge, character, pedigree and experience to bear in the discharge of the functions of your office as the vice president and driver of the nations economy, the results of which are very visible, impacting and reassuring.

On behalf of the leadership and the entire members of the House of Representatives, I heartily wish you a happy 61st birthday celebration while praying God Almighty to continue to keep you in good health and bless you with many more years in service of the nation.

Meanwhile, the vice presidents senior special assistant on media and publicity, Laolu Akande, has also taken to Twitter to congratulate his boss as he clocks 61.

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He twitted: Happy birthday to Prof: man of honour, loving husband & dad, legal luminary, diligent Vee Pee & faithful man of God. Working with him offers a regular dose of inspiration. Observing him tackle issues of the day for nation is hope-conferring. As your days so shall your strength be!

NAIJ.com previously reported that the All Progressives Congress (APC) said that the legacy of the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has continued to inspire good governance on the African continent after so many years.

Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, the APC national publicity secretary, stated this in a statement on Monday, March 5, in Abuja while celebrating the former president on his 81st birthday.

He also said that the former president remained an influential voice in different facets of national life.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo delivers a speech on the Biafra war - on NAIJ.com TV

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Source: Naija.ng

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Home | News | General | Delta under herdsmens siege  Okowa

 as Police give Rivers vigilantes 21 days to submit arms

By Festus Ahon, Perez Brisibe & Davies Iheamnachor

ASABAGOVERNOR

Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, yesterday, said the state was under siege by herdsmen.

Governor Okowa, who spoke at Isiokolo, Ethiope East Local Government Area, in continuation of the town hall meetings across the state, insisted that the state will not cede land to the establishment of cattle colonies, asking the Federal Government to come out with a definite

policy to end herdsmens attacks. Gov. Okowa

Okowa said: Unfortunately, in our state, we are under siege. But we are trying to manage it the

best way possible.

We have made a statement that we will not support cattle colonies in Delta State because we do

not have enough land for our farmers, considering the fact that a lot of our land is already degraded from oil exploitation activities.

We have raised these issues, along with other states, as we have no doubt that the clashes we have here is not limited to Delta State.

We believe the Federal Government needs to work out a policy that will checkmate this and we are happy that the Vice President is currently leading a committee to look into this, but before then, we will continue to work with the states Commissioner of Police on how to look into the issues involved.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the state House of Assembly, Chief Sheriff Oborevwori, called on the states Commissioner of Police, Mr. Muhammed Mustafa, to end herdsmen attacks on farmers and

other Deltans.

The Speaker, who spoke when the Police boss paid him and members of the House a courtesy visit, said Deltans, especially farmers were now living in constant fear as a result of herdsmens attacks.

Speaking earlier, Mr. Mustafa called for unity in dealing with crime cases in the state and thanked members of the Assembly for assisting Police in the state.

In Rivers

This came as Rivers State Police Command said it had commenced mopping up of illegal firearms used by vigilante groups in the state and Neighbourhood Watch Corps, following a directive from the Inspector General, Ibrahim Idris.

In a statement in Port Harcourt by the Public Relations Officer, DSP Nnamdi Omoni, the Command noted that based on the IGPs order, the Police Commissioner in the state, Ahmed Zaki, had

constituted a special task force to recover arms from vigilante members.

Omoni urged all vigilante members in the state to willingly submit their arms to the Police within the next 21 days, warning that anyone who failed to surrender his will be arrested and prosecuted.

Omoni said: Any person or group of persons bearing prohibited firearm or any locally-fabricated firearm, pump action, double/ single-barrelled guns or any modified weapon fashioned to kill or cause harm, panic or breach of the peace or threat to law and order in the state, should, as a matter of urgency, surrender same to the task force set up by the Commissioner of Police

within the next 21 days, which started running from February 22.

He added that the task force has been mandated to embark on raids, cordonand- search, seizure from any premises, hideouts, houses or buildings or sites (completed or under construction) or any other location where illegal/ prohibited firearms are kept or, on reasonable suspicion,

are believed to be kept or being used.

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Home | News | General | IWD: Give women their right, Fr. Adizie urges govt

By Chris Onuoha

In recognition of the roles of women in the society, a clergyman Reverend Father John Damian Adizie has called on the government and the entire populace to accord women their statutory rights, noticing their impact and contributions to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations initiative.

The Catholic priest who is the Director of International Youth Empowerment and Rehabilitation Centre (IYERC), in Ekpoma Edo State in a statement today said that theres no better way to celebrate women all over the world as they mark International Womens Day today than to look inwards and positively recognise their huge impacts as home builders, peace makers and larger contributors of agro economy globally.

Rev Fr. Adizie who is also an advocate of gender equality and rights of women said, Having lived and worked with women at the rural areas I have come to realize that this group contributes immensely to the development of any society today.

Its a proven fact over eighty percent of the food consumed in urban cities were produced by women at the rural areas, yet they are not given adequate attention. But with the theme of this years international womens day, the rights and activities of women that make up this category comes to focus. As the theme rightly indicates, Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Womens Life, each phrase in the theme is pregnant with meaning, therefore, time is now.

Stressing on the right time, the clergyman quoted the scripture book, describing now as the right time.

When the right time came God sent his son born of a woman to come into the world for the salvation of mankind (Galatians 4:4). It was through a woman therefore, that the Saviour of the world came into the world. As St. Paul rightly wrote, Now, is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Therefore, now is the right time to recognize women all over the world. A right time to engage women in developmental activities including rural areas. It is also the right time to uphold gender equality and raise women activists. Now, indeed, is the right time to uphold women transformation and be repositioned for leadership roles.

Talking about transformation, the rural woman need urgent transformation in the area of supply of modern and mechanised agricultural tools to produce more food. Other basic infrastructures such as good roads, electricity, health centers and even recreational centers wiil facilitate healthy living and prevent urban migration.

Adequate water supply which is among the focus of UN Sustainable Development Goals is very vital. Women in most of these agrarian areas lacks portable water which militates against health challenge they face, that also affects productivity. Women trek miles away to rivers and streams in search of clean water. If boreholes could he provided for them, it will certainly reduce their suffering.

With proper education a woman will be exposed to her fundamental human and civil rights. She will also know the importance of leadership and how to get involved at all levels. Gender equality, rights of women and women empowerment are among the just cause which every women activist must take into consideration.

Meanwhile, Fr. Damian Adizie stated that in other for most of these needs to be achieved or be implemented, women on their own, should step up effort to actualise it.

As the saying goes, heaven help those who help themselves. We want to equally use this medium to encourage our women to raise their voices when and where necessary. They need to raise their voices and cry out against every form of injustice and oppression against women. This can be achieved by women mobilizing themselves into action and into peaceful demonstrations. Women can as well project their voice and interest through the mainstream media and even social media. This is what women activism is all about.

I believe, this is the right time to let the world feel the impact of women in our society. This is the right time to put into practice all the discussions on women empowerment. And of course this is the right time to involve women at the rural areas in any discussion or projects that has to do with them.

This is the right time to ensure that whatever that is due to women at the rural areas does not just end up in the hands of few greedy elects who have no interest of women at heart. This is the right time to celebrate our women for the various contributions in the society. It is indeed the right time to wish all of you present happy International Women Day celebration.

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Home | News | General | US Based Nigerian Producer, Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin Raises Alarm Over Sex Tape Blackmail

Sex tape blackmail involving nigerian music video producer.

The CEO and MD of Dudu productions, mr Tunde Alabi-hundeyin Dudu is currently battling with a blackmailer who claims to have Nood pictures of him. The blackmailer demands to be paid in dollars or else he will leak the pictures of the music video producer who was popular in the eighties and nineties. Below is a note released to notify the public of such malicious person.

THIS IS TO NOTIFY THE GENERAL PUBLIC THAT SOME SONS OF SATAN HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTING TO BLACKMAIL ME FOR THE PAST 5 DAYS BY HACKING INTO MY ACCOUNT WITH EXPERTLY PHOTOSHOPPED SEXUAL CONTENT USING MY IMAGE. PLEASE FIND BELOW MESSAGES DEMANDING DOLLARS.. IM REQUIRED TO SEND THE MONEY TO ONE ACCOUNT FAITH TUDY IN BENIN REPUBLIC . THEY ARE USING THE NUMBER +1 412 460 4886.

I HAVE MADE REPORTS TO FBI, NIGERIAS SSS, WHATSAPP, FACEBOOK YOUTUBE AND OTHER RELEVANT AGENCIES. PLS INFORM ME ON MESSENGER IF YOU SEE THIS MATERIAL ON ANY INTERNET PORTAL IMMEDIATELY. AND HELP REPORT IT MIGHT BE YOUR TURN TOMORROW. BE ON LOOKOUT FIR OTHER NAMES.

A man claiming to be Dudus brother on Facebook, Chris Kehinde Nwandu shared some information on Facebook showing screenshots of the chat with the blackmailer. He wrote:

BLACKMAILERS AT WORK..DUDU IS THEIR NEXT VICTIM

My big bro that Ive known for over 20 years Tunde Alabi-hundeyin Dudu woke me up from my sleep last night all the way from USA to inform me of an attempt by a faceless person threatening to blackmail him on social media.

He claimed to have Nood pictures of him which he must have doctored with Photoshop which he is ready to splash on social media except he is paid in dollars. He went ahead to give a name through which the western union transfer could be made.

Ive told him to ignore him..That to me is the best answer to blackmailers. For the avoidance of doubt and I have repeated it severally on this page ,with the new CYBERCRIME LAW ,anyone caught engaging in such act will spend a better part of his life in prison.

The days of cyber rascality is gone.If you share such stories on your wall too,youre culpable.. Be Warned.. Amb CKN

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Home | News | General | Boko Haram: FG Encouraging Insurgency By Paying Ransom To Criminals  Fayose Reveals

The Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has accused the federal government of fueling the menace of insurgency in the country with its interest to pay ransom to insurgents rather than killing or arresting them.

The governor alleged that the continued insurgents activities in the country is a manifestation of internal aggression and not external one as the people were made to believe.

Speaking at a press conference in Ado Ekiti yesterday, Fayose said the governments alleged failure to tackle the challenge of insecurity over the time and adoption of an option of paying ransom are indications that insecurity challenge has become an internal problem caused by those who are allegedly profiting from it.

According to him, We dont have external aggression but an internal one. We are calling on the international community to look beyond Boko Haram or herdsmen. The international community should come for a fact finding as well as dig deeper into the killings in Nigeria.

This is beyond what Boko Haram or herdsmen are doing. It is more of what the government has failed to do on time. Nigerians are becoming helpless. Benue State people need international intervention; they need support. We want to believe that the president has lost it. His approach has been a cosmetic.

How would you want us to believe that the Nigerian army cannot engage herdsmen or Boko Haram? It seems that the reason for the coming of President Muhammadu Buhari to secure Nigeria has been defeated in all areas, including corruption and fight against

Boko Haram to secure Nigeria among others.

You can all see the situation, Nigerians are angry and hungry on a daily basis as they are being killed by their own brothers.

I cant understand why the federal government cannot take a stand to engage the so called herdsmen. They flaunt their weapons on the social media and the government looks away. Currently, the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government of President

Buhari is paying lip service to the challenges of security of Boko Haram and herdsmen.

Fayose urged Nigerians to challenge the President to act decisively, saying: Steps must be taken; Nigeria must realise that if we fail to challenge the government on this, it would be a sad story for the coming generation.

Personally, I am worried as a Nigerian that we are no longer safe in our fatherland.

The presidents visit to Taraba State is simply political. After the president left, Taraba people were also killed. I cant believe that after three months of the killings, the president only went to the troubled part and spent only one or two hours and left. It is unfortunate.

Asked if the governors forum has advised President Buhari on what to do, he said: The Governors Forum is not the Commander in Chief of the country. The present government is not taking advice. How do you explain a situation where our president is saying governors should tell their people not to block cattle route in this 21st century?

When we are faced with the challenge of people carrying AK 47 in the name of rearing cows, we are talking of cattle routes in the 21st century! The defence for cows has become more important than that of human beings.

Meanwhile, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan on New Media, Mr. Reno Omokri, has faulted the federal governments negotiation with terrorists, saying that the group cannot be trusted.

Omokri said in a statement wednesday that it is a mistake for the country to negotiate with terrorists, adding that any negotiation or ransom payments will only come back to haunt the country as evidenced in a recent video by Shuaibu Moni, a Boko Haram commander.

He said he watched a video by Shuaibu Moni, who was reported by the media to have been freed in exchange for some 82 kidnapped Chibok girls in a deal allegedly brokered by the Swedish government.

According to him, the fact that a

Boko Haram commander released by the Buhari government can threaten Nigeria proves that the government should not negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms to them.

By doing so, you become the major financier of terrorism knowingly or unknowingly. In this video, Mr. Moni threatened Nigeria and vowed to show the country that Boko Haram is still fully in control of Sambisa Forest, contrary to claims made by the military and President Buhari . This latest video proves the futility of negotiating with terrorists. Terrorists cannot be trusted and any negotiation or ransom payments will only come back to haunt you as we have seen in Mr. Monis latest video, Omokri added.

Omokri alleged that under the

Buhari administration, nearly a thousand so called repentant

Boko Haram members have been freed.

How many of them were truly repentant? How does a government justify releasing hardened criminals who by the principle of Taqiyya, are permitted by their extremist interpretation of their religion, to deceive their enemies in order to undermine them? Has the Buhari government offered the same liberty to repentant IPOB members, Shiites and other minority/religious activists? What is so special to the Buhari administration about Boko Haram that this government keeps on releasing members of one of the most deadly terrorists in the world? he queried.

Omokri called on the Buhari administration to put a stop to this unusual practice of releasing deadly terrorists.

I also call on the government to halt any payments to Boko Haram or any other terrorist group if they have been making such payments.Who knows whether it was moneys paid as ransom to Boko Haram or individuals freed by the government that were used to facilitate the kidnap of the Dapchi Girls and the recent killings of United Nations staff in Rann. Again, I urge the federal government not to unwittingly become a lifeline to Boko Haram , he added.













Source: ThisDayLive

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Home | News | General | Constant killings in Nigeria is an issue of internal aggressors - Fayose

- The international community has been called upon to help in ending killings in some parts of Nigeria

- Ekiti state Governor Ayodele Fayose who made the call said the killings in Benue state is worrisome

- Governor Fayose said it is not believable that army cannot tackle the developments that have claimed lives and unsettled communities the country

Ekiti state Governor Ayodele Fayose on Wednesday, March 7, called on the international community to step in and help in ending mindless killings in many parts of Nigeria.

Channel Television reports that he claimed that President Buhari-led administration is taking the twin menace of Boko Haram and herdsmen attacks in Nigeria for granted.

READ ALSO: Northern elders speak about adopting presidential candidate for 2019

Fayose said: ''The killings in Benue state is particularly worrisome. President is merely using a cosmetic approach. It is not believable that Nigerian soldiers cannot tackle the developments that have claimed lives and unsettled communities.''

He called on President Buhari to play his roles as the commander in chief of the armed forces and justify the mandate given him by the people.

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He also claimed that the incessant killings is an issue of internal aggressors and not external and that therefore, President Buhari should be able to get to its root.

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that suspected herdsmen killed two people at villages in Takum local government area of Taraba state, barely hours after President Muhammadu Buhari visited the state.

The state police command that confirmed the incident noted that at least on person was killed at Adada village and a reprisal attack in Manya village led to the death of another person.

The commands public relations officer David Misal said normalcy has since returned to the area with high deployment of security personnel to forestall further attacks and reprisals.

Victims of Herdsmen killing buried in Benue State - on NAIJ.com TV:

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Source: Naija.ng

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Home | News | General | 2019: We will mobilise over 30 million Nigerian youths to canvass support for Buharis re-election - Group

- President Buhari has been applauded by a youth group for responding promptly to the abduction of the girls from Dapchi Yobe state

- The group's president, Abdullahi Wali, said the quick response by the federal government showed Buhari was committed to ensuring the safety of lives

- Buhari was also commended for deciding to visit Taraba, Benue, Yobe, Zamfara and Rivers states

The president, Nigeria Youth Organisation (NYO), Abdullahi Wali, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for responding promptly to the abduction of students of Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe.

Wali lauded the president in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday, March 8, in Abuja. He noted that the quick response by the federal government to the abduction of the school girls had clearly demonstrated Buharis commitment to ensuring the safety of lives and properties of all Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Police parade kidnappers, cattle rustlers with exotic weapons, fake dollars

Wali said the deployment of over 200 hours of air search for the Dapchi girls within 24 hours had enhanced confidence of parents of the abducted girls on government determination to rescue the girls.

As soon as the news of the abduction of Dapchi school girls was broke, the federal government swung into action within 24 hours. For example, the minister of information led a federal government delegation to Dapchi and Damaturu, the Yobe state capital, twice in one week.

Similarly, the National Security Adviser (NSA), the Chief of Army and Chief of Air Staff visited the state to assess the situation and adopt strategies on how to rescue the girls.

It takes a serious government that is truly committed to the wellbeing of it citizens to go to this certain in addressing security challenge in the Northeast region, Wali said.

The youth leader also noted that Buharis administration had been able to limit Boko Haram insurgents to the cowardly act of bombing soft spots and kidnapping. He also commended Buhari for deciding to visit Taraba, Benue, Yobe, Zamfara and Rivers states for an on the spot assessment, describing it as a kind gesture to the people of the states.

According to him, the decision of Buhari to visit the affected states clearly justified that the president listens to the yearnings and aspiration of the common man.

Wali said that the Buhari-led administration had performed very well in tackling security and economic challenges facing the country in the last three years. He listed some of Buharis achievements as effective implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA), diversification of the economy, anti-corruption crusade, war against insurgency and the complete refund of Paris club loan deduction to states, among others.

He expressed readiness of NYO to mobilise over 30 million Nigerian youths at home and abroad to canvass support for Buharis re-election. He said it has become imperative for NYO to support Buharis re-election in order to enable him consolidate the achievements his administration recorded so far.

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According to an earlier report by NAIJ.com, the presidency said the abduction of 110 girls from the Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe state should not be used to determine whether the country is more secure or safer than it has ever been.

Speaking to Vanguard in a recent interview, Femi Adesina, the special adviser on media and publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, said it was a freak occurrence, adding that there are still remnants of insurgents who launch occasional attacks, and that is what happened in Dapchi.

The presidential spokesman said Buhari has done well in terms of securing the country, though the job is not fully done.

Nigerians react as Boko Haram terrorists kidnap over 100 girls in Dapchi, Yobe on NAIJ.com TV.

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Source: Naija.ng

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Movement for the Actualisation of South-East Presidency (MASEP) has called on Nigerians to re-elect President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019 to enjoy more dividends of democracy.

Mr Humphrey Onyima, the leader of the group, made the call in an interview with Newsmenon Thursday in Abuja.

Onyima said Buhari deserved a second term because of the good works the president is doing.

He flayed the negative opinions expressed over Buharis re-election by some Nigerians.



We want to categorically state here and now, without recourse to what anyone thinks or has thought, that we back President Buhari for the 2019 presidency.

We also call on others to do same because so far, President Buhari has done well; the construction of the three-phase Second Niger Bridge is on course.

The bridge will by-pass Onitsha and Asaba to connect to the Owerri-Onitsha Expressway at Nkwerre-Ezunaka and then, cross Atani to the Asaba-Benin Expressway at Okpanam, with a total length of 44kms.

Also, to the credit of this government, between June 2015 and July 2017, it had earned $58 billion in oil revenue, according to the OPEC, Onyima stressed.

The leader of the group noted that while the payment of contractor liabilities running into trillions of Naira was ongoing, insecurity was being given the desired attention.

According to him, massive development of rail transportation is ongoing; the age-long, clash between herdsmen and farmers is also being addressed by the government, among others.

He explained that the Buhari administration had in 2017 issued a N100 billion bond with a 7-year term, so as to facilitate the rehabilitation of 25 key economic road projects across the country.

Onyima said the roads include the Oyo-Ogbomosho Expressway, Ofusu-Ore-Ajebandele-Shagamu dual carriageway, Yenagoa Road Junction-Kolo Otuoke-Bayelsa Palm, Enugu-Port Harcourt Dual Carriageway and Onitsha-Enugu Expressway.

Others, according to Onyima are the Kaduna Eastern By-pass, Dualisation of Kano-Maiduguri Road, Dualisation of Abuja-Lokoja-Benin Road, dualisation of Suleja-Minna Road with each geo-political zone benefiting.

Power generation is on the increase as more power plants are coming on stream. This government has set a target of ending fuel importation by 2019.

Also, licenses have been issued to 10 modular refineries with a refining capacity of 30,000 barrels per day and total refining capacity of 300,000.

Without mincing words, this government has given Nigerians more hope and reasons to believe in our future as a nation, than we have ever had at any time in our history.

For many years, we were led down dark paths by a misguided few and today, everything is being done to reverse that disgraceful, obnoxious phase in our democracy.

To be honest, this cannot happen overnight, not even in four years. Thus, we want to call on Nigerians to get behind the president and vote him into office come 2019.

We therefore issue a rallying cry to every Igbo man, woman and youth to support President Buhari for 2019, as we prepare our house to present ourselves for election in 2023, Onyima said.

He emphasised that the likes of Orji Uzor Kalu, Rochas Okorocha, Ken Nnamani, Chris Ibe and Gbazuagu Gbazuagu were willing to lead the South-East to support Buhari and also occupy Aso Rock in 2023.
Home | News | General | Charly Boy breaks down in tears as police stops Peace Corps from occupying its headquarters

- The Nigeria Police Force has continued to lay siege on the the headquarters of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) office in Abuja

- Efforts to get the police to vacate the building have proved abortive

- Leader of the 'Our Mumu Don Do' movement, Charles Oputa (Charly Boy), has joined those campaigning for the police to vacate the premises

Leader of the 'Our Mumu Don Do' movement, Charles Oputa popularly known as Charly Boy, has berated the Nigeria Police Force for continuously laying siege on the premises of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) headquarters in Abuja, after several court judgements.

Charly Boy who openly shed tears due to the high handedness of the policemen, made the comment came on Thursday, March 8, after he and members of the PCN were prevented from taking possession of their office.

Charly Boy displays emotion as police stops Peace Corps from occupying office on Thursday, March 8. Photo credit: PCN

READ ALSO: National Assembly to override President Buhari's rejection of Peace Corps bill

The office has been under siege by police personnel since February 28, 2017, the day the premises was officially commissioned.

Despite different court orders given at Federal High Court, Abuja with the attendant letter from the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Ibrahim Malami, that the police should obey the 2 subsisting court orders, the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Kpotun Idris, has ignored the orders.

The House of Representatives, had also waded into the matter through its committee on public petitions, as it urged the police to comply with court orders and the advice of the AGF on Tuesday, March 6.

NAIJ.com gathered that the officers of PCN under the leadership of the national commandant, Dr Dickson Akoh, were ushered by some officials of Civil Society Organisations, to take possession of their office.

They were however resisted by a detachment of well armed mobile police officers from the FCT police command.

Reacting to the conduct of the police, Charly Boy described their action as "act of injustice," vowing to stand firm against it.

His words: This is our country, we would have no place to call our own or go to, if we allow our system to erode. We won't alow the IGP or anyone to give the youths reasons to resorting to self help or anarchy.

The Civil Society coalition led by Comrade Olayemi Success, said it was very ironical that, the same police which was supposed to be enforcing the law could not obey court orders, the AGF and the order of Nigerian parliament.

He lambasted the force for embarrassing Nigeria before the international community, which caused the recent rating of Nigeria police being the worst in the whole world.

On his part, the Peace Corps Boss, Akoh, said, as peaceful people and law abiding organisation, his men would retire home while waiting for the response of the IGP.

Akoh said the office was rented for 3 years with N13.8m annual rent, adding that, the police had already vandalised the premises and looted some valuables.

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Meanwhile, the council of commandants and Board of Trustees of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN) have called on President Buhari to reevaluate and reconsider his decision to withhold his assent to the Peace Corps bill.

They made the call at a press briefing in Abuja on Friday, March 2, arguing that there was no security agency in Nigeria that was currently undertaking the functions ascribe to Peace Corps in the said bill.

Speaking on behalf of the organisation, the national commandant, Dr Dickson Akoh said the bill does not conflict with that of the functions of any existing security agency in the country.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians on NAIJ.com TV

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Source: Naija.ng

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Home | News | General | Mike Ezuruonye's wife: who is the woman that makes the famous actor happy?

The prominent movie star Mike Ezuruonye has stolen the hearts of Nigerians with his charming smile and talented acting. Many people wish to know if he is a happy family man. In this post, you will receive the true information about Mike Ezuruonye wife and his family.

Mike Ezuruonye: who is he?

The famous movie star Mike Ezuruonye was born on September 21st, 1982 in Lagos. He came from a wealthy family, being the eldest child of four, but everything changed when his father passed away, and he had to help out his mother who worked hard to make sure her children have a decent life. He enjoyed acting since his young years, even though his education was connected with banking. His career in Nollywood started accidentally when the famous producer Ruke Amata found him at the filling station and advised him to attend casting calls for the movies.

Now, Mike Ezuruonye has a huge experience behind his back, having starred in plenty of commercially successful and fan-favourite movies. He won a lot of prestigious awards for his talent and is considered to be one of the wealthiest Nollywood actors. Many people are wondering about his private life. Is Mike Ezuruonye married or is he single? You can find all the answers to the questions about Mike Ezuruonye family here.

Mike Ezuruonye wife biography

The outstanding Nollywood actor is happily married to the love of his life. Mike Ezuruonye first met his beautiful wife, Keke Nkechi Nnorom, in Abuja on the movie set. Their meeting took place in 2009. Nkechi used to live in Canada, where she worked as a medical psychologist, but later she moved back to Nigeria, and it happened not so long before she met her famous husband.

The gorgeous wedding took place in November 2010. Mike and Nkechi white wedding took place at the Folawiyo Bankole Methodist Church in Lagos.

READ ALSO: Mike Ezuruonye's biography

Mike Ezuruonye wedding, photo from yabaleftonline.ng

Currently, Mike Ezuruonye and his lovely wife Nkechi live together in Ontario, Canada. They have two children together  a boy and a girl. Their cute little son was born in October 2011, in Canada and his name is Reynold Nkembuchim Ezuruonye. Some fans jokingly called Mike Ezuruonyes little son the independence baby, since he was born on October 1st, which is the day of independence in Nigeria. Mike Ezuruonye has a lot of photos with Reynold on social media, and he loves his little son more than anything.

In September 2016, it became known that Mike and Nkechi had a little daughter. She was born in Canada too. The media still does not know the name of Mike Ezuruonyes little girl, because the parents try not to show her so much on social media while she is still very young. Hopefully, they will reveal her name and photos soon.

Mike Ezuruonye always talks very fondly about his wife and family. He confesses that in the show business it is hard to stay away from scandals and controversy, but he manages to do it. According to Mike, the key to being scandal-free is minding no ones business but your own, and being careful about what you say and do. He admits that there are always some people who expect him to do wrong things, but they do not deserve his attention. As he says, his family fully supports him, and they do not believe any rumors that are spread about him by the media.

Mike Ezuruonye and family photos

Here are the adorable photos of Mike Ezuruonye with his beautiful wife and beloved children.

Mike Ezuruonye with wife, photo from nairaland.com

Mike Ezuruonye and son, photo from blog.irokotv.com

Mike Ezuruonye with son, photo from motherhoodinstyle.net

Mike Ezuruonye is a happy man with a loving family, and this is a rare thing in Nollywood. We wish the best to him, his wife, and children.

READ ALSO: Mike Ezuruonye son

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Home | News | General | I have done my best since I got to power in 2015 - Buhari

- President Muhammadu Buhari said he has done his best since I got to power in 2015

- He made the declaration on Thursday, March 8, while receiving a delegation from King Salman of Saudi Arabia

- He said his government was mindful of the three-pronged promises made to Nigerians before the 2015 elections

President Muhammadu Buhari said he has been able to do his best since he got to power in 2015.

Daily Trust reports that the president in a statement issued by his senior special assistant on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said this at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja on Thursday, March 8, while receiving a delegation from King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

NAIJ.com gathered that Buhari said his government was mindful of the three-pronged promises made to Nigerians before the 2015 elections, assuring that he remained undeterred and focused on securing the lives and properties of all Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Why Igbo male are prone to developing glaucoma - Study

From the very time we came until now, we have been able to do our best, and we remain focused on delivering on our promises, Buhari said.

He said Nigerians in the areas affected by Boko Haram insurgency were in the best position to provide correct assessments of the changes that had taken place since he assumed office in 2015.

He said his administration's priority had so far been on securing the country, buoying the economy and curbing corruption so that Nigerians would start benefiting from the rich natural and human resources of the country.

He thanked the King Salman aid and relief centre, and the Saudi development fund for providing relief materials, worth 10 million dollars, to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the northeast.

In his remarks, the minister of defence, Mohammed Dan-Ali, said the delegation from Saudi Arabia had already visited the ministry of defence, defence headquarters and taken a tour of IDP camps in Maiduguri as part of their schedule.

The leader of the Saudi Arabian delegation from King Salman, Nasser Bin Mutlaq, said the visit and the donation of materials was an extension of the good relations both countries had shared over the years.

We are directed to offer materials and food for the displaced persons in the northeast worth 10 million dollars. We have had a field visit to the places and seen the humanitarian situation ourselves, he added.

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had earlier reported that President Muhammadu Buhari felicitated with the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, on the occasion of his 61st birthday, thanking him for being a loyal and dependable partner.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians - on NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | At 61, Im gradually becoming senior citizen  Osinbajo

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA  VICE President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Thursday, expressed appreciation to God as he marked his 61st birthday anniversary, saying that he was gradually getting to the class of senior citizens.

VICE President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo

This is as the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, Boss Mustapha, prayed for more Gods knowledge and wisdom for the Vice President so that he will continue to give wise counsel to President Muhammadu Buhari in his bid to move the country forward.

Speaking while cutting a birthday cake surprisingly organised by the staff of his office, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Vice President Osinbajo prayed that the country would continue to be greater and experience joy and peace.

According to him,  I am grateful to God for preserving my life. It is just exciting to be one year older. I think we are gradually getting to that class who are called senior citizens and in some way it places greater responsibility.

But I am immensely grateful to God and thank everyone for the surprise.

I pray that our country will be greater and greater, that it will prosper and that we will experience true joy and true peace.

Also speaking, the SGF, Boss Mustapha urged Prof. Osinbajo to continue to give wise advice to the President as he (Buhari) will depend on him for insights into the governance of the country.

The SGF said, We are gathered to share with you on this very auspicious day. Our prayer is that God will continue to watch over you, continue to fill you with wisdom and understanding, that at every point in time as you counsel with Mr. President you will give him Godly counsel, that he will depend on you for insights into the governance of this country.

And for those of us working with you, we will receive direction to take this country forward and to greater heights.

From the right, SSA on Social Investments Programme, Mrs. Maryam Uwais; CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele; Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachukwu; the SGF, Mr. Boss Mustapher; Minister for Budget, Senator Udo Udoma; the Celebrant, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; Minister for Water Resources, Mallam Suleiman Adamu and others cutting the cake to mark the 61st Birthday for Vice President at the State House, Abuja. Photo by Abayomi Adeshida 08/03/2018

Present at the brief ceremony were members of the Federal Executive Council, FEC like the Ministers of Water Resources, Budget and National Planning, the CBN Governor, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang and the staff and aides of the Vice Presidents office.

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Home | News | General | Buhari felicitates with Osinbajo at 61

President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Abuja, commended Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo for being a loyal and dependable partner in the journey to transform Nigeria to an enviable position.

Buhari gave the commendation on his twitter handle, @MBuhari, while congratulating the Vice-President at 61.

President Buhari

The President said he joined millions of friends and well-wishers of the vice-president in wishing him good health and strength to continue to offer service to God and humanity.

The President posted: Happy 61st Birthday (Vice-President) Yemi Osinbajo.

Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well-wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, Nigeria and humanity.

Meanwhile, the Aso Villa Chapel said it had planned a 61-hour-nonstop-praise concert in commemoration of the 61st birthday celebration of the vice-president.

The Chaplain of the Aso Villa Chapel, Pastor Seyi Malomo, who made this known in a statement signed by him in Abuja, said the exercise was in conjunction with the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

The vice-president, whose full name is Oluyemi Oluleke Osinbajo, was born on March 8, 1957 in Lagos.

He obtained his primary school certificate at Corona School, Lagos; secondary education at Igbobi College, Yaba and proceeded to University of Lagos between 1975 and 1978, where he studied law.

He also attended the Nigerian Law School, Lagos in 1981 and later went to London School of Economics.

Osinbajo, who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), a Professor of Law and a Senior Partner at a law firm held various positions before his current position.

These include Head of Public Law Department, University of Lagos, Lagos State Ministry of Justice as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice.

Some social commentators described the vice-president, who is also a Pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God, as an excellent speaker and a loyal politician who complements Buhari so perfectly.

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Home | News | General | Trade Unions dangerous to Nigerias progress  Gov. El-Rufai

.Says, past Yobe, Borno Govs sowed the seed of Terrorism

.Our Federal Health Institutions overstaffed -FG

By Omeiza Ajayi

ABUJA  Governor of Kaduna state, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has lashed out at the organized labour unions in the country, saying they have destroyed the nation more than they have contributed to it. El-Rufai

Speaking Thursday in Abuja at a Governance Matters roundtable organized by Development Alternative Incorporation, DAI, the governor said the excesses of the trade unions must be curtailed.

Trade Unions have never served the country well. They have been selfish and everything is about their narrow interests. In general, in Nigeria, trade unions have been a danger to our progress and I think they should be curtailed.

The mistake we made as a country was placing trade unions in the Exclusive Legislative List. If the Academic Staff Unions of Universities ASUU has an issue with the Federal Government, then the state universities will go on strike too. In Kaduna, I warned the Kaduna state University, that if you ever go on strike gain because of somebody else, I will fire all of you.

Advocates Very Low Minimum Wage

I think we need to do some things. First, take labour matters out of the Exclusive List because many of us are victims of agreements reached with ASUU by the federal government. The states were never part of such agreements. Secondly, is the issue of minimum wage. Except we set a very low minimum wage, there will continue be issues especially with states that do not have wide tax net. You cannot set the same minimum wage for Lagos and Jigawa. Also, we must apply the labour laws strictly. No work, no pay, because there has to be a trade dispute before anything strike. That is what the law says.

I think the health unions have been the most irresponsible because only an irresponsible doctor will abandon his patients even after swearing to the Hippocratic Oath. I think Nigerian doctors are the only ones on the planet that go on strike.

We have submitted our report on True Federalism and it will be taken to the National Assembly. We hope the National Assembly will stop dealing with inanities and deal with the real issues, he said.

The governor also accused some past governors of Yobe and Borno states for been responsible for the emergence of the Boko Haram sect due to their negligence of the education sector.

We tended to ignore this problem (of out of school children) but this problem when ignored gave us Boko Haram. If you look at education statistics in Yobe and Borno in 2003 and 2004, you could reasonably predict that Boko Haram would happen within a decade. So, this is a huge problem, he said.

On his part, Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole said the federal health institutions are over-staffed while there is a dearth of health officers at the primary healthcare level.

Let me state that Nigeria has a large stock of human resources, the problem is that of distribution. There is a wide gap between the north and the south. Over 60 percent of our human resources are concentrated in Lagos and Abuja and the rest have little to cope with.

There is a state in this country with 23 doctors and 24 hospitals. That means we do not even have one doctor for one hospital. I was at Ahmadu Bello Teaching Hospital and they said they needed more staff and I said no, that we are over-staffed at the federal level. Over 80 percent of our resources is dedicated to personnel cost and we cannot really deliver on our mandate where the large chunk of allocation is for personnel and then you have a situation where te states cannot pay salaries, he said.

Treat every Incidence of Malaria as Lassa Fever

Meanwhile, as part of measures to curb the growing incidences of Lassa Fever, the Federal Government has advised medical doctors and other health practitioners to handle all suspected cases of malaria with extreme care, urging them to first treat such cases as Lassa Fever.

Lassa is entirely a disease that should stay among animals but we have animal-human barriers being jumped and then we are affected.

When healthcare workers are infected, everybody coming in contact with that worker is in trouble and that is why we believe we need to do certain things. We can treat Lassa fever when we detect it early. We are telling our health workers that it is not every fever that is malaria. In the past, once there is fever, they treat malaraia for three, four, five days and when there is no improvement, they change to typhoid fever and treat for another one week and by the second week, the fellow with the viral haemorrhagic fever would have had a renal shut down and start bleeding from al the orifices and then is gone beyond treatment. So, what we are saying is that no one should treat malaria without diagnosis. There are rapid diagnostic tests to treat malaria. So, once you check and it is not malaria, you think Lassa straight away. You have just lost a few hours not two weeks and every suspected case must be treated as a case of Lassa until proven otherwise, he said.

Earlier, Managing Director, Governance, DAI Global, Jeremy Kanthor said the organization is determined to make a lasting difference in Nigeria.

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Home | News | General | PIGB: FGll retain, not sack PPPRA, DPR workers  Kachikwu

Says workers no longer have a job for life

Job security now based on performance

Insists existing regulators to be scrapped

By Michael Eboh

Kachikwu

The Federal Government, Thursday, allayed fears over the sacking of workers of the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory, PPPRA, stating that workers of both agencies would be assimilated into the new petroleum industry regulator to be set up by the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, PIGB.

Speaking at a Round table on understanding the PIGB, organized by the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter, NNRC and the Media Initiative on Transparency in the Extractive Industry, MITEI, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu, however, insisted that that DPR and the PPPRA would be scrapped and would be merged into the Petroleum Regulatory Commission, PRC, as stipulated by the Bill.

Kachikwu, who was represented by his Senior Technical Adviser on Policy and Regulation, Mr. Adegbite Adeniji, also stated that it would not be business as usual as key performance indicators, KPI, would be set for the Board, management and other employees, adding that any official found wanting in the discharge in his or duties would be sanctioned and shown the exit.

He maintained that the scrapping of the DPR and the PPPRA, apart from ensuring that no one is sacked, would provide an opportunity for new persons to be employed into the new entity to be set up, especially as new ideas are sought to fill in gaps that might exist in the company.

He said, Where they are gaps in the manpower in there, it provides an opportunity for people to be appointed from outside, because again, you want to put in new ideas, fresh legs in the whole process. In that process, you preserve the jobs, and you also attract a pathway for the employment of other skills from outside to help energise the new system you are trying to build.

Board, management get authority to hire, fire.

Kachikwu said the Board and management of the new regulatory entity would be given the power to hire and fire and also given the authority to set benchmarks with which staff would be measured.

He said, At that time, it has not nothing to do with the minister, it is up to the management to retain their staff afterwards. You then have to make sure you actually meet up to task as far your job is concerned. That is how we dealt with the issue of labour.

After that, with the mandate that each institution would have for efficiency, people there have to work and display their performance in their jobs. But at the inception, the existing jobs would be there, but then people would then have to rise up to the occasion, because those Boards that would be in those entities would be mandated statutorily to ensure efficiency in the public interest. Therefore, from that point on, you do not have a job for life. You now have to be worth that salary, that money you are paid.

Kachikwu explained that powers would now be given to the management of the entity to ensure they operate efficiently and effectively, to enable them correctly make decisions as to who would meet up with the requirements for their position.

He said, Once the ball gets rolling, the question would now be if I am the manager at the helm of the institution, I would want to see who is effective and who is not. That is now the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for the Board and for the Chief Executive of the institution, to make sure he runs an effective institution.

FG insists PPPRA, DPR to be scrapped.

Continuing, the Minister said, What the PIGB has done is to establish a single regulatory authority. What PPPRA does today is to regulate petroleum products pricing, so it is almost like an economic regulator for the downstream. What the PIGB creates is the Petroleum Regulatory Commission, which now undertakes technical and economic regulation of the upstream, midstream and the downstream.

It regulates oil, gas and products. It assimilates both DPR and PPPRA, such that those two institutions would no longer exist; a new entity is created from that merger. So there would be no more PPPRA, inasmuch as there would be no more DPR. We would have a new regulator that covers the whole fields.

The idea is this, if you are a regulator and you do not have access to all information in the industry, you cannot be effective; which is part of the reasons why our current system is not effective, because they are split among two or three agencies. But when you merge them and you create one and all the different regulatory powers now rest on that entity, then you would now start to have a platform on which to further regulate.

Incompetent people would destroy oil industry

Kachikwu further explained that the new law is trying to build a more muscular regulator, while he warned that it would be dangerous if competent people were not engaged to run the organization.

He said, We cannot sacrifice the future of the country on the altar of incompetence. This is where we have to be watchful, so that the hiring process into that entity must be done in a manner that it gives clarity to all that things are been done in national interest.

We are taking the entire petroleum industry into an entity that is statutorily independent, from political interference. The way the Minister can interfere is through policy directions. The policy directives must emanate from published policies. That is say this is the policy of the country and it must be a consistent policy.

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Home | News | General | NASS to go against corrupt VCs, lecturers

-Promises to address grievances of Varsity non teaching staff

-FG in habit of breaching agreement with workersNLC

-SSANU, NASU, SSANU stage protest over corruption in Varsities

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA  THE National Assembly Thursday promised to look into the allegations of corruption in the Nigerian Universities in order to sanitize the system.

corruption

This is as the non teaching staff in the universities under the umbrella of Joint Action Committee, JAC, has accused the university administrations of indulging in corrupt practices while the government appears not to be disturbed with the ugly situation despite the Federal Government anti-corruption fight.

Meantime, the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has accused the Federal Government of always breaching agreements it freely entered into with workers.

JAC comprising the National Association of Academic Technologists, NAAT, Non Academic Staff Union of Universities and Educational Institutions, NASU and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, SSANU, staged a protest at the Ministry of Education and the National Assembly over the alleged decay in the universities.

Security operatives had a hectic day at the Federal Secretariat, Abuja, when they tried to stop the protesting university non teaching staff to have access to the Ministry of Education where they had gone to register their protest with the Minister, Malam Adamu Adamu.

The protesting workers had to use all their strength to force the gate that was locked with heavy presence of the policemen to open for the workers led by the National President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba and the Chairman of JAC, Comrade Samson Ugwoke to gain access to the ministry.

Infuriated by the development, the workers chanted anti Adamu songs and even called for his resignation.

At the National Assembly, the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki represented by Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim from Yobe East assured the protesting workers that the National Assembly would look into their grievances especially the allegation of corruption in the universities.

Senator Ibrahim flanked by Senators Shehu Sani and Ahmed Sani Yerima as well as Rep Jarigbe Agon Jarigbe said, impunity brings anarchy, so I want to assure you that we are going to fight corruption in the universities squarely..

I also want to assure that every worker will get its allowances. All the demands that you have made will be tabled before the house.

Also speaking, Senator Sani Shehu, assured the non academic teaching staff that in the name of the struggle and in the name of the Nigerian people that he will peruse their demand to logical conclusion.

Presenting their grievances, the Chairman of JAC and National President of SSANU, Comrade Samson Ugwoke said, We need to let the National Assembly to know why we are sad, we need to let them know and sentizes them on the injustices that are going on the university system.

We need to let them know the plight of the Nigerian universities and also workers in the system. We want them to come in and investigate the universities and find out why our graduates are not employable. We are not pleased with the state of affairs and strongly believe that with your intervention, all matters that led to the current industrial action of the Joint Action Committee unions shall be address.

We also deem it imperative to humbly draw the attention of His Execellency on the ongoing strike action embarked upon by the non teaching staff unions based on our demands for the full proper implementation of our 2009 agreement. We have also had several meetings with the federal government.

The specific issues are one, the reinstatement of our members in the university staff schools, who were removed from the budget of the universities based on obnoxious budget call circular from National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission in gross contravention of the 2009 agreement with federal government which also the National Industrial Court has ruled in our favour.

Two, the issue of payment of Earned Allowances where a sum of N23 billion released by government in September 2017, was skewed in favour of a sister union by some government officers thereby leaving 11 percent of the said amount to the non teaching staff.

Three, the issue of shortfalls in salary payment where our members have been receiving fractions of their salaries for upward of a year now. Four, the issue of career progression for Technologists to CONTISS 14 and 15, in line with the agreement reached with NAAT.

Five, Usurpation of non teaching career positions by academic staff and six corruptions in the universities system. We also want to state that we have signed two different MOUs with government through the Minister of Labour, yet to no avail. Nothing tangible on ground except verbal assurances. But rather a segment of university system was being favour to our detriment. So we want you to intervene.

The NLC President, Comrade Wabba said, The rally has become necessary as government keeps reneging on its promises. So, the strike must continue until justices is done because the sector need more attention as they have not been able to receive the desired attention it deserves

So everything possible needs to be done for this sector because of our future generations. So it must be a priority of government and all stakeholders We must also ensure that the right thing is done.

Speaking earlier at the Ministry of Education, the Director, Tertiary Education in the ministry, Mr. Joel Ojo who stood in for the Minister said, The ministry is doing all to ensure that the issues affecting the university system is resolved immediately

The ministry is interfacing with the National Assembly and modalities have been put in place to resolve the ongoing strike and make sure normalcy returns to the universities. I want to assure you that the Federal government is committed and I want to plead with you to give us some time.

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Home | News | General | Womens Day: Ekiti adds 5000 women to welfare scheme

In its usual manner of celebrating women and empowering them, Ekiti State Government has added 5000 beneficiaries to its welfare scheme for women through which each beneficiary is given N20000 monthly to boost their trades.

Fayose

Governor Ayodele Fayose announced this on Thursday in Ado-Ekiti during the celebration of this years International Womens Day.

By this addition, the number of women benefitting from the scheme is now 15000.

Last year, Fayose announced that 10000 women would be given N20000 monthly to boost their trades.

According to the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Idowu Adelusi, the governor told the mammoth crowd at the Oluyemi Kayode Stadium, venue of the event, that his administration had greatly given more opportunities for women to thrive, and that no reasonable government could afford to sideline half of the population.

When my wife spoke, she demanded that I gave women another great offer this year and in line with that, we are adding 5000 new beneficiaries to our welfare scheme for women. We are promoting the rights of women in Ekiti and that is why out of the seven female senators in the country, Ekiti produced two. We have over 60 women councillors and women local government chairmen.

 As for the All Progressives Congress-led government at the centre, they have woefully failed. All that I have said about them have come to pass. Nigerians are hungry, angry and poor. They have failed to fulfill any of their promises. Boko Haram and killer herdsmen are on the prowl, killing people on a daily basis. Nigerians are yearning for real change, a change that will not be selective and the Peoples Democratic Party will provide that.

For our people jostling to be governor in our party, a level playing field will be provided for all. However, I am solidly in support of the aspiration of my deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola and by Gods grace, he will succeed me as governor of Ekiti State, he said.

On the July 14, 2018 governorship election, Fayose urged the Independent National Electoral Commission and security agencies to be transparent and promised a resounding defeat of the APC.

In her remarks, Ekiti State First Lady, Mrs Feyisetan Fayose, described her husband as a promise keeper and lover of women.

She urged the people of the state to support the continuity agenda of her husband by voting in Prof, Olusola as the next governor of the state.

In her speech, Dr Mrs Joe Okei Odumakin, who was the guest speaker, said women should see themselves as the lubricant for growth in the society.

She lauded the Fayose administration for creating the enabling environment for women to actualise their potential.

Odumakin said this years theme of Press for Progress was to help bridge the gap between women and men especially in the economic front.

In his remarks, Prof. Olusola said whether in or out of office, Fayose would always remain a leader to follow.

He promised that he would continue with the great strides set by Fayose and that no ancient landmarks would be removed.

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Home | News | General | Just in: Deputy Senate president Ike Ekweremadu becomes professor, says politicians flooding Nigeria with weapons ahead of 2019

The deputy president of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, has again revealed that politicians are currently flooding the country with arms ahead of the 2019 as he warned that the citizens have no other place to run to if Nigeria is destroyed.

Ekweremadu made the revelation in the evening of Thursday, March 8, just when the governor of Ebonyi state, David Umahi, felicitated with him on his recent appointment as a visiting professor by a US-based university, Southern University, Baton Rouge Louisiana.

A statement by the governors spokesperson, Emmanuel Uzor, said Umahi sent his goodwill messge while reacting to the appointment of Ekweremadu as a full visiting professor by the American university.

He described the appointment as clear manifestation of scholarship, dedication to duty and hardwork adding that Senator Ekweremadu was a consummate scholar, a perfect politician and a gentleman whose passion for the enthronement of rule of law is total.

READ ALSO: Police parade kidnappers, cattle rustlers with exotic weapons, fake dollars

It is with great joy that I received the news of the appointment of one of our finest leaders in Igbo land, Senator Ike Ekweremadu as a full visiting professor by the prestigious Southern University, Baton Rouge Louisiana, United States of America.

For me, this appointment is a clear manifestation of his humane dedication to his passion which is ensuring rule of law.

No doubt, as a lawmaker of great standing, Ekweremadu has made significant landmarks in making beneficial laws for the entire nation and has mentored so many scholars through his journals on politics, law and economy.

He has been able to itemize those challenges that steer us in the face as a nation and proffered solutions to them.

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His appoint has once again demonstrated that Africa and indeed Nigeria and Igbo land still parade the best brains when it comes to academic excellence and on behalf of the patriotic citizens of Ebonyi state, I congratulate him on this well-deserved appointment.

Congratulations prof," the governor said.

NAIJ.com earlier reported that the Nigerian army declared that it is derogatory for Ike Ekweremadu to claim that the military can still take over the government of the country because its democracy was already receding.

Meet Hwande, Benue state's incoming 'saviour' - on NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | FG insists PPPRA, DPR will be scrapped

- The minister of state for petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu, dismisses fears that workers of the DPR and the PPPRA will be sacked

- He says the scrapping of both agencies will provide an opportunity for new persons to be employed into the new entity to be set up

- IMF applauds CBN, confirms Nigeria out of recession

The federal government has said the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory (PPPRA) will soon be scrapped.

The minister of state for petroleum resources, Ibe Kachikwu, made the disclosure on Thursday, March 8, when speaking at a round table on understanding the new petroleum industry regulator to be set up by the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB), organised by the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC) and the Media Initiative on Transparency in the Extractive Industry (MITEI).

Kachikwu however dismissed the fears that workers of the DPR and the PPPRA will be sacked. He said the workers will be assimilated into the new petroleum industry regulator to be set up by the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, Vanguard reports.

READ ALSO: Northern elders speak about adopting presidential candidate for 2019

The minister stated that scrapping of both agencies will provide an opportunity for new persons to be employed into the new entity to be set up, especially as new ideas are sought to fill in gaps that might exist in the company.

He said: At that time, it has not nothing to do with the minister, it is up to the management to retain their staff afterwards. You then have to make sure you actually meet up to task as far your job is concerned. That is how we dealt with the issue of labour.

After that, with the mandate that each institution would have for efficiency, people there have to work and display their performance in their jobs. But at the inception, the existing jobs would be there, but then people would then have to rise up to the occasion, because those Boards that would be in those entities would be mandated statutorily to ensure efficiency in the public interest. Therefore, from that point on, you do not have a job for life. You now have to be worth that salary, that money you are paid.

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He said what the PIGB has done is to establish a single regulatory authority.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed that Nigeria is out of recession and applauded the countrys strong recovery in foreign exchange reserves.

Leadership reports that this was contained in a report released on Wednesday, March 7, in Washington DC by its executive board after the conclusion of Article IV Consultation with Nigeria.

According to the report, the executive director of IMF applauded Nigerias implementation the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan. It however, warned that it was still susceptible to shock in spite of the economy being out of recession due to its fragility

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Home | News | General | 61st birthday: Accolades pour in Vice President across Nigeria

- Accolades continue to pour in all over the country for Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo

- Professor Osinbajo turns 61 today, March 8 and he has been celebrated all over the country

- One of those who joined in praising the vice president is renowned publisher, Mariam Mohammed

Renowned publisher and Public Relations expert, Mariam Mohammed, has joined other Nigerians to wish Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo a happy birthday.

In a statement sent to NAIJ.com Mohammed said: said I raise a toast to an amazing leader, academic and mentor without measure.

As a man of grace, you have demonstrated that the gift of God is not to be taken lightly, and for this, you have committed yourself to service and betterment of our country, and society.

Vice President Osinbajo received accolades across the nation today on his birthday. Photo credit: Kaduna state government

READ ALSO: Lovely photos of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo as he clocks 61

While extolling his good virtues, she added: I join millions of Nigerians, women and men of goodwill to wish the peoples Vice President and a godly man a Happy Birthday and urge you to continue to inspire with your dedication, zest and unflinching loyalty to God and country.

On her part, the official photographer to Osinbajo described her boss as an iconic leader.

The nation would never had asked for a better leader at this time, she tweeted.

On its part, the ruling All Progressives Congress recalled the role Osinbajo played after the formation of the party in 2013.

He was tasked alongside other notable party members to design and produce our partys manifesto, culminating in the presentation of the partys roadmap to a new Nigeria.

The highly-cerebral Osinbajo has endeared himself to the generality of Nigerians as a team player in the current administration and a very dependable ally of the president.

Osinbajo has been a key support base in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC administrations ongoing efforts to deliver on election promises made to Nigerians.

We wish him the very best in the years ahead in service to the party and nation, the party's national publicity secretary said in a statement sent to NAIJ.com.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has felicitated with Osinbajo, on the occasion of his 61st birthday, thanking him for being a loyal and dependable partner.

Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well-wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, to Nigeria, and to humanity, the president said.

READ ALSO: Tinubu hails Osinbajo at 61, says VP's position did not change his humility, commitment

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Home | News | General | APC is finally dead in Rivers - Governor Wike speaks about President Buharis proposed visit to state

- Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike says President Buhari's proposed visit to Rivers will never revive the opposition APC in the state

- Wike argues that it is on Jesus Christ who is known to have revived a dead thing in history

- The governor says he has not been officially briefed about the president's proposed visit

Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike of Rivers has declared that the proposed visit by President Muhammadu Buhari may be aimed at reviving the fortunes of the All Progressive Congress (APC) that is dead in the state.

A statement by Simeon Nwakaudu, his spokesperson, said Wike made the declaration when he flagged-off the reconstruction of Egbelu Street and the link roads in East-West in Rumuodara, Obio Akpor local government area on Thursday, March 8.

According to the governor, the federal government has not informed him of the president's visit and the reason behind his visit.

READ ALSO: APC has borrowed $11trn in 3 years - Melaye

"I hear they say that the president is coming to our state. I have not been told the president is coming and why he is coming. He has the right to come to any state.

"Maybe the president is coming to make sure that he will improve the fortunes of the APC that is dead in Rivers state.

"Apart from Jesus Christ, we don't know of anyone who has risen a dead thing. APC is a dead party in Rivers state. No matter how you fast and pray, it will never wake up," the governor said while charging Rivers people not to be bothered the politics or otherwise of the visit, because the state is very peaceful.

Let nobody bother him or herself that the President is coming for security reasons. We don't have security challenges in the state.

"We have never had herdsmen killings or crisis in the state, except when some criminals tried to disrupt the peace and they were checked. We resolved that challenge," he added.

Wike, in the statement obtained by NAIJ.com, stated that there is no state in this country where kidnappers and armed robbers are not operating. He said if President Muhammadu Buhari is visiting because of Kidnappers and Armed Robbers, then he should visit all the 36 states.

He, however, noted that as the state's that produces the wealth that supports the country, President is welcome to visit the wealth producers of the nation.

Since the administration has abandoned Rivers state for three years, this visit may be a blessing in disguise.

"The president may use the visit to complete the Port Harcourt International Airport, the neglected East West road, the neglected sea ports and the rejected Port Harcourt-Aba road," he said.

Concerning the road, Governor Wike said the chairman of the Rivers state council of traditional rulers, King Dandeson Jaja, drew his attention to the challenges faced by residents of the populated surburb.

The governor urged the people to cooperate with the contractors to ensure scheduled completion of the road.

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The commissioner of works, Dum Dekor said the seven roads will be completed in six months, while the project will offer employment to 230 youths.

The works commissioner noted that the road construction will also resolve the environmental challenges facing the residents.

The chairman of Obio/Akpor local government area caretaker committee, Prince Noble Amadi, praised the governor for key projects across the area, assuring him of total support in 2019.

NAIJ.com earlier quoted a report by Daily Trust as indicating that some PDP governors are not happy with the attitude of their Rivers state colleague, Nyesom Wike ahead of the 2019 general elections.

According to the report, the governors held a meeting on Sunday, March 4, at the Government House in Gombe, where they reportedly discussed the excessive powers being wielded by Governor Wike with a view to checkmating him.

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Home | News | General | CCT adjourns Saraki's trial indefinitely, to await Supreme Court's decision

- CCT has halted the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki

- Saraki had earlier approached Supreme Court to stop his trial at the CCT

- The CCT chairman, Danladi Umar, said the tribunal would await Supreme Court's decision in the case

The Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) Thursday, March 8, stopped further proceedings in the false assets declaration trial of Senate President, Bukola Saraki to await the decision of the Supreme Court in pending appeals relating to the case.

The Nation reports that the CCT Chairman, Danladi Umar, announced an indefinite adjournment in the trial, which was earlier scheduled for parties to adopt their final written addresses.

READ ALSO: I have done my best since I got to power in 2015 - Buhari

NAIJ.com gathered that the CCT had earlier ended the trial abruptly when on June 14, 2017; it upheld the no-case submission made by Saraki, to the effect that the prosecution was unable to establish its case against him.

Upon an appeal by the prosecution, the Court of Appeal, Abuja, in a judgment on December 12, 2017, partially set aside the CCTs decision on Sarakis no-case submission

The Court of Appeal upheld the CCTs decision in respect of 15 out of the 18 counts contained in the charge against Saraki, on the grounds that the prosecution failed to establish a prima facie case to warrant the defendant to be called to enter his defence in relation to the 15 counts.

In relation to the remaining three counts, the Court of Appeal held that the prosecution led sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case against Saraki, and ordered him to enter his defence on the three counts.

Saraki later appealed, at the Supreme Court, that portion of the Court of Appeal judgment ordering him to enter defence in relation to the three counts. He prayed the Supreme Court to restore the CCT decision, upholding his no-case submission.

The prosecution cross-appealed, at the Supreme Court, the portion of the Court of Appeal judgment which voided 15 of the 18 counts in the charge against Saraki. It urged the Supreme Court to restore all the 18 counts and order Saraki to enter defence in respect of all the counts.

Despite the appeals by parties, the CCT ordered the recommencement of Sarakis trial on February 6 this year, during which the Senate President called his only witness and closed his case, following which the tribunal adjourned to February 27 for the adoption of final written addresses.

The adoption failed to hold on February 27 because the defence, led by Kanu Agabi (SAN) prayed for time to file a response to the prosecutions final address, which he said was served on his team late. The tribunal the adjourned to February 7.

When parties got to the tribunal yesterday, Umar sought parties opinion on whether the tribunal could proceed with the trial in view of their appeals pending before the Supreme Court.

In reaction, lead prosecution lawyer, Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), objected to the postponement of proceedings in view of the position of the law today.

Citing Section of 306 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), Jacobs said the provision enjoins the court not to entertain any application for stay of proceedings in a criminal trial.

He noted that the Supreme Court has equally interpreted and upheld that provision of the ACJA in the case of Metuh and the federal republic of Nigeria.

Jacobs argued that Section 305 of the ACJA, which the tribunal Chairman referred to, had to do with reference of an issue to a higher court.

He noted that the appeals pending before the Supreme Court do not amount to referral.

Jacobs added: Assuming it has to do with reference, that section allows your lordship to go on.

He also drew the tribunals attention to a letter dated January 19, 2018, which Saraki wrote to the CCT asking for the trial to be suspended pending the determination of the appeals pending at the Supreme Court.

On the letter, Jacobs argued that since the defence chose to proceed with the trial by calling its only witness on February 6, it was too late in the day for them to pursue the prayers contained in their letter dated January 19 and sent to the CCT.

In a counter argument, Agabi noted that the question about the necessity of an adjournment pending the Supreme Courts decision on the appeals by parties was the initiative of the tribunal and not the defences.

Agabi noted that since both parties have pending appeals at the Supreme Court that relate to the trial, it was better to await the decision of the apex court on the matter.

He also said the Supreme Court had on Wednesday invited parties to appear for the hearing of the appeals next Thursday, March 15.

Agabi siad: We must be mindful of the dignity of the Supreme Court.

On why the defence, chose to proceed on February 6 rather that pursue its earlier request for the suspension of the trial pending the Supreme Courts decision, Agabi said: You (the tribunal) summoned us here and we came here. Since you said we should proceed we proceeded.

Agabi stressed the need to halt further proceedings in the trial in order not to jeopardise the appeals before the Supreme Court.

He added: A right of appeal ought not to be unduly fettered.

Ruling, Umar noted that each of the parties has an appeal pending before the Supreme Court in relation to the trial.

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The CCT Chair in view of the right to fair hearing and the right of appeal, from lower court to appellate court, there was the need for the tribunal to tarry awhile so that the integrity of the Supreme Court will not be played with.

He subsequently adjourned to await the outcome of the pending appeals at the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had previously reported that the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Danladi Umar, has been barred by the Court of Appeal from the trial of a former comptroller general of customs (NCS), Rasheed Owolabi, who accused him of N10m bribe.

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Home | News | General | Just in: Nigerian army reacts to Ekweremadus claim that the military still has capacity to scuttle Nigerias democracy

The Nigerian army has declared that it is derogatory for the deputy president of the senate, Ike Ekweremadu, to claim that the military can still take over the government of the country because its democracy was already receding.

The army, in a statement by Brigadier-General JA Agim, acting director of defence information, said the statement was derogatory to the entire military countrys armed forces.

Read the full statement below:

1.The defence headquarters wish to respond to a comment by the deputy president of the Senate, Distinguished Senator Ike Ekweremadu, on Wednesday, 7 March 2018, regarding the Nigerian military, while contributing to a debate on a motion sponsored by Senator Ahmed Ogembe, representing Kogi Central. In his comments among others, the distinguished deputy president of the Senate stated: The problem in Nigeria is that our democracy is receding. Who says army cannot take over, let us not joke with our democracy that is the issue.

2.This statement may appear cautionary and sincere in the atmosphere of discourse, it is however derogatory to the army used in the expression and by extension to the armed forces of Nigeria. The statement in the true sense has the capacity to denigrate the Nigerian military in every ramification including its loyalty to the president and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and the confidence of the general public to defend Nigerias democracy. In the light of this; the defence headquarters wish to state clearly that, the Nigerian military has come of age and is in tune with best international military practices of complete and total subordination to democratic governance.

READ ALSO: Northern elders speak about adopting presidential candidate for 2019

3. In this regard, it is worthy to remind the general public about some key measures among others that guaranteed the present sustainable status of politically unambitious members of the armed forces:

a. Shortly, after the transition from a military to a democratically elected government in 1999, officers of the armed forces of Nigeria, who were quasi-political, were honourably eased out of service. This was done to avoid indoctrination of other officers in the military in order to enable the democratic government commence a re-professionalisation process of the armed forces. The process commenced in collaboration with international organisations such as the United States armed forces and the British military. By 2009, from the basic military training institutions through units and formation reorientation programmes to top management workshops and seminars for the military, it became clear that the armed forces of Nigeria has been re-professionalised to be totally subordinate to political leadership and democracy in the country.

b. In addition, the Nigerian military began to take the lead at ensuring that the West African sub region is stable democratically through military diplomacy and physical actions where it is highly desirable and supported by ECOWAS. The case of the Gambia last year is still fresh in our memories, where democracy was enforced by an ECOWAS military coalition led by the armed forces of Nigeria, under the focused and able leadership of Nigerias Chief of Defence Staff, General AG Olonisakin (NAM).

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c. Furthermore, the present crop of personnel in the armed forces of Nigeria right from the service chiefs to the men; are made up of the balance of re-professionalised officers and fresh intakes from 1999, who do not nurse political ambitions. They are fully committed to their oaths of allegiance to serve their fatherland Nigeria, with total submission to our democratic government.

4. Defence headquarters hereby assures the international community, Nigerias democratic institutions and the general public, of its unalloyed loyalty to the president and Commander-in-Chief, provision of all necessary support for the sustenance of our democracy and carrying out our constitutional roles. Therefore, the apprehension by the deputy president of the Senate should be totally disregarded.

5. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

NAIJ.com earlier reported that Ike Ekweremadu stated that it is not unlikely for the military to take over, as he noted that the nations democracy is receding.

Ekweremadu made his comment in reaction to a motion sponsored by Ahmed Ogembe, the senator representing Kogi Central.

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Home | News | General | My wish is for Nigeria to be greater and experience true peace - Osinbajo

- Yemi Osinbajo expresses gratitude to God for preserving his life

- Staff members in the office of the vice president gives Osinbajo a surprise 61st birthday treat

- Buhari congratulates Osinbajo at 61, thanks him for being loyal, dependable partner

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday, March 8, prayed for sustained peace, joy and prosperity in the country.

Osinbajo made the prayer when speaking in a short interview, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

Staff members in the office of the vice president on Thursday evening also gave Osinbajo a surprise 61st birthday treat.

My wish for Nigeria is that our country will be greater and greater, that it will prosper and that we will experience true peace and true joy, the vice president said in a short interview.

READ ALSO: Northern elders speak about adopting presidential candidate for 2019

I am grateful to God for preserving my life; I am just excited to be one year older.

I think we are gradually entering into that class who are called senior citizens and in some way it places some greater responsibility on you as an individual.

But I am immensely grateful to God and thank everyone for the surprise, Osinbajo said.

The vice president also thanked the young men, women and children gathered for the event and prayed that those who are not 60 will be 60 and beyond it.

The secretary to the government of the federation, Boss Mustapha, who supervised the cutting of the birthday cake by the celebrator, prayed that God would continue to protect the vice president.

Our prayer is that God will continue to watch over you, fill you with wisdom and understanding and that at every point in time as you counsel with the president he will depend on you for insight into the affairs of this country.

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For those of us that are working closely with you, we will receive direction and move this country forward and to greater heights, Mustapha said.

He described Osinbajo as a very pleasant man by his disposition and action.

I worked with him closely during the campaigns in my position as Director, Contact and Mobilisation (of APC) and we structured the town hall meetings.

That was the time he showed the kind of man that he was made of and he did very well.

That was the dimension of the kind of campaigns that helped us to sell our manifesto and message of change, he said.

Also speaking, the Senior Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters (Senate) to the President, Ita Enang, thanked God for keeping the vice president strong and vibrant.

I have learnt humility, dedication to service and Gods grace upon his life.

In spite of the grace, he is still humble and serving the country with all his heart and loyalty to the government and absolute great feelings for the welfare of Nigerians, Enang stated.

In attendance at the brief ceremony were the Ministers of Water Resources, Mr Suleiman Adamu; Budget and National Planning, Mr Udo Udoma; Minister of State (Petroleum), Dr Ibe Kachikwu and Dr Maryam Uwais, a presidential aide on Social Investments.

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has felicitated with the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, on the occasion of his 61st birthday, thanking him for being a loyal and dependable partner.

President Buhari sent his congratulatory message to the vice president via his Twitter handle, @mbuhari.

He tweeted: "Happy 61st Birthday, @ProfOsinbajo. Thank you for being a loyal and dependable partner on this journey. I join millions of your friends and well-wishers around the world to wish you many more years of service to God, to Nigeria, and to humanity."

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Home | News | General | Womens Day: Ex-MBGN takes free cervical cancer screening to rural mothers

By Luminous Jannamike

ABUJA  As part of activities to mark this years International Womens Day, the Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria (MBGN) 2012, Isabella Agbor Ayuk, on Thursday, organised community sensitisation, free cervical cancer screening and treatment for women in Ushafa community, Bwari Area Council of the FCT.

Isabella Agbor Ayuk and the women beneficiaries of free cervical screening

The programme, which also featured capacity building exercise for primary healthcare workers in the community on early detection and treatment of the ailment, had about 200 rural women benefiting from the medical outreach.

In a chat with journalists at the Ushafa Primary Healthcare Centre, where the outreach took place, Ayuk expressed concern over the low-level of awareness, on the part of women, on the need to go for regular screening for early detection of the disease.

Isabella Agbor Ayuk and the women beneficiaries of free cervical screening

She noted that limited human and financial resources, uninformed and disempowered female population, poverty, and poorly developed health care centres were some of the reasons responsible for the high rate of deaths among women in the country due to cervical cancer.

According to her, in Nigeria, it is reported that over 30 million women of reproductive age are at risk of developing cervical cancer with an estimated 10,000 deaths annually.

Cervical screening helps diagnose the disease at an early pre-cancerous stage so that necessary measures can be applied to ensure the ailment does not develop. So, the essence of screening tests conducted on these women is to identify pre-cancerous changes in the cells of the cervix that could develop into cancer. I believe that with successful cervical cancer screening, we can bring down the scary number of deaths linked to the disease.

Also speaking, Dr. ChimaIjem Ikekeonwu of the National Hospital Abuja, who superintended the medical outreach on behalf of the Isabella Ayuk Foundation, said some of the symptoms of cervical cancer include abnormal bleeding per vagina after sex, copious watery foul-smelling vaginal discharge, and pelvic swelling or mass pain.

Others, according to him, include bleeding after menopause, increased vaginal discharge, pelvic pain and pain during sexual intercourse.

Dr. Ikekeonwu further explained that the implementation of organised population-based cancer screening programmes will reduce the great burden of the terminal disease that Nigeria currently bears.

He advocated a realistic approach to screening of the ailment in line with the recommendation of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

He said, Cervical cancer is one of the most common types of cancer of the female reproductive system. It is a disease in which cells of the cervix, the lower part of the uterus and the adjoining vagina become cancerous or malignant.

It is usually a slow-growing kind of cancer that may not present initial symptoms, but can be detected with regular screening by Pap tests (a procedure in which cells are scraped from the cervix and viewed under a microscope) and detection of Human Papillioma Virus (HPV).

Speaking on behalf of the beneficiaries, Mrs. Godiya Goji expressed their appreciation and urged more women to take advantage of the opportunity of the free medical outreach to present themselves for screening.

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Home | News | General | Coup: We no longer have officers with political ambition, DHQ tells Ekweremadu

*Apprehension by DSP should be totally disregarded,it urges Nigerians

*Reiterates total subornation to civil authorities

By Joseph Erunke

ABUJA  THE Nigerian Military authorities said Thursday, that contrary to cautionary advice of the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu during Wednesdays Senate plenary that the military could still stage coup in the face of receding democratic practice in the country, there was no such contemplation from any quarter.

Sen. Ekweremadu

To this end, it urged Nigerians to disregard the apprehension raised by the Deputy Senate President in its entirety.

The Defence Headquarters, DHQ,which said this in a statement,through its spokesman,Brigadier General John Agim,said present men and officers in the Nigerian Military were thorough professionals with no ambition in politics whatsoever.

The DHQ said the statement of Senator Ekweremadu even as it appeared cautionary and sincere in the atmosphere of discoursewas however derogatory to the Army used in the expression and by extension to the Armed Forces of Nigeria.

While reiterating that the military was in complete and total subordination to democratic governance,the DHQ said:Shortly, after the transition from a military to a democratically elected government in 1999, officers of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, who were quasi-political, were honourably eased out of service.

 This was done to avoid indoctrination of other officers in the Military in order to enable the democratic government commence a re-professionalisation process of the Armed Forces,it explained.

It added: By 2009, from the basic military training institutions through units and formation reorientation programmes to top management workshops and seminars for the military, it became clear that the Armed Forces of Nigeria has been re-professionalised to be totally subordinate to political leadership and democracy in the Country.

Furthermore, the present crop of personnel in the Armed Forces of Nigeria right from the Service Chiefs to the men; are made up of the balance of re-professionalised officers and fresh intakes from 1999, who do not nurse political ambitions. They are fully committed to their oaths of allegiance to serve their fatherland Nigeria, with total submission to our democratic government.

The full statement as released by the Defence Headquarters read thus:

The Defence Headquarters wish to respond to a comment by the Deputy President of the Senate, Distinguished Senator Ike Ekweremadu on Wednesday 7 March 2018, regarding the Nigerian Military, while contributing to a debate on a motion sponsored by Senator Ahmed Ogembe, representing Kogi Central.

 In his comments among others, the Distinguished Deputy President of the Senate stated The Problem in Nigeria is that our democracy is receding. Who says army cannot take over, let us not joke with our democracy that is the issue.

This statement may appear cautionary and sincere in the atmosphere of discourse, it is however derogatory to the Army used in the expression and by extension to the Armed Forces of Nigeria.

The statement in the true sense has the capacity to denigrate the Nigerian Military in every ramification including its loyalty to the President Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and the confidence of the general public to defend Nigerias democracy.

In the light of this; the Defence Headquarters wish to state clearly that, the Nigerian Military has come of age and is in tune with best international military practices of complete and total subordination to democratic governance.

In this regard, it is worthy to remind the general public about some key measures among others that guaranteed the present sustainable status of politically unambitious members of the Armed Forces:

Shortly, after the transition from a military to a democratically elected government in 1999, officers of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, who were quasi-political, were honourably eased out of service. This was done to avoid indoctrination of other officers in the Military in order to enable the democratic government commence a re-professionalisation process of the Armed Forces.

The process commenced in collaboration with international organisations such as the United States Armed Forces and the British Military.

 By 2009, from the basic military training institutions through units and formation reorientation programmes to top management workshops and seminars for the military, it became clear that the Armed Forces of Nigeria has been re-professionalised to be totally subordinate to political leadership and democracy in the Country.

In addition, the Nigerian Military began to take the lead at ensuring that the West African Sub Region is stable democratically through military diplomacy and physical actions where it is highly desirable and supported by ECOWAS. The case of the Gambia last year is still fresh in our memories, where democracy was enforced by an ECOWAS Military Coalition led by the Armed Forces of Nigeria, under the focused and abled leadership of Nigerias Chief of Defence Staff, General AG Olonisakin (NAM).

Furthermore, the present crop of personnel in the Armed Forces of Nigeria right from the Service Chiefs to the men; are made up of the balance of re-professionalised officers and fresh intakes from 1999, who do not nurse political ambitions. They are fully committed to their oaths of allegiance to serve their fatherland Nigeria, with total submission to our democratic government.

Defence Headquarters hereby assures the international community, Nigerias democratic institutions and the general public, of its unalloyed loyalty to the President Commander in Chief, provision of all necessary support for the sustenance of our democracy and carrying out our constitutional roles.

 Therefore, the apprehension by the Deputy President of the Senate should be totally disregarded.

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Home | World | Africa | Bulawayo councillors accused of stifling investment

Bulawayo Provincial Affairs minister Angeline Masuku has accused city councillors of stifling investment through red tape.

Masuku made the allegations, while officiating at a streetlights handover ceremony in Bulawayo on Tuesday.

Streetlights installed along George Silunduka Avenue and 6th Avenue were donated by local taxi operators under the Express Private Car Commuter Services (Expriccos).

"The councillors, who are here should take the message to council. I am disappointed because what the investors are saying is very bad. The investors just told me that it is not easy doing business in council areas, as they are being referred from one office to the other, when they want to do business," she said.

Masuku also claimed that a lot of projects in the city have failed to take off due to bureaucracy at the MDC-T-run council.

"Many projects should have commenced as way back as 2012, but up to now, nothing tangible has been done. I once talked to the mayor [Martin Moyo] about the issue and blame was put on higher offices," she said.

Masuku said that the city needs investors, who can revive industry.

"We should try to make it easy and possible for those who want to come and help us in reviving the city's and let us not shut investors out," she said.

Masuku also commended Expricoss for rehabilitating the street lights.

Expriccos chairperson, Mpikelelo Khumalo said the association restored the streetlights after realising that many of their clients were being robbed during the night because of poor street lighting.

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Home | World | Africa | Presidential powers challenge hearing today

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has now taken over litigation in which his predecessor, Robert Mugabe had been taken to court by activist, Mfundo Mlilo, who is challenging the gazetted Statutory Instrument (SI) 117/2017, which amended the Electoral Act, giving the Head of State powers to override decisions made by Parliament or make a law that overrides the existing legislation.

Mlilo's Constitutional Court application came about after Mugabe, on September 15, 2017, through the Government Gazette extraordinary volume XCV number 61, published the Presidential Powers (Temporal Measures) Amendment of the Electoral Act Regulations as SI 117/2017.

Through his lawyer, Tendai Biti, Mlilo said Mugabe's move was in breach of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

"In any event, the President, acting in terms of the Act or any other law does not have the power to override Parliament, through a parliamentary amendment or the making of a law that overrides existing law," Mlilo said.

"Accordingly, to the extent that the respondent (Mugabe) has purported to make a law, being the Presidential Powers (Temporal Measures) (Amendment of Electoral Act) Regulations, we seek that the same be declared null and void and of no force and effect."

However, in response to the litigation, Mnangagwa, through the Civil Division of the Attorney-General's (AG) Office, said the President enjoyed those powers and the situation was not peculiar to Zimbabwe.

"The presidential prerogative is a power that attaches to the President by virtue of his office. It is historically derived from the monarch of the United Kingdom. Under the common law, respondent (President) has always enjoyed prerogative powers which entitle him to promulgate temporary legislation in urgent situations," the AG said.

"The contents of such legislation have been codified under the provisions of the Presidential Powers Act. The respondent's prerogative powers that he has always enjoyed under the common law have not been abolished under the Constitution. If anything, section 110 to 113 are some of the sections that provide for some, but not all, of the President's prerogative powers.

"In Britain, the analogous royal prerogative has been overtaken by the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004. In other countries, it is expressed in the legislative sphere  such powers are not peculiar to Zimbabwe, and are derived historically from the status of Zimbabwe as a colony of the United Kingdom," the AG said, adding: "The new Constitution does not abolish the prerogative power of the President although it no longer mentions that power specifically."

The matter is set to be heard today before High Court judge, Justice David Mangota.

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Home | World | Africa | Econet partners Shaw Academy for educational solutions

ECONET Wireless has partnered with a global online educator, Shaw Academy, to provide educational solutions that enhance quality, affordability and accessibility within Africa.

In a statement, Econet recognised Shaw Academy as the world's largest interactive online classroom providing courses on a range of subjects allowing students to be in an online classroom with their peers in other countries.

The courses carry a diploma accredited by the European Qualifications Framework, said Econet.

"We are passionate about overcoming the barriers to quality, affordable education across Africa by leveraging online learning platforms such as Shaw Academy," head Econet education unit, Tendai Mashingaidze was quoted as saying.

"Given the broad variety of lifestyle and business courses that Shaw Academy provides, we noted an opportunity to provide accredited online opportunities to Africans between 15 to 55 years of age at a very affordable fee."

According to Econet Education, the partnership reaffirms commitment to empowering Africans across the content with credible and affordable technological education solutions.

The recent partnership with the Dublin-based online learning giant, Shaw Academy, sees Econet Education establishing a mutually beneficial relationship to exclusively market their highly sought after online educational courses, across the continent, said Econet.

Econet has already launched Ruzivo, which is an innovative interactive digital learning platform that offers locally developed educational content online, including interactive lessons, exercises and tests.

"This partnership demonstrates the ambition Econet Education and Shaw Academy have to transform hundreds of thousands of lives across Africa.

Our mission is to develop high quality education that is affordable and accessible to all. By working with Econet we can do this at scale and in an innovative fashion," said John White, chief strategy officer at Shaw Academy.

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Home | World | Africa | Beitbridge-Harare highway dualisation takes shape

Officials from Geiger International, the company contracted for the dualisation of the Beitbridge - Masvingo - Harare highway are now on the ground identifying sites to set up bases, with machinery for the road construction expected in the country anytime from now.

The highway has earned itself a bad name over the past few years due to its bad state.

It is often referred to as the pencil thin highway of death.

With officials from Geiger International now on the ground putting logistics in place, it is relief for most of the road users that finally the dualisation of the road is about to commence.

A team led by Dr Cuthbert Mashanda, Geiger International Zimbabwe representative, was in Masvingo to inspect sites where they will set up their sub camps for construction activities.

"As soon as we finalise this process in the next couple of weeks, you will see some serious movement with equipment moving into the country. The bulk of it has already arrived in South Africa," said Dr Mashanda.

Detailed topography surveys are also expected to be done in the coming few weeks.

Dr Mashanda re-affirmed the government's announcement that 40% of the road work will be reserved for local companies.

The road will be constructed at a total cost of US$987 million.

The officials said there is a proposed flyover or interchange at the Bulawayo-Masvingo turn off and the realignment work for the road has already been done.

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Home | World | Africa | Mugabe-backed political outfit 'not a threat to Mnangagwa's rule'

Zimbabwe's recently formed political party, the National Patriotic Front (NPF), is not likely to threaten President Emmerson Mnangagwa's rule, an analyst has said.

In an interview with News24, Derek Matyszak, who is a political and security consultant, said that the newly formed political outfit was just a project by former president Robert Mugabe's allies, and it was highly unlikely that it would pose any serious threat to Mnangagwa's government.

A former army brigadier, Ambrose Mutinhiri, who quit Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party to protest the removal of former leader Robert Mugabe, was last week reported to be the leader of the new political party.

State media said that Mutinhiri, a veteran of the 1970s war against white minority, had Mugabe's backing.

Mutinhiri's resigned from parliament recently, citing the military intervention that pressured 94-year-old Mugabe into stepping down in November as his reason for cutting ties with the ruling Zanu-PF party.

But according to Matyszak, although the party boasted having Mugabe's support, it was "wishful thinking" to believe that it had the "gravitas to challenge the ruling Zanu-PF party".

Matyszak said that the NPF was a "project aimed at taking over and continuing with Mugabe's legacy".

"They seem to be alarmed by Mnangagwa's rule... It remains unclear how Mugabe is going to play a role in this new party... I don't see them mounting any significant challenge against the ruling party," said Matyszak.

Mugabe recently criticised president Mnangagwa and demanded an apology over his ousting.

During a private party at his Harare mansion to celebrate his 94th birthday, the nonagenarian said Mnangagwa and his allies should apologise for last year's military operation that ousted him from power  and he doesn't think Zanu-PF will win this year's polls.

But Matyszak said that it was "hypocritical" of Mugabe to demand an apology from his successor.

"It's hypocritical for him to demand an apology from the president after he oversaw the most brutal regime under the Zanu-PF banner for years. I don't think it is right for him to complain about the trampling of democracy and constitution after the atrocities carried out by his regime particularly in 2008," said Matyszak.

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Not a Fair Fight

Viruses Dont Play By Our Rules, Says MacPhail

Photo: Chia-Chi Charlie Chang

Those who dont learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or so the saying goes. So what can past worldwide pandemics teach us about future deadly outbreaks and the systems weve developed to combat them? Dr. Theresa MacPhail, a medical anthropologist who lived in China just after a deadly virus struck there, visited NIH recently to share her insights into the Evolution of Viral Networks: H1N1, Ebola and Zika.

Outbreaks are about more than just biology and epidemiology, she said. Our responses to outbreaks are conditioned by what we know about past outbreaks. They rely upon institutions and structures put in place as a result of prior outbreaks and are often as much about politics and economic constraints as they are about science.

MacPhail moved to Hong Kong in 2003, just as 37 countries around the world were recovering from severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which originally broke out in south China and killed nearly 800 people. Before the pandemic was contained, more than 8,000 cases had been reported globally. Two years later, when bird flu erupted, the governments response was swift and unforgiving, MacPhail said. SARS was a dramatic event in China and colored the public health response to everything that followed it.

MacPhails lecture was the keynote of Viral Networks: An Advanced Workshop in Digital Humanities and Medical History, sponsored jointly by the National Library of Medicine and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). NEH and NIH recently extended their 6-year-old collaboration with a new memo of understanding through 2021.

Photo: Library of Congress

Ive recognized through time that humanities have much to offer us as we bring a scientific and engineering approach to thinking about that which can only be experienced by humans, noted NLM director Dr. Patricia Flatley Brennan, in opening remarks.

Delivering her lecture, coincidentally 100 years to the day of the start of the killer 1918 influenza pandemic, MacPhail, assistant professor of science and technology studies at Stevens Institute of Technology, said, SARS had proven we needed a more robust international response systemWhat bird flu proved was that we needed a more robust surveillance system. The global community couldnt afford to be taken by surprise if another highly infectious pathogen were to emerge.

Photo: Chia-Chi Charlie Chang

By 2009, when a novel strain of H1N1 influenza broke out in Mexico, an international public health response systema so-called viral networkwas experience- informed and ready for the world stage, MacPhail said. Given lessons from SARS and bird flu, would the system master the challenges presented by a fast-moving, mostly unpredictable infection?

MacPhail defines a viral network as any group of people, institutions, technologies and other living and non-living thingslike virusesthat are interconnected in order to produce information or knowledge. The network exists to create, revise and transmit information to get everyone on the same page. Thats its whole function. And that function is critical to us being able to actThe viral network is a super-organism that relies upon its individual parts and yet is able to transcend them.

MacPhails lecture pitted the viral networks 2009 performanceshe wrote a widely regarded book, The Viral Network: A Pathography of the H1N1 Pandemic, about itagainst two more recent pandemics: the 2014-2015 Ebola crisis and the 2015 Zika outbreak.

She focused on three aspects of the viral networklab work, surveillance and information-sharing/coordination systems.

We have to think about outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics holistically, she said. We have to look at everythinghistory, politics, economics, biology, cultureall at once in order to understand not only what happened, but also what is happening and what is likely to happen in the future.

Had 2009 lessons produced any changes in the network? MacPhail asked. Had the virus that is global health adapted, mutated or evolved to be better able to respond to large-scale highly transmissible infectious diseases?

The reviews were somewhat mixed.

Lab science forms the core of the entire super-organism that is global health, argued MacPhail, who in 2009 worked in the global disease detection unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and witnessed the culture of pathologists and epidemiologists first-hand in real time as H1N1 occurred.

Photo: Chia-Chi Charlie Chang

The genetic sequencing of H1N1 was a watershed event, she reported. It was to date the fastest, most transparent production of phylogenetic information on any new virus that has ever taken place. Laboratories around the globe worked together pretty seamlessly to produce quality informationthe viral network at its best.

Labs remain the most adaptable segment of the global health system, she said. But, lab capacity is always a problem during any outbreak of infectious disease, no matter where you are. Because of this, strengthening lab capacity has been a key focus of pandemic planning.

Unlike the big-city emergence of H1N1 in Mexico, the first cases of Ebola occurred, in late 2013, in impoverished rural areas and initially were missed by the network. It wasnt until May 2014 that a sentinel lab in Kinshasa, central Africa, sounded an alarm. A case reported in Sierra Leone in March had been ignored.

Sporadic cases of Ebola are normal for certain locations, so no red flags were triggered by the first cases, MacPhail explained. Thats the real issue herethe viral network doesnt reach everywhereClearly there are many gaps in our surveillance and lab capabilities.

Photo: Chia-Chi Charlie Chang

Ebola, capitalizing on these system vulnerabilities, was able to get a foothold, she pointed out. For Zika, labs were deemed generally successful; however, political realitiesthe virus affected pregnant women and infantsintruded on surveillance and coordination efforts. Again, the infection largely won.

Public health in all its forms is constantly focused on its past, MacPhail said. It tries to learn from its history but in doing so it often repeats the same mistakes.

Having data and circulating it widely is not the same as having knowledge, she explained. Context is crucial, and that comes only from seasoned, expert analysts, who often are in short supply.

MacPhail said the narrative is the same for H1N1, Ebola, Zikaand in many ways for todays H3N2 flu outbreak, which is swiftly showing itself to be the worst influenza epidemic in recent history.

Were bad at predicting because pathogens are great at surprises, she said. They pop up in weird places, at weird times and seem harmlessand we cant care about everything. Our resources are limited. Global health makes choices about what to prioritize.

Without more resources, surveillance capacity and expertise, MacPhail said, we wont see the next thing coming either.

Reviewing how each pandemic played out, she made valuable observations: Chiefly, the network is not flexible enough to adapt quickly to ever-changing pathogens and conditions, and past information often can hinder as well as help in real-time crises.

Viruses do not play by our rules, she concluded. They confound our expectations and force us to become like them in order to effectively battle them. The global viral network needs to keep evolving but clearly we need to start rethinking about how we do that.

MacPhails lecture is archived online at https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=26977&bhcp=1.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution that threatens to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan and to take "all appropriate measures" against those blocking peace efforts.

The draft text obtained by AFP demands an end to four years of fighting in South Sudan and urges the warring sides to uphold three ceasefire deals agreed since July 2016.

The council "expresses its intention to consider all appropriate measures, including an arms embargo, to disable the parties' ability to procure weapons and ammunition so that the peace process can proceed," said the draft resolution.

Diplomats said Russia and China are likely to raise objections to the draft, which takes a tough line on punishing those who refuse to end the war, now in its fifth year.

Negotiations are to begin Thursday on the proposed measure ahead of a vote at the council scheduled for March 15.

The African Union has backed sanctions as a way to pressure the sides to end the war in South Sudan but it has not endorsed an arms embargo.

The United States failed in late 2016 to garner enough support for a ban on weapons sales to South Sudan but is again making the case for an embargo as fighting continues.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley told a council meeting in January that a ban on weaponry would "actually help the people of South Sudan -- to slow the violence, slow the flow of arms and ammunitions and protect innocent lives."

- Last chance for peace -

The war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted nearly four million -- roughly a third of the population -- and raised the risk of famine.

Ethiopia is leading a regional peace effort for South Sudan, hosting talks that have yet to produce a breakthrough.

That diplomatic effort has been billed as a last chance for peace as frustration grows over the ongoing war that has seen horrific levels of brutality.

Addressing a recent AU summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dropped his usual reluctance to criticize leaders and said he "had never seen a political elite with so little interest in the well-being of its own people."

Story continues

The draft resolution would also renew the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in South Sudan for a year, maintain a regional force in Juba and request that the blue helmets be fully-equipped with tactical helicopters and drones to help them carry out their mission.

The United Nations has 12,500 troops and 1,500 police in its UNMISS mission.

The draft urges Guterres to ensure the mission is at full strength, reaching its authorized ceiling of 17,000 troops and 2,000 police.

It calls on Juba to sign an agreement with the African Union to allow the establishment of a hybrid court in South Sudan to try those responsible for serious crimes.

South Sudan descended into war in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup.
Nobody needs that much in child support tbh

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especially considering the boys are with Britney 99% of the time

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I do! I have a puppy! She needs it

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I think the idea is that when the kids are with the "poorer" parent they have the same standard of living, because what kid would ever want to go hang out with the "poorer" parent if they get alot of stuff from the rich one.





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eeeem, a normal loving kid?

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I have a friend who grew up like this. He literally lived in a trailer with his mom during the school year and took a Greyhound bus to Texas to visit his dad, live in a mansion, and drive a Porshe all summer.





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lol this hillbilly-lookin' parasite



I don't know how often he even parents these two kids but apparently he sometimes doesn't have them for weeks at a time because they're on tour with her

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Tag, no. 6 kids, yes.



2 from Shari, 2 from Britney, and 2 from current(?) wife Victoria.



That's also bullshit that he has any chance of getting increased child support because there's no way he's not using any of that money to support his current household of wife, 2 kids, and other 2 kids during visitations ugh.

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No. Also, lol at the fact that he needs more child support b/c he's with the kids less often now. this backwards thinking.

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Maybe he should release another album!

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yup. another album nobody will buy. or since it's today....stream.

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Po po zao!

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Just stop.

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"Britney will not be involved in the legal discussions because of her conservatorship." dang, surprised that she's still under that considering it's been so long. hope Britney doesn't have to give any extra coins to Kfed, I'm sure that $20k for two kids is way more than enough...

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LOL She's not coming out from under that until all of those lawsuits get settled.

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I thought she already WAS out of the personal one hmmm

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Yeah that surprised me too but then I thought maybe she wants to keep it that way? As long as she has people she trusts on her side (not sure if her dad is skeezy or not but she's been super successful recently so he can't be all bad?) to fight for her rights then maybe she doesn't want anything to do with the financial shit.

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fuck that, he gets enough.



the kids are 11 and 12 KFed. your dumbass better make some smart investment choices because that child support ends the moment their both 18 (right?). then whatchu gonna do? ask the judge to give you more because you couldn't manage your finances so Britney still owes you?



fucken leeches.

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That why hes doing it. He knows hes got less than 7 years & none of his other baby mamas are worth much. He needs more money so he can support his youngest.



Also, his child support can be reduced once the 12 year old turns 18, then it should be completely done when the 11 year old turns 18.

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But if the boys are with her most of the time, why would there be a need to increase the amount he gets? Clearly I don't understand how child support works.

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Is she has primary custody wouldn't be owe her???

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Not if she were the primary breadwinner which she is? It's based on income, isn't it? It's supposed to be equal to what the kids are used to when they are with the other parent. But she has them most of the time.

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madre carmen, love yourself!

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lmao i remember on ONTD back during the Kfed and Britney glory days there'd always be at least one of these comments, usually paired with that gif of his dick jiggling around in sweatpants while walking

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Look, that gif did things to fifteen year old me

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same, but i have incredibly low self esteem

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Why am I having deja vu? Do you say this on the regular, sis? iamconfusion.gif

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what a scum bag. $240k a year and you need more?! fuck outta here you leech.

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I obviously can't do math while I'm on cold meds because I thought he was getting 2.4 million a year, lol

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do not feel bad, i had to use a calculator lmao

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If the kids are with her most of the time, an increase in child support is laughable. But he's always looked at Britney as nothing but a bank from jump so I shouldn't be surprised that his pathetic ass would ask for it.

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he's gone above and beyond what most people do because he's cool with seeing them less? this literally sounds like nothing but trying to blackmail her into paying him more to do less and avoid him making a fuss about the custody arrangement

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bingo.



he reminds me of my brother in-law who is using this to blackmail my sister/parents into financially supporting him so he doesn't take her to court and mess up any arrangement with my nephews. both KFed and him can choke.

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it's always men who seem like they would be cool with being nothing more than birthday and holiday dads so long as they're getting a steady source of income 

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mte. I mean what does "Kevin believes Britney's success in Las Vegas has come from having her boys with her" have to do with anything other than "the kids are an emotional support, if you wanna have them with you all the time pay me more".

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Enough with this fucking keeper, get a fucking job, asshole.

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this was my mom's favorite fairytale. not for pervy reasons but cause of the dresses she gets in the nutshells.

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Trump dating site used a convicted child sex offender on its home page https://t.co/Dg3LkqXYv7 pic.twitter.com/jOB5xuP6v8  The Independent (@Independent) February 21, 2018





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yuck

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of course it did

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cute cute cute

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They also put one in the white house soo

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NOT surprising.

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Not at all shocking

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cuz of course it would.



Wow Trumpanzees really cry about safe spaces, yet create their own. lol.





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You got: You're 85% dead inside



You're pretty dead inside, but there's a small corner of your soul that's a soft shade of pink.

You pretend to be hardcore and emotionless at all times, but you always cry at Pixar movies  they're your kryptonite.



https://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahwainschel/design-a-completely-pink-house-and-well-reveal-how-dead?bfsource=bbf_enus&utm_term=.jwJ3egGEL#.vmbrqL84P : You're 85% dead insideYou're pretty dead inside, but there's a small corner of your soul that's a soft shade of pink.You pretend to be hardcore and emotionless at all times, but you always cry at Pixar movies  they're your kryptonite.

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You got: You're completely dead inside

Your house may be pink, but your soul is pitch black.



Accurate.

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You got: You're 25% dead inside



You're pretty positive and enjoy life in general, but as soon as someone starts walking all over your freshly vacuumed, pink carpet with their dirty shoes, the dark recesses of your soul start to show.



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You're 25% dead inside

You're pretty positive and enjoy life in general, but as soon as someone starts walking all over your freshly vacuumed, pink carpet with their dirty shoes, the dark recesses of your soul start to show.



"You're pretty positive and enjoy life in general" yeah nah

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You got: You're 50% dead inside

Half of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.

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You got: You're completely dead inside

Your house may be pink, but your soul is pitch black.



this accuracy

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Half of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.



You got: You're 50% dead insideHalf of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.

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well your* room at home is pink, makes sense





istg if u make fun of me again...



Edited at 2018-03-07 06:11 pm (UTC)

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You got: You're 50% dead inside

Half of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.



This is fairly accurate.

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You got: You're completely dead inside

Your house may be pink, but your soul is pitch black.



lmao trueee

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You got: You're 0% dead inside

You're an early riser, unwaveringly positive, and full of life. Honestly sounds exhausting  but good for you, I guess?



I'm plenty exhausting but not for these positive reasons? 



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You got: You're 50% dead inside



Half of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.

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You're pretty dead inside, but there's a small corner of your soul that's a soft shade of pink. You pretend to be hardcore and emotionless at all times, but you always cry at Pixar movies  they're your kryptonite.



You got: You're 85% dead insideYou're pretty dead inside, but there's a small corner of your soul that's a soft shade of pink. You pretend to be hardcore and emotionless at all times, but you always cry at Pixar movies  they're your kryptonite.

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You got: You're 50% dead inside

Half of your soul is black, but the other half is a blinding hot pink. You fluctuate between those two sides of your personality  there is no in between.

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You got: You're 25% dead inside



You're pretty positive and enjoy life in general, but as soon as someone starts walking all over your freshly vacuumed, pink carpet with their dirty shoes, the dark recesses of your soul start to show.





All that pink was making me ill.



Reminds me of a story that my dad told about when he was deserving coal. This one woman had an entirely pink kitchen, the walls the cupboards, appliances, everything. She would pay the bill in there & it mad him sick every time he went in there. [/csb]

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Ive realized that 95% of the time Im talking about either sex, food, or poop.

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replace poop w/ dogs and you've got me

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food 

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constantly been listening to The Neighbourhood again these past few days. i'm so excited for their new album

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I can't wait until I'm able to go on solo vacations one day.

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one of my favourite things to do

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Considering how many vacations Ive been on theyve been fucked up by the people I went with, I should do this more often.



I legit ended a 7 year friendship recently because of a bad London trip.

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Yea there are some people in my life that I will NEVER travel with bc I know it would be miserable.

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I was in London by myself, super fun.





But now I wanna know about the bad London trip please.

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Both my and my husband's family like to do big family trips in the summer. We get along with our families and all, but at the same time, it was never our first pick for destinations and then you're often stuck doing kid-friendly activities, family-friendly restaurants. They were usually either free or super cheap (group rate kind of thing), but it would suck up our vacation time.

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i would love to do this since my bf has no time or money to go (not that i do either lbr)

but as a short woman it seems too dangerous

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solo vacations are awesome bc you don't have to compromise what you want to do! it's great when you're selfish like i am.



Edited at 2018-03-07 06:19 pm (UTC)

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I love traveling by myself. I don't have many friends at home and have a hard time making them. I refuse to go out alone because I'm shy and introverted. But when I travel alone, somehow I meet so many people. I'm more outgoing, and I have more friends around the world than I do here in my city.

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Once you start, you wont stop. Its scary but so much easier because you can do your own thing.

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Good luck at the interview, and take that nap afterward!! <3

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ahhhh how do i choose!

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Man, do you not have a pages-long Amazon wishlist like me? lol. Even if there's no singular gift you want for yourself, it's good for basics like stocking up on grooming products, cleaning supplies, socks, etc. I personally vote for a bunch of sheet masks- they're pretty cheap on Amazon and a nice little indulgence.

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I've got some movies and baking tools I could use that on

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I have a hard time finding stuff to buy on amazon lol



I just pre ordered a couple of blurays I'm looking forward to

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books

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hi guys <3

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happy wednesday bb

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Hiya

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Hola

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henlo smol bean

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hi becky

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fuck off

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hi

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Happy Wednesday, ONTD! I'm back from Japan and so jet-lagged ugh D: I feel like I didn't get properly used to the time there before I went back and now I'm all over the place. gonna take some melatonin tonight and I hope that helps.

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welcome back! melatonin always knocks me out.

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thanks bb! I hope the melatonin works, I prob don't even need to take it tonight because I have been up since about 1 am but I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to fall back asleep so I've gotta try it!

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do I have white cheddar popcorn or ramen for lunch?



I'm watching The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson and it's just so sad :( it's just, depressing as f.

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ramen

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ramen

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Ramen

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ramen ofc

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bothhhh

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ramen w/ a side of white cheddar popcorn

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Why not both?

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Ramen <3



I can't have popcorn anymore :( stupid teeth.





have some white chedder popcorn for me when you can :D

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Guys, HELP.



I'm trying to help my mom price her old china. This is stupidly hard. We don't even know the names of some of these dishes.

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https://www.replacements.com/china/manu/a.htm



Do you know the manufacturer? Maybe this site can help?

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Yeah. I've been there. We know the NAME of the design. I meant that we don't necessarily know what the official name of each plate is like...dinner plate, sugar bowl, etc.



We basically can only find a handful of the plates online to price them as well.

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go on antique road show

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I got a fucking tardy slip for being 3 mins late to work last Friday 

I fucking hate this new management

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What the fuck. Are you in fucking HIGH SCHOOL? That's stupid

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A tardy slip?

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what the hell

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this is v grade school

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Ugh, how ridiculous.

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um what

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Well, damn. Do they micromanage employees a lot now? I haaaate that.

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a tardy slip lmaoooo





welcome back to middle school

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Will they let you clean overhead transparencies to clear the tardy?



Sorry, micromanagers suck





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wow



get the hell out of there if you can, sounds like management is too shitty.



I heard Forever 21 times bathroom breaks FOR THE CORPORATE staff.

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I briefly worked at a store that only gave you ONE minute to clock in, you had to clock in exactly on the hour, you couldn't do it early and if you were even one minute late you had to find a manager to clock in for you



so stupid

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wow thats a throwback to middle school

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LOL, I'd get one every day.

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Like others said that's so Middle/High School. What's next, asking permission to use the Restroom?

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They are exhausting. And I know nothing about their relationship tbh, just that they've broken up and 67 times.

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she needs to go to her room and think about what she did

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I have a friend like this. On and off with the same loser for years, asks me for advice and doesn't take it, degrades herself. I had to put up boundaries so I told her in the end she is accountable for her life and not to talk to me about him anymore. Seriously draining.

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except in this situation they're both losers.

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tbh yeah :/

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I had a friend in a similar situation and put up that same boundary and now we barely talk. Guess all her communication skills go towards bitching about her life.

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i was that person for 4 years, i hope ur friend gets out bc it's the best fucking feeling to finally get free

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Same. My friend's boyfriend beat her up and then she went back to him because he was sorry. Afterwards he was cheating on her with two other girls and I told her and she still believed him over me. So I just said good luck and bye.



People like that just drag you down.

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just break up and never speak again like normal people, omg how hard is that

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yawn

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i love your icon hunny

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Isn't Jason Kennedy tired of planting stories about these two? Does Pastor Carl have the next few months of media leaks already planned out?

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So, that Love Yourself song about Selena, right? That alone would be enough for me to be dunzo with him.

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Miranda Kerr

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Ed Sheeran wrote it for his latest album

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she must be an exhausting friend and they must be an exhausting couple. imagine hearing her whine all day about it.

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lmao back together for like 5 months and already need a time out... this is one healthy meant to be relationship.





also explains why hes liking girls instagram pics again

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Sometimes a break is what you need, but these two fools aren't going to do anything to change anything so they'll just repeat this cycle ad infinitum.

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don't they get tired.... of themselves....

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mte

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They do. And a lot. That's how a toxic relationship is.





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I think they do... so they start more drama to keep themselves entertained. So many never-ending toxic relationship cycles are because the people don't want to give up the drama of the relationship because it's exciting and stimulating.

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I know nothing about on/off relationships like this, but this can't go on forever right? like 20 years down the road, them still doing this.

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Another source tells E! News that Selena, who is currently in New York, hasn't seen Justin since the day before his birthday, which was March 1.



They've gone 7 whole days without see each other?! LoL, my Gawd...

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Jared Leto's new yakuza thriller The Outsider is 'baffling bad' say criticshttps://t.co/G0go0x6xFA pic.twitter.com/F2IXvpP30g  Yahoo Movies UK (@YahooMoviesUK) March 8, 2018

 Netflix's The Outsider releases on March 9th:

"An American soldier imprisoned in postwar Japan enters the dark world of the yakuza, adopting their way of life in repayment for his freedom."

 A follow up to this post, The Outsider is directed by Danish director Martin Zandvliet with the screenplay by Andrew Baldwin. is directed by Danish director Martin Zandvliet with the screenplay by Andrew Baldwin.

Reminder that in the original draft, Baldwin wrote the opening scene featuring his straight white male avatar (the titular character) as having a bigger dick than the Japanese characters, who were trying to compare to see if it was larger than theirs "as they've heard". This scene was cut somewhere down the line.

 David Ehlrich at Indiewire said its a bad film, boring for both veterans and newcomers: Viewers conversant in Yakuza classics will roll their eyes at the protracted scenes of Leto chopping off his own pinkies in shame, while newcomers to the genre will find plenty of their own reasons to be bored stiff."

 Karen Han of The Daily Beast called it " a culturally insensitive disaster ": "On the flip side of the coin, people have countered that theres nothing wrong with it, noting that the films very title is The Outsider, and that the character was written from the start as a white American man. Both points are technically true, but theres no argument that can be made in favor of The Outsider when one watches the actual movie. Its culturally insensitiveit might as well be the poster child for the ways the film industry continues to fail in terms of representationand even if it werent, theres no escaping the fact that its simply a bad movie."

 Charles Bramesco, The Guardian: "These films give lip service to a faux reverence for their subjects, but then reduce them to a collection of signifiers and monolithic character types before placing them in a position of inferiority to the white interloper. In its obsession with all things Japanese, the film places a special emphasis on the quality of humility. Nevertheless, the story ends with an elite corps of Asian assassins bowing to the former frontman for 30 Seconds to Mars."

 Sam Eichner, UrbanDaddy: "Jared Letos performance, like his performance in Blade Runner 2049, does not make sense. He does not so much act in this movie as model a series of wide-eyed looks that are supposed to signify stoicism (hence, my Gucci theory); he looks like a robot trying to play a human. Which isnt his fault: Jared Letos character is given no interiority. He doesnt appear to know why hes doing anything hes doing, because neither the writer nor director of the movie seems to care why he cares about being a Yakuza, why he hasnt tried to go home to the U.S., or how he became the only American POW in that Osaka prison in the first place."

 Mike D'Angelo, The AV Club: "...beat for beat, one of the most tediously generic yakuza stories imaginable."

 Tadanobu Asano (who also stars in the film) said Tom Hardy was originally supposed to be the titular role. Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike was the original director, who last worked with Asano on Ichi The Killer and enlisted Hardy in the first place, but the two of them fell through. Asano is one of the producers of the film from the beginning.

 The Outsider follows the critically panned route of other Netflix films, including Bright, The Cloverfield Paradox, and Mute.

Netflix's losing streak continues with the Jared Leto-starring The Outsider https://t.co/2ZfZbjUZoG  The Independent (@Independent) March 8, 2018

Herewith, a comprehensive list of things that make no sense in Jared Leto's new Netflix movie, #TheOutsider, which may just be the worst film of the year so far....https://t.co/c0DEOBuamd  UrbanDaddy (@UrbanDaddy) March 8, 2018

#JaredLeto stars in the new #Netflix gangster movie #TheOutsider as a man who joins the Yakuza. If you thought that would be interesting, you thought wrong.https://t.co/XavNfgYjdr pic.twitter.com/7W3Omrp20A  IGN (@IGN) March 8, 2018

I don't want to blow your mind or anything, but the Jared Leto yakuza Netflix movie is bad. My review of THE OUTSIDER, or GHOST SLOG: WHY? OF THE SAMURAI. https://t.co/5AztCaC4p4 pic.twitter.com/3GcufaTh9A  Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevasse) March 8, 2018

good news, everyone! that Netflix movie where Jared Leto joins the Yakuza is somehow even worse than it sounds. my review of THE OUTSIDER: https://t.co/pAoLfbwG7x pic.twitter.com/18Z9j2El36  david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) March 8, 2018

Netflixs The Outsider is the generic Jared Leto yakuza thriller no one wanted https://t.co/0YlFK3Ai0l pic.twitter.com/e3OHKSG3io  The A.V. Club (@TheAVClub) March 8, 2018

The Outsider review  Jared Leto joins the yakuza in crass Netflix thriller https://t.co/l7yfSnjv3P  Guardian US (@GuardianUS) March 8, 2018

Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano talks his new @Netflix film while rocking Brain Dead x Sasquatchfabrix: https://t.co/sNkkRH9yZp pic.twitter.com/UWOxBgiSUo  Highsnobiety (@highsnobiety) March 5, 2018

THE OUTSIDER

LA PREMIER



LA pic.twitter.com/ljBJlZgVaU   ASANO TADANOBU (@asano_tadanobu) March 7, 2018

Talked about THE OUTSIDER. https://t.co/D4TD26Dbj3   ASANO TADANOBU (@asano_tadanobu) March 5, 2018
The Philippines' Supreme Court chief justice warned on Wednesday that the country's civil rights were under grave threat as she faces all-but-certain impeachment by allies of President Rodrigo Duterte. Maria Lourdes Sereno spoke out as the Philippine House of Representatives prepared to vote Thursday on whether to proceed with her impeachment following a threat by Duterte that she would be forced out. Sereno has clashed with the president on issues like the independence of the judiciary as well as rights issues linked to Duterte's centrepiece "war on drugs" which has left thousands dead at the hands of police or shadowy vigilantes. Duterte in turn vowed last year to impeach Sereno, accusing her of excessive spending and other abuses of power -- a move slammed by critics as the latest in a series of measures by the president to muzzle his critics. "The current state of the nation is one where perceived enemies of the dominant order are considered fair game for harassment, intimidation and persecution," she said in a speech at a prominent women's school. She said "short cuts are preferred over adherence to constitutional guarantees of human rights", due process was being dispensed with and fake news used to manipulate the public. "Every erosion of the bill of rights hits the poor and unknowing the hardest," she added, urging the public to openly denounce perceived abuses. "Be not silent, nor afraid, nor compromising in attitude," she said. The vote at the House committee on justice is the start of a process that could see Sereno removed from office by way of a trial in the Senate. Since taking office in mid-2016, Duterte and his allies have jailed an opposition senator, publicly castigated media agencies that criticised him, and attempted to sideline human rights and anti-graft agencies. The president enjoys widespread support and his allies control both houses of Congress. Although she did not mention the fiery president by name, Sereno assailed the attempt to re-write the constitution, a key project of Duterte and his allies. "Checks and balances that are designed to work, indeed work," she said, citing constitutional guarantees for transparency and accountability. Sereno has said the charges against her were fabricated.
The device, developed at TU Wien, which will be ejected 80km above ground and find its way back to earth. Credit: Vienna University of Technology

The Space Team at TU Wien is launching an ambitious project together with the University of Wurzburg. Measurement devices are going to be ejected from a rocket and will fall to Earth without a parachute.

It's a bold idea, and no one knows for sure if it will work. Tubular measurement devices will be transported to an altitude of 75 kilometres by a rocket and will then return to Earth undamaged and entirely unassisted. If this technology proves successful, it could be a great new tool for meteorological research.

In recent years, the TU Wien Space team, a group of students at TU Wien (Vienna) has drawn attention to itself with successful rocket launches and satellite projects. Now, the students' association at TU Wien is joining forces with a student team from the University of Wurzburg to make the idea of space probes autonomously returning to Earth a reality. The project is called 'Project Daedalus', and is now intended to be implemented in March as part of the international REXUS programme for promoting student space initiatives.

80 kilometres high

'REXUS/BEXUS' is a collaboration between the German Aerospace Centre, the Swedish National Space Board and the ESA. As part of 'REXUS', two rockets are launched each year in Sweden that carry instruments and experiments developed by students to an altitude of approximately 80 kilometres. The TU Wien Space Team is now also joining the imminent rocket launch in March for the first time.

The inside of the device. Credit: Vienna University of Technology

"The aim was to develop a device with which meteorological data can be collected conveniently and easily," says Sebastian Seisl from the TU Wien Space Team. The altitude of approximately 80 kilometres reached by the REXUS rockets is particularly interesting. For weather balloons, which can climb to a maximum of 30 to 40 kilometres, this is too high, and satellites can only poorly capture data in this area of the atmosphere.

The basic idea for the innovative measurement device is reminiscent of maple seeds, which fall to the ground very slowly and gently due to their long wings. The tubular probes from Project Daedalus are also provided with wings. A specially developed ejection mechanism is intended to launch three of these probes from the rocket at an altitude of 80 km, at which point their wings fold out and ensure that the devices return to Earth as slowly and as unscathed as possible. GPS modules are then intended to report the landing location, so that the devices can be retrieved as easily as possible.

Some important data are measured during their descent, for example acceleration, temperature and air pressure. "Our main focus this time, however, is on demonstrating that the method actually works. The additional measurement sensors with which the devices are provided actually do not play such a big part, in technical terms," says Christoph Frohlich, President of the Space Team.

The construction was inspired by maple seeds. Credit: Vienna University of Technology

In addition to support from private sponsors and the Institute of Automation and Control (ACIN), the Austrian participants in this project are also generously sponsored by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). "As an institute at TU Wien, we are particularly pleased to support the students in the Space Team with their plans and their work on these promising projects," says Prof. Georg Schitter from ACIN.

The Space Team at TU Wien was responsible for the ejection mechanism and the development of the on-board computer. In the process, the team was able to draw on its own experience. For example, it developed the on-board electronics for the nano-satellite Pegasus, which was brought into Earth's orbit in 2017. In addition, the Space Team has already developed several experimental rockets, which successfully made advances at international competitions at altitudes of up to 6 km.

Members of the TU Wien Space Team working on the device. Credit: Vienna University of Technology

In the meantime, the TU Wien Space Team has gathered over 70 members from very different fields of study at TU Wien. "For us, it is of primary importance that you can get enthusiastic about aerospace," says Christoph Frohlich. "We have lots to do: From programming to quality checks, from electronics to aerodynamics  in rocket technology you face many different challenges that can only be overcome with an interdisciplinary approach."

At the start of March, a delegation from the team will leave for Kiruna (Sweden). The earliest launch window for the REXUS rocket is on 12 March  shortly after that, we will know whether the ambitious Daedalus project has been a success at the first attempt.

Credit: Vienna University of Technology

Explore further New Zealand space launch scrubbed from remote launch site
Andrew Knight, associate professor of organizational behavior at Olin Business School, led a study that found that employees in a business with direct customer involvement tend to be happier. Credit: Washington University in St. Louis

It's possible the Keebler Elves aren't as happy at work as they seem.

At the same time, SpongeBob SquarePants' dour fast-food colleague Squidward might be a little cheerier than he lets on.

New research from Andrew Knight, associate professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis' Olin Business School, shows that people working in customer-facing companies, such as retailers (or cartoon burger joints), tend to be happier at work. Meanwhile, workers for companies further removed from direct customer interactionmanufacturing companies, for example (or treehouse cookie factories)tend to be less happy.

But the research goes even further by showing that the phenomenon is not limited to individuals who work directly with customers. It affects everyone at the companydepending on whether the company itself deals more directly with end consumers.

"The accountants who work in a grocery store company would be happier than the ones who work at General Mills," Knight said. "We're trying to make the point that it's broader than the people who are directly engaged with customers."

Knight's research gauges employee happiness in terms of "workforce strain," including sick time, absenteeism and job burnoutissues that significantly affect productivity.

"Workforce strain is extremely expensive," Knight said. How expensive? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that productivity losses to absenteeism cost U.S. employers nearly $1,700 for every worker, totaling $226 billion a year.

"There's also the human, goodness-of-life component," Knight said. "If people are sick and don't want to come into work, that's not a good outcome."

The paper, published in the February edition of the Academy of Management Journal, relied on more than 24,000 survey responses by employees, leaders and human resources workers at 161 small- and medium-sized firms in Germany. Different groups of workers filled out surveys measuring how positively or negatively they viewed their work; how openly they could express emotion on the job; their level of emotional exhaustion; and how rigorously the company regulated or centralized their work.

The researchconducted with Jochen Menges from Germany's WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management and Heike Bruch of Switzerland's University of St. Gallenalso measured the degree to which companies value "emotion-focused personnel practices." The study found that organizations that tend to value outward expressions of emotionsagain, those that are more customer-facingtended to have happier workers. On the flip side to being more positive, the researchers found that those same happier workers in more customer-facing organizations also tended to be less negative.

"In manufacturing, for example, there's a thought that emotions impede work, standing in the way of making good decisions," Knight said. "There's an assumption that emotions should be kept out."

The paper suggests, however, that "neutralizing" emotions on the job may be more emotionally taxing at work than making a conscious decision to mask your emotions when, for example, a customer is particularly difficult to work with. Workers can commiserate in a back room after an unpleasant encounter, which ultimately contributes to a more positive "affective tone" in the workplace.

The results perhaps upend conventional wisdom suggesting that dealing directly with customerswho, as we know, are always rightmight be aggravating and emotionally taxing as workers grit their teeth through difficult interactions.

"For every customer who is a pain in the neck, there's probably a customer who is a true delight," Knight said. "That is a part of people-centric work that maybe doesn't exist in some of these other worldslike manufacturing."

Moreover, administrators can breed these collective feelings with emotion-focused personnel practices and centralization, the researchers wrote.

Knight and his co-authors acknowledged that their paper represents only a snapshot in time, in a specific geography. Additional research into this area might look at these issues over time and in other parts of the world, as well as in much larger or much smaller organizations.

Another dimension the research does not consider is the financial performance of the firms that were studied.

"What if emotion is linked to a lower error rate and more efficiency?" Knight said. "You can't pull one component of an organization and change it; you have to think about the whole logic of the system and how the pieces fit together."

Explore further Rise in worker happiness leads to an increase in productivity

More information: Andrew P. Knight et al. Organizational Affective Tone: A Meso Perspective on the Origins and Effects of Consistent Affect in Organizations, Academy of Management Journal (2017). Journal information: Academy of Management Journal Andrew P. Knight et al. Organizational Affective Tone: A Meso Perspective on the Origins and Effects of Consistent Affect in Organizations,(2017). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2016.0671
Schematic showing changes in circulation and nutrients. Credit: Figures produced by J.K. Moore at UCI

University of California, Irvine scientists expect the world's fisheries to be, on average, 20 percent less productive in the year 2300, with those in the North Atlantic down nearly 60 percent and those in much of the western Pacific experiencing declines of more than 50 percent.

In a study published this week in Science, UCI climatologists outline the results of computer simulations showing a world subjected to nearly three more centuries of unbridled global warming. This bleak future will be characterized by a 9.6-degree Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in mean surface air temperature, nearly 10 times the warming we have seen to this point. The extended climate warming will drastically alter wind patterns, boost ocean surface temperatures and melt nearly all the sea ice in polar regions.

"These conditions will cause changes in phytoplankton growth and ocean circulation around Antarctica, with the net effect of transferring nutrients from the upper ocean to the deep ocean," said lead author J. Keith Moore, UCI professor of Earth system science. "Marine ecosystems everywhere to the north will be increasingly starved for nutrients, leading to less primary production (photosynthesis) by phytoplankton, which form the base of ocean food chains."

In today's ocean, nutrients are brought up to the surface around Antarctica but then move north and eventually flow into the low latitudes, supporting the plankton and fish populations there, Moore said. With increased phytoplankton growth around Antarctica, the northward transfer of nutrients will be greatly reduced.

Schematic showing climate change processes that lead to declining global marine biological productivity. Credit: Figures produced by J.K. Moore at UCI

"You end up trapping the nutrients near Antarctica," he said.

There are three key factors driving increased phytoplankton growth around Antarctica, according to Moore: the long-term warming trend in the oceans, the changes in winds brought on by global climate warming and, most significantly, the near elimination of sea ice along the coast of Antarctica.

"Without the floating ice, which blocks much of the light today, you get increased photosynthesis," Moore said. "Combined with warmer ocean temperatures throughout the year, this leads to a longer growing season and faster plankton growth rates. Stronger winds drive increased upwelling, bringing nutrients to the surface, resulting in higher nutrient concentrations and more plankton growth near Antarctica."

Nitrogen and phosphorus are key nutrients that support phytoplankton growth in the ocean. As these elements are increasingly depleted everywhere to the north, phytoplankton populations decline and scarcity reverberates up through the food chain, ultimately affecting the fish that humans catch and eat. Moore and his fellow researchers used an empirical model linking plankton growth to present-day fish catches and then factored in dwindling nutrients and plankton populations due to climate warming in the coming centuries.

Credit: Carla Schaffer / AAAS

"By looking at the decline in fish food over time, we can estimate how much our total potential fisheries catch could be reduced," said Moore, who helped develop the Community Earth System Model employed in this study.

He emphasized the importance of looking further into the future with climate models, something that isn't often done because of the computational resources such modeling requires. Months of computations using thousands of central processing units were needed to simulate the climate and oceans up to 2300. But stopping climate studies at the end of our current century, as is common among scientists and policymakers, is insufficient given the amount of time it takes for the ocean to absorb and respond to heat being trapped by the Earth's atmosphere today, Moore said.

"The climate is warming rapidly now, but in the ocean, most of that added heat is still right at the surface. It takes centuries for that heat to work its way into the deeper ocean, changing the circulation and removing the sea ice, which is a big part of this process," he said.

"This is what's going to happen if we don't put the brakes on global warming, and it's pretty catastrophic for the oceans," Moore stressed. "There is still time to avoid most of this warming and get to a stable climate by the end of this century, but in order to do that, we have to aggressively reduce our fossil fuel use and emissions of greenhouse gas pollutants."

Explore further From tiny phytoplankton to massive tuna: How climate change will affect energy flows in ocean ecosystems

More information: J.K. Moore el al., "Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity," Science (2018). Journal information: Science J.K. Moore el al., "Sustained climate warming drives declining marine biological productivity,"(2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao6379
Gold Molokai spider. Credit: George Roderick

About 2 to 3 million years ago, a group of spiders let out long silk threads into the wind and set sail, so to speak, across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii. These spiders were parasites of other spiders, invading their webs, snipping threads to steal insects that had been caught. But there weren't many webs to rob on Hawaii when they arrived. So they expanded their repertoire, looking for other ways to survive by trapping and eating other spiders. A new species evolved from those first spiders, after finding a way to live on rocks. And then another species evolved to live under leaves. And then another. And then 11 more species.

Charles Darwin first noted this phenomenon, called adaptive radiation, in the beaks of finches of the Galapagos Islands. His study of the finches' diversity led to his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet today, much remains unknown about how adaptive radiation, and thus evolution, actually work. Hawaii is even more of a hotbed for biological diversification than the Galapagos due to its isolation.

In Hawaiian Ariamnes stick spiders, adaptive radiation has resulted in 14 species now living across Hawaii. They share a generally similar body type, but each is a separate species with distinct physical traits. Remarkably, stick spiders with similar traits - yellow and red coloring, for example - live on different Hawaiian islands but aren't each other's closest relatives; they are a rare instance where a physical form has evolved separately on each island, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. The study shows that evolution has led to a predictable and independently evolved set of similar forms in spiders on each island.

"This very predictable repeated evolution of the same forms is fascinating because it sheds light on how evolution actually happens," said Rosemary Gillespie, professor and Schlinger Chair in Systematic Entomology at UC Berkeley and lead author of the paper. "Such outstanding predictability is rare and is only found in a few other organisms that similarly move around the vegetation."

Ariamnes corniger, a stick spider from East Maui, Hawaiian Archipelago. This white matte ecomorph is cryptic against lichen. Credit: George Roderick

The study of Ariamnes stick spiders will be published March 19 in the journal Current Biology. It was funded by the National Science Foundation and the William M. and Esther G. Schlinger Foundation.

"This study provides insights into a fundamental question about the origins of biodiversity, but also presents a remarkable story that can call attention to the need for conserving nature in all of its forms," said study co-author George Roderick, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Science Policy and Management at Berkeley.

Hawaii is a chain of islands that formed chronologically, so the scientists were able to study the spiders' adaptive radiations over time as they moved from old to new islands. The oldest island, Kauai, was formed 5 million years ago, followed by Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Maui and finally the big island of Hawaii, the youngest at less than 1 million years old.

The study found that stick spiders have evolved and differentiated from a single species on the same island. So, spider types on any one island were generally more closely related to very different looking spiders on the same island than to spiders that looked the same on other islands. For instance, a white spider on Oahu is a closer relative to the brown spider on the same island than it is to a white spider on Maui.

An undescribed species of Ariamnes from Kauai, Hawaiian Archipelago. It is an example of the dark ecomorph. Credit: George Roderick

"You can find these spiders in pretty much every habitat on each island," Gillespie said. "This really detailed and finely tuned repetition of evolution of the same form is really quite uncommon."

The spiders can be grouped into three distinct ecological types, called ecomorphs: A brown one that lives in rocks; a gold one that lives in under leaves, and a white one that's a matte color and lives on lichen.

The analysis of stick spiders mirrors Gillespie's previous discovery in Hawaiian Tetragnatha spiders, another group that shows remarkable adaptive radiation. This group of spiny-legged spiders does not spin a web and has repeatedly evolved similar ecomorphs since its ancestor arrived in Hawaii. That study was featured on the cover of the journal Science in 2004.

The varied habitat types on the Hawaiian Islands, cold and wet areas closely juxtaposed with hot and dry, have provided a rich tapestry of species diversity. The flip side of such extraordinary diversity that evolved in isolation is its vulnerability to change and to invasive species that are now flooding in as a result of human traffic, Gillespie said.

"We need to be able to figure out this diversity and document it and describe what's so special about it, so that people know about it," Gillespie said. "It's being lost and it's a desperate situation."

Explore further World's most venomous spiders are actually cousins

More information: Rosemary G. Gillespie et al, Repeated Diversification of Ecomorphs in Hawaiian Stick Spiders, Current Biology (2018). Journal information: Current Biology Rosemary G. Gillespie et al, Repeated Diversification of Ecomorphs in Hawaiian Stick Spiders,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.083

Provided by University of California - Berkeley
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Water, always important, always controversial, always fascinating, remains surprising. For a substance that is ubiquitous on Earth, three quarters of our planet is covered with it, researchers can still be surprised by some of its properties, according to Arizona State University chemist C. Austen Angell.

Angell, a Regents Professor in ASU's School of Molecular Sciences, has spent a good portion of his distinguished career tracking down some of water's more curious physical properties. In a new piece of research just published in Science (March 9), Angell and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam have, for the first time, observed one of the more intriguing properties predicted by water theoreticians - that, on sufficient super-cooling and under specific conditions it will suddenly change from one liquid to a different one. The new liquid is still water but now it is of lower density and with a different arrangement of the hydrogen bonded molecules with stronger bonding that makes it a more viscous liquid.

"It has nothing to do with 'poly-water,'" Angell adds recalling a scientific fiasco of many decades ago. The new phenomenon is a liquid-liquid phase transition, and until now it had only been seen in computer simulations of water models.

The problem with observing this phenomenon directly in real water is that, shortly before the theory says it should happen, the real water suddenly crystallizes to ice. This has been called the "crystallization curtain" and it held up progress in understanding water physics and water in biology for decades.

"The domain between this crystallization temperature and the much lower temperature at which glassy water (formed by deposition of water molecules from the vapor) crystallizes during heating has been known as a 'no-man's land,'" Angell said. "We found a way to pull aside the 'crystallization curtain' just enough to see what happens behind - or more correctly, below - it," Angell said.

Phase transitions of water are important to understand for a multitude of applications. For example, the well-known and destructive heaving of concrete roads and footpaths in winter is due to the phase transition from water to ice under the concrete. The phase transition between liquid states, described in the current work, has much in common with the transition to ice but it occurs at a much lower temperature, about -90 C (-130 F), and only under super-cooled conditions so it is likely to remain mostly a scientific curiosity for the foreseeable future.

Angell explained that a couple of years ago he and his research associate Zuofeng Zhao, were studying the thermal behavior of a special type of "ideal" aqueous solution they had been using to explore the folding and unfolding of globular proteins. They wanted to observe these solutions' ability to supercool and then vitrify. Seeking the limit to the glassy domain, they added extra water to enhance the probability of ice crystallization and found that instead of finally evolving heat as ice crystallized (leaving a residual unfrozen solution) as is normally found when cooling saline solutions, it actually gave off heat to form a new liquid phase.

The new liquid was much more viscous, maybe even glassy. Furthermore, by reversing the direction of the temperature change, Angell and Zhao found that they could transform the new phase back into the original solution before any ice would start to crystallize.

"This observation, published in Angewandte Chemie, raised considerable interest but there was no structural information to explain what was happening," Angell said. That changed when Angell visited the University of Amsterdam two summers ago, and met Sander Woutersen, a specialist in infrared spectroscopy who became very interested in the structural aspects of the phenomenon.

In the Science paper, the team with Woutersen, his student Michiel Hilbers and his computational colleague Bernd Ensing has now shown that the structures involved in the liquid-liquid transition have the same spectroscopic signatures - and the same hydrogen bonding patterns - as are seen in the two known glassy forms of ice produced by laborious alternative processes (high- and low-density amorphous solid phases of water).

"The liquid-liquid transition we had found was now seen to be the 'living analog' of the change between two glassy states of pure water that had been reported in 1994, using pure pressure as the driving force," Angell explained.

The results would seem to "provide direct evidence for the existence of a liquid-liquid transition behind the 'crystallization curtain' in pure water," Woutersen said, adding that the findings offer a general explanation for the thermodynamic anomalies of liquid water, and a validation for the "second critical point theory" put forward by Gene Stanley's group to explain those anomalies.

"This behavior is almost unique among the myriad of known molecular liquids," Angell added. "Only a few other substances are thought to exhibit it, but none have been proven to date."

Explore further Rapid decompression key to making low-density liquid water

More information: S. Woutersen el al., "A liquid-liquid transition in supercooled aqueous solution related to the HDA-LDA transition," Science (2018). Journal information: Science S. Woutersen el al., "A liquid-liquid transition in supercooled aqueous solution related to the HDA-LDA transition,"(2018). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aao7049
Map of 3 million personality tests showing regional neuroticism (fear) and voting behavior in the United States. Credit: Social Psychological and Personality Science

Regions where voters have more neurotic personality traits were more likely to vote for Donald Trump in the United States or for the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, revealing a new trend that could help explain the rise of fearmongering populist political campaigns across the world, according to new research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Researchers analyzed personality traits from online surveys of more than 3 million people in the United States and more than 417,000 people in the United Kingdom. Election data was compiled from public sources.

"Our study reveals how neuroticism or psychological hardship is shaping the global political landscape," said lead study author Martin Obschonka, PhD, a psychologist and associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. "One could also call this 'irrational' voting behavior because the surprising success of Trump and Brexit weren't predicted by models that relied on a rational understanding of voters."

Neuroticism hasn't previously been associated with voting behavior, suggesting that it could have been a "sleeper effect" with the potential to have a profound impact on the success of populist political campaigns across the globe, Obschonka said.

The Trump and Brexit campaigns both promoted themes of fear and lost pride, which are related to neurotic personality traits that include persistent feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, envy or jealousy. Regions in the United States with greater support for Trump were very similar to areas in the United Kingdom that supported Brexit, including a higher percentage of white people and lower levels of college education, earnings and liberal attitudes. Former industrial areas that are now in economic decline also were more likely to support Trump or Brexit.

Maps of UK voting patterns and personality test results in 2016. Credit: Social Psychological and Personality Science

The Brexit vote in June 2016 by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union succeeded by a very narrow margin, with 51.9 percent of voters in favor. Trump's presidential victory in 2016 also shocked many people, with him winning 30 states and the electoral vote tally even though 2.8 million more Americans voted for Hilary Clinton.

Trump's crucial voter gains above the performance of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney occurred largely in areas with high levels of neurotic traits, including battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio, which shifted from Democratic in 2012 to Republican in 2016. Trump's populist campaign also was especially successful in former industrial centers that are now in economic decline, including the Rust Belt region across the Midwest and Great Lakes.

The researchers examined regions, not individuals, and were studying larger trends relating to psychological traits, not specific diagnoses of mental illness for any voters. The study also excluded Northern Ireland from the Brexit analysis because of the lack of available data.

The fears and worries of voters with neurotic personality traits should be taken seriously, and facts should be provided during political campaigns to allay those fears, Obschonka said. Education also could be a buffer against fearmongering populist political campaigns because regions with higher rates of college graduates had much lower levels of neuroticism, he said.

Explore further The revolt of the Rust Belt may explain Trump's election

More information: Martin Obschonka et al, Fear, Populism, and the Geopolitical Landscape, Social Psychological and Personality Science (2018). Journal information: Social Psychological and Personality Science Martin Obschonka et al, Fear, Populism, and the Geopolitical Landscape,(2018). dx.doi.org/10.1177/1948550618755874
Credit: UPM

Portable, easy-to-use water quality assessment systems are essential in developing countries where water access is limited and there is a risk of contamination. Researchers from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) have designed a new system for assessing water for human consumption that is better than the systems currently available. The new system is three to five times cheaper, and is more sustainable and long-lasting, making it ideal for use in development aid.

Non-potable water and poor sanitation are the leading causes of child mortality worldwide. In 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared that one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for poverty eradication by 2030 is access to clean water and sanitation.

Given its relevance, many projects aim to find solutions to improve potable water access in developing countries. In this context, the cooperation group of Water and Sanitation Systems for Development from School of Industrial Design and Engineering at UPM (ETSIDI-UPM) has been working in Africa y Latin-American on diverse projects regarding water access.

The basic elements of the new system are an optical turbidimeter, a filtering device, and a bacteriological incubator to detect the presence of bacteria in the water. Additionally, a meter for dissolved salts, a pH meter and a chlorine meter can be added to the system. In order to make it more sustainable, it includes a photovoltaic power supply.

"Thanks to an easy-to-build design that allows the self-fabrication and the use of local pieces and recycled materials, we reduced the cost of the existing commercial kits between three and five times," said Daniel Squittieri and Diego Pelayo, members of the team.

Additionally, they state, "both the maintenance and the cleaning of the system are easy and this guarantees its correct working during long periods, which is and advantage for its usage in the framework of cooperation and development."

New portable system of water quality assessment. Credit: UPM

Explore further Just a small piece of paper can make water consumption safer
University of Melbourne researchers have discovered how to retrofit homes to be more energy efficient, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting electricity bills significantly.

In Melbourne, 95 percent of homes were built before 2005, making them noncompliant with current energy efficient standards and responsible for emitting 80 to 90 percent of the city's greenhouse gas emissions.

University of Melbourne Department of Infrastructure Engineering Professor Greg Foliente examined the composition of Melbourne's housing stock over 31 government areas to determine what it would take to bring the homes up to a six-star energy rating.

"Bringing the city's housing stock to a six-star energy rating would lead to a 73 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and significant cuts to electricity bills," Professor Foliente said.

"This would save the city about 2.35 terawatt hours per year in heating and cooling, equating to around $3,784 million."

In order to retrofit a house to six star standard  the minimum standard for new houses  the homeowner would need to implement a range of energy saving solutions, including draught sealing of windows, doors and chimneys, improved air vents, ceiling and wall insulation, secondary glazing and external thermal curtains.

While the cost of a full energy retrofit could be in the range of $42,000-$63,000 for a typical detached house, and $9000-$18,000 for a semi-detached house depending on its age, Professor Foliente said it would be worth it over time.

"If homeowners don't consider retrofitting their home to improve its energy rating, they're missing an opportunity to save money in the long run," Professor Foliente said.

"Our research looked the amount of time it takes for a household energy retrofit to start to be paid off in operating energy savings, so that the homeowner is 'financially neutral'," he said.

"We found that in some Melbourne suburbs it could take just nine years to recoup the costs of lifting a home's energy rating from 1.5 stars to four stars. And it's better to aim for an energy rating of four rather than three, or six rather than five, because the cost difference is minimal and the payback time around the same."

Explore further New project transforms social housing into energy efficient smart homes
Jenna Crowe-Riddell conducting fieldwork at Hibernia Reef off the coast of Western Australia. Credit: Chris Malam

Sight, touch and spatial memory are key ways sea snakes find their mates, says an Adelaide researcher.

On field trips to Hibernia Reef off the coast of Western Australia Jenna Crowe-Riddell, and colleagues from the University of Adelaide, filmed a male turtle-headed sea snake (Emydocephalus annulatus) courting a female underwater.

"We're interested in how sea snakes can find each other in such a vast environment like the ocean, where many sensory cues, such as smell and vision, are distorted," says Jenna.

Sea snakes are native inhabitants of Australian tropical waters and most, although not the turtle-headed sea snake, have a deadly venomous bite.

"A male turtle-headed sea snake has a specialised spine at the tip of his snout which he uses to probe the female along her back," says Jenna.

"We think this spine is used as tactile feedback for the male so that he can keep up with the female as she swims."

However after watching a few minutes of sea snake courting, Jenna noticed something unusual.

"The male completely lost contact of the female and was unable to find her again, despite her being within one metre of him at one point," she says.

Jenna photographing a male turtle-headed sea snake at Hibernia Reef. The spine on the tip of its snout is clearly visible. Credit: Chris Malam

This made the researchers wonder: how does the male recognise and keep track of females?

"We noticed that the male used a combination of senses: he followed her movement while she swam (visual), probed her with the tip of his snout (tactile) and revisited sites of previous courtship (spatial memory)," says Jenna.

Jenna hopes her underwater observations can be used to better understand what motivates sea snake behaviour, which she says is vital for understanding the evolution of these remarkable Australian reptiles and ensuring their future conservation.

Explore further Territorial defense by the Taiwanese Kukrisnake

Provided by Freshscience
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition is calling for the resignation of seven Democratic members of Congress whom it claims are "connected" to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, which it describes as a "known anti-Semite."



Farrakhan has routinely spoke disparagingly about Jews over the years, as well as white people, in general. He was thrust into the mainstream spotlight again this week after excerpts from a speech he gave last week on the Nation of Islam's Saviour's Day surfaced online. During the speech, he once again described Jewish people -- who he says "are my enemy" -- in a pejorative manner.



The lobbying group on Tuesday called for the following lawmakers to step down: Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; Danny Davis, D-Ill.; Andre Carson, D-Ind.; Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y.; and Al Green, D-Texas.



The aforementioned lawmakers have at one point in their careers while in the House -- but not necessarily anytime recently nor with any frequency -- met Farrakhan. In a report it published Tuesday, The Daily Caller outlined the various previous interactions, based on videos and photos.



ABC News has reached out to each of the seven lawmakers for comment on the Republican Jewish Coalition's call for their resignations.



Davis told The Daily Caller in a statement Monday, without specifically addressing Farrakhan, anti-Semitism is "antithetical to everything I believe and everything that I work for on a daily basis."



Davis also described Farrakhan as an "outstanding human being."



A spokesman for Ellison, the deputy director of the Democratic National Committee, told Fox News on Tuesday that Ellison "has repeatedly disavowed anti-Semitism and bigotry, since his first campaign for Congress in 2006."

Below is the statement Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks:



Seven long-serving Democrats have close ties with Louis Farrakhan. Each of them should resign.



They include former Nation of Islam employee, Congressman Keith Ellison, who is Deputy Chair of the DNC. Ellison has tried to excuse his 2013 meeting with Farrakhan, while ignoring his more recent meeting with the NOI leader in Farrakhans hotel room, in 2015. At least six other Democrats are known to have embraced Farrakhan. These members of Congress - Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Danny Davis, Andre Carson, Gregory Meeks, and Al Green - have all, while in office, sat down with Farrakhan for personal meetings.



There can be no question about how abhorrent it is for these Democrats to be connected to Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is first and foremost a preacher of hate. He preaches about Jewish control over the government and media and has claimed to have pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, saying your time is up, your world is through. And those were just the comments from last week.



Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Farrakhan is the moral equivalent of a leader of the KKK. If it was discovered that members of Congress had met with the leader of the KKK, they would need to resign. In this case, for meeting with, and embracing, Louis Farrakhan, nothing short of resignation is acceptable from these seven Democrats.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
News

Microsoft Pulls Plug on Outlook Web Apps for iOS and Android

Microsoft's Outlook Web App mobile client e-mail applications for Android, iPad and iPhone devices will be phased out over the next few months, the company said this week.

The announcement used the old "Outlook Web App" term even though the currently used descriptor is "Outlook on the Web." This refers to browser-based e-mail client applications available to Office 365 subscribers and to users of the on-premises Office Web Apps Server (now called "Office Online Server").

Deadlines

In April, Microsoft plans to withdraw the Outlook on the Web apps for Android from the Google Play store. It'll also withdraw the iPad and iPhone Outlook on the Web apps from Apple's iTunes store in that month.

On May 15, Outlook on the Web (or Outlook Web App) mail client applications for Android, iPad and iPhone mobile devices will stop working, Microsoft's notice warned. On that date, end users still using those apps will get prompted with a message suggesting that they download the Outlook for Android or Outlook for iOS native apps.

End users will get recurring messages in April telling them that the Outlook on the Web apps won't work on May 15. However, if an organization uses Exchange Server on-premises, then IT pros will have to tell those end users that their Outlook on the Web apps are expiring. Microsoft explained that point in this "Microsoft OWA Mobile Apps" support document:

If your organization uses Exchange Server on-premises (that is, hosts its own Exchange servers rather than using Office 365) and you're using the OWA mobile app, you won't receive the in-app message. Your administrator should let you know that the OWA mobile apps will stop working on May 15, 2018 and that you can use Outlook for iOS or Outlook for Android instead.

Instead of using those retired Web apps, Microsoft wants mobile device users to use the "native Outlook app for iOS and Android devices." Setup instructions are linked at this page.

Microsoft gave no reason why it was ending its Outlook on the Web apps. It described the move as an effort to "streamline our mobile portfolio." Microsoft's Outlook mobile client portfolio has been confusing at best. A list of possible clients can be found here.

According to a Microsoft Tech Community explanation, the Outlook for Android and Outlook for iOS applications are based on Microsoft's acquisition of Acompli, and those reworked Acompli apps essentially became the official mobile apps going forward. At one point, the Outlook for Android and Outlook for iOS apps used Amazon Web Services (AWS) for caching, but that architecture was replaced with native Exchange Online support. That native support "means there is no mailbox data that is cached outside of Office 365," Microsoft explained in a TechNet document.

Feature Support

Unfortunately, it seems that the dying Outlook on the Web apps had greatest support for e-mail features. For instance, Outlook on the Web apps have support for things like renaming folders, which the native apps can't do, according to this Microsoft comparison chart. On balance, the bulk of the feature support seems to be mostly on the Outlook on the Web app side.

The "Microsoft OWA Mobile Apps" support document partially addressed the question of loss of features support when moving to the native clients. Here's how it characterized that change for end users:

Many features, including shared or delegate calendar access and the ability to view the Global Address List, are now included in the Outlook apps. Other features (like shared mailboxes) will be available by the end of 2018. In the meantime, the Outlook web experience is available from your browser on your mobile device.

It's not clear what Microsoft means by the "Outlook web experience." Microsoft's note perhaps suggests that there's another way to access Outlook in a browser. Meanwhile, comments in Microsoft's announcement, like "please stop deprecating functionality without providing an alternative," seem to be falling on deaf ears.
Leidos Holdings, Inc. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of scientific, engineering and information technology services and solutions in the areas of defense, intelligence, civil and health markets. It operates through the following three segments: Defense Solutions, Civil, and Health. The Defense Solutions segment focuses on deploying agile, cost-effective solutions to meet the ever-changing missions of the company's customers in areas of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, enterprise IT and integrated systems and cybersecurity and global services. The Civil segment focuses on seamlessly integrating and protecting physical, digital and data domains. The Health segment offers solutions to federal and commercial customers that are responsible for the health and wellbeing of people worldwide including service members and veterans. The company was founded by John Robert Beyster on February 3, 1969 and is headquartered in Reston, VA.

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" " The chime generator apparatus to be installed in the 10,000 Year Clock. Designer Danny Hillis created a progressive algorithm to ring a series of 10 bells in a different sequence each day over the course of 10,000 years  over 3.5 million permutations. Long Now Foundation

Since 1989, an inventor named Danny Hillis has been working on a truly mind-boggling project  a 500-foot-tall (152-meter-tall) solar-powered clock inside a mountain in West Texas that is designed to keep time for 10,000 years, with minimal maintenance or interruption. In an article published in American Astronomical Society in 2012, Hillis and colleagues described the plan for the device, which will maintain its long-term accuracy by synchronizing to the sun through heating of a sealed chamber of air by a beam of sunlight that shines into it at solar noon.

The massive clock is being built by the Long Now Foundation with the help of Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who donated $42 million to the project, according to a 2011 Wired article.

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Bezos recently created a stir on Twitter when he posted a time-lapse video to announce that the clock is now in the installation phase.

In an undated blog post on the 10,000 Year Clock website, Bezos explains that he's been helping with the project for years because "As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders, but also civilization-scale problems. We're likely to need more long-term thinking."

No word yet on when the clock actually will be completed and operational.

Now That's Interesting According to the 2012 article written by Hillis and colleagues, Earth's rotation currently is slowing at a rate of 1.8 milliseconds per day per century, slowly altering the length of a solar day. But melting icecaps caused by climate change could influence that process as well, creating an uncertainty of plus or minus 37 solar days over the clock's 10,000 year lifetime.
An air raid believed to have been carried out by the Saudi-led coalition hit a home in Yemen's rebel-held capital Sanaa, killing six members of the same family, witnesses and rebels said Thursday. Neighbours told AFP the strike on the two-storey house took place at around 9:00 pm local time on Wednesday. The coalition is the only force known to carry out air strikes on Huthi rebel-held territory and has previously admitted to "erroneous" strikes that caused civilian casualties. "There was an air strike on the house. My father and rest of the family were inside," the son, Ahmed Hazem al-Samri, told AFP. He had been out for the evening at the time of the attack in the Shamlan district, northwest Sanaa. "Six of them were killed and seven wounded," said Samri. The dead were three children, two women and Samri's father. Rebel media outlet Al-Masirah also said six people were killed in the air strike. Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a military intervention in Yemen in 2015 with the aim of rolling back Huthi rebels who had seized the capital and restoring the government to power. More than 9,300 people have been killed in the war since and more than 50,000 wounded, according to latest figures from the World Health Organization. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country is a main buyer of British arms, on Wednesday started a controversial three-day visit to Britain. The Save the Children charity protested the visit by installing a statue of a child near parliament in London "to draw attention to the violence that is being fuelled, in part, by British-made bombs".
Leader of the house Grace Fu (left) and the Workers Partys Sylvia Lim. (PHOTO: Screengrabs from gov,sg YouTube channel)

As political theatre goes, it was all a bit anticlimactic. Parliamentary proceedings in Singapore tend to be sedate affairs, and watchers will likely have hoped for fireworks following Leader of the House Grace Fus demand that Aljunied MP Sylvia Lim apologise for her allegations in Parliament regarding the planned GST hike.

But on Thursday (8 March), which also happened to be International Womens Day, Singapores only female opposition MP called Fus bluff. In the parlance of Game of Thrones, Lim politely declined to bend the knee to the House, citing her constitutional duties as an MP. The Workers Party chair had said last week that the government floated test balloons to test public reaction to a GST hike and found itself stuck with the announcement.

I do not see any reason for me to retract the statements which I made during the exchanges with the minister I believe I was doing my duty as an MP to convey ground concerns, reactions and confusions, said Lim on Thursday.

In response, Fu huffily said she would refer Lim to the Committee of Privileges  which looks into complaints about abuse of parliamentary privilege  if the Workers Party chair abuse(s) parliamentary privilege again. But the move had already backfired, given the surfeit of online comments opining that Lim had done nothing wrong in giving voice to what many thought.

Perhaps Fu, one of the 4G leaders, could have learnt something from the way Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam took on Lim last Thursday over her comments on the GST hike. Shanmugam takes no prisoners in debates; by comparison, Fu looked more like the class monitor threatening to report a student to the discipline master. She even appeared to be at a loss for words.

Still, it was one of the most exciting things to happen during a Committee of Supply (COS) debate that went on for seven days.

Parliamentary privilege

NCMP and Workers Party member Leon Perera. (PHOTO: Screengrab from gov.sg YouTube channel)

This is the second time in recent months that a WP MP has been accused of abusing parliamentary privilege, after Non-Constituency MP Leon Perera was compelled to apologise in January for his remarks on national broadcaster Mediacorps use of video footage taken of parliamentary proceedings.

Story continues

Singapores Parliament is no House of Commons, where the banter and withering comments fly thick and fast; as seen in one instance when former UK Prime Minister David Cameron called Labour MP Ed Balls a muttering idiot.

But our House is still modelled on the latter, and it feels curious that an opposition MP should be censured for exercising parliamentary privilege in a debate on matters of national importance.

Parliamentary privilege grants MPs legal immunity  within limits  for statements made in Parliament during the course of their duties. What is more, Lim has made far stronger comments in the House with little incident.

Last October, the Aljunied MP accused the government of using the Attorney-Generals Chambers (AGC) advice as a red herring when deciding the timing of the reserved Presidential Election. Why make an issue out of Lims most recent comments, which were innocuous by comparison?

Perhaps it is just as well that Lim did not back down. It would set an alarming precedent if opposition MPs run the risk of being censured every time they offer an opinion in the House. Fu and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, also a 4G minister, might also have been better served if they had handled Lims comments on their own, rather than have Shanmugam step in.

In any case, Singapores leading opposition party has far bigger fish to fry. The WP election to choose a new party chief takes place in April, while there is still the small matter of the lawsuits filed against its MPs over the long-running Aljunied-Hougang Town Council saga. The party may have won the battle this time, but their struggles are far from over.

Related stories:

COMMENT: Why master of the moment Low Thia Khiang is stepping down

COMMENT: No space in the Parliament press room
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed Wednesday to crack down on cyber hate, telling Jewish leaders that a recent law in Germany punishing web platforms which fail to delete hateful content could be a blueprint to follow. "We need to go further," the French leader told delegates of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), an umbrella groups representing France's Jewish communities. France, he said, will lead moves this year at a European level in "a fight to legislate to compel (web) operators to withdraw as soon as possible" content that is hateful. "No course will be ruled out, including the possibility of legislating in this area," he said. A new hate speech law in Germany, he added, was "an inspiring example". That law that came into force on January 1 and requires social media giants to remove hate speech and other illegal content, or risk fines of up to 50 million euros ($57 million). Under the legislation, companies like Twitter and Facebook have 24 hours to remove posts that openly violate German law after they are flagged by users. Germany adopted the measure, one of the toughest in the world, after a surge in racist and incendiary speech online, particularly since the arrival of more than one million asylum-seekers since 2015. Critics of the law say it stifles free speech.
In another major victory for transgender rights this week, New Hampshires Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on Wednesday in favor of a bill that prohibits discrimination against transgender individuals.

The bill, which passed 195-129, bans discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations on the basis of gender identity. It now goes to the Senate, where supporters said they expect it to pass. If it does, the legislation would then head to the desk of Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has suggested he will sign it.

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Supporters of the anti-discrimination bill  called HB 1319  said it will go a long way in protecting the states transgender community and providing them with equal opportunities.

No person should be fired, evicted or denied service just because of who they are, and it is far beyond time that the Granite States non-discrimination protections include transgender people, Marty Rouse of the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement. We call on the New Hampshire Senate to swiftly pass this bill and send it to Governor Sununus desk for his signature.

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When the vote was announced on the House floor on Wednesday, video of the visitors gallery showed people cheering and applauding. For supporters of the bill, the victory was particularly sweet as it came about a year after a similar bill stalled in the House.

As part of the transgender community, Ive seen so much pain, local resident Gerri Cannon told WMUR. People struggling to keep their jobs, people being fired just because theyre transgender, people being thrown out of their apartments because some guy doesnt like who they are.

Opponents of the bill argued that extending anti-discrimination protections could have negative repercussions, with some Republican lawmakers repeating the oft-touted  and debunked  idea that predatory men would be able to prey on women and girls in places like public restrooms if such legislation was passed.

Story continues

If a violent man wants to harm a woman, all he has to do is say he identifies as a woman and he can go wherever he pleases. Never again will there be a safe space for women, said Rep. Jeanine Notter (R-Merrimack), per the AP.

Rep. Al Baldasaro (R-Londonderry) questioned if the bill would open up the doors where a male who is a female is able to take a shower with my granddaughters.

Supporters lambasted this reasoning as flawed and misguided.

None of the jurisdictions where these protections exist have experienced increases in harassment, violence or any other public safety issue in public bathrooms or locker rooms, said Rep. Ed Butler (D-Harts Location), who was one of the bills sponsors.

Its been a big week for transgender rights across the country.

On Monday, a federal judge in Idaho struck down a state policy barring transgender people from changing the assigned gender on their birth certificates.

In a landmark decision on Wednesday, a federal appeals court ruled that its illegal for employers to discriminate against transgender workers under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex [or] national origin.

New Hampshire is currently the only New England state where there are no anti-discrimination laws protecting transgender people. If HB 1319 is signed into law, it could have a positive domino effect across the nation.

New Hampshire may be small but it has an outsized national political significance ... which is precisely why transgender Americans like myself were watching the Granite States House of Representatives so closely on Wednesday, Daily Beast writer Samantha Allen wrote. A win for [the] transgender rights bill wouldnt just be significant for the estimated 4,500 transgender people in New Hampshire, but for anyone who wants to see such protections spread even further beyond progressive bastions like the West Coast and more liberal parts of New England.

Related...

It's Not Enough To 'Tolerate' Transgender Rights

Gavin Grimm Is The Face Of Transgender Rights. But He's Also A Regular Teen.

Fighting Back For Transgender Rights In New Jersey

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The pro-establishment candidate hoping to secure the Hong Kong Island seat in this Sundays by-election said on Wednesday that the city could consider reviewing term limits for its leader.

Judy Chan Ka-pui, at a televised debate with three other contenders, voiced support for a plan announced by Chinas ruling Communist Party last week to remove constitutional restrictions on term limits for the countrys president, which would pave the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in office beyond 2023.

She added that Hong Kong could consider doing the same.

The situation in China is very different from the West  If our countrys president has more power  this would be a good development, Chan, of the New Peoples Party, said. Such a change could lend continuity to government policies, she added.

If our countrys president has more power  this would be a good development

Judy Chan Ka-pui

For example, in the United States, from Obama to Trump, everything was thrown out, said the Southern district councillor. She said it was common for countries to amend their constitutions.

Asked by candidate Edward Yum Liang-hsien if Hong Kong should also remove the current two-term limit on its chief executive, Chan said the matter could be discussed. The two terms allow for a maximum of 10 years in office.

It depends on Hong Kongs situation, Chan said.

Pro-democracy camp candidate Au Nok-hin, who is expected to be in a close fight with Chan at the polls on Sunday for the seat in Hong Kongs legislature, asked her when the term limits for Chinas president had been written into the constitution.

Chan failed to answer that question, and fellow Southern district councillor Au then slammed her for being unfamiliar with the countrys history.

Chan previously made headlines for saying that denying Hong Kong was part of China was akin to rejecting your own mother.

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Late Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the two-term limit for the president in 1982 to prevent another lifelong dictatorship after Mao Zedongs tumultuous rule.

The fourth candidate running for the Hong Kong Island seat is Ng Dick-hay, an information technology officer. Like Yum, he is not affiliated with any political party.

Bernard Chan, the top adviser to current Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor as convenor of the Executive Council, on Wednesday said there was no need to fiddle with term limits when none of the citys leaders since the 1997 handover from Britain had completed two terms in office.

Why extend it? None of the chief executives have finished two terms  how difficult that is! he said. There are two different systems for the mainland and Hong Kong, and the requirements are completely different. If Carrie Lam could complete two terms, it would already be a breakthrough.

The term limits are stipulated in Article 46 of the Basic Law, the citys mini-constitution. Chan believed it would be difficult and too complicated to amend the law.

A constitutional amendment would definitely be approved in Beijing  but amending the Basic Law would trigger fierce debate in Hong Kong, he said.

Under Article 159 of the Basic Law, the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee, the State Council and the Hong Kong government all have the power to propose amending the mini-constitution.

The final say on amending it, however, lies with the first of those three bodies.

Additional reporting by Tony Cheung

This article Hong Kong can consider axing term limits on leader, pro-Beijing by-election hopeful says first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.
LONDON (Reuters) - Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, days after the visiting French foreign minister sought to discuss Tehran's role in regional conflicts.

Jean-Yves Le Drian travelled to Tehran on Monday with a brief to reaffirm Europe's support for a nuclear deal that opened Iran's economy while echoing U.S. concern about Tehran's missile programme and its influence in the region.

"European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It is none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here?" Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Khamenei said Iran would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.

"We will negotiate with America, when we wanted to be present in America," he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull out of the nuclear deal unless three European signatories help "fix" the accord by forcing Iran to limit its sway in the Middle East and rein in its missile programme.

French President Emmanuel Macron has criticised the programme and raised the possibility of new sanctions.

Tehran supports Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the government's war against rebel forces, including groups backed by the West, and is an ally of Israel's enemy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by John Stonestreet)
Latvia's parliament on Thursday urged longtime central bank chief Ilmars Rimsevics to step down after anti-corruption authorities accused him of bribe-taking. The call for his resignation was passed with 55 lawmakers voting in favour, zero against, and two abstentions. Legally, the eurozone member's governor cannot be dismissed. Before the vote, the other members of the Bank of Latvia's supervisory board banned Rimsevics from attending meetings of the European Central Bank governing council. The deputy governor replaced him in Frankfurt on Thursday. Rimsevics's lawyer Saulvedis Varpins called the parliament vote "incompatible with the rule of law" and inspired by "pre-election populism". The parliament's "resolution can be regarded as documented political pressure on Rimsevics and the European Central Bank," Varpins told the Baltic news agency BNS. Appointed in 2001, Rimsevics was detained last month by the Corruption Prevention Bureau (KNAB) and accused of having solicited and receiving a bribe of at least 100,000 euros ($125,000). Now out on bail and barred from carrying out his duties, Rimsevics has denied the accusations and refuses to step down. He told the Financial Times last month that he believes the allegations are a result of his efforts to have banks undergo audits by US law firms in 2016 and 2017, which lowered their profits.
Yahoo file photo

A 59-year-old man was charged in the State Courts on Thursday (8 March) for his alleged involvement in an armed robbery that occurred more than two decades ago, in 1996.

Foo Siang Thian was charged with one count of armed robbery with common intention for allegedly robbing a 43-year-old man of about $44,000 at knifepoint on 5 July 1996 outside an OCBC Bank branch in Jurong, where the victim had withdrawn a sum of money. After the incident, Foo and an accomplice fled on a stolen motorcycle.

Following police investigations at the time, two men, now aged 59 and 65, respectively, were arrested and charged in court, while a third suspect remained at large.

On 5 March this year, the third suspect was arrested in Malaysia with assistance from the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP). He was extradited to Singapore on 6 March and subsequently charged with armed robbery.

Deputy Commander of Jurong Police Division Julian Chee acknowledged the strong support of the RMP. I would like to thank the RMP for their efforts to locate and arrest the suspect. Through good partnership with foreign law enforcement agencies, the police will persevere and ensure that criminals are brought back to face justice regardless how long it takes.

The maximum punishment for armed robbery with common intention is up to 14 years jail and and up to 12 strokes of the cane (although, as the suspect is above 50, he is exempt from caning).

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Actor Michael B. Jordanbecame one of the men leading the charge for a more equitable Hollywood when he announced on Wednesday that his production company would adopt inclusion riders on all its projects.

In support of the women & men who are leading this fight, I will be adopting the Inclusion Rider for all projects produced by my company Outlier Society, Jordanwrote in an Instagram post.

A post shared by Michael B. Jordan (@michaelbjordan)on Mar 7, 2018 at 3:03pm PST

The Black Panther and Creed star then linked to theUSC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, led by Dr. Stacy Smith, who first publicly presented the inclusion rider as a solution to Hollywoods dismal diversity problem in a2014 op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter. Smith, who researches equality in film and television at the University of Southern California, also discussed the rider in her 2016 TED Talk, The Data Behind Hollywoods Sex Problem.

The inclusion rider, Smith explains, is an opportunity for top actors to contractually demand that their projects reflect the world we actually live in by requiring diversity on screen and behind the camera.

We are thrilled that Michael B. Jordan has signed on to this effort and committed to the inclusion rider, Smith told HuffPost. He and the members of his team are true leaders. We hope other actors and content creators will follow their lead and make inclusion something that is embedded in all of their projects.

The inclusion rider exploded onto the national scene when Frances McDormand concluded herOscars acceptance speech by saying, I have two words to leave you with tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider. She told reporters following the show that she had just learned of the concept the week prior.

The fact that we, that I, just learned that after 35 years of being in the film business  its not, were not going back,McDormand said. So the whole idea of women trending, no. No trending. African-Americans trending, no. No trending. It changes now, and I think the inclusion rider will have something to do with that. Right? Power in rules.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Three prominent South Korean writers and artists who have been accused of sex abuse will have their works and almost all mentions of their names removed from school textbooks, the government said Thursday, as the country's nascent #MeToo campaign spreads. A growing number of women have spoken out about abuses they suffered at the hands of powerful figures in multiple fields, making headlines in a country that remains socially patriarchal despite economic and technological advances. Those accused of sexual misconduct include Ko Un, a top poet regularly tipped for the Nobel prize for literature, prominent stage director Lee Yoon-taek and playwright Oh Tae-seok. Seoul poet Choi Young-Mi accused Ko of sexually abusing many women in literary circles, after publishing a thinly veiled poem "Monster" in which she detailed her experiences at his hands. Lee is under investigation for raping or sexually harassing more than 10 actresses at his theatre group, and Oh is also accused of harassing actresses and students. The trio's works and almost all 40-odd references to them will be erased from school textbooks, Seoul's education ministry said, describing them as "figures who created social controversy." Only a few passing mentions of their names will remain, the education ministry said without elaborating further. Ko also stepped down as of Wednesday as the president of a joint board to create a Korean-language dictionary aimed at bridging the widening linguistic divide between the two Koreas. Ko has denied the allegations against him in a statement to the Guardian, saying he did "nothing which might bring shame on my wife or myself". Lee apologised for causing "harm" to actresses, saying he was willing to "take any punishment", but denied accusations of rape. Oh has refused to comment. Women in South Korea have long been reluctant to come forward about sex abuse due to fears of relentless public shaming and bullying. But a Seoul prosecutor in January made a rare move to speak out about sex abuse by a superior on live television, triggering a wave of accusations against figures ranging from artists to politicians. The most high-profile target is Ahn Hee-jung, a former presidential contender and a star politician who announced his resignation as a provincial governor and retirement from politics on Tuesday after an aide accused him of multiple rapes. Ahn, 52, on Thursday cancelled a planned press conference after another woman came forward to claim that she also had been raped by him repeatedly, as prosecutors opened an inquiry. Amid the barrage of allegations, scores of women's rights activists staged protests to mark International Women's Day, urging stern punishment for offenders and expressing support for victims. "Can't trust empty apologies! They need to take legal responsibility!" shouted activists wearing black outfit and waving roses at a rally in Seoul. Many held banners reading "#MeToo, #WithYou", chanting slogans including "You are not alone! We are with you!"
(PHOTO: Getty Images)

Two Taiwanese men who came to Singapore and acted as money mules for an international syndicate were jailed on Thursday (8 March).

For their actions, Wang Wei Ciang, 24, and Wang Wei-Ming, 25, received sentences of three years and three-and-a-half years at the State Courts after pleading guilty to one count each of abetment by conspiracy to assist another to retain criminal proceeds.

The men, who are not related, had worked for a syndicate carrying out police impersonation scams.

Wei Ciangs role in the scam

Sometime in July last year, Wei Ciang was offered a job while in Taiwan that would pay between NT$40,000 (S$1,760) and NT$50,000 (S$2,245). He was told he would have to travel to Singapore and that his expenses would be fully paid for. He agreed, and arrived in Singapore on 1 August 2017.

Before leaving Taiwan, he was given further instructions via a chat app by a person named Da Li. Wei Ciang did not know, nor did he ever meet, Da Li in person. Da Li would instruct Wei Ciang on where to go and who to meet while the latter was in Singapore.

Wei Ciangs role in the scam was to collect cash from scam victims and deliver the money to Wei-Ming, who met the former in Singapore and handed him $2,000 for the formers living expenses. The two had never met previously and them money came from Wei-Mings own pocket, with the promise that he would later be reimbursed by the syndicate.

From 2 to 8 August last year, Wei Ciang collected a total of $254,800 in cash from various locations around the country. On 8 August, while collecting a package from a victim, Wei Ciang was arrested at the meeting point.

Wei-Mings role

Wei-Mings role in the scam was to collect cash from other money mules and pass it on to another party.

He was recommended for the job while in Taiwan and was promised NT$100,000 (S$4,490) for his work, said Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Foo Shi Hao. Although he suspected it could be criminal in nature, Wei-Ming agreed to take up the job, and flew to Singapore on 31 July 2017.

Story continues

When he arrived in Singapore, he bought a local SIM card and was added into a WhatsApp chat group populated by people he did not know, and from which he received instructions on where to collect money from various people.

Between 2 and 7 August last year, Wei-Ming met Wei Ciang on several occasions and collected cash from him. Wei-Ming had been instructed via the WhatsApp chat group to ensure that the transactions were carried out in secluded places.

In total, Wei-Ming collected $663,250 from Wei Ciang and several other parties. Throughout the process, Wei-Ming believed the money was obtained from illegal sources.

From 1 to 8 August last year, Wei-Ming met another man, Tay Kai Wen, on several occasions during which he handed over $650,000 in cash to the latter. Tay was jailed six months in November last year for his role in the scam.

Wei-Ming was arrested on 8 August last year at a hotel in Chinatown. A total of $13,250 was seized at the time.

A total of $180,100 from the money collected were later declared the proceeds of criminal conduct against four police impersonation scam victims.

DPP Foo sought a jail term of 40 months for Wei Ciang and 45 months for Wei-Ming. He stressed a need for the frustration of police impersonation scams which have caused great harm to Singapore society. He said the two men were part of a syndicate carrying out such crimes.

In mitigation, lawyer Leon Koh, who acted for both men, said Wei Ciang was a country bumpkin who had never travelled out of Taiwan before. He did not think the job was illegal and did not open the envelopes to see what he was collecting and delivering, said Koh.

Wei Ciang had merely followed the instructions given to him and had no association with the syndicate, nor did he know where the money came from or where it went to, said Koh. He also did not reap any personal benefits apart from the $2,000 for his living expenses and is completely broke now, added the lawyer.

Both men also have no previous convictions and cooperated with police investigations, said Koh who asked for jail terms of 24 months and 30 months, respectively, for Wei Ciang and Wei-Ming.

District Judge (DJ) Terence Tay said that the facts of the case showed how many unknown parties were involved in such scams. In addition, money mules made it difficult for the perpetrators to be detected, said DJ Tay.

Sentencing Wei Ciang to 36 months jail, he noted that Wei Ciangs involvement was on a more limited scale because he was under the impression that what he was doing was legitimate.

The judge sentenced Wei-Ming to 42 months jail, saying that his involvement in the syndicates activities was more serious. Wei-Ming was aware that he would be engaging in illicit activities in Singapore, said the judge.

The two mens jail terms were backdated to 10 August 2017. For their crimes, each could have been jailed up to five years, fined, or both.

More Singapore stories:

Construction worker jailed 6 months for molesting cleaner at MRT station

Man arrested over pinhole camera found in NTU toilet

Man jailed 13 years, caned for sexually assaulting lovers teen daughter
Long time Sidewalk favourite Phil Evans has been hard at work on Saint Denis  a documentary on Belfast native and The National Skateboard Co. pro Denis Lynn. The brother of long term Belfast ripper Conhuir Lynn, Denis has grown up in the eyes of the UK and Ireland skate scene and established himself as a ripper of all terrain as well as ripper of the piss, out of everybody in his path. An insight into the life of the self proclaimed legend is bound to be interested, so make sure you get to the Peckhamplex on the 15th (or one of the European dates if youre not UK based) to enjoy it, followed by free booze at the White Horse pub and, weather depending, a follow up at The Wall (if you know, you know).





Saint Denis is the latest skate documentary by Carhartt WIP, featuring team rider Denis Lynn. Clocking in at 43 minutes, it explores the world of Denis, his

humble origins and his jaunts around Europe, seeing him skate spots in Paris, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Malmo. The film is shot and directed by Phil Evans, a regular Carhartt WIP collaborator, who has worked with the brand on previous projects such as Format Perspective and The Panoramic Series.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Denis first picked up a board at the age of five. By his teenage years, he had garnered a reputation as a talented skater

and consummate piss-taker. However, as Evans captures throughout this film, his city still bares the scars of years of sectarian division, which has long stunted the growth of Belfasts skate scene. For Denis, skateboarding not only became his purpose, but also a tool for transcending these surroundings, allowing him to travel the world and throw himself into all manner of unusual situations.

Saint Denis is a testament to Deniss own resolve and evolution as a skater. It includes archive material, interviews with Denis as well as friends and family,

and a host of original, unseen skate footage.
Add sorry to the list of profanities that Freeform wont allow characters to sayat least, if youre a woman. For International Womens Day, Freeform has launched its #NotSorry campaign, which will bleep out the word sorry every time a woman says it on the air. About 50 sorrys will be censored throughout the day Thursday, with an on-air #NotSorry meter tracking the number of omitted words. Women should not be sorry for asking for equal rights or equal pay, the campaign announced. Women should not be sorry for seeking justice, speaking out against harassment or asking for gender parity. 

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Disneys young adult network gave viewers a taste of the action with a promotional montage of female characters from Grown-ish, Shadowhunters, The Fosters, and The Bold Type, who were all censored for saying the dirty word. While Freeforms campaign may have its heart in the right place, hoping to encourage women to be bold in the face of cultural norms that condition them to be more apologetic, it feels like clumsily executed lip service. Omitting the word from its characterslikely in many scenes in which the apology is actually warrantedisnt going to close the gender wage gap, provide women with more promotional opportunities, and ensure a workplace environment that is free from sexual harassment.

Instead of presumptuously censoring womens speech at a time when they already tend to speak on-screen less than men, Freeforms programs could question why women feel the need to say sorry in the first place. The network has already produced some interesting women-driven shows like The Fosters, Grown-ish, and The Bold Type. Perhaps its time would be better spent addressing the deeper meanings behind those empty apologies in the scripts themselves.
Better Life Lab is a partnership of Slate and New America.

The #MeToo moment has awakened us to many hard truths for the first time. The reality that there are contentious divides and disagreements among women who all call themselves feminists is one that is still sinking in. Its easy to oversimplify those divides as generationalwith young women taking a more militant approach and older women holding the movement at arms length. Others have rightly pointed out that the divides are actually political, reflecting different core beliefs about questions like, why is there gender inequality in the first place? Do we need women leaning in? Or women revolting against this system altogether? But these political debates can still feel generational. Why? Because the politics that dominate the feminist movement in any given era are a moving target.

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Look no further than the evolving and contested politics of International Womens Day, where debates among feminists about the roots of the problem and the way to a solution date back more than a century. And the re-emergence of these divisions points toward the renewed vitality of feminist organizingnot its demise.

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Today you can celebrate by attending a corporate panel on womens leadership, drinking the new Scotch for ladies, Jane Walker, with your girlfriends, or organizing the women in your workplace to skip work and go to a protest, joining groups in major U.S. cities whove called for a womens strike for the past two IWDs. Thursday in Spain, millions of women are expected to strike against macho culture with the support of 82 percent of Spaniards overall, including major labor unions and prominent politicians. Until recently, IWD was a feel-good holiday across the globe. In the U.S., it was barely a blip on most peoples radars, unless they worked in marketing, where IWD could be a convenient gimmick for attracting female customers, or in gender advocacy, where it was an occasion to draw attention to long-standing inequalities that werent always making headlines.

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But IWD originated in a very different time when gender and economic inequality were forced into the headlines by a radical international labor movement, rather than by career advocates or clever advertisers. The development of International Womens Day into an annual day of protest emerged from a group of women associated with the Second Communist International, who formed the International Conference of Socialist Women, led by the German Marxist Clara Zetkin. In part, they took as their inspiration a National Womans Day organized by socialist women in the U.S. in 1909.

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Zetkin, who was deeply skeptical of the motives of early feminists who campaigned for voting rights but did not adopt a working-class outlook, once wrote that, Bourgeois feminism and the movement of proletarian women are two fundamentally different social movements. While bourgeois feminists believed womens oppression stemmed from the bad behavior of men in their own class, socialists thought it came from the capitalist system. When the conference finally passed a resolution marking IWD as a day to agitate for voting rights for women around the world, they made it clear this was a holiday representing their particular socialist view of feminism, not a big-tent feminist love fest.

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In agreement with the class-conscious political and trade union organizations of the proletariat of their respective countries, socialist women of all nationalities have to organize a special Womens Day (Frauentag), which must, above all, promote the propaganda of female suffrage. This demand must be discussed in connection with the whole womans question, according to the socialist conception.

Throughout the early 20th century, radicals saw March 8 as a chance to protest and disrupt a society they believed was built on the backs of exploited people, especially women, who were exploited as well as disenfranchised. In subsequent years around the world, women used the day not only to protest for suffrage, but for more radical, gender-neutral demands too, like an end to imperialism and war. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia kicked off with a womens day march for bread and peace in 1917 that eventually led to the tsars abdication three days later.

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As the subsequent backlash to communist politics rose throughout the world, and as labor power, unions, and communist and socialist parties influence declined, the nature of IWD changed drastically. In the U.S. the day disappeared from most peoples consciousness altogether. In 1975 the United Nations began celebrating International Womens Day and encouraging countries around the world to do the same. For those countries that did recognize it in an official capacity, it became a fluffy holiday, something like a cross between Mothers Day and Valentines Day, in which women receive little gifts and tokens of appreciation from friends and family. More radical feminist groups around the world have still held annual protests on IWD, but with a few exceptions, theyve been marginal and routine. Most feminist organizing since the 1970s was happening not through protest, but some mix of electoral campaigning and advocacy.

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But last year, a radical current reawakened.

On the heels of the Womens March in January 2017, the largest day of protest in American history, several leading feminists called for a womens strike from both their paid and unpaid jobs on IWD. Although Ximena Bustamante, a New Yorkbased organizer of the International Womens Strike and a member of the Womens Strike national committee, says some of those feminists had disagreements with the leadership of the Womens March, they saw huge potential in the massive number of people it inspired. Despite various disagreements about the place of electoral politics, the centrality of labor and unions, and the importance of the strike as a tactic, the approach of IWS organizers to the more conservative politics of the Womens March has been one of enthusiasm and commitment to working together and having debates out.

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As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor at Princeton and one of the signers of the original call for a strike, wrote in the Guardian last year: The womens marches were the beginning, not the end. What happens next will be decided by what we do. Movements do not come to us from heaven, fully formed and organized. They are built by actual people, with all their political questions, weaknesses and strengths. If the march wasnt radical enough for you, Taylor argued, you should join them and make your case. This is inarguably a positive evolution in since Zetkin and the socialist feminists of the 20th century debated their differences with definitive declarations and separate and sometimes competing organizing.

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But by calling for a strike, rather than just taking part in the big protests and marches, Bustamante says the International Womens Strike wanted to highlight a feminist politics that addresses the needs of the majority of women. These politics cannot be reduced to just having women in positions of power or in certain institutions, if ultimately the majority of women will be exploited and oppressed.

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So what happened to set off this recent wave of radical IWD celebrations? Bustamante says the call for an International Womens Strike came in 2017 on the heels of a few key events. In 2016, thousands of women in Poland went on strike to protest a ban on abortion rights. Many international feminists were inspired by the use of a strike, which highlights the value women are contributing to society by taking that value away, even if for a few hours or a day.

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But Bustamante also says the greater context for this renewal of a feminism-for-the-99-percent approach to International Womens Day has been the overall decline of organized labor in the U.S. at the same time work conditions have become more unstable and precarious. In their first year they held a rally with several thousand activists in New York City, and dozens of labor unions and organizations endorsed the day of action. They worked together all year to help make this years strike even bigger.

The strike is a proxy of the politics we want to advance. Its a symbol of the ultimate way the international working class can make their power be felt, said Bustamante. You might hear echoes of the holidays original charter.

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But not all feminists see the international working class as their target audience. In the year since the Womens March, theyve focused on exactly what Bustamante and the IWS organizers find to be inadequateelevating the visibility and power of women in business, in the media, and in politics. Given the number of those who rallied with IWS last year compared with the massive turnout around the Womens March even in its second and smaller year, its reasonable to guess the feminist politics of IWS are still in the minority, even after the flash of radicalism weve seen in recent years.

But thats just a snapshot. Where International Womens Day and the feminist movement as a whole go next is up for debate. And onlookers should take comfort in that. Just as critics have said, the debates that have been with us for over a century were getting too harsh and feminism itself too divided, feminists have pulled off some of the biggest and most ambitious organizing weve seen in decades.
Democrats hoping that 2018 will mark a watershed moment in terms of sending women to Washington got a Texas-sized helping of good news on Tuesday. In the first-in-the-nation primary, where turnout easily beat recent records, female candidates outperformed expectations in several competitive races, many of whom were up against better-known or better-funded male counterparts.

More than half of the roughly 50 women running for Congress in the state, most of whom are Democrats, either won their primary or advanced to runoffs on Tuesday. Lupe Valdez, a progressive former Dallas County sheriff who also happens to be gay and Latina, barely missed winning the Democratic gubernatorial nomination outright over Andrew White, a Houston businessman and the son of a former governor who has deep pockets. And the strength of this crop of female candidates looks even stronger the further you zoom in on the five seats Democrats hope they can flip in November.

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The Democratic nominees in all five of those races, like the one for governor, will be decided in a runoff in May since no candidate cracked the necessary 50-percent threshold needed win outright on Tuesday. All five congressional runoffs feature at least one female candidate in the final two. In fact, the top vote-getter in four of the five was a woman, and two of those five runoffs will be women-only affairs.

The most striking of these victories came in the 21st Congressional District, where the retirement of Rep. Lamar Smith has opened up a potentially competitive seat. The only woman in the four-candidate Democratic field, Mary Wilson, finished first on Tuesday, with 31 percent of the votethis despite raising only $40,000 over the past year, only a fraction of some of her fellow candidates. Wilson, a former math teacher who entered the race as a long-shot, will now go head to head with Joseph Kopser, who raised about 20 times what she did. But Wilson has already outlasted two other men expected to finish in the race ahead of her.

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In the 23rd Congressional District, two women outperformed a male challenger who was thought to be one of the front-runners. In that race, where Democrats hope to unseat Rep. Will Hurd, Air Force vet Gina Ortiz Jones, an out lesbian with the backing of LGTBQ and veterans groups, finished first with more than 40 percent of the vote, more than twice that of any of her rivals. A second female candidate, Judy Canales, missed the runoff by about half a percentage point, but notably still drew more support than Jay Hulings, a former federal prosecutor who was thought to be one of the leading candidates. Hulings spent heavily in the primary and had the backing of Joaquin and Julian Castro, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He got 15 percent of the votegood enough only for fourth place.

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In the most closely watched race on Tuesday, journalist and activist Laura Moser survived a nuclear attack launched from Democrats in D.C. to finish second with 24 percentjust behind another female candidate, attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. Fletcher and Moser were the only two women in a seven-candidate field that included cancer researcher Jason Westin, who along with Fletcher was endorsed by the Houston Chronicle; and Alex Triantaphyllis, a nonprofit executive whos been near the top the fundraising leaderboard.

In the 31st Congressional District, where Democrats hope to knock off Rep. John Carter, the two women in the four-candidate primary, Mary Jennings MJ Hegar and Christine Eady Mann, together won nearly 80 percent of the vote and will proceed to a runoff, while the two men in the race will now head home. In the 32nd Congressional District, where Democrats want to take out Rep. Pete Sessions, the only woman in the seven-candidate primary, Lillian Salerno, finished second and made the runoff, in the process beating out a male challenger who had made a name for himself on local TV news.

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Elsewhere in Texas, two other Democratic women won their respective nominations in deep-blue districts where the incumbent isnt running for another term. If things go as expected, then come November, Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia will share the distinction (possibly with others as well) of being the first Latinas elected to Congress from Texas.

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Its not entirely clear yet whether this represents a surge in womens turnout, or what it portends for November. But it was hardly a given a few months ago. Texas is not a place where female politicians have traditionally thrived. None of the five districts targeted by the DCCC have ever sent a woman to Congress. In fairness, the 31st and 32nd districts have only been around for a decade and a half, but the states track record is only marginally better. Texas has sent only one woman to the Senate, and only six to the House, since it joined the union more than 170 years ago. Only three of the states current 36-member House delegation are women, and the two Democrats, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Sheila Jackson Lee, represent two of the states deepest blue districts. The Lone Star State has had two female governors in its history, but the first, Miriam Ma Ferguson, was elected only after her husband was impeached as governor and she promised Texans that shed follow his advice, giving them two governors for the price of one.

With more than twice as many women running for Congress this year as did two years ago, Democrats, womens group, and like-minded allies have good reason to hope the tide is finally turning. The results so far in Texas should only buoy their spirits further. Yes, this particular crop of female candidates in Texas will still face headwinds as they move from the Democratic primary to the general election in conservative-leaning districts. But many of them have already proved capable of surviving rough waters not of their own making.
The Florida legislature passed a raft of new gun control legislation Wednesday in response to the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., marking a significant shift in the political and policy undertones of the gun control debate in a state that has long been used as a gun rights policy petri dish by the National Rifle Association. In a bipartisan vote that had significant opposition from both parties, the Republican-dominated State House voted 67-50 to impose new restrictions on long gun purchases, while also resolving to put more guns in the state school system in the hands of school employees.

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The vote comes days after the State Senate narrowly approved the bill that would raise the age requirement from 18 to 21 and impose a three-day waiting period on purchases of long guns; the measure also bans the possession or sale of bump stocks altogether. Along with those restrictions, the bill includes provisionsknown as risk protection ordersthat make it easier for authorities, with a judges approval, to temporarily confiscate the weapons of an individual considered to be a risk to themselves or the community.

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The bill instructs state law enforcement to set up a new mobile app that would allow members of the public, including students, to anonymously report dangerous threats, and it funds additional school mental health services and security officers, the Washington Post reports. The Florida bill also provides nearly $100 million to improve school security and $67 million to fund a new sheriff program that would allow school districts to voluntarily train and arm employees who do not exclusively teach in the classroom. These new school marshals would have to pass 132 hours of law enforcement training, a background check and additional diversity training.

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The bill irked Democrats in the state that felt it didnt go far enough to limit access to weapons, squandering a moment where significant reform seemed uniquely possible. The measure similarly does not meet the demands made by many of the Parkland students-turned-activists that have called for a more sweeping ban on the type of gun used by Nikolas Cruz to kill 17 people. Many Republicans, backed by a rallying cry from the NRA, saw the new restrictions as an unconstitutional abridgment of law-abiding citizens gun rights.

The bill now goes to Florida Gov. Rick Scotts desk, who has signaled his support for much of the bill, but who has stated on the record that he does not support the idea of putting more guns in schools by arming teachers. The bill, more or less, does just that, with some teachers exempted from being able to carry a weapon, but the Republican governor has not indicated he will veto the bill. I am going to read the bill, and I am going to talk to parents, Gov. Scott told reporters in the state capitol Wednesday. My goal is that this never happens again to a parent in our state.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions filed a lawsuit on Wednesday intended to make you think that hes suing California to strip the state of its major sanctuary policies. Hes not. Sessions didnt have the guts to go after Californias principal sanctuary law because he would undoubtedly lose. Instead, he has targeted three secondary policies that make up a small portion of the states broader immigration regime. Even if Sessions succeeded in overturning all three laws, California would remain a sanctuary state. But he probably wont succeed in killing any of them. Perhaps this lawsuit is just another desperate attempt to win back President Donald Trumps affections.

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Lets start with what Sessions isnt challenging: Californias ban on immigration holds.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement issues these holds, also known as ICE detainers, when a local enforcement agency is about to release an undocumented detainee. ICE asks the agency to keep the detainee for an extra 48 hours after his release date, excluding weekends and holidays, so it can transfer him into federal custody. The arrangement is entirely voluntary.

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In 2017, California barred its state and local law enforcement from honoring ICE detainers. That policy, alone, makes it a sanctuary state. There are several reasons why California banned these detainers, but the main reason is that they may well be illegal. Living in the United States without proper documentation is a civil offense, not a criminal one. So ICE is asking local agencies to detain immigrants for days after their release date with no probable cause of criminal activity. Several federal courts have already found that honoring ICE detainers violates the Fourth Amendment. California has decided it wants no part in this dubious practice.

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Even if ICE detainers were somehow lawful, Sessions could not constitutionally compel California to honor them. Thats because the 10th Amendment forbids the federal government from commandeering state officials to implement federal law. In April 2017, a federal judge ruled that, under this principle, the Trump administration could not legally withhold funding from jurisdictions that ignore ICE detainers. If the administration cant even yank money from jurisdictions that refuse to work with ICE, it certainly cant compel them to cooperate by court order.

So: What California policies did Sessions challenge? The attorney general took aim at three measures that, he alleges, frustrate the enforcement of federal immigration law and are thus void under the Constitutions Supremacy Clause. That clause pre-empts state laws that conflict with federal law. But it isnt at all clear that any of the three laws in question create such a conflict. Lets take a closer at each one.

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First, Sessions targeted a rule that bars California law enforcement agencies from sharing information about undocumented immigrants, including their release date, with the federal government. Unfortunately for him, the 10th Amendment probably insulates this policy from his attack. Sessions is essentially arguing that the federal government can commandeer a state by requiring it to let agencies turn over data pertaining to state residents. Again, the Supreme Court has ruled that the feds cant commandeer a states police powers. Its hard to see how Sessions could win this fight.

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Even if ICE detainers were somehow lawful, Sessions could not constitutionally compel California to honor them.

Second, Sessions challenged a law designed to protect immigrants from workplace raids. Under the act, federal immigration officers may not access any nonpublic areas of a place of labor or the employers employee records without a subpoena or judicial warrant. California passed this law for several reasons, chief among them a desire to protect employees from harassment by ICE. But Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, noted that the legislature had another concern: Theres a long history of employers effectively blackmailing undocumented employers over their immigration status, using the information to thwart union drives and exploit workers. Californias law makes such blackmail more difficult by forbidding employers from giving voluntary consent to an immigration raid, instead requiring judicial oversight to ensure due process.

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Sessions claims that these protections create an obstacle to the objectives of Congress in authorizing these raids. But theres a problem with that theory: The California measures explicitly permit any action required by federal law. How can a state statute impede federal law enforcement if the statute itself allows anything that federal law requires? As Ian Millhiser points out at ThinkProgress, this objectives of Congress doctrine is so hazy that nobodys quite sure what counts as an obstacle. We do know, however, that Justice Clarence Thomas dislikes the doctrine, while the courts liberals seem hesitant to apply it when a state pursues legitimate interests that arent explicitly reserved to the federal government. Sessions argument here isnt frivolous. But because no federal statute directly conflicts with the California acts, its doubtful that a majority of the court would strike them down on that basis.

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Third, and most bizarrely, Sessions challenged an act that allows the California attorney general to inspect immigration detention facilities within the state. These facilities are notorious for their poor conditions: California detainees have been sexually abused and denied medical treatment, while a handful have died from lack of proper care. Yet ICE has been destroying its record of immigrant abuse. The California law seeks to restore transparency by directing the attorney general to tell the legislature and the governor about what he sees in the facilitiesincluding the amount of due process provided.

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What, exactly, is wrong with that? According to Sessions, these inspections constitute an improper, significant intrusion into federal enforcement of the immigration laws. This claim is already weak, since the attorney generals inspections would do nothing to impede the enforcement of these laws. It is made weaker by the fact that 9 of Californias 10 detention facilities are either run by local law enforcement or contracted out by the city. Some cities rent out beds in the local jail to ICE detainees; others contract with private prisons to house these immigrants. Only one facility, the Otay Mesa Detention Center, is under contract with the federal government exclusively.

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Sessions might be able to prevent the California attorney general from inspecting Otay Mesa because it is exclusively federal. But he almost certainly cannot prevent the state from inspecting its own detention facilities. California does not relinquish all authority over its jails and prisons when it allows the feds to house undocumented immigrants in them. To claim otherwise would be to reject the notion of state sovereignty altogether.

And that is whats so galling about this lawsuit: Yet again, Jeff Sessions, a self-proclaimed defender of states rights, is seeking to undermine states ability to conduct their own affairs. He is intruding upon Californias police powers and undermining its protection of civil rights because he dislikes the states laws. Sessions may wish that every state would accede to his policy agenda. But he cant use the Constitution to make them obey his commands.
Robert Muellers investigation began as an inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election and is still often referred to, in shorthand, as the Russia investigation, but at this point, Russia is far from the only country involved. Heres a rundown of some of the other foreign powers alleged to have had improper or illegal contact with members of the Trump administration.

Turkey

The allegations involving former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rival any Trump connections to the Kremlin reported so far. At the same time Flynn was advising Trumps campaign, he was on the payroll of a company with close ties to Erdogans government, a fact he did not reveal until after he was named national security adviser. During this time, Flynn publicly advocated for the U.S. to extradite exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Erdogan for a 2016 coup attempt, and lobbied against a plan to partner with Kurdish forces to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from ISISa plan opposed by the Turkish government. Mueller was also reportedly investigating a meeting between Flynn, his son, and several Turkish officials during the presidential transition at which they discussed a plan to deliverkidnap, basicallyGulen to the Turkish government in exchange for $15 million.

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Federal investigators have also reportedly reached out to several Turkish nationals through the FBIs office in Ankara regarding Trumps adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushners efforts to secure financing for his companys real estate properties.

Qatar

Muellers team is also reportedly looking into conversations between Kushner and influential figures from Qatar. Last July, the Intercept reported that Kushners company had unsuccessfully sought a half-billion-dollar investment from Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani, the billionaire former prime minister of Qatar, throughout 2015 and 2016 for its struggling Manhattan property at 666 Fifth Avenue. A follow-up story in March reported that Kushners family company had made a direct pitch to Qatars minister of finance in the spring of 2017.

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That timing looks suspicious. That summer, Saudi Arabia and several of its allies launched a blockade of Qatar. Though Qatar is also a Sunni Persian Gulf monarchy, it has angered its neighbors in recent years with its support for Muslim Brotherhood movements in other countries, its friendly relations with Iran and Turkey, and its sponsorship of the TV network Al-Jazeera. Trump, who has also unsuccessfully sought Qatari funding for his own business ventures in the past, publicly backed, and took credit for, the Saudi-led blockade, contradicting his own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who maintained a neutral stance. (While the U.S. and Qatar have certainly had their differences, the country also hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East.) NBC reported in March that Qatari officials had considered giving Mueller documents showing what they believe is evidence of efforts by their countrys Persian Gulf neighbors in coordination with Kushner to hurt their country but decided not to for fear of further straining their relations with the White House.

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Theres no proof that Kushners business dealings had anything to do with Trumps stance on the blockade, but the appearance of a conflict of interest makes it hard to view the administration as a neutral arbiter in this dispute between ostensible U.S. allies.

United Arab Emirates

In recent weeks, Muellers investigators have been questioning George Nader, an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates. According to the New York Times, they are looking into the possibility that the Emiratis used Nadera Lebanese American businessman who, for decades, had had a sideline in freelance Middle East diplomacyto funnel money to Trumps campaign. Nader, an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, reportedly made frequent visits to the White House in the early months of the Trump administration, meeting with Kushner and former strategist Steve Bannon to discuss U.S. policy toward the Gulf States. (The Trump administration has generally been very friendly toward the UAE, which is mostly aligned with the Saudis in the dispute with Qatar.) At one point, Nader reportedly received a detailed report from a Trump fundraiser with UAE ties about an Oval Office meeting.

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Nader also reportedly attended and helped organize a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Trump, and a Russian investor with ties to Vladimir Putin. Mueller is believed to be gathering evidence that this meeting was intended to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin.

Israel

Mueller is also reportedly looking into Kushner and the incoming Trump administrations efforts in December 2016 to block an anti-Israel U.N. resolution. The Security Council resolution demanded an end to Israeli settlement building in the Palestinian territories. The Obama administration, breaking with past precedent, chose to abstain from the vote rather than veto it. But Kushner and Flynn worked behind the scenes to try to scuttle the resolution, lobbying members of the Security Council to vote against it. Trump spoke personally with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government had sponsored the original resolution, after which Egypt withdrew it. But the resolutions co-sponsors put it forward again, and it passed on Dec. 23.

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Because Trump, Flynn, and Kushner were not yet government officials at the time, this was arguably a violation of the Logan Act, which bars private U.S. citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. (Among the officials Flynn spoke with was Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak. Flynn would later plead guilty to lying to the FBI about this and other conversations with Kislyak.)

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The Kushner family has extensive business ties to Israel, including receiving a $30 million investment from one of the countrys largest financial institutions made shortly before Trump and Kushners first trip to the Middle East in May. Israel is one of several governments whose officials have discussed ways to use Kushners proximity to the president to their advantage, intelligence sources recently told the Washington Post.

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China

China is reportedly one of the countries that Muellers team is looking into with regard to the Kushner familys efforts to secure financing for its real estate properties. It is also one of the countries whose governments have discussed ways to influence the presidents inexperienced son-in-lawone factor in the recent downgrading of his security clearance.

The Chinese have an unusually chummy relationship with Kushner, even as his father-in-law has railed against the countrys trade practices. Before the downgrade, the New Yorker had reported that U.S. intelligence officials are concerned about Chinas efforts to cultivate Kushner as an asset within the White House. Chinese officials, notably Ambassador Cui Tiankai, have reportedly often dealt directly with Kushner, without any American China specialists present to advise him.

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Kushner real estate projects have received extensive Chinese financing, including through a U.S. immigration program that allows wealthy foreigners to obtain visas for investing in U.S. projects. Ivanka Trump also has business interests in China, where much of her branded merchandise is manufactured. Her company has won trademark approval for several products since she took a position in her fathers administration, raising further conflict-of-interest questions.

While Trumps alleged ties to Russia have understandably gotten the most attention, the expanded focus of Muellers investigation suggests the possibility of a much wider pattern of criminal behavior, and that Moscow wasnt the only foreign capital that hador thought it hadleverage over this administration.
The New York Times, on Tuesday, reported special counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Lebanese American businessman George Nader. The focus on Nader, who is reportedly cooperating and testified before a grand jury last week, brought focus back to a murky January 2017 meeting, during the presidential transition, in the Seychelles with Nader, a Putin-aligned Russian investor, and Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm Blackwater and informal Trump adviser. The secretive meeting has been the subject of much speculation from those who were not involved and significant misdirection from those who were. The meeting was also speculated to be a potential backdoor linkwith a United Arab Emirates detourbetween the Trump universe and the Kremlin. On Wednesday, the Washington Posts reporting confirmed that Muellers investigators have evidence the meeting was, in fact, an attempt to establish a back channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin.

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The full implications of what this means arent yet clear, but one thing is plain: Erik Prince, the Trump emissary at the off-book rendezvous, has been lying. Last year, Prince told lawmakersand the news mediathat his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates, the Post reports.

At the end, one of the entourage says, Hey, by the way, theres this Russian guy that weve dealt with in the past. Hes here also to see someone from the Emirati delegation. And you should meet him, hed be an interesting guy for you to know, since youre doing a lot in the oil and gas and mineral space,  Prince told lawmakers. We chatted on topics ranging from oil and commodity prices to how much his country wished for resumption of normal trade relations with the USA, Prince told lawmakers. I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism.

Prince said the totally chance encounter with the Russian lasted only as long as it took them to drink a beer. Of all the Seychelles bars in the world. What a coinkydink.
Watching Sam Nunbergs spectacular public splashdown on Monday was awkward for virtually everyone, but it was particularly painful for anyone who suspected that deriving secret joy from witnessing a public mental health crisis is neither journalistically, nor morally defensible. By Tuesday night, it was boring old news, as all things seem to be these days, but the questions raised by the uneasy spectacle shouldnt fade so quickly. As CNNs Brian Stelter mused in his evening newsletter, If your source seems drunk or drugged or just plain out of his mind, what is your responsibility? This is one of the reasons America hates the media, Axios Jim VandeHei added: Our entire industry lit itself on fire because a troubled Trump hanger-on made an ass of himselflive.

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It seems plain that something was profoundly awry with the former Trump campaign adviser (CNNs Erin Burnett told him Monday night she could smell alcohol on his breath), and friends confessed that they were worried for him. By Tuesday, Nunberg was cooperating with the Robert Mueller investigation and Fox Business Network correspondent Charles Gasparino tweeted that Nunberg was fully cooperating now with Muellers team and hes intending to go get treatment following his grand jury appearance on Friday. The case, it seemed, had been closed. But we should not move on so swiftly. Indeed, the only thing more worrisome than increasingly routine public episodes of lawless public fury is our expanding capacity to normalize them.

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The only thing more worrisome than increasingly routine public episodes of lawless public fury is our expanding capacity to normalize them.

Nunberg is not the first, or the second, or even the third person in Trumps orbit to perform a spectacular meltdown in the public eye. And while he may have shattered a record in doing 12 media hits in one short evening, he is in good company when it comes to tantrums and spectacle. Last July, Trumps personal attorney on the Russia probe, Marc Kasowitz, went after an anonymous correspondent in a late-night rant that included profanity-laden threats of violence. Kasowitz apologized and stepped back his representation. And who can forget the shortest-lived White House communications director ever, Anthony Scaramucci, whose tenure concluded after he went nuts on the New Yorkers Ryan Lizza for refusing to name a source. Then theres former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, accused by Michelle Fieldsa former Breitbart reporterof allegedly yanking at her arm during a campaign press conference. Charges were eventually dropped. Hes since been accused of assaulting someone else at a holiday party.

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And these are just the examples that were directed at the public and the press. None of it even begins to capture the scope of the private acts of assault and violence delivered by the White Houses alpha men, ranging from the allegations of abuse by recently departed Staff Secretary Rob Porter, allegations of domestic violence against former Trump campaign chair and adviser Steve Bannon, and similar allegations against Andrew Puzder, Trumps first nominee for secretary of labor. And then of course, there is Trump himself, who personally embodies both the public meltdown and the tantrum-as-art form of governance.

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That the country is in the hands of a band of people among whom many, at best, lack the capacity to regulate their emotions and, at worst, routinely abuse women and the press is well-known and well-documented. But this isnt just about the recurring patterns of male rage and violence that surrounds Donald Trump and his advisers. The deeper concern here is how their behavior slowly changes us, as viewers and bystanders, and how these extraordinary circumstances are starting to become the status quo. Dismissing Sam Nunberg as crazy and his Monday rant as a media meltdown experienced by someone in need of treatment obscures the ways in which this conduct, far from an anomaly, is almost a job requirement for Trump and the Trump-adjacent. Losing ones mind on national television, calling a womanin this case press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sandersa fat slob, bragging that you are personally above the rule of law, is not normal. But its increasingly normal for the men surrounding Donald Trump. And its behavior that runs deep in the bloodstream of the president himself.

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One of the defining sociological concerns of the present age is whether it is appropriate to discuss and diagnose Donald Trumps daily flirtations with violence, aggression, fabrication, and dehumanization of others as a mental health problem. This would be an extremely boring and even fantastical conversation, as there is no serious question that Trump is a man with severe impulse control problems and a propensity to lash out violently against perceived enemies, and also perceived friends. But he is the president, and so the conversation has taken on a new, worrisome weight. But whats possibly more worrisome, provided he doesnt nuke us all, is what he normalizes and condones all around him every day.

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Trump surrounds himself, and frequently defends and sides with, people who have similar proclivities. And Nunberg, who was fired from the Trump campaign in August 2015 after a series of racist posts were found in his Facebook archives, is very much the kind of rage-against-propriety man Donald Trump likes best: the kind who loses his temper, berates journalists (always journalists), belittles women, and then laughs it all off as a joke or master plan. This isnt a diagnosable sickness or awkward meltdown. Its the playbook.

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It is not coincidence that this language and conduct is cresting with the avalanche of #MeToo, because its a reflexive way of centering oneself in a moral universe full of suffering as the only true victim.

A closer look at Nunbergs extraordinary performance from Monday suggests that what he was acting out, with almost eerie accuracy, was the rant of the beleaguered newly dismissed contestant on a reality show. The tropes are by now predictablethey dont know me/ let them try I dont care / I am the real victim here. This is, perhaps, a social behavior and language that has already infected everything we say beyond repair. But the trope has also been elevated to a new level in recent months, as weve seen it performed not by reality TV contestants, but by the people who are supposed to be running the government. It is the ever more familiar howl of rage adopted by white men who are extremely angry that the law, the rules, and the women are out to get them. Its a way of claiming to be the real sufferer, the genuinely wronged. And it is not coincidence that this language and conduct is cresting with the avalanche of #MeToo, because its a reflexive way of centering oneself in a moral universe full of suffering as the only true victim. Its also the central narrative of the Trump presidency.

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There is no disputing the fact that this presidency has opened the porthole between private expressions of rage and anger to acting them out in the public context. It is also true that the president himself uses public anger, tantrums and even his own incoherence to destabilize and confound discourse. That isnt new either, and it isnt even very interesting anymore. Its also not new that the meltdowns and rage and drama that froths around Trump is nothing weve ever seen from the White House before. Its discomfiting. But also numbing. By that measure, Nunberg was small potatoes and gone in a day.

We dismiss and ignore these ever more frequent public meltdowns of the people with whom this president has surrounded himself at our own peril. Its not fun or shocking to watch Carter Page, or Corey Lewandowski, or Steve Bannon, or Sam Nunberg flip out at the media; its just the White House equivalent of a Real Housewife flipping over a table. It still feels vaguely opportunistic and titillating, as it should; human pain is still not funny. But these people arent performing explosive anger because they are unfit or unwellor at least, it is not only because of that. They are enablers of the Trump apparatus precisely because they are creatures of barely contained, frightening, explosive anger. Lets at least recognize this one sad truth: These episodes of temper and fury are neither tragic outliers nor tactical political wizardry.

The house of Trump is built on male fury, and even if we grow numb to the explosions, the fuses are going to keep blowing.
Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers are currently in legal jeopardy thanks to the Trump administrations ongoing efforts to cancel the DACA program. Earlier this week, the presidents bad-faith March 5 deadline for creating a legislative DACA fixcame and went, and some Democrats seem to have concluded that theres nothing to be gained by making noise about POTUSs unpopular position on the issue. Consider the following:

 Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA via Twitter or press release yet this year.

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 Alabama Sen. Doug Jones doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Feb. 15.

 Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Feb. 15, but she did complain to Roll Call on March 1 that DACA activists are too critical of Democrats.

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 West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Feb. 15.

 Florida Sen. Bill Nelson doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Feb. 12.

 Michigan Sen. Gary Peters doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Jan. 21.

 Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow doesnt appear to have issued an official statement about DACA since Jan. 16 unless you count her quote in Roll Call criticizing immigration activists.

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 New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen doesnt appear to have issued a public statement about DACA since Feb. 15.

You may have your suspicions about why I picked those particular Democrats if you read the headline of this post, and indeed, they were all among the 16 Dems who crossed the aisle and voted to advance a major bank deregulation bill earlier this week. (I didnt mention the other eight because theyve stayed relatively more active on DACA.) While the bill in question is being pitched as an effort to help small banks and credit unions lend more easily to mom and pop local businesses on Main Street, reporting in the Intercept notes that the institutions that will or may benefit from it include such notably nondown-home, nonmom and pop operations as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Barclays. (Twenty-five of the 38 biggest banks in the country are expected to benefit from one of the bills components in particular.) Having reviewed the latest data on credit availability, meanwhile, my colleague Jordan Weissmann recently wrote that [t]here is no sign of a credit shortage in the United Stateson Main Street or any other street. And the Congressional Budget Office says the bill will increase the likelihood that a large financial firm with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail.

So thats what those senators are doing right now instead of pushing more on immigration. Maybe theyre making the right political calculation given their lack of legislative leverage on DACA and the potential value to Democrats in red and purple states of being able to claim bipartisan achievementsI dont know. I cant see the future! But its, you know, interesting.
To this besieged White House, the Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels, aka Peggy Peterson) lawsuit against President Donald Trump might only register as a single locust on the plague scale. Stormy Daniels doesnt even represent the most interesting sex scandal the White House has to confront this week. Nevertheless, her lawsuit poses a few interesting legal questions that some poor judge in Los Angeles Superior Court will have to very publicly grapple with.

The nature of the dispute is paradoxically convoluted. Cliffords lawsuit seeks to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement requiring her to keep secret her sexual relationship with Donald Trump, but the lawsuit itself announces the nature of the relationship in the first paragraph of the suits factual background:

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Ms. Clifford began an intimate relationship with Mr. Trump in the Summer of 2006 in Lake Tahoe and continued her relationship with Mr. Trump well into the year 2007.

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Indeed, the opening of the barn doors surely preceded this lawsuit. Countless news outlets have already reported that Clifford had approached Slates Jacob Weisberg in late 2016 with details that match the allegations in the lawsuit. The Wall Street Journal has also reported on the details of a $130,000 payment made by Trumps personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to Clifford at the height of the campaign. This payment may have been a violation of federal election law, but the point is that it speaks to how much the public already knows about this supposedly confidential case.

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That arrangement had a nondisclosure agreement with a mandatory arbitration clause, of which Cohen availed himself late last month. Again, its all very labyrinthine.

Putting aside for the moment the question of whether Cliffords lawsuit, by its being filed publicly instead of under seal, represents a breach of the nondisclosure agreement, the next most convoluted question involves Cliffords attorney Michael Avenattis central claim that the agreement is invalid. He argues that there can be no confidential settlement to violate because, as he told NBCs Today: Mr. Trump did not sign. We believe that that was so that he could later claim deniability, and therefore, from a legal perspective, we believe shes free to talk.

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Sure enough, Trumps seismograph-like signature does not appear on the agreement, either as himself or by his latest alleged nom de plume, David Dennison. But if Clifford deposited the check, the court might view that act as a unilateral ratification of her end of the agreement. If a court interprets the parties conduct as evincing the existence of a contract, it wouldnt then matter whether either party signed.

Whether Cliffords attorney is right involves an area of contract law most lawyers last encountered on their first-year exam, known as the statute of frauds. Each state has its own such statute and theyre largely similar, but essentially it requires that certain types of contracts must be signed in writing by both parties. Its well-established that a court can find a contract valid even where neither party signs simply by the conduct of the parties, though this rule is somewhat constrained in contracts governed by the statue of frauds. If a court deems this agreement as falling outside the statue of frauds, then Trumps lack of signature might not matter. Generally, the types of contracts that require signatures are weighty and have lasting implicationsreal estate contracts, mortgages, long-term employment contracts, surety agreements, debts dischargeable in bankruptcy, and so on.

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That a lawsuit seeking to undo the terms of an agreement could potentially violate that agreement suggests that were inside a farcical adaptation of the film Inception.

So the question for the court might be whether the TrumpClifford nondisclosure agreement categorically squares with Californias enumerated statute of frauds. While the aforementioned types dont quite fit, one interesting candidate is California Civ. Code 1624(a)(1), which requires a signature of the party to be charged or the partys agent where the agreement, by its terms is not to be performed within a year from the making of the agreement. So the question is: What would that mean, with respect to this nondisclosure agreement, where Clifford is obligated to remain silent indefinitely, a period that could easily extend past a year? Despite that arguments intuitive appeal, courts have mostly viewed indefinite duration contracts as not falling within this one-year provision, sometimes reasoning that the party could die within a year, sometimes finding validation where only one of the parties completes performance. Often, one partys ratification (e.g., cashing the check) can serve as an exception to the statute of frauds.

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Whatever the merits of Cliffords argument that Trumps failure to sign the agreement rendered it invalid, it may not ultimately matter because in order for Trump to prevail on the agreement he would have to take Clifford to court and enforce it. For a president of the United States to sue an exporn actress for revealing details of their extramarital affair allegedly occurring shortly after the birth of his son Barron would seem to be a politically fraught venture, even for a president as Teflon as Trump has proven to be.

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One big caveat to consider here is that Cohen has already filed an arbitration proceeding pursuant to the agreement, with the lawsuit alleging that it was filed surreptitiously and without notice to Clifford, and that its purpose was to silence Clifford. The California court could perhaps tell Clifford that she needs to take her case to the same arbitration panel. Cliffords response to that suggestion is implicit in her lawsuitarguing that there is no agreement because Trump didnt sign it. Accordingly, if theres no agreement, the arbitration clause within can be disregarded.

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The stakes are daunting enough for Clifford, at least on paperthe agreement contains a $1 million liquidated damages clause for each individual breach of the agreement, and its reasonable to assume that she doesnt presently have $1 million in the bank. Whether or not filing such a lawsuit publicly might separately constitute such a breach, or multiple such breaches, is a rabbit hole beyond the scope of the rabbit hole weve already crawled down. That a lawsuit seeking to undo the terms of an agreement could potentially violate that agreement suggests that were inside a farcical adaptation of the film Inception.

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At every stage of this story, the White House has simply pretended that Stephanie Clifford doesnt exist. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump had been unaware of the payment and that he denied the relationship took place, another point of contention of the lawsuit itselfthe suit argues that it stretches credulity to argue Trump didnt know about the paymentand one that would seem potentially to offer another avenue for invalidating it. If Trump was not even aware of the agreement, how could he agree to it and how could Cohen even have acted as an agent on his behalf in signing? Then again, what Trump supposedly paying $130,000 for was the right to pretend none of this ever happened. Harvey Weinstein can probably sympathize.

Ultimately, if Trump chooses to enforce the agreement against Clifford in court it will serve as a tacit admission of Cliffords underlying story. However, if a court throws out the suit and the enforcement is made in arbitration, then we may never get the full story. Perhaps the lesson here is that nondisclosure agreements over personally embarrassing incidents involving the rich and famous arent particularly useful as anything more than a calculated bluff, when the revelations cant be undone by 1 million uncollectable dollars.
For the past two weeks, progressive activists and Jewish advocacy groups have been relitigating the character of Louis Farrakhan. The National of Islam minister gave his annual Saviours Day speech on Feb. 25, during which he made several characteristic remarks about the Satanic Jew responsible for Hollywoods filth and degenerate behavior that is turning men into women and women into men.

Usually, Farrakhans speeches dont spend weeks in the headlines. Hes been making anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-feminist statements for his entire career, and his most recent proclamations are unremarkable for a notorious hate group leader. To some of his fans, Farrakhans violent rhetoricHitler was a very great man; the wicked Jewsare promoting lesbianism, homosexualityis a major part of his appeal. But this year, Farrakhans Saviours Day audience included a newly prominent leader of the post-Trump resistance movement: Womens March co-president Tamika Mallory.

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CNNs Jake Tapper was one of the first to point out that Mallory was at Farrakhans speech. In the days that followed, both Jewish media outlets and mainstream ones wondered whether and when the Womens March would condemn the anti-Semitic leader to the satisfaction of its followers. BuzzFeed claimed the Womens March had created an anti-Semitism crisis.

The charge of anti-Semitism is nothing new to the Womens March leadership team, which includes prominent Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, who has been accused by Tablet of espousing a politics of hate. And the groups connection to Farrakhan shouldnt come as a total surprise. The organizations namesake event, held the day after Donald Trumps inauguration, counts among its influential predecessors the Million Man March that Farrakhan spearheaded in 1995. For many people raised in civil-rights organizing circles, as Mallory was, Farrakhan is a very flawed, but nevertheless very present leader.

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Perhaps for this reason, neither Mallory nor fellow march co-founder Carmen Perez have tried to hide their affiliation with him. Both have posted photos of themselves getting cozy with Farrakhan. Last year, Mallory called him the GOAT (greatest of all time). The year before, Perez posted an up-close video she filmed while watching Farrakhan speaking truth to power at his 2016 Saviours Day address. According to Mallory, she has been going to the Nation of Islam event for more than three decades: I first went with my parents when I was just a little girl, and would begin attending on my own after my sons father was murdered nearly 17 years ago. In that most difficult period of my life, it was the women of the Nation of Islam who supported me.

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None of this should be construed as an excuse for Mallorys continued support of a man who called for the wicked state of Israel to be cleansed with blood for allowing Jerusalem to host a gay pride parade. Worse still, when asked by Womens March supporters to denounce Farrakhans Feb. 25 statements, she demurred. For more than a week, she and the Womens March didnt mention his name at all in their tweets and public statements. Mallorys only tweets on the matter offered a general condemnation of anti-Semitism and homophobia, attacks on her critics (My love for people is deep. Whatever else they say about me is a LIE.), and a seeming justification of Farrakhans methods: The black community is very complex. We have been & continue to suffer thru incomparable circumstances. This means other ppl may not understand how we organize and all that it takes to deal with our pain.

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This defensive stance is an insult to the many other black organizers Mallory has championed in her years of activism, who dont make their cases or deal with intergenerational trauma by renouncing the humanity of Jewish, queer, and transgender people. (The Womens March itself chastised Rose McGowan, who had previously spoken at the groups convention, for making anti-transgender remarks, telling her that The pain we feel does not excuse the pain we cause others.) A liberation ideology that rests on the demonization of other marginalized groups should be, and is, unacceptable to most contemporary activist movements. This is not about respectability politics, the nitpicking at tone and tactic people often employ to discredit black activism, as Mallory seemed to suggest in her tweet. This is about basic human rights and freedoms. Without an intersectional understanding of those, including the acknowledgement of black people who are Jewish and/or LGBTQ, no struggle for justice can hope to succeed.

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The sad thing is, Mallory knows this. Her knowledge is reflected in the deeply progressive, far-reaching platform of the Womens March. The organizations big-tent agenda, which counts criminal justice reform, labor rights, and transgender health access as feminist issues, is exactly what has made it a powerhouse activist training ground for more than a year, helping thousands of women claim a broader array of social justice issues as their own. By refusing to denounce Farrakhan, Mallory and the Womens March are betraying the values of the promising movement theyve helped create.

Finally, nine days after Farrakhans speech, the Womens March tweeted a statement noting that Farrakhans anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ remarks were not aligned with the Womens March Unity Principles. There was no assessment of the man himself. It had taken the organization more than a week to respond to the controversy because, the statement said, they are trying to intentionally break the cycles that pit our communities against each other.

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On Wednesday, Mallory published a longer essay on News One. I attend meetings with police and legislatorsthe very folks so much of my protest has been directed towards, she wrote. Ive worked in prisons as well as with present and former gang members. It is impossible for me to agree with every statement or share every viewpoint of the many people who I have worked with or will work with in the future. Her piece echoed remarks Perez made to Refinery29 on the subject of Farrakhan earlier this year. People need to understand the significant contributions that these individuals have made to Black and Brown people. There are no perfect leaders, she said.

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None of the people whove been energized by the Womens March expect leaders like Mallory, or the leaders she admires, to be perfect. They do, however, expect a baseline of commitment to equality, respect for human dignity, and humility in the face of valid criticism. The question is, how much dehumanizing garbage should activists have to accept from the likes of Farrakhan before cutting him out of their class of admired elders? Most people can accept that their activist peers are all in various stages of unlearning their internal biases, whether those biases are anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, or transphobia. But there has to be a reasonable expectation that people make good-faith attempts to listen to and learn from communities theyve harmed, and there will always be a bright-line past which an organizer no longer qualifies for tempered admiration. Farrakhan crosses it just about every time he opens his mouth. Mallorys fave isnt just problematiches the antithesis of the principles that supposedly animate her work.

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Mallorys unwillingness to see Farrakhan for what he is will surely cost the entire Womens March organization its credibility among many Jewish people, LGBTQ people, and those who see themselves as allies to those communities. By embracing one of the worlds most famous anti-Semites, she is giving ammunition to the right-wingers and leaders of Jewish advocacy groups who call Sarsour an anti-Semitic, Sharia-loving agent of terror for her Muslim practice and pro-Palestine activism. You cant be a feminist in the United States and stand up for the rights of the American woman and then say that you dont want to stand up for the rights of Palestinian women in Palestine, Sarsour told the Nation last year. If the Womens Marchs leaders are truly committed to this kind of intersectional justice framework, they must ask themselves whether a civil rights advocate who demeans women, Jews, and queer people can really be hailed as a civil rights advocate at all.
A week after the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead and 14 injured, Donald Trump publicly scolded members of his own party: They have great power over you people, he said to a room filled with shell-shocked Republicans. Some of you are petrified by the NRA.

The presidents willingness to follow public opinion, rather than the orthodoxy of his own party, on a highly emotional issue with mass support opened the door for a major political win. If Trump actually decided to use his vast powers to push through a historic compromise on gun control, he would finally be able to cash in on the claim he has made since he declared his candidacy: that he is a deal-maker who can deliver for the people because he isnt beholden to the political class.

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Voters who are very liberal or highly politically engaged would likely dismiss such a move as an uncharacteristic aberration. But there are few of those. The bulk of Americansthose who dont pay much attention to politics or have ideologically muddled viewswould probably start to temper their negative opinion of the president. And if that result then served as a blueprint for similar bargains on other issues, average Americans might just start to like him.

From Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and from Viktor Orban in Hungary to Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, many populists around the world have remained sufficiently popular for a long enough span of time to concentrate vast powers in their own hands. Trump has some important commonalities with them. Like them, for example, he is a master at riling up his base with lofty promises of big improvements and urgent warnings about imminent dangers.

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Unless Trump suddenly starts to learn on the job, he is unlikely to emulate the successes of Chavez, Kaczynski, and cohorts.

But the ways in which Trump differs from his populist peers are even more important: So far, he has been far less interested than them in rewarding his base with tangible material improvements. He has been far less strategic about abolishing independent institutions. And he has also been far less effective at hammering home a consistent worldview that recasts any harm to him as a threat to the whole nation.

This is heartening: Unless Trump suddenly starts to learn on the jobsomething he has stubbornly resisted doing for the past 18 monthshe is unlikely to emulate the successes of Chavez, Kaczynski, and cohorts.

But it is also scary: If American institutions have, so far, stood up to Donald Trump, the reason for this seems to have at least as much to do with his personal failings as it does with the structural differences between the United States and countries like Poland or Venezuela. If Trump, or one of his successors, should learn to emulate the playbook developed by authoritarian populists around the world, he too could concentrate enormous powers in his own hands.

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The appeal of populist leaders is nearly always based on the idea that they have little in common with the traditional elite. By conventional measures, this is simply untrue: Trump, as we know, grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and golden draperies in his crib. Hes not alone. Viktor Orban, Hungarys xenophobic prime minister, for example, studied at Oxford University thanks to a scholarship from George Soros, a man he has done more than just about anybody else to vilify.

But despite their relative privilege, there is one thing that really does distinguish Trump and Orban from other elites: their willingness to say things that are considered utterly unacceptable by other people in their social circles.

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It is a mistake to think that Trump is committing an unintentional gaffe when he calls Mexicans rapists, or that Orban is slipping up when he calls migrants poison. But nor do they express such ugly sentiments because they expect a majority of the population to agree with them. Rather, they are setting out to shock their fellow elites because they know that the opprobrium which they thereby provoke serves to demonstrate that they truly stand apart from the political class.

Trump is a master at this art of verbal provocation, and it is impossible to explain his success without understanding that. When his willingness to refer to shithole countries doesnt lead his supporters to abandon him, many commentators conclude that Americans must secretly share his racist views. This is undoubtedly true of a certain part of his base. But the fact of the matter is that even many people who disagree with the sentiment, and would never say something similar themselves, see it as proof that Trump is for real.

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This manufactured sense of authenticity is Trumps biggest strength; indeed, he may be even better at exploiting it than his populist peers. But in other ways he has, thankfully, fallen far short of their performance.

If fortune favors the bold, as Niccolo Machiavelli famously quipped, then the sorry cast of populist imposters who have risen to power over the past years must be bold indeed.

Indeed, Lady Luck has been unusually kind to most of the populist leaders who have managed to capture a large amount of power in recent years: Chavez was able to ride high during his early years in office because of a temporary boom in oil prices. Erdogan came to power just as Turkey was starting to attract vast foreign investments. And Kaczynskiwho as leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party is widely regarded as the most powerful man in Poland, even though he doesnt officially have a role in the governmenthas, in recent years, been buffeted by a strong global recovery that is hardly of his own making.

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But if successful populist leaders got lucky by presiding over favorable economic circumstances, they were also shrewd in doing what they could to claim credit for them. Chavez used the vast revenues from Venezuelan oil sales to raise pensions, increase unemployment benefits, and invest in the countrys public services. Erdogan massively expanded the countrys infrastructure, doubling the number of airports in the country and tripling the length of its double-carriage roadways. Kaczynski quickly introduced a generous child benefit that sends a monthly payment of 500 Zloty to millions of Poles. Other strongman leaders, from Vladimir Putin to Narendra Modi, have introduced similarly generous programs.

It is a mistake to think that Trump is committing an unintentional gaffe when he calls Mexicans rapists, or that Orban is slipping up when he calls migrants poison.

On the campaign trail, Trump gave the impression of following in their vein by promising to deliver tangible benefits for down-and-out Americans: Unlike other Republicans, for example, he went to great lengths to sound serious about ending special treatment for big businesses, claimed to favor universal health insurance, and waxed lyrical about huge investments in infrastructure.

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But as president, Trump has spectacularly failed to deliver on all three counts. His tax bill has been full of flagrant handouts to special interests. Ever since he proved incapable of repealing Obamacare, in good part because he didnt have any real plan for what to replace it with, his policy on health care seems to consist solely in sabotaging the existing system to the best of his meager abilities. Even his ideas for rebuilding Americas roads and bridges are so vague and lacking in ambition that the phrase infrastructure week has become a shorthand for the administrations inability to focus on the actual business of getting anything done.

Trump, of course, also does what he can to claim credit for a strong economic recovery, regularly tweeting about record low unemployment figures and record-high stock prices. And though most economists dont think that his tax bill will actually boost growth, recent polls do suggest he has managed to convince many Americans that his administrations economic policies are making a real contribution.

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But though Trump would like to take credit for the strong economy he has inherited, he has nothing nearly as concrete as Erdogans expanded welfare state or Kaczynskis monthly child care payments to offer up as evidence of his magnificence. By the standards of the illiberal international, he is simply not doing enough to exploit his good economic fortune.

Populists like Chavez, Orban, and Kaczynski have all recognized one key rule from their first day in office: To vanquish the institutions that were meant to hold them in check, they needed to reform independent power centers because of purported inefficiencies in a seemingly nonpartisan manner.

Within a few months of becoming president of Venezuela, Chavez called an assembly that was tasked with rewriting the constitution; it ended up granting him vastly expanded powers. Well before there had been accusations of impropriety at the ballot, Orban reformed Hungarys electoral commission; it is now staffed with cronies who have levied huge fines against opposition parties while declining to investigate his own. And long before it had even had the opportunity to censor the government, Kaczynski took control of Polands Supreme Court; he has since succeeded in flooding it with his own appointees and politicizing the process by which particular cases are assigned to particular judges.

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On this count, too, Trump has been kindred in spirit but chaotic in execution.

His rhetoric leaves little doubt about the fact that, like other populist strongmen around the world, he desires to make state institutions that have a long history of independence subservient to his whim. He has made clear that he expects personal loyalty from the leading law enforcement officers in the country. He has attacked the press as an enemy of the American people and maligned his main political adversaries as traitors. And he has openly expressed his admiration for a dozen dictators around the world, congratulating Xi Jinping of China for becoming president for life and suggesting, as recently as last week, that maybe well have to give that a shot some day.

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But because Trump has pursued the destruction of democratic institutions in a tactical and reactive manner, rather than a strategic and proactive one, he has wrought a lot less damage than he might have otherwise.

If Trump had pursued an effective strategy of institutional co-optation, he would have tried to wrest control of independent agencies before he seemed to have an ulterior motive for doing so. This is one reason why I was so worried about his casual request during the State of the Union for Congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workersand to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people. Like other populists who had broken the independence of the civil service, this seemed to pave the path for him to purge state institutions while preserving the plausible fiction that he was merely holding lazy or incompetent bureaucrats to account.

Trumps attack on the core institutions of the American republic is being constrained as much by his own incompetence as it is by the Constitution or the political opposition.

Indeed, it is astounding to what extent Trumps attacks on independent institutions are already bearing fruit in the one area in that he is waging them in a consistent manner. In his short time in office, he has effectively turned the House Intelligence Committee into his accomplice, rendered the Senate Intelligence Committee toothless, fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and pushed key personnel in the Department of Justice into premature retirement. Only a few embattled officials, like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, now stand between Trump and his goal of a deeply politicized law enforcement apparatus.

If he puts even more pressure on those career officials whose first commitments are to the Constitution rather than to the president, and fills top vacancies with his own loyalists, he may well succeed in doing to the FBI and the Department of Justice what he has already done to the congressional committees that were supposed to investigate his campaigns alleged collusion with Russia. That would not only mean that his own crimes could no longer be fully investigatedbut also raise the possibility of a politically motivated prosecution of his main adversary in 2020.

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As the investigation by Robert Mueller starts to inch ever closer to Trumps family and friends, his incentive to fire the special counsel, and provoke a massive constitutional crisis, will only keep on rising. The threat he poses to the separation of powers remains all too real, then. But because these measures are so clearly bound up with Trumps immediate self-interest, they have also provoked much more fervent pushback than they would have done under different circumstances. As in so many other areas, Trumps attack on the core institutions of the American republic is being constrained as much by his own incompetence as it is by the Constitution or the political opposition.

Trumps rhetoric is undoubtedly his strongest suit. But even in the one area in which he is capable of real strokes of terrifying genius, he often fails to take advantage of his own talents.

While other populists also like to stir the pot with outrageous claims, the bulk of their rhetoric is focused on one goal and one goal only: to cast themselves as the only legitimate spokesmen of the peopleand portray their nation as being under siege from both internal and external enemies. This is what Erdogan is consciously doing when he calls all critical journalists terrorists, what Orban is doing when he claims that Soros has hatched a plot to make Hungary subservient, and what Kaczynski is trying to achieve when he insinuates that Jews are telling lies to use the Holocaust as a weapon against Poles.

Trump, of course, is fully capable of using strikingly similar language. And whenever he sticks to a speech written by his advisers, he mounts a very effective expression of this basic worldview. In the imagery of the State of the Union, for example, Trumps America is a country of patriotic boys who embrace the flag and of heroic cops who adopt needy children. Democrats, meanwhile, mostly care about making life easy for the violent criminals of MS-13.

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But while Trump regularly hits these points, he rarely does so in a disciplined manner. Rather than propagating a carefully composed worldview in which it is America that is under siegewith Trump coming to his nations rescuehe offers up a succession of disconnected ramblings that leave no doubt about the fact that his main concern is for his own political survival. For every sentence in which he manages to focus his mind on the threats that are supposedly befalling his most loyal followers, he seems to utter four or five in which he nurses the perceived slights that he has personally suffered throughout his life.

This is enough to keep a large minority of the American population loyal to him: As has become depressingly evident over the past months, Trumps appeal among his longtime faithful is undiminished, and his grip over the Republican Party is only continuing to grow more deathly. But it is not enough to grow his base: Unlike his peers around the world, Trump has proved preternaturally inept at winning over undecided or ideologically moderate voters.

By last December, America had seemingly made up its mind about Donald Trump. According to FiveThirtyEights tracker, 20 percent fewer Americans approved of the presidents job performance than disapproved of it. With his numbers gradually continuing to drop, he seemed headed for an unprecedented rout in the midterm elections. It was increasingly difficult to imagine how he could win re-election.

Two months later, Trumps approval ratings had rebounded to an astonishing degree. Though he was still unpopular, the gap between Trump approvers and Trump disapprovers had effectively halved, standing at just over 10 percent. For a terrifying moment, it looked as though he might be on the verge of a real comeback.

At first glance, this reversal in fortunes was deeply puzzling. After all, the headlines of the major newspapers and television networks were hardly favorable to Trump between the middle of December and the middle of February: There was the publication of Fire and Fury and the revelation about his lawyers payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, his reference to African nations as shithole countries, and the indictment of Russian hackers accused of interfering with the 2016 election.

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What could possibly explain Trumps temporary resurgence?

Unlike his peers around the world, Trump has proved preternaturally inept at winning over undecided or ideologically moderate voters.

At a time when the news feels like a rapid succession of knock-out blows, it is difficult to know which hit packed the biggest punch. But two important events do seem to stand out over those months: Tax reform gave Trump the first real legislative achievement of his presidency. And the State of the Union address gave him an opportunity to hammer home the worldview of far-right populists in a far more disciplined manner than his early morning tweets. By following, however partially, the two key parts of the populist playbook that he usually neglects, he was able to improve his standing to an astounding degree in a scarily short span of time.

Thankfully, it does not look as though Trump is learning from those successes. He has so little interest in public policy, and so little patience for the grueling work involved in bipartisan negotiation, that he is unlikely to broker an agreement on gun control. (Indeed, he has already beat a humiliating retreat on the issue, welcoming an NRA lobbyist into the Oval Office and gushing about the meeting on social media.) He is so narcissistic that he will likely prove incapable of holding his tweets even if a moment of silence might be needed for his divisive worldview to resonate all the more powerfully. And unlike many other authoritarian leaders, he seems to be too shortsighted even to reward those cronies who have proven to be unfailingly loyal to himwhich makes it all the more difficult to build up a deep bench of subordinates willing to do his bidding.

Trump may be the one populist leader in world history who is too narcissistic to succeed at the narcissists game of turning himself into a beloved peoples tribune.

If Trump really does depart the White House in shame a little less than three years from now, it will be tempting to interpret his demise as final proof of the resilience of the American political system. Even in the face of an uncouth barbarian intent on breaking every single rule and norm of liberal democracy, some commentators will then pronounce, the American republic has proven to be unassailable. There was never anything to worry about in the first place.

That would be a grave mistake. For the truth of the matter is that even though he has proven astoundingly incompetent at following the authoritarian playbook, Trump has already had a remarkably corrosive impactfrom undermining the independence of the FBI to consolidating his hold over the Republican Party.

Far from showcasing the strengths of American institutions, the past years have demonstrated that a rank amateur can push them close to the breaking point. This implies that a would-be authoritarian with a much greater dose of professionalism could prove depressingly popular and dangerously effective. And so the true task for those of us who are worried about the threat populism poses to the survival of liberal democracy goes well beyond beating Donald Trump: It is to make sure that he is never succeeded by the kind of strongman leader who has the discipline and the intelligence to enact the populist playbook here in America.

Yascha Mounks new book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It, is available now from Harvard University Press.
In the age of Donald Trump, conservative jurists, legal theorists, and political commentators have adopted a very, very narrow definition of what constitutes obstruction of justice. Thats because the current Republican president of the United States conductirrespective of what did or did not happen during the campaignclearly violates the spirt of the obstruction law, if not (yet) the letter. The president can fire who he wants; he can bully and cajole, order and insinuate, their thinking goes, but, throughout, the one thing these definitional constrictionists have agreed upon as legally problematicand often point to as a counterexample of what would constitute obstruction of justiceis if the president ordered a witness to lie to investigators. A New York Times report Wednesday doesnt go that far, but it does reveal that President Trump discussed with witnesses after the fact their testimony to investigators, which has the president again tiptoeing along a very slippery legal slope.

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Its hard to overstate the recklessness of Trump engaging with high-profile witnessesthe current White House counsel and former chief of staffabout their testimony, no matter how innocuous. It indicates an awareness on the part of the president of the potential impropriety of past actions and gives the appearance of possible coordination of testimony to square any discrepancies. Even if you assume, or believe, Trump has done nothing wrong at any point, the discussions with witnesses would require extra scrutiny by Muellers investigative team as the kernel of potential wrongdoing.

The first instance of Trump discussing the testimony of a key witness was with White House Counsel Don McGahn in January after a New York Times article reported that the White House lawyer told investigators Trump has ordered him to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, but McGahn refused and threatened to resign if Mueller was sacked.

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Mr. McGahn did not publicly deny the article, and the president later confronted him in the Oval Office in front of the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, according to the people. The president said he had never ordered Mr. McGahn to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn replied that the president was wrong and that he had in fact asked Mr. McGahn in June to call the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to tell him that the special counsel had a series of conflicts that disqualified him for overseeing the investigation and that he had to be dismissed. The president told Mr. McGahn that he did not remember the discussion that way. Mr. Trump moved on, pointing out that Mr. McGahn had never told him that he was going to resign over the order to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn acknowledged that that was true but said that he had told senior White House officials at the time that he was going to quit.

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The second instance involves former chief of staff Reince Priebus, who left the White House in July 2017 but has maintained contact with Trump and occasionally visits the White House. During one visit, in December, Trump met with Priebus in the West Wing.

Mr. Trump asked [-] Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsels investigators and whether they had been nice, according to two people familiar with the discussion Mr. Priebus replied that the investigators were courteous and professional. He shared no specifics and did not say what he had told investigators, and the conversation moved on after a few minutes, those briefed on it said. Mr. Kelly was present for that conversation as well, and it was not clear whether he tried to stop the discussion.

To get a sense of how McGahn and Preibus and the others present for these conversations interpreted the interactions, the Times reports, [the] witnesses and lawyers who learned about the conversations viewed them as potentially a problem and shared them with Mr. Mueller.
This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy.

As legal battles over the Muslim ban make their way up to the Supreme Court, reports from U.S. embassies are casting doubt on a central legal defense to the bans constitutionality: individualized waivers. There were 8,406 visa applications from countries subject to the ban as of Feb. 15. Only two applicants were granted waivers. Thats a success rate of 0.02 percent. While the State Department is now reporting that 100 waivers have been granted, the success rate is still minuscule. Such a high rate of refusal shows the futility of the waiver process and only confirms the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recent finding that the ban was motivated by religious animosity, not national security.

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The current iteration of President Donald Trumps Muslim ban indefinitely prohibits the citizens of six Muslim-majority countriesChad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemenfrom entering the United States. The government has repeatedly touted the plans supposedly individualized, case-by-case waiver process in defending its constitutionality. But the numbers above, along with other recent reports, suggest that the process is not meaningfully available, leading to mass visa denials for hopeful would-be immigrants and visitors who appear to have ample good reason for coming to the United States under the terms of the waiver program.

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Samerah Alawdi and three of her children were among those denied a waiver this past December in Djibouti. Alawdis husband is an American citizen, and she has four children born in Michigan. It is difficult to think of a more suitable candidate for a waiverthe Trump administration specifically identifies children and those with family in the United States as appropriate waiver recipients. But the Alawdi family did not receive a waiver, and they are not alone. There have been reports of an American father unable to bring his 10-year-old daughter to the United States for critical medical care; of an American son unable to reunite with his Iranian father, a celebrated academic suffering from various medical conditions; and of an Iranian mother unable to visit her son working as a researcher for the National Institutes of Health. There are thousands being denied access to the United States through a waiver program that the government contends is evidence that their Muslim ban is not discriminatory.

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The current ban offers the prospect of waivers to those who would face undue hardship if denied entry, who present no national security threat, and whose entry would be in the national interest. But the executive order behind the ban does not explain the process by which an individual may apply for a waiver, nor does it describe any procedures concerning hearings or appeals for the denial of a waiver. This lack of detail begs the question as to whether these waivers were designed to actually be taken advantage of by travelers to the United States.

If the Yemeni experience is emblematic of a wider practice, as it now appears, then the waiver process may as well not exist.

Despite the Trump administrations promise of an individualized process, the New York Times reports that hundreds of Yemeni nationals have had their applications summarily denied, including those who were previously told that their visas were approved. The notices did not include explanations, and those who received them were not given the opportunity to prove their eligibility for these waivers. Many were wholly unaware that they might be able to apply for a waiver, and they received denials before they even applied. Young children, prime candidates for a waiver, also received the summary denial notices. Apparently, the notices were generic with no individualized assessment as to the applicants eligibility. While there are anecdotal reports of immigration officers telling candidates that they may be eligible for waivers, and of candidates using legal help to submit applications, it does not appear that individualized waiver decisions were ever made for these applicants. Indeed, the only evidence of waivers being granted are the meager statistics provided by the State Department.

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If the Yemeni experience is emblematic of a wider practice, as it now appears, then the waiver process may as well not exist. Indeed, similar generic denial letters were issued by U.S. immigration representatives in Armenia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Jordan. Moreover, both Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, have described receiving reports of the near uniform denial of waivers for visas. These denial letters and high rejection rates cast doubt on whether the waivers primary purpose is to provide an available path of entry, or to blunt the bans legal challengers.

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The Center for Constitutional Rights has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, seeking information on the process for adjudicating waivers. Future discovery in ongoing legal challenges to the Muslim ban may also shed much needed light on the waiver procedures and policies, if any, used by the administration.

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In the near term, the blanket denials may have an impact on the court battles over the bans constitutionality. The waiver process has been central to the governments legal defense, arguing that it shows the ban is motivated by national security rather than religious animosity. According to the government, [n]either the [bans] text nor its operation evidence an intent to exclude Muslims, in-part because the ban provides for case-by-case waivers of the entry restrictions in a variety of circumstances. The numbers now tell a different story, confirming earlier anecdotal reports.

Strikingly, the government also faults those challenging the ban for not waiting to see if they will be granted a waiver before turning to the courts. The 4th Circuit rejected these arguments. It rightly found that these waivers did not cure any constitutional defect and that those challenging the ban did not have to wait until they were denied waivers to do so.

These waivers are currently the only means by which individuals otherwise subject to the Muslim ban may enter the United States. But if these waivers only exist on paper, then the Supreme Court may take note.

More from Just Security:

Cyber Operations and the U.S. Definition of Armed Attack

The Legality of U.S. Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia for Use in Yemen
As Amazon Echo Dot owner Gavin Hightower was heading to bed the other week, he encountered a disturbing Alexa bug. For no apparent reason, the device uttered a very loud and creepy laugh.

Theres a good chance Im getting murdered tonight, Hightower tweeted after the incident.

Hightower isnt alone: Numerous Echo device owners have reported their Alexas laughing spontaneously, unprovoked by their wake word (Alexa) or any other command. For other users, its more than just laughter. Some report their Alexa devices failing to fulfill their spoken requests, performing random other actions instead, and then capping it off with a guffaw.

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Of all the bugs your smart assistant could encounter, uttering a high-pitched witch-like laugh ranks among the creepiest possibilities. (Other podium contenders: Saying Im watching you or actually making a threat.) The issue has now evolved into a trending moment on Twitter, and Amazon has responded to the phenomenon, telling the Verge on Wednesday that the company is aware of this and working to fix it.

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The whole scenario reminds me of Mat Honans delightfully dystopian view of the future of connected homes for Wired in mid-2014:

I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I dont know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again.

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Honans four-year-old imagined future seems eerily on point. However, at the time, Amazon had not yet launched its revolutionary Echo; it and other digital assistants are now poised to permeate every facet of our existence.

While theyve had a remarkably good run, it was inevitable that our digital assistants would crack. Friday delivered a tremor of foreshadowing: Amazons virtual assistant briefly lost her voice due to issues with Amazon Web Services. (Its unclear if these reported issues are related to that downtime.)

Whatever the reason for the laughterand hopefully Amazon will tell us whether this is some sort of software malfunction, a hack, or the work of a disgruntled software programmerthis isnt going to be a one-off scenario. Amazon is adding capabilities to its assistant on a near-daily basis and so are its competitors, like Google Home. As it gets more bloated with code, the possibility a strange bug could slip through also increases. Consider Apples iOS. In November, a strange bug cropped up that autocorrected the letter I on iOS devices. Over the years, the operating system has suffered from numerous other bugs: The alarm clock not working, apps becoming unresponsive, and the phone crashing when it encounters a certain character.

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However, while these bugs can be annoying, inconvenient, or both, theyve typically never verged on creepy. Theres something different about a virtual entity imbued with personality going haywire, particularly one thats become a part of the household. In the future, its not far-fetched to think Alexa may sometimes have mix-ups when responding to queries or commands, be unable to reach certain services when they go down, refuse commands from a specific voice, or decide its time to speak, even though she hasnt been spoken to.

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Then theres the possibility of hacking. Researchers in China last year discovered that it was possible to control a virtual assistant using ultra-high frequencies inaudible to humans but detectable via smart speakers microphones. Meanwhile, a U.K. researcher found a way to hack Amazon Echo devices which, while it likely wouldnt transform your assistant into a laughing demon, could surreptitiously transform it into a spy-style listening device. While both of these situations require direct access to someones Echowhich makes the potential for hacking much lowerit still shows that the devices are susceptible to foul play, and that could lead to even creepier Alexa scenarios.

The tech savvy could have predicted some of those risks, or the hacking of Wi-Ficonnected devices like baby monitors and thermostats. But a smart home assistant laughing of its own accord for no reason? This is a technological fail that only Hollywood could have imagined, and unfortunately, its only the beginning.
The Netizen Report offers an international snapshot of challenges, victories, and emerging trends in internet rights around the world. It originally appears each week on Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Rohith Jyothish, Rezwan Islam, Oiwan Lam, Karolle Rabarison, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

Sri Lankas Telecommunications Regulatory Commission ordered telecom operators to block Facebook, Viber, and WhatsApp on Wednesday, in reaction to sectarian violence.

In recent months, tensions have risen between the majority Buddhists and Muslims, who represent just 10 percent of the population. Last Sunday, a Buddhist man died after a violent encounter with a group of Muslim men over a traffic dispute in the central region of Kandy. The following day, residents reported that a mob of at least 200 people set fire to a local mosque and the homes of at least 15 Muslims. According to a provincial council member, dozens more homes and businesses have been vandalized.

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On Wednesday, authorities imposed a 10-day state of emergency for the first time since 2011, when Sri Lanka was still freshly emerging from its civil war.

Regulators say the block will last for three days. An official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said that police had identified anti-Muslim messages being shared on social networks, including a video posted by a hardline Buddhist monk urging violence against Muslims.

Reacting to the measures in an analysis for Groundviews, an independent citizen media outlet based in the capital Colombo, journalist and social commentator Nalaka Gunawardene argued that this strategy was futile and carried consequences for the entire population, leaving families unable to contact one another in a time of uncertainty and rising street violence. He wrote: [T]his is more a case of public order than a matter of national security. Faced with a major breakdown in law and order, the government should have policed the streets properly, before trying to police the Internet.

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Saudi Reform Activist Sentenced to Six Years in Prison

Saudi human rights and political reform activist Essa al-Nukhaifi was sentenced to six years in prison, primarily over tweets that criticized the Saudi military intervention in Yemen. After he is released from prison, Al-Nukhaifi will face an additional six-year ban on social media use and a six-year travel ban.

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In a recent letter written from his cell in Mecca General Penitentiary, where he has been detained for more than a year, al-Nukhaifi addressed Saudi Prince Bin Salman:

I have been delighted to hear your speeches and media interviews in which you call for freedom of expression and respect for human rights, which is what we are calling for and share your wish to achieve.  I am writing to you about them from a place of detention, where I being detained because of calling for these things.

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Al-Nukhaifi called for broad reforms to the kingdoms justice system, rule of law, and mechanisms for political participation.

Nigerian Media Workers Charged with Cybercrime

On March 1, a federal court in Abuja, Nigeria, arraigned journalist brothers Timothy and Daniel Elombah of the independent Elombah News website on cybercrime and terrorism charges. The site covers Boko Haram and allegations of corruption in the upper tiers of government.

Chinese User Accuses Apple Tech Support Agent of Stealing Data, Passwords

China Digital Times published allegations by a Weibo user who says their data was stolen by an Apple technical support employee. The report surfaced just days after Apple handed operations of its mainland China servers over to the Chinese governmentowned company Guizhou-Cloud Big Data.

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According to the allegations, the employee accessed and tampered with multiple private online accounts belonging to the user. Apple subsequently claimed to have fired the employee but could not offer further details on the safety of the users data or iCloud account, for confidentiality reasons. China Digital Times was not able to independently verify the allegations.

On Weibo, the user wrote: They fired the employee so quickly, but still dont even know how many peoples personal information and data was stolen and leaked. Apple users should all be wary!

New Research

Unshackling Expression: A Study on Laws Criminalising Expression Online in AsiaAnnenberg School for Communications, University of Pennsylvania

Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging MethodsOmidyar Network and Upturn
If youre like most people, the first thing you check when you log into Twitteror Facebook, or Instagramis the little number that tells you how many new notifications await you. As you skim those notifications, you might take note of how many replies, retweets, or favorites your latest tweets received. When you look at who interacted with you, an unfamiliar name or face might send you to their bio page to see how many followers they have. It continues in your feed, where each tweet comes time-stamped and pre-endorsed with a certain number of prior engagements by other users.

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Now imagine all of that is gone. No numbers anywhere; no metadata to guide your assessments of self-worth, your estimation of a given tweets virality, or your judgments of other users. Youre left with nothing to go on but names, avatars, and the content itself.

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Its jarring. Its confusing. It might make you yearn for the little numbers return. It will force you to reckon with just how heavily you relied on them and why they were so important to you. And then, at last, it might leave you more at peacefree to evaluate tweets and people and yourself by your own subjective lights, rather than according to the rules of the platforms never-ending popularity contest.

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Thats what the Twitter Demetricator does.

Its a tool developed by Ben Grosser, an artist and professor of new media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He launched it last week as a sequel of sorts to the Facebook Demetricator, which he first published in 2012 as an artwork that invited people to consider how visible metrics influence their use of social media. (Grosser published a study on this in 2014.) It is most popular as a Chrome browser extension, though its also available on other platforms. You can download it and try it for yourself here.

The Demetricator was conceived as an art project and a social experiment. But at a time when Twitter and Facebook are rethinking their role in the world, it doubles as a potent critique of their platformsone that reveals just how deeply ingrained are the features that make them so addictive, performative, and exploitable.

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You might be surprised at how drastically you can change your Facebook or Twitter experience just by hiding a few little numbers.

The sense that people are fed up with Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms has never been stronger. The Atlantics Alexis Madrigal recently singled out shareability as the culprit in his feeling that Twitter is increasingly an exercise in condescension and outrage, and he got a friend to write a script that would effectively turn off retweets. The New York Times Farhad Manjoopreviously known for his prolific tweetingunplugged from the platform and rediscovered newspapers. Facebook acknowledged in December that certain ways of using it can be bad for users mental well-being. And Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey last week admitted that his company didnt fully predict or understand the real-world negative consequences of the service it had created. Both platforms have been accused of undermining civil discourse and allowing Russian agents to interfere in foreign elections. The mechanisms of virality, and the metrics that underpin them, are part of what allowed bots and trolls to amplify divisive messages.

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For individual users trying to reshape their social media experience, Madrigals trick of turning off retweets holds some appeal, as does Manjoos decision to turn off social media notifications. But you might be surprised at how drastically you can change your Facebook or Twitter experience just by hiding a few little numbers.

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Indeed, its almost impossible to comprehend just how central metrics are to the Twitter experience until you install Demetricator. Only when I tried it did I realize that my eyes were instinctively flicking to a tweets retweet and favorite counters before I even processed the tweet itself. Only when I tried Demetricator did I understand how much I relied on those signals to evaluate a tweetnot only its popularity or reach, but its value.

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Without really meaning to, Id been glossing over tweets that had relatively few likes and paying extra attention to those that had many. I had even subconsciously developed a sort of multiplier for various Twitter users based on the size of their followings, so that a tweet by a relatively obscure user that garnered 10 likes would stand out in my feed more than one by a famous user that got 100 likes. And in threads with lots of replies, I had been checking like counts as though they were an official scorecard of who was winning the conversation.

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Absurdly shallow as that might sound, Grosser assured me Im not alone in this. People with Demetricator installed quickly realize that they were very competitive around these numbers, Grosser told me. I post a photo, somebody else posts a photo: Why did they get more likes than I did? And they also realize that they feel compulsive around the numbers: Youre checking your notifications first thing, but checking them means you lose that little number, and the only way to get it back is to enter more content into the system.

But the numbers impact runs deeper than just how people perceive content on Twitter and other social platforms. Grosser argues that it shapes, in profound ways, the content they create. Part of what the metrics teach us is what to post in the first place, he said. Users create rules for themselves about what to write, how to act, what to say based on what the numbers show them. And they do this without realizing it.

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The moment Grosser said this, I realized it was true of me. Part of my internal calculation every time I post something on social media is: Will people like this? And, absent the ability to survey all of my friends or followers, Id been relying almost exclusively on engagement metrics to answer that question. On occasion, Ive even deleted tweets that received few favorites or retweets, on the assumption that something must have been wrong with them. David Zweig, writing about the Demetricator for the New Yorker last week, likewise observed that the numbers had been guiding and constraining his behavior, a process he described as the robotization of users.

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Thats not to say that the social media experience suddenly becomes serene and fulfilling the moment you install Grossers tool. On the contrary, I found tweeting without the aid of metrics to be more anxiety-inducing, at least at first. I knew the metrics were still out there, and everyone could see them but me. Meanwhile, I found myself having to read each tweet in my feed more carefully, without the metrics to signal at a glance which ones were likely to be noteworthy and which ones might be skippable. Reading your Twitter feed without popularity metrics is like watching a network TV comedy without the laugh track.

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And in some cases, the metadata is the message. Think of the ratio, in which a disproportionate number of replies to a given tweet suggests that the joke is on its author. Or a famous tweet by @dril, which is noteworthy only given the context that its viewed by many as seminal to the history of weird Twitter. Without the metrics, his viral no from 2008 is just another no. Or, more straightforwardly: Its hard to fully grasp the impact of some Parkland survivors tweets without knowing that theyve been retweeted hundreds of thousands of times.

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That helps to explain why some users of Demetricator dont stick with it very long: It makes using social media feel a bit like playing a game with one hand tied behind your back. That said, its very much worth trying, even if only to realize the extent to which social media really is a gamespecifically, a popularity contest.

Visible metrics dont just draw our attention, but I argue that we are compelled by this deeply ingrained desire for morea desire to make them larger simply because we can see thembased in an evolutionarily developed need for esteem, Grosser said. It intersects with capitalism in the way that capitalism treats value as a quantifiable thing, and theres this endless need for growth.

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That might help explain why, for all their public soul-searching, companies like Facebook and Twitter have given no indication that theyd consider pulling back on their gamification of the user experience.

Twitters Dorsey was credited by many, including me, for the apparent humility of his recent tweetstorm pledging to rethink the service in fundamental ways, and soliciting ideas from outside experts. But it wasnt lost on Grosser that Dorsey immediately turned to metrics as the path to a solution. The companys request for proposals makes it clear from the outset that it isnt interested in any kind of fix that cant be readily quantified. In doing so, Grosser said, Twitter presupposes the mechanism by which it would understand its own problem.

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In other words: If the root of Facebook and Twitters dysfunction lies in their commitment to quantifying value, then no metric or combination of metrics will ever fix them. As long as engagement metrics determine what people create, what people see, and how all of it is perceived, conversation on social media will never be healthy in the way Dorsey says he wants it to be. (To make this about Facebook instead of Twitter, just substitute meaningful interactions and time well spent for healthy conversations.) Its a sobering thought.

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Grosser said he isnt necessarily arguing Facebook and Twitter ought to remove all their visible metrics. After all, he notes, both would still run on invisible metrics, which fuel the software behind both their feeds and their targeted ads. I dont propose Demetricator as a solution, he said. I propose it as an indicator of a problem. That said, he added that he thinks that de-emphasizing certain metrics is at least something we should be considering in any big rethinking or redesign of social media systems.

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After our long conversation about the perversity of quantifying social value, it seemed a bit rude to ask Grosser if he kept track of how many people had installed the Demetricator. I did it anyway, because reporters are trained to be rude. He said he has stopped keeping track of the number of people actively using Facebook Demetricator and knows only that its between 10,000 and 100,000. And as for the week-old Twitter Demetricator? He laughed, then paused for a moment. On Chrome, its up somewhere in the 1,000 range, he told me. But Id prefer you didnt say it.
A natural disaster can strike at any time, particularly during the winter when storms, flooding, blizzards and high winds are unavoidable. For small businesses hit by a natural disaster, the impact can be irreversibly damaging. It is vital small business owners act quickly following a natural disaster to protect employees, provide continuity and repair property or infrastructure.

There are measures small businesses can take in the wake of a natural disaster to help minimize the impact and damage. Take a look at what you should do after a natural disaster strikes your business.

Implement Your Disaster Plan

In its natural disaster recovery guide, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advises businesses to implement their recovery plan as soon as a disaster strikes. Implementing the plan will ensure the correct policies and procedures are carried out when a small business is faced with a natural disaster.

Consider Moving to a Backup Location

The damage to the businesss premises and infrastructure should be assessed without delay. If the damage compromises the safety of employees or prevents continuity of business operations, the business should move to a backup location.

Call FEMA or SBA Immediately

In its guide to Disaster Assistance Programs, the Small Business Administration (SBA) advises that if immediate assistance is required, small businesses should call the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), or the SBA in its local community. FEMA can be reached at 1-800-621-3362 and SBAs Disaster Assistance team at 1-800-659-2955.

Provide Employees with Support and Assistance

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce notes the importance of providing employees with support and assistance. This can be in the immediate wake of a disaster by informing the local medical services or in the longer term for employees who may be shaken up and disturbed by the event and require some counselling to help get over the trauma.

Put a Communications Strategy into Place

Communication is vital in the case of a natural disaster causing damage and destruction to a business. A communications strategy should be put in place quickly, which means important facts, information and advice are fed to staff, suppliers, clients and customers and, if need be, the media, to ensure those who should be informed are kept up to date.

Cultivate Partnerships with the Local Community

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also recommends that small businesses cultivate partnerships and relations with the local community, including other businesses, local government agencies, and non-profits, which may be able to collectively advise, support, and help one another.

Document All Damage

In the wake of a disaster, all damage should be clearly documented and safely recorded. Part of a comprehensive disaster plan should include who is going to identify and record the damage, so this vital task can be carried out without hesitation or delay.

Take Photos of the Damage

When documenting the damage, it is a good idea to take photos of the premises or even a video, as such visual evidence can be crucial when making insurance claims.

File Insurance Claims

The quicker insurance claims are filed the better. Businesses need to get in touch with their insurance company as soon as possible and inform them of the situation and any damages that occurred. The sooner insurance claims are made, the quicker the business will receive a payout, which can be vital in helping it recover some of the financial costs the natural disaster may have caused.

Inform Lenders About the Situation

Small businesses should also get in touch with their lenders or other financial institutions and let them know of the emergency situation. Many lenders will work with businesses, possibly deferring payments and fees until they are back up and running.

Use Any Reserves Saved for the Unexpected

Sensible businesses will have a reserve saved for emergency situations like a natural disaster. Nows the time to use such reserves to take care of vital cash flow, such as paying employee wages or for repairs until insurance claims come through to help keep the small business running.

Take Time to Recuperate

While a business needs to be operating as quickly as possible following a natural disaster, it is important to remember that workers, managers, and bosses are only human and will need time to recuperate from the disruption and anguish.

Ensure employees are mentally and physically prepared to return to work following a disaster as going back to work too early is likely to result in an unproductive workforce and low morale.

Allow Flexible Working or a Change of Scenery

Having a change of scenery can help those affected by a work-based natural disaster get over the ordeal. Even if your premises are ready to be worked in again, allowing staff to work at home or from other locations could help them feel more mentally prepared to return to work.

Having cloud-based systems and remote-working technology set up can mean the business could operate even if the premises are not ready or the staff does not feel emotionally ready to return to the facility where the disaster struck.

Take Out a Low-Interest Disaster Loan

If the business is really strapped for cash in the wake of a natural disaster, you could consider taking out a low-interest disaster loan. The SBA has two loan programs to help business victims of a natural disaster stay on their feet.

Get an Extension on Tax Filing Dates

For businesses located within areas where disasters have been declared by the federal government, it is possible to get an extension of your tax filing deadlines. Some extensions can be as long as up to five years.

When it comes to natural disasters, small businesses can never be over prepared. You can learn more about how to prepare your business and what actions to take in the wake of a natural disaster in this disaster preparedness guide and this 21-Point Checklist for Preparing for Natural Disasters.
When it comes to the entrepreneurship, most people focus on how they can grow a business. But, the reasons why a person should start a company dont get nearly enough attention, particularly how powerful (albeit, a bit crazy) starting a business can be.

Entrepreneurship has the ability to unlock human potential, no matter what type of entrepreneur you happen to be. It allows people to craft their destinies by finding meaningful work that doesnt just help themselves, but others as well.

An Inspirational Small Business Story

John Cronin, a 21-year-old entrepreneur who is the mind behind Johns Crazy Socks, a million+ dollar business focused on making fun, creative, and colorful socks available to the masses. And he doesnt let anything stop him from reaching for success, including Downs Syndrome.

Founding a Company

John and his father, Mark X. Cronin, are co-founders of Johns Crazy Socks. The company operates online, though is physically based in Long Island, New York.

After his birth, John was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. He worked diligently throughout his life and, upon graduating from high school, decided he wanted to start a company with his dad.

As they began discussing the prospect, Johns first idea was a fun store, though the pair never quite worked out what that would be.

Then, they considered a food truck because John and Mark had seen a movie about a father and son operating a food truck, and it seemed like a good idea. But, they identified a problem. According to John, Both of us cant cook.

The third concept was the winner, John and Marks unicorn of an idea was to sell socks because John had worn crazy socks my entire life. John believed it would be fun and creative, and the pair decided to give it a whirl.

Johns Crazy Socks Takes Off

During 2017, Johns Crazy Socks pulled in $1.75 million in gross sales, representing 42,710 separate orders. The online store sells 1,500 different kinds of socks, giving shoppers a lot of options from which to choose. Their inventory includes colorful variants of classic shapes including no-show, ankle, crew, knee high, and above the knee socks.

Plus, John had a knack for making the customers feel special. He includes sweet treats and a thank you note with every order that heads out the door. And, for shoppers in Long Island, John will even deliver the socks in person.

The pair attribute much of their growth to positive word-of-mouth as well as a strong presence on social media. Additionally, many people identify with the story, and they have been fortunate to receive substantial media coverage, leading to significant sales increases.

Johns Crazy Socks also now employs a dozen full-time staff members, eight of which have some form of diagnosed disability.

Its imperative to hire people with disabilities, and not simply because it seems the right thing to do, Mark stated. Employers complain that they cant find enough workers and here is an untapped pool of excellent labor. We look at what people can do and match our business to their skill set and we are better off because of it.

I dont think we are doing groundbreaking work, said Mark. We are giving our employees an opportunity. We have seen tremendous growth because we give them an opportunity.

Giving Back to the Community

The company also works to support the larger community. First, 5 percent of their profits going to the Special Olympics. Also, John creates awareness socks as a method for raising money for a range of charities.

Giving back is a core principle for the company, and is at least partially responsible for their relatively quick success.

When speaking about his diagnosis during an interview, John said, Downs Syndrome never holds me back.

A Mission to Believe In

John believes the company is spreading happiness through socks, a simple mission that is easy to get behind. They give people a method for expressing themselves with greater ease, and in a way that works for many buyers lifestyles. (Hey, even Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada known for attending events in colorful socks, has a few pairs of Johns Crazy Socks).

Mark stated, We both are absolutely committed to the vision we have. And we both know we need each other. I couldnt do this without John. You probably couldnt do it without me, right?

Right, dad.

And were having fun. Were spreading happiness. Whats better than that? Mark adds.

What You Can Learn from Johns Crazy Socks

John and Marks success can teach a lot of entrepreneurs, and aspiring entrepreneurs, a thing or two about business.

First and foremost, they found a product and a vision they believe in wholeheartedly, showing just how valuable passion can be when it comes to achieving success. Even in the face of what many would consider adversity, John doesnt let Downs Syndrome stop him from reaching his goals and spreading joy to everyone who decides to visit the shop or buy some socks for themselves or others.

John participates fully in the business, doing a wide range of tasks from creating thank you videos to working as a sock wrangler (their title for those who help pick and pack orders) to giving tours and promoting the business. He also attended a business acceleration program where he learned about presenting, networking, and how to interact with customers.

Second, the company focuses on creating opportunities for others, giving back to the community, and treating their customers like gold, all of which help propel them forward. Johns Crazy Socks has an enviable company culture, one that is certainly worthy of being mirrored by other entrepreneurs, including fun activities like staff lunches on Fridays.

We had this mission to spread happiness and that has to start here, said Mark. So, its important hat this is a great place to work.

Plus, Johns Crazy Socks is determined to succeed, crafting a strong online presence through their website and social media, demonstrating that they also have the marketing chops to make it happen.

Final Takeaways

Discussing his takeaways from his experience starting Johns Crazy Socks, Mark shared, Its not enough to simply to sell a product. We are creating meaning and experience around that product. For us, we have a retail mission and a social mission and those are indivisible. If we only had the retail mission we wouldnt be doing to business we are doing. If we only had the social mission, it wouldnt mean as much. People dont just buy socks from us. They tap into our mission of happiness and into the giving back that we do.

He also added, when it comes to starting a business, his biggest advice is to just do it.

We chose not to spend time to research and do a lot of planning. We decided to test a viable product and tinker with it, using customer feedback to guide us.

He also recommended that parents of kids with diagnoses like Downs Syndrome shouldnt settle.

John is the youngest of three boys, and you try to do the same things as a parent when you raise your children. We promote independence and raise the expectations of whats possible, said Mark.

He added, There are more options when you leave school, like starting a business. We, as parents, sometimes we shelter our children too much. If we can let them go and be willing to let them try things, theyll surprise us. I look at John and he shows up every day, on time and ready to work. He is focused, he works hard. Hes diligent and pays attention to details.

Ultimately, John and Mark created something special, a unicorn of a sock business that brings smiles to the faces of thousands of shoppers today, and likely many, many more in the future.

Republished by permission. Original here.
Documentary shows civilians training for war

The Slovak Levies says that they are neutral, but they are training with the Russians and want to enter politics.

A group of boys from the paramilitary organisation Slovenski Branci (Slovak Levies) are pretending to patrol in the town of Gabcikovo. They go along the border with Hungary. While travelling by car they can see a large number of refugees crossing the border.

What are you doing? They even dare to scream, says Peter Svrcek, the head of the group, commenting on a small child crying in the crowd.

Dirty people, they are worse than gypsies, says his fellow soldier. I should take my machine gun, he said later when they stepped out of the car.

This is one of the most powerful scenes from the new documentary When the War Comes, by the Czech director Jan Gebert.

It could be said that they are quite normal, well-behaved and mostly intelligent people, Gebert told the Sme daily. They dont behave in accordance to our stereotypical views.

The film follows Svrcek's development from his secondary-level school leaving examination to the present, when he is openly talking about entering politics. At the same time, he portrays some practices of the Levies and their relationship to Russia.

A few years ago the public had impression that the levies are right-wing extremists but it is not exactly the right picture, according to analysts.

In the forests they practice shooting, military tactics, field orientation, man-to-man fighting, and so on. They describe themselves as a militia ready to help fellow citizens in crisis situations.

Although they do not officially have the characteristics of an extremist organization and there are not many extremists among their ranks, they still present a security risk, says Daniel Milo, an extremism expert in the Globsec organisation.

Their statements show that this is not a group that would be a loyal to the state in the event of a conflict, Milo told The Slovak Spectator. At the same time they are armed and relatively well trained.

Praising Tiso was a mistake

The Slovak Levies originated as an informal group without registration in 2012. Svrcek initially cooperated with the far-right Slovak Revival Movement (SHO), which adores the totalitarian Slovak state created during World War II.

We do first-aid courses, hiking, we practice in forests, we do tactical training and self-defence courses, said then 16-year-old Svrcek in 2012, when the levies laid a wreath at the statue of Slovak state president Jozef Tiso.

8. Mar 2018 at 6:30 | Roman Cuprik
Slovakia made no palpable progress in fighting corruption

Despite improving in some aspects, Slovakia has not made any visible progress in the fight against corruption over the past year.

Slovakia has made some progress in meeting the European Commissions recommendations, according to the ECs latest Report on Slovakia. Brussels perceives some progress in several policies, such as increasing the cost-effectiveness of the health-care system, improvements in activation measures for disadvantaged groups, improvements in employment opportunities for women, and reducing administrative and regulatory barriers for doing business, the SITA newswire wrote. However, the Commission also records areas where Slovakia has made no or only minimal progress.

Spheres still lagging behind or stagnating

The EC notes only a slight improvement in improving the quality of education, increasing Roma participation in education, boosting competition, and transparency in public procurement, as well as improving the efficiency of the judicial system. In the latest report released on March 7, the Commission identified among the biggest structural challenges in Slovakia the continued fight against tax evasion. Despite growing budget revenues, there is still a wide gap in collected value-added tax. However, Brussels notes that further measures to combat tax evasion are coming this year, SITA wrote.

Brussels also notes the increased tax benefits for research and development, but, on the other hand, a low amount of real estate taxes on total tax revenue. The report states as well that a revision of expenditures in different budget chapters appears to be a powerful tool to boost efficiency in public spending. Brussels draws Slovakia's attention to continued long-term challenges in the pension and health-care system, despite the reforms that have already been implemented.

Corruption is the worst factor

The worst sphere is the fight against corruption where no progress has been made, according to the report.

So far, we can see that theres no change in the perception of corruption among people, while the real physical capacity of the Special Prosecutors Office to deal with corruption cases has decreased although the number under criminal prosecution has declined, Ladislav Miko, head of the European Commissions Representation to Slovakia, told the TASR newswire. This leads to the assessment that theres been no visible progress. Well see whether the measures adopted by the Government will have any effect on next years assessment, he added.

The European Commission (EC) is concerned about the level of dependence that the head of police and police inspections have on the Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, according to the report. It wants to see improvement in the protection afforded to those who report corruption. Conversely, it perceives positively the involvement of non-governmental organisations in monitoring corruption.

The findings in the EC report are confirmed by a Eurobarometer survey which shows that the perception of corruption in some areas in Slovakia is exceptionally high, TASR wrote. These include, for example, corruption related to the health-care sector, the police, the courts, the prosecutors office and education sector. The perception of corruption in politics is high in all EU countries.

The Report on Slovakia is an independent analytical document describing the state of the country in several areas. Based on the report and meetings with representatives of the country, the EC will publish its recommendations for the due member state in May.

8. Mar 2018 at 0:18 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Young Slovak martyr will be beatified

Anna Kolesarova was shot down by a Russian soldier during World War II but her sacrifice is still honoured today.

Slovakia will have a new beatified personage. On March 7, Pope Francis approved a decree on the martyrdom of Anna Kolesarova who was shot down at the end of World War II by a Russian soldier. The girl, aged only 16, died in a fight to keep her innocence.

The Pope received Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation for Cases of Saints, on March 6, 2018. During the ceremony, Pope Francis approved the Congregation issuing a decree on martyrdom of the Gods Servant (i.e. a person whose process of beatification has started but was not finished) Anna Kolesarova, born in Vysoka nad Uhom in Slovakia on July 14, 1928, and murdered with hatred towards the faith on November 22, 1944, the press department of the Holy See informed the SITA newswire.

Biography of the young Slovak martyr

Kolesarova was born in a village in eastern Slovakia and lost her mother at 10 years old. After a modest, pious and kind life, she, along with her father and brother, hid in a cellar from the Russian soldiers who liberated Slovakia at the end of WWI. When a Russian soldier searched their home, Anna prepared food for him but refused sexual intercourse, even when her life was threatened.

She ran to her father and brother, under gunpoint, and was soon killed by the soldier with two shots. Due to ongoing fights, her family spent one more night with her dead body in the cellar and then hastily buried her in a shallow grave, SITA wrote.

Priest Anton Lukac buried her on November 29, 1944. Immediately after the burial, he wrote in the parish register Hostia Sanctae Castitatis, i.e. the Victim of holy chastity.

Annually, hundreds of young people visit the grave of Anna Kolesarova. The first meeting initiated by the testimony of her martyr death took place in 1999. Since then, regular pilgrimages have been organised, according to SITA.

8. Mar 2018 at 0:09 | Compiled by Spectator staff
PSA will produce electric cars in Trnava, PSA CEO confirmed

After Volkswagen another carmaker will produce e-cars in Slovakia

The Slovak arm of the French carmaker PSA Groupe may start manufacturing electric cars within some months. PSA Groupe CEO, Carlos Tavares, confirmed this to the Sme daily during a car show in Geneva, Switzerland.

The production of compact electric cars for the PSA Groupe depends on the CMP platform, said Tavarer as cited by the daily. I can confirm that we will install this platform in Trnava.

The CMP platform is a global platform developed by the PSA Groupe and its Chinese partner Dongfeng Motors for compact and city car models. It enables the production of cars with combustion engines and electric cars on one production line.

The concern confirmed production of electric cars in Trnava for the first time. It has not specified yet which model it will electrify in Trnava. Since Trnava produces Citroen C3 and Peugeot 208, it may be one of these models.

Last year the carmaker in Trnava received an investment stimulus from the Slovak cabinet as a tax holiday of 18.6 million. The carmaker will invest about 165 million in Trnava. The investment project did not mention an electric car, Sme wrote.

Electric cars in Slovakia

Out of the three carmakers in Slovakia, only Volkswagen is manufacturing electric cars for now. It produces the eUP! at its plant in Devinska Nova Ves.

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The automotive industry needs investments not only in production but new products or technologies that will change the industry, said Martin Jesny, industrial analyst at the Revue Priemyslu magazine, as cited by Sme. Electric cars are such a technology. Their production is an important step so that the competitiveness of this sector is sustainable for a longer period of time.

8. Mar 2018 at 13:43 | Compiled by Spectator staff
The building had to be closed early on March 8.

The police had to close the parliamentary building after an anonymous person reported a bomb early on March 6.

The head of the parliaments press department, Zuzana Cizmarikova, confirmed the information to the TASR newswire.

Security forces took some three hours, during which all planned press conferences were either cancelled or moved to other venues. All employees present in the building when the information arrived remained there during the proceedings carried out by the respective security forces.

Nobody entered nor left the building, parliaments spokesperson, Tomas Kostelnik, told the SITA newswire.

8. Mar 2018 at 13:46 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Smer: President is aligned with opposition

Party members are critical of the presidents meetings with the opposition.

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The attacks of the ruling Smer partys representatives on President Andrej Kiska continue.

At a press conference called for March 8, four members of the party criticised the meeting of Kiska with representatives of the opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party. The president called for similar negotiations, inviting democratic parliamentary parties to discuss the current political situation.

Smer was mostly critical of the fact that the president first met with the opposition, since on March 7 he invited representatives of the Sme Rodina movement and the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO).

He has clearly aligned with the opposition, said MP Juraj Blanar.

No comment on Kalinak

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Martin Glvac recalled the previous statements of Lucia Duris Nicholsonova, who used the word "coup". He asked whether the president discussed this with SaS.

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Read also: Kiska: The government has ignored Mafia warnings Read more

Not even [far-right extremist] Marian Kotleba dares to use the word coup in this country, Glvac claimed, as quoted by the Sme daily.

Instead of calming the situation, Kiska is inciting chaos, Smer MPs said.

Glvac refused to comment on the earlier information provided by the SITA newswire that Interior Minister Robert Kalinak plans to resign on Monday. He does not know about the vacating of the interior minister's position.

He also denied the information that he is planning to become his successor.

Think tank is critical

Smer cast doubt on the organisers of the marches scheduled for March 9, aligning them with Kiska and OLaNO. At the same time, Glvac linked legal think tank Via Iuris to George Soros.

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With todays attack on civilian activists and non-governmental organisations, Smers representatives are trying to divert attention from the murder investigation of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner, as well as the investigation concerning the scandal over potential contacts of the prime ministers close collaborators with organised crime, responded Milan Sagat, executive director of Via Iuris.

In his opinion, Slovakia needs a proper and independent investigation of the murder, and not conspiracy theories on Soros.

Slovakia has to be a state of law in which we have no doubts on the trustworthiness of the police and prosecutors office and where we will not be powerless against those in power, Sagat added.

8. Mar 2018 at 13:52 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Delegation from Brussels arrives to Slovakia

The murder of a Slovak investigative journalist and his fiancee will be discussed at the European Parliaments session next week.

A delegation of six MEPs arrived for a two-day visit to Slovakia on March 8, to look into the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova.

The delegation is composed of members of six political factions: co-chair Ingeborg Grassle (European Peoples Party, Germany), co-chair Claude Moraes (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, United Kingdom), Ryszard Czarnecki (European Conservatives and Reformists Group, Poland), Sophia int Veld (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, the Netherlands), Benedek Javor (Greens-European Free Alliance, Hungary), and Marco Valli (Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, Italy).

The decision to send a delegation to Slovakia was made on March 1, while the programme and members were approved on March 7.

After returning from Slovakia, the MEPs will write a report that will be submitted to the EP president and leaders of the political factions and then published, stated press attache Sona Mellak of the European Parliaments Information Office in Slovakia.

Kiska: The murder investigation is in Slovakias interest

The MEPs have already met with President Andrej Kiska and the representatives of non-governmental organisations dealing with the fight against corruption.

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Im glad that our partners have expressed a sincere interest in helping us investigate this horrible crime, Kiska said after the meeting.

He hopes they will experience so much sincerity at the other planned meetings and receive answers to all their questions. The president stressed that the murder investigation of these two young people is in the interest of their families, Slovakia and the EU.

Kiska officially confirmed his participation in a March 9 meeting with Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko and Prime Minister Robert Fico at Bratislava Castle. He will propose signing a joint declaration to calm the situation and end the political crisis.

Meeting with journalists and state representatives

Later on March 8, they will meet with PM Robert Fico, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, Deputy PM for Investments and Informatisation Peter Pellegrini and Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matecna on March 8. Meetings with journalists are planned.

Early on March 8, they met with the representatives of non-governmental organisations involved in the fight against corruption. The delegation asked them about the EU funds agenda and how corruption is penalized here.

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Read also: Murder investigation: What we know so far and what are main concerns on impartiality Read more

The next day, a meeting with Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar, head of the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) Peter Hrasko, Justice Minister Lucia Zitnanska, General Prosecutor Jaromir Ciznar and representatives of the Supreme Audit Office (NKU) is planned.

The delegation will visit the village of Velka Maca (Trnava Region), where they will pay tribute to Kuciak and Kusnirova.

The murder and the protection of journalists in Europe will be discussed at next weeks EP session in Strasbourg, Mellak said.

8. Mar 2018 at 14:00 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Prosecutor accuses the interior minister of corruption scheme

Special Prosecutor Vasil Spirko blows the whistle on Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and former finance minister, Jan Pociatek, filing a criminal complaint. Top police officers face criminal complaints, too.

In a whistleblowing act that Slovakia has never seen, prosecutor of the Special Prosecutors Office, Vasil Spirko, filed a criminal complaint against the interior minister and top police officials.

Spirko is known from the B.A. Haus case, related to the infamous Basternak scandal from 2016, which he supervised. Following an episode with a witness who testified on alleged fraud at the Interior Ministry, Spirko stood accused of an attempt to exert pressure on the witness. The circumstances of his case have not been satisfactorily explained, and Spirko was recently acquitted of the charges against him.

Now Spirko stepped forward to explain what happened between him and the witness, and how the testimony of that person led to a criminal complaint that they wrote regarding a scheme at the Interior Ministry, related to the purchase of IT and network devices.

Finally society can understand who governs this state and how, and to whose benefit, Spirko said, announcing he was filing a criminal complaint against Interior Minister Robert Kalinak, Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar, NAKA head Peter Hrasko, and the national anti-corruption unit head, Robert Krajmer.

The Wallet and Milan

The witness described concrete companies who took part in the order, the persons involved and the relations between them within the scheme.

Spirko says the witness in his testimony brought up two key persons: the first mentioned is Milan (whom he only describes with his first name), who allegedly managed the whole scheme and the persons involved in the order, a close person of Interior MInister Robert Kalinak and Finance Minister Jan Pociatek. Based on Spirkos account, Milan was in charge of making sure the two ministers would have their interests satisfied. Milan was also close to people at the Governments Office.

The other person that Spirko mentions as a key person is only nicknamed Penazenka (Slovak for Wallet). Spirko did not give the name of this person as he is not a public figure. The role of this person was to create the transaction history of the money in the books.

8. Mar 2018 at 15:44 | Michaela Terenzani
Murder investigation: What powers do foreign investigators have in Slovakia?

Prime Minister Robert Fico has repeatedly referred to the involvement of foreign police teams in the murder investigation of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova, but what can they actually do?

Shortly after initial information about the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova surfaced, the public and international organisations called for a thorough investigation. A petition was even launched, appealing to the European Unions institutions to investigate the crime, with its authors referring to suspicious links between Slovak government members and Mafia groups.

At the same time, the countrys representatives are defending the work of the Slovak police. Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and Prime Minister Robert Fico (both Smer) have repeatedly referred to the presence of the police teams from the Czech Republic, Italy and even the FBI, Europol and Scotland Yard.

However, the members of the foreign police forces can only collaborate with their Slovak colleagues. They are not allowed to carry out any investigative measures, nor can they press charges against people, says Jaroslav Ivor, a former investigator who is currently teaching at the Pan-European University in Bratislava.

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The criminal proceedings and related operations are the prerogative of an individual member state, Ivor told The Slovak Spectator, explaining that only the police officers of a respective country can carry out operations in its territory.

Though foreign investigators and police officers can be present, they can only collaborate with their Slovak colleagues.

Embargo on police information

The investigation of the murders is being watched closely by the public, but information is rather scarce. Though Police Corps President Tibor Gaspar held the first press conference a few hours after the bodies were found, providing some details from the crime scene, both General Prosecutor Jaromir Ciznar and the prosecutor of the Special Prosecutors Office issued an order at the turn of February and March, banning investigators from speaking about the case until the prosecutor allows it.

The investigator and supervising prosecutor will follow the Penal Code, said Jana Tokolyova, the spokesperson for the Special Prosecutors Office. In accordance with the circumstances of the investigation, the media will receive summarised information to the extent that it will not hinder further investigation.

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Meanwhile, Fico and Kalinak have called on people to trust the work of the police officers working on the case. The interior minister stated on March 1 that he is in contact with the most important investigative institutions in the world, and has asked them for help.

The Czech and Italian police became involved in the investigation on Monday [February 26], while on Tuesday [February 27] Europol representatives confirmed they were helping, Kalinak wrote on his Facebook status. Weve received the same answer from the FBI and Scotland Yard.

Fico stressed on several occasions that the investigation has international attendance.

We have invited representatives of foreign police forces, Fico told the March 7 press conference. Were very closely collaborating with the FBI, Scotland Yard and Europol. Were also cooperating very closely with our Czech and German colleagues, and two Italian teams are here.

What do the foreign police forces say?

Jozef Bocan, from the press department of the Czech Police Corps Presidium, confirmed to The Slovak Spectator they are cooperating with their Slovak colleagues.

8. Mar 2018 at 18:00 | Radka Minarechova
American Electric Power Co., Inc. engages in the business of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. It operates through the following segments: Vertically Integrated Utilities, Transmission & Distribution Utilities, AEP Transmission Holdco and Generation & Marketing. The Vertically Integrated Utilities segment engages in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity for sale to retail and wholesale customers through assets owned and operated by its subsidiaries. The Transmission & Distribution Utilities segment engages in the business of transmission and distribution of electricity for sale to retail and wholesale customers through assets owned and operated by its subsidiaries. The AEP Transmission Holdco segment engages in the development, construction and operation of transmission facilities through investments in its wholly-owned transmission subsidiaries and joint ventures. The Generation & Marketing segment engages in non-regulated generation and marketing, risk management and retail activities. The company was founded on December 20, 1906 and is headquartered in Columbus, OH.

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Meghan Markle has been baptised by the Archbishop of Canterbury using holy water from the River Jordan, Daily March has learned.

The intimate 45-minute service was conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Chapel Royal on Tuesday evening.

They were joined by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, but neither Prince William nor the Queen were present.

Miss Markles baptism, which formally introduces her into the Anglican faith ahead of her wedding to Harry in two months, marks an important step on her transformation from divorced American actress to future granddaughter-in-law to the Queen.

The ceremony was a closely-guarded secret with only a handful of royal aides involved.

Miss Markle, 36, had asked the 62-year-old Archbishop, Justin Welby, to lead the service after forming a close bond with him in recent weeks as he instructed her on the rites and sacraments of the Church.

Her baptism was followed immediately by her confirmation, which means she will be able to join Harry, 33, at Holy Communion.

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Get in free to all national parks Saturday, the first of two more free days this year. Sept. 26 is the fifth of six no-fee entrance days. The final one is Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Free entrance applies not only to the country's 62 national parks but also to all of the 420 National Park Service (NPS) sites, which include seashores, forests, preserves and monuments.

"Free entrance days serve as additional motivation for people to get outside and enjoy these places of inspiration and recreation, said David Vela, then NPS deputy director, when announcing the fee-free days late last year.

Many sites are already free, including Pennsylvania's Gettysburg National Military Park and Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. But some of the most popular sites  such as Grand Canyon, Shenandoah and Yosemite national parks  charge $30 or $35 per vehicle.

Other ways to save on park visits

Another option for budget-conscious frequent visitors: Buy an annual $80 America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass. It allows unlimited entrance to more than 2,000 federal recreation areas, including national parks, wildlife refuges, seashores and forests.
Heres what travel advisers say they can do for you.

1. Save you money and time

It sounds contradictory: Travel advisers charge a fee, but they can also save you cash  $452 per trip, on average, according to ASTA. Fees typically range from $50 to several hundred dollars, ASTA says, depending on the complexity of the request. If the agent books you a flight to Cleveland, say, it can cost as little as $25, but if youve asked her to plan a six-country multigenerational vacation through Europe, shell obviously charge more. Some consultants charge a flat rate; others, a percentage of the total trip cost. The prices vary from company to company.

The fees are offset by the travel planners' getting you bigger discounts than you can find on your own. Advisers are deal hunters, McCully points out  they know where to look, and they often have preferred rates and insider info. Many of them are affiliated with a network such as Virtuoso (which has 16,000-plus agents) or Signature Travel Network (more than 7,000 agents). The larger they are, the more buying power they have, says Kimberly Wilson Wetty, whose New York City firm, Valerie Wilson Travel, is a member of Virtuoso. That means that agents in those networks can score cool perks for clients, such as free breakfasts, Wi-Fi and hotel-room upgrades. And if youre crunched for time, consultants can save you about four hours in trip planning, from conducting research to booking rental cars, tours and flights, according to ASTA.

2. Protect you when theres trouble

When theres a problem with a flight, dealing with an airline can feel like torture. If theres an error with a reservation booked online, youll spend hours on the phone or youll shell out additional money, says Lauren Cardinale, a luxury-travel adviser from Atlanta. Vacation planners work as your advocate to resolve problems quickly, which can be vital to those with disabilities or language barriers. And most agencies offer 24/7 service, so don't leave without the number.

Some advisers try to prevent problems from happening at all. In winter, Lesley Egbert, owner of Live Longitude (an Avoya affiliate) in Helena, Mont., avoids booking flight connections at airports where snowstorms are likely. Most people arent thinking about blizzards when theyre planning travel in June, but no grandparent wants to be stranded at Chicago O'Hare with multiple grandchildren for hours. Travel advisers think ahead about scenarios like this.



3. Share their expertise and ideas

A resort may look great on your iPad, but advisers can spot potential problems. Hotel and destination photos are almost always enhanced, and the reviews tend to be extreme in both directions, Cardinale warns. If a price seems too good to be true, an experienced adviser may know why. The hotel may be undergoing renovations, or the island view room category may actually mean a parking lot.

Travel consultants are travelers, too, and they share their information with colleagues. Wilson Wettys agency compiles adviser info into a database thats available to its planners nationwide. When she talks with a client about Rome, she can search the database and access hot new restaurants or updates at hotels.

We spend lots of time, money and energy to get to know destinations, hotels, cruise lines, restaurants and tours, says Daniela Harrison of Avenues of the World Travel in Flagstaff, Ariz. We know the general managers at hotels that we recommend, and we know the crew on most cruise ships.

Even if you enjoy the planning process, a travel adviser can improve your selections. Wilson Wetty gives the example of her mother-in-law, who likes researching her trips but still works with a consultant. We can say, I know youre thinking about this hotel, but I think you'd be happier with this other one given your past experiences  and here is the value we can add, which you can't get if you book it direct.' 
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), also referred to as the TPP without the U.S., is still expected to bring in a number of benefits for different Vietnamese economic sectors, a top trade official said.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed in February 2016 by 12 countries that border the Pacific Ocean.

The ambitious trade deal, however, was effectively left for dead when the U.S., under the protectionist administration of President Donald Trump, announced its withdrawal in January 2017.

One year later, the 11 remaining countries rebranded the agreement as the CPTPP and intended to officially launch the new trade deal at a signing ceremony scheduled this Thursday in Chile.

The member states of the CPTPP are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

Following the signing, the CPTPP will come into effect if six of the member states ratify the trade pact in their own countries.

The original TPP planned to cover 40 percent of the worlds economy. Without the U.S., the deal only involves 13.5 percent of global GDP.

The CPTPP will incorporate and maintain the high standards set forth by the original trade pact, with custom duties on 95 percent of goods to be removed in the years following its ratification.

Trade ministers and delegates from the remaining members of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) attend the TPP Ministerial Meeting during the APEC 2017 in Da Nang, Vietnam November 9, 2017. Photo: Reuters

Vietnam was believed to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the TPP.

According to Vietnams Ministry of Planning and Investment, the CPTPP will lead to GDP growth of 1.32 percent and a four percent jump in export revenue  a hefty drop from 6.7 percent and 15 percent increases in GDP and export revenue projected for the original 12-member TPP.

The CPTPP will open new markets for Vietnams industrial and seafood sectors and also contribute to the countrys effort to fight poverty, Luong Hoang Thai, head of the border trade department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.

Chances from open markets

Thai said the new deal preserves all tariff outcomes agreed to under TPP, meaning that custom duties on 95 percent of trade in goods between the parties will be cut or eliminated, either immediately or according to pre-defined schedules, once the CPTPP enters into effect.

The good news is that Vietnam was given a longer schedule for the tariff reduction and elimination, from seven to ten years compared to the common seven-year roadmap, he said.

Thai said many of the trade pact parties have committed to fully open their respective markets for Vietnamese imports, such as seafood, tropical agricultural produce, textile and garment, and footwear.

The CPTPP will leave positive impacts on the agriculture and seafood sectors, helping Vietnam to ease poverty for farmers and fishermen, he said.

Luong Hoang Thai in the interview with Tuoi Tre

Under the CPTPP, other member countries will also cut all tariffs for imports of Vietnamese industrial goods to zero, compared to the current average rate of 1.7 percent, according to the official.

Some non-tariff barriers for Vietnamese goods will also be lifted in line with the trade deal, he added.

Some countries, such as Japan and Canada, will immediately cut more than 90 percent of their tariffs for Vietnamese imports after the trade pact takes effect, Thai said.

Challenges do not necessarily mean bad outcomes

However, as the agreement is to be implemented on a reciprocity basis, Vietnam will not merely enjoy benefits but also meet some challenges from the CPTPP, the official noted.

As other member states are slated to open their doors for Vietnamese imports, Vietnam will also eliminate custom duties for goods from other markets.

The biggest challenge will be for the animal husbandry industry, particularly the pork and poultry sectors, he said.

The good news is that some of our industries have already been opened,' and some sectors have experience in dealing with challenges.

For instance, he elaborated, the country has already eliminated tariffs for cars imported from ASEAN countries since January this year, an opportunity to gain experience that can be applied to when the sector opens to other CPTPP countries in the next seven years.

As for the husbandry industry, Thai said relevant agencies and sectors have been preparing to take on the challenges, adding that difficulties do not necessarily result in bad outcomes.

Milk cows are seen at a farm of a Vietnamese dairy producer. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Vietnam has entered free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, which once sparked fear that the countrys dairy sector would be unable to compete with these two giant milk makers.

The reality is that Vietnams dairy producers have been proactively working to strengthen themselves and keep their products competitive, he said.

In conclusion, with good preparation and a proper roadmap, we hope that Vietnamese sectors will all be able to weather challenges that may come with the CPTPP.

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The Vietnamese educational climate has somewhat suffered from recent instances of improper behavior by a teacher and a student reported in elementary and secondary schools.

A teacher at Ke Sach 2 Elementary School in Ke Sach District, Soc Trang Province was fired on March 7 after he was accused of sexually harassing one of his female students, a fifth grader.

About two months ago, the girls grandmother filed a complaint against her teacher, Nguyen Thanh Trang, after finding unusual signs from her.

The student hesitantly said Trang had physically touched the sensitive parts of her body.

The man admitted his wrongdoing, but said that he considered the student as his child or grandchild only.

The local government condemned him for violating the professional code of conduct and causing serious consequences, dismissing him accordingly.

In another case, an eighth grader in Ben Tre Province supposedly pressed his female teachers neck with his bare hands right in the class session after being verbally impolite to her.

Tan Thach Middle School in Ben Tre Province, southern Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

According to preliminary information, on March 2, Cao Thoai Nhu, a teacher at Tan Thach Middle School in Chau Thanh District, asked a student in her class to put away the material of a different subject to focus on English, the subject she was teaching.

The student refused to obey the teacher, who confiscated the material as a result.

The student showed no reaction of disagreement over the action, but a male peer behind, N.V.M.T., rose to his feet and hurled angry offensive language at Nhu, who then asked for help from her two colleagues.

The male student continued shouting at her before squeezing her neck in the classroom.

Only when others intervened did he halt the violence.

The actual occurrence and cause are being investigated.

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Check out the news you should not miss today, March 8:

Society

-- Authorities in tourism cities in Vietnam including Da Nang, Nha Trang and more are intensifying inspections of restaurants, stores and other places which use all-foreign-language signs, as the advertising law requires signage to include Vietnamese.

-- More than 3,800 flights by four Vietnamese carriers including Vietnam Airlines, Vietjet Air, Jetstar Pacific and Vasco were delayed and canceled in February, according to statistics released by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.

-- Da Nang has stopped issuing licenses for construction of residential and hotel buildings in the citys central districts of Hai Chau and Thanh Khe under the pressure of transportation infrastructure overloading.

-- An earthquake of 3.4 on the Richter scale occurred at 9:18 am on Wednesday in Tra Bui Commune in the central province of Quang Nams Bac Tra My District with no damage recorded, according to the Earthquake Information and Tsunami Warning Center under the Institute of Geophysics.

-- A female tourist was brought to hospital following a scuffle between her group and staff at a food stall at the Da Lat night market, as the diners had complained about the food quality and wanted to take pictures of their dishes.

-- A fire at the Duyen Hai Thermal Power Plant 3 Extension in the southern province of Tra Vinh was completely extinguished on Wednesday after two hours thanks to the efforts of 50 firefighters and eight fire trucks.

Business

-- Around 450 foreign enterprises from 79 countries are participating in the 2018 Vietnam International Furniture and Home Accessories Fair from March 7 to 10 at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City.

Lifestyle

-- Iconic sand dunes in the south-central tourism town of Mui Ne and the worlds largest cave Son Doong in the central province of Quang Binh will be respectively featured in the first and second episodes of the Miss Adventures Asia program by Outdoor Channel Asia, which leads viewers through adventurous journeys in Asia-Pacific, from March 8.
A taxi driver picking up passengers at an airport in the north-central Vietnamese province of Nghe An used a knife to threaten a security guard after violating the airdromes regulations.

Authorities at Vinh International Airport in the namesake city in Nghe An have issued their report on a situation involving Dinh Xuan Danh, 21, one of their security officers.

Danh was patrolling the parking lot in the northern section of the airport at around 11:15 am on Wednesday when he spotted Vu Sy Cong, 31, driving a cab through the area  a violation of airport regulations.

Danh approached Cong, who refused to cooperate. The confrontation erupted into an argument that nearly turned violent after Cong pulled a knife on the security guard.

Other officers from the airdrome security unit arrived at the scene to apprehend Cong and prevent the situation from escalating.

The cab driver is held at the airport. Photo: Vinh International Airport

The cab driver was later transferred into police custody.

Vinh airport also made headlines earlier this week after a local mental health patient scaled the perimeter fence and attempted to sneak onto an aircraft.

The flight attendants only realized what was happening when the man was unable to present his boarding pass.

Following the incident, five airport employees were fined for their carelessness and the airdrome itself was slapped with a VND40 million (US$ 1,756) pecuniary penalty.

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Archbishop Paul Bui Van Doc of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City passed away in Rome, Italy at the age of 74 during an ad limina visit.

The archbishop was attending Mass at the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the Walls in Rome early Wednesday morning (Vietnam time) when he suffered a stroke and was rushed to hospital, the Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City announced the same day.

Archbishop Paul Doc drew his last breath at the San Camillo Hospital in Rome at 4:00 am on Wednesday.

The 74-year-old Archbishop Paul Bui Van Doc was on an ad limina visit to Vatican with 32 other members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Vietnam, during which they met with Pope Francis to report on the state of their dioceses.

The Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City said it was working with authorities in Rome and Vietnam to repatriate the body of the late archbishop for a funeral in the Southeast Asian country.

Paul Bui Van Doc was born in 1944 in the city of Da Lat in Vietnams Central Highlands region.

He was ordained in 1970 in Da Lat and served at a local seminary until he was appointed as vicar general at the Diocese of Da Lat in 1995.

Archbishop Paul Doc was appointed Bishop of My Tho by Pope John Paul II in March 1999 and was consecrated on May 20 the same year.

He was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City on September 28, 2013 by Pope Francis.

On March 22, 2014, he succeeded Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man as the Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City upon the latter's resignation due to advanced age.

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Japans justice ministry is investigating a case involving a Vietnamese national who was allegedly duped into taking part in decontamination work in the affected areas of the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, local media reported.

The 24-year-old Vietnamese, who is not named for legal reasons, arrived in Japan under the governments foreign trainee program and worked for a construction firm in Iwate Prefecture, according to Japan Times.

While he was supposed to conduct dismantling and public engineering work, the man was allegedly tasked with cleanup work in contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, exposing him to radiation, according to Zentoitsu Workers Union, a Tokyo-based organization that represents him in the case.

The Fukushima disaster cleanup is an ongoing attempt to limit radioactive contamination from the three nuclear reactors involved in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which was initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011.

Japan Times quoted Shiro Sasaki, secretary-general of the Zentoitsu Workers Union, as saying that the man arrived in Japan from Vietnam in September 2015 on a three-year contract with the construction firm.

He was later assigned to decontaminate the residential areas of Fukushimas Koriyama City in more than ten business trips between October 2015 and March 2016, according to Sasaki.

The firm also had the Vietnamese engaged in dismantling buildings in an exclusion zone in the Fukushima town of Kawamata, when it was still a restricted zone due to high levels of radiation.

Wakana Kumagai, 7, visits the spot where her house, which was washed away by the tsunami, used to stand in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi prefecture March 11, 2012. Photo: Reuters

Sasaki claimed that the trainee had no idea he would be doing the decontamination job in areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

[The mans claims] suggest that he might have been deceived and brought to Japan to conduct cleanup work, Sasaki was quoted by Japan Times as saying.

The Japan Times said the Vietnamese left the company in November 2017 over health concerns, when his employer ignored requests to have the situation explained.

The newspaper added that it has proof showing the man had been exposed to radiation while working in Kawamata.

Seeking compensation

Japans Nikkei daily reported on Tuesday that the construction firm in question has denied claims that it violated labor laws as accused by the Zentoitsu Workers Union.

The company also asserted that the Vietnamese trainee had been assigned the same non-risk tasks as his Japanese coworkers.

According to the union, the mans monthly wage was only about 140,000 (roughly US$1,300), nearly three times lower than that of Japanese workers doing similar cleanup work.

The union is helping the Vietnamese in negotiations with the firm, and seeking compensation worth the amount that would have been paid for his unfulfilled time of the contract.

The Japanese justice ministry has confirmed through telephone to Japan Times that it was looking into the case, verifying such claims as the Vietnamese was given duties different from what were described in his contract.

The construction firm will face penalties if found guilty of breaching labor laws.

View of some of the damage caused by the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Photo: Reuters

The ministry representative noted that the labor laws do not ban foreign workers from working at decontamination sites, and Japanese employers are legally allowed to send foreign technical trainees to the work.

However, the Vietnamese in this case was a trainee of a vocational training program, which has little to do with radiation cleanup.

Its hard to imagine that a trainee could use decontamination work experience in his or her home, the official told Japan Times.

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A Vietnamese-American holidaymaker was beaten to the point of unconsciousness at a Da Lat eatery after workers caught one of her companions in the attempt of posting a negative review of the restaurants food and service on social media.

The incident took place on Tuesday night while the 28-year-old tourist, referred to as T., and a group of friends were having dinner at the Bich Thuy eatery near the Da Lat Night Market.

One of the tourists, Vietnamese national V., said the group ordered six dishes of rice with chicken and pork, which were later served without the complimentary soup shown in the menu.

When they asked for the soup, the eatery attendants brought in a big bowl and charged them VND100,000 (US$4.4), which the tourists refused to take.

As they dined, V. and her friends found that the chicken was undercooked and started to complain to restaurant workers.

V. also took photos of the food, prompting a waitress to should Stop her! She is posting photos on Facebook."

A group of people then appeared from nowhere and joined the Bich Thuy staff in beating V. and her friends.

An attendant named Lo Thi Mai Trang, 20, grabbed T.s hair, threw her to the ground, and sat on her.

The Vietnamese-American, who has a history of cardiovascular disease, lost consciousness shortly after falling to the ground and was rushed to a local hospital.

V., who also suffered scratches and bruises on her face, went straight to the Ward 1 police station to file a report.

However, she admitted to having fought back with her selfie stick and suggested that the police refrain from filing charges in the case.

Do Ngoc Hoa, head of Ward 1 police, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday that his unit has booked the case and is still conducting an investigation.
Perth-based broadcaster is joining Weekend Sunrise alongside Monique Wright.

After Andrew OKeefe departed in December. Zempilas quickly emerged as one of the hot favourites for the gig. He won the praise of execs after filling-in on the role.

TV Tonight recently revealed David Koch was seeking a 4 day working week on the show, due to other commitments.

For years Ive watched and thought how much fun it would be to be part of the Weekend Sunrise team, he said.

Turns out I was right. Ive loved every moment filling in on the show over the last six months and I cant wait to work alongside Monique every weekend.

Monique Wright added: We needed a lanky uncle who is mad about sport in the family, now weve got him! Basil is a tower of a person  literally. His wonderfully generous and fun personality is matched only by his 6ft 5 frame. His energy and knowledge over a wide range of areas will be a wonderful addition to the Weekend Sunrise family.

We have known each other for more than 20 years and are firm friends, so Im really looking forward to sharing the desk with such a brilliant person. His self-deprecating humour is simply a joy and he has already given me permission to rib him about everything so this is going to be a lot of fun!

Seven Network Director of News and Public Affairs, Craig McPherson, said: Basil is a bundle of energy on and off screen. He has a serious passion for news and everyday issues which will no doubt come to the fore in his new role. He has many strings to his bow which have been relatively untapped. Hell excel alongside Monique and the terrific team at his new home on Weekend Sunrise.

Zempilas will certainly be juggling a busy schedule including breakfast radio in Perth, commentating AFL and calling the swimming at the Commonwealth Games in April.

Updated.
Ben Knights report on Big Australia next on Four Corners asks if we are ready for population growth?

It will be followed by a Q&A episode debating the arguments.

The numbers tell the story. Australias population is growing fast. Across the country, weve added almost 400,000 people in the last year alone. The populations of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth have expanded by nearly three million extra people in the last 10 years. And were feeling the strain.

You just cant go exponentially like that and not expect there not to be some sort of consequences. Bernard Salt, The Demographics Group

Australians living in our big cities are experiencing crippling commute times, over-crowded public transport, school shortages and an under supply of affordable housing.

Its not a choice, its forced on people. I dont think thats wonderful for our future. Dick Smith, businessman

And our population is set to get even bigger. Therell be almost 40 million of us by the middle of the century.

Its time for the nation to have a conversation about how big Australia is going to grow.

It might be an uncomfortable conversation but its necessary. In order for Australia to be the country we want it to be. Dr Liz Allen, demographer

On Monday night Four Corners investigates what a Big Australia will mean and the difficult choices that will have to be made.

Do you have fences and turnstiles? Do you start to ration access? Thats the sort of dystopia that we can see coming at us through the mist. Bob Carr, Former Foreign Minister and Former Premier of NSW.

We look at the projected rise of Australias megacities  where some will double their current size  and ask who is planning for this?

Weve got huge changes comingwere looking at things like infrastructure needs, education needs, health needs. These are huge issues that Australia is facing as our population grows. Innes Willox, Chief Exec, Australian Industry Group

We investigate how we got to this point and interrogate why Australia has no national population policy.

Weve done an abysmal job. You know, there has been really no serious integrated debate around all the key factors that population growth brings to our economy and our national way of life. Innes Willox

Some are now saying we should pull down the shutters and dramatically reduce the number of migrants arriving in Australia or risk our envied way of life.

I see disaster for the way of life that we loved in Australia. Dick Smith

Others point out that were facing a tsunami of older Australians, who will not have people to care for them.

The oldest baby boomer is about 68, 69. Were going to need more than 24,000 (aged care workers) every five years. Were going to need 50,000. Its not the sort of job that can be digitally disrupted. Bernard Salt, The Demographics Group

Australians will need to start asking: what sort of place do we want to live in? What are we determined to hang onto and what are we prepared to give up?

The debate begins with Four Corners this Monday.

Youll find online features and shareable videos on the Four Corners Facebook page and ABC News Online.

And Q&A will keep the conversation going in a special Big Australia edition following Four Corners.

Monday 12th March at 8.30pm on ABC.
SBS has officially released We Got Love, the song Jessica Mauboy will take to the Eurovision Song Contest.

The event in Portugal in May marks Mauboys second Eurovision appearance, but her first time competing, after her 2014 performance as a guest performer.

We Got Love begins quietly before bursting to life with an infectious chorus about love overcoming all obstacles. Together with Mauboys natural joy and strong vocals it should prove a stronger entry than Isaiahs 2017 Dont Come Easy.

I love the Eurovision Song Contest. I have since I was a little girl watching it with the family in Darwin, Mauboy said. I wanted to write a song that captured that instinctive sense of joy of how a great song can change the darkest of moods into happiness. We Got Love is also about how music can lift the human spirit. You can always rise above in the hardest times with something as simple as a great song.

Eurovision, to me, is people brought together through a real love of music and all the joy that music can bring. I cant wait to perform this song live in Portugal and see it connect with a global audience at such a special time.

The song was co-written with DNAs David Musumeci and Anthony Egizii who penned Dami Ims Sound Of Silence and Isaiahs Dont Come Easy. It leaked earlier this week before being pulled offline by Sony, but the move may have helped create some early buzz.

Especially in times like these where the world can be a very confusing and lonely place, its important to remember when we feel disarmed of empowerment that we still hold the greatest chance for change with love, the duo said.

Michael Ebeid, SBS Managing Director said, SBS has been bringing Eurovision to Australians for 35 years, but Jessica introduced homegrown talent to the world stage in 2014 when she became the first non-European solo artist to perform. She wowed the global audience and showcased what Australia is made of  and SBS is thrilled to invite her back to compete for Eurovision glory this year.

At the heart of Eurovision is a celebration of diversity through music  a universal language that transcends culture  and #We Got Love really resonates as a song about overcoming barriers and bringing people together.

Paul Clarke, Australian Head of Delegation and Director of Blink TV, said: From the first time we took Jessica to Eurovision, we really hoped we could return with her to compete. #We Got Love is the culmination of that four year plan, and the song so fits her beautiful soul voice. Its a song of belief and overcoming the status quo, and I love the passion of it. Im sure it will lift your heart. We hope you all love it and hope Europe gets behind Jessica and #We Got Love.

So far Australia is yet to rank outside the Top 10. Fingers crossed for Portugal.

Eurovision will air on SBS from May 9 to 13.
THERESA MAY had heroically raised human rights concerns with Saudis Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, during her visit to Saudi Arabia. Why should she raise them again? Surely once is enough? It is only those pesky leftist, communist, fascist, socialist thinking, lazy great unwashed that keep harping on about their precious human rights. What about his right as a human to cause suffering to millions of innocent people, including children?!

Those leftist, fascist, communist have only one desire, to destroy the freedoms that allows us to do and say as we please without a second thought to the supposed suffering of other humans.

Plus, those children very clearly ARENT children, look at them, they look older!

The history of heroic patriots!

History informs us that Great Britain have been honourable in their actions, if you look at the House of Saud, they exiled to Kuwait after traitors from within ruining their second empire. Then the GREAT British government decided that it was necessary to break up the Ottoman Empire, a key reason why they decided it was necessary to cause millions of deaths through a world war. In a memo the heroic liberator of Arabia, Colonel T.E. Lawrence, stated beneficial to us because it marches with our immediate aims, the breakup of the Islamic bloc and the defeat and disruption of the Ottoman Empire, and because the states [Sherif Hussein] would set up to succeed the Turks would be  harmless to ourselves

The British government contacted Sherif Hussein, stated that he was needed and promised him some form of land but then decided in the Sykes-Picot agreement to break up the land between Britain and France, it was minor faux-pas not informing Hussein, but everyone is flawed, right?

Perhaps giving Ibn Saud 5,000 a month and selling him arms during the first world war, considerably less than what Britain gave to Hussein for his Arab revolt was a mistake, but weve moved on from that now, thats the past and they are obviously reforming. Yes, this did help facilitate the ultra-conservative ideology of Wahhabism in the region, an ideology that ISIL subscribe to, but things are changing for the better.

I mean, since Germany have banned all arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the conflict in Yemen, we have increased our arms sales, but it creates GREAT BRITISH jobs and adds to our economy. Our responsibility is to make sure there is enough wealth at the top and human life neednt matter in these proceedings. It is just fascist, leftist, snowflake whinging that says otherwise.
Since Donald Trump took office just over a year ago, the string of high-profile white house resignations has been staggering. On Tuesday, Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, resigned from his post. According to the New York Times, he did so because of his opposition to the president's decision to impose tough trade tariffs.

Commentators believe, Cohn considered quitting last August after Donald Trump's controversial comments on the Charleville race riots. But it was the decision to introduce tariffs on aluminium and steel imports that reportedly caused an insurmountable rift between Trump and Cohn.

Both Cohn and the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, are said to have strongly opposed the trade tariffs.

Cohn was seen as moderating influence on Trump

During his tenure, Cohn helped to push through many of Donald Trump's economic reforms, including the tax cuts. As a Democrat, many believed him to have had a moderating influence on Trump's economic policies. Once one of Trump's personal favourites, Cohn said in a statement that he had been pleased to work on pro-growth policies and tax reforms.

However, the decision to proceed with the introduction of trade tariffs appears to have been a step too far for Cohn.

In a statement to the New York Times, Donald Trump praised Cohn's contribution:"He's a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people." On Tuesday, he took to Twitter to ponder who'd be a possible successor.

Will be making a decision soon on the appointment of new Chief Economic Advisor. Many people wanting the job - will choose wisely!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2018

President Trump's trade tariffs

It's not just Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin who've been critical of Trump's decision to impose trade tariffs. Many Republicans have been equally scathing, fearing that tariffs could spark an international trade war.

Stock markets have also reacted to Donald Trump's decision, and some believe, Cohn's resignation could rattle them further.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump seems determined to push ahead with the introduction of tariffs on steel and aluminium, reiterating, that the US was on the losing side of many trade deals.

We are on the losing side of almost all trade deals. Our friends and enemies have taken advantage of the U.S. for many years. Our Steel and Aluminum industries are dead. Sorry, its time for a change! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2018

Trump highly critical of the European Union

At a press conference with the Swedish prime minister, Trump said that it was near impossible to do business with the European Union. He went on to say that the EU "has been particularly tough on the United States", and that "the European Union has not treated us well and it's been a very, very unfair trade situation."

Previously, Donald Trump had criticised the German car industry, sentiments he reiterated on Saturday on Twitter.

If the E.U. wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on U.S. companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the U.S. They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2018

European Union response

Responding to Donald Trump's trade tariff announcement, the European Union announced it would ask Washington for a rethink. However, if the US were to go ahead with the introduction of a 10 percent tariff on aluminium and 25 percent on steel, the European Union believes many European jobs would be at risk. For that reason, the European Union would see itself forced to take action.

First, the EU would seek support from the World Trade organisation to oppose the US tariffs. Secondly, it would introduce measures to protect the openness of the European market. Finally, the EU would look at rebalancing the losses resulting from the imposition of the US tariffs by placing tariffs on certain US products. The European Union stressed that all measures would comply with WTO regulations.
In what could be the first unprecedented moon landing of its kind in history, Indias space agency ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) is planning to send a lunar probe to the Moon's South Pole which till today remains an unchartered region territory of the lunar surface. The vehicle named Chandrayaan -2 is scheduled for lift-off in April this year and if successful will become the first lunar probe to land in the region of the moon's South Pole where others have all landed near the equator.

The ambitious project to be launched by the ISRO comes in the wake of the first unsuccessful Chandrayaan -1 which was launched in 2008 and terminated after scientists lost contact with the spacecraft.

A major breakthrough if successful: targeted area has rocks four billion years old

This mission would be a scientific milestone and a breakthrough of sorts in lunar exploration as the area that has been targeted for landing consists of rocks that are regarded by scientists to be four billion years old. By that, one can imagine the sheer magnitude of the data and research the project would yield. It would become a goldmine of information to which scientists have not yet been privy too as no craft has attempted such a challenge till date.

ISROs ambitious project is being touted as a daredevil manoeuvre as the first-ever mission to soft-land on the moon's South Pole. The mission itself is not without its technical challenges.

Said former ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar on Saturday, Feb 4 We have identified two locations and will be choosing one. No other moon mission has landed in this area. Incidentally, AS Kiran Kumar retired just last month.

Landing simulations are underway: scheduled launch in April

Speaking to the Times of India, current ISRO chairman K Sivan said that Chandraayan-2 will be a real challenge because this is going to be the first instance a lander, orbiter and a rover will be carried to the moon.

Even now, landing simulations are also underway at ISROs Liquid Propulsion System Center at Mahindra Giri in Tamil Nadu. A prototype of the lander will attempt a simulated soft-landing from a height of approximately 80 meters.

Technology and hardware almost ready

The ISRO chief also revealed the technology and hardware for Chandrayaan -2 was almost ready and launch is scheduled by the first quarter or second half of 2018.

Chandrayaan-2 will be carried into the lunar orbit by the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark II space rocket. Solar energy will be used to power the rover every lunar day which is equivalent to 14 Earth days. It will be analysing the lunar surface and transmitting data and images back to Earth.

The lunar probe may discover water which would be phenomenal

Wu Ji the director of the National Space Science Center in Beijing said it was a challenging and complicated mission because there is less sunlight at the lunar poles so the lunar probe may receive less power.

The project aims to land the probe in an area between the lunar mountain craters of Simpelius N and Manzinus C which are 70 degrees south.

This is an entirely unknown area near the lunar South Pole but the scientists working on the project feel it will not just be a milestone in lunar exploration but more ambitiously pave the way for possible lunar habitation in case the probe discovers water.

Will Chandrayaan-2 redeem the loss of Chandrayaan I. Scientists are optimistic.

The spacecraft carrying the probe weighs 3,300 kg and will be launched from the Sriharikota Satish Dhawan Space Centre located on the countrys southwest coast. The rocket GSLV MKII will launch the spacecraft that will carry the orbiter, robot and lander to the moon. Upon launch, the spacecraft will enter a 170 x 20, 000 km elliptical orbit. From here, the craft will be manoeuvred towards a lunar orbit with the help of thrusters.

In 2008 Chandrayaan I was launched from Sriharikota at a cost of $83 million. The main craft made it to the lunar orbit and a lunar probe landed on the moon. It even discovered magmatic water on a moon pit. Unfortunately, the main craft malfunctioned in 2009 crashing into the moon breaking all communications with the probe. The project was subsequently abandoned. In 2017, NASA through its Jet propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, located the lunar orbiter hovering near the moons North Pole.

Scientists are hopeful that Chandrayaan 2 will be successful and put India on the map as one of the latest major contenders in space exploration.
South America is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west side and by the Atlantic on the East and north portion. While the western region is dominated by the Andes mountain range, the eastern is occupied by lowland regions where rivers, including the Parana, Orinoco and the Amazonas reign. There are fourteen countries on this continent and the most common language is Spanish; the second is Portuguese followed by English and French. The great diversity of this continent is a great challenge for the most adventurous people.

Machu Picchu

This is a 15th century Inca city that was built for the Inca emperor Pachacuti.

Its located 2500 meters (8000 ft.) above sea level and 80 km (50 miles) to the northwest of Cuzco. It remained unknown to the world until about 1911 when Hiram Bingham discovered it. This is one of the most famous sites in Peru. The Inca trail consists of three routes that lead to Machu Picchu, this trail goes through several Andean ecosystems, including, alpine tundra, Incan ruins, tunnels and rainforest. The Peruvian government placed a limit on the number of people who are allowed to hike the trail; therefore, its recommended to book in advance.

Rio de Janeiro

This is the second most populated city in Brazil and the sixth most concentrated in all America. This city is world known for its carnival which is held each year, its samba music, the jazz-like music known as bossa nova and the Balneario beaches along the coastline, where anyone who likes beach parties will enjoy.

Christ the Redeemer is well noticed atop the Corcovado Mountain, where one can get a clear view of the city from above. It offers dozens of trails and first-class attractions. Portuguese is the main language spoken here, but English and other international languages are spoken too.

Angel Falls

This is the highest waterfall in the world situated in Venezuelas Canaima National Park.

The falls consist of almost 1000 meters of plunging water; at the point where this plunge hits the bottom, a sloping cascade of rapids form. Travellers enjoy a spectacular view of grasslands and rivers that cut into forested mountains, revealing waterfalls and lakes. This is one of Venezuelas top tourist attractions. One can get a flight from Ciudad Bolivar or Puerto Ordaz to get here.

River trips are available from June to December.

Cartagena de Indias Colombia

For those seeking colonial architecture, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia offers some of the best preserved colonial cities. This city was one of the ports of entry for the Spanish colony. Castillo San Felipe de Barajas is a fortress located on a hill where one can have a good view of the city and the ocean. The walled city of Cartagena is a stoned fortress of massive walls that are 20 meters thick and 11 km long; the historic plazas and narrow streets in this area are other attractions worth visiting. Other attractions include the clock tower, the Gold Museum and Palace of the Inquisition. The main language spoken is Spanish.

The Galapagos Islands

This is an archipelago of volcanic islands situated 900 km (560 miles west of Equator. This archipelago is known for its vast number of unique species. This is the place where Charles Darwin made his discoveries about the theory of natural selection. Travellers can walk among many creatures unafraid of spectators. Dolphins, sea lions, seals, turtles, iguanas, lizards and flamingos are among some of the animals one can encounter here. One can get to the Galapagos Islands by air or boat. Overnight stay is offered on yachts and ships.

These are only five of the vast array of destinations in South America. Once there, you will surely want to visit more of this tropical and subtropical land.
Russia have always been a concern for Britain, even at the height of the Empire. It is the reason why Britain sought to break up the Ottoman Empire and install a leader within the region under British protectorate, this led to deals with Sherif Hussein to lead the Arab revolt, the Sykes-Picot agreement, a deal between France and Britain to break up the middle-east and the signing of the Darin Treaty with Ibn Saud, which was the official recognition of his leadership in Arabia leading to the creation Saudi Arabia. Lest not forget the Balfour Declaration that led to the creation of Israel.

The timing of the UK state visit of Saudis crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is interesting given the history.

Plus, the increase tensions between the West and Russia, particularly since Britains closest ally, the US, has charged around a dozen in connection with interference in their 2016 election.

Real life Shogi

In Salisbury, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent, with Russia suspicious of conducting an attack on foreign soil because Skripal was convicted of spying for the UK. But with Vladimir Putin seeking re-election in two weeks, tying up loose ends would seem like a plausible tactic, especially if he still had information that could prove detrimental to the elected dictator. Even if it was proved that he did not hold any information negative to Putin, the idea of better safe than sorry (or the Russian equivalent) is probably something Putin follows.

The west has always been wary of Russia and their history violence is something that isnt hidden, they are almost proud of the hard man image of the Russian military and its leaders. Along with deep levels anti-democratic corruption, Russia have been vying for control over the Middle-East for a century and with recent weakening of the UK and the US, following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump  both of which have been linked to Kremlin involvement in either deepening divisions or direct interference to ensure the preferred outcome comes to fruition  this presents an opportunity for Russia to push forward their military agenda in the region, supporting Turkey and their fascist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Furthermore, the secret state of China, whom are close allies with Russia, have been rapidly expanding their naval power to be able to challenge the US in the South China Sea. President Xi Jingping, who is seeking to change the constitution to abolish presidential terms, effectively making himself emperor, has visited Moscow more times than any other state to cement the deep relationship between Beijing and Moscow.

Xi has always been against Western powers, in 2013, he circulated a document within the Communist party that spoke of seven dangerous Western values: constitutional democracy, universal values of human rights, civil society, pro-market neo-liberalism, media independence, historical nihilism (criticisms of past errors), and questioning Reform and Opening.

Proxy wars

The Middle-East has been ground for proxy wars between the Western powers and Eastern powers to clash without directly declaring war. Russia have been supporting Assad, Turkey and Qatar along with China using trade and economic growth as means to create allies. This was the reason Saudi Arabia led a boycott against Qatar, after they began conducting international trade in Chinese Yuan rather than US dollar.

The UK and US have been supporting, Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has been largely successful in keeping the region under their control for the last century. However, with recent developments at home, the GBP and importantly, USD have been weakening, both have been mainstays in international and European trade for decades.

This has created a mess in the region that has led to the deaths of millions of innocent people, the rise in extremism that has largely been Western funded. Civilians on the ground in Afghanistan have claimed that the US is dropping in military supplies to ISIL  whom they moved into the region - on the border to combat the Russian military presence on the other side in Iran.

Russia have always had a powerful ground force, but their naval power has been lacking, something Putin has been fully aware of which explains the deep relationship with China and their move to create a blue water navy. Putin has also been boasting this week of a nuclear missile that cant be stopped by Western defence systems. In an interesting development, North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, has been vying to cement relationships with South Korea in a rare display of diplomacy and even stated that he would drop their nuclear programme if they were protected. International powers will cast a wary eye over recent developments.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures as he speaks, Iran, January 9, 2018. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS

Thomson Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Tehran would not negotiate over its presence in the Middle East region with the United States and Europe.

"European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. Its none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here?" Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.

Khamenei said Iran would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.

(Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; editing by John Stonestreet)

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(Reuters) - Magic Leap, a secretive startup working in the augmented reality space, said on Wednesday it raised $461 million in its latest funding round, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's sovereign investment arm.

The company said it raised $963 million in the series D round, taking the total funding to over $2.3 billion to date.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund joins a clutch of global names such as Alphabet Inc's Google, Alibaba Group , Qualcomm Inc , Time Warner's Warner Bros and J.P. Morgan Investment Management which have invested in Magic Leap.

Magic Leap in October raised $502 million in a capital funding round, led by Singapore government-owned investment firm Temasek Holdings [TEM.UL].

The latest financing round comes as Magic Leap readies to ship in 2018 its long-awaited debut product, "Magic Leap One, Creator Edition", an AR headset built for developers.

Magic Leap said Allen & Co LLC served as its financial advisers.

(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

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Turkish-backed Syrian rebels released drone footage of Jandris, a town they said they captured on March 8, located about 20 km southwest of Afrin in Syria.

In this drone footage, a large mosque, a school, a cemetery, and fortifications located in Jandris are visible.

Qasioun News Agency also reported on this advance and posted video showing fighters in the center of the town, amid deserted streets and damaged buildings.

Turkeys Anadolu agency said on March 8 that Janderis had been cleared or terrorists following fierce fighting.

Kurdish sources reported on heavy fighting against Turkish-backed forces in the same area on the same day. Credit: Faleeq al-Sham via Storyful
Cecil the lion made headlines worldwide in July 2015 after he was shot by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe. New details, suggesting Cecil suffered at least 10 hours of "incredible cruelty" before dying, surfaced on Wednesday.

Minnesotan dentist Walter Palmer, 55, is said to have given local hunters at least $50,000 for the 13-year-old black-maned lion, beloved by the people of Zimbabwe. Cecil was killed with a bow and arrow after being lured from his home in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, which is a protected wildlife preserve. Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (Wildcru), a group that regularly observed Cecil, had placed a tracker on the lion, which is how they located his remains.

Dr. Andrew Loveridge, one of Oxford's lion researchers, now suggests the true horror of Cecil's death.

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Cecil

Getty Images

"He most definitely did not die instantly and almost certainly suffered considerably," Loveridge wrote in a passage obtained by National Geographic. "The injured lion most likely was killed 10 to 12 hours after being wounded."

Added Loveridge, "Clearly, although the wound was severe, the arrow had missed the vital organs or arteries that would have caused rapid blood loss and a relatively quick death. Certainly, the lion was so incapacitated that in all those hours he'd been able to move only 350 meters from the place where he was shot."

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Cecil's death shocked millions worldwide, becoming an international topic of discussion. In America, an image honoring Cecil the lion was illuminated on one of New York's most iconic landmarks, the Empire State Building. And late-night host Jimmy Kimmel cried over the incident, urging viewers to donate to Wildcru. "If you're hunting to eat, or to help keep the animal population healthy, or it's part of your culture or something, that's one thing. But if you're some a-hole dentist who wants a lion's head over the fireplace in his man cave so his douchebag buddies can gather around it and drink scotch and tell him how awesome he is, that's just vomitous," Kimmel said to his viewers.

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Palmer closed his dental practice due to the widespread backlash over Cecil's death. After the news broke, Palmer said, "I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt."

Zimbabwe did not charge him in Cecil's death.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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Colorado Teachers Account of Mistaken School Lockdown Goes Viral: I Cowered in a Closet with My Fifth Grade Students

A Colorado teacher's tweets went viral after she thought her school was experiencing a lockdown because of an attack on Tuesday.

I am a teacher, today I cowered in a closet with my fifth grade students. I locked doors and switched off tech, tweeted Colorado teacher Ali Kemp after her school reportedly went into lockdown mode.

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Subsequent tweets revealed a harrowing, moment-by-moment account of Kemp reacting to the lockdown announcement of this is not a drill.

She writes in one tweet, if today would be the day she would use her training to be a fighting target so others can escape.

Soon after, her tweets revealed that the school had made a mistake. Thirty seconds later, the school was on lockout because of a "neighborhood incident."

"Thank god. A simple miscommunication. But for thirty seconds, it had been real. Not a drill. Thirty seconds of blood pounding in my ears. Of students eyes on the ground. On the closet doors. On my face," she said in another tweet.

Schools are placed on lockout anytime there is police activity in the neighborhood, and it's a standard safety practice, an official from Denver Public Schools told Newsweek.

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The official was unable to confirm where the incident happened, adding that lockouts happen "frequently" in its more than 200 schools. While it usually lasts just a few minutes, doors are locked and no one is let in or out, the official said.

In the scenario of a lockdowna step upcalls cant be made and electronics are shut off.

We always have regular drillsthats a practice thats already been in place. Were on top of school security, the official says.

In the aftermath of last month's deadly attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed, authorities have worried about copycat attacks.

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In the week after, the Educator's School Safety Network found threats were being made on an average of 50 a day, according to an NPR report.

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After these events, it brings up a lot of emotions about what it means to be an educator, educators want to keep their students safe, there are a lot of emotions going on, said Melissa Brymer, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, to Newsweek.

A wave of these moments happens, and educators have to deal with trauma in the most effective way, she said.

Nine out of 10 public schools across the U.S. conduct mass shooting drills. Twenty states have laws that enact lockdown drills in all of its public schools, and 30 states have "broad emergency plans" that may include lockdowns.

But living in the environment of crisis preparedness can also add to the anxiety, Brymer said. While the debate on active-shooter drills dates back 20 years, since the Columbine High School attack, reports make evident the psychological trauma on those who go through them, prompting some to question tactics and what can be improved.

Past cases show that drills and planning save lives, but it's also important to look at how they're carried out, Brymer said.

It's honestly better to have announced drills, Brymer said. Unannounced drills can cause a confusion, the goal and purpose of a drill is to make sure everybody knows what to do, our main job is to educate and to learn. We dont need it to be the scariest situation where its unannounced.

She points out that, in that case, should an emergency truly happen, teachers won't be left guessing. Many drills could potentially delay response times and cause greater confusion, if in the likelihood an emergency situation is actually underway.

Newsweek also reached out to Denver police, who referred us to Denver Public Schools regarding reports of the lockout.

Kemp declined an interview request from Newsweek.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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By Francesco Canepa

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is asking the European Union's top court whether the Latvian authorities can keep the country's central bank governor from his role as an ECB policymaker because of bribery allegations.

The government has barred the central bank chief, Ilmars Rimsevics, from leaving his country over accusations that he solicited a bribe. Unable to travel, he could not attend an ECB policy meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday.

The ECB is now asking the European Court of Justice if the restrictions imposed on Rimsevics comply with the bank's rules, which say governors can only be relieved of office if they can't fulfil their duties or are "guilty of serious misconduct".

"The Governing Council has decided, again unanimously, to ask for clarification ... whether individual security measures imposed on the governor of Latvia's bank ... have had the effect of relieving him from office and if these measures comply with (EU) law," ECB President Mario Draghi told a news conference on Thursday.

Rimsevics, who denies all charges, is one of three members of the ECB policy-making Governing Council currently under investigation, in what some inside the institution perceive as a threat to its independence.

He was detained by anti-corruption agents last month, suspected of taking a bribe. He has refused to resign, creating a political dilemma for the Latvian government, which cannot sack him, and an embarrassment for the ECB.

The Latvian central bank has stripped him of his salary and barred him from accessing documents.

The ECB's Governing Council is made up of six Executive Board members, who run the institution and include Draghi, and the chiefs of the euro zone's 19 national central banks.

The Bank of Latvia was represented by Deputy Governor Zoja Razmusa at Thursday's meeting.

The other two ECB governors under investigation in their own countries, Greece's Yanis Stournaras and Slovenia's Bostjan Jazbec, regularly take part in meetings.

(Additional reporting by Gederts Gelzis in Riga; editing by Larry King)
Rufaro Chisango said she had not heard back from university officials two days after the incident happened. (Twitter/@rufarochisango_)

Two men have been arrested after a video of racist chants in a universitys halls circulated online.

On Wednesday Nottingham Trent University student Rufaro Chisango tweeted a video of male voices chanting we hate blacks and oh, ah, f**k the blacks outside her room, which she says was recorded on Monday night.

The video shows Ms Chisango, who says she is the only black student in her corridor, being subjected to a barrage of racial slurs before a second woman can be heard telling the men to leave her alone.

Despite saying she reported the incident to accommodation managers on Tuesday morning, Ms Chisango said she had not heard from university authorities by 7pm the following day.

Two 18-year-old men have been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.

Nottingham Trent responded to the video on Thursday morning, stating they had opened an investigation into the incident and that the suspected offenders had been suspended immediately.

When contacted by Yahoo News UK, the university said it didnt know how many students had been suspended.

A tweet from its official account read: We are shocked and appalled to see the video of racist chanting posted yesterday evening. This kind of vile behaviour will not be tolerated at NTU. Those suspected perpetrators have been suspended immediately pending a full investigation.

Nottingham Trents statement

Support for Ms Chisango poured in overnight, with Labour MP David Lammy urging her to call the police.

He said: Please contact the Police and your Member of Parliament and cc me in. All my love and solidarity.

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Many were furious the university had taken so long to act.

Twitter user ThatSoRene posted: Matter of Urgency. You put out a statement today at midnight but this happened on Monday?! Save your institute any more embarrassment and find these students ASAP, exclude them and report them to the police.

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In the early hours of Thursday morning Ms Chisango tweeted:

I just want to thank everyone for their kind messages and all the support, she wrote.

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.  DR Martin Luther King JR.

An investigation has been launched at the university. (Getty)

Yahoo News UK has also reached out to Ms Chisango.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German prosecutors have charged a 47-year old Vietnamese citizen for helping to kidnap high-profile oil executive Trinh Xuan Thanh from central Berlin last year, from where he was whisked to Vietnam and imprisoned, they said on Wednesday.

The case, reminiscent of Cold War-style disappearances, angered Berlin and soured relations with Hanoi.

Federal prosecutors in Karlsruhe said they believe the suspect, identified only as Long N.H., helped with the logistics of the kidnapping, such as renting a vehicle that was used. He was arrested in the Czech Republic in August and handed to German authorities and remains in detention.

In January, Thanh was sentenced to life in prison in Vietnam for violating state regulations and embezzlement.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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The Chancellor has warned the City of London (LSE: CIN.L - news) 's European rivals that they will not automatically benefit from a Brexit deal that excludes financial services.

Philip Hammond said it was in the interests of both Britain and the European Union for the sector to be part of the settlement.

He was speaking after European Council president Donald Tusk unveiled negotiating guidelines for the post-Brexit relationship.

The document warned there can be "no cherry-picking" of particular sectors, like financial services, participating in the EU's single market.

But Mr Hammond warned the "real beneficiaries" of any loss of market share in London would not be financial centres on the continent, but the likes of New York, Singapore and Hong Kong.

In a keynote Brexit speech at the HSBC building in London's Docklands, Mr Hammond said: "I want to challenge the assertion that financial services can't be part of a free trade agreement, to set out why it is in the interests of both the UK and the EU27 to ensure that EU businesses and citizens can continue to access the UK financial services hub.

"This is not a zero-sum game where any loss of market share in London is automatically a gain to another EU capital."

Describing the City of London as a "European asset", Mr Hammond claimed any trade deal which undermined it would backfire on the EU.

He said: "Those who think that the major winners for any fragmentation of London's markets would be Paris or Frankfurt, Dublin or Luxembourg should take note.

"The real beneficiaries are more likely to be New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong, cutting Europe's market share.

"And leaving Europe as a whole, less competitive and more reliant on distant financial centres, operating under very different rules."

Mr Hammond added: "A trade deal will only happen if it is fair and balances the interests of both sides.

"Given the shape of the British economy, and our trade balance with the EU27, it is hard to see how any deal that did not include services could look like a fair and balanced settlement."

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Fleshing out his argument in more detail, the Chancellor said the existing equivalence regime through which third countries deal with the EU would be "wholly inadequate" given the scale of the UK's relationship with Brussels.

Mr Hammond said the principle of "mutual recognition and reciprocal regulatory equivalence" could be a good starting point, but stressed in order for it to work it would need to be objectively assessed with proper governance structures and dispute resolution mechanisms.

Josh Hardie, deputy director-general at the Confederation of British Industry, said: "Trying to forge a new trading relationship with our largest trading partner that does not include financial services is like building a ship with no sails."

However Labour MP Chris Leslie, a supporter of the pro-EU campaign group Open Britain, accused the Chancellor of failing to be honest.

He said: "The EU could hardly have been clearer this morning in rejecting the Government's cherry-picking approach of demanding all the privileges of single market membership but rejecting the responsibilities it brings.

"The Government misses every chance it has to be honest with the British people about the costs of Brexit."
Israel and Lebanon have fought several deadly conflicts, leaving a hostile border that both countries have vowed to defend through the use of force. Tasked with preventing a war, more than 10,000 troops from about 41 nations are participating in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

French Ambassador to Lebanon Bernard Foucher touted his own countrys role in the peacekeeping mission of its former colony during a reception Wednesday on Frances Mistral-class amphibious assault ship Dixmude, which was docked in Beirut. France provides 661 personnel to the UNIFIL mission, and the envoy said they played a crucial role on the tense boundary between Lebanon and Israel, which have exchanged fresh threats of potential military action.

Related: Lebanon ready for war with Israel in response to military aggression or any attempt to invade by land or sea

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We are present in Lebanon, in the region of south of the Litani, in order to strengthen security and prevent the outbreak of wars threatening the region and the world. Our main objective with the international community remains that the Lebanese government be able to gradually exercise its sovereignty over all its territory, Foucher said, according to Lebanons official National News Agency.

Frances participation in the UNIFIL forces in the south of the Litani is making great efforts to preserve and spread peace, as it is spreading in many areas of the world for these supreme goals. Whoever says France isnt doing enough for Lebanon is mistaken, for France always stands beside all Lebanese, he added.

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MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP/Getty Images

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When Israel declared independence in 1948, Lebanon joined fellow Arab states in declaring war to support an independent Palestinian state, whose territorial integrity would have been threatened by the creation of a majority-Jewish country. The exodus of Palestinian fighters from Israeland from neighboring Jordan later oncreated a hub for Palestinian commando activity in southern Lebanon. This prompted an Israeli invasion in 1978, at the onset of a sectarian civil war in Lebanon that lasted from 1975 to 1990.

This invasion compelled the U.N. to form UNIFIL 40 years ago this month. While maintaining contacts with all sides of the conflict, the force struggled to ease tensions and provide support to locals as Israel invaded again in 1982, after Palestinian gunmen attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israeli ambassador to the U.K., and a third time in 2006, after cross-border raids conducted by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement mobilized with Iranian support in response to Israels occupation.

Recent tensions over Hezbollah and its allies growing presence in Syria, a controversial Israeli border wall and a dispute over potential oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea have led to escalating rhetoric from both sides of the conflict. As Israeli, Lebanese and Hezbollah forces all made showings at the border, UNIFIL has been caught in the middle.

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GettyImages-924998268

JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images

The current number of UNIFIL troops by country are: Armenia (33), Austria (186), Bangladesh (116), Belarus (5), Belgium (0), Brazil (208), Brunei (30), Cambodia (185), China (418), Colombia (1) Croatia (1), Cyprus (2), El Salvador (52), Estonia (38), Fiji (147), Finland (299), France (661), Germany (126), Ghana (870), Greece (169), Guatemala (2), Hungary (4), the Netherlands (1), India (899), Indonesia (1290), Ireland (377), Italy (1077), Kenya (1), Macedonia (1), Malaysia (829), Nepal (877), Nigeria (1), Qatar (2), Serbia (177), Sierra Leone (3), Slovenia (17), South Korea (331), Spain (632), Sri Lanka (331), Tanzania (159) and Turkey (87).

Throughout the four decades UNIFIL has existed, 312 personnel have been killed. Of these casualties, Ireland has suffered the most. Irish Army Major General Michael Beary was appointed the commander of UNIFIL in July 2016.

In August 2017, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley accused UNIFIL of giving terrorism a pass and charged Beary with being blind to Hezbollah activities in southern Lebanon. Shortly after, the Irish Foreign Ministry defended the military leader, saying his outstanding record of leadership in numerous international peacekeeping roles speaks for itself, according to The Irish Times.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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In 2016, over 64,000 people in the United States died from opioid overdoses  either from painkillers, heroin, or fentanyl (a synthetic opioid). To put that number in perspective, thats more Americans killed by opioids in 365 days than were killed during the entirety of the Vietnam War. Opioids in America are more than a crisis  theyre a national emergency.

Photo: Getty Images

While doctors may have helped fuel this epidemic through the over-prescription of opioids, the underlying issue that they were often trying to treat, chronic pain, remains an enormous issue. Americans, pain pills or not, are hurting. In a recent National Institutes of Health study, 25.3 million adults reported experiencing chronic pain every single day in the three months prior to the study, a number that makes up 11.2 percent of the population. An even larger number, 126 million people, reported experiencing pain of some sort in the three months prior.

Doctors have long voiced concerns that prescription opioid painkillers  on top of a high potential for addiction  arent actually solving the problem of chronic pain. This week, science confirmed it.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association compared opioids (Vicodin, oxycodone, and fentanyl) to non-opioids (Tylenol, ibuprofen, and nerve blockers) to see if they were better at treating chronic back, hip, or knee pain. The answer was clear: They were not. Treatment with opioids was not superior to treatment with non-opioids for improving pain-related function over 12 months, the study reads. Results do not support initiation of opioid therapy for moderate to severe chronic back pain or hip or knee osteoarthritis pain.

The news is a major blow for pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma, who have made billions through prescription painkillers, but its even worse news for those suffering the effects of chronic pain. The question it leaves behind: If opioids arent the answer to chronic pain, what is?

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For a growing number of doctors, the answer comes in the form of another less dangerous drug: cannabis. This past November, three doctors in Illinois started a campaign called Physicians Against Injurious Narcotics, or PAIN, which aims to expand the states medical marijuana program to allow anyone that qualifies for opioids to also qualify for marijuana.

Photo: Getty Images

Last month, promising research results from Israel added scientific evidence to back their fight. Published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, the study followed 2,970 cancer patients between 2015 and 2017 as they embarked on a medical marijuana treatment program for chronic pain. Each patient was able to choose a plan that specifically catered to their lifestyle, and to pick from 16 different strains of the drug. Pain scales were ranked before taking the medicine and then measured again after the treatment was underway.

The results were overwhelmingly positive. Of the 1,211 cancer patients who were ultimately surveyed (902 patients from the original group died and 680 stopped treatment), 95.9 percent reported an improvement in their condition, and the vast majority of them experienced a dramatic reduction in pain. While at the outset, 52.9 percent of patients had rated their pain between 8 and 10 (on a scale of 10), after six months of treatment, the number reporting that level of pain had dropped to just 4.6 percent.

On top of managing pain, the study showed cannabis capable of addressing other issues the patients were experiencing too. Of those surveyed, 91 percent reported improvements in nausea and vomiting, 87.5 percent reported an improvement in sleep disorders, and 84 percent noticed improvement in anxiety and depression. The studys authors fully endorse the drug as a treatment option.

In an age where a physician often prescribes a different medication for each [cancer] symptom, cannabis, as a comprehensive treatment that affects several symptoms, becomes a desirable therapeutic option, the authors conclude. Cannabis as a palliative treatment for cancer patients seems to be well tolerated, effective and safe.

Cannabiss success in treating chronic pain is echoed in a 2018 review of more than 10,000 abstracts on the topic. Also published in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, the large-scale review offers individual conclusions about marijuanas ability to treat a variety of conditions. Under chronic pain, the authors write, There were five fair-to-good quality systematic reviews that contributed to the conclusion that there is substantial evidence that Cannabis is an effective treatment for chronic pain in adults.

Photo: Getty Images

Despite these reports, not everyone agrees that medical marijuana is the answer to chronic pain. Kevin Sabet, founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), thinks that the studies miss the point. We do know that components of marijuana like THC have shown results for modest pain relief, but thats a very different conclusion than saying marijuana, which has hundred of components, is good for that, Sabet tells Yahoo Lifestyle. I think we need to really distinguish between THC and raw marijuana  especially the kind that the subject would be getting in Israel for the study.

Sheila P. Vakharia, the policy manager of the Office of Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance  a nonprofit fighting to end the war on drugs  sees it differently. The general pain levels reported by study participants went down dramatically, Vakharia tells Yahoo Lifestyle. And to see folks reporting that change is really promising. Vakharia notes that on top of being effective in treating pain, cannabis comes with fewer risks. Namely, its less addictive and rarely fatal.

Although some medical professionals remain reluctant to prescribe medical marijuana, Vakharia says patients are beginning to seek out the benefits of marijuana themselves  and are safer as a result. A look at data in the states where marijuana is legal suggests shes right. According to a 2014 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the rate of deaths from prescription drug overdoses is 25 percent lower in states where medical marijuana is legal.

While Sabet thinks that more research needs to be done before individuals start using marijuana as a substitute for opioids, Vakharia hopes that the shift already underway will gain momentum. I think the evidence will continue to build  and will start to persuade people who are otherwise reluctant to consider it as a treatment for themselves, or to recommend it as a medical professional, Vakharia tells Yahoo Lifestyle. But only time will tell.

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The EU has criticised Theresa May's latest speech on Brexit, describing it as "long on aspirations" but "short on workable solutions".

It also claims she addressed her comments mainly at a "domestic audience, trying to bridge the gaps between the two poles of the debate on Brexit in the UK".

In a document drawn up by the Council of the EU General Secretariat, seen by Sky News, the Prime Minister's speech on Friday is described as containing "a change in tone, but not in substance".

On "options for customs co-operation", it says the address "only rehashed the Lancaster House speech of January 2017".

It describes the PM's comments as being "highly ambiguous on the nature of the future economic partnership".

However, it says that "in contrast to previous speeches, the tone was positive and measured".

A Whitehall source told Sky News the document was a "highly misleading summary" containing "very poor analysis" that had been "prepared at pace".

In her address, Mrs May stood firm in calling for a different relationship to that which Canada, Norway and Turkey have with the EU, declaring: "If this is cherry picking, then every trade agreement is cherry picking."

But the EU accuses her of setting out a "new model based on a double cherry-picking: taking in selective elements of EU membership and of third country trade agreements".

It does find favourable aspects, though, such as a recognition that "trade-offs between sovereignty and market access must be made".

:: Chancellor confronts EU over City Brexit deal

It praises Mrs May for admitting that "leaving the EU has a cost for the UK" and that "Brexit is complex".

On the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, it notes a "welcome recognition of the UK's responsibility for the problem and a reaffirmed commitment to the Good Friday Agreement".

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But it says there was "no solution proposed", and claims the UK's objectives on the matter are "mutually contradictory".

It lists them as: "No Single Market/no customs union; no border on the island of Ireland, no border down the Irish Sea."

In general, it says her speech was "more a domestic communication battle than (something) proposing real substance and ways forward".

A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the EU said it would not comment on leaks.

But a Whitehall source told Sky News the document was a "highly misleading summary which was clearly prepared at pace, contains very poor analysis, and does not reflect the detailed conversations we are having with European partners".
By Joe Bavier

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Militia fighters attacked, kidnapped and raped en masse a large group of women in an isolated area of Central African Republic last month, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday.

The medical charity treated 10 survivors of the Feb. 17 violence near Kiriwiri, a village in the country's northwest. Fearing further attacks if they tried to reach a hospital, the women were unable to seek medical treatment until about two weeks later, it said.

Many other victims remained behind, fearing that, as rape victims, they would be stigmatised in their community.

"Some were totally in shock, others paralysed by fear or unable to talk about the incident. Some of the women had open wounds caused by blades," said Soulemane Amoin, a midwife at the hospital in the town of Bossangoa where the women were treated.

"It was terrible to see. It broke my heart."

Central African Republic descended into chaos after mainly Muslim Seleka rebels ousted president Francois Bozize in 2013, provoking a spate of killing by Christian anti-balaka militias.

Despite the deployment of a 12,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission, rival armed groups still stalk much of the countryside. The U.N. Security Council approved an extra 900 peacekeepers in November to help to protect civilians.

However Gabon, which contributes around 550 soldiers to the mission, announced on Thursday it was planning to withdraw its contingent, citing what it said was a "progressive return of peace and stability".

The rapes near Kiriwiri coincided with a surge in violence in Bossangoa and the surrounding areas.

In its statement, MSF said the women had left their village to fetch water and tend to their fields when the militiamen arrived. Some women fled, but others were grabbed and brought back to the militia's base where they were repeatedly raped before being let go, it said.

MSF did not identify the group behind the assault.

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"This attack is one of the consequences of the new wave of senseless violence that broke out at the end of 2016 and continues without let-up," said Paul Brockmann, who heads MSF's mission in Central African Republic.

The hospital at Bossangoa has treated 56 rape victims since September, up from 13 in the previous eight months, MSF said.

It has also treated around 300 victims of rape and sexual assault from around the country each month so far this year at its main hospital in the capital, Bangui.

(Additional reporting by Gerauds Wilfried Obangome in Libreville; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Robin Pomeroy)
The final night of a Norwegian cruise on the lines Epic vessel was anything but boring.

Tuesday evening, off the coast of the Bahamas, one of the guests onboard the more than 1,000-foot-long vessel fell off and into the ocean below.

Luckily, the guest was rescued by the crew of the ship and successfully brought back onboard, Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement to Newsweek. Once onboard, the guest was taken to the on-site medical facility, evaluated and determined to be in stable condition. After the ship arrived in Port Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday morning, the guest was able to get further care onshore, the statement said.

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Details about how the guest fell overboard or whether any foul play was involved were not included in the statement, and Norwegian did not respond to Newsweeks questions about the fall.

We are thankful that our team reacted quickly and was able to rescue the guest. Our thoughts and prayers are with the guest and their family as they embark on the recovery process and our CARE team is providing support and assistance during this time, said the statement from the cruise line.

The boat was full of vacationers enjoying their last night at sea at the time. Kandace Tice, a 20-year-old student at Florida Gulf Coast University, was napping in her room before dinner when she and her friends heard an alarming noise and felt the boat shake around 9 p.m. They soon realized that the shaking they felt was the boat slowing down and went out onto the balcony to see what was going on.

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On the balcony, we saw the emergency boat go into the water, Tice told Newsweek. But it was pitch black out in the middle of the oceanthe ship had left port in the Bahamas nearly five hours earlier and was scheduled to reach Florida by morning, she said.

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We couldnt see anything, said Tice, who added that at that time they didnt know what was going on but could see people in the bridge of the ship moving around and looking out into the water. The women thought maybe a smaller boat had sunk nearby. But then they saw where the emergency boat was heading. We saw the blinking vest, said Tice.

Another passenger on board posted a video of the rescue boat heading out on Twitter.

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For about 45 minutes to an hour, the ship stood still while the emergency vessel made two trips out into the night, said Tice. When the captain of the ship made an announcement over the intercom, he was almost casual, maybe trying to keep everyone calm, she explained.

The captain said on the intercom there was a passenger overboard but she was rescued and taken to the hospital, said Tice, Thankfully, she was OK.

The captain added that the boat would still make it back to Port Canaveral on schedule the next morning.

It wasnt until Tice and her friends went to dinner that they learned more about the incident. They ran into a group of parents who said they had seen the whole thing happen, said Tice.

The story onboard was that the woman, who was on vacation with her parents, was on the top deck of the boat, about 15 stories high, when she leaned over the railing to take a selfie and ended up falling. The parents said that other passengers made an attempt at pulling her back over but couldnt so they tossed her a life vest and got help immediately, said Tice.

The cruise had previously scheduled Tuesday as a day at sea to take the boat from the Bahamas back to Florida, but due to water conditions, the plan changed, and instead the boat docked in Nassau on Tuesday morning. That meant the boat had to make up for a day at sea in one night, which isnt entirely unusual. But even before the woman fell overboard, the ship was traveling pretty quickly that nightor, as Tice described it, They were hauling butt.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Police officers in Male, the Maldives, blocked an International Womens Day march on March 8, local reports and politicians said.

The march was organized by the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), the main opposition party, the news site Raajje said.

MDP MP Rozaina Adam tweeted photos showing the marchers behind barricades. She said they were being blocked by police.

The women can be seen holding a banner saying, International Womens Day 2018, #PressforProgress, To Help Accelerate Gender Parity, Walk the Talk.

Adam accused police of using violence toward the marchers. One woman, she said, was thrown to the ground and beaten with a baton.

Video here shows a police line in front of a group of mostly women. One woman is seen being shoved by an officer. Credit: @ZFahmy1414 via Storyful
Waffle House 3

Hollis Johnson

Waffle House has secret menus for emergencies, including "no water" and "no power" menus.

Locations in Georgia's DeKalb County are serving the "no water" menu after a massive water-main break.

Waffle House's dedication to remaining open despite natural disasters resulted in the creation of standardized menus to be used during emergencies.

"If the restaurant has daylight and natural gas, we can cook something," a Waffle House representative told Business Insider.

Waffle House is pulling out one of its emergency menus, as DeKalb County in Georgia deals with a massive water-main break.

On Wednesday morning, DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta and some of its suburbs, issued a massive boil-water advisory, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Residents are told to boil water before drinking it after a water-main break caused flooding and mayhem in the area.

Despite the lack of readily available water, Waffle House locations in the area are still serving up hot food.

"How bad is the water main break in DeKalb County? @WaffleHouse is breaking out the infamous 'no water' menu," WSB Radio's Mark Arum tweeted.

Screen Shot 2018 03 07 at 11.28.45 AM

Twitter MarkArum

Pat Warner, a Waffle House representative, confirmed to Business Insider that the chain had a national "no water" menu for use in emergencies and that just fewer than 20 locations in DeKalb County were serving the menu.

The locations are serving only six entrees as well as bottled water and canned soda. The no-water menu also requires that locations use bottled water and serve food on disposable plates and cups.

This isn't Waffle House's only emergency menu, according to Warner. Over the years, the chain has developed standardized menus designed to allow locations to stay open in a wide variety of situations.

For example, when areas lose electricity, local Waffle Houses will start serving a limited "no power" menu.

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"If the restaurant has daylight and natural gas, we can cook something," Warner said.

Waffle House is known to be dedicated to staying open through natural disasters, something Warmer calls part of the chain's culture. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency even unofficially uses a "Waffle House Index" that determines the impact of a natural disaster by how many Waffle House locations are forced to close.

"If the community sees we're open, it kind of brings back a sense of normalcy," Warner told Business Insider.

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This story was first published on March 7, 2018.

Police and paramedics on March 7 escorted a woman from an office building next to Zizzis restaurant on Castle Street in Salisbury, UK, as seen in this video. She was one of two people treated, according to local media.

The restaurant was said to have been visited by former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter before they were found unresponsive on March 4 following a suspected case of poisoning. Skripal and his daughter remained in hospital, in intensive care, on March 7.

There were no immediate reports linking this incident to the Skripal case.

The national Counter Terrorism Police force took over the Skripal case on March 6. Londons Metropolitan Police issued a statement on March 7 appealing for witnesses to the original event to come forward.

Mark Rowley, the assistant commissioner of the counter terrorism force, said: "The focus at this time is to establish what has caused these people to become critically ill. We would like to reassure members of the public that this incident is being taken extremely seriously and we currently do not believe there is any risk to the wider public. Credit: Simon Ward Photography via Storyful
Mineral resource company Keras Resources  investee Calidus Resources has completed a regional target generation study over its Warrawoona gold project, the company announced on Thursday.

Following the completion of the study, mapping and geochemistry programmes are now underway at over 45 identified high priority targets at the Warrawoona project in Australia, with RAB and RAC drilling now scheduled for Q2 and Q3 of this year.

Keras holds a 31% interest in Calidus through 217m shares, and also holds a total of 507m Performance Shares in the company.

The most advanced target area at the site is the Klondyke target area.

Dave Reeves, director of Keras Resources, said: "Whilst the main focus of Calidus has been on the extensive Klondyke Shear zone over the last six months and increasing the overall mineral resource estimate by 74% to its current 712,000ozs, Calidus have not forgotten about the significant exploration potential within the wider portfolio."

The Warrawoona project has had limited to no exploration over the past three decades but the site will see regional soil sampling accros high priority targets commencing in late March.

"This comprehensive regional study across Warrawoona has generated numerous high conviction prospects with several priority drill targets already identified. Calidus is actively exploring these high-quality targets and are currently accelerating their 50,000m drill programme for the year. We will provide ongoing details as results come to hand," said Reeves.

As of 1631 GMT, Keras Resources shares were down 9.72% at 0.33p.
UK shares are being called to start the day slightly higher thanks to a favourable tailwind from a higher close on Wall Street and more dovish Fed talk on Thursday.

The Footsie is seen about 14 points higher at the opening bell from Thursday's closing mark of 5,918.23.

To take note of, markets are pricing in roughly 33% odds that the Fed will hike rates in March, down from 52% at the start of the year, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank.

A raft of US economic data is set to be released in the afternoon, including the latest readings on retail sales and consumer confidence.

Overnight, the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Composite Index finished down by 3.55% to 2,900.97 despite the People's Bank of China's decision to leave its fixing for the yuan unchanged. Some traders attributed the move lower to another downdraft in oil crude futures.

A late report from Bloomberg on Thursday evening broached the possibility that later today the IAEA might announce that Tehran has fulfilled its pledge to curb the country's nuclear programme. That could see nuclear sanctions imposed by the UK, US and European Union lifted as soon as next Monday.

Data released this morning showed that total Chinese aggregate social financing leapt to 1.82trn yuan in December, easily outstripping analysts' forecasts for 1.15trn.

However, figures for new yuan loans and the rate of growth in money supply undershot market forecasts.

Investors will also be keeping close tabs today on two more Fed speakers, at 14:00 and 16:10GMT, respectively, as well as the latest quarterly results from two of the largest lenders Stateside, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

BT gets green light for EE acquistion

The Competition and Markets Authority has approved BT Groups plans to acquire mobile network and internet provider EE. The approval was granted on Friday unconditionally without remedies, and allows the telco to acquire the joint venture between Deutsche Telekom and Orange S.A for 12.5bn. BT Group said it will complete the deal in the coming weekse deal is due to be completed by the end of the month.

Legal & General has sold self-invested personal pension provider and administrator Suffolk Like to Curtis Bank for 45m. Suffolk Life administers around 26,500 plans, including 3,600 commercial properties and its assets under administration totalled 8.7bn as at 30 November. Chief finance officer Mark Gregory said that Suffolk was not core to our focused strategy going forward. Teaming up with Curtis Banks will help it to realise its strong potential, by creating one of the UK's largest SIPP providers."

International Airlines Group said it had signed a joint business agreement between British Airways, Iberia and LATAM Airlines Group on flights between Europe and South America. The airlines plan to seek approval from the competition authorities in South America and will inform the regulatory authorities in the European Union.
Community shopping centre investor Capital & Regional announced its results for the year ended 30 December on Thursday, with adjusted profit rising 8.6% to 29.1m, and adjusted earnings per share ahead 7.3% at 4.10p.

The London-listed firm said IFRS profit for the period was 22.4m, swinging from a loss of 4.4m in the prior year.

Its like-for-like net rental income rose 1.9%, while it had 79 new lettings and renewals achieved during the period at an average 10.3% premium to previous rents, and an 8.4% premium to estimated recovery value.

The companys passing rent was up 3.0% on a like-for-like basis, while its occupancy improved to 97.3% from 95.4%.

Cost efficiencies delivered annual savings of 1.2m, according to the board, with the company said to be on track for annualised savings of at least 1.8m by the end of 2018.

Shareholders were reaping the benefits too, with a 7.4% increase in the total dividend to 3.64p per share.

On the subject of the firms community shopping centre strategy, Capital & Regionals board said it had seen strong progress since it launched the plans at its capital markets day in December.

It said the implementation of the Ilford and Maidstone pilot projects had been highly successful, contributing to a 0.5% increase in footfall in second half of 2017 - significantly outperforming the national index, which saw a 2.9% decline in footfall.

Positive footfall momentum continued into 2018 as well, with the companys portfolio ahead 3.1% for the two months to the end of February, compared to the national index decline of 2.9%.

Capital & Regional said its strategic asset management masterplans had now been implemented across the portfolio, which were focused on further enhancing and improving its shopping centre community offer and trading environments.

A revised capital expenditure plan was also drawn up, with opportunities for more than 50 projects across the portfolio, totalling more than 100m.

Looking at the books, the company said it had a robust balance sheet with long-term debt security, and resilient basic and EPRA net asset value per share figures, both at 67p - declining from 68p year-on-year.

The group cost of debt was 3.25%, with an average debt maturity of 7.3 years.

This is another strong set of results that provides me with further confidence in our decision to focus on serving the non-discretionary, value and needs based end of consumer demand through our portfolio of community shopping centres, said chief executive Lawrence Hutchings.

I believe that C&R through our platform, quality portfolio, energy, insight and experience, can redefine and be recognised as the specialist owner/manager, driving strong returns in this high yielding sector.

Hutchings said management had confidence that its repositioning programme and rebased affordable occupancy costs allowed its retailer customers to trade profitably in its high footfall locations, which had proven to be the engine room for their profits.

"The board has announced a 7.4% increase in total dividend for 2017 and, while fully aware that recent occupier failures present some challenges to short term results, believes that both the momentum we have carried through into 2018 and our strategic asset management master plans, underpin our objective of delivering annual dividend growth in a range of 5% and 8% over the medium-term.
Randgold Resources said the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has assured mining companies that questions about their operations under the country's new mining code would be resolved, but only after the new law had been signed off.

President Joseph Kabila Kabange met representatives from the mining industry on 7 March at the companies' request, Randgold said in a statement.

"The representatives of the mining industry raised questions pertaining to their operations. The president gave assurances that the questions raised will be resolved through discussions with the government, in the mining regulation to be adopted by the government," Randgold said.

A joint statement by the DRC government and the mining group noted that miners concerns "will be taken into account through a constructive dialogue with the government after the promulgation of the new mining law".

Mark Bristow, Randgold's chief executive, said his company would start discussions with government representatives in the week starting 12 March. Randgold operates the giant Kibali gold mine in the north-east of the country.

Randgold, Glencore and other mining companies have clubbed together in an effort to head off the new code, which would increase royalties the companies pay on cobalt, which is used in smartphones and electric car batteries. DRC produces about two-thirds of the world's cobalt and is a leading copper producer.

Economists have identified cobalt as a potential constraint for electric vehicle producers and have said the industry's reliance on DRC could make production of the metal a problem for 5-10 years.

Randgold shares were down 1.4% to 5,898p at 08:03 GMT. Glencore shares fell 0.9% to 364p.
Three University of North Georgia (UNG) students have been chosen for the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program to study abroad this summer, while two others have been named alternates.

The three finalists are:

Madison Brooks of Tallapoosa, Georgia, a junior double majoring in Arabic and French

Micaela Tierce of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a junior majoring in international affairs with a Middle Eastern concentration

Thomas Vella of Decatur, Georgia, a freshman majoring in strategic studies

Two semifinalists were selected as alternates for the program:

Lily OClery of Gainesville, Georgia, a senior majoring in Chinese and minoring in Korean

Marissa Wilborn of Auburn, Georgia, a sophomore majoring in Arabic and minoring in global leadership

Micaela Tierce, CLS finalist

"The UNG students who are finalists for the Critical Language Scholarships have demonstrated great commitment and academic ability," said Dr. Chris Jespersen, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at UNG. "They are to be applauded for their dedication. Their selection is another indication of just how successful UNG students can be."

The scholarship, a program of the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, funds American undergraduate and graduate students to complete intensive language study abroad in the summer. CLS is a very competitive scholarship with acceptance rates hovering around 10 percent each year; from the more than 5,000 applications submitted each year, only some 500 are selected.

"UNG students excel in competitive national opportunities like the Critical Language Scholarship thanks to their diligence, hard work, exceptional talent, and support by many, many faculty and staff," said Dr. Anastasia Lin, assistant vice president of research and engagement at UNG. "We continue to be impressed by the potential and drive of our applicants."

This year's number of recipients for UNG exceeds the total number of CLS winners since 2013, in part because 16 students applied this year. UNG has had two previous CLS winners and three other semifinalists.

"We had more students submit applications this year than any year prior," said Dr. Victoria Hightower, associate professor of history at UNG. "We are immensely proud of all of our students who submitted applications. The scholarship applications undergo a rigorous two-level evaluation process. We are thrilled to have three awardees and two alternates."

For Tierce, a cadet in UNG's Corps of Cadets, the scholarship is a step in her plan to become a commissioned officer and eventual foreign area officer.

"I completed the Critical Language Scholarship to improve my writing skills, and become more competitive for future scholarships as I progress in my major," Tierce said. "I plan to commission into the U.S. Army in 2020, and my ultimate goal is to branch military intelligence after obtaining my bachelor's degree in international affairs and a minor in Arabic and culture. In the military, I hope to eventually be a foreign area officer or civil affairs officer as my career progresses."

Vella was thrilled to earn the scholarship as a freshman and, like Tierce, has a focus on Middle East studies.

"I was extremely happy and I immediately stood up and did a couple of dance movements," Vella said. "My ultimate goal is to become an analyst who works in the intelligence community specializing in the Middle East."

With the goal of broadening the base of Americans studying and mastering critical languages and building relationships between the people of the United States and other countries, CLS provides opportunities to a diverse range of students at every level of language learning.

Students interested in learning more about nationally competitive scholarships should contact ncs@ung.edu for more information. Also, students interested in learning about funding and programs to study abroad in a variety of projects can visit the Center for Global Engagement website.
The massacre of 17 persons in the high school in Parkland has led to the creation of a bill to ensure the safety of school children from gun violence. The bill has been approved by the state's second legislative body, at 67 to 50, and only a veto by the Governor can stop it from becoming law. One of the aspects covered in the bill pertains to increasing the legal age for buying rifles. Another is of mandatory a time-bound waiting period on all firearms sales. Also, some employees of public schools would be allowed to carry guns. However, even though an assault type of weapon was used in the Florida shooting, such weapons are not covered in the proposal.

Sky News reports that a grand jury has formally charged the 19-year-old gunman with 17 counts of murder, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.

The support came from both sides

When tragedies like the one in Parkland occur, that support goes across party lines was evident in this case. The Florida gunman shot at random and the victims included children from both the sides. Therefore, in order to pass the bill, ten House Democrats and 57 Republicans extended support to it while 19 Republicans and 31 Democrats voted against it.

The arming of some school employees was a concept that is expected to act as a deterrent to gun violence. It is hoped it will provide a sense of security for the children as well as the staff.

The schools will identify the persons who would take on the responsibility. They will be given special training, be screened for mental health or drug issues and they must also obtain a license to carry a concealed weapon.

Gun control could feature in midterm elections

Governor Rick Scott is a Republican and an ally of the National Rifle Association.

He is not in favor of arming teachers. He also feels the three-day waiting period for all firearms needs to be reviewed because a similar provision already exists in Florida, but only for handguns. The proposed bill will become law in 15 days unless he vetoes it.

CNBC adds that this could become a major issue in the midterm elections which will decide the future course of action.

Gun control activists have descended on the scene after the shooting incident in Parkland. A survey by Quinnipiac University has revealed that about two-thirds of voters support tighter gun laws.

Obviously, candidates of both the parties will be under pressure to clarify their positions on how to check gun violence and come up with concrete proposals. The bottom line is that public opinion cannot be ignored and politicians must plan their strategies to win them over.
Donald Trump has long claimed that he is a big supporter of the United States Military, but he appears to be taking his admiration to another level. In a new report, the president has called on the Pentagon to throw him a special military parade.

Trump's parade

From the day Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for president, he made sure to stick with several talking points. In addition to repealing Obamacare and pushing for a southern border wall, Trump has also repeated his claim that he is a strong supporter of the military, often promising to treat current members of the military and veterans better than any president before him.

JUST IN: Trump ordered Pentagon to plan massive military parade for him: report https://t.co/EDsEPGoNH6 pic.twitter.com/eujhC4QeGy  The Hill (@thehill) February 6, 2018

As reported by the Hill On February 6, Trump is calling on the Pentagon to throw a military-style parade in honor of his presidency. Citing the first report by the Washington Post, Trump recently held a meeting with military officials where his orders of a personal military parade were "suddenly heard as a presidential directive." According to one military offical in attendance, the president said "I want a parade like the one in France."

As of press time, the parade plans are in the "brainstorming" stage, with a target date of around Veteran's Day.

In addition, the Washington Post reports that the parade could cost millions of dollars, with the Pentagon unsure of how they will be able to fund the event.

Instant backlash

Once the news broke of a Trump-ordered military parade, critics lashed out on social media. "I am so mad I am crying right now over this! I just can't believe what's happening in our country and just makes me sad!" one tweet read.

I wonder how much a military parade to honor a draft dodger is going to cost us.  bex  (@bex0760) February 6, 2018

I hope there is some kind of rally/March during his parade I will be there!!  Kimberley D (@KimM1969) February 6, 2018

Ridiculous!! And frightening.  Anthony Assefi (@anthony_assefi) February 6, 2018

"How very authoritarian.

He admires North Korean parades and state TV control," a follow-up tweet added. "Ridiculous!! And frightening," another Twitter user wrote. "As a Vietnam vet, this draft dodger wanting a parade to honor himself really turns my stomach. Where is Lee Harvey Oswald when we really need him," an additional tweet noted. "I didnt think I could hate him more but he constantly lowers the bar," a tweet went on to read.

I didnt think I could hate him more but he constantly lowers the bar  Christine Galea (@chrisgalea) February 6, 2018

Um, ya...If ever there was a reason for thousands of people to lie down and block a parade route, this is it. #Trump  cmacs (@Leafer1) February 6, 2018

Better be careful a Trumpanzee might report your tweet to secret service since they still believe Lee Harvey Oswald is alive  Kelley Dockrey (@DockreyKelley) February 6, 2018

"I wonder how much a military parade to honor a draft dodger is going to cost us," a social media user wondered.

Um, ya...If ever there was a reason for thousands of people to lie down and block a parade route, this is it," a post went on to read. As the backlash continued to pour in, it reflected the growing negativity in the United States towards Donald Trump and the entire administration.
While holding a law enforcement panel on the MS-13 gang, Donald Trump slipped in his demand for a southern border wall while calling for a government shutdown to get it done. The president's comments came just hours after sending out a warning about the DACA program on social media.

JUST IN: Pres. Trump: "If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don't want safety...then shut it down. We'll go with another shutdown." https://t.co/z2cDLnUWkj pic.twitter.com/z5FVkuOR79  ABC News (@ABC) February 6, 2018

Trump on wall

The issue of immigration has been Donald Trump's number one talking point since the day he kicked off his campaign for president.

From calls for a border wall allegedly funded by Mexico, to the suggestion of mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, the former host of "The Apprentice" has not been shy about his position on the issue. With another government shutdown on the horizon as Republicans and Democrats debate over the DACA program and border security, Trump held a round-table discussion with law enforcement with the topic of the MS-13 gang.

"Whenever they want to come through [the border], they come through," Pres. Trump claims of MS-13 gang. "We don't have the wall, we're never going to solve this problem." https://t.co/DSUFsT5sAc pic.twitter.com/C48o2k6Tl0  ABC News (@ABC) February 6, 2018

As reported by ABC News on February 6, Donald Trump introduced members of law enforcement, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and ICE Agent Angel Melendez.

"MS-13 recruits through our broken immigration system. Violating our borders and just comes right through whenever they wanna come through," Trump said, adding, "It's much tougher now since we've been here."

"We need much better border mechanisms and border security. We don't have the wall, we're never going to solve this problem," Donald Trump went on to say, while doubling down on the need to "strengthen our borders." Following up his comments, Trump said he would be open to another government shutdown to get his border wall.

"If we have to shut it down because the Democrats don't want safety...then shut it down. We'll go with another shutdown," he said.

Trump and DACA

Citing a controversial poll from the right-wing news outlet the Daily Caller, Donald Trump claimed that 70 percent of the country wants an immigration deal that includes both DACA and funding for a border wall during an early morning tweet.

Using the partisan poll, Trump tweeted " If (Democrats) oppose this deal, they aren't serious about DACA," before adding, "they just want open borders."

Polling shows nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes DACA, fully secures the border, ends chain migration & cancels the visa lottery. If Ds oppose this deal, they arent serious about DACA-they just want open borders. https://t.co/XDMcDOr9vM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2018

Shutdown questions

Whether or not the United States government shuts down for the second time in two months will be decided in less than two weeks as Democrats and Republicans debate the issue of funding the government.

While DACA hangs in the balance, only time will tell if Trump will get his pet project in the form of a border wall, or if Democrats are able to pull off a deal that removes the wall from discussion.
A bill titled the "Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act" passed by a vote of 67-50 in the Florida House Of Representatives on Wednesday night (March 7). It raised the age and to buy firearms to 21, prohibited the sale of "bump stocks" (devices that make semi-automatic firearms act similar to automatic ones), and added a waiting period for all gun purchases. It also included a provision that allows for increased school safety measures, including the controversial act of arming some school officials.

Though the bill in Florida passed, it was not without major opposition from many House Democrats, who were against its provision authorizing armed school personnel.

In fact, according to Politico, 75 percent of House Republicans voted in favor of the bill, while only 24 percent of House Democrats voted for the bill.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act Passes

The bill was passed in the Florida Senate on Monday (March 5) with a vote of 20-18. It now goes to the desk of Governor Rick Scott, where it awaits his signature to make it a law. A report by the Tampa Bay Times states that Scott has not specified whether or not he will sign the bill, though he has been outspoken in his opposition to arming teachers.

Why now?

The bill comes in response to the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School carried out by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz which killed 17 people and injured many more.

Following the shooting, many of the survivors have been outspoken about their experiences and have channeled their grief into action. They have publicly called on lawmakers to tighten gun restrictions across the nation. They have been actively urging President Trump and other Republican lawmakers who have received political donations from the National Rifle Association (including Florida Senator Marco Rubio) to cut all ties with the association.

As evident by the compromises made by both Democrats and Republican congressmen in Florida, politicians across the country have viewed the shooting, and the uptick in a foiled school shooting attempts since the Florida one, as an opportunity to put aside political differences and work together to help protect children in schools all across the country.

Cruz, after initial attempts to run away, has admitted to the shootings. He was indicted Wednesday afternoon on 34 counts: 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of first-degree attempted murder, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
In honor of International Women's Day, Barbie Doll has launched two doll lines featuring real and inspiring women, CNN reported. This week Barbie introduced two doll series: 'Inspiring Women', based on historical women; and additions to its 'Shero' series, the line based on real, contemporary women.

'Inspiring Women' features Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo and Katherine Johnson--amazing women who made contributions in history--or her story, for that matter.

Lisa McKnight, senior VP and general manager of Barbie, said in a press release: "As a brand that inspires the limitless potential in girls, Barbie will be honoring its largest line up of role models timed to International Womens Day."

Mattel has hoped to create lines that would serve as real-life role models to girls from around the world

We are thrilled to shine a light on real-life role models to remind girls that they can be anything, McKnight added. Amelia Earhart was an aviation pioneer and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her portrait and self-portrait masterpieces. Katherine Johnson is an African-American pioneer in mathematics who broke barriers of gender and race with immense contributions in the field of aeronautics and space.

The 'Inspiring Women' collection only has three dolls so far, but Mattel's Marissa Beck shares that they will grow the doll line with more dolls in the future.

This week, Barbie also announces the release of 14 new dolls in the Shero line

According to CNN, the new dolls in the 'Shero' line include Winter Games gold medalist Chloe Kim and 'Wonder Woman' film director Patty Jenkins.

The series also honored modern sheroes who are entrepreneurs, actresses, journalists and fashion designers.

Barbie has long been under criticism for perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards. The toy manufacturer's revenues have slipped the past few years because of this. In hopes of improving the brand's reputation and public perception, Mattel has since revamped its image by introducing more diverse offerings in color, race, body shapes, careers, etc.

Last year, for instance, Barbie launched its first ever hijab-wearing doll.

Even Ken is getting a reboot, too, as the toy manufacturer launches 'man bun' and 'dad bod' Kens.

The new doll lines hope to provide a more positive influence on body image, as well as inspiring children the value of brains and bravado. Both 'Amazing Women' line and new 'Shero' dolls will soon be available in stores nationwide and are currently up for pre-sale on the official Barbie website.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas is one of the happiest men in the great state of Texas. The meme in the mainstream media leading up to the Texas Primary was that a blue wave was building that would sweep the dominant Republicans out of office. Cruz was said to be threatened by Rep. Beto ORourke, D-Texas, a young liberal congressman with a superficial resemblance to Bobby Kennedy. The actual results of the primary revealed the blue wave to be a blue drip.

Democrats surged but so did Republicans

The results for ORourke in the Democratic Primary and Cruz in the Republican Primary tells one everything needed about the state of play in Texas.

ORourke won with 641,000 or 62 percent of the vote. Second place Sema Hernandez, who spent next to no money, got nearly a quarter of the vote. Meanwhile, Cruz got 1.3 million votes for 85 percent of the total. The results were replicated up and down the ballot.

Cruz mocks ORourkes name change

Cruz released a country and western style song radio ad the night of the primary that mocked ORourkes assumption of a childhood nickname Beto as well as some of his more liberal views, including his wish to enact a kind of civilian draft. Robert ORourke is as Irish as the day is long, but the Irish vote is not a factor in Texas. Beto makes him sound Hispanic, making him seem as if he was trying to be trans-ethnic.

The media pounces

The media, especially CNN, was not amused. In a number of interviews, journalists pointed out that Sen. Cruzs full name is Rafael Edward Cruz. Is he not being a little hypocritical mocking ORourke for his creative naming? Not at all, Cruz would reply. First of all, Ted is often used as a shortened version of Edward. Think Sen.

Edward Moore Teddy Kennedy. Second of all, the talented senator says, let me tell you how my dad escaped Cuban tyranny and immigrated to America with hardly any money and worked his way up. Unlike ORourke, Cruz has never tried to hide his ethnic origin. He is a proud Cuban American, though his Spanish is said to be somewhat substandard.

Cruz is, in any case, a real and not fake Hispanic.

The bottom line

The general election for Senate in Texas is going to be fun to watch. Beto ORourke is not going to unseat Ted Cruz, no matter how much national Democrats and the media might wish it. He is the Wendy Davis of 2018, and the only mystery is how thoroughly Cruz is going to thump him from Amarillo down to Brownsville.
Ray J and Princess Love have definitely dealt with their fair of ups and downs while fans watched them over the last few years. Now, the "Love & Hip Hop Hollywood" couple is waiting for their baby to arrive and we can't wait either. As Princess Love's due date gets closer, "LHHH" fans are keeping an eye on the reality star's social media for any news we can find about her pregnancy. What it did bring us was a whole lot of laughs.

Even though Princess Love has kept much of her pregnancy to herself, she's shared bits and pieces with fans on social media.

One of the most recent shares was a joint YouTube channel run by the "LHHH" couple. While it only has one video on it so far, it's definitely a video worth watching.

'Princess's Low Placenta'

Apparently, Princess Love recently visited her doctor and was told that her placenta is low. That can mean a few things during a pregnancy and definitely will be monitored. As many women can tell you, any news from the OB that doesn't sound perfect and pleasant can send you into a tailspin of worry.

Princess admitted that she was worried about her recent baby news too. That's when Ray J decided to cheer her up by making up a new song about her low placenta and performing it on camera. He probably didn't know that the whole thing would be uploaded to their YouTube channel for "Love & Hip Hop" fans to see and enjoy.

So far, nearly 5,000 fans have viewed Ray J and Princess Love's first video. That's not too bad considering that the video is only a day old and the couple has only done a tiny bit of promotion. Hopefully, as Princess' pregnancy progresses, we'll get more home videos from the happy couple.

Third trimester, baby!

On Saturday, Princess Love shared a new photo and announced that she's now hit the 28-week mark.

That puts the "Love & Hip Hop Hollywood" star in her third trimester. With only 12 weeks of pregnancy to go, baby Norwood is going to be here very soon. Based on the clues Princess has left behind on Instagram, expect to hear some baby news in mid-late May.

Over the last few months, Princess has shown off her baby bump a few times but only sparingly.

It wasn't until February that she really showed it all off. Prior to that, she said that her baby belly just looked like she spent the last 6 months bloated. We totally feel you on that!

So far, there has been no mention of whether Princess Love and Ray J are expecting a girl or boy. They've managed to keep that info under wraps but I'm dying to know. Do you think the "Love & Hip Hop Hollywood" couple is team pink or team blue?
Robert Parks Valletta wanted to show scheana marie's friends that he knew how to party, so he invited them all to his cabin in Big Bear Lake, California. This trip was just featured on "Vanderpump Rules," and it sounds like they all had a great time. But while Scheana kept gushing about how much she and Rob loved one another, he explained to the guys that he couldn't say the things that Scheana Marie was telling him. For him, saying "I love you" is a big deal and he couldn't throw it around as she was doing. He revealed that he was a very private person and he had no interest in doing what she was doing in terms of reality television.

Scheana has revealed that fame and her friends through "Vanderpump Rules" are to blame as to why they are no longer together. According to a new Instagram post, Robert Parks Valletta is now revealing that no matter what people ask of him, he won't be dishing the details to fans. He hints that people can continue to make assumptions about him and his relationships, but he won't talk about what's going on.

Not interested in sharing his life

It isn't surprising that he wants to keep his life private. Scheana has revealed that he doesn't have a lot in common with her "Vanderpump Rules" co-stars, who have signed contracts to share their lives on television. Valletta hasn't signed on to be on the show so it makes sense that he wants to keep his life private.

Of course, Robert was also the source of drama when Scheana Marie began filming with him. It didn't take long for someone to spread a rumor that he had been caught kissing someone else. While Scheana didn't believe the rumors, she didn't exactly give Robert the chance to explain himself. Because he didn't sign on to "Vanderpump Rules," he may feel that he doesn't owe people an apology.

Break up due to 'Vanderpump Rules'

Scheana has hinted that the two broke up because of her "Vanderpump Rules" co-stars. While everything seemed relatively calm between her co-stars and Valletta during the trip to Big Bear Lake, it appears that Scheana is blaming her friends for the split. She has revealed that they broke up in August, which is shortly after the trip to Big Bear Lake.

Maybe he didn't feel right being around people who constantly fought, as he didn't understand why they had to fight.

What do you think of Robert Parks Valletta's Instagram post about not speaking about his former relationship or his private life? Do you think he's getting bombarded with tweets about Scheana?
Chelsea Houska's ex-boyfriend, Adam Lind, has been facing legal issues throughout the past couple of years and by the looks of things, that won't soon change. Luckily, their eight-year-old daughter Aubree has a solid father figure in her stepfather, Cole DeBoer, who married the "Teen Mom 2" star in October 2016.

In recent years, Cole DeBoer has treated Chelsea Houska's oldest child as his own and has been to at least two father/daughter dances as her date. He also frequently gushes about the sweet child on his Instagram page, which has led many to wonder if he would ever adopt the child.

Adam Lind's daughter's last name was recently changed

While Adam Lind would have to first lose custody of Aubree completely, Teen Mom Talk Now recently raised the question of a possible adoption by DeBoer, stating that Lind has continued to struggle with alleged substance abuse issues and other legal troubles. The outlet also revealed that Aubree's name was recently changed from Aubree Lind to Aubree Lind-DeBoer and around the same time, Lind's visitation rights to the child were reduced.

While Lind used to play a role in his daughter's life, as fans witnessed on "Teen Mom 2," his time with the child has dwindled in recent years and when it comes to his youngest child, Paislee, he doesn't appear to see her much either.

In fact, it's unclear if he still has visitation rights to the child.

Chelsea Houska is living happily ever after with Cole DeBoer

After splitting from Lind following years of back and forth, Houska fell in love with DeBoer after the pair crossed paths at a gas station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Two years after meeting, DeBoer proposed to Houska off-camera and one year after that, they tied the knot off-camera.

While Houska used to expose nearly every part of her life, she's become more selective as she gets older and her family grows. That said, she did share a number of photos from her engagement and from her wedding wither fans and followers on Instagram.

As for what the future will hold for Chelsea Houska and Cole DeBoer, more kids could be on the horizon.

After all, the couple was seen discussing their family over a year ago on "Teen Mom 2" season seven and, at the time, DeBoer appeared to be ready for more. So, a pregnancy could come at any moment.

Chelsea Houska and her family, including husband Cole DeBoer, daughter Aubree, and son Watson, are returning to MTV later this year for the new season of "Teen Mom 2."
Herman Doswald, a Virginia Tech professor and dean emeritus, died on Jan. 8, 2018. He was 85.

Doswald served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, now the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and the College of Science, from 1987 to 1994.

He began his teaching career in 1959 as an instructor at Oberlin College, the University of Washington in Seattle, and Seattle University. Before arriving at Virginia Tech in 1979, he was an assistant professor and an assistant head of the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. Then he held a tenured position at the California State University at Fresno, followed by one at Kent State, where he was also head of the Department of German and Russian.

During his career at Virginia Tech, Doswald served as a professor, department head, and dean. From 1979 to 1984, he was the head of what is now the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. At the College of Arts and Sciences, he served as an associate dean from 1984 to 1986, interim dean in 1986, and then dean until 1994. Doswald continued as a professor of German until his retirement in 1996. Virginia Tech later granted him emeritus status as both professor and dean.



Upon retirement, Doswald continued to teach German to children at the New Vista Montessori School in Roanoke, Virginia, and to teenagers at the Community High School in Roanoke.



Doswald received a bachelors degree in German from the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his doctorate in German language and literature from the University of Washington in Seattle. During his undergraduate years, he also studied at the University of Munich on an Adenauer Scholarship and then at the University of Vienna on a Fulbright Fellowship. From 1962 to 1964 he was on active duty as an infantry officer in Worms, Germany.

Doswald is survived by his wife, Ruth; daughter Caroline and her husband, Sanjaya Wijesinghe, and their sons, Joshua and Noah; and daughter Stephanie and her husband, Dan Sebolt, and their sons, Alex, Max, and Nicholas.

Written by Leslie King


The Moss Arts Center celebrates the voices and creative work of Virginia Tech students and community members with a free performance showcasing their year-long collaborative work with visiting artists Omar Offendum, Saba Taj, and Karim Nagi on Saturday, March 17, at 8 p.m.

The performance, which will explore Muslim cultures through dance, music-making, visual art, hip-hop, spoken word, and poetry, will be held in the centers Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located within the Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall. The event is free and no ticket is required.

Syrian-American hip-hop artist Offendum, Egyptian musician and DJ Nagi, and mixed-media visual artist Taj have worked with Virginia Tech students from a range of disciplines throughout the academic year during a series of residency activities, including class visits and workshops, to create the original production.

The performance is a culmination of this work and is a component of the Moss Arts Centers project, Salaam: Exploring Muslim Cultures. The center was awarded a grant by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters to strengthen cross-cultural understanding by engaging Virginia Tech students and other communities in Southwest Virginia with the diversity of Muslim cultures through an exploration of stories, images, sounds, and perspectives.

The Moss Arts Center was one of only five grantees (four universities and one consortium) in the nation to receive funding to build knowledge and appreciation for arts and culture with roots in Muslim-majority societies.

This project has been in process since 2013, when I first convened an interested group of faculty to consider how we as a community at Virginia Tech might take part in this national cultural conversation, explained Ruth Waalkes, Virginia Techs associate provost for the arts and executive director of the Moss Arts Center. Those discussions lead to the Moss Arts Centers April 2015 Islamic Worlds Festival, and ultimately to this years multi-faceted grant-funded project, Salaam: Exploring Muslim Cultures. Several faculty and students have been involved from that early start. Collaboration traversing disciplines, beliefs, and perspectives has made Salaam a powerful, engaging set of experiences for all involved.

The event will feature solo performances by Omar Offendum and Karim Nagi, as well as an original duet performed by the artists. Offendum started his musical career as one-half of Arab-American hip-hop group The N.O.M.A.D.S. As a solo artist, he has toured the world performing his groundbreaking music, including his solo album SyrianamericanA. Offendum will be accompanied by DJ Craig Arthur, teaching and learning engagement librarian at Virginia Tech and one of the creators of the on-campus Diggin in the Crates series.

A native Egyptian drummer, DJ, composer, and folk dancer, Nagi is the creator of the innovative music performance Turbo Tabla and has released four CDs of his unique blend of Arab house and electronica music, which he creates using acoustic instruments. Nagi will also join a group of Virginia Tech music students to perform percussion pieces created for the project.

Virginia Tech students will perform original spoken word and hip-hop compositions, which will include a group piece performed by student group VT Expressions, while Arabic studies students will perform classical and contemporary poetry in translation.

Itraab, the Moss Arts Center's Arabic music community ensemble, will perform musical pieces from various parts of the Arab world. Featuring percussion, voice, and Arabic instruments, Itraab has been rehearsing and performing together since 2014. Another ensemble of campus and community members will perform two traditional Arab dances.

The performance will conclude with a finale collaborative piece performed by the full ensemble of guest and local artists.

Since September I've had the opportunity to connect with various student groups and community members through classroom visits and open workshops, discussing a wide array of topics from poetry and translation to social justice and immigration, said hip-hop artist Offendum. We ultimately settled on home as a theme for this program, as it felt both broad enough for everyone to relate to, yet specific enough for everyone to have a deeply personal understanding of. Whether you are a local Virginian, an international student, or a recently resettled refugee, we welcome you. May this performance spark nostalgia, encourage curiosity, and bring us all closer to the home in our hearts.

For the evening of the performance, the Moss Arts Center will feature an exhibition of visual arts pieces created by campus and community members. The exhibition will feature tapestries, painted and adorned with fabric, that are inspired by the intersection between community artists experiences and iconic stories from the Quran. The pieces were created in collaboration with visiting artist Saba Taj. A Pakistani-American artist and activist from North Carolina who identifies as a queer Muslim, Tajs work challenges racism and xenophobia through empowered representations of people of color.

Beyond the stage, Salaam: Exploring Muslim Cultures is providing other meaningful opportunities for Virginia Tech students to engage and learn more about Muslim identities and cultures, including story circles, work with the Blacksburg Refugee Partnership, and training in intercultural and interreligious dialogue facilitation.

The Moss Arts Center project Salaam: Exploring Muslim Cultures is made possible by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals; Building Bridges: Arts Culture and Identity, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. Virginia Tech faculty and staff possessing a valid Virginia Tech parking permit can enter and exit the garage free of charge. Limited street parking is also available. Parking on Alumni Mall is free on weekdays after 5 p.m. and on weekends.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Kacy McAllister at 540-231-5300 or email kacy@vt.edu during regular business hours.
PEOPLE

ASRC Federal adds Harris vet Lucernoni

ASRC Federal said Tuesday it has hired former Harris Corp. executive Wayne Lucernoni as president of the information systems and technology group.

Lucernoni will oversee an organization that provides IT, data analytics and business-related services to national security, defense, health, intelligence and federal civilian agencies.

Prior to ASRC Federal, Lucernoni was president of mission sustainment at Harris Corp. He is also a former president of Harris IT Services -- the business now known as Peraton.

He first joined Harris in 1990.
CONTRACTS

Salesforce tapped for CBP human resources work

Salesforce has won a contract to provide a variety of cloud services to support human resources efforts by Customs and Border Protection.

The agency will be using Salesforce Analytics, Community Cloud and Service Cloud to modernize HR processes including recruitment, retirements, engagement with citizens, and management of border activities.

With Community Cloud, the agency wants to transform its core HR IT capabilities and become more efficient. Current employees will be able to access information such as onboarding, benefits and payroll.

Salesforce Analytics will be used for dashboard to monitor recruiting efforts by demographics, regions and other factors.

At the border, Service Cloud will be used to help manage activities and handle citizens via a variety of channels.

There is a huge opportunity for government agencies to modernize so they can meet the expectations of today's digitally savvy employees and citizens, said Dave Rey, executive vice president for public sector, at Salesforce.

The value of the contract was not released.
Agilent Technologies, Inc. engages in the provision of application focused solutions for life sciences, diagnostics, and applied chemical markets. It operates through the following segments: Life Sciences and Applied Markets; Diagnostics and Genomics; and Agilent CrossLab. The Life Sciences and Applied Markets segment offers application-focused solutions that include instruments and software that enable to identify, quantify, and analyze the physical and biological properties of substances and products, as well as the clinical and life sciences research areas to interrogate samples at the molecular and cellular level. The Diagnostics and Genomics segment consists of activity providing active pharmaceutical ingredients for oligo-based therapeutics, as well as solutions that include reagents, instruments, software and consumables. The Agilent CrossLab segment includes startup, operational, training and compliance support, software as a service, and asset management and consultative services. The company was founded in May 1999 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA.

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Wall Street analysts have given Enel Generacion Chile 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 Enel Generacion Chile wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
While Jonrowes final long-distance race did not end the way she hoped, her early departure will not undo the legacy she has created in dog mushing. No woman ran the Iditarod as many times as she did, and only two men have. She had 16 finishes in the top 10, and her second-place finish in the 1998 race stood as the fastest time ever recorded by a woman until 2012.

But her Iditarod story goes much deeper than those successes. She became a model of perseverance. She raced in 1997 just five months after a car accident that killed her grandmother and left her in the hospital for two weeks; in 2003 just four weeks after finishing chemotherapy; and in 2016 after fire destroyed her home in Willow, Alaska. She used lessons she learned about perseverance on the dogsled to endure those tragedies and said her love of her dogs helped her in her darkest hours: I think God gives us passions and then you use those passions to get through.

Though shes not retiring entirely from dog mushing  shell run sprint races and train dogs  she acknowledged that her final Iditarod marked an important turning point for her and prompted her to reflect on her place in the history of the race she loves. Fans will remember her as a survivor with an outsized personality and an unbreakable joie de vivre, and she said she treasures the relationships she formed with her dogs and people in the sport.

I feel that way now more than ever. [Relationships] make life worthwhile. Am I able to contribute to somebody elses journey? What am I leaving behind? I dont want to be irrelevant, she said. I dont want to be just a statistic on some list somewhere. I want to have left this sport better, or the world better, or somebody better, as a result of my journey.
And now Mattel has transformed its brand again by introducing a new collection just in time for International Women's Day that features dolls made in the likeness of Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo and Katherine Johnson. Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean; Kahlo was a Mexican artist renowned for her feminist activism; and Johnson was the NASA mathematician highlighted in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Johnson, 99, reportedly worked closely with Mattel to create the doll in her likeness. Each Barbie will come with information about the contributions the women made to society. Although the toy company doesn't yet have an exact date for when the dolls will go on sale, they will be mass-produced and sold in stores across the country. Also, the Barbies can be preordered.

"As a brand that inspires the limitless potential in girls, Barbie will be honoring its largest lineup of role models, timed to International Women's Day, because we know that you can't be what you can't see," Lisa McKnight, the senior vice president and general manager for the Barbie brand, said Tuesday in a press release. "Girls have always been able to play out different roles and careers with Barbie, and we are thrilled to shine a light on real-life role models to remind them they can be anything."

In addition to Earhart, Kahlo and Johnson, Mattel has announced a new "Shero" line of dolls that celebrate 14 modern-day role models. These include Yuan Yuan Tan, a Chinese ballerina, Bindi Irwin, the Australian conservationist, and Chloe Kim, a U.S. snowboarding champion who won gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics. These dolls aren't meant to be sold, although in the past, some particularly popular ones have found their way into the marketplace. Previous honorees include Ashley Graham, Ava DuVernay and Misty Copeland.

In 2017, it was Ken that received the attention. In June, Mattel gave the male doll a makeover that included new skin tones, body shapes and hairstyles.
Smithsonian Institution

While Amelia Earhart is known as a pioneer among female pilots, African American women were also breaking ground in the early days of aviation, often overcoming great adversity and discrimination to do so. Air show pilot Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman to receive a pilot's license and Janet Bragg was the first to earn a commercial pilot's license. Additionally, Bragg's leadership in black pilot organizations paved the way for other aviators of color.

Born in 1907, Bragg enrolled in the Curtiss Wright Aeronautical School in 1933, where she was the only woman in the aircraft mechanics class. The school could not afford an actual plane for flight instruction, so while simultaneously doing postgraduate work and working as a registered nurse, Bragg saved enough money to buy her first plane, which she rented out to fellow aviators.

That little plane  it just seemed like you could talk to it, or it would talk to you. You merge right into the plane, its the feeling you get. I knew that little old plane was doing everything for me, Bragg said in an interview with the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in 1989.



But the challenges did not end there. African American pilots were not allowed to fly out of airports used by whites. So Bragg and her class at the ground school formed the Challenger Aero Club and purchased land to build an airfield in the African American town of Robbins, Ill.

Bragg, who was also of Cherokee descent, would continue to encounter discrimination due to her race and gender. At the Tuskegee training school for black pilots, she passed the flight test for her commercial license but was denied it because she was a woman. She eventually received the license in 1943 at the Pal-Waukee Airport near Chicago, becoming the first black woman to do so. During World War II, Bragg attempted to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), but was turned down because she was African American.

Not only a pioneer in the air, Bragg also started her own business, purchasing property for a health care facility for patients on welfare, which eventually grew into a nursing home business housing 60 patients that she ran with her husband, Sumner Bragg. Later in life she would travel widely throughout Africa giving tours and was active in civic organizations. She continued to fly for pleasure into the 1970s. Bragg died in Blue Island, Ill., on April 11, 1993, at age 86.
For Subscribers How Aberdeen Christian took down top-ranked Wolsey-Wessington

Several key things came into play for the Knights as they did what not even Warner or Northwestern could do against the previously unbeaten team.
Scientists say methane pollution poses a public health risk and is the second-largest industrial contributor to climate change in the United States.

Patrick Von Bargen has something to add to that: Capturing leaked methane is going to be an important source of employment in the future, so are we going to bring those jobs to New Mexico, or not?

Bargen is the director of the Center for Methane Emissions Solutions, a trade group of technology firms and service providers focused on the economic potential of methane.

At an event hosted by his organization, Bargen said that methane  the main component of natural gas that is often leaked by oil and gas drilling operations  is the source of about $200 million in lost gas revenue for New Mexico energy companies, as the result of faulty equipment or inefficient practices.

For businesses that can find ways to help those companies capture methane or prevent it from leaking, according to Bargen, there is a significant financial upside and job creation opportunity.

The event was moderated by Synthia Jaramillo, the city of Albuquerques director of economic development, who said the topic was proof that officials dont need to choose between saving the environment and creating jobs.

A panel included representatives from the Canadian company Airworks Compressors Corp., the San Francisco and Albuquerque-based technology company Xpansiv Data Systems and the Santa Fe-based investment firm Horizons Sustainable Financial Services.

Bargen said regulation can aid the growth of the methane leak industry. He pointed to Colorado, where he said environmental advocates and extractive industry representatives came together to pass statewide methane emissions regulations after the appearance of several local measures aimed at banning fracking. In part because of the law, said Bargen, the industry has flourished there.

The discussion takes place as the countrys executive and judicial branches spar over an Obama-era air pollution regulation. Last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it would replace the rule, which requires energy companies to capture methane emissions at drilling sites. The oil and gas industry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have argued that the rule is overly burdensome to businesses.

A federal judge subsequently ordered the department to reinstate the regulation, stating that its absence would likely cause irreparable injury to states like New Mexico. An earlier attempt by the department to delay part of the rule was also overturned by a federal court.

Robert McEntyre, a spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association who attended the event, called the federal regulation a heavy-handed, top-down approach and said the methane pollution issue is best addressed by giving energy companies the freedom to innovate their own solutions. He also disputed Bargens characterization of the Colorado law.

Its like taking a cow to a slaughterhouse and saying, Do you want to be a steak or a rawhide? he said.

Darryl Weflen, president of Airworks Compressors and one of the events panelists, had his own bovine metaphor. Weflen said a large system offered by his company will cost between $70,000 and $80,000. Without regulation, he argued, energy company CFOs are less likely to make investments that could benefit them in the long-term but have a significant short-term financial impact.

Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? asked Weflen.
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The FBI is asking the publics help to find a man reported missing from Yah-ta-hey, NM.

Spokesman Frank Fisher said 69-year-old Roger Johnson was last seen on Feb. 26.

Shortly before his disappearance, Johnson is believed to have been in the company of an unidentified individual, whom the FBI would like to contact, Fisher said. This unidentified person is not considered a suspect at this time.

He said the Isleta Police Department is assisting with the investigation.

Tips: Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 505-889-1300.
WASHINGTON  In the squabbling Trump White House, no insider is ever above rebuke and no one blacklisted beyond redemption. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, once barred from sending private emails and spotted skulking in West Wing hallways, has emerged from the chaos ascendant.

With his chief ideological rival, Gary Cohn, now headed for the exit, Navarro and his protectionist trade policies are taking center stage as President Donald Trump prepares to impose the steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that Navarro has long championed.

Navarro, a 68-year-old former economics professor whose ideas were once considered well outside the mainstream, joined the Trump campaign in 2016 after one of his books on China happened to catch the eye of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner during an internet search.

From the presidential campaign, Navarro made the leap to the new administration to head a new White House National Trade Council. But he was quickly sidelined by chief of staff John Kelly and closely managed by former staff secretary Rob Porter.

As alliances shifted and staffers departed, though, Navarro made his move, encouraging Trump to embrace a plan that many economists, lawmakers and White House aides warn could lead to a trade war and imperil U.S. economic gains. Trump signed a pair of proclamations Thursday imposing tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum.

The president and the combative Navarro share the same hard-line views on trade that were a centerpiece of Trumps campaign. For decades, both men have accused China of unfair trade practices that have displaced American workers and hobbled the U.S. manufacturing base.

Peter speaks the same language as Trump does on these issues, said Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign adviser who is now a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He and Trump agree on an America First policy when it comes to trade and other issues, so he has emerged as a policy force in this administration.

Like Stephen Miller on immigration, Navarro has now become the face of Trumps trade plan. In interviews since Trumps surprise promise to impose the sweeping tariffs, Navarro has forcefully defended his boss and minimized any potential negative impact on the U.S.

Theres negligible-to-nothing effects, he said dismissively on CBS, later accusing the media of hyping prospects of a trade war.

Navarro had limited contact with Trump world until early in the campaign, when Kushner was drawn to his book, Death by China, while researching China policy. Kushner reached out and Navarro quickly became an economic adviser.

Despite his credentials as a Harvard Ph.D. and former professor at the University of California, Irvine, Navarro was less an academic focused on research than a master of controversy writing books such as The Coming China Wars. He has professed views that go further even than academic peers who see Chinas emergence in the global economy as hurting many U.S. workers.

Trump has unconventional views on many issues. And here was an economist of some acclaim who was validating those positions, Moore said.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, which represents steel makers, has known Navarro for more than a decade. He described Navarro as someone who certainly speaks his mind and is not afraid to present ideas and data that are contrarian. And I think way more often than not, he makes a very persuasive case.

Persuasive to like-minded Trump, perhaps, but not to many free-trade-loving Republicans.

I think hes wrong on a lot of things, said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, who opposes the tariffs.

Under Trumps plan, Canada and Mexico could be exempted from the tariffs based on the outcome of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move that could soften the tariff blow.

But Navarro is still riding high.

Hes been telling friends that hes seeking Cohns National Economic Council director title, according to a person close to the White House who has spoken to Navarro  a move that could spark an exodus of Cohn allies, another person familiar with the thinking of other White House officials said.

Early in Trumps term, Navarro at first was outmaneuvered by Cohn, the Goldman Sachs president-turned-Trump economic adviser.

Cohn-Navarro discussions sometimes turned into shouting matches, occasionally in front of Trump.

Navarro, excluded from Trumps trip to Asia last fall, was sometimes seen walking the West Wing halls at night. In an especially personal blow, he was required to copy in Cohn on all his emails after being accused of trying to circumvent West Wing processes, according to two people familiar with the policy. They spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration roles.

The White House regimen included a weekly trade policy meeting in the Roosevelt Room where aides with opposing views could talk through ideas to ensure recommendations brought to the president were fully vetted and legally sound. When Porter left, said one of the people, the process broke down and Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made their move.

Asked on Fox whether hed conducted guerrilla warfare, sneaking around the West Wing and trying to making an end-run around staffers, Navarro dismissed the narrative as a cheap shot spread by all sorts of malicious leakers.

Others said Navarro had bided his time, keeping his head down, persistently building his case. He waited as tariff decision deadlines set by Ross ticked closer, and the White House turned its attention back to trade after deciding to table the divisive issue while it worked on health care and taxes.

For a long time, there were a lot of long knives out to get him, said Paul, who served as a member of the White House Manufacturing Jobs Initiative before resigning last summer.

In the end though, said Paul, I think its pretty clear that the president is siding with the economic nationalists.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Catherine Lucey, Zeke Miller and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

___

Follow Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj.
ROMEPope Francis has cleared the way for Archbishop Oscar Romero, an advocate for the poor who was slain in 1980 by right-wing death squads in El Salvador, to become a saint, the Vatican announced Wednesday.

The Vatican said Wednesday that Francis considered Romero a model for the Roman Catholic Church and had approved a miracle attributed to the archbishop  a requisite for canonization. It said Francis had also approved a miracle for Pope Paul VI, which means he, too, can be elevated to sainthood.

The news comes after years of efforts by church conservatives to block Romeros canonization because they opposed his leftist political views. It was celebrated in El Salvador, where the gulf between the rich and the poor remains as wide as ever, and where Romeros unflinching advocacy for the downtrodden still resonates with the masses.

Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, a close associate of Romero, called the news a gift for the country and a promise that we can find a way out of so much violence, out of so much suffering.

President Salvador Sanchez Ceren tweeted that Francis decision fills us with immense joy.

Many people in El Salvador already consider Romero a saint. About 250,000 Salvadorans turned out for his beatification ceremonies in 2015, with some donning T-shirts declaring him Saint Romero.

Born in a rural corner of El Salvador, the priest began his career in the church as a relative conservative. But years of seeing how El Salvadors poor were mistreated by a handful of rich oligarchs turned him against the elite.

He was killed  with a bullet through the heart while saying Mass in a hospital chapel in 1980  just as El Salvadors civil war was heating up, pitting leftist rebels against a right-wing military dictatorship backed by the United States.

Romero, who spoke out against the militarys harsh tactics in his homilies and radio broadcasts, angered the military by writing to President Jimmy Carter to ask that the U.S. stop military aid to El Salvador. Shortly before his death, Romero delivered a sermon begging army soldiers to not obey orders to kill civilians.

At his funeral, the army opened fire, killing dozens of mourners. That incident and his death were seen as key events at the start of the 12-year civil war, in which 75,000 people were killed and thousands disappeared.

Conservatives within the church long blocked efforts to name Romero a saint, arguing he was slain for his politics, not his religion. They disliked Romeros embrace of liberation theology, a church movement that argued that while clergy should care for the poor, they should also push for political changes to end poverty, with some priests even supporting armed struggles.

Francis, a Jesuit from Argentina who became pope in 2013, has made Romeros ascension a priority. He cleared the way for him to be beatified in 2015 and now for canonization, the last step to sainthood.

Normally, candidates for sainthood have to be attached to two miracles. In Romeros case, however, he is declared a martyr  killed for his faith  which means only one miracle had to be attributed to him.

The miracle that cleared the way for Romeros sainthood concerned the medically inexplicable cure of a pregnant, terminally ill Salvadoran woman who was condemned to death by illness but lived, and gave birth to a healthy child, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, a Vatican official, told the Associated Press.

The womans husband first began praying to Romero in May 2015 when the priest was beatified in San Salvador, Paglia said. By late August or early September, the womans condition had worsened, and her doctors delivered the child fearing that he too would die.

They did the caesarean and were waiting for her to die, because all the tests indicated she wouldnt survive. Paglia didnt specify the illness. Her friends started praying to Romero and after five days, in an inexplicable way, this woman begins to improve and was completely healed.

Paglia said he hoped Romero and Pope Paul VI would be declared saints together in October, saying a joint canonization would give Catholics a burst of energy and example of the need to live ones life for others.

Im in a hurry because theres an urgent need to change the world, Paglia told AP. It has been a long, tortuous journey, full of obstacles and opposition, he said. But it has finally reached its conclusion.

Father Tom Reese, an analyst at the National Catholic Reporter, said Wednesdays announcement shows first and foremost that Pope Francis really liked and admired Oscar Romero.

To Francis, he was a bishop who cared for the poor and marginalized and was prepared to lay down his life for them, Reese said. That is the kind of bishop Francis wants, that is the model, and that is his message for bishops in Latin America.

James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, said the Romero announcement signals the church is moving away from past conflicts.

The canonization of Oscar Romero is an immense step forward for the church, and a great wrong finally righted, he tweeted. Archbishop Romero, gunned down at the altar while saying Mass, after his prophetic defense of Gods poor in El Salvador, was clearly, and always, a martyr and a saint.

For Salvadoran churchgoer Josefa Trejos, the news of Romeros pending canonization only confirmed what she had long believed.

The pope is giving us a blessing with this news, but St. Romero is already on the altars, she told AP. He is already miraculous and a saint.



(Linthicum of the Los Angeles Times and Wilkinson of the Tribune Washington Bureau reported from Mexico City and Washington, respectively, and special correspondent Kington from Rome.)



2018 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194):RELIG-ROMERO-SAINTHOOD

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SANTA FE  A new method of voting apparently didnt change the outcome of Tuesdays mayoral election in Santa Fe.

The result of the first election in New Mexico to be decided by ranked-choice voting (RCV) was the same as it would have been had the election been decided by plurality: Entrepreneur Alan Webber won, City Councilor Ron Trujillo was second, school board member Kate Noble finished third, and city councilors Joseph Maestas and Peter Ives placed fourth and fifth, respectively.

That was the same order of finish after the first round of ranked-choice vote-counting, when just the first-choice votes for each candidate were tabulated.

But the outcome could have been drastically different had just a few dozen votes gone a different way. Nothing is definite, but Santa Fe might have been swearing in its second female mayor in the citys 400-year history next Monday.

A post-election analysis of the data indicates that Noble could have given Webber a run for his money in the fourth and final round had she edged ahead of Trujillo in round three.

RCV applies to elections where there are more than two candidates. Voters rank their choices from first to last, choose just a first choice or rank just some of the candidates. If no candidate has more than 50 percent of first-choice votes initially, the candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated. The second-choice votes on those ballots are distributed to the remaining candidates.

In later rounds, if the second choice on ballots for candidates being eliminated has already been knocked out, the third choice is counted, and so on. The process is repeated until someone has a majority of votes.

After two rounds, Webber held a 15 percentage point lead over Trujillo and an 17 percentage point lead over Noble. When Maestas was eliminated and his voters next-ranked votes were distributed to the other candidates, Noble closed the gap to within one-half of a percentage point of Trujillo. Just 89 votes separated the two, but Noble was eliminated.

The election then swung decisively in favor of Webber, as 3,996 votes  nearly 80 percent of the Nobles voters next-ranked choices  went to him, compared to just 1,032 to Trujillo. That resulted in a 2,964-vote swing, which won Webber a whopping 66 percent of the vote in the final round.

What would have happened if Noble had edged Trujillo in that third round and it was Trujillos voters next ranked votes that were re-distributed to her and Webber? The final outcome may have been much closer, if not entirely different.

Theres no way to tell from the data released by the City Clerks office so far, but informed speculation is that Trujillo supporters saw Webber as the biggest threat to their candidate and many may have ranked him behind Noble on their ballots. Webber was considered a favorite since he entered the race and that idea was bolstered by his raising more money for his campaign  more than $300,000  than the other four candidates had access to combined.

Had 80 percent of Trujillo voters ranked Noble ahead of Webber, she would have picked up 4,523 additional votes compared to 1,131 for Webber, a difference of 3,392, in the final round. Noble trailed Webber by 3,527 votes after the third round, so. who knows?

Nobles campaign chairman, former mayor David Coss, said he hadnt analyzed the data closely. But he could see that the 89-vote separation between Noble and Trujillo in the third round was pivotal.

In a way Ron and Kate, split the We went to Santa Fe High vote, he said. When Kate got eliminated someone had to go over the top, and it was Alan. Trujillo and Noble are Santa Fe natives and graduated from the local high school. Webber moved to Santa Fe in 2003.

Here is how the tallies went as the ranked-choice votes were tabulated over four rounds:

First round

Alan Webber 39.2%

Ron Trujillo 24.4%

Kate Noble 22.4%

Joseph Maestas 8%

Peter Ives 6%

Second round

Alan Webber 41.2%

Ron Trujillo 25.6%

Kate Noble 24.1%

Joseph Maestas 8.9%

Third round

Alan Webber 44.8%

Ron Trujillo 27.9%

Kate Noble 27.4%

Fourth round

Alan Webber 66.2%

Ron Trujillo 33.8%
SANTA FE  A state district court judge has denied former New Mexico state senator Phil Griegos motion to remain free pending an appeal of his conviction on public corruption charges.

Todays ruling by District Judge Brett Loveless means Griego will have to start serving his sentence by the close of business on Friday, barring a last-minute intervention by an appellate court.

Last month, the judge sentenced Griego, who was convicted last fall of fraud, bribery and other public corruption charges, to 18 months in prison and more than $47,000 in fines.

Griego, 69, a Democrat who lives on a family ranch in rural San Miguel County, was also ordered to complete five years of supervised probation after his release from prison and to perform 1,000 hours of community service.

However, his attorney said Griego could end up serving only nine months in prison under day-for-day good time incentives. He also said its likely Griego will be incarcerated at the Central New Mexico Correctional Facility in Los Lunas, which houses special units for elderly inmates and those in poor health.

Attorney General Hector Balderas office prosecuted the case against Griego, and had initially asked the judge to impose a 10-year prison sentence. Griegos attorney had requested probation and no prison time.

Griego represented a sprawling Senate district for 18-plus years before resigning in 2015 under the cloud of an internal ethics investigation.

The criminal charges against him stemmed from legislation authorizing the 2014 sale of a historic state-owned building near the state Capitol. Prosecutors argued Griego concealed his involvement in the deal and ultimately pocketed a $50,000 commission as a real estate agent for the buyer.
Amid allegations that he plotted to escape from the county jail, an accused murderer will be moved next month to a more secure facility to await trial in a gruesome homicide case, a local judge ruled Wednesday.

Second Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora on Wednesday partially granted a request by Bernalillo County to move Chase Smotherman to the Penitentiary of New Mexico after jail officials said an October body scan revealed he had a handcuff key stowed in his body. A Metropolitan Detention Center employee testified that Smotherman said he found the key in a courthouse holding cell.

An attorney for the county argued that Smotherman planned to escape custody during a court appearance, and he even shaved his beard in anticipation.

Smotherman is facing charges in two separate cases. One involves the alleged kidnapping and torture of Matthew Tressler, which is set for trial early next month, and a second involves the death of John Soyka, whose mutilated body was found near the Rio Puerco in the fall.

Smothermans attorney worried that relocating his client might impact his ability to prepare for trial.

Zamora said that Smotherman would be moved to DOC after the kidnapping trial wraps up. If he was moved immediately, he would have to be transported back to MDC each week for court hearings, and she questioned whether that might increase the risk of an escape attempt.

Although the county claimed Smotherman somehow sent Facebook friend requests to corrections officers, their attorney said Wednesday that turned out to be untrue.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

An Albuquerque police officer involved in a high-profile on-duty crash that killed a 6-year-old boy has filed a counterclaim against the boys mother, alleging her negligence caused the wreck.

Joel Anthony Mumaws family sued the officer and the city in January, and on March 2, officer Jonathan McDonnell and his wife filed a counter complaint against the boys mother, Antoinette Suina, seeking damages.

The McDonnells say that as a result of the wreck, they have suffered, and will continue to suffer mental anguish, emotional distress, and pain and suffering.

McDonnell was traveling nearly 80 mph to a call for help around 6 p.m. on a Monday in April 2017 when his cruiser collided with Suinas car as she turned left onto Indian School from southbound Eubank. The 6-year-old Joel Anthony later died in a hospital, and his 9-year-old sister suffered extensive injuries. McDonnell suffered extensive leg injuries and a bruised lung.

The counterclaim argues that Suina made the left-hand turn without first ascertaining that this move could be made with safety, and further, that she failed to give way to an emergency vehicle in making this left-hand turn.

As a result (Suinas) vehicle pulled directly into the path of (McDonnells) emergency vehicle, the lawsuit alleges, adding that McDonnell was not negligently operating his cruiser.

Albuquerque police said McDonnell was responding to reports that a male subject with a machete was threatening someone at a Northeast Heights grocery store.

Meanwhile, Suina was driving to Hobby Lobby with her two young children in tow. She told investigators that she didnt see anyone coming when she began to turn. She never heard sirens or noticed police lights, she said, and the first time she saw the officers unit was as it hit her car where her children were sitting.

Both drivers had green lights at the time of the wreck.

It is my opinion that Officer McDonnell was operating his vehicle at a speed to (sic) fast for conditions at the time, however, Officer McDonnell was authorized to operate his vehicle in an emergency response, a Bernalillo County sheriffs deputy wrote in the crash investigation.

McDonnell had been disciplined in at least six prior driving-related incidents during his nine years with APD. According to internal police documents, McDonnell was previously disciplined in five preventable crashes and an unauthorized pursuit.

Mumaws family argued in their complaint that the city turned a blind eye to (officer) McDonnells pattern of committing policy and law violations pertaining to vehicle crashes by failing to meaningfully discipline or retrain defendant McDonnell, or terminate him.

Attorneys in the case could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

Police eventually arrested 15-year-old Keisean Anderson in connection with the assault at the grocery store that McDonnell had been dispatched to that day. According to police, Anderson had pulled out a machete when confronted by Albertsons employees and later punched a store worker in the face.

McDonnells first name is spelled Johnathan in some references.
WASHINGTON  As the saying goes, you dont miss the water until the well runs dry: This deeply aberrant presidency threatens to cost the nation much more than even some of Donald Trumps harshest critics may realize.

From 1988-1992, I was The Washington Posts correspondent in Buenos Aires, covering all of South America. It was a time when countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Chile  emerging from years of authoritarian rule  were struggling to re-establish democratic norms, and I learned one important lesson: Its easy to lose the habits and values of democracy, but incredibly hard to get them back.

Perhaps most difficult of all is to recover lost faith in the rule of law. That is why Trumps very public desire to use the legal system as a weapon against his political opponents is so damaging. Lock her up is more than a call to imprison Hillary Clinton. It is, potentially, a tragic epitaph for the consensus view of our legal system as a disinterested finder of fact and dispenser of justice.

In the countries I covered, military rulers had imprisoned, exiled and assassinated their internal foes. It was understandable that democratically elected governments would struggle  sometimes successfully, sometimes not  to find ways to hold the murderous generals and admirals accountable. Decades later, however, the pattern still persists.

Democratically elected presidents such as Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil have been hit with serious criminal charges since leaving office. Alberto Fujimori of Peru was extradited from Chile, tried and imprisoned for years before the current president pardoned him on humanitarian grounds. In the United States, we do not seek to jail our out-of-power leaders. Trump, with his repeated calls for the Justice Department to go after Clinton, is determined to establish the custom.

Those former leaders were charged not just with political offenses but also with corruption  another bad habit that Trump is trying to instill.

In most of the South American countries I covered, transparency was a joke. Public officials were assumed to be in the pocket of some special interest  rewarded not just with campaign donations but with secret offshore bank accounts and the occasional suitcase full of cash. I reported on a coup in Paraguay that was led by a general  a lifelong public servant  who, even before seizing the presidency, had built himself a mansion that looked like a replica of the Petit Trianon palace at Versailles.

Trump and his family have refused to divest themselves of their businesses or even draw more than a flimsy veil between their official actions and the impact those actions have on their personal finances. Does the administrations policy toward Panama really have nothing to do with a bitter dispute over the Trump-branded hotel in Panama City? Does the administrations tough new attitude toward Qatar really have nothing to do with that nations refusal to invest in Jared Kushners debt-laden real estate company?

Its not the potential answers to those questions that are so corrosive; its the questions themselves. As in many countries whose governance we scoff at, Americans must now wonder whether policy is being tailored for our leaders personal gain.

When the rule of law and financial probity can no longer be assumed, the vacuum is filled with conspiracy theories. The president himself is a conspiratorialist par excellence; he was, after all, the chief purveyor of the birther nonsense. Since neither his words nor those of his press office can be believed, it is natural  but incredibly damaging  to assume that the real story is being hidden from us, for reasons that must be nefarious.

During my years in Buenos Aires, every once in a while some renegade military officer would make a pathetic attempt to stage a new coup; once, when I called home at the end of a long reporting trip, my wife matter-of-factly advised that from the airport I take the long way to our house because a would-be generalissimo was blocking the shortcut with a bunch of tanks, making traffic simply a mess.

I came to cherish the long American tradition of civilian control of the military. Now we are forced to rely on three generals  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, chief of staff John Kelly and national security adviser H.R. McMaster  to keep an ignorant and impetuous president from rashly triggering Armageddon.

Despite his recent joke about making himself president-for-life, Trump wont be around forever. But the damage he is doing will remain  and it may take years of hard work to repair.

Robinsons columns, including those not published in the Journal, can be read at abqjournal.com/opinion  look for the syndicated columnist link. E-mail: eugenerobinson@washpost.com; copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
If there are any doubts campaign season is gearing up, one blast of the hot air coming from state Land Commissioner/Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate Aubrey Dunn should put them to rest. First, Dunn took on the U.S. Air Force, demanding $25 million he says the state will lose because military flight training plans interfere with part of a second phase of Oregon-based Avangrid Renewables El Cabo wind farm in Torrance County.

The project would add 114 wind turbines on state trust lands, but the Department of Defense has voiced objections to some of the project because of height issues  61 of the turbines could affect a military training route called IR-33.

Instead of taking the diplomatic route and seeking a compromise on turbine height and placement, Dunn fired the first shot, telling reporters this federal power grab not only impacts revenue to the trust, but completely disregards states rights and individual liberties. This is military tyranny.

And he wrote this to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson: I believe that the military should not be uniquely and unduly burdening state trust lands by effectively prohibiting the investment-backed activities of state trust land leases unless it is willing to pay appropriate compensation.

So lets talk about that so-called burden the U.S. military places on the Land of Enchantment. New Mexico was the recipient of $3.1 billion in defense spending in fiscal 2015 alone. The Department of Defense employs 23,539 people in New Mexico at places like Kirtland, Holloman and Cannon Air Force bases and the Armys White Sands Missile Range. That military spending is a vital part of the states economy, and it makes no sense for one of our elected officials, much less someone running for Senate, to play hardball with DoD.

If its such a hardship to have military installations in the state, they could move somewhere they are welcome, taking their billion-dollar budgets and 23K-plus employees.

Rather than quit while he was behind, on Tuesday Dunn staged another media event, posting a no trespassing sign on a dirt road near a border fence in an effort to keep the Border Patrol off state lands. He accused the federal government of installing a border wall, infrastructure, and roads on state lands without the state authorization and without compensation to the state trust. He told the Journal wed like to bring attention to the border wall and the federal government taking away property rights without paying for it.

Yet while Dunn maintains he is taking a principled stance for property rights, his issue is getting $19,200 from the feds for a 35-year permit to use the 60-foot easement on the borderland held in trust for public schools  about $549 a year.

As with the wind turbines, it sure seems like Dunn could have been able to work this matter out with the federal government without the media blitz he is trying to generate.

Yes, Dunn was elected to advocate for state lands and the beneficiaries they serve. He notes money generated from leased state Land Office lands supports New Mexicos schools and hospitals. In fiscal 2017, his office collected $664 million.

And theres no question projects like the one proposed in Torrance County are important to New Mexicans and the states path toward more renewable energy sources, or that the state Land Office is entrusted with ensuring any and all activities on state public lands provide a return for New Mexicans. But its hard to see how picking a fight with the military or preventing the Border Patrol from doing its job to keep southern New Mexico safe chalk up wins for New Mexicans and the state economy. Its unbecoming of our land commissioner, even more so of someone seeking to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. If Dunn hopes to wind up in D.C., he should dial down his over-the-top rhetoric, do a risk/reward analysis before his next news release or press conference, and consider the big picture for his state and his nation.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  The Latest on the murder trial of Danish inventor Peter Madsen (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

The Danish inventor accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his private submarine has given a Copenhagen court an account of how she died in an accident.

Peter Madsen described Thursday how he couldn't open the submarine's hatches to reach Wall amid a pressure problem inside the submarine during a trip the pair took in August. He said he found Wall lifeless when he finally managed to open the hatches.

He said he tried to give her first aid but stopped because it was impossible to stay inside. There was a risk of having a submarine with two deaths, he told the court.

Madsen denies murdering the 30-year-old journalist, but has admitted to dismembering her body and disposing it at sea.

2:15 p.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen has testified to a court that Swedish journalist Kim Wall, who died during a trip on his submarine, had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident, but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them.

Madsen was standing trial Thursday in Copenhagen for murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse. He denies murder but has admitted to dismembering the 30-year-old's body and disposing of it at sea.

Sporting a dark t-shirt, jeans and blue sneakers, Madsen was well-spoken and answered the questions of prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen thoroughly.

Wall's body parts were found on the shore of Copenhagen and at sea after she disappeared in August.

1:40 p.m.

The Danish inventor accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on his private submarine has reiterated to a court his claim that Wall died accidentally.

Questioned Thursday during the first day of his trial, Peter Madsen said he had offered shifting explanations for Wall's death because I didn't wish to share with the whole world how Kim Wall died.

Madsen initially told authorities he had dropped Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip in August. Then he said that Wall died accidentally inside the submarine while he was on deck during the excursion  a claim he repeated Thursday. He did not elaborate.

He has admitted to dismembering Wall's body and throwing it into the sea.

Wall's torso was found on a southern Copenhagen shoreline in late August. Her head, legs and clothes were discovered in bags at sea in October and November, along with heavy metal objects designed to take them to the ocean floor.

1:10 p.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen, accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall on a private submarine trip in August, has told a court he was in total denial of what had happened when he told officials over the radio that he had let Swedish journalist Kim Wall disembark on a Copenhagen island.

Madsen, 47, is accused of torturing and murdering Wall and dismembering and disposing of her body during a submarine trip last summer. The inventor, who denies the murder charges but admitted to cutting up her body, had initially maintained that Wall disembarked from the submarine several hours into their trip.

His defense lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, urged the court to listen to the facts presented during his trial, not those presented in the media.

What has been my client's intent? Did he intend to kill Kim Wall? she asked. We do not have a cause of death, making it pretty muddy.

12 noon

Jakob Buch-Jepsen, the prosecutor in the Danish murder trial of inventor Peter Madsen, says a psychiatric report of the 47-year-old Dane has concluded that he is an intelligent man with psychopathic tendencies who has no empathy or feelings of guilt.

Madsen is on trial Thursday in Copenhagen accused of tying up and torturing Swedish reporter Kim Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her during a trip on his private submarine in August.

The prosecutor said the cause of Wall's death has not been established. But he said Wall's blood was found on the military-style bodysuit that Madsen wore when he was arrested, and he also said that detectives found videos and texts about killing women on Madsen's laptop and an external hard drive.

Buch-Jepsen also showed the court underpants and pantyhoses  both damaged  and pieces of hair.

11:05 a.m.

Danish submarine builder Peter Madsen, who is accused of murdering Swedish journalist Kim Wall, has listened quietly with his fists closed as the prosecutor described in detail how her body parts of were found on the ocean bed.

Wall's parents were also present Thursday on the opening of the trial against Madsen at Copenhagen City Court as prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen explained the findings at the bottom of the Oresund waterway between Copenhagen and southern Sweden.

The court showed a drawing of the multiple stabs to Wall's torso to members of the court, but did not display them to other people present.

Madsen is accused of killing Wall on his home-made submarine, dismembering her and disposing of her body in the water during a trip on the sub in August last year.

10:35 a.m.

The prosecutor in the Danish murder trial of inventor Peter Madsen says Madsen's submarine was submerged for several hours on the fatal night when journalist Kim Wall disappeared, was invisible to radar and didn't immediately respond to attempts to make radio contact.

When reached over radio  the audio file was played to the Copenhagen City Court Thursday  Madsen said he had let Wall off on Refshale island several hours into the trip.

Madsen also said over the radio that there were no injured persons on board but only technical problems. Shortly after, Madsen reported man overboard over the radio. He was picked up alone.

After he was arrested on land, forensic experts found dried blood on Madsen's nose, blood that eventually was proven to belong to Kim Wall, said prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen.

9:45 a.m.

The trial has started of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, accused of tying up, torturing and murdering Swedish reporter Kim Wall during a trip on his private submarine in August.

Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading the charges while Madsen, wearing glasses and a dark shirt, watched the prosecutor from his seat beside his defense lawyer.

The defense lawyer, Betaina Hald Engmark, then formally entered a not-guilty please to the murder charge.

Madsen claims Wall died accidentally inside the submarine while he was on deck during the excursion. He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing.

The trial at Copenhagen's City Court is due to run until April 25.

9:15 a.m.

Danish inventor Peter Madsen stands accused of tying up and torturing Swedish reporter Kim Wall before he either cut her throat or strangled her during a trip on his private submarine in August.

Madsen, 47, whose trial starts Thursday in Copenhagen, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Wall's body.

Madsen has denied murder. His defense lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told TV2 Thursday that he maintains she died accidentally inside the submarine. He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

The prosecution claims Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally didn't take when sailing.

The trial at Copenhagen's City Court ends April. 25.

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WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M.  Military officials in southern New Mexico are preparing to host visitors at the spot of the worlds first atomic test during a special one-day open house at the Trinity Site.

The first of two annual open houses will be April 7.

At the site on White Sands Missile Range, visitors can take a quarter-mile walk to ground zero where a small obelisk marks the spot of detonation. Historical photos are mounted on the fence surrounding the area.

Visitors can also tour the Schmidt/McDonald Ranch House, where scientists assembled the bombs plutonium core.

Last July marked the 70th year anniversary of the test at the Trinity Site. It was part of the Manhattan Project, a top-secret World War II nuclear development program out of the then-secret city of Los Alamos.
CARLSBAD, N.M.  Officials are seeking permit changes to allow more nuclear waste to be stored in an underground facility in southeastern New Mexico.

Officials with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad are looking to redefine how the volume of the waste is calculated, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported Wednesday.

The Nuclear Waste Partnership in January submitted a modification request for the facilitys permit with the New Mexico Environment Department, seeking to alter the volume calculations that include space between the inner waste containers.

The drums of waste are packed into larger containers, called overpacks, to make handling easier and to protect against ruptures. The current calculations include the outer containers overall volume.

The Department of Energy is asking for the calculations to be based on the volume of the inner containers, claiming that measurement is more accurate.

Under the current measurement system, the underground storage facility is about halfway to capacity.

Should the change be approved, the facility would be about a third full under the alternative volume measurements, officials said.

The federal Land Withdrawal Act sets the maximum capacity for waste storage at 6.2 million cubic feet (176,000 cubic meters).

The facility would continue to report the volume under the current calculation to state if the change is approved, said Rich Chavez, a manager of Regulatory and Environmental Services for the partnership.

We can sort that information and report it in numerous ways, but its one book, Chavez said. For the permit, for the LWDA, we hope to move forward with counting the inner container.

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Information from: Carlsbad Current-Argus, http://www.currentargus.com/
As North Korea considers negotiating over its nukes, it may find lessons in the Middle East, where leaders imperiled, paranoid or pugnacious have long used the doomsday weapon threat to secure a wobbly perch.

It is a delicate dance  and getting the balance wrong can end badly. Holding nuclear weapons, or even chemical weapons, gives a strongman powerful leverage with the region and the world; giving them up can end a pariah status and bring economic benefits.

Saddam Hussein, whose regime used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, gave veiled hints of possessing even more powerful weapons of mass destruction and appears to have bluffed his way into sparking the 2003 U.S. invasion that proved catastrophic for him. Chastened, Libyas Moammar Gadhafi then gave up a real program. That brought him an opening with the West but he lost a card that might have prevented the NATO air campaign that helped bring him down a few years later, in 2011.

Syria claims it gave up its chemical weapons. About a decade ago, a nuclear project was reduced to dust by Israeli jets. No believer in mutual assured destruction, Israel is itself widely believed to have a significant undeclared arsenal that has kept its enemies cautious.

Iran was stopped from approaching weapons capability, which it denied seeking, through a deal with world powers. The 2015 agreement limiting the atomic program brought  as North Korean leader Kim Jung Un undoubtedly has noted  significant economic benefits in its wake.

The worlds reaction suggests there is no such thing as the absolute right to such weapons, nor a blanket prohibition. And as the world grows more multipolar and chaotic, circumstances trump principle.

Heres a look at how some of these nuclear narratives played out:

SADDAMS GAMBLE, FROM BEGIN TO BUSH

Iraq pursued nuclear capabilities under Saddam for decades; the centerpiece of his nuclear efforts was the Tuwaitha nuclear complex, about 19 kilometers (12 miles) south of Baghdad.

Iran bombed the site in 1980. Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at Tuwaitha in 1981 and the U.S. bombed it in 1990. After the 1981 attack, Israel announced a pre-emptive strike policy that was subsequently named after then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Later, under Saddam, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded 550 metric tons of yellowcake  the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment  stored at Tuwaitha since before the 1991 Gulf War.

In the lead up to the 2003 U.S. invasion, President George W. Bush claimed Saddam attempted to purchase additional uranium yellowcake from Niger as part of a program aimed at developing weapons of mass destruction.

Months later, the White House admitted the claim was false and based on forged intelligence documents.

Following the invasion of Iraq, no evidence surfaced of programs pursing weapons of mass destruction and in 2005 the CIAs top weapons inspector in Iraq said an investigation into the alleged programs found nothing.

No additional yellowcake was uncovered at the Tuwaitha site and the material once guarded by the United Nations  dating back to before the Gulf War  was put under control of American forces and eventually removed from the country in 2008.

GHADAFI DRAWS CONCLUSIONS

Libyas longtime dictator unilaterally renounced weapons of mass destruction and ended the countrys programs in 2003, shocking the world with sudden compliance in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, after years of operating as an international pariah. Gadhafi welcomed international inspectors to verify the process, and they helped dismantle Libyas chemical and nuclear weapons programs, as well as its longest-range ballistic missiles.

Libya fell into chaos following the 2011 uprising by rebels that overthrew and killed Gadhafi, with much of the country now in the hands of militias nominally loyal to two rival governments in the countrys east and west. Despite this, Libyas few remaining stockpiles of chemical and biological agents are considered secure, and arms control experts say authorities continue to destroy them.

A NIGHTTIME STRIKE ON SYRIA

In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a complex in the Syrian desert that the United States says was a covert, nearly finished nuclear reactor. A year after the strike, the U.N. nuclear watchdog determined that the destroyed buildings size and structure fit the specifications of a nuclear reactor. Syria never stated the purpose of the site known as Al-Kibar in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.

More recently, Syrias issue was chemical weapons.

A chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs in August 2013 that killed hundreds of people sparked worldwide outrage. The U.S. blamed Syrian President Bashar Assads forces and threatened punitive strikes, but backed off at the last minute following a surprise agreement with Moscow to remove all of Syrias previously undisclosed chemical weapons. Ahead of disarmament, Assads government disclosed it had some 1,300 tons of chemical weapons, including sarin, VX nerve agent and mustard gas.

This did not include chlorine, which has civilian uses. Soon after the declaration that everything was destroyed, reports began emerging of chlorine attacks and the use of other suspected chemical weapons agents including sarin, raising questions about whether Syria had disclosed all aspects of its chemical weapons program.

Last April, the U.S. launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to a chemical attack in the countrys northwestern Idlib province that killed about 80 people. Since then, the Trump administration has accused Assad of producing and using new kinds of weapons to deliver deadly chemicals. There have been at least seven reported chlorine gas attacks this year. The government denies using the agent in its attacks.

THE PERSIAN BAZAAR

Given the hostility between Iran and the U.S., its easy to forget that America actually began Irans nuclear program through its Atoms for Peace program during the time of the U.S.-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. But after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran did little to advance its nuclear program as it faced a bloody eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. After that conflict, Iran expanded its program, including buying equipment from A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistans nuclear program.

Iran long has maintained its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa forbidding the production and use of any weapons of mass destruction. However, the West feared Irans program could be used to clandestinely build atomic bombs. Iran found itself subject to major international sanctions over its program that crippled its economy.

Ultimately, Iran agreed in 2015 to a nuclear deal with world powers under which Tehran limited its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. That deal now appears in jeopardy with President Donald Trumps refusal to recertify it.

ISRAELS DENIABLE DETERRENT

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been an outspoken critic of the international nuclear deal with Iran, he says little about Israels own suspect nuclear program.

Israel is widely believed to possess a vast arsenal of nuclear bombs  a consensus reached by international experts after former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu leaked pictures and details of Israels nuclear program to a British newspaper in 1986.

Israel neither confirms nor denies the existence of a weapons program. It also is among a handful of countries not to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, leaving its nuclear facilities off limits to international inspections.

Over the decades, its policy of nuclear ambiguity has served as an effective deterrent and insurance policy against Israels many foes in the Arab and Muslim world.

___

Associated Press writers Dan Perry and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Zeina Karam in Beirut, Hamza Hendawi in Cairo; Susannah George in Baghdad and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  A residential rooftop solar provider that operates in New Mexico and 20 other states was accused Thursday by the state attorney general of defrauding residents and jeopardizing their home ownership through deceptive sales practices.

Attorney General Hector Balderas filed a lawsuit in state district court against Vivint Solar, Inc. over claims that the company was engaging in a pattern of unfair and unconscionable business practices, fraud and racketeering.

The case centers on the companys door-to-door sales tactics and agreements made with customers to purchase power from the solar panel systems. Similar complaints by prosecutors in other states have resulted in settlements.

Vivint said it takes the allegations seriously but believes the lawsuit lacks merit.

Our commitment to our customers is to provide them the opportunity to adopt clean, renewable energy while always adhering to the highest ethical sales standards. We believe we have honored this commitment in New Mexico and that our practices in the state comply with applicable law, company spokeswoman Helen Langan wrote in an email.

New Mexico prosecutors say an investigation has identified hundreds of clouded titles among Vivints customers in the state.

According to the complaint, Vivint binds New Mexico consumers into 20-year contracts that require consumers to purchase electricity generated by the solar panels installed on their homes at rates that increase by over 72 percent during the 20 years.

Prosecutors alleged the sales model allows staff to overstate the cost savings to consumers and to tell consumers that they may save 50 percent or more on their rates compared to the Public Service Co. of New Mexico, an electric utility that serves much of the state.

Consumer complaints highlight the cumulative impact of Vivints multiple false statements and unfair business practices from the initial door-to-door sales pitch through design of solar systems to the billing for their production, the complaint states.

The complaint also accuses Vivint of filing improper notices in consumer real estate records. In some cases, prosecutors say the documentation makes it difficult for consumers to sell their homes.
LONDON  Around 21 people have received medical treatment after a nerve-agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, British police said Thursday, as the U.K. vowed strong action against whoever was responsible for the brazen and reckless act.

Three people remain hospitalized after the poisoning Sunday in the southern English city of Salisbury  former spy Sergei Skripal, his daughter and a British police officer who tried to help them.

Health authorities say there is little risk to the wider public. But Wiltshire county acting police chief Kier Pritchard said around 21 people have had treatment, including the Skripals, who were found unconscious on a bench.

Pritchard said a number of the 21 were having blood-tests, support and advice. Previously, authorities had said only that several people had sought treatment.

The ex-spy and his daughter remain in critical condition in a Salisbury hospital. A police officer who came to their aid, Sgt. Nick Bailey, is hospitalized in a serious condition, though he is conscious and talking, officials said.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said enormous resources are being devoted to determining who poisoned Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia. They were found unconscious on a bench, triggering a police inquiry headed by counterterrorism detectives.

The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act, Rudd told Parliament. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way.

Rudd said Britain would respond strongly when it is clear who is to blame.

The Russian Embassy in London, which has mocked other British politicians for suggesting Russian involvement, tweeted that it agreed with Rudd: First evidence then conclusions on Mr. Skripals case. Responsible political approach.

Police have refused to publicly speculate on who is behind the attack, but many experts have focused on Russia because of the similarity to the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210.

A public inquiry found that Russia was responsible for killing Alexander Litvinenko, and that President Vladimir Putin probably approved it.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in the Litvinenko killing or the attempted killing of Skripal, a former Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.

Russia does seem like the most likely story, given what we know both of the background of this case  given the track record in the state of the relationship, the fact that we have seen things like this before, Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at Kings College London, told Sky News.

But Greene said that even if the attack was planned in Russia, it may not have been ordered by the Kremlin.

A lot of these things are being done by people operating at sort of an arms lengths distance from the command and control structure, Greene said.

Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie of the research project CBW Events, which records the use of chemical and biological weapons, said the highly public attack appeared to be an expression of power intended to send a message.

Theres echoes of Litvinenko  you are doing it in a way that makes it obvious youre doing it, he said.

Russia is obviously a clear candidate, but it is too soon to say who was behind the attack, Guthrie added.

Its also possible there could be some troublemaker out there who wants to make it look like it was Russia, he said.

Nerve agents are chemical compounds that block nerve cells from sending messages to each other and the organs, preventing the body from working normally. They can be administered in gas or liquid form, causing symptoms including vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis and often death.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the global chemical weapons watchdog based in The Hague, said Thursday the Skripal case was of great concern, adding that it was in touch with British authorities over the attack.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, has said there was a low risk to the public, but experts say that nerve agents are highly dangerous and volatile.

Nerve agents are not materials that can be made at home, said Andrea Sella, a chemistry professor at University College London. Their level of toxicity is such that they are only to be manufactured in specialized facilities.

Sella said authorities will be looking to find impurities and residues that might provide clues to the precise chemical process used to manufacture the material. He added that if authorities found the container used to deliver the material, it might well be possible to trace the origin of the substance.

Police and forensics officers are searching Skripals home in Salisbury, a medieval city known for its towering cathedral, located 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of London, as well as a pub and a restaurant he and his daughter are believed to have visited Sunday.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russias GRU military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned. He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicized spy swap in which the U.S. agreed to hand over 10 members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

Those who knew him in Salisbury were shocked, describing him as friendly and outgoing  hardly a man hiding out.

The owner of a local convenience shop frequented by Skripal described him as one of her favorite customers. Ebru Ozturk said she made sure to stock the food he liked, particularly smoked bacon and Polish salami.

Usually he plays lottery and scratch cards, said Ozturk, 41. Plus a few weeks he was lucky as well and laughed about it.

___

Jo Kearney in Salisbury, England, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

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An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Richard Guthrie as Griffiths on one occasion.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.  U.S. scientists studying the effects of uranium mining around the Grand Canyon say they are lacking information on whether the radioactive element is hurting plants, animals and a water source for more than 30 million people.

And they would not get to fully gather it if President Donald Trumps 2019 budget proposal is approved.

The U.S. Geological Survey is leading a 15-year study meant to determine whether a 1 million-acre area surrounding the national park needs protection from new uranium mining claims well into the future. Now, no one can stake claims until 2032, though a portion of that Obama-era ban is under review by the Trump administration.

The agency says its received far less for its study than whats needed so far and would be left with nothing under Trumps plan, which eliminates the money in favor of other priorities.

We love to provide information, Geological Survey hydrologist Fred Tillman said. If you dont get the funding to do it, you simply cant do the studies.

Former President Barack Obamas administration implemented the ban in 2012 as uranium prices soared and a flurry of new mining claims came pouring in. It faced a backlash from Republicans, who touted improved mining techniques and lamented job loss in a remote area.

Without the study to document the effects of mining, some fear industry supporters would point to a lack of evidence of environmental harm to reopen the area to mining.

A federal appeals court recently upheld the ban, but the U.S. Forest Service is reviewing whether its necessary on 360,000 acres it manages. It follows an order by Trump to identify regulations that stand in the way of energy production.

The ban provided an avenue for the Geological Survey to study uranium-bearing pipes, groundwater flow, windborne dust, and plants and animals near mines. Of particular concern for the Obama administration was the Colorado River, a lifeline for millions of people in seven Western states that runs nearly 300 miles (483 kilometers) through the Grand Canyon.

Those supporting the ban have pointed to the legacy of death and disease on the nearby Navajo Nation, the countrys largest American Indian reservation, from Cold War-era uranium mining.

Without the science, the concern is just opinion, said Jan Balsom, senior adviser to the Grand Canyon National Park superintendent.

Im not comfortable with that being the only source of information, she recently told reporters on a tour of the lower Colorado River basin.

The Geological Survey said its Environmental Health Mission funds the work, allocating $800,000 to $1.5 million a year to the studies between 2013 and 2017. Thats about half the estimated need annually. Trumps 2019 budget proposal nixes all funding for the program.

The agencys associate director for environmental studies, Geoff Plumlee, said hes proud of the work done so far under budget constraints and will await word from Congress on what science will be produced.

Other federal agencies and universities work to fill the knowledge gaps and have contributed funding for the larger effort.

Northern Arizona is rich in high-grade uranium ore, and companies have staked hundreds of claims in the area. Even with the ban, federal agencies estimated a dozen uranium mines would open under claims that were grandfathered in.

The 15-year plan assumed two mines would open and close before the ban expires. But one mine is still trying to get permits and the Canyon Mine about 6 miles from the Grand Canyons popular South Rim entrance wont open unless uranium prices rise significantly.

Energy Fuels Inc. owns both mines. Company president Mark Chalmers said the Canyon Mine will be mined responsibly and wont harm people or the environment. He said its footprint is small and the ore extracted could provide an annual supply of power for Arizona.

There will be some people that will say  uranium mining has contaminated the water in Grand Canyon already,' he said. It is false, it is false. Natural contamination from the uranium is already in the system. Mother Nature put it there.
JACKSON, Miss.  Mississippi lawmakers on Thursday passed what would be the nations most restrictive abortion law, making the procedure illegal in most cases after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The states only abortion provider pledged to sue, and the attorney general said he expected a tough legal battle ahead.

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature appeared to not only expect, but to encourage, such challenges in hopes the issue will eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The House voted 75-34 in favor of the bill , and Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said again Thursday that he would sign it. Because of necessary paperwork, it wont reach his desk until next week. The Senate passed the measure Tuesday.

We are protecting more women, we are protecting more children, said House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, a Braxton Republican. By 15 weeks, you have a child in the womb who has a heartbeat, who for all practical purposes has taken on the form of a person.

Under the Supreme Courts 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion, states were permitted to restrict abortions after viability  the point when the fetus has a reasonable chance of surviving under normal conditions outside the uterus. The ruling offered no legal definition of viability, saying it could range between 24 and 28 weeks into a pregnancy.

The Mississippi measure seems like a pretty simple bill designed to test the viability line that the Supreme Court has drawn, said David Forte, a law professor at Ohios Cleveland State University.

Abortion-rights-groups immediately spoke out against the bill, saying it is not legally or medically sound.

We certainly think this bill is unconstitutional, said Katherine Klein, equality advocacy coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. The 15-week marker has no bearing in science. Its just completely unfounded and a court has never upheld anything under the 20-week viability marker.  We expect that this bill will be challenged in court and it will lose and, in the process, Mississippi will lose thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars.

Anti-abortion groups applauded the measure.

Were thrilled that Mississippi lawmakers are taking a step to protect the basic right to life, as well as protecting maternal health, said Jameson Taylor, acting president of the conservative-leaning Mississippi Center for Public Policy. The center helped craft the bill.

There are two exceptions to House Bill 1510: if the fetus has a health problem that would prevent it from surviving outside the womb at full term, or if the pregnant womans life or a major bodily function is threatened by the pregnancy. Pregnancies as a result of rape and incest are not exempt.

Its unclear if a 15-week ban will move forward elsewhere. A bill has been filed for Louisianas upcoming legislative session. Gipson said lawmakers in Texas, Georgia, and some Midwestern states are exploring the idea. An appeals court in 2015 struck down efforts in North Dakota to ban most abortions after six weeks, when a fetus develops a detectable heartbeat, and in Arkansas after 12 weeks.

Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood said Thursday that he expected legal challenges and he noted that less-restrictive measures banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy have been struck down in other states. The U.S. Senate earlier this year rejected such a ban nationwide when supporters couldnt reach a 60-vote supermajority to act.

Mississippis 20-week ban has never been legally challenged, in part because the states only abortion clinic, the Jackson Womens Health Organization, doesnt perform abortions that late in pregnancy. According to state Department of Health statistics, 85 percent of abortions in Mississippi took place before 12 weeks in 2016.

Diane Derzis, who owns the clinic, has said it provides abortions as late as 18 weeks after pregnancy. Most of Mississippis 2,500 abortions in 2015 took place at the clinic. Before the bill was passed, Derzis said she would sue. She did not respond to text or telephone messages seeking comment Thursday.

Abortion opponents have been encouraged by a 2007 Supreme Court case, Gonzalez v. Carhart, that allowed bans on what some call partial-birth abortions, an abortion performed relatively late in pregnancy, in which the living fetus is extracted in stages through the birth canal. The opponents believe the decision opened a window for states to restrict abortion before a fetus is viable.

We would welcome the court to clarify the extent to which states can regulate abortions, particularly with regard to maternal health, Taylor said.

He said the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal advocacy group, was among those who vetted the bills language. The Arizona-based alliance didnt respond to questions, with senior counsel Kevin Theriot saying only that the alliance supports states important and legitimate efforts to protect the health and safety of women and children.

Forte and University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone both said they believe the chances the Supreme Court will consider a major abortion case are slim as long as the current justices remain, though a case could ascend quickly on an emergency appeal of a lower court ruling.

The likely hope of Mississippi lawmakers is that one of the justices more favorable to abortion rights, such as Anthony Kennedy or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will have stepped down by the time the states case reaches the Supreme Court.

Kennedy, for example, has twice in the past 26 years been part of a 5-4 majority upholding abortion rights.

If Anthony Kennedy has already stepped down, this would make perfect sense, Stone said.
AUSTIN, Texas  Democrats are salivating at the prospect of flipping a wealthy Houston enclave that has been solidly Republican since sending George H.W. Bush to Congress in 1967  the kind of race theyll have to win for any hope of retaking the House in the November midterms.

But their new opportunities, here and in other states, sometimes have them going after each other instead of the Republicans, and that could spoil their chances. Aside from the normal conflicts of ambition and personality, theres a more significant Democratic rift lingering from the 2016 presidential primary between the partys Bernie Sanders progressive wing and its Hillary Clinton establishment.

The tensions clouding the upcoming runoff between the partys top two candidates in the Houston district  corporate attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and activist Laura Moser  could shadow other House races nationwide. Party leaders believe frustration with President Donald Trump, coupled with a surge of energized female candidates, could spell a banner midterm election season. But with so many Democratic candidates in so many districts, party power brokers may try and tip the scales, sometimes with clumsy results.

In Houston, Moser advanced to the May 22 runoff despite opposition from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The national campaign group published an opposition research memo calling her a Washington insider who begrudgingly moved to Texas to run for Congress and targeted her for once joking that shed rather have my teeth pulled out without anesthesia than live in small-town Texas.

Sanders, whose Our Revolution group endorsed Moser, called the partys attack appalling.

Such tactics go beyond the 2016 fallout to the kind of negative campaigning that is why so many people are disgusted with politics, Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The party is becoming more progressive, said Sanders, the progressive, and part of the old establishment who are not enthusiastic about that kind of change will resist it. He said he understands that, but I hope that resistance does not come in the form of ugly, negative advertising. It should come in the form of debating the issues.

National Democrats say the problem in Houston isnt that Moser is too liberal. Its that she doesnt match the congressional district where the party has set its sights on picking up the seat that Republican John Culberson has held since 2001. Every seat is important as the Democrats try to win majority control in Washington.

Even though Moser is a Houston native, they worry her time in Washington and flip comment about Texas will become ready-made ads against her in a general election, and could make her unelectable. They dont want to miss their chance in a district that re-elected a Republican to Congress yet voted for Clinton over Trump in 2016  one of 23 nationwide to do so.

Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the DCCC, said the organization has long recognized and appreciated the unprecedented influence that the grassroots have in these races. As weve indicated all cycle, the DCCC is keeping all options on the table to work with our allies and ensure that theres a competitive Democrat on the ballot for voters to elect in November.

But the move drew the ire of another wing of the same national party. Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez criticized the DCCC, pointing to lingering resentments against party leaders from Sanders supporters still angry over the 2016 nominating process.

When voters, whether its Texas or elsewhere, perceive that someone from Washington, from the outside is trying to put their thumb on the scale, they dont take kindly to that, Perez said.

Still, he said he has no problem with House or Senate Democrats campaign committees choosing favorites, adding that they should involve only the high road of boosting a preferred candidate.

Progressive groups point to more intraparty showdowns to come, including in Illinois, where moderate Democratic Rep. Daniel Lipinski, who is backed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, faces a primary challenge from Our Revolution-endorsed Marie Newman in a safely Democratic district.

Other daunting races will be in California, particularly for two seats now held by Republicans that are coming open in Southern California districts where Clinton won. There are so many Democratic hopefuls that the party might have to choose front-runners to make sure one of them makes the general election. Under the states unusual primary system, the top vote-getters face off, even if they are from the same party.

Former DCCC official Jesse Ferguson said when he was at the committee, we would have begged to have even one candidate in some of these districts.

Now we have multiple candidates and its evidence of enthusiasm to take control of Congress away from Trump, said Ferguson, who went on to work for Clinton. Ultimately, it may fuel some healthy internal debates and some awkward moments, but its a fundamentally good problem to have.

Some activists see the 2018 primary contests as a continuation of the long-running progressives-versus-establishment conflict from a decade ago between former DCCC chairman Rahm Emanuel and then-Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean.

The DCCC just has to stay out of these races, said Neil Sroka, spokesman for Democracy for America, the group founded by Dean. Part of the reason why Democrats have been stuck in this cul-de-sac of loss over the past 10 years is we are not running the candidates who can inspire and turn out the new American majority that is essential to winning elections.

The partys opposition to Moser in Houston may have backfired, since it focused national attention and helped spike her fundraising. She produced an ad before Tuesdays Texas primary in which she talked about rejecting the system where Washington party bosses tell us who to choose.

Texans dont like being told what to do and I think that was the biggest miscalculation, Moser said by phone.

Pannill Fletcher is trying to focus on other issues in the race than the DCCCs action.

My opponent is and has always been John Culberson, she told supporters at her victory party Tuesday night.

Voter Michelle Umengan, a pediatrician who cast her ballot for Moser, said the candidates comments were insensitive but not a deal-breaker.

Its definitely more offensive to have the DCCC spend time and money smearing one of their own, she said. Moser was born and raised in Houston. I think her Houston upbringing is well balanced with the perspective of her worldly career. Thats more important than any distaste she might have for small town living.

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Follow Weissert on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apwillweissert and Mascaro at https://twitter.com/LisaMascaro
University of New Mexico biologist Nancy Kanagy dove into her first shark tank Thursday with a new technology for early detection of disease in diabetics.

A three-member panel of seasoned investors and entrepreneurs peppered her with questions about the technologys market potential in front of a packed audience at UNMs first-ever Bioscience Fast Pitch.

Kanagy took first place against two other researchers with novel medical innovations at the event, which was jointly organized by UNM Health Sciences Clinical and Translational Science Center and the New Mexico Bioscience Authority to increase the transfer of university technology from lab to market.

Kanagy won a gift certificate and bragging rights for successfully stepping out of her laboratory comfort zone and into the wolves den, where promising academic discoveries collide with the real world of business.

Its the first time Ive done a pitch, Kanagy told the Journal. Im a scientist, and I spend my time in the lab. This is very different than anything Ive done before, but I need to tell investors and businesspeople about our technology to move it forward, or it could just die in the lab.

The pitch and networking event reflect a newfound effort to forge collaborative partnerships between academics and entrepreneurs to propel more UNM inventions into the marketplace, said Dr. Richard Larson, Health Sciences Center executive vice chancellor. Its part of a new BioVenture Partnership between UNM and the Bioscience Authority.

Its our first event for people to network and build relationships, Larson said. Hopefully, it can lead to more startups and businesses here in the bioscience arena, creating more jobs and economic development in New Mexico.

UNM Health Sciences is already one of the universitys most-prolific centers for marketable inventions, with more than three dozen startups formed around its life science technologies since 2004. But theres a lot more available in UNM labs.

We want to dramatically increase that number, and this event is part of that process, Larson said.

Larson is chair of the new Bioscience Authority, created last year by the state Legislature to spearhead programs, initiatives and incentives to expand New Mexicos life sciences industry.

A lot of emerging biotechnology was on display at Thursdays event, which included a poster display manned by researchers showing nearly two dozen medical-related innovations for new diagnostics and therapies for cancer, diabetes and other diseases.

The other two competing technologies in the Bioscience Fast Pitch included a new temperature-stabilization process to keep vaccines fresh without refrigeration, and an app to educate and assist students against alcohol abuse.

All participants won gift certificates, but its the shark tank experience that really counts, said New Mexico Angels President John Chavez, one of the pitch judges.

It was all about professional development  learning how to talk with investors and community members, Chavez said.
Coinciding with Womens Day is the appointment of Rathi Gangappa as Chief Executive officer of Starcom India.

Gangappas last role was as COO at Mediacom, where she was in-charge of day to day operations and managing key client relationships across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Her earlier stints include Vodafone, Onmobile Global Ltd, Maxus and Lowe Lintas.

She comes with a wealth of experience  over 20 years in media and brand communications with rich digital and data expertise. She has navigated key leadership roles requiring a fine balance of strategy and execution in complex cross-cultural environments, driving transformation programmes, building capability and nurturing talent spanning media strategy, innovation, sponsorships, digital, mobile and social media marketing.

Commenting on Gangappas appointment, Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Media India, said, Were delighted to have Rathi join us. Her immense experience across agency, client and publisher eco-systems and demonstrated capabilities across the entire gamut of Marketing and Brand communications is exemplary. She shares our view on the consumer journey being ever-evolving and the challenges it poses to brands and is passionate about Starcoms Human Experience approach. She will no doubt be an asset and will add value to our clients and people alike.

On her new role, Rathi Gangappa said, I am very excited to join Starcom, especially at a time when the agency has gained so much momentum. Starcoms Human Experience focus connects human values with brand objectives, delivering seamless integrated communications. I look forward to driving business results for clients and adding to the Starcom culture of innovation and collaboration. It has a wonderful set of clients both locally and globally and a really strong backing of Publicis Media.
On the occasion of Womens Day, travel marketplace ixigo is encouraging women to leave behind all stigmas and travel without any apprehensions. With the video: #RukJaanaNahi, ixigo is urging women to go out there and embrace the joy of travel. This will change the way people perceive travel for women in India.

Though travel is an essential part of each ones life, women in India have been subjected to various forms of taboo surrounding travel. Women have always had to hear phrases such as - Log kya Kahenge?, Shaadi ke baad Jaana!, Kya karogi jaake? etc. from people around them. This video is ixigos way of bringing to the forefront the reality of this situation.

Commenting on the campaign, Aloke Bajpai, ixigo CEO & Co-founder said, This womens day, our endeavor is to educate people about the stigma that is limiting women to experience the joy of travel. Our video strikingly highlights the true experiences of women being subjected to various taboos that are attached to travel, especially in India. We want women to break free from apprehensions and make travel a part of their lives. We would love for all women to become a part of this revolution. Tell us about instances when you had to compromise on travel plans, and also how you overcame the hurdles! Use #RukJaanaNahi @ixigo while posting on Twitter. You could also join the conversation on Facebook.

Taking this one step forward, ixigo is also addressing the problem of women having to face poor hygiene and sanitation while travelling. ixigo has partnered with Pee-Buddy to help out women by providing them with the perfect solution. ixigo will be giving out free Travel Hygiene Kits to women travellers on Womens Day.
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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster officially supports plutonium pit production taking place at the Savannah River Site.

"I'm for it," McMaster said Wednesday during a stop in North Augusta.

Plutonium pits are the triggers to nuclear weapons. They're about grapefruit-sized and haven't been produced since 2011. New pits are needed to modernize  and survive  the nation's nuclear weapon stockpile.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous U.S. Department of Energy agency, is charged with maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons complex. The NNSA is under orders to produce 80 pits per year by 2030, and a 2017 NNSA analysis says SRS is one of two best places to do it.

Pits have historically been made at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Before that, they were made at the Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver.

The NNSA analysis outlines two SRS pit production options: build a brand new facility from the ground up, or repurpose the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, a roughly three-fourths complete weapons-grade plutonium processing plant.

McMaster is an outspoken fan of MOX  "I don't want to repurpose MOX; I want to open MOX," he said Wednesday  and wants a new facility built at SRS should the site be awarded the pit mission.

S.C. governor's nuclear advisors support SRS pit production, German fuel repatriation The South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council approved motions that support the two potential  but far out  SRS missions.

A new pit production facility at SRS would cost between $1.8 billion and $6.7 billion in fiscal year 2018, according to the NNSA analysis.

"It's very important that we complete what we have begun with that MOX facility," McMaster said. The MOX project began a decade ago.

McMaster said downblending  the NNSA-preferred alternative to MOX  is "not logical."

McMaster's stance on pit production tosses him into the middle of a local pro-pit herd.

The South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council formally sponsored relocating pit production to SRS at the end of January. SCGNAC is a nine-member organization, comprising state politicians and nuclear academics, that advises the governor on all things nuclear.

The cities of Aiken, North Augusta and New Ellenton  the municipality right outside SRS  have passed pit production resolutions of support. The Greater Aiken Chamber of Commerce supports the prospective mission, as does The Aiken County Legislative Delegation.

It has been estimated 800 longterm, skilled jobs will be created by relocating pit production to SRS.

McMaster visited North Augusta on Wednesday for a cyber-related grand opening at the city's municipal building.
A Lebanese-American businessman reported to be cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe helped broker a controversial 2012 Iraq-Russia arms deal valued at $4.2 billion, Iraqi sources tell Al-Monitor.

Russia arms deal

George Nader, 58, traveled to Moscow in 2012, telling Russian interlocutors that he represented Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the deal should be negotiated through him, according to two Iraqi sources. Naders role in the deal was controversial to Iraqi officials because Iraqs minister of defense was in Russia to conduct the negotiations, and they were unaware that Maliki was working with Nader to bypass official channels.

One of the Iraqi sources, a former Iraqi official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition that he not be named, personally witnessed Naders interactions with Maliki in their Moscow hotel when he accompanied Maliki to Moscow in October 2012 to sign the arms deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Naders career as a deal broker in Iraq ran from the mid-2000s until Maliki left office in 2014, the Iraqi sources said. Nader then became an adviser to the powerful Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It is in that capacity that Naders meetings with members of the incoming Donald Trump administration in 2016-17  including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former chief strategist Steve Bannon  brought Nader to Muellers attention.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Nader was arrested and questioned by the FBI when he landed at Washington Dulles International Airport on Jan. 17 en route to celebrate Trumps first year in office at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He was questioned by Muellers grand jury March 2 and is reported to now be cooperating with Muellers probe. One line of inquiry Mueller is reported to be questioning Nader about is whether the United Arab Emirates (UAE) might have funneled money to members of the incoming Trump administration in an effort to curry influence with them, including in their dispute with Qatar.

From journalist to dealmaker

Naders recent career as a Middle East deal broker is both an outgrowth and departure from his past. As an editor of Middle East Insight magazine in Washington in the 1980s and 1990s, Nader interviewed President Bill Clinton and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

During this time, Nader also served as a frequent go-between in informal Syrian-Israeli talks encouraged by the Clinton administration before abruptly disappearing from the Washington scene around 2000.

He was a reliable go-between, a facilitator, Martin Indyk, who knew Nader when Indyk served as Clintons assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs and ambassador to Israel in the 1990s, told Al-Monitor. He was not a con man.

Nader was connected to the Hafez al-Assad regime through then-Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa and then-Syrian Ambassador to the United States and current Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, Indyk said. He was going to Israel from time to time. He set up an interview of [Syrian Foreign Minister al-Sharaa] with Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari as a confidence-building measure. George is the one that made that happen.  Then he hooked up with [Ron] Lauder. He traveled with Lauder 16 times to Damascus in 1998 in efforts to advance an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement.

And then when the Clinton administration was gone, George was gone, Indyk, now executive vice president of the Brookings Institution, said.

Last time I heard from [Nader] was after the US invasion of Iraq, journalist Hisham Melham told Al-Monitor. He called me from Kurdistan. But why would MBZ [the crown prince] need him when he has [UAE Ambassador] Yousef Al Otaiba?

From dabbling in Syria-Israel peace talks to Iraq postwar dealmaker

Nader appeared in Iraq in the mid-2000s, looking to translate his Rolodex of connections from his Middle East Insight days into work advising various Iraqi political clients, including some of Iraqs new Shiite political leaders, as well as Kurdish officials.

According to Iraqi sources, Nader helped arrange meetings for the 2005 visit to Washington of leading members of an Iraqi Shiite political party with close ties to Iran, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. In 2010, Nader similarly arranged meetings for then-Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani with high-level UAE officials, including the crown prince, a second Iraqi source now living in exile told Al-Monitor. But Nader failed to win over the KRG leader, the second Iraqi source said.

Nader got Nechirvan Barzani meetings with MBZ and [Lebanese Prime Minister] Saad Hariri, the second Iraqi source said, adding that he advised Iraqi Kurdish interlocutors at the time to be wary of Nader.

Nader had a knack for claiming that he had unique access to 'mysterious' persons, the second Iraqi source said. This way he would be able to latch on from one new confidant to another.

By 2012, Nader had forged close ties with the Iraqi prime minister and Malikis son and deputy chief of staff, Ahmed Maliki, Iraqi sources said. Nader had worked with the younger Maliki on power generation projects, the former Iraqi official said. The relationship that Nader forged with Malikis son apparently brought Nader into the fathers inner circle when the huge Russian arms deal was being negotiated.

In August 2012, Iraqs Minister of Defense Saadoun al-Dulaimi spent 24 days in Moscow to finalize negotiations for the $4.2 billion Russian arms deal. But during the negotiations, the former Iraqi official told Al-Monitor that he received a message from former Russian Energy Minister Yuri Shafranik warning him that there were other people in Moscow claiming that they, and not the defense minister, were representing Maliki, and that the deal should go through them.

Eventually, on Oct. 3, 2012, Shafranik went to Baghdad to try to clarify the situation with Maliki, the former Iraqi official said. Shafranik even offered Maliki a direct communication line with Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid confusion and leaks.

The third of October, Yuri [Shafranik] came to Baghdad, met the prime minister and told him clearly that Mr. Putin is suggesting direct relations between you and him to avoid any leakage and  cut any unhealthy things, the former Iraqi official said. The prime minister welcomed that.

Maliki assured the officials that he welcomed the suggestion to streamline their contacts and signaled that the confusion over who represented Baghdad in the arms deal would be resolved.

So the former Iraqi official was astonished when he accompanied Maliki to Moscow in October 2012 to sign the Russian arms deal to see Nader enter their hotel and take the elevator to Malikis suite.

We were in a Radisson hotel in Moscow, the former Iraqi official said. And all of a sudden, George Nader came, walking very fast, entered the elevator, went up and, I saw from the screen over the elevator, went to the level where the prime minister was staying.

When the minister of defense came down to the ground floor, I asked, did you notice George Nader? And he said yes; he saw him entering the prime ministers suite, the former Iraqi official said. By that time I realized the issue is in-house. The corrupted party, which went to Moscow to represent Maliki, they are not  strange people. They are in the circle with Maliki.

The former Iraqi official continued, Also, while we were there we discovered new facts. I myself did not know that those people who traveled to Moscow at the end of August, that they are connected to Maliki and his son. But George Nader I knew very well. I was shocked. Then it immediately came to me  Naders relations with the son of Maliki.

Over the course of the trip to Moscow, we came to know that one of the three people who had been in Moscow presenting themselves as [Malikis] representative was George Nader, the former Iraqi official said.

A call Wednesday by Al-Monitor to an attorney who represented Nader in an earlier case was not returned. A spokesman for the Iraqi Embassy said it did not have information on the matter.

The Iraqi-Russian arms deal was controversial in Iraq and long suspected to have involved corruption. In November 2012, just a month after it was signed, Iraqs then-acting Defense Minister Dulaimi announced that the deal was canceled, citing possible corruption in the contract, Reuters reported.

But Malikis then-media adviser Ali al-Moussawi was cited by Reuters as saying that the deals would be renegotiated and any suspension of the contract was a precautionary measure because of suspected corruption."

From Iraq to the UAE

After the end of Malikis run as Iraq's prime minister in 2014, Nader made his way to become an adviser to the Abu Dhabi crown prince. Until Trumps election, however, he had maintained such a low profile that even several Washington consultants who have advised the Emirates said they were entirely unaware of his role.

It may now be left to Mueller to help deepen understanding of Naders mysterious activities and what role they may have played in influencing the Trump administrations policies toward the Middle East.
Irans Foreign Ministry has called the recent comments by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman about Iran, Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood childish, and has instead invited him to Iran for a multisided dialogue.

During his first trip to Egypt since becoming crown prince, the Saudi leader  speaking to Egyptian media and borrowing from President George W. Bushs infamous Axis of Evil State of the Union Speech  described Iran, Turkey and Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood this week as being part of a triangle of evil. Bush had included Iran, Iraq and North Korea in the axis in his 2002 speech, which helped pave the way for the 2003 Iraq invasion, one of the most disastrous and deadly US foreign policy actions.

While the Saudi Embassy in Ankara denied that the crown prince included Turkey in the triangle of evil, according to Egyptian media, the prince said Saudi Arabia believes Turkey is trying to revive the Ottoman Empire. According to Iranian media, the crown prince referred to Iran as a paper tiger in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper.

During a press conference, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi said, It is not a point of pride for someone who claims to be a politician and a Muslim leader to express incoherent words and imitate the speeches of dated politicians who unilaterally pushed the world toward destruction. He said the crown prince knows best himself who has fought against ISIS [Islamic State], violence and extremism.

Ghassemi said "one must not be surprised by such comments from some Saudi officials. He added, One should not expect more from someone who has failed to understand the new world and region and is at the same time consumed by vile tribal ignorance and prejudices and uses derogatory, incorrect and childish language. Ghassemi said small-minded individuals "imagine that in order to be seen [they must] resort to untrue, deceitful and hostile speech.

In a reference to the arms purchases by Saudi Arabia from the United States and the United Kingdom, Ghassemi accused the Saudis of purchasing their security and being unable to rely on their own domestic capacities to ensure it. He said, When security is purchased, history has shown that it will be used against itself. Ghassemi said Saudi Arabia, having spread instability and extremism and stuck in a quagmire in Yemen, has no choice but to resort to lying and relying on foreign powers and purchasing arms.

In references to Saudi support for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Ghassemi said Saudi Arabia is now trying to erase its dark past with the use of words and dollars. He said that rather than throwing around useless and baseless words, Saudi Arabia should engage in an inclusive dialogue on regional stability and security.

Ghassemi also again denied that Iran has any involvement in the war in Yemen, adding that the Saudis' accusations about Irans involvement are only to compensate for their invasion and slaughter.
One of the typical symptoms of election fever is a life-threatening outbreak of populist legislation. The epidemic does not distinguish between radical right and center-right, and does not spare politicians hiding behind the label of center-left. Unfortunately for those elected officials, the media is busy these days with public corruption scandals and the governing coalition crisis over the military draft law for ultra-Orthodox Jews. They have sidelined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its implications, such as the instability of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israels only potential partner for peace. Nonetheless, Knesset members are energetically promoting a series of proposed bills that could indicate the agenda of the coming election campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may avoid starring in television and radio campaign advertising spots in light of his many ongoing criminal investigations, but his hallmark slogan and the title of the book he published in 1995  Fighting Terrorism  will continue to take center stage.

On March 5, the Knesset gave overwhelming initial approval to proposed legislation allowing Israel to deduct money from various taxes it collects for the PA to punish it for supporting terrorism. Fifty-two lawmakers voted for the bill, which openly violates a 1994 interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Only 10 refused to greenlight this distortion of the Paris Protocol, the interim agreement regulating economic ties between Israel and the PA under which Israel commits to collect taxes for the Palestinians, such as customs import duties and income tax deducted from the pay of Palestinians working in Israel, and transfer these revenues to the PA.

Knesset member Dov Khenin of the Joint List said during the Knesset debate on the bill that Israel was not doing the Palestinians any favors by handing over the money and was not doing so out of the goodness of its heart. His fellow party member Aida Touma-Sliman suggested changing the language of the bill to replace the word deduct with steal. However, in addition to eight of her party members, only two Knesset members of the left-wing Meretz opposed the proposed law. Twelve Zionist Camp Knesset members and eight members of Yesh Atid, both opposition parties, voted in favor of the bill.

As far as anyone knows, no Knesset member has ever suggested a bill that would deduct funding for rabbinical colleges or the West Bank outposts that have served as home to Jewish terrorists, mosque arsonists, students who beat up soldiers and rabbis who incite against Palestinians. Israeli taxpayers continue to funnel massive budgets to religious institutions that advocate xenophobia. State-supported local councils collaborate with Jews stealing Palestinian lands. No one even considered withholding social welfare benefits from the widow and orphans of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 worshippers in a Hebron mosque in 1994, nor from the families of other Jewish terrorists.

Supporters of the bill, which faces two additional Knesset votes before it becomes law, complain that the PA and its leadership glorify terrorists who attack Israelis, while Israel has named innumerable streets and town squares after the pre-state Etzel and Lehi underground organizations responsible for the killing of dozens of Arab bus passengers and passersby as well as British and Jewish soldiers suspected of collaborating with the enemy. The bill, however, is not simply an expression of contempt for a signed pact with the Palestinians for the sake of picking up a few votes. It is being promoted at the expense of endangering the voters. Subjecting the PA budget to cuts means withholding pay from its employees, among them members of the security forces. The greatest beneficiaries of such moves are Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two Islamist Palestinian groups funded directly by Iran and Qatar. Israeli defense officials consistently praise the coordination with the Palestinian security agencies that has saved the lives of many Israelis.

On March 6, the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee voted for a bill initiated by Bezalel Smotrich of HaBayit HaYehudi, authorizing district police commanders to prevent the handover of Palestinian terrorists bodies to their families if an officer entertains reasonable suspicion that the funeral procession would endanger lives by inciting to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist organization or activity. In explanatory remarks, the bills author noted that in some cases, funeral procession participants have raised banners and made speeches expressing support for the attack in which the terrorist had died or calling for additional attacks.

The lawmakers have obviously never seen the funerals of Jewish settlers killed in West Bank terror attacks. They have never heard participants calls for revenge and incitement to carry out tit-for-tat attacks against Arabs. Committee members were unmoved by the reservations of the state prosecutors representative, attorney Gavriela Pissman, who said the law was unnecessary given that both the penal code and anti-terrorism laws address suspicions that a funeral procession could turn into an incitement parade. She noted that the prosecution had been unable to establish a link between incitement and terrorism, adding that she would be glad to get research supporting such claims. However, with the threat of another Knesset member hijacking the legislative initiative and raking in public plaudits, who needs research studies? Never mind that they may show that refusal to hand over bodies intensifies hatred of Israel and encourages Palestinian violence.

Next week, Israels security-diplomatic Cabinet is expected to debate proposed death penalty legislation for terrorists. The objection by different security branches to the law has not deterred Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who is leading the initiative. He has even threatened to bring down the government if the religious parties in the coalition continue resisting the bill. Netanyahu, who has in the past objected to the death penalty, adapted his views to the findings of polls indicating support among right-wing voters for the execution of terrorists  only Palestinians ones, of course. Poll findings presented March 4 at the annual Sderot Conference on Israeli Society suggest that almost 70% of Israeli Jews support the death penalty for terrorists who kill Jews.

In an article in Haaretz, former Shin Bet security agency head Ami Ayalon and researcher Idit Shafran Gittleman wrote that numerous debates had been conducted about the death penalty during the terrorist attacks of the second intifada. Participants had concluded that not only does the death penalty not pose a deterrent, it could even enhance the martyr ethos among young Palestinians. Woe to the state whose elected officials do not tremble before signing populist legislation for political needs, even when it runs counter to the position of the defense establishment and could even result in the deaths of Israelis in revenge terror attacks and intensify the cycle of violence, the two wrote. How true. How depressing.
Israel's gun laws are strict. Despite the many security threats facing Israelis, and a horrific record of terror attacks, no Israeli can simply walk into a store and buy a weapon. While some soldiers take their weapons home when they go on leave, Israels Ministry of Interior only licenses guns to private individuals who can prove they work or live in dangerous areas, such as the West Bank, or work as security guards in specific sectors. Several levels of screening are involved and permit renewals are mandatory every three years.

Nonetheless, Israeli lawmakers have a great deal in common with their counterparts on Capitol Hill. Both are hostages of powerful, single-interest lobbies that represent small but vocal minorities. Like Americas National Rifle Association (NRA), Israels national religious settlers cynically corrupt the intentions and spirit of their founding fathers to justify their agenda and their very existence, and the actions of both groups have disastrous consequences for their fellow citizens.

Im not wild about the comparison, Likud Party Knesset member Yehuda Glick, a leading settlement proponent, told Al-Monitor. Settlement activity brings peace, whereas NRA activity leads to violence.

Nonetheless, the NRA itself sought to hold up Israel as an example of the ills of gun control. Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, Were going to stop it, and they put armed security in every school, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said in 2012 after the deadliest school shooting in US history, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were murdered in Connecticut.

Contrary to LaPierres assertion, Israel has only had one school shooting in its 70-year history, when 22 schoolchildren were murdered in a 1974 Palestinian terrorist attack in the northern town of Maalot. Following this and other attacks over the years, and mainly as a deterrent, Israel posts guards, most of them unarmed or lightly armed, at the entrance to schools, malls, film theaters and other public facilities. Yet its first lines of defense are intelligence gathering, border fences and state security forces.

Whereas Israeli law does not guarantee the right to bear arms as the US Constitution does, the settlers view the land they occupy as their God-given right they trace back to the biblical promise made to their patriarch, Abraham. Both settlers and Americans bearing guns ignore the vastly different reality compared to the era in which these promises and guarantees were made.

Americans were granted the right to bear arms in the context of a war of independence against British colonizers and a pioneering existence in a union still in the making. For the Israelites, the Promised Land was a symbol of hope over millennia of persecution and exile. With stable and independent contemporary states, established domestic police forces and law enforcement authorities, and mighty armies complete with nuclear arsenals, neither context is remotely relevant for Israelis and Americans any longer.

Public opinion appears to agree.

In the wake of the mass killing of 17 people last month at a Florida high school, support for gun control has surged to its highest level in at least 25 years. According to a poll by Politico/Morning Consult, for instance, 68% of registered voters now say they support stricter gun laws.

While an estimated 400,000 of Israels 8.6 million inhabitants (less than 4%) live in the West Bank, the vast majority of Israelis have never set foot there, be it for fear of Palestinian attacks or a sense of alienation from the lifestyle and beliefs of the settlement stalwarts.

Opinion polls consistently indicate that half or more of Israelis support the establishment of some form of Palestinian state, which means ceding territory to the Palestinians. Only 11% support annexation of the West Bank to Israel. Even among Likud voters, according to a survey last month by Commanders for Israels Security, a group of senior former defense officials, only 30% support annexation. Yet under the influence of the hard-line camp in the Likud and its coalition ally to the right, HaBayit HaYehudi, Israel is adopting more and more legislation aimed at annexing large chunks of the West Bank to Israel.

Glick agrees that a majority of Likud voters probably do not support annexation, but notes that the Likud Partys central executive body voted overwhelmingly last year, albeit in a nonbinding resolution, in favor of annexation. He also does not agree that most Israelis do not support the settlement enterprise. As the years go by, we have become more and more mainstream. There are 400,000 settlers and they each have families so that at a rough estimate, at least 2 million Israelis support us, he said. Every interest group tries to exert influence, and were no different.

It is unclear whether US President Donald Trump meant what he said on Feb. 28, when he appeared to be embracing gun control and urging Republican lawmakers to restore safety legislation opposed for years by the NRA. What is clear is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who views Trump as a kindred soul, is nonetheless unlikely to follow suit and shake off the stranglehold of the settlement lobby and its Likud Party lawmakers, which has imposed a debilitating paralysis on prospects of peace with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has repeatedly zigzagged on a Palestinian state. However, there is little doubt of his deep, messianic conviction that only he can protect Israel from the Palestinian aspiration to establish a state of their own in the West Bank. He has now managed to convince many Israelis of this threat, becoming a willing hostage of the settlers and their leaders.
Relations between Turkey and Iraq had been improving somewhat, with the countries even discussing a joint military operation against Kurdish militants in Iraq. That goodwill is being threatened, however, by the severe sentences Iraq is imposing on Turkish women for involvement with the Islamic State (IS).

When Turkey and Iraq adopted a joint position opposing September's independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, it appeared that they had smoothed over some of the tensions between them. With the Baghdad government having taken control of Kirkuk from the Kurds, Turkey has come to view as vitally important a new pipeline project to bypass Iraqi Kurdistan and the opening of a new major border crossing at Ovakoy as an alternative to the Habur crossing, which the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) controls. Ankara is also advocating joint operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Qandil Mountains and Sinjar. A recent exchange of visits by the Iraqi and Turkish military chiefs of staff was seen as a possible prelude to such a campaign.

Despite these possible steps forward, Ankara and Baghdad face a renewed strain in relations. The latest headache began when Iraq announced on Feb. 25 that its courts had sentenced more than a dozen Turkish women to death and 10 others to life imprisonment. Despite Turkey's expressed concerns about the women, Baghdad  riding high after forcing IS from Mosul, recovering disputed areas from the KRG and preparing for general elections in May  is apparently in no mood to make concessions simply to please Ankara.

The convicted women had confessed during the investigation [to joining] IS, marrying IS members and providing logistical aid to the group, said Abdul Sattar al-Birakdar, the High Judicial Council spokesman.

After Mosul was liberated, Iraq announced that it had detained more than 500 European women related to IS members. Turkish sources estimated that 300-400 of them are probably Turkish citizens. Although firm figures are not available, an estimated 200 children belonging to these women are also believed to be in detention centers.

Following Birakdar's announcement, the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad approached the Iraqi Justice Ministry for details to assess the detainees' legal rights and try somehow to stop the executions, as well as prevent the issue from damaging bilateral relations. Turkey is also annoyed in part because, it claims, Iraq has avoided addressing the issue at an official level and instead is discussing it through the media.

Turkish officials are worried about a deterioration in relations and say they are being dragged into a dilemma: If Ankara makes a strong case for its citizens, it will be perceived as supporting IS. If it does nothing, it will be accused of not caring about the welfare of the women. That might explain why Turkey has decided to deal with the issue discreetly. Information provided by sources who spoke with Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity explained the difficult position Turkey is in.

Iraqi officials have not shared information with Turkey or officially informed it of the courts rulings. Ankara only knows the names of the women, some of them obtained from petitions filed with Turkish offices by the women's relatives. Other names were learned from relatives who traveled to Baghdad and contacted the Turkish Embassy there.

Turkish officials told the Iraqi Justice Ministry that it was unfortunate that the court decisions were issued just as relations were improving. The officials also met with Birakdar, who is a Turkmen. As an appeals process proceeds, diplomatic contacts will continue and alternatives will be probed, such as allowing the women to serve their sentences in Turkey.

What is transpiring is not a simple matter of justice. As Iraq's national elections approach, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's government wants to use the cases to show that it is continuing the struggle against IS in every arena, without hesitation. A Turkish government source closely following developments spoke to Al-Monitor about the convictions and other issues.

There are some people who are trying to associate Turkey with IS, the source said. They want to drag us into that quagmire. We dont want Turkey to be accused of supporting terrorists, but we also have the responsibility of ensuring fair and transparent trials for our citizens. We dont want this issue to escalate, as it could have disastrous consequences. We are worried about it, while we are also trying hard to improve relations with Baghdad.

In October, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim postponed a visit to Baghdad at the last minute. In December, Turkish Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar hosted the US commander of forces in Europe, Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, CENTCOM Commander Joseph L. Votel and Iraqi Joint Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Othman al-Ghanimi. Akar himself went to Baghdad on Feb. 1. According to information reaching Al-Monitor, no agreement was reached on any of the issues between the two countries during the meetings.

Baghdad doesnt feel inclined to [conduct] a joint operation at [Sinjar], the source added. We could have some cooperation in security matters, but there is no likelihood of joint operations. At a March 8 news conference, however, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that some kind of joint steps are planned for after the Iraqi elections.

Opening a new border crossing at Ovakoy and building a new oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Turkeys Ceyhan oil terminal will have to wait for the outcome of bargaining between the Iraqi government and the KRG, the source said. To normalize relations with the KRG, Baghdad demands full control at borders and the airport. Abadi doesnt want to be seen making concessions to the Kurds and is likely to stall negotiations until the elections. Of course, their not reaching a deal affects Turkeys projects as well. The new pipeline will take at least one year to build. The old pipeline is beyond repair. We simply dont expect Abadi to make any drastic moves before the elections.

Ankara realizes in general that it has to wait until after the Iraqi elections to resolve outstanding issues with Baghdad and hopes that in the meantime nothing critical  in particular, executions of the Turkish women  will transpire.
Thousands of women marched in central Istanbul today to demand an end to violence and greater equality with men in a country lagging behind its European neighbors in most benchmarks.

We wont shut up, we are not afraid, we wont obey, the crowd chanted, waving signs that read When women jump, its a revolution, joining worldwide commemorations from Afghanistan to Iceland on International Womens Day, which celebrates women's rights.

I came here to see that I am not alone. We are all fed up with attacks on women and children and impunity for men, said Busra, a 24-year-old engineering student who did not want her last name used.

She may have been thinking about reports this week that a police officer was acquitted of rape charges after the alleged victim was found to have mens telephone numbers and pictures on her phone.

Womens Day has had a tumultuous recent past in Turkey, facing bans for security reasons and attacks by mobs of angry men. This year, governors in a handful of provinces prohibited gatherings, citing an emergency rule ban imposed in the wake of the 2016 military coup attempt.

On Sunday, police in the capital, Ankara, detained 15 people and used tear gas to break up a march by women getting a head start on Women's Day.

Turkish women say the biggest problem they grapple with is violence. Last year, 339 women were killed by domestic abusers, reports Anit Sayac, an online memorial to the victims. The platform We Will End the Murder of Women said last month was one of the deadliest, with 47 women murdered.

Nearly four out of every 10 women have been subjected to physical abuse in Turkey, according to a 2015 UN Women report on domestic violence. The Turkish government in 2016 put the figure far higher, at 86%.

The Family and Social Policies Ministry, which oversees womens issues, counts 143 shelters with total capacity for 3,444 women and children, underserving a country with a population of 80 million people.

Turkey was the first signatory to the Istanbul Convention to combat violence against women, but lawyer Canan Arin said courts have reduced the period for restraining orders, the pacts key introduction, to one month from six, forcing women to continuously renew them.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to combat the epidemic of violence, calling it a bleeding wound.

But activists such as Arin say womens rights are backsliding after more than 15 years of rule by Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP), which espouses nationalist and religious policies.

Erdogan has indicated that gender equality is against human nature and that the notion of feminist motherhood is unacceptable. In 2016, he said, Working women who avoid motherhood disavow womanhood [and] humanity.

He backs strict limits on access to abortion, comparing the procedure to airstrikes on civilians, and regularly urges women to have up to five children to stave off the economic effects of a graying population.

These declarations of male superiority, that women are not equal to men are repeatedly made. When the men leading the government say this, it filters down to the rest of society, Arin told Al-Monitor. And when you encourage the mentality that women and men are not equal, thats when men begin to believe they have the right to murder women.

In a Womens Day message, the president said that excluding women in the economy, politics and education undermines Turkish society and that violence against women was a problem not just in Turkey but around the world.

Together we must take steps, in accordance with our own history and culture, to correct mistakes and make up for shortcomings to strengthen the role of the woman, Erdogan said.

His government has expanded affirmative action to boost female participation in education, health, employment and politics, he said.

Under Erdogan, Turkey has lifted bans on Islamic-style headscarves that barred devout women from attending university, entering the civil service and serving in the military.

Measures to reduce violence against women include training police and opening centers to provide legal and medical support to victims. But Arin said a lack of political will means violence is actually rising.

What [the government] sees as important is the family, not the woman, who is not accepted as a person and individual, she said.

A handful of public attacks by male strangers on women because of the clothing the women were wearing garnered media attention last year. One conservative news site said the reports were difficult to believe, and designed to sow outrage among secular Turks against the pious.

Some cities have introduced women-only pink buses and pink taxis and set aside public beaches for women, prompting questions about whether isolating women further may actually fuel discrimination.

Because they are unable to prevent sexual assault of men, [authorities] introduce restrictions on women, Arin said.

The UN Development Program ranks Turkey 69th in its Gender Inequality Index and 71st in its Gender Development Index out of 188 nations. Other measurements give Turkey even poorer marks. Turkey has sunk to 131st place out of 144 countries on the World Economic Forums Gender Gap Index for 2017.

Women make up less than a third of the workforce, and 64% are unhappy in their jobs due to low wages, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions said in a report this week.

The disparity is especially wide in politics. Founded as a secular republic in 1923, Turkey was an early adopter of womens suffrage in 1934, when compared with other Muslim states. It elected its first, and only, female prime minister in 1993.

Today, women make up just 14% of parliament, with the AKP giving 11% of its seats to women, lagging behind the two biggest opposition parties.

More than a third of the lawmakers from the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which campaigns for womens rights, are female. Five women are among the nine HDP deputies jailed on terrorism-related charges during the state of emergency.

At a time when we are fighting for women, freedom and equality, we see those running this country trying to bend it to their will. Their stance toward women is clear  whenever the president talks about women, HDP co-chairwoman Pervin Buldan said at a Womens Day rally in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, according to an emailed statement from her party.

The opposition says laws the AKP has ushered through, including one in November allowing Muslim clerics to conduct civil marriages, weaken womens standing and encourage child brides. Parliament now wants to criminalize adultery and prepared a report on how to make divorce more difficult to obtain.

Introducing religious tenets into all areas of life  is slowly eroding what rights we did possess, Arin said.
The United States sold more than $650 million in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the Yemen war expanded last year, according to a study released Thursday.

The Washington-based Security Assistance Monitor said the weapons went to Saudi Arabia and the UAE through the State Departments Direct Commercial Sales program, which allows American arms-makers to sell directly to foreign customers.

US weapons contractors reportedly sold $610 million in precision-guided bombs and small arms ammunition to the Saudis, and another $48.6 million in M-4 and M-16 automatic rifles and spare parts to the Emiratis. Congress receives detailed readouts of direct US commercial weapons sales, but only cursory data is made public.

Under the program, the UAE spent nearly $60 million for small arms in 2016, while Saudi Arabia purchased about $11 million worth of machine guns.

Experts say the move shows an uptick of expeditionary warfare by the UAE.

It reflects the high op tempo of the UAE armed forces, David Des Roches, a former Defense Department and White House official told Al-Monitor. If you go back, they bought their original rifles in 2000  they probably need to recapitalize them.

The standard-use weapons for US soldiers and Marines could go to the UAEs 4,000 troops in Yemen in its ground war against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, including the elite Presidential Guard.

The United States has also provided significant supplies of guided munitions to boost the Saudi-led air war in Yemen, delivering 4,000 joint direct attack munitions that can be latched onto dumb bombs for accurate targeting to Saudi Arabia in 2017. Another 1,000 of the smart bomb kits were delivered to the UAE the year before.

Yet the weapons are being unleashed on battlefield thats increasingly unpredictable. In 2015, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon could not account for more than $500 million worth of weapons given to the embattled government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and suspended assistance. Apparently US-supplied sensor turrets also appeared in Houthi propaganda footage earlier this year that showed the Iran-linked militant group shooting down a Saudi F-15. And in February, local groups allied with Saudi Arabia turned on each other, dimming Riyadhs hopes for a settlement.

Meanwhile, the US Central Command also quadrupled airstrikes in Yemen to more than 120 in 2017, primarily targeting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

But as the Donald Trump administration has waved aside Barack Obama-era human rights protections to sell the precision weapons to Riyadh, international observers and rights groups have complained that the deliveries are being used against civilians.

Amid a worsening humanitarian situation in the country, the Trump administration demanded that Saudi Arabia receive $750 million in US training to mitigate civilian casualties in Yemen. Under US pressure, Riyadh also allowed four US-made cranes into Hodeidah port in January to help unload humanitarian assistance, after closing all of Yemens ports, airports and land crossings in November.

Yet according to a United Nations report released in January, inspectors who investigated 10 Saudi-led airstrikes that led to 157 deaths and 135 injuries found that Riyadhs efforts to mitigate harm to children remain largely ineffective. The weapons used in the attacks included US- and UK-provided Paveway bomb guidance kits.

The UN has also accused UAE forces of detaining more than 200 Yemenis who were tortured and denied timely medical treatment.

Last month, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, head of the US Air Forces Central Command, told Al-Monitor that the United States continues to refuel Saudi and Emirati jets leading the bombing campaign in Yemen while providing targeting and other advice. Over the past year, the Defense Department has provided 478,750 gallons of aviation fuel to the Saudi coalition at a cost of more than $1 million, more than doubling its support over the previous fiscal year.

But as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman prepares to visit Washington on March 19, lawmakers are expressing increased frustration with Riyadhs air war. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a former Democratic presidential contender, added his name to a bipartisan resolution that would end US support for the campaign.

Last year, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., pushed for a vote to block a $500 million sale of precision-guided missiles for use against the Houthis.

What makes it a little bit tricky is that its not just a strict security assistance question, said Des Roches, now with the National Defense University. Its a question of Congress in terms of a declaration of war.

Overall, US arms sales globally hit $82.2 billion last year. Middle East and North African countries received nearly $30 billion.
The more than one million Rohingya Muslims are described as the worlds most persecuted minority.

The Rohingya are an ethnic group, the majority of whom are Muslim, who have lived for centuries in the majority Buddhist Myanmar. Currently, there are about 1.1 million Rohingya in the Southeast Asian country.

The Rohingya speak Rohingya or Ruaingga, a dialect that is distinct to others spoken throughout Myanmar. They are not considered one of the countrys 135 official ethnic groups and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982, which has effectively rendered them stateless.

Nearly all of the Rohingya in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine and are not allowed to leave without government permission. It is one the poorest states in the country, with ghetto-like camps and a lack of basic services and opportunities.

Due to ongoing violence and persecution, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring countries either by land or boat over the course of many decades.

Where are the Rohingya from?

Muslims have lived in the area now known as Myanmar since as early as the 12th century, according to many historians and Rohingya groups.

The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation said: Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial, referring to the area now known as Rakhine.

Latest On April 7, five Rohingya were rescued off the island of Sumatra.

During the more than 100 years of British rule (1824-1948), there was a significant amount of migration of labourers to what is now known as Myanmar from todays India and Bangladesh. Because the British administered Myanmar as a province of India, such migration was considered internal, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The migration of labourers was viewed negatively by the majority of the native population.

After independence, the government viewed the migration that took place during British rule as illegal, and it is on this basis that they refuse citizenship to the majority of Rohingya, HRW said in a report issued in 2000.

This has led many Buddhists to consider the Rohingya Bengali, rejecting the term Rohingya as a recent invention created for political reasons.

The UN has called the current exodus of Rohingya the most urgent refugee emergency in the world [Showkat Shafi/Al Jazeera]

Why arent they recognised?

Shortly after Myanmars independence from the British in 1948, the Union Citizenship Act was passed, defining which ethnicities could gain citizenship. According to a 2015 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, the Rohingya were not included. The act, however, did allow those whose families had lived in Myanmar for at least two generations to apply for identity cards.

Rohingya were initially given such identification or even citizenship under the generational provision. During this time, several Rohingya also served in parliament.

IN PICTURES: Rohingya refugees search for shelter in Bangladesh

After the 1962 military coup in Myanmar, things changed dramatically for the Rohingya.

All citizens were required to obtain national registration cards. The Rohingya, however, were only given foreign identity cards, which limited the jobs and educational opportunities they could pursue.

In 1982, a new citizenship law was passed, effectively rendering the Rohingya stateless. Under the law, Rohingya were again not recognised as one of the countrys 135 ethnic groups. The law established three levels of citizenship. In order to obtain the most basic level (naturalised citizenship), proof that the persons family lived in Myanmar before 1948 was needed, as well as fluency in one of the national languages. Many Rohingya lack such paperwork because it was either unavailable or denied to them.

As a result of the law, their rights to study, work, travel, marry, practice their religion and access health services have been and continue to be restricted. The Rohingya cannot vote, and even if they navigate the citizenship test, they must identify as naturalised as opposed to Rohingya, and limits are placed on them entering certain professions such as medicine or law or running for office.

How are they persecuted?

Since the 1970s, a number of crackdowns on the Rohingya in Rakhine State have forced hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, as well as Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. During such crackdowns, refugees have often reported rape, torture, arson and murder by Myanmar security forces.

READ MORE: A month of misery for Myanmars Rohingya

After the killings of nine border police in October 2016, the government blamed what it claimed were fighters from an armed Rohingya group and troops started pouring into the villages of Rakhine State. A security crackdown on villages where Rohingya lived ensued, during which government troops were accused of an array of human rights abuses including extrajudicial killing, rape and arson  allegations the government denied.

In November 2016, a UN official accused the government of carrying out ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. It was not the first time such an accusation has been made.

In April 2013, for example, HRW said Myanmar was conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. The government has consistently denied such accusations.

In August, residents and activists have described troops firing indiscriminately at unarmed Rohingya men, women and children. The government, however, has said nearly 100 people were killed after armed men from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) launched a raid on police outposts in the region.

In February 2018, the Associated Press released a video showing what they say is the site of a massacre and at least five undisclosed mass graves of Rohingya in Myanmar. The UNs special rapporteur to Myanmar said violence against the Rohingya bears the hallmarks of genocide.

Myanmars government razed at least 55 villages once populated by Rohingya, destroying with them evidence of crimes against the minority, according to Human Rights Watch.

The rights groups released images in February that showed between December 2017 and mid-February, areas that were once full of buildings and greenery had been completed cleared.

HRW described the actions by Myanmar security forces as an ethnic cleansing campaign and called on the UN and Myanmars donors to demand an end to the demolitions.

A total of 362 villages have been destroyed either completely or partially since Myanmars military began a campaign against the Rohingya in August last year, according to HRW.

How many Rohingya have fled Myanmar and where have they gone?

Since the late 1970s, nearly one million Rohingya have fled Myanmar due to widespread persecution.

According to the most recently available data from the United Nations in May, more than 168,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar since 2012.

Following violence that broke out last year, more than 87,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from October 2016 to July 2017, according to the International Organization for Migration.

READ MORE: I want to take my last breath without fear of attacks

Many Rohingya also risked their lives trying to get to Malaysia by boat across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Between 2012 and 2015, more than 112,000 made the dangerous journey.

Prior to the violence that began in August 2017, the UN estimated that there are as many as 420,000 Rohingya refugees in Southeast Asia. Additionally, it said there were around 120,000 internally displaced Rohingya.

Since the violence in Myanmars northwest began, more than 650,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, the UNHCR said. It added that more than 1,000 people, mostly Rohingya, may have been killed in Myanmar.

What do Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar government say about the Rohingya?

State Chancellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader of Myanmar, has refused to really discuss the plight of the Rohingya.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her government do not recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic group and have blamed violence in Rakhine, and subsequent military crackdowns, on those they call terrorists.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate does not have control over the military but has been criticised for her failure to condemn the indiscriminate use of force by troops, as well as to stand up for the rights of the over one million Rohingya in Myanmar.

OPINION: Aung San Suu Kyis inexcusable silence

The government has also repeatedly rejected accusations of abuses. In February 2017, the UN published a report that found that government troops very likely committed crimes against humanity since renewed military crackdowns began in October 2016.

At the time, the government did not directly address the findings of the report and said it had the the right to defend the country by lawful means against increasing terrorist activities, adding that a domestic investigation was enough.

During Pope Francis visit to Myanmar in November 2017, Myanmars army chief told the pope that there was no discrimination in the country and praised the military for maintaining peace and stability.

In September 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi entrusted former UN chief Kofi Annan with finding ways to heal the long-standing divisions in the region. While many welcomed the commission and its findings, which were released this August, Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy, argued it was just a way for Aung San Suu Kyi to pacify the global public opinion and try to demonstrate to the international community that she is doing what she can to resolve the issue.

Annan was not given the mandate to investigate specific cases of human rights abuses, but rather one to look at long-term economic development, education and healthcare.

REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: They look at us with hope, but we can only document their despair

When setting up the commission, Aung San Suu Kyis government said it would abide by its findings. The commission urged the government to end the highly militarised crackdown on neighbourhoods where Rohingya live, as well as scrap restrictions on movement and citizenship.

Following the release of the August report, the government welcomed the commissions recommendations and said it would give the report full consideration with the view to carrying out the recommendations to the fullest extent  in line with the situation on the ground.

On the latest round of violence, Aung San Suu Kyi blamed a huge iceberg of misinformation on the crisis, without mentioning the Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh.

On September 19, she gave a televised address, condemning all human rights violations in Rakhine, without specifically mentioning the Rohingya.

She said that Myanmar was ready at any time to verify the status of those who had fled the violence in the last month. She did not specify who would be qualified to return and did not elaborate on how the verification process would work.

Her speech was criticised by Rohingya refugees, as well as activists who accused her government of burying their heads in the sand.

The government has often restricted access to northern Rakhine State for journalists and aid workers. Aung San Suu Kyis office has also accused aid groups of helping those it considers to be terrorists.

OPINION: Myanmar needs to get serious about peace

In January, Yanghee Lee, a UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said she was denied access to certain parts of Rakhine and was only allowed to speak to Rohingya who had been pre-approved by the government.

The country has also denied visas to members of a UN probe investigating the violence and alleged abuses in Rakhine.





What does Bangladesh say about the Rohingya?

There are more than half a million Rohingya refugees living in mostly makeshift camps in Bangladesh. The majority remain unregistered.

Bangladesh considers most of those who have crossed its borders and are living outside of camps as having illegally infiltrated the country. Bangladesh has often tried to prevent Rohingya refugees from crossing its border.

READ MORE: My name is Arba Khatun, I am Rohingya

In late January, the country resurrected a plan to relocate tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to a remote, flood-prone island that has been called uninhabitable by rights groups. Under the plan, which was originally introduced in 2015, authorities would move undocumented Myanmar nationals to Thengar Char in the Bay of Bengal.

Rights groups have decried the proposal, saying the island completely floods during monsoon season. The UN also called the forced relocation very complex and controversial.

Most recently, Bangladeshs foreign minister labelled the violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar a genocide. The countrys National Commission for Human Rights also said it was considering pressing for a trial against Myanmar, and against the Myanmar army at an international tribunal on charges of genocide.

Bangladeshs Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited a Rohingya refugee camp in September and called on the UN and the international community to pressure Myanmars government to allow the return of hundreds of thousands Rohingya refugees.

READ MORE: Bangladesh medics struggle to cope with Rohingya influx

She said that Bangladesh would offer the refugees temporary shelter and aid, but that Myanmar should soon take their nationals back.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have told Al Jazeera that the governments aid thus far as been inadequate, with many saying they havent received any kind of government help.

Refugees in Bangladesh have been banned from leaving the overcrowded border areas. Police check posts and surveillance have been set up in key transit points from stop Rohingya from travelling to other parts of the country.





What does the international community say about the Rohingya?

The international community has labelled the Rohingya the most persecuted minority in the world.

The UN, as well as several rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have consistently decried the treatment of the Rohingya by Myanmar and neighbouring countries.

The UN has said that it is very likely that the military committed grave human rights abuses in Rakhine that may amount to war crimes, allegations the government denies.

OPINION: Only international pressure can save Rohingya now

In March, the UN adopted a resolution to set up an independent international mission to investigate the alleged abuses. It stopped short of calling for a Commission of Inquiry, the UNs highest level of investigation.

The UN investigators must provide a verbal update in September and a full report next year on their findings.

Rights groups have criticised the governments reluctance to accept the UN investigators.

Human Rights Watch warned that Myanmars government risked getting bracketed with pariah states like North Korea and Syria if it did not allow the UN to investigate alleged crimes.

READ MORE: Myanmar  UN probe can only aggravate Rakhine tension

In response to the latest round of violence, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing, calling on Aung San Suu Kyi and the countrys security forces to end the violence.

In early September of last year, Guterres also warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe if the violence did not end.

UN human rights chief Zeid bin Raad al-Hussein urged Myanmar to end its brutal security operation against the Rohingya in Rakhine, calling it a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Both UN officials said they completely supported the findings of the advisory commission, led by Kofi Annan, and urged the government to fulfil its recommendations.

In November 2017, Pope Francis visited Myanmar and while he did not explicitly use the word Rohingya, he said that there needs to be acceptance and respect for all ethnic groups in the country.

In April, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC) asked the court to rule if it had jurisdiction over the deportations of Rohingya people from Myanmar to Bangladesh.

A ruling affirming its jurisdiction could pave the way for prosecutors to investigate whether crimes against humanity were committed.





OPINION: The Rohingya crisis and the role of the OIC

What is the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army?

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), formerly known as the al-Yaqeen Faith Movement, released a statement under its new name in March 2017, saying it was obligated to defend, salvage and protect [the] Rohingya community.

The group said it would do so with our best capacities as we have the legitimate right under international law to defend ourselves in line with the principle of self-defence.

The group is considered a terrorist organisation by the Myanmar government.

In its March statement, the ARSA added that it does not associate with any terrorist group across the world and does not commit any form of terrorism against any civilian[s] regardless of their religious and ethnic origin.

The statement also said: We [] declare loud and clear that our defensive attacks have only been aimed at the oppressive Burmese regime in accordance with international norms and principles until our demands are fulfilled.

The group has claimed responsibility for an attack on police posts and an army base in Rakhine State. According to the government, nearly 400 people were killed, the majority of whom were members of the ARSA. Rights groups, however, say hundreds of civilians have been killed by security forces.

Rights group Fortify Rights said it has documented that fighters with the ARSA are also accused of killing civilians  suspected government informants  in recent days and months, as well as preventing men and boys from fleeing Maungdaw Township.

On September 9, the group declared a month-long unilateral ceasefire in Rakhine to enable aid groups to address the humanitarian crisis in the area.

ARSA strongly encourages all concerned humanitarian actors to resume their humanitarian assistance to all victims of the humanitarian crisis, irrespective of ethnic or religious background during the ceasefire period, the group said in a statement, adding that it calls on Myanmars military to also temporarily lay down arms.

According to the International Crisis Group, the ARSA has ties to Rohingya living in Saudi Arabia.

The Myanmar government formally categorised the group as a terrorist organisation on August 25.

What is the repatriation deal?

In November 2017, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a deal for the return of 650,000 Rohingya refugees, who fled in the recent violence.

Both countries agreed to complete a voluntary repatriation in two years. The plan is based on a similar agreement that was signed in the 1990s to repatriate Rohingya who have fled a previous crackdown led by the Myanmar military.

Myanmar set up two reception centres and what it is believed to be a temporary camp near the border of Rakhine to receive the first arrivals.

We have been tortured, killed and our houses burnt, we want Myanmar citizenship and ID cards saying we are Rohingya. I dont want to go to another camp in Myanmar if Bangladesh and the rest of the world can protect our rights, then we will go back, but not yet, Syed Alam, a Rohingya refugee told Al Jazeera.

On the deal, Director of Human Rights Watchs (HRW) refugee rights programme said: Before the start of actual returns, Myanmar should agree to a set of prerequisites for return.

That includes unfettered, independent monitoring of returnees, restoration of lost homes and properties among others.

On April 14, the Myanmar government announced in a Facebook post that a family of five had returned to the country, a move that was denounced by Rohingya rights groups as staged and a publicity stunt.

Images accompanying the social media post on Saturday showed five individuals receiving identification cards  which do not grant citizenship  from uniformed Myanmar officials, and getting medical help and living provisions from health and social workers.

According to the Rohingya Blogger, a watchdog and Rohingya rights website run by activists in Europe, the individuals in the photos are not Rohingya refugees, but family of a local administrator in Taung Pyo Latya.

The reported repatriation came days after Myanmars social welfare minister, Win Myat Aye, visited a Rohingya camp in Bangladeshs border area of Coxs Bazar.

During the visit, Win announced that Myanmar is ready for the repatriation of Rohingya.

But Ursula Mueller, the a UN senior humanitarian official, warned that there critical issues of freedom of movement that Myanmars government needs to address before beginning repatriation, AFP news agency reported.

UNHCR has also said that the conditions in Myanmar are not yet conducive for returns to be safe, dignified and sustainable, adding that the responsibility for creating such conditions remains with the Myanmar authorities, and these must go beyond the preparation of physical infrastructure to facilitate logistical arrangements.
Victims of paedophile and pornography ring in Punjabs Kasur wait for justice years after being sexually assaulted.

Hussain Khanwala, Punjab  The brick lanes of Hussain Khanwala are narrow and dark.

Three years ago, the largest child abuse scandal in Pakistans history shattered this rural Punjabi village, home to a poor farming community.

It is fewer than 20km from where seven-year-old Zainab Ansari was raped and murdered in January.

Little more than a month after the childs lifeless body was found in a rubbish tip, Mohammad Imran Ali  the main suspect also accused of several other sexual assault cases and killings  was sentenced to death.

Ansaris rape and murder was the 12th such case in Kasur district in the last year, according to reports, and ignited widespread, violent protests as Pakistanis blamed the authorities for failing to protect children.

For the people of neighbouring Hussain Khanwala, Ansaris story has brought back painful memories.

In 2015, the Nation newspaper reported that a gang running a paedophile and pornography ring assaulted more than 280 children, extorting significant sums from family members by threatening to dishonour them through releasing videos of their young relatives being assaulted and forced to perform sex acts.

About 400 videos were discovered, which the Nation said were sold for around 50 Pakistani rupees ($0.45) each.

Several victims fled the village. Many had been manipulated into feeling ashamed. Others were frustrated by an apparent lack of justice, which some still wait for.

The victims said the atrocities were carried out between 2006 and 2014.

One of the victims said he was injected in the spine with a drug before he was assaulted, said the Nations report.

However, Malik Abu Bakar Khuda Bakhsh, an inspector who led police investigations at the time, denies that 280 children were assaulted, 400 videos were found and 35 young victims fled.

He says the number of children assaulted is closer to 20.

There was a lack of evidence, and we cant go on hearsay, he told Al Jazeera.

Medical evidence, he said, such as the DNA evidence found in Ansaris case, was needed to make arrests.

Police reports claim that, to date, three men have been sentenced to life. More than a dozen people were held for questioning, and 12 were recently acquitted.

Residents were less willing to talk to Al Jazeera about the female victims of the ring.

Local council chairman Mobeen Ghaznavi said when the story broke, families of the village were blacklisted by people in surrounding areas, in terms of being approached for marriage proposals.

Weve got nothing [from the authorities] in the last two years. We cant even go to the police any more, because the police treat us like the criminals themselves, he told Al Jazeera.

Those who do not understand the intricacies of the legal system are deliberately pressured in court, he said.

The kind of vulgar questions that are asked, and asked with such force in the hope of intimidation, end up succeeding in confusing the witnesses, victims and petition filers.

Feisal Naqvi, a Lahore-based lawyer who continues to work on the Hussain Khanwala cases, told Al Jazeera the judicial system was overwhelmed.

At the same time, he said, because the system is so open to abuse and so choked with frivolous allegations, the police often deal with complaints informally, sometimes for the better but also quite often in a corrupt manner.

Over two days in late January, Al Jazeera travelled to the village and spoke to some victims and their relatives.

Many of them alleged that the perpetrators continue to live in Hussain Khanwala and intimidate them as cases are ongoing.

Below are their accounts in their own words.

Asterisks indicate false names used to protect the victims identity

Mohamed*, whose son ran away

I found out my son was sexually abused when the media came to town and the videos were being circulated. Until then, I had no idea.

He used to steal small things from home  money, his mothers jewellery, for a year or so. He was a good student, top of his class.

When the abuse started, he stopped going to school.

I would drop him off at school, and he would bunk classes and run away. Later, I found out these men would pick him up from school and take him to go and film whatever they did to him.

I would drop him off at school, and he would bunk classes and run away. Later, I found out these men would pick him up from school and take him to go and film whatever they did to him.

Eventually, I said: Just come work at the shop. Im an electrician so I took him as an apprentice.

Once, when I came back from the city after 10 days, my entire shop was empty. I asked him: Where is everything?

He told me he sold it all and gave the money to his mother. I asked my wife for the money but it was no more than change.

My son gave his abusers over $6,000 worth of inventory.

I didnt know at this time he was being abused.

That day, he had left halfway through lunch. I looked for him all night and couldnt find him.

Even the money in my safe, another $2,500, was gone.

My son kept running away and different relatives and friends would bring him back.

Each time he came back, I would lose more money, so much so that I did not have food to eat.

Four months after investigators left our village, I found him in Lahore working at a roadside cart selling roasted corn.

I brought him back and then he finally admitted he had been giving the abusers everything.

But he just couldnt live here.

He was distressed seeing them walk around the village; they still taunted and threatened him.

He stayed a few weeks, gave his testimony and left quietly. I have no idea where he is.

He calls his mother once in a while.

After court hearings and testimony recordings, the accused come to my shop and home and threaten to kill me.

Ive been threatened that they will pick up my other children, too.

We want justice.

Who is listening to us? My son lost his entire childhood to this evil.

Qamar*, whose grandson was abused

I filed a case for my grandson.

He was not even four years old at the time when he was raped by a boy from the same family that is involved in the 2015 cases.

I lost more than half an acre of land fighting that case.

Those people are used to courts and lawyers.

We are not, and, eventually, in order to move on with our lives, we had to withdraw our case because we had no more money.

They have made us so helpless, and we know there is no justice in this world for us.

They countered with false cases and fake witnesses. The police helps them, not us.

My grandson was raped and I ended up with a fake case against me. What chance is there for justice?

My grandson was raped and I ended up with a fake case against me. What chance is there for justice?

We eventually signed a compromise paper to be able to move on with our lives.

Qasim* and Shuja*, 18 and 17-year-old victims.

Qasim and Shuja have run away from the village. Both had quit school to work as apprentices. Neither knew of each others repeated rapes and extortion until the videos were leaked.

Shuja*

I was 10 years old when it started. Two boys picked me up and took me to a large house in the village.

They told me I would have to go every time they called.

They called me every two days.

Initially, I did not know what was being done to me. I knew it hurt. I was raped from the age of 10 to 15.

They would inject me, sometimes in the arm.

I felt entirely numb and was unable to speak.

I couldnt feel anything until it wore off and the pain started. I was neither dead nor alive for a few hours.

I went into the courtroom a few days ago and gave my testimony against them.

I was scared. They screamed and shouted at me afterwards. I will keep speaking against them and demand my truth to be heard.

They still bother me now, they come and harass me where I work and try and get me to say that I wont say any more. I cant do that.

I want justice, I want someone to listen to me.

My case is still going on, its been going on since 2015, I have no lawyer.

Qasim*

My father hit both of us because we did not tell him we were being exploited and raped.

I would rather set myself on fire than go back to school. Teachers, students, everyone talks and makes fun of us. They point us out to people and say we are the pornography case victims.

I would rather set myself on fire than go back to school.

Teachers, students, everyone talks and makes fun of us.

They point us out to people and say we are the pornography case victims. I only recently came back because my father begged me to.

When the investigators were here, the rape and extortion stopped

Even now, with the Zainab case, things stopped. But it will start again.

No one stops these people, the police are with them.

Aqil* and Shamim*, the grandfather and mother of a runaway victim

Shamim: I do not know what they did to him, but they changed him. He left me.

He does not even call any more.

The last time he came, they threatened him and told him they would kill him, so he left.

They told me they will chop off my legs at my knees and leave me to die.

Aqil: We have other kids too, and if we cannot protect them, whats the point?

The judge dismissed my case despite all the evidence in the videos. We will die for this justice and demand it.

They said they would cut my arms and legs off and hang me there. If I am to die at their hands, I would rather die protesting.

They extorted $15,000 from us by raping my grandson over and over again for years. It's come to the point where I wear used clothes from the flea market. I don't even have four walls any more, just what's left of my cattle.

They extorted $15,000 from us by raping my grandson over and over again for years.

It has come to the point where I wear used clothes from the flea market.

I do not even have four walls any more, just what is left of my cattle.

My sons rapists were set free. What kind of message is this? We have no lawyers, no justice.

My grandson still takes medicine for the injuries he sustained during the attacks.

I need peace, my boy needs peace. We need to hear he was wronged and know there is justice in the world.

Amin*, a victim

I was in fifth grade (10 years old) when the forced picking up and sexual acts began.

It went on until I was in eighth grade. That is when I ran away to Lahore to live with my cousin.

I always thought it was just me; it was not until years later that I realised it was many more children.

So many classmates of mine were picked up, injected, and raped.

No one could do anything about it until one day, when a boy in school got a memory card with about 25 videos on it, in which you could recognise children.

My older brother saw the video.

Everyone in the village was against pursuing the case, but [local council chairman] Mobeen wanted to, and we knew he was connected with political circles.

I was never asked to identify anyone.

There was no testimony  whatever names were added to the police reports, I was never asked who my abusers were. Then [the investigation team] was formed, cases went into court.

I completed school.

The very people helping us actually went against us.

Everyone in my case was set free due to lack of evidence.

Of course there was lack of evidence; it wasnt dealt with correctly.

I have left college and [the perpetrators] still threaten my family. I cant go back to Hussain Khanwala. I have no job.

People come and make documentaries, and everyone uses us to tell the stories and make their names  no one really actually cares about us. Our lives are lost. What will we do - no future, no education, what is the point of living?





People come and make documentaries, and everyone uses us to tell the stories and make their names. No one really actually cares about us.

Our lives are lost. What will we do? [We have] no future, no education. What is the point of living?

The interviews have been edited for clarity and length
Questions on journalism ethics and trauma have shadowed journalists coverage of wars and conflict for a long time. Where do we draw the line between ethical and unethical journalism practices, when interviewing people suffering from trauma, let alone interviewing women taken hostage, raped and tortured?

While preparing for a course Im teaching at City, University of Londons Journalism faculty, titled Reporting the Middle East, I came across a Womens Studies International Forum report on Yezidi women perceptions of the media coverage of their stories. The findings of the study were disturbing, as they shed light on some foreign correspondents practices when dealing with vulnerable individuals.

All but one of the 26 Yazidi women interviewed for the report had interactions with journalists. The testimonies of these women revealed that the mostly male foreign journalists that they interacted with had a macho approach to their stories. They narrated stories of distress, of being forced to speak by their clan or camp leaders who granted access to the journalists; of how journalists put their lives and their families lives in danger by revealing their faces and their identities.

These accounts by Yazidi women raise some crucial questions about the role of consent in journalistic practice and its disavowal in favour of exclusive and sensational stories. Journalists sought the most dramatic, traumatising details of these womens experiences while ignoring their emotional and psychological wellbeing. They, as the study revealed, have ignored all guidance on interviewing traumatised people, the guidance set out by Dart Center on interviewing women subject to sexual violence, and the UNs guidelines for reporting on gender-based violence among others.

The stories of these Yazidi women have been told mostly through a male lens. Disregarding the emotional strain of subjecting women to scrupulous interrogation, and with the promise of saving them, journalists demanded the victims to narrate details of their horrific experiences. Some of these women were even promised a solution to their situation if they granted an interview. Assurances of help were made.

What were those journalists thinking? Were they able to give some thought to the horrors of what those women went through? Did they question the nature of consent given by those traumatised women?

There are two dimensions to understand such behaviour, the first is gender specific and the second is ethnic specific.

No one should underestimate the power dynamics enacted by male foreign correspondents approaching stories of vulnerable women in a highly patriarchal context. Gaining consent in such context becomes categorical. And if consent is not granted, as in one of the cases featured in the report, the journalists seem to assume it is irrelevant.

The Western fantasy of the sensual East, borrowing the words of Edward Said, also seems to be evident in the line of questioning Yazidi women were subjected to by male journalists. The horrors that they suffered, including rape, were reduced to a sensual story from a faraway land.

In times of war and conflict, we, as journalists, have an ethical responsibility to give voice to the voiceless. But giving voice to the voiceless does not mean that we are allowed to operate outside the ethical realms of journalism.

Journalism ethics matter, and in times of war and conflict it is essential. Ethics is evidently important when dealing with subjects of trauma and specifically when interviewing women subjected to sexual violence and torture.

War reporting has been historically dominated by men. Awareness of gender sensitivity and gender prejudices in accessing information on sexual violence targeting women is a priority.

This saga should teach us all a lesson. We should never assume that by telling the survivors stories we are making them a favour. We are not in the business of granting favours. We tell stories to inform and to shed light on aspects of a story that are unknown to the public.

In times of war and conflict, we, as journalists, have an ethical responsibility to give voice to the voiceless. But giving voice to the voiceless does not mean that we are allowed to operate outside the ethical realms of journalism. We need to respect the people we are reporting on, be an active listener and let them be in control of how they want to narrate their story. These basic guidelines on interviewing subjects of trauma have repeatedly been shared in recent years. Yazidi womens disturbing testimonies on the practices of journalists that tried to cover their story is demonstrating that adopting uninformed approaches to gender-sensitive stories adds to the trauma of the victims and distort the voices that genuinely feel the need to be heard.

Seeking informed consent in such cases is crucial. Raping women has been used as a submission tool in wars for centuries, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) is also no stranger to this violent method of control. Yazidi women subjected to sexual violence and brutality by ISIL were eager to tell their stories. But before asking Yazidi women to give consent to these stories being recorded and disseminated, journalists should have informed them about how, where and when their stories would be published or broadcast.

The hostile environment training for war and conflict reporters should be accompanied by courses on interviewing subjects of trauma. These courses are already widely available. There is also a substantial body of material created to help journalists interview victims of trauma. On the top of the list is Dart Center guidelines. Other institutions, such as Poynter, also offer some guidance.

We as journalists need to step up to the challenge, otherwise, the ethical imperative of our profession will continue to be tainted by practices that are driven by an uncontrolled desire to obtain exclusive content and sensationalism.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Attack kills 30 soldiers from Niger and two from Nigeria on countries border near city of Bosso, Niger officials say.

At least 30 soldiers from Niger and two Nigerian troops were killed in a Boko Haram attack on Nigers border with Nigeria, Nigers defence ministry said.

On Friday, hundreds of assailants of Boko Haram attacked the position of the army of Bosso, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday, giving a provisional toll of 32 soldiers killed and 67 wounded.

On the enemys side, several dead and injured were taken away, the ministry said.

The counter-offensive conducted early this morning helped to retake control of all the positions in the city of Bosso. The situation is under control, it added.

READ MORE: One million children forced from school by Boko Haram war

Local resident and former MP Elhaj Aboubacar told the AFP news agency that the gunmen drove up at twilight, shouting Allahu Akbar [God is great], they fired a lot of shots and torched many places in Bosso.

We dont know where our military went, but one thing is for sure, Boko Haram were able to do what they liked until dawn, Aboubacar said.

The town of Bosso is part of the Diffa region, where many refugees and internally displaced people have sought shelter from Boko Haram violence elsewhere. The region has been targeted numerous times in attacks blamed on Boko Haram fighters.

Around 200 people took to the streets on Saturday in Nigers capital Niamey to voice support for Diffas population, calling for an audit of military spending as they denounced a lack of results from army action.

Civil society groups marched in Niamey to show solidarity after the latest attack [Tagaza Djibo/Reuters]

Regional violence

Since February 2015, Niger has been plagued by Boko Haram attacks in its southeast region.

The armed group frequently stages cross-border raids from their stronghold in neighbouring Nigeria.

The war between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government has left at least 20,000 people dead in six years and made more than 2.6 million homeless.

The Lake Chad region  which borders Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger  has been frequently targeted by Boko Haram and all four countries have formed a coalition along with Benin to fight the group.
UN calls for implementation of truce resolution as latest shelling kills 50, blocks aid convoy from entering enclave.

The delivery of aid to Syrias rebel-held Eastern Ghouta has been postponed, the Red Cross has said, as Syrian government forces stepped up their offensive against rebels in the enclave.

An aid convoy was scheduled to reach the besieged area on Thursday, and aimed to deliver much needed medical supplies that were prevented from being delivered earlier this week.

On Wednesday, members of the United Nations Security Council called for the immediate implementation of a resolution it had passed on February 24, which demanded a 30-day ceasefire in Syria.

Netherlands ambassador to the UN, Karel van Oosterom, said in a statement that members of the council expressed concern about the humanitarian situation, and reiterated calls for the implementation of resolution 2401 during a closed meeting.

UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said the governments offensive, backed by Russia, was creating an apocalypse.





Since February 18, Russian-backed government warplanes intensified their bombardment of Eastern Ghouta.

The government has been fighting armed opposition groups in the Damascus suburb from multiple fronts, and said on Tuesday it will send reinforcements to join the battle.

A pro-government Syrian military commander told Reuters news agency on Thursday that the army managed to slice the enclave into two, as forces advance from the east.

However, a spokesperson of one of the rebel groups in the enclave denied the claim.

Wael Olwan, of the Failaq al-Rahman (the Rahman Legion), a major armed group linked to the Free Syrian Army in Eastern Ghouta, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Assad forces have only attained about 30 percent of land.

Assads forces advanced near the town of Beit Siwa, while rebels have taken new positions in Al Muhammadiyah, he said. The battles are ongoing and face-to-face fighting comes and goes, its not ongoing.

According to Mahmoud Adam, spokesperson for Syrias Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, at least 50 people were killed on Wednesday as a result of government shelling and artillery fire.

They [government forces] have not left anything but used it against the people of Ghouta  from phosphorus bomb attacks to artillery fire, he told Al Jazeera.

To date, at least 800 people have been killed since the start of the latest offensive, SOHR reported.

The Damascus suburb has been under rebel control since mid-2013. Shortly after, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad imposed a siege on the area, home to some 400,000 people.

The ongoing confrontation has forced many of the residents to leave their towns on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta, opting to flee deeper into the rebel-controlled enclave.

At least 1,000 families left their homes for the central city of Douma on Tuesday and Wednesday, despite a Russian-sponsored truce that pledged to create humanitarian corridors last week.

In an attempt to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis in Eastern Ghouta, a 46-truck convoy managed to enter the enclave for the first time in weeks on Monday.

However, Syrian authorities prevented at least 14 of the trucks from unloading surgical supplies and medicine, resulting in the delivery of only half of the aid meant for about 27,000 residents.
Florida House passes gun-school safety bill

Proposals within the school safety bill, that has been sent to Governor Rick Scott for his signature, include raising the minimum age for buying rifles from 18 to 21.
Companies with more than 250 employees to install software next year and have three years to correct any discrepancies.

The French government has announced it will implement new measures to combat gender pay gaps in the workplace.

Edouard Philippe, Frances prime minister, said his government is looking to introduce new software to better detect unjustified pay gaps between men and women.

The crazy thing is that it all exists in law but equality is missing in practice, he told union leaders and employers.

Our aim is to pass from fine words to true, genuine equality.

Companies with more than 250 employees are expected to install the software next year and will have three years to correct any discrepancies.

Failure to comply with the new regulations could lead to fines of up to one percent of a companys wage bill.

Smaller companies  those employing between 50 and 249 people  will have till 2020 to fall in line with the governments new action plan.

The measure is one of 50 initiatives announced by Philippe on Thursday.

Many of these are said to have been informed by local best practices encountered by Marlene Schiappa, state secretary for gender equality equality, during a 2017 Gender Equality Tour de France.

Men are on average paid nine percent more than women in France, even though the law has required equal pay for the same work for the past 45 years, the government said on Wednesday.
US museum sends letter to Suu Kyi, criticising leader for failing to condemn and stop persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

A Holocaust museum in the US has rescinded an award to Myanmars state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign against the majority-Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine State.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which honoured Aung San Suu Kyi with the Elie Wiesel award in 2012 for her advocacy for freedom and human rights, said in an open letter to her  published on Wednesday  that she disappointed them.

As the militarys attacks against the Rohingya unfolded in 2016 and 2017, we had hoped that you  as someone we and many others have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights  would have done something to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population, the letter said.

The museum reminded Aung San Suu Kyi that Wiesel once said: Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented.

The Rohingya are one of the most persecuted communities in the world [Kevin Frayer/Getty Images]

It said the museum had undertaken numerous visits to Myanmar and Bangladesh to obtain first-hand evidence so that it could fully understand the extent of the persecution and crimes committed against the Rohingya minority.

The museum said it documented crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and what it called mounting evidence of genocide committed by the Myanmar military against Rohingya civilians since October 2016.

It also accused the National League for Democracy under Aung San Suu Kyis leadership of promulgating hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya, denying access to and cracking down on journalists trying to uncover the scope of the crimes in Rakhine State.

We understand the difficult situation you must face in confronting decades of military misrule and violence in your country and that institutions still powerful constitutional role, the museum wrote to Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, the militarys orchestration of the crimes against Rohingya and the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation.

We had hoped that you ... would have done something to condemn and stop the military's brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population. US Holocaust Memorial Museum to Aung Sang Suu Kyi

It urged Aung San Suu Kyi to use her unique standing and her role as state counsellor and foreign minister to cooperate with international efforts to establish the truth about the atrocities committed in Rakhine State and secure accountability for perpetrators.

We also urge you to lead an effort to review and amend the 1982 Citizenship Law, which has rendered most Rohingya stateless, so that it is aligned with international standards and allows equal access to full citizenship rights regardless of ethnicity, it said.

You can expand access for both local and international aid workers to administer life-saving assistance. Finally, we urge you to condemn the hateful, dehumanising language directed toward the Rohingya.

Persecuted community

The Rohingya, one of the most persecuted communities in the world, are not recognised as citizens of Myanmar and face widespread discrimination from the authorities.

Prior to the current exodus, tens of thousands of Rohingya have already been living as refugees in several neighbouring countries.

About 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since the violence erupted in August [Getty Images]

The plight of the Rohingya reached its peak in Myanmar six months ago when the countrys military cracked down on the minority group in Rakhine State, sparking a mass exodus.

About 700,000 Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh since the violence erupted in August, bringing with them consistent testimony of murder, rape and arson by soldiers and vigilante mobs.

Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym, MSF) has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in the first month of the crackdown alone.

Hundreds of Rohingya villages were torched, and recent satellite imagery showed at least 55 villages have since been completely bulldozed, removing all traces of buildings, wells and vegetation.

Myanmars military says its crackdown was needed to root out Rohingya armed rebels who attacked border police posts in August, killing about a dozen people.

In January, Myanmar and Bangladesh announced a repatriation deal, but rights groups and Rohingya have raised concerns about the agreement, saying it does not guarantee full citizenship, or safety, for those who return.
Hundreds protest at Turkish border against Syrian womens plight

Women of varied ethnicities and religions gather at the Turkey-Syria border on International Womens Day 2018 to raise awareness of the crimes committed against women in Syrias prisons.
As Indias government announces new budget plan to combat pollution in major cities, experts note more needs to be done.

Indias capital, New Delhi, may not breathe easy for some more winters, if the budget allocation for a major anti-pollution measure is any indicator.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday announced a budget of $177m over two years to reduce crop residue burning, a key reason for the air pollution crisis that has gripped major Indian cities, especially the capital, New Delhi.

The governments own policy advisory body, NITI Aayog, had estimated $600m needed to be spent every year to prevent farmers from burning the crop waste left over after harvesting.

The intended usage of these allocated funds is to help farmers purchase and use these mechanical implements that would help them do in-situ (on site) management of the crop residue, said Polash Mukherjee at the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

The amount allocated is not enough. Our own estimates of funds needed are far higher than this. This is a problem that needs a long-time fix, Mukherjee added.





The government plan would give money to farmers in three states bordering Delhi: Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, to cover 80 percent of the cost of machinery to remove the crop stubble.

Crop burning from adjoining states caused one-quarter of the bad air in New Delhi, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change told members of parliament earlier this year.

According to a state Pollution Control Board, farmers in northern states like Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan burn millions of tonnes of crop waste around October every year, to clear farmland before sowing the winter crop. An estimated 35 million tonnes are set afire in Punjab and Haryana every year, which contributes to the haze and smog in New Delhi.

In November last year, the US embassy air pollution tracker showed levels of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that enters deep into the lungs and bloodstream, repeatedly breached 700, which is double the mark of 300 that authorities deem as hazardous. Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of New Delhi, had called the city a gas chamber, owing to its toxic air.

However, the governments recent announcement may do little to cut the air pollution in cities, warn activists.

Farm activist Kavitha Kuruganti expressed frustration at the governments inability to grasp that the problem is deeper than that.

If they use this for subsidising labour, there is little possibility. What we need are cropping shifts supported by procurement. This money is inadequate, Kuruganti told Al Jazeera.

In the absence of concerted government action on battling pollution and political blame-games, courts have stepped in several times in the past years.

Last year, the top court temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers in and around New Delhi before the Hindu festival of Diwali, sparking debate over the decision. It also outlawed the sale of luxury diesel vehicles and ordered a tax on trucks entering the city.

Science journal Lancet has said half a million Indians have died prematurely due to PM2.5.

Arvind Kumar, a lung surgeon at Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi, warns staying in a polluted city like Delhi ultimately shortens ones life by 10 years or so.





Pollution affects all ages  from life in the mothers womb to the elderly. In Delhi on a typically polluted day, its equal to smoking about 15 cigarettes a day. The worst affected are children  their airwaves are very small and when the toxins cause swelling in the airwaves, they have breathing problems, Kumar told Al Jazeera.

When the toxins are inhaled, they get lodged inside. The reality is once toxins are deposited in the lungs, they are deposited there forever and they cause immediate and long-term damage ranging from asthma, COPD, chronic bronchitis to lung cancer, he added.

Indias government has struggled to get ahead of the problem, and it is unfair to blame and penalise farmers with limited resources for clearing farmlands by setting fire to crop residue, according to some experts.

The governments approach to handling stubble burning is not the right way to address this issue. The problem with policymakers is that they cant look beyond machines. This money that is being allocated is actually to buy or subsidise machines, Devinder Sharma, an independent food and trade policy analyst, told Al Jazeera.

But the solution does not lie in pushing more machines to the farmers. Instead, equip them with adequate financial resources so they can themselves ensure the stubble is not burned, he said.

Why are governments reluctant to pay farmers? Why do they insist on paying companies and manufacturers? Advisory bodies like Niti Aayog are only looking at corporate interests, he added.
Another noreaster has brought more disruption from Philadelphia to New England.

It was less than a week ago that a major storm brought damaging winds and flooding rain to much of the northeastern part of the United States.

Five people died as winds of 80 kilometres an hour brought down power lines, leaving nearly 1.7 million properties without power.

A very similar system is now bringing similar winds and widespread snow from Philadelphia through New York, and Boston to Maine.

Some 900,000 homes are already without power and this figure is likely to rise as the storm continues to develop.

The combination of strong winds and wet snow has brought down many trees and power lines. One person is reported to have been killed when a tree collapsed in Suffern, New York.

Thunderstorms embedded within the low-pressure system increased the intensity of snow to as much as 10 centimetres an hour in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and eastern New York.

By the end of Wednesday, some parts of New Jersey and New York were under as much as 60cm of snow.

Travel disruption has been severe. The heaviest of the snow appears to have fallen along the I-95, causing major delays. Bus services were also suspended by New Jersey Transit on Wednesday, and Amtrak rail services were reduced or suspended.

Around 2,700 flights were cancelled across the country on Wednesday, including several hundred flights from New Yorks three major airports.

Coastal flooding may be possible, although the risk is fairly low with the entry into a period of neap tides. In last weeks storm, the strongest of the winds coincided with the full moon and spring tides.

The snow is expected to continue moving northeastwards on Thursday, across Maine, into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in Canada, before easing on Friday.
Son of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Mullah Fazlullah killed along with 19 others in drone strike in Afghanistan.

Islamabad, Pakistan  At least 20 members of the Pakistani Taliban, including the son of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah, have been killed in a US drone strike in the northeastern Afghan province of Kunar, according to a Taliban statement.

The fighters, including Abdullah, were killed in a strike on a TTP camp, the group said in a statement texted to local journalists in Pakistans Bajaur district, which borders Kunar, on Wednesday.

According to the statement, 20 fidayeen, or suicide bombers, were killed, while another six fighters were wounded in the strike.

Prominent TTP commander Gul Muhammad and fidayeen trainer Yaseen were also killed in the strike, Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported.

Pakistan has often accused US and Afghan forces of not doing enough to target TTP forces resident on the Afghan side of the volatile Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where they fled following a series of military operations by Pakistan.

While violence has dropped in recent years, the TTP and its affiliates continue to carry out sporadic large-scale attacks targeting Pakistani security forces and civilians.

Violence casualties

At least 748 civilians and security forces were killed in violence perpetrated by the TTP and other armed groups, included armed Baloch separatists, in 2017, down from a peak of at least 3,739 in 2012, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi based research organisation.

Pakistans military says that it has killed at least 4,000 fighters working for the TTP and its allies since 2013.

Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify that number, as access to the conflict areas is strictly controlled, and the identities of those killed are seldom revealed.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua is in Washington DC this week for talks with the US aimed at lowering tensions between the two erstwhile allies.

In January, US President Donald Trump cut more than $1.1bn in military assistance to Pakistan over allegations that it was providing safe haven to members of the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network.

Pakistan denies the charges, alleging that it is being scapegoated for the failure of US-led coalition forces to secure Afghanistan after more than 16 years of war.

Recent diplomatic contacts appear to be softening the divide between the two countries.

On Monday, senior US State Department official Alice Wells said the US recognised that Pakistan had legitimate concerns regarding the situation in Afghanistan.

They have concerns over border management; over the [Pakistani Talibans] presence in ungoverned space in Afghanistan; refugee concerns, she said.

Additional reporting by Hameedullah Khan in Islamabad.
In a tragic turn, victim was murdered just over five years after his cousin was shot dead by a far-right gunman.

Rome, Italy  As Italians woke up to election results on Monday, 54-year-old Idy Diene left his home in the town of Pontedera and headed into Florence.

The 54-year-old migrated to Italy from Senegal 20 years ago, and eked out a living by selling accessories to passersby and tourists.

Diene was selling his merchandise on the citys Vespucci bridge when he was shot six times by Roberto Pirrone, a 65-year-old, unemployed, white Italian citizen who later told police he had intended to commit suicide.

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When he found himself unable to shoot himself, he said he fired on a random target. He was depressed and wanted to spend the rest of his life in prison, investigators told local media.

Police have ruled out a racist motive for the killing, but the Senegalese and Muslim communities are not convinced. They say the recent election stoked anti-migrant sentiment and believe Diene could have been targeted because he was black.

His death has reopened old wounds.

In December 2011, Gianluca Casseri, an author linked to a far-right group, killed his cousin, Samb Modou, and another Senegalese citizen at the market where they worked.

In the years since, Diene took care of Modous daughter and his widow, Rokhaya Mbengue. Diene and Mbengue later married.

She has now been widowed twice.

No ties have emerged with political groups, certainly not right-wing or racist. [Pirrone] was a firearm collector, and we found some memorabilia from the former Soviet Union at his home, Giuseppe Creazzo, Florences chief prosecutor, told reporters.

This man left the house to commit suicide, and ended up killing a black man instead. Mamadou Sall, member of Senegalese association in Florence

After a rally calling for justice on Monday, Dario Nardella, the citys mayor, tweeted, The grief the Senegalese community is going through is understandable.

Some angry demonstrators had kicked over rubbish bins in the city centre.

Whoever uses violence, wherever they are from, should face justice, the mayor said.

We condemn this behaviour, said Mamadou Sall, a member of the Senegalese association in Florence which had invited the mayor, referring to the bins being knocked down.

On the other hand, we cant believe that another, fellow Senegalese was killed, randomly. Every time by a crazy man. We are tired. When we leave home, we dont know if well come back. Security should be for everyone, including foreign citizens, he told Al Jazeera.

Its not the first time, and this makes us stop and think. Is it just that they are crazy, or is there racism behind it? [Diene] was shot by six bullets, not a flying one.

Weve seen an electoral campaign based on hatred, racism and verbal violence; now we have seen the action. This is one of the reasons people are angry. This man left the house to commit suicide, and ended up killing a black man instead.

Election campaign marred by racism

Izzeddin Elzir, the imam at the mosque Idy used to attend in Florence, and leader of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), called for politicians to exercise care in their campaign rhetoric.

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What we know for certain is that there were several people on the bridge, but [Pirrone] killed a black man, Elzir, who is originally from Hebron in the West Bank, told Al Jazeera.

Ours is an open-minded city, there is a dialogue. Italy is not a racist country. But, unfortunately, in the past two months of electoral campaigning, the political climate has been unhealthy, against [migrants], against whoever is different. When politicians dont use words responsibly, we know that words can be worse than bullets.

One month ago, far-right gunman Luca Traini attacked a group of African migrants in a drive-by shooting in the central town of Macerata, wounding six. At the time of his arrest, he was draped in an Italian flag and greeted officers with a straight-armed fascist salute.

Traini had links to self-described neo-fascist groups and had run in a local election as a candidate for the right-wing League party, which is headed by far-right politician Matteo Salvini, getting no votes.

Italian nationalist Luca Traini confessed to shooting African migrants from a vehicle [File: EPA]

We consider this our country now

Amnesty International, which monitored hate speech during the campaign, said migrants have been the top target, and named Salvini  who has previously claimed that Islam is incompatible with Italian values  as the main culprit.

Dienes killing came amid repeated attacks on an Islamic cultural centre in Padova between March 4 and 5.

Police apprehended the suspect, a 57-year-old local, whom media said had no links to political groups.

His motive, reports said, was an argument with one of the community members.

[The suspect] says its an act of revenge, that he had an argument with a neighbour, said Ahmed Raudi, head of the La Saggezza (Wisdom) cultural association. But I have friends living in that area, and no one seems to have had an issue with him.

Raudi told Al Jazeera that during the 2015 regional elections, someone had tried to break the centres windows.

He explained, however, that the majority of people understand we are well integrated and that we are not far from Italians in terms of mindset.

I have been here for 20 years, my children grew up here and I have many friends like that. We consider this our country now.

The National Office Against Racial Discrimination (UNAR, a government body) recorded 2,652 discrimination incidents in 2016, 69 percent of which were ethnically or racially-motivated.

A national anti-racism demonstration has been announced for March 10 in Florence.
Deal to upgrade Qatari air force components comes days after the UAE violated the Gulf countrys airspace.

Qatar and the United States have agreed to a $197m sale in upgrades and other equipment for the Gulf nations air force.

The deal announced by the US Department of State on Thursday is subject to approval from the US Congress.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.

The US stations about 10,000 military personnel at a large base in Qatar that serves as the Air Forces Central Command headquarters for US operations in the Middle East.

The sale includes equipment that will make the Qatari air force more resistant to cybersecurity threats, it said.





Regional threats

The deal between Qatar and the US Department of State will support the defensive capability of Qatar. The proposed sale will help strengthen Qatars capability to counter current and future threats in the region and reduce dependence on US forces, the statement said.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain, all US allies in the Middle East, launched a blockade against Qatar in June 2017.

The Saudi-led group alleges Qatar supports extremism in the region, a charge Doha has denied.

Minutes after announcing the Qatar sale on Thursday, the US State Department also approved a $270m deal to sell Sidewinder air-to-air missiles to the UAE.

It described the UAE as a friendly country and an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.

There are also reports the US will sell the UAE state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jets. The US has previously sold the advanced aircraft only to Israel.

News of the US-Qatar sale came days after a military cargo plane from the UAE violated Qatari airspace, the third violation in four months.

Sources told Al Jazeera the cargo plane penetrated Qatari airspace for seven minutes on Sunday. Qatari fighter jets intercepted the plane after it failed to respond to warnings.

In January, Qatar complained to the UN about two previous UAE violations of its airspace. All Qatari aircraft are prohibited from flying inside Saudi, Bahraini, Egyptian, and UAE airspace.
Mob attacks in Kandy are targeted and well planned, witnesses say, as fears grow over threats to Sri Lankas stability.

Ambatenna, Sri Lanka  The mob came by the hundreds, screaming at the top of their lungs and carrying sticks, stones and petrol bombs, as they descended on the hill town of Ambatenna in central Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

Some two dozen policemen and soldiers watched helplessly, according to residents, as the mob  mostly Sinhalese Buddhist men  vandalised and set fire to Muslim homes and businesses in the towns Welekada area.

We were so scared, Fathima Zameer told Al Jazeera, clutching her three-week-old infant as she recounted the violence that swept through her neighbourhood that morning.

We have nowhere to go. They broke all the windows in my house. Our whole house is burnt.

The mob, which witnesses said was between 200 and 500-strong, overran Welekada defying a curfew and a state of emergency imposed by President Maithiripala Sirisena a day earlier to quell anti-Muslim riots that began in the highland district of Kandy over the weekend.

In Welekada, rioters vandalised at least 15 houses belonging to Sri Lankas Muslim minority and a mosque, residents told Al Jazeera. Four of the buildings and several vehicles were also torched.

The attacks have raised fears of a return to conflict and instability in Sri Lanka, less than a decade after the South Asian island nation ended a bloody civil war with Tamil separatists.

The latest bout of communal violence began on Sunday when a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority died after being beaten by a group of Muslim men over a traffic accident in the town of Teledeniya in Kandy, an area famous for its tea plantations and Buddhist religious sites.

The next day, hundreds of Sinhalese Buddhists, mostly outsiders, according to officials and residents, poured into Kandy and attacked and torched dozens of Muslim businesses, houses and mosques. The body of a 23-year-old Muslim man was found in a burned building, and the government, fearing more violence, imposed a state of emergency on Tuesday. It also deployed the army and extended a police curfew in the region.

The violence, however, continued. Overnight on Wednesday several incidents were reported in four towns, said Ruwan Gunasekara, a police spokesman.

Three police officers were injured during clashes in Menikhinna, he said. Later in the day, Ambatenna was attacked and a Sinhalese man was killed there after a hand grenade he was carrying exploded.

Gunasekara said security forces have arrested about 35 people since the riots began.

The government has also suspended internet services in the area and blocked access to Facebook and other social messaging applications including Whatsapp and Viber in an attempt to halt incendiary rumours.

We dont feel safe

Shukry Cassim, whose four-bedroom house was vandalised in Welekada, said he was petrified.

We dont feel safe. All our children are traumatised. We dont know where to go, or who to trust, the 27-year-old accountant told Al Jazeera, standing in front of the burned hulk of his car in his garage.

We dont know why this is happening. The mob is not from our area. We dont know them, he said. But they couldnt have done this without the support of people from our area because they have targeted the Muslim houses, and excluded the non-Muslim houses.

Cassim, however, said the violence was instigated by a few people.

Relations between Muslims and Buddhists in the Kandy district have been historically harmonious, he said, adding: We share food during religious festivals, we play together and buy goods from each others shops.

Analysts say tensions flared up between the two communities because of the rise of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist groups following the end of the countrys nearly three-decade war. These groups include the monk-led Bodu Bala Sena, which has links to Buddhist hardline groups in Myanmar.

They are widely perceived to have the support of former President Mahinda Rajapakse, and accuse the Muslims, who make up 10 percent of Sri Lankas 21 million population, of forcing people to convert to Islam and of destroying sacred Buddhist sites. Prior to the Kandy riots, at least three other major incidents of anti-Muslim violence have been reported in the past year.

Sri Lanka is on the brink, said Alan Keenan, a researcher at the International Crisis Group.

These attacks are organised, well-planned, he said. And there is good reason to believe they are partly designed to provoke a Muslim response, which would then justify more violence against Muslims.

The Muslim community has been admirably restrained so far, he said.

But if the minority retaliates by attacking the Sinhalese community, other Sinhalese will then feel threatened and participate in a way they havent yet.

Police inaction

Keenan also said he was concerned by the inability of the army and the police to control the riots.

The reason for this is unclear  whether they [the security forces] have been badly deployed, or deployed in inadequate numbers. What worries me is the hypothesis that some significant degree of the police and military are sympathetic to the rioters, which would not be surprising, he said, referring to reports of state collusion in clashes that broke out between Muslims and Buddhists in 2014 which left four dead and many injured.

A third factor may be that security forces are cautious to act, Keenan said, because of the Sirisena coalition governments humiliating defeat to Rajapakses party in local council elections in February.

Sirisena ousted Rajapakse, who is accused of authoritarianism, corruption and human rights abuses, in 2015 after campaigning on a platform of national reconciliation and constitutional reform. However, the coalition that brought the president to power was in tatters ahead of the February vote.

Rajapakses party win emboldened Sinhalese Buddhist hardline groups and more crucially, police and other state officials are now more likely to hedge their bets, said Keenan.

They [the police] may not be sure if they should go after the rioters. Because they are known to have the sympathy, if not the active support of Rajapakse and his people.

If Rajapakse and his people are going to be running the government soon, which is possible, a police officer wouldnt want to be known as the courageous guy who did his duty and stopped the violence.

Rajapakse has previously denied links to hardline Sinhalese Buddhist groups.

Government in jeopardy

If the clashes continued, said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based think-tank, the future of Sirisenas government could be in jeopardy.

Some say [the riots are instigated] to show that this government is incompetent and incapable, he said. Others say this is to create instability, which will expedite yet another regime change.

Urging Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremasinghe to act fast, quickly and decisively, Saravanamuttu said security forces must arrest perpetrators of the violence.

It should be communicated to the country at large that we are a multi-ethnic, multi-religious country and we intend to stay so. And that is our strength, he said.

The conflict could also affect Sri Lankas post-war economic recovery, he warned.

If we continue with emergencies and blocking social media, tourists are not going to come and investors are going to start thinking twice, he said.

Back in Welekade, Zameer said she was hurt and heartbroken by the violence.

We want safety and security. We dont want anyone to face this, she said.

Cassim echoed her sentiments: I have tasted the bitterness of war. And I want peace.

Irfan Cader reported from Ambatenna. Zaheena Rasheed reported and wrote from Doha.
Since violence erupted, allegations have surfaced that security forces are failing to arrest perpetrators of attacks.

Sri Lankan Muslims say they fear being attacked during Friday prayers by Sinhalese Buddhists, amid accusations that security forces are failing to take action against marauding mobs.

Despite a state of emergency and a curfew to curtail violence that broke out last weekend between Muslims and Buddhists in the central district of Kandy, concerns abound that attacks will continue in Sri Lanka.

I am living in fear and could not sleep the whole night as all the men from my family have gone out to protect us and we are left in the home, Fathima Rizka, a 25-year-old from Kandy, told Al Jazeera.

The police are not protecting us. They are just standing by while more attacks are being carried out  We dont know what will happen next.

On Thursday, the streets of most towns in Kandy were empty, except for police and soldiers. The violence and heavy security presence are largely limited to Sri Lankas central hills.

Rizka said word is spreading among the Muslim community in Kandy that Buddhists are planning attacks in the area during Friday prayers.





Special arrangements are being made by the community to ensure that there are men who will pray at a different time to ensure that women and children are not left vulnerably alone in their homes, she said.

Enabling the mobs?

The latest communal violence began on Sunday, when a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority was beaten to death by Muslim men over a traffic accident, in Teledeniya town in Kandy.

The following day, hundreds of Sinhala Buddhists converged on the district and attacked dozens of Muslim businesses, houses and mosques. Many establishments were set ablaze.

Since the violence erupted, there have been repeated allegations that security forces have failed to arrest the perpetrators of attacks.

The government is saying that they will do more to crack down against the mobs, but the truth on the ground is that Muslims do not feel protected. We feel that there is someone involved in a high position who is enabling the mobs to get away with the crimes against our community, said Mohamed, 58, who asked that his surname not be published for security reasons.

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The husband and father of two told Al Jazeera that Muslim residents are taking security matters into their own hands.

We cannot let our wives, mothers and sisters cry in fear, watching our livelihoods burn before our eyes while those in authority refuse to sincerely help us, he said.

We have to take matters into our own hands by standing outside our properties and in our towns to ensure the safety of our families, because the police are simply not keeping law and order intact.

Al Jazeera attempted to contact Kandys police Inspector-General Pujith Jayasundra for comment, but a person answering the phone at his office said he was unavailable for comment on the accusations, and to call back on Friday.

Few extremists

Ashar Careem, 36, from Kattunkudy town, said the Buddhist community at large is not to blame for the attacks.

The majority of the Sinhalese community are peace-loving and kind-hearted, except these few extremists and politicians, he said.

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Muslims generally have been restrained over the years through all the violence and destruction posed against us. Police and the successive governments had more than enough time to crack down on these racist elements and they have had ample evidence, but nothing has been done so far while our lives go up in smoke.

It is the sheer incompetence of the authorities and I hold them responsible for the situation today. Our love for this country and patriotism is not second to anyone elses, said Careem.

The government has suspended internet services in the area and blocked access to Facebook and other social media  including WhatsApp and Viber  in an attempt to halt organisers from planning more violence and spreading false rumours.

Religious violence is not new to the South Asian island nation of 21 million people. An anti-Muslim campaign was launched by hardline Buddhists following deadly riots in Aluthgama in June 2014.

President Maithripala Siresena had vowed to investigate anti-Muslim crimes after assuming power in 2015, but no significant progress has been reported so far.
Staff of closed embassies in Qatar in limbo after Gulf crisis

Some workers at foreign embassies in Qatar say they have been abandoned because of the nine-month blockade by neighbouring countries, including Saudi Arabia. Some staff have not been able to work since embassies were closed and diplomats sent home.
Iran will not ask for permission from Washington to be active in the Middle East, Ayatollah Khamenei says.

Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, days after Frances visiting foreign minister raised Tehrans role in regional conflicts.

European countries come [to Tehran] and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It is none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here? Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website on Thursday.

Khamenei, a Shia cleric who is Irans ultimate authority on all major matters of state, said the Islamic Republic would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.

Irans Revolutionary Guards have sent weapons and thousands of soldiers to Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad in the countrys seven-year civil war.

Khamenei described the presence of US military forces in various regions of the world as malicious and seditious, and said Iran would not ask for permission from Washington to be active in the Middle East.

We will negotiate with America when we want to be present in America, he said.





Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed Irans military activities in the region with Trump in Washington this week.

Iran has also been aiding the Shia-led government of Iraq in its fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Iranian Defence Minister Amir Hatami was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency that Tehran was also ready to offer military advisory and security help to Afghanistan in that countrys fight against terrorism  an allusion to ISIL and Taliban fighters.

President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that Irans military might posed no threat to any country in the region.

Our weapons are meant to promote peace, strengthen stability and security, and to prevent others from invading our country. No one should be concerned about Irans weapons and missiles, Rouhani said.
Taiwan lantern festival blends tradition and technology

Six Asian cities are displaying their creations at this years sky lantern festival in the district of Pingxi, near Taipei, in Taiwan. The event attracts millions of visitors from around the world.
US drone attacks in Iraq and Syria shot up 50 percent while civilian deaths rose 215 percent from 2016 to 2017.

A group of nongovernmental organisations called on the Trump administration to clarify its policy on drone use, saying they are concerned about reported changes to US rules and a lack of transparency in the decision-making process.

We are deeply concerned that the reported new policy, combined with this administrations reported dramatic increase in lethal operations in Yemen and Somalia, will add to an increase in unlawful killings and in civilian casualties, a joint statement said.

The organisations include Amnesty International, the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU and others.

President Donald Trump signed the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act in December. The act funds the US military but also requires Trump to make known to Congress any changes to previous drone policies by March 12.

The statement detailed alleged changes in policy, which are reported to have been made to Obama-era guidelines but have not been confirmed by the current government.

The Trump administration, embroiled in scandals and resignations, has not signalled it will make changes to drone policy known.





Concerning relaxations

The reported changes include a relaxing of the imminent threat requirement, which means the US may select targets outside of armed conflict, the standard of requiring near certainty that the target is present, and an increased role for the CIA.

Daniel Mahanty, director of the US programme for the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told Al Jazeera these changes, and the fact that the administration refuses to make them public, should concern Americans and the many countries upon which the US depends for cooperation and support.

Furthermore, the relaxations increase the risk that more civilians will lose their lives or livelihoods with very little recourse to pursue any meaningful remedy, Mahanty said.

According to Airwars  a watchdog group that tracks airpower-dominated international military actions  there was a nearly 50 percent increase in drone attacks in Iraq and Syria, while civilian deaths rose roughly 215 percent from 2016 to 2017.

In Somalia, where American drones are active, the US killed more than 200 people in 2017, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The US latest drone attack took place in Yemen on Tuesday. The attack killed four people said to be linked to al-Qaeda in Hadramout province, Chinas Xinhua news agency reported.

Targeting Yemen

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Yemen has been the epicentre for US drone raids since the Obama administration. Trump has continued that policy, rights group say.



Last year alone, President Trump carried out more than three times as many strikes in Yemen as Obama, and authorised two raids that killed almost a dozen children and a Navy SEAL, Jennifer Gibson, head of the assassinations programme at Reprieve  one of the signatories of the joint statement, told Al Jazeera.

While watchdog groups try to keep track of drone attacks, it is often difficult to confirm circumstances or death tolls in war-torn areas.

US armed forces and intelligence services have been accused of hiding details and doctoring numbers to make drone attacks appear more accurate.

Former CIA director John Brennan said in June 2011 there hasnt been a single collateral death in Pakistan for more than a year. The claim was widely disputed.

Drone policy, including who and where the president can kill, should not remain hidden in the shadows, said Gibson.
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine has launched an investigation into claims surrounding an alleged multi-million dollar lobbying contract that names one of US President Donald Trumps most influential fundraisers, Elliott Broidy.

The 12-page document, which appears to have been signed by Broidy, outlines his role as providing political advocacy on behalf of a now sanctioned Russian bank, VTB.

The deal was apparently dated June 12, 2014, just weeks before VTB Bank was blacklisted by the United States and European Union as a key Kremlin asset following Russias invasion of Crimea. Russian President Vladimir Putin is guest of honour at VTB Banks investor conference every year.





The document raises serious questions about whether Broidy is in breach of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that has gained prominence following the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller into foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his aide Rick Gates have both been charged as a result of their work in Ukraine.

The document, obtained by Al Jazeeras Investigative Unit, also suggests that Broidy, a national deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, would provide the same services to Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU), a Ukraine brokerage that has acted as financial advisors to President Petro Poroshenko.

If this is a bonafide document, it is very troubling, says the Washington-based organisation Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Broidy appears to be an unregistered agent of a foreign principal in violation of federal law, says spokesman Jordan Libowitz.

The document obtained by Al Jazeera raises serious questions about whether Broidy is in breach of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act [Al Jazeera]

US law requires American citizens involved in lobbying on behalf of foreign governments or parties to register with the US Department of Justice on their Foreign Registered Agents (FARA) database. Al Jazeera found no evidence that Broidy is registered despite mounting evidence of multiple foreign clients.

Details of the alleged consultancy first emerged in Ukraine in January. The files were handed to Ukraines Prosecutor General, who has ordered the Kiev Prosecutors office to investigate further.

Ukraines Institute of Law and Society submitted the documents to authorities, and the reform group is now calling for a thorough investigation in both Ukraine and the US.

The document outlines the work to be undertaken by Broidy, which includes regular political and business analysis, political advocacy, investment advice, and money management to VTB Bank and ICU.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a regular guest of honour at the annual investor conference of VTB Bank, whose chairman is Yuri Soloviev [File: EPA]

The consultancy work was apparently to be paid in five annual payments of $2.5m from an offshore company, Quillas Equities SA, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands, but with an address in Dubai. According to the Panama Papers, a massive leak of offshore documentation, Quillas Equities SAs shareholder is Yuri Soloviev, first deputy president and chairman of VTB Bank Management Board.

The document names Broidy as a consultant who has many years of investment banking and money management experience. It goes on to detail his expertise in international investments and American politics.

The alleged agreement outlines Broidys background in Republican politics, describing how he served as Finance Chair of the Republican Party and has access to US politicians and government agencies.

The business and lobbying activities of this prominent Republican are coming under increasing scrutiny beyond Ukraine.





Last week a group calling itself LA Confidential leaked emails that appeared to show Broidy and his wife Robin Rosenzweig, deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee, asking for more than $75m to quash an investigation in the US into a multibillion-dollar fraud in Malaysia.

Further revelations came from The New York Times, which reported that Broidy has a lucrative defence contract with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and that he had lobbied President Trump to meet privately with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the leader of the UAE. The emails suggest he has direct access to the US President.

Romanian media have also reported Broidys role in negotiating arms deals worth potentially millions of dollars.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty in New York to bribing New York state pension officials with almost $1m in return for their $250m investment in an Israel-focused investment fund he helped to manage.

He and the firm paid over $30m in fines; however, the charges against Broidy were downgraded, and he avoided jail.

Now, Broidy claims he is the victim of a hack and smear campaign orchestrated by the state of Qatar in response to his criticism of the Gulf states record against terrorism, a charge that Qatar denies.

Amid long-standing regional rivalries, the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, has imposed a nine-month-long siege on Qatar. Broidy has close financial ties to the UAE and its royal family.

Broidy is tipped to be a key part of President Trumps re-election campaign team in 2020 [Reuters]

Broidys wider links with the Middle East are now reportedly of interest in the FBIs far-reaching probe into foreign influence in US politics, which are mostly focused on Paul Manafort. Breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act form a key part of this investigation.

Confidential MOU

A second document appears to expose further connections with the UAE. It outlines a plan for ICU and an Abu Dhabi based company to invest $40m into a fund to be managed by Broidy. The same group also handed what is described as a Confidential Memorandum of Understanding to prosecutors in Ukraine.

The Abu Dhabi firm and ICU apparently agreed to provide 80 percent of the investment, including an initial $3.5m payment.

It is unclear as to what the $40m was to be used for. This alleged MOU states that the deal was effective from December 2014, but omits specific details on how the money would be invested. It is also not clear if it was ever completed as the paperwork is unsigned.

This alleged MOU states that the deal was effective from December 2014, but omits specific details on how the money would be invested [Al Jazeera]

Broidy owns a security company, which is run by former US military personnel and provides services to governments in the Middle East. Its services include conducting specialised operations, infrastructure protection and training.

Broidy, a Los Angeles-based financier and seasoned political operator, has raised millions of dollars in donations for the Republican Party. He is tipped to be a key part of Trumps campaign team for 2020.

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In a response to these claims, ICU denies that the company, or its affiliates, has had any relationship with Broidy or his company and describes the contracts as being part of an elaborate forgery.

We believe they are part of a malicious fraud against us, they told Al Jazeera in a statement.

VTB Bank also denied dealing with the Republican Party fundraiser. Yuri Soloviev is not acquainted with Elliott Broidy and has never had any business dealings with him.

Al Jazeera also approached Broidy for comment during the preparation of this article. However, no response was received.

https://twitter.com/Elliott_Broidy/status/971843842285568000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Al Jazeera obtained the documents as part of a one-year investigation into corruption involving Eastern European oligarchs, which also revealed a massive off-shore corruption network linked to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/DC-search-document-4403331-document-4403338-document-4404667-document-4403334-document-4403333-document-4404887-document-4404888-document-4404890.html

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/DC-search-document-4403331-document-4403338-document-4404667-document-4403334-document-4403333-document-4404887-document-4404888-document-4404890.html
State news agency says government forces backed by Syrian rebels now in control of Jandaris in northern Syria.

Turkish forces and allied Syrian rebels are now in control of Jandaris, a town in Afrin district of northern Syria, the state-run Anadolu news agency says.

Turkeys military alongside Free Syrian Army allies have seized control of the second most populated town in the district from Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) fighters after capturing a hill overlooking the town a day earlier, it said on Thursday.

Jandaris is about 20km away from central Afrin, the last major YPG outpost.

The entire city of Jandaris was liberated from the secessionist gangs. The fight will continue until the whole of Afrin is cleared of them, an FSA commander who goes by the name of Abu Saleh said.





Speaking in Vienna, Mevlut Cavusoglus, Turkeys foreign minister, said the military operation in Syria against the Syrian Kurdish group should end by May.

Al Jazeeras Allan Fisher, reporting from the Turkish-Syrian border, said fighting could still be under way in Jandaris.

Despite the bravado, they may not have complete control yet. Sporadic fighting is reported to be continuing in the town, he said.

The battle for Afrin may not be as quick or straightforward. The Kurds are moving 1,700 fighters across the country away from the battle against ISIL on to the front lines of the coming assault.

Turkey has rejected international calls for it to suspend the Afrin assault in line with a UN ceasefire for Syria, which does not apply to ISIL, al-Qaeda and groups associated with it, or others deemed terrorists by the UN Security Council.

Turkey considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launched a decades-old fight against Ankaras rule.

YPG has been an important ally to the United States in the fight against ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS).
Israeli undercover forces arrested Omar Kiswani, president of student union at Birzeit University, for second time.

A previous version of this article stated that since 2014, more than ten student council representatives have been arrested by Israeli forces. This is incorrect. The ten arrests were made since 2004.

Israeli forces have arrested Omar Kiswani, president of the student council at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

Online video footage showed six men dressed in civilian clothing pinning Kiswani to the ground, kicking and beating him while a few of them fired gunshots on campus.

According to Birzeit University, the group attacked Kiswani, 24, in front of the student council building.

Another armed Israeli unit had detained the universitys guards in a room and proceeded to use their firearms against the students while providing cover for the kidnapping operation.

They were carrying guns inside their bags, they disguised as students and started shooting in broad daylight, said Sondos Hamad, coordinator of the Right to Education campaign.

Education under apartheid. Earlier today, undercover Israeli occupation forces infiltrated Birzeit University campus, near Ramallah in the West Bank, and brutally arrested student council head Omar Kiswani.https://t.co/chkTNe17wR pic.twitter.com/scYBlSd4nb  Ben White (@benabyad) March 7, 2018

They took him to the western gate of the university where Israeli military forces were waiting for him with their jeeps. We dont know where he is now.

An Israeli spokesperson did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

The abduction of Kiswani by Israeli occupation forces has been strongly condemned by @BirzeitUniv, who "call upon the academic community to support human rights and protest against these aggressions". https://t.co/chkTNe17wR pic.twitter.com/ko4s4J5ObG  Ben White (@benabyad) March 7, 2018

This is the second time Kiswani has been arrested. Previously, he spent a year in an Israeli jail due to his participation in a Hamas-affiliated group on campus.

According to the Right to Education campaign, arrests of Palestinian students on campus in the occupied West Bank are common.

We believe his arrest has to do with his status as student president, Hamad said. They tried to arrest him last week as well but he ran away, he added.

Hamad explained that a similar scenario occurred at the beginning of 2017 when two students were arrested at the campus gate by Israeli soldiers disguised as civilians.

{articleGUID}

There are currently more than 60 students from Birzeit University imprisoned in Israeli jails.

Since 2004, more than ten student council representatives have been arrested by Israeli forces, out of which seven were presidents of the student union at the time of arrest.

Since US President Donald Trumps Jerusalem declaration, Birzeit University has noted an increase in student arrests.

Students at Birzeit University told Al Jazeera that affiliation with any political bloc, whether it is Fatah or Hamas, is prohibited by Israeli military orders.

Birzeit is like any university in the world. Students are given space to express themselves and they have the right to belong to any political bloc but unfortunately, the Israeli occupation always violates our right to education and freedom of expression, Hamad said.
Japan mulls extending cash handout to all households to cushion economic fallout and ministers in New Zealand will take 20 percent pay cut for next six months.
The sudden departure of Ms. Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, was indeed a disappointment. It's not that Hicks, who has been close to Trump since her days at the president's real estate company, close enough that she earned the nickname "the Trump whisperer," had any talent for political communication. She was one of the few constants in Trump's inner circle, a non-ideological assistant to a president who doesn't need any help making his thoughts known.

He who indulges hope will always be disappointed. So said Dr. Johnson in one of his many apothegms.

Hope's departure leaves yet another hole to fill in a White House slowly hemorrhaging talent. Trump seems dissatisfied with every major player around him: he constantly rails on Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the press; national security adviser H.R. McMaster is rumored to be on his way out; Chief of Staff John Kelly is engaged in a quiet war with the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump; and secretary of state Rex Tillerson is none too liked within the Oval Office.

The loss of Hope does present an opportunity. If you're like me, you've grown tired of the amateur hour antics spilling out of the West Wing onto Pennsylvania Avenue. You're tired of the media greedily grasping onto any morsel of gossip to report, framing the Trump administration as one big backstabbing drama. You want a return to order, to normalcy. And, above all, you want a modicum of professionalism.

Trump should hire a cool, calm, and competent communications director. But at this point, it's clear that such a thing isn't coming. Trump is Trump. He's always going to be Trump. At 71 years, his habits are more established than a glacier-carved moraine in the Midwest. The tweets, the gaffes, the misstatements, the policy reversals  they're now par for the course.

But if order is irreparable, perhaps something productive could still be gained. For all his expertise in constructing beautiful buildings, Trump is a wrecking ball. His blunt-force style is useful for tearing things down. And what better to demolish than the president's number-one enemy?

I talk of the media and their crazed crusade to chase Trump out of office. For too long, the White House communications office has played too nice with its main foil: the media. It's been the school nerd, endlessly pounded into the schoolyard pavement by a bunch of know-nothing bullies with a sense of importance so inflated, it would make the Goodyear blimp shrivel up in embarrassment.

There's no need for this pusillanimity. The D.C. press corps is the most despicable group of preening, self-obsessed, pharisaical nitwits ever not to sit in the jury box during a Salem witch trial. Puritanical in demeanor, hypocritical in nature, dense in understanding, these malevolent scribblers are an offense to everything good and true in this world. They deserve to be treated as the rotten souls they are.

Granted, some journalists remain fair-minded  Jake Tapper and Maggie Haberman come to mind. But most are more focused on blasting off pithy takes on Twitter than doing any actual hard-nosed reporting.

Here are a few suggestions for how the next White House communications director should deal with the press.

First things first: end the dreaded White House press briefing. This exercise in administrative masochism accomplishes nothing. It only provides a forum for grandstanding, where blackguards like CNN's Jim Acosta try to run up the "gotcha" score in the name of civic duty. The briefings are cheap theater, where exchanges are all tilted toward creating viral social media clips. Deny glamour-seeking journalists their daily pageant of jackassery and restore some dignity to the White House.

Second, turn Twitter's verification system into a banishment list. Cease all individual communication with anyone bearing a blue check mark next to his Twitter handle. And for Heaven's sake, stop responding to press inquiries over the platform. Journalists have a home field advantage on Twitter  except, that is, when they take on Trump himself.

And lastly, why not write an order to lock one or two muckrakers up from time to time? Trump would gleefully sign it. Jailing journalists is a fine American tradition. All the great presidents have done it, from Adams to Lincoln to Wilson. Certainly an example could be set by throwing the next journo who publishes Democrat-provided classified information behind bars.

The last proposal is meant in Swiftian jest. The free press remains one of our best institutions. But the rabid hatred many members of the press have for Trump is nonpareil. "I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I've known about," former president Jimmy Carter recently told the New York Times.

When the soft-spoken Carter is defending Trump, you know something's wrong. The media's penchant for publishing false, unsubstantiated stories has gotten out of hand. The eagerness with which professional reporters breathlessly praise the poise of a murderous dictator's sister over their very own vice president reveals a deep animus toward the current administration.

Hicks was too kind to a press that's more than eager to sacrifice the duly elected leader of the country on the altar of online page views. The one-sided arrangement can't sustain itself. The media's credibility is slowly burning out, along with our shared set of common truths we use to make sense of things.

Enough with hopeful niceties  we need reprisal and ridicule in large amounts. Overly anxious journalists are begging for a swift kick in the pants. The next White House communications director should be able to give it to them, good and hard.
What else recently has become much the same  a caricature and a joke due to constant melodrama? How about the news media?

The dark and stormy night is one of those classic Victorian opening lines to the next great melodramatic novel. It's become a caricature and a joke  appropriately, based on its overly dramatic style.

Stormy Daniels, who, I am quite certain, has enjoyed many dark and stormy nights, is an American porn actress. She is quite celebrated in her world, having won such awards as "Contract Babe of the Year"; "Favorite Breasts," which she won three times; and "Crossover Star of the Year."

Perhaps her most noteworthy recognition is a nomination for Best Safe Sex Scene in a movie. I'm not sure if she ever sat on Harvey Weinstein's casting couch or is part of the #MeToo movement.

She is not a Russian hooker, as she was born in Baton Rouge. She said of her childhood that she "came from an average, lower-income household[.] ... [T]here were days without electricity."

Stormy's real name is Stephanie Clifford. And despite not having ties to Russia or Putin, she is the latest shiny object being breathlessly chased by the media. No Russian collusion, but instead an alleged affair with Donald Trump.

She is not a young White House intern, but instead a porn actress who claims to have had an affair with then-citizen Donald Trump back in 2006. Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Stormy $130,000 in October 2016, just a few weeks before the election.

There is no dispute that Stormy was paid. Was it to buy her silence? Or to stifle another October surprise on the heels of the Billy Bush Access Hollywood tape? In lawsuits, settlements are paid to limit future costs and exposure, without any admission of guilt. Sometimes it's just the most cost-effective path to take.

President Trump has denied the affair, as has Stormy Daniels. She wrote a letter dated January 10, 2018 denying an affair with Trump, "[s]tating with complete clarity that this is absolutely false." She wrote, "He was gracious, professional and a complete gentleman to me and EVERYONE in my presence." She concluded, "[T]he fact of the matter is these stories are not true."

The latest is that Stormy is suing President Trump in a California court, "alleging that he never actually signed a 'hush agreement' over an alleged sexual relationship between the two, making the agreement null and void."

If you want more details, turn on CNN or any of the other cable news shows, as they are breathless over this story. They just caught their breath from the weekend flurry of interviews of San Nunberg, concluding with a 45-minute nothing-fest on CNN where Nunberg was asked if he was drunk.

The dark and stormy night is a he-said, she-said story, impossible to prove one way or the other. At least NBC had audiotape of Trump's comments to Billy Bush. But that won't stop CNN.

Adhering to its standard approach for Trump news, CNN concluded, "In short, there's a lot of smoke around the Daniels-Donald relationship even if there is no proof of fire." Sounds just like the Russian collusion story, which the network pushes on a daily basis: no proof but let's keep reporting it because there is smoke around it.

The only smoke around Russian collusion is being blown by Rep. Adam Schiff and his fellow left-wing conspirators, plus a handful of NeverTrump Republicans.

What a difference a few decades makes. Everyone remembers President Bill Clinton and his sexual hijinks. The intern in the Oval Office, sexual harassment, rape, perjury, and impeachment. Remember how those were all "personal matters" that didn't affect his ability to function as president? "It's only sex. Everyone does it." And the entire affair was, according to the enabling wife, "a vast right-wing conspiracy."

The media are giddy. CNN insists, "Stormy Daniels deserves fairer treatment." Do they mean like Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Wiley? ABC News declares, "Trump 'absolutely knew' about money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels: Lawyer." Just like how Mrs. Clinton absolutely did not know about emails or anything else, according to James Comey and her other butt boys.

Newsweek quotes Daniels's attorney, who, of course, "stated that his client had a sexual relationship with President Donald Trump." Her attorney surprisingly is not Gloria Allred. How ironic that another Newsweek journalist, Nina Burleigh, years ago said about Bill Clinton, "I'd be happy to give him [an oral sexual act] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal."

Let the media bark and bray, just as they did after the Access Hollywood tapes. The result was that Donald Trump got elected, easily. Perhaps Americans are tired of October surprises, even when they occur in March.

Will the Stormy Daniels story amount to anything? Doubtful. We have been treated to nonstop stories of Trump-Russian collusion with absolutely nothing to show for them after a year and a half. Since Trump was elected, media coverage has been overwhelmingly negative  91 percent, to be exact  and it continues to this day.

Ratings are down, and viewers are tuning out, not listening to or reading mainstream news. Another Trump story? So what? Every day, it's another smoking gun, from a drunken campaign aide to a porn starlet seeking her moment of fame, all in the span of a few days. The little boy is crying wolf again. Ho hum.

Just as starting a novel with "it was a dark and stormy night" means the rest of the story will be a dud, pushing another Stormy on Americans will be as big a flop as all the rest of CNN's breaking news.

Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Democrats never blame their policies and taxes for economic problems, therefore we get articles like this from Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post , blaming robots for the loss of manufacturing jobs and essentially saying a president or Congress can do nothing to bring them back.

Mr. President, if you're looking for someone to demonize for killing blue-collar jobs in your favorite industries, don't blame China and "bad trade deals."

Blame the robots.

Barack Obama stammered his way through this YouTube video, saying manufacturing jobs aren't going to come back. Obama had a history of blaming others for his slow economy. In 2011, he blamed kiosks and ATMs. What an economic genius. No wonder we had slow economic growth.

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

I wonder how Obama, Rampell, and others explain how manufacturing jobs are coming back. Facts really haven't mattered for a long time.

And the United States has added 138,000 manufacturing jobs so far this year, far better than the 34,000 factory jobs lost over the same period last year. Last year's losses reinforced President Trump's portrayal of manufacturing in a long decline.

There have been a lot of garbage forecasts over the years by government, scientists, businessmen, economists, the media, and politicians that make excuses for economic problems. One of the recurring "fake news" stories over the last 100 years has been that we are running out of oil. (In fact, oil production is still growing, with new sources found all the time.) When there is an agenda that fossil fuels are a problem, a lot of stuff is just made up. The National Enquirer is more accurate.

This article summarizes the made up predictions well. It is titled "We've Been Incorrectly Predicting Peak Oil for Over a Century":

In 1909, we were going to run out in 25-30 years.

In 1919, Oil and Gas News said there were two to five years until maximum production.

In 1937, the director of the naval and production petroleum reserves said oil would be gone in 15 years.

In 1943, the Oil and Gas Journal said peak oil had been reached.

In 1956, a Shell Oil spokesman said there were 10-15 years before we hit peak oil.

In 1972, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said U.S. oil would be gone in twenty years.

In 1977, the U.S. Department of Energy said oil would peak in the early 1990s.

In 1996, a Nobel laureate in chemistry said we would hit peak oil by 2020.

In 2002, a group of petroleum specialists said we would hit peak oil by 2010.

These inaccurate, made up predictions remind me of all the made up, inaccurate predictions on global warming or climate change. When there is an agenda, facts take a back seat.

An expert on oil at Goldman Sachs predicted in 2008 that oil would hit $200 per barrel.

Arjun N. Murti remembers the pain of the oil shocks of the 1970s. But he is bracing for something far worse now: He foresees a "super spike"  a price surge that will soon drive crude oil to $200 a barrel.

I can think of many reasons why Americans jobs are destroyed or moved and robots and automation are not at the top of the list. Here are several I can think of:

If you want to bankrupt coal companies, make their jobs disappear, and make utility prices increase to support the agenda for alternative fuels, you have the EPA write rules and regulations based on inaccurate, manipulated computer models.

If you want to destroy fossil fuel jobs and make energy prices rise, you block drilling and pipeline projects, not based on environmental studies, but because you have an agenda.

If you want to destroy for-profit universities and their jobs, you make different rules and regulations for them from what you have for not-for-profit and government universities.

If you want to get to a single-payer government health system, you write a law with massive regulations, mandates, and taxes, which destroys competition, raises prices, and takes away the ability to make a profit.

If you want to destroy small banks, you create a new bureaucracy, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), with almost unlimited ability to create new compliance regulations.

If you want fewer government projects, higher costs, and fewer jobs, you keep in place punitive prevailing wage laws.

As for automation: In the 1800s, around half of Americans worked on farms. We are much better off with fossil fuel machinery. That did not destroy American jobs. It created new American jobs.

Mass production lines have been around for approximately 100 years, and that did not destroy manufacturing jobs in America. It created new ones.

Computers have been around for approximately 80 years, and I believe that Silicon Valley is creating lots of jobs.

America has had an increasing trade deficit since 1974. It is now over $600 billion per year. The trade deficit reduces economic growth, and previous presidents have done little to make sure other countries don't dump. Trump obviously likes trading with other countries because we are exporting oil and natural gas, which ticks off the Russians. (Isn't that what the media and other Democrats want?)

If Trump penalizes only China, China will trans-ship through other countries, and it won't solve the problem.

The obvious way to make the U.S economy grow faster is through fewer regulations, lower taxes, and bilateral trade agreements we can analyze instead of big ones that make politicians feel good.

Thank goodness we now have a president who understands economics and surrounds himself with people with business experience, instead of a president who surrounds himself with people who just wanted to make the government bigger. The U.S. became the greatest economic powerhouse in the world because of capitalism and economic freedom, not because of high taxes and regulations.
"Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men," Farrakhan said in his keynote speech.

The narrative that the left has created about President Trump being a racist and the GOP as the home of David Duke can be flipped on its head and used to great electoral advantage, if only Republicans will take full advantage of the opportunity presented by revelations concerning deep ties of key Democrat officials with Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan's open and proud hatred of Jews was once again on display two weeks ago, when he delivered his " Saviours' Day " address, condemning "Satanic Jews" (again).

"White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I'm here to say your time is up, your world is through," Farrakhan said towards the end of his speech.

The Democrats have been in bed with Farrakhan for years. Barack Obama secretly met with him in 2004, and with the aid of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), he kept that secret from the public until after his presidency was over.

No fewer than seven members of the CBC have ties with the hate-monger:

California Reps. Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks and Texas Rep. Al Green have all attended meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress, according to photos, videos and witness accounts of the meetings reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. ... Davis has a personal relationship with Farrakhan and is unbothered by Farrakhan's position on "the Jewish question," he told TheDCNF on Sunday. Davis called Farrakhan an "outstanding human being" in an interview with The Daily Caller in February and said he has regularly visited with Farrakhan. ... Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), repeatedly attended meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress, according to photos and videos reviewed by The DCNF and Farrakhan's own statements.

Ellison now is claiming  perhaps accurately  as Peter Hasson reports, that "other Democrats don't care about his ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite."

"None of my colleagues ever asked me about that, only reporters," Ellison told the Post. "I am telling you, no one cares. I've been all over Minnesota, all over Alabama, all over Missouri, all over Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and nobody ever asked me about this. People ask me about wages, about pay, about health care, about guns, about immigration. They ask me all kinds of challenging questions. But for some reason, some folks in the Fourth Estate think that this Farrakhan thing needs to be inquired about instead." In his interview with the Post, Ellison never denied meeting with Farrkahan in Congress.

Imagine if the second-in-command of the Republican Party had been caught meeting with David Duke multiple times, after claiming no ties, and then went on to say that Republicans don't care about such meetings. Can anyone doubt that CNN would put aside the MSM obsession with Russia and denounce the GOP as openly racist and demand the official's firing? The media would be joined by many Republicans, who want nothing to do with racists. It is, in fact, unthinkable that such ties would ever be tolerated in the first place.

The Republican Jewish Committee has already demanded the resignations of the Farrakhan Seven. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune:

[I]f you're of the left, and happen to be a Democratic Party politician, you can get away with making excuses for notorious anti-Semite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. And when those excuses are made, the left is largely silent.

Even New York Magazine asks why it's so hard to condemn Farrakhan's anti-Semitism.

I would love it if President Trump would turn his Twitter account toward asking why the Democrats tolerate ties to Farrakhan in the party leadership and congressional delegation. And with the midterms approaching, how about ads telling voters that if they vote Democrat, they could hand power to supporters of Farrakhan and those who see nothing wrong with him? There is video of Farrakhan's hateful rhetoric, and there's that picture of Obama smiling next to Farrakhan. It is well past time to brand Democrats as the party of hate.

Almost certainly, the Democratic Party as a whole is loath to antagonize the CBC by demanding the severing of ties, much less resignations. The party wants a gigantic black turnout. But Democrats should be made to pay a price with the majority of Americans, who find Farrakhan's bigotry unacceptable.
Or something like that. Going against all precedent to see a crime where there never was one, the special counsel is now pursuing the potential back channels Trump administration officials set up with the Russians in Seychelles shortly before he took office.

According to a Washington Post report:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin  apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter. In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations. A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

This is an old story, by the way, first reported 11 months ago, in 2017.

According to an ABC News report last year, back channels are something every president has done since the nation's founding, with some rather spectacular examples dating from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt onward. Those examples include then-president-elect Obama. ABC reports:

In March 2013, the Obama administration opened up a back channel with Iran, and subsequently held several secret meetings. When the Iran Nuclear [sic] deal was brokered, Obama said the back-channel conversations were instrumental in negotiating the deal, according to the Associated Press. Obama also approved secret negotiations with Iran in 2014 that were used to negotiate for the freedom of Americans held captive there.

Obama also set up back-channels with the Taliban, back channels with the North Koreans, and back channels with the Castroite Cubans. He was a man of many back channels. His hot-mic advice to Russian then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2012 that he'd have "more flexibility" after his re-election was also a back channel. And according to this report noted in the Daily Caller, he set up another back channel to the Russians over the Russian electoral hacking allegations. Seems to be a lot of back-channeling in the presidency of President Obama, something that doesn't get much attention as the left screams about the Trump minions' Seychelles encounter.

So back channels are nothing new; they're just problematic when President Trump does them, and Democrats want to prove that he conspired with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Yeah, sure.

Mueller does seem to have Blackwater founder Erik Prince in a bind, because Prince apparently told Congress some other story  a stupid move on his part, given that it's not a bad thing to be setting up a back channel. So even if Prince did, he should have just laid it out and been done with it.

Mueller's pursuing this strange line of investigation is questionable, given that pretty much every other president has done it. Does he really mean to say that all presidents can do it except for President Trump? Is that the rule he is setting up? Because if it is, it's stupid, too, and well outside his mandate, because it proves no collusion.

What we are seeing here is more grasping at straws, a phenomenon first noted by Mike Allen of Axios. Now Mueller is going to get another scalp over the lying issue instead of something of real substance pertaining to his mandate to investigate Trump's supposed collusion with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Is he turning anything up on this matter? Not a bit.

Finding nothing is wearying, of course. This line of inquiry is so content-less that one wonders if Mueller's investigators just wanted some vacay on the public dime in Seychelles.

Such a barren, fruitless investigation he's led. Must be tough to be Bob Mueller, the man who finds nothing.
"We need the voices of all women," she said in her remarks .

Nancy Pelosi donated the oversized gavel she used during her brief tenure as speaker of the House. The gavel has no special significance other than the fact that the hand that wielded it belonged to a female body rather than a male one.

Even conservative ones? I think Nancy would rather hear the voice of men disguised as women than women disguised as liberals.

"We need their courage and their strength because when women succeed, America succeeds."

Does America also succeed when men succeed, or only when women succeed? Have we ever in modern history had an America where men succeeded but not women, or vice versa?

"For our daughters and our granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling," she said at the time.

Are women now more able to become speaker of the House because Nancy Pelosi did? Or are they less able to because her speakership was viewed as brief and marked by failure, and she's currently about as popular as a bout of polio in a maternity ward?

Pelosi, 77, served four years as speaker, relinquishing the post after Republicans captured the House majority in the 2010 elections.

...and has been in the minority ever since then. Does Nancy take any responsibility for that?

It's funny, because even though Nancy is allegedly a role model for women and girls, so many of her own colleagues want her to GET OUT, to GET OUT NOW, and to LEAVE OFFICE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Does that further endear her as a role model for women and girls?

I wonder if the exhibit will feature quotes such as these from her fellow Democrats:

"I think you'd have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top," said Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas)[.] "It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team," said Rep. Kathleen Rice. Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, perhaps the most vocal anti-Pelosi Democrat, said last week that "we as Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that we lost again," before calling for "a new generation of leadership."

Given all the free time Nancy has now and the fact that the Smithsonian likes to collect historical artifacts, it's amazing that Nancy has not yet volunteered to be a part-time exhibit at the National Museum of American History. All she has to do is stand perfectly still, and everyone will think she's part of the exhibit.

Exit question: Will we ever see the day when a woman is lauded for her achievements alone, rather than the fact that she is a woman who has allegedly achieved something of value?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.
Obamacare's latest 21,904 dead bodies

Remember how President Obama, back when he was selling Obamacare to the public, oleaginously assured that his plan would expand health care access to the millions? And how he pooh-poohed the Republican claim that such socialized medicine would result in long waiting lines, same as those seen in every other socialized-medicine country? Turns out the waiting lists are there, and it's the sickest people  those who require home care or institutionalization  who are waiting longest. In fact, according to a new report from the Foundation for Government Accountability, at least 21,904 have died, waiting in line, victims of Obama's Medicaid expansion, which prioritized quantities of people on the rolls over a neediest-first policy. According to Pajamas Media's Tyler O'Neil:

At least 21,000 needy people have died while waiting for Medicaid coverage, while 13 million able-bodied adults received coverage from Medicaid in the states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, an explosive new study revealed Tuesday. At least 247,295 people are currently on waiting lists to enroll in Medicaid. The study, published by the Foundation for Government Accountability, revealed that when Obamacare enabled states to vastly expand Medicaid, it resulted in mismanagement, depriving the most needy and rewarding the able-bodied. Central planning has always been about getting big numbers  quantity over quality. It was that way in the Soviet Union, with its emphasis on production for "the masses," and it's that way with Obamacare. That there is anyone still waiting for care on these lists  and the report describes these people as ones with traumatic brain injuries, spinal injuries, severe intellectual disabilities, and mental illness  is scandalous. Those are the ones the full political spectrum supports care for. There is always room in a free-market system for help for people who cannot help themselves. That the Big State and the Obama programs that created it are falling down on the job in this matter highlights the lack of political muscle these truly powerless people have. The report is vague on who's able-bodied, given that able-bodied people can still get heart problems or cancer. But there's no excuse for abandoning the helpless with no political lobbies. Republicans should make an issue of this mismanagement of priorities  and use these figures as one more nail in the coffin to end the nightmare of Obamacare and all its Medicaid add-ons as soon as possible.
The district will pony up $60,000 to pay an independent consulting firm, Collaborative Educational Network, to pore over Cruz's school records and determine what went wrong.

Rather than give a transparent, honest, and public account of how Nikolas Cruz was able to avoid the juvenile justice system as his behavior became increasingly volatile, Superintendent Robert Runcie has recommended a comprehensive investigation of Cruz's educational background, to be completed by June 2018.

On its website, the Tallahassee-based Collaborative Educational Network, in partnership with Evergreen Solutions, lists Broward County as one of its former clients.

In 2014, the company was hired to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the county's special education services after its Exceptional Student Education (ESE) Advisory Council criticized the department's executive director.

According to an October 2014 news story, Collaborative's completed evaluation showed 110 areas of weakness in the county's program for special needs students.

Specifically, the report found that the special ed student-to-teacher ratio was much higher in Broward than in nearby counties. Investigators also discovered unspent millions of dollars earmarked for specialists and technicians and, most importantly, cited inadequately trained teachers as a contributing factor in the department's subpar review.

Around the same time the Collaborative-Evergreen firm issued its indictment of Broward's special education services, Nikolas Cruz was removed from Westglades Middle School for violent outbursts and was subsequently placed in a special school for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children.

In January 2016, in 10th grade, he was sent to his home district's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where he was eventually removed again in February 2017 for an assault. Soon after his removal from Stoneman Douglas, he bought an AR-15, passing a background check that showed no arrest record. Throughout 2017, Cruz attended Broward County's alternative public schools until the mass shooting on February 14 of the following year.

Runcie's decision to hire Collaborative, a firm familiar with Broward's special education services and their failures, suggests that the ESE department, with its history of poor performance, will be held at least partially responsible for allowing Cruz to slip through the cracks.

The scapegoating has already begun.

In a March 6 Sun-Sentinel article, school personnel stated that Cruz's "Individual Education Plan (IEP) was drafted by a team of specialists and approved by his mother." Superintendent Runcie also weighed in on Cruz's years as a special needs student, stating that "although these plans may require lighter discipline than regular students for some infractions, school officials are expected to call police if students bring weapons to school."



Image via MSNBC.

Are they, Mr. Runcie? Or should they first consult the Broward County Collaborative Agreement signed by everyone from the state attorney to police chiefs to the sheriff to the juvenile justice judge, and on to the NAACP president and many other Florida notables?

Speaking of the agreement and the PROMISE program, Mr. Runcie is now vehemently defending the discipline guidelines designed to keep students, particularly blacks and Hispanics, from being suspended, expelled, or arrested.

With the help of his loyal herd of left-wing reporters at the Miami New Times, Superintendent Runcie is blaming the "obscure blog, The Conservative Treehouse"; Rush Limbaugh; Senator Marco Rubio; and Fox News for "exploiting an incident for whatever varied agendas they have."

The New Times goes on to claim that the Obama-era plan to halt the school-to-prison pipeline began with 2009 legislation introduced and signed into law by then-Republican governor Charlie Crist in order to rein in our-of-control zero-tolerance policies. In summary, the bill requires "that any disciplinary or prosecutorial action taken against a student who violates a zero tolerance policy be based on the individual student and the particular circumstances surrounding the student's misconduct; encouraging school districts to use alternatives to expulsion or referral to law enforcement agencies unless using such alternatives will pose a threat to school safety."

The bill's recommendation of exploring alternatives to expulsion left the door open just enough for Obama's Education Department to pervert the true intention of Crist's bill  namely, to stop what one psychologist called the "psychotic zero tolerance" school policies, where 7-year-olds get suspended for biting a Pop-Tart into a shape that looks like a gun.

Employing the carrot and stick approach, Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan, and his attorney general, Eric Holder, threatened to go after school districts not complying with federal guidelines based on the disproportionate number of minorities disciplined in the nation's schools. According to Obama's discipline reform initiative, local school districts would be required to provide alternative methods such as restorative justice, counseling, and behavioral supports to keep minority students out of the prison pipeline, or else there would be no money and possible charges of civil rights violations.

Runcie was all in with this approach. At a National Urban League conference in July 2015, Runcie stated:

We're not going to continue to arrest our kids[.] ... Once you have an arrest record, it becomes difficult to get scholarships, get a job, or go into the military.

According to his district website at the time, the agreement, with PROMISE as its foundation, was "designed to address the unique needs of students who have committed a behavioral infraction that would normally lead to a juvenile delinquency arrest and, therefore, entry into the juvenile justice system."

Runcie, partnering with the Johnny Appleseed of the "implicit bias" theory, Phillip Atiba Goff (who peddled his "everybody is racist" propaganda from police department to police department), devised a 210-page training manual for school personnel to become more aware of how racist they are.

The manual, entitled "Eliminating the School-to-Prison Pipeline," lists "assault/threat" and "fighting" among "infractions aligned with participation in the PROMISE program," and it states that the recommended consequences for such misdemeanors are a "student essay," "counseling," and "restorative justice."

Mr. Runcie's agenda-driven, racially motivated program, now in the crosshairs after the Parkland tragedy, has the superintendent in cover-up mode.

Curiously, in the New Times article, Mr. Runcie said he does not know whether school administrators reported Cruz to law enforcement.

Why not? The superintendent makes $335,000 a year and has access to records and personnel with one phone call. Runcie also stated that the PROMISE program is not at fault because Cruz was not a participant. If that is true, why not? Does the intervention service exclude and discriminate against special needs students? According to the PROMISE literature, students who have committed in-school misdemeanors including threats and assaults, are referred to PROMISE, not to the police. Certainly, Cruz qualified.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office is cited by New Times as the real culprit, not Superintendent Runcie. No doubt, their 2013 collaboration with Runcie's gung-ho, no-arrest, implicit-bias policy, in part, prevented them from doing their job. But the Times, in providing cover for Runcie, says the collaborative agreement did not tie law enforcement's hands. The N.T. writer states that the second step in dealing with the delinquent student, as noted in the collaborative agreement, is to consult law enforcement, not the sixth step, as Senator Rubio and other critics have claimed.

Close but no cigar. What critics of the agreement were referring to was page 7 of the policy outlining the seven steps a police officer must follow before making an arrest.

He must first consult the principal; next, evaluate the situation; then issue a warning; then talk to the parents or guardian; next, consider alternatives; and penultimately, in step six, after exhausting all other steps, "the officer may consider placing the student under arrest." The final step involves placing all contraband in the custody of the law enforcement personnel involved in the arrest.

While this plays out, students who want to learn are forced to share a classroom with kids who should be expelled or in jail.

In a defiant March 7 tweet, Runcie vowed to keep the dangerous discipline school policies that allowed Cruz to avoid arrest in place.

We're not going to dismantle a program that's been successful in the district because of false information that someone has put out there. we will neither manage nor lead by rumors.

We can draw two conclusions from Mr. Runcie's vehement adherence to his radical, racist practices. First, the independent review will leave him unscathed and innocent of all wrongdoing. Secondly, students in Broward County should demand that teachers, school personnel, and security officers be armed to the teeth.
By the 1990s, disaster movies had taken on a distinctly sci-fi element, such as the movie Armageddon , which highlighted the twin disasters of an asteroid striking the Earth and a plan to send Ben Affleck into space.

The 1970s were a great time for disaster movies. There was Earthquake with Charlton Heston, Towering Inferno with Steve McQueen, the Poseidon Adventure , and many more.

That's where we are today, except our science fiction is being portrayed as science fact by liberals who want to scare us with the global warming bogeyman. In their latest attempt, they have produced a map showing which parts of the San Francisco Bay Area will be plunged underwater by 2100 due to global warming:

Points for discussion:

1. Notice that San Francisco is spared from flooding, but Oakland in the northeast and San Jose in the south (right next to Santa Clara) are subject to a lot of it. S.F. is largely white, but Oakland is home to many black people and San Jose to many Hispanics. Can a natural disaster be racist?

2. Note again that San Francisco is largely untouched by the flooding. Do you think all those Prius-owners in S.F. will go back to driving gas-powered cars since they now know they have nothing to worry about?

3. Foster City is to be heavily hit by global warming. It's a city with a large Asian population. Should we care because Asians are a minority, or should we not care because they are not a minority favored by liberals?

4. Palo Alto and much of Silicon Valley are slated to go under water. If the people at Google and Facebook really believe this nonsense, why have they not put forward a plan to start waterproofing 100,000 web servers?

5. This disaster will heavily impact a very liberal metropolitan community. There seem to be no consequences at all for conservative areas. Do you think the authors of the study are inadvertently incentivizing conservatives?

6. In the original Superman movie, Lex Luthor plotted to detonate a nuclear device in the San Andreas Fault, which would supposedly cause the western edges of California to slide into the sea. Luthor had previously arranged to buy up land in Nevada, which would instantly become valuable waterfront land. Instead of conducting a real study, do you think the authors simply cribbed the map from Superman?

7. If this reminds you of the plot of a bad sci-fi movie from the 1990s it's because it is the plot of a bad sci-fi movie from the 1990s. Let me refresh your memory of Escape from LA:

In 1998, Los Angeles has become immensely crime-ridden and decadent, ultimately being directly governed and patrolled by the recently created United States Police Force. Two years later, on August 23, 2000, a massive earthquake strikes the city, the San Fernando Valley floods, and the Los Angeles area turns into an island from Malibu to Anaheim[.] ... Thirteen years later, Cuervo Jones, a Shining Path Peruvian Revolutionary, seduces the President's daughter, Utopia[.]

Can you imagine that  a future where Los Angeles becomes immensely crime-ridden and decadent, and a radical communist is in charge?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.
The old Bill Clinton-style Democrats are starting to re-emerge

Democrats have been out in the wilderness for a while now, and, most visibly, they've mostly thrown tantrums. Antifa, the snowflakes on campus, and unpopular causes such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals; the hypocritical #MeToo movement; Russia, Russia, Russia; impeaching Trump; grown men in the little girls' room; and gun control pretty well have defined them. It's been a lot of extremist positioning, and it hasn't been good to them. It's natural to wonder if they have a future at all, given that they have a bad split between the extremist factions of the Bernie Sanders camp and the far leftists of the Hillary Clinton camp, and they don't seem to stand for anything serious. Will they really keep spinning farther into fringe causes? As J.R. Dunn noted in a brilliant piece in American Thinker here, their lunatic turn is precisely because they are falling apart.

This is why the emergence of some of the old retreads from the Clinton administration (Bill, not Hillary) is so interesting. Yesterday, Larry Summers, Clinton's former treasury secretary, wrote about the importance of a strong dollar, an old mantra from the Clinton era, first introduced by treasury secretary Robert Rubin. The idea was to get foreigners to buy U.S. debt issuance so Clinton could keep spending, but it also attracted quite a bit of foreign investment and encouraged savings at home, which was doubly buttressed by free trade. Sounding sensible, Summers writes: The confidence of global markets is much easier to maintain than to regain. Currency markets are sending a signal that the US is not on a healthy path. Its [sic] time for the United States to strengthen the strong fundamentals on which a strong dollar and healthy economy depends [sic]. His piece follows Paul Krugman's fierce condemnation of tariffs being proposed by the Trump administration. Krugman these days is known as an unpleasant left-wing pundit, but back during the Clinton era, he was one of the strongest voices in favor of free trade, and indeed the work he did in his academic career that got him his Nobel Prize in economics was on free trade. So his loud re-emergence to condemn Trump's tariffs (which free trade gets rid of) brings him in line with the Clinton era of economic thinking, when he first got famous. After starting his column with weird insults against President Trump, Krugman sensibly writes this: Trade isn't a zero-sum game: it raises the productivity and wealth of the world economy. To take a not at all random example, it makes a lot of sense to produce aluminum, a process that uses vast amounts of electricity, in countries like Canada, which have abundant hydropower. So the U.S. gains from importing Canadian aluminum, whether or not we run a trade deficit with Canada. (As it happens, we don't, but that's pretty much beside the point.) These are both fairly strong free-market positions, something Democrats have never been associated with, at least not until the era of Clinton, with "the era of big government is over." It suggests a possible shift in the wind for the Democrats. (And it's problematic ideologically for Republicans, who have held the free market banner for decades.) These free trade and strong dollar ideas don't represent all free-market ideas, but they represent the ones Clinton supported, and that sounds like a shift, given the hostility to all markets that has characterized Democrats since House speaker Nancy Pelosi took the gavel in 2006. Now take these ideas and combine them with the pattern of low-key, non-firebrand Democrats who are winning (think Doug Jones, who beat Roy Moore in Alabama), and it starts to look as though the path to victory for Democrats is not through all the insane chaos they have been propagating, but through the Bill Clinton model to victory, coming across as moderate Democrats and promoting some free trade ideas. Politics-wise, it would fit the U.S. pattern of elections  just as Reagan followed the extreme misery of Jimmy Carter, and then Bill Clinton emerged to reclaim ground for the Democrats, we now have Trump following the economic failure of Barack Obama, and a sort of Bill Clinton-like moderation of the party line emerging. There's one missing thing here: leadership. Unless the Democrats get any, who can follow this line, they can look forward to a long extended Trump administration and then his successor. Free markets are an unlikely issue for Democrats to beat Trump at, but Trump has created a bit of an opening for them (and I wish he'd close it by dropping the talk of tariffs) in this era. Krugman and Summers starting to show up may be a sign that the coast is clear for such a leader if the party can drop its lunatic causes as a strategy. These intellectuals (and the victories of low-key, presumably moderate Democrats) may be wind at the back of Democrats toward just such a shift.

Bill Clinton in 2015. Credit: Chris Savas / Flickr / CC-BY-4.0.
Also displayed in the photo was Professor Allison Stanger. Murray and Stanger were walking out of a lecture the former had just given at Middlebury last year when the two were assaulted by some woke students. Stanger received a concussion and had to wear a neck brace.

Students at Middlebury college woke up on February 28 to a jarring sight in their campus newspaper: a full-color photograph of Satan  or, since they don't believe in stuff like that, controversial political scientist Charles Murray.

The editor of the newspaper was terrified that the mere sight of Murray would be a traumatic, triggering event for many students and felt compelled to explain himself in an editorial:

I wish to explain the photograph on page A1 to the readers. I recognize that it may be especially jarring, particularly for students of color who feel that Charles Murray's rhetoric poses a threat to their very humanity. I also recognize that Murray's visit to campus last March is an open wound for a campus trying desperately to move forward from it. During a heated debate in the newsroom on Tuesday night, most of the section editors, and the managing editor, said that running this photograph would be inappropriate. Though I deeply respect the input of my editors, I decided to run the photograph anyway. I take full responsibility for this decision. It was mine alone, and any criticism should be directed at me alone. This photograph is not meant to troll, or to cause pain, but to ask how that protest still lives with us today, one year later. For many, this image is burned in our collective memory. As much as we try to distance ourselves from that moment, we are made from it. I recognize that running this photograph is a political act. Yet I see no way to comprehend this institution without seeing ourselves as part of American society, which is itself political. I also believe moving forward requires looking inside, however unpleasant that may be. We cannot escape our history. We can only confront it. Ethan Brady is the editor in chief.

Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, had a choice tweet in response:

How about confronting that the woman in the photograph you can't bring yourself to name suffered a concussion and a neck injury that she still lives with? https://t.co/Xs8ZpxfkEk pic.twitter.com/iNxNiGKE7W

 Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) March 4, 2018

Just another example of mind-blowing stupidity on campus? More proof that many college students will be unable to function in a society that doesn't care how woke they are?

Yes, and more. Hit and Run's Robby Soave explains:

Even if one accepts the claim that Murray's rhetoric somehow constitutes a literal attack on marginalized students  a ridiculous claim, to be sure  a mere picture of him is not an expression of violence. Wouldn't it be useful to show a photo of Murray, even if the only point was to criticize him? This is verging into He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named territory. It's worth keeping in mind that the people who think Murray's words are violence were the ones who physically assaulted him and Stanger while they fled the chaos last year. Stanger ended up in the hospital with a neck brace. You might say that makes the students hypocrites  they're against violence, and yet they engage in it  but I know from speaking to leftist students that the most radical activists would say there's no tension here. They do not recognize a difference between words and actions, so when Murray and his problematic racial views came to campus, he essentially threw the first punch. The students' violence was an act of self-defense, in their opinion. The college-students-are-all-delicate-snowflakes charge is often leveled unfairly. But a bunch of young newspaper editors cowering in fear of printing a picture of Charles Murray is a reminder that there's at least a kernel of truth to it.

Students are terrified of a picture because someone told them to be. "Marginalized" students may not give a crap if a picture of Murray is shoved in their faces  until those who feed off the power it gives them to manipulate emotions say they should be. Minorities, feminists, gays  any group told they are "marginalized"  are, in fact, in complete control of campus thought. They are not snowflakes or marginalized in any way. They are dominant.

We all know that few if any students are bothered by a picture of Charles Murray. What they're terrified of is not "feeling" the correct amount of outrage at what they're told to be outraged about. If they don't hate the target of the day enough, their own place in the community of the oppressed may be questioned.

This is not about social activism. It is a classic exercise in how to wield power.
Theres been a lot of talk about a trade war in recent weeks, due to the announcement from the Trump Administration about Tariffs on steel and aluminum. Many feel that there could be a trade war in the wireless space as well. According to analysts at Jeffries, there could be a trade war over 5G wireless technology. Which would mostly be due to Huawei.

The White House has been urging US carriers as well as carriers in its ally countries like South Korea, to stay away from Huawei for its 5G network. This is because the US government is afraid of Huawei using its products to spy on users, though Huawei believes that belief is being driven by its competitors. China and the US arent exactly on the best of terms, so it wouldnt be surprising. However, there have been numerous investigations over the past decade, looking into whether Huaweis products are in fact spying on its users, and nothing was found. Which makes this situation a bit odd for the Chinese smartphone maker. The US has also urged KT and SK Telecom in South Korea to not use Huawei for its 5G network, and SK Telecoms CEO stated at Mobile World Congress last week, that it was at a crossroads about whether it should award the contract to Huawei or not.

Huawei isnt the entire story in this potential trade war though, the other aspect is Broadcom and Qualcomm. Broadcom has been attempting to takeover Qualcomm in recent months, though Qualcomm isnt interested in being acquired. And recently, the CFIUS has opened an investigation into the attempted takeover of Qualcomm. Which is just the latest development in the story. While the US may be looking to avoid using Chinese equipment for its 5G networks, it wont be able to cut China completely out of its 5G networks. This is because many believe that China will have a large number of the 5G-essential patents. This is similar to China not being able to cut Qualcomm out of 4G LTE, since it has a ton of 4G LTE patents, and CDMA patents  remember China Mobile was a CDMA network before it jumped to 4G LTE.
Amazon invested in Canadian smart thermostat startup Ecobee via its Alexa Fund meant to foster innovation in the smart home segment, the Toronto-based company revealed earlier this week. The exact amount of the tech giants commitment remains unclear, though the series C funding round in which it participated raised CAD $80 million, i.e. $61.8 million in total. The extra cash injected into Ecobee will be primarily used for diversifying its operations, Chief Executive Officer Stuart Lombard told CNBC. The startup is ultimately looking to offer a comprehensive smart home ecosystem spanning a broad range of products, with Internet-enabled thermostats being just the first category it decided to tackle.

Ecobee is now preparing for a release of the Switch+, a Wi-Fi light controller which will be compatible with Alexa. The Ecobee 4 thermostat can also communicate with Amazons artificial intelligence assistant but ships with compatibility for other solutions as well. The firm is hoping to convince more consumers to consider its products by offering them with no compatibility strings attached, thus delivering Internet of Things hardware that can easily be implemented into any existing setup or serve as the starting point for a new system. That diversified and inclusive approach to product design also influenced Ecobees distribution strategy, with its offerings presently being sold by everyone from Amazon and Best Buy to Lowes, Home Depot, and Apple.

Amazons financial injection into Ecobee comes mere days after the company acquired smart doorbell startup Ring for a reported $1 billion, delivering yet another indicator of its growing ambitions in the consumer electronics and AI segments. The e-commerce juggernaut is planning to leverage the technologies of its newly acquired firm to directly compete with Googles Nest whose products will soon be pulled from Amazon, deepening the discord between the two technology giants. Ecobee showed no firm signs that it would be prepared to sell in the foreseeable future but Amazons investment in the startup makes that scenario a possibility, especially given how one of its current backers  Energy Impact Partners  also previously invested in Ring, thus already having a history of being bought off by the Seattle-based company.
BlackBerry has signed an agreement to license its security technology for mobile phones called BlackBerry Secure to Punkt, a Switzerland-based consumer electronics company. As part of the deal, Punkt will incorporate BlackBerrys security technology into a wide variety of commercial products, which the company says will be connected to home and enterprise networks, suggesting that beyond mobile devices, Punkt will also embed the security solution in a range of Internet of Things devices. It doesnt come as a surprise, though, after BlackBerry announced in April last year that it had planned to expand its security licensing to other areas beyond the mobile device category such as wearables, medical devices, POS terminals, and appliances. The addition of IoT devices will be a welcome development.

BlackBerrys focus on security solutions is part of the companys broader goal of drifting away from building actual mobile devices and instead shift its resources to the development of enterprise security products, an indication that it is abandoning the smartphone segment. The move just makes sense given the companys poor financial results due to the lackluster performance of its hardware business, which prompted the company to shut it down in 2016. That doesnt mean, however, that its the end of the road for the BlackBerry smartphone brand, as the hardware is now manufactured by TCL in China as well as PT BB Merah Putih in Indonesia and Optiemus in India. Then last year, the companys Chief Executive Officer John Chen made a commitment to generate huge profits for BlackBerry by driving the company back to where it started: developing security and enterprise software applications. Part of that shift in focus is to license its security solutions to third-party phone manufacturers, allowing BlackBerry to continue capitalizing on its smartphone brand while putting more of its investments in a profitable business.

Also last year, BlackBerrys Chief Operating Officer Marty Beard revealed the companys goal of providing security to enterprises and grow its BlackBerry Secure brand as the company shifts toward the so-called Enterprise of Things segment. By licensing BlackBerry Secure to third-party companies, the Waterloo, Canada-based software allows product manufacturers to integrate a security solution consisting of BlackBerrys proprietary software and applications into their offerings.
The United States Federal Communications Commission will soon be holding a vote that will affect the review process for the deployment of small cell wireless equipment, and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association has submitted a filing urging the Commission to make things easier for wireless carriers. The filing is not a direct demand for action or meant to open up a new case or action; its filed as Ex Parte, which essentially means that its a suggestion from an outside party with interest in the FCCs internal issues. The filing zeroes in on the hefty fees and costs associated with environmental reviews for small cell deployments, stating that the scale of those costs far outweighs the impact of the small cell being deployed, especially in an environmental sense.

Currently, small cell deployments are subject to hefty environmental reviews, among others, to determine how much of an impact a given deployment would have on not just the environment around it, but also other electronic devices, other wireless equipment in the area, and any other activity that happens in that area, such as air traffic or military operations. Most of the review requests received by carriers and other wireless entities are tribal; in some areas where tribal lands overlap, as many as 15 requests can come in regarding a single deployment. Reviews from major American environmental institutions are also necessary. This has made reviews into a massive budget constraint in some cases. Wireless carrier Verizon, for example, states that this process makes up more than a quarter of its small cell deployment costs. The environmental reviews process can often be lengthy and costly, and the CTIA is arguing that it is largely unnecessary; small cells, speaking strictly from an environmental standpoint, draw vastly less power and emit less radiation when compared to traditional cell sites. All the same, the environmental reviews that theyre subjected to are similar to those necessary for a normal ground-based cellular deployment, whereas public Wi-Fi access points, which small cells are more akin to, have no such review process.

Small cells, for the uninitiated, are cellular access points that are much smaller than cell towers, hence their name, and only reach a maximum of a few hundred users spread over a relatively small area, usually less than a square mile. Small cells have a short path from access point to user, making them ideal for use with high-frequency wireless spectrum, which can deliver incredible data speeds with little latency. As is easy to imagine, this makes small cells integral in the march of 5G technology. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has expressed in the past that ensuring 5G technology can propagate undisturbed is vital to the future of contemporary networking in America, so its hard to imagine the FCCs vote not going in carriers favor.
Samsung released a new infographic meant to list all new features and major selling points of its 2018 QLED TV lineup the company officially announced yesterday. The promo that can be seen below touts the new Direct Full Array backlighting solution as one of the main advantages of the television sets, being meant to allow for perfectly accurate screen illumination. The TVs also come equipped with the Q Engine, a new processor specifically designed for handling heavy workloads thats capable of upscaling content in order to deliver an Ultra HD-quality image in an entirely automated manner. The latest offerings from the South Korean tech giant also utilize a new anti-reflection solution meant to support unprecedentedly steep viewing angles and boosting picture contrast under regular circumstances.

Samsung is also quick to boast about Bixby, its first AI assistant thats deeply integrated into its 2018 QLED TVs, allowing users to control the devices using just their voice and rely on them as their smart home hubs capable of managing other appliances and gadgets from the companys portfolio. Support for the SmartThings platform is (still) part of the package, as is a slightly redesigned remote meant to be even more comfortable to use than its predecessor. The flagship Q9SN model is also aiming to push the boundaries of overall picture quality in the consumer electronics segment, offering Samsungs latest backlighting technologies and micro-dimming solutions combined with an 8K resolution.

All of the newly announced models feature an Ambient Mode designed to conserve energy when they are not in use while still serving as slideshow frames. As Samsungs design chief recently explained, the feature was included with the goal of allowing the devices to blend into their environments even when theyre not in direct use while still leaving a minimal energy footprint. The latest QLED TV models are also seeking to address the issue of cluttered cables by integrating data lines with power cables as part of a setup that Samsung calls One Invisible Connection. The OEMs new TV offerings will be available for purchase this spring, with their prices still being undisclosed.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 appears to be on track to receive the highly anticipated Android 8.0 Oreo update at the end of the month, according to new information that recently popped up on Samsung Turkeys outlet Guncel Miyiz. Specifically, the official page dedicated to the international variant of the Galaxy Note 8 bearing the model number SM-N950F now suggests that Android Oreo is planned to be released on March 30, though this date might still be subject to change and might not reflect the updates availability in every region where the SM-N950F was released.

Whether or not the date will stick remains to be seen, but either way, the Galaxy Note 8 should technically receive the Oreo update soon given the fact that the Galaxy S8 series made the jump to the same Android iteration earlier this year. The Galaxy S8 series took priority over the Galaxy Note 8 because it was released earlier in 2017, and both models in the lineup were treated with a fairly lengthy and somewhat problematic beta period preceding the launch of the public build. Although the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 wasnt subjected to a beta testing period like its older siblings, this was largely due to the hardware and software similarities across both series, and as a result, a successful Android Oreo release for the Galaxy S8 should theoretically translate into faster software development for the S Pen-equipped phablet.

As a reminder, the Galaxy Note 8 bearing the model number SM-N950F is equipped with the Exynos 8895 SoC manufactured by Samsungs chipset division, so given these recent events, there is a possibility that variants powered by the Exynos SoC could receive the update before the models powered by Qualcomms solution, which were released in North America and China. Then again, an Android Oreo build for the Qualcomm-powered Galaxy Note 8 leaked in early February and seemed to be a release candidate, so there is a chance the two main variants of the device will be updated simultaneously. According to the previous leak, the upcoming software designed for the Galaxy Note 8 is nearly identical to the Android Oreo update previously launched on the Galaxy S8 series, except for the inclusion of certain features pertaining specifically to the S Pen.
SoftBank recently announced its earnings for the first three quarters of the 2017 fiscal year. In its presentation, it broke down how each company it has a stake in, did over those nine months. And in the Sprint section, SoftBank essentially confirmed the Snapdragon 855, which is expected to be announced this Fall, and be available in smartphones next year. It also confirmed that it would have a 5G-capable modem in the Snapdragon X50. Which also means that itll be a dual-modem chipset, since it will still need support for 4G LTE.

This showed up in SoftBanks presentation when talking about Sprints upcoming 5G network. SoftBank was mentioning its partners which include Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia and also Qualcomm. So there was very little information about the Snapdragon 855 in this presentation, but it is expected that more information will surface in the coming months, as we approach the announcement of the Snapdragon 855. Although, whats interesting here is that its being called the Snapdragon 855 Fusion Platform. Now recently, Qualcomm has been naming its processors as a platform rather than just a chipset, and thats due to all the parts that are included in the chipset. But the Fusion is something new. Its possible that Qualcomm may start naming its chipsets to appeal with a more marketing term here, similar to what Apple does. Or it could mean something else entirely.

Nokia and Ericsson are working on the actual network for Sprint, and will be deploying Massive MIMO sites in 2018, and expanding that in 2019. Which is what Sprints CTO, John Saw, announced at Mobile World Congress last month in Barcelona. Qualcomm, meanwhile, is working on the modem that smartphones and other mobile products will be using to connect to that 5G network. So its also a very vital part of the 5G evolution, even though its not building the radios that will be used on cell sites in the coming years. The Snapdragon X50 is actually a somewhat old modem at this point, so its a little interesting to see that its going to be in the Snapdragon 855 Fusion Platform later this year, but its also possible that Qualcomm wants to keep that under wraps more than the actual processor.
The pro-European public opinion is very worried about the Italian election outcome. Before the election, one of the most worrisome possibilities was that right-wing populism, together with xenophobic and neofascist options, would add up to make Silvio Berlusconis candidate, Antonio Tajani, prime minister. True, a possible Five Star Movement victory was also disturbing, due to its left-wing populist rhetoric. But the Tajani option, with all it entailed, was seen as a threat to the Europe of freedoms and democracy. Who is Tajani then, that he would receive populist and extremist votes? Right now, the President of the European Parliament. A Forza Italia Berlusconi acolyte who became the main European hooligan cheering for Rajoys policies against Catalonia. The one who endorsed the enforcement of article 155, the one who said Europe had to speak frankly to the Catalans and make them understand that the EU would never recognize an independent Catalonia. Antonio Tajani could become the prime minister of Italy riding on populist, racist and neofascist votes. Europe, restless before this possibility, should take note of what Tajani has stood for and against from one of the main European seats of power.

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The latest development of Steyr sniper rifle SSG M1 chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum is now in service with the Austrian army. The Steyr SSG M1 is modern bolt-action sniper rifle fully developed and produced by Steyr Mannlicher in Austria. The Austrian Company Steyr presents for the first time to the public its sniper rifle SSG M1 at Enforce TAC 2018, the International law enforcement, security and tactical solutions exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany.



Steyr SSG M1 sniper rifle at Enforce TAC 2018, International law enforcement, security and tactical solutions exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany

(Picture source: Army Recognition)

According to Internet military source, 120 of Steyrs SSG bolt-action sniper rifle have been acquired and are going to be introduced to special purpose and infantry units. The weapon is chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum and fitted with a riflescope Kahles K624i.

It is a highly accurate bolt-action sniper rifle, with a folding stock and an adjustable cheek piece and butt plate. It is equipped with a bipod and a "butt spike" monopod for added stability. The pistol grip is customizable by changing the front and back straps. This sniper rifle has a Picatinny rail to the upper part for mounting optics, there is also an additional Picatinny rail in the lower part of the weapon. The rifle also features an improved muzzle brake over the SSG 04, with the ability to attach a suppressor.

The SSG M1 utilises the Safe Bolt System (SBS) action, cold hammer-forged barrels, trigger units and 10 rounds magazines. It features an aluminium alloy stock, with side-folding, fully adjustable butt and additional Picatinny rails on the forend.

The SSG M1 is based on Steyr's SBS rotary bolt action with four frontal locking lugs, arranged in pairs. It also features free-floated, cold hammer-forged heavy barrels, which are available in 508mm (.308 Winchester), 600mm (.243 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .300 Winchester Magnum) and 690mm (.338 Lapua Magnum) lengths.

Feed is from detachable double-column box magazines, which hold ten .243 Winchester or .308 Winchester, eight .300 Winchester Magnum or six .338 Lapua Magnum rounds. The single-stage trigger is factory set for optimum performance, but can be adjusted by the user.

The Kahles K624i is precision riflescope used to shoot on long distances. The elevation adjustment has a second rotation indicator and the most refined zero stop and dial reset available. With 26 Mils of overall elevation adjustment in just two rotations and precise indexing, adjusting for extreme distances and back to zero is incredibly fast and accurate.

The Kahles K624i is fitted with an unique and innovative parallax adjustment, located under the elevation turret, superior to all other designs, for left or right handed shooters. This means less time required to engage multiple targets as you wont have to break your shooting position.
The former Aspen Chamber Resort Association offices off of Rio Grande Place, where a new city office building would be constructed under an approval granted in April 2017 by city council. The project is the subject of litigation over when citizens have the right to refer a land-use approval to an election ballot. Meanwhile, chamber offices have moved to the former Aspen Art Museum space across the Roaring Fork River.
Sun (Surya Graha) is the King for Vedic New Year Vilambi Nama Samvatsara (2018-19) and Dhaanyadhipathi(Cereals).



Sun being the ruler will make people discuss politics more frequently. Political news, formation or evolution of new political parties and equations will be hot topics.Few parties will try to divide people on basis of race, religion, caste etc to avoid their own defeat.Most people will vote for parties who protect their religious rights.

Technology will improve and new mobile phones, Apps will emerge. Social media will be active in politics.

Sun being the king will defiitely lead to war or similar situations across the border for many asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, Afghanistan and Middle-East.

Terrorists will attack in different disguises, but most of such incidents will be prevented by army and intelligence.

Cyber crime, white collar crime, forgeries, check bounce cases, cheating, loan avasions will increase this year.

More tax and bank related scams will be exposed, which were planned in the past.

More people will buy new houses or invest in real estate. Land rates increases.

Indian government will have a strong foreign policy and when in need, it gets support from many countries.

Government also gives support to new companies and industries.

2018-19 (Vilambi Nama Samvatsaram) is good for fishing business. Those who are into Aquaculture can make good profits this year.

Also Dairy business will pickup. Unemployment problem continues in USA, Europe, Pakistan, Bangladesh and few north states of India.

Agriculture (dry crops) will do good.

Anti corruption bureau, CBI will expose more financial crimes and more white collar criminals, corrupt officials will go to jail.

Rice Mills will have new rules and export of rice increases.

Food will be liberally donated.

Birth of premature babies increases. Also, there will be increase in number of divorces, kidnaps, suicides, death in accidents this year.

Hindus lack protection in Nepal. 2018 Summer will be the hottest of recent years. Weather forecast can fail multiple times.

Delhi and north India can experience earth quake in 2018.

More endangered bird species will go extinct this year.

Related Articles:
DLA Piper said that a small team began working with the Timorese government in 2013 to formulate a revised strategy in relation to the Timor Sea.

Working with the Timor-Leste Maritime Boundary Office, DLA Piper played a central role in advising on what was a little known compulsory conciliation process  the first time this has been activated under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), DLA Piper said in a statement.

Administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the process has resulted in an agreed boundary based on the median line between the two countries. It gives Timor-Leste a bigger slice of the resource-rich area, as almost all of the previous joint petroleum-development area and other significant areas have become the countrys sovereign territory under the treaty.

This has been a significant achievement for the government and the people of Timor-Leste. This is a matter that, at its heart, allowed the smaller, younger nation to stand on a level playing field and realise its sovereignty with a larger neighbour, said partner Stephen Webb, who led the DLA Piper team.

The conciliation process and the resulting treaty primarily delimits a permanent boundary. It also recognises and respects the rights of the many companies with an interest in this part of the Timor Sea he said. A real key to success was the appointment, by both countries, of highly regarded and committed conciliators. They deserve considerable credit for the way they, and the PCA, played such a proactive role.
Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) has confirmed that it was the legal adviser of private equity firm EQT on the sale of Australias largest radiology network.

I-MED Radiology Network is being acquired by private equity firm Permira. The deal is estimated to be worth $1.3bn, according to unnamed Bloomberg sources. Financial details have not been officially disclosed.

EQT acquired I-MED for more than $400m in 2014. Baker McKenzie acted for EQT, HSF represented I-MED, and Ashurst advised I-MED shareholders in that deal. EQTs co-investors were GIC and Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec.
The Law Society of Scotland is warning lawyers that scammers are using the organisations name in sham emails.

We have been informed of scam emails claiming to be from 'Law Society' sent out to solicitors and law firms with PDF downloads, the Law Society cautioned in an announcement.

The emails typically have the subject line Important Information and claim that the Law Society has been trying to reach the recipient, it said.
AMG

HP

Mercedes brought over a number of examples. We've got a white C43 sedan, a dark silver C43 wagon, a sedan with the Elegance trim level and a C 220d with theLine body kit.In case you didn't spot this already, Mercedes is presenting two different and quite striking headlight designs. One looks like it's based on the S-Class and the other is similar to Volvo's.As you might have heard already, the Mercedes-AMG C43 is sticking to its twin-turbo V6 engine, but power has gone up to 390and 520 Nm (384 lb-ft) of torque. Mercedes says that's enough to take you to 100 km/h in 4.7 seconds in the case of the sedan and 4.8 seconds in the wagon.When it eventually makes it to the United States, the revised C-Class will also get a newly turbocharged 2-liter delivering 255-hp and 273 lb-ft (370 Nm), thus better competing with the Audi A4.The things that sell the C43 for us are the new exhaust pipes and the interior. Finally, there's a carbon fiber dashboard for the lesser AMG model, and it goes really well with the new 10.25inch infotainment screen, steering wheel and high-definition 12.3-inch digital dash. The overall design of the interior remains the same, but at least it doesn't look like every other Mercedes currently on the market. We'd take this over the new A-Class any day of the week.If you squint hard, you'll notice that the normal C-Class models also get new bumpers and taillights. The AMG Line body kit looks as sporty as the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Other highlights for this model include an updated Active Steering Assist system with Active Lane Change Assist and Active Emergency Stop Assist functions.
HP

SUV

AWD

Adaptive Cruise Control

While America just got a hot version called the Edge ST, powered by a twin-turbo V6 with 336-hp, Europe has to make due with the ST-Line. However, we think it's almost as good.You see, Ford uses the ST-Line body kit to give its normal models a sportier appearance. However, they are usually among the most dynamic in their class anyway.The ST-Line treatment is basically the same as that for the Edge ST. You get big, black wheels, a bold grille with black mesh, slightly sportier body bits and a few interior touches as well.Around the back, there's a more prominent trunk spoiler, a diffuser, and two rectangular exhaust pipes. You can't go wrong.The Edge shown in Geneva had a good Stormtrooper color combination and impressive interior Alcantara trim, not to mention that B&O sound system they just added.There's also something new under the hood, namely a twin-turbo 2-liter diesel engine belonging to the EcoBlue family. With an output of 238, it's almost a match for the Tiguan 2.0 BiTDI and outguns the Ford Ranger Raptor truck.Of course, we think it's a little too much for a family-friendly, which is why the Edge facelift also comes with 150 HP and 190 HP versions of the 2-liter EcoBlue. All the mills are available with an 8-speed automatic gearbox andRegarding technology, the 2019 Edge addswith Stop-and-Go, Lane Centring Assist, Evasive Steering Assist and PostCollision Braking.The new Ford Edge is our most compelling offering yet for the ever-growing numbers of European customers migrating towards SUVs," declared Roelant de Waard, vice president of Marketing, Sales & Service at Ford of Europe.
Luckily, Giugiaro rarely (if ever) disappoints. You may or may not like his vision of what a car should look like, but regardless of which of the two sides you're on, you definitely can't say his creations are boring without crossing your fingers first.His latest creation - though, to be exact, he's now working under the GFG (Giorgetto Fabrizio Giugiaro) Style brand, a design house he founded together with his son so it's more of a collective effort) - is called Sibylla , and it looks like... well, "nothing we've seen before" should do it.Actually, its most intriguing feature - the fighter jet-like canopy that slides forward - might remind some of the Chevrolet Corvair Testudo, a prototype also penned by Giorgetto back in the '60s which had a similar system, though that one was hinged rather than on rails.Access to the rear seats isn't exactly a boring affair either as it involves a pair of gullwing doors. Once inside, the driver and passengers can enjoy a multitude of large displays and the usual quality you would expect from a luxury model with Italian roots.GFG Style didn't offer too much detail on the interior, so we're back to its exterior design which mixes aggressiveness with luxury (though the latter may be harder to spot from certain angles). The front end is dominated by a huge gaping whole framed by the thin headlights, a bit of chromed trim and a prominent splitter at the bottom.The car is about the same length as a BMW 7 Series and sits 1.5 meters tall, but its shape certainly makes it look bulkier - almost like a crossover. The powertrain is left to anyone's guess with GFG Style and its partner, Chinese energy specialist Envision only saying it's electric and uses one electric motor for each of the axles.Then again, this is only a concept with neither of the two companies willing to discuss whether it would make it into production one way or another. Either way, we're glad to see Giugiaro still has its place in the automotive world, and hopefully, the next time we'll get the chance to repeat that will be about a series model bearing the famous designer's signature.
The Volkswagen Bug will be no more after this generation AutoIndustriya.com March 08, 2018 17:20

In an announcement during the Geneva Auto Show, Volkswagen R&D Chief Frank Welsch confirmed the swirling rumors about the Beetle's fate. Following the current generation, VW is no longer planning to produce another Beetle. Having had a total of three generations of the beetle, each with a significant gap between manufacturing dates, VW finally closes the curtain after the current generation ends production.

The R&D head reasoned the decision saying two or three generations is enough now as VW can't simply come out with a new new new Beetle. At this point, the Beetle's role may become quite redundant considering the T-Roc will be available soon as a convertible, essentially filling the role of the Beetle in VW's lineup. The odd crossover will likely debut sometime in 2020 following a $100 million investment in VW's Osnabruck factory.

With the original beetle being succeeded by the New Beetle back in 1997 and refreshed in 2011 for another generation, the Beetle is the oldest model in VW's lineup. Having departed from the signature rear-engined configuration to accommodate similar platforms of new VW models, the Beetle retained its iconic shape throughout the years and still established itself as an iconic vehicle in VW's lineup.

Despite the axing of their famed bug, VW will continue to offer retro-inspired models in the future such as the I.D. Buzz which will be taken after the Type T2.
At first glance, many readers might think general aviation is as far removed from helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) operations as east is from west. However, there are more similarities than meets the eye, especially when it comes to safety.

Lets have a look at what we, as general aviation IFR pilots, have in common with the HEMS branch of aviation and, more importantly, what we can learn from them. They had a rocky start (the first HEMS operation was in 1972) in terms of safety, but have made remarkable gains over time.

What We Share

Like general aviation, HEMS historically had a poor safety record with a comparable accident rate. In fact, one Johns Hopkins researcher calculated that a HEMS pilot flying 20 hours per week, over the course of 20 years, had a 37-percent chance of being involved in a fatal accidentnot something that their family would want to know.

Perhaps this is not surprising considering the hazardous off-airport environment (perhaps a car accident on a freeway encumbered with surrounding obstacles) that these aircraft have to negotiate, not to mention the lack of instrument approaches. Moreover, many operations are often during periods of inclement weatherhistorically a leading cause of HEMS accidents.

A second similarity shared by both groups of aviators was that (at least until last year with the advent of modified FARs) HEMS pilots could (if not carrying a patient) depart under Part 91 rules, much as we do for a general aviation IFR flight.

A third commonality is the real potential for get-there-itiswith a twist. For the general aviation IFR pilot it might be a business meeting, or a long-planned family reunion, whereas a HEMS pilot, knowing of a trauma case involving a child, might feel a compelling pressure to complete the flight. The perception to accomplish the mission is there for both groups.

Finally, fatigue has been a big problem for both the HEMS industry and general aviation. IFR flight can be demandingadd in a missed approach, a change in runway necessitating reprogramming the avionics and/or digging around for a different chart, and things can get out-of-hand. We need our mental awareness performing at peak efficiency. Until last year, like general aviation, there were no rest requirements imposed on HEMS operators.

Improved Safety For HEMS

There does happen to be one big difference between general aviation and HEMS safety. While the accident rate for the former has stubbornly remained unchanged, the HEMS industry has seen a 70-percent decrease in accidents over the last 15 yearsthats impressive.

Remarkably, this dramatic improvement in safety has come in the absence of new regulations (the updated FARs for HEMS were only implemented in 2014) and therefore reflects effective self-policing by the industry. Those pilots are doing something right for sure. What can we learn as instrument pilots?

What has changed in the industry that might have contributed to their reduced accident rate? For starters, one of their frequent cause of accidents was inadvertent flight into IMC77-percent of which were fatal. This should sound familiar, as the same problem continues to plague general aviationincluding instrument-rated pilots. Just because a pilot holds an IFR-ticket doesnt mean they are current and/or proficient. All too often instrument rated pilots fly into unexpected IMC. However, these types of accidents have decreased over time for HEMS pilots.

The industry has undertaken several steps that may have resulted in fewer of these kinds of mishaps. In the early days of the service, most HEMS pilots were IFR-rated, but there was little requirement for those flyers to be current/proficientas a result, scud-running was popular.

This point was emphasized to the industry early on in a compelling study using a full-motion helicopter simulator that demonstrated the obviousrusty instrument pilots lost control more often in unplanned IMC than their proficient counterparts.

In addition, the non-current pilots entered these weather conditions at lower altitudes than their more proficient brethrenrunning the risk of impact with ground obstacles. Sound familiar? The industry took heed and many an operator, on their own initiative, required their pilots undertake regular training on getting out of inadvertent IMC.

Risk Assessment

Along similar lines across the industry, preflight risk assessment matrices were implemented. Depending on the level of risk, mission authorization required approval by a senior pilot, the chief pilot, or director of operations.

Sure, the general aviation IFR pilot has access to something similarthe AOPA Flight Risk Evaluator and a comparable (albeit more perfunctory) construct by the FAA (see the FAA Risk Management Handbook FAA-H-8083-2). Theres also the PAVE/IMSAFE advocated by the FAA.

But, how many pilots use these tools? Perhaps not as many as should. Theres no one checking as to whether a pilot has done a self-assessment. As an alternative, consider discussing an upcoming flight with a senior flight instructor or perhaps a FAAST team member. Its even more relevant if that person is familiar with your flight history and perhaps has even flown with you recently.

Fatigue Assessment

Current self-evaluation tools for the general aviation pilot are still deficient in fatigue assessment. One of the questions posed is the amount of sleep that the pilot had the prior nightusing a cut-off of eight hours. Thats a good start, but for the pilot who has built up a sleep-deficit over the period leading up to the flight, one night of restful sleep is unlikely to do the trick. The fatigue issue has been addressed across the HEMS industry via mandating rest periods for their pilots.

As theres no such comparable rule for general aviation pilots, one option for us is the use of personal sleep monitors (collectively known as actigraphs), which a pilot could use in the days leading up to a flight.

Theres a range of commercially available products out there with odd-sounding names presumably generated by imaginative marketing departmentsPEAK, The Fitbit Surge, Jawbone Up, Misfit Shine, and ActiGraphto name a few. The peculiar names might reflect the fact that these devices are primarily for exercisesleep assessment is ancillary.

There are numerous products that can be viewed on the web to help you track your sleep. Personal sleep monitors represent less expensive alternatives than the gold standard for sleep assessmenta polysomnograph conducted in a sleep clinic. Actigraphs, which contain accelerometers, are typically worn on the wrist and function by monitoring arm movement. Note that these devices define sleep based on lack of movement. Therein lies a potential problema person lying motionless will be tracked as sleeping so the length of sleep given by the device could represent an over-estimate.

Get-There-Itis

The pressure to complete a flight that sometimes ends in an accident is nothing new to general aviation. The same applies to the HEMS industry where pilots in the past could push themselves, resulting the same effect in degraded weather.

In addition to implementing the risk assessment matrix described above, the HEMS industry now typically does not reveal the criticality of the mission to the crew. Because there is no equivalent for the general aviation IFR pilot, there needs to be some way of addressing this problem.

If the trip is that urgent, consider forgoing the use of general aviation. Remember you arent flying a transport-category aircraft with the corresponding level of redundancy, and more than likely theres only one, not two, persons up front. Alternatively, have a rental car or an airline ticket as backup. A rental car can be cancelled and some airlines will allow you to bank your air fare should you determine that conditions allow for your personal air transportation.

Wrapping It Up

The improvement in HEMS safety, especially in the realm of operation in IMC, has been remarkable. Even more impressive is that these changes were brought about in the absence of federal regulations.

As IFR rated pilots, it would serve us well to learn from an industry that, by its own design, has made dramatic inroads in their operational safety. Examine your thought process in light of these examples.

Douglas Boyd, Ph.D. is a Professor at The University of Texas, and a Commercial, SMEL and instrument rated pilot.

This article originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of IFR Refresher magazine.

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While Congress has been caught in a perpetual argument over whether to require background checks for all gun sales, several states have already acted. Those that have added additional background check laws regarding private gun sales tend to have lower gun death rates.

Why it matters: Of course, correlation doesn't equal causation, but typically trends like this at least spark smart, nuanced research. Gun deaths are comparatively under-researched, and gun debates on Capitol Hill are based more on emotions than the facts and trends we do know.

There is research that does suggest that background checks can be effective in reducing firearm violence.

 Michael Siegel, professor at Boston University School of Public Health
The Gulf of Maine is getting warm  quick. From 20042013, sea temperatures there rose faster than almost any other location on Earth.

Why it matters: The Gulf is home to a number of endangered species, and the fisheries there bring in several billion dollars per year to the U.S. and Canada, but the Gulfs future hangs in the balance. Researchers are scrambling to understand what the warming water means for the people and animals who rely on the ecosystem, particularly as the changes there provide a glimpse into the future of coastlines around the world.

Why it's warming

The Gulf of Maine lies at the intersection of several major ocean currents, including the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which moves dense, cold water down and toward the equator. Fresh water from melting sea ice seems to be weakening this current, which could be causing the Gulf to warm faster than other regions.

A combination of cold winters, warm summers, and dramatic tides make the Gulf one of the most productive ecosystems in the ocean. It's a critical habitat for right whales, seabirds like puffins, humpback whales, bluefin tuna and other species.

If it changes, it will have effects on all of those animals. But its also a human place. There are important social and cultural connections people have with this water. If a town loses its identity as a fishing community, it loses part of its history in addition to the economic losses.

 Andrew Pershing, chief science officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute

The impact

Lobster: On the surface, lobster populations appear to be doing well. Sustainable fishing practices and colder temperatures in the northern part of the Gulf have brought in record hauls since 2010. But in Southern New England, the fishery has crashed, with populations declining and the remaining lobsters moving north.

Cod: Climate change and overfishing caused population numbers to fall well beyond sustainable levels. Although theres active debate over just how many cod remain, everyone agrees numbers are much lower than they used to be.

And because of how New England fishing quotas work, low cod populations mean some fishermen are forced to stop fishing for other species that live in the same area, like pollock and halibut.

Herring & Puffins: Climate change has caused herring populations to shift  with consequences for the shorebirds that rely on them. Without herring, puffin parents resort to bringing their babies butterfish. Unlike herring, which are perfectly shaped for young puffin-mouths, butterfish are round. The baby puffins are choking and starving.

Sea turtles: Records of sea turtles in the Gulf of Maine go back hundreds of years, and as their populations have increased, so have sightings. But sea turtle strandings, caused when turtles get caught by the hook of Cape Cod and freeze in cooling winter waters, have been increasing at rates faster than the population is rising.

Scientists suspect Gulf warming might be drawing more turtles in, or making them stay longer, putting them at risk once winter comes.

Go deeper: We travelled to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where some of these turtles were being rehabilitated.

Plankton: Calanus, a planktonic animal the size of a grain of rice, is the preferred food of right whales and at the center of the Gulf of Maine food chain. If you asked an oceanographer to pick one species that would represent the North Atlantic, it would be calanus, Pershing says.

Starting in the 1960s and until 2013, the National Marine Fisheries Service tracked calanus distribution and found a decline. But funding for the research halted, so current distributions are unknown. However, many studies project further declines in calanus abundance as waters warm.

Right whales: Last year, critically endangered right whale populations moved northward, out of the Gulf of Maine and into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, presumably to search for food. But its unclear if they found it  this year, for the first time in decades, there were no calves born, which can happen when food is scarce.

Numerous protections had been put into place to prevent whales from being struck by ships or entangled in fishing lines, but the shifting feeding grounds have put them in danger of ship strikes and entanglement in lobster fishing lines.

At least 17 of the roughly 450 remaining whales died last year  and with no calves born, the whales may once again be facing extinction.

Distant visitors: Fish that are not normally found north of Cape Cod have been entering the area, in record numbers. Fishermen report catching sailfish, black seabass, squid, and blue crab, all of which are native to much warmer climates.

The bottom line: When we talk about warming waters, we often talk about shifting populations. Questions revolve around whether or not species will move north fast enough to survive rapidly warming waters. But the recent warming in the Gulf reveals something dramatic: even if animals like right whales follow the cold water north, the habitats theyre entering may not be able to support them.

Youre not just sliding game pieces north on the map, Pershing says. The Gulf of Maine is really special.
The Housing and Urban Development Department, headed by Secretary Ben Carson, is changing its mission statement by possibly removing words like "free from discrimination," and emphasizing "self-sufficiency," the Washington Post reports. The Post reports that career staff at the agency were not consulted.

Why it matters: HUD is responsible for ensuring equal access to housing. HUD spokesman Raffi Williams told the Post that the revised statement is a "modest" attempt clarify what the agency's work includes, but president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Diane Yentel, says it shows Carson doesn't "take discrimination in the housing market seriously."

Per the Post, the new statement being proposed is: "HUDs mission is to ensure Americans have access to fair, affordable housing and opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency, thereby strengthening our communities and nation.

"HUDs mission is to ensure Americans have access to fair, affordable housing and opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency, thereby strengthening our communities and nation. Williams also told the Post that any mission statement from HUD "will embody the principle of fairness as a central element," and that the agency "will always be committed to ensuring inclusive housing, free from discrimination for all Americans."

This change has reportedly been "in the works for a couple of months."

Go deeper: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is also planning to change its mission statement, excluding the phrase "a nation of immigrants."
The Millennial generation, aged 21 to 36, is continuing to grow due to an influx of Millennial-aged immigrants and is forecasted to overtake Boomers in population next year. The generation isn't expected to peak until 2036, at 76.2 million people, according to a study by Pew Research.

Expand chart Data: Pew Research; Chart: Axios Visuals

By the numbers: 39% of foreign born U.S. citizens and 48% of foreign born non-citizens are between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the 2016 American Community Survey by the Census Bureau.
The Trump administration has asked China for a plan to reduce the bilateral trade deficit by $100 billion  not $1 billion as President Trump tweeted Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The details: It makes much more sense to cut $100 billion from a $375.2 billion deficit than to cut $1 billion. Liu He, President Xi Jinping's top economic deputy who was in Washington last week, reportedly told U.S. officials that it's in China's interest to reduce the trade deficit as it moves away from export-led growth. [Go deeper: The scale of the U.S.-China trade deficit.]
The Trump administration has yet to chart a clear or coherent policy toward Africa, but that may now be changing. Secretary of State Rex Tillersons six-day trip to Africa marks by far the administration's highest-ranking official visit to the continent, following U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haleys well-received tour in October.

The background: Tillerson laid out the beginnings of an Africa policy in a speech at George Mason University on Tuesday. He acknowledged the importance of Africa's partnership to U.S. interests and spoke favorably of policy initiatives undertaken by previous administrations, referring to the historically bipartisan nature of U.S.Africa relations.

However, his speech prioritized security issues over political, social or economic development. While this theme accords with Trumps worldview, it does not speak directly to the problems Africa wants to address or the interests of U.S. businesses looking to invest on the continent.

The destinations on the secretarys trip coincide with U.S. military assistance and engagements. Ethiopia and Kenya are engaged against al-Shabaab, Nigeria and Chad against Boko Haram and Sahelian Islamic extremists, and Djibouti hosts a U.S. military base. While still focusing on security issues, past administrations have also championed health (PEPFAR), development (Power Africa), U.S.-Africa trade (African Growth and Opportunity Act) and human rights (Anti-Apartheid Act, passed over President Reagans veto).

The bottom line: The United States has enjoyed a positive image across much of Africa, but Trumps recent derogatory comments have severely damaged its reputation. Tillersons trip is an opportunity for a reset. Even with a one-dimensional focus and without a signature policy initiative, the simple fact of Tillersons trip is a step in the right direction.

John Campbell is the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Ethiopia visiting the headquarters of the African Union Thursday, the first stop on his five-country tour of the continent. Per the NY Times, Tillerson's trip thus far, much like his recent visit to Latin America, has been marked by tense exchanges and calls to answer for the "shithole countries" remark Trump reportedly made in January.

Why it matters: Trump's unpredictability and inflammatory comments (including about Tillerson) haven't made representing the U.S. abroad any easier, particularly with global approval of U.S. leadership plummeting under his administration.

Awkward moments, per the NYTimes:

Wearing his signature "tight smile," Tillerson responded to a reporters' question about Trump's "shithole" remarks as best he could: The United States' commitment to Africa is quite clear in terms of the importance we place on the relationship.

Tillerson also railed against China, despite the fact that Chinese investments in Ethiopia total about $3.5 billion more than the U.S. in recent years. Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairman of the African Union Commission, responded, "I think Africans are mature enough to engage in partnerships of their own volition."

Tillerson is also staying at the same hotel as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but the pair reportedly have no plans to meet. Trolling Tillerson on Facebook, the Russian Embassy in Washington wrote, "This would be a great opportunity to discuss a range of accumulated issues on regional and global agenda not through the press, but directly.

Go deeper on Ethiopia: The world's fastest growing economy, in one of its poorest nations
As President Trump signed proclamations for tariffs on steel and aluminum this afternoon, the 11 remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) finally closed their sweeping trade deal, just over a year after the U.S. withdrew.

Why it matters: For the U.S., the TPP deal means that manufacturing, agricultural and services exporters and their workers will be at a disadvantage in the markets of the 11 Asian-Pacific countries. Beef, pork and dairy exporters, for example, will not benefit from the tariff cuts made by Japan that competitors from Australia, New Zealand and Canada will soon enjoy.

Few expected the other countries to proceed without their largest partner, but Japan filled the leadership vacuum left by the U.S. and pushed negotiations to the finish line. The final text is close to original agreement struck two years ago, minus a handful of provisions on areas including intellectual property, investment, government procurement and customs.

What's next: The TPP countries now must initiate their domestic approval procedures, which differ from country to country and in most cases include legislative votes. The deal will come into effect once six of the 11 countries complete these procedures, which should happen by early 2019.

After that, the door will be open for others to join. Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia have all expressed interest in the past. Some have suggested the United Kingdom, in need of trade partners post-Brexit, would be a good candidate. In light of President Trumps statement in January that he would consider rejoining TPP provided significant changes were made, the U.S. may also find itself back at the negotiating table.

The bottom line: U.S. exporters will be hurt, but its not all bad for America. Many of the provisions included in TPP-11  in such areas as state-owned enterprises, digital trade and labor  were based on U.S. proposals. These rules provide an important alternative to the state capitalism model offered by China and do so without invoking actions that would risk a trade war.

Wendy Cutler is vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
President Trump signed two proclamations today that go into effect on March 23, one imposing a 25% tariff on steel and the other a 10% tariff on aluminum. The president confirmed that Canada and Mexico are exempt from the tariff increases, citing national security agreements  specifically ongoing NAFTA negotiations. He called the existing taxes an economic and national security "disaster" adding, "we're finally taking action to correct."

The big picture: This will still meet fierce opposition from free traders and large sections of the business community. But its not nearly so bad as it originally appeared. Trump initially wanted to impose these tariffs on everyone with no exceptions and no room for exclusions. Theres now plenty of wiggle room.

A factor that influenced Trump: In his conversations with Canadian leader Justin Trudeau he became convinced that he could use the threat of steel and aluminum tariffs as leverage to get a better deal in the NAFTA negotiations, according to sources with direct knowledge. Trumps team viewed Canada as a bigger problem than Mexico in these negotiations and given Canada sells so much of those metals to the US, Trump saw an opportunity to squeeze them. (Whether it works is an open question.)

The details: The proclamations will be "flexible," allowing the U.S. to address security relationships in an "ironclad way" to defend its steel and aluminum industries, said a senior administration official. Trump explained that they will show "great flexibility and cooperation towards [nations] who are really friends of ours both on a trade basis and on a military basis." The administration is open to allowing some countries to negotiate for exemptions on a "case-by-case" basis, pending separate, bilateral agreements.

What's next: Countries have threatened to protest the increased tariffs, with the EU warning of "tit-for-tat" tariffs of 25% on $3.5 billion worth of American products. We could see an international trade war looming with subsequent hits to the U.S. and global economies.
President Trump on Wednesday launched, by executive order, the Federal Interagency Council on Crime Prevention and Improving Reentry. The president enacted the council with the aim of reducing crime while looking for ways to "provide those who have engaged in criminal activity with greater opportunities to lead productive lives."

Why it matters: Jared Kushner has been pushing for criminal justice reform and just last week, the White House released its prison reform priorities to Congress. This is another big step toward implementing prison reform in the federal criminal justice system, however some criminal justice reform advocates  including Sen. Chuck Grassley  are not settling for prison reform without sentencing reform.

What they're saying:

We applaud President Trump for following through on his stated commitment to reducing crime, reforming our prisons and rehabilitating individuals who are hungry for a second chance, Mark Holden, general counsel at Koch Industries who recently launched the Safe Streets and Second Chances prison reform initiative, told Axios. Holden said he is particularly encouraged that Jared Kushner will be one of the co-chairs.

While she thinks this is a good step from the administration, Inimai Chettiar, director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice told Axios, "there can be no real criminal justice reform without reducing the number of people entering prison. The President and Attorney General are attempting to kill bipartisan sentencing reform in Congress, and offering incremental reentry reforms instead."

About the executive order:
With President Trump imminently planning to sign a tariffs proclamation, the Gary Cohn wing scores a win: Canada and Mexico will be exempt at the outset, and will remain so if a new NAFTA deal is reached, per the Wall Street Journal.

Trade wars are bad and easy to lose.

 European Council President Donald Tusk at a press conference in Luxembourg, via AFP

The latest: A senior official told Axios' Jonathan Swan last evening that Trump's planned tariff announcement is now not happening today. As we reported Wednesday, Trump wanted to do it as soon as possible but White House lawyers are still working out the details.
The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) does not fear that some of its lawmakers may break ranks, its spokesperson said ahead of next months parliamentary vote on the next prime minister that is going to be held through an open ballot system.

Under Armenias new Constitution, when outgoing President Serzh Sarkisians powers expire on April 9, the four parliamentary factions will have a week to field their candidates for prime minister, which is going to be the top policymaking post in the country thenceforth.

Unlike the recent parliamentary election of Armenias next, largely ceremonial president, which was held by a secret ballot, lawmakers are to elect the countrys next, more powerful prime minister in an open ballot, meaning that the record of each vote will contain the name of the voter.

Together with its junior coalition partner, Dashnaktsutyun, the HHK enjoys a comfortable majority in the Armenian legislature and is expected to be able to easily install its candidate as prime minister.

Opposition representatives as well as pundits have assumed that the open ballot system is preferred by the parliament majority to make sure none of its members vote against the party-backed candidate.

We have no renegades within the Republican Party, Deputy Parliament Speaker Eduard Sharmazanov, who is also a spokesman for the HHK, said. Let them look for renegades in other parties.

According to Sharmazanov, the HHK will start discussions on its candidacy for next prime minister in early April. Many say that we are slow, but we arent, simply some are too hasty, he said.

Opposition parties and analysts assume that the HHK will name Sarkisian for the position of prime minister, which, if happens, will be against the promise made by the outgoing president four years ago not to aspire to the top post if Armenia becomes a parliamentary republic as a result of controversial constitutional changes initiated by him.

Sharmazanov and other senior HHK members earlier expressed their personal views that Sarkisian would be the best choice for the post. They downplayed his earlier promise, saying that in politics one has to be guided by interests of the State.

In anticipation of Sarkisians nomination at least one Armenian opposition group has warned the outgoing president against attempting to stay in power. Nikol Pashinian, an outspoken government critic who heads the opposition Yelk faction in parliament, said last month that such a move could drastically escalate the political situation in Armenia.

The Pashinian-led party in the three-party Yelk alliance has considered a possibility of staging street protests against Sarkisians becoming Armenias next prime minister in April.

Meanwhile, as a whole the alliance, which has nine members in the 105-seat National Assembly, plans to field its own candidate as an alternative to the majority candidate.

Yelk lawmaker Aram Sargsian told RFE/RLs Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) today that they havent come up with the decision on who their candidate will be.
By Trend:

Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to OSCE has made clarifications with regard to the allegations surfaced in the Armenian media claiming that at the initiative of the agents of the unlawful separatist regime in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan a so-called statement was disseminated as an official document in OSCE.

In line with established practice within OSCE, the Secretatriat of the organization distributes at the request of any participating state any document received from that state without altering its content, said the message from the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to OSCE.

The delegation of Azerbaijan to OSCE on a number of occasions has raised this issue with the Secretariat and Secretary General of the organization, drawing attention to the inadmissibility of allowing Armenia to abuse the OSCE Document Distribution Center for promoting its annexationist aspirations with regard to the territories it has occupied through military force and where it has carried out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, in violation of the OSCE principles and commitments set forth in the Helsinki Final Act and the OSCE documents and decisions, said the message.

As a result of negotiations with the Secretary General, the OSCE Secretariat distributed among the participating states a Note Verbale, in which it restated the official policy of the organization that the Secretariat carries no responsibility for the content of the document received for distribution from any participating state and that such distribution is without prejudice to the OSCE decisions as set out in documents agreed by OSCE participating states, said the message.

The sole responsibility for the content rests with the particpating state, requesting distribution of the document, according to the message from the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to OSCE.

The OSCE as an intergovernmental organization carries out the consensus-based decisions and exercises collective will of all 57 particpating states. Only consensus documents reflect the position of the organization. Consequently, dissemination of the mentioned "statement" is irrelevant and has no effect whatsoever on the declared OSCE position with regard to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, said the message.

This position is reflected in the relevant OSCE documents and decisions adopted by consensus since 1990s, which underlined the respect for the inviolability of all borders, whether internal or external and unequivocally recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh region is a part of Azerbaijan, according to the message.

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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Trend:

The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will formally launch the missions activities on the upcoming presidential election in Azerbaijan on March 9, the OSCE said in a message on March 7.

Corien Jonker, the head of the ODIHR election observation mission, will introduce the role of the mission and its upcoming activities during a press conference scheduled for March 9.

Previously, it was reported that ODIHR recommended to send 280 people to Azerbaijan to observe the election process on the voting day (short-term observers), as well as 30 long-term observers.

The presidential election will be held in Azerbaijan on April 11.

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Trend:

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has approved the law "On approving the agreement between the Government of Azerbaijan and the Government of Lithuania exempting holders of service passports from visa requirements".

The agreement was signed in Vilnius on Oct. 27, 2017.

President Aliyev also approved the law "On approving the agreement between the Government of Azerbaijan and the Governments of Benelux Countries exempting holders of service passports from visa requirements".

The agreement was signed in Brussels on Nov. 23, 2017.

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Trend:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has extended condolences to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in connection with fire in the Republican Drug Rehabilitation Center which led to casualties.

"Dear Mr. President, dear brother. I was deeply saddened by the news of death of 25 Azerbaijani citizens and many injured in a fire in a treatment center in Baku," the message reads.

"We feel the sorrow of the brotherly Azerbaijan in the depths of our hearts," he said, further extending his deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died and wished recovery to the wounded.

"Dear Mr. President, taking this opportunity, I wish you good health and well-being to the brotherly Azerbaijani people," Erdogan told President Aliyev in the letter.

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic also sent a message of condolences.

"Dear Mr. President. I was deeply saddened by the news of death of Azerbaijani citizens in the Republican Drug Rehabilitation Center in Baku. On behalf of Croatian people and on my own behalf, I extend my deepest condolences to you, the letter said.

"We share the sorrow of the citizens of your country and wish patience to the families of the killed."

Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov also sent a letter of condolences to President Ilham Aliyev.

"Dear brother, I was deeply saddened by the news of death of many people in a fire in a treatment center in Baku," the message reads.

"I express my deep condolences to the relatives and friends of the victims and share their sorrow. I wish all those injured as a result of this incident to recover soon."

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The influential Dutch Diplomat Magazine has published an article devoted to Azerbaijani women.

Azerbaijan recently hosted its first Global Startup Weekend Women in Baku attracting 50 entrepreneurs leading the countrys fast-growing startup ecosystem. Two women from a human resources and job-seeker startup called TalentPort won this competition and represented Azerbaijan at the Global Startup Weekend Women in Paris, wrote the author of the article Geovanny Vicente Romero, founder of the Dominican Republic Center of Public Policy, Leadership and Development (CPDL-RD, international consultant.

The author writes that TalentPort is described as the first Azerbaijani corporate social responsible company aimed to provide students and disabled people with temporary jobs to build their skills and provide a reliable, cost-effective source of labor.

This company is an excellent example of the valuable contributions women leaders make in Azerbaijans modern society with a strong track record of womens empowerment reflected in the countrys political leadership and educational attainment, Romero notes.

The author asks: How has Azerbaijans human development set itself apart from its neighbors?

A small Muslim-majority nation squeezed between Russia and Iran, Azerbaijan is no different from its Muslim neighbors, yet the progressive government of the short-lived republic in 1918-1920 ensured that women became full members of the liberal and secular society, said the article.

Romero pointed out that a renowned Polish-American historian Tadeusz Swietochowski wrote in his seminal book Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920 that the National Councils law on Constituent Assembly providing proportional representation to minorities and political groups, and universal suffrage effectively made Azerbaijan the first state in the Muslim world to grant women their political rights.

Thus, Azerbaijani women were enfranchised even ahead of many developed nations of Europe and the United States of America, wrote the author.

Romero noted that the US passed the 19th Amendment to its Constitution giving American women their voting rights in 1920.

Since 1918, women have become a sign of progress in Azerbaijan. This tradition continues into the 21st Century, he added.

In March 2000, Azerbaijans President Heydar Aliyev signed an executive order on a new State Policy on Women, instructing the administration to ensure proportional representation of women in government based on the principles of equality; make sure women have their deserved place in business and economics, and consistently check the progress of women in the society, recalled the author.

The new law may have solidified the path that was already leading women in Azerbaijan to new heights, according to the article.

At present, Azerbaijan has a female cabinet member and 16 percent of its 125-member National Assembly are women. According to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Womens report on Azerbaijan, the poverty rate among women decreased from 49 percent in earlier years to 5.9 percent in 2014, a statistic that can be attributed both to the overall economic development of the country with equal participation and benefit to its women, Romero wrote.

The author pointed out that Azerbaijan society values education, with 90 percent of women graduating from secondary school education.

Since enforcing the 2000 law on the state policy on women, women by 2015 made up 18 percent of Azerbaijan entrepreneurs. Azerbaijani women are also serving in the military, with an estimated 1,000 women in active military duty alongside men. The power of women in Azerbaijan also extends to minorities. Such is the case of Tatyana Goldman Alexander, an Azerbaijani Jew holding a seat in the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan, a testament to the countrys special attention to ethnic minorities and women, said the article.

Romero pointed out that some modern-day inspiration for women in Azerbaijan is coming from the influential First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva.

In her tenure as the First Lady, she has served as the Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO and ISESCO, taking her philanthropic work beyond Azerbaijan, said the article.

Heydar Aliyev Foundation that shes led since its formation in 2004, has made substantial contribution to enhancing cultural and economic development, especially when it comes to young women, noted the author.

With the efforts of the organization, new hospitals, museums, schools were built in Azerbaijan and other countries, including Egypt, Romania, Russia, the Netherlands, Pakistan and Georgia, said the article.

Recently, the First Lady become the highest ranking woman official in Azerbaijans history when she was named Vice President in 2017, wrote Romero.

The case of Azerbaijan demonstrates how stereotypes of women can be dismantled, how equality can be established and most importantly, how the world can be made a better place. Women contribute to the highest positions of power, because they have knowledge and expertise to share that enrich public policies and political discussions. Women improve the representativeness of the decisions that emerge from the political system resolving many of the globes most entrenched conflicts and leading humanity into the future. Azerbaijans future is being written by a concert of voices, of which women represent an integral part, said the article.

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Children living in Bevil Oaks will attend Hardin-Jefferson ISD this fall after Beaumont ISD agreed this week to release the students, ending a decades-long effort by the small city to leave the largest school district in Southeast Texas.

Beaumont ISD reached an agreement with petitioners this week, releasing Bevil Oaks' students and tax dollars to Hardin-Jefferson ISD. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath approved the detachment in an order signed on Monday.

"Effective July 1, 2018, students residing in Bevil Oaks become residents of HJISD, title to property owned by BISD within Bevil Oaks will transfer to HJISD, HJISD will assume any BISD bond debt allocated to it by the Jefferson County Commissioners and HJISD assumes jurisdiction of the annexed territory for all other purposes," BISD said in a statement Thursday.

>> Read the order here.

Residents petitioned the districts this spring asking to join Hardin-Jefferson ISD, which they say is closer and has better academic results and school environments. Bevil Oaks has tried to leave Beaumont ISD multiple times in the past 30 years, but all previous attempts have failed.

H-JISD's board voted to accept the city's students, but BISD's board of managers rejected the residents' petition in May, claiming that it didn't meet the criteria in the Texas Education Code that allows for detachment.

>> Read more: BISD says 'no' to Bevil Oaks petitioners wanting H-J annex

The residents appealed the denial, and an Administrative Law Judge in Austin ruled in December that detachment was legal.

A hearing scheduled this week was waived, and the parties agreed to the order releasing the city to Hardin-Jefferson.

"There are no significant adverse social, economic or educational effects of the proposed boundary change" for students in either district, the order said.

Hardin-Jefferson superintendent Shannon Holmes said he was not surprised that the agreement was reached. "I'm excited that they're now going to be part of the Hawk family."

"I feel grateful," said Allen Pride, a Bevil Oaks resident who has led the effort to leave BISD. "I feel grateful that Hardin-Jefferson accepted us, and that Beaumont ISD chose to let us go without further fighting."

>> Read more: Bevil Oaks residents petitioning again to leave BISD for H-JISD

As of 2015-16, the most recent completed school year when the petition was signed, there were 48 students from Bevil Oaks attending BISD schools, and 27 Bevil oaks students attending Hardin-Jefferson as transfer students.

Neighbors said last spring that other students in the city were unofficially already attending Hardin-Jefferson ISD by using addresses of relatives or rental properties in the H-J district.

Holmes said he thinks the number of students in the city has likely changed since Harvey, and expects to recalculate the numbers when the district starts making plans for the annexation. "We've got additional capacity on each of our campuses," he said, and the district has not yet accepted applications for external transfers for next year to ensure space for the Bevil Oaks students.

When the BISD board rejected Bevil Oaks' petition in May, they rezoned the city to address their concerns about distance, sending the city's middle school students to Marshall or Vincent, instead of Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School on Avenue A.

During the public hearings held on the petition last spring, Bevil Oaks residents asked Hardin-Jefferson to "save" their students from BISD, with some arguing their students weren't safe in the larger district.

Many claimed that their students' and families' "values" and "lifestyle" more closely aligned with those in the H-J school district.

BISD, the region's largest district, has more than 19,000 students. According to data from the Texas Education Agency, 60 percent of its students are African American, 23 percent are Hispanic and 11 percent are white. Almost 80 percent are considered economically disadvantaged, compared to 39 percent in Hardin-Jefferson.

H-JISD has about 2,200 students, and about 78 percent are white.

Bevil Oaks had about 1,250 residents before Tropical Storm Harvey, which devastated the city, according to U.S. Census data. The city is 88 percent white.

The order said the boundary change "would not affect the racial makeup of either district beyond the allowable amount under the law, and there is no indication that the proposed detachment and annexation is racially motivated and/or would lead to illegal segregation," though it did not explain how that determination was reached.

Both districts were overall rated "met standard" by the Texas Education Agency for 2016-17, but BISD had 10 of its campuses rated "improvement required," while all H-JISD schools met state standards.

In response to claims from the petitioners last spring that Hardin-Jefferson students receive a better education than Beaumont's, then-board president Jimmy Simmons said "we believe our education system offers them as much, or more." Current board president Joe Domino could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday.

On social media Thursday afternoon, Bevil Oaks residents celebrated the news, calling it "spectacular" and long-awaited.

Some residents have said in recent months that they were waiting on the outcome of the case to decide whether or not to rebuild their damaged homes in the city or to move elsewhere.

Along with the 45 current students and the city's tax base, Hardin-Jefferson will also receive a 13.63 acre tract of land in the city limits that BISD owns. The Jefferson County Commissioners' Court will determine how much of BISD's bond indebtedness will transfer to Hardin-Jefferson, which they agreed to take on when they approved the annexation last May.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
Beaumont ISD plans to "keep a presence" on the Central High School campus and will use the gym for events and rentals, Superintendent John Frossard said on Wednesday.

The gym, which is a detached building, has remained open since the main building was closed in September because of Tropical Storm Harvey, and will be available for district and community events, Frossard said.

BISD has not announced plans for Central's main building, which would cost an estimated $19 million to repair and renovate.

"The district is currently evaluating which programs to relocate to the Central campus in order to keep the usable parts of the facility in use," spokeswoman Nakisha Burns said.

While the school's 1,400 students will move to the Ozen campus when Beaumont United High School opens in August, the district will keep portable buildings on the Old Town lot rather than moving them, which would be "cost-prohibitive," Frossard said.

Instead, the district will install a $2.2 million modular building at the Ozen campus this spring. The district's governing board voted unanimously Wednesday to increase the 2017-18 budget by more than $2 million to cover the Ozen upgrade, citing Beaumont United's large student body, estimated to be around 2,400, as the need.

>> Read the budget request here.

The money will come out of the district's fund balance, which is currently more than $20 million.

This past fall, BISD spent about $3 million trying to control leaks in the Central building, which is almost 90 years old. The district decided in January to close the campus and merge the student bodies at Ozen.

In response to rumors that the district already had a buyer for Central lined up before voting to consolidate the high schools, Frossard said in January that the damage made it clear it's unlikely anyone would want to buy the building.

The modular brick building going up at the current Ozen campus will be built on a slab, have 16 classrooms and an expected lifespan of 30 to 50 years, Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Hernandez said on Wednesday.

Construction of the slab and building installation can't start until the Mansfield, Texas-based company has completed plans and gotten permits from the city of Beaumont, but BISD "can start the dirt work immediately," Hernandez said.

According to plans posted on the district's website, the cost may increase for windows and doors that comply with the Texas Department of Insurance's windstorm standards.

Ramtech built the temporary Deweyville Elementary campus after the school flooded in March 2016, and has also built permanent buildings for Alief ISD in Houston, according to the company's website.

The modular building structure was chosen for Beaumont United because it can be installed more quickly than other types of construction, ensuring the project is complete by the time school starts on Aug. 13, Hernandez said.

BISD has not announced which classrooms or students will use the new building.

The board also voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve spending about $69,000 to install internet connections at the Beaumont United campus, and to give Frossard authority to approve contracts for plumbing, electrical and sewer work for the new building.

While the board usually approves all purchases and agreements of more than $50,000, Frossard has authority to sign contracts up to $500,000 for the project "due to time constraints."

Manager Vernice Monroe asked that the board be given a list of all contracts signed.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz


Criminal lawyers for a death row inmate convicted in the 1998 Jasper dragging death of James Byrd Jr. should have argued at trial that his racist views were "largely fantasy" and that he "did not advocate violence," his attorney claimed in an appeal filed this week in federal court.

John William King, 43, who was convicted of capital murder in Byrd's death, filed an appeal in 2017 alleging that his trial defense lawyers, Sonny Cribbs and Brack Jones, were ineffective and did not present evidence that could have proved him innocent.

Byrd, 49, was chained by his ankles to the bumper of a truck and fatally dragged on an old logging road on the outskirts of Jasper in June 1998.

> > RELATED: Scenes from Lawrence Russell Brewer's execution

King's appeal was denied by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans in February. Judge Carolyn Dineen King wrote in the opinion that Cribbs, who died last year, and Jones were "facing an uphill battle from the start," and tried to maximize King's chances of acquittal.

In a request for a rehearing filed Wednesday, appeals attorney Richard Ellis repeated his claim that Cribbs and Jones should have challenged prosecutors' theory that Byrd's death was a racially-motivated murder.

"King's racist views are not in dispute," Ellis said, "yet the defense failed to effectively show that these racist views did not encompass racist violence."

King joined a KKK splinter group known as the Confederate Knights of America (CKA) while in prison on a burglary charge in the 1990s, and indicated that he wanted to start a white supremacist group in Jasper, according to court testimony.

Ellis called that intent a "stillborn fantasy," which he said Cribbs and Jones should have pointed out at trial.

> > TIMELINE: The dragging death of James Byrd Jr.

"Defense counsel could also have cast doubt on the State's theory by showing that King's CKA activities were largely fantasy and grandiose braggadocio common to inmates with a fertile imagination and time on their hands," Ellis wrote in the Wednesday appeal. King referred to himself as the "Exalted Cyclops of the C.K.A. here in prison," which Ellis said was evidence that his plan to start the hate group was not realistic.

He argued in the motion that "King espoused the tenets of the 'Asatru' religion and 'Odinism,' both of which seem to be based on Norse mythology."

According to Ellis' motion, documents found in King's apartment show that the Asatru Community "does not support nor promote religious or racial hatred, prejudice, or bigotry."

Followers "believe that all peoples have the Gods (sic) given right to seek their own religious, cultural, and ethnic fulfillment, free from oppression or malice," Ellis wrote.

He said Cribbs and Jones should have used those documents at trial to prove King did not intend to commit racist crimes.

Ellis also cites a letter King wrote recruiting members to the CKA, in which he called it "a totally legal organization" and promised "no leader will ever ask you to break any law."

"We try to motivate the Aryan race to work for the advancement of its kindred, we don't force anyone to do anything," King wrote in the letter.

Ellis argued at a hearing in January that Byrd's death was a "backwoods drug deal gone bad," not a race-based crime, a theory that the Appeals Court said in its ruling was "uncorroborated by any physical evidence."

In Wednesday's motion, Ellis reiterated his claim that Cribbs and Jones did not pursue that theory because of a media rights deal that made the hate crime theory more profitable for them.

> > RELATED: Texas death row inmates won't receive last meals after Jasper killer's final request

According to court documents, King signed a media rights agreement on the last day of his trial, giving literary and media rights to his life story to Cribbs, Jones and King's father.

"Defense counsel had an obvious financial motive not to challenge the sensational State's theory, because a steroid-deal gone bad would have had negligible value as a media property," Ellis said. King's story and the agreement were "worth much more if this crime was not seen as simply another drug-related murder, however grisly in its details."

In their February ruling, the appeals court said this claim was "unconvincing," because there is not proof that it actually influenced the lawyers' actions, but Ellis argued Wednesday that there was clearly an adverse impact. The appeal also again argues that Cribbs and Jones did not sufficiently challenge evidence tying King to the crime, including a cigarette butt found along the road where Byrd was killed, and sandals found in King's apartment with Byrd's blood on them.

The Appeals Court ruled that Cribbs' and Jones' treatment of the evidence was reasonable, and said the theory that King had "violent white-supremacist views was multifaceted and ironclad."

"No matter how skillful they were, counsel could not make this evidence go away," the court said.

King was the first of three white men from Jasper convicted of capital murder for the hate crime. He was sentenced to death in 1999.

Co-defendant Lawrence Brewer was sentenced to death in the case and was executed in 2011 at the age of 44. Another co-defendant, Shawn Allen Berry, 42, is serving a life sentence.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
A Lumberton seventh-grader was arrested Thursday after threatening a school shooting, Police Chief Danny Sullins said.

In a message to a student in another local school district, the student said he was "mad at everyone and hates everyone," and said he was going to shoot people at Lumberton Middle School, Sullins said.

The message was reported to the Hardin County Sheriff's Office, which contacted the school and Lumberton Police Department.

Police found no weapons in the student's belongings or in the school, Sullins said. The campus was not put on lockdown, LISD said.

Sullins said the student faces a third degree felony charge of making a terroristic threat, and a class A misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest.

The student was brought to the principal's office, and "while taking him into custody, he decided to resist the officers," he said. "Officers had to subdue him."

He has been arraigned and will be held at the Hardin County juvenile detention facility in Kountze.

"This was opened and closed very quickly," Sullins said. "I have zero tolerance for this kind of stuff."

In a Facebook post, Lumberton ISD reminded parents "to be vigilant and knowledgeable of their child's communications through their phones."

"You absolutely cannot make comments like this in our society," Sullins said.

At least two other Southeast Texas students were arrested in the past month for allegedly making terroristic threats.

A Little Cypress-Mauriceville High student was detained at the Minnie Rogers juvenile detention facility on Feb. 22 after allegedly posting a threat on social media, according to the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

Kirbyville police arrested a Kirbyville High School student on Feb. 16 for allegedly saying "that he hated everyone and wanted to kill everyone" during a class discussion about the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

About one-third of the more than 30 districts in Region 5 have reported real or rumored threats in the last month.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
Here are seven updates for ASC leaders to know for March 8, 2018.

Data breach at New York ASC possibly exposes 135k patient records  4 insights

An unauthorized third party possibly gained access to approximately 135,000 patient records at Albany, N.Y.-based St. Peter's Surgery & Endoscopy Center Jan. 8. The center said there was no evidence showing patient information was accessed or used in any way, but the center is "unable to definitively rule that out."

Missoula Bone & Joint approved for larger ASC

Missoula City Council approved Missoula (Mont.) Bone & Joint to open a 31,949-square-foot ASC on its campus, which already includes a 43,307-square-foot office building. The new surgery center could cost around 50 percent to 60 percent less than hospital-based procedures.

St. Rita's Medical Center to offer robotic surgery in outpatient ASC

Mercy Health St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima, Ohio, will feature a da Vinci Si surgical system in the Mercy Health-Ambulatory Surgery Center's new surgical room, expected to be fully operational by June. The surgical robot will allow physicians to perform single-quadrant gallbladder, prostate, hysterectomy and hernia surgeries.

UnitedHealth Group eyes acquisition of Envision's ambulatory unit

UnitedHealth Group submitted a bid to acquire Envision's ambulatory business, several people familiar with the matter said. Envision shares rocketed 5.9 percent after the rumors came out. It would be UnitedHealth Group's second ambulatory-facing acquisition; UnitedHealth's Optum acquired Surgical Care Affiliates for $2.3 billion in 2017.

Pennsylvania legislators expand ASC scope of care  3 insights

Pennsylvania legislators expanded the duration that services can be performed in the ASC space to up to 24 hours. The state originally limited duration of services to a four-hour procedure and four hours of supervised recovery. The new law is now in effect.

UC San Diego to open Koman Family Outpatient Pavilion

UC San Diego is set to open the 156,000-square-foot, $140 million Koman Family Outpatient Pavilion March 12. The pavilion houses eight surgical suites, imaging services, physical therapy services and pain management services.

New Jersey ASC Association: Relative number of adverse events in surgery centers 'extraordinarily low'

New Jersey Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers President Jeff Shanton said a report by The Record and NorthJersey.com misrepresents ASCs and the quality of care they provide by using anecdotal information and allegations from ongoing lawsuits. Mr. Shanton's letter published on NorthJersey.com said the article failed to contextualize adverse events at ASCs by not evaluating hospitals or other healthcare facilities.
Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare unveiled plans to construct a $93.5 million cancer center at its Sentara Leigh Hospital in Norfolk March 8.

The facility, dubbed the Sentara Cancer Center, will serve as a home for multidisciplinary care teams from the Virginia Oncology Associates, Sentara Medical Group and Norfolk-based Eastern Virginia Medical School.

The facility will centralize outpatient oncology services to one cancer center.

Construction on the facility is expected to start in late March and is projected to be complete by mid-2020.

"Developing this center is the culmination of years of work to deliver a truly integrated cancer program that will engage clinicians, researchers, support staff, community leaders, patients, and families in a collaborative way," said Howard Kern, president and CEO of Sentara Healthcare.
Lakeland Community Hospital, a 59-bed hospital in Haleyville, Ala., was slated to shut down at the end of the month, but it will now remain open, according to WBRC.

In November, officials said the hospital was closing due to dwindling reimbursements. Hospital CEO Debbie Pace said officials explored "every viable option" before making the decision to close Lakeland Community Hospital, which is the only hospital in Winston County.

However, the hospital will remain open thanks to efforts by several groups. On March 31, Clinton, Tenn.-based Curae Health, which currently owns Lakeland Community Hospital, will transfer ownership of the facility to the Haleyville and Winston County Hospital Authority. Once the ownership change occurs, Nashville, Tenn.-based Java Medical Group will operate the hospital, according to the report.

In December, Haleyville leaders approved a 1-cent sales tax, which will help support the hospital. Half of the revenue from the sales tax will go toward the hospital authority, and the other half will be used to pay hospital debt.

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UnityPoint Health-Meriter in Madison, Wis., is at risk of losing its Medicare contract after a handful of patients in the hospital's newborn intensive care unit suffered unexplained injuries.

Hospital authorities notified police about the injuries in early February, and the Madison Police Department is investigating. The hospital did not disclose the types of injuries that occurred in the NICU, citing patient privacy laws.

In February, Meriter told Becker's Hospital Review it was cooperating in the investigation, and it had implemented additional monitoring and security measures to enhance supervision in the hospital's NICU.

Due to the patient safety issues, the hospital's Medicare billing privileges were originally set to be terminated March 18, but CMS extended the termination date by more than two months after the hospital made progress toward full compliance with Medicare rules. The hospital has suspended the nurse who was allegedly involved in the incidents, and it has submitted a correction plan to CMS that includes several changes to improve patient safety in the NICU.

UnityPoint Health-Meriter did not immediately respond to Becker's request for comment.

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Wyoming hospital resolves 20 malpractice suits that pushed it into bankruptcy

59-bed Alabama hospital avoids closure

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Powell (Wyo.) Valley Healthcare has emerged from bankruptcy, and the hospital's reorganization plan resolves about 20 malpractice lawsuits that pushed the facility into bankruptcy in 2016.

Powell Valley Healthcare filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2016. At that time, the board said the only reason for entering bankruptcy was a flood of litigation over surgeries performed by orthopedic surgeon Jeffrey Hansen, MD.

Former patients of Dr. Hansen brought the lawsuits over surgeries performed in 2013 and prior. He was employed by Powell Valley Healthcare from 2006 through February 2014. Dr. Hansen, who has denied any wrongdoing, resigned from the hospital after being suspended over patient safety concerns.

The hospital board said filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy would allow the hospital to effectively deal with the lawsuits while not disrupting operations.

Powell Valley Healthcare's reorganization plan went into effect March 1, according to the Powell Valley Tribune. The reorganization plan calls for the hospital to pay $3 million over the next eight years to the patients who filed claims against the hospital. The patients will also receive $3 million from UMIA Insurance, which provided medical malpractice insurance to the hospital from August 2014 through August 2016, and an additional $127,500 from a company that helped manage the hospital while Dr. Hansen was employed there.

The amount each patient will receive will be determined through mediation at a later date.

More articles on healthcare finance:

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Cleveland Clinic promoted three physicians to its executive team.

Edmund Sabanegh, MD, will serve as hospital president of Cleveland Clinic's main campus. He has served in numerous leadership roles since he joined Cleveland Clinic in 2006, including associate chief of staff and urology department chairman.

Cleveland Clinic selected James Young, MD, to serve as chief academic officer, leading its education and research mission. He previously served as executive dean of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University; chairman of the Endocrinology and Metabolism Institute; and physician director of the Philanthropy Institute.

The organization named Herbert Wiedemann, MD, chief of staff. Dr. Wiedemann has worked at Cleveland Clinic since 1984 and has served as chairman of the Respiratory Institute since 2007. He succeeds Brian Donley, MD, who was tapped to serve as CEO of Cleveland Clinic London.

"While Cleveland Clinic is well-positioned for the future, it is clear that our organization has grown in scope and complexity and the executive team structure should evolve to meet our future needs," said Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD.
Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Penrose-St. Francis Health Services CEO Margaret Sabin is resigning March 16, according to a report by The Gazette.

Here are six things to know:

1. Ms. Sabin served in the role for nearly a decade.

2. Her decision to resign "has to do with my love of population health management. I want to try to do something while I still have runway in my career that is more dedicated to that goal," she told The Gazette.

3. Ms. Sabin took over Penrose-St. Francis Health Services when it was struggling financially.

4. During her tenure, she focused on bringing financial and operational stability to the organization. Last year, Penrose-St. Francis launched a $102 million expansion of St. Francis Medical Center in Colorado Springs, which will be completed next year.

5. She also spearheaded the acquisition of an 80-acre plot of land in Colorado Springs, where a replacement hospital for Colorado Springs-based Penrose Hospital will be built.

6. Ms. Sabin's experience prior to Penrose-St. Francis includes serving as CEO of Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health and leading Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colo.
Dennis P. Lund, MD, serves as CMO of Stanford (Calif.) Children's Health and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, and associate dean for maternal and child health at the Stanford School of Medicine.

On April 11th, Dr. Lund will speak on a panel as well as give a presentation at Becker's Hospital Review 9th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Dr. Lund's sessions, click here.

Q: What are the disruptors that have your attention? Why?

Dennis P. Lund: When I saw this question about disruptors in healthcare, my first though was digital health initiatives  it's something I've seen permeate almost everything I touch as a CMO. That said, we do not know yet what the delivery of healthcare will look like in, say, 2025, but we do know one thing  it's not going to be the same way we're delivering it today. We already see that telehealth will play a large role, as will digital encounters with physicians and providers of all kinds.

As millennials and younger generations become the parents who are buying healthcare services, convenience and access are both going to be paramount considerations when it comes to their decision making. Therefore, we are going to have to redesign our care delivery systems around the patients themselves, rather than around providers. This sort of patient-centered care ranges from traditional telehealth, or looking at a provider on a computer screen, all the way down to wearables, which offer constant monitoring and continuous connectivity. In order to do this, though, there will have to be some sort of monitoring device involved. The technology for these sorts of monitoring devices is already available; now, it's up to healthcare systems to scale this technology in the coming years.

Q: All healthcare is local. What about your specific market influences your organization's business or operations most?

DPL: The northern California market has become quite consolidated and looks like it will continue to consolidate. Fundamentally, there are a limited number of large tertiary pediatric providers in the Bay Area region, which makes our market unique. With limited primary and specialty care support, government-funded patients, often complicated or critical in nature, are dispersed amongst northern California pediatric providers disproportionately. Right now, the concern we have is that if there is a substantial reorganization of how Medicaid is financed moving forward, the number children who can be cared for under government programs becomes subject to substantial risk. We need to ensure that children do not get swept up into a broader government reform, as it could detrimentally affect how these pediatric patients are treated. This fear is true in a lot of markets in the U.S., but it is particularly relevant in northern California.

Additionally, and somewhat related to the above discussion, is that building a pediatric delivery system is difficult because pediatric specialists are in short supply. To use an example close to home, at Stanford Children's Health, we've been tasked with developing a pediatric healthcare delivery system that can somewhat serve as a "plug-and-play" model for other adult providers. This, in addition to our position as an education and training institution, has allowed us to collaborate and build relationships with other healthcare systems, such as [Walnut Creek, Calif.-based] John Muir Health and [San Francisco-based] Dignity Health to name a couple.

Q: As a leader, what is the best investment you made in your own professional development in the past five years?

DPL: For myself, I have typically made sure that I have invested time in some sort of personal enrichment courses throughout my career  whether that be leadership training, quality and safety training, or even some more basic healthcare finance training. These courses, which aren't long, usually spanning a week or two, allow me and my fellow colleagues to step away from our daily routines, giving us the chance to spend a brief period of time discovering new things with a different set of people, from a vastly different vantage point.

At Stanford, physical wellness is important  as it is for many institutions out there. In fact, I believe Stanford became one of the first institutions  if not the first  to recruit a chief wellness officer, Tait Shanafelt, MD. Through Dr. Shanafelt, we're looking into a variety of programs and support activities centered around physician wellness. It all comes down to this: if we don't have happy and healthy physicians, we cannot provide quality care.

On April 11, Dr. Lund will speak on a panel at Becker's Hospital Reviews 9th Annual Meeting highlighting the evolving role of the CMO, in addition to presenting on how specialty and subspecialty shortages can impact a hospitals business strategy. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Dr. Lunds sessions, click here.
John Collins, a former, longtime CEO of Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, died March 2 at age 72 of complications from heart failure, according to the Valley News.

Throughout his tenure as CEO at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, from the mid-1970s to 2007, Mr. Collins helped move the clinic from its original home in Hanover, N.H., to its Lebanon location and helped bring physicians practicing in nearby cities to the clinic. In addition, his colleagues credited Mr. Collins for helping to shape the reputation of Dartmouth-Hitchcock with his strategy and vision.

"He was a terrific strategic thinker," Stephen Plume, MD, who served as president of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic from 1990 to 2000, told the Valley News.
In honor of International Women's Day March 8, Becker's Hospital Review asked women in the healthcare industry to share their insights on leadership.

Here are nine women who offered words of advice for healthcare leaders.

If you'd like to share additional leadership advice, please email Morgan Haefner at mhaefner@beckershealthcare.com or Mackenzie Bean at mbean@beckershealthcare.com.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Nadina J. Rosier, PharmD, health & benefits practice leader for pharmacy at Willis Towers Watson North America. "Learn to say no. I find that women in business are often too eager to say yes at their own career expense. As you navigate your career and understand your value, women should not overburden themselves with lower-value tasks. Know your value, specifically where you make a difference and have impact, and say yes to those high-value opportunities. It will reap rewards for your employer and your career."

Peyton Howell, executive vice president and president of health systems & specialty care solutions at AmerisourceBergen. "I recently read a book called, 'Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,' which resonated with me and reaffirmed my core beliefs about leadership and success. For me, there are two key ingredients to sustained success: displaying 'grit' and embracing your unique traits and perspectives. As a female leader, and  in some cases  the only woman in the room, you will experience moments when you feel like you are different or alone. In those moments, remember your authentic passion and 'grit' makes you unique and an asset. In fact, I actively seek out these characteristics in leaders on my own team. It takes courage to showcase these traits, but it exists within all of us."

Jennifer Alvey, senior vice president and CFO at Indiana University Health (Indianapolis). "Great leaders take the time to mentor. I've been shaped by mentors who've challenged me and taught me to grow through direct and actionable feedback. I always appreciate the opportunity to grow stronger in my own role and find mentoring others to be most rewarding. I am continuously inspired by their growth as they embrace feedback and use it to grow in their own leadership roles. The determination our leaders demonstrate to propel themselves and the organizations they support to greatness is a constant motivation to me."



Patty Maysent, CEO of UC San Diego Health. "Women have always been the cornerstone of healthcare, but we are seeing significant growth in the number of women in leadership roles, as physician scientists and senior executives. At UC San Diego Health, our CFO, general counsel, chief human resources officer, chief clinical officer, CMO, chief marketing officer and chief administrators of our cardiovascular and cancer centers are all women. I think one of the most important lessons I have learned  and what I would pass on  is to find and focus on what you love and be willing to commit fully to achieving your aspirations."

Rita Numerof, PhD, president of Numerof & Associates, a healthcare consulting firm. "I've been blessed to have been raised in a family committed to exacting standards and the expectation that excellence was the goal in pretty much everything my brother and I did. My father was a scientist/executive at a major pharmaceutical company and my strong-willed, opinionated and very traditional mother cared deeply about those around her. The combination instilled in me a passion for excellence, insatiable curiosity, a perpetual quest for something better, a genuine desire to make a difference and a belief in my ability to succeed. The most successful leaders  female and male  are able to create passion for their vision of what's possible and harness the energy and creativity of the people around them to do more than they might even have expected they could achieve on their own. For me, leadership is less about male or female than it is about the clarity of vision and the ability to excite people to achieve it. Believe in yourself and what's possible."



Karen Way, health plan analytics and consulting practice lead at Plano, Texas-based NTT DATA Services. "There are three concepts I have tried to follow in my career I would offer as advice. The first is to persevere with flexibility. In the healthcare IT world, there are always going to be people who challenge you or tell you no. Find ways to address and resolve the challenges and offer alternatives that result in a positive response. Using this process, you're likely to learn something new, as well as build relationships that will benefit you long term. The second is to stand in front of your team; lead by example. Demonstrate you will take accountability for the team, while at the same time ensuring each team member is accountable for their portion of the whole. The last, and likely most important, is to encourage and mentor your team members to be more successful than yourself. There's a great sense of accomplishment in knowing you've helped the next generation be able to adapt and excel in the ever-changing healthcare industry."

Christy Dempsey, MSN, RN, CNO of Press Ganey. "I graduated from college as a nurse in 1985. It was a largely female profession and there was a shortage of nurses. I was able to get a job quickly and immediately sought ways to grow, learn and advance both my education and my career ambitions. I progressed through the traditional charge nurse, manager and director roles, but found competition a bit more prevalent when I ventured into administrative and executive roles. However, I knew I not only could lead in that way, but also that I was the best and most qualified person for the job. That confidence was invaluable, but the willingness to take a risk is what put me where I am today. There have been many times in my professional life when my job was safe and comfortable  I could have stayed in my comfort zone, but I didnt. When I saw an opportunity, I took it, even when it was scary to take the risk. Passion for what you do, as well as perseverance to do what you know is right is only part of the journey. It's taking those calculated risks  taking yourself out of your comfort zone  that yields the amazing opportunities to learn and grow."



Kathleen Ellmore, managing director of Engagys, a healthcare engagement consultancy in Nashua, N.H. "I always tell women you can have it all but you can't necessarily do it all. Don't be afraid to focus on what you love and where you can contribute the greatest value and let others help on the tasks that are not in your wheelhouse. We sometimes feel compelled to own it all, and that is not sustainable for the long term.

"I mentor other women in their career goals as a side hobby. One of the areas I focus on is helping them tell their story in a way that promotes their strengths and takes ownership of their accomplishments. I am always surprised when I see women who are pretty established in their careers still not comfortable taking credit for their accomplishments. Tell your story and own all of your terrific achievements!



"Finally, there is something I like to call the Path of Most Resistance. Women who are balancing many demands in life  such as family, senior parents and a career  sometimes feel they cannot succeed in their careers because of the additional demands they are facing. Instead, I believe those extra challenges are crafting character and leadership in a way the easier routes in life don't allow for. Embrace your challenges and realize you are growing from them and find ways to harness those gifts in your everyday career choices."



Antoinette Thomas, RN, vice president and nurse executive at solution provider Oneview Healthcare. "We have two ears and one mouth, we should use them accordingly. Take action. Only use words when absolutely necessary. Lead by example. Give your team what they need, not what they want. Commit to active mentoring. Share knowledge. Volunteer in your community."



Editor's note: This article was updated March 16 at 9:54 a.m. CT to include additional advice.
Two Democratic senators penned a letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta requesting they review whether Anthem's emergency department policy violates law.

The four-page letter, jointly written by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., raises concerns Anthem may be violating federal law by denying ED claims allowed under the prudent layperson standard. The prudent layperson standard refers to a person who has an average understanding of healthcare presenting to the ED with conditions he or she would deem emergent.

Under Anthem's ED policy, which is in effect across several states, Anthem will review diagnoses after members' emergency room visits. If the condition is determined to be nonemergent, Anthem may not cover the ED visit. The policy is designed to discourage patients from using costly ED facilities for nonemergent medical treatment.

"While we appreciate Anthem's effort to encourage patients to seek medical care in lower-cost settings, we remain concerned that Anthem's ED policy still forces patients to determine, before they even leave their home, if their symptoms are serious enough to go to the emergency room," the senators wrote. "The Prudent Layperson Standard was specifically drafted to allow patients to get the services they need, when they need them. Patients should not be forced to act as their own doctors and second guess themselves when they truly believe that they are having a medical emergency."



In their letter, Sens. Cardin and McCaskill request documents and answers to eight questions by March 30 from the secretaries. The senators follow several other lawmakers who've spoken out against Anthem's policy. In early March, Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill in Ohio's General Assembly that would bar insurers like Anthem who cover ED visits on a discretionary basis from state contracts and tax incentives.

There are several exceptions to Anthem's ED policy. Click here to learn more.
The family of an 89-year-old man is suing Autumnwood of Livonia (Mich.) nursing home after a hidden camera allegedly captured the facility's staff yelling at and roughly throwing the patient onto his bed and wheelchair, according to MLive.com.

The patient, Hussein Younes, lived at the nursing home until December 2015. Mr. Younes' son removed him from the care facility after noticing his significant weight loss, along with bruises and cuts on his head and legs.

"[Autumnwood of Livonia] blamed his injuries on him falling 11 times over a five-month period," said Jonathan Marko, the Younes' attorney, who cited evidence suggesting the injuries were "not an isolated incident," according to MLive.com.

The lawsuit alleges the facility's caretakers shouted ethnic slurs at Mr. Younes, who is a Lebanese immigrant. The complaint also claims the caretakers denied Mr. Younes water, took his call button from him and violently shook him.

"I raised concerns with Autumnwood many times, and they assured me everything will be taken care of. Then, when my dad's situation worsened ... I told him we have to have proof," Mr. Younes' son said. "We agreed on putting a hidden camera in (an) alarm clock next to his bed. After a couple of days ... I discovered unspeakable horrors."

Mr. Younes' family gathered 119 clips over the course of two days documenting the caretakers' behavior.

The company that runs Autumnwood of Livonia said the caretakers identified in the video clips were terminated, according to MLive.com. The company also conducted an internal investigation and reported the allegations to several governmental agencies. However, attorneys for Autumnwood said they were "unable to substantiate the allegations with the information we had at the time."
New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health invested approximately $3 million into a startup project for a device that disinfects operating rooms and stretchers by using ultraviolet rays, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Luis Romo, founder and CEO of the startup, called "PurpleSun," started developing the healthcare technology in 2011 during his time as a biomedical engineering graduate student at Syracuse (N.Y.) University.

PurpleSun works in 90-second intervals and can eliminate almost all germs on a surface by using modular panels to enclose medical equipment, including stretchers.

Mr. Romo recently demonstrated the device in an operating room at a New York City-based Northwell Health facility. The device disinfects equipment and sections of the OR while cleaning crews are working, which can cut the time it takes staff to clean and disinfect an OR by half, Mr. Romo said.

Northwell Health plans to test PurpleSun in clinical trials across the system's 23 hospitals.
EOS imaging will showcase stereoVIEW alongside hipEOS 3.0 and the other EOSapps for 3-D orthopedic surgical planning at the 2018 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in New Orleans.

Here are three things to know.

1. The stereoVIEW software enables collaborative sharing of 2-D and 3-D data among radiologists, referring physicians and patients. The software displays parameters to assist physicians in diagnosing and treating osteoarticular pathologies and orthopedic conditions, providing physicians with access to patient-specific 3-D bone models.

2. The stereoVIEW software is expected to launch in April 2018. EOS consumers will be able to download the free software from their user platform, launch the software directly from the sterEOS 1.8 patient database, and share 3-D data with their referring physicians.

3. EOSapps is a complete software suite dedicated to 3-D surgical planning for spine, hip, and knee. The EOSapps include hipEOS 3.0, the latest version of the software for planning primary total hip arthroplasties, which includes range of motion analysis based on weight-bearing EOS images; hipEOS 3.0 is currently pending FDA approval.

"The hipEOS 3.0 planning software is unique because it allows surgeons to create a 3-D patient-specific plan that can be tested and adjusted in functional positions, now with implant range of motion simulation and analysis in standing, sitting and theoretical sitting positions. This will enable us to plan for an optimal implant range of motion, thereby helping us to improve outcomes for our patients," said Prof. Jean Yves Lazennec, senior orthopedic surgeon at the Assistance Publique des Hopitaux de Paris.

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First standalone pediatric hospital acquires virtual reality visualization platform: 4 insights

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After its success the spine market, Globus Medical is now entering the orthopedic trauma market.

Here's what you need to know:

1. Globus Medical is showcasing its new devices at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in New Orleans March 6 to March 10.

2. The devices include the:

 Comprehensive Anthem Ankle Fracture System

 Arbor External Fixator System

 Autobahn Tibial Nailing System

 Anthem Small Fragment Plating System

 Comprehensive Anthem Distal Radius Fracture System

 Anthem Proximal Humerus Plating System

 Comprehensive Captivate Compression Screw System

 Anthem Proximal Tibia Plating System

 Anthem Clavicle Plating System

3. Globus Medical designed its trauma portfolio to treat a variety of fracture patterns and accommodate varying patient anatomies in upper and lower extremities.

"Globus has demonstrated an unprecedented level of surgeon responsiveness resulting in the most comprehensive spinal product portfolio on the market. We aim to continue that tradition in orthopedic trauma by leveraging a dedicated product development team with a highly trained, direct sales force to bring our

innovative and efficient systems along with the best support to our surgeon and hospital customers," said Barclay Davis, vice president of orthopedic trauma at Globus Medical.
Washington University Orthopedics & Barnes Jewish Hospital in Chesterfield, Mo., is set to open a new Orthopedic Injury Clinic in St. Louis.

Here are three insights:

1. The new clinic following increasing demand from the Chesterfield location. Both locations are staffed with Washington University orthopedic specialists.

2. Services at the clinic included X-rays, casting and splinting. Patients come to the clinic for various orthopedic injuries including dislocated joints.

3. The new clinic is expected to open Sept. 1.
Physician Partners of America welcomed Stefan Pribil, MD.

Here are six points:

1. Dr. Pribil previously served as medical director of Atlantic Coast Brain and Spine Institute in Kissimmee, Fla.

2. He is seeing patients at the PPOA Pain Relief Group in Hurst, Texas.

3. Dr. Pribil specializes in stem cell and biologics for neuroregeneration, minimally invasive spinal reconstruction, laser-assisted spine procedures as well as spinal implants and spinal augmentation.

4. He is especially interested in cervical disc replacement.

5. Dr. Pribil is a fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

6. He completed his neurological surgery residency at University of North Carolina Hospitals, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Millennials  people between 18 and 36 years of age  are the largest living generation in the U.S. and make up more than a quarter of the U.S. population. Physicians should keep up with the times and reach out to millennials, according to an article in Medscape.

There are 83 million millennials in the U.S., and they are spending more on healthcare. Older millennials are more likely to be commercially insured, which can enhance practice profitability.

Here are eight ways to attract younger patients to your practice.

1. Encourage online reviews. Nearly half of millennials and Gen-Xers surveyed by PNC Healthcare relied on online reviews the last time they searched for a healthcare provider, compared with 40 percent of boomers and 28 percent of seniors.

2. Reach out on social media  many millennials are there. "Your online image is your website, your online reputation, and your social media presence," the CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based Practice Builders Parham Javaherian told Medscape. "When a millennial sees that your last post was in 2014 and you have two bad reviews on Yelp, the perception is that you are not a good provider."

3. Provide them with the technology they need. According to athenaHealth, patient portal adoption rates are highest among consumers aged 20-39 years.

4. Do not use a clipboard; allow patients to complete forms online beforehand and offer a tablet-based check-in option to expedite the registration process.

5. Create a relationship with retail clinics. In a survey of 5,000 consumers, PNC found that millennials were more than twice as likely as both boomers or seniors to visit a retail clinic, which can be a referral source.

6. Increase the transparency of your practice. More than four out of 10 millennials surveyed by PNC say that they request estimates before undergoing treatment compared with 21 percent of boomers and 18 percent of seniors.

7. Focus more on the patient experience. Millennials are more concerned with the patient experience than simply having their health needs addressed compared to boomers, according to Upali Nanda, director of research for HKS, which surveyed healthcare consumers.

8. Reevaluate your waiting and exam rooms. Updating them can improve overall patient experience and practice efficiency.

More articles on practice management:

Missoula Bone & Joint to open outpatient center: 4 takeaways

Southern Plains Medical Center partners with Oklahoma Spine Hospital to expand spine program: 4 key points

McLeod Health orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Woodbury opens new office
Physicians across Washington created a website to help patients suffering from back and leg pain predict if spinal fusion procedures will relieve their symptoms, according to Reuters.

Here are five takeaways:

1. The calculations are based off of 1,965 adults seen at 15 Washington hospitals from 2012 to 2015. All patients were candidates for lumbar spine surgery.

2. The physicians recommend a patient use the website with their physicians unless he or she is fluent in technical details, such as how he or she ranks on the American Society of Anesthesiologists' physical status classification system.

3. Patients can view how insurance type, use of prescription opioids and decision to delay surgery may affect surgery success.

4. Physicians found 58 percent of patients with moderate to severe symptoms reported symptom relief after surgery compared to the 43.8 percent of patients who opted out of surgery.

5. A majority of patients, 68.5 percent, who underwent spinal fusions experienced improved back pain compared to the 53.4 percent of patients who did not undergo surgery.
Intraoperative neuromonitoring services provider Assure Holdings added Jeffrey Ratusznik, MD, to its Texas network.

Here are three things to know.

1. Dr. Ratusznik is a Fort Worth, Texas-based orthopedic spine surgeon specializing in the evaluation and treatment of cervical and lumbar disc degeneration, adult and pediatric spinal deformity, fractures and complex revision procedures.

2. Assure works with neurosurgeons and orthopedic spine surgeons to provide a services that support intraoperative neuromonitoring activities during invasive surgeries. The company employs its own staff of technologists and uses its own monitoring equipment, handles all of the intraoperative neuromonitoring scheduling and setup and bills for all technical services provided.

3. Last November, Assure performed its first case in Texas, demonstrating the scalability of the model outside of the company's home state of Colorado.

More articles on spine:

Neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Wilson dies at 88 years old

Dr. Christopher Bono to be 4th editor in chief of The Spine Journal  6 highlights

Pregabalin did not improve pain management after lumbar fusion, HSS researchers find  4 insights
Olawale Sulaiman, MD, PhD, is a neurosurgeon and the system chairman of the neurosurgery department at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans. He also travels to Nigeria every month to perform free surgery, WWLTV reports.

Here are five things to know.

1. Dr. Sulaiman received his medical degree from the Medical University in Varna, Bulgaria. He underwent fellowship training in complex nerve reconstruction at Louisiana State University in New Orleans and completed a complex spine surgery fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He also holds a PhD in neuroscience from University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and is a member of the American College of Physician Executives.

2. Dr. Sulaiman began his medical mission to Nigeria in 2010. At the outset, he would go to Nigeria every few months. Now he travels each month and spends seven days to 10 days performing surgery there.

3. In order to have the flexibility to travel, Dr. Sulaiman agreed with Ochsner to give up 15 percent of his salary.

4. In the past five years, Dr. Sulaiman and his team have performed surgeries on 500 patients as well as screened and provided preventative medicine to 5,000 people. Ochsner supports his efforts by sending supplies overseas with him.

5. Dr. Sulaiman founded RNZ Global to educate and empower Nigerians to raise the standard of healthcare.

Here is more information on RNZ Global.

More articles on spine:

Neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Wilson dies at 88 years old

Dr. Christopher Bono to be 4th editor in chief of The Spine Journal  6 highlights Pregabalin did not improve pain management after lumbar fusion, HSS researchers find  4 insights
Here are five spine and neurosurgeons who recently received awards or promotions.

Jean-Pierre Mobasser, MD, was elected to serve as president of Indianapolis-based Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine.

Christopher M. Bono, MD, will be the fourth editor-in-chief of The Spine Journal.

Marquis Who's Who honored Stephen D. Burstein, MD, with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons will present Jack Rock, MD, with the Humanitarian Award at its annual conference this year.

Florida neurosurgeon Merle Stringer, MD, was reappointed to the Florida Board of Medicine.

More articles on spine:

Dr. Jean-Pierre Mobasser elected president of Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine: 5 takeaways

Assure Holdings adds Dr. Jeffrey Ratusznik to Texas network: 3 insights

Neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Wilson dies at 88 years old
Here are eight things for spinal surgeons to know for March 8, 218.

Dr. Christopher Bono to be 4th editor in chief of The Spine Journal

Christopher M. Bono, MD, will be the fourth editor-in-chief of The Spine Journal. Dr. Bono will replace Eugene J. Carragee, MD, in December 2018. He previously served as deputy editor for The Spine Journal and Journal of the Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. The first issue under Dr. Bono will publish January

2019.

Zimmer Biomet sees opportunity in spine, to tackle cultural integration issues in 2018

Zimmer Biomet reported $7.8 billion in 2018 sales, a 3 percent increase over the previous year. However, spine sales were up 14 percent. "In speaking with stakeholders, it's clear that Zimmer Biomet is working from a strong foundation that includes the industry's broadest portfolio, a robust commercial pipeline,

meaningful market share in key end markets and [a] world class sales teams," said CEO Bryan Hanson. "Our immediate priorities are to restore supply, engage with sales and return to offense."

Dr. Anthony Yeung publishes study on endoscopic decompression vs. fusion procedures

Phoenix-based Desert Institute for Spine Care's Anthony Yeung, MD, published the results of his study of endoscopic transforaminal of isthmic and degenerative spondylolisthesis decompression causing sciatica and back pain in the Journal of Spine. Dr. Yeung included 55 patients from January 2002 to December

2012 to review in his five to 10-year study. The patients specifically chose to undergo Dr. Yeung's endoscopic transforaminal decompression procedure over fusion. In all, 33 percent of patients opted to undergo fusion at some point of their treatment to get more symptom relief.

Former Swedish Neuroscience Institute Chair Dr. Johnny Delashaw claims conspiracy

Former Seattle-based Swedish Neuroscience Institute Chair Johnny B. Delashaw, MD, claims he has proof of a conspiracy to push him out of his previous employment. During a state medical hearing, Dr. Delashaw alleged an anonymous source sent him records proving other physicians colluded with The Seattle

Times to remove him from his position. Dr. Delashaw's March 2017 resignation came after The Seattle Times published an investigative report in February 2017 on the spine and neurosurgery services at Providence Health & Services Swedish-Cherry Hill hospital.

VA fails to complete nationwide license review after hiring neurosurgeon with revoked license, malpractice allegations

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs for failing to complete their national review of all VA healthcare providers' licenses by the February 2018 deadline. The review was intended to ensure that no physicians had been hired illegally by the VA.

Sens. Ernst and Grassley made the complaint after a December 2017 USA TODAY investigation found the Iowa City VA hospital hired a neurosurgeon whose Wyoming medical license was revoked over malpractice allegations.

BPCI Advanced includes outpatient spine episodes

CMS released 32 episodes of care for the BPCI Advanced program, with three outpatient-only episodes including outpatient back and neck procedures, except spinal fusions. he inpatient bundles begin at the inpatient admission for an anchor stay, while the outpatient bundles begin at the start of the outpatient

procedure, or anchor procedure. Outpatient procedures qualifying as anchor procedures will be identified by HCPCS codes. The other two outpatient episodes of care are percutaneous coronary intervention and cardiac defibrillator procedures. CMS also released inpatient clinical episodes for back and neck

procedures, cervical spinal fusion, combined anterior posterior spinal fusion and non-cervical spinal fusions.

Medtronic face criticism for alleged delayed response in cybersecurity issue

WhiteScope, a provider of deep security research and security solutions, found cybersecurity vulnerabilities when doing research into Medtronic's CareLink 2090 defibrillator program. This issue was first brought to Medtronic's attention a year ago. However, the company released a statement saying the vulnerabilities

didn't create a safety risk to patients. Medtronic acknowledged the extended time it took to resolve the issue. The company reiterated while the cybersecurity issues were present they did not present harm to patients.

Biologics, opioids will be magic words at AAOS 2018 meeting

Surgeons attending the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2018 Annual Meeting in New Orleans March 6 to 10 can expect to discuss biologics and opioids. Physicians from Philadelphia-based The Rothman Institute will present a study on the effectiveness of oxycodone, ibuprofen and acetaminophen for

pain management after carpal tunnel surgery. Researchers from South Korea will present their findings of the first clinical trial of an intratendinous injection of autologous adipose tissue-delivered mesenchymal stem cells to treat rotator cuff disease.
Northern Ireland businesses are "missing out" on the benefits of the Apprenticeship Levy despite contributing millions of pounds to the fund.

Companies whose wage bills exceed 3m pay 0.5% of that into the fund as part of a scheme which was introduced last year.

The pot of money is available to all employers, including those with a wage bill of less than 3m who don't pay the levy. But distribution of the levy has not been finalised in Northern Ireland.

But Aodhan Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, believes that many businesses, especially those in the retail sector, here are missing out on the benefits of the scheme.

And he challenged the Department for the Economy to do more with the revenues from the levy to help retailers. His comments come during National Apprenticeship Week which ends tomorrow.

Mr Connolly said retailers have paid millions "but received no extra support than in the previous year".

"And while Scotland has the Flexible Workplace Development Fund, which is meant to provide skills training, Northern Ireland has no way of ensuring that retailers or any employers of scale can get value for the money they are paying in despite the extra costs," he said.

Mr Connolly believes there needs to be a "radical overhaul" of the scheme to ensure Northern Ireland retailers aren't unfairly penalised.

"Sadly retailers in Northern Ireland are missing out on the opportunities elsewhere in the UK to invest in apprenticeships and training. Whilst businesses in England have a transparent account which they can access and direct towards training, equivalent businesses in Northern Ireland are paying what looks more and more like a tax on employing workers.

"Retail in particular looks to be getting a raw deal. Northern Ireland retailers will face another multi-million-pound tax bill this year for the levy with precious little in return. It doesn't have to be this way.

"There is an opportunity to consider a Flexible Workforce Development Fund to ensure employers needs are met.

"We believe that if done right apprenticeships are a strong gateway to a successful career that's why the department needs to remove the current barriers such as age to allow us to train our front-line colleagues."

Kirsty McManus, director of the Institute of Directors in Northern Ireland, said: "Our members who are subject to paying the Apprenticeship Levy say that it is hindering growth plans and diminishing already low productivity levels. Although they are paying into the scheme, they are unable to claim the money back through government vouchers, as is the case elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

"In sectors where employers are finding it hard to fill vacancies, especially those that rely heavily on EU workers born outside the UK, the frustration is being felt even more keenly."

She added: "Additional money to pay for training in Northern Ireland would go a long way to addressing these recruitment issues by retraining and upskilling our existing workforce while also providing an avenue into sustainable employment for those currently out of work or preparing to leave school or higher education."
An artists impression of what Royal Exchange in central Belfast could look like

The green light for the beginning of a 400m redevelopment of Belfast city centre could be given at a special council meeting in a fortnight.

A decision on stage one of the Royal Exchange project was due to be taken last month, but the City Hall planning committee deferred it until members carried out a site visit.

That visit took place on February 21.

Now planners want to hold a special committee meeting on March 27 to decide whether work can begin on the controversial scheme, which it is claimed will create 6,000 jobs, and could have a 27-storey high-rise at its core.

But campaigners warned last month that the proposals would put the city's historic buildings "under threat", and they move away from the council's long-term vision.

Council planning documents say: "The committee previously agreed that this application would be considered at a separate meeting, due to the number of linked applications and to provide the opportunity for these to be considered in parallel to the main proposal.

"A site visit took place on February 21, 2018. Members viewed the site from Royal Avenue, Lower Garfield Street, North Street and Rosemary Street.

"Members were also shown around three listed buildings (Central Halls, Masonic Hall and 41-51 Royal Avenue) internally and viewed the boundary wall of the listed First Presbyterian Church."

The first stage of the scheme, from developer Castlebrooke, covers a 12-acre site around Royal Avenue.

The Save CQ campaign group has said this retail, office and residential development will damage the character of the historic Cathedral Quarter.

The proposed 27-storey building mooted for Royal Exchange has been described as a "massive monolith" that threatens to overshadow the city's oldest church.

The Ulster Architectural Heritage Society has said it believes "our valuable, fragile and non-renewable built heritage is again under threat" from the proposals for Royal Exchange. During last month's committee meeting, Craig O'Brien of Savills, representing Castlebrooke, defended the scheme and said it had extensively engaged with the public, through consultation, and that plans would "kickstart" the rest of the overall development.

Mr O'Brien said a "high-profile tenant" was already in line to take over the major retail element of the scheme. John Lewis had previously been linked.

He added that it would be "Belfast's defence against Sprucefield", and would create more than 200 construction jobs.
The potential developer of a gold mine in Co Tyrone has said he hopes a public inquiry will be called into the controversial plans before the end of this year.

Canadian firm Dalradian Resources submitted its application for the underground mine in the Sperrins in November.

While the plans have been met with opposition from some residents, the company says its proposal fits in with the area's topography and has a "low-profile" design.

The company says it has spent over CAN $300m on the project at Greencastle the last eight years, with $20m to be spent on engineering this year.

It has already been deemed by the Department for Infrastructure to be of sufficient strategic importance to require examination in a public inquiry.

Gold was discovered in the area in the 1980s but the full economic potential of the site has not been explored until now.

Dalradian chief executive Patrick FN Anderson, whose parents were from Belfast, said he was hopeful a public inquiry should be called this year and heard next year.

He told an Ireland-focused event at the Prospecters and Developers of Canada annual conference in Toronto this week: "Even though there's no sitting government, the priority of all the political parties is to bring jobs."

He said there had been 70 visits from government officials to the site, and 40 sit-down visits with planners "to ensure everything is right and proper and falls within the law".

And following the submission of the application, he said it would be dealing with questions from stakeholders ahead of a public inquiry.

The company said it is already giving work to 100 people on the site, with 50 direct employees and 50 contractors. If operational, the site would employ up to 400 people, with $200m to be invested in the building of the mine, and a 1bn spend over the 25-year lifetime of the mine.

The company has said it hopes to reverse opposition to the mine in the area.

Chief operating officer Eric Tremblay insisted it could bring long-term tourism benefits if a tourist centre is set up after its planned 25-year span. "We want to become a mining tourist attraction that we can open and that money can stay in the community," he said.

"There's a minority of people who have different opinions and people don't want infrastructure, but sometimes there are site visits and people say, this is not what I thought it was."
Around 60% of workers in Northern Ireland say gender discrimination exists in their workplace, a poll has found (Philip Toscano/PA)

Around 60% of workers in Northern Ireland say gender discrimination exists in their workplace, a poll has found.

The survey - Perceptions of Gender Discrimination in the Workplace 2018 by Investors in People - has been released to coincide with International Women's Day today.

It also revealed that 50% of those surveyed say they have experienced gender discrimination first-hand, while 30% believe that their gender has negatively impacted career progression.

The results of this year's survey also suggested that workers here are most likely to believe that the current pay gap between men and women is 19% in favour of men.

The actual pay gap for full-time workers is 9%.

Investors in People chairperson Valerie Todd said: "The results of Investors in People's Perceptions of Workplace Gender Discrimination 2018 reveal that an unacceptably high proportion of workers in Northern Ireland feel that gender discrimination exists.

"Moreover, the fact that nearly half of workers in the region have experienced this sort of discrimination shows that there is still much to be done in ensuring that workplaces across the country are providing fair and inclusive environments for all workers, regardless of gender."

Other statistics showed that almost half of workers feel that their organisation actively encourages gender equality.

Investors in People chief executive Paul Devoy said: "It is unacceptable that the majority of workers feel that pay discrimination is actually worse than it is. More must be done to promote a culture of gender parity in every workplace."

The poll was carried out among 1,000 male and 1,000 full-time workers in the UK.
Disney Magic will dock in Belfast next year (Matt Stroshane, photographer)

Disney Magic will dock in Belfast next year (Matt Stroshane, photographer)

Disney Cruise Lines have confirmed they will visit Belfast for the first time in 2019.

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Rapunzel and a host of other Disney stars  plus 3,650 passengers and crew  will be docking in Belfast Harbour as part of a seven-night British Isles cruise.

Disney Magic is painted in Mickey Mouse-inspired colours  black hull, white superstructure, yellow trim and two giant red funnels - with a horn that plays the first seven notes of When you Wish Upon a Star.

The luxury liner will dock in Belfast Harbour for one day in September 2019.

Tony McAuley, Belfast Harbour, said: The announcement by Disney Cruise Line that they are including Belfast for the first time on their itinerary is another massive boost for the city.

"You could say that since 1996, when the first two cruise ships visited Belfast, the sector has gone To infinity and beyond!

Guests onboard the 11-deck Disney Magic can enjoy Disney inspired live shows in the Walt Disney Theatre, open-air music and dance extravaganza deck parties, and, new this year, Rapunzels Royal Table, a restaurant inspired by the Disney hit animation.

Expand Close Disney Magic will dock in Belfast next year (Matt Stroshane, photographer) Matt Stroshane, photographer / Facebook

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Last week Belfast Harbour and Visit Belfast announced that 2018 will be a record cruise season with over 200,000 passengers visiting the city.
Ten addresses in Northern Ireland were responsible for a combined 1,000 emergency calls to the Ambulance Service last year.

The shocking findings reveal the extent to which crews are repeatedly summoned to the same address.

In 2017 the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) received 1,107 999 phone calls from just 10 addresses here.

One address was responsible for more than 200 calls.

UUP MLA Roy Beggs said the figures were "astonishing".

"This would indicate to me that there are likely underlying problems and a need for support," he said. "It would be a much better use of public funds if underlying issues are addressed.

"It's likely that these calls are a cry for help, and the statutory agencies would be better working together to try and identify the cause of concern of the individuals. What would give me the greatest concern is if ambulances are not available for other emergencies."

The shocking findings were disclosed after a Freedom of Information request by the Belfast Telegraph.

They show that on average each of the addresses made 110 calls over the course of the year.

In total, the NIAS answered 216,741 phone calls between January 1, 2017, and December 31, 2017, not including duplicate calls. The calls made by the 10 addresses account for 0.5% of the total number of calls made to the emergency service last year.

Significantly, the data also shows that the 10 homes which were most-visited by the NIAS called 999 on 661 occasions, leading to 356 transfers to hospital. In the most shocking case, one Belfast home made a total of 212 999 calls.

In response, the ambulance service made 73 visits to that address, resulting in 32 transfers to hospital.

The NIAS says that there is "no defined average cost of answering a 999 call or an ambulance response" and that "the costs of providing 999 ambulance cover in a specific geographical area are broadly fixed regardless of the number of responses".

However, they revealed that the direct costs of a traditional double-crewed accident and emergency ambulance are approximately 70 per hour.

NIAS added that it does not have a classification of "nuisance" callers, so could not give a figure on how much money was wasted because of nuisance 999 calls.

However, they emphasised the true cost of such calls was the delays created for real emergencies.

They continued: "The costs that cannot be quantified in relation to calls that do not require an ambulance response are the inevitable delays caused to genuine ambulance emergencies when crews are responding to such calls.

"There are also the additional pressure and risks to ambulance staff and the public in responses under blue light conditions to such calls."
Councillors seeking clarity over DUP dinners in Co Antrim say they were "silenced" after their microphones were "turned off" at a meeting of a local authority.

Two councillors - Sinn Fein's Patrice Hardy and the TUV's Timothy Gaston - claim attempts were made to silence them at a full meeting of Mid and East Antrim Council on Monday night.

A DUP dinner with Cabinet Minister Michael Gove was hosted by the party's North Antrim MP Ian Paisley at Ballymena's Tullyglass House Hotel last September. At the time, the DUP described it in the Press as "an annual MP's constituency dinner", and denied it was "a DUP fundraising dinner".

Mid and East Antrim council took a 1,500 table at the dinner, which was attended by chief executive Anne Donaghy, council officers, elected members and agri-food sector representatives.

A second event, the North Antrim DUP dinner, was held on February 23 at Galgorm resort.

It was sponsored by Belfast International Airport and featured former Cabinet minister Priti Patel, who was interviewed by Mr Paisley.

The event was described by former DUP MLA Phillip Logan as a "fundraiser" for the party's "war chest".

However, the invitation sent to Mid and East Antrim council did not mention the event was the annual North Antrim DUP dinner, and the council did not take a table.

On Monday, there was a heated exchange between DUP mayor Paul Reid and Mr Gaston after the TUV representative questioned whether Mr Paisley had tried to arrange a separate meeting between Ms Patel and the council.

Following tense exchanges, chief executive Anne Donaghy stated that no such meeting occurred.

Ms Hardy then attempted to talk about the DUP dinner involving Michael Gove.

Despite being refused permission by the mayor for not abiding by standing order procedure, she continued to talk.

There were heated exchanges between the mayor and Ms Hardy and she claimed her microphone was then turned off.

The councillor revealed she had obtained an invitation to the 2017 event which shows that, while guests were asked to make cheques payable to the Tullyglass House Hotel, they were to be posted to Ian Paisley Jr's constituency office.

She stated: "I found the mayor's nature very aggressive.

"I believe this was an attempt to silence and gag us, and I will be asking the local government auditor to investigate further."

Mr Gaston also claimed his microphone had been turned off.

Mr Reid insisted he "remains neutral at all times" and "would not be aggressive to anyone".

A council spokesperson said elected members had "agreed to purchase" a 1,500 table at the 2017 dinner during a full council meeting, and that the local authority had made an electronic payment to the Tullyglass Hotel as requested.

The council "completely rejected" Ms Hardy's claim that her microphone was turned off.

Regarding Mr Gaston, the spokesperson said it was standing order procedure for a member to cease speaking when the mayor calls a meeting to order.

The DUP did not respond to a request for comment, but a party spokesman has previously said: "Ian Paisley hosts an annual MP's constituency dinner. The event was attended by civic and political figures from across the community. It was not a DUP fundraising dinner."
Donations to all Northern Ireland parties are to be published for the first time.

Donations to Northern Ireland political parties are to be published on Monday, March 12.

On Wednesday the Transparency of Donations & Loans (NI Political Parties) Order 2018 was passed in parliament allowing the Electoral Commission to publish donation details.

The new measures compel Northern Ireland parties to publish all donations and loans over 7,500 from July 1, 2017.

It had been argued the donations published should go back to July 2014, as had been originally intended, but this was later amended.

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The Electoral Commission said it intended to publish details of all donations between July 1, 2017 and 31 December 2017 on Monday.

Unlike the rest of the UK, the identities of party donors in Northern Ireland have historically remained secret due to concerns over security.
European Council president Donald Tusk is in Ireland on Thursday to meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

They will discuss Brexit negotiations, the European Commissions draft withdrawal agreement and suggested guidelines for the future relationship between the EU and the UK.

The pair will also consider key economic issues during the talks at Government Buildings in Dublin.

Mr Tusks visit comes before the European Council meeting of EU leaders on March 22-23 on Brexit and economic affairs.

Irelands foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has suggested the EU could block Theresa Mays plans to maintain a soft Irish border while leaving the customs union.

One fallback option is the UK would have to accept keeping Northern Ireland in an effective customs union with the EU.

This is Mr Tusks second visit to Ireland in three months.

He has already pledged that the EU will stand with the Republic on the Irish border issue and Dublins efforts to ensure frictionless passage of people and goods.

Northern Irelands position post-Brexit is holding up agreement on Britains exit terms and a transition deal.

Mrs Mays supporters in Government, the Democratic Unionists, are adamantly opposed to any settlement distinguishing Northern Irelands EU trading relationship from the rest of the UKs post-Brexit, what some have termed a border in the Irish Sea.

On Thursday Mr Varadkar will also hold a separate meeting with the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria.

Discussions will cover the OECDs latest economic survey of Ireland and the potential for deeper Ireland-OECD co-operation.

Meanwhile, Department for Exiting the EU minister Robin Walker is due to meet Gibraltar chief minister Fabian Picardo on Thursday, and Cabinet Office minister David Lidington is hosting a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee with representatives of the devolved administrations.
Brigid Hughes challenged ongoing failures by the Executive Office at Stormont, the Justice Department and the Northern Ireland Secretary to put in place adequate funding to prevent further delays in holding legacy inquests. Pic: Freddie Parkinson Presseye

Former Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster unlawfully stopped Stormont Executive discussion of a funding plan aimed at clearing a backlog of legacy inquests, the High Court ruled today.

A judge held the Democratic Unionist Party leader erroneously took into account the absence of an overall agreed package to deal with outstanding issues from Northern Ireland's violent past.

Despite rejecting claims of discrimination, Sir Paul Girvan said: "The decision to refuse to put the paper on the agenda was procedurally flawed."

Delivering his verdict on a challenge mounted by the widow of an innocent civilian shot dead along with eight IRA men, he also found that a "systemic delay" in dealing with Troubles-related killings is impacting on her human rights.

Stormont departments and the Secretary of State must now reconsider whether to provide extra funding for hearings into nearly 100 deaths without waiting for any political agreement, the judge directed.

Brigid Hughes took legal action against the British Government and the devolved administration for allegedly withholding the necessary financial resources.

Her lawyers also claimed Mrs Foster unlawfully blocked a Department of Justice (DoJ) paper on the legacy inquest issue going before an Executive committee meeting.

Mrs Hughes husband, Anthony, died after being unwittingly caught up in the SAS ambush of an IRA unit at Loughgall, Co Armagh in May 1987.

The legal challenge was brought against the Secretary of State, the Stormont Executive and Mrs Foster personally due to her alleged responsibility for the logjam.

More than 50 legacy inquests remain outstanding, with potentially 72 more cases on the Attorney General's desk for consideration.

Expand Close Arlene Foster thought a bid for extra funding for inquests could wait, a judge said. (Yui Mok/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Arlene Foster thought a bid for extra funding for inquests could wait, a judge said. (Yui Mok/PA)

Each of them could cost over 1m to run, the court heard.

Although the Stormont House Agreement includes a 150 million package to deal with all legacy issues, the Government has said financial resources will not be released until political consensus is reached on dealing with the past.

Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan, had advanced a plan for having all cases dealt with within five years.

In 2016 a paper was drawn up by the DoJ to bid for funds based on Sir Declan's blueprint.

Lawyers for Mrs Hughes alleged Mrs Foster stopped it from being discussed by her Executive colleagues for political reasons.

It was claimed that she would not allow a process which would "rewrite the past" because most of the inquests concerned state killings.

However, Attorney General John Larkin QC, representing Mrs Foster, insisted she behaved impeccably in preventing an "undercooked" paper going forward at that stage.

She had been focused on balancing the limited 150 million budget for dealing with all outstanding legacy issues, the court heard.

Counsel for the Northern Ireland Office also claimed that financial package could have been drained by the inquest funding bid alone.

Officials were said to be concerned the DoJ paper only covered 16 of the cases at a cost of nearly 17m, lacked a proper business model, reform proposals may have left nothing for other planned new bodies.

But Sir Paul held there was a legal flaw in Mrs Foster's decision not to permit the paper to go before the Executive Committee.

"The former First Minister was in error in concluding that it was legally proper to defer consideration of the question of seeking additional funding to deal with the systemic delays in relation to the legacy inquest until an overall package was agreed in respect of the outstanding legacy issues," he said.

"She was in error in concluding that it was legally proper to defer consideration of the funding issue because in the absence of an overall package the provision of additional funds to deal with the systemic delays in the legacy inquests would favour victims who were not innocent as against innocent victims of the Troubles."

Turning to the discrimination claim made against her, the judge pointed to her view that legacy inquests would produce an imbalanced outcome between different categories of victims.

If anything, he said, her decision favoured members of the security forces involved in the killings.

"This is not discrimination on the grounds of the religious or political opinion of the next of kin even though a preponderance of them may have come from one section of the community," he ruled.

"The case for discrimination has thus not been made out."

Dealing with the wider challenge against the devolved bodies, Sir Paul Girvan recognised unlimited resources cannot be provided to the coronial system.

But he said at times the arguments put forward on behalf of the respondents sounded like an attempt to escape individual liability, with the fault attributable to some other public body.

He warned: "The relevant organs must conscientiously and properly consider the issue of the need for additional funding leaving out of account the legally flawed proposition that the question must await the outcome of an overall package.

"If they do not approach the question correctly they are contributing to an ongoing breach of the procedural obligations arising under Article 2 (of the European Convention on Hujman Rights)."

It was stressed how the current political impasse in Northern Ireland has created a vacuum at the heart of the devolved system of government.

Even though the Court cannot direct Government departments how to spend public funds, Sir Paul Girvan said he was minded to issue a declaration compelling the respondents to reconsider their respective duties on provision of additional funding to the Coroners Service for legacy inquests.

In his conclusions he also confirmed Mrs Hughes has established a systemic delay in the coronial system in determining directed legacy inquests.

"The current systemic delay is impacting on the applicant as the widow of the deceased in respect of the inquest directed by the Advocate General," Sir Paul continued.

"Her Article 2 rights are not being vindicated and the delay engages her rights under Articles 2 and 8.

"The systemic delay is caused or significantly contributed to by a lack of adequate resources which are needed to speed up the process of carrying out the legacy"
Police have interviewed a former Sinn Fein MP who quit after posing with a Kingsmill-branded loaf on his head on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre.

Ex-West Tyrone representative Barry McElduff voluntarily attended the interview about the incident with officers in Omagh.

Detective chief superintendent Tim Mairs said an evidence file would be passed to Northern Irelands Public Prosecution Service for assessment.

Expand Close Barry McElduff with a Kingsmill-branded loaf on his head (Barry McElduff/Twitter/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook

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The 51-year-old abstentionst MP resigned in January, more than a week after the online furore first erupted.

He had already been suspended by his party for three months.

Mr McElduff said staying in the job would have impeded efforts to forge reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

He has continued to insist that he had not meant the video as a reference to the sectarian murders of 10 protestant workmen by republican paramilitaries near the south Armagh village of Kingsmill in 1976.

However, he acknowledged the post had caused unintentional hurt to the Kingsmill families.

West Tyrone is a very safe Sinn Fein seat and the party will likely hold on to it at an upcoming by-election.
There is a crisis looming for deaf children in Northern Ireland as their numbers increase while the figure for specialist teachers is falling, a leading charity has said.

New research has revealed that in the last seven years, despite a 25% increase in the number of deaf children, the number of specialist teachers of the deaf has been reduced by 16%.

"We know deaf children can achieve what their hearing peers can achieve but despite that deaf children fall a whole grade behind at school," said Angela Bonomy, the National Deaf Children's Society director for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

"This support is absolutely required. Things need to get a move on now as this crisis is looming."

There are currently 30 specialist teachers of the deaf in Northern Ireland, but 61% of existing staff are due to retire in the next 10 to 15 years.

She added: "In Northern Ireland we've got around 1,400 deaf children, which can mean anything from a small hearing impairment to profoundly deaf.

"Out of those children, 71% of them are currently educated in mainstream school.

"In those schools, the staff require support from teachers who have the specialism to be able to deal with those deaf children."

Additional support would allow trained staff to educate teachers on the awareness and communication needed for deaf children.

"It would also allow for one-to-one tuition, if required, and organise specialised technology for the pupils.

"Those teachers help the children to integrate and they help the teachers to help the children to integrate, so it's a dual support," said Angela.

"There's a great opportunity here because of the five education and library boards recently consolidated into one Education Authority so we can take a Northern Ireland-wide approach in addressing this situation.

"We would like to see a plan to train new teachers of the deaf so we have new teachers coming through to replace those who retire in the near future, and we would like a recruitment drive to get more of them into the classroom.

"At the moment, because of the increase of children who are deaf along with the reduction in teachers of the deaf that we will soon have in the workforce, we would like to see education for deaf children recognised and given the attention and funding that it deserves."

She added: "We have a good relationship with the Education Authority - we're already engaged with them - so we're ready to bring our expertise, evidence and ideas to the table.

"We would like them to up the ante a bit off the back of those figures and we're very willing to help with that."

The research was published yesterday by the Consortium for Research in Deaf Education (CRIDE), supported by the National Deaf Children's Society.
Family and friends carry the coffin of Katie Ballentine from the family home off the Shankill Road

Hundreds of mourners lined the Shankill Road yesterday for the funeral of tragic teenager Katie Ballentine.

The former pupil at Belfast Girls' Model School died suddenly last Friday and her body was discovered at a house in north Belfast.

Police have said that they are not treating her death as suspicious.

A private funeral for the 16-year-old took place yesterday afternoon at her family home in Crimea Court with Pastor Sam Moreland from Malvern Assembly Church leading the service.

A large crowd gathered outside with some shops closing their shutters as a mark of respect.

Before the funeral cortege proceeded to Roselawn Crematorium, balloons were released from the front door of her home.

DUP MLA for North Belfast William Humphrey and Alderman Brian Kingston visited the family on Tuesday to pass on their condolences.

Mr Humphrey said: "Her parents asked that we make it known that they would wish that any donations in memory of young Katie should be made to Community First in recognition of the caring support that this group provides for so many people in need within the community."

Heartbroken friends continued to pay respects to the popular teenager on social media.

Living Hope Church on the Shankill, where the teenager had attended the youth club when she was younger, held a special service on Monday evening.

Senior pastor Matthew Davis called for greater focus on helping young people.

"I think there is an epidemic of suicide in our area which isn't being properly reported," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

"It's taken nearly 900 lives in Northern Ireland in the last three years, the highest on proportion in the UK," he said referencing official statistics between 2014 to 2016.

In 2016, the figures showed north Belfast had the highest rate in Northern Ireland with 41 deaths recorded.

"This has nothing to do with the community a victim comes from," Mr Davis said. "There are lots of good organisations who do good work, but there just isn't enough resources for them and the community is suffering."

Around 100 people attended the open prayer meeting on the Shankill for Ms Ballentine on Monday.

"As a church we had to have some sort of response," Mr Davis said.

"Heartbreak was the word I would use for the mood. We prayed for an hour.

The pastor added: "It's been about six years since Katie attended our youth club, but even if she hadn't attended, every time we hear of a suicide of a young person there is always a connection to so many people because it's such a small and tight knit community here on the Shankill Road."

If you are affected by any issues in this article, call the Samaritans on 116123 or Lifeline on 080 8808 8000
The new measures compel Northern Ireland parties to publish all donations and loans over 7,500 from July 1, 2017

Alliance leader Naomi Long has said she is deeply disappointed that new rules offering greater transparency on party funding in Northern Ireland won't be backdated to 2014.

It means details of donations made during the 2016 EU referendum campaign will remain secret.

This includes 435,000 handed to the DUP by the 'Constitutional Research Council', despite continuing questions about the origins of the money.

Mrs Long, who secured the original law that paved the way for transparency, said the decision meant allegations of "corruption and cronyism" would keep poisoning public confidence in politics.

She called on other parties to follow the example of Alliance and the Greens and voluntarily publish their large donations from January 2014.

The new measures compel Northern Ireland parties to publish all donations and loans over 7,500 from July 1, 2017.

Labour had argued that they should be backdated to 2014 but the Tories applied a three-line whip to ensure the measures went through by 308 to 261 votes. Labour Shadow Secretary Owen Smith alleged the government was "doing the DUP's dirty work" by moving the date of publication from 2014 to 2017. Theresa May's minority government relies on support from the DUP's 10 MPs.

A DUP spokesman said: "We welcome the increased transparency but we are disappointed that the backdoor on foreign donations which clearly benefits Sinn Fein and the SDLP has not been closed.

"As a matter of accuracy we would point out that all the main Northern Ireland parties, with one exception, were opposed to retrospective disclosure. This was demonstrated when the Secretary of State published party submissions on the matter in July 2017.

"Given we have already taken the voluntarily step of publishing the detail of the Brexit donor no question arises about donor anonymity in this instance."

Unlike the rest of the UK, the identities of party donors in Northern Ireland have historically remained secret due to concerns over security.

The Transparency of Donations & Loans (NI Political Parties) Order 2018 means the Electoral Commission can now publish donation details.

Mrs Long said she was disappointed that donations given to local parties during the last two Assembly elections, two Westminster elections, and a council and European election would all now not be published.

"Others have talked about supporting donor transparency, with some even making commitments in various manifestos, but their actions have failed to live up to their pledges," she said.

"For as long as secrecy remains around donations, allegations of corruption and cronyism will continue to poison public confidence in politics.

"The MPs who voted to keep things secret will have to explain their actions to the public who have little faith in politics to act for the greater good, rather than personal or party interest."

Mrs Long added: "I challenge other parties to do as Alliance and the Green Party already do - publish your large donations voluntarily and do so to the original commencement date of January 2014.

"Only by demonstrating your active commitment to transparency can parties start to rebuild public trust and confidence in politics."

Green Party leader Steven Agnew said he was very disappointed by the House of Commons vote. "It makes a mockery of the notion of transparency that the Tories performed this sleight of hand, apparently in order to provide cover for their friends in the DUP," he said. "People are rightly questioning what kind of deals some of the Northern Ireland parties may have buried and why the UK Government is providing cover for them.

"The people of Northern Ireland urgently need to know who exactly could be working behind the scenes to influence our politicians."

Mr Agnew insisted that "major questions" remained about the donation to the DUP during the EU referendum.

"People need to know what exactly they are voting for and there will never be full transparency until we know who is holding the purse strings," he said.

"The Green Party is leading the way by voluntarily publishing all donations it receives over 500 and has urged all Northern Ireland's political parties to follow its example, but to date none has done so."
A legal battle over Northern Ireland's prostitution laws is to end with the death of a sex worker who took the case, it emerged on Thursday.

Laura Lee's challenge to legislation which criminalized her clients was formally withdrawn at the High Court in Belfast.

Mr Justice McCloskey said: "In light of the regrettable demise of the applicant, and by consent, the court will order a dismissal of the judicial review."

Ms Lee, a Dublin-born law graduate, passed away last month at the age of 39.

A campaigner for the rights of prostitutes, she had worked in the sex industry for two decades.

In September 2016 she secured High Court permission to challenge a new law making it illegal for men to pay for sex in Northern Ireland.

The region is the only part of the UK to make the purchase of sexual services a criminal offence.

The legislative change was introduced in 2015 in a private member's bill brought before the Assembly by Democratic Unionist peer and Stormont MLA Lord Morrow.

Although it shifts the legal burden away from prostitutes, they believe it will put them at heightened risk from customers using fake names to avoid identification.

Lawyers representing Ms Lee claimed amendments to the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act breached her human rights to privacy and freedom from discrimination.

Her legal challenge was directed against the Department of Justice - even though former Minister David Ford opposed the new legislative clause.

A full hearing of the case had been due to take place later this year.

Women's rights organisations SPACE International, a group set up to campaign for those abused through prostitution, and Equality Now were also set to feature after being granted intervener status.

But with no-one in a position to replace Ms Lee in the case, counsel confirmed today that all parties were in agreement about proceedings being ended.

Outside court her solicitor, Ciaran Moynagh, said: "We have worked very hard to get us to a place where we could continue with this judicial review, not only in Laura's memory but to succeed in her goal of protecting vulnerable sex-workers in Northern Ireland.

"The blunt legislation that continues to exist makes it a crime to pay for sex. We continue to believe it not only breaches the human rights of sex workers but puts them at increased risk of violence as the industry is driven underground."

Mr Moynagh added: "Laura Lee provided a courageous voice for a community which so often feels trapped in the shadows.

"We continue to be open to working with a similarly brave individual who feels able to put their head above the parapet."
European Council president Donald Tusk has poured cold water on Philip Hammonds hopes for a free trade agreement covering the financial sector, warning any post-Brexit deal will not offer the same access for services as for goods.

Mr Tusk also dismissed UK suggestions that the vexed issue of the Irish border could be put off until a broader settlement on trade relations is reached, insisting that the sequence of negotiations must be Ireland first.

After Theresa May angrily rejected EU proposals for Northern Ireland effectively to remain in the customs union, Mr Tusk warned that progress in Brexit talks could be put at risk if there was any backsliding by the UK on the deal reached between the Prime Minister and Jean-Claude Juncker in December.

Britain has so far failed to bring forward specific and realistic alternative proposals to keep the Irish border open without activating the EUs backstop option, he said.

The European Council president was speaking in Dublin after talks with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who held out hopes for an evolution in the UKs position as negotiations on the future relationship get under way.

At a joint appearance in the Irish capital, Mr Varadkar welcomed the EUs assurance that it would approach negotiations with an open and positive, constructive mind that will allow for a possible evolution of the UK position in the future, allowing ours to evolve as well.

Wrapped up a very useful meeting with @eucopresident Donald Tusk. Thanks again for standing firmly beside Ireland on #Brexit. Always a pleasure to welcome him to @merrionstreet. Next step is @EUCouncil on March 22nd. pic.twitter.com/wIrz3Jdv2z  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) March 8, 2018

But on the specific points of contention, Mr Tusk gave little ground to the UK position set out in high-profile speeches by Mrs May and Mr Hammond in recent days.

In response to the Chancellors call on Wednesday for a bespoke free trade agreement (FTA) including financial services, Mr Tusk said: In the FTA we can offer trade in goods with the aim of covering all sectors, subject to zero tariffs and no quantitative restrictions.

But services are not about tariffs. Services are about common rules, common supervision and common enforcement, to ensure a level playing field, to ensure the integrity of the single market and ultimately also to ensure financial stability.

This is why we cannot offer the same in services as we can offer in goods. Its also why FTAs dont have detailed rules for financial services.

We should all be clear that, also when it comes to financial services, life will be different after Brexit.

Life will be different after #Brexit, also for financial services.

I fully respect UK Chancellors competence in defining UKs interest. I would ask to allow us define whats in EUs interest.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) March 8, 2018

Brexit Secretary David Davis has accused the European Commission of putting the cart before the horse over Ireland by setting out detailed plans for regulatory alignment north and south of the border. He insisted that the issue can best be dealt with as part of upcoming talks on the future relationship.

But Mr Tusk said: We know today that the UK Government rejects a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, the EU single market and the customs union.

While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border.

As long as the UK doesnt present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations. If in London someone assumes that the negotiations can deal with other issues first before the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first.

He warned: We have to be clear that any backsliding on the commitments made so far would create a risk to further progress in Brexit negotiations. This applies also to the question of avoiding a hard border.
A 37-year-old man arrested in connection with the murder of Raymond Johnston has been released unconditionally.

Mr Johnston (28) died after being shot at a house in Glenbawn Avenue in west Belfast, just before 8pm on February 13.

He was killed by a shotgun blast in front of an 11-year-old girl and his partner.

The man, arrested under the Terrorism Act by detectives from Serious Crime Branch, has now been released.

Last month four men were arrested in connection with the death of Mr Johnston but were subsequently released.

People arrested under The Terrorism Act must be charged, released pending report to the Public Prosecution Service or released unconditionally  bail is not permitted under this legislation.
Police have charged a man with rape.

Police have charged a man with rape in relation to an incident in Belfast.

The 38-year-old is to appear at Belfast Magistrates Court on Thursday.

The charges relate to an incident in the city on Tuesday, March 6.

As is usual procedure all charges will be reviewed by Public Prosecution Services.
Health inspectors have ordered a care home for people with dementia to close to new admissions amid serious concerns over residents' welfare.

Glenabbey Manor in Glengormley is owned by Runwood Homes - the same company that operated Ashbrooke Care Home in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, which was forced to close last year after regulators said conditions in the facility posed a serious risk to life.

The firm also owns Dunmurry Manor, situated on the outskirts of Belfast, which has been at the centre of a number of official probes over conditions there.

The latest development has prompted a call for the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) to be given greater powers to act when companies continually fail to meet basic safety standards.

The RQIA said yesterday that it has taken enforcement action against Glenabbey Manor after an unannounced inspection of the facility on February 13 and 14 carried out in response to intelligence it had received.

During the visit, it emerged that two residents had fallen at the home and required medical care. However, the RQIA had not been informed of the incidents - despite this being required by law.

The RQIA said: "This is the second time that this issue has been brought to the attention of the provider in respect of this home."

It also emerged during the inspection that staff were left in charge despite the fact they had not completed the necessary assessment to prove they were capable of doing so.

The RQIA said: "The registered provider's persistent failure to ensure that all staff who are left in charge of the home are competent and capable has the potential to place residents at risk of harm.

"This is the second time that this issue has been brought to the attention of the provider in respect of this home."

Last August, the RQIA took the unprecedented step of closing Ashbrooke Care Home while describing the failings there the worst they had ever seen.

The RQIA's inspection report revealed that one patient with diarrhoea was left for 20 minutes without help, while another resident was believed to have gone without a shower for five weeks.

Records showed two patients had lost more than one stone in a week and there was no evidence this had been addressed.

Meanwhile, Dunmurry Manor has been at the centre of a number of probes, including an investigation by the NI Commission for Older People, Eddie Lynch, who is examining the action taken by the RQIA and health trusts after it emerged concerns were raised about the home as far back as 2014, shortly after it opened.

Aidan Hanna from NI Patient Voice said: "It should not be left up to the RQIA to be the only people who monitor care in nursing homes.

"The RQIA must be praised on this occasion for acting swiftly but they are just repeating the same enforcement action at other Runwood Homes care facilities. It is now clear that the RQIA should have powers to act against private companies who systematically fail to provide safe nursing care to the most vulnerable in society."

Runwood Homes did not respond to a request for comment.
District Judge John Meehan, a stern critic of domestic abuse, made the remarks as he set strict bail conditions for a Co Tyrone man who disappeared off the justice system's radar

A judge has hit out at domestic violence suspects who try to keep close to victims in order to have them withdraw their complaints.

District Judge John Meehan, a stern critic of domestic abuse, made the remarks as he set strict bail conditions for a Co Tyrone man who disappeared off the justice system's radar.

John Stephen McDonagh (21) was due to appear at Dungannon Magistrates Court on January 10, but failed to turn up, resulting in a bench warrant being issued for his arrest.

McDonagh of Sydney Lane, Aughnacloy, is charged with assaulting his fiancee on December 14 last year, and damaging her clothing.

A police officer explained there was no indication of McDonagh's whereabouts until he presented himself in court with his solicitor yesterday, seeking to have the warrant executed.

But by that time, the victim had withdrawn her complaint - prompting a stern intervention by the judge.

Seated in the dock, McDonagh was clearly agitated whilst the details of case against him were read out.

Whilst a defence solicitor accepted the allegations concern domestic violence, he advised the court: "I understand the injured party has made a withdrawal statement."

Judge Meehan replied: "Surprise, surprise.

"When did the victim withdraw her complaint?"

The police officer confirmed this was on March 2.

The judge said: "And then the defendant turns up at court a few days later to have the warrant executed and expects that's the end of it?

"No. Once a suspected perpetrator of domestic violence, charged with attacking a woman, gets the chance, it's game on.

"They know the best chances to persuade victims to withdraw is by sustaining the closest possible guard on her."

He continued: "The defendant was released on bail after being charged, to have no contact with the victim or entering the area of her home.

"Of course, having conditions like that would be difficult, so he simply absented himself from January until today.

"Then, and only then, he presents himself to court, in the knowledge that the withdrawal statement has been made.

"It's all fairly transparent."

However, both police and prosecution said they were not objecting to the re-granting of bail, provided conditions were imposed.

Judge Meehan set bail at 400 and ordered McDonagh to reside at his Aughnacloy address and no other, abiding by a curfew from 10pm to 7am every night.

The ban on contacting the victim or being within 100 metres of her home was reinforced.

In addition, a cash surety of 400 was ordered to be lodged with the court prior to McDonagh's release and he is to be electronically tagged.

Concluding, Judge Meehan warned the defence: "This is perhaps one of the most serious instances for failing to appear on the specimen charges - given what has emerged - this court has had to deal with."

McDonagh appeared very angry by the proceedings, gesturing to family members seated in the public gallery.

On being taken back into custody until his bail was finalised, McDonagh demanded his solicitor attend with him at once.

The case is due back in court later this month.
Petrol bomb attack at the Conflict Resolution Services Ireland on the Falls Road in West Belfast. Pic: Freddie Parkinson, Press Eye

Police attended the scene of a petrol bomb attack at the Conflict Resolution Services Ireland building on the Falls Road on Monday.

Conflict Resolution Services Ireland work "to promote peaceful resolution to conflicts through mediation."

Detective Inspector Stephen Harvey appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

Early indications are that a petrol bomb type device has been thrown at the doorway of a building causing some damage to the door and hallway," he said.

Expand Close The building was damaged in the attack. Picture: Freddie Parkinson, Press Eye Freddie Parkinson / Facebook

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"I would ask anyone who has any information which could assist us with our investigation to contact detectives at Musgrave Street station on 101 quoting reference number 532 of 08/03/18, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A protest is to be held in Derry on Saturday calling for the release of dissident republican prisoner Tony Taylor.

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This week marks two years since Taylor was imprisoned following the revoking of his license by then Secretary of State Theresa Villiers.

The protest is to take place at Derry's Courthouse at 2pm on Saturday afternoon followed by a walk to Guildhall Square.

In a short statement Taylor called for as many people as possible to attend the rally to show their support.

"As we approach the 47th anniversary of the introduction of interment in 1971, it is telling, is it not, that the British government is still employing such draconian legislation to imprison those in political opposition," the statement read

"As a consequence, and as a victim of such action, I once again need and ask for your attendance this Saturday evening March 10 at a rally organised calling for my immediate release. Gathering outside Derry Court House at 2pm, ending in a short walk to Guildhall Square.

"In finishing, I would like to emphasise that it is vital that we get as many people as possible to attend this event and the many others organised right across Ireland and further afield. Therefore, I call on all to make every effort to mark this event because without you and your voice me and my family would be very much alone in this fight for justice."

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) said his licence was revoked by the Parole Commission because of the risk he posed to the public.

Taylor, a former IRA man, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1994 after he was seriously injured in a premature explosion in Derry.

He was then released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

In 2011, Taylor was then sentenced to three years behind bars for possession of a rifle in a case that made history by using covert surveillance evidence gathered by a drone.

The 48-year-old is currently detained at Maghaberry Prison.

At the weekend posters calling for Mr Taylor's release were erected in Derry and Strabane.

The posters caused controversy as they featured the logo of Derry City and Strabane District Council.

DUP Foyle MLA Gary Middleton called for an urgent investigation into the situation.

In 2016, the council backed a motion tabled by independent councillor Gary Donnelly to call for Mr Taylor's immediate release.
The Ireland and Ulster Rugby player at the centre of a rape trial has told a court he would have "completely freaked out" if a woman left his house crying and upset.

Taking the stand on the opening day of the defence case, Paddy Jackson (26), who denies forcing a young student to have sex with him, claimed that the alleged victim was "flirting" with him during a party at his home.

Mr Jackson, from Oakleigh Park, is currently on trial at Belfast Crown Court charged with raping and sexually assaulting the woman in his bedroom following a night out at Ollie's nightclub in June 2016.

The rugby star gave evidence for several hours from the witness box, where he recalled the events leading up to and during the alleged rape.

The jury heard how, the day before the alleged incident, Mr Jackson had returned from a tour of South Africa with Ireland. He told the court he had been looking forward to a four-week break from rugby and had planned on going on a summer holiday with a few of his friends.

The court also heard details of his schooling and professional career with Ulster Rugby and Ireland, as well as his charitable work.

The accused described his close friendships with some well-known players, including Ireland skipper Rory Best.

His barrister Brendan Kelly QC asked about his friendship with Mr Best, and how he would have babysat his children.

Mr Jackson replied: "Yeah, I would, and I got invited to his son's sixth birthday."

Mr Jackson also described co-accused Stuart Olding as a "very close friend", having met at the Ulster Rugby Academy. He has been friends with Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison, who are also facing charges connected to the incident, since school.

Mr Olding (24), from Ardenlee Street in the city, denies raping the same woman. Mr Jackson denies a further charge of sexual assault.

Mr McIlroy (26), from Royal Lodge Road, Belfast, denies exposure, while Mr Harrison (25), from Manse Road, Belfast, denies perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

Mr Kelly asked Mr Jackson if he was "party to a violent attack" on the alleged victim.

"Are you a violent person?" he asked.

Mr Jackson replied: "No, I have never been violent.

"I have never been in a fight, I'm not an aggressive person. I have never thrown a punch."

Mr Jackson was asked for his version of events at the house party and when he first came into contact with the complainant. He told the court he was sitting on a sofa when he turned and saw her sitting on the opposite side.

"She was looking at me and I smiled at her," he said.

When asked what her reaction was to him, Mr Jackson said: "She was looking at me. I didn't really think it was strange at the time."

When asked about her attention, he said: "It was very much focused on me, and it got my attention. We were flirting with each other. If I went into the kitchen she followed me. It seemed very innocent and normal. I remember her following me to the kitchen a few times. It was very flirty."

He added that on a few occasions she was "very close" to him.

"I got the impression she liked me," he added. "It was nice and I liked her back."

He described to the court how the complainant followed him up to his bedroom where they started kissing. "Our bodies were very close and we were passionately kissing," he said.

He added that they stopped after a while, and she pulled away, asking if he knew her name.

"I didn't respond because it was awkward. I didn't know her name. I kind of tried to shrug it off," he added.

"She asked again and I said I didn't know her name. She pulled away. She was doing it in a jokey way."

Mr Jackson claims he left the room and returned to the party downstairs. He said that at no stage did the victim say "no" to him, and added that after returning to the party the alleged victim "came up close to me".

"We were almost face-to-face. Then she ran her fingernails down my right arm," he said.

"I think it was her way of getting my attention again. She got my attention again.

"It was quite nice when she did it."

The court heard how the flirtatious behaviour continued and after a short time he went back to his room, claiming that the alleged victim again followed him.

He went on to describe how they kissed in his bedroom before moving on to his bed.

"We were kissing for a while and she started to bite my lower lip," he told the court. "It was playful, but it was pretty hard."

He further claimed that the claimant began kissing his neck before undoing his trousers and pulling them and his boxers down to his knees. In his evidence, he claimed that she performed oral sex on him.

The lawyer asked if there were any signs that the complainant was "enjoying" what was happening.

Mr Jackson said: "She was doing it. She was enjoying it."

He was later asked if there had been any resistance to "inserting your hand or fingers" inside the complainant.

"No, none at all," he said.

The barrister added: "Was there any movement away from that activity by her?"

"No," answered Mr Jackson.

The court heard that Mr Olding walked into the room while the woman was on top of Mr Jackson "performing oral sex".

When asked what happened, Mr Jackson said: "He walked in on us and it was a bit embarrassing. I kind of smiled at him and waved at him. It's a bit stupid, but that's what happened. It was kind of like: 'Hi, look what's happening'.

"He came over and there was an interaction between them. Her attention went from me to Stuart."

The barrister asked: "Was there an intention to have penile intercourse?"

Mr Jackson said: "I thought it was leading to that, yes."

Sexual intercourse, however did not happen because he could not find a condom after the complainant asked for one.

Mr Jackson said: "She asked for a condom. I looked in the wardrobe. I was looking for a condom and couldn't find one."

Meanwhile, he was also questioned about the presence of blood and whether he believed it had been associated with pain.

Mr Jackson said: "I would have stopped. I would have asked her if she was okay, tried to comfort her. If there was any pain I would have tried to help her."

He also denied trying to put his whole hand inside her, describing it as "revolting" and something "I would never do".

He was also asked about claims that the woman was upset while leaving his home in the early hours of the morning.

Mr Kelly said: "You said if you saw her upset you would have looked after her?"

He replied: "I know I would have done that. The last thing I would want is a girl crying and leaving my house.

"I would have completely freaked out. I would have gone to help her. If I had have known she was upset I would have tried to contact her.

"For the fear of this, I would have been aware of stuff like this happens."

The trial continues.
The house on Lenadoon Avenue which was the scene of a fire on Tuesday evening

The neighbour of an elderly man whose house went on fire in west Belfast says everyone involved in the blaze is "lucky to be alive".

A man in his late 80s was helped from the blaze by caring locals on Lenadoon Avenue on Tuesday evening.

His next door neighbour noticed smoke coming through the wall between her semi-detached house and Mr McGovern's and called the emergency services.

"Everyone keeps telling me that we're lucky to be alive, but I didn't realise that at the time," said the neighbour. "I still don't think I've really realised that but that's what people keep saying."

Fire crews were able to bring the blaze under control with four fire-fighting jets.

"There were flames everywhere," said a neighbour. "The fireman told us that it was lucky that it didn't happen later on, in the middle of the night, because it might have been too late.

"Because it was early, people were still awake so they noticed that something had happened."

Last month, firefighters attended a call at the same house.
Karol Kelly who was killed in Grafton Street, Derry in the early hours of Sunday 04 March 2018

A man holds a picture of murder victim Karol Kelly who was murdered in Derry at the weekend. There was a heavy Police presence at the court in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 07.03.18

A 17-year-old local youth was remanded in custody when he appeared before the Magistrate's Court in Derry on Wednesday charged with the murder of Karol Kelly.

Mr Kelly, a 35-year-old father of five, was stabbed to death in the early hours of last Sunday morning outside a house in Grafton Street in the Rosemount area of the city.

On Wednesday brothers Gary and Sean Anderson, both from Grafton Street, appeared in the same court jointly charged with Mr. Kelly's murder. They too were remanded in custody following disturbances in the courtroom during their appearances.

Before the youth, who was dressed in a grey track suit, appeared in court, members of the public were asked to leave the courtroom by District Judge Barney McElholm.

The youth, who cannot be named because of his age, spoke only to confirm that he understood the charge and to confirm his name, address and his date of birth.

He sat outside the dock accompanied by a uniformed police officer and close to his mother and grandmother.

A detective inspector in the PSNI's Major Investigations Team told the District Judge that she could connect the defendant to the murder charge.

Defence barrister Ciaran Roddy said he had no questions in relation to the connection of the defendant and said no bail application was being made.

The defendant was remanded in custody until March 29 for a video link appearance.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a walkabout during a visit to Millennium Point in Birmingham (Victoria Jones/PA)

Tactile Meghan Markle is becoming known for dishing out warm embraces to those she meets.

But the future royals at-ease nature is likely to be keeping her royalty protection team on their toes.

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In Birmingham, American Ms Markle happily got up close and personal with those she encountered, giving hugs and reaching into the crowd to shake hands.

Walkabouts are the Windsors closest interaction with the general public, when scores of people wait in the open air to catch a glimpse of the visiting royal.

The Queen introduced the idea of the haphazard but happy meetings with people in the crowds in the early years of her reign  and has always refused to drop them despite security worries.

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But while the Queen will collect flowers, she has never been a hugger like Ms Markle.

Ms Markle was watched by her alert and serious-looking bodyguards as she carried out official duties with Prince Harry.

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In 2001, the Prince of Wales was slapped around the face with a flower during a walkabout in Latvia.

Schoolgirl Alina Lebedeva, a member of the extremist Russian nationalist National Bolshevik movement, hit Charles with a red carnation in protest at the war in Afghanistan as the prince met the crowds in Riga.

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The Princess Royal has in the past shrugged off the risks of attack, saying the royal family must live with the danger.

Anne, who survived an armed kidnap attempt in 1974, told Womans Hour on Radio 4 in 1994: I think it is a permanent possibility, I am afraid. We just have to live with it.

Just travelling around has its own risks, but then so does getting out of bed. So, lifes too short, really 

When Ms Markle marries Harry, she will be entitled to her own personal protection officer from the Metropolitan Polices Royalty and Specialist Protection unit, paid for by the taxpayer.

Harry has grown accustomed to the intrusion since childhood, but Ms Markle will have to adjust to a lifetime of being accompanied by a bodyguard.
NHS spening on agency staff has topped 300 million for the first time, Nicola Sturgeon was told (Peter Byrne/PA)

NHS spending on agency workers has reached more than 300 million for the first time ever despite the First Minister saying health boards should minimise the use of such staff, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has said.

The Tory MSP criticised the increasing cost of locum medical staff to the health service, saying taxpayers are shelling out a third of a billion pounds on costly locums and private agency workers despite assurances that numbers would go down and not up.

She challenged Nicola Sturgeon on the spiralling cost of locums after figures this weekend showed almost a quarter of Scotlands GP practices have at least one medical vacancy.

The cost of locum staff has now risen AGAIN, breaking the 300 million barrier for the first time.#FMQs  Scottish Conservatives (@ScotTories) March 8, 2018

Ms Davidson said: Just over a year ago, I asked the First Minister at First Ministers Questions about the spiralling cost of locums, medical staff brought in at huge expense because there arent enough NHS staff to fill shifts.

Last year the First Minister was clear health boards should minimise their use of agency staff.

Well, weve looked again at the cost of locum staff using Freedom of Information and it has now risen again, breaking the 300 million barrier for the very first time.

She pressed Ms Sturgeon on the SNPs mismanagement of the NHS at First Ministers Questions at Holyrood.

Ms Davidson said: Just four years ago, only one in 10 GP surgeries was missing a doctor, now its one in four. That is not progress.

Ill spell it out  it is because under the SNP GP services are in crisis and weve known it for months.

Here is the Governments record  160 fewer GPs, vacancies trebling in the last five years, a third of GPs in post now nearing retirement and an entire NHS propped up by expensive private agencies to fill the gaps left by poor workforce planning.

FM: It is simply not credible for the Tories to come to this Chamber and say, somehow, they think there should be more investment in our NHS, when they voted against the investment we are already making. #FMQs pic.twitter.com/PDjdydDf44  The SNP (@theSNP) March 8, 2018

Ms Sturgeon, a former health secretary, defended the SNPs record on the NHS, saying the number of people working in primary care was at a record high when nurses and other health professionals were included as well as GPs.

She said: Let me also talk about the record of this government  record funding in our National Health Service, record numbers of people working in our National Health Service, a 10% increase since this government took office, extra money being committed to primary care and general practice.

She pointed to the target the Scottish Government has set to increase the share of health spending that goes to primary care to 11%.

With Tory MSPs having voted against the SNP governments spending plans in last months budget, Ms Sturgeon insisted: It is simply not credible for the Tories to come to this chamber and say somehow they think there should be more investment in the NHS when they voted against the investment we are already making.

On the issue of agency spending by the NHS, she said: The combined medical and nursing agency costs represent just around 2% of the overall staffing budget.

Ruth Davidson might be interested to know that that is a third less proportionately than it is south of the border, where the Conservatives are actually in government.

I know that Ruth Davidson doesnt like this but let me be clear: we dont judge ourselves by standards elsewhere, we set our own standards.

When Ruth Davidson, or any other member of the opposition, stands in this Parliament and says it would all be better if only my party was in government, then it is legitimate to look at where their party is in government.

Unfortunately for Ruth Davidson, that doesnt paint a very pretty picture.
Surgeon's Hall was the scene of a riot in 1870 (RCSED/PA)

Seven pioneering female doctors are to be remembered at a special event on International Womens Day.

The women  Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson and Emily Bovell  were admitted to study medicine at Edinburgh University in 1869, making them the first females to be accepted on to a degree programme at any British university.

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSED) is to unveil a plaque commemorating the medics achievements at a ceremony in the city on Thursday.

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At the time, the actions of the group known as the Edinburgh Seven were extraordinary enough to attract widespread criticism from across society, even inciting a riot on the streets of the Scottish capital.

Although they were admitted in 1869, they had to continue their campaign to be allowed to train and practice as doctors.

A defining moment in that campaign was The Surgeons Hall Riot of November 18, 1870, which attracted widespread publicity and created a groundswell of support for their fight.

Information on the University of Edinburghs website reveals the challenges faced by the women at the time.

The article states: The everyday jealousy the male students exhibited was vile.

The men made life as difficult as possible for the Edinburgh Seven, shutting doors in their faces, howling at them and behaving aggressively.

Events came to a head at their anatomy exam when several hundred male students pelted the women with mud and other objects as they arrived. The women struggled through the crowd until a supporter unbolted a door to hurry them inside.

During the exam, the rioters shoved a live sheep into the hall, causing further chaos.

The notice, part of Historic Environment Scotlands commemorative plaque scheme, will be officially revealed by Caroline Doig, a retired paediatric surgeon and the first woman to be elected to the RCSED Council in 1984 and the first female chair of the General Medical Council.

She said: Today, the college celebrates the role of women in all its committees and activities, and its growing female membership has reached over 5,000 surgical and dental professionals worldwide.

I am delighted there are now so many women pursuing a career in surgery and it is an honour to unveil this commemorative plaque on International Womens Day, in memory of the first seven women to be admitted on to a degree programme at any British university.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby greets the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, HRH Mohammed bin Salman, at a private meeting at Lambeth Palace, London (Yui Mok/PA)

The Archbishop of Canterbury has met Saudi Arabias Crown Prince on the second day of his visit to the country.

Justin Welby saw Mohammed bin Salman at Lambeth Palace in London as concern over Saudi Arabias role in the war in Yemen continued to cause controversy.

Amnesty International UKs director Kate Allen said: We hope Justin Welby used the meeting as an opportunity to personally communicate the Churchs concerns over the thousands of Yemeni civilians killed and injured in reckless and indiscriminate Saudi-led coalition air strikes.

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We also hope the Archbishop was able to express concern over the ongoing jailing of peaceful critics of the Saudi government, including the prisoner of conscience Raif Badawi.

The meeting with the Archbishop came after Prime Minister Theresa May and the Crown Prince used Downing Street talks to lay out plans for a 65 billion trade and investment package.

The Prime Minister also raised the situation in Yemen with the Saudi royal.

The Crown Prince is holding further talks with the PM at Chequers on Thursday, including a private dinner with Mrs May at her official country residence.

Foreign policy issues, including Yemen and Iran, are expected to feature in the talks.

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The first day of his visit saw the Crown Prince have an audience with the Queen, and dinner with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.

Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody civil war since 2014 when rebels took over the capital city of Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia is the main player in a coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis in a war which has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Crown Prince has been the driving force behind a modernisation programme, Vision 2030, in Saudi Arabia but the reforms have been dismissed as a mirage by human rights campaigners.
Bones found on an island in 1940 are likely to be that of Amelia Earhart (PA)

Bones found in 1940 on a remote Pacific island were quite likely to be remains from famed aviator Amelia Earhart, new analysis has concluded.

Earhart disappeared during an attempted flight around the world in 1937. The search for an answer to what happened to her and her navigator has captivated the public for decades.

The remains discovered on Nikumaroro Island are now lost and all that survive are seven measurements, from the skull and bones from the arm and leg. Those measurements led a scientist in 1941 to conclude that they belonged to a man.

It's highly unlikely that a random person would resemble the bones as closely as EarhartAnthropologist Richard Jantz

Now University of Tennessee anthropologist Richard Jantz has weighed in with a new analysis of the measurements, published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

The study and other evidence point toward her rather strongly, Mr Jantz said.

For comparison, he used an inseam length and waist circumference from a pair of Earharts trousers. He also drew on a photo of her holding an oil can to estimate the lengths of two arm bones.

Analysis showed the bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer, he wrote in the journal article.

Its highly unlikely that a random person would resemble the bones as closely as Earhart, he said.
A Danish inventor is going on trial accused of murdering a Swedish reporter on his private submarine.

Peter Madsen is alleged to have tied up and tortured journalist Kim Wall before either cutting her throat or strangling her during a trip last August.

The 47-year-old, whose trial starts in Copenhagen on Thursday, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Ms Walls body.

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Madsen has denied murder.

His defence lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told TV2 on Thursday that he maintains she died accidentally inside the submarine.

He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

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The prosecution claims Ms Walls murder was premeditated because Madsen took tools he did not usually take on board the submarine.

The trial at Copenhagens City Court is expected to last until April 25.
Donald Trump has announced steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminium into the US to address what he says is an assault on our country.

The president said a 25% tax will apply to steel imports, and 10% will be added to aluminium brought into the US.

Mr Trump said the excess of imported steel and aluminium was a travesty and hurts American workers and industry.

Making the long-awaited announcement on Thursday, the president said the industry had been ravaged by aggressive foreign trade practices.

Its really an assault on our country, he said.

Sources outside the White House said the tariffs will take effect in 15 days, with Canada and Mexico indefinitely excluded from the duties.

Those briefed on the plans say all countries affected by the tariffs are being invited to negotiate for exemptions, if they can address the threat their exports pose to the US.

American steel and aluminium workers have long been betrayed, but that betrayal is now over, Mr Trump said. The former real estate developer said politicians had for years lamented the decline in the industries, but nobody was willing to take action.

As he has indicated previously, Mr Trump confirmed he would levy tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminium. But he said during a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day that the penalties would have a right to go up or down depending on the country and Ill have a right to drop out countries or add countries. I just want fairness.

Business leaders, meanwhile, have continued to sound the alarm about the potential economic fallout from tariffs, with the president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce raising the spectre of a global trade war. That scenario, Tom Donohue said, would endanger the economic momentum from the GOP tax cuts and Trumps rollback of regulations.

We urge the administration to take this risk seriously, Mr Donohue said.

The president suggested in the meeting with his Cabinet that Australia and other countries might also be spared, a shift that could soften the international blow amid threats of retaliation by trading partners.

Were going to be very fair, were going to be very flexible but were going to protect the American worker as I said I would do in my campaign, Mr Trump said.

People briefed on the plans ahead of the announcement said all countries affected by the tariffs would be invited to negotiate with the administration to be exempted from the tariffs if they can address the threat their exports pose to US manufacturers.

The process of announcing the penalties has been the subject of an intense debate and chaotic exchanges within the White House, pitting hard-liners against free trade advocates such as outgoing economic adviser Gary Cohn.

The fight over tariffs comes amid intense turmoil in the West Wing, which has seen waves of departures and negative news stories that have left Mr Trump increasingly isolated in the Oval Office, according to two senior officials.

Congressional Republicans and business groups are bracing for the impact of the tariffs and the departure of Mr Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who has opposed them.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, appearing at a session with Home Depot employees in Atlanta, said ahead of Mr Trumps announcement: Im just not a fan of broad-based, across-the-board tariffs. He pointed to the stores many products that rely on steel and aluminium.

There are unquestionably bad trade practices by nations like China, but the better approach is targeted enforcement of those bad practices. Our economy and our national security are strengthened by fostering free trade with our allies. pic.twitter.com/Ne0S4glcCx  Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) March 8, 2018

More than 100 House Republicans wrote to Mr Trump on Wednesday, asking him to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the US economy and workers.

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican, said he plans to introduce legislation next week to nullify the tariffs though he has acknowledged that finding the votes to stop the presidents actions could be difficult.

The president has said the tariffs are needed to reinforce lagging American steel and aluminium industries and protect national security.
International Womens Day has seen demonstrations across the globe, with an unprecedented strike by millions of Spanish women, and a crackdown in France on companies violating gender-equal pay policies.

Many of the events on Thursday echoed the #MeToo movement that has mobilised women against sexual violence and workplace harassment.

In Spain, unions estimated that 5.3 million people joined the strike, which targeted gender violence and unequal pay.

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The day culminated with street protests in several cities, with the theme If we stop, the world stops.

Social services worker Teresa Sonsur, protesting in Madrid, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination at her agency.

The women are doing all the hard work, dealing with the customers, but in the positions of management it is always men, the 38-year-old said.

Meanwhile, French companies that treat women unequally may soon face new pressure and penalties, with president Emmanuel Macron stating his government is going to name and shame such firms.

Another government initiative would fine companies with more than 50 employees if there is an unjustified gender wage gap.

Today is International Women's Day!

"Gender equality is not just about fairness and justice in Europe  it is also about a necessity to achieve sustainable peace and economic prosperity"

Our joint statement on #IWD2018  https://t.co/qHwn4ljIS0 #EU4Women pic.twitter.com/vRaIGLVrJ2  European Commission  (@EU_Commission) March 8, 2018

In Russia, the head of parliaments foreign affairs committee apologised after being accused of sexual harassment by several female journalists.

Noting it was International Womens Day, Leonid Slutsky said on Facebook: I am using the occasion to ask forgiveness from those of you whom I freely or involuntarily caused suffering.

The apology came after demonstrators, including opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, picketed outside Parliament, demanding Slutskys resignation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the worlds most powerful women, said in a video message that the quest for greater gender equality in Germany and worldwide must continue.

Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights, she said.

But theres still a lot to do.

Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rightsAngela Merkel

In Rome, Catholic women challenged Pope Francis to give women a greater voice in church affairs.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese, an advocate for womens ordination and gay rights, accused the churchs all-male leadership of refusing to change womens second-class status.

The Catholic Church has long since been a primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny, McAleese said.

On this International #WomensDay, let us together demand gender equality and womens empowerment. Let us declare #TimeIsNow. https://t.co/aenAZPRNMy pic.twitter.com/Zrdo0hvp7t  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 8, 2018

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on men to join in making gender equality a reality for all.

He said: This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want.

It is what every sensible man and boy should want.

The White House meanwhile announced that first lady Melania Trump would present State Department courage awards to women from around the world at a ceremony on March 21.
Fortunately, we enjoy a free Press in this country. Unfortunately, events over the last few weeks have shown how negative attitudes and extreme views in the media can have a damaging effect on our political life.

Recently the Nolan Show has faced criticism from myself and others that it prefers to court controversy and raise tension rather than to promote conciliation and bring common sense to solve our problems.

The blame for the collapse of the talks to restore a power-sharing Executive must be laid at the feet of our political leaders, but I believe that the Nolan Show made their task more difficult.

My good friend Ruth Dudley Edwards has praised Stephen Nolan for his job in taking our politicians to task. I accept that it is his role to do this - and I think that he does it fairly.

At the same time I believe the approach he takes to his questioning can sometimes encourage conflict and not problem-solving.

For example, he constantly sought to question efforts by our politicians to move away from promises, or 'red lines', that they had made at recent elections on issues such as the Irish language and gay rights. Efforts to compromise were challenged.

These same politicians had also promised to restore our Executive and to get this country up and running again. Both sets of promises are diametrically opposed, so compromise has to happen. This should have been encouraged - not criticised.

Concern must also be expressed about how the Nolan Show can sometimes provide a platform for extreme views.

A free Press must allow the expression of all views, but there is a lack of more moderate voices on the show.

Also, some individuals with strong views seem to be regular contributors to the programme. On occasions prominence given to such views has caused censorship of moderate opinion.

The coverage on the programme over the issue of the Irish language played a key part in raising tension over this matter.

The Nolan Show brought on spokespersons from language groups who made extreme claims for their ambitions for an Irish Language Act. These included Irish language version names on all streets and roads, including the Shankill Road.

Another goal espoused by a spokesperson on the Nolan Show was that people would have the right to receive a service in Irish every time they visited a GP, or a motor tax office. Quotas for the Civil Service were talked about.

To challenge these views, people were then brought on who proceeded to make their extreme statements.

These ranged from claims that the promotion of the Irish language was all part of an IRA plot to declarations of intent to tear down any such signs on their street or road (as if this was likely).

What should have happened is that the programme should have engaged people who could have presented the case for a reasonable and moderate provision of the Irish language.

They could also have turned for advice to members of the excellent Irish language departments we have in our two universities.

Provision of information on the comparative fortunes of Gaelic languages elsewhere on these islands would have been helpful.

In the Irish Republic, efforts to promote the Irish language have not been successful. At the 2016 census it was revealed that only 73,806 persons spoke Irish daily outside the educational system.

This failure can be put down to the fact that, post-1921, promotion of the language was top-down, politically and ideologically driven and compulsorily imposed.

Elsewhere, however, there has been greater success in promoting Gaelic languages. In Wales some 20% regularly speak Welsh, while in Scotland Gaelic is spoken regularly by around 5%.

Reasonable policies in both countries, commensurate with local needs, serve to protect and encourage the language. There, the language promotion is ground-up with wide support. The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 was passed unanimously by the Scottish parliament.

Instead, the heated arguments on the Nolan Show, with these uncontested claims and counter-claims for an Irish Language Act, helped to cause great tension in the whole community. This led to greatly exaggerated worries, especially among DUP supporters.

On Tuesday, February 13, Arlene Foster stated that there would be no compulsory Irish language in schools and no one would be forced to learn Irish.

Obviously, she felt it necessary to deny such outlandish ideas, because of widespread rumours among her followers.

Subsequently, the talks collapsed. An important factor was the deadlock over the Irish language. The heightened tension over the issue, to which the Nolan show contributed, made any agreement impossible.

Of course, the two main parties must share the major responsibility for this failure. The DUP failed to bring along its own members on the matter. Sinn Fein took no steps to put forward a moderate argument for language legislation to reassure unionists.

From what we now know, the parties had achieved agreement over some issues. They still faced difficulties over other matters, but were working on those. People were moderating their positions.

The parties and the media should acknowledge and praise these advances. What we don't need is for programmes, such as the Nolan Show, to criticise our politicians because they have moved from confrontational, 'red line' positions.

Sensible compromise should be praised, not derided. Moderation should be welcomed and extremism challenged.

It is nonsense to suggest that this is a call for censorship. It is a call for all opinions - not just the loudest - to receive a hearing. It is also a suggestion that other questions should be asked.

There is too much concentration on who saw what papers and who talked to whom. Constant negativity makes progress very difficult. Other issues could be raised on "the biggest show in the country".

What are the positive points to have come out of these talks? What are the steps necessary to reach a new agreement?

These are the questions that Stephen Nolan and other members of the media should be asking.

Professor Emeritus Brian M Walker is the author of A Political History Of The Two Irelands: From Partition To Peace (Palgrave Macmillan)
Philippine Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno (third from left)poses for a photo with law students during a visit to the University of Baguio, March 2, 2018.

A panel of the Philippine House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Thursday in finding probable cause to impeach embattled Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno over corruption-related allegations.

Voting 38-2, the Houses justice committee took less than an hour to rule on the accusations that Sereno, the first woman to head the Philippine Supreme Court, had likely committed culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, corruption and other crimes. The House is controlled by allies of President Rodrigo Duterte, whose policies Sereno has publicly opposed.

Throughout the probable cause hearings, this committee has gathered sufficient evidence to provide us the ammunition to prosecute this case towards victory, Committee Chairman Rep. Reynaldo Umali said, according to a news release posted on the congressional website.

Speaking to members of the Philippine Women Judges' Association who were marking the International Women's Day on Thursday, the chief justice said she didnt expect that she would receive a fair hearing in the 298-member House.

I ask that we dispel all thoughts and impulses of malice and ill will for they serve no good purpose and bring nothing but shame. We must denounce gossiping and unfounded innuendo, and try our best to preserve our dignity as members of the Judiciary. And, true to our oath as judges, we do not judge anyone until all the evidence is in, Sereno said.

That is why I must fight to have my day at the Senate Impeachment Court. This fight is a fight for Judicial Independence, for the right of every member of the court to confront her accuser face to face in a trial type proceeding, she said.

Sereno accused the House justice committee of being blatantly unfair against her, stressing that it had denied an earlier request by her camp to confront and cross examine the witnesses against her.

Indeed, I look at any forum to try me other than the constitutionally-exclusive forum of impeachment as an admission by the complainant and my other detractors that, after 15 hearings, they have failed to come up with any evidence with which I can be convicted in the Senate, Sereno said. They started it, why are they afraid to finish it?

All kinds of lies, threats, harassment and bullying have been thrown my way. But I will not yield, she added.

Grossly flawed

An obscure lawyer, Eligio Mallari, with known ties to politicians allied with Duterte had filed the complaint against Sereno, accusing her, among other things, of not properly decelerating her real net worth and of spending on a luxury vehicle for her use.

The impeachment case has also taken its toll on the judiciary, which is supposedly an independent body of government. Thirteen of her 14 fellow justices had earlier voted to ask Sereno to go on leave, while the impeachment process was playing out.

If a third of the House agrees with the impeachment finding, Sereno would then be considered impeached and a trial would commence in the Senate.

Sereno would then become only the second chief justice to be impeached, after Renato Corona in 2012, who was removed on similar charges of corruption.

While Duterte has distanced himself from the impeachment proceedings, he had earlier blasted Sereno for going against him publicly.

Sereno had questioned the presidents drug war, which has left over 4,000 dead so far, after he brandished an unverified list that supposedly contained names of government officials, mayors, soldiers, policemen and judges allegedly involved in the drug trade.

At least three mayors whose names were on the list were later gunned down in what police claimed were legitimate anti-drug operations. One of the judges named on the list was later found out to have died before Duterte became president.

Sereno had also gone against Duterte when he pushed, in 2016, for a transfer to the Heroes Cemetery in Manila of the remains of dictator Ferdinand Marcos; and when he pushed for martial law in the south to defeat Islamic State militants.

Edcel Lagman, an opposition member in the House, said the justice committee should have immediately passed the vote to the entire body for plenary voting. Once the House voted to impeach Sereno, it should have transmitted the case to the Senate without delay, he said.

In his view, the fact that the House did not do this showed that Congress was buying time because it knew lawmakers knew they a weak case. Instead, Lagman alleged, Congress was waiting for the resolution of the case filed by the governments solicitor general to disqualify Sereno instead for allegedly failing to submit her real net worth.

The complaint was filed earlier this week by Solicitor General Jose Calida, who wants the high court to disqualify Sereno because she failed to submit annual statement of assets and liabilities.

Calidas petition was grossly flawed because it subverts the impeachment power that is grossly granted to Congress, Lagman said.

It is also baseless because the submission of SALNs (statement of assets and liabilities and net worth) is not required by the constitution for appointment of Chief Justice, Lagman stressed.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, speaks at a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York, May 17, 2016.

A Filipina United Nations special rapporteur and a former congressman on Thursday said they were told they were among a list of 600 alleged communist guerrillas that President Rodrigo Dutertes government wants declared as terrorists.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said she learned her name was included in petition filed by the justice department. The petition asks a local court to declare the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed unit, the New Peoples Army (NPA), as a terrorist organizations.

Former House member Satur Ocampo said he too appears on the list that has not been made public.

In this 55-page petition my name has been included as one of the respondents and as one of the officers and members of the CPP and NPA, Corpuz said. I denounce this act by the Department of Justice of including me in this list.

Corpuz denied she was connected to the organizations, nor that she had participated in alleged terroristic acts spelled out in the petition. She did not say how she learned her name was listed.

I will address this baseless, malicious and irresponsible inclusion of my name even as I am consulting my lawyers on what legal courses of action to take to clear my name and even make accountable those who put my life and security at risk, Corpuz said.

Government and military spokesmen refused to comment.

The government filed the petition at a Manila court after Duterte ended peace negotiations in November, ending hopes that a political settlement would be reached with the insurgents the military estimates to have an armed strength of about 5,000 fighters.

Duterte had accused the rebels of negotiating in bad faith, noting that the CPP-NPA had continued its attacks despite agreeing to a truce and the peace talks moving forward. He had hoped to end the 49-year rebellion that has left thousands dead and left large parts of the countryside in dire poverty by the time he ends his six-year term in 2022.

In particular, he had said he felt betrayed by the CPP-NPA, after freeing dozens of jailed guerrillas so they could join peace negotiations. He had also named several prominent leftists to his cabinet as a show of good faith.

Others named

Ocampo, a former leftist politician, plans to consult his lawyer about the inclusion.

He has turned totally antagonistic towards the left, Ocampo told BenarNews, speaking about Duterte. He has scuttled the peace negotiations just when these were producing very positive results on socio-economic reforms.

Ocampo said Duterte was absolutely wrong by tagging him and others as guerrilla fighters and the CPP-NPA as a terrorist organization. He again is relying on the militarys advice and replicating the U.S. government listing of the revolutionary organizations as a terrorist organization since 2002, Ocampo said.

The petition includes 18 top guerrilla leaders, including CPP founder Jose Maria Sison and former chief peace negotiator Luis Jalandoni. Sison, who taught Duterte at a university, had heaped praise on his student who won the presidency by a landslide by vowing to kill thousands of drug addicts and pushers.

Felipe Villamor in Manila contributed to this report.
Science Applications International Corporation in Hanahan is expanding its existing operations in Berkeley County and will create 200 new jobs during the next five years.
As part of a cultural exchange, a Yanshan University group from China will perform at Bowling Green State University and other northwest Ohio universities beginning March 12.



Comprised of five faculty members and eight students from Qinhuangdao, the Yanshan University Performance Troupe will present Whispering Dreams of a Spring Breeze, demonstrating Chinese dance, music and martial arts. Fourteen presentations are included in the performance, with themes of ancient charm, diversified ethnicity and unique folk arts. The performances will include vocal soloists, Chinese zither music, a Taichi fan performance, Chinese fiddle (er hu), and Southern Fist martial arts demonstrations.



The BGSU performance is at 7:30 p.m. on March 12 in Kobacker Hall of Moore Musical Arts Center. Other performances are scheduled at University of Toledo and Lourdes University.



The troupes visit is part of the sister city relationship between Toledo and Qinhuangdao, China, that began in 1985. Both are known as a Glass City.



Dr. Joseph Chao, Narayen Endowed Associate Professor and chair of the BGSU Department of Computer Science, leads the local Qinhuangdao Sister City Committee. The purpose of the troupes presentation is to spread goodwill and share our cultures with one another, he said.



Chao and College of Musical Arts Dean William Mathis visited Yanshan University in December to plan for the cultural exchange performance.



During my visit to Yanshan University, I had the personal honor to see a rehearsal of several of the numbers that will be performed here at BGSU, Mathis said. I was thoroughly taken with the beauty and expressive display of both the traditional Chinese music and dance. Their presentation on our campus and the cultural exchange with our students will be a wonderful experience for all who are involved.



The performers from Yanshan University are Xin Zhao, vocal professor; Nuan Wen, Chinese zither lecturer; Lingyun Ma, associate professor; Wennan Zhao, lecturer; Yiwei Wang, a senior student majoring in pipa, a stringed instrument related to the lute; and members of the Art Ensemble Dance Performers: Huiqian Cai, Zi Tian, Shihao Guo, Yang Zheng, Yao Jia and Xirong Zhang.



Tickets are $5 per person and available at the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Information Desk, by calling 419-372-2741, or at the door the night of the performance. The additional performances are at 7 p.m. March 14 in the Doermann Theatre at the University of Toledo, and at 7 p.m. March 19 in the Franciscan Center at Lourdes University.



While in northwest Ohio, in addition to their performances, the group will attend a Toledo Symphony Orchestra concert at the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle, visit the Toledo Chinese School at Maumee Valley Country Day School, and attend soprano Dawn Upshaws BGSU concert and the dress rehearsal of the BGSU Opera Theater production of Cosi fan tutte.



These exchanges are important to foster better understanding of each other, to become more comfortable with each other, and promote mutual respect, Chao said.




Plus, Bill's Message of the Day, on General Mark Milley's call to the Chinese.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
International Women's Day 2018: What is there to celebrate?

On International Womens Day 2018 readers might ask whether there is much to celebrate. The day falls amidst scandals about the abuse of vulnerable women by some of the worlds leading charities  precisely the organizations that we expect to be fighting exploitation. The problem is not confined to aid, or charities-exploitation has been identified in government, multinational companies, and film industries.

In the aid context, inequalities in power and resources are magnified, but we are kidding ourselves if we think these problems are limited to disaster zones. For many women, they are part of everyday life.

As such, International Womens Day 2018 is an occasion to remind ourselves of the need to redouble our efforts to confront gender inequality wherever we find it.

The challenge ahead

A formidable battle lies ahead. In most walks of life, women continue to be underrepresented at the highest level. The number of women elected to the worlds parliaments continues to be shockingly low. In Sweden, consistently highly ranked in the Global Gender Gap index, the percentage of seats held by women has declined in recent years. In the United States, women hold just 19.6% of the seats in Congress. In the United Kingdom the record 208 women elected in 2017 represents only 32% of parliament  a long way off parity. The United Kingdom has its second female Prime Minister, but women remain underrepresented in cabinet (26%).

This is also true of academia. The number of women entering higher education in the UK is at a record high. Female students outperform males in many subject areas. However, the number of female professors is far too low  including at the University of Birmingham, where efforts to redress this inequality have yet to be successful. Less than a quarter of professors in the UK are women and a recent study found that one in three universities are moving backwards.

The democratic paradox

It is tempting to think that the situation must be even worse in parts of the world where democracy is less consolidated. This intuition is wrong. In many sectors there is no clear correlation between democracy and female representation. Indeed, it is outside of the West that some of the most striking breakthroughs have been made in recent years.

The countries with the highest levels of female political representation in the world are Bolivia, Cuba and Rwanda  one problematic democracy and two authoritarian states. In the same league table, Zimbabwe sits above Germany, while Belarus outperforms Canada.

These findings suggest an uncomfortable truth: democracy is not necessarily a boon for gender equality. The disappointing performance of so many democracies on gender equality is not simply down to manipulative elites and clunky structures, but also the attitudes of ordinary voters. Recent research has found that even people publicly committed to gender equality have difficulty accepting women as leaders subconsciously.



Changing gender norms

Having more women in parliament does not necessarily translate into pro-women government policies. Parliaments with strong female contingents have failed to pass legislation on issues such as gender-based violence and inheritance rights, leading some to question whether we should care about the number of women in parliament. Cant men sensitive to equality issues do just as good a job?

Growing evidence indicates that size does matter. Alice Evans has demonstrated that it is possible to change social norms when marginalised people gain confidence in the possibility of social change. Critical to this process are more role models from excluded communities and for citizens to believe that others in their community are leaving old prejudices behind.

Given this, gender parity has real value in key sectors of our economy and political system, even if this does not translate into immediate policy gains. All the more worrying then, that many advanced democracies have made little progress towards gender equality in key areas like politics and education.

Recent revelations demand efforts to end the exploitation of women in disaster zones and on movie sets. However, success here will be dependent on our ability and willingness to tackle the roots of gender inequality, which lie closer to home.

Nic Cheeseman is Professor of Democracy and Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation, University of Birmingham

Jill Steans is Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory and Fellow of the Institute for Global Innovation, University of Birmingham

Together, they lead an exciting new research programme on innovative ways to tackle gender inequality in health and wellbeing as part of the Universitys new Institute for Global Innovation.

View our International Women's Day YouTube playlist to see just some of the amazing work being carried out by women across the University of Birmingham.
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On a day where women are being celebrated around the world, YWCA Brandon will be recognizing the women in Westman who have gone above and beyond for the community.

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This article was published 8/3/2018 (1291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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On a day where women are being celebrated around the world, YWCA Brandon will be recognizing the women in Westman who have gone above and beyond for the community.

The 31st Annual YWCA Brandons Women of Distinction Gala takes place tonight, capping off International Womens Day by honouring those who have led the way.

The gala has been held since 1985 to honour women of Brandon and the Westman and Parkland areas. All proceeds from the event support programs and services provided by the YWCA Brandon in the community.

"We want to recognize women in the Westman area who have contributed to their communities, for their individual achievements or for being role models for other women and girls," said Karen Peto, executive director of the YWCA Brandon.

"I dont think women get recognized as often as men do for the roles they play  This brings these women to the forefront and  puts them in the spotlight, giving people some insight as to how these women have helped all of us, or been role models for our daughters."

Every year the nominees are "thrilled" to be recognized, Peto said.

"The nomination makes a lot of other people around them come forward and tell them how much they appreciate what theyve done for the community and how important they are," Peto said.

"I want people to really take the time to congratulate these women, and to acknowledge what theyve done  many of these women have made huge differences in peoples lives."

Over the past year, womens empowerment and equality have been at the forefront of the conversation  one which Peto said shed like to see continue and grow.

"I think the last year has opened peoples eyes to the challenges women face in society  and I think theres a little more openness on the part of a lot of people about the issues women face and what some of the struggles are for women," Peto said. "So when women achieve something, theres a little more thought put into  what her struggles were to get there."

And International Womens Day doesnt exclude men from the conversation, Peto said, adding that mens voices are equally important.

"Im hoping we start to see some changes, some acknowledgement on the part of men about treating women as equals  Id really like to see society move toward a more equitable view of things and for women to be acknowledged  realistically  for what they bring to the table," Peto said. "(Men) speaking up when someone says or does something inappropriate, calling out other men when they dont act appropriately, it would make a huge impact."

 edebooy@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @erindebooy
By Padraig Hoare

New Look stores in the Republic of Ireland and the North are understood not to be under threat after the fashion retailer announced 60 shops in Britain could close with the loss of almost 1,000 jobs.

The firm said it was looking to reduce its UK stores and rental costs amid challenged trading performance and a difficult retail environment.

New Look said it had identified 60 of its 593 stores in the UK for potential closure, alongside a further six sites sublet to third parties. The proposal includes a reduction in rental costs and revised lease terms across 393 stores.

It said it would seek up to 980 redundancies from its more than 15,000 staff across the UK.

Sources said New Looks 29 stores in the Republic are not under consideration for closures and that no jobs are under threat.

New Look has eight stores in the Dublin area, five in Cork, two in Galway, and at locations including Limerick, Clonmel, Dungarvan, Drogheda, Dundalk, Navan, and Ashbourne.

It also has a number of stores in the North, including 10 around the Belfast area.

There are hundreds of employees in the New Look stores throughout the Republic and the North.

New Look said it was instigating a company voluntary arrangement and seeking approval from creditors on a plan to improve the operational performance.

Executive chairman Alistair McGeorge said: Given our challenged trading performance and over-rented UK store estate, we are having to take tough but necessary actions to reduce our fixed cost base and restore long-term profitability.

We have held constructive discussions with our key landlords and strategic partners and will now seek creditor approval on our company voluntary arrangement proposal. A priority for us is to keep all potentially affected colleagues informed during this difficult time.

The Irish arm of New Look, which is separately run, is said to be profitable and therefore exempt from the potential closures.

The company saw a profit of 1.38m last year, down from 1.5m in 2016, according to accounts.

The company noted, in those accounts, that it saw no significant changes to the future of the business in the Republic.

The potential closures come at a difficult time for retailers across the UK. More than 140 jobs at Maplin Electronics stores in the Republic and the North are under threat after an administrator was appointed to its 217 stores across the UK and Ireland last week.

Toy seller Toys R Us also appointed an administrator to its stores in Britain and the North, where it has four stores in Belfast, Derry, and Down  a move that could lead to all four being closed, said insiders.
Former Stormont first minister Arlene Foster unlawfully mistakenly deferred a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in the North, a judge said.

She erroneously believed 150 million (168 million) earmarked by the British Government as part of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement to speed up coroner's hearings should await the outcome of an overall package dealing with all legacy issues, Belfast High Court judge Paul Girvan added.

The state's obligation to speedily investigate deaths during the conflict remained whether or not devolved Government was restored, he said.

He said: "She (Arlene Foster) was in error in concluding that it was legally proper to defer consideration of the funding issue because in the absence of an overall package the provision of additional funds to deal with the systemic delays in the legacy inquests would favour victims who were not innocent as against innocent victims of the Troubles."

In 2014 the British Government announced 150 million to support legacy reform in Northern Ireland, as part of a wider package of measures to address the legacy of the country's toxic past.

Disagreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP over issues relating to the past meant that was not implemented.

In 2016 the North's Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan requested the cash be released to address a major backlog. A total of 54 inquests involving 94 deaths were covered.

Mrs Foster refused to table a government paper for agreement by the powersharing administration to petition the Northern Ireland Secretary for the funding, failing to discuss it with then deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, the judge said.

Unionists held concerns about a focus on state killings by police and Army personnel when most deaths were caused by paramilitaries.

The judge said more work was needed before the Treasury could have approved the proposal and cautioned unlimited public funds were not available.

Powersharing collapsed in Northern Ireland more than a year ago and the inquest issue has not been resolved.

Judge Girvan said finding a resolution of the funding issue cannot be postponed until an outcome to a political agreement on other legacy issues.

"The longer the absence of a working devolved administration the longer the problem will continue and the greater it will become."

The judge said the law did not envisage a lengthy hiatus.

"Undoubtedly a vacuum in which there are rudderless departments without ministers, the lack of a functioning Executive Committee and the absence of a sitting Assembly produces an essentially undemocratic system of unaccountable government provided effectively by senior civil servants who find themselves in an uncomfortable situation."

Without resolution the UK faces yet again the "likelihood" of being found to be in breach of its Article 2 obligations to protect life and hold a speedy investigation into deaths, he said.

Brigid Hughes took the judicial review. Her husband Anthony Hughes died in May 1987 when he was innocently caught in the cross-fire between soldiers and the IRA at Loughgall Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station in Co Armagh.

Eight IRA men also died in the SAS ambush.

She said she was pleased with the outcome of the hearing but it had taken a long time.

Responding to the judgment, a UK Government spokeswoman said: "We need to take time to consider the judgment. Our thoughts today remain with all of the families in Northern Ireland who have lost loved ones as a result of the Troubles.

"The Secretary of State is very clear the current approach to addressing the legacy of the past is not working as it should. The UK Government is committed to working towards the full implementation of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement and the new bodies for addressing the legacy of the past."

- PA
By Eoin Reynolds

Baby Joshua Tighe, whose father is on trial accused of his murder, had paper that matched two different tissue boxes in his throat when he died, a forensic scientist told the Central Criminal Court today.

John Tighe (40) of Lavallyroe, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo has pleaded not guilty to murdering his son Joshua Sussbier Tighe at his home on June 1, 2013.

Bridget Fleming of Forensic Science Ireland examined the "bolus" or "wad" of tissue that was taken from the six-month-old baby's throat during a post-mortem carried out by Dr Khalid Jaber.

She told prosecuting counsel Paul Murray SC that it consisted of two pieces of tissue paper, one three-ply and one two-ply, that were crumpled together. Gardai gathered tissue paper from various parts of the house where Joshua died and Ms Fleming compared those with the pieces taken from the baby's throat.

She found that the three-ply paper matched tissue from a box found in the main bedroom while the other matched tissue found in a box in the sitting room. She said she analysed the tissue for its dimensions, the number of layers and the number of folds in the tissue.

She added that the tissue was not from a baby wipe.

The prosecution alleges that Mr Tighe murdered his son by putting the wad of tissue in Joshua's throat, causing death by asphyxiation. Mr Tighe denies the charge and when speaking to emergency services said that he was changing the baby's nappy, went to the toilet and when he returned the child was choking and had gone blue.

John Hoade of Forensic Science Ireland told Mr Murray that he took blood samples from Mr Tighe's pyjama bottoms and compared them to blood taken from baby Joshua during post-mortem. He said the DNA on the pyjamas matched that of Joshua.

Further profiles taken from a babygrow and baby vest also matched Joshua's blood, as did samples taken from stains found on the floor of the sitting room and a wall. The babygrow and vest had multiple light blood stains on them.

Mr Hoade agreed with defence counsel Micheal P O'Higgins SC that if the baby was bleeding as Mr Tighe held him while trying to help him, that would explain the presence of Joshua's blood on his pyjamas.

Counsel pointed out that Mr Tighe, during a phone call to emergency services, said there was blood coming from Joshua's mouth.

Daniel Sommerville told Mr Murray that he met Joshua's mother, Natasha Sussbier, on St Patrick's Day, 2013, shortly after she had separated from Mr Tighe. Mr Sommerville and Natasha started a relationship around the start of May and she moved in with him.

On May 31 they put a post on Facebook saying: "Daniel Sommerville and Natasha Sussbier are in a relationship."

Mr Tighe collected Joshua from Natasha later that day and the following day Joshua died.

Under cross-examination the witness agreed that it could have been "blindingly obvious" to the accused man that Natasha was in a relationship before the Facebook post. He said he did not remember Mr Tighe seeing them holding hands but agreed it is possible that he did.

Justice Patrick McCarthy told the jury of three men and nine women to return to court on Monday as he and counsel must deal with a legal issue in their absence.
By Louise Roseingrave

A "large volume of medical evidence" will need to be considered in relation to the death of a four-month-old baby.

Gardai investigating the death of baby Joshua Smith plan to submit a file to the Director of Public Prosecution within weeks.

At Dublin Coroners Court Superintendent Tom Calvey described the case as complex.

The matter is still under investigation, we expect the file to be forwarded to the DPP within the next six weeks, Supt Calvey said. Asked how much time the DPP might require for a decision on whether to bring charges, Supt replied that six months should suffice.

Its a complex investigation. The DPP will have to consider a large volume of medical evidence, Supt Calvey said.

Baby Joshua was born on August 30th, 2016 and died on January 1st, 2017. The infant's address was given as Barley Hill, Bohola, Co Mayo.

Dublin Coroner's Court previously heard that the baby boy's life support machine was switched off at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin on January 1st, 2017. Baby Joshua was pronounced dead at 12.44pm by Dr Helen Daly.

The infant was formally identified by his mother to Garda Nicola Dolan of Ballyhaunis Garda Station at the hospital on the same day. An autopsy was carried out by State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy and she gave the cause of death as head trauma.

Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane adjourned the inquest for six months as requested by Gardai until September 6 2018.
By Fiona Ferguson

A successful businesswoman from Cavan who harassed three former employees by phone and email has been given a suspended sentence.

Helen Rahill, 59, felt hard done by after her former employees bought out her company when it went into liquidation. She sent over 90 emails and made over 600 calls over a ten-month period.

Rahill, of River Crescent, Virginia, Cavan, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three counts of harassment against Fergus Agnew, Susan Naughton, and David Murphy at an unknown location by persistently pestering them by phone and email between January and October 2015.

She has no previous convictions.

The names of Rahill's former company or of her former employees' new company were not given in open court. The three injured parties did not wish to make victim impact statements or attend court.

Judge Martin Nolan noted Rahill had felt hard done by and felt a good degree of resentment towards her former employees. He said he had no doubt her behaviour was quite distressing for the victims

He said Rahill had been very successful in a number of businesses and was a very energetic lady who contributed to her community. He said she was remorseful and he did not think she would re-offend.

Judge Nolan imposed a three-year suspended sentence and ordered her to have no contact with the injured parties.

Detective Garda Orla Madden told Eoin Lawlor BL, prosecuting, that the three injured parties used to work for a company founded by Rahill and in which she was part owner. In 2011, the company went into liquidation.

During the course of the liquidation, the three former employees formed a new company and bought the assets of Rahill's former company. They then continued to run the business.

The court heard Rahill was initially quite sanguine about matters, but in January 2015 her view began to change. She began emailing and phoning both the individuals and the company.

Mr Lawlor handed in to Judge Nolan a master list of 93 emails sent by Rahill during the relevant time. He said these ranged from coherent complaints to abusive messages with allegations of immorality and criminality.

There were 660 calls in total to the business number from Rahill over the ten-month period.

Mr Agnew, with whom Rahill had previously been in a relationship, described in his statement receiving 30 calls per week.

Rahill apologised in May 2015 for the way she had treated the injured parties but then began the behaviour again despite having been sent a solicitor's letter asking her to stop.

She ceased the behaviour when charged with the offences by gardai and has abided by her bail conditions since then, including having no contact with the injured parties.

Det Gda Madden agreed with Tara Burns SC, defending, that during the course of the liquidation of Rahill's company the liquidator had attempted to sell the software programme that was the basis of the company, but was unable to, unless the employees maintained the software.

The garda agreed the employees came to an agreement with the liquidator and set up a new company which took over the old company's customer base.

Ms Burns said Rahill came from a family of Cavan hoteliers and had shown acute business acumen from an early age. She said she had started studying accountancy but returned to help with the family business after her father's death.

Counsel said Rahill's mother later fell sick and the hotel was sold. Rahill continued to show a keen interest in the area of finance and accountancy and also trained in computer systems.

She set up her company in 1992 developing software packages for businesses after receiving redundancy from a job as an IT manager. Counsel said this company had been Rahill's life work and she had invested a substantial amount of money in it.

Ms Burns said the company was a success but following a number of bad business decisions and the the recession hitting in 2009, the company went into liquidation. The liquidator was then unable to sell the software without the employees to maintain it.

She said afterwards Rahill did a data marketing course but later began to ruminate on things. She said Rahill was also having difficulties with alcohol at this time.

She said Rahill acted in a disgraceful manner and had written a letter accepting what she had done and expressing remorse.

Counsel said Rahill had a number of health difficulties and was now off alcohol. She was pursuing data marketing work, as well as participating in charity work in her locality after realising she needed new focus in her life. She asked the court to consider a non-custodial sentence.
The President of the European Council Donald Tusk will hold Brexit talks with the government in Dublin today.

His visit comes ahead of a European Council meeting in two weeks time that will finalise the Withdrawal Agreement with the UK.
By Fiona Ferguson

A burglar who assaulted a 74-year-old man and his 40-year-old daughter in his efforts to escape from their house has been jailed for three years.

Gary O'Brien (20), who said he had been out of his head on tablets and sambuca, was restrained on the bathroom floor by the elderly man until gardai arrived.

O'Brien, of Old Connaught View, Bray, Co Wicklow, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary and two counts of assault at the family's home in Dalkey on September 26, 2017.

The court heard O'Brien, who has 49 previous convictions, suffered an acquired brain injury as a 16-year-old after being struck from behind with a hammer.

Judge Martin Nolan noted the assault perpetrated on O'Brien had lead to considerable issues for him in terms of treatment and still caused him problems. He also took into account that O'Brien wanted to rehabilitate himself.

He said that despite this it was a serious crime and must be dealt with a serious way. He imposed a three year sentence, consecutive to a 22 month district court sentence that O'Brien is currently serving.

Judge Nolan said the sentence would have been longer if it were not for the particular circumstances of O'Brien's acquired brain injury.

Garda Paul Hughes told John Quirke BL, prosecuting, that gardai were alerted at 2am that two males had been attempting to enter a home.

Gda Hughes was met by two distressed women at the scene, a 70 year old woman and her 40 year old daughter. The daughter had cuts to her arm and a bloody nose. She told him her father was restraining a male in the bathroom.

Gda Hughes said there was broken glass, pots and furniture around the house. He found the elderly man in the bathroom holding an abusive male on the floor of the bathroom.

The daughter told Gda Hughes that she had been awoken earlier that night by her mother screaming downstairs and came out of her bedroom to see a male in grey hooded top. She screamed and shouted at him to get out of the house.

She struggled back down the stairs with the male and her father came out of his room to help her.

Downstairs the male ran to the dining room where the struggle continued, with household items getting broken. A second male began kicking at the front door in an effort to get in.

The father managed to restrain O'Brien, who was shouting I will get you. Gardai who had been alerted by the elderly women were nearby and arrived quickly on the scene.

The 74-year-old man suffered bruising and cuts to his body, while his daughter described herself as feeling battered the following day. She said she felt anxious and vulnerable following the burglary, as well as paranoid about safety in the home.

The 40-year-old woman said in her victim impact statement:

I felt the need to scrub every inch of the house, I just wanted him out of the house in a sense by cleaning.

The court heard there was 3,000 worth of damage done to the house.

O'Brien told gardai he couldn't remember anything about the events. He said he had been out of his head on Sambuca and tablets. He said he had not gone into the house to hurt the occupants.

Gda Hughes agreed with Ronan Prendergast BL, defending, it was not a targeted burglary and the occupants were not known to O'Brien. He agreed that when the state of the occupants of the house was put to O'Brien he could not believe he could have done it.

Mr Prendergast said as a 16-year-old O'Brien had suffered a brain injury after being hit from behind with a hammer. He handed in a number of reports to Judge Nolan and outlined O'Brien's treatment at the National Rehabilitation Centre and the ongoing care he required.

He said O'Brien, a father of one, had difficulties with tablet misuse and had made attempts to attend addiction counsellors. He said O'Brien was remorseful and had conveyed an apology to the victims.
Justin McAleese, the son of former President Mary McAleese, has said he thinks people will find it hard to stomach that she was "silenced and banned" from speaking at a conference about women in the Vatican.

Speaking on Today with Sean O' Rourke, Justin McAleese said his mother is committed to the Catholic Church, and she is a product of the Catholic education system.

"[The nuns] gave her the tools to become the President of Ireland and a canon lawyer. And to think today she is in Rome not speaking in the Vatican City on a conference about women in the church on International Women's Day. I think of the irony there, I don't think it's lost on people."

President Michael D. Higgins also expressed his support for Mrs McAleese. Speaking on the Ryan Tubridy show on RTE Radio 1 this morning, he said he was "deeply concerned and upset" at the recent exclusions.

"I think that shes a very very important person in speaking on matters that are her matters and so many people, matters of a spiritual significance but are in terms of the right to believe", he said.

His comments come after Mrs McAleese said the Catholic Church is an "an empire of misogyny".

Mrs McAleese made the comments to reporters in Rome yesterday ahead of a conference calling for women to be included in Church decision-making.

"The Catholic Church is one of the last great bastions of misogyny. It's an empire of misogyny," she said."There are so few leadership roles currently available to women. Women do not have strong role models in the Church that they can look up to."

Mrs McAleese is speaking at the annual 'Voices of Faith' conference on Catholic women's rights in Rome today to mark International Women's Day.

Traditionally, the conference is held in the Vatican but is moving to a different location in Rome this year following remarks from a conservative US cardinal who requested that three gay rights campaigners, including Mrs McAleese, be excluded from the programme.

Mrs McAleese has been a campaigner for same-sex rights for 40 years and said that a Church hierarchy that is "homophobic and anti-abortion is not the Church of the future".
By Ruaidhri Giblin

One of two men caught red-handed with loaded guns at optimal readiness, as well as a can of petrol, has had his 12-year prison sentence cut to 11 on appeal.

Anthony Callaghan (45) and Paul Zambra (39) were caught following a three-day surveillance operation by specialist gardai.

Callaghan, of Millrace Road, Phoenix Park Racecourse, Dublin and Zambra, of Inagh Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin both pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of a Ruger Revolver and semi-automatic pistol with intent to endanger life at Clonshaugh Avenue, Coolock on May 29, 2015.

The men were stopped by gardai who mounted a surveillance operation in the Coolock area and a search of the BMW driven by Zambra yielded two firearms and a full can of petrol.

Judge Melanie Greally sentenced Callaghan to 12 years imprisonment and Zambra to 10 years imprisonment on March 16, 2016.

Judge Greally said the guns, when discovered by gardai, were at optimal readiness for use and their capacity to endanger life was considerable. She accepted there was no evidence as to why the men had the weapons but added: the venture for their intended use was imminent.

Callaghan successfully appealed his sentence today and was accordingly resentenced to 11 years imprisonment. Zambra did not seek to appeal.

Giving judgment in the three-judge Court of Appeal, Mr Justice George Birmingham said the sentencing judge had commented in sentencing that a slight distinction could be made between Callaghan and Zambra on the basis that Zambra's previous convictions effectively ceased in 2003 and that his earlier convictions were recorded when he was a very young man.

On the other hand, Callaghan's most recent previous convictions, for possessing a firearm under Section 27a of the Firearms Act and for robbery, were recorded in 2008.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the judge was correct, in the court's view, to come to the conclusion that there was a basis for distinguishing between them.

He said a slight distinction was appropriate and it would be understandable if Callaghan was left with some sense of grievance with the differentiation of two years.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the court would quash Callaghan's 12-year sentence and substitute it with one of 11 years.

He said the Court of Appeal would ordinarily be very slow to intervene by reducing a sentence from 12 to 11 years.

However, in a situation where the Circuit Court judge had said specifically and we believe correctly that there was a basis for a slight distinction, the court found it necessary to bring the sentence in closer alignment to Zambra's.

Evidence

Detective Garda Glen Somers had told Vincent Heneghan SC, prosecuting, that gardai acting on confidential information mounted a surveillance operation over several days on the movements and activities surrounding a number of vehicles driven variously by Callaghan and Zambra.

On May 29, 2015 gardai became aware that a white Nissan van driven by Callaghan with Zambra as a front seat passenger was on its way to Coolock. Zambra was dropped off at Clonshaugh Crescent where a blue BMW estate was parked.

Zambra got into the BMW and drove onto Clonshaugh Avenue, in a direction which was in close proximity to the Riverside Estate. Callaghan drove off onto Clonshaugh Road.

Gardai made tactical stops of both vehicles at about 12.15pm and arrested the men.

Zambra had attempted to drive off after being directed to get out of the car but was boxed in by a squad car. Inside the BMW gardai recovered a full 5-litre petrol container, a semi-automatic pistol wrapped in newspapers and a revolver wrapped inside a neck warmer.

The semi-automatic pistol had a silencer attached and its safety catch was off. The Ruger Revolver was loaded with five rounds and had its serial numbers drilled off.

Both men exercised their right to silence during garda questioning. Gardai recovered CCTV from Topaz in Mulhuddart and identified Zambra as the person purchasing the petrol. Both vehicles seized were registered under false names and addresses.
by Ruaidhri Giblin

A man jailed for 13 years for raping a young woman with Down syndrome is seeking an extension of time to bring an appeal against his conviction and sentence.

Faisal Ellahi, originally from Haripur in Pakistan, had pleaded not guilty to rape, sexual assault and having sex with a mentally impaired person at his home in Dublin on June 12, 2013.

A jury at the Central Criminal Court convicted him of the rape and sexual assault charge.

Sentencing him to 13 years imprisonment in March 2016, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said the frightening, appalling, disgusting and depraved offence committed by Ellahi had "demolished" years of work in helping the woman lead an independent life.

The judge complimented the victim's mother on her dignity and fortitude in meeting the case and wished the family well in the future as they seek to restore the woman to her independence.

Ellahi lodged an appeal against his conviction and sentence one year and seven months outside of the 28-day limit provided for criminals to lodge an appeal.

Barrister Lorcan Staines, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the State would take an hour to argue against granting Ellahi an extension of time to appeal.

Mr Justice George Birmingham fixed July 17 next as the date for hearing.

Ellahi was not in court for the procedural matter.

The Central Criminal Court heard that the woman was out with her mother that day but that they became separated.

In her interviews, the woman said a man found her on the street and pushed her into a corner before saying come with me. She said the man told her he was going to help her before taking her by the hand to a house.

He didn't help me. I was confused and scared and sick.

The court heard evidence from 16 women who were approached by Ellahi in the area around the time of the rape.

One woman who lived across the road from him said he tried to force his way inside her home after she returned from a night out.

Ellahi gave evidence in his own defence in which he admitted propositioning many women as he walked the streets near his Dublin home. He said he would stop women and ask them to come home with him for consensual fun. He said he also used prostitutes.

During his evidence, Ellahi admitted sexual contact with the special needs victim but denied penetrative sex and claimed that he didn't know she had a mental impairment. He said she looked normal to him and that she enjoyed herself.

He said he never heard of Down syndrome until his arrest. He said in his native country people with mental impairments were kept at home or in hospitals and that they wore name badges to indicate they were disabled.

Ellahi moved to Ireland in 2005 where he found work as a security guard. He was unemployed at the time of the rape and spent his days walking the streets, the court heard.
Counsel for Maurice McCabe has argued that its not permissible for former Commissioner Noirin OSullivan to disown the actions of her legal counsel at the OHiggins Commission.

The Disclosures Tribunal is hearing submissions on whether Commissioner OSullivan inappropriately relied on unjustified grounds to discredit Sergeant McCabe at the 2015 inquiry.
Satisfaction ratings for Irish politicians are among the highest in Europe, a new poll has found.

The poll, which was carried out in seven countries, found that 37% of Irish people are satisfied with the performance of politicians.
Returning emigrants will soon be able to avail of a help to buy scheme to get on the property ladder, according to a new report.

The study, prepared by Indecon and commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs, contains 33 recommendations that look at ways to encourage people to return to Ireland.

Currently, only people who have been working here for the past four years are entitled to claim back their income tax when they buy a new house.

Minister for the Diaspora Ciaran Cannon explained how the scheme would work for returning emigrants, outlining that it would apply to an individual's last four years of employment in Ireland.

"If you left Ireland four years ago, but had worked for the previous four years, you could then claim back that tax as part of the help to buy scheme," he said.

Mr Cannon also said that returning emigrants should soon find it easier to get driving licences, access social welfare payments and buy houses.

Around 500 people are returning every week but often face long waits for driving tests and benefits.

Mr Cannon said it's about making the same supports available for everyone, and made it clear that none of the recommendations in the report would confer additional entitlements upon the returning emigrants over and above those already living in the country.
By Gerard Cunningham

The allegation that former garda commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan used unjustified grounds to discredit a garda whistleblower is a result of leaks demonstrated to be false, lawyers have told the Disclosures Tribunal.

In it's third module the tribunal is currently investigating whether unjustified grounds were inappropriately relied upon by the former garda commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan to discredit Sgt Maurice McCabe at the O'Higgins Commission of Investigation.

The commission, which sat in private in 2015, investigated complaints made by Sgt McCabe about certain policing matters and about serious allegations against senior officers including then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

Barrister Paul Sreenan SC appeared on behalf of Colm Smyth SC, Michael MacNamee BL and Garrett Byrne BL, who represented An Garda Siochana at the O'Higgins commission.

Mr Sreenan said that his clients had represented not only Ms O'Sullivan, but also Chief Supt Michael Clancy, Supt Noel Cunningham, Chief Supt Colm Rooney and former garda commissioner Martin Callinan.

Mr Sreenan said his clients were "entirely justified" in challenging the credibility and motivation of Sgt McCabe before the commission, in order to vindicate the good name of their clients.

Allegations had been made of corruption against senior garda officers, and they were entitled to defend their good names.

The O'Higgins report had found no evidence of corruption, and had said the allegations were deeply hurtful to his clients, Mr Sreenan continued.

Mr Sreenan said it was not put to Mr Smyth that the same approach would have been taken toward Sgt McCabe if the commission had held its hearing in public. Sgt McCabe's barrister Michael McDowell had now raised this in his closing submission.

Mr Sreenan said that in answer to a question the chairman has asked at the end of hearings in February, there was no proper basis for this term of reference to the disclosures tribunal.

Mr Justice Charleton had asked:

"Was there any proper basis to ask the tribunal to investigate this particular module, or was it entirely based on leaks and on conjecture?

Mr Sreenan today said the terms of reference of this module came about as a result of leaks from the O'Higgins commission "which have now been demonstrated to be false."

Patrick McCann SC, on behalf of the Department of Justice and former minister Frances Fitzgerald, said that officials in the department behaved lawfully and appropriately in leaving questions of legal strategy to the garda commissioner, and in maintaining an appropriate distance from the operations of the independent O'Higgins Commission.

On behalf of John Barrett, the civilian human resources director of An Garda Siochana, Tony McGillycuddy told the tribunal his client came forward at an early stage and made a statement to the tribunal. Mr Barrett had at all times tried to carry out his work with diligence and enthusiasm.
Update 9.05pm: A number of pro-choice and pro-life rallies have been held in Dublin today as the Government signed off on a referendum bill.

It will be debated in the Dail tomorrow, and Health Minister Simon Harris will outline the legislation the Government want to bring in if the Eighth Amendment is repealed.

Cora Sherlock from the Pro-Life Campaign has dismissed the Minister's claim that the constitution is not the place to look after abortion.

"I think the constitution is the ideal place for the right to life because the right to life is a fundamental human right and our constitution is a place where we protect the human rights of every person, born and unborn, living in Ireland.

"I think what the Supreme Court did was it showed how lucky we are to have the Eighth Amendment.

"The Eighth Amendment has saved 5,000 lives every year and if we didn't have it then unborn human beings would have no protection."

Meanwhile, the National Campaign to Repeal the 8th called the referendum bill a critical step forward on the road to providing safe, regulated abortion care to women who need it.

"This is a historic and momentous day for Ireland, and for the women of Ireland, in particular," said Ailbhe Smyth, convenor of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment.

"It has been a very long time coming. Today is a significant milestone for the tens of thousands of supporters who have been campaigning for decades to remove the Eighth from the Constitution for once and for all.

"We need abortion care that is safe and regulated, in line with best medical practice, and today brings us a crucial step forward in trying to achieve this important goal."

The Cork Coalition out in force for today's March for Choice in Cork. Photo: Jannik Pietzsch

Rallies were also held around the country, including pro-choice marches in Galway and in Cork.

- Digital Desk

Earlier: Taoiseach: Abortion referendum 'about trusting women to decide'

Update - 1.48pm: After the Cabinet meeting, Leo Varadkar said: "On my first day as Taoiseach I committed to holding a referendum this year. The matter has been considered by the Citizens' Assembly and a cross-party Oireachtas committee.

"The Cabinet has now taken the next important step which paves the way to holding a referendum in the summer.

"This referendum is about asking our citizens to allow women to make major decisions for themselves.

"It's about trusting women to decide, in the early weeks of their pregnancy, what's right for them and their families. And it's about trusting our doctors to decide when continuing with a pregnancy is a risk to the life or health of a woman.

"Above all it's about trusting Irish people to consider this matter in depth, with compassion and empathy, as I know they will."

12.24pm: Government approves referendum bill on 8th Amendment

The Government has signed off on the referendum bill to allow a vote on the 8th Amendment.

Ministers approved the bill in the last hour, and the next stage will require the Dail and Seanad to give their approval before a date can be fixed for the referendum.

Ministers have also been considering a policy paper outlining possible legislation if people vote to repeal the 8th Amendment.

Minister for Health Simon Harris said this will then be published tomorrow before further details are revealed in about three weeks.

"We will bring forward draft head of a bill at the end of this month or at the very start of April," he said.

However, he made the point that legislation to follow but that remains "academic and hypothetical" until the amendment is actually repealed.

"I hope that as we discuss the detail of what may follow, we don't lose sight of the importance of repealing the 8th Amendment in the first place," he said.
Star Wars actor Mark Hamill is to receive his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but wanted to pick out his own spot,

But it turns out, it's right where Jimmy Kimmel's star lies.

What's a Jedi master to except dig that thing up!

'Why dont you put your star in front of Hooters?'

Hamill will officially recieve his star outside the El Capitan Theatre today, and will be joined by Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford and creator George Lucas.

As well as being International Women's Day, March 8 will now be known to fans of the sci-fi franchise as Jedi Day.
A Danish inventor has gone on trial accused of murdering a Swedish reporter on his home-made submarine.

Peter Madsen is alleged to have tied up and tortured journalist Kim Wall before killing her, during a trip on the vessel last August.
Over five million women have taken to the streets of cities across Spain for marches protesting against wage gaps and gender violence, and demanding an end to glass ceilings for female workers.

"If we stop, the world stops" was the slogan opening more than 300 protests in the country on International Women's Day.
Jeremy Corbyn has admitted having been a member of a controversial private Facebook group about Palestine but denied ever seeing anti-Semitic posts.

The British Labour party is investigating after claims abusive messages about Jews were exchanged on the forum emerged.

Mr Corbyn said he was signed up to the group without his knowledge, but later exchanged messages on it.

During a visit to Alfreton, Derbyshire, England, he told the Press Association: "I was joined on to that group without knowing it in probably about 2013/14.

"I removed myself from the group in 2015. I replied by Facebook message to a couple of things about a suggestion on the vote on recognising Palestine, which I supported, and inviting a doctor to speak at an event.

"I have never trawled through the whole group. I have never read all the messages on it. I have removed myself from it.

"Obviously, any anti-Semitic comment is wrong. Any anti-Semitism in any form is wrong."

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism published screenshots of messages said to have been posted on the Palestine Live group.

CAA files fresh disciplinary complaint against @JeremyCorbyn over allegations that he actively participated in a secret Facebook group where #antisemitism was on brazen displayhttps://t.co/jqUsYWq0Ef  Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) March 7, 2018

Among the comments exchanged are claims about Israeli involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as links to neo-Nazi groups postings.

Mr Corbyn said the party "doesn't tolerate" anti-Semitism "in any form" and he would have challenged any abusive posts if he had seen them.

"Had I seen it, of course, I would have challenged it straight away but I actually don't spend all my time reading social media," he said.

- PA
Update - 4.54pm: The police officer who was left seriously ill after assisting poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has been named by sources as Sergeant Nick Bailey.

Temporary chief constable of Wiltshire Police Kier Pritchard said: "I did go and see Nick today and I met Nick and his wife at the hospital in the intensive care unit.

"I've known Nick for many years, he's a great character, he's a huge presence in Wiltshire Police - well liked, well loved, a massively dedicated officer. He's clearly receiving high specialist treatment.

"He's well, he's sat up. He is not the Nick that I know but of course he's receiving a high level of treatment. He's in the safe hands of the medical professionals working in Salisbury District so I'm very confident he's getting the best professional support that he can.

"Of course he's very anxious, he's very concerned. He did his very best on that night.

"All of our staff that attended the incident in Salisbury in the Maltings, they performed the role that police officers and police staff do every day up and down the country. Limited information, responded to try and protect people and safeguard people who we knew were ill.

"I'm massively proud of what Nick did and all of my staff on that night, they did a first-class job."

Wiltshire Police said in a statement: "We can confirm the Wiltshire officer currently in Salisbury District Hospital is Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey.

"Nick joined Wiltshire Police in 2002.

"Temporary Chief Constable Kier Pritchard visited Nick in hospital today along with his wife. He remains in a serious but stable condition.

"A photo of Nick is attached.

"His family has asked for privacy at this time and do not want to speak directly with the media."

In tweets today, the Russian Embassy said: "Totally agree with Secretary @AmberRuddHR: first evidence then conclusions on Mr Skripal's case. Responsible political approach."

Totally agree with Secretary @AmberRuddHR: first evidence then conclusions on Mr Skripal's case. Responsible political approach. pic.twitter.com/2mUnoVnUd6  Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) March 8, 2018

And quoting the UK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, referring to two other high-profile deaths of Russians in the UK, it said: "MFA: when Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Perepilichny died in Britain, there was a lot of speculation in the media, then all the conclusions were classified, and no data provided to Russia. Same happening now, with MI6 agent Sergei Skripal poisoning."

12.19pm: UK condemns 'brazen and reckless' use of nerve agent against Russian ex-spyBritish Home Secretary Amber Rudd has told the British House of Commons that the use of a nerve agent in British is "a brazen and reckless act".

In her statement to the Commons, she said Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia "remain unconscious and in a critical but stable condition".

She added: "I regret to inform the House that a police officer has also fallen seriously ill. The officer was one of the first responders on Sunday, acting selflessly to help others.

"The latest update from the hospital is that the officer remains serious but stable and is conscious, talking and engaging.

"Our thoughts are with all three victims, their families and friends at what for them will be an incredibly difficult time."

The tent covering a bench in Salisbury, where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found critically ill by exposure to a nerve agent, is blown over by the wind.

Ms Rudd said she would not comment further on the nature of the nerve agent as it is a "fast-paced criminal investigation".

Addressing speculation on who was responsible for "this most outrageous crime", Ms Rudd added: "The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account.

"But if we are to be rigorous in this investigation, we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation.

"We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be.

"The investigation is moving at pace and this Government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer."

11.03am: Officer 'talking in hospital' as police probe murder bid of Russian ex-spy by nerve agent

The police officer who rushed to the aid of a Russian ex-spy targeted with a nerve agent in England is talking in his hospital bed as detectives race to discover who was responsible.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the policeman was not in intensive care but was still in a serious condition following the attack, in which a nerve agent, described by Ms Rudd as "very rare", was used in an attempt on the lives Sergei Skripal, 66, and 33-year-old daughter Yulia.

Counter-terror police are working to unravel what is now feared to be a sophisticated chemical weapon plot amid heightened tensions between Britain and the Kremlin.

UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said Russia was becoming an "ever-greater threat", while a senior general warned the state was "capable of anything".

Ms Rudd refused to say whether she regarded Russia as responsible, saying the investigation should be based on "facts, not rumour".

And speaking about the officer, she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I heard this morning from the head of counter-terrorism policing that he is engaging with, talking to, people.

"But that doesn't mean his situation isn't serious. It remains serious. He is not in intensive care, but it's a serious situation."

Mr Skripal and his daughter remain critically ill.

Ms Rudd is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons about the incident shortly after noon today.

7.49am: UK police investigating nerve agent attack against Russian ex-spy

Counter-terror police are working to unravel what is now feared to be a sophisticated chemical weapon plot targeting a Russian spy and his daughter.

A nerve agent is believed to have been used to critically injure Sergei Skripal, 66, and 33-year-old Yulia in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on Sunday.

One of the first police officers to arrive at the bench where the pair were slumped is also seriously ill in hospital.

It remains unclear who is responsible for poisoning the pair, but the attack has stoked tensions between Britain and Russia amid suspicions of state responsibility.

Former British ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood told the Daily Telegraph that the "assassination attempt" was more serious given a policeman was among the injured.

However the former diplomat, who served in Moscow between 1995 and 2000, said the injuries suffered by the double agent's daughter and the officer should not take attention away from the attempt on Mr Skripal's life.

He told the paper: "If it is true that this is, in some fashion, the Russian state, it obviously makes it even harder to believe the Russian state is worth anything or is to be trusted.

"The fact they targeted his daughter, and that a policeman is seriously ill, makes it emotionally difficult, but it does not alter the fact that this was an attempted assassination on British soil."

Home Secretary Amber Rudd is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons about the incident on Thursday.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the head of counter-terrorism policing, revealed on Wednesday that the incident was being treated as attempted murder and the pair had been "targeted specifically".

He declined to specify the nerve agent or how it was administered.

He said: "Having established that a nerve agent was the cause of the symptoms, leading us to treat this as attempted murder, I can also confirm that we believe the two people who originally became unwell were targeted specifically.

"Our role now of course is to establish who is behind this and why they carried out this act."

Hundreds of detectives, forensic officers and analysts are working on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko on British soil in 2006.

Nerve agents, which are chemical weapons, have been used in assassinations and attacks in war zones in recent years.

Kim Jong Un's half-brother Kim Jong Nam was killed at an international airport in Malaysia last year in an attack using a nerve agent known as VX.

Another well-known nerve agent, sarin gas, killed more than 90 people in a rebel-held area in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria, drawing international condemnation of the Bashar Assad regime.

Access to such toxins are tightly regulated, meaning the Salisbury plot would have taken considerable planning to execute.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commanding officer of Britain's Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Regiment, told the Times: "This is not the stuff you can knock up in your back shed.

"It is quite challenging to make. The inference is that this has probably come from a major laboratory, probably state-run."

Mr Rowley reiterated his appeal for anyone who was in Salisbury city centre on Sunday to come forward to help with the "missing pieces" in the case.

Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the incident posed a "low risk" to the public and advised that all the sites the pair were known to have visited had been "secured".

Public Health England later confirmed it had contacted all first responders who had attended the scene.

Russia have denied responsibility for the attack, which comes seven years after Mr Skripal was released from the country as part of a spy swap with the US.

He had been convicted in his home country in 2006 for passing state secrets to MI6.

The investigation has triggered a diplomatic row and prompted crisis talks in Whitehall but Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police must respond to "evidence, not to rumour".

It comes as police extended the cordons in Salisbury city centre, and also sealed off part of a business park in nearby Amesbury.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in nearby Porton Down, which has state-of-the-art equipment to look for trace amounts of substances, is believed to have been involved in examining the substance.

- Press Association
Researchers believe bones found nearly 80 years ago on a remote South Pacific island are very likely those of aviator Amelia Earhart.

Earhart disappeared in 1937 while on an expedition to circumnavigate the globe. The wreckage of her plane has never been found.

The bones found in 1940 "have more similarity to Earhart than to 99% of individuals in a large reference sample," said a statement released by the University of Tennessee, where anthropology professor Richard Jantz did his new forensic analysis.

The bones were found by a British expedition on the island of Nikumaroro.

According to the university, they were later discarded after physician D. W. Hoodless conducted seven measurements on the human remains in 1940 and concluded they belonged to a man.

However, professor Jantz examined the bone measurements again recently and found that Hoodless had incorrectly determined the gender of the remains, the Billings Gazette reports.

After he compared the bone lengths with the aviator's - Ms Earharts humerus and radius lengths were obtained from a photograph - as well as measurements of her clothing, Jantz concluded that:

"until definitive evidence is presented that the remains are not those of Amelia Earhart, the most convincing argument is that they are hers."

The new study is published in the journal Forensic Anthropology.

Youll probably know Earhart as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1928  just a year behind Charles Lindbergh, the first person ever to do so. After her success, Earhart became a hugely prominent public figure, nicknamed Queen of the Air. The Atlantic flight wasnt the only record she broke: Earhart also became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, among many other achievements.

She disappeared on July 2, 1937, along with her navigator Fred Noonan while flying over the Pacific Ocean during her attempt to become the first female aviator to fly around the globe. They were declared dead two years later, but the wreckage was never found.

The disappearance of Earhart and Noonan on July 2, 1937, in the Western Pacific Ocean has been the subject of continuing searches, research and debate.

A longstanding theory is that the famed pilot ran out of gas and crashed into deep ocean waters northwest of Howland Island, a tiny speck in the South Pacific that she and Noonan missed.

- Digital Desk and PA
A woman who boarded the Tube moments before a bomb went off at Parsons Green has described flames passing over her head.

Aimee Colville, who got on the District Line train in London seconds before the explosion, gave evidence at the trial of Ahmed Hassan, 18, at the UK's Old Bailey.

Describing what happened at around 8.20am on September 15 last year, she said: "I heard a loud bang, like a cracking bang."

She added: "Then the next thing, there was a bit of a shudder and then a wall of glass came across and the gentleman who was standing in front of me, his head went forward when I saw the glass coming in front of me."

Miss Colville explained: "After he moved forward I don't know if I physically got myself down or if I blacked out, but at that point I noticed a flame come over my right side.

"It came over my side and that is when I smelt the burning."

She added: "That morning I had curled my hair and I had put hairspray in my hair so when the flames came over me my hair immediately caught fire."

The court heard Miss Colville suffered from superficial injuries, but has ongoing back problems linked to stress after the attack.

Also in court, a retired counter-terrorism officer described a "rolling fireball" coming towards him following the explosion.

Alex Beavan boarded the District Line train at Wimbledon at 8.10am on September 15 last year.

He told the Old Bailey that the doors were just closing at the Parsons Green stop when the bomb went off.

Mr Beavan said: "I was standing by the doors. The doors were closing. I was facing down towards the interior towards the back of the train.

"I heard a huge popping sound. Looking towards the direction of the sound, I saw a rolling fireball coming over the ceiling at the back of the train.

"When I saw the rolling fireball, wall to wall, slowly coming up the ceiling ... At that point I was looking towards the fireball and looking at the people.

"Everything goes in slow motion. There was a woman. I could see her realise what was happening and she began screaming and some men were shouting 'Run'. I was aware there had been some sort of explosion."

Mr Beavan told jurors he got off the train and realised there was only one exit stairway so decided to "take cover" behind a wall, thinking there might be a second wave of the attack.

Describing the scene, he said: "There was chaos and I was thinking there is going to be a second attack so I ran across the platform."

Mr Beavan said he looked for any casualties and called 999.

Glancing into the train he saw debris and abandoned bags and purses as well as a large pot which was on fire.

It is alleged that Hassan left the bomb on the train before getting off a stop before Parsons Green.

He denies attempted murder and using the chemical compound TATP to cause an explosion that was likely to endanger life.

- PA
Two industry groups have lodged an appeal against the controversial merger of the national construction and maritime unions.

The Fair Work Commission on Tuesday approved the three-way tie-up of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Maritime Union of Australia, and the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia.

CFMEU national secretary Michael O'Connor and MUA national secretary Paddy Crumlin Credit:Nick Moir

A spokesman for resources and energy group the Australian Mines and Metals Association said it had joined with the Master Builders Association to lodge an appeal against the decision.

The spokesman said the application was lodged with the Fair Work Commission on Thursday afternoon.
Supermodel Helena Christensen has said it is the shared responsibility of designers, agents and parents to ensure the wellbeing of young models.

Helena Christensen (right) with her business partner Camilla Staerk in Melbourne on Thursday. Credit:Simon Schluter

"The responsibility lies with the designers, the big fashion houses, the agents, not so much with the girls and boys, they are so young, they are still developing personalities and becoming who they will be as grown ups," she said.

"Parents and agents need to make sure these kids are guided in the right way, especially at the start of their career."
Police are investigating the death of woman who plunged from Sydney Tower in the city's centre.

Paramedics responded to reports of a person threatening self-harm at the building, also known as Centrepoint Tower, on Castlereagh Street about 2.40pm Thursday.

NSW Police said an operation was under way after a person died in the central business district.

It is understood the woman fell from the building's Skywalk and landed on a canopy below.
Former CFMEU boss David Arthur Hanna has been committed to stand trial over allegations he destroyed documents in the lead-up to the Trade Union Royal Commission.

Brisbane magistrate Jacqui Payne on Thursday ruled there was sufficient evidence to send the case to a higher court.

Former CFMEU boss Dave Hanna leaves the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane. Credit:AAP

Mr Hanna then entered a plea of not guilty to the single count of destroying, concealing or mutilating documents that could have been required as evidence at the royal commission into Australia's union sector.

The alleged offending occurred in the inner-Brisbane suburb of Bowen Hills and in other parts of Queensland between April 1 and April 4, 2014.
Qianqian "Queenie" Xu spent just two months in the world before her schizophrenic grandfather fatally plunged a knife into her stomach, his mind overrun with a delusion that his wife and daughter were trying to kill him.

Yonghou Cao, 54, killed his two-month-old granddaughter and stabbed the two women while staying with his daughter in Brisbane on a visit from China in 2016, later admitting "I did a terrible thing".

Two-month-old Queenie Xu was stabbed to death at her home in Brisbane's south.

Cao had been charged with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder but the charges were dropped last month by the Mental Health Court, which ruled he was of unsound mind.

It can now be revealed the attack began after the Chinese man's wife, Huijuan Fu, slapped him upon discovering he had not taken his anti-psychotic medication for two months.
In gently falling rain, their families and friends, police, military police and fire officers stood quietly for a minutes silence, waiting their turn to file past the small, smoking fire to add their sprig of lemon myrtle leaf to the flame. Since March 8, 2013, family members of friends of these people had gathered quietly in Amelia Street where the Whiskey Au Go Go once pumped out live rock and roll until the early morning. Previously, they would quietly pay their respects virtually unnoticed. Then, in 2013, Helen Palethorpe, the sister of 20-year-old soldier Leslie Palethorpe, told her story of the sadness of having no memorial for her brother, one of the 15 largely unknown victims of what was then Australias worst mass murder. Local politicians finally recognised a memorial, in the form of a plaque for the victims of Whiskey Au Go Go killings, was appropriate in 2014.

And then former Whiskey Au Go Go waitress and advertising manager Donna Phillips told of her horror on the night where the Delltones and Trinity played to the Thursday night crowd. Since then, she has co-ordinated a Facebook page and built contact with people who discover they are part of the wider Whiskey Au Go Go family and now have a way to pay their respects. The event itself was astounding and it has been bought back up to date because of recent legal proceedings, she said. Which means it will move into a coroners inquest over the coming events and hopefully the background to the Whiskey Au Go Go, if it is different to the initial reports, may be exposed. And those who have lost loved ones in the fire can have some peace and move on in their lives.

Now part of the Whiskey Au Go Go family is survivor Karin Carter with friend Julie Pierce. Credit:Tony Moore Karin Carter went to the Whiskey Au Go Go for the first and only time on the night of the disaster to see the Delltones. She is one of the blessed ones. A survivor. A member of the Whiskey Au Go Go family. After watching the Delltones, she ended up being huddled out through the windows of the upstairs section of the nightclub by her then-boyfriend as smoke blacked out the nightclub interior. It was around 2am, quarter to two in the morning when my boyfriend at the time said there was some commotion at the front stairs, she said. He said wed better get out.

We were trying to get out and we didnt know where to go. It was dark. I couldnt breathe because it was full of smoke. But he found a way out. He smashed a window and pushed me out and I ended up out on a ledge." The Queensland Coroners office is quietly gathering witnesses in the new Whiskey Au Go Go inquest announced by Attorney General Yvette DAth in June 2017. Two career criminals were convicted of putting two 23-litre drums of diesel fuel in the downstairs nightclub foyer before lighting it. Brisbane and Sydney underworld figure John Andrew Stuart, then 33, and James Richard Finch, 29, flown to Brisbane from London reportedly by Stuart, were arrested in Jindalee on the weekend after the nightclub fire. They were both convicted of murder and sent to the now-closed Boggo Road Prison, where they both continually protested their innocence.

Stuart died in his cell in 1979. Finch was deported back to London in 1988 and has disappeared from the public spotlight. Convicted Whiskey Au Go Go murderer John Andrew Stuart on top of a cell block at Boggo Road where he spelled out 'innocent'. Credit:Fairfax Former Boggo Road prison officer Stephen Gage knew both Stuart and Finch in his 14 years at Boggo Road. He now runs a prison exhibit at Caboolture where he exhibits seven of the barbed wire crosses that Stuart swallowed covered in bread and spit to get to hospital. Mr Gage said he believed both were responsible for the Whiskey Au Go Go fire bombing, but thought others were involved. He said Stuart was a hard man who was feared in Boggo Road. He was kept in a cell within a cell.
A lightning strike was believed to have killed six cows, which were discovered laying dead in a row on a Beaudesert property last week.

Grazier Eda Shirley found his cattle lining a fence last Wednesday, following a storm on February 26.

The cows were found laying dead in a row last week. Credit:Derek Shirley

Ms Shirleys son, Derek, said it appeared that they had been killed instantaneously after lightning struck the fence.

They would have been standing in water near the fence and the lightning has just dropped them all at the same time, Mr Shirley said.
Professor Heywood said Greater Brisbane needed a return to a cross-industry model used in 1989, which produced the Brisbane Traffic Study. That study, championed by then-lord mayor Sallyanne Atkinson, included input from state government traffic planners, road users, university specialists and design institutes to collaboratively develop future traffic solutions. Ultimately, its recommendations resulted in the Goodwill Bridge (2001), Eleanor Schonell Bridge (2006), the Kurilpa Bridge (2009) and kick-started the SEQ Busway network and the duplication of the Gateway Bridge in 2012. Professor Heywood recommended a new metropolitan traffic study assess: The pros and cons of turning Brisbanes Victoria Bridge into a public and active transport-only bridge;

The pros and cons of a proposed pedestrian bridge from Brisbanes new casino across to South Bank;

RACQs ambitious Bridging Brisbane plan, where 4600 residents suggested priorities for new river crossings; and

Better cross-river links between Brisbanes fast-growing outer eastern and western suburbs, revisiting the western bypass concept.

The opening of Indooroopilly's Walter Taylor toll bridge in 1936. Credit:John Oxley Library Professor Heywood said it was time for the three levels of government, along with private industry and other stakeholders, to collectively reassess the next traffic projects over the next 18 months. I know it seems a delay, but when you think how long we have been having these problems (slowing travel times), that isnt too long, he said. Professor Heywood proposed the following organisations develop a new metropolitan traffic study: The Department of Transport and Main Roads;

Brisbane City Council;

The federal government;

The Planning Institute of Australia;

The Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Institute of Landscape Architects;

The Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and Management;

RACQ;

Bicycling Queensland; and

The Council of Mayors (SEQ).

Fairfax Media has asked these organisations their views, which will be published in due course. As it stands, Brisbane City Council is updating its Brisbane Transport Study, while the state government updates transport in its SEQ Regional Plan and the Council of Mayors (SEQ) has its own project list. Planning Institute of Australia Queensland urban planning committee chairman Stephen Smith said there was frustration among planners in many areas of Queensland infrastructure and engineering industry. However, he said the solution was not a new cross-industry planning study, but for the three levels of government to bluntly acknowledge longer time lines than the next election. Overall, we've got to try to plan towards the city we want; not the city we are prepared to put up with, Mr Smith said*.

Professor Heywood's views on Brisbane's bridge issues The proposed pedestrian bridge from new casino to South Bank should be reviewed, Professor Heywood said. I think any transport study would look at it and go, that looks interesting, but I dont think it would pass much scrutiny, he said. Victoria Bridge makes an excellent green bridge, Professor Heywood said, but should not be overloaded. In theory, its a good idea in a perfect location for the citys newest green bridge. However, traders along Melbourne Street and people using South Bank Parklands should be intensively consulted," he said.

People who live in outer Brisbane and in the suburbs around the metropolitan inner-city may well have some need for access to the cultural complexes and South Bank Parklands via that bridge. Professor Heywood suggested an alternative. The [Brisbane Metro] idea is to take buses from a subterranean bus station at South Bank to a subterranean bus tunnel under King George Square and the best way of doing that would be by using a tunnel," he said. Im not saying that is the complete and absolute answer, Im saying that should be looked at as one of the options. Professor Heywood said Brisbane needed a new cross-river car bridge between Balmoral and Hamilton and more cross-river lanes between Jindalee and Kenmore, where the Centenary Bridge had four lanes, and between Indooroopilly and Chelmer, where the Walter Taylor Bridge struggled to cope.

But of course that takes us straight to the overall bigger issue, which is to see what their offsite consequences will be, he said. Professor Heywood said it was time to mirror the effectiveness of the Gateway Motorway with a similar traffic route in Brisbane's western suburbs. "The Gateway speeds traffic from the south, from the Gold Coast through Brisbane and north up towards the Sunshine Coast," he said. I mean there is now a very interesting case for an outer western bypass linking up out past Brookfield and The Gap up towards the north. It would almost replicate the great virtues of the Gateway Arterial."
Radio host John Burns will get lifts from "Mr Uber" for a while after having his licence stripped for 12 months for drink driving.

The 3AW breakfast presenter was stopped at a booze bus in Glen Iris in Melbourne's east on his way home from hosting a charity dinner in October, blowing a blood-alcohol reading of 0.061.

Radio presenter John Burns outside court on Thursday. Credit:AAP

Burns says he was "shocked" to find he was over the 0.05 limit and urged all drivers to be careful when they consider getting behind the wheel after drinking.

"During the dinner, wine was poured and I was a bit careless," he told reporters outside Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday.
Three teenagers have been charged over a spate of crimes across Melbourne.

The teenage boys allegedly targeted properties in the city's north and south-east over the past week, committing a string of burglaries and aggravated burglaries.

The crime spree started on Saturday with an aggravated burglary in Malvern in which two cars were stolen, and ended on Thursday morning when the three boys were arrested at an Epping shopping centre following a 30-kilometre pursuit from police.

Police arrested teenage boys over a spate of crimes throughout Melbourne.

Two 17-year-olds from Bundoora and Mill Park and a 15-year-old from Thomastown were charged with conduct endangering life, aggravated burglary, theft of a motor vehicle and evading police.
Four victims randomly attacked with a sharp object, possibly a syringe, spent time anxious and fearful they might have contracted a disease, a Melbourne court has been told.

Hepatitis C-positive man Brett Keenan, 42, approached four strangers including a 12-year-old boy between February 18 and 20, 2017 on trams or at tram stops across Melbourne.

For seemingly no reason, he punctured each of his victims with what prosecutors said was a needle, but Keenan claimed was a nail.

One of the victims said he saw what looked like a needle tip emerging from Keenan's clenched fist before he was jabbed in the hand.

Keenan was homeless and suffering a serious psychiatric disorder and schizophrenia at the time, having failed to take his anti-psychotic medication a day earlier, the County Court of Victoria was told.
The Turnbull government is renewing its campaign for Australia to be spared from US President Donald Trump's trade crackdown after the White House abruptly softened its position and revealed some allies may be granted an exemption from steep new tariffs based on national security considerations.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has also entered the dispute, and on Friday will announce new measures to toughen domestic trade rules so Australia does not become "a dumping ground for cheap foreign goods" after the new US trade barriers are established.

Mr Trump, defying intense domestic and international pressure to abandon the import taxes on steel and aluminium, is pushing to formalise them by the end of this week. But the potential exemptions represent a shift from the President's previous insistence that the tariffs apply to all countries.

Malcolm Turnbull and Donald Trump in the Oval Office last month. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

"There are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday morning.
The Turnbull government's union watchdog is charging taxpayers nearly half a million dollars to defend itself against claims its controversial raids on the Australian Workers Union were politically motivated.

The Registered Organisations Commission is paying multinational law firm Ashurst Australia at least $463,089 to defend it in the ongoing Federal Court case launched by the AWU, government tender documents show.

The commission originally estimated the case would cost it $240,000, according to contract notices on the Austender website. However the size of the contract almost doubled in January, with the commission blaming the blowout on "the scope of the legal proceedings and how they have advanced".
The Turnbull government has pinned its hopes on changed numbers on the Senate crossbench as it prepares to dredge up a number of controversial failed policies for a second attempt in 2018.

Rejected changes to Australian citizenship, drug testing for welfare recipients and a public interest hurdle for union mergers are all back on the agenda, as the government seeks to exploit the fallout from the dual citizenship debacle, which significantly changed the make-up of the upper house.

That is in addition to the government's flagship corporate tax cuts, which it also hopes to pass.

And there are signs the government could have some success, with several key crossbenchers now indicating they are open to negotiation on contentious policies, all of which are now in the control of new ministers following the frontbench reshuffle late last year.
An executive was appointed to the board of government-owned power company after his CV was forwarded by a union boss to the then energy minister.

Electrical Trade Union boss Peter Simpson forwarded the resume to former energy minister Mark Bailey, who sent it to his chief of staff, a Right to Information request revealed.

"Mate, as discussed," Mr Simpson wrote in an email to Mr Bailey's private email account.

Mark Algie got the job Credit:Energy Queensland

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Thursday said she did not know whether the person landed a government job, and did not know their name because it was redacted in the RTI.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will not ask one of her ministers about a CV sent to his private email account by a union boss.

A Right to Information request by The Australian revealed Electrical Trade Union boss Peter Simpson forwarded a resume to former energy minister Mark Bailey, who sent it to his chief of staff.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk speaking to reporters on Thursday at the Queen's Wharf construction site. Credit:Darren England/AAP

"Mate, as discussed", the email from Mr Simpson reads, with the name on the CV redacted.

On Wednesday, Ms Palaszczuk said she did not know whether the person landed a government job but said she would look into it.
Beijing: It is fundamentally wrong for Americans to see China as a strategic threat because China has no intention of replacing the United State's role in the world, Chinas foreign minister Wang Yi has said in his annual press conference.

However, he warned China would protect its interest in a trade war.

Chinese minister of foreign affairs Yang Yi takes questions from the press during the National Peoples Congress in Beijing. Credit:Sanghee Liu

Mr Wang also downplayed concern over Australias involvement in a new regional grouping with the US, India and Japan, known as the "Quad", and said China was determined to stay on the path it has chosen.

Its rise was unstoppable, he said.
Jakarta: The Turnbull government has pushed back at Indonesia, saying it was unnecessary to renegotiate the maritime boundary between the two countries, a day after a senior official in Jakarta flagged the possibility.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Fairfax Media on Thursday that Australia did not "believe that the conclusion of permanent boundaries between Australia and Timor-Leste requires Australia to renegotiate boundaries with Indonesia".

Julie Bishop: a renegotiated treaty is not required. Credit:AAP

"We have a settled understanding of boundaries with Indonesia which has served both countries well for several decades," she said.

"During the conciliation with Timor-Leste, we have kept the interests of Indonesia in mind and have briefed Indonesia on the terms of the treaty between Australia and Timor-Leste."
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Borough Wide

Congratulations to Yeoman First Class Shellyann Atwater. The fly girl earned her Blue Angels Crest after completing several weeks of training in squadron history, procedures, teamwork, and traditions.

Our borough daughter was pinned by Cmdr. Eric Doyle, flight leader for the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, at a cresting ceremony held at Naval Air Facility El Centro, Calif.

Standing O wishes Yeoman Atwater, clear skies and easy flying.

Sheepshead Bay

Ashes to ashes

The staff and students at St. Edmund Preparatory High School celebrated Ash Wednesday with a service. Ash Wednesday signals the 40 days of preparation for celebrating the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

Fr. Michael Gribbon, school chaplain, administered ashes to the students and said during the service: Let us allow the voice of God to speak more clearly to us and let us to be more attentive to Him speaking to us in our lives.

Also participating were Br. Mark Amatrucola, director of technology, Deacon Ronald Rizzuto, director of mission, ministries and outreach, and Deacon Andrew Ciccaroni, math and religion teacher.

St. Edmund Preparatory High School[2474 Ocean Ave. and Avenue T in Sheepshead Bay; (718) 7436100]

Flatbush

Presidential program

Congratulations to borough son Dr. Robert Gore, an emergency room at tending physician at New York Citys Health+Hospitals at Kings County.

The doctor was selected to attend the class of 2018 in the program for developing and implementing the Kings Against Violence Initiative, a youth violence prevention program, through the prestigious Presidential Leadership Scholars Program.

The initiative, a partnership between the presidential centers of George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon B. Johnson, was designed to cultivate a diverse network of leaders who are capable of addressing our nations most pressing challenges. Over the course of six months, the executive-style education series provides mid-career professionals with the opportunity to learn from former presidents, key administration officials, respected scholars, and academics.

I feel fortunate to be able to participate in the program and represent the Kings Against Violence Initiative and NYC Health+HospitalsKings County, said Dr. Gore.

In addition to his role at Kings County, Dr. Gore serves as an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate. Dr. Gore continuously seeks new ways to build the program, and his appointment to the program is expected to provide new ways to build on successes already achieved.

We congratulate Dr. Gore on his acceptance into this elite program, said Sheldon McLeod, chief executive officer at NYC Health+HospitalsKings County.

Dr. Gore was also recognized in 2017 and awarded the Distinguished Community Service Award from the United Hospital Fund.

New York City Health+Hospitals, Kings County [451 Clarkson Ave., in Flatbush; (718) 2453131]

Read Standing O every Thursday on Brook lynDa ily.com !
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A newly elected East Flatbush pol has joined a group of activists fighting to get more women elected to the Council.

Councilwoman Alicka Ampry-Samuel (DEast Flatbush), who replaced term-limited Councilwoman Darlene Mealy (DEast Flatbush) in January, is one of 11 women out of 51 members of the city legislature  and she has hit the ground running, looking to get more women involved in politics as part of the 21 in 21 Initiative, which launched last year with the goal to get 21 women elected to the city Council in the next three years as a way to push back against President Trumps divisive political movement.

Were the ones when were in elected office who introduce the most bills, are the most vocal. Elected officials should definitely reflect the population and the people, said Ampry-Samuel. This White House administration and what you see across the country now  such disrespect to women and marginalized groups. I want to be able to lend my voice, lend my expertise to help other women.

The freshman pol was tapped by newly elected Council Speaker Corey Johnson (DManhattan) to chair the Public Housing committee, along with several other women who also head powerful committees in the caucus  but theres still more to do, and she consciously looks to recruit politically engaged women to run for future office every day, she said.

Corey Johnson is amazing and he put women in some key roles, but at the same time, not all of the men of the Council are working together and willing to even partner with the women in the Council, said Ampry-Samuel. Im conscious of this every day when I walk into a room, Im looking around the room, what women are shining, what women are really engaged, asking questions? You best believe Im tapping her on the shoulder, asking her what you got going on?

Ampry-Samuel joins several other Brooklyn pols as part of the 21 in 21 Initiative, including Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo (DCrown Heights), Public Advocate Tish James, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (DNew York).

  

A Democratic Bay Ridge state Senate candidate is putting the kibosh on rumors that he plans to jump ship to run for what could become a vacant Assembly seat if the disgraced Assemblywoman Pamela Harris (DConey Island) steps down from her post.

A handful of local activists are reportedly eyeing Harriss Ridge-to-Coney seat after the feds charged her with stealing money from city and federal storm-recovery agencies.

Among the eager field are former Republican opponent Lucretia Regina-Potter, who had predicted Harriss downfall, as well as Coney Island-based professor Mathylde Frontus, according to Kings County Politics, and Andrew Gounardes, a Bay Ridge Democrats member and attorney for Borough President Adams, who already declared his candidacy to oust state Sen. Marty Golden (RBay Ridge) and has $299,599 in his war chest.

Brooklyns Democratic Party Boss Frank Seddio said the Borough Hall lawyer would make a good candidate to replace Harris, but Gounardes said he only has eyes for Goldens seat.

My plans to run for the state senate have not changed, Gounardes said. Our neighborhood is ready for change and Im running to bring that change.

  

Freshman Councilman Justin Brannan (DBay Ridge) repeatedly told this paper that hes not thinking about a career in elected office beyond two terms of the Council, but he has been gallivanting around the five boroughs over the past week, suggesting political aspirations beyond his Council district.

Brannan, who previously worked for Mayor DeBlasio in the Department of Education, has said he doesnt see his future in politics, but traveled up to the Bronx and then to Queens for a political event and parade with Council Speaker Corey Johnson (DManhattan), making some question if he has sights set on Johnsons seat.

Is @JustinBrannan running the @CoreyinNYC Speaker-seeking playbook? Gotham Gazettes executive editor Ben Max wrote on Twitter on March 1.

Brannan didnt respond to requests for comment.

  

The Working Families Party is throwing its support behind candidates challenging turncoat Democrats who align with the Grand Old Party up in Albany.

Attorney Zellnor Myrie is looking to oust state Sen. Jesse Hamilton (DCrown Heights)  a member of the breakaway block the Independent Democratic Conference, which sits across the aisle with the Grand Old Party to give the Republicans a majority in the chamber in exchange for leadership posts and perks  and he secured support from the Working Families Party last week.

Hamilton continues to call himself a Democrat, but hes sitting with a group of Trump-aligned politicians who prevent much-needed laws from passing, including rent regulations, school funding, and criminal justice reform, said a spokesman for the party.

This will be the seventh-straight budget in a row that the IDC-GOP coalition has blocked legislation to strengthen our rent laws, provided adequate funding for public schools and universities, and enact sensible and human criminal justice reform. The working families of the 20th Senate District deserve better than an IDC representative who proudly supports a Trump supporter as leader of the State Senate, said Dom Leon-Davis. We can count on Zellnor to put working families first.

The Working Families Party has also endorsed candidate Jasmine Robinson, who is running against state Sen. Diane Savino (DConey Island), who also represents The Rock, and is evaluating the two Democratic challengers to Golden, Gounardes and Bay Ridge journalist Ross Barkan, said Leon-Davis.

  
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Now its getting somewhere!

The streamlined design-build process is integral to the citys repairs to a crumbling portion of the BrooklynQueens Expressway, according to Gov. Cuomo, who this week signaled his support for the process that would fast-track the fix  months after local pols and residents began demanding he authorize the procedure in his budget so city transit honchos arent forced to send the thousands of big-rigs that travel the road daily down local streets instead.

The BrooklynQueens Expressway is a very big construction project. The city planning to move traffic throughout the construction period is by definition problematic, Cuomo said on Tuesday during an unrelated conference call with reporters about the next days snowstorm. Downtown Brooklyn is already congested, so design-build for the BQE I think is essential. Even with design-build its going to be a real problem in terms of traffic.

The governor has long maintained his general support for the process that state law requires his authorization for local governments to use, which would request one bid for the expressway makeovers design and construction instead of hiring unique contractors for each phase. He green-lit it for several state-run projects, including the construction of the recently built Kosciuszko Bridge and a new span that will bear the Cuomo name.

But hes repeatedly left advocates hanging when asked specifically whether hell allow the Department of Transportation to use design-build in its reconstruction of the expressways decaying triple cantilever. And Cuomo failed to authorize the procedure in both his first and revised drafts of the state budget, so his statement indicates he is moving in the right direction as his April 1 deadline to sign-off on a final budget looms, according to a Brooklyn Heights lawmaker in favor of the process.

Whats different is that this is more direct, and its about doing it in the context of the city and some of its priority projects, said Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon. The governor is signaling that he will fight for this.

Before the call on which Cuomo recognized how design-build could help the expressways repair, his staffer Alphonso David penned a Feb. 25 letter to Council Speaker Corey Johnson (DManhattan) that urged city officials to seek approval for the process in specific cases  including the roads rehab and other projects such as closing the jails on Rikers Island and replacing them with new facilities throughout the five boroughs, and making much-needed renovations to the citys public-housing complexes, according to the New York Daily News, which first reported on Cuomos support.

But design-build advocates said they arent taking a victory lap until the governor officially approves a final budget that authorizes using the procedure to fix the expressway, a permission that will cut about $113 million from the jobs current $1.9-billion price tag, and accelerate the reconstruction of the 1.5-mile stretch of the road between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street by at least two years, supporters say.

Of course Im worried, Simon said. Im not going to rest until its done.

Members of both houses in Albany are now writing each chambers own budget, which are due by the end of next week and together will be used to create the final version that must be approved by early April, according to Simon and another Brooklyn Heights state pol, who in a joint statement applauded Cuomo and pledged not to give up their fight for design-build as the budget-approval process continues.

We thank Gov. Cuomo for his essential support for design-build for the BQE, and we look forward to working with him and with our colleagues in the Senate and the Assembly to ensure that legislation authorizing design-build for this project is enacted later this month in the final budget, said state Sen. Brian Kavanagh.

The governors public support for the streamlined process followed a Feb. 27 meeting where Transportation Department bigwigs presented a draft of their expressway-repair plan, which locals have until March 12 to submit comment on by e-mail or snail mail.

Check out the citys proposed scope of work for the BrooklynQueens Expressway repair at www.bqe-i278.com/en. E-mail feedback to info@ bqe-i 278.com , or mail it to BQE Project Team, 605 3rd Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10158. All comments due by March 12.
Research News

UB spinoffs receive federal funding to advance technologies in health care, water purification

Entrepreneur Jeff Harvey (left) lost his wife to ruptured brain aneursyms. He co-founded Neurovascular Diagnostics  which is developing a blood test for detecting unruptured brain aneurysms  with Hui Meng (center), UB professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Vincent Tutino (right), UB biomedical engineering PhD graduate. Photo: Douglas Levere

By CHARLOTTE HSU

The new funding recognizes the potential impact of the UB startups, which are working to improve the safety of MRI scans, enable early identification of unruptured brain aneurysms, and help alleviate drinking water shortages worldwide.

Three UB startups have received six-figure awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support commercialization of promising technologies that could benefit society by improving health care and providing broader access to clean water.

From left to: Sunny Clean Water co-founders Qiaoqiang Gan, UB associate professor of electrical engineering, and Zongmin Bei, UB senior research support specialist in engineering, with UB PhD graduate Haomin Song, the company's chief technical officer. Photo: Douglas Levere

Sunny Clean Water LLC, founded by associate professor Qiaoqiang Gan and researcher Zongmin Bei, both in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Zongfu Yu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received a $225,000 Phase I SBIR award from the NSF. The company is developing a solar-powered water-purification device that could help alleviate drinking water shortages in developing areas and regions affected by natural disasters.

The federal SBIR and STTR programs are extremely competitive, and the success of these UB spinoff companies in securing funding is a testament to the promise of their technologies, says Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development.

UB invests time and resources into commercializing technologies developed by our researchers. In recent years, the university has increased support for students and faculty who are making the transition to becoming entrepreneurs, Govindaraju says. The progress that UB-affiliated startups are making reflects the success of these efforts, as well as the vibrancy of the ecosystem that we and our many partners are building.

UBs efforts to commercialize discoveries are helping to drive economic development in the region, with dozens of UB faculty and students starting companies in recent years. These businesses develop products and services that benefit society and create jobs in Western New York.

Support from UB begins when faculty and student researchers approach the university with a discovery that holds promise for becoming a commercial product or service.

UBs Technology Transfer and Business and Entrepreneur Partnerships teams  part of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development  help inventors understand their innovations from a business standpoint: What is the real-world problem that a product helps to solve? What is the size of the market for the product? What research and development (R&D) needs to happen to get the product to consumers, and how will that R&D be funded?

UB follows through on these initial conversations by protecting UB discoveries with patent applications and providing the resources needed to help spinoffs succeed.

More information about Ferric Contrast Inc., Neurovascular Diagnostics Inc. and Sunny Clean Water LLC is available online.
With less than a year before the 2019 elections and nearly 4 years after the erstwhile state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated to create two new Indian states, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the spotlight on a 'special status' demand for the state is back. Political analysts watching the developments feel the BJP government at the Centre perhaps does not want to earn the displeasure of Andhra's neighbouring states including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and even Maharashtra by granting that special status. This is primarily because it will lead to potential migration of industrial investments from one region to another.

Also, for the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the matter becomes politically sensitive and therefore even though four years have elapsed since the bifurcation, the state may be politically compelled to make all the right noises about this demand.

There is of course an economic rationale for the special status or why else would there be any need to announce it in the first place, says a former bureaucrat from the Naidu government, who now does not wish to be identified.

So, what is the economic rationale for the demand and how serious are the economic challenges for Andhra?

Consider this - when the state was divided, Andhra not only lost a capital but also an important industry hub, which was in and around Hyderabad. The contribution of agriculture to state GDP is higher for Andhra than its neighbouring states. In fact, today it is arguably the highest in South. This is also a reflection of a lower level of industrialization and along with it a lower per capita income and again, the lowest in South. Much of this is because of Hyderabad, which political analysts argue has gone on to make Telangana, a city-centric state, with the city still an important growth engine and revenue source for Telangana. Today, the per capita income for Telangana is at par with states like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, and many see this as largely on account of Hyderabad.

How did Hyderabad become important? Part of the reason for the industrialisation and the boom in the pharma sector in and around Hyderabad was due to Indira Gandhi, opting to contest from Medak in 1980 near Hyderabad. The city and its surrounding regions saw lot of industrial estates coming up and industrial incentives given.

How will a special status help? Typically, the big attraction is all the industrial incentives such as tax exemptions for 10 years and others that come with it. Think of Baddi in Himachal Pradesh and how it emerged as an important pharmaceutical hub. It was largely on account of such incentives. Other than this, it is also important to remember that the 14th Finance Commission award provided for a deficit grant to cover the revenue deficit of Andhra for a five year period. This was, of course, with guidelines but amounted to around Rs 22,000 crore.

An added benefit under the special status is that all the borrowings from other countries for the externally aided projects in a state, about 90 per cent is repaid by the government of India for special status states. Part of this is to be addressed in the special package that the Centre wants to give but here apparently there is need for clarity in terms of how it will pan out in the context of the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Managememt) Act provisions.

Then, for any loans from the central government, the share of subsidy component is higher. Though, these would be for old loans as such schemes are more or less done away with today.

Other than the economic implications, there is yet another political angle - about getting additional assembly seats approved. The reorganization provides for additional seats following reorganization of Assembly seats wherein Andhra would go up by 50 seats and Telangana would get another 30 to 40 seats. The reason to up the ante on the special status issue, some political analysts feel, could be triggered by the need to get a bargain on this demand at least.
Dassault Systemes, a spin-off from France's Dassault Aviation has all along been among the leaders in sustainable development. As 3D design has spread across the world, Dassault provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Sylvain Laurent, Executive Vice President, Global Field Operations (Asia-Oceania), Worldwide Business Transformation at Dassault Systemes and Samson Khaou, managing director Dassault Systemes India spoke to Business Today's Anup Jayaram on their India plans. Excerpts:

BT: What are your immediate plans in India?

Samson Khaou: We announced the acquisition of the joint venture with Geometric, our R&D lab. We have finalised the acquisition. With this, we now have R&D capacity of 2,200 people based out of Bangalore and Pune. We are also increasing our technical force to support the digitalisation trend in India. I think India has witnessed a lot of capacity increase especially to support our customers. And this is the reason why India benefits from a lot of investments. You can expect the same of China because those are the two high growth countries. So we have R&D and technical capacity increase in India over the last three years.

Sylvain Laurent: In India, one question could be what would be the channels to use Dassault Systemes technology? That would be skills. And that's why I push from a strategic point of view here. How do we manage new co-operation with universities from different states, to bring this value and to embark? That's because we need skills here, not only from Dassault Systemes' point of view but our customers. Many customers are looking for new candidates, new talent and it's important that we teach more people.

BT: Industry says only 20 per cent of engineering students really fit into a company today. Does that need a re-drafting of the courses in universities?



Samson Khaou: We announced an Aerospace and Defence Centre of Excellence with the Government of Karnataka. The minister of IT in Karnataka wanted to have skilled engineers to reconfirm and reinforce their position as an aerospace hub in Bangalore. So the industry is looking for industry-ready engineers, trained with the latest development of technology. And what we did is that we take the solution that we provide our aerospace customers with. We take those solutions and train students. Since July 2017 we have trained two batches of 25 students. So that's 50 engineers, and the state government is asking us to accelerate this training.

We bring industry experts to provide training. Whether it's from engineering colleges, or university level, in order for them to cover the gap and to build slowly what we now call in Dassault Systemes, a life-long education programme. You need to think of this starting from high school to the engineering college and to university. At every step, you need to think about what skills and technology you need to bring to the young generation. Europe is doing very well on those terms, in India we need to do it collectively.

Sylvain Laurent: The initial cue came from the Karnataka government. It's a model that we created with the government. I think we need to do it for more industries. In this case, it is for aerospace and defence. It depends on the area in India, but I think we could use someone for shipbuilding, automotive, life-science or hi-tech industries as well. But maybe there's a way to promote it as a structure/centre of the initiative. It works very well and is a good investment and the outcome of this will be quite significant.

BT: With the world moving towards AI and robotics, a whole set of people are getting out of the job because they don't have the skills. What kind of skill development do people need in a changing world?

Samson Khaou: If you look at our 3D solution - CATIA or SOLIDWORKS -- the technology we include is what we call cognitive and AI-enabled. So we incorporate those AI solutions in the technology for the designer to be assisted in their design. That's the technology people very much know that we do. But the fact is that we incorporate those technologies inside, make them exposed to the solution. Second, what we also have as a technology and we are promoting, is old data analytics. We call it information intelligence. Our 3D Experience platform has this data science and information intelligence built in. So the fact that we also develop the skills of those generations around the 3D expense platform, they are exposed to data science, and this is the new type of technology that will make them industry-ready.

BT: In India, we've been talking about Smart Cities for some time now. How much have you been involved with and how far has it moved?

Sylvain Laurent: Over the last three years, people are talking but not really starting something. Because it was difficult for them with politics and it's different for each city. But, I trust that from this year or the next, they will make a decision based on the case of cities like Singapore, because they can look at it as a showcase. While Singapore is one of the largest, China is moving very fast now. The approach to Smart City varies.

BT: Are you working with the 100 cities in India on Smart Cities?



Samson Khaou: We have been requested to present our solution, our experience of virtual Singapore to some of those cities. We are still having expression of interest. As you know, when they talk about Smart City, every city has their own definition of what is a Smart City.

BT: Broadly it seems to be water, sewage, transportation and communications. If you look at it, these are 3-4 things that everybody talks about.



Samson Khaou: Yes. Infrastructure management is actually how you will plan the expansion of the city or its renovation or refurbishment. You have all the energy which includes all utilities management and safety. Those are the very generic case of the city, but what we usually find out when we talk to the city, is that they want to cover those used cases, they want to see 3D of the city. But, what we know from different cities is that they need old data to make the right decisions. Whether it's the citizen living in the city, the government authorities, or whether it's the planner, you need to have those communities associated based on the relevant set of data information. And I think sometimes what we need to explain to those cities who express interest is that they need to consider all this community information and also how technology will benefit them.

If we are considering what will be a reality in 2050, 70% of the population will live in an urban environment. If not, I think we're going to be in front of a lot of crazy cities in some countries. It's interesting that if you are like a virtual Singapore model, you could pre-empt certain situations.

BT: What's the next big thing you see coming in the next six months to a year?



Sylvain Laurent: I'm thinking about 10 years because as you know, when we're working we have to project 10 years in the future. And if I look at the last 30-35 years, every year we opened a new capacity. If you focus on India, I think Cloud and Marketplace. 3D printing is part of the Marketplace. Cloud is a way to give access to certain new technology for all companies with less investment, less issue with infrastructure. Because the way you manage Cloud, they manage the infrastructure for the companies. So the companies will focus their investment on their knowledge, on their product that they want to develop, and less about the constraint about IT, the environment. The Cloud will bring this capacity to access in an easy way, about any technology like this. Because this technology becomes more and more complex from an IT point of view, and the Cloud will bring this easy way to give access to them.

Marketplace is a way for any company anywhere in India to access or order immediately any small product. If you look at it from an organic point of view, you have some limitations. The Marketplace is the way to inform everyone it's a way for any company to give possibility to get any product they want to manufacture. And 3D printing is one example.

BT: So do you see large companies like yours, setting up their own Marketplaces? How will it work?



Samson Khaou: Our solution on Marketplace is really to help our customer to use our platform to access or enforce their eco-system. They can leverage it through the Cloud to extend their eco-system, or to look for a partner who can actually bring them added value services.

Sylvain Laurent: Or sometimes to create innovation also. Marketplace is a way that you can lend one marketplace. Then you can say maybe with my traditional approach, I don't create new innovation capacity. With Marketplace, you can lend it outside. Sometimes we have an incredible version, we start up on something. They jump in the Marketplace saying I have an idea, etc. And they provoke and deliver immediate value, that in your own company sometimes you have difficulties to do it by yourself. It's not a way to replace jobs of people, but it's a way to provoke the fact that you create natural innovation capacity. In the future in the next 6 months, I think 3D printing will also be key. Because 3D printing or additive manufacturing, it depends on how you mention this, it's a strategic element to completely transform the way to think about the product. It could be a bottle, it could be a phone.

BT: How big a business is 3D printing globally?



Sylvain Laurent: Globally we are on double-digit growth. In the last three years, people were talking about 3D printing tests in any industry. In the next three, it will become reality and evidence. New capacity to engage with the new material, a new way to consider a new product completely differently, with a new generative design I could say. So it's now an evidence for metal, plastic, new material. It's a way to reveal the new material capacity to serve all industries.

BT: With all these new technologies coming, there will be skill development right? Will there be jobs shaping in the organisation? Do you see that? People trying to upscale within the organisation to fit in.

Samson Khaou: We launched a few initiatives with SOLIDWORKS in India. We launched the start-up initiative and are supporting start-ups. That's because start-up is the way to ramp up technology adoption quickly. We have the Aakruti Design Contest for school and university students to become entrepreneurs before they graduate. It's a contest we conduct annually to promote entrepreneurship at the university level.

Second, when you look at the traditional industry, this is the centre of excellence that industry focuses on. We are promoting the centre of excellence. At the same time, we also want to accelerate our partnership with the key university in every region. In the west, we need to develop knowledge on how to develop the electric car; in the south, it's about aerospace. If you look at the eastern side, we want to develop things around SME and in the north is where urban planning is key for us.

BT: What's the main difference you see between skilling in India v/s China? Why are they so much faster than India?



Sylvain Laurent: First of all, it's a political model, it's a social model. The discipline in China is much higher. I don't believe that in terms of skills it's much better. Except that when they make a decision they align everyone and the way they execute, that's the key. On the other hand, also because from a strategic point of view in terms of country, they have a huge vision.

BT: What's your ambition?



Sylvain Laurent: My vision is India will be close to $1 billion business in five years.
In order to expedite the Air India disinvestment process, the government is likely to invite Expressions of Interest (EoIs) from interested parties in the next couple of weeks, as mentioned by an official. Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the four-day aviation event, 'Wings India 2018', in Hyderabad, Civil Aviation Secretary RN Choubey said a revised EoI for disinvestment in Pawan Hans is also expected to be floated around the same time.

According to agency reports, aviation companies including InterGlobe Aviation's IndiGo, Turkey's Celebi Aviation Holdings and Tata Group have expressed interest in buying some of Air India's businesses. Last year in June, the Union Cabinet had approved privatisation of the debt-laden national carrier, which is kept afloat on taxpayers' money. On January 10, in an attempt to fast-track Air India's divestment process, the Cabinet allowed foreign airlines to invest upto 49% in Air India.

A group headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with Rothschild and Ernst & Young as consultants has been appointed to chalk out the strategy for Air India's stake sale.

"Our ministry is presently engaged in the important task of finding buyers for Air India, its subsidiaries and Pawan Hans. We are committed to take it forward very, very fast," RN Choubey said. "We expect that the EoIs for Air India should come out possibly in the next couple of weeks. A revised EoI for Pawan Hans will also be coming forward around the same time," he further added.

The government is likely to split up Air India's various businesses before offering it for sale. The airline has six subsidiaries, out of which three are making losses, with assets worth about USD 4.6 billion. The government has pumped USD 3.6 billion since 2012 to bail out the airline.

Unlike how things are looking for the airline, air traffic in India has only increased. Choubey said India's domestic air passenger traffic has grown over 20 per cent in the last three years. However, because of the increasing oil prices, the growth this fiscal is expected to be around 17.5 per cent. Nevertheless, if oil prices remain below USD 80 per barrel, the travel demand is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 per cent over the next 20 years, he said.

The government's regional air connectivity scheme 'Udan' has further boosted traffic growth in the country, Choubey said. "As many as 56 new airports have been added into the network in the last two years," he said.

Besides, many more airports are expected to be operational in the next six to eight months as by that time the second phase of Udan will also take off, he added.

(With agency inputs)
The Bombay High Court today dismissed Reliance Communications' plea challenging an arbitration tribunal's order which restrained the telecom company from selling its assets. The tribunal's order had come after Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson moved a petition to recover unpaid dues from the Anil Ambani-led company. However, RCom on Wednesday filed an appeal before the Bombay High Court against the tribunal's ruling.

RCom spokesperson in a statement to the Economic Times said that the company would challenge the order of the Bombay High Court. "We intend to file an appeal against the interim order of the Hon'ble Mumbai High Court. The claims of secured financial lenders stand higher in priority as compared to Ericsson, which is an unsecured operational vendor. Further, the sale of assets is being undertaken in pursuance of the decisions of the secured financial lenders," the ET quoted the spokesperson as saying.

An arbitration tribunal on Tuesday had restrained RCom and two of its companies from transferring or selling any assets without its permission. The tribunal's order was a setback to the telecom company which wanted to trim down its debt by selling its wireless assets to Reliance Jio.

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio has signed an agreement to acquire Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications' mobile business assets including spectrum, mobile towers and optical fibre network. The deal was expected to be completed by March 2018 and RCom had planned to use the proceeds of the sale to reduce its mammoth debt burden. As of March 2017, RCom owed around Rs 45,000 crore to banks.

Ericsson's Indian subsidiary, which signed a seven year deal in 2014 to operate and manage RCom's nationwide network, had filed the insolvency petitions in September 2017, seeking a total of Rs 1,155 crore. According to a filing with BSE, Ericsson is aiming to recover Rs 491 crore from Reliance Communications, Rs 535 crore from Reliance Infratel and Rs 129 crore from Reliance Telecom.

The tribunal in its order said that Ericsson has made out an arguable case, and the firm would suffer irretrievable injury if it was denied any relief. "Irreparable injury in the opinion of tribunal would mean substantial injury. The applicant cannot be denied a legal remedy that is available under the law," the tribunal order had noted.
After making waves in the Indian smartphone market, Xiaomi is making headway in the TV segment too. The company launched its affordable smart TV line-up, Mi TV 4A, in India on March 7, close on the heels of launching its flagship Mi TV 4 in the country. The new offerings from the Chinese tech major are a 43-inch and a 32-inch smart TV which offer much more than just lucrative price tags.

Xiaomi has claimed that the specifications and the price point of the the new TV series will let the Indian market shift to a Smart TV segment. The new televisions offer features that have been limited to high-end TVs, at a very affordable price. With desired features and an even more desirable price, the Mi TV 4A is expected to replicate the success of Mi TV 4 55-inch that was launched just two weeks ahead of the new SmartTV series.

Below are the top five features of the new Mi TV 4A:



Patchwall

The Mi TV 4A comes equipped with PatchWall, similar to the flagship Mi TV 4 launched by Xiaomi a while back. The PatchWall is an AI-enable TV system which classifies content and makes personalised recommendations based on user preferences.

PatchWall offers more than 5,00,000 hours of content via several content partners like Voot, Sony Liv, Hungama and others. Almost 80 per cent of this content is free to watch. Xiaomi has shared plans to add to this repertoire of content in future. The PatchWall system can be upgraded too.

Universal Search

A part of the PatchWall user interface, Universal Search on Mi TV 4A allows users to find content on both online and offline channels at the same place. Viewers also receive personalised recommendations at Universal Search according to their viewing habits. Based on what you watch frequently, PatchWall suggests content from both online and offline directories when using the search function.

Hardware

The Mi TV 4A runs Amlogic 64-bit quad core chipset coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. On the connectivity front, both variants of Mi TV 4A are fitted with three HDMI ports, two USB ports, Ethernet port, WiFi and a headphone jack. The bigger 43-inch variant comes with an additional USB port and a S/PDIF port, allowing more devices to be connected to the TV.

The Mi TV 4A comes with the same 11-button MI Remote shipped with the on the Mi TV 4. The simplified design allows ease of use. The screen on 32-inch Mi TV 4A is a HD Ready panel whereas the 43-inch variant boasts a full HD resolution.

India-centric features

Xiaomi has collaborated with several content partners to bring content in 15 Indian languages on Mi TV 4A. The sound output on the new smart TV has been streamlined with DTS and 20W dome speakers specifically for India.

With PatchWall on MI TV 4A, viewers can switch between content from their set top box operators and that available online. Xiaomi said this has been done considering the amount of content Indian viewers peruse via their set top boxes.

Pricing

The 43-inch variant of Mi TV 4A has been priced at just Rs 22,999 and the 32-inch variant is going to be sold at Rs 13,999. Xiaomi is offering an instant cashback of Rs 2,200 on Mi TV 4A with a JioFi connection.

The Mi TV 4A will go on sale from March 13 via flash sales held every week on Tuesdays and Fridays. The new smart TV will be sold through mi.com, Mi Home and Flipkart. With buyers complaining of stocks running out surprisingly fast, Xiaomi has assured that adequate stocks will be put up for sale from the very first flash sale.
In its latest Economic Survey of Ireland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claims that the Irish economy is recovering robustly. Business investment by local firms has picked up, household consumption is reviving while the boost to jobs and a rapidly declining unemployment rate have led to strong wage growth in a number of sectors.



The OECD says the expansion is projected to continue over the next two years - albeit at a more sustainable pace (forecast at 2.9% in 2018 and 2.4% in 2019) - but it warns that Brexit poses a serious risk to the outlook. It estimates that a trade arrangement between Britain and the EU governed by the WTOs Most Favoured Nation rules could reduce Irish exports by 20% in sectors such as agriculture and food.



The OECD warns that such uncertainty makes it vital to further improve public finances to create scope for policies to support the economy in the event of a shock and ensure that the benefits of growth reach everyone. Among its many recommendations, the survey highlights that reviving productivity will be crucial to ensure Irelands future economic dynamism and to maintain high living standards.

Research shows thst local firms compare poorly with foreign-owned multinationals active in Ireland, with productivity gaps between them widening. The report argues that unblocking the productivity potential of Irish firms will require improving the business environment and encouraging the benefits of new ideas and technology in high performing foreign companies to spill over to local firms.



The OECD also recommends improving infrastructure to alleviate emerging bottlenecks. The group believes careful evaluation through a more systematic collection of information is required in order to identify investment projects which would have the highest returns in terms of well-being and economic growth.



While the survey highlights the improvement in public finances and the reduction of fiscal deficits, it suggests that public debt could be further reduced by broadening the tax base, including by eliminating exemptions and preferential VAT rates and raising the property tax yield through more regular revaluations.

The report also calls attention to the need to continue strengthening the financial sector: despite the fact that non-performing loans (NPL) on bank balance sheets have now declined by around 60% from their peak, The OECD say incentives are needed for banks to further reduce their NPL stock.

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The EU on Wednesday offered Britain a free trade deal for their post-Brexit ties that fell well short of ambitions set out by Prime Minister Theresa May last week, notably for the country's dominant financial sector.

In a draft seen by Reuters, the remaining 27 European Union members said they wanted a close partnership with Britain, but its depth would be limited by Britain's own wish to leave the bloc's single market and the customs union.

"Because of Brexit, we will be drifting apart," the chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk told a news conference, delivering a message that contrasted sharply with May's call for future trade to be as "frictionless as possible."

Referring to what he called the first free trade deal ever to loosen economic ties, he said it would make bilateral trade "more complicated and costly than today, for all of us."

Tusk said that, while he understood May's goal to make Brexit a success for Britain, that was not the EU's objective.

Crucially, the bloc said Britain would be treated like any other third country when it came to financial services - which London had pressed to be included in the future deal.

Financial services generate more than 10 percent of Britain's economic output and are the only area in which it has a trade surplus with the EU, making London very keen to preserve its banks' current access to continental Europe.

But the text said in the future, Britain's financial firms would only be allowed to operate in the EU "under host state rules," reflecting "the fact that the UK will become a third country and the Union and the UK will no longer share a common regulatory, supervisory, enforcement and judiciary framework."

In a sign some large banks may be losing patience with the protracted uncertainty about the future, Goldman Sachs has put more than a dozen UK-based banking, sales and trading staff on notice to move to Frankfurt within weeks.

That is one of the first tangible signs that banks are starting to act on Brexit contingency plans to keep what the EU calls passporting rights - the possibility to offer services to all EU clients via just one local license.

British finance minister Philip Hammond called the EU guidelines a very tough position that any skilled negotiator would start with.

While the EU says it does not want to mete out punishment Britain, the trade deal offer will come as another blow to Britain. The bloc has also recently outlined its contingency plans for avoiding an Irish border after Brexit, which Britain said would undermine its constitutional sovereignty.

With no passporting rights for its banks, the best option London can hope for is regulatory equivalence, under which they can get more access to the EU market if British financial rules, though not identical to EU ones, are seen by the bloc as achieving the same goals.

But Hammond said the EU's third country equivalence regime would be wholly inadequate, and criticized the only patchy access it gives, as well as the possibility of revoking it at short notice.

He said a better solution would be mutual recognition and reciprocal equivalence, with sensible notice periods.

He also argued that Britain and the EU could reach a much better agreement on financial services than the EU had reached with Canada. Canadian financial firms must set up a presence inside the bloc and comply with its regulations if they want to do business there.

The draft EU guidelines, which will be worked on by diplomats to be approved by the bloc's 27 national leaders in late March, say services will be part of the deal, but spell out clear limits of what can be on offer.

"Such an agreement cannot offer the same benefits as Membership and cannot amount to participation in the Single Market or parts thereof," the text read.

Tusk did say services would be covered in the future arrangement with London but stressed: "No member state is free to pick only those sectors of the single market it likes ...By the same token, a pick-and-mix approach for a non-member state is out of the question."

Last December, the Bank of England proposed allowing EU banks in Britain to continue as branches in London after Brexit  on condition of reciprocity from Brussels  to avoid lenders having to find extra capital to become full subsidiaries.

Instead, the EU proposal sticks with the bloc's traditional approach to dealing with banks from third countries.

"This means double regulation. You operate in London under UK rules and some elements would be under their rules for cross-border services," Barney Reynolds, a partner at law firm Shearman & Sterling said. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Irish-founded social network, GirlCrew, has today launched its app in the US, coinciding with International Womens Day, to provide women the opportunity to connect with like-minded women and expand their community of friends.

The network has raised a seed round of almost $1 million from investors, including LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner, Wrigley CMO Orla Mitchell, Reddit Director of Data Science Joe Gallagher, Aegis Corporate Strategy Managing Director Hazel Hutchinson, PCH Chief Executive Liam Casey, Stanford University Adjunct Professor Stuart Coulson, and Enterprise Ireland, Europes third largest seed investor. The funding will allow GirlCrew to expand across the US city by city, with thousands of women already on waiting lists to get the app.

GirlCrew has created a unique platform, available on iOS, Android and desktop, focused on connecting women for friendship and chats. Although a digital community, its aim is to facilitate in-person friendships, offering an additional channel in which to do so  find a group of girls to travel with, meet for coffee, start a business. Members can participate in online group chats and offline events such as brunch, hikes or nights out.

GirlCrew operates through an app available on iOS and Android, and a desktop platform (www.girlcrew.com). Women simply join the group for their city, such as Toronto or Vancouver, and there they can see what events are happening, read posts and comments from other members, write posts themselves and create events. They can also join GirlCrew topic groups such as Travel, Careers, Entrepreneurs, Fashion & Beauty, Fitness & Wellness, Bloggers, Dating Advice and Staying In.

Within the groups, members share tips, advice and knowledge on everything from getting a new job to finding a good restaurant for a first date. GirlCrews three female co-founders  Elva Carri, Pamela Newenham and Aine Mulloy  are passionate about enabling women to make friends, network in a social and professional capacity, seek advice and share knowledge.

Commenting on the purpose of the network, Co-CEO of GirlCrew, Pamela Newenham said, "We believe real friendships happen in person, however sometimes you need a nudge and an extra channel in order to meet these new like-minded people. So many people have either moved to a new city, or have found themselves at a different life stage to their friends, either because their friends are getting married, settling down etc. As a result, they need new friends, but making friends as an adult can be hard."

The start-up also runs a series of careers events in conjunction with Microsoft called GirlCrew Pro. The company has just renewed its partnership with GirlCrew for another year. Speaking this week, Microsoft Ireland CEO, Cathriona Hallahan said, "Throughout my career my network of colleagues, friends and mentors have continued to grow and have been, and continue to be, key to me on my career journey. The idea behind GirlCrew of a global network of women engaging, sharing ideas and learning from each other is a simple but effective one and I wish the GirlCrew team the best of luck for the future."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Banks and insurers lined up to back the British government's demand that a future trade deal with the European Union must include financial services, putting them on a collision course with Brussels.

Faced with the world's biggest financial centre being cut off from a core market after Brexit, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Wednesday that finance should be at the heart of a new trade deal with Europe.

He sketched out how Britain and the EU could keep their financial markets integrated and avoid costly fragmentation, based on a blueprint from the City of London financial district and TheCityUK lobby.

But just before Hammond spoke, Brussels offered a free trade agreement that falls well short of Hammond's plans, saying Britain's banks and insurers would get the same treatment as rivals from other non-EU countries and only get limited access.

Catherine McGuinness, policy chair for the City of London, home to Britain's financial district said the EU's position would hit the wider European economy.

"Refusing to include financial services as part of a final trade agreement would undoubtedly damage the whole European economy, limiting growth and risking jobs," she said.

"We urge the EU to give their negotiating team flexibility by including financial services as part of a final trade agreement."

The Association of British Insurers said it would defy common sense not to include financial services in a trade deal.

"It's now time for everyone to drop the dogma and get round the table," ABI Director General Huw Evans said.

The Investment Association said protecting the ability of asset managers in Britain to serve EU-based clients was critical to avoid disruption to Europe's economy and to protect the integrity of the wider financial services industry in the UK.

The financial sector has little option but to support the British government's position given that the alternative is a patchy system of EU market access known as equivalence.

"I haven't ruled out equivalence. What I've said is that the EU's model of equivalence, which is unilateral and withdrawable on no notice in some cases... would not work," Hammond said.

He expects Britain and the EU to agree a transition deal later this month to bridge a gap between Brexit Day on March 29 next year, and new trading relations from January 2021.

Banks have said transition would provide critical breathing space to adjust to Brexit and give more time for trade negotiations.

"Firms now want to see swift agreement on the transition period, to provide much-needed certainty and allow us to focus on reaching a mutually beneficial trade deal," said Stephen Jones, chief executive of UK Finance, a banking lobby.

But many banks like Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered have decided not to rely on a transition deal or bet that Britain will get favourable trading terms for financial services once the political noise dies down.

Instead, they are pushing ahead with moving staff and operations from London to Paris, Frankfurt or Luxembourg to avoid rupturing links with EU customers.

"The clock is ticking. The end date is not that far away," Standard Chartered's Chief Financial Officer Andy Halford told Reuters.

"And if you want an assured, continuity of activity there does come a point where unfortunately you've got to get on with these things and just say, even if there was a change of mind on other fronts, it may arrive too late." (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
About books, reading, the power of fiction, some music, some movies. These are my opinions, my thoughts, my views. There is much wisdom afloat in the world and I like finding it in books. Communicating about wisdom found keeps it from getting lost.
The China Insurance Regulatory Commission said it will trace shareholders investments into insurance companies back to the original funding sources. Photo: VCG

China is clamping down on opaque shareholding structures in the freewheeling $2.7 trillion insurance industry.

The China Insurance Regulatory Commission released new rules on Wednesday that cut the ceiling of single shareholders to 33% from the current 51%. Investors will have to use their own funds to buy a stake in an insurer and will be prohibited from hiding ownership through proxies.

Insurance companies should have clear and reasonable shareholding structures, and must reveal the actual controlling entity to the regulator, the CIRC said in a statement.

About 12 private insurers have big shareholders with holdings exceeding the new 33% cap, according to Caixins calculations. These include Foresea Life Insurance Co., Guohua Life Insurance Co. and Evergrande Life Insurance Co. The CIRC said existing shareholders wont immediately be affected by the new rules unless the regulator detects potential risks.

Generally, the regulator will allow big shareholders with stakes exceeding 33% to keep their holdings, though they will need to be gradually reduced in future company fundraising. However if the regulator sees a company as having dodgy corporate governance, it will require shareholders to comply with the new limit.

Regulatory measures will be issued based on each companys specific condition, a CIRC official said.

The new rules, which take effect on April 10, are the latest steps by the CIRC to tame the insurance industry, which turned into a piggy bank for some large shareholders to fund big-ticket acquisitions and risky investments that came to be seen as serious threats to Chinas financial system.

The clampdown reverses liberalization led by then-CIRC chairman Xiang Junbo of the cash-rich but sleepy industry.

In 2013, the CIRC increased the maximum stake of insurance shareholders to 51% from 20%, sparking a stampede by private investors to get into insurance. In practice, a single investor was often able to get the absolute controlling stake with shares held by relatives or affiliated parties.

Insurers spent lavishly on overseas acquisitions such as soccer clubs and world-class properties, while selling high-risk products to cover highly leveraged deals. Last year, Beijing ousted Xiang, accusing him lax oversight and corruption that included trading power for sex, profiting from his position and accepting real estate as bribes.

Anbang Insurance Group, China's third-largest insurance provider in terms of premiums, is a prime example of opacity that exploded. According to a Caixin report, behind the insurers seemingly dispersed shareholding structure are a series of complicated transactions among more than 100 companies, all linked to the companys former chairman, Wu Xiaohui.

In late February, the CIRC said it was taking over Anbang for a year to protect consumers, as the company struggled to pay back investors following a massive global buying spree. Wu has been charged with committing economic crimes.

Under the new rules, regulators will trace shareholders investments into an insurance company back to its original funding source to prevent proxy shareholding while banning ownership transfer through stake pledges and other financing methods.

The CIRC will also prohibit buying insurance companies stakes with insurance funds or money borrowed by pledging insurance companies assets.

A CIRC official said although previous rules have required investors to use their own capital to invest in insurers, their capital flows were often not closely monitored. The new rules will scrutinize investors capital sources.

The CIRC is also planning to introduce new rules regarding insurers board of directors to strengthen their corporate governance. In December, the commission published draft rules requiring insurance companies to have at least two independent directors on their boards. Companies with one controlling shareholder should have half of their board members consisting of independent directors, according to the draft rules, which are set to take effect this year.

The CIRC official said the commission will step up enforcement of the shareholding rules and work with the public security department to punish violators to put more teeth into insurance regulation.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
Published On Mar 08, 2018 06:56 PM By Saransh for Hyundai Elantra 2015-2019

Should we expect a dramatic change in the way Hyundai cars are designed right now?

Hyundai has showcased the Le Fil Rouge concept at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. With the new concept the South Korean carmaker has given us a glimpse of its future design philosophy. Called Sensuous Sportiness, the new design theme will be embraced by all future Hyundai products ranging from sedans to SUVs. Hyundai says the design is defined by a harmony between four fundamental design elements in a vehicles design: proportion, architecture, styling and technology.

Designwise, we find the Le Fil Rouge to be easily amongst the better looking concepts ever to sport the Hyundai insignia. However, it is not dramatically different from current Hyundai designs -- and since the concept is a coupe, we can compare it to some of the current Hyundai sedans to get an idea.

The concept retains the cascading front grille and coupe-like roofline that we see on some of the latest generation Hyundai sedans like the Elantra and the Verna. However, the way the headlamp and tail lamp sections of the concept have been defined, there is certainly going to be a departure in the design of these elements in future. While the headlamps on the Le Fil Rouge concept still stretch backwards, they have sharp ends unlike the current Hyundai sedans. The concept doesnt get clearly defined tail lamps but the rear design suggests that the tail lights will not be stretched too far on to the sides, like they are on both the Elantra and the Verna.

While it doesnt stand out, there is a significant difference in the way the front and side character lines are drawn. Up front, on the bonnet, the character lines that extend from the A-pillars in the concept merge around the logo in the centre, which is placed on the bonnet instead of the front grille. These lines currently merge with the two top corners of the hexagonal grille of current-generation Hyundai cars. Going forward, we might see Hyundai repositioning the brand logo from the front grille on to the bonnet, which might make the newer cars look quite different from the existing ones without a massive change in the design of elements like the front grille and bumpers.

At present, Hyundais cars are designed to be aggressive in the way they are designed from the side, with the character line starting from the front fender and only moving upwards as it reaches the rear. On the Le Fil Rouge concept, the character line follows a gentle curve as it initially goes up and drops as it goes past the rear door. This could be another big deviation in the how the upcoming Hyundai cars will look in comparison to the cars we see these days.

Other thing that remains similar to the Fluidic design theme is that the dimensional proportions of cars will be based on the golden ratio, a mathematical ratio in design that is naturally attractive to the human eye. And as a result of that the Le Fil Rouge gets a long wheelbase, large wheel arches and short overhangs. These elements can also be found on current Hyundai cars such as the Elantra and the Verna.

Hyundai says the interior and exterior of the car are merged by the Tube Architecture, which means the Sensuous Sportiness theme has been carried forward on the inside as well. In the Le Fil Rouge concept, the interior is divided by a central console running from the dashboard to the rear seats, which gives a premium touch to the cabin, but the possibility of it making it to the production model is very slim.

Coming to the technological part of the story, the car gets an aircraft-inspired two-way air ventilation system that blows air over the curved surfaces thanks to the Tube Architecture. While Hyundai doesnt claim it, it could have been done to improve the air-con effectiveness inside the cabin. Trims are made up of revitalised wood and high-tech fabrics that are sculpted to give an airy feel to the cabin. While such elements are not expected to make it to production cars, it suggests that Hyundai is working to make the upcoming cars feel more spacious on the inside. For infotainment, the concept gets a panoramic display with haptic technology for intuitive controls and other vehicle functions. Hyundai might retain the infotainment system in the production-spec car considering that the carmaker is known to offer segment-above features in its cars.

On the whole, the new design philosophy from Hyundai will involve new design elements that will give the newer cars a different identity while retaining some signature elements from the current theme. We expect the cars to sport bold lines and creases but the overall design will not be loud.

Hyundai has not yet given a timeline as to when a car embodying this Sensuous Sportiness philosophy will see the light of production. However, we expect it to happen soon considering that the Fluidic design theme has been around for more than a decade now.

Also Read: Hyundai Serious About Developing A Supercar

Read More on : Hyundai Elantra diesel
Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles uses Soliss graphic novel as its starting point, but takes a different approach with the story and art direction.

In a telephone conversation with Cartoon Brew, film director and scriptwriter Salvador Simo explained that the intention of the movie is to introduce the figure of Luis Bunuel to contemporary audiences, and to generate interest in his extraordinary personality and filmography.

The movie follows the Spanish director and his production team to Las Hurdes, the western Spanish region where the documentary is set. During the trip, the movie reveals the complex artistic world of the filmmaker and his odd sense of humor, while exploring aspects of his character and personality, such as a fondness for cross-dressing and causing provocation for its own sake.

Among film buffs Bunuel is considered one of the most influential Spanish directors of the 20th century, thanks to the pivotal role that his silent movies An Andalusian Dog (1929) and The Golden Age (1930) played in the avant-garde Surrealist movement. Land Without Bread brought an end to those experiments as Bunuel began to embrace a more socially conscious and narrative approach, establishing the starting point for some of his careers more mature feature films.

The iconoclastic filmmaker always maintained a troubled relationship with his native country. In 1949 he renounced his Spanish nationality in favor of Mexico, and only five of Bunuels 32 movies are Spanish. However his status as one of Spains artistic darlings endured, and he is considered alongside the ill-fated poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and the painter Salvador Dali as one of the most iconic artists linked to the Spanish cultural movement Generation of 1927.

At that time, the remote region of Las Hurdes was considered so poor that bread was virtually unknown, and taking in orphaned children was a key source of income for its population, due to the government subsidies offered to families that adopted children.

Far from reporting reality however, Bunuel exaggerated the regions stereotypes, faking many scenes such as the slaughtering of a goat and a sick donkey. While Bunuels intention was to highlight and denounce living conditions in Las Hurdes with surrealist imagery, the tremendous uproar it caused led to the movie being banned in the years preceding the Spanish Civil War.

Production of Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles started in October 2016 at The Glow Animation Studio  based in the same region that Bunuels documentary was set and is expected to be finished next month. The feature film marks the first collaboration between Salvador Simo and the Spanish producers Manuel Cristobal and Jose M. Fernandez de Vega. Other credits include illustrator and comic artist Jose Luis Agreda as art director, and Manolo Galiana as animation director (The Illusionist, Anastasia, Spirit, Chico and Rita).

Cristobal, who previously produced the comic book adaptation Wrinkles (2011) with Perro Verde Films, will work with Salvador Simo as director again on the animated adaptation of Oscar Pantojas graphic novel Gabo  Memoirs Of A Magic Life, which depicts the writing process of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Bunuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles is expected to hit Spanish screens in fall 2018.
Photo: Contributed

The Saskatchewan coroner's office is investigating the death of a girl who was found under snow in the backyard of her home.

Police and other first responders were called to a Regina home on Tuesday night and the 12-year-old was later pronounced dead in hospital.

"We are in the process of assisting the Office of the Chief Coroner in a death investigation," said a statement from Regina police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich.

"The deceased person is a 12-year old girl, who was found, unresponsive, in her family's backyard, in snow. At this point, there is little else to say about the case."

Regina Catholic Schools said the girl was a Grade 7 student at Ecole St. Elizabeth School. The school has brought in grief counsellors to help students and staff.

Popowich said victim services staff are working with the family, which has asked for privacy at this time.

The principal of Ecole St. Elizabeth School sent an email to parents informing them of the students death and the schools response.

Police do not consider the death suspicious.
Photo: The Canadian Press Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa

Ontario's Liberal government is breaking its promise to maintain a balanced budget this year, saying its upcoming fiscal plan will run a deficit in order to fund programs for seniors, women and students ahead of a spring election.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa said Wednesday that the budget will be delivered on March 28.

"I firmly believe you have to invest to create growth," Sousa said in a speech to a Toronto business audience. "You cannot create jobs by beggaring your future prospects. As I have said many times  balancing the budget is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. And that end is a stronger Ontario."

Sousa, who will be delivering his sixth budget as finance minister, said the province will run a deficit of less than one per cent of its gross domestic product starting next year but would not confirm a specific figure.

According to the Ministry of Finance, Ontario's gross domestic product sat at $794 billion in 2016, the latest publicly available data. Using those figures, the government's budget deficit could run as high as almost $8 billion.

Last year, the Liberals posted the province's first balanced budget in a decade and had projected balanced books through to 2019-20. As recently as November, in the government's Fall Economic Statement, Sousa said the 2018 budget would be balanced.

The minister said Wednesday that the decision to run a deficit is, in part, a response to challenges the province is facing. He hinted repeatedly that the budget will include measures to help women, students and seniors.

"We have to invest more and that doesn't come cheap," he said. "So here is the choice: ignore these costs of care to stay in balance or use our fiscal room to invest more in mental health, long-term care and child care."

The budget will outline a path to return to balance, Sousa noted.

The minister also suggested the opposition Progressive Conservatives, who have are days away from selecting a new party leader, did not plan to balance the books if they took power after the June election.

"They will cut services, roll back minimum wage and sacrifice those working at the lowest incomes," he said.

Tory finance critic Lisa MacLeod said the upcoming fiscal blueprint amounts to nothing more than a "last-ditch ploy to win the next election."

"This is a government that has no real beliefs other than their own political self-interest," she said. "Now, right before an election, they're cynical and willing to do or say anything to cling to power."
Tanzania Portland Cement given ultimatum over dust emissions

08 March 2018

Tanzania Portland Cement Company Ltd (TPCCL) has been issued a two-month ultimatum from the government to improve its dust control or face a ban.



The Deputy Minister of State in the Vice President's Office (Union and Environment), Alphaxard Kangi Lugola, said local residents in Dar es Salaam faced health concerns due to the dust emissions from the plant.



"Having listened from both sides, I am now convinced that the dust problem is real. I am, therefore giving a two-month ultimatum for the company to find a lasting solution to this problem or else we will close down the factory until the matter is solved," said Mr Lugola who toured the factory in the company of officials from the National Environment Management Council (NEMC).



TPCCL Managing Director, Alfonso Velez, said the plant will work on the directives but added that they were already doing their best in preserving the environment.



"Our factory is already spending a lot of cash in preserving the environment. For example, we are using gas in production as a way of preserving the environment," he said.

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Since President Trump took office in January 2017, observing the goings-on in The White House has been like examining a house of horrors. With an ever revolving door of staff who have either been fired and resigned, a ton of scandals, and the ongoing Russia investigation, the Trump presidency and administration looks like a reality series where everyone loses.

With such high turnover rates, we are having trouble keeping up with it all. However, it seems like two of Trumps most prized White House aids  his daughter and advisor, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, another senior advisor  might be the next officials booted out of Washington. Apparently, despite their stark (and misguided) loyalty to him, it looks like President Trump might be the one trying to oust his daughter and son-in-law.

A rough start

When Trump announced that Ivanka and Kushner would be joining him in Washington as senior advisors in the White House, many folks across all parties raised their eyebrows. Though the businesswoman and her husband have been successful in industries like real-estate and fashion, neither had any real experience in politics. Therefore, their hiring practically screamed nepotism.

From the beginning, Ivanka, in particular, has been scrutinized and questioned for being complicit in her fathers racial and anti-woman policies. She has tried to weasel her way out of being held responsible for her actions by pretending she doesnt know what the word complicit means. She even told reporters, who asked her about the sexual-misconduct allegations against her father, that they were inappropriate questions to ask.

Next: A change in favor

John Kellys arrival

Kushner and Ivanka were sitting pretty in their cushy positions until Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was pushed out and General John Kelly arrived in July of 2017 to take his place. At the time, the pair seemed pleased that Kelly was trying to bring some semblance of order back to the chaotic White House, but they soon realized Kelly saw them as part of the problem.

New York Magazine reported, During Kellys tenure, Kushner saw his absurdly large portfolio whittled down to mainly Middle East peace and China policy.

According to CNN, Kelly has little patience for Ivanka as well. He privately remarked that she was playing government, and he dismissed her child tax credit as a pet project.

Next: A major scandal

A breaking point

Things started to go left for Ivanka and Kushner when allegations against former political aide Rob Porter hit the news. Both of Porters former wives came forward accusing him of domestic abuse. This brought up major concerns about security clearance, especially since the alleged domestic abuser had interim security clearance, as did Ivanka, Kushner, and a dozen other unqualified White House workers.

As a result, Kelly has taken action to downgrade clearances, including those of Kushner and Ivanka. Vanity Fair explained, By downgrading Kushners clearance, Kelly expertly flipped the situation, using the uproar over security clearances to neutralize his foe.

Next: An enemy in The White House

Enemies on all sides

Its no secret that Kushner and his wife havent exactly made a ton of friends in Washington. In fact, Kushner is starting to believe that everyone is out to get him.

CNN reported, Kushner also feels that he has come under fire from his own West Wing colleagues recently, with the notion that everyone is out to get him. Apparently, Kushner is distraught over Kellys decision to overhaul the security clearance process. He feels as though its a direct stab at him.

Next: A confounding president

An unlikely adversary

Kelly might not be the only one in the White House trying to squeeze Ivanka and Kushner out. President Trump himself is beginning to see his daughter and son-in-law as liabilities. Apparently, POTUS has asked Kelly to help him boot the duo out of the White House.

However, Trump is telling his family something different. The New York Times reports,

Privately, some aides have expressed frustration that Mr. Kushner and his wife, the presidents daughter Ivanka Trump, have remained at the White House, despite Mr. Trump at times saying they never should have come to the White House and should leave. Yet aides also noted that Mr. Trump has told the couple that they should keep serving in their roles, even as he has privately asked Mr. Kelly for his help in moving them out.

Next: Total confusion

Feeling the pressure

Things really begin to take a turn for the worse for Kushner and Ivanka at the top of 2018. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has set his sights on the couple, specifically looking into Kushners family business. Ivankas business dealings have also put Mueller on alert. Trumps eldest daughter was once the head of his hotels and according to CNN; the FBI has been looking into the negotiations and financing surrounding the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver.

It doesnt help that the pair are also the laughing stock of the Middle East especially since they are supposed to be easing tensions.

Next: Packing their bags?

Back to New York

We have no idea if President Tump is even astute enough to realize that his family ties are aiding in sinking his ship or if hes simply tired of them and wants them to head back to New York. Either way, if Mueller is, in fact, closing in and Kushner and Ivanka have things to hide, it might be best for them to retreat, head back to the Big Apple, and agree to some plea deals so they can at least be there for their children.

But who knows, only time will tell.

Follow Aramide on Twitter @midnightrami.

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Eight years later: Do you remember the Colorado flood of 2013?
A bill seeking to ban Down syndrome abortion has progressed in the Utah Senate, and lawmakers will continue to debate the pros and cons of terminating a pregnancy if the fetus has tested positive for the lifelong condition.

Republican Rep. Karianne Lisonbee introduced HB 205 following a perceived increase in abortions among mothers in the Icelandic and European regions who have had prenatal tests that detected the genetic condition. She stated that she wants to prevent that scenario from happening in Utah.

Under Lisonbee's proposal, doctors who performed Down syndrome abortions solely on the diagnosis of the condition will be charged with a class A misdemeanor. Doctors must also refer the mother to a Down syndrome specialist and a support group for parents.

The exact numbers on Down syndrome abortions in Utah are not known, but a government report from 2015 revealed that of the 3,000 abortions that year, 40 cases had been about "malformation." In Utah, at least 83 babies are born yearly with genetic disorders like Down syndrome.

Pro-choice proponents, however, pointed out that Lisonbee's bill was unconstitutional and in violation of the 14th amendment. Among the questions and criticisms raised include the lack of details about funding and support for families with children with Down syndrome, as well as the erosion of the trust and relationship between a patient and a doctor.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Utah cited in its official statement that Lisonbee's bill was "a calculated and unconstitutional attack designed to burden women, scare doctors, and chip away at Roe v. Wade."

The Utah House passed HB 205 in February after the third reading. Senators, on the other hand, will still have to go over the proposal in its second reading.

Similar bills have already been passed in states like Ohio, Louisiana and North Dakota. Abortion providers, however, have challenged these bills in court and thus the bans have yet to take effect in some of these states.
Over a hundred thousand individuals have signed a petition asking President Donald Trump, the Senate and Congress to declare a Billy Graham national holiday.

Kyle Siler opened the call on Change.Org just days after the American evangelist, who died at 99 years old, was buried in his home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Siler cited Graham's contributions to Christians all over the world and to several U.S. presidents who sought his advice and guidance over the decades.

"Mr. Graham preached the Gospel to more people in live audiences than anyone else in history a nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territoriesathrough various meetings, including Mission World and Global Mission," the petition stated. "Mr. Graham's counsel was sought by presidents, and his appeal in both the secular and religious arenas is evidenced by the wide range of groups that have honored him."

The petition has received over 107,000 signatures as of press time.

Ahead of Siler's call, Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles has declared that March 2 will be commemorated in the city as Billy Graham Day. The council read the proclamation during a regular meeting as devotees paid their last respects to the pastor at a four-day public mourning.

Graham's body laid in a closed casket at the property his father built and the pastor's childhood home. Later that week, the family moved him to his library at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Then on Friday, March 2, mourners, including President Donald Trump, gathered together at Graham's final resting place.

The reverend, who was dubbed "America's Pastor," passed away because of natural causes last Feb. 21 at his home in Montreat. His remains was also brought to the U.S. Capitol for public viewing among politicians and dignitaries. Only one other private citizen, civil rights icon Rosa Parks, received the rare national honor of lying in state at the U.S. Capitol following her death in 2005.

It is unclear if the government leaders will grant the petition. Trump has been one of Graham's advocates but Congress has the sole mandate to declare national holidays.
A list of 40 gay priests and seminarians in Italy that a male escort in Naples compiled has been forwarded to the Vatican. The 1,200-page dossier has the profiles and erotic photos of 34 active priests and six seminarians, which also included their conversations with the escort on WhatsApp.

The escort, Francesco Mangiacapra, revealed that he had reported those involved to the archdiocese in Naples because of their hypocrisy. He clarified, however, that the priests had not been accused of any crimes, such as engaging in sex with minors, but they have committed grave sins.

"The aim is not to hurt the people mentioned, but to help them understand that their double life, however seemingly convenient, is not useful to them or to all the people for whom they should be a guide and an example to follow," Mangiacapra told reporters.

Naples Archbishop, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, confirmed receiving the list, which has been supplied to the Vatican. He also said that those identified did not work in Naples but they were still reported to the Vatican.

"There remains the gravity of the cases for which those who have erred must pay the price, and be helped to repent for the harm done," Sepe said.

The Catholic Church specifically rejects homosexual behaviors or acts. Pope Francis, however, encourages the acceptance of homosexuals and transsexuals.

The news on the gay priests follows a recent sex scandal involving a Vatican judge who received a 14-month suspension for molestation and child pornography. Monsignor Pietro Amenta worked on family cases as a Roman Rota judge for the Catholic Church, but police in Rome arrested him in March 2017 after he inappropriately touched an 18-year-old man in public, who reported the deed to authorities.

Investigations further led to the discovery of porn images of minors on the monsignor's computer. They also learned that he had prior records of sexual molestation. Amenta pleaded guilty to the charges and resigned from his post.
A 13-year-old boy planned to launch an elaborate mass shooting at the Jackson Middle School in Ohio last March 1, but for some reason, Keith Simons did not carry out his plans and instead shot himself in the head in the school bathroom.

Mark Brink of the Jackson Township Police could not explain what stopped Simons. As they investigated the boy after his death, the police chief could only think of one factor that prevented this tragedy from happening.

"We should thank God every day, whatever made him change his mind," Brink told the press when the police finally provided details to their investigations.

The cops discovered disturbing messages in Simons' cellphone that suggested he had planned the shooting for weeks. He had an eight-step plan of attack documented on his device from Feb. 14 to Feb. 20.

Simons also implied that he admired the 1999 Columbine mass shooters who killed 12 people and injured dozens of teachers and students. His social media profiles also alluded to a teenager with a growing fixation for weapons.

"I will never be forgotten. I'll be a stain in American history and the Simons history, it's going to be so much fun," the boy wrote on his phone.

Police said that Simons rode the bus to school in the morning of Feb. 21 while concealing his weapons under his clothes. He also carried a backpack that had extra ammunition.

Upon arriving at school, Simons went to the bathroom first. Four other students saw him come out and then he turned back to the bathroom again. One of the students who saw the gun reported him to school officials, but by then, Simons had shot himself.

Simons' obituary read that he was a "caring, quiet and gentle person" and people who actually knew the boy said that he was always a funny kid. His family's church on Facebook, the New Harmony Worship Center, wrote that Simons was "a great kid who made a bad decision."

His mother, Misty, donated his organs, which would save five or more lives. She and her fiancA were once active members of The First Christian Church of Massilon, Ohio .
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Billy Graham made a bit of controversy with his death. More to the point, on his tombstone, there is the inscription that reads, "Billy Graham, Preacher of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ" followed by John 14:6. The controversy stems from the verse chosen for his tombstone, particularly its exclusivist claims. The Scripture features a teaching from Jesus himself where he says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (Jn. 14:6, CSB).

Among the Christian world, progressive ministers argue that such a verse should not have been chosen. In our area, two Presbyterian ministers (who will remain nameless) went on the air, claiming that Christ was inclusive of all people and that it was arrogant for Christians to claim that they possessed the only pathway to heaven. I would like to respond in four ways.

1. Jesus made exclusive claims.

From John 14:6, it is self-evident that Jesus made exclusivistic claims. He not only claimed to be the way, truth and life, but he also makes a bolder claim in the next verse, saying, "If you know me, you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him" (Jn. 14:7, CSB). Furthermore, Jesus states that he is in the Father and the Father is in him (Jn. 14:10-11). The writer of Hebrews takes Jesus's words a step further, claiming that in Jesus, one finds the "radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature" (Heb. 1:3, CSB). Even the most popular verse in the Bible makes an exclusive claim, saying, that God loved the world so much that he "gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life" (Jn. 3:16, CSB). One and only Son shows that God had implemented one plan to save the world by his only Son.

2. Salvation is exclusive in nature.

Let's consider the whole aspect of salvation itself. To be saved from one's sins indicates that the person has been spared from a life of sin and from an eternal condemned state. When Evangelicals claim that they have been saved, that is what they are implying. Previously, we mentioned John 3:16, but again, let's put the verse in the context of the message being given. A few verses later, the text reads that "Anyone who believes in him [pointing to Jesus] is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God" (Jn. 3:18, CSB). Isn't it funny that we often mention John 3:16 while neglecting John 3:18? The nature of salvation is exclusive. For it is by Jesus alone that one finds salvation. That may not be popular to say. But, if Jesus is truly the Son of God and is the means by which the Father has chosen to save the world, then there cannot be another way.

3. Jesus is inclusive of all people, but exclusive in the means by which he saves.

Let's pause for a moment and consider the fact that progressives are right in one sense. Jesus accepts repentant individuals from all walks of life. Jesus accepted women, Gentiles, children and the oppressed. The apostle Paul notes that in Christ, "There is no Jew or Greek [no ethnic differences], slave or free [no socio-economic differences], male and female [no gender differences]; since you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28, CSB). That is to say, Jesus accepts people as they are. But, this does not mean that Jesus changes his standards. Jesus notes that "Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out" (Jn. 6:37, CSB). So, does Christ accept those from various backgrounds and perspectives? Yes! But, does God change the method of salvation? Absolutely not!

4. All worldviews make exclusive claims.

Lastly, one must note that Christianity is not the only worldview that makes exclusive claims. Buddhists claim that one must reach enlightenment before escaping the wheel of reincarnation. For Buddhists, the escape results in nirvana; for Hindus, it's a utopia. These are exclusive claims. Muslims claim that one must recite the shahada and keep the five pillars of Islam in order to be saved. Even progressives make exclusive claims. They are saying that it is wrong to say that there is only one way to heavenan exclusive statement! Those who hold that truth does not exist makes an exclusive truth claim, resulting in a self-defeating statement. The point is, everyone makes exclusive claims, but it seems that Christians are targeted when they make the same type of claim to exclusivity.

Was Billy Graham wrong to put John 14:6 on his tombstone? Absolutely not! In fact, this issue should not be controversial for any believer who wholeheartedly holds to the truths of Scripture. In fairness, I think the problem is emotional, not logical. Some believers do not want to seem arrogant, and rightfully so. No Christian should be arrogant. Christians should be the humblest people in the world as we realize that salvation is not work-based, but grace-based. However, we cannot dismiss the genuine claims of Christ in an attempt to appear humble. In the end, God's word will stand true. Billy Graham stood by the principles of Scripture even in his death. May we be revitalized to hold to Scriptural authority with the same effervescent vigor!

Brian G. Chilton is the founder of BellatorChristi.com and is the host of The Bellator Christi Podcast. He received his Master of Divinity in Theology from Liberty University (with high distinction); his Bachelor of Science in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Gardner-Webb University (with honors); and received certification in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Brian is currently in the Ph.D. program in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty University. Brian is full member of the International Society of Christian Apologetics and the Christian Apologetics Alliance. Brian has been in the ministry for over 15 years and serves as the pastor of Huntsville Baptist Church in Yadkinville, North Carolina.
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If you asked your average American today, especially a millennial, to repeat something Jesus taught, many would respond, "Jesus said, 'Judge not.'" That's what many people know these days about Jesus. He taught us not to judge.

But not only have we forgotten when Jesus really meant when He said, "Judge not." We've also forgotten a whole lot of His other words. Are you ready for a refresher course?

I've written on this subject before, explaining that Jesus taught us not to judge superficially or hypocritically, and that He taught us not to condemn.

But the subject came up afresh for me in response to a meme we posted on our Facebook page, picturing Hugh Hefner and Billy Graham. The text of the meme read: "2 men. Both died recently in their 90's. Both influenced the world. Both born into Christian homes. One saw only religion & led millions astray. The other saw the Savior and led millions to faith."

That was it. Simple. Powerful. Clear.

Yet some folks protested the meme, with one man writing, "Really? Let God be the judge! Negative example for Christianity! Prime example why people have issues with Christians. Very poor taste!"

This man even had 19 people like his comment. How insane is that?

Aside from the fact that the meme said nothing about Hefner's eternal state (heaven or hell), there was nothing debatable in the meme.

Hefner vocally rebelled against his strict Christian upbringing and was a key player in the terribly destructive sexual revolution. To dispute his negative influence is like disputing that a hurricane causes destruction.

But no, not today. We dare not judge! What a misinterpretation and misuse of the words of Jesus.

So, to set the record straight, since "Judge not" is taken from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), allow me to quote for you some other sayings of Jesus from the very same sermon.

He said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell" (Matt. 5:27-30).

When is the last time you heard a sermon on this? Does this comport with your image of Jesus?

Then, in the very next verses, He said this: "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" (Matt. 5:31-32).

Heard many sermons on this topic either?

How about this? The Lord said, "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money" (Matt. 6:24).

Jesus did not play games.

And He said all this before His famous teaching to "Judge not, lest you be judged." What did He say after those words?

In contrast with the idea that, when it comes our faith, you can have your way and I can have mine, Jesus said this: "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt. 7:13-14).

Then He gave this stern warning, which contains a call to judge righteously: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, you will recognize them by their fruits" (Matt. 7:15-20).

That's exactly what that Facebook meme was doing. It was judging the tree by the fruits. And while deathbed conversion is certainly possible, based on what we know up until the time of death, Hugh Hefner was a God-rejecting man who produced much terrible fruit. (And in his case, he hardly came in sheep's clothing.)

And for any who think that just calling on Jesus' name without following Him is enough, He had this to say: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" (Matt. 7:21-23)

Do you feel the weight of these words?

So, I'd like to make a simple proposal. The next time someone tells you that Jesus said, "Don't judge," how about saying this? "Did you know those words are from the Sermon on the Mount? How about we read that sermon together?"

It might just rock a few boats  and perhaps save a few lives.
home US Appeals court upholds order to remove 40-foot cross memorial in Maryland

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that ordered the removal of a 40-foot veterans cross memorial from an intersection in Maryland.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit had ruled in October that the display called the Bladensburg Cross was unconstitutional and had to be removed from the intersection. On Thursday, the Fourth Circuit had declined a request from the Maryland-National Capital Park & Planning Commission for a full court rehearing to save the display from being removed or destroyed, The Christian Post reported.

The Bladensburg Cross, which is located at the intersection of Maryland Route 450 and U.S. Route 1, was an American Legion project completed in 1925 in honor of the veterans who lost their lives during World War I.

In a concurring opinion with the majority, Judge James Wynn dismissed the petitioner's argument that the display held a mostly secular meaning because it was part of a memorial.

Judge Paul Niemeyer, however, warned that upholding the three-panel decision "needlessly puts at risk hundreds of monuments with similar symbols standing on public grounds across the country, such as those in nearby Arlington National Cemetery."

"Because this ruling has such far-reaching and unnecessary consequences, it should be reheard by our court en banc, and I dissent from the vote not to do so," Niemeyer wrote in a dissenting opinion.

"The panel, in a 2a1 decision, will now have the monument removed or destroyed because, as it concludes, its presence on public land amounts to a violation of the Establishment Clause, although no Supreme Court case has ever held that the Establishment Clause prohibits such monuments," he continued.

The lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of the display was filed in 2014 by the American Humanist Association (AHA) on behalf of its two members who lived in the area and a third person from Beltsville.

In 2015, U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow ruled that the monument is constitutional because it did not have an exclusively religious purpose and is meant to honor war veterans rather than promote any religious message.

The AHA appealed the ruling in December 2015 and the three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in October 2017 that the memorial was unconstitutional, arguing that the display sends a message that the government favors Christianity over other religions because there are no other religious symbols in the park.

Monica Miller, senior counsel from the AHA's Appignani Humanist Legal Center, hailed the Fourth Circuit's decision to reject the full court rehearing, saying it is a "big win" for both non-Christian veterans and the separation of church and state.

First Liberty Institute, which is representing the American Legion in court, stated that it plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Deputy Chief Counsel Hiram Sasser warned that the ruling sets a "dangerous precedent" for other veterans memorials across the U.S.

"If this decision stands, other memorialsaincluding those in nearby Arlington Cemeteryawill be targeted for destruction as well," he said in a statement.
home World China steps up crackdown on underground churches in Henan province

Christians in China's central Henan province have complained that members of underground churches have been targeted by local officials with threats and fines since early February.

According to China Aid, a new initiative in Nanyang, Henan requires all Christians in the area to join an officially registered church. All religious gatherings in people's homes are explicitly prohibited, and anyone caught attending or hosting meetings outside of a registered religious venue will be ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 yuan (US$4,700).

Some members of underground churches have been reluctant to join the official Chinese Protestant Church, known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, as most of these churches are required to teach loyalty to the Communist Party and Chinese State and often teach propaganda over the actual tenets of these faiths.

"Some of the house church members did not register with the Three-Self Churches, and government officials showed up and inspected their houses. Some brothers and sisters have been too scared to gather. Some split into smaller groups and continue to meet," a local Christian who was identified only as Ms. Wang told a reporter on Feb. 28.

The new restrictions on churches came after the Chinese government implemented new regulations for religious affairs on Feb. 1. In several regions, minors have been prohibited from entering places of worship after the implementation of the new policy.

Officially registered churches within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement have also been targeted by the government despite their officially recognized status.

In Jiangxi province, local officials ordered the removal of a cross on top of Shaxi Church. When church members refused, the officials dispatched a team with a heavy-duty crane to forcibly demolish the cross on Feb. 22.

About 20 female church members tried to stop the demolition by linking arms and singing hymns to block the path of the machinery, but a 10-person team of officials pushed past them and tore down the cross.

After negotiating with church members, the local religious affairs bureau had agreed to allow the church to build a smaller cross and place it on the wall, instead of on top of the building.

"The government agreed to my demand of making a smaller cross, but we can only place it on the church wall. We are not allowed to place a large cross on top of the building. Currently, the cross inside the church is still intact," said a church member who was only identified as Zhang.

Officials often remove the crosses by saying the display violates building codes or by using other excuses. In Zhejiang province, around 2,000 crosses were destroyed in a period of three years after the provincial government launched its "beautification campaign" in an effort to remove all crosses throughout the area.
home US Christian bakers file appeal to Oregon Supreme Court to challenge $135K fine over refusal to make same-sex wedding cake

Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweetcakes by Melissa, have filed an appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court to challenge the state's imposition of a $135,000 fine for their refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2013.

First Liberty Institute, which is representing the Kleins in court, has filed an appeal on Thursday asking the high court to overturn a decision by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) that resulted in a fine of $135,000, forcing the Christian couple to shut down their family-owned bakery.

"Aaron and Melissa Klein are entitled to the Constitution's promises of religious liberty and free expression," Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty Institute, said after filing the appeal.

"As Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy said during recent oral arguments on a similar case, 'Tolerance is essential in a free society, and tolerance is most meaningful when it's mutual.' Freedom of expression for ourselves should require freedom of expression for others," he added.

The complaint against the Kleins was filed in 2013 after the bakers declined to make a cake for the same-sex wedding of Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer citing their religious beliefs.

In July 2015, BOLI ruled in favor of the lesbian couple and ordered the Kleins to pay them damages, resulting in the closure of the bakery.

The Oregon Court of Appeals upheld the decision by BOLI in December, with Judge Chris Garrett arguing that people opposed to interracial marriages could also ask for exemptions if the court grants an exemption for making wedding cakes for same-sex ceremonies due to the bakers' sincere religious objections.

"The Kleins do not offer a principled basis for limiting their requested exemption in the manner that they propose, except to argue that there are 'decent and honorable' reasons, grounded in religious faith, for opposing same-sex marriage," the judge wrote in his opinion, according to The Christian Post.

"That is not in dispute. But neither the sincerity, nor the religious basis, nor the historical pedigree of a particular belief has been held to give a special license for discrimination," he added.

The appeals court had reversed a decision that declared that the Kleins were guilty of violating a state law by expressing their intent to discriminate against gay couples in the future.

Melissa Klein had stated during a press conference earlier that she had served the lesbian couple before they ordered a cake for their same-sex wedding. She noted that she would love to serve them again, but she said that she only wanted to have the right not to take part in a same-sex wedding to honor her faith.

The Kleins, who are now selling their baked goods online, have reportedly been subjected to harassment, including hate mail and death threats, since the controversy erupted.

Melissa Klein had previously stated that she would like to open up another storefront bakery in the future, but she believes that it would impossible to do so in Oregon.
home US Facebook flags Christian satire site as fake news over article mocking CNN

Facebook has reportedly flagged Christian satire site Babylon Bee as "fake news" after it published an article stating that CNN had purchased an "industrial-sized washing machine to spin news before publication."

The article, published on March 1, claimed that the machine would allow the reporters to load the facts of any given issue and they would receive a "nearly unrecognizable version of the story that's been spun to fit with the news station's agenda."

After the article was flagged by Snopes.com as false, Babylon Bee Founder and editor Adam Ford received notification from Facebook, warning him that publishing another story with "disputed info" would result in demonetization and reduced viewership.

"Snopes has 'fact-checked' several of our articles before. But this is the first time Facebook has used that to threaten us with reduced reach and demonetization," Ford told The Daily Caller.

Apart from the notification issued to Ford, Facebook had also reportedly been warning its users who click on the article that it has been fact-checked by Snopes.

"Before you share this content, you might want to know that there is additional reporting on this from Snopes.com," the social media giant stated in a little pop-up window.

Facebook has since issued an apology, saying its warning to the satirical website has been a mistake.

"There's a difference between false news and satire. This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It's since been corrected and won't count against the domain in any way," Facebook said in a statement to The Daily Caller.

Although Snopes acknowledged that the article in question was just a spoof, it claimed that the satirical nature of the piece was not apparent among some readers.

The fact-checking website went on to claim that the Babylon Bee, which describes itself as "Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire," has published several articles that have been mistaken for real news.

Since 2016, Snopes had reportedly fact-checked 13 articles from the Babylon Bee and 17 articles from another satirical website, The Onion.

In August 2017, Snopes had fact-checked a Babylon Bee article claiming that Joel Osteen had sailed through Houston after the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in his luxury yacht to promote his book "Your Best Life Now."

Snopes also noted at the time that the article originated from a satirical website, but it claimed that the story had been copied to other sites where it was not clearly marked as satire.

In 2016, Facebook had partnered with Snopes to help fact-check numerous fake news stories being shared by its users.

Facebook had been criticized for its alleged political bias after employees told Gizmodo in 2016 that they had suppressed conservative news. The social media giant also faced criticism from the left over the circulation of election-related content from Russian advertisers on the popular social media platform.
home US Harvard puts Christian club on probation for demoting lesbian Bible study leader

Harvard University has reportedly put a Christian student group on a year-long probation after it asked a lesbian member to step down from her role as a Bible study leader.

According to The Harvard Crimson, the Office of Student Life had placed the religious group Harvard College Faith and Action (HCFA) on "administrative probation" for a year after the organization asked the unnamed member to resign from her position in September following her decision to date a woman.

"HCFA had conducted itself in a manner grossly inconsistent with the expectations clearly outlined in the Student Organization Resource and Policy Guide," school spokesman Aaron M. Goldman said in a statement.

Goldman further stated that Harvard would require updated materials indicating that HCFA is in compliance with the university's nondiscrimination policy if the Christian group decides to re-apply for recognition.

HCFA co-presidents Scott Ely and Molly Richmond denied that the group had discriminated against the lesbian member and insisted that their organization has clear character standards, including "sexual purity" in abstinence before marriage.

"We reject any notion that we discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in our fellowship. The student in this case was removed because of an irreconcilable theological disagreement pertaining to our character standards," Ely and Richmond told The Harvard Crimson.

The HCFA leaders further noted that they believe that the groups standards on issues such as extramarital "sexual activity" are applied equally to student leaders of "all sexual orientations."

According to Fox News, the probation notice came after the group hosted a controversial talk by Jackie Hill Perry, a Christian spoken word artist who was "saved from a lifestyle of homosexual sin."

Although HCFA stated on Facebook that the event was "not intended in any way to promote homophobia, conversion therapy, or hatefulness in any form," LGBT student activists had reportedly complained about the event as "hate speech" on campus.

HCFA will no longer receive financial support from the Undergraduate Council's Finance Committee until the probation is lifted, according to sophomore Finance Committee Chairman Henry S. Atkins. The UC Finance Committee has been handing out an average of $350 a year to the 200-member Christian group to fund events.

Atkins had reportedly proposed that HCFA be cut off from all UC funds until the group shows contrition, but the proposal lost by a 5a3 vote of the committee after members questioned whether they had the authority to cut off all UC funding.

University spokeswoman Rachel Dane stated that HCFA would also have to sever its ties with its parent group, Christian Union, by the end of its probationary period before the school will recognize the group as a student organization again.

Christian Union, which hires HCFA staff, is a national organization that provides funds and leadership support to Ivy League Christian student groups.
home US Highpoint Church releases update on sex abuse investigation involving Pastor Andy Savage

Highpoint Church has announced on its website on Sunday that the sex abuse investigation involving Pastor Andy Savage is "wrapping up" and further updates would be released "as the situation requires."

"The investigation is wrapping up and the initial findings give us assurance that we can begin the long process of moving forward as a church," church officials said in a statement, as reported by WREG.

"Just as the culture around us is waking up to the suffering expressed by the courageous voices of the #metoo movement, we are taking very seriously our commitment to fully understand how our church should minister to the needs of the people we impact," it continued.

The statement noted that Savage remains on leave from his ministry at the church. A separate investigation regarding the church's practices for protecting children will be launched after the investigation on Savage is complete, according to a church administrator.

Highpoint Church drew national headlines in January when the congregation broke into 25 seconds of applause after Savage confessed to a "sexual incident" with a teenager named Jules Woodson in 1998 and asked for forgiveness. Savage, who was 22-years-old at the time, was serving as a youth minister at Woodlands Parkway Baptist Church outside of Houston, Texas.

He had recounted the incident as a consensual encounter and said that it happened before he was engaged to his wife, Amanda. The pastor claimed that the incident had been "dealt with in Texas 20 years ago" but it had been "presented to a wider audience" back in January.

Two days before Savage confessed to the congregation, Woodson had written about the sexual assault in a blog post, saying Savage drove her to a secluded area and sexually assaulted her when she was a 17-year-old high school senior.

"There are triggers that take me back to that night, there are nightmares that haunt my dreams," Woodson recounted in her blog.

Woodson had filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in January, but the sheriff's office stated that it was unable to investigate the incident because the statute of limitations had already passed.

Shortly after the confession, Savage has been placed on leave from his role as teaching pastor and he has since been pictured on the church website as a staff member, without the title of teaching pastor.

Chris Conlee, the church's lead pastor, announced at the time that an independent, third-party organization had been commissioned to conduct an audit of the church processes and Savage's ministry. The lead pastor said at the time that the church will continue to support Savage and his family when the audit is finished.
home World Hindu extremists attack Christians over attempted burial of baby

At least six Christians in India's Odisha state suffered severe injuries after a violent Hindu mob attacked them when they attempted to bury a 2-year-old baby in their village.

According to World Watch Monitor, one of the three Christian families residing in the town of Tangaguda in Malkangiri District had tried to bury a 2-year-old girl in their own land on Feb. 27, but they were opposed by Hindus who demanded that the infant should be buried outside the village.

The Hindu extremists had reportedly said that the family would only be allowed to bury the child if they paid the equivalent of US$80.

After they buried the baby, about 30 Hindu extremists reportedly came to their home at night and set it on fire.

Morning Star News reported that the mob also surrounded the houses of other Christian families in the village and told them to come out of their houses and renounce their faith. When the Christians refused, they were reportedly dragged out of their houses and beaten by the mob.

The assailants had severely beaten 45-year-old Nandi Madkami, an aunt of the deceased baby girl, and threatened to burn her with gasoline.

Savita Madkami, Nandi's 13-year-old daughter, was also beaten with wooden sticks when she tried to rescue her mother from the attackers, leaving her bleeding from head wounds.

The attackers also beat Savita's father Deba Madkami, as well as his father Ganga Madkami, and brother Jaga Madkami, according to Morning Star News.

"The mob also looted 10,000 rupees (US$153) from Jaga Madkami's house and destroyed his cycle," said Enka Pusham, a Christian from a neighboring village who hid the other Christian families.

Ganga Madkami had sustained an injury on his right hand while Nandi Madkami suffered injuries on her legs and back. Savita had a severe wound on her head while Deba Madkami and Jaga Madkami sustained injuries on their legs, face and back.

The other Christian villagers hid in the jungle and spent the night there after the assailants proceeded to burn their houses. The next morning, Pusham and other Christians from nearby Kalimela village went in search of the Christians who hid in the jungle.

"News reached our village that the villagers assaulting the Christians had actually burnt Nandi alive, and we were horrified. We started to send messages for help and prayer support on social media," Pusham told Morning Star News.

The Christians tried to file a complaint at a local police station on Feb. 27, but they were refused by officers, saying they should go to the main police station in Kalimela instead.

Pusham noted that the officers did not help the injured Christians obtain medical treatment. The injured victims were only taken to a hospital after they filed a complaint at the Kalimela police station on Wednesday.

Morning Star News noted that the Christians were prevented by the villagers from returning to their homes.

A meeting has been arranged between leaders of the mob and the Christians on March 2, but the situation remains tense and the assaulted Christians are still waiting to return to their homes.
home World Iraqi security forces discover mass graves of 40 Christians in an area west of Mosul

A mass grave containing the remains of 40 Christians was discovered by Iraqi security forces and pro-government militias in the area west of Mosul, according to a source from the Syriac Orthodox Church.

According to Iraqi News, Iraqi security forces, along with Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, also known as Popular Mobilization Forces, found the mass graves in Iraq's Halila region.

"Most of the human remains were buried collectively. Some of them were for women and children. They had small Christian crosses with them," the church source said.

Tens of mass graves have been discovered by security troops in regions previously occupied by the Islamic State and more than 70 graves, including Yazidis killed by the terror group, were also found.

However, an official from Nineveh province has said that the latest mass grave discovered in the west of Mosul did not contain the remains of victims of ISIS.

Dureid Hikmat, the deputy governor of Nineveh for Christian affairs, stated that "the mass grave that was found in Mosul is not for victims killed by Islamic State, but for people who were killed more than 30 years ago."

In the area northwest of Mosul, the Iraqi army uncovered a mass grave containing the remains of ISIS militants, who were killed by other members while the terror group was in control of the city.

"Troops of the Iraqi army ran into a mass grave in al-Zarka region in Baaj town including 100 human corpses of local and Arab Islamic State members. The corpses were shot in the heads and chests," Col. Ali al-Taan told reporters last week.

More than 125,000 Christians have been displaced in Iraq's Nineveh region after ISIS captured Mosul in 2014 and proclaimed an "Islamic Caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

In October 2016, the government launched its campaign to fight the terror group, resulting in the deaths of thousands of ISIS militants as well as Iraqi civilians.

In July 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi declared victory over ISIS, and in December, he announced the full liberation of Iraqi lands, declaring the end of the war against the terror group.

Last month, Iraqi Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil came to Washington, D.C. to speak about the future of Christians in Iraq. He lamented that the attacks by ISIS had left Christians "without shelter, without refuge, without work, without properties, without monasteries, without the ability to participate in any of the things that give our lives dignity."

The archbishop noted that the total number of Christians in Iraq had decreased from 1.5 million in 2003 to about 200,000 or less today.
home US Maryland church gives away five cars to celebrate grand opening of new worship space

A church in Maryland has given away five cars last weekend to celebrate the grand opening of its new location in a Columbia strip mall.

Destiny Church, a congregation based in Columbia, had given away five used cars to mark its first official Sunday at its new permanent location in a building that the church recently moved into after several years meeting in a high school auditorium.

According to The Christian Post, the church had given one car to a needy family on Saturday and gave away four vehicles at the end of each worship services on Sunday.

"One of our founding values as a church is that 'We Are Outrageously Generous,' and we strive to live that out in everything we do," said Destiny Senior Pastor Stephen Chandler.

"We wanted to mark the celebration with an act of generosity that overshadowed the great blessing of the building we received. Acts 20:35 says that it is better to give than to receive and that has truly turned out to be the case," he added.

The church had purchased a Chevy Cruze, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Sentra, Ford Escape and a Dodge Journey from a used car dealership with congregational tithe money from the last year.

As many as 2,250 tickets were given away in advance of the worship services for the raffle that determined the recipients of the vehicles.

The church had asked people to write why they needed a car, and it received more than 60 submissions that Chandler described as "heartbreaking." One of the cars was given away to a couple raising four children, who needed the vehicle to drive their 20-year-old daughter to Pennsylvania for medical treatments for her liver and kidney failure.

The predominantly African-American church usually draws up to 1,100 people each week, but more than 2,100 attended the Sunday service for the grand opening of the new location.

Chandler had argued that the Bible teaches that giveaways are a reliable method to draw a crowd, citing the Biblical account of Jesus attracting large audiences when he distributed free loaves and fish.

Some critics, however, accused the church of engaging in bribery and materialism. But Chandler insisted that the giveaway was an "act of generosity" meant to "let our community know that we at Destiny Church loved them and more importantly, that God loved them."

"The greatest satisfaction at the end of each service was watching people leave, and them realizing that whether they won a car or not, there truly were no strings attached," he added.

Chandler noted that the church sets aside 10 percent of the tithes each year and give it to missions, outreach and nonprofit organizations. This year, the church decided to give back to its own congregation and even considered the idea of buying out a Chick-Fil-A and passing out free food.
home US Over 94,000 sign petition calling for national holiday honoring Billy Graham

More than 94,000 people have signed a petition that calls for a national holiday in honor of the late Rev. Billy Graham, who was laid to rest next to his wife last week at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The Change.org petition, which was initiated by user Kyle Siler, highlights Graham's contributions to the Christian world as well as his relationships with past U.S. presidents. It is addressed to President Donald Trump and both houses of Congress, as well as North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis, Richard Burr and Jerry Tillman.

"Mr. Graham preached the Gospel to more people in live audiences than anyone else in historyanearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries and territoriesathrough various meetings, including Mission World and Global Mission," the petition stated.

"Hundreds of millions more have been reached through television, video, film, and webcasts. Mr. Graham's counsel was sought by presidents, and his appeal in both the secular and religious arenas is evidenced by the wide range of groups that have honored him, including numerous honorary doctorates from many institutions in the U.S. and abroad," it continued.

The petition initially called for 75,000 signatures and had reached more than 65,000 as of Monday morning. It has been signed by more than 94,800 people as of March 7, with the goal of reaching 150,000.

Graham, who passed away on from natural causes at his family home in Montreat on Feb. 21, was only the fourth private citizen in U.S. history to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda, where the public was able to pay their last respects from Feb. 28 - March 1.

His funeral in Charlotte was attended by Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who were escorted by Graham's grandson, a Major in the United States Army, according to Fox 8.

The service, which was set in a revival tent at the foot of a 40-foot glass cross, featured tributes from Graham's five children, as well as performances from Christian recording artists such as Michael W. Smith and the Gaither Vocal Band.

The funeral was also attended by presidents of at least five entities of the Southern Baptist Conventions, namely Danny Akin of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chuck Kelley of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Paige Patterson of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, David Platt of the International Mission Board, and Thom Rainer of LifeWay Christian Resources.

The late evangelist's coffin, a plain, pine casket, was built by inmates at the Louisiana state prison.

Last week, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles declared March 2, 2018 as "Billy Graham Day," which is a "citywide expression of gratitude and appreciation" for the achievements of the popular evangelist who came to be known as "America's pastor."
home US Secularist group calls out Texas Sheriff for including Bible verse in departmental memo

A Wisconsin-based secularist group has sent a letter to a sheriff's office in Texas to complain about the inclusion of a Bible verse in a memo to officers.

Denton County Sheriff Tracy Murphree had released a memo last week following the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida directing officers to take immediate action in the event of an active shooter situation.

According to Christian News Network, the memo included the verse Romans 13:4 which states, "For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) said that it had been alerted by a local resident to the Murphree's use of the verse on the memo. The group asserted that the sheriff is not allowed under the Constitution to cite Scripture in his official correspondence because it "conveys government preference for religion over non-religion."

The group further contended that the Bible contradicts the Constitution, claiming that the latter document declares that governments are ordained by men and not God.

"The Constitution declares that governments are instituted by the people, not a god: 'We the People of the United States . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.' Romans 13:1 says precisely the opposite, 'the powers that be are ordained of God.' The two documents are opposed. You may have taken your oath on the Bible, but that oath was a promise to uphold the Constitution," Andrew Seidel, the group's director of Strategic Response, wrote.

Murphree's memo was released amid reports that the deputies of Broward County had remained outside and had taken cover behind their vehicles with pistols drawn as the mass shooting was taking place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14.

After releasing it to his staff, Murphree later posted it on social media, where it has been shared more than 14,000 times on Facebook and re-tweeted on Twitter more than 1,200 times.

The FFRF has urged Murphree to remove the Bible verse from the memo and has requested that the social media post be removed and reposted without the quotation.

This was not the first time that the FFRF had taken issue with Romans 13:4. In July 2016, the group sent a complaint letter to the police chief of Harper, Kansas, demanding the removal of a decal that read "Romans 13:4" on the upper right-hand corner of a municipality-owned patrol truck.

The secularist group contended that having a police vehicle endorse Christianity gives the impression that those who do not identify as Christians are "outsiders" or are not "full members" of the political community.

In response to the FFRF's demand, Harper police chief Doug Murphy and Mayor Scott Blubaugh sent a letter to the organization explaining that the decal has been removed.
home World Sexual abuse thrived in Church of England due to 'excessive emphasis' on forgiving predators, abuse inquiry told

The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse was told that the Church of England has failed to stop sexual abuse because it had prioritized its reputation over the safety of children and because it had put an "excessive emphasis" on forgiving predators.

On the first day of three weeks of hearings, the independent inquiry was told that the young victims were made to feel responsible for the abuse they suffered when they reported it to church staff.

The hearings being held this week are part of the review on how the Anglican Church handled allegations of sexual misconduct since the 1950s, beginning with the cases at the Diocese of Chichester.

The diocese has seen a series of sex abuse scandals, including those committed by former bishop Peter Ball, who was convicted of indecent assault for abusing 18 vulnerable men and boys over 20 years.

During the hearing, lead counsel Fiona Scolding lamented that priests in some parishes have resigned in an apparent attempt to avoid facing "criminal records and vetting and barring checks."

"You will hear of parishes where individuals resign rather than face such checks, not because they have perpetrated any criminal offending, but because they consider that it is a slur on their character to even be asked such questions," Scolding told the inquiry, as reported by The Telegraph.

The specialist abuse lawyer Richard Scorer, who represents 21 victims, said that the Church cannot be trusted to put its own house in order, noting that survivors had faced years of institutional cover-up and denial.

"As the established church, [it] claims to offer moral guidance and moral leadership to the country. Yet clerical sex abuse cases and the scandals associated with them powerfully undermine that claim," Scorer said, according to The Guardian.

"It must be clear now that if you want to abuse children, there is no more effective way of terrifying and silencing your victims than to claim to have God on your side," he added.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, his predecessor Rowan Williams and several senior bishops are expected to appear before the inquiry on behalf of the Church.

In a statement read to the inquiry by Welby's counsel, Nigel Giffin QC, the archbishop said that the Church's failures are "deeply shaming" and "a cause of horror and sadness."

Griffin said that much had changed for the better, but he acknowledged that there is more work to be done to prevent abuse in the Church.

In an apparent effort to prevent sexual abuse, the Church had increased its national spending on safeguarding from 1.6 million (US$2.2 million) in 2011 to 5.1 million (US$7.08 million) last year.
home World UK Christian leaders call on Israel to abolish taxation on church properties in Jerusalem

The heads of the Catholic and Anglican church in Britain are calling on the Israeli government to end the "punitive" taxation on church properties in Jerusalem to preserve the "Status Quo" of holy sites in the city.

The Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby have recently sent a joint letter to the Israeli ambassador to the UK to express their "deep concern" about the new taxation law that was aimed at collecting 130 million (US$180 million) from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In the letter, the church leaders lamented that the new taxation laws could cause "serious damage" to the "Christian presence in Jerusalem" as well as Christian families and Christian institutions, including schools and hospitals.

"It is our view that the measures being pressed in Jerusalem and in the Knesset are a clear and evident threat to the status quo. These violations of historic agreements risk undermining prospects for peaceful coexistence between communities, at a time of already heightened tensions," the letter stated, as reported by Jewish News.

The attempt to tax church-owned properties in Jerusalem was halted in late February after church leaders in charge of various Christian holy sites in the city decided to shut down the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for several days in protest of the tax decision. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is believed to be the site of the passion and burial of Christ, was reopened on Feb. 28.

Some observers have believed that the tax plan stemmed from a dispute between Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Israel's central government about the funding for the city, according to Crux. The mayor had stated that only church-owned properties that are not used for worship a such as hotels, restaurants and conference centers a would be taxed.

After Barkat decided to suspend the tax plan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu established a team on Feb. 27 to negotiate with representatives of the churches to resolve the issue.

"Israel is proud to be the only country in the Middle East where Christians and believers of all faiths have full freedom of religion and worship. Israel is home to a flourishing Christian community and welcomes its Christian friends from all over the world," said a statement from the office of the prime minister.

Netanyahu announced that the Jerusalem Municipality would suspend tax collection actions it had taken in recent weeks. The prime minister also stated that the work on a legislation that would allow the Israeli government to expropriate land in that were sold by Jerusalem churches to private real estate firms in recent years will also be suspended during the review of the tax plan.

The measure is supposedly aimed at protecting homeowners against the possibility that private companies will not extend their leases of land on which the residences stand. Jerusalem churches, which are major property owners in the city, have complained that the law would make it more difficult for them to find buyers for their land.
home World UN committee draws criticism for claiming pro-life laws are 'violence' against women

A United Nations committee has drawn criticism from a leading conservative group in the U.K. for claiming that pro-life laws in Northern Ireland constitute violence against women.

In February, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) issued a report claiming that thousands of women and girls in Northern Ireland faced "systematic violations of rights" because of a law that prevents them from obtaining abortion in the region.

CEDAW Vice-Chair Ruth Halperin-Kaddari pointed out that thousands of women are compelled to travel outside of Northern Ireland to obtain an abortion, which she said was "cruel, inhuman or degrading."

The report also argued that the U.K. was responsible for the alleged violations of rights because it has allowed Northern Ireland to have its own abortion restrictions.

Roger Kiska of the Christian Legal Center responded to the report on Friday by insisting that there is no international law that affirms the right to abortion.

"Treaty monitoring bodies, such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, go beyond their authority and mandate in making declarations like those directed towards Northern Ireland," Kiska stated.

"By inferring such obligations, the Committee is aggressively incurring on national sovereignty and unilaterally creating obligations which have been explicitly rejected by member states during the treaty drafting process. It is a sad day when self-important civil servants try to undermine the laws of a sovereign nation with the sole aim of advancing the culture of death," he continued.

According to The Guardian, abortion became legal in the U.K. in 1967 through The Abortion Act, but the law did not extend to Northern Ireland, where the procedure remains illegal in most cases except when a mother's life is threatened.

Halperin-Kaddari had contended that the criminalization of abortion in the region amounts to discrimination against women because it is a "denial of a service that only women need. And it puts women in horrific situations."

The CEDAW report recommended changing the law in Northern Ireland so that criminal charges would not be brought against women and girls who obtain abortion, as well as those who assist them. It also contended that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest and cases of fatal fetal impairment.

In June 2017, the U.K. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling declaring that the U.K. had to respect the "democratic decision of the people of Northern Ireland not to fund abortion services."

Last year, the pro-life group Both Lives Matter launched an advertisement campaign stating that as many as 100,000 people in Northern Ireland are alive today because of the restrictions on abortion. The advertisement was challenged by proponents of abortion, but it was approved the Advertising Standards Agency and it recently won the U.K.-wide PR award for the campaign.
home US Washington state legislature approves bill requiring insurers to cover abortion

The Washington state Senate has approved a measure that would require insurance companies that offer maternity care to also provide coverage for elective abortions and contraceptive drugs.

Senate Bill 6219, sponsored by state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D), was passed by the Senate by a 27a22 vote on Saturday after concurring on changes made in the House. An earlier version of the bill was approved by the Senate in January. It is now headed to the desk of Gov. Jay Inslee for his expected signature.

The measure, also called the Reproductive Parity Act, would also require any plans renewed or issued after Jan. 1, 2019 to cover contraceptives and procedures such as voluntary sterilization. It does not include exceptions for religious or moral objections, according to The Daily Caller.

Hobbs has consistently introduced the bill in the Legislature for the past five years, but it has faced stiff opposition from religious pro-life groups. In January, he had insisted that abortion coverage "should be part of basic women's primary health."

"No woman should have to seek or pay for an additional rider or co-pay or have any other means of delay or financial burden for this coverage," he said.

Sen. Annette Cleveland, a Democrat from Vancouver and chair of the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee, said that Hobbs' bill "has been a long time in coming and will make a big difference in many women's lives."

Peter Sartain, the archbishop of Seattle and Washington State Catholic Conference, had expressed his objections to the bill during the hearing on Tuesday.

"It would require contraception and abortion coverage while violating the constitutionally-protected conscious rights of individuals, churches, businesses and others," the archbishop said. "Maintaining the state's commitment to religious freedom is vital," he added.

Sartain had warned that the bill would be challenged in court if it passes, noting that Catholic Churches and morally obligated businesses and organizations simply cannot include coverage for contraception and abortion.

Hobbs stated that religious entities and non-profits with moral objections are already protected, adding that the bill would not eliminate already established religious and moral protections.

Seattle attorney Theresa Shremp noted that the measure does not include an opt-out method for those who have religious or moral objections to providing abortion and contraceptive coverage, but the current law already addresses religious exemptions.

Under the 2014 Supreme Court ruling, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, religious employers or nonprofits are not required to cover contraceptives in health plans and small business owners are also not required to include contraceptive coverage based on moral conviction.
home US West Virginia resolution declaring 'no Constitutional right to abortion' heads to November ballot

The West Virginia legislature has approved a resolution that aims to amend the state's Constitution to say that it does not recognize abortion as a "right."

Senate Joint Resolution 12, which was approved by the Senate in February, was passed by the state House of Delegates by a 73a25 vote on Monday. The measure, which does not require the approval of the governor, will be on the ballot in November.

"Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of abortion," the proposed Constitutional amendment states.

The resolution gained the support of several Democratic senators, including Brent Boggs (D-Braxton), Andrew Byrd (D-Kanawha), Kenneth Hicks (D-Wayne), Shirley Love (D-Fayette), Chad Lovejoy (D-Cabell), Dana Lynch (D-Webster), Ricky Moore (D-Raleigh), Ralph Rodighiero (D-Logan), and Robert Thompson (D-Wayne).

Supporters of the resolution said that they intend to undo a 1993 West Virginia Supreme Court decision that overturned a state prohibition on Medicaid coverage for abortions. The justices had argued that the law discriminated against poor women.

"This would allow the Legislature to essentially override that decision without any ambiguity," Sen. Robert Karnes stated previously. "This will make it absolutely clear that it's constitutional for those things to pass," he added.

According to Charleston Gazette-Mail, proponents of the measure also noted that they want to clarify that state lawmakers have the right to restrict abortion.

Federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, but in West Virginia, it currently funds abortions that are deemed "medically necessary," meaning for a woman's well-being.

Opponents of the resolution expressed concern that it does not contain any exceptions. But supporters pointed out that while the resolution does not have any exceptions, the overturned law that they want to reinstate does.

The state law contained exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal anomalies or when the mother's life is in danger.

The West Virginia chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed the proposed Constitutional amendment, arguing that women can resort to unsafe ways to end their pregnancies at home when abortions are illegal or highly regulated.

Wanda Franz, president of West Virginians for Life, expressed support for the resolution and said that her group would be launching a campaign to encourage people to vote in favor of the measure.

"I don't know what our strategy is going to be. West Virginians for Life is a well-established grassroots group here in the state. We will be working with our chapters to encourage them to get out the vote," she said.
Belgian Catholic baptisms in major decline amid rise of evangelicals and Muslims

For the first time, fewer than 50 per cent of Belgian children were baptised as Catholics last year, according to figures from the Belgian Bishops Conference in cooperation with the University of Louvain and reported by Evangelical Focus.

The figures show that since 2010, the decline of baptisms has been the sharpest in the Brussels diocese (32 per cent) and in Antwerp (31 per cent).

A spokesman of the Bishops Conference, Geert De Kerpel, acknowledged the drop, saying: 'Like any other organisation, we would prefer a growth rather than a decline, but we will not start a promotional campaign.

'In the society we see an evolution from a church to which people belonged automatically to a group of people that choose consciously to be part of the church. When people are really convicted they specifically decide to have their children baptised and they will stimulate them to belong to the church.'

According to Evangelical Focus, there has been a 'growing secularisation of Belgium's society' which has seen church attendance gradually dropping to less than 10 per cent.

Evangelical Focus added that in contrast to the Catholic Church, 'Belgium witnesses a growth of evangelical churches and Muslim communities. The increase of the number of Muslims is mainly due to natural growth and immigration. But newcomers from other countries are also the most important cause for evangelical churches to grow: many of the new communities have their origins in African countries; in particular, Christians arriving in Belgium from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ghana establish churches in the larger cities.'
Britain First leaders jailed for 'hostility' towards Muslims

The leader and deputy leader of far-right political group Britain First have been jailed for religiously-motivated assault and 'hostility' towards Muslims.

Paul Golding, 36, and Jayda Fransen, 32 had been arrested for targeting and harassing people during a gang-rape trial. Both were handed jail sentences  Fransen for 36 weeks and Golding for 18 weeks  yesterday at Folkestone Magistrates' Court, according to BBC News.

Seven charges of harassment had faced the pair, but three were thrown out, with Fransen ultimately found guilty of three and Golding of one.

Golding and Fransen were arrested last year on charges of harassment during a rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court, in which three Muslim men and a teenager were ultimately jailed.

Judge Justin Barron said the leaders had 'demonstrated hostility' towards Muslims and Islam.

'I have no doubt it was their joint intention to use the facts of the case [in Canterbury] for their own political ends,' he said.

'It was a campaign to draw attention to the race, religion and immigrant background of the defendants.'

Last May the pair had publicly targeted a pizza takeaway in Ramsgate, east Kent, banging on the shop windows and shouting 'foreigner' and 'paedophile'. The abuse was filmed and shared online by Britain First, while defamatory leaflets were posted around the local neighbourhood.

In another shared video, Fransen was seen visiting the house of trial defendant Tahani Rahmani, and shouting through the front door: 'Come out and face me you disgusting rapist, come on.'

The Crown Prosecution Service said: 'In each case, they instead targeted innocent members of the public.'

In trial Fransen said she was not a racist and had targeted those accused of sex offences.

She interrupted Judge Barron in court, saying: 'This is a very sad day for British justice. Everything I did was for the children of this country and they are worth it.'

Britain First gained global prominence last year after three of Fransen's anti-Muslim/immigrant social media posts were retweeted on Twitter by US President Donald Trump, a move for which he received widespread international condemnation. Fransen had posted in response: 'GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP! GOD BLESS AMERICA!'
Faith schools row: Rees-Mogg hits out at Rowan Williams, Richard Dawkins over admissions cap

Conservative MPs have hit back at Rowan Williams, Richard Dawkins and dozens of other public figures who joined forces to argue a cap on admissions to faith schools must not be lifted.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is hailed as Tory party members' favourite to be leader, said the 'main effect' of the cap was to block new Catholic schools from opening so 'denying thousands of pupils the opportunity of a place in a diverse and nurturing environment'.

'Open, inclusive, diverse and integrated schools are to be welcomed, and existing Catholic schools provide a very good model for this,' he said in a letter to the Telegraph also signed by Sir Edward Leigh, MP for Gainsborough, Martin Vickers, MP for Cleethorpes, and Sir Bill Cash, MP for Stone.

It comes after a prominent letter signed by Dr Williams, Andrew Copson, the chief executive of Humanists UK and Richard Dawkins among others said scrapping the cap would be 'deleterious to social cohesion and respect' and 'allows schools to label children at the start of their lives with certain beliefs and then divide them up on that basis'.

The current law states that new faith schools must award 50 per cent of places to pupils irrespective of their faith. However the new education secretary Damian Hinds, who is a Catholic, is rumoured to be considering lifted the cap.

The topic is highly controversial as Catholics say that because their schools are over-subscribed Catholic pupils are turned away simply on the basis of their faith.

'Canon law forbids Catholic bishops from turning away Catholic pupils solely on the basis of their faith,' the letter in Thursday's Telegraph said. 'The combination of the cap and popularity of Catholic schools among people of other faiths, however, means that the Catholic Church is required to discriminate on exactly this basis. As such, it has been impossible to open new free schools.'

The Tory MPs letter says: 'To argue that the operator of the most diverse existing schools cannot be allowed to open new ones for fears they will not be diverse is entirely illogical.

'Advocates for diversity in education would do better to support the initiative to open more high-quality schools serving many of the most disadvantaged in our society. Scrapping the cap is the simplest and easiest way of achieving this.'

It is in reply to the letter from Dr Williams earlier this week, which was also signed by 70 other public figures, and said: 'The Government rightly identifies the promotion of mutual understanding and tolerance for those of different religions and beliefs as one of the most important roles for schools. As we are all aware, children are blind to the differences and immune to the prejudices that so often divide society. The duty of the education system... should not be to highlight and entrench such differences.'

The Catholic Church is strongly opposed to the cap and has said that it would not establish any new schools as long as it was in place, arguing it has a duty to educate Catholics.

But the Church of England said that the cap did not affect its work. Nigel Genders, its chief education officer, said: 'Neither the removal nor the retention of the faith cap will impact on our existing schools or any new ones we open.'
Google Pixel 3 release date, specs rumors: Next flagship smartphone to boast iris scanner

The next-gen Google Pixel smartphone is not expected to arrive until October this year, but rumors are already about regarding its possible new design and features. The search engine giant is probably looking for ways to introduce the Google Pixel 3 with much hype, just like how Apple's iPhone X flagship was received by the public upon its launch. According to the latest reports, the Google Pixel 3 could use an advanced iris scanner to match the Face ID feature of the iPhone X.

As reported by Value Walk, the Google Pixel 3 could implement iris scanning technology to unlock the smartphone. To note, the Pixel 3 will not be the first device to feature an iris scanner as the same biometric sensor was already introduced by OnePlus in 2017. Likewise, Samsung's recent flagship handsets such as the Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S9 have also incorporated iris scanning.

Nevertheless, having an iris scanning feature in the Google Pixel 3 is a great development, given that its current technology is not reliable enough to be used for security purposes in Android apps. It appears that Google is the only tech firm that could make this possible in Android-based devices. The Pixel 3's advanced iris scanner will prove that this feature is reliable enough to be entrusted for the phone's sensitive information. To deliver this technology, Google is said to enter a partnership with Fingerprints, a company that has already manufactured a number of iris scanners in different mobile devices.

Earlier rumors suggest that the Google Pixel 3 will catch up with the trend among high-end smartphones. Specifically, the Pixel 3 is expected to sport an all-screen display with an edge-to-edge design and slimmer bezels. The handset's display will also be made taller with its 18:9 aspect ratio. The Google Pixel 2 was also thought to boast a dual-lens camera, which did not materialize. However, the Pixel 3 could be the one to feature this camera setup. The smartphone was also tipped to arrive in three variants later this year, namely Albacore, Blueline and Crosshatch.
Honda's Urban EV goes on sale in in 2019

Last year, Japanese automaker Honda's Urban EV Concept car made waves in the Frankfurt Motor Show. The Urban EV will make an appearance again in this year's Geneva Motor Show, with Honda announcing that it plans to begin rolling out units in 2019. However, the electric Urban EV will only initially be available in Europe, and Honda has made no mention of whether or not the car will be available in other markets.

Despite its simple, retro design, the Urban EV turned heads in Frankfurt last year. At first glance, the car looked like it rolled in from the 70's. It was a small two-door hatchback that can comfortably fit four people inside. A look at the car's interior, however, revealed how Honda molded modern technological functionality with an unassuming retro-inspired exterior.

The car's interior revealed design details such as a square steering wheel, very few buttons and knobs, a wooden dashboard, and a very wide touch screen. The lack of the usual controls indicates that drivers will likely need to talk to the car to give commands, which means that artificial intelligence will likely play a huge role in the Urban EV.

Honda's concept car is set to appear once again at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, which runs from March 8 to March 18. Design-wise, not much seems new. There is also not much information about how the car is powered, but what is clear so far is that the car is likely to run on electricity.

However, the engineering behind the car's electric power is still unknown, possibly because Honda may make changes to the Urban EV's electric platform between now and the time that units actually roll out.

The Japanese automobile giant also revealed that it will begin taking orders for the Urban EV in early 2019, with the goal of launching the finished products in late 2019.

While the design features of the Honda Urban EV piqued interest, not all of them will make it to the finished product. After all, the Urban EV shown in the motor shows is only a concept car. Many of the design features are likely to change or disappear entirely in the manufacturing process due to practical and legal considerations.

Unfortunately, the car will only be available in Europe, at least for now. Honda remains silent on if and when the car will be available in the United States, Canada, and other territories. It is possible that Honda has decided against releasing the model in the United States since there may not be much demand for a car that is already inches smaller than the smallest car currently on the U.S. market. However, the car is likely to fit in well with Europe's narrower streets.
'Outlander' season 4 spoilers: New set photos tease Brianna's time travel, Frasers' reunion

Sophie Skelton's Brianna was not seen much in the second half of "Outlander" season 3 as the show shifted back from the 1940s to the 18th century. However, things may finally change come season 4, if the latest set photos are anything to go by.

The actress was recently spotted in "Outlander" season 4's Denure, Scotland set and she was not just in a period outfit, Skelton was also seen filming with Steven Cree, aka the show's Ian Murray. Sporting a faux fur-lined hooded brown coat and a full-length midnight green plaid skirt, Skelton is pictured seemingly holding Murray's hands as he stands with a green sock and wooden stump.

There are no available details at the moment as to which episodes they are filming. However, the photos clearly indicate that Brianna will be traveling through the stones back to the 18th century at some point in "Outlander" season 4. With her parents currently in the Amercian colonies, it is likely she will meet her uncle Ian first.

According to International Business Times, the two look like they are traveling on a ship to reunite with Brianna's parents, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan), as well as Ian's son, Young Ian (John Bell), who was kidnapped by some pirates last season. This would mark the first time Brianna meets her biological father, following her parents' separation prior to her birth.

"Outlander" book series author Diana Gabaldon previously teased the big reunion by sharing an excerpt of the meeting on Twitter. It turns out Brianna is hesitant to call Jamie "Daddy," since that endearment belonged to her late adoptive father, Frank (Tobias Menzies). Thankfully, Jamie suggests she can call him the shorter version "Da" instead."

"Outlander" season 4 is expected to return on Starz later this fall with new characters including Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speelers), and the wolf hybrid Rollo. Check out the first teaser below.
Saudi crown prince vows to promote religious freedom in meeting with Welby

Saudi Arabia's crown prince has vowed to promote religious freedom in a private meeting with the archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace today.

Mohammed bin Salman is on a three-day visit to the United Kingdom and yesterday had lunch with the Queen and dinner with Prince Charles and Prince William.

In an hour-long private meeting with Justin Welby, described as 'cordial and honest', the crown prince 'made a strong commitment to promote the flourishing of those of different faith traditions and to interfaith dialogue within the Kingdom and beyond,' according to a statement from Lambeth Palace.

The 32-year-old Mohammed bin Salman is considered the presumptive heir to the 82-year-old King Salman and is seeking to promote his reforms moving Saudi Arabia's economy away from a reliance on oil.

The meeting at Lambeth Palace was also attended by one of the Church of England's first senior female bishops, Christine Hardman, the bishop of Newcastle, and Nick Baines, the bishop of Leeds.

During the discussion Welby pressed concerns over restrictions on Christian worship in Saudi Arabia where converting away from Islam is punishable to death and non-Islamic places of worship are banned.

He 'highlighted the importance for leaders of all faiths to support freedom of religion or belief, drawing on the experience of the UK', Lambeth Palace's statement said.

Welby also 'voiced his distress' about the ongoing conflict in Yemen where is fuelled by Saudi-led airstrikes and has been described by the United Nations as 'the world's worst humanitarian disaster for 50 years'. The war has killed an estimated 10,000 people with 8.3 million people depending on food aid and 400,000 children have life-threatening levels of malnutrition.

Welby asked 'that all that is possible be done to alleviate the suffering of civilian populations and to seek an end to the conflict'.

The persecution charity Open Doors ranks Saudi Arabia as the 12th worst country in the world to be a Christian.

'Wahhabism, a strict interpretation of Islam, dominates life in Saudi Arabia, and all Saudis are considered Muslims,' Open Doors said on its website. 'The legal system is based on Sharia (Islamic law), and it is illegal to evangelise Muslims; conversion to another religion is punishable by death. There are no church buildings at all, and house churches are raided; Christians risk arrest, imprisonment, lashing, deportation and sometimes torture.'

In his meeting with Welby, Mohammed bin Salman studied early texts from the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths held in the Lambeth Palace library.

'The Archbishop appreciated the opportunity to engage in this important conversation at Lambeth Palace, especially following the crown prince's visit with Pope Tawadros II on Monday at St Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo,' a statement said.
Live like a Rockefeller  Near Abiquiu, New Mexico by Georgia OKeeffe

Elizabeth Beaman, Senior Director of American Paintings, explains how this 1931 painting links OKeeffe with the founder of the Taos arts colony, an influential gallerist and the co-founder of MoMA

Georgia OKeeffes Near Abiquiu, New Mexico, painted in 1931, links four of the most influential women in 20th-century art: OKeeffe herself, arguably the most celebrated female artist of the 20th century; Mabel Dodge Luhan, whose Taos arts colony hosted the likes of D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Ansel Adams; Edith Halpert, whose Downtown Gallery showcased, in addition to OKeeffe, Arthur Dove, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler and Jack Levine; and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, co-founder of MoMA. OKeeffe had first visited New Mexico in 1929, two years before she created Near Abiquiu  staying at the ranch owned by Mabel Dodge Luhan, who is described by Elizabeth Beaman, Senior Director of American Paintings in New York, as a sort of Gertrude Stein of the New Mexico artists circle. From 1913 to 1916, Luhan had presided over one of the famous salons in American history  her Wednesday Evenings at 23 Fifth Avenue in New York served as a gathering spot for those who supported avant-garde ideas in the arts, politics and society. The topics debated ranged from the ideas of Sigmund Freud to the virtues of free love. OKeeffe was immediately taken with New Mexicos seemingly untouched vistas of deserts and mountains, and their particular light. You know I never feel at home in the East like I do out here, she wrote. And finally feeling in the right place again  I feel like myself  and I like it.

Near Abiquiu expresses one of the qualities OKeeffe most loved about New Mexico: the ability to see clearly over great distances. OKeeffe has really focused here on the way the clear New Mexico light hits the mountain ranges, and shes included a small sliver of blue sky across the top, says Beaman. The surface is very rich and textural, particularly where two different pigments meet, adds the specialist. Rather than mixing or layering pigments, as many other artists would, OKeeffe deliberately placed them side by side, creating beautiful ridges in the surface. The young David Rockefeller had visited New Mexico three years before OKeeffe, in the summer of 1926. It was hardly a common journey at the time, remarks Beaman. Together with his parents, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and his brothers Laurance and Winthrop, David celebrated his 11th birthday in Taos in the midst of a 10,000-mile, two-month railway trip across the Southwest.

Near Abiquiu, New Mexico on display in the private office of David Rockefeller at Rockefeller Center  2018 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Live like a Rockefeller  The Rivals by Diego Rivera

Virgilio Garza, Head of Latin American Paintings in New York, looks at the colourful story of this work by the great Mexican artist  commissioned by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller in 1931, and later among her earliest gifts to Peggy and David

At first glance, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and the Mexican artist Diego Rivera couldnt have been more different. She was the daughter of a prominent Republican senator and had married into one of Americas most famous capitalist families; he was a devoted member of Mexicos Communist party, who had visited Moscow before his first U.S. mural commission in San Francisco. Abby, however, was a huge admirer of Riveras art. Hed developed a reputation as one of his generations leading modern artists, and she knew all about his triumphs as a muralist in his homeland (in buildings such as the Ministry of Education in Mexico City), not to mention his mural for the Pacific Stock Exchange Tower in San Francisco. She purchased a number of Riveras oil paintings, sketches and watercolours. Her first purchase in 1929 was May Day Parade, a Rivera sketchbook (now in the collection at MoMA), which he had completed on a trip to Moscow. In 1931, in her capacity as co-founder and trustee of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Abby invited Rivera for a solo exhibition at the institution, making him only the second artist, after Matisse, to receive that honour. It is likely that Mexico had been on her mind for decades, ever since her first trip to the country in 1903. Rivera embodied everything that Abby and Alfred Barr, MoMAs first Director, were looking for in terms of the museums programming: he was both a modernist genius with a towering body of work and as Mexicos leading muralist, he was the foremost proponent of a genuine art movement from the Americas to the world. On arrival in New York, Rivera paid a visit to the Rockefellers Manhattan home with his wife, the artist Frida Kahlo. He was a very imposing and charismatic figure: tall and weighing three hundred pounds, Abbys son, David Rockefeller, recalled in later life.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), The Rivals, painted in 1931. 60 x 50 in (152.4 x 127 cm). Estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000. This lot is offered in The Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller: Art of the Americas, Evening Sale on 9 May at Christies in New York  Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / DACS 2018

Rivera brought with him a new canvas, titled The Rivals, which Abby had commissioned and which he had painted in a makeshift studio aboard the steamship, the SS Morro Castle, en route from Mexico. The painting depicts a traditional festival from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca known as Las Velas, a colourful celebration in observance of local patron saints and of the natural bounties of spring. Its undoubtedly one of Riveras masterpieces, says Virgilio Garza, Head of Latin American Paintings at Christies. Compared with his murals  which are epic in scale and content, with sweeping vistas and narratives that are often ideologically or historically driven  this easel painting is equally monumental in presence, yet devoid of Riveras politics. Its a much more intimate scene focused on regional traditions, and the brushwork is deliberately looser. Others have praised the rich combination of bright colours, reminiscent of Matisse (whom Rivera knew from the decade hed spent in Paris, between 1911 and 1921) but also, more pertinently, reflecting the vivid hues evident across Mexico: from its flora to its architecture. And then theres his modern conception of space through the use of multiple planes of colour that recall the formal effects of synthetic Cubism, says Garza. Forms and figures are synthesised and reduced to their essential elements. The viewers gaze recedes in stages, from the men in the foreground, to the brightly dressed women under the hanging papel picado. Riveras brilliant composition of intersecting planes creates a cinematic narrative.

I had always found [Rivera] to be a very sympathetic person, and I liked his painting  David Rockefeller

The Rivals was as popular with Abby as Riveras sell-out MoMA retrospective proved to be with New Yorks public. In 1932, she approached the artist about another project: completing a mural for the lobby of the RCA Building, the centrepiece of the Rockefeller Center, her husband, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.s new complex in Midtown Manhattan. Riveras idea was a fresco on the twin themes of human cooperation and scientific development, and he sent Abby a planned sketch of it along with a letter saying, I assure you that I shall try to do for the Rockefeller Center  and especially for you, Madame  the best of all the work I have done up to this time. In the process of painting the mural Man at the Crossroads, Rivera made several changes to his original sketch that would have fateful consequences. Chief among these was the addition of Lenins features into the face of a labourer. When news of this change in the mural reached Nelson Rockefeller, Davids older brother, he asked Rivera to substitute the late Soviet leader for another figure. The painter, despite many attempts to persuade him, refused. Equally vexing to the Rockefeller family was the depiction of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. on the left side of the mural drinking among a group of men and cavorting with women of questionable repute. The latter was a striking image given the familys devout religious views and their abstinence from drinking and smoking, as well as the Rockefellers firm support of U.S. Prohibition-era laws. With no compromise reached, Rivera was dismissed, and although he was paid in full the mural was destroyed. The mural was quite brilliantly executed, wrote David Rockefeller in Memoirs in 2002, but not appropriate. Rivera would go on to recreate Man at the Crossroads, in modified form as Man, Controller of the Universe, on the walls of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. Here again, Rivera depicted John D. Rockefeller, Jr. clutching a martini amid scenes of gambling and excess, while the other side featured workers and various Communist leaders.

The Rivals took pride of place in the living room at Ringing Point, Peggy and David Rockefellers home in Maine  Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / DACS 2018

Despite all these events, Abby and her sons Nelson and David remained admirers until the end. She would donate many of the Rivera works she owned to MoMA, although The Rivals was one piece she held on to. As a sign of how highly she valued it, Abby gave it to David and his wife Peggy McGrath as a wedding present in 1940. They, in turn, would give the painting pride of place, for decades, in the living room of their summer residence, Ringing Point, in Maine. David Rockefellers interest in Latin America and its art and culture spanned many decades. In January 1946, after completing his military service in the Second World War and before he started work at Chase Bank, he and Peggy decided to take a second honeymoon. They settled on Mexico as the destination for their six-week holiday. This was our first direct exposure to Latin America, and we were very much taken with what we saw, David wrote years later. We were especially fascinated by the remarkable pre-Columbian monuments and artefacts, as well as by the charm of much contemporary Mexican painting and folk art. He recounted how keen they were to see the famous Mexican frescoes of Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City and Cuernavaca. We especially wanted to see Riveras murals, since I had met Rivera with my mother when he first came to New York in 1931, he recalled. I had always found him to be a very sympathetic person, and I liked his painting.

As chairman of The Americas Society, David was afforded many opportunities to appreciate the diverse art and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean
Marking International Womens Day, the Paris-based specialist shares her discoveries about the role of women in European sculpture through the centuries, illuminating the careers of two in particular: Suzanne de Court and Marie-Anne Collot

I couldn't do my job without books. When I am in front of an object, I dont always know where it is from or who made it. Mine is a very broad field, and very rich: European sculpture and works of art from the 10th to the mid-19th century, and in all sorts of materials  marble, ivory, coral, enamel. So I cant just open one big catalogue raisonne and  voila  find everything I need. That means I spend a lot of time in libraries, in museums and archives. Without recourse to books, my speciality would be non-existent.

France is le grenier  the attic where sculptures lie hidden. I find so many exceptional works when we go out on valuations. Lots of historic collections of sculpture are based in France. That means there is more demand for European sculpture here than in some other countries. At the same time, there is work that can be bought for prices from two or three thousand euros up into the millions.

Discoveries come from knowledge. Sometimes you go to a house to look at a particular piece, but when you arrive you find that it is not so great. Then, sitting right next to it, there is an amazing work of art. A few years ago, I was at an English country house and I looked in a cupboard. There, among lots of little pieces, there was a bronze bird that I immediately recognised as a Giambologna. If I hadnt been familiar with the kind of model that he used to do at a specific time in his life, I would have missed it.

The more you look around, the more likely it is you will encounter happy coincidences. My parents told me: wherever you go, visit the local art museum and explore the church. If your job is your life, as mine is, then looking around and reading around paves the way for great coincidences. At a valuation in France a few years ago, I saw a bronze figure of a walking warrior. I thought to myself: I saw the model for that in the Rijksmuseum two weeks ago. It was by Willem van Tetrode  and the client had no idea. We sold it at auction for $409,000.

So much about women sculptors of the past remains hidden. Women artists from the 10th century onwards suffer from a lack of visibility and a lack of study. Its probable that there were quite a few women working, but we don't know who they were.
Lone Star College and community officials celebrated the ribbon cutting ceremony of LSC - Kingwood's new Process Technology Center in Generation Park on March 6.

LSC - Kingwood established the Process Technology program in January to prepare students for careers as process technologists and operators in the petrochemical, plastics, food and beverage and pharmaceutical industry.
MAN Diesel & Turbo has inked a deal to consolidate its Houston-area locations to a new North America headquarters building with room to expand in the Twinwood business park west of Katy.

The 137,434 square-foot campus, to be owned by Houston-based Welcome Group, marks the first deal in the 650-acre Twinwood business park, the developers announced. The park is south of Interstate 10 between Woods Road and FM 1489 in the Brookshire area.

Twinwood business park is part of a larger proposed development designed to include residential, hospitality, higher education and offices on property owned by Houston businessman Putera Sampoerna.

KDW will build the campus, which includes 105,309 square feet of service shop space and 32,125 square feet of office space. Construction will begin in the second quarter and take a year to complete.

"Our goal has been to bring our two Houston area operations under one roof," MAN Diesel & Turbo managing director Tony Ruegger said in an announcement.

"We're certainly looking forward to expanding our equipment servicing capabilities in Twinwood."

The Augsburg, Germany-based company makes marine propulsion systems used in some of the world's largest containers ships and turbomachinery such as compressors and steam turbines used in oil and gas and chemical processing. The new building will consolidate MAN Diesel & Turbo's locations in Houston and Deer Park.

RELATED: German firms boost manufacturing comeback in Houston

"Our pre-construction group and in-house architectural team worked with MAN to program its entire campus from the inside out with future phases that will eventually double the square footage of this initial phase," KDW president and CEO Keith Dalton said.

Twinwood aims to attract research and development, distribution and light manufacturing companies.

"The property offers global companies a convenient west Houston location with immediate access to Interstate 10," Twinwood president Glenn Plowman said.

Bob Berry and Jacob Bravo of Avison Young represented MAN Diesel & Turbo in the lease. Welcome Realty Advisors represented Welcome Group. Katie Sandoval arranged acquisition and construction financing through Hancock Whitney Bank.

Vince Yokom of the Waller County Economic Development Partnership and Waller County Judge Trey Duhon assisted with the deal. The new facility is expected to employ 142 workers.
Half a century into an illustrious career, with its queens and detectives and other kaleidoscopic women, one thing still eluded Helen Mirren.

"I've always wanted to be in an Italian movie," she said recently, recalling her lack of fascination with the American films she saw growing up in Essex, England. "What alerted to me the potential of film as an art form was Italian film."

So when the director Paolo Virzi asked her to star in "The Leisure Seeker" - his version of an American road-trip movie, opening in select cities Friday, but Houston later - Mirren climbed into a recreational vehicle with Donald Sutherland in the driver's seat and an Italian crew in the back, and set off in the sweltering Georgia heat.

Mirren and Sutherland play Ella and John Spencer, a long-married couple who defy their adult children by absconding in August 2016, during the early days of the presidential campaign, for one last journey in their decrepit RV. Destination: Key West, Fla., where John, a retired English professor whose failing mind clings hard to beloved literary quotations, can visit the home of Ernest Hemingway.

"I like being a foreigner in this country and, in a way, this film is very gentle and loving but as foreign as I on a certain kind of America," Mirren, 72, said in a call from Los Angeles. Later this year, she plays Mother Ginger in Disney's "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms," alongside Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Morgan Freeman as Drosselmeyer. She recently spoke about road trips, playing Donald Trump in a movie and wanting to be younger.

Q: This is a road-trip movie, but also something more.

A: I think it's about love. So many movies are about love, but they're about the beginning of love or sometimes about the middle of love. This is about the end of a love story - the trials and challenges of the happily-ever-after bit. It's much more difficult than the beginning.

Q: The Clinton and Trump campaigns each get a nod in the film. A Vanity Fair headline from November suggested that you'd like to play President Donald Trump.

A: Oh no, I didn't say that. I think I may well have said that's an interesting character to play. These people who want to make that kind of a mark upon the world are always incredibly flawed and also incredibly self-delusional. They have to be.

Q: You called him Shakespearean.

A: Whether it's "Timon of Athens" or "Macbeth" or "Coriolanus" or "Henry V," Shakespeare was brilliant at looking at the public figure, and then immediately underneath that human being full of insecurities or failures or paranoia or delusion. So on that level, I think all of these people are Shakespearean. (Pause) I don't think Barack (Obama) was a Shakespearean. I have to say I look at Barack with very, very romantic eyes. (Laughs) Maybe he's Romeo.

Q: Have you ever taken a road trip?

A: Yes, my husband (the director Taylor Hackford) and I drove across the South from Natchez (Miss.) to Charleston (S.C.) in a van. We were buying furniture for our house in Los Angeles, so the van got more and more filled as we drove with less and less room for us. We stayed in bed-and-breakfasts, and I learned about all-you-can-eat buffets - fried chicken, mac and cheese, grits, collard greens, total soul food. That was a fabulous trip.

Q: Do people take road trips in Europe?

A: I think it is an American invention, actually. I was astounded when I first came to America how people would get in the car and drive for five hours without even thinking about it. I think 50 percent of Americans don't own a passport because there's an awful lot of America to see. There's a ubiquitousness that Europeans find quite difficult to deal with, the fact that you can drive for thousands of miles into a place that looks exactly the same, with a Marshalls, Staples, T.J. Maxx, Home Depot. But I have yet to go to a part of America that is not unbelievably beautiful - New Mexico, the Smoky Mountains, South Dakota, the redwood forests, Yosemite, the bayou.

Q: You're a longtime Hollywood sex symbol. What do you make of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements?

A: It's an amazing moment, isn't it? I've never wanted to be younger than I am, but the only thing that makes me think, God, I wish I was 18 now, is that 18-year-olds now are coming into a very different world. People often ask, "What would you say to your younger self?" And I say I would teach my younger self to say, "(Expletive) off" with more alacrity and confidence, and more often. I think (the movement) will have its flaws and its backlash. The whole uncomfortable, wonderful-but-weird relationship between men and women has got a lot more unraveling to do. But I'm thrilled the journey has started. Honestly, I thought it was something I went through when I was young but that it was over. I had no idea. I'm an idiot.
A second flood-related letter writing campaign is up-and-running in an effort to promote flood mitigation measures for the Lake Houston area.

During the Kingwood Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, March 6, Houston Council Member Dave Martin encouraged the hundreds in attendance to participate in the Plea to See Lake Houston campaign asking Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Land Commissioner George P. Bush to visit the Lake Houston area before hurricane season to see the continued effects of Hurricane Harvey.

The campaign is a part of the Recover Lake Houston initiative headed by the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce to bring attention and action in response to the needs of the Lake Houston area after Hurricane Harvey.

One of the major issues outlined by campaign organizers is the sand and siltation built up in the San Jacinto River, which Martin said greatly diminished its capacity.

As the rainy season and hurricane season draw nearer, an incident that occurred on Monday, Feb. 26, increased anxieties of some Lake Houston area residents who fear it won't take another major rain event to flood.

"Last week we had less than an inch-and-a-half of rain and we had the San Jacinto River coming out of its banks already. I don't know if we can afford a five-inch rain" said Mark Mitchell, Kingwood resident and Lake Houston Economic Development Partnership president.

Martin said seeing the sand and siltation build-up firsthand has had a profound effect on him and others who have traversed the San Jacinto by boat and helicopter.

"We're inviting the Governor and Lt. Governor (and Land Commissioner) to come with us," Martin said. "We'll put them in a helicopter, we'll put them in a boat and we'll take them for a tour of what we see around the Lake Houston area. It's an eye-opening experience for everyone who's seen it."

The Plea to See Lake Houston campaign asks residents to send a signed, pre-formatted letter available on the Recover Lake Houston website, to each of the three officials.

The letter addressing Abbott states, "We feel to best understand the desperation of the residents and businesses that have been unable to recover, you must tour and see for yourself the massive sand deposits in our waterways and the devastated state of our area which we still live and work in more than six months after Harvey."

The letter also asks the officials to come witness the community's continued plight to recover, including the many homeowners and businesses that have yet to return to their houses and stores.

Hurricane Harvey dropped more water on the Houston region than any other location in the nation's history, impacting thousands of homes and businesses, said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during the town hall meeting.

Of all the city's areas, Turner said the Kingwood area businesses have had the hardest time coming back after the storm.

"We do want the businesses to come back to Kingwood," Turner said. "Some, I'm sure are waiting to see what's going to take place  should they make the investment, run the risk of making the investment, and if they do, what's going to be different than in the past?"

This new plea campaign launched on the heels of Recover Lake Houston's Plea for Three letter writing campaign, which recently ended, yielding what campaign organizers say is progress in terms of flood mitigation measures.

"Our first plea was to make sure that we had representation so that we were a part of the decision-making process at the San Jacinto River Authority," Martin said. "Mission accomplished."

Gov. Abbott appointed two Kingwood residents, Mark Micheletti and Kaaren Cambio, to the SJRA board in February.

Another aspect of the Plea for Three campaign was a request for funding to dredge the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston, in addition to enacting harsher regulations and enforcement of sand mining operations, which campaign organizers attribute to lowering the river's capacity and increasing the risk of flooding.

According to an update by the Lake Houston Chamber, "Governor Abbott has indicated Lake Houston will be included in flood mitigation plans with funding from the federal government." The update goes on to say that the Chamber, Lake Houston EDP and Rep. Dan Huberty have started looking into sand mining operation legislation and that the TCEQ has since handed out citations and fines for sand mining operations and plans to conduct surveillance of operations again in the spring.

The final Plea for Three ask was for the reduction of the water level in Lake Conroe to increase the capacity it can hold before releasing during a rain event.

"We still need that," Martin said. "That is an important ingredient as we move into rainy season because I remember 2015 and 17 we had the Tax Day and we had Memorial Day floods and then we had Harvey. So we need some relief before the rainy season comes upon us."

The Montgomery County Commissioners Court passed a resolution on Feb. 27 in opposition to a permanent reduction of Lake Conroe water levels. However, new SJRA appointee, Micheletti, said during the town hall meeting that the SJRA board is considering the possibility of a temporary lowering of the lake level.

"We are exploring and having discussions about temporarily lowering the lake during the 2018 hurricane season, or if we get into a situation where we have an event where there's a storm developing in the gulf or coming into the gulf," Micheletti said.
Southwest Airlines is celebrating Louisiana by emblazoning a Boeing 737-700 with an artist's rendition of the Louisiana state flag.

Dubbed the "Louisiana One," the plane is decorated with a giant pelican spreading its wings against a blue background. The engines of the plane feature baby pelicans chirping from a nest.
The University of Houston inched closer to offering a medical degree on Thursday as regents approved a proposal for a doctoral program in the field.

Now, the university needs outside approval for the degree  from accreditors, Texas' higher education coordinating board and state lawmakers wary of doling out cash.

"We're hopeful and optimistic, but it's not a slam dunk," said Stephen Spann, a longtime health-care educator and administrator tapped as the medical school's founding dean. He called the proposal "sound."

UH's proposal indicates that the college would focus on preparing primary-care doctors who practice in underserved urban and rural areas.

In the three-year, nine-month degree program approved by regents Thursday, students would learn about social explanations of health disparities and would participate in a primary care rotation one half day per week starting in the program's first year.

The school would seek to educate diverse future doctors who would work in regions of Texas with low access to health care. UH hopes to enroll students by August 2020.

UH President and Chancellor Renu Khator said the university would submit a full proposal to the state's coordinating board on Friday or Monday, and she said she hoped for that group's approval by the end of 2018.

Other outside approval is also needed.

UH hopes to submit an application for accreditation to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education by December 2018 for preliminary accreditation by October 2019, administrators said.

In addition to internal funding, the state and donors also must support the project financially with $40 million each. UH has raised about $7.5 million for the medical school so far, said Eloise Dunn Brice, vice president for university advancement.

The proposal comes as state lawmakers are reconsidering how to fund colleges and universities. Texas' higher education coordinating board has previously expressed some concern that the state's universities are spreading resources too thin by offering too many degree programs.

"We're expanding higher education and higher education programs more quickly than the legislature is raising appropriations for higher education," said Raymund Paredes, the board's commissioner, when asked about a possible UH medical school in January. "We can expand these programs with lesser lower levels of state appropriations, but if we're going to make solid institutions, the money is going to have to come from somewhere," he said.

A spokeswoman for the state coordinating board did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Khator told the Chronicle that she has had "great reception" from coordinating board members when she has talked to them about the proposal and its goals.

"We'll answer whatever more questions they have," she said, adding that she was optimistic because of the necessity of the school's mission.

Also on Thursday, regents approved a 3.5-percent tuition increase for undergraduates for UH's 2019 and 2020 fiscal years. The figure, UH said, was in line with proposed increases from Texas Tech University and Texas State University.

UH administrators said Thursday that the tuition increase would keep faculty pay competitive, increase financial aid and update facilities to give students a better shot to succeed in college. The state has given less money per student credit hour to universities since 2011, adjusted by the consumer price index, making the increases necessary, UH said.

Also, UH will use grants to cover tuition and fees next year for in-state students whose parents' incomes total $50,000 or less, up from the current $45,000, administrators said.

Richard Walker, UH's vice chancellor for student affairs and enrollment, told the Chronicle that would likely impact more than 1,000 students next year. The current program covers 832 students. At least 200 new students could be covered with the higher income cap, he said.

"Affordability has always been a very good part of our mission," Khator said. "We'll try to help students out in affordability as much as we can."

Lindsay Ellis writes about higher education for the Chronicle. You can follow her on Twitter and send her tips at lindsay.ellis@chron.com.
After a short standoff in East Montgomery County, a woman was taken into custody for a psychiatric evaluation on Wednesday night.

According to law enforcement, the woman allegedly fired a rifle at her brother-in-law after some sort of altercation and has a history of mental illness. When officers arrived on the scene, shots were continually fired by the woman, but not directly at officers. She was taken into custody, peacefully, at 6:30 p.m.

There were no injuries reported at the scene.

WANTED: Houston capital murder suspect took METRORail as getaway

The situation unfolded at approximately 5:15 p.m. in a neighborhood near the East Montgomery County Annex building and courthouse after deputies responded to a domestic disturbance.

It is not immediately clear how many rounds were fired, authorities said.

According to a neighbor, this is not the first incident where law enforcement has been called to the house for a disturbance.

"She used to live in the trailer park around the corner and has always been very nice, always cared for dogs," neighbor Maxie Cole, who has lived on the street for 50 years, said. "She sometimes will have mental issues. I have seen her walking on the road in the middle of the night. It's sad to see stuff like this; it's sad when people have mental issues and this could have ended worse since she came out with the rifle and the officers were there."

Two years ago, the woman allegedly ran her car into the privacy fence and telephone pole not far from Cole's home and called EMS to tend to her, according to Cole.

"I hope and pray this all works out," Cole said.

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.
A student sprayed pepper spray in a classroom and prompted evacuation of a large Fort Bend ISD middle school in Missouri City around 11:15 a.m. Wednesday, March 7.

According to school officials, the pepper spray spread throughout Quail Valley Middle School and student and staff began getting sick.

The Missouri City Fire and Police Department responded to the scene and two people were taken to the hospital in an ambulance from the school, which has a student population of more than 1,200 students. After police and firefighters gave the all-clear, students were allowed to re-enter the school around 12: 30 p.m.

In an email to parents, school principal Jeff Post said school officials were still evaluating the incident.

"We are working with the FBISD Police Department to identify the student who deployed the pepper spray. Please be assured that once our investigation is complete, appropriate disciplinary action will follow," Post wrote, and praised students and school staff for remaining calm and organized during the evacuation.

"We were able to move promptly because of their organization and response, in accordance with our regular drills. The events of the last few weeks have continued to show the importance of these drills, and I truly appreciate the way our students and staff work together to ensure the safety of our campus. We are thankful that EMS and the fire department responded quickly today. As a precaution, two students were transported to area hospitals."

Quail Valley Middle School is located at 3019 FM 1092, northeast of Highway 6.
Outgoing Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza said the chance to lead Americas largest school district  and not frustration with the local school board or state leaders  prompted his decision this week to leave the district after 18 months on the job.

Two days after he stunned the Houston community with the announcement he was leaving to become chancellor of New York City schools, Carranza expressed optimism about the districts future and lauded the school board. But in his first public comments since returning from New York, he also alluded to a disconnect with trustees over his prospects for receiving an extension on his three-year contract, which expires in August 2019.

"There's been no indication that my contract was going to be extended, so I have a family as well and I have responsibilities as well," Carranza said, though he declined to say whether he requested an extension.

Let's just say it's not uncommon for boards to extend contracts before they actually expire, he said.

Carranza's contract status has not been a point of contention publicly, and board members have given no indication that they were dissatisfied with Carranza's performance.

In a text message, Houston ISD school board President Rhonda Skillern-Jones noted that Carranza's contract had more than a year remaining and three new trustees were seated on the nine-person board in January. She declined to comment on whether Carranza requested an extension, saying it was a personnel matter.

Carranza will earn the same base salary in New York City  $345,000  as he did in Houston.

"I've always wanted to have as big an impact as I could," Carranza said. Its an opportunity that we just dont get many times in a lifetime. Its not that Im running from anything in HISD.

Carranzas end date hasnt been set, but hes expected to step down in the next couple weeks. Trustees are expected to meet in closed session at 2 p.m. Thursday to discuss a possible interim superintendent appointment, followed by a 5 p.m. public meeting.

The break-up has not been contentious with school board members, Carranza said, but trustees have asked him not to attend Thursdays public meeting.

We have gotten angry emails regarding Carranza's abrupt departure, Skillern-Jones wrote in a text message. "We have to conduct the business of the district and would rather that not become a distraction."

Carranzas abrupt departure comes as HISD tackles academic, financial and community challenges that have stirred parents, teachers and taxpayers.

HISD faces a projected $115 million budget deficit, largely because of money owed the state under a recapture formula that shifts money from property-wealthy districts to poorer ones.

The district also faces the possibility of forced campus closures or a state takeover of the districts school board in August because of its failure to improve chronically underperforming campuses. Carranzas administration is also in the midst of changing the districts magnet school system and overhauling its campus finance model  proposals that have prompted outcry from various corners of the district.

Theres never a good time for leadership change, Carranza said. I understand how folks may be concerned about that.

Carranza said he was not seeking an early exit from HISD, recounting that officials from New York City initiated contact about the job there in recent weeks.

When asked twice Wednesday about any contact he had with representatives from the Los Angeles Unified and Clark County (Las Vegas) school districts, both of which are larger than HISD and seeking new superintendents, Carranza twice replied, I get phone calls all the time about searches.

Carranza said he believes his administration has helped restore more trust in the district, provide support to lower-performing schools and tackle longstanding issues of equity, among other accomplishments.

I think weve changed the culture so its much more transparent what were trying to accomplish here, Carranza said. And quite frankly, Im honored that people are paying so much attention to the fact Im leaving, because that must mean they believe were doing something right.

HISD trustees and city leaders, who learned of Carranzas dalliance with New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio just hours before he accepted the job Monday, have been largely magnanimous about Carranzas decision. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday that he preferred Carranza gave him more advance notice, but he added, Im not angry. People come and go.

Turner said hes prepared to take on a larger role with HISD following Carranzas departure. He plans to meet Thursday with Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, whom hell lobby for a one-year break in state accountability ratings due to Hurricane Harvey. The reprieve could give HISD an extra year to improve performance at its lowest-performing campuses, helping the district stave off severe state sanctions.

"I am prepared to be very involved in the process," Turner said Wednesday during a press conference. "The city cannot advance at the level that it should if the school district is going in a different direction."

Mike Morris contributed to this report.
Arrested after an altercation with the pastor of First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs on church grounds Monday, conspiracy theorists Robert Ussery, 54, and Jodi Mann, 56, were charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, officials said Tuesday.

Ussery, whose Side Thorn website is dedicated to the belief that the Nov. 5 mass shooting at the church was a government-inspired hoax, was also charged with possessing under 2 ounces of marijuana and making a terroristic threat, a class B misdemeanor.

On Wednesday, the Wilson County Sheriffs office confirmed that the two had been released from jail Tuesday morning. Usserys bail amount totalled $9,000, while Manns totalled $5,500.

Ussery was charged with terroristic threat because he told the pastor, Frank Pomeroy, that he would hang him and fellow congregant Rod Green, who was also present, according to a charging affidavit.

Both victims were in fear of their personal safety by (Usserys) verbal threats and demeanor, the document states.

In an email to the Express-News, Ussery said he had video evidence to prove his denial of all charges except for the marijuana charge, which he admitted possessing because we are advocates (for its)medicinal properties. He said he lives just outside Austin and one of his family members is serving as their lawyer.

Pomeroys 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle, was killed in the massacre at Sutherland Springs along with 24 other congregants attending Sunday services and an unborn child. Ussery has become known to the community for harassing victims families and approaching residents with a camera on his chest, attempting to interview them.

His website offers a $100,000 reward for proof of death of victims from a host of high-profile U.S. mass shootings and frequently posts videos supposedly proving that the tragedy in Sutherland Springs was a drill using crisis actors.

Ussery and Mann screamed at Pomeroy and Green and at one point Ussery asked Pomeroy to show his daughters birth certificate, Pomeroy said Monday. The noise brought neighbors onto their porches and one called deputies.

He kept hollering about his constitutional rights and that were all traitors, that were all in this together with the Department of Homeland Security, Pomeroy said. And then they cuffed him.
The volunteers at the Sugar Land animal shelter have been trying to find Meatball more than 700 days. But the shelter's work has finally paid off.

Meatball was adopted this week by his new owner, Victoria Morris, who lives in Calgary, Canada.

Meatball, who was abandoned and is estimated to be about 7 years old, flew to Canada on a plane and is settling into his new snowy home, Morris said.

HEARTWARMING: Viral video shows woman's act of kindness

She said she fell in love with Meatball after her dad and stepmother, Chris and Tina Morris who are volunteers at the animal shelter, asked her to share photos of the dog to drum up interest in his adoption.

Morris had to get special permission to adopt Meatball from the shelter, which doesn't normally allow people outside the area to adopt pets.

She then flew to Sugar Land to have two sleepover nights with the dog, to make sure the pair would be happy together.

After flying Meatball home on March 5, it is clear that both parties are, indeed, happy.

"I call him a house hippo," Morris said of Meatball; he spends most of his time lazing around and snoring.

He's also acquired an assortment of winter clothes in which to experience the snow. 'The snow boots haven't quite worked out yet," Morris said.

"Some things are worth the wait and this is one of them," said Kathryn Ketchum, animal services manager for the city of Sugar Land.

"What a blessing to have Meatball go to such an awesome home after waiting for two years. In our profession it's the cherry on top. It is what we hope for every animal that leaves the shelter, a truly loving forever home."

Morris said she is equally grateful for the efforts of the shelter employees and volunteers. She said Meatball became calmer and learned new habits during his lengthy stay in Sugar Land.

"They really put in so much love and work into every animal that comes through there," Morris said.
AUSTIN  Victorious from winning a primary election race the governor wanted her to lose, Rep. Sarah Davis stood before dozens of her fans in Houston and called for a change of direction in the Republican Party.

Gov. Greg Abbott, the states leading Republican, had spent more than $200,000 running TV ads against her, casting Davis as too liberal to be in the GOP. He used the same line of reasoning in targeting two other Republicans, one in Galveston and another San Antonio.

Its time to end the party purges and start building bridges. Its time to be a party that welcomes all and includes all because want to be worthy of leading all, Davis said in her victory speech.

By the end of the night, Abbott lost two out of those three races he bet his money and political capital on, failing to persuade voters to dump moderate Republicans in the Legislature and replace them with conservatives who pledge loyalty to his agenda.

His efforts are part of the ongoing fight for the heart and soul of the Texas Republican Party. Tuesdays election led voters to abandon seven incumbents, narrowly keep others, reject the governors efforts to oust moderate members while picking up other avowed conservatives. The election not only displayed continuing divisions within the GOP, but revealed the governors finite political power.

[Abbotts] political influence is pretty limited, and his ability to be able to direct Republicans in a primary is pretty limited, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. The fact that he went one for three in the raced he backed with money suggests that his influence is not as significant as governors past.

The governor invested time and money to back Susanna Dokupil, a businesswoman, to defeat Davis in Houston. He also endorsed Chris Fails to unseat Rep. Lyle Larson in San Antonio. The governors favorites lost both races.

But Mayes Middleton, Abbotts candidate to run against Rep. Wayne Faircloth, won. The governor also endorsed a series of incumbents who all emerged victorious in contentious races, including Houston state Sen. Joan Huffman, who ran a tough race against Fort Bend ISD President Kristin Tassin.

More Information Abbott's track record Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed legislative candidates ahead of the primary election. Here is how they fared: House Speaker Joe Straus helps control the Texas House Leadership Fund supports incumbents facing challenges from Tea Party-aligned candidates. Straus gave directly to Sarah Davis. Here's how the incumbents he helped fared: See More Collapse

Republicans of various stripes are declaring victory, including Michael Quinn Sullivan, the leader of Empower Texans, a group that has slowly helped conservative candidates gain power in the states capitol.

Its easy to get caught up scoring the quick wins, but our job is to change the culture of Texas government, Sullivan wrote in an email blast Wednesday. Make no mistake: the House and Senate have moved right.

Michael Quinn Sullivan is a liar. A damn liar, Rep. Charlie Geren, a Fort Worth Republican, said in an interview with the Fort Worth Star Telegram the day before. Empower Texans helped fund his opponent and sent attack mailers against Geren, a longtime incumbent aligned with House Speaker Joe Straus, a moderate. Geren won.

Straus, who has found himself attacked by the conservative wing of the party, including by Abbott, poured $350,000 into House legislative races to fend off challenges from tea party-aligned candidates, along with $50,000 into Davis race.

The group also lost out its attempt to push out former Amarillo mayor and state Sen. Kel Seliger but managed to bump off Sen. Craig Estes of Wichita Falls. Voters re-elected all its favorites who already serve in the Senate, including Sen. Bob Hall of Edgewood, who faced a tough challenge from Rep. Cindy Burkett of Sunnyvale.

In all, voters booted seven sitting members of the Legislature, dumping one state senator and six representatives.

Rep. Jason Villalba, a Dallas Republican long targeted by conservatives, lost his seat in the Texas House.

The rest of the candidates who lost are Democrats, including Austin Rep. Dawnna Dukes who has been dogged by allegations she misused her public office; San Antonio Rep. Tomas Uresti whose brother in the Senate was convicted of 11 felonies; San Antonio Rep. Diana Arevalo; and Dallas Rep. Roberto Alonzo.

I dont think its a trend by any means, Rep. Cesar Blanco, an El Paso Democrat, said about the loss of Democratic incumbents. Blanco chairs the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee that is targeting 20 districts it aims to flip in the November election, including Davis in southwest Houston.

Andrea Zelinski covers politics for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Send her tips at andrea.zelinski@chron.com.
WASHINGTON  President Trumps lawyer secretly obtained a restraining order last week to prevent a pornographic film star from speaking out about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump.

The White Houses spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Wednesday that President Trumps lawyer won an arbitration proceeding against the actress, Stephanie Clifford. She had been paid $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election in what she calls a hush agreement. But in recent weeks, she had prepared to speak publicly about Mr. Trump, claiming his lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, had broken the agreement.

Ms. Sanderss statement put the White House in the middle of a story that Mr. Trump and his lawyer had been trying to keep quiet for well over a year. The turn of events created the spectacle of a sitting president using legal maneuvers to avoid further scrutiny of particularly salacious accusations of an affair and a payoff involving the porn star, who goes by the name of Stormy Daniels.

Although Ms. Clifford said their relationship was consensual, the issue is particularly sensitive to Mr. Trump, whose campaign was dogged by allegations of groping and his boast of grabbing womens crotches.

Ms. Clifford filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday asserting that the nondisclosure agreement that accompanied the $130,000 payment was void because Mr. Trump never signed it.

Ms. Sanders said that the president had denied having an affair with Ms. Clifford or making the payment himself. She added that she was not aware of whether Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Ms. Clifford at the time.

Ive had conversations with the president about this, Ms. Sanders said. This case has already been won in arbitration, and there was no knowledge of any payments from the president, and he has denied all these allegations.

Lawrence Rosen, a lawyer representing Mr. Cohen, said in a statement on Wednesday that an arbitrator found that Ms. Clifford had violated the agreement and barred her from filing her lawsuit.

Ms. Cliffords lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said that he did not consider the restraining order, dated Feb. 27, valid and that she would proceed with her lawsuit in open court. This should be decided publicly, he said.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined Wednesday to provide additional details and deflected questions about adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who is suing to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement.

Look, the president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true, Sanders said.

Trump has not publicly addressed the alleged illicit dalliance.

This case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that I would refer you to the president's outside counsel, Sanders added.

Avenatti, mocked the White House's response to the suit, derisively making fun of the fact that Trump claims he also won the popular vote.

Avenatti said that Daniels and Trump had a sexual relationship that lasted months and she believes she is free to now talk because Trump never personally signed the nondisclosure agreement.
The person believed to have shot and killed a man in Houston's Near Northside in late February hopped on a METRORail train to get away from the crime scene, officials said.

And now, Houston Crime Stoppers is offering a reward for information leading to that man's arrest.

The shooting happened late Feb. 28 in the 300 block of Cavalcade near Fulton. Gerardo Lopez, 64, was walking home from a local convenience store when the suspect walked up to him and shot him several times, police said.

NEIGHBOR FEUD: Man says woman filled door locks with superglue, vandalized home

A neighbor who heard the gunshots ran outside and saw the suspect running away. The neighbor chased the suspect, who turned around and pulled the gun out again as if he were going to shoot the neighbor, according to detectives.

The suspect pulled the trigger, but the gun never fired. He ran off in an unknown direction but eventually made his way to a nearby METRORail station and hopped on a train to leave the area, police said.

NEW FOCUS: Houston police to focus on certain types of domestic violence cases

When police responded, they discovered that the suspect had emptied Lopez's pockets before fleeing the scene.

Houston police are likely to charge the man with capital murder once he's captured because he allegedly robbed Lopez during the shooting.

The suspect is described as a black male in his early 20s standing about 6 feet 2 inches tall. He had short dread locks with beads on the tips and was wearing a black hoodie and dark pants at the time of the shooting, police said.

Anyone with information about the suspect is urged to call Houston Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). The organization is offering a reward up to $5,000.

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.
A Houston man received a decades-long prison sentence for a violent robbery in 2016 where he and an accomplice both shot a construction worker.

Michael Earl Marshall, 29, was found guilty of first-degree aggravated robbery Tuesday and was sentenced to 50 years in prison Wednesday.

Marshall already has filed paperwork appealing the conviction and sentence, according to court records.

NEIGHBOR FEUD: Neighbor says woman filled door locks with superglue, vandalized home

The robbery unfolded in the mid-afternoon of Feb. 27, 2016, at a home in the 5700 block of Rietta in northeast Houston. Marshall and John Douglas Osby, 29, targeted a construction worker inside the attic of a home on that street, according to court documents.

The pair entered the home, went to stairs that led to the attic and demanded the worker give up his wallet. The construction worker threw down $150 in cash to Marshall and Osby.

While Osby stayed behind to keep an eye on the victim, Marshall ran outside and tried to steal the worker's truck. The worker tried to climb down from the attic to stop Marshall, but Osby pulled a gun out and threatened him, according to court records.

NEW FOCUS: Houston police to focus on certain types of domestic violence cases

The two began to fight over the gun, but Osby eventually got hold of it and shot the worker in the chin. While injured, the worker was able to grab the gun from Osby.

Meanwhile, Marshall was having trouble starting the worker's truck and ran back inside the house just as the worker had grabbed the gun from Osby, court documents show. The worker was trying to shoot in self-defense when Marshall ran up behind him, grabbed the gun and loaded it with more bullets.

Marshall then pointed the gun at the worker and fired, striking the victim in the side, according to court documents. Marshall and Osby fled the scene.

Despite his wounds, the worker survived the ordeal.

RESTITUTION: Nanny enslaved by Katy couple gets back pay

"If that bullet had been a mere two inches over, our victim would have died and Marshall would have committed capital murder," Assistant District Attorney Christopher Condon said in a press release. "As he later discussed the attack, Marshall showed an utter disregard for human life."

Houston police detectives investigated the robbery and were able to connect both Marshall and Osby. The pair also was accused in several similar robberies in the northeast Houston area that targeted Hispanic lawn workers, according to court documents.

While Marshall was found guilty and sentenced by a jury, Osby pleaded guilty in August 2017 in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence.
Voters in southwest Houston will select a replacement for the late City Councilman Larry Green in a May 5 special election, Mayor Sylvester Turner said Wednesday.

Green, who was found dead at his home Tuesday morning, remains the only councilman ever to lead District K, which was created after the 2010 Census prompted the council to expand from nine to 11 districts, plus five at-large seats.

No cause has been announced in the 52-year-olds death, but police do not suspect foul play.

Turner said state law dictates that City Council call a special election by March 20 and that candidates file for the office by March 26. The district stretches from the NRG Park area to Fort Bend Houston and Westbury.

Large portions of Wednesdays regularly scheduled council meeting focused on honoring Green.

Council members, their employees and other city staffers wore green in his honor, and Councilman Robert Gallegos coordinated the purchase of a bountiful bouquet  including 16 red roses and one white rose -- that was placed in front of Greens chair.

Several council members and others were visibly moved throughout the meeting, including when Greens chief of staff, Donald Perkins, and colleague Martha Tatum addressed the council.

Council member Green will be missed by all, but he wont be forgotten, Perkins said. His spirit will continue to live in all of us and his legacy will continue to move forward.

Turner echoed those comments, and referenced Greens meticulous attention to constituents complaints about service delivery.

The reality is he does live on because you all represent a part of that legacy. Be very proud of that, Turner told Perkins and Tatum. Yes, well miss him, but quite frankly hes walking with us right now. And from where hes is, hes still telling you, Answer the phones, answer the emails.

And, Tatum added, And get those peoples trash picked up!
AUSTIN  Democrats got the turnout boost they were hoping for in Tuesdays primaries, topping the million-vote mark for the first time since 2002.

While Democratic candidates and party officials were jubilant Wednesday, Republicans were quick to provide a reality check: The GOP still dominated turnout, topping 1.5 million.

Nearly 700,000 of those Republican votes were cast on election day.

The turnout patterns suggest that the blue wave Democrats hope will sweep Republicans out of office remains a mirage, at least for now, analysts said. Yet lessons learned from the runoff will affect the remainder of Campaign 2018.

That starts with the two Democrats running for governor: Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and Houston entrepreneur Andrew White, who will face each other in a May 22 runoff.

Its going to be a competition about who can marshal their limited resources better, said Brian Smith, a political science professor at St. Edwards University in Austin with expertise in voting patterns. The questions are whether Valdez can expand beyond her base in the primary, and whether White can convince the voters who didnt vote for him in the primary to do so in a runoff where the turnout is always much less.

Bottom line: Despite Democrats enthusiasm, Republicans still cast more ballots  by almost a half-million votes  on Tuesday and almost certainly will in the November general election.

Happy for enthusiasm

Democrats have not won a statewide office in Texas in 24 years  a record drought for the party nationwide. Still, state party chair Gilberto Hinojosa, pointing to Tuesdays strong Democratic turnout, predicted that grassroots energy and enthusiasm would ensure a strong showing in November.

Trump Republicans should be terrified, he said, referring to Texas top GOP leaders who have all steadfastly maintained their support of the controversial president who won Texas in 2016.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Wednesday publicly pushed back against that assertion, saying the so-called blue wave that Democrats had been predicting for months never made landfall.

We have been hearing for weeks in Texas and across the country that a great blue wave was coming to Texas, Patrick said. We have been assaulted with predictions that our great state is trending Democrat.  Texas is a bright red state with an engaged conservative majority who are committed to keeping Texas on a conservative path.

In the governors race, incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott remains confident after winning the GOP nomination for re-election by 90 percent Tuesday over two little-known challengers, he insists nothing can be left to chance with the increased Democrats turnout.

Now we have our work cut out for us to keep Texas in Republican hands, he said in a FacebookLive video to supporters. He noted there are more Republican votes than Democrat votes if GOP voters turn out.

Tallies from the Tuesday primary show Valdez ran strong in her hometown of Dallas, and in traditional Democratic strongholds in San Antonio, Austin and South Texas. White won in Houston and in surrounding counties, and in a number of rural counties where Democrats held sway years ago when they still held statewide office.

Low turnout persists

Statewide, turnout among Democrats was just over 6 percent and about 10 percent for Republicans  highlighting an historical problem for both parties.

REPUBLICAN: Navy SEAL's comeback forced unexpected runoff for Congress

That could make a difference in the runoff because in a number of counties, the margin between the two remaining Democratic gubernatorial candidates in actual votes is relatively close  2,300 in Galveston, 108 in Bowie County in far northeast Texas and 54 in Blanco County in Central Texas. In West Texas Borden County, each of them got one vote  even though 486 Democrats are registered there  attesting to just how few Democrats there are in some places.

Both need to get their messages out, because the general rule is that only about half of the people who voted in the primary will come back and vote in the runoff, said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor. The runoff probably favors Valdez because runoff voters tend to be the real die-hards. White needs to convince Democrats who voted for her in the primary that he is the better candidate to beat Abbott in November.

According to state voting records, more than 650,000 Texans took advantage of early voting to cast their ballots in the 10 largest counties. More than 370,000 of those were Democrats, and 283,000 were Republicans. That was a change over four years ago, when Republicans outvoted Democrats in early balloting.

That trend may not hold true in a runoff, election officials say, because there will be fewer races and lower turnout, even though Democratic party officials insisted Wednesday that may not hold true since the partys primary turnout doubled from 2014 to 2018.

All sides agreed: Both campaigns must raise cash, lots of it and quickly.

Both campaigns launched new fundraising appeals Wednesday.

Valdez said her message to bring common sense solutions to our great state was a reason for her primary win, a message that seemed to echo Whites campaign pitch. In his fundraising message, he insisted his campaign beat every expectation  and were not wasting any time gearing up for the May runoff.

The statewide name recognition for both of these people is limited, and they have to raise money to effectively campaign, said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Dallas Southern Methodist University. White has to raise more money, $2-3 million at least, to win the runoff.
Now dont you let the government get ahold of my Medicare, an elderly constituent of former senator John Breaux implored him in 1993, reacting to the Clinton administrations health-care reform proposals. Variations of this tale have proved popular ever since with liberal intellectuals and punditsmost recently, as they looked to defend the Affordable Care Act. The anecdote demonstrates, they contend, how voters enthusiastically embrace government management in practice while opposing it in theory. But as long as politicians are responsible for the management of health insurance, how can they ensure it is really operated in their interests?

Millions of seniors have been abandoning the federally managed Medicare program for privately administered Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. The proportion of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in MA has soared, from 13 percent in 2003 to 33 percent in 2017, confounding expectations that the ACAs cuts to private plans would cause those plans to decline. Some analysts expect that the majority of Medicare beneficiaries will be enrolled in MA plans within the next ten years.

Such an arrangement would greatly improve seniors quality of medical care and financial protection; it would also do much to secure the Medicare programs fiscal sustainability. Cost has been a major problem since Medicares inception in 1965. President Lyndon Johnson initially believed Medicare and Medicaid together would cost $500 million annuallybut by 1970, Medicare alone cost $7.7 billion. This enormous miscalculation led to the establishment of the Congressional Budget Office a few years later. The programs expense has continued to rise as a result of its largely open-ended commitment to pay for whatever medical procedures are developed and billed. In 2017, Medicare expenditures totaled $679 billion (making it the largest spending item on the federal budget after defense and Social Security), and costs are expected to double over the coming decade.

To get health-care providers to participate, Congress initially reimbursed physicians according to usual, customary, and prevailing fees, and paid hospitals based on whatever they claimed that it cost to treat beneficiaries. These arrangements supplanted incentives for cost-conscious medicine, encouraging physicians to inflate fees and rewarding hospitals for making enormous capital investments at a greatly expanded number of facilities. Though Congress gradually enacted caps on permissible fees for various services, slowing the subsequent growth in price, inflated costs were baked into the cake. And the caps may have encouraged physicians to truncate their consultations with patients while increasing the volume of billed services. The growth of physician fees slowed to 4.5 percent between 2000 and 2005, but Medicare spending on physician services per beneficiary increased by 45 percent.

Over 50 years, Medicare has become as much of an entitlement for medical providershospitals, medical staff, and drug makersas for seniors. Rather than establishing dedicated programs to subsidize care for the uninsured or hospital services in rural areas, Congress has found it easier to inflate the Medicare programs reimbursement rates as a method of supporting such activities.

Cutting costs means cutting provider incomes, so it is inherently difficult to ensure that Medicare delivers value for the money. The program incurs new costs in covering expensive new drugs, devices, and surgical procedures, but reimbursement rates are rarely trimmed when new technologies reduce the time and expense needed to treat patients, so taxpayers enjoy few savings. Medicare sets tens of thousands of prices for services whose adequacy is hard to discernwith providers lobbying aggressively to scare members of Congress that any cuts would yield devastating shortfalls in access to care.

Because new legislation is often needed to fix payment flaws, problems may pass for years without remedy, as enterprising lobbyists are always able to mobilize one constituent group or another that would lose out from an efficiency-minded reform. For instance, doctors get reimbursed for the average sales price of drugs they use, plus 6 percent, a practice that is well-known to encourage them to administer more expensive but therapeutically equivalent alternativesnotoriously, the $2,000 Avastin, rather than the $50 Lucentis. Medicare lacks most of the controls that private insurers employ to contain costs. The program imposes no gatekeeping of access to costly specialists, benefits from no network of cheaper preferred hospitals, and conducts no scrutiny of claims prior to reimbursement. The federal government estimates that 9.5 percent of Medicare claims were improperly paid in 2017.

In 1997, Congress enacted the Sustainable Growth Rate mechanism to reduce automatically Medicare fees when aggregate spending on physician services exceeded a target amount. But Congress overrode SGR cuts 17 times before repealing the policy altogether in 2015. Though several years away from implementation, SGRs replacement is already widely seen as unworkable. Is there a better way to pay for Medicare?

In 1995, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich laid out his vision for reform to a health-care industry conference, telling attendees that if Medicare beneficiaries were allowed to choose privately managed alternatives, the federally managed option would wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it. The statement caused 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole great anxiety as an AFL-CIO-funded television commercial took Gingrichs words out of context to suggest that he was trying to eliminate Medicare altogether. Yet despite the demagoguery and Doles subsequent defeat, Gingrichs vision is now largely coming true.

Privately managed HMO plans were first made available to Medicare beneficiaries in the mid-1980s, and by 1997, more than 5 million were enrolled. That years Balanced Budget Act expanded the choice of Medicare options to include privately managed fee-for-service plans, with or without networks. Yet, while expanding the appeal of what became Medicare Advantage, the BBA inadvertently reduced payment to plans in some areas below the costs of delivering the standard Medicare benefit packagecausing MAs growth to stagnate. The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act adjusted rates to fix this problem, and enrollment has soared steadily since, rising from 5 million in 2003 to 19 million in 2017, even though CBO had projected enrollment would fall following a major cut in payments to MA plans under Obamacare.

One-third of Medicare beneficiaries and a majority of seniors without Medicaid or employer-funded supplemental coverage are now enrolled in MA plans. In some states, enrollment is even higher: 42 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in Florida, 44 percent in Oregon, and 56 percent in Minnesota are enrolled in private plans. This growth has had political consequences. Initially, then-Senator Al Franken of Minnesota attacked Medicare Advantage plans as overpaid; by 2012, he had flipped, denouncing the ACAs cuts to the program.

Because they get paid a flat feeadjusted according to enrollees expected medical needsto deliver the whole spectrum of hospital and physician services to which Medicare beneficiaries are entitled, MA plans have the freedom and incentive to spend money in the way that best treats patients at the lowest cost. This flexibility allows plans to reward clinicians for employing cost-effective practice styles, to limit unnecessary utilization of the most expensive procedures, and to exclude fraudulent providers from their covered networks. It also allows them to provide additional preventive services that may avert costly hospitalizationsincluding case management for chronic conditions, better coordination of medical records, assistance with medication adherence, and support following discharge from the hospital.

As a result, Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in privately managed plans are more likely to get appropriate medical treatment and 20 to 30 percent less likely to visit the emergency rooma key measure of the effectiveness of care. Controlling for the severity of medical conditions, MA patients were 13 to 20 percent less likely to get readmitted within 30 days. MA patients also spent less time in nursing facilities following admission to hospital for equivalent proceduresyielding savings of 16 percent in post-acute care. MA plans therefore deliver the standard Medicare benefit with a higher quality of care but at an average cost of $1,200 less per beneficiary.

During the 1990s, employees receiving health insurance through their jobs resisted managed care because the savings that it generated accrued to their employers. But under MA, plans can use efficiency gains to attract beneficiaries by providing supplemental benefits, such as dental, vision, or hearing coverage excluded from traditional Medicare. Whereas the traditional Medicare Part B benefit requires enrollees to pay 20 percent coinsurance, without limit, on all outpatient servicesan exorbitant amount in a world where physician-administered drugs regularly cost over $100,000 cost-sharing under Medicare Advantage plans is limited to $6,700 per year, and the majority of plans reduce the cap on out-of-pocket costs even further. This saves seniors from having to purchase additional coverage, known as Medigap, which requires an average annual premium of about $2,000. MA plans have thus proven disproportionately attractive to beneficiaries on modest incomes who lack supplemental coverage paid by Medicaid or previous employers.

Increasing enrollments in MA plans will help address Medicares looming solvency crisis. At the moment, the slightest trimming of Medicare payments to providers unleashes an army of lobbyists to argue, with some plausibility, that proposed cuts will reduce access to care for beneficiaries. Congresss consistent overturning of cuts under the SGR policy demonstrated the futility of this approach. Yet Medicare Advantage has absorbed with relative ease the major cuts to which the ACA subjected it. While Medicare cannot shed costs without provoking political battles with interest groups, MA plans can cut expensive providers out of networks, amend cost-sharing arrangements, or steer enrollees to more cost-effective methods of treatment. Because costs get eliminated incrementally by a multitude of different plans, with savings from efficiencies returned to beneficiaries, no pitched legislative battle takes place, with providers coalescing to defend their automatically inflating revenue streams.

Moving Medicare beneficiaries into MA plans therefore greatly facilitates the programs transition into a fiscally sustainable, premium-support arrangement, of the sort proposed by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Yet, rather than becoming a politically suicidal struggle to take benefits away from seniors, a premium support system emerging out of Medicare Advantage would be cherished by the programs beneficiaries, as they have already enjoyed its fruits.

Photo: s-c-s/iStock
Over 80 per cent of full-time workers in the charity sector think that gender discrimination in the workplace is present, while 48 per cent say they have experienced it, research published today to coincide with International Womens day has shown.

The Perceptions of Gender Discrimination in the Workplace 2018 poll was carried out by Investors in People which produce a standard for people management. It looked at gender discrimination across a range of industries.

The report revealed that over 8 in 10 workers in the charity sector believe that workplace gender discrimination exists.

It also found that 27 per cent of workers feel that their gender has impacted their career progression in the charity sector.

Paul Devoy, chief executive of Investors in People, said: There is clear gender disparity in this sector, with perceptions of ambition, pay and seniority evidencing discriminatory attitudes.

Pushy or determined

The report also looks at perceptions in gender in the workplace, in particular looking into how ambitious men and women in the same organisation might be viewed differently.

The results showed that more than a quarter (26 per cent) of workers in the charity sector said that an ambitious women was most likely to be described as pushy. While 37 per cent said an ambitious man was most likely to be described as determined.

Investors in People say that this is compounded by research compiled by Civil Society Media and Charity Finance magazine, which showed that 71 of the chief executives at the top 100 charities are men, with just 27 women and two vacant positions.

It is also further evidenced by the findings of CharityJobs research into diversity and discrimination in the charity sector, which found that men were less likely than women to feel that gender would have an impact on their career, with 27 per cent compared to 56 per cent.

Since its last report in 2016, Investors in People say there has only been a 3 per cent reduction in the proportion of women seeing the presence of workplace inequality across all industries, and a 4 per cent drop in the perception across all workers.

A poll of 1,000 men and 1,000 women full-time workers in the UK was launched in January 2018, with data captured via an online survey carried out by research organisation One Poll. This data was then used to inform the findings presented in IIPs Perceptions of Gender Discrimination in the Workplace 2018 poll.
On International Women's Day we have looked at some of the ways charities are marking the day and celebrating all the inspiring women that work for their organisations. Here is a, by no means exhaustive, list of some of the highlights.

#messagetomysister

This International Womens Day Women for Women International is celebrating with its campaign #messagetomysister, which aims to make sure that as many women as possible receive a message of support.

It is giving the opportunity to write a message on their website which is then sent to women living under siege or in refugee camps, and the outside world. Women for Women International started with a simple-letter writing campaign to women in these situations.

A case study from Women for Women International on one of its previous campaigns #SheInspiresMe, appears in March's Fundraising Magazine which is out today. To mark International Women's Day, the article has been put in front of the paywall for a limited time. Read it here.

"I want you to know that you are not alone." This #InternationalWomensDay, our Ambassador Elizabeth Debicki is sending a #MessageToMySister to the women survivors of war we serve.



What is your message of support? Share it today: https://t.co/s5J0v6G7xX #IWD2018 #WomensDay pic.twitter.com/vN5zOEAvHh  Women for Women UK (@womenforwomenUK) March 8, 2018

International 'When's International Men's Day?' Day

Comedian Richard Herring is spending today replying to everyone on Twitter who asks when International Mens Day is (it is 19 November FYI) and directing people to his JustGiving page where he is raising money for the domestic abuse charity refuge.

Writing on his page, he said: Every International Women's Day, for a few years now I have gone on Twitter to search for people asking, When's International Men's Day? to let them know that that is on November 19th. Weirdly most of them only seem to care about this on International Women's Day and when November 19th comes along they do nothing. I think some of them think that there wouldn't be an International Men's Day. But there is one. It's on November 19th.

I do this so that everyone else can get on with celebrating International Women's Day and using it to raise awareness of the issues that affect women. And trying to achieve equality.

At the time of publishing, he had raised over 55,000 for the charity.

November 19th. Please pay finders fee of 19.11 here https://t.co/XV522ImcQR

If you fail to pay within 30 days then bailiffs will be sent to your home https://t.co/GeXvrPX7lH  Richard K Herring (@Herring1967) March 8, 2018

Spirit of 2012

Funding charity Spirit of 2012 has today announced plans to stage a centenary exhibition in Manchester, birthplace of the suffrage movement, which will celebrate 100 years since some women won the right to vote in the UK.

Called Spirited, the exhibition will focus on the young social activists that were at the heart of the first-wave movement for change, looking at their role in the fight for female suffrage and the ongoing battle for gender equality over the past century.

Called Spirited, the exhibition will focus on the young social activists that were at the heart of the first-wave movement for change, looking at their role in the fight for female suffrage and the ongoing battle for gender equality over the past century.

Sightsavers

Sightsavers, which aims to prevent avoidable blindness and empowers people with disabilities, is using International Womens Day to highlight that 55 per cent of the 36 million blind people in the world are women. In a Twitter thread it is showcasing women on the frontline protecting sight and fighting for disability rights.

Happy Women's Day! #DYK there are 36 million blind people in the world, and 55% of visually impaired people are women? This #IWD2018, follow our Twitter thread showcasing women on the frontline protecting sight and fighting for disability rights! https://t.co/azTswqed1J pic.twitter.com/uptS6y7maI  Sightsavers (@Sightsavers) March 8, 2018

Remembering Syrie Barnardo

For both International Women's Day and Women's History Month, Barnardo's is remembering the stories of women who had vital roles in supporting vulnerable children, including Syrie Barnardo, wife of Dr Thomas Barnardo.

Although Thomas Barnardos vision more than 150 years ago may have been to help all destitute children, his early work focussed mainly on boys. It wasnt until he married Sara Syrie Louise Elmslie that Barnardos was able to care properly for the thousands of girls living on the streets or in abject poverty around Londons East End.

Syries involvement in Barnardos opened the door for thousands of girls who would otherwise have been forced into begging or prostitution to earn money.

Other stories the charity is celebarting are those of Margaret McElroy, who set up her own Guide Company to provide opportunities for disabled girls, and Effie Bentham, who established a scheme to get working people to donate 'a farthing a week' direct from the wages, she died aged 97 in 1970, having raised over 7m for Barnardo's.

This #InternationalWomensDay, were sharing the stories of some of the women who inspire us. Mary Joynson, our director from 1973-84, was a decisive and determined pioneer. Read how she was a pivotal figure in the development of our charity: https://t.co/ayTKd308tZ pic.twitter.com/m24hD2x3wi  Barnardos (@barnardos) March 8, 2018

And more

Brooklands Museum is tweeting the stories of women who worked at Brooklands racecourse during the First World War, which coincided with the end of its Women in Work exhibition.

It's #InternationalWomensDay! To mark the end of our #WomensWork100 exhibition Doing Their Bit Brooklands Women in the Great War today we will be tweeting the stories of the women featured in the exhibition #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/ZLlA2f9jx2  Brooklands Museum (@BrooklandsMuseu) March 8, 2018

Girlguiding Scotland has partnered with Women 5050 to empower the next generation of female leaders in politics and beyond.

The partnership is also to celebrate 100 years since women got the vote, and the Year of Young People.

Theyve launched a campaign and interactive resource called Citizen Girl, which aims to empower girls to discover why their voice matters and how they can make a change; learn more about political processes, representation and equality with fun challenges; and think about how they can be the leaders of tomorrow in areas including politics, business, tech, and the media.

To celebrate #IWD2018 weve joined forces with @women5050 to launch Citizen Girl, a campaign to empower girls to take the lead in politics & beyond. Help your unit to discover the power of their voice by downloading the new resource today https://t.co/U3KCuuzYgG #CitizenGirl pic.twitter.com/3glRZCoIuQ  Girlguiding Scotland (@GirlguidingScot) March 8, 2018

Target Ovarian Cancer is using International Womens Day, which takes place during Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, to encourage women to look out for the symptoms of the disease and help save lives.
We will move to a low-carbon world because nature will force us, or because policy will guide us. If we wait until nature forces us, the cost will be astronomical. Christiana Figueras

The Divest Invest campaign claims that investors controlling some $5.5tn have partially or wholly disinvested from fossil fuel companies. Many charities are under pressure from members and supporters around the issue of such investments. Many have already sold their shares in coal producers such as Glencore. At the same time, shares in companies such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell have formed part of the core of many charity investment portfolios for decades. What should charity investors do? How has the situation changed in the last few years?

The Paris Agreement and carbon budgets

The 2015 Paris Agreement broke years of logjam in international negotiations on climate change. It strengthened the global consensus, adopted a goal to keep the increase in global temperatures to well below 2C, and recognised the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible. In the last few years scientists have also developed the concept of the carbon budget, the amount of carbon that can be emitted globally to meet the constraint of limiting global warming to an acceptable level. The efforts of groups such as Carbon Tracker have made us all aware that if all the known fossil fuel reserves globally were burnt, then the outcome would be global warming of significantly more than 2C. BP has acknowledged this by stating: We agree that burning all known reserves would probably cause global temperatures to rise by more than 2C  and that addressing this issue will require the efforts of governments, industry and individuals.

The importance of transition

At first glance the argument for disinvestment seems very strong, but its important to consider what disinvesting would achieve, and why investors typically exclude certain sectors. Investors normally exclude sectors because they think it is morally wrong to finance or profit from activities such as tobacco, gambling, cluster bombs, alcohol or pornography. Often these views on investments flow from the operating activities and objectives of the charities themselves.

One of the complications in the disinvestment argument relates to those operating activities. Almost all charities are still dependent on fossil fuels. For some of us it is about gas boilers that heat buildings, for others it is the petrol-driven cars and vans used for activities. This would suggest that charities are not currently of the view that it is immoral to burn fossil fuels.

The key to understanding the arguments around disinvestment is to focus on the need for a huge transition in the global energy system. The International Energy Agency has estimated that to meet the target of limiting global warming to less than 2C, global coal use will need to fall by roughly half by 2040, and oil use will need to fall by roughly a quarter. This will involve both a significant increase in the use of electricity and a transformation of the electricity generation industry as coal and gas plants are replaced by renewable sources such as wind or solar.

The energy industry is characterised by long-lived investments. New coal mines, oilfields and power stations often have lives measured in decades. The coal-fired power plants that are currently being decommissioned in the UK were mostly built in the 1960s. The investments that are made in energy infrastructure by companies today will still be determining the energy system in 2030, 2040 and 2050. For there to be a successful transition to a 2C world, then new investments in coal and oil producing facilities need to be dramatically curtailed and investments in renewable energy facilities and associated infrastructure need to be dramatically increased.

How is the transition developing?

In some sectors the pace of transition has been very impressive. If we look at electricity generation, the last new coal-fired plant to be built in the UK was Drax which was completed in 1986. According to the Digest of UK Energy Statistics, the proportion of coal in the UKs generation mix has fallen from 40 per cent in 2012 to 9 per cent in 2016, while the proportion from low carbon sources (nuclear, wind, solar and other renewables) has increased from 23 per cent in 2012 to 46 per cent in 2016.

There are, however, sectors not doing so well. Coal and oil producers are still investing to discover new reserves and develop and expand existing assets. Many of these companies have business models and executive remuneration policies predicated on expanding production, when all the evidence would suggest that these companies need to shrink for the transition to a 2C world to take place. These policies reflect the excessive focus on shortterm profits that can be prevalent in some listed companies.

Disinvestment or engagement?

The argument in favour of disinvestment would seem to hinge on whether or not these companies are changing their business models to become part of the transition. This is not an easy question to answer, and is a challenge for many investors as it involves taking a very long-term view.

How much of BP or Royal Dutch Shells capital expenditure is consistent with a 2C world? Carbon Tracker has tried to answer this in its 2 Degrees of Separation report. It estimates that for BP, between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of capital expenditure is consistent with 2C and for Royal Dutch Shell between 60 per cent and 70 per cent is consistent. This compares with ExxonMobil of the US, where only between 50 per cent and 60 per cent is consistent with a 2C world. Is a company where their products today are ones we all use, and where threequarters of their capital spending is consistent with a 2C world, one which we should view as morally wrong? It is not an easy question to answer, and one which different charity trustees have taken different views on.

The other side of the coin is for trustees to focus on engagement, whether directly or through their investment managers. Selling existing investments in large companies is unlikely to hinder their ability to operate. Tobacco companies have not gone out of business because many investors refuse to hold their shares. Those in favour of engagement would argue that change is more likely to come by engaging with companies and encouraging them to curtail their plans for investments in new fossil fuel facilities. Instead the capital can either be returnedl to shareholders or invested in renewables. The first step to such change is disclosure and many charities were part of the Aiming for A coalition, which succeeded in getting shareholder resolutions passed which forced greater disclosure around emissions reduction plans by major coal and oil companies.

There is no magic bullet in achieving the transition to a low carbon future. Some trustees have favoured disinvestment from fossil fuel companies, others have focused on engagement. What is clear, however, this is a pressing problem which all investors should be focused on  not to address an issue which threatens the future of the environment and society would surely be a dereliction of fiduciary duty.

Christophe Borysiewicz is client relationship manager at Epworth

Charity Finance wishes to thank Epworth for its support with this article
This week on The Kicker, we have a special episode with two interviews. First, Pete talks to Kim Masters, editor at large at The Hollywood Reporter, about her reporting on the film industry during the age of #MeToo. Then Meg sits down with New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean to discuss her process for finding stories, interviewing techniques, and more. Please note: There were some technical issues in the studio this week.

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SHOW NOTES:

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Meg Dalton and Pete Vernon are CJR Delacorte Fellows. Find Meg on Twitter @megdalts and Pete @ByPeteVernon.
Stormy Daniels has been in the news for two months, but a recent flurry of developments have brought her story back to the top of cable news hours.

Since The Wall Street Journal reported in January that President Trumps personal lawyer had arranged a $130,000 payment to the former adult-film star in the days before the 2016 election, the story has been simmering on the back burner of the political hot stove. Plenty of journalists questioned why an alleged payoff by a presidential candidate days before his election wasnt getting more sustained attention. On Wednesday, the saga of Stormy Daniels finally seemed to break through.

ICYMI: Not the best look for the New York Times

On Tuesday, Danielss lawyer Michael Avenatti filed a lawsuit seeking to void the agreement barring her from speaking about her interactions with the president on the grounds that Trump had never signed the document. Wednesday morning, Avenatti told NBCs Today show that Daniels believes its important that the public learn the truth about what happened. Finally, NBC News reported that Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who arranged the initial agreement during the campaign, is trying to silence Daniels by obtaining a secret restraining order in a private arbitration proceeding and warning that she faces penalties if she publicly discusses a relationship with the president.

During Wednesdays briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was challenged by reporters, notably CNNs Jeff Zeleny, over the presidents involvement. Sanders deflected all questions to outside counsel, saying the case had already been won in arbitration. Asked for a response to that claim, Avenatti told The New York Timess Jim Rutenberg, yeah and he also won the popular vote.

Whats at stake in this story? Jack Shafer takes on that issue in his column for Politico, delineating whether the matter at hand is prurient interest in the presidents affairs, concern over an apparent cover-up, or a legal quagmire. The Daniels topic, just entering its seventh week in the news spotlight, has become so choked with details, nuance, and avenues of entry that its easy to get confused, Shafer writes. He doesnt come down on any correct interpretation, but concludes: The takeaway that probably fits everybody, from pro-Trumpers to anti-Trumpers, is that the 45th president has successfully demolished a norm so outrageous that nobody ever thought to spell out as a norm: Presidential Candidates Should Never Get Caught Having Sex With Adult Film Actors.

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RELATED: A portrait of Trumps mental state by photojournalists

It helps that Daniels seems intent on telling her story. With allegations of secret payments in the midst of a heated campaign, its certainly more than a simple sex scandal. But weve seen other controversies surrounding the president bubble to the surface and be minimized by the administration, only to recede beneath the roiling waters of the Washington churn. While the administration has more questions to answer, the past couple of days show the power of persistence in keeping a story alive.

Below, more on the coverage of the Stormy Daniels story.

Eye of the storm: The Timess Rutenberg and Peter Baker write that the most recent twists in the saga put the White House in the middle of a story that Mr. Trump and his lawyer had been trying to keep quiet for well over a year.

The Timess Rutenberg and Peter Baker write that the most recent twists in the saga put the White House in the middle of a story that Mr. Trump and his lawyer had been trying to keep quiet for well over a year. How we got here: The Washington Posts Frances Stead Sellers, Emma Brown, and David Fahrenthold look at how the story spilled into public view. The issue, they write, has altered the course of Danielss life and threatens to alter the course of Trumps presidency.

The Washington Posts Frances Stead Sellers, Emma Brown, and David Fahrenthold look at how the story spilled into public view. The issue, they write, has altered the course of Danielss life and threatens to alter the course of Trumps presidency. Making the rounds: Avenatti was on a media blitz on Wednesday. Regarding the restraining order that Cohen won through arbitration, he told CNNs Anderson Cooper, We do not take kindly to these threats, nor will we be intimidated.

Other notable stories

The New York Timess Farhad Manjoo turned back the clock on his media consumption, unplugging from digital and television news for two weeks, and relying on print for his information. The result? I am not just less anxious and less addicted to the news, I am more widely informed (though there are some blind spots). And Im embarrassed about how much free time I have.

CNNs Brian Stelter reports that some journalists forced to participate in Sinclair Broadcastings new anchor delivered journalistic responsibility message are upset with the promotional campaign that reads like anti-media propaganda. This is so manipulative, one anchor told him.

CJRs Jackie Spinner looks at the way new photographs of the unrest in Chicago following the assassination of Martin Luther King 50 years ago help develop the story of what went on in that city, and demonstrate the importance of having diverse perspectives in newsrooms.

For CJR, the Tow Centers Susan McGregor reports on a shift in EU regulations that will have ripple effects on digital publishing and dissemination across the globe. The new privacy regulations will affect any organization in the world that serves EU residents.

Good discussion over at FiveThirtyEight thinking through the question: Why does everyone hate the media?

ICYMI: How hacked emails and a yacht in Monaco ended my career at The Wall Street Journal

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Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.
A womans fall at a holiday party has reached the Michigan Supreme Court, which could use the case to clarify the responsibilities of property owners when they welcome guests to their home.

The court heard arguments Tuesday in the case of Susan Blackwell, who missed an 8-inch step when she stepped into an unlit room at a co-workers home on December 14, 2013. According to court records, Blackwell arrived at the home of Dean and Debra Franchi for a dinner party they were hosting. She entered the home and proceeded to the mudroom to hang her purse. An approximate eight inch drop off/stair exists between the hallway and the mudroom. Unaware of the stair, Blackwell claims she fell resulting in injuries.

Justices are exploring whether she should have been informed about any risks when she arrived at the party.

Its worth the time of this court, said Chief Justice Stephen Markman, noting the case resembles other injury lawsuits faced by judges in lower courts.

Blackwells lawsuit was dismissed by an Oakland County judge, but the state appeals court reversed that decision and said a jury should determine whether the danger was open and obvious because there was conflicting testimony. Its a key legal standard in Michigan, one that often means a personal injury lawsuit doesnt get very far.

Steven Couch, an attorney for Dean and Debra Franchi, said Blackwell should have assumed possible danger when she saw the unlit room. But Blackwells attorney, Kevin Oliver, said the step was dangerous  not the darkness.

Even with the light on, you dont see that a step is there, Oliver said.

The Michigan Manufacturers Association said a decision against the couple could force any property owner, not just homeowners, to explain every potential hazard to a visitor.

So deck the halls but beware the boughs of holly.  If something as ordinary as a step or a dark room is not an open and obvious hazard, then what is? the group said in a court filing by attorney Cliff Taylor, a former chief justice.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Despite a tricky and manpower-intensive rescue of a teenager, Wind Cave in southern Lancaster County will not be closed to public use.

Warning signs, however, will be erected at access points to the popular cave, said Phil Wenger, president and CEO of the Lancaster County Conservancy, which will take over ownership of the land containing the cave this year.

We have no intention of closing that cave at this point, Wenger said.

The Feb. 17 rescue spurred new safety concerns from some local residents. Others expressed indignation at the thought of closing a touchstone natural wonder for generations of local explorers.

The discussion reflects the difficult dance faced by private and public managers of Lancaster Countys natural areas as they work to keep natural landmarks open, but safe.

Wind Cave is one of several spots that have posed significant challenges:

.There have been repeated falls from the Chickies Rock precipice along the Susquehanna River despite protective fences and warning signs.

.Accidents and a lawsuit at a popular swimming hole in the gorgeous Pequea Gorge caused the spot to be sealed off from the public.

.And a sublime view of the Susquehanna River on the White Cliffs of Conoy made township officials determined to open it for public enjoyment even though a few visitors act like idiots.

How do you keep Lancaster Countys natural landmarks accessible  and uncluttered by signs and fences  yet safe for the public?

In todays litigious society, the threat of liability is always in the background, despite a state law aimed at protecting those who provide public recreation.

Sometimes, when accidents happen repeatedly, landowners feel they have no choice but to limit or bar access. Often, it comes down to how far should one go to protect people from themselves.

Here is how overseers are managing several local landmarks.

Wind Cave

After the recent rescue of a teen from Wind Cave in Martic Township  the fifth since 1993  some have questioned why access to the cave is not restricted or closed.

Many others have argued vehemently against such a move.

In an informal online LNP poll asking whether the cave should be closed, 73 percent of 541 responders said the cave should remain open to the public.

The cave, accessible from the Conestoga Trail System, is very popular with youth groups and beginner spelunking groups from several states.

One of those groups is Youth Opportunities Underground. Founder Allen Maddox of Honey Brook observed, I prefer to educate people about caves, rather than closing them or making them off-limits, he said.

Reaction from readers of LNPs online stories about the cave rescue has been one-sided, with a strong sentiment that the cave should not be closed. Many were indignant at the very suggestion.

Life is dangerous. Five rescues in all these years is not a bad stat by any stretch, Stephen Davis, a missionary at Child Evangelism Fellowship, commented on the rescue story.Im sure very good lessons were learned all around.

One of the most dangerous things we can ever attempt to do is to try and make everything safe. Keep it open!

Sean Broome, another reader, responded with sarcasm: More people get hurt out in the river during the summer. Guess well have to close that off too. The bubble wrap/nanny state types make my blood pressure boil.

The cave is currently on land owned by the Brookfield Renewable utility. But it will be donated this year to the Lancaster County Conservancy, which is in the early stages of developing a management plan with input from caving groups and other stakeholders.

The new warning signs being posted are a joint venture of the conservancy and Brookfield.

Life is dangerous. Five rescues in all these years is not a bad stat by any stretch.

The conservancy owns some 21 nature preserves in the county, including such popular natural areas as Tucquan Glen, Kellys Run and House Rock.

Kathie Shirk-Gonick, the conservancys director of land protection, says the group, in general, likes to minimize impact on these natural features.

I think the public wants us to keep our natural areas as natural as possible, she said. When they go for a hike, they want to enjoy the outdoors and not feel like theyre in an amusement park.

The conservancy does post warning signs, on its website and at trailheads and parking areas, about certain land features and the levels of difficulty of its hiking trails.

Chickies Rock

The rocky top and sweeping vista between Marietta and Columbia along the Susquehanna River is one of the countys most visited landmarks.

Its also its most accident prone.

There have been 10 fatal falls since 1981 from the top of the overlook that is owned by Lancaster County, according to LNP archives. Several have been suicides but most occurred when people fell accidentally from abrupt precipices.

The county, after diverse public input, erected a hip-height stone and wood fence at the main overlook in 1989.

But three fatal falls and two with injuries have happened since then. The victims ignored warning signs and went beyond barriers.

Recently, a new danger has arisen at Chickies Rock. With the recent opening of the Northwest Lancaster County River Trail at the base of the rock, there have been incidents in which people on top of the overlook threw rocks or bottles and nearly hit trail users.

As a result, signs warning of the dangers to people below  and the promise of prosecution  have been erected at the overlook.

To protect people completely from being able to do something, you end up destroying the natural beauty. Weve struck a balance and for the most part its worked.

Technical climbing of the face of Chickies Rock has been remarkably safe, with the only recorded accident in 2012 when two climbers encountered a wasp nest and fell, sustaining minor injuries. Climbing groups monitor the rock face.

Aside from Chickies Rock, the county owns Money Rocks in the eastern part of the county. The overlook also has a railing. There have been no accidents, according to Paul Weiss, director of the Lancaster County Department of Parks and Recreation.

You can go over a fence and get injured, Weiss said of the efforts made at Chickies Rock and Money Rocks. To protect people completely from being able to do something, you end up destroying the natural beauty. Weve struck a balance and for the most part its worked.

Suzys Hole

Heres a case where accidents, abuse and a lawsuit ended up removing a popular natural spot from the public realm.

The rugged section of Pequea Creek in southern Lancaster County includes waterfalls, a narrow chute and waterside boulders.

The spot was popular with water tubers. But partiers and drug users often left it littered with after-hours debris and illegal fire rings. A late-night drowning of an intoxicated man occurred in 1994.

Then, in 1998, after a 4-year-old girl drowned in the turbulent narrows known as Suzys Hole while tubing with her family, the family sued PPL for negligence.

The lawsuit maintained that the utility, which owns the banks on either side of the creek, did not warn creek users of the dangers of the stream. PPL eventually settled in 2004 for an undisclosed amount of money.

In 2009, a month after a teen girl fell while grabbing for a rope swing, severely injuring herself  and a few days after eight people were cited for trespassing  PPL abruptly put up no-trespassing signs and closed access to the steam bank the length of the gorge.

Cooks Landing

For generations, cliffs on the edge of the Susquehanna, just north of the Maryland line, had been a summer swimming hole and spot for diving.

But rocks just under the surface presented hidden dangers. Drownings occurred in 1993 and 1994. In 2002, a man diving from the cliffs struck a submerged rock and died from neck and head injuries.

Break-ins of vehicles parked by the swimmers also were rampant.

Norfolk Southern, which owns the riverbank, has long had a strict no-trespassing policy, and many have been cited at the spot by state police through the years  dozens of citations every year, newspaper archives show.

The railroads reluctance to allow crossing of its railroad tracks up and down the river has caused grumbling by recreation users and municipal officials.

At the railroads insistence, Manor Township reluctantly assembled a 6-foot-high chain-link fence along its 5-mile Enola Low Grade Line rail-trail. The fence partially obstructs views of the Susquehanna but Norfolk Southern wanted assurances that no one would wander downhill to its active rail line.

White Cliffs of Conoy

When Conoy Township opened the popular river overlook from an old industrial waste pile in 2014, Supervisor Stephen Mohr said he didnt worry about possible falls or lawsuits.

We decided most people are responsible enough, he said. The township put up signs warning of a drop-off and plastic orange snow fencing near the edge.

Its worked well enough, though some people on occasion have cut through the fence for a closer look, risking a lengthy fall.

People sometimes have no common sense, Mohr said.`You cant fix stupid sometimes.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A bill to legalize medical marijuana in Kentucky was shelved Wednesday after it ran into strong opposition from law enforcement officials during a round of testimony before a legislative panel.

A day after hearing from medical marijuana supporters, the panel took comments from law enforcement officials and a Warren County prosecutor. They warned that legalization could exacerbate Kentuckys drug addiction woes.

This is a road we do not want to go down, said Chris Cohron, representing the Kentucky Commonwealths Attorneys Association.

Legalizing medical cannabis would send the wrong message, creating a dangerous illusion that marijuana is safe, Daviess County Sheriff Keith Cain said. That would be a sure prescription for increased use, especially among young people, he said.

My opposition to this legislation isnt because I lack compassion for the sick, but because I think its wrong to herald marijuana  with its many proven negative qualities, the sheriff said.

Opponents also included groups representing police chiefs and narcotics officers.

Tommy Loving, representing the Kentucky Narcotic Officers Association, pointed to a section of the bill that would allow each medical marijuana patient to possess up to 12 mature cannabis plants. That would equal about 12 pounds of harvested marijuana, he said.

I just cant imagine what disability youd need 12 pounds of marijuana, he said.

A day earlier, medical marijuana supporters said the bill would strictly regulate medical cannabis and leave it up to cities or counties whether to allow it.

The bill would license use of medical cannabis. Those seeking access would have to clear multiple steps, including approval from a new state enforcement agency. Potential patients would have to show they have qualifying conditions, such as cancer, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder. If approved, they would be given a special ID and would have to go to state-approved dispensaries to buy medical marijuana products.

Each step of the process would be licensed  from those growing cannabis, to the processors, distributors and dispensaries. An excise tax would be imposed at the wholesale level.

Participation would be optional for local communities. City and county governing bodies would decide whether to allow local medical cannabis licensing. If elected officials refused to act, local residents eventually could mount efforts to put the issue on the local ballot.

Some committee members started staking out their positions on the bill Tuesday.

Rep. Jason Nemes said he ran for office as a medical marijuana opponent, but said his position evolved after listening to advocates. Hes now a legalization supporter, he said.

Who the heck do we think we are as a government to keep this away from people if it helps them, the Louisville Republican said.

But he added that he couldnt vote for the bill in its current form.

After the hearing, medical marijuana advocate Eric Crawford said he wouldnt give up the fight, regardless of what happens to this years bill.

Im coming here whether the bill passes or not. Ill be here next year  trying to get it passed again, the Mason County man said.

(The legislation is House Bill 166.)

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi attends a meeting at the Great Hall of the People on October 19, 2017 in Beijing, China.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi called on the United States and North Korea on Thursday to have talks as soon as possible.

He said that peace must prevail, amid signs of easing tension over North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

Wang made the comments during a news briefing as part of the annual meeting of China's parliament.
A worker stands on piles of industrial products before exporting, at a port of Lianyungang, China

China's exports unexpectedly surged at the fastest pace in 3 years in February, suggesting its economic growth remains resilient even as trade relations with the United States rapidly deteriorate.

Trade tensions have jumped to the top of the list of risks facing China this year, with proposed U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium imports suggesting more measures may be on the way, Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum this week.

China's February exports rose 44.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with analysts' median forecast for a 13.6 percent increase, and an 11.1 percent gain in January, official data showed on Thursday.

Imports grew 6.3 percent, the General Administration of Customs said, missing analysts' forecast for 9.7 percent growth, and down from a sharper-than-expected 36.9 percent jump in January.

Analysts caution Chinese data early in the year can be heavily distorted by the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in February this year but in January in 2017.

But combined January-February trade data also showed a dramatic acceleration in export growth.

Exports rose 24.4 percent on-year in Jan-Feb, much better than 10.8 percent in December and 4 percent growth in Jan-Feb last year.

The government also releases combined data for the first two months in an attempt to smooth out seasonal distortions.

The deceleration in import growth for February may be payback for the previous month's unusual strength, rather than a sign there has been an abrupt weakening in demand.

Robust import growth in January was mostly led by commodities as factories scrambled to restock inventories ahead of the long holiday.

Imports in the first two months of the year rose 21.7 percent, compared with 4.5 percent in December.

China's trade surplus widened to $33.74 billion for February, compared with forecasts for $0.6 billion and January's $20.35 billion.

For Jan-Feb combined, the surplus rose 43.6 percent from the year earlier period to $54.32 billion.

Boosted by a global trade boom in 2017, China's exports grew at the fastest pace since 2013 and served as one of the key drivers behind the economy's forecast-beating 6.9 percent expansion last year.
Sometimes, CNBC's Jim Cramer finds it helpful to take a step back from a market clouded by politics and zoom in on major company-specific stories.

"Consider the case of Nordstrom, ... the swanky department store chain I like so much with a story that's reaching soap opera levels of melodrama," the "Mad Money" host said on Wednesday.

Shares of Nordstrom took a hit after the retailer released its fourth-quarter earnings last week. The results were mixed: earnings per share came in weaker than expected, but revenue and same-store sales (a key metric for the industry) beat Wall Street's estimates.

But after spending last Thursday in the penalty box, Nordstrom's stock bounced back on Friday, climbing more than $5 per share, or nearly 12 percent, from its lows.

"When a stock can bounce like that off supposedly bad news, you've got to stand up and pay attention," Cramer said.

Part of the reason for Nordstrom's comeback was the revival of takeover negotiations at the department store chain. Since 2016, members of the Nordstrom family have been trying to take the company private to no avail due to financing issues.

With the retail environment and consumer spending now in recovery, negotiations have restarted. On Monday, news broke that a special advisory committee for Nordstrom's board rejected the family's initial takeover offer.

Cramer said the family's offer of $50 per share was a "low-ball offer given that the stock was selling for just under $52 when the news broke."

"But you know what? I am still regarding it as a game-changer," he said. "It is no secret that I like the stock and, by the way, the company. The darned thing only gets more attractive as it [goes] lower."

A key problem investors had with Nordstrom's latest earnings report was a major decline in its retail gross margin. But the 40-basis-point hit was largely due to rising occupancy expenses tied to the growing discount Nordstrom Rack business and expansion in Canada  "growing pains," according to Cramer.

Management also gave some confusing guidance, predicting lower than expected revenue growth in 2018 but better than expected earnings.

"Many people on Wall Street simply don't believe Nordstrom will be able to become so profitable so quickly," the "Mad Money" host said.

Others thought differently, however. After Nordstrom's drop, institutional investors stepped in on Friday and started buying the stock in droves, convinced that the company's growth strategy would pay off.

Cramer, whose charitable trust owns the stock, concurred: Nordstrom has been investing heavily in bolstering its online presence, opening new stores in New York and Canada and building out its Nordstrom Rack business.

Now that the company can scale back spending, which has put pressure on its razor-thin margins, it's not so outlandish to predict that Nordstrom could turn profitable, Cramer said.

"That's why I continue to like this stock," he said. "The potential for a leveraged buyout or even a flat-out takeover is just the cherry on top."

And even if the Nordstrom family's "low-ball" offer happened because they're having trouble financing the deal, Cramer said the $50 stock price could now be considered a floor.

"In other words, with Nordstrom currently trading at $51 and change, the news of their bid means you're getting some amazing risk-reward," the "Mad Money" host said.

"Bottom line? The way Nordstrom bottomed on Friday after a not-so-hot quarter [was] incredibly bullish," he continued. "When a stock goes up on bad news, you know it's got something real going for it. And given that the Nordstrom family wants to buy the whole business at $50 a share, I think it's pretty darned compelling for your portfolio right here at $51."
The 'Fugro Equator' returns to Fremantle Harbour for resupply on August 12, 2015 in Fremantle, Australia. The research vessel is part of MH370 search operations in the southern Indian Ocean.

The full investigation report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 will be released after the latest search efforts are completed, officials said on Thursday, four years after the aircraft first went missing.

Flight MH370, carrying 239 people onboard, became one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries when it disappeared on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

Malaysia agreed in January to pay U.S. firm Ocean Infinity up to $70 million if it found the plane during an offshore search effort that is underway and expected to end in June.

The decision to engage the firm came after Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless A$200-million ($159.38 million) search across a 120,000 square-kilometre (46,332 square miles) area in the Indian Ocean last year, despite investigators calling for the target area to be extended 25,000 square kilometres (9653 square miles) north.

The release of a full report into MH370's disappearance has been suspended pending the outcome of the new search, as any new evidence uncovered is "likely to significantly affect the

investigation", Malaysian investigators said in their annual interim statement sent to families of those aboard the plane.

"In the event that the aircraft is found, the team will conduct further investigation," said the statement seen by Reuters and due to be released publicly later on Thursday.

"If the aircraft is not found and a decision is made to discontinue the search, the team will resume the completion of the report and release it in the months ahead."

Several pieces of aircraft debris have been found on Indian Ocean islands and along Africa's east coast, and efforts to retrieve more are ongoing.

Three wing fragments were confirmed as coming from the missing plane, while other pieces, including some cabin interior items, were determined to be "almost certain" from MH370, the investigators said.

Malaysian officials are working with Australian authorities on plans to recover the Boeing Co 777's wreckage or its flight recorders, in the event the aircraft is found.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak reiterated the country's commitment to finding the plane.

"We are pushing the global aviation community to take measures to make our skies safer," he said on his official Twitter account on Thursday.

The Seabed Constructor vessel has covered 16,000 square kilometres (6178 square miles) so far but has yet to identify any significant findings, Ocean Infinity said in its weekly search update on Tuesday.
Japanese regulators on Thursday issued punishment notices to several cryptocurrency exchanges and forced others to halt business, in an effort to shore up consumer protection after the $530 million theft of digital money from Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Coincheck.

A senior official at the Financial Services Agency told reporters at a briefing on Thursday it had confirmed Coincheck had funding to reimburse its customers for digital NEM coins stolen from its exchange. It said the company would announce details of its reimbursement plan later in the day.

The regulator issued business improvement orders to Coincheck and six other exchanges, saying the seven exchanges lacked the proper and required internal control systems.

It ordered the suspension of operations at two of them, Bit Station and FSHO, for one month starting Thursday.

FSA said a senior employee at Bit Station was found to have used customers' bitcoin for the person's own purposes. The agency said the exchange, which has been allowed to operate on a provisional basis, dropped its application to become an authorised exchange.

The FSA said Coincheck lacked a proper internal control system for risks such as money laundering and terrorism financing.
Fighting to repair an battered reputation, ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced on Wednesday a new fund for job creation.

"Today I'm announcing the creation of a new fund called 10100 (pronounced 'ten-one-hundred'), home to my passions, investments, ideas and big bets," Kalanick wrote on Twitter.

@travisk tweet

The fund, likely named after the address of his childhood home, will tackle large scale job creation with a focus on investment in real estate, e-commerce and innovation in emerging markets, like China and India. Non-profit efforts will focus on education issues and the future of cities, according to the former Uber executive's tweet.

Kalanick resigned as CEO of Uber last June, amid reports of combative behavior and an intellectual property lawsuit with self-driving rival Waymo. The company also faced allegations of a toxic work culture that led to widespread sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Kalanick ordered an investigation into those allegations before resigning.

Since Kalanick's departure as CEO -- and a settlement reached by Uber and Waymo -- the rideshare company has fought to remake its image under new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. And so, too, has Kalanick.

Just this month, Kalanick joined the board of directors for health startup Kareo. It marked his first public appointment since he resigned as CEO of Uber.
Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Brian Quintenz said some type of regulation in the crypto market is good.

"Regulation can add to credibility," Quintenz told CNBC on "Closing Bell" on Wednesday. "And I think the participants in this market want a credible marketplace."

"Everyone that trades these products needs to know that there is no federal oversight over these platforms," said Quintenz, who was in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday for the third annual DC Blockchain Summit. "And I would agree with the SEC that some type of federal oversight is a good idea. Ultimately, it's for Congress to decide that."

Earlier in the day, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it will now require digital asset exchanges to register with the agency. The securities laws surrounding cryptocurrencies have been unclear in recent months, allowing firms to rely on self-disclosure and making fraudulent exchanges easier to execute.

The news quickly sparked sell-offs in several popular cryptocurrencies, as some investors feared a tightening regulatory environment could inhibit future trading.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell below $10,000, or 10 percent, after the news from the SEC. That's nearly 50 percent down from its mid-December highs of around $19,500.

Quintenz said the SEC takes action against unregistered ICOs, while the CFTC has authority over spot trading.

"We don't have oversight authority," he said. "That's kind of a hole in the law, a lack of jurisdiction."

He said while the government will likely always participate in regulation in some form, it would "behoove investors" to come together and form some type of independent oversight committee  before Congress makes a decision as to who should regulate spot currencies and how.

"It's good business," Quintenz said.

 CNBC's Thomas Franck contributed to this report.
Singapore -based Six Capital Investments, a firm that touted itself as a financial technology innovator but which has been plagued by scandal for months, is being liquidated.

The company, known as SixCap, was placed into insolvent liquidation last month in the British Virgin Islands where it's incorporated, according to a statement dated Feb. 26 from appointed liquidator Baker Tilly.

Investors and creditors were told they're collectively owed more than $143 million, according to a Wednesday report by Singaporean newspaper The Business Times.

Baker Tilly did not immediately respond to an email from CNBC requesting confirmation of that figure and asking for other details such as the number of investors involved.

The development marks the latest in the downfall of a firm that once occupied a prime-location office in Singapore's central business district. SixCap was a sponsor of high-profile events, had its name painted on an airplane, and wooed new clients at places like the World Economic Forum in Davos, .

Troubles started emerging around June last year when SixCap informed customers that it was having problems with its bank account.

That led to investors wanting to cash out millions of dollars they poured into what the firm claimed were fintech products that generate turns through foreign currency trading. But investors failed to get back their money.

SixCap closed its office, and angry investors filed police reports late last year, according to Singapore's The Straits Times.
A herd of elephants walks past a watering pan supplied with water pumped from boreholes powered by more than 45 diesel-powered generators which run continuosly to ensure a steady supply of water for animals in the arid Hwange National Park.

Good news for you big-game hunters. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reversed an Obama-era ban on elephant trophy imports. Instead, the FWS will assess each case on an "individual basis."

The March 1 announcement comes a bit more than three months after President Trump paused a first attempt to loosen the ban after public outcry. The president, seemingly joining the uproar, called the relaxation on imports a "horror show."

Tweet

The Trump administration said in November it would allow the importation of body parts from African elephants shot for sport, contending that encouraging wealthy big-game hunters to kill them would aid the vulnerable species.

The FWS said in a written notice in November that permitting elephants from Zimbabwe and Zambia to be brought back as trophies would raise money for conservation programs. A licensed two-week African elephant hunt can cost more than $50,000 per person, not including airfare, according to advertised rates.

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The change marked a shift in efforts to stop the importation of elephant tusks and hides, overriding a 2014 ban imposed by the Obama administration. The policy applied to the remains of African elephants killed between January 2016 and December 2018.

"Legal, well-regulated sport hunting as part of a sound management program can benefit certain species by providing incentives to local communities to conserve those species and by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation," the agency said in a statement.

Animal rights activists and environmental groups expressed skepticism then that killing elephants could help save them. Wayne Pacelle, the president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, said the policy change sent the wrong signal amid international efforts to curb illegal poaching.

"What kind of message does it send to say to the world that poor Africans who are struggling to survive cannot kill elephants in order to use or sell their parts to make a living, but that it's just fine for rich Americans to slay the beasts for their tusks to keep as trophies?" Pacelle asked.

But the move was quickly praised by groups that champion big-game trophy hunting, including Safari Club International and the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association. The two groups had sued to challenge the ban in court.

Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action, called the action "a significant step forward in having hunting receive the recognition it deserves as a tool of sound wildlife management, which had been all but buried in the previous administration."

"By lifting the import ban on elephant trophies in Zimbabwe and Zambia the Trump administration underscored, once again, the importance of sound scientific wildlife management and regulated hunting to the survival and enhancement of game species in this country and worldwide," Cox said.

President Trump's two adult sons are avid trophy hunters. A photo of Donald Trump Jr. holding a knife and the bloody severed tail of an elephant he reportedly killed in Zimbabwe in 2011 sparked outrage among animal rights activists.

Tweet

The world's largest land mammal, the African elephant has been classified as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act since 1979.

Illicit demand for elephant ivory has led to devastating losses from illegal poaching as the natural habitat available for the animals to roam has also dwindled by more than half. As a result, the number of African elephants has shrunk from about 5 million a century ago to about 400,000 remaining. And that number continues to decline each year.

According to the United Nations, as many as 100,000 African elephants were killed between 2010 and 2012. For forest elephants, the population declined by an estimated 62% between 2002 and 2011.
President Donald Trump gestures while meeting with Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (not pictured) in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 6, 2018.

President Donald Trump spoke about special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian meddling with witnesses after they had been interviewed by investigators, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

Trump asked his former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about his interview with the special counsel, two people familiar with the exchange told the Times. He reportedly asked if the interviewers had been "nice" to Priebus.

In another instance, Trump told one of his aides that White House lawyer Don McGahn should publicly deny a January report alleging that McGahn told investigators that Trump had asked him to fire Mueller, the Times reported. Sources familiar with the conversation told the Times that McGahn later reminded Trump of his request.

McGahn's lawyer, William Burck, did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.

Mueller is investigating potential collusion between Trump's winning 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, along with "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation."

Reports of Mueller's interest in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, among other events, have fueled speculation that the investigation has expanded to include a potential obstruction of justice charge.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment, while the special counsel's office declined comment.

Read the full report from the New York Times.
Many people are bringing work into bed with them.

More than 40 percent of professionals report they often lose sleep because they can't get their job off their minds, according to a survey of 2,800 people by global staffing firm Accountemps.

"If you're not sleeping, you're going to have lower productivity, health issues and work-life balance issues," said Bill Driscoll, district president of Accountemps.

The most common work-related issue disrupting people's slumber is an overwhelming feeling about their job's responsibilities or hours.

Many people also say they stay up fixating on a business problem or worrying about their relationships with their co-workers. Some people say it's a fear of being fired that leaves them staring at the ceiling. Others blame their boss for their sleeplessness.

Nearly 60 percent of young people (between the ages of 18 and 34) report losing sleep over work, compared with just 29 percent of people over the age of 55. And women are less likely to let work keep them up (40 percent) than men (50 percent).
Bitcoin fell again Thursday, bringing its two-day losses to more than 18 percent, after news of increased regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges.

The cryptocurrency hit a high of $11,432 Tuesday but had fallen 18.4 percent to near $9,319 as of 3:34 p.m., according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index. Earlier Thursday, bitcoin's losses suddenly accelerated and the cryptocurrency hit a low of $9,075.87, down just over 20 percent over the last two days.

The sudden midday drop "caught me by surprise," said Nick Kirk, quantitative developer and data scientist at Cypher Capital, a cryptocurrency trading firm. "It could be a hangover from SEC news ... but actually, I think regulation is a good thing for the space."

Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 Wednesday after news of compromised accounts on a major Hong Kong-based exchange and a statement from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that expanded its scrutiny to cryptocurrency exchanges. News overnight from Japanese regulators added to those concerns.

Bitcoin this week

Source: CoinDesk

Some analysts also attributed bitcoin's decline Thursday to technical factors.

Bitcoin failed to break above a resistance level around $11,765 on Monday, "and has been in corrective phase since," said Robert Sluymer, technical strategist at Fundstrat Global Advisors.

"Yesterday as the exchange hack developed, bitcoin broke a key technical level that led to a collapse to its next support level [around] $9,400," he said. "Today again, bitcoin retested this level and has yet show evidence that it will hold."

The next levels of support are at $8,759 and $8,000, down about 5.8 percent and 14 percent, respectively, from Thursday afternoon's prices.

Japan's Financial Services Agency suspended operations Thursday at two relatively small exchanges, Bit Station and FSHO, for one month. The regulator said a manager at Bit Station used customers' bitcoins for personal purposes, according to wires and a Google translation of an online statement.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was lower at 2.859 percent at 4:19 p.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was also lower at 3.127 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

U.S. government debt yields slipped Thursday following the European Central Bank's decision to hold interest rates steady and after President Donald Trump signed steel and aluminum tariffs.

The European Central Bank (ECB) dropped its easing bias but held rates steady in its Thursday meeting. The central bank has, until now, stated that it stands ready to augment its bond purchasing should the economic outlook in the European Union falter.

ECB President Mario Draghi said that the ongoing economic recovery in the region reinforces the central bank's decision to remove the so-called easing bias.

"Incoming information... confirms the strong and broad-based growth momentum in the euro area economy, which is projected to expand in the near-term at a somewhat faster pace than previously expected."

Though the bank tweaked its bias on its quantitative easing program toward a more hawkish stance, some thought Draghi's comments undermined the move.

"In his press conference, Draghi was more disposed to his 'dovish' instincts," said Thierry Wizman, global interest rates and currencies strategist at Macquarie Group. "Although the growth projection was raised for 2018, Draghi was careful to suggest that this should not be associated with higher inflation."

Investors will monitor the political situation in the U.S. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump would likely formalize any details on his tariff proposal, including exemptions, later this week.

"We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week, and there are potential carve-outs for Mexico and Canada based on national security, and possibly other countries as well," she said.

Ahead of the all-important nonfarm payrolls data due out on Friday, investors poured over the latest unemployment claims report.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rebounded last week from a more than 48-year low, though the ongoing trend continues to suggest to a strong labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 231,000 for the week ended March 3, the Labor Department said. Claims dropped to 210,000 in the prior week, which was the lowest level since December 1969.

In Washington, President Trump signed two controversial proclamations that implement a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum but exempts Canada and Mexico.

"A strong steel and aluminum industry are vital to our national security," Trump said. "You don't have steel, you don't have a country."

The taxes are opposed by numerous free-trade Republican and Democratic politicians as well as a host of foreign leaders.

CNBC's Annette Weisbach and Mike Calia contributed to this report
Universal basic income is a policy that's been lauded by tech leaders from Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk as a proposed solution to job loss due to automation. Last Sunday, it officially became part of California's Democratic Party platform, signaling that the idea is beginning to enter the political mainstream at the same time Silicon Valley leaders are putting their weight behind it.

Universal basic income is the idea that all citizens should receive a certain amount of money from the government, with no regulations on spending attached. In recent years, tech leaders have funded major projects in the space: Y Combinator Research piloted a program in Oakland that gave people $1,500 a month for a year, and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is funding a project in Stockton for working individuals. He just wrote a book advocating the idea of giving every working person in the U.S. $500 a month.

While UBI is still seen as a long shot on a national scale, the recent move signals that it's entering the political mainstream in California. Democratic politicians in the state seeking party endorsement are supposed to read and get behind the party platform, including basic income.

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Behind the push for UBI is a growing number of young political activist leaders rising up in the party who see basic income as a solution to growing economic inequality.

Those figures include 25-year-old graduate student Jonathan Abboud, who sat on the California Democratic Party Platform Committee and helped push forward the UBI proposal, as well as 27-year-old Stockton mayor Michael Tubbs, who mentioned UBI as a keynote Millennial Voices speaker at the convention.

Tubbs has had support from the tech community in recent years  he received a $50,000 donation to his campaign for mayor in 2015 from Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, who he counts as a college friend from his Stanford days, and another $5,000 from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. Neither Spiegel nor Yang has taken a public stance on UBI. Tubbs is now piloting a guaranteed income experiment in Stockton with funding from Hughes' organization.

Party leaders say tech's involvement has helped spread mainstream awareness about the idea of basic income.

"I've been talking about UBI for years," said Rocky Fernandez, Region 5 director for the California Democratic Party and district director for state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, who played a leading role in getting UBI included in the platform. Earlier this year, Fernandez tried to pass a state bill that would use a carbon tax to fund a guaranteed income but was unsuccessful.

"A lot of folks hadn't heard about the idea at first, but the more and more folks know about it, the more they like it," he said. The recent UBI platform proposal was passed by the convention of thousands of party delegates.

The mention of UBI in the Economic Justice section of the recent party platform reads: "We support efforts to enact programs, such as a guaranteed government jobs program and a universal basic income/rent or housing to eliminate poverty while improving prospects to secure good jobs that help people climb the economic ladder."

While tech's involvement has helped spread awareness that is pushing UBI closer to the California Democratic Party mainstream, it has also caused some pushback from the labor side of the party, who worry it will be viewed as an end-all solution to poverty and an excuse to remove existing social benefits.

So far, tech's response has been positive about the move.

"I suspect we still have a long road ahead, but that was a nice milestone," said Y Combinator President Sam Altman, who also chairs the Y Combinator Research project that plans to give $1,000 a month to 1,000 people across two U.S. states for five years. If completed, it will be the most comprehensive study in the country on basic income. Altman said he wasn't involved in putting UBI on the platform but has spoken generally about basic income with Democratic politicians in the past.

Hughes said, "California has always been at the forefront of big bold ideas like a basic income. Now it's up to leaders and other states to follow suit. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be on the national party platform."
President Donald Trump's tariffs will be "extraordinary" for business, Century Aluminum CEO Michael Bless told CNBC on Thursday.

The president signed tariffs on Thursday afternoon that slap a 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. Canada and Mexico are exempt from the tariffs, which will take effect in 15 days. The U.S. will also give other nations the opportunity to justify why they shouldn't be included.

Bless told CNBC he expects Century Aluminum will be able to bring its Kentucky plant from 40 percent of capacity to 100 percent because of the tariffs.

That means 300 jobs and over a $100 million investment into the plant "to get it going and improve the technology," he said in an interview with "Power Lunch."

And he's not buying critics' arguments that the tariffs will start a trade war with other nations.

"The hysteria over this so-called trade war has reached frankly above a fevered pitch. We're not exactly sure where the trade war is coming from," Bless said.

Century Aluminum makes high purity aluminum, which is a national security issue, he said. However, the beverage industry, for example, uses mostly recycled aluminum.

"This plant at full production can make more than about 1.5 times the amount of high purity metal that our DOD and commercial aerospace sector needs," he said.

"Today most of that metal is coming from places like the Persian Gulf and from Russia and a little bit from Canada. So we'll be able to supply a good portion of that when this plant is up and running at full capacity."

And that's just one part of the equation. With his peers also opening plants and hiring, the benefits will begin to flow into other areas, Bless said.

"It's a rising tide. It will be good for the entire industry. It will help support R&D in the industry, capital investment and the further competitiveness of this critical sector," he said in an interview later Thursday on "Closing Bell."
Beijing is holding back on a response to the recent U.S. announcements about punitive trade moves, but the situation may escalate if no mutually beneficial solution is found, a former diplomat said on Thursday.

President Donald Trump last week said that the U.S. will be imposing heavy duties on steel and aluminium imports, a sweeping move against all countries, but one that is seen to be targeted primarily at China.

This was even though Chinese economic adviser Liu He was in Washington last week to hold talks on trade.

"When Liu He, the senior economic adviser to President Xi Jinping, came to the United States, he asked the Trump administration to do two things  one, negotiate with them and two, tell them what the United States actually wants," Susan Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, told CNBC.

"But the Trump administration opted instead to punish China in a way that is going to be damaging not just to China but to the United States consumer and to many of our other friends like Canada who are our trading partners," said Shirk, who was involved in U.S. policy toward China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.

On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China would make a necessary response in the event of a trade war with the United States but said such a war would only harm all sides.

"So I think the Chinese are scrambling to hope that reason prevails in Washington," she added.

If not, China will retaliate "for sure," she told CNBC.

"At first, probably quite modest retaliation, but if the Trump administration continues in this direction without trying to find some mutually beneficial solution to all the complexities in our economic relationship, things will escalate for sure," Shirk added.
By exempting Mexico and Canada from new tariffs, President Donald Trump is hoping to incentivize those nations to strike a fair deal on the North American Free Trade Agreement, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Thursday.

"There's no question that the action the president took today is a further motivation to both Canada and Mexico to make a fair arrangement with the United States," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell."

"This is not being done, though, just as a negotiating ploy," he added.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of NAFTA if the nations can't find a way to overhaul the pact.

On Thursday afternoon, the president signed off on tariffs that slap a 25 percent levy on steel imports and a 10 percent charge on aluminum. Canada and Mexico are exempt from the tariffs, which will take effect in 15 days. The U.S. will also give other nations the opportunity to justify why they shouldn't be included.

"We are deadly serious about solving the problem in steel, aluminum and, as the weeks and months go by, other industries," Ross said.

He also reiterated his contention that the tariffs will not have harmful economic consequences.

Last week, Ross told CNBC the tariffs are "no big deal" and held up a can of soup to make his point that they will have a "trivial" impact on prices.

On Thursday, he said he used that soup prop to illustrate that the impact is "a fraction of a penny per can."

"Please spare me the idea that this is going to be massively destructive to our economy," he said. "All this talk about destruction in the other industries is simply not going to happen."
There's no business, like the arms business.

Chief executives of the top 10 U.S. military contractors were paid a total of about $160 million in 2016, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

At the top of the list are the female CEOs of Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics with combined pay of $42 million in 2016.

The Department of Defense requested one of the largest budgets in history with its recent proposal of $686 billion and an additional $30 billion for nondefense agencies including the Department of Energy, which maintains the country's nuclear weapons.

As the top weapons supplier, Lockheed Martin takes the lion's share of Pentagon funds with nearly 90 percent of revenue coming from the federal government.

In short, defense contractors are paid largely with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Below is a list of defense industry giants and how much leaders of these companies made.

Companies are ordered by revenue.
Tesla's Elon Musk is complaining to President Donald Trump about China's car tariffs.

"Do you think the US & China should have equal & fair rules for cars? Meaning, same import duties, ownership constraints & other factors," Musk said on Twitter in response to a Trump tweet about trade with China. "I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. It's like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes."

Tweet Link

Tweet Link

The auto executive said China puts a 25 percent import duty on American cars, while the U.S. only does 2.5 percent for Chinese cars. He added that no American car company is "allowed to own even 50% of their own factory" in the Asian country, but China's auto firms can own their companies in the U.S.

Trump responded to Musk's tweets later at his steel and aluminum tariff press conference Thursday.

"We are going to be doing a reciprocal tax program at some point, so that if China is going to charge us 25% or if India is going to charge us 75% and we charge them nothing ... We're going to be at those same numbers. It's called reciprocal, a mirror tax," Trump said after reading Musk's earlier tweets out loud.

The Trump administration has also asked Beijing for a $100 billion reduction in the U.S. trade deficit with the Asian country, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the talks.
Samsung's Galaxy S9 is the best phone to launch in 2018  so far. It's loaded with more features than most people will ever use (or perhaps even want). There's something for everyone in the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, which I'll refer to simply as the Galaxy S9 for ease. The display is the best I've ever seen on a phone, it finally packs stereo speakers, and, yes, still has a headphone jack. However, I don't think that it's necessary to upgrade from other great phones that launched in the last year.

The good

The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ Todd Haselton | CNBC

Almost everything about the Galaxy S9 is perfect, which is probably why the design hasn't changed drastically from last year's still-great Galaxy S8. Depending on the model you choose, you're getting either a 5.8-inch display or a 6.2-inch screen on the Galaxy S9+. The larger model has a bit more RAM, which should theoretically make running lots apps more fluid, and has a camera with improved zoom. If you like big screens, get the 6.2-inch model. Samsung loaded both phones with Android Oreo, the latest major Android release from Google, which is great, though it may be a bit overloaded with customizations.

The screen and stereo speakers are perfect for watching movies Todd Haselton | CNBC

You'll finally get stereo speakers for the first time ever on a Galaxy device, which means you hear audio from the top and bottom or left and right while holding the phone. You'll no longer muffle games or movies while holding the device with two hands. The speakers are nice and loud and balanced, at least for a phone. They're noticeably better than my iPhone X. Samsung also kept the headphone jack, which means you don't need to rely on dongles or Bluetooth headphones. Both models come with 64GB of storage  enough for saving apps, music and movies for most people. There's also still the option to expand storage using a microSD card, which is a nice plus. Samsung's fast charging system also juices up the phone quickly, so you don't need to spend hours at the outlet. There's also wireless charging, allowing you to drop it on a wireless charging pad instead of plugging it in, which is a convenience I've grown accustomed to from earlier Galaxy devices and the latest iPhones. A lot of focus was placed on improving the cameras this year, and they don't disappoint. Most folks probably won't see a massive difference between the Galaxy S9 and iPhone X cameras, which means Samsung did a good job. The lens is particularly good in low-light situations, like a pub or at dusk. You also get fun features like the ability to shoot portrait mode, though it doesn't seem to do as well as the iPhone X in this case. Finally, there's a new 940fps slow-motion mode that records really fun clips intelligently: Just turn it on and take the picture and the phone will detect movement and take the best slo-mo shot it can. You can save these as GIFs, too, for sharing. There are plenty of options for unlocking the phone, including a secure iris scanner, a slightly less secure fingerprint reader and face unlock, which Samsung says is more of a convenience than a security option. All worked well in my tests and I preferred face unlock since it was fast, even if it's not as secure as Apple's Face ID technology. Finally, unlike most other phones currently on the market, it will support next-generation Gigabit LTE networks that will begin rolling out in the United States this year. Think of it as a bit of future proofing for when these roll out: You'll be able to download movies and games much faster when you're not on Wi-Fi.

The bad

AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9 Todd Haselton | CNBC

There are a few things I don't like, but they're not really forward facing and not generally a huge problem. Samsung copied Apple (it denies this but it's clear as day) with its own take on Apple's Animoji. The feature is called AR Emoji and it's silly at best. I snapped a picture of myself and then the Galaxy S9 created a cartoon version of my face, though it didn't really look like me. You can use these in text messages, but they're so strange that I felt goofy sending them. Apple's Animoji are much more animated and fun, even though they don't try to customize to your face.

AR Emoji Todd Haselton | CNBC

Samsung's smart assistant, called Bixby, made its debut last year on the Galaxy S8. It wasn't good then and it still isn't good now. It's sluggish and most folks are better served by Android's built-in Google Assistant for most tasks. Samsung added a couple of new features to Bixby, like the ability to point your camera at foreign languages and translate them in real time, which is fun but isn't enough to warrant a recommendation for Bixby overall.

Galaxy S9 or iPhone X?

Apple says this is the strongest glass used on a smartphone Todd Haselton | CNBC

I don't normally compare Android phones with the iPhone because the product ecosystems are so different  you're either investing in Apple or Google software and products  but I've heard a lot of questions from friends and family which phone is better. There's no question the Galaxy S9 is a worthy Android rival to the iPhone X, with a great screen, camera, wireless charging and more. If you're buying an Android phone and don't like Apple products for whatever reason, this is a safe bet.

Should you buy it?

Pink, black and blue models will launch in the Untied States Todd Haselton | CNBC
A model walks the runway at the Hugo Boss fashion show during Ciputra World Fashion Week in Surabaya, Indonesia.

German fashion house Hugo Boss said it expected sales growth to accelerate in 2018 and net income to rise as a brand overhaul to appeal to younger consumers and efforts to improve its ecommerce offering gained traction.

Hugo Boss, which already reported a 5 percent increase in currency-adjusted sales in the fourth-quarter, said net income in the period fell by 29 percent to 45 million euros ($55.84 million), missing average analyst forecasts for 59 million.

However, it forecast sales and net profit to rise in a low to mid single-digit percentage range in 2018, while it expects to increase capital expenditure to between 170 million euros and 190 million from 128 million in 2017.

After a string of profit warnings, the maker of slick men's suits has been slashing prices in China, adding more casual and sportswear to appeal to younger customers, investing in its website and closing loss-making stores.
In 2014, Inga Beale became the first female CEO of Lloyd's of London, a leading specialist insurance market.

To be a chief executive takes a lot of confidence and management skills to steer a company forward. However, when Beale was offered her first-ever promotion in the insurance industry, she didn't think she was good enough to manage even one person.

"I can remember, it was in the 1990s and I had been working in the insurance sector for about 14 years and I was offered my first promotion. This was going to be the first time I was going to manage one person at work, and do you know what? I said 'No,'" Beale told CNBC on Thursday.

"I look back at that 32-year old Inga and I don't recognize her now  but that's how under-confident I was. I didn't think I was ready or good enough to take the job."

Luckily for Beale, she was "fortunate enough" to work for a business that incorporated a pro-active talent management program that encouraged promoting women and female leadership.

"It was only through that, that they then had to persevere with me and then persuaded me: 'You can take that job, you've got the confidence to do that,'" she said.

As the debate surrounding pay disparity gathers momentum, companies are being pressed to publish their own reports on how much they pay each sex. British firms that have more than 250 employees are legally required to publicly release their gender pay gap data by April.
A new contract for more F-35 fighter jets will take time, given the focus on cost, the CEO of the world's largest defense contractor says.

"We have been open and collaborative throughout this process on this negotiation, but what I will tell you is it's a complex negotiation because  when you consider 130 aircraft for this next lot, it's very important to understand the cost," said Marillyn Hewson, chief of Lockheed Martin.

The company, the prime contractor for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, has been negotiating with the Pentagon on the next contract since last year. It involves the 11th batch of 130 fighters, which would go to the U.S. and allies including the U.K., Australia and Norway. The Defense Department missed its own target of getting a deal done by the end of 2017.

Last week, Vice Adm. Mat Winter, who manages the program, blamed Lockheed for slow negotiations.

"They could be much more cooperative and more collaborative, and we could seal this deal faster," he said, according to Defense News. "We could. They choose not to, and that's a negotiating tactic."

In response, Hewson told CNBC: "Our government customer needs to understand the cost. We need to make sure that we are both at the table negotiating. As our program executive officer Adm. Winter has said, we're both negotiating in good faith. It just takes time to walk through all the elements of it first."

Cost has been a huge sticking point for the F-35, as numerous delays and costs overruns have spurred criticism over the years. Lockheed came under fire from then-President-elect Donald Trump in late 2016, when he slammed the program as too expensive.
Mexico's Minister of Energy, Pedro Joaquin Coldwell, said North America's energy trade would continue even if NAFTA is ended, but it will be more powerful if the free trade agreement is successfully revamped.

"I don't think it would be threatened, but if it continues, it would enhance its growth," he said. "I can say that the energy chapter in NAFTA is a chapter of coincidences among the three countries. There are conditions that make North America the most competitive region in the world."

Coldwell said NAFTA is important for energy integration even though the crossborder connections were there long before the 1994 agreement. But since then, the energy relationship has boomed. There is an eighth round of negotiations expected in the efforts to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

"It's obviously very important because it's important for energy integration in the region. In 1994, when NAFTA was signed, back then interregional trade was one-third. It's nearly half. Energy trade is double the rest of goods and services," he said.

Coldwell was speaking to CNBC at the annual CERAWeek conference hosted by IHS Markit in Houston, where 3,500 industry officials gathered from across the world. Mexico's minister appeared on a panel with Canada Natural Resources Minister James Carr and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and discussed how the interconnections of the energy industry tie the three countries together naturally. The U.S. imports Mexican oil and sells it gasoline and natural gas, while the U.S. buys oil, gasoline and power from Canada, while selling it oil and natural gas.
Chrystia Freeland, Canada's minister of foreign affairs, left, shakes hands with Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, Mexico's secretary of economy, before a bilateral meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Monday, Jan. 22, 2018.

The Mexican peso and the Canadian dollar rose against the U.S. dollar on Thursday on the back of a report that said Canada and Mexico will be exempt from proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The peso traded 0.4 percent higher at 18.639 against the U.S. dollar, erasing earlier losses. The Canadian dollar jumped to trade 0.1 percent higher versus the U.S. currency at 1.2898.

Earlier Thursday, The Associated Press, citing sources, reported that the tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump on steel and aluminum imports will take effect in 15 days and will exempt Canada and Mexico indefinitely. Canada and Mexico are two key U.S. trade partners.

Trump is expected to make an announcement on the tariffs Thursday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
A cold winter in China could be signaling a hotter market for a new wave of U.S. natural gas exports sooner than expected.

Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco said Chinese demand for liquefied natural gas was up 40 percent year-over-year and should continue to be strong. He said the growth in demand is about the size of Cheniere.

"As we saw this winter, demand in Asia and China kind of surprised the market. What we saw was supposed to be a market that might not be hitting supply-demand balance until the mid-2020s," said Kevin Brown, research analyst at Tortoise Capital Advisors. "It's at a place now where we see the balance coming maybe earlier, in the 2020s, pushing people to have to make that second wave of LNG investment."

Since Cheniere's first LNG shipment went to Brazil two years ago, there's an even split between destinations in Latin America and Asia, and then the rest of the world. But every spare drop went to China recently, Fusco told the CERAWeek annual energy conference hosted by IHS Markit in Houston this week.

Fusco said there's secular change in China behind the demand growth. "They want  they need  cleaner air, and we see that shift longer term," he said. China's goal is to use natural gas for 10 percent of its needs by 2020, and it needs LNG to meet that demand.
A.P. Moller-Maersk is the largest container shipping company in the world.

The Danish shipping firm Moller-Maersk has confirmed that at least one man is dead and four more missing after a fire broke out aboard its Maersk Honam ship.

The vessel was headed towards Suez from Singapore when it first reported the fire Tuesday. The vessel is reportedly currently positioned around 900 nautical miles southeast of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

Maersk, the largest container shipping firm in the world, confirmed that a Thai national passed away Wednesday afternoon because of injuries sustained in connection with the fire. The firm also said the nationalities of the four missing crew members, are two Filipinos, one South African and one Indian.

The remaining 22 crew members were evacuated to a nearby vessel, along with the now deceased man, on Tuesday evening.

Soren Toft, chief operating officer of Moller-Maersk, said Thursday that the hope of finding the missing four men is fading.

"We are in contact with their families and they know that tragically, the time passed decreases the likelihood of finding their loved ones alive. Our thoughts and prayers go to them," he said .

The Danish firm said the cause of the fire remained unknown.
In a trip to western Pennsylvania in January, President Donald Trump promoted the recently passed Republican tax plan as a boon to workers and businesses in a region that helped to propel him to the White House.

The president trumpeted "tremendous tax relief" for families. Trump brought an employee of Pittsburgh-area H&K Equipment to the stage to talk about how he would spend his tax savings. Trump also listed the major Pennsylvania employers who planned to give employees bonuses after a massive reductions in their tax burdens.

"When we began our push for tax cuts, I promised that our bill would result in more jobs, higher wages and tremendous relief for middle-class families, and that is exactly what we have delivered," Trump said at the time. "There's only one thing  even I never knew how big it would be. It's much bigger  and you see it  than anybody anticipated. We kept our promise."

Trump's visit came partly as an effort to boost Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone, who is running in a tight House special election in southwestern Pennsylvania's 18th District. On Saturday, the president is expected to head back there, in a new bid to promote Saccone's candidacy.

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While most voters who spoke to CNBC in the red district this week at least modestly supported the tax plan or said they knew someone who benefited from it, the tax overhaul has not featured as prominently as an election issue as the president may have hoped in January.

Ahead of November's battle for control of Congress, the Pennsylvania race is seen as a crucial gauge of Democrats' ability to win House seats in red areas like the 18th District, which Trump won by 20 points in 2016. A strong U.S. economy and the tax plan will be a key selling point for Republican candidates in this year's midterms.

Trump may try to refresh voters' minds about the tax plan when he makes another visit to western Pennsylvania Saturday evening, just days before Tuesday's election. The law slashed tax rates for businesses and moderately reduced the tax burden on most individuals.

Democratic leaders in Congress have cast it as a giveaway to the rich and corporations at the expense of the working class. Republicans have cited corporate announcements of one-time bonuses or capital investment as evidence that the plan worked, although stock buybacks have also shot up since the tax overhaul became law in December.
One of the most heart wrenching moments in my service as U.S. Commerce secretary was in the fall of 2016 in Lorain, Ohio.

I met with steelworkers whose lives and livelihoods were flipped upside down by years of overproduction and subsequent dumping of steel by the Chinese on the global market. This action created a glut worldwide, causing a crash in steel prices. Workers in Lorain, along with many other communities across America, felt this massive shock as thousands were laid off.

There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of the significant pain those steel workers had the courage to share. Thus, I understand the president's desire to find clear and urgent solutions to help protect American workers from foreign competition.

But the reality is that the president's call for tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, or threats of a trade war, will do exactly the opposite. These moves would cause real damage to our economy and job losses for countless Americans. No doubt some jobs will be saved for producers of steel and aluminum, but these gains will be offset by more jobs lost elsewhere across the nation as prices on everything made from steel and aluminum will rise, making it impossible for U.S. workers to compete on a global scale.

We've been here before. In 2002, President George W. Bush imposed tariffs of up to 30 percent on imported steel. The result of these tariffs drove up the price of U.S. products made with steel by as much as 40 percent. Studies showed they cost our economy up to 200,000 jobs for Americans who manufactured those products. That figure included roughly 10,000 in my home state of Illinois, 11,000 in Ohio, 10,000 in Michigan, and 8,000 in Pennsylvania.

It's no wonder then why the Bush administration reversed course on this policy just 20 months later, removing the tariffs after seeing their harmful effects. The president would be wise to heed this lesson.

Instead of confronting China head-on to reduce its excess production, the administration wants to misdirect our policy firepower and take out this frustration instead on our allies when we most need their help. Contrary to the goals the president wants to achieve, these tariffs will have a limited effect on China because much of the steel and aluminum we import comes from important allies such as Canada, South Korea, Brazil and Mexico.

Rather, the president should double down and work with the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea and others to put more pressure on China. This multilateral approach is one we pursued in the Obama administration to address those hurt by China's mercantilist economic policies and its failure as a market economy  not just in steel and aluminum, but in other key sectors such as semiconductors.

Our allies' anger is hitting a fever pitch as leading officials in the EU and elsewhere are threatening retaliation against the president's proposed tariffs. The U.S. could, in turn, face new tariffs on exports such as soybeans or planes or cars, to name just a few. Expect more of this.

Stepping back, however, we have to be honest with the American people. Far too many people feel left behind by the impacts of technology, automation and globalization. Neither trade wars nor tariffs will help in this regard, however. In fact, they will only leave more Americans further behind.

We have failed as a nation for more than three decades to develop a robust strategy to create more inclusive economic growth, arm American workers with skills they need to adapt to technological advances and modernize our safety net for 21st century work. I believe this is the central economic challenge of our time.

With the world changing this quickly, we cannot know what the future will look like just a few short years from now, let alone decades ahead. But we can put in place a system that truly prepares Americans of all ages to succeed in a competitive 21st century economy.

Here are some things we should do, among others:

Replace the decades-old Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides too little support and often fails to provide displaced workers with the support they need. An improved system must include better support to facilitate workers ability to move between jobs, across sectors and communities if need be throughout their careers, with the requisite life-long, affordable learning to help them adjust to powerful changes in our economy and improve their skills.

Instead of cutting federal workforce training, we should double down on job-driven programs with a proven record of success, providing more funds and support for apprenticeships.

We can better harness our data capabilities, through government-business cooperation, to help more Americans develop smart, strong career paths and better link them to employers.

Governments at all levels  federal, state and local -- should expand the earned income tax credit, and build a system of portable benefits so that retirement, sick leave and other benefits are available to all workers in our growing "gig" economy, not just traditional full-time workers.

A comprehensive workforce strategy is even more imperative given the fact that U.S. government spending on training is lower as a percentage of our economy than all but two OECD countries. Moreover, the U.S. private sector has reduced spending on training by roughly one-third over the last two decades.

Of course, there is no one single remedy to help more people adapt and thrive. While tariffs and bellicose rhetoric may make some feel good in the short term, they do nothing to ward off the challenges of Chinese competition or technological disruption in the long-term.

Yet, as a businessperson who had the high honor to serve in the Cabinet, I know we can do better. We must be willing to do the hard work to apply real political and policy muscle  at all levels -- to modernize our education, workforce and safety net systems to meet this test.

This is a defining moment  much like when our country created a public education system during the transition from an agrarian to an industrialized society. This comprehensive, generational approach is the only real answer to create greater opportunity and prosperity for all Americans, whether they hail from Lorain or any other community across our country.

Penny Pritzker is chairman and founder of the investment firm PSP Partners and was the 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.
If you're thinking of buying Samsung's new Android flagship smartphone, you should splurge for the larger model.



It's easy to assume the Galaxy S9+ is simply a larger version of the Galaxy S9, but it's actually a lot more. I tested both phones over the past week and found myself always choosing the larger model.

Yes, the slight bump in screen size  the S9+ has a 6.2 inch screen to the 5.8-inch on the Galaxy S9  is really terrific for movies, browsing the web or running two apps side-by-side at the same time. There are other changes you'll like.

Samsung added a second camera on the back of the Galaxy S9+ that can be used for hardware-zoom, which is much better than relying on software. This is similar to what Apple did on the iPhone X, and it works really well when you need to get a bit closer to a subject while taking a photo. It also helps with low-light performance, so shots taken in the dark are much brighter. While standing on my porch at night, for example, I snapped a picture of the snowfall in near-complete dark, but it still almost looks like dusk or even daylight.

The Galaxy S9+ also has more RAM  6GB instead of 4GB. That's not something most people usually care about, but it makes a difference when you're running a lot of apps, especially with the larger screen, and should keep things running smoothly as apps get more complicated over the life of your ownership.

Finally, it's rated for up to 35 hours of battery charge versus the 31 hours promised by Samsung for the Galaxy S9. That alone is usually worth it for me, since my phone always seems to die, though I was able to use the Galaxy S9+ for at least a day and a half most of the time.

The choice is yours, and the Galaxy S9+ will cost a few bucks more a month if you're buying it on a carrier payment plan. It's money well spent.
Concerns about trade wars, the future of NAFTA and impending steel and aluminum tariffs loomed over a major energy conference this week, but U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the overall tone in the energy industry is one of "sheer optimism."

The Trump administration aims to encourage innovation in the energy sector by scaling back regulations, according to Perry. The prospect of a future bound in less red tape and the technology-driven surge in U.S. oil and gas production is what's underpinning that optimism, in his view.

"It's less concern than it is pure optimism. Everybody's got concerns about their particular sector, whether it's the utility guys or the infrastructure guys," Perry told CNBC on the sidelines of the CERAWeek by IHS Markit energy conference.

"There are concerns out there. Don't get me wrong, but the overall message here is one of just sheer optimism."
Saudi Arabia's decision to overturn a ban on women driving could prove lucrative for international carmakers, with the likes of Ford launching driving schools for women ahead of the radical change in the law.

"I've always been a passenger in the car and I can't wait to get behind the wheel," said Shams Hakim, a female university student in Saudi Arabia. She's attending a driving school at Effat University in Jeddah.

"I'm excited, but I also have some apprehension about what is actually involved in driving," Hakim adds.

The student of Business Human Resources is one of 250 women who have signed up to carmaker Ford's Driving Skills for Life for Her (DSFL) program, essentially a hands-on driving school run by Ford that's based in the university. Hakim says the program has given her "the confidence and education I need for the journey that lies ahead to obtain my license."

Carmaker giant Ford has started a hands-on driving education course for women only, ahead of the lifting of the driving ban on women i the country. According to a royal decree, the ban has to be lifted before June 24 2018.

The overturning of the ban means that women will be allowed to drive in the conservative, religious country for the first time in decades. Hundreds of women have even signed up to become drivers for ride-hailing companies, like Careem.

Ford said more than 250 students joined the driving school program this week in the lead up to International Women's Day on Thursday. Previously, the law in Saudi Arabia had meant that Ford's driving school sessions were for men only.

"The DSFL for Her sessions have been tailor-made for Saudi women as they approach the day when they can legally drive on public roads," Ford said in a press release.

It said the lessons included learning about your vehicle  where students are taught the fundamentals of preparing to drive such as adjusting the seat, checking mirrors and correct hand position  things that drivers take for granted in many countries.
Student loan borrowers could get some wiggle room when it comes to repaying private loans, thanks to two new proposals in the Senate banking bill.

The provisions in the bill would adjust how private student loan lenders treat the death or bankruptcy of co-signers, as well as how defaults are reported on a borrower's credit report.

The changes would have positive results for borrowers, student loan experts said.

"It's bipartisan, so this legislation is probably going to move," said Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert and publisher at the website Private Student Loans Guru.

The first proposal makes it so that a lender cannot declare default or accelerate a private education loan when a co-signer of the loan dies or declares bankruptcy.

In addition, when the student dies, the private loan lender will be obligated to release the co-signer from the debt, if any remained.

Those new rules would only apply to private loan agreements made at least 180 days after the bill is passed.

"From a fairness perspective, it makes sense to make this no longer an option for future private student loans," said Betsy Mayotte, founder and president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors.

Mayotte said she has seen cases where a lender has accelerated a loan in order to make a co-signer's estate liable.

Lenders do have choices in terms of how they enforce these rules, Mayotte said. Anyone who takes out a private student loan, particularly those who need a co-signer, should read the promissory notes carefully, she said.
Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Cigna  The U.S. health insurer announced plans to buy pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts in a $67 billion cash-and-stock deal, which includes Cigna taking on about $15 billion in debt. Cigna would find a new partner in Express Scripts, after antitrust regulators last year denied a Cigna and Anthem combination as anti-competitive.

Wynn Resorts  Two members of the company's board of directors stepped down Wednesday, hours after the state of Oregon announced it was suing disgraced former CEO Steve Wynn and the Wynn Resorts board of directors for allegedly failing to stop sexual misconduct at the company's highest levels.

Costco Wholesale  The retailer reported second quarter earnings of $1.42 per share, missing Wall Street's expectation by 5 cents according to Thomson Reuters. The membership-based chain saw strong same store sales growth in the latest quarter, while also announcing it would reinvest a portion of the company's tax reform windfall into employee benefits.

Exxon Mobil  Chairman and CEO Darren Woods told CNBC that President Donald Trump's tariff proposal threatens to undo some of the improvements business saw from the administration's tax reform and deregulation efforts. Tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, "takes us back in the opposite direction," Woods said.

Apple  The company said Wednesday it has found more serious violations of its labor and environmental policies by its suppliers. Apple's latest annual supplier responsibility report included 197 suppliers for the first time, which are part of one of the largest manufacturing chains in the world.

Tesla  CEO Elon Musk shared photos of a cargo-hauling test drive of two Tesla Semis with his legions of followers on social media. While Tesla has told investors it would start mass-production of its electric semis in 2019, the company has yet to announce where these trucks will be manufactured.

Cisco Systems  President of Cisco's Southeast Asia division Naveen Menon told CNBC Thursday that he is "not at all" worried that rising trade tensions could dent business optimism in the region. "The macroeconomic or the geopolitical landscape does not worry me at this point in time," Menon said.

Amazon  A small footnote in the e-commerce giant's annual report revealed it is on the hook for an additional $22 billion in future purchase obligations following the Whole Foods acquisition. Accounting experts told CNBC that Amazon is showing its commitment to growing its grocery business with this unusual multi-year obligation.

JPMorgan  The bank is one of five working to change the barriers to entry in London's $6.8 trillion per year gold market. JPMorgan, along with HSBC, Scotiabank, UBS and ICBC Standard, are reforming the rules of the world's largest bullion clearing house, in a move which may the market more competitive.

Netflix  A GBH Insights note to investors called Netflix a "growth machine showing no signs of slowing down." The firm raised its price target on shares of the streaming service to $375, a 17 percent premium above Wednesday's close of $321.16 per share.
Congress will get one last shot later this month to pass a modest plan to help fix the Obamacare marketplaces  that is, unless the Trump administration torpedoes what has been until now a very uneasy truce.

After months of discussions, a pair of plans  one negotiated by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA), the other from Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Bill Nelson (D-FL)  would inject billions of dollars of federal money into the insurance markets, while also giving Republicans a win by providing some more administrative flexibility for states to pursue their own health care programs.

But then on Tuesday, Politico and the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House is making some deeply conservative demands if Trump is going to support a stabilization plan. They want to place abortion restrictions on federal tax credits, they want to allow insurers to charge older people even higher premiums, and they want to expand short-term insurance plans that don't have to comply with Obamacare's rules.



More from Vox:

The latest White House resignation has spooked Wall Street

Trump White House quietly issues report vindicating Obama regulations

Why you should give a sh-- about Trump's tariffs, explained by an economic historian

The bills making their way through Congress wouldn't single-handedly save the markets, especially with the Trump administration taking bureaucratic steps to undercut the law, but they would represent a good-faith bipartisan effort on a hotly contentious issue. House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose most conservative members have balked at compromise, was reported last week to be looking at budgetary maneuvers that would make it easier to pass a stabilization plan.

Democrats had soured a bit on these stabilization bills after Republicans repealed the individual mandate despite expert warnings that it would raise premiums and damage the markets, but still signaled they wanted to get something done.

With Congress needing to pass a major spending bill at the end of this month, an obvious vehicle for these measures, it seemed like lawmakers might actually be gearing up to do something positive to aid the Affordable Care Act.

But now the administration is adding abortion to an already-volatile mix and pushing a provision fundamentally at odds with Democratic priorities. It seems like the White House is standing in the way of anything getting done on Obamacare.

The White House is rocking the boat on Obamacare stabilization

Obamacare stabilization has been an unsteady venture from the start. Democrats and Republicans have been viciously feuding over the law for almost an entire decade at this point.

Rank-and-file Republicans have always been reluctant to put any more federal money into the law's markets, given that they have promised their voters for years that they would repeal Obamacare root and branch. Democrats have been antagonized by the GOP's repeated attempts to repeal the law  and their success in the tax bill of undoing the individual mandate, which is expected to weaken the markets further.

Despite those misgivings, the Alexander-Murray and Collins-Nelson plans seemed to be in everybody's best interest. Democrats would get affirmative Republican buy-in to making the law work for the first time and Republicans would be able to undo some of the damage their own policies have done to the law, lowering the risk that premiums will rise again this autumn right before the elections. This is especially important now that most voters consider Republicans accountable for the ACA's success or failure.

The spending bill offered a strong vehicle to carry the contentious proposals. And Ryan's exploration of some budgetary tricks to make the stabilization plans more palatable suggested that the biggest problem in Congress for these bills  conservatives in the House  might be surmountable.

But now the White House is muddying the waters by pursuing abortion restrictions  always a nonstarter for Democrats  and trying to formalize its proposal to expand short-term plans that don't comply with Obamacare, when Democrats have said they want to do the exact opposite.

Democrats probably aren't going to acquiesce, especially when they think the Alexander-Murray proposal has already been undermined by the repeal of the individual mandate.

"I certainly hope the president and Republican leaders won't once again sabotage an opportunity to undo some of the damage they've done by choosing to play politics with women's health and making last-minute, harmful demands that would raise families' costs even more and place an age tax on seniors," Murray said in a statement.

And if the White House holds firm, refusing to drop its demands and endorse the existing plans, that could be deadly for Obamacare stabilization in the House. Conservatives in the lower chamber typically take their cues from Trump on hot-button issues and don't seem likely to support the health care fixes in sufficient numbers if the White House is opposed.

How the Obamacare stabilization bills would reverse Trump's sabotage

Trump and congressional Republicans have undermined the Affordable Care Act on multiple fronts. They repealed the law's individual mandate in their tax bill. Trump's health department slashed funding for enrollment advertising and outreach by tens of millions of dollars. And Trump stopped making cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurers, which helped to lower out-of-pocket costs for the marketplace's poorest customers.

The attacks have had real effects on insurance premiums for ACA plans, which likely would have increased by single digits on average without Trump's meddling. But because of uncertainty about CSR payments, enrollment outreach, and the mandate, plans hiked their rates an additional 20 to 30 percent on average for 2018.

There are currently two deals on the table  Alexander-Murray and Collins-Nelson  designed to offset some of that damage.

The Alexander-Murray deal would fund the CSR payments for 2018 and 2019. The bill also provides $106 million in Obamacare funding outreach in 2018 and 2019, with the money being directed to states.

The Collins-Nelson bill would provide $10 billion in federal reinsurance funding over 2018 and 2019 to help lower insurance premiums by compensating insurers for their costliest patients.

Looking ahead to 2019, the deals would undoubtedly provide more stability to the ACA markets, which were reaching an equilibrium before Trump intervened. The cost-sharing payments would be guaranteed, plans would know that tens of millions of dollars would be spent on Obamacare outreach, and the reinsurance money should help keep insurers afloat if healthier people leave the market after the mandate's repeal.

Plans and state insurance commissioners found a way to work around Trump's refusal to make CSR payments, which actually gave many Obamacare customers who receive tax subsidies even more financial assistance. Some have argued that there is actually no need to fund the payments, given that workaround.

But the argument I've heard from Senate aides is that you don't want to have a hobbled law forever. Trump, in stopping the CSR payments, has stopped the ACA from functioning like it's supposed to. Alexander-Murray would put the law back on track.

What Republicans would already get out of Alexander-Murray

The Obamacare stabilization measures are the obvious wins for Democrats. Republicans wanted some deregulatory provisions and more state flexibility in return.

The bulk of Alexander-Murray's changes would be to the ACA's 1332 waiver program. The law established those waivers for states to pursue their own health care programs, as long as they provided coverage that was as comprehensive and affordable as what Obamacare itself would provide. States have had grand ambitions (like Vermont's failed single-payer proposal) and more modest ones (like the reinsurance programs, which compensate insurers for high-cost patients, that a few states have pursued this year) for the waivers.

The deal would make several changes to streamline the waiver process, a priority for Republicans:

Governors could pursue 1332 waivers on their law; under current law, the state legislature must approve the waiver

"Me too" waivers  states pursuing a waiver already approved for another state  would receive expedited approval

Waivers would last for six years by default instead of the current five

The most notable change is to the 1332 program's so-called guardrails, which are supposed to ensure states are still providing coverage as robust as what Obamacare offers.

Under the ACA right now, health coverage and cost-sharing under a 1332 waiver is supposed to be "at least as affordable" as Obamacare coverage. Alexander-Murray would change that standard to "of comparable affordability, including for low-income people, people with serious health needs, and other vulnerable populations."

How much does that actually change? Potentially not much.

"The language change is pretty modest," Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told me last fall. "The language change may signal that HHS could approve waivers where the protections are slightly less protective than what we've already got under the ACA  but only slightly. Doing away with cost-sharing protections altogether still isn't possible."

The other major win for Republicans in the deal would be the expansion of catastrophic coverage under the ACA. Those plans, which have higher out-of-pocket costs than other Obamacare coverage but lower premiums, are currently limited to people under age 30. Alexander-Murray would make them available to everyone.

That does expand the choices consumers have, a priority for Republicans. But the effect on the market is expected to be muted.

"No big deal," David Anderson at Duke University told me of the concept before the deal was announced. "It won't help; it won't hurt."
Whether it's leading a national conversation about gun control or fighting for girls' education and gender equality around the world, an increasing number of young women are stepping forward as change agents. To keep the momentum going, this year's theme for International Women's Day is centered around #PressforProgress and urges women of all generations to to use their voices to make a difference. Below are just a few of the young female leaders leading national and international conversations about some of the world's most critical issues:

1. Emma Gonzalez

Photo courtesy of Getty

Just days after a gunman opened fire at her school and killed 17 of her peers, Florida high school senior Emma Gonzalez used her voice to call national attention to gun law reform. She, along with several of her classmates, have held gun control rallies in their Florida community and called on government officials to act now to prevent future mass shootings from taking place. In an essay written for Harper's Bazaar, the 18-year-old spoke about her determination to continue to use her voice until change has occurred. "If I'm able to communicate one thing to adults, it would be this: It should not be easier to purchase a gun than it is to obtain a driver's license, and military-grade weapons should not be accessible in civilian settings," she wrote. "You don't drive a NASCAR on the street, no matter how fun it might be, just like you don't need an AR-15 to protect yourself when walking home at night. No one does."

2. Amariyanna "Mari" Copeny

Twitter In 2006, 8-year-old Copeny wrote a letter to President Barack Obama in which she referred to herself as "Little Miss Flint." In the letter she asked if she could meet with him or the First Lady during an upcoming trip to Washington, D.C. She was heading to the nation's capital to hear Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder testify before Congress about the water crisis in her hometown of Flint, Michigan. "My mom said chances are you will be to [sic] busy with more important things but there is a lot of people coming on these buses and even just a meeting from you or your wife would really lift peoples spirits," The Washington Post reports her writing in her letter. "Thank you for all that do for our country." While her trip to Washington did not end with the meeting she had hoped for, "Little Miss Flint" later received a call from the White House that President Obama had read her letter and was emailing a response. In the letter, Obama explained that he was moved by Copeny's words and that he hoped to meet her on his upcoming trip to Flint. Since that meeting, Copeny has continued her fight for clean water in Flint and has also become a youth ambassador for the Women's March.

3. Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai Luiz Rampelotto/Pacific Press | LightRocket | Getty Images

In 2012, Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban after publicly speaking out about her fight to protect girls' education. After surviving the attack she went on to share her story around the world and launched the Malala Fund in 2013 with her father to raise awareness. "I started speaking out when I was 11 years old and I had no idea if my voice can have an impact or not," Yousafzai said during a session titled "An Insight, An Idea With Malala Yousafzai" at this year's Davos summit. "But soon I realized that people were listening to me and my voice was reaching to people around the world. So change is possible and do not limit yourself, do not stop yourself, just because you are young." In addition to being an activist, 20-year-old Yousafzai is a published author, a United Nations (UN) Messenger of Peace and in 2014 she became the youngest Nobel Laureate ever after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

4. Yara Shahidi

Michelle Obama and Yara Shahidi participate in panel discussion at Glamour Hosts 'A Brighter Future: A Global Conversation on Girls' Education.' Paul Morigi | Getty Images

Shahidi is an 18-year-old actress and activist who uses her platform to advocate for important issues like diversity in Hollywood, girls' education and voter turnout. Most recently, she sat down with Oprah Winfrey to discuss how she's turning her activism into action by launching a new initiative called Eighteen x '18, which will encourage more young people to vote in the upcoming elections. In the past, she's worked with Michelle Obama's Let Girls Learn initiative and with the United Nations to launch a mentorship program called "Yara's Club," through the Young Women's Leadership Network. Her work with empowering young women also helped her to score the ultimate college recommendation from Mrs. Obama herself. After completing her gap year, she plans to attend Harvard University as a sociology and African-American studies double major.

5. Shamma bint Suhail Faris Mazrui

Photo courtesy of Getty

In 2016, at just 22 years old, Mazrui was appointed Minister of State for Youth Affairs in the United Arab Emirates. According to the Los Angeles Times, she is believed to be the youngest government minister in the world and her role is to create pathways for young people to have more engagement with government and within society. She holds a bachelor's degree from New York University Abu Dhabi and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford, which she attended as her country's first Rhodes Scholar.

6. Sophie Cruz

Sophie Cruz and her family at the 2017 Women's March. Photo courtesy of Getty

In 2015, 5-year-old Cruz broke through security to give Pope Francis a letter in which she asked that her parents, who are undocumented immigrants, not be deported from the United States. In the letter, she asked that Pope Francis speak with the President and Congress about the issue and said that she would soon be sending a letter to President Obama. Since then, Cruz has continued to advocate for immigration rights. Last year she spoke at the Women's March in Washington, D.C., and she called on the crowd to work together to bring about change. "Let us fight with love, faith and courage so that our families will not be destroyed," she said.

7. Marley Dias
Workers connect drill bits and drill collars, used to extract natural petroleum, on Endeavor Energy Resources LP's Big Dog Drilling Rig 22 in the Permian basin outside of Midland, Texas.

President Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs on metal imports could create a perfect storm for oil prices to crash, according to one strategist.

At the start of the month, Trump announced plans to impose duties on steel and aluminum imports. The contentious move has prompted a global backlash and heightened fears of a tit-for-tat trade war.

Stephen Brennock, oil analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said such protectionist tariffs were a "major threat" to the demand side of the oil equation and would likely prompt a "vicious cycle" of downward pricing pressures. He added the move would be a "sure-fire" way to undermine economic trade and growth.

"Economic optimism and oil consumption go hand-in-hand, therefore, any adverse impact on the health of the global economy will dampen oil demand growth prospects  In short, a trade war would be a recipe for lower oil prices," Brennock said via email on Wednesday.
Adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, poses for pictures at the end of her striptease show in Gossip Gentleman club in Long Island, New York, U.S., February 23, 2018.

The salacious details of Stormy Daniels' alleged affair with Donald Trump more than a decade ago have seeped out to the public but the porn-star-turned-household-name has been barred from telling the story herself.

That might soon change, according to legal experts, despite a temporary restraining order the president's legal team won last week against Daniels, who is fighting in court to tell her story about their alleged tryst.

The legal document, referred to as a "hush agreement," she signed weeks before the 2016 presidential election that keeps her from dishing on her relationship with Trump paints the president in a corner, said Imre Szalai, a national expert on arbitration law with the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans.



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Trump and his legal team can try to keep Daniels silent through arbitration  and his legal team, so far, has indicated that's the preferred course. But the move essentially would force the president to admit his role as a party to an agreement that paid Daniels to stay quiet.

That could get him in hot water with the Federal Election Commission, which would likely view it as a violation of campaign finance law, Szalai wrote on his Outsourcing Justice blog.

But if Trump decides not to contest Daniels' ability to go public, she could immediately spill her story, adding further embarrassment to a president who's been accused of sex harassmentby several women and was caught on a Hollywood Access tape boasting about grabbing women sexually.

Or Trump and his legal team can try to keep Daniels silent by taking the issue to arbitration, a move that essentially force the president to admit his role as a party to an agreement that paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

"If the hush payment violated election law, then this lawsuit and the procedural dilemmas concerning the enforcement of the arbitration agreement have placed Trump in a Catch-22 situation if he or the company seeks to compel arbitration," Szalai wrote.

And that could put Trump in even more legal peril because it might draw the interest of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating any links between the Trump campaign and Russians who sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

"This is well within Mueller's wheelhouse," Turley said. "Mueller could seek answers about the payment."

Amanda Werner, a lawyer who tracks arbitration issues for the progressive group Public Justice, said non-disclosure agreements such as the one Trump entered into with Daniels are "pretty standard" methods of buying people's silence to prevent public embarrassment.

"Unfortunately, arbitration is able to generally ensure that people can't tell the truth and can't talk to the media," Werner said. "But in this case, it's just really hard to enforce without further incriminating the president. He's kind of stuck in a tough situation here but I think it's hopefully going to help the truth come out."

News of the secret restraining order emerged Wednesday after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters an arbitration proceeding against Daniels "was won in the president's favor."

On Tuesday, Daniels filed a lawsuit, claiming that a $130,000 settlement she reached with Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to keep quiet about the alleged relationship was no longer valid because Trump had not signed the document. The lawsuit marked the first time Daniels had openly admitted to having a "hush" agreement.

In the suit, Daniels claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007. Cohen and Daniels signed the agreement to secure her silence on Oct. 28, 2016, just days before the presidential election.

Despite the confidentiality agreement, Daniels' team has managed to say a great deal about the alleged affair. In a round of television interviews Wednesday, Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti insisted that the president must have known about the $130,000 payment to Daniels when it was made in October 2016.

"The suggestion that you would have an experienced, educated attorney like Mr. Cohen who would run off, half-cocked without any knowledge of his client, that he would negotiate and draft a detailed agreement that included his client as a party, that he would engage in weeks of negotiation, that he would reach agreement, that he would then send $130,000 in connection with that agreement, that he would then later institute an arbitration proceeding without knowledge of his client, all of this to those of us that practice under the law as attorneys, it's ludicrous," Avenatti said on CNN.

Daniels is scheduled to appear this weekend at the Solid Gold strip club in South Florida which is promoting the event as Daniels' first public appearance since filing a lawsuit against Trump.

"Stormy no longer wishes to remain silent , and SOLID GOLD proudly supports her right to speak," according to the club's Facebook page.
President Donald Trump said he will make his announcement on steel and aluminum tariffs at a 3:30 p.m. ET meeting Thursday.

The announcement comes a week after Trump said he would institute a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum. The move rattled markets as it indicated the president was moving toward more protectionist trade policies.

A White House official, who declined to be named, told CNBC the president on Thursday will sign a "legal paper enacting the president's stated objectives with dates of enactment and implementation included." Earlier Thursday, NBC News reported that if Trump were to sign a proclamation Thursday it would be largely "symbolic."

Markets are watching for more concrete signs that Mexico and Canada could be exempted from the tariffs. The White House has said the president was considering such exemptions.

Two sources familiar with the planning told CNBC that Trump is considering a 30-day exemption for Canada and Mexico, which would be tied to negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement. The president has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the 1994 pact if negotiators do not figure out a way to overhaul it.

Thursday morning, Trump tweeted: "Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military."

TRUMP TWEET

 CNBC's Eamon Javers and Kayla Tausche contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump said Thursday morning there will be a meeting at the White House regarding the U.S. steel and aluminum industries.

The announcement, which came in a tweet, comes as markets watch for more concrete signs that Mexico and Canada would be exempted from the aluminum and steel tariffs Trump unveiled in a surprise announcement a week ago.

Trump is considering a 30-day exemption for Canada and Mexico, which would be tied to negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement, two sources familiar with the planning told CNBC. The president has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the 1994 pact if negotiators do not figure out a way to overhaul it.

Thursday morning, Trump tweeted: "Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military."

Trump tweet

The tweet appears to be signalling that an announcement regarding proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports would be coming. Meanwhile, NBC News, citing a White House official, reported that the details are still being worked out  and that the president could sign a largely "symbolic" proclamation.

Welker tweet

Upon Trump's announcement last week, investors and lawmakers feared that the tariffs could be a catalyst for a trade war.

Those fears were eased somewhat after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that Canada and Mexico  two key U.S. trade partners  could be exempt from the tariffs.

Trump is expected to formally sign off on the tariffs Thursday or Friday, although some reports said the announcement could have been delayed until next week.

CNBC's Kayla Tausche contributed to this report.
"A strong steel and aluminum industry are vital to our national security," Trump said. "You don't have steel, you don't have a country."

The moves will slap a 25 percent levy on steel and 10 percent charge on aluminum . White House officials say the tariffs are an essential matter of domestic and economic security.

Trump signed the tariffs in the White House's Roosevelt Room, surrounded by workers who will supposedly benefit from the moves. The tariffs will take effect in 15 days.

President Donald Trump , following through on one of his most controversial campaign promises, signed two proclamations Thursday that implement tariffs on imported steel and aluminum but exempt Canada and Mexico.

Surrounded by steel and aluminum workers, U.S. President Donald Trump (C) signs a 'Section 232 Proclamation' on steel imports during a ceremony in Roosevelt Room the the White House March 8, 2018 in Washington, DC.

In addition to the exceptions for the two NAFTA partners, the White House will give other nations the opportunity to justify why they shouldn't be included.

"If the same goals can be accomplished by other means, America will remain open to modifying or removing the tariffs for individual nations, as long as we can agree on a way to ensure that their products no longer threaten our security," Trump said.

Determining further exceptions will depend on whether countries can convince Trump that there's a "satisfactory alternative means" for resolving trade inequities, said an administration official familiar with the tariff proclamations who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We're going to show great flexibility," Trump added.

In the meantime, the president said it's vital for national interests to take action against other nations that have dumped steel into the global market, costing American jobs and the nation's economic standing.

"Now we're finally taking action to correct this long overdue problem," he said. "It's a travesty."

While there is not currently a timetable, the exemptions for Canada and Mexico "are not open-ended" and will depend on whether changes are made to NAFTA that satisfy Trump, the administration official added. The proclamations also can be amended in other ways "to preserve our national security."

"I have a feeling we're going to make a deal on NAFTA," Trump said.

The president began saber rattling about tariffs during his 2016 "Make America Great Again" election campaign. He frequently has complained that previous administrations negotiated trade deals that were unfair to the U.S., and he has resolved that he would revisit them.

Though the moves resonated with a chunk of Trump's base, they've caused conflict both within the administration and the Republican Party, which saw 107 of its House members sign a letter in opposition. Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, is leaving his post after a dispute over the tariffs.

Trump is using authority under Section 232 of U.S. law, which gives the president the ability to issue tariffs based on national security concerns. The administration official said the pivotal role the steel and aluminum industries play in defense munitions and economic security will easily justify the 232 citation.

Critics, though, say the argument is flimsy and will worsen economic relations globally, possibly triggering a trade war. Financial markets have been volatile since Trump indicated late last week that the tariffs were coming.

The administration is not expecting business backlash against the moves, despite many industries' reliance on cheaper imports.

"I think companies are going to be very happy in the end, countries are going to be happy. We're going to show great flexibility," Trump said.

Since the announcement, U.S. Steel has announced it is reopening a plant in Illinois, while Century Aluminum officials have said the tariffs could generate 300 new jobs in Kentucky.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a meeting on his infrastructure initiative at the White House in Washington, February 12, 2018.

President Donald Trump appears to have understated just how much the U.S. asked Beijing to cut the trade deficit between the two countries  by $99 billion.

The Trump administration has asked Beijing for a $100 billion reduction in the trade deficit, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the talks. U.S. officials reportedly made their request in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping's top economic deputy last week.

That is very different than a tweet posted by Trump on Wednesday, in which he claimed to have asked for a $1 billion reduction in the annual trade deficit.

"Our relationship with China has been a very good one," Trump tweeted. "We look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!"

tweet

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

The monthly trade deficit with China surged 16.7 percent, to $36 billion, in January, its highest level since September 2015, suggesting that Trump's "America First" policies have not yet had a material impact. Meanwhile, the United States' total trade deficit increased to a more than nine-year high during the first month of 2018.

A $100 billion decrease in the U.S.-China trade deficit would represent a 26.7 percent reduction in the annual disparity, which totaled more than $375 billion in 2017. Trump's $1 billion figure represents less than 0.3 percent of that year's imbalance.

The request to Beijing comes amid a heated international debate on trade policy after Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports last Thursday.

Read the entire WSJ story here.
Federal police officers and army soldiers arrive at the dock where an explosion occurred on a ferry in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo state, Mexico on February 21, 2018.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City is prohibiting U.S. government employees from traveling to popular resort town Playa del Carmen.

The U.S. Consular Agency in Playa del Carmen in the state of in Quintana Roo will be closed "until further notice," the embassy said in it alert.

The embassy said it had "received information about a security threat" on Wednesday. It did not specify what that threat is.



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The alert, issued Wednesday night, says U.S. government employees have to cease traveling to the town "immediately" and "until further notice."

The move comes after the Feb. 21 explosion on the ferry that links Playa del Carmen with the town of Cozumel. The incident injured 25 people, including two Americans.

On March 1, undetonated explosive devices were found by Mexico law enforcement on another tourist ferry. Both incidents are still under investigation. After that incident, the embassy prohibited U.S. government employees from using all tourist ferries.

The U.S. State Department earlier this year put Mexico on a "Level 2: Exercise increased caution" alert status due to crime. It warns that some areas are experiencing violent crime such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery.

U.S. government employees are not allowed to travel between cities after dark in many parts of Mexico.

The State Department has already advised travelers to avoid five states in Mexico due to crime. They are Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas. Alcapulco is located in Guerrero.

Last summer, the department also cautioned vacationers to be careful when drinking alcohol in Mexico. The move came after a U.S. traveler died in a pool at a resort near Playa del Carmen after drinking. Other tourists reported blacking out after drinking at resorts in Mexico.

Some tourist destinations have no warnings against them, including Mexico City, Cancun, and Los Cabos.

Cancun, the Mayan Riviera, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Riviera Nayarit, and Mexico City.
President Donald Trump plans to offer U.S. trading partners Canada and Mexico a 30-day exemption from his new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The exemptions would be extended based on the progress of the NAFTA talks. (Washington Post)



Meanwhile, more than 100 House Republicans signed a letter "urging" the president to trim down his proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. The letter praised the Trump administration on tax cuts but warned that adding new taxes would undermine its progress. (CNBC)



* China will make necessary response in event of trade war with US (Reuters)

* Exxon CEO: Trump tariffs move us 'in the opposite direction' from tax cut and deregulation benefits (CNBC)

Eleven countries, not including the United States, are expected to sign a landmark Asia-Pacific trade agreement today that will reduce tariffs in countries that together amount to more than 13 percent of the global economy. (Reuters)

Trump spoke about special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation with witnesses after they had been interviewed by investigators, according to the New York Times. He reportedly asked ex-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about his interview.



* Mueller gathers evidence that 2017 Seychelles meeting was effort to establish back channel to Kremlin (Washington Post)

The second major storm in less than a week moved up the East Coast early this morning, dumping heavy snow and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses after some places saw more than 2 feet of snow late last night. (AP)



* Airlines cancel more than 2,400 flights as winter storm hits northeast (CNBC)

Florida legislature voted to approve a gun bill that would raise the age to buy all firearms to 21 following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It would also impose a 3-day waiting period of purchases and possibly put guns into the hands of some educators. (NBC News)

The president's legal team secretly won a temporary restraining order against former adult film actress Stormy Daniels that would prevent her from speaking out about her alleged affair with Trump. She had been prepared to speak publicly that Trump's lawyer broke their agreement. (USA Today)
Of all the things that Warren Buffett is good at  making money (his net worth: $67 billion), building a company (Berkshire Hathaway's stock market value: $500 billion) and teaching (he wants to be remembered as a teacher, he said)  there's another thing that is certainly his forte but doesn't earn the famous investor a ton of credit: storytelling.

And more than ever, storytelling is an essential building block of leadership success.

Consider Buffett's annual letter to shareholders. In his latest letter, accompanying Berkshire's annual report that came out two weeks ago, Buffett compares fund managers to monkeys and uses other analogies and stories to explain why investors, on average and over time, will do best with low-cost index funds.

In an era of increasing CEO distrust, Buffett relies on a couple of centuries-old methods  letter-writing and storytelling  to build trust in him and his company.

Whenever Buffett wants to share his take on the world, he often tells a story. I'll never forget five years ago Buffett called me at my Fortune office to tell me that he believed many CEOs were discounting women to their own detriment and to the harm of the U.S. economy  and would Fortune run an essay by him about this topic? Of course, we said yes.

In "Warren Buffett Is Bullish on Women," in the 2013 Fortune 500 issue, he brilliantly translated his take on diversity to a language that guys running Fortune 500 businesses can relate to: "No manager operates his or her plants at 80 percent efficiency when steps could be taken that would increase output," Buffett wrote. "And no CEO wants male employees to be underutilized when improved training or working conditions would boost productivity. So take it one step further: If obvious benefits flow from helping the male component of the workforce achieve its potential, why in the world wouldn't you want to include its counterpart? Fellow males, get on board."

What, beyond a point of view and a specific message to communicate, makes a great storyteller? After more than 30 years interviewing and profiling CEOs and world-changing entrepreneurs, I've learned that the leaders who best attract followers do four important things with their storytelling:
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House Speaker Paul Ryan will answer tax questions Thursday at a Home Depot store support center in Atlanta.

The Wisconsin Republican will take questions from the company's employees and reporters during the visit.

Ryan and GOP leaders have promoted the recently passed Republican tax law as a boon for both businesses and workers. Ryan has touted companies like Home Depot that gave employees one-time bonuses following the plan's passage.

The GOP hopes the tax plan and a strong economy can help it hold on to congressional majorities in midterm elections in November.
Big states with multiple industries have been the fastest to recover from the Great Recession of of 2007-2009, while several small states are still recovering, Matthew Ferguson, chief executive officer of CareerBuilder, told CNBC.

"Think about those two sets of states," Ferguson said Thursday on "Power Lunch." "Bigger states with diversified economies did really well. Smaller states that were dependent on one or two industries did worse."

His company, CareerBuilder, an online job finder platform, tracked the industries and states that have been the fastest and slowest to recover from the Great Recession.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing at a fast pace, down from 13.5 million in 2007 to 12.5 million in 2017, Ferguson said. However, the United States as a whole has has significant job growth in the same time period.

So where are the jobs? Ferguson said they are largely concentrated in health care and information technology. "Things around mathematics," he said. "Any areas with big data. Those are the areas where you see a lot of job creation."
As the possibility of a global trade war weighs on the minds of business leaders around the world, a Cisco executive in Asia said he is not yet worried about the impact it may have on his customers.

Naveen Menon, president of Southeast Asia at Cisco, said on Thursday that he was "not at all" worried that rising trade tensions could dent business optimism in the region.

He explained that Cisco's local business in each Southeast Asian market was growing at about "double the rate of GDP." In some markets, Menon said, the growth was at four to five times more.

"What that means is infrastructure spending is up," Menon told CNBC's "Squawk Box" at the YPO Edge conference in Singapore.

"If infrastructure spending is up, then people are investing in automation and investing in new technologies. Which is a great thing for us as a company," he said.

"The macroeconomic or the geopolitical landscape does not worry me at this point in time," he added. "Our customers, the public sector or the government or the large companies, are not necessarily impacted directly by that."

President Donald Trump previously said the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminium. The decision is expected this week but the White House hinted there could be an exemption period for Mexico, Canada and a few other countries.

The move had prompted a global backlash and heightened fears of retaliatory measures from U.S. trading partners including Canada, the European Union and China.

The European Union on Wednesday threatened to impose duties on U.S. bourbon, peanut butter, cranberries and orange juice in retaliation. China also warned that it would respond accordingly.

Elsewhere, reports said that Southeast Asia and Europe were looking to speed up efforts for a trade deal amid growing U.S. protectionism.
5G Base Station: Various forms to suit the deployment requirements in all scenarios and offer ubiquitous xGbps user experience

The first wave of 5G deployment will take place in buildings and densely populated urban areas. Diverse site forms are therefore required to accommodate the needs of complex deployment scenarios, offering continuous coverage and fulfill capacity requirements of indoor and outdoor hotspots. Huaweis newly released full range of 5G product solutions support millimeter wave (mmWave), C-band, and all Sub-3 GHz frequency bands. These products also cover all site forms including tower sites, pole sites, and small cells.

Huawei launched the C-band 64T64R and 32T32R Massive MIMO AAUs to deliver ubiquitous Gbps experience. These AAUs support 200 MHz large bandwidth and 3D beamforming to cover buildings, offer uniform coverage, and meet the demands of various other scenarios. Coverage can be flexibly adjusted to optimize the experience for users at the near points and far points, and generate a 20 or 30 times increase in network capacity. mmWave products are suited to supporting 1 GHz bandwidth. The equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) of Antenna ports reaches 65 dBm, ranking first within the industry.

Huawei wireless products boast an integrated, compact, and lightweight design. These features greatly relax the requirements on the antenna installation platform while reducing engineering complexity. All products support diverse scenarios in centralized radio access network (C-RAN) and distributed radio access network (D-RAN) deployment mode. The optical interface speed is less than 25 Gbps, which is ideal for large-scale 5G deployment.

In addition, the newly released compact 5G Massive MIMO products working in the C-band and mmWave allow for deployment on street lamp poles to fill coverage holes and boost hotspot capacity. The 5G LampSite is backwards-compatible with 4G. Existing CAT6A network cables or fiber optic cables can be used to achieve indoor 4G and 5G co-deployment with zero cable adjustment or site addition.

In the 5G era, wireless sites will be deployed in hybrid D-RAN and C-RAN networking scenarios. Huawei launched BBU5900 and CBU5900 to suit distributed and centralized sites, respectively. BBU5900 is the most highly integrated site solution currently available in the industry. It supports all RATs (2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G) and all frequency bands, and offers 50 Gbps backhaul capability to meet 5G services long-term development needs. CBU5900 features the centralized deployment of a large number of baseband units to support the C-RAN architecture. Using CBU5900 help to simplify remote sites, reduces the demands for air-conditioned equipment rooms, and contributes to quick satellite clock synchronization across the entire network. This approach also reduces the number of site visits during maintenance and installation, and considerably lowers future site maintenance and expansion costs. In addition, it will boost performance of the entire network via large-scale close coordination.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Google is slowly pulling back the curtains on its next-gen Android P release. Yesterday, we got our first glimpse at a work-in-progress, developer-focused preview of the software  and today, we're getting a closer look at what exactly is new when it comes to Android P and the ever-evolving subject of Android security.

I had the chance to chat with Xiaowen Xin, Google's Android platform security product manager, about some of the significant changes on the way with Android P. Here's the inside scoop on what you can expect:

More controlled access to your device's camera, mic, and sensors

Starting with Android P, an app won't be able to access your camera, microphone, or most of its sensors while it's running in the background  unless it makes it perfectly clear to you that it's doing so.

This is basically a preventative measure to make sure bad apps aren't able to abuse legitimate permissions they've been granted. The way it'll work is this:

Whenever an app is in the background and idle, the hardware won't deliver any data to it from the camera, mic, or sensors  even if it tries to check in with any of those sources.

[Android Intelligence in your inbox. Upgrade your knowledge with the new insider's newsletter.]

If an app has a valid reason for accessing one of those elements in the background, it'll have to create a foreground process to do it. In layman's terms, that means you as the user will see a notification anytime that's occurring.

"We want to make sure that whenever a sensor's being used  whether it's the camera, microphone, or any other sensor  that there's a clear disclosure to the user, and so there's always that persistent notification," Xin says.

The change will affect all apps as of Android P, regardless of when they were last updated or what Android version level they're targeting. The one exception to the rule is a device's GPS sensor: Since that's already controlled via its own standalone toggle in Android's Quick Settings, it won't require an ongoing foreground process to remain active.

Xin says in all of Google's testing thus far, she and her team have yet to encounter a single app where legitimate functionality has been disrupted as a result of the change.

Better encryption for backup data

You know all that data Android saves from your device and then makes available for restoring when you sign into a new phone or tablet  OS-level settings, app-oriented info, all that sort of stuff? The data's always been encrypted, but with Android P, it'll start using a client-side secret for its encryption.

What that means is the encryption will be protected with something specific to your phone  something derived from your PIN, pattern, or password  and the whole process will take place directly on your device.

That, in turn, means it'll be tougher than ever for anyone to access that info when they shouldn't be able to.

(This element is not yet present in the initial Android P developer preview, by the way, but it'll show up in a future update between now and the final P release.)

More privacy with network connections

When you connect to a Wi-Fi network from an Android device today, the network is able to see your device's MAC address  a unique and consistent number that identifies your phone or tablet. And while it's a bit out there, that means there's the potential, in theory, for your location to be tracked as you connect to different networks throughout the day.

"Anywhere I go, if I connect to a network, the owner of the network will know my MAC address," Xin explains. "If those people were then to collude, they could figure out where I go."

Android P addresses this possibility by allowing the system to generate a new and random MAC address for every single Wi-Fi network you connect to. The address will stay constant for that one network over time, but you'll get a new and different address for each other network you use  so there's no permanent and device-specific ID that follows you everywhere and leaves a lasting mark.

This option is starting out as an off-by-default "experimental" feature in the earliest Android P developer preview build.

Stronger protection from unsecure traffic

Speaking of network security, Android P pushes forward with Google's effort to move away from unencrypted "http" web traffic and toward fully secure web transmissions.

P actually takes what Oreo started in that department and turns it up a notch (so to speak): With Oreo, Google introduced a new system in which app developers could choose to prevent unencrypted network traffic  commonly known as "cleartext"  from appearing in their apps. As of P, that system is fully active and running by default.

Developers can still opt to allow unencrypted network traffic on a case-by-case basis by whitelisting specific domains as needed. And the change will only affect apps that have been updated to support Android P, so older apps that aren't regularly maintained will continue to function without issue.

Better protection of your unique device identifier

Network connections aside, every Android device has a permanent and unique identifier known as a "build.serial identifier"  basically a serial number that belongs to your phone and your phone alone. It remains present even through factory resets, so if you sell your device to someone, he or she will then have that same number.

It may seem trivial, but it's just one more way companies could track you and learn about you without your knowledge  especially when you consider that in the past, apps were able to freely access and store that number. With Oreo, Google started the process of pulling back that ability  and with Android P, it's fully removing the ability for apps to access your device identifier without first getting permission.

A standardized UI for fingerprint authentication

Your fingerprint is a powerful form of security  but the user interface for inputting your fingerprint across Android has thus far been anything but clear or consistent.

"We saw a very, very large variety in what apps did for fingerprints," Xin laughs. "We saw one app that basically showed a Comic Sans font when it was asking for a fingerprint."

So with P, Google is creating a consistent UI for fingerprint authentication  whether the prompt is coming from the system itself or from an app. Aside from the obvious surface-level benefit of this change, Xin says it could have some hidden perks for future technologies.

"If an OEM wanted to launch an in-display fingerprint sensor  say, in the bottom half of the screen  you'd need a way for them to tell you to put your fingerprint in a specific place," she notes.

Don't get too excited about that possibility yet, though: Xin says while some Android device-makers have absolutely been starting to consider the idea of in-display fingerprints, it's not yet clear if or when any such system will actually launch on a device.

User-facing warnings for outdated API use

When we talk about Android OS updates, the shiny marquee features tend to get the most attention. Beneath the surface, though, new releases always contain important foundational improvements  including sets of new APIs, or interfaces developers use to access data and tap into features within their apps.

Newer APIs can provide more advanced possibilities as well as more effective privacy and security  and so when an app doesn't take advantage of such opportunities and continues to target older APIs instead, it can be bad news for you as the user.

"We tighten down the API year after year," Xin says. "A lower API level might not be as secure."

In Android P, Google is proactively working to keep developers using the latest tools available  and to keep you aware of any instances when they might be failing to do so. How? Simple: The P-level operating system will actually show a warning to you anytime an app is targeting older-than-acceptable APIs.

(Side note: I hope this warning will be phrased in a way that explains the potential problem in plain English and thus actually means something to a typical user  because if a message pops up on an average person's phone about an "app targeting outdated APIs," I can't imagine it'll be effective at much other than befuddlement.)

This change actually goes hand in hand with an effort announced for Google Play late last year. On that side of the equation, any new or updated apps will be required to use recent API levels starting this summer. Xin tells me this two-prong approach is designed to allow for ongoing support of older apps that haven't been updated  but also to make sure users are aware of the potential downsides of using any such titles.

And that, dear friends, is what's new in terms of security with Android P. We've got a lot more to discuss with this release as it continues to take shape in the weeks and months ahead, so stay near  and don't miss out on the newsletter, below, as we'll be exploring P's most significant intricacies there tomorrow (and on plenty of other Fridays in the future).

Sign up for JR's new weekly newsletter to get this column along with bonus tips, personal recommendations, and other exclusive extras delivered to your inbox.

[Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld]
May hosts Saudi Crown Prince

Labour accused of putting thousands of defence jobs at risk over Saudi protest  Daily Mail

Ministers colluding in war crimes, Opposition claim  The Times

Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sat down face to face for talks with Theresa May today as Britain rolled out the red carpet for his visit. The two leaders agreed to set a target for around 65 billion of trade and investment between the two countries over the coming years. The PM also raised deep concerns at the humanitarian situation in Yemen where Saudi led forces are raging a bloody war and have been accused of breaching internal humanitarian law. They met for talks together with senior officials on both sides at the first ever UK-Saudi Arabia Strategic Partnership Council  a high-powered meeting will be repeated annually to build ties.  Daily Mail

Comment:

The man dragging Saudi Arabia into the modern era  John R Bradley, Daily Mail

Editorial:

Britain should help the Crown Prince push for reform  The Times

>Yesterday:

as Boles urges her to break off ties to Russia over Salisbury attacks

Theresa May has been urged by one of her MPs to retaliate after the disclosure that a British police officer was poisoned in an attempt to murder a Russian spy. Britain has yet to accuse Russia of being behind the attack. However, Nick Boles called on the UK to break off diplomatic ties immediately. I do not see how we can maintain diplomatic relations with a country that tries to murder people on British soil and puts the lives of British citizens at risk. Its time for us to turn tough talk into action, he tweeted. The police officer, who had gone to the aid of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, was critically ill last night Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda and a persistent critic of Russia, said the fact that a police officer was a casualty of the poisoning made a significant difference to the political context.  The Times

Tugendhat calls on the Government to get tough on oligarchs  The Sun

More:

Rudd says she can guarantee the publics safety  The Sun

Police say new evidence suggests Kremlin was behind assassination attempt The Times

Europol head warns of Brexit security impediments  FT

>Today: ToryDiary: Williamsons words in Westminster, not attempted murder in Salisbury, are our best guide to responding to Russia

>Yesterday: ToryDiary: Sorry, Gary Neville, but Putins World Cup has always been political  England should have boycotted it from the outset

Government mulls alcohol ban for men who abuse their partners

200 business leaders and MPs sign letter urging ministers to back female entrepreneurs  Daily Telegraph

Domestic abuse suspects face being banned from drinking alcohol and could be electronically tagged under a Government crackdown. Courts and police would be given extra powers to ensure bullies stay away from partners and family members they are accused of tormenting, even if there is not enough evidence to charge them. Domestic Violence Protection Orders, introduced in 2015 and which ban abusive partners from going near their home for up to 28 days, would be extended under proposals unveiled today by the Home Office. For the first time, culprits could be required to attend parenting programmes, undergo drug and alcohol treatment or stay away from a specified place for more than four weeks to reduce the risk of them carrying out further abuse.  Daily Mail

>Today: Gillian Keegan in Comment: Road to Parliament 3) An apprenticeship gave me my start in business, so I designed one for entering politics

Theresa May: Our new Domestic Abuse Bill will help protect women

Under our plans economic abuse will be recognised for the first time as a type of domestic abuse. If you have your finances withheld, are denied access to employment or transport, or are forced to take out loans  thats simply not right. We want to open up the conversation on this issue which means that we expect  indeed hope  that more victims will come forward. We recognise this will put more pressure on the system and have heard the concerns from charities and tireless campaigning by The Sun for sustainable funding for refuges. We are committed to that and we want to hear from charities and those on the front line about how best to deliver this.  The Sun

How men can tackle gender inequality and injustice  William Hague, Daily Telegraph

Cox wanted women and girls to feel empowered and safe  Penny Mordaunt MP, Times Red Box

Chancellor says Government could trade access to UK fishing waters for a better deal

Impact of Brexit bill on UK finances to be revealed  FT

Hammond says that UK could reject any deal which excludes financial services  The Guardian

Scottish fishermen react with fury to EU access demands  Daily Telegraph

Sturgeon in soft Brexit appeal  The Scotsman

EU accused of double standard over fishing rights  The Times

Sinn Fein reject calls for anti-Brexit pact with Labour  Belfast Telegraph

Hammond receives 10 billion budget boost  Daily Mail

Ministers are open to trading away access to Britains fishing grounds in return for a better Brexit deal, Philip Hammond said yesterday. In a frank admission, the Chancellor suggested that British fishermen might have to accept foreign trawlers having significant access even after the UK has regained control of its traditional fishing grounds. Asked whether it would be acceptable to trade off fishing rights in return for a better deal for lucrative sectors of the economy such as the City, Mr Hammond said: Fishing is an iconically important British industry and we are very clear that we are taking control of our waters.  Daily Mail

Comment:

The Chancellor must tackle our domestic problems now  Nicky Morgan MP, Times Red Box

Tackling the deficit was just a pretext for slashing the state  Frances Ryan, The Guardian

The Tories have done it, and the age of austerity can now end  Nick Timothy, Daily Telegraph

Ministers to crack down on stealth care home fees

Care home operators are to be banned from forcing grieving families to pay accommodation charges for weeks after their relative dies. Ministers have told firms they must remove the hidden fees  which can reach thousands of pounds  with the threat of legislation if they fail to ditch unscrupulous practices. The Daily Mail has repeatedly highlighted the issue of families being fleeced by care home chains. The warning that they must overhaul their contracts comes after the Governments market regulator revealed that they may be breaking the law by failing to tell families they could have to pay so-called death fees for up to a month.  Daily Mail

Senior Momentum official attacks Labours trades union links

MPs call for resignation of Corbyn ally  The Sun

A senior Momentum official has called for Labour to cut its links to trade unions. Christine Shawcroft, a member of Labours national executive committee, accused the unions of sticking it to rank-and-file supporters of the party, which should belong to its members. The comments on her Facebook page were part of a statement endorsing Jon Lansman, the Momentum founder, for the role of general secretary. He is a frontrunner for the top job alongside Jennie Formby, a Unite official, in a heated contest that insiders see as a battle for the future of the party Mr Lansman and Momentum sought to distance themselves from her remarks. A Momentum spokesman said: Were very proud of the strong links Momentum has to the trade union movement. We believe Labour is strongest when trade unions and member organisations work together closely.  The Times

Comment:

Far left want Labour to abandon the unions as they fear Corbyns rule is build on sand  Tom Harris, Daily Telegraph

Brexit Britain could soon be humming to a Marxist tune  Philip Stephens, FT

News in Brief:
Cllr Peter Golds is Leader of the Conservative Group on Tower Hamlets Council.

The Executive Mayoral system, as currently established for councils as opposed to regions, means that the work of councillors is both enhanced through scrutiny and yet diminished due to the powers that can be acquired and used by the person who is mayor.

Unsurprisingly, Tower Hamlets exhibited the worst of both of these positions between 2010-15.

When Labours John Biggs was elected in June 2015, he took control of an authority that had become a byword for incompetence, sleaze, and hidden decision making. During his first weeks, files requiring decisions and attention, some dating back months and even years, were presented to him to decide on matters which Lutfur Rahman had either shown no interest in or ignored. He also had to tackle the inherent lack of transparency and scrutiny. The latter had reached the point that by the end of the Rahman era, overview and scrutiny had such reduced funding that even basic officer support was minimal. As is well known, Lutfur Rahman refused to answer questions at council meetings on the advice of the former monitoring officer who ruled that a request for him to do so raised human rights issues.

Council members and the new mayor sought to put the past aside and steps were taken to introduce transparency to the councils decision-making processes.

What the Rahman administration did not lack was government-provided money and it received lots of it for education and housing. The borough became the number one recipient of the new homes bonus in the country.

Sums of money that are routinely discussed locally will cause shock to colleagues elsewhere. Tower Hamlets has 106 million in unused Section 106 money held in a bank account. The council has 37 million receipts from Community Infrastructure Levy. The authority received 120 million in New Homes Bonus, and at the time of writing has spent 90 million of that. The council budget for its Youth Service (whose activities were notorious under Rahman) is 4 million and that excludes the 1 million budgeted for youth offending.

One of the most controversial items of expenditure is the 750,000 allocated for what is known as community languages. It is better known locally as mother tongue teaching. In short, after school classes are provided to children to enable them to speak the language of their parents. There is almost no budget for English as a spoken language for non English speaking parents, which would benefit adults and assist in integration. To even discuss this provokes the inevitable cries of racism and Islamophobia.

The council is not as dysfunctional as during the Rahman administration. However, it does follow many Labour orthodoxies, sometimes with abandon. It has also, since 2015, had to deal with a number of controversies.

In 2017 the council faced an extremely critical Ofsted report damning childrens services in the borough as inadequate.

The main areas of criticism were:-

Children who need help and protection  Inadequate

Leadership, management and governance  Inadequate

Children looked after and achieving permanence  Requires improvement

Adoption performance  Requires improvement

Experiences and progress of care leavers  Requires improvement

This was a downgrade from the Rahman era and the criticism in the first two items were particularly important. Both indicated the failure of political leadership. Remedial steps were taken, including moving the executive member responsible for childrens services, but the publicity took the gloss off the administration and showed how important it is that this service must be supervised properly.

Planning is another matter of increasing controversy. For over a decade, Labour councillors routinely passed numerous planning applications which has made parts of this borough, particularly the Isle of Dogs, the densest area of population in Europe. Suddenly, a year before May 2018, Labour criticised overdevelopment. A major application to build 2,000 homes, mainly in massive tower blocks on an ASDA supermarket car park, overlooking a park, was withdrawn. This was an amendment to a previous application, albeit with fewer homes, which Labour had supported.

After this a number of applications have been either voted down or withdrawn. To assist on planning, the Mayor appointed a councillor as his personal adviser on planning. This members previous contributions to planning had been mainly to oppose academies and free schools. He had rarely voiced any objections to the many applications that came forward before his 2014 election as a councillor. He will not be standing again in May.

In December 2017 a story broke in the national media that a local political fixer had been taped informing a member of a development team that for 2 million and a 15,000pcm retainer, he could ease through a particular planning application. Bravado, it may have been. What caused local annoyance that this had taken place in 2015 and the council were aware of the allegations in 2015, if not the tape. Only in 2016 were the police notified and that was after the council had sought advice firstly from Ernst and Young and secondly a senior lawyer. During this time the DCLG appointed commissioners were still in place, but were not given a briefing on the circumstances of this allegation.

Other aspects of the councils defensive culture are difficult to change. We are currently locked in a tug of war with the monitoring officer over a Labour council candidate, who has posed for photographs in a council supplied high viz jacket and jet stream with contractors employed by the council, alongside a council badged vehicle. This has been tweeted as a Labour success. The tweet is directly linked to Labour campaign tweets. The monitoring officers response is that the person in the tweet is not a candidate. Yet he is named as a Labour candidate on the party website, and his actions are tweeted as part of Labours election campaign. Council facilities are being used to promote his political campaign and there should be no discussion on this.

Even more disturbingly, a leading Labour member, Cllr Rachael Saunders, is standing down in May and in a personal blog of October 2017, headed Woman hatred in Tower Hamlets attacked the culture of misogyny within the local Labour Party. She writes on her blog:-

Some men in the Labour Party think womens bodies are there for their use regardless of what the woman wants. I have pulled men out of a crowded meeting where I saw them groping a young girl who could not get away. I have had to hit pummel and scream to get a car stopped when a member giving me a lift home tried to take me somewhere else. I have sat in a pub with Labour men chatting about prostitutes they have used.

Then there is the straightforward intimidation, phone calls after a Labour Group meeting to let me know someone would be round to finish me if I did not stop asking questions.

Labour does not appear to actually promote the kindler, gentler politics that their leader once spoke of.

The Conservative group campaigns on our strong local record of community activity and scrutinising the council. For example, there have been a number of issues that cross the River Thames. Conservatives and only Conservatives, have attended and addressed the Cabinet, Licensing and Planning Committees of Greenwich Council. Cllr Andrew Wood initiated the establishment of a Neighbourhood Planning Forum on the Isle of Dogs, the largest area of development in London. Conservative councillors have profiles across the borough and we work on problems across the borough.

We bring financial rigour to localism. We are not afraid of being controversial and so our 2018 budget amendment will propose cancellation of the community language programme. Significantly, the Labour Mayor of London has said all non-English speaking migrants that come to Britain should learn English.

We also campaign for sustainable development. If our borough has the highest housing allocation in London, then it requires appropriate infrastructure. This improved infrastructure of transport, health, education and open spaces must be in the area of development. Too much money is collected and then spent on pet schemes far away from the communities impacted by development.

We are entering the election campaigning to ensure that Tower Hamlets is properly governed and that probity will be maintained within the authority.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of our work was identified by our former colleague, Tim Archer. He said that each year he would see our budget proposals shot down and dismissed, then mysteriously after a while many would become council policy and appear slightly repackaged.

Sadly, in the era of Momentum this is increasingly less likely, to the detriment of our local residents.
Henry Hill: Davidson warns May that she cant take the votes of Scottish Tory MPs for granted

Davidson warns May that her MPs are not drones

Ruth Davidson has warned the Prime Minister that the support of all 13 Scottish Conservative MPs cannot be counted on in crucial Brexit votes, the Herald reports.

Asked whether she could guarantee their support, the Scots Tory leader replied that her MPs were individuals who would vote in accordance with their own principles.

However, she then referred several times to the circumstances in which we would support the Prime Minister, and said that the Scottish Conservatives had agreed together on the principles by which they would assess Brexit legislation.

These intimations of a Scottish Tory bloc vote seem to fly in the face of recent evidence, when four of their MPs put their names to a letter organised by the European Research Group pressing Theresa May to pursue a clean Brexit.

Elsewhere in the interview, Davidson said that she would support the British Government mounting a legal challenge to the SNPs Brexit bill.

In other Scottish Conservative news, Andrew Bowie has become the first of their newly-elected MPs to join the Government. The Press & Journal reports that the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine MP has become a Parliamentary private secretary (PPS) at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport.

Welsh Government trying to block Sargeant inquiry from examining crucial days

The Welsh Government is apparently trying to prevent the official inquiry into the death of Carl Sargeant from investigating the four days between his sacking and his apparent suicide, Wales Online reports.

Although the QC in charge of the inquiry was appointed weeks ago, negotiations between the Welsh Government and Sargeants family mean that its terms of reference have still not been set.

Sargeant seems to have taken his own life shortly after being dismissed from his post as Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children over unspecified allegations of sexual harassment.

Carwyn Jones, the First Minister, has come under heavy criticism for his handling of the affair, especially for not telling Sargeant the substance of the allegations against him and for having a special adviser carry out a preliminary investigation rather than referring Sargeant to the civil service for investigation under the ministerial code.

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, insisted that it was essential that Welsh Government not be allowed to unreasonably narrow the scope of the investigation.

Sturgeon attacks ex-Childrens Minister for not resigning as an MSP

The First Minister has criticised Mark McDonald, formerly a minister in the Scottish Government, for refusing to resign his seat in the Scottish Parliament after an inquiry concluded that he had harassed women, according to the Daily Telegraph.

McDonald has resigned from the SNP but intends to continue to represent his Aberdeen Donside constituency as an independent. Opposition parties suggest that he is putting the Nationalists interests above his constituents, as by staying in post he will avoid a potentially embarrassing by-election.

This week, a shocking official report found that there have been over 200 instances of sexual harassment and sexism reported in Holyrood, including dozens by MSPs.

Foster denies briefing loyalists on deal with Sinn Fein

The Belfast Telegraph reports that Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionists, has denied claims that her party briefed hardline loyalists about a potential deal with Sinn Fein.

She said that whilst there may have been phone calls between members of her party and loyalist groups, they were not conducted with her knowledge or on behalf of the DUP.

According to the Irish News, which first broke the story, one loyalist with links to the Ulster Defence Association said that they were urged to reassure their people that there would be no rolling over to republicans.
Perhaps Vladimir Putin now feels Russia is so strong and Britain so weak that he can break the unwritten rules of espionage  and seek to murder a former spy, and his daughter, on our streets. Or maybe the operation was unauthorised. Or it could be that Sergei Skripal hadnt retired after all, and Putin wanted to send a very public message to the security services, and to others, that Russia wont tolerate such manoeuvres. Or it is possible that there is some more exotic explanation.

Any Tinker Tailor Soldier Putin yarn makes irresistible copy and spawns frantic guesswork. But a less startling though ultimately more significant event should help frame the way we think about Russia.

Last month, Gavin Williamson told the Defence Select Committee that it has ousted terrorism from the top of the national threat list. In 2015, the National Security Strategy put the terror threat first, and framed the country as a possible partner (notwithstanding our differences, we will seek ways of cooperating and engaging with Russia on a range of global security issues, such as the threat from ISIL), as well as a potential threat (we cannot rule out the possibility that it may feel tempted to act aggressively against NATO Allies). In the 2010 strategy, state-based threats to our security were only vaguely referenced: the emergence of old or new regional powers was listed alongside state failure, competition for energy and the destabilisation of the Middle East by a nuclear-capable or nuclear armed Iran. Russia wasnt even named.

As Mark Francois, the former Defence Minister, suggested at the select committee session, and as the Defence Secretary confirmed, this changed Government analysis has spending implications  and backs up the latters drive for more cash.

Defence and health are now the two main spending pressure points on the Chancellor. And it so happens that were the proportion of our GDP to rise to three per cent of GDP, or that fabled 350 million a week to go to the NHS, then roughly the same extra sum would be spent in each case  18 billion or so. The good news is that, largely due to the work of the Coalition, Britain is at last in surplus. The mills of George Osborne ground slowly, but they ground exceeding small.

It doesnt follow, of course, that Philip Hammond is in a position simply to roll over, and give the big spending departments anything they want. But he should certainly meet Williamson more than halfway. We dont need attempted murder in Salisbury to tell us that.
HEB Grocery Company of San Antonio, Texas, is recalling about 2.5 million GTC halogen light bulbs.

The bulbs can shatter while in use in a lamp or light fixture, posing laceration and fire hazards to consumers.

The firm has received 14 reports of the light bulbs shattering while in a lamp or light fixture. One consumer had a cut on his hand, and another had a burn to his hand and cuts on his foot.

This recall involves GTC halogen light bulbs sold in packages of 2 or 4 bulbs. The bulb packages were sold in 25 watt, 40 watt, 60 watt, 75 watt, or 100 watt bulb varieties in either clear or soft white colors.

The bulbs measure approximately 4.5 inches in length and 2.375 inches in diameter. The tops of the bulbs read GTC and include the wattage and lumens values.

The bulbs are packaged in blue and red cardboard boxes that read: GTC NATURAL LIGHT across the top, along with the wattage and color of the bulb.

The UPC codes are printed on the product packaging. Only bulbs with the following UPC codes are included in the recall:

ProductName UPC GTC A19 HAL 60W 1500HR SW 4PK 4122043932 GTC A19 HAL 75W 1500HR SW 4PK 4122065268 GTC A19 HAL 100W 1500HR SW 4PK 4122017409 GTC A19 HAL 60W 1500HR CLR 4PK 4122017463 GTC A19 HAL 75W 1500HR CLR 4PK 4122017576 GTC A19 HAL 100W 1500HR CL 4PK 4122065608 GTC A19 HAL 40W 1500HR CLR 2P 4122084562 GTC A19 HAL 60W 1500HR CLR 2P 4122029652 GTC A19 HAL 75W 1500HR CLR 2PK 4122029783 GTC A19 HAL 100W 1500HR CL 2PK 4122065177 GTC A19 HAL 25W 1500HR SW 2PK 4122030062 GTC A19 HAL 40W 1500HR SW 2PK 4122017464 GTC A19 HAL 60W 1500HR SW 2PK 4122017397 GTC A19 HAL 75W 1500HR SW 2PK 4122065271 GTC A19 HAL 100W 1500HR SW 2PK 4122017418

The bulbs, manufactured in China, were sold at H-E-B stores in Texas or online at www.heb.com from August 2015, to December 2017, for about $2.20 (for 2 pack) and $4 (for 4 pack).

What to do

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled halogen light bulbs and return them to H-E-B for a full refund.

Consumers may contact H-E-B at 800-432-3113 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. CT Monday through Friday or online at www.heb.com and click on Product Recalls under the Customer Service heading at the bottom of the homepage for more information.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Ontario PC Party leadership hopeful Christine Elliott stopped at the Ramada Inn in Cornwall on her way to a debate in Ottawa on Wednesday, Feb. 28.

The lunch time appearance at the Ramada was packed with those hoping to hear her speak and was organized by Stormont, Dundas and South Glengarry MPP Jim McDonell, who has endorsed Elliott for his partys leadership.

I like the experience she has and thats what the others dont have, said McDonell.

Christine Elliott is competing for the party leadership against Caroline Mulroney, Doug Ford and Tanya Granic Allen. Elliott served in the Ontario legislature for nine years and was at one-point Deputy Leader.

It comes down to experience, she said. We dont have time for a leader in training.

In her address at the Ramada Inn on Wednesday, Elliott highlighted her experience as a financial auditor.

As a former bank auditor, I want to be the auditor that cleans up the mess of the Wynne Liberal government, she said.

Elliot also outlined some of her policies if she leads the Conservatives to victory in the June 7 election. She promised that she would reduce the personal income tax by 22 percent, focus on improving healthcare and increasing the number of long-term care beds in Ontario and promised to fight the federal government on their proposed carbon tax.

I believe that we can have policies that are both economically responsible and environmentally responsible, she said.

Elliot also said that she would not enact the one-dollar jump in the minimum wage next year that would bring the rate to $15 an hour.

Elliott faces off against her fellow candidates in a debate in Ottawa. This will be the last debate before the final vote for the leadership on March 10.
CORNWALL, Ontario  St. Lawrence Secondary School (SLSS) dance class students demonstrated their moves in the Cornwall Square Food Court for International Womens Day on Thursday, March 8.

The event was organized by Sexual Assault Support Services for Women in SD&G and Akwesasne (SASS) and SLSS dance teacher Abi Fontaine under the banner of V-Day and One Billion Rising.

One Billion Rising is a mass action organization dedicated to ending violence against women.

The campaign, launched on Valentines Day 2012, began as a call to action based on the staggering statistic that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. With the world population at 7 billion, this adds up to more than one billion women and girls, One Billion Rising states on its website.

Roughly 15 students participated in the event which involved a dance set to the song Break the Chain. The dance itself was choreographed by Debbie Allen.

We want people to be educated, teacher Abi Fontaine said of the performance. My students are in shock that we still need this movement and that there are these things still happening around the world.
TORONTO, Ontario  Congratulations to Joeanne Laviolette of Long Sault after winning $1 million with MAXMILLIONS in the December 22, 2017 LOTTO MAX draw.

Since its launch in September 2009, Ontario LOTTO MAX players have won over $4.1 billion in prizes, including 55 jackpot wins and 392 winning MAXMILLIONS tickets from all across the province.

The winning ticket was purchased at CNIB Lottery Kiosk in Walmart on Ninth Street in Cornwall.
REAN Cloud, which lost the lion's share of a lucrative federal contract after its close ties to AWS provoked an official protest from Oracle, said Wednesday the U.S. Department of Defense had not explained its basis for slashing the contract for cloud services.

REAN managing partner Sekhar Puli, in a prepared statement, said the threat of legal action and protest "by the old guard" would further delay modernization of defense infrastructure, benefitting "those large companies that stand to lose money if the DoD proceeds with innovation."

"In the meantime, the cost of maintaining antiquated government infrastructure has not subsided," he said.

[Related: REAN Cloud's $950M Pentagon Contract Crumbles After Oracle Lodges Opposition To Amazon Partner]

The Premier AWS partner based outside of Washington D.C. announced the five-year contract, capped at $950 million, on Feb. 7, for a full cloud migration involving a custom solution for automating the military's procurement of cloud resources.

Soon after, Oracle lodged its official protest through the Government Accountability Office.

Oracle argued the procurement process violated government procedures to ensure competitive bidding because the Defense Department selected an implementation partner linked to Amazon before deciding on the cloud provider that would host those workloads.

On Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said REAN's deal had been reduced to cover only a pilot U.S. Transportation Command project, with a maximum price set at $65 million.

REAN's work on that pilot project began almost two years ago. Since then, the scope has twice been expanded, the company said.

When REAN received the contract last month, the company issued a statement saying it would "provide a platform of options that lets agencies migrate legacy applications to a government-approved, commercial cloud environment of their choice."

But REAN is commonly associated with Amazon's ecosystem, and AWS is the only hyperscale infrastructure provider it lists as a partner.

That led Oracle, which declined comment, to argue the selection was a de facto deal with AWS at the expense of other cloud providers.

REAN's prototype for USTRANSCOM was awarded the 2017 DoD CIO Cyber and IT Excellence Award.

REAN's original contract called for working with the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), which looks to implement commercial technologies beneficial to the U.S military. The project was to speed procurement times to help the Pentagon achieve what it has identified as an important priority for maintaining a military edge over rival superpowersembracing the cloud.

"Many DoD agencies wish to procure these services, Puli said Wednesday. He declined a live interview with CRN.
Public acknowledgement and rewards for engaging in cybersecurity best practices will result in greater workforce buy-in and participation, according to a security author and expert.

"You don't just make it a negative thing," said Jayson Street, vice president of infosec for Manhattan-based consultancy SphereNY. "Usually when they do carrot and stick, we've got more stick than carrot."

Every employee that forwards a phishing email to the IT department should get entered into a quarterly drawing for a reward like a $100 Amazon gift card, Street said. Street delivered a keynote address Wednesday at XChange University: IT Security, hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company.

[RELATED: MSSP Superstar Michael Knight: Slow And Steady Wins The Managed Security Services Race]

Street said this type of initiative can get a broad swath of employees engaged with what secure policies look like at a relatively minimal cost to the company. In Street's experience, this initiative has led not only to the catching of simulated phishing emails sent as part of the contest, but has also resulted in employees flagging and identifying legitimate phishing attempts from bad actors.

Employees should be personally thanked by the IT department for reporting a phishing attempt or any other potential security incident, Street said. He also recommended sending out a newsletter that publicly acknowledges the employees that have reported phishing attempts.

"Give them that public recognition," Street said. "Make it part of a competition."

It's important that employees not feel demoralized when it comes to their security posture and preparedness, Street said. "You're dealing with people, not servers," Street said. "Servers don't get their feelings hurt when they're compromised."

One simple thing Street recommended is having the IT department go through the offices and look under the keyboards of every employee. The security team is likely to find that a number of workers have left a sheet of paper in that location with all of their passwords written down, which Street said presents a good, real-world opportunity for user education.

Solution providers also need to make the security training engaging for customers, Street said. A multiple-choice online quiz that's administered yearly isn't going to capture employees' attention or truly make them security-conscious, according to Street.

"Make it something interesting for them, which will then make it interesting for you," Street said. "That's how you battle the battle fatigue."

Once employees are engaged, Street said solution providers should then take a deeper dive into what exactly they're securing and which parts of the network should be given the highest priority. This involves figuring out whether the customer cares about availability or integrity more, as well as what technology-wise is actually making them money.

For instance, Street said some businesses wouldn't care if their website was hit by a DDoS attack and was down for two days. Other companies, though, would be completely lost if their website was down for just two hours, and would be at risk of going out of business entirely in the event of an extended outage, Street said.

"You need to understand what you're trying to defend," Street said.

At the end of the day, Street said businesses can only mitigate a portion of their risk, with some of the rest being offset by a good managed security service provider and the remainder having to be accepted by the end customers. Solution providers need to educate the C-suite on responsible procedures for mitigating risks, Street said, as well as the challenges associated with risk that's unmitigated.

"You can only mitigate so much," Street said. "You have to let them know that they are accepting some risk."

Solution providers need to take the time to learn business terminology to effectively communicate with corporate leadership rather than putting the onus on the C-suite to learn IT vocabulary, Street said. Numbers and metrics that capture the gravity of the security situation businesses are facing go a long way toward capturing the attention of executives, according to Street.

For instance, Street said solution providers can track the number of malicious emails that were thwarted going through the network, as well as the number of scans for malicious activity that were blocked by the firewall. This level of insight will help cybersecurity move beyond being seen at a cost center, according to Street.

"Give them a different view, let them see something different," Street said. "When they're engaged, you get money, which is good for everybody."

Enterprise Data Concepts (EDC) has been playing around with gamification internally and trying to find a system that can overcome the implementation hurdles, said COO Roddy Bergeron. The Lafayette, La.-based solution provider has tried giving its own employees gift cards or time off when they report something that's in violation of the internal IT policy, Bergeron said.

As it rolls out gamification to clients, Bergeron said EDC will look into providing office-wide rewards or lunch-and-learns to companies where employees have reported an issue.

Bergeron also appreciated Street's push for positive reinforcement rather than negative feedback. Employees are more willing to change their behavior when it takes the form of praise rather than badgering, he said.
Seabourn is launching a "Global Partner Appreciation Event" in March to demonstrate its support of the travel professional community worldwide.

Taking place March 5-30, 2018, the line's global sales teams in North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia will strengthen the commitment to travel professional partners through an increased number of activities, including seminars, webinars, conferences, events and in-person meetings, the company said, in a prepared statement.

"Our travel professional partners are a tremendous value to Seabourn, and we want to continue to support their growth and success," said Chris Austin, Seabourn's senior vice president of global marketing and sales. "During the Partner Appreciation Event, we will share our stories, news and promotions with our partners so that they are well-equipped with the best information to share with their clients. But most importantly, this is an opportunity for us to thank them and show our appreciation for their support over the years and into the future."

Seabourn's teams will be showcasing a number of new tools to help share the companys story with travel professionals, including a new 25 minute film showcasing this season's first Antarctica voyage on Seabourn Quest.
Last year, I wrote about how to plan your trip to the RSA 2017 conference. While its normally in February or March, this years conference is April 16-20, a little more than 5 weeks away.

Attending the conference requires a significant time and monetary investment. With a little more time to prepare, here are some tips for 2018 to consider ensuring your time and money are well spent.

Book your hotel ASAP

San Francisco is a small city and for large conferences, theres often a dearth of hotel rooms. If you didnt book yet, do that now at the conference hotel page. The number of available hotels rooms in San Francisco has not increased, but the number of RSA attendees has. To which I have noticed that hotel prices are significantly more expensive this year. Many rooms in the immediate area are 2-3 times above their normal price, given the amount of RSA attendees.

Alternatively, sites like Hotels.com may have other and possibly cheaper options. But be aware though that some listings are so low as they have shared bathrooms and lack other basic amenities that many business travelers may expect.

Create a schedule

Most people go to the conference to learn as much as they can. Others go for the famous RSA parties. For those that want the learning experience, heres a complete listing of all sessions where you can create a personalized schedule. Theres a huge amount of sessions to choose from, so take the time to peruse and create your customized schedule.

When I say huge, I mean it. Having just created my own schedule, there were at least 2-3 interesting sessions at every slot I wanted to attend.

There is a colossal amount of sessions, which are broken up according the following tracks:

Analytics, Intelligence & Response Application Security Association Special Topics C-Suite View Cloud Security & Virtualization Cryptography DevOps Governance, Risk & Compliance Hackers & Threats Human Element Identity Industry Experts Law Machine Learning Mobile & IoT Security Policy & Government Privacy Professional Development Protecting Data & Applied Crypto Security Mashup Security Strategy Sponsor Special Topics Technology Infrastructure & Operations

In the past, some attendees got enraged arriving (most often late) and finding the session they wanted to attend was full. Somehow, a few hundred other people managed to get there on time. You can reserve a seat prior to the conference, which helps ensure that you will be able to attend your preferred sessions.

Know which vendors you want to meet

2017 saw over 700 vendors in attendance. As of this writing, the vendor list has close to 600 vendors listed.

The expo halls are massive, overwhelming and loud. Spend some time looking at the exhibitor list and getting a feel for the vendors you want to meet with.

Once there, think twice about spending half an hour sitting through a vendor pitch to enter a drawing for a drone or similar prize. For me, my time is better spent speaking with the technical staff at the booths. You can get valuable insights how their products work and potentially solve your security issues. This is especially true if you are already a customer. Dont squander your limited time just to bring home a USB power pack or t-shirt.

For those that have an interest in Israeli security vendors, over 50 companies will be at the Israel pavilion at booths 635 & 735.

Wear comfortable shoes

Youll be doing lots of walking at RSA. With events in the south, north and west Moscone Center buildings and now at the Marriott Marquis, combined with the long expo floor aisles; you dont need a podiatrist to tell you comfortable shoes are a must.

Chat with a legend

There are many illustrious industry personalities at the conference. The good news is that they are approachable and often happy to share quick advice. Be it Adi Shamir, Bruce Schenier, Whit Diffie, Steven Bellovin, Ronald Rivest, Paul Kocher and many more. RSA may be a huge show, but you can also pick the brain of and meet some of the best minds in the business.

Then there is the Security Scholar program, which connects the brightest up-and-coming cybersecurity students to leading experts, peers and conference attendees.

If you would rather chat with a legend over extremely loud music in a crowded club, the many RSA parties afford such opportunities. Dave Lewis was kind enough to create a RSA parties 2018 list.

Dont use the 2018 conference bag

RSA gives out great bags, often high quality backpacks. Since thousands of people will be using the identical 2018 conference bags, often without nametags, many of them get switched, and lost forever from their rightful owners. If you dont want to be a victim of a RSA conference bag switch, bring a different backpack.

As for me, Ill be at the conference and giving a talk on Ransomware: How Not to Be a Victim, and What to Do When You Become One and leading a Peer2Peer session on 35 Days to GDPR. Even if you prepared, is your firm truly ready?. I hope to see you there, in your comfortable shoes with an old backpack.
CHESTNUT HILL, Mass.  In a broad appeal for greater cooperation with the security community in the private sector, FBI Director Christopher Wray blasted the prevalence of unbreakable encryption, calling investigators' inability to access the contents of thousands of devices "a major public safety issue."

In fiscal 2017, FBI investigators were stymied in their attempts to obtain the contents of 7,775 devices involved in investigations in which a judge had authorized access, Wray said in a keynote address here at Boston College's second annual cybersecurity summit on Wednesday.

That amounted to "more than half of all the devices we tried to access during that time period," Wray said. "And that's just at the FBI."

Wray made an impassioned appeal for help from the tech sector and the security community to address a familiar but stubborn problem, urging a good-faith collaboration from all sides to strike a balance that respects strong privacy and security without unreasonably hindering law-enforcement investigations.

"The FBI supports information security measures. We support strong encryption," Wray said. "But, information security programs need to be thoughtfully designed so that they don't undermine the lawful  underline the word lawful  tools that we need to keep the American people safe."

The thoughtful design that Wray envisions would necessitate a thaw in relations between the public and private sectors. The friction between the two is longstanding, and memorably flared up with the FBI's long struggle to gain access to the contents of the iPhone of one of the shooters in the 2015 massacre in San Bernardino, California.

That standoff between the FBI and Apple brought attention to the debate over the utility of metadata in criminal investigations. Metadata  information detailing things like when and where phone calls were made or text messages were sent  can be obtained without having to crack open the device to view its contents, Wray acknowledged. But in building a criminal case, metadata only goes so far.

"To be fair, while there's certainly some things we can glean from that, if the purpose is to actually prosecute terrorists and criminals, to actually prevent attacks and save lives by arresting and prosecuting people, words, content can be evidence," Wray said. "Mere associations are not going to get us very far in keeping the American people safe."

Wray offers no prescription for what a product that satisfies tech companies' insistence on security and user privacy, while still affording law enforcement the access it needs, would look like. He envisions solutions arising from technical innovation, and potentially varying from one type of device to another, but emerging as the result of an ongoing dialogue between two camps whose positions sometimes have seemed too hardened to find room for compromise.

"I'm convinced that we're going to need  and we want  the private sector to help. We need them to respond to lawfully issued court orders in a way that's consistent both with the rule of law and strong cybersecurity," Wray said. "I just do not buy the claim that we should throw up our hands and say that's impossible."

The appeal for greater information sharing comes as the FBI observes a spike in attacks that are the product of a collaboration among what traditionally have been distinct adversaries. Increasingly, agents of a foreign government are enlisting criminal groups to orchestrate an attack against a government or corporate target, according to Wray.

"We've also been seeing more and more of what we refer to as blended threat  nation-states using criminal hackers to do their dirty work," he said.

Wray amplified his call for cooperation on the encryption issue with a more general plea for companies to work with law enforcement to report attacks and provide information about emerging threats. Within the law enforcement agencies at various levels of government, many of which have historically resisted the very information sharing that Wray is advocating, longstanding barriers have been leveled in response to the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

"The threat is moving so quickly that if there was ever a place for turf battles, that time is long, long, long gone," he said. "We're much less concerned about who you call than that you call, and that you call as promptly as possible."
The story of America is built upon the often poignant and fascinating stories of refugees and immigrants.

Whether fleeing from persecution or in search of a better life, folks have for centuries left their native countries to relocate here.

The issue is not new, Fairfield Museums Executive Director Mike Jehle said. While investigating the topic, it is not long before we realize, These people are us.

Central to our mission is to present a major topic each year  relevant and topical  in which we can engage the community in an open forum so that we can all learn a bit more about complex issues that define our time, Jehle said in a recent telephone chat. Last years topic was climate change.

This year, the Fairfield Museum and History Center presents a new and timely exhibit and numerous special events that explore An American Story: Finding Home in Fairfield County, which runs through July 23. The show also observes the 100th anniversary of the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants founded in 1918.

An American Story highlights the experiences of eight individuals from Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Hungary, India, Rwanda and Syria, who have built new lives in Fairfield County over recent decades. Seeking safety and opportunity here, refugees and immigrants from around the world have added to the fabric of our communities, the exhibition points out. Biographical narratives were written by Lynne Penczer and the large-scale portraits were created by Caren Winnall.

powerful biographical narratives, authored by Lynne Penczer, and the large-scale portraits, taken by Caren Winnall,

The nonprofit museum is a community center where people come together to learn from each other ... to explore the historic context of current events and discuss ways we can work together for collective solutions to some of the challenges we face, he said.

To that end, Jehle said the museum will host special events designed to appeal to various age groups.

Programs

As described by the museum:

Museum After Dark: Thursday, March 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. Women Rebuilding will be the topic. Marco Werman, senior producer of Public Radio Internationals The World, will moderate a discussion about womens empowerment projects in Connecticut that are giving immigrant women opportunities.

Film Series: Wednesday, March 28, at 12:30 p.m. The film, Searching for Wordin Avenue, which commemorates the Hungarian community in Bridgeport and the immigrant experience, will be shown.

For Families: Monday, April 9, from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Family Focus: Architecture Around the World. Using found objects and recycled materials, families can design and build a model structure. Free.

Workshop: Wednesday, April 11, 10 a.m. to noon, for ages 6-10. Adventures Around the World. Discover places around the world in the An American Story exhibit and create your own adventure picture book. $20. Register online.

More Information Fairfield Museum, 370 Beach Road. Through July 23. Daily 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $5; $3 seniors, students (6-22); 5 and younger, free. 203-259-1598, Fairfieldhistory.org See More Collapse

Storytime for Children: Wednesday, April 11, 10 to 10:30 a.m. Hope and Home. Discover the people who came to this country and the traditions they brought with them. Free.

Film Series: Sunday, April 15, at 4 p.m. Rebuilding Hope will be shown. Filmmaker Jen Marlowe will speak about the movie, which traces the journey of the Southern Sudanese Lost Boys, who fled Sudan as children in 1987.

Forum: Thursday, April 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. Sanctuary: Interfaith Forum on Refugees will highlight the different ways faith-based communities are offering diverse approaches to meet the needs of refugees and immigrants.

Community Day: Saturday, June 9, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Performances, stories and hands-on activities for children. Short documentaries, for ages 10 and older, will be shown, including Shirins Dream and Magic Shoes, curated by Northwest Film Forum. Free.
Meat products often sold at Whole Foods stores are being recalled in both Canada and the United States.

Over 3,900 pounds of ready-to-eat salami, pepperoni, chorizo and sopressata made by Olli Salumeria Americana in Oceanside, Calif. were pulled from circulation after a routine inspection found them to be tainted with Listeria, the United States Department of Agriculture said in a press release.
It was the perfect storm for Danbury mayor and governor hopeful Mark Boughton, who got the kind of publicity money couldnt buy during Wednesdays noreaster.

His two minutes of fame came during a guest appearance alongside celebrity Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore at the time most of Connecticut, if not the nation, was tuned in to The Weather Channel to see the forecast for the second major storm in less than a week.

Its a great opportunity, said Boughton, who pays close attention to weather maps and considers himself an amateur meteorologist.

Im a big fan of Jim Cantore, I just wish we had some high wind like he gets during some of the hurricane broadcasts. It was a lot of fun.

Major storms  and the response to them  have been known to make or break a political career, especially during election seasons.

Hilary Fussell Sisco, associate professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Communication at Quinnipiac University, cited the careers of leaders like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans, whose responses to crises shaped their reputations  Giuliani during 9/11 and Nagin during and after Hurricane Katrina.

For anybody running for office or that wants to make a larger profile, I think appearances like this are particularly important, Sisco said. If you have a big media presence or appearance that can make a difference. Jim Cantore is a beloved weather guy. If you have a good rapport with him, people will have more confidence in you as a leader. They will have more interest in the candidates platform.

It wasnt the first time The Weather Channel has called on Boughton for local insight during a major storm. Boughton has built up a working relationship with producers for the station, who called his office when they realized Cantore was headed to the area.

It wasnt necessarily a hookup, Boughton said. Ive done that show a couple of times, for various weather issues and we were going to be in the jackpot zone for snow.

Cantore, who was reporting in the field from Bethel, said he made his stop in the Danbury area based on predictions it would be the center of the storm action and the possibility of a so-called dry slot, a mass of dry air that greatly diminishes snowfall and carries the potential for thunder snow and lightning.

The more fireworks the better, as far as Boughtons Weather Channel appearance is concerned.

I think when people feel frustration, when there is disruption in your everyday life, they want a solution, Sisco said. When they feel like elected officials or potential elected officials cant deliver when people are in need, theyre going to question whether you can do that when youre in the office. I think the best thing for (Boughton) is it also shows that hes putting Danbury on the map. Having someone that can put your town or your state on the larger stage, sets you up better when youre talking about an election.
BRIDGEPORT  While the region was getting slammed by Wednesdays snowstorm, residents in Bridgeport waited hours for it to start.

It seemed to be so delayed in what was anticipated, said Mayor Joe Ganim. Just this afternoon (Wednesday) afternoon it seemed to be rain and melted snow. But it changed so quickly.

Early on Wednesday afternoon, the storm that was dropping several inches of snow in other areas in the state, including Danbury and Norwalk, was not doing much damage in Bridgeport.

Initially, the city saw a wintery mix and some slush on the streets. But then, around 4:30 p.m., the snowfall picked up and so did the wind.

Near blizzard conditions are expected as heavy snow falls at the rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour, dropping visibility to less than one quarter mile, and as northeast winds gust 35 to 40 mph. Thundersnow is also expected, said the National Weather Service around 6:10 p.m. Wednesday.

Once the storm picked up, fire and police personnel were responding nearly nonstop to calls for downed wires and trees in a roughly two hour time frame, according to Scott Appleby, Bridgeports director of Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

A wider impact

The snowstorm packed a wallop on the New England region and some neighboring states.

Roxbury Township in New Jersey, around 5 p.m., had recorded 15 inches of snowfall, according to a report from the Weather Channel. A winter storm warning remained in effect until 3 a.m. Thursday in western Monmouth and northwestern Burlington counties.

Providence was hit with rain and snow, which became all snow after 8 p.m., the NWS said. The state was expected to have winds in the range of 15 to 20 mph, with gusts possibly reaching up to 38 mph. An expected total nighttime snow accumulation was anywhere from 3 to 5 inches.

Bostons winter storm warning will be in effect until 1 p.m. Thursday. A total of 4 to 8 inches was expected in the area, with localized amounts of up to 10 inches possible near the New Hampshire border.

Scattered outages

Power was knocked out to thousands of Connecticut residents during the treacherous storm that slammed the region Wednesday, bringing snow, rain and wind.

Among those cities experiencing significant outages were Danbury, Stamford, Norwalk, Greenwich and Bridgeport.

But during the storm there were only spotty power outages in Bridgeport, city spokesman Av Harris said.

The fire department and police department responded to at least 115 calls for wires and trees down in the city at the height of the storm, said Appleby. He said the peak of the storm was between 6:16 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Prior to that, we had limited accumulation, Appleby said.

As of 8:35 p.m. Wednesday, there were 1,634 UI customers without power in the city, Appleby said. He said there had been no definitive restoration time from the company, but that repairs would continue into Thursday as needed.

Thursday cleanup

As Bridgeport works to clean up after the storm, city officials stress that residents need to move their vehicles so plows can efficiently clear the snow.

Please move your cars from emergency streets, the citys Emergency Operations Center pleaded on social media sites Wednesday.

Among the list of emergency snow streets are North Avenue and East Main Street - major roads in the city. During snow emergencies, which the city declared in the city for Wednesday, cars should not be parked on either side of the streets. The full list of snow emergency streets can be found at www.bridgeportct.gov.

For Thursday, residents should move their cars to the even numbered side of the street so plows can effectively clear the odd numbered side of the street, White said.

The roads are still going to be sloppy tomorrow (Thursday), Ganim said. He said he hopes residents will stay off the roads until theyre cleared and safe for travel.

Appleby said there were over 30 crews working in the city to clear the snow Wednesday night. He said the goal was to clear as many roads as possible by Thursday morning.

Proactive safety measures

Once snowfall and the wind started to build up, fire and police units were dispatched to several areas across the city for calls about wires and trees down. One call around 6:20 p.m. Wednesday was even for two city buses stuck in the snow on Central Avenue.

And, at that time, Greater Bridgeport Transit decided to suspend its service for the evening due to the weather and several buses getting stuck, said GBT Chief Executive Officer Doug Holcomb.

Some buses were left out to pick up anyone at the stops in case they didnt know the service was suspended, Holcomb said, and then supervisors patrolled the routes to ensure no one was stranded.
We had the pleasure of attending and exhibiting at CUNA GAC 2018. Its the annual conference where the credit union industry comes together to advocate for issues that matter, such tax status, common-sense regulation, security standards, and more. This event brings the entire credit union community together in a very meaningful way.

CUNA GAC 2018: Focus on Member Service

All credit unions want to provide excellent service to their members. Whether thats through self-service channels such as web and mobile or call centers, the objective is to always help members resolve their needs quickly. However, this isnt always as easy as it sounds and the experience isnt always the most pleasant.

During our time spent at CUNA GAC 2018, it became very clear how dedicated the industry is to serving members in ways that are efficient and convenient. After 100+ conversations with credit union presidents, executives, board members, and other technology service providers, we identified three major ways in which they are trying to enhance member service.
As longtime credit union leaders retire, a new generation of leaders must take the advocacy mantle in the decades to come.

With this reality in mind, CUNA, in conjunction with the New York Credit Union Association, hosted its first young professional advocacy workshop this past fall.

Its never too early to prepare a new generation to advocate on behalf of the credit union movement, especially when so many young professionals are already in place within the system and passionate about not-for-profit, member-owned financial cooperatives, says Adam Engelman, CUNAs grassroots manager and the workshop coordinator.

CUNA has access to an incredible variety of advocates with years of experience advocating for credit unions, and it only makes sense to connect them with the younger generation, he adds.
For Subscribers Week 4 headliners: Berlin has playmakers; Windber 'D'-termined; Township duo dominating

Week 4 HS football: What we learned from the players and teams across Somerset County including two, 4-0 squads.
India's history is like an ancient parchment manuscript that has been written, erased and rewritten, as has been the case with medieval manuscripts in the rest of Asia and large parts of Europe. Many a time, these manuscripts are overwritten to the extent that in takes years to recover the more ancient writings using modern techniques, with efforts that may last years.

Statues, too, are a depiction of history. The early medieval statues of Buddha in southeast Asia are a religious as well as political statement. Over centuries, these have been excavated, some very ancient, some medieval. The Vedas have been reconstructed over time. At times, like in Asoka's era, statues running into large numbers and other emblems like the chakra, were systematically destroyed by the later Sunga and Kushana dynasties, leaving relatively few remains.

Even the Bodhi tree, where Buddha attained divine wisdom, was cut down by a zealot after the ascetic's death. Other forces, including Hindu brahminical dynasties, were hostile to Buddha and Buddhists like Asoka. So history is clearly written and rewritten, including our ancient and medieval past, and the modern reconstruction may, in parts, be controversial. However, in modern times, this is not what happens - and not in the same degree. Apart from the Buddhist-era statues of Bamiyan destroyed by the Afghans, the Angkor Wat too has been destroyed in the much the same fashion by anti-Muslim idolators like the Khmer Rouge in their extremist and distorted Marxist rule. The Angkor Wat was later restored by Indian archaeologists.

Statues are history too.

During the Ukraine civil war, hundreds of Lenin statues were destroyed. This is also true of East Europe, which, after its failed and distorted Marxist experiments, swung towards a strongly repressive neofascist direction, and rewrote its past.

India is not quite the same. It is both multi-cultural and multi-religious. It has ancient traditions as well as carefully preserved linkages from the medieval periods to the past. For example, the Bhakti saints: Kabir, Mirabai, Baba Fareed and a host of others, enriched their songs and poems, imbued with a medieval richness and the old syncretic tradition. As is well-known these songs are sung even today by people of all faiths and regions.

So how did angry stone pelters, earlier known as the breaker of idols, begin attacking the two Lenin statues and the Dasarath Deb college named after the renowned tribal and Left leader in Tripura. Owing to the vagaries of multi-cornered contests, the Left front, which got 44.90 per cent of the votes cast, it got only 16 Assembly seats.

On the other hand, the BJP got only 43 per cent of the votes, but as many as 35 Assembly seats. So the BJP victory was not by any means a sweep like the party has claimed, but due to its association with the larger of the two tribal coalitions. The collapse of the Congress to only 1.80 per cent of the vote share in the state where they earlier got over 30 per cent is an unmitigated disaster.

Even before the election began, the saffron brigade swelled, strengthened by the overall Sangh Parivar ranks. The Sangh proudly announced that it was sending cadres in the thousands to the northeastern state. As reports in the electronic media showed, the RSS cadre got hold of a bulldozer and toppled one Lenin statue, attacked another and assaulted many Left and rural villages and households. Governor Tathagata Ray abdicated his duty by not acting swiftly to stop the riots. In the most casual fashion, Ray said that the breaking of statues would be a democratic act, as any democratic party in the Opposition, could do the same.

For this statement, the president should have dismissed the governor under his emergent powers. The Union home minister, too, was late to respond. It is unacceptable that he stands by while Tripura burns. The fact that a bulldozer was already used while the police allowed it to happen and the governor abdicated his duty, show that this was no spontaneous reaction.

The saffron cadres, if ordered not to indulge in anti-social activities, could not have razed the statue to the ground. The RSS' crocodile tears can fool few.

But once you let the genie out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. It was clear from day one that there would be a backlash. Soon, a Periyar statue was damaged in Tamil Nadu. Since Periyar is a secular anti-caste legend, the fact that a major BJP leader allegedly welcomed the assault on the Periyar statue has further stoked tensions.

Then a couple of statues of Syama Prasad Mookerjee were splashed with ink and desecrated. Those who did this probably did not know that Mookerjee was a member of Nehru's cabinet after Independence, before he formed the Bhartiya Jana Sangh in 1951.

This must stop. We have enough troubles, including severe shortages in several vital sectors of the economy, to start tit-for-tat attacks on statues. Such assaults also instigate violence that is contrary to several traditions. The Tripura Left front ruled for 25 years with limited funds for a large part of their regime. The Left front should be respected for this very major success. The Sangh may try emulating this record, but not for long. The Lenin statue has been demolished, but not the Left.

Tragically, the celebrations in Tripura were for a victory that became pyrrhic owing to a very relaxed governor who did failed his duty, and a supine police and civil service. Elections are famously seen as a festival of democracy. Sadly, in the present case, the elections turned out to be an assertion of might is right. More than just the Lenin statue, democracy itself was assaulted in Tripura.

A sad day indeed.

Also read: Sahir Ludhianvi's many tributes to women
Afghanistan may be a war-torn country, but its people continue to watch and love Bollywood films. The sudden death of Indian actress Sridevi saddened Afghans outside and inside their homeland no end.

Thousands of her Afghan fans have mourned Sridevi's passing, pouring their hearts out on the social media.

Shaim Rahi, the admin of the Facebook page "Yadi Tu Kabul" and a Sridevi fan, wrote:

"Only a couple of days ago I shared a poster of the Hindi movie Khuda Gawah. I was a fan of hers and wanted to make a video clip about her movie. Unfortunately, I received the sad news of her death today."

Another fan, Khatol Abawi, a middle-aged woman, echoed similar sentiments. "I became her fan when I watched her movie Khuda Gawah, was shot in Afghanistan."

She became a symbol of peace for all of Kabul because her shooting entertained its people.

Yet another ardent admirer, Zmarialai recalled his memories about an embattled Kabul and the Sridevi film Khuda Gawah.

"When the capital was besieged for months by the so-called Mujahideen during the '90s and Kabul was being shelled every day by rockets.

Vulnerability, rockets, missiles, and cries and funerals were daily routines for the Kabuli people. During this time, some of Bollywood actors like Amitabh Bachchan had arrived in Mazari Sharif and later Kabul for the Khuda Gawah shooting. The Buzkashi game portion was shot at Mazari Sharif, in the northern part of Afghanistan. Khuda Gawah was filmed in several parts of Kabul.

A part of the shooting took place on Kabul's Artal bridge. Sridevi never came to this side of the capital for filming sequences, but her name was known to the locals as if she had been there all along. In fact, Sridevi's name alone brought happiness and joy to the besieged residents of Kabul (at the time).

She became a symbol of peace for all of Kabul because her shooting entertained its people. Some militant commanders even stopped firing rockets in her honour! It came as a breather for local residents who could finally try and come out of their homes and buy some groceries for their families during the short time when there was a blanket of security owing to Sridevi's film.

On the other hand, religious fanatics gifted to the residents of Kabul rockets, bombs, killings, tragedy, orphans and sorrows."

"Sridevi was one of those humans the never made people cry... she made millions of people smile and laugh. She never brought tears to eyes," another emotional fan shared.

In addition to the Afghan social media community's outpouring of tributes for the actress, West-funded media like DW Pashto, BBC Pashto and Free Europe radio Pashto and VOA Pashto and Dari covered thousands of her fans' memories about her.

Afghanistan remains a country that has a small minority of Hindi-speaking people of Hindu and Sikh origin, yet most Afghans have learnt Hindi by watching Bollywood movies and listening to film music.

Also read: Why must we label Sridevi - the star - a lonely, unhappy woman?
Diplomat Pharmacy, Inc. operates as an independent specialty pharmacy in the United States. The company operates through Specialty and PBM (pharmacy benefit management) segment. It provides specialty infusion pharmacy, patient care coordination, clinical, compliance and persistency program, patient financial assistance, specialty pharmacy training, benefits investigation, prior authorization, risk evaluation and medication strategy, retail specialty, and hub services, as well as clinical and administrative support services to hospitals and health systems. The company primarily focuses on medication management programs for individuals with complex chronic diseases, including oncology, immunology, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, specialized infusion therapy, and various other serious or long-term conditions. It also offers PBM services, including electronic point-of-sale pharmacy claims management, retail pharmacy network management, mail pharmacy claims management, specialty pharmacy claims management, Medicare Part D services, benefit design consultation, drug review and analysis, consulting services, data access, and reporting, information analysis, and preferred drug management programs to managed care organizations, self-insured employer groups, unions, and third-party healthcare plan administrators and worker's compensation payers. The company was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Flint, Michigan.

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Xing SE operates professional networking Websites primarily in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and internationally. It operates through four segments: B2C, B2B E-Recruiting, B2B Advertising & Events, and Kununu International. The B2C segment serves XING members who use XING.com, XING Jobs, and kununu.com to network with other professionals for finding a suitable job, obtaining information about employers, or reading about career-related topics. The B2B E-Recruiting segment offers passive recruiting products and services that allow recruiters to post various kinds of jobs ads on the XING platform; and active recruiting products and services, which provides active candidate search and management product, as well as employer branding profiles. It also offers Xing referral manager to recruit talent with the help of existing employees. The B2B Advertising & Events segment engages in selling advertising space on XING.com., as well as provides Xing sponsored posts, mailings, video posts, articles, and business pages. The segment also processes events through its XING platform that offers registration, ticketing, and billing services for event organizers, as well as provides an online tool, which offers event organizers to select target groups for events they post on XING and then advertise them on the platform. The Kununu International segment engages in the provision of technical infrastructure services. The company was founded in 2003 and is based in Hamburg, Germany. Xing SE is a subsidiary of Burda Digital GmbH.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: 87 Leonard Development LLC, ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Acacia (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Accounting Solutions Holding Company Inc, Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Amber Investments S.a r.l., Ambidexter GmbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BHW Kreditservice GmbH, BNA Nominees Pty Limited, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, BTAS Cayman GP, BTD Nominees Pty Limited, Baincor Nominees Pty Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Barkly Investments Ltd., Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Biomass Holdings S.a r.l., Birch (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Blue Cork Inc, Blue Cork Inc., Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cape Acquisition Corp., CapeSuccess Inc., CapeSuccess LLC, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Career Blazers LLC, Career Blazers Management Company Inc, Career Blazers Management Company Inc., Career Blazers Personnel Services Inc, Career Blazers Personnel Services Inc., Career Blazers Personnel Services of Washington D.C. Inc. Washington D.C., Caribbean Resort Holdings Inc, Caribbean Resort Holdings Inc., Carpathian Investments Designated Activity Company, Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Centennial River 2 Inc., Centennial River Corporation, Chapel Funding, Charlton (Delaware) Inc, China Recovery Fund LLC, China Recovery Fund LLC, Cinda - DB NPL Securitization Trust 2003-1, City Leasing (Thameside) Limited, City Leasing Limited, Consumo S.p.A., Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, Cyrus J. Lawrence Capital Holdings Inc., Cyrus J. Lawrence Capital Holdings Inc., D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, D.B. International Delaware Inc., D.B. International Delaware Inc., DAHOC (UK) Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DAHOC Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB (Pacific) Limited, DB (Pacific) Limited New York, DB (Pacific) Limited New York, DB Abalone LLC, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Alps Corporation, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Asia Pacific Holdings Limited (in voluntary liquidation), DB Asset Finance I S.a r.l., DB Asset Finance II S.a r.l., DB Aster II LLC, DB Aster III LLC, DB Aster Inc., DB Aster LLC, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Investments Sarl, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Capital Partners Inc., DB Capital Partners Inc., DB Cartera de Inmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Cartera de Inmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Commodity Services LLC, DB Consorzio S. Cons. a r. l., DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Covered Bond S.r.l., DB Credit Investments S.a r.l., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Commodities Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Enfield Infrastructure Holdings Limited, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Finance International GmbH, DB Ganymede 2006 L.P., DB Global Markets Multi-Strategy Fund I Ltd., DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holding Fundo de Investimento Multimercado Investimento no Exterior Credito Privado, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB Holdings (South America) Limited, DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Immobilienfonds 1 Wieland KG, DB Immobilienfonds 2 KG i.L., DB Immobilienfonds 4 KG i.L., DB Immobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG, DB Impact Investment (GP) Limited, DB Impact Investment Fund I L.P., DB Impact Investment Fund I L.P., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB Io LP, DB Litigation Fee LLC, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Managers LLC, DB Municipal Holdings LLC, DB Nexus American Investments (UK) Limited (in members'voluntary liquidation), DB Nexus Investments (UK) Limited (in members' voluntary liquidation), DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios Interactivos Agrupacion de Interes Economico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB PWM, DB Portfolio Southwest Inc., DB Print GmbH, DB Privat- und Firmenkundenbank AG, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB RC Holdings LLC, DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services Americas Inc., DB Services Americas Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Finance 1 Designated Activity Company, DB Structured Finance 2 Designated Activity Company, DB Structured Holdings Luxembourg S.a r.l., DB Structured Products Inc., DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB U.S. Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a r.l., DB Value S.a r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita S.A., DBAB Wall Street LLC, DBAH Capital LLC, DBAH Capital LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBCIBZ2, DBFIC Inc., DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBOI Global Services Private Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management IA Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management IB Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management IB Ltd., DBRE Global Real Estate Management US IB L.L.C., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUKH No. 2 Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a r.l., DBUSBZ2 S.a r.l., DBX Advisors LLC, DBX ETF Trust, DBX Strategic Advisors LLC, DBO Vermogensverwertung GmbH, DEBEKO Immobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUFRAN Beteiligungs GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK A.S., DG China Clean Tech Partners, DI Deutsche Immobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DIB-Consult Deutsche Immobilien- und BeteiligungsBeratungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DNU Nominees Pty Limited, DSL Portfolio GmbH & Co. KG, DSL Portfolio Verwaltungs GmbH, DTS Nominees Pty Limited, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, De Heng Asset Management Company Limited, De Meng Innovative (Beijing) Consulting Company Limited, DeAM Infrastructure Limited, Deloraine Spain S.L., Delowrezham de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (Mauritius) Limited Port, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alt-A Securities Inc., Deutsche Alt-A Securities Inc., Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (France) SAS, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Asset Management (Japan) Limited, Deutsche Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, Deutsche Asset Management S.A., Deutsche Asset Management S.G.I.I.C. S.A., Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (Chile), Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anonima Institucion Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Bauspar-Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Capital Finance LLC I, Deutsche Bank Capital Finance Trust I, Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency of Delaware, Deutsche Bank International Limited, Deutsche Bank Investments (Guernsey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. - Fiduciary Deposits, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A. - Fiduciary Note Programme, Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple, Deutsche Bank Mexico S.A. Institucion de Banca Multiple, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank National Trust Company Los, Deutsche Bank Nominees (Guernsey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Nominees (Jersey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Polska Spolka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A. - Banco Alemao, Deutsche Bank S.A. - Banco Alemao Sao, Deutsche Bank SPEARs/LIFERs Series DBE-8011 Trust, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Services (Jersey) Limited, Deutsche Bank Sociedad Anonima Espanola, Deutsche Bank Sociedad Anonima Espanola, Deutsche Bank Societa per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Management Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Colombia S.A.S., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 1 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 2 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 3 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance Co 4 Pty Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Immobilien-Leasing mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Immobilien-Leasing mit beschrankterHaftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Deutsche Holdings (Malta) Ltd., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche Immobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Inversiones Dos S.A., Deutsche Inversiones Limitada, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mandatos S.A., Deutsche Master Funding Corporation, Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a r.l., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Public Limited Company, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Mortgage Securities Inc., Deutsche Mortgage Securities Inc., Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC I, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC II, Deutsche Postbank Funding LLC III, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities Menkul Degerler A.S., Deutsche Securities S.A., Deutsche Securities S.A. de C.V. Casa de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities S.A. de C.V. Casa de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Securities SpA, Deutsche Securities Venezuela S.A., Deutsche Securitisation Australia Pty Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trust Company Limited Japan, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. S.A., Deutsches Institut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.I., Elba Finance GmbH, Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, Emerald Asset Repackaging Designated Activity Company, Erste Frankfurter Hoist GmbH, European Value Added I (Alternate G.P.) LLP, Exinor SA, FARAMIR Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs GmbH, FRANKFURT CONSULT GmbH, Fiduciaria Sant' Andrea S.r.L., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Franz Urbig- und Oscar Schlitter-Stiftung Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-037, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-039, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-040, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-041, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-043, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-044, Freddie Mac Class A Taxable Multifamily M Certificates Series M-047, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., G.O. IB-US Management L.L.C., G918 Corp., GAC-HEL Inc., GWC-GAC Corp., Galene S.a r.l., Gemini Technology Services Inc., German American Capital, German American Capital Corporation, Gladyr Spain S.L., Global Markets Fundo de Investimento Multimercado, Global Markets III Fundo de Investimento Multimercado - Credito, Greenwood Properties Corp., Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer Landstrae GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Kerpen-Sindorf Vogelrutherfeld GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Leipzig Petersstrae GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Wiesbaden Luisenstrae/Kirchgasse GbR, HTB Spezial GmbH & Co. KG, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, IOS Finance EFC S.A., ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF I Manager S.a r.l., IVAF I Manager S.a r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, Immobilienfonds Mietwohnhauser Quadrath-Ichendorf GbR, Immobilienfonds Wohn- und Geschaftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul Inkasso GmbH, Kradavimd UK Lease Holdings Limited, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Latitude Australia Secured Personal Loans Trust, Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo III Initial GP Limited, Lindsell Finance Limited, London Industrial Leasing Limited, MEF I Manager S. a r.l., MEF I Manager S. a r.l., MHL Reinsurance Ltd., MIT Holdings Inc., MIT Holdings Inc., MPP Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgageIT Inc., MortgageIT Inc., MortgageIT Securities Corp., Motion Picture Productions One GmbH & Co. KG, NCW Holding Inc., Navegator - SGFTC S.A., Navegator - SGFTC S.A., New 87 Leonard LLC, Nordwestdeutscher Wohnungsbautrager Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentre", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs-GmbH, OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Holding GmbH, OPB-Nona GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPB-Quinta GmbH, OPB-Septima GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM Flottenfonds V GmbH & Co. KG, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, OPS Nominees Pty Limited, OVT Trust 1 GmbH, OVV Beteiligungs GmbH, Opal Funds (Ireland) Public Limited Company, PADUS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, PARTS Funding LLC., PB Factoring GmbH, PB Firmenkunden AG, PB International S.A., PB Spezial-Investmentaktiengesellschaft mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PBC Banking Services GmbH, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, PT. Deutsche Verdhana Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Peruda Leasing Limited, Plantation Bay Inc., Plantation Bay Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Immobilien GmbH, Postbank Immobilien und Baumanagement GmbH, Postbank Immobilien und Baumanagement GmbH & Co. Objekt Leipzig KG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank Service GmbH, Postbank Systems AG, QR Tower 2 LLC, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, REO Properties Corporation, RREEF, RREEF America L.L.C., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisors Private Limited, RREEF Management L.L.C., RTS Nominees Pty Limited, Reference Capital Investments Limited, RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables LLC, Route 28 Receivables LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SCUDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SEDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SENA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Kamenz KG, SIFA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SOLIDO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, SP Mortgage Trust, SPINO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., SPV I Sociedad Anonima Cerrada, SPV II Sociedad Anonima Cerrada, STATOR Heizkraftwerk Frankfurt (Oder) Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim Alternative Investments GmbH, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. AG & Co. Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Komplementar AG, Sechste Salomon Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Sechste Salomon Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Service Company Four Limited, Sharps SP I LLC, Singer Island Tower Suite LLC, Somkid Immobiliare S.r.l., Stelvio Immobiliare S.r.l., Structured Finance Americas LLC, Structured Finance Americas LLC, Swabia 1. Vermogensbesitz-GmbH, Suddeutsche Vermogensverwaltung Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, TAKIR Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TELO Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, TEMATIS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., TERRUS Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., TESATUR Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Halle I KG i.L., TESATUR Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH & Co. Objekt Nordhausen I KG i.L., TOSSA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TRIPLA Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, TRS Aria LLC, TRS Leda LLC, TRS Maple II LTD, TRS Oak II LTD, TRS SVCO LLC, TRS Scorpio LLC, TRS Tupelo II LTD, TRS Venor LLC, TRS Walnut II LTD, Tagus - Sociedade de Titularizacao de Creditos S.A., Tasfiye Halinde Deutsche Securities Menkul Degerler A.S., Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Tianjin Deutsche AM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Limited, UKE Beteiligungs-GmbH, UKE Grundstucksgesellschaft mbH, UKE s.r.o., Ullmann - Esch Grundstucksgesellschaft Kirchnerstrae GbR, Ullmann - Esch Grundstucksverwaltungsgesellschaft Disternich GbR, Ullmann Ullmann Krockow Krockow Esch GbR, VCJ Lease S.a r.l., Vesta Real Estate S.r.l., VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, WEPLABeteiligungsgesellschaftmbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., Whale Holdings S.a r.l., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., World Trading(Delaware)Inc., Zumirez Drive LLC, db PBC, and norisbank GmbH.
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.

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Bunge Ltd. operates as a holding company, which engages in the supply and transportation of agricultural commodities. It operates through the following segments: Agribusiness, Edible Oil Products, Milling Products, Sugar and Bioenergy, and Fertilizer. The Agribusiness segment involves in the purchase, storage, transportation, processing, and sale of agricultural commodities and commodity products. The Edible Oil Products segment includes production and sale of vegetable oils, shortenings, margarines, and mayonnaise. The Milling Products segment consists of production and sale of wheat flours, bakery mixes, corn-based products, and rice. The Sugar and Bioenergy segment comprises manufacture and marketing of sugar and ethanol derived from sugarcane, as well as energy derived from the sugar and ethanol production process. The Fertilizer segment focuses on producing, blending, and distributing fertilizer products for the agricultural industry. The company was founded by Johann Peter Gottlieb Bunge in 1818 and is headquartered in Chesterfield, MO.

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Aptiv Plc engages in the design, development, and manufacture of vehicle components. The firm also provides electrical, electronic, and safety technology solutions to the global automotive and commercial vehicle markets. It operates through the following business segments: Signal and Power Solutions, Advanced Safety and User Experience, and Eliminations and Other. The Signal and Power Solutions segment includes complete electrical architecture and component products. The Advanced Safety and User Experience segment covers component and systems integration in connectivity and security solutions, as well as advanced software development and autonomous driving technologies. The Eliminations and Other segment comprises of elimination of inter-segment transactions, other expenses, and income of a non-operating or strategic nature. The company was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

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United Technologies Corporation provides technology products and services to building systems and aerospace industries worldwide. Its Otis segment designs, manufactures, sells, and installs passenger and freight elevators, escalators, and moving walkways; and offers modernization products to upgrade elevators and escalators, as well as maintenance and repair services. The company's Carrier segment provides heating, ventilating, air conditioning, refrigeration, fire, security, and building automation products, solutions, and services for commercial, government, infrastructure, residential, and refrigeration and transportation applications. This segment also offers building services, including audit, design, installation, system integration, repair, maintenance, and monitoring. Its Pratt & Whitney segment supplies aircraft engines for commercial, military, business jet, and general aviation markets; and provides aftermarket maintenance, repair, and overhaul, as well as fleet management services. The company's Collins Aerospace Systems segment provides electric power generation, power management, and distribution systems; air data and aircraft sensing systems; engine control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems; engine components; environmental control systems; fire and ice detection, and protection systems; propeller systems; engine nacelle systems; aircraft lighting, seating, and cargo systems; actuation and landing systems; space products and subsystems; avionics systems; flight controls, communications, navigation, oxygen, and training systems; food and beverage preparation, and storage and galley systems; and lavatory and wastewater management systems. The company offers its services through manufacturers' representatives, distributors, wholesalers, dealers, retail outlets, and sales representatives, as well as directly to customers. United Technologies Corporation was founded in 1934 and is headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut.

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Trecora Resources manufactures and sells various specialty petrochemical products and synthetic waxes in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Petrochemical and Specialty Waxes. The Petrochemical segment offers hydrocarbons and other petroleum based products, including isopentane, normal pentane, isohexane, and hexane for use in the production of polyethylene, packaging, polypropylene, expandable polystyrene, poly-iso/urethane foams, and crude oil from the Canadian tar sands, as well as in the catalyst support industry. It also owns and operates pipelines. The Specialty Waxes segment provides specialty polyethylene for use in the paints and inks, adhesives, coatings, and PVC lubricants markets; and specialized synthetic poly alpha olefin waxes for use as toner in printers, as well as additives for candles. The company also provides custom processing services; and produces copper and zinc concentrates, and silver and gold dore. Trecora Resources was formerly known as Arabian American Development Company and changed its name to Trecora Resources in June 2014. Trecora Resources was founded in 1967 and is based in Sugar Land, Texas.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Valero Energy: AIR BP-PBF DEL PERU SAC, BELFAST STORAGE LTD, CANADIAN ULTRAMAR COMPANY, COLONNADE TEXAS INSURANCE COMPANY LLC, COLONNADE VERMONT INSURANCE COMPANY, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY LLC, DIAMOND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY OF CANADA INC., DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL HOLDINGS LLC, DIAMOND GREEN DIESEL LLC, DIAMOND K RANCH LLC, DIAMOND OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., DIAMOND SHAMROCK REFINING COMPANY L.P., DIAMOND UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., DSRM NATIONAL BANK, ENTERPRISE CLAIMS MANAGEMENT INC., GCP LOGISTICS COMPANY LLC, GOLDEN EAGLE ASSURANCE LIMITED, HAMMOND MAINLINE PIPELINE LLC, HUNTWAY REFINING COMPANY, MAINLINE PIPELINES LIMITED, MAPLE ETHANOL LTD., MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT GP LLC, MICHIGAN REDEVELOPMENT L.P., MRP PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, NECHES RIVER HOLDING CORP., NORCO METHANOL LLC, OCEANIC TANKERS AGENCY LIMITED, PARKWAY PIPELINE LLC, PENTA TANKS TERMINALS S.A., PI DOCK FACILITIES LLC, PICKARD PLACE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, PORT ARTHUR COKER COMPANY L.P., PREMCOR USA INC., PROPERTY RESTORATION L.P., PURE BIOFUELS DEL PERU S.A.C., PURE BIOFUELS HOLDINGS L.P., Parkway Pipeline, Premcor, Pure Biofuels Del Peru, SABINE RIVER HOLDING CORP., SABINE RIVER LLC, SAINT BERNARD PROPERTIES COMPANY LLC, SUNBELT REFINING COMPANY L.P., THE PREMCOR PIPELINE CO., THE PREMCOR REFINING GROUP INC., THE SHAMROCK PIPE LINE CORPORATION, TRANSPORT MARITIME ST. LAURENT INC., ULTRAMAR ACCEPTANCE INC., ULTRAMAR ENERGY INC., ULTRAMAR INC., Ultramar Diamond Shamrock, V-TEX LOGISTICS LLC, VALERO (BARBADOS) SRL, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS GP LLC, VALERO (PERU) HOLDINGS LIMITED, VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO ARUBA ACQUISITION COMPANY I LTD., VALERO ARUBA FINANCE INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA HOLDING COMPANY N.V., VALERO ARUBA HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO ARUBA MAINTENANCE/OPERATIONS COMPANY N.V., VALERO BROWNSVILLE TERMINAL LLC, VALERO CANADA FINANCE INC., VALERO CANADA L.P., VALERO CAPITAL CORPORATION, VALERO CARIBBEAN SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO COKER CORPORATION ARUBA N.V., VALERO CUSTOMS & TRADE SERVICES INC., VALERO EAST BAY LLC, VALERO ENERGY (IRELAND) LIMITED, VALERO ENERGY ARUBA II COMPANY, VALERO ENERGY INC., VALERO ENERGY LTD, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS GP LLC, VALERO ENERGY PARTNERS LP, VALERO ENERGY UK LTD, VALERO ENTERPRISES INC., VALERO EQUITY SERVICES LTD, VALERO FINANCE L.P. I, VALERO FINANCE L.P. II, VALERO FINANCE L.P. III, VALERO FOREST CONTRIBUTION LLC, VALERO GRAIN MARKETING LLC, VALERO H2 PIPELINE COMPANY LLC, VALERO HOLDCO UK LTD, VALERO HOLDINGS INC., VALERO INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., VALERO LIVE OAK LLC, VALERO LOGISTICS UK LTD, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY (PANAMA) LLC, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY COMPANY, VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPLY DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO MARKETING AND SUPPY INTERNATIONAL LTD., VALERO MARKETING IRELAND LIMITED, VALERO MKS LOGISTICS L.L.C., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEDERLAND COOPERATIEF U.A., VALERO NEW AMSTERDAM B.V., VALERO OMEGA COMPANY L.L.C., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONAL SERVICES DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO OPERATIONS SUPPORT LTD, VALERO PARTNERS CCTS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS EAST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS CORPUS WEST LLC, VALERO PARTNERS EP LLC, VALERO PARTNERS HOUSTON LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LOUISIANA LLC, VALERO PARTNERS LUCAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MCKEE LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS MERAUX LLC, VALERO PARTNERS NORTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS OPERATING CO. LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PAPS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS PORT ARTHUR LLC, VALERO PARTNERS SOUTH TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS TEXAS CITY LLC, VALERO PARTNERS THREE RIVERS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST MEMPHIS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WEST TEXAS LLC, VALERO PARTNERS WYNNEWOOD LLC, VALERO PAYMENT SERVICES COMPANY, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE LLC, VALERO PEMBROKESHIRE OIL TERMINAL LTD, VALERO PLAINS COMPANY LLC, VALERO POWER MARKETING LLC, VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL OPERATIONS DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO RAIL PARTNERS LLC, VALERO REFINING AND MARKETING COMPANY, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-ARUBA N.V., VALERO REFINING COMPANY-CALIFORNIA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-OKLAHOMA, VALERO REFINING COMPANY-TENNESSEE L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-MERAUX LLC, VALERO REFINING-NEW ORLEANS L.L.C., VALERO REFINING-TEXAS L.P., VALERO RENEWABLE FUELS COMPANY LLC, VALERO SECURITY SYSTEMS INC., VALERO SERVICES INC., VALERO SKELLYTOWN PIPELINE LLC, VALERO TEJAS COMPANY LLC, VALERO TERMINAL HOLDCO LTD, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, VALERO TERMINALING AND DISTRIBUTION DE MEXICO S.A. DE C.V., VALERO TEXAS POWER MARKETING INC., VALERO ULTRAMAR HOLDINGS INC., VALERO UNIT INVESTMENTS L.L.C., VALERO WEST WALES LLC, VRG PROPERTIES COMPANY, VTD PROPERTIES COMPANY, WARSHALL COMPANY LLC, and ZELIG COMMERCIAL INC..
Ashtead Group plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the construction, industrial, and general equipment rental business in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It offers range of products and services, such as general tools, air compressors and accessories, compaction and earth moving, climate control services, power and HVAC, pump solutions, remediation and restoration, flooring solutions, and lighting and grip. The company also provides power generation, heating, cooling, scaffolding, traffic management, temporary flooring, trench shoring, and lifting services. It offers its products and services for facilities maintenance and municipalities, such as office complexes, apartment complexes, government, hospitals, data centers, parks and recreation departments, schools and universities, shopping centers, pavement/kerb repairs, and golf course maintenance; construction of airports, highways and bridges, office buildings, data centers, schools and universities, shopping centers, residential, and remodeling; emergency response for fire, hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, winter, storms, residential emergencies, covid-19, alternative care facilities, points of distribution, and mobile testing facilities; and entertainment and special events, including national events, concerts, sporting events, film/TV production, theme parks, festivals farmers' markets, local 5k runs, and cycle races. The company operates 873 stores in the United States, 75 stores in Canada, and 193 stores in the United Kingdom under the Sunbelt Rentals brand. Ashtead Group plc was founded in 1947 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

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Xcel Energy, Inc. operates as a holding company, which engages in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution and sale of electricity. It operates through the following three segments: Regulated Electric Utility, Regulated Natural Gas Utility and All Others. The Regulated Electric Utility segment generates, transmits and distributes electricity primarily in portions of generates, transmits and distributes electricity in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico. In addition, this segment includes sales for resale and provides wholesale transmission service to various entities in the United States. It also includes commodity trading operations. The Regulated Natural Gas Utility segment transports, stores, and distributes natural gas primarily in portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Michigan and Colorado. The All Others segment engages in steam, appliance repair services, nonutility real estate activities, processing solid waste into refuse-derived fuel and investments in rental housing projects that qualify for low-income housing tax credits. The company was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.

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Federated Investors, Inc. is a publicly owned asset management holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the firm provides its services to individuals, including high net worth individuals, banking or thrift institutions, investment companies, pension and profit sharing plans, pooled investment vehicles, charitable organizations, state or municipal government entities, and registered investment advisors. Through its subsidiaries, it manages separate client-focused equity, fixed income, balanced and money market mutual funds along with separate client-focused equity, fixed income, money market, and balanced portfolios. Through its subsidiaries, the firm invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It invests in growth and value stocks of small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap companies. The firm makes its fixed income investments in ultra-short, short-term, and intermediate-term mortgage-backed, U.S. Government, U.S. corporate, high yield, and municipal securities. It employs both fundamental and quantitative analysis to make its equity investments. Federated Investors, Inc. was founded in 1955 and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with additional offices in New York City and London, United Kingdom.

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Ferrellgas Partners, L.P. distributes and sells propane and related equipment and supplies. The company transports propane to propane distribution locations, tanks on customers' premises, or to portable propane tanks delivered to retailers. It conducts its portable tank exchange operations under the Blue Rhino brand name through a network of independent and partnership-owned distribution outlets. The company's propane is primarily used for space heating, water heating, cooking, outdoor cooking using gas grills, crop drying, irrigation, weed control, and other propane fueled appliances; as an engine fuel for combustion engine vehicles and forklifts; and as a heating or energy source in manufacturing and drying processes. It serves residential, industrial/commercial, portable tank exchange, agricultural, wholesale, and other customers in the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. As of July 31, 2018, it operated 72 service centers and 859 propane distribution locations. The company is also involved in the sale of refined fuels; provision of common carrier services; and retail sale of propane appliances and related parts and fittings, as well as other retail propane related services and consumer products. Ferrellgas Partners, L.P. was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas.

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Wall Street analysts have given John Hancock Income Securities 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 John Hancock Income Securities Trust wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Jungheinrich Aktiengesellschaft, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and supplies products in the fields of warehousing and material handling equipment, and automated systems worldwide. The company's Intralogistics segment develops, produces, sells, and rents new material handling equipment and warehousing equipment products; sale and short-term leasing of used trucks; and provides spare parts, as well as maintenance and repair services. Its Financial Services segment engages in the sales financing and usage transfer of material handling and warehousing equipment products. The company offers warehousing equipment, such as pedestrian trucks, low level order pickers, reach trucks, stackers, order pickers, high rack stackers, tugger trains and trailers, and hand pallet trucks, as well as racks; electric and diesel/LPG counterbalanced trucks; customized trucks and powertrain solutions; and batteries and chargers. It also provides automated systems, including automated guided vehicles, conveyor systems, and stacker cranes; and digital products, such as warehouse management, fleet management, communication interfaces, assistance systems, and safety interfaces, as well as develops software solutions. The company distributes its products through its direct sales and service network, as well as through dealers. Jungheinrich Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

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Rolls-Royce Holdings plc operates as an industrial technology company in the United Kingdom and internationally. The company operates in four segments: Civil Aerospace, Power Systems, Defence, and ITP Aero. The Civil Aerospace segment develops, manufactures, and sells aero engines for large commercial aircraft, regional jet, and business aviation markets, as well as provides aftermarket services. The Power Systems segment provides high-speed and medium-speed reciprocating engines, and propulsion and power generation systems for the marine, defense, power generation, and industrial markets. The Defence segment offers aero engines for military transport and patrol aircraft applications; and naval engines and submarine nuclear power plants, as well as aftermarket services. The ITP Aero segment engages in the design, research and development, manufacture and casting, assembly, and testing of aeronautical engines and gas turbines. It also provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for regional airlines, as well as business aviation, industrial, and defense applications. Rolls-Royce Holdings plc was founded in 1884 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. operates as a multinational, specialty pharmaceutical, and medical device company that develops, manufactures, and markets a range of pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter (OTC) products, and medical devices. The company operates through three segments: Bausch + Lomb/International, Branded Rx, and U.S. Diversified Products. The Bausch + Lomb/International segment provides pharmaceutical products, OTC products, and medical device products, primarily consist of Bausch + Lomb products, with a focus on the vision care, surgical, consumer, and ophthalmology Rx products in the United States; and pharmaceutical products, generic pharmaceutical products, OTC products, medical device products, and Bausch + Lomb products in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. The Branded Rx segment sells gastrointestinal and dermatological products in the United States. The U.S. Diversified Products segment offers pharmaceutical products, OTC products, and medical device products in the areas of neurology and certain other therapeutic classes, including aesthetics. The company was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Laval, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Molina Healthcare: Aetna & Humana - Medicare Advantage, Affinity Health Plan, AmericanWork Inc., Better Health Network, Camelot Care Centers Inc, Children's Behavioral Health Inc., Choices Group Inc., College Community Services, Dockside Services Inc, Family Preservation Services Inc., Family Preservation Services of Florida Inc., Family Preservation Services of North Carolina Inc., Family Preservation Services of Washington D.C. Inc., Family Preservation Services of West Virginia Inc., Florida NetPASS LLC, Hclb Inc., Magellan Complete Care, Maple Star Nevada Inc., Maple Star Oregon Inc., Mercy CarePlus, Molina Clinical Services LLC, Molina Healthcare Data Center Inc., Molina Healthcare of Arizona Inc., Molina Healthcare of California, Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc., Molina Healthcare of Georgia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Molina Healthcare of Iowa Inc., Molina Healthcare of Louisiana Inc., Molina Healthcare of Maryland Inc., Molina Healthcare of Michigan Inc., Molina Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Molina Healthcare of Nevada Inc., Molina Healthcare of New Mexico Inc., Molina Healthcare of New York Inc., Molina Healthcare of North Carolina Inc., Molina Healthcare of Ohio Inc., Molina Healthcare of Oklahoma Inc., Molina Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Molina Healthcare of Puerto Rico Inc., Molina Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, Molina Healthcare of Texas Inc., Molina Healthcare of Texas Insurance Company, Molina Healthcare of Utah Inc., Molina Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Molina Healthcare of Washington Inc., Molina Healthcare of Wisconsin Inc., Molina Holdings Corporation, Molina Hospital Management LLC, Molina Information Systems LLC dba Molina Medicaid Solutions, Molina Medical Management Inc., Molina Pathways LLC, Molina Pathways of Texas Inc., Molina Youth Academy, NextLevel Health Illinois, Pathways Community Corrections Inc., Pathways Community Services LLC, Pathways Community Support of Texas Inc., Pathways Health and Community Support LLC, Pathways Human Services LLC., Pathways of Arizona Inc., Pathways of Delaware Inc., Pathways of Idaho LLC, Pathways of Maine Inc., Pathways of Massachusetts LLC, Pathways of Oklahoma Inc., Pathways of Washington Inc., Providence Community Services, Providence Human Services, Raystown Developmental Services Inc., The Game of Work LLC, The RedCo Group Inc., Total Care Medicaid plan, Transitional Family Services Inc., Unisys -Health Information Management, and YourCare Health Plan.
Yext, Inc. is an emerging growth company engages in software development. It offers a cloud-based digital knowledge platform, which allows businesses manage their digital knowledge in the cloud such as financial information, resources and performance of these resources on a consolidated basis and sync it to other application such as Apple Maps, Bing, Cortana, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Instagram, Siri and Yelp. It offers the Yext Knowledge Engine package on subscription basis, which has an access to Listings, Pages, Reviews and other features. The Listing feature provides customers with control over their digital presence, including their location and other related attributes published on the used third-party applications. The Pages feature allows customers to establish landing pages on their own websites and to manage digital content on those sites, including calls to action. The Reviews presence enables customers to encourage and facilitate reviews from end consumers. The company was founded by Howard Lerman, Brent Metz, and Brian Distelburger in 2006 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

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KB Financial Group, Inc. engages in providing financial services through its subsidiaries. It operates through the following segments: Corporate Banking, Retail Banking, Other Banking Services, Credit Card, Life Insurance, Investment and Securities business. The Corporate Banking business segment provides services such as loans, overdrafts, deposits, credit facilities and other foreign currency activities. The Retail Banking business segment offers services such as private customer current accounts, savings, deposits, consumer loans and mortgage loans. The Other Banking business segment provides services relating to banking business besides corporate banking and retail banking services. The Credit Card business segment offers services such as domestic as well as overseas credit and debit card operations. The Investment and Securities business segment provides services such as investment banking and brokerage. The Life Insurance business segment provides products such as life insurance and wealth management. The company was founded on September 29, 2008 and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.

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Posted Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:26 am

A white buffalo calf is born is it a sign?

A Lakota Sioux might suggest this is a story, a myth, a fable  that she is the savior of the world. A more semi-cynical point of view might point out she is merely a genetic anomaly, one in a half-million or so.

Don Zolidis stage play, White Buffalo, playing at Riverwalks black box theater, invites the question of whether belief is merely a difference of opinion, depending on the eye of the beholder.

Emily Clark is Carol Gelling, a burned-out, overwrought farmer in Blackhawk, Wisconsin, who discovers the calf while walking her small acreage. A flood of phone calls and visitors ensue, based on a photo in a local newspaper. Her struggle, as to what to do with this calf, is at the heart of this play.

Gelling is joined-at-the-hip in this dilemma along with her 18-year-old idealistic daughter Abby, portrayed earnestly and in tensely by Cassie Little. Abby sides with the Lakota Sioux as to keeping and raising the calf, especially after she and her mother are joined in this emerging drama by a handsome young John Two Rivers, played by Boris Nikolovski.

Mythical understandings of the significance of this event are provided in this play with a Greek chorus of chanting and singing Native Americans, including a child cloaked in a feathery white shroud signifying the buffalo calf. Collen Bethea adds a strong singing voice to this four-voice chorus.

There are a lot of dialogue-dyads in this play, scenes where two actors at a time dominate the stage. Mother and daughter, for example, then daughter and Two Rivers.

An ex-husband, Mike, played by Doak Bloss, arrives on the scene in the middle of lightning and thunder, and Mike and Carol continue the scene, with a stormy exposition on their troubled past.

White Buffalo was produced with consultation from Jeff Sprague and Victoria Voges from the Nokomis Learning Center, a Native American cultural resource, and Eva Menefee from LCC. Riverwalk is also collecting donations to erect a memorial for the Burt Lake burn-out, a forced relocation measure that took place in 1900.

All of these scenes are full of crisp dialogue and passionate exchanges of deep emotion  except when they are not, moments when it feels like all the air has gone out of the room.

Chalk this up to Zolodis script, which could have benefited from some careful pruning here and there. Narratives suffer from over explanation, conversations sometimes drift into where exactly is this going? Individual actors, however, each have their moments-in-the-sun, Clark, in particular, completely inhabits her stress-driven character, the exasperated, emotionally starved Carol Gelling, while Nikolovski articulates the deep cynicism and bitterness of John Two Rivers estranged from his tribal family.

Bloss, as Mike, unfolds a deeply painful recollection of the death of the couples 4 -year-old child. While Anderson Wilkes, played by Jeff Boerger, lives the role of a crusty, creaky, aging millionaire rancher, who ambles in to buy the calf for $2 million.

He lets it roam freely on his multi-acre ranch adjacent to Sioux territory.

The resolution is somewhat incomplete in this play.

John Two Rivers announces he is returning to his roots in Lakota Sioux territory.

Abby decides to go with him, leaving Carol and Mike with $2 million and an uncertainty as to what this means for them. Will they reconcile? Has the Buffalo calf symbolically brought them back together?

White Buffalo

Riverwalk Theatre March 1-4 and 8-11 Tickets start at $12 www.riverwalktheatre.com
Posted Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:26 am

Trying to make sense of any particular countrys wine industry in 900 words or less is a fools errand. Sure, New Zealand is known for highly expressive sauvignon blanc, but there are many other moving pieces that make it quite difficult to expect the exact same few aspects of those wines to deliver the same typical styles every time.

If such a task is proving to be impossible for a country and wine industry like New Zealands, imagine the breadth of said task for France. The key is to submit. To enjoy your studies in consumption, a sip at a time.

Northern France presents a few interesting styles of wine that have never hit fever pitch here in the States. Patrick Cappiello, founder of Forty Ounce Wines, may be able to move the needle a bit.

A bit of a misnomer, the Forty Ounce Muscadet is not 40 ounces, but rather 1 liter, or 33.8 ounces. Thats OK. At $16 retail, this is a must-have sharable bottle for fans of dry white wine.

The name Muscadet can understandably be confusing, as it sounds very similar to Muscat, a family of wine grapes which quite often makes reasonably sweet wines from around the world (often called Moscato outside of France). Make no mistake, Muscadet is dry.

This crisp, tart-fruited, lighter wine hails from near the city of Nantes, in Western Loire Valley, France. About 15 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, the lands of the Pays Nantais produce an enormous amount of Muscadet wines, made from the melon de bourgogne grape.

The goal with this packaging is clearly multifaceted: One to remind people to not always take (especially inexpensive) wine too seriously. But to, well, clearly land in your Instagram feed.

A short drive east of Nantes and youll bump up against the Loire river again, just a touch higher in elevation. Hugging this storied waterway is Savennieres, a sleepy village known for chenin blanc. There are a few big names of wine here, and arguably of the two most important is Domaine des Baumards.

For a special occasion, check out their Clos du Papillon bottling.

The current vintage is 2013 and costs roughly $45. Its a single vineyard expression of chenin not to be missed: honeyed, rich, floral and elegant. While Baumards entry-level bottle at about $25 can seem somewhat aggressive, Clos du Papillon is all Audrey Hepburn: grace and composure.

Headed to the Northeast corner of the country, youll find the sunniest region of France: Alsace. A unique region with a somewhat tragic history through the world wars, Alsace is driven by white wine production, often at a great deal.

Sure, there are wines like Trimbachs Clos Saint Hune, legendary bottles which may cost up to $300. Importantly, there are also seemingly oceans of respectable riesling, gewurztraminer, pinot gris, and muscat available for less than $25.

Bott Freres is one of those producers. Their 2014 gewurztraminer isnt subtle, but hits all the right notes for gewurztraminer lovers at a great price ($19). This is not a full-on sweet wine. It has some residual sugar, no doubt. The lower acid in this wine effectively lays bare all of those typical gewurztraminer notes that we can expect: Excessively perfumed floral notes, yellow apple and bosc pear. If youre looking for a bottle to go with your General Tso takeout, this is it.

Heading south to Rhone, the red wines get most of the glamour, spearheaded by top level production of the grenache, syrah and mourvedre grapes. But once again, when were talking value, there are ample opportunities to pick up some deals.

The trouble in Rhone begins with the fact that the common white grapes are virtually unknown to our market, and putting them on the front label would assuredly be a detriment to sales. This is a shame because if youre keen on full-flavored white wines, but want to skip out on oakey chardonnay, these wines are a good start.

The 2015 Delas Freres Cotes-du-Rhone blanc is only $17, and checks a lot of boxes: ripe fruit, freshness, balance, great price. Its made from grenache blanc, clairette, viognier and bourboulenc. The good news is you dont have to know or care what the grapes are to enjoy this wine.

You can spend 10 hours a week for years studying France and not come close to getting a total comprehension. And thats OK.

Theres so much more joy in the world of wine when you give up caring about learning for the sake of learning, and instead just stop for a minute and enjoy some bottles with your loved ones.

These bottles are great opportunities to do so, as the weather slowly creeps from lion to lamb.

Justin King is an Advanced Sommelier and owner of Bridge Street Social, a wine and cocktails-focused restaurant in DeWitt. He was named 2017 Best New Sommelier by Wine & Spirits Magazine. Send your email to justingking@gmail.com.
Posted Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:26 am

Last month, Katie Anne Lambert moved her 9-month-old pastry shop, Mitten Raised Bakery, from a small-ish space in Okemos to a 2,800-square-foot storefront in East Lansings Brookfield Plaza. She didnt have much of a choice  her old lease was up and the building is slated for demolition  but the move fortuitously positions her across the street from MSU, unofficially the largest consumer of caffeine and free Wi-Fi in Mid-Michigan.

Lamberts business has already become a popular favorite for pastry lovers for its inventive creations with equally memorable names, such as Unicorn Dreams, a sprinkle cookie sandwich filled with tropical fruit frosting, and Ive Got Worms, a mini-mud pie bedecked with gummy worms. As she prepares for the second stage of her business life, she took some time to talk about her philosophy behind baking and whats coming out of the oven next.

What sparked your interest in baking? Id always done it when I was a kid, but it wasnt until I was a little older that I knew this is what I wanted to do  and definitely before the first episode of Cake Boss aired. I just love being able to experiment with different flavors and ideas to see what crazy things I can come up with to take people out of their comfort zones.

Did you formally study baking? I went through the hospitality program at Grand Valley State University, but rather than going to culinary school, I jumped right into kitchens and internships while I was getting my degree. Most of what Ive learned is from trial and error and from the chefs I studied under in Colorado and Hawaii who gave structure to my work.

Whats your approach when it comes to baking?

Make it fun. You never know if something will taste good unless you try. The whole mission I had when we opened Mitten Raised was to bring some of my dessert experience back to Michigan. But were still a cake bakery at our core, and I still love seeing the pictures from customers after their kiddos bang fists into their first smash cakes. Its awesome.

What are the differences between Mitten Raised pastries and those you find at other places around town?

We try to rotate flavors and create different flavor profiles weekly. For example, this week we have mango- and green tea-flavored frostings. We still have all the staple items that are a treat for adults and pair great with a morning coffee, but also have fun stuff that light up their kids eyes too.

How do you come up with your pastry ideas?

I try to think of one main flavor and then build around that. I create all these flavors based off things I love to eat or crazy things that I want to try that I cant find around here. And I tell my staff all the time to bring me their ideas  theyre awesome and theyre really great about pushing the envelope.

How do you come up with those names?

Im just goofy and its a fun way to express myself.

What kind of work did you have to do in the new space to make it suit you?

It was certainly a labor or love. We wanted to make it ours and create a comfy place. We painted the walls to brighten it up, replaced tabletops with reclaimed wood, changed the lighting and added a couch and chars for more of a welcoming environment.

Whats next for Mitten Raised? We have some awesome specialty coffee and a full espresso coming later this month. Were working on some healthy lunch options to add to our menu. Were also currently looking at Grand Rapids for a second location, but well need to establish ourselves here first.

Whats your favorite part about running your business?

I love seeing the reactions people have to my creations. Having fun playing with color is always at the top of my mind, and if you walk into my store, I think thats easy to see. I go into a lot of bakeries that have awesome stuff, but they feel really stiff. I want to walk that line where every trip is an experience.

Going Green While Green Dot Stables is closed for flood repairs, a skeleton crew from the recently opened burger bar will host a pop-up dinner from 5-9 p.m. this Saturday, March 10, at the Allen Neighborhood Center, 1611 E. Kalamazoo St. in Lansings Eastside Neighborhood. It gives a chance for local diners who have already become addicted to the creative slider menu a chance to get their fix, with all proceeds going to benefit staff who are out of work until the Lansing Township restaurant is back up and operational.

The pop-up is an opportunity for us to engage the community and our staff under less than stellar circumstances, said Green Dot owner Jacques Driscoll. Were facing a bit of a tough time, but many others have been hit worse. This event gives us a chance to get out there, have a little fun and give back to our hard-working staff, who we hope will be able to come back when we reopen those doors.

Driscoll said hes hoping to reopen within four weeks.

Mitten Raised Bakery 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday 1331 E. Grand River Ave., East Lansing (517) 580-3647, mittenraised.com
Mumbai: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who is shooting for "Thugs of Hindostan" at the historic Mehrangarh Fort here, today said that it was heartening to see women working on the sets of a film, a place where they were "nonexistent" at a time.

The 75-year-old veteran actor took to his personal blog where he praised the women for the efficiency and discipline they brought on location of the Vijay Krishna Acharya-directed project.

"... The entire controls barring a few, are managed by the ladies... Efficient, demanding, disciplined, screaming their heads off to inefficiency, but getting it done... So so remarkable...

"... And such a joy to see the ladies on set... a region where they were nonexistent in the years gone by... In my time there were just 2 on shoots... The leading lady and her mother... That's it..." Bachchan wrote.

The actor said the times are changing fast as women are coming forward to claim workplaces, which is their right.

"... A majority management by young professionals, running the show with panache and bearing... The industry changeth... As does the world and its opinions on women... There's is a voice that now resounds about for their rightful place... For equality... For recognition... And for respect."

Bollywood celebrities such as Anushka Sharma, Twinkle Khanna, Juhi Chawla, Kajol and Varun Dhawan also took to social media to wish their fans on International Women's Day.

Anushka urged the women to keep fighting for their rights and not surrender to adversities.

"Every step makes a difference when you believe in something strongly and do your bit. It might not show immediately but the results do create a ripple and an impact. To all the women fighting for what they believe in, don't give up! Happy #WomensDay."

Twinkle shared a text from a friend on Twitter that read, "Embrace your divine feminine power this #WomensDay... And it works because instantly I am in full Kali Ma mode wanting to stab him with my Trishul."

Juhi tweeted, "Happy Women's Day... To every little girl who believes she can... YES she CAN!"

Kajol shared a funny video in which she can be seen asking, "How are you doing, sweety?"

She captioned it as, "Fight like a woman #happywomensday."

Varun quoted Beyonce's hit number "Run the world" and said he hopes women are respected every day, not just on Women's Day.

"WHO RUN THE WORLD - GIRLSSSS. Happy #InternationalWomensDay. I hope we realise we don't need a day to remind us to respect women because we need to do it everyday," he wrote on Twitter.

On the work front, Amitabh Bachchan will next be seen in '102 Not Out' alongside Rishi Kapoor.
PETA India notes that supporting breast-feeding mothers can also help prevent animal mothers and their babies from suffering in the dairy industry. (Photo: PETA)

Mumbai: On International Women's Day, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India honoured Malayalam magazine Grihalakshmi with its 2018 Good Mother Award for highlighting the importance of human breast milk to infants' health.

The publication recently featured on its cover a photo of model Gilu Joseph in which she appears to breast-feed a baby.

Speaking about the decision to honour Grihalakshmi, PETA India spokesperson and vegan mother Neha Singh said, "Mothers of each mammal species naturally produce the perfect food for their own babies, so human mothers who breast-feed can be proud of their innate ability to nourish their infants.

She further added, "Often, when children are bottle-fed, they are given milk from cows or buffaloes, which is nature's perfect food for calves but can cause health problems including allergic reactions, diarrhoea, and anaemia in human babies. Dairy formula may also be diluted with contaminated water, risking illness and even death. Helping human mothers feel good about breast-feeding their children enables them to keep future generations healthy and strong!"

Human consumption of dairy "products" is linked to an increased risk of suffering from juvenile diabetes, allergies, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Babies have difficulty digesting bovine milk, and drinking it can make them anaemic, while most adults lose their ability to digest milk altogether after infancy. Because of its health disadvantages, the late Dr Benjamin Spock, the world's leading authority on child care, denounced feeding cows' milk to children. What's more, babies who are breast-fed by mothers who drink cows' milk may suffer from colic.

PETA India  whose motto reads, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat" notes that supporting breast-feeding mothers can also help prevent animal mothers and their babies from suffering in the dairy industry.

On today's dairy farms, farmers repeatedly forcibly impregnate cows and buffaloes through traumatic artificial insemination  which is rape. They also commonly inject cattle with oxytocin to force them to let down more milk, causing them painful muscle contractions similar to those experienced during labour. And farmers typically tear calves away from their loving mothers shortly after birth so that humans can steal the milk that nature meant for them.

If the babies are female, they are often fed milk replacer and will go on to be treated as milk machines themselves, just like their mothers. If they're male, farmers generally abandon them, let them starve to death, or sell them to be reared for beef. When mother cows' and buffaloes' milk production wanes, they, too, are often sold for beef or abandoned, or they end up at severely crowded goshalas.
Doshi's ethical and personal approach to architecture has touched lives of every socio-economic class across a broad spectrum of genres since the 1950s. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: Nonagenarian architect and reputed urban planner Balkrishna Doshi has been named this years winner of architectures highest honour - the Pritzker Prize, becoming the first Indian to do so.

His designs include the IIM-Bangalore; Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad; cultural spaces in Ahmedabad such as Tagore Memorial Hall, the Institute of Indology, and Premabhai Hall; and private residence Kamala House (Ahmedabad), among many others.

The architect also designed Aranya Low Cost Housing (Indore, 1989), which currently accommodates over 80,000 individuals through a system of houses, courtyards and a labyrinth of internal pathways.

Tom Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation that sponsors the award made the announcement in Chicago, selecting Doshi as the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.

Doshi has been an architect, urban planner, and educator for 70 years. The foundation called the 90-year-old's work "poetic and functional," and noted his ability to create works that both respect eastern culture and enhance quality of life in India.

The award ceremony will take place at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto this May.

Influenced by masters of 20th-century architecture, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, and Louis Khan, Doshi has been able to interpret architecture and transform it into built works that respect eastern culture while enhancing the quality of living in India.

His ethical and personal approach to architecture has touched lives of every socio-economic class across a broad spectrum of genres since the 1950s.

"My works are an extension of my life, philosophy and dreams trying to create treasury of the architectural spirit. I owe this prestigious prize to my guru, Le Corbusier. His teachings led me to question identity and compelled me to discover new regionally adopted contemporary expression for a sustainable holistic habitat," Doshi said.

He added the award reaffirmed his belief that life celebrates when lifestyle and architecture fuse.

"The work of Balkrishna Doshi truly underscores the mission of the Prize - demonstrating the art of architecture and an invaluable service to humanity," Pritzker said.

"I am honoured to present the award to an architect who has contributed more than 60 years of service to us all," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his congratulations.

"This honour is a fitting recognition of his outstanding work, which has spanned decades and made a notable contribution to society," He said.
Cardinal Mar George Alencherry of the Syro-Malabar Church inaugurates the fourth Syro-Malabar Major Archiepiscopal Assembly at Kodakara Sahrdaya College of Engineering & Technology in Thrissur on Thursday. (Photo: DECCAN CHRONICLE)

Kochi: The permanent synod of the Syro-Malabar Church has constituted a three-member panel headed by Kanjirapally bishop Mar Mathew Arackal to handle the controversial land deal case in Ernakulam  Angamaly archdiocese. Mar Jacob Manathodath and Mar Mathew Moolakkattu are the other members of the committee.

There has been criticism within the pro-cardinal sections that the High Court strictures came due to the mishandling of the defence.

The committee will take decisions regarding the legal matters in the land deal, including the appointment of a new counsel. Serious lapses by the archdioceses counsel in handling the case have led to the court directive against the cardinal, said the synod meeting.

Meanwhile, the Ernakulam central police said that an FIR will be registered in the case only after getting a copy of the court order and its detailed scrutiny. The court has ordered a police probe against Cardinal Mar George Alencherry and three others for allegedly effecting a land deal that caused huge loss to the Church.
Sasikala, a close aide of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalaalitha, is serving a four-year sentence in the prison here in a disproportionate assets case. (Photo: Screengrab | File)

Bengaluru: In a major revelation, a retired top jail official of Parapana Agrahara central prison said special amenities were being given to AIADMK chief VK Sasikala, serving her term in a corruption case, at the intervention of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

The revelation will give opposition BJP a fresh fodder to attack the state Congress ahead of the assembly elections scheduled in May this year.

Former DGP Prisons Sathyanarayana Rao, was the head of the state's prisons department in 2017 when a senior police officer D Roopa exposed irregularities including special treatment to Sasikala.

Rao was removed from the post and an inquiry committee appointed to investigate allegations that jail officials were paid Rs 2 crore to extend special treatments to Sasikala, who is serving a four-year sentence in the jail. It was in his deposition before this inquiry committee that points finger at the Chief Minister.

According to reports, in a statement given before the inquiry officer and submitted before the court, Rao had said a cot, bed and pillow were provided to Sasikala in the jail on instructions from the Chief Minister.

Rao on Tuesday moved the Karnataka High Court questioning February 26 government order directing Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to register a case against him under sections of Prevention of Corruption Act in this regard.

Speaking to reporters, Rao on Wednesday said he had placed all the documents before the court.

"Class one facility was not given at all. The matter is before the High Court of Karnataka, the affidavit filed by me, statement given by me before the inquiry officer, is all before the high court. Things will be known during the next hearing... making any statement now will not be proper," Rao said.

Questioned whether the Chief Minister had told him to provide pillow and other amenities to Sasikala, he said, "It is there in my statement, things will be known during the next hearing."

On whether he was accusing the Chief Minister, he said, "it is not an accusation...let the high court decide, as the matter is before it."

As word got around about the allegation, the BJP's P Muralidhar Rao took a swipe at Siddaramaiah for his "gesture" to ask officer to make Sasikala's jail stay comfortable. "This is outrageous and direct interference in the day-to-day administration going against the jail manual," the BJP general secretary tweeted.

As the attacks from the BJP intensified through the day, Siddaramaiah came up with his defence.

Denying having instructed officials to give certain amenities to jailed Sasikala, Siddaramaiah, on Wednesday, said denied he only asked them to follow the prison manual.

"A delegation from Tamil Nadu had come to me stating that Sasikala was not even given a mat and pillow. Then Sathyanarayana Rao was DGP (Prisons). I had asked him to see what help can be done according to the jail manual," Siddaramaiah told reporters.

He said "I had not asked (him) to give special amenity. I had told, give a mat and pillow, if it is allowed under the jail manual."

Sasikala, a close aide of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalaalitha, is serving a four-year sentence in the prison here in a disproportionate assets case.

(With inputs from PTI)
Posted Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:26 am

Under the newly installed solar cells of Lot 89 at Michigan State University, drums and brass instruments sounded in the afternoons cold air. As MSU police observed, men and women, racially mixed and dressed mostly in black, many with masks or bandanas covering their faces, danced, laughed and smoked.

They had come to protest a white nationalist speech.

About a mile and half northeast another group met with smiles and handshakes in the parking lot of Meridian Mall, as township police looked on. They were all white, with many dressed in black. They were white nationalists and those interested in hearing white nationalist leader Richard Spencer speak.

The jovial atmosphere at both soon gave way to clashes under a torrent of thrown bottles, rocks and horse manure as protesters, white nationalist and police converged.

Those clashes resulted in 25 arrests and bloodied faces.

This was Spencers visit to MSU Monday. It was a battle of wills among curiosity seekers attempting to see what the white nationalist speaker might say, his supporters, anti-fascists and officers from 10 local law enforce- ment agencies. All sides have claimed victory from the event.

Spencer is the leader of the National Policy Institute who has been on a tour of college campuses across the nation, spreading the gospel of his truth: White people need their own ethnostate and the world was better when whites made all the rules.

At each campus appearance, he and his supporters have been met with protests that have often turned violent. Spencer supporter Cameron Padgett requested to rent the Kellogg Center and Hotel in the wake of the Charlottesville confrontation in August, the Unite the Right rally. That rally turned violent as white nationalists and protesters fought in the streets. One protester died when she was hit by a car driven by a white nationalist supporter.

MSU denied the request, citing concerns about campus safety and security, but Padgett sued in federal court and won the March 5 date for the event, during MSUs spring break. To attend, one needed a ticket printed by MSU but distributed by the National Policy Institutes director of operations, Gregory Conte.

Conte met supporters at the Meridian Mall parking lot outside Macys. Mall General Manager Todd Huhn said the mall had not given the nationalists permission to use the lot and was unaware of the plan until contacted by Meridian Township Police. He refused to allow media to take photos or do interviews in the lot while tickets were being distributed under the watchful eye of four Meridian Township officers.

Meridian Township Police Chief Dave Hall said by email early Monday morning he was unaware of the ticket distribution plan either until City Pulse asked about it.

Back at MSU, violence seemed inevitable as police attempted to funnel ticket holders for the speech through the aggressive crowd of anti-fascists screaming Nazis go home! to anyone attempting to traverse the north parking lot of the Pavilion to the police security checkpoint.

Nick Lemmer, a Lansing area resident, and Quinten Mahoney, an Albion College student, agreed to attend Spencers speech for City Pulse. Members of the media were barred.

It was weird, very kind of nerve wracking, because the first thing that happens as soon as I get to the protest is some Antifa just come up to me to make sure I was there for the protest and not with Spencer, said Lemmer.It was just a very aggressive start getting to the protest right off the bat.

Mahoney echoed that experience, but he also noted that because he had been protesting against Spencer, he had concerns he would be identified in the Spencer speech. All it took was one person that saw me protesting it to see me in the actual event and I was in a whole lot of trouble, Mahoney said.

Before going in the event, both were in the area of the protests. Mahoney watched his brother, Aaron, be arrested by police. He also saw the mayhem that ensued when law enforcement allowed a group of about 35 white nationalists march in formation from Commuter Lot 89 down Farm Lane toward the Pavilion. The formation was led by Conte and the leader of the white nationalist Traditonalist Workers Party, Matthew Heimbach.

The group stopped beside a Michigan State Police vehicle to tighten its formation about 100 feet from protesters. They then began marching towards protesters, and the protesters came toward them. Police made no move to block the pathway of either group.

Officers moved in and separated the groups after a melee broke out. The white nationalists used that as an opportunity to re-form and attempt to advance through the protesters again. You have a plan, and you arent following it, Just like in Charlottesville, Conte screamed at police as the group tried to advance. Again it was met with violence.

Law enforcement finally moved in and cleared the street using batons and bikes. The nationalists retreated to the commuter lot, where they had parked. They were met there by protesters and another melee broke out.

It was chaotic said Theresa Rosado, a freelancer for City Pulse who witnessed and photographed the fight at the lot. There were cars squealing out there and fighting. As the clashes lessened, Lemmer said police searched those trying to attend the speech itself.

Theyre just like, Unzip your jacket! Arms up! If you have anything in your pockets you wanna declare, Lemmer said of his contact with police. They were very clearly ready for something to go down, but they were definitely kind of on-edge.

That edge may have resulted from the earlier clashes among police, protesters and white nationalists on Farm Lane. With access to the checkpoint choked off from the east along an access drive to the building and from the parking lot full of protesters, officers were still confronted with how to get people into the Pavilion to hear Spencer speak.

Thats when officers began forming phalanxes to surrounding ticket holders and rush them through the hostile crowd of protesters. Some protesters hurled rocks and other projectiles, while others tried to stop the phalanx from moving.

Inside, Spencer held his 4:30 start time.

He started his speech about 5 p.m. and there were no issues inside, reported Mahoney and Lemmer.

If Im being very honest, especially with all the chaos outside, getting into the building, it was just kind of dead silent I think, just as people are trying to get in, said Mahoney.

Lemmer compared it to the quiet of a church before service.

That speech was an eye opener for both of them. Theyd never heard white nationalists speak about their beliefs.

I guess the weirdest part was sitting down and listening to somebody say things that you always imagined, like when people are joking, or trolling, or their just trying to get a rise, said Lemmer. And this was somebody actually arguing for just ridiculous things that just obviously arent true.

Asked what specifically, Lemmer responded, Like that its OK that we had slaves because it made us a stronger nation and white people are the majority so it was okay to do those kinds of things.

Entering the space where the speech would happen was somewhat intimidating both men said, with the chaos raging outside, a heavy police presence inside and silence combined with walking into a room with an avowed white nationalist. But that dissipated.

The people there were pretty non-threatening. It was obvious that they werent the people that the alt-right were going to try to use in the charge, Mahoney said. They were people that couldnt fight. So there wasnt really anything to be afraid of because it was kind of just a bunch of pathetic old men and these angsty teenagers.
New metal detector placed at Lokayukta office following attack on Lokayukat justice Vishwanath Shetty, in Bengaluru on Thursday DC

BENGALURU: A day after Lokayukta Justice P. Vishwanath Shetty was stabbed by a contractor at his office, due to security lapse, the door metal detector has been repaired and two more security personnel, one of them female, have been deployed to check visitors bags and identity cards with hand-held metal detectors.

Due to the severity of the situation caused by the security lapse, the Home Minister has suspended the DCP Yogesh, in-charge of security at Vidhana Soudha and Vikas Soudha.

Justice Shetty (74) was repeatedly stabbed by Tejraj Sharma after the judge told him that the corruption complaint filed by him has been closed.

An officer said, We have been ordered not to allow anyone in without making an entry in the register and visitors cannot carry any packages or bags, other than documents. In case of a laptop or such expensive devices, they will be thoroughly checked by the policemen on duty. Even the documents and files carried by the staff at the office will be checked before letting them in.

Alert attender

According to sources, who didnt wish to be named, it was Justice Shettys attender Palini who saved him by displaying presence of mind and not caring for his own life.

As soon as he heard Lokayukta scream for help, he rushed inside the cabin, pushed the accused away and alerted the security.

The security personnel rushed to the cabin took Lokayukta to the hospital. Palini, meanwhile, went back and locked the accused inside the cabin.

Police custody for Tejraj

The accused, Tejraj was produced to the magistrate on Wednesday night after a two-hour long medical examination, which declared him mentally fit.

The local court has remanded him to five days police custody. On Thursday morning, Tejraj was taken to his house in Tumakuru by the Vidhana Soudha police and they questioned his relatives and friends.

The police said that Tejraj lived alone in a single-room rented house. His neighbours told police he was short tempered and they used to avoid him.

Case filed by Tejraj

The investigating officer said that Tejraj is a furniture dealer and had sold a wheelchair to the public instruction department in Tumakuru.

The chair broke down on the first day and the officials demanded that it be replaced with a new one. But Tejraj demanded them to issue tender for more than 15 chairs and other furnitures for the department in exchange of the new chair. When the staff refused, he filed a complaint with the Lokayukta against all the officers.

In July 2017, he had written a letter to the deputy director of public instruction department, Tumakuru, stating that the almighty should punish the corrupt government officials and the letter had been addressed to the God himself.

According to the sources, he reportedly told the police that he was born on an auspicious day under the same zodiac sign of a Hindu god to end the corrupt practices in the government. He particularly chose Wednesday to attack as his astrologer had told him that it was an auspicious day for him.

However, the police will be investigating him for few more days to know the reason behind his frustration and the reason behind the attack.
Hyderabad/Chennai/Vijayawada: The important film and business fraternities in the neighbouring states of Telangana and Tamil Nadu are supporting Andhra Pradeshs fight to obtain Special Category Status which is being denied by the Centre. Tamil Nadu film fraternity also has a piece of advice for Andhra Pradesh, to build a momentum and uprising on the lines of Jallikattu movement to achieve special category status.

Tollywood too strongly came in support of the cause. People from Telugu film fraternity too joined the chorus demanding special category status. Ace director Koratala Siva in a tweet reminded Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his promise made four years ago and said he was terribly disappointed with the way the Union government is looking at the whole issue. I was dejected to see the tone and the way Arun Jaitley was speaking, he tweeted.

I am a responsible citizen and a taxpayer. Moreover, commenting on such a delicate issue is my natural reaction. I was dejected to see the tone and the way Arun Jaitley was speaking; it clearly reflects lack of responsibility. I have been active on social issues as well, so whatever affects my states environment  be it political or economic scenario naturally affects me. I speak my heart out and I stand by my words. And down the line, I am going to further raise and voice my opinions, Siva tweeted. Actor Prakash Raj said it was unfair to go back on a promise. A new capital city needs funds for infrastructure, he said, and added that I am talking as a responsible citizen of India and I dont belong to any political party.

Veteran actor Mohan Babus tweet asked why this step-motherly treatment to Andhra Pradesh? What did AP do wrong? Whats going on with Special Status? Even when Telangana is supporting Special Status for AP, is it just the sentiment of one state? @arunjaitley (sic) Asked if the Movie Artistes Association (MAA) supported APs demand, president Sivaji Raja said, We are supporting Andhra Pradesh for the special category status issue and also supporting the Telangana state. The Central government has failed in implementing the promises made to both the states and we will support both the states.

The Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce president P. Kiran said he is discussing how to take this issue and go forward with MAA and other sectors. Director Tammareddy Bharadwaja said that top Telugu stars and celebrities had supported the Jallikattu movement in Tamil Nadu and now its time for them to show support for Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile the members of the film fraternity in Tamil Nadus film capital Kollywood are being cagey about commenting on Andhra Pradesh seeking special category status and more funding from the Centre.

Prominent members of the fraternity, who backed the spontaneous Jallikattu agitation two years ago in Chennai, said that a similar uprising may have helped the neighbouring state in its formative state to make a more impactful impression on the Centre for funding. A prominent businessman from Hyderabad, who has recently shifted to Vijayawada, supports special category status because with it comes tax incentives and exemptions, which will be a game changer for the state of Andhra Pradesh. The state of AP is yet to recover from the wounds of bifurcation. Many investments will pour in due to tax incentives, which will trigger the economy and provide many jobs.

It is known that a set of industrialists from Tamil Nadu have quietly encouraged the Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu in his quest for special status and are supporting his decision to pull his ministers out of the Union cabinet. A number of businessmen from Chennai have been operating in AP for years and a few big projects are also in the offing, including an international class business university in Sri City, which is not far from Chennai. Meanwhile, the funding for new entrants into politics like Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth has been promised and even made in some cases as industrialists and NRIs are hedging their bets for the future. And Chennai industry sources are also revealing a stronger Andhra connect if the climate for investment does not improve in Tamil Nadu.
The complainant said that the recent remarks made by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the Babri Masjid issue was an open threat against the minority community.

Hyderabad: Spiritual leader and Art of Living Founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was booked by Saidabad police following a complaint against him for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Muslim community for provocative statements on the Babri Masjid issue in an interview.

The complaint was filed by one Syed Fayazuddin, a social activist, at the Saidabad police station on Thursday. The complainant said that the recent remarks made by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the Babri Masjid issue was an open threat against the minority community.

His remarks that India will turn into Syria if the court didnt give judgment in favour of Hindus is highly condemnable. He is not just threatening the minority community but also provoking the Hindus, calling for a bloodbath. Fayazuddin said, adding that he is also undermining the Supreme Court.

We respect the court, but he is threatening the court itself. Such persons should be arrested for promoting terrorism, he added. Saidabad inspector K. Sattaiah said that they have not registered a case yet and that they were taking legal opinion on the case.
New Delhi: In a perfect happy-ending to a tumultuous and often tragic love story, the Supreme Court on Thursday restored the marriage of Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan, 25, with Shafin Jahan, 28. Since January 2016, when Hadiyas father filed a complaint against her allegedly forced conversion, they have been at the centre of what has come to be known as the Kerala love jihad case. Saying that a court can act as a parent to adults in certain circumstances, the Kerala high court had annulled their inter-faith wedlock on May 24 last year terming it as an instance of love jihad, following which Mr Jahan had approached the apex court.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra set aside the order cancelling their marriage, saying the high court ought not to have gone into the aspect of marriage. We hold that the high court should not have annulled the marriage between Hadiya and Shafin Jahan in a habeas corpus petition under Article 226 of the Constitution. We say so because in the present appeal, we had directed the personal presence of Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan; she appeared before this court on November 27, 2017, and admitted her marriage with Shafin Jahan, said the apex court. The fact that Hadiya was married or not was irrelevant to decide the habeas corpus petition, the SC said.

The fact that Hadiya was married or not was irrelevant to decide the habeas corpus petition, the apex court said, adding that the NIA cannot go into the legality of consent for marriage. Referring to allegations of Hadiyas father that Mr Jahan planned to take his daughter to Syria to join the ISIS, the apex court said, If they are planning to travel to Syria, there are ways to prevent them from travelling. You cant see a crime in a marriage. The apex courts landmark judgment said, Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at However, the apex court refused to stop NIAs probe into other criminal matters being investigation Mr Jahan. We clarify that the investigations by the NIA in respect of any matter of criminality may continue in accordance with law, said the bench, which included Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud.

Love jihad is a controversial term coined by Hindutva outfits to harass interfaith couples by claiming that these are forced marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women where the motive is conversion. The apex court had, on February 22, questioned whether the Kerala high court could nullify a marriage between vulnerable adults. Reacting to the Supreme Courts order, Hadiyas father Asokan said that he was pained to let his daughter go with a terrorist and that he will continue his legal battle. He claimed that the NIA was continuing with its probe because it was convinced Mr Jahan was a terrorist.
In a big respite to the construction industry and the consumers who await perfect time to buy houses at affordable costs, the state government recently invited bidders to import 30 lakh tonne of river sand from abroad at a whopping Rs 548.73 crore for two years.

CHENNAI: In a big respite to the construction industry and the consumers who await perfect time to buy houses at affordable costs, the state government recently invited bidders to import 30 lakh tonne of river sand from abroad at a whopping Rs 548.73 crore for two years.

According to a recent tender document floated by the public works department (PWD), the potential bidder would import five lakh tonne of river sand per month to keep the construction industry ticking. The tender document also elucidates that the individual firm or joint venture should import and supply natural river sand to PWD for the construction purpose for the period of two years.

The development has come two months after the PWD issued directions pertaining to import of sand from abroad in January. However, the PWD had made clear that the importers could not sell imported sand and coerced them to hand over selling rights to the PWD. This provision received opposition and subsequent disinterest among the importers had forced the PWD to import itself. The sand would be imported through Ennore Kamarajar Port, Adani Kattupalli Port private ltd and Tuticorin V.O. Chidambaranar Ports.

It may be recalled that the construction industry in the state had been limping for nearly a year after the High Court injunction banning sand mining in Tamil Nadu. Although the government had advocated usage of M-Sand as an alternative to natural river sand, the meagre production capacity of the state had failed to succour the predicament that industry had been facing.

Moreover, the industry experts had earlier worried that the rates of buildings would go up due to the rise in prices of M-Sand and already stocked river sand.

The governments move to import river sand will result in the reduction of sand prices in Tamil Nadu. However, 10 consignments per month will not repair the losses that the industry had accrued, S Ram Prabhu, Secretary, Builders Association of India, said. He also sounded optimistic and said that the sand price in the state would come down to Rs 80 per cft (cubic feet) from the present selling price of Rs 130 per cft.

Meanwhile, the government also laid conditions to ensure import of quality sand and asserted that the poor quality sand must be taken back out of Tamil Nadu at the cost of the importer. The purchaser (PWD) shall inspect the goods to check conformity to the contract specifications. If the goods fail to meet standards, road transportation would not be allowed, the document stated.
HYDERABAD: On the lines of T-Hub, the Telangana state government on Thursday launched Women Entrepreneurship Hub (We-Hub) which is Indias first state-led service exclusively for women entrepreneurs . It will be led by Deepthi Ravula, who stays near Mahabubabad of Telangana, and has worked in the US and also with the IT Department. We-hub will begin functioning from Friday. It is located at the T-SAT campus at Dr B.R. Ambedkar Open University in Jubilee Hills. We-Hub is open for both technology and non-technology business.

One key characteristic of We-Hub is that it aims to be a platform that brings all the key elements of a vibrant eco-system together. The government will be the first customer for the start-ups in We-Hub, minister K.T. Rama Rao said at the Launch of We-Hub. The government will procure services from start-ups which is the same as T-Hub. NITI Aayog launched the Women Entrepreneurship Platform (WEP), on the occasion of International Womens Day.

Through We-Hub, Telangana is the first state-level incubator to partner with NITI Aayog. Six MoUs were signed with UNDP, PwC, CII INW, Salesforce, AIDEA, NAARM and NSRCEL-IIM Bengaluru. While the interested women entrepreneurs can apply through http://wehub.telangana.gov.in/, the space currently has 100 seats. The applications will be scrutinised by Ravula and Chief Innovation Officer of Telangana Phanidra Sama. Companies which are led by women can only apply.
Chennai: After the collapse of its alliance with the ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh, it now appears to be the turn of the 'servile' AIADMK to turn the heat on the BJP in Dravidian Tamil Nadu. Senior Minister D. Jayakumar has in fact threatened to throw the BJP national secretary H. Raja into jail for his 'dangerously provocative' insults about Periyar, the divine guru of Dravidianism.

For his part, Raja too was not wanting in the display of his robust firepower as he came out on Thursday with what he termed as fresh evidence of Periyar's hatred for Tamil, as if to say that these Dravidian leaders attacking him for the FB post on Periyar statues were on terribly weak wicket. He had pulled down that FB post of Tuesday and sacked the administrator who had put it up without his knowledge when he was in the plane travelling to Delhi, yet the attack on him was not abating, wailed Raja. And then he came up with his Brahmastram on evidence of Periyar's hatred for Tamil.

Dravidam was forced upon the Tamils only to destroy their Tamil language. I have in my possession the evidence of Periyar calling Tamil as shani (evil) that must be destroyed. I am coming under attack now only because I have started speaking the truth about all this, declared Raja at a crowded media interaction at Dindigul, while an armed police team kept guard close by to ensure he did not come to physical harm from the enraged members of the several Dravidian parties and outfits swearing allegiance to Periyarism.

For those who insisted that Raja was summoned to Delhi by the BJP top brass and the PMO for a scolding on his FB post, his even more provocative claim on Periyar's alleged hate for Tamil should come as a shocker.

Reacting with expected anger, Minister Jayakumar told the eager TV mikes that Raja's claim--on Periyar's hate for Tamil--was bogus and Tamil Nadu people should not believe that. This government will not tolerate any attempt to denigrate Tamil. I am warning those trying to create violence and chaos in Tamil Nadu by making such false statements that they will be thrown into jail. Whoever does that, however big and mighty, will be jailed. All are equal before law, be it Raja (king) or Rajaveettupillai (of royal family) and law will take its course, thundered the AIADMK senior. The royal family, it is easy to infer, is the BJP where H. Raja holds a national position.
A police complaint has been filed against TS state Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao at the Moghalpura police station.

Hyderabad: A police complaint has been filed against TS state Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao at the Moghalpura police station for using unparliamentary language against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

An advocate and vice-president BJP minority morcha M.A. Qavi Abbasi, approached the police late on Wednesday night alleging that the CM, during his public address recently in Karimnagar, made derogatory comments against the PM. Mr Abbasi alleged that the CM has referred the PM in an offensive manner as Modi Gaadu.

Such unparliamentary language and reference against the Prime Minister is unacceptable to the BJP leaders and himself in particular, he stated in the complaint.

The BJP leader demanded that the police initiate action against the Chief Minister.

When contacted Inspector Moghalpura, Mr. R Devender said that they had made a general diary entry after receiving the complaint. We are seeking legal opinion on the complaint from legal advisors and basing on it further action will be initiated, the Inspector said.
Washington: A US Navy veteran on Wednesday pleaded guilty to the murder of engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla in a racially motivated hate crime at a bar in Kansas City last year that raised fears of growing intolerance in America following President Donald Trumps tough rhetoric on immigration.

Adam Purinton, 52, pleaded guilty before a Kansas court.

He was charged with first-degree murder of Kuchibhotla, 32, and two counts of attempted first-degree murder in the shootings of his friend, Alok Madasani, and a bystander, who chased Purinton after he fled the Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe city on February 22 last year.

Purinton, yelled, Get out of my country, before shooting Kuchibhotla, who later died from injuries sustained in the attack. Kuchibhotla and Madasani worked as engineers at Garmin, a tech company that makes GPS devices. Puriton had earlier pleaded not guilty on all these charges and waived his preliminary hearing in late November 2017.

Before allowing Puri-ntons plea, Judge Charles Droege explained to him that changing his plea meant he would face life in prison, as well as a minimum of 146 months, maximum of 653 months in prison for attempted murder, not to mention the sentence hell face if convicted of a hate crime in federal court.

Purinton told the judge he understood, then he sat down as the State presented the details of the incident last February.

Kuchibhotlas widow Sunayana Dumala welcomed the guilty plea. Todays guilty verdict will not bring back my Srinu, but it will send a strong message that hate is never acceptable, she said in a statement.
Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris 2017. (Photo: File)

Paris: Two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned from a blunder-struck trip to India, Emmanuel Macron arrives in New Delhi hoping to avoid the missteps of his ally.

Trudeau and Macron are often compared internationally because of their broadly similar political views, as well as youth and good looks. But the French leader will be eager to make a different impression on his Indian hosts.

Trudeau, already facing suspicions in India that Canada was too soft on Sikh separatists back home, was seriously embarrassed when a former militant was invited to a dinner with him in Mumbai.

Even before this revelation, India's Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris 2017.

Macron will "spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi," a source in the French presidency said, adding that they had "formed a close relationship" during Macron's first nine months in power.

They will meet Saturday for talks before Macron attends a solar power summit on Sunday designed to showcase India and France's commitment to fighting climate change, which both leaders have made a priority.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, France's 40-year-old president is set to make the almost obligatory visit to the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a few hours drive from the Indian capital on Sunday.

On Monday, he heads to the chaotic Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the river Ganges, which the Indian premier has promised to modernise and clean up.

Having seen Trudeau pilloried on social media and in the Canadian press for donning traditional Indian clothing at every opportunity, Macron is likely to be far more conservative in his dress-sense.

Arms and reactors

As well as discussing climate change and ways to build closer diplomatic ties, the two biggest issues between the countries in recent years -- defence and nuclear energy sales -- will also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the world's biggest arms buyer.

Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron has travelled widely since his election in May 2017, presenting himself as the dynamic new face in the European Union who is driving reform efforts in the 28-member bloc.

The centrist has invested time and energy in building relationships with the world's nationalist strongmen, including US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the world's biggest democracy and its huge yet still untapped business potential.

The United States and leading European Union members have spent years wooing successive governments in New Delhi, seeing the country as a counter-weight to China in the region.

Macron is set to announce plans to allow Indian navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.
Thursday, March 8, 2018

ThinkProgress (Feb. 28, 2018): Mississippi is perilously close to passing a big crackdown on reproductive rights, by Amanda Michelle Gomez:

A committee of lawmakers in the Mississippi Senate passed House Bill 1510, which would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. While the bill provides exceptions for medical emergencies or certain cases of fetal abnormalities, it does not except rape or incest. The House originally proposed and passed the bill earlier in February of this year.

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R) has previously stated his goal is to completely end abortions in Mississippi, and has affirmed he would sign the bill if it lands on his desk.

Mississippi already proscribes abortions after 20 weeks, a law that was originally defended on the basis of preventing fetal pain, despite research that shows a fetus may not feel pain until 27 weeks.

As many people do not find out they are pregnant for several weeks, or even months, pro-choice advocates are concerned about the difficulty a 15-week ban imposes on persons who would seek an abortion but do not discover their pregnancy in time.

20-week bans have been proposed and judicially struck down in Arizona and Idaho, however there has been no challenge yet to Mississippi's current 20-week ban. It's likely the new bill, if made law, would be challenged in court.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/reproductive_rights/2018/03/mississippi-is-perilously-close-to-passing-a-big-crackdown-on-reproductive-rights.html
SALT LAKE CITY  A West Valley man found guilty of murder for shooting his friend in the back was sentenced to prison Monday.

Christopher James Bonds, 28, was sentenced to at least 15 years and up to life in prison for murder, a first-degree felony, in the death of Byron Williams, 26.

A jury found Bonds guilty of the murder and four firearms charges in January. He was exonerated on one count of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony.

Police were called to 1800 W. Parkway Blvd. on Nov. 20, 2016, where they found Williams lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Bonds told police he and Williams had been arguing and then began struggling over Bonds' gun, according to charging documents. The gun fired once into the ground as the struggle ensued and then dropped to the ground.

Bonds then picked up the gun, racked the slide and fired three shots at Williams as he ran away, according to charging documents. A medical examiner determined Williams was shot in the upper back.

Police said Bonds and Williams were friends at one point.

An additional prison term of at least one and up to 15 years for possession of a weapon by a restricted person, a second-degree felony, was ordered to run back-to-back to the murder charge. Two sentences of felony discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony, will run concurrently. A sentence for discharge of a firearm with serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony, is still being considered.

Bonds had also been charged with two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of commission of domestic violence in the presence of a child, and two counts of felony discharge of a firearm, all third-degree felonies. Bonds' wife told police that she had fled their house after being assaulted by her husband, prompting him to fire a round at her, according to court documents.

That case was dismissed Monday because prosecutors are "unable to locate key witnesses in the matter," according to court documents.
SALT LAKE CITY  The Utah House passed legislation Wednesday that could lead to the repeal of a controversial election law while ensuring candidates who file to run for office under that law would be on the 2018 primary election ballot.

Many Republicans have regretted voting for a bill four years ago to head off the Count My Vote initiative to replace the state's long-standing caucus/convention system for nominating candidates with a direct primary election. The SB54 compromise maintained the convention but allowed candidates to gather voter signatures to get on the ballot.

SB54 caused prolonged strife within the Utah Republican Party and drove it into debt trying to overturn the law in court. An appeal of a loss at the federal district court level is pending in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

"The Legislature should have never intervened in that," said Rep. Steve Handy, R-Layton, calling the law an "unmitigated disaster."

The GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly passed HB338, which would repeal SB54 if a renewed Count My Vote initiative doesn't get on the November ballot or if it fails. If the initiative passes, the two paths to the primary ballot would remain in place.

"This, colleagues, will put SB54 in its appropriate place where we should have left it in 2014, which was in the hands of voters," said Rep. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, the bill's sponsor.

"We have in many ways tried to save both parties from themselves, and it turns out that no good deed goes unpunished," he said. "In this situation, that is no deed."

HB338 passed 53-19 and now goes to the Senate. The Legislature will adjourn at midnight Thursday.

Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, said lawmakers negotiated the SB54 compromise with Count My Vote and "feel pretty strongly about not breaking that. There's the argument that part of that agreement was that there would be no initiative."

Niederhauser said the new initiative being circulated by Count My Vote this year is "actually probably a breach of the agreement."

McCay said he no longer feels bound by the deal now that Count My Vote has restarted its ballot initiative, which began as another attempt to establish a direct primary but now fixes issues with the current dual-path system.

Some argue SB54 saved the caucuses and conventions, while others say the law ruined them, said Rep. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork.

"But what we do know is that SB54 has created a divisive issue across the state that continues to rage on," McKell said.

Democrats opposed the bill.

"This bill represents another attack in a series of attempts on the part of legislators to concentrate power where it benefits them," said House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City. "Utahns should be alarmed by the relentless efforts by their representatives to take away their options as voters and candidates."

Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, said the bill, in part, is designed to save the Republican Party from itself. Political parties, she said, can change their rules midstream but have to live with the consequences. The state can't do that without violating the Utah Constitution, she said.

Also Tuesday, the House passed another bill, HB485, to keep the law under SB54 in place for the 2018 election.

"We call it the freeze plan," said McKell, the bill's sponsor.

The measure passed 40-31 and now goes to the Senate.

The Republican State Central Committee voted to kick out candidates in two congressional districts who choose to collect signatures to gain a spot on the ballot.

But Utah Reps. Rob Bishop and Chris Stewart have not declared their intent to gather signatures  nor has any other Republican in those two districts.

The rule, though, could also have implications for federal, statewide and state legislative candidates throughout the state. It could also threaten the party's standing with the state and puts the party at risk of not getting GOP candidates on the ballot.

The Utah GOP declared itself a "qualified political party" under the law, which allows candidates to get on the primary election ballot by gathering petition signatures, going through the political partys convention, or both.

Rep. Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara, said the bill protects candidates across the state who relied on that declaration and who had the rules changed on them midstream. Those candidates need a path to the ballot "not withstanding those who attempt to obstruct them" by either taking away their GOP membership or precluding them from participating in the convention.

"Providing for that protection without a remedy could leave candidates without any recourse, except perhaps judicial review," Snow said.

Senate Republicans have only spoken briefly about both bills and are looking at "McKell's bill fairly strongly," acting Senate Majority Leader Kevin Van Tassell, R-Vernal, said.

Contributing: Lisa Riley Roche
SALT LAKE CITY  A bill defining "adequate shelter" for purposes of enforcing animal welfare laws narrowly passed the Senate earlier this week, but its sponsor isn't sure how it will fare in the House.

"I have no idea if we can get it prioritized," Senate Minority Leader Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, said of his SB91.

Davis' bill would only apply to Salt Lake County. It defines what is meant by "shelter" in the law so animal control can properly respond to calls, he said.

The bill defines shelter for animals other than a dog as "natural or artificial protection against inclement weather and direct sunlight."

Shelter for dogs, under the bill, means a "barn, doghouse or other enclosed structure" that "is sufficiently sound to protect against inclement weather and extreme temperatures; prevents penetration by moisture; includes, in an appropriate size for the dog, a floor with a solid surface, a roof, coverage on all sides, a door or entry portal, and sufficient space to allow for freedom of movement; contains hay, straw, bedding, or a safe, artificial heat source, that allows the dog to maintain a normal body temperature; and is adequately ventilated and clean."

The bill says that an animal may not be tethered and unattended at a personal residence in a way that prevents it from reaching adequate shelter while it is exposed to "hail, snow or severe weather."

The bill failed in a previous vote on the Feb. 28 amid concerns that it was too broad and could potentially impact hunters, campers and rural farm animals in unfair ways. Davis described the version of the his bill that passed the Senate as "very narrow."

He expressed hopefulness that other counties in Utah would take up his definition of shelter for animal welfare, but they would have to enact it themselves, he said.

Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, rose in support of Davis' bill on the floor Monday.

"I appreciate how hard he has worked to make this a better bill and to make it as fair for the accused as it is for the animals, Thatcher said.

But Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, spoke against the bill, saying the Farm Bureau says to not support it as it is dangerous to animals' welfare.

The Senate narrowly passed the bill by a 15-13 vote. It now awaits consideration in the House.
SALT LAKE CITY  A detention hearing was held Wednesday for a teenage boy accused of leaving explosives in a backpack at a St. George high school and raising an ISIS flag at another.

No formal charges have been filed against him, but he is being held in juvenile detention for investigation of possession or use of a weapon of mass destruction, threat of terrorism, graffiti and abuse of a flag

The Deseret News has opted not to name the boy at this time.

The teen was arrested Monday after a backpack with homemade explosives was found in the lunchroom area of Pine View High School. Several students saw smoke coming from the backpack and immediately notified school administrators and a school resource officer.

The school was evacuated and no one was injured. But police say the device was intended to hurt people or cause damage to the school.

Local and federal investigators served a search warrant on the boy's home and found items "consistent with the materials used to build the device placed at Pine View," according to police. Investigators also discovered that the teen had been "researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization."

Wednesday's detention hearing was held in 5th District Juvenile Court. Details about what occurred during the hearing were not immediately available.

The same boy is believed to have spray-painted graffiti on a wall at Hurricane High School that stated, "ISIS is comi--" and for replacing the high school's flag with an ISIS flag in February.

According to the Washington County School District, the student was only taking one class at the high school because he was part of the Success Academy, a partnership with Dixie State University that allows students to enroll concurrently for high school and college classes. The program is typically for accelerated learning students, according to the district.

The student had attended the high school full-time in the past, according to the district.
SALT LAKE CITY  Utah lawmakers are a vote away from giving the Legislature the power to intervene in court cases on its own behalf.

Rep. Lavar Christensen, R-Draper, said SB171 would prevent putting the attorney generals office in the position of having to decide who it represents as happened when former U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz resigned last year.

The Legislature sought an opinion from the attorney general on holding a special election to replace Chaffetz, but citing the governor as its client, the attorney generals office refused to give the document to the Legislature.

That wont happen again, Christensen said.

Rep. Merrill Nelson, R-Grantsville, the bills House sponsor, said no single incident prompted the legislation. He said conflicts have arisen over the years where the Legislatures interest werent fully and accurately represented in court.

These are longstanding concerns that preceded us and will follow us, he said.

Nelson said the authority, which he says lawmakers would use sparingly, allows the Legislature to represent its position on laws it passes.

Rep. Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara, raised concerns about the possibility the legislative and executive branches could be at odds in a court case. That would put a judge in the difficult position of having to choose between the two, he said.

The House passed the bill 61-8 with amendments, sending it back to the Senate for another vote. The earlier version passed there 21-5.
SALT LAKE CITY  A Utah lawmaker's attempt to rename a southern Utah highway after President Donald Trump ran out of gas Wednesday amid sometimes vulgar personal attacks.

Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, said he didn't want to "lean on" his Republican peers to vote on the bill and put them in a tough position with their constituents.

"I just don't feel good about that," he said.

The House, at Noel's request, voted to send HB481 back to the Rules Committee late Wednesday, that after a House panel endorsed the bill Monday.

"I think that might be a comfortable position for many of us," said House Majority Whip Francis Gibson, R-Mapleton.

Noel proposed renaming hundreds of miles of roads the "Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway," covering sections of U.S. 89, I-15, U.S. 191, and other roads that trace the edges of some of Utah's national parks. He planned to scale back the length of the route to make it more palatable before deciding to let the bill die.

Noel considered the designation as a thank you Trump for shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. He called the president a "champion" for public lands and national parks, and said he deserves credit for what he's done for Utah.

"There are certainly bills that are extremely controversial," Noel said. "This one has controversy, not because we don't appreciate what the president did in terms of the monuments, but it's all the issues that have come up around him and swirling around him."

Gov. Gary Herbert called the proposal premature, and said highways in Utah are typically named after someone who is longer in public office or has died. Noel noted the governor's lack of support but said he didn't blame Herbert for his decision to drop the bill.

Noel received nasty voicemails and other messages calling him and Trump crude names, he said. He said he didn't want to subject his family to those types of comments in pursuing the bill.

The veteran lawmaker also said he didn't want to detract from the good work lawmakers have done this legislative session.

"I don't want this to be the headline. I want it to be all the good stuff that happened this session," Noel said.

Democrats condemned the idea from the beginning, calling it ill-considered.

Rep. Suasn Duckworth, D-Magna, had an amended bill ready to rename the road the "Jon M. Huntsman Sr. Utah National Parks Highway" in honor of the late industrialist/philanthropist.

Sen. Jim Dabakis, D-Salt Lake City, said he would propose adding the "Stormy Daniels rampway" along the frontage road if the bill made it to the Senate.
SALT LAKE CITY  State lawmakers have earmarked $150,000 in one-time funding to develop secondary school curriculum to better address the states opioid abuse, addiction and overdose crisis.

Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City, sought the appropriation to update existing curriculum on addiction developed by the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah.

The funding, part of late appropriations included in the yet-to-be approved HB3, will be used to update and expand an existing educational module developed by the center on the science of addiction. Its free, evidence-based science curriculum and online teaching materials are used by nearly all Utah high schools.

The Executive Appropriations Committee also approved late Wednesday $500,000 in ongoing funding to help offset transportation costs in sprawling school districts with small numbers of students, as well as busing costs for one public charter school in Carbon County that uses a 27-year-old bus to transport students from Emery County.

"This charter school is mainly a group of polygamist children coming out of Emery County. We're trying to provide them with an education, and it's a very, very long distance to drive," said Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab.

This will be first time state lawmakers have appropriated transportation funding for a public charter school. Charter schools must have bused students for at least five years to qualify.

In other action Wednesday:

 Qualifying low-level offenders could undergo job training instead of serving jail time under a pilot program that will be expanded with the passage of HB106.

The Utah Senate gave final passage to the bill Wednesday, which was sponsored by Rep. Val Potter, R-North Ogden.

The bill expands a small pilot program started by the Cache County Attorneys Office. It gives low-level offenders an opportunity to undergo certificate or job training at Bridgerland Technical College as an alternative to serving jail time.

The program also requires participants to undergo counseling and work with the Department of Workforce Services' Work Success program, which prepares people to seek and compete for jobs.

Participants must cover the costs of the training program themselves, although some may qualify for government grants or scholarships.

 The Utah House of Representatives voted 61-7 to give final approval to SB194, which raises the bar statewide for elementary school reading.

The bill sets a state standard calling for 60 percent of Utah children reading on or above grade level by the end of the third grade.

Achieving reading proficiency at the end of the third grade is a key factor in later educational success, the bill's sponsor, Sen. Ann Millner, R-Ogden, said during Senate debate.

Children who are not proficient readers by the end of third grade are four times less likely to graduate from high school, according to a recent report by the Education Commission of the States.

SB194 also calls on local school boards and charter boards to set proficiency goals, determine strategies to reach their goals and to report results.

 Special education teachers will become another group of educators who receive stipends intended to address workforce needs.

Supplemental pay is currently paid to teachers of mathematics, some science disciplines and computer science to address shortages of teachers in those disciplines and to encourage more students to go into teaching in those areas.

Potter, the sponsor of HB233, said the stipend also acknowledges the extra training special education requires and the record-keeping demands to comply with federal special education laws.
Editors note: This column has been rewritten to reflect updated, but as-yet unpublished, figures from the Institute for Justice.

Utah lawmakers like to talk about the need to get government out of the lives of average citizens, but they just whiffed on a great opportunity to take a decisive step in that direction  an unfortunate decision after recent progress.

Rep. Brian Greene, R-Pleasant Grove, sponsored a resolution that would have asked Utah voters to approve a simple amendment to the state Constitution. It would have protected Utahns against government infringement on the individual, inalienable right of the people to pursue an honest trade, vocation, occupation, or career  

The only exceptions would be for narrow requirements that directly protect public health and safety.

It failed miserably in the House Judiciary Committee, rejected by a 7-3 vote after a lot of blather from opponents about the harm it would do.

Some lawmakers, Greene told me afterward, like to say theyre for limited government and less regulation, but when you present them with (a way to make that happen) they get a little bit squeamish.

That doesn't mean Utah hasn't made good strides in recent years. A constitutional amendment would have added momentum to that progress.

If youre wondering what all the fuss is about, especially in a state where unemployment is at a scant 3.1 percent, you should consider how much better things could be.

The Institute for Justice ranks Utah as the 24th most extensively and onerously licensed state for moderate-income occupations.

What this means is that if you want to provide for your family in any of a variety of moderate-income professions, from upholsterer to commercial paint contractor, Big Brother will force you to meet a list of requirements before you may receive a license to work.

And the thing is, most other states dont even license upholsterers and commercial painters, nor any of a list of other occupations Utah government feels the need to get its hands on. Nearly 24 percent of Utahs workforce is required to have a license. A sample of moderate-income occupations shows an average requirement of 117 calendar days of education and experience and $292 in fees.

Many of these requirements exist specifically to keep the people currently in those professions from facing too much competition, which effectively makes it harder for people to find work, just as it limits innovations and raises consumer prices.

That figure dropped significantly last year when Utah reduced its licensing requirements for contractors, eliminating two exams and dropping a two-year experience requirement. That move dropped the state from a 13th place ranking for most burdensome licensing laws for moderate-income occupations to 50th, just behind best-in-the-nation Nebraska.

Still, it licenses too many professions.

Lee McGrath, senior legislative counsel in the Minnesota office of the Institute for Justice, which focuses on limiting government power and promoting personal freedoms, told me, No evidence exists that these government requirements protect consumers. In the age of the smartphone, anyone can research a contractors reputation in a matter of seconds.

How does a state like Utah become mired in such regulation? Thats easy to answer. People already working in professions approach legislators and request laws that set licensing standards. Because the only opponents are people who sometime in the future may want to enter the field, lawmakers find it easy to comply.

This year, Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake, succeeded in passing a bill that would reduce the hours it takes to train for a private investigators license from 10,000 to 5,000, and it would lower the minimum age. That was another step in the right direction.

Utah made headlines six years ago when an immigrant from Sierra Leone challenged the requirement of 2,000 hours of training to become a hair braider. She won, leading some to believe the days of onerous licensing were numbered.

That's taking a long time, however. A constitutional amendment would help.

Greene says hes not giving up. Maybe next year he can persuade enough of his conservative colleagues that the state would have much to gain by allowing more competition.
SALT LAKE CITY  Utah appears to be in line to receive millions of more dollars from a revision to the longstanding settlement with Big Tobacco.

The Senate unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday approving an update to the 20-year-old agreement with cigarette makers. It now goes to the House.

In April, the state will receive its regular $28 million annual payment plus another $28 million, according to SJR19. From 2018 and 2027 the state will receive "substantial" additional payments totaling about $298 million.

Utah was among 46 states in November 1998 that entered into a master settlement agreement with tobacco companies to end a lawsuit over health care costs related to smoking.
SALT LAKE CITY  In a final-hour sweep of changes and with little debate, the Utah Legislature passed a controversial bill late Wednesday that would create a board to control the development of a global trade hub in Salt Lake City's northwest quadrant  leaving city leaders little time to react to "bad public policymaking" before the bill made its way to the governor's desk.

SB234, which would create a new governing body called the Utah Inland Port Authority to oversee the development in Salt Lake City's last developable swath of land, passed after the House adopted changes that included reducing city seats on the board, altering boundaries and ability to provide property tax differential  all of which city officials were still scrambling to review late Wednesday.

But what city officials did know is the new bill did nothing to quell any of their concerns  and instead made "matters much worse," said David Litvack, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski's deputy chief of staff.

"A whole new bill was dropped late this evening that the city was never given a copy in advance, never had a chance to review it," Litvack said.

The bill passed the House in a matter of minutes, and the Senate concurred with changes minutes later after even less debate.

"That's not collaboration. That's bad process. That's bad public policymaking," Litvack said.

The new bill appears to not address the city's land-use concerns and continues to usurp the city's planning and zoning authority, but "it just made matters much worse," Litvack said.

"I'm not even sure where I would begin," Litvack said. "It's that bad. It's a complete re-write."

"I'm very disappointed," Litvack added. "Very disappointed and very concerned."

Salt Lake City Council Chairwoman Erin Mendenhall said in a text message late Wednesday she was "deeply troubled." She said the city had very little time to review the bill before it passed both the House and the Senate less than an hour after it was released to the public.

"This is a significantly troubling outcome that ignores the good faith effort to share city's concerns and find a mutually acceptable compromise," Mendenhall said. "This bill goes further to usurp local government responsibilities than any ever before."

The bill's changes appear to give the Utah Inland Port Authority taxing authority and the power to issue bonds, as well as gives West Valley City and the Utah Department of Transportation seats on the board, according to the bill's substitute.

The changes also cut the city's representation on the board from three members down to two removing Biskuspki's two board appointments leaving the city's appointments to only the chair of the Salt Lake City Airport Advisory Board and a member of the Salt Lake City Council.

On the House floor, House Majority Whip Francis Gibson, R-Mapleton, said Salt Lake City's northwest quadrant is "ripe" for the opportunity to capitalize on its rail, trucking and proximity to the airport to be a global trade hub.

Gibson urged for support of the bill, arguing the creation of an inland port is a task too big for one city or even one county.

"This is an issue that needs Salt Lake City, it needs Salt Lake County, it needs the state of Utah," Gibson said.

Only one Democrat, Rep. Sandra Hollins, D-Salt Lake City, spoke against the bill on the House floor before debate was cut off and the bill was put to a vote.

"Does the great Salt Lake City think this is a great plan for them? Probably not," Gibson said. "But I would argue the state of Utah feels like we could do more."

The bill passed 61-11 on the House floor, with all but one Democrat voting against it. In the Senate, the bill passed 20-6.

House Democrats released a statement opposing the bill shortly after the vote.

It is important that we get this right because we are creating a platform for decades of development and infrastructure," said Minority Leader Rep. Brian King, D-Salt Lake City, in a statement. "This is such an important issue, and it has to be part of a larger, ongoing discussion. Most Democrats opposed this version of the bill because we should not rush through such a critical decision without more deliberate process and discussion.
SALT LAKE CITY  LDS Church President Russell M. Nelson and his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, surprised a congregation of Latter-day Saints when they showed up at their stake conference in Oakland, California, last Sunday.

Jana Riess, a Religion News Service columnist, happened to be in the area on a speaking engagement and was seated on the fourth row. She wrote about the experience for religionnews.com.

"I was surprised by how moved I was by the whole morning," Riess wrote. "President Nelson was the final speaker, and he spoke without notes. He was eloquent and heartfelt."

In his remarks, President Nelson introduced the basic theme of his remarks when he expressed appreciation for the "beautiful children's choir ... the future of the church," Riess wrote. President Nelson instructed parents to help their children learn about Jesus Christ through prayer and scripture study.

President Nelson talked about how his life has changed since becoming the prophet. He used to receive phone calls at odd hours during his days as a surgeon, and he has found a similar experience as the president of the church. President Nelson said that, as sometimes messages come to him at night, he makes notes in the dark but the challenge is reading his writing in the morning, Riess wrote.

Among other things, President Nelson also discussed family history and spoke of family members serving missions.

"I have to say that I much prefer this President Nelson to the one Ive seen at general conference," Riess wrote. "Here was a man in his element, obviously gifted in interpersonal relationships, with a striking sense of humor Ive not seen before."

Read the entire article by clicking here.
Three weeks ago, Utah-based company Gathre launched a Kickstarter for its newest product, vegan leather yoga mats. Yoga is new territory for Gathre, but leather mats are the companys expertise.

In 2017, the companys play mats were called one of Vogues Dos for road-tripping with tots in tow and Readers Digest called the companys mats one of 10 ingenious beach day lifesavers. And considering its Kickstarter was funded, collecting $22,500 in just over an hour and over $100,000 to date, it would seem the company was developing a following.

Weve very choosy about what we put out and market, said co-owner Jessica Eraso, who graduated from BYU with a degree in human development and nonprofit administration before later getting a masters degree in public administration. We could put out a million different products. What couldnt you put leather on, right? But we really try and find products that encourage gathering, that really give a foundation for meaningful experiences.

Since their companys rebrand from Lets Playground to Gathre two years ago, Marilee Killpack and her business partner, Eraso, who joined the company after the departure of Jeni Awerkamp, who moved out of state, have frequently been asked how to pronounce the name of their company. Its spelled g-a-t-h-r-e but is pronounced gather. Contrary to popular belief, the spelling is not an attempt to be hip; rather, the explanation is simple.

When we were rebranding, we couldnt find any websites or Instagram handles that all coordinated, said Killpack, a family life graduate from BYU. So we had to switch the R and E to land a website and to land an Instagram handle.

While the spelling is the result of necessity, the brand name, its inclusion of the concept of gathering and its design is not.

When we were rebranding, we couldnt find the right fit, and when we hit on Gathre, it just clicked and felt so right. And I think its because that message is fading and families are falling apart and there is such a need to come together, Killpack said.

Gathre felt so simple at first and we were like Is that too simple and vague? But it really is our core principle, and it comes with so much intention, Eraso said. Its an intentional thing to gather something. And weve just really tried to push that: intentional living and making an effort.

The two moms, both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, say their message is inspired by their faith and its core principles. It's also a message they have tried to apply not only to the way they run their business but also in the way they live their lives.

"Were kind of weaving this storyline of light and goodness and faith and hope and these things that have carried us through our personal lives and centered us, Eraso said. We try to weave that into our brand messaging and its been really well-received.

Killpack and Eraso have sought balance in their efforts to build a business while also raising their children. They have trusted in the counsel of former LDS Church president Ezra Taft Benson, who said, When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives." Trusting in that promise has helped the two moms, who have seven children between their two families, to overcome feelings of "mom guilt."

If it wasnt right, we wouldve given up a long time ago, Killpack said.

As Gathres audience has grown to over 100,000 followers on Instagram, they hope that in sharing goodness, they will succeed in helping others gather goodness.

I think we really want people to find good whatever that is and wherever that is in their life, Eraso said. And I think that ultimately funnels down to, for us, our faith and our family.

The companys success was not immediate and after its rebrand, there was a period where business was just slow. But they found that success cannot always be measured by numbers.

Its easy and standard to measure by numbers, but I think theres a greater way to measure things for us, I guess, Killpack said. I think you should work on the right things and try to hire the right people and put out the right message and products and growing personally like we should be.

Yoga mats feel like a natural progression for the two former athletes. Eraso is a former BYU track and cross country runner at BYU and Killpack a dancer. As as young mother, Eraso discovered when she tried to take the time to do yoga, her daughter would always come join in her practice. Instead of becoming frustrated by a lack of alone time, Eraso invited her to join in and thus, the Gathre toddler and childs yoga mats were born.

It turned into this moment that I knew I could count on to spend time with her even though life is so busy, Eraso said. So we just wanted to create more of those moments. Its such a part of our brand.

The two are believers in the power of exercise.

"We need to take care of ourselves, and we need a timeout and you need a place to do that, and I think teaching your children at a young age to take care of yourself and not just your physical self, your mental and emotional and spiritual self, Eraso said. Its so important, and when were carving out time to do that, everything else, the stresses of life and everything, it doesnt go away, but the impact of it on you is different because youre now equipped with what you need to handle it.

There was a time when Eraso and Killpack resisted the stresses associated with Gathres influence on their lives but, for now, they have chosen to embrace it.

I feel like once we really started trying to do that, its really probably only been in the last year or maybe six months ... where I feel like weve found a lot more happiness and peace and weve seen a lot of blessings and growth doing that, Killpack said. I think that would be my message: No matter what youre doing keep going at it and chasing it and Heavenly Father will bless you if you do what he wants you to do.
SALT LAKE CITY  The Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill seeking a federal waiver to allow the state to use Medicaid money to help pay for mobile crisis outreach teams.

Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, has described such teams as a "mental health ambulance."

Mobile crisis outreach teams, frequently referred to as MCOTs, would be made up largely of mental health experts who could respond to behavioral health crises that are best suited with a treatment-oriented home visit rather than an emergency room trip or a police presence at the home, Thatcher has said.

"We are very excited to have Utah pioneer this issue," he told fellow lawmakers in January.

According to the senator, the service only currently exists in Salt Lake County.

The bill also asks the state Department of Health to request that its Medicaid funds be eligible to help fund the statewide mental health crisis line and local mental health crisis lines.

HB42 passed its final reading in the Senate by a 27-1 vote. Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, was the lone senator to vote no. It passed the House 72-0 in January. It will next go to Gov. Gary Herbert for consideration.
Two Scottish women with type 1 diabetes are calling for hospital staff to be better trained in treating the condition after they both became seriously ill during their stay.

Joanna Traynor, 47, woke from an eye operation in Glasgows Gartnavel Hospital and was violently sick. She had not been given any insulin, despite warning staff she would need somen, which caused high levels of ketones in her blood.

A similar experience of not having insulin happened to Nicole Scottsville, 31, when she was admitted to St Johns Hospital in Livingston. She was eight months pregnant at the time and staff managed her insulin intake.

Speaking to the Daily Record newspaper, the 31-year-old said: The nurse removed my sliding scale [insulin] so I could go to the toilet and when I returned she said she would reattach it but I fell asleep because I was so unwell and she didnt return until over five hours later.

In Joannas case, her pump was removed before her operatio, leaving her without any back-up insulin.

She said: I removed my insulin pump before theatre and told the anaesthetist I had no background insulin working. I woke up and couldnt catch my breath. I was being sick and had pads over both eyes for the next 14 hours.

I had to get them to find my meter and strips that I use to check  all while being sick, unable to see or breathe and begging for insulin.

A programme to improve healthcare professionals knowledge of diabetes and treatment for the condition has been developed by Diabetes Scotland. Health boards are being encouraged to follow the initiative in a bid to avoid short-term diabetes-related complications, such as hypoglycemia and ketoacidosis, when people are staying in hospital.

Acting national director Claire Fleming said: We champion the new inpatient care programme which provides diabetes training and ensures healthcare teams understand the condition and how to manage it.

A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: We are very sorry to hear that Ms Traynor was unhappy with the care she received.
Public Health England (PHE) has told food makers to cut calories in their products by 20% by 2024 in a bid to tackle obesity and type 2 diabetes rates.

PHE, an executive agency of the Department of Health, has outlined 13 food categories such as sandwiches, ready meals and savoury biscuits where it wants sugar and calorie reduction efforts from food makers.

Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at PHE, announced that food producers can meet this target either by reducing portion sizes, promoting healthy options or reformulating products.

PHE believes this new anti-obesity drive will reduce NHS costs by 4.5b, revealing that the NHS spends 6.6bn annually on obesity-related illness. Obesity significantly increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and other health complications, and combating obesity is paramount to improving the UKs health.

However, while cutting calories in unhealthy foods is a relatively positive step, it fails to address the major issue behind rising obesity and type 2 diabetes in the UK: people continue to eat too many highly processed foods.

Even after calories have been cut from processed foods, food makers will still be serving food with little nutritional value that raises blood glucose levels and aids weight gain.

Recent research, from the journal of Public Health Nutrition, shows that over 50% of family food purchases in the UK are for ultra-processed foods.

Benedict Jephcote, Editor of Diabetes.co.uk, said: Public Health Englands efforts to make 4.5 billion in NHS savings appears to be pie in the sky. The root issue is being side-stepped. Research shows that the nation as a whole is eating too much of the wrong foods. The issue of rising weight gain and associated long-term conditions needs to be tackled by improving access to natural, healthy, unprocessed foods.

Fortunately, a positive movement is happening amongst grass roots. Hundreds of thousands of people who have signed up to our award-winning Low Carb Program and cut out processed foods altogether in favour of healthy fats and low carbohydrate foods are losing weight and preventing future health complications.

The Low Carb Program has helped people with diabetes, or at risk of it, reduce their dependency on medication through eating real foods, improving their health significantly, all while eating delicious meals.

PHE plans to provide guidance for food markers on specific product categories by 2019 and will report regularly to the government on what steps are being taken.
The Binge-watching season is upon us and March has some action packed streaming in store. Heres what you can stream on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar this month.

Marvels Jessica Jones Season 2

The alcoholic detective/superhero is back for a second standalone series this March. The Show starts streaming today and promises a rage-filled trip as Jones (Krysten Ritter) digs deeper into her past to remember the events that led to her gaining her superpowers. Jessica Jones is returning to Netflix after a break of almost 2.5 years, but she was spotted on Marvels The Defenders last year and season 2 picks up from when Daredevil goes missing in the crossover series. Heres hoping season 2 is as exciting as the first one where Jones takes on The Purple Man AKA Killgrave.

Platform: Netflix

Premiere: March 8

A Series of Unfortunate Events: Season Two

The odd and eccentric lives of the Baudelaire orphans will once again entertain on the streaming screen of your choice this March. Netflix just dropped a new trailer for A Series of Unfortunate Events where the three Baudelaire children are seen sent to an Orphan shack, with their arch nemesis Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris) still in pursuit. What misery is in store this time? Youll soon find out

Platform: Netflix

Premiere: March 30

The Tick Season 1 continued

Another Superhero returns to the streaming world this March. If youve already not seen them, six new episodes of The Tick have been released on Amazon Prime after the series took an abrupt break for four long months. Tick and his sidekick Arthur were separated after The Terror abducts Arthur and makes him his prisoner. Episode 7 picks up right there and the adventure continues from there on.

Platform: Amazon Prime Video

American crime Story Season 2: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

American Crime Story this season brings the horrid and scintillating story of Andrew Cunanan, a serial killer who murdered more than five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace. This season is currently down seven episodes, but its never too late to start watching the show, especially now that you have a bank of episodes to binge on. Each episode details Cunanans life and mindset leading upto the killing of Versace. The creators of the show have skillfully captured Cunanans severe superiority complex muddled with his delusions of grandeur. A must watch for enthusiasts of the serial killer genre who want a peek into a real-life psychopaths mind.

Platform: Hotstar

The Worlds Most Extraordinary Homes

Ever fancy an abode made out of a real Boeing 747 airplane? Or a house dug inside a hill? Or a mansion in the middle of a forest? If architecture is your thing, youll love the splendid houses featured on The Worlds Most Extraordinary Homes. The sheer design innovation behind these gorgeous homes will unfailingly impress and make you take a sad gaze around your own little box of an apartment. But who is to stop one from dreaming, right?

Platform: Netflix

Looking Ahead

Lost In Space

Lost In Space is a modern reboot of the 60s family-oriented science fiction series with the same name. As far as the storyline is concerned, Lost in Space 2018 will be set 30 years into the future, i.e, 2048. Space colonisation is a reality and the Robinson family has been picked to start a new life on a new planet. You can read more about the show here.

Platform: Netflix

Premiere: April 13
Donegal GAA chiefs have confirmed a man has been convicted in a court in the UK for his part in an internet scam that stung Donegal GAA for a large sum of money.

The scam, which dates back to August 2013, involved the hacking into the Donegal treasurers email address.

The hacker then used the address to issue instructions to members of the boards administrative staff to transfer a large sum of money to an account in the UK.

The account was in a bank in Reading and the sum in question was reported at the time to be Stg 15,000.

Donegal chairman, Mick McGrath, confirmed in a brief statement to the Donegal county committee on Monday night that a man had been in court in the UK.

The chairman was responding to a request from Grace Boyle, who was the Donegal treasurer at the time of the scam.

The former treasurer had asked at the previous months county committee meeting for information on how the case had gone.

The chairman also confirmed the man in question received a seven month suspended sentence and ordered to repay the Donegal board Stg2,500 in instalments of Stg100 per month.

The man was not thought to be the hacker but had withdrawn the money from the bank account.

The incident happened at the beginning of August, 2013, and was reported to the Gardai almost within hours of it happening.

The Democrat learned at the time that the money was still in the bank account when the matter was reported.

However, for legal reasons, it is believed the bank was powerless to stop the transaction before the money was withdrawn and the account cleaned out.

The chairman did not allow any comment on the matter at Monday nights meeting.

And he did not wish to comment other than to confirm he did read the statement on Monday night when contacted by the Democrat.
North West Hospice is delighted to have the opportunity to attend the Sligo and Leitrim association dinners in New York on March 9th and 10th.

North West Hospice has enjoyed support from the diaspora living in New York for many years and will take this opportunity to thank them in person and update them on our plans to build a new Hospice In-Patient Unit.

Attending these events demonstrates the commitment of North West Hospice to engage and build greater links with the diaspora living abroad from our catchment area of Sligo, Leitrim, South Donegal and West Cavan.

North West Hospice was started in 1986 by a small group in the community and has developed and grown over the last 31 years because of continued community support. North West Hospice belongs to the communities of Sligo, Leitrim, South Donegal and West Cavan and the Diaspora living abroad is part of this community.

Speaking about developing links with the diaspora, Nuala Ginnelly, North West Hospice Manager said: The Hospice is now entering a new stage in its development with a momentous and ambitious plan to build a new hospice In-Patient Unit on our current site in Sligo. This development is essential to meet the current and future needs of our communities. We are sincerely grateful to our diaspora living abroad for supporting us over the last 31 years and we hope that they will continue to support us as we embark on our new build. We rely heavily on the local community to raise in excess of  1 million to maintain our current level of service each year. We will need this local community support to continue to maintain our essential services while looking to other areas, such as our diaspora, for funding to help us build our new hospice.

North West Hospice would like to acknowledge the support of Hubert McHugh and Valerie Cox who have been instrumental in engaging with key members of our diaspora in New York and Boston, while also coordinating a programme of events during our visit. North West Hospice also acknowledges the support of Carol Coleman for creating key links with broadcast media in New York and Boston to help spread the hospice message.

North West Hospice provides specialist care with compassion to those living with life-limiting illness in Sligo, Leitrim, South Donegal and West Cavan.
The decision by the Special European Union Programmes Body (SEUPB) to turn down a funding application for the Riverine Project in Lifford and Strabane has been described as a devastating blow for Lifford and Strabane.

The proposed Riverine concept plans comprise 47 acres covering two currently unused open natural spaces, including a partially covered outdoor public events space, community building and a world-class play experience, radiating out into shared parkland featuring walkways, river access and parking.

If taken to the next stage the area will also benefit from greatly enhanced infrastructure with a new cross-border greenway network connecting Lifford and Strabane as well as a cross-border pedestrian bridge linking the towns. The space will span either side of the banks of the River Foyle in Lifford and Strabane which will be interconnected by a community footbridge.

Sinn Fein Councillor Gary Doherty said he was shocked after it was revealed that the project narrowly missed out on the scoring threshold for funding allocation.

This decision by SEUPB not to advance the Riverine Project to the next stage of the application process is a devastating blow for the towns of Lifford and Strabane. I am absolutely shocked and saddened that the project was not deemed worthy enough to progress to the next stage of the process, and I simply cannot understand the rationale for the decision. So much effort and time has been put into this project by Council officials, elected members and the wider community who were part of the evaluation process late last year and is it such a disappointment for everyone involved

"However, since becoming aware of this decision, I and my party colleagues have been in contact with officials from both Donegal County Council and Derry City and Strabane District Council and we remain hopeful and confident that the project can still progress.

"The bulk of the funding under the 'Peace IV - Shared Spaces Programme' has yet to be allocated, and we are aware that a new funding call will open next week. Therefore we are confident that the Riverine Project can get over the line at that stage. Nevertheless, the disappointment across the towns of Lifford and Strabane is tangible this afternoon as we digest the news of this latest setback."
The Indian Motorcycle prices have been reduced on completely built units (CBU) after the Indian government reduced the customs duty to 50 percent from 75 percent.

While CBU receives price cuts, motorcycles which are assembled in India from completely knocked down (CKD) kits are expected to receive a price hike with an increase in customs duty on motorcycle components.

However, motorcycles imported from Thailand, with whom India has a Free Trade Agreement will not be affected by the change in customs duty.

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Here's The Indian Motorcycle Revised Price List:

Models Ex-Showroom Price Indian Scout Sixty Rs 10.99 Lakh Indian Scout Rs 12.69 Lakh Indian Scout Bobber Rs 11.99 Lakh Indian Chief Dark Horse Rs 18.81 Lakh Indian Chief Classic Rs 21.29 Lakh Indian Chief Vintage Rs 25.32 Lakh Indian Chief Springfield Rs 33.50 Lakh Indian Chieftain Rs 32.01 Lakh Indian Roadmaster Rs 39 Lakh

"We are glad that the Government has rationalised the import duty structure to 50 percent across the range for imported bikes. The new attractive price of our products available in India will lead to more sales. This will also create opportunities for enthusiasts to buy our iconic products and be a part of the Indian Motorcycle family," said Pankaj Dubey, Managing Director & Country Head, Polaris India Pvt. Ltd.

As of now, bike manufacturers such as Harley-Davidson and Ducati have announced a price cut on their motorcycles which are imported.

Most of the Ducati bikes are being imported from Thailand, and hence they do not receive any change in prices in India.

BMW Motorrad has announced a price reduction of its range of bikes in India, which are mainly imported from Germany.

Triumph Motorcycles' product lineup in India are mostly CKD, so we expect an increase in prices of these bikes in India.

DriveSpark's Thoughts About The Indian Motorcycle Prices Being Reduced

Indian Motorcycle range of bikes in India is now more affordable than before.

The entry-level Indian Scout Sixty now costs Rs 10.99 lakh ex-showroom making it one of the cheapest imported cruisers in India.

We test rode the Indian Scout Sixty, and the bike performed well with its brisk pace and ease of riding through the city as well as on long distances.
Louth County Council say they are facing an ongoing battle in trying to reduce the rent arrears currently owed to the local authority  with current arrears sitting at just over 5.1 million.

Speaking at Tuesdays Dundalk Municipal District meeting, Senior Executive Officer Aoife Lawler admitted the council were facing difficulties in getting tenants to commit to payment plans, but did confirm the biggest debtors were now in plans to pay off rent arrears.

Its very hard to get people into a payment plan, she said at the meeting, held at Dundalk Town Hall. Some people are in big arrears, some people are in small arrears. We have targeted the 50 tenants in the biggest arrears and they are now in a payment plan.

She confirmed one tenant, who failed to engage with the council despite 80 attempts to do so, has been evicted. That person had already moved out of the council house and found alternative accommodation  meaning no one was made homeless in this instance.

Its not a scenario we want to happen, but if people dont engage, its something we have to do, she added.

Were working to work with people, we dont want people in arrears. We werent getting anywhere. When asked whether the amount owed by the person in this instance was significant, Lawlor replied, We dont evict people unless its significant.

The Senior Executive Officer cited mis-information given to the council by tenants as a particular problem.

Figures show that as of January 31st, Louth CoCo are currently owed 5,163,932 in rent arrears by a total of 1,860 accounts. The majority of accounts, 1,443, are in arrears greater than 12 weeks.

That makes up over 4,975,311 of the overall total.

Rising rent arrears are a growing problem for the local authority. The overall total has risen from 3.6 million owed at the end of January two years ago compared to 5.1 million owed now.

Sinn Fein councillor Anne Campbell raised the issue of rent arrears, claiming it impacted on those tenants who needed improvement work undertaken on their properties.

Its a flat no when you ask about wriggle room, she said when speaking on the issue. People are asking for houses to be fixed, but with so many people in arrears, nothing is getting done.

There are a lot of knock-ons with rent arrears.
Fr Peter McVerry, the anti-homelessness campaigner, has praised Louth County Council's efforts to to acquire and provide social housing for those who need it.

The founder of the Peter McVerry Trust says that the local authority is leading the way in making vacant properties available for social housing.

I would urge the Government to tell the other local authorities to follow Louth County Councils example," he told the Irish Examiner. "We have the solution to homelessness  we just have to use it."

McVerry told the newspaper that Louth County Council had made 81 compulsory purchase orders on vacant properties in recent years, with just two cases successfully challenged in courts by owners of properties.

As of the end of January, the social housing waiting list in Louth stood at 4,479. In recent years, the local authority have launched an initiative to start applying its powers under the 1966 Housing Act to place a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on vacant or disused properties.

They see this as an efficient and credible way to take vacant properties and make them available for people who need somewhere to live across the county. The council say this method is a cheaper and quicker alternative that attempting to build new units.

According to the Department of Housing, the average cost of bringing vacant properties up to standard is between 60,000 and 70,000 while it costs 190,000 to build a new three-bedroom house, according to the Department of Housing.

It is understood that a number of local authorities around the county have looked closely at the Louth council's approach with a view to evaluating the county's approach and following it's lead.
Dundalk Institute of Technology will host the KNORR Student Chef of the Year competition next month - with preparations well underway for the cook-off which will pit some of Ireland's best young chefs against each other.

2018 marks the 21st edition of the annual competition, the biggest of it's kind in the country. It allows up-and-coming student chefs to showcase their talent, love of food, creativity and innovation in front of some of Irelands leading food professionals.

Among the judges this year is Michael McNamera, DkIT's Chef Lecturer. He joins Unilever Food Solutions Business Development Chef Mark McCarthy, special guest judge Aidan McGrath of the Wild Honey Inn, Irelands first Michelin starred pub and Katy McGuinness, restaurant critic with the Irish Independent.

This year, DkIT get to host the prestigious awards after Andrew Reddan, representing the college, was crowned the Knorr Student Chef of the Year last year after a cook off hosted by Cork Institute of Technology.

Andrew produced a starter of Irish sea bass with Carlingford mussel ragout with lemon and curd and mint risotto before he served a 'Tasting of beef', which comprised seared sirloin, cheek croquette, bonemarrow crumb with caramelised celeriac puree.

The competition is open to second year students from participating catering colleges, training centres and Institutes of Technology with the winning entrant from each participating college travelling to Dundalk IT for the final on Tuesday, April 17th 2018.

This years students are being challenged to create a vegetarian starter and a main course celebrating Irish seafood. Students must demonstrate an understanding of the importance of locally sourced and produced ingredients in the creation of their menu.

Besides the much-coveted KNORR Student Chef of the Year title, the winner will receive a fantastic Wild Atlantic Way culinary experience. The first two nights will be spent in Galway, dining at the Michelin starred Loam and Anair restaurants with a final night at the Wild Honey Inn, located in the heart of The Burren in Co.Clare.
Dundalk Library are celebrating World Book Day today.

There will be a storytelling event in the library at 3.30pm. All are welcome to attend, and there is no charge. This will be the 22nd World Book Day, and it is Irelands biggest annual event promoting literature and a love of reading.

Mary from the Dundalk Library says that they had other plans for the event, which was due to occur a week ago. We originally had Louth author Erika McGann for the storytelling event but that was cancelled due to the snow, Mary says sadly. However, we are looking to reschedule that within the next week or ten days.

Mary says that staff at the library are working hard to promote literacy in young people. We want to promote a love of reading right from birth, Mary says. We have a baby book club so children are used to reading with their parents from a very early age.

In April we are launching Spring into Storytime. We want to go back to basic with parents, teach them how to sit down with their children and make a routine of reading bed time stories, Mary explains. We want to encourage a love of reading it makes a real difference in the relationship between parents and child, and it opens peoples minds.

People really enjoy the events we put on, our baby book club is very popular, and the parents are keen to get their children reading, adds Mary.

We also have reading lists for older children who might have finished all the books by their favourite author, and we steer them in the direction of another author we are sure they will love, Mary says. We are also hoping to advance our plans to connect with a teen audience by setting up a Facebook page aimed at them, she reveals.

We also link in with schools, and we have our summer reading programme which is very successful, Mary says. This offers incentives to the children who read, by giving them a medal and a certificate the programme keeps growing, we had our highest number ever last year.

Meanwhile, Word Book Day continues to promote a love of literacy through various campaigns it has launched this year.

Primary school children can enter a competition to design a bookmark and have the chance to win up to 500 worth of National Book Tokens for their school, 200 worth of tokens for themselves and 200 worth of tokens for their teacher. Visit the World Book Day website (worldbookday.com/play-and-win/competitions) to download a template, and for terms and conditions. The deadline for this competition is Friday the 13th of April 2018.

Secondary school students are encouraged to build up World Book Days online presence. A new social media campaign called #ShareAStory is being launched. Young adult readers are encouraged to take a picture of the front cover of their favourite book and post it on their preferred social media channel, using the hashtag #ShareAStory.

Teenage readers are also encouraged to set up a Young Adult book club with their friends, and to meet at the same time and place once a week or month. Each book club member should read the same book and give it a score out of 100. Bookclubbers are also encouraged to invite guest speakers to their meetings, whether it be a librarian, English teacher or local author. Bookclubbers can also use social media to blog about the books they recommend and to upload photos of their events. This way, book lovers everywhere can get recommendations.
As part of our International Women's Day celebrations here at The Dundalk Democrat, we take a look back at incredible Dundalk women like Dorothy Mcardle.

www.dundalkdemocrat.ie/news/home/301614/celebrating-remarkable-louth-ladies-for-international-women-s-day-2018.html

Louth County Libraries in association with The Dorothy Society are running a free lecture and discussion on the family background of Dundalk Woman Dorothy Macardle, international humanitarian, historian, bestselling author, playwright, journalist, political activist and revolutionary.



The talk will be given by Lea Hennessy of the Dorothy Macardle Society, it will take place at the County Library in Dundalk this Thursday, March 8th at 6.30pm. Admission is free.



Lea Hennessy will begin the evening talking about Dorothys very varied family background, her conservative, essentially unionist upbringing in Dundalk with her English mother Minnie, who had a British Military background (her father was Paymaster in the Scots Greys and had been billeted in Dundalk Barracks when Minnie was a small child and one of her sisters was actually born in Dundalk) and her father Sir Thomas, prominent in the Home Rule Movement and one of the wealthiest men in Ireland, heading up Macardle and Moore Brewery.



Lea will speak about Dorothys siblings, her sister Mona and brothers Donald and Kenneth. They were a family noted for their philanthropy, Minnie helping the poor locally and Sir Thomas a fair employer and a reasonable man. Dorothy might have carried on the charmed life of the educated Anglo Irish intellectual with her especial interest in Shakespeare, had 1916 not happened.

The path of her life changed forever, but she had a strong sense of justice which sustained her throughout her life as an international humanitarian and never totally abandoned her Britishness to her new found Irishness which she embraced to the point of ending up in jail. Dorothy was especially interested in how women were treated in the emerging Ireland. Her family members were also greatly impacted by this period in history.

Come along to hear Lea Hennesseys talk and you will get an insight into the making of Dundalks Dorothy Macardle, bestselling novelist, playwright, journalist, historian, revolutionary, International humanitarian.
Dr. Pearse Lyons, founder and president of American animal nutrition business Alltech, who was born and raised in Dundalk, has passed away after battling an illness, the company said today.

Born and raised in Dundalk, Dr Lyons graduated with a first class honours degree in Biochemistry.

While at college, he worked in Harp Lager in Dundalk and later graduated with a Master of Science in Brewing Science, from the British School of Malting and Brewing (now the School of Biochemistry), University of Birmingham in 1968. He received a PhD in Biochemistry in 1971.

Dr Lyons' work led him to Kentucky in 1976, where in 1980 he founded scientific research company Alltech with the aim of improving the health and performance of people, animals and plants.

While Alltech is an American company, Dr. Lyons always recognised his drive and passion to succeed began at home in Ireland.

The thoughts of our entire Alltech family around the world are with Dr. Lyons family, specifically his wife Deirdre, daughter Aoife, son Mark and Marks wife Holly, CEO and treasurer of Alltech Alric Blake said in a statement this afternoon.

Dr. Lyons was a visionary entrepreneur who transformed the agriculture industry beginning with his innovative application of yeast technology in animal nutrition. From farm to field, from market to family dinner table, our world is immeasurably better because he was a man who never saw problems, only a challenge that had not yet been solved."
The teenager charged with the murder of Japanese man Yosuke Sasaki in Dundalk in January was once again unable able to attend a court hearing scheduled for today.

The Irish Independent report that Mohamed Morei (18) was unable to appear at his sixth scheduled court hearing at Cloverhill District Court today. He was arrested and remanded in custody on January 4th, the day after the murder.

Judge Vincent Blake has further remanded Morei in custody in his absence and the case has now been adjourned for another two weeks, until Thursday March 22nd.

Six weeks ago, the Independent report, the court was handed a letter from a consultant psychiatrist at the CMH, stating that Mr Morei would not be able to attend court until mid-February. However, the earliest he will appear will now be late March.

Morei has been receiving regular psychiatric treatment at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. Garda Inspector Martin Beggy said at that hearing that the youth's nationality had not yet been undetermined.

If he seeks bail this application will have to be made in the High Court, because he is facing a murder charge.

Japanese national Mr Sasaki, aged 24, was killed after he was fatally stabbed on the Avenue Road in Dundalk shortly before 9am on Wednesday January 3rd.
Comet Doom  Past And Future?

Did a comet strike the Earth 12,800 years ago, causing global wildfires and starting an age of cooling? Scientists are still arguing about it. Dr. Joanne Ballard, co-author of two new papers with evidence that it did happen. Comet expert Dr. Mark Boslough says the science is flawed. I close with my own impressions of the science, the believers, and why all this matters a lot for our future. After all, the next comet strike can come at any time.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

PLEASE HELP ME REACH MORE PEOPLE WITH RADIO ECOSHOCK

Im asking for your support to hire a person who will help me find more radio stations, and more social media, to get these important messages out even further. If listeners can help me raise $5,000 this program can go a lot further. Please go to this page to lend your support. Any amount you can donate will help. Or sign up to give a small amount each month. Together, we can build this thing bigger.

THE CASE FOR A RELATIVELY RECENT COMET STRIKE  DR. JOANNE BALLARD

In the second week of February 2018, two unexpected comets passed by Earth, coming closer than the moon. They mystery is: why have we NOT been hit by a large rock from space during human times? A group of scientists say there was a strike around 12,000 years ago. They claim it darkened Earth with fires on multiple continents, wiping out large animals, and kicking off a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas.

Around 2006, books were published on this comet strike, with lots of media coverage. There was also push back from other scientists, saying it never happened. Two new papers have been published in the Journal of Geology this month. The lead author in both is Wendy S. Wolbach, along with 26 other scientists.

To make the case for a climate-changing, extinction-level comet strike, just a few thousand years before the discovery of agriculture and the rise of civilization, is co-author Joanne P Ballard. Dr. Ballard is an Archaeologist for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville.

Dr. Joanne P Ballard

DOWNLOAD OUR GUEST INTERVIEWS FOR FREE (brought to you by listeners who donate to keep Radio Ecoshock free for all)

Listen to or download this 28 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Joanne Ballard in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

Listen to or download my 19 minute Radio Ecoshock interview with Mark Boslough in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

WILLIAM NAPIER AND COHERENT CATASTROPHISM

At times in this first Radio Ecoshock interview, particularly on questions involving comets or astronomy, Joanne is relaying answers from another paper co-author, the Scottish astronomer Dr. William Bill Napier. Napier has been publishing about possible comet strikes since 1979. Early on, with co-author Victor Clube, Napier started building a case for coherent catastrophism. Another proponent Duncan Steel is thought to have coined coherent catastrophism.

For more by Napier, see this paper: Asher, D. J.; Clube, S. V. M.; Napier, W. M.; Steel, D. I., Coherent catastrophism, Vistas in Astronomy, vol. 38, Issue 1, pp.1-27, 1994 (Abstract)

According to this entry in The Velikovsky Encyclopedia:

Coherent catastrophism is the hypothesis that the inner solar system, and consequently the Earth, has been subjected to catastrophes from passing comets. It is termed coherent because:

Cataclysms visit wide areas of the planet due to the coherent arrival of many impactors in a few days. It is entirely feasible that within those few days the earth could receive hundreds of blows like that of the Tunguska object.

That second quote is from Duncan Steele. For more from Duncan, pursue Steel, D. L (1991) Our asteroid-pelted planet, Nature 354, 265  267 (28 November 1991). I cant find anything beyond this title info. If anyone finds the full-text of Steels 1991 paper still out there on the Net, please add that link in a comment to this blog.

My point here is we are entering a current of thinking, developed by a few scientists all over the world, reconsidering the time of humans in terms of multiple comet impacts, not all of them yet known.

THE TWO NEW PAPERS

We will get to more recent developments in this impact hypothesis, and the new group gathered around it, in a minute. First, we have two new papers about this exact topic, published in the Journal of Geology. The first is: Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago. 1. Ice Cores and Glaciers

The second is: Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ?12,800 Years Ago. 2. Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments

There are 27 authors listed on the first paper (land impacts) with many names recognized in this movement, including Firestone and West. The second paper, on Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments, has 31 authors. Both papers have Wendy S. Wolbach as lead author. But as we will see (and hear in the interview), not all listed authors are scientists with expertise in the field (most are).

ABOUT JOANNE BALLARD

Dr. Joanne P Ballard is an Archaeologist for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville, Tennessee. You can find out more about her here on Researchgate, where she says:

I analyze lacustrine sediments for charcoal, wood ash, micromorphology using thin sections, stable C and N isotopes, XRF, pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs to reconstruct fire history and vegetational and environmental changes from LGM to the Holocene.

Joannes specialty in carbon dating can help pinpoint when there were major fires, even thousands of years ago. She has analyzed lakes in the southern United States, and in Michigan. Although these papers contain a graphic showing concurrent fires on many continents, including Africa and Europe, Joanne only discussed the fires in North America, where she has studied.

DID A COMET IMPACT KILL THE MAMMOTHS?

Joanne Ballards Doctoral Dissertation was also on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, titled Evidence of Late Quaternary Fires from Charcoal and siliceous Aggregates in Lake Sediments in the Eastern U.S.A. Joanne was originally inspired by a presentation by Richard Firestone. In this Radio Ecoshock interview she says: I learned about this hypothesis when I attended a paleontology conference at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs North Dakota. The impact hypothesis offers an alternative for the usual ideas on why the great mammoths went extinct in North America. (A few mammoths persisted into historic times, as a smaller species, in Siberia). Previous to this hypothesis, the common reasons for mammoth extinction have been climate change, over-hunting by early humans, or a disease.

THE MISSING CRATER

Proving that a comet struck the earth, a couple of thousand years before human agriculture, is easier if you have a big impact crater to show where it landed. This hypothesis is not so easy. No crater large enough for the impact effects described in this paper has been found.

The group has evolved ideas about the lack of a crater. In their 2006 book, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture, Richard Firestone and Allan West suggested the Younger Dryas and mammoth deaths came about due to a supernova explosion affecting Earth. Then with Napier and others, the explanation became a bit muddied, at least for untrained people. It sounds like a Comet exploded in nearby space, or on entry, and Earth then passed through a cloud of debris. That would explain the fires arising on many different continents. However, in our next interview, our other comet expert Dr. Mark Boslough says that is unlikely to impossible.

In this radio interview, Joanne Ballard suggests a comet could have hit the Laurentide Ice Sheet, then covering North America to a depth of up to two miles. The crater would be in ice, and so be invisible later after the melt. This is problematic when trying to explain why fires would start concurrently in Africa. Another impact proposed in the paper is a global nuclear winter from impact dust. But again, would there be that much dust from hitting the ice sheet?

Mark Boslough says a comet of the size required for the impacts in these papers would have drilled through the ice, leaving a visible crater, and being so recent, might be still steaming today!

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

In this interview, Joanne touches on some of the complexity of proving objects from outer space landed in a particular time zone. People are slicing up segments of black mat (organic goo from long ago) for microscopic work. Others have searched for irregular isotopes of rare metals coming only from comets or asteroids. When the discussion goes to spherules my eyes glaze over.

That is the stuff of science, and the evidence trail is beyond my abilities to judge it. Joanne also discusses using ice core data, which is generally reliable. We also discuss evidence of massive acid rain at this time.

A 2007 paper led by W.B. Masse argued that asteroids and comets have struck Earth regularly in the longer past, so why has it been so quiet during our time?

MARK BOSLOUGH: THE CASE AGAINST THAT RECENT IMPACT

Dr. Mark Boslough

The Wiki on Mark Boslough is impressive, and so is his CV and long list of publications. Wiki says:

Mark Boslough is a physicist. He is a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, an adjunct professor at University of New Mexico, and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[1] Asteroid 73520 Boslough (2003 MB1) was named after him.

However, that is out of date. Mark retired from Sandia Labs a few months ago. Now Im just going to quote more from WIKI, because I cannot get this detail said any better:

An expert on planetary impacts and global catastrophes, Bosloughs work on airbursts challenged the conventional view of asteroid collision risk and is now widely accepted by the scientific community. He was the first scientist to suggest that the Libyan Desert Glass was formed by melting due to overhead heating from an airburst. His hypothesis was popularized by the documentaries Tutunkhamuns Fireball (BBC), (recipient of Discover Magazines Top 100 Science Stories of 2006) and Ancient Asteroid National Geographic. which provided inspiration for the unorthodox and controversial notion that a large airburst over North America caused an abrupt climate change mass extinction.

However, Boslough has been a leading critic of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, arguing among other things that the proponents have misinterpreted his airburst models. He appeared as a skeptic on the Last Extinction Nova, (recipient of AAAS Kavli award for best science documentary of 2009).

In 2011, he presented a paper at the IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Bucharest, Romania, in which he stated, It is virtually certain (probability > 99%) that the next destructive NEO event will be an airburst. This prediction proved true less than two years later, on Feb. 15, 2013, when an airburst over Chelyabinsk, Russia injured more than 1000 people. Boslough was among the first western scientists to arrive in Chelyabinsk, where he did field research and accompanied a production crew filming Meteor Strike for NOVA. Most of the documentaries are focused on his impact and airburst modeling.

In 2014, Boslough delivered a major address on death plunge asteroids that can pose a sudden danger to Earth at the second Starmus Festival in the Canary Islands.

So there you go. Boslough provided the original theory of asteroid airbursts, but strongly disputes the case that one happened 12,800 years ago, or that a comet of any significant size hit then either. In 2013, Boslough published an article about all this, published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Find that article Younger Dryas impact model confuses comet facts, defies airburst physics here.

Boslough calls for Planetary Defense. He is the pioneer of the airburster space rocks (technically bolides) that cause significant damage, but not age-ending catastrophes. Boslough says we should worry less about big asteroids and more about smaller space debris hitting Earth.

We talk more about Marks book, and he tells us about the coming Asteroid Day.

On a personal note, Mark turned a private property fight with off-roaders in Colorado into an important new argument in the climate change battle. As Mark told the Huffington Post, we have a right to radiate.

The right to radiate by all citizens has a much easier burden of proof. Our prescriptive easements consist of the gaps in the infrared absorption spectrum of the sky that are now being filled up by pollution. Weve all been using them for our entire lives. And we can prove it in court if we can convince a judge that weve always had warm bodies, and get a physicist to be an expert witness. All we need are some real libertarians to work up some righteous indignation and file a lawsuit.

MY OWN RESEARCH INTO PROPONENTS AND CRITICS OF THIS HYPOTHESIS

With our ability to find events from many millions of years ago, it should be easy to say whether a comet hit the Earth just before humans developed agriculture and civilization. As you have heard, it is not easy, and scientists do not agree on the results. I spent a lot of time trying to resolve the truth about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. I did not succeed, but did find lots of worthwhile things to explore, not raised by either of our guests. Here you go from a fraction of my notes.

First, as Mark Boslough says, trust is everything in science. I checked out our guest Joanne Ballard. She went through the right training, with very good advisers at the Masters and Doctorate level. Those advisers specialized in subjects helpful to the two new papers. Joanne is a genuine scientist.

Theres a long history and deep cultural fabric running below this whole topic. Humans have long held a mythology or religious belief that matter from space drives major events on Earth. Science agrees, with a big asteroid ending the age of dinosaurs, hitting near Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula about 66 million years ago.

The whole subject was popularized by a best-selling book published in 1950, which I read in the 1960s: Worlds in Collision Immanuel Velikovsky. Then in 1979, the Scottish astronomer and author William M. Napier published, with Victor Klube, A theory of terrestrial catastrophism. Bill Napier is a co-author in the current paper, and provided some of the answers relating to astrophysics, relayed to us by Joanne Ballard.

Richard Firestone and Allen West joined the fray with their 2006 book The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. The science in that book has since been discounted. As you heard in our interviews, newer papers evolved in their theory of what happened.

THE COMET RESEARCH GROUP

There is a group of people, mostly scientists, who are dedicated to proving Comets continued to make big changes much more recently. They gather in two organizations: the Comet Research Group in the West, and the Holocene Impact Working Group based in Russia. Joanne Ballard and the other 29 authors of the new papers in Journal of Geology belong to the Comet Research Group.

The Comet Research Group was co-founded by Dr. Ted Bunch, a credible scientist; by George Howard, an enthusiast with no training in the field, and the enigmatic Dr. Allen West. Nobody, including science journalist Rex Dalton, has managed to find any record of science degrees for Allen West, who took up that name only recently.

I dont have a problem with citizen scientists and enthusiasts contributing ideas and work. But we need honesty about that. I randomly checked three members listed on the web site of the Comet Research Group. Dr. Sylvia Gonzalez replied she is a member, having seen evidence of a major event in her work in Mexico. Another said he is not a member but has written two papers supporting the hypothesis. A third denied any connection to the group.

During the interview, Mark Boslough mentioned a critical article by Rex Dalton. Its called Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth, published May 14, 2011. Google it, or find a link in my show blog. We also mentioned the paper The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem with lead author Nicholas Pinter. It was published June 20, 2011 in the journal Earth-Science Reviews.

The two new papers in Journal of Geology have about 29 co-authors. In my opinion, that is a growing disease in modern scientific literature. Science journals complain too many names are being given to add weight to a publication. There is a committee looking into this, and abuses of adding names just to help careers, with no indication who did what work. Im not saying that happened with these two papers in Journal of Geology, but we have to recognize that a long-list of co-authors no longer guarantees anything about whether the science is correct. I was surprised when two of the co-authors here were not scientists at all.

The Comet Research Group is like a club of people with common interests in near-term impacts and coming impacts. Their Facebook page is a lively place to check out new arrivals from outer space, and research into past contacts. Everything posted there supports the Younger Dryas Impact Theory, with no criticism, but I found this Facebook page useful and Ill be back.

The Comet Research Group is also a non-profit in the United States. The main poster on their web site is George Howard, blogger at the Cosmic Tusk. The group is doing fund-raising. They hope to raise over $100,000 to fund 3 expeditions to verify their theory. Over the past 3 months they report getting around $35,000. For example, they would like to send members to find an impact crater, perhaps in Greenland or North Dakota,.

MYSTICISM ANYBODY?

More worrying to me, the Comet Research Group is also sending out an expedition to Jordan to investigate whether a comet destroyed the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It sounds like a marriage of mythology and religion, where comets determine human history. Of course that is possible, but I worry about a cult-like following developing around this subject.

Along those lines, the prolific author and amateur archaeologist Graham Hancock has endorsed the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. Hancock claims there are many previous civilizations that were wiped out. This Impact Hypothesis, he says, explains what happened to them. His 2015 book Magicians of the Gods is based on the Hypothesis, and he gives credit to Kennett, Bunch, Allen West and the gang. Graham has a page promoting the Comet Research Group on his popular web site.

Hanging around the fringes of the Comet Research Group are commenters who claim the pyramids and Stone Henge are all part of human response to comet strikes. The scientists cant be blamed for off-base comments. Its just part of the Internet today.

George Howard and his blog the Cosmic Tusk gets rave reviews from the world worst climate denial blog, WattssUpWithThat. Anthony Watts has run at least three pieces on the Younger Dryas Impact Event  and why not? It wasnt really climate change: a space rock did it! To be fair, Watts also reported on studies that refuted the Hypothesis.

As recently as February 2, 2018 Watts revived the theory of massive fires and the comet strike during the time of early humans. So there is a continuing traffic between some supporters of this theory and climate change denial  but no denial in the scientific papers we are considering in this show.

THE HOLOCENE IMPACT WORKING GROUP

There is another small collection of scientists working on this theory. The Holocene Impact Working Group has six scientists who hypothesize that meteorite impacts on Earth are more common than according to current scientific consensus.

Although the scientists come from all over the world, the groups server is hosted in Novosibirsk Russia, by the Tsunami Laboratory Institute, which is part of the Siberian Division Russian Academy of Sciences. That lab also maintains an Expert Database on the Earth Impact Structures (EDEIS). Naturally, since global interest in the strike in Siberia in 1908, the largest in recent times, a cottage industry of scientists and tourists are fascinated by comets in Russia.

Again at the Holocene Impact site we find some books that cover alternative history. One example is Irishman Mike Baillies 1999 book Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets. But I also note a Canadian book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard: Second Edition by E. Bryant. Remember our space expert Mark Boslough said that a tsunami arising from a comet landing in the ocean may be possible. More research is needed, but that could be a big surprise indeed.

THE RUSSIANS?

This seems to be a big topic for Russian research as well. I suppose thats natural considering the big hit in Siberia in 1908, and the recent surprise strike in Chelyabinsk Russia in February 2013. The Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences holds two databases of reported hits. Co-author Bill Napier reports to Joanne Ballard that he has talked with some Russian counterparts. Of course that is natural in the global nature of science these days.

As an aside, in my darker more paranoid moments, I wonder if the Kremlin has considered a disruption war against climate science. Decarbonization is bad for the current Russian economy, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction and exports. Would they? Have they done it already, but funding scientists in the West who question climate change? I dont think thats an issue for the authors of these new papers, but it may come some day, or already be happening in a different venue. Watch that space.

A DIFFERENT (NON-COMET) EXPLANATION FOR THE YOUNGER DRYAS COOLING (WHICH COULD HAPPEN TO US AGAIN)

A question I raised to Joanne Ballard in this weeks show was about another potential cause for the Younger Dryas: that a warm period caused so much meltwater that it cooled the oceans, and led to a cooling event. Some scientists worry there are early signs this is happening now, as meltwater rushing off Greenland has created a cold spot in the ocean further south.

Here is an except from a new article from Andrew Glikson: The onset of climate tipping points: Methane and the future of the biosphere

Dr. Andrew Glikson, Australia

Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleoclimate scientist, Australian National University

As is well known to students of the history of the climate, once a temperature threshold is breached, abrupt events follow as a consequence of amplifying feedbacks, often within short time frameworks, examples being (1) stadial freeze events which followed temperature peaks during past interglacial peaks due to cooling of ocean regions adjacent to melting ice sheets, such as the north Atlantic Ocean and west Antarctica; (2) the intra-glacial DansgaardOeschger (DO) ~1400 years-long warming events during the last glacial period; (3) the Younger dryas stadial freeze (12,80011,600 years- ago) and the Laurentian stadial freeze (8200 years-ago).

In some instances it only took a temperature rise of about 1  2 degrees Celsius to trigger extensive ice melt, a flow of cold melt water into the oceans and thereby a regional to global freeze event, over periods ranging from a millennium to a few centuries. The abrupt transitions into and from stadial conditions could occur over a few decades and even few years.

Oh, and by the way, check this out in Andrews new article:

Hudson (2011) estimates the increase in absorbed radiation due to total removal of Arctic summer sea ice as 0.7 Watt/m2, equal to about 1.05 o Celsius. This means the global effect of Arctic melting, which in itself constitutes a feedback from CO2-driven global warming, is close to the warming effect of the rise in atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 407 ppm since the onset of the industrial age.

That article by Stephen R. Hudson is here.

So, the Arctic warmed by our emissions is losing sea ice at record rates. When we have a blue ocean event, that will greatly increase warming all on its own  adding as much heating as all our emissions since the beginning of the industrial age! Ill be covering the big changes in the Arctic in a coming show.

MY CONCLUSIONS

So where do we end up and does it matter? I say recognizing and measuring comet impacts matters a lot. The energy released from such events are measured in terms of comparable numbers of nuclear weapons exploded. Larger rocks from outer space have already changed Earths climate, and caused mass extinctions. Even the smaller ones can do significant damage, as Mark Boslough told us.

Space rocks have passed close to Earth in the last few weeks. A big asteroid is expected to come very close to Earth in 2029. As Boslough said, if smaller ones come from the direction of the sun, we will not see them before impact. So more science, and raising awareness among the public is a positive thing. Thats why I did this radio program.

It is strange that we can have certainty about an event 66 million years ago, but no certain closure about a strike just 12,800 years ago. NASA still reports the Near Earth Object (NEO) community of planetary scientists says that no large impacts have occurred during the past 15,000 years. As Nicholas Pinter points out, not a single human has been proven killed by a rock arriving from outer space. Statistically, its been quiet on that front during our human times. How long can that last?

We need artists, and even scientists, to exercise imagination for our knowledge to progress, but we also have to be very cautious about what is science, and what is myth-making.

One of the pillars and promoters of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis is a leading light of science. Dr. James Kennett from the University of California, Santa Barbara is legendary. Still, as we have seen in the case of Dr. James Lovelock, scientists with vision can sometimes be very right about one thing, and wrong about another. They may still have the same passion for both.

We are always going to be challenged by what is good science, and how we keep our imaginative minds tracking reality. Thank you for taking this journey with me this week. Im Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock.

(The end music for the 1 hour show is Path of Destruction by Alex Smith.)

PLEASE HELP ME REACH MORE PEOPLE WITH RADIO ECOSHOCK

Im asking for your support to hire a person who will help me find more radio stations, and more social media, to get these important messages out even further. If listeners can help me raise $5,000 this program can go a lot further. Please go to this page to lend your support. Any amount you can donate will help. Or sign up to give a small amount each month. Together, we can build this thing bigger.
AMSTERDAM  Recent days have seen Spanish fashion brand, Mango and British apparel retail conglomerate, Arcadia become the latest firms to sign up to the renewed terms of the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

It has taken many brands, including the aforementioned pair, a long time to commit to the Accord renewal. A delay which has only served to highlight the industry scepticism surrounding the initiatives effectiveness.

There are still a large number of companies who have either not renewed their signatory status or were not part of the original Accord and continue to abstain. These companies include brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Hudsons Bay and Levi Strauss.
The climate skepticism of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt has received significant attention since President Trump appointed him to the role.

But, as POLITICO revealed in a deep-dive published March 7, Pruitt isn't the only member of the Trump administration whose refusal to accept climate science could have serious impacts on U.S. policy.

The POLITICO report focuses on 20 Trump appointees with positions as agency heads or advisors in the administration who have made public statements dismissing the threat of climate change or the science behind it. POLITICO suggests their views have already influenced the Trump administration's climate-related decisions, such as pulling out of the 2015 Paris agreement or removing higher temperatures from a list of national security threats.

It has further produced a graphic outlining each appointee's climate views and how it might impact their actions going forward.

The report includes both big names like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and lesser-known figures who still wield significant power. Sessions, who has called carbon dioxide "plant food," has more power over climate decisions than you might expect, since his Justice Department will defend Trump's environmental policies from lawsuits.

On the lesser-known side are figures like Douglas Domenech, the Department of the Interior's assistant secretary for Insular Areas, who oversees Pacific islands particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification. The people living in those territories would not be encouraged to know he once said, "Climate alarmists are once again predicting the end of the world as we know it. This time the culprit is carbon dioxide," as POLITICO reported.

Other climate deniers whose views could do real harm include Agriculture Sec. Sonny Perdue and Homeland Security Sec. Kristjen Nielsen. The Agriculture Department will have to deal with droughts and changing rainfall patterns, but its employees have been barred from even discussing the problem openly, as leadership has instructed them to use "weather extremes" instead of "climate change" in reports. The Department of Homeland Security runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which responds to hurricanes and other storms that are increasing in frequency and intensity as the planet warms.

Ana Unruh Cohen, the government affairs director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, compared the current government's denial of climate science to a patient refusing heart medicine. "Trump taking that away, saying, 'Forget it, I don't believe I have high cholesterol,' is setting up the country for a heart attack," she told POLITICO.

The U.S. isn't the only country affected by the Trump team's willful ignorance. Former UN General Sec. Ban Ki-moon told The Guardian on Monday that the U.S.'s exit from the Paris agreement had made international action on climate change more difficult and hindered the delivery of aid from rich countries to help poorer countries adapt to climate-related challenges.

"I think the United States' decision to withdraw from this Paris agreement really creates a serious problem," he said.
If you turn on the news, you might think that climate science has been on trial for decades. But now a San Francisco judge will give it an official day in court.



U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is hearing a suit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco against five big oil corporations, ordered a historic tutorial in which both parties will have a chance to present their view of the science behind climate change, the McClatchy Washington Bureau reported March 7.

"This will be the closest that we have seen to a trial on climate science in the United States, to date," Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the Bureau.

The hearing marks the most recent novel development in an already groundbreaking lawsuit. As EcoWatch reported, San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change when it filed with Oakland against the five largest fossil-fuel producing corporations in September 2017.

The cities claim the companies named in the suitChevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell"have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings." They are therefore suing the companies for the costs of adapting to the climate challenge, such as the building of sea walls.

Alsup scheduled the hearing for March 21, and has asked each side to prepare a two-part presentation.

According to Alsup's order, "The first part will trace the history of scientific study of climate change," while "the second part will set forth the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise, and coastal flooding," the Bureau reported.

EarthRights International General Counsel Marco Simmons said the hearing was a positive development. "The court is forcing these companies to go on the record about their understanding of climate science, which they have desperately tried to avoid doing," he told the Bureau.

Still, Alsup's ruling was not entirely favorable to the cities, who had filed a motion to have the case tried in California courts, which have developed precedent around "public nuisance" law.

Alsup instead held that the case belonged in federal court. "[A] patchwork of fifty different answers to the same fundamental global issue would be unworkable," the court ruled, according to the Columbia Law Blog.

The California cities' suit isn't the only historic climate case that will be decided in federal court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration could not halt a suit brought by 21 children and teenagers against the federal government for failing to act on climate change, The Washington Post reported.

These suits brought by cities, municipalities and children represent creative legal ways in which ordinary citizens are trying to hold powerful interests accountable for man-made climate change. And an accurate understanding of climate science is key to their success.

"We're looking forward to putting the federal government on trial on climate science and its dangerous fossil fuel policies," Julia Olson of Our Children's Trust, the head lawyer in the children's case, told the Post.
What Is Climate Change? Is It Different From Global Warming?



Climate change is actually not a new phenomenon. Scientists have been studying the connection between human activity and the effect on the climate since the 1800s, although it took until the 1950s to find evidence suggesting a link.

Since then, the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases) in the atmosphere have steadily increased, taking a sharp jump in the late 1980s when the summer of 1988 became the warmest on record. (There have been many records broken since then.) But climate change is not a synonym for global warming.

The term global warming entered the lexicon in the 1950s, but didn't become a common buzzword until a few decades later when more people started taking notice of a warming climate. Except climate change encompasses a greater realm than just rising temperatures. Trapped gases also affect sea-level rise, animal habitats, biodiversity and weather patterns. For example, Texas' severe winter storms in February 2021 demonstrate how the climate isn't merely warming.

Why Is Climate Change Important? Why Does It Matter?

Marc Guitard / Moment / Getty Images

Despite efforts from forward thinkers such as SpaceX Founder Elon Musk to colonize Mars, Earth remains our home for the foreseeable future, and the more human activity negatively impacts the climate, the less habitable it will become. It's estimated that Earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius, or two degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the Industrial Revolution around the 1750s, although climate change tracking didn't start until the late 1800s. That warming number may not sound like much, but this increase has already resulted in more frequent and severe wildfires, hurricanes, floods, droughts and winter storms, to name some examples.



Environmental Impacts

Then there's biodiversity loss, another fallout of climate change that's threatening rainforests and coral reefs and accelerating species extinction. Take rainforests, which act as natural carbon sinks by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But as rampant deforestation is occurring everywhere from Brazil's Amazon to Borneo, fewer trees mean that rainforests are becoming carbon sources, emitting more carbon than they're absorbing. Meanwhile, coral reefs are dying as warming ocean temperatures trigger bleaching events, which cause corals to reject algae, their main food and life source. Fewer trees, coral reefs and other habitats also equate to fewer species. Known as the sixth mass extinction, a 2019 UN report revealed that up to a million plant and animal species could become extinct within decades.

Human Impact

It can be easy to overlook climate change in day-to-day life, or even realize that climate change is behind it. Notice there's yet another romaine lettuce recall due to E. Coli? Research suggests that E. Coli bacteria are becoming more common in our food sources as it adapts to climate change. Can't find your favorite brand of coffee beans anymore? Or that the price has doubled? Climate change is affecting that too. Climate change is also worsening air quality and seasonal allergies, along with polluting tap water. Not least, many preliminary studies have also drawn a line between climate change and the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that is still gripping much of the world. Future pandemics are likely to happen more frequently until the root causes, such as deforestation, are addressed.

Speaking of larger-scale issues, global water scarcity is already happening more frequently. The Caribbean is facing water shortages due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall; Australia's dams may run dry by 2022 as severe wildfires increase and Cape Town, South Africa has already faced running out of water.

As touched upon earlier, it's one thing to be inconvenienced by a lack of romaine lettuce for a couple of weeks or higher coffee bean prices, but reports warn how climate change will continue to threaten global food security, to the point of triggering a worldwide food crisis if temperatures surpass two degrees Celsius.

Many of these factors are already contributing to climate migration, forcing large numbers of people to relocate to other parts of the world in search of better living conditions.

Unless more immediate, drastic action is taken to combat climate change, future generations will have to contend with worst-case scenario projections by the end of the 21st century, not limited to coastal cities going underwater, including Miami; lethal heat levels from South Asia to Central Africa; and more frequent extreme weather events involving hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, droughts, floods, blizzards and more.

What's Happening and Why?

Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington, UK. Chris Conway / Moment / Getty Images

The Earth's temperature has largely remained stable until industrial times and the introduction of greenhouse gases. These gases have forced the atmosphere to retain heat, as evidenced by rising global temperatures. As the planet grows warmer, glaciers melt faster, sea levels rise, severe flooding increases and droughts and extreme weather events become more deadly.



The Greenhouse Effect

In the late 1800s, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius studied the connection between the amount of atmospheric carbon and its ability to warm and cool the Earth, and while his initial calculations suggested extreme warming as carbon increased, researchers didn't start to take human-induced climate change seriously until the late 20th century.

But proof of human-led climate change can be traced to the 1850s, and satellites are among the ways that scientists have been tracking increased greenhouse gases and their climate impact in more recent years. Climate researchers have also documented warmer oceans, ocean acidification, shrinking ice sheets, decreased snow amounts and extreme weather as among the events resulting from greenhouse gases heating the planet.

Numerous factors contribute to the production of greenhouse gases, known as the greenhouse effect. One of the biggest causes involve burning fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas, to power everything from cars to daily energy needs (electricity, heat). From 1970-2011, fossil fuels have comprised 78 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Big Ag is another greenhouse contributor, particularly beef production, with the industry adding 10 percent in 2019. This is attributed to clearing land for crops and grazing and growing feed, along with methane produced by cows themselves. In the U.S. alone, Americans consumed 27.3 billion pounds of beef in 2019.

Then there's rampant deforestation occurring everywhere from the Amazon to Borneo. A 2021 study from Rainforest Foundation Norway found that two-thirds of the world's rainforests have already been destroyed or degraded. In Brazil, deforestation reached a 12-year-high in 2020 under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. As it stands, reports predict that the Amazon rainforest will collapse by 2064. Rainforests are important carbon sinks, meaning the trees capture and remove carbon from the atmosphere. As rainforests collapse, the remaining trees will begin emitting more greenhouse gases than they're absorbing.

Meanwhile, a recent study revealed that abandoned oil and gas wells are leaking more methane than previously believed, with U.S. wells contributing up to 20 percent of annual methane emissions.

Not least is the cement industry. Cement is heavily used throughout the global construction industry, and accounts for around eight percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

Natural Climate Change

Granted, natural climate change exists as well, and can be traced throughout history, from solar radiation triggering the Ice Ages to the asteroid strike that rapidly raised global temperatures and eliminated dinosaurs and many other species in the process. Other sources of natural climate change impacts include volcano eruptions, ocean currents and orbital changes, but these sources generally have smaller and shorter-term environmental impacts.

How We Can Combat Climate Change

Participant holding a sign at the climate march on Sept. 20, 2020, in Manhattan. A coalition of climate, Indigenous and racial justice groups gathered at Columbus Circle to kick off Climate Week with the Climate Justice Through Racial Justice march. Erik McGregor / LightRocket / Getty Images

While the latest studies and numbers can often feel discouraging about society's ability to prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening, there's still time to take action.



As a Society

In 2015 at COP 21 in Paris, 197 countries came together to sign the Paris Agreement, an international climate change treaty agreeing to limit global warming in this century to two degrees Celsius, and ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels; it's believed that the planet has warmed one degree Celsius since 1750. Studies show that staying within the two-degree range will prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening. Achieving this goal requires participating parties to drastically slash greenhouse gas emissions sooner rather than later. However, there have already been numerous setbacks since then, from former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement in 2020 to world leaders, such as China, the world's biggest polluter, failing to enact aggressive climate action plans. Yet many of the treaty participants have been slow to implement changes, putting the world on track to hit 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century even if the initial goals are met. However, it's worth noting that U.S. President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement in 2021, and pledged to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2030.

Then there's the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 global agreement to phase out ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals that were commonly used in air-conditioning, refrigeration and aerosols. Recent studies show that parts of the ozone are recovering, proving that a unified commitment to combatting climate change issues does make a difference.

On a smaller scale, carbon offset initiatives allow companies and individuals to invest in environmental programs that offset the amount of carbon that's produced through work or lifestyle. For example, major companies (and carbon emitters) such as United Airlines and Shell have pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in part by participating in carbon offset programs that remove carbon from the atmosphere. The problem is that these companies are still producing high levels of fossil fuel emissions.

While individuals can make a small impact through carbon offsets, the greater responsibility lies with carbon-emitting corporations to find and implement greener energy alternatives. This translates to car companies producing electric instead of gas vehicles or airlines exploring alternative fuel sources. It also requires major companies to rely more on solar and wind energy for their energy needs.

In Our Own Lives

While it's up to corporations to do the heavy lifting of carbon reduction, that doesn't mean individuals can't make a difference. Adopting a vegan lifestyle, using public transportation, switching to an electric car and becoming a more conscious consumer are all ways to help combat climate change.

Veganism

Consuming meat relies on clearing land for crops and animals, while raising and killing livestock contributes to about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization. By comparison, choosing a plant-based diet could reduce greenhouse gas footprints by as much as 70 percent, especially when choosing local produce and products.

Public Transportation

Riding public trains, subways, buses, trams, ferries and other types of public transportation is another easy way to lower your carbon footprint, considering that gas-powered vehicles contribute 95 percent of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Electric Vehicles

Electric cars and trucks have come down in price as more manufacturers enter the field, and these produce far lower emissions than their gas counterparts. Hybrid vehicles are another good alternative for lowering individual emission contributions.

Conscious Consumption

Buying locally produced food and items is another way to maintain a lower carbon footprint, as the products aren't shipped or driven long distances. Supporting small companies that are committed to sustainability is another option, especially when it comes to clothes. Fast fashion has become a popular option thanks to its price point, but often comes at the expense of the environment and can involve unethical overseas labor practices. Not least, plastic saturates every corner of the consumer market, but it's possible to find non-plastic alternatives with a little research, from reusable produce bags to baby bottles.

Climate Activism

Those interested in becoming even more involved can join local climate action organizations. Popular groups include the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, to name a few. Voting, volunteering, calling local representatives and participating in climate marches are additional ways to raise your voice.

Takeaway

It's taken centuries to reach a climate tipping point, with just a matter of decades left to prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening. But there's still hope of controlling a warming climate as long as individuals, companies and nations make an immediate concerted effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions. As the world already experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic, a rapid unified response can make all the difference.

Meredith Rosenberg is a senior editor at EcoWatch. She holds a Master's from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in NYC and a B.A. from Temple University in Philadelphia.
Americans do love their denim, so much so that the average consumer buys four pairs of jeans a year. In China's Xintang province, a hub for denim, 300 million pairs are made annually. Just as staggering is the brew of toxic chemicals and hundreds of gallons of water it takes to dye and finish one pair of jeans. The resulting environmental damage to rivers, ecosystems and communities in China, Bangladesh and India is the subject of a new documentary called The RiverBlue: Can Fashion Save the Planet?.

It is estimated that 70 percent of Asia's rivers and lakes are contaminated by the 2.5 billion gallons of wastewater produced by that continent's textile industry. In scene after scene in the film, the dark frothy spill off can be seen rushing out of dye facilities while a cadre of scientists and environmental experts detail the public health crisis that has resulted from the largely unregulated manufacturing process.

Co-directed by award-winning documentarians David McIlvride and Roger Williams and produced by Lisa Mazzotta, RiverBlue has won 13 awards globally including Best Documentary at Raindance in London and will be receiving the Green Drop Award from Filmambiente at the World Water council on World Water day, March 22. Three years in the making, the film follows internationally celebrated river conservationist, Mark Angelo, as he paddles the rivers devastated by the chemical waste and the local communities who rely on these rivers for drinking and bathing. These communities suffer from a high incidence of cancers, gastric, skin and related issues afflicting both their residents and factory laborers.

Mark Angelo (left) paddles a river devastated by a toxic brew of chemical waste from the denim and leather industries with Roger Williams (right). RiverBlue

The Chemicals in Your Jeans



What makes the process of making jeans so poisonous to people and planet? Consider just one of the most popular types of jeans todaydistressed. To get that "lived in" look, denim is subjected to several chemical-intensive washes. Campaigners from the environmental group Greenpeace, who tested the outflows near dyeing and finishing facilities in the top denim producing towns in Asia, found five heavy metals (cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead and copper) in 17 out of 21 water and sediment samples taken from throughout Xintang one of the locales featured in the project. Toxic campaigners in China also discovered heavy metals like manganese, which can be associated with brain damage, in the rivers.

These chemicals don't stay put. They can also be transported to our North American oceans, atmosphere and food chains and accumulates in places far away from their original source.

Where Should the Change Be?

The question the film poses to viewers: Are brand-name clothing corporations disregarding the environment in their zeal to make their clothes faster and cheaper for the consumer? "Low cost clothing has a high cost attached to it, one to the environment and public health," explains Angelo.

The solution the film's producers unveil is two-fold: through innovation and consumer education there can be change.

Director David McIlvride was determined to find brands making jeans which didn't do damage to the environment. He found the father of distressed jeans: Francois Girbaud who introduced the eponymous stone washed jean decades ago. "It took 40 yrs. before we realized what we made and what we did was wrong," says Girbaud of using permanganate in the 1970s. "If people knew that the spraying of permanganate on your jeans to give you that acid- wash look was killing the guy doing the spraying, would you still want that look? I don't think the customer is aware of what is happening abroad. We have to change the process of making jeans and brands have to be willing to invest because we are destroying the planet," says Girbaud.

A Better Jean Through Technology

In California now, the designer was trying to re-establish himself as manufacturer of good jeans when McIlvride found him. "He led us to the Spanish company, Jeanologia where they distress jeans by engraving images on the fabrics with lasers (light and air) and eliminating water without increasing the cost," says McIlvride. They are now considered a leading industry innovator.

Jeanologia distressed jean.

It was a trip to China in the mid 90s that made Alex Penades and the other execs at Jeanologia want to change the way they did business. At the time the company was a jeans washing consultancy for finishers researching and investigating industry solutions.



"Once we saw the pollution in the rivers and the workers exposed to the chemicals we knew we had to innovate." Jeanologia now creates technology to treat and finish jeans (giving them a certain feel or aesthetic). "We started searching for ways to make garments in a more sustainable way. We have been dyeing clothes with water since the beginning of time and we faced the reality that even though it had been done this way in the mass consumer world, it was not sustainable," explains Penades.

Jeanologia began working with Girbaud in 2003 and still does. They developed several technologies using light and air to finish jeans using little water and no chemicals. "It wasn't pretty at first and for designers the look is the most important thing," he says referring to their first prototypes back in 1996. "It took us a while to get better to convince industrial finishers to make that shift," says Penades who works with brands like Levi Strauss, V.F. Corp (makers of Lee and Wrangler)., PVH Corp. (Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger), Inditex (Zara), H&M, Uniqlo and Marks & Spencer among others. Today, laser technology can give a pair of jeans a worn look instead of sandblasting or hand sanding which can be lethal or detrimental to workers and the environment. Their G2 ozone treatments introduced in 2005, fade down the color of a jean instead of using chemicals like bleach or hypochloryte. In 2011, they unveiled eflow technology that uses air (nanobubbles) instead of water to dye jeans and give them properties like softness and wrinkle repelling. The company is also expanding, working on the technology for knits, wool, cottons and blends.

RiverBlue

Using these innovations, an average pair of jeans requires just a glass of water to finish when it used to require 300 liters. "It requires a big capital investment," says Penades of the technology. Depending on the business model the capital investment is made by the dyeing and finishing facilities or brands. "In the beginning it was like preaching in the desert," he says. "Everyone was comfortable doing things in the same way as always. Why should anyone change their methods of production if they are doing well?"



Jeanologia has Environmental Impact software to measure the footprint of every style and brands know where they are and how they can improve. Penades has seen the tide started to change. Three years ago, about 16 percent of the jeans in the world were made in a sustainable way he says. Now 35 percent of the jeans are made more sustainably. "About 6 billion pairs of jeans are made a year so that means 2 billion pairs are now being made in a more sustainable way."

Innovation Through Science

While filming the movie, most denim manufacturers barred the filmmakers from shooting inside their facilities. Italdenim, one of three denim manufacturers in Italy, invited them to film at their facility. President Luigi Caccia had been making denim for more than 40 years when he too realized rivers were dying and workers were becoming sick from the chemicals they were exposed to. In 2014, he sought to create a cleaner dyeing process. First his company invested in a machine, the only one of its kind in the world, that takes indigo dye and uses electrochemicals (Co2 and O2) and no water to make the colors for their denim.

They then found a company using chitosan, which comes from the waste of the food industry (it is the natural derivative of chitin which is the exoskeleton of shrimp and crab) and applied it to the yarn after dyeing it. "It creates a shell to protect the color so dyes will not rub off and less dye is needed overall to color the denim. This new process saves chemistry, water and energy and is biodegradable. Because there are no chemicals, the process doesn't create skin problems. "Your skin absorbs 65% of what you put on it, good or bad. We introduce chemicals to our skin with the food we eat, the environment we live in and our clothes. You can choose if you want to smoke or not but no one tells you that your denim may be harmful to your body," says Caccia.

The Cost to Make a More Sustainable Jean

Italdenim sells their denim to 30-40 brands around the world including Joe's Jeans and Mother Jeans in the U.S. "It was important to find solutions that did not increase the cost of the fabric so it would be available to all. If a brand wants to buy a sustainable denim it should cost the same as the alternative. We should be able to produce that or we should find ourselves a new job."

Penades says brands have a choice to manufacture in a traditional way or a sustainable way. "The water and energy of traditional production is costly and so is pollution. Today, including the capital investment, you can produce the same product at the same price. Brands can do it. If the consumer is aware they have to request these kinds of products today. Consumers must also know what their impact on the environment is because of their acts of consumption. It's all about co-responsibility."



Girbaud agrees. He now hears customers asking where things come from and how clothes are made. "Brands are finally talking about this, too. I just hope I live to see the changes."

Watch the trailer for RiverBlue below:
By Carly Nairn

For International Women's Day, we decided to honor those lady writers bringing climate change to everyone's minds and eyeballs through world-building, apocalyptic scenarios. Pandemics, extreme weather, droughts and a militarized process of securing natural resources are common elements in climate fiction or "cli-fi"and our anxiety-induced states make this the perfect time for an artful examination of the future of the environment.

The writers listed here are questioning, critiquing and speculating about what various kinds of worlds, including the one in which we presently live, can look like. In fact, the burgeoning genre of cli-fi has already sparked new avenues. Take solarpunk, a sub-genre that ultimately conveys an optimistic view of the future, often by envisioning how present political and cultural movements might realize their missionssuch as Black Lives Matter, #TimesUp, #NODAPL and the end of late-stage capitalismand ultimately offering conclusions about how we can save ourselves from ourselves. Solarpunk and cli-fi stories are marked by conjecture about the future, critique of the present and evaluation of the past. Frequently, environmental justice is a central theme, and humanity ultimately claims stewardship of the natural world.

This round-up includes works from cli-fi's up-and-comers, as well as some bestsellers and a nod to the legacy writers who started it all.

The Broken Earth Series by N.K. Jemisin

Back-to-back Hugo Award winner Jemisin brings a memento mori to life with the Broken Earth trilogy. The title of the first book, The Fifth Season, references an annihilation event that occurs every few centuries due to climate change. All of Jemisin's work is steeped in mythologycharacters understand their place within the hierarchy of "use-caste;" that is, until circumstances or natural grit compels them to undertake extraordinary endeavors.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver is not your typical genre writershe's best known for mainstream best-sellers such as The Poisonwood Bible and the wonderful The Lacuna. Flight Behavior, on the other hand, feels like it could be a news report a few years down the road. A Tennessean housewife goes on a hike and finds a valley covered in millions of monarch butterflies whose usual winter grounds in Mexico have been displaced by climate change.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is set in the Great Lakes region in the near-future, after a swine flu pandemic known as the "Georgia Flu" has devastated the world, wiping out most of the population. A troupe of actors tries to bring joy to those who are left by staging performances depicting life from a bygone era. The novel includes multiple character arcs that intersect and at times leave the reader guessing. Station Eleven is ultimately a story about the creative spirit within people, and how it can simultaneously shape and destroy our world.

California by Edan Lepucki

Post-apocalyptic California is becoming a common trope in cli-fi, but it holds sway in Lepucki's astute portrait of human fragility. In the 2060's, a young couple finds out they are pregnant, and decide to leave Los Angeles for the wilderness, so as to find a community that can help the young couple raise the kid. In this novel, "Communities" refer to havens of those wealthy and lucky enough to have survived after a flu-ravaged most of the population. Like Silicon Valley's real-life burgeoning community of wealthy and exclusive survivalists, California's communities, located deep in the wilderness, include private security forces to protect those within them. Like most people who rely on cell phones, delivery services and cheap transportation to get through the day, Frida and Cal are not your typical lovers of the outdoors, but still, they try to make life work in a world that won't.

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Another novel set in a dystopian California, Watkins's debut takes place in the near future, when the land is ravaged by extreme drought (this, of course, hits especially close to home for Californians). It hasn't rained in years, and an expanding, shifting-sand hellscape reminiscent of the one portrayed in Mad Max, the "Amargosa Dune Sea," has swallowed the Southwest. Los Angeles is left mostly abandoned. The main character is Luz, an orphaned model who as a baby was adopted by the Bureau of Conservation to be a poster child for water infrastructure expansion effortswhat a way to get famous. Watkins's narration feels flimsy at timesyou want to know more about Luz and why she makes the decisions she does. However, the story maintains suspense in that it's difficult to choose who is more likely to survivethose in the Dune Sea, living each day like it's their last, or those trying to make a world better than the one they currently inhabit.

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Noami Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Oreskes is one of the few cli-fi writers who can safely say she has an insider's take on the potentialities of climate change. As the Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, her daily life involves studies in geophysics and global warming. According to her novel, the collapse of western civilization happens in 2093, after the West Antarctic Ice Sheet disintegrates, and the global order is upended due to mass migration. The story takes place 300 years after the "Great Collapse," and is told through the point of view of a scholar in the Second People's Republic of China, who writes about the human folly of not heeding earlier warnings of ensuing catastrophe.

The Carbon Diaries: 2015 by Saci Lloyd

The Carbon Diaries: 2015 is a 2009 young adult novel set in the United Kingdom after weather disasters have left 16-year-old Londoner Laura weary of the future, and a carbon-rationing program has been instituted. Nobody flies in a plane anymore, because it is too expensive, and each citizen's carbon ration card has to be used on essentials, like starting home appliances and taking public transit. Reviewer Rebecca Onion touted the The Carbon Diaries as a prime example of a "soft apocalypse," story, in that it "chronicles societies changing as a result of a series of rolling crises, rather than in the blink of an eye, as from a nuclear blast."



Disasters in the First World by Olivia Clare

In Disasters, a short-story collection populated with imperfect people, drinking water in Las Vegas costs more than booze or drugs. An affront to the price of commodities, perhaps, but the scenario's not as far-fetched as we would like to think, with major cities such as Cape Town presently on the brink of waterlessness. Clare, who's mostly known for her poetry, is a master of language. Her fine-tuning is on full display in the story Petur, which was published in 2013 in Ecotone and fetched a 2014 O. Henry Prize. After a mother and son are stranded in a remote Icelandic town in the wake of 2010's volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (what a nameand it's real!), they suffer mental decline.

Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor

This short story, published online by Lightspeed Magazine, is set in a future Nigeria, where ecological destruction has taken root"the fish, shrimps and crayfish in the creeks were dying. Drinking the water shriveled women's wombs and eventually made men urinate blood." Okorafor, who has seen a boost in popularity following the recent announcement that her 2010 novel Who Fears Death will be adapted into an HBO series (with George R.R. Martin as executive producer), weaves elements of Nigerian folklore and history into all of her stories. In Spider the Artist, Zombies, or Anansi Droidsnamed after the African master storyteller who often takes the shape of an arachnidguard a pipeline crucial to the Nigerian government's control over its people, and its ongoing supply chain to the U.S.

A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World by A.C. Wise

This short story, from Upper Rubber Boot Books' Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation anthology, is told through diary entries that toggle back of forth through the 22nd and 23rd centuries. Set mainly in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago at the top of the world, one account illustrates the harsh beauty of aggravated circumstances. "Today the light is pure," it states. "There isn't a cloud in the sky to cut it, no breeze to stir it off our skins. All the shadows are sharp-edged. There's so much of it, it's easy to forget it's there." It's always sunny at the end of the world, and the unnamed narrator reminisces about good and tough times, and about what's to come next. Wise encapsulates the feelings of awe and dread that the natural world tends to inspire.

Now, let's not forget the greats.

Many of the writers mentioned above would not be on this list if not for the shoulders of giantesses on which they stand. The following three authors are some of the best in the genre, periodand their legacies continue to haunt and astound us.

Octavia Butler, best known for The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents, Kindred, Lilith's Brood

Butler, a cornerstone of Afrofuturisman aesthetic, philosophy and critique that explores intersections of African culture and technologyis unparalleled when it comes to world-building capabilities. The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents so eerily predicted the rise and election of Donald Trump that one might wonder whether Butler used a crystal ball when she got writer's block. (This hypothesis, however, does a disservice to Butler's narrative talent.) The Parable series, inspired by news reports about climate change and late-stage capitalismand which Butler was never able to finish, due to her sudden and untimely death in 2006conjures a world devastated by global warming. Drought and rising sea levels scourge the Earth. Most people live in gated neighborhoods. Pharmaceuticals have replaced reality with psychotropic experiences. Women's oppression is laid bare"nags" who speak their mind get their tongues cut out. After President Donner, a nincompoop who promises jobs to the people, is elected, an opposition candidate, the charlatan Andrew Steele Jarret, dedicates his campaign to "making America great again." It's all very disturbingespecially when you find yourself nodding in agreement to teenage protagonist Lauren's claim that, "People have changed the climate of the world."

Margaret Atwood, best known for The Handmaid's Tale, the MaddAddam trilogy, The Heart Goes Last

It would be difficult to argue that the cli-fi genre is what is todaychock-full of talented writers who can conjure the strange, the tortured and the triumphantwithout Atwood having paved the way. In her MaddAddam series, readers are immersed in worlds defined by genetic engineering, religious zealotry and internet and video culturesubjects so increasingly relevant that Atwood has become required reading in many schools. And yet, while reading Atwood, one cannot help but feel optimistic about the human capability to endure. In Oryx and Crake, the first book of the MaddAddam trilogy, a group of vegetarians are devoted to preserving all plant and animal life. They predict a natural disaster that will wipe out all species. When it comes to fruition, Atwood's characters showcase the best and worst of humanity.

Ursula K. LeGuin, best known for The Dispossessed, the Earthsea Cycle Series, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven

A champion of genre fiction, LeGuin's recent death, following a prolific career in which she (masterfully) wrote everything from children's fantasy to personal essays to poetry, amounted to a loss of one of the most brilliant authors in American letters. Everyone has a favorite LeGuin, based on personal preference and often, on where they were in life when they read it (The Dispossessed, all the way!). LeGuin not only took a hatchet to cliches in sci-fi about female or simply gendered, character representationshe liked to include sexless or asexual entitiesand served as a constant source of inspiration in terms of approaching writing as passion, but she also cared about the environment deeply. And this shows through her work as requiem.

Reposted with permission from our media associate SIERRA Magazine.
A federal court rejected the Trump administration's attempt to shut down a landmark lawsuit initiated by 21 young plaintiffs suing the government for its creation of climate danger.

The three-judge panel with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied the White House's writ of mandamus petition filed in June, a rarely used legal maneuver that would have dismissed Juliana v. United States.

In the unanimous decision Wednesday, Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas called the petition a "drastic and extraordinary remedy reserved for really extraordinary causes" and the Trump administration's motion did not satisfy that standard.

"The issues that the defendants raise on mandamus are better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation," Thomas wrote, thus allowing the case to move forward.

"The Ninth Circuit just gave us the green light for trial," said Julia Olson, the chief legal counsel for Our Children's Trust, the organization spearheading the lawsuit. "We will ask the district court for a trial date in 2018 where we will put the federal government's dangerous energy system and climate policies on trial for infringing the constitutional rights of young people."

Juliana v. United States was filed in 2015 on behalf of 21 young people who argue that their constitutional and public trust rights are being violated by the government's failure to take significant action on global climate change.

The Center for Biological Diversity, one of many environmental organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of the suit, celebrated the news.

"This is a huge victory for young people fighting to protect their future from climate chaos," Kassie Siegel, the director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute, said. "It should be the case that forces the government to reverse its stance on climate change and take the rapid, ambitious action we need."

The young plaintiffs are looking forward to seeing the case go to trial.

"I'm grateful that my fellow plaintiffs and I can have our voices heard, and that climate science can have its day in court," Victoria Barrett, an 18-year-old plaintiff from White Plains, New York, said. "The Trump administration tried to avoid trial, but they can't ignore us. Our future is our choice and I believe the courts will stand with our constitutional rights."

Kiran Oommen, a 21-year-old plaintiff from Seattle, Washington, added: "The question of the last few years has not been 'do we have a case' but rather 'how far will the federal government go to prevent justice.' We have seen that they are willing to go to many lengths to cover up their crimes and maintain the status quo, but not even the Trump administration can go far enough to escape the inevitable tide of social progress. The Ninth Circuit's decision affirms that we are on the side of justice, and for justice we are moving forward. We'll see you in court."
As we stood on our boards and paddled away from the cove at Malpais and turned south past the wave-break, I felt a rush of what Costa Ricans call pura vida"pure life." The wind was calm, the sun glaring, and the sea slightly rolling along this headland that includes the 3,000-acre Cabo Blanco National Park. Our guide, Andy Seidensticker, had moved to Costa Rica just to surf and paddleboard these waves at the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula on the Pacific coast.

There are blessings as well as problems amid Costa Rica's abundant waters. Poudre Riverkeeper Gary Wockner felt the rush of what locals call "pure life" on a paddleboarding trip off the Nicoya Peninsula near Malpais.

This excursion with Carolina Chavarria, executive director of Nicoya Peninsula Waterkeeper, topped off my water-filled trip to Costa Rica this past winter. With the park to our left, we paddled just outside the wave-break, chatting, watching wildlife, soaking in the sun until we reached a warm freshwater spring that bubbled up in the ocean about 100 meters offshore. Surrounded by the bubbles, we sat on our boards and rested before paddling back to the cove. As the wind picked up and swells rose higher, the return paddling became more strenuous, as did our conversation about the watery challenges facing Costa Rica.

There are as many problems as blessings in the country's abundant waters, and Chavarria and her staff are energetically confronting those problems, many of which are caused by the country's booming tourist industry. Costa Rica has exemplary environmental laws but they are poorly enforced. Restaurants, hotels, and home- and road-construction generate sewage and runoff that flow directly into rivers and the ocean.

In Santa Theresa, the home of the Nicoya Peninsula Waterkeeper, five miles from Malpais, the water supply descends from the country's inland mountains out of a massive and rapidly expanding network of dams and through a snaking tangle of canals, pipes and dikes. Many of Costa Rica's dams also produce hydroelectric power, which provides 80 percent of Costa Rica's electricity. Government and business officials speak of this as clean energy" that is carbon free." Nothing could be further from the truth.

A few months before visiting Costa Rica I had written a post for EcoWatch, Dams Cause Climate Change: They Are Not Clean Energy." Based on research I'd done in fighting dam proposals on my own river, the Cache le Poudre, as well as my work advocating for the already-dammed Colorado River, I've come to believe that hydropower is one of the biggest environmental problems our planet faces. Construction of hydroelectric dams around the world is surging dramatically, guided by the false premise that they produce clean energy, even as study after study refutes this claim.

How Does Hydropower Cause Methane Emissions?

The principal environmental menace of hydroelectric dams is caused by organic materialvegetation, sediment and soilthat flows from rivers into reservoirs and decomposes, emitting methane and carbon dioxide into the water and the air throughout the generation cycle. Studies indicate that in tropical environments and high-sediment areas, where organic material is highest, dams can release more greenhouse gas than coal-fired power plants. Philip Fearnside, a research professor at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon, in Manaus, Brazil, and one of the most cited scientists on the subject of climate change, has called these dams methane factories." And, according to Brazil's National Institute of Space Research, dams are the largest single anthropogenic source of methane, being responsible for 23 percent of all methane emissions due to human activities."

Even that number 23 may be low; the emissions can be huge even in temperate climates. A 2014 article in Climate Central offered a disturbing comparison: Imagine nearly 6,000 dairy cows doing what cows do, belching and being flatulent for a full year. That's how much methane was emitted from one Ohio reservoir in 2012. [Yet] reservoirs and hydropower are often thought of as climate-friendly because they don't burn fossil fuels to produce electricity." Another 2014 article in the same publication pointed out that, because very few dams and reservoirs are being studied, their methane emissions are mostly unaccounted for in climate-change analyses across the planet.

An article published in the 2013 book Climate Governance in the Developing World focused this failing on Costa Rica:

These [methane] emissions, however, are neither measured nor taken into account in calculating Costa Rica's carbon balance. Given that the nation's electricity demand is projected to increase by 6 percent per year for the foreseeable future, and that the majority of this is to be met with increased hydroelectricity production, including such emissions in neutrality calculations would probably make it quite difficult for the country ever to achieve its goals."

Indeed, in February and March of this year, Costa Rica's government-owned electric utility issued press releases announcing that the country is on track to reach its carbon neutrality" goals by 2021, stating that  88 percent of its electricity came from clean sources" in 2014 and that, during the first 75 days of 2015, it had been 100 percent powered by clean" and renewable" energy. News agencies across the world spread this misinformation about hydroelectric power. CNN claimed the prize for irresponsible reporting when it ran a TV news-segment, A Carbonless Year for Costa Rica." More surprising still, some American environmentalists also took the bait. Green groups, including many national organizations, splashed the stories and scientifically false information across social media350.org ran a large Facebook meme celebrating Costa Rica's achievement.

Read page 1

Hydropower's Methane Bomb Threatens COP 21

Even worse, the myth of carbon-free hydropower is embedded in the Kyoto protocol's  Clean Development Mechanism" to address planetary climate change, and is increasingly being implemented by countries in attendance at COP 21 in Paris. The program calls for a bigger investment in hydropower than in any other type of purported clean energy." Such recommendations heavily influence funding-decisions made by the U.S. government and international lenders such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In fact, the World Bank states on its website: As demand grows for clean, reliable, affordable energy, along with the urgency of expanding access to reach the unserved, hydropower has assumed critical importance."

In the U.S. the Department of Energy published a report in 2014 calling for new hydropower development across more than three million U.S. rivers and streams," and it is not unreasonable to fear that the United Nations Conference on Climate Change later this year in Paris will be polluted with hydropower = clean energy" propaganda.

A U.S. government pamphlet touts the benefits of hydropower. Because very few of the world's dams are being studied, the huge amounts of methane they emit are mostly unaccounted for in climate-change analyses.

As governments and funders have gravitated more and more to hydropower over the last 10 years, the dam industry has accordingly ramped up its green washing." It pretends, as it has for decades, that its activities are benign, while dams and reservoirs have flooded and displaced communities, destroyed rivers and perpetrated massive human rights abuses across the planet, under the false promise of clean and renewable energy."

In the U.S., along the Colorado River, the directors of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams, two of the biggest river-destruction schemes in human history, continue to claim those dams supply clean energy" and erroneously calculate the carbon offset" of their hydropower versus the alternative of coal power. In 2013, at a public meeting of 1,200 people in Las Vegas, I heard government officials make such claim (slide 13), which have repeatedly been repudiated by Colorado Riverkeeper John Weisheit and others.

Like the tobacco industry refusing for decades to accept that its product causes cancer, the dam industry, in public statements and advertisements, flouts the science that links methane emissions to hydropower. And to make matters worse, the U.S. Department of Energy reinforces the myth of clean hydropower.

This myth seems to permeate energy discussions everywhere. A week after my paddleboard adventure, a whitewater guide on Costa Rica's Rio Tenorio, in the country's northwest coastal area, described to me and a group of fellow rafters how his country's rivers had been harnessed beneficially to produce clean energy" and clear the way to a nearly carbon-free future.

Costa Rica is now completing the largest hydropower dam in Central America, a project that will likely devastate the Reventazon River. The 426-foot-tall structure is being touted as a shining example of Costa Rica's commitment to the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, and the Clean Development Mechanism," in particular. The methane emissions it will create do not appear to have been considered, and may never be measured. But as troubling as Costa Rica's situation may be, it represents just one small piece of an enormous global problem.

Dams are being built at a record pace all across the world. The Chinese government recently proposed to build the largest hydropower project in the world across the border in Tibet. Just one of the dams to be included would be three times the size of the current world-record-holder, Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Further, the conservation group International Rivers reports that, Currently, no less than 3,700 hydropower projects are under construction or in the pipeline" across the planet.

Hydropower is dirty energy, and should be regarded just like fossil fuel. And environmentalists, far from embracing it, should be battling to shut down hydropower plants and block the arrival of new ones just as vigorously as we work to close and prevent construction of dirty coal plants.

At this critical moment in the planet's history, philanthropic funders that support action against climate change must fund a movement against hydropower. Unless the scientific truth about methane emissions from dams is more widely acknowledged, pura vida will never be achieved in Costa Rica or anywhere else.

Gary Wockner, PhD, is an international environmental writer and activist based in Colorado where he also works to protect the Cache la Poudre and Colorado Rivers. Contact: [email protected].

This article originally appeared in Waterkeeper Magazine, Summer 2015, Volume 11, Issue 2.

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(Photo: Courtesy Gatestone Institute)Shama Bibi (left) and Shahzad Masih, a Christian couple and parents of three children, were burned to death by a Muslim lynch mob in Pakistan because of a blasphemy accusation.

An Algerian court has sentenced a Christian man in Algeria to five years in prison, the maximum term, and dealt him a heavy fine for blasphemy against Islam and its prophet, for a social media post.

Slimane Bouhafs, 49, was arrested on July 31 for posting a message on social media about the light of Jesus overcoming the "lie" of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, Evangelical Focus reports.

He also published photos showing the execution of a civilian by an Islamist terrorist.

Such material is judged by the authorities to insult Islam, the state religion in Algeria, according to its Constitution.

The penal code provides for a penalty of three to five years in prison, along with a heavy fine, against anyone convicted of insulting Islam and Muhammad, its prophet, World Watch Monitor reports.

The Algerian Constitution deems that such material insults Islam, the State religion.

The country's penal code provides for a penalty of three to five years in prison, along with a heavy fine, against anyone convicted of insulting Islam and Muhammad.

However, the vice-president of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH), Said Salhi, denounced what he called "this attack" on the guarantees of freedom of conscience and worship enshrined in Algeria's Constitution.

The human rights group said it wished to "alert public opinion and defenders of liberties to this new attack against the rights guaranteed by national laws and the international instruments of human rights."

LADDH also called for Bouhafs' unconditional release and for "a broad mobilization to push back an unlawful act, to let justice triumph."

Bouhafs' sentence shocked his family, who denounced what they called a "sham" trial of the man who became a Christian in 1997, and who was baptized in 2006.

His daughter, Afaf, said her father is man who has always defended the interests of his country from a young age and he is known for his commitment to democracy and religious freedom in all his writings published on his Facebook page.

Bouhafs' family expressed deep concern, as he suffers from a chronic illness and his health may deteriorate as he goes to prison.
Crash leaves Cavendish with fractured rib



Team Dimension Data's Mark Cavendish

Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish was left with a broken rib after crashing on his return from a concussion.

The 32-year-old crashed at high speed during a team time trial at the Tirreno-Adriatico, leaving him with multiple cuts, soft tissue injuries to his knees, hips and hands and swelling to his face, as well as a rib fracture.

The injury makes him a doubt for the Commonwealth Games, which take place next month.

It comes just a couple of weeks after Cavendish suffered a concussion at the Tour of Abu Dhabi.
2018-03-08

Maeci

To celebrate International Womens Day, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Angelino Alfano, announced that the Meeting Room of the Directorate General for Italians Abroad will be named after Ambassador Carla Zuppetti.

Carla Zuppetti served as Director General for Italians Abroad from 2008 to 2012 and, throughout her career, mainly performed consular functions in Countries with a large number of Italian emigrants such as Germany and Switzerland. She was appointed Vice Consul to Basel; Chargee dAffaires ad interim of the Consulate General in Leningrad; Consul in Frankfurt; Counsellor for Emigration in Paris and Ambassador to Berne, where she died on duty.

It is the first time that a Hall of the Foreign Ministry is named after a female diplomat; with this gesture, the Ministry intends to honour the memory of an Ambassador who spent her career life at the service of the State and especially of all the Italians abroad.
The sixth edition of The Tobacco Atlas and its companion website TobaccoAtlas.org* finds the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting vulnerable populations in emerging markets, such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, where people are not protected by strong tobacco control regulations. The report was released at the 17th World Congress on Tobacco OR Health in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Atlas, which is co-authored by American Cancer Society (ACS) and Vital Strategies, graphically details the scale of the tobacco epidemic around the globe. It shows where progress has been made in tobacco control, and describes the latest products and tactics being deployed by the tobacco industry to grow its profits and delay or derail tobacco control efforts. In response to an evolving tobacco control landscape, the Sixth Edition includes new chapters on regulating novel products, partnerships, tobacco industry tactics and countering the industry.

In 2016 alone, tobacco use caused over 7.1 million deaths worldwide (5.1 million in men, 2.0 million in women). Most of these deaths were attributable to cigarette smoking, while 884,000 were related to secondhand smoke. The increase in tobacco-related disease and death has been outpaced by the increase in industry profits. The combined profits of the world's biggest tobacco companies exceeded US $62.27 billion in 2015, the last year on record for all the major companies. This is equivalent to US $9,730 for the death of each smoker, an increase of 39% since the last Atlas was published, when the figure stood at US$7,000.

"Every death from tobacco is preventable, and every government has the power reduce the human and economic toll of the tobacco epidemic," said Jeffrey Drope, PhD, co-editor and author of The Atlas and Vice President, Economic and Health Policy Research at the American Cancer Society. "It starts by resisting the influence of the industry and implementing proven tobacco control policies. The Atlas shows that progress is possible in every region of the world. African countries in particular are at a critical point - both because they are targets of the industry but also because many have opportunity to strengthen policies and act before smoking is at epidemic levels."

"Tobacco causes harm at every stage of its life cycle, from cultivation to disposal," said Dr. Neil Schluger, Vital Strategies' Senior Advisor for Science and co-editor and author of The Atlas. "It is linked to an ever-increasing list of diseases, burdens health systems, and exacerbates poverty, especially when a breadwinner falls ill and dies from tobacco use. At a conservative estimate, there are more than 7 million tobacco-related deaths and global economic costs of two trillion dollars (PPP) each year, not including costs such as those caused by second-hand smoke and the environmental and health damages of tobacco farming. The only way to avert this harm is for all governments to vigorously implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and to enforce the proven strategies that reduce tobacco use."

Tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke costs the global economy more than two trillion dollars (PPP) every year - equivalent to almost 2% of the world's total economic output. More than 1.1 billion people are current smokers, while 360 million people use smokeless tobacco. Low and middle income countries represent over 80% of tobacco users and tobacco-related deaths, placing an increased share of tobacco-related costs on those who can least afford it. A growing proportion of that burden will fall on countries across Africa in the future, if governments do not implement tobacco control policies now to prevent it.

Africa is at a tipping point

The Sixth Edition of The Tobacco Atlas reveals that the tobacco industry deliberately targets countries that lack tobacco control laws and exploits governments, farmers and vulnerable populations across Africa. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, consumption increased by 52% between 1980 and 2016 (from 164 billion to 250 billion sticks). This is being driven by population growth and aggressive tobacco marketing in countries like Lesotho, where prevalence is estimated to have increased from 15% in 2004 to 54% in 2015. Economic growth has increased consumers' ability to afford tobacco products and there is a lack of tobacco control interventions to deter tobacco use. Furthermore, in countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Senegal, smoking is now more common among youth than adults - potentially increasing the future health and economic burden of tobacco in these countries.

Yet Africa has also seen real successes in tobacco control recently, according to The Tobacco Atlas. Ghana and Madagascar have introduced comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Kenya, and Madagascar have implemented graphic warnings on cigarettes, an important intervention in countries with multiple dialects and for citizens in those countries who have low levels of literacy. South Africa has implemented consecutive tobacco tax increases to deter consumption and Kenya has implemented a highly effective track-and-trace system to track and reduce illicit trade. These countries are setting an example to others across the world.

Other examples of effective tobacco control policies

In spite of the tobacco industry's efforts to impede progress, global cigarette consumption and tobacco use prevalence have declined recently thanks to an overall increase in the adoption of proven and innovative tobacco control measures. Tobacco taxes alone could deliver a 30% relative reduction in smoking prevalence by 2025. This would save 38 million lives and $16.9 trillion, just from former smokers becoming healthier.

In 2013, the Philippines implemented one of the largest tobacco tax increases in a low and middle income country, leading more than 1 million smokers to quit. Kenya implemented a successful track and trace system for tobacco products, which helped to stem the illicit market.

Turkey's comprehensive tobacco control strategy reduced smoking prevalence from 39.3% in 2000 to 25.9% in 2015.

Analysis by Australia's government found that plain packaging alone resulted in 108,228 fewer smokers between December 2012 and September 2015.

Brazil has banned all tobacco additives such as flavors used to attract children. WHO predicts that there will be 3 million fewer smokers in Brazil between 2015 and 2025.

"We are proud that our two organizations have worked together for almost two decades to engender a healthier world," said Dr Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society. "The data in The Tobacco Atlas depict a sobering look at the daunting magnitude of the epidemic, but also show considerable progress in places where governments take up solutions that are proven to work. For the first time, more than two billion people are protected by at least one WHO MPOWER measure, but very few countries have taken up every measure. The data are clear that measures like raising taxes and enacting 100% smoke-free air laws indisputably work, but too many governments have not yet committed to adopting them. Our life-saving opportunity lies in that gap."

"The ultimate path to improved tobacco control is political will," said Jose Luis Castro, President and CEO, Vital Strategies. "Strong tobacco control policies deliver a significant return on investment, and The Tobacco Atlas offers the best and most recent data on the tobacco epidemic as a resource for governments to pursue effective strategies. The answer does not lie with the industry: as The Atlas makes clear, there is a complete disconnect between the tobacco industry's claims about harm reduction and its actual work to grow tobacco use among vulnerable populations. Governments must be accountable to their citizens in reducing tobacco use and improving health. They must prepare to rebuff the tobacco industry's challenges to legislation, seek the appropriate assistance to build capacity, and be transparent about the industry's inevitable approaches. We urge governments, advocates, organizations and people who care about health, the environment and development to stand together to reduce this man-made epidemic in pursuit of a healthier planet."

###

About the Authors

The authors of The Tobacco Atlas bring a deep knowledge of the tobacco epidemic and its solutions. The work of a team of global experts is led by two editor-authors. Jeffrey Drope, PhD, is Vice President, Economic and Health Policy Research at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, Georgia and Professor in Residence of Global Public Health at Marquette University. His research focuses on the nexus of public health (including tobacco control, nutrition, physical activity, alcohol misuse and access to care) and economic policymaking, especially trade, investment and taxation. Neil W. Schluger, MD, is Senior Advisor for Science for Vital Strategies as well as Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Environmental Health Science and Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. He is also a founder and director of the East Africa Training Initiative, a Vital Strategies- sponsored project to train pulmonary physicians in Ethiopia. This program is the first of its kind in East Africa.

About the Sixth Edition

The Sixth Edition of The Tobacco Atlas is being launched on March 8, 2018, at the World Conference on Tobacco OR Health in Cape Town. The Atlas compiles, validates and interprets global- and country-level data from multiple sources to present the best and most recent evidence, and build a holistic and accurate picture of the tobacco industry's activities, tobacco use and tobacco control across the globe. In print and online at tobaccoatlas.org - where policy makers, public health practitioners, advocates and journalists may interact with the data - The Atlas graphically details the scale of the tobacco epidemic, progress that has been made in tobacco control, and the latest products and tactics being deployed by the tobacco industry to grow its profits and delay or derail tobacco control efforts. In addition to addressing major developments across all topic areas, new for the Sixth Edition are chapters on regulating novel products, partnerships, tobacco industry tactics and countering the industry. Tobaccoatlas.org features a more graphic-rich interface and new functionality to enable users to hone in on the data points contained within the graphics.

About The American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society is a global grassroots force of nearly 2 million volunteers dedicated to saving lives, celebrating lives, and leading the fight for a world without cancer. From breakthrough research, to free lodging near treatment, a 24/7/365 live helpline, free rides to treatment, and convening powerful activists to create awareness and impact, the Society is the attacking cancer from every angle. For more information go to http://www.cancer.org.

About Vital Strategies

Vital Strategies is a global health organization that believes every person should be protected by a strong public health system. Our team combines evidence-based strategies with innovation to help develop and implement sound public health policies, manage programs efficiently, strengthen data systems, conduct research, and design strategic communication campaigns for policy and behavior change. To find out more, please visit http://www.vitalstrategies.org or Twitter @VitalStrat.
Walking presents many challenges for patients with Parkinson's disease. Among the most burdensome of these challenges is "freezing of gait," the sudden onset of immobility mid-step. It often causes falls and leads to a reduction in quality of life.

A new Tel Aviv University study suggests a novel way of treating the affected areas of the brain that apparently cause freezing of gait. It proposes that transcranial direct-current electrical stimulation of the primary motor cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex significantly ameliorates the condition.

"The effects of multi-target simultaneous stimulation of motor and cognitive networks demand investigation," says Prof. Jeffrey Hausdorff of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine and the Center for Movement Disorders at Tel Aviv Medical Center, who led the research for the study, just published in the journal Movement Disorders.

Research for the study was also conducted by TAU neuroscience doctoral student Moria Dagan; Prof. Nir Giladi of TAU's Sackler School of Medicine and Tel Aviv Medical Center; Dr. Tali Herman of Tel Aviv Medical Center; and a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School led by Dr. Brad Manor and Prof. Lew Lipsitz.

Real and "sham" stimulation examined

The team of scientists examined 20 Parkinson's disease patients, who often experience freezing of gait. The patients received 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation via a cap that the subjects wore on their head on three separate visits. Transcranial direct current stimulation targeted the primary motor cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex simultaneously; the primary motor cortex only; or underwent "sham," placebo stimulation, where the subject feels some tingling sensation, but the amount of stimulation is negligible.

Before and after each round of stimulation, the participants completed a test that provoked freezing of gait, a static and dynamic mobility test (known as "Timed Up and Go"), gait assessment, and a cognitive test for processing speed, selective attention and inhibition control (Stroop test).

"What we found was quite encouraging," says Prof. Hausdorff. "The participants' walking improved after simultaneous stimulation of the primary motor cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, but not after primary motor cortex only or sham stimulation. The results of the study reveal that transcranial direct current stimulation designed to simultaneously target motor and cognitive regions apparently induces immediate aftereffects in the brain that translate into reduced freezing of gait and improvements in executive function and mobility."

Multi-site stimulation most effective

After 20 minutes of multi-site stimulation, the patients' freezing of gait was reduced and mobility and cognition improved -- more than that seen after stimulation of primary motor cortex only or through sham simulation.

"In other words, a larger, more positive effect is obtained when both motor and cognitive areas are targeted," Prof. Hausdorff concludes. "When thinking about treatments for freezing of gait, it is important to target both motor and cognitive functions.

"Even among patients with advanced Parkinson's disease and freezing of gait, it is apparently possible to improve brain function via non-invasive brain stimulation, at least in the short-term, and this has positive, functional consequences."

Together with their collaborators at Harvard Medical School, the TAU-TAMC team is currently conducting a randomized controlled trial to determine the long-term benefits of this multi-site stimulation on freezing of gait and related symptoms.

###

American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) supports Israel's most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. For three years in a row, TAU ranked 9th in the world, and first in Israel, for alumni going on to become successful entrepreneurs backed by significant venture capital, a ranking that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,400 patents have been filed out of the University, making TAU 29th in the world for patents among academic institutions.
Social issues such as hunger, inadequate housing, social isolation, and poverty are linked to poor health, especially as we age. When community organizations and healthcare systems coordinate with each other, they are better able to help us address these concerns individually and as a society.

Food insecurity occurs when people lack access to food or go hungry due to poverty or other challenges. Food insecurity is a serious problem for many older adults. For example, in 2015, 8.3 percent of American households with a family member aged 65 or older and 9.2 percent of all older adults experienced food insecurity.

A research team from the Institute for Health Research, Kaiser Permanente, Colorado, designed a study to learn more about food insecurity and older adults. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

The researchers examined information from a health survey that was given to more than 50,000 older adults between 2012 and 2015. The survey was part of a free Annual Wellness Visit for Medicare members in Kaiser Permanente Colorado. It included a question about food security.

More than 50,000 people answered the question about food insecurity. More than 2,950 people (almost 6 percent) said that they did not always have enough money to buy the food they needed.

The study revealed that:

Food insecurity was least common (4.8 percent) in people 85-years-old or older.

Food insecurity was most common (6.2 percent) in people between the ages of 75 and 84.

More than 25 percent of people with both Medicaid (government insurance for people living below the federal poverty line) and Medicare (government insurance for older adults) reported having food insecurity.

Food insecurity was more common among:

Women

People without a spouse or partner

Those who used tobacco or alcohol

People with high blood pressure , diabetes, or diagnosed depression

People who had been hospitalized, visited an emergency department, or had lived in a nursing home in the year before the survey

Food insecurity was reported by 10 percent or more of people who had:

Fair or poor general health or quality-of-life

Oral or dental problems

Trouble with bathing, eating, dressing, and performing other activities of daily living

A poor diet (they ate no fruits or vegetables, or they ate fewer than two meals a day)

No one to call for help

The researchers said that ways to identify food insecurity in older adults needed to be combined with methods to connect older adults with community-based food resources.

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This summary is from "Food Insecurity among Older Adults in an Integrated Health Care System". It appears online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are John F. Steiner, MD, MPH; Sandra H. Stenmark, MD; Andrew T. Sterrett, PhD; Andrea R. Paolino, MA; Matthew Stiefel, MPA, MS; Wendolyn S. Gozansky, MD, MPH; and Chan Zeng, PhD.

About the Health in Aging Foundation

This research summary was developed as a public education tool by the Health in Aging Foundation. The Foundation is a national non-profit established in 1999 by the American Geriatrics Society to bring the knowledge and expertise of geriatrics healthcare professionals to the public. We are committed to ensuring that people are empowered to advocate for high-quality care by providing them with trustworthy information and reliable resources. Last year, we reached nearly 1 million people with our resources through HealthinAging.org. We also help nurture current and future geriatrics leaders by supporting opportunities to attend educational events and increase exposure to principles of excellence on caring for older adults. For more information or to support the Foundation's work, visit http://www.HealthinAgingFoundation.org.

About the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society

Included in more than 9,000 library collections around the world, the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS) highlights emerging insights on principles of aging, approaches to older patients, geriatric syndromes, geriatric psychiatry, and geriatric diseases and disorders. First published in 1953, JAGS is now one of the oldest and most impactful publications on gerontology and geriatrics, according to ISI Journal Citation Reports. Visit wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/JGS for more details.

About the American Geriatrics Society

Founded in 1942, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) is a nationwide, not-for-profit society of geriatrics healthcare professionals that has--for 75 years--worked to improve the health, independence, and quality of life of older people. Its nearly 6,000 members include geriatricians, geriatric nurses, social workers, family practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and internists. The Society provides leadership to healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the public by implementing and advocating for programs in patient care, research, professional and public education, and public policy. For more information, visit AmericanGeriatrics.org.
Some see acupuncture as a safe alternative to drugs, while others argue there's no convincing evidence of clinical benefit and potential for harm. So should doctors recommend acupuncture for pain? Experts debate the issue in The BMJ today.

Acupuncture is a safe alternative to drugs for chronic pain, argues Mike Cummings, Medical Director of the British Medical Acupuncture Society and Associate Editor of the journal Acupuncture in Medicine, published by BMJ.

In the US, acupuncture is recommended for back pain, but in the UK, it is no longer included in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's (NICE) guidelines for low back pain, although it remains in the NICE guideline on headaches, he explains.

The biggest and most robust dataset for acupuncture in chronic pain comes from a review of data from 20,827 patients, showing moderate benefit for acupuncture compared with usual care, but smaller effects compared with sham acupuncture, he writes. Importantly, it also shows that 85% of the effect of acupuncture is maintained at one year.

Further evidence that sham acupuncture is linked to better quality of life compared with usual care for patients with chronic pain "should urge a more flexible approach from guideline developers," adds Cummings.

He acknowledges that acupuncture "seems to incur more staffing and infrastructure costs than drug based interventions, and in an era of budget restriction, cutting services is a popular short term fix." But argues that group clinics in the community "can provide more treatment at much lower cost."

Another challenge is the lack of commercial sector interest in acupuncture, he adds, meaning that it does not benefit from the lobbying seen for patented drugs and devices.

In summary, he says the pragmatic view sees acupuncture as a relatively safe and moderately effective intervention for a wide range of common chronic pain conditions.

"For those patients who choose it and who respond well, it considerably improves health related quality of life, and it has much lower long term risk for them than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. It may be especially useful for chronic musculoskeletal pain and osteoarthritis in elderly patients, who are at particularly high risk from adverse drug reactions," he concludes.

In a linked patient commentary, Kumari Manickasamy says acupuncture gave her hope when she had exhausted all avenues offered by conventional medicine for severe pelvic girdle pain during pregnancy.

She points out that there are few safe options for pain relief in pregnancy, and says women with pelvic girdle pain "have to strike a difficult balance between controlling their pain and risking harm to their child."

But Professors Asbjrn Hrobjartsson at the University of Southern Denmark and Edzard Ernst at the University of Exeter, argue that doctors should not recommend acupuncture for pain "because there is insufficient evidence that it is clinically worthwhile."

Overviews of clinical pain trials comparing acupuncture with placebo find a small, clinically irrelevant effect that "may be due to bias rather than acupuncture," they write.

Acupuncture enthusiasts often emphasise "pragmatic" comparisons between acupuncture and usual care. However, they argue that "unblinded pragmatic trials cannot differentiate possible true effects of acupuncture from placebo effects and bias." To inform us reliably of any causal relation between acupuncture and effect, "we need to focus on adequately blinded "explanatory" acupuncture trials," they say.

"If acupuncture is endorsed as a theatrical placebo we should be discussing the ethics of placebo interventions, not the elusive effect of acupuncture," they add.

They also point to harms of acupuncture as well as costs to the NHS, which they say may amount to 25m (28m; $34m) a year. "Health services funded by taxpayers should use their limited resources for interventions that have been proved effective."

"After decades of research and hundreds of acupuncture pain trials, including thousands of patients, we still have no clear mechanism of action, insufficient evidence for clinically worthwhile benefit, and possible harms. Therefore, doctors should not recommend acupuncture for pain," they conclude.

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According to study, after being converted to pastures, areas of the so-called 'Cerrado' become closed forest with poor biodiversity if not appropriately managed.

Some of Brazil's most important rivers, including the Xingu, Tocantins, Araguaia, Sao Francisco, Parnaiba, Gurupi, Jequitinhonha, Parana and Paraguay, rise in the Cerrado, the only savanna in the world with perennial rivers. This biome is at risk owing to rapid conversion to pasture and cropland, in conjunction with inadequate management of preserved areas, despite its tremendous importance as a natural resource to a country with the world's third-largest technically usable hydroelectric potential and where hydropower accounts for 77.2% of the total supply of electricity.

Moreover, destruction of the Cerrado represents an inestimable loss in terms of biodiversity. At the microscale, this biome, containing areas with 35 different plant species per square meter, is richer in flora and fauna than the tropical forest biome.

The Cerrado is known to have significant natural regeneration potential. However, how far does its resilience go?

Brazilian researcher Gisela Durigan, from the Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), conducts a study with the support form the Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP, performed in old pasture areas - originally part of the Cerrado biome, they currently enjoy from 'legal reserves' status and started a process of natural regeneration.

The scientist explains that natural regeneration of Cerrado's vegetation is a phenomenon restricted to trees. Which is the same as saying that farming's damaging effects on Cerrado's biodiversity is definitive - unless preservation policies can be perfected to the point where it will be possible to restore propitious conditions for the abundant ground layer species.

"We discovered that the ground layer, which contains most endemic species, doesn't regenerate once it's been destroyed. Therefore, when pasture is simply abandoned, after a time it becomes cerradao, high-canopy closed forest with poor biodiversity," Durigan said.

The study, whose results published in Journal of Applied Ecology, was conducted as part of the PhD research of Mario Guilherme de Biagi Cava, who had a scholarship from FAPESP, with Durigan as supervisor. It was also supported by a research grant awarded to Professor Milton Cezar Ribeiro and a doctoral scholarship awarded to Natashi Aparecida Lima Pilon.

The research comprehended 29 areas in the state of Sao Paulo surveyed on their vegetation, counting both trees and the small plants (shrubs, grasses, etc.) that make up the ground layer and constitute the greatest treasure of the Cerrado's flora. Although these 29 areas, with ages ranging from four to 25 years, were located in different regions, they could be ranked in chronological order in terms of their stage of regeneration.

Ground layer bushes replaced by exotic grass

The trees recover because they have very deep roots and have evolved over millions of years, developing the capacity to resprout countless times. You can't get rid of them even with herbicide," Durigan said. The shrubs and other low plant cover in the ground layer, however, will have been removed to establish the pasture in the first place and will not grow back owing to invasion by brachiaria, a highly resistant and aggressive exotic signalgrass.

"This grass only disappears when the tree cover is dense enough to provide shade. But when the exotic grass disappears, there can be no regeneration of the original shrubs and bushes, which were completely eradicated by the use of herbicide, as well as by mowing and competition from brachiaria, and don't tolerate shade," Durigan said.

To return an area to typical Cerrado, the exotic grass would have to be eliminated by burning combined with herbicide, after which native species could be reintroduced. However, this process is costly and operationally difficult, and it would not be feasible on a large scale with existing resources.

"We've researched different techniques to promote regeneration. With seeds, you need a huge amount, so many there wouldn't be anywhere to extract them from. What worked very well on an experimental scale was transplanting shrubs and herbaceous plants to recreate the ground layer, accompanied by native grasses and bushes," Durigan said.

"The main problem is that there are no more source areas for this in Sao Paulo State. The only open Cerrado remnants left have been invaded by exotic grasses, so when you transplant the ground layer you get the brachiaria too. This happens even in protected areas."

Degraded forest

The study conducted at UNESP led to a diagnosis and predictions. Typical Cerrado, once degraded, does not regenerate spontaneously. Pasture can be returned to typical Cerrado with rich biodiversity, characteristic flora, and habitats for wild animals that specialize in savanna only by human management: the tree density cannot be allowed to exceed 15 square meters per hectare, exotic grasses must be eradicated, and native plants must be reintroduced to form a ground layer.

Evolving spontaneously without management, tree cover in abandoned pasture will become cerradao in an estimated 49 years. The sparse ground cover typical of cerradao is completed in four years, and the poor biodiversity of the herbaceous layer develops in 19 years. "The process is rapid, but the results aren't what we want. Cerradao is no different from a degraded forest," Durigan said.

The group will measure everything again in the same areas during the second stage of Cava's PhD research, which stretch until the end of March, two years after the original study. The researchers expect to determine how much the plant cover, density and biodiversity have increased.

"These precise values will tell us exactly what the regeneration potential is in the different areas and help us identify favorable factors, such as soil type or distance from seed sources and water. All these parameters will be considered," Durigan said.

The article published by her group, she added, is highly innovative because no one in any other country is addressing the issue of savanna regeneration.

"Neither in Africa nor in Australia has there been a process similar to the one we're experiencing here, with savanna being converted into extensive pasture and large plantations of soybeans, sugarcane or corn," Durigan said. "In Africa, the savannas are very degraded, but this is due to overgrazing, firewood extraction and other activities with less visible impacts in the short run. In Brazil, we're seeing changes that occur overnight."

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About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. For more information: http://www.fapesp.br/en.
HOUSTON-(March 7, 2018) - One of the nation's leading cardiologists is challenging the new hypertension guidelines, perhaps sparing up to 10 million people from unnecessarily aggressive blood pressure treatments.

Robert A. Phillips, M.D., Ph.D., Houston Methodist's chief medical officer, and his colleagues investigated the impact of new guidelines issued in November that redefine high blood pressure. Phillips, who is an expert in hypertension and cardiovascular disease, says while patients at higher risk for cardiovascular disease benefited from the stricter guidelines, those with lower risk had more harm than benefit from the intensive treatment recommendations.

The findings are described in a paper titled "Impact of cardiovascular risk on the relative benefit and harm of intensive treatment of hypertension," appearing online March 7 and in print April 17 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, a leading medical journal in the field of cardiovascular disease.

"While it's estimated that 107,500 deaths could be averted annually in the U.S. by implementing more aggressive treatments, it may be accompanied by other serious, adverse events," Phillips said. "This presents clinicians and patients with a dilemma, potentially trading one clinically significant condition for another."

The new rules were written by a panel of 21 scientists and health experts who reviewed more than 900 published studies. Issued by the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and nine other professional health organizations, the new guidelines classify hypertension as a reading of 130 over 80, rather than 140 over 90. Under these new tightened rules, 46 percent of U.S. adults are now considered hypertensive, up from 32 percent.

This call for more aggressive treatment is based largely on data from the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial, or SPRINT, which was a large-scale study of more than 9,000 people, sponsored by the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

"Classifying patients by degree of future risk might be the best way to identify who could benefit most from intensive treatment," Phillips said. "We developed a model using the 10-year cardiovascular disease risk and found that aggressive treatment of patients with a risk greater than or equal to 18.2 percent would result in more benefit than harm, while those with a risk of less than that would fare better under a standard blood pressure management approach."

These numbers are at odds with the new guidelines, which suggest treating patients with a greater than 10 percent risk.

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Other researchers collaborating with Phillips on this paper include Jiaqiong Xu, Ph.D., Leif E. Peterson, Ph.D., M.P.H., and Ryan M. Arnold, M.P.H., from Houston Methodist; Joseph A. Diamond, M.D., from the cardiology department of Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine in Hempstead, New York; and Adam E. Schussheim, M.D., with the cardiac specialists of Northeast Medical Group at Bridgeport Hospital with Yale New Haven Health in New Haven, Connecticut.

To speak with Robert Phillips, M.D., Ph.D., contact Lisa Merkl, Houston Methodist, at 281-620-2502 or lmerkl@houstonmethodist.org. For more information about Houston Methodist, visit the newsroom or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information: Impact of cardiovascular risk on the relative benefit and harm of intensive treatment of hypertension. Journal of the American College of Cardiology DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2018.01.074 (March 7, 2018) R.A. Phillips, J. Xu, L.E. Peterson, R.M. Arnold, J.A. Diamond, A.E. Schussheim.
New Rochelle, NY, March 6, 2018--When older adults suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI), they may benefit from aggressive treatment and rehabilitation, but the lack of evidence-based, geriatric-specific TBI guidelines presents barriers to optimal care. The urgent need for more clinical research, data, and prognostic models on TBI in the growing geriatric population is described in an article published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal fromMary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website until April 6, 2018.

In the article entitled "Geriatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Epidemiology, Outcomes, Knowledge Gaps, and Future Directions," Raquel Gardner, MD, University of California, San Francisco and San Francisco VA Medical Center, and coauthors from UCSF, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY) and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital review the medical literature on TBI sustained by adults 50 years of age or older. The researchers report on the prevalence and incidence of TBI in this population, what the initial clinical evaluation and array of diagnostic studies should look like, and issues related to neurocritical care and neurosurgical management. In addition, the article addresses the controversial issue of how age affects outcomes and the risks of death, post-traumatic neurological disorders, and chronic psychosocial and cognitive impairment. The role of rehabilitation and future directions for research are additional topics of discussion.

"The Journal is pleased to have the opportunity to publish this timely review that focuses attention on the significant problem of geriatric traumatic brain injury," says John Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma. "This important review is a must read for both basic and clinical scientists, confirming the gravity of this problem for our geriatric population, while highlighting a series of recommendations to improve the development of prognostic models and evidence-based management guidelines."

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About the Journal

Journal of Neurotrauma is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 24 times per year in print and online that focuses on the latest advances in the clinical and laboratory investigation of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. Emphasis is on the basic pathobiology of injury to the nervous system, and the papers and reviews evaluate preclinical and clinical trials targeted at improving the early management and long-term care and recovery of patients with traumatic brain injury. Journal of Neurotrauma is the official journal of the National Neurotrauma Society and the International Neurotrauma Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Neurotrauma website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management, Brain Connectivity, and Tissue Engineering. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
HONOLULU, HI - For the first time, scientists from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (UH Manoa) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) will deploy a small fleet of long-range autonomous underwater vehicles (LRAUVs) that have the ability to collect and archive seawater samples automatically. These new robots will allow researchers to track and study ocean microbes in unprecedented detail.

Ocean microbes produce at least fifty percent of the oxygen in our atmosphere while removing large amounts of carbon dioxide. They also form the foundation of marine food webs, including those that support global ocean fisheries. Edward DeLong and David Karl, oceanography professors in the UH Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) have been studying these microbes for decades. For this project, they and their teams are collaborating with engineers from MBARI to test new ways of adaptively sampling oceanographic features such as open-ocean eddies, swirling masses of water that move slowly across the Pacific Ocean, which can have large effects on ocean microbes.

In late February 2018, MBARI engineers completed the construction and testing of three new LRAUVs in collaboration with UH Manoa scientists, and delivered them last week for their first deployment in Hawaiian waters. As the LRAUVs move through the ocean, they collect information about water temperature, chemistry, and chlorophyll (an indicator of microscopic algae) and send this data to scientists on shore or on a nearby ship. Additionally, a unique aspect of these AUVs is an integrated Environmental Sample Processor (ESP), a miniature robotic laboratory that collects and preserves seawater samples at sea, allowing researchers to capture a snapshot of the organisms' genetic material and proteins.

MBARI has been developing ESPs for about 15 years. The first instruments were about the size of a 55-gallon drum. These latest ESPs, the third generation, are eight to ten inches in diameter--one-tenth the original size--and were designed specifically to fit inside an LRAUV.

Jim Birch, MBARI's lead engineer on the ESP project commented, "When we first talked about putting an ESP in an AUV, I thought to myself 'this is never going to happen.' But now I really think this is going to transform oceanography by giving us a persistent presence in the ocean--a presence that doesn't require a boat, can operate in any weather condition, and can stay within the same water mass as it drifts around the open ocean."

With its surveying ability, the LRAUV allows scientists to discover, track, and sample open-ocean eddies, which can be over 100 kilometers (62 miles) across and last for months. When these eddies spin counterclockwise they bring water from the depths up toward the surface. This water often carries nutrients that microscopic algae (phytoplankton) need to survive.

"The new LRAUVs can transit for over 600 miles, and use their own 'eyes and ears' to detect important oceanographic events like phytoplankton blooms," DeLong explained. "These new underwater drones will greatly extend our reach to study remote areas, and also will allow us to sample and study oceanographic events and features we can see by remote satellite imaging, even when ships are not available."

An expeditionary cruise aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's (SOI) research vessel Falkor leaves on March 10 for open-ocean sea trials of MBARI's newly-designed LRAUVs. During this cruise, the researchers will locate an eddy using satellite data and then deploy the LRAUVs to survey the feature and collect water samples. When the robots return to the surface and are recovered, UH Manoa researchers will extract DNA from the filters. This information will provide unique insight into the eddy's duration, stability, and influence on the ocean systems; and will improve current ocean models, which are critical for developing expectations on the health of future oceans.

"Although this fleet of AUVs will never replace our need for a capable research vessel, it will provide much needed access to the sea and the collection of novel data sets that would not otherwise be possible," said Karl.

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This research is supported by the Simons Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the State of Hawai'i.
It matters who takes the initiative when it comes to regrets after casual sex

In general, women regret short-term sexual encounters like one-night stands more than men do. But various factors determine whether and how much they regret them.

"The factor that clearly distinguishes women from men is the extent to which they themselves take the initiative," says Mons Bendixen, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Initiative is the clearest gender-differentiating factor for regret after casual sex, although other conditions also affect how much an individual regrets the encounter. In contrast to women, sexual regret for men is not affected by whether they take the initiative.

"Women who take the initiative see the man as an attractive sexual partner," says Professor Leif Edvard Ottesen Kennair, also at NTNU's Department of Psychology.

Less reason to feel regret

Bendixen and Kennair have collaborated with PhD candidate Joy P. Wyckoff and Professor David M. Buss at the University of Texas at Austin and with Buss's former PhD candidate Kelly Asao, now a lecturer at the Institute of Social Neuroscience in Melbourne.

"Women who initiate sex are likely to have at least two distinguishing qualities," says Professor David Buss. "First, they are likely to have a healthy sexual psychology, being maximally comfortable with their own sexuality. Second, women who initiate have maximum choice of precisely who they want to have sex with. Consequently, they have less reason to feel regret, since they've made their own choice."

"Regret is a highly unpleasant emotion and our findings suggest that having control over their decision to engage in sex buffered women from experiencing regret. These results are another reminder of the importance of women's ability to make autonomous decisions regarding their sexual behaviors," says Wyckoff.

Quality matters

Men regret casual sex much less overall than women do, although it does happen. But several individual factors play an important role in women's regret.

"Women feel less regret if the partner was skilled and they felt sexually satisfied," says Kennair. Bendixen points out that these effects are not as strong in men.

"Women have less regret if the sex was good. For men, this also plays a less important role. The underlying causes are biological," Bendixen said.

The higher-investing sex faces larger repercussions of mating decisions than the lower investing sex. Women have a higher minimum obligatory parental investment (e.g., 9 months internal gestation) than men. So, women's regret should be more closely tied to the quality of their sex partner than men's.

"For women, sexual skill might be a cue to high male quality," says Kelly Asao. In short, women may profit more from high quality in their sexual partners than men do.

Bendixen and Kennair, in collaboration with David Buss and his research team in Texas, have been looking at what people think of their own and others' sexuality for the last several years, and whether they regret having had casual sex and why.

This study adds several factors that can explain responses to casual sex. This time the researchers also asked study participants if they took the initiative for the sex act, if they felt pressured to have sex and whether the partner was skilled or sexually competent. Participants were also asked if they experienced disgust.

Disgust

Women also feel disgust more often than men after a short-term sexual encounter. This is a key factor in whether or not they feel regret.

"The feeling of disgust or revulsion is the single factor that best explained why women and men regretted the last time they had casual sex when we controlled for all other factors," says Bendixen.

People may feel disgust because they feel moral regret, but also if the act is unhygienic or if the sex itself was perceived as gross. The impact of disgust was strong for both sexes and among both the Norwegian and the American student participants.

"Sexual disgust is an important adaptive emotion," says Buss. "It functions to help people avoid, now or in the future, potential sex partners who are either low in mate value or who carry some risk of sexually transmitted infections."

Same in the United States and Norway

The basic data consists of responses from 547 Norwegian and 216 American students. The nationality and possible cultural aspects of the responses seem to play a lesser role, if any.

A larger proportion of Norwegian participants had casual sex than the Americans, but the patterns are the same, and the responses differed little in their reasons for regret and to what degree women and men feel any regret at all.

"It's interesting that - despite clear gender and cultural differences in the levels of concern, pressure, disgust, how good the sex was, the partner's sexual competence and initiative - clear similarities existed between the groups in how these factors affected the degree of sexual regret," says Bendixen.

"With the exception of initiative-taking, it seems that the mechanisms for sexual regret are only minimally affected by whether you're a woman or a man, or whether you're a Norwegian or an American student," says Kenner.

A significant aspect of the latest findings is that the researchers obtained the same results as they had done in previous studies.

Psychology is among the fields of study that have been criticized for not obtaining results that can be repeated in later studies. But Kennair and Bendixen have now done this.

"By studying the same phenomenon that's based on clear theory, in several rounds, from different angles, and especially in different cultures, we can develop a theory-based cumulative science. The findings are simply more credible when we find out the same thing over several rounds," Kennair says.

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Reference:

Why do women regret casual sex more than men do? Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, Joy P. Wyckoff, Kelly Asao, David M. Buss, Mons Bendixen. Personality and Individual Differences. Vol. 127, 1 June 2018, Pages 61-67
The increasing use of therapy animals in Australia has prompted researchers from Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, to recommend the creation of Australia's first best-practice guidelines for animal-assisted therapy.

The increasing use of therapy animals in Australia has prompted researchers from Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, to recommend the creation of Australia's first best-practice guidelines for animal-assisted therapy.

Therapy animals are used in the treatment of both mental and physical health issues, however this important form of therapy is not regulated, which leaves it open to misuse and misunderstanding by those who deliver it and the wider community.

Professor Sue Cotton, head of health services and outcomes research at Orygen, in collaboration with Dr Simon Rice and psychologist and PhD researcher Melanie Jones has made a series of recommendations to ensure animal assisted therapy delivers safe and effective patient care. The recommendations are published in the current issue of Australasian Psychiatry.

Ms Jones said there was a significant difference between therapy animals and emotional support animals.

"A therapy animal participates in a range of interventions in order to achieve a desired outcome, such as assisting people to engage and participate in an activity, right through to working with a client with severe trauma," Ms Jones said.

"An emotional support animal is a pet that resides with an individual and gives them comfort. And that's different again to service animals, which work to mitigate a disability."

Dogs are the most commonly used therapy animals, but horses, dolphins and even guinea pigs are also used.

Professor Cotton said the popularity of therapy dogs, particularly in mental health settings, was built on research and anecdotal reports indicating that friendly dogs could improve patient engagement and reduce anxiety. "However, although the presence of therapy dogs may be of benefit, that benefit might last only for as long as the patient and the dog are in contact," she said.

"It is not enough to claim the temporary reduction of anxiety while in the presence of a dog, for example, as treatment. Animal-assisted therapy needs to be combined with treatments such as trauma-based therapy or social skills training to be clinically effective. Although dogs may improve treatment, they are not a treatment in and of themselves."

The recommendations Professor Cotton and Ms Jones have developed around animal-assisted therapy include:

The use of standard terminology to describe different types of animal-assisted interventions

Development of clear methodologies for how, why and when to incorporate animals in therapy

The establishment of peak bodies to aid the development of clinical guidelines, welfare standards and accreditation

Ongoing research and evaluation of interventions.

Professor Cotton said the adoption of these recommendations would help to ensure animal-assisted therapies were safe and ethical and based on sound evidence.

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This March and April, an international team of researchers will install monitoring equipment inside an active fault zone off the coast of New Zealand, in the Ring of Fire, in the first-ever scientific drilling mission specifically designed to study slow earthquakes.

Led by Demian Saffer, professor of geosciences, Penn State, and Laura Wallace, geodetic scientist, GNS Science, the team will install observatories beneath the sea floor on two colliding tectonic plates, which may reveal links between slow earthquakes, large normal earthquakes and tsunami generation risk.

The expedition is funded through the National Science Foundation's International Ocean Discovery Program. The Penn State researchers' efforts are supported by $165,000 in grants from the U.S. Science Support Program, which facilitates U.S. researcher involvement in the IODP.

Slow earthquakes, also known as slow slip earthquakes, are not well understood partly because they are difficult to detect. In some cases, they may contain roughly the same total energy as magnitude 7 or larger earthquakes, except that instead of lasting for seconds or minutes, they last for days or weeks at a time. Because of this, they dissipate energy at a much slower rate, which has allowed them to elude detection by seismographs. Only within the last two decades have researchers begun to focus investigations on slow earthquakes, but a lack of robust data prevents us from knowing how or why they occur and how they relate to major earthquakes and the risk of tsunamis.

Saffer, Wallace and their collaborators aim to change this.

In addition to collecting samples of the rock and sediment in the slow slip source area to characterize its properties, they will install two observatories roughly 1,600 feet beneath the sea floor that will allow them to document rock strain and deformation, temperature, and the chemical makeup of the rocks, and to fingerprint any fluids released during tectonic activity.

"These data will tell us about the 'creaks and groans,' or strain accumulation of the shallow fault zone, which is important for tsunami genesis, as well as potentially the origins of fluids associated with slow earthquakes," said Saffer.

The researchers will place their observatories along the Hikurangi continental margin, located off the coast of New Zealand's North Island. Here, the Pacific tectonic plate is being pushed underneath the Australia tectonic plate, a process known as subduction. One observatory will be placed into the Australia plate above the slow slip source fault, and a second will be placed directly into the fault zone where the two plates meet and slide past one another.

This area is a hotbed of tectonic activity ranging from slow earthquakes occurring on roughly two-year cycles to major earthquakes, such as the one in 1947 that triggered a large and damaging tsunami.

"This expedition will yield information that's key to understanding why destructive tsunamis happen after shallow earthquakes at plate subduction zones and underwater landslides," says James Allan, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funds IODP.

There are multiple theories on whether slow earthquakes increase or decrease the risk of tsunami generation.

"One hypothesis is that slow earthquakes release strain before it can accumulate to be released in a large earthquake, and therefore decrease the risk of tsunamigenic slip; while another is that the slow slip may load up regions of the subduction fault nearby and trigger earthquakes," Saffer said. "The only way to know what's happening is to get in there and document the conditions, the stresses and temperatures and pressures associated with slow earthquake activity."

After installing their equipment, the team will return in 2020 or 2021 to collect the observatories and begin analyzing the data.

The trip will be well represented by Penn Staters -- of the 31 scientists aboard the ship, six have an affiliation with Penn State. On board the ship will be Srisharan Shreedharan, geosciences doctoral student; Heather Savage, geosciences doctoral alumna now at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Matt Ikari, geosciences doctoral alumnus now at MARUM research center; Patrick Fulton, geosciences doctoral alumnus now at Texas A&M University; and Hiroko Kitajima, former Penn State post-doctoral researcher, now at Texas A&M University.

The team leaves March 11 from New Zealand and will complete their mission on May 5. For more information, visit the project website: http://joidesresolution.org/expedition/375.

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Women who use menopausal hormone therapy appear to have a heart structure and function that is linked to a lower risk of heart failure, according to a study led by Queen Mary University of London.

The effect of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT), previously known as hormone replacement therapy, on cardiovascular health in post-menopausal women has been controversial and unclear. Extensive data had suggested MHT to have a protective effect on the heart, leading to MHT being routinely prescribed for prevention of heart disease, but subsequent studies to confirm this have varied in their results.

To tackle this longstanding question, researchers have now used data from UK Biobank - a database of health questionnaire data, biological samples and physical measurements from over 500,000 people. UK Biobank holds cardiovascular MRI data - the gold standard for imaging and analysing heart structure and function - which could help overcome the lack of detailed data on the effects of MHT on cardiovascular health.

Lead author Dr Mihir Sanghvi, from the team of scientists led by Professor Steffen Petersen at Queen Mary University of London, said: "This is the first study to look at the relationship between the use of menopausal hormone therapy and subtle changes in the structure and function of the heart, which can be predictors of future heart problems. This is an important issue because there are 2.3 million women using menopausal hormone therapy in the UK today and current evidence of its effect on heart health is conflicted and controversial.

"Using UK Biobank data, we've now been able to show that the use of menopausal hormone therapy is not associated with any adverse changes to the heart's structure and function, and may be associated with some healthier heart characteristics."

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE and funded by the British Heart Foundation, examined the left ventricular (LV) and left atrial (LA) structure and function in 1,604 post-menopausal women, who were free of known cardiovascular disease, and 32 per cent of whom had used MHT for at least three years.

The researchers found that MHT use was not associated with adverse changes in cardiac structure and function. Indeed, significantly smaller LV and LA chamber volumes were observed, which have been linked to favourable cardiovascular outcomes, including lower mortality and risk of heart failure, in other settings.

They also looked at LV mass - one of the most important characteristics observed in cardiovascular imaging, with increases in LV mass predicting a higher incidence of cardiovascular events and mortality. Importantly, they found no significant difference in LV mass between the two groups of women.

Ashleigh Doggett, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, said: "The effect of menopausal hormone therapy on heart health is still unknown, with previous research showing both positive and negative effects on the heart. This study adds to our understanding by suggesting that the treatment does have a positive effect on the heart's structure, which should give reassurance to women taking the treatment.

"However, women shouldn't take MHT specifically to improve their heart health, as this study doesn't consider all of the ways this therapy affects our cardiovascular health. For instance, there is some evidence to suggest that MHT may increase your risk of blood clots, meaning more research is still needed to get a complete picture.

"For most menopausal women - especially those under the age of 60 - the benefits of taking HRT outweigh any potential risks. However, each woman's situation is different so please speak to your GP about whether HRT is appropriate for you."

###

The study involved collaborators from the University of Oxford and University of Southampton.

The study has several limitations, including the analysis being cross-sectional - meaning causality cannot be inferred from the associations demonstrated. Secondly, it was not possible to explore longitudinal change in cardiac structure in relation to MHT use. Thirdly, all menopause and MHT data was self-reported.

For more information, please contact:

Joel Winston

Public Relations Manager - Medicine and Dentistry

Queen Mary University of London

Tel: +44-207-882-7943

Mobile: +44-7970-096-188

j.winston@qmul.ac.uk

Notes to the editor

* Research paper: 'The impact of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) on cardiac structure and function: Insights from the UK Biobank imaging enhancement study. Mihir M. Sanghvi, Nay Aung, Jackie A. Cooper, Jose Miguel Paiva, Aaron M. Lee, Filip Zemrak, Kenneth Fung, Ross J. Thomson, Elena Lukaschuk, Valentina Carapella, Young Jin Kim, Nicholas C. Harvey, Stefan K. Piechnik, Stefan Neubauer, Steffen E. Petersen. PLOS ONE.

About Queen Mary University of London

Queen Mary University of London is one of the UK's leading universities with 23,120 students representing more than 160 nationalities.

A member of the Russell Group, we work across the humanities and social sciences, medicine and dentistry, and science and engineering, with inspirational teaching directly informed by our research. In the most recent national assessment of the quality of research, we were placed ninth in the UK amongst multi-faculty universities (Research Excellence Framework 2014).

As well as our main site at Mile End - which is home to one of the largest self-contained residential campuses in London - we have campuses at Whitechapel, Charterhouse Square, and West Smithfield dedicated to the study of medicine and dentistry, and a base for legal studies at Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Queen Mary began life as the People's Palace, a Victorian philanthropic project designed to bring culture, recreation and education to the people of the East End. We also have roots in Westfield College, one of the first colleges to provide higher education to women; St Bartholomew's Hospital, one of the first public hospitals in Europe; and The London, one of England's first medical schools.
Heart disease patients have lower levels of an important family of protective molecules in their blood in the morning, which could be increasing risk of blood clots and heart attacks at those times, says early research by Queen Mary University of London

Cardiovascular disease patients have lower levels of an important family of protective molecules in their blood in the morning, which could be increasing their risk of blood clots and heart attacks at those times, according to early research led by Queen Mary University of London.

The discovery of the importance of this compound in the blood could lead to new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent cardiovascular disease.

The body's clock is set in part by environmental cues including the light-dark cycle and controls many aspects of our body's daily functions, including sleep, heart rhythm and feeding.

Recent studies have shown that the body's defence system also responds to this clock and influences our body's ability to repair itself and respond to injury at different times of the day. And in patients with heart disease, the activation of blood cells in the early hours of the morning is associated with an increased incidence of blood clots, heart attacks and strokes at those times.

Lead researcher Dr Jesmond Dalli from Queen Mary's William Harvey Research Institute said: "For people with heart disease, in the morning just before getting out of bed, an increase in heart rate together with other changes in the blood stream, results in an activation of cells in the blood stream. This leads to the formation of small clots which may lead to blockage of the blood vessels resulting in heart attack or stroke.

"We were surprised to discover that a small group of molecules from an essential fatty acid, previously thought not to have any clinical importance, actually appears to control this vital cell activation process. This helps us to understand how cardiovascular disease may occur, and uncover potential new ways to identify, treat and prevent it."

The study, published in the journal Circulation Research, looks at a group of recently discovered molecules, known as specialised pro-resolving mediators (SPMs), which are produced from omega-3 fatty acids, the same fatty acids found in fish oils. SPMs are involved in controlling both white blood cell and platelet behaviour during inflammation, allowing the body to heal itself.

The team collected blood from 7 healthy volunteers and 16 patients with cardiovascular disease. This was collected at different times of the day to measure the SPM levels, and note the behaviour of the blood cells.

In healthy people, they found that the SPM level increased during the early morning hours and helped keep in check the behaviour of both white blood cells and platelets in the blood vessels.

In patients with cardiovascular disease, however, the production of these SPMs was significantly impaired, and associated with a marked increase in blood cell activation and the formation of clusters of white blood cells and platelets which can contribute to clot formation and blood vessel inflammation.

When the researchers replenished the levels of SPM molecules in the blood from patients with blood vessel disease, and also in experiments in mice, they found they could improve the behaviour of cells in the blood stream and reduce blood vessel inflammation.

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The work was conducted in collaboration with colleagues at Trinity College Dublin and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and funded by European Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Barts Charity, Medical Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland.

Research paper: 'Impaired Production and Diurnal Regulation of Vascular RvDn-3 DPA Increases Systemic Inflammation and Cardiovascular Disease'. Romain A Colas, Patricia R Souza, Mary E Walker, Maudrian Burton, Raquel M Marques, Zbigniew Zas?ona, Annie M Curtis, Jesmond Dalli. Circulation Research. doi 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.117.312472

Available here: http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/early/2018/02/02/CIRCRESAHA.117.312472.long
Regions where voters have more neurotic personality traits were more likely to vote for Donald Trump in the United States or for the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, revealing a new trend that could help explain the rise of fearmongering populist political campaigns across the world, according to new research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Researchers analyzed personality traits from online surveys of more than 3 million people in the United States and more than 417,000 people in the United Kingdom. Election data was compiled from public sources.

"Our study reveals how neuroticism or psychological hardship is shaping the global political landscape," said lead study author Martin Obschonka, PhD, a psychologist and associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. "One could also call this 'irrational' voting behavior because the surprising success of Trump and Brexit weren't predicted by models that relied on a rational understanding of voters."

Neuroticism hasn't previously been associated with voting behavior, suggesting that it could have been a "sleeper effect" with the potential to have a profound impact on the success of populist political campaigns across the globe, Obschonka said.

The Trump and Brexit campaigns both promoted themes of fear and lost pride, which are related to neurotic personality traits that include persistent feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, envy or jealousy. Regions in the United States with greater support for Trump were very similar to areas in the United Kingdom that supported Brexit, including a higher percentage of white people and lower levels of college education, earnings and liberal attitudes. Former industrial areas that are now in economic decline also were more likely to support Trump or Brexit.

The Brexit vote in June 2016 by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union succeeded by a very narrow margin, with 51.9 percent of voters in favor. Trump's presidential victory in 2016 also shocked many people, with him winning 30 states and the electoral vote tally even though 2.8 million more Americans voted for Hilary Clinton.

Trump's crucial voter gains above the performance of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney occurred largely in areas with high levels of neurotic traits, including battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio, which shifted from Democratic in 2012 to Republican in 2016. Trump's populist campaign also was especially successful in former industrial centers that are now in economic decline, including the Rust Belt region across the Midwest and Great Lakes.

The researchers examined regions, not individuals, and were studying larger trends relating to psychological traits, not specific diagnoses of mental illness for any voters. The study also excluded Northern Ireland from the Brexit analysis because of the lack of available data.

The fears and worries of voters with neurotic personality traits should be taken seriously, and facts should be provided during political campaigns to allay those fears, Obschonka said. Education also could be a buffer against fearmongering populist political campaigns because regions with higher rates of college graduates had much lower levels of neuroticism, he said.

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Doctors contemplating the best therapy for lung cancer patients may soon be able to predict the efficacy of a widely used lung cancer drug based on an imaging agent and a simple scan, according to the findings of a new clinical trial co-led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers developed a PET scan-compatible imaging agent engineered to seek out a specific mutation found in nonsmall cell lung cancer (which accounts for about 80 percent of lung cancers), bind to it and emit a radioactive signal that flags its presence. In addition to exposing the molecular roots of tumors, the imaging agent reveals potential weak spots in the cancer where specific therapeutic drugs can be administered to counteract the pro-tumor mutation.

"Some people wonder, 'Can't you just prescribe the drug and wait to see if the tumor shrinks? If it shrinks, then you know it's working,'" said Sanjiv "Sam" Gambhir, MD, PhD, professor and chair of radiology at Stanford.

While in broad strokes that's true, there's a flaw to that approach: If the therapy isn't effective, the tumors will not only continue to grow, but continue to become more molecularly complex. "In the time you waited to see if the tumors shrank, those tumors continued to evolve, and that makes it more difficult to treat with the next round of therapy," Gambhir said.

That's where a relatively quick scan could come in very handy; patients whose tumor sites don't emit the tracer's signal while undergoing a PET scan likely don't harbor the mutation, and can be spared the treatment.

A paper describing the findings of the trial will be published March 7 in Science Translational Medicine. The senior authors of the paper are Gambhir, who also holds the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professorship in Cancer Research; Zhen Cheng, PhD, associate professor of radiology at Stanford; and Baozhong Shen, MD, PhD, director of the Molecular Imaging Research Center at Harbin Medical University in China. The lead author is Xilin Sun, MD, former trainee in the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford and now an associate professor of radiology at Harbin.

'Like a full-body biopsy'

As with many cancer-imaging agents, the new tracer, called F-MPG, works with a PET scan, a common imaging technique used to spot signs of disease while using radioactive tracers. While there's no shortage of PET scan tracers, Gambhir likens the development of these imaging agents to the development of drugs.

"There are hundreds of drugs, just like there are hundreds of imaging agents; we have to keep building new ones for different purposes," he said. "We have to keep looking for different ways to interrogate the underlying biology of the tumor, and the new method we've developed goes after actually measuring mutations in the tumor."

Most PET scans use a tracer that can only tell if a tumor is active in terms of its metabolism. In this case, F-MPG can tell doctors whether the tumor cells are present and whether they contain a mutated version of a protein called epidermal growth factor, which when overexpressed spurs cell division. The F-MPG tracer floats throughout the body, glomming onto any mutated epidermal growth factor proteins. Once latched on, it emits blips of detectable energy in the form of gamma rays, revealing the location and mutational details of the culprit protein.

"If the PET scan shows a high signal from the tracer in a patient's lung cancer, that's predictive of someone who is going to respond well to the specific epidermal growth factor therapy," Gambhir said. "For those who show low signals, they're likely not going to respond, so you need to look into other treatment options."

Gambhir points out that biopsies, or a sample of the tumor, can also tell doctors what mutations are present. But tumors are so complex that a single biopsy may not accurately capture the spectrum of mutations present in the mass, and it's even less likely to characterize the mutations present in multiple tumors including those that have spread throughout the body.

"One way to think about this imaging technique is like it's taking a biopsy of the entire body, and that gives a much more complete picture of the mutational status of the primary tumor, which allows you much better information to treat the cancer," Gambhir said.

Guided by the glow

At Harbin Medical University, members of the research team conducted a 75-participant clinical trial with the tracer, monitoring which tumors lit up (or had a high signal) on a PET scan and which had a low signal. Among the participants whose tumors appeared with the help of the tracer -- meaning their tumor cells had the epidermal growth factor mutation -- more than 80 percent saw a positive response from the targeted drug: Either their tumors shrank or tumor growth slowed. In contrast, only 6 percent of participants who lacked PET scan evidence of the mutation benefited from the drug.

Gambhir noted that the clinical trial was the first time this tracer had been used in humans. The next stage of the research, he said, is to recruit more participants for an even larger trial and, barring unexpected complications, eventually use the tracer's data to guide treatment plans for lung cancer patients. Currently, the tracer is only approved for use in China, so the studies will continue at Harbin.

"We'd like to continue to build our collaboration with the terrific group at Harbin, and work toward a clinical trial network in China for testing many different tracers," he said.

The team's work is an example of Stanford Medicine's focus on precision health, the goal of which is to anticipate and prevent disease in the healthy and precisely diagnose and treat disease in the ill.

###

Cheng and Gambhir are both members of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Cancer Institute. Gambhir also is a member of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai also contributed to the work.

The study was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Heilongjiang Province Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars and the Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging Foundation.

Stanford's Department of Radiology also supported the work.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/school.html. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu.

Print media contact:

Hanae Armitage

650-725-5376

harmitag@stanford.edu

Broadcast media contact:

Margarita Gallardo

650-723-7897

mjgallardo@stanford.edu
Biggest predictor was high levels ICAM-1, one of a group of molecules known as cytokines

TORONTO, March 8, 2018--Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have found a biomarker from fluid in the eye that predicts which patients will respond best to current treatments for diabetic macular edema, one of the most common complications of diabetes.

Their study, led by Dr. Rajeev Muni, a vitreoretinal surgeon at the hospital, was published online today in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

Diabetic macular edema is the accumulation of fluid in the macula, an area in the centre of the retina responsible for sharp, straight-ahead vision. The fluid buildup causes the macula to swell and thicken, which blurs vision. Dr. Muni said it is the leading cause of vision loss in people under the age of 65 in North America.

Treatment for diabetic macular edema has evolved dramatically in the last decade, but still requires a sometimes painful injection in the eye, in some cases as often as once a month.

Dr. Muni said that while this treatment has been a "game-changer," preserving and even restoring vision in people who might otherwise have gone blind, some people respond to it better than others.

In his study, he took fluid samples from the front, or anterior, chamber of the eyes of 48 patients who were then treated with a ranibizumab injection (tradename Lucentis).

They found there were two molecules that were associated with who responded better to the injections than others.

The first, which was somewhat expected, was low levels of vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, a protein produced in the eye when there is poor blood flow. Ranibizumab is known to bind to VEGF, reducing the amount of VEGF in the eye, meaning there is less leakage from blood vessels and less fluid accumulation.

But Dr. Muni said the biggest predictor of who will respond to treatment was high levels of a different molecule, ICAM-1, one of a group of molecules known as cytokines that both help cells communicate immune responses and stimulate the movement of cells toward sites of inflammation.

"Now we have a novel biomarker to determine who will respond best to treatment," said Dr. Muni. "The prospect of ongoing injections in the eye is daunting for patients. The fact that we can now measure a protein in the eye that allows us to predict which patients are less likely respond to treatment, could lead to more personalized and tailored medicine and fewer injections. This could alleviate the treatment burden on patients and the health-care system."

He said St. Michael's was enrolling people for a bigger followup trial to determine the optimal interval between injection treatments based on the levels of these biomarkers.

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The study published today received financial support from Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada, Inc., which manufactures Lucentis, and the Retina Foundation of Canada. About St. Michael's Hospital

St. Michael's Hospital provides compassionate care to all who enter its doors. The hospital also provides outstanding medical education to future health care professionals in more than 29 academic disciplines. Critical care and trauma, heart disease, neurosurgery, diabetes, cancer care, and care of the homeless are among the Hospital's recognized areas of expertise. Through the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Healthcare Education Center, which make up the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, research and education at St. Michael's Hospital are recognized and make an impact around the world. Founded in 1892, the hospital is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto.

For more information, or to speak to Dr. Muni please contact:

Leslie Shepherd

Manager, Media Strategy

St. Michael's Hospital

Phone: 416-864-6094 or 416-200-4087

ShepherdL@smh.ca

Inspired Care. Inspiring Science.

http://www.stmichaelshospital.com

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stmikeshospital
LA JOLLA, CA - March 8, 2018 - About 1 in 2,500 people have a degenerative nerve disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT). The disease is typically diagnosed in children, who can lose their ability to walk and use their hands for fine motor skills. There is no cure--yet.

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have now shown a path to developing treatments for disease subtype CMT2D. As they report in the journal Nature Communications, it may be possible to reverse the disease by using a small molecule to restore normal protein function in the nervous system.

"This study provides guidance for developing therapeutics," says Xiang-Lei Yang, PhD, TSRI professor and senior author of the study.

Importantly, the study reveals how a better understanding of the fundamental causes of CMT can point researchers toward a cure for other subtypes.

Detective work reveals new role for mutant protein

Here's a puzzle: CMT2D is caused by mutations in a protein called GlyRS, which is expressed by cells throughout the body. Yet, the disease only damages the peripheral nervous system--the nerves in hands and feet.

Adding to the mystery, studies show that GlyRS primarily affects a process called protein synthesis, where genetic information is translated into proteins. Again, this process happens in all cells, so why would hands and feet be most affected?

"Our everyday research is like a detective role," says Zhongying Mo, PhD, senior research associate at TSRI and first author of the study.

The new study offers the answer: GlyRS has a role outside protein synthesis.

The researchers discovered that mutations in GlyRS trigger unusual interactions between GlyRS and a protein called HDAC6. Normally, HDAC6 would regulate a process called acetylation, which readies a protein called -tubulin for its role in forming microtubules. Yang compares microtubules to a highway. Thanks to -tubulin, signaling proteins and other important molecules can zip along, sending signals from your tiptoes to your brain.

But in CMT, the aberrant protein interactions with HDAC6 prevent proper -tubulin acetylation, turning that highway into a dirt road. Nervous system signals can't run smoothly, and the longer the nerve, the rougher the road. Because our longest nerves reach our feet and hands, this finding explains why CMT2D is most severe in the peripheral nervous system--even though the mutant proteins are everywhere in the body.

Further experiments in a mouse model of CMT2D showed that researchers could bring back proper nerve function by injecting the mice with a small molecule that blocks HDAC6 from interfering in -tubulin acetylation. Although this particular small molecule would not be safe for humans to take, Yang and Mo believe a similar molecule may work as a future CMT2D therapy.

"It's exciting when you can accumulate all the evidence and point to a specific target," says Mo.

Targeting the root cause of CMT

Yang and Mo are excited to find this potential treatment target, but their ultimate goal is to treat the root cause of all types of CMT. To do this, they need to do more studies like this one, which reveal the fundamental pathology of the disease.

From patient to patient, different mutations can cause either mild or very severe symptoms. Some types of CMT are diagnosed in infancy, while others don't appear until adolescence. "That variability is striking," Yang says.

Now that the researchers know about this GlyRS interaction with HDAC6, they would like to investigate where else mutant proteins in CMT are causing problems. In fact, an earlier study from the Yang lab caught another problem made by the mutant proteins, which has something to do with affecting nerve maintenance signal. Yang hopes future studies can solve these mysteries and even show a way to target mutant GlyRS itself.

"Our understanding of the disease is ever-increasing," says Yang.

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Additional authors of the study, "Aberrant GlyRS-HDAC6 interaction links to axonal transport deficit in Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy," were Huaqing Liu, Qinghua Hu, Jessica Pham, Na Wei, Ze Liu and Jiadong Zhou of The Scripps Research Institute; Xiaobei Zhao and Xu-Qiao Chen of the University of California, San Diego; Robert W. Burgess of The Jackson Laboratory; Samuel L. Pfaff of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; C. Thomas Caskey of Baylor College of Medicine; Ge Bai of The Scripps Research Institute and the Salk Institute of Biological Studies; and Chengbiao Wu of the University of California, San Diego, and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.

The study was supported the National Institutes of Health (grants R01 GM088278 and R01 NS054154) the Tau Consortium, The Larry L. Hillblom Foundation and by aTyr Pharma through an agreement with The Scripps Research Institute.

About The Scripps Research Institute

The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) is one of the world's largest independent, not-for-profit organizations focusing on research in the biomedical sciences. TSRI is internationally recognized for its contributions to science and health, including its role in laying the foundation for new treatments for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, and other diseases. An institution that evolved from the Scripps Metabolic Clinic founded by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps in 1924, the institute now employs more than 2,500 people on its campuses in La Jolla, CA, and Jupiter, FL, where its renowned scientists--including two Nobel laureates and 20 members of the National Academies of Science, Engineering or Medicine--work toward their next discoveries. The institute's graduate program, which awards PhD degrees in biology and chemistry, ranks among the top ten of its kind in the nation. In October 2016, TSRI announced a strategic affiliation with the California Institute for Biomedical Research (Calibr), representing a renewed commitment to the discovery and development of new medicines to address unmet medical needs. For more information, see http://www.scripps.edu.
SAN DIEGO -- A cutting edge, "off-line" signal transmission mechanism, experimentally demonstrated just a few years ago, is now on-line as a real-time bidirectional transmission system. At OFC 2018, the single-most important annual event in optical communications, being held March 11-15 in San Diego California, a research team from Nokia will report the real-time, bi-directional transmission of 78 interleaved, 400 gigabit per second (Gb/s) channels with a 31.2 terabit per second (Tb/s) fiber capacity.

At twice the 200 Gb/s standard rate found in most applications, the C-band signals were transmitted over a single, 90-kilometer-long single-mode fiber. Such a high transmission capacity and rate would offer a particularly attractive capacity bump to current data center interconnections, where nearby data centers are coupled together to form a single, larger center.

Fundamentally speaking, there are two ways to go about increasing a data center's capacity: either increase the number of (parallel) fibers through which the data travels, or increase how much data you transmit through existing fibers. While the use of additional fibers is a more straightforward approach (particularly for data centers which usually rent fibers to use), it is expensive both in price and power consumption.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is considerable interest in finding ways of increasing the transmission capacity of fibers already in use. As multiplexers (devices that combine multiple signals into one) and transponders become more sophisticated, so do the available signal encoding/decoding processes. Current standards for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) signals, for instance, can combine up to 96 channels on C band.

The off-line proof-of-principle experiments first demonstrating the high capacity, error-free 400 Gb/s WDM transmission capitalized on a very high spectral efficiency to boost capacity in the fiber. While this is not the first real-time implementation of 400 Gb/s channels, it is the first to be successful with an impressive 8 bit per second-per hertz spectral efficiency.

"So far, three different companies have demonstrated a real-time 400 Gb/s transponder over the last three years, but we are the only ones reporting 400 Gb/s with such high spectral efficiency," said Thierry Zami, who will be presenting the team's work. "The spectral efficiency allows us to provide quite a large fiber capacity. So, in this case we claim 31.2 Tb/s, but in practice, without the limitations in terms of number of loading channels in our lab, we could have reached about 38 Tb/s over whole C band. This is really one of the innovative points."

In addition to using the real-time, commercially available transponders, the setup used components that are compliant with current network standards. After testing the unidirectional transmission configuration, Zami and his team wanted to further improve the resulting Q2 margins, which represent the signal to noise power ratio.

"It was important for us to maintain simple amplification, only based on erbium doped fiber amplifiers, and to use standard fibers," said Zami. "To increase the system margins observed with the unidirectional set up, we could have decided to make the same unidirectional experiment with slightly larger channel spacing, for instance. But we said, 'no' because we wanted to remain compliant as much as possible with the standard grid."

The team instead developed a bi-directional transmission set up with the same 90-kilometer fiber, where the even and odd 400 Gb/s channels, with the same 50 GHz grid spacing, transmit in opposite directions. For this configuration, they measured Q2 margins at least twice as large as for the unidirectional version. And because it employed two 100 GHz-spaced multiplexers to create the 50 GHz channel spacing, unlike the unidirectional system's individual 50 GHz multiplexer, it benefits from wider filtering to exhibit better tolerance to frequency detuning.

Hear from the research team: 31.2-Tb/s real time bidirectional transmission of 78x400 Gb/s interleaved channels over C band of one 90-km SMF span (W1B.5), Wednesday, 14 March at 9:15 AM, Room 1B.

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MEDIA REGISTRATION: Media/analyst registration for OFC 2018 can be accessed online. Further information is available on the event website at OFC, including travel details.

ABOUT OFC

The Optical Fiber Conference and Exposition (OFC) is the largest global conference and exposition for optical communications and networking professionals. For more than 40 years, OFC has drawn attendees from all corners of the globe to meet and greet, teach and learn, make connections and move business forward.

OFC includes dynamic business programming, an exposition of more than 700 companies, and high impact peer-reviewed research that, combined, showcase the trends and pulse of the entire optical networking and communications industry. OFC is managed by The Optical Society (OSA) and co-sponsored by OSA, the IEEE Communications Society (IEEE/ComSoc), and the IEEE Photonics Society. OFC 2018 will be held from 11-15 March 2018 at the San Diego Convention Center, California, USA. Follow @OFCConference, learn more OFC Conference LinkedIn, and watch highlights OFC YouTube.

Media Contacts:

Rebecca B. Andersen

The Optical Society

+1 202.416.1443

randersen@osa.org

Joshua Miller

The Optical Society

+1.202.416.1435

jmiller@osa.org

Thierry Zami

Ph. D - WDM Network Senior Architect

WDM Network Photonic Design

Nokia

Desk S0.032, Route de Villejust, 91620 Nozay, France

Tel : + 33 (0)1 60 40 27 99

thierry.zami@asn.com
In a first, biologists computationally model the electrical code in the tissue of developing frogs to find treatments that reverse the harmful effects of nicotine

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (March 8, 2018) Tufts University biologists have demonstrated for the first time that electrical patterns in the developing embryo can be predicted, mapped, and manipulated to prevent defects caused by harmful substances such as nicotine. The research, published today in Nature Communications, suggests that targeting bioelectric states may be a new treatment modality for regenerative repair in brain development and disease, and that computational methods can be used to find effective repair strategies.

In a developing embryo, the outer membrane of each cell contains protein channels that transport negative and positive ions, generating voltage gradients across the cell wall. Groups of cells create patterns of membrane voltage that precede and control the expression of genes and the morphological changes occurring over the course of development.

"Studies focusing on gene expression, growth factors, and molecular pathways have provided us with a better but still incomplete understanding of how cells arrange themselves into complex organ systems in a growing embryo," said Professor Michael Levin, Ph.D., corresponding author of the study and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. "We are now beginning to see how electrical patterns in the embryo are guiding large scale patterns of tissues, organs, and limbs. If we can decode this electrical communication between cells, then we might be able to use it to normalize development or support regeneration in the treatment of disease or injury."

To help decipher that code, Levin and lead author Vaibhav Pai, Ph.D., a Research Scientist II at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, explored whether it was possible to use a computational model to predict the bioelectrical patterns that occur in normal and nicotine-exposed embryos, and then use the model to identify reagents that might restore the normal pattern even in the presence of the teratogen (a class of molecules that induce birth defects). In humans, nicotine has been linked to prenatal morbidity, sudden infant death, attention deficit hypersensitivity disorder (ADHD), and other deficits in cognitive function, learning, and memory.

Earlier studies suggested that these defects may be a result of nicotine depolarizing cells in the embryo by inducing acetylcholine receptors to pump in positively charged sodium and potassium ions. Levin and Pai hypothesized that disruption of the normal bioelectric prepattern that drives brain patterning could be the underlying cause for these defects, and that restoring this pattern might rescue those defects.

Pai worked with Alexis Pietak, Ph.D., a primary investigator at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts, who developed a powerful computational simulation platform - called the BioElectric Tissue Simulation Engine (BETSE) - to create a dynamic map of voltage signatures in a developing frog embryo. The simulation engine (available for free download) was built on a biologically realistic model of ion concentrations and fluxes and parameters of ion channel behaviors derived from molecular studies. The BETSE model accurately replicated the distinct pattern of membrane voltage from the normal embryonic brain development, and also explained the "flattened" (erased) electrical pattern observed to result from nicotine exposure.

The Tufts researchers were then able to use BETSE to explore the effect of various reagents on the embryo's voltage map. One reagent in particular, the hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide gated channel (HCN2), when added to the cells in the model, selectively enhanced hyperpolarization (large internal negative charge) in areas where it was diminished by nicotine. The effect -- akin to dialing up the contrast in a photo editor -- effectively restored the normal electrical pattern.

Remarkably, expressing HCN2 in live embryos rescued them from the effects of nicotine, restoring a normal bio-electric pattern, brain morphology, markers of gene expression, and near normal learning capacity in the grown tadpole.

"This is an important step providing a realistic model that bridges the molecular, cellular, bio-electrical, and anatomical scales of the developing embryo. Adding the bioelectrical component was critical to making a search for therapeutic strategies more tractable," said Levin, the Vannevar Bush professor of biology in the School of Arts & Sciences at Tufts.

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Other authors on the paper were Valerie Willocq, an undergraduate at Tufts University, Bin Ye, now at Veridian Biotechnology Ltd, and Nian-Qing Shi, at the Department of Developmental, Molecular and Chemical Biology of Tufts University.

The work was supported by The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, the W.M. Keck Foundation, the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (AR055993-01, AR061988), and the American Heart Association. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Pai VP, Pietak A, Willocq V, Ye B, Shi N-Q and Levin M, "HCN2 rescues brain defects by enforcing endogenous voltage pre-patterns: computationally modeling embryonic bioelectrics," Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03334-5

About Tufts University

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university's schools is widely encouraged.
A discovery sheds light on how cancerous cells differ from healthy ones, and could lead to the development of new strategies for therapeutic intervention for difficult-to-treat cancers in the future.

An international team of investigators found a "stop sign"--a modified protein researchers named a PIP-stop--inside cells that are overused by cancerous cells that effectively prevents healthy ones from sorting material in the way they were designed to.

"We have discovered that breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and neuroblastoma cells have too many PIP-stops. This would upset protein function, and opens up a new avenue for developing drugs that block PIP-stop formation by kinase enzymes," said Michael Overduin, a University of Alberta cancer researcher and professor of biochemistry, who led the research project.

The team named the modification a PIP-stop because it stops proteins from interacting with lipid molecules called PIP.

Before making their discovery, the researchers first solved the 3-D structure of a sorting nexin protein, which is key to sorting proteins to their proper locations within the cell. Powerful magnets in the U.K. and in the National High Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre (NANUC), Canada's national magnet lab based in Edmonton, were then used to detect signals from within individual atoms within the protein structure.

By focusing on the protein structure, the team was able to discover the PIP-stop and see how it blocked the protein's function. The PIP-stop is a phosphate which is added to the protein surface that binds the PIP lipid, and normally controls how proteins attach to membranes.

Samples from cancer patients have too many PIP-stops, which could lead to the unregulated growth seen in tumour cells. Similar PIP-stops were found to be overused in a large number of other proteins involved in other cancer types, where they could also influence tumour growth.

"Our goal now is to design inhibitors for the overactive kinases that create PIP-stops, and to use this information to design drug molecules that block the progression of cancers, particularly those which lack effective treatments," said Overduin.

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The study was published in the journal Nature Communications and was carried out using grants from Alberta Innovates and funders in the U.K. and Switzerland.
Researchers at the University of Birmingham and King's College London have found that staying active keeps the body young and healthy.

The researchers set out to assess the health of older adults who had exercised most of their adult lives to see if this could slow down ageing.

The study recruited 125 amateur cyclists aged 55 to 79, 84 of which were male and 41 were female. The men had to be able to cycle 100 km in under 6.5 hours, while the women had to be able to cycle 60 km in 5.5 hours. Smokers, heavy drinkers and those with high blood pressure or other health conditions were excluded from the study.

The participants underwent a series of tests in the laboratory and were compared to a group of adults who do not partake in regular physical activity. This group consisted of 75 healthy people aged 57 to 80 and 55 healthy young adults aged 20 to 36.

The study showed that loss of muscle mass and strength did not occur in those who exercise regularly. The cyclists also did not increase their body fat or cholesterol levels with age and the men's testosterone levels also remained high, suggesting that they may have avoided most of the male menopause.

More surprisingly, the study also revealed that the benefits of exercise extend beyond muscle as the cyclists also had an immune system that did not seem to have aged either.

An organ called the thymus, which makes immune cells called T cells, starts to shrink from the age of 20 and makes less T cells. In this study, however, the cyclists' thymuses were making as many T cells as those of a young person.

The findings come as figures show that less than half of over 65s do enough exercise to stay healthy and more than half of those aged over 65 suffer from at least two diseases.* Professor Janet Lord, Director of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham, said: "Hippocrates in 400 BC said that exercise is man's best medicine, but his message has been lost over time and we are an increasingly sedentary society.

"However, importantly, our findings debunk the assumption that ageing automatically makes us more frail.

"Our research means we now have strong evidence that encouraging people to commit to regular exercise throughout their lives is a viable solution to the problem that we are living longer but not healthier."

Dr Niharika Arora Duggal, also of the University of Birmingham, said: "We hope these findings prevent the danger that, as a society, we accept that old age and disease are normal bedfellows and that the third age of man is something to be endured and not enjoyed."

Professor Stephen Harridge, Director of the Centre of Human & Aerospace Physiological Sciences at King's College London, said: "The findings emphasise the fact that the cyclists do not exercise because they are healthy, but that they are healthy because they have been exercising for such a large proportion of their lives.

"Their bodies have been allowed to age optimally, free from the problems usually caused by inactivity. Remove the activity and their health would likely deteriorate."

Norman Lazarus, Emeritus Professor at King's College London and also a master cyclist and Dr Ross Pollock, who undertook the muscle study, both agreed that: "Most of us who exercise have nowhere near the physiological capacities of elite athletes.

"We exercise mainly to enjoy ourselves. Nearly everybody can partake in an exercise that is in keeping with their own physiological capabilities.

"Find an exercise that you enjoy in whatever environment that suits you and make a habit of physical activity. You will reap the rewards in later life by enjoying an independent and productive old age."

The research findings are detailed in two papers published today in Aging Cell and are the result of an ongoing joint study by the two universities, funded by the BUPA foundation.

The researchers hope to continue to assess the cyclists to see if they continue to cycle and stay young.

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For further information or to arrange interviews please contact:

1. For further information or interviews contact Emma McKinney, Press Office, University of Birmingham, on +44 (0)121 414 6681 or contact the Press Office out of hours on +44 (0)7789 921165.

2. Garfield Myrie in the King's College London press office on: +44 (0)207 848 4334 or email garfield.myrie@kcl.ac.uk

Sources:

*Kings Fund Report on Multimorbidity 2014 - https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/time-think-differently/trends-disease-and-disability-long-term-conditions-multi-morbidity Notes to Editor:

The two studies, both published in Aging Cell, are:

1. Pollock et al (2018). 'Properties of the vastus lateralis muscle in relation to age and physiological function in master cyclists aged 55 - 79 years'. DOI:

2. Duggal et al (2018). 'Major features of Immunesenescence, including Thymic atrophy, are ameliorated by high levels of physical activity in adulthood.' DOI:

Professor Janet Lord is also Director of MRC-ARUK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research. She is also part of NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Birmingham BRC). The NIHR Birmingham BRC brings together the expertise of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) and the University of Birmingham, both members of Birmingham Health Partners (BHP).

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 5,000 international students from over 150 countries.

King's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (2017/18 QS World University Rankings) and among the oldest in England. King's has more than 29,600 students (of whom nearly 11,700 are graduate students) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 8,000 staff. King's has an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), eighty-four per cent of research at King's was deemed 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' (3* and 4*).

Since its foundation, King's students and staff have dedicated themselves in the service of society. King's will continue to focus on world-leading education, research and service, and will have an increasingly proactive role to play in a more interconnected, complex world. Visit its website to find out more about Vision 2029, King's strategic vision for the next 12 years to 2029, which will be the 200th anniversary of the founding of the university. World-changing ideas. Life-changing impact: https://spotlight.kcl.ac.uk/
Irvine, Calif. - University of California, Irvine scientists expect the world's fisheries to be, on average, 20 percent less productive in the year 2300, with those in the North Atlantic down nearly 60 percent and those in much of the western Pacific experiencing declines of more than 50 percent.

In a study published this week in Science, UCI climatologists outline the results of computer simulations showing a world subjected to nearly three more centuries of unbridled global warming. This bleak future will be characterized by a 9.6-degree Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in mean surface air temperature, nearly 10 times the warming we have seen to this point. The extended climate warming will drastically alter wind patterns, boost ocean surface temperatures and melt nearly all the sea ice in polar regions.

"These conditions will cause changes in phytoplankton growth and ocean circulation around Antarctica, with the net effect of transferring nutrients from the upper ocean to the deep ocean," said lead author J. Keith Moore, UCI professor of Earth system science. "Marine ecosystems everywhere to the north will be increasingly starved for nutrients, leading to less primary production (photosynthesis) by phytoplankton, which form the base of ocean food chains."

In today's ocean, nutrients are brought up to the surface around Antarctica but then move north and eventually flow into the low latitudes, supporting the plankton and fish populations there, Moore said. With increased phytoplankton growth around Antarctica, the northward transfer of nutrients will be greatly reduced.

"You end up trapping the nutrients near Antarctica," he said.

There are three key factors driving increased phytoplankton growth around Antarctica, according to Moore: the long-term warming trend in the oceans, the changes in winds brought on by global climate warming and, most significantly, the near elimination of sea ice along the coast of Antarctica.

"Without the floating ice, which blocks much of the light today, you get increased photosynthesis," Moore said. "Combined with warmer ocean temperatures throughout the year, this leads to a longer growing season and faster plankton growth rates. Stronger winds drive increased upwelling, bringing nutrients to the surface, resulting in higher nutrient concentrations and more plankton growth near Antarctica."

Nitrogen and phosphorus are key nutrients that support phytoplankton growth in the ocean. As these elements are increasingly depleted everywhere to the north, phytoplankton populations decline and scarcity reverberates up through the food chain, ultimately affecting the fish that humans catch and eat. Moore and his fellow researchers used an empirical model linking plankton growth to present-day fish catches and then factored in dwindling nutrients and plankton populations due to climate warming in the coming centuries.

"By looking at the decline in fish food over time, we can estimate how much our total potential fisheries catch could be reduced," said Moore, who helped develop the Community Earth System Model employed in this study.

He emphasized the importance of looking further into the future with climate models, something that isn't often done because of the computational resources such modeling requires. Months of computations using thousands of central processing units were needed to simulate the climate and oceans up to 2300. But stopping climate studies at the end of our current century, as is common among scientists and policymakers, is insufficient given the amount of time it takes for the ocean to absorb and respond to heat being trapped by the Earth's atmosphere today, Moore said.

"The climate is warming rapidly now, but in the ocean, most of that added heat is still right at the surface. It takes centuries for that heat to work its way into the deeper ocean, changing the circulation and removing the sea ice, which is a big part of this process," he said.

"This is what's going to happen if we don't put the brakes on global warming, and it's pretty catastrophic for the oceans," Moore stressed. "There is still time to avoid most of this warming and get to a stable climate by the end of this century, but in order to do that, we have to aggressively reduce our fossil fuel use and emissions of greenhouse gas pollutants."

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Collaborating in this U.S. Department of Energy-supported study were scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Virginia, Cornell University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.
In a new study in Nature Neuroscience, Jaideep Bains, PhD, and his team at the Cumming School of Medicine's Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), at the University of Calgary have discovered that stress transmitted from others can change the brain in the same way as a real stress does. The study, in mice, also shows that the effects of stress on the brain are reversed in female mice following a social interaction. This was not true for male mice.

"Brain changes associated with stress underpin many mental illnesses including PTSD, anxiety disorders and depression," says Bains, professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and member of the HBI. "Recent studies indicate that stress and emotions can be 'contagious'. Whether this has lasting consequences for the brain is not known."

The Bains research team studied the effects of stress in pairs of male or female mice. They removed one mouse from each pair and exposed it to a mild stress before returning it to its partner. They then examined the responses of a specific population of cells, specifically CRH neurons which control the brain's response to stress, in each mouse, which revealed that networks in the brains of both the stressed mouse and naive partner were altered in the same way.

The study's lead author, Toni-Lee Sterley, a postdoctoral associate in Bains' lab said, "What was remarkable was that CRH neurons from the partners, who were not themselves exposed to an actual stress, showed changes that were identical to those we measured in the stressed mice."

Next, the team used optogenetic approaches to engineer these neurons so that they could either turn them on or off with light. When the team silenced these neurons during stress, they prevented changes in the brain that would normally take place after stress. When they silenced the neurons in the partner during its interaction with a stressed individual, the stress did not transfer to the partner. Remarkably, when they activated these neurons using light in one mouse, even in the absence of stress, the brain of the mouse receiving light and that of the partner were changed just as they would be after a real stress.

The team discovered that the activation of these CRH neurons causes the release of a chemical signal, an 'alarm pheromone', from the mouse that alerts the partner. The partner who detects the signal can in turn alert additional members of the group. This propagation of stress signals reveals a key mechanism for transmission of information that may be critical in the formation of social networks in various species.

Another advantage of social networks is their ability to buffer the effects of adverse events. The Bains team also found evidence for buffering of stress, but this was selective. They noticed that in females the residual effects of stress on CRH neurons were cut almost in half following time with unstressed partners. The same was not true for males.

Bains suggests that these findings may also be present in humans. "We readily communicate our stress to others, sometimes without even knowing it. There is even evidence that some symptoms of stress can persist in family and loved ones of individuals who suffer from PTSD. On the flip side, the ability to sense another's emotional state is a key part of creating and building social bonds."

This research from the Bains lab indicates that stress and social interactions are intricately linked. The consequences of these interactions can be long-lasting and may influence behaviours at a later time.

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In addition to Sterley and Bains, the paper's other authors are Dinara Baimoukhametova, Tamas Fuzesi, Agnieszka Zurek, Nuria Daviu, Neilen Rasiah and David Rosenegger.

The study was made possible through the generous contribution of longtime HBI donor Mr. Sanders Lee.

The research was supported by several funding sources including the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Brain Canada, and Alberta Innovates.
Serious asthma attacks in adults can be reduced by a temporary but significant increase in the dose of inhaled steroids during severe episodes of asthma, according to a new UK-wide study led by asthma experts at the University of Nottingham.

Previous research at the University has found that doubling the dose of inhaled steroids during worsening asthma did not prevent the frequency of serious attacks, so this new NIHR-funded clinical trial was set up to see if quadrupling the dose had a more beneficial effect.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases and affects around 300 million people worldwide. Acute episodes are frightening for patients, cause significant ill health, unnecessary deaths and also account for a large proportion of the overall costs of asthma to health services.

During serious asthma attacks patients may have to be admitted to hospital for treatment including oxygen, nebulised bronchodilators and high dose steroids that can sometimes have adverse side effects.

Three people die from asthma in the UK every day and, according to the National Review of Asthma Deaths, two thirds of these deaths could have been prevented with basic asthma care, which includes patients getting a written asthma action plan from their doctor which, among other advice, outlines the medicine they should use.

The Fourfold Asthma Study (FAST) - published in the New England Journal of Medicine - compared two asthma self-management plans in a large trial involving nearly 2000 patient volunteers in England and Scotland. Around half the patients were randomly assigned to the plan that prescribed a quadrupling of inhaled steroid during periods of worsening asthma and the other half followed the current standard self-care plan over a period of 12 months.

The study showed that the participants in the quadrupling group had a 20% reduction in severe asthma attacks compared with the usual care group and they also had fewer asthma-related hospital admissions as only 3 patients in the quadrupling group were admitted to hospital compared with 18 in the usual care group.

Professor of Asthma and Respiratory Medicine, Tim Harrison, from the University's School of Medicine, and the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Our study shows that patients can reduce the risk of a severe asthma attack by following a self-management plan which includes a temporary four-fold increase in their preventer medication when their asthma is deteriorating. This means less need for oral steroids such as prednisolone, less admissions to hospital with severe asthma and hopefully fewer deaths from asthma".

Long-term asthma patient, Richard Harris, 68, from Stamford, Lincs, who took part in the trial, said: "The study has made a real difference to my quality of life and my asthma is under much better control as a result. At the completion of the study I continued to follow the quadrupling self-management plan with the agreement of my GP. I could not praise the team at Nottingham highly enough. They manage to combine high levels of professionalism with a friendly approach that makes the patient feel part of the team, with valued opinions and information."

Dr Samantha Walker, Director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK, and co- author of the study said: "This groundbreaking research could make a real difference to the 5.4 million people in the UK with asthma. This study showed that increasing the steroids in someone's preventer inhaler could prevent them having severe asthma attacks and needing to go to hospital.

"We'd urge any healthcare professionals who want to increase their patient's asthma medication to fully explain what it means, let them know about potential side effects and include it in their written asthma action plan. People with asthma who would like to increase their medication should talk to their healthcare professional and should not delay getting help or support even if they do have an asthma attack."

The FAST trial was managed by the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit and funded by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Professor Hywel Williams, Director of the NIHR's Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme, said: "We are proud to have funded this original researcher-led study. The research shows that quadrupling inhaled steroids during periods of worsening asthma reduces severe asthma attacks by a substantial amount, resulting in less need for oral steroids and fewer hospital admissions. The study is good news for asthma sufferers all over the world as it shows how patients can better manage their condition and ultimately improve their quality of life."

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The other UK centres involved in the study were Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Aintree University Hospital, Leicester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford NIHR Respiratory BRC, University of Aberdeen, Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust.
Sign of times? Philanthropy to coastal preservation surpasses value of finfish catch

Massachusetts boasts one of the most iconic fisheries in the U.S., but new research suggests that protecting marine coastlines has surpassed commercial fishing as an economic driver.

The study is the first to calculate the economic value of coastal preservation in Massachusetts. The research finds these efforts contributed $179 million to the state's economy in 2014, more than finfish landings ($105 million) and whale-watching ($111 million).

"Marine conservation has become a major economic force in Massachusetts," says lead author Joe Roman, a University of Vermont (UVM) biologist. "For the first time, this study gives us the tools to properly capture the magnitude of this value.

After years of diminishing catches of wild fish - including cod, haddock and flounder - finfish landings have also been surpassed by commercial shellfish operations ($420 million) and recreational fishing ($688.5 million).

The study, by a team of economists and marine experts from UVM, Boston University and Franklin Pierce University, was published today in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

NEW TOOL FOR MEASURING CITIZENS VALUE OF NATURE

To calculate marine stewardships $179-million value, researchers pioneered a new method to account for the millions in donations and volunteer time flowing to marine conservation nonprofit organizations.

Of Massachusetts philanthropy in 2014, researchers determined that coastal stewardship groups received more than $122 million in monetary donations, and $57 million worth of volunteer time.

The findings are conservative. The team found that environmental groups with a partial marine mission had a greater value  $282 million in 2014  but chose to focus on organizations primarily addressing coastal ecosystems. They also excluded university programs, direct spending by government agencies (other than select programs or grants), and money from companies for conservation.

Coastal conservation groups support a range of activities, including responses to marine mammal strandings, cleanup of beaches and waterways, marsh and dune restoration, and education and public-awareness campaigns.

These organizations provide jobs, and the money they raise is often spent on local goods and services, says co-author Brendan Fisher of UVMs Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. And the results of conservation efforts can benefit many people. IMPLICATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT

The importance of coastlines - in Massachusetts and elsewhere - are no secret. Nice beaches and harbors attract tourists. Flourishing sea life contributes to cleaner water and more food options. Plenty of people care about the welfare of marine mammals and the quality of the world's oceans.

But quantifying how humans value the environment can be challenging. Business sectors can often dominate policy and regulation discussions, as a result, Roman says.

By highlighting the economic might of marine conservation, Roman hopes to show that environmental groups deserve a place at the table when discussing Massachusetts' ocean economy. "Having better data will help policy makers understand the trade-offs and make better decisions."

While some researchers have conducted surveys to determine how much someone is "willing to pay" to save a humpback whale, those numbers don't require real dollars and sometimes overstate the actual expenditures for such efforts, Roman notes.

AN 'AHA MOMENT' IN CAPE COD

The idea for the study struck Roman on a class trip to Cape Cod to explore the trade-offs of a proposed offshore wind farm. The group met with commercial fishermen, wind developers, conservationists and an oyster farmer.

One morning, his UVM class discovered five dolphins stranded on a beach in Wellfleet, Mass. They watched as the marine stranding experts cared for the mammals' health and released them back into the ocean.

"People had tears in their eyes when they were releasing the dolphins," says Roman, who noticed the workers and volunteers who responded to the stranding. He started counting up the investments in time, equipment and money.

"We're ignoring this whole part of the economy," he thought.

Roman says the valuation could easily apply to other parts of the U.S. coastline - along the Gulf or Pacific Ocean, for example - with adjustments made for the conservation work that's most relevant in each location. Efforts to save sea turtles, for example, are significant in North Carolina.

"As we're making decisions about the future of our oceans," Roman says, "let's make sure stewardship has a role."

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A trauma to the spinal cord, quickly leads to a progressive loss of nerve tissue. This not only affects the injured area, but over time affects also other parts of the spinal cord and even the brain. These neurodegenerative changes can be explored in detail using magnetic resonance imaging. An international team of researchers headed up by Patrick Freund from the Spinal Cord Injury Center of the University of Zurich and the Balgrist University Hospital has now for the first time investigated the extent and progression of microstructural changes over the first two years after a spinal cord injury.

The smaller the initial nerve loss, the better the long-term recovery

In their study, the scientists examined 15 patients who had suffered acute traumatic injuries to the spinal cord as well as 18 healthy study participants after 2, 6, 12, and 24 months. In the brain as well as spinal cord, they determined the anatomical extent of neurodegeneration, the loss of myelin (the insulating layer surrounding nerve cells), as well as the accumulation of iron in the nerve tissue as a result of degeneration and inflammation. It then emerged that there was a direct link between the recovery levels of patients after two years and the extent of neurodegenerative change within the first six months after injury. "The smaller the overall loss of nerve tissue across the neuroaxis at the beginning, the better the patients' long-term clinical recovery," summarizes Patrick Freund.

Predicting long-term recovery by measuring early changes

What the researchers found surprising was the fact that the recovery was steepest within the first six months but neurodegenerative changes greatest within the same time period with no signs of deceleration over two years in the spinal cord and brain. This indicates a fierce competition between compensatory and neurodegenerative changes early after injury. The battle seems to be lost in favor of neurodegeneration over time. Nevertheless, the magnitude of early microstructural changes is predictive of the long term recovery of patients suffering from a spinal cord injury. Crucially, non-invasive, high-resolution neuroimaging provides a mean to predict recovery trajectories and distinguish between neurodegeneration caused by the spinal cord injury itself and beneficial changes resulting from therapy. "We have now a tool to reliably predict recovery and determine the effects of treatments and rehabilitation measures as opposed to spontaneous neurodegeneration in humans" adds neuroimaging specialist Freund. "Clinical studies can thus be carried out more efficiently and cost-effectively in the future."

Clinical studies into the influence of arm and leg exercises planned

The patients who took part in the study will be examined again after five years using the same method. The scientists want to determine whether the neurodegenerative changes will have ceased by then or whether they will still be ongoing. Patrick Freund and his team are also planning training studies that aim to show whether the high-intensity exercising of arm and leg functions helps to slow down or stop the loss of nerve tissue.

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Three papers published tomorrow in Nature answer a question that scientists have been asking ever since Galileo first observed the famous stripes of Jupiter: Are the colorful bands just a pretty surface phenomenon, or are they a significant stratum of the planet? The Weizmann Institute's Prof. Yohai Kaspi led this research in which measurements from NASA's Juno spacecraft were analyzed to reveal that the stripes - belts of strong winds circling the planet - extend to a depth of about 3,000 km. That is quite a bit more than previous estimates, and it is revising scientists' picture of Jupiter's atmosphere as well as its inner layers.

Juno orbits Jupiter every 53 days, and it is giving researchers a chance to "see" what lies below the planet's surface. Among the measurements Juno beams back to Earth are those of the planet's gravity field. This is done via radio waves: As the planet's gravity pulls on the spacecraft in its flyby, the radio signal is also shifted a bit; this shift in the wavelengths, though tiny, is measurable. And since the flybys are in different orbits each time, they can sample the gravitational field of different parts of the planet.

Kaspi, together with Dr. Eli Galanti, both of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, had been preparing for this analysis even before Juno was launched nearly seven years ago. During this time, they built mathematical tools to analyze the gravitational field data; these are what would enable the researchers to get a grasp on Jupiter's atmosphere. The wind belts that encircle the planet, explains Kaspi, are much stronger than the fiercest winds on Earth, and they have lasted for at least hundreds of years. As these jets flow in bands from east to west or west to east, they disrupt the even distribution of mass on the planet. Thus by measuring the imbalance - changes in the planet's gravity field - their analytical tools would be able to calculate how deep the storms extend below the surface.

The scientists looked for anomalies - measurements that show the planet deviating from a perfect sphere. They expected a certain anomaly because the planet's rotation squashes its shape slightly, but additional anomalies in the measurements would most likely be due to winds in the atmosphere. "Since Jupiter is basically a giant ball of gas," explains Kaspi, "the initial expectation was that there would be no asymmetries in the gravity field between the north and south." However, in 2013, while the craft was still enroute to Jupiter, Kaspi calculated that since asymmetry exists between the winds in the north and the south, this should produce a measurable gravitational signal. When the results from Juno arrived, the measurement revealed large differences in the gravity field between north and south. "The remarkable thing about this," says Galanti, "is that we were able to directly measure the signature of the flows themselves."

Based on the asymmetry in the gravitational fields between north to south, the researchers determined that the wind belts - these stripes observed by Galileo - extend 3,000 km deep. Moreover, Kaspi and Galanti developed a method of determining not only the overall depth of the flow, but also precisely how those flows, hidden beneath Jupiter's clouds, change with depth.

The calculations based on these findings show that Jupiter's atmosphere is 1% of its total mass. That may not sound like a lot, but in comparison, Earth's atmosphere is less than a millionth of its total mass. "That is much more than anyone thought and more than what has been known from other planets in the Solar System," says Kaspi. "That is basically a mass equal to three Earths moving at speeds of tens of meters per second."

The first of the three Nature papers, led by Prof. Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome, presents the findings of asymmetry in the gravitational fields. The second describes the results obtained by Kaspi, Galanti and their colleagues showing the distinctive depth of Jupiter's atmosphere. Using these results, the third, led by Prof. Tristan Guillot of the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, looks below the atmosphere, suggesting that beneath the level of the winds, the gas rotates more or less as a single body, almost as if it were a solid. These three papers are helping build a new picture of Jupiter ? from the upper cloud-level inwards.

The subject of Jupiter's core is not yet closed, and the researchers aim analyze further measurements to see whether Jupiter has a solid core, and if so, to determine its mass. Answering this question may help us understand how the Solar System and its planets formed. In addition, Kaspi and Galanti are aiming at another iconic feature of the Solar System: Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Using some of the same methods they developed to characterize the jet-streams, they are trying to understand how deep this giant storm extends. They hope to understand, among other things, why this storm, which has been stable for as long as telescopes have existed, has been shrinking in recent years.

###

Prof. Yohai Kaspi's research is supported by the De Botton Center for Marine Science; the Andre Deloro Institute for Space and Optics Research; and the Sussman Family Center for the Study of Environmental Sciences.

The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the world's top-ranking multidisciplinary research institutions. Noted for its wide-ranging exploration of the natural and exact sciences, the Institute is home to scientists, students, technicians and supporting staff. Institute research efforts include the search for new ways of fighting disease and hunger, examining leading questions in mathematics and computer science, probing the physics of matter and the universe, creating novel materials and developing new strategies for protecting the environment.
March 7, 2018 - Cognitive therapies should be considered when addressing the harmful psychological consequences of trauma in victims of human trafficking, according to a review and recommendations in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

The recommendations are based largely on research in other groups of traumatized patients--reflecting the lack of evidence on mental health treatments for human trafficking victims, according to the first of two articles by experts at Baylor College of Medicine: Temilola Salami, PhD (now at Sam Houston State University), Mollie Gordon, MD, John Coverdale, MD, and Phuong Nguyen, PhD. In the second paper, the authors call for psychiatry to take the lead in coordinating an integrated care approach for this large and highly vulnerable group of patients.

Human Trafficking - Initial Recommendations for Mental Health Treatment Sometimes called "modern slavery," human trafficking refers to the use of force, coercion, or fraud for purposes of labor or sexual exploitation. Estimates of the scope of the problem vary widely--by one estimate, there are more than 300,000 human trafficking victims in Texas alone. Victims span all ages, races, genders, and socioeconomic brackets. A US Department of Justice report found that 83 percent of sex trafficking victims were US citizens.

Due to their exposure to traumatic events, human trafficking victims experience distressing psychological consequences. In their review of the research literature, Dr. Salami and colleagues found sparse evidence on mental health treatments for this group of patients. Their recommendations reflect research on other traumatized groups--such as victims of sexual abuse or domestic violence or torture survivors--informed by understanding of the psychological issues faced by human trafficking victims.

The main treatment strategies for PTSD and other trauma symptoms are cognitive processing therapy (CPT) and prolonged exposure therapy (PE). While both treatments are effective, they work in different ways. In CPT, cognitive restructuring techniques are used to change maladaptive, hopeless thoughts regarding the self, the world, and the future. In PE, patients are exposed to internal and external stimuli (thoughts and places) to help them fully process their traumatic experiences.

Available evidence favors CPT for victims of human trafficking, the researchers believe. Cognitive therapies may be more effective in addressing the strong feelings of guilt and shame experienced by survivors. The CPT approach proceeds more slowly and with less exposure to traumatic reminders, which may help keep survivors in therapy.

Dr. Salami and coauthors write, "We believe that cognitive approaches not only show promise in treating trauma and stress-related symptoms that result from trafficking, but that they may also reduce other psychological consequences of trafficking." Common disorders in trafficking victims include anxiety and depression, substance use, dissociation, and psychosis. Victims vary in terms of their background and types of traumatic experiences; care and treatment will differ depending on the individual's situation.

Other critical considerations in working with human trafficking victims include the fear and mistrust that may make it difficult for victims to seek help and treatment. Some victims may be accompanied by their trafficker, or fear being recognized. Mental health professionals need to work closely with others in the community--for example, emergency room staff and police--who may come into contact with victims.

In the companion article, Dr. Gordon and colleagues highlight the pivotal role of psychiatrists and psychologists in developing integrated approaches to caring for human trafficking victim at all stages. They write, "The provision of such a comprehensive and integrated model of care should facilitate the identification of victims, promote their recovery, and reduce the possibility of retraumatization."

###

Click here to read "What Therapies are Favored in the Treatment of the Psychological Sequelae of Trauma in Human Trafficking Victims?"

DOI: 10.1097/PRA.0000000000000288

Click here to read "Psychiatry's Role in the Management of Human Trafficking Victims: An Integrated Care Approach."

DOI: 10.1097/PRA.0000000000000287

About Journal of Psychiatric Practice

, a peer reviewed journal, publishes reports on new research, clinically applicable reviews, articles on treatment advances, and case studies, with the goal of providing practical and informative guidance for clinicians. Mental health professionals will want access to this journal--for sharpening their clinical skills, discovering the best in treatment, and navigating this rapidly changing field. John M. Oldham, MD, is the editor in chief and past president of the American Psychiatric Association.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer N.V. (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2016 annual revenues of 4.3 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry. For more information about our products and the organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com/, follow @WKHealth or @Wolters_Kluwer on Twitter, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, or follow WoltersKluwerComms on YouTube.

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Pound sterling has extended its recent slump against the US dollar after weaker-than-predicted house prices pressured the British currency. GBP/USD is seen slightly higher on Friday 9th March, quoted at 1.38178.

An unexpectedly weak RICS house price balance for February left the Pound US Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate on a softer footing, undermining confidence in the UK economic outlook.

As the measure stagnated on the month this highlighted the increasing pressure which the domestic housing market finds itself under.

Coupled with lingering concerns over Brexit, and the still-wide disparity between the UK and EU positions, this left the Pound lacking in any particular support on Thursday morning.

On the other hand, the mood towards the US Dollar improved somewhat thanks to a temporary easing in worries over the prospect of a global trade war.

Strong Jobs Data May Outweigh Trade War Fears For US Dollar (USD)

However, USD exchange rates remain vulnerable to market jitters if the Trump administration presses ahead with the imposition of steep tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

As the US looks set to pursue a more protectionist agenda in the months ahead the appeal of the US Dollar is likely to deteriorate.

Analysts at Danske Bank commented:

Trumps accelerating his protectionist agenda is easily reconcilable with his highly fiscal expansionary policies and the talk of the virtues of a weak dollar voiced by Treasury secretary Mnuchin early in the year. While the current mix of fiscal and monetary policy is set to remain USD negative, we further note that the hegemony status of the USD  and hence possibly its safe-haven properties  have been up for revision for a while, and Trumps trade rhetoric is accelerating that process.

Given the negative impact that a trade war could have on the US economy the GBP/USD exchange rate should find some support in the coming days, unless the administration rows back on its plans.

Even so, the US Dollar may still find a solid rallying point ahead of the weekend if the latest non-farm payrolls report proves positive.

Following on from yesterdays stronger-than-forecast ADP employment change figure there are hopes the Februarys unemployment rate will tighten from 4.1% to 4.0%.

Further signs of tightness within the US labour market are likely to support the case for the Federal Reserve to pursue a more aggressive pace of monetary tightening in 2018.

However, if the average hourly earnings figures fail to show fresh improvement this may temper any USD boost.

While the Fed has retained a rather hawkish policy outlook there is still a possibility than underwhelming wage growth could encourage policymakers to rethink the likely course of rate hikes.

As the Trump administrations approach to trade also has the potential to derail the prospect of further Fed policy tightening any weaker data could weigh heavily on the US Dollar.

Brexit Uncertainty Remains Key Headwind for Pound to US Dollar Exchange Rate

Speculation surrounding Brexit is expected to keep the GBP/USD exchange rate under some degree of pressure, meanwhile.

At this stage there appears to be little progress towards an agreement on post-Brexit trade between the UK and EU, maintaining a significant degree of uncertainty over the future of the UK economy.

As Mikael Olai Milhj, Senior Analyst at Danske Bank, noted of the EUs draft proposals:

The EU wants tariff-free and quota-free trade but reiterated that there can be no cherry picking by choosing which parts of the EU single market the UK wants to be a part of. The EU still thinks the only likely solution is a free trade agreement like Canada. Services will only be included with restrictions and there will be no special access for banks.

Unless there are signs of progress towards an amicable deal on trade the Pound is likely to remain somewhat biased to the downside.

Even so, if tomorrows UK trade and production data demonstrates greater resilience within the domestic economy this should give Sterling a boost.

On the other hand, as forecasts point towards a dip in the NIESR gross domestic product estimate for the three months to February GBP exchange rates could still to make particular headway going into the weekend.
Authorities in Geneva have ruled that private apartments or houses can be rented on platforms such as Airbnb for a maximum of 60 days annually. Infractions will be penalised by sanctions, they said.

Taking their cue from other European cities such as Berlin, which have capped the amount of time private accommodation can be offered on Airbnb, the Geneva cantonal government said on Wednesday that the figure of 60 days represented an approximation of school holidays and some weekends.

Such a ceiling thus allows for hosts who genuinely live in the apartment to sublet it on certain occasions; anything beyond this figure, however, means that the nature of the accommodation has shifted to something more commercial.

The regulation will come into effect from April 1. Sanctions will be imposed on those who fail to respect the limit, the government said.

+ Read about the huge growth of Airbnb in Switzerland in recent years

The goal of the regulation is to tackle the problem of apartments being used primarily as rentals for travellers rather than being let on the market as homes. The housing market in Geneva is already very tight, while owner occupancy of apartments is also extremely low.

The decision comes after some years of debate in Switzerland about how best to regulate Airbnb, which has continued to gain in strength across the country. Cantons have debated leaning on the company to collect tourist tax  a step already taken in Zug  while canton Geneva had reportedly also considered a complete ban of the platform.

Airbnb welcomed Wednesdays decision, but warned that the new regulations should not bring about onerous administrative formalities for hosts.

Some 2,000-3,000 accommodations in Geneva are offered on Airbnbs site, according to the authorities.













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Switzerlands largest mosque, which has been embroiled in various controversies, has a new director, reports Swiss public radio, RTS. This follows calls for reforms by the secretary-general of the Saudi Arabia-based Muslim World League (MWL).

Switzerlands largest mosque has replaced the director of the Islamic Cultural Foundation of Geneva, which manages the place of worship in Petit-Saconnex, Geneva, according to RTS and the Tribune de Geneve newspaper on Thursday.

The previous director, Ahmed Beyari, who was in charge from 2012, stopped work at the mosque in early February and has taken retirement, RTS said. His replacement is a former Saudi ambassador who has been appointed by the MWL and approved by the Geneva foundation. A vice-director in charge of communication has also been chosen. Full details are expected to be presented soon.

+ Muslims well integrated into Swiss society

The changes at the mosque follow a visit to Geneva last November by the secretary-general of MWL Mohammad bin Abdul Karim Al-Issa and his vows to reform the place of worship to make it a model of culture, dialogue and integration. The former Saudi justice minister said if this was not achieved, MWL would seriously considering withdrawing all support to the centre.

Fiche S

In an interview with the Tribune de Geneve on November 17, Al-Issa said errors had been made in past recruitment at the mosque.

Four French employees, including two imams, who had reportedly been placed by French officials on a backlist known as Fiche S, were removed from their posts soon after his November visit. Fiche S, or S file status, is reserved for individuals who are considered potential threats to French national security. Their lawyer said on Thursday that the four individuals were planning to file appeals against their dismissals before a Swiss court.

In last years interview, Al-Issa denied that the Geneva mosque was a centre for indoctrination of extremists.In 2015, the Tribune de Geneve reported that 20 young extremists had attended the mosque for several months, two of whom allegedly travelled to Syria.

The Geneva mosque was inaugurated in 1978 by former Saudi king Khalid bin Abdulaziz. It is the biggest in Switzerland and can host 1,500 worshippers.













swissinfo.ch/sb






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Two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned from a blunder-struck trip to India, Emmanuel Macron arrives in New Delhi hoping to avoid the missteps of his ally.

Trudeau and Macron are often compared internationally because of their broadly similar political views, as well as youth and good looks. But the French leader will be eager to make a different impression on his Indian hosts.

Trudeau, already facing suspicions in India that Canada was too soft on Sikh separatists back home, was seriously embarrassed when a former militant was invited to a dinner with him in Mumbai.

Even before this revelation, Indias Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given Trudeau a cool reception, but he is expected to be much more welcoming for Macron after a warm meeting between the two in Paris last year.

Macron will spend a lot of time with Narendra Modi, a source in the French presidency said, adding that they had formed a close relationship during Macrons first nine months in power.

They will meet Saturday for talks before Macron attends a solar power summit on Sunday designed to showcase India and Frances commitment to fighting climate change, which both leaders have made a priority.

Travelling with his wife Brigitte, Frances 40-year-old president is set to make the almost obligatory visit to the monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a few hours drive from the Indian capital on Sunday.

On Monday, he heads to the chaotic Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the river Ganges, which the Indian premier has promised to modernise and clean up.

Having seen Trudeau pilloried on social media and in the Canadian press for donning traditional Indian clothing at every opportunity, Macron is likely to be far more conservative in his dress-sense.

 Arms and reactors 

As well as discussing climate change and ways to build closer diplomatic ties, the two biggest issues between the countries in recent years  defence and nuclear energy sales  will also take centre-stage during private talks.

In September 2016, India finally inked a deal to buy 36 French-made Rafale fighter jets, much less than the 126 that were once discussed, but France and its manufacturer Dassault Aviation hold hopes of further sales.

Macron will also vaunt the quality of Airbus helicopters and Scorpene submarines in a country that buys 90 percent of its equipment from abroad, making it the worlds biggest arms buyer.

Obstacles holding up the long-delayed sale of six nuclear reactors will also be discussed.

Macron has travelled widely since his election last May, presenting himself as the dynamic new face in the European Union who is driving reform efforts in the 28-member bloc.

The centrist has invested time and energy in building relationships with the worlds nationalist strongmen, including US President Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

France, like much of Europe and the West, sees India as a natural diplomatic and economic partner in Asia because of its role as the worlds biggest democracy and its huge yet still untapped business potential.

The United States and leading European Union members have spent years wooing successive governments in New Delhi, seeing the country as a counter-weight to China in the region.

Macron is set to announce plans to allow Indian navy ships to use French bases in the southern Indian Ocean where New Delhi remains wary of Chinese expansion in an area that it sees as its strategic backyard.

amd-jri-adp/je/jta
The British military facility in Porton Down analysing the nerve agent used in the poisoning of a former Russian double agent serves as a state-of-the-art laboratory specialising in chemical and biological weapons research.

Located just a few miles from Salisbury, the southwestern English city where Sergei Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter were targeted, is Britains most secretive and controversial military base.

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory  its official name  employs 3,000 scientists across a sprawling rural site, and has an annual budget of 500 million (560 million euros, $695 million).

It was founded in 1916 to counter German gas attacks in World War I, which initially involved chlorine and then mustard gas and phosgene.

In the 1950s scientists at Porton Down developed non-lethal CS gas, better known as tear gas, as well as the deadly nerve agent VX, according to the BBC.

Given international conventions that prohibit the use of chemical weapons, research conducted at Porton Down is defensive in nature, Britains Ministry of Defence (MoD) says.

The facility aims only to improve equipment and testing to protect troops and the population, it adds.

In recent years, the laboratory has participated in Ebola research, and has been involved in the fight against the epidemic in Sierra Leone since 2013.

It has also analysed the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, in particular sarin gas, the British government has previously revealed.

The long history of secrecy surrounding the site and its work has fueled persistent rumours and conspiracies, including accusations of experiments on animals and humans.

In 1999, police opened a probe into testing that may have endangered the life of soldiers without their knowledge.

The investigation did not result in criminal prosecutions, but in 2008 the MoD awarded 360 former members of the armed forces members compensation of 3 million (3.4 million euros, $4.2 million).

They claimed to have served against their will as guinea pigs in Cold War era chemical testing, but the ministry did not admit responsibility.

In a June 2016 press release  entitled the truth about Porton Down  the MoD tried to rebut some of the claims about the site, including that aliens had been taken there and that it had been used to cultivate cannabis.

It outlined the work carried out at the facility, admitting successful testing could not, currently, be achieved without the use of animals.

The laboratory also elaborated on its volunteer programme, which has seen 20,000 people take part in studies over the decades.

(It) has always been operated to the highest ethical standards of the day, the MoD said.

apz/jj/je
Jurors in the trial of an alleged London Underground bomber were on Thursday shown a replica of the malfunctioning device that still injured 30 people, hearing victims describe the "fireball" that tore through a train carriage last September.

Ahmed Hassan, an 18-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker accused of carrying out the botched attack, is standing trial in the British capital.

Explosives officer Andrew Gee, who was responsible for disabling the device at the scene near Parsons Green station in west London, told the court that he used a handheld device to check for explosives.

He said the bomb  a white substance packed in a bucket inside a plastic bag, registered as the chemical compound TATP.

In this instance we had a hit basically in 10-15 seconds, Gee told the court, noting it can take up to five minutes to identify a substance.

Jurors were shown a replica of the home-made device Hassan allegedly left on the train, with sugar used as a substitute for the explosive substance and fake shrapnel packed into it.

Earlier Stephen Nash told jurors that he was on his way to work when he experienced a blinding flash before being engulfed in flames.

I was thrown to the ground, he said. The flames were overwhelming It was intense heat, I thought I had lost my ears, I thought my head was on fire.

Commuter Aimee Colville said she heard a loud bang and cracking before a wall of glass came across.

That morning I had curled my hair and I had put hairspray in my hair so when the flames came over me my hair immediately caught fire, she added.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan said it was only luck that prevented the bomb from fully detonating.

Hassan arrived in Britain in October 2015. He told authorities he was in fear of the Islamic State group and that it had taken him by force and trained him how to kill when he was in Iraq.

He denies attempted murder and causing an explosion on a packed train on September 15.

The attack, claimed by IS, was the fifth time Britain had been targeted in six months.
Interior minister Amber Rudd said Thursday that Britain would do "all we can" to pursue those behind a nerve agent attack on an ex-Russian spy, acting "without hesitation" once the facts become clear.

We are committed to doing all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be, she told MPs, describing it as a brazen and reckless act.

The investigation is moving at pace, and this government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer, she said, adding: We will respond in a robust and appropriate manner once we ascertain who was responsible.

In an update to the House of Commons, Rudd said Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remained unconscious and in a critical but stable condition after being found collapsed on a bench in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on Sunday.

A police officer who attended the scene remains serious but stable and is conscious, talking and engaging, she added.

Police confirmed late Wednesday that Skripal and his daughter were attacked by a nerve agent, and Rudd said it was highly likely the police officer was also exposed.

She refused to speculate further on the nature of the agent or who was responsible while the police continued their complex and fast-paced investigation.

But Rudd warned it was a most outrageous crime, adding: The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act.

This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account.
EU Council President Donald Tusk warned Thursday that the problems of the Irish border must be resolved before talks on Brexit proceed further with Britain.

If in London someone assumes that the negotiations will deal with other issues first, before moving to the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first, Tusk said after talks with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublin.

Both Britain and the EU have vowed to avoid the return of customs checks to the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of Britain, and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

They reached an interim deal in December leaving some flexibility on the issue, but an EU text putting the agreement into law has sparked a fresh row with London.

Britain intends to leave the EUs single market and customs union, which suggests the need for border controls somewhere.

The EU text says Northern Ireland must stay in a customs union with the rest of the bloc if no better way is found to avoid a hard Irish border  which Britain rejects.

While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border, Tusk said in Dublin.

As long as the UK doesnt present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations.

Varadkar said: We must have certainty that, if a better option proves unachievable, the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland will apply.

Britain hopes to begin talks on the future trading relationship with Brussels next month, and Prime Minister Theresa May set out her proposals for a new wide-ranging free trade agreement (FTA) in a speech on Friday.

Finance Minister Philip Hammond set out more detail this week, saying it would be in both sides mutual interest to include the financial services industry in the deal.

The EU has repeatedly rejected this, although its draft guidelines for the trade talks published on Wednesday made no overt mention of the issue.

Tusk repeated Thursday that a free trade deal could reduce or eliminate tariffs on goods, but services required common rules to ensure there was a level playing field.

This is why we cannot offer the same in services as we can offer in goods. And its also why FTAs dont have detailed rules for financial services, he said.

We should all be clear that also when it comes to financial services, life will be different after Brexit.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held a private meeting Thursday with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, where he made a "strong commitment" to interfaith dialogue, the archbishop's office said.

During the hour-long visit at Lambeth Palace, the pair discussed the crown princes reform plans and Welby  the head of the Anglican church  expressed his concerns about the treatment of Christians in Saudi Arabia.

The Crown Prince made a strong commitment to promote the flourishing of those of different faith traditions, and to interfaith dialogue within the Kingdom and beyond, the archbishops office said in a statement.

The archbishop shared his concern about limits placed on Christian worship in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and highlighted the importance for leaders of all faiths to support freedom of religion or belief, drawing on the experience of the UK.

Prince Mohammed is on a three-day visit to Britain, which began with a lunch with Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday, and will see him hold the second of two meetings with Prime Minister Theresa May later Thursday.

It follows a trip to Egypt earlier in the week, when Prince Mohammed met Coptic Pope Tawadros II in Cairo.

In what his office described as a cordial and honest conversation, the archbishop also voiced his concern over the Saudi-led military action in Yemen, which has been the cause of protests during the crown princes British visit.

The archbishop voiced his distress at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, and asked that all that is possible be done to alleviate the suffering of civilian populations and to seek an end to the conflict, the statement said.

The men viewed a selection of early texts from the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths during their meeting.
Germany has remanded in custody a 17-year-old Iraqi suspected of having planned an explosives attack for the Islamic State jihadist group in Germany or Britain, prosecutors said Thursday.

The teenager, identified only as Deday A., hoarded a large amount of pyrotechnics at his home and allegedly planned to use the black powder to make an explosive device, said federal prosecutors.

The suspect, who was first arrested on February 13 in the state of Hesse, faced a judge Wednesday who ordered him remanded in pre-trial custody on charges of having planned an attack.

The accused is alleged to have procured explosives to commit an Islamist attack in Germany or Britain, the prosecutors said in a statement, adding that he was a suspected member of IS.

German authorities have been on heightened alert since IS claimed a lorry assault on a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 which killed 12 people.

Dozens of suspects have been arrested or charged over alleged terror plots.
Ryanair has agreed to recognise Italian pilots' trade union ANPAC, the Irish no-frills airline said Thursday, after agreeing a similar deal in Britain.

The agreement comes after Ryanair suffered a troubled end to 2017, being forced to cancel 20,000 flights through to March this year, mainly because of botched holiday scheduling for pilots.

Against that backdrop, the airline has made concerted moves to improve relations with employees by recognising trade unions.

Ryanair today confirmed that it has signed a union recognition agreement with ANPAC, who will now be the sole representative body for Ryanair employed pilots in Italy, a statement said.

This agreement follows extensive negotiations with ANPAC since Ryanairs December announcement that it was willing to recognise unions for collective bargaining purposes.

ANPAC welcomed Thursdays announcement.

This is a historic moment for Ryanair pilots in Italy, who for many years have been working to obtain union representation and both secure and uniform working and salary conditions across the different bases in Italy, the union said in a separate statement.

Italy has become the second country after Britain where Ryanair has officially recognised unions representing pilots.

Ryanairs non-pilot employees in Italy staged a strike on February 10 over their exclusion from contract negotiations, with little disruption caused.

The airline described the latest agreement as significant because Italy accounts for about 20 percent of its pilots, and almost 80 of its fleet of more than 400 aircraft.

And it expressed optimism that more recognition deals would follow.

We are making good progress with unions in other major EU countries and we hope to sign more recognition deals with pilots and cabin crew unions over the coming weeks and months, said human resources chief Eddie Wilson.

In January, Ryanair signed a deal to recognise the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA), reversing its historic hostility towards trade unions.

That came after the carrier said that its UK-based pilots had accepted pay increases of up to 20 percent.

The company also said in December that it would recognise an Irish pilots trade union, Impact, although it has yet to formalise the deal.

rfj/bcp/ser
The EU warned US President Donald Trump on Thursday against letting individual states like Britain off global steel and aluminium tariffs, saying any such exemption would be viewed as applying to the whole bloc.

The White House signalled Wednesday it would water down plans for the contentious tariffs by exempting Mexico, Canada and possibly other countries as well, in the face of jitters on world markets.

But European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said Brussels would not accept a carve-out for Washingtons close ally Britain, which has voted to leave the European Union but remains a member until 2019.

What I have read today is that they are probably considering some exemptions to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) countries but also they have mentioned the UK and maybe some other countries, Katainen told reporters.

So if they try to make (an) exemption for one of our member states it means the EU as a whole.

Finnish former prime minister Katainen said Brussels had contacted US authorities intensively in recent days to try to convince them not to trigger any major damages to the US economy and the world economy.

The European Union sounded a stern warning Wednesday as it readied to retaliate with US-targeted tariffs of its own on everything from steel to peanut butter, orange juice, cranberries, bourbon and denim jeans.

Trade wars are bad and easy to lose, EU President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday, directly rebuffing Trumps assertion last week that they were good and easy to win.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Burning Out: What Really Happens Inside a Crematorium, a huge feature story in the March 2018 issue of Popular Mechanics, covers just about everything youd want to know about cremation. You can read the full article by Caren Chesler online.

Among the topics covered in this impressive article:

Cemeteries and columbaria  how the growing trend toward cremation is changing memorialization of the dead.

Why the U.S. cremation rate skyrocketed from 5% in the 1980s to more than 50% in 2016.

How flame-based cremation works (this is, after all, a Popular Mechanics article).

What cremated remains look like through different points in the cremation process.

Stories of people who have the cremated remains of loved ones at home and arent sure what to do with them.

The growing use of alkaline hydrolysis  illustrated with a YouTube video I did with funeral director Jeff Edwards explaining the process! (see the video below)

Scattering ashes versus giving them a permanent final resting place with memorialization.

While I already know a lot about cremation, this bit of information was news to me: The Cremators Rule of Thumb  100 pounds of human fat is the equivalent of 17 gallons of kerosene.

Read the article online.

Heres the video about alkaline hydrolysis Popular Mechanics used in the online version of the story.

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Jeff Edwards also did a great description of a natural gas-fired retort, the cremation machine.

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If youre thinking about cremation, check out HAIL AND FAREWELL: Cremation Ceremonies, Templates and Tips.

The book by Gail Rubin, Certified Thanatologist and Certified Funeral Celebrant, and Susan Fraser, respected memorial authority, covers everything related to creating a meaningful memorial service with cremated remains:

Why its important to hold some sort of goodbye ceremony.

A description of the cremation process, so families know what to expect.

Examples of different ways to scatter ashes  more than youd think!

Stories of creative memorial services in different settings to spark ideas.

Templates to easily create meaningful memorial services.

Sample scripts from actual memorial services to provide inspiration.

Suggested readings, music and online resources for a wealth of meaningful materials to weave into a service.

The books title refers to the last line of an ancient elegiac poem written by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus approximately 2,000 years ago. He mourns the death of his brother, who died while Catullus was traveling abroad. Upon his return, he sadly addresses his brothers cremated remains,  with brotherly weeping. And forever, brother, hail and farewell.

More information here.

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Federal prosecutors have asked a federal judge to prohibit recently convicted state Sen. Carlos Uresti from squandering his assets.

The U.S. Attorneys Office here filed the motion under seal this week  days after his wife filed for divorce Friday. They are seeking a restraining order to prevent the dissipation of assets. Blacks Law Dictionary says the term is used in referring to a person with debt who will squander his money and not pay his creditors.

The court docket shows Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra signed an order related to the request on Tuesday, but it also was filed under seal.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristy Callahan on Wednesday asked the judge to unseal her earlier motion and his order because she said the parties have been notified of the governments request. She declined to comment on her motion, so its not immediately clear if a restraining order would apply to anyone besides Uresti.

The filing comes two weeks after a jury found Uresti guilty of 11 felony charges over his involvement in FourWinds Logistics, a now-defunct San Antonio company that defrauded investors. The company bought and sold sand used for fracking in oil production.

Uresti is facing the possibility of years in federal prison. But he also could possibly owe millions in restitution to victims of the fraud, which may explain why the government sought to prevent him from dissipating assets.

The government made its request just three or four days after Urestis wife filed divorce papers to end their nearly six-year marriage. Lleanna Uresti cited adultery as one of the reasons for wanting to end the marriage.

In the divorce petition, Lleanna Uresti seeks exclusive possession of their Helotes home, assessed at $1.6 million. She also says she should be awarded a disproportionate share of the couples estate for various reasons, including fault in the breakup of the marriage and need for future support.

It wasnt immediately clear if the divorce petition prompted the government to seek the restraining order.

The Urestis separated on Monday, the petition says, four days after the San Antonio Democrat was convicted for securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, among other charges. He has vowed to appeal his verdict.

The senator served as FourWinds outside general counsel, a 1 percent owner and recruited investors.

One of the investors was a one-time legal client whom he helped obtain a $2.5 million settlement following the deaths of two of her children in 2010. Denise Cantu of Harlingen later invested $900,000 of the money on Urestis recommendation and ended up losing $800,000. Cantu testified she became sexually involved with Uresti. She is suing him for fraud. He denies the relationship.
Federal prosecutors expect state Sen. Carlos Uresti will owe more than $3 million in restitution to victims of his criminal fraud, a newly unsealed court filing shows.

The government also alleges that last weeks divorce petition filed by Urestis wife, Lleanna, is largely to avoid the lien that will arise at sentencing to enable it to apply their property to his restitution debt.

Senior U.S. District Judge David Ezra issued an order Tuesday barring Uresti, 54, and his wife, family members, representatives or companies from disposing of any of his assets without court approval.

The order remains in force until Urestis sentencing, set for June 28. Uresti is facing possibly years in federal prison in addition to owing restitution to victims.

The judge also authorized the government to file lis pendens, Latin for suit pending, against all of Urestis real property, which could prevent him from selling any real estate. Hes permitted to use assets to pay normal living expenses.

The judges order and the governments motion to prevent the dissipation of assets were unsealed today.

In their filing, prosecutors allege the San Antonio Democrat is selling furniture, statues and artwork. He also is preparing to list for sale his law office building, prosecutors say. The building at 924 McCullough Ave. in San Antonio is assessed for about $519,000.

His actions could hinder his victims ability to recover their losses, the government says.

A jury on Feb. 22 found Uresti guilty of 11 felonies in connection with his involvement in FourWinds Logistics, an oilfield company that defrauded investors. He served as outside general counsel, a 1 percent owner and recruited investors.

Uresti has vowed to appeal the verdict. Attorney Michael McCrum, who represented Uresti in the criminal trial, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ezras order enjoins Uresti and his wife from dividing their assets in their divorce proceeding.

About a week after the verdict, Lleanna Uresti, 42, his second wife, filed for divorce in state district court in Bexar County. She cited adultery as one of reasons. Her attorney Juanita Pelaez-Prada declined to comment.

The government noted Lleanna Uresti seeks a disproportionate share of the parties estate to include exclusive use and possession of their residence. The Helotes property is assessed at almost $1.6 million.

She also wants her husband of nearly six years to pay her attorneys fees and expenses, even though the government noted she has separate bank accounts her husband previously has deposited money directly into from his law firms operating account.

Divorce is a common asset protection device in cases where restitution is anticipated, and defendants will routinely agree to a final decree in which the nondebtor spouse receives all of the assets while the defendant receives all of the debt, the government said in its motion.

The government added that community property isnt exempt from criminal debt. It further said Urestis community property interests should remain available for restitution.

Although (Urestis) actions have certainly impaired his marriage, (he) and his spouse should not be the sole arbiters of their assets as it will likely leave the victims without any means of recovering their losses, prosecutors said in their motion. That result would further perpetuate the damage (he) has done.

Among Urestis victims is Denise Cantu of Harlingen. He helped represent her in civil litigation involving the 2010 deaths of two of her children in a vehicle wreck. Uresti later recommended Cantu invest some of the proceeds of a $2.5 million settlement with FourWinds.

Cantu invested $900,000 and lost $800,000. She is suing Uresti for fraud.

Uresti  had little regard for his victims then and is not expected to have any regard for them now, prosecutors said in their motion. Given his fraud, he cannot be trusted to manage his assets in the best interests of his victims and should be restrained from making decisions that could impede the ability to recover restitution.
Only Child opens in a claustrophobic elementary school cloakroom as first-graders huddle with their teacher after a lockdown alert comes over the intercom.

Some are crying quietly. One boy has vomited all over his shirt. Somebody has wet their pants. The teacher, fumbling with her cell phone password, has dropped the F-word, shocking and delighting her students. Zach Taylor is counting the pop! pop! pop! sounds  18, 19, 20  which get louder as they get closer, then stop.

Everything was hot and wet and smelled bad and I started to feel dizzy from it all and my stomach didnt feel good. Then all of a sudden it was quiet. I couldnt hear any more pops. Just the crying and the hiccupping in the closet.

Zach is a smart and sensitive 6-year-old who narrates first-time writer Rhianan Navins debut work of fiction. A mother of three young children who lives outside New York City, she was jolted by the 2012 murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 young students and 6 adult staff were shot.

In Only Child, set in an NYC suburb, the death toll is 19, including Zachs older brother Andy, a fifth-grader who took medication for oppositional defiant disorder, battled frequently with his parents and was cruel more often than kind to his kid brother.

More Information Only Child By Rhiannon Navin Knopf, $25.95 See More Collapse

Only Child is a timely novel, given the recent school shootings in Florida; sadly, it is a timeless work, as some form of public murder happens regularly in our country.

In an interview on her website, Navin said she began writing the book two years ago after her 5-year-old twins participated in their first lockdown drill in kindergarten.

That same afternoon, I found Garrett hiding from the bad guy underneath our dining room table. That crushed me, she said.

Using her own children as a focus group, Navin, 40, chose to tell the story in Zachs voice. Its problematic. Maintaining the point of view of a 6-year-old, staying inside his head over nearly 300 pages, is one of the more difficult narrative approaches for a writer, regardless of their experience and skill level. It asks a lot of adult readers, because it draws attention to itself. We are constantly asking internally: Would a child say that? Would he think that? Would he do that?

For example, in an attempt to bring his shattered family back together, Zach launches a plan that involves sneaking out of the house in the middle of the afternoon and walking, loaded down with a heavy backpack, for more than an hour on city streets to the cemetery where his brother is buried. Could a 6-year-old do all that?

The loss of brother Andy tears the Taylor family apart. Mom Melissa, who put aside a stressful career to be at home for her kids, turns from catatonic to vengeful, while dad Jim, the breadwinner who is cautious and callous, itches to get back to work. Initially, both dismiss their younger son as they are consumed by their grief.

Like smoke from a house fire, sadness, fear, anger and confusion permeate the Taylor home. And Zach is left pretty much to himself to make sense of it.

Overall, Navin writes convincingly as Zach, although there are some potholes in the road  the term crisscross applesauce for sitting cross-legged lurks throughout the book like a land mine full of explosive rainbows and unicorns. And Zachs search for the secrets of happiness  inspired by Mary Pope Osbornes real-life Magic Tree House childrens book series  grows heavy-handed.

I chose the point of view of a young child deliberately because I believed it would offer a chance to tell the story in a way that wouldnt be skewed or biased in any way, Navin explained. I didnt want my own views regarding gun control to bleed into the story; I wanted readers to come away with their own conclusions.

Whether the Taylors find anything resembling peace is left open ended; Navin thankfully doesnt wrap up things in a neat package. What she does is to step bravely into the storm surrounding school shootings, asking us to consider the volatile issue of guns in America through the eyes of a child.

It is said that grief affects all of us in different ways. Perhaps Only Childs greatest attribute is that the book explores various paths that such a shock to the system can take. As Zach notes, The gunman came and real life went away, and now it was like we were in a new fake life.
San Antonio chefs have made several cooking appearances at the prestigious James Beard House in New York through the years, but three local chefs who thought they were joining that list now are shocked to discover they never were booked to cook.

Chef Michael Grimes, who co-owns Southern Grit Flavor with his wife; Elisa Trevino; Stephen Paprocki (Texas Black Gold Garlic); and Tony Hernandez (Bliss) were sure enough that they were cooking there that the San Antonio Express-News ran a short story about it on mySA.com and in print Feb. 28.

Then they discovered earlier this week none of it was true.

Simply put, they were duped, said Izabela Wojcik, director of house programming for the James Beard Foundation. They were never on the schedule, and there wasnt ever any official talk of them being on the schedule.

Wojcik read the mySA.com story and contacted the chefs to try to figure out what was going on.

Grimes said he and his wife were contacted by New York-based business owner and food marketer Kara Kenney in January about a series of chef-driven Texas Takeover events at a few New York restaurants May 3 through May 5. The events would focus on introducing Texas tastes and ingredients to a Manhattan audience.

Kenney represents Nectar Girl, a Dallas company that makes organic juice mixers, and said she discovered Grimes through a family contact and his Source to Course online video series spotlighting South Texas farmers.

The highlight of the trip was supposed to be an exclusive May 3 dinner at the Beard House that focused on a Cinco de Mayo-themed menu. Grimes contacted Paprocki and Hernandez to see if they were interested in accompanying him  and of course the answer was yes.

Every chef dreams about this, Grimes said.

Grimes said Kenney told him the Beard opportunity opened up after a chef canceled due to family obligations, and they would be booked as replacements. After what he cited as many emails and phone conversations with Ms. Kenney, Grimes notified the Express-News Feb. 23 that they were good to go on the Beard House dinner, and shared the planned menu.

The one major problem was that none of these plans ever reached Wojcik, and she booked the real replacements for that dinner without ever realizing the San Antonians were options. The Beard House hosts about 200 events each year, and Wojcik is responsible for booking all of them and has the final say.

Kenney said she discussed the possibility of plugging the San Antonio chefs into the May 3 date with a volunteer member of the Beard House programming committee. The volunteer instructed her to file a formal proposal, which Kenney claims she was about to do when Wojcik contacted the local chefs and her, informing them the spot had been filled.

Still unclear is how Grimes and the others could have thought a proposal was a final booking.

When asked, Kenney said: Im not interested in getting into a he said, she said. Its not that at all. I dont appreciate the innuendos of any of this. There is nobody to blame. There was a cancellation that correlated with what the chefs were doing anyways.

This was being put together as a replacement option. Unfortunately, the proposal wasnt submitted, but we were in the process of that.

Grimes said Wednesday in an emailed statement that Kenney is now trying to back peddle and maintained that in several emails and phone calls, she continued to fabricate the illusion that the James Beard Dinner was scheduled and not just a proposal.

Neither Kenney nor Grimes would share their correspondence with the Express-News.

This was a pretty unusual situation, Wojcik said. Ive spent more time talking about a dinner that isnt happening than the 200 that are. I dont believe that any of this was malicious though, and it was all done with good intentions.

Wojcik also said the door remains open for Grimes, Paprocki and Hernandez to get an official invitation someday, and she bears them no ill will.

As for the trio, they have canceled plans for the New York trip. Grimes said in his statement that they are completely severing ties with Kenney over the mishap.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Beard House did officially announce a dinner featuring three San Antonio chefs scheduled for April 21. Chefs Johnny Hernandez (Grupo La Gloria), Elizabeth Johnson (Pharm Table) and Steve McHugh (Cured) will be in the kitchen as part of an event titled Savoring San Antonio, which will celebrate the the citys tricentennial and its recent designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.
It was bound to happen eventually. Chef, restaurant owner and culinary provocateur David Chang has turned 40.

The world met Chang in 2004 with the opening of his groundbreaking Momofuku Noodle Bar. It was the early days of modern celebrity chef culture. Magazine covers and a slew of new restaurants followed, as did his reputation for possessing what Epicurious.com dubbed a bad-boy attitude for moves such as nixing reservations and vegetarian options from his properties.

But with age, it seems, comes an attitude change, and in the Chang who hosts the new eight-episode Netflix series Ugly Delicious, we see more introspection and less attitude.

His target these days? Not so much the vegans and food allergies. Chang uses Ugly Delicious to make a compelling indictment of authenticity  or at least our collective ideas of the concept as it relates to food.

An early scene in second episode finds Chang crunching into a taco de camaron from a Los Angeles food truck specializing in Jalisco-style food. His immediate reaction? Equating it to har gao, a Cantonese shrimp dumpling.

What unfolds is a story of immigration to Mexico that starts with the Chinese shortly after the Spanish conquest and goes until the Lebanese migrants who came in the early 20th century. Mexican food continues to evolve, colliding with more cultures and their pantries for results including the Korean-Mexican mashup tacos popularized in the past decade in L.A.

I view authenticity like a totalitarian state. Its something that I think has been overvalued but the reality is it hasnt been scrutinized enough, Chang said in the shows first episode, a treatise on the invention of pizza, who perfected it and what global food culture has done with it. Its not that I hate authenticity. I hate that people want this singular thing that is authentic.

Texas barbecue enthusiasts will no doubt laugh, cry and balk as Chang connects the dots between pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz at Snows BBQ in Lexington and Chinese-style Peking duck, chicken wings grilled over a charcoal fire at a Japanese izakaya and ribs sizzled at a Korean barbecue restaurant.

In the end, youre hooked by the shows infectious premise that the world is one big, delicious place, and we should all go out and eat what we like without seeking permission from the gatekeepers of tradition.
Few beers represent their home country as well as Guinness does for Ireland, making it a go-to beer for those celebrating St. Patricks Day.

The brewery at St. James Gate, Dublin, has been producing dark ales, variously called stout or porter, since 1759. Their best-known beer, the ubiquitous Guinness Draught, is only one of a range of stouts shipped to the United States, and what better time than St. Patricks Day season to give them a try?

The best known Guinness beer looks heavy, perhaps made more intimidating by its cascading nitrogen head of creamy foam, but its actually a really light beer. At only 3.8 percent alcohol by volume, it has fewer calories than an acknowledged light beer such as Heineken.

Due to its lower strength, the usual roasted malt flavor and chocolate and coffee undertones common to dark beers are muted, with more of a graham cracker taste. To give the beer a refreshing tartness, the recipe includes a bit of soured beer.

The next stronger beer in the lineup is Guinness Extra Stout, which is more along the line of what we think of as a stout. Its got a much stronger malt aroma thats rich with toasty and caramel-like notes. The body of the beer is relatively malty-sweet, though it dries out after you swallow to a sharp tangy roastiness.

Guinness varies the recipes and strengths of its beers regionally. The version exported to the United States is 5.6 percent ABV, but in the United Kingdom, it is only 4.2 percent.

The recipe for the Extra Stout uses a significant amount of roasted barley, which is not malted before roasting, instead of black patent malt, which is malted and roasted to a darker color. Guinness made this change in the late 1940s, but now brews the original again and sells it as their 200th Anniversary Export Stout, referring to the bicentennial of their first export to America.

The aromas of the Anniversary and the Extra Stout are similar, but in taste they diverge. Theres less of a caramel presence, despite still being somewhat sweet, and the finish it dries out much more aggressively and is almost acrid, a hallmark of beers made with black patent malt.

Guinness recently brought one of their regionalized products, the Antwerpen stout, to the American market for the first time. Made for distribution in Belgium, where it is just called Guinness Foreign Stout, it has a robust 8 percent ABV, and is not to be confused with any of the other stouts Ive mentioned so far.

It has a rich aroma which is roasty with caramel notes, as one would expect from a stout of its strength, and adds in some fruitiness and a hint of alcohol. Taking a sip reveals a sweet maltiness that contributes to a substantial body and quite a bit of fruitiness, which bears some resemblance to the character of some stronger traditional Belgian styles.

Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, slightly lower in alcohol at 7.5 percent ABV, is as intense as the Antwerpen, but has a very different character. After being produced in Canada under license for at least a decade, it is once again being imported from Ireland, which has really improved the taste.

It is not as sweet and fruity, and despite its roastiness, some hop flavor pops through. In the end, the hops and malt fade, leaving the roastiest impression of all the stouts.

You dont have to be Irish to appreciate a good stout, especially if its one of these. Just remember to wear some green on St. Patricks Day, because drinking a green beer just wont do.
ABC News(WASHINGTON) -- After a meeting with special counsel's team, President Donald Trump asked his then-chief of staff Reince Priebus how the meeting went, a source familiar with the conversation has confirmed to ABC News.



The encounter is just one example of the president ignoring the advice of his attorneys and asking witnesses about their interviews with the special counsel's team regarding the ongoing probe.



During their conversation, Trump asked Priebus if the special counsel's team had been "nice" and if he was treated fairly, according to the source. The source described the encounter as a small portion of a larger conversation about other topics.



The New York Times was first to report the interactions between Trump and members of his team, including Priebus and White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II.



In the meeting with McGahn -- also confirmed to ABC News via a source with knowledge of the conversation -- Trump encouraged the White House counsel to issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January that the president once asked him to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. McGahn never released a statement.



Priebus and McGahn's lawyer, declined to comment. Lawyers for the president have not responded to ABC News.



Sources close to the president said they do not believe this could be deemed as any form of witness intimidation because the conversations happened after the individuals met with the special counsel team and were not substantive in nature.



However, the timing comes as the president's legal team is in active negotiations for what the president will do with the Mueller team, which could include an in-person interview -- but no final decisions have been made.



Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Family members of Dennis Johnson, 77, and Sara Johnson, 68, a couple who were killed in the Nov. 5 massacre in Sutherland Springs, have taken the first step toward suing the Air Force and the Department of Defense over the services failure to place the gunman on a federal database.

Now at least six families of victims or survivors of the shooting have filed wrongful death claims against the Air Force for not forwarding information to the FBI on Devin Kelleys violent history, which includes a domestic violence conviction in 2012.
Philanthropist Harvey E. Najim recently donated $1.3 million to the San Antonio Food Bank, a major donation that was put toward the purchase of 10 new refrigerated food rescue trucks.

But the really astonishing numbers connected to the Najim Family Foundation gift have to do with what those 26-foot-long trucks can do. They can:

Individually hold 40,000 pounds of perishable and nonperishable food, the equivalent of 400 full grocery carts

Rescue about 8 million pounds of perishable foods like fruits and vegetables each year, comestibles would otherwise be thrown away

Bring much-needed nourishment to some 200,000 low-income children in San Antonio each year

When the new trucks were unveiled inside the cavernous food bank warehouse Wednesday, Najim said he was motivated by a desire that no child in San Antonio go to bed hungry, a motto emblazoned across the back of each truck.

When I heard about the need for new trucks, I just knew this was the right thing to do, said Najim, who founded Star Data Systems in 1980, a company he renamed Sirius Computer Solutions in 1991.

Through its 500 partner agencies, the San Antonio Food Bank provides food to more than 58,000 people a week in a 16-county area throughout South Texas, mostly low-income families and children who struggle with food insecurity  meaning they may not know where their next meal is coming from.

About half of all children in San Antonio public schools qualify for free or reduced lunch, food bank officials said.

The food bank is going to benefit tremendously from these new trucks, said Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who along with state Sen. Jose Menendez and other officials showed up to applaud Najims donation. This gift is going to make a difference in a childs life and ensure that they have the opportunity for a bright future.

Many students in San Antonio face food insecurity over weekends, holidays and summer vacations, said food bank CEO Eric Cooper, and would go hungry if it werent for the host of food bank programs that seek to fill that gap.

Were grateful to have the right equipment to do our job, Cooper said in thanking Najim. He told an anecdote about a woman who recognized him as the food bank guy and who implored him to keep doing his job. The food bank alleviated her anxiety about making ends meet, she said.

A lot of mothers are going to sleep better tonight because of the new trucks, Cooper said.

The trucks replace aging ones in the agencys 35-truck fleet, some of which were 16 years old and had millions of miles on them, said Chief Development Officer Michael Guerra.

After the unveiling, the convoy traveled to 10 schools in San Antonio, one in each council district, to deliver nonperishable food boxes to students.

The children are going to get an extra dose of nourishment today, said Najim.
Joe Gonzales secured the Democratic nomination for Bexar County district attorney before 9 p.m. Tuesday, but he only managed to fit in two hours of sleep before the interviews began.

A politically unknown attorney five months ago, Gonzales found himself at the center of attention after knocking off incumbent DA Nicholas Nico LaHood, his former business partner, with an early and decisive primary result.

We anticipated that we were going to have a slight lead going into the early vote, but I never imagined that we were going to have such a strong lead, Gonzales said during one of his eight media interviews Wednesday. So that was a shock. But it was a pleasant shock.

The result, decided by an 18-point margin, sets up a general election race between Gonzales and uncontested Republican nominee Tylden Shaeffer, both local prosecutors turned defense attorneys. They each entered the race with their sights set on LaHood, but on Wednesday pivoted to an issues-based race after a primary in which cordial discussion took a backseat to personal attacks.

First of all, the campaign thats going to be run between me and Joe is going to be much more civil, and were going to talk about real issues, Shaeffer said in an interview Wednesday. I think this campaign has a chance to focus on some substantive issues, some complex things that dont have easy fixes.

Gonzales and Shaeffer met more than two decades ago in the Bexar County District Attorneys Office, where they overlapped as prosecutors. They havent spoken much since announcing their candidacies, Gonzales said, yet he doesnt consider (Shaeffer) an enemy by any means.

Echoing Shaeffers prediction about civility, Gonzales said the campaign  set to last eight months leading to the Nov. 6 election  would center on the differences between their distinct approaches to running the office.

He added that he would continue supporting the progressive platform hes already laid out, including reform of the bail bond system and elimination of an entry fee to the offices pretrial diversion program.

I'm the reform candidate, Gonzales said. And I'm going to focus on restorative justice. That's not typically a Republican plank. They are, by nature, more conservative in the way they approach everything, including running a district attorney's office.

Shaeffer acknowledged his conservative approach would differ from Gonzales liberal principles, though added hes developed a reputation for being tough and fair.

The two candidates differ slightly on the ideal makeup of a cite-and-release program, currently in its pilot stage in partnership with the Bexar County Sheriffs Office.

Shaeffer opposes the idea of a one-size-fits-all program with a cookie cutter mentality, he said, pointing out the current system extends to criminal destruction of property and theft  more than just the small amounts of marijuana billed when LaHood rolled out the program.

We cant solve every single one of societys inequities. The number one goal is to safeguard the community, Shaeffer said. But he acknowledged the crowded county jail, adding: Lets be intelligent about this: You cant put everyone in jail. Im a firm believer of giving everyone fair chances.

Both agreed on the idea of increasing training for prosecutors in the district attorneys office, though Gonzales has focused on informing prosecutors of the effects of incarceration or rehabilitative programs, his website reads.

There are a lot of very good prosecutors over there, Shaeffer said. Im going to give them the training and tools they need to succeed, and Im going to expect them to do the right thing, and be real attorneys. The attorneys I will have in my courts, I will trust them.

One potential squabble emerged in a press release Shaeffer put out Tuesday night, immediately after LaHood conceded. It included two sentences that read: The question now becomes, who should lead this county and based on what support? I believe that effective change comes from seeking the support of local community leaders and citizens.

Acknowledging the statement referenced the $958,000 of ads Gonzales received through a political action committee from liberal billionaire George Soros, Shaeffer nevertheless said the statement was not a dig on Joe.

Its a comment on why this outsider felt the need to come in and manipulate the election, Shaeffer said. You can either agree with Soros progressive message or not, but hes dropping $1 million, and probably more.

Asked about Soros influence, Gonzales said hes not beholden to Soros or anyone involved with the PAC, and the contributions dont make him a radical liberal.

Whats important is that voters understand, even now and into November, that there weren't any strings attached, that these people are never going to call me and say, look, we gave you money and now we want you to do x, y, z, Gonzales said. There was a clear understanding from the beginning that we would accept their contributions, but we were not going to be told how to run this office.

Since the nomination was decided, Gonzales had not heard from LaHood, who did not respond to a call or text seeking comment Wednesday.
AUSTIN  Texas Democrats eager for a blue wave in November turned out in droves for Tuesdays primary election, casting more than 1 million ballots for the first time since 2002 in a midterm year.

But as Democrats seek to seize on anti-Trump sentiment this election cycle, the states Republicans still have sheer numbers on their side. A record-setting 1.5 million voters cast ballots in the Republican primary for governor  the most since at least 1970  which presents an uphill battle for a party that that hasnt had a statewide victory in more than two decades.

Theres a blue wave but its lapping at our feet, its not going over our heads, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones.

Take the high-profile race for U.S. Senate, where charismatic Congressman Beto ORourke, D-El Paso, is raising millions of dollars and mounting a bold 254-county tour in his efforts to unseat Republican Ted Cruz. On Tuesday, Cruz scored more than 1.3 million votes in the GOP primary, roughly 300,000 more than were cast on the Democratic side in total, and about 670,000 more than ORourke received.

Most Republicans dont need to worry about it, Jones said. If you are one of those Republicans in a low-lying area like John Culberson or Pete Sessions or Will Hurd, you probably need to worry. Everyone else is high and dry and doesnt have a care in the world.

Primary results indicate some of those races are on track to be competitive, including Hurds re-election bid in Congressional District 23, one of the several that Democrats are aggressively targeting after Hillary Clinton won there in 2016. Roughly 14,000 more people voted in the Democratic primary for the 23rd Congressional District than in the Republican contest.

Democrats, who havent won a statewide race since 1994, point to enthusiasm they say is on their side. For the first time in 25 years, the left is fielding candidates in all 36 congressional districts, including those in solidly red areas. The party has boosted voter turnout in midterm primaries over the past ten years, roughly doubling participation in this years primary from 2014 levels. And for the first time in a decade, more people voted early in the Democratic primary than in the Republican one in the states 15 largest counties.

That enthusiasm, that growth, is going to be critical for November, said Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party. Republicans are not energizing anybody new.

State Republican Chairman James Dickey disputed that point.

While Democratic primary turnout has fluctuated since 1994, Republicans have steadily increased their partys turnout from roughly 550,000 voters then to more than 1.5 million in this years GOP gubernatorial primary.

We set a record and when you have a record you have growth, Dickey said. Thankfully our Republican elected officials take very, very seriously their need to earn those important votes of all Texas voters.

A Democratic victory at the statewide level is an uphill battle, but the party will score a win if they cut their margins from double- to single-digits, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Republicans have a structural advantage because they clearly have more voters, but the Democrats are slowly but steadily catching up, he said. Sometime we may see a tortoise and a hare scenario.

Strong turnout in a primary doesnt necessarily predict the outcome of a general election. In 1994, for example, voters cast ballots in the Democratic gubernatorial primary at twice the rate of Republicans, before George W. Bush went on to beat incumbent Democrat Ann Richards, according to Texas secretary of state voting records.

In the 23rd Congressional District, Hurd won the two most recent elections after Democratic and Republican voters turned out at nearly equal numbers in the preceding primaries.

Locked in the statewide race gaining the most attention, Cruz dismissed the notion of a blue wave in a call with reporters Tuesday.

I agree that there are a lot of Democrats and voices in the media who have been desperately predicting a blue wave in Texas for a long, long time. And those predictions sound great in the newsroom, but they run into the reality that Texans are conservatives, said Cruz, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016. If conservatives show up and vote in November, Texas will stay bright red.

ORourke, who earned more than 61 percent in the three-way Democratic primary, mostly lost ground in counties along the Mexico border.

Definitely we have our work cut out for us and this is going to be really tough, but it is something that we can do, ORourke said in an interview Wednesday. Some of those who voted in the Republican primary may not be voting for the Republican nominee in November. There are some people who didnt come out to vote in the primary  who will come out in November.
When Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood narrowly won the Democratic primary four years ago, he carried a majority of votes in 290 precincts across Bexar County.

This week, many of those voting precincts abandoned him.

LaHood lost ground in 160 precincts, many of them on the North Side, in his defeat to political newcomer Joe Gonzales in the Democratic primary, an analysis by the San Antonio Express-News of voting data released Wednesday shows.

After winning his 2014 primary race by 47 votes, LaHood was swept out of office by a more than 15,000-vote margin.

The Express-News examined who won every voting precinct in Bexar County  more than 700 distinct neighborhoods and geographic areas  for major races where Democrats overwhelmingly swept out incumbents. The Bexar County Elections Department still was counting mail-in ballots Wednesday, which could change close results in some precincts.

Overall, Gonzales won nearly 60 percent of the vote against LaHood. When those numbers are viewed on a map of voting precincts, it shows LaHood had few strongholds in Bexar County. Gonzales won most precincts on the North Side and made inroads in other parts of the county where LaHood had performed well in 2014.

Gonzales LaHood Tie No votes

From the beginning, Gonzales tied LaHood to President Donald Trump during interviews and debates. But with more than $900,000 worth of ads from liberal hedge fund tycoon George Soros, Gonzales spread the message countywide, using a vigorous direct mail push and, near the end, a series of TV ads comparing LaHood to the president.

Thats a theme that developed over time, Gonzales said when asked about the Trump focus. But we just kept saying, throughout the campaign, that Nico was ripping a page out of the Trump playbook. Every time we turned around, he would double down on something that he did, he would refuse to take responsibility, he was attacking the media, or not being transparent. He did a lot of things that were consistent with Donald Trump, so it was not difficult to make those comparisons.

Though Soros campaign contributions created political fodder for LaHood, the late disclosure of the finance reports  one week before the Tuesday election day  limited the DAs time to respond. LaHoods last-minute push of salacious ad material ultimately failed to sway enough voters.

Responding after his concession speech to a reporters question about the Soros money, LaHood said the contribution played a major role.

How do you say it doesnt? LaHood said. A million dollars in three weeks, I mean it's not a million dollars over a year.  And it was used in a very dishonest way, in my opinion. I think the facts speak for themselves. It's too much to overcome, obviously.

Gonzales thought LaHoods negative campaign attacks backfired.

If you listen to his campaign rhetoric, he spent a lot of the time attacking me, he spent a lot of time with his negative ads, and he didn't focus a lot on his accomplishments, Gonzales said. You didn't hear him spend a lot of time about the good that he's done in the office.

LaHood wasnt the only Democratic incumbent to face defeat this week at the hands of a newcomer.

Democratic Party Chairman Manuel Medinas loss to Monica Ramirez Alcantara, who won 67 percent of the vote, meant he had only a few pockets of support in Bexar County voting precincts that were scattered across the East, West and South Sides.

Alcantara Medina Tie No votes

Everywhere else, Alcantaras campaign dominated.

We were having that feeling as we were block-walking, Alcantara said Wednesday. As we were talking to everyone out in the community, the feeling that we were getting was excitement. Every person we spoke with was just like, Yes, thank you so much. Yes. So we kind of felt that along the way.

Medina didnt answer his cellphone Wednesday. In an interview on election day, he said much of the Democratic turnout was driven by new voters, many of whom were unhappy with Trumps presidency

But some of Medinas critics complain Medina himself was guilty of sounding like Trump in his own campaign rhetoric when he ran for San Antonio mayor last year. Alcantara said she heard that complaint from Democrats.

Our constituents wanted change, she said. I believe they could see through all of the rhetoric that was going on. I think they used this opportunity to have their voices heard.

In House District 118, which runs along the southern and eastern edges of Bexar County and juts into parts of the South Side toward downtown, Democratic incumbent Tomas Uresti was defeated by another newcomer: Leo Pacheco, who received 57 percent of the vote.

Pacheco Uresti Tie No votes

Urestis strongest core of support was a cluster of three voting precincts inside Loop 410. But Pacheco easily won most of the remaining precincts or narrowly trailed Uresti in a handful of others.

The best thing that worked was my signs that said less property taxes for homeowners 65 and older, Pacheco said Wednesday. That was resonating with the seniors in the precinct.

Pacheco told the Express-News shortly after his victory that he thought the race was winnable and plastered the district with political signs last Thanksgiving.

Pacheco said he didnt make a campaign issue of the Uresti name. Urestis brother, state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, was convicted of 11 felony criminal charges last month in a federal trial where prosecutors accused him of defrauding investors in a company called FourWinds Logistics.

Tomas Uresti wasnt connected to the criminal case at all  but he couldnt escape his last name.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amount of money Gonzales received from George Soros.
Former Air Force intelligence officer Gina Ortiz Jones of San Antonio heads to a May 22 runoff election in the Democratic race for the District 23 congressional seat after capturing more than 41 percent of the vote in Tuesdays primary, according to unofficial election results.

It appears Jones opponent in the runoff will be former high school teacher Rick Trevino of San Antonio, although that wont be known for sure until the state Democratic Party canvasses the election results and makes them official. The state party has until March 18 to do so.
I cannot believe that Jane Fonda was at the Academy Awards ceremony.

My husband, a career Army soldier, was fighting in South Vietnam when Hanoi Jane was being a traitor in North Vietnam.

How can this happen? Lest we forget?

Patricia J. Wood

Not so biased

Like many of your readers, I believed that the Express-News has a far left liberal bias.

I decided to do a little research. I read and counted every letter to the editor published in the paper from Feb. 1 to Feb. 28. There were 143 letters published. Fifty-seven mentioned Trump or the president. Thirty three (58 percent) were anti-Trump and twenty four (42 percent) were pro-Trump.

I dont know if 58 percent vs. 42 percent is statistically significant, but from my perspective, there may be only a mild bias. I will not be as critical as I have been in the past.

Doug McKenzie

White privilege

Just when you think Sen. Nancy Pelosi can get no more offensive and biased toward white people, she tells us her young grandsons wish on his birthday was to be dark-eyed and dark-skinned like his Latino play pal. Can you imagine an African-American politician saying their grandson wished he could have blue eyes and blond hair like his white friend?

Pelosi thinks his poor self-image is something to encourage. I mean, hes a white male, so hes already not exactly the apple of Nanas eye. Now if only he wished he were an illegal Latina, hed be Nanas favorite.

Its pathetic, this condescension toward Latinos. You guys are so fabulous that my grandson will give up his white male privilege to be you! Anybody want my white privilege?

Shannon Deason

Two virtuous men

Re: Sizable egos, Your Turn, February 27:

It was my pleasure to meet our former mayor, Julian Castro, years ago at the opening of the John Igo Branch Library in San Antonio. I found the Jefferson High School, Stanford University, and Harvard Law School graduate to be a friendly, respectful young man. And I remember with pride watching him give the Keynote Speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

I am also aware of the millions of dollars that LeBron James has donated to charitable causes.

Andy Parsons

Preserve the charm

Re: An open letter to the mayor on property taxes, Robert Trevino, Another View, Feb. 6:

We have lived in the historic King William District since 1996. We have also owned and operated a bed-and-breakfast on our property for the same time. Around 1999, the neighborhood and city worked together to write a very good ordinance regarding short term rentals/bed-and-breakfasts.

Why is the city wasting time and money trying to write another law when this one has served all of us very well? I have yet to hear a cogent answer from any city representative. The law currently in place covers any entity that rents short term whether they are called inns, bed-and-breakfasts, short-term rentals or Airbnb.

There is absolutely no need for another law to cover the Airbnb properties. They fall under the current ordinance definitions and should obey the law the rest of us have for the past many years.

Deborah Field

Heartfelt thanks

On Feb. 9, residents and team members of Normandy Terrace Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center were alerted to a small fire in a lighting ballast. Firefighters and emergency officials promptly responded and extinguished the fire, which was contained to one area of the building. Once the fire was out, our patients and residents were cleared to remain inside the center.

I want to thank the San Antonio Fire Department, Station No. 18 and all the area emergency response teams that came to our aid. Each of you went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure our center was safe for us to occupy.

Your commitment and dedication to serving others is evident and admirable. I now realize that our community is in great hands with its first responders.

A heartfelt thank you from me, our team members, our patients and residents, and their families. I am grateful for your dedication to serving others.

Elizabeth Howard, administrator, Normandy Terrace Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center

Exploiting the kids

I find it interesting how the media and liberal groups are suddenly praising the kids as being so smart, mature and having all the answers to gun control. Yet these same liberals claim those younger than 21 are not mature or smart enough to even own a gun.

The liberals are excited about this new bloc of 18-year-olds becoming new voters only because they support the liberal view on gun control.

Its sad to see liberals and the media taking advantage of this recent tragedy using the kids. The solution to controlling school and mass shootings is much more complicated than just taking guns away from all citizens.

Carthel W. Williams, Spring Branch

Ditch your guns

I see where our eccentric president suggests we convert teachers into pistol-packing mamas. The more we talk about gun control, the more we move in the opposite direction.

Lay that pistol down, babe.

George Carrera
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WASHINGTON  Beleaguered Connecticut native Paul Manafort pleaded not guilty Thursday to tax and money-laundering charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his wider investigation of connections between Russia and President Trumps 2016 campaign.

Manafort said nothing in an hour-long appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington, where a 32-count indictment against him was lodged last month.

Manafort faces a separate array of charges in federal court in Washington, which include money laundering and false statements.

The judge in the Northern Virginia case set a trial date of July 10. Manafort already faces a trial date of Sept. 17. A plea for more time from Manaforts lawyer, Kevin Downing, met with no sympathy from the judge, T.S. Ellis III.

But Ellis, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, actually prompted Manaforts lawyer to observe that the charges against Manafort are not specifically related to the central thesis of the Mueller probe: the Trump campaign and Russia conspiring to swing the 2016 election away from then-frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Youd like to point out it doesnt have anything to do with Russia (or) interfering in the election, Ellis said to Downing, according to Politico.

You made my point, Downing replied.

Through a spokesman, Manafort has insisted he is not guilty of all charges against him  even though his business protege, Rick Gates, has pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.

The indictment in the Northern Virginia case lays out a stunning list of purchases of real estate, clothes, automobiles and other luxuries from Manaforts offshore bank accounts in Cyprus, the Grenadines in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

Manafort is the son and grandson of prominent business and political figures in Connecticut. Manafort Brothers, Inc., the construction firm, traces its roots to his Italian immigrant grandfather, James.

Paul Manafort Drive in New Britain is named for his father, Paul Sr., who served three terms as that citys Republican mayor from 1965 to 1971.

Manafort is under home confinement at his condo, also in Alexandria. The judge in the Washington case, Amy Berman Jackson, has said she would consider releasing Manafort from home confinement if he can put up assets equal to the $10 million bail she imposed.
by Brendan Tuma | Padres Correspondent | Thu, Mar 8th 1:10pm EST

According to Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports, the San Diego Padres have been talking internally about the possibility of signing free agent starter Jake Arrieta. (FanRag Sports)

Fantasy Impact:

Heyman adds that this is likely a long shot, but it's one of the only rumors we've had about Arrieta in a while. The 32-year-old starter went 14-10 last year along with a 3.53 ERA 163 strikeouts in 168 1/3 innings pitched. He is just two years removed from winning the National League Cy Young award. It's been a bizarre winter, but it's truly puzzling as to how Arrieta can remain unsigned with just 21 days left until Opening Day.
While we watch the cat-juggling carnival that is Washington, D.C. these days, real fake news experts  yes, there are experts in real fake news  are artfully mixing fact with myth to influence how Big Biotechs mergers and buyouts play out in American agriculture.

The biggest merger, Dow and DuPonts $150-billion hook-up, was completed last August. Another big one, Bayer and Monsantos $66-billion marriage, remains on hold.

Farmers, too, are in limbo although most suspect the buyouts will limit choices and increase prices of already-costly biotech seeds and corresponding chemicals. Confirmation of their worries appears to come from Syngenta, the Swiss-based biotech giant, and its cloudy connections to a farmer advocacy group now lobbying the White House against the Bayer/Monsanto deal.

If true  and strong circumstantial evidence suggests it is  thats a problem because Syngenta is owned by ChemChina, a China-owned state enterprise, and federal law prohibits foreign governments from lobbying U.S. officials.

Market policies

The tale began in mid-December when a group calling itself Farmers and Families First, was formed to advocate for free-market-based policies to help the American farmers who grow our nations food and help the American families who consume that food.

The group, which lists no office, address, telephone number or contact person on its website, named an Advisory Board who, according to its own descriptions, includes growers, farm group representatives, two advocates, and one backyard poultry farmer.

Its key project, however, was a glossy, 24-page white paper titled, A Bayer-Monsanto Merger Will Raise the Price of Agricultural Inputs, Reduce Seed Choices and Increase Costs for U.S. Farmers.

The report, filled with warm photos of farmers and families alike, is a sophisticated, detailed market analysis of the national and international consequences that a completed Bayer-Monsanto deal will bring, the group claims.

Kill the deal

Section titles like Anticompetitive Market Control, Vertical Monopoly through Tying & Bundling, and Reduced Innovation make little secret of the reports main message: U.S. farmers should tell Washington to kill this deal.

Merging the worlds largest seed seller (Monsanto) to a company that is also the worlds largest agrochemical seller (Bayer), it noted, would only enhance its ability to raise agricultural input prices and engage in anti-competitive behavior using a variety of strategies Monsanto has employed in the past.

Nothing in its many pages, photos, and 112 footnotes, however, offered one clue as to who wrote it, paid for it, put together the loose advisory panel or was pushing it in print and online. A hint of authorship did appear in a Feb. 17 story in the Washington Examiner, a conservative weekly newspaper published in the nations capital.

The newspaper connected Farmers and Families First to DDC Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C. company that, notes on its website,  has been helping clients navigate complex legislative, regulatory and policy issues  (to) sway public opinion and affect the political landscape.

According to the Examiner, the key political landscape DDC Public Affairs has been trying to affect lately lies just two blocks from its office, The White House. In a February ad campaign broadcast on Fox News, Farmers and Families First called on President Trump to stand with Americas farmers and please stop the Monsanto merger (because)  Trump voters  are overwhelmingly opposed to the merger.

What DDC Public Affairs never broadcast, noted the Examiner, is that it has long worked with Syngenta, a Swiss pesticide and seed company now owned by ChemChina.

Behind the scenes

As such, its reasonable to ask whether the Chinese competitors of Bayer AG and Monsanto arent  behind this campaign to scuttle the merger.

In fact, its more than reasonable because, as the Examiner explained, If it can be established that Farmers and Family (sic) First is merely a front group for ChemChina, then DDC should probably be required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Thats a brilliant idea because, after all, enforcing our laws and preserving the integrity of our markets are two key jobs our representatives, senators, and president were elected to do.

Heres another idea for them: lose the cat-tossing routine before Novembers job review. Its tiring and theyve lost their audience. At least in the U.S.
The Wildlife Society (an international organization of professionals trained in wildlife science, management, and conservation), recently released some short summaries of wildlife research that provide food for thought.

 When shale gas development began in 2008 in West Virginia, researchers from West Virginia University began studying its impact on birds in 2009. In a recent study published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications one research team studied the effect of the gas industry on the nesting success of Louisiana waterthrushes in their preferred streamside habitat.

Lead author Mack Frantz says, Whatever happens to the streams, happens to these birds. They are bioindicators. They serve as an ecological early warning system just like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine.

Success declined

Frantzs team monitored waterthrush territories and nest success along 14 headwater streams. The study concluded that as shale gas development expanded on study sites, waterthrush nest success declined.

And as habitat quality deteriorated, waterthrush territory size increased. Poorer habitat required birds to travel farther from their nests to find food and other resources. That requires more energy and greater exposure to predators.

Frantz thinks the waterthrushes are being affected on multiple fronts. For example, habitat degradation seems to affect their preferred aquatic invertebrate prey. And waterthrushes may be bioaccumulating chemicals like barium and strontium, two heavy metals associated with the fracking process.

Constant noise

And then there are factors that have yet to be studied such as the constant noise from gas compressors, the bright lights that illuminate fracking sites at night, and the impacts of pipeline rights-of-way that destroy the continuity of large tracts of undisturbed forest.

 Long-term studies are unusual simply because they take so much time and personnel at wildlife agencies and universities turns over so quickly. But when long-term projects come to light, the results can surprise and fascinate.

A recent study in the herpetological journal Copeia, for example, reported on more than 35 years of research on American alligators. Phil Wilkinson, a biologist with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, began studying alligators in the 1970s.

Thomas Rainwater, a research scientist at Clemson University and second author of the paper, said, To my knowledge, theres no other crocodilian study like this in the world. Its remarkable to have such a long-term dataset on the same population.

Based on 35 years of data collected at the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center in Georgetown, S.C., the research team compiled data from hundreds of alligators that had been captured, marked and measured.

Though biologists had long thought alligators grew throughout their lives, in 1993 Wilkinson noticed that some older alligators stopped growing. After reviewing decades of data, the team found that alligators reached their maximum length at 25 to 35 years.

Still breeding

The team also discovered that females continued to breed for many years after they stopped growing. One female estimated to be about 68 years old produced a fertile clutch of eggs in 2014.

This information is essential to manage hunted populations of alligators. Most alligator eggs, hatchlings, and juveniles succumb to predators, but after they attain adulthood they can live a long time.

It is essential to limit the harvest of adult alligators to maintain sustainable populations.

 Predators, especially large ones, usually have a bad reputation with people. A recent review of international research suggests that some predators and scavengers provide benefits to society. Christopher OBryan, a Ph.D. candidate at Australias University of Queensland and his colleagues, reviewed studies from around the world published over the last decade.

They found more than a dozen instances where predators and scavengers benefited human health or economics. For example, in North America bats save farmers billions of dollars in chemical costs by controlling insect populations.

Improving safety

OBryan also suggests that restoring mountain lions to the eastern U.S. could improve highway safety by reducing deer populations and thus reducing costly and sometimes deadly deer-vehicle collisions.

In Australia, dingoes prey on calves, but they also prey on kangaroos, which compete with cattle for pasture. In Indonesia, insect-eating birds and bats can boost coffee production by 30 percent.

And in Old World countries that lack garbage disposal systems, vultures provide the valuable service of devouring carcasses of both wild species and domestic livestock.
By John F. Grimes | OSU Extension Beef Coordinator

Bull buying season is well underway throughout the cow-calf regions across the country.

If your calving season starts in January, you may have already made your herd sire selections for this years breeding season. If your calving season starts a bit later, you may be in the midst of making herd sire selections.

If you have yet to make your bull buying decisions, there are plenty of opportunities available in the immediate future through public auction or private treaty.

As an Extension professional and a seedstock producer, one of the most interesting discussions I can have with a producer is reviewing their thoughts on what they are looking for in a potential purchase for a herd sire.

Lots to consider

Obviously, there is a wide range of criteria to be considered depending on the production goals and size of the herd.

In my experience, a few consistent themes emerge with discussions on a potential herd bull purchase: calving ease, disposition and price.

Given the value of feeder cattle and the level of expenses associated with beef production today, discriminating bull buyers should demand that potential herd sire candidates be equipped with the proper qualifications to do the job.

Prospective bull buyers should expect these qualifications from any operation selling bulls at private treaty or public auction. There is simply too much risk involved in beef production today to take a chance on a sire with a lack of information in the areas of genetics, health, and fertility.

Check EPDs

Expected Progeny Differences (EPDs) allow the breeder to identify the animals that excel in the traits that are important for their operation.

The EPDs can be used to determine exactly where a herd sire candidate ranks within a given breed and his potential to make significant improvements in the performance of future calf crops.

Protect herd health

A documented health program should be emphasized with any herd additions regardless of gender. A sound biosecurity plan for the herd can go a long way to help avoid the introduction of a costly disease into a herd.

Demand soundness exam

It is my opinion that the most important job qualification that any potential herd sire should possess is a successful Breeding Soundness Examination. This examination gives the purchaser an assurance that a herd sire candidate has the ability to get cows bred.

Even mature bulls should have a Breeding Soundness Examination performed prior to turnout before a breeding season.

Given todays economic climate, a cow is too expensive to maintain and feeder calves are too valuable to sell to take risks with poor potential reproductive performance from a sire without a fertility check.

Production traits

Beef producers need to be concerned with a wide variety of production traits if they intend to be successful in this business. Weaning weights, yearling weights, milk, carcass traits, etc. should be prioritized to varying degrees depending on your marketing program.

A person who sells feeder calves at weaning will be concerned about weaning weights, while a marketer of freezer beef will be more concerned about carcass traits.

However, regardless of your marketing program, the traits of supreme importance are fertility (percentage of females bred) and calving ease (percentage of live calves).

Calving ease

While calving ease is extremely important, I believe there is a tendency for the typical Ohio herd owner to overemphasize calving ease across the entire herd.

The average cow herd in Ohio numbers approximately 17 head, with most herds retaining some number of replacement heifers to add to the herd. Herds of this size usually work with one herd sire to cover both mature cows and yearling heifers.

If you choose a herd sire with the proper calving ease for the heifers, he should also possess enough quality in the traits of importance such as growth and carcass merit for the mature cows.

There are bulls out there that can do many things well, but they can be hard to find and more expensive to own.

How much?

This brings us to the subject of price. It should be the goal of every cow-calf producer to purchase the best possible bull that fits within a determined budget.

A rule of thumb I have often heard is that the value of a typical herd bull should be equal to the value of two to three market steers or three to five feeder calves at weaning.

There are exceptions to these guidelines, but an above-average bull that excels for traits such as calving ease, growth, carcass traits, etc. will likely demand a premium. I am not about to tell any producer what the correct amount is that they should pay for a bull.

The author is the OSU Extension Beef Coordinator. This article is reprinted from the Feb. 14, Ohio Beef Cattle Letter, a publication of the OSU Extension Beef Team.
Maple syrup production at the Brown family farm, north of Fredericktown in Knox County, has been a mainstay for about as long as anyone can remember.

Brothers Dan and Kelly Brown, 63 and 64, have tapped all of their lives, the same is true of their father, the late William Brown, who built the familys current sugarhouse in 1948.

But the history goes much deeper. In the early 1900s, several thousand people met on the Brown property for a social event called the Waterford Picnic, a carnival that drew people from all over.

And there is evidence that some of the farms oldest trees have been tapped since the early 1800s.

When we cut some of the 200-year-old trees down, we could tell they were tapped, said Dan Brown.

Continuously tapped

The family has owned the same land since the 1840s and said it has been continuously tapped since 1948, when Will and his wife, Kate, began with just 600 taps. Today, the Browns have 1,800 taps, and come late winter, its just a fact of life that theyre going to find themselves working in the sugarhouse.

The Browns say making syrup is a lot like farming  once you get started, you keep going.

Its just what we do, Dan Brown said. Its such a unique product for one thing. The history of it, the whole tradition of it. And I enjoy working in the woods.

Kelly Brown, who manages the Owl Creek Produce Auction, said its fun to make a product people enjoy and want.

Our track record tells us we make a pretty good product that consumers really like and they tell us that, he said. Theres terrific demand for our product.

Syrup produced on the Brown family farm is marketed under the name Bonhomie Acres, a name Dan and Kellys mother, Kate, chose that stood for gentle nature or good-natured man. According to Dan Brown, it was mostly a way of giving the farm a unique name, outside of just Browns maple farm.

Bonhomie Acres maple syrup can be found in retail stores as far south as Dayton and Cincinnati, and it is sold locally and also at the farm at 7001 Quaker Road.

Selling syrup

The Browns sell between 2,500-3,000 gallons of syrup a year, and it all begins the same way.

In late spring, when the winter freeze begins to break, the sap in the maple trees begins to flow. The freeze-thaw cycle that is typical of February-March keeps the sap flowing, and makes for the most ideal window for collection.

The Browns rely on some of the old-fashioned metal buckets, and they also rely on many miles of plastic tubing that drain near the sugarhouse. They tap about 45 acres of local woodland and rent an additional 90 acres that drains into collection tanks, which has to be trucked to the sugarhouse.

In addition to gravity and the natural flow of the sap, the line system relies on a vacuum pump, which, lowers the pressure outside of the tree and helps stimulate the flow of sap. The trees are unharmed and provide decades of service  some that have lived 200 years.

Inside the sugarhouse, the Browns rely on a 3-by-12-foot oil-fired evaporator, which removes the water from the sap, resulting in maple syrup. The syrup is first stored in barrels, and throughout the year, Dan repackages the syrup into retail containers with the farms name on the front.

Reaching out

Dan Brown, who is also president of Ohio Maple Producers Association, said the demand for maple products is strong, because its a healthy sweetener, and maple has a unique, natural flavor.

He said Ohio is fortunate when it comes to maple, because producers can reach major population centers in less than an hour, while an operation in Vermont or Canada might have to drive several hours to reach a significant market area.

To make syrup in Ohio, its the best of both worlds, Dan Brown said. We have a population with a very large disposable income and if you make a good product, theres no reason you cant market it right here in Ohio.

As president, Brown tries to advocate for the industry and ensure Ohio maple producers have a seat at the table when it comes to important production issues and policies. His father, William Brown, helped run the Malabar Farm maple syrup days for about 30 years, where the family worked to show school children how syrup is made.

Although the farm no longer does tours at its own location, the Browns are supporters of the educational component, and they support the growth of the maple industry across Ohio.

Dans wife, Kathie, and Kellys wife, Marcia, also help with the operation, along with Dans son, Dane, and Kellys son, Ross.

During the off-season, the Browns do some crop farming and other activities, but their main focus is maple syrup production.

Weather issues

The past couple years have been difficult for maple producers, due to unseasonably warm temperatures and a lack of normal weather patterns.

The Browns say climate change is definitely impacting what they do, but theyre adjusting.

Im sure were in a climate change, but were not in a weather-changed-forever, Kelly Brown said. You go through this stuff. Every once in a while you have a bad year and thats all there is to it.

But the Browns arent ready to call 2018 a bad year just yet. If they have to work late at night, or late into March, thats what theyll do.

Three good weeks in March and we could make a lot of syrup, Kelly said.

Even 10 days would make a big improvement, Dan said.

The Browns are hoping that March will be a bumper month, as it has been in the past. And according to the National Weather Service, which shows a lot of up-and-down temperature swings, the Browns might be in for a good month of maple syrup.
NORTH CANTON, Ohio  Students interested in a career in the oil and gas industry can get free training during a special 10-week summer intensive program at Stark State College.

The course will be June 4-Aug. 9 and meets from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Free tuition and, room and board at Malone College residence halls are made possible by ShaleNET Share scholarships funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education and Chevron. This opportunity is limited to 24 students.

Course work

Each day  through blended course delivery, team teaching, and experiential learning  students will capture knowledge, skills, and abilities related to five technical classes.

These classes comprise 14 credit hours towards an associates degree in measurement and mechatronics corroboratively offered by Stark State, Eastern Gateway Community College, Belmont College and Hocking College.

Students can complete their studies at any of the partner colleges.

Competencies learned include corrosion prevention, pipeline operations, gas measurement, process controls, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), wellhead production operations and gas utility installation.

Field trips and lecturers will supplement hands-on, project-based learning.

For more information, visit www.starkstate.edu/shalenetshare, contact Jean Barbato, case manager, 330-494-6170 ext. 5194 or jbarbato@starkstate.edu.
OLATHE, Kan.  The John Deere S700 Series Combine was recognized by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and Association of Equipment Manufacturers as one of the best among the 50 products that received the AE50 Award earlier this year.

This first-time JB Davidson award for engineering excellence was presented to John Deere at a ceremony Feb. 27 during the 2018 Commodity Classic.

This is the only international engineering awards program of its kind, celebrating product innovations in the areas of agricultural, food and biological systems.

The new Davidson Prize is being presented to three elite AE50 winners who best exemplify the spirit of JB Davidson, the father of modern agricultural engineering.

The Davidson award represents the best of the best in new technologies as carefully evaluated and judged by an all-star panel of industry experts.

Qualifications

The John Deere S700 Series Combine was recognized by the Society for its significant innovations in smart technology, improved operator comfort and data capabilities for more efficient grain harvesting, said Matt Badding, John Deere marketing manager for harvesting equipment.

From the many entries submitted each year, an expert panel of engineers selects approximately 50 products for recognition with the AE50 award.

The award-winning products are those ranked highest in innovation, significant engineering advancement and impact on the market served.
SALEM, Ohio  The Ohio General Assembly is considering a bill that would significantly increase the amount of funding available for plugging idle and orphaned wells.

Known as H.B. 225, the bill requires 45 percent of the revenue in the states Oil and Gas Well Fund to be used to fund the plugging process, compared to 14 percent in current law.

The state estimates there are around 700 known orphan wells  some dating back to the 1800s  which have been abandoned and are no longer producing.

Some of these wells present safety hazards because of the equipment protruding above ground, and the potential for water and environmental contamination.

The Ohio House passed the bill unanimously Jan. 17, with 96 favorable votes, and it is now being heard in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

These wells were drilled before modern regulations were written, and many were never properly plugged.

If these wells were plugged, they were plugged by a tree chunk, said Mike Chadsey, director of public relations with the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. The idea is we need to really clean these things out and get some cement down there and seal these things off.

(Story continues below graphic)

Legend: OP = Orphan Well, pending; OR = Orphan Well, ready

Orphan wells

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, orphan wells have been found under buildings, houses and streets, as well as in lawns and recreation areas.

Some of the signs you may have an orphan well include the presence of a large diameter pipe or wellhead, an area where vegetation will not grow, the odor of crude oil or natural gas, the odor of rotten eggs, or your water well is contaminated by saltwater, crude oil or natural gas.

Bill supporters say they want to increase the spending as a way of assuring more wells get filled, and that more funding stays within the Oil and Gas Well Fund.

Some $15 million was removed from the fund last year to help fund a legal settlement against ODNR over property damage near Grand Lake St. Marys. And additional money was taken from the fund to help with the state budget.

H.B. 225 precludes future funds from being used to settle state lawsuits and also precludes moving those funds into the states general fund.

There was really not a sense of urgency on orphan wells, even though theyre one of the greatest threats to groundwater in Ohio, said Ohio Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marietta.

We are taking action on a critical concern  the health of our drinking water.

Reporting process. The bill also includes provisions meant to simplify the landowner reporting process, and to clarify who will pay for the plugging.

According to the bill, landowners who discover idle and orphan wells can report them to the chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources, and the chief is then required to inspect the well within 30 days.

The chief is also required to establish a matrix for scoring idle and orphaned wells, and to use the matrix in determining which wells should be plugged first.

The bill also requires the chief to pay the contractor after a well is properly plugged, rather than requiring the chief to reimburse the landowner after the landowner has paid the contractor.

ODNR concern

Rick Simmers, Ohios current chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources, testified in the House that the bill includes many changes that will improve the overall program.

However, he said he was concerned about increasing the spending from 14 to 45 percent, which could require $37 million to be spent on plugging activities next year alone.

He said the division does not have enough time or manpower available to accomplish this spending mandate.

Instead, he said that the amount spent on plugging should be determined during each biennial budget process, with input by ODNR and the legislature.
LEXINGTON, Ky.  Dr. Pearse Lyons, who founded the diversified company Alltech, died Thursday, March 8, 2018, due to an acute lung condition that developed during his recovery from heart surgery. He was 73.

In 1980, Lyons, an Irish entrepreneur and scientist, founded Alltech in his home garage with $10,000, hoping to apply his yeast fermentation expertise to agricultural challenges.

Today, Alltech is a leading producer and processor of yeast additives, organic trace minerals, feed ingredients, premix and feed, with more than 5,000 team members worldwide.

Headquartered just outside of Lexington, Kentucky, Alltech has a strong presence in all regions of the world.

Although his training was science, he was widely regarded as an inspirational leader and communicator.

Dr. Lyons was a visionary entrepreneur who transformed the agriculture industry beginning with his innovative application of yeast technology in animal nutrition, said Alric Blake, CEO and treasurer of Alltech. He inspired everyone he met with his energy, enthusiasm and passionate belief in possibilities.

About Lyons

Lyons was born Aug. 3, 1944, to Thomas Kevin and Margaret (nee Dunne) Lyons and raised in Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland.

He received his bachelors degree from University College Dublin, Ireland, graduating with first-class honors. He continued into postgraduate study at the British School of Malting and Brewing in Birmingham, where he gained masters and doctoral degrees in brewing science from the University of Birmingham. He was the first Irishman to receive a formal degree in brewing and distilling from the university.

He interned at the Guinness and Harp Lager breweries and later worked as a biochemist for Irish Distillers, makers of Jameson whiskey. He was instrumental in designing the Midleton Distillery for Jameson, an opportunity which he considered to be a highlight of his early career.

Pearse met Deirdre (nee Byrne) when she was 17, and they married in 1972. Their daughter Aoife Louise was born in 1973 and son Mark in 1976.

Lyons moved to the United States in 1976, having been asked by Irish distillery Gems Whisky to help ethanol distillers in Kentucky improve their processes.

In 1980, Lyons launched his own business, Alltech, which built its success upon the application of yeast technologies to animal health and nutrition. Incidentally, Alltechs name is based on the initials of daughter Aoife Louise Lyons, and Alltechs signature logo color was son Marks choice at the time.

In 1999, when the former Lexington Brewing Company in downtown Lexington was closing its doors, Dr. Lyons purchased it to resurrect the brewing and distilling tradition of Lexington that dates back to 1794.

Lyons was widely recognized for his contributions to science and industry and was awarded honorary doctorates from many colleges and universities around the world. He was named Business Person of the Year by Business & Finance magazine and received the prestigious Ireland-U.S. Council Award for Outstanding Achievement.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny recognized him with the St. Patricks Day Science Medal in recognition of creating a global business based on scientific research. He was also selected to receive the Commanders Award for Public Service, a rarely presented official U.S. Army medal, and has been honored with the Henry Clay Medallion for Distinguished Service.

Lyons spearheaded Alltechs commitment to international equestrian sport by sponsoring the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games 2010 in Lexington, Kentucky, which led to his receipt of the Commonwealth of Kentuckys first-ever Legacy Award in 2011.

The Lyons believe in cultivating lifelong learning, and Dr. Lyons, in particular, was interested in encouraging young scientists and entrepreneurs. The Alltech Young Scientist program, the largest global agriscience competition of its kind, has engaged more than 100,000 university students.

The Lyons also ensured that Alltech opened its doors to students for on-the-job discovery, with more than 450 undergraduates completing an internship program at the Alltech Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition in Kentucky, and approximately 440 Ph.D., masters degree and graduate students being supported through Alltechs bioscience centers.

Also, at the university level, Dr. Lyons initiated an Alltech Innovation Competition, which awarded entrepreneurs with $10,000, the same amount with which he founded Alltech.

Believing that the arts are essential to creative thinking and innovation, Dr. and Mrs. Lyons led Alltechs sponsorship of the Alltech Vocal Scholarship Competition, which is considered one of the largest vocal scholarship programs in the world and has positioned the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre program as a Richard Tucker Foundation top 20 opera program. More than $500,000 in scholarships have been awarded annually to promising young vocalists.

He and his wife also funded and oversaw the construction of more than a dozen state-of-the-art science laboratories at primary schools in Kentucky and Ireland.

His business, Alltech, will remain privately held under the ownership of the family.

Services

The Lyons family request any expressions of sympathy, including memories and tributes, be shared at alltech.com/pearselyons. In lieu of flowers, the family is encouraging donations to the Alltech ACE Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that funds a variety of philanthropic endeavours around the world from disaster relief to primary schools in Haiti. Donations may be made at alltech.com/pearselyons.

Funeral masses will be in Lexington, Kentucky, on March 17 and in Dublin, Ireland, in April. Public visitation in Lexington will be on Friday, March 16. Arrangement details will be kept up to date on alltech.com/pearselyons.

A special celebration of life will be held on May 20 at the beginning of ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference in Lexington.
EDON, Ohio  In celebration of National FFA Week, the Edon FFA Chapter conducted several activities to give back to the community.

The chapter held a community breakfast Feb. 17 in the Edon High School auditeria. This year, over 200 individuals attended. The chapter also held a teacher and staff appreciation breakfast Feb. 23.

Throughout the week members collected new and gently used stuffed animals to donate to the Childrens Hospital. The entire school district collected of 231 stuffed animals.

FFA members also led a pet food collection that resulted in 85 pounds of food donated to the Williams County Humane Society.

The chapter collected change for the Cancer Assistance of Williams County by holding a Kiss-A-Pig Fundraiser. Students raised $368.77 and students and teachers were nominated to kiss a live pig.

In addition to the above activities, the Edon FFA Chapter also logs more than 1,200 community service hours each year.

  

COLLINS, Ohio  Western Reserve FFA members, McKenna Woodruff, Colton White, and Caleb Bibb, competed in the sub-district public speaking contest Feb. 14 at Plymouth High School.

Woodruff placed first in the beginning prepared speech contest, Bibb placed second in the advanced prepared speech contest, and White placed fifth in the creed speaking contest.

Woodruff and Bibb advanced to the district contest Feb. 21, at New London High School. Bibb placed eighth and Woodruff placed second, advancing her to the state contest March 3, at Marysville High School.

Western Reserve FFA celebrated National FFA Week by serving breakfast to the teachers and staff. Other weekly activities included Tractor Tuesday,  students wore their favorite tractor T-shirts  Workboot Wednesday, Blue and Gold Day and Flannel Friday.
A realistic robot called the "Super Monster Wolf" is on sale in Japan for farmers who want to scare crop-damaging pests away from their farms.

The robotic wolf, which features red eyes and realistic fur, will now go in mass production following successful trials.

According to Chiba Nippo news website, the Super Monster Wolf helps stop damage caused by harmful animals, such as wild boar.

The robot has a length of 65cm and a height of 50cm, and uses an infrared sensor to detect wild animals. When one is detected, it emits a red LED light from the eyes and a threatening sound.

The infrared sensor has an effective radius of about one kilometer (0.62 miles).

According to Kisarazu City Agricultural Cooperative, a field trial conducted for two months in a paddy field in Yana, where nearby farms suffer from damage caused by wild boars, experienced a drop in crop losses where the Super Monster Wolf was present.

The robot has been in experiment at nine locations across Japan, and the cooperative explained that all trials were effective.

The robot costs around 3,480 (514,000 yen), but farmers have the option to lease the equipment on a monthly basis instead.

A report looking at the role of robotics forecasts that agricultural robots will become a $12bn industry by 2027.
The government has backed calls for flexibility to allow the building of new homes within existing farms to help farmers retire.

The move will help free up farmhouses to get the next generation into the industry.

The Government has published a consultation on the draft revised text of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

It contains a number of changes that will see increased opportunities for building homes for village communities and creating opportunities for rural business growth and change.

The CLA which represents landowners, farmers and rural businesses has reacted to the proposals that contain a number of lobbying wins for the organisation.

'Widespread'

CLA President Tim Breitmeyer said the housing need is "widespread" throughout rural England.

It is good to see the Government recognise the specific needs of those in the countryside and be bold in its approach to addressing them, Mr Breitmeyer said.

The CLA has long argued that in the right circumstances, land outside of existing settlements can play an important role in meeting the housing and business needs of a rural community.

By backing this policy, the Government is showing a marked shift in its attitude to how planning authorities should treat development opportunities outside of towns and villages.

Mr Breitmeyer said the CLA are "pleased" to see the Government propose entry level exception sites as another means to provide affordable homes for those who live and work in the countryside.

He said such people are "struggling to get their foot on the housing ladder."

Homes for retiring farmers

The Government has also backed calls for flexibility to allow the building of new homes within existing farms to help farmers retire and free up farmhouses to get the next generation into the industry.

The draft text contains a new exception from restrictions on building in open countryside for those taking majority control of a farm business.

Mr Breitmeyer continued: The Government has recognised this simple change will help to smooth the notoriously difficult process of farm succession in time for an expected increase in retirement driven by Brexit.
A farmer who herds five-hundred sheep has said the consequences of not grazing the uplands would include a "devastating impact" on the environment and tourism.

Carmarthen sheep farmer and Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) Vice President Ian Rickman, who farms at 1000ft-above-sea-level, has highlighted the important role sheep play in maintaining the countryside.

Mr Rickman farms 500 Llandovery white faced ewes, which are due to lamb during the next two months.

But he fears that the consequences of not grazing the mountains would have a devastating impact on the environment and tourism.

The farm extends to 220 acres with Common Grazing Rights on the Black Mountain, and he is a member of the Management Committee of the Black Mountain West Graziers Association.

To showcase just how much farming matters and to discuss wider issues of concern, he held an open day in February, welcoming Jonathan Edwards MP, Adam Price AM, Dafydd Llewelyn Dyfed Powys Police and Crime Commissioner, Councillor Gareth Thomas, various business representatives and many local farmers.

'Many generations'

Mr Rickman explained the importance of grazing the mountains, which has been going on for "many generations".

I move the ewe lambs annually to the mountains and common land with their mothers where they are taught where to graze, Mr Rickman said.

It has been an important part of grazing the mountains for many generations.

If lamb prices dropped drastically, we lost our market or farm support was to diminish, it could mean less or no sheep on the mountains.

That in turn could have a detrimental effect on the landscape of the mountains in years to come and therefore also on tourism, the communities that are intrinsic to our rural economy, and our way of life here in the uplands would change - and possibly not for the better.

'Real problem'

Nerys Edwards, the FUWs assistant CEO in Carmarthen highlighted the need for urgent funding security for upland farmers like Ian Rickman.

She said: We know that the UK Government has said that it will match the current EU budget that supports farming and our rural economies, but how that money gets to Wales and how it is managed has not been determined.

That of course is a real problem for our farmers like Ian, because they cant plan for the future.

It is encouraging to hear First Minister Carwyn Jones backing the industry and we recently heard him say that agricultural funding will have to be held in a separate pot and dealt with in a different way.

However, there is a risk that it could go through the Barnett Formula, which will reduce the 260 m to circa 150 million and spell disaster for our rural economy.

The FUW is now actively lobbying for the money to be assigned from the UK Government to Wales, for agriculture and we really appreciated being able to raise this with our local elected politicians here on farm.
A forecast has been launched to help sheep farmers respond to the annual spring disease threat to young lambs as the UK could be in for a 'high-risk' season.

It may not feel like it in parts of the UK hit by 'The Beast from the East' and Storm Emma, but spring is just around the corner  and with it the annual deadly threat from the roundworm Nematodirus in lambs.

Nematodirosis is caused by a gutworm, and is a potentially deadly disease affecting young lambs.

Eggs deposited on pasture by lambs the previous year hatch together in spring, triggered by a period of chilling over winter followed by warmer weather.

Young lambs take in large numbers of larvae as they graze, which damage their gut leading to foetid black diarrhoea (black scour) and death.

Responding to the speed with which this parasite can hit, the Sustainable Control of Parasites in Sheep (SCOPS) group is providing a new forecasting tool, developed by the Bristol Veterinary School.

An interactive map with a traffic light system of warnings is provided alongside practice advice for assessing on-farm risk.

'High-risk season'

Dr Hannah Vineer, Senior Research Associate from the Bristol Veterinary School, who developed the online tool, said the UK could be in for a "high-risk season", if this late cold snap is followed by a rapid increase in temperature.

"Such conditions will cause the Nematodirus battus parasite to hatch in large numbers, posing a massive threat to lambs aged around four to six weeks," Dr Vineer said.

"Predicting when outbreaks might happen at a local level is becoming increasingly difficult, due to variation in spring temperatures from year to year.

"Farmers can no longer rely on a standard timetable of treatments to avoid disease, hence the important role of this easy-to-use forecast. Sheep farmers, vets and advisers can all use it to assess regional and local risk."

Weather stations

The forecast map is updated daily using data from over 140 weather stations around the UK, tracking changes in risk throughout the spring and early summer.

The interactive map allows farmers to select the nearest or most representative weather station, providing advice on how to relate the predicted risk to their particular farm, treatment options and possible management actions.

Lesley Stubbings, independent sheep consultant, speaks on behalf of the SCOPS group, added: "Survey data collected by SCOPS shows more than 90 per cent of users changed their approach to nematodirus control by using the forecast, and many reported a significant improvement in lamb health, lower losses and better lamb condition."
The rural land market could see some massive changes in the coming years if new Government proposals come into effect.

New planning and housing consultation papers, released on Monday (5 March), have the potential to transform existing planning policy and market prices.

The Central Association of Agricultural Advisers (CAAV) has warned that by 2033 there could easily be another 10 million people in the UK, and there are therefore significant levels of housing and infrastructure needed.

Jeremy Moody, secretary and adviser to the CAAV said: The Government wants to solve the housing problem by using market housing to fund affordable housing  but if you strip the profitability out of market housing, it could limit the availability of land for any future development.

Thee CAAV say there is a "fine balance" to be found, and interested parties only have until 10 May to submit their responses to the consultation paper.

Community Infrastructure Levy

Speaking at the CAAV spring conference in Cheltenham on Wednesday (7 March), Mr Moody ran through the key points raised in the consultation paper.

One of the key thrusts is to capture some of the uplift in development land value  taking into account local house prices  and use it for other infrastructure, he said.

The existing Community Infrastructure Levy could be revised to reflect local house prices and the scale in capital uplift values.

He continued: Fortunately, there are signs that the Government may have listened to us with regard to removing CIL from agricultural buildings  where there is very little uplift in land value  but agricultural land used for housing development could suffer a higher CIL charge.

Private rights

Another change is to make the planning permission framework even more plan-based, forcing councils to identify sites for development and developers to push forward with housing projects more quickly.

Whether there is capacity in the construction sector to cope with this is another matter, added Mr Moody.

Viability assessments could be brought forward to the early planning stage, to rule out sites which are too costly to develop, while there will also be a greater emphasis on small sites: The proposal is that 20% of all sites should be 0.5ha or less.

Green belt protections will remain unchanged, but the Government will take a more strategic interest in the development of new towns  up to five of which could be created in the Oxford-Cambridge corridor alone. And this is where landowners could see their private rights come into question.

Legislation over the HS2 rail link and Nationally Important Infrastructure Projects introduced the concept of developers being able to acquire associated land for development at existing land use value, explained Mr Moody.

There is a lot more talk around compulsory purchase and payments being made on existing land use value rather than including any sort of market or hope element. This clearly tramples on private landowners rights, and it will be important to feed into this consultation and watch any future developments very closely indeed.
First generation farmer and blog writer Rachel Watling has spoken about why women in British farming should be proud to work in the "biggest job in the world" today on International Women's Day. In her online blog, she writes the following...

This article had to begin with the result of Minette Batters breaking headlines a few weeks ago to become the first female NFU President  not to mention that it is also International Womens Day today!

I am heading to a Ladies in Agriculture event this evening at the Farmers Club in London. Sounds exciting, doesnt it? Well it is.

It is made up of a group of women working in agriculture that is headed up by Christine Tacon and organised by More People. Meeting three times a year to discuss business, offer support and network, the group has been very valuable to me as a young woman in agriculture.

Bishop Burton are also celebrating International Women's Day this evening, hosting a dinner on the topic of Facing Challenges Head-On, with two inspirational women speakers, Ann Daniels and NFUs Rachel Hallos.

The industry is not short of groups (including Twitter) or events supporting women in agriculture, such as the Womens Food and Farming Union, Norfolk Ladies in Agriculture, Women in Dairy, Ladies in Beef, Meat Business Women and so on. BBC Radio 4 even has a womens hour!

#PressforProgress

So, what is International Womens Day all about? Well, this years theme is #PressforProgress.

Probably a call to action out of the World Economic Forums 2017 Global Gender Gap Report, stating gender equality is some 200 years away. Really? Surely not at this day and age.

Historically a male orientated profession and now appearing in the press more and more, in 2017, according to The Guardian 28% of women make up the farming industry in the UK.

Some headlines to note: Why are herds of women conquering farming? and, This is a womans world! Meet the female farmers taking over the male-dominated industry by producing their own posh crisps, homemade pies and artisan ice creams

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) also reported that between 2010-2013 the number of female farmers rose by 10 per cent, amounting to more than 25,000.

A good measure for me was when I attended the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists John Deere Training Award in 2017. There were fourteen attendees; thirteen women and just one man. We still stay in touch on a WhatsApp group, where communication and support is in abundance.

'Support network like no other'

In 2016, The Oxford Farming Conference debated Agriculture is an Equal Opportunities Industry.

Given the majority of male farmers in the room, a close result was concluded with Ayes 175 against the Noes 158. Knowing the gender statistics in the room would be interesting, dont you think?

The CMI (Chartered Management Institute) have its very own dedicated CMI Women page on their website. The Why drive for gender diversity image brings a lot in to perspective in just six images, not forgetting this is not farming specific:

If you are a reading this and are a woman in farming, I am sure you will join me by saying you are proud to work in the sector and enjoy every minute of it.

If youre not, then join us! Farming is the biggest job in the world and as youve read in this article, there is a support network like no other.

Rachel Watling is a first generation farmer and blog writer who works in marketing and communications at Map of Agriculture.
Clarkson urges government to boost UK food self-sufficiency

'It should be much more like 80%, were capable of it'
This film had not just one, but two strong female characters, and both played to perfection by Kangana Ranaut in a double role. The first being Tanu, who finally changes her wild ways and becomes more compassionate for the man she loves, without giving away her identity. And the second, Kusum, a champion athlete who doesnt let go of her pride when she realises that the man she loves is still in love with his wife. It was double the awesomeness.
'I Really Hard To Push Myself A Lot'

Q. Could you give us a little insight about the character that you play in Hate Story 4?

A. In Hate Story 4, I am playing character of a girl called as Tasha, who is a super-model. What attracted me to this character is that she's a very strong, independent, and very dominating. However, at the same time she is also very vulnerable and very real in nature.

So, when a person is a mixture of two opposite worlds that makes me and my character very interesting. Therefore, there was more of underground research I had to do for preparing this role.

Considering the fact my character is a super-model, she also has to look like one. I have been super-model in my real-life, so that is something which came quite easily. So it was like a glad moment for me to portray something like this on the screen. But the characteristics of Tasha in the film are something very different what I am in real-life, as a result for that I really had to push myself a lot.

In addition, Tasha is a hero of the film, just as you can see in the poster. Also, though everybody is praising about the poster, but I would really like to add here that the thing which I most liked in the poster is the eyes of Tasha, which is speaking loudly and all set for action. They are very real and helpless, but at the same time, they are very strong.

'I Used To Cry Many Times In My Bed'

Q. How difficult for you to get over with such type of character?

A. Getting over with my character in Hate Story 4 was quite difficult. There used to be a time where I could not sleep properly. In addition, we were having late-night shoots, so I was having many sleepless nights. I also used to cry many times in my bed, because it's a very disturbing character. So playing such ones are not easy. After Hate Story 4, I would love to do some refreshing and happy character.

Q. Knowing the brand, Hate Story' series is quite known for two things - One is the sensuous and bold thing, and the second one is the hatred concept. So were you skeptical to take up this role or was it an immediate 'yes' from your side?

A. When I read the script, I wasn't aware that it's a Hate Story' film. I really liked my character in it. However, when I got to know that it's Hate Story 4', I took some time and then gave my nod for the film. In addition, I haven't watched the earlier parts of the series, but after signing the film, I thought to watch it now. But then I decided not to watch as of now, because I would like to give a fresh approach to my character and towards part 4 of the series. I want to bring in something new, different and more creative. And therefore, All I can promise you is that Hate Story 4 is one of the best parts among the Hate Story franchise.

'I Have Grown Up Watching A Lot Of Jennifer Lawrence's Work & Love How She Portrays In A Female-Centric Film'

Q. As you have mentioned about the poster, and since Hate Story' has been a great successful franchise, but still it's been promoted as Uravashi Rautela starrer film. What's the feeling like?

A. I have grown up by watching a lot of Jennifer Lawrence's work, I simply love how she portrays in a female-centric film. So I really wanted to be a part of such female-centric films. However, it's too early for me to be a part of such films. A lot of other senior actors may feel certain kind of pressure like how the film would turn out at the box-office and so on, but I was always a chill kind of person.

But here, there's a lot of pressure in me, where the entire responsibility is on me. I have just taken a risk here, so I don't know what's going to happen next.

Also I believe that only those actresses get the opportunity to do the female-centric films who are quite strong in nature. For example we have Anushka Sharma in Pari, Rani Mukerji in Hitchki, Kangana Ranaut in Tanu Weds Manu and Queen, Tasha in Hate Story 4. I believe, a girl would then be comfortable in doing female-centric films when they are really strong and have something inside them. So I take it as a compliment!

'I Always Wanted To Be A Part Of Those Films Which Would Make Me Feel Proud About Myself'

Q. You were last seen in Great Grand Masti' (2016) as a lead actress post which you did a special song appearance in Kaabil and now Hate Story 4. Are you very choosy when it comes to taking up work?

A. Yes, I am indeed a kind of choosy about selecting films. I have also refused to do lot of films, where the recent one was Sarkar 3. Who would leave the opportunity to work with Amitabh Bachchan? But I didn't like the character, so I said no to the film. There are also other great films, which I have refused to be a part of, but I always wanted to be part of those films where just looking at it, I feel proud to myself. And that's the reason I did Hate Story 4' after a gap.

'I Said Yes To Haseeno Ka Deewana Only Because Of Hrithik Roshan'

Q. Do you feel that remixes suit you well as compared with other actors. You got some great reviews for Haseeno Ka Deewana' in Kaabil', where Hrithik too mentioned about you. And now as well you are getting the same for Aashiq Banaya Aapne' and Name Hai Mera' in Hate Story 4'.

A. Yes, for sure! Also, after Haseena Ka Deewana, a lot of other actors like Khans, Ajay Devgn, and Sanjay Dutt have approached me to do special song for their films, which I again refused to do the same.

I said yes for Haseeno Ka Deewana only because of Hrithik Roshan, since I see myself as a female Hrithik Roshan. When you just watch him on screen, no matter how good looking an actor is, but he will always look the most beautiful and charming person on the screen. He has that kind of aura. He is also an amazing dancer, and so is an all-rounder. He is a perfectionist, and when he chose me for Haseeno Ka Deewana, it was a big-thing for me.

I was truly very much happy. Hrithik also gave me a lot of motivation, which actually doubled-up my motivation power and did my best. Also, eventually it was Amitabh Bachchan's song. So you have to do that thing, which is already big, and now have to do something even much better than this. I am very happy that people are talking about, be it Aashiq Banaya Aapne or Haseeno Ka Deewana. People are talking about the song, talking about its choreography. And that's really great, especially when a superstar like Hrithik Roshan loves your craft and work, and then he chooses you for a special appearance in song.

Q. Do you have some special memories related to the orginal Aashiq Banaya Aapne' song?

A. I was actually in a 6th standard, and at that time, such songs were not something which you can't proudly watch with your family or even in front of so many people. Also, I was not watching many movies when I was in 6th standard, but I saw the song about 2-3 years later when it got released. I knew that it's a super-hit song at that time, but when I heard the music of the recent one, I thought to bring in something new. I already do 11 different kind of choreography like Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, Bollywood, etc.

Just like Yanis Marshall, who does his kind of choreography in Hollywood, so I thought why we can't do his choreography in Bollywood. And that's how his choreography came in this song. Earlier, people were writing very bad comments about Aashiq Banaya Aapne - such as body shaming and so on.

But when they are watching it now on loop on television, they are realizing the kind of hard-work that we have done. It's not easy to walk or even stand in a heat, and we are doing such kind of challenging choreography by wearing 5-inches heel. You face with so many difficulties, like balancing yourself by maintaining the centre of gravity, while doing such choreography. However, now people are loving it, and I am happy that it has been crossed with more than 50-million of views in YouTube.

Q. You spoke about body-shaming just now; a lot of actors are these days facing with trolls of the same on social-media. So what's your take on that, and how do you deal with such kind of negative thoughts?

A. I just ignore it. I am a very positive person and always consider that half of the glass is full, rather than considering as half empty. In fact, I was lately trolled for my Filmfare outfit, but I don't pay any attention to it. Also, people usually forget in a short span of time.

'I Always Pick & Choose What My Heart Tells Me'

Q. In one of your old interviews, you had mentioned that you was offered Ishaqzaade, but you rejected the film and choose to go to the Beauty Pageant. Do you think your career would have been something different if you would have taken up that film?

A. I am that kind of person who always follows what my heart says. Along with Ishaqzaade, there was also another film that starred one of the Khans. But I choose my Pageant, because that was my childhood dream. For other people, of course that dream is bigger than my dream. But for me as a person, this one was bigger than anything.

If at that point of time, someone would ask me what do you want Urvashi, which is your dream - then I would say my college is more important. Indeed Mr. Habib Faizal (writer-director of Ishaqzaade) approached me for that film, but that time I was living, breathing and preparing myself for Miss Universe. And so that thing was much more important to me than anything else.

No matter what big opportunity I was being offered, but as I said, I always follow what my heart says and I always pick-and-choose what my heart tells me. And I have no regrets in my life, where whatever decision I take in my life, I am really happy about it and how things are shaping up now.

Q. Like you said that you rejected a couple of films, do you think that could be one of the reasons why actors or superstars are shying away to work with you?

A. I don't think, because all these superstars like Khans, Hrithik Roshan or other actors are very open-minded. And that's the reason they are legends. I believe they think very broadly, and don't have time to think about such thing. And that's the reason they continue being in people's heart for such a long time, because they think big, positively and in a broader manner. Also, they are so much occupied with their work and have so many other things to do as well.

Q. Lastly, what's next on the platter for you?

A. I have signed couple of films, but have promised myself that will not do publicity for any other films during Hate Story promotions.
Boney Is Shattered

Trade analyst Komal Nahata wrote in his blog, ''Boney Kapoor has still to get over his grief over the demise of his better half, actress Sridevi. It is not rare for the producer to shed tears while recalling the events in Dubai on 24th February, the day he reached Jumeirah Emirates Tower Hotel where Sridevi was putting up, after a couple of hours of which he found her dead body in the bathtub of their bathroom.''

Boney Was Inconsolable When Aamir Khan Called Him

''But Boney was inconsolable when Aamir Khan called him up from Los Angeles on 3rd March to pay his condolences. Aamir was out of station and, therefore, could not personally visit Boney when the latter reached India with Sridevi's mortal remains. Aamir did call Boney a couple of times but, quite understandably, Boney missed his calls.''

Aamir Realised That...

''Realising that Boney would be both, distraught and busy with the last rites once he landed in India, Aamir decided to telephone him after a couple of days. He was returning from Los Angeles on 3rd March and called up Boney on his way to the LA airport to inform him that after landing from LA on 4th, he would visit Boney straight from the Shivaji International Airport.''

When Boney Told Aamir What Happened With Sridevi

''Over the telephone, Boney and Aamir got talking about the unfortunate demise when the former started to recount the chain of events in brief, leading to the horrifying end. Hearing this, Aamir instantly recalled how a very dear friend of his had, a couple of years ago, almost lost his wife in the bathtub.''

Aamir Narrated The Scary Incident To Boney

''It had so happened that Aamir's close friend was on a holiday abroad, with his wife. While there, the wife had one day gone to the bathroom for a bath in the tub. Not having much to do, the husband, after a while, entered the bathroom, wanting to chat with the wife while she bathed in the tub.''

The Man Was Shocked To See His Wife's Face Submerged In The Water

''To his shock, he saw about half his wife's face, including the nose, submerged in the water. Calling her out by her name, the man saw her stare at him blankly and make some feeble sounds. Wondering what was happening, the man shouted out to his wife, ran towards her and still screaming her name, pulled her out of the bathtub.''

When He Pulled His Wife Out..

''The wife could barely stand. On being asked what had happened, all the wife could say meekly was, "I don't know what happened, I don't know what happened."

She Was Suffering From Low Blood Pressure

''She looked half-conscious and could barely stand. The visibly shaken husband sat his wife down for a few minutes till she felt better. "What had happened," said Aamir to Boney, "was that my friend's wife suffered from low blood pressure, and when she lay in the bathtub in extremely hot water, with her entire body, except her head, in the water, the blood pressure went further down.''

She Could Have Drowned In The Tub Just Like Sridevi

''This made the blood rush down from her head (which was not in the hot water) to the lower parts of her body, making her feel giddy and semi-conscious. The doctor told the couple that because of the low blood pressure and the consequent flow of blood from her head to the other parts of the body which were inside the hot water, she could have lost complete consciousness and drowned in the tub.''

The Wife Would Not Even Have Got A Chance To Shout For Help

''Had the husband not entered the bathroom, he would have, in all probability, lost his wife that day as she would have drowned in the water." Aamir added, "The wife would not even have got a chance to shout for help or scramble to come out of the bathtub as she would not have realised that she had drowned, because of her unconscious state."

On Hearing This...

''Boney started to cry inconsolably on the telephone. Revealed Aamir, "I feel, while I was narrating the incident of my friend's wife, Boney was probably imagining how Sridevi ji, in similar circumstances as my friend's wife, must have drowned to her death. He was so shaken that he was sobbing like a child on the telephone."

Later...

''Aamir pacified Boney and promised to see him on landing in India. In less than 24 hours thereafter, Aamir was by Boney's side in his house. The actor called on Boney on 4th before going home from the Shivaji International Airport in Bombay.''
The Film Is Based On A Book

Hansal was quoted as saying to PTI, "It is a beautiful story, I have got the rights for it. It is from a book, a novella... It is a Chinese story."

He Was Keen To Give A Narration To Sridevi

"I felt it would be wonderful to do it with Sridevi. I had thought of narrating the idea to her, but she passed away. It was shocking."

He Will Dedicate The Film To Sridevi

"I will dedicate it to Sridevi. I had very little interaction with her. I believe she had seen my work. She was a great actor, an inspiration to lot of actors," Hansal told PTI

He Also Spoke About The Film's Plot

About the plot of the film, he said, "It was a departure from the kind of films I was making. It is a tale about love, about how in the late 50s you are discovering womanhood... Motherhood and marriage, without either being a wife or a mother."

His Tweet

After the news of her demise broke, Hansal Mehta had tweeted to offer his condolences, "There will never be another Sridevi. I was about to approach her for a film. That film will now be dedicated to her. If it finds an actor."
2016  Rajisha Vijayan

Rajisha Vijayan went on to become one among the very few actresses who bagged the Best Actress title with the very first film. The actress won the Best Actress award at the Kerala State Film Award 2016, for her spectacular performance in the movie Anuraga Karikkin Vellam, in which she essayed a character named Eli.

2015  Parvathy

Parvathy won her very first Kerala State Film Award for the Best Actress in the year 2015. The year was indeed a phenomenal one for the actress and she made a big impact with her performances in the movies Ennu Ninte Moideen and Charlie.

2014  Nazriya Nazim

Nazriya Nazim, the much loved actress of Malayalam cinema won this big title in the year 2014. Her lovely performances in the films Bangalore Days and Om Shanthi Oshana helped her win the Best Actress title.

2013  Ann Augustine

In the film Artist, Ann Augustine got to play a very powerful role of a character named Gayatri and the actress did give a spellbinding performance. Rightly, she was adjudged as the Best Actress of the year 2014.

2012  Rima Kallingal

Rima Kallingal came up with a memorable performance in the film 22 Female Kottayam in which she played a character named Tessa. Similarly, she also gained a lot of appreciation for her performance in the film Nidra. She went on to win the Kerala State Film Award for the Best Actress for her performances in these films.
Mammootty

Megastar Mammootty made it a point to wish all the winners on the big occasion. He send out a Facebook post wishing all the State Award winner.

Mohanlal

Mohanlal too took to Facebook to send out his sincere compliments to all who were declared as the winners of the Kerala State Film Awards 2017.

Dulquer Salmaan

Dulquer Salmaan, the young sensation of Mollywood took to Facebook to congratulate Indrans, Parvathy, Gopi Sunder and all others who made a mark at this year's Kerala State Film Awards.

Nivin Pauly

Nivin Pauly did send out his heartfelt regards to all the big winners. He wrote that he is hoping to see such amazing works in the years to come. His film Hey Jude also won three awards at this year's Kerala State Film Awards.

Jayaram

Jayaram made it a point to congratulate Indrans, his co-star in many movies, on winning the Best Actor award at the Kerala State Film awards. He also did send out his wishes to all the other winners.

Kunchacko Boban

Kunchacko Boban shared his happiness on Take Off winning 5 major awards and he congratulated the big winners from the film Take Off. The actor dedicated all these awards to Late Rajesh Pillai. He also congratulated all the other big winners like Indrans, Alencier Ley Lopez, Lijo Jose Pelliissery & others.

Aju Varghese

Aju Varghese was one among the very first celebrities who took to Facebook to wish the winners. He send out his congratulations to all the award winners.

Navya Nair

Popular Malayalam actress Navya Nair, who herself is a two time winner of the Kerala State Film Award for the Best Actress, took to Facebook to send out a congratulatory message to the winners.
Ekta Has A Special Message For Special Woman

The czarina of television industry, who herself in an inspiration for many women, took to social media to dedicate the special day to a special woman who inspired her!

Ekta Dedicates This Women's Day To Sridevi

Although she says that her mother is always her biggest hero, she dedicated this Women's Day to the late Bollywood actress, Sridevi and called her hero' and lady superstar'.

Ekta Shares An Adorable Throwback Pictures

Sharing an adorable picture, Ekta wrote, "Woman's day is everyday!!! But today I'll remember a woman who gave me a childhood joy like no other! I lost touch with her when I grew up but the fat child in me had a silent approval of India's first female superstar!" - (sic)

Ekta Calls Sridevi A HERO & #LadySuperstar!

"My mom will always b my biggest hero but this woman's day is for that hero who first showed me  strong women support women( even if she is much younger) #ripsridevi #ladysuperstar." - (sic)

Smriti Irani & Sachin Joshi

Ekta's friend and actress, Smriti Irani and actor Sachin Joshi commented on her post. While Smriti wrote, "Plus 1," Sachin appreciated Ekta, "Well said..."

Sridevi's Death

Sridevi died on Saturday February 24, 2018 due to cardiac arrest, in Dubai. The actress was in Dubai along with her family to attend her nephew, Mohit Marwah's wedding.

Sridevi's Death Had Sparked Several Stories

Her untimely and sudden death sparked several stories. Many of them felt one of the reasons of her death is her surgery. Ekta had also slammed people who spread false news related to Sridevi's death.

Ekta Lashes Out At Gossip-Mongers

Ekta had tweeted, "Evil ones pls realise one percent ( as fwded as my doc told me) of the population can have an cardiac arrest without any heart condition or any kind of surgery ! It's destiny not how evil rumour-mongers portray!!!" - (sic)
Hina Khan At Power Women Fiesta Awards 2018

Hina Khan shared a few pictures and wrote, "#OOTN at the Power Woman Fiesta. Thank you @marketcitykurla for honouring me tonight. Event organised by @vikaaskalantri." - (Sic)

Hina Khan Bags An Awards At Power Women Fiesta Awards 2018

Sharing a few more pictures from the awards ceremony, the actress wrote, "This is to all the men n women out there .. still killing us before we are even born." - (Sic)

The Bigg Boss Actress Writes

"If you don't raise me well, I WILL RAISE MY SELF, If you don't let me become something, I WILL MAKE MYSELF, If you still wanna curb my potential, I WILL RAISE ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE MYSELF, I AM A WOMAN, I HAVE THE POWER!" - (Sic)

Hina Wishes Happy Womens Day

"M not asking you to give me a fighting chance because it's your duty and I will keep coming back no matter how hard you try to Stop me. Initiate the cycle from becoming powerful to raise an empowered girl. Happy Women's Day! @365 days a year" - (Sic)

Debina Bags An Awards At Power Women Fiesta Awards 2018

Debina shared a picture of the award and wrote, "Filled with immense gratitude #PowerWoman @MarketcityKurla thanku  @VikasKalantri .. keep dreaming keep achieving keep setting your goal higher. A power woman acknowledges the fact that men and women r the 2 pillars of d society and need to encourage each other to coexist." - (Sic)

Geeta Kapoor Bags An Awards At Power Women Fiesta Awards 2018

Geeta Kapoor shared the picture and wrote, "Power woman fiesta 2018 ... Phoenix market city ... thank u @sandip_soparrkar for bestowing blessings and love in so many ways and always remembering me for occasions as these ... thank u @farahkhankunder for making me so powerful in every way and thank u #workstation for adding to my power..." - (Sic)

Geeta Kapoor Thanks Fans

"Thank u most of all to all the fans followers and viewers whose appreciation love and blessings make moments like these possible .... ABOVE AND BEYOND THANK U GOD ....HAPPY WOMENS DAY TO ALL THE WOMEN IN THE WORLD !!!!! #award #powerwoman #pheonixmarketcitykurla #womenachievers #power #womensday #black #favourite #thanks." - (Sic)

Vikas Kalantri Appreciates Hina

Vikas Kalantri shared a couple of pictures snapped with Hina and wrote, "With this #gorgeous #stylish woman @realhinakhan a true #powerwoman at the #powerwomenfiesta keep rocking always my dear friend  @marketcitykurla @whiteleafent." - (Sic)

Vikas Praises Debina

He shared a picture of Debina (posing with the award) and wrote, "Debi you are not only a #powerwoman in reel life but in real life as well. Someone i truly admire in all means @debinabon truly well deserved #powerwomenfiesta  @marketcitykurla executed by @whiteleafent." - (Sic)
What happened

Shares of Harmony Gold Mining Co. (NYSE:HMY) took off last month, rising 20.2% after reporting strong fiscal first-half results.

So what

In an operations update in early February, Harmony Gold Mining said that an improvement in its operational performance would likely yield a 40% to 60% year-over-year increase in earnings when the company reported results later that month. That forecast came to fruition when the company announced that it earned $0.17 per share during the first half of its fiscal year, which was up 49% from the year-ago period. Driving the increase was the combination of higher production and ore grades with lower costs. Overall, production rose to 560,000 ounces during the first half of its fiscal year, up 4,000 ounces versus the year-ago period. As a result, the company remains on track to hit its full-year production guidance.

In addition to those strong results, Harmony Gold also said that it had received approval from the South African government to begin mining its recently acquired Moab Khotsong mine. The company paid $300 million to buy that mine from AngloGold Ashanti (NYSE:AU). The deal enabled AngloGold Ashanti to reduce debt, which aligned with its commitment to improve its strategic and financial flexibility. Meanwhile, for Harmony Gold, the deal "will enhance the quality of our asset portfolio and increase our profit margins," according to CEO Peter Steenkamp, with the company estimating that it will boost operating cash flow by 60% as well as provide "substantial cost savings."

Now what

Harmony Gold believes it's on track to deliver solid results in 2018, highlighted by improving earnings and free cash flow thanks in part to its ability to make needle-moving deals like the one with AngloGold Ashanti. That said, it's still a relatively small gold company, which makes it a higher risk option for investors, who might want to consider a stronger gold stock instead.
Apple to ditch the notch with the 2019 iPhone model News oi-Vishal Kawadkar Apple might ditch the 'controversial' notch.

Apple after setting a trend of the notch comprising display, has been reportedly planning to ditch it. According to a report from Korea, the company will drop the notch design with its 2019 OLED iPhones. The company is reportedly working on a new design which will 'completely fill the front of new iPhones.'

However, there aren't any other details available about how Apple will tuck in all the sensors currently seen on the iPhone X notch which includes front-facing camera, separate infrared camera to deploy FaceID, microphone, speaker, proximity sensor, dot projector, flood illuminator and ambient light sensor.

According to ETNews "Apple decided to get rid of notch design starting from 2019 models and is having discussions with relevant companies." said an industry representative. "It seems that Apple is planning to implement full-screen that is more complete in its new iPhones."

The report also suggests that the company will retain the FaceID and also speculates possible ways to incorporate the technology in the screen.

"Suppliers are interested in how Apple will be able to place receiver, front-camera, and Face ID feature and implement full-screen at the same time. Some display industries think that Apple will either drill holes into OLED panels or use BM (Black Matrix) area within displays."

Apple's biggest competition Samsung already has a patent for drilling holes in the display, but this doesn't look something Apple will opt for. Apple also has patents for embedding some of the sensors into the display itself. But the embedded speakers are still far and embedded cameras are even further away.

Recently few images of the alleged iPhone X Plus also surfaced online. According to a new image attained from a "trial run of production equipment" by MacRumors, shows the big screen on the alleged device.

In one the shots, the size can be clearly seen far larger than the iPhone X. This falls in line with analyst Ming Chi-Kuo's statement about the iPhone X Plus featuring a 6.5-inch display, which will larger than any of its rivals.

Additionally, MacRumors also notes both the flex cables seen in the photos and the part numbers align with existing formats "typically used by Apple" while "The rear design of the part is also very similar but not identical to the iPhone X display assembly."

8 Ways To Make Your iPhone Battery Last Longer!

The images have allegedly come from LG's plant in Vietnam. This also raises suspicion as Samsung is the exclusive supplier of the OLED panels for Apple's flagship, but the company has reportedly invested around three billion dollars in LG in 2017 to produce OLED panels for future iPhones to reduce reliance on on Samsung.

Best Mobiles in India
Meizu 15

Meizu 15 will likely come with a full-screen display but there seem to be significant bezels on the smartphone and they are quite thick as compared to phones that have already been launched with a similar design.

There is a circular fingerprint scanner at the bottom bezel while the top bezel houses the front camera. The smartphone comes with a 5.5-inch display with a18:9 aspect ratio. The handset offers 4GB of RAM and comes in two memory variants, 64GB and 128GB. The listing shows that the device is running on Android 7.1.1.

Meizu 15 Lite

Meizu 15 Lite seems to be similar to its base variant Meizu 15 with similar design and a 5.5-inch display. The only difference seems to be in terms of storage variants where this Lite version offers 32GB and 64GB of ROM. The smartphone runs on Android 7.1.2. Well, this smartphone will basically be a toned down version of the 15.

Meizu 15 Plus

Yet again, Meizu 15 Plus is similar to the phones that we have already talked about. The only difference with this model seems to be its bigger size. The phablet comes with a 6-inch display. The device comes in two 64GB and 128GB variants. Unlike Meizu 15 and 15 Lite, this model features 6GB of RAM. The device runs on Android 7.0.

We must say that we were expecting a better and more improved design considering these smartphones are anniversary edition phones. The company can make up for the loss with better software and hardware aspects. The 15 series are said to be launching in April in line with the company's anniversary celebrations.

Meizu E3

Meizu E3 has also been listed on the website. This model looks promising in terms of design. Meizu E3 will come with a 6-inch full-screen display which will have an 18:9 aspect ratio. The listing reveals that the smartphone will offer 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It will run Android Nougat 7.1.1

Meizu via its Weibo account has confirmed that the new Meizu E3 smartphone will be unveiled at an event at the National Convention Center in Beijing on March 21. The event will reportedly start around 9:30 PM local time.
Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 now receiving Android security patch for March News oi-Chandrika Since it's an OTA update, it will take a while to reach all the devices.

HMD Global, the license holder of Nokia brand, is making sure that the smartphones are getting updates on a regular basis. Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 were recently upgraded to Android Oreo, and now the handsets are receiving new updates. Weighing in at about 132MB, the updates include the Android security patch of the month of March.

As reported by Nokia Power User, HMD is rolling out the updates in many markets including India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Hungary, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Tunisia etc. Nokia 6 and Nokia 5 users staying in the UK, Germany, Mexico, and Greece, will also receive the update. Since the update is pushed out via OTA, it will take a while to reach all the devices. For now, you can keep a tab on the notification panel.

HMD also recommends using Wi-Fi network for installing the update to avoid exhausting their mobile data pack. However, the size of the updates is not large, so you can use mobile data pack as well.

To recap on the specifications, the Nokia 6 comes with a 5.5-inch FHD 1080p display and makes use of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage, which can be expanded up to 128GB with the help of a microSD card.

The imaging aspects include a 16MP main camera and an 8MP selfie shooter with FHD video recording support. A 3,000mAh battery powers the handset with fast charging support.

Coming to the Nokia 5, the smartphone is fitted with a 5.2-inch HD 720p IPS LCD display. Under the hood, the device is powered an octa-core Snapdragon 430 SoC. The processor is teamed up with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage space that can be expanded up to 128GB using a microSD card.

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In terms of optics, the Nokia 5 is equipped with a 13MP main camera with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, and dual-LED flash. Up front, there is an 8MP selfie snapper with the same aperture. The other goodies on board include 4G LTE, NFC, OTG support and a 3,000mAh battery to keep the lights on.

Best Mobiles in India

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Trump: US 'Willing to Go Either Way' with North Korea

By Peggy Chang, Steve Herman March 07, 2018

President Donald Trump said the United States is "willing to go either way" in response to North Korea's development of nuclear-tipped missiles, adding "hopefully it's going to be the proper way."

The president's comments came after South Korea said Tuesday the North is willing to start talks with the United States about giving up its nuclear weapons.

Trump's latest remarks on North Korea stand in stark contrast to his previous threat to respond with "fire and fury" to Pyongyang's development of weapons of mass destruction.

"We cannot let that situation fester," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office where he was hosting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven.

"It would be a great thing for the world" if the current dialogue between Seoul and Pyongyang defuses tensions on the Korean peninsula, Trump said. He also cautioned that the inter-Korean talks "may carry over, it may not," while noting that "it's a very tenuous situation."

A senior U.S. official said the Trump administration is open-minded but skeptical about Pyongyang's intentions, noting North Korea has a 27-year track record of breaking "every agreement that they've ever made with the United States and the international community."

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, added "it's good for everybody to keep some perspective and take a deep breath."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "shows no interest in walking away from his nuclear or ballistic missile programs," Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. "Additional missile launches are a near certainty, and further nuclear tests are possible."

Trump on Tuesday again blamed previous U.S. administrations of both parties for allowing North Korea to develop weapons of mass destruction. "These are the cards we were dealt. We're handling it properly," the president said.

Asked if he would be willing to meet Kim Jong Un, Trump replied, "We'll see what happens."

At a subsequent joint news conference with Prime Minister Lofven, Trump said a possible breakthrough on the Korean peninsula results from U.S. and U.N. sanctions that "have been very, very strong and biting." He also said "China has been a big help. I think that's been a factor," but Beijing could do more to pressure Pyongyang.

South Korea's top security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, told reporters Tuesday that Pyongyang signaled there was no need to keep its nuclear program if military threats against the country are eliminated. Chung added North Korea was receptive to discussing denuclearization and normalizing relations with the U.S.

Chung was part of a South Korean delegation that just returned from a two-day visit to North Korea, where the group held an unprecedented meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Representatives of South Korean President Moon Jae-in are to visit Washington this week to brief U.S. officials about the inter-Korean talks.

"We don't have a play-by-play of that just yet. We will wait for the Republic of Korea to come to Washington and to be able to brief us on these meetings," State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters Tuesday.

U.S. Senator Ben Cardin told VOA on Tuesday that Seoul's announcement is a "positive sign" and urged the Trump administration to "take advantage of this opening."

The Democrat from the state of Maryland added that the "only sensible way to end this crisis is through diplomacy. It starts with North Korea freezing its current [nuclear] program."

North Korea has repeatedly demanded, as a condition for dialogue, that the United States and South Korea stop conducting joint military drills, which it contends are a prelude to an invasion.

Those annual war games, however, are to resume next month.

"It's only natural that our routine defensive exercises will resume," according to a senior U.S. administration official.

In the last two years, North Korea has launched numerous medium- and long-range ballistic missiles and conducted two nuclear tests, in large part to develop an operational capability to target U.S. mainland cities with a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile.

The Trump administration has led international efforts to pressure Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program by imposing tough sanctions that ban billions of dollars' worth of North Korean coal, iron ore, clothing products and seafood exports. The Trump administration has also said that, if necessary, it is prepared to use military force as well to eliminate the nuclear threat.

VOA's Jeff Seldin from the Pentagon and Michael Bowman from Capitol Hill contributed to this report.

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South Korea says 'too early to be optimistic' about North

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 7, 2018 09:38AM

South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he has no plans to ease sanctions on the rival North only because of Pyongyang's offer to discuss denuclearization with the United States.

"We are only at the starting line," Moon told the parliament's political party leaders at the presidential Blue House on Wednesday.

He said it was "too early to be optimistic" and that there would be no let-up in the sanctions or pressure against North Korea.

Moon made the remarks after his envoys revealed the offer of talks by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un following their return from a historic trip to Pyongyang.

Moon stressed the significance of maintaining close co-operation with Washington, saying, "I think denuclearization talks will become feasible only when South Korea and the US take common positions."

He said he had discussed all steps regarding North Korean engagement with US President Donald Trump.

He also rejected allegations of a behind-the-scenes agreement with Pyongyang in exchange for its agreement to come to the negotiating table.

"There has been no backroom deal whatsoever with the North," Moon said, as quoted by a spokesman for the minor opposition Bareunmirae Party. "There will be no such thing as a gift to the North."

China welcomes engagement

Meanwhile, China guardedly welcomed an agreement by the two Koreas to hold a historic summit, calling on both parties to "seize the current opportunity" to bring about the denuclearization of the peninsula.

In a late Tuesday statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang praised the "positive outcomes" of a meeting between South Korean envoys and Kim in Pyongyang.

Geng added, "We hope that all relevant parties can seize the current opportunity, work for the shared goal, and make concerted efforts to promote the process of denuclearization of the Peninsula and politically resolving the Korean Peninsula issue."

"China is willing to continue to play its due role to this end," he said.

The two Koreas have reportedly agreed to hold a summit between top leaders Moon and Kim Jong-un in the Demilitarized Zone in late April.

Pyongyang has expressed willingness to halt its nuclear and missile tests if its security is guaranteed.

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Putin Praises Trump, Assails Sanctions, Vows To Defend 'Great Power' Russia

RFE/RL March 07, 2018

Russian leader Vladimir Putin praised U.S. President Donald Trump as a "balanced" man he can negotiate with, but he also assailed the West for "illegitimate and unfair" Ukraine-related sanctions imposed on Moscow.

"I have no disappointment at all," Putin said about Trump during a wide-ranging interview released on social media on March 7, some two weeks before Russia's presidential election.

"Moreover, on a personal level, he made a very good impression on me," he added, saying the U.S. president easily understands the specifics of issues and is a good listener.

It was not immediately clear when Putin made the remarks. The interview was part of a documentary titled World Order 2018.

Putin, 65, has been president or prime minister since 1999. His popularity, his control over the levers of power, and what critics say have been years of steps to suppress dissent and marginalize opponents virtually ensure his victory in the presidential election set for March 18.

Still, analysts believe the Kremlin fears that low turnout will undermine the appearance of the election's legitimacy, and the government appears to be taking numerous measures to boost participation.

Despite his praise for Trump, Putin lamented the state of the U.S. political system, saying that "it has demonstrated its inefficiency and has been eating itself up."

"It's quite difficult to interact with such a system, because it's unpredictable," Putin said.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said he would press for better ties with Russia as a way to solve many of the world's deep-standing conflicts.

He has also downplayed conclusions by U.S. intelligence services that Moscow interfered in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and warnings that it will likely continue to do so. Russia denies the allegations.

Putin blamed the West for raising tensions, citing what he called efforts to contain and weaken Russia.

"We are a great power, and no one likes competition," he said.

He also blamed the United States for what he alleged was its role ousting Ukraine's Russia-friendly president in February 2014 amid massive street protests.

Putin claimed the United States had asked Moscow to prevent then-President Viktor Yanukovych from using force against protesters, then "rudely and blatantly" sponsored what he labeled a "coup."

After a pro-West government was installed in Kyiv, Moscow responded by seizing control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and fomenting separatism across much of the country -- one of the causes of a war that has killed more than 10,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 and displaced more than 1.6 million Ukrainians.

"Few expected us to act so quickly and so resolutely, not to say daringly," Putin said.

He said Western sanctions for the annexation and for Moscow's support of separatists in eastern Ukraine were "illegitimate and unfair" and said that "we will win in the long run."

"Those who serve us with poison will eventually swallow it and poison themselves," he added.

The remarks weren't in the context of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who remains in critical condition, along with his daughter, after being found unconscious in Britain.

British police on March 7 said the two were deliberately targeted by a "nerve agent" and that the case was being treated as attempted murder.

On March 6, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned that any involvement of a foreign government in the incident would not go "unpunished."

Speaking to parliament, Johnson said Britain might step up sanctions against Russia if it finds that Moscow was involved in the incident.

Moscow accused British politicians and journalists of using the case to drive "anti-Russian" sentiment and disrupt relations between London and Moscow.

In the interview released on March 7, Putin also appeared to follow up remarks made in his annual address on March 1, when he boasted of a new generation of "invincible" nuclear-capable Russian weapons.

The remarks came under criticism from NATO as well as the United States, Germany, France, and other Western countries.

"The decision to use nuclear weapons can only be made if our early warning system not only detects a missile launch but clearly forecasts its flight path and the time when warheads reach the Russian territory," Putin said in the interview.

"If someone makes a decision to destroy Russia, then we have a legitimate right to respond."

"Yes, it will mean a global catastrophe for mankind, for the entire world. But as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state, I would ask: What is such a world for, if there were no Russia?"

With reporting by AP, Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-social-media-interview -praises-trump-assails-sanctions/29085457.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russian Military Reports Tense Situation in Syria's Eastern Ghouta

Sputnik News

07:34 07.03.2018

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The situation in Syria is gradually normalizing, the number of violations is decreasing, however, the situation in Eastern Ghouta remains tense, chief of the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation Maj. Gen. Yury Yevtushenko said Tuesday.

"Monitoring shows that, in general, the [ceasefire] regime has been observed. Over the past few days there has been a decrease in the number of violations," Yevtushenko said.

"At the same time, with the general stabilization of the situation in the country, the situation in the Eastern Ghouta de-escalation zone remains extremely tense. Radical groups operating in that enclave continue to violate the ceasefire regime. They constantly open fire on the government troops to provoke them to respond," he said.

Yevtushenko said shelling of Damascus, including the Russian embassy, trade mission and the Russian center for Syrian reconciliation, continues from territory controlled by militants.

"Over the past 10 days, militants have fired 272 mortar shells and rockets from Eastern Ghouta areas on the residential neighborhoods of the Syrian capital. A total of 13 people were killed, 135 were wounded, including three children," he said.

Yevtushenko said that ten people had been killed and 49 wounded when militants shelled the Tishrin hospital in Syria's Dahiyat Al-Assad on March 5.

So far, the Russian center's chief said, only 17 people have managed to leave Eastern Ghouta through the Muhayam Al-Wafedin humanitarian corridor.

 Sputnik

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What's Ukraine Doing To Combat Russian Cyberwarfare? 'Not Enough'

Christopher Miller March 07, 2018

KYIV -- Dmytro Shymkiv fidgeted in a chair as his boss, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, testified via video linkup from a few doors down in the Kyiv trial of his exiled predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych.

A big part of Shymkiv's job as deputy head of the presidential administration is focused on the cybersecurity of the president's office and the country. At this particular moment on February 21, his most important task was to keep the signal up and clear so Poroshenko could speak uninterrupted during the televised treason trial.

"I'm very worried about cyberattacks," Shymkiv confessed to RFE/RL as the president delivered his testimony.

With one eye glued to a screen showing Poroshenko and the other on his constantly vibrating mobile phone, which flashed updates from his IT team, Shymkiv said he feared a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by Russian hackers that could take the video feed offline.

"It's happened before," said Shymkiv, who before joining the government in 2014 was general manager of Microsoft Ukraine, referring to past DDoS attacks timed to disrupt presidential appearances.

Testing Ground

Before Russian hackers allegedly targeted the United States and its 2016 presidential election, they were accused of taking aim at Ukraine and even its own presidential vote in May 2014 -- and with a lot more than just DDoS attacks.

For its part, Russia has denied cyberattacks against Ukraine or the United States.

But authorities here and in Washington attribute the attacks to Russia. They say they haven't stopped and are expected to continue.

In fact, they say Russia is using Ukraine as a cyberwar testing ground, or as Wired described it in a lengthy and detailed report on the matter last year, "a laboratory for perfecting new forms of global online combat."

Yet, for a country that is such a persistent target, Ukraine remains largely "unprepared" for cyberattacks from the likes of Russian and other skilled hackers, Shymkiv conceded.

In separate interviews, Ukraine's chief of Cyberpolice and members of a prominent pro-government hacker team agreed; while acknowledging that the country has made some progress on the cybersecurity front, they suggested or said outright that its defenses are nowhere near where they should be as a regular target of cyberattacks. They cited poor communication between state institutions, a resistance to change, a confused policy approach to cyberdefense, and a lack of funds to recruit skilled personnel and buy much-needed equipment.

Ukraine Hit 'Every Day'

Ukraine has been locked in an undeclared war with Russia since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed the Crimean Peninsula and fomented a shooting war in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,300 people and is grinding into a fifth year. The war is being fought not only in the literal trenches but in cyberspace, through disinformation, fake news, and of course, cyberattacks.

Since 2014, suspected Russian hackers have taken aim at critical targets in Ukraine with ever-growing sophistication. Ukraine's chief of Cyberpolice, Serhiy Demedyuk, said in an interview with RFE/RL that it was difficult to track Russian cyberattacks here because they occur "every day."

"What we see is that Ukraine really is a [Russian] test site for malicious software," Demedyuk said in his office on the outskirts of Kyiv on February 21.

In December 2016, Poroshenko claimed Ukraine had been struck by 6,500 cyberattacks on 36 targets in the previous two months, most of which Kyiv attributed to Russian aggression. His government has not provided more up-to-date statistics.

While attribution can be difficult, Demedyuk and Shymkiv said Ukraine has managed to directly link Russia to most cyberattacks, citing the characteristics of the attacks and their timing; many occur on historically significant dates in Ukraine, or just before or during holidays, thus maximizing the effect.

Two such cyberattacks targeted Ukrainian power plants ahead of holidays in December 2015 and December 2016, and left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity for hours.

Last year, Ukraine's Boryspil and Odesa international airports were hit by cyberattacks at the height of tourism season, along with the Kyiv subway's ticketing system, supermarket checkouts, bank ATMs, and the radiation-monitoring system at the defunct Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Luckily, those attacks caused more confusion than damage and potential crises were averted.

But ransomware attacks dubbed Petya, NotPetya, and Bad Rabbit also ripped through the country, crippling businesses for days or weeks. NotPetya, in particular, spread to 64 countries, including Poland, Germany, Italy, and Russia, and caused billions of dollars in damage.

The U.S. and U.K. governments both released extraordinary statements attributing NotPetya to the Russian military's cyberarm. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders went further, calling it "part of the Kremlin's ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine," which "demonstrates ever more clearly Russia's involvement in the ongoing conflict."

Indeed, experts say evidence in many of these cyberattacks points back to the same Kremlin-linked hackers believed to have targeted the 2016 U.S. election.

And they fear these may be only the beginning, as Russia continues to test new cyberwar methods -- where else -- in Ukraine.

More To Come

The U.S. intelligence community "expect[s] that Russia will conduct bolder and more disruptive cyberoperations during the next year, most likely using new capabilities against Ukraine," read a worldwide threat assessment authored by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and published on February 13. "The Russian government is likely to build on the wide range of operations it is already conducting, including disruption of Ukrainian energy distribution networks, hack-and-leak influence operations, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and false-flag operations."

And Coats, a former senator appointed by President Donald Trump to be the United States' top intelligence official, said it was expected that once Moscow perfects new tactics in Ukraine, it will turn them on Western countries.

"In the next year, Russian intelligence and security services will continue to probe U.S. and allied critical infrastructures, as well as target the United States, NATO, and allies for insights into U.S. policy," he said.

Coats reportedly told a congressional committee the same day the report was released that he had already seen evidence Russia was targeting U.S. midterm elections in November.

"Frankly, the United States is under attack," Coats added, according to Reuters.

Many experts believe the United States and its European allies are woefully unprepared for future cyberattacks and have called for defenses to be strengthened.

Ukraine's 'Vulnerabilities' Exposed

In boosting their own defenses, U.S. and European officials might look elsewhere for inspiration than Ukraine, which has struggled to batten down its proverbial hatches in the face of Russian cyberoperations.

In direct response to the Russian cyberthreat in recent years, Ukrainian institutions have developed special cybersecurity units: the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has an in-house team; the Interior Ministry and National Police created the Cyberpolice force led by Demedyuk; there is a Center for Cyberprotection within the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection; and the Defense Ministry has been slower to react but is currently discussing the creation of cyberunits for military purposes and cyberdefense, according to Shymkiv. A ministry spokesperson told RFE/RL they could not offer more specific information.

Coordinating all of Ukraine's cybersecurity initiatives is the National Security and Defense Council (RNBO), which opened a new cyber-focused center for doing so last month.

Some state companies have also taken the initiative. For instance, Ukrainian power distributor Ukrenergo, one of the main targets of cyberattacks in the past two years, said last month that it was investing up to $20 million in a new cyberdefense system.

But many Ukrainian institutions and companies -- including those who help lead cybersecurity efforts or guard highly sensitive information -- fail to communicate or coordinate with one another, and remain vulnerable to cyberattacks and information leaks, according to pro-government hackers who spoke to RFE/RL.

One of them, "Sean Townsend," the pseudonymous spokesman and one of the founding members of the self-described hacktivist group Ukrainian Cyber Alliance, said that a recent flash mob organized by him and a dozen or so Ukrainian hacktivist colleagues that they promoted on social media proved cyberdefenses here remain weak.

Townsend and the Cyber Alliance usually focus on Russian targets. But worried about Ukraine's cybersecurity, they turned their sights on their own country in an effort to help find where it might be vulnerable and plug whatever holes exist.

Townsend was startled by what they found. "There were many cases where highly classified information was stored simply unprotected," he said.

For instance, when Townsend probed Energoatom, the state nuclear-power-plant operator, he "found vulnerabilities that would easily allow hackers to enter the [energy] system" of one of its facilities.

Energoatom responded days after the Cyber Alliance published some of its findings online, which caused public concern about a "new Chornobyl." The company essentially dubbed Townsend's findings fake news and said it would be "impossible" to hack the critical energy infrastructure at its power plants.

Townsend said he was certain that what he found "could be perfectly used to penetrate power-station equipment." As if that wasn't enough of a concern, he added, among the power plant's unsecured computer networks he was able to obtain countless gigabytes-worth of sensitive documents, including the building plans for the reactor and information pertaining to Westinghouse Electric Company, the U.S.-based provider of nuclear fuel to Ukraine.

The story was similar with Ukraine's Defense Ministry. "We found several computers with classified files about Ukrainian forces" that could provide their Russian counterparts with valuable intelligence, Townsend said.

Unlike Energoatom, the ministry reacted quickly. "When we notified our military that they have computers leaking data to the Internet, they found them and shut them down," Townsend added.

In all, Townsend said more than 200 cases of vulnerabilities were found among Ukraine's state institutions and companies. But not all of them have been addressed. In fact, responses from companies and institutions where vulnerabilities were discovered were mixed; some thanked the Cyber Alliance and addressed the issues, while others shrugged or denied their existence.

The Kherson regional administration, annoyed by the alliance's discovery of vulnerabilities that would easily allow ill-intentioned hackers to penetrate its system, even filed a criminal complaint against the Cyber Alliance with the Cyberpolice.

Townsend, who said he cooperates closely with Demedyuk and the Cyberpolice, also claimed to have found vulnerabilities in the systems of the presidential administration and the RNBO, both of which he said reacted swiftly and fixed the issues.

Townsend placed much of the blame for the inconsistent responses to cyberthreats on poor communication between the various cybersecurity units in government institutions plus a "policies for the sake of policies" approach by the government. "Many of our leaders think we need to simply write down new rules, enforce them, and control how people are executing them, and then all will be well," he said.

Western Help

Shymkiv said the U.S. and Western European governments have helped Ukraine strengthen its cybersecurity through training and financial support, but he would like to see much more cooperation.

His "dream," he said, was to build a U.S.-led, nongovernmental cybersecurity center in Kyiv that would act as a computer emergency-response team for the public while also focusing on training.

Shymkiv said he had discussed the idea with Washington officials who found the idea "interesting" but have indicated there are still some hang-ups preventing them from acting on the idea. "Everybody's concerned [with] how many Russian spies we have in the government," Shymkiv said. "That's why I'm saying, 'Let's build this from scratch...on the principles and approaches defined by the U.S.'"

Plus, he added, with Ukraine a regular target of Russian hackers, there is a lot the United States could learn from its experience and apply at home.

The U.S. Embassy declined to discuss Shymkiv's idea on the record, and intelligence officials in Washington could not be reached for comment.

There is some movement within the U.S. Congress to further help Ukraine in the cybersecurity sphere. On February 7, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Ukraine Cybersecurity Cooperation Act. The Senate introduced a mirror version of the bill on February 27.

The bills call for the State Department to increase cooperation with Kyiv over shared Russian cybersecurity threats by doing several things, including: providing Ukraine necessary support to increase protection on government computers, particularly systems that defend critical infrastructure; reducing Kyiv's reliance on Russian technology; and helping Ukraine to build capacity, expand cybersecurity information sharing, and cooperate on international response efforts.

That is all music to the ears of Shymkiv, Demedyuk, and Townsend, who say replacing outdated equipment will go a long way toward protecting Ukraine from cyberattacks.

Stealthier, Evolving Methods

But until those bills become law or similar help from elsewhere is provided, Ukraine must muddle through and remain vigilant, which Shymkiv said meant continually educating staff.

In recent months, Shymkiv said, he had noticed stealthier and more sophisticated phishing attempts aimed at the presidential administration by hackers he believes are working in Russia. These efforts to extract sensitive information are disguised as messages from internal systems administrators and appear carefully crafted to appeal to specific employees, himself included.

"They are extremely well done," Shymkiv said. "[The hackers] are hacking our brains. They target people's trust."

But if the Russians were trying to hack the video link through which President Poroshenko was delivering his testimony while Shymkiv spoke, they failed.

As Poroshenko finished, Shymkiv breathed a sigh of relief. But he said he never lets his guard down. "Every day [Russian hackers] are trying to collect information of our people," he said. "They are trying to get inside our systems...and to disrupt us."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-struggles-cyberdefense- russia-expands-testing-ground/29085277.html

Copyright (c) 2018. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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How does an airline feed 250 passengers for 19 hours? How does it keep rice or noodles moist for that long? Serve a perfectly cooked medium rare steak on the plane? Or ensure that food is tasty, beautiful and fresh after making its way halfway around the world from kitchen to truck to plane to airplane seat?

Singapore Airlines invited SFGATE cameras out to its inflight kitchens for a look at how it pulls off this amazing feat for some of the longest flights in the world.

Once a quarter, chefs, airline executives and accountants gather in a nondescript beige building next to a Hampton Inn in Millbrae, California. They are there to view, taste and discuss the meals served on Singapore Airlines long haul flights to Asia.

This ritual has recently taken on added importance as the airline chooses meals for its "ultra long haul" flights. Currently, one of Singapore Air's longest flight runs between San Francisco and Singapore, a 16-17 hour odyssey on an Airbus A350-900.

Singapore Air also recently started flying its longest flight, between New York/Newark and Singapore, which clocks in at about 19 hours. Flights like that require new thinking about inflight dining.

Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE bi-weekly email alerts

One new concept for ultra-long flights is something like an all-day-brunch or dine-on-demand plan in business class. This means that passengers don't necessarily have to dine when flight attendants push their carts down the aisles. Instead, they can choose from a wide variety of meals at any time during the very long flight.

For example, when you board SIA's SFO-SIN nonstop at 9:30 am, you can choose to have a dim sum or an omelet for breakfast. Or maybe you flew in from the east coast, and would rather have a steak for your first meal? Or maybe just a nice bowl of warm noodle soup. No problem.

As the flight approaches Singapore for a 6 pm arrival 17 or so hours later, some passengers may want breakfast after sleeping during the latter part of the flight. Others who may have slept earlier may be ready for a smoky barbecue sandwich or a bowl of fresh fruit.

If you know what you want before you go, premium economy and business class passengers can go to Singapore Air's website to "book the cook" and order from a special menu of items specially prepared on the ground and served on the plane when requested. (We checked out a few delicious menu items -- like fried prawns tossed with tangy mayonnaise and topped with candied walnuts-- during our visit- see it in the slideshow above.)

The current lowest fares for January flights on Singapore's two dailies between SFO and Singapore are about: $1,000 in economy, $1,600 in premium economy, and around $4,900 in business class. Singapore competes with United on this nonstop route, so fares rise and fall a lot. Singapore Air also flies from SFO to Singapore via Hong Kong using a Boeing 777.

Be sure to scroll through the slideshow at the top for a look behind the scenes at the inflight kitchen and boardroom as execs and chefs taste meals and make decisions. The story is in the captions! You'll get a preview of what it will be like to dine aboard tone of he world's longest distance and duration flights.

What's the best meal you've had on a long distance flight? Would you rather eat or sleep on a flight to Asia? Tell us in the comments!

Read all recent TravelSkills posts here

Chris McGinnis is SFGATE's senior travel correspondent. You can reach him via email or follow him on Twitter or Facebook. Don't miss a shred of important travel news by signing up for his FREE biweekly email updates!
Connecticut women have achieved many firsts in fields that were once reserved for men, oftentimes breaking convention and taboo. As recently as 2016, a military graduate from Woodbridge, Conn., Kristen Griest, became the first female infantry officer in the U.S. Army. She was inducted in the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame last year, joining the likes of abolitionist Prudence Crandall, explorer Mary Jobe Akeley, and Margaret Bourke-White, the first female American war journalist.

Many of the inductees broke barriers in their fields even when formal training or education weren't available to them, according to Lena Pacheco, director of education at the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. The first female dentist in America, Emeline Roberts Jones of Danielson, Conn., tried to enter a profession that in the 1850s was still not accessible to women. She studied in secret, before assisting her dentist husband and continuing his practice after his death.

In 1898, at a time when architecture schools were reserved to men, self-taught Theodate Pope Riddle convinced her parents to move to Connecticut and buy a tract of land in Farmington where she planned to build them a house, now known as the Hill-Stead Museum. She hired the firm of McKim, Mead and White in New York City, instructing them to use her own sketches and essentially creating an apprenticeship for herself. Pope Riddle went on to design many Connecticut landmarks, including the college preparatory school Avon Old Farms.

"One thing that these women have in common is they really forged their own path," Pacheco said. "They faced barriers whether for gender and race, but regardless of these obstacles, they found their own opportunity forward and when there wasn't a path forward, they created one."

Another inductee, Maria Sanchez, came from Puerto Rico in 1954, at the age of 28, and opened Marias News Stand on Albany Avenue in Hartford, which soon became a meeting place for local women to discuss politics. She led a life of public service, advocating for those in her community, and went on to become the first Hispanic woman elected to the Connecticut General Assembly.

In 1974, Ella Tambussi Grasso, the daughter of Italian immigrants, ran for governor of Connecticut and won, becoming the first woman in the nation to be elected governor in her own right. She was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

"Many of the inductees were not seeking prestige, or to have a particular accomplishment, so much that they were seeking to fill a need that they saw in the community," Pacheco said.

Who are the female role models in Connecticut that have inspired you? Please tell us about them in the comment section.

Click through the slideshow to see more women trailblazers from Connecticut.
When the company that owns the Johnnie Walker brand, Diageo, launched a limited-edition version of its scotch featuring a female version of its top-hat-wearing male icon, there was quick backlash. Consumers and the media found the timing of the launch (which coincided with International Womens Day and Womens History Month) questionable, and many people suggested Diageo was pandering.

Related: When Your Customers Are Talking, Quiet Your Brand Voice and Listen

Any chance of changing the publics perception of Jane Walker quickly ended when some comments from Johnnie Walker vice president Stephanie Jacoby (who actually worked on the Jane Walker campaign) took the media and the Twitterverse by storm and even made it onto The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Specifically, Jacoby said in an interview, Scotch as a category is seen as particularly intimidating to women.  [Jane Walker] is a really exciting opportunity to invite women into the brand.

Despite the fact that Diageo had been making changes internally to promote womens rights for some time and will donate $1 to organizations championing womens causes for each bottle of Jane Walker produced (there will be 250,000 produced), the wave of negative perception overshadowed any good intentions the company may have had.

Understanding the backlash against Jane Walker

From a marketing perspective, its always risky to connect a product, service, brand or company to a social or political movement, including days that celebrate social or political movements like International Womens Day or Womens History Month. The reason is very simple. Human beings can be distrustful of companies motives. After all, companies are in business to make money, so this distrust isnt surprising. Its the companys job to earn consumers trust in their brands, products and services first, so later, its intentions are perceived as good, genuine and  wait for it  trustworthy.

Related: Why You Should Hire One of These People to Tell Your Brand's Story

Thats where Diageo failed with Jane Walker. In fact, there are two specific steps that the company took with the release of Jane Walker that foretold its negative debut: timing and messaging.

1. Intentional timing perceived as pandering

Diageo originally planned to launch Jane Walker in the wake of Hillary Clintons expected victory in the 2016 Presidential election. When that didnt turn out the way the company expected, Jane Walkers debut was delayed until this year when its launch was tied to International Womens Day and Womens History Month. In other words, the launch timing was clearly intentional, and as a result, people perceived the timing as pandering rather than authentic.

Remember, in marketing reality and perception dont always mix, and as the first rule of marketing tells us, consumers build brands, not companies. If the consumer perception of a companys brand and related products and marketing doesnt align with the companys intentions (as it did not for Jane Walker), then the company failed at understanding its audience, effectively communicating with them, and delivering the right products to them.

Related: 5 Ways to Authentically Connect Your Employees to the Brand

2. Public relations messaging created negative brand perceptions

When a company tells the world that its brand and products are intimidating to women, and this intimidation was so massive that the company actually had to create a female icon to place on its packaging in order to invite women into the brand, the result will be negative perceptions.

Suggesting that a whiskey brand is intimidating and there was a need to make it less scary for a portion of the consumer audience to drink is practically a guaranteed way to alienate that portion of the consumer audience. Its also a good way to insult the 29 percent of the products current customers who belong to that segment of the consumer audience (29 percent of scotch buyers are women and women are responsible for 24 percent of scotch sales, according to Nielsen Spectra).

Related: 4 Ways to Make Your Business More Authentic and Successful

How the Jane Walker brand launch could have worked better.

For Diageo, the Jane Walker brand launched before the consumer audience was ready for it and prepared to accept it. For casual observers, one day Johnnie Walker was a scotch enjoyed primarily by men. The next day, Johnnie is Jane and the brand claims to be all about womens rights. There was an obvious disconnect between the brand promise, and you cant be surprised that most people didnt instantly make the leap.

Diageo could have had more success with the Jane Walker branding if the icon and product were not launched until after the company had invested time and money into connecting the company to womens rights. Had the company led with messaging and events about all of the great things its doing for womens rights first, and then launched Jane Walker, the icon and product would have seemed like a natural next step for the brand promise rather than a giant leap out of nowhere.

Furthermore, Diageo could have positioned Jane Walker not as a scotch for women but as a scotch for everyone who supports women. Rather than directly saying the purpose of Jane Walker is to bring more women to the brand, Diageo should have allowed that to happen naturally based on its actions. Ultimately, the icon and Jane Walker brand name simply would act as tangible brand identity elements representing the purpose, promise and actions. In fact, thats what brand identity elements like icons and names are for, so this recommendation isnt innovative or surprising. Its marketing at its most basic, strategic level.

Related: Don't Get Too Fancy in Your Marketing -- Authenticity Always Wins

Furthermore, consumer psychology tells us that people are more likely to buy products they can relate to. Thats why its important to use the right colors in packaging, actors in commercials, etc. -- so the appropriate target audience can relate and say, This product is for me, or This brand is for me. Diageo needed to build an emotional connection in peoples minds between the brand and womens rights before trying to sell the Jane Walker product. Otherwise, the launch would be perceived as pandering, particularly due to the timing that made it look like the company was trying to ride on the coattails of International Womens Day and Womens History Month. Of course, as we all know now, thats exactly what happened.

The lesson to learn from Jane Walker

With all of that said, its important to remember that companies can and should conduct market research to understand consumer preferences and behaviors and launch products for specific target markets. That includes gender-specific products, because men and women could use products differently, have different preferences for products and derive different benefits from products.

For Diageo, the Jane Walker branded scotch is identical to the Johnnie Walker branded scotch, so the new branding wasnt based on product-related preferences. It was entirely based on a new aspect of the brand promise, but the way it was launched made people question that brand promise. Does Diageo really care about womens rights, or is the company just trying to gain more exposure with the conveniently timed launch? Based on this consumer confusion and coupled with the companys own comments about its product and the purpose of Jane Walker, the effort was tarnished with negative perceptions regardless of the companys actual intentions.

Jacoby later clarified the intention of Jane Walker, saying, This wasnt about making a whiskey for women. We would never make anything thats for womens palates. Taste buds have no gender. However, the negative perception had already traveled fast and far.

The lesson to learn from Jane Walker is to match your products, marketing and efforts to your brand promise, and if there could be a disconnect, close the gap and massage consumer perceptions before you make any big changes.

Related Video: Your Competitive Advantage Is Not Your Product -- It's Your Story

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The Problem With Johnnie Walker's Jane Walker Scotch Was Perception

#4 Tips to Help Women Entrepreneurs Grow a Strong Personal Brand



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


Great Northern Fair Board member Tyler Smith, from left, board members Chelby Gooch, Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown, not visible, board member Ray Kallenberger and Board Chair Paul McCann listen Thursday during a special meeting of the board.

The fiscal situation and uncertain future of the Great Northern Fairgrounds was the topic of a special meeting of the Great Northern Fair board Wednesday night at Bear Paw Veterinary Services.

Nearly 40 people were at the meeting, where board members and the Hill County commissioners fielded questions throughout the two-and-a-half hour meeting about the current fiscal situation of the fairgrounds and possible solutions to sustain it going forward,

The meeting came after the Hill County commissioners fired fairgrounds manager Dave Brewer, citing a lack of available funds to pay him.

Board members announced in January that the budget was in trouble because of less-than-expected revenue coming in to the fairgrounds in the face of increasing expenses.

The first portion of the meeting was about the current financial status of the fairgrounds.

This fiscal year, the Great Northern Fairgrounds had $117,500 in expenses but took in only $107,200 in revenue.

McCann said that in years past the county could tap into the fairground's cash reserve to help get the fairgrounds through the year. However Montana law requires that a certain amount of money be held in reserve, and the required amount is not there.

As of November, only $43,040 remained in the fairgrounds' cash reserve, McCann said. The level of cash reserves has been falling steadily since the 2013-2014 fiscal year when reserves were at $173,000.

As of 2015, the fair board had a reserve built up that it was using to repair roofs on the ground's buildings and for other uses.

McCann said there is a misconception that the upkeep of the fairgrounds is financed mostly through county tax dollars.

"I thought that for years it was funded with my tax dollars. until I got on the board and started looking," McCann said.

In all, McCann said, the fairgrounds received slightly less than $4,000 in tax revenues this year. The bulk of fairgrounds revenue comes from camping and storage fees, building rentals for events and memberships for equestrian programs, and a share of the money generated from the fair, he said.

The two biggest expenses, he said, are utilities, and wages for the fair manager as well as seasonal employees hired for the summer to help prepare for the fair.

McCann said he believes the fairgrounds needs a manager.

He showed the audience a list of functions a manager performs including executive duties, maintaining the treasury, reception, delivering services to the public and public relations.

An organization that doesn't have a manager, he said, typically can't provide all those services. He added that during the years the fairgrounds did not have a manager, the fairgrounds actually lost revenue.

If the grounds does not have a manager, those duties would have to be performed by the board, McCann said, something that could be difficult because different board members would be in charge of different duties.

Tammy Walters asked if money was raised to pay to either bring Brewer back or hire another manager, would the board be willing to do that?

McCann asked Hill County Commission Chair Mark Peterson if the board receives money for management, if they can put a manager back on.

Peterson said that it is not that simple,

"There are a lot of questions that need to be answered," Peterson said. "Money is not the only part."

Peterson said there are rules the county needs to follow in order to restore the position.

Even if the public was able to raise the money, Hill County Treasurer Sandy Brown said, it would not be a long-term solution.

Causes for the decline in revenues to the fair were also discussed.

Bob Kaul asked why the fair was taking a lower percent of the money raised from the carnival then they had in years past.

Board member Ray Kallenberger said the fairgrounds was taking in a lower percentage of fair profits because the fair board entered into an agreement in 2016 with Dreamland Amusement to provide the fair.

He said that as part of the agreement, the share of the profits received by the fairgrounds from the carnival fell from 30 percent to 10 percent in 2016. The amount rose to 20 percent last year and under the agreement being considered for the coming fair, the amount the fair gets will likely rise again to 30 percent.

Another potential source of lost income, McCann said, is a fee schedule, for people who use the fairgrounds.

The fair board, McCann said, is often approached by organizations that are constrained financially and want to put on an event. The fair board then often tries to make a deal with the organization and take a lesser share of income generated from the event, leading to the fairgrounds bringing in less money.

"So what we end up doing is cutting our throat a little bit at a time," Board Vice Chair Tyler Smith.

Trisha Hellems of the Havre Jaycees said what is needed are solutions moving forward and the community is going to have to help out.

"We know that we are failing," she said. "We know that this is happening, what can the community do to bring it back up? That is why we are here, that is what we want to find out."

Frank English said he knows people who have ideas, and he is looking at bands to play shows in the Bigger Better Barn and wanted to know what it would take to host an event there.

Smith said that to put on an event a person or organization will need to pay a $250 deposit on the barn and pay $200 a day,

Board member Chelby Gooch, who also sits on the board of the Great Northern Fair Foundation, which helps raise money to improve the fairgrounds, said the foundation's board has openings after five board members quit.

Christy Owens, who sits on the foundation, said that in recent years the foundation has not been able to do as much fundraising as they did in past years, partly because of a lack of interest from the public.

Owens said with new members and new ideas they can do more fundraising going forward.

She said bylaws are also in the process of being updated.

Foundation members also passed around flyers that said the foundation has opened an account at Stockman Bank where donations can be made to the foundation.

Donations, the flyer says, will be used only for expenses related to maintaining the fairgrounds.

If people want to make a donation for a specific building or project, people should contact members of the foundation board at 399-1420 before the donation is made.

Kody Peterson said the fair board should put together a list of things that need to be done and people who have different skill sets.

"There are a lot of things I am good at, wiring isn't one of them, but I can sure make a hole that the wire can go through," Kody Peterson said.

Kody Peterson said that the board should again start asking local businesses to sponsor the fair.

Gooch said that she and fellow board member Scott Doney have discussed sponsorships, but that other organizations also ask many of the same businesses to sponsor events such as the Havre Jaycees Demolition Derby or the rodeo.

Kody Peterson said he knows that is a short-term fix but that is what the fairgrounds needs.

Smith said that what is needed is a larger mill levy from the county. He held up a bar graph showing the amount each of the surrounding counties give to their fairgrounds.

Toole County, which shares its fairgrounds in collaboration with Glacier and Liberty counties gives its grounds $150,000 a year in funding from mill levies, Chouteau County gives $101,000 to its fairgrounds, Valley County $63,000, Philips County $30,000 and Blaine County about $60,000.

Havre Daily News/Ryan Welch

The Great Northern Fairgrounds, by contrast received $3,900 in county taxpayer dollars.

"In my opinion, and my opinion only, for the long-term viability of this board, we need more baseline revenue, and that starts with raising the mills to a sustainable point," Smith said.

Kallenberger said that the Great Northern Fair might have to look at charging a fee for admission or parking.

He said Lewistown charges a $5 admission fee.

The days of free fairs, he said, are over,

Smith said a fee for vehicles to park on the grounds during the fair might be easier to manage logistically, since there are more entrances for people to enter by foot than vehicle.
Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Its that time of year again.

Does this long winter have you feeling down? Tired of shoveling snow?

For those hunters interested in applying for elk or deer permits for the 2018 season a critical deadline is approaching March 15.

Fortunately, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks online application process and application packet make it simple to apply. An easy-to-use application packet is available from all hunting license providers, FWP offices and online at http://fwp.mt.gov.

Resident hunters need a 2018 conservation, elk or deer license, and base hunting license to apply for a special elk or deer permit. Everything else needed to apply is in the application and information packet, and hunters should look into applying online, said FWP spokesman Greg Lemon.

Its fast, secure and very convenient, Lemon said.

Archery hunters must have purchased a Montana bow and arrow license prior to hunting.

To purchase a bow and arrow license an individual must meet one of the following requirements:

 show completion of a bowhunter education course

 show proof of purchase of a previous years bow and arrow license from Montana or another state

Signed affidavits are no longer acceptable as proof of an bowhunter education.

Hard copies of the hunting regulations will be on the shelf at FWP offices and local license providers in April.

This year, hunters should note a few changes in the regulations from last year, particularly hunting district specific changes.

Antlerless elk

While many hunting districts in Montana offer an elk B license, either over the counter or through a special draw with a June 1 deadline, the number of hunting districts with antlerless elk permits has increased. Hunters must apply for these permits by March 15. For most of these antlerless elk permits, if hunters are successful they will not be allowed to harvest an antlered elk in that specific hunting district.

Hunters must apply for antlerless elk permits by March 15 in the following hunting districts: Most hunting districts in FWP region 1, most hunting districts in region 2, hunting districts 313, 318, 335, 339, 343, 620, 621, 622, 630, 631, 632, 680, and 690.

Be sure to check the regulations before you apply if youre interested in hunting antlerless elk in 2018.

Antlered mule deer

Two new options are open this year for antlered mule deer. A small number of permits will be issued for the north portion of hunting district 103. This new permit was approved by the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission in February.

Hunting district 262 will also have antlered mule deer buck permits available this season.

As always, its critical for hunters to check the regulations online or pick up an application packet at any license provider to ensure theyre applying for the appropriate permit.

Nonresidents who wish to apply for big game combination, elk combination or deer combination licenses and deer and elk permits for the 2018 Montana hunting season can also apply online or download an application from FWPs website.

To request an application by mail, write to: Licensing Section; Montana FWP; P.O. Box 200701, Helena, MT 59620-0701; or call: 406-444-2950. The application deadline is March 15.

The next big game deadline is May 1 to apply for moose, sheep, goat and bison licenses and then June 1 for antlerless deer B and elk B licenses and antelope and antelope B licenses.
Havre Daily News staff

The official who regulates securities in the state of Montana is sending staff to Havre on the Invest in Montana Tour.

State Auditor Matt Rosendale announced that he and other securities staff have launched the statewide tour to encourage business investment and highlight capital formation opportunities throughout Montana.

The tour will stop in Havre March 20 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Havre Inn and Suites, with lunch provided.

Rosendale said the tour will educate Montanans on the ways Montanas securities laws allow companies, organizations and local government to raise funds from investors. The statewide tour comes as more Montanans and businesses are seeing the benefits of federal tax reform and emphasizing investments in employees and equipment.

The purpose of the capital formation presentations and roundtable discussions is to create a dialogue with business leaders, economic development organizations, business incubators, and community leaders to promote investment in Montana and support businesses as they start up and/or grow their existing operations, Rosendale said in a press release. We have fantastic people, great businesses, and an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit in Montana. By raising capital, Montanans can leverage those assets to start new businesses, expand existing ones, and create more good-paying jobs in every community under the Big Sky.

Invest in Montana will discuss the basics of capital formation, sources of capital, types of securities, how to properly offer and sell securities under Montana law, investor disclosure requirements, exemptions to registering securities, crowdfunding, and other items.

CSIs Capital Formation webpage at http://csimt.gov/securities/capital-formation has more information for Montana businesses and individuals interested in capital formation.

People are asked to register online for the Havre stop at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/invest-in-montana-havre-tickets-43367241587 so the planners can get a rough head count. There is no cost to attend and the event is open to the public, but seating is limited.
Several of us here on Rancho Esperanza begin our days with Qi Gong, a Chinese energy-movement routine; good for balance, stretching and breathing. Breathing is a good thing.

We have learned the form, Soaring Crane. Most of us are in our seventh decade. Samantha, our teacher, goes through each of the five separate movements with grace and beauty. We do the best we can. I would say I look more like a Crippled Crane. But I keep going. It makes me feel good.

The last few weeks Ive noticed flocks of birds flying over when we begin. In the second movement we arch backward, arms open to the sky. I watch the birds and keep my mouth closed. Each day there are more birds. Each day the birds fly closer.

Yesterday, I swear, they were laughing at us. Look at those humans. They think they imitate birds. What a hoot.

Laugh at me, they will. But Ill continue my routine. Like I said, it makes me feel good.

One day Jim drove to Guadalajara and I rode shotgun. Weve become good friends, use one another to bounce around ideas. He makes me laugh.

Its a good thing you are not my boyfriend or whatever we call it when we get this age, I told him. We are not compatible.

Jim said, Nobody is compatible. Its a myth.

He might be right. We agree that the best trait for friendship is tolerance. And maybe notions such as compatibility and that really strange new-age idea of soul-mates, are really nothing more than desperate wishes that eventually morph into myths.

The greater Guadalajara area is huge with a population of over six million. Every trip to the Big City is an adventure, to me. Our second stop was at Sundance Hot-tubs and Spas, to get information. I would like a small hot-tub for therapy. A hot water soak makes me feel good.

We found the address, finally, down the center of a dicey looking alley with Federales standing guard at each end. The entrance is a large metal slide-up door. We found it locked down. The store must be around on the main street, we reasoned. So we walked around the block  no such store front. Its a mystery.

The auto shocks and brakes business next to where we thought the spa store should be was open. When I finally remembered to pronounce Sundance the Spanish way, soon-dawn-say, the man pointed us through his garage back to the alley. OK.

Back to the locked door we went. Using my Mexican cellphone, we called the number above the door. Immediately, I knew we needed help. The man who answered wanted to give me a different number and a name to call. I could understand that much. But he rattled on too quickly with even more information.

I know how to ask for help in Spanish. I went to the three Federale men standing next to the door, handed one of them my phone and a tablet and pen. The Man in Blue listened, wrote a name, a number and proxima semana. That means next week. The business will be open next week.

Jim, we looked up the address online before we came. Why didnt we call from home? His answer, That would be too easy. I thought I heard a whisper, Bird brain.

With much thanks, we then asked to be pointed in the direction of a restaurant. They sent us to the street with restaurant supply stores. Two, three, four blocks of restaurant supply stores. That sort of defined the next eight blocks. We finally found a hole-in-the-wall taco place. The tacos were delicious. But they always are.

On the way home we had a fiery conversation about opinions and myths. Where do people get their information? I asked. I think they make it up.

Jim said, Facebook.



Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashtons essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected]
For example, when youre trying to hire quickly in a very dynamic and competitive market where there is already a shortage of talent and where people are already under pressure to meet numbers and get roles filled quickly, you want to help people understand that this is not just an HR program designed to slow down what they need to do. Showing them the bigger picture with data is critical.

It provides great insights into so many areas.

Melbourne-born but now Texas-based, Lynch has been a long-standing employee of cybersecurity firm McAfee.

She joined the company in 2005 and worked her way up to global head of HR in 2015. Today she leads the HR function at McAfee for 7,500 employees in 50 countries.

During her career at McAfee, Lynch has been involved in various M&As and also a major divestiture  all the while being a working mother to five children. She is a strong advocate for supporting the growth, empowerment and success of women in what remains a male-dominated industry.
When Marc Hammer went to the emergency room feeling fatigued and dizzy, he had no idea his life was actually at risk. Im an avid cyclist and walk five to 15 miles a day, said Hammer, so you can imagine my shock when I found out I was facing a heart issue. It came out of the blue.

Doctors performed several tests to determine what was happening with Hammers heart. We wanted to rule out blockages in his coronary arteries, said Lori Daniels, MD, cardiologist at UC San Diego Health. The blood tests came back normal, but it was determined that Marc needed a pacemaker to regulate his heart beat.

The pacemaker improved his symptoms briefly, but new symptoms appeared. A few days after the procedure, I started to feel pressure in my chest and shortness of breath, said Hammer. I was back in the hospital with questions.

When Hammer returned, his cardiologists decided to use a new version of the troponin test, which measures levels of troponin T in the blood, a protein released when heart muscle is damaged, such as during a heart attack. The more damage, the greater the amount of troponin T.

A simple blood draw and analysis revealed Hammers troponin T levels were high. Normal levels range from less than 6 to 22 for men; Hammers were up to 41. The results led to an angiogram, which found Hammer had a problem with his main coronary artery. His heart was compressing his coronary artery and he was having a heart attack, said Daniels. The new troponin test truly helped us put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

The fifth generation test was approved in the United States in 2017, and UC San Diego Health is the first hospital in California to use it. The new version is much more sensitive and can detect a heart attack within one hour versus three to six hours for previous generations. It saved my life, said Hammer.

Critical diagnoses rely on the biomarker troponin, and over the past 15 years, improvements in the sensitivity of the test have increased our ability to detect heart issues faster, said Robert Fitzgerald, PhD, clinical chemist at UC San Diego School of Medicine. This next generation of test also has sex specific cutoffs, which is very important because females have a lower baseline.

During the two months of using the new troponin test, UC San Diego Health cardiologists also ran the previous version on patients for side-by-side comparisons.

We saw a good number of cases where the results of the previous version showed normal results but the fifth generation showed abnormal results with some kind of cardiac issue going on, said Daniels. This new test allows us to make decisions faster, administer immediate treatment when every minute counts, and also discharge patients earlier if their levels are normal.

The troponin test is primarily used in emergency departments and outpatient cardiology clinics.

With sensitive tests like the fifth generation of troponin, we can identify new disease states and why heart cells are dying, said Fitzgerald. Armed with this information, we could develop new life-saving therapies for the future.

One month after his diagnosis, Hammer is still recovering, slowly getting his energy back and adjusting to necessary medications.

Everything is looking up, said Hammer. I definitely dont take life for granted anymore.
EPFL researchers have developed a new type of retinal implant for people who have become blind due to the loss of photoreceptor cells in their retinas. The implant partially restores their visual field and can significantly improve their quality of life.

Thirty-two million people around the world are blind. Between 2 and 4 million of them owe their condition to the loss of light-sensitive cells in their retinas. The most promising treatment for this type of blindness is a retinal implant containing electrodes that electrically stimulate the retinal cells. But current implants produce very poor results, and their wearers are still considered legally blind, says Diego Ghezzi, who holds the Medtronic Chair in Neuroengineering (LNE) in EPFLs School of Engineering. In order to lead what is considered a normal life, the implantee must recover a visual field of at least 40 degrees. Current implants achieve only 20 degrees.

The LNE researchers have come up with a pioneering, wireless implant made of a highly flexible and pliable material and containing photovoltaic pixels. It is expected to provide wearers with a visual field of 46 degrees along with much better resolution. These findings were recently published in Nature Communications.

Poor results from existing implants

The retinal implants currently available consist of a grid of electrodes placed directly on the retina. The implants are wired to a pair of glasses and a camera and to a portable microcomputer. The camera captures images that enter the implantees field of vision and sends them to the computer, which turns them into electrical signals that it transmits to the electrodes. The electrodes stimulate the retinal ganglion cells based on the light patterns detected in the field of vision. The implantee then has to learn how to interpret the incoming visual sensations in order to see the images. The more numerous and detailed the patterns, the easier it is for the wearer to recognize them.

A larger surface area means more pixels

EPFLs implant, like conventional implants, is composed of an array of pixels, glasses and a camera  but no wires. It also has a larger surface area designed to widen the visual field and improve image quality. The greater size also means that more retinal cells will be stimulated by the photovoltaic pixels. This will expand the field of vision, says Laura Ferlauto, a scientist at the LNE. Existing implants only stimulate cells at the center of the retina. Naig Chenais, a PhD student at the lab, adds: It also means we can increase the number of photovoltaic pixels, which will sharpen the images.

The same image looks very different, depending on how many pixels are available.

Surgical constraints

Until now, the size of retinal implants was limited mainly by the length of the surgical incision in the eye. The cut has to be as small as possible to avoid damaging the tissue, says Chenais. To get past this hurdle, the researchers chose to work with an extremely flexible material. This enables the implant to be folded during surgery, so a larger implant can be inserted without having to lengthen the incision. The material is a transparent, non-toxic polymer that is already used in the medical field. Because the polymer is flexible, the implant can bend to the curvature of the eye and be in greater contact with the retinal ganglia, adds Marta Airaghi Leccardi, another PhD student at the LNE.

Photovoltaic pixels and no wires

The researchers were able to make their implant wireless by replacing the electrodes with photovoltaic pixels. Unlike electrodes, the solar-powered pixels generate an electric current themselves and do not require an external energy source. The light captured by the camera therefore no longer needs to be transformed into electrical signals. Instead, it needs to be magnified in order to be detected and processed by the photovoltaic pixels. The pixels will only react to light signals that meet certain requirements in terms of intensity, duration and wavelength, says Ferlauto. Natural light alone isnt enough. A second advantage of photovoltaic pixels is that they take up less space than electrodes. More of them can fit on the implant, which further boosts both visual acuity and the field of vision.

In the first round of tests, the prototype proved to be non-toxic and to successfully increase the visual field and visual acuity. The next step will be in vivo trials to look into other factors such as how the pixels behave and how long the implant will last. It will also be interesting to see how well humans adapt to this new way of seeing, which is unlike our natural vision, concludes Ferlauto.

Design and validation of a foldable and photovoltaic wide-field epiretinal prosthesis, Nature Communications, Laura Ferlauto1, , Marta J. I. Airaghi Leccardi1, , Naig A. L. Chenais1, , Paola Vagni1, Michele Bevilacqua1, Thomas J. Wolfensberger2, Kevin Sivula3 and Diego Ghezzi1*

1 Medtronic Chair in Neuroengineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics, Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland

2 Hopital Ophtalmique Jules Gonin, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

3 Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Optoelectronic Nanomaterials, Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, School of Basic Sciences, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland

This study received funding from the European Commission (EU project 701632), the Fondation Pierre Mercier pour la science and Velux Stiftung (project 1102).

EPFL
Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases and affects around 300 million people worldwide. Acute episodes are frightening for patients, cause significant ill health, unnecessary deaths and also account for a large proportion of the overall costs of asthma to health services.

Previous research at the University has found that doubling the dose of inhaled steroids during worsening asthma did not prevent the frequency of serious attacks, so this new NIHR-funded clinical trial was set up to see if quadrupling the dose had a more beneficial effect.

Serious asthma attacks in adults can be reduced by a temporary but significant increase in the dose of inhaled steroids during severe episodes of asthma, according to a new UK-wide study led by experts at the University of Nottingham.

During serious asthma attacks patients may have to be admitted to hospital for treatment including oxygen, nebulised bronchodilators and high dose steroids that can sometimes have adverse side effects.

Three people die from asthma in the UK every day and, according to the National Review of Asthma Deaths, two thirds of these deaths could have been prevented with basic asthma care, which includes patients getting a written asthma action plan from their doctor which, among other advice, outlines the medicine they should use.

The Fourfold Asthma Study (FAST)  published in the New England Journal of Medicine  compared two asthma self-management plans in a large trial involving nearly 2000 patient volunteers in England and Scotland. Around half the patients were randomly assigned to the plan that prescribed a quadrupling of inhaled steroid during periods of worsening asthma and the other half followed the current standard self-care plan over a period of 12 months.

The study showed that the participants in the quadrupling group had a 20% reduction in severe asthma attacks compared with the usual care group and they also had fewer asthma-related hospital admissions as only 3 patients in the quadrupling group were admitted to hospital compared with 18 in the usual care group.

Professor of Asthma and Respiratory Medicine, Tim Harrison, from the Universitys School of Medicine, and the NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust said: Our study shows that patients can reduce the risk of a severe asthma attack by following a self-management plan which includes a temporary four-fold increase in their preventer medication when their asthma is deteriorating. This means less need for oral steroids such as prednisolone, less admissions to hospital with severe asthma and hopefully fewer deaths from asthma.

Long-term asthma patient, Richard Harris, 68, from Stamford, Lincs, who took part in the trial, said: The study has made a real difference to my quality of life and my asthma is under much better control as a result. At the completion of the study I continued to follow the quadrupling self-management plan with the agreement of my GP. I could not praise the team at Nottingham highly enough. They manage to combine high levels of professionalism with a friendly approach that makes the patient feel part of the team, with valued opinions and information.

Dr Samantha Walker, Director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK, and co- author of the study said: This groundbreaking research could make a real difference to the 5.4 million people in the UK with asthma. This study showed that increasing the steroids in someones preventer inhaler could prevent them having severe asthma attacks and needing to go to hospital.

Wed urge any healthcare professionals who want to increase their patients asthma medication to fully explain what it means, let them know about potential side effects and include it in their written asthma action plan. People with asthma who would like to increase their medication should talk to their healthcare professional and should not delay getting help or support even if they do have an asthma attack.

The FAST trial was managed by the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit and funded by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Professor Hywel Williams, Director of the NIHRs Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme, said: We are proud to have funded this original researcher-led study. The research shows that quadrupling inhaled steroids during periods of worsening asthma reduces severe asthma attacks by a substantial amount, resulting in a reduced need for oral steroids and fewer hospital admissions. The study is good news for asthma sufferers all over the world as it shows how patients can better manage their condition and ultimately improve their quality of life.

The other UK centres involved in the study were Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Aintree University Hospital, Leicester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Oxford NIHR Respiratory BRC, University of Aberdeen, Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust.

 Ends 

Our academics can now be interviewed for broadcast via our Media Hub, which offers a Globelynx fixed camera and ISDN line facilities at University Park campus. For further information please contact a member of the Communications team on +44 (0)115 951 5798, email [email protected] or see the Globelynx website for how to register for this service.

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Notes to editors:

The University of Nottingham is a research-intensive university with a proud heritage, consistently ranked among the worlds top 100. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our 44,000 students  Nottingham was named University of the Year for Graduate Employment in the 2017 Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, was awarded gold in the TEF 2017 and features in the top 20 of all three major UK rankings. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia  part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement. We are ranked eighth for research power in the UK according to REF 2014. We have six beacons of research excellence helping to transform lives and change the world; we are also a major employer and industry partner  locally and globally.

Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the Universitys vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news
Sometimes its discouraging how long it takes to progress the cause of gender equity, but take heart: there are women all around the world fighting to overcome oppression and defy the gender stereotypes of their cultures. Youve never heard of them, but weve been lucky enough to meet them. Their stories are very real, powerful and just a drop in the bucket of women and men who comprise the ever-swelling wave that will bring us to an equitable world. Meet five people who are smashing the patriarchy around the globe:

Buddi Devi's name translates to "clever."

1. Buddhi Devi

When Buddhi Devi came to the desert village of Nosaria, India, as a young bride, she felt powerless and easily intimidated. This is difficult to picture. Buddhi Devi has the self-assurance and charisma of a natural-born politician, so much so that its hard to imagine her as a timid homebody. But she was different then, she explained. In that time if you had come here, I would be under my veil, unable to speak.

In those early years of her marriage, she worked hard in the fields for the two rainy months of the year. She spent the other 10 months mostly alone in her small home, cooking and caring for her three children while her husband worked as a day laborer. She could make out a few nearby houses, but she didnt know any of her neighbors. There were no dreams, she remembers. Just eating and sleeping.

Five years ago, Buddhi Devi changed course. She joined Baba Veertija, a Heifer-supported womens group that aimed to help members improve their goat-raising operations. Buddhi Devi, whose name aptly means clever in Hindi, showed up for every training she could and soon became a community animal health worker. Leaving the house to make calls on farmers who needed vaccinations or other health services for their animals was tough at first. Being poor her whole life left Buddhi Devi shy and insecure, and she was nervous to talk to people she barely knew. But she had a new set of skills and a head full of know-how going for her. I had things to share. That gave me confidence, she said.

Of a lower caste and used to being shunned, discounted or simply ignored by higher-caste women, Buddhi Devi was nervous once again when she took on a leadership role in the self-help group. She was used to everyday humiliations, like not being able to drink water or tea with members of higher castes and being made to wait outside their houses when she came to care for the animals because they didnt want to let her in.

Buddhi Devi found, however, that her success suddenly made her quite popular. All group members began sitting together at meetings, rather than dividing themselves into their usual hierarchical groupings. And all the members deferred to Buddhi Devis expertise.

What I say, they follow. Before, I was following what they say. Buddi Devi, Community Animal Health Worker

What I say, they follow, she said of the group members from upper castes. Before, I was following what they say.

When a potential members husband is reluctant to let his wife sign on, Buddhi Devi goes to the familys home and makes her case. More often than not, shes successful.

Buddhi Devis work supports her entire family, and she plans to use savings to help her son start his own shop. Her husband, Chatararam Ji, works alongside his wife to care for the animals and to keep the household running during the many hours Buddhi Devi spends arranging sales, administering vaccines, and taking care of the other jobs that come along with raising and selling goats.

The dramatic change in their lives was a surprise at first, Chatararam Ji said, but a welcome one. I was not expecting that she could do this work. Now, Im confident, he said.

In fact, he said more women should ditch their traditional role of sticking close to home. The whole family will be better off, he said. Husbands, you should let your wife go out of the house, he said. She can do anything.

Gulliermina Castro is taking charge of her family's farming operation.

2. Guillermina Castro

Guillermina Castro is the lady of the house and the undisputed boss of her familys 40 acres.

The machismo culture that infects most of Nicaragua has no hold at Guillermina Castros house. The mother of six is used to taking charge and has no trouble managing both family and farm.

Sometimes men have no idea how to handle finances. Sometimes women are better at that, son Carlos Vargas said.

This seemingly obvious, common-sense attitude is actually quite rare in rural Nicaragua, where traditional gender roles often keep women from claiming overt positions of authority. Heifer International and its partners have a clever work-around: By giving gifts of livestock and training directly to women, Heifer empowers women with confidence, leadership skills and the raw materials they need to build a sturdy economic base for their families.

The strategy is working, Heifer Nicaragua Director Milton Castillo said. Even men reluctant to share power with their wives are coming around as women begin making money.

I have seen a lot of changes in the lives of the beneficiaries, Castillo said. Men and women are sharing the work of the house, and wives are less stressed.

Rain shortages and baking heat in Nicaraguas dry corridor are rendering traditional farming methods largely ineffective. So agriculture experts with Heifer International are helping Castro and other families adapt to hotter temperatures and drier soil by introducing new techniques and seeds. We never had a project that helped us like this, Castro said.

Through the project, Castro learned how to tap a spring on her land and pipe water to her fields, an improvement thats doubling her crop yields because she can now grow food year-round and harvest in both August and December. The heifer she received two years ago has already calved, and the milk from her cow means her family has fresh cheese every day. Heifers contributions here, simple as they seem, injected hope and momentum into Castros farm. Her husband, Hector Guevara, and their six children, ranging in age from 11 to 26, are all benefitting from daily doses of animal-based protein that boost energy levels and health.

Ou Kongkea with her children taking care of their pigs.

3. Ou Kongkea

Ou Kongkea lives in Cambodia and grew up in a culture of extreme marginalization and oppression of women. In traditional Khmer culture, which permeates Cambodian life, a womans reputation influences not only her own social status, but that of her husband, father and sons as well. That reputation hinges largely on how well a woman can live up to the standards laid out in the Chbab Srey, a traditional poem written in the 19th century. Literally the code of conduct for women, the Chbab Srey takes the form of a queen advising her daughter on the ideals of womanhood. Women should be demure and obedient, letting men take charge, the queen counsels. Dont walk so fast that your skirt makes a sound. Dont go on a walk to someones house. Dont sit on the stairs in front of your housepeople will think youre waiting on a boy. Dont speak loudly. Dont laugh loudly.

Now, it seems like I'm leading the family. Ou Kongkea

Ou Kongkea dropped out of school after the 5th grade, but she was well aware of the Chbab Srey. Her parents wouldnt allow her to talk to boys, and she was rarely allowed to leave the house. The heavy burden of her familys reputation frightened Ou Kongkea so much that she retreated inward. When Ou Kongkea was 20 years old, her parents arranged a marriage and she moved in with her husband, but her story was still much the same. I was scared to speak to anyone, she said. When I went out in public, since I never had the chance to talk, I was afraid to speak or share ideas because they might be wrong.

Not so, now. Ou Kongkea bloomed in a community of women farmers, and she leaves her house regularly to attend trainings, meet with local government groups or sometimes just to check in on the neighbors. What has changed is people acknowledge my ability, Ou Kongkea said. I am really very comfortable to speak out. When I talk, people listen to me.

Ou Kongkeas leadership extends to family life as well. When I propose something, my husband listens to me and follows along. He says, You have good ideas. And we do it. Now it seems like Im leading the family.

Pragatasil Women's Group

4. Pragatasil Womens Group

In the months following the massive earthquake that shook Nepal on April 25, 2015, thousands of women emerged from the rubble as incredible examples of strength and resilience.

In Tupche village, the Pragatasil Womens Group mobilized immediately. Just two days after the disaster  with 19 of the groups 25 families living together under tarps strung between trees  the group called an emergency meeting. The earthquake had blocked the single path into the village, cutting off help for the many injured who needed medical attention.

So, the women decided to build a road. Together with six other Heifer-formed self-help groups, the women of the Pragatasil group divided the area into seven sections and got to work. They took whatever tools they had, shovels, wheelbarrowseven their bare hands  and began digging. Even with each woman putting in four or five hours of work a day, it took more than three weeks to finish the 4-mile road.

Even though we dont have homes we have this road, said group member Devi Rijal, 33. Now you can see that not just ambulances but trucks and motorbikes can travel through the village. It makes us feel very proud.

Soy Phe helps out with the cooking at home.

5. Soy Phe

Men are important in the fight for gender equity, and Soy Phe is demonstrating true vision by leading the way in Cambodia, a country where women are heavily oppressed and domestic violence is devastatingly common. A 2013 United Nations Development Programme report shows about a quarter of Cambodian women ages 18-49 said they had been a victim of domestic violence. In a 2014 study from British geographer Katherine Brickell, 75 percent of women and 55 percent of men said wives should keep quiet about domestic abuse to keep the family together. In the unlikely event violence is reported to local authorities, there will probably be no significant repercussions.

Soy Phe grew up thinking of traditional gender roles as mostly good things. After the joining a Heifer project, discussions in the trainings changed his mind. Heifer formed a farmers community group in the area, and Soy Phe volunteered to be a gender peer educator for the group.

Now, Soy Phe is a familiar face in Andong Chros. Nearly every day, he walks to a neighbors house to talk purposefully for a half hour or so, mostly with other men. After pleasantries, the conversation sometimes touches on the best ways to raise livestock or grow vegetables. But the main theme is always the relationship between women and men in the community.

You know you have a happy family when the wife and husband are working together. We have to respect each other. Soy Phe, Peer Educator

Before the project started, Soy Phe noticed signs of domestic abuse in the community fairly frequently. Sometimes we would hear it, loud, from our house, he said. You could hear the fighting and the shouting, cursing.

As a peer educator, Soy Phe discusses gender issues with self-help group members during meetings and home visits. His message is that domestic violence will destroy a family. You know you have a happy family when the wife and husband are working together. We have to respect each other. Soy Phe also connects with police and local authorities regularly to make sure everyone in the community remains vigilant for the signs of domestic abuse.

The approach seems to be working. A few years ago, Soy Phe estimates that domestic violence was common for 20-30 percent of families in the community. Now he thinks the number is close to 1 percent. The early success is encouraging, and Soy Phe is motivated to continue the volunteer work. I see a better future for my community, he said.
The garda hunt for missing woman Tina Satchwell has suffered a setback after it emerged a quantity of CCTV security footage from an area being searched has been deleted over time since the disappearance.

A team of 60 personnel is now searching a sprawling Co Cork forest for Tina (45), who vanished without trace from her Youghal home on March 20 last year.

On Monday, gardai launched one of the biggest single-site searches ever seen in the county - in Mitchel's Wood outside Castlemartyr, east Cork - following a phone tip-off.

Focused

Until now, the garda search has focused on Youghal where Tina and her husband Richard live, and Fermoy where she was originally from.

Mitchel's Wood is located 200 metres from Castlemartyr village and just off the Cork- Waterford road.

CCTV security camera footage from various premises in the east Cork village has been examined as part of that search.

Unfortunately, a quantity of CCTV footage was deleted because of the significant time lapse involved. Other footage is now being examined in a bid to determine the possible movements of vehicles of specific interest to investigating gardai.

There is no CCTV camera coverage of the entrance to Mitchel's Wood itself.

Gardai under Superintendent Colm Noonan also received permission to have a no-fly zone declared over the search area - amid concerns some people might try to use camera-equipped drones to hover over the site.

Gardai also have heavy excavating equipment and ground-mapping radar on standby.

The forest is cordoned off as a 60-strong specialist search team, supported by Defence Forces engineers and canine units, trawls through 40 acres of forestry for clues as to Tina's whereabouts.

Supt Noonan, of Midleton Garda Station, said searches will continue for the next three weeks. The current search followed a phone call to gardai from a member of the public after the broadcast last January of an RTE Prime Time special on Tina's disappearance.

Gardai determined the information was both "reliable and credible" and ordered a major search of Mitchel's Wood.

A team from Search Dogs UK is also assisting the garda operation. The searchers are supported by generators and industrial lighting.

"There have been 220 separate lines of inquiry conducted. This has included liaison with Interpol and we are now conducting a search at Mitchel's Wood," Supt Noonan said.

Tina's husband, English-born truck driver Richard, said he was "shocked" by the development.

"I was sick in the stomach with worry. I am still hoping Tina will be found safe and well," he said

Mr Satchwell confirmed he has stored all cards and presents bought for Tina for their 25th wedding anniversary, her birthday, Christmas and even Valentine's Day as he prays for her return.
GardaI at the scene of the collapsed Lidl store in Fortunestown Lane last week

A father-of-one has been refused bail after he was charged with handling 1,400 of stolen goods taken during the looting of a Dublin supermarket.

During last week's snowstorm, the Lidl at Fortunestown Lane in Tallaght was extensively damaged after it was raided and looted while another shop was broken into on Friday night.

Liam Walsh (26), from Ard Mor Drive, Tallaght, appeared at Dublin District Court charged under the Theft and Fraud Act.

Mr Walsh, who is accused of handling stolen property taken from the Lidl supermarket, made no reply when charged, Garda Stephen Murray told Judge Grainne O'Neill.

Objecting to bail owing to the seriousness of the offence, Gda Murray told the court that on March 2 the Lidl supermarket was burgled and "extensive damage was caused by a large excavator". Video appeared on social media showing the building collapse, he said.

Gardai learned that perishable as well as electrical goods were stored in the back bedroom and in the kitchen of Mr Walsh's home, it was alleged.

A search warrant was obtained, resulting in the goods being recovered, the court heard.

They were found in several black sacks and pictures of goods had been circulated by phone, Gda Murray said.

The court heard that Mr Walsh, who is unemployed and lives with his partner and their child, was arrested on Tuesday and detained for five hours before being charged.

Shuttle

Gda Murray said it was his belief the accused intended to sell the stolen goods.

Mr Walsh denied the charge, his solicitor said.

On Saturday nine other men appeared at the district court to face a range of charges in connection with the raiding and looting at the Lidl and a break-in at a nearby Centra shop. Six were released on bail while the remaining three were remanded in custody.

Separately, it was confirmed that German retailer Lidl is to demolish the supermarket while it considers whether it will rebuild on the site.

In a goodwill gesture to loyal customers who have been left without their local supermarket, the company yesterday announced that it would run a free daily shuttle from across the street of the former Fortunestown Lane store to its nearest outlet at Whitestown Way from tomorrow morning, a spokeswoman said.

"We are aware that some of our customers in the Fortunestown area are experiencing difficulty in accessing and doing their shopping in other Lidl stores in the locality after the devastating events of last Friday night," she said.

Lidl will offer the free shuttle service on a trial basis for the next fortnight. The 40-seat bus will operate on a 'first-come first-served' basis, leaving the site at 10.30am every day and returning from Whitestown Way at 11.45am.

In the meantime, Lidl is continuing to review whether it will go ahead with expansion plans - or even rebuild - at the Fortunestown Lane site.
A Dublin man has been charged at the Special Criminal Court in relation to the murder of Michael Barr at the Sunset House in Dublin.

Mr Barr was shot dead at the pub almost two years ago.

Martin Aylmer (31), of Casino Park, Marino, Dublin 3, was charged yesterday at the three-judge, non-jury court with participating in or contributing to activity intending to facilitate the commission by a criminal organisation or any of its members of a serious offence, namely the murder of Mr Barr at the Sunset House on April 25, 2016.

He was also charged with participating in or contributing to activity being reckless as to whether said participation or contribution could facilitate the commission of the murder of Mr Barr.

Arrest

The offences are alleged to have occurred between April 23 and April 25, 2016.

Garda David Chapman, of Bridewell Garda Station, gave evidence of the arrest of Mr Aylmer. He told State solicitor Michael O'Donovan that he arrested Mr Aylmer at his home address yesterday morning and informed him of a number of charges he was facing.

Gda Chapman said that Mr Aylmer made no reply when cautioned.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, sitting with Judge Patricia Ryan and Judge Ann Ryan, remanded the accused man in custody until today, when a bail application is expected to be made.
A landmark court ruling will allow the Government to press ahead with an abortion referendum, Health Minister Simon Harris has said.

In its ruling, the seven-member Supreme Court decision found that the unborn has no constitutional rights beyond the right to life contained in the Eighth Amendment.

It unanimously rejected a High Court ruling which found the unborn had other rights under the Constitution and was considered a child, with rights the State is expected to vindicate.

Clarity

"Now we can get on with allowing the people of Ireland to have their say in a referendum this May," he said in a tweet.

"I will now bring the Referendum Bill to cabinet."

Children and Youth Affairs Minister Katherine Zappone said: "I welcome the clarity offered by today's Supreme Court decision and look forward to ... putting the 8th amendment before the Irish people."

Fine Gael party colleague Senator Catherine Noone also welcomed the court's clear and unanimous decision.

Ms Noone chaired the all-party parliamentary committee that recommended the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Currently, terminations are allowed only when the life of the mother is at risk, including from suicide. The maximum penalty for accessing an illegal abortion is 14 years in prison.

Campaigners across Ireland are seeking to liberalise the regime to allow unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy.

If the referendum goes ahead, voters will be asked whether they want to remove the section of the constitution that gives equal right to life to the mother and the unborn, and to allow parliament to regulate the termination of pregnancy.

Senator Noone said: "Today the Supreme Court made a landmark decision.

"This judgment will allow us to move forward to a May referendum on the Eighth Amendment.

"It is my belief that the only rights afforded to the unborn under the current constitutional status, is the right to life provided for in the Eighth Amendment and this does not extend to other areas of the constitution.

"I urge us all to accept the court's judgment in good faith and move forward in a civilised and respectful manner".

Labour Party TD Jan O'Sullivan welcomed the clarity provided by the ruling.

"The decision paves the way for the Oireachtas to debate with clarity the wording of the proposed government referendum, which is coming before the Dail this week.

"I look forward to engaging in the debate with my Oireachtas colleagues, and would again call on the Government to keep to its timetable of a May referendum so that the maximum number of people will be available to vote on the issue, many for the first time."

Equal

In January, the Government formally agreed to hold a referendum on the Eighth Amendment. The move came after the Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment recommended the repeal of Article 40.3.3. The article recognises the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn.

The report stated that constitutional provision prohibiting the termination of pregnancy in Ireland was unfit for purpose and in need of reform.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said he welcomed the unanimous ruling.

"[It] offers real clarity, and paves the way for a referendum on the 8th Amendment," he said.
RTE Director General Dee Forbes has said there are issues in the national broadcaster around gender equality and pay, but said it is something she is striving to change.

The Cork woman told how she is proud to be leading the way to make RTE a more "inclusive" organisation as its first female Director General.

"RTE is not without its challenges. We get lots of good press and lots of bad press," she said.

"We've been around for a long, long time and yes there are issues.

"There are issues around pay, there are issues around gender equality.

"The important thing is we are tackling them. If anything has come out of the Me Too and Time's up movements, it's that there is more awareness now.

"There are conversations being had about how do we have a more diverse organisation? How do we have an organisation that is more inclusive? How do we address the issues of pay?'

"All of this is ongoing in RTE now and I am very proud to be leading that charge.

"It's something we won't solve overnight because some of these things have been around for a long time."

Speaking at the Press for Progress event at the National Concert Hall for International Women's Day, Ms Forbes admitted that many people questioned her choice to accept a position in RTE after working in the media industry in London for 27 years.

"I took the job, many wonder why. One of the main reasons for me was, I grew up with RTE. I grew up with one channel for most of my life," she said.

Culture

"Even though I was away for 27 years, being in media, I was intrigued by what was happening here anyway. I always watched RTE. It's such an important part of the culture of this country.

"What RTE does is it champions Irish culture."

Ms Forbes recalled receiving letters of support from the public when she arrived in RTE and said there is a responsibility that comes with being the first female Director General.

"I thought I would never come back to Ireland and then I got a phone call about the job in RTE. I was approached about the role and got into the process and here I am," she said.

"I am hugely proud to be the first female DG of RTE. It comes with a huge responsibility to RTE, our audiences, and other women."

Ms Forbes stated that she believes the only thing that may hold women back is a lack of confidence.

"Once you get over the confidence hurdle, you can achieve anything," she said.
Best-selling author Emma Hannigan said there would "never have been enough time," in moving words she wrote before her death.

She bid a poignant farewell and thank you to her friends, family and loyal readers, following an 11-year cancer battle, at a packed service at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Church, Foxrock, Dublin, yesterday.

Fr Gerry Byrne, the chaplain at the Blackrock Clinic where Emma (45) passed away last Saturday, told how she had asked him to officiate at her funeral service, and planned it with him.

The much-loved author asked him to read out the words she had prepared at the service.

Poignant

"I have no regrets, only that I have to leave right now," Emma said in the poignant address.

"One thing is glaringly obvious, when it all comes down to the wire, all that matters is love. The love I have in my heart for the people who made my life worthwhile."

In the speech, she recalled her "idyllic" childhood, growing up in Bray with her brother Timmy, her schooling in St Gerard's and meeting her husband, Cian.

"We were simply meant to be together," she said.

She recalled how the couple had their two children - Sacha and Kim - before settling in a house beside her parents, and how "cancer hit for the first time in 2007."

She spoke lovingly about her close-knit family.

"Suffice it to say there was a constant line of communication between us and that set me up for whatever else life threw at my direction."

"I hope you know I will be there in your hearts, and you will always be in mine," she said.

Her wicker coffin was adorned with a picture of Emma, sparkly high-heeled shoes, one of her books and an angel, which her daughter Kim had made for her when she was in kindergarten.

"Yes, life was great, surrounded by my family and so many great friends," she continued.

"I can hold my head up and say that I never had a day where I felt lonely, or as if I had nobody to turn to. I never felt I was on my own.

"My cancer fight was up there for all to read on Facebook or through my blog.

"The peer-to-peer support I received there was priceless. I had such loyal readers and followers who took my hand and walked along by my side.

"They say all things happen for a reason.

"I don't want to go looking over my shoulder or waving my fist in anger. That was never my style. But the truth of the matter is this. I would never have wanted to go. There would never have been enough time. So I will try to be gracious about it."

In her address, the author said there is enough grey in the world already.

"Let the pink fluff and the sparkles break through. There is enough sadness, suffering and strife. Let the laughter be heard," she said.

"Farewell, look after each other. Be kind, be happy, be grateful and most of all, be yourself.

"Life is short, so very, very precious, and it's not a dress rehearsal, so enjoy each chocolate, drink strong coffee, have a fabulous glass of wine, and buy those clothes; walk in those high heels and let the world know that are here to work hard and to play even harder.

"Thank you all for making my life so amazing. I will watch over you, and please know that I am never truly gone. I will live on in the sparkles in your heart. Love always, Emma."

Applause

There was applause in the crowded church as Fr Byrne finished the address.

Some of the countries top writers, including Cathy Kelly and Claudia Carroll, attended the service, as well as TV3 host Elaine Crowley.

Fr Byrne described her as a "bright star that rose high and sparked brightly in her life."

She had picked the music for the service herself, with a harpist Aine Ni Dhubhghaill and flautist Ellen Cranitch playing songs including Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper.

Prayers of the Faithful were said for all those who cared for Emma all the years of her illness, her "other family" in the Blackrock Clinic.

"I don't want to go looking over my shoulder or waving my fist in anger. That was never my style.
SALT LAKE CITY  In partnership with Adobe, Dell EMC, Girls Who Code and Microsoft, the Utah STEM Action Center recently announced the launch of the Utah Girls Who Code Club Network at Dell EMC.

Starting in the fall 2018 school year, nearly 50 clubs will be hosted at schools, community centers, libraries and various organizations. Industry partners will sponsor and facilitate the clubs, creating a unique business and education partnership.

More than 200 girls, grades 7-12, from multiple school districts joined industry members recently to kick off the program, listening to remarks given by Lt. Gov. Spencer J. Cox and engaging in a coding activity with Reshma Saujani, CEO and founder of Girls Who Code.

Were thrilled to have the STEM Action Center expanding Girls Who Code Clubs throughout the state of Utah, Saujani said. Their efforts will not only develop the workforce of the future but also make sure our girls are prepared to succeed as a part of that workforce.

Girls Who Code was founded five years ago with the belief that computing skills are a critical path to security and prosperity in todays job market. What began with 20 girls in the heart of New York City will reach more than 50,000 girls in all 50 U.S. states by the end of this year.

Through our commitment to Girls Who Code, we are able to raise awareness and visibility of technology among young women and help shatter the perception that the tech industry is only for males, said Janice Peters, program manager for sustainability and social impact at Adobe.

Were excited to help kick off this program in Utah to equip young girls with coding and creativity skills that will allow them to share their unique voices, perspectives and ideas.

Girls who join the club are part of a safe and supportive environment of peers and role models and learn about coding and to see themselves as future computer scientists.

Beyond the club, girls can tap into an alumni network of tens of thousands of girls across the country that is using computer science to solve problems they care about in their community.

Never before in history has technology been so core to our economy and our society at large, said Vance Checketts, vice president and general manager for Dell EMC.

We have an incredible opportunity to truly drive human progress through technology, and we cant realize the full potential without our girls. Were so excited to partner with Girls Who Code to prepare the next generation of female leaders to grow and thrive in a connected world. When we engage and empower our girls, there is no limit to what we can achieve as a global community.

Members of the club learn the concepts of loops, variables, conditionals, and functions that form the basis for all programming languages  whether they want to build a website, an app, or a robot. Girls returning to the club can deepen their programming knowledge through extended activity sets.

With free workshops and camps that teach coding and computer science year-round, we are proud to support Girls Who Codes mission to close the gender gap in technology, said Justin Lee, community manager at Microsoft.

Microsoft is also proud to support Girls Who Codes Summer Immersion Program, hosted on Microsoft campuses for the past four years, and the Girls Who Code Clubs program across communities nationally in 2018.

About GOED

The Utah Governors Office of Economic Development (GOED) charter is based on Gov. Gary R. Herberts commitment to statewide economic development. The states economic vision is that Utah will lead the nation as the best performing economy and be recognized as a premier global business environment and tourist destination.

GOED provides extensive resources and support for business creation, growth and recruitment statewide, as well as programs to increase tourism and film production for the benefit of Utah residents.

All administered programs are based upon strategic industry clusters to develop a diverse, sustainable economy. GOED accomplishes its mission through unprecedented partnerships.

For more information contact: Aimee Edwards, (801) 538-8811 or edwards@utah.gov or visit business.utah.gov.

About STEM

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Action Center works to develop Utahs workforce of the future by prioritizing STEM education.

The program drives research and implementation of STEM education best practices across Utah by coordinating STEM-related activities, creating and coordinating proven STEM education best practices, facilitating educator access to those tools, align public STEM education and higher STEM education activities.

For more information visit the STEM Action Center online at stem.utah.gov.
SANDY Utah Farm Bureau has released its list of Issues to Watch For in 2018 upon returning from the national agricultural convention for the American Farm Bureau Federation and is implementing its policy priorities during the 2018 Utah general legislative session.

Though not exhaustive in scope, the list is based off the Farm Bureaus policy book, adopted at its recent convention in November. The policy book will guide the general farm and ranch organizations public policy actions throughout the upcoming year  including the current legislative session.

It is important to note the policies advocated and defended by the Utah Farm Bureau come from the grassroots level, from actual farmers and ranchers on the ground and in the trenches  not simply from the ideas of one leader or board, said Ron Gibson, a dairy farmer from Weber County and President of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation.

These policies are developed through grassroots debate and deliberation in response to issues felt on the farms of the smallest towns as well as in the families of the largest cities in Utah. These issues have a direct impact on the ability to produce food in Utah.

State Concerns

1. Tax reform. Congress recently passed tax reform, and leaders in Utah are focused on state tax reform as well. Discussions during the interim legislative sessions have led to legislative proposals and budget recommendations that directly impact Utah production agriculture and rural Utah in 2018.

A. Sales tax reform. Modern economy has left Utahs tax code in the dust. Growth of online sales and the inability of state and federal agencies to collect online sales taxes has become a problem.

Seventy percent of online consumer goods pay no taxes. In Utah alone, this accounts to hundreds of millions of sales tax revenues that are not being collected.

While there are some discussions about increasing the sales tax percentage, it makes more sense to keep percentages where they are and focus efforts at modernizing the tax code and improve collection of existing revenues.

There are more than 190 examples of sales tax exemptions on the books, 35 of these exemptions are agriculture related. Of the 190 exemptions, there isnt an accurate estimate on how much sales tax revenue is being lost from at least 90 of them.

The Utah Farm Bureau supports a healthy tax reform debate and implementation, but wants to ensure Utah farmers and ranchers are properly and adequately represented. Certain exemptions are appropriate to ensure the continued sustainability and purpose of agriculture.

B. Property tax reform. Government is the #1 landholder in the state of Utah, with farmers and ranchers being #2. When there are discussions related to property tax reform in the state, agriculture needs to have an appropriate seat at the table as it will feel the impacts greatest.

According to a recent Envision Utah report, studies have shown that farmland and rural residencies only require about 37 cents in public services for each dollar paid by landowners in property taxes, while urban/residential properties require $1.11 of services for every dollar paid in property taxes.

This would indicate rural Utah is providing a great value in terms of property taxes vs. services provided, and it is hoped that future property tax reforms take this into consideration.

2. Transportation funding. The State of Utah is looking to increase funding to update the states transportation infrastructure to accommodate the doubling of our population by 2050  $17 billion in new funding will be needed in the next 10 years alone.

This infrastructure is also critical for Utahs farmers and ranchers to get products from farm to fork in an efficient way. The majority of funds spent on transportation will understandably come to the Wasatch Front.

But as the state looks to modernize its collection of tax revenues to adequately fund transportation projects, the needs of rural communities and its transportation infrastructure cannot be ignored.

What is the best way to fund these needs? Will it be to do away with the motor fuel tax and create a user fee tax  thus making drivers pay for the actual miles they drive?

This will certainly have a greater impact on rural drivers, who travel further for basic services and to take advantage of the benefits afforded to metropolitan areas of the state.

3. Water issues. With three million new residents expected to come to Utah, and with the federal government bowing out from funding major water development projects, Utah taxpayers will have to meet the growing water infrastructure needs.

This includes big ticket items like the Lake Powell pipeline, as well as the day-to-day operation of our existing water infrastructure  which is often out-of-sight, out-of-mind for most residents.

Residential and industrial uses of water  including agriculture  must improve conservation and efficiency efforts related to water. But there is also a need to grow the total amount of water available.

Recognizing that agriculture diverts approximately 80 percent of Utahs water resources, decisions will need to be made regarding developing and paying for future water projects that are both fair to those benefitting yet recognize how existing water projects paid for with federal loans have benefitted Wasatch Front users.

National issues

Regulatory reform. All Americans have an interest in a regulatory process that is transparent and fact-based, respects the will of Congress, and observes the separation of powers in the Constitution.

Federal regulations have a direct impact on farmers and ranchers, and over the years, the breadth and extent of that regulatory landscape have increased.

Farm Bureau has taken a stand against regulatory overreach and is working to reform the federal regulatory process and preserve farmers and ranchers land-use and water rights.

Farm Bureau is also working for reform to ensure that federal rules are limited to what is necessary, are supported by science, appropriately balance costs and benefits, are clearly authorized by law, are created in a transparent manner, and allow farmers and ranchers to remain productive.

Immigration reform. Farmers and ranchers need a reliable, skilled workforce. Farm work is challenging, often seasonal and transitory, and its not easy to find American workers to take on these jobs.

Farm labor cant all be replaced by machines either. There are certain farm jobs, like tending livestock and pruning or picking fresh produce, which require a human touch. Where American workers are unwilling or unavailable, workers from other countries have stepped in.

Congress needs to pass responsible immigration reform that addresses agricultures current experienced workforce and creates a new flexible guest worker program.

Instability in the agricultural workforce places the food supply at riskincreasing immigration enforcement without also reforming the worker visa program will cost America $60 billion in agricultural production.

2018 farm bill

Farm programs are written to provide a basic level of risk protection to help offset bad economic times and severe weather. No one buys insurance for the good times, and similarly, farm bill programs provide critical tools to help farmers and ranchers manage risk.

As farmers and ranchers prepare for the development of the 2018 farm bill, Farm Bureau is leading the way in moving the discussion forward and providing resources that address the relevant issues.

Trade

As modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA 2.0, continues, concern from the agricultural community over a potential NAFTA withdrawal has intensified.

NAFTA supporters point toward the tens of billions of dollars in U.S. agricultural exports delivered to the NAFTA partners each year or point out that exports to Mexico and Canada represent 30 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports. Put simply, Mexico and Canada are among the top three export markets.

Total withdrawal from NAFTA would make U.S. farmers and ranchers less competitive in the top export markets  and could result in billions of dollars of agricultural products accumulating in inventories  further weakening the U.S. farm economy.

The integration of the North American agricultural market that has occurred over the last quarter century is at risk.

For more information visit www.utahfarmbureau.org or call (801) 233-3000.
Fall foliage expected to be 'spectacular' in Pennsylvania

State and national foresters are meeting this week in Pittsburgh and they expect another beautiful autumn in the northeastern states.
Behind the growing presence of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Jammu & Kashmir, police see a change of strategy from Pakistan after increased, repeated international scrutiny of Lashkar-e-Toiba and it chief Hafiz Saeed.

A report by J&K police says that while the LeT may reduce its operations in the Valley, Pakistan is reviving Jaish to give some breathing space to Hizb-ul Mujahideen and LeT. The report, prepared two weeks ago by the intelligence wing of the state police, has been circulated to all district police officers by the police chief.

The reason for Jaish-e-Mohammad coming to the forefront (of militancy in valley) may be due to the increased and repeated international scrutiny of LeT and its chief, says the report. The recent development of Pakistan declaring Hafiz Saeed a terrorist under global pressure and reports that Pakistan government is taking over all the facilities, offices and seminaries that belong to JuD (Jamat-ud-Dawa) and FIF (Falah-e-Insan Foundation), the LeT might lessen its role by providing logistical support to Jaish for executing attacks.

The report speaks of a rare collaboration between Lashkar and Jaish in the Valley. There are reports of terrorists from LeT and JeM having met days before the Fidayeen attack on the CRPF camp suggesting the strike might have been the result of a rare collaboration between the two, reads the report. While there have been occasions where LeT provided logistic support to indigenous terror groups such as Hizb-ul Mujahideen, its collaboration with JeM signals a shift in Valleys insurgent landscape.

The report warns of more coordinated attacks by Jaish and LeT. It suggests the reason for revival of Jaish in the Valley is heavy losses suffered by Hizb and Lashkar last year.

The year 2017 witnessed heavy losses to terrorist outfits especially LeT and Hizb as their top commanders were killed, it says. The Pakistan-based handlers of terrorists have started reviving Jaish cadres in valley and the main motive of carrying Fidayeen type attacks is to push security forces on backfoot in order to give some breathing space to Hizb and LeT.

While Jaish had very little or no presence in the Valley in 2016, the militant outfit has taken the centre-stage of militancy of late. The outfit has carried four Fidayeen attacks  three in the Valley and one in Jammu  in the last eight months.

For many years now, the outfit didnt have any members at local level, but it has since managed to recruit several youth in south Kashmir. In fact, two of the three Fidayeen who stormed a CRPF commando training centre in Lethpora, South Kashmir, were local recruits.

Police sources say the outfits commander, three-foot-tall Noor Mohammad, was behind the revival of the outfit in the Valley, especially South Kashmir. Mohammad was killed in an encounter in December last year.

This event (Lethpora Fidayeen attack) marks as psychological comeback of Masood Azhar into Kashmir by not only getting executed a well thought out suicide mission but using Kashmiris for the carnage, the police report points out.

Source : Indian Express
Normally when a European leader visits India; the major focus is on trade and investment. French President Emmanuel Macrons India visit has the potential to become truly strategic. Today, India has more than 30 strategic partners. However, the first-ever strategic partnership signed by New Delhi was with France in 1998. Since then, a strong institutional mechanism has been established covering joint defence exercises, space and civil-nuclear cooperation, counter-terrorism, maritime security, as well as dialogues among defence chiefs and National Security advisers. The decision to purchase Rafale jets has further strengthened these ties. Unlike commercial exchanges, closer defence ties indicate convergence of views on broader geopolitical environment.

Europe is changing. Post-Brexit, Britains role is set to decline within Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is busy sorting out political difficulties at home. This is helping French President Macron to emerge as a de facto European leader. Trumps isolationist America first policy has provided a further space to France. After Brexit, France will be the only nuclear power and the only permanent member of the UNSC within the EU. Last September, in his big speech on Europe at Paris Sorbonne University, he presented a vision to take deadlocked EU out of crisis and towards greater integration. Similar to Charles De Gaulle and Francois Mitterrand, he also seems to believe that a strong and united Europe could be used as a tool to improve the French position in world affairs. A trusted India-France partnership could be used to shape India-EU ties and evolving geopolitics in Asia and the world.

Just a few weeks ago, Macron completed a high-profile visit to China and promised that he is determined to get the Europe-China relationship into the 21st Century. Although he is in favour of China and Europe working together on Beijings Belt and Road initiative (BRI), he asserted that the Silk Roads were never only Chinese, and by definition, these roads can only be shared. So apart from traditional subjects, Macrons India visit will be an opportunity for India and Europe to develop common responses to the Chinese BRI. Already increasing cooperation on maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region will be discussed and strengthened. Some further movement on the Jaitapur nuclear power project is also expected. The founding summit of the International Solar Alliance will bring India and Europe further closer on climate change, an issue with huge political support within the EU.

Both India and France are important for each other for trade, investment and defence purchases. Since India-EU FTA negotiations are deadlocked since 2013, the focus is already slowly shifting to other areas. The Macron visit will be a good opportunity to evaluate the importance of changing Europe in Indian foreign policy and strategic calculations. Europe has strong economic linkages with China. Still, in the evolving global geopolitics and security and economic architecture in Asia, France and Europe may share more with India than with China.

Gulshan Sachdeva is Jean Monnet chair at the School of International Studies, JNU

The views expressed are personal
French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte begin a key, three-day visit to India on Friday. India sees France as a key partner, both politically and strategically, especially now, as an island of political stability and continuity in an increasingly uncertain world. The past year has seen great political upheaval not only in the United States of America with the arrival of a whimsical and often contrary president, but also across Europe, which has witnessed enormous political upheaval.

Britain, caught in the negotiating coils of Brexit, has little time for anything but its own woes with the EU. Italy has just shooed in an extreme-right, anti-immigrant, anti-EU political formation with gigantic question marks hanging over the type of government that will emerge. Germany, the powerhouse of the European Union, has returned Angela Merkel to chancellorship, but with a substantially weakened hand. Spain is locked in an internal separatist debate while countries such as Hungary, Poland or the Czech Republic are all moving towards the extreme right. Europe is in the midst of an identity angst.

It is with this backdrop that Macron, elected President with more than 65% of the vote and a thumping parliamentary majority for his Republique En Marche! party, comes to India for a State visit that is likely to produce several positives for both sides. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Macron will co-chair the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance, an Indian initiative first mooted at the Paris Climate Change Conference of 2015. Both India and France have pledged to substantially reduce their carbon emissions and work towards energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

The French have decided to invest wholeheartedly in India. The thinking at the Elysee Palace was that a strong signal should be sent to both China and India by getting President Macron to visit India before he went to China. That two-day visit, initially slated for December 2017, was postponed at the request of Prime Minister Modi who rushed off to campaign in the Gujarat elections in order to ensure a BJP win in the state. Had President Macron been able to stick to the earlier schedule, this visit would have had an even sharper profile. As it turned out, Macron went to Beijing in January, repeating the China first, India second trope. But this time around it was at Indias behest.

France has given a cautious welcome to Chinas Belt and Road Initiative but Paris has concerns about the flexing of Chinese muscles in the entire Indian Ocean region, a key worry for New Delhi. A stronger alliance between Paris and New Delhi can only be in the two nations interest. France has major Indian Ocean naval bases such as Djibouti or La Reunion and future strategic cooperation could persuade Paris to allow New Delhi access. Known as the forces armees de la zone sud de locean Indien (FASZOI), these highly trained and sophisticated regiments based on the islands of La Reunion and Mayotte have intervened several times in the Comoros, Rwanda and the Gulf of Aden. Security and military cooperation, arms purchases and defence contracts including transfer of technology as well as counterterrorism will be discussed when Modi and Macron meet and a logistics and defence exchange agreement on the lines of Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) could be signed during the visit.

France, which once treated India with benign neglect, considering it to be solely an Anglo-Saxon preserve, was late in waking up to Indias economic and strategic importance. It was under President Jacques Chiracs 12-year mandate (1995-2007) that the relationship, which appeared moribund and mothballed at best, first began to flower. India now features high on the agenda with successive French presidents each making multiple visits to India with a quite remarkable consolidation of relations.

But there are also other substantive issues on the table. France is the ninth largest investor in India with about a thousand French firms operating in the country. Although large contracts are in the active negotiation phase for nuclear reactors (the 1650Mw EPR, six of which are being negotiated for the Jaitapur site in Maharashtra), nano technologies, cooperation over smart cities, railways, aviation and infrastructure, small and medium sized firms are still fighting shy of investing in India. Part of the problem comes from the fact that French SMEs do not often have experience of developing markets and despite Modis Make in India efforts, India has still not shed its image of a country mired in corruption, red tape and a judicial quagmire.

Macron, who turned 40 a couple of months ago, is keen to meet young people and exchange views on the challenges of the future. He will hold a Town Hall with some 250 students at Bikaner House on Saturday. France would like to take advantage of the anti-foreigner sentiment in both Britain and America to make a push for international students. Paris would like to double the number of Indian students in France from the present 5,000 to 10,000 in the next couple of years.

Macron is one of the few leaders in Europe who shows an exceptional grasp of history. He has often said in interviews that extremism and religious fundamentalism are the two issues that worry him the most and experts who have had occasion to discuss India with him say he is concerned about the rise of the Hindu nationalist Right. In that sense while he might enjoy a reasonably warm personal relationship with Modi, he is keen to understand the role the RSS and its proxy organisations play in shaping the narrative in India.

Vaiju Naravane teaches journalism and media studies at Ashoka University The views expressed are personal
A city in western Germany said on Wednesday it is opening an investigation into eight disputed works by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian that have been part of one of its museums collections for decades. A spokesman for the city of Krefeld, Christoph Elles, said the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum strongly rejects allegations by lawyers for Mondrians heirs that the works presence at the museum had been deliberately concealed. He said the museum believes the artist himself donated eight works in 1929, though there is no clear proof for that.

A lawyer for the heirs, Gunnar Schnabel, questioned whether the artist ever donated the works to the museum and said it illegally sold four of them. The fact that Krefeld had eight works from (Mondrians) most important creative period ... was concealed until the summer of 2016, Schnabel wrote in a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The New York Times first reported about the dispute on Sunday. Mondrian, one of the most important artists of the 20th century, is famous for his abstract compositions of black lines and rectangles filled with bright colours. The museum said eight of his works surfaced there in 1950. While it is not clear how they came there, the museum said its possible that the artist himself gave them the works in 1929, for an exhibition that never took place.

Mondrian never reclaimed the works and after 1950, the museum swapped four of the artworks for works by other artists, it said. The remaining four Mondrian works are still in the Krefeld museums possession. Schnabel, the lawyer for the Mondrian heirs, said it would have been hopeless for Mondrian to try to reclaim his works because they were deemed degenerate art after the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. Mondrian himself left Europe for the United States and died in exile in New York in 1944. The museum said it would task an expert with shedding light on the disputed history of the eight works.

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Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt has paid tribute to late actor Sridevi, whom he misses dearly. During an episode of Indias Next Superstars, Bhatt inspired some of the aspiring actors by sharing a story about Sridevi while shooting with the actress for his film Gumrah (1993), a statement said.

While shooting for Gumrah, we had to shoot a water sequence for which Sridevi was needed. I was informed that she is down with fever and we might have to postpone the shoot, he said.

Worried about her health, I met her in her room and requested her that we continue shooting when she is fine because her condition was really bad. To my surprise, she refused to postpone the shoot, he added.

Talking about her hard work, he said, Sridevi shot inside water for hours with fever and didnt say a word because she was so professional. I salute her spirit and I miss her dearly.

Sridevi passed away following an accidental drowning in a bathtub in her hotel room in Dubai on February 24.
Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopras upcoming movie on Kashmir will be shot in the migrant camps of Kashmiri Pandits here, an official said.

Vinod Chopra is scheduled to shoot his upcoming movie from March 27-April 7 in the migrant camps, said K K Sidha, deputy commissioner (relief), Jammu. He, however, said there would be no shooting on March 29 and 31, and April 4 at the camps, which are inhabited by Kashmiri Hindus, who were forced out of the Valley after the rise of militancy in the region in the early 90s.

Talking to PTI, assistant-director Asheish Nijhawan said the shooting would take place in the migrant camps, but refrained from giving further details about the movie.

Most of the actors will be fresh faces, Nijhawan said, adding that Kashmiris, including young, old, middle-aged, male, female and kids, would be hired for the shooting.

Producer of popular movies like 3 Idiots, PK and the Munna Bhai film series, Chopra had earlier shot Mission Kashmir, starring Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt and Preity Zinta, in the Valley.

Originally hailing from Jammu and Kashmir, Chopra had spent his early life in Srinagar, where he studied in a school and college. He had met Union minister Jitendra Singh and Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra in the past and held discussions on this project.

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How often have you heard boys being told Dont cry like a girl? How often have you thought men look cool in shorts while girls look hot? Have you ever questioned why children always take on the fathers surname? Why are daughters barred from performing the last rites of their parents? The phrase working mom is popular, but why is working dads not?

Our lives are full of such examples of gender bias. In a world that is male-dominated, simple acts that come naturally to us are often sub-consciously guided by the male way of thinking.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, every Womens Day is the same. Its only a 24-hour carnival to make women feel at the top of the world. Social media gets flooded with dollops of praise for women and gender equality. But, at the stroke of midnight, the world goes back to its ways of bias against women.

P.C. Chandra Jewellers, a brand that stands for the modern empowered women, decided to change this pseudo-narrative of equality. It spoke to women across Kolkata about gender discrimination that they face in their day-to-day lives. The responses, which were later compiled into a video, were one and the same: #UncelebrateWomensDay.

We are not against Womens Day. We are against the idea of celebrating one day for women. Every day must be Womens Day. Without women, this world is incomplete. P.C. Chandra is a brand that has been celebrating women for decades. So, it was only fitting to have a narrative on Womens Day that was all about being honest about the respect that women deserve through the year, not just on one special day says U.K. Chandra, Managing Director of P.C. Chandra Jewellers.

Conceptualised by J Walter Thompson, Kolkata, and directed by Abhishek Sinha, #UncelebrateWomensDay aims to mobilise women to join the cause.

Catch the full story here.
The Bombay high court has dismissed Reliance Communications Ltds (RCom) plea against an arbitration court order that barred the telecom operator from selling or transferring its assets without the tribunals permission.

The company intends to file an appeal against the interim order of the court, an RCom spokesman said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The court threw out three appeals from Rcom and its two companies, the Economic Times reported earlier.

Debt-laden Rcom had appealed against the interim order in a case filed by Ericsson seeking payment of unpaid dues.

The claims of secured financial lenders stand higher in priority as compared to Ericsson, which is an unsecured operational vendor. Further, the sale of assets is being undertaken in pursuance of the decisions of the secured financial lenders, the spokesman said.
Indian airlines Jet Airways, SpiceJet Ltd and AirAsia India are planning to add new jets to their fleets as they look to expand in the worlds fastest-growing aviation market, the carriers said on Thursday.

Domestic Indian passenger traffic increased by 17.9% in January from a year earlier, marking the 41st consecutive month of double-digit growth, the International Air Transport Association said in a monthly update released on Thursday.

Civil aviation secretary Rajiv Nayan Choubey said as long as oil prices remained below $80 per barrel, he expected the Indian aviation market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15% for the next 20 years or so.

We are committed to ensure that new airports are built, better air space management services are provided, so that there is no congestion in the skies, Choubey said at the Wings India air show.

Indian airlines are scrambling to add more jets to meet demand for more domestic and international flights, making it one of the most targeted sales markets for jet manufacturers Airbus SE and Boeing Co.

The growth of the domestic Indian (aviation) market is the highest in the world, Boeing senior vice-president Asia Pacific and India sales Dinesh Keskar said. Every segment of traffic in and out of India is going to grow for the next 20 years.

Boeing said in July it expected Indian airlines to order up to 2,100 new aircraft worth $290 billion over the next 20 years, calling it the highest-ever forecast for Asias third-largest economy.

Jet Airways hopes to close a deal to buy another 75 narrowbody jets by the end of March, its CEO Vinay Dube told reporters on the sidelines of the airshow.

The airline last year finalised a deal to buy a separate 75 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and said it was in serious talks for 75 more.

Dube said it would finalise the deal with one of the plane manufacturers, alluding to Boeing or Airbus.

AirAsia India is looking to expand its fleet to 60 jets from the current 14 over the next five years, a spokeswoman said. The airlines parent, AirAsia Bhd, said in January it was considering an IPO of the Indian arm.

Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet said in July it had signed a provisional deal to buy 40 Boeing 737 MAX 10 jets.
The Uttarakhand government is looking for land in Dehradun to set up a new helipad to cater to the VIPs. The move comes days after the army establishment allegedly obstructed the landing of a helicopter carrying chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat at the cantonment area helipad.

A committee has been constituted to explore the feasibility of a helipad near residences of the chief minister and the governor, said principal secretary, home, Anand Vardhan. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by him to review the security of VIPs including the CM, the governor and that of the secretariat here on Wednesday.

The government had earlier alleged that the army establishment had obstructed the landing of the CMs helicopter at cantonment helipad on February 18. It had also accused the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Uttarakhand sub area, of misbehaving with the CMs security staff and jeopardizing his security. A miffed Rawat, his personal staff said, even lodged a complaint against the GOC with the army brass.

According to reports, the army raised objections as the frequent use of its helipad by VIPs was hampering the defence forces routine activities. As the controversy left both sides red-faced, chief secretary Utpal Singh and army officials held a meeting to resolve the issue. While the minutes of the meeting were not available, officials said that the armys view seems to have prevailed.

It is clear from the fact that the CM now uses the helipad on the premises of the Oil and Natural Gas Cooperation (ONGC), instead of the army helipad that is closer to the his official residence in the cantonment area.

An official familiar with the development said a portion of the land belonging to the horticulture department could be identified for setting up the proposed helipad. It would be an ideal location considering that the area, besides being spacious, is also adjacent to residences of the chief minister and the governor, the official said.

Vardhan said helipad was one of several issues concerning the CM and the governors security that were reviewed at the meeting. Issues relating to security of the fleet of CMs official cars and the security staff etc were discussed at the meeting, he added. A proposal for setting up night vision cameras at the official residences of the CM and the governor was also discussed.

Officials of more than a dozen departments, including the department of civil aviation, attended the review meeting, which was called in the wake of an internal review, which revealed gaping holes in the security at the CMs official residence. Some 50% of the total 30 CCTV cameras put up at the residence spread over a 4.75 hectares area were found dysfunctional.
A man from Haldwani in Uttarakhand allegedly committed suicide after his village was not included in the municipal area, and he was not given voting right in panchayat elections.

Haldwani additional superintendent of police Amit Srivastav said Kishen Kumar, a taxi driver from Jeetpur Negi, committed suicide on Wednesday night, and the matter is under investigation.

A transporter from Haldwani had committed suicide by consuming poison during the janata darbar of agriculture minister Subodh Uniyal in Dehradun on January 8, citing financial woes triggered by demonetisation and goods and services tax (GST).

Kishen Kumar, who consumed poison, was not given voting right in panchayat elections as he had been living on a land belonging to the forest department, police said. His village was also not included in the Haldwani municipality area in a fresh delimitation of wards.

There had been rumours that the plot, on which Kishen built his small house, would be acquired for building an inter-state bus terminus in Haldwani. Police said Kishen had told the villagers that he would kill his family if they were not given voting rights and their land was acquired for building of ISBT.

Haldwani block pramukh Bhola Bhatt, who belongs to the Congress, said, People like Kishen should be given voting rights in panchayat elections as the people of Bindukhatta, who are living on forestland, already have such rights.

Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat was told about the suicide when he visited Haldwani on Thursday to take part in a Womens Day programme, but he did not comment on the matter.
Delhi power minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said that the national capital is expected to witness highest ever peak electricity demand of 7,000 megawatt (MW) this summer, and the power department has made arrangement to deal with this.

Announcing the action plan for electricity supply in Delhi, Jain said that this summer, the government was aiming at zero percent power cuts.

Steps such as replacing old transformers with new ones, and repair of machinery engaged in the distribution system, have been taken to avoid power outages.

Last year, Delhi recorded lowest percentage of power cuts  0.06% with respect to total energy consumption.

We have enough back-end arrangements to meet the power demand that is expected to reach up to a historic 7,000 MW level in June this year. Besides, we have additional capacity to provide 700-800 MW extra power in case of emergency, Jain said at a press conference.

The peak power demand had breached the 6,000 MW-mark last year settling at 6,526 MW in June.

As per the projections, the power demand for summer months in Delhi is expected to remain 6,000 MW in April, 6,450 in May, 7,000 MW in June, 6,500 MW in July, 6,400 MW in August, and 6,000 MW in September.

Other steps include running the closed Badarpur thermal power plant for three months after March.

The three power distribution companiesBSES Rajdhani Power Limited (BRPL), BSES Yamuna. Power Limited (BYPL) and Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) are responsible for power distribution in Delhi.

Jain said that the government was also exploring the options of green power to ensure enough supply for the city and has purchased 1,000 MW green power that will be available within next one year. The government has purchased 750 MW of solar power at the rate of Rs 2.44 per unit, and wind power at the rate of Rs 2.50, he said.

Jain reiterated his governments stand that the power tariff should not be hiked for next ten years.

We will send the proposal for imposing fine for unscheduled outages to the lieutenant governor for his approval, the minister said.
Delhi University has given in principle approval to names of experts sent by Delhi government for constituting governing bodies (GB) in 28 colleges funded by it, ending an over year-long tussle between the university and the state government.

The names were approved during an emergency meeting of the university executive council on Thursday morning.

Twelve out of the 28 colleges are fully funded by the government.

Trouble started in September last year when the government withheld funds from the colleges after July as the colleges had no GBs for over ten months at that time. GBs play an important role in functioning of a college, including in the appointment process.

Since then the government has released funds for two months as an interim measure, however, some colleges said they do not have funds to pay salaries for month of February while others said they have managed to pay salaries this month but wont be able to do it for March.

The executive council (EC) appointed committee gave in-principle clearance to the names sent by Delhi government. We hope now the government will release funds so that colleges can function without problems, said AK Bhagi, an EC member.

Another EC member said five names were not approved as they did not fulfil the requirement of the university. Another 25-30 names did not have complete details of their addresses and affiliations so the government has been asked to provide the details, said Rajesh Jha, an EC member.

Jha said after the government furnishes all details, the names will be sent to the respective colleges. We demand to complete the whole process swiftly so that the hardships faced by the employees could be mitigated and normalcy to the college governance could be restored, he said.

Officials said that GB of each college consists of a total of 15 members and one non-teaching staff member. Out of the total, five are recommended by government and five by the university, officials said.
Several areas in Delhi are likely to see heavy congestion between Friday and Monday, the Delhi Traffic Police has said, asking people  particularly students who need to take their board examinations  to prepare accordingly.

The worst-hit are likely to be the central Delhi area and stretches connecting it to the airport, which will be among 40 roads where intermittent restrictions will be made for VVIPs coming to attend the International Solar Alliance Summit, in addition to the rush expected at India Gate for Odisha Parba.

A large gathering is expected at India Gate memorial between Friday and Sunday and it could result in heavy congestion of vehicles in the region, Dependra Pathak, the Delhi Traffic Police chief, said on Thursday.

Garima Bhatnagar, joint commissioner of police (traffic), said 40 routes in central Delhi that will be affected include the India Gate C-Hexagon, Shanti Path, Teen Murti Marg, Akbar Road, Sardar Patel Marg, Janpath and Ashoka Road.

In south Delhi, the stretch from RTR flyover to Dhaula Kuan, Thimayya Marg, Parade Road and Terminal -3 road will be restricted for limited periods for the movement of dignitaries to and from the airport. These restrictions will mainly be in effect on Friday and Monday, the arrival and departure days for most VVIPs.

Police said the exact timings of the restrictions would depend on when the dignitaries arrive and on their choice of travelling between the solar summit venue and their hotels.

Pathak said arrangements have been made to ensure restrictions do not last more than five minutes at a time. To ensure minimum inconvenience and maximum facilitation of traffic, we will make optimum use of our staff, seek help from Google and inform commuters about restrictions through social media and radio advertisements, he added.

The officer said motorists must look up Google Maps, which will not suggest restricted stretches for navigation. Students who have to appear for board exams in the affected areas must plan well in advance and leave for the venue with extra time in hand, he said.


Dr Puneeta Mahajan works hard to provide better maternal and child care in Delhi

Dr Puneeta Mahajans mantra of hard work with sincerity and compassion has held her in good stead both at home and work. These are the values that I was brought up with. I try to serve patients with a smile, even when the hospital is crowded, says Dr Mahajan, medical director, Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital. Choosing to study biology decided that she would go on to become a doctor. Dr Mahajan vividly remembers the day she cleared MBBS entrance exam. She was at her home with her father, while her mother took the day off from work and drove across the city in heavy rains to go to Delhi University to check the list. My mother drove through waterlogged streets; there was water inside the car when she came back. That left a mark on me, said Mahajan. She did her MBBS from Lady Hardinge Medical College and her postgraduation from Safdarjung Hospital.

Her husband, who is an anaesthetist at private hospital, and his family are equally supportive.

The two changes that she would like to see in Delhi are fewer pregnancy complications and childbirth deaths, and safety of women everywhere.

While she can do little to reduce the number of minors coming to her hospital with tell-tale signs of rape, she is working to provide better maternal and child care.

The hospital has one of the best labour rooms in a public hospital where mothers are offered a calm environment with cheerful paintings and soothing music.

At workplace, Dr Mahajan feels no different from her male colleagues and has never faced insubordination. Initially, there might have been negative currents, but that did not obstruct my work, she said.

She also motivated her team to provide better services and getting an NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers) accreditation  a certification for quality services given to hospitals. This is Delhi governments only accredited 500-bed hospital, she said with pride. Dr Mahajan wants to give back to the people of Delhi after she retires in three years.

How DCP Aslam Khan cracked a gang-rape case five years after Nirbhaya

When Aslam Khan took over as the deputy commissioner of police, Delhis north-west district last November, she was taken aback on being addressed as sir. Khans unusual name, her demeanour and the muscle memory of the officers drew the unusual prefix.

It was the first time in nearly six years that the district was being helmed by a woman officer and Khan came in with the reputation of a strict and upright officer.

She had barely settled into the job  mostly marked for male IPS officers  when she found herself handling a crime that has been a constant nightmare for the police. On the fifth anniversary of the Nirbhaya gang-rape case, a 16-year-old girl was gang-raped by three men in a park in her district.

We seemed lucky early on into the probe. One of the 2,000 suspects claimed he was around when his friends raped the child. But I realised he was only trying to frame his enemies. I refused to arrest him and continued the hunt, recounts Khan.

Police nabbed the three suspects 20 days later, but it won Khan the respect and loyalty of her officers.

Born in a family of farmers in a village in Rajasthan, it was a unique situation that got the officer christened as Aslam  a name usually reserved for men. My parents were expecting a boy and they had even decided the name. So they went ahead with the same when I was born, recounts Khan. Khans father ensured she received the best possible education; she topped the political science stream in her graduation.

Be it getting a scooty or more pocket money, Khan did not lose out to her two younger brothers. When she landed in Delhi to prepare for civil services, she befriended Pankaj Singh, current DCP of Delhi Metro. Khan cracked the UPSC exam in 2007 and Singh a year later, before the two got married.

Along with the job came the usual sexist barbs. She remembers being constantly told to prove herself harder than her male colleagues. Bureaucracy reinforces the Indian traditional system that discriminates against women and people belonging to lower castes, says Khan.

I have nothing at stake. I do not fear getting transferred. I stand by what is right, says Khan about what drives her. She will not take her job and associated privileges for granted. I drive a secondhand Maruti Ritz during my visits to my hometown and travel in auto-rickshaws, says Khan.

When she leaves the police force, Khan plans to start an orphanage for girls. I will give financial freedom and freedom of choice to those girls, says Khan.

Varsha Joshi reveals why she stands out in the male dominated sectors of power and transport

As the head of Delhis transport and power departments, Varsha Joshi is at the forefront of the Capitals fight against pollution. Under her tenure, the Delhi government brought out the citys solar policy, and soon a unified parking policy for the Capital will be out, apart from a separate set of rules for taxis and junk vehicles.

She has been a green energy warrior since her days in the ministry for new and renewable energy (MNRE). She broke several barriers to introduce Indias first wind prediction system in Tamil Nadu and set the ball rolling for bidding in the wind industry.

A 1995 batch IAS officer, Joshi started her career as an SDM in Delhi. A single mother, she finished her Masters in Physics from DUs Hindu College and ranked 10th in UPSC-CSE exam.

Joshi says that deep domain knowledge and trust of her colleagues are what makes her stand out in two of the extremely male dominated sectors of power and transport.

Everyone assumes they know more than you. And then, they try to talk you down. We should know that it becomes a male thing because there just happen to be more men in the sector. There is no other reason, she says.

But, she asserts, having domain knowledge is a must. You cant shoot in the dark. You have to understand the core principles. You have to make it clear that you know what you are talking about. At the same time, you should know when the other person is talking bullshit.

Apart from MNRE, Joshi also fondly remembers her stint at the Census of India. I was part of the core team for digitisation of census data. It was like creating history of sorts because of the sheer volume of data. But, thats the beauty of India and I am proud of it, she said.

Joshi have always found space for what she loves doing since her childhood. When I was 4 or 5, I was fascinated by the designs of offices and houses. I used to make offices and houses while my friends played, she says.

Putting her life philosophy in context, she shares an incident from her days in SDM office. During a dowry related inquest, I found that it was a suicide and did not register a case. However, the victims relatives tried to pressure me and when I didnt relent, I was transferred. My successor filed a case but the court threw it out. I was vindicated. I dont fight battles I cant win, she says.

How Swapna Liddle rose through the ranks to head INTACH

Her father was an Indian Police Service officer and mother was a trained teacher, who always wanted her daughter to become a bureaucrat. However, the daughter aspired to become a history teacher.

Pressing family issues compelled Swapna Liddle to shelve her plan. Nevertheless, she took to her childhood passion albeit in a different manner.

Heritage walks are another way of teaching history beyond textbooks and conventional settings like closed classrooms, says Liddle, convener of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) Delhi chapter.

Though she has been associated with INTACH since 2006, she was leading walks for the Trust, but joined it formally after four years.

Within six years of her joining, she rose through the ranks and became the second woman convener in October 2016 after Malvika Singh. It was after the gap of 29 years when a woman was nominated to lead the prestigious institution.

So far, Liddle has organised around 150 walks covering almost all major heritage sites.

Liddle is one among few women city historians, who has been spearheading heritage awareness and conservation of historic structures in the national capital for more than a decade.

Apart from editing others work, she has authored two books  Delhi; 14 Historic Walks and Chandni Chowk: The Mughal City of Old Delhi. Her new book on New Delhi will be released soon.

Liddle has also been instrumental to make legal interventions in the form of public interest litigations or campaigns to protect heritage structures, which are on the verge of extinction. In her legal fight for conservation, she is supported by her lawyer husband.

She considered herself fortunate to get the support of family, friends and colleagues in her journey to pursue her passion. I have been very lucky. I got good education. I have supportive parents and husband. I was never discriminated or faced gender issues in my working sphere or at workplace. They have all been very friendly, she adds.

Rama, the first woman principal of Hansraj College

Thirty-four years before she was chosen to run Hansraj College, 16-year-old Rama convinced her father in 1981 to allow her to continue with her studies by promising that she will finance her own education.

Rama was the second of the five children born to a home-maker mother and a military officer father.

Rama, the acting principal of the college since 2015, is the first woman to be holding the position since the college was established in 1948. When Rama took admission in Delhi University for pursuing an undergraduate course in Hindi, she started taking part in debate competition, eyeing on the cash prize and also due to her love for a good argument.

I won 850 prizes in debate, extra-curricular activities and poetry competitions in five years of doing undergraduate and postgraduate at DU, says Rama, who does not use her last name.

Rama, who studied journalism after college, worked in different media houses before taking up a job as a teacher in a school. I later joined Hansraj in 1991 and was appointed as the officiating principal in 2015, she says.

But when Rama was offered the position, she wasnt sure whether she will be able to do it. However, she overcame her doubts and took up the role, she says.

The biggest challenge was to maintain discipline in the college, whose proximity to Kamla Nagar market, had resulted into frequent bunking by students.

Also, the college used to have frequent protest by different students political groups.

My first few months were spent in ensuring that students attended their classes. I took rounds of classes every day. There used to be sloganeering by political groups but I started talking to them and that helped in resolving issues faster, she says.

As the administrative head, Rama had her fair share of people trying to pull her down. The male teachers in the college were used to saying sir it took them a while to say yes maam, she says.

According to Rama, it is not easy for people to accept women in position of power because they are not used to it. But the key is hard work and ignoring the detractors, she says.

(Anonna Dutt, Shiv Sunny, Sweta Goswami, Parvez Sultan, Heena Kausar)
The Delhi airport hopes to start partial operations of IndiGo and Spicejet airlines from Terminal 2 by March end.

I Prabhakara Rao, CEO of Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), said they had received requests from both the airlines and within a week would decide what flights move to Terminal 2.

T2 was ready for operations from January 2017 but because airlines delayed their shifting from T1, operations could not be started.

In October, GoAir shifted to T2 but IndiGo approached the Supreme Court against the move. Now after the courts order, both IndiGo and Spicejet will have to shift to Terminal 2.

Though DIAL said it is yet to finalise the cities to which IndiGo and Spicejet flights will operate from T2, sources said that some of the routes proposed by IndiGo includes Amritsar, Vishakhapatnam, Bagdogra and Baroda.

Spicejet has suggested seven cities that include Patna, Goa, Ahmedabad and Kochi.

While IndiGos spokesperson said they were in consultation with DIAL, Spicejet refused to comment on the matter.

They (airlines) have given us some sectors and we are discussing it. We are hopeful that by the end of this month, operations of flights will start from T2, Rao said.

Rao said the capacity of T1 will be reduced so that they can expand the terminal. No compromise will be made with passenger comfort during the expansion work that will start by September this year, Rao added.

With 63.5 million passengers flying through the Delhi airport in 2017, it has surpassed Changi, Incheon and Bangkok airports in terms of passenger growth. It is now the seventh busiest airport in Asia and among the top 20 busiest airports across the world.

T1 handled 24 million passengers in 2016-17, of which 3.6 million used Go Air; 16.1 million used IndiGo and 4.5 million used Spicejet. DIAL needs to shift 8 million passengers in order to start expansion work of T1.

That is why we are insisting that at least one third of the total passengers of these airlines must shift to T2. They can choose the sectors but it cannot exceed beyond 10. Once we finalise the sectors, the signage will be changed at T2 and passengers will be informed accordingly, an airport source said.
Residents of a few South Delhi colonies should brace for water shortage in the next couple of days.

Delhi Jal Board repair work will affect parts of Delhi Cantonment, New Delhi Municipal Council areas, RK Puram, Moti Bagh, Nanak Pura, Vasant Vihar, Vasant Enclave, Shanti Niketan, Westend Colony, AIIMS, Safdarjang Hospital and adjoining areas serviced by the Palam reservoir.

Due to interconnection work at the 1,000mm Palam main water line near Army Medical College in Delhi Cantonment, water supply will not be available or will be available at low pressure on Friday evening and Saturday morning in these areas. Residents are advised to store adequate water for their use, a DJB release stated.

Water tankers will be provided on request by calling 1916, 23527679, 23538495 (Central Control Room), 26100644, 26193218 (RK Puram water emergency), 29234746, 29234747 (Greater Kailash water emergency), 26137216 (Vasant Kunj water emergency), 23533083, 9650291494 (nodal officer: executive engineer (Proj.)-W-VIII), 27552447, 9650291252 (nodal officer: executive engineer (E&M)-HP-II).

For more than a month, the DJB has been facing problems in treating water as the three plants at Wazirabad, Chandrawal and Haidarpur have not been running at full capacity since January 30 due to high levels of ammonia in the Yamuna.



The National Green Tribunal had last month directed the Delhi and Haryana governments to hold a meeting to resolve the issue of high ammonia content in the water provided to the city.

Of the 900 MGD of water distributed in Delhi, nearly 60% comes from Haryana through the Yamuna. The toxic water not only is unfit to be treated for drinking, it also poisons the groundwater and any fruit and vegetable that grows on its floodplain, experts say.

After directions from the NGT, the Central Pollution Control Board submitted its analysis of ammonia at Tajewala in Haryana, Wazirabad water treatment plant, Okhla and at ITO barrage in Delhi.

The analysis showed the level of ammonia in Yamuna exceeded the safe limit in 13 of 17 places between Haryana and Delhi and that most of the ammonia was coming from drains in Delhi. At Delhi Gate, Najafgarh and Sonia Vihar, the ammonia level was at least 35-45 times higher than what the DJB is equipped to treat, the report said.
Their faces and bodies may bear the ugly scars of acid attack, but their determination to overcome the stigma and have a dignified existence has not been dented.

Several women acid attack survivors tried to spread this message as they walked the ramp at a fashion show here yesterday to sensitise people to stop such crimes and launch a campaign against illegal sale of acid.

Some of the contestants at the fashion show. (HT)

Laxmi Agarwal, an acid attack survivor and a TV host who speaks for the rights of women who have gone through a similar ordeal, said her scars are a reminder of the narrow- minded approach of the society, but her grit and determination to live keeps motivating her everyday.

A scene from the make up room. (HT)

As an acid attack survivor, it was and it is a challenge to start everything from zero. Its difficult to concentrate on anything when a part of your body is still burning from inside, said Agarwal, who was a guest at the fashion show held at the Vivianna Mall on the eve of the Womens Day.

Nevertheless, she felt there was hope to create a safer society that gives equal opportunities to everyone.

We are proud to be women and no one can rob us of that title, which stands for love and peace, she said.

A man had hurled acid on Agarwal in 2005, when she was 15 years old, after she spurned his advances.

Later, she launched a campaign against acid attacks and to curb the illegal sale of acid.

Some of the other acid attack survivors also narrated the sufferings that they underwent, but all of them expressed their resolve to fight for justice and create a safer society for women.

An official of the mall said the objective of the event was to create awareness about the safety of women and create pathways for them towards success. The mall was also open to creating job opportunities for the acid attack survivors, the official said.

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The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) has come under fire for booking a disputed venue  a banquet hall constructed by a tent house on the Huda Gymkhana Club ground in Sector 29  for holding the farewell function of outgoing MCG commissioner V Umashankar on Thursday.

Umashankar had the dual charge of MCG commissioner and chief executive officer, Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority. Yashpal Yadav replaced Umashankar as MCG commissioner this week.

Top officials, including D Suresh, deputy commissioner Vinay Pratap, police commissioner Sandeep Khirwar, Huda administrator Chander Shekhar Khare, MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav, a few councillors and several MCG officials, were present at the event on Thursday.

On the orders of D Suresh, divisional commissioner, Gurgaon, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) had cancelled the contract of Billu Tent House on October 22, last year and had also ordered demolition of the structure after members of the club had objected to it.

Later, the Billu Tent House moved the local court against Huda. The owners lost the case and obtained a stay on Hudas demolition notice from the Punjab and Haryana high court on February 5, 2018. The matter is being heard by the high court, and is, hence, sub judice.

I will not comment on this matter as we had thought that venue was the Gymkhana Club hall, a senior MCG official said, adding that the booking of the banquet hall of Billu Tent House has become a matter of embarrassment for most officials.

The cancellation order by D Suresh had come on the complaint lodged by Gymkhana Club members. The members said the Huda had signed an agreement with Billu Tent House in April 2017, allowing the owner to erect a banquet hall in the two-acre open ground adjoining the club. The agreement was signed for nine years and Huda had not floated an open tender to invite open bids.

Abhay Jain, a member of the Gymkhana Club who is a complainant in the matter, said, State vigilance is inquiring into allotment of the club ground to the Billu Tent House after club members lodged complaints in October and D Suresh ordered to demolish the banquet hall. We have accused the Huda officials of corruption in the allotment of club ground to Billu Tent House. After we exposed the officials, the executive committee of the Huda cancelled the tender and sent a notice to Billu Tent House to vacate the ground.

The Billu Tent House has been hand in gloves with MCG officials and the farewell party organised by the MCG at the disputed banquet hall is unfortunate. We will write to CM Manohar Lal Khattar in this regard, Jain said.

D Suresh said, We all were there to grace an august occasion but it would not affect our efforts to remove the banquet hall in any way.

Yashpal Yadav said, Gymkhana club is a government property and there was no harm in arranging a farewell there.

The owners of Billu tent house refused comment on the matter.
Rotting and overflowing garbage from the municipal dustbins placed outside a neighbourhood park has residents of New Colony, Model Town, Madanpuri and others worried about their health and the condition of the once green and clean park.

This is the Guru Govind Singh Park. It used to be lush green till about a decade ago. Then the MCG left it to rot. The park has now turned into a garbage dump. About three years ago, the MCG itself put dustbins here. Local hotels, eating joints and commercial establishments throw their garbage in these dustbins from where it is not even collected; they are overflowing, said Hemant Kumar, a resident of New Colony.

Kumar added, We have informed the MCG about the unattended garbage through emails with photographs, but nothing has happened. This is a big health hazard and adversely affects the environment.

The residents said they have often uploaded photographs of the garbage outside the park on official Twitter handles and Facebook pages, which according to government claims were to become the fastest way of addressing and redressing civic issues, but to no avail.

We have tweeted the photographs to official Twitter handles @MunCorpGurugram, @cmohryseveral times but nothing has happened till date. We have now appealed to our councillor Seema Pahuja to take up the issue, Kumar said.

Three months ago, the MCG signed agreement with a private company Ecogreen for door-to-door waste collection, segregation and disposal at Bandhwari. This initiative and the Swachhta app were started ahead of the Clean India survey to improve citys sanitation quotient.

This defeats the purpose of the Swachh Bharat mission. We are shocked by how the MCG has turned a blind eye to this nuisance despite our complaints, another resident Harjinder Singh said, adding that open garbage dumping continues even though the MCG appointed Ecogreen to collect waste from homes.

We do not require to throw our waste in a dustbin placed in the park, where cows can be seen eating the restaurant waste and scatter it further, Singh added.

Talking about the garbage menace, Pahuja said, I have taken up the matter with MCG commissioner and put in up for discussion in the House meetings also. I will again take it up.

Ward 16 councillor Madhu Batra said that she too has raised this issue in the MCG House meeting. We will take to the streets if the issue is not fixed by March 15. This is a big nuisance and I continue to receive complaints of foul smell and insects from residents, Batra said.

MCG additional commissioner Dr Narhari Bangar said, I will seek a report and fix the problem at the earliest.

This is not the first time that repeated complaints by residents to act against unattended garbage have been ignored by the authorities. Turning vacant plots and parks into garbage dumps is a big problem in Gurgaon. New Colony and Sector 23 are among the many places where this nuisance is worrying residents, Sector 23-A resident Bhawani Shankar Tripathy said.
In a move to do away with impersonators hampering the functioning of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), commissioner Yashpal Yadav on Thursday said the civic body will introduce a biometric attendance system for its staff from April 1.

The move will eliminate ghost positions or impersonators and the decision in this regard was taken during the MCG House meeting at John Hall, Civil Lines, on Wednesday.

From April 1, the MCG staff will be marking their attendance on the biometric system. The move will ensure that the day-to-day functioning of the MCG is not carried out by impersonators and there will be complete transparency, Yadav said.

On several occasions over the past year, MCG had discovered that staff members, as well as impersonators, were flouting norms and carrying out illegal operations.

In August 2017, Haryana urban local bodies (ULB) minister Kavita Jain had sought a report from then MCG commissioner V Umashankar over discrepancies in the property tax collection.

A total of 200 commercial properties were taxed as residential properties and this caused a loss of crores to the MCG, as commercial properties have a higher tax slab than residential ones.

It was discovered that these properties were approved as residential properties by forging the signatures of MCG commissioner, joint commissioners and zonal taxation officers.

In December 2017, certain MCG staff, along with a few outsiders, had floated a website wherein taxpayers were offered a rebate in their tax dues. No such website was ever authorised by the MCG, officials said.

Yadav, on assuming office as MCG commissioner on Monday, had directed the MCG staff to be present in their offices by 9 am and allot an hour every day  between 11am and noon for hearing grievances of the public.

In a reply to a query filed by RS Rathee, independent councillor of ward 34, in the House meeting on January 17, the MCG had replied that it had spent 215.46 crore on salaries between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2017.

In the same House meeting, Rathee had also raised the issue of the MCG outsourcing 1,700 posts, many of which could be a proxy and part of a bigger scam.

YS Gupta, additional commissioner of MCG, disclosed during the House meeting on Wednesday that the civic body has 635 sanctioned posts, of which only 183 positions are occupied by MCG staff members  the remaining have either been outsourced or filled with employees on deputation from the urban local bodies and other state departments.

On January 5, J Ganeshan, the Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) chief administrator, had also directed authority officials in Gurgaon to restrict entry of visitors by installing a biometric attendance system at its Sector 14 office for its employees. Incidentally, Yadav was the Huda administrator at that time, but the authority is yet to install the facility.
The residents of South City 2 met Yashpal Yadav, the new commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), on Tuesday and gave a representation demanding transfer of their colony to the municipal corporation as early as possible for better maintenance of civic amenities.

We have given a letter signed by more than 1,500 residents demanding urgent transfer of the colony to the MCG. We hope the MCG commissioner would expedite the process, said Neeraj Yadav, president of the residents welfare association (RWA) South City 2.

The residents updated the MCG commissioner of the dismal state of roads, sewers, drains, and water supply, among other problems they face since the developer has failed to maintain the civic amenities.

We have tried our best to put facts before the government through the MCG that more than 2,500 families are suffering just because of the delay in transfer of the colony from Unitech to the municipal corporation. Roads are full of potholes, drains are choked with waste and streetlights dont function resulting in darkness on many streets, said BS Chauhan, a resident.

The residents also raised issues such as mushrooming slums on vacant land inside and outside the colony unchecked by the administration.

The process of transfer of privately developed colonies from cash-strapped Huda to the MCG started last year. In April 2017, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced the transfer of private colonies to the MCG, which later hired private consultants to prepare a detailed project report (DPR). Till date, DPRs of DLF I-3, Sushant Lok-1, Palam Vihar, Suncity and South City 1 and 2 have been prepared, but none of these colonies have been transferred as yet.

The process is very slow and that worries us. Itll be time for the Monsoons in another few months, and the fear of waterlogging and accidents because of potholes, overflowing sewers and open drains is already worrying us, another resident Shailesh Giri said, adding that the MCG should expedite the transfer process and complete it before the rainy season.

Yashpal Yadav said, I have spoken with my staff in this regard and will update the government.

On Sunday, residents of Sushant Lok-1 protested demanding that the long-pending takeover of their colony to the MCG. The residents took out a protest rally from Vyapar Kendra to the Huda City Centre Metro station.
Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) commissioner Yashpal Yadav met officials of Ecogreen, the concessionaire for the Bandhwari waste plant and door-to-door waste collection service, on Thursday.

Ecogreens functioning had come under criticism from councillors during the MCGs House meeting on Wednesday. Councillors said that even though the concessionaire had officially started the service, there was little to show on the ground.

Yadav directed Ecogreen officials to extend the door-to-door waste collection project to all wards at the earliest and address residents complaints. The commissioner also directed Ecogreen to allot a deadline for each task and inform residents about the same to create transparency.

Ecogreen CEO Ankit Aggarwal said, Ecogreen has launched door-to-door collection of waste in 26 wards of Gurgaon, and by March 31 all wards will boast of this facility. The company has also started a call centre where residents can lodge complaints related to waste collection.

During the House meeting held on Wednesday, councillors had questioned officials about the door-to-door waste collection service, which was supposed to have been expended to all parts of the city by February, and sought an explanation for the delay.

Additionally, mayor Madhu Azad informed the House that the waste collection service was so far only in 26 of the 35 wards and even in the wards where it was available, residents complained of poor collection and disposal. She asked for an explanation from the MCG officials.

On Wednesday, Yadav had assured councillors that the matter will be brought to the concessionaires notice during Thursdays meeting.

RS Rathee, the councillor of Ward 34, had also sought details of stamp duty paid by Ecogreen to the MCG. On August 14, 2017, a pact was inked by Haryana Urban Local Bodies, the MCG, the Municipal Corporation of Faridabad and Ecogreen for first integrated solid waste management project.

The agreement listed construction of a waste-to-energy plant at Bandhwari, door-to-door collection of waste and establishing a call centre for addressing issues related to waste collections.
Actor Brad Pitt is happier and healthier since his split from wife and actor-filmmaker Angelina Jolie. Following a rare sighting at the pre-Oscar event last week, a source told eonline.com that the father of six is finally coming to terms with the break-up.

The separation was brutal and a very sad time in his life, the source said.

(Brad) made some important changes and is much better off now. He is happier and healthier. He has an active social life and has rekindled old friendships. He goes out to dinner a lot and enjoys being out doing different things.

The 54-year-old actor has been keeping busy of late. He has signed on to join actor Leonardo DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantinos upcoming film.

The source said (Brad) spent a lot of time alone and in private looking at himself and re-evaluating what was most important and who he wanted to be. Now hes in a place where hes implemented those changes and has a lot more clarity. Hes come out of that dark time and is in a much better place.

Jolie had filed for divorce from Pitt in September 2016 after two years of marriage and a 12-year relationship.

Actor Brad Pitt arrives at the premiere of the film Allied in Madrid.

The pair got involved in a custody battle over their children, Maddox, 16, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 11, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 9, before reaching a temporary agreement.

According to court documents obtained by eonline.com in 2016, the former couples six children were to remain in Jolies custody. Pitt would continue to have therapeutic visitation with his children, as well as to attend weekly individual therapy sessions. He was also ordered to attend group therapy and submit to random drug tests.

The temporary custody agreement came after the FBI officially closed its investigation into Pitts actions on a private plane that involved an alleged altercation between him and his son Maddox.

(Angelina and Brad) are still working out the divorce and the custody details, said the source.

Brad isnt happy about the custody arrangement. He wants to see his kids more and struggles with not being able to. Overall, he is doing well though.

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Veteran actor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said the shooting of the next installment in the Terminator franchise will start in June. The 70-year-old actor said he is looking forward to reprise his role of cyborg T-800 in the Tim Miller-directed film, which also see Linda Hamilton return as Sarah Connor.

We are starting to shoot Terminator 6 in June to the middle of October, so I am in that, Schwarzenegger told fan site TheArnoldFans.com.

I am looking forward to coming back as the T-800 model. Its gonna be great with Tim Miller as the director and Jim Cameron is kind of supervising the whole thing, he added.

The movie, which will be produced by Cameron, is scheduled to be released on July 26 next year.

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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the Aarushi and Hemraj double murder case by the Allahabad high court.

The Talwars daughter Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj were found murdered in their Noida flat in 2008.

The move comes almost a month after the law ministry advised the CBI to file the special leave petition.

The CBI is said to have said in the appeal that the high courts conclusion that there was no evidence to prove the couple guilty was wrong on many counts.

An appeal filed by Hemrajs wife Khumkala Bandaje against the HC verdict is already pending .

A Ghaziabad court had in November 2013 convicted the couple and handed them life imprisonment.

Last October, the Allahabad HC overturned the order, saying there was insufficient evidence against the couple. It had pulled up the CBI for its shoddy probe.

Aarushi was found murdered in her bedroom at their Jalvayu Vihar home in Noidas Sector 25 on May 16, 2008. Police had initially suspected Hemraj, but a day later his body was found on the terrace of the house.

Noida police accused the couple of killing their daughter in a fit of rage. On May 31, 2008, the CBI took over the investigation.

In June, the agency arrested Krishna, a compounder in the Talwars clinic. They also arrested Raj Kumar and Vijay Mandal  two other domestic helps -- but later freed them for lack of evidence.

In December 2010, the CBI filed a closure report before a Ghaziabad trial court. The dentist couple were not named as accused. But the report pointed to their possible involvement.

On February 9, 2011, a special judicial magistrate rejected the CBIs closure report. On November 26, 2013, the couple was convicted.
A bust of Dalit leader BR Ambedkar was defaced by unknown people late on Wednesday in north Chennai in Tamil Nadu, police said on Thursday, days after a statue of Dravidian icon EV Ramasamy or Periyar was vandalised after a senior BJP leaders inflammatory post on Facebook.

Police said Ambedkars bust was found splashed with red paint in the market area in Tiruvottiyur on Thursday morning by shopkeepers, who reached Gramam Street to open their shops.

A local police officer said they were checking footage from closed-circuit television or CCTV cameras positioned in the vicinity of the incident. We will nab the culprits once the identity is established, the officer said adding that it could be the handiwork of locals.

Security has been stepped up in the area, the police officer also said.

There has been a series of attacks on statues of political figures in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala after a Communist icon Vladimir Lenin statue in Tripura was toppled on Monday.

Another statue of Ambedkar was vandalised in a village in Uttar Pradeshs Meerut district on Tuesday night. A statue of Mahatma Gandhi was vandalised in north Keralas Kannur district on Wednesday by unidentified men who hurled stones and bottles damaging the spectacle and garland.

Tamil Nadu chief minister Edapaddi Palaniswami condemned the incident as well as the one in Vellore where Periyars statue was vandalised. He said comments such as that of Bharatiya Janata Party leader H Raja were uncalled for and unacceptable.

Raja has explained that it was posted by his admin and that it was since removed as also the admin removed from the job, Palaniswami said but added, Raja must apologise properly to the people of Tamil Nadu.

Political newcomer and superstar Rajinikanth, who kept silent so far, came out strongly against the statue desecration and condemned it as barbaric.

Raja posted, and removed later, remarks that Periyars statues in Tamil Nadu will fall next following Communist icon Vladimir Lenins in Tripura. He apologised for his comments, saying his social media team erroneously posted the remarks against Periyar and he had removed the people responsible for it.

But most political parties, barring the ruling AIADMK, dismissed his apology.

On Wednesday, at least eight Brahmins were assaulted by four people on motorcycles in the Triplicane and Mylapore neighbourhoods of Chennai and it was seen as a retaliatory move after Rajas post.

These men, allegedly members of the Dravidar Viduthalai Kazhagam, shouted Love live Periyar slogans and cut the sacred threads, or poonal, that the Brahmins wear across their shoulders.

The incidents in Tamil Nadu and Kerala have come hours after the Union ministry of home affairs sent out an advisory to the states asking them to prevent such incidents as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he disapproved of such incidents and spoke with Union home minister Rajnath Singh.

It issued a second advisory later on Wednesday, asking the states to promptly investigate all such attacks and to make district magistrates and senior superintendents of police personally responsible for law and order in the context of the attacks.

The Madras high court also directed the Tamil Nadu government to ensure law and order across the state after vandals desecrated the statue of rationalist leader Periyar on Tuesday evening.
BJP ministers Kamineni Srinivas Rao and P. Manikyala Rao tendered their resignations to Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday.

Medical and Health Minister Srinivas Rao and Endowments Minister Manikyala Rao met the Chief Minister in his chamber in the Assembly and handed the letters of resignation to him.

They thanked Naidu for the opportunity as the Chief Minister also appreciated their efficient working.

Later, Srinivas Rao said: I had the privilege of working with him for more than three-and-a-half years. I recently asked him about his opinion on my work. He gave me the certificate that I have no enemies, he said.

Manikyala Rao said he learned to operate a computer because of Naidus stress on use of technology in the administration.

Earlier, I knew only making and receiving calls. I was never used to texting. Now, I operate computer because of Naidus thrust on the use of technology..., he said.

Follow live updates here

The resignation came ahead of the presentation of the budget for 2018-19 in the Assembly by Finance Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu, a party official said.

Both BJP ministers had stayed away from the cabinet meeting here that was convened to formally approve the budget.

Thursdays development comes after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on Wednesday announced its decision to pull out of the Narendra Modi government in protest against refusal of the Centre to grant Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh, saying the Centre has done injustice to the state.

Naidu announced to the media that two TDP ministers -- P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju (Civil Aviation) and Y.S. Chowdary (Minister of State for Science and Technology) -- will tender their resignations on Thursday.
Two Telugu Desam Party (TDP ) ministers resigned from the central government a day after Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu indicated his party was considering a divorce with the National Democratic Alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This was preceded by the resignation of two BJP minister from the Andhra Cabinet after Naidu on Wednesday said the TDP would pull out from the NDA government over the centres refusal to give special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Politicians in the TDP say the party had weighed several options, such as pulling out of the NDA, MPs resigning and ministers quitting the government, and it was decided that the divorce should be a step-by-step process. If their demand is not met even after pulling out the ministers, the TDP will consider quitting the ruling coalition.

The BJP has rejected Naidus charge that the central government led by Narendra Modi neglected Andhra, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations but also went out of its way to help the state.

Follow the updates here:

6.53pm: Many aspects of bill were taken up but unfortunately, the emotional issue of special status has not been addressed in time: Chowdary.

6.50pm: On the possibility of BJP-YSRCP alliance, YS Chowdary says, That is between those two parties, we have nothing to say on that, you can ask them.

6.46pm: We will continue to be a part of the NDA but not take up any ministerial positions.I dont think there is anything wrong in that, says TDP MP Chowdary.

6.45pm: I dont think its fair on our part to expect PM to deal with these issues. Its for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed: YS Chowdary, TDP.

6.45pm: Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary address the press conference.

6.23pm: The two TDP MPs, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary, submit resignation after meeting the PM.

Aviation Minister and TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju's resignation letter to PM Narendra Modi pic.twitter.com/DXFbagSzWs  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

5.45pm: The two TDP MPs in the Union cabinet, AG Raju and YS Chowdhary arrive at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg to meet PM Narendra Modi.

5.20pm: TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju arrives at colleague YS Chowdarys residence. Both Union ministers will meet Prime Minister Modi at 6pm.

#Delhi: Aviation Minister & TDP MP AG Raju arrives at YS Chowdary's residence. Both the TDP ministers will meet PM Modi at 6 PM. pic.twitter.com/GqmpXLQeC3  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

5.15pm: AP CM Naidu explained to the Prime Minister about reasons leading to central ministers resignation and TDP withdrawing from the Union government, according to TDP sources.

5pm: The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet to meet PM Narendra Modi at 6 pm. They were directed on Wednesday by Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu to submit their resignations.

4.50pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu amid row over special status to Andhra Pradesh.

1.57pm: Chandrababu Naidu took a historical step. Why did our CM (Nitish Kumar) take a step back? Letter was written to him to create pressure over issue of special status to Bihar. This is much needed, especially with the kind of disparities here. CM should muster up at least 1% of Naidus courage, says RJDs Manoj Jha.

1:30pm: TDP MP and Union aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju says he and his colleague YS Chowdary have sought an appointment with PM Modi for handing over their resignations. Speaking about the demand for special status to Andhra, he says: When the state of Andhra Pradesh was made, the people did not want to be treated as a residue material. There were some assurances made. UPA govt made some commitments, now these commitments are the questions, ANI reports.

1:02pm: TDP MP CM Ramesh arrives at Parliament wearing a t-shirt with the six demands printed on it.

12:48pm: Rajya Sabha adjourned till 2pm.

12:20pm: YSR Congress chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy says his party will support whichever party promises the state special category status, IANS reports.

12:15pm: Lok Sabha adjourns for the day.

11:45am: Lok Sabha adjourned till noon amid uproar over various issues, including TDP parliamentarians demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh.

11:20am: TDP leader Jayadev Galla says, Other parties who are sympathetic to our cause have also started protesting on various issues but in support of us. Next step is coming out of the cabinet, after FM Jaitleys statement yesterday, according to ANI.

11:15am: What Arun Jaitley spoke yesterday is not good. You are holding hand of the North Eastern states but not Andhra Pradeshs. You are giving industrial incentives to them, not to Andhra Pradesh. Why this discrimination? the chief minister says.

11am: Andhra CM Naidu addresses assembly. Our ministers in central cabinet and BJP ministers in our cabinet have resigned. However, these ministers worked good in the state. They brought considerable reforms in their departments. I thank them for their services, ANI reports.

10:47am: TDP leader Srinivas says the partys central government ministers will resign today. No one from AP was willing to bifurcate, all resources related to generation of employment were in Hyderabad; bifurcation was not done in a scientific way and injustice done with the Andhra Pradesh, he tells ANI.

10:41am: TDP MPs protest inside Parliament premises over non-granting of special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Delhi: TDP MPs protest inside Parliament premises over special category status to Andhra Pradesh pic.twitter.com/tKNTOyPq9f  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

10:35am: Congress Renuka Chowdhury dismisses talk of crisis. What crisis? This is like match fixing. They are still pretending to withdraw (from the alliance). What would happen if two ministers resign? If you are serious do it seriously, she says, according to ANI.

10:28am: Union minister Ramdas Athawale says Andhra CM Naidu must think his decision through. Want to appeal to AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu that he must think over this decision once again for development of people of AP they should stay with NDA. Whenever you seek time from PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah they meet. If all states demand special status it would become very difficult for the government, he says according to ANI.

10:24am: TDP MPs YS Chowdary and Ashok Gajapathi Raju are expected to give a statement in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively today.

10:20am: Shiv Sena leader Manisha Kayande says the current TDP-BJP tussle is due to the BJPs overconfidence. Two ministers from TDP are about to resign, BJP shouldve thought about it. Former NDA leaders had kept the alliance together. Now its overconfident. 2019 will be challenging for BJP, ANI quotes her saying.

10:15am: When were asking for our right it cant be rejected. Alliance is still under negotiation. We dont want to make it a political fight between TDP-BJP, but a fight for the state, ANI quotes TDP MP Ram Mohan Naidu as saying.

10:08am: BJP ministers Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao resign from the Andhra Pradesh cabinet to CM Naidu in Amaravati. Srinivas was the minister for health and Rao was the endowments minister.

#AndhraPradesh : BJP Ministers in Andhra Pradesh cabinet submitted their resignation in the CM office in Amaravati. pic.twitter.com/0P33Y4S5Uu  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

10am: Shiv Sena says the developments in Andhra are as expected. Other parties have walked out of NDA too. Allies no longer have good relations with BJP. Gradually their grudges will spill out and eventually theyll walk out of alliance, ANI quotes Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut.

9:30am: BJP state legislator PVN Madhav says, Decided that our ministers will resign from TDP Cabinet. We will be going to the people and telling them all the things Centre has done for the state. Since independence till date, no state has received as many favours as that were given to Andhra Pradesh, according to ANI.

9:10am: TDPs YS Chowdary, junior minister for science and technology, says, It is not a good move but unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances were stepping down as ministers. Our President (Naidu) said that we will continue to be a partner of NDA. We are most likely to meet PM also, according to ANI.

8:37am: BJP ministers are expected to skip the Andhra cabinet meeting to be held by CM Chandrababu Naidu to approve state budget.

8:35am: Andhra assembly session to begin at 9am.

8:30am: BJP ministers in the Andhra cabinet  Kamineni Srinivas and P Manikyalal Rao  are expected to submit their resignations to the Speaker.

6:30am: Congress leader Ahmed Patel reacts to CM Naidus remark that he couldnt speak to PM Modi directly. It is very unfortunate that the Prime Minister couldnt take the Andhra Pradesh Chief Ministers phone call on such an important matter. This doesnt augur well for the interest of the people of Andhra Pradesh, ANI quoted him as saying.

Tug of war

Before the Wednesday nights announcement, TDP leaders said the BJP had pushed them to a position where taking a tough stand was the only option left. Naidu said he will take a call on whether or not to remain in the NDA before the second leg of the budget session ends.

The TDP has 16 members in the Lok Sabha and six in the Rajya Sabha. To be sure, the BJP and the NDA have a comfortable majority, and the threatened pullout of TDP from the coalition would pose no crisis for the government.

As a first step, both our central ministers will resign from the Narendra Modi cabinet on Thursday morning, Naidu told journalists late in the night. With regard to alliance with the BJP, we will decide on party-to-party basis later, he said.

Naidu made the announcement after discussions with his partys members of Parliament in Delhi through teleconference and his own cabinet ministers in the state secretariat in Amaravati, following an announcement by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi categorically ruling out special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Naidu said Jaitleys statement clearly indicated that the NDA government was not interested in resolving the crisis in Andhra Pradesh and coming to the rescue of the state, which, he said, had suffered in the aftermath of its 2014 bifurcation. When the purpose of our joining the government is not served, we dont have any option but to come out of it, he said.

He said that as a courtesy, he called up the Prime Ministers Office to inform Modi of the decision. I could not reach the prime minister on phone. Our officials informed the PMO of the decision, the chief minister said.

Divorce imminent?

Politicians in the TDP familiar with the situation said the party had weighed several options, such as pulling out of the NDA, MPs resigning and ministers quitting the government, and it was decided that the divorce should be a step-by-step process.

TDP leaders said pulling out ministers would send a signal to the BJP and will keep its hopes of special category status for Andhra Pradesh alive. If the demand is not met even after pulling out the ministers, the TDP will consider quitting the ruling coalition.

Reaching out

In New Delhi earlier on Wednesday, the Centre tried to pacify its ally, saying every commitment made during the 2014 bifurcation of the state to create Telangana would be honoured. We are committed to giving monetary equivalent to special status to Andhra Pradesh, finance minister Jaitley said.

The minister said the special category status existed when the state was bifurcated, but such treatment is now constitutionally restricted to just the North-Eastern states and the three hilly states after the implementation of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.

Jaitley said the Centre is committed to funding all of Andhra Pradeshs programmes to the tune of 90%, which is equivalent to the aid special category states get, through other means like external agencies. The Centre, he added, is even willing to accept the state governments suggestion of routing such funds through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD).

At meetings last month, the Centre suggested creation of a special purpose vehicle (SPV; a company created for a specific purpose) with the funds from NABARD going into it. Jaitley said the Andhra Pradesh government is yet to come back on the modalities of such a transfer.

Political equations

The TDP also has to deal with rival YSR Congress Party headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who has announced that his party MPs will resign from Parliament on April 6, the last day of the second leg of the budget session, if the demand for special category status is not met by April 5.

YSR Congress won 8 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and remains TDPs main rival in Andhra Pradesh, a state which Chandrababu Naidu won from the Congress after 10 years. Jagan Mohan Reddy has made special category status an election issue for the party.

Of the total 175 assembly constituencies, the TDP won 102 seats in 2014. It doesnt have to depend on the support of the four BJP legislators to maintain a majority, an advantage that Naidu wants to leverage.

Naidu blamed state BJP leaders for launching a counter-attack on his government, rather than taking up the states issues with the Centre. You cannot run away from your responsibility by attacking us. The 130-year-old Congress party was completely routed from AP for hurting the sentiments of the people. If you continue to hurt our sentiments by denying the special category status, which is our right, you will have to meet the same fate, he said.

The BJP has two ministers in the Naidu government  health minister Kamineni Srinivas and endowments minister P Manikyala Rao  and they will have to quit if he announces a parting of ways with the NDA. We are ready to get out of the state cabinet within minutes of getting the directions from the party leadership in Delhi, Srinivas said.
The decision of two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers to quit the Narendra Modi government has given fresh fodder to the Congress to corner the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

On Thursday, just hours after Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu announced that two of his partys ministers would depart from the central government, the Congress was quick to accuse the Prime Minister Narendra Modis autocratic style of functioning to drive home its point that all is not well in the NDA  to suggest that the group was disintegrating.

A parochial autocratic alliance led by the Prime Minister could never accept the divergence of opinion or plurality which is the essence of Indias foundational values, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said. The splintering of the NDA is only a reflection of that philosophy of the Prime Minister and the BJP. It doesnt start or end here, he added as the main opposition party also alluded to the growing differences between allies Shiv Sena and BJP.

The party also targeted Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar whose Janata Dal (United)s alliance with the BJP, it claimed, was on the verge of collapse.

This talaq, remarriage and now possible talaq again has to be explained by Nitish Kumar himself, Surjewala said, while seeking traction for its claim by pointing out Odishas ruling party Biju Janata Dals (BJD) decision to snap ties with the BJP in 2009.

While the NDA is in disarray, the Congress is trying to expand the much-truncated United Progressive Alliance (UPA) by bringing all the non-NDA political parties to a single platform and prepare a joint strategy not only for Parliament but for the next Lok Sabha elections as well.

So far, as many as 17 Opposition parties, including the bitter West Bengal rivals Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Left, have on various occasions come together to attack the NDA government on several issues. The unity inside and outside Parliament on the defrauding of the Punjab National Bank and the escape of accused jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi has further energised the Opposition camp.

As part of the strategy, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi has called a dinner-meeting of the Opposition parties at her residence on March 13.

Perhaps Gandhis move was prompted by the BJPs stunning performance in Tripura and its ability to stitch alliances in Meghalaya and Nagaland despite being a small player in the

two states.

Though the TDP continues to be a part of the NDA at the moment, the Congress is hoping that the southern party will soon snap its ties. It even tried to woo its chief, Naidu, by praising him over his stand for the development of Andhra Pradesh.

Let me recapitulate, Mr Naidu as the NDA convener was the first to speak against Mr Modi when he was the Gujarat chief minister. He showed the courage of conviction to say so and called a spade a spade, Surjewala said in an apparent reference to the political developments following the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Mr Naidu has now realised the futility of continuing in an alliance which only has disrespect and humiliation for the partners, he said.
A quarter of a century after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested Yasin Mansoor Mohammed Farooq, alias Farooq Takla, believed to be a key conspirator behind the blasts , and a close aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

Farooq, who was extradited from Dubai, arrived in Mumbai on March 8, and was arrested and produced in a special court trying cases under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) in Mumbai and was remanded to custody till March 19.

Twelve bombs went off in Mumbai, then known as Bombay, between 1.30pm and 3.40pm on March 12, 1993, killing 257 people and injuring more than 700. The bombs were placed at key locations in the city, including the Bombay Stock Exchange, three five-star hotels, the Air-India building, near the Shiv Sena headquarters at Dadar, the regional passport office, and Zaveri Bazaar. Grenades were also thrown at the citys international airport and at a fishermens colony. It is alleged that Dawood planned and executed the bombings in retaliation for the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya in December 1992.

According to CBI, Takla and his brother, Mohmad Ahmad Mansoor, provided logistical support to some of the blast accused in Dubai, from where they were sent for arms training to Pakistan. CBI alleged that Farooq had received several of the terrorists, hosted them, and then sent them on to Pakistan.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai bombings, investigators had filed charges against 129 people, of which 100 were convicted by the TADA court.

One of the key accused, Yakub Memon, had escaped the country to Dubai and then Pakistan with his family. The CBI claimed that he was arrested from New Delhi railway station in August 1994. He was convicted on all four charges, and sentenced to death in July 2007. He was executed at Nagpur Central Jail on July 30, 2015.

Farooq was declared a proclaimed offender on June 19, 1995 and a red corner notice was issued against him through the Interpol. Later, on August 3, 2017 another non-bailable warrant was issued in his name and an extradition request was made to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). UAE agreed to extradite Farooq. He was extradited to India on March 8.
Led by the concern over an increase in the number dog bite cases, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, decided to remove two stray dogs from its campus.

However, little did the institute know that its action would lead to Union minister Maneka Gandhi, known for her animal rights activism, taking the matter up with the human resource development (HRD) ministry, asking it to take action against those responsible for removing the stray dogs.

It is learnt that the minister acted on the complaints submitted to her by some students of the IIT-K.

Two old dogs that were paralysed were removed and dumped somewhere by the security guards. Some students raised the matter with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which said it would take care of the two dogs. But the IIT officials refused to tell where the dogs had been dumped, said a person familiar with the developments.

The officiating director (of the IIT-K) called a meeting of the students and the staff and said anyone found feeding the stray dogs will be expelled, which is illegal. The matter was taken up with the HRD ministry, which was briefed that the removal of the dogs would be a violation of the Supreme Courts guidelines, the person added.

However, IIT officials argued there has been a rise in cases of dog bites on the campus with 87 instances reported in a year.

There are certain rules and regulations and we will follow them. But it was decided that in case of enclosed spaces such as residential areas and hostels on the campus, and cases where an inhabitant has complained that dogs are creating nuisance, they (the animals) will be relocated within the campus. The well-being of the residents is important for us, said a senior IIT official.

The security guard was instructed to remove the dogs after the students complained. So it is not fair to take action against them. They did not mistreat the dogs and just rounded them off, said another official.
Indias first woman fighter pilot dreams of flying French-made Rafale warplanes someday, even as she is cutting her teeth on the extremely demanding MiG-21.

Right now I am focusing on the MiG-21 I have been assigned to. But as and when the IAF thinks I am good enough and suitable to fly a Rafale, I would love to do that, said Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi, who undertook a historic solo sortie in an MiG-21 Bison on February 19. She will become a fully operational fighter pilot in a year.

Indian air crews will fly the first lot of the French fighters to the country beginning in September 2019, and the Indian Air Force (IAF) hopes to induct the 36 planes on order by 2022. As for her ability to fly Rafale warplanes, she has an endorsement from the person who counts.

Its baptism by fireif our women fighter pilots can fly the MiG-21s, then they can fly any aircraft in our fleet, said IAF chief Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, himself an MiG-21 fighter ace.

Chaturvedi, along with Flying Officers Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh, may have emerged as the most recognisable faces of women in the IAF after being assigned to the fighter stream, but the gender integration hasnt happened overnight.

Its the culmination of a 25-year-old journey from the time women began joining the IAF in 1993, outside the medical stream. Today, they are important contributors to a wide spectrum of activities, Dhanoa said on the eve of Womens Day.

IAF is the only one of Indias three defence arms to allow women in combat positions. Around a dozen countries including China and Pakistan allow women to fly fighter planes.

The headcount of women in the IAF is close to 1,600, including 104 in the flying branch, but combat roles were off-limits to them until the service took the lead in crushing internal resistance to grant them equal opportunities in 2014.

When I joined the Air Force Academy, there was no provision for women flying fighter planes. The moment that opportunity arose, I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to fly fighters, said Chaturvedi.

The first woman helicopter pilot to land at forward posts on the Siachen glacier agrees that things have changed a lot for women in the IAF during the last 25 years.

During my training days, my instructor would tell me dont even dream of getting posted to Ladakh and flying choppers there. But here I am landing my Cheetah helicopter on a matchbox-sized helipads at altitudes of nearly 20,000 feet in Siachen, said Squadron Leader Khushboo Gupta, one of the two women serving in the Leh-based 114 Helicopter Unit, also known as Siachen Pioneers.

The air forces Cheetah and Cheetal choppers are being stretched to their limit to sustain the armys high altitude deployments.

These helicopters are designed to fly at high altitudes but not at the extreme heights we are flying them at, said Gupta, whose husband Wing Commander SK Pradhan is also with the Siachen Pioneers.
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked Karti Chidambaram, the son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, to approach the Delhi high court for seeking any interim relief in the INX Media money laundering case.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra requested the acting chief justice of the Delhi high court to allocate Kartis matter to an appropriate bench so that it can be taken up for hearing on Friday.

The bench, also comprising justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, allowed Karti to withdraw his plea pending with the apex court related to the money laundering case.

On March 6, the top court had 6 refused to grant any interim protection to the son of the former Union finance minister.

Karti had approached the apex court seeking direction to declare that the Enforcement Directorate had no jurisdiction to conduct any investigation unrelated to the allegations in the FIR lodged by CBI on May 15, 2017.

He had also sought the quashing of summons and all the proceedings initiated by the ED, terming it unreasonable, without jurisdiction, without authority of law, in colourable exercise of power and vitiated by malafides.

Karti was arrested on February 28 in Chennai immediately after he returned from London.

He had also sought direction to the ED to forbear him from investigation under the PMLA, the commission of a predicate offence or the existence of proceeds of crime in the M/s INX Media case and investigate the alleged offence of money laundering only if and after the proceeds of crime arising out of a predicate offence are identified by the CBI.

The apex court had on February 23 refused to stay the summons issued by the ED against Karti Chidambaram  who is presently in CBI custody in the INX Media case.

The ED had registered a case against him and others in May last year. It had registered an ECIR, against the accused named in a CBI complaint. These included Karti Chidambaram, INX Media and its directors, Peter and Indrani Mukerjea.

An FIR, filed on May 15 last year, had alleged irregularities in the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) clearance to INX Media for receiving Rs 305 crore in overseas funds in 2007 when P Chidambaram was Union finance minister.
On Monday, Nepals newly elected Prime Minister KP Oli received his first foreign visitor -- the Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

It was unusual. Nepal and Pakistan share cordial ties and are both a part of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), but Islamabad and Kathmandu dont quite share ties so intimate as to warrant Abbasi being the first visitor to greet Oli after his win.

This incident, however, symbolically marked the changing times in Indias neighbourhood.

Nepals Prime Minister usually makes his first visit to India and Oli is still expected to do so. But after winning the election on an explicitly ultra nationalist platform, where he has promised to diversify Nepals relations beyond India and deepen ties with others, particularly China, symbolically, Oli will do all he can to show his independent credentials. And in Nepals political lexicon, both nationalism and independence have come to be synonymous with resisting India. Having the Pakistani Prime Minister over is as good a sign of signalling independence.

This assertion of independence in Nepal has left India with an almost schizophrenic policy approach.

On one hand, a strong section of the political establishment believes it can do little but to engage with the new government, appease it, remain detached from the domestic politics and hope Nepal doesnt move too close to China. On the other, an influential section in Delhi believes that the aim must be to get even more invested in Nepali politics, contain Oli and tilt towards the north and prepare for a situation where an alternative coalition can be eventually constructed against him.

But this throws up a larger question. Is the Nepal-India special relationship undergoing a fundamental shift? Despite deep ties, this may well be the case, where India is no longer exercising the same influence over Nepali politics and does not command the same levers to shape Nepali elite opinion and society.

The special relationship

No two countries - as leaders of both remind us - share ties as intimate as Nepal and India.

This special relationship takes concrete cultural forms. Nepalis and Indians visit each others country for religious pilgrimage - -Pashupati and Janakpur are traditional centres in Nepal, as Varanasi and the four dhaams are in India. The Buddhist network is interlinked -- Lumbini is in Nepal, while Kushinagar, Gaya and Sarnath are in India. The special relationship has explicit state support. Nepal and India have an open border, with free movement of people. Nepals currency is pegged to the Indian currency.

Nepali and Indian workers can work freely in each others countries, without visas and work permits. Nepal and India gain tremendously from remittances from the other. Nepalis can own property in India. Generations of Nepali students have studied in India.

Nepal depends on India for third country trade. Its essentials -- from fuel to basic medical supplies - -come from India. India is Nepals largest trade partner and there is abundant informal trade that exists across the open border.

There has also been an explicit political contour to the special relationship. India has played a key part in Nepals democratic movements -- helping oust the Rana oligarchy in Nepal in the early 50s; indirectly supporting the restoration of democracy in 1990; engineering a peace accord between democratic parties and Maoists to oust the monarchy in 2006.

Rupture?

But there appears to be a rupture in the relationship at four levels.

The first is indeed politics and Indias ability to influence Nepali politics. In September 2015, Nepals Constituent Assembly adopted a constitution; despite India urging Kathmandu to accommodate the concerns of the people of the Tarai, Nepals political elite did not listen. India tacitly supported Madhesi protests at the border, crippling essential supplies. This generated a backlash in Kathmandu and the hills. India developed cold feet and eventually lost out on all ends. It earned the hostility of hill communities; and it could not deliver to Madhesis and get the constitution overhauled.

Once it became clear that Indias word could be defied, and defying it could well be politically attractive, KP Oli took on the mantle of an ultranationalist leader. Delhi tried to block his electoral alliance with the Maoists; it tried to block their election victory; and it tried to stop the announcement of the merger of the two communist parties. It failed on all ends.

Second, a geopolitical alignment is underway. China was getting aggressive in precisely this period. It had stepped up economic investment and trade linkages. But as Indian influence waned, it got involved in shaping politics.

Beijing backed the communist alliance and Olis rise. KP Oli himself had made a trip to the Nepal-China border right after his win, and has said he will deepen ties with the north to increase his leverage with the south.

The third rupture is happening at the level of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG). Nepal and India set up an EPG, of four members each, to relook at the entire gamut of relations - in particular the 1950 treaty. It is now clear that the group would recommend an overhaul of the treaty. This in itself is fine.

But Nepali members have pressed hard for regulation of the border and documenting entry and exit of each person. This is bound to generate complexities for communities who live at the border, who have deep cross-border livelihood networks, and could well jeopardise the people to people ties.

And finally, Nepali society -- particularly the hill dominated Kathmandu bureaucracy, media, civil society institutions -- is becoming more autonomous of Indian influence.

The elites now go to the west for training; others have come up through the Nepali-speaking world. Their emotional investment in India is limited. Their networks here are barely present. Those who could have balanced these views in politics and society -- the people of the Tarai plains --lie marginalised.

As Delhis Nepal policy swings from excessive involvement to neglect, from a desire to shape politics to tendency to stay away from it entirely, a major shift is certainly underway. India-Nepal special relationship is in its final leg.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday unveiled the state flag, terming the move a historic decision that has been taken keeping in mind the history of the state and to promote the self-respect of the people, although analysts say the primary motivation may be the coming state elections.

The state cabinet had asked me to take a decision after taking the opinion of pro-Kannada organisations and intellectuals, Siddaramaiah said. This is a historic decision. However, we cannot take the decision by ourselves and will require the Centres approval, he added.

The proposal to have a state flag will be sent to the home ministry for approval. We will press upon the Centre to clear this soon, the chief minister said.

This is for the first time that the state will have its own flag. There is no provision in the Constitution that prohibits any state from having its own flag, Siddaramaiah said.

This flag will be flown below the national flag, he added.

Except Jammu and Kashmir, no other state in India has its own flag.

The new flag is a departure from what was earlier used unofficially as the Kannada flag. While it retains the classic bands of yellow on top and red at the bottom, a strip of white, symbolising peace, has been added.

At the heart of the flag is the official emblem of the state, the coat of arms of the erstwhile state of Mysore.

Patil Puttappa, a veteran journalist and one of two people who petitioned the government urging it identify a state flag, said he welcomed the move.

I had suggested that the state needed a cultural flag that will be flown below the national flag, he said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) called the move a diversionary tactic by a government facing flak over the lack of security in the state.

Siddaramaiah has unveiled the flag because his government is on the back foot over the stabbing of the Lokayukta on Wednesday, said party spokesperson S Prakash.

The anti-corruption ombudsman was stabbed by a disgruntled complainant in his office.

Let us not forget that it was former chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda (of the BJP) who initiated the move for identifying a state flag. Siddaramaiah sat on this decision for four years and has used it now because of his political troubles, Prakash said.

He said the BJP had no objection to the state flag and even its design. Let them recommend it to the Centre, which will decide on the issue after getting legal opinion, he said.

With an eye on the state elections, scheduled to be held in May, the Karnataka government has over the past year introduced a series of measures to project the local identity.

It has made Kannada and the singing of the official state anthem mandatory in schools.

Last year, the government also weighed in on the side of the pro-Kannada organisations protesting the use of Hindi in signboards at metro rail stations.

According to Chandan Gowda, professor of sociology at the Azim Premji University, the inclusion of Karnatakas state emblem, which includes the Indian states emblem of four lions found on the Ashoka pillar, signals an attempt to affirm Karnataka as an integral part of India.

However, Gowda doubts whether this move will help the government in the election.

I doubt that there is a Kannada vote that can be electorally decisive in the coming elections, he said. It could at best mean an increase in a few thousand votes in Bengaluru, but not sufficient to swing an election in any constituency.
The Indian governments interlocutor on Kashmir on Wednesday appealed to the security forces to show restraint in the Valley and put an end to civilian killings, describing the recent spate of violence in the region as a setback.

Civilian killings must stop. The security forces must show restraint and not resort to disproportionate firing, Dineshwar Sharma, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, said in an interview.

I was hoping for a better summer but violence has come as a setback. Amongst the districts in south Kashmir, Shopian is particularly alienated and angry. We must be sensitive while dealing with the people of Kashmir, he added.

Sharma was appointed as a special representative by the Centre on October 23 to hold a sustained dialogue with all stakeholders, and has made several visits to Jammu and Kashmir, including one in late February to Shopian, where three civilians were killed by Army bullets on January 27 during a protest, and four were shot dead along with two militants on March 4.

After his first visit to the Valley on taking charge as the interlocutor, Sharma recommended the withdrawal of cases against first-time stone pelters. The decision was announced a few days later by chief minister Mehbooba Mufti in November.

Cases were withdrawn against nearly 4,000 stone pelters as a goodwill gesture, but the army has now questioned the decision.

The cases were withdrawn as a goodwill gesture but what goodwill are they showing? The stone pelting continues, army chief General Bipin Rawat said on February 23.

Matters between the army and the state government have come to a head in recent weeks over the naming of an army officer, Major Aditya (Kumar), who was leading a convoy that came under attack from stone pelters. Mufti announced a magisterial inquiry into the killing of civilians, but the Supreme Court has restrained the state police from probing the army saying, He (Major Aditya Kumar) is an army officer, not a criminal.

Sharma said he planned to go back to the troubled district and engage with young people there. I will visit Shopian again, he said, adding, I feel very sad when I see Kashmir in trouble.

Several governments at the Centre have appointed interlocutors to engage with the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The United Progressive Alliance government had similarly appointed a team of interlocutors led by journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, after unrest in 2010, following the killing of three civilians in an alleged fake encounter in Machhil. The teams report has still not been made public.
Speculation swirled on Thursday over Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidus next move after he asked his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers at the Centre to resign, effectively breaking ranks with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

The TDP chief kept his cards close to his chest as civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science and technology YS Chowdary submitted their resignations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday evening.

It is not proper for us to talk about future alliances at a time I have taken a decision to come out of the NDA government with a lot of anguish and pain, the chief minister said in Amaravati late on Wednesday.

According to political experts, the options before Naidu are limited, now that the TDP has almost severed its four-year alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the NDA governments refusal to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh.

Any friendship with the Congress looks unlikely too as the TDP has been opposing the party since the days of its inception in the early 1980s although Congress president Rahul Gandhi has backed the demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh that would entitle the state to special central grants. Besides, the Congress and BJP are on a weak footing in the state politically  the first for the 2014 bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, which led to the creation of Telangana, and the second for, in Naidus words, betraying the states people by denying it special status.

Given the circumstances, Naidu has to join hands with other political forces to retain power in the state and play a role at the Centre after the 2019 parliamentary elections.

In Andhra Pradesh, he can seek help from the Jana Sena Party, founded by popular Telugu film star Pawan Kalyan, who supported the TDP in the 2014 elections and has been maintaining friendly relations with Naidu.

We shall decide our plan of action at a public meeting to be held in Guntur on the partys foundation day on March 14. We shall disclose our stand on the TDP and other parties then, Pawan Kalyan said.

The leftist parties, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and CPI(Marxist), may have limited vote banks but might support the TDP as it has almost snapped ties with the BJP. It is good that Naidu has at least come out of the BJP fold, CPI secretary K Narayana said.

Naidu could explore the option of joining a federal front proposed by Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao as a political alternative to the Congress and BJP.

The Congress and BJP do not stand a chance in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh in the next elections. So, it is better for the TDP to join the third front in the best interest of the Telugu people. If the two parties come together, they will have a stronger voice in Delhi.., said senior TRS leader and deputy chief minister Kadiyam Srihari, who was once a close associate of Naidu in the TDP.

The TRS too is upset with the Modi government for denying increased reservations in jobs and education to Muslims.

The TRS leader recalled that it was TDP founder-president NT Rama Rao who had brought several anti-Congress and anti-BJP forces together to form a National Front in the 1980s.

Political analyst K Nageshwar said the federal front is still at a conception stage, but it could provide Naidu the platform to play a key role in national politics.

The front may not form the government at the Centre in 2019, but Naidu and KCR can have their say in Delhi, if the Congress or BJP fail to get absolute majority and are forced to depend on regional parties, he said.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a lawyers protestations against being questioned over his submissions on a petition seeking an independent probe into the death of CBI special court judge BH Loya.

We do not have to show a veneer of justice to you. Justice lies in our conscience and hearts. We do not want certificates from lawyers, Justice DY Chandrachud, one of the members of the bench, said.

Lawyer Dushyant Dave started by arguing that a Maharashtra government probe into Loyas death had been conducted hurriedly, and sought an independent investigation. He questioned the manner in which the three sitting judges of the Bombay high court, who were reportedly with Loya when he died in Nagpur on December 1, 2014, gave their statements like good school children within a day of the commissioner (investigation) writing to the Chief Justice.

To this, Justice Chandrachud asked Dave if he wouldnt have maintained the same stand if the judges had taken their time. Then you would probably have said how consistent the statements are, he remarked.

Dave retorted by wondering why the court was asking questions only for our submissions and none for the Maharashtra government. A visibly upset Justice Chandrachud then informed the lawyer that he does not have to agree with the bench. Sometimes we become so self-possessed that we forget who is a judge and who is a lawyer, he said. Judge Loya was hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case in Gujarat, in which BJP president Amit Shah was an accused.
A day after a group of ultra-Left students vandalised a statue of BJP ideologue Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Kolkata, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee condemned the act and said it is not the culture of Bengal.

Statues of political figures were attacked in several parts of the country since the demolition of a statue of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin in Tripura on Monday.

Lashing out at the new BJP dispensation in Tripura for the demolition, Banerjee said she had no knowledge about anyone being arrested in the northeastern state for the vandalism, but Kolkata police promptly arrested those attacked the statue of Jan Sangh founder on Wednesday.

Police have arrested them promptly in Bengal. They will be dealt with sternly, said the chief minister at a party programme on the occasion of International Womens Day.

This was the first time she commented on the incident that became one of the talking points in the country since Wednesday morning, when seven supporters of the Radical, an ultra-Left student outfit in Jadavpur University, descended on Mookerjees statue breaking its right ear and eye. A student also smeared black ink on its face.

Some may support Lenin, some may support Ho Chi Minh, some may support Karl Marx, some may support Syama Prasad Mookerjee. One may not agree with them, but why should anyone show disrespect to them, said Mamata Banerjee.

She also criticised the Radical saying their action was giving the state a bad name.

In 1951, Mookerjee founded the Jan Sangh that was the precursor of the BJP.

Kolkata Police arrested seven students including a woman for the vandalism. A court sent them to jail custody for two days.

Incidentally, as the chief minister spoke, there was a scuffle between ruling Trinamool Congress and BJP supporters, who gathered near Keoratala crematorium to wash the statue with milk to purify it. Police detained a few BJP supporters.

Speaking at the rally on International Womens Day, the chief minister exhorted her partys women supporters to prevent BJPs growth in the state. You should erect such a wall that their attacks are thwarted. The BJP should not get a single vote, she said at the rally at Rani Rashmoni Road in central Kolkata.

Its good that you ( BJP) have won Tripura. Now work for the people, but dont make a big song and dance about it, she remarked.

Cant you hear the voices of people in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka? Wasnt TDP, Shiv Sena your partners? said Banerjee. She was alluding to recent reverses the saffron party faced in byelections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and BJPs tumultuous relations with the two allies.
Residents of a village in Uttar Pradeshs Kaushambi district are planning to file a police complaint after an idol of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the local Shiva temple was found damaged on Thursday.

The nose of the statue was found broken, but the cause of the damage couldnt be known, said a resident of Bhagwanpur Bahugara village, who didnt reveal his identity.

The villagers led by local BJP leader Brajendra Narayan Mishra, who got the statue installed in the temple before the 2014 parliamentary elections, said they plan to file a police complaint on Friday.

According to the leaders son, Alok Mishra, the villagers prayed every day in the temple before the elections, requesting god to make Modi the prime minister.

The prayer sessions stopped after Modis victory, although a handful of villagers still visit the temple, he said.

The villagers are upset and suspect foul play after discovering the damage, more so because it happened at a time the country is witnessing a spate of vandal attacks on statues  Vladimir Lenin in Tripura, SP Mookerjee in West Bengal, BR Ambedkar in UP and Periyar in Tamil Nadu.

The station house officer of Sarai Akil police station, Uma Shankar Yadav, said he is not aware of the damage to the Modi statue.
A statue of Mahatma Gandhi was vandalised by unidentified people in Thaliparambha in north Keralas Kannur district, police said on Thursday, latest in the series of attacks on statues of political figures in many parts of the country.

The police said assailants hurled stones and bottles damaging the spectacle and garland on the statue situated in front of the Thaliparambha taluk office. The attack was noticed on Thursday morning.

Senior police and civic officers have rushed to the spot and a case has been registered, officials said.

Vandalism: The present is always informed by the past I Opinion

A senior police officer said they have identified a person from the CCTV cameras installed near the shops and efforts are on to nab him. It was not immediately known if more people were involved in the attack.

All political parties have condemned the attack on Gandhi statue, which was unveiled by former chief minister Oommen Chandy in 2005.

There has been a rash of attacks on statues of political figures in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh after a Communist icon Vladimir Lenin statue in Tripura was toppled on Monday.

Some Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members on Tuesday came out in support of the toppling of the Lenin statue but changed track after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he disapproved of such incidents.

The ministry of home affairs sent out an advisory to the states asking them to prevent such incidents, according to a government statement, after Modi spoke with Union home minister Rajnath Singh.

It issued a second advisory later on Wednesday, asking the states to promptly investigate all such attacks and to make district magistrates and senior superintendents of police personally responsible for law and order in the context of the attacks.
A Thai national, who was among the 23 seamen rescued from the container ship of Maersk Line that caught fire in the Arabian Sea off the Lakshadweep coast, has died, the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS) said Thursday.

A search was on for the other four missing crew members, including one Indian, a Coast Guard official said.

Fire continued to rage in the Singapore-flagged Maersk Honam, a 330-metre long vessel, where a massive blaze erupted on Tuesday night, forcing its 27 crew members to jump out into the sea waters.

Among the 27 crew members 13 were Indians, including the captain, nine Filipinos, two Thai sailors, and one each from the UK, Romania and South Africa.

While 23 crew members were rescued, one of them, a Thai sailor, died of burn injuries while being taken to Colombo, a DGS official said.

The vessel ALS Ceres, carrying the remaining 22 crew members, including 12 Indians, was expected to reach the nearest port Colombo later this evening, the official said.

Search and rescue operations for the four missing crew members continued with the help from the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard.

The missing Indian crew member has been identified as Sakim Hegde, one of the cooks on board, a senior official from the DGS said Wednesday.

Maersk Line also confirmed the death one of the evacuated Thai national.

The company in a statement said his health condition drastically deteriorated yesterday afternoon due to the injuries sustained in the fire.

We are deeply saddened with the passing of one of our colleagues who in the first place had been evacuated. The seriousness of the event has escalated and everyone in Maersk is moved by this, Soren Toft, the chief operating officer and member of the executive board, A P Moller-Maersk, said.

We are in contact with the family of the deceased and our thoughts and condolences go to them, he said.

Maersk Line had yesterday termed it as a serious fire with the cargo on board the 2017-commissioned vessel.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard Ship Shoor was on the spot and fire fighting was on, a CG spokesperson said.

The container ship reportedly had chemicals and dangerous goods on board, he said.

The fire was raging through the front portion of the ship and slowly spreading towards its bridge, he said.

A thick plume of toxic fumes was seen emanating from the ship, he said, adding that high temperatures have melted the containers on board.

During the fire fighting operation, a few empty life boats were spotted by the Coast Guard near the fire-hit ship, the official said.

A DGS official said on Wednesday the fire is suspected to have started in one of the 7,860 containers on board the ship, which had a capacity to carry 15,262 standard 20-footer boxes.
BJP leader Ram Madhav met former Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar in Agartala on Thursday, inviting him to attend the oath-taking ceremony of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state.

Madhav praised Sarkar -- also a CPI-M politburo member -- and said he has qualities that other leaders should emulate. BJPs CM-elect Biplab Kumar Deb too was present in the meeting.

Called on former CM of Tripura Sh Manik Sarkar at d CPM office and invited him to d oath ceremony of d new govt tomorrow. True to his character he has shifted to d party office immediately after resigning as CM post the election. Something for leaders to emulate.  Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) March 8, 2018

But the Tripura unit of the CPI(M) said it has decided to boycott Fridays swearing-in ceremony of the states first BJP government to protest the post-poll violence, though Sarkar might attend the event.

According to the CPI(M)  which is ideologically opposed to the BJP  more than 100 party cadre and supporters were injured and property was vandalised in the violence.

Photo: Twitter/@BjpBiplab

The BJP came to power after toppling the 25-year-old Left Front government in the state.

We will boycott the ceremony. But outgoing chief minister Manik Sarkar, ex-finance minister Badal Choudhury and a few others will attend the ceremony, CPI(M) secretary Bijan Dhar said on Thursday.

Around 348 party offices were ransacked, 75 offices and 199 houses were gutted in fire, and more than 200 party offices were put under lock in different parts of the state till Wednesday night, said Dhar.

The CPI(M) has urged the election commission to postpone the polling in Charilam constituency scheduled on March 12, alleging that supporters of the BJP and its ally, the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura, were indulging in violence.

CPI(M) central committee member Goutam Das said, The unprecedented terror forced our candidate for Charilam seat, Palash Debbarma, to seek shelter outside the constituency.

The Congress also accused the BJP of forcibly taking over 15 of its party offices in different parts of the state, including the one in CM designate Biplab Kumar Debs constituency, Banamalipur.

We accepted the peoples mandate. But we condemn the BJPs possession of our offices forcefully and we will seek the DGPs intervention, said Congress president Birajit Sinha.

The BJP denied the CPI(M) and Congress allegations. BJP spokesperson Mrinal Kanti Deb said the CPI(M) had triggered the violence prior to the swearing-in ceremony.
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the validity of the marriage of Hadiya, a 26-year-old Kerala woman who converted to Islam and wed a Muslim man, overturning a Kerala high court order that annulled their marital union as a sham.

Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan is at liberty to pursue her future endeavours according to law, a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra ruled, reading out the operative part of its judgement. A reasoned order will follow later, the bench said.

Pronouncing the landmark decision that upholds a womans right to choose her partner, the bench  also comprising justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud -- said the Kerala high court should not have annulled the marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan while exercising the extraordinary powers it derives from the Constitution of India to enforce fundamental rights.

Hadiya, born Akhila, converted to Islam in January 2016 and married Jahan in December the same year. In May 2017, the Kerala high court annulled the marriage.

Thursdays order came on a petition by Jahan challenging the high court order, which was delivered on a habeas corpus petition filed by Hadiyas father KM Asokan. The top court rejected the fathers plea that it was well within the high courts power to declare a marriage sham if there was evidence to back it.

The high court not only invalidated Hadiyas marriage but also handed the womans custody to her parents. The order had put the spotlight on love jihad, a controversial term coined by fringe Hindu groups to describe what they claim is a conspiracy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into marriage.

The Supreme Court relied on its November 27, 2017 interaction with Hadiya when the latter was present in the court. It noted that Hadiya had admitted to her marriage with Jahan.

After the interaction Hadiya was freed from her fathers custody and sent to her college to complete the homeopathy course she was pursuing.

Reacting to the Supreme Court verdict, Asokan said he will continue his fight. He said he will soon file a review petition against the order after consulting his lawyers.

I still believe that the marriage was a haphazard one and an excuse to take her abroad, he said.

Look, no father would like to send his daughter to the violence-hit areas of Afghanistan or Syria. I am an atheist and I dont believe in any God. I would be the happiest if my daughter would have converted and married a Muslim youth in a proper way, he said, adding he still believe that Jahan has some nexus with fundamentalist elements.

READ MORE: Hadiya has the Constitutional right to make her own choices

On a probe of the case by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Supreme Court clarified that the anti-terror agency may continue its work in respect of any matter of criminality in accordance with law. This means the NIA cannot enquire into the legality of the marriage but can look into the allegations of terror links, if any.

It was the Supreme Court which in August last year ordered the NIA to probe the case. A bench headed by the then chief justice of India JS Khehar had issued the directive. Justices Khanwilkar and Chandrachud were members of the bench.

But in January this year, the bench headed by CJI Misra said the NIA cannot probe the legitimacy of the marriage. It even refused to peruse the report NIA had prepare in which it claimed that the alleged conversion and marriage of Hadiya to a Muslim man was not an isolated incident and there was a pattern of such marriages emerging in Kerala.

Earlier in the day, during the arguments, the bench cautioned against stepping into the realm of public law. Marriage and personal relations are the core of plurality of India. We must do everything to protect it, the bench said, responding to senior advocate Shyam Divans argument that the peculiar facts of Hadiyas case justified the HC order.

Divan, appearing for Asokan, said public law has evolved to account for situations where a marriage may be intended to defeat a state interest or even a private interest. He argued that the expanding concept of law now takes into account the question of marriage fraud.

Justice Chandrachud differed and said courts could annul marriages, but the power should be exercised only in exceptional circumstances where it is established that one of the parties was incapable of asserting free will. This would include cases of minors being forced to get married to elderly men or cases of trafficking.

Intervening, additional solicitor general Maninder Singh, appearing for the NIA, sought to stress that marriage in the case was a disguise to further an offence.

Opinion | Hadiya has the right to love and marry whoever she wants

This marriage was a ploy to get her out of court proceedings, Singh said, narrating the sequence of events leading to the HC order. He implored the bench to take a look at NIAs status report.

The government is free to take action in case of a criminal act but a good or bad marriage cannot be annulled, the court told Singh.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for petitioner Jahan, rubbished the NIAs arguments.
Statues of BR Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi were attacked by vandals in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, state police said on Thursday. They were the latest in a spate of attacks on statues across India this week that have been widely condemned.

A bust of Dalit icon Ambedkar was found splashed with red paint in north Chennais Tiruvottiyur on Thursday morning by shopkeepers in the area. A local police officer said the police was checking footage from closed-circuit television cameras positioned in the vicinity, adding that the incident likely took place late on Wednesday.

We will nab the culprits once their identity is established, the officer said.

The incident came two days after a statue of Dravidian icon EV Ramasamy, aka Periyar, was vandalised after an inflammatory Facebook post by a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader. The politician, H Raja, has disowned the comments, which triggered widespread political protests in Tamil Nadu.

In Thaliparambha in north Keralas Kannur district, vandals hurled stones and bottles, damaging the spectacles and a garland on the Gandhi statue, police said. The attack was noticed on Thursday morning. A senior police officer said they identified a person from the CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity and efforts are on to catch him.

Vandals have targeted statues since Monday, when a statue of Russian communist icon Vladimir Lenin was toppled in Tripuras Belonia, just days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended the 25-year Left Front rule in the state. Busts of Ambedkar in Uttar Pradesh, Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Kolkata and Periyar in Tamil Nadu have since been desecrated.

In Kolkata, where a Mookerjee statue was damaged allegedly by students on Wednesday, the police and supporters of the ruling Trinamool Congress prevented an attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to cleanse the statue. A few hundred supporters of the BJP and state party president Dilip Ghosh were stopped about 400 metres from the statue and some party workers were arrested.

We are giving time to the state administration till 5 pm today to announce by when the damaged statue will be restored. Otherwise, we will start an agitation throughout the state from Friday, Ghosh said before leaving the spot.

At another programme in the city, chief minister Mamata Banerjee condemned the desecration of Mookerjees bust and said it did not represent the culture of Bengal. Police have arrested them (the culprits) promptly in Bengal. They will be dealt with sternly, said Banerjee. Some may support Lenin, some may support Ho Chi Minh, some may support Karl Marx, some may support Syama Prasad Mookerjee. One may not agree with them, but why should anyone show disrespect to them?

All major political parties have distanced themselves from the attacks. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday condemned the incidents and warned of a crackdown on vandals.
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth on Thursday slammed as barbaric the controversial comment of H Raja on Dravidian movement founder EV Ramasamy Periyar, but said that the BJP leader has expressed regret and the issue need not be magnified further.

Rajas comment indicating that Periyars statue be removed and the subsequent vandalism were a barbaric act. I strongly condemn it, he said.

It is my humble view that the issue need not be magnified further as Raja has expressed regret, Rajinikanth, who is all set to launch his political party, said.

His comments come in the background of continuing incidents of defacing of statues of various leaders in the country.

On March 6, a statue of Periyar was defiled in Tirupattur in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu after Raja posted a comment on Facebook that the rationalist leaders statue would meet the same fate of Communist leader Lenins statue in Tripura.

However, facing flak from political parties in the state, the BJP leader later deleted the post and blamed his social media administrator for the lapse.

The state unit of BJP has distanced itself from the post, saying it was a personal view.

Raja had posted online: Who is Lenin and what is the connection between Lenin and India? What connection India has with Communists? Today Lenins statue removed in Tripura, tomorrow it will be the statue of E V Ramasamy in Tamil Nadu.

Ruling AIADMK, DMK, MDMK and several other parties had strongly condemned Rajas remarks, with many leaders demanding his arrest.

Rajinikanths contemporary and Makkal Neethi Maiam founder, Kamal Haasan, had also hit out Rajas comments.

Rajinikanth had earlier this week made his first major speech wherein he emphasized that he would provide good administration like late chief minister and AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran.
A group of students allegedly beat up members of a right-wing Hindu outfit outside Kolkatas Jadavpur University on Thursday evening.

The little-known Hindu group -- Bangali Hindu Astitwa Raksha Mancha -- had gathered to protest against the desecration of a statue of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee on Wednesday.

The protest was scheduled next to a statue of Russian communist icon Vladimir Lenin at 6.30 pm but members of various Left-leaning student organisations started gathering by the hundreds since afternoon. Though police was present at the spot, it couldnt prevent the Hindu group members from being beaten up.

We are looking into all aspects. The gathering of the mancha was without permission, said a senior police official at the spot, which is right outside the university. No officer was willing to comment on the record. No member of the state government could be reached for a response.

The protests came a day after Mookerjees statue was defaced in south Kolkata allegedly by seven students of Jadavpur University. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has condemned the incident, which was the latest in a series of desecrations of statues across the country.

Busts of BR Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi and EV Ramaswamy Periyar have been attacked in the past three days. The violence began after a statue of Lenin was toppled in Tripuras Belonia after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ended the 25-year-long Left Front rule in the state.

The BJP criticised the university students.

We are not involved with the Mancha but we condemn the attack on its members, said BJP state president Dilip Ghosh. We have said time and against that JU is a den of anti-national elements and Thursdays attack proved it again, Ghosh added.

On Wednesday, Hindutva outfit Hindu Samhati had supported the Manchas programme and asked Samhati members to attend it. We came out of the programme. We were not present in Jadavpur, said Hindu Samhati vice-president Devduttta Maji.
The Madras high court has said the road traffic need not be halted for dignitaries, including the state governor, the chief minister and chief justice, as it suggested that any such stoppage for facilitating the movement of their vehicles should not be more than 5 or 10 minutes.

First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and justice Abdul Quddhose, also said exceptions may only be made in the case of visits of high-level dignitaries such as the president and the prime minister, who occasionally visit and whose visits were intimated and publicised in advance.

As far as possible, traffic should not be stopped for more than 5 to 10 minutes or so for the purpose of the movement of vehicles of high dignitaries, be it the governor, the chief minister, the chief justice (for whom the traffic need not at all be kept waiting) or anyone else, it said.

The bench gave the directions in its order while disposing of a public interest litigation (PIL) petition by S Doraisamy, an advocate of the high court, seeking appropriate action against top city traffic police officials for allegedly restraining him wrongfully on a main road near the high court on March 22 last year following a traffic jam.

No action is warranted. The petition is disposed of by directing the respondent police authorities to ensure proper traffic regulation and free flow of traffic to the extent possible, the bench said.

It, however, made it clear that the directions will not prevent the police authorities from diverting traffic from certain roads in case of visit to the city of high dignitaries such as the president and the prime minister or in other exigencies.

The petitioner submitted that he missed an appointment with his doctor on that day due to the traffic jam.

He further alleged that on an enquiry with the police, he came to know that the chief minister was supposed to go to RK Nagar in North Chennai for a political meeting, but the meeting had got delayed for some reason.

The court said it appeared that in this case there was a traffic jam, which certain traffic policemen could not control.

No case was made out in the PIL for penal action against the commissioner of police or the deputy commissioners of police, impleaded as respondents.

It was nobodys case that these officers were present at the spot or were even aware of the traffic dislocation.

In any case, no case of misconduct has been made out against them, the bench ruled.
Tripuras Communist government, voted out in last months state election, had asked the Centre in January to make special security arrangements, particularly for the period after the announcement of poll results.

The request was made by the government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), after intelligence reports that suggested the state could witness violence. The state government, which was ousted by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the election, requested the Centre to keep paramilitary forces performing election duties deployed in the state after the announcement of poll results, a senior central government official said.

The official said on condition of anonymity that the request was made in the last week of January, when paramilitary forces were assessing the situation in the three northeastern states where elections were to be held. Meghalaya and Nagaland were the other states.

Elections in Tripura were held on February 18 and the results were declared on March 3, following which the CPI(M) has accused workers of the BJP and its ally, the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), of unleashing violence across the state. The razing of a statue of Russian Communist revolutionary leader Vladamir Lenin has resulted in a war of words between the left wing and right wing parties in the state and elsewhere. According to the official cited above, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) sent 300 companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to Tripura to perform election duties that included protection of polling booths, transportation of election officers and so on. Each company comprises 90-100 personnel.

After the results were declared, of the 300 companies, 246 were recalled, leaving the state with 54 companies, or somewhere between 4,800 and 5,400 troopers. The CPI(M) government had demanded 75-80 companies. Representatives from Tripura government, during their meeting with the CRPF officers, specifically asked the paramilitary unit to focus on the period following the announcement of election results, said the official, adding that the request made by Tripura was not only based on intelligence inputs but also due to the states history. There have been instances of violence in the state during elections. Furthermore, violence between political parties has been observed in the recent past. It is in this context that the request had been made, the official said.

The deputation of central forces in states is decided after discussions between state governments, the Election Commission of India and the MHA, and it is standard practice for forces to remain deputed after the announcement of results. Central paramilitary forces are mandated to make security arrangements before, during, and after the elections depending on the requirement of the state.

A senior MHA official said law and order being a state subject, the state police is the first to respond in the kind of law and order situation that currently prevails in Tripura. The ministry on its part provided ample security forces to ensure a peaceful election, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Following up on Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidus announcement the previous day, the two Telugu Desam Party (TDP) ministers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government resigned on Thursday.

Civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science YS Chowdarys resignations, to protest the denial of special category status to Andhra Pradesh, came soon after Prime Minister Narendra Narendra Modi spoke to Naidu on the phone.

In a reciprocal measure, the two BJP ministers in the Andhra cabinet too put in their papers and quit the state government.

The TDP has, however, not pulled out of the NDA and the partys pull-out has no impact on the majority of the government in the house. The exit was cordial with the ministers, in their statements, appreciating the PM and his support.

The announcement sparked a range of political reactions in Delhi. The BJP officially emphasised that it had done its best to convince the TDP, and suggested that this had in fact opened the doors for the partys growth in Andhra Pradesh. An energised opposition, however, claimed this was the beginning of the unravelling of the NDA.

After finance minister Arun Jaitley made it clear that special status, which would have entitled Andhra Pradesh to special central grants, was not feasible, Naidu announced the decision to pull out the two TDP ministers from the government late on Wednesday night.

The TDP has been demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh since the creation of Telangana state in 2014 deprived it of revenue generated from industries located in and around Hyderabad. The city is to be transferred exclusively to Telangana, carved out from Andhra Pradesh, in 2024 after serving for 10 years as their joint capital.

Modi travelled to Rajasthan on Thursday to launch the National Nutrition Mission, and the TDP ministers waited for his return to submit their resignations. The PM was back in the Capital by evening, had the phone conversation with Naidu.

Modi called the Andhra chief minister to discuss the differences. People in the chief ministers office familiar with the contents of the conversation said Modi had tried to pacify Naidu and asked him to re-think his decision to pull out of the NDA government.

Naidu told him that he had to take a decision in accordance with the peoples sentiments attached to the special category status, and that if he still continued in the NDA, it would be politically disastrous for his party, one person said on condition of anonymity.

Aviation Minister and TDP MP Ashok Gajapathi Raju's resignation letter to PM Narendra Modi pic.twitter.com/DXFbagSzWs  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

The two TDP ministers, who drove to his Lok Kalyan Marg residence at 6 pm to submitted their resignations, refused to speculate about what transpired in the telephone call. That is within leaders and they will interact. We dont interpret what leaders have spoken amongst themselves. We will not, Raju said..

Both expressed gratitude to the prime minister for his support during their stint. We wanted to call on the prime minister as a courtesy as we have worked together, Raju said. He told reporters that the TDP had decided to come out of the government, but remains part of the ruling NDA at the moment.

There is nothing new in it, no secret either, Raju said at a press conference after resigning from the cabinet. We are continuing as part of the NDA and the problems are well known.

Raju added that the PM was well aware of the issues. We hope that a solution will come. It was a cordial atmosphere. He said the prime minister felt the development was unfortunate.

Senior leaders of the BJP said the TDPs exit did not come as a surprise. We realised two months ago that TDP was going a different way, said Andhra BJP chief and MP K Hari Babu. The party believes it was pressure from the TDPs local rival, the YSR Congress, and its aggressive push for special status that promoted Naidu to take the decision.

But the BJP senses an opportunity in the situation. Babu said, We have a bigger territory to gain. The BJP will attempt to improve its position.

Even so, the party is well aware that a key challenge would be to counter the perception that it is against or had blocked the special status for the state.

The opposition is energised and believes the TDPs decision is a big blow to the NDA, in terms of optics and perception, even if not in terms of numbers.

A parochial autocratic alliance led by the Prime Minister could never accept the divergence of opinion or plurality which is the essence of Indias foundational values, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said. The splintering of the NDA is only a reflection of that philosophy of the Prime Minister and the BJP. It doesnt start or end here, he said.

Another opposition leader said this would further embolden their stance in Parliament against the government. They were up after the Tripura win. We are up after the TDP exit, the leader of a key opposition party in the Lok Sabha said on condition of anonymity.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition Congress MLAs traded charges over alleged large-scale transfers of government employees on second day of the budget session in the Himachal Pradesh assembly on Wednesday.

Later, the opposition legislators staged a walkout from the House alleging that even dead employees were shown as transferred in the two-month tenure of Jai Ram Thakur-led government in the state.

Soon after the question hour, Vidhan Sabha speaker Rajiv Bindal informed the House about an adjournment notice from Congress MLA Harshwardhan Chauhan wherein the opposition demanded suspension of business to discuss the issue.

The adjournment motion was supported by MLAs Nand Lal and Jagat Singh Negi. The House again witnessed commotion when the opposition MLAs interrupted the speaker claiming that in its two-month tenure, the BJP government has transferred more than 20,000 employees.

They stood up from benches and exchanged barbs with the treasury benches.

Congress legislature party (CLP) leader Mukesh Agnihotri claimed that even dead employees were transferred during Jai Rams tenure, leading to another bout of exchange of charges between the ruling and opposition parties. The speaker quoted rule 67 of the Vidhan Sabha to which the Congress MLAs hurriedly walked out from the House while raising slogans.

Minister condemns walkout

Law and parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Bhardwaj condemned the walkout by the opposition, claiming that more 5 lakh employees were transferred during the Congress regime. He said the Congress was trying to create a issue out of a non-issue. Staging walkouts from the House is the only strategy of the Congress party. The government is ready to take up the matter, he said.

Bindal again read out the adjournment motion moved by the Congress. Chief minister Jai Ram Thakur criticised the behavior of Congress legislators. I am hurt by the manner in which the Congress legislators are behaving in the House and seeking adjournment over non-serious issues under rule 67, he said.

Its just that the Congress is trying to make a mockery of rule 67 which is used for seeking adjournments on serious issues of immediate concern. It is not necessary that what happened in the past will happen now, he said, taking a jibe at his predecessor Virbhadra Singh. I am ready to place records over the transfers made during the Congress rule.

The lone CPM legislator Rakesh Singha sought clarification on the transfer issue.

To this, Bindal said replied he has not accepted the notice and Singha could discuss the issues when it comes up later under different rules of the Vidhan sabha.

The CM apprised Singha that he can discuss the issue with him later. Earlier, CLP leader Mukesh Agnihotri objected to the CMs assertion that his government will not buckle under any pressure, with reference to making amendments in Section 118 of the Land Tenancy Act.

I feel that the beginning of session has not been good. Our government is open to take forward the matter through discussion, the CM said.
Public anger against chief minister Vasundhara Raje was apparent on Thursday as a section of the crowd waved black flags at Prime Minister Narendra Modis public meeting in Jhunjhunu to launch the National Nutrition Mission and extend the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign.

As Raje got up to speak, some people started hooting and waving black flags and banners. Raje continued her speech despite the protest.

Several BJP leaders, including MLA Shubhkaran Chaudhary, and police officials were seen rushing to the corner to pacify the crowd. Sources familiar with the protesters said they were local people.

This was the first time that black flags were raised at a public meeting of the Prime Minister in Rajasthan. Modi had held three public meetings in Rajasthan earlier -- in Udaipur, Barmer and Suratgarh.

An elderly woman finds a seat with the school girls at a public meeting where Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched national nutrition mission. (Himanshu Vyas/HT Photo)

Politically the BJP government has been facing a rough weather in the state after losing bypolls and civic bodies polls.

Modi had visited Barmer on January 15 to launch commencement of work of the Barmer oil refinery. The bypoll results were announced on February 1 and BJP lost all three.

After the bypoll loss, some party leaders and workers demanded a change in the state leadership ahead of assembly polls later this year.

A day before the PMs meeting, the BJP faced another defeat in local bodies polls on Wednesday with the Congress winning 20 of 33 seats.

Modi who had praised Raje during his Barmer trip did not commend the CM, apart from extending birthday greetings to her. Modi had also extended wishes to Raje on Twitter.

Shekhawati region in north Rajasthan, comprising Jhunjhunu, Sikar and Churu districts, has been a Congress stronghold. Of the 21 assembly seats, the BJP has only 10 in the region.

Sikar saw a massive farmers protest, led by the CPI-M, for crop loan waiver last year. Raje announced Rs 50,000 one-time waiver for all farmers who have taken loans from cooperative banks.

The BJP government hoped to offset the negative sentiment by holding Modis public meeting in the region. But going by the reaction of the public, it might have a tough job on its hands.

Addressing the meeting, the CM said, If our daughters study and become empowered, it will lead to empowered homes, society and eventually an empowered state. We are making efforts to ensure our daughters get educated and empowered.

She said the state government has introduced schemes, such as Rajshri and Padmakshi, under the BBBP campaign.

Under Rajshri, Raje said, the government was giving Rs 50000 financial help to girls at different stages from birth to class 12. Under Padmakshi scheme, meritorious girl students are given Rs 1,00,000.

The girl students who get good grades are given laptops, scootys and cycles. In the past 4 years, the state government has distributed about 43,000 laptops, 9000 scootys and 11.5 lakh cycles, Raje said.

The CM said under BBBP, she has adopted 300 meritorious girl students and will take care of their education.
A district court on Thursday sent three Romanian nationals, accused of cheating people by cloning their automated telling machine (ATM) cards, to five-day police custody. The foreigners allegedly withdrew over 27 lakh by cloning more than 88 ATM cards.

They have been identified as Catanescu Catalin (41), Duica Bogdan Nicolae (28), and Ciobanu (44). The crime branch of Jaipur police, led by deputy commissioner of police Vikas Pathak, arrested them from Delhi on Wednesday.

Of the three accused, Duica came to India in October 2017, Catenescu in December 2017 and Ciobanu in February 2018. Duica visited Mumbai and Agra before coming to Jaipur, whereas other two came to Jaipur from Delhi, a police official said.

Police have recovered five cloned ATM cards, a card reader, hotspot, spy camera, microchip, laptop, some masks, four mobile phones and a cash of around 50 lakh from their possession, the official added.

Explaining the modus operandi, the official said that the accused used to identify an ATM with big footfall. Early morning, they would install a skimming device and camera in the ATM to get the card details and password. They would collect the details in evening. They would then use the details to clone ATM card and withdraw money from the bank accounts.

On February 25, a number of people, especially from Mahesh Nagar area in Jaipur, approached police and complained of transactions from their back accounts. The commissioner of police asked crime branch to take over the case. The number of complaints increased to around 90 by February 27. The accused made all transaction from Delhi. On February 25, they withdrew more than 17 lakh from bank accounts of around 25-30 people. The transactions started from 11am and continued till 9pm. The accused are experts and probably would have done such acts in other countries too, the official said. He said the case was cracked in coordination with more than 10 banks. On the basis of CCTV footages, we traced one of the cabs hired by the accused, which gave us pick and drop location and a breakthrough in the investigation, the official added.

The teams in Delhi were tracking locations and two cheats were arrested with cash on Wednesday, he said. Later, their partner in the crime was also arrested from a flat with equipment, the official added
Former Alwar parliamentarian and Union minister Jitendra Singh on Thursday demanded a CBI inquiry into the death of two Dalit youngsters in Bhiwadi village in less than four days.

A Congress team led by Singh visited the family members of the two youngsters.

After meeting family members of Neeraj Jatav (16) and Ajay Jatav (18), Singh said people of the Jatav basti were terrified after the two killings and children are not going to school.

I have spoken to the state director general of police to set up a temporary police outpost in the village to reassure people of the basti.

If police were active in the area, the incidents could have been prevented, Singh said.

Neeraj Jatav was killed on March 2 during a Holi brawl while the charred body of Ajay Jatav was found in Sector 3 of Bhiwadi on March 5.

Singh also demanded government job each for a member of the family of the two youngsters.

Alwar parliamentarian Karan Singh Yadav said the Jatav families have no confidence in the Alwar police and that they will get justice from them.

People are taking the law on their hands and they are least bothered about the police, he said.

Neeraj Jatavs father, Babu Lal said that people from the Gujjar community were threatening him to withdraw the murder case.

Babu Lala has named people from the Gujjar community as the accused in an FIR lodged with the police.

In the Neeraj Jatav murder case, police have arrested four out of the six people named in the FIR.

Dalit leader Om Prakash Jatav said police were trying to convert the case of murder of Ajay Jatav into that of a suicide. Ajay was Neerajs friend and was also beaten by the accused on March 2, he said.

Alwar district collector Rajan Vishal said compensation of  4.12 lakh was given to Babulal Jatav and 25,000 to the two youngsters who suffered injuries.

We have asked Babulal Jatav to file a complaint against people who are threatening him. Preventive measures have been taken against some people to maintain peace in the area, he said.

District superintendent of police Rahul Prakash said mobile numbers of additional and deputy superintendents of police will be painted on the walls of the Jatav Basti as a confidence-building exercise.
A Rajasthan woman who converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man, hailed the Supreme Court judgment on Thursday that overturned a Kerala high court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya, formerly a Hindu, with her childhood lover Shafin Jahan.

The case of 23-year-old Aarifa Modi is quite similar to that of the Kerala woman, a reason why the Jodhpur woman she soon came to be known as Hadiya of Rajasthan.

Hadiya, born a Hindu and named Akhila Asokan, embraced Islam in January 2016 and married Jahan in Decemeber the same year. Hadiyas father moved a habeas corpus petition in Kerala high court alleging that she was forcibly converted by groups with links to terrorist outfits. The HC annulled the marriage. Jahan moved the Supreme Court in August 2017 to challenging the HC order.

In a near re-run of the case, Payal Singhvi, a Hindu, converted to Islam and took the name of Aarifa in April 2017 to secretly marry her school-time lover, Faiez Modi (24). In October, she left her home and started living with her husband.

However, her brother, Chirag Singhvi, filed a habeas corpus petition in Rajasthan high court stating that she had been brainwashed and was a victim of love jihad, a controversial term coined by fringe outfits to describe cases of what they believe are forced marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women.

On November 1, the Rajasthan high court asked Jodhpur police to lodge a case of kidnapping against Faiez and sent his wife to a government home for women for a week. However, a week later, the court set her free, as the love jihad charge fell apart. The court said the woman was a major and was not in illegal detention of any person.

Aarifa, now living with her husband, said shes happy the apex court pronounced the landmark decision that upholds a womans right to choose her partner.

In the end, love conquers all, said the woman, who fell in love with Faiez when they were in Class 7 at Sardar Childrens Senior Secondary School in Jodhpurs Jalori Gate area near Behru Bagh Mandir. The two had secretly married according to Islamic rituals when Payals parents were trying to fix her marriage with a Bangalore man who was 10 years older.

Even after wedding, the two continued to live in their respective houses.

When the high court sent Aarifa to government home, the two were away for a week for the first time in 10 years. I fasted to pray to Allah for the issue to settle down. When she came back to me, she told me that she had also not eaten anything in the government home, remembers Faiez.
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee asked the administration to deploy drones to spot the Royal Bengal tiger that is eluding the forest officials to out to catch the predator for the past 10 days even as it triggered panic in Midnapore town by leaving pug marks in its outskirts.

Panic spread in the town after marks were seen in Mukarta and Muchiberia village, less than 10 km away from Midnapore town.

Read: RTR begins counting its tigers on Thursday, with help of 300 camera traps

Forest officials earlier said the Royal Bengal tiger, an adult male, that is roaming in the area for the past fortnight, might have strayed from Odishas Simlipal that is about 190 km away.

Why are you not using drone cameras to find out the location of the tiger that seems to be moving in Lalgarh and Salboni of West Midnapore and in Sarenga of Bankura. Use a drone to spot it, the chief minister told forest department officials in an administrative review meeting on Wednesday in Bankura district.

About 130 km from Kolkata, Midnapore town is the head quarters of West Midnapore district. According to the 2011 census its population stood at 0.17 million that inhabit 25 wards of Midnapore municipality, a 150-year old civic body.

Read: MP records one-fourth of tiger deaths in India in 2017, highest in country

We got in touch with the forest department immediately after we came to know of the pug marks of the tiger a few km away from the town. Though the forest officials told us that the animal seems to have moved away from the town, we are not taking it lightly. We shudder to think what it can happen if it ventures inside the town, said Pranab Basu, chairman of Midnapore Municipality.

We came to know that the tiger has moved towards Lalgarh again. But as pug marks were found in Murakata and Muchiberia we are taking measures. We also placed a cage in the Chandra Range area, said Rabindranath Saha, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of Midnapore.

The tiger is moving from one place to another. We are afraid that it may even enter our village. This is the only topic of discussion among the villagers now, said Swapan Bera, who runs a beetle shop in Nepura village.

We are just not going anywhere close to the forest. There is a constant undercurrent of panic not seen even during the height of the Maoist activity during 2008-2011, said Tapan Bera of Muchigeria village.

On February 27 the department installed cameras after villagers complained of cattle vanishing in the area. On March 2, the department placed two traps in Madhupur of Lalgarh.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday directed senior officials of his government to take strict action against those who vandalised a statue of Dalit icon BR Ambedkar in a village in Meerut district, an official spokesman said.

The CM has asked all the district magistrates and district police chiefs to take steps to prevent such incidents in their respective areas and maintain strict vigil to ensure security of all the statues, the spokesman said.

He said law and order was the top priority of the government and strict action would be taken against those trying to disturb peace.

Unidentified people vandalised the statue of Ambedkar in Mawana Khurd village of Meerut on Tuesday night.

Sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), Mawana, Ankur Srivastava said the damaged 17-inch statue had been replaced and action would be taken against the vandals.

Statues of political figures were attacked in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh after a Communist icon Vladimir Lenin statue in Tripura was toppled on Monday.

The Union home ministry also sent out an advisory to the states asking them to prevent such attacks.
A Solapur-based Islamic scholar Maulana Shahabuddin Firdausi has endorsed Maulana Salman Nadwis stance on shifting the Babri Mosque away from the dispute site even as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) ruled out an out of court settlement at this juncture of Ayodhya issue on Wednesday.

The whole earth is a mosque. A place of worship can be replaced in the greater interests of the Indian Muslims and this will be a desirable step in Babri Masjid case, Maulana Firdausi said in a tweet tagging Maulana Salman Nadwi and Zafar Sareshwala, chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University. Despite his about turn and statement that he was dropping the Ayodhya issue from his agenda, Nadwi quickly re-tweeted Maulana Firdausis tweet.

A peace activist, Maulana Firdausi, has also authored a book on triple talaq and has set up a blood bank in Solapur.

The AIMPLB, however, dismissed such attempts to broker a negotiated settlement saying that it was too late for talks and only a court verdict on the matter was acceptable to it.

This is not the first time that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is trying to mediate. He tried the dialogue route earlier also but drew a blank, said AIMPLB secretary and lawyer Zafaryab Jilani.

The apex body of Muslims on religious issues, however, took exception to the Art Of Living (AOL) spiritual leaders comment that the country can become like Syria and Muslims should leave their claim on Ayodhya.

This is an attack on countrys well-being, AIMPLB general secretary Maulana Wali Rehmani said to PTI. On the letter written to the AIMPLB by Ravi Shankar on Tuesday, in which he suggested Muslims gift one acre at Ayodhya site to Hindus who will provide five acres for a mosque, Rehmani said, he will comment on it only after discussion with board members. We will come out with a detailed reply to his (Ravi Shankars letter) letter soon, said AIMPLB spokesperson Maulana Sajjad Nomani.

Asked about AOL founders concerns regarding communal violence, Maulana Rahmani said, If he has any such apprehension, he should find a way out to avoid a situation of communal clashes.

Sri Sri has, meanwhile, clarified his statement: It was a point of view, and not threat. There is no point in giving a threat. I cannot imagine it even in my dreams. We want peace, and an atmosphere of harmony...I feel that the situation which is prevailing in other countries, should never arise in our country. We are working in those countries, he said to reporters in Bareilly.
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday hit out at chief minister Yogi Adityanath for having said in the state assembly on Tuesday that he (Yogi) did not celebrate Eid and he was a Hindu and proud of it.

If you are Hindu, then say who we are? If we are Hindu, then you will have to accept it, or else make sure we are counted among the Dalits and backwards . You will have to define Hinduism clearly, said Yadav at an election rally at Champa Devi Park here ahead of the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha by-polls scheduled on March 11.

Yadav appealed to party workers not to treat the by-polls as ordinary elections.

He said the by-elections will send out a strong message across the country and indicated that Bua (BSP chief Mayawati) and Bhatija (Akhilesh himself) could continue their partnership to counter the BJP in 2019 when the Lok Sabha election is due.

He thanked Mayawati for extending support to the Samajwadi Party and claimed that such a winning political combination had never been formed before.

He appealed to party workers to ensure that every single vote was cast in favour of Samajwadi Party candidate Praveen Nishad, who was also an engineer like him.

He also hit back at Adityanath, who had rejected the possibility of the SP-BSP alliance posing a threat to the BJP.

Adityanath had described the understanding between the arch rivals as an instance of saanp and chhuchandar (snake and mole) hiding together to escape floods.

Akhilesh Yadav said, Their language has changed now. Today, they call us saanp and chhuchundar but I have seen them sitting quietly in the house (Parliament) and TV channels have also aired visuals showing them bursting into tears.

Adityanath made headlines in 2007 when he burst into tears in Parliament and accused the then UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav of targeting him. Adityanath had attended the Lok Sabha after spending 11 days in jail for allegedly violating prohibitory orders in Gorakhpur.

Akhilesh Yadav said, Ever since we forged a partnership with BSP we are being called saanp and chhuchandar. They dont see us as people who distributed laptops and started the 102 and 108 ambulance services. But they call us snake and mole. We have never used such words for them.

Akhilesh Yadav also said the BJP could not compete with his government on the development front. He asked the chief minister to give details of development work done by the Yogi government, which will complete a year in office on March 19.

They have discontinued the development schemes launched by the previous government. We had launched the 102, 108 ambulance service, the UP 100 emergency response system. But can they mention a single development work by their government. We gave a 500-bed encephalitis ward to the BRD Medical College and allotted land for AIIMS in Gorakhpur. Have they built the AIIMS?

Even the Rs 500 Samajwadi pension has been discontinued. We had promised to double it to Rs 1000 in our assembly poll manifesto and we will increase it to Rs 2000 if the SP comes back to power, he said.

Akhilesh Yadav, who met the mothers of encephalitis victims at the rally venue, criticised the alleged statement that Adityanath had made after over 30 children died in 48 hours at the BRD Medical College Hospital due to alleged disruption in oxygen supply between August 9 and 11 last year.

Akhilesh claimed Adityanath had said he feared a day would come when children, when they are one or two years old, will be left in the care of the government. The chief minister had made the remark in reference to lack of sanitation being the cause of encephalitis deaths.

The SP chief also said health minister Sidharth Nath Singh had said children died every year in August due to encephalitis in the Gorakhpur region.

Attacking the Modi government, Akhilesh said demonetisation neither helped check corruption nor paved the way for bringing back black money from abroad, as promised by BJP leaders .

Corruption has risen to such a level under this government that those who take away poor peoples cash abroad through banks are not caught. They will never return, he said.

Earlier, Akhilesh Yadav reached the rally ground in a modified red campaign bus which he had used in the 2017 polls too.
A man has accused doctors at a Mathura-based private medical institution of leaving a needle in the head of his 10-year-old son in a complaint uploaded on the chief ministers grievance redressal portal.

They operated on my son on February 15, and later discharged him. I decided to bandage the wound during the Holi festivities to prevent colour from seeping in. That was when I found a pointed needle-like object inside his head, alleged Daudayal, a resident of Akbarpur village in Chaumuha block, on the Jan Sunwai portal. Another complaint has also been lodged at the Chhata Kotwali in Mathura.

Dr Rajeev Gupta, the officiating chief medical officer of Mathura, said the matter was being probed by a three-member panel of district hospital doctors. Action will be taken on the basis of the report, he said.

However, the management of the institution  KD Medical College, Hospital and Research Centre  has denied any negligence on its part. Rubbishing the charges, managing director Manoj Agarwal said: As we run the hospital on charity basis, we only billed the boys father Rs 2,600 for operating on his sons head injury. While discharging the boy, we told his father to bring him here regularly for further dressing. But he never returned. The boy was probably being attended to elsewhere.

Agarwal went on to allege that the boys father suddenly turned up after the Holi festivities and tried to blackmail the hospital by levelling false allegations. I am sure that the probe will throw some light on the matter, and truth will prevail, he added.

Daudayal, however, stood by his allegations. I might leave for Lucknow soon to apprise the chief minister of the matter, he said.

The Jan Sunwai portal was launched to address grievances of citizens across the state.
UPs cabinet minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi on Wednesday apologised for his alleged derogatory remark against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati.

Nandi had compared Maya to Surpanakha, the sister of demon king Ravan, during a public meeting at Durga Puja ground on Sunday last.

In a press note issued on Wednesday, Nandi said he firmly believed in the democratic values and strictly followed the parliamentary language.

I was only commenting on a Holi joke, which I received on WhatsApp and had no intention to hurt or insult anyone. However, I withdraw my statement if it has hurt the sentiments of the people, said Nandi.

The apology comes after condemnation from all opposition quarters.

In Vidhan Parishad on Tuesday, Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) members had demanded the dismissal of the minister.

While chief zonal coordinator of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Ashok Kumar Gautam has lodged a police complaint, the BSP workers also ghearoed Dhumanganj police station demanding an FIR against the minister.

Advocate KK Roy had also forwarded an online complaint to the election commission demanding an FIR against Nandi and restrictions on his speeches during by-polls.
Taking suo motu cognisance of media reports claiming spread of HIV infection in UP jails, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to chief secretary and inspector general (prisons) seeking a detailed report within six weeks.

In a press release, deputy director (media and communications), NHRC, said the Commission had taken suo motu cognisance of media reports claiming 24 prisoners lodged in Gorakhpur jail had been tested HIV positive in the last four months.

In the tests conducted by the UP State AIDS Control Society (UPSACS) in 70 jails, 265 prisoners were tested positive, he said.

NHRC has asked the state government to submit a detailed report within six weeks along with the measures taken to deal with the situation.

Majority of cases have been reported from Bareilly, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Faizabad, Agra, Meerut, Varanasi and Kanpur.

The NHRC official said there was an urgent need to conduct a probe into the matter to determine the cause of the spread of HIV infection among prisoners. Immediate preventive measures should be taken so that other prisoners do not fall prey to infection and those who are suffering are provided necessary medical treatment, he said.

According to media reports, the Gorakhpur jail administration claimed that the disease did not spread inside jails and the prisoners were already infected when they arrived. Most of the infected prisoners have been jailed under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

In October last year, a camp was started on the initiative of Uttar Pradesh State AIDS Control Society to conduct blood tests on the prisoners to detect HIV. Tests were conducted on more than half the prisoners lodged in various jails, the NHRC officer said.
A total of 10 cases were lodged in Revenue Board against senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan by the office of district magistrate of Rampur on Wednesday.

Khan has been accused of procuring 104 acre land belonging to the people from Scheduled Caste against rules.

The cases were registered by the DM following a complaint by one Akash Saxena, a Rampur based businessman and son of a local BJP leader.

Saxena is also district head of Laghu Udyog Bharti, which is an offshoot of RSS working for Micro and Small Industries.

Confirming the development, DM Rampur Mahendra Bahadur Singh said, The cases are related to the procurement of land from 10 families of the Scheduled Caste. It was found in our preliminary investigation that no permission to procure the land was taken from the then district magistrate, which is a clear violation of rules.

The procurement of the said land was allegedly not done directly. The land was first brought from the SC families by a person close to Khan and was later transferred to Mohammed Ali Jauhar Trust run by Azam Khan to build Mohammad Ali Jauhar University.

The land use of any SC property cannot be changed without the permission from the DM office. But it was done to procure land for the Jauhar University, said Akash Saxena, the complainant in the matter.

The procurement was done in 2007 and its land use was changed fraudulently in 2013 when Khan was a minister in the Samajwadi Party government, he added.

According to the official website of Jauhar Ali University, the university has a campus of 350 acre. At least 104 acre of this land was purchased against the law, claimed Saxena.

Meanwhile, Khan denied any illegal procurement of land for Jauhar University.

All land procurement for the university was done by the books. It appears that these cases were registered against the university under political pressure to hinder the education of students who study here, Khan told HT over phone.
A farmer committed suicide after being allegedly pressurized by bank officials to return the loan that he had taken for fish farming in 2016. While the deceased mans wife alleged bank authorities for her husbands grave step, his brother denied any such reason. As per reports, the farmer Manoj Kumar, 40, resident of village Ganj Baderwa in Balmau, had consumed some poisonous substance on Saturday. He was first rushed to Dalmau primary health centre from where he was rushed to district hospital, Rae Bareli. He was being referred to Lucknow on Monday during which he passed away.

Manoj Kumar is survived by his wife Ketaki, 35, daughter Parul, 14, son Anup Kumar, 12.

Ketaki told scribes that her husband committed suicide after bring pressurised by Bank of Baroda authorities on Thursday and Friday to return the loan. Since Manoj was depressed, he consumed poison that ultimately led to his death. Meanwhile, sub divisional magistrate Pradeep Kumar Verma told HT that just after getting information about the farmers death, a lekhpal was sent to the deceased mans house to record the statement of his brother who denied bank loan behind Manojs death.
Sending the Mumbai police into a tizzy, 35 people, including farmers and citizens, from various parts of the state have written letters to their respective collectors, threatening to commit suicide outside the Vidhan Bhavan during the ongoing budget session.

The development comes after an 84-year-old farmer from Dhule district, Dharma Patil, consumed a poisonous chemical outside the Mantralaya in January. He died within a week. Patil was protesting against inadequate compensation for his land that was acquired for a power project.

Following the incident, the Opposition and activists upbraided the Devendra Fandnavis-led government for its insensitivity towards the plight of farmers. A spate of farmer suicides has earned the state the dubious distinction of farmer suicide capital of the country.

A substantial number of the senders of these letters are from Patils Dhule district, though their issues are not related to land acquisition or farm debt, top sources in the Mumbai police claimed.

The issues highlighted by these people relate to their perceived injustice over a range of issues from civil to criminal, claimed a source privy to the content of the letters.

For example, a woman from a district near Mumbai has threatened to commit suicide as she claims that her husband was wrongfully arrested in a rape case. In another instance, a farmer from an interior district blames the police for not prosecuting his brother for forcibly occupying his share of land.

These people feel suicide is the last resort to highlight their problems before the administration, the source said, suspecting that Dharma Patils suicide has set a dangerous precedent.

Collectors of various districts have received the letters over a period of time. They have forwarded them to the Mumbai police for precautionary measures.

After receiving letters, the Mumbai police have written back to the district collectors and superintendents of police to redress grievances of the aggrieved people on a priority basis. They should also try to convince the people to change their travel plans (to Mumbai), the source said.

In addition, the police have started collecting personal information of the senders, including their phone numbers and photographs, by contacting sarpanchs of their villages. They feared that some of them have already reached Mumbai.

Their photographs have been fed to the hard disk at the CCTV control room. This will help us identify them in the crowd in south Mumbai. Moreover, our personnel will keep an eye on visitors outside Vidhan Bhavan and Mantralaya, another source said.

Manoj Sharma, deputy commissioner of police (Zone I), under whose jurisdiction Mantralaya falls, said security has been beefed up in south Mumbai for the budget session. He, however, refused to comment on security precautions in view of the letters.
After colleges and social activists criticised the Maharashtra governments decision to disburse only 30% grants for scholarships and fee benefits for students from socially weaker sections for the current academic year, the state has decided to release the entire fund.

On Wednesday, the state issued a government resolution (GR) announcing its decision to release 100% amount required for providing all pre-matric and post-matric scholarships and fee benefits to students belonging to Vimukta Jati (VJ), nomadic tribes (NT), other backward categories (OBC) and special backward categories (SBC). A similar resolution for scheduled caste (SC) students was issued in January.

In November, the state cabinet had decided to release only 30% amount of scholarships and fee benefits provided by various departments of the government for the academic year 2017-18. The state is required to release half the amount every semester. The decision drew flak from activists and colleges, as the students were unable to pay their fees on time, causing financial trouble at the institutes.

Last year, the state had decided to disburse the education aid to students through a direct benefit transfer (DBT) system  depositing money directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries instead of reimbursing their respective institutes. While a portal was put in place to facilitate the transaction, the state information technology (IT) department had trouble running it. As a result, the disbursement of scholarships was moved offline.

According to the office of the commissioner, VJ, NT, OBC and SBC Welfare, Maharashtra State, Pune, over 9.15 lakh students belonging to VJ, NT, OBC and SBC and 4.58 lakh SC students have applied for various pre-matric and post-matric scholarship schemes. The government has appropriated around Rs1,651 crore for VJ, NT, OBC and SBC students, of which Rs 915 crore (55.42%) have already been deposited into the bank accounts.

A government official said that they decided to release the entire fund, as the academic year is about to end.

We will divert the surplus funds from other heads towards scholarships, he said.

However, an official from the commissioners office said that the move was aimed at fending off criticism for the government.

After the government decided to release the entire scholarship money of SC students, the colleges insisted that we release 100% grants for students from other categories as well. It earned the government a bad name, he said.

Rekha Thakur, general secretary, Bharatiya Republican Party (BHARIP), said that the decision was taken out of political compulsion. The government realised its mistake of diverting funds for social welfare towards providing loan waivers to farmers. The decision was taken keeping in mind the elections are approaching and unrest among OBCs, she said.
Women commuters rushing to board the 8.01 am ladies special local at Kalyan station on Thursday were pleasantly surprised when they spotted a motorwoman at the helm.

On International Womens Day, the Central Railway (CR) got Indias first motorwoman Mumtaz Kazi, 47, to operate the local train, which runs from Kalyan to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT).

As women spotted Kazi, they gathered around the engine, and word spread, prompting many excited commuters to peep out of their compartment doors and windows.

I saw a crowd near the engine and rushed to see why. I saw that a woman driver was going to operate the train. It is a rare, motivating sight,said Shyama Shetty, 30, who takes the ladies special every day to get to her office in Dadar.

Kazi was in the engine compartment along with a woman guard, Mayuri Kamble, 22.

The CR got Indias first motorwoman, Mumtaz Kazi, 47, to operate the train from Kalyan to CSMT. (Rishikesh Choudhary/ HT Photo)

The engine and front compartments of the ladies special were also decorated both inside and outside with flowers and balloons. We felt special as we entered our usual compartment. It was glittering and shining with decorations. This will definitely make my day, the feeling that women are special,said Madhuri Shinde,24, who takes the local to go to her college in Thane.

Not just the driver and the guard, even railway police officials and the Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE) were women. It is good to see an all-women staff handling the train, Shetty said.

After the train pulled into the station, Kazi took charge of the train along with Kamble, in the presence of senior CR officials.

I am glad that today, many women are willing to take up jobs that were once male-dominated. When I drive the local train, its not just about doing my job but also about setting an example, said Kazi, a resident of Kurla.

Kazi has been driving different types of trains since the age of 20. She applied to the railways for a job in 1989, after seeing an advertisement, and has been working for the railways for 27 years now.

At this age, I got a chance to be the guard of a local train, which is a big achievement as well as responsibility. I will do my job efficiently, said Kamble.

AK Singh, public relations officer, CR, said: The train was welcomed at CSMT by our senior officials. It was followed by several other programmes to celebrate Womens Day.
The Thane police on Wednesday filed a 1,731-page charge sheet against two private detectives and their relative for allegedly extorting money from IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar.

The charge sheet was submitted in the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime (MCOCA) court.

The police have recorded statement of 76 witnesses.

On November 2, when Thane anti-extortion cell arrested private detectives Satish Mangale, 27, and his 26-year-old wife Shraddha, for allegedly trying to extort Rs7 crore from Mopalwar, who was them the managing director of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

Mangale was arrested while accepting Rs1 crore in his Dombivli house.

The next day, his wife Shraddha and brother-in-law Atul Gawde were arrested from Mira-Bhayander.

The charge sheet also names gangster Ravi Pujari and businessman Anil Vaid Mehta as wanted accused in the case.

Pujari had threatened Mopalwar and asked him to withdraw the case. Mehta, a Juhu resident, allegedly helps Pujari in extorting money.

Pradeep Sharma, senior police inspector from Thane anti-extortion cell, said, On November 12 last year, Mopalwar received a threat call from Pujari, asking him to withdraw the case. On November 14, we added Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) charge against the three arrested accused.

We are investigating the case ahead as two accused names which have come ahead and we have also mentioned in the charge sheet their names. We are searching for them.

In August, Mopalwar was removed from his post after Mangale made the audio clips public, saying that he was demanding bribe. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered an inquiry. Mopalwar had claimed that the tapes were doctored.

A police officer from Thane anti-extortion cell said, We have also mentioned in the charge sheet that we have seized laptops, a spy camera and cell phones from the accuseds house. We have also mentioned about the CCTV footage of a hotel in Bhiwandi from where Satish had made the call to Mopalwar.

The police are checking whether any of the property was purchased with the extortion money.

Sharma said they have found 500 to 600 RTI applications from Mangales house in Dombivli.

Mangale used RTI applications to threaten and extort money from people. He had filed these applications in government departments in the past couple of years, said Sharma.

He added that they are verifying the RTI applications that Mangale used to apply in his fathers or wifes name.

The police said Mangale used to gift high-end mobile sets to celebrities and businessmen.

We have learnt that some RTI documents that checked were used for extorting money, said Sharma.
Though the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) aims to commission two Metro lines in the city by 2019, the percentage-wise expenditure on these projects is still in single digits, according to the Economic Survey 2017-18.

Until October 2017, the planning authority spent Rs124 crore (1.93%) of the Rs6,410 crore estimated for the Metro-2A (Dahisar-DN Nagar) and Rs448 crore (7.21%) of the Rs6,208 crore for Metro-7 (Dahisar East-Andheri East).

The MMRDA plans to commission Metro-2A and Metro-7 by 2019. Pravin Darade, additional metropolitan commissioner of MMRDA, said major part of the cost will be spent on rolling stock and technical components such as signalling system, for which tenders are yet to be floated. Apart from the major tenders, which will be issued now, the payments will reflect after the projects are completed, said Darade. He said the project deadlines remain unchanged.

The Economic Survey further indicated that of the total cost of Rs61,289 crore for the five ongoing Metro projects, authorities have spent Rs18,824 crore (30.71%).

Of these, the MMRDA has just awarded works for Metro-4 (Wadala-Thane-Kasarvadavali) and Metro-2B (DN Nagar to Mandale) last week.

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) spent the highest at 15.75% for the Metro-3 corridor (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz). The work was started in 2015.

Rishi Aggarwal, a city transport expert, said it is very doubtful that the two corridors will be commissioned by next year. The station works are yet to start. The rolling stock will take time. There will be safety trials conducted which will itself take about three to four months. To top it all, the work will definitely slow down during monsoon. So it is very difficult to meet the 2019 deadline, Aggarwal said.

The survey report also earmarked a 2019 deadline for the long-running Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP), especially when the MMRDA had spent Rs2,404 crore of the Rs6,235 crore on the project.

The project entails the completion of 18 roads and 32 bridges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Similarly, it has set a 2019 deadline for certain projects under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project-II (MUTP). By the end of January, only 69% of these works were completed. The report gave a miss to the two ambitious infrastructure projects  the Rs15,000-crore Mumbai coastal road and the Rs46,000-crore Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway  of the BJP-government.
Five persons were killed in a vehicle pile-up on Mumbai-Goa highway near Mahad in Raigad district on Thursday morning -- four were charred to death when a truck and trailer rammed into each other and one person riding a two-wheeler was killed when he crashed into the trailer.

According to the police, a truck loaded with tiles was going towards Goa from the Mumbai side. As it was crossing Mauje Loner village around 5.40 am, it collided head on with an empty trailer that was coming from the opposite direction.

Both the vehicles caught fire just after the accident and two persons from each of them were charred to death.

Around the same time a speeding two-wheeler, which was passing that stretch, rammed into those vehicles and then it came under the rear side of the trailer. Tushar Gawde, who was driving the two-wheeler, suffered severe injuries on his head and other parts of his body. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, but was declared dead there. Gawde, 26, was a resident of Vadgaon, a nearby village.

While the truck was registered in Haryana, the trailer was registered in Rajasthan. With the help of their clothes and the jewellery we identified the burnt deceased, said VS Jagtap, police inspector from Goregaon (Raigad) police station.

The driver and the cleaner of the truck have been identified as Jahid Khan, 25, and Shakil Khan, 19 respectively. Likewise, Surendra Rawat, 28, and Punam Singh Rawat, 19, have been identified as the driver and cleaner of the trailer. Their bodies were sent to a government hospital for conducting post-mortem.

The accident took place at an isolated place. Some people who spotted the burning vehicles informed us about it and we immediately called in the fire-tenders. The bodies of the drivers and cleaners of both the vehicles were taken out after the fire was doused, Jagtap said.

The exact reason behind the accident is not clear as no one involved in the accident is alive. We think one of drivers lost control and ended up hitting the vehicle coming from the opposite direction. The fire might have broken out because of an electric short-circuit or kerosene kept in heavy vehicles for preparing food, another official said.

There was traffic jam on Mumbai-Goa highway following this accident as the truck and the trailer blocked almost the entire road. There were around three kilometer-long traffic snarls on either side of the accident spot. The police later towed away the burnt vehicles and the situation was normal after 8.45 am.

The Mumbai-Goa highway is now being widened at different places of Raigad district. No such widening work, however, was being undertaken at the place where the accident took place.
Versova Police arrested four people for allegedly sending girls to America on the instructions of a person named Raju. According to the police, Raju brought the girls from Gujarat and met Rizwan, a parent,whose daughters looked similar to the girls who were brought from Gujarat. Rizwan, Amir, Afzal and Tajiuddin have been taken into custody by Versova Police.

The modus of the accused was to find parents in Mumbai and then find similar looking minor girls in Gujarat. They looked 80 percent similar and the rest was done through make to make the girls look similar to Rizwans real daughter. We are still trying to ascertain the reason why they wanted to take the minors from Gujarat to America, said an officer from Versova police station.

Raju brought the girls and matched the pictures on passport. Amir did the work of making passport and visa and Afzal was the mediator between Amir and Rizwan. The accused said that they wanted to take them to America to unite them with their parents but investigation is on to know the exact reason, said Paramjit Singh Dahiya, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Zone 9.

On March 4, Tajiuddin and Amir took the girls from Gujarat to a saloon in Yari road where they did make up on the girls so they could look like Rizwans daughters. But one woman at the saloon saw this and called the control room.

Another officer investigating the case said, Although the accused are claiming that they wanted to take the girls to their parents but that could be a false claim. We are investigating from all the angles. We have not reached to any conclusion and are also looking for more accused whose names have cropped during the investigation.
Afghan national Rehman Dawlaty, who was booked and wanted by Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) for helping four Kalyan youth join Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was shot dead by the Afghan forces on May 30, 2017.

The news of Rehmans death was confirmed by a relative of his wife, Yasmeen. He added that Rehman married her in 2011 and lived in a rented flat at Kopar Khairane for two months before they left for Afghanistan.

It was the third day of Ramzan, when he was killed in an encounter outside his house in Kabul. We were informed about his death two months later by his brother Roshan, the relative said. We then called his wife, who said Rehams last rites had been performed.

Giving into parental pressure, Rehmans wife returned to India with their four children last month, the relative added.

The four ISIS recruits from Kalyan On May 25, 2014, four men from Kalyan Areeb Majeed, Fahad Shaikh, Amaan Tandel and Saheem Tanki took an Etihad flight for Baghdad On May 31, all four who were in their 20s  hired a cab that dropped them to Mosul after which they were reported missing It was later learnt that they had joined the ISIS in Syria While Majeed returned, Tandel and Sheikh became poster boys for the radical outfit They were even seen in an ISIS propaganda video, urging Indians to join them Except Majeed, who is in jail, all three are believed to be dead.

Her parents were anxious about her safety and wanted her to return home at the earliest. Now that shes back, Rehmans parents are pressurising her to return to Afghanistan. But we are not sending her, the relative added.

The relative also said several security agencies, including Maharashtra ATS and National Investigation Agency (NIA), visited their residence to record Yasmeens statement.

None of the agencies harassed us. They asked questions and left after verifying our statements, the relative added. Sources from NIA corroborated the relatives version.

Those privy to the investigation said Rehman completed his Bachelor of Management Studies from SIES College, Nerul, and lived in a rented flat. In 2011, he met his future wife through Islamic Research Centre. Yasmeens family were clueless about his activities.

We saw that he was religious and offered prayers five times in a day. We knew he was a graduate and agreed for the marriage, the relative said.

Who was Rehman Dawlaty?

On September 21, 2014, the Maharashtra ATS registered a case against four people  two Afghan nationals Rehman Dawlaty and Mohammed Rateb, Aadil Dolare, a businessmen from Kalyan and a manager of local hotel in Kalyan. The case was registered under the Foreigners Act

As per records, Rehman visited Kalyan on November 20, 2013 and stayed at Raja hotel. He left for Afghanistan the next day. Dolare had then given a declaration at the foreigner regional registration office that his friend and partner from Afghanistan was coming to Mumbai for business and would stay with him

In September 2014, during one of their business trips to India, Rehman and Rateb were picked up by the ATS for questioning. But were released after questioning

In the charge sheet filed by the NIA against Areeb Majeed, one of the four youth who joined ISIS and is currently at Arthur Road jail, it is mentioned that he used an Iraqi number to contact Rehman and Abu Fatima, an Iraqi referred to Majeed by Tahirah Bhatt, a propagator of the ISIS

Investigation also revealed that on Rehmans instructions, Areeb and his three friends contacted Abdulla Hadi Rehman Al Enezi, a Kuwaiti, through WhatApp to seek financial assistance. Abdulla allegedly transferred USD1,000 (Rs65,150) on May 29, 2014, which was received by Majeed

Majeed had contacted Rehman, Bhatt and Fatima for arranging Tarkiya (recommendation for joining ISIS).
A 16-year-old daughter of a diamond merchant cooked up a story of being stalked on social media, getting threatening messages and being attacked by an unknown person, apparently after developing a feeling of being neglected by her family, the police said. The Khar police said investigations are still on, and they are yet to reach a conclusion.

The incident came to light after the police conducted preliminary investigations into the complaint lodged by the college student. She had approached the Khar police on February 21.

In her complaint, after coming back from college, she left the door of her house open. She claimed a man entered the flat and strangulated her, said a police officer who did not wish to be named. She said she stabbed him with a pen in her pocket and then broke a glass on his head, after which he fled.

The police registered a case under sections 452 and 323 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and reached the spot and questioned the watchman of the plush housing society in order to ascertain veracity of the girls allegations. When the watchman told them he did not see anyone entering the gate, the police suspected that someone from the building had attacked her.

During her interaction with us, the girl also claimed that she was being stalked and was getting threat messages on Instagram from a man, said a police officer. She told us that whenever she came to the police station, the man used to tell her that no one can trace or catch him, which made us suspicious of the sequence of events, said the officer.

The police did not find anything in the CCTV footages and also got suspicious about the claims of the girl about Instagram messages. How was it possible that every time the investigation team contacted her, she received a message on Instagram, the police officer wondered. When we confronted her, she told us that she felt neglected as her parents used to go to Thailand, where her fathers business is based, but they never used to take her along, the officer said.

The prime reason for this kind of behaviour is lack of communication between parents and children, said Dr Avinash Dsouza, a child psychiatrist explaining the girls conduct. The age [12-18] is very crucial, parents should give as much time as possible to their children and if they do not do that there is a possibility that the child might get into substance abuse, depression or a failed love affair, Dr Dsouza warned. He said it also needs to be looked at whether parents have had an open relationship with her in the past or not. Maybe in the past she could have tried to suggest the same, but was ignored, he said, suggesting, They should sit together and talk and also seek professional help together and individually.
A 28-year-old Nigerian national was arrested by the anti-narcotic cell of Mumbai after he was allegedly found in possession of 30g of cocaine worth Rs1.80 lakh. The arrested accused was produced in court and remanded in police custody till March 12.

According to the police, the arrested accused is been identified as Uzowm Chikwudoom Livonos, 28, a resident of Mira road. He was arrested at Byculla, Mumbai. On the basis of information we received it was found that he was going to come near the bus stop for a deal. However, we laid a trap and caught hold of him, an official said.

In his statement to the police, Livonos said he has been into the drug-peddling business for 18 months and came on a business visa, which he extended a few months ago. Whenever he used to receive a call from the customers, depending on the order he used to come to India with the consignment and deliver the products. He was selling the drug for Rs6,000 per g and was getting an commission of Rs500 per g, added the official.

Shivdeep Lande, deputy commissioner of police, anti-narcotic cell, Mumbai ,confirmed that a case has been registered under the relevant section of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. The accused will be in police custody till March 12 and we trying to develop (possible) further links to the case, he said.
Reacting to an HT report, the Maharashtra revenue department will file a case about the destruction of mangrove forests in Charkop, Kandivli.

HT had reported on March 7 that 22 hectares of mangroves were destroyed at three sites in the western suburbs. Reji Abraham, member of the mangrove destruction redressal committee which was formed on the orders of the Bombay high court had brought the incidents to the committees notice.

Babasaheb Pardhe, sub-divisional officer (SDO), Mumbai suburban, said, while a first-information-report (FIR) had been filed in the mangrove destruction case near Indian Navy Station (INS) Hamla, Marve in November 2017, an FIR was filed in the Evershine Nagar case.

We can confirm mangrove destruction at all three locations highlighted by HT in its report, said Pardhe.

Since these areas belong to the revenue department, investigation is underway at all these locations. At INS Hamla and Evershine Nagar, the police needs to file a charge sheet and arrest offenders. However, near Charkop village, we cannot confirm the exact area of destruction, but our investigation is underway, and an FIR will be filed soon.

Pardhe said that the district administration used land revenue maps, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) 1991 development plan, and on-ground survey during its investigation.

Meanwhile, the state government directed the mangrove cell to give its reaction to the newspaper report.

An official from the state government, who is following the case, said, The alleged mangrove destruction cases were discussed at the highest level of the state government. In such a situation, clarifications from the responsible departments are always called for.

The state mangrove cell in a letter to the forest secretary, public relations wing of the forest department, and HT, said that allegations were baseless and scientifically incorrect.

N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell said, the maximum damage was witnessed at INS Hamla, Marve, which amounted to 3 hectares and the remaining two locations, did not lose any mangrove cover, and; on the contrary, fresh plantations had increased the cover. The letter attached satellite images highlighting areas, where fresh plantations were done.

These are unsubstantiated opinions of an individual, who happens to be a member of that committee. The committee at no point of time arrived at such a conclusion. There is no large-scale mangrove cover destruction at any of these sites. Small scale destructions need to be investigated by the district administration as the land is under their jurisdiction, said Vasudevan.

Only in the INS Hamla area, can one observe a likely reduction in the mangrove cover. More detailed analysis is required to determine the exact loss of mangrove cover here, but prima facie the loss appears to be around 3 hectares.

However, the complainant stood by his allegations and said there was no action taken by the cell to prosecute offenders.

The directions of the Bombay HC are being repeatedly violated and no one to be held accountable. There will be deterrence if there are arrests and convictions, said Abraham.
An autorickshaw driver, who was last month found fleecing passengers with a rigged e-meter, will not able to drive the vehicle for the next six months. Reason: the Wadala Regional Transport Office (RTO) on Monday suspended his driving licence along with autorickshaw permit.

Based on a complaint filed by Sachin Khetale, a civil engineer, whom the driver had charged an exorbitant fare for the journey between Kapurbawadi, Thane to Shanti Nagar Jogeshwari, the Jogeshwari traffic division had seized Narales autorickshaw with registration number MH 03 BT 6161. With the help of friends, Khetale had spread a post on the incident and photographs on social media.

After the Hindustan Times on February 16, published a report on how the Jogeshwari resident, brought to the attention of traffic police a trick allegedly being used by the driver of an auto he was travelling to tamper with the meter and fleece commuters, the transport authorities swung into action.

Purushottam Nikam, regional transport officer of Wadala RTO, said, We have suspended the auto-rickshaw permit of Nitin Kumar Narale for 90 days and driving licence for 180 days, as per the provisions in section 86 and section 19 of the Motor Vehicle Act, for e-meter rigging complaint against him.

After hearing his side, as per the set procedure, the RTO did not find his response satisfactory and therefore decided to suspend his permit and driving licence. The Wadala RTO had asked Narale, a resident of Tembhipada in Bhandup to remain present in front of them on February 20, but he did not turn up. Instead he appeared before the transport authorities on Monday.

During the hearing, the autorickshaw driver denied rigging of e-meter and claimed he has been falsely implicated, said RTO officials. Narale can appeal to the transport commissioner.

They sent a show-cause notice to Narale. The Wadala RTO also lodged a police complaint against the auto driver at Meghwadi police station under section 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of Indian Penal code, on February 17. 2018.
They are building metros, they are building airports, they are making the city walkable, they have not only stepped into what was considered to be a mans world, but have gone way ahead.

On International Womens Day (March 8), HT speaks to women officials of the Maharashtra government who are breaking every barrier to change the citys landscape, improve the quality of life and make it better for its citizens. The challenges they face in the bargain are innumerable - long hours at work, visits to dusty construction sites even at odd hours, staying away from children and juggling between family and work.

What keeps them going, however, is their immense passion and dedication to provide infrastructure that the megapolis deserves. And yes, they are not expecting any special treatment for being women.

Being a woman can never be an excuse

ASHWINI BHIDE, MD, MMRC

Ashwini Bhide at a Metro construction site in BKC, Mumbai. (Aalok Soni/ HT Photo)

She is heading a project which Indias Metro man E Sreedharan has termed the most difficult, most challenging and the most complex Metro project the country has ever undertaken.

Dealing with the project, being in a field considered to be male-dominated and not having a background in engineering -- nothing has dithered Ashwini Bhides passion for her work. The one principle that the managing director of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) has followed in her career spanning more than two decades is being a woman can never be an excuse.

Highlights Ashwini Bhide, a 1995 batch IAS officer is the managing director, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation. She heads the organisation which is executing the fully underground Metro-3 corridor (Colaba-Bandra-Seepz). She has also worked as the additional metropolitan commissioner in the MMRDA.

My first e counter with urban infrastructure was when I was appointed at the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA). I was an arts graduate, I had no engineering background and here I was heading several major infrastructure projects in a completely male-dominated arena, says Bhide. But I didnt hesitate to learn on-field. Through the years, I also learnt that projects are not always about engineering, there are a lot of social aspects involved. It needs managerial skills and good co-ordination to complete an infrastructure project.

An IAS officer from the 1995 batch, Bhide is credited for the execution of several infrastructure projects in the city, including the 16.8-km Eastern Freeway, the Mumbai monorail and the citys first Metro from Versova to Ghatkopar. Her contribution towards rehabilitating 5,000 families, affected by many infrastructure projects, is also considered to be a case study.

Today, Bhide heads a company that is executing a 33.5-km underground Metro corridor from Colaba in South Mumbai to Seepz in the western suburbs. Once commissioned in 2021, it is expected to change the way the city travels.

Since its inception, however, the project has also been mired in controversy, including resistance to a car-depot in Aarey, tree-cutting across the city and complaints of damage caused to old buildings owing to the works. Family support has given the strength to carry on in her long journey, she says. My family always understood that the job as an IAS officer in this mega city can be demanding.

Bhide recalls an incident when she had to take her two young children to Mussoorie, where she had to attend a month-long training programme. I took special permission to bring my children, my mother-in-law and a house help because my children were very young, she says. However, Mussoorie was followed by a three-week programme in South Korea, for which Bhide had to seek help from her extended family to look after her children in Mumbai. I remember when the Milan and Dahisar rail-overbridges were being executed, a major part of the work was to be done at night. I used to be at the site from 11pm to 3am for days, she says.

My journey from Rajasthan to Mumbai feels like a dream

NIDHI CHOUDHARI, DEPUTY MUNICIPAL COMMISSIONER (SPECIAL), BMC

Nidhi Choudhari at the BMC headquarters in Mumbai. (Kunal Patil/HT Photo)

Tasked with one of the controversial, expansive and ongoing project of dealing with encroachments in Mumbai and freeing public space, Nidhi Choudhari, the deputy municipal commissioner (special) in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), says her journey from Didwana (a small town in Rajasthan) to becoming an Indian Administrative Service officer was almost unimaginable.

I had not been outside my town until I completed my post-graduation. I first stepped outside Didwana when I got a job in the Reserve Bank of India in Chennai. The first job brought a positive change in me, made me more independent, said Choudhari.

Highlights Nidhi Choudhari, a 2012 batch IAS officer is the deputy municipal commissioner, special, in the BMC. She has been given the task of removal of encroachments in the city and also heads the BMCs legal department. Before joining the BMC, Choudhari was the CEO of Palghar and assistant collector, Pen sub-division in Raigad district

Fighting the probability of child marriage, she said the journey was difficult. Where I have reached is like a dream, said Choudhari, who makes it a point to keep Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao plank on her desk.

The journey was not only difficult for me but mostly for my parents who had to hear taunts like will you make her collector and who will marry her? My parents were considered unlucky because they had two daughters.

An IAS officer from 2012 batch, before joining the BMC, Choudhari was the chief executive officer of Palghar district council and assistant collector, Pen sub-division in Raigad district, where she worked to make six tribal blocks free of open defecation and introduced social networking portals. Notably, during her time, the Palghar Zilla Parishad released its first Gender Budget.

In Mumbai, she has been given the task of removing encroachments, including 739 illegal religious structures in the city, which has faced political pressure and also implementing hawkers policy. After her appointment in October, the BMC has demolished over half the illegal religious and hawkers policy has been moved to final stages of implementation. Choudhari says the present task also requires similar dedication and planning.

Choudhari has also been a front-runner in organising career guidance workshops, talks for employees daughters and self-help groups.

Through my work, my aim is to provide support and motivate all girls. Sometimes, the social pressure may make women think that marriage or having a child is the end of their dream or life. I want all women to be an individual first and then look at different roles.

People dont judge on gender, but on ability

PRAJAKTA LAVANGARE VERMA, JOINT MD, CIDCO

Prajakta Lavangare Verma at the Navi Mumbai airport site at Ulwe. (Bachchan Kumar/ HT Photo)

She took a 25-day child care leave when her daughter was unwell, but the mother also had another responsibility -- she was the joint managing director of the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), which is executing the Rs16,700-cr plus Navi Mumbai airport.

I had to take care of my daughter but at the same time there were many crucial meetings that I had to attend. I was also working from home to ensure there were no delays, says Prajakta Lavangare Verma, an IAS officer of the 2001 Maharashtra batch. All of us struggle to maintain a work-life balance. A male officer may not struggle with the same intensity, but I guess we learn to create a support system over time, said Verma, whose daughter is in a day-care facility in Navi Mumbai, as Verma spends long hours away from home. Here, she also specifies the need for institutional support that will facilitate women to not give up their careers after marriage or child-birth. I could not find a lot of day-care centres in south Mumbai. Our society has to create these institutions to support women, said Verma.

Highlights Prajakta Lavangare Verma, a 2001 batch IAS officer is the joint managing director, City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) which is building the much-needed Navi Mumbai international airport. Verma has previously worked as director general of information and public relations in the govt.

In her 17-year career, Verma has handled several responsibilities, including that of the director general of information and public relations, deputy director general of shipping. She has also been the chief executive officer of the Ahmednagar district and collector at Dhule, which enriched her experience in dealing with both -- rural and urban affairs. Today, she is a part of a project that is going to have major impact on the megapolis. The second airport, which is meant to ease the load off the congested Mumbai airport, is expected to take off by the end of 2019. The state government is keen to get the project started early, which means Verma and her colleagues have to work at breakneck speed.

Her job involves planning and execution of work and getting the villagers who are losing land to the project, on board. Ask her about the struggle of being a woman officer in the infrastructure arena, which is considered to be a mans world, and Verma lists out the benefits of the gender. The most challenging aspect of the executing the airport project is rehabilitation of 3,000 families who will be affected by land acquisition. A woman officer makes a huge difference here when it comes to getting villagers trust. We are here with them, she said.

She said infrastructure projects are not devoid of human issues. Although it is a technical field, it is traditionally a male-dominated area. To say that infrastructure projects are devoid of any human issues would be wrong. The main stakeholders -- the villagers in this case -- dont judge you based on your gender, but solely your ability as an officer who can resolve their issues, she said.
In a bid to continue fighting for their rights and those of the future students from marginalised communities, students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) have decided to continue their stir.

On Thursday, the protesting students started a crowdfunding program, requesting anyone and everyone to help fund their protest, which is in the interest of many students from reserved categories, who wish to pursue high education.

We need funds to keep the momentum going. In order to sustain the movement, we need funds for food, water, blankets and other essentials as well as money for inventory expenses to get mics, speakers, banners and posters. This fund will also help us mobilise more students from across the country to fight for this very important cause, said a student.

A bandh was called by the TISS Students Union on February 20 to protest the institutes decision to withdraw the fee waiver given to SC, ST and OBC students, eligible for last years Government of India Post Matric Scholarship (GoI-PMS). Students have not attended classes since February 21 and the protest has been going on at all campuses of TISS  Mumbai, Hyderabad, Tuljapur and Guwahati.

On Thursday, representatives of the students union met up officials from the institutes administration to find solutions to their problem, but were dejected to find no amicable solution. The institute has agreed to waive off the excess fee for SC and ST students for the current batch and also agreed to increase the compensation money given to OBC and non-creamy (NC) later.

The institute is only partly accepting our demands without understanding that our fight is not just for the current batch, but also for future students of the institute, who will come from the reserved categories. As of now, we intend to intensify our stir till the central government takes notice of the issue and brings about changes, said student, who participated in the protests.
One of the parents of a class 10 student has lodged an FIR for cheating against the school director, principal and other management members of Holy Angels School at Kavi Nagar. The complainant alleged that his son was not given the admit card for the class 10 board examinations.

Samarjeet Singh, the station house officer of Kavi Nagar police station, said a complaint was lodged by one Pawan Goel and an FIR was registered under Section 420 of the IPC. Goel had also submitted receipts of fee deposited towards his sons education at Holy Angels School, Kavi Nagar.

There were a total of nine cases, including the case of Goels son, in which the child failed in class 9 and could not clear his exam. The parents could not produce his class 9 pass certificate. So, he was not issued an admit card for appearing in the class 10 examinations. All nine cases are similar and we have asked them to take a refund. In case they are interested, we can get their wards admitted to an open school for clearing the examination, Siddharth Jain, the chairman of Holy Angels School, said.

Pawan Goel, the childs father, confirmed that his son failed in class 9 in another school while Holy Angel gave him admission to class 10.

Still, my son was admitted to class 10 with an assurance that his class 9 examination will be cleared. The school got him admitted to class 10 and we have submitted all the fee receipts to the police. The school can give us a refund but they will not be able to return the year lost, as a result, Goel said.

City magistrate PK Dubey has directed the police to lodge an FIR against several unaffiliated schools who admitted students and allegedly promised them admit cards through affiliated schools.

The parents and the members of parents association staged a protest and came to us with a complaint against these schools. We have directed the circle officer to take action and lodge FIR against four to five private schools that are allegedly involved in the incident, Dubey said.

The incident came to light a day before the CBSE class 10 board examinations. At least 94 instances were reported across the district, in which students were not provided with an admit card even though the respective schools promised them admit cards from a tie-up with affiliated schools.
On February 28, at a meeting of its chief ministers and deputy CMs from 19 states in Delhi, the BJP discussed simultaneous elections from panchayat to Parliament. Holding simultaneous elections is a feasible proposition, but important conditions have to be met before one can go ahead with the plan. The most important prerequisite is political consultation before amending the Constitution and statutes.

The first four general elections (1951-52, 1954, 1962 and 1967) were held simultaneously with assemblies. This pattern was disturbed in 1968-69. Thereafter premature elections to Lok Sabha and assemblies were conducted each time the government lost the confidence of the House.

Since then, the conduct of elections has become increasingly complex. With our continental size and now almost 900 million voters, more than North and South America, this is without doubt the worlds largest management exercise. Most of us are not aware of the complexities involved in its micro management: from EVMs and now VVPATs, to the enormous deployment of central forces (Central Reserve Police Force, Central Industrial Security Force and the Border Security Force).

Over the years, political players have lost faith in the state constabulary for election deployment. They view them as supportive of the government in power. The requisitioning of such large central forces and their deployment is a mammoth exercise. In addition, the Election Commission of India (ECI) needs almost 2000 general and expenditure observers for a general election and a proportionately smaller number for state elections. These are senior officers of the rank of joint secretary and above who are deputed for almost a month at a time to safeguard the Model Code of Conduct and ensure a level playing field.

There is no doubt that clubbing elections will save on expenditure not just for the State but also political parties and their candidates. A prolonged period when the Model Code of Conduct is operational would be reduced to once or twice during a five-year period.

There are, however, critical constitutional provisions that will require amendment.

The Constitution prescribes five-year terms for the Lok Sabha and assemblies (six in the case of Jammu and Kashmir). Any change in this cycle will necessitate amendment of several related articles of the Constitution. If a new pattern of simultaneous polls is sought to be introduced, the existing terms of some Houses will need to be extended or shortened as a one-time measure.

Detailed political consultations are needed to determine what would need to be done if, thereafter, any assembly loses a confidence vote. Would there be a spell of Presidents rule in the state concerned ? More importantly, who will administer the Centre in the case of an early dissolution of the Lok Sabha? There is no provision in the Constitution for any interim measure if Parliament is dissolved before its five-year term. If the government falls within a short period (say, in 13 days, as it once happened) it would necessitate an immediate re-election, unless a new provision is enacted to take care of the interregnum.

There are other questions too: In case a government falls mid way through its term, can a no-confidence motion be followed by a confidence motion in order to install a new government for the remainder of its term? At present, there are no provisions for a confidence motion.

Some of these questions have been addressed in the Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee under EM Natchiappan in 2015. A solution that the committee offered was that elections could be held in two distinct phases. A clutch of assembly elections could coincide with elections to the Lok Sabha. The remaining could be held after two-and-a half years. Each of these proposals will need to be discussed by the political parties.

The ECI may best be viewed as an impartial umpire. The players are the recognised political parties, both central and state, and the members of Parliament and assemblies. The government must seek their views and obtain consensus as was obtained for the creation of the Model Code of Conduct in the 1960s by the political parties.

Navin B Chawla is former Chief Election Commissioner of India

The views expressed are personal
We are an open house. We will be at your service. Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh reiterated that his government is serious about the need to reinvent Punjabs economy to curb unemployment, and he is ready to give all entrepreneurial efforts a boost.

Addressing a gathering of entrepreneurs at TiECon-18 at Indian School of Business on Thursday, he also cited the reason for this shift. There was a time when India had to go around with a begging bowl for food, he said. Punjab with 2% of Indias population produced 50% of national foodgrains.

Things have changed, other states have developed, and Punjabs grains are not required any longer to that degree. Rice we dont require at all, he said. His statement comes close on the heels of Niti Ayogs strong message to Punjab, asking it to set its house in order and not worry about national food security any longer.

Pointing out that Punjab is behind the national growth rate of 7%, he called for focusing on industry. Punjab has the competence, the atmosphere Our problem is opportunity, he said.

Earlier, ISB dean Rajendra Srivastava, recounting the growth of Austin, Texas (US), into a world-class tech hub, said what Punjab needs is a confluence of educational institutes, private sector and government for the big push.

Speaking in the same vein, TiE chairman IS Paul pointed out that the region has substantial human capital in its universities, and TiE, a non-profit body with over 240 members in the region, is ready to help with financial capital. It is for the state government to provide the right ecosystem, he said. We should focus on one technology and specialise in it. Entrepreneurship is the best guarantee for jobs.

Agreeing with him, the CM said there are 9 million underemployed or unemployed young people in the state. The world is changing, industry is changing, everything is becoming electronic; we have to keep pace.

Later, TiE Chandigarh chapter president Alok Ramsisaria declared, For the first time we are hearing a CM say we are there for you.

Social incubator to launch 50 entrepreneurs

Invest Punjab (or Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion) signed a memorandum of understanding with Param Singh, the Australia-based founder of UDAY and Project Mooo, for setting up a social incubator for profit-with-purpose enterprises, in the presence of CM Capt Amarinder during the conclave on Thursday.

To start with, the two partners will set up incubators at Mohali and Amritsar. Param Singh said they will encourage and fund entrepreneurs in the field of agriculture, soil health, water, education and rural development. Our aim is to fund and mentor 50 entrepreneurs in the next two years. Imagine the cascade effect it will have on employment, Param said.
Chandigarh Police on Wednesday registered a case against a woman lawyer and her mother, 24 hours after the duo created a ruckus at the five-star Hotel Mountview , allegedly destroying crockery, furniture and abusing and pepper spraying cafeteria staff.

Admitted to a private hospital in Mohali, Swati Kataria (32), a practising lawyer in the Punjab and Haryana high court and Rani Kataria (53), both from Karnal, are yet to be arrested by the police.

Both have been booked under sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 427 (Mischief causing damage to the amount of fifty rupees), 353 (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 506 (criminal intimidation) at the Sector 3 police station.

If found guilty they could face a maximum punishment of imprisonment of up to two years. We have registered the case. They are yet to be arrested, confirmed Umrao Singh, deputy superintendent of police (DSP).

A case against Swati and her mother Rani was registered by the police on a complaint by the hotels security officer, SP Bhardwaj.

They were taken under preventive custody by the police on Tuesday and admitted to the Government Multispecialty Hospital at Sector 16 from where they were discharged on Wednesday. Later in the day both again got admitted to a private hospital in Mohali.

Damage at hotel pegged at Rs 30,000

Meanwhile, the staff at Hotel Mountview, a flagship hotel run by the Chandigarh Industrial and& Tourism Development Corporation (CITCO) has pegged the loss to hotel property at Rs 30,000.

Apart from breaking plates and glasses they even broke the telephone installed in the cafeteria, alleged Anurag Walia, deputy general manger of the hotel. He added that a formal complaint was lodged by the hotel against the accused.

Apart from the phone, estimated to cost Rs 15,000, about 15 to 20 plates stacked for the buffet and an equal number of glasses were destroyed.

We have decided to ban the entry of the two women in the hotel, Walia added.

Talking about the allegations by the women that the staff had misbehaved with them , he said, It is totally baseless and they are just trying to cover up their misdeeds.

Giving her side of the story, Swati had said that female staff at the washroom had misbehaved with her mother and they along with the security officer were using derogatory sign language while pointing at them.

She said the duo sat at the table ignoring all of this but after a staff member misbehaved again with them I lost my temper and threw the curd on her face, Swati added.

I am practising advocate at the high court and the staff of the hotel has misbehaved with us. The assaulted me and my mother, she said while talking to HT on the phone from a private hospital in Mohali.

She also said she had injured her hand and head and her mother had fractured her leg.
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has decided to gherao the Punjab on March 20 to protest against the Congress governments over non-fulfilment of its poll promises, especially those related to farmers, farm labour and the poorer sections of society.

Announcing this, SAD senior vice-president and spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said that party president Sukhbir Singh Badal has convened a meeting of party MLAs, ex-MLAs and district presidents on March 14 to discuss the preparations for the protest to be held on the opening day of the budget session of the state assembly.

The SAD will not let the government run away from the promises it made to farmers and farm labour about farm loan and force it to fulfil promises or quit, he said.

RESOLUTION AGAINST JUSTICE RANJIT SINGH PANEL

The party also passed a resolution rejecting the Justice Ranjit Singh Inquiry Commission formed by the state government to probe sacrilege incidents of Guru Granth Sahib.

The resolution was passed at a Pol Khol rally held at Koom Kalan, 20km from Ludhiana, in presence of Sukhbir and other senior leaders of the party.

Moving the resolution, SAD leader Maheshinder Singh Grewal said the party would cooperate with any commission headed by a Supreme Court judge and alleged that Justice Ranjit Singh (retd) was biased against the Akali Dal.
Jharkhand police are investigating if outlawed Maoist groups are using Aadhaar cards of villagers to open bank accounts and procure mobile SIM cards.

Nearly 300 Aadhaar cards, two bank passbooks and ATM cards were recovered during an anti-insurgency drive in Girdih district through Tuesday and Wednesday. Fifteen suspected Maoists, including two woman cadres, were arrested and a huge cache of arms and ammunition was seized as security personnel scoured the Parasnath forested area for ultras.

The raiding party found around 300 Aadhaar cards, passbooks and over a dozen ATM cards. We are probing if these cards have already been used to open bank accounts. We will take action accordingly once that is established, said Ashish Batra, inspector general (special task force) and spokesperson of the Jharkhand police.

Police said many of the Aadhaar and ATM cards still remained in envelopes, unopened. They did not rule out the possibility of Maoists using the Aadhaar cards to open new bank accounts in the months that followed the 2016 demonetisation initiative.

Several bank accounts witnessed huge deposits in Chatra district. A majority of these accounts were seized because their holders could not give satisfactory explanations regarding their sources of income, a senior police officer said on the condition of anonymity.

Police also pointed out that Aadhaar cards help members of banned rebel outfits procure mobile SIM cards through civilians, thereby making surveillance difficult for security agencies. Top Maoist commanders dont use the same number regularly. They need as many SIM cards as possible. We cant ignore the possibility that they must be using Aadhaar cards of villagers to procure SIMs as most outlets mandatorily seek UIDAI linkage, the officer said.
Amala Pauls next Tamil film is a thriller and the title was announced on Thursday as Adho Andha Paravai Pola. The adventure thriller is set in the western ghat, and is about a young woman who loses her way in the jungles. It is her journey - her interactions with wild animals and weird incidents become the crux of the film to be directed by debutante Vinoth KR. The film is written by Arun Rajagopalan and is bankrolled by Jones under Century International Films.

With a prevailing and a relevant social angle, the film is narrated as a taut thriller with Amala Paul playing the lead role. Ashish Vidyarthi, Samir Kochhar and Supreme Sundar play prominent roles in the film. The film is being extensively shot in the jungles of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. The cinematography is done by Santhakumar who is an associate of George Williams and the music for this project will be scored by Jakes Bejoy.

Amala Paul who was last seen in Thiruttupayale 2 opposite Bobby Simha and Prasanna is now awaiting the release of Bhaskar Oru Rascal, opposite Arvind Swami. She is currently busy shooting for the Malayalam film Aadujeevitham.

Amala Paul was recently in news for being harassed by a man when she was rehearsing for a stage show in Chennai. The actor filed a complaint against the offender and spoke about it at length to explain the incident.

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Actor Dhanush on Thursday unveiled the first look of his upcoming film Vada Chennai, which marks his reunion with filmmaker Vetrimaaran, with who hes worked in his career best films such as Pollathavan and Aadukalam. Dhanush shared two posters and wrote that he plays a character called Anbu, whose name goes beyond the character. Going by the two posters, we see two different sides to Dhanushs character. In a poster that features other actors too, we see Dhanush stepping out of a police van, smiling at Aishwarya Rajesh in distance. In the second poster, we see him with a knife in his mouth and climbing what appears to be a rope.

While it was speculated that the Dhanush plays a gangster in the film, in his interview to Tamil magazine, Vetrimaaran revealed that the actor plays an aspiring carom player in the film, which will be released in three parts and the first one is slated for release in June.

Produced on a lavish budget of Rs 60 crore, Vetrimaaran said that despite knowing that his market value as a director is around Rs 45 crore, Dhanush had no qualms producing the film on a high budget. The first part of the film captures the life of Dhanushs character from age 15 to 30. Vetrimaaran said Dhanushs effort for the film is unparalleled, and that he had to do two commercial films to raise funds for this project. Apparently, Dhanush had set aside 200 days to shoot three parts of the film.

The film also stars Andrea, Aishwarya Rajesh, Daniel Balaji and Ameer in pivotal roles. Having recently wrapped up the shoot of the first part in the trilogy, Dhanush is currently busy shooting for Maari 2. From June, hes expected to commence work on his second directorial which is rumoured to also star Akkineni Nagarjuna.

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When Bhushan Pradhan accepted his role in Pratima Joshis Aamhi Doghi, he was confident that the film would do well. However, he wasnt expecting people within the industry to take note of his character, Ram. Considering the film is women-centric and revolves around the lives of Savi and Ammi, played by Priya Bapat and Mukta Barve, respectively, Bhushan is overwhelmed that his part was equally appreciated. I did not expect this, he says, adding, I wasnt sure of how the audience would react to my character, and I wasnt expecting industry insiders to call up and acknowledge my work. Actor Jitendra Joshi called me and spoke to me at length about my work. He is one person who is very selective with his praise. He gave me tips on how I could continue doing great work. He recalled each scene and explained what he liked about it too.

The actor says that he couldnt attend the Mumbai premier, but right after the show, messages started pouring in. I wasnt around for the cast and crew screening either, and I was deeply touched by the messages. Priya, Mukta and other members genuinely praised my work, and I have taken screenshots, which I will look at when I go through phases of self-doubt.

Recalling another incident, Bhushan says, I am a huge fan of late actor Rasika Joshi and had watched her in the play, White Lily and Night Rider, numerous times. Even Rasika would ask me how many times I was going to watch it. When she passed away, I asked actor Milind Phatak if he had a recording of the show, but he said, I have it, but you will have to earn it. This was many years ago and we made a deal that whenever Milind likes my film, he would share the CD. And, after he watched Aamhi Doghi, he called me and said that I could have the CD now. The actor adds that he owes the success and positive feedback he has received to his director, Pratima, who trusted him and made sure he was more than just a good-looking actor in the film.

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Actor Anita Hassanandani Reddy and her husband Rohit Reddy were in Pune on Wednesday (March 7) to surprise her father-in-law. Rohits father was in Pune as part of the Raising Day of 63 Engineer Regiment, celebrated by the serving as well as retired officers of Pune. My father-in-law, an ex-army officer, was posted here. Rohit and I decided to drive down and surprise him, says Anita, who is very fond of the city.

Anita adds that her husband was born in Khadki and studied at Symbiosis College. Every time we drive down, Rohit tells me interesting stories about the city. He shows me around his college, hang-out places and where he lived. The city has a young and energetic vibe that is infectious.

The Krishna Cottage (2004) actor calls Pune a holiday destination and says, I would come down often with friends because of its proximity to Mumbai. The minute you enter the city you feel a relaxed vibe. I enjoy Pune because it has some great party places and even betterrestaurants. It is definitely greener and prettier than Mumbai.

Anita adds that places like Prems and Arthurs Theme in Koregaon Park are her favourite spots.
A 17-year-old girl was killed in a shooting at dismissal time Wednesday at an Alabama high school and a 17-year-old male student was injured, authorities said, adding they were investigating it as accidental.

Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said investigators are still seeking to determine the specific circumstances of the shooting shortly before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at Huffman High School, adding they had begun seeking out witnesses and school surveillance video.

At this particular time, we are considering this accidental, the police chief said at a news conference. Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions.

Wednesdays shooting prompted a brief lockdown at the magnet school in Alabamas largest city. Students were subsequently released and authorities said they had determined that the shooting was not perpetrated by someone from the outside entering the school. Wilson declined to say who fired the gun or to identify what firearm was retrieved by authorities.

No arrests were immediately reported and the two students werent identified.

We are asking questions from the staff, the students, anyone who was in that area, Wilson said. This should not happen in schools.

He said police have already questioned students but declined to say how many. Wilson did confirm metal detectors were in place and functioning in the school.

Huffman High in northeast Birmingham is one of the largest high schools in the city. The Birmingham City School system said in a statement that the shooting prompted a brief lockdown and added two students were involved as school was letting out.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin joined the news conference and said the deceased student would have turned 18 in about 30 days and was a senior who had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse.

We are not just talking about some person, (were) talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy, Woodfin said.

Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring said her goal was to support the family of the teen who died and to reassure parents about the safety of their children.

She said the citys schools would be open Thursday.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey released a statement Wednesday evening that she was saddened by the students death.

I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early. Every life is precious and, even though this was an accident, it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus.

The shooting took place the day after Ivey created a school safety council in Alabama to make recommendations on security. The security plan would ensure schools have an updated security response plan for sharing information about potential threats. It also would require schools to train students and school employees on how to respond to an emergency situation.

Multiple bills have been proposed in the Alabama legislature after 17 people were killed last month in a shooting rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school. Varying proposals by Republicans would arm either teachers or volunteer security forces in schools. Measures sought by Democrats would seek to limit or ban the sale of assault weapons. They all face a tight deadline before the end of Alabamas legislative session this election year.
Buddhist mobs swept through Muslim neighbourhoods in Sri Lankas central hills, destroying stores and restaurants and setting homes on fire despite a curfew, a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of security forces, residents said Thursday.

In the small town of Pallekele, mobs ignored the curfew that was supposed to keep them off the streets and used gasoline bombs to burn four homes, said Mohamed Nazar.

An angry crowd gathered around Nazars house around 8pm Wednesday, throwing rocks and shouting, so the family turned off the lights so no one could see inside. Then a large flame came and the house caught fire, Nazar said.

His father hid under a sofa as the flames took hold, but Nazar grabbed him and they ran out. Authorities eventually put out the fire, but much of his familys belongings were destroyed, he said.

Many residents of the area around Kandy, the main hill town, described a series of similar attacks since the violence began early this week. The streets of most towns were all but empty except for police and soldiers.

As evening began to fall Thursday, many Muslims worried that darkness could bring more attacks, and that the police would do little to stop them.

Mohamed Ramzeen in his vandalised restaurant in Pilimathalawa, Sri Lanka, on Thursday. About 50 people broke into Ramzeen's restaurant on Wednesday night while the curfew was in effect, destroying nearly everything they found, he said. (AP)

We cant trust the army and police. My shop has been attacked in their presence and I dont know what could happen tonight, said Mohamed Faraz, whose butcher shop was ransacked.

The government ordered a state of emergency Tuesday and later shut down popular social media networks, saying they were being used to spread false rumors that led to the attacks.

Technology created to bring people together is being used to pull people apart, technology minister Harin Fernando was quoted as saying by the Sri Lanka Mirror newspaper. Social media websites such as Facebook, Whatsapp and Viber ... have been used to destroy families, lives and private property.

Some see the violence rooted in the spread of hardline Buddhism.

Sri Lanka has long faced a bitter ethnic divide between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, fuelling a decades-long civil war as Tamil militants tried to carve out their own homeland.

Sri Lankan police look at a burnt home in Digana, a suburb of Kandy, on Thursday. Sri Lankan police said petrol bombs were hurled at a mosque as hundreds of troops patrolled a troubled central district where anti-Muslim violence has left three people dead. (AFP)

But in the years since the war ended in 2009, a religious divide has grown, with the rise of Buddhist nationalist groups that stoke anger against the minority Muslims, saying they are stealing from Buddhist temples or desecrating them, or forcing people to convert to Islam. Muslims also own many of Sri Lankas small shops, and many Muslims suspect small-town jealousy has led to some attacks.

Sinhalese are overwhelmingly Buddhists, while Tamils are mostly Hindu, Muslim and Christian.

It is vital that all political leaders, religious and other community leaders condemn violence, the European Union ambassadors to Sri Lanka said in a statement Thursday, calling for urgent action against hate crimes.

The violence and heavy security presence are largely limited to the islands central hills. In the capital, Colombo, and other cities and towns, there are few if any signs of trouble.
A pathbreaking agreement between India and Canada on combating terrorism, the seminal outcome of Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus recent visit to India, may turn into a non-starter due to the backlash against it in Canada and events that have followed the bilateral trip.

Concern is growing in India, and obviously within the government, that the Framework for Cooperation on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism may well be undermined by political compulsions in Canada, and it may remain largely on paper rather than put into practice.

The framework was agreed upon on February 14, three days before Trudeaus arrival in India, but formally released nine days later after the bilateral meeting between him and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Ironically, the Canadian official who signed the framework, National Security and Intelligence Officer Daniel Jean, was the person identified by Canadian media as having held briefings blaming rogue elements within the Indian establishment of trying to sabotage the visit.

Indian officials refused to comment on the matter given its sensitive nature, but there is a clear sense of frustration over how such an important pact could potentially be sabotaged by concerted opposition to it.

Former Indian high commissioner to Ottawa Vishnu Prakash said, Everything should henceforth be taken with more than a pinch of salt.

The agreement is based on fundamental respect for the sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of India and Canada and institutionalised cooperation between the National Security Council Secretariat of the Republic of India and the office of Canadas National Security and Intelligence Advisor, and regular exchanges and coordination between India and Canada.

It also equated groups associated with Khalistani terrorism, such as Babbar Khalsa International and International Sikh Youth Federation with al-Qaeda, Islamic State and Lashkar-e-Taiba, among other major terror groups.

It has drawn immediate criticism in Canada.

Gurpatwant Pannun, legal advisor to the hardline activist group Sikhs for Justice, said, What act of violence has been funded by Canadian Sikhs? They (Indian government) cannot defame the (Sikh) community. He also said that India cannot dictate the terms, its not going to work in the end.

Earlier, World Sikh Organisation senior vice-president Bhavjinder Kaur said in a statement, Indian intelligence bodies continue to be accused of interfering in the affairs of Sikhs in Canada. While increased trade between Canada and India is beneficial to both countries, it cannot be at the expense of our human rights and principles or by compromising the safety and security of individuals, as may happen with this framework.

Without dramatic improvements to their human rights records, increased cooperation with Indian security and intelligence bodies is very problematic.

There are others, though, who have a more optimistic view, like Kwantlen Polytechnic University professor of political science Shinder Purewal, who said, Knowing that Canadian officials dont have these kind of political links, they will see it from another angle, even if the political will is not there.

He also said that one of the issues here was that of Khalistani terrorism, particularly the money trail from here to India. If the Canadian government can stop it, that will be an accomplishment.

However, that positive sentiment is not necessarily shared at this time in New Delhi.
Britains top domestic security official on Thursday described the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter with a rare chemical agent as a brazen and reckless act that will be answered without hesitation when the facts become clear.

Home secretary Amber Rudd told the House of Commons that enormous resources are being directed at trying to figure out who might be responsible for poisoning Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33. The pair was found unconscious on a bench in the southwestern English city of Salisbury on Sunday, triggering a police investigation led by counterterrorism detectives.

The use of a nerve agent on British soil is a brazen and reckless act, she said. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way. People are right to want to know who to hold to account. But if we are to be rigorous in this investigation we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation.

The Skripal case is reminiscent of the 2006 killing of another former Russian spy who was poisoned in London with radioactive polonium-210. The banned VX nerve agent was used to kill the estranged half-brother of North Koreas leader last year in Malaysia.

Skripal and his daughter are in critical but stable condition, Rudd said. A police officer who came to their aid is also in a serious but stable condition, though he is not in intensive care.

Police have declined to speculate on who might be behind the attack. The Russian government has denied any involvement in the attempted killing of Skripal, a former Russian agent who had served jail time in his homeland for spying for Britain before being freed in a spy swap.

But Rudd said the government will act without hesitation as the facts become clearer.

The rarity of the poisoning material drew attention to the potential of a state actor being involved. Chemical weapons expert Richard Guthrie of research project CBW Events said the highly public murder attempt appeared to be an expression of power intended to send a message.

Theres echoes of Litvinenko  you are doing it in a way that makes it obvious youre doing it, he said.

Griffiths said that Russia was obviously a clear candidate, but it was too soon to say who was behind the attack.

Its also possible there could be some troublemaker out there who wants to make it look like it was Russia, he said.

Nerve agents are chemicals that disrupt the messages sent by the nerves to the bodys organs. They can be administered in gas or liquid form, causing symptoms including vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis and often death.

Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said there was a low risk to the public, but experts on the chemical said it was highly dangerous and needed specialized care to process.

Nerve agents are not materials that can be made at home, said Andrea Sella, a professor of inorganic chemistry at University College, London. Their level of toxicity is such that they are only to be manufactured in specialized facilities.

Authorities will be looking to find impurities and residues that might provide clues as to the precise chemical process used to manufacture the material, Sella said.

There is no question that the authorities will be looking for the container used to deliver the material, as the chemical contents would be a goldmine, Sella said. With this information it might well be possible to trace the origin of the substance.

Police and forensics officers are focusing on three sites in Salisbury, a medieval city known for its towering cathedral located 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of London. Rudd said the sites are Skripals home, a pub and a restaurant.

Skripal, a former colonel in Russias GRU military intelligence service, was convicted in 2006 of spying for Britain and imprisoned. He was freed in 2010 as part of a widely publicized spy swap in which the U.S. agreed to hand over 10 members of a Russian sleeper cell found operating in America in return for four Russians convicted of spying for the West.

Those who knew him in the community were shocked, describing him as friendly and outgoing  hardly a man hiding out.

The owner of a local convenience shop frequented by Skripal described him as one of her favorite customers. Ebru Ozturk, from Kahramanmaras, Turkey, said she made sure to stock the food that he liked to eat, particularly smoked bacon and Polish salami.

Ozturk, 41, painted an image of an educated man enjoying his retirement  fond of playing the lottery and chatting with the locals.

Usually he plays lottery and scratch cards, she said. Plus a few weeks he was lucky as well and laughed about it.
China will respond as necessary in the event of a trade war with the United States, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday, while warning that such a war would only harm all sides.

US President Donald Trump is expected to establish tariffs of 25 per cent on imported steel and 10 per cent on imported aluminium this week, but the White House has said there could be a 30-day exemption for Mexico and Canada and some other countries based on national security.

Such a move aims to counter cheap imports, especially from China, that Trump says undermine US industry and jobs.

Trumps administration has faced growing opposition to the tariffs from prominent congressional Republicans and business officials worried about their potential impact on the economy.

Trade tension with the United States has jumped to the top of the list of risks facing China this year, Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum this week, and its latest data showed exports surging 44.5 percent in February from a year earlier.

Wang, speaking on the sidelines of an annual meeting of Chinas parliament, said China and the United States did not have to be rivals, and history showed that trade wars were not the correct way to resolve problems.

Especially given todays globalisation, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful, Wang said.

China would have to make a justified and necessary response, he said.

Wang said China had a long way to go on its path of modernisation, and that it will not and need not displace the United States.

Trump addressed trade with China in tweets on Wednesday, demanding that it lay out plans for reducing its trade surplus with the United States by $1 billion, which appeared to have been raised during a meeting with a top Chinese official last week.

China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States, Trump tweeted, without saying where the message had been conveyed.

In the tweet, Trump mistakenly referred to a deficit where China runs a surplus. It was also not clear if he meant that amount, which would only be about 0.27 percent of the record $375.2 billion goods trade surplus China had with the United States last year.

Trade tensions between the worlds two largest economies have risen since Trump took office in 2017, and although China only accounts for a small fraction of U.S. steel imports, its massive industry expansion has helped produce a global glut of steel that has driven down prices.

FEW ALTERNATIVE SOURCES

The US tariffs are expected to go into effect in two months, though economists see little immediate impact on China.

Capital Economics estimates Chinas exports of steel and aluminium to the United States account for less than 0.1 percent of its gross domestic product, as both are already limited by anti-dumping measures.

On paper, China has more to lose from a trade war  it exports far more to the U.S. than it imports. But there are few alternative sources for the main products the U.S. buys from China, the research firm said in a note on Wednesday.

US soy beans, aircraft and cars are widely seen as vulnerable to possible retaliation from Beijing.

Trump is also considering trade sanctions against China under a Section 301 investigation into its intellectual property practices and pressure on foreign companies for technology transfers.

Diplomatic and US business sources say the United States has all but frozen a formal mechanism for talks on commercial disputes with China because it is not satisfied it has met its promises to ease market restrictions.

Chinas latest trade data released on Thursday showed its February exports up 44.5 per cent from a year earlier, beating market expectations, while imports grew 6.3 percent.

That left it with a trade surplus of $33.74 billion for the month, and a January-February trade surplus with the United States of $42.92 billion.

Chinas trade performance rebounded in 2017 and logged a strong start this year thanks to robust demand at home and abroad.

But the tensions with the United States are clouding the outlook for exports, while a cooling property market may curb domestic demand for imported raw materials such as iron ore.
President Donald Trump pledged Thursday the United States will show flexibility to real friends as the White House prepares to roll out steel and aluminium tariffs that have sparked fears of a global trade war.

Trumps impromptu announcement he intends to slap 25% import taxes on steel and 10% on aluminium has sparked a revolt within his own Republican party, pushed a top aide to quit, and angered major trading partners who vowed retaliation.

The proposed duties  which have already roiled world markets for days  are to be formalised at a signing ceremony later Thursday, and Canada and Mexico will initially be exempt according to Trumps top trade advisor Peter Navarro.

We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military, the president tweeted -- saying he was looking forward to the 3:30pm White House meeting.

Administration big guns commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin rushed to calm market jitters Wednesday over the tariff plans, which they indicated were still negotiable and would not hurt growth.

The US would offer temporary relief to Canada and Mexico for 30 days, the Washington Post reported citing senior US officials, breaks that could be extended depending on progress in the ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations.

But Brussels warned against letting individual European states off the hook -- such as Washingtons close ally Britain -- saying any such exemption would be viewed as applying to the whole bloc.

European Commission vice-president Jyrki Katainen said Brussels would not accept a carve-out for Britain, which has voted to leave the EU but remains a member until 2019.

What I have read today is that they are probably considering some exemptions to NAFTA countries... but also they have mentioned the UK and maybe some other countries, Katainen told reporters.

So if they try to make (an) exemption for one of our member states it means the EU as a whole.

Partners promise backlash

The EU had already sounded a stern warning Wednesday as it readied to lash back with US-targeted tariffs of its own on everything from steel to peanut butter, orange juice, cranberries, bourbon and denim jeans.

Trade wars are bad and easy to lose, EU president Donald Tusk warned, directly rebuffing Trumps assertion last week that they were good and easy to win.

With markets tumbling following the resignation of Wall Street favorite Gary Cohn -- Trumps top economic adviser who had lobbied ardently against the tariffs -- Ross tried to assuage fears.

Were going to have sensible relations with our allies, he told CNBC, claiming that Trumps policy was well thought through. Were not looking for a trade war.

Data released Wednesday showed the US foreign trade deficit widened in January to its highest level in nine years -- heaping pressure on Trump, who had campaigned on a promise to reverse that trend.

Trump blamed the deficit on his White House predecessors, while also taking aim at Beijing.

China has been asked to develop a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States, he tweeted.

Our relationship with China has been a very good one, and we look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!

China meanwhile warned Thursday it was ready to respond to US tariffs if they materialise.

Choosing a trade war is surely the wrong prescription, in the end you will only hurt others and yourself, foreign minister Wang Yi said, adding that China will certainly make an appropriate and necessary response.
An eccentric inventrepreneur, or a murdering, sexual sadist? The evidence against Peter Madsen has provided some clues about how Swedish journalist Kim Wall died on board his homemade submarine, but he has yet to tell the whole story.

The self-taught engineer goes on trial for murder on Thursday amid hopes the proceedings will determine what actually happened on board the submarine on August 10, 2017, and help understand the inner workings of a person accused of such a grisly crime.

The 47-year-old, nicknamed Rocket Madsen, was well-known in Denmark before his arrest as an inventor who dreamed of exploring worlds beyond. He built his own submarine and was developing plans for private space travel.

Now he faces a life sentence for premeditated murder, desecration of a corpse and aggravated sexual assault against Wall, who had accompanied him on his sub for a profile piece she was writing about him. Prosecutors have painted a picture of a control freak who fantasised about torturing, killing and dismembering a woman.

They believe Madsen tied Wall up before beating her and stabbing her repeatedly in the genital area. They say he then killed her, possibly by strangulation, dismembered her torso, head, and legs, and placed them in separate bags weighed down with metal objects before tossing them into Koge Bay off Copenhagen.

They claim he planned it all, bringing a saw, knife, plastic strips and metal pieces on board. And they believe Madsen watched fetish films in which women were tortured, decapitated and burned alive. Investigators found the films on a hard drive in his workshop.

Swedish journalist Kim Wall . (AFP)

Madsen, meanwhile, has insisted the hard drive is not his, and has denied intentionally killing Wall. He has changed his version of events several times, but maintains Wall died in an accident.

He has however told investigators he panicked after her death: he took a nap, then chopped up her body and threw it overboard.

Rocky past

Peter Langkjaer Madsen grew up in the small town of Saeby, 100 km (60 miles) west of Copenhagen. His parents divorced when he was six and Madsen went to live with his father, whom he has described as authoritarian and violent.

When I think about my father, I think how children in Germany must have felt if their dad was a commandant in a concentration camp, Madsen said in a 2014 biography written by journalist Thomas Djursing.

At 15, he started his first company, Danish Space Academy, to buy spare parts to build a rocket. He studied engineering, but quit once he thought he knew enough to build submarines and rockets.

My passion is finding ways to travel to worlds beyond the well-known, Madsen wrote on the website of his now-defunct Rocket Madsen Space Lab.

In 2008, he launched the Nautilus, the biggest privately-made submarine at the time. Around the same time, he developed his idea for private space travel.

In June 2011, he successfully launched a rocket from a floating platform on the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.

Madsen reportedly had an open marriage. Some of his ex-girlfriends have told the media he was into sado-masochism and erotic asphyxiation.

Angry with everyone

His half-brother Benny Langkjaer Egeso said in August that Madsen is very strange, but also very open and likeable.

You can ask whoever you like, theyll tell you we never saw this side of him, Egeso told AFP at the time.

Others paint a dark picture of an erratic person who couldnt take no for an answer, with sudden mood swings and a reputation for histrionics.

Conflict has followed him his whole life. He has a hard time getting along with other people--he has lofty ambitions and wants to do everything his way, according to Djursing.

He is angry with God and everyone, Djursing said last August.

His rocket partnership with former NASA architect Kristian von Bengtson also collapsed after an angry spat in 2014.

Im fully aware that my temper is to blame for Kristians exit and Im very sorry it has come to this, Madsen wrote in a statement at the time.

The inventor also fought with the 25 volunteers who helped build the Nautilus. After a 2015 conflict, the subs board of directors transferred ownership to him. There is a curse on Nautilus, he wrote to two of the collaborators.

That curse is me. There will never be peace on Nautilus as long as I exist.
India will help rebuild 50,000 houses in Nepal that were damaged during the 2015 great earthquake by providing a grant of $16.2 million to two UN agencies working in areas that were hit hardest by the temblor.

The Indian government signed an agreement in Kathmandu on Thursday with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) for providing socio-technical facilitation to people in Gorkha and Nuwakot districts to reconstruct their homes.

Socio-technical teams from the UN agencies will assist people to reconstruct their homes in line with the Nepal governments earthquake resistant norms. They will also guide them through the inspection and certification process to enable them to access various tranches of the housing grant.

The UNDP will provide facilitation to 26,912 houses in Gorkha, and UNOPS will cover 23,088 houses in Nuwakot under the three-year project.
Britains Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday recognised Srishti Bakshi from India as the 26th Commonwealth Point of Light in honour of her exceptional service to empowering women in India.

Srishti is the founder of the CrossBow Miles movement. After seeing that Indias National Crime Records Bureau recorded 327,394 cases of violence against women in 2015, Srishti decided to make a statement and spread her message of gender equality across the country.

She is leading a team of hundreds of female volunteers on a 3,800-km walk through India across 260 days.

In achieving one billion steps, her CrossBow Steps movement has spread the message of womens empowerment and safety across India. I hope the Points of Light award helps Shrishti spread her message globally and I congratulate her for her tremendous creativity and determination, said Dominic Asquith, British high commissioner to India, who presented Srishti with her award to mark International Womens Day.

During the walk, Srishti leads workshops for women in rural communities on digital and financial literacy, leadership and health.

She has overseen the creation of a mobile app where people from across the world can upload steps collected from their phone pedometers and join the campaigns Billion Steps For Women drive.

She said, It is overwhelming and humbling to be recognised for our efforts to build a safer and better India for women, by empowering them.

At CrossBow Miles, we have always believed in doing our duty without expectation of a reward, but a recognition like this reaffirms our belief in the work we are doing.

The Points of Light awards recognise outstanding volunteers every day of the week - people whose service is making a difference in their communities and whose story can inspire others to creative innovative solutions to social challenges in their own communities and beyond. In the lead-up to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London next month, the Queen - as head of the Commonwealth - is thanking inspirational volunteers across the 53 Commonwealth nations as part of a special series of the award.

Since 2014 British Prime Minister Theresa May has been recognising a daily Point of Light from the UK, with almost 900 now recognised.

Commonwealth Points of Light is a continuation of this programme - with a special series of awards recognising inspirational volunteers throughout the Commonwealth in the lead-up to the CHOGM in London in April.

One volunteer will be recognised from each of the Commonwealth countries in the 53 week days preceding the Heads of Government meeting.
A Pakistani court on Thursday allowed the countrys election commission to register the Milli Muslim League (MML), a party formed by Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) founder and alleged Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed that wants to contest this years general election.

The Islamabad high court set aside the election bodys October 2017 decision not to register the MML in view of objections from the interior ministry. A statement issued by the MML said Justice Aamer Farooq had issued an order to the poll panel to register the party.

The ruling came a day after the Lahore high court extended its stay against the possible arrest of Saeed, who had approached the court following reports that he could be detained again due to pressure from the United States.

There was no official word on Thursdays development from the Pakistan government, which is facing intense pressure from the US and its allies to crack down on the JuD and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation, two groups linked to Saeed that have been declared fronts for the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba by the US and the UN Security Council.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided last month to put Pakistan on its grey list in June for not doing enough to choke funding for terror organisations. Pakistan was backed only by Turkey after China and the Gulf Cooperation Council withdrew their opposition to a US move to put the country on the watch list.

Saeed, on whom the US has placed a $10 million bounty, was placed under house arrest for about 10 months last year as part of efforts to prevent Pakistan being placed on the FATFs watchlist. Earlier this year, the government took over some JuD and FIF centres, offices and some other facilities but was unable to stave off action by the FATF

The MML, which was launched by the JuD last August, had last September fielded an independent candidate for by-elections to a seat in Lahore that fell vacant when former premier Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court. The candidate, Sheikh Yaqoob, designated a terrorist by the US, won more votes than candidates from established parties such as the Pakistan Peoples Party.

MML chief Saifullah Khalid, a close aide of Saeed, had contended in the Islamabad high court that there were no grounds for the election commission not to register the party as there were no first information reports (FIRs) against any of its leaders. He had described the election commissions objections as baseless.

Khalid and other leaders, who were present in court when the judge announced his decision on Thursday, said the MML would emerge as a major force in the upcoming general election.

Retired Lt Gen Amjad Shuaib told Reuters last year that Saeeds entry into politics was in line with a blueprint prepared by the military to mainstream militant groups. However, former premier Nawaz Sharif rejected the plan when the military proposed it in 2015, the report said.
Noted Indian writers Meena Kandasamy and Arundhati Roy have been longlisted for this years Womens Prize for Fiction that celebrates womens creativity across the world, the organisers announced on Thursday.

Kandasamy has been included for her acclaimed book, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, while Roy makes it to the 16-member longlist for her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Now in its 23rd year, the prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English from throughout the world. The judges for the 2018 prize are: Sarah Sands, Anita Anand, Katy Brand, Catherine Mayer and Imogen Stubbs.

Sands, chair of the judges panel said, What is striking about the list, apart from the wealth of talent, is that women writers refuse to be pigeon-holed. We have searing social realism, adventure, comedy, poetic truths, ingenious plots and unforgettable characters. Women of the world are a literary force to be reckoned with.

The longlist includes new and well-established writers and a range of genres; it features two previously longlisted authors and one previously shortlisted author. There are six first novels on the list. The shortlist will be announced on April 23 and the prize on June 6.

Set up in 1996, the prize is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018. Any woman writing in English  whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter  is eligible.

The longlist announcement coinciding with International Womens Day 2018 is H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon, Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig Manhattan, Beach by Jennifer Egan, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, Sight by Jessie Greengrass, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy, Elmet by Fiona Mozley, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy, See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt, A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward.

The winner will receive an anonymously endowed cheque of 30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as a Bessie, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.
Casualties linked to militancy and violence have dropped in Pakistan for the third consecutive year, with 21 percent fewer fatalities in 2017 than in the previous year, a security think-tank says.

Some 2,057 people were killed and 2,074 wounded for a total of 4,131 casualties over the year, according to a report by the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies seen Wednesday.

That continued the trend from 2016, in which 2,613 people lost their lives due to violence and 1,714 were injured. In 2015, 4,647 people were killed and 1,927 injured, the groups figures show.

The dramatic improvement in security came after the army launched an operation in June 2014 to wipe out militant bases in the northwestern tribal areas and end a bloody insurgency that has cost thousands of civilian lives since 2004.

It has involved a series of military offensives as well as some attempts to block the militants sources of funding. Those efforts were in the spotlight again when a global terror financing monitor voted last month to put Pakistan on a watchlist.

But the remnants of militant groups are still able to carry out periodic bloody attacks, and analysts have long warned that Pakistan is not doing enough to combat the root causes of extremism.

Washington has also increased pressure on Pakistan in recent weeks, freezing military aid amid accusations that Islamabad has refrained from clamping down on militant groups such as the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban.

The report warned that even with the security improvement new militant groups have appeared in the country.

It also said that the Islamic State group had claimed responsibility for attacks that left at least 143 people dead -- more than twice the 68 people the report said were killed by the group in 2016 -- while a branch of Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed 99 fatalities.
SAP SE said it paid 128.6 million rand ($11 million) to companies linked to South Africas Gupta family, which is headed by three brothers accused of using their friendship with former President Jacob Zuma to defraud state-owned companies.

A probe by law firm Baker McKenzie found that the payments were made by the German software giant to third parties as commissions on contracts with state utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and ports and rail operator Transnet SOC Ltd. Three senior executives who were suspended last year have now quit and the Walldorf-based company is co-operating with ongoing investigations by US and South African authorities.

We have left no stone unturned in our investigation, Adaire Fox-Martin, an executive board member, said on a call with reporters Thursday. The commissions were between 10% and 14.9% of the value of the contracts, just below the level that would have triggered an internal investigation, she said.

Corruption Allegations

SAP said last year its being probed by the US department of justice and the US securities and exchange commission over how it won contracts with South African state businesses. Its one of several international companies to have become involved in corruption allegations surrounding the Guptas, including McKinsey & Co. Inc. and KPMG LLP, though the first to give detail of specific payments.

The Guptas, who are in business with one of Zumas sons, are accused of using their political connections to win state contracts and influence ministerial appointments. They and the Zumas deny wrongdoing. On the same day Zuma resigned last month, police arrested five serving and former heads of Gupta-linked companies on charges of fraud and theft. Ajay, the oldest brother, has as-yet-undisclosed charges pending against him and has been declared a fugitive.

SAP reiterated that while it transferred money to Gupta associate Santosh Choubey for contracts won between December 2014 and June 2017, the German company found no evidence of payments to South African government officials or employees at Transnet and Eskom. The company has bolstered its legal and compliance teams in Africa, and is re-doing due diligence on some partners.

Eskom plans to undertake its own investigation of contracts with SAP to ensure compliance with the companys procedures and policies, the utility said in a statement.

SAP has received notice that the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission has laid charges against the company with the South African police related to contraventions of the Companies Act, Fox-Martin said.

Beginning in the middle of 2014, representatives of the Guptas began to associate themselves with multiple small parties that had experience in the South African IT industry, Fox-Martin said. It would appear from the evidence that we have that they approached SAP in South Africa.

US consultancy McKinsey said last year it had made several errors of judgment while working for Eskom, while auditor KPMG said work it did while auditing Gupta companies was sub-standard and several executives quit.
A man set himself on fire and died in western Chinas Sichuan province in the first self-immolation protest among Tibetans this year, monitoring groups reported Thursday.

Tsekho Tugchak, reportedly in his 40s, died in Ngaba county on Wednesday amid intensified security in the restive region ahead of the anniversary of a 2008 anti-China riot and 1959 independence uprising, the International Campaign for Tibet said.

ICT said his death was the 153rd self-immolation by a Tibetan since the protests began in 2009. The Free Tibet Campaign and US-backed Radio Free Asia also reported the death, saying it took place in Ngabas Meruma township.

In Beijing, Tibets Communist Party chief  the regions most powerful official  dismissed the reports.

I dont think theyre telling the truth, Wu Yingjie told reporters at a meeting on the sidelines of the annual session of Chinas ceremonial parliament.

If such self-immolations happened in the United States, it really wouldnt be that weird, but I can tell you that in Tibet that these kinds of self-immolation incidents dont happen, Wu said.

The self-immolations by Tibetans monks, nuns and laypeople aim to highlight harsh Chinese rule and the oppression of Tibets Buddhist culture, as well as appeal for the return of the exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

The region is closed to foreign media, making it virtually impossible to confirm reported self-immolations, which are believed to have peaked in 2012 with 83 that year.

Staff members reached at police headquarters, government offices and the local propaganda department in Ngaba, also known by its Chinese name, Aba, said they had no knowledge of the case. All declined to give their names as is usual among Chinese bureaucrats.

China claims Tibet, including Ngaba, has been part of its territory for more than seven centuries and regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist.

Many Tibetans insist they were essentially independent for most of that time and have protested what they regard as Chinas heavy-handed rule imposed after the Peoples Liberation Armys battled its way into the Himalayan region in 1950.

The Prime Minister of the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile in India, Lobsang Sangay, expressed concern over the reported self-immolation and called on China to address what he called Tibetans legitimate grievances.

Such sacrifices by Tibetans in Tibet evidence that repression in Tibet under the Chinese rule is making lives unlivable, Sangay said in a statement from the north Indian town of Dharmsala, where his government has its headquarters.

The issue of Tibet can be best resolved amicably through the middle way approach, by resuming dialogue with the Tibetan representatives, he said, referring to the Dalai Lamas call for Tibet to be granted true autonomy while remaining under Chinese rule as Beijing originally promised.
Male readers of left-wing French daily Liberation were asked to pay 25% more for their paper on Thursday, to underscore the gender pay gap on International Womens Day.

The paper published two versions with different cover pages, one marked for women, 2 euros, normal price with a pictogram of a woman, the other marked for men, 2.50 euros with a pictogram of a man.

In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay for equal work being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn on average 25.7% less than men, according to a 2017 report from an inequality watchdog.

To highlight this injustice Liberation has decided to apply the same difference to its sale price for a day, meaning 50 cents more for men, it said, adding that profits from the operation would be donated to Frances non-governmental Equality Observatory.

Liberation said it was inspired by Canadian monthly Macleans, which charged men more for its March edition -- also to denounce the wage gap.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced plans to get tough on companies that pay women less.

Under a package of workplace reforms to be finalised next month, wage gap screening software will be rolled out in all companies with more than 250 employees from 2019, and in all companies with over 50 employees by 2022, Philippe said.

Companies with unjustified disparities will have three years to rectify the situation or face fines of up to 1% of their wage bill, he said.

Drawing on 2012 statistics, the Equality Observatory said last year that women earned 25.7% less than men.

A 2014 report by national statistics agency INSEE put the gap slightly lower, at 23.8%.

When adjustments for part-time work were factored in, women were still paid on average 17.4% less, the report found.

For the same job, women are estimated to be paid nine percent less.
Britain on Thursday promised to deliver a robust response to those responsible for Sundays alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter by a suspected nerve agent.

Home secretary Amber Rudd said in a statement to the House of Commons that using the nerve agent was a brazen and reckless act that amounted to attempted murder in the most cruel and public way, but refused to identify those behind it until investigations were completed.

Sergei Skripal, 66, the former spy, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, were allegedly poisoned in Salisbury, England, on Sunday and have since remained critical in hospital. A police officer first on the scene was also affected by the suspected nerve agent and was said to be serious but recovering.

British media and some politicians have speculated that the Russian state could be behind the attack  suggestions dismissed by Moscow as part of an anti-Russian campaign.

A Downing Street spokesman said when those responsible for the attack are identified, they would face a robust response.

Defence secretary Gavin Williamson alleged Russia was becoming an ever greater threat.

Russias being assertive, Russias being more aggressive, and we have to change the way that we deal with it because we cant be in a situation in these areas of conflict where we are being pushed around by another nation, he told ITV.

Scientific tests by government experts have identified the specific nerve agent used, which will help identify the source, but authorities have refused to disclose the details.

Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest by Russian authorities in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.

A large number of experts were said to be working on the case, which has been compared to the 2006 alleged poisoning and death of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London.

(With inputs from Agencies)
Two missiles fired from a US drone hit a militant facility in neighbouring Afghanistan, killing 21 insurgents, including the son of the head of the Pakistani Taliban, two Pakistani intelligence officials and local Taliban commanders said on Thursday.

The strike, which according to the officials took place on Wednesday, targeted a compound frequented by Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.

The intelligence officials said that Fazlullah was apparently not there, but his son was killed in the strike in Afghanistans Kunar province, miles away from Pakistani border.

Three Pakistani Taliban commanders also confirmed the strike and militant casualties. Pakistani officials and the Taliban commanders spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The United States made no comment on the strike. There was also no immediate comment from NATO, Afghan authorities or the Pakistani government.

It was unclear whether the bodies of those killed in Wednesdays drone strike would be brought to Pakistan for burial.

Islamabad has for years has asked Washington and Kabul to take action against Fazlullah and other Pakistani Taliban, who are believed to be hiding in neighboring Afghanistan and who cross the porous Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks inside Pakistan.

Kabul, for its part, has long complained that Islamabad is not taking enough action against militants who use Pakistani soil to launch attacks against US, NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

In recent months, President Donald Trumps cranked up pressure on Pakistan to act against militants by suspending key security assistance to the country. Pakistan denies providing sanctuary to militants and says it has carried out several military operations in the countrys tribal regions and elsewhere to kill or arrest militants.

Fazlullahs is the son-in-law of a Sufi Mohammad, a radical anti-US cleric who was recently freed by Pakistan. The cleric, imprisoned in Pakistan in 2009, was released in January from a prison in the northwestern city of Peshawar, following a court order for his release on health grounds earlier that month.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday rescinded a prestigious human rights award it had bestowed on Myanmars civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi for failing to condemn and stop the brutal military campaign against the countrys Rohingya Muslim minorities.

It is with great regret that we are  rescinding that award, the museum said to Suu Kyi in a letter, referring to the Elie Wiesel award, named after a Romanian-American Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, it had given her in 2012. A copy of that letter, dated March 6 was posted on the museums website.

Suu Kyi, who is the de facto ruler of Myanmar with the official title of state counsellor and foreign minister, was the first recipient of the award.

The museum said as the repression unfolded over 2016 and 2017 we had hoped that you  as someone we and many others have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights  would do something to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population.

Once a towering figure around the world for standing up to the Myanmars military junta and suffering 14 years of house arrest, which won her the Nobel peace prize in 1991, Suu Kyi has in recent months become a target of international criticism and scorn for failing to stop the brutal repression of Rohingya Muslims, which peaked late 2017.

She has not even condemned it, as the museum pointed out.

The museum said, We understand the difficult situation you must face  (but) the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation.

An estimated 6,700 Rohingya, including 730 children are said to been killed since August, 2017, when the decades of repression persecution of the community began peaking, and more than 680,000 of them have been forced to flee their homes to neighboring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi has been criticised by fellow Nobel laureates. Some critics have even demanded for her Noel prize to be rescinded, which has never happened in the 116-year history of the prize. Sormer members of the Nobel committee have said there is very little chance it could be done now.

But the holocaust museum, which started the Elie Wiesel award with Suu Kyi as the first honoree, just did it.

The award is after Eliezer Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-American survivor of the Holocaust who lost the rest of his family at the infamous Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

The museum wrote to her, quoting Wiesel, Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormenter, never the tormented.

There was no response to a request for comments sent to the Myanmarese embassy in Washington DC.
Appointment

8 March 2018

As SVP of Partnerships & Business Development, James Colquhoun will oversee strategic initiatives contributing to Suiteness' ongoing growth. He will be responsible for growing hotel partnerships and creating business opportunities for Suiteness.
Press Release

8 March 2018

Hilton recently completed a major dual-brand deal that it hopes will sure up its status as one of the major luxury hoteliers in Egypt, as well as in the rest of Africa. This deal will eventually bring a Waldorf Astoria hotel to Egypt, making it the brand's first location in the entire continent.

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This, however, is just one major deal. With tourists returning to Egypt after their numbers dipped in the recent past, many major hotel brands are working to sure up their footprints in the country. This is actually all part of a larger trend in which the global hospitality market is trying to make up for lost time in Africa.

Egypt and Africa as Sleeping Hospitality Giants

For many years, Africa has been a sleeping tourism giant, rich with unrivaled natural landscapes, unique experiences and a deep history and culture. Tourists have recently begun to pick up on this, with the continent becoming marginally safer, and as a result hospitality has surged. Hospitality properties, however, are not available in abundance.

Hotel owners and operators say challenges have long scared off investors from making significant investments in the continent. These challenges include infrastructure and the availability of contractors, as well as trained and qualified staff can uphold the long-time luxury and service standards that their international brands have become known for.

These challenges have also lessened, and now hotel owners and operators who took risks and made early investments in the continent are poised to reap the rewards.

Photo: TOPHOTELPROJECTS

Egypt's Booming Project Pipeline

Nowhere is the coming hotel boom in Africa more evident than it is within Egypt's project pipeline.

In fact, according to numbers from the TOPHOTELCONSTRUCTION database there are presently 52 projects in Egypt's hotel construction pipeline. Once completed, these 52 projects are slated to yield a total of 19,466 rooms for guests.

What is perhaps most telling is the timing of these coming projects, which would seem to indicate that developers who are investing in Africa are thinking long-term and acting cautiously.

While the coming year stands to usher in a scant 11 total projects, that number is set to increase with 14 projects coming throughout 2019. The major growth period, however, is set to take place in 2021 and beyond. In fact, of the 52 projects currently in Egypt's pipeline, 33 percent of them are set for that period, or 17 total projects.

The Best of the Rest in Egypt

Hilton bringing a Waldorf Astoria to Egypt is far from the only major hotel to be opening in the country. With that in mind, let's take a look now at some of the other major luxury hotel brands slated to come to the country, as per the TOPHOTELCONSTRUCTION database:

Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh



This hotel is slated to have a whopping 1,400 rooms when it debuts in the third quarter of 2019.

The St. Regis Cairo

This hotel will bring 366 new rooms for guests to Cairo when it opens in the third quarter of this year.

Element Cairo

This hotel will have 344 new rooms when it debuts in early 2021.

More information on Egypt hotel projects can be found in the

TOPHOTELPROJECTS database.

TOPHOTELPROJECTS is the specialized service provider of cutting-edge information of the hospitality industry.
Last week, the rap community prayed for Rick Ross as he was rushed to the hospital for what was first reported as pneumonia. Eventually, it was revealed that the issues were more serious with Ross experiencing pulmonary and cardiovascular issues. It was reported that the rapper was put on a life support machine to assist in the functions of his lungs and heart while he was stabilized. Rozay kept relatively quiet about the panic, posting a few times on Instagram but never making mention of his hospitalization. The Miami legend has now put out a simple statement, letting his fans know that he is back home and that he is grateful for the fact.

Ross posted a photo of himself holding a bottle of Belaire Rose, which the rapper has frequently endorsed. While the photo itself is tame like his others since the hospitalization, the caption ultimately interested crowds, writing, "Aint nothing like home . I love yall." The "Hustlin'" rapper had not previously spoken about the health scare, and it is nice to hear directly from the source that he is doing well and enjoying his time at home.

An ambulance was called to Ross' residence early on March 2 and he was released from the hospital after a four-day stay. We continue to wish Rozay all the best in his recovery so he can hopefully bless us with some new music this year.
Relationships always have their ups and downs. Though there may not have been one as closely-documented as the relationship of Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. The celebrity couple first started seeing each other as teenagers and have been sporadically considered a couple over the years. After her break up with RnB star The Weeknd, Selena found herself back with Bieber in late 2017. A source says that the couple is once again taking a break; although it's not a break up.

Speaking with E!, a source said that the celebs need space but are still in contact. "They were having a lot of little disagreements recently and one fight in particular blew up and caused them to decide to 'break up,' however, they've been in contact the entire time and their feelings for each other have not changed."

As mentioned, this isn't a new concept for Bieber and Gomez who have managed to return to one another various times. The source continued, "They will absolutely get back together and they are not over, but they both need some time away from each other." The couple have had happier times, recently going on trips to Mexico, Jamaica, and Laguna Beach. As to the future of "Jelena", as they're referred to, only time will tell.

[via E! News]
YFN Lucci is ready for the big leagues. Hits have put him on the map, and now he's looking to lay down the finishing blow with Ray Ray From Summerhill. Today, the Atlanta rapper's official follow-up to the Freda's Son EP has hit select international markets, with a worldwide release on Friday, March 9th. The tracklist features a respectable roster of guests, including T.I., Dreezy, Wale, Offset, Meek Mill, and YFN Trae Pound; ultimately, Lucci takes on the bulk of the project himself. With smooth production and honest lyrics, Lucci's insight into the struggle gives him a refreshing sense of emotional depth.

If you have yet to check out Lucci's music, Ray Ray From Summerhill should make for an interesting introduction. It may be a little lengthy, but there's plenty of versatility to be found. Bangers like "Boss Like," "Down," and "Street Kings" are for the streets, while tracks like "Come With Me" and "Time For It" showcase Lucci's melodic prowess. For those who can't yet access the project, Ray Ray is set to hit streaming services at midnight.
Rascal Flatts made a bit of history during Monday's RodeoHouston performance.

The trio of Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney was the first act this season to acknowledge Houston's recent struggles with Hurricane Harvey.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT: Alessia Cara clapped back at someone who criticized her RodeoHouston outfit

As the band launched into survivor anthem "Stand," emotional video clips of Harvey damage and rescues played on the screens.

They were also joined in the arena by dozens of first responders, who circled the stage amid thunderous applause.

"We are so honored to be here with you guys," DeMarcus said. "We thank you for running into danger when everyone's running away from danger."

YEAH BOY: Kelsea Ballerini brings country-pop sparkle to RodeoHouston debut

He also espoused patriotism and tolerance, looking "to the man upstairs" and "loving each other a little bit more."

"Before we are Republicans, before we are Democrats, we are Americans first," DeMarcus said. "It's time to start having each other's backs a little bit more."

Judging by the reaction, Rascal Flatts clearly knows its audience. This was the band's seventh overall performance and first since 2011. Monday's show drew 58,184 paid attendance.

LeVox has traded the glitter that once covered his hair and jeans for a cleaner look  black jacket, jeans covered in zippers, a leather arm band and a wallet chain.

HTOWN HAND: Bun B helps Leon Bridges liven up Black Heritage Day at RodeoHouston

He's become a much stronger vocalist, no longer singing from his head and instead pulling more from his diaphragm. It's taken away much of the nasal quality.

The set was expertly paced, veering from energetic uptempos ("Bob That Head") to emotive ballads ("Here Comes Goodbye") to soulful midtempo grooves ("Rewind," "I Like the Sound of That").

Other RodeoHouston acts should take note. (I'm talking to you, Little Big Town.)

CROWD GETS LITTLE: Little Big Town has trouble keeping the audience at RodeoHouston

It was a pair of power ballads disguised as country hits  "What Hurts the Most" and "Bless the Broken Road," of course  that connected strongest with fans. They stood up, outstretched their hands and were singing along even as they darted through the outside rain and traffic.
Listen, my Texans, and you shall hear

Of the midterm face-off that's growing near!

On the sixth of November of 2018,

From El Paso to Houston to Abilene

Teachers are getting their ballots in gear.

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

Unlike the British in Longfellow's poem, Texas teachers are the ones defending their turf from invasion. Educators and their supporters are pledging to block vote across party lines during the coming midterm elections.

And the results from the primary races gave us all hope.

Hands sticky with sunscreen this past summer, I texted back and forth with a fellow teacher. We were following the agenda of the Texas 85th legislative session, followed by the sexy summer special session. Indeed! Between taking my girls to the beaches of Galveston and passing out to episodes of "Stranger Things," I actually had time to follow my elected officials!

My bud texted about this Facebook group that was gaining steam. This coalition has since grown into a headquarters of sorts for the battle ahead.

Texans for Public Education, founded by Troy Reynolds, began with three teachers. I can see the scene Troy described clearly, as every teacher has starred in it. Probably a packed restaurant  just three teachers on a Friday after school with beers, lamenting about education.

This time it was over the 82nd legislative session. Everyone felt the sting of the State that year.

"We lost good teachers," Troy explains. "So we decided we could take it, or we could do something about it. We formed the Facebook group, and it grew to a steady few hundreds. Eventually we reached 1,000!"

By July of last year when I jumped in, the group was up to 10,000 members. They rallied in Austin. They researched every candidate on virtually every Texas ballot and rated them "friendly," "neutral," or "unfriendly" based on the incumbent's voting record or the challenger's campaign platforms concerning public education.

The group's extensive spreadsheets track the names we would support. They got a website. They got behind the #blockvote hashtag. Then a YouTube channel.

Today, their membership has reached 23,000.

While there's no way to truly measure the impact of block voting, one thing is clear: Teachers showed up!

Privatization and consolidation

"Politics is not religion, and the government is not God."

We must show the voters all parties are flawed.

And together, bound by love of our nation,

We shall rally around those who support education!

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

Troy and I chatted recently about the issues we're tackling. He tells me over the phone that we will face two monsters if we lose this fight: privatization and consolidation.

Privatization through vouchers, inaccurately framed as "school choice," threaten our public schools.

At the state level, Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick wear their yellow voucher scarfs with pride. "Every parent deserves a choice about where they will send their child to school," Abbott professed at the Capitol last year.

Lt. Governor Patrick chimed in. "I am going to fight for school choice session after session after session."

In the great state of Texas, parents have a choice to send their kids to public or private school. Parents can send their kids to charter school or homeschool. Did I miss something? How is choice denied?

What Abbott and Patrick want is for public dollars to pay for the private choice of some. In Texas, the state invests between $8,000 and $10,000 a year for each student. With that money, districts hire certified teachers and provide our children with a plethora of resources, including free transportation and special education supports and services.

Private schools averaging $12,000 and $15,000 in yearly tuition do not guarantee these services. They are not tested by the State or held to any other accountability standard. They are also under no obligation to accept any child who does not meet their application standards.

We let in every child. We have no application.

"But it's our money!" voucher advocates bemoan.

No, it's not.

I've read Article Seven of the Texas Constitution, and that money belongs to the children of Texas.

I don't have the right to demand "my money" back from my local police department if I happen to feel they aren't keeping me safe to my standards. I can't petition for my taxes to hire a private security guard.

But Patrick expects you and me to pay for the private "choices" of others.

Isn't that the very definition of entitlement, something the Republican Party used to stand against?

WHAT CHOICE?: Dan Patrick to Texas schools: Starve.

My friend Shannon, a teacher in Louisiana, tells me of what happens when this is allowed.

"Families take money from our public schools and go to a private school. If the student gets kicked out, the public school system has to take them back, without their allotted funding, and educate them."

Patrick vows to pursue these vicious vouchers "session after session after session." Despite six "no" votes from our Republican legislature. Despite the defeat of the bill again during the special session. Despite the difference in cost. Despite the basic flaw in voucher logic.

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

The old "economy of scale" justification will be used to consolidate small districts. And Troy knows that will devastate places like his old hometown.

"I grew up in Madisonville. Rural districts will lose their very identity if they are asked to consolidate."

But large districts aren't safe either.

My daughters will grow up in Humble ISD, a booming district which has maxed out what they're legally allowed to ask property owners to contribute. Conversely, I work for Houston ISD, a property-rich district which serves many economically disadvantaged students. HISD is facing a $115 million cut next year due to "recapture" payments. Essentially, the property-rich district I work for will be paying for the cash-strapped district I live in.

When I presented criticism of this system on Patrick's Facebook page this summer, he shot back in response to my post.

"Fact: We spend 52 percent of all state revenues on education," he retorted, even though we know that figure includes all education costs, including support for colleges and universities. This figure also includes selective wrap-around services.

Ross Ramsey from the Texas Tribune exposed the half-truths of Dan Patrick and other lawmakers just last month. He explains that while the state spending in the budget has gone up, the spending per student has fallen. "They don't say, however, that the state's share is sliding from 43.7 percent of the total Foundation School Program spending in 2016 to 38 percent in 2019. Or that the state covered 48.5 percent of the total as recently as 2008  10 years ago."

Increasing property tax values doesn't result in more money to that district. It merely puts more local property taxes to fund the outdated formulas, resulting in a savings to the State.

Sparknotes Summary: The state contributes less; you and I contribute more.

OFF TO NYC: HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza hit the right notes but missed the mark

And this isn't the only time Patrick misrepresented the truth. He continues on my Facebook post. "What we need to do is make sure as much of those dollars go to teachers as possible as they are the most important aspect of education."

Patrick's current campaign ads for the midterms echo this statement. He criticizes districts for spending money on "fancy stadiums" instead of teacher pay.

This outrageous statement reveals one of two things about him: He's either spent 12 years in the Texas legislature misunderstanding the basic difference between how stadiums are funded (through bonds, which our local voters approve) and teacher pay (operations funding), or he's misrepresenting.

Which is it, fool or liar?

He promises a teacher raise of $10,000, but he withholds the truth: He expects the money to come from cuts to district budgets. That would mean cuts in the arts. That would mean cuts to valuable support staff.

No teacher wants a raise at the expense of music and librarians and security guards.

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

Seeing is believing

After the divisive 2016 election, and certainly in 12 years of teaching, I never thought a movement like this was possible. I was resigned to the fact that my daughters would grow up in a country divided.

Science tells us that even when presented with facts, we reject challenges to closely held beliefs. This tribalism has been studied since the 1950s, often referred to as "confirmation bias."

We know this echo chamber well. No one pretends our Facebook and Twitter feeds aren't a hall of mirrors, endlessly reflecting our own ideas back at us. Jack Gorman and his daughter, Sara Gorman, wrote in "Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore The Facts That Will Save Us," that we actually experience a rush of pleasure when our brains process information that confirms our beliefs.

How, then, could a block vote movement accommodate for our biological and psychological nature? Will die-hard Democrats really vote for Republicans on the ballot? Will Republicans really back Democratic candidates who are friendly to education come November?

Is coming together really possible?

OPEN QUESTION: Will magnet schools survive the HISD budget crisis?

Matt Feinberg from the University of Toronto and Rob Willer from Stanford University collaborated on a study surrounding this question. Moral Foundational Theory studied whether liberals and conservatives could break through the divisive dissonance.

Feinberg and Willer published that, in fact, Americans can experience a "moral reframing" if commonalities can be specifically crafted between deep-held values, in our case education.

And Troy has worked hard to foster that unity.

"The State takes care of infrastructure and education," he clarified. "If we can stay away from the federal races and the federal issues, which are more divisive and which our state can at best only tweak, we can stay focused. We can come together."

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

The hundreds upon hundreds of pictures filling the group's Facebook page every day leading up to the election made me a believer. It wasn't just teachers in the photos proudly showcasing their "I voted today!" stickers.

It was teachers with sons and daughters voting for the first time. Teachers with their spouses. Teachers voting with neighbors. One teacher brought a group of 22 from her church to vote with her.

Wednesday morning

Block voting produced mixed results. But with 74 percent of our candidates winning elections and 5 percent heading to run-offs, the group is feeling optimistic!

Our candidate for Lt. Governor did not win. Scott Milder, who ran a humble four-month campaign on $40,000, stole 370,292 votes from Patrick. In fact, Patrick earned 228,347 fewer votes than Gov. Abbott.

ONE EXCEPTION: Republican Scott Milder endorses Democrat challenger to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

Most significant is the revelations that more Texans voted against Dan Patrick than for him. If we count up the teachers who block voted for Milder and the votes Mike Collier and Michael Cooper pulled in, 1,326,457 Texans don't want Patrick's policies. Patrick pulled in 1,164,521 votes by comparison.

So the numbers are there.

If we can maintain our binding commonalities, if we can explain to our friends and neighbors the flaws of vouchers and current school financing, if we show up again in November, we can take back Texas from the invaders.

One vote in hand

Two kiddos with me

And I in the voting booth will be

Ready to vote and finally disarm

Any candidate threatening schools harm.

The teachers are coming! The teachers are coming!

Gaby Diaz is an English teacher in Houston. This article originally appeared on Medium.

Bookmark Gray Matters. Is coming together really possible?
After a short standoff in East Montgomery County, a woman was taken into custody for a psychiatric evaluation on Wednesday night.

According to law enforcement, the woman allegedly fired a rifle at her brother-in-law after some sort of altercation and has a history of mental illness. When officers arrived on the scene, shots were continually fired by the woman, but not directly at officers. She was taken into custody, peacefully, at 6:30 p.m.

There were no injuries reported at the scene.

WANTED: Houston capital murder suspect took METRORail as getaway

Now Playing: A woman in an active standoff with East Montgomery County police. Video: Scott Engle, Montgomery County Police Reporter

The situation unfolded at approximately 5:15 p.m. in a neighborhood near the East Montgomery County Annex building and courthouse after deputies responded to a domestic disturbance.

It is not immediately clear how many rounds were fired, authorities said.

According to a neighbor, this is not the first incident where law enforcement has been called to the house for a disturbance.

"She used to live in the trailer park around the corner and has always been very nice, always cared for dogs," neighbor Maxie Cole, who has lived on the street for 50 years, said. "She sometimes will have mental issues. I have seen her walking on the road in the middle of the night. It's sad to see stuff like this; it's sad when people have mental issues and this could have ended worse since she came out with the rifle and the officers were there."

Two years ago, the woman allegedly ran her car into the privacy fence and telephone pole not far from Cole's home and called EMS to tend to her, according to Cole.

"I hope and pray this all works out," Cole said.

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.
Houston and Harris County officials are pursuing the removal of sediment from the San Jacinto River as a top priority, citing an urgent need to protect communities near Lake Houston from a repeat of the calamitous flooding they endured during Hurricane Harvey.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said he has spoken to state officials about potential funding of a dredging project that would increase the rivers capacity to hold floodwaters. A planned county flood control bond issue is another possible funding source, Emmett said.

This needs to become a top priority project, Emmett said in an interview this week.

Mayor Sylvester Turner offered similar assurances to several hundred residents at a community meeting in Kingwood Tuesday night. Turner said he had spoken to Gov. Greg Abbott earlier Tuesday about the pressing need to remove sediment from the river.

We talked about the dredging issue and dealing with that in real time instead of putting it off for years and years and years, Turner said. The mayor said he hopes dredging can commence within about a month.

Read more: As sand shrinks river capacity, Kingwood residents feel like sitting ducks for floods

The Houston Chronicle reported Sunday that many Lake Houston-area residents and community leaders were concerned that their needs had not been given enough priority in post-Harvey discussions about flood protection. The vulnerability of these communities was underscored last week, when the San Jacinto rose out of its banks in Kingwood after a storm that dropped less than a half-inch of rain.

I can imagine the anxiety that created, Turner said.

More than 16,000 homes and 3,300 businesses in Kingwood, Humble and other towns and developments near Lake Houston were damaged by flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. The damage was worsened by sedimentation, some of it linked to nearby sand mines, that dramatically reduced the capacity of the river and lake to hold floodwaters.

The scope of the sand mining operations is enormous, and involves clearing vegetation from large areas of the riverbank and extracting sand from open pits. Many residents and elected officials say sand mining operations dump huge quantities of sand into the river when it rises, although an industry spokesman said this relationship has not been sufficiently studied.

State officials have identified 16 mining facilities on the east and west forks of the San Jacinto that were active around the time that Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25. Research by the nonprofit Bayou Land Conservancy found that about a quarter of the floodplain along the west fork had been excavated for sand mining.

Removing sand from the river, Turner and others said, would be pointless unless steps are taken to deal with the source of the sedimentation.

We can dredge today, but if the sand mining continues, were just dredging today to dredge again, Turner said.

In addition to dredging, Turner said the city is seeking funds to add 10 gates to facilitate the release of water from the Lake Houston dam. This could help to eliminate a bottleneck created when the Lake Conroe dam, which has more gates, releases water too quickly for the Lake Houston dam to keep up.

Bob Rehak, a longtime Kingwood resident who has been active in efforts to protect the community from flooding, said he was pleased at the statements by the mayor and the county judge.

Its definitely encouraging, said Rehak, who attended the Tuesday night meeting. However, he said he was concerned that discussion of dredging seemed to focus solely on the rivers west fork.

What about the east fork? he asked. They apparently werent aware that the sanding there was as bad if not worse as it is on the west fork.

Any dredging should be done in a way that considers the potential environmental impacts, said Matthew Berg, a hydrologist with Simfero Consultants. Digging up sediment can re-suspend pollutants that may have drifted down from upstream, he said.

The San Jacinto River doesnt have a tremendous reputation for a legacy of purity, said Berg, a board member of the nonprofit Bayou Land Conservancy. Heavy stuff from manufacturing processes can sink to the bottom.

Berg recommended core sampling and containment measures to ensure that any pollutants dont flow downstream to Lake Houston, a major source of drinking water.
Chip Somodevilla/Staff

WASHINGTON  Texas Republican Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means committee and one of the architects of the GOP tax cuts, penned a letter joined by 106 other Republican lawmakers Wednesday in a letter to President Donald Trump expressing their "deep concern" about his global tariffs on aluminum and steel.

Trump's moves on trade have alarmed many Republicans and Democrats in Congress, shaken the stock market, and prompted his top economic policy advisor, Gary Cohn, to resign.
Mayor Sylvester Turner has expanded on his criticisms this week of Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush and his office's response to Hurricane Harvey in a detailed letter.

Federal rules tied to $5 billion in disaster relief funding for Texas that Congress approved last fall require Bush's General Land Office to consult with local officials in drafting a plan for the use of those dollars, which originate with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The GLO has failed to do that, Turner told the city council Wednesday, saying the agency was "hogging" the money and "not being a good partner."

"How can you put together an action plan when the city of Houston is not at the table?" the mayor said at the council's regular weekly meeting. "There's a lack of cooperation. We just need to get that worked out and, quite frankly, we need to get that worked out yesterday."

GLO officials said Wednesday they understand local leaders must advocate for their constituents, but stressed they have statewide duties. The city's request for direct funding has been partially met in the draft plan, they added, and said Houston can formally submit its concerns when the plan is published and proceeds through a required public comment period.

In his letter, dated Wednesday, the mayor said the draft plan did not include sufficient city input, does not specify how the GLO is using data -- making city officials worry funding will not be allocated proportionate to storm damage -- and gives the city insufficient control over the funding it will receive.

"The city must play an important role in regional planning efforts, and have the lead on recovery activities in our jurisdiction," Turner wrote.

Read the letter here.

Turner said state officials' errors after Hurricane Ike risk being repeated after Harvey, inviting disputes with HUD, lawsuits from housing activists, "misguided spending" and "severe delay" in getting funding to affected areas.

The mayor asked specifically for:

More data on how the GLO is calculating the unmet need and its formula for distributing the funds

More control over all categories of funding, not just the single-family dollars state officials said Houston will be given directly instead of than through intermediaries

More dollars to support local planning efforts

More collaboration and "consultation," as required by HUD guidelines

"Before the state moves further in the process, I am requesting meaningful consultation that leads to reconsideration of the draft plan to reflect the important role Houston must play in recovery," Turner wrote.

The GLO has not yet responded to a request for further comment.

mike.morris@chron.com

twitter.com/mmorris011
Six million dollars was not going to stop Dan Crenshaw.

The former Navy SEAL has had to face much tougher odds  nearly losing his life in Afghanistan  than his uphill Congressional race he found himself in Tuesday. When the vote counting began, the 33-year-old Crenshaw was well back in third place in the Republican Primary for the 2nd Congressional District that covers large parts of northern Harris County.

With early voting and absentee ballots counted, Crenshaw was almost 2,000 votes out of second place.

And sitting in second place was Kathaleen Wall, a wealthy campaign donor who had plowed $6 million of her own money into her race for a bevy of television ads. She also had two of the biggest names in Texas politics on her side: Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

We knew we got a late start, Crenshaw said in an interview with conservative radio host Michael Berry.

But there was Crenshaw telling his supporters in northern Harris County on Tuesday morning that he had volunteers at every precinct in the district making a big final push.

Were feeling optimistic, he said early Tuesday. Were feeling good.

Then the surge took over. By the end of the day, Crenshaw was dominating at the polls, offsetting the hole he was in to start the day. Crenshaw was the leading vote getter on Tuesday, 8 percentage points ahead of State Rep. Kevin Roberts and 10 percentage points up on Wall.

The result allowed Crenshaw to slip into 2nd place by just 145 votes, according to unofficial results from the Harris County Clerks office. That puts Crenshaw into a run-off on May 22 against Roberts, who won the primary overall, but fell short of the 50 percent he needed to avoid the runoff.

We clawed our way in there, Crenshaw told Berry.

Crenshaw, a retired lieutenant commander spent 10 years in the SEALS that included tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.Crenshaw nearly lost his vision when an IED blast in Afghanistan nearly cost him his life and put him into a coma for five days. He survived, but lost his right eye which forces him to now wear an eye patch.

MORE ON CRENSHAW: Wounded Navy SEAL makes bid for Congress

Roberts said he has immense respect for Crenshaw and said voters can expect a high-integrity campaign from both. He said hell continue to make the same case to voters that hes been making since November: that he has the proven conservative credentials. Elected to the state Legislature in 2016, Roberts has focused on his experience. He is the only one of the Republican candidates to hold elective office.

It really feels good, Roberts said on Wednesday about finishing first in the primary.

He said with one candidate spending $6 million, he wondered if the would be a difference maker early on. It shows you can still run an old school campaign - meeting people and listening to them and what they are going through, said Roberts, who manages the business side of the Lanier Law Firm in Houston. And money cant buy that.

Roberts and Crenshaw are expecting to get together later this month at a gun range, thanks to Roberts winning an auction to spend an hour shooting with a Navy SEAL, Crenshaw said.

Big spenders, bad results

Walls defeat is another stunning blow for wealthy self-financers who have consistently lost campaigns for Congress in Texas even while heavily out spending their opponents.

Since 2000, 21 candidates have put at least $1 million into their own campaign. Eighteen lost.

WALLS SPENDING SURGE: Republican spends $5.9M in race for Congress

What often happens is that self funders are often political novices who try to use their money to overcome their inexperience, said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

In Walls case that inexperience showed up in her speaking engagements where she struggled to remember talking points during forums. Her campaign also avoided interviews with the media, turning down repeated interview requests with the Houston Chronicle.

On election night, Wall spoke to supporters late on Tuesday but never announced she had lost.

Thanks to everyone for running a good race, Wall told a couple dozen supporters at Cafe Adobe as election results came in. And thanks to the voters of Congressional District 2 for trusting me with their vote.

Roberts and Crenshaw are battling to see who will take on Democrat Todd Litton in November. Litton easily won his Democratic primary against four other Democrats.

The candidates are seeking to replace U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican from Atascocita who announced late last year that he would not seek re-election in 2018. The winner of the race will get a 2-year term that pays $174,000 a year.

Todd Ackerman contributed to this report.
Reporters and politicos from across the nation turned their eyes to Houston and waited Tuesday night to see the results of the first primary election of the year.

And they waited. And waited. And waited.

Harris Countys notoriously slow results and outdated county clerk website garnered complaints and mockery all night long. A coalition of civil rights groups also called for the county to address a broken election system that frustrates voters with long lines and confusing locations year after year. Add the Houston Chronicle editorial board to the list of institutions calling for a better election process.

But when the final votes were announced around 1 a.m. the next day, questions that had lingered for months were finally answered. No, not one of Texas statewide Republicans was forced into a primary runoff.

Yes, Republican state Rep. Sarah Davis survived her Abbott-backed challenger.

No, apparently $6 million worth of mailers and television ads apparently wasnt enough to send Kathaleen Wall to the Republican primary runoff in the 2nd Congressional District. Maybe next time shell spend $7 million.

And yes, state Sen. Sylvia Garcias primary victory in the Democrat-friendly 29th Congressional District probably means Houston will have our first Hispanic representative in Washington.

And in the most disappointing news of the night, two impressive incumbent judges  Jay Karahan and Theresa Chang  lost in their Republican primaries to under-qualified challengers.

Let us now offer an encouraging observation to good candidates who fell short in this months primary elections: Even Rocky Balboa lost his first fight.

Remember that George W. Bush lost his first election and ended up living in the White House. Sylvester Turner lost his first two races for mayor, but hes now sitting in the big office at Houston City Hall.

The lesson for aspiring elected officials is simple. Even successful politicians sometimes lose elections.

The editorial board has spent the past few months interviewing scores of candidates who took the initiative to run for public office. Even if they had no hope of winning, even if their qualifications have been questionable, their commitment has been inspiring.

A cancer researcher decided to run this year because he thinks America needs more scientists in public office. An ethics expert put his name on the ballot because hes bothered by cronyism in our state capital. A retired rock-n-roll disc jockey went to a womens march and came to the conclusion she needed to campaign for Congress. A woman who lived in an RV in Austin so she could lobby state lawmakers decided to run for the Texas Legislature.

We met some mighty impressive citizens who put their reputations on the line and their names on the ballot but ended up losing their primaries. Indeed, many of them faced such stiff competition they didnt even win our endorsement. But some of them have been so compelling we want to encourage them to stay in politics. They deserve a second mention, because we hope we see their names on the ballot again in the future.

Jason Westin has dedicated his professional life to curing cancer hes an oncologist and researcher at the MD Anderson Cancer Center but the state of American politics bothered him so intensely he decided to run for Congress. His boyish appearance and political inexperience may have led a lot of people to underestimate him when he started campaigning for the Democratic primary in the race for Republican John Culbersons seat in Congress. But his calm command of the issues earned him not only a growing base of voters impressed with what they heard him say at community forums, but also the respect of Democratic political insiders and campaign contributors. At a time when far too many politicians pander to anti-intellectual simplicity, it's noteworthy that Westin also got a lot of help from something called 314 Action a group whose name represents the approximate value of pi dedicated to electing more scientists to public office.

Jason Westin, please run again.

Silky Malik walks and talks like the future of the Democratic Party in Houston. Shes a Montrose resident with an MBA from Texas A&M who ran in the primary for the congressional seat now occupied by Ted Poe. Shes lively and smart and she speaks with uncommon passion, particularly when she explains why millennial voters are looking for honest and authentic candidates who wont sell them out to special interests. I think we can have leaders who inspire people the way FDR inspired me, she told us.

Silky Malik, please run again.

Trey Blocker is a conservative Republican lawyer and lobbyist whos deeply concerned with ethics in government. Having worked in politics for more than twenty years, Ive seen a lot of things, he told us. But I can honestly say this last legislative session, I saw more corruption and crony capitalism than Ive seen in my entire career. And I finally decided Id had enough of it, and it was time to do something about it. Blocker ran against the man he considered the poster boy for unethical behavior in Austin. Somehow, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Jesus Shot Miller managed to win the GOP primary despite his record of playing fast and loose with taxpayer dollars. Still, Blocker fought the good fight for good government, and we hope he stays in the arena.

Trey Blocker, please run again.

Joshua A. Butler is among the most spirited candidates we had the pleasure of meeting in this election season. Hes development director at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. Butler was one of the seven Democrats running in the crowded primary for the seat now occupied by Republican John Culberson. He delivered some of the most stirring remarks we heard in this election cycle when he vowed to keep a positive relationship with his primary opponents. It doesnt mean that were always going to agree and get along, he said. But were the dream team. We are the individuals that beat John Culberson as a whole. Were the change.

Joshua A. Butler, please run again.

Jerry Patterson had the guts to run a tough campaign against an incumbent descendant of a political dynasty. He lost his Republican primary fight to retake his old seat as Texas Land Commissioner from George P. Bush. But his candidacy reminded a lot of voters of what they always liked about Patterson, a straight shooting former state senator who was a voice of common sense when he ran for lieutenant governor. Hes 71 years old, and he says he came out of retirement only because he was upset with Bushs management of the agency he used to run. But Patterson is so wise and wily it seems a shame hes no longer in state government.

Jerry Patterson, please run again.

Beth Barron is an assistant district attorney who has helped more than 10,000 victims of family violence obtain protective orders against abusive husbands and fathers. Her peers so profoundly respect her expertise in this field, the Texas District and County Attorney Association uses her published family violence guidelines throughout the state. Choosing between her and the equally impressive Barbara Stalder may have been the toughest decision our editorial board had to make in this election cycle. Barron won our endorsement, Stalder won the primary, and voters couldnt lose in a contest between two exemplary lawyers doing noble work.

Beth Barron, please run again.

David Bridges has been a justice on the Fifth District Court of Appeals for more than two decades. Hes written more than 2,000 opinions while serving on the court, and hes board certified in both criminal and criminal appellate law. Hes also a former assistant district attorney and staff lawyer for the State Bar of Texas, where he took action against crooked members of his own profession. He ran but lost a GOP primary campaign for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which reviews not only cases from all 14 Texas courts of appeals, but also all death penalty sentences handed down in trial courts. His campaign website discreetly suggested voters Google the name of incumbent Justice Sharon Keller, whose outrageous rulings in a couple of high profile cases have led countless lawyers to publicly call for her removal from the bench. Bridges could have run an entirely negative campaign blasting the incumbents troublesome record. Instead he chose to run on his own considerable reputation, displaying the temperament of a fine jurist.

David Bridges, please run again.

Adrian Ocegueda runs a private equity firm in Dallas. He grew up in El Paso, where he served as an economic policy advisor to the citys mayor. Ocegueda is a thoughtful Princeton University graduate with an MBA from Southern Methodist University. As a Democratic candidate for governor, he talked about big issues and fundamental structural problems facing state government. For example, Ocegueda had the foresight to call for retraining Texas workers who are about to lose their jobs to automation, from forklift operators to long haul truck drivers. And he had the courage to touch the third rail of Texas politics, suggesting the state needs to seriously discuss introducing a state income tax.

Adrian Ocegueda, please run again.

Armen Hammer Merjanian publicly called a judge a tyrant for behaving more like a prosecutor than a jurist. Instead of just complaining, he decided to run for county criminal court judge. Merjanian is an idealistic young lawyer whose five years of experience barely exceeded the statutory minimum for the bench he sought. Hes a passionate advocate for criminal justice reform and ending mass incarceration. Someday, he could become a fine judge.

Armen Hammer Merjanian, please run again.

Every election has only one winner. These candidates didnt garner the most votes, but we dont think of them as losers. Were grateful they ran, and we hope Texans will have a chance to vote for them again.
People often forget the main theme of the Steve Goodman-penned, nostalgia-fueled ode to Amtrak, The City of New Orleans. At the time of the song, railroads were outmoded forms of transportation (15cars and 15restless riders) and nearly dead. In 1971.

The Texas Central Railway still aint heard the news.

As noted in a story in the Chronicle (Progress vs. preservation, Page A1, Feb. 18), the private consortium of investors attempting to build a bullet train between Houston and Dallas faces opposition on a number of fronts, but mostly by the owners of the land they want to snake the rail line through.

Literally and figuratively, this disoriented express has chosen the wrong path.

Though a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, Texas Central plans a 240-mile wayward journey that cuts through private lands well west of Interstate 45 with a stop in Grimes County to attract traveling Aggies and escaped convicts.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady of The Woodlands (not on the route), among others, have questioned why the train cant travel along the Interstate carved out since the early 1970s. That would at least allow a stop at the Buc-Ees in Madisonville for some turkey jerky and a frozen Dr Pepper.

Brady also opposes any use of eminent domain, the land grab that worries ranchers, farmers and other landowners in the flyover counties between Texas two largest cities.

He should. As should all politicians who recognize that the bulk of Texan philosophy revolves around a get off my land attitude. And the landowners along the way are loudly showing that sentiment.

As reported in the Chronicle, anti-appropriation folk in Waller, Grimes, Leon, Limestone, Navarro and Ellis counties have decried tactics by Texas Central ranging from vague economic projections to a lack of public scrutiny, in addition to what they see as aggressive efforts to enter private lands to conduct surveys.

Citizens around the area also have expressed concern that the rail would destroy the ambience of their communities, but that is a less obvious concern. The denizens of the Shady Rest Hotel were unchanged by the train between Hooterville and Pixley, after all.

Far be it for anyone to condemn a privately-funded folly like the Houston-Dallas bullet train (interestingly up in that self-centered city to the north, they call it the Dallas-Houston bullet train). But the threat of using federal directives to give Texas Central eminent domain authority  despite state efforts to block those maneuvers  is chilling.

The people between Houston and Dallas simply do not deserve to have permanent scars gouged into their family land without their approval. Especially not for something as uncertain as private high-speed rail.

Travelers between the two big cities could definitely use some relief. I-45 is often packed and full of speed traps in all those little towns after you get through Corsicana.

But rail exists as a solution only in the minds of grandiose civic planners and amid the ashen pages of an Ayn Rand novel. A 90-minute train ride will doubtfully change lives when a 60-minute Southwest Airlines flight (at a similar cost) suffices.

Only in rail infrastructure do we buy into the concept that using a 200-year-old technology represents progress.

Sure, elected officials love to point to train tracks and say look what I did, but myriad rail projects around the U.S. (excepting the northeast corridor) have been met with a resounding meh.

Despite spending billions on rail, multiple reports show decreased use of mass transit. Ridership gains in Houston are attributed in several reports to the 2015 redesign of bus routes, not the light rail.

Amtrak, the beleaguered semi-public rail system that never seems to meet financial goals, says it carried 31.3 million passengers in 2016, though about two-thirds of those riders were traveling around the cluster of large cities in the northeast. That leaves about 7.8 million riders for the year across the rest of the country, which is pretty big.

The Federal Railroad Administration estimates 7.2 million riders per year on the Houston-Dallas bullet train, a figure about 10 ten times the number of people who jet between the two cities each year. Texas Central itself claims it will tally 10 million riders by 2050.

Those numbers seem a bit up in the sky. Like most of the folks who need to get to Dallas in a hurry.

Even the Acela Express, a quasi-high-speed line in the railroad-crazy Northeast Corridor, only carries about 3.4 million people a year.

Texas Central also estimates that travelers will save an hour of travel time between Houston and Dallas. As if anyone wants to get to Dallas an hour earlier than necessary.

There is a certain steampunk romance to riding the rail, until you actually do it in the modern era. Thoughts of seeing the countryside along the way are replaced with a view of the shrubbery on either side of the tracks.

The luxury in memory and movies likewise no longer exists. Passengers can freely move about the cars, but theyre only going to see rows of seats resembling every other mode of mass transportation. Its less Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flirting over a meal at a comfortable table in the dining car, more Joe Buck catching a Greyhound to New York City.

And little romance can be expected when racing at 200 miles per hour through bisected family farms and generational dreams.
Candidates complete a video interview or online test and our assessment centre is completely paperless for both candidates and assessors, she tells HRD.

The company also leverages digital tools to enable a greater work-life balance for its employees  something which millennials have frequently voiced a desire for across countless studies and surveys.

Millennials value work/life balance and the majority of them are unwilling to commit to make their work lives an exclusive priority, says Williams, who will be discussing the topic at the upcoming Millennial Workforce Summit in Auckland.

Our policies are designed to allow greater flexibility for our people and allow a greater work life balance, she continues. We support a flexible working environment and provide the digital tools so our people can work anywhere, anytime.

As well as a push towards digital and an understanding that work/life balance is a priority, Vodafone also focusses on a creating a collaborative culture for its up-and-coming employees.
This article is part two in a five-part series that uncovers top strategies for reaching potential guests in meaningful moments and increasing direct bookings throughout every stage of the travel planning journey. This article focuses on the first stage of travel planning: the dreaming phase.

Lets face it. We all understand the need for our next vacation, and some of us may even be counting down the days. But as hotel marketers, how do we reach potential guests at the very beginning stage of the travel planning journey? Is reaching travelers early in the process important? And even more significantly, how can hotel marketers make a lasting impression?

Read on for part two of our five-part series, How to Capitalize on the Full Travel Planning Journey to Drive Direct Bookings, to understand how hotel marketers can reach potential guests in the first stage of the travel planning process: the dreaming phase. We will uncover what online behaviors are most common in this stage, what marketing channels are most effective, and how to measure success.

What exactly is the dreaming phase?

The first stage of travel planning is the dreaming phase, when consumers first start thinking about their next vacation. Google refers to the micro-moments throughout this phase as I-want-to-get-away moments. At this point travelers are just beginning to explore destination options and day-dreaming about what their next getaway could look like.

According to Google, in this stage, travelers are not committed to any one brand. The search-engine giant has found that 78% of leisure travelers are undecided on what airline they will travel with, while 82% are undecided on the accommodation they will book. So, what does this phase mean for hotels? Endless opportunity to grab the attention of potential guests and ignite interest in a hotels destination, location, and accommodations. Before we can understand which marketing channels are best for reaching these potential guests, we have to understand what these key micro-moments look like throughout the dreaming phase.

A study conducted by Think with Google has confirmed that the majority of time spent throughout this phase:

With travelers spending almost half of the dreaming phase on OTA websites, having an effective strategy to shift consumer attention to the direct hotel website is simply a must. By combining the power of non-OTA channels and touchpoints with the right content, hotels can greatly influence the travel planning journey and fuel potential guests through the direct booking funnel.

What type of content are travelers looking for in this phase?

At this early stage in the travel decision-making process, people want brands to provide content to inspire and narrow down their destination choices. In fact, 67% of travelers are more likely to book with a travel brand that provides relevant information for the destinations they're interested in.

The most common searches in this phase are keywords surrounding the type of trip travelers plan to take, such as:

Honeymoon Destinations

Europe Destinations

Best time to visit [Destination]

For these broader, destination-level keyword search terms, it may surprise you that, according to Google, 60% of these searches were conducted on a smart phone. Travelers are day-dreaming on-the-go, and your hotel needs to find creative and meaningful ways to be present in these moments.

Finally, no matter the device, 64% of people who watch travel-related videos do so when thinking about taking a trip, making video a crucial component in reaching travelers in a compelling way.

The best marketing mix to reach travelers in the dreaming phase:

SEO Destination Content and Travel Guides: Featuring destination and neighborhood guides on the hotel website is one of the best ways to reach potential guests throughout the Dreaming Phase and ensure your hotel brand is present from the very beginning of the travel planning journey. HEBS Digital recently worked with an independent hotel to create comprehensive neighborhood guides. After just 30 days live, 57% of visitors came to the guide from search engines, showcasing how well-optimized destination content can successfully capitalize on search interest in destination keywords.

Featuring destination and neighborhood guides on the hotel website is one of the best ways to reach potential guests throughout the Dreaming Phase and ensure your hotel brand is present from the very beginning of the travel planning journey. HEBS Digital recently worked with an independent hotel to create comprehensive neighborhood guides. After just 30 days live, 57% of visitors came to the guide from search engines, showcasing how well-optimized destination content can successfully capitalize on search interest in destination keywords. Lifestyle and Editorial Blog Content: With travel consumers bouncing back and forth between the dreaming and planning phase as they consider their vacation destination options, valuable editorial content surrounding the hotel destination, property location, and unique property features play a crucial role in influencing travel planners as they narrow down their destination choices. Editorial destination content like Why [Destination] Should be Number One on Your Travel To-Do List or Top 5 Gram-worthy Hidden Gems in [Destination], is a great way to influence destination travelers decision. Property-specific content that positions the hotel as the hero of the destination is also a great way to influence the dreaming phase. Content highlighting on-property cultural programming, unique attractions near the hotel, and any unique amenities that play up your destination, such as featuring artwork from local artists, is also an effective strategy.

With travel consumers bouncing back and forth between the dreaming and planning phase as they consider their vacation destination options, valuable editorial content surrounding the hotel destination, property location, and unique property features play a crucial role in influencing travel planners as they narrow down their destination choices. Editorial destination content like Why [Destination] Should be Number One on Your Travel To-Do List or Top 5 Gram-worthy Hidden Gems in [Destination], is a great way to influence destination travelers decision. Property-specific content that positions the hotel as the hero of the destination is also a great way to influence the dreaming phase. Content highlighting on-property cultural programming, unique attractions near the hotel, and any unique amenities that play up your destination, such as featuring artwork from local artists, is also an effective strategy. Destination Video: With 64% of travel planners watching video in the dreaming phase, creating rich, interesting video content that provides useful information for travel planners is one of the most effective strategies to influence potential guests. Travel planners are turning to video to make the travel experience come to life and help paint a picture of what their vacation might be like. They want to get a better sense of the scenery of the destination, things they can do, where they should stay, and, ultimately, how their vacation will take shape. Creating videos that feature the most sought-after information, combined with the power of YouTube advertising and retargeting strategies, will tell a compelling story and help nurture potential guests through the booking funnel.

With 64% of travel planners watching video in the dreaming phase, creating rich, interesting video content that provides useful information for travel planners is one of the most effective strategies to influence potential guests. Travel planners are turning to video to make the travel experience come to life and help paint a picture of what their vacation might be like. They want to get a better sense of the scenery of the destination, things they can do, where they should stay, and, ultimately, how their vacation will take shape. Creating videos that feature the most sought-after information, combined with the power of YouTube advertising and retargeting strategies, will tell a compelling story and help nurture potential guests through the booking funnel. Destination-focused SEM, Gmail Ads, and YouTube TrueView: With 8% of travel planning in the dreaming phase happening through search, its important to have a comprehensive strategy across search channels. Targeted keywords promoting your destination content, as well as utilizing upper-funnel ad formats such as Gmail Ads and YouTube TrueView, are highly effective in increasing awareness and getting in front of potential guests in moments of influence throughout this phase. With Gmail Ads, you can target subscribers of top OTA websites, as well as email lists of your top competitors, to capture interest and demand early on in the travel planning journey. On the other hand, YouTube TrueView allows you to feature video content on relevant destination videos that travelers are already watching so you can capture the attention of potential guests and make an impact.

With 8% of travel planning in the dreaming phase happening through search, its important to have a comprehensive strategy across search channels. Targeted keywords promoting your destination content, as well as utilizing upper-funnel ad formats such as Gmail Ads and YouTube TrueView, are highly effective in increasing awareness and getting in front of potential guests in moments of influence throughout this phase. With Gmail Ads, you can target subscribers of top OTA websites, as well as email lists of your top competitors, to capture interest and demand early on in the travel planning journey. On the other hand, YouTube TrueView allows you to feature video content on relevant destination videos that travelers are already watching so you can capture the attention of potential guests and make an impact. Native Advertising: Native advertising allows your hotel to reach potential guests with relevant content on the editorial websites where they are browsing articles and spending time. Native advertising allows marketers to promote content that appears to be from the online publisher where your content is featured. Most importantly, content is blended seamlessly into the user experience and featured among similar, relevant topics from the publisher. Native advertising has high engagement rates, with HEBS Digital clients achieving an average click-through rate of 1.8% and higher. By generating interest and demand, this advertising format drives traffic to the hotel website, which grows the remarketing pool and reaches potential guests with display ads lower in the booking funnel.

Native advertising allows your hotel to reach potential guests with relevant content on the editorial websites where they are browsing articles and spending time. Native advertising allows marketers to promote content that appears to be from the online publisher where your content is featured. Most importantly, content is blended seamlessly into the user experience and featured among similar, relevant topics from the publisher. Native advertising has high engagement rates, with HEBS Digital clients achieving an average click-through rate of 1.8% and higher. By generating interest and demand, this advertising format drives traffic to the hotel website, which grows the remarketing pool and reaches potential guests with display ads lower in the booking funnel. Social Media: Many potential guests ask for travel advice from friends and family on social media throughout the dreaming phase. Travelers typically ask for destination recommendations based on category, such as family-friendly or romantic getaways. They will also ask for advice on accommodations once they narrow down their destination, and turn to social media for user-generated content (UGC) and original content from the brand. With consumers encountering an average of 1,400 images throughout this phase, having a strong presence on visually-compelling social media platforms such as Instagram is vital to making an impact. Aside from a strong organic presence, ad formats such as Instagram ads, Facebook promoted posts, and Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel are great tactics to drive awareness and reach potential guests throughout many touchpoints on the travel planning journey.

Many potential guests ask for travel advice from friends and family on social media throughout the dreaming phase. Travelers typically ask for destination recommendations based on category, such as family-friendly or romantic getaways. They will also ask for advice on accommodations once they narrow down their destination, and turn to social media for user-generated content (UGC) and original content from the brand. With consumers encountering an average of 1,400 images throughout this phase, having a strong presence on visually-compelling social media platforms such as Instagram is vital to making an impact. Aside from a strong organic presence, ad formats such as Instagram ads, Facebook promoted posts, and Facebook Dynamic Ads for Travel are great tactics to drive awareness and reach potential guests throughout many touchpoints on the travel planning journey. Metasearch: With 12% of travel planners using metasearch as a planning resource in the dreaming phase, a presence on Google Hotel Ads and TripAdvisor Metasearch is low-hanging fruit to ensure your direct website is discovered during the early phases of travel planning. Keep in mind that this initiative plays an important role in the dreaming and research phases. Because potential guests are price-shopping and utilizing Google Maps to view hotel locations, direct returns from this channel might not be comparable to lower-funnel initiatives. While Metasearch can serve as a lower-funnel marketing initiative as the last touch before a booking, it predominately serves as a research tool where users might click to explore a hotel, but not yet convert.

Measuring the Dreaming Phase: The Right KPIs

Each stage of the travel planning journey has focus KPIs that are important when measuring marketing effectiveness. In the dreaming phase, top KPIs should include:

Impressions/awareness

Engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares)

Click-through rate

Overall website traffic

Unique website visitors

Time spent on site

Focus metrics vary depending on the marketing initiative and campaign budget. Establishing goal KPIs before launching a campaign is important for gauging success and optimizing campaigns to achieve your goals.

Reaching potential guests in the dreaming phase plays an important role in capturing the majority of travel demand to your market and owning the attention of your best guest against your comp set and the OTAs. Consumer engagement in this phase increases reach and awareness of your hotel brand and fuels the booking funnel., Just like the beginning of any good vacation, being present in the moments that matter goes a long way.

Read Part 1 - From Dreaming to Booking: How to Capitalize on the Full Travel Planning Journey to Increase Direct Bookings - By Margaret Mastrogiacomo

Read Part 3 - From Dreaming to Booking Part III: The Planning Phase How to Capitalize on the Planning Phase of the Travel Planning Journey - By Margaret Mastrogiacomo

About HEBS Digital:

Founded in 2001, the firm is headquartered in New York City and has global offices in Las Vegas and Auckland. Through its Smart Guest Acquisition Suite, including the smartCMS, Smart Personalization Engine, Smart Data Marketing, and full-service digital consulting and marketing solutions, HEBS Digital helps hoteliers drastically boost direct bookings, lower distribution costs, and increase the lifetime value of guests.

Part of NextGuest Technologies, HEBS Digital and Serenata CRM, the most comprehensive Hotel CRM Suite today, are the creators of the hospitality industrys first Fully-Integrated Guest Engagement & Acquisition Platform.

A diverse client portfolio of top-tier luxury and boutique hotel chains, independent hotels, resorts and casinos, franchised properties and hotel management companies, convention centers, spas, restaurants, DMO and tourist offices across the globe are all benefiting from HEBS Digitals direct online channel strategy and digital marketing expertise.

HEBS Digitals technology, website design and digital marketing services have won more than 500 prestigious industry awards, including World Travel Awards, HSMAI Adrian Awards, Stevie Awards (American Business Awards), Travel Weeklys Magellan Awards, and more.

The HEBS Digital team is comprised of thought leaders, a diverse team of experts comprised of over 33 nationalities speaking over 22 languages. Contact HEBS Digitals consultants at 1 (800) 649-5076 (North America), +64 (0) 9 889 8489 (Australia, New Zealand, South Pacific) or success@hebsdigital.com.

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Editorial Contact:

Garrick Lee

Marketing Manager, HEBS Digital

Phone: (212) 752-9425

Email: garrick@hebsdigital.com

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 2021 Hospitality Trends
"Target Africa calls out one of Western secularism's most peculiar orthodoxies: the perceived right of people from increasingly barren societies to meddle with the fertility and sexual mores of other people -- especially Africans. Kudos to Obianuju Ekoecha for this bold, bracing, and morally urgent book."

 Mary Eberstadt, Author, Adam and Eva After the Pill

"In the book you now hold, the great Nigerian human rights activist Obianuju Ekeocha casts a spotlight on the new colonialism and subjects it to searching critical scrutiny."

 Robert P. George, Ph.D., Princeton University, From the Foreword

"Target Africa is a stunning achievement. Informed and passionate, it presents a convincing vision of neocolonialism accomplished by means of destabilizing sexual revolution and the control of African fertility and population."

 Adrian Vermeule, Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School

"To find out about a real war on women, read this book. You will learn how Western governments, organizations, and businesses target female fertility in Africa to further their own ambitions."

 Abby Johnson, Author, Unplanned and The Walls Are Talking

"That one brave, eloquent African woman is drawing attention to this battle for the soul of her continent is a cause for celebration. May we all join her in this fight for true freedom, first by reading this vital book."

 Eric Metaxas, New York Times Best-selling Author, Bonhoeffer; Host, The Eric Metaxas Show

"No matter where you stand on cultural issues, the arguments of Target Africa must be addressed. This is a powerhouse of a polemic, a cry from the heart backed up by the facts. Everyone who cares about Africa's future should read it."

 Andrew Klavan, Author, The Great Good Thing



"A profound, searing, and utterly necessary work that exposes how the rapidly deteriorating Western culture imposes its poisonous values across the world."

 Matt Walsh, Columnist, The Daily Wire; Author, The Unholy Trinity

"With ruthless logic and meticulous research, Target Africa spells out the condescension of First World oligarchs."

 Patrick Coffin, Host, The Patrick Coffin Show

"Despite what seem to be insurmountable odds, Obianuju Ekeocha is fighting fire with science, facts, and tremendous faith, while serving as an example for the entire pro-life movement."

 Teresa Tomeo, Author, Extreme Makeover; Radio Host, Catholic Connection

"A must-read for complacent Westerners believing their aid money is being put to good use in Africa. A masterful analysis demonstrating in painful detail how Western governments, billionaires, and NGOs are systematically imposing a morality completely alien to many Africans."

 David Paton, Chair of Industrial Economics, Nottingham University Business School, United Kingdom

"A tour de force examination of the ideological colonization being waged on Africa, written by someone who knows the continent and the issues intimately."

 Edward Pentin, Rome Correspondent, National Catholic Register

"Anybody interested in true civilization and world peace should study this book in order to realize what should be urgently done by all people of goodwill globally to arrest this impending calamity."

 Michael C. Asuzu, Professor of Public Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria

"Offers compelling insight into the deculturalization of Africa by a liberal elite and exposes the truth behind Western donors' attempts to eradicate Africa's culture of life and family values."

 Senator Jim Walsh, Republic of Ireland
At any conference about women and business, there will invariably be a few men in the audience. Often, when it's time for the audience Q&A, a guy will get chosen to ask a question, mostly because, hey, he's a guy, and he showed up. And often, the question is the same: When it comes to gender bias in the workplace, what can men do?

A new article in the Harvard Business Review has an answer. The authors, law professor Joan Williams, who is also the founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and Marina Multhaup, a research and policy fellow there, warn that these suggestions are not glamorous or high profile. They're hardly going to make your career.

They want you to order lunch. While you're at it, could you reserve the conference line for Tuesday's sales meeting? And order a baby gift for that employee who just went out on leave?

I am not joking, nor are Williams and Multhaup. These thankless tasks are part of a whole category of work known as office housework, and men need to do more of it. Offices run more smoothly when this stuff is done properly. But no one gets applauded for doing it well, and it certainly won't earn anyone a promotion.

Overwhelmingly, it's women who get stuck with these mundane tasks. Research from Williams and Multhaup, which has yet to be released, finds that women of color are particularly likely to get stuck with office drudgery. Ironically, when a man does do office housework, he's rated 14 percent more favorably than a female colleague, according to a study from New York University.

Obviously, this is unfair. It's also kind of a big deal. It's not just about the coffee at a meeting. Office housework takes time, and it takes time away from higher-profile activities that will lead to promotions and raises. Assigning the office housework mostly to women feeds the stereotype that women are nurturers and men are the ones who get taken care of. That frankly, women are subservient. Even at work, where we're all supposedly measured by the same metrics and asked to conform to the same standards of behavior.

It's also harder for women to refuse office housework than it is for men. A man who doesn't organize a birthday party can say he's busy, or more bluntly, has more important things to do. A women who refuses the office housework is more likely to be accused of being "not a team player" or selfish.

Ideally, managers would make sure these mundane tasks are doled out equally. Until then, men need to volunteer to do more of the office drudgery.

So what can men do? Plenty. Here are Williams's and Multhaup's 15 suggestions:

Take notes Procure the conference room Get everyone on the conference line Plan the party Buy gifts for birthdays, retirements, baby showers Order lunch Organize lower-level employees Mentoring activities Serving on committees that are not linked to revenue or core business goals Handle less-valued clients Handle HR tasks Handle routine work that is not central to business strategy Organize offsite events Maintain the task list Keep the trains running (versus big-picture thinking and strategy)
In the early days of fashion company Everlane, CEO Michael Preysman said he would never bring the company into physical stores. According to The Washington Post, he even said he would shut down the company before going brick-and-mortar. Today, Everlane has not one but two physical retail stores. Its second opened in San Francisco last weekend. Given this expansion, and the line of people I observed outside the San Francisco store all weekend, it doesn't seem like the company is experiencing much backlash against its updated strategy.

Leaders are not always as successful as Preysman when it comes to publicly changing their strategy. Here are three things he and the company did to maintain the trust of their customers during this time of transformation.

1. They maintained the company's strong core values.

Everlane was founded on a concept of radical transparency in retail. Everlane differentiated itself by being open with consumers about the costs of manufacturing, where money was going, and how the company kept its prices lower than traditional designer clothing. Now with a physical store, none of this changes. The company is not acting at odds with the strong brand and values it has established over the years. Instead, the company is leveraging its brand to expand its footprint.

Big changes in a company's plan are better received when they align with its established North Star.

2. They demonstrated their ability to innovate.

Deciding to open physical stores shows Everlane's ability to evolve with the industry. Over the past several years, previously online-only stores like Warby Parker and Amazon have established a physical retail presence. This is a direct result of technological growth and consumers' changing behaviors. Preysman has recognized that a lot has changed in retail since the company's start. While he could have chosen to stick to his word around the company's online-only strategy, Preysman instead adapted to a changing industry.

In our rapidly changing economy, it's always possible that new and unexpected factors may call for a company to change its strategy. When done in the right way, this change demonstrates an innovative mindset rather than a fickle one.

3. They stayed connected to their loyal customers.

Through its online offering, Everlane learned that customers want to be able to touch and feel products before purchasing. Everlane took this learning and spent two years experimenting on different types of stores with real customers before landing on its current New York City and San Francisco store formats. Through this approach, Everlane was able to bring its customers along on its transformational journey. The physical stores represent less a change of course for the company and more a deep investment in meeting customer needs.

When a change in strategy is rooted in what a company has learned from its customers, it communicates the company's investment in doing best by its customers. This makes changes in strategy not only accepted but appreciated.
Hedy Lamarr was born to innovate. Yet, the world was blind to her truth  all because of a pretty face.

Lamarrs story is a familiar tragedy: of female brilliance sidelined, ignored, passed over. The victim of a gaze that sought to objectify her body and erase her mind, it deemed her the most beautiful woman in the world, but conceived of her as nothing more than an empty-headed trophy.

To the world, she was the Hollywood star of Algiers (1938), Ziegfeld Girl (1941) and Boom Town (1940), though best known as the great seductress of Cecil BDeMilles biblical blockbuster Samson and Delilah (1949).

She made her name timeless, but the silver screen projected a mere phantom of Lamarrs true self, a creation so that she could survive in this world and flourish. Behind closed doors was the second life of inventor, the co-creator of a frequency hopping system which has gone on to become one of the most significant communications developments of the 20th century. Her work later formed the basis for Bluetooth and wi-fi.

Lamarr had a complete inventing table installed in her home, with a smaller version gifted to her by one-time flame Howard Hughes. He was fixated on building the fastest planes in the world in order to sell them to the US Air Force. Lamarr took a book on birds, a book on fish, sketched the fastest creature of each and combined them. She showed the results to Hughes, who replied: Youre a genius.

The two Lamarrs  one in the spotlight, one in the shadows  are the subject of a new documentary by Alexandra Dean, titled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Her life is carefully recounted through news footage and interviews with the children of her six marriages, close friends, experts, and even Mel Books  a longtime fan she actually sued for naming one of his Blazing Saddles characters Hedley Lamarr.

The centre of the film, however, is a series of previously unheard tapes from an interview she gave Forbes magazine in 1990. A chance for her to tell her own story.

As it goes, Lamarrs invention was created alongside her friend, composer George Antheil, during the summer of 1940. Born Hedwig Kiesler and raised in Austria to Jewish parents, she felt helpless in the face of the terrors being inflicted on her people, all while she sat, draped in luxury, an ocean away. And so, she and Antheil met to devise a way to protect Allied Navy ships in the Atlantic, specifically to prevent the interception of torpedo transmissions.



Lamarr had become familiar with the mechanics of weaponry during her first marriage to arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl, a Jew whod converted to Catholicism so he could do business with the Nazis. Lamarr would later claim that hed kept her locked away in their home like a prisoner; she eventually fled  dressed as a maid  and made her way to Paris. That grim experience, at least, had offered her the insight she needed, which she combined with Antheils own knowledge of self-playing pianos.

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Their invention, a frequency hopping signal, made it impossible for German submarines to interrupt radio-controlled torpedoes by spreading the frequency over a much broader bandwidth  88 frequencies to be exact, the same as the standard number of piano keys. Lamarr and Antheil took out a patent for their Secret Communications System and pitched it to the Navy, but were turned down.

However, by the 1950s, they were using Lamarrs technology. In 1957, it was adapted for use in transmitting the underwater positions of enemy submarines revealed by sonar. In 1962, it was present on the ships involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Their work has now been recognised as a precursor to the spread-spectrum wireless communication used in mobile phones, global positioning systems, and wi-fi technology.

Lamarr was not informed that her patent had run out. Uncredited, uncompensated  for an invention now estimated to be worth $30bn. Bombshell asks of you only to imagine how much more Lamarr could have achieved had she been given the tools, the trust, and the means afforded to her male peers. If she hadnt been trapped behind that beautiful face, the one she called a mask I cannot remove.

Hollywood made her a star, but was to exact a heavy price in later life (Zeitgeist Films)

She was a boundary-breaker, whatever the confines put on her. In 1933, she became an international sensation as the star of Czech film Ecstasy, thought to feature the first on-screen orgasm in a non-pornographic film. Later on, her plastic surgeons would exclaim that Lamarr would demonstrate to them new ways to cut and fold her skin so as to better hide the scars, with the techniques themselves becoming wildly popular.

A woman of such vision should live in triumph, but hers is the classic tale of Hollywood tragedy. She was one of many stars pushed into drug addictions by the studios that employed them: pumped full of substances to wake them up, to put them to sleep, all so they could work excruciating schedules. It came to impact her in later life, as her children recall increasingly erratic episodes. She eventually became a recluse, rarely leaving her house, but spending up to seven hours each day on the phone.

It was only in the last years of her life that the world seemed to finally awaken to her achievements. In 1998, Lamarr and Antheil were honoured with an Electronic Frontier Foundation Award. She did not appear in person to accept it, but spoke to the crowd over the phone.

She died two years later, though not before she could witness the start of those two Lamarrs  star and inventor  begin to reconcile into one. Bombshell hopes to continue that work.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is in UK cinemas now
The fight for gender equality will always seem to inevitably fall in front of the camera, so starkly visible amongst its onscreen heroines and celebrity actors. But, to bring those iconic female characters to screen and create those spectacular roles for our Jennifer Lawrences and Lupita Nyong'os, there is a desperate need for diversity behind the camera as well.

That's how to really combat the same old stories forever being told and retold in Hollywood movies; there are hundreds of voices and visions being shut out from filmmaking due to the same old biases and archaic structures. New approaches to the camera, to the written word, to sets and stunts; yet women largely make up only 15-19% of behind-the-scenes roles.

It's time to recognise the extraordinary work of women behind Hollywood's cameras; and, though this list is only a tiny portion of those contributions, these women's creative achievements are certainly worth the celebration.

Ava DuVernay - Director/ Marketer/ Distributor

DuVernay's multi-talented creative force is fast making her one of Hollywood's biggest names, thanks to her rich visualisation of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches in Selma, her searing documentation of the racial inequality embedded into the prison system in the Oscar-nominated The 13th, and her television adaptation of Natalie Baszile's Queen Sugar; plus, her latest is just about to hit cinemas - Disney's epic fantasy A Wrinkle in Time.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy - Producer/ Director

Sharmeen made history in 2016 as the only Pakistani to win two Academy Awards; she was also the only woman of colour to win that year. Her powerful, moving documentary on honour killing, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, even sparked political change. "The Pakistani Prime Minister has said that he will change the law on honour killing after watching this film," she stated during her acceptance speech. "That is the power of film."

That year, a loophole was repealed that allowed the perpetrators of honour killings to avoid punishment by seeking forgiveness for the crime from another family member, and thus be legally pardoned.

Maryann Brandon & Mary Jo Markey - Editors

The female team who edited Star Wars: The Force Awakens helped bring to life one of the world's most beloved franchises: from the thrills of seeing the Millenium Falcon burst into action, to the terrors of Kylo Ren's powers or the mysteries of Rey's dream sequence. The blockbuster pair were also responsible for editing Abrams' other films: Mission: Impossible III, Super 8, Star Trek, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. They're also set to work on Star Wars: Episode IX.

Maryse Alberti - Cinematographer

Maryse Alberti knows how to make a fight look good; she's lensed both Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler and Ryan Coogler's Creed. She's a major player in a field particularly devoid of women, who make up less than 4% of the membership of the American Society of Cinematographers.

Jenny Beavan - Costume Designer

The world fell in love with Mad Max: Fury Road's Jenny Beavan at 2016's Oscars, as she picked up her gong for Best Costume Design. Though her self-deprecating attitude and bedazzled biker jacket were both charming and refreshing on their own terms, Beavan boasts an incredible body of work which previously saw her win an Oscar for 1987's A Room with a View. This year, her stunning work will be seen in both Disney's Christopher Robin and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

Marielle Heller - Director

Heller's already made a splash in Hollywood with her debut feature, The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Adapted by Heller herself from Phoebe Gloeckner's diaristic graphic novel, the frankness of Minnie (Bel Powley)'s sexual awakening amongst the backdrop of '70s San Francisco is a refreshingly honest, non-judgemental portrait of feminine-driven sexuality in a system which seeks to suppress it. Her next project Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which stars both Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, is set for release this year.

Judy Becker - Production Designer

She captured the pulsating nerve at the heart of the '70s in American Hustle, and the dreamlike romance of Carol. She created the backdrop to the burning love of Brokeback Mountain, the acute pain of Shame, and the ambitions of Joy. Becker's Oscar-nominated work has put her in high demand amongst some of Hollywood's finest directors, particularly in her frequent collaborations with David O. Russell.

Zoe Bell - Stunt Double

Bell is surely stuntwork's most recognisable face, thanks to her string of acting roles in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight. However, she'll forever best be remembered as Uma Thurman's stunt double in the Kill Bill movies; though her heavy slate has seen her work on the likes of Iron Man 3, Alias, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

Nina Yang Bongiovi - Producer

With Bongiovi onboard as producer, Ryan Coogler's 2013 flick Fruitvale Station, documenting the last day of Oscar Grant III before he was shot by police, has now catapulted both its director and star Michael B. Jordan to the big leagues. Alongside production partner Forest Whitaker, she also produced the critically acclaimed Dope; and looks to strike gold once more with documentary Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?

Victoria Alonso - Producer/ Visual Effects

If you want proof it's Marvel's visual effects team that are keeping the studio on top of their game, just look to Victoria Alonso. Having served as visual effects producer on the likes of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, she became Marvel's visual effects chief for its Phase I movies, before a promotion to the Executive Vice President of Physical Production to the studio. She's a lifelong advocate for the promotion of women in the visual effects industry; something her position will now surely inspire in future generations.

Kelly Marcel - Screenwriter

Marcel's daunting task of adapting the steamy blockbuster novel Fifty Shades of Grey clearly paid off; her name is now attached to a certified blockbuster and the fastest-selling R-rated title of all time. However, Marcel actually started out her career doing uncredited re-writes for Nicholas Winding Refn's ultraviolent 2009 biopic Bronson. Now how's that for range?

Patty Jenkins - Director

Having helped Charlize Theron win her Academy Award for Monster, Jenkins is now striding into cinematic history; she's directing Wonder Woman's solo film, bringing to screen one of DC's most iconic properties after 76 years left trapped within the page. Having previously departed from Marvel's Thor: The Dark Wold, Jenkins will now be the first female director to take on a major project for the DC universe.

Rachel Portman - Composer

Portman is the go-to soundtrack for your tragic, yearning romances; she's penned the music for the likes of Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, One Day, The Duchess, and Never Let Me Go. She was the first female composer to win an Academy Awards, for Emma in 1996; in 2010, she was appointed with an OBE for her contributions to British film.

Amma Asante - Director

Asante has crafted some of the most beautiful, lush love stories put to film in the past couple of years: between Belle's tale inspired by the portrait of mixed race aristocratic Dido Elizabeth Belle, or last year's A United Kingdom. Starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, Asante captured the interracial romance between Prince Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams. Their love sparked international outrage, though Khama overcame his troubles to lead Botswana's independence movement.

Katie Dippold - Screenwriter

One of the brightest voices of the current comedy scene, Dippold graduated as a writer for Parks and Recreation and MADtv to pen the hit The Heat, alongside co-writing last year's Ghostbusters reboot with Paul Feig. This year, she's behind the mother-daughter comedy Snatched, starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn.

Niki Caro - Director

Having first shot to fame for the Oscar-nominated Whale Rider back in 2002, Caro last year releasedThe Zookeeper's Wife. Starring Jessica Chastain, it recounts the story of Warsaw Zoo's keepers, Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who helped to save hundreds during the Nazi invasion of Poland by hiding them within their zoo's cages. She now boards Disney's highly-anticipated live-action take on Mulan.

Francine Maisler - Casting Director

Though Oscars night always leaves us inevitably fawning over the performances of its winners, it's always important to remember the skills of a great casting director in herding the perfect actor into the perfect role. Maisler helped Leonardo DiCaprio to his Oscar for The Revenant, Lupita Nyong'o to hers for 12 Years a Slave; she was also behind landing Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda their roles in Disney's Mary Poppins Returns, as well as pairing Ryan Gosling with Harrison Ford in Blade Runner 2049.

Jennifer Yuh Nelson - Director

Originally a storyboard artist, Yuh has achieved a whole host of honours with her debut feature Kung Fu Panda 2. She's the first woman to solely directed an animated feature from a major Hollywood studio, the second woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and her film is the most financially successful to be directed by a woman. She's directed her first live-action film with sci-fi thriller The Darkest Minds, out this year.

Megan Ellison - Producer

Ellison has risen to the position of one of Hollywood's super-producers in the space of just 10 short years; founding Annapurna Pictures, she's produced the likes of Zero Dark Thirty, Joy, True Grit, Her, Foxcatcher, and American Hustle. Her dedication and passion landed her in TIME's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2014. Last year, Ellison acted as producer on Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread, Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit, and Alexander Payne's Downsizing.
Ever since Frances McDormand's call-to-arms acceptance speech at Sunday night's Academy Awards, the term "inclusion rider" has now become the focus of conversation.

The term, which was first discussed in a 2016 TED talk by social scientist Stacy Smith, refers to a clause inserted into an actor's contract that requires cast and crew on a film to meet a certain level of diversity.

I just found out about this last week, McDormand said in the Oscars press room. There has always been available, to everybody that does a negotiation on a film, an inclusion rider, which means that you can ask for and/or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only the casting but also the crew."

"And so the fact that I just learned that after 35 years of being in the film business were not going back. So the whole idea of women trending? No. No trending. African Americans trending? No, no trending. It changes now. And I think the inclusion rider will have something to do with that.

Several stars have already chimed in with their support of the concept. Brie Larson tweeted: "I'm committed to the Inclusion Rider. Who's with me?"



Now, Michael B. Jordan has announced that his production company Outlier Society will be utilising the initiative in all future projects.

In support of the women & men who are leading this fight, I will be adopting the Inclusion Rider for all projects produced by my company Outlier Society, the Black Panther star wrote on Instagram. Ive been privileged to work with powerful woman & persons of color throughout my career & its Outliers mission to continue to create for talented individuals going forward.



The actor ended by urging people to seek out the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a program which dedicates itself to studying and developing solutions to tackle inequality.

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Taylor Hickson has filed a lawsuit against production company Incident Productions, after a horrific accident on the set of Ghostland left her with a career-altering facial scar.

While filming in Canada for the indie horror production in December 2016, Hickson was performing an "emotionally charged scene" when the film's director, Pascal Laugier, asked her to pound harder and harder on a door while her face was right against its glass pane.

According to the suit filed last Friday with the Queen's Bench in Winnipeg: "In the course of shooting the scene, the director, consistently told [Hickson] to pound harder on the glass with her fists."

"At one point during the filming of the scene, and after being asked to increase the strength with which [she] pounded on the glass, [she] asked one of the producers and the director if it was safe to do so. That producer and the director both replied in the affirmative." Laugier is not named as a defendant in the suit.

Hickson was propelled through the door after the glass shattered during one of the takes, the suit states; she was left with a deep cut on the left side of her face, receiving 70 stitches after being rushed to hospital.

The actress, who turned 19 just days before the accident, spoke to Deadline about the injury's lasting effects. "Its been mass amounts of insecurity, conflicted, confused, hurt, angry, and sad that this was my last day on set and no precautions were taken," she said.

She has since undergone treatment including laser treatment and silicone treatment, but over one year post-incident, has been left with permanent scarring on the left side of her face, the suit continues. It is unknown at this time if any further treatment, including plastic surgery, would reduce the visual appearance of the injury.

Hickson, who had previously appeared in Deadpool, was "a busy, up and coming actor in the very competitive movie industry", the suit states, adding that: "as a result of the injury, she has lost income [during] the period of time she was unable to act while she recovered from her injury."

The suit accuses the production company of failing to take reasonable precautions in ensuring the safety of its actors, including in the use of safety glass or stunt doubles.

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Russell Maliphants choreography is fluid, elegant and self-possessed. He doesn't do flashy: he and his dancers reveal extraordinary strength, not in big moves but in effortlessly sustained lines. Shimmering in golden light, they remain poised and thoughtful.

Since founding his own company in 1996, Maliphant has become quietly starry, collaborating with superballerina Sylvie Guillem, the BalletBoyz and more. Still, his dances work particularly well in intimate spaces, making him a good fit for the distressed chic of the Print Room at the Coronet. His second collaboration with this venue, maliphantworks2, is an evening of duets and film, from the 1998 Critical Mass to a new dance for Maliphant and his longtime muse, Dana Fouras.

The two male dancers of Critical Mass can look like mirror images. With Maliphant himself and the marvellous Dickson Mbi, its more of a study in contrasts, between the long-limbed choreographers lean experience and younger Mbis rich power. Mbi plunges into a silky backbend, caught and held by Maliphant: its an image of trust as well as balance.

Maliphants duets often emphasise the independence of each performer. Two Times Two is a double solo. Fouras and Grace Jabbari each stand in a box of light created by Michael Hulls, arms whirling so fast that they blur, or reaching out in gestures of etched clarity. Theyre both isolated and overlapping. Arm positions chime; one bends forwards as the other bends back.

In Still, the lighting and Jan Urbanowskis animation make an aggressive partner for Mbi, who stands in a field of strobing, twitching patterns. His moves are impossibly slow and steady, turned into a crackling, flickering image. Its both a celebration of his quality of movement and a distraction from it. Late in the piece, hes joined by Jabbari, who matches his moves but stays a remote figure.

The new duet for Maliphant and Fouras is all about the connection. Theres a sense of a couple with bone-deep knowledge of each other, played out with serene assurance and hints of nostalgia. Fourass score brings together fragments of a Donizetti aria, sung by Caruso, emerging from snatches of radio static.

Circling each other, Maliphant and Fouras are as sophisticated as tango dancers, but without the sense of power struggle. Each is independent and free, with an extra softness suggested by their fullness of movement. Perched on his back or shoulder, she reaches into space with floating, balletic ease.

Until 17 March (the-print-room.org)
No longer relegated to rounds of party shots, tequila is having a moment in the spotlight as the new drink of choice for those with a refined palette - and strong political opinions.

According to the Distilled Spirits Council, sales of the blue agave-based drink have risen 121 per cent since 2002.

One reason behind the increase is because the rich and famous have adopted the liquor as their go-to drink.

Recommended Tequila could help you lose weight

George Clooney, Justin Timberlake and P Diddy are well-known fans of the drink, having created their very own brands - and others have caught on as well.

On the Oscars red carpet, Helen Mirren downed a shot of tequila and wellness-obsessed Gwyneth Paltrow even promotes the alcohol for its lack of gluten and minimal caloric content.

While tequila is delicious, the underlying reason the liquor may be seeing a rise in popularity could have to do with the divisive speech of the President of the United States.

According to the New York Times: For some people, drinking tequila, a type of mescal made from the blue agave plant in specific regions of Mexico - as well as other kinds of mescal - is even a way to signal dissent from the presidency of Donald Trump, who has made a border wall between the United States and Mexico a priority.

For John Rexer, founder of Ilegal Mezcal, Trumps campaign led him to create a line of Donald Trump-themed merchandise - which he has used to fundraise for various organisations focused on education, undocumented youth and immigration reform, womens reproductive rights, wildlife animal protection, and LGBT advocacy.

Rexer also held a drinking protest, A Shot at Donald, which donated $2 for every photo of an Ilegal bottle alongside the hashtag #AShotAtDonald.

And bars across the nation have responded to the presidents views with cocktails that protest in a subtle way.

Americans may be consuming tequila in protest of the president (Getty)

For The Standard Hotel in New York City, this meant introducing the #resist as a cocktail to support the campaign that promotes justice and equality. Speaking to SuperCall, Ashley Santoro, regional beverage director for The Standard said: Weve dedicated a lot of energy in supporting and partnering with spirits brands that have a political voice and donate a portion of their revenue to charities that have been victim to some of the recent (un)developments.

The ever-increasing tequila consumption comes as tequila brands have expressed worry about the potential negative impacts a poor relationship with the United States can have on their sales.

But by consuming the liquor proudly and heavily, Americans seem to be showing their support for Mexico - and their favourite imported beverage.
Bitcoin's mid-December boom has sparked a renewed interest in cryptocurrency investment across the world - and some extremely strange goings-on as entrepreneurs speculate on the best way to capitalise on the digicoin gold rush.

The market leader's value stormed to an all-time high of $19,850 (14,214) in the run-up to Christmas - as did many others, inspired by a flurry of ether purchases driven by the popular kids' app CryptoKitties - but has since dropped back to its customary $10,000 (7,190) mark.

Competitors like ethereum, litecoin, ripple and bitcoin cash have all quietly prospered out of the limelight - but cryptocurriences remain a volatile proposition.

Yesterday saw all but two of CoinMarketCap's top 50 cryptos decline in value, thought to be a reaction to the US Securities and Exchange and Commission declaring that all trading platforms will ultimately need to be registered and regulated to protect consumers.

All of this excitement has led to a number of bizarre developments as businesses (and scammers) think outside the box about the best way to enter a market worth a combined $405bn (292bn).

First we had the bitcoin strip club, a Las Vegas lap dancing venue where the performers are branded with temporary tattoos of QR barcodes - allowing customers to tip them in bitcoin by scanning their thighs with smartphones.

Then Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched the petro, effectively a system of oil-backed tokens for paying taxes described by Matt O'Brien of The Washington Post as "one of the worst investments ever."

We've had cryptocurrencies for dentists, the Long Island Iced Tea Company and even a single malt-backed whisky currency from Scotland, CaskCoin. Steven Seagal has his own currency for crying out loud.

Bitcoin marketplace Paxful has meanwhile proposed that cryptocurrency investment could be the key to unlocking the potential of faltering African economies, providing an engine for growth likened to the miracle discovery of "vibranium" recently seen driving the Afrofuturist utopia of Wakanda in Marvel's latest blockbuster movie Black Panther.

Paxful's co-founder and CTO Artur Schaback elaborates:

"Many African nations have plentiful natural resources and a sizeable population that is highly educated. Additionally, a culture of entrepreneurship is common in many African cultures, most notably Nigeria. However, all the natural resources in the world don't mean much until they are taken out of the ground and turned into useable products.

"Imagine every path to starting your own business being cut off and being in a kind of 'financial prison'. This is the bleak reality Africans have had to face, until now. Cryptocurrency is truly the vibranium of Africa as it unlocks the work and effort of the people by giving them equal financial footing. Every single person who has seen the value of their savings evaporate thanks to rampant inflation as seen in Zimbabwe and even Nigeria knows that crypto offers an average of a 600 per cent return in a year as opposed to -40 per cent if they kept their native funds.

"Crypto helps put power back into the people's hands to do business and create wealth."

Many of the ideas currently floating around the sector are more about PR companies getting creative in order to leap aboard the blockchain bandwagon but all convey the very real excitement surrounding cryptocurrencies and their possibilities right now.

Investors are advised to remain cautious, however, as bitcoin and its rivals continue to fluctuate and are open to misuse by scammers and pirates, equally keen to exploit the hype.

While the unauthorised use of Ryan Gosling's likeness among Miroskii's management team was funny, Twitter accounts co-opting SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk's identity to dupe currency speculators is less so.

Musk is one of the most prominent tech innovators in the world and his legion of fans could easily be persuaded to part with their savings on the assumption that his endorsement was being given in good faith.

Even Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak has admitted being caught out by coin scammers in the past, which is as clear a cautionary lesson as you could wish for.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

Last weekend also saw a mass PC heist in Iceland, where 600 machines being used to mine bitcoin in the country's cool climes were stolen by raiders, showing the dramatic extents criminals are prepared to go to to cash in on the crypto boom. Be careful out there.
The US Military is using artificial intelligence software developed by Google in one of its drone programmes, causing internal divisions over how the company should be run.

The Department of Defense's Project Maven, commenced last April, utilises the Silicon Valley search giant's TensorFlow AI to analyse the hours of footage shot by unmanned planes.

TensorFlow scans the film for objects of interest and flags them for human analysts with a view to further investigation.

It has reportedly already been used in the field to survey areas held by Isis in the Middle East but Google stresses the technology is being deployed for "non-offensive uses only."

Employees have nevertheless raised concerns about the company's role in defence contracting after it was revealed last week on an internal mailing list, particularly in light of the company's famous founding principle: "Don't be evil."

Many have expressed disquiet internally about the software they helped develop being signed over for surveillance, according to Gizmodo.

"Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns," Google said in a statement.

"We're actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies."

The company has worked with the US Military in the past and senior executives including Eric Schmidt and Milo Medin have advised the armed forces on cloud and data systems as part of the Defense Innovation Board.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

Google also oversaw the development of the BigDog robotic packhorse, built by Boston Dynamics when it was owned by parent corporation Alphabet in 2015. Originally conceived in 2005, the stalking quadruped was repurposed to assist the Marine Corps before ultimately being abandoned on the grounds that it was too noisy for stealth combat manoeuvres.

The Pentagon spent $7.4bn (5.3bn) on AI and data processing tech in 2017, according to The Wall Street Journal, as global warfare becomes ever more remote and tech-centric.
The Vatican has been urged to embrace equality on International Women's Day (Alessandro Di Meo/Ansa/AP)

Catholic women have urged Pope Francis to give women a greater voice in Catholic Church decision-making, warning they are leaving the church in droves because its all-male leadership refuses to change their entrenched second-class status.

Former Irish president Mary McAleese, an outspoken advocate for womens ordination and gay rights, was the keynote speaker at an International Womens Day conference that was moved off Vatican territory this year because a cardinal declined to sponsor it due to Ms McAleeses participation.

We are not the strawberries on the cake, we are the leaven in the bread. And without the leaven the bread will not rise Mary McAleese former president of Ireland speaks about women in the church pic.twitter.com/C64g1CPIYV  Voices of Faith (@vofwomen) March 7, 2018

In her speech, delivered at the Rome headquarters of Francis Jesuit order, Ms McAleese said: The Catholic Church has long since been a primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny.

Its leadership has never sought a cure for that virus though the cure is freely available.

Its name is equality.
Demonstrators march through Dublin city centre calling for the repeal of the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution (Niall Carson/PA)

The Irish Government has finalised the wording for an abortion referendum giving the go-ahead for voters to have their say on liberalising Ireland abortion laws.

Ministers formally approved the referendum bill at a Cabinet meeting at Government Buildings in Dublin.

The move comes in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that protections for the unborn child offered under the states constitution do not extend beyond the right to life.

The Government had waited for the ruling. If the court had found rights were more widespread within the constitution it may have put the referendum in doubt.

Expand Close The Taoiseach said the referendum is about asking citizens to allow women to make major decisions for themselves (Brian Lawless/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Taoiseach said the referendum is about asking citizens to allow women to make major decisions for themselves (Brian Lawless/PA)

Currently, terminations are only allowed in the Irish Republic when the life of the mother is at risk, including from suicide, and the maximum penalty for accessing an illegal abortion is 14 years in prison.

Campaigners are seeking to liberalise the regime to allow for unrestricted abortion up to 12 weeks into pregnancy.

Citizens will be asked whether they want to remove the Eighth Amendment, which gives equal right to life to the mother and the unborn, and replace it with wording that would allow politicians to set Irelands abortion laws in the future.

That wording will be: Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancies.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said this referendum is about asking citizens to allow women to make major decisions for themselves.

Its about trusting women to decide, in the early weeks of their pregnancy, whats right for them and their families, Mr Varadkar said.

And its about trusting our doctors to decide when continuing with a pregnancy is a risk to the life or health of a woman.

The Taoiseach added: Above all its about trusting Irish people to consider this matter in depth, with compassion and empathy, as I know they will.

I'm really looking forward to bringing that wording and the referendum bill into the DailSimon Harris, Health Minister

Health Minister Simon Harris said it was fitting the Government had approved the wording on International Womens Day.

It is very appropriate and fitting that on this day the Irish Government has taken a decision that we will have a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment and that we will have finalised the wording for that referendum, Mr Harris said.

Im really looking forward to bringing that wording and the referendum bill into the Dail tomorrow.

The contentious Eighth Amendment of the countrys legal framework enshrines the right to life of the unborn  a provision that renders abortion illegal other than in exceptional circumstances.

Expand Close Demonstrations in Dublin city centre (Niall Carson/PA) / Facebook

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Mr Harris added: The women were thinking of today on international womens day are the women who have courageously told their woman personal sensitive stories.

He said it was their stories that brought about the change.

The minister made the comments at Government Buildings after the meeting.

The message of Government to the Irish people today is if you want to see change in this area we need to repeal the Eighth Amendment, Mr Harris said.

Were really looking forward to the next number of weeks where we can take this debate firstly to the Dail and Seanad and then to the people of Ireland and give the people of Ireland an opportunity to have their say on this really important issue by the end of May.

The Government will formally establish the Referendum Commission on Friday.

It will be chaired by Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy.

The Referendum Commission is an independent statutory body that must be established in advance of any referendum in Ireland to provide unbiased information to the public about the issue.
Simon Coveney said he was 'extremely concerned' about the allegations levelled by two Garda analysts (PA)

The Tanaiste has insisted the Government is serious about Garda reform as he rejected claims of inaction on the misrecorded homicides controversy.

Simon Coveney said he was extremely concerned about the explosive allegations levelled this week by two Garda analysts who claimed they were belittled and ignored by senior officers when they tried to highlight significant errors in

the forces data recording systems.

The mistakes around the recording of domestic crimes has prompted concern that future threats posed by suspected perpetrators were not properly flagged.

The testimony offered by analysts Laura Galligan and Lois West to the Justice Committee dominated leaders questions in the Dail on Thursday.

Mr Coveney said the Government was not in a position to offer a comprehensive response to the claims as it was only 24 hours since they had been aired.

But he said that did not mean ministers, in particular Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, were not committed to getting to the bottom of the furore.

He said any suggestion that the Government was not determined to overhaul Garda practices was absolute nonsense.

I want to thank the two women concerned for the courage they have shown to raise these issues publicly yesterday and I want to give them and give everybody else an assurance that the Government is going to take that testimony very seriously

in terms of how we follow up on it, he said.

And I want to reassure anybody who feels that they need or want to come forward and expose wrongdoing and inappropriate behaviour or intimidation or bullying in An Garda Siochana, or indeed any other arm of the state, to come forward and

do that and be reassured that the Government will take that seriously and will act on the evidence that they get while working with whistleblowers and others who are brave enough to come forward.

Fianna Fail TD Michael McGrath claimed the women faced 15 months of torment as a result of raising their concerns.

Their reward for telling the truth was to have their integrity and professionalism attacked, he said.

Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly accused senior Garda of lying to their oversight body, the Policing Authority, about the extent of the problem.

She also accused the authority of not taking the concerns of the two women seriously when alerted to them. Ms Daly claimed the oversight body instead reported the claims back to the Garda.

The Police Authority knew there were problems but not only did they not respond to them but they went back to the bosses and ratted them out, she said.

She challenged Mr Coveney in blunt terms.

Do you think it is right to lie, bully and isolate people? If you dont, who are you going to call to account? she asked.

The TD added: These women dont want a pat on the head, they dont want to be told how brave they are  they want things to change.

Mr Coveney replied: Clearly the Government doesnt think it is okay to lie, bully and intimidate people in any walk of life in Ireland and particularly An Garda Siochana.

He added: To say the Government is not committed to reform of the gardai and holding people to account is absolutely nonsense.

The whole approach that the Government is taking is about a fundamental reform of both the culture of An Garda Siochana and indeed the structures to ensure that we enforce and require a new culture in the future to ensure that the kind

of allegations that we heard yesterday are dealt with in a much more comprehensive way than seems to have been the case.

Ms West and Ms Galligan told the committee that inaccuracies with the forces Pulse recording system meant some killings were not registered as crimes.

They claimed significant pressures were brought to bear on them to sign off on a review which they felt did not address their worries.

Those included gardai not filling in fields in the IT system, particularly surrounding hate and domestic crimes.

They said there was an organisational culture where it was acceptable to record a homicide as a sudden death non-crime until an investigation had progressed and direction was received from the DPP to treat it as homicide.

But they claimed Pulse might not be updated at that stage.
European Council president Donald Tusk is in Ireland on Thursday to meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

They will discuss Brexit negotiations, the European Commission's draft withdrawal agreement and suggested guidelines for the future relationship between the EU and the UK.

The pair will also consider key economic issues during the talks at Government Buildings in Dublin.

Mr Tusk's visit comes before the European Council meeting of EU leaders on March 22-23 on Brexit and economic affairs.

Ireland's foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has suggested the EU could block Theresa May's plans to maintain a soft Irish border while leaving the customs union.

One fallback option is the UK would have to accept keeping Northern Ireland in an effective customs union with the EU.

This is Mr Tusk's second visit to Ireland in three months.

He has already pledged that the EU will stand with the Republic on the Irish border issue and Dublin's efforts to ensure frictionless passage of people and goods.

Northern Ireland's position post-Brexit is holding up agreement on Britain's exit terms and a transition deal.

Mrs May's supporters in Government, the Democratic Unionists, are adamantly opposed to any settlement distinguishing Northern Ireland's EU trading relationship from the rest of the UK's post-Brexit, what some have termed a border in the Irish Sea.

On Thursday Mr Varadkar will also hold a separate meeting with the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria.

Discussions will cover the OECD's latest economic survey of Ireland and the potential for deeper Ireland-OECD co-operation.

Meanwhile, Department for Exiting the EU minister Robin Walker is due to meet Gibraltar chief minister Fabian Picardo on Thursday, and Cabinet Office minister David Lidington is hosting a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee with representatives of the devolved administrations.
European Council President Donald Tusk has said that Ireland's concerns over Brexit will come first in EU-UK negotiations.

"If in London someone assumes that the negotiations will deal with other issues first, before moving to the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first," he said.

Mr Tusk is in Dublin meeting with the Taoiseach ahead of a crucial EU summit in Brussels on March 22.

He spoke about the failure so far from the UK to come up with a plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland, or create a solution to Brexit.

And said this was hampering progress.

"As long as the UK doesn't present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations", he said following the meeting.

Mr Tusk also said that while the EU respects the result of the Brexit referendum, the same should be said for the British in respecting the Irish vote for the Good Friday Agreement.

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"We must recognise the democratic decision taken by Britain to leave the EU in 2016, just as we must recognise the democratic decision made on the island of Ireland in 1998 with all its consequences", said the former Polish Prime Minister.

"The risk of destabilising the fragile peace process must be avoided at all costs. So we will be firm on this", he added.

Meanwhile the Taoiseach called for "certainty" from London regarding how it plans to protect the border and how it sees its future relationship with Brussels.

He said if the UK doesnt come up with workable, practical plans in solving the border issue, then the backstop agreement from December should apply.

This would require Northern Ireland maintaining regulatory alignment in compliance with the Single Market, while keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union.

Brexit is due to happen in March 2019.

"We must have certainty that if a better option proves unachievable the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland - with those rules of the single market and the customs union - will apply in order to protect North South cooperation and avoid a hard border", said Mr Varadkar.
The Central Bank has confirmed it is in contact with Bank of Ireland in relation to a computer glitch that caused money in some customer accounts to temporarily vanish this week.

In a statement the regulator said it has received assurance "the issues have been resolved with all services now working normally".

Bank of Ireland also said the problem had been rectified. In a statement a spokesperson for the group said its online, phone and business support teams had "provided 24/7 support to customers" and stressed "we continue to engage with those who have been impacted."

The bank also apologised for "any inconvenience caused".

On Wednesday a number of customers contacted the Irish Independent expressing concerns about money mysteriously disappearing from their accounts.

Bank of Ireland blamed the problem on a technology glitch and firmly rejected suggestions it had suffered a cyber attack.

But Bank of Irelands handling of the difficulty riled some customers, who complained about the lenders slow communication and poor customer service.

The Central Bank confirmed to the Irish Independent this evening that it was aware of the lenders system issues in recent days.

A spokesperson said we are in contact with the firm and have been assured that the issues have been resolved with all services now working normally."

He added the Central Bank "expects firms to communicate clearly and promptly with affected customers when a technical incident occurs, including details of the impacted service, details of alternative access to services and an undertaking that identifiable loss will be remediated. 
The Rockefeller Centre has introduced an app-driven world of health, education and pampering to attract corporate tenants

Find your Zo.

That's the invitation Tishman Speyer Properties LP has extended to workers at Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan, welcoming them to an app-driven world of health, education and pampering - and fighting off rival landlords in a battle to woo corporate tenants by appealing to their employees.

By next month, workers in eight of the 10 New York commercial properties Tishman manages, including the MetLife building, will be able to download the Zo app.

It will let them book amenities like a haircut or educational talk, backup child care, a yoga class or time in a nap room, all now available at Rock Centre. The app will spread to most of Tishman Speyer's US properties by the end of the year and eventually to its entire global portfolio, covering a quarter of a million employees.

Companies such as Brookfield Property Partners LP, which operates Brookfield Place New York in lower Manhattan; Silverstein Properties Inc., which runs office towers at the World Trade Centre; SL Green Realty Corp., Manhattan's largest office owner; and Tishman are working to hang on to tenants and lure new ones away from their foes. The competition is particularly intense in New York, where a surge of construction means tenants can flee to Hudson Yards, the World Trade Centre or even across the river to Queens.

In Midtown Manhattan, where buildings average 56 years old, large tenants have notified landlords that they're vacating about eight million square feet over the next few years, according to Colliers. Many, including Wells Fargo & Co. and Time Warner Inc., are shifting to new buildings on Manhattan's thriving far West Side.

Near Wall Street, at One World Trade Centre, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, workers can stop at the 64th floor for the barista coffee bar, pingpong, table shuffleboard, and yoga classes with floor-to-ceiling views of the Statue of Liberty.

"This puts talent at the centre of the equation," says Chris Kelly (35), president and co-founder of Convene, a startup helping landlords remake buildings for millennials.

"If you create the best workplace, then you get the best talent."

Convene, which manages the year-old amenities area for the Durst Organisation, is applying for a liquor licence for events at the One World Trade lounge and is working with a landlord to introduce a full-service bar in another New York office building, which it declined to name.

Convene is also operating the amenities in Equity Office's Park Avenue Tower in Midtown, which has a game room and catering facilities, and it's working with Brookfield on a group of buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

Even banks are renting tricked-out spaces for software engineers who always are at risk of getting poached by tech firms with sweeter offices. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leasing more than 400,000 sq ft from Brookfield for its new technology hub at 5 Manhattan West. Techies can mellow out with board games or jam in a soundproof room equipped with electric guitars and a drum kit.

"It's all about making tenants happier, making buildings stickier" and lowering turnover, said Zach Aarons, a co-founder of MetaProp, which acts as a bridge between traditional real estate companies and the many 'proptech' startups looking to make their fortunes automating the property business. With the threat of an office-space glut, Aarons said, landlords "start figuring out what can you do in your building to differentiate yourself and what do tenants really want."

Tishman's competitors are offering their own apps - some, like Zo, created in-house, and others, like an app that workplace-services provider Convene is developing, part of a package landlords can buy. There's hOM, which sells an amenity package to both residential and office landlords and counts Brookfield and Silverstein among its customers. And there's SL Green's SL Living Green, which boasts a 'suite of wellness amenities', including meditation, speakers and 'health-food pop-ups'.

It's too soon to say how great a role these apps and amenities will play in a company's decision on whether to renew a lease, Aarons said. At hOM, co-founder Ryan Freed cited a survey in which 69pc of his users in multifamily buildings named the service as a factor in signing their leases.

Each tenant who renews saves the landlord $5,000 to $7,000 in turnover costs, Freed said.

Turnover is much less frequent in office buildings, but young employees now expect such services at work, he said.

Whether the technology turns out to be fundamental or a fad, killer amenities are the new currency of office real estate, with commercial property brokerages, such as Cushman & Wakefield Inc., getting in on the act, too.

Cushman offers its clients an app called Workplace Edge, designed to help landlords "increase engagement and retention," that offers both wellness and concierge services. "You're almost at parity with multifamily buildings," Aarons said, adding that five years ago it "would have seemed insane" to suggest that office buildings would someday have similar amenities.

With Zo (from the Greek 'zoi', or life), many of the services aren't free, but Tishman has negotiated group rates for some. There are a few showboat features. A 7,700 sq ft (715 sq m) lounge and outdoor terrace are to open this spring on the 33rd and 34th floors of 1 Rock Plaza.

Over at 30 Rock - headquarters of NBC Universal, which broadcasts the Today and Tonight shows and Saturday Night Live - signs in the lobby lead workers to a 2,300 sq ft mezzanine space where they enjoy the talks, naps, beauty treatments and, one recent day, recreational piglet petting.

Although NBC owns most of its own space, its employees have full access to Zo, said E.B. Kelly, the Tishman managing director who is overseeing the app's global implementation.

"We are now viewing our real estate by the number of people who are in it," she said, "not by square footage."

(Bloomberg)
AGRICULTURE Minister Michael Creed warned sustainability was now a key demand from buyers of dairy produce around the world.

The minister, who has just returned from a trade mission to the US and Canada, said that increasingly the ask is around sustainability with climate change and emissions from cattle firmly on the agenda.

The co-ops and plcs have been really active in trying to ensure that our dairy industry does not find itself in a post-milk quota era finding that we have effectively a new quota because of environmental regulations, he told Newstalk radio, adding they were trying to fire proof the valuable sector.

He stressed Ireland was the most carbon efficient producer of dairy per unit of output, with work underway to improve sustainability in the sector. However, he said there was no silver bullet for methane emissions.

Mr Creeds said the very well resourced Go Vegan campaign that has seen anti-dairy advertisements erected was a wake up call to the industry that these are the headwinds to be faced and the sector must be best in class in terms of sustainability, animal welfare and anti-microbial resistance.

Mr Creed was speaking ahead of launching a 35m cheese plant expansion for Glanbia in Co Wexford, with the dairy processor also set to invest a further 125m in their nutritional powders plant at Belview, Co Kilkenny.

He said the dairy processor was working on a product mix which insulates them from the worst excesses of Brexit, with Ireland significantly exposed to the UK market which takes around a third of Irish dairy production.

In particular, cheddar cheese is exposed to Brexit with 80,000t going into the UK.

Mr Creed said there wasnt a substantial ready-made market for it elsewhere in the globe.

The minister admitted he was worried if a hard border did arise due to Brexit as the industry was exposed but highlighted there were significant opportunities in the likes of Canada and Japan.
The Government has confirmed Enterprise Ireland support towards Glanbia Irelands plans to invest over 160m in its site at Belview, Co Kilkenny.

This investment will result in new activities at the Belview facility, which was first opened in 2015 and lead to the installation of a new third dryer and other processing equipment which will produce infant formula products destined for global export markets.

It is expected that the new facility in Belview will be operational by 2020 and this investment will directly result in the creation of 83 new full-time jobs as well as supporting 400 jobs during the two-year construction phase of the project.

Between now and 2020 we expect to invest between 250 and 300 million to facilitate an expected 30pc growth in milk from Glanbia Irelands 4,800 farmer suppliers.

It came as Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed, along with Glanbia Group Chairman Henry Corbally, also officially re-opened Glanbia Irelands Wexford cheese plant following a major capital investment programme.

The 35m investment in the facility, just outside Wexford town, has been supported by the Government of Ireland through Enterprise Ireland since 2014 and has doubled peak capacity at the plant.

Speaking at the event Minister Creed said he was delighted to mark the official reopening of Glanbia Irelands Wexford Cheese Plant.

"This investment supported by Enterprise Ireland is another example of the potential of the Irish agri-food sector to create and sustain jobs across the country.

Combined with todays announcement on further substantial investment in Glanbia Irelands Belview facility it is clear that the future of dairy in Ireland is a very bright one indeed.

Also commenting on the Belview investment, which she presented to Cabinet for approval this week, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD said the Governments investment, through Enterprise Ireland, to support Glanbia Irelands development of new activities in Belview reflects our belief in the underlying economic contribution of our indigenous dairy industry and in the companys development plans.

Meanwhile, Henry Corbally, Glanbia Group Chairman said these major investments in Wexford and Belview are a great vote of confidence in Irish dairy and in Irish dairy farmers.

Despite volatility in global markets there is growing demand and positive long-term prospects for our products.

These investments are designed to ensure that Glanbia Irelands suppliers have the opportunity to access those markets. I would like to thank Enterprise Ireland for their continuing support for the Agri-food sector which is such an important part of the Irish economy, he said.
While an early spring is still possible this week's forecast will delay field work for another while. At this stage plans for the spring should be in place and machinery ready to go when conditions allow.

The three-crop rule may be more difficult to satisfy this year as some farmers failed to get winter cereals sown, but some early sowing may make this a little easier. Growers are well advised to refrain from working soils that are not in good condition as yields will suffer if crops are mucked in.

Spring beans should be the first crop to be considered. Sow to a 10cms depth and target a seed rate of about 35 seeds/m2. Remember this is a six-month crop so the earlier it is sown the earlier the harvest.

If you have ground that is following a break crop such as beans, rape, beet or maize, spring wheat should be considered and should be the next crop to be planted.

Spring oats should also be considered for early sowing and can follow any crop and is a good break crop in its own right.

The seed rate should be determined by the seed size for all crops, but you should plan for approx 350 seeds/m2 for both wheat and oats. Many will consider it too early for planting barley, but if you know your ground and have dry fields in good condition barley can be planted towards the end of the month.

Aim to establish approx. 350 plants/m2 also but you may have to use higher seed rates when drilling to allow for losses. Remember: leaving poor land fallow or sowing grass in an arable field will also help to satisfy the three-crop rule.

Check your soil samples and if your P and K levels are low consider combine drilling the fertiliser with the seed. We are noting an increase in applications under TAMS for combined seed and fertiliser drills. Many farmers are now realising the potential yield penalties associated with low fertility soils. Applying fertiliser close to the seed is a necessity for higher yields.

If a combine drill is not available, you should ensure that fertiliser is put on early and as close to the seed as possible. Higher P usage rates are allowed if you can prove average yields are higher than the standard over the last three years.

If in doubt, check with your adviser. Many growers still do not give due recognition to the value of lime. If your pH levels are low uptake of fertiliser is poorer and obviously yields will be poorer. A minimum pH of 6.5 is required. If pH levels are above 7 an additional 20 kgs of P per hectare is allowed as P tends to be locked up in high pH situations.

It appears that fertiliser costs have increased significantly over 2017 so judicial use of fertiliser based on relevant recent soil results is essential to minimise costs.

Organic manures should be used where possible. As previously advised by both myself and my colleagues, should local livestock farmers require an outlet for their surplus manures this is the time of the year to get best benefit from it.

Contracts for grain

Many growers are currently questioning some of the available contracts. While there is no doubt that extra money can be generated from speciality grain contracts, the small print should be studied before signing on the dotted line.

Growing crops for seed can be very attractive but ensure that you sow these crops in suitable ground free of relevant weeds etc. Seed for these crops can be expensive and if they fail to make the target market it only adds to the overall cost. Many malting barley growers are questioning their current contracts based on prices received last harvest.

There is no doubt that the premium malting bonus does not always leave more money in your pocket or work out as good as was proposed. Many feed buyers can often provide higher prices than the standard and many growers have found that their feed price barley can generate as much or more as their premium crops.

There is the additional risk of extra costs with the premium crops such as malting barley and should they fail to make the relevant spec they will be rejected. I have seen cases over the winter where farmers who delivered surplus quality malting barley obtained very poor feed prices for the surplus supplied. It makes no sense to deliver surplus grain unless you know the price on offer.

It is also apparent that many of these contractual crops have additional requirements on input purchases. Growers should be aware of the costs of these purchases and that they are not over and above the cost that they can purchase through regular outlets. It is going to be another difficult year for tillage growers with no major prospects for major price increases. All costs should be scrutinised as closely as possible to ensure viability.

Nitrogen

Now is the time to consider the initial application of nitrogen to boost crops. Oil seed rape and hybrid barley are the priority. The green area index (GAI) of rape crops will determine the amount of nitrogen to appl y.

This could vary between 50 and 150kgs of N per hectare. The better the GAI the lower the level of nitrogen required. Winter barley should receive between 50 and 80kgs of N per hectare.

If conditions allow, apply 40 kgs/ha to backward crops of winter wheat. You should ensure all P fertiliser is applied as soon as possible if not done already.

Pat Minnock is a Carlow based agricultural consultant and a member of the ACA and the ITCA. www.minnockagri.ie
Bank of Ireland yesterday insisted that money apparently missing from customer accounts was a result of a "technical processing issue" and not a cyberattack.

The lender rushed to correct the fault which caused panic and distress to a number of customers and disrupted payments.

A number of agitated Bank of Ireland customers contacted the Irish Independent claiming money paid into their accounts had disappeared.

One woman said her wages, which were paid into her personal account last week, appeared to have been wiped. When she contacted Bank of Ireland she was told the missing funds were caused by a "computer error".

Another customer said tens of thousands of euro in a business account had suddenly disappeared, which he only discovered when a business payment was declined.

The customer, who wished to remain anonymous, slammed what he described as the bank's abysmal customer service and communications.

He said customers were forced to do "all the footwork" in relation to the source of the problem, and endured "the embarrassment of payments being declined" while Bank of Ireland made no attempt to "contain a significant IT issue".

There were also reports of customers being challenged over payments into accounts - with the bank allegedly instructing customers to check whether payments had in fact been made, despite records documenting the transfers.

Affected Bank of Ireland customers claimed the problem emerged on Tuesday.

However, a spokesperson for Bank of Ireland declined to detail or clarify the scale of the computer error or detail when it occurred.

The bank blamed the glitch on a "process issue" that "has resulted in some customers not seeing all transactions reflected in real time in their accounts".

She said the bank acknowledges "the inconvenience this may cause some customers" and added "we wish to sincerely apologise for this delay. We are currently working to resolve the issue as soon as possible".

Bank of Ireland is in the midst of a 900m technology overhaul of its core processing capacity. Bank of Ireland's recently appointed CEO Francesca McDonagh has said some of the bank's systems are 30 years old.
A Dublin medtech firm has secured a 50,000 cash injection from an individual angel investor - just two days after the company's pitch.

Incereb has developed neonatal sensors designed to take the technical difficulty, the time, and the patient's discomfort out of the traditional method of attaching EEG monitors to a babys head.

Founded in 2012, the Irish company's Neon8 and Neon12 devices - neonatal and fetal physiological monitoring sensors - also allows EEG monitoring to be performed by any neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) staff member.

The HBAN investor's 50,000 makes up part of Incereb's third round of funding success of 750,000 as it plans to expand its network in the US market, while also developing its product range.

Incereb CEO Jim Roche said the "smart money" from HBAN is more than just a cash injection as it "brings expertise, insights and knowledge of an experienced businessperson".

"In the last three months of 2017, we secured contracts with three major academic teaching hospitals on the east coast. This latest investment will help us to bring the devices aimed at older children and adults to the US market," he said.

Previously, the Irish company attracted 1.6m investment from HBANs Boole Syndicate, Enterprise Ireland, ACT Venture Capital and Delta Partners.

The individual investor was able to transfer funds within 48 hours as HBANs Boole Syndicate had previously invested in Incereb, and so the due diligence was complete.

HBAN syndicate manager Julian Seymour said that the medtech sector, specifically medical device companies, continues to attract a lot of interest from the group's business angels.

"Almost 12m has been invested in 11 medical device companies by HBAN angels in the last three years," he said.

Incereb is an industry partner in the SFI funded INFANT Centre at University College, Cork.

The company is seeking to raise a fourth round of funding in 2018 to help expand into Latin America and across Europe and Asia.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has previously dismissed climate change fears as "rubbish", but the airline now plans to raise funds to support projects tacking global warming.

Ryanair will now allow customers to buy "voluntary" carbon offsets to ease their consciences when flying.

"The funds that are raised from these voluntary guest donations will be distributed annually to environmental charities and NGO's [non-governmental organisations] as selected by our people," it said.

In a 2007 interview CEO Michael O'Leary said: "I don't think the advice of a bunch of UN scientists should be taken as gospel truth.

"Human breathing is one of the biggest problems as far as I can see, so why don't the environmentalists just shoot all the humans?"
Shares in packaging group Smurfit Kappa rose again yesterday, despite the Irish company reiterating its opposition to an 8.6bn takeover approach from US firm International Paper.

"The board of Smurfit Kappa has already carefully considered, with its financial advisers, the proposal in detail and has unanimously rejected it on the basis that it fails entirely to reflect the group's superior prospects as an independent business and represents a valuation multiple significantly below recent comparable transactions," Smurfit Kappa said.

The comments came after International Paper issued a statement on Tuesday evening in which it said the proposed takeover of the FTSE-100 company would be an "excellent strategic fit" that would create long-term value for both Smurfit Kappa and International Paper.

Smurfit Kappa shares, traded as high as 35.24 on Tuesday in Dublin, but eased later in the day. Yesterday, they added as much as 5pc to 35.50 as investors continue to weigh the likelihood of a higher proposed offer from International Paper.

International Paper said its cash-and-shares proposal would equate to a total of 36.46 per Smurfit Kappa share, valuing the Irish firm at 8.6bn.

The US firm said it remains "ready to engage" with Smurfit Kappa's board and its shareholders.

Some analysts reckon that Memphis-based International Paper could have to table an offer of more than 10bn in order to win over Smurfit Kappa shareholders.

Earlier this week Smurfit Kappa chief executive Tony Smurfit roundly rejected the approach from International Paper, saying that the Irish company's board recognises that it has a "really fantastic future ahead" as an independent company.

"The proposal that was given to us was so far away from anything that the board would even remotely consider, that they unanimously and unequivocally rejected it," he told the Irish Independent.

"The board mandate is to view what is put in front of us. What is put on front of us at this juncture is a proposal that is significantly below what we would even contemplate," he said.

"Obviously, if there was another proposal, the board would examine with the same thoroughness that they've examined this one," he added.

"We've a responsibility to our stakeholders, and that means all stakeholders. That very much includes our own people. But own people are, I think, very happy in Smurfit Kappa.

"If there are other proposals, the board will obviously have to look at them in that context. That's part of being a public company."

He has cited cultural differences as being among the hurdles that could hinder a successful takeover of Smurfit Kappa.

The company continued to urge its shareholders to take no action.
'Brussels said the improved performance of the banks should allow for a more ambitious reduction in non-performing loans' (stock photo)

Rising profits at Irish banks means they could cut bad loan exposures by writing off more unpayable debt for businesses and households, the European Commission has said.

Brussels said the improved performance of the banks should allow for a more ambitious reduction in non-performing loans.

Permanent TSB ignited a storm of controversy for opting to sell its bad loans - including consumer mortgages - to hit bad debt reduction targets.

In its latest assessment of the economy, the Commission said the banks should be encouraged to have a "continued and more durable reduction in non-performing loans through resolution strategies that involve write-offs for viable businesses and households, with a special emphasis on resolving long-term arrears".

It comes just weeks after it emerged that state-owned Permanent TSB may sell its non-performing loans to an unregulated vulture fund. The Commission said long-term mortgage arrears remain the biggest challenge, and that insolvency procedures, including court options, "remain little used".

Brussels also argued that Ireland's corporate tax rules are still being used by multinationals for aggressive tax planning.

Exemptions from withholding taxes on dividend payments made by companies based in Ireland may lead to those payments escaping tax altogether, it said.

It also warned that there existed some provisions in bilateral tax treaties between Ireland and other countries that could be used by companies to overrule the new tax residence rule.

"The high level of dividend payments and, in particular, charges for using intellectual property, suggest that the country's tax rules are used by companies that engage in aggressive tax planning," the Commission report said.

"Exemptions from withholding taxes on dividend payments made by companies based in Ireland may lead to those payments escaping tax altogether, if they are also not subject to tax in the recipient jurisdiction.

"This may facilitate aggressive tax planning."

In a separate Commission report focusing on aggressive tax planning structures, Brussels said Ireland is one of a number of small member states exposed to aggressive tax planning.

It focused, in particular, on the flow of royalty payments, which it said was high in Ireland's case.

"Ireland stands out as the member state with the highest net royalty payments (as a percentage of GDP), which is consistent with a potential ATP (aggressive tax planning) channel using royalty payments," the report noted.

"Other member states with significant royalty inflows and outflows (and positive net outflows) are Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands. Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the United Kingdom have the highest net royalty receipts."

Meanwhile, the Commission said the economy continues to grow at a "solid pace" and that domestic activity continues to "thrive". It said the Government has repeatedly intervened to tackle the undersupply of housing, but it will take time for the measures to have an effect.

But it warned that it remains "difficult to access affordable, full-time, quality childcare". The Commission also warned about the over-reliance on corporate income taxes, and said the majority of measures in Budget 2018 were "biased towards uncertain tax bases".
The Blessington Lakes supply much of Dublin's water - but new water capacity is needed as the population of the Dublin and mid-Leinster increases

Water restrictions put in place for 1.2 million people in homes and businesses across the Dublin area are more about failed politics than they are about weather. The need for restrictions is caused by the tiny buffer of excess water built into the swollen system in the Dublin area.

It highlights the urgent need to either fix existing infrastructure or build new water capacity as the population of the Dublin and mid-Leinster area is expected to increase by 500,000 in the next 20 years.

But 20 years is an eternity in politics. Our approach to water investment has been a bit like that stereotypical Irish joke of the man who won't fix the hole in his roof because it is raining and he will get soaked.

"Why not fix it when it stops raining then", he is asked. "Well it isn't causing me a problem then", he replies.

Residents of the capital city, having been through one of the worst snow storms in decades must now put up with water restrictions in one of the wettest countries in Europe.

That is not to mention the implications for businesses which pay nearly a quarter of a billion euro a year in water charges. Also consider the reputational damage and possible consequences for foreign direct investment projects.

Imagine an executive in a large global corporation considering investing in the Dublin area. He is told that after a snow storm there are water restrictions.

He hears that around half of the water going through the pipes leaks out anyway. There is a relatively new national water utility which needs billions of euro to fix the problem, but politicians backed down on charging citizens one of the lowest prices for water in Europe.

Along the way, around 800,000 water meters were installed but, because there are not domestic water charges, they cannot be used effectively. Those who paid their charges were given the money back, but people who received 'grants' to conserve water got to keep those.

This is the shambles and Irish Water - a far from perfect organisation - isn't really to blame. Once the politicians backed away from standard domestic water charges, Irish Water's business model had a hole in it that had to be filled.

Since then it has sort of disappeared from the spotlight. Until now.

Yet it has been getting on with its job. Its 2016 accounts show that during the year it reduced the number of water schemes on remedial action with the EPA from 111 to 99. The number of properties on boil water notices reduced from 8,970 to 5,511. Network leakage fell from 47pc to 45pc.

Small gains in the face of such a mess, but no doubt hard-earned.

Irish Water estimated that repairing defective water pipes in the Dublin area (totalling 8,000km) would cost around 5bn. The water network can supply around 623 million litres of water a day to the wider Eastern and Midland region, at full tilt and under pressure. Typically daily requirements are around 540 million litres.

However, in the Dublin area in particular, the buffer is running at around 2pc, whereas water consumption last weekend shot up by 10pc, due to weather-related burst pipes and people running their taps.

Add another 500,000 people living in that area in the coming years and the problem really is critical.

Irish Water is planning to build a new water pipeline that would take supply from the River Shannon at the Parteen Basin and pump it to Dublin, bolstering supply in the wider Midlands region along the way. The 1.2bn project would see a pipe laid over 170km.

It will be fought against tooth and nail by some. And expect further political immaturity from public representatives along the way. These projects take time. The need for a new water supply for Dublin was first identified by Dublin City Council in January 1996 - yes, 22 years ago. A report assessing various options was conducted in June 2006 - yes, 12 years ago. In the meantime, Dublin is relying on around 40pc of the water from the River Liffey to supply the city.

Irish Water was formed as a single utility taking control of water supply from county councils. In November 2015, Irish Water said it hoped to submit a planning application to An Bord Pleanala for the Shannon-Dublin pipeline by mid-2017 and deliver additional water supply to the capital by 2022.

But water can be a slippy business. Last month CEO Jerry Grant, told an Oireachtas Committee that its target is to submit its plans for the scheme early next year, with work starting on the project in 2021 and delivery to Dublin and the Midlands by 2025.

Of course Irish Water's entire funding model has been thrown in the bin since 2015. Its accounts show that in 2016 it brought in revenue of 906m. Its operating costs were pretty static at around 777m.

Its revenue was made up of domestic charges, which were 232m in 2015 but they of course collapsed down to just 22m in 2016. Non-domestic revenue was 231m, up from 219m. State subvention rocketed in 2016 to 652m from 399m the year before.

The State is saying it will pony up the money to invest in all of this broken water infrastructure. The original Irish Water plan envisaged it remaining off the balance sheet which meant its borrowings would not count towards Ireland's sovereign debt.

It has 900m in debt, and pays just 1.5pc in interest on that. This might not always be the case.

EU budgetary rules dictate how much Ireland can borrow each year. With the economy firing on all cylinders, for now, there has been a tendency to forget all of this.

Tax revenues are buoyant and we are on track not to have to borrow at all this year. So, the Government believes it can increase funding to Irish Water without having to borrow it.

But what happens to water infrastructure investment in the future if we have to tighten our belts again? That tap will be turned off again I suspect.

There are those who argue that the Shannon to Dublin pipeline is not necessary and if Irish Water spent the money fixing the leaks in the system, there would be enough water for Dublin into the future.

It sounds like a valid argument given that the leakage rate is so high, but I would not pretend to adjudicate on the merits of either side in that one. These issues will no doubt play out among landowners, politicians in Leinster House and An Bord Pleanala in the years ahead. As this week shows, some solution has to be found.

Meanwhile, Irish Water has a very important job to do. It is trying to fix a broken system, and I don't just mean the pipes. For example, it has applied to the regulator for permission to introduce a new connection charge scheme for developers and businesses, etc.

This covers the cost of connecting apartment buildings, houses or industrial estates to the water and wastewater network. In the period from 2017 to 2021 Irish Water expects to connect approximately 51,000 customers to the water/wastewater network with expected revenue of 315m.

When it took over water operations from the 34 different local authorities, it inherited 57 different connection charging regimes and over 900 different connection charges. Irish Water wants to streamline this process.

The state company wants to fully take over the operations of the water system in a single utility model as soon as is practical. It believes it could reduce the staff headcount through voluntary redundancies by 1,000 and save 70m in the process.

It currently pays local authorities 263m a year to manage water services locally. A centralised operation would allow for greater savings it argues.

Homes and businesses face water restrictions, at least until the thaw replenishes the reservoirs. But then it won't be a problem any more!
Thousands of women are already on the waiting list for an Irish-founded friend-making app which has just launched in the US.

To coincide with International Womens Day, GirlCrew has announced the availability of their unique platform, on iOS, Android and desktop, across The States.

Co-founded by Irish trio Elva Carri, Pamela Newenham and Aine Mulloy, the Enterprise Ireland-supported GirlCrew allows women to access a secure network in a social and professional capacity, to seek advice and share knowledge.

LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner is one of a number of high-profile investors who have recently injected funds into the company.

GirlCrew raised a seed round of almost $1m which will allow them to expand across the US, city by city.

Pamela Newenham, co-CEO of GirlCrew said: "We believe real friendships happen in person, however sometimes you need a nudge and an extra channel in order to meet these new like-minded people.

"So many people have either moved to a new city, or have found themselves at a different life stage to their friends, either because their friends are getting married, settling down etc.

"As a result, they need new friends, but making friends as an adult can be hard."

'Crew' members can participate in online group chats and offline events such as weekend brunch, outdoor activities such as hikes or nights out on the town.
A dozen female artists from 12 different countries have been celebrated by Google with an interactive Doodle for International Womens Day.

Hailing from as far afield as Japan and Pakistan, the women share their personal stories in a series of visual narratives.

Comic strips, illustrated and penned by them, share their personal stories of a specific moment or event that has changed their life as a woman.

Philippa Rice, a comic artist and animator based in Nottingham, is among those whose work is featured.

Her story is about the daughter she had earlier this year.

She is keen to explore the occasions when her daughter invests trust in her and her feelings about that responsibility. Her works include autobiographical romance and animated crochet characters.

My story is about how overwhelming it is to become a mother and how talking to others and sharing your troubles can make you feel better," Ms Rice, who creates animations and illustrations as well as making comics, said.

"I hope that if anyone reads it and identifies with it, then they can at least feel that they're not alone".

She added: I really enjoyed working on a Google Doodle! I was delighted to be asked to take part and to have my work alongside fantastic comic artists from around the world. I feel really lucky to get to share my story.

International Womens Day, she said, provided a powerful platform to applaud female artists from across the globe.

For more than a century it has provided a time to look back at womens achievements and celebrate the movement for womens rights.

Ms Rice said it was "a great opportunity to support, promote and celebrate women artists and writers from around the world and to share our stories. I love to see my social media feeds filled with art from loads of my favourite artists and discover the work of so many women who I wasn't aware of before.
Coca-Cola plans to launch it's first ever alcoholic drink, in Japan. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

With its iconic red label and secret recipe, it's been one of the world's most famous soft drinks for more than a century.

Now, however, Coca-Cola is on the brink of a new chapter - with plans to launch its first alcoholic drink.

The company is currently experimenting with the creation of a popular type of Japanese alcopop known as Chu-Hi, containing distilled shochu alcohol mixed with flavoured carbonated water.

The low-alcohol canned drink will be launched in Japan, home to a thriving if competitive industry, with countless Chu-Hi flavoured drinks - from kiwi to yuzu - sitting on convenience store shelves across the country.

Confirming the plan in an interview on the company's website, Jorge Garduno, Coca-Cola's Japan president, said: "This is a canned drink that includes alcohol; traditionally, it is made with a distilled beverage called shochu and sparkling water, plus some flavouring.

"We haven't experimented in the low-alcohol category before, but it's an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas."

The concept of alcoholic Coca-Cola drinks, however, was likely to stay within Japan rather than expand globally, due to the "unique and special" qualities of the Japanese market, he added.
The Government is completing the final steps required to hold a referendum on abortion.

The Cabinet will this morning publish the referendum bill which will be followed by a debate and a vote in the Oireachtas.

What does the bill include?

The bill allows for a "repeal and enable" clause which will give the Oireachtas explicit competence to legislate for abortion should the public vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Cabinet will agree that the words "provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy" be inserted in to the Constitution in place of the Eighth Amendment, known as Article 40.3.3.

Will we get the exact question for the referendum?

The exact question to be asked of voters will not be in the bill but it is likely they will be asked a question along the lines of: "Do you agree to delete Article 40.3.3. or the Eighth Amendment in its entirety and where provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy?" It will be a yes or no answer.

What did yesterday's landmark ruling at the Supreme Court mean?

Essentially, the judgment means any future court case challenging subsequent abortion legislation is less likely to succeed.

The Government was forced to delay the publication of the bill while it awaited yesterday's landmark ruling at the Supreme Court, which found the unborn has no rights under the Constitution other than the right to life contained in the Eighth Amendment.

Health Minister Simon Harris welcomed the court's decision, saying it brought "great clarity to an important situation".

"I think it was right and proper that the Government waited to consider and finalise the wording of the referendum until the Supreme Court had made its ruling," said Mr Harris.

So, when will the Dail debate begin?

The obligatory Dail debate will have to begin tomorrow morning at the latest in order for the Government's timeline for a referendum to take place in May. The Business Committee which determines the Dail agenda will sit at 2pm today to decide when a debate can be facilitated.

The leaders of all political parties and several Independents have pledged their willingness to begin debating and voting on the bill as soon as possible, which could also be tonight.

What will the debate involve?

Mr Harris will open the debate with a 20-minute speech detailing the Government's policy paper - its planned legislation describing the circumstances in which abortion will be available if the Eighth Amendment is repealed.

The policy paper - which will be broadly in line with the recommendations of the Oireachtas committee - will say that any woman wishing to access a termination up to 12 weeks must wait around 48-72 hours before a termination can take place.

This "consideration period" will begin from the first meeting with the woman's GP or healthcare practitioner. She may be given a post-dated prescription for abortion pills to be filed when the consideration time has elapsed.

The paper will also confirm the decriminalisation of abortion for women who procure one for themselves. And in the case of risk to the health of a woman - with no distinction to mental health - a termination can be carried out following the approval of two medical experts. There will be no gestational limit in cases of potential fatal foetal abnormalities.

"I don't believe doctors in this country should have to dust down Bunreacht na hEireann to decide whether or not they can treat a woman who might have diabetes and be at risk of going blind or be at risk of losing her kidney function.

"If you believe it is wrong that a woman who has a fatal foetal abnormality in her pregnancy finds herself having to travel to Britain and bring back her baby's remains in the boot of her car, you have to repeal the Eighth Amendment," Mr Harris said.

Anything else?

Minister Eoghan Murphy will start preparatory work to establish a referendum commission.

It will produce literature and run a public information campaign.

The chair of the commission will be announced by tomorrow, or as soon as the bill is published.
The Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling that the unborn has no constitutional rights beyond the right to life contained in the Eighth Amendment.

In a keenly awaited judgment, the seven member court unanimously rejected a High Court ruling which found the unborn had other rights under the Constitution and was considered a child, with rights the State is expected to vindicate.

However, it upheld a finding by High Court judge Mr Justice Richard Humphreys that the Justice Minister was required to consider the prospective constitutional rights of the unborn when considering whether or not to deport their parent.

The ruling will remove much uncertainty ahead of the referendum the Government plans to hold in May to remove Article 40.3.3, better known as the Eighth Amendment, and to allow the Oireachtas to legislate to regulate the termination of pregnancy.

Delivering judgment in Limerick, Chief Justice Frank Clarke said it was the unanimous view of the court that the unborn does not have rights outside the right to life in the Eighth Amendment. It also found that the unborn was not considered to be a child for the purposes of Article 42A of the constitution, introduced with the passing of the children's rights referendum in 2012.

The rights of the unborn arose as an issue in an immigration case involving a Nigerian man who was facing deportation and wanted the order revoked by the Justice Minister. His Irish partner was due to give birth to a child three weeks after the proceedings began. The child was born in August 2015.

Last summer Mr Justice Humphreys found the unborn child had rights under the Constitution beyond the right to life. He also found the minister should take into account the impending birth when considering whether to revoke such orders.

The findings were appealed by the State, which argued the only right the unborn has is the right to be born. Other constitutional rights only kick in when a child is born, lawyers for the State argued.

Deportation

The Supreme Court found the Justice Minister was obliged to consider the fact that the pregnancy of the partner of a deportee was a relevant factor in any decision to revoke a deportation order and was obliged to give separate consideration to the likely birth in Ireland of the child of a potential deportee.

He also said the minister was obliged to take account of the fact that an Irish citizen child will acquire on birth constitutional rights which may be effected by deportation.

The weight the minister must accord to these factors was not an issue in this case, he said, and the minister was not precluded from refusing to revoke the deportation order.

Accordingly, Mr Justice Clarke said the decision of the High Court on this aspect of the case was correct and it was incumbent on the minister to consider these factors in making a decision.

However, he said neither the common law cases and statutory provisions nor the pre and post amendment court decisions relied on by Mr Justice Humphreys supported the High Court judge's conclusion that the unborn possesses inherent constitutionally protected rights other than those expressly provided for in Article 40.3.3.

"The most plausible view of the pre-Eighth Amendment law was that there was uncertainty in relation to the constitutional position of the unborn which the Eighth Amendment was designed to remove," he said.

Mr Justice Clarke also said the Thirteenth Amendment, which says the prohibition on abortion does not limit the right to travel abroad, and the Fourteenth Amendment, which allows for the distribution of information about foreign abortion services, supported the Supreme Court's view that the present constitutional rights of the unborn "are confined to the right to life contained in Article 40.3.3, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother".

He said: "While it does not alter the outcome of this case, the minister is accordingly not obliged to treat the unborn as having constitutional rights other than the rights contained in Article 40.3.3.

Mr Justice Clarke said the High Court determination that the unborn is a child for the purposes of Article 42A was also being reversed.
The garda hunt for missing woman Tina Satchwell suffered a setback as it emerged a portion of CCTV footage from an area of east Cork being searched has been deleted since last March.

A team of 60 personnel are now searching the sprawling Mitchel's Wood, outside Castlemartyr, for Ms Satchwell (45) who vanished without trace from her Youghal home on March 20 last.

Until now, the Garda search has focused on Youghal, where Ms Satchwell lived with her husband Richard, and Fermoy, where she was originally from.

Gardai launched one of the biggest single-site searches ever seen in Cork following a phone tip-off on Monday.

Mitchel's Wood is located 200 metres from Castlemartyr village, and just off the Cork-Waterford road.

CCTV security camera footage from various premises in the east Cork village has been examined as part of that search.

Unfortunately, a quantity of CCTV footage was deleted because of the significant time lapse involved.

Read more: Drones banned from flying over woods being searched for missing Tina Satchwell

Other footage is now being examined in a bid to determine the possible movements of vehicles of specific interest to investigating gardai.

There is no CCTV camera coverage of the entrance to Mitchel's Wood itself.

Gardai, under Superintendent Colm Noonan, also received permission to have a no-fly zone declared over the search area, amid concerns some people might try to use camera-equipped drones to hover over the site. Gardai also have heavy excavating equipment and ground-mapping radar on standby.

"There have been 220 separate lines of inquiry conducted. This has included liaison with Interpol and we are now conducting a search at Mitchel's Wood," Supt Noonan explained.

The woods have now been divided into various search zones.

The forest is cordoned off as a 60-strong specialist search team, supported by Defence Forces engineers and canine units, trawls through 40 acres of forest.

Supt Noonan, of Midleton garda station, said searches will continue for the next three weeks.

The current search followed a phone call to gardai from a member of the public after the broadcast last January of an RTE 'Prime Time' special on Ms Satchwell's disappearance.

Mr Satchwell confirmed he has stored all cards and presents bought for his wife for their 25th wedding anniversary, her birthday, Christmas, and even Valentine's Day, as he prays for her safe return.
Spanish prosecutors say the Irishman accused of murdering Gary Hutch in 2015 wore a balaclava and lay in wait for his victim before chasing him, pumping him full of bullets and shooting him twice in the head as he lay injured.

Dubliner James Quinn, a nephew of Martin 'The Viper' Foley, faces trial over the Costa del Sol killing.

He has been warned he could become only the second person to be jailed for life in Spain since its return to democracy.

The brutal slaying, which saw Hutch (34) chased round a residential estate and shot in the head and chest, sparked the vendetta between the Hutch and Kinahan families which has claimed at least 15 lives.

Mr Quinn insists he has been wrongly identified as the gunman who killed Hutch on September 24, 2015 outside his home near Fuengirola.

The indictment against claims Mr Quinn shot Hutch on the orders of an "unknown person" after being driven to his alleged victim's home on a gated estate in a stolen car.

It states: "He (was) armed with a 9mm Glock 26 semi- automatic pistol whose serial number had been erased and a .45 semi-automatic Colt 1911 pistol.

"When Gary approached his vehicle moments later, the accused began to shoot at him in a surprise attack.

"The victim was able to flee towards the inside of the estate but the accused chased him and fired more than 15 shots.

"Finally, the accused caught up with him when Gary was on the ground and virtually motionless because of the bullets he had been hit with. Giving him almost no chance of defending himself, he shot him twice in the head from close range and killed him instantly."

Mr Quinn is due to be tried on the murder charge in June.
ANGLO Irish Bank officials discussed getting a bit of drink into a foreign banker before asking him for 5bn and telling him to sign the beer mat, a court has heard.

As the bank struggled during the financial crisis, senior executives talked about asking the London-based banker for a "one night stand," in an approach a week before Anglo was bailed out.

Discussing the proposed deal, the pair said they would not need "physical cash" and would "just run the cash in one door and out the other."

A tape of the conversation between Anglos then Chief Financial Officer Matt Moran and Head of Capital Markets John Bowe was played to the jury in the trial of the banks ex CEO David Drumm today.

Mr Drumm (51) is pleading not guilty to conspiring to defraud Anglo investors by dishonestly creating the impression that the banks customer deposits in September 2008 were 7.2bn larger than they were.

He is alleged to have conspired with former Anglo officials Willie McAteer and John Bowe, as well as then-CEO of Irish Life and Permanent (ILP) Denis Casey, and others.

The case centres on a series of multi-billion euro interbank loans which circulated between Anglo and ILP.

Mr Drumm also denies false accounting, by providing misleading information to the market.

Today, the jury was played a recording of a phone conversation between Mr Bowe and Mr Moran in which they discussed what Mr Moran should say at a meeting with "Ewen."

It took place on September 22, 2008, just over a week before Anglos financial year end and the Governments banks guarantee.

Mr Moran, who was in the witness box for a third day, confirmed to Mary Rose Gearty SC that "Ewen" was Ewen Stevenson of Credit Suisse, based in London.

The transaction proposed in the conversation never actually went ahead.

Mr Moran was heard on the tape telling Mr Bowe of arrangements to meet Ewen and when the time was finalised, Mr Moran said thanks be to f**k.

If I can get a bit of drink into him, I might say to him, Id like about 5bn before the 30th, Mr Moran said.

Get him to sign the beer mat, Mr Bowe said. Do you think hed be prepared to give us a little kind of one night stand?

If I can promise him theres no f**king STD out of it, Mr Moran said.

Its a dance, Mr Moran said and the pair discussed the proposed transaction.

Its sort of the cherry on the cake, plus a bit of the cake as well, Mr Bowe said, to laughter. And the f**king tin as well. And the bloody oven.

Its two f**king layers, Mr Moran said.

Mr Bowe told Mr Moran if you can say that in such a way and that you guys will do very nicely out of it.

We give them the eligible assets or we give them the cash and we just run the cash in one door and out the other, Mr Bowe said.

But do we have the cash? Mr Moran asked.

Yeah but what you do is we pay them and they pay us, do you know what I mean? Mr Bowe replied.

Yeah, Mr Moran said.

So its one set of cash, Mr Bowe said.

Yeah, you dont need the physical cash, Mr Moran said.

You dont need the physical cash, Mr Bowe repeated

We just make a payment on the basis that we are getting the receipt in anyway, Mr Bowe said. Do you know what I mean?

Read More

Earlier, Mr Moran gave evidence about references in Anglo documents to the transaction that was carried out with ILP later that month,

He was shown the bank's December 3, 2008 preliminary results. On a section entitled performance highlights - balance sheet, customer deposits were 51.5bn, which was slightly up on the figure from 2007.

Ms Gearty asked Mr Moran if there was anything to link that customer deposits figure to loans from banks.

No, he replied.

There was no reference on that page to bank loans generally, he said.

The Chief Executives review also referred to these figures, stating that customer funding had increased 1.9bn on the previous year and referring to the continued strong performance of the banks customer deposit base.

Mr Moran and the jury were then shown minutes of a board meeting of January 13, 2009.

The knowledge and full awareness of the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank as to the nature of the transaction was considered, it being confirmed by Matt Moran that both parties were fully aware of both sides of the transaction at the time it occurred, the minutes stated.

Mr Moran told the court the description fully aware of both sides of the transaction as it occurred was not something I would have said.

He was shown the minutes of a January 12 audit committee meeting.

Matt Moran advised the committee that the Financial Regulator and the Central Bank were aware of the transaction entered into in respect of ILP at the time of the transaction and outlined details of the discussions with the Financial Regulator in respect of the transaction, the minutes stated.

He added that the matter had also been outlined in the PWC report.

Mr Moran told the court he understood the Regulator had been aware of the transaction and had queried it with Finance Director Willie McAteer, and a senior finance manager Colin Golden has responded to the Regulator.

He understood this had happened in October.

It was only in the look back that Mr Moran became aware of the details of what the Financial Regulator was aware of at the time of the transaction, he said.

He understood Mr Drumm and Mr McAteer had met the Regulator at the end of September 2008 and informed the Regulator of the transaction with ILP.

Mr Moran had made a note of what Mr McAteer said the Regulators comment was.

The jury was shown Mr Morans handwritten notes from a meeting with Mr McAteer and Mr Drumm.

The court heard he noted that Mr McAteer said we would be managing the balance sheet at year end. Ms Gearty read out that Mr Morans note of what Mr McAteer said the Regulator said to him was fair play to you.

The words good man were crossed out.

The trial continues.
Blood found on pyjama bottoms belonging to a father accused of murdering his six-month-old son came from the baby, a trial heard this morning.

John Tighe (40) of Lavallyroe, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo has pleaded not guilty to murdering his son Joshua Sussbier Tighe at his home on June 1, 2013. He is on trial at the Central Criminal Court.

John Hoade of Forensic Science Ireland told prosecuting counsel Paul Murray SC that he took blood samples from the pyjamas and compared them to blood taken from baby Joshua during post mortem. He said the DNA on the pyjamas matched that of Joshua.

Further profiles taken from a babygrow also matched Joshua's blood, as did samples taken from stains found on the floor of the sitting room and a wall.

Mr Hoade agreed with defence counsel Micheal P O'Higgins that if Mr Tighe held the baby while trying to help him, that would explain the presence of Joshua's blood on his pyjamas.

The prosecution alleges that Mr Tighe murdered his son by placing a "bolus" of tissue in Joshua's throat, causing death by asphyxiation. Mr Tighe denies the charge.

The trial continues this afternoon in front of Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of nine women and three men.
Patrick O Connor (Right) and Tanya Shannon (Left of pic), both of Harelawn Avenue, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 pictured leaving the Four Courts after they were both awarded 10,000 damages each following a Circuit Civil Court action for damages. Pic: Collins Courts

A DUBLIN couple who were accused of not paying for a family meal in a pub have been awarded 20,000 damages for defamation of character.

Patrick OConnor told Circuit Court President, Mr Justice Raymond Groarke, he felt he had no choice but to empty out his pockets on a service counter at The Arc Bar and Restaurant, Lucan, Co Dublin in a search for a receipt he believed he had never been given in the first place.

OConnors partner, Tanya Shannon, said she had to endure her husband having been aggressively accused of not having paid for four meals for themselves and two children which she said he had done.

Barrister Ian Fitzharris, counsel for the couple, told the court they and their two children with a niece in a buggy had bought four meals off the pub carvery in September 2010 and had paid a man at the till at the end of the counter.

Mr OConnor said that as the family started gathering up their things to leave a man had approached them and asked had they paid. When told they had paid another man at the till he had said I was at the till and you didnt pay me.

He said he and his partner and children, who live at Harelawn Avenue, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, had not been allowed to leave the restaurant until eventually the other man had returned to the restaurant and confirmed that the meals had been paid for some 40 minutes earlier.

Mr OConnor and Ms Shannon said the other man had then given them a hand-written note confirming payment for the lunches.

Mr Fitzharris, who appeared with Eugene Smartt Solicitors, told the court that the defendant, Lackabeg Limited, which trades as The Arc Bar and Restaurant, had not entered an appearance and judgment had been obtained against them.

He said no-one had turned up in court to defend the couples claims and the matter had been reduced to an assessment of damages.

Mr Fitzharris said the whole episode had been played out in full public view and hearing of other customers in the restaurant and his clients had been made to feel as though they had committed a criminal offence and had been attempting to escape without paying.

Judge Groarke awarded Mr OConnor and Ms Shannon 10,000 damages each for defamation of character and awarded costs against the defendant in both cases.
A father accused of murdering his six-month-old son told the doctor who arrived first at the scene to "do something", a trial has heard.

Dr Diarmuid Murray added that, as soon as he arrived, he formed the opinion the baby was dead.

Dr Murray was giving evidence on day two of the trial of John Tighe (40), of Lavallyroe, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his son Joshua Sussbier Tighe at his home on June 1, 2013. He is on trial at the Central Criminal Court.

Dr Murray told prosecuting counsel Paul Murray SC that he was on call on June 1, 2013 when a call came in at 12.53pm that help was urgently needed in Lavallyroe where a six-month-old baby was choking on a baby wipe.

He knew Lavallyroe well as it is within his catchment area and arrived there at about 1.10pm.

He jumped out of his car and ran up to the steps leading to the house when Mr Tighe came running out the door with the baby in his arms.

They both ran inside but Dr Murray said that as soon as he saw the baby he formed the impression he was dead.

He was flaccid and his lips were blue.

Inside the house, Mr Tighe placed the baby on the floor and knelt at his feet.

The doctor knelt at Joshua's head and put his index finger in the baby's mouth.

He could feel a tissue in the pharynx, immediately above and blocking the larynx. He tried but could not move it and he could not see it.

He said the effect of a piece of tissue lodged in this position would be asphyxiation and death within minutes.

Paramedics arrived and attached a defibrillator to Joshua's chest but the heart showed no signs of electrical activity and Dr Murray formally pronounced the death at 1.40pm.

He said he did not have any conversation with the accused other than to tell him his baby was dead.

Under cross-examination, Dr Murray told Micheal O'Higgins SC that when he arrived and they knelt with baby Joshua in the house, Mr Tighe was "quite upset and was exhorting me: 'Do something'."

There was nothing he could do, he said.

The tissue was "lodged very tight" in the baby's throat, he said, and demonstrated with his index finger how he attempted to dislodge it.

He explained that he was able to get his finger down one side of it but could not dislodge it.

He agreed that this was similar to what Mr Tighe had said when talking to emergency services before Dr Murray arrived, that he could feel the tissue but couldn't move it.

The jury also heard yesterday from nurses Liz Watson and Aine Watts, who took the emergency call and tried to instruct Mr Tighe how to save the baby's life.

Ms Watts told Mr Murray that she formed the opinion that Mr Tighe wasn't following her instructions because when she asked him to hit the baby to dislodge the blockage she couldn't hear him doing it. Then when she asked him to take the baby to the door to wave down the doctor she didn't believe he took the baby with him.

The trial continues today in front of Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of nine women and three men.
Former Anglo Irish Bank CEO David Drumm told colleagues weeks after the Government bailout out that a team should be put together with "war cabinet urgency" to tackle the issues facing the troubled bank.

Mr Drumm emailed bankers in November 2008 telling them that the issues Anglo faced included an audit and future funding.

The email was shown to the jury as Anglo's then-chief financial officer Matt Moran gave evidence for a second day at Mr Drumm's trial.

Mr Drumm (51) is pleading not guilty to conspiring to defraud Anglo investors by dishonestly creating the impression that the bank's customer deposits in September 2008 were 7.2bn larger than they were.

The case centres on a series of multi-billion euro interbank loans which circulated between Anglo and Irish Life and Permanent ILP.

Mr Drumm also denies false accounting, by providing misleading information to the market.

Yesterday, the jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court was shown an email Mr Drumm sent to other bank officials on November 12, 2008.

"Guys, just spoke with Matt [Moran] today and he's rightly pressing that we need to get a larger group around the table immediately to manage the key issues we are currently facing, including YE audit, ratings agencies action, funding plan going forward, capital," the email stated.

"The suggestion is keeping the team tight and to key people who can contribute to the strategic discussion... but with a 'war cabinet' urgency to it."

Earlier the jury heard Mr Drumm had mailed executives before the bailout on September 10, 2008, asking them to "look under every rock" for ways to reduce lending.

"Massive push needed, guys, look under every rock, this is crunch time for us, thanks," the email read.

Mary Rose Gearty SC, prosecuting, asked Mr Moran what he thought this referred to.

Mr Moran said he believed it meant to minimise lending.

Ms Gearty asked if it could refer to funding.

"I don't think so," Mr Moran replied.

The court also heard there were meetings held in David Drumm's office on Friday afternoons from August to early September 2008 at which the funding initiatives were discussed.

"David was a very experienced person in the bank," Mr Moran said. "He chaired and drove those meetings," he said.

The trial continues.
A TEENAGER, who has been receiving ongoing psychiatric treatment since he was charged with the murder of a Japanese man in a stabbing in Dundalk in January, was unable to attend another court hearing on Thursday.

Mohamed Morei (18) was remanded in custody on January 4 after being charged with the murder of 24-year-old Yosuke Sasaki. He was unable to attend the four subsequent hearings and could not appear at his sixth scheduled hearing today at Cloverhill District Court.

He has been receiving ongoing medical care in the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) in Dundrum.

Judge Vincent Blake further remanded him in custody in his absence and adjourned the case until March 22 next.

Six weeks ago the court was handed a letter from a consultant psychiatrist at the CMH, stating that Mr Morei would not be able to attend court until mid-February.

Mr Sasaki, from Ebina, west of Tokyo, was fatally stabbed on Avenue Road shortly before 9am on Jan. 3 last.

He had worked at National Pen, a call centre in Dundalk, Co. Louth and had lived in Ireland for the past year.

Following his death, an Irish man was injured when he was stabbed a short time later at a nearby location. At 9.40am, gardai received a report that another local man had been injured in an attack at Seatown Place.

Mr Morei, whose nationality has not yet been confirmed, was initially remanded in custody by Dundalk District Court on January 4 after he was charged with the murder of Mr Sasaki.

Garda Inspector Martin Beggy said at that hearing that the youth's nationality had not yet been undetermined.

If he seeks bail this application will have to be made in the High Court, because he is facing a murder charge.

In the week after the incident, the people of Dundalk gathered in the town centre for a candle lit vigil in memory of Mr Sasaki's life. In a letter from his parents read aloud by local councillor John McGahon, they said that their son had been very happy in Ireland.

A fund-raising drive was also launched by local people to help pay for the repatriation of his remains.
Members of the Gardai at the scene of the shooting of Michael Barr at the Sunset House Pub in Dublin.

A man has been charged at the Special Criminal Court in relation to the murder of Michael Barr at the Sunset House pub in Dublin.

Mr Barr was shot dead at the pub almost two years ago. Martin Aylmer (31), of Casino Park, Marino, Dublin 3, was charged yesterday at the three-judge, non-jury court with participating in or contributing to activity intending to facilitate the commission by a criminal organisation or any of its members of a serious offence, namely the murder of Michael Barr at the Sunset House, Summerhill Parade, Dublin 1, on April 25, 2016.

He was also charged with participating in or contributing to activity being reckless as to whether said participation or contribution could facilitate the commission of the murder of Mr Barr.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between April 23 and April 25, 2016.

Garda David Chapman, of Bridewell Garda station, gave evidence of the arrest of Mr Aylmer.

Gda Chapman told State solicitor Michael O'Donovan that he arrested Mr Aylmer at his home address yesterday morning and informed him of a number of charges he was facing.

He then took the accused to Bridewell Garda station, the court heard.

He said that Mr Aylmer made no reply when cautioned.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, sitting with Judge Patricia Ryan and Judge Ann Ryan, remanded the accused man in custody until today, when a bail application is expected to be made.
A 25-year-old Dublin man has been jailed for six and a half years for the online sexual exploitation and defilement of a young girl six years ago.

Darragh Meehan was 19 when he met the 13-year-old girl and they later began communicating online via Skype, Facebook and texting on a regular basis.

He exposed himself and masturbated during Skype sessions and invited the girl to masturbate or penetrate herself.

During a meeting in person, Meehan asked the girl to masturbate him and performed sexual acts on her.

The girl's mother contacted gardai after finding concerning messages on her laptop.

Meehan, of Dargle Wood, Knocklyon, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to one count of defilement and three counts of sexual exploitation of the girl on dates between December 2011 and May 2012. He had no previous convictions.

Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy said Meehan had groomed the victim, who he described as "a child in the full sense".

He noted that she didn't resist Meehan when he made her perform oral sex on him but said she had not given "true consent".

"She was induced to submit because of the manipulation and grooming that had taken place," the judge said.

He said the victim had been having difficulties at the time dealing with the psychological and physical changes that come with being an adolescent.

Mr Justice McCarthy described the victim-impact report as "impressive" and said it demonstrated "maturity" on her part.

He said she had made obvious efforts to come to terms with what had happened. "I hope she will continue to do so."

The judge accepted that Meehan was a person "otherwise of good character" without a criminal record.

He accepted evidence that Meehan was unlikely to re- offend in the future and said he believed he could be rehabilitated to become a "useful member of society".

He sentenced Meehan to six and a half years for the defilement charge and a concurrent five years for the charges of sexual exploitation.

The now 19-year-old woman said in her victim impact statement she had been going through a tough time at the time of the offences and felt quite low in herself.

She said after meeting Meehan he quickly became someone she confided in and that he made her feel special.

"I feel he used my vulnerability to his advantage to get what he wanted," she said. She said afterwards she was angry and upset at what had happened and just wanted to forget about it.

She said people told her at the time that it was not her fault but she could not see it.

"It was something that happened to me, not something I made happen," she said.

She described going through a "whirlwind of emotion" and becoming protective of younger people around her as well as distrustful of new people. She said seeing someone who looked like Meehan transported her back to the young girl she was at the time.

The woman said she had been in a bad place at the beginning of this process but now felt stronger and was hopeful her quality of life would continue to improve.

Sean Gillane SC, defending, said Meehan had written a letter of apology to the victim in which he indicated he had hurt her in a way she should not have been hurt.

He accepted what he did was wrong and was "whole-heartedly sorry" for what he did and the abuse of her trust.
A Cork man who told gardai he had gone to Monaghan for a drinking session and did not know about the half-tonne of fertilizer in the back of the van he was driving has been given a date to appeal his conviction.

Martin McHale (54), with an address at Blackwater Grove, Togher, in Cork, had denied membership of an unlawful organisation, styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA on November 2nd, 2013.

The non-jury Special Criminal Court found him guilty of the offence last year and he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years imprisonment on February 22, 2017.

McHale has lodged an appeal against his conviction which was fixed for hearing on July 19 next today.

Barrister Amy Heffron told Mr Justice George Birmingham that the hearing is expected to take half-a-day.

McHale was not in court for the procedural matter.

Sentencing him last year, Ms Justice Kennedy said McHale had travelled with another man to Monaghan with half-a-metric tonne of fertiliser in a van not owned by either of them.

McHale told gardai during interviews that he had borrowed a friends van to go to Monaghan for a drinking session and was unaware there were bags of fertiliser in the rear.

Ms Justice Kennedy, presiding alongside Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge Gerard Haughton, said the court was satisfied that McHale had full knowledge of the contents of the van and that he was a trusted transporter of the fertilizer.

She said the court had considered belief evidence, his interviews with gardai, forensic evidence and activities at the relevant time.

She said McHale gave answers to gardai the Special Criminal Court found "false and misleading" and he refused to name the owner of the van.

McHale had no relevant previous convictions, had settled family circumstances and was entitled to credit for the manner in which he approached the case, the judge said.
Gardai found duct tape, cable ties and work tools in the back of a van registered to a man accused of carrying out random attacks on women.

Slawomir Gierlowski (33), of Galtymore Road, Drimnagh, Dublin, denies attacking three women on dates in 2011, 2015 and 2016 at locations around Clondalkin, Co Dublin.

In the May 2016 incident, a man armed with a knife attacked a woman as she was walking to a Luas stop.

The woman told the court last week that she thought the man was going to slit her throat and she grabbed the blade to stop that happening.

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday, Garda Sergeant Katherina Joyce told the jury that on May 20, 2016, she was made aware of a VW Crafter van believed to be connected to this incident. The jury heard the registered owner was Mr Gierlowski.

Sgt Joyce said she obtained a warrant at Blanchardstown District Court to search Mr Gierlowski's address on Galtymore Road.

Gda Ronan O'Malley said he was part of the Garda team that searched Mr Gierlowski's home on June 1, 2016. He said he searched an upstairs master bedroom and found a blue-green jacket which he seized as evidence.

He agreed there was another man living in the house and he was using a downstairs room as a bedroom.

Det Gda Brian O'Shaughnessy told Orla Crowe SC, defending, that he searched this room but he didn't seize anything of evidential value.

He said he seized the VW Crafter van with registration number 08-D-20729 from the front of the house. Gda David Harte said he carried out a search later that same day.

He seized a roll of grey duct tape and an open packet of black cable ties.

The jury was shown photographs taken by gardai of the van, showing it fitted out with a shelving unit. The jury heard the van also contained a hi-vis jacket, a ladder, a spirit level, drills and extension leads.

Mr Gierlowski denies falsely imprisoning and assaulting the woman on May 16, 2016. He also denies having a hunting knife with intent to intimidate on the same occasion.

He also denies the false imprisonment, sexual assault and assault of a second woman on September 3, 2015. Finally, he denies the false imprisonment, sexual assault and assault of a third woman on September 11, 2011.

The trial continues.
Banning smartphones in schools is not the answer to the growing problem of protecting children from online risks, according to an Irish education technology company.

Education of children and parents is what is key, and banning phones is a misguided strategy when it ignores the critical need for an effective education programme on the use of technology for children in Irish schools, says the UCD-based start-up, Zeeko.

Zeeko works with parents, teachers and children to promote digital health and internet safety among primary and second-level pupils in Ireland.

The company made known its views on the digital age of consent and banning smartphones as the Governments Open Policy Debate Forum on Internet Safety opened in Dublin today.

The Government has supported a recommendation that the digital age of consent by set at age of 13, although others argue that it should be 16.

The digital age of consent refers to age from which it is legal for data controllers to hold data gathered from minors. Parental consent will be required up to the age of 13.

Zeeko noted that the French government has announced plans to prohibit students up to the age of 15 from using mobile phones in schools, and some Irish teachers have issued similar calls.

The company, whose position is based on research conducted over more than a year on childrens online behaviour and digital health, says any age of consent that is agreed by the Government requires education from a very young age.

Dr Marina Everri, head of research at Zeeko, said the risk with creating a solution that only communicates a specific age of consent as a solution is that children go underground when parents are not prepared and well-informed.

Such a solution neglects the need for both parents and children to be educated on their online privacy and digital footprint. In an ever-changing technology environment, an evidence based education solution is critical.

Dr Everri said providing education to children on technology required conducting research, so we can effectively teach children how to think about online risks and data protection.

Since it started in 2013, Zeeko has visited more 500 primary and second-level schools and delivered safety seminars to over 80,000 pupils, 2,900 teachers and 6,000 parents. It has also surveyed more than 35,000 pupils on their digital habits and online behaviour.
Right now, schools across the country are asking their third year and transition year students to choose the subjects they would like to take for Leaving Cert. These are important decisions, but students often get caught up focusing on entry requirements for college. This can lead to them feeling overwhelmed and can result in mistakes being made.

In reality, colleges have less complicated requirements than one may think, as well as a number of entry routes to most career options. It makes better sense to choose subjects that will assist the student in achieving the best results they can. This will give the student more options in the future.

I'm my opinion, subject selection has a great influence on how a student performs at Leaving Cert overall and here are three considerations which will help any student make good choices:

Choose subjects you enjoy

Every subject at Leaving Cert is challenging. Most schools offer five class periods a week or three hour-long periods for each subject. In addition, students should be doing two to three hours further study in their own time. This means a lot of time engaging with individual subjects. By choosing subjects which they enjoy, students will find this less of a challenge and even enjoyable.

Students are likely to perform better in subjects they enjoy, resulting in higher grades, higher CAO points and, therefore, more options after Leaving Cert. Students are also likely to pursue third-level courses related to subjects they enjoyed at school.

Consider subjects you are good at

One way students can maximise their results is by playing to their strengths. It is likely that by choosing subjects they are good at, they are also choosing areas they hope to study or work in in the future. Consider Junior Cert results if they are available. It is important not only to look at the subjects in which they achieved the highest grades, but also why students performed best in these. Perhaps the subject was taught by a favourite teacher, perhaps a large project component helped. Many students may also have participated in some aptitude testing - consider these results and discuss them with someone who is able to interpret them, such as a guidance counsellor. Other testing is available on careersportal.ie.

Subject requirements

Subject requirements for entry to third level are often less complex than originally thought. If students have ideas about what they would like to study after school, they should research the entry requirements for these courses thoroughly in a variety of different institutions.

If students are not yet clear on what they would like to study at third level, they should research the requirements for a number of different areas and consider common themes. This can be done on qualifax.ie where students can enter key words that will produce a list of relevant courses and their descriptions. Some Leaving Cert subjects are never required for college entry. Students should pay particular attention when considering their choices in the areas of languages, sciences and technical subjects.

Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin
The first comprehensive schools opened just over 50 years ago with the vision of offering all students within the community the opportunity to access a comprehensive curriculum combining academic and vocational opportunities.

From the outset, comprehensive schools embraced a spirit of creativity and innovation. The concept of a school education which provided students with the opportunity to explore a broad curriculum and to identify their own strengths was encouraged.

The Department of Education allowed the schools the autonomy to explore these kinds of possibilities resulting in the introduction of the first Centre for Curriculum Development, Research and Innovation under the aegis of the board of management of St Patrick's Comprehensive School, Shannon. Much of what was proposed then is finally taking root across schools with the introduction of the new Junior Cycle Framework.

Diversity is a key strength across Irish post-primary education provision. Within the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACCS), there is significant diversity as individual schools are reflective of the communities which they serve. While responsible to its patrons and the Department of Education and Skills, the board of management has a real autonomy, allowing it to meet the needs of the local community in an authentic way. This is consistent with the ACCS vision of promoting an understanding of community-led comprehensive education for all.

As Judith Gross et al note in Strong School-Community Partnerships: "School factors that facilitate these partnerships include strong school leadership, an inviting school culture, educator commitment to student success, and the ability to collaborate and communicate with community partners. Strong community partnerships support schools in the present, while the benefits to the community may continue long into the future."

At all times, community and comprehensive schools have shown a strong capacity to adapt and evolve to meet the needs of the diverse and indeed pluralist communities which they serve. With the emphasis on access for all, there is a strong tradition of promoting cross-cultural understanding and engagement. It is common across community and comprehensive schools that the single most important determinant of who attends the school is those who reside close to the school and within the community which it serves.

The recent Department circular on religious instruction and worship has initiated healthy debate. The key trait that describes a pluralist society can be summed up as 'respecting the otherness of others'. It is healthy to promote an understanding of different religions and traditions among communities while also appreciating the Christian tradition that underpins much of Irish society. In this regard, ACCS promotes their schools with religious patrons to engage with the religious education programme developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).

The NCCA states that this programme highlights "the promotion of tolerance and mutual understanding" and "seeks to develop in students the skills needed to engage in meaningful dialogue with those of other, or of no, religious tradition".

While promoting the religious education programme, ACCS also respects the right conferred on any child in article 44.2.4 of the Irish Constitution "to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school".

This right is given expression in the Deed of Trust for Community Schools which states, "the Board shall ensure that there is religious worship and religious instruction for the pupils in the school except for such pupils whose parents make a request in writing to the principal that those pupils shall be withdrawn from religious worship or religious instruction or both religious worship and religious instruction".

This will continue to be the practice in community schools where consultation with parents is strongly promoted.

John Irwin is General Secretary of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, whose annual conference is taking place this week in Galway
Garda recording of hate crimes and domestic incidents is so "slack" that lives are being put at risk.

Violent suspects may also have been allowed to slip through the vetting process and work with vulnerable people because of countless routine errors.

In a series of extraordinary public statements, two civilian members of An Garda Siochana have outlined a litany of internal concerns which "fell on deaf ears" within the force.

Lois West, the deputy head of the Garda Siochana Analysis Service (GSAS), told an Oireachtas hearing that at one point she wrote a colleague an email stating: "We need to smack the organisation around the face with this. This is potentially very explosive if we are correct."

Ms West, along with senior crime and policing analyst Laura Galligan, outlined how rank-and-file gardai have a "cavalier attitude" to recording crime.

They were put under pressure to sign-off on a flawed report, the Policing Authority ignored their concerns, and the Garda Pulse system doesn't have a category for 'hit and runs'.

Ms Galligan was tasked in July 2016 with conducting a 10-year review of domestic homicide figures, but quickly began to discover serious anomalies.

For months, she wrote reports citing examples of wrongly classified crimes and substandard data quality.

"In writing all these reports, and they were being sent up to management, nothing was changing. They were falling on deaf ears," she said.

Ms West said there was a "lack of consistency" in completing forms on the Pulse system, and in many cases crimes were not defined as being of a domestic nature. She said these records were important for assessing trends and in preventing potential crimes.

"It becomes very concerning for me in relation to areas such as domestic abuse. It's essentially to capture even the smallest of incidents. It may be the beginning of a pattern or an escalation," she said.

Ms Galligan added: "If there's a potential chance we could prevent a domestic homicide, I think as an organisation that's what we should be striving towards." The whistleblowers noted that the issue extended into Garda vetting, because if suspected offenders were not properly linked to a crime then "potentially we might be missing things".

In November 2016, Ms Galligan compiled a report on a sample period from 2013 to 2015 which identified 41 cases for attention. But there was "an apparent reluctance to countenance many of the issues we tried to raise".

Eventually Ms Galligan's methodology for reviewing cases was deemed too "inherently weak". "The integrity of both myself and my colleague, was, I felt, under attack," said Ms West. The civilians were put under pressure to sign off on a different report they knew to be "misleading". "We stood firm and didn't agree to sign-off on it," Ms West said.

She subsequently made four attempts to engage with the Policing Authority - but no meeting has ever taken place. Instead, the committee heard a member of Garda management was alerted to the contacts. "This was raised with me in the context of management trying to ascertain what my thinking was when I did this," she said.

She added that it was a "breach of trust" on the part of the authority which is supposed to operate completely independent of the force. Asked by Fine Gael's Colm Brophy if she felt "let down" by the authority, Ms West replied: "Yes."

The Policing Authority last night told the Irish Independent it will review the claims made by the analysts to see if action is needed "We are not commenting on specific contact that individuals may make with the authority. However, in general terms we can confirm that robust safeguards are in place to appropriately protect confidentiality," a spokesperson said.

Since part of the controversy found its way into the media, it has been agreed that Ms Galligan's methodology will now be used for a fresh review of statistics which is being overseen by a new Garda working group.
More than 200 patients endured delays of at least nine hours for a bed in hospitals across the country yesterday amid growing concern about the impact of the slow recovery from the recent snow.

There were 613 tired and worried patients waiting on trolleys in A&E departments and wards, with little space for new arrivals in several hospitals in Cork, Limerick and Tullamore.

The knock-on effect of having to halt outpatient clinics for three days last week is also heaping more pressure on services.

Prof Tim Lynch, a neurologist at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, said over 19,000 people were waiting for a first appointment to see a neurologist.

More than 6,000 were waiting more than 12 months and over 3,500 have been on the list for in excess of 18 months.

The delays have put a strain on many of the 800,000 people who are living with neurological conditions such as migraine, epilepsy, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease.

Expand Close Roundwood woman Maura Doyle, who was dug out by troops from the 7th Infantry bn Lt Richard OHagan, Cpl Wayne Casey, Pte Mick McCabe, Pte Gareth Callaghan, and Pte Paul Keane, who called back with a cake and card to celebrate her 100th birthday the next day. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Roundwood woman Maura Doyle, who was dug out by troops from the 7th Infantry bn Lt Richard OHagan, Cpl Wayne Casey, Pte Mick McCabe, Pte Gareth Callaghan, and Pte Paul Keane, who called back with a cake and card to celebrate her 100th birthday the next day.

"We have improved access to neurology - about twice as many patients are seen now compared to six to seven years ago," Prof Lynch said.

"However, the waiting list is about the same because more people are appropriately referred and we are unable to meet the demand.

"There is an urgent need to implement the model of care for neurology that is with the HSE and Department of Health for the last two years."

Meanwhile, the master of the Rotunda maternity hospital in Dublin, Prof Fergal Malone, warned the timeline of 10 years to build a new hospital is too long.

The current building is over 260-years-old and it is proposed to build a new hospital on the grounds of Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown.

He said: "Unfortunately, it is unrealistic to expect the completion of this relocation in the near future. In the absence of any indication to the contrary, it is likely it will take at least 10 years to realise the Connolly relocation.

"It means over 100,000 mothers and their babies will need to be safely managed on the existing campus before a potential relocation to Connolly."

He added: "We cannot wait such a long period without taking action to protect patients from serious adverse outcomes related to infection."

A Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) inspection raised serious concerns about infection control.

Prof Malone said: "The Rotunda Hospital is currently embarking on a minor capital works programme to upgrade infrastructure in its existing campus, including the development of a modular operating theatre, upgrading of the labour ward and upgrading and refurbishment of the neonatal intensive care unit.

"These upgrade works are being funded directly by the Rotunda with some financial support committed from the HSE Acute Hospitals Division in 2019."

But these will not adequately "address the major risks identified during the Hiqa inspection, associated with overcrowding and infection that currently exist at the hospital due to its dated infrastructure".

Prof Malone said that in order to "address these risks, the Rotunda Hospital is currently finalising an interim capital and service optimisation plan for its existing city centre campus, and is in the process of engaging with relevant stakeholders".

He added: "It was also outlined in the Hiqa report that less than desirable staffing numbers likely contribute to challenges in infection outbreak management in the hospital.

"The hospital acknowledges this finding and has been very proactive in trying to source additional nursing and midwifery staff, in particular for the neonatal intensive care unit.

"This has included a major effort to recruit nurses from outside the EU."

Under the National Development Plan it is planned to co-locate all remaining stand-alone maternity hospitals with adult acute hospitals.

The National Maternity Hospital will relocate to the St Vincent's Hospital and the Coombe to St James's Hospital.
More than 60pc of people who suffer a stroke are not making it to hospital emergency departments in the ideal time frame, specialists warned yesterday.

The success of acute treatment of stroke is extremely time-dependent, the Oireachtas Health Committee was told.

The doctors called for a relaunch of the Act-FAST campaign, which raised awareness among the public about being aware of the symptoms of a stroke.

Prof Ronan Collins, Dr Diarmuid O'Shea and Prof Ken McDonald were appearing before the committee.

The doctors said that a "third to a half of all strokes may be prevented through lifestyle change, management of blood pressure and identification of an irregular heart rhythm".

A "nationwide approach to cardiovascular disease prevention is needed", they said.

Admission to a stroke unit is the foundation of all stroke care and reduces death and disability by 25pc.

"To achieve optimum patient outcomes, all acute stroke patients should be managed in an acute stroke unit," they said.

However, there are still a few hospitals without an acute stroke unit receiving stroke patient.

Dr Collins said that the delivery of emergency clot-busting drugs to stroke patients rose from 1pc in 2008 to 12pc in 2016.

This was in keeping with European norms, he said.

Clot-busting drugs are most effective if started as soon as possible after the stroke occurs.

It isn't generally recommended if more than four-and-a-half hours have passed, as it's not clear how beneficial it is when used after this time. Before it can be used, the patient must undergo a brain scan to confirm a diagnosis of an ischaemic stroke.

The medication can make the bleeding that occurs in haemorrhagic strokes worse.

The mortality rates from stroke has reduced from 19pc to 12pc.

Discharge to a nursing home, indicating the stroke patient is left with a level of disability, had remained constant at around 15pc, the Oireachtas committee was told.

How thinking Fast could save a life

FAST, or Face-Arms-Speech-Time, is easy to remember and helps people recognise if someone else is having a stroke.

Face - has their face fallen on one side? Can they smile?

Arms - can they raise both arms and keep them there?

Speech - is their speech slurred?

Time - it is time to call 999 if you see any single one of these signs of a stroke.

There are also other symptoms that may occasionally be due to stroke. They include:

Sudden loss of vision or blurred vision in one or both eyes;

Sudden weakness or numbness on one side of your body (including your leg);

Sudden memory loss or confusion;

Sudden dizziness, unsteadiness or a sudden fall, especially with any of the other symptoms.

You can contact Irish Heart Foundation on freephone 1800 25 25 50.
The group, which has been seen in the waters around Ireland and Scotland for the last 40 years, was photographed near the Blasket Islands by Nick Massett, of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG).

A pod of killer whales has been sighted off the south-west coast of Kerry.

The group, which has been seen in the waters around Ireland and Scotland for the last 40 years, was photographed near the Blasket Islands by Nick Massett, of the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG).

Simon Berrow, chief science officer of the IWDG, said killer whales are spotted off the Irish coast around five or six times a year. "It's not rare, but with killer whales there's no pattern. Other species are more predictable. They can appear anywhere at any time of the year, north, south, east or west.

"So when you see a killer whale it's exciting," he said.

He said among the whales in the eight-strong pod was Joe Coe, who is identifiable by the notch on his dorsal fin. Also among the group was Aquarius and Floppy Finn.

"They used to be nine but one of them, named Nicola, died in 2016."
Vulnerable women and children are at serious risk due to big doubts about the compilation of garda statistics on domestic homicide, the Dail has been told.

Fianna Fail TD, Michael McGrath, paid tribute to the bravery of two civilian garda workers who expressed their concerns to a Dail committee on Wednesday.

He said Lois West and Laura Galligan, who both deal with crime statistics, spoke about 15 months of torment they suffered from senior garda management because they persisted in raising concerns.

Their reward for telling the truth was to have their integrity and professionalism attacked, Mr McGrath said of the two women.

The Cork South Central TD said concerns about garda crime statistics, especially concerning domestic violence, were not new. He said there was a major review on the issue currently continuing and the Central Statistics Office had refused to publish garda crime figures.

Independent4Change TD, Clare Daly, said the two womens situation was deplorable. She said it must be seen in the context of most murders in Ireland happening in a domestic situation.

Mr McGrath was critical of a response from the Justice Minister, Charlie Flanagan, saying it did not inspire confidence the issues would be dealt with.

Replying for the Government, Tanaiste Simon Coveney, said he was concerned about any statements of bullying or harassment in An Garda Siochana.

But Mr Coveney said there was no evidence that unlawful killings were not being investigated and the evidence to the Dail committee said and the Government had yet to get a dossier on the issue.

Mr Coveney said serious issues had been raised by the two garda statistics officers. He said Mr Flanagan had met senior gardai on the issue in early February and was assured they would prioritise concluding the review.
Two students were hospitalised following an "emergency" at NUI Galway yesterday evening, the college has confirmed.

The alarm was raised about the condition of the students yesterday evening and the university put their emergency response protocol in place.

Pat Morgan, Vice President for Student Experience at NUI Galway said the incident happened in the "early evening" but declined to provide any more details about the incident or the students involved to protect their privacy.

She told Independent.ie: "What we know is that two students needed medical care on campus, we immediately got our response team in place.

"We have people on campus around the clock, we were able to provide support for them and bring them to hospital.

"Our main concern was to ensure the safety of the students and to provide support until their families arrived."

The students were brought by ambulance to the nearby University Hospital Galway, where Ms Morgan said they are not believed to be in a serious condition.

"We are not currently concerned about their condition, we have also provided support for other students on campus who may have been impacted.

"Our priority is looking after the health and safety of all of our students," she said.

NUI Galway shared an update about the incident on their official Twitter account yesterday.

They said: "There was an incident on campus today involving two students who were hospitalised.

"The University activated its emergency response protocol and emergency services came to the support of the students, who are now under medical care.

"Our campus community is reminded to stay safe and mind each other."

An Garda Siochana and the HSE declined to comment on this incident.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald has raised Dail questions about the funding for and motivation behind a special information supplement about the Irish national flag.

Ms McDonald argued that the supplement with the Irish Independent yesterday carried photographs of Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail, and Fianna Fail senator Mark Daly, who is an advocate for respecting the national flag.

"I want to know if public moneys were used for this? It is an extraordinary publication. It is very lengthy and, in part, informative," Ms McDonald said.

"On the face of it, this supplement is about the national flag, Thomas Meagher and so forth, all of which is good. However, it becomes difficult when it can be interpreted as politically partisan," Ms McDonald added.

She was speaking during a renewed discussion on the controversy surrounding the Government's Strategic Communications Unit.

Ms McDonald suggested that Fianna Fail was as good as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at garnering publicity.

The Ceann Comhairle insisted his office had not contributed any money to the supplement.

He went on to say he would happily put that in writing to comply with a demand from the Sinn Fein leader.

The Irish Independent's 24-page supplement, entitled 'The People's Flag - Pride, Respect, Peace' was funded by the Thomas F Meagher Foundation.

This is a special group which honours the 19th-century patriot who introduced the green, white and orange national flag.

The foundation chairman, Rev Michael Cavanagh, also a Church of Ireland clergyman, has issued the following brief statement, insisting no taxpayers' money whatsoever was involved in the supplement and an accompanying exhibition in the GPO in Dublin.

"The national flag belongs to everyone and the supplement was produced to ensure that every generation, especially students, know the Irish flag's meaning for peace.

"The foundation received no public funds to install the first ever exhibit in the history of the State on the Irish flag and its meaning for peace and its creator Thomas F Meagher in the GPO. Nor did it receive public funding for the 24-page supplement in the Irish Independent," Rev Cavanagh said.

The patriot's own words say: "The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between orange and green."

It is modelled on the French flag.
THE husband of missing woman Tina Satchwell (45) paid a visit to the Cork woodland being intensively searched by Gardai for her - and said he was praying daily she would be found safe.

Richard Satchwell visited Mitchel's Wood outside Castlemartyr in east Cork for the first time today as a fourth day of a massive Garda search operation failed to uncover any clues as to Tina's whereabouts.

Supt Colm Noonan is leading a 60-strong search team at the 40 acre woodland which includes Defence Forces engineering units and a special canine unit from Search Dogs UK.

The woods is being searched following a telephone tip-off to Gardai of potentially significant movements being spotted at the forestry in March last year.

Supt Noonan said the search will continue for between two and three weeks.

Tina vanished without trace from her home at Youghal, Co Cork on March 20 2017 - and her husband has repeatedly insisted he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

Mr Satchwell visited the search site today and said he was "hoping and praying" Tina would be located safe and well.

"I am not a religious man but at night I am having a little prayer that everything as regards this just turns up nothing", he told TV3.

"I feel sick - I felt sick driving down here from Youghal and I know it is only a short distance."

"You know, it is a place we have never been - we drove past it on numerous occasions to go to Ballycotton or Garryvoe."

"Obviously, while I was working I had deliveries that I had up around this road but this is the first time I ever stopped off here."

Mr Satchwell said he was very upset at the thought of precisely what the Gardai were looking for in Mitchel's Wood.

"Just the basic thought that, it is a possibility, no matter how small that my wife could be behind them barriers," he said.

"I am sick in the stomach - I would say I have not had three hours sleep since Sunday morning."

"The only sleep I did get was just nodding off while watching the telly."

"I find it difficult because after getting a phone call from An Garda Siochana on Sunday I know what is happening behind me by those barriers there," he said.

"I am trying to fill myself with hope - I have people say to me, how will you cope if it does turn out to be....my answer to that is Iwon't be able to cope."

"(Every night) I am praying and hoping that, like the search in Youghal, it all comes to nothing."

He said the hope that Tina will be found safe and well is what keeps him going.

The English-born truck driver insisted he does not believe he is a suspect in the case.

"They've (Gardai) not voiced it (that he is a suspect) - but their actions are different," he said.

"I went into the guards of my own accord, I made a statement and I'm not ashamed to say I was an emotional mess, I did more crying than talking."

"No, I did originally (think he was a suspect) but then originally everything was all raw with her being gone, the house was searched. I was confused and now I feel that I am not (a suspect)."

"Anything that the guards ask for I am providing."

"Our (telephone) network has gone into liquidation so I've already swapped the number on her phone because I believe that's the one she would call and the guards have that and I'll be handing the new phone to the guards tomorrow."

Mr Satchwell repeated that he suspected in March last year that his wife had taken time away on her own to deal with personal problems.

She vanished on March 20 but he did not report her missing until March 24, initially believing she had gone to stay with family or friends in Fermoy.

"As a couple we weren't going through a hard time - we celebrated our 25th anniversary just before Christmas and everything was good."

"(Tina) got up Christmas morning and said let's make this our best Christmas we have ever had - for the first time we took photos of Christmas Day."

"There were things going on, I've had people who knew her say you could see the upset in her eyes in those Christmas photos but when you live so close to her you don't see everything that is going on."

"One of Tina's fears was ending up on anti depressants, she made me promise she would never have to, she said that from day one."

Mr Satchwell said his wife vanished when he went on a short errand to Dungarvan.

When he returned to their Youghal home, her keys were on the floor, suitcases were missing and Tina's beloved dog, Ruby, was alone in the house.

Mr Satchwell also said that 26,000 from a property sale was missing from the house.

Despite a huge search operation and repeated Garda public appeals for information, no trace of Tina has been found.

She was not seen on thousands of hours of CCTV security camera footage analysed and no trace of her was found at any Irish or UK port and

airport.

The current search followed a phone call to Gardai from a member of the public after the broadcast last January of an RTE 'PrimeTime' special on Tina's disappearance.

That indicated activity was seen in the vicinity of Mitchel's Wood in March 2017 which may be significant to the ongoing Garda investigation.

Gardai determined the information was "reliable and credible" and decided to order a major search of Mitchel's Wood.

The search operation is the biggest undertaken in Cork for almost 20 years.

More than 100 metres of steel security fencing has been erected to cordon-off the entrance to the wood.

That has been covered in black plastic sheeting to guard the privacy of what searchers are doing.

A portacabin was brought to the site to act as a resource centre for the search team.

Portable toilets were also brought onto site as well as heavy industrial generators and lighting units.

A Garda communications and incident command vehicle is also deployed on site.

"There have been 220 separate lines of inquiry conducted. This has included liaison with Interpol and we are now conducting a search at Mitchel's Wood," Supt Noonan explained.

"We are looking for evidence in relation to Tina's disappearance and I would appeal to members of the public to stay away from the area -there will be no public access for the duration of this search."

Supt Noonan confirmed they have received all necessary equipment and support for the search of the sprawling woodland.
RTE Director General Dee Forbes has told of the terrifying moment she was robbed at gun-point while in Madrid, Spain.

The Cork woman was being interviewed on the Eoghan McDermott Show on 2FM as part of International Women's Day and revealed how she was held down on the ground while a gun was pointed at her.

"I was walking down the road with a really good friend of mine and we were walking into the centre of Madrid and a guy came out of a car, grabbed my bag and I had a gun pointed against me," she said.

"His friend got my friend up against the wall and stole her chain. I was fighting like hell because my passport and everything was in the bag. I was fighting not knowing a gun was on me until I heard my friend shout 'stop, he's got a gun'."

Forbes said her memory of the incident is still quite vivid, even though it happened years ago.

"I was really scared for quite a while after. I was working in London at the time. The walk from the office to the train station wasn't the most fabulous of walks and it was scary.

"I can see myself where it happened, on the ground and the guy grabbing my bag. There was no harm done and that's the main thing."
Irish Rail contractors repair the track at Inch, Co Wexford, which has closed due to subsidence. Photo: Garry ONeill

Shutting off running taps and fixing broken pipes in businesses has helped to significantly reduce water demand across the Greater Dublin Area.

But Irish Water said restrictions will continue to be imposed across Dublin and Meath to help restore reservoirs over the coming weeks, and that it will take "months" to replace leaking pipes damaged during Storm Emma.

The National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG) has been stood down and, for the first time in a week, Met Eireann does not have a weather warning in place.

But it predicts rain to arrive tomorrow, which, coupled with melting snow, could lead to localised flooding. The OPW said "quick increases" in river levels were possible over the next few days due to the forecast for rain and melting snow.

Despite the thaw, conditions remain "very difficult" in north Kildare, Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford and south Dublin, and the public is advised to be extremely careful while driving.

Health services remain disrupted in some areas, with all outpatient departments now open, including in Wexford, where they were closed earlier in the week due to the snow.

A "small number" of hospitals have suspended day cases, with only urgent inpatient elective procedures, including cancer cases, going ahead.

The HSE is still completing home-help calls in Wicklow, Kildare and Wexford.

The vast bulk of public transport is operating, but Irish Rail services will be suspended between Gorey and Arklow until at least next week following a landslide at Arklow.

Local authorities and State agencies have been asked to quantify estimates for loss and damage caused, with the bill to be met by central Government.

But water remains the big concern.

Pressure will continue to be reduced across large parts of the capital, and some 16,000 people outside Dublin had no supply yesterday, compared with 23,000 the day before, with 37,000 on a restricted supply, down 2,000 compared with Tuesday. Full service has been restored in Westmeath, Laois, Longford, Kildare and Donegal after local authorities completed works on the ground.

But there are "persistent problems" in some areas, including Rathmines, Rathgar and Milltown, with "significant leaks". Ballyboden and Mount Venus Road, Dublin, were also without water because they are on high ground, and there are also issues with some apartment blocks.

Pressure reductions would only be imposed "as a last resort", Irish Water added, saying if supplies did not recover it would arrange an alternative supply. Some 22 leak detection crews and 26 repair crews were on the ground.

"In comparing yesterday with the previous day, we can attribute a significant factor in the reduced demand has been shutting-off of running taps and broken pipes within premises," it added.

"The balance can be attributed to leaks which will require a sustained programme of work over weeks and months to reach pre-Storm Emma levels, which were themselves too high."
Yet another couple have been reported to the name police in France - this time for trying to call their baby girl Liam.

According to the public prosecutor, the name "would be likely to create a risk of gender confusion" and would be "therefore contrary to the interest of the child and could harm her in her social relations".

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The couple from the Morbihan department in Brittany have been told to give their child a more feminine name or, failing that, a name chosen by the judge.

This isn't the first time prosecutors have intervened in the naming of a French child. Liberte, egalite, fraternite may be the country's national motto, but try calling your child Macaroon and you'll soon come up against all sorts of restrictions.

Up until 1993, French parents were required by law to choose their child's name from a long list of traditional Breton prenoms. Nowadays, parents can pick their own names, as long as their choice is in the best interest of the child, and as long as it's not 'Nutella', 'Joyeux' or 'MJ', which were all banned in recent years.

In Ireland, the names Jack and Emily are still top of the charts, but more creative names (Kai and Tyler for boys; Harper, Willow, Madison for girls) are creeping up behind them.

Many of these names wouldn't pass muster in France, but are authorities there right in saying that alternative names harm a child's "social relations"?

Or is it in fact folly to think we can predict the attitudes of school children and the culture of the schooling system in the years to come?

To put it another way: giving a girl a unisex name like Harper used to be edgy and nonconformist. Now, in a world where the complexities of gender identity are rigorously debated, we barely blink.

Similarly, you can give your child a perfectly ordinary name only for it to be reinvented during an adolescent identity crisis. Karen becomes Karyn; Ciaran becomes Ciaryn. In some cases, children christen themselves with another name entirely. Think of Saoirse Ronan's eponymous character justifying her "given name" in Lady Bird. "It was given to me, by me."

Indeed, with inventive names fast becoming the new normal, perhaps the most subversive thing of all is to choose an utterly unremarkable one. (Paddy Power are offering odds of 3/1 that Kate Middleton's third child will be called Mary, should you be looking for ideas).

By the same token, there's a big difference between calling your child Harper and calling your child Nutella. Wildly unconventional names are always going to attract attention and while that attention isn't always unwelcome, it will eventually become tiresome.

Possessing an unusual name is similar to being unfeasibly tall, in that people believe it is their God-given right to remark on it.

Daedalus? Is that your real name? How do you spell it? Are your parents artists... or just arseholes?

Parents who give their children unusual names often consider the possibility of playground taunts. They should in fact be thinking towards the tedious small talk that the adult child will have to engage in at every dinner party they ever attend.

There's remarkable freedom in going to a social event knowing you won't have to explain yourself to every person you meet.

On second thoughts, maybe the French know a thing or two about liberte after all...

Fertility on ice

Olivia Munn (37) was once again talking about egg freezing at Sunday's Oscars after-party. The actress had her eggs frozen in her early 30s and she regularly enthuses about the procedure, describing it as something "every girl" should do.

Her close friend Kim Kardashian gave her the lowdown on the procedure, she revealed in the recent interview. "I was able to just store a ton," she added.

It's wonderful that Munn is so open about egg freezing but the truth, as any woman who has been down that road will tell you, is that the process is physically and emotionally demanding, expensive and unpredictable.

It's not a lunchtime treatment that you pencil in after a vampire facial and before a SoulCycle class. It's not as simple as renting out a safety deposit box or taking out an insurance policy.

Celebrities like Munn make egg freezing sound easy, breezy and accessible, but in their rush to appear self-empowered and independent, they ought to be more honest about what it entails.
La Citadelle, the historic-looking hotel at Puy Du Fou, which actually opened last year.PA Photo/Warren Chrismas.

It's early on a summer's morning and I'm in bedwear and flip-flops, making a short walk back to our mobile home from the campsite convenience store.

Having made the very best use of my school French, I'm carrying a big paper bag full of warm croissants and pain au chocolat and, with the morning sun on my face, I'm full of - how you say? - joie de vivre.

Spoiling the serenity somewhat are my three excitable boys - 7-year-old Oscar, Dylan, 3, and Alex, 2 - who blatantly have energy to burn.

As they run off up a path shouting, I offer a passer-by a cheery "Bonjour!". "Alright mate,?" he replies, chuckling. "Havin' fun?"

Yes, we are. We're having lots of fun.

We're on day five of a stay at a Siblu holiday village at Bonne Anse Plage, a small resort on the edge of a pine forest just north of Royan in Charente-Maritime.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Alex at La Palmyre Zoo. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Emma and Alex on a ride at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Puy Du Fou's dramatic lakeside Viking show. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. La Citadelle, the historic-looking hotel at Puy Du Fou, which actually opened last year.PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Plage de Gatseau on Ile d'Oleron. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex playing at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Siblu's Bonne Anse Plage holiday park. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. / Facebook

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The boys have clocked hours and hours swimming and whizzing down water slides in the sun. And, given the choice, I suspect they'd happily do it all day, every day.

But we decide to head out for some activities, including a trip to the excellent La Palmyre Zoo, just down the road, and Ile d'Oleron, France's second largest island (after Corsica). Here we discover Plage de Gatseau, a beautiful stretch of beach with shallow water, which is almost deserted. It's perfect.

Glorious weather is helping. We've based ourselves half-way down France's west coast to increase our chances of sunshine. Whenever we've driven down France, clouds seem to instantly disperse south of the Loire Valley.

Of course, it's a long way to travel with a car full of kids for a bit of sun - about 5.5 hours from Roscoff or Cherbourg, and at least five from the Caen/Ouistreham ferry port, in fact. So we'd arranged a couple of detours to break-up the journeys - and hopefully create some unforgettable memories for the kids.

Futuristic fun for all the family

On the way out, our chosen stop-off is Futuroscope in Poitiers. Set in glorious parkland and featuring some quirky architecture, it's a relatively uncommercial theme park with an emphasis on 3D and 4D immersive attractions rather than roller-coasters or traditional rides.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Plage de Gatseau on Ile d'Oleron. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Siblu's Bonne Anse Plage holiday park. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex playing at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. La Citadelle, the historic-looking hotel at Puy Du Fou, which actually opened last year.PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex at La Palmyre Zoo. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Puy Du Fou's dramatic lakeside Viking show. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Emma and Alex on a ride at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. / Facebook

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While my wife takes our youngest two children to an infant-friendly Raving Rabbids ride and a screening of Ice Age: No Time For Nuts, Oscar and I head for Extraordinary Journey.

Strapped in with our legs dangling, we're taken on a virtual ride around exotic locations flying amongst birds and hot air balloons. It's a good introduction, but far more thrilling is Arthur, The 4D Adventure, based on the Luc Besson movies, which sees us tearing through a fairy-tale world on the back of a ladybird.

The piece de resistance here, though, is Dances With Robots, a full-on ride in which you're strapped into the palm of a giant robot hand, and then violently spun around and upside down in every direction, to a banging techno soundtrack.

We spend some considerable time watching it, mesmerised, but none of us is brave enough to try it. I mean, I would have, but... er, I'd just eaten. Shame.

Rides aside, the parklands and playgrounds of Futuroscope are a great place for our young kids to hang out and play (caveat: We went slightly off-season), and well worth the detour.

But historical theme park Puy du Fou in Les Epesses (pronounced 'pwee dew foo') - our chosen stop-off on the way home - would prove to be even better.

Proof history can also be fun

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Puy Du Fou's dramatic lakeside Viking show. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Emma and Alex on a ride at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex at La Palmyre Zoo. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. La Citadelle, the historic-looking hotel at Puy Du Fou, which actually opened last year.PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Plage de Gatseau on Ile d'Oleron. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex playing at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Siblu's Bonne Anse Plage holiday park. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Puy Du Fou's dramatic lakeside Viking show. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas.

Arriving late afternoon, we check into La Citadelle, a hotel from the Middle Ages which actually dates all the way back to, er, May 2017.

"Wow, they've made it look really old," remarks Oscar, astutely. It's all very serious and grown up - a long, long way from a Legoland Hotel.

Entering the Grand Parc is a bit like setting foot on a giant movie set, with a cast of hundreds acting out set pieces from throughout the ages - in French, of course. Headsets are required for English commentary.

We arrive just in time to catch the best attraction of the lot - Les Vikings. Set in a lakeside village, the 26-minute show begins with a sedate wedding but the scene erupts into chaos following a huge Viking raid. With fires, explosions and, well, plenty of surprises, it's all very exciting.

That evening we join a capacity crowd of 14,000 to attend the acclaimed weekend show Cinescenie. This is on a different scale altogether with more than 2,000 actors. It's basically an Olympics opening ceremony.

But pyrotechnics, fire effects, projections and lasers aren't enough to keep our youngest two awake. Its start time (10 or 10.30pm) is late for kids, and it's a whopping 100 minutes long.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Alex playing at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Emma and Alex on a ride at Futuroscope. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Puy Du Fou's dramatic lakeside Viking show. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Alex at La Palmyre Zoo. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. La Citadelle, the historic-looking hotel at Puy Du Fou, which actually opened last year.PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Plage de Gatseau on Ile d'Oleron. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. Siblu's Bonne Anse Plage holiday park. PA Photo/Warren Chrismas. / Facebook

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With batteries recharged, day two sees us dashing around to squeeze in as many of the timetabled shows as we can. There's the tale of King Arthur, medieval jousting, musketeer sword fights, chariot racing, gladiator battles and more. It is, simply, a history lesson brought to life - and one our children will surely never forget.

After seven nights away, 1,000 miles of driving and two overnight ferries, we arrive back in England on a Monday morning, happy but exhausted. But, before home, there's one final detour, to drop Alex off at nursery.

"Oooh, what did you get up to in France?" asks Kim, the receptionist.

"Nothing!" he replies.

How to do it

Holiday homes at Siblu's Bonne Anse Page holiday village in Charente-Maritime (siblu.com/camping-bonne-anse-plage; 0208 610 0186) start from around 572 based on up to six people staying seven nights from May 26.

Brittany Ferries (brittanyferries.com) operate crossings from Cork to Roscoff and Portsmouth to Caen. Irish Ferries (irishferries.com) and Stena Line (stenaline.ie) sail from Dublin and Rosslare to Cherbourg. See websites for rates.

Day entry to Futuroscope (en.futuroscope.com) in Poitiers starts from 36 per person, based on four people booking single day tickets in advance.

Day tickets for Puy du Fou (puydufou.com/en) in Les Epesses in the Vendee start from 35 for adults and 25 for children.

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Aer Lingus is marking International Womens Day today by offering Priority Boarding to all women departing on UK and European flights.

Some 110 flights on Thursday, March 8 will see "female travellers, along with any junior travel companions" board their flight ahead of all other guests as a gesture towards joining the global celebration, the airline says.

Priority Boarding, which allows guests to board planes first and nab coveted overhead bin space, is normally priced at 4.99 per flight.

The offer applies to all short-haul flights from Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock and Belfast (Priority Boarding is not a feature of transatlantic services).

More than 2,000 of Aer Lingus's 4,200 employees are female, it is pointing out in a press release today, with roles ranging from pilots and cabin crew to engineers, planners, marketers and logistics specialists to name a few.

The airline was the first in Europe to employ a female pilot, it says, when Grainne Cronin flew her first flight as a qualified Aer Lingus pilot in 1978.

Today, 10pc of Aer Lingus pilots are female - a figure that is more than double the international airline industry average, it claims.

Read more:
Aer Lingus has cancelled more than 50 flights from Dublin Airport today. Photo: Twitter/ShannonAirport

Dublin Airport has resumed flight operations this morning - however there will be continued knock-on disruption from Storm Emma.

Aer Lingus has cancelled more than 50 flights from Dublin Airport for Saturday.

The airline had planned for a return to full operations after suspending all flights Friday, but has now cancelled over 50 flights this morning.

"Our Dublin short-haul flight schedule on Saturday will be disrupted with early morning flights cancelled and most operations not commencing until after 10am," it says.

Ryanair said they currently plan to return to operations at all Irish airports, but they do expect further disruptions.

A spokesperson said; "Ryanair currently plans to return to operations at all Irish airports on Saturday, 3rd March while remaining in close contact with the airports and the emergency authorities. We recommend customers check the status of their flight at Ryanair.com before making their way to the airport.

"Based on the latest weather warnings in place for Ireland until Saturday morning, Ryanair expects some further disruptions tomorrow morning and has had to cancel a number of flights to/from Dublin airport.

"All affected customers have already been notified of their options by email and SMS text message and should avoid traveling to the airport.

"Affected passengers will be informed by SMS and email, but anyone flying should check the status of their service before leaving for the airport."
Brad Pitt attends the 7th Annual Sean Penn & Friends HAITI RISING Gala benefiting J/P Haitian Relief Organization on January 6, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for for J/P HRO Gala)

Brad Pitt attends the premiere of Amazon Studios' "The Lost City Of Z" at ArcLight Hollywood on April 5, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Brad Pitt attends "Okja" New York Premiere at AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13 on June 8, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Netflix)

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston at the premiere of 'The Mexican' at the National Theater in Los Angeles, Ca. 2/23/01. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images).

Actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrive on the red carpet for the 86th Academy Awards on March 2nd, 2014 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / Robyn BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

Brad Pitt has finally got his life back on track after splitting from Angelina Jolie.

The 54-year-old actor went to a "dark place" when the 'Maleficent' star filed for divorce in September 2016, just two years after they married after a decade together, but has been working hard on himself and is now doing much better.

A source told People magazine: "Brad seems to be in a better place.

"The separation was very dark for him, but lately he looks healthier and happier. He seems excited about life."

Expand Close Brad Pitt attends the 7th Annual Sean Penn & Friends HAITI RISING Gala benefiting J/P Haitian Relief Organization on January 6, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for for J/P HRO Gala) / Facebook

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It was recently claimed Brad has quit drinking alcohol and is doing his best to be a better man and a good father to Maddox, 16, Pax, 14, Zahara, 13, Shiloh, 11 and nine-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

"He goes to therapy every week and is mostly interested in learning and bettering himself as a man and father," they added.

The 'World War Z' star prefers to keep things "private and safe" when he has visitation time with his children, but he would love to spend more time with them.

"Brad doesn't go out much with the kids or leave the house, but Brad would definitely like to spend more time with them than he does," the insider said.

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"He prefers to keep things very private and safe. It's his sanctuary and just being there is where he finds peace. He has projects around the house and is always making things or changing things around."

Last May, the 'Fury' actor admitted his drinking had become a "problem" during his marriage, but he was "really happy" to have got sober.

He said: "I can't remember a day since I got out of college when I wasn't boozing or had a spliff, or something. Something. And you realise that a lot of it is, um --cigarettes, you know, pacifiers. And I'm running from feelings.

"I'm really, really happy to be done with all of that. I mean I stopped everything except boozing when I started my family. But even this last year, you know -- things I wasn't dealing with.

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"I was boozing too much. It's just become a problem.

"And I'm really happy it's been half a year now, which is bittersweet, but I've got my feelings in my fingertips again. I think that's part of the human challenge: You either deny them all of your life or you answer them and evolve."

But the 'Fury' actor admitted he found it harder to give up alcohol than marijuana.

He said: "I mean, we have a winery. I enjoy wine very, very much, but I just ran it to the ground. I had to step away for a minute. And truthfully I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional. I was good.

"[I] didn't want to live that way anymore."
Harrison Ford paid tribute to Carrie Fisher, the late member of the original Star Wars trio, as Mark Hamill was honoured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Luke Skywalker actor was presented with a star on Hollywood Boulevard on Thursday in a ceremony attended by hundreds of fans and the franchises creator, George Lucas.

Han Solo actor Ford celebrated Hamill as a master of his own experience and noted the absence of the Princess Leia actress, who died aged 60 in 2016.

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When thinking about today I was really sorry we dont have the other member of our trio here to celebrate with us, he said, to applause from fans.

But I feel her presence.

Hamill thanked his family for putting up with his acting as a child, and Lucas.

If it wasnt for the genius of George Lucas, I wouldnt be standing here today, Hamill, 66, said.

Hamill said the last time he had been so speechless was in a Star Wars episode noted for his lack of dialogue.

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Its hard to convey my gratitude, my joy, the exhilaration of being recognised this way  I havent been this speechless since Force Awakens, he said.

Lucas also addressed the audience, praising the chemistry formed between Hamill, Ford and Fisher in the early days of the franchise.

Fans, some clutching light sabres or dressed as jedis, lined the street and cheered as they saw Star Wars newcomer Kelly Marie Tran as well as producer Kathleen Kennedy and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson.

Stormtroopers also joined the ceremony, as did R2-D2.

Hamills star, outside the El Capitan Theatre, is the 2,630th in Hollywood.
A man accused of stealing Frances McDormands Oscar from an after party has a long history of theft convictions, a court was told.

Terry Bryant, 47, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to swiping McDormands best actress Academy Award for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri as she celebrated at the Governors Ball on Sunday night.

Prosecutor Rena Durant told Los Angeles Foltz Criminal Justice Centre he has 13 primarily theft-related convictions from between 1994 and 2012.

However he was released from custody without having to pay bail after a judge heard testimony from his rabbi.

Bryants lawyer, Daniel Brookman, told a press conference they would forcefully resist the charges and defend him very aggressively.

He was flanked by Bryants rabbi, Naomi Levy, who described him as a sweet, gentle man of faith.

Judge Deborah Brazil said Ms Levys words and Bryants apparent lack of danger to the public had convinced her to free him without bail.

Prosecutors have said Bryant, an aspiring journalist, was witnessed taking the statuette before being detained near an exit.

Bryant wore prison-issue blue overalls in the dock as he was photographed and filmed by the press. The scene was a far cry from the tuxedo-wearing man who courted praise as he clutched the award at the exclusive ball.

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Look it, baby. My team got this tonight. This is mine, he said, before planting a kiss on the Oscars head in a since deleted video selfie posted to his Facebook.

Bryant was also captured on video leaving the ball while brandishing the award to photographers, one of whom confronted him after not recognising him as a winner.

In court, he only spoke to confirm he had understood the judges demands after his lawyer entered the not guilty plea to one charge of grand theft of property.

Along with the thefts, Ms Durant said Bryant has failed to appear in court nine times previously, but he was released on his own recognisance to return on March 28.

Outside court, Mr Brookman addressed the footage, saying: Theres a difference between holding an Oscar and what he is charged with, so that will play out in court.

The lawyer added that Bryants behaviour was out of character for anyone, but would not comment on his mental state.

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Mr Brookman also said he would contact McDormand after she reportedly called for Bryant not to be prosecuted.

Ms Levy, who said she has known Bryant for seven years, added: I think we are living in an unusual time in America.

I believe that maybe perhaps his story is a commentary on our whole society and its obsession with its 15 minutes of fame.

Police said the Los Angeles resident handed the gold-plated bronze statuette back without a struggle and was arrested.

Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office said he faces up to three years in jail if convicted.

McDormand, 60, won her second best actress Oscar with Martin McDonaghs Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Her publicist said she celebrated being happily reunited with the award with a double cheeseburger from Californias In-N-Out Burger chain.
Pax may look like a normal, fun loving Corgi, but a comment on his Instagram account has sparked a remarkable viral debate about fat shaming dogs.

It all kicked off when Instagram user setphonie_erin commented on a picture of Pax at a pet grooming shop, writing: That poor dog is so obese.

To which Morgan, Paxs owner and Instagram curator, replied: Actually bitch, the healthy weight for an adult male Corgi is 25-30 lbs and he weighs 26.

Go troll on someone elses page and find something better to do than hate on a precious dog that looks better than you ever will.

I felt the need to call out the extremely rude individual, Morgan, from Houston, Texas, told the Press Association.

He is not a poor dog. He is very happy, healthy, and loved.

Morgans response to the criticism towards Pax has really captured the imagination online, with many amused by the idea that it appeared it was Pax giving the response.

Actually bitch  julia reinstein  (@juliareinstein) March 6, 2018

Morgan hopes that as well as laughing at the sassy exchange, that a message will be shared too.

I hope that others will learn from this exchange that whether youre body shaming a person or a dog that someone owns and loves, its all hurtful and unnecessary, she said.

Peabody is shocked that someone would be so mean to a fellow Corgi. pic.twitter.com/OscEMRDPOQ  Ashley Mason (@ashleymason527) March 7, 2018

Despite her incredible response on the Instagram account, Morgan said the internet troll is still harassing her with more than 50 hateful and untrue comments on the Instagram post.

I felt the need to call her out, hoping that she would learn her lesson to quit being judgemental and rude, especially with making inaccurate comments, she added.

But that did not work.

I feel better about not responding to the provoking comments and being the better person than I wouldve felt had I been as hateful as her.

So, what about Pax? Well, from the look of the six-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi, he isnt too bothered by it all.

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Pax is one of three Corgis and a mixed breed owned by Morgan and her husband Andrew.

Their Instagram account pcacorgis is so called for the names Pax, Carter and Apollo  while the mix is a rescue dog called Pirelli.

If you would like to see more of Pax and the gang, follow them on Instagram.
The achievements of females around the globe will be celebrated today as we mark International Women's Day 2018.

The annual events honours the progress made in gender equality and highlights where women's rights aren't up to scratch.

Feminism traditionally means equal rights for men and women but we asked school children from Burdett-Coutts Primary School in London what it means to them.

Their answers include women who "work really hard", "are powerful" and who "stand up for their rights."

Mum's the word when asked who their female heroes are.

One little girl explained: "She taught me that every girl in the world can be what they want to be."
US President Donald Trump during a news conference at the White House (Evan Vucci/AP)

US President Donald Trump told reporters that South Korea would be making a "major announcement" on North Korea at 7 pm (midnight Irish time) on Thursday.

Trump made the comments to reporters in the White House briefing room but he gave no other details.

South Korea's National Security Office head Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service chief Suh Hoon flew to Washington to explain North Korea's stance on possible future talks with Washington and the prospect of Pyongyang suspending nuclear tests if the security of the North's government is assured.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that Chung would make the announcement on North Korea.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that though "talks about talks" might be possible with Pyongyang, denuclearization negotiations were likely a long way off.

But at the White House, there was a growing recognition that the North Korean offer for talks and South Korean desire to have them had put the United States under pressure to talk to the North, and that unless North Korea resumed aggressive activity like missile launches, Washington would likely take up the offer, a senior U.S. official said.

However, it was unclear at what level or how soon.

The South Korean officials, who met Kim on Monday in Pyongyang, met a large group of U.S. administration officials, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and officials of the U.S. Treasury.

A South Korean Presidential spokesman said the delegation would also meet Trump.

The growing focus on diplomacy has helped ease fears of war in a standoff over North Korea's development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

As U.S.-South Korean talks got under way, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters: "We will see what comes out of that meeting today and we may have announcements at some point."

Monday's talks with Kim were the culmination of a series of North-South contacts since the beginning of the year.

Tensions over North Korea rose to their highest in years in 2017, and the Trump administration has warned that all options are on the table, including military ones, in dealing with Pyongyang, which has pursued its weapons programs in defiance of ever tougher U.N. sanctions.

Signs of a thaw emerged this year, with North and South Korea resuming talks and North Korea attending the Winter Olympics. During the Pyongyang talks this week, the two Koreas agreed to hold their first summit since 2007 in late April.
Visitors take pictures in front of banners placed on a barbed wire fence with messages wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas at the Imjingak Pavilion in Paju, South Korea near the border with North Korea, yesterday. Photo: Ahn Young-joon / AP.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said yesterday that sanctions on North Korea will not be eased for the sake of a summit between the two sides as Chinese state media repeated Beijing's line that talks are the only way to end the nuclear standoff.

South Korean officials met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday in the first such encounter of its kind, and said he had expressed his willingness to denuclearise if his country's security is assured.

US President Donald Trump said North Korea seems "sincere" in its apparent willingness to suspend nuclear tests if it holds denuclearisation talks with the United States.

Tensions rose to the highest level in years over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, which it pursues in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, with shrill, bellicose rhetoric coming from both Mr Kim and Mr Trump.

North Korea has boasted of its plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the mainland United States. But fears of all-out war eased last month, coinciding with North Korea's participation in the Winter Olympics in the South.

"From looking at the news or Twitter, I believe President Trump is positive about the results of the North Korea visit (by South Korean officials)," Mr Moon told political party leaders. "However, as this is just the beginning, I believe we are not at a situation yet where we can be optimistic."

Mr Moon added that he had no plans for an easing of sanctions. "Just because there are talks ongoing between North and South Korea doesn't mean international sanctions can be eased," he said. "There cannot be an arbitrary easing of sanctions; we do not wish to do that and I tell you now that it is impossible."

South Korea's goal was the denuclearisation of North Korea, nothing less, said Mr Moon in comments distributed by the presidential Blue House.

"We cannot have things like the prevention of nuclear proliferation or a moratorium as a final goal," said Mr Moon.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-'53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North defends its weapons programmes as necessary to counter US aggression. The South hosts 28,500 US troops, a legacy of the war.

North and South next month will have the first meeting between their leaders since 2007 at the border village of Panmunjom, Chung Eui-yong, head of the South Korean delegation, said.
A 23-year-old man has been arrested by Austrian police following knife attacks in Vienna in which four people were injured.

Police spokesman Patrick Maierhofer said in a statement on Thursday that the suspect was detained shortly after a 20-year-old man was stabbed and taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries on Wednesday night.

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Officers said they are still investigating whether the suspect is also responsible for the stabbings of a family of three an hour earlier, also in the heart of the Austrian capital.

They did not release any further details on the identity of the suspect.

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All three family members  a 67-year-old man, a 56-year-old woman and their 17-year-old daughter, suffered life-threatening injuries and were taken to hospital after the attack.
The Bank of China has pledged at least 10 billion yuan (1.1 billion) to create a massive giant panda conservation park in south-western Sichuan province.

Chinas forestry ministry announced on Thursday an agreement between the bank and the provincial government to finance the Giant Panda National Parks construction by 2023.

The park aims to bolster the local economy while improving breeding conditions for wild pandas living in the mountainous region.

The ministry said it will measure 5 million acres (2 million hectares), making it more than twice the size of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

Giant pandas are Chinas unofficial national mascot and live mainly in the Sichuan mountains.
A Danish inventor is going on trial accused of murdering a Swedish reporter on his private submarine.

Peter Madsen is alleged to have tied up and tortured journalist Kim Wall before either cutting her throat or strangling her during a trip last August.

The 47-year-old, whose trial starts in Copenhagen on Thursday, is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Ms Walls body.

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Madsen has denied murder.

His defence lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, told TV2 on Thursday that he maintains she died accidentally inside the submarine.

He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

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The prosecution claims Ms Walls murder was premeditated because Madsen took tools he did not usually take on board the submarine.

The trial at Copenhagens City Court is expected to last until April 25.
A British police officer was seriously ill in intensive care last night after being poisoned by a nerve agent when he came to the aid of the Russian spy targeted in Salisbury.

The unnamed officer was one of the first on the scene on Sunday when Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were attacked by would-be assassins at a shopping arcade in the cathedral city in western England.

The pair remained in a critical condition in hospital last night.

The policeman was initially treated in hospital as a precaution and then discharged, but his condition deteriorated and he was readmitted on Tuesday and taken into intensive care.

The disclosure of the officer's condition will add to growing pressure on the British government to take a hardline approach against Russia if state involvement is confirmed.

Last night, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the events as "very troubling".

"If this does turn out to be in any way the result of hostile activity by another government, or directed, led, by another government, then the people of this country can be absolutely sure that the UK will respond robustly," he said.

 Daily Telegraph, London

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Police are close to a breakthrough in the former Russian spy poisoning case, according to UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

Ms Rudd yesterday revealed more is now known about the substance used against Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

But emergency services had to be called to an office in central Salisbury yesterday lunchtime following reports a person had been taken seriously ill.

Three fire engines and at least two ambulances arrived at premises close to Zizzis restaurant on Castle Street.

Police officers and paramedics were seen inside Sarum House, next door to the pizzeria.

Ms Rudd chaired a meeting of the UK governments emergency committee in Whitehall to discuss the crisis as Mr Skripal (66) and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia continued to fight for their lives in hospital.

Ms Rudd said: We need to keep a cool head and make sure we collect all the evidence we can. We need to make sure we respond not to rumour but to all the evidence and then we will need to decide what action to take. She added: We do know more about the substance.

Scotland Yard counter-terror officers further extended cordons in the city overnight, while scientists at Porton Down, the UKs military research facility, continue their investigation.

One theory being explored was that the substance could be the deadly nerve agent VX, which was used last year in the murder of North Korean dictator Kim Jung-uns half-brother Kim Jong-nam.

Mr Skripal and Yulia were found unconscious shortly after 4pm on Sunday. They are thought to have been poisoned as they sat on a bench outside a shopping centre.

Detectives have urged anybody who visited Salisbury town centre on Sunday afternoon or who visited Zizzis  where the Skripals are believed to have eaten  or the Bishops Mill pub to come forward.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had vowed to kill Mr Skripal as he was being sent to the UK in a spy exchange in 2010. The emergence of Mr Putins warning will reinforce UK ministers belief that the attack was state-sponsored and perpetrated by the FSB Russian intelligence agency.

 Daily Telegraph, London

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
A Danish inventor has gone on trial accused of murdering a Swedish reporter on his home-made submarine.

Peter Madsen is alleged to have tied up and tortured journalist Kim Wall before killing her, during a trip on the vessel last August.

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Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial in Copenhagen by reading the charges while Madsen, wearing glasses and a dark shirt, watched the prosecutor from his seat next to his lawyer.

Defence lawyer Betaina Hald Engmark then formally entered a not-guilty plea to the murder charge.

Madsen, (47), claims Ms Wall died accidentally inside the submarine while he was on deck during the excursion.

He has admitted throwing her body parts into the sea.

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The prosecution claims Ms Wall's murder was premeditated because Madsen took tools that he did not normally take on board the submarine.

The trial at Copenhagen's City Court is expected to last until April 25.
Florida lawmakers have passed laws that include new restrictions on rifle sales and a programme to arm some teachers, sending the measure to the states governor for his signature.

All eyes now turn to Rick Scott, who has declined to say if he will sign the school safety bill with new restrictions on rifle sales and a programme to arm some teachers.

The state House narrowly passed it on Wednesday after a narrow Senate vote on Monday.

The 67-50 House vote reflected a mix of Republicans and Democrats in support and opposition. The measure, a response to the shootings at a Parkland high school that left 17 dead, is supported by the victims families.

Scott has repeatedly said he does not support arming teachers and had pushed lawmakers adopt his own proposal, which called for at least one law enforcement officer in every school and one for every thousand students who attend a school.

Andrew Pollack, who lost his 18-year-old daughter Meadow in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and Ryan Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina, said there was enough good in the bill that it should pass.

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More needs to be done, and its important for the country to be united in the same way the 17 families united in support of this bill, Mr Pollack said after the vote.

My precious daughter Meadows life was taken, and theres nothing I can do to change that, but make no mistake, Im a father and Im on a mission.

Im on a mission to make sure Im the last dad to ever read a statement of this kind.

Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz, a former Parkland city commissioner, ended the eight hours of debate with an emotional account of seeing the high school after the shooting, attending victims funerals and working with students and families while the House was forming the legislation.

He broke down in tears after talking about how his four-year-old sons writing teacher lost her daughter in the attack.

You dont need to stand with me. I dont need you to stand with me. I need you to stand with the families, Mr Moskowitz said.

Democratic Representative Kristin Jacobs said she did not like the idea of arming teachers, but she voted yes.

Republican Republican Jay Fant said raising the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21 was unconstitutional, and he voted no.

There is a cultural divide in this room, in this state and across the country. And theres a bill before us that is not perfect, said Mr Jacobs, whose district includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The bill would raise the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21 and create a waiting period on sales of the weapons.

It would also create a so-called guardian program that would let school employees and many teachers carry handguns if they go through law enforcement training and if the school district decides to participate in the program.

Other provisions would create new mental health programs for schools; establish an anonymous tip line where students and others could report threats to schools, ban bump stocks and improve communication between schools, law enforcement and state agencies.

Mr Scott has repeatedly said he does not support arming teachers and pushed lawmakers adopt his proposal, which called for at least one law enforcement officer in every school and one for every thousand students who attend a school.

Im going to take the time and Im going to read the bill and Im going to talk to families, Mr Scott told reporters.

Shooting suspect Cruz was formally charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder Wednesday, which could mean a death sentence if he is convicted.
International Womens Day has seen demonstrations across the globe, with an unprecedented strike by millions of Spanish women, and a crackdown in France on companies violating gender-equal pay policies.

Many of the events on Thursday echoed the #MeToo movement that has mobilised women against sexual violence and workplace harassment.

In Spain, unions estimated that 5.3 million people joined the strike, which targeted gender violence and unequal pay.

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The day culminated with street protests in several cities, with the theme If we stop, the world stops.

Social services worker Teresa Sonsur, protesting in Madrid, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination at her agency.

The women are doing all the hard work, dealing with the customers, but in the positions of management it is always men, the 38-year-old said.

Meanwhile, French companies that treat women unequally may soon face new pressure and penalties, with president Emmanuel Macron stating his government is going to name and shame such firms.

Another government initiative would fine companies with more than 50 employees if there is an unjustified gender wage gap.

Today is International Women's Day!

"Gender equality is not just about fairness and justice in Europe  it is also about a necessity to achieve sustainable peace and economic prosperity"

Our joint statement on #IWD2018  https://t.co/qHwn4ljIS0 #EU4Women pic.twitter.com/vRaIGLVrJ2  European Commission  (@EU_Commission) March 8, 2018

In Russia, the head of parliaments foreign affairs committee apologised after being accused of sexual harassment by several female journalists.

Noting it was International Womens Day, Leonid Slutsky said on Facebook: I am using the occasion to ask forgiveness from those of you whom I freely or involuntarily caused suffering.

The apology came after demonstrators, including opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak, picketed outside Parliament, demanding Slutskys resignation.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the worlds most powerful women, said in a video message that the quest for greater gender equality in Germany and worldwide must continue.

Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights, she said.

But theres still a lot to do.

Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rightsAngela Merkel

In Rome, Catholic women challenged Pope Francis to give women a greater voice in church affairs.

Former Irish President Mary McAleese, an advocate for womens ordination and gay rights, accused the churchs all-male leadership of refusing to change womens second-class status.

The Catholic Church has long since been a primary global carrier of the toxic virus of misogyny, McAleese said.

On this International #WomensDay, let us together demand gender equality and womens empowerment. Let us declare #TimeIsNow. https://t.co/aenAZPRNMy pic.twitter.com/Zrdo0hvp7t  Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 8, 2018

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on men to join in making gender equality a reality for all.

He said: This is what women and girls want. And that is what I want.

It is what every sensible man and boy should want.

The White House meanwhile announced that first lady Melania Trump would present State Department courage awards to women from around the world at a ceremony on March 21.
File photo of a musher driving his team across the frozen Norton Sound near Nome, Alaska (Al Grillo/AP)

Norwegians are setting the pace halfway through the gruelling Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, pursued by a trio of contenders from host venue Alaska.

Mushers from Norway are in the top two spots as their dog teams make their way to the finish line in Nome.

The winner is expected early next week.

Joar Ulsom continues to be the race leader.

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He has pocketed 3,000 US dollars in gold nuggets for being the first musher to reach the halfway point when he pulled into the ghost town of Iditarod, Alaska.

Norwegian Lars Monsen is in second place, followed by three Alaskans.

In third is Larry Daugherty, a radiation oncologist who climbed Mount Everest after running last years Iditarod.

Rounding out the top five are four-time champion Jeff King and the defending champion, Mitch Seavey.
Thousands of women have taken to the streets of cities across Spain for marches protesting against wage gaps and gender violence, and demanding an end to glass ceilings for female workers.

If we stop, the world stops was the slogan opening more than 300 protests in the country on International Womens Day.

Thursday saw a full day of strikes, with 5.3 million people participating, according to two of Spains main workers unions.

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The March 8 Commission, a platform of feminist organisations that coordinated the marches, said that women working at home, unpaid caretakers and students were the main focus of this years protests.

Strikes were especially noticeable in the media, with prominent female anchors and journalists absent from television screens and radio programs.

Nearly 7,500 female journalists have signed a manifesto calling for equal pay and opportunities.
Indian women sing and dance during a march to celebrate International Women's Day in New Delhi (Manish Swarup/AP)

Women around the world have held gatherings to mark International Womens Day.

This years event takes place after a year when scandals have shone a spotlight on gender issues across the planet.

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Women shout slogans during a protest at the Sol square during the International Womens Day in Madrid (Francisco Seco/AP)

Women across Europe and Asia shouted their demands for equality, respect and empowerment to mark International Womens Day, with protesters in Spain launching a 24-hour strike.

Crowds of demonstrators filling the streets of Manila, Seoul and New Delhi.

Spanish women were staging dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence.

In Barcelona, protesters disrupting traffic into the city centre were pushed back by riot police.

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In Madrid, hundreds of women gathered in its central square to demand change.

Teresa Sonsur, a 38-year-old social services agency worker, said she wanted to end workplace discrimination.

What we see in our job in social services is that the women are doing all the hard work, dealing with the customers, but in the positions of management it is always men, she said.

In some countries, protests were more muted.

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International Womens Day is a public holiday in Russia, but opposition presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak was one of the few demonstrators in Moscow.

In a protest reminiscent of the #MeToo movement, which aims to hold those involved in sexual misconduct, and those who cover it up, accountable, Ms Sobchak staged a solo picket outside the lower house of the Russian parliament to demand the resignation of a prominent politician whom several female journalists accuse of sexual harassment.

On a lighter note, a leading French newspaper found a witty way of making its point about discrimination and the gender pay gap, by upping its price for men.

The left-leaning daily Liberation said that for one day only, men would pay 50 euro cents more than women, in a reflection of the 25% less that women in France are paid, on average.

Frances President Emmanuel Macron said he vowed to name and shame companies that do not respect the law on gender equality.

Across Asia, women came out to mark the day.

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In China, students at Tsinghua University used the day to make light of a proposed constitutional amendment to scrap term limits for the countrys president.

One banner joked that a boyfriends term should also have no limits, while another said, A country cannot exist without a constitution, as we cannot exist without you!

But photos of the students banners, like other content about the proposed amendment, were quickly censored on social media.

At rallies in the Pakistan capital Islamabad, its largest city Karachi, and the cultural capital of Lahore, women denounced violence against them in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives each year in so-called honour killings.

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Pakistani women have largely been deprived of their rights since the country gained independence in 1947.

Hundreds of activists in pink and purple shirts protested in downtown Manila against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, calling him among the worst violators of womens rights in Asia.

Protest leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in Plaza Miranda, handing red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of drug suspects slain under Mr Dutertes crackdown on illegal drugs.

Human rights groups have condemned Mr Dutertes sexist remarks.

In Afghanistan, hundreds of women, who would have been afraid to leave their homes during Taliban rule, gathered in the capital to commemorate the day.

Hundreds of South Koreans, many wearing black and holding black #MeToo signs, rallied in central Seoul.

Today is International Women's Day!

"Gender equality is not just about fairness and justice in Europe  it is also about a necessity to achieve sustainable peace and economic prosperity"

Our joint statement on #IWD2018  https://t.co/qHwn4ljIS0 #EU4Women pic.twitter.com/vRaIGLVrJ2  European Commission  (@EU_Commission) March 8, 2018

South Koreas #MeToo movement has gained significant traction since January, when a female prosecutor began speaking openly about workplace mistreatment and sexual misconduct.

Several high-profile South Korean men have resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his female secretary.

In India, hundreds of women, including students, teachers and sex workers, marched through the capital to bring attention to domestic violence, sexual attacks and discrimination in jobs and wages.

Unite against violence against women, one placard urged.

Man enough to say no to domestic abuse, said another. My body, My choice.

Empowering women empowers humanity.



To achieve the #GlobalGoals & leave no one behind, the #TimeIsNow to speak up for gender equality & womens rights! https://t.co/I3lLjbA0oW #IWD2018 pic.twitter.com/3OOkV13x11  United Nations (@UN) March 8, 2018

India had its first female leader in 1966 when Indira Gandhi became prime minister, but Indian women are still often relegated to second-class citizenship.

In Africa, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged men to stop physically abusing their wives.

Domestic violence is common in Uganda, although victims rarely report perpetrators to the police for fear of being stigmatised or thrown out of their homes.

If you want to fight, why dont you look for a fellow man and fight? Mr Museveni said, calling domestic abusers cowards.

Many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights ... but there's still a lot to doAngela Merkel

Back in Europe, the European Commission said in a statement published on Twitter that the continent is one of the safest and most equal places for women in the world.

On the other hand, it noted that the path to full equality in practice is still a long one.

The issue of gender equality is high on the agenda, Frans Timmermans, the European Commissions first vice-president, said, but progress is still slow on the ground.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, considered by many to be one of the worlds most powerful women, echoed those sentiments, saying in a video message the struggle for greater equality in Germany and worldwide must continue.

She said many women before us have made sacrifices and fought persistently so that women would have more rights  but theres still a lot to do.
Thousands of demonstrators protest against male violence during the female general strike to commemorate International Womens Day, in Pamplona, northern Spain (Alvaro Barrientos/AP)

Spanish women are marking International Womens Day with the first-ever full-day strike and dozens of protests across the country against the wage gap and gender violence.

Under the slogan If We stop, The World Stops, women working both in and outside their homes, unpaid caregivers and students were called to join the 24-hour strike by the March 8 Commission.

The movement is a platform of feminist organisations that also demands equal opportunities for working women.

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CCOO and UGT, two of the main workers unions in Spain, called for morning and afternoon two-hour work stoppages.

In Madrid, a massive demonstration was expected.

In Barcelona, protesters who disrupted traffic in the city centre were seen in social media videos being pushed by anti-riot police agents.
A video showing the moment a homeless man was made to leave McDonalds after a customer bought him a meal has sparked widespread outrage, after the footage was viewed millions of times.

The short clip shot by customer Yossi Gallo shows a uniformed police officer standing over an elderly man who has sat down with a meal, and telling him he has to go after accusing him of asking for money.

Mr Gallo, who shared the video on his Facebook page, tells the officer. He didnt ask me for money, he didnt even ask for food, I brought him from outside. You guys suck for giving him a trespass.

As the homeless man takes a final few bites of food, visibly upset, Mr Gallo added: I brought him over, as soon as they saw him, Nah, Nah, hes not getting food. I paid for his food, hes getting food.

A McDonalds staff member at the branch in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in the US tells him to lower voice, but he replies: This is how I talk, I talk loud.

Then the filmmaker then steps outside and explains to the camera, that he brought the elderly man in from the car park to eat.

As soon as they saw him they tell him you cant eat and they call the cops for trespassing. The guy did nothing wrong.

He returns to the restaurant, and sees the man, who is dressed in a cap, putting his bag of chips and drink back on the tray and getting up to leave.

Mr Gallo is eventually also asked to leave, and seemingly denied his request to finish his food and told if he wants a refund he will have to go through civil court.

As other customers look on, the officer tells him: You have to leave right now.

I am the law. You need to get your stuff and leave. That is all. You want a refund, you have got to go through corporate. I am not corporate.

At one point Mr Gallo yells out: I am getting kicked out of here because I gave a homeless man food.

After both leave the restaurant in Myrtle Beach, Mr Gallo asks the man to come in his car so he can drive elsewhere to buy him something to eat.

The homeless man, replies in a tearful voice: I didnt hurt nobody.

Myrtle Beach Police Department said they had been called to the restaurant by a member of staff about a man asking people for money in their car park.

In a statement, the police said: Upon arriving at the restaurant, an employee approached the officer and indicated the male was inside the establishment. The employee requested the officer issue a trespassing warning and asked that the person leave the premises.

The officer advised the male of the request made by the business and issued the warning. A bystander, who was videotaping the incident was also trespassed from the location, at the request of the manager, for what management deemed as disorderly behaviour.

Both individuals complied with the request of the business and left the premises.

Joel Pellicci Jr, who works at the McDonalds where the incident took place in Myrtle Beach, told WMBF News: At my restaurant, the goal is to provide our customers with a positive and welcoming experience each time they visit.

Unfortunately, the individual in this video has a history of disruptive behaviour and has been asked to leave by management and police on several occasions.

McDonalds did not immediately reply to request for comment.

Many have left one star reviews on the Facebook page of the McDonalds where the incident took place, as well as a series of aggressive comments.

Mr Gallo has since asked people to stop posting abusive messages to the police officer in the video, who was doing her job

She did nothing wrong, I dont have any anger towards her in any way, he told the news channel.
A porn star who has said she had sex with President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a non-disclosure agreement that she signed days before the 2016 presidential election, which prevented her from discussing the alleged sexual encounters.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that the agreement is "null and void and of no consequence" because Mr Trump didn't personally sign it.

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said she wanted to go public with the details of her alleged sexual relationship with Mr Trump in the weeks leading up to the election, according to the lawsuit. Ms Clifford and Mr Trump's attorney Michael Cohen signed the non-disclosure agreement on October 28, 2016.

Clifford alleges that she began an "intimate relationship" with Mr Trump in 2006 and that it continued "well into the year 2007", according to the lawsuit.

She said the relationship included encounters in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and Beverly Hills, California. Mr Trump married his current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005.

Ms Clifford has claimed she had sex with Mr Trump once and then carried on a subsequent years-long platonic relationship. She has also, through a lawyer, denied the two had an affair. Mr Cohen has denied there was ever an affair.

Mr Cohen has said he paid the porn actress $130,000 (105,000) out of his own pocket as part of the agreement. He has also said that "neither the Trump Organisation nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms Clifford, and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly".

Lawsuit

The lawsuit charges that the "hush agreement" is legally invalid because it was only signed by Ms Clifford and Mr Cohen.

The agreement refers to Mr Trump as David Dennison and Ms Clifford as Peggy Peterson, but an attached exhibit details their true identities. Ms Clifford's lawsuit also alleges that Mr Trump and Mr Cohen "aggressively sought to silence Ms Clifford as part of an effort to avoid her telling the truth, thus helping to ensure he won the presidential election".

"To be clear, the attempts to intimidate Ms Clifford into silence and 'shut her up' in order to 'protect Mr Trump' continue unabated," the lawsuit said.

Ms Clifford alleges that as recently as last week, Mr Trump's attorney tried to initiate an arbitration proceeding against her.

Neither Mr Cohen nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.

NBC News first reported the existence of the lawsuit.
Canadas Minister of International Trade Francois-Philippe Champagne, Chiles Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz and New Zealands Trade Minister David Parker pose before the signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (AP)

Trade ministers from 11 Pacific Rim countries have signed a sweeping free trade agreement to streamline trade and slash tariffs.

The move came hours before US president Donald Trump announced plans to impose new tariffs on aluminium and steel imports to protect producers.

Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership last year, prompting fears it would not prosper without its most influential country.

But the remaining 11 members pressed ahead, saying they were showing resolve against protectionism through global trade.

Expand Close Perus Trade Minister Eduardo Ferreyros, left, Secretary of Economy of Mexico Idelfonso Guajardo, centre, and Japans Trans-Pacific Partnership minister Toshimitsu Motegi at the signing ceremony of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (AP) / Facebook

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The ministers dropped key provisions that the Americans had required on protection of intellectual property, among others.

The renegotiated pact signed in the Chilean capital of Santiago was also renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.

Japanese economy minister Toshimitsu Motegi said after the signing of the deal: Despite the diverse and difficult challenges, the CPTPP is a historic achievement that creates free and fair 21st century rules in the Asia-Pacific region.

The pact that covers 500 million people includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, which together account for 13% of the global economy.

The US, originally the biggest TPP economy, was one of the trade deals strongest supporters before Mr Trump took office.

The president has said he prefers country-to-country deals and is seeking to renegotiate several major trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement that includes the US, Mexico and Canada.
A second convoy due to carry aid to the besieged rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus has been postponed because of violence in the Syrian capital, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said.

Ingy Sedky, the ICRCs spokeswoman in Syria, said Thursdays convoy is postponed. No confirmation yet on when it will take place.

The postponement came as government forces intensified their offensive in the area, known as eastern Ghouta, under the cover of air strikes.

Ms Sedky added that the situation is evolving rapidly on the ground, which doesnt allow us to carry out the operation in such conditions.

Earlier this week, the first convoy in weeks made it into eastern Ghouta, but 14 of the 46 trucks were not able to fully offload critical humanitarian supplies because of stepped-up violence.
Authorities said they are investigating a shooting at a school in Alabama in which a 17-year-old female student was killed as apparently accidental.

A 17-year-old boy was injured in the incident at Huffman High School in Birmingham.

Birmingham Interim Police Chief Orlando Wilson said investigators are seeking to piece together the exact circumstances surrounding the shooting at dismissal time on Wednesday afternoon.

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He added that the inquiry will involve scouring school surveillance video for clues and completing interviews among students and staff at the school.

At this particular time, we are considering this accidental, Mr Wilson said at a news conference just hours after the incident. Right now we have a lot of unanswered questions.

The shooting prompted a brief lockdown, although students were released late on Wednesday and authorities said they had subsequently determined that the shooting was not perpetrated by someone from the outside the school.

Mr Wilson declined to say who fired the gun or to identify what firearm was involved, adding it had been recovered by authorities.

No arrests were immediately reported and the two students were not identified.

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We are asking questions from the staff, the students, anyone who was in that area, Mr Wilson said. This should not happen in schools.

He said police have already questioned students but declined to say how many. He also would not confirm that metal detectors were in place and functioning in the school.

Huffman High in north-east Birmingham is one of the largest high schools in the city. The Birmingham City School system said in a statement that the shooting prompted a brief lockdown and added two students were involved as school was ending for the day.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said the dead student would have been 18 in about a months time and was a senior who had aspirations and dreams to be a nurse.

We are not just talking about some person, (were) talking about losing a part of our future. Our hearts are heavy, he said.

Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Lisa Herring said her goal was to support the family of the teenager who died and to reassure parents about the safety of their children.

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Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said she was saddened by the students death.

I am praying for the family of this young lady who has tragically lost her life way too early  it reaffirms that there is no place for students to have firearms or other weapons on campus.

The shooting took place just a day after Ms Ivey created a school safety council in Alabama to make recommendations on security.

The security plan would ensure schools have an updated security response plan for sharing information about potential threats. It would also require schools to train students and school employees on how to respond to an emergency situation.

Multiple Bills also have been proposed in the Alabama legislature after 17 people were killed last month in a shooting rampage at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Varying proposals by Republicans would arm either teachers or volunteer security forces in schools, while measures sought by Democrats would seek to limit or ban the sale of assault weapons.

The proposals face a tight deadline before the end of Alabamas legislative session this election year.
Members of the media queue up in front of the courthouse (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau via AP)

The Danish inventor accused of torturing and killing Swedish journalist Kim Wall during a private submarine trip before dismembering her body is an intelligent man with psychopathic tendencies, a prosecutor said as the murder trial opened.

Peter Madsen, 47, was standing trial on Thursday at Copenhagen City Court accused of torturing Ms Wall, 30, before he either cut her throat or strangled her on his submarine in August.

The inventor is charged with murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse for the way he disposed of Ms Walls body.

He denies murder, but has admitted to dismembering her body before he buried her at sea.

Ms Wall, a freelance journalist who wrote for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications, embarked on Madsens submarine on August 10 to interview him.

Her remains were found in plastic bags on the Baltic Sea bed weeks later, and her torso was found stabbed multiple times.

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Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen started the 12-day trial by reading out the charges, describing in detail how Ms Walls body parts were found on the ocean bed.

He said a psychiatric report has concluded that Madsen has no empathy or feelings of guilt.

Madsen, wearing glasses, a dark shirt and jeans, listened quietly with his fists closed.

Ms Walls parents were also present at the trial.

Giving evidence, Madsen repeated his claim that Ms Wall died accidentally inside the UC3 Nautilus while he was on deck.

He said Ms Wall had a wonderful evening until it ended in an accident, but denied that any sexual activity had taken place between them.

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Madsen had offered shifting explanations for Walls death prior to the trial.

He initially told authorities he had dropped Ms Wall off on an Copenhagen island several hours into their submarine trip.

Then he said that Ms Wall died accidentally inside the submarine when a hatch fell and hit her on the head.

On Thursday, he claimed there was a sudden pressure problem in the submarine.

I could not open the hatches. I heard Kim, it was not good, he said.

Where - Copenhagen City Court

When - March 8-April 25. The date for the verdict is unknown

Purported crime scene - The 33-ton, 60ft (18m) Nautilus submarine sailing off Copenhagen

Purported time of crime - Overnight between August 10 and August 11 2017

Charges - Murder, dismemberment and indecent handling of a corpse, as well as having sexual relations of a 'particularly dangerous nature'. Sailing dangerously, forcing one ship to change its course and sailing close to another ship

Sentence - Prosecutors will urge that Madsen be sentenced to life in prison or be locked up in a secure mental facility, if deemed necessary by psychiatrists, for as long as he is considered sick and a danger to others

The prosecution claims Ms Walls murder was premeditated because Madsen brought along tools he normally did not take when sailing.

Mr Buch-Jepsen said the cause of Ms Walls death has yet not been established.

But he said Ms Walls blood was found on Madsens nose and his bodysuit, and he also said that detectives found violent videos and texts about killing women on Madsens laptop and an external hard drive.

Members of the court were shown a drawing of the multiple stabs to Ms Walls torso.

An audio file of a radio exchange between Madsen and maritime officials from August 11, the day after Madsen and Ms Wall embarked on their submarine trip, was also played.

In the recording, Madsen said he had let Ms Wall off on an island, and that there were no injured persons aboard but only technical problems.

The 33-ton, nearly 18-meter-long submarine sank south of Copenhagen shortly after being spotted afloat.

Madsen reported man overboard over the radio and was then picked up alone.

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Ms Wall, who had previously reported on topics including tourism in post-earthquake Haiti, studied at Paris Sorbonne university, the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York.

Caterina Clerici, a friend from Colombia, said Ms Wall had a soft spot for misfits, for places and people that did not conform.

Madsen was a co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, a private aerospace consortium to develop and construct manned spacecraft.

In 2011, it launched a homemade nine-metre rocket five miles into the sky over the Baltic Sea, a step toward its unrealized goal of launching a person into space.

In an interview with Danish weekly Soendagsavisen in 2014, Madsen said he one day hoped to have a criminal career, adding he did not want to rob a bank because no one must be hurt.

Police believe Madsen sank the submarine on purpose, and later found videos of women being tortured and killed on his personal computer in his hangar.

He did not make the videos himself, investigators said.

The trial at Copenhagens City Court ends on April 25.
The United States Holocaust Museum is revoking a major human rights award given to Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmas civilian leader.

The museum says she has failed to respond adequately to the mass killings of Burmas Muslim Rohingya minority.

The museum announced that the Elie Wiesel Award given to Ms Suu Kyi in 2012 would be rescinded.

The move is just the latest in a series of blows to Ms Suu Kyis international reputation, which has plummeted over the Rohingya massacres.

In response to the museums action, a spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi said the decision appeared to be based on the wrong information and that it made the Burmese government very disappointed and sad.

Ms Suu Kyi was a Mandela-like figure in Burma who spent years under house arrest for opposing the countrys military dictatorship.

She became an international rallying point and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Her party won a landslide victory in 2015 and she assumed the newly created post of state counsellor, although the military still retains significant political and economic power.

Hopes had been high for Ms Suu Kyi to make the transition from revered opposition figure to reformist political leader, given her long campaign for democracy.

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Instead, human rights advocates consider her a disappointment, particularly in her response to the Rohingya killings.

The Holocaust Museum has embraced the plight of the Rohingya in recent years, and published a report in November that concluded there was mounting evidence of genocide committed by both the military and armed Buddhist extremists.

The severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situationThe Holocaust Museum

In a letter to Ms Suu Kyi, the museum accused her government of obstructing United Nations investigators and promoting hateful rhetoric against the Rohingya community, even as it acknowledged she has little influence over the military.

The museum had hoped Ms Suu Kyi would have done something to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population, the letter stated.

The severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation.

Ms Suu Kyi does not oversee her countrys military or its security operations that set off the exodus of Rohingya refugees, but three former fellow Nobel Peace laureates last month accused her and the army of committing genocide in northern Rakhine state.

They said that as the countrys leader she cannot avoid responsibility.

Her government has defended the military operation in the north and has embraced the prosecution of journalists along with other attempts to suppress and discredit the media.

We assume that the decision of revoking the award is also based on of the wrong information they have receivedZaw Htay, Aung San Suu Kyi's spokesman

Zaw Htay, Ms Suu Kyis spokesman said in response to a request for comment: Burma has always been supportive of the Holocaust Museums principles and activities and the purposes of the museum.

But now, now the latest situation in Rakhine state, we see that the museum has no balanced perceptions on us.

He added: We assume that the decision of revoking the award is also based on of the wrong information they have received.

The Burma government is very disappointed and sad on the decision made by the Museum.

And this decision will not have any effect on the support from Burmas people to the state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Beijing/New Delhi, Mar 8 (IBNS): Is the India-China relationship finally turning into a camaraderie? Keeping in mind the recent exchanges, one can be hopeful.

To bolster the partnership, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called out to its neighbour, stating "If China and India are united, one plus one will become eleven instead of two."

Asked how he views the present Indo-China relationship, Wang said, "Despite some tests and difficulties, the China-India relationship continues to grow."

Last year, the bilateral ties between India and China took a hit after Beijing blocked New Delhi's attempt at the United Nations to list terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist as well as India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group or NSG.

Indian and Chinese troops at Dokalam, a three-way strategic point, also engaged at a standoff after the former accused the latter of breaking protocols and building a road, which was rubbished by the latter.

India and China's relationship also soured owing to Beijing ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

However, those may well be a thing of the past, according to Wang.

"Chinese and Indian leaders have developed a strategic vision for the future of our relations. The Chinese dragon and Indian elephant must not fight each other but dance with each other," he said.

"With political trust, not even the Himalayas can stop us from friendly exchanges," he said.

While answering a question on whether the India, Japan, US and Australia nexus will affect China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), he said that it's like the foam on the sea that gets attention but will soon dissipate.

"Let us not forget that the Belt and Road Initiative has received the support of over 100 countries. Nowadays stroking a new Cold War is out of sync with the times and inciting confrontation will find no market," he said.




Kannur, Mar 8 (IBNS) : Close on the heels of the destruction of a Lenin idol in Tripura, a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Kerala's Kannur was vandalised on Thursday morning as an unidentified person hurled stones at it The Indian Express reported.

According to reports, the miscreant broke the spectacles of the Gandhi statue and threw away a garland.

The vandalisation was first noticed by people who arrived to register their vehicles at the RTO office which is in the Taliparamba Taluk Office premises where the statue was located.

The reports quoted eyewitnesses as saying that they had first mistaken the person for someone responsible for cleaning the statue. By the time they decided to call the police the accused had already left the place.

Reports said the police have managed to gather some information about the accused. An investigation is underway.
Hyderabad, Mar 8 (IBNS) : Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in Andhra Pradesh resigned on Thursday hours after the Telugu Desam Party decided to pull out of the Narnedra Modi Government at the Centre, reports said.

Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments Minister P Manikyala Rao put in their papers after meeting the Chief Minister.

The BJP move followed Chandrababu Naidu's announcement that Telugu Desam Party (TDP)'s ministers will resign from the NDA.

Naidu made the announcement just hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressed that it was difficult to give "special status" to Andhra Pradesh.

The decision was taken after Naidu met party lawmakers on Wednesday evening.

"As a first step, both our central ministers-civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science and technology Y S Chowdary- will resign from the Narendra Modi cabinet on Thursday morning, Naidu told media.

He said decision on alliance with the BJP will be taken later.

Naidu also tweeted to inform that their purpose of joining the Central government has not been fulfilled.

" The Centre has been taking one sided decisions and our patience has run out now. When the purpose of joining the union cabinet hasnt been fulfilled, its best to resign now," Naidutweeted.

He said the decision to pull out minsters were taken for the benefit of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

"I am not angry with anyone. This decision has been taken only to benefit the people of Andhra Pradesh," he tweeted.

"I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform him about our decision. But sadly, he was unavailable," he said.

Jaitley earlier in the day said his government is committed to giving Andhra Pradesh financial assistance equivalent to a special category state.

"We are committed to giving monetary equivalent to special status to Andhra Pradesh," Jaitley said.
New Delhi/Amaravati, Mar 8 (IBNS): Amid the political hue and cry, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday spoke to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu over the latter's demands for a special status to the southeastern state, media reports said.

Modi will also meet two Telegu Desam Party (TDP) ministers in the NDA government, who are likely to quit following the order of their party chief Naidu.

In the meantime, two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in Andhra Pradesh resigned on Thursday hours after the TDP decided to pull out of the central government, which is run by the BJP-led NDA.

Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments Minister P Manikyala Rao put in their papers after meeting the Chief Minister.

The BJP move followed Chandrababu Naidu's announcement that Telugu Desam Party (TDP)'s ministers will resign from the NDA.

Naidu made the announcement just hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley expressed that it was difficult to give "special status" to Andhra Pradesh.

The decision was taken after Naidu met party lawmakers on Wednesday evening.

"As a first step, both our central ministers-civil aviation minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and minister of state for science and technology Y S Chowdary- will resign from the Narendra Modi cabinet on Thursday morning, Naidu told media.

He said decision on alliance with the BJP will be taken later.

Naidu also tweeted to inform that their purpose of joining the Central government has not been fulfilled.

" The Centre has been taking one sided decisions and our patience has run out now. When the purpose of joining the union cabinet hasnt been fulfilled, its best to resign now," Naidutweeted.

He said the decision to pull out minsters were taken for the benefit of the people of Andhra Pradesh.

"I am not angry with anyone. This decision has been taken only to benefit the people of Andhra Pradesh," he tweeted.

"I tried reaching out to the Prime Minister to inform him about our decision. But sadly, he was unavailable," he said.

Jaitley earlier in the day said his government is committed to giving Andhra Pradesh financial assistance equivalent to a special category state.

"We are committed to giving monetary equivalent to special status to Andhra Pradesh," Jaitley said.
New Delhi, Mar 8 (IBNS): Two Telegu Desam Party (TDP) ministers, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y.S. Chowdary, have quit the NDA government over the demands of a special status for Andhra Pradesh, media reports said.

The ministers' resignation came a day after the central government denied to grant a special status to the southeastern state.

While Raju held the civil aviation ministry, Chowdary was the Minister of State in for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences in the BJP-led central government.

Both the ministers resigned following their party leader N Chandrababu Naidu's order.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's discussion with Naidu over the matter on Thursday evening failed to melt the ice between the BJP and the TDP.

However, the TDP has not withdrawn its support from the NDA government yet.

Meanwhile, two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in Andhra Pradesh resigned on Thursday hours after the TDP decided to pull out of the central government, which is run by the BJP-led NDA.

Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments Minister P Manikyala Rao put in their papers after meeting the Chief Minister.

Images: facebook.com/ashokvizianagaram, facebook.com/yschowdary/photos
New Delhi, Mar 8 (IBNS): In a new twist to the Andhra Pradesh issue, the Telegu Desam Party (TDP) has walked out of the NDA ministries over the demands of a special status to the southeastern state but stayed in the alliance for now.

TDP ministers Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Y.S. Chowdary resigned on Thursday following the orders of their party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

After submitting his resignation, Chowdary said: "We had no option but to resign. We adhere to the people's voice."

"We will continue to work hard, negotiate and try to fulfill the demands of the state" he added.

Interacting with media, Raju said: "Andhra Pradesh has turned out to be a residual state."

The move by the TDP turned out to be surprising as it came hours after Naidu's discussion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue.

Naidu on Wednesday late night said his party TDP will pull out of the NDA, which runs the central government.

While Raju held the civil aviation ministry, Chowdary was the Minister of State in for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences in the BJP-led central government.

Following Naidu's statement of pulling out of the NDA a day back, two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu cabinet in Andhra Pradesh resigned on Thursday.

Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments Minister P Manikyala Rao put in their papers after meeting the Chief Minister.

Image: Chandrababu Naidu Official Twitter Handle
Kolkata, Mar 8 (IBNS): Tension erupted in southern Kolkata's Jadavpur area as activists of CPI-M's students wing, Students Federation of India (SFI) and a Hindutva outfit, Bangali Hindu Astitva Raksha Manch, got engaged in a clash with each other on Thursday evening, reports said.

According to reports, activists of the religious group gathered near Jadavpur 8B bus stand to stage protest against the vandalism of a statue of Bharatiya Janata Party's predecessor organization Bharatiya Jana Sangh's founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in city's Kalighat area.

Minutes before the programme was scheduled to start, SFI members reached the spot and allegedly beaten up the activists of the religious outfit in presence of police.

CPI-M leader Satarup Ghosh, who was present there during the incident, told IBNS, "We had inputs that a right wing activists would try to destroy Lenin statue at Jadavpur 8B today to take revenge for Shyama Prasad Mukherjee's statue vandalism."

"We never support attacks on statues. Today we came here just to save Lenin's statue from the right wing activists," Ghosh added.

The incident triggered tension at the area.

Later, a heavy police force rushed to the scene and security personnel evacuated the Hindutva group members from the area to bring situation under control.

A local police official told IBNS, "Situation is under control now and we've deployed a huge force to avoid untoward incident further."

"Two members of the religious group have been held for inciting the violence," the official added.

BJP West Bengal president Dilip Ghosh condemned the alleged attack of Left students' union on the Hindutva group.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
Kolkata, Mar 8 (IBNS): Marking the International Women's Day, the Kolkata Metro Rail authority on Thursday handed over its Netaji Bhavan station to an all women crew, officials said.

According to reports, the station will be fully operated by Kolkata Metro's women employees, including the station superintendent, shift in-charge, booking clerks, security personnel, station porter, point operator, commercial porter, sweepers and other cleaning staffers, from today (Thursday) onwards.

"In a step towards women empowerment, the Kolkata Metro has declared Netaji Bhavan station an 'All-Women Metro Station' from today," Kolkata Metro Rail's CPRO Indrani Banerjee told IBNS.

"Netaji Bhavan station, from where country's first underground metro rail's maiden run began on October 24 in 1984, will be entirely managed by our women staffers and we are very happy to announce the endeavour to empower our women workforce on International Women's Day," she added.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Images: Kolkata Metro Railway)
New York, Mar 8 (JEN): In a scathing address to the Human Rights Council, the top United Nations rights official on Wednesday warned political leaders who stoke fear and intolerance among their followers for the sake of their own ambitions are merely copying the behaviour of previous generations of once strong, but ultimately catastrophic, leaders and politicians.

Yours will in the end become a mouse-like global reputation, never the fine example of the leader you think you are, said Zeid Raad Al Hussen, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He underscored the universality and fundamental nature  common to everyone  that ultimately they are all human beings, able to feel, love, think and hope; and that the characteristics like colour, race, ethnicity or gender are acquired by virtue of being humans and are secondary in nature.

The present-day hatred, and its corresponding rising uncertainties, seem to come from humans who view the relationship between the core and the bolted  on characteristics in reverse, added Zeid.

In their view, the differences decide everything. But this approach, if each of us were to adopt it, and act upon it, would be an open invitation to human self-annihilation.

Recalling the life of Nelson Mandela, the values of diversity and tolerance he worked for and the respect he earned, High Commissioner Zied urged political leaders to follow Mandelas example.

To deserve global respect, you must begin to follow his example  committing to the spirit and letter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he said.

The UN human rights chief also painted a bleak picture of situations in more than 50 countries, ranging from an apocalypse in Syria to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and anti-migration policies in many European countries and in the United States.

Zeid also praised the real courage of all those who stand up for and defend womens rights, including sexual and reproductive rights, as well as the civil society movements fighting for respect of decency and rights despite overwhelming challenges.

In particular, he noted the MeToo movement, which takes on the abuse and sexual exploitation of women, an expression of solidarity and a force for dignity that is much needed, including in the wealthiest societies.

Wherever I have travelled I have been privileged to meet women who defy restrictions on their freedom. These resilient and powerful women teach us  have, indeed, taught me  that every individual can help to reshape society, and the world, he said.








Ottawa/Washington, Mar 8 (IBNS): A latest tweet by US President Donald Trump has raised a question whether Canada will be exempted from the trade tariffs imposed by its neighbouring country.

In a tweet, Trump has said the US will be flexible and cooperative with those nations who are "real friends".

The tweet reads, "Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military."

Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 8, 2018

The US has announced that it will impose tariffs of 25% and 10% on steel and aluminium imports respectively from any other country.

Canada, very likely, expressed its displeasure over the entire idea of Trump administration.

In a tone of blackmailing, Trump also said Canada will be exempted only if a new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the US President alleged to have incurred loss to his country, is signed.

Days ago, Trudeau had termed the imposition of trade tariffs as "unacceptable".

Trudeau was quoted by CBC News, "We will continue to engage with all levels of the American administration in the coming days so that they understand that this proposal is unacceptable."

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland had said "responsive measures" will be taken if Canada is not exempted at the last minute.

She said: "It is entirely inappropriate to view any trade with Canada as a national security threat to the United States. We will always stand up for Canadian workers and Canadian businesses. Should restrictions be imposed on Canadian steel and aluminum products, Canada will take responsive measures to defend its trade interests and workers.

Trump hopes the imposition of tariffs will help him to bring back jobs to the US which he alleged to have been stolen by other countries that acted unfairly.

Canada still can hope for a last minute exemption as it was done in 2002 when then US President George W. Bush had imposed a tariff on steel imports.



(Reporting by Suman Das)
The Union Cabinet has approved easing of spectrum holding limit, based on recommendations given by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, as well as raising the tenure of spectrum payments for mobile operators."Revising the limit for spectrum cap holding will facilitate the consolidation of telecom licencees and may encourage participation in the future auction," the government said on Twitter.In November, TRAI had suggested raising the overall cap on spectrum held by operators to 35% from the current limit of 25%.The telecom regulator had also suggested removing the intra-band cap of 50% on a given band held by an operator in a service area, and instead, recommended a 50% cap only on the combined spectrum held in sub-1-GHz bands -- 700 MHz, 800 MHz, and 900 Mhz.There will be no cap on individual or combined spectrum holding in bands above 1 GHz, as per the government release today."The revised spectrum caps may be revisited after Final Acts of World Radiocommunication Conference 2019," the release said.For payment of liability for spectrum, the tenure has been increased to 16 years from 10 years.While this will reduce the annual outgo for spectrum payments by telecom companies and support cash flow, it will increase the total amount for the government by Rs74,446cr till 2034-35 (Apr-Mar), the government said in a release.The two measures are part of suggestions of an inter-ministerial group set up by the government to ease financial stress on telecom operators.The panel had suggested that the government approach the regulator for its views on the issue of spectrum holding limit.Easing of spectrum holding cap will augur well for telecom companies opting to increase their market share through the inorganic route.India's second- and third-largest operators Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd last year announced a merger, which is expected to be completed by June. The combined entity will replace Bharti Airtel Ltd as the country's largest operator.Bharti Airtel itself announced acquisitions of Tikona Digital Networks, Telenor (India) Communications Pvt Ltd and consumer mobile businesses of Tata Teleservices Ltd and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd.Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd is also in the process of acquiring wireless infrastructure assets including spectrum, tower, fibre and media convergence nodes of brother Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications Ltd.
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www.indiainfoline.com is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others.
President Trump has stated that Canada and Mexico would initially be excluded from stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. This exemption may include other US allies though the White House did not mention any specific countries.However, the exclusion for Canada and Mexico would not be permanent if they fail to reach an updated Nafta agreement with the US. President Trump has repeatedly stated in the past that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) is against US economic interests and needs to be re-negotiated.However, the tariffs would still apply to other countries. China and the EU have stated that they are displeased with the outcome and could take retaliatory action by imposing duties on US exports. This story is still under development and it would be too soon to estimate the impact on the Indian steel and aluminium industry. However, this is a positive for Hindalco, which imports a large part of raw material for its US facility from Canada.Hindalco is one of the largest producers of aluminium and copper globally. Alumina production for the company stood at 2,170kt in 9MFY18, with Aluminium metal sales at 953kt (up 4% yoy). Copper sales stood at 299kt, up 15% yoy. Total shipments from Novelis stood at 2,383kt in 9MFY18, up 5% yoy. President Trumps import tariff would impact Novelis margins in the near term due to higher aluminum prices. However, we expect that the effects of any price hikes would passed through keeping margins steady over the medium term. Hindalco is said to be considering a bid for Aleris, a US based aluminium producer that focuses on making value added products for the US automobile industry.We expect the company to report revenue CAGR of 5.6% over FY17-20E aided by (a) 2.7% increase in shipments from Novelis due to US auto makers, (b) firm commodity prices and (c) ~2% rise in domestic copper and aluminum volumes over FY17-20E. EBITDA margins are also likely to expand by ~38bps over the same period. The stock is currently trading at 9.7x FY20E EPS.
It's funny how humans hurl the term 'dog' as an abuse to call out on someone who isn't warm; contradicting the fact that dogs, in fact, are the most loyal beings ever. In the past, we have seen innumerable instances where dogs have gone above and beyond to help their humans.

Here's another painful anecdote that might just move you to tears.

A pet dog whose owner was stabbed to death back in October 2017 is refusing to leave the hospital premises, waiting for him. The dog who chased the ambulance that picked up the person has put his foot down outside the hospital and is refusing to leave.

The Santa Casa de Novo Horizonte hospital in Brazil has now become famous for the dog who isn't leaving, similar to Hachiko's story.

The staff of the hospital is quite overwhelmed with the dog's gesture and is taking full care by facilitating food and water for it. They have even found a local kennel, just 5 km away from the hospital, willing to take it.

We are assuming our readers know that this isn't the first time that a dog has done something like this. Many dogs have chased their deceased owners to graveyards and hospitals, wishing that they'll get better soon.

It's heart-warming yet painful to see them waiting for their owners. We often forget that our pet might just be a part of our life, but for them, we are their whole life.
Decades before Delhis conscience got awaken and people took to streets in protest of the gruesome rape of Nirbhaya in 2012, another rape victim was fighting the battle for gender equality.

PTI

Bhanwari Devi is a name that signifies Vishakha guidelines, a set of laws that protects women from sexual harassment at workplace. The law got stronger by 2013 law enacted by the Parliament in the wake of Nirbhaya rape case.

She has also worked to put pressure on the government to make better policies on girl-child education, womens safety, poor family planning, poor maternal health, child marriage, female infanticide, and dowry.

Bhanwari is an icon and champion of women rights in India who sacrificed a lot for her cause which again makes her a true harbinger of change who did more than the lip service we get especially on Womens Day.

Here is her story.

Born in a 'low-caste family' in Rajasthan - The odds were against her

Bhanwari Devi was born in Bhateri village in Rajasthan, just 55 kms from the capital Jaipur. She was born in a family of potters and the village was dominated by a community identifying with a different caste. Bhanwari remained illiterate as her family didnt send her to school. But, she was aware that women are being discriminated against and thats why she enrolled as a Saathin aka friend, a Rajasthan government project to help women to get enrolled in schools in 1985.

Started working for the collective betterment of women

As a Saathin, Bhanwari started working for girl-child education, womens safety, family planning, maternal health, and payment of minimum wages for famine relief workers. She also stood at the forefront of the battle against the practice of child marriage, female infanticide, and dowry. She would walk into various households in the village and spread awareness among women of the same.

The government campaign against child marriage

In 1992, the state launched a campaign against the practice of child marriage and it launched a programme just before Akha Teej festival, which is auspicious for conducting marriage ceremonies. This festival was also used by families to marry their young girls. The government wanted to use this to make people understand that child marriage isnt a noble practice.

Bhanwari stood against the child marriage

However, Bhanwari was aware of the magnitude of the issue, despite that, she went and joined the campaign because she herself got married at six. Of course, the village elders and local panchayat, were against this campaign since they believed that this was an encroachment on their culture and way of life.

TheBetterIndia

When she found out about a familys decision to marry their nine-month-old daughter, Bhanwari decided to make them understand about the ill effects of child marriage. But the family didnt understand it.

Bhanwari called the police and stopped the marriage on the day. But the family married off the child next morning and police didnt help this time.

Gang raped and beaten

Angered by an "illiterate and low-caste woman", who dared to defy the prevailing social norms, the upper caste Gurjar community in the village ostracised her family.

The societal pressure wasnt enough as in the darkness of September 22, 1992, night, Bhanwari was gang raped by her neighbours after her husband was beaten until he fell unconscious.

Thus, she started her struggle

In the time of adversity, Bhanwari refused to buckle down. The couple pursued the justice valiantly despite the system and the social fabric standing against their quest for the fair probe.

Over the course of police investigations and judicial proceedings, she gave her testimony eight times and remains consistent with her version of events. She didnt mince a word and spoke openly about the crime done with her in a society which still considers it a taboo.

The Court acquitted the accused

The Rajasthan government abandoned her and the trail judge in 1995 acquitted all the five accused and even after 26 years, her case remains pending in Rajasthan High Court.

I am not afraid. What more can they do? I am not alone in my fight. The justice and the case are not just about me anymore. I am fighting for a society where there is gender equality; where there is no discrimination between two siblings of a household; where both brother and sister get equal rights and education opportunities, she told YourStory, earlier this year.

Her case led to a landmark judgement

However, she doesnt get justice until this day, but seeing her struggle, a group of women right groups filed a PIL under the platform of Vishakha in Supreme Court, which drew attention to, The absence of domestic law occupying the field, to formulate effective measures to check the evil of sexual harassment of working women at all workplaces.

In September 1997, the apex court issued the guideline that clearly defined the ambit of sexual harassment in the workplace, and the state was asked to set up the mechanism to ensure safety of women at workplaces.

In 2013, after 16 years of the SC decision, the government came up with the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act.

Bhanwari may have helped other working women, but justice still eludes her.

Bhanwari Devi and her struggle have helped lakhs of women working to get a comparatively safer work environment which has a law guarding them. Bhanwari while battling all odds made sure that her daughter doesnt have to go through the pain being illiterate.

Despite her trials, she found the time to educate her daughter Rameshwari, who has completed her masters degree, and now teaches in a school.

The Alternative

With support from womens group and her husband who always remained with her, Bhanwari continues to find her battle against social evils,

I will continue fighting till my last breath. My fight is against the society where child marriages are still rampant despite being illegal. Law alone is not enough. Women, the whole society, need to support one another. Fight collectively against social evils, she once said.
The world is today celebrating International Women's Day with fervour empowering females across the globe. From sharing success stories to telling tales of women who are doing extraordinary jobs, the social media is also abuzz. International Women's Day is not just a day to look back at women's achievements but also a reminder that women must keep fighting. Over the last one year, numerous protests, marches, events, both national and international, were held across the world to understand that time is up and women must reclaim what is rightfully their's.

Here's a look at all the powerful events and protests that shook the world in a fight for empowerment.

1. #Metoo hashtag

Samantha Hanahentzen, 17, poses for a #MeToo portrait in Detroit, Michigan

Reuters

2. Women's power

A woman demonstrates against Brazil's congressional move to criminalize all cases of abortion.

Reuters

3. J ustice for Female

A woman takes part in a demonstration demanding justice for female victims of violence in Mexico.

Reuters

4. We want justice

A demonstrator shouts slogans in front of police officers during a women's march to protest against President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas

Reuters

5. Rohingya crisis

Roshid Jan, a Rohingya refugee, who walked for 10 days with her five children to Bangladesh after soldiers burnt their village.

Reuters

6. S elf esteem

Maria Jose is photographed by Flavio as she poses after an event organized to self esteem in 90 women who live in nursing homes by Projeto Velho Amigo NGO

Reuters

7. The Handmaid's Tale

Women dressed as handmaids from the novel, film and television series "The Handmaid's Tale" demonstrate against cuts for Planned Parenthood in the Republican Senate healthcare bill at the Capitol in Washington.

Reuters

8. Internally displaced

Zeinab, 14, looks in a small mirror as she brushes her teeth using a chewing stick inside her shelter at a camp for internally displaced people from drought hit areas in Dollow, Somalia.

Reuters

9. Female bouncer

Bouncer Mehrunnisha Shokat Ali offers her evening prayer Mehrunnisha has been a female bouncer for nearly a decade, and is expert in breaking up bar fights, frisking female customers, and uncovering illegal drugs.

Reuters

10. In a parliament

Swedish Member European Parliament Jytte Guteland holds her baby as she takes part in a voting session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France,

Reuters

11. Illegally leading into Hemmingford

A young girl carries her doll and suitcase as her family, which claimed to be from Turkey, are met by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers after they crossed the U.S.-Canada border.

Reuters

12. Women's Convention

Actor Rose McGowan raises her fist after addressing the audience during the opening session of the three-day Women's Convention at Cobo Center in Detroit.

Reuters

13. Be carefull

Women riding in a van react to something happening outside the van in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Reuters

14. B abies queue

Women carrying babies queue as they try to buy diapers outside a pharmacy in Caracas, Venezuela.

Reuters

15. Traditional Costumes

Ethnic Miao women wearing traditional costumes take part in a parade during the traditional Lusheng (reed-pipe wind instrument) festival in Gulong.

Reuters

16. Houthi movement

A boy stands with women loyal to the Houthi movement during a gathering held to show their support to the movement in Sanaa.

Reuters
One fear we have of the confluence of the government and technology is how it may be misused in the name of national security. Now, it seems thats a very valid fear once more.

According to Gizmodo, Google has partnered with the US Department of Defense (DoD) to help develop artificial intelligence that will analyze its drone footage. This is quite a controversial move, given that the company has actively limited its work with the military in the past, and the employees are not happy.

News of Googles pilot program with the DoDs Project Maven emerged when details were shared in an internal mail last week, and its ignited a shitstorm of opposition. Gizmodos sources, who remained anonymous, say employees were outraged that Google would aid the militarys surveillance programs, while still others were mostly concerned about the ethics of using machine learning in this manner. This despite the fact that the company insists its involvement is not related to any combat uses for AI.

Project Maven is a Pentagon initiative, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT), established in April 2017. The idea was to hasten the application of big data and machine learning in the DoDs methods. Project Mavens first task was to help the Pentagon more quickly process the massive amounts of video footage collected daily by its aerial drones, a task humans just cant keep up with.

That involves having AI to identify vehicles and other objects in drone footage, so human analysts can focus on more abstract inferences without having to worry about mundane details. The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only, a Google spokesperson said. Military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns. Were actively discussing this important topic internally and with others as we continue to develop policies and safeguards around the development and use of our machine learning technologies.
France's Macron to talk to Biden amid crisis over submarines AP - Sun Sep 19, 12:51PM CDT PARIS (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron will speak in the coming days with President Joe Biden in their first contact since a major diplomatic crisis erupted between France and the United States... $SPX : 4,432.99 (-0.91%) $DOWI : 34,584.88 (-0.48%) $IUXX : 15,333.47 (-1.18%)

Chart of the Day: Blackstone Has My Attention Barchart - Sat Sep 18, 2:16PM CDT The Barchart Chart of the Day belongs to the financial services company Blackstone (NYSE: BX ). I found the company by sorting Barchart's All Time High list first by the highest number of new highs... BX : 133.63 (-1.04%)

December 2021 Lean Hogs Chicago Quant Technologies - Sat Sep 18, 10:48AM CDT Is there more downside on the horizon? We think so.

Protect wheat prices once inputs purchased Sidwell Strategies - Fri Sep 17, 11:07PM CDT Manage fertility and protect prices

Cigna  The Textbook Definition of Average The Smart Investor - Fri Sep 17, 7:35PM CDT At this point, we usually recommend the company for its dividend, However, the companys dividend has been notoriously inconsistent. It has a mountain of debt (a net debt position of more than $20 billion)...
Here are the numbers:

Operating profit  3.07 billion (around AU$5.46 billion), up 2%

Total dividend per share  27.4 pence, up 18%

Solvency II capital surplus  12.2 billion, up from 11.3 billion

Cash remittances  2.4 billion, up 33%

General insurance net written premiums  9.1 billion, up 11%

The streamlining of our geographic perimeter is complete and the strength of our franchises is beginning to shine through, explained Wilson. As a result, we have upgraded and brought forward our growth ambitions, and are now targeting greater than 5% growth in operating EPS from 2018.

Together with our targets of 8 billion of cumulative remittances in 2016-2018 inclusive and increase in dividend payout ratio to 55-60% by 2020, we remain confident that we can continue to deliver cash flow plus growth for our shareholders.

As for geography, with its exit from certain markets came Avivas investment elsewhere. In Vietnam, for instance, the insurer acquired 100% ownership of its joint venture with VietinBank. Still in Asia, Aviva recently received regulatory approval for its joint venture with Tencent and Hillhouse in Hong Kong.

In terms of performance, major market Singapore delivered operating profit of 110 million, an increase of 5% in local currency terms. The same cant be said about Canada, which Wilson described as having had a very challenging 2017, with operating profit falling to 46 million.

Back on its home turf, UK insurance operating profit rose 13% to 2.2 billion; operating profit from annuities and equity release grew 11% to 725 million; and in long-term savings, operating profit climbed 30% to 185 million. In nearby Ireland, where it is acquiring Friends First, Aviva saw an 18% increase in operating profit to 86 million.

Other major markets are France, Poland, and Italy.

Aviva has broad-based growth, with six of our eight major markets delivering double-digit profit improvement, said Wilson. We now have a collection of strong and growing businesses.

Related stories:
The police say that the insurance policy of the driver contained an exclusion for commuting but fellow Twitter users branded the force pathetic and a joke, The Daily Mirror reports.

West Yorkshire Police Roads Policing unit tweeted that they had stopped the driver on their way home from work on a motorway near Huddersfield.

The police also noted the driver has an incorrect address on the policy.

Seized and reported, the tweet finished.

A tweet-storm followed with users lambasting both the policy and the police with one user stating: If you insure your car then you should be insured for driving your car, having different categories of usage with one being driving to the job that lets me pay the compulsory car insurance is a joke!

Regarding the above comments, for obvious reasons we cannot discuss this specific incident in detail, however we always ensure the law is enforced fairly and proportionately, the force later tweeted. If using the vehicle for a class of use not covered, then the vehicle is uninsured for that journey.

The police pointed those questioning its decision to the Motor Insurance Bureau which offered details on exclusions that consumers may be unaware of.

Remember, always read the fine print!

Related stories:
This is just the latest example of Bermuda companies being an area that companies want to get into, whether its for diversification or whether its to add some earnings potential in different lines of business, he explained.

On the other hand, Schneider sees the changing state of the reinsurance market as one catalyst for the mergers and acquisitions happening recently.

The reinsurance business used to be a good, high margin business and thats been competed away with a lot of the capital market activity that weve seen come into the reinsurance space, he said. The market for reinsurers has become especially tough for small companies as they are being consolidated, with larger players looking to reduce the amount of reinsurers they utilize in their businesses.

Though the deal is done, AXA and XL still have to clear some hurdles. Ratings agency AM Best is reviewing the financial strength ratings of XL Group. And combining two companies also presents a challenge.

The cultures of the organizations are similar, said Schneider, but he added, there are differences between how they operate their businesses, so that will definitely take some time and adjustment to get them on the same page. Picking the stronger brand, for example, is one decision the partners will have to make.

M&A activity isnt over yet, according to Fitch, as the US market experiences a shift in tax reform.

You can continue to see other opportunities, particularly looking at US companies that are becoming a bit stronger from a standpoint of the better economics with lower tax rates, said Schneider. I wouldnt be surprised to see some other US companies deciding that they want to do some acquisitions with some of the additional monies that they may have as a result of lower taxes.

Related stories:
As a result of the sale, a NZ$8.5m ($7.9m) gain will be realised by Suncorp New Zealand in the second half of June 2018 financial year, the firm said in a statement.

Suncorp originally purchased the stake through its Vero Insurance New Zealand subsidiary as it looked to take-over the NZ-based insurer.

This move was shot down by the New Zealand Commerce Commission, which decided that the merger would lessen competition in the market as the second and third ranked insurers from market share in home, contents and motor, looked to combined.

Bain Capital now becomes the largest shareholder in Tower as the insurer said it looks forward to working with the firm.

Tower remains focused on continuing to improve performance and accelerating its transformation into a digital challenger, Tower said in a statement.

Related stories:
AIA thanks our outgoing chairman, Chris Swift, for his stewardship and dedication these past two years, said John Degnan, president and CEO of AIA. We are very excited to have Tony serve as our next chairman. Tonys decades of experience in the industry and his forward-looking, innovative leadership at Munich Re will be an immense addition to AIA. I look forward to working with him as we navigate the most important matters facing todays property-casualty industry.

The AIA is an important partner to the property-casualty reinsurance industry, and is uniquely positioned to help us better manage the pressing issues that impact our business and our customers, Kuczinski said. I look forward to being a part of those solutions in my new role.

Kuczinski has more than three decades of industry experience. He has been with Munich Re since 1989, and was named president and CEO of Munich Reinsurance America in 2008, after serving as president of insurance company operations and president of the specialty markets division. He is CEO of Munich Res US P&C operations and also serves as the chairman of the board of Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance Group and American Modern Insurance Group, both Munich Re companies.

In addition, he has also served as a board member and chair of the Reinsurance Association of America, a board member and chair of The Institutes, and an executive committee member of the St. Johns University School of Risk Management Advisory Board. He is a Certified Public Accountant and a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, and has completed the Advanced Executive Education Program in conjunction with the American Institute of CPCU and the Wharton School.

Related stories:
A new contractors equipment form will be made available through the tool for agents to easily select coverage options and deductibles that meet the specific needs of their clients.

The rollout of our contractors equipment tool means our agents can issue quotes for contractors equipment clients within minutes, said Hanover marine president Paul J. Butler. This helps agents provide the high-quality service demanded by the construction industry. With the competitive rates and broad coverage options offered through this online system, were able to help our agent partners better serve their clients.

The Hanovers marine products are offered through a nationwide network of marine specialists, who are supported by dedicated claim and loss control experts, a release said.

Related stories:

The Hanover, USI Affinity to offer enhanced insurance for lawyers

Hanover elects new member to board of directors


The most devastating impacts of a data breach can only be avoided by both working to prevent a breach and by planning and preparing a response before an incident occurs, said Jerry Thompson, senior vice president, of Intersections. Our service is not expensive. It costs $3,500 a year, which is an annually renewable fee  and for that you get a mixture of analogue and digital services.

We provide a Data Breach Readiness workbook, which guides companies on how to set up internal teams and how to manage every category of data within the company to protect against breach. We also provide digital services, which includes a monthly external network scan with cyber security company Delta Risk LLC, a Chertoff Group organization.

Equifax was breached due to a vulnerability in the companys external network. With the expertise of Delta Risk, the Data Breach Readiness solution sends SMEs a monthly report, highlighting any vulnerabilities in their networks, the severity of the exposure, and how to fix it.

The solution also provides dark net monitoring that scans for sensitive business information which may indicate a potential breach or threat of a breach. Training and tools are also provided to teach employees how to handle sensitive information and reduce the risk of a breach.

We believe training employees is the best solution for preventing data breach. Its the first and most important line of defense, Thompson told Insurance Business. The Data Breach Readiness solution includes interactive desktop training around cyber security and data hygiene. Its all about building employee best practices into a companys DNA to help them avoid the data incursions that are happening more and more frequently.

Data Breach Readiness was launched in the US in February. Intersections hopes to roll the solution out in Canada during summer 2018.
ICW Group Insurance Companies, the largest privately held insurance company domiciled in California, has announced that it has begun writing workers compensation insurance in five new states: Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota and Missouri.

ICW Group is excited to offer a more competitive work comp option for Midwest and Mid-Atlantic agents and brokers, said Kevin Prior, ICW Group president and CEO. Our expansion provides agents the opportunity to deliver their clients ICW Groups hallmark of excellence and affordability. They can also capitalize on our recently expanded underwriting appetite that includes new lower minimum premium requirements across hundreds of top class codes.
Another snowy, blowy noreaster threatened a new round of power outages as it began moving up the East Coast on Wednesday, causing officials to close schools and government offices and raising concerns for utility customers still trying to bounce back from an earlier storm.

A wintry mix of snow and light rain started falling early Wednesday in many areas, but the precipitation was expected to soon turn to all snow in most areas and then continue through the day.

The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning that stretched from eastern Pennsylvania to most of New England, which was due to be in effect through Thursday morning.

All in all, it hasnt been a terrible winter, and it seems that March is always our worst month for major storms, Chris Martin said as he prepared to leave his Toms River, New Jersey, home and head to work at an information technology firm in Philadelphia.

Martin had already arranged to stay in Philadelphia overnight, preferring not to take a chance with the expected treacherous road conditions.

I keep telling myself spring is tight around the corner, Martin said with a laugh. If Mother Nature wants to give us one last blast of winter, thats up to her.

Utility workers took advantage of milder temperatures and sunshine Tuesday in their scramble to restore electricity to thousands of customers around the Northeast. More than 90,000 homes and businesses remained without power Wednesday, mostly in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

The outages turned to outrage for a New Jersey man whose home had been without electricity since Friday. Robert Winter, 63, threatened to kidnap a utility company employee and blow up a substation, according to police in Vernon. He was charged with making terroristic threats.

Transportation departments in Philadelphia and Boston loaded up salt trucks and treated roads Tuesday, and some airlines waived ticket change fees for airports in the storms projected path, such as Newark, Philadelphia, Boston and New Yorks JFK.

Amtrak canceled some train service Wednesday, and regional rail trains in Philadelphia were operating on a weekend schedule.

School districts and municipal operations around Pennsylvania and Connecticut were closed for the day. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf declared states of emergency.

The National Weather Service urged people to stay off the roads to allow emergency and road crews to do their jobs. Officials advised homeowners to be careful while shoveling, saying the weight of it has been known to cause heart attacks.

Associated Press writer Bruce Shipkowski, in Toms River, New Jersey, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New Jersey Pennsylvania
A stand-off between Britain and the European Union over the future of Londons vast financial services industry is shaping up as one of the key Brexit battlegrounds of this year.

The EU said on Wednesday that there will be no special deal for one of Britains most important industries, delivering a blow to hopes of a trade agreement that maintains current flows of staff and services.

But British government officials believe that the EU will change its mind, partly because European countries risk damaging their own economies if they are cut off from its markets.

The financial services sector, which accounts for about 12 percent of Britains economic output and pays more tax than any other industry, potentially has a lot to lose from the end of unfettered access to the EU market of 440 million people.

Below are some scenarios for financial services access to the EU after Brexit:

BESPOKE DEAL

Like the British government, the City of London wants a free-trade deal with the EU, granting access to each others financial markets based on broad acceptance of each others rules. This would allow both sides some leeway to set their own rules to achieve those goals.

A trade deal in financial services on this scale has never been done before and could take years to agree.

The EU has said Britain cannot continue to have free access to the single market because it has ruled out continuing to meet its membership conditions  chief among them the free movement of workers from other EU countries to Britain.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA

If Britain were to join the European Economic Area, dubbed the Norway option, it would have access to the EU single market in return for accepting free movement of EU citizens and contributing to the blocs budget, but with no say over the EU rules it must implement.

Joining Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in the EEA is not seen as a viable option for Britain, given that the government has ruled out free movement of EU citizens, continued contributions to the EU budget and acceptance of EU rules it might not agree with.

CANADA

Canada took several years to negotiate its CETA free trade deal with the EU and it only has a minimal section on financial services. If a Canadian financial firm wants to do business in the EU it must set up a presence inside the bloc and comply with EU regulations.

The chapter on financial services says the EU and Canada must treat each others sectors equally, but a prudential carve-out allows each side to protect consumers and financial services providers while maintaining financial stability.

But the EU is under pressure not to offer Britain more favorable terms than it already has with countries such as Canada. This is because, under the terms of their deals with the EU, their trade relationships will have to be upgraded in line with any terms offered to Britain.

EQUIVALENCE

The EU allows access to foreign financial firms if it deems their domestic rules to be equivalent or as robust as the blocs own regulation. This designation is solely in the gift of the EU and can be withdrawn at a months notice.

The City of London financial district says equivalence as applied by the EU is unworkable over the long term for a financial center of Britains size because that would make it a rule taker of EU regulation.

WTO

Many banks are working on a worst-case scenario of having to fall back on World Trade Organization (WTO) rules for trade with the EU. This would rely on a system of tariffs that do not adequately cover financial services.

Under a so-called hard Brexit, Britain would have to set tariffs on its goods and services, which could take years to complete. The General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, is the WTO agreement governing trade in services.

That means Britains right to export financial services into the EU could be downgraded to match countries such as India or China to keep within WTO rules. Similar restrictions would arise on EU financial services sold to Britain.

(Editing by David Goodman)

Related:

UKs Prime Minister Defends Decision to Reject EU Passporting for Insurers, Banks

Topics Legislation Europe London Uk Canada Brexit
Its nearly impossible to read the news these days without seeing headlines of allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace. The news is in turn prompting employers to wonder what role, if any, insurance plays in handling claims should they arise.

As Marie-France Gelot, senior vice president and insurance and claims counsel in insurance broker Locktons Northeast operation, notes, sexual harassment claims can impact not only a companys reputation but also its bottom line.

Typically such claims would be covered under an employment practices liability insurance policy (EPLI) or a hybrid private company directors and officers liability (D&O) policy, although coverage may vary considerably from policy to policy.

As with any claim, the specific factual circumstances surrounding the matter will be critical in determining whether coverage is ultimately triggered, Gelot writes in a white paper, Sexual Harassment: Is Your Company Exposed?

The term sexual harassment is used widely today, but not all allegations meet the legal definition from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that says that sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individuals employment, unreasonably interferes with an individuals work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Gelot outlines the legal procedures for filing a sexual harassment claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a process that must begin with a claimant filing a charge with the EEOC within 180 days of the alleged event. A claimant cannot file a lawsuit against an employer until and unless the EEOC says so.

The broker points out that even though the bulk of such allegations never make it to trial, there can still be substantial costs.

Whether or not a claimant is able to actually make a case proving that sexual harassment occurred, the reality is that the bulk of liability faced by companies accused of such conduct is not generated after a jury trial, she writes. It is generated by attorneys fees in litigation, win or lose. In the current environment, this is a critical point; any perceived harassment can result in six-figure liability for a company, regardless of whether a judge or jury would ultimately find the harassment unlawful.

In her white paper, Gelot explains specific claim scenarios where the line between insured versus uninsured acts can be confusing. For example, a customer of a retail chain alleges being sexually harassed by a store employee while in the store and suffering damages. This would likely constitute a covered claim under the companys EPLI policy, assuming that policy had third-party coverage. EPLI policies cover companies and their employees, including of directors, officers and senior management, for claims brought by past, present or future employees alleging wrongful employment acts and decisions. Many, but not all, EPLI policies cover claims brought by third parties, like clients, customers or vendors. These policies would provide defense costs coverage and indemnity coverage for the company and employee.

Insurers also look at where the sexual harassment took place and if the employee was acting in the course and scope of employment. For example if an employee alleges that her manager sexually harassed her in a bar on a Saturday evening during a social event, the insurance carrier would question whether the manager was on the job during the social event to determine whether coverage applied.

Employers should also be aware of frequent exclusions like the conduct exclusions for intentional acts and the bodily injury exclusion, which may broadly exclude coverage for assault and battery. Since the definition of battery means unwanted or unpermitted touching, this limits sexual harassment coverage to nonphysical sexual harassment only, even if that is not explicitly stated in the policy wording. However, EPLI policies that do exclude bodily injury typically contain an exception for claims alleging emotional distress, mental anguish and humiliation

Policies could also preclude coverage for intentional or deliberate fraudulent or criminal acts.

Gelot also explores vicarious liability of a business for acts of its employees, situations where an employer and employee may be at odds, and issues of indemnification that may vary by state.

Due to the coverage of recent sexual harassment cases, employees and employers are paying more attention to such claims. For now, Gelot says corporations should examine their own policies to ensure they have the right coverage.

It remains to be seen if EPLI insurers will react to the momentous changes occurring in the national conversation on sexual harassment in the workplace by limiting the scope of the coverage or making it more expensive, she says.

Source: Sexual Harassment: Is Your Company Exposed?

Topics Claims Commercial Lines Business Insurance
ICW Group Insurance Companies, a group of property and casualty carriers, is now writing workers compensation insurance in five new primary states  Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota and Missouri, the companys regional and national presence.

The company has expanded the scope of two current territory managers to oversee these additional states. Keith Guccione, head of ICW Groups Midwest region will oversee Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota and Missouri. Beverly Bisazza, head of ICW Groups Northeast region, will oversee Maryland.

Kevin Prior, president and CEO of ICW Group, said the expansion coincides with the companys recently expanded underwriting appetite that includes new lower minimum premium requirements across hundreds of top class codes.

While licensed nationwide, ICW Group now actively writes workers compensation insurance in 21 primary states through a network of appointed independent agents and brokers.

Based in San Diego, ICW Group Insurance Companies quotes more than $3 billion annually, representing a group of workers compensation, property and auto insurance carriers, including Insurance Company of the West and Explorer Insurance Company.

Topics Workers' Compensation
Wall Street banks dont have much to celebrate in whats probably the final version of a bill easing financial rules that is headed for a U.S. Senate vote.

Late Wednesday, Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, proposed some last-minute changes to his overhaul of the Dodd-Frank Act. He specified that foreign banks such as Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc wont benefit from a reprieve in his legislation thats intended to help regional U.S. lenders.

Crapos revisions  filed in an amendment  also make clear that only custody banks, including State Street Corp. and Bank of New York Mellon Corp., will win relief from a key post-crisis capital requirement. Citigroup Inc. and other lenders had been pushing lawmakers to expand a provision in the bill so they would also get a break.

And Crapo declined to make changes to the Volcker Rule that firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had been pressing for.

Another recipient of bad news is Equifax Inc., the credit company whose 2017 hack put millions of consumers at risk of identity theft. Crapos amendment would require it and competitors to provide free credit monitoring to some consumers after a breach.

But Equifax and its competitors could benefit from a separate section Crapo added to his bill. The provision affects Fair Isaac Corp., the creator the FICO credit score that is crucial to consumers getting a mortgage. Crapos revision would direct mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to use credit scores offered by other companies, instead of exclusively relying on FICO assessments. Equifax and other credit-reporting companies own VantageScore Solutions LLC, a potential rival to Fair Isaac.

Massive Overhaul

The bill broadly marks the biggest overhaul of Dodd-Frank since it became law eight years ago. Crapos legislation is largely aimed at giving small and regional banks a reprieve from regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, including raising the threshold for banks subject to aggressive oversight because theyre considered too-big-to-fail. To-be-sure, it does include some goodies for Wall Street.

The legislations backers  including at least a dozen Senate Democrats  say smaller firms didnt cause the meltdown and that burdensome rules are preventing them from making loans that would spur economic growth. But progressives, including Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren, have repeatedly framed the bill as an assault on consumers that will undermine crucial reforms.

The Senate is expected to vote on Crapos bill as soon as this week, with lawmakers beginning the process of considering amendments Thursday. While dozens of amendments have already been offered, Crapos proposed revisions are by far the most important. His legislation is a compromise, not rolling rules back as much as the finance industry would like and doing little to help Wall Street.

It remains to be seen whether Crapos efforts will win the backing of House Republicans, who must also approve the bill for it to reach President Donald Trumps desk. Last year, the House passed much more sweeping legislation that would rip up much of Dodd-Frank. If some House GOP members demand a more aggressive rollback, Senate Democrats could walk away, causing the legislation to fail.

House Headwinds?

In a sign that there still could be issues that need to be ironed out, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, said in a Wednesday interview that there are about four dozen bills that the House has already passed that he would like to see added to Crapos legislation.

The version Crapo released Wednesday puts to rest questions about whether the biggest foreign banks doing business in the U.S.  such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays and HSBC Holdings Plc  would piggyback on the major break mid-sized lenders are poised to get from post-crisis oversight.

It clarified that foreign banks with more than $100 billion in consolidated U.S. assets will still be subject to aggressive monitoring by the Federal Reserve, echoing what Fed officials including Vice Chairman Randal Quarles have said in recent public remarks.

The move follows criticism from some Democrats that Crapos legislation could free non-U.S. banks from stress testing and other burdens  leaving them mostly deregulated, according to Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. One of the key requirements for the largest foreign banks was to set up intermediate holding companies in the U.S., and the latest version of the bill keeps such a requirement in place.

Intense Lobbying

Industry groups have been lobbying right up to an expected Senate vote to persuade lawmakers to amend a provision in the bill on whats known as the supplemental leverage ratio, a change that could free up billions of dollars for Wall Street banks. The amendment Crapo released Thursday indicates the campaign failed, as custody banks such as Bank of New York Mellon and State Street that safeguard assets for their customers remain the only firms getting relief.

Still, the Fed is separately working to relax the capital requirement in a way that would benefit more lenders. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in a report earlier this week that theres a 50 percent chance that the Fed will relax the rule for Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase & Co. should Congress pass Crapos bill.

For years, big banks like Goldman Sachs have been trying to relax the Volcker Rules ban on proprietary trading. While most of their focus has been on regulators, one change theyve sought from lawmakers is reducing the number of agencies with authority over the rule. That, in turn, could make it easier to soften its impact. Crapo has declined to provide such relief in his legislation.
The Texas Supreme Court has disagreed with the decision of a lower court to exclude, without having watched it, a companys surveillance video of an injured employee in a workers compensation case. Because it found the lower court erred in its handling of the surveillance video, the Court reversed the ruling favoring the injured worker and remanded the case for a new trial.

Diamond Offshore Services Limited and Diamond Offshore Services Company V. Willie David Williams involves a personal injury suit arising from a workplace accident on an offshore drilling rig.

Willie David Williams was working as a senior mechanic for the Diamond companies when he injured his back while working alone with a large and heavy piece of equipment on the rig. He subsequently had two back surgeries and continues to suffer back pain and related neurological issues, the opinion states. His treating physician has declared him totally disabled and Williams has never returned to work.

Williams sued Diamond under the Jones Act in 2011 alleging that Diamond was negligent and the drilling rig was an unseaworthy vessel, the Supreme Courts March 2 opinion states.

A functional capacity evaluation (FCE) Williams underwent to assess his physical abilities after he filed suit suggested Williams was exaggerating his symptoms and was physically able to do more than he thought he could.

Based on the FCE, Diamond pursued a defensive theory Williams was overstating his pain and downplaying his ability to return to some form of work, Justice Eva Guzman wrote in the Courts published opinion.

The company subsequently had Williams surveilled and recorded his actions to support its theory.

In December 2012seventeen months after the FCE and nearly four years after Williamss second surgeryan investigator recorded him for about an hour over two consecutive days while he was engaged in limited physical activities. Prominent date-and-time stamps appear on all recorded segments, the opinion states.

The recordings showed Williams performing various physical activities for short periods of time such as operating a mini-excavator, bending over numerous times to pick up debris and discard it, and working on a truck while seated on a stool.

Diamond offered the surveillance video at trial and Williams objected, contending impeachment would be improper because Williams admitted he could engage in the activities portrayed, just not for an extended time period and not without pain. He also argued the was not a fair representation of his disabilities or abilities.'

Williams asserted that the video was prejudicial and misleading and that it did not show the copious amounts of pain medication he must take to be able to perform these activities, and the amount of pain he suffered following physical activities.

In the written opinion, Justice Guzman explained that while video imagery can be useful and highly persuasive when submitted as evidence at trial, it sometimes can be misleading.

Because video evidence can be highly persuasive, when objected to, the trial court must carefully evaluate the factors in Texas Rule of Evidence 403, which requires balancing the probative value of the evidence against concerns such as unfair prejudice, the potential to mislead the jury, and needless presentation of cumulative evidence, Guzman wrote.

Under rule 403, before evidence can be excluded countervailing concerns must be found to substantially outweigh the evidences probative value.

In this case, without watching the video, the trial judge initially declined to admit it into evidence but allowed Diamond to hold it in reserve in the event that circumstance at trial provided an opening for its admittance. During the trial, however, the judge declined three times Diamonds request to submit the video as evidence.

The trial jury found in favor of Williams, awarding almost $10 million in lost earning capacity, medical expenses, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and physical impairment.

The court of appeals affirmed the ruling and determined the trial court had not erred in excluding the video. But the appeals court decision was not unanimous. The dissent asserted that the trial court was wrong to bar the video without having watched it.

The Texas Supreme Court agreed with the appellate dissent.

Citing Rule 403, Guzman said the video should not have been excluded. Guzman wrote: Proper exercise of discretion here required the trial judge to watch the video. Diamond sought to give the jury a visual representation of Williams performing activities he said caused him pain. The probative value of the evidence derives directly from Williamss appearance as he performed the surveilled tasks. Fully assessing the probative value of this visual was impossible based solely on the parties descriptions.

Instead of watching the video, the trial judge relied on counsels descriptions and arguments. The trial judge should have assessed the video for herself to determine whether the jury might have been misled by some of the segments, the Supreme Court found.

The Court concluded that the surveillance video should not have been excluded under Rule 403, and the trial court abused its discretion and harmed the case by doing so.

The case was reversed and remanded for a new trial.

Topics Lawsuits Texas Workers' Compensation
Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill into law that allows ridesharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to operate statewide.

The legislation proposed by Rep. David Faulkner, a Republican, and Sen. Bobby Singleton, a Democrat, will charge ridesharing companies a fee to be given to the Public Service Commission. The commission will regulate companies, issue permits and implement discrimination and substance abuse policies.

Alabama is the 45th state to pass ridesharing legislation. Currently, Uber and Lyft run in Alabamas urban centers under city laws.

Ivey arrived to the signing at the Alabama State Capitol in a ridesharing car. She was joined by advocates, drivers and university student government leaders. Price McGiffert from the University of Alabama and Dane Block from Auburn University said students hail ridesharing apps every day.

Ivey said the law would mobilize visitors and Alabamians, especially in rural areas.

We are paving the way for everyone in Alabama to have a ride just with the touch of a button, regardless of where you might be in Alabama, Ivey said.

Ivey said expanding ridesharing companies would create job opportunities and give a boost to local economies as people use the service to get to restaurants or late-night events. Renee Stevenson, a ridesharing driver and retiree, said she likes the flexible schedule and locations.

Ivey added that by sharing rides with a professional driver, Uber and Lyft reduce the possibility of drunken driving.

The same bill did not pass the Senate last year.

It will go into effect on July 1.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation Alabama Sharing Economy Ridesharing
A Honolulu nurse has been awarded nearly $4 million after an image of a noose was taped to her locker and a racist note was left in her hospital mailbox.

A jury on Wednesday awarded former Queens Medical Center nurse Ellen Harris $630,000 in general damages and $3.2 million in punitive damages after finding that she was harassed and discriminated against for reporting suspected wrongdoing in 2011.

The jury found that race was a substantial motivating factor in the harassment and that the conditions created a hostile work environment.

All 12 jurors just said, `This is not Hawaii, said Carl Varady, Harris attorney. Were the Aloha State. Were not going down the pathway of hate.

Jurors were told that Harris, the only black nurse at the time in the medical intensive care unit, reported concerns to management that a co-worker was stealing narcotics intended for patients. Two other nurses eventually reported the same drug-use suspicions to management, Varaday said.

After Harris reported her initial patient-safety concerns to management, the harassment against her intensified, and she found the racist note in her mailbox the next day, Varaday said.

Queens Medical Center spokesman Cedric Yamanaka said the center is disappointed in the verdict and will be filing an appeal.

The case was one of two discrimination cases in Hawaii filed by African-American workers that included the use of a noose.

In the other case, Hawaiian Airlines worker Timothy Degrate filed a lawsuit claiming he complained to management for months about a hostile work environment, including racial harassment.

Despite the complaints, he found a noose fashioned from rope hanging on the locker next to his in August 2016.

Hawaiian Airlines said in a statement in January that an independent investigation of Degrates allegations was unable to verify actions by specific individuals. It also said the airline was committed to maintaining a fair and safe work environment.

The lawsuit is pending.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Honolulu City Council has approved a $1 million settlement with a woman who sued the city for injuries she sustained when a coconut tree struck her in 2012.

Ana Krogh-Doyle was a competitive surfer before being struck by the tree at Kuhio Beach Park, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

The then-44-year-old received fractures to her spine, ribs and face and sustained a head injury. Surgeons inserted metal rods in her back to stabilize her spine.

Because of her injuries, she could not return to work as an American Airlines passenger service representative, which involves lifting heavy luggage.

Krogh-Doyles attorney, Wayne Kekina, said the tree fell and hit the roof of a restroom, then rolled off the roof and crushed his client.

Krogh-Doyles lawsuit said the tree was malnourished and showed signs of declining health for several years, which should have been known to any qualified tree professional.

Parks and Recreation Director Michele Nekotas said the city hires certified arborists to perform inspections and inform the city if theres an issue with a tree.

The citys corporation counsel recommended settling with Krogh-Doyle.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
What Is an Integrated Circuit Card?

An integrated circuit card, or chip card, is a payment card that uses an embedded microchip to store data in addition to (or instead of) a traditional magnetic stripe. Integrated circuit cards are made of plastic or a similar material and are most often associated with specific credit cards known as EMV or chip-&-pin credit and debit cards.

Key Takeaways Integrated circuit cards contain a microchip that stores the cardholder's information, the most common being EMV or chip-&-pin credit or debit cards.

Integrated circuit cards are primarily used in credit cards and debit cards but are frequently used in other settings, such as employee identification cards.

These cards are a deterrent against identity theft as they avoid using the magnetic stripe of a card, which increases the ease of data skimming for identity thieves.

Understanding an Integrated Circuit Card

Integrated circuit cards allow the storage of information on the card itself. A consumer's information is accessed when the payment card is used in a card reader. Combined with other security measures such as a PIN or password, the chip allows the secure transmission of personal and financial information.

EMVCo manages the technology standards behind integrated circuit payment cards. These types of cards are also known as "smart cards" due to their integrated circuit chip. Though they were initially used in Europe and Asia, their use has spread to the United States. EMV has become a standard in payment card security technology and has been deployed by financial institutions such as banks and credit card providers.

While integrated circuit cards are often associated with credit and debit cards, they are also used in a variety of other settings. For example, employees may be assigned an identification card that they must scan in order to be allowed inside a secure building.

How Integrated Circuit Cards Are Used to Combat Identity Theft

Magnetic stripe cards have been frequently duplicated, allowing identity thieves to create copies of the original card, as well as sell the account information they have illegally accessed. The use of the embedded chip in a payment card can reduce such fraud as it makes skimming a less effective means of accessing account information.

Transactions with an integrated circuit card require the chip to be inserted into the chip reader, where available, thus making the magnetic stripe a backup feature to be used only when a chip reader is not available. Since fraudsters cannot access the information secured by integrated circuit cards as easily as a magnetic stripe, they're not able to authenticate their illicit transactions. Many integrated circuit cards also have a contactless payment method, whereby the chip can be read over a short distance, further avoiding the use of a magnetic stripe.

As a result of this anti-theft technology, integrated circuit cards are seeing more use at retail locations as more chip readers are introduced to accommodate this form of payment security. The cards typically include a magnetic stripe as well to allow transactions to be completed if a chip reader is not available at a retailer's store.
What Is IRS Publication 590: Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)?

IRS Publication 590, entitled "Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)," refers to an IRS document that outlines rules for individual retirement accounts (IRAs). The document, published by the Internal Revenue Service, provides information on how to set up an IRA, how to contribute to it, how much may be contributed, how to treat distributions, and how to take tax deductions for contributions made to IRAs.

IRS Publication 590 also provides information on penalties that taxpayers might face if IRA regulations are not followed properly.

Key Takeaways IRS Publication 590 explains the tax rules and guidelines for individual retirement accounts (IRAs).

This IRS document also includes information on how to set up an IRA, how much you can contribute, and more.

IRS Publication 590 is in two partsPart A and Part B, which cover IRAs and distributions.

Understanding IRS Publication 590: Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)

While IRS Publication 590 specifies "individual retirement arrangements," that term is meant to broadly represent a wide variety of individual retirement accounts, individual retirement annuities, and other trusts or custodial accounts that act as a personal savings plan that provides tax advantages for setting aside money for retirement.

IRS Publication 590 has two parts. Part A covers contributions to individual retirement arrangements, and Part B covers distributions from individual retirement arrangements. There are significant differences between the various retirement accounts covered in IRS Publication 590, including Roth IRAs and traditional IRAs, especially when it comes to the tax treatment of contributions. The publication covers the following:

Who can open a traditional IRA or Roth IRA

When a traditional IRA or Roth IRA may be opened

The definition of a Roth IRA

How to open a traditional or Roth IRA

How much may be contributed

When contributions can be made

How much may be deducted

IRA inheritance rules

Moving of retirement assets

Asset withdrawal rules

Acts that trigger penalties or additional taxes

IRS Publication 590: Individual Retirement Arrangements: New Items

IRS Publication 590 often outlines new rules or provisions, such as those that offer relief to disaster victims. For example, in the tax year 2017, it named a qualified disaster tax relief provision that covers "tax-favored withdrawals and repayments from certain retirement plans for taxpayers who suffered economic losses" as a result of Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey, as well as Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and the California wildfires.

Other items for 2017 included:

New information for the treatment of unrelated business income in an IRA

A modified AGI limit for traditional IRA contributions

A modified AGI limit for certain married individuals

A modified AGI limit for Roth IRA contributions

In 2018, there were increases to the AGI limits across the board, as well as an extended rollover period for certain plan loan offsets and a disclosure disallowing recharacterization of conversions made in 2018 or later.

There are significant differences between the various retirement accounts covered in IRS Publication 590, including Roth IRAs and traditional IRAs, especially when it comes to the tax treatment of contributions.
By Padraig Hoare

The Department of Finance has insisted steady progress is being made in implementing recommendations made in the Cost of Insurance Working Group (CIWG) report, following criticism that no meaningful change has occurred.

The department was responding after the Alliance For Insurance Reform group, which is made up of 20 business organisations, fiercely criticised the negligible pace of progress on the CIWG report.

The group also called for a statutory financial conduct authority to be established to supervise the insurance industry, which was rolling in money, on behalf of policy holders. It said despite the recommendations, there had been no reform of personal injury payouts.

Following the CIWGs Motor Insurance Report in early 2017, it then published a report on employer and public liability in the context of the cost of business insurance in January, headed by Minister of State, Michael DArcy.

The report called for a review of damages in personal injuries as well as tackling fraud and exaggerated claims.

A spokeswoman for the department said: Work on the CIWG is ongoing with steady progress being made in a number of areas. Minister DArcy recognises the importance of this work continuing apace and acknowledges the impact that high insurance premiums is having on the business sector.

She said there was a need for the insurance industry to be more robust in challenging dubious claims.

Industry representative body Insurance Ireland said it agreed the pace of reform was not satisfactory. A spokesman said: We fully agree that the pace of reform on tackling the cost of claims needs to be accelerated.
By Eamon Quinn

The Government could do more to close off loopholes that multinationals use to avoid paying tax, the European Commission has said in a report that again thrusts Ireland back in the spotlight over the tax affairs of foreign-owned firms.

In its latest report, the commission urges the Government to broaden the tax base to offset the exposure of finances to volatile corporate revenues which depend on a handful of multinationals.

Highlighting cuts in the income taxes in recent budgets, the commission said that revenue-raising measures such as the hike in commercial property transaction tax, announced by Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe last October, was pro-cyclical and cannot be relied on when the economy turns down.

It said there is some evidence that parts of Irelands corporate tax regime, including charges allowed for intellectual property, were overly aggressive and favour multinationals.

And further changes in the global tax rules to restrict tax structures used by multinationals, as well as Brexit, could deliver economic shocks to Ireland.

As shown in a study, Irelands high inward and outward FDI (foreign direct investment) stock can only partly be explained by real economic activities taking place in Ireland, said the commission.

The high level of dividend payments and, in particular, charges for using intellectual property suggest that the countrys tax rules are used by companies that engage in aggressive tax planning, it said.

Banks have the room to tackle their elevated levels of non-performing loans by writing down debt and by striking sustainable debt deals, it said.

On other taxes, the Government should scrap the different tax levels levied on petrol and diesel.

It repeated the findings of its earlier reports that the affordability of housing was a matter of concern, but again said prices did not seem overvalued.

Overall, the report is upbeat on the outlook of the economy. Predicting GDP growth of 4.4% this year and 3.1% in 2019, the economy continues to grow at a solid pace while domestic activity continues to thrive.

And it said the State performs well against the EU social scorecard even though the healthcare and homelessness show significant room for improvement, and the healthcare system is costly.
The chairwoman of the Institute of Directors (IoD) in the UK has temporarily stepped aside after a report claimed she bullied staff and made derogatory and racist remarks.

Lady Barbara Judge, 71, is facing 41 allegations against her, it is believed.

The senior businesswoman told The Times she had "voluntarily decided to step aside temporarily from my role as chair and contest these allegations and the flawed process conducted so far".

It is understood that the report, commissioned by Dame Joan Stringer, found that Lady Barbara had bullied staff and made racist comments.

Hill Dickinson lawyer Caroline Prosser, who compiled the final report, told the Press Association that it had been handed to the IoD.

An IoD spokesman said: "Our human resources department was made aware of a number of allegations from staff members concerning the conduct of non-executive members of our board.

"Senior Independent Council Member Dame Joan Stringer commissioned a full investigation into the allegations which was carried out by independent experts from the Hill Dickinson law firm.

"Their detailed report and findings will be discussed by members of the IoD Council on Thursday afternoon."

After a long career in law and banking, Lady Judge became the IoD's first female chair in 2015.
By Padraig Hoare

Increased Garda investment against cybercrime will see the introduction of dedicated regional units within the next two years, a conference on cybersecurity has heard.

The Zero Day Con event at the Convention Centre in Dublin heard from Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan, who heads up the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau.

Cybercriminals, by skimming, phishing, and vishing, are gathering information on us all the time. I have this big fear that theres some group out there gathering all this information for the D-day when theyre going to hit us all, he said.

Chief Supt Lordan said increased Garda investment would lead to better defences against cybercrime, which is said to be more lucrative globally than the international illegal drugs trade.

We will have a regional liaison unit within the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau which will assist the different Garda units around the country. By the end of this year, I will have a fraud prevention office, which will be primarily focused on the cyber fraud end of things.

We have a very good crime prevention officer in each division but the challenge is to help them to keep up with this type of technology. Some things will still need to be done centrally. An Garda Siochana is taking this threat seriously, and asks all victims of this type of crime to come forward.

The conference, organised by Cork firm Smarttech247, also heard from charge daffaires at the US Embassy in Dublin, Reece Smyth, as well as fraudster turned cybersecurity expert, Tony Sales.

Smarttech247 CEO Ronan Murphy, tech investor Pat Phelan, and IBM Security vice president of development, Mary OBrien, also spoke at the event, which saw hundreds of delegates attend from around the world.

Other topics at the conference included the upcoming major EU data protection legislation, the General Data Protection Regulation.

The legislation, which comes into law in May, is designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe and to protect citizens data privacy.

If organisations fail to comply with the regulation, they can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover, or 20m.
Disability groups are warning the government that ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities needs to be backed up with action.

The Dail approved the ratification last night, 11 years after it was first signed by Ireland.

Ireland is the last EU country to formally approve the convention, which is designed to ensure people with disabilities have equal rights in all areas of life.

Groups are now calling to make sure it will lead to positive changes for people with disabilities here.

Senator John Dolan, Chief Executive of the Disability Federation of Ireland, says ratification alone isn't enough.

"When you ratify the convention, you're giving an undertaking that you're going to have a progressive programme of implementation," he said.

He said that such a programme should include public transport, housing, employment and income support.

Last night, the Minister of State for Disability Issues, Finian McGrath T.D., said the approval of the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities marked a key moment not only for people living with a disability, but also for their families, friends and support networks and for Irish society generally.
Insurance companies are being urged to prioritise farmers who've been hit by Storm Emma after the Beast from the East ravaged the country last week.

The Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed says it is vital for the sector that farmers, many of whom suffered extensive damage to their properties, are not left waiting for compensation.
Representatives from tech giants Google and Facebook, childrens charities and the gardai are meeting today in Dublin to discuss the risks posed to children by the internet.

A third of all online users are children, and experts will have a debate on the challenges that this poses and what action needs to be taken.
By Ann O'Loughlin

A senior Garda has told the High Court it would be "virtually impossible" to investigate many serious crimes committed in the state without the use of retained communication data.

Detective Chief Supt Anthony Howard who heads the Garda Special Detective Unit, which combats organised crime and terrorism said the use of retained data is important because many criminals operate "under the radar".

Mr Howard was giving evidence before Mr Justice Tony O'Connor on behalf of the State and the Garda Commissioner on what was the eight day of an action brought by convicted killer Graham Dwyer, aimed at having provisions of Ireland's data retention laws struck down.

In reply to counsel for the state Sean Guerin SC, Chief Supt Howard said the use of retained data had played a very important role in the investigations of many serious crimes such as murder and tiger kidnappings, committed in Ireland.

He cited examples where Gardai were able to access information generated by mobile phones in criminal investigations.

He said In one case retained data was used to disprove an alibi claim made by a suspect in a homicide, and had provided evidence about the location of certain persons at the time when offences had occurred.

While he was not involved in the investigation of Elaine O'Hara's murder he said retained data was used in another case to identify a suspect who had previously never come to the attention of the Gardai.

He said in 2017 approximately 20 % of requests for retained data related to murder investigations.

He also told the court there had been a surge in the number of requests made by the Gardai in 2017 because of several cold case reviews and following the shooting at the Regency Hotel and subsequent feud between the Kinahan and Hutch organised crime gangs.

Also giving evidence today retired Detective Chief Superintendent Mr Peter Kirwan, who was head of the force's Security and Intelligence Section, told the court the assessment of Garda requests for access for retained telecommunications data is "independent in practice."

Part of his role, until his retirement last year was to assess requests for retained telecommunications data before making a formal request to the service providers for the data.

Under cross examination from Remy Farrell SC for Dwyer Mr Kirwan said he had turned down requests by Gardai investigating crimes for retained data, including from officers conducting investigations ordered by the Garda Commissioner on several occasions.

The refusals were made because the requests did not meet the criteria required, he said.

Graham Dwyer

In his action Dwyer claims the 2011 Communications (Retention of Data) Act, which allowed Gardai obtain and use data generated by Dwyer's mobile phone during his 2015 trial for the murder of childcare worker Elaine O'Hara breached his privacy rights.

The material obtained under that Act should not have been used at his trial, he claims.

Dwyer argues the 2011 Act was introduced to give effect to the 2006 EU directive concerning the retention and use of data.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) found in 2014 the directive was invalid and that position was further strengthened in subsequent rulings by that court in 2016.

Dwyer's claims the 2011 Act suffers from the same flaws identified by the ECJ.

In proceedings against the Garda Commissioner, and the State, Dwyer seeks various declarations that his privacy rights under the Irish Constitution, European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter have been breached.

Dwyer (45) denies killing Ms O'Hara, and his appeal against his conviction is pending before the Court of Appeal. Dwyer's application is opposed.

Evidence in the hearing has concluded and legal submissions from both sides, which are expected to take several days, will commence on Friday.
St Stephens Green is a beautiful place any time of the year but spring is particularly magical.

One aspect that strikes you about living in a city like Dublin is just how steeped in history and literature it is. WB Yeats house across the street  no doubt his beady eye glanced the lovers in one anothers arms and the birds in the trees.

His words are never far from my mind as I take my weekly stroll through this oasis of calm. And, like Yeats, as I watch the youthful parade, I come to the same, rather pessimistic conclusion, that is no country for old men.

My self-consumed concerns of ageing aside, I often find myself standing by a bench, reading the lime granite bust that overlooks it. Constance Markievicz  A valiant Woman who fought for Ireland.

A valiant woman, indeed. Born in London, her father was the philanthropist Henry Gore-Booth. A fascinating man in his own right, an Arctic explorer and a landlord in the west of Ireland. Constance was educated at the family estate in Lissadell, Co Sligo.

Their fathers example ignited a lifelong concern in Constance and her younger sister, Eva Gore-Booth, for working people and the poor. Significantly, the sisters were childhood friends of Yeats.

The poet frequently visited the family home, Lissadell House, and the sisters were deeply influenced by his artistic and political ideas.

They also inspired Yeats. He wrote a poem, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz, in which he described the sisters as two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle (the gazelle being Constance.)

It was her friendship with Yeats that was to prove one of the most influential in her life as she became interested in Irish nationalism and social issues at a time when women were not allowed vote in elections or become MPs.

On a day like today, as we celebrate International Womens Day, it is important that we remember women like Markievicz, not merely because they helped shape the Ireland of today, but because she is one of the strongest women in our nations history. And we are a country rich with strong women.

In 1903, Markievicz moved to Dublin where she joined Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Ireland) and later founded, with Bulmer Hobson, Na Fianna Eireann (1909).

She was inspired by the work of the great socialist revolutionary James Connolly, and together they ran a soup kitchen at Liberty Hall during the 1913 Lockout, after which she joined the Citizen Army.

It was her involvement in the 1916 insurgency for which she is, perhaps, best remembered. During the birth of this terrible beauty, Markievicz stood out for her courage and determination.

As a woman, fighting for Ireland, she tore down the social construction of the time, that women were weaker than men. She offered women new hope for what they could achieve and how they should think about themselves.

Even though the British machine guns proved too much for the poorly trained and ill equipment insurgents, they only surrendered when they were given a copy of Pearses surrender order. On her surrender she kissed her gun. A powerful image that defied social discourse about women at the time.

She refused to allow herself be viewed as a victim of patriarchy. This wasnt a mans war that she had been duped into. This was her fight, for her country. She was a soldier, like everyone else who picked up arms on that fateful day.

After her death sentence was commuted to a life sentence, she stoically declared I do wish you lot had the decency to shoot me.

The British tried to diminish her by releasing false testimonies from the trial, which had her begging for her life. It seems the British knew they had someone unique in front of them and they didnt want the public to see how ferocious this woman actually was.

Far from begging for her life, Markievicz calmly stated; I went out to fight for Irelands freedom and it does not matter what happens to me. I did what I thought was right and I stand by it.

Markievicz was released under the general amnesty of 1917. In 1918 she was the first woman elected to the House of Commons but did not take her seat, adhering to the policy of abstentionism followed by her party, Sinn Fein.

Throughout her life she never lost that feverish determination towards a united Ireland. She opposed the treaty, and, like many, saw it as a stain on the memory of those who had given their lives for a vision of Ireland. Markievicz joined Fianna Fail in 1926 and was elected to the Dail.

She died in a public ward in Sir Patrick Duns Hospital, Dublin, on July 15, 1927. She refused a state burial and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

Sean OCasey summed her up well, One thing she had in abundance physical courage; with that she was clothed as with a garment.

Constance Markievicz  a true hero who transcended gender and laid the groundwork for all the wonderful women who followed.

 Richard Hogan is a school teacher, systemic family psychotherapist, and father of three.
This is especially true in the developing world, where women pool their savings so each member can buy basics when the need arises, says Bobbi Gray.

Today, the world will celebrate International Womens Day, an annual opportunity to recommit to gender equality.

This years observance comes at an important time for womens rights, as global movements, like #MeToo and #TimesUp, are refocusing attention on the discrimination that women confront in their social and professional lives.

But while women in the developed world are waging big battles, women in developing countries remain focused on smaller victories.

We must not forget that in the worlds poorest communities, poverty, hunger, domestic violence, and discrimination remain endemic obstacles to gender parity.

I have studied gender and development in the global south for 15 years.

My research, which has included thousands of interviews with women from India to Burkina Faso, has centred on one question: How can the international community improve the welfare of the worlds poorest women? The answer is to help them do what they are already doing on their own.

One of the most effective ways to empower women anywhere, but especially in the developing world, is to promote their financial independence.

That may mean supporting informal savings groups, networks of like-minded women, who pay dues to a shared pool of resources. This money can then be drawn on to fund any number of items, such as small business expenses, school fees, or health-care costs.

Community-based savings groups  there are millions in Asia and Africa  are changing lives every day. I once met a woman in Burkina Faso whose son owes his life to the financial resources of a savings network.

One evening, when the boy was violently ill with diarrhoea, his mother called a taxi to take him to the nearest clinic.

But taxis, like ambulances, must be paid for in advance, and the woman had no money.

Fortunately, a neighbour who belonged to a health savings group was able to contribute and pay the fare. That immediate access to cash very likely saved the boys life.

Most savings group loans are similarly small. In Benin, for example, the average loan size in one group is just $9 (7.25). But, in a country where the average annual income is less than $800, small amounts can make a huge difference.

Unfortunately, many savings groups, as important as they are, do not scale; most operate in isolation from official services, which weakens their effectiveness.

Women in poor communities must rely on one another, but they also need access to government and international agencies, if they are ever to escape from hunger and poverty.

That is why my organisation, the Grameen Foundation, is using digital technology and mobile phones to connect savings groups with other service-providers.

One of our largest projects is in Burkina Faso, a desperately poor country in West Africa, where 55% of the population is food insecure for at least a portion of the year.

Since 1993, we have worked with 73,000 women in 3,300 savings groups, bringing services directly to the women who need them. Our average participant is 40-years-old, illiterate, and earns just $7 a week, selling crops like sesame and peanut.

When we began the programme, only about half of the women we worked with said they felt empowered in their homes; many feared their husbands.

Today, those sentiments are slowly changing. By serving as a bridge between informal savings groups and banks, health centres, schools, and agricultural extension services, we are helping women make better decisions about food-use, nutritional practices, and spending.

Our goal is to reduce poverty rates by strengthening asset-management skills, which would give women a greater voice in communities. Gender dialogue sessions, which we host, are also strengthening family bonds.

During each of my field visits, I have been amazed at how these efforts are affecting womens lives. On one recent trip, I met Rasmata, a young mother who told me that, thanks to the safety net of her savings group, she was managing to support her family, despite her husbands emigration abroad, her fathers recent death, and a lingering drought.

She was diversifying her income, managing her finances, and even adopting climate-smart farming techniques.

The best part was that she described herself as a hard-working, respectful, rigorous, and ambitious woman.

Those are adjectives that women everywhere, regardless of their financial situation or education, deserve to ascribe to themselves.

So, this week, as the world celebrates the incredible progress that women have made on the long march to parity, I will be thinking about women like Rasmata, who have accomplished so much, despite having so little.

Bobbi Gray is research director at the Grameen Foundation, a global nonprofit dedicated to ending poverty and hunger. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018.
Events of natural disaster can bring out the very best in people.

This has been exemplified within Irish society the past week and in particular within our health services.

Nursing Homes Ireland takes this opportunity to acknowledge, commend and thank staff within our nursing homes across the country.

Tadhg Daly, Nursing Homes Ireland CEO.

Nursing homes are reliant upon staff across a range of disciplines to meet the health and living care needs of people who require round-the-clock care.

These include nurses, carers, chefs and those who organise the activities that bring enjoyment and fulfilment to these peoples lives on a daily basis.

We are aware of great sacrifices that were undertaken by nursing home management and their staff to provide care to older persons as the country was pounded by the worst extremes of weather.

We should not take for granted the tremendous sacrifices made by personnel within our nursing homes and, indeed, their families and members of the public who are supporting them in travelling to and from the nursing home.

We take this opportunity, through your pages, to thank staff within our nursing homes for their tremendous commitment, resilience, dedication and compassion that was to the fore during Storm Emma.

You exemplify human resilience, kindness and decency.

Tadhg Daly

Nursing Homes Ireland CEO
A severely disabled boy who was at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute in England has died, his father said.

The parents of 12-month-old Isaiah Haastrup had fought against an application by King's College Hospital in London to move him to palliative care.

The couple's "last resort" appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, was dismissed on Tuesday.

Isaiah died at 7.50pm on Wednesday, hours after being removed from life-support, father Lanre Haastrup said on Facebook.

Mr Haastrup and Takesha Thomas, Isaiah's mother, asked the ECHR to intervene after losing two legal battles in England.

A British High Court judge had given doctors permission to provide only palliative care to Isaiah against the wishes of Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas.

Mr Justice MacDonald analysed evidence at hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in January.

Specialists at King's College Hospital in London had said providing further intensive care treatment was futile and not in Isaiah's best interests.

Mr Haastrup and Miss Thomas, who are both in their 30s and from Peckham, south-east London, subsequently failed to persuade Court of Appeal judges to overturn Mr Justice MacDonald's decision.

They then made a written application to the ECHR as a "last resort", which was declared "inadmissible".

Mr Haastrup said on Wednesday that judges had not listened to their arguments.
In response to the decision that the constitutional rights of the unborn do not extend past the right to life, a special Cabinet meeting will take place at 10am today.

Ministers will agree to officially sign off on the referendum bill, which will contain the exact referendum wording and what its implications are for the constitution.

The referendum bill will need to be debated in the Dail and Seanad, and passed by both Houses by the end of this month, in order to allow for a May 25 vote.

Before this happens, the Oireachtas business committee will have to meet in private at 1pm today to agree on whether to begin this debate this evening, tomorrow, or on the Dails return after the St Patricks Day festivities.

In tandem with the referendum bills publication today, Health Minister Simon Harris will publish a health policy paper outlining what the likely 12-week law will be should the referendum pass.

This document will be released tomorrow in order to allow TDs to have all information while debating the referendum bill. The Government hopes this will calm concerns over what is to come.

The publication of both the referendum bill and the health policy paper means that the Government will now be allowed to set in train the work of the Referendum Commission, a chair of which will be appointed in the coming days.

The commission is designed to ensure fairness during the referendum campaign, and will be tasked with organising the practical steps needed during the build-up to the referendum.

The referendum bill will also contain a reference to an early summer vote date, saying it can be allowed for at any point between 30 and 90 days of the referendum bill being agreed.

While May 25 is the date expected for the vote, it is not currently mentioned in the referendum bill  a sign that, while a step closer, the May referendum date is still not a certainty.
The new Ireland only email jo@samaritans.ie is being launched at a time when the charity is experiencing a surge in telephone calls.

Samaritans Ireland answered more than 625,000 calls for help last year and sent almost 25,000 text replies.

There has been a 4% year on year increase in telephone calls  in 2016 volunteers answered 600,716 calls.

Young people, in particular, are expected to reach out to volunteers through the new email address.

Irish regional director with the Samaritans, Cindy OShea, said the volunteers would be available to respond to the new email service around the clock seven days a week just like the charitys freephone helpline and text message service.

Samaritans volunteers in Ireland have answered 2.3m calls since the launch of the freephone  116 123 in April 2014, said Ms OShea, a volunteer with the charity for 10 years. We also reply to those who text us, write to us and are happy for people to visit us in our branches across the country.

Ms OShea said there was a demographic divide between those who would use the email and SMS service and those who use the phone line. Under 35s are more likely to use social media and text services and over 35s are more likely to use the phone service.

Sometimes, she said, people find it easier to write down their concerns and convey them through email and text.

Ms OShea said a big barrier for a lot of people contacting the service in the past had been the cost of making a telephone call.

In 2013 around 300,000 people called us but in the two years after the freephone number was launched the number of calls increased by 70%. At this point, it has increased by 100%.

Aside from the fact that we reduced the telephone cost barrier, we were there at a time when people needed to call a service like the Samaritans.

The freephone number was launched during the recession. A lot of people had problems with finance and unemployment and found they had no one to talk to.

Mr OShea said the charity was associated with suicide, but only 20% of their calls are about suicide and self-harm. Most of our calls are about the general human condition but we have noticed that more people who are experiencing loneliness and isolation are calling us.

Samaritans has 20 branches across Ireland with 12 in the Republic and eight in Northern Ireland, with a total of 2,500 active volunteers.

Ms OShea said they always needed new volunteers.

At the moment we have nearly 2,000 volunteers in the Republic of Ireland and they provide a phenomenal service.

Even during the bad weather last week we still managed to open and provide a limited service. Last Saturday alone we answered 2,000 calls.

Ms OShea said she welcomed the increasing focus on mental health by both the Government and HSE had enabled people to talk more openly about mental health

It is very much normalising mental health as an issue. It is almost like giving people permission to talk about their mental health and to be more aware of looking after their mental health, which is really important.
The maltreatment of the civilian staff by sworn officers in the force has been branded a national scandal by Labour TD Alan Kelly.

The TDs blasted the forces top brass after two civilian analysts with the force told the Oireachtas Justice Committee yesterday they were attacked and belittled.

Analysts Lois West and Laura Galligan were giving evidence as part of an examination as to why the Central Statistics Office has not been prepared to accept Garda figures relating to deaths.

Committee chairman, Caoimhghin O Caolain, praised the two women for highlighting the issue and giving evidence to them, saying their evidence pointed to a clear cover-up of damaging revelations by senior Garda management.

You are a very powerful duo ... an example to us all in the public service, Mr O Caolain said.

Mr Kelly said the evidence given by the two women was extremely shocking and showed that little or nothing has changed in An Garda Siochana.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, he said: The way they have been treated over the past 15 months is nothing short of a national scandal. I believe there was a cover-up at the highest echelons of the force. There was an attempt to attack their work. Their evidence was shocking.

The tensions between the civilians and the sworn officers in the force is there for all to see and the civilians are being treated in a second-class way, Mr Kelly added.

Mr Kelly said the two women were the best witnesses he has ever seen before an Oireachtas committee, given their knowledge of the subject, their courage and professionalism.

Mr Kelly, who is vice-chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and who has led the charge on the Garda scandals, called on the Policing Authority to make a statement on the evidence given by Ms West and Ms Galligan who he said felt let down by the Authority.

Sinn Fein justice spokesperson Donnchadh O Laoghaire described the experience of the two analysts as quite shocking, and worrying. It appears there was a repeated failure to treat their reports with anything like the urgency required. These women have shown great courage and resilience in the context of great pressure, stating they felt belittled and treated very poorly, he said.

It was also clear that they felt let down by the Policing Authority, which is deeply disappointing and a cause for considerable concern. Every death should be classified properly, and this isnt just about statistics, this is about victims and families.

The committee heard there were 14 deaths which were pathologically considered a homicide, but were misclassified in the wrong crime, or a non-crime, category, in the 2013-15 period.

Responding, the Policing Authority said it was concerned at what has emerged but was not in a position to respond fully to the evidence given yesterday as a process with the force is ongoing.
The National Womens Council of Ireland, the Abortion Rights Campaign, and the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment jointly welcomed the ruling, saying it provided the certainty to proceed with a referendum.

Linda Kavanagh, of the Abortion Rights Campaign, said: Nothing now stands in the way of this referendum, as promised by the Government.

Orla OConnor, of the NWCI, said she hoped the Government would bring the referendum bill before the Dail, without delay.

We know people are looking for controlled change of our laws on abortion. They want to protect womens health and wellbeing, and ensure that doctors can care for their patients here in Ireland. This is only possible if we remove the Eighth Amendment, she said.

Ailbhe Smith, of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, said now that there was legal clarity, the group would campaign vigorously to remove the problematic amendment.

The Pro-Life Campaign, however, said the Supreme Courts decision highlighted the need to retain the Eighth Amendment to safeguard against unlimited abortion. Prof William Binchy said: The court has made it clear that unborn babies, up to birth, would have no constitutional protection against the legislation that the Government intends to introduce.

Maria Steen, of Christian thinktank the Iona Institute, said it was extremely sad that the Government had decided to appeal to the Supreme Court, after the High Court ruled the unborn child had constitutional rights beyond simply the right to life.

It shows the overt hostility of the Government towards the unborn child. It wants these children to have no constitutional rights, whatsoever, she said.

Niamh Ui Bhriain, of Save the 8th, also said it was now more important than ever that the referendum be rejected. The ruling exposes the true agenda of the government proposals: to remove all constitutional protections for unborn children, while masking it as a proposal to protect the rights of women.

The Catholic bishops did not comment, but in a statement ahead of their spring meeting this week, they suggested voters should not be swayed by the Supreme Court.

Every one of us has a right to our life. It is not given to us by the Constitution of Ireland or by any law, they said.

Save the 8th is leading a rally for life in Dublin city centre this Saturday. The Repeal the Eighth Coalition, meanwhile, is having a march to coincide with International Womens Day, also in Dublin, this evening, at 5.30pm.

Immigrant rights groups said they were studying the section of the ruling which stated that the minister for justice must consider any potential rights a child born in Ireland would have, when deciding on deportations. The ruling has possible implications for expectant parents facing deportation, as a child born here is considered to have rights of access to their parents.
The Department of Social Protection confirmed the exceptional needs and urgent needs allowance figures last night, but failed to reveal how many people saw their requests for the same help turned down.

According to the figure obtained by the Irish Examiner, the 125 payments granted under the two emergency allowances cost a total of 25,000 last week.

The breakdown  which does not include the number of people who applied for the funds but were rejected  is in addition to the 331,000 people who received a double fuel allowance last week to cope with the snow storms, which cost 8.3m.

However, while the payments will be seen by the Government as proof funds were made available to those in need during the storms, the lack of any information on how many applications were rejected is likely to lead to fresh criticism from the opposition

Asked by the Irish Examiner for a breakdown of the extra allowance payments as a result of the Beast from the East and Storm Emma, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Protection said: All 331,000 recipients of fuel allowance will receive an additional weeks payment next week at a cost of 8.3m.

There will be no additional staff costs incurred for making this payment.

In the week ending March 2, there were 125 payments made at a cost of approximately 25,000 under the exceptional needs payment and urgent needs payment schemes for assistance towards heating-related costs, which includes fuel and essential repairs to equipment.

Statistics are maintained relating to payments under the exceptional needs payment and urgent needs payment schemes, however, they are not maintained on the number of applications or the outcome of those applications.

The extra fuel allowance payments were highlighted by the Government in response to an angry public and political backlash to Taoiseach Leo Varadkars initial claims last week that he would not write a blank cheque for those in need.

On Tuesday of last week, just hours before the Beast from the East first hit parts of the country, Minister for Older People Jim Daly suggested elderly people should keep their heating on constantly during the freeze and not to worry about the resulting bills.

However, later that day Mr Varadkar appeared to reject the plan, saying it is not the Governments job to pick up the bill and write a blank cheque for people unable to heat their own homes.

After an angry backlash from Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, Labour and other parties, as well as advocacy group Age Action Ireland, the following morning Mr Varadkar did a U-turn on the decision and said both a double fuel allowance payment and the extra allowances would be made available.

The ability for older people, in particular, to afford to heat their homes has been seen as key to ensuring the safety of a large section of society who were vulnerable during the cold weather and freezing temperatures.
It comes as Catherine Corless, the local historian who found the names of the 796 children who died at the former mother and baby home, has hit out at the Government for focusing on cost rather than committing to the fullest examination of the site.

There was a public outcry this time last year from the Government of their shock and horror that the Tuam Home babies were buried thus, but their shock is somewhat dwindling at this stage, with the focus now on cost, she said.

The Tuam babies deserve a decent burial in consecrated ground alongside their relatives. Memorialising them with a statue planked on top of the septic tank is only a further slight adding to the way their little bodies were discarded in the first place.

Ms Corless also hit out at the callous and cold voting system put in place by Galway County Council as part of an independent consultation process on the five options presented by the expert technical group advising the Government in how to manage the site.

Speaking during the Dail debate on the third interim report from the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, Independent TD Maureen OSullivan said it was incredible that there was a voting procedure on the five options.

In an email I got from one of the groups, a survivor whom I know stated: Whoever in Gods name or anybodys name was there ever a consultation about what to do with human remains. We are distraught. I believe this is a matter for the State, not for the local authority, she said.

Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats said it was possible to identify the cause of death and remains of children found at the site.

At the time Catherine Corless made the initial revelations, I called for the scene to be declared a crime scene. If remains are unearthed where they should not be, that is what should happen. There is a need to bring in forensic anthropologists and examiners. That call stands and the work that needs to be done here cannot be neglected simply because the State, once again, is not prepared to uphold its responsibilities to the people left to the mercy of those institutions, she said.
Inspector Gary McPolin said yesterday that the theft of the hares was spotted by gardai who became suspicious of a vehicle parked in the Blarney area on an afternoon shortly before Christmas.

On December 15, 2017, at 2.30 in the afternoon, gardai observed a car parked in somewhat unusual circumstances at Shean Lower, Blarney, Co Cork, Inspector Gary McPolin said yesterday at Cork District Court.

The drivers door was open and the engine was running. It also had an enclosed trailer attached to it.

The registered owner was Arthur McCarthy who was with the vehicle.

Gardai found a box containing five hares next to the trailer and four more hares in the trailer.

While 18-year-old Arthur McCarthy, of bay 5, Spring Lane halting site, Blackpool, Cork, was reluctant to give any explanation to gardai for his unusual live cargo on the day, he did plead guilty to the charges of stealing the box and the nine hares at Cork District Court yesterday.

Insp McPolin said: The treasurer from Cork Coursing Club later identified the hare box and the nine hares as being the property of the club. All nine hares were tagged.

The value of the box was 20 and the nine hares were collectively valued at 1,080.

Because the accused had no previous convictions, Judge Olann Kelleher said he would put back penalty to see how the defendant would behave in the meantime warning that if there was any more trouble all bets were off.

Frank Buttimer, solicitor, said: This is a first  the theft of hares. It certainly ranks in the unusual department.

The guards asked him how the hares ended up there and he was not forthcoming at the time. They have since been given back to the owners. He accepts he was there and the hares were in his car.

He did not accept criminal responsibility at the time. He did not want to be forthcoming, maybe because he did not have full responsibility. But he did have partial responsibility.

There was no suggestion yesterday that this distinction was a case of splitting hairs.
The anti-homelessness campaigner, who founded the Peter McVerry Trust, said Louth County Council had made 81 compulsory purchase orders over the last couple of years.

Just two cases were successfully challenged in courts by owners who claimed the action taken by the council was contrary to the right to private property.

I would urge the Government to tell the other local authorities to follow Louth County Councils example. We have the solution to homelessness  we just have to use it, he said.

The national housing and homelessness charity has developed a new empty homes mapping app with Dublin-based social enterprise, Space Engagers.

The new online tool was launched by Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, at the companys Dublin office yesterday. He said companies had a responsibility to give something back to a community and make it stronger.

The pilot project, named Reusing Dublin, hopes to tap local knowledge on empty buildings across the capital in an effort to alleviate the homeless crisis. It is hoped that buildings identified by the public can be reused to provide social housing solutions.

The Peter McVerry Trust has been working on empty and derelict buildings for a number of years and knows, from experience, that high-quality homes can be created much faster and cheaper than traditional new build construction.

Fr McVerry said the Government produced a plan 18 months ago to reduce homelessness and every single month since then the number of homeless people had increased.

The Government keeps on telling us their plan is working; you just have to give it time. I am asking how much time do we have to give it?

He said the Government was trying to manage homelessness rather than trying to eliminate homelessness.

The measures they are taking are little baby steps instead of the radical steps I would be proposing.

He believed just 100 owners had availed of a grant of up to 40,000 available under the repair and leasing scheme introduced a year ago.

He said the 2016 Census identified 186,000 permanently empty, boarded up habitable houses and apartments in this country.

While some could not be brought back into use for various reasons, many of them could be.

He believed they could solve the housing problem within two years with empty buildings.

The trusts head of communications, Francis Doherty, said it had no legal problems with the new online mapping tool.

We will do a number of checks before we ever declare a site is vacant. If somebody says my property is on your site and asks for it to be taken down we will do that, he said.

The app is only live now in the last few days but it is something that can be used in any county in Ireland.

"We have had discussions with Kildare County Council and are liaisoning with Limerick City and County Council.
He claimed on the night that he was testing the security of the building.

Putnik Neizvestny was jailed for three months yesterday for the trespass.

Frank Buttimer, solicitor, said at Cork District Court yesterday, where the accused pleaded guilty: He is an unusual gentleman who is most engaging. I have had conversations with him. He is highly intelligent, has excellent English and I dont think he is offensive. He is demonstrative and expressive. He has admiration for the Brehon laws of this state.

Judge Kelleher said it was a serious matter and imposed the three months in prison backdated to February 22 when the accused went into custody.

Inspector Gary McPolin said: On July 29, 2017, at approximately 1.45am, Putnik Neizvestny, presented at the public office of Anglesea St Garda Station having entered the station via the rear car park and through the fire exit where bicycles are stored.

He had gone to the third floor where he tried unsuccessfully to have access to the roof. He then circled the third floor, second floor and first floor before exiting the way he entered and then walking into the lobby through the front door to the public hatch.

He told the guard on duty where he had been and said he was checking the security of the building. Effectively he had gone walkabout in the building.

The defendant was living at St Marys Lane, Upper John St, Cork.
Jim Foley, aged 43, of 54 Dominic St, Cork, pleaded guilty to stealing the phones in the course of his duty and he has since lost his job.

Judge Olann Kelleher said at Cork District Court yesterday: Stealing from his employer in this case is the same as from the postal service. It is a position of trust.

Inspector Gary McPolin said that one of the phones was a 919 iPhone and the two others were valued at 550 each.

When the phones, sent by the Three store on St Patricks Street, Cork, did not reach their destinations, an investigation was put in place. It was established that two of the three phones had been activated with SIM cards. It was also discovered that the phones had been sold to smaller phone outlets in Cork City and sold on to customers.

The thefts were committed between August 1 and August 11, 2017.

Judge Kelleher wanted to know if the accused had 2,000 in court as compensation for the thefts which dated back over six months.

Diane Halahan, solicitor, said the accused had a lot of financial difficulties at the time and even since this occurred, and had been unable to raise compensation.

The judge said he would have to do so if he wanted to avoid jail.

Ms Halahan said the defendant had no previous convictions for theft and had lost his job as a result of taking these parcels. She said he was about to start another job soon and would gather compensation.

Judge Kelleher said he could do so in the next three months or else go to jail for three months. If raised it will be suspended. He will also be required to do 240 hours of community service.
He was jailed for nine months yesterday for a litany of crimes including his threatening behaviour towards medical staff.

Judge Olann Kelleher said at Cork District Court: It is a terrible thing to do to the people working in the hospital and trying to help patients, including the accused.

Kelvin McNamara, aged 19, of 79 Ardmore Avenue, Knocknaheeny, Cork, pleaded guilty to all the charges against him at Cork District Court yesterday.

Frank Buttimer, solicitor, said McNamara had a background of education and addiction difficulties.

Inspector Gary McPolin said: On August 5, 2016, shortly before midnight gardai from Gurranabraher were on patrol at Harbour View Road, Knocknaheeny, Cork, when they observed Kelvin McNamara acting in a suspicious manner.

Garda Desmond Prendergast approached and Mr McNamara attempted to conceal a lump hammer on his person.

Mr McNamara took off running down Harbour View Road. Gardai gave chase. An unknown male intervened and stopped Mr McNamara. He then attempted to swing the hammer at the gardai but he was restrained.

On October 13, 2017, an ambulance crew received a call in relation to a male with a head injury on Meade St, Cork. On arrival, they met Kelvin McNamara who had no injuries but was highly intoxicated.

He was conveyed to Mercy University Hospital by paramedics for his own safety. He began spitting in the ambulance en route to hospital. At the hospital he became aggressive with paramedics, hospital staff and security staff.

He was verbally abusive to security staff and paramedics, all within earshot of patients on trolleys in the A&E department.

The accused recently got a two-year jail term in a case where a motorcycle guard in high visibility gear with lights and siren indicated for McNamara to stop driving a stolen car but he looked at the officer and then drove at him.

This resulted in an endangerment charge to which McNamara pleaded guilty.

The guard got out of the defendants way in time and was not injured.
Arts Artist Responds to Disaster with Love

Myat Kyawts Great Love Line exhibition will be on display through Friday at OK Art Gallery at Aung San Stadium in Yangon.

A Myanmar artist is concerned for the world. There have been deadly shootings at schools in the United States. Extremists have executed reporters. Around the world, there are wars, natural disasters and epidemics. And Myanmar is no exception. There is considerable uncertainty about its political transition.

Faced with all this, Ive thought about how I can respond as an artist, what artistic creation I can make. I decided to create works about peace and love. I drew families, symbols of peace, and Nobel peace laurates, said Myat Kyawt.

His paintings depict toy doves, happy families and children playing. There is also an installation about families. In one piece, a mother helps her toddler walk.

The new government came to power with love. It even created opportunities for its enemies. It carried out a revolution with love and created change for more than 50 million people. I have dedicated my work to these causes, said Myat Kyawt.

Myat Kyawt has been making art for decades, but he never seems to run out of new ideas and ways to approach his craft. He is never satisfied with simply creating new things, and has continuously created performance art depicting love and unity.

In one of his performances, he carried a painting into crowds. This is what I call brining art to the people. Children, grandmas, and women liked it very much, said Myat Kyawt.

His exhibition Great Love Line will be on display through Friday at OK Art Gallery at Aung San Stadium (North Wing) in Yangon.

There will be a total of 30 pictures, 15 paintings, four installations, as well as a performance at the exhibition. Myat Kyawt has so far organized 15 solo shows and dozens of group exhibitions at home and abroad.

He has won awards and his paintings have been collected by museums in Germany, New Zealand and Singapore.

Art can by one way or another affect the human race. Art is to me the virtue of serving the interests of mankind, said Myat Kyawt.
Burma Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Says Rule of Law Must Come First

Aung San Suu Kyi speaks at a conference on the rule of law in Naypyitaw on Wednesday. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYITAW  The misconduct of civil servants can ultimately undermine public confidence in the government, State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said in a public address on Wednesday.

When administrative measures and decisions are made without reference to the relevant laws and regulations, it leads to poor use of due discretion and can results in biased decision making, the countrys de facto leaders said in her remarks at the Rule of Law: Conference on Justice Sector Coordination in Naypyitaw.

As a result, failing to reference the legal basis for decisions by civil servants will negatively impact the rule of law and make people less confident in the government.

She urged civil servants to carry out their duties selflessly and with good intentions because they are serving the public.

The general administration department, courts, law offices and police forces play crucial roles in implementing the rule of law effectively and are responsible for protecting the public, she said.

A great many of the complaints sent to higher authorities are concerned with the police, she added. If the public is afraid to seek help from the police or does not wish to come forward about a criminal matter, the relationship and cooperation between the public and the police will deteriorate. Consequently, the rule of law will stumble.

U Thein Than Oo, of the Independent Lawyers Association of Myanmar, said the capacity of law enforcement personnel was limited and that the rule of law was too weak in Myanmar.

Aung Win Khaing [a suspect in last years assassination of prominent lawyer U Ko Ni] is at large, and people criticize that two Reuters reporters were set up, he said.

According to the 2008 Constitution, the lawyer said, the military-run Home Affairs Ministry  and in particular the police force and general administration department, which it oversees  were mainly responsible for these cases. He said the civilian government was next in line.

Thein Than Oo blamed the lack of rule of law on the lack of cooperation between departments.

Departments should not work as an entity and make decisions on their own. Rather, they should cooperate with each other, he said.

If good laws only exist in books and are not applied to peoples lives, the rule of law cannot be said to exist, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said. Her National League for Democracy party contested the 2015 election with its eyes fixed on the rule of law, she added.

Only with the rule of law can other things succeed, for example peace. Some argue that peace should be the top priority, not the rule of law. But without the rule of law, peace will not last long, she said.

The rule of law, peace and the stability of the country were interconnected and the concern and responsibility of every single citizen, said Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

She urged civil servants not to perform their duties only when there were complaints, but to provide their services dutifully and responsibly.

To improve the broader governance practices of the public sector, accountability and transparency in decision making and complaints handling are necessary, she said.

The two-day conference, which ends Thursday, was organized by the Attorney Generals Office to facilitate discussion on the challenges facing the rule of law in Myanmar and how to improve it.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Govt Greenlights Electricity Joint Ventures in Mon State, Bago Region

Transmission towers link Sittwe, Rakhine State, to the national power grid. / Min Aung Khaing / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The Myanmar Investment Commission (MIC) has granted permission to two joint ventures involving foreign partners to supply power to areas not connected to the national grid.

One is for households in Ye Township, and the other is for the developer of an industrial zone in Bago, said U Than Aung Kyaw, deputy director-general of the Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA), at a press conference on Monday.

The Southern Myanmar Development Co., a Singapore-Thai-Myanmar joint venture, won a contract to supply electricity to villages in Ye Township, Mon State. According to DICA, the 26-billion-kyat project will generate 10 megawatts of electricity daily with a diesel generator. The Singapore and Thai partners each hold 33 percent in the venture, while the local partner holds 34 percent.

i-Land Park Myanmar Co., an 80-20 Singapore-Myanmar venture with initial investment of $23.18 billion, will supply 19 megawatts to Singapore-backed i-Land Park Myanmar Industrial Zone in Bago Region. It will use a type of fuel to generate electricity, DICA said.

According to MICs statistics, in the current fiscal year, Myanmar citizens have invested 172,267.324 million kyats in four electricity-supply projects, and foreigners have invested $405.774 million in five projects.

Up to 70 percent of the countrys population, the majority of them living in rural areas, has yet to be connected to the national power grid, DICA said.

Myanmar Oil and Gas Services Society Chairman U Kyaw Kyaw Hlaing said: Most of the rural areas are out of reach of the national grid. Even if they get electricity from private suppliers, locals have to pay 250 to 300 kyats per unit of electricity, which is five times the rate in Yangon.

The government should be fair to the whole country. It is not fair that electricity prices are cheap in Yangon and high in rural areas, he added.

It is good that foreigners are investing in the electricity sector; the more investment, the better. But it is more important that electricity prices fall, he said.

Rich people use a lot of electricity. The government said it loses [money] for every unit it produces. This means it is subsidizing power for the wealthy. The government should change. Only then will it be fair, he added.

The government spends about 333 billion kyats annually on electricity subsidies, according to figures from the Ministry of Electricity and Energy.

According to the 2014 national census, 77.5 percent of the urban population uses electricity, but in rural areas, the percentage is just 14.9 percent.

Domestic electricity consumption increases by 15 percent every year, according to the ministry.

Currently, households pay 35 kyats per unit up to 100 units and 40 kyats per unit up to 200 units. Above 200 units the rate is 50 kyats.

Industrial users pay 75 kyats per unit up to 500 units, 100 kyats from 501-10,000 units, 125 kyats from 10,001-50,000 units, and 150 kyats from 50,001 to 300,000 units. The unit price drops to 100 kyats for usage above 300,000 units.
Burma Holocaust Museum Strips Suu Kyi of Award

Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi smiles as she holds a certificate after she received the Freedom of the City of Dublin during a ceremony in Dublin, Ireland, June 2012. The award was stripped last year. / Reuters

YANGON  The Myanmar Embassy in Washington, D.C., stated that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was misled and exploited by people who failed to see the true situation in Rakhine State upon the museums revocation of its Elie Wiesel Award from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The museum released an announcement on Tuesday about the withdrawal of the award that they honored her with in 2012, stating that the Myanmar State Counselor had failed to use her moral authority to address the Myanmar militarys orchestration of crimes against Rohingya Muslims.

More than 680,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh after army clearance operations in northern Rakhine State since August last year in the wake of serial attacks on security outposts in the region by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

Those who made it to camps on the Bangladeshi side reported arbitrary killings, rapes and torching of property by the Myanmar Army. The UN labeled the actions as ethnic cleansing.

In its statement, the museum dedicated to Nazis victims of World War II said it had hoped Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would have done something to condemn and stop the militarys brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population as someone celebrated for her commitment to human dignity and universal human rights.

We understand the difficult situation you must face in confronting decades of military misrule and violence in your country and that institutions still powerful constitutional role. However, the militarys orchestration of the crimes against Rohingya and the severity of the atrocities in recent months demand that you use your moral authority to address this situation, said the statement.

On Wednesday, The Myanmar Embassy in Washington said: We immensely regret that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has been misled and exploited by people who failed to see the true situation in fair judgment on the situation in Rakhine State.

It continued that the decision of the museum would have no bearing on the determination of Myanmar people in supporting the leadership of the State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in nation-building but will make the government to redouble its effort in finding a lasting solution in Rakhine State.

The museum is the first US institution to revoke an award from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Since last year, the Nobel laureate has had at least three honors stripped, including the Freedom of the City awards by Oxford, Glasgow and Sheffield City Councils and the Honorary Presidency award by the London School of Economics.
Burma Mandalay Revives Traditional Thingyan Nights to Attract Visitors

The Mandalay Thingyan Walkway entrance in 2017. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

MANDALAY  The Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC) is planning to revive traditional Burmese Thingyan nights to attract more visitors during the upcoming celebrations.

After success last year with a traditional Thingyan night walkway, the MCDC will repeat its efforts. By separating the old and new celebrations, it hopes to attract more visitors. High-pressure sprays, DJs and pavilions will still be on some sides of the Mandalay Palace moat, but the south side outside the old palace will be a strolling walkway, with no vehicles allowed.

The Thingyan night walkway will attract visitors who want to enjoy Mandalay nightlife but in a traditional fashion, U Kyaw Yin Myint, an MCDC committee member, told The Irrawaddy.

According to the MCDC, local and foreign visitors increased considerably last year, largely because of the traditional walkway along the southern palace wall.

Visitors will be able to enjoy traditional delicacies, puppet shows and classic Myanmar films.

Along with a number of bookstores and souvenir shops, the Thingyan night walkway will be open from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. during the festival.

We are taking great care to have fresh, quality food to sell at the walking street, said U Kyaw Yin Myint.

Our target is to revive tradition and create a major festive attraction in the country while also letting the youth be current, he added.

The Thingyan water festival is the annual celebration for Myanmar New Year. Many Myanmar people believe that throwing water on others before New Years Day will wash away the bad things from the prior year.

People used to use cups and buckets to politely pour water on each other but pressured water pumps and sprays have become popular in recent years.

This year, Thingyan celebrations will run from April 13 to 17.
Burma Myanmar Police Witness Says Searched Reuters Reporters Home For News

Detained Reuters journalist Wa Lone is escorted by police after a court hearing in Yangon, Myanmar, February 28, 2018. / Reuters

YANGON  Police in Myanmar searched the family home of Reuters reporter Wa Lone looking for material related to news the night after he and a colleague were arrested on suspicion of violating the Official Secrets Act, an officer told a court on Wednesday.

Myanmar has previously denied accusations Wa Lone, 31, and fellow Reuters journalist Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were targeted over their reporting of a crisis in northern Rakhine state.

Court proceedings are under way in Yangon to decide if they will faces charges under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

Before Wednesdays hearing a doctor examined and took blood samples from the pair at the request of the defense, after their lawyer raised concerns that their health had deteriorated in prison. Both have been in custody since their arrest on Dec. 12.

Prosecution witness Police Major Soe Aung told the court he had been sent to search Wa Lones family home in northern Yangon on the evening of Dec. 13.

Asked during cross-examination what police were looking for, he said the 10 or so police officers who entered the house were searching in relation to news. He did not elaborate.

Investigation into Killings

The reporters had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men who were buried in a mass grave in northern Rakhine State after being hacked to death or shot by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist villagers and soldiers.

The military excavated the shallow grave in December, days after Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested, saying they had received a tip-off. Authorities are taking action against 10 members of the security forces and six villagers, according to a government spokesman.

Police went my home to search about Rakhine and what we were reporting, and they surely aimed to sue us to stop our reporting, Wa Lone told reporters during a break.

Myanmars ambassador to the United Nations, Hau Do Suan, said last month that the journalists were not arrested for reporting a story, but were accused of illegally possessing confidential government documents.

The government prosecutor, Kyaw Min Aung, did not respond to a Reuters reporter who attempted to ask him about the case after the hearing on Wednesday. Government spokespeople have declined to comment on the case, citing the ongoing court proceedings.

Soe Aung testified that during the search police found a reporters notebook from the Myanmar Times, where Wa Lone had worked prior to joining Reuters in 2016, that included the phone number of a leader of an ethnic Rakhine armed group, which was recorded on a police search form at the time of the search.

Police also seized a broken laptop, a hard drive belonging to Wa Lones younger brother, and an empty bag during the search, according to the police form and Wa Lones family.

Restaurant Meeting

The reporters have said that they had been invited to meet two police officers at a northern Yangon restaurant on Dec. 12, and were arrested almost immediately after being handed rolled up papers by the policemen, whom they had not met before.

Police officers have testified in court, however, that they were arrested after they were stopped and searched at a traffic checkpoint by officers who were unaware they were journalists.

Also on Wednesday, Kyaw Min, a 21-year-old waiter from the restaurant where the reporters met the two police, told the court he could not remember seeing Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo.

Kyaw Min was the second member of the restaurants staff called to testify by prosecutors to say they had no knowledge of the arrest. He repeatedly told the court he could not remember details of the night of Dec. 12.

Asked why he was a witness in the case, Kyaw Min said he had come forward to make a statement after being told his restaurant was mentioned in a newspaper article about the case.

The hearing was adjourned until March 14.
Burma National Mining Policy Needs Total Rethink, Report Finds

A copper mine project in Sagaing Division in 2012. / The Irrawaddy

CHIANG MAI, Thailand  Myanmar needs a new mineral resources policy and fresh laws developed through a transparent and consultative process if the mining sector is ever to be sustainable, the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business (MCRB) said at the launch of a sector-wide impact assessment (SWIA) report on March 8.

The fourth SWIA based on MCRBs field research focused on mining of three commodities: tin, gold and limestone. In 2016, field researchers investigated a total of 41 mine sites in eight areas: Shan, Karen, Karenni and Kachin States, and Bago, Sagaing, Mandalay and Tanintharyi regions.

Among them were 11 large-scale permitted operational mine sites (of which one was in the exploration phase), 15 small-scale permitted mine sites, and 15 informal mining areas of various sizes.

Based on the many negative impacts on the environment and on mine workers observed by the researchers, the MCRB said in a press release that to achieve responsible mining, The entire approach to mining in Myanmar needs a rethink.

Most of the harms were felt by workers  including women and children  and borne by the environment. A rethink is also needed if Myanmar is to develop the modern mineral rights cadaster it needs to meet EITI standards. A fresh start, a clear policy vision, and simple laws to underpin it, are essential if mining is ever to contribute to sustainable development in Myanmar, it said. EITI refers to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

MCRB identified five key challenges based on field research and an extensive review of current laws and initiatives. These are: a lack of clarity on policies, laws and regulations relevant to mining activities, which inhibit responsible investment; the limited capacity of government and business actors to monitor and address the environmental, social and human rights impacts of mining; the externalization of the environmental, social and human rights costs of mining on local communities; problematic governance of mining in conflict-affected areas; and extensive informality in the mining sector.

Vicky Bowman, the director of MCRB, said at the launch of the SWIA in Yangon that the development of mining sector regulation in Myanmar over the past two decades has been based on the 1994 Mining Law, which she said is outdated.

The legal framework is also fragmented between mining and gemstones, she said, adding that the 2015 Amendments to the Mining Law only made minor changes. New rules imposed this year and based on those amendments have only tinkered at the edges of reform, she said.

The existing Mining Law developed under the former State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) was designed at a time when mining, and oil and gas, both fell under the same minister [Vice Admiral Maung Maung Khin] and [this continued] even after amendment in 2015, she told The Irrawaddy. Vice Admiral Maung Maung Khin was Myanmars deputy prime minister under the SLORC.

Bowman explained that the 1994 Mining Law favors use of production sharing contracts [PSCs] in mining, which are used in the oil and gas industry. However almost no other country in the world uses PSCs for mining, as the commercial risks in mining are different to oil and gas. Furthermore, it does not establish a mining cadaster, which is the fundamental basis for managing mining transparently and attracting investment.

She pointed out that although additional elements related to the environment, health and safety have been introduced, these are either unclear or not in line with international good practice.

If the law is compared to other countries mining laws such as Mongolia or Peru, with whom Myanmar is competing to attract investment, the weaknesses are evident, she added.

The MCRB director said the current Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC)s decision to consider adopting a Mineral Resources Policy was a positive step.

But it needs to be done as part of a transparent, cross-government and multi-stakeholder process, [and] have concrete actions that incorporate modern international standards. It also needs to be developed in a way which supports the peace process and EITI, the National Environmental Policy and the draft Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan, she said.

Claus Teilmann Petersen, director of the Human Rights and Development think tank at the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), was quoted in the press statement as welcoming the governments intention to formalize artisanal and subsistence mining [ASM] rather than outlaw it.

Teilmann Petersen, an expert on the relationship between business and human rights standards, emphasized that although ASM has serious negative impacts on human rights and the environment, it also benefits thousands of poor people.

Formalizing artisanal mining is a difficult task, he said. It cant simply be addressed by a new set of rules on licensing.

He suggested Myanmar take lessons from other countries that have followed the ASM track.

One lesson for putting together an affective Artisanal and Subsistence Mining (ASM) Management Strategy is that governments need to consult with all stakeholders, including the subsistence miners themselves, he said.

Their right to livelihood will be affected by an approach which doesnt take the specific nature of ASM into account, he added.
News KIA Reports Second Offensive by Tatmadaw This Year

KIA fighters on guard duty in Tanai Township, Kachin State, in 2017. / Lawi Weng / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) says the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, launched a second offensive against its forces in Kachin States Tanai Township on Saturday.

They started a military offensive again in the Tanai area. Their offensive this time is heading toward our KIA Battalion 14, Colonel Naw Bu, a spokesman for the ethnic armed group, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.

There was a strong military push on March 5 and 6, he said.

The Tatmadaw launched its first offensive against the KIA in January, seized some amber and gold mining areas in Tanai and driving hundreds of ethnic Kachin out of the area.

They could not reach the area KIA Battalion 14 controls during their first offensive, so they are trying to get there this time, Col. Naw Bu said.

They [the Tatmadaw] used only ground forces this time to attack our troops. They have not used the air force yet, he said, adding that the KIA battalion was pushed back from some areas in the past few days.

Locals said the fighting has prevented them from reaching their paddy fields and that Tatmadaw checkpoints around the town of Tanai, home to some 900 displaced Kachin, were hampering their travel. They said they heard shelling throughout most of Monday and Tuesday.

The fighting is quiet today, but we could hear explosions from artillery all day on March 5 and 6, said Naw Tawng, a Tanai resident helping the displaced families.

The Tatmadaw will celebrate Armed Force Day on March 27 in Naypyitaw. It has often launched offensives against the areas ethnic armed groups ahead of the annual event, at which it typically hands out awards to soldiers who have distinguished themselves in the fighting.

Another of the armed groups, the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), reported a clash with the Tatmadaw on Thursday in northern Shan State. It said the Tatmadaw has brought some 50 trucks to the area for what it believes may be a full-on offensive against the TNLA.

The TNLA says it engaged with the Tatmadaw in 14 clashes last month.
Commentary Remembering Myanmars Unsung Heroes  Its Women

Family members of political prisoners wait for them to come out from Yangon's Insein prison after authorities released them in January, 2012. / Reuters

To mark International Womens Day, I embrace this opportunity to honor the countless women who have dedicated and continue to dedicate their lives to their families, communities and countries with loving kindness, empathy, courage and the many other qualities their male counterparts so often lack. Unavoidably for me, first among these women is my late mother.

My mother not only led our family as a breadwinner, she also raised her boys to think rationally and justly and backed her rebellious sons when they opposed oppressive regimes right up until she met her ill-fated death, her body crushed by a Hino vehicle carrying Air Force personnel as she was making her way back home. That was in August 1994  more than two years after I was thrown into jail for my political activism.

I am certain that as she took her last breath on that spot, at the age 49, she was thinking about what would happen during the coming week, when she was due to come and visit me in prison. (Her other son was at that moment living in exile.) Since my sentencing to 10 years in prison by a military tribunal, she had never missed a single one of the biweekly visits she was permitted to make to her political prisoner son in Insein Prison.

By the time she died, she had visited the prison more than 60 times to bring me the food, medicine and other materials that not only I but also my fellow political prisoners so badly needed. But her visits were intended not only to meet my material needs, but also to provide the strong moral support I would need to survive my 10-year imprisonment.

In our country under the previous military regime, it was beyond difficult and dangerous to be the mother of both a political prisoner and an exiled political activist.

While running her own business to take care of the family  as well as provide for me in prison  she faced harassment, threats and intimidation from officials of the junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, in her ward and township, as well as from plainclothes officers belonging to the regimes notorious Military Intelligence apparatus. In their eyes, she was simply the mother of a prisoner and an outcast who had defied their authority. But she stood up to them until her last day.

In fact, my mother was just one among countless mothers, sisters, wives and individual women in Myanmar who bravely endured similar or even worse situations under one of a series of authoritarian regimes from 1962 to 2010.

Other women took even more risks to play leading roles in the fight for freedom and/or democracy throughout British colonial rule in the late 19th-century, the pre- and post- independence eras, and various authoritarian and military regimes from 1962 to 2010.

We may never know how many mothers, wives, sisters and partners were victims of those oppressive systems and the abusive individuals who did their bidding. Nor will we ever fully appreciated the extent to which so many of them managed to overcome these hardships.

Throughout Myanmars history, women have always been at the forefront of efforts to combat oppression and promote democracy. In the early 20th century, when the country was under colonial rule, women were active in the nationalist movement that led to independence in 1948.

With independence restored, the role of women in politics and other sectors was more vital than ever. But their role, especially in politics, diminished after the military staged a coup in 1962. Women were marginalized in the male-dominated regime. The period between 1962 and 1988 under the rule of late dictator Ne Win can be seen as a kind of dark age for women.

But when we took to the streets to topple the authoritarian regime during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, young female students in my classrooms joined the movement along with women from every sector. Win Maw Oo was just one example of how bravely women and girls took to the forefront of the movement, staring down the regimes rifle barrels. She was just 16 when she was gunned down in downtown Yangon on Sept. 19, 1988, the day after the military staged a bloody coup.

Several hundred female political activists were among those of us locked up for lengthy terms in cells at prisons across the country. Some might wonder how those female political prisoners managed to overcome such hardships in prisons.

Some of those women are today sitting in national and regional parliaments as lawmakers elected in the 2015 general election. Women now account for 13 percent of the members of the countrys legislative assemblies  an unprecedented though still unsatisfactory level.

But the majority of Myanmar people  both male and female  showed in the 1990 and 2015 elections that they are ready to accept women as their leaders or representatives if they are capable. Led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy won both elections in landslides. Some ethnic women candidates won seats in their constituencies as well.

In Myanmar, which was closed off to the world by authoritarian and military rulers for nearly five decades, there are bound to be many people who cling to old-fashioned political and social norms.

For an individual person to be able to recognize womens endeavors, sacrifices and achievements, they must be able to change their view and mindset. For an institution or administration, including the incumbent government, it will require policies or decisions that create an environment in which women  half of Myanmars more than 51 million people  can fulfill their important roles  which are not limited to nurturing families, but extend to leading their country to a better future  with all their strengths and abilities.
Guest Column Rowdy monks or a Crisis of Monastic Authority?

Buddhist nationalist monks attend a Ma Ba Tha meeting to celebrate its anniversary in Yangon, Myanmar, May 27, 2017. / Reuters

The NLD governments relatively quiet campaign against nationalist monks has burst into the headlines again in the past few weeks. First, on February 21, Minister of Religious Affairs and Culture U Aung Ko made a request to the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee (Ma Ha Na, in its Burmese acronym) that the group step up its disciplining of monks who speak or behave in ways that disgrace the religion. Then, on February 25, another monk named Ashin Issariya (famous for his organizing role in the 2007 Saffron Revolution and probably better known by his pen name King Zero) tried to hold a press conference to call on the government and Ma Ha Na to discipline U Wirathu for disrespecting Buddhism. It was disrupted by a group of aggressive nationalist monks, which seemed to prompt another statement from U Aung Ko the following day. In this statement, he claimed that the government found it difficult to act against these monks because of a lack of consensus within society on the proper political role of monks.

Hand-wringing about monks in politics is nothing new in Myanmar. Unsurprisingly, this is itself a deeply politicized topic, where ones approval of a monks political activities often depends on how much those activities align with ones own political perspective. (It is also important to note the ways in which the term political monk has been used to delegitimize monastic activities since at least the colonial era, and regularly under previous military governments.) It may be a bit disingenuous of the minister to suggest that, in order for the authorities to be able to take action, society needs to make a definitive determination on what has always been and likely always will be an essentially contested question within Buddhist cultures. But this recent series of events shines light on how the precarity of religious authority in Myanmar today has shaped the current incarnation of Buddhist nationalist groups.

For the last 18 months, I have been part of a research team (that also includes Dr. Ma Khin Mar Mar Kyi, Aye Thein and Saw Aung Than Wai) for the ESRC-funded project Understanding Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar. Part of our goal has been to track the nuances and variation in the phenomenon of Buddhist nationalism in different contexts across Myanmar, essentially disaggregating a movement that we believe is neither unitary nor unified.

Crisis of Authority

Recently, members of our research team gave a talk at the University of Oxford in which we positioned the emergence of Ma Ba Tha (the Organization for the Protection of Race and Religion, mostly re-branded since June 2017 as the Buddha Dhamma Parahita Foundation) within an extended crisis of religious and religio-political authority in Myanmar. (You can listen to a podcast of the talk here.) We know that the current transition has generated deeply felt anxieties regarding the resilience of Buddhism in the country. While this has been most notably and problematically directed against a perceived existential threat from Islam, there is a complementary line of concern related to the level of devotion in Buddhist practice and corresponding levels of respect for Buddhist institutions such as the sangha (monkhood).

Ma Ba Tha rose to prominence amidst persistent criticisms of Ma Ha Na, which I describe briefly below. But, however much Burmese monks might resent the politically motivated centralization of the monkhood, they also seem to value the existence of the monastic authority, both because of its role in keeping discipline within the sangha and as a voice of advocacy for monks and for Buddhism, more generally. Persistent concerns that Ma Ha Na is simply a tool of the government (whichever government is in power) run alongside a sense that the organization is necessary, but no longer sufficient, for the protection of Buddhism. It is these sentiments, we argue, that created fertile ground for a group like Ma Ba Tha to emerge and occupy a crucial religio-political space. And it is disputes over the proper boundaries of that space and the role of monks and political authorities within it, that underlie recent events related to monastic discipline and governance.

Criticisms of Ma Ha Na

The 47 monks at the top of the Ma Ha Na hierarchy are often seen as old and out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of the monkhood and of Buddhism more broadly. Most critics stop short of claiming that individual monks within Ma Ha Na are corrupt, but there are worries about its senior figures having become too comfortable and that their decisions have been influenced by their receiving titles and respect from high-ranking lay figures. They are particularly criticized for being under the control of the government, under whose auspices Ma Ha Na was created in the 1980s. As one monk told us, Under normal circumstances, its good to have an organization like Ma Ha Na. However, it shouldnt exist, as it currently does, in a position of subordination whereby it only does the governments bidding.

Many monks encounter Ma Ha Na only in its regulatory capacity, and even then, their interactions would take place largely at arms length, and only sporadically. Ma Ha Na rules monastic life from a distance, its dormant administrative mechanism becoming active only when serious problems arise, such as disputes over monastic property. Otherwise, the interactions between local monasteries and abbots and different levels of Ma Ha Na authorities remain at a bare minimum. As a result, the central organization only seems to appear in monks lives when it is interfering in their affairs.

At the same time, others (such as Ashin Issariya and U Aung Ko) express concerns regarding the regulation of monastic conduct in general. Ma Ha Na is supposed to undertake this purification duty and it is seen as not consistently carrying out this duty. It should be noted that this can often be a self-interested critique, in that monks strongly believe that other monks should be disciplined and held to the vinaya (rules of monastic conduct) more strictly, but see regulation of their own conduct and activities as unjustified interference.

Many monks seem to want a monastic hierarchy that is not only independent of the government, but can act as a strong defender of monastic interests and of Buddhism more generally. Advocating on behalf of Buddhism would not only include engaging with the government, but taking a more active role in encouraging, managing and supporting activities that strengthen the religion, such as parahita (social work) and thathana pyu (building up the religion through the construction of religious edifices, implementing Buddhist education, or providing material support to monks).

But importantly, there are (often vague and unarticulated) limits to how much monks should be involved in mundane affairs. Senior monks within Ma Ha Na might be restricted in the available actions they could take, because of the perceived dependence of Ma Ha Na on the government, the sluggish pace of the monastic bureaucracy, or because the dictates of the vinaya, while ideally providing a code of conduct for all monks, might weigh more heavily on more senior and respectable monks.

Ma Ba Tha Fills a Religio-Political Vacuum

This point brings us back to consideration of Ma Ba Thas emergence as a group that straddles the religious and political spheres, and compels us to re-think its relationship with Ma Ha Na. This relationship can seem competitive and antagonistic, but recall that, even in the moments where Ma Ha Na has censured Ma Ba Tha, it has done so in very particular ways, and senior Ma Ha Na monks have continued to express support for the shared goal of protecting the Buddhist religion and Buddhist community more broadly.

There is, then, a way in which monks from both groups could see their coexistence as complementary and mutually beneficial. That is, Ma Ba Tha, as a sangha-lay organization, could be seen to be in a better position to respond to perceived emergencies, whether communal violence, natural disasters or government policies perceived as hostile to Buddhism. Of course, the other side of this is the expectation that Ma Ha Na would be more focused and effective in its areas of competency, such as in advocating for monks and maintaining discipline within the sangha.

And, despite occasional harsh public criticisms of Ma Ha Na (mostly from more firebrand monks like U Wirathu), the language with which these critiques are expressed reveals the persistent influence of the monastic hierarchy and the norms that govern intra-sangha relations. Even the softest form of condemnation is made in such a way that it is carefully depersonalized. In our interviews, even monks who were strong detractors of Ma Ha Na wouldnt name particular figures within Ma Ha Nas senior leadership. Similarly, Ma Ba Thas senior monks have always been appropriately deferential in response to Ma Ha Nas public orders against their group.

Challenging or Strengthening Ma Ha Na?

These intra-sangha tensions are rarely discussed in analyses of Ma Ba Tha, which usually focus on anti-Muslim attitudes which, while still an important and consequential part of the groups ideology, are not the only relevant aspect of its existence. Because Ma Ba Tha emerged during the previous, military-aligned political administration, most analysis of the group has highlighted government support for the organization, especially in the context of the 2015 election. A more contentious relationship between Ma Ba Tha and the current NLD government has brought these critiques of Ma Ha Na back to the surface, reminding us that both religious and political authorities try to influence the other and exercise some control over the others realm, and that religious authority in Myanmar is continuously contested and re-negotiated. Paying attention to these dynamics helps provide a more accurate picture of what Ma Ba Tha is, how it has been evolving, and where the potential fracture points are, both within the organization and within the sangha more broadly.

Broader insecurities about the place, status and durability of Buddhism that circulate in Myanmar today have sometimes been directed towards the perceived external threat from Islam. But they have also been focused internally, via a discourse on inadequacies in sangha governance and a real or perceived decline in respect for monastic moral authority. While the criticisms of Ma Ha Na in the present period appear to be consistent with those expressed in past decades, they are refracted through a perceived crisis of Buddhism in present moment, occurring in the context of the expansion of political space within Myanmar and dynamics of globalization more broadly. Ma Ba Tha was not intended as a direct challenge to religious authorities in Myanmar, but it has provided an effective vehicle for carrying out activities seen as outside the scope of Ma Ha Nas remit. It has continued calls for the reform of monastic governance, while also expanding the institutional networks through which monks can conduct their religious, social and (sometimes) political activities.

We can see the same dynamics present in the recent statements by U Aung Ko and Ashin Issariya. The latter is concerned about the effects that U Wirathus words and actions might have on the reputation of Buddhism. (Ironically, some senior monks expressed exactly the same concern when they founded Ma Ba Tha almost five years ago.) The minister knows that he walks a fine line in trying to manage and discipline the sangha from the position of a layperson, with no moral authority over a monk. While the entire monkhood tries to keep these disputes hidden behind closed doors, they spill into public view in periods of heightened tension or fears related to the perpetuation of Buddhism. Myanmars still-uncertain transition has not assuaged any of those fears, which likely means we can expect to see conflicts between monks continue, accompanied by calls for Ma Ha Na to do its job and discipline rowdy monks. But it also suggests that Ma Ba Tha continues to remain relevant and influential in part because it operates in a religio-political space that the formal monastic authorities are unable or unwilling to occupy themselves.
Thursday, March 8th, 2018 (1:27 pm) - Score 20,210

A number of residents in the large Cambridgeshire village of Papworth Everard, which has a population of roughly 3000, claim to have been taken by surprise after Virgin Medias four year old trial of a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) broadband network suddenly came to a halt.

The trial was originally setup in summer 2014 as a way of testing the cable operators new narrow-trenching approach to civil engineering with the John Henry Group (here and here), which reduced the width of the trench used to lay fibre optic cables from 40cm to just 10cm. Normally Virgin Media wouldnt target such a small community but in this case their infrastructure already passed through the area and that made it viable.

On top of that the area also became the first on their network to test a 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH/P) service, which was used to connect around 100 homes and many of those reported speeds of up to 800-900Mbps (Megabits per second). All of this occurred just ahead of the operators official Project Lightning launch in February 2015 (here).

Since then the network has continued to run and until very recently the locals had still been enjoying the pleasingly fast connectivity. Sadly all that changed a few weeks ago. Without any warning the FTTH connection suddenly went down and this time it didnt come back up again. Residents had previously been warned to expect occasional downtime as part of the trial but nothing like this.

One Resident told ISPreview.co.uk (Anonymously): A few villagers posted on Facebook that it was off and was it just them or everyone and we came to the conclusion it was down for all users on the trial. Then a couple of local VM engineers replied but nothing from Virgin Media in any official capacity to the villagers on the trial, no formal communication about why it had gone off and if it would be back on. Eventually one of the VM engineers posted on FB saying there had been an equipment failure at the VM exchange and due to the cost it would not be fixed, so trial over, but again no formal communication from VM just a post on FB by a local engineer trying to be helpful.

We did some checking with another person who is known to be on the trial and they similarly confirmed that the service had stopped functioning. Luckily customers on the trial were also supplied with a traditional Hub 3.0 router, which meant that they could just go back to the old service (i.e. there was no charge for the 1Gbps service on top of their standard package).

Nevertheless those affected are now mourning the loss of speed.

A Spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview.co.uk: In 2014, we started a small six-month trial to test narrow-trenching technology and trial new in-home and network equipment. This trial was completed successfully and after being extended for nearly four years, has now ended.

The development is somewhat unexpected, particularly given VMs stated intention to extend their fledgling FTTH/P based infrastructure out to 2 million premises under the 3bn Project Lightning network expansion by around 2019 or 2020. This will deliver a total of 4 million extra premises passed, albeit with the other half being traditional hybrid coax + fibre DOCSIS.

Sadly Virgin Media did not answer our question about the alleged equipment failure in their exchange, although the operator has said that theyre now in the process of contacting customers on the trial to update them and arrange to collect any unused kit. Still being left with the option of a top connection speed that can reach 350Mbps is hardly terrible.
For all the focus on GDPR, there is a U.S.-based security mandate that was scheduled to go into effect in January. To better protect federal agencies from cyberattacks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) required the implementation of Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) for email systems. As a CISCO blog post on the DMARC topic reported back in the fall:

DHS has officially recognized what we have known all along, email is the number one threat vector and federal agencies are at risk for phishing, business email compromise and ransomware. . . . . According to the 2017 Midyear Cisco Cybersecurity Report, $5.3 billion was stolen due to business email compromise fraud between October 2013 and December 2016, an average of $1.7 billion per year. Implementing an email security solution with DMARC can help mitigate this risk.

At the same time, agencies were also required to use HTTPS to promote encrypted communications.

So, January 2018 is in the books. How are these agencies doing in terms of meeting these fairly simple protocols?

According to Tara Seals at InfoSecurity, DMARC adoption surged coming up to the January 15 deadline, with a 38 percent increase in a 30-day period, based on research by Agari. Seals also wrote:

Agari research also shows the effectiveness of the DMARC security control across federal agencies. Of the billions of emails sent across the more than 400 federal government domains secured by Agari, 96 percent of the emails are protected by the strongest DMARC policy (p=reject), including those in the US Senate, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services and the US Post Office. All of these have seen attempted fraud send rates decrease to less than 2 percent in December.

However good the adoption rate was, more than half of federal agencies had not made the changes with less than two weeks to go. Easy Solution investigated more than 300 agencies in February to see where things stood after the mandate deadline. The results werent promising. More than 100 agencies have done nothing, and eight in 10 agencies overall did the bare minimum. The Easy Solution blog also reported this:

Surprisingly, and somewhat disconcertingly, some agencies that fall into the Economic and Health sectors shook out near the bottom of the pack. Most egregious is the fact that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which suffered a rather catastrophic breach in 2015 to the tune of 21.5 million stolen records failed to achieve even the bare minimum of p=none.

I know that asking government agencies to do something in 90 days may be pushing the envelope of expectations, but honestly, this is a pretty minor adoption  one that Congress had to push for before anything was done. No wonder its doubtful well ever see GDPR-style regulations passed across the U.S.

Sue Marquette Poremba has been writing about network security since 2008. In addition to her coverage of security issues for IT Business Edge, her security articles have been published at various sites such as Forbes, Midsize Insider and Toms Guide. You can reach Sue via Twitter: @sueporemba
At a Glance Experts Rating Pros Strict no-logging policy

Granular, per-country server selection

Respectable number of servers spread over 60 different countries

Torrent-friendly

Subscriptions can be purchased using Bitcoin

AES-256-bit encryption Cons No power user options to change VPN protocol as on Windows

Expensive no subscription/month-to-month fee Our Verdict CyberGhosts connection speeds make it a great VPN option for most people, but users who deal in sensitive information may wish to look elsewhere for greater privacy from government actors.

Best Prices Today

Retailer Price Delivery CyberGhost $47.88 View

First, lets address the spooky stuff that pertains to paranoid types, journalists, and political activists. CyberGhosts offices are located in Bucharest, Romania, a country not known for sharing online information with western intelligence concerns or law enforcement agencies. Dont feel too cozy about it, though: The company was recently sold to Crossrider, which is based on The Isle of Mana British Crown Dependency.

England is a member of the Five Eyes (FVEY) data intelligence sharing program. If you consider using CyberGhost, be aware any sensitive information you send or receive could fall under direct government scrutiny. On top of that, Crossrider is a digital product company, and one of the products that it offers is ad server software for targeting mobile hardware.

CyberGhosts founder swears that user privacy will be maintained, despite the companys sale to Crossrider. This pledge is backed up by the VPNs strict no-logging policy. While other VPN providers retain data about where and when you connected to their servers, and how much data you transferred before disconnecting (purportedly for server diagnostic purposes), CyberGhost holds on to no user information to speak ofor so they say. Allegations made in a number of security forums say that the companys no-logging policy isnt worth the display it scrolls across. Whether this policy is upheld by the companys new owners, who purchased the VPN service in 2017, remains to be seen.

However, if youre just looking for a VPN to protect your personal information while you use an unprotected public wi-fi network, you dont really need to worry about any of this.

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them.

CyberGhost: Security, software, servers, and speed

CyberGhost uses AES-256-bit encryption to keep their customers data and browsing habits secure from prying eyes. This same level of encryption offered by most other VPN service providers and is currently used by military and government agencies around the world to relay sensitive data.

CyberGhosts macOS app is pretty to look at, but slow to load. On a 2015 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro that I used for testing, it took between five and ten seconds before the apps UI finally presented itself. Once loaded, though, using CyberGhost is mostly a breeze.

If youre simply looking to connect to a VPN without changing any country or security settings, just click the apps central button and let the tunneling begin. However, the app could make locating a server to connect to a little bit easier. Its possible to sort CyberGhosts servers based on speed, location, load and a number of other factors. But the controls for doing so arent highlighted within the app interface.

At the time of this review, CyberGhost maintained 1,324 servers spread across 52 countries. While some VPN service providers might offer more servers in more locations, these numbers are entirely respectable and should support most tunneling needs. If youre investing in a VPN so that you can engage in a bit of torrenting, CyberGhost will welcome you with open arms. The same goes for users who want to be be able to use streaming services like Netflix or Hulu while theyre out of the country or to access region locked content from elsewhere. This ability can, however, change at any time. Streaming content providers are very good at keeping one step ahead of anyone looking to use their services in unlicensed locations.

CyberGhost allows subscribers to connect up to five devices at a time to their network and, in addition to macOS, offers apps for iOS, Android and Windows users.

During testing, connecting to CyberGhosts servers resulted in the following upload/download speed reductions versus connecting to the Internet without a VPN.

Server location Download

speed

decrease Upload

speed

decrease U.S. 10% 15% U.K. (England) 39% 47% European (Switzerland) 12% 82% Oceanic (Australia) 24% 29% Asia (Japan) 6% 57%

Learn more about how we tested VPN software.

CyberGhost pricing

Using CyberGhost on a month-to month basis will set you back $12 every 30 days. This might be fine for users with short-term needs, but its pretty expensive compared to the companys one and two year plans.

A one year subscription to CyberGhost can be had for $72, which breaks down to roughly six bucks per month. Signing on for two years is even cheaper, paid up front at $84.

No matter which package you select, you can cancel your service within 30 days of purchase. Subscriptions can be purchased using a credit card, PayPal, or, if anonymity is important to you, Bitcoin.

Bottom line

With fast VPN connections to US and Oceanic servers, and reasonable speeds to the rest of the world, CyberGhost could be a great VPN optionfor most people. Users who deal in sensitive information may wish to look elsewhere for a VPN that offers a greater amount of privacy from government actors.

Editors Note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.
The airport has deployed Vai  a Virtual Assistant Interface  which started work last week and is claimed as the first ever Digital Employee to be deployed at an airport.

New Zealands the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) is trialling Vai in the airports biosecurity arrivals area to see whether she will become a permanent asset in the team. Vai can see, hear and answer arriving international visitors questions.

The idea is for her to take some of the load off MPI officers during peak times by answering simple biosecurity questions from the public, says MPIs detection technology manager, Brett Hickman.

Westpacs Innovation Fund supported the development of Vai for MPI, while FaceMe, a New Zealand-based company specialising in AI, developed the technology.

Vai was built using FaceMes digital employee platform which offers companies customised Digital Employees, and with training, these employees can offer personalised service using natural language.

FaceMes avatar technology uses biometrics to learn human interactions and will interact accordingly to ease the customers experience.



Digital Employees also learn from every past interaction to sharpen and perfect their skills, says FaceMe CEO and winner of the Sir Richard Branson Virgin Business challenge, Danny Tomsett.

Vai is highly conversational and has been trained through every interaction, as well as data available on the website. She embodies the AI experience with human like qualities, including a friendly personality and emotional understanding.

Nothing can replace real human interaction and relationships but Vai frees up our officers time so they can deal with the really important aspects of their role.

According to FaceMe, which was recognised at the Deloitte Fast 50 NZ awards as one of the countrys fastest growing businesses, believes that the market for AI will grow beyond $47 billion per annum.

"Over the next ten years, human contact with organisations will be reduced to less than 15% of interactions. On the other hand, meeting consumers expectations is far more complex today than ever before; and theres still huge strategic importance in customer experience and its impact on company culture, revenue growth and churn. Its at the intersection of these two realities that there is a powerful opportunity to innovate, Tomsett said.

Digital Employees offer an empathetic, human-like interface which provides answers, handles requests, supplies information or simply connects clients to a key person across any and all channels, day or night. In short: the perfect employees and FaceMe can enable any organisation with a digital team to make this experience a reality.

According to FaceMe it has brought this experience to life over mobile, browser, phone and kiosk; and has pilot customers across banking, Government and telecommunications.

The Westpac Innovation Fund was born out of the All of Government banking tender and is a $10 million initiative set up as a joint program between Westpac and the New Zealand Government.

Click here to watch VAI on Youtube
Australia and New Zealand are relatively quiet places in terms of cyber threats when compared to the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, one of the few women in the field of cyber security claims.

Noushin Shabab, a security researcher with Kaspersky Lab in Melbourne, said that Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia faced bigger problems on the cyber front, adding that her observations were based on the last two years.

She said Australia and New Zealand had better defences, more people and invested more in security; this was why the problem of online security were less severe.

Shabab, who spoke to iTWire on the sidelines of the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Cancun on Thursday, pointed out there were instances where Australian companies had been attacked but that was because they were part of an industry sector that was being targeted.

For example, in the case of one unnamed company in 2016-17, she said it was attacked because it was in the financial sector and many others in the same sector had been attacked in other countries.

As far as attacks targeting Australia were concerned, she said in 2016, Kaspersky Lab had found a marketplace for compromised servers on the dark web and the highest rates were for Australian servers, with many Australian domains having been compromised. However, this was not limited to Australian servers.

Again, in 2016, in the case of the Dropping Elephant threat actor  malware that used two main infection vectors target foreign relations with China  Shabab said Australia was again one of the targets.

New Zealand, she said, was even quieter than Australia. In the event that anything did happen there requiring Kaspersky's intervention, the company used its remote forensic framework to investigate, using a local IT person to assist.

Asked whether she had seen any increased interest in data security in the run-up to the introduction of the Australian data breach law last month, Shabab said there was not much of a difference in the level of interest.

The writer is attending the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit as a guest of the company.

Photo: courtesy Kaspersky Lab
This new Center report outlines ten policies supported by available research that can help Illinois reduce the number of people killed each year by gun violence

The soaring sales of firearms worry mental health and gun violence experts, concerned that the likely fallout will be a rise in suicides, domestic homicides, and accidental injuries and death in the weeks and months ahead.

A white paper and infographic review the approaches states use to screen out prohibited individuals from owning guns, and conclude that only purchaser licensing has been shown to reduce gun violence.

In households with firearms, safe storage is now especially criticaland is the focus of a new online map developed by students and faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Daniel Webster and Cass Crifasi, co-authors of the report, explain the background, findings, and takeaways for other communities in the US.

New Center report on the enforcement of gun laws in Baltimore offers findings and recommendations to reduce violence and improve trust in police.

A consortium of legal and public health experts organized by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, including core faculty member, Shannon Frattaroli, has a new set of recommendations to improve and enhance the effectiveness of ERPOs.

Join us for a unique opportunity to learn more about this evidence-based approach to reducing gun violence through scientific data and first-person accounts of those who are on the front lines using ERPOs as a tool to save lives.

The Center celebrated 25 years of gun violence prevention with a special virtual symposium on March 3. The event reflected on the Center's history and achievements, featured dynamic conversations between leaders in the field, and provide a vision for what lies ahead.

This simple but comprehensive tool can help everyone understand the different parts of a firearm and lead to more productive conversations about gun violence prevention.

Our goal is to bring public health expertise and perspectives to the complex policy issues related to gun violence prevention.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy is engaged in original scholarly research, policy analysis and agenda-setting public discourse. An important part of the Center's mission is to serve as an objective and informative resource for the news media, thereby providing the public with accurate information about gun injuries, prevention strategies, and policies.
Summerville, SC (29483)

Today

Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. High 83F. Winds E at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Rain. Low 73F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
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The bipartisan bill was rewritten after criticism by civil rights advocates but it remains challenged by the ACLU.

The legal advocacy group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Tuesday their opposition to a revised draft of a legislation targeting the growing pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The ACLU criticized the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which was introduced last year by a group of Democratic and Republican legislators, warning it would infringe upon the free speech of United States citizens.

BDS is a nonviolent movement launched in 2005 to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, to respect the human rights of Palestinians under occupation, and to recognize Palestinian refugees right to return.

It is inspired by the 1990s boycott campaigns against the apartheid regime of racial segregation and domination in South Africa and was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

In light of mounting criticism, last week Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) released a joint statement about amending the bill. However, the ACLU responded that while there have been several significant improvements the bill still harms freedom of speech and political expression.

Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project explained in a letter to Senators Cardin and Portman that the revised bill continues to penalize participants in political boycotts in violation of the First Amendment. The ACLU also warned that if passed, the organization would most likely challenge it in court.

The Supreme Court ruled decades ago that political boycotts are protected by the First Amendment, and the ACLU is currently fighting two lawsuits challenging Kansas and Arizona laws requiring state contractors to certify that they are not participating in boycotts of Israel, Wizner added.

Syndicated by permission from TeleSur



Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Democracy Now! from last summer: Criminalizing Critics of Israel: Congress Considers Sweeping Bills to Fine & Jail Backers of BDS
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By Elizabeth Drayson | (The Conversation) |  

It was the moment which set Spain on a course to become the greatest power in early modern Europe. On January 2, 1492 Abdallah Muhammad bin Ali, or Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil, the last Moorish sultan of Granada and head of the Nasrid dynasty, surrendered his city and handed over the keys of the Alhambra to the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. The Christian rulers had approached Granada accompanied by the cardinal of Spain, Francisco Cisneros, and a brilliant retinue of courtiers and noblemen, among whom was Christopher Colombus.

The Capitulation of Granada.

Francisco Pradilla Ortiz



All the Christian royalty and knighthood wore Moorish dress, brocade and silk tunics and the waist sash or marlota, in a gesture of apparent respect, a visual statement to placate, reassure and suggest commonality. In reality, it was more an act of insolent appropriation and absorption of what was Moorish by the enemy. It was a gesture that epitomised the aggressively hostile ethos of the Reconquest, which manifested itself in a latent desire to usurp and eliminate that culture and religion. That desire finally became a reality in 1609, when all Moriscos or converted Muslims were expelled from Spain.

Boabdil rode out to meet them, departing from the Gate of Seven Floors at the Alhambra, down steep slopes offering magnificent views of the city he was about to leave forever. At this official, public surrender of Granada to the Christian enemy, Boabdil handed the keys of his city to Ferdinand, and was recorded as saying in Arabic: God loves you greatly. Sir, these are the keys of this paradise. I and those inside it are yours.

Struggle and diplomacy

This moment of surrender has captured the imagination of writers and artists up to the present day  initially as one of supreme conquest and later because of the extreme poignancy of that ceremony of transition and loss. It marked a crucial encounter in a centuries-old clash between two great religions and cultures and symbolised the epoch-changing transition of the kingdom of Granada from Islamic state to Christian territory.

In the ten years before 1492, the kingdom of Granada was the theatre of one of the most significant wars in European history. The Nasrid sultans territory was the last Spanish stronghold of a great Muslim empire which had originally stretched to the Pyrenees and beyond, and had included northern Spanish cities such as Barcelona and Pamplona. The fall of Granada was the culmination of that ancient battle between two major and opposing civilisations, which not only settled the cultural fate of a large part of Europe but also established the basis for the discovery of the Americas.

In that last decade of Muslim rule in Spain from 1482-92, sultan Boabdil  a raw youth of 20 who had barely left the confines of the Alhambra palace and had no experience of the world outside his dysfunctional family  rose to the throne as the 23rd of the Nasrid dynasty of Granada. In the ensuing ten years, he fended off the attacks of the indomitable Christian army with courage, bearing the inescapable loss of his Islamic kingdom and his consequent exile from Spain with dignity. Boabdil broke the mould of previous Muslim rulers in preferring negotiation over violence, peace with the Christians over war, and strove to find a way for the Muslims of his kingdom to maintain their religion and customs alongside their Christian counterparts.

As I have discussed in a recent book on the subject, the last Muslim sultan in Spain has become a potent symbol of resistance against repression, and of the forces of rebellion  a moral hero in his own right whose life matters today because he sought to save his kingdom and way of life through the path of negotiation and diplomacy.

End of days

The year 1492 is generally seen as a beginning, whether of modern Spain or the discovery of the New World. But what had ended was equally significant. For nearly 800 years, since 711, the Spanish peninsula had been home to a group of people who came as invaders and stayed to create a unique and sophisticated civilisation which bequeathed to Spain a lasting cultural heritage. One thing that was lost was the fertile cross-cultural creativity and renewal born out of the Muslim conquest.

The sometimes uneasy coexistence of Christians, Muslims and Jews which had been such a significant part of medieval Spanish life was replaced by the serious confrontations and conflicts leading to the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609. Instead of a society where members of three different religions lived together, Spain after 1492 became a society with a sole religion and language, a closed, suspicious place that repressed and eliminated difference.

The story of Boabdil and the fall of Granada represents a last stand against religious intolerance, fanatical power and cultural ignorance, in which issues of violence, tension and prejudice between Muslims and Christians were as pressing then as they are now.

Elizabeth Drayson, Lorna Close Fellow in Spanish at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
OAKVILLE, Ontario, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Giyani Metals Corporation (TSXV:WDG) (GR:A2DUU8) (Giyani or the Company) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Kneipe Setlhare as country manager. He will be based out of Giyanis new regional office in Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana.

As Giyanis country manager in Botswana, Mr. Setlhare will ensure that the Company meets all requirements to maintain compliance with government regulations, obtain necessary approvals in a timely manner, and manage local third party contractors. Additionally, Mr. Setlhare will supervise the development of the Companys Kanye manganese project, including the upcoming field program, and manage relationships with the local communities.

Mr. Kneipe Setlhare graduated from the University of Botswana and is a mining engineer with over 12 years of experience in mining operations management, including roles with BCL Mines and Smelting, and Discovery Metals Limited. He is also a director of Marcelle Holdings who vended 12 manganese licences to Giyani in 2017.

The office in Gaborone will provide Giyani with necessary logistical and legal infrastructure to establish itself as a credible mining company that is well positioned to contribute to the development and diversification of the Botswana mining sector.

I am very pleased with the progress that we have achieved in Botswana thus far. The setup of a local office in the capital Gaborone, gives us the ability to accelerate the development of our Kanye manganese project. We welcome Mr. Sethlhare to the Giyani team and look forward to his contribution to the growth of our Company said Robin Birchall, CEO.

About Giyani

Giyani Metals Corp. is a Canadian based junior exploration company focused on creating shareholder value by accelerating the development of its high-grade manganese project in the Kanye Basin, Botswana, Africa.

Additional information and corporate documents may be found on www.sedar.com and on Giyani Metals Corp. website: http://giyanimetals.com/.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Giyani Metals Corp.

Robin Birchall, CEO

Contact:

Giyani Metals Corporation

Robin Birchall

CEO, Director

+447711313019

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, the financial picture of the Company etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statement.
TORONTO, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Victoria Gold Corp. (TSX.V:VIT) Victoria or the Company is pleased to announce that it has entered into documentation with Orion Mine Finance (Orion), Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd (Osisko) and Caterpillar Financial Services Limited (Caterpillar Financial) with respect to a construction financing package totalling approximately C$505 million in aggregate (the Financing) that will fully fund the development of the Eagle Gold project through to commercial production. The Financing is comprised of:

two credit facilities totalling US$175 million (approximately C$219 million);

an equipment financing facility for up to US$50 million (C$63 million);

a C$98 million royalty financing; and,

a private placement of Victoria common shares to two separate subscribers for a total of C$125 million.

With this project financing package, Victoria is in a position to continue construction activities and advance the Eagle project to first gold pour, which we expect in the second half of 2019, commented John McConnell, President & CEO. With this significant milestone behind us, we look forward to building a high-quality, profitable, and environmentally safe project that will deliver significant economic benefit to all of our stakeholders.

In connection with the Financing, Victoria has executed a term sheet with respect to: (i) the sale to Osisko of a 5% NSR royalty for proceeds of C$98 million (the Osisko Royalty), and (ii) the purchase by Osisko, on a private placement basis, of 100,000,000 common shares of Victoria at a price of C$0.50 per common share for proceeds of C$50 million.

Additionally, Victoria has executed a term sheet with Orion with respect to: (i) the provision by Orion of a senior secured project finance debt facility in the principal amount of US$75 million and a subordinated debt facility in the principal amount of US$100 million (together, the Orion Debt Facilities), and (ii) the purchase by Orion, on a private placement basis, of 150,000,000 common shares of Victoria at a price of C$0.50 per common share for proceeds of C$75 million.

Separately, Victoria has executed a term sheet with Caterpillar Financial with respect to a proposed equipment financing for up to US$50 million.

Senior Secured Debt Facility

US$75 million debt facility to be available from the date the secured subordinated loan facility is fully drawn until two years post-closing;

Interest rate of 3-month LIBOR plus 5.00%;

Two-year interest holiday during which interest will accrue and be capitalized reducing cash payments for Victoria during the construction period;

Principal and accrued interest is repayable in 15 quarterly installments beginning 24 months after the closing of the facility.

Secured Subordinated Loan Facility

US$100 million loan facility to be available from closing for a period of two years;

Interest rate of 3-month LIBOR plus 6.70%;

Two-year interest holiday during which interest will accrue and be capitalized reducing cash payments for Victoria during the construction period;

Principal is due at maturity on March 31, 2024.

Equipment Finance Facility

Up to US$50 million of equipment leases;

Facility will be used to support the acquisition of primarily new Cat  equipment;

equipment; Six-year, amortizing facility.

Royalty Agreement

C$98 million will be advanced to Victoria in two tranches, as described below, in exchange for a 5% NSR royalty on future production from the Eagle project;

Following delivery to Osisko of 97,500 ounces of refined gold, the NSR royalty will fall to 3%.

Equity Private Placements

Orion will subscribe for 150,000,000 shares of Victoria at a price of C$0.50 for aggregate proceeds of C$75 million.

Osisko will subscribe for 100,000,000 shares of Victoria at a price of C$0.50 for aggregate proceeds of C$50 million.

In connection with the financings to be provided by Orion, Victoria has agreed to issue Orion a combination of 25,000,000 Victoria share purchase warrants and gold call options for 20,000 oz, both of which will have a five-year term. The warrants will have a strike price of C$0.625, while the gold call options will have a strike price determined by the gold price at the time of closing plus US$150/oz premium. Victoria has agreed to grant offtake rights to Orion to purchase up to 25% of the annual gold production at the Eagle Gold project at prevailing market prices.

A majority of documentation has been agreed between the parties. Closing of the Financing is expected by the end of March 2018. The Financing is conditional upon the execution of definitive documentation including: credit agreements; subscription agreements; offtake agreement and warrant certificate. Closing of the Financing is conditional on the satisfaction of certain conditions precedent, including finalization of remaining documentation, including appropriate intercreditor arrangements between and among Victoria, Osisko, Orion and Caterpillar Financial (as applicable) and completion of necessary steps to perfect the security interests in respect of the Orion Debt Facilities, Osisko Royalty and Cat equipment financing. There can be no assurance that the Company will be able to satisfy the foregoing conditions and complete the Financing. The funding of the Osisko Royalty is expected to be carried out in two tranches, with the first tranche of C$49 million to be funded upon the satisfaction of certain conditions including (but not limited to) the execution by Victoria and Orion of definitive credit agreements in respect of the Orion Debt Facilities and the occurrence of the closing date under such facilities, and the second tranche of C$49 million to be funded pro rata to drawdowns under the subordinated debt component of the Orion Debt Facilities.

Following closing of the private placement common share subscriptions, (i) Orion will own approximately 19% of Victoria and (ii) Osisko will own approximately 16% of Victoria, in each case on a basic shares outstanding basis, which includes shares currently held by Osisko in the Company. Additionally, each of Orion and Osisko will have a right to nominate one member to Victorias board of directors.

John McConnell continued, Our Phase 1 construction activities, which commenced in August 2017, significantly de-risked the project and advanced detailed engineering to over 50% complete. We now look forward to working with our new partners, Orion, Osisko and Caterpillar, and all of our existing partners, including the First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun and the government of Yukon Territory, to reach our next milestone of production from the Eagle mine.

Sean Roosen, Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Osisko, commented, We are very pleased to partner with Victoria Gold to develop Canadas next premier gold mine, and to generate important benefits for all project stakeholders. Having been to the project and met with many of the stakeholders, we are looking forward to investing in and working with Victoria in the Yukon to bring this project to fruition. With the gold price currently over C$1,700 per ounce, this is a great time to be building a gold project in Canada as there is availability both from suppliers and in the work force. In addition, the robust economics of this project set the stage to start what we believe will be a project that brings economic change to the area and will be a meaningful contributor to the Yukon economy, both in the near term and long term, as the local workforce acquires important skills and experience that can be applied to future projects.

The Company has also concluded a term sheet for a C$20 million bridge loan with Auramet International. The Auramet bridge facility provides the Company flexibility to ramp up site activities while the Company closes the Financing outlined herein. The Company may choose whether or not to draw on the bridge facility dependent upon timing of closing and funding under the Financing.

The completion of the Orion Debt Facilities, the Osisko Royalty and the private placements to Osisko and Orion have been conditionally approved by the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV). Final approval remains subject to satisfaction of the customary conditions of the TSXV.

As a result of the Financing announced herein, the project finance facility previously announced on July 31, 2017 is no longer in effect.

Advisors

Auramet International and BMO Capital Markets are acting as financial advisors to Victoria in connection with the Financing. Bennett Jones LLP and Cassels Brock LLP are acting as Victorias legal counsel.

About the Dublin Gulch Property

Victoria Gold's 100%-owned Dublin Gulch gold property is situated in the central Yukon Territory, Canada, approximately 375 kilometres north of the capital city of Whitehorse, and approximately 85 kilometres from the village of Mayo. The Property is accessible by road year-round, and is located within Yukon Energy's electrical grid.

The Property covers an area of approximately 555 square kilometres, and is the site of the Company's Eagle Gold Deposit. The Eagle Gold Mine is expected to be Yukon's next operating gold mine and, between the Eagle and Olive deposits, include Proven and Probable Reserves of 2.7 million ounces of gold from 123 million tonnes of ore with a grade of 0.67 grams of gold per tonne, as outlined in a National Instrument 43-101 feasibility study. The NI 43-101 Mineral Resource for the Eagle and Olive deposits has been estimated to host 191 million tonnes averaging 0.65 grams of gold per tonne, containing 4.0 million ounces of gold in the "Measured and Indicated" category, inclusive of Proven and Probable Reserves, and a further 24 million tonnes averaging 0.61 grams of gold per tonne, containing 0.5 million ounces of gold in the "Inferred" category.

Qualified Person

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Tony George, P.Eng., as the Qualified Person. For additional information relating to the Property, refer to the technical report entitled "NI 43-101 Feasibility Study Technical Report for the Eagle Gold Project, Yukon Territory, Canada", with an effective date of September 12, 2016, which is available on the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Cautionary Language and Forward Looking Statements

This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation, including statements regarding the Eagle Gold project being fully funded, the construction of the Eagle Gold project, satisfaction of conditions precedent, including the negotiation, completion and execution of definitive documentation with respect to the Orion Debt Facilities, Osisko Royalty, Orion private placement, Orion offtake arrangements, Caterpillar Finance Facility, intercreditor arrangements, security arrangements, warrants and gold options, completion and funding under the Orion Debt Facilities, Orion private placement, Osisko Royalty and Caterpillar Finance Facility, projections regarding future production and production costs. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond Victoria's control, including risks associated with the ability of Victoria to satisfy the conditions precedent for completion of the Orion Debt Facilities, Osisko Royalty, Orion private placement and Caterpillar Finance Facility and to receive funding under them; the volatility of metal prices; risks and dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; risks of not achieving construction and development timelines and estimates; uncertainty of mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates; the ability to obtain and maintain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for mining activities; risks related to environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; risks related to remote operations and the availability of adequate infrastructure, fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for construction development and ultimately mining operations; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory risks; climate change risks; volatility of global financial conditions; risks related to reliance upon contractors and third parties; challenges to title or surface rights; dependence on key personnel; risks associated with conflicts of interest among the Company's directors and officers; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; litigation risk; taxation, including changes in tax laws and interpretation of tax laws; community and aboriginal support for the Company's operations including risks related to strikes and the halting of such operations, from time to time; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in Victoria's most recent Annual Information Form and the Company's other filings with Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sedar.com.

The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits or liabilities Victoria will derive therefrom. The Company's forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof and except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

For Further Information Contact:

John McConnell

President & CEO

Victoria Gold Corp

Tel: 416-866-8800

Fax: 416-866-8801

www.vitgoldcorp.com
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Equinox Gold Corp. (TSX-V:EQX) (OTC:LWLCF) (Equinox Gold or the Company) is pleased to announce positive drilling results from near-mine exploration at the Companys 100%-owned Aurizona Gold Mine (Aurizona) in Brazil. Broad intervals of economic grade gold mineralization, including ultra high-grade gold values up to 1,005 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au), were intersected near surface at the Genipapo, Micote and Mestre Chico targets. The Company tested six near-mine exploration targets with 45 holes totalling 5,500 metres (m).

Genipapo Drill Highlights

1.89 g/t Au over 6.0 m in hole D552

1.18 g/t Au over 60.0 m in hole D626

0.87 g/t Au over 22.0 m in hole D627

0.70 g/t Au over 24.0 m in hole D631

Micote Drill Highlights

3.28 g/t Au over 9.0 m and 1.90 g/t Au over 11.0 m in hole D554

84.3 g/t Au over 21.0 m including 1,005 g/t Au over 1 m and 735 g/t Au over 1 m in hole D612

Mestre Chico Drill Highlights

1.05 g/t Au over 30.0 m in hole D600

1.56 g/t Au over 16.0 m and 8.50 g/t Au over 5.0 m in hole D615

For a map of regional drill targets, Click Here

For a map of regional drill targets, Click Here For a complete table of regional exploration drill results, Click Here

The bulk of recent exploration work at Aurizona has successfully focused on resource growth at the Piaba West target, said Scott Heffernan, EVP Exploration of Equinox Gold. Concurrently, near-mine exploration drilling has highlighted three targets east of the Piaba gold deposit with significant near-surface gold mineralization, clearly demonstrating the growth potential at Aurizona.

The Genipapo target, located east and north of the Piaba gold deposit, measures several square kilometres in area and covers numerous NW-SE trending gold-in-soil and geophysical anomalies. Drilling focused on the largest gold-in-soil anomaly, measuring 500 m by 1,000 m, and has now intersected gold mineralization on three distinct structures within a 400 m wide corridor. The NW-SE orientation of these mineralized structures is new and unique to this portion of the Piaba trend.

Drilling at Micote, located several kilometres to the east along trend from Piaba, successfully tested a typical ENE-SSW trending structure over a strike length of 200 m before being truncated by a NW-SE trending fault. Recent mapping and historical drilling suggest that the zone might be displaced approximately 100 m to the NW. Of note, drilling returned two ultra high-grade gold assays of 1,005 g/t Au and 735 g/t Au from within a broader zone of 84.3 g/t Au over 21.0 m. Exploration composites are calculated on uncapped assay values. The samples are from the saprolite zone where surficial processes can significantly enrich gold content. Applying the 40 g/t Au cap that was used for saprolitic material in the Piaba resource estimate would change the interval to 5.29 g/t Au over 21.0 m.

Drilling at the Mestre Chico target was limited to an area measuring 100 m by 100 m. The target is associated with a NNE-SSW shear zone where several structures converge forming a complex fault system associated with rare felsic plutonic rocks.

The exploration team at Aurizona is currently focused on updating geologic models and refining plans for future drill campaigns, including a first pass drill program at the Tatajuba target that the Company plans to commence in the second half of 2018.

On behalf of the Board of Equinox Gold Corp.

Christian Milau

CEO & Director

About Equinox Gold

Equinox Gold is a Canadian mining company with a multi-million-ounce gold resource base, near-term and growing gold production from two past-producing mines in Brazil and California, and a long-term growth platform with a diverse portfolio of gold and copper assets in North and South America. Construction is underway at the Companys Aurizona project in Brazil with the objective of pouring gold by year-end 2018, and a prefeasibility study is underway at the Companys Castle Mountain project in California with the objective of restarting production. Further information about Equinox Golds current portfolio of assets and long-term growth strategy is available at www.equinoxgold.com or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Equinox Gold Contacts

Christian Milau, CEO

Rhylin Bailie, Vice President Investor Relations

Tel: +1 604-558-0560

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Qualified Person and Disclosure Statement

Scott Heffernan, M.Sc., P.Geo., the Companys EVP Exploration and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and verified that the technical information contained in this news release is accurate and approves the written disclosure of the same. Drill composites were calculated using cut-off values of 0.3 g/t, 1.0 g/t or 5.0 g/t gold as specified in the drill table and contain no more than 3 metres of internal waste. Drill intersections are calculated using uncut assays and are reported as drilled thicknesses. True widths of the mineralized intervals are interpreted to be 60 to 90 percent of the reported lengths. All samples were submitted to ALS Chemex in Belo Horizonte, Brazil for sample preparation. Sample pulps were then sent to ALS Chemex in Lima, Peru for geochemical analysis for gold by fire assay of a 30-gram charge with an Atomic Absorption finish (AA) and for a 33 multi-element geochemical suite by 4-acid digestion and Inductively-Coupled Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Samples with AA gold values over 10.0 g/t are re-assayed by Screen Metallics fire assay. Control samples (accredited standards, blanks and duplicate samples at the field and preparation stages) were inserted on a regular basis. Results were monitored upon receipt of assays.

Cautionary Notes and Forward-looking Statements

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as such term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This document contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively forward-looking statements). The use of the words will, currently, updating, objective, underway, continues, potential, intends and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the exploration strategy and potential at Aurizona, production potential from the Aurizona Gold Mine and Castle Mountain Gold Mine, the Castle Mountain prefeasibility study, the potential for other assets of the Company, and the long-term growth potential of the Company. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and/or information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since the Company can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including the risks, uncertainties and other factors identified in the Companys periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators, and assumptions made with regard to the Companys exploration strategy at Aurizona; the results of Aurizona exploration and the impact of Aurizona exploration; the Companys ability to complete the Castle Mountain prefeasibility study and the results of the study; the Companys ability to complete construction at Aurizona and the timing to achieve production; and the Companys ability to achieve its expected growth and production potential. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligations to publicly update and/or revise any of the included forward-looking statements, whether as a result of additional information, future events and/or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 5, 2018) - Fremont Gold Ltd. (TSXV: FRE) (OTC Pink: USTDF) ("Fremont" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received drill permits from the US Bureau of Land Management and plans to drill a minimum of 1000m at the Gold Bar and Gold Canyon properties in the spring of 2018.

Drilling permits were received for both the Gold Bar and Gold Canyon projects which are adjacent and on trend to McEwen Mining's Gold bar development project

The Company has awarded a drill contract to DeLong Drill Contractors

Numerous drill targets are based on historic geochemical, geophysical and structural data compiled by Fremont's technical team

The Company plans to drill a minimum of 1000m at the Gold Canyon and Gold Bar properties

Drilling is planned for the Hurricane project later in the year due to its relatively high elevation and snow levels

Background

The Gold Bar and Gold Canyon properties are both former mines in the Gold Bar District in Eureka County Nevada, an active mining zone in the Roberts Mountains at the southern end of the Cortez Trend. The district contains several Carlin-style sediment-hosted gold deposits including McEwen Mining's Gold Bar project, which is scheduled to produce 62,800 oz/annum at $770/oz starting in early 20191.

Fremont's Gold Bar and Gold Canyon projects are adjacent to McEwen's Gold Bar development project. While McEwen's development project and Fremont's property share the same name, the historic Gold Bar mine is held by Fremont and produced 286,354 ounces of gold from 1986 to 1994. Fremont's Gold Bar property comprises 4150 hectares, hosts the historic mine and is 5kms SW of McEwen's project. It also contains an historic resource of 147,000 ounces @ 2.57 g/t Au called the Millsite deposit2 thought to be a faulted off-set of the former Gold Bar ore body (see Fremont press release dated Sept 12, 2017) located on the NW side of the old pit.

Figure 1: Location of Fremont's Gold Bar and Gold Canyon projects

McEwen's Gold Bar project comprises four of the five former satellite pits located 5kms NE of the historic mine. The fifth satellite pit called Gold Canyon, was recently acquired by Fremont. The Gold Canyon property comprises 260 hectares, is surrounded by McEwen Mining and is 800m from McEwen's nearest pit. The four McEwen pits along with the Gold Canyon pit were formerly satellite pits to the original Gold Bar mine, operated by Atlas Precious Metals Inc. and were active in the early 1990's. These pits collectively produced approximately 198,846 ounces of gold, including approximately 41,000 oz from Gold Canyon3.

Mineralization at Gold Canyon is controlled by a northeast trending high angle feeder structure. Recent rock chip sampling of this structure from the NE end of the pit returned values of up to 9.15 g/t Au3 (See Fremont news release dated January 16, 2018). This mineralized zone clearly trends to the NE out of the pit and is most likely the mineralized structure intersected in historical Atlas Drill Hole #100-45 which returned 60 feet grading 0.112 oz/ton Au (18.3m@ 3.48 g/t Au) within the North Gold Ridge target zone4. Fremont intends to confirm and expand this mineralized zone by drilling the initial holes in this area.

Figure 2: Gold Canyon in relation to McEwen Mining's Gold Bar development project

President and CEO Dennis Moore stated, "We are ready to commence our initial drill program focusing on targets our team has identified at Gold Bar and Gold Canyon. We expect these first drill holes to confirm the historic data and demonstrate that the known gold mineralization at McEwen's project continues onto our ground. It is a very exciting time for the Company and will be the first step of resource definition on our properties."

M.C. Newton, the Company's Vice President of Exploration, and a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Dennis Moore"

President and CEO



Telephone: 778-772-9892

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.fremontgold.net

About Fremont Gold Ltd.

Fremont holds exclusive leasing rights to the Hurricane and Gold Bar-Gold Canyon Projects, located respectively in Lander County and Eureka County, Nevada. Fremont also owns the Goldrun Project, in the Adelaide mining district, in Humboldt County, Nevada. The Company's strategy is to conduct exploration on its existing projects and to increase the gold resources (historic at present) within these projects using the collective exploration expertise of the management team. Further information regarding the Gold Bar, Hurricane, and Goldrun Projects are described in the filing statement of the Company dated May 29, 2017, available at www.sedar.com.

1 McEwen Mining website: www.mcewenmining.com

2 Atlas-Granges Joint Venture, 1996, Year End Report, private company report, 17p

3 Ely Gold Royalties fact sheet based on Telesto 2010

4 Atlas Corporation, Gold Bar Review, January 1997

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release contains "forward-looking information" that is based on the Company's current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections. This forward-looking information includes, among other things, statements with respect to the Company's exploration and development plans. The words "will", "anticipated", "plans" or other similar words and phrases are intended to identify forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 8, 2018) - MAX RESOURCE CORP. (TSXV: MXR) (OTC Pink: MXROF) (FSE: M1D) ("MXR" or the "Company") is pleased to release Initial Long Wave InfraRed ("LWIR") results, continuing the due diligence in support of its acquisition of Copperbelt Minerals Corp's Gachala Copper Project, 50 kilometres east of Bogota, Colombia (the "Property"), as detailed in its February 26, 2018 news release.

The 3,400 square kilometre LWIR survey identified 8 separate targets within the 400 square kilometre Property showing spectral best match signatures for chalcocite, supported by best spectral match signatures for chalcopyrite. Individual targets ranged from 1 kilometre to 10 kilometres in length for an aggregate target length of 40 kilometres.

The Gachala Copper Project covers 25km of a 250km by 120km belt of Devonian through Cretaceous age rocks in a geological setting conducive to hosting sedimentary copper deposits. Mineralization appears to be localized at the contact between the Devonian-Permain red beds and the overlying Cretaceous reducing black shales, one of the settings typical of these copper deposits. Many of the LWIR target signatures are concentrated at this contact.

The MXR field teams plan to conduct a number of preliminary follow-up sampling programs over the 40 kilometres of LWIR anomalous zones, so results will be released in batches.

Interpretation of the remaining 2,800 square kilometre area the LWIR covered is underway. Results will be released as they are made available.

MXR is still waiting for assay results from an extensive channel sampling program taken from an outcrop near the historic Cerro de Cobre copper mine, including a zone returning 22.8 m averaging 3.16% copper. (The historic sampling was completed by Colombian Mines Corporation as disclosed in their 15-May-2008 News Release. The orientation of the mineralization is unknown and will require further mapping).

Assay results from a newly discovered area located 700 meters north of Cerro de Cobre are pending.

Additional results from the examination of a number of other areas around the Property area.

Brett Matich, MXR Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Our on-going due diligence continues to confirm our staunch believe the Gachala project will become a critical asset for Max Resource Corp. The LWIR signatures at the critical red bed / black shale contact is extremely encouraging and we eagerly anticipate the results of our due diligence exploration program."

Max Resource Corp. - Gachala Copper Project

About LWIR

LWIR analysis, through proprietary processing of ASTER satellite data, has the ability to map or identify, through reflectance spectroscopy against a set of known standards, mineral distribution over extremely large areas covered by vegetation and shallow cover. The ground-penetrating nature of infrared radiation in the longwave bands allows viewing of mineral spectra in the first 30 to 60 cm of the earth's surface through dense vegetation. The Company believes LWIR is therefore well suited to Colombia. The Company cautions investors LWIR does not necessarily identify mineralization, only the signatures of individual minerals.

About Gachala

The Gachala Copper Project consists of 4 mineral claims and 21 exploration applications totaling approximately 400 square kilometers and includes the historic Cerro de Cobre copper mine, where 2008 channel sampling returned 22.8 metres grading 3.16% copper and 15.3 g/t silver. Subsequent Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) soil sampling defined a 1500 metre by 800 metre copper-in-soil anomaly encompassing the two zones, open in all directions. Colombian Mines Corporation felt there was a high potential for repetition on the opposite side of the hosting anticline and further felt the geology suggested mineralization may extend beyond the limits of known anomalous zones. (Source: Colombian Mines Corporation News Releases dated 15-May-2008 and 14-Nov-2012 respectively). The orientation of the channel sampled mineralization is unknown at this time. MXR cautions investors it has not yet verified the historical data.

The historic sampling combined with the recent mapping and sampling completed by MXR indicates that copper appears to be widely dispersed throughout the 400 square kilometre property holdings.

About the Transaction

MXR has signed a binding Letter of Intent ("LOI") to acquire 100% of the outstanding share capital of Copperbelt Minerals Corp., a private Canadian company holding the Property. MXR will issue 12,000,000 common shares to the Copperbelt Minerals' shareholders and take over the obligations of the Cerro de Cobre agreement, requiring the aggregate payment of US$1,060,000 over the next three years to the Cerro de Cobre vendors. Certain shareholders of Copperbelt Minerals will collectively retain a 3-per-cent net smelter returns royalty ("NSR") on the Property. MXR has the sole exclusive right to purchase half of the 3-per-cent NSR for the consideration of US$3-million at any time prior to production.

About Max Resource Corp.

Max Resource Corp., a Canadian-based exploration company, its focussed on acquiring advanced exploration projects which are located within the under-explored northern section of the richly endowed Andean Copper Belt of Colombia.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF MAX RESOURCE CORP.

"Brett Matich"



Brett Matich, CEO and President

Tim Henneberry, P. Geo (British Columbia), a member of the Max Resource Corp. Advisory Board, is the qualified person who has reviewed and approved the technical content of this news release on behalf of the Company.

Further information regarding the Company can be found on SEDAR at www.SEDAR.com, or by contacting the Company directly at (604) 365 1522.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed as "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements pertaining to completion of the Acquisition and any approvals required in connection with the Acquisition. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include: changes in market conditions, unsuccessful exploration results, changes in the price of commodities (particularly copper), unanticipated changes in key management personnel and general social, economic or geo-political conditions. Mining exploration and development is an inherently risky business. Accordingly the actual events may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forwardlooking statement that may be from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. We seek safe harbor.
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo, March 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ivanhoe Mines (TSX:IVN) (OTCQX:IVPAF) welcomes the commitment made yesterday by mining industry representatives and Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila Kabange to continue productive and mutually advantageous discussions to resolve industry concerns arising from the DRCs 2018 mining code.

The commitment was part of a joint statement issued following a positive and constructive six-hour meeting in the DRC capital of Kinshasa between President Joseph Kabila Kabange, the Honorable Minister of Mines Martin Kabwelulu, senior members of the government and senior executives of international mining companies that have operations in the DRC. Companies with representation at the CEO-level included China Molybdenum, Glencore and Randgold. MMG and Zijin Mining had senior executive representation. Ivanhoe Mines was represented by Executive Chairman Robert Friedland.

The joint statement noted that President Kabila has assured the industry representatives that their concerns about the impacts on their DRC operations that would result from changes to the DRC mining code will be resolved in legally binding mining regulations.

A live video recorded late at night on March 7, 2018 in Kinshasa of the joint press conference with the Honorable Minister of Mines Martin Kabwelulu and the industry principals that followed immediately after the six-hour meeting can be found here:

About Ivanhoe Mines

Ivanhoe Mines is advancing its three principal projects in Southern Africa: 1) Mine development at the Platreef platinum-palladium-gold-nickel-copper discovery on the Northern Limb of South Africas Bushveld Complex; 2) mine development and exploration at the Tier One Kamoa-Kakula copper discovery on the Central African Copperbelt in the DRC; and 3) upgrading at the historic, high-grade Kipushi zinc-copper-silver-germanium mine, also on the DRCs Copperbelt. For details, visit www.ivanhoemines.com.

Information contacts

Investors

Bill Trenaman +1.604.331.9834

Media

North America: Bob Williamson +1.604.512.4856

South Africa: Jeremy Michaels +27.82.772.1122
March 8, 2018 / TheNewswire / Vancouver, British Columbia; - LiCo Energy Metals Inc. ("the Company" or LiCo") TSX-V: LIC, OTCQB: WCTXF is pleased to the update its shareholders on the completion on the Teledyne Cobalt Property Phase 1 diamond drilling program. During the fall of 2017, LiCo completed 11 diamond drill holes totaling 2,200 m. The drill program, along with the Phase 1 diamond drilling program completed on the Glencore Bucke Property, satisfied LiCo's flow-through financing obligations.

"We are extremely pleased with the overall results, especially the grades and widths of the cobalt mineralization intersected in the majority of the drill holes from the Teledyne Phase 1 drill program. We view the results of both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke drill programs as being successful" commented Mr. Tim Fernback, President & CEO of LiCo. "Now that we have all the drill results, LiCo will design the Phase 2 drill program which will then become the basis of completing a 43-101 Compliant resource estimation. We are very excited about the future and commencing Phase 2 on both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke properties in the future".

From 1979 through to 1980, Teledyne Canada Ltd., completed 6 surface diamond drill holes and 22 underground diamond drills for an aggregate of 3,160.8 m on the Teledyne Cobalt Property. Based on the surface and underground diamond drill programs, historical reserves of 60,000 tons in the geologically inferred category, and 40,000 tons in the probable category, at an average grade of 0.45% Co, 0.6 oz/t Ag was estimated (Linn, 1983). The reserve estimate is a historical estimate as defined by National Instrument 43-101. The historical reserve estimate contains categories that are not consistent with current CIM definitions. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves. No attempt was made to reconcile the historical reserve calculations as reported by Teledyne Tungsten. LiCo is not treating the historical reserve estimate as a current mineral resource or mineral reserve.

LiCo's Phase 1 diamond drill program was designed to confirm and extend the existing known mineralization along strike and up and down dip, and LiCo was successful in completing this objective. The program tested the Teledyne Zone for a strike length of approximately 220 m.

A Summary of the most significant results of the Phase 1 Diamond Drill Program completed on the Teledyne Cobalt Property are:

TE17-01 0.62% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m including 3.92% Co over 0.75 m from 140.25 to 141.00 m.

TE17-02 0.95% Co over 1.90 m from 143.0 to 144.9 m, incl. 2.58% Co over 0.60 m from 144.30 to 144.90 m.

TE17-02 0.59% Co over 3.90 m from 156.0 to 159.9 m, incl. 2.22% Co over 0.60 m from 156.6 to 157.2 m.

TE17-04 1.82% Co over 6.00 m from 138.00 to 144.00 m, including 5.06% Co over 1.75 m from 141.25 to 143.00 m

TE17-05 2.32% Co over 4.00 m from 126.5 to 130.50 m

TE17-05 1.70% Co over 6.00 m from 136.00 to 142.00 m.

TE17-07 0.50% Co over 2.10 m from 127.60 to 129.70 m

TE17-08 0.77% Co over 3.40 m from 169.50 to 172.90 m, including 1.17% Co over 2.00 m from 169.50 to 171.50 m.

TE17-08 0.59% Co over 1.20 m from 174.00 to 175.20 m.

TE17-08 0.62% Co over 0.60 m from 178.60 to 179.20 m.

TE17-11 0.54% Co over 2.00 m from 130.00 to 132.00 m

A summary of the most significant results from the Phase 1 diamond drilling program are provided in Table 1, while drill hole collar information is provided in Table 2.

Table 1: Highlights of Phase 1 Diamond Drilling Results, Teledyne Cobalt Property

DDH From (m) To (m) Core length (m) Co (%) Ag (ppm) Cu (ppm) Zn (ppm) Pb (ppm) TE17-01 136.00 142.00 6.00 0.62 0.9 51 37 4 Incl. 136.50 137.00 0.50 0.23 0.9 6 47 2 Incl. 139.75 142.00 2.25 1.54 1.8 121 40 8 Incl. 140.25 141.00 0.75 3.92 2.4 216 39 13 TE17-02 142.5 144.9 2.4 0.76 1.6 202 35 10 Incl. 143 144.9 1.9 0.95 1.8 234 36 10 Incl. 144.3 144.9 0.6 2.58 1.5 140 39 12 TE17-02 152 161 9 0.34 1.1 203 262 29 Incl. 152 154.2 2.2 0.26 1 101 239 38 Incl. 156 159.9 3.9 0.59 1.6 377 445 41 Incl. 156 157.8 1.8 0.90 2.3 228 924 79 Incl. 156.6 157.2 0.6 2.22 5.4 590 2705 226 TE17-03 128.5 129.5 1 0.11 3.1 183 28 26 TE17-03 152.4 155.7 3.3 0.09 1.2 13 22 5 TE17-03 155.1 155.7 0.6 0.22 1.7 23 14 8 TE17-04 138.00 144.00 6.00 1.82 4.7 742 49 20 incl. 138.50 144.00 5.50 1.98 5 786 51 21 incl. 139.00 144.00 5.00 2.16 5.4 840 53 23 incl. 140.45 143.00 2.55 3.84 8 1242 67 33 incl. 141.25 143.00 1.75 5.06 9.1 744 85 36 incl. 141.64 141.79 0.15 18.70 16 251 6 37 TE17-05 126.50 130.50 4.00 2.32 7.6 425 49 61 incl. 127.00 128.00 1.00 8.48 5.6 105 25 24 incl. 127.00 129.00 2.00 4.47 7.1 263 28 50 incl. 127.64 128.00 0.36 21.9 11.5 42 31 36 TE17-05 136.00 142.00 6.00 1.70 2.6 40 148 28 incl. 136.00 140.00 4.00 2.47 2.8 34 210 33 incl. 136.50 138.5 2.00 4.41 3.7 30 141 46 TE17-06 164.00 165.00 1.00 0.14 0.7 4 33 6 TE17-07 127.60 129.70 2.10 0.50 2.3 130 157 32 incl. 128.20 128.60 0.40 1.50 6.6 206 84 46 TE17-08 160.00 160.50 0.50 0.25 7.7 516 27 402 TE17-08 165.50 166.50 1.00 0.23 4.7 59 31 652 TE17-08 169.50 172.90 3.40 0.77 7.6 252 68 1370 incl. 169.50 171.50 2.00 1.17 8.3 62 41 1758 incl. 171.00 171.50 0.50 2.09 23.5 228 46 5400 TE17-08 174.00 175.20 1.20 0.59 21 338 43 2191 incl. 174.30 175.20 0.90 0.71 24.4 437 43 2548 TE17-08 178.60 179.20 0.60 0.62 20.8 101 72 991 TE17-09 145.50 147.50 2.00 0.09 0.4 13 16 5 incl. 146.40 146.65 0.25 0.20 0.4 5 15 2 TE17-10 124.55 128.00 3.45 0.11 0.5 10 24 4 incl. 124.55 125.50 0.95 0.19 0.7 9 25 5 TE17-11 130.00 132.00 2.00 0.54 1.1 13 36 8 incl. 130.00 130.50 0.50 1.07 0.7 14 29 3

Note: Intervals reported in Table 1 represent core lengths and not true widths.

Table 2: Drill hole Collar Information

DDH Azm Dip TE17-01 090 -49 TE17-02 090 -45 TE17-03 090 -45 TE17-04 090 -45 TE17-05 090 -45 TE17-06 090 -45 TE17-07 090 -50 TE17-08 090 -49 TE17-09 090 -45 TE17-10 090 -45 TE17-11 090 -54

QA/QC Program

LiCo Energy Metals Inc. has implemented a quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) program for both the Glencore Bucke and Teledyne Property drill programs.

Diamond drill core was logged, then sawed in half, with one half placed in a labelled bag, and the remaining half placed back into the core box and stored in a secured compound. Either a standard or a blank was inserted every 20th sample. All samples were shipped to Activation Laboratories in Ancaster, Ontario. Each sample is coarsely crushed and a 250 g aliquot is pulverized for analysis. A 0.25g sample is digested with a near total digestion (4 acids) and then analyzed using an ICP. QC for the digestion is 14% for each batch, 5 method reagent blanks, 10 in-house controls, 10 samples duplicates, and 8 certified reference materials. An additional 13% QC is performed as part of the instrumental analysis to ensure quality in the areas of instrumental drift. If over limits for Cu, Pb, Zn, and Co are encountered, a sodium peroxide fusion, acid dissolution followed by ICP-OES is completed. For Ag over limits, a four acid digestion is completed followed by ICP-OES.

Qualified Person

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved Joerg Kleinboeck, P.Geo., an independent consulting geologist and a qualified person as defined in NI 43-101.

About LiCo Energy Metals: https://licoenergymetals.com/

LiCo Energy Metals Inc. is a Canadian based exploration company whose primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company's focus is directed towards exploration for high value metals integral to the manufacture of lithium ion batteries.

Glencore Bucke Cobalt Project (Cobalt, Ontario): The Company has purchased a 100% interest from Glencore Canada Corporation (subsidiary of Glencore plc) in the Glencore Bucke Property, situated in Bucke Township, 6 km east-northeast of Cobalt, Ontario, subject to a back-in provision, production royalty and off-take agreement. Strategically, the Glencore Bucke Property consists of 16.2 hectares and sits along the west boundary of LiCo's Teledyne Cobalt Project. The Property covers the southern extension of the #3 vein that was historically mined on the neighbouring Cobalt Contact Property located to the north of the Glencore Bucke Property. Diamond drilling in 1981 on the Glencore Bucke Property delineated two zones of mineralization measuring 150 m and 70 m in length.

Ontario Teledyne Cobalt Project (Cobalt, Ontario):

The Company has an option to earn 100% ownership, subject to a royalty, in the Teledyne Project located near Cobalt. Ontario. The Property adjoins the south and west boundaries of claims that hosted the Agaunico Mine. From 1905 through to 1961, the Agaunico Mine produced a total of 4,350,000 lbs. of cobalt and 980,000 oz. of silver. A significant portion of the cobalt that was produced at the Agaunico Mine located along structures that extended southward onto the Teledyne property. The Company completed a total of 11 diamond drill holes totaling 2,200 m in the fall of 2017. The drilling has confirmed cobalt mineralization present on the Property which is consistent with historical grades as reported historically by Cunningham-Dunlop (1979) and Bressee (1981), disclosed in earlier news releases. These reports are available in the public domain through MNDM's AFRI database.

NI 43-101 Reports for both the Teledyne and Glencore Bucke Properties, are publicly available on www.SEDAR.com as well as the Company's website. LiCo's recently completed diamond drilling program (September to December 2017) consisted of both twinning and infill drilling of the historical drill holes located on both the Teledyne Cobalt and Glencore Bucke Properties.

Purickuta Lithium Project (Chile):

The Purickuta Project is located within Salar de Atacama, a salt flat encompassing 3,000 km2, being about 100 km long, 80 km wide and home to approximately 37% of the worlds Lithium production and Chile itself holds 53% of the world's known lithium reserves (Source: Bloomberg Markets - June 23, 2017, "Lithium Squeeze Looms as Top Miner Front-Loads, Chile Says"). The property is 160 hectares large and is enveloped by a concession owned by Sociedad Quimica y Minera ("SQM") and lies within a few kilometers of a property owned by CORFO (the Chilean Economic Development Agency) where its leases land to both SQM and Albermarle's Rockwood Lithium Corp. ("Albermarle") for lithium extraction. Together these two companies, SQM and Albermarle, have a combined annual production of over 62,000 tonnes of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent) making up 100% of Chile's current lithium output. As reported in The Economist (June 15, 2017 - A battle for supremacy in the lithium triangle), the Salar de Atacama has the largest and highest quality proven reserves of lithium. The combination of the desert's hot sun, scarce rainfall, and the mineral-rich brines make Chile's production costs the world's lowest. This together with a favourable investment climate, low levels of corruption, and the quality of its bureaucracy and courts makes Chile a favourable place to conduct business.

Dixie Valley Lithium Project (Nevada, USA):

The Company has an option to acquire a 100% interest, subject to a 3% NSR, on a large lithium exploration project at the Humboldt Salt Marsh in Dixie Valley, Nevada. Some important geological similarities exist between various lithium brines, notably geothermal activity, a dry climate, a closed basin, an aquifer, and tectonically driven subsistence exist at Dixie Valley along with Clayton Valley and various lithium bearing salars in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.

Black Rock Desert Lithium Project (Nevada, USA):

The Company has entered into an option agreement whereby the Company may earn an undivided 100% interest, subject to a 3% NSR, in the Black Rock Desert Lithium Project in southwest Black Rock Desert, Washoe County, Nevada.

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved Joerg Kleinboeck, P.Geo., an independent consulting geologist and a qualified person as defined in NI 43-101.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Tim Fernback, President & CEO

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.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information:

This news release may contain forward-looking statements which include, but are not limited to, comments that involve future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Except for statements of historical facts, comments that address resource potential, upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt and security of mineral property titles, availability of funds, and others are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may vary materially from those statements. General business conditions are factors that could cause actual results to vary materially from forward-looking statements.
Presenting his last annual report to the UN Human Rights Council as High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein highlighted a series of mass crimes needing investigation by commissions of inquiry, referral to the International Criminal Court or other courts able to act under universal jurisdiction.

Zeid Raad Al Husseins four-year mandate ends this summer. And the Jordanian High Commissioner could only present an alarming picture of the human rights situation across all continents. The resurgence of brute force in relations between State powers is rocking a crisis-hit world where democratic regression is palpable, even in the oldest liberal democracies, 70 years after the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Reviewing more than 60 countries, the High Commissioner for Human Rights pointed to particularly grave and widespread violations in the hope of inciting the 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council to support the investigations of the International Criminal Court (ICC), request that it be seized of these matters or set up/ extend commissions of inquiry.

Syria, amply mentioned by hundreds of political leaders and ambassadors this first week of the HRC 37th session and subject of a special session last Friday, comes at the top of his list of concerns. Given the latest developments in this never-ending war, Syria has entered a new phase of horror, according to the High Commissioner. This month, it is Eastern Ghouta which is, in the words of the Secretary General, hell on earth; next month or the month after, it will be somewhere else where people face an apocalypse  an apocalypse intended, planned and executed by individuals within the Government, apparently with the full backing of some of their foreign supporters, he says. It is urgent to reverse this catastrophic course, and to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Another especially grave situation is Myanmar. This Council is aware that my Office has strong suspicions that acts of genocide may have taken place in Rakhine State since August, says the High Commissioner. While awaiting the final report of the Fact Finding Mission, I again recommend that this Council ask the General Assembly to establish a new independent and impartial mechanism to prepare and expedite criminal proceedings in courts against those responsible.

Libya and migration

Another hotspot, Libya, is mentioned in two different contexts. During my mission there in October I was alarmed by the near-complete lawlessness throughout the country, with almost total impunity for even the most serious crimes, says Al Hussein. I encourage all States to support the International Criminal Courts investigation into crimes against humanity committed in the country.

And Libya is also mentioned in the section on migration policy: I emphasise that measures which in effect externalise the borders of the European Union put the human rights of migrants at risk, by subcontracting their protection to States with often fewer resources. Support to the Libyan Coast Guard by the EU and some of its member states is one such example. The EU and its members need to review the approach they are taking in the Mediterranean, to ensure that they are not indirectly supporting the return of migrants to Libya, where they face a real risk of torture, sexual violence and other serious violations.

Elsewhere on the African continent, the High Commissioner makes an appeal to the government of the Central African Republic. Hope for national reconciliation continues to be undermined by violence committed by armed groups, he says. I urge the authorities to operationalize without further delay the Special Criminal Court, alongside the on-going trials before Assize courts, in order to respond to the peoples calls for justice.

Problems in Asia

With regard to North Korea, I remain convinced that the situation should be referred to the International Criminal Court, says Al Hussein. Pursuant to this Councils resolution 34/24, my Office is moving forward with an Accountability Project to document human rights violations, particularly those which may amount to crimes against humanity.

Still in Asia, the High Commissioner reminds us that the ICC has announced its intention to investigate violations committed in the Philippines by President Rodrigo Duterte, who is engaged in bloody repression in the name of the war on drugs. I deplore the President Dutertes statement last week to elite police units that they should not cooperate when it comes to human rights, or whoever rapporteur it is and the continued vilification of this Councils Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings by the authorities, he says.

In Sri Lanka, violence against minorities persists whilst the government has made little progress in setting up transitional justice mechanisms. In the absence of such progress I would encourage Member States to explore the use of universal jurisdiction, says Al Hussein.

As for Venezuela, where the political, social and economic situation is crumbling, Zeid Raad Al Hussein says the situation is deeply alarming. Malnutrition has increased dramatically throughout the country, affecting in particular children and the elderly, and credible reports indicate that government assistance programmes are often conditioned on political considerations, he says. I am also deeply alarmed by the possibility that crimes against humanity have been committed, and by the erosion of democratic institutions. () I am deeply disturbed by the growing exodus of Venezuelans from their country, many of them in search of access to food and basic services. Once again, I encourage the Council to consider mandating a Commission of Inquiry to investigate human rights violations in Venezuela.
Helen Clark

The first woman to be elected as Prime Minister of New Zealand and the first woman Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, Helen Clark, will be visiting Manila for the first time and in time for the celebration of Philippine National Womens Month.

Hosted by the Ateneo School of Government, in partnership with the New Zealand Embassy Manila, an open forum and discussion with Clark will be held on March 15, Thursday, 8:30 -11:30 a.m., at Escaler Hall of Ateneo De Manila University in Quezon City.

Once ranked among the twenty most powerful women leaders in the world, Clark was also considered one of the most influential women in the UN.

A champion of social issues regarding sustainability and climate change, empowerment of women, and equitable development, Clark continues to wield her influence in endeavoring for social justice.

As a pillar of the global movement for women empowerment, Clark will be sharing her insights and learnings from her term at the helm of the UNDP, as well as from her experience during the year when she stood for the position of UN Secretary General.

Prior to her role at UNDP, Clark served for nine years as Prime Minster of New Zealand, the first woman to be elected to the position. Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, and as a Member of Parliament 27 years prior, Clark advocated strongly for New Zealands comprehensive program on sustainability and for tackling the problems of climate change.

Entrance to the forum is free of charge. Interested parties may register at http://bit.ly/ASOGHelenClark. For other queries and concerns, please email [email protected] or call (02) 4266061.
70 Shares Share

In past years, the opioid crisis has become a topic of interest among the adult population. More recently, attention has grown surrounding the pediatric population, as well. In fact, the topic was included in the State of the Union address given by President Trump just a few weeks ago. He vowed to end the crisis and named it a public health emergency.

When discussing true addiction, it is important to remember that it is defined by a disruption in the social functioning of the patient. These patients will spend exorbitant amounts of time seeking and using the drug. Despite adverse effects, the patient continues to use the drug. This differs from physical dependence, which emphasizes the experience of withdrawal symptoms once a substance is discontinued after multiple exposures to the drug.

So, just how serious is this crisis in the pediatric medical world?

A recent study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that teens have easy access to prescription painkillers after undergoing common surgeries that may lead teens to abuse these medications after leaving the hospital. The study completed by Dr. Calista Harbaugh, pediatric surgery research at the University of Michigans C.S. Mott Childrens Hospital, examined patients between the ages of 13 to 21 who were opioid naive after operations such as hernia repair and tonsillectomy. She found that of these 90,000 privately insured patients, 1 in 20 were still getting prescriptions refilled for opioids three to six months following the operation.

Given this realization and the concern that teens have access to opioids for longer than necessary, some states have enforced limitations on the duration of opioids that a physician may prescribe. This means that physicians are only able to prescribe a five-day to a weeklong supply of the opioid medication. This approach may help prevent the development of opioid and benzodiazepine tolerance and dependence. Studies have shown that use of opioids and sedatives for more than 5 to 10 days increases the risk of fueling addiction.

Interestingly, the FDA encourages physicians to obtain adequate training for how to appropriately prescribe opioid medications. It recommends the development of straightforward guidelines for physicians to follow when prescribing opioids for pain management in patients whose pain cannot otherwise be controlled with alternative regimens.

As a resident physician, I have attended several lectures that incorporate learning about the escalation of pain management and how to achieve adequate pain relief appropriately with non-opioid and opioid medications. Oversight by an attending physician with more experience is helpful. The challenging moments arise when patients ultimately doctor shop and go from one doctor to another in order to seek out additional prescriptions for opioids to feed dependency. There is no formal curriculum that includes the opioid crisis or discusses how to negotiate a pain contract with a patient.

Typically, chronic pain patients are managed by a specific pain doctor or anesthesiologist in the outpatient setting. Most primary care providers will refer these patients once it becomes difficult to manage their pain or potential addiction. Pain specialists have a greater degree of training and are more apt to appropriately manage pain regimens for these patients.

Problems arise when the patient is unable to schedule an appointment at the pain clinic regularly. These patients will often land in the offices of primary practice providers. I believe that pain management specialists should mentor and lecture the primary care providers, including resident physicians, about their general approach so that these providers feel more comfortable developing pain management plans in the interim periods. This also allows for the patient to continue to access appropriate pain medications without turning to illegal avenues.

Ultimately, pediatricians must continue to bring attention to the issue and encourage the practice of limited prescriptions of opioids coupled with the use of other modalities, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Dr. Suresh, Arthur C. King professor in anesthesiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and chair of the Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology at Lurie Childrens Hospital of Chicago summarized the topic well by saying, We do need to pay attention to it  its a silent killer.

Cherilyn Cecchini is a pediatric resident.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
In the aftermath of the Beast From The Beast and Storm Emma, publican, Fred Malzard in Stoneyford came out with a profound statement.

Remember when the snows gone, that your local village shops that you went to get milk, eggs, bread and other stuff because you couldnt get to the large supermarket, will still be there providing a fantastic community service, so support your rural shops.

Fred was prompted to make the statement following the exploits of his local grocery shop owner, Willie Walsh on the main street.

Willie is always there for people and that shone through during the snow and ice, Fred said.

He added that it made economic sense to do your groceries in your local shop.

You buy only what you want so there is no waste and you won't be throwing stuff out at the end of the week, he pointed out.

Coon village was not so lucky. it lost its shop some years ago and its post office and its creamery.

However, that same sense of camaraderie evident everywhere else in the county was present in Coon/Castlewarren.

All physical links with Coon were severed by the snow. It is 800 feet above sea level and while things were bad during the last big snow in 1982, last week, the residents don't even have a shop to rely on.

Drifts of up to 10 ft from both the Castlecomer and Carlow sides cut the lovely village off from everywhere until Kilkenny county council came to their assistance on Saturday and Sunday.

Resident Mick Somers said the only good thing about the severe weather of last week was that it will now force the Government to look at how it has allowed rural Ireland to go into decline by removing vital, local services like the post office and by standing by while creameries and local shops shut their doors.

In Johnswell, people also reconnected. They walked miles to get into Brennans pub, next to the church and it wasn't about alcohol consumption, it was about community and about looking out for one another and that is something that Kilkenny people obviously have.
A Kilkenny student has been recognised for the exemplary volunteer work carried out in her local community, as Pramerica announced its 20 finalists for the 2018 Spirit of Community Awards, the only all-Ireland youth initiative of its kind.

Anna Phean, a sixth-year at Loreto Secondary School, is a student leader ambassador for mental health awareness charity Cycle Against Suicide. Her involvement with the charity has changed her life.

Her passion for spreading the message its ok not to feel ok has involved organising a committee group within her school and last year Loreto Secondary School was picked as an anchor school for the charities annual cycle.

Anna and the committee put a lot of work into the preparation for the event so that the school kept its Ambassador School Status.

As well as her work with Cycle Against Suicide, Anna also completed her Saint John Paul II Silver Award through volunteering with Archersrath Nursing Home where both her grandparents lived before passing away. Anna has also given speeches to her school sharing her experiences on mental health, womens rights and her Transition Year experience.

A quiet unassuming young lady, Anna has an innate ability to get jobs done without any drama bringing her peers on the journey with her, said Annas school principal.

When we organised the Cycle Against Suicide lunch last year, Anna was pivotal to its success and I was delighted when she was selected out of thousands of students nationwide to become a student leader ambassador for the charity. A true lady,

Anna is constantly working to make the school and her community a better place.

The programme which is run in partnership with the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) and the

General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland (GTCNI), rewards post-primary students for outstanding acts of volunteerism and the positive contribution they make in their local communities and further afield.

Each year I continue to be humbled by the incredible volunteer work carried out by teenagers and young people in towns and villages across Ireland, said Andrea McBride, vice president, Pramerica Systems Ireland.

From caring for disabled relatives to helping people with learning disabilities, brain injuries and dementia, so much of the volunteering activities that young people are involved in is going under the radar.

Our awards programme aims to shine a light on these dedicated students, by applauding their achievements and encouraging others to give back to their hometown.

The post-primary students will be presented with 500 and an engraved silver medallion at the awards ceremony on March 22 at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. This year the top two Junior Honourees will also receive an additional 500 for their chosen charity for the first time.

At the event, two of the 20 students will be named All-Ireland Youth Volunteers of the Year, receiving 1,000, a gold medallion, a crystal trophy for their school and an all-expense paid trip to the United States in May to participate in the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards ceremony.

For more information about the 2018 Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards, which is supported by Volunteer Now, Volunteer Ireland, Scouting Ireland and Foroige, follow the Pramerica Spirit of Community Snapchat (Pramerica.soc) Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter feed @Pramerica_SOC, or visit spirit.pramerica.ie.
A guest post by Chris Penk, National MP for Helensville:

A Time for Questions  Papering over the Cracks

In any modern government the Prime Minister serves as communicator-in-chief. That much is perfectly natural, reasonable and inevitable. During the early days of any administration, voters will judge largely according to the PMs efforts in promoting its policy intentions. As time goes on, however, focus inevitably turns towards delivery. In the case of the Labour-NZ First-Green government, this is a development that Im looking forward to with interest.

For now, Ms Arderns communication skills are doing a relatively good job of papering over various coalition policy cracks. The stardust wears off, however, when youre prepared to look critically at how she uses language to manipulate meaning. Put another way: when enough voters decide her governments talk and walk arent ever going to align, the current occupant of the Beehives ninth floor will return to earth.

So lets take the ultimate environment for political posturing  Question Time in Parliament  as an opportunity to lift the lid on some linguistic limbo dancing. On 20 February, the PM responded to a series of question from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on the subject of tertiary education; Ill use extracts from the exchange to illustrate my points. (Words in quote marks below have been pasted from the draft version of the Parliamentary record and Ive underlined certain ones for the sake of discussion.)

In the space of just two supplementary questions, Ardern uses a variety of techniques, probably subconsciously in most instances:

Pronoun conflation:

Ardern stated at one point that,  we believe, for instance, that everyone should be able to access secondary education. Anyone [] should acknowledge that if we want to make sure we are a more productive society. The word doing all the heavy lifting, in persuasive terms, is the deceptively powerful first person plural pronoun: we.

The first occasion that the PM uses it ( we believe), shes referring to the Government. The next couple of times ( we want and  we are a more productive society), however, shes meaning New Zealand at large. Switching seamlessly between political belief and public betterment is designed to provide a subliminal indication that the priorities of the Government match those of society. We will see!

Implication:

A question about the cost of a particular policy was met with the following remark:  This side of the House believes education is a public good. Clearly Ms Ardern is implying that the other side of the House doesnt believe that education is a public good. Of course shes incorrect on that front but the technique is worth noting.

Loading statements with dubious implication is a common trick of advocacy, a favourite of courtroom lawyers for example, but its all the more notable here in relation to an arcane Parliamentary rule. In answering oral questions, ministers are not allowed to speak on areas outside their portfolio responsibility. While the PM was technically unable to comment on the Oppositions (purported) beliefs regarding the value of education, her answer was constructed in such a way as to bury that particular dig within a statement seemingly all about her own sides position. Using the power of implication in this way makes it very difficult for the Speaker to rule an answer out of order.

Presupposition:

Heres another interesting item: I point to the fact that , ultimately, our fees-free policy was about making sure that that can ensure that they are work-ready and that they are adaptable in a changing environment [sic].

Ardern has used the word fact to describe a mere assertion. It presupposes what is not necessarily the case. Others could quite legitimately have a different view about what Labours fees-free policy was about (for instance, buying the votes of a particular generation of students) but the PM attempts to preclude that possibility by presenting her own version of events as fact.

Redundant verifier / intensifier:

Id really love to provide more detail is another interesting statement, which came in answer to a question about the results of analysis. In this context, the word  really  could mean a couple of different things.

It could mean honestly, which would make the word redundant for a very obvious reason: we should be able to expect honesty without that being highlighted on every occasion. The other possibility is that the word  really  here simply indicates a stronger version of what the statement would otherwise have been. But as love is already an intense concept its hardly meaningful.

Either way, Ardern is trying hard make it look as though shes wanting to provide as much information as possible but is being thwarted by circumstances beyond her control. Her tendency to hyperbole will grow tiresome quickly for many voters.

Tautology / repetition to create distance:

Asked a question about expected tertiary student numbers, the PM refers to a rough estimate being made. Its a classic case of tautology because an estimate is, by very definition, a rough figure. In her uncertainty, Ardern is seeking to avoid responsibility in case the number in question is not actually right.

And in the same segment we can unearth another gem: My recollection and Id have it noted this is simply my recollection [] from memory , 5 percent. In addition to recollection being used twice, its followed by the phrase from memory, which is of course the same thing. In repeatedly emphasising that her details are not necessarily accurate, Ardern is trying to avoid having to correct the record later if these are proven to be inaccurate.

Furthermore, for Ardern to say that Id have it noted is meaningless: every word spoken by a Minister at Question Time is noted by Hansard, whether or not they would have it that way. In conjunction with her thrice-emphasised reliance on memory, the PMs desire to note uncertainty is based on her desire not to be held accountable for inaccuracy  at the same time as avoiding having to confess that she simply does not know the answer.

Qualified absolutes:

Finally, we hear from Ardern her stated desire to ensure that  all New Zealanders, particularly those who have never entered into post-secondary education before , have access to education.

The phrase  all New Zealanders  is an absolute (as no New Zealander is excluded by it) so its pointless going on to mention anyone to whom this  particularly  applies. Here, the point of the PMs statement isnt to impart information efficiently but instead to reach out to those who havent entered into post-secondary education before for political reasons. In other words, the point of the exercise is to promote the policy as being equally good for everyone at the same time as saying its particularly good for a particular group. Shes trying to have her cake and eat it, too, suggesting universalism and a targeted approach simultaneously.

Id conclude by noting that while Ms Ardern linguistic skills make no practical difference to her ability as a legislator. It will ultimately be works and worth  not words  that voters use as the basis for judging her government. That day of judgement will come all the sooner if we, the people (yes, including we, the Opposition) pay careful attention  not only to the things that the PM is saying but also how shes saying them.

Chris Penk (@christopherpenk) is the National MP for Helensville and a former student of Linguistics at the University of Auckland

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A guest post by Jamie Whyte:

In April last year, I left New Zealand to take up a position as the Director of Research at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. As part of this job, I sometimes write opinion articles in the UK press.

On Monday last week, the Daily Telegraph published an opinion article of mine concerning a proposed ban on plastic straws in the UK. Somehow, this became a news story in New Zealand. Not the ban; the fact that I had written an article criticising it.

My article was not news-worthy, for reasons Ill soon explain. But the Newshub story about it, run under the title Ex-ACT leader says pleasure of using plastic straws more important than the ocean, is worth attention for what it reveals about modern journalism.

To tell readers my position on the topic, the author, Dan Satherley, quotes a sentence in which I say When they use plastic straws, the world is made an altogether better place. The they in my sentence refers to the increasingly few people who value drinking from a straw more than avoiding the harm to the environment that may result from disposing of the straw.

Anyone familiar with the idea of external costs  costs borne not by the person doing something but by third parties  will know that this isnt quite right. Even when a straw user cares nothing for the environment, the net effect may be harmful because of the costs to other people who do care about the environment.

Thats why my very next sentence was Thats not quite right. From which I went on to say that if a tax were applied to straws, equal to the external cost of the environmental damage done by them, then plastic straws would be used only when the total upside exceeded the total downside.

This is a pretty standard view in environmental economics. In fact, its the position of the Green Party of New Zealand on carbon emissions.

Since no such tax is now applied to plastic straws, I cant know if anyone would still be willing to pay for them at the higher price  if only because I dont know what that price would be. So I couldnt possibly say if using plastic straws is ever worth the damage they do. Thats why I said no such thing, contrary to the headline of Satherleys article.

Satherley claims that the position of my article is summarised by a sentence which I followed with Thats not quite right. He then fails to say anything about the view expressed after that qualification, which is my actual position.

Following his crass misrepresentation of my position, Satherley quotes a few tweets. Alan Gregson asked Why does Jamie Whytes desire to continue living trump our pleasure from having less twats wasting our precious oxygen. Paul Stollery suggests that Jamie Whyte can get in the f**king sea. Where I hope he gets a straw stuck up his nose.

The article is nothing but misinformation and abuse.

I do not know Satherley, so I cannot be sure of his motivation. But the only one I can think of is political. He peddles foul-mouthed fake news as a way of discrediting the liberal political position I am associated with.

Why else would he fabricate a story about something said by a former New Zealand politician in a newspaper in the UK?

Why else would the article be laced with apparently irrelevant references to my incest gaff in a 2014 interview, when I accepted the logical conclusion of something that almost everyone believes: namely, that the state should not stop adults from engaging in consensual sex. Look at the dirty pervert who would destroy the ocean for the sake of a plastic straw!

I was a useless politician. As Satherley points out, when I led ACT into the 2014 general election, we got only 0.69% of the party vote. But part of the reason I was useless is that I failed to adapt properly to journalists like Satherley.

In 2013, when deciding whether to run for the leadership of ACT, my wife advised me against it. Disgusting and corrupt were her favourite words for conveying her disapproval of politics. I still think she was wrong  at least, about the politicians. The 2014 campaign gave me a generally favourable view of them. And of most of the journalists I encountered.

But a corrosively large minority of journalists seemed more concerned with getting politicians  especially the ones with whose policies they disagreed  than with providing their audience with information.

Edmund Burke (perhaps apocryphally) described the press as the fourth estate of society, adding it to the clergy, the nobility and the commoners. This fourth estate was supposed to keep the other three informed and honest.

Journalists have never played this role perfectly. How could they, being human? But journalists who write articles like Satherlys, who seem to be increasingly common, are not even trying to play their fourth estate role. They are engaged in an altogether different business, in which keeping people informed and honest plays no part.
Posted Thursday, March 8, 2018 6:15 am

The Marshfield Board of Aldermen meeting on Feb. 22 started with a discussion item about the activity center property.

Mayor Robert Williams had been approached about the activity center property and asked the board if they would be interested in selling any part of the land where they are building the new activity center. He said they would have to know what the possibilities are, as far as what would be available, but he did not want to move it past the meeting if the board had no interest in entertaining any offers. Alderman Rob Foster said he was open to having a conversation about it.

In past discussions, there was talk about leaving space somewhere for a possible future fire station or using the property for ballfields or trails. Williams mentioned the northern section being in the Niangua School District and brought up another question someone had about whether the property was annexed into the city and what it would take to change the property to Marshfield School District.

Addressing the first question, Williams asked the board if there was any discussion they wanted to have to determine what property they wanted to make available or if they wanted to wait and see if they received any offers on any portion of the property. Foster said he wanted to know about the procedure and if they would have to put it up for bid. He also asked city administrator John Benson if the property was in the county. Benson explained the property is in the county and they could move forward anytime to annex it into the city. He continued that the value of annexing into the city would be zoning on the property and continuous annexation, which would give the opportunity for land that adjoins the property to be annexed.

With more discussion and questions from the board, Williams said they would not go into the conversation further until they had more information.

RESOLUTION 2018-04

Joe Kinder with George K. Baum came to discuss Resolution 2018-04 (a resolution authorizing the offer for sale of a series of general obligation bonds for a street improvement project authorized by city voters). According to the board meeting notes, this resolution is for general obligation bonds for street improvements and the interchange project. The resolution authorizes the preparation of the offering for sale of the citys general obligation street bonds, Series 2018, which will finance road improvements relating to the interchange project. It also authorizes the selection of Gilmore & Bell, P.C., as the special tax counsel/bond counsel for the transaction and George K. Baum as underwriter for the transaction. The board voted unanimously to approve the resolution.

RESOLUTION 2018-05

Kinder mentioned the next item, which was Resolution 2018-05 (a resolution authorizing the offering for sale of a series of certificates of participation to pay the costs related to constructing a new outdoor aquatic complex). This resolution, according to the meeting notes, authorizes the preparation of the offering for sale of the Certificates of Participation, Series 2018, which will finance the costs of the new outdoor aquatic complex project. In addition, it would authorize the selection of Gilmore & Bell, P.C., as the special tax counsel/bond counsel for the transaction and George K. Baum as underwriter for the transaction. The board voted to approve the resolution.

AWARD TRASH BID

The city of Marshfield received three bids for trash services and spring cleaning services. Those who submitted the bids were EZ Disposal, Republic Services and WCA. According to the meeting minutes, EZ Disposal was the only bid received to provide the organic waste dumpster for the wastewater treatment plant. The board approved to award the low bid for trash services and spring cleaning services for 2018 to EZ Disposal.

OTHER ACTION ITEMS:

 Approved sport uniform bid to Absolute Screen Printing.

 Approved asbestos abatement bids for new City Hall.

 Approved awarding low bid to Don Vance Ford for the purchase of 2018 utility vehicle for police department.

 Approved to increase number of persons appointed to finance committee.

 Approved Bill No. 2018-04, an ordinance for the city of Marshfield, Webster County, Missouri, approving budget amendment number 3 for the budget year of Jan. 1, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2017.
Saudi Arabia has tossed Turkey in the triangle of evil, which includes arch rival Iran and extremist Islamist groups as tensions between the two countries hype over Ankaras support to Qatar in the diplomatic row opposing the tiny Gulf country to its regional neighbors.

Crown Prince Mohamed, in an interview with Egyptian media editors-in-chief, described Turkey and its President as trying to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate, abolished nearly a century ago when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Middle East Monitor reports citing Egyptian Al-Shorouk newspaper.

The Crown Prince told the media editors that Turkey, Iran and hardline Islamist groups constitute the contemporary Triangle of Evil.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have had good ties despite temporary tumult caused in 2013 following the overthrow of Egyptian first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi known as an Ankara-backed Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey led by President Erdogan has cleverly and strategically opposed Saudi Arabia in the region after it stepped in the Gulf crisis by sending food stocks and military to Qatar after Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt cut ties and air, sea and ground links with Qatar.

Iran also stepped up its support for Qatar in the crisis.

Both Iran and Turkey have been exchanging military intelligence in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria and in the reduction of fighting in the war-torn country.
Saudi Arabia will not bar Qatar from attending the annual summit of the Arab League to take place in the kingdom later this March, despite the eight-month old blockade imposed on the tiny Gulf country by a Saudi-led quartet, heir to the Saudi throne told Egyptian media bosses.

Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MbS) told Egyptian media editors that the Kingdom would not stand in the way of Qatars participation, Egyptian Al-Shorouk newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The young royal made the comments during his three-day visit to Egypt that wound up Wednesday.

The Arab League is meeting in the kingdom on March 23 for its annual meeting. MbSs decision to allow Qatar to attend the event has removed several questions over the success of the Arab summit. The latest Gulf summit hosted by Kuwait late last year ended abruptly the same day it opened following decision by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain to send low key officials because of Qatars presence.

Saudi Arabia, its three gulf neighbors and Egypt in June severed ties with Qatar over the emirates alleged support for terrorism. The so-called Quartet cut sea, ground and air links with Qatar.

Doha vehemently rejected the charges saying that it was victim of a smear campaign seeking regime change.

The 32-year old de facto Saudi leader, ignoring calls to lift the blockades, told the Egyptian media that the blockade could take much longer, comparing it to the US embargo imposed on Cuba 60 years ago. The powerful young royal also belittled Qatar describing the emirate as smaller than a Cairo street.

MbSs decision to allow Qatari officials to attend the Arab summit could be interpreted as a little positive sign to the White House after President Trump reportedly threatened to call off the Camp David summit in May, scheduled to bring together all US Gulf allies, if the diplomatic tumult is not solved.
Riyadh has joined in the endorsement of self-style army Commander Khalifa Haftar, according to a rebel leader, aligned with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

Hussein Zaait, a leader of Zawiya rebels in the west Tripoli, accused Saudi authorities of arresting and handing over some of his forces to Haftar at the demand of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), known as Haftars foreign pillar of support.

Hussein Zaait revealed Wednesday to local TV channel Al-Nabaa he was lodging a complaint against Saudi authorities for the arrest of some key officers of his group last year during Ramadan Umrah (minor pilgrimage) in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Monitor reports.

Zaait said he would sue Riyadh through an international lawyer for the arrest of his comrades, adding that he himself and his brother, who were also performing the religious ritual, managed to find refuge in the Libyan consulate in Jeddah.

He claimed that two of his comrades were arrested at the request of Abu Dhabi and were later handed over to Haftar, whose Libyan National Army controls the eastern part of the country and some other large swathes of the Libyan territory.

Zaait added that he stayed at the consulate for eight months before being able to sneak out with the help of some Saudis.

Saudi Arabia has never been publicly finger-pointed in meddling in Libyan affairs following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi who was at loggerheads with the giant Sunni kingdom.

The UAE is known to be an important backbone of Haftars influence in Libya. The army commander made several trips to Abu Dhabi over the past years.

Russia also supports the rogue commander who has been opposed to the GNA that he accuses of being full of Muslim Brotherhood elements. Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.
@newsbysmiley

Donna Shalala says shes running for Congress because shes angry.

At Trump. At his administration. At Congress.

On Wednesday, the former University of Miami president officially rolled out her campaign to succeed the retiring Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, releasing a video on her campaign website. She filed her statement of candidacy earlier this week, immediately becoming the favorite, though vulnerable, candidate to take a seat that many expect will flip to Democrats after decades of Republican control.

Everything we fought for in our lives is under attack under the slogan, Make America Great Again, Shalala said in the video. Running for Congress was never in my plans. But now I realize everything we fought for is at risk.

Shalala, 77, says the ruling party in America has frustrated her by undercutting education, the working class, the environment, civil rights for women, immigrants and the LGBTQ community. In an interview with the Miami Herald, she also said shes disturbed by the lack of federal legislation following last months shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Frankly, whats going on in Washington really made me angry, said Shalala, who was Health and Human Services secretary under Bill Clinton in 1996, when Congress passed a law banning the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying gun violence. Elected officials ought to make decisions based on evidence. If you stop us from collecting the evidence, youre doing real damage to making public policy.

Read more here.
Lawmakers agreed Thursday to withhold more than $1.9 million in salaries and benefits for the Department of Health over medical marijuana delays, materializing threats to use the legislature's budgetary power to force officials to move faster on implementation.

The provision, which is embedded in the state budget, keeps money for department officials in reserve until medical marijuana regulations are implemented, per the constitutional amendment that legalized it for medical purposes in 2016 and a subsequent bill passed by the Legislature. Delays have dogged the process of obtaining and growing medical marijuana since the bill was passed, from a backlog in identification cards for patients to slowdowns in approving dispensing licenses and promulgating various regulations.

Lawmakers have grown increasingly irate with the department's lack of progress, particularly after health officials failed to respond for months to letters from a committee expressing concerns with the agencys rules. Last month, a joint legislative committee took the director of the Office of Medical Marijuana Use Christian Bax to task in person. Budget leaders, including health care appropriations chair Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, and Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, also proposed freezing department funds to push regulators to act.

The office has blamed legal and administrative disputes, including fallout from Hurricane Irma, for the slow progress in implementing cannabis for medical use.

Department spokeswoman Mara Gambineri did not comment directly on the withheld funds, but said in a statement that the office has made progress on several rules and regulations, including some on edibles, signage and dosing. The department has also added online payments to streamlined the ID application process, she wrote.

"The department has made  and will continue to make  significant progress in the implementation of Amendment 2 and section 381.986 Florida Statutes, despite the special interests involved in this new industry," she wrote.

Though the $88.7 million budget is now complete, lawmakers must wait through a required 72-hour "cooling-off period" before they can take a vote. The budget then goes to Gov. Rick Scott for his signature, though he oversees the Department of Health and can veto individual items in the budget.

Photo: Appropriations chairs Rep. Carlos Trujillo, R- Miami, and Senator Rob Bradley, R- Fleming Island, after reaching a budget agreement in Tallahassee.  Scott Keeler, Tampa Bay Times
Nashik, March 8: In a bid to press for their long pending demands, about 25,000 farmers on Wednesday continued their march from Nashik to Mumbai. As per reports, the farmers began a 180-km-long march on Wednesday from the CBS chowk in Central Nashik. Reports state that they then took a night halt and resumed their journey on Thursday morning on the Mumbai-Agra National Highway. The protesting farmers are believed to reach Mumbai on March 12.

As per reports, the farmers plan to gherao the Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha after they reach Mumbai. It must be noted that All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) is organising the march. The protest has been called for the resolution of farmers issues that include a complete loan waiver, said Sunil Malusare of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).

Members of All Indian Kisan Sabha took out a march from Nashik to Mumbai demanding a complete loan waiver for the farmers of State. The march commenced on Tuesday. #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/zZryxregBG  ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2018

Farmers demands

The demands of the farmers include a complete waiver of loans and electricity bills, and the implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission. Among other demands, the farmers are also demanding the transfer of forest land to those who have been tilling it for years and an increase in the compensation for peasants whose crops were damaged in the recent hailstorms and pink bollworm infestation. Notably, the government had announced the loan waiver last year following unprecedented protests by farmers in various parts of the state.

AIKS says no progress made in the last 2 years

AIKS secretary Raju Desle had said earlier that they wanted the state government to refrain from a forceful acquisition of farmlands in the name of development projects like the superhighway and the bullet train. Meanwhile, Ajit Nawale, the state general secretary of the Kisan Sabha, said though these demands were raised two years ago, no progress has been made.

As per a report by PTI, Desle accused the Centre and the state government of adopting anti-farmer policies. He claimed that as many as 1,753 farmers have killed themselves since June last year when the BJP-led state government announced a conditional farm loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore.

AIKS national president Ashok Dhavle said, We will demand a complete change in the river linking scheme proposed to be implemented in Nashik, Thane and Palghar, so as to ensure that tribal villages are not submerged and water is made available to these districts and other drought-prone areas.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 08, 2018 02:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
@alextdaugherty @francoordonez

Sen. Marco Rubio questioned Joseph Macmanus, a career foreign service officer who could become the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, over his ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's initial response to the 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya.

Macmanus was working as Clinton's executive assistant in September 2012, and was part of Clinton's inner circle as the details of the attack began to unfold. The attack killed ambassador John Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Multiple Republican senators, including Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, have said they plan to delay or sink Macmanus' nomination over his ties to Clinton and the Benghazi attack

"When did you know the attacks were terrorism and not related to anti-American protests and when did you first inform the Secretary of State of that fact?" Rubio asked Macmanus.

"I used the term terrorist attack because that's what I judged it to be," Macmanus replied. "It was not a legal determination it was not based on an amass of evidence or analysis, it was the term that I used to describe what I saw taking place."

Macmanus also said he never purposely misled the American people about the nature of the attack.

Rubio also questioned Macmanus about trying to stop Colombian cocaine production, and Venezuela's role in drug trafficking.

"The border between Colombia and Venezuela is rife for mischief and illegality," Macmanus said.

And Rubio also asked Macmanus about the ongoing refugee crisis and the Venezuela-Colombia border.

"As you see more and more people coming across the border...do you anticipate at some point, if not already, that the U.S. will need to step up and provide Colombia assistance along with the international community to deal with pressures being created by these large number of refugees flowing into Colombia from Venezuela?" Rubio asked.

"I think Colombia understands deeply the depth of this particular problem and crisis," Macmanus said.
Mar 8, 2018, 9:05am ET

Tesla Semi takes first 'production' cargo trip

The pre-production trucks hauled battery packs from Nevada to California.

The Tesla Semi has made its first cargo trip, starting with a shipment between the company's own factories.

"First production cargo trip of the Tesla Semi heavy duty truck, carrying battery packs from the Gigafactory in the Nevada mountains to the car factory in California," CEO Elon Musk wrote on Instagram.

The achievement was likely an incremental development after the prototype semis had been spotted for many weeks on public roads without trailers in tow.

The fastest route from the Nevada Gigafactory to Fremont is around 260 miles, with a top elevation of 7,239 feet as Interstate 80 crosses the Sierra Nevadas near Donner Pass.

Tesla claims the trucks will have a maximum range of approximately 500 miles when fully laden with cargo.
Laois land prices have recorded the highest jump in the country, increasing by 22 per cent.

The figures are contained in the 2017 Irish Farmers Journal Agricultural Land Price Report which released this Thursday.

The average price of agricultural land leaped to 11,926/acre in 2017, representing a massive 22% increase when compared against the 2016 average of 9,769/acre.

1,914 acres were offered for sale in the county last year, which is only slightly down from the 1,647 acres in 2010.

The dairy drive has certainly driven prices in Laois, with almost 50 of properties making over 12,000/acre.

Land prices in Offaly were up 4 per cent from the 2016 figures, with an average price of 9,906 last year.

Prices ranged in the county from 4,000-17,260/acre. A total of 49 farms incorporating 2,158 acres were offered for sale.

There was a high demand for smaller high quality parcels of land, with parcels under 40 acres selling for almost 10,500/acre, above the county average.

Prices in Westmeath were also up by 4 per cent with the average price for agricultural land in 2017 was 7,849/acre compared with 7,536/acre in 2016.

The countys supply increase was the second highest in the country, with a jump of 60%. 5,120 acres were offered to the market, up from the 3,199 acres offered for sale in 2016. Westmeath also had the highest proportions of properties offered for auction last year in Ireland.

2017 saw land prices at their highest level in three years.

The national average land price in the Republic of Ireland in 2017 was 9,088/ac, up 3.61% on 2016 figures of 8,771/ac.

The total value of land transactions in the Republic of Ireland was 313m (+5% year on year). 33,864 acres recorded as sold: 43.2% of the 78,350 acres offered for sale

A strong year for land prices saw value increase in 19 counties, with just 7 counties seeing a price fall. Kildare had the highest agricultural land value in 2017 at 14,020/ac while Leitrim was the least expensive county for land at 4,586/ac.

What were the key drivers of land prices in 2017?

- Non farmers were a major source of competition for land in 2017 with business people investing in land as an asset in the Republic of Ireland.

- Forestry was once again a big player. The lucrative premiums and tax free income on clear fell meant pension funds, private investors and indeed farmers regarded forestry as a solid low risk investment. This increased both competition and the base price of marginal land in many parts of Ireland, particularly in the west.

- Dairy was the big driver of land prices last year, with counties such as Cork, Laois, Tipperary and Carlow all seeing substantial increases of over 10%. Tillage beef and sheep farmers lagged behind as the dairy drive pushed on.

- The supply of land offered for sale to the market in 2017 totalled 78,350 acres, up 6.2% on 2016 but auctioneers noted the scarcity of land coming onto the market as a reason as to why land prices were rising.

- There was a very noticeable reduction in supply in the border counties suggesting Brexit could be a factor in these counties.

- Leasing: More farmers entered into long term leases for land with very little leased land coming on the market. Dairy farmers in particular are prepared to pay top dollar for leased land, which is driving land prices higher in key dairying counties.

For the eighth consecutive year, land prices have hovered between 8,700/acre and just under 10,000/acre. With the dairy drive and more businesspeople buying land, the market strengthened in 2017.

The highs experienced in 2007 when land was fetching over 20,000/acre is a distant memory as Irelands land market settles into a steady pattern.

The 2017 Irish Farmers Journal Agricultural Land Price Report reveals that the average price paid for land across the 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland in 2017 was 9,088/acre. This is an increase of 3.61% on the 2016 figures, which stood at 8,771/acre.

It is the first time since 2014 that the average price per acre has risen over 9,000/acre. The improving prices can be seen around the country with 19 counties showing an increase in land prices in 2017.

Seven of these counties saw a price rise of over 10%, with Laois experiencing the highest jump of 22.1%. Just seven counties saw a drop in average values, with Waterford, Monaghan, Donegal and, surprisingly, Kilkenny seeing drops of over 10%. The influence of commodity price volatility was plain to see in 2017.

A bumper year for dairy farmers was counteracted by another poor year for grain. Beef and sheep farmers had a better year than in 2016 but were largely unable to compete with the dairy drive. It was just over 12 months ago when the milk price was on the floor and confidence was right there with it. What a difference a year makes and there is little doubt that land prices have significantly benefitted from this renewed dairy vigour.

KEY DRIVERS OF LAND PRICES

INVESTMENT FUNDS- FORESTRY

Forestry was a major player in the Irish land market in 2017, with agents, predominantly in the western region, noting a strong appetite for land suitable for planting. With investment funds considering forestry a low-risk option, international pension funds were very prominent in the market last year.

Individual investors and farmers are also availing of the lucrative premiums obtained from planting in Ireland at the moment. To a lesser degree, smaller UK investment funds are active in the Irish forestry market. Agents have said that if forestry companies have not bought land suitable for planting, they have almost certainly being the highest under bidder. The reality for farmers in this instance is that competition is heavily increased.

As long as tax-free income on clear fell and lucrative premiums of 560/ha per year are received, the demand for forestry land will not waver.

BUSINESS PEOPLE MORE PROMINENT

More business people were active in the market in 2017. With land prices halving between 2007 and 2009, the market seems to have corrected itself. This relative stability has encouraged business people to invest in the market, with land believed to be a solid, low-risk investment. Business people with equine interests have also been to the forefront and it is believed that Frank Dunne, of Dunnes Stores, snapped up Ballymacoll Stud for 8.15m in June.

DAIRY

Dairy has been the big driver of land price in 2017. A better milk price, increased production and expanding enterprises have meant the appetite for land continues to surge. Counties such as Cork, Tipperary and Laois have seen prices rise by over 10% as a direct result of this hunger.

Agents around the country have noted that dairy farmers were in a league of their own and, with the strength of the milk cheque last year, dairy farmers had the financial muscle to outbid other players.

SUPPLY TIGHT

The supply of land offered to the market in 2017 totalled 78,350 acres, up 6.2% on 2016 when 73,778 acres were offered. While the supply increased in a general sense, one of the most frequent observations form across Ireland last year was the scarcity of land.

The analysis shows 13 counties in the Republic of Ireland had a supply reduction in 2017 with a very noticeable reduction in the border counties with Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan and Louth all seeing less land on the market which may well be a direct impact of Brexit amid the uncertainty around cross-border trade.

Furthermore, just 47% of the properties offered for sale at auction were sold under the hammer with both auctioneers and selling agents claiming this is partly due to (1) the relatively short timeframe in the auction room that allows buyers to get their finances in order and (2) Some sellers had unrealistic expectations and were holding out for more than 10,000 an acre making targets unviable and properties being either withdrawn or remaining on the market.

LEASING

Leasing was a major factor in the land market in 2017. The Irish Farmers Journal began collecting information from auctioneers around Ireland last year to ascertain how much farmers were paying to lease land. With this information, we now have a comprehensive county by county breakdown of the current leasing market with the average price for leased land in Ireland at 196/acre in 2017.

Almost every agent said that lease prices were up in 2017, as the demand rose with more and more farmers entering into long-term agreements. Dairy farmers are willing to pay top dollar for land, which is raising the prices in certain regions.
A Portlaoise man who spat in a womans face during a dispute between neighbours has been sentenced to one month in jail.

At a recent sitting of Portlaoise District Court, Joseph Moore (32), Market Mews, Maryborough Village, Portlaoise, was charged with assault at Maryborough Village on May 24, 2017.

Sgt JJ Kirby gave evidence that there was an altercation between the accuseds partner and another woman, who were neighbours.

The accused intervened and spat in the face of the other woman, said Sgt Kirby.

The accused had 14 previous convictions.

Defence, Mr Barry Fitzgerald said that the accused was remanded in custody on more serious matters and he had no previous convictions for assault.

Mr Fitzgerald admitted this had been a particularly repulsive offence, but said the accused is currently a model prisoner.

Defence went on to say that drugs got a grip on the accused and he moved on to cocaine, and at the time of the offence he was in the grip of a major addiction.

There had been a neighbours dispute between the accused partner and another woman and the red mist descended, said defence.

Judge Catherine Staines imposed a one-month sentence.
Fifteen Kildare restaurants scooped awards at last nights Leinster Irish Restaurant Awards in the Knightsbrook Hotel, Trim, where 165 awards were presented to the countrys leading chefs, restaurants and pubs.

Two Cooks in Sallins won two awards  one for Best Emerging Irish Cuisine and the other for Best Restaurant, while Boyles of Kildare Town won Pub of the Year. Leinster Leader beer columinists, Susan and Judy Boyle are renowned all over the country for their expertiese on all things beer related.

Over 550 people attended the Leinster Regional Final where the top establishments in each county were named.

Speaking at the awards, Adrian Cummins, Chief Executive of the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI) said: Now in their tenth year, the Irish Restaurant Awards continue to showcase the exquisite and admirable calibre of food available in our restaurants and pubs nationwide. Online nominations have increased from 9,000 in 2013 to over 80,000 this year and with the increase in interest comes an increase in standards, making the judging process more difficult than ever.

Our small island boasts everything from fine dining to high quality gastropubs, from the exotic taste explosions of world cuisine to the comfort of traditional dishes. We have an appreciation for what we eat, for the journey of our food from farm to fork, and for the dedication of those working in the food industry to serve up Irelands finest food.

The Kildare Winners Are As Follows:

Best Casual Dining sponsored by San Pellegrino - The Ballymore Inn, Ballymore Eustace

Best Emerging Irish Cuisine sponsored by Odaios Foods - TwoCooks Restaurant & Wine Bar, Sallins

Best Kids Size Me sponsored by Dubliner Cheese - Da Vinci's Italian Restaurant, Leixlip

Best 'Free From' sponsored by Peroni Nastro Azzurro Gluten Free - Beetroot Healthy Food, Maynooth

Best World Cuisine sponsored by Aryzta - Oak Alley Restaurant & Cocktail Bar, Maynooth

Best Restaurant Manager - Barbara Snela of Novak's Restaurant, Athy

Best Wine Experience sponsored by Classic Drinks - The K Club, Straffan

Pub of the Year sponsored by Bushmills - Boyle's Bar, Kildare Town

Best Cafe sponsored by Illy - L'Art du Chocolat, Maynooth

Best Customer Service - Red Torch Ginger, Maynooth

Best Gastro Pub sponsored by Coca Cola & Schweppes - Hartes of Kildare town

Best Hotel & Guesthouse Restaurant sponsored by BWG Foodservice - The Linden Tree at Carton House Hotel, Maynooth

Best Newcomer sponsored by Elavon - LaBrasserie, Maynooth

Best Chef sponsored by Nisbets - James Sheridan at Canteen Restaurant, Celbridge

Best Restaurant sponsored by Tindal Wine Merchants - TwoCooks Restaurant & Wine Bar, Sallins

SEE ALSO: Newbridge schoolgirl chops hair for wigs for needy children
A man, who told Kilcock District Court that he was going to his car only to resolve an debate over a Kilcock poem, was cleared of a charge of being drunk in charge of his car.

Sean Coyne (59), with an address at Harris Hill, Kilcock, appeared at the March 6 court sitting, charged with being drunk in charge on January 3, 2017.

Garda Dan Broderick told the court he saw Mr Coyne getting into his car, which was parked closed to Maynooth Garda station and ten yards from the Roost pub, around 10pm on the night in question.

He said the defendant turned on the cars engine and its lights. Mr Coyne then turned and his eyes met those of Garda Broderick.

He got out of the car and walked back towards the Roost pub.

The garda said he believed Mr Coyne intended to drive.

After he approached Mr Coyne, he asked to see the latter's driving licence and Mr Coyne, stating he was drunk, asked why he should show him his driving licence.

Tests showed that Mr Coyne, who said in evidence he had five pints, had a 47mg breath reading.

Mr Coyne, who was represented by solicitor, David Powderly, said in evidence that he was only going to his car to get a tape or a CD, to resolve a debated about a poem, The Lay of Kilcock, about a Kilcock man meeting St Peter at the gates of heaven.

The defendant said he could recite half of the poem.

He did so and explained about St Peter talking to the Kilcock man at the gates of heaven.

Mr Coyne said his father came to Kilcock in 1957 and he lived there since 1958.

Garda Broderick said Mr Coyne could have ejected the CD without turning on the engine but the defendant said he had to turn on the engine in the car to get the CD, which was made by the Kilcock Mens Shed.

Garda Broderick said that Mr Coyne had not mentioned the tape to him when he first spoke to him.

The court heard Mr Coyne was going to go home by taxi or get a lift.

Judge Desmond Zaidan said that he had to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt that Mr Coyne intended to drive. He opted to dismiss the charge.
A passenger, who was aboard the 7.19am Iarnrod Eireann train from Newbridge to Grand Canal Dock this morning, said the train was so overcrowded people were in danger of fainting.

Such was the crowd, Jill Scanlon said there were handfuls of people unable to even get on the train from Adamstown onwards.

"By the time we came to Clondalkin, there was no room in any part of the train for anyone to board. Ironic that youre (Iarnrod Eireann) taking 15% of our salaries for train tickets and cant even get half of us to our workplaces," she said.

SEE ALSO: Celebrating 10 awesome Kildare women on International Women's Day

Ms Scanlon said it was vital more carriages were added to cater for all passengers. She said commuters are paying as much as 280 a month to use the service and people were actually passing out from overcrowding. She said there was no room for movement on the train this morning, and there was no replacement service for those who couldn't physically fit on the train.

Absolutely disgraceful, Irish Rail know they are the only rail service in Ireland and are using extortionate prices and low quality services because they know they can. What happened to putting the people first and doing the decent thing? Its a joke."

When contacted by the Leinster Leader, Iarnrod Eireann said; unfortunately this train was reduced in size to three carriages this morning as a result of vandalism of a train overnight. It will be restored tomorrow to its normal four-carriage size.

The nature of peak commuting is that there will be heavy loading, both in Ireland and internationally. Our trains are designed to safely accommodate heavy loading, albeit that the train was unavoidably reduced in size today. We use all of our available fleet at peak time, and it should be remembered that we diverted any remaining available capacity to establish the Phoenix Park Tunnel services.

The spokesperson said ultimately, the company needs new trains to expand capacity, and has not been funded for this in recent years.

We are set to refurbish 28 carriages which have been out of service for a number of years, which will increase our fleet size from early 2020. Beyond that, the National Development Plan includes funding for 300 new carriages over the coming decade, to cater for growth and electrification. It is anticipated that we will go to tender for an initial order of approximately 100 carriages this year, but the lead times involved mean it will be 2022-23 when these would enter service, he said.

In the meantime, any expansion of service will primarily be at off-peak, as Connolly is heavily congested at present and with the forthcoming expansion of the DART service.
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Come along and hear Gerry Boland read from his new short story collection, The Far Side of Happiness, and Jessamine O'Connor from her latest book of poems, Pact when they visit Carrick-on-Shannonon Monday, March 12 at 6.30pm.



Jessamine and Gerry will also talk candidly about what writing means to them, the challenges and opportunities they face as emerging writers on the crowded publishing scene, their writing routines, and much else besides. Audience participation will be encouraged, so bring along your literary questions.



Entry to all books tour events is free, but spaces are limited so booking is advisable. Signed copies of both books will be on sale.



About the Writers

Gerry Boland is an author and a poet writing for adults and for children. A native of Dublin, he has been living near Keadue since 1999. He is arguably the most important short story writer living in Derreenadouglas (population 17).



Jessamine O Connor is a poet. She has been enjoying critical success ever since her first chapbook, back in 2014. A native of Dublin, she has been living in Monasteraden since 1999. She is possibly the most important poet living in her house.



They will also be visiting Roscommon library, on Monday, April 9 at 6.30pm and Sligo library on Monday, May 14 at 6.30pm.

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Leitrim to mark Fairtrade Fortnight with special events
Irish Water working in partnership with Leitrim County Council is advising customers supplied by the South Leitrim Water Supply that there will be restrictions on their water supply tonight from 11pm to 7am.

Reservoirs recovered well over night and the numbers of people without water today have dropped significantly. However, there are customers in high areas that may still be without water while the system recharges.

An alternative water supply has been made available at Keshcarrigan Quarry for customers affected in the Drumbranned and Glenboy area.

Leitrim County Council is working to identify customers affected on higher ground and will prioritise them for alternative supplies.

Irish Water makes every effort to ensure that the alternative drinking water supply provided, including the tanker/bowser, and dispensing tap, are adequately disinfected. However, as it is not practical to provide sterilised containers for the public to transport drinking water from the tanker to their homes and we cannot guarantee that any containers used by the public do not negatively impact or contaminate the drinking water. Therefore people are advised to boil this water before use.

Irish Water is appealing to those customers who do have a supply to conserve water in every way possible.

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Watch: Deputy Martin Kenny raises issues regarding South Leitrim water supply in Dail Eireann
In a broad-ranging discussion about the works programme for 2018, Carrick-on-Shannon Municipal District councillors were informed that a bypass for Carrick-on-Shannon is not included on any programme at the moment, despite publicity to the contrary.

Shay O'Connor, Senior Engineer, Roads, told the members at their latest meeting that despite announcements at the Project Ireland 2040 plan Carrick-on-Shannon is not on any programme, as yet.

He explained there are 15 to 20 schemes seeking funding but only six or seven are going to be advanced.

He said there has been a lot of publicity on it and a lot of expectation but the bypass is not on a programme yet.

He said this year there are plans in place to overlay the road surface from the Attifinlay Roundabout to the county boundary at the bridge, as well as an overlay on the Jamestown/Drumsna Bypass.

Mr O'Connor said consultants have been engaged and their report will be submitted to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) for approval. He said he expects the preliminary results by this week and there is a good chance the work will take place later this year.

Two bridges in the district have been earmarked for funding to carry out repair works. They are Drumhauver Bridge near Drumshanbo and Battlebridge.

A specific grant of 200,000 has been received for a detailed design of a new bridge at Hartley. Planning permission for a new bridge was granted some 10 or 12 years ago.

Funding has been received under the Towns and Villages Enhancement Scheme for a footpath in Leitrim Village from Church Road to Lock 16.

There is nothing in this year's budget for new footpaths or new public lighting.

Cllr Sinead Guckian said the Carrick-on-Shannon District received the lowest allocation last year and she had called for the Chief Executive to come before them to explain the methodology used.

She pointed out that seven years ago the Council was getting 14m in funding and are nearly 5m down on that allocation this year.

Cllr Guckian expressed surprise in relation to Carrick-on-Shannon Bypass as it was specifically mentioned in the Government's recent launch. We will be lucky to have our bypass by 2040, she said, adding that they are still in a very unacceptable place regards roads funding.

Cllr Sean McGowan said the executive needs to put more pressure on the Department of Transport regarding Carrick-on-Shannon Bypass. He said the plans to upgrade the section of the N4 from Mullingar to Rooskey as well as the Castlebaldwin to Collooney section will see all traffic on the route converge on Carrick-on-Shannon.

He expressed his disappointment that Rooskey Bridge has again received no funding. It was deemed a priority as far back as 2009, he said, and noted that Minister Naughten had met with the community there last year about the issue.

Cllr Des Guckian said the basics were being ignored and he could see nothing more basic than resurfacing the lanes and byroads in the locality.

He said the Council were refusing to finish the Derrycarne road and Derrywillow Lane, which he claimed was the busiest lane in Ireland, saying it was recently patched by the Council but it was a poor job.

Cllr Guckian described it as discrimination of the worst kind and said two roads he had nominated were just ignored.

He also stated that he was not in favour of any extension to the faulty Dromod/Rooskey Bypass.

Cllr Guckian queried why so much was being earmarked for walking trails and stated that charity should begin at home. We should cater for the people who live here first and then the tourists. Our voice in Leitrim is not being heard, he said.

Cllr Enda Stenson said that rural areas deserve the same recognition as towns and villages.

He too said he was confused about a bypass or ring road for Carrick-on-Shannon. He thought it was clearly stated the town was going to get the new road. Members of the government party specifically mentioned it after the launch in Sligo, he said.

He said that Boyle Municipal District have to take the matter seriously as well and he didn't think they were.

In relation to the overall picture, Cllr Stenson said what has been allocated to them was not good enough to maintain our roads.

He also raised the issue of forestry companies destroying rural roads and said they were not contributing enough to the repair of the roads.

Cathaoirleach, Cllr Seadhna Logan thanked Mr O'Connor and his team for their work and for the fair spread of work across the municipal district in 2018.
GARDA overtime payments in Limerick increased by almost two thirds over the past four years as the number of personnel attached to the division continues to decline.

Overtime figures for 2017, which have been released by An Garda Siochana under Freedom of Information legislation show 2,501,551 was paid in overtime in the Limerick garda division during 2017 while 15,899 was paid to civilian members of the force.

A break down of the payments nationally shows overtime payments in Limerick accounted for less than two per cent of the overall total of more than 130 million which was paid in 2017.

According to the figures, the highest payment of overtime in Limerick last year was recorded during the three month period between July and September.

It is understood that this, in part, can be attributed to a number of high profile criminal trials which were heard before a number of different courts in Dublin and Limerick during that time.

The overtime which was paid in Limerick last year represented an increase of more than 1m on what was paid during 2016.

During that year, 1,472,035 was paid to gardai while 11,437 was paid to civilian members of the force locally.

In 2015, overtime payments totalled 1,469,019 while in 2014 payments totalled 919,121.

The figures do include a district-by-district breakdown but its understood the vast majority of payments locally were made to personnel attached to Henry Street and Roxboro Road garda stations.

A break-down of overtime payments by rank is also not included in the figures.

According to the figures, the vast majority of overtime payments during 2017 were made to members of the force working in various divisions within the Dublin Metropolitan Region (DMR).

In addition, almost 30 million was paid to gardai who are attached to specialist national units  some of which were deployed during operations in Limerick.

Outside of Dublin, the highest overtime payments last year were recorded in the Cork City and Laois/Offaly divisions.
MORE than 1,700 patients over the age of 75 had to wait in excess of 24 hours to be treated at University Hospital Limerick last year, figures a Limerick TD has said are 'borderline criminal'.

Sinn Fein Limerick city TD Maurice Quinlivan has voiced his concern at the figures, which were released in response to a Parliamentary Question submitted by his Oireachtas colleague, Deputy Louise OReilly.

These patients are often among the most vulnerable people due to their age and the additional medical needs that can sometimes accompany aging. Being treated urgently prevents escalation of injury and ensures safety and swift treatment, he said.

According to the HSE figures, there were 11,261 recorded incidents of patients aged 75 or older who had to wait for more than 24 hours for treatment having presented at hospitals across the country last year.

The situation was particularly bleak in University Hospital Limerick where 1,746 elderly sick patients waited over 24 hours to be seen. The highest number in any hospital across the State, said Deputy Quinlivan.

It is unacceptable that anyone is left waiting on a trolley for over 24 hours, but it is borderline criminal that elderly people are, he added.

Deputy Quinlivan is demanding that immediate action is taken to ensure the figures are not released this year.

We need more ambition in meeting targets for treating elderly patients from the HSE and the Minister for Health. If this situation is not rectified then lives will be put at risk resulting in fatalities, he said in statement.

Furthermore, we need to see the immediate movement on the implementation of the recommendations of the bed capacity review and the Slainte care report, he added.
A JUDGE has issued a stern warning at Limerick court that nothing should be published in the media or online that might identify anybody connected with an ongoing investigation into the alleged abuse and sexual exploitation of a number of young children.

The Taoiseach, meanwhile, has commended gardai from the Limerick division who are leading the investigation - details of which emerged this week.

The arrest of eleven adults was raised by Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin during Leaders Questions in the Dail this Wednesday.

He said the allegations, details of which cannot be reported for legal reasons, have highlighted serious gaps in the States ability to deal with such cases.

The scale of what is alleged in Limerick is quite shocking and could represent a first in this country" said Deputy Martin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the crimes alleged are shocking, abhorrent and truly disgusting.

Mr Varadkar told the Dail that crimes of a sexual nature are among the most heinous that can occur and that crimes against children are the worst imaginable.

The Taoiseach went on to commend the work of the gardai and Tusla for their efforts in the intelligence-led investigation which led to six women and five men being arrested on Monday.

All eleven were later released without charge and a file is to be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Limerick TD Niall Collins says there is significant public concern in relation to what has emerged into the public domain this week.

The public are very shocked at the alleged scale of child abuse which has been reported. My party leader, Micheal Martin, raised this case in Dail Eireann in the context of under- resourcing by the government of our child protection services, he said.

Tulsa and An Garda Siochana need more resources and specialist training to ensure that the abuse of children is acted upon in a timely manner.

Abuse on the scale of that reported this week is truly shocking, he added.

Meanwhile, Judge Mary Larkin has warned there will be consequences for any media organisations which breach a court order relating to an ongoing family law matter.

Having considered submissions from lawyers representing Tusla and An Garda Siochana, at a sitting of the district court this Wednesday afternoon, the judge said she expects the media to scrupulously comply with the court order which has been in place for a number of months.

She said that the court order was not granted lightly and said that the court had gone above and beyond the normal reporting restrictions.

Judge Larkin said the identification of any geographic area was not appropriate as people are connected by schools, by parish and by work.

She warned that journalists and media organisations must be "vigilant and diligent" in ensuring nothing is published or broadcast which could lead to the identification of any of the parties involved in the proceedings.

The order is there to protect the most innocent and vulnerable of our citizens, she said.

Warning that any breaches of the order by the mainstream media or on social media would not be tolerated Judge Larkin said: There is no point in making such orders if the media thrash them and disrespect them.
IRISH-AMERICAN multi-billionaire Chuck Feeney has made a remarkable and lasting impact on the University of Limerick and the Mid-West region for generations to come with donations from his fortune, the head of the UL Foundation has said.

In the last 30 years, Mr Feeney has donated more than 1.1bn to various causes in Ireland, including 153 million to UL.

The billionaire, who avoided donated anonymously for as long as possible, practiced a policy of giving while living, and once famously said: I would like my last cheque to bounce.

Atlantic Philanthropies, the charity tasked with giving away his fortune, closed its Irish offices last week. Atlantic wrote its last cheque in 2016, and the firm has been preparing for its exit from Ireland for some time.

In 2012, Mr Feeney donated 15.85m to the Bernal Project at UL, which was used to construct the Analog Devices Building, a fully equipped, applied science and engineering laboratory on campus.

In 2007, 10.65m was donated to expand the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance and a further 1.12m was donated in 2008 to fund a mosaic mural in the building.

In 1998, a donation of 3.44 million was made for the construction of ULs Student Centre.

Chuck Feeney also donated 1m to the regeneration of Limerick city and 400,00 to the implementation of prevention services.

The greatest privilege that I have enjoyed in my career has been to spend time with Chuck Feeney, chief-executive of the UL Foundation David Cronin said.

The generosity, vision and guidance of Chuck Feeney has left a remarkable impact on the University of Limerick and the midwest region for generations to come, he added.

As the first chairman of UL Foundation, Chuck built a board of directors who have been hugely supportive of the university and to this day, we are so fortunate to have these leaders in business, industry, arts and sport involved.

Our current chairman Loretta Brennan-Glucksman will be Grand Marshall of the New York St. Patricks Day Parade next week, the fifth woman in their 250 plus year history.
GARDAI in Limerick are warning people to be vigilant and to protect their PINs when using credit and debit cards.

It follows the theft of a bank card from a pensioner at the weekend which was then used by the thief.

According to gardai, the man, who is aged in his early 70s, did some shopping at Roxboro Shopping Centre at around midday last Saturday.

The following morning he discovered that his bank card was missing and he reported this to the gardai at Roxboro Road.

"It appears that he was watched while he put in his PIN at the checkout and then his card was stolen, said a garda spokesperson.

A number of transactions were made on the mans card before he realised that it had been stolen.

Garda are advising people that they should cover the key pad when entering their PIN and ensure it is put securely back into their purse or wallet.
A FOURTEEN-year-old boy has been placed in State care after a judge granted an application for an emergency care order.

The order was sought by Tulsa this Thursday afternoon  less than 48 hours after gardai exercised their powers under the Child Care Act, 1991 as they had concerns for the boys welfare.

Limerick District Court was told by a social worker the boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had been reported missing by his mother earlier this week and that when located by gardai she refused to collect him.

The judge was told the woman, who has not been contactable since Tuesday night, has indicated she is not willing to care for her son anymore.

She refused to go home (on Tuesday) until he was taken into care, said the social worker.

Judge Marian OLeary was told the boys father, who works abroad, is currently in hospital and will not in a position to care for his son for a number of of weeks.

Other options have also been explored but none are practical or realistic.

The social worker added the boy, who has admitted using cocaine, cannabis and upjohns, is refusing to return to the care of his mother and father.

She told solicitor Muiris Gavin the boy has not attended school for some time and that there are concerns he is engaging in criminality with older teenagers.

Having considered the matter, Judge OLeary granted the order which remains in place for up to seven days.
THE president of the Limerick Solicitors Bar Association says the availablility of proper childcare has led to the almost even split between the number of male and female solicitors currently practicing in Limerick.

The figures, published in the Law Society Gazette, show that at the end of 2017 there were 155 male and 153 female solicitors practicing across the city and county.

The split is not so even in neighbouring counties with men outnumbering women (103 -60) in County Tipperary while the opposite applies in County Clare (48-71).

Nationally the number of female solicitors now outnumbers the number of men for the first time.

The figures demonstrate how much attitudes have changed since 1960, when less than 4.5% of solicitors across the country were women.

Ken Murphy, director general of the Law Society says the majority of those training in the societys law school to become solicitors have been female since 1992.

However, he added that it has taken 25 years for the proportion of women actually practicing to catch up with and overtake the number of men.

Stephanie Power, president of Limerick Solicitors` Bar Association, says it is a positive development that a gender balance is being reached within the profession in Limerick and across the country..

She added that it shouldn'tt make a difference to clients whether their solicitor is a man or a woman.

I dont think it does, traditionally the women used to get slotted into certain areas of law which, if you like, were family friendly but with the better availability of childcare I think that is changing. Family circumstances have definitely contributed to it, she said.
SAMUEL Becketts masterpiece Waiting for Godot is receiving the magical Druid treatment at Limerick's Lime Tree Theatre in a much anticipated run this week.

The exceptional theatre company returned to Limerick this week with the acclaimed play, starring Garrett Lombard, Aaron Monaghan, Rory Nolan and Marty Rea.

Becketts seminal play, featuring two bickering, world weary friends interminably awaiting the arrival of the mysterious Godot, opened this Wednesday and runs until Saturday at the 510 seater theatre, which is celebrating five years in business.

Druid return with the award-winning production to the Lime Tree, scene of exceptional works in the past couple of years at the theatre such as Druid Shakespeare, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the Colleen Bawn and DruidMurphy.

Under Garry Hynes assured direction and the involvement of the gifted Druid ensemble, this stark play is indeed something very special and Druids interpretation does justice to one of the most significant plays of the twentieth century.

Hynes said it was fantastic to continue working on this extraordinary show after an acclaimed run in 2016.

Garrett Lombard, who plays the wandering slave Lucky in the play, says Druid set out to show audiences that the dense, stark and almost always abstract play was not all it seems and has a lot of laughs in it.

I think people are surprised by that, laughed the actor, who featured in Alone it Stands many moons ago and claims to have a good long relationship with Limerick over the years.

What we are finding when we are doing it now is that people cant believe how funny it is and how simple and straightforward a lot of it is, he says of Godot.

So we are happy, because that was kind of our intention behind doing it in the first place, we felt that it had become so sort of mythologised, this impossible, impenetrable piece that nobody can understand.

One of the reasons behind doing it, was to show people that its not this mad, philosophical or beyond the beyond high intellectual stuff, it is actually quite basic and human and, yeah, understandable and relatable.

The four actors worked on the piece themselves before approaching Hynes - just one of the best directors working in the world today, he says.

She was really into it - she loved the idea, he says. It just met sense and she felt that our idea of a new generation of actors maybe taking over that particularly lauded masterpiece if you will, that it was time and people were ready for that.

Druid are simply among the finest touring ensembles anywhere, and bring a down to earth approach that humanises the work they take on that leave audiences spellbound.

We are a very tight company, we have been working together a lot over the years, so there is a great shorthand there, says Garrett.

I think what we try and do is bring an Irish sensibility to a lot of our work that we put on and maybe a rural sensibility as well. If there was anything, I would say that is our hallmark.

Waiting for Godot runs in the Lime Tree until Saturday. See www.limetreetheatre.ie for more details and to book tickets
While other planets in Earth's solar system are either scorching hot or bitterly cold, Earth's surface has relatively mild, stable temperatures. Earth enjoys these temperatures because of its atmosphere, which is the thin layer of gases that cloak and protect the planet.

However, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans have changed Earth's atmosphere in dramatic ways over the past two centuries, resulting in global warming. To understand global warming, it's first necessary to become familiar with the greenhouse effect, though.

Energy in, energy out

There's a delicate balancing act occurring every day all across the Earth, involving the radiation the planet receives from space and the radiation that's reflected back out to space.

Earth is constantly bombarded with enormous amounts of radiation, primarily from the sun. This solar radiation strikes the Earth's atmosphere in the form of visible light, plus ultraviolet (UV), infrared (IR) and other types of radiation that are invisible to the human eye.

UV radiation has a shorter wavelength and a higher energy level than visible light, while IR radiation has a longer wavelength and a weaker energy level. About 30 percent of the radiation striking Earth's atmosphere is immediately reflected back out to space by clouds, ice, snow, sand and other reflective surfaces, according to NASA. The remaining 70 percent of incoming solar radiation is absorbed by the oceans, the land and the atmosphere. As they heat up, the oceans, land and atmosphere release heat in the form of IR thermal radiation, which passes out of the atmosphere and into space.

It's this equilibrium of incoming and outgoing radiation that makes the Earth habitable, with an average temperature of about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), according to NASA. Without this atmospheric equilibrium, Earth would be as cold and lifeless as its moon, or as blazing hot as Venus. The moon, which has almost no atmosphere, is about minus 243 F (minus 153 C) on its dark side. Venus, on the other hand, has a very dense atmosphere that traps solar radiation; the average temperature on Venus is about 864 F (462 C).

The greenhouse effect

The exchange of incoming and outgoing radiation that warms the Earth is often referred to as the greenhouse effect because a greenhouse works in much the same way.

Incoming UV radiation easily passes through the glass walls of a greenhouse and is absorbed by the plants and hard surfaces inside. Weaker IR radiation, however, has difficulty passing through the glass walls and is trapped inside, thus warming the greenhouse. This effect lets tropical plants thrive inside a greenhouse, even during a cold winter.

A similar phenomenon takes place in a car parked outside on a cold, sunny day. Incoming solar radiation warms the car's interior, but outgoing thermal radiation is trapped inside the car's closed windows.

Gases in the atmosphere can reflect or trap heat energy, much like what happens in a greenhouse for plants. (Image credit: by Ross Toro, Livescience contributor)

Greenhouse gases and global warming

"Gas molecules that absorb thermal infrared radiation, and are in significant enough quantity, can force the climate system. These type of gas molecules are called greenhouse gases," Michael Daley, an associate professor of Environmental Science at Lasell College told Live Science. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other greenhouse gases act like a blanket, absorbing IR radiation and preventing it from escaping into outer space. The net effect is the gradual heating of Earth's atmosphere and surface, a process known as global warming.

These greenhouse gases include water vapor, CO 2 , methane, nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and other gases, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline have greatly increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially CO 2 , National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Deforestation is the second largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere ranging between 6 percent and 17 percent," said Daley.

Atmospheric CO 2 levels have increased by more than 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, from about 280 parts per million (ppm) in the 1800s to 400 ppm today. The last time Earth's atmospheric levels of CO 2 reached 400 ppm was during the Pliocene Epoch, between 5 million and 3 million years ago, according to the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The greenhouse effect, combined with increasing levels of greenhouse gases and the resulting global warming, is expected to have profound implications, according to the near-universal consensus of scientists.

If global warming continues unchecked, it will cause significant climate change, a rise in sea levels, increasing ocean acidification, extreme weather events and other severe natural and societal impacts, according to NASA, the EPA and other scientific and governmental bodies.

There are those that say that gases are not the cause of global warming, though that goes against the opinion of the global scientific community. "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," EPA chief Scott Pruitt told CNBC's morning news show "Squawk Box" March 9, 2017. [Carbon Dioxide Is Warming the Planet (Here's How)]

Can the greenhouse effect be reversed?

Many scientists agree that the damage to the Earth's atmosphere and climate is past the point of no return or that the damage is near the point of no return. "I agree that we have passed the point of avoiding climate change," Josef Werne, an associate professor at the department of geology & planetary science at the University of Pittsburgh told Live Science. In Werne's opinion, there are three options from this point forward:

Do nothing and live with the consequences. Adapt to the changing climate (which includes things like rising sea level and related flooding). Mitigate the impact of climate change by aggressively enacting policies that actually reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Keith Peterman, a professor of chemistry at York College of Pennsylvania, and Gregory Foy, an associate professor of chemistry at York College of Pennsylvania, think that the damage isn't to that point yet, and that international agreements and action can save the planet's atmosphere.

Currently, some scientists are investigating how to re-engineer the atmosphere to reverse global warming. For example, theories published in the journal Science in July 2017 by lrike Lohmann and Blaz Gasparini, researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, proposed reducing cirrus clouds that trap heat.

"If cirrus clouds behave like a blanket around the Earth, you're trying to get rid of that blanket," Lohmann, a professor of experimental atmospheric physics at ETH Zurich, told Live Science. [Cool the Planet? Geoengineering Is Easier Said Than Done] "You remove the water vapor, you remove the humidity and you prevent the normal cirrus cloud formation," Lohmann said.

For the latest information on the greenhouse effect, visit:

Additional resources
Troublemakers and groundbreakers

(Image credit: NASA)

Throughout history, women around the world have confronted seemingly insurmountable obstacles when pursuing education, career opportunities and accolades typically reserved for men.

But time and time again, ambitious, exceptional women from all cultures proved that they were more than capable of achieving groundbreaking accomplishments, even when unsupported or even vehemently opposed by society's established leaders.

Here are 10 extraordinary women  activists, scientists and innovators  whose remarkable deeds merit attention, recognition and acclaim.

Sybil Ludington (1761-1839)

(Image credit: Monuments and Memorials)

Like the more celebrated Paul Revere, Sybil Ludington also completed a grueling nighttime ride to alert colonial militia to a British attack  and she did it when she was only 16 years old.

When British troops descended on the town of Danbury, Connecticut, on April 26, 1777, a teenage Ludington, whose family lived nearby, set out on horseback to alert scattered fighters and to urge them to gather at the Ludington house under her father's command.

Her ride began after 9 p.m. and lasted through daybreak, covering approximately 40 miles (64 kilometers), according to Historic Patterson. While the revolutionary forces failed to repel the British from Danbury that day, Ludington's courage earned her the recognition and thanks of George Washington, which he delivered in person at her family home, an event described by the National Women's History Museum.

Elizabeth Jennings (1830-1901)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Known as "the schoolteacher on the streetcar," Elizabeth Jennings stood up for her civil rights by sitting down. Much like Rosa Parks  but more than a century earlier  Jennings challenged segregation when she was 24 years old by insisting on her right to a seat on a New York City streetcar, even after a white conductor ordered her to leave.

During the July 16, 1854, incident, Jennings was forcibly removed from the vehicle and pushed into the street by the conductor and a police officer.

After her letter describing her treatment was published in the New York Tribune, she successfully sued the Third Avenue Railway Company. Jennings was represented by Chester A. Arthur  who would become president of the United States in 1881  and she collected $225 in damages, according to the African American Registry.

Her case established an important precedent, and most of the streetcar lines in New York City were integrated by 1860.

Ida Wells (1862-1931)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Writer, suffragist and civil rights activist, Ida Wells launched what would become a lifelong public campaign against injustice at the age of 25. In 1884, the Memphis native filed a lawsuit against the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company, after a conductor and two other train workers forcibly removed her from a seat that she refused to vacate for a white passenger.

She won the case in local courts, but her victory was overturned by the Supreme Court of Tennessee. After the suit, Wells used the power of her words to denounce injustice, deadly violence and discrimination against black people in the South, PBS wrote. After moving to Chicago, she continued to decry the horrors of lynching, while also marching for women's suffrage and preventing the establishment of segregated schools.

She later served as one of the founding members  of which only two were women  of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. In 1930, Wells became one of the first African American women to seek public office, when she ran as an independent candidate for state senator.

Marie Stopes (1880-1958)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Marie Stopes published her first scientific study on plants in 1903, and she received a doctoral degree in botany in 1904 from the University of Munich. She was a leading expert at the time in the study of ancient plants, lecturing on paleobotany at the University of Manchester from 1904 through 1910, and her 1910 book, "Ancient Plants," popularized fossil plant life for the general public.

Stopes' work took her to Japan and Canada, where she embarked on geological field studies and searched for traces of ancient plants. While conducting coal research for the British government, she created scientific terminology and a classification scheme for coal that remains in use today.

Stopes was also a pioneer of family planning, and co-founded the first birth control clinic in Britain, which opened in 1921. She wrote extensively about contraception, reproductive health and marriage as an equal partnership between the sexes.

Clara Maass (1876-1901)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Beginning in 1898, Clara Maass served as a nurse during the Spanish-American War, tending primarily to soldiers who had become ill after contracting infectious diseases like dengue, malaria, yellow fever and typhoid.

In 1901, she volunteered to participate in a risky endeavor for the Yellow Fever Commission, which had been established by the U.S. Army to investigate how the disease spread. Maass allowed herself to be bitten by mosquitoes that had fed on yellow fever patients, to test whether the disease could be transmitted through bites of infected mosquitoes.

She contracted yellow fever and recovered, volunteering again to be bitten by mosquitoes as the commission continued to gather evidence. Once more, Maass became ill with yellow fever, but this time it proved to be fatal. Her widely publicized death ended the practice of yellow fever experiments using people, but helped scientists to confirm mosquitoes as a yellow fever vector.

Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture (1890-1996)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Born on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in Southern Ontario, Canada, Charlotte Edith Anderson Monture was the first native Canadian woman to train and practice as a nurse. Racial prejudice denied her entry to Canadian nursing programs, and she attended and graduated from a nursing school in New Rochelle, New York, later becoming a public school nurse in New York City.

In 1917, Monture volunteered for the U.S. Army Nurse Corps (USANC). She was sent overseas to work in a military hospital in France, and was one of 14 Native American women who served in the USANC during World War I.

After the war, Monture returned to Canada, where she lived on the Six Nations Reserve and worked as a nurse in a local hospital.

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997)

(Image credit: PD-US)

Known as "The First Lady of Physics," Chien-Shiung Wu studied nuclear fission, leading to her participation in the Manhattan Project  a then-secret collaboration in the 1940s between scientists and the U.S. military to create nuclear weapons.

While working on the Manhattan Project at Columbia University, Wu contributed to the development of a process that separated uranium metal into isotopes through diffusion, increasing the amount of uranium that could serve as fuel for an atomic bomb.

In 1957, Wu and two of her colleagues at Columbia University overturned a law of symmetry in physics, but when their discovery was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics that year, her contributions were overlooked and only her colleagues were recognized.

Despite the snub, Wu continued to garner awards and accolades over the next several decades, becoming the first woman elected to the American Physical Society, the first woman to receive the Cyrus B. Comstock Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Princeton University.

Nancy Grace Roman (b. 1925)

(Image credit: NASA)

"When I was a girl, women were not supposed to be scientists. At least, that's what I was told," astronomer Nancy Grace Roman wrote in an autobiographical essay for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Roman faced down discouragement and disapproval to pursue a graduate degree and a career in astronomy, and was a vocal advocate for women in the sciences throughout her professional life.

Roman's discovery of irregularities in "normal" stars' orbits and how the quantities of heavy chemical elements in stars change as they age was one of the first clues to reveal to scientists how the Milky Way galaxy evolved.

In 1959  the first year of NASA's operation  the agency tasked Roman with creating a program that coordinated satellites, sounding rockets, balloons and ground research to support space observation for half a century. Until 1979, she also served in the NASA Office of Space Science as the Chief of the Astronomy and Relativity Programs.

She is also known as the "Mother of Hubble" for her efforts in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope  the first powerful optical telescope in space  which launched in 1990 and remains active to this day.

Wangari Maathai (1940-2011)

(Image credit: Martin Rowe)

The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize (2004), Wangari Maathai spoke up for democracy and sustainability in her native Kenya. She founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental initiative whose members plant trees in Africa to prevent soil erosion, provide a source for firewood and store rainwater.

Maathai's organization began as a grassroots campaign in 1977, when she mobilized women to take action by planting trees to counter the deforestation that threatened the livelihood of their rural communities. What began in Kenya soon spread to other countries in Africa, and has led to the planting of more than 51 million trees in Kenya alone, according to the Green Belt Movement website.

Maathai held a graduate degree in biology  the first doctorate awarded to a woman from East and Central Africa. She was also Kenya's first female professor, served as chair of the National Council of Women of Kenya from 1981 to 1987, and she was elected to Kenya's parliament in 2002 by an overwhelming majority  98 percent of the vote.

Sylvia Ray Rivera (1951-2002)

(Image credit: Photographer unknown)

Transgender activist and civil rights pioneer Sylvia Rae Rivera was on the front lines of the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969, which many credit with sparking the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, during the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, Rivera and other Stonewall regulars fought back, triggering a series of protests that extended over several days. By taking a stand against what had been systematic, institutionalized harassment and arrests, Rivera's actions at Stonewall played an important part in mobilizing and uniting the gay community in New York, according to an NBC News profile.

Rivera further participated in the struggle for gay rights with the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), though she later parted ways with the organization when they abandoned agenda items that protected transgender people. She continued to work to promote rights and visibility for gender nonconforming people, especially those in the community who were young or at risk.
Sea ice

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey/Richard Turner)

Heavy sea ice in Antarcticas Weddell Sea forced the British polar research vessel RRS James Clark Ross to turn back from their destination near the Larsen C ice-shelf on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) announced March 2, 2018.



The ship was carrying an international team of scientists who had hoped to survey the area recently exposed along the ice shelf by the giant A-68 iceberg that broke off from Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017. [Read more about the Antarctic expedition]

Destination ahead

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey)

The scientists on board the RRS James Clark Ross were more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) from their destination beside the southern Larsen C Ice Shelf when the ship was forced to turn north.

Slow Going

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey/Susie Grant)

The heavy ice in the Weddell Sea meant that the RRS James Clark Ross has only been able to cover a few miles each day.



There are only a few weeks left in the short Antarctic summer, so the ship's captain made the "difficult decision" to head for a new destination, near the Larsen A region of the Antarctic Peninsula.

RRS James Clark Ross

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey)

The RRS James Clark Ross is a marine research and supply ship operated by the British Antarctic Survey since the 1990s.



It also supports British scientific research in the Arctic regions during the Antarctic winters.

James Clark Ross

(Image credit: John Wildman/public domain)

The ship is named after the 19th-century naval officer and polar explorer James Clark Ross.



Between 1839 and 1843, Ross commanded a British expedition to Antarctica on the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which charted much of the coastline of the frozen continent.

Equipped for work

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey/Richard Turner)

The RRS James Clark Ross is equipped with several scientific laboratories and winch systems for deploying scientific equipment into the water.

Deep ice

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey/Richard Turner)

Although the ship is designed to break through with sea ice up to 3 feet (1 meter) thick, it was forced to turn back after encountering ice of up to 16 feet (5 m) thick in the Weddell Sea.

Antarctic ice ship

(Image credit: NASA/John Sonntag)

The international team of scientists on board the RSS James Clark Ross had hoped to be the first to survey a newly exposed area of the seafloor beside the Larsen C Ice Shelf.



A giant iceberg, dubbed A-68, started breaking away from the edge of the ice-shelf in 2014.

Big 'ole iceberg

(Image credit: German Aerospace Center)

Last year, the A-68 iceberg, covering an area of more than 2,000 square miles, broke free from the ice shelf and started to float away.



Scientists say the seafloor exposed by the A-68 iceberg has been covered by the thick ice shelf for around 120,000 years.

Next stop

(Image credit: British Antarctic Survey/Susie Grant)

The RRS James Clark Ross and the international team of scientists on board will now head farther north on the Antarctic Peninsula, to carry out a marine survey near the Larsen A ice region.



The next scientific expedition to Larsen C is scheduled in early 2019, on a German research ship, RV Polarstern.
Google has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense to help the agency develop smarter drone software. According to a report from Gizmodo, Google has agreed to provide the DOD with machine-learning software that will help the department's computers better detect objects in surveillance drone footage.

The new partnership, which was leaked from an internal Google mailing list last week and confirmed yesterday (March 6) in a statement, is part of a DOD initiative called Project Maven (also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team). According to a DOD news release issued last July, Project Maven aims to improve America's ability to "[win] wars with computer algorithms and artificial intelligence" by rapidly upgrading the military's ability to analyze drone footage. [5 Surprising Ways Drones Could Be Used in the Future]

The project's first goal is to develop artificial intelligence capable of automatically detecting "38 classes of objects" regularly seen in military drone footage, the DOD said. This will ultimately help data analysts parse the "millions of hours of video" captured each year by drones surveilling combat zones in such countries as Iraq and Syria.

"AI will not be selecting a target [in combat]  any time soon," Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team, said at a defense tech summit last year. "What AI will do is complement the human operator.

Google will reportedly help the department achieve this goal by providing software building blocks known as TensorFlow application programming interfaces (APIs), which are often used in building neural networks.

"This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data," a Google representative said in a statement."The technology flags images for human review, and is for non-offensive uses only."

This explanation doesn't sit well with some Google employees, Gizmodo reported, and some staffers are "outraged" at the companys agreement to lend its technology to controversial drone operations. Countries around the world are nevertheless pouring funding into developing artificial intelligence for military purposes, which Cukor described as "an AI arms race."

"No area will be left unaffected by the impact of this technology," he said.

It is unknown whether the DOD is working with any other major tech companies as part of Project Maven at this time, or if Google stands alone.

Originally published on Live Science.
China's space station, weighing in at 9 tons (8,500 kilograms), is currently falling toward Earth, and those tracking the hefty payload estimate it will reenter our atmosphere some time between about March 30 and April 2. So how unlucky would you have to be to get bonked on the head with any Tiangong-1 bits that survive the fiery plunge?

Turns out, pretty unluckly. The odds that any person will get hit by falling Tiangong-1 debris in the regions on Earth that are most at-risk for such a collision are about one million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot, according to the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit corporation in California that advises military, civil and commercial space operations. [Gallery: Tiangong-1, China's First Space Laboratory]

So if the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about one in 292 million, as has been reported, then carrying out the math means your odds of a ding from the space station debris are about one in 292 trillion.

China launched Tiangong-1, the country's first space station, in September 2011, primarily so taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) could sharpen the skills  such as docking abilities  needed to build a planned space station in the 2020s, according to Space.com, a Live Science sister site.

Since then, Tiangong-1 has dutifully served its purpose, docking with three spacecraft: Shenzhou-8 in November 2011, Shenzhou-9 in June 2012 and Shenzhou-10 in June 2013, Space.com reported. But China lost contact with the 34-foot-long (10.3 meters) space station in March 2016, and now the 9.4-ton (8.5 metric tons) behemoth is falling back toward Earth.

Though Tiangong-1 is expected to collide with Earth around April 1, give or take a few days, according to a prediction by Aerospace, most of it will likely burn up in the atmosphere, Aerospace said. When this happens, people may see a bright light hurtling across the sky, likely resembling this meteorite that disintegrated over Bolivia in 2016.

As it reenters Earth's atmosphere, Tiangong-1 might break up into debris that could hit the ground or water, the Aerospace Corporation noted. If this happened, the debris would smash into the region of Earth that the station passes over, seen below in yellow (high probability), green (low probability) and blue (zero probability), Aerospace reported. The "zero probability" area constitutes about one-third of Earth's total surface area.

The yellow bands are the riskiest places to be, but even there the odds of getting hit by space station debris are extremely low. (Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation)

But even people living within the yellow bands shouldn't sweat it. As mentioned, they're much more likely to win the Powerball jackpot than they are to get hit by Tiangong-1 debris.

However, if any piece of Tiangong-1 were to crash into a person, it wouldn't be the first time that part of a spacecraft hit someone. In 1997, a small piece of a Delta II rocket struck Lottie Williams, a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the shoulder, according to NPR. Luckily, Williams wasn't injured, and she remains the only person on record to be hit with a piece of human-made space debris.

That's not to say space gear doesn't come crashing down to Earth. Over the past 50 years, more than 5,900 tons (5,400 metric tons) of space debris has survived re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, but no incidents  except for Williams'  have been reported, Aerospace Corporation said.

Meanwhile, Space.com has reported, the Chinese space agency has already launched Tiangong-2, whose name, like its predecessor's, means "heavenly palace" in Mandarin.

Editor's Note: This article was first published on March 7 and updated with timely information on March 23.

Original article on Live Science.
San Francisco International Airport is one of the areas at highest risk of flooding due to land subsidence and rising seas. Up to half of the runways and taxiways at the airport could be underwater by 2100, new research suggests.

Large swaths of the Bay Area, including the region's biggest airport, are sinking. As a result, the area could face catastrophic flooding when sea levels rise, new research suggests.

The findings suggest the Bay Area could be even more prone to flooding than current emergency hazard maps or models of climate change predict.

"The ground goes down, sea level comes up, and flood waters go much farther inland than either change would produce by itself," Manoochehr Shirzaei, an assistant professor of Earth and space exploration at Arizona State University and a member of NASA's Sea Level Change Team, said in a statement.

Shirzaei and his colleagues analyzed satellite-based interferometric measurements of elevation from 2007 to 2011. This highly precise measurement can detect minute changes in elevation  as small as a 0.03 inches (1 millimeter).

The team found that while most parts of the Bay Area were sinking by just 0.06 inches (2 mm) a year, other areas were falling at 10 times that rate.

Many of the fastest-sinking areas were built on top of landfill. For instance, parts of Treasure Island, which should more rightly be named "Trash Island," are now sinking at a rate of 0.5 to 0.75 inches (12 to 20 mm) a year. The artificial island, located partway between San Francisco proper and Oakland, was constructed out of trash in time for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition.

Another high-profile area at risk? The San Francisco International Airport (SFO), which was also built on landfill. About 200,000 flights a year land on runways that are perched right by the water of the San Francisco Bay. The study found that SFO is sinking enough that by 2100, half of the runways and taxiways will be underwater.

Foster City, located partway between San Francisco and San Jose, is also at high risk. The landfilled area is home to several high-tech companies  and is likely to be significantly flooded by 2100, the study found.

Area hazard maps that predict flood risk, such as those used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, need to account for both sinking land and rising seas, the researchers suggested. (FEMA currently has maps that account for sea level rise, but not both sea level rise and subsidence).

This isn't the first study to highlight the flood risks of climate change. A study published Nov. 2017 in PLOS One found that 13,000 archaeological sites in the U.S., including the oldest English settlement in the country, could be submerged by 2100, thanks to climate change.

The findings were published today (March 7) in the journal Science Advances.

Originally published on Live Science.
Chunks of clay excavated from Iron Age grain bins in South Africa. Early farmers burnt their clay huts and grain storage buildings in times of drought as part of a cleansing ritual, unknowingly locking the magnetic properties of the minerals in the clay into place.

A flip in Earth's magnetic field may be brewing. And if it is, an electromagnetic blob deep under southern Africa is likely to be ground zero for the change.

New research using clays burned in cleansing rituals by Iron Age farmers finds that over the past 1,500 years, an electromagnetic anomaly in the Southern Hemisphere has waxed and waned, with the magnetic field in the region weakening and strengthening. This weirdness may presage a gradual reversal in the magnetic field, so that magnetic north moves to the South Pole and vice versa. (A flip-flop of this sort last occurred 780,000 years ago.)

The study suggests that the magnetic field under southern Africa may not just be weird today, study co-author John Tarduno, who researches the Earth's magnetism at the University of Rochester in New York, told Live Science. It may be a longstanding hotspot for changes in the global magnetic field.

"This may be the place that reversal started, at least reversals over the last millions of years," Tarduno said. [7 Ways the Earth Changes in the Blink of an Eye]

Weakening field

The planet's magnetic field is generated by the churning of liquid iron in the core. Without the field, life on the planet would be much different, if not impossible: This invisible shield protects the Earth's surface from deadly cosmic radiation.

Right now, the field is undergoing a weakening, and no one is sure why. The South Atlantic Anomaly, a region of the magnetic field that stretches from South Africa to Chile, is particularly weak, Tarduno said, so scientists have become interested in figuring out what might be going on in the core underneath that area.

The problem is that before about 160 years or so ago, with the advent of magnetic observatories and (eventually) satellite observations, there weren't many records of what the magnetic field looked like in the Southern Hemisphere, Tarduno said. Ninety percent of the data that does exist comes from the northern half of the planet. To start to rectify that disparity, Tarduno and his team excavated clays from the Limpopo River Valley of Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Botswana. In times of drought hundreds to thousands of years ago, Bantu-speaking farmers would burn down their clay huts and grain bins in ritualistic ceremonies. Unbeknown to these ancient farmers, the fire heated the magnetic minerals in the clay and locked into place a record of the strength and orientation of the field at that time. Now, researchers can study those properties to find out what the magnetic field was doing at that moment in time.

Locked in clay

The excavations unearthed these burnt clays as long ago as A.D. 425, Tarduno said, providing the longest record yet of the magnetic field in southern Africa. The data show that the magnetic field experienced sudden directional shifts between A.D. 400 and 450, and then again between A.D. 750 and 800. Between about A.D. 1225 and 1550, the field noticeably weakened. The first two shifts might also indicate a weakened field, Tarduno said, but more research is needed to determine the magnetic intensity in those time frames. The researchers reported their findings Feb. 15 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

What these shifts suggest is that what is going on in the Southern Hemisphere's magnetic field today may have happened before, Tarduno said.

The field shifts may have to do with underlying processes churning deep beneath the Earth's surface, Tarduno said. In recent years, scientists have documented a weird patch of magnetic field below southern Africa at the boundary between the core and the mantle, where the polarity of the field is reversed.

"That patch may be largely responsible for the decreasing magnetic field," Tarduno said.

The patch is like an eddy in a stream, he said. As for what causes the eddy, it may be something odd about the mantle right above the core in that location, he said. The mantle under southern Africa is unusual, and possibly both hotter and denser than surrounding mantle, he said.

"We think that is causing there to be changes in the flow of the iron [in the core] as it enters this region," Tarduno said.

That could mean that southern Africa is the origin for magnetic field reversals, Tarduno said, though there's no guarantee that the field will flip now  the weakening could also dissipate, as it has in centuries past.

Even if the field doesn't reverse, though, the weakening itself could have societal implications, Tarduno said.

"These are not of the nature of disaster movies. That's not the point," he said. Instead, a weakening field could let more cosmic radiation hit the Earth, making infrastructure like the power grid more susceptible to geomagnetic storms and even changing atmospheric chemistry so that more UV rays could sneak through, causing increased risk for skin cancer in humans.

"It's definitely something that we need to keep an eye on," Tarduno said.

Original article on Live Science.
Amelia Earhart, who has a tall, thin body, stands in front of the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in July 1937.

In arguably one of history's biggest mysteries, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart has captured both public and scientific attention since that fateful day in 1937 when the Coast Guard lost radio transmission with Earhart's airplane on its way to Howland Island, just north of the equator in the Pacific Ocean.

Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were attempting to circumnavigate the globe. They were never heard from again. This week, a paper published in the journal Forensic Anthropology suggests that bones found on the Pacific island of Nikumaroro (once called Gardner Island) in 1940 may belong to the lanky female aviator.

"This analysis reveals that Earhart is more similar to the Nikumaroro bones than 99% of individuals in a large reference sample. This strongly supports the conclusion that the Nikumaroro bones belonged to Amelia Earhart," study author and forensic anthropologist Richard Jantz wrote in the journal article. [10 Mysterious Deaths and Disappearances That Still Puzzle Historians]

Jantz is part of an effort launched by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) in 1988 to find Earhart's remains.

Since 1988, Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR executive director, has led TIGHAR researchers on 11 expeditions in the hope of finding clues as to what happened to Earhart. One idea is that Earhart and Noonan made an emergency landing on Nikumaroro, in the Republic of Kiribati, and subsequently died there. Earhart's plane is also missing. In 2014, TIGHAR researchers found an "anomaly" on the seafloor off Nikumaroro, though there's no word on what created that anomaly.

Measuring bones

Though the actual bones have not been found, scientists have records from a Dr. D. W. Hoodless, who apparently examined the 13 bones in Suva, Fiji, in 1941, after they were shipped to him at the Central Medical School. In his notes, Hoodless concluded the bones belonged to a European male who was about 5 feet 6 inches  much shorter than the 5-foot-9 Earhart, according to an NPR report from 1998. (In his paper, Jantz indicates Earhart was perhaps 5 feet 7 inches or 5 feet 8 inches tall.)

Figuring out whether these bones could have belonged to Earhart, or even a female, has been a long back-and-forth scientific journey. In 1998, forensic anthropologists Karen Burns and Richard Jantz analyzed the medical record and images of Earhart to conclude that "the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart's height and ethnic origin," according to a TIGHAR statement. [In Photos: Searching for Amelia Earhart]

That interpretation was disputed in 2015, when British graduate student Pamela Cross and Australian anthropologist Richard Wright published a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports arguing that the bones likely belonged to a stocky European male, as Hoodless had initially suggested in his 1941 description.

In response to that rebuttal, Jantz (Burns died in 2012) undertook a more thorough examination of the Nikumaroro bone measurements and how they compared to Earhart's physique. Preliminary results were released in 2016 that suggested the bones did match what images of Earhart suggested of her body size, Live Science reported at the time.

Closer to the truth?

In the newly published study, Jantz describes his analysis, which included newfound information about Earhart's body dimensions based on a study of her clothes that were held at Purdue University in the George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers. Jantz measured an inseam length and waist circumference from a pair of Earhart's pants. He also used various images (particularly those with bare arms and legs), a Massachusetts driver's license and other records to estimate Earhart's build.

He concluded that, "in all respects," the bones are consistent with those of Earhart. "As a tall and narrow-bodied female, the 'set' of the femora could well have appeared male to Hoodless," Jantz wrote. "It is apparent from the many photos of Earhart, and from her waist circumference, that her hips were narrow for a female. This, in combination with her height, does not require a femur angle one might expect of a female."

In addition, Hoodless had used half of a pubic bone as part of his sex determination: The spot where the pubic bones meet in the middle is an arch  known as the pubic arch  and forensic anthropologists use the angle of that arch to determine the sex of a skeleton. Women, who on average have wider hips than men, have a bigger angle at the top of that arch. One problem with his measurement, however, is that he had only one side of that bone (and arch), which makes figuring out the actual angle, especially with the tools available in 1941, tricky, Jantz noted in his paper.

"An ambiguous half subpubic angle," Jantz wrote, "could easily have been called male by an inexperienced eye, or even an experienced one, particularly if taphonomic [fossilization] processes had modified the morphology."

Even with this finding, other narratives abound. For instance, as reported by The Washington Post, retired journalist Mike Campbell, who has studied Earhart's disappearance, continues to argue that the Japanese captured Earhart and Noonan, believing them to be spies, on the Marshall Islands. Campbell, who authored "Amelia Earhart: The Truth at Last " (Sunbury Press Inc.; Second Edition, 2016), maintains the duo were tortured, only to perish in Japanese custody.

Last year, the History channel ran a special on a photo they had unearthed that the channel suggested showed Earhart and Noonan. They claimed the image showed Earhart after she had been taken hostage by the Japanese in the Marshall Islands. Experts immediately refuted that claim, citing the biggest giveaway of all: The photo was taken at least two years BEFORE Earhart's final, fateful flight.

Original article on Live Science.
A virus scooped up from a lake saved an 80-year-old Connecticut man who had a life-threatening bacterial infection in his heart.

Doctors had tried to combat the infection using antibiotics, to no avail. So they turned to a virus that was originally found in a nearby lake. The virus, a type called a bacteriophage, appeared to eradicate the patient's infection, according to a new report of the case.

Although larger studies are needed, the new report provides early evidence that bacteriophages could be effective treatments against some antibiotic-resistant infections, said the researchers from the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

The patient's troubles began in 2012 after he had heart surgery to replace a damaged section of his aorta  the artery that carries blood away from the heart. Doctors replaced this damaged section with a synthetic tube known as a graft.

But soon after the surgery, the man's graft got infected with a type of bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This type of bacteria is common in the environment, and it is frequently linked to infections acquired in hospitals, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]

The patient was treated with a long-term course of antibiotics, but the infection kept coming back. He was admitted to the hospital numerous times over the next few years for P. aeruginosa infections in his blood, the report said.

As the patient was running out of treatment options, his physician was contacted by another researcher at Yale who had been studying bacteriophages and thought he had one that could help.

This bacteriophage, known simply as OMKO1, was found in a sample taken from Dodge Pond, which is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) up the coast from New Haven. (The researchers had been studying natural samples for bacteriophages.)

Experiments in lab dishes had revealed that OMKO1 could kill P. aeruginosa bacteria by binding to the proteins on the bacterial surface that allow the bacteria to pump out antibiotic drugs before they cause harm. In doing so, the bacteriophages kill the bacteria. What's more, if the bacteria were to evolve to become resistant to OMKO1, they would have to change that pump, and without it, they become more susceptible to traditional antibiotics, the researchers said. That allows researchers to combat the bacteria with a "one-two punch" of sorts.

"The bacteria are backed into an evolutionary corner," study co-author Paul Turner, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, said in a statement.

The researchers got approval from the Food and Drug Administration to use OMKO1 on the patient. In January 2016, they performed surgery to inject hundreds of thousands of OMKO1 bacteriophages into the man's chest.

Follow-up with the patient showed that he was free of his bacterial infection, despite taking antibiotics for only a short time after the surgery. So far, he has not had a recurrence of the infection and has remained off of antibiotics for 18 months, the report said.

"We argue that the phage therapy played a significant role in contributing to the eradication of the P. aeruginosa infection," the researchers wrote in the March 8 issue of the journal Evolution, Medicine and Public Health. "We hope that exploratory studies such as this one can provide preliminary evidence suggesting that phage OMKO1 can greatly improve the effects of antibiotics for the removal of P. aeruginosa," the study authors said.

The researchers are currently screening other types of bacteriophages to see if these might be effective treatments against other antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, said study co-author Benjamin Chan, a research scientist at Yale.

Original article on Live Science.
A nerve agent was likely used to poison a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in England, new reports suggest.

The former spy, Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, were found slumped on a park bench in Salisbury, England, on Sunday (March 4). Both Skripals allegedly looked pale and stiff; vomit was pouring from Sergei's mouth while his daughter sat frothing at the mouth with wide-open eyes, according to U.S. News and World Report.

According to investigators, the condition in which the Skripals were found indicates they were poisoned by a nerve agent  the most toxic and fast-acting chemical warfare agents in the world, Live Science previously reported. But what are nerve agents, and what do they do to humans?

Related: 5 lethal chemical warfare agents

Simply put, nerve agents stop the central nervous system from communicating with the muscles, organs and glands it needs to keep your body's internal machinery running smoothly. Specifically, the chemicals in nerve agents stop the body from breaking down a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. The nervous system releases this crucial enzyme to activate muscles; when acetylcholine can't be broken down, those muscles  including the heart and lungs  spasm uncontrollably until they exhaust themselves, becoming effectively paralyzed.

Victims of nerve agents thus lose control of their bodily functions. Unintentional drooling, vomiting and urinating are common symptoms of exposure. Within minutes, the effects can escalate to asphyxiation or cardiac arrest. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the extent of the poisoning increases with the amount and the duration of nerve agent exposure. Nerve agents typically enter the body through the mouth or nose, but can also be absorbed through the skin.

"If you have ever seen a fly sprayed, it drops on its back and lies with its legs in the air, twitching, this is the result of nerve agents taking hold," Dr. Simon Cotton, a senior chemistry lecturer at the University of Birmingham, told the Daily Mail.

A man and his daughter were found in critical condition following a "brazen and reckless" nerve agent attack. (Image credit: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty)

Weaponized pesticides

Tellingly, many nerve agents were first developed as pesticides. Sarin, for example  a deadly chemical warfare agent believed to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians in Syria  was created as a pesticide by German scientists in 1938. In its liquid and gaseous forms, sarin is colorless, odorless and tasteless, making it nearly impossible to detect until poisoning symptoms have already set in. Depending on the degree of exposure, symptoms from sarin poisoning may take only a few seconds to appear. (Sarin and many other nerve agents are banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, which more than 190 nations, including Syria, participate in.)

It is unlikely that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with sarin, a source close to the investigation told the BBC. Investigators also believe that the poison in question was not VX (or "Venomous Agent X")  another deadly nerve agent banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. VX was used to assassinate Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at an airport last year.

Investigators believe the nerve agent used against the Skripals was "very rare," the BBC reported, and was likely manufactured in a country with a large infrastructure capable of creating and delivering such deadly man-made toxins. It may take days or weeks before toxicologists can provide an answer. In the meantime, the area where the Skripals were found has since been hosed down, which should help dilute any remnants of the chemical agent, an emergency-medicine doctor told Live Science. Nevertheless, the site remains closed to the public.

Originally published on Live Science.
An elderly man suffered life-threatening injuries Wednesday after a car hit him in San Franciscos North Beach neighborhood, police said.

The man, 82, was hit shortly before 7 p.m. while walking on Mason Street near the Northpoint Street intersection, according to San Francisco Police Department. He was taken to the hospital with severe injuries.

In a separate incident almost five hours later, a 20-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries after crashing into a parking garage in the citys Merced Heights neighborhood.

The man lost control of his car around 12:15 a.m. Thursday and hit a garage at 19th Avenue and Junipero Serra Boulevard, police said. He was taken to the hospital for his injuries.
JERRY LARA

The price of oil along with coffee, cotton and other commodities is relatively easy to monitor through established exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange

But liquefied natural gas, which is coming on the market in increasing supply, doesn't have the same transparency of pricing because there isn't a dominant exchange that can provide spot prices or futures contract prices.
Federal prosecutors expect state Sen. Carlos Uresti will owe more than $3 million in restitution to victims of his criminal fraud, a newly unsealed court filing shows.

The government also alleges that last weeks divorce petition filed by Urestis wife Lleanna is largely to avoid the lien that will arise at sentencing to enable it to apply their property to his restitution debt.

Senior U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Tuesday issued an order barring Uresti, 54, and his wife, family members, representatives or companies from disposing of any of his assets without court approval. The order remains in force until Urestis sentencing, set for June 28. Uresti is facing possibly years in federal prison in addition to owing restitution to victims.

The judge also authorized the government to file lis pendens against all of Urestis real property, which may prevent him from selling any real estate.

The judges order and the governments motion to prevent the dissipation of assets were unsealed today.

In their filing, prosecutors allege that the San Antonio Democrat is selling furniture, statues and artwork. He also is preparing to list for sale his law office building, prosecutors say.

His actions could hinder his victims ability to recover their losses, the government says.

A jury on Feb. 22 found Uresti guilty of 11 felonies in connection with his involvement in FourWinds Logistics, an oilfield company that defrauded investors. He served as outside general counsel, a 1 percent owner and recruited investors.

Uresti has vowed to appeal the verdict. Attorney Michael McCrum, who represented Uresti in the criminal trial, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ezras order enjoins Uresti and his wife from dividing their assets in their divorce proceeding.

About a week after the verdict, Lleanna Uresti, 42, his second wife, filed for divorce in state district court in Bexar County. She cited adultery as one of reasons.

The government noted Lleanna Uresti seeks a disproportionate share of the parties estate to include exclusive use and possession of their residence. The Helotes property is assessed at almost $1.6 million.

Uresti  had little regard for his victims then and is not expected to have any regard for them now, prosecutors said in their motion. Given his fraud, he cannot be trusted to manage his assets in the best interests of his victims and should be restrained from making decisions that could impede the ability to recover restitution.

To read the complete story, see Fridays paper or click here to visit ExpressNews.com
Next week, the National Book Critics Circle will announce the winners of awards in six categories. Admittedly, the contenders for the fiction and nonfiction prizes attract the most buzz. But let's take a moment, shall we, for the odd duck of the evening: the criticism award. Though it may be the least ballyhooed of the NBCC categories, it is, I would argue, the most closely attuned to the zeitgeist. And it seems both bracing and appropriate that this year's criticism finalists include no work by a white man.

The contenders do, however, include a remarkable book called "Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History," by Camille T. Dungy (Norton, $25,95). The essays in Dungy's graceful and perceptive collection display the fluidity and finely tuned ear one would expect from a celebrated poet for whom "language is home." She is a perceptive historian, keenly aware of how history is both the "ways human history cross-pollinates all my interactions" and how it is yet "little more than a record of disputed erasures." The book revolves around the birth and infancy of Dungy's daughter, whom we follow from Dungy's pregnancy all the way up to the age of 3. Dungy navigates the complicated crosscurrents of contemporary parenthood with honesty and insight.

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Three sentences into "You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, and Other Mixed Messages" (Mariner, $16.95) I already felt like cheering. Carina Chocano is a first-rate cultural critic whose specialty is constructing dead-on feminist analyses of such sinister artifacts as the relentless "Frozen" and the various horrifying iterations of Barbie. Chocano is unusually skilled at dismantling the toxic underpinnings of such pop-culture mainstays, motivated in part by her desire to help her young daughter confront "a world that literally never stops yelling at her that her primary value is sexual." And Chocano demolishes the dismal shibboleth that feminists can't be funny, wielding abundant wit with a devastating sardonic edge. She refers to Elizabeth Gilbert's"Eat, Pray, Love" as "the Eileen Fisher phase of the fairy tale ... tasteful, flowing, and calming." She describes how a Hans Christian Andersen heroine "throws herself" at the hero "and weeps hot tears upon his breast" before adding, "In real life, we know, this tactic usually backfires."

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To move from Chocano's quick-witted and perceptive essays to Kevin Young's erudite "Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News" (Graywolf, $30) is a readerly change of pace. There appears to be no format in which Young does not shine. A fine poet and incisive critic, the director of Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the poetry editor of the New Yorker to boot, he has produced in "Bunk" a work of extraordinary gravity and scope. Dissecting scams from P.T. Barnum up to Rachel Dolezal and beyond, Young journeys "back and forth across the history of the hoax in order to trace the hoaxing of history." In his skillful analysis, hoaxes are themselves revealed as a central strand of America's toxic racial history - Young calls the hoax "racism's native tongue" - and thus make up a "potent, American cocktail of doubt and danger, desire and delight."

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Depending on your emotional valence, Valeria Luiselli's "Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions" (Coffee House, $12.95) will either break your heart or make you very, very angry. The 40 questions of the subtitle are the questions that undocumented and unaccompanied child immigrants (or refugees, as they should rightly be called) are asked upon their arrival in the United States. Their answers determine whether they are admitted into this country or turned away, most likely to face a cruel fate in their homelands. Luiselli, who spent a harrowing year as a volunteer translator in New York City immigration court, paints a grim portrait of a system that abandons children to a legal netherland. She often finds herself "quietly listening, wishing that the story I'm hearing had a better ending." The restrained eloquence of her testimony is somehow more effective than gales of polemical fury. Most of "Tell Me How It Ends" was written in 2016, before the accession of our current president, which makes the book even more vital and relevant.

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We end, as we all must, with death: Edwidge Danticat's somber and beautiful mediation "The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story" (Graywolf, $14) stands as a stirring addition to Graywolf's thoughtful "Art of" series. (A word about Graywolf: Has any independent press in recent memory punched so far above its weight with such astonishing consistency?) Danticat's brief tome is both a touching elegy for her late mother, who comes across as a true force of nature, and a concise survey of how death is treated by writers ranging from Tolstoy to Toni Morrison. All of them, Danticat notes, "write about the dead ... to become less haunted, to turn ghosts into words, to transform an absence into language." In doing so, we enact "our most humble, and perhaps most arrogant, wish ... that our writing might help others feel less alone."

All of these finalists for the NBCC criticism prize are deeply satisfying fulfillments of this deathless and profoundly human wish. The winner - along with the winners in the fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography and poetry categories, will be announced on March 15 at a ceremony open to the public at the New School in New York.

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Lindgren is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post.
Victorians Undone: Tales of Flesh in the Age of Decorum

By Kathryn Hughes

Johns Hopkins. 414 pp. $29.95

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Sometimes a book just bowls you over with how good it is. For instance, I can remember starting my review of A.S. Byatt's "Possession" with the sentence "Sometimes a critic just wants to say 'Wow.'" Still, I never expected to feel anything approaching Nabokovian bliss when reading five lengthy biographical essays about figures and incidents from 19th-century British history.

But Kathryn Hughes' "Victorians Undone" is just amazing, and her "Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum" are so various, so imaginatively structured, so delicately salacious and so deliciously written that I sighed with pleasure as I turned the pages and even felt those tiny prickles along the neck that A.E. Housman once claimed were the sign of true poetry.

In her introduction, Hughes declares that her book is "an experiment to see what new stories emerge when you use biography - which, after all, is embodied history - to put mouths, bellies and beards back into the nineteenth century." That word "experiment" hints that Hughes just might be comparing "Victorians Undone" to A.J.A. Symons' 1934 classic, "The Quest for Corvo," which bears the subtitle "An Experiment in Biography." In it Symons not only delineated the career of a notorious fin-de-siecle writer, but also recalled just how he himself researched and wrote the book. The result revolutionized biography. Might "Victorians Undone" do the same?

While Hughes - a professor of life writing at the University of East Anglia - largely avoids the overtly personal, she does stress that her fugue-like essays build on 25 years of burrowing through libraries and archives. Her topics are, from the get-go, original.

"Why did the young Queen Victoria become obsessed with other women's figures in the spring of 1839, and exactly what made Charles Darwin grow that iconic beard in 1862 ... ? Why was the great philosophical novelist George Eliot so conscious that her right hand was larger than her left, and how did the poet-artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti manage to paint his mistress' lips so beautifully while simultaneously treating them as a dirty joke?" In her fifth and last chapter Hughes relates, with the pacing of a true-crime writer, the 1867 murder of an 8-year-old girl and the trial that followed.

Most of these stories are, in fact, structured like mini-mysteries. For instance, was the unmarried Lady Flora Fraser pregnant, as the teenage Queen Victoria suspected? Hughes tracks the case from suspicion of hanky-panky to rumor and royal outrage, to brutal gynecological examination, to widening public and private consequences. The Fraser case, she writes, had "absolutely everything the British press liked best: young aristocratic women, lascivious doctors, slippery foreigners and, above all, several stripes of illicit sex." Along the way, Hughes treats the reader to sentences such as this one: "Princess Victoria had yet to master the knack of eating with her mouth closed, especially given her habit of stuffing it so full of food that she resembled a small, pouched rodent."

In the chapter about Darwin we learn about his eczema, flatulence and sensitive stomach: The young naturalist threw up nonstop during his first seven weeks while sailing on the Beagle. Hughes' essay touches on the cultural perception of sexual differences, the rise of muscular Christianity, the Crimean War and Julia Margaret Cameron's propensity for photographing writers as sages or prophets. Charles Dickens, Hughes tells us, joked that "some of his friends welcomed his beard because it meant they saw less of him." Tennyson not only wore thick spectacles but also ill-fitting dentures, eventually growing his famous "dirty monk" facial hair to hide his hollow-cheeked toothlessness. Picking a wonderfully apt verb, Hughes concludes that Darwin's theorizing ended by "dislocating the foundations of existence."

The pages devoted to George Eliot, about whom Hughes has published an entire book, focus on how family members wanted the novelist depicted in biographies. Was, or wasn't, her right hand larger than her left because, when young, she worked in the family dairy milking cows? Even though Eliot was, in the words of Henry James, "magnificently ugly," she nonetheless radiated a charismatic allure never captured in surviving images. This hidden but "most powerful beauty," James added, "in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind so you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her."

Hughes' last two chapters are her most shocking. "Fanny Cornforth's Mouth" opens, "On 23 July 1859, George Boyce agreed to pay Dante Gabriel Rossetti 40 pounds to paint the woman with whom they were both sleeping." The result was a thrillingly voluptuous canvas entitled "Bocca Baciata" - the Kissed Mouth. From it, and various intimate letters, Hughes deduces that Fanny's lips were actually "transporting both Rossetti and Boyce to heaven" in ways that didn't involve ordinary kisses. Hughes dryly notes that, according to one scholar, Fanny was "'warm, open, unsophisticated, uncomplicated, uneducated and vigorous,' which is about as close to 'tart with a heart' as you can get without actually saying so."

To round out these studies of 19th-century carnality, "Sweet Fanny Adams" presents the you-are-there trial of a mild-mannered clerk accused of unspeakable sexual violence. Hughes' irony comes into full play here when she observes that, to the mid-Victorians, any little girl who had been raped would be so polluted that it was really for the best if she was also murdered. The account of this crime and its aftermath is simply unputdownable.

As is "Victorians Undone" in its entirety. While some readers may find it gossipy or even sensational in a negative rather than positive sense, I'm not one of them. This is popularized history done right, done with panache. Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.
The Houston Zoo is throwing its first-ever Brew at the Zoo event on April 26, showcasing a handful of craft breweries from around Houston and the state of Texas.

Part of the proceeds from the ticketed event will go to help the zoo continue to do its day-to-day conservation and educational work. Drinking for a good cause is a Houston tradition.

RELATED: The bars and restaurants in Houston with the oldest TABC liquor licenses

The adults-only evening event will also feature live music and trivia games. The event is also offering discounted tickets to designated drivers who can enjoy free, non-alcoholic drinks throughout the evening.

Local breweries involved so far include 8th Wonder, Spindletap, Eureka Heights, Saint Arnold, and Karbach. Texas craft brands Rahr & Sons, Twisted X, and Celis will also be serving up samples.

There will also be special encounters lined up with some of the zoo's biggest hits like elephants, jaguars, and sea lions. Most animals will already be asleep and the event is in a limited area of the zoo grounds.

RELATED: Quirky facts about Saint Arnold Brewing Co., Houston's first craft brewery

Fun fact: The Albert & Ethel Herzstein Trading Post at the zoo has been serving Saint Arnold beer and other brands for some time. This might make some parents and guardians look forward to zoo day with the kids this spring break just a little more.

General admission is $45 and discounted designated driver admission is $25. Each ticket is good for six beer samples and additional samples can be purchased for a fee. Drinkers also get a special souvenir mug as well.

Babies and children are not allowed at this event, even if they are a designated driver.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com.
Houston artist Jamal Cyrus has won a prestigious international award, the BMW Art Journey prize, chosen from among three shortlisted artists whose works were exhibited in the Positions sector at last year's Art Basel show in Miami Beach.

His winning proposal for a journey that would allow him to do research to deepen his artistic practice focused on the concept of the Afro-Atlantic, which he describes as "an intercontinental and multinational geography describing the circulation of ideas between Africa, Europe and the Americas."
Ah, YouTube. You've had a rough year so far. From Logan Paul's video of a dead human body to Logan Paul's video of himself tasering a dead rat, the worst of YouTube culture has been in the spotlight.

I've written a lot about what's wrong with YouTube over the past several months. But it is also true that I watch a lot of YouTube for fun - just not the same channels that make the news for doing something awful on the regular.

So, to highlight that not everything on YouTube lives in the abyss of humanity's worst impulses, I asked my co-workers, YouTube creators and other journalists who cover the platform to recommend a channel to me - and to you, the reader. Someone they've watched, for fun. Someone, maybe, a bit under the radar. Here are their answers.

- Jenny Nicholson

Jenny Nicholson is part of the "Star Wars" fandom, yet she also loves to tear into the fandom. Think Natalie Portman's Queen Padme character is smart? "I know hindsight is 20/20 and everything, but it seemed kind of extremely obvious that Anakin was turning evil." She's been on YouTube talking about "Star Wars" (and "My Little Pony") for years, but she's riding the crest of the new "Star Wars" wave, hosting her own show, "Millennial Falcon," on ScreenJunkies. She's made "Star Wars" part of her brand, but she often chimes in on other geeky pop culture moments. Her breakout hit is "Suicide Squad Sales Pitch," in which she pretends to be a government agent selling the feds on the very dumb idea of freeing and arming supervillains to do covert ops missions. "Why would you do this with bad guys? I don't know." Another can't-miss episode: "How to make up your own 'Star Wars' name." Her channel is a testament to why blindly holding up a brand on a pedestal will never be as fun (or as smart) as taking it apart. - Gene Park, audience editor at The Washington Post

- Elle Mills

YouTube has become known for teens pulling outrageous stunts, and 19-year-old Elle Mills, a vlogger from Ottawa, has definitely participated in her share of pranks (she legally married her own sister's boyfriend in Las Vegas once for a vlog). But unlike other high-profile YouTubers, Elle never crosses the line. Her channel is honest, hilarious, refreshing and outrageously creative. She breaks the mold when it comes to women in comedy on YouTube. Her videos are also some of the most earnest short films you'll come across on the internet. If you missed her viral coming-out video last fall, it's definitely worth a watch. Elle recently surpassed 1 million followers and has been getting high-profile promotion from top YouTube talent like vlog legend Casey Neistat. There's no end to her creativity and enthusiasm, and her videos always put me in a great mood. - Taylor Lorenz, tech and culture reporter at the Daily Beast

- Marques Brownlee

Sometimes it feels as if tech YouTubers are talking only to each other. Watch a few different phone reviews, and you're bound to hear the same jargon parroted straight off the manufacturer's website and similar product shots, right down to the fake plant on the all-white table.

That's not the case with Brownlee. His videos are informative, aesthetically pleasing and, in my opinion, easy to understand. I'd recommend his channel to tech enthusiasts and average consumers alike. He doesn't appear to be in the pocket of any particular company but instead seems as though he truly wants to inform his viewers about new tech. - Ric Sanchez, social media editor at The Washington Post

- Bobby Burns

YouTube is hard to parse. It's designed to satisfy a niche's hunger, not for people to aimlessly browse. YouTube houses so many different, vibrant and strange communities, it's difficult to identify what defines YouTube culture. Is it pranks? Vlogging? Gaming? Beauty? Why do YouTubers frame their channels a certain way? Why is one person popular and another, who partakes in the same type of content, not? What exactly is a react channel?

Bobby Burns is a 21-year-old YouTuber who's quickly become the most insightful mouthpiece on these important questions. His channel used to be dedicated to breaking down and explaining film theory but pivoted to commentary on YouTube culture. Burns's first major recognition from the greater YouTube community happened last year when he took on the disconnect between company executives and YouTube culture as seen in the annual Rewind highlights video. Burns has since then demonstrated how YouTubers manipulate their audiences when delivering important announcements, and staged his own satirical talk show to point out the favoritism YouTube gives to popular late-night series in its Trending tab.

Commentary channels are becoming increasingly more valuable as newcomers to YouTube culture try to understand the intimidating behemoth; Burns is one of the best. He doesn't hold back his biting opinion but uses enough evidence and visuals to help explain why a certain trend is suddenly everywhere. His genuine interest in understanding internet culture helps him deliver commentary without coming across condescending. There are other commentary channels, but Burns is someone I check on regularly.

Burns curates an important channel with interesting, educational content that's beneficial to newcomers and daily users alike. The laughs I get out of watching his videos are just an added bonus. I would, frankly, be lost without him. - Julia Alexander, senior culture reporter at Polygon

- Sailor J

I have to be honest: I'm about 90 percent sure that the first time I ever saw a Sailor J video was on Facebook, via one of those random "Who did this!?!?!?" Facebook meme pages that get millions of views from stealing other people's content. I laughed and felt guilty at the same time, so I tracked down the video to its original source. I'm so happy I did.

Sailor J is a beauty YouTuber in the same way that current-era Jenna Marbles is a beauty YouTuber: Makeup is an important prop for her online persona, but the joy of her videos is in the juxtaposition of a familiar YouTube format with something unexpected. The result is a comedy channel - mostly. Her breakout series, "How to be a ______," dunks on each zodiac sign, and she's also in the middle of a similar, equally good series on Hogwarts houses.

But she's also used the same makeup tutorial structure to comment more seriously on the world around her. After the Parkland, Florida, school shooting, Sailor J uploaded a trenchant review of the "Thoughts and Prayers" makeup line. - Abby Ohlheiser, internet culture writer at The Washington Post

- Stevie Boebi, Michelle Khare

Stevie Boebi makes LGBT sex education videos that are entertaining and desperately needed. Her videos help young queers who often don't have the resources or means to find out anything about safe sex or their own bodies. We've heard from tons of kids who said Stevie's videos were essential in their coming-out process. Unfortunately, under YouTube's ad policy, her videos are often demonetized and/or not given the placement or support they deserve.

Michelle Khare makes high-quality, intense fitness and lifestyle videos often featuring stunts like racecar driving and superhero training regimes. Michelle puts so much work into her videos that each one is a mini-movie, and she puts her body through hell and back to make high-quality content because she cares so much about what she puts out. She shows young girls it's cool to be strong. - Gaby Dunn & Allison Raskin, co-hosts of "Just Between Us."

- Ingrid Nilsen

Ingrid Nilsen is probably best known for her tearfully candid coming-out video - "Something I Want You to Know" - from June 2015. It's been viewed more than 17 million times, a significant number of views by anyone's standards, but even more significant when you consider Nilsen's follower count clocks in just shy of 4 million. Before coming out, Nilsen built her brand as a popular beauty vlogger with a successful channel full of the exact types of content you'd expect from somebody in that category. Think helpful curling iron tips and product recommendations. But after coming out, Nilsen's channel saw a marked shift, one that only made me a bigger fan. (It's worth noting as a queer, 20-something woman that I'm smack in the center of Nilsen's target demographic. Still, a good YouTuber is a good YouTuber, and Nilsen is a good YouTuber.) Sure, Nilsen's content is still a lot of the same "basic" videos of makeup picks, morning routines and apartment tours, but she's also established herself as the kind of YouTuber who will, in the same breath, tell you which foundation will look good on your oily T-zone and also about the time she interviewed President Barack Obama about marriage equality and domestic terrorism. Both of which she does with equal prowess.

Videos about social issues, such as women's rights, growing up in a mixed-race family or what it's like to be Asian - Nilsen's mother is Thai - and gay, are just as common as videos about lob haircuts and shopping hauls. As an added bonus, Nilsen has a very good dog, a Pomeranian named Tayto, and she's never once angered her neighbors by lighting a swimming pool on fire in the name of creating a video. (Looking at you here, the younger Mr. Paul.) - Madison Malone Kircher, internet culture writer at Select All.
NEW YORK - He had me at "window."

The word crops up prominently in "Dear Evan Hansen's" socko second song, the mournfully revealing "Waving Through a Window." As delivered by the Tony Award-winning musical's first long-term successor to Ben Platt, the role's superhuman originator, the number - not to mention the actor - still binds you profoundly to a troubled high-schooler who aches for that thing all sensitive teenagers crave: being noticed.

Taylor Trensch is the affecting inheritor of Platt's formidable mantle, and seeing how another actor might customize it to his own emotional resources drew me eagerly back to the production at the Music Box Theatre. It was my fifth visit to "Dear Evan Hansen," my initial encounter having occurred in summer 2015, when the musical, under director Michael Greif's refined guidance, was birthed at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

The plaudits-showered Platt departed in November, after a year on Broadway, and the interim Evan following him, Noah Galvin, offered a finely voiced transition for "Fansens," as the show's army of adherents is called. Trensch, recently an exuberant Barnaby Tucker in the Bette Midler-led revival of "Hello, Dolly!," is the Evan whom critics were invited back to see. It's a pleasure to report that the show remains as potent as ever, with Trensch introducing some fascinating new shading to a character of unusual musical-theater complexity, as dreamed up by songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and book writer Steven Levenson.

It was during "For Forever," though, another of Evan's early songs (in a score featuring him in 11 of the 14 distinct numbers), that the insights Trensch brings to the character become apparent. The song cements the central misunderstanding that prompts Evan into perpetuating a terrible lie - that he was best friends with another student (Mike Faist) who's died. Evan concocts a story about their heretofore secret friendship, the details of which he conveys in "For Forever" to the boy's grief-stricken parents (Michael Park and Jennifer Laura Thompson) and angry sister (Laura Dreyfuss).

Noteworthily, Trensch's Evan stares deeply into the eyes of one of them in particular: Thompson's heartbroken Cynthia, and sings a lot of "For Forever" right to her. It's slightly spooky, the way this Evan instinctively zeros in on her, either because he intuits that she is the one who most desperately needs consoling - or, perhaps, that she is the key to his finally finding acceptance from a world that hardly stops to recognize his existence.

That keen emotional intelligence is evident in Trensch's bracing turn, and occasionally, his intensity gets the better of his musicianship. To sustain a fever pitch, he's sometimes a little pitchy. His voice has the color and power, but perhaps he's still learning to metabolize Alex Lacamoire's vibrant orchestrations. Platt displayed in this regard a preternatural capacity for what you might call tuneful purging. He could communicate with uncanny precision the most wrenching melodic moments of Evan's journey.

Trensch, on the other hand, conjures Evan's fragility with his own special poignancy; the physical tics that betoken Evan's inner disturbances feel drawn particularly sharply from the character's own sadness-tinged reality.

Dealing with a new Evan no doubt demands adjustments from Trensch's seven superb castmates, all the Broadway originators of their roles. It's not surprising that living night after night in the sorrowful space that "Dear Evan Hansen" occupies, on the way to its consoling resolution, would make an actor ever weepier. But that's a tendency to be resisted. I offer the friendly caution that a show is at its best when the audience sheds the bulk of the tears.

---

"Dear Evan Hansen," music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, book by Steven Levenson. Directed by Michael Greif. With Rachel Bay Jones, Kristolyn Lloyd, Will Roland. About 2 hours 40 minutes. Tickets, $119-$499. At the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., New York. Visit telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200.
In 1939, the U.S. Post Office Department refused to distribute a lithograph by Grant Wood, declaring its depiction of a nude man bathing by a horse trough "pornographic." Wood, a homosexual artist described euphemistically as a "shy bachelor," was surprised and affronted, and cropped the nude figure out of a painting based on the same image, leaving a vision of a dark tree against a rolling green landscape.

The lithograph is included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's retrospective of the artist's career, "Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables," a comprehensive overview that includes most of his major paintings, including "American Gothic," the work that rocketed him to national prominence in 1930. With its dour farm figures portrayed with the flat but meticulous detail of a Northern Renaissance masterwork, the painting seemed a natural extension of the painter himself, who cultivated a homespun, folksy persona. Like the old man in "American Gothic," the artist was often photographed wearing overalls, and, for a while, this calculated presentation of generic masculinity helped insulate Wood from the whispering and insinuation about his private life.

Like Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring," Wood's "American Gothic" both defines and defies Americana, establishing a sense of American identity that was far more complex and ambiguous than most Americans were willing to acknowledge. Like both Wilder and Copland, Wood probably drew upon his sexual difference to maintain a productive critical distance from the world he was depicting. When he returned to his own country after travel in Europe and study in France, he came back as an internal emigre, creatively charged by never being completely at home again.

The exhibition traces his career chronologically, from his early work as a designer and craftsman to impressionist paintings he made before the emergence of his self-consciously American style, with its hard-edge, dreamlike enchantment and the more geometric reductionism in works he finished before his premature death from pancreatic cancer in 1942. Essays in the catalogue take up the central issues of his career: his relation to "magical realist" painters in Europe working during the same period, including artists later embraced by the Nazis; his literary inspiration (he illustrated an edition of Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street," among other projects); and his sexuality, which Stanford University art historian Richard Meyer argues "cannot be understood within the coherent, confident terms of what we now call gay identity."

One doesn't need a contemporary sense of gay identity to see that there is something wonderfully queer in Wood's world. Lay aside the many images with overtly homoerotic subject matter and you still have a large body of work in which lines are being crossed, categories jumbled and expectations confounded. The idiosyncrasies of his oeuvre seem to flow not simply from the fact that Wood was homosexual, but from a deeper, transformative sense of gender. His America can never be neatly sorted into traditional ideas about masculine and feminine, and that, even more than the nudity of the man depicted in the problematic 1939 lithograph, may have been what unsettled the U.S. Post Office prudes.

Take a closer look at that image, titled "Sultry Night," and you see not so much a man with his pants off, but a man bathing. In many images that seem to celebrate the traditionally masculine idea of hard work, his workers are, in fact, resting. In one of his major paintings, the 1934 "Dinner for Threshers," you also find a man combing his hair before entering a long dining room filled with workers sitting a table. Women work and confront the viewer with determination, while men bathe and play and sing.

In both "Dinner for Threshers" and "Sultry Night," the artist has carefully rendered the effect of sun on the skin: The threshers have pale, pasty foreheads with bronze cheeks below, marking the line of their hats, while the bathing man has a darkened neck and arms against a white torso. Sun-kissed skin stands in for the impress of the artist's gaze on their bodies. The Post Office Department probably saw that, too, clear evidence not just of a naked man, but the keen, noticing eye of the artist.

The reaction of postal officials to Wood's lithograph underscores the sociological complexity of the cultural moment in which he lived. He would claim, or perhaps feign, innocence about the sexual content of the image, saying it was based on nothing more prurient than a childhood memory. Wood probably did see this image as no more provocative than the male nudes one found in paintings by Thomas Eakins or George Bellows a few decades earlier, when the surveillance of sexuality was less severe. As an artist, Wood was often astonishingly good at judging the national mood, but as a man, he seemed to live in a fictional past, gentler and more playful, than the world he was forced to negotiate in the 1930s and '40s.

After "American Gothic" established his popular reputation, and as critics on the East Coast were compelled to grapple with him seriously, Wood attracted as much suspicion and loathing as love and admiration. He was persecuted by colleagues who thought his work was aesthetically conservative, and accused of fascist sympathies by one of the giants of 20th-century art scholarship, H.W. Janson, author of the best-selling "History of Art," studied by millions of undergraduates. Wood's work fell out of favor by the middle of the last century, and even today, as this exhibition demonstrates, he is an artist fated to be perpetually rediscovered.

But it does his work a disservice to see its rise and fall as merely collateral damage of the 20th-century culture wars over modernism, regionalism, sexuality, or the supposed conflict between rural and urban values. Nor does it make sense to delimit him as merely a sly and subversive painter, although this gets closer to the truth. Like Wilder and Copland, and perhaps Willa Cather before them, Wood was as affirmative as he was transgressive. When he looked at the rolling and cultivated landscape around him, and painted it like fabric stretched over flesh, he discovered a world that was neither soft and sensuous nor strong and muscular, but all of the above. When he painted men nurturing trees and offering up corn, or a boy tenderly leaning his head against the cow he was milking, he was uncovering facts about who we are, not who he insisted we should be.

One painting, made in 1935, stands out among the others for its symbolic power. "Death on the Ridge Road" shows two passenger cars heading up a steeply inclined road while a large red truck comes screaming toward them round a blind curve. An angled wedge of dark storm clouds release torrents of rain in the background. It is an ominous image, and also one of the most gender-fluid he ever made, for along the right side of the painting, there is a second drama, of wires crossed and cultural confusion. Three lines of barbed wire are stapled to fence poles alongside the road, while telephone wires are stretched taut above them.

There's no clean or simple way to sort out the dichotomies, between things that are barbed and bounded and things that are connected and modern, the blunt power of possession and the fluid power of communication. The fence line, which might suggest masculine power, curves and sways, following the round contours of the landscape, while the lines for the telephone (which in one painting Wood connects with the feminine presence of his great-aunt) bisect them with a precipitous geometrical rigor.

If this landscape is gendered, it seems to be both, not one or the other. The cars and truck might be heading toward the fatal accident implied in the painting's title, but the mash-up next to them seems just as significant. In it, we discover the coexistence of different forces and potentials in Wood's Americana, lines and curves as unresolved in their intersections as our sense of both the past and future.

---

"Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables Through June 10 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. For information, visit whitney.org.
Elizabeth Johnson Gill, a local historic preservationist, died Tuesday, leaving a lasting public legacy of generosity and service to the causes she supported, according to her obituary.

Gill was born in Washington, D.C. on May 13, 1925 and although she lived some of her early years away from Laredo, the city was always an important piece of her heart and her life. This showed through her passion of the preservation of Laredos history.

READ ALSO: Former Webb County constable dies at 67

She was a founder of the Webb County Heritage Foundation and one of its greatest benefactors. She was a champion of the preservation of local history and a proponent of the tenet that school children benefit from the lessons of their own history and that of Laredo and the border region.

Gill was a driving force for the preservation of downtowns architectural treasures, her obituary states. She was a leader in the restoration of the Republic of the Rio Grande Museum and more recently of the restoration of the condemned downtown building that was transformed into the showpiece that is the Heritage Foundations Border Heritage Museum.

Margarita Araiza, executive director of the foundation, saw Gill as the soul of the organization.

There are some who might see only the astounding amount of financial support she very quietly provided to her chosen causes, though Betsy, herself, was the definition of quiet philanthropy  always resisting recognitions of any kind, Araiza said. But Betsy was far, far more than the level of her monetary support.

She added, There is no single person in our communitys history who has personally done more to safeguard, promote and cherish Laredos identity than ... Gill. Betsy toiled in this field setting the example of the adage to whom much is given, much is expected.

Not only did she meticulously collect the photographs, documents, newspaper clippings, and artifacts that chronicled this citys development over the last two centuries; she then turned all of that monumental work of meticulous organization over to form the basis of the Webb County Heritage Foundations historical collections.

Stan Green, former president of the board of the Heritage Foundation, remembers Gill as a key person driving the preservation movement.

She was always ready to take on projects, Green said. Generally, she very quietly gave a lot of money to all kinds of projects. She didnt want anyone to know about it. She was a very generous human in both her time and money.

He added, She liked to spread the resources around. Betsy was always involved in all the work in projects around Laredo. She was really one of the prime movers in the historical preservation movement.

Ray Keck, former TAMIU president, worked alongside Gill in organizations throughout the city. They served on committees and boards. Together, they would dream up ways to make good things happen.

Many people will never know that it was Betsy Gill whose resources eased their pain and improved their lives, said Keck, president of Texas A&M University-Commerce. And then she was enormously full of energy and life. She was fun to be with. She was very plain spoken but always kind. Patricia and I lived across the street from her for many years and she was a cherished neighbor.

The community can never imagine what a friend she was to how many. She often insisted that no one knows it was her resources behind the gift or her support.

Gill touched the lives around her by stepping in to help and improve the lives of untold numbers of Laredoans, often times anonymously and often times as a result of gifts to the university, the college or social institutions in Laredo.

Steve Harmon, director of public relations, marketing and information services at TAMIU, said he will miss Gill dearly.

Betsy was an original: feisty and fun, and she had the biggest, kindest heart, Harmon said. She was an astute business executive, and realized that in her time, being a woman in leadership raised eyebrows  and aspirations. Her generosity to others, often performed under anonymity, changed lives and futures. She was a staunch advocate for our culture and history, and a founding member of the Webb County Heritage Foundation, a group she supported her entire life.

Gill was the granddaughter of Silas N. Johnson, who established a soda bottling works (later the Coca Cola Bottling Company), the Anheuser Busch beer distributorship and the S.N. Johnson Brick Company. He and his wife, Katherine Dunamon Johnson, were the parents of Samuel Norman Johnson, Gills father.

READ ALSO: Final voting results from the Webb 2018 Primary Election

Gill was born to Elizabeth Korbly Johnson and Samuel Johnson Jr., an attorney. He practiced law with Robert Phelps and later served Webb County as its attorney and as a county commissioner for 18 years.

Gill graduated from Our Lady of the Lake High School in San Antonio and continued her studies at Incarnate Word College.

Silas Johnson gave Sam Johnson Jr. the Coca Cola Bottling Company in 1930, and upon Sams death in 1962, the company was held in trust for two years and was then subsequently purchased in 1964 by Gill and her brother, Samuel L. Johnson III.

Gill married L. Lamar Gill in 1963. He became president of the company and managed it while she assumed the role of vice president. Her son, Paul Payne Jr., became general manager in 1977 and took full direction of the Laredo Coca Cola Bottling Company when Lamar Gill died in 1988.

Gill served as president until the company was sold to Coca Cola Enterprises of Atlanta in 1992.
Two people died in a plane crash Thursday morning at the Laredo International Airport after the pilot reported smoke coming from an engine.

Their identities had not been released as of press time.

READ ALSO: Mother collapses after learning man won't face trial in daughter's death

Robert R. Marshall, of Bruni, and his wife, Amy Marshall, are the registered owners of the aircraft, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He is the CEO and president of Marshall Aviation, an on-demand charter service for passengers and freight aircraft. The Marshalls are also members of the Webb Consolidated ISD school board.

A person who answered a phone call to Marshall Aviation refused to comment on the crash to the Laredo Morning Times. The Marshall Aviation website was taken offline sometime early Thursday afternoon.

Laredo Police and Fire departments received reports of a downed plane at 10:39 a.m. Authorities found the crash site behind Iglesia Cristiana Emmanuel and Quality Reflections Glassworks in the 6400 block of Polaris Drive.

A man said he was leaving his workplace when he noticed a small aircraft flying low in the area and struggling to stay in the air until it crashed and exploded.

Purported videos of the crash went viral. They showed the aircraft nosediving into the ground and bursting into flames upon impact.

The twin-engine Piper PA-31 was attempting to return to the runway after smoke was reported coming from the aircraft's left engine, according to Lynn Lunsford, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

Airport firefighters responded to the blaze within seconds of the crash, said Investigator Joe E. Baeza, Laredo Police Department spokesman.

There were initial reports that three people may have been killed in the crash. But authorities later confirmed there were two fatalities.

READ ALSO: Authorities ID suspect in 24-hour standoff in San Antonio-area

Authorities closed down the airport as per protocol while the investigation took place. It was re-opened later in the day.

Loved ones arrived at the scene as Baeza spoke to the media near the scene of the crash. They could be heard crying in disbelief from several feet away.

The National Transportation Safety Board will be the lead investigating agency.
A Laredo police officer is on administrative duty after being arrested on a felony assault charge in connection with a domestic altercation, authorities said Wednesday evening.

LPD identified him as Julian Alfredo Ochoa, an 11-year veteran with the force. He had been arrested earlier in the day at LPD headquarters.
College presidents -- including two in Houston -- are still fighting against the controversial tax hitting certain private university endowments.

On Wednesday, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine presidents joined others nationwide in calling a new tax on endowment incomes "unprecedented and damaging" in a letter to U.S. lawmakers. President Donald Trump signed the tax bill into law more than two months ago.

"This tax will not address the cost of college or student indebtedness, as some have tried to suggest," the letter reads. "Instead, it will constrain the resources available to the very institutions that lead the nation in reducing, if not eliminating, the costs for low- and middle-income students, and will impede the efforts of other institutions striving to grow their endowments for this very purpose."

LOBBYING: Texas colleges, universities brace for hard changes

About 50 presidents in total signed the letter urging Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress to revisit the policy. The taxes, levied in December, targeted private universities with high ratios of endowments per student.

Rice University President David Leebron had been a vocal critic of the bill when lawmakers considered it late last year, and he told the Chronicle in February that it would cost Rice about $3 million each year, the equivalent of several dozen full student scholarships.

He called the provision discriminatory because it targets "very successful institutions of higher education" but not other nonprofits.

RELIEF: Graduate student tuition tax dead in tax bill

The tax, he said, would not be prohibitive, just "one more chink" in eroding support for higher education. Rice's recent strategic plan, unveiled last month, detailed what the university sees as a challenging moment for higher education as a sector.

The other Texas signatory besides Leebron and Baylor's Paul Klotman was Danny Anderson, who leads San Antonio's Trinity University.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - All is well now between the United States and Africa with the visit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the chairman of the African Union commission said Thursday as he received the top U.S. diplomat.

Tillerson embarked on a five-nation tour beginning in Ethiopia with a visit to the African Union. It is the highest-level visit to date for the Trump administration and comes after derogatory comments by President Donald Trump in January outraged leaders around the continent.

"The incident is behind us, the visit by the secretary of state today is proof of the importance of relations between the different parties," Moussa Faki Mahamet said in a joint news conference with Tillerson. "I want to add I am satisfied with the discussions I had with the secretary of state, notably the engagement of the United States to support Africa in the battle against terrorism."

For his part, Tillerson ignored two questions about the comments attributed to Trump, only emphasizing the U.S. relationship with Africa, which until now has been largely undefined by the administration.

"I think the U.S. commitment to Africa is quite clear in terms of the importance we place on the relationship," he said. "The president himself wrote a personal letter to chairperson reaffirming importance of the relationship."

The letter came after Faki himself described the comments to the African Union as "profoundly" shocking and "conveying contempt, hate and desire to marginalize and exclude Africans."

In the course of the visit, Tillerson will also visit Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria, even as many top posts for the continent in the State Department remain unfilled and little has been said of the administration's priorities for the continent.

"The purpose of my trip to this continent is to listen," Tillerson said Thursday. "I think it's important to listen to what the priorities of the continent are and see where there is good alignment."

Tillerson added that the continent's growing population and economies would make it increasingly important to the world.

The sentiments represent a change on the part of the Trump administration, which until now has said very little publicly on African policy. During the transition, mentions of the continent seemed largely in the context of cutting some signature U.S. programs.

In a speech ahead of the trip, Tillerson lauded these same programs, including free-trade initiatives, a program to bring electricity to Africans and one to provide AIDS treatment to millions across the continent.

Ultimately, however, the main theme of the trip may be one of security. Ethiopia is one of the biggest contributors to peacekeeping troops on the continent and, together with Kenya, one of the key allies in the fight against the Islamist militant faction al-Shabab in Somalia. Djibouti is the home of the sole American base in Africa, and Chad is a major ally in the fight against extremism in the Sahel region.

Under Trump, there have been more-aggressive U.S. attacks against extremists in Somalia, and recent deaths in Niger have highlighted the growing role played by U.S. Special Forces in training regional militaries.

Increasingly, the United States has been eclipsed in Africa, at least economically, by China, which has aggressively boosted its activities on the continent - extracting resources, providing loans and building much-needed infrastructure across the continent.

In Ethiopia, Tillerson's first stop, China has built an electric rail line connecting the capital to the port in neighboring Djibouti and is involved in scores of other projects throughout the country that have made Chinese nationals a ubiquitous sight on the streets.

Tillerson, however, laid out a robust defense for the contrasting style of aid given by the United States on the continent, opting for capacity building and private-sector development rather than loans for projects.

"We think it's important African countries carefully consider the terms of those investments," said Tillerson, claiming that Chinese-funded projects do not "bring significant job creation locally" and risks having countries lose control of resources and development projects.

"Our message is for countries to consider what the terms of those agreements are and not forfeit any elements of sovereignty," he added.

American aid also tends to be accompanied by American views on human rights and governing, and Tillerson will probably have to address the political crises in Kenya and Ethiopia, while Nigeria is facing a key election next year. Djibouti and Chad are also often criticized on human rights issues.

Many African leaders have noted that these concerns rarely come up when dealing with China.

The United States remains the biggest contributor of humanitarian aid to Africa, and Tillerson announced during his speech Tuesday a new package of $533 million to combat ongoing crises in several parts of the continent.

The aid, which includes tens of thousands of tons of food, is divided among Ethiopia, parts of which are ravaged by a severe drought, Somalia, Nigeria, South Sudan and the countries of the Lake Chad basin, where millions are teetering on the edge of famine.

Since the start of 2017, the United States has provided nearly $3 billion in humanitarian aid, despite earlier threats from the administration to cut funding.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump will sign a pair of proclamations Thursday that impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum but offer relief to some U.S. allies.

The tariffs, which take effect in 15 days, initially will not apply to imports from Canada and Mexico so that U.S. officials can assess progress toward a new North American Free Trade deal, according to a senior administration official.

Other countries with a "security relationship" to the United States may seek exemptions by opening talks with the administration on "alternative ways" to address the threats the administration alleges their products pose to national security, the official said.

The plan differs significantly from Trump's initial suggestion he would apply the taxes to all imports, a change that follows a week of pleas from his fellow Republicans to narrow the tariffs or abandon them entirely.

The initial exemptions for Canada and Mexico are not time-limited but are designed to last only long enough for the administration to assess the outlook for the NAFTA renegotiations.

For countries that do not win exemptions, steel imports will be taxed at 25 percent and aluminum imports at 10 percent. If Mexico and Canada win permanent exemptions, tariffs on imports from other nations may have to be increased beyond 25 percent, the official said.

Trump plans to formally unveil the order in a White House event, and he previewed the remarks earlier Thursday.

"I'll have a right to go up or down depending on the country, and I'll have a right to drop out countries or add countries," Trump said in an appearance alongside his Cabinet. "I just want fairness because we have not been treated fairly by other countries."

The president championed the tariffs as necessary protections for two industries - steel and aluminum - that he called "the backbone of our nation."

"We're going to be very fair, we're going to be very flexible, but we're going to protect the American worker, as I said I would do in my campaign," Trump said.

Republicans have been pushing Trump to back off his planned tariffs since he shocked the party last week by announcing they were coming. A temporary exemption for NAFTA members would mark progress in that effort, but lawmakers are pressing the president to pull back further.

"If they were to exempt Mexico and Canada while other negotiations were ongoing, it would be a welcome gesture on behalf of the president and certainly would be received well on Capitol Hill," Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., an influential House conservative, said before Trump's announcement.

Republican lawmakers criticized the rollout, with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., calling the process "chaotic and confusing."

Hours before Trump's promised announcement, foreign diplomats, industry leaders and Trump allies were still in the dark. Their outreach to senior administration officials seeking definitive answers was returned with shrugs or unanswered calls.

"The people in the building have no idea what's about to happen," said one Trump donor opposed to the tariffs and spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

As can be Trump's wont, the president left Washington in suspense via an early morning post on Twitter. At 7:38 a.m. Thursday, he wrote: "Looking forward to 3:30 P.M. meeting today at the White House. We have to protect & build our Steel and Aluminum Industries while at the same time showing great flexibility and cooperation toward those that are real friends and treat us fairly on both trade and the military."

The meeting was not on the president's daily schedule, released to the public Wednesday night. Several hours after Trump's tweet, senior White House aides did not know whether the announcement would happen Thursday. Trump dispelled those doubts later that morning during the Cabinet meeting, when he again touted the tariffs and previewed his afternoon announcement.

The White House was also being lobbied heavily against the tariffs by outside conservative groups that have worked with the administration on other issues, including passing the new tax cut law.

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group backed by the billionaire GOP donor Koch brothers, warned in an interview that the tariffs could harm Republican prospects in the November midterms when Democrats hope to retake control of Congress.

"If American consumers are paying higher prices on a wide range of products just as the economy is starting to take off, it can slow the economic recovery," Phillips said. "It could definitely impact the midterms."

Phillips said that merely narrowing the tariffs to exclude Mexico, Canada or other allies would not be enough to alleviate his group's concerns.

"The administration can still not do this, and we're urging them not to do it, and it's an ongoing conversation," he said.

- - -

The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
After a year rallying international support against North Korea, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is finding the ability to unite the UN Security Council around U.S. priorities in the Middle East stymied -- as they were during the Cold War -- by Russia.

Whether Haley is seeking to counter Iran's support for rebels in Yemen or to sanction Syria for chemical weapons attacks, Moscow keeps blocking U.S. initiatives at the world body while bolstering its alliances with Tehran and Damascus. The struggle to win over Russia on the most intractable U.S. foreign policy priorities outside of North Korea risks increasing conflict and further fracturing international agreements, such as the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran.

"If Russia is going to use its veto to block action against Iran's dangerous and destabilizing conduct, then the United States and our partners will need to take actions against Iran that the Russians cannot block," Haley said Feb. 26. That followed Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia's veto of a resolution condemning the Islamic Republic for "non-compliance" with an embargo against sending arms to Yemen.

Haley didn't give more details on possible U.S. moves, though President Donald Trump has said time is running out for the nuclear agreement if European allies can't reach a deal to strengthen the accord and address Iran's ballistic missile program. His threat to quit the agreement by May if changes aren't made has fueled U.S.-European talks, including a visit this week to Tehran by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

This month, Russia and the U.S. are likely to clash again over Syria as the Security Council debates rival resolutions on responding to the use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Al-Assad. The council also will review the mandate of a UN peacekeeping force separating Iranian-backed Hezbollah from Israel in southern Lebanon, with the U.S. pushing for tougher actions against the Shiite militia and Russia resisting.

It wasn't always this way. When Haley took office, there was speculation that a U.S.-Russian alliance on the Security Council could help achieve breakthroughs on previously intractable issues in light of Trump's vows to seek better ties with Moscow. But the continuing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election have stymied Trump's ambitions to build bridges with President Vladimir Putin, and Haley, like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, has from the start been more critical of Russia than has Trump.

So while the Cold War is over, it's increasingly clear that the two countries will cooperate only minimally on issues including sanctions against North Korea and some peacekeeping operations in Africa, said Michael Doyle, a professor at Columbia University and a former UN assistant secretary-general.

"I expect marginal cooperation on issues the powers want to separate from direct competition," Doyle said.

One focus for Haley since her arrival has been on Iran as a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Yet at every turn, Russia, which has won use of an Iranian airbase for its military operations in Syria, has blocked her efforts. That's fueled a feud with little sign of easing.

During a session last month devoted to the UN charter, Haley called Russia a destabilizing force in eastern Ukraine. She lumped together Russia's Putin, Syria's Assad and North Korea's Kim Jong Un as rulers violating international standards with impunity.

But Haley has faced her greatest challenge on the Middle East.

Take Yemen: A UN panel of experts concluded in January that Iran violated the arms embargo after determining that missiles fired by Houthi rebels at Saudi Arabia last year were made in Iran. Russia's envoys said they found the report unconvincing and vetoed the resolution.

Haley managed to get a statement of support from ambassadors of the U.K., France and Germany condemning Iran for not complying with the embargo. But that carried far less weight than an official Security Council resolution.

The dispute over Iranian missiles in Yemen was a continuation of the other major conflict in the region -- the civil war in Syria, now in its eighth year. It took three days at the end of February for the Security Council to agree on a watered-down resolution demanding a cease-fire in the Syrian enclave of Eastern Ghouta because of objections by Russia.

On Feb 23, as Russia delayed a vote on the original resolution, Haley tweeted: "Unbelievable that Russia is stalling a vote on a ceasefire allowing humanitarian access in Syria. How many more people will die before the Security Council agrees to take up this vote? Let's do this tonight."

The next day, after Russia agreed to a revised resolution that the U.S. considered weaker, Haley said, "Today, Russia has belatedly decided to join the international consensus and accept the need to call for a ceasefire, but only after trying every possible way to avoid it."

Haley's setbacks over Syria are similar to those suffered by her predecessor, Samantha Power, who faced obstructionist tactics from the late Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, said Richard Gowan, a UN expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"I don't think Haley's tough words do much good, but I equally don't think Moscow would behave much more reasonably and humanely if the U.S. toned down its rhetoric," said Gowan. "For Haley, as for Power before her, strong words arguably cover up for a lack of real policy options over Syria."

The Security Council's paralysis on Syria -- and on Iran, which joins Russia in propping up Assad -- is a devastating blow to the 15-member body, said Francois Delattre, France's UN ambassador.

"Let us beware that the Syrian tragedy does not also become the grave of the United Nations," Delattre said at an emergency Security Council session on Syria last month. "We owe it to the security of the region and of the world, which we have the collective responsibility to protect."

The tensions make it unlikely Haley will be able to persuade Russia to join the U.S. on a range of issues before the UN. Created to help foster solutions to grave international crises, analysts say they fear the Security Council is becoming a roadblock instead.

"The only way out is improved U.S.-Russia relations, which doesn't seem likely," said Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University. "Or action by the U.S., and perhaps its allies, without Security Council approval."
The euroskeptic League of Matteo Salvini is reaching out to lawmakers from Italy's center-left Democratic Party to seek support for a broad governing alliance, according to senior League officials.

Envoys of the anti-migrant League, the main party in the center-right coalition which will form the biggest bloc in the next parliament, are holding informal talks with PD dissidents, according to two League officials who declined to be named discussing strategy. Spokesmen for Salvini and the PD didn't respond to requests for comment.

PD leader Matteo Renzi is facing a backlash from within the ranks as he insists the party should go into opposition after the worst election result in its history. But his critics say they don't have that luxury with a divided legislature and a troubled country in need of a government.

While the center-right coalition has the largest number of lawmakers, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement is the biggest single party and is challenging Salvini's claim that he has a mandate to govern. Both are looking to the PD for help.

The yield on Italy's benchmark 10-year bonds fell four basis points on the news to 2.02 percent, before rising again to 2.06 percent after the European Central Bank decision.

Around 35 to 40 PD lawmakers, including some opposed to a pact with Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio, might be prepared to back a center-right program led by Salvini or another League figure, one of the officials said. That would still leave Salvini at least 10 votes short.

Some members of the League are also floating the idea that Salvini might step aside in favor of a more moderate figure who some center-left politicians could stomach, even if they may prefer to stay out of a formal coalition, one of the officials said. President Sergio Mattarella, who gets to nominate the prime minister, is seeking a figure who can guarantee a majority and is prepared to wait for the parties to sort themselves out.

"I'm not thinking of deals with parties," Salvini told reporters Thursday in remarks quoted by newswire Ansa. "We are working on a program which we will offer to lawmakers, in parliament. On some points we'll see who gives us a hand and who says no regardless." He ruled out what he called a comprehensive agreement with the PD or Five Star.

Giancarlo Giorgetti, head of League lawmakers in the lower house, told RAI radio that a government with the PD was possible "and then we go straight to an election." He said such a government could change the electoral law, but would not handle the 2019 budget which has to be approved by year-end.

The League would be open to considering some policies the PD has proposed. While offering Italian citizenship to children born to immigrants is a no-go, the two groups could find common ground on the League's proposals for a flat tax, job-creation measures and welfare reform, one of the officials said.

Both officials said a deal could involve making a sympathetic PD lawmaker speaker of one of the houses of parliament, adding the fate of the approach hangs on how the PD emerges from its disarray. Renzi is due to meet party leaders on March 12 to confirm his plans to resign.

Acting Justice Minister Andrea Orlando, leader of a minority faction in the PD, told Radio Capital on Thursday that an agreement between the PD and Five Star is "impossible."

European parliament head Antonio Tajani, whom center-right coalition member Silvio Berlusconi had picked as his candidate for the premiership before the League overtook his party, said he is looking to the center-left to break the deadlock. "It's very difficult to form a government, let's see what the left can do," Tajani said in a speech in Valencia, Spain.

Italian politics could see the mainstream "grandfathering" populists, Barclays Plc senior European economist Fabio Fois said. "Anti-establishment parties Five Star and the League have not only softened their stance but also opened the door to governing with traditional parties," Fois wrote in a note to clients. "The presence of traditional parties could act as a backstop to further shifts to political extremes."

If the League fails to drum up support for a government, there would be little alternative but to hold repeat elections in October, said one of the League officials. Five Star is unlikely to find enough support, he added.

--With assistance from Hayley Warren Marco Bertacche and Esteban Duarte
Despite pushback from school officials, Midland high school students might still participate in a walkout protest at 10 a.m. on March 14 that coincides with events planned at the same time throughout the country.

The "Enough" protests led by students at schools and universities involve walking out of class for 17 minutes to protest Congress' inaction on passing legislation to help keep schools safe from gun violence. The 17 minutes symbolize the 17 people who died in the Parkland, Florida school shooting.

On the Action Network website's posting for the Dow High walkout, the description was updated to let students know that membership in National Honors Society would not be affected by participating in the protest.

"Administration would like us to have it in the gym, but that would lose the publicity of it," the protest description reads. "The problem is, that is likely the only way we will not get in trouble."

Superintendent Michael Sharrow issued a communique March 5 with details on a closed event in the gymnasium where students could "express their support" without walking out in protest.

Sharrow's communique focused on the safety concern of students walking out, and did not say if there would be consequences if students walk out of class for 17 minutes.

Sharrow declined to comment on if students will face any consequences if they walk out in the protest. A student organizer refused to comment about any other plans on the walkout.

A Twitter account for the Midland student walkouts tweeted Wednesday that both walkouts will take place outside, and there will be "more information to come."

The goals of the protest are to demand congress address the following:

Banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, expand background checks to all gun sales, passing federal gun violence restraining order law, funding government research on gun violence and promoting safe storage of guns, according to the action network website.

The event is in conjunction with the March 24 March for Our Lives event. A student-led sister march will take place in Midland in coordination with Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America and the Women of Michigan Action Network.
President Donald Trump's former campaign manager pleaded not guilty to tax and fraud charges in federal court in Virginia on Thursday, as he appeared before a judge in the second criminal case brought against him by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

During the hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Judge T.S. Ellis III put Paul Manafort on home confinement, requiring him to wear a GPS monitoring device, and set a trial for July 10. Jurors will hear from 20 to 25 witnesses over a trial that will last eight to 10 days, prosecutors said.

Manafort last week also pleaded not guilty in a related case in Washington, District of Columbia, where he is set to go to trial Sept. 17. Manafort lives in Virginia and was indicted there in February.

Ellis called the Virginia case "complex" but noted that it "doesn't have anything to do with the Russians or Russian interference in the election."

Defense attorney Kevin Downing responded that he planned soon to file motions making that very point and arguing that special counsel Robert Mueller III has no authority to bring these charges.

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said in court that the special counsel's office has already turned over all relevant documents to Manafort's attorneys and was ready to go to trial soon.

"I don't think it's complicated," Weissman said of the case.

Downing disagreed, pointing to the numerous offshore accounts and business interests involved.

"Having had the benefit of trying criminal tax cases for 15 years, I think it is complicated," he said. He had hoped for the trial to be in November, he said, after Manafort faces a jury in the District.

Manafort's former business partner, Rick Gates, has pleaded guilty in the District to conspiracy and lying to the FBI. At the request of prosecutors, charges have been dropped against Gates in Virginia, though they could be resurrected should he fail to live up to a plea agreement, which requires him to offer information on any matters Mueller deems relevant.

Both indictments accuse Manafort of hiding the work he did for and the money he made from a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

In Washington, Manafort faces counts of conspiracy to launder more than $30 million, making false statements, failing to follow lobbying disclosure laws and working as an unregistered foreign agent.

In Virginia, he is accused of hiding foreign bank accounts, falsifying his income taxes and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Manafort also faces bank fraud charges in Virginia not directly related to his work in Ukraine. After his business there dried up, according to prosecutors, Manafort fraudulently secured over $20 million in loans in part by using his real estate as collateral.

Prosecutors had offered to combine the indictments in the District, but Manafort refused to do so. Downing suggested Thursday that Manafort would like to face all the charges in Virginia.

"We're trying," Downing said, to move tax conspiracy charges from the District to Virginia.

Downing declined to comment after court, saying he had already "had my three minutes."

The attorney has been rebuked by the judge overseeing the District trial for speaking out on Manafort's behalf despite a gag order she issued.

Manafort also said nothing to a gaggle of reporters outside the courthouse, holding his wife's arm as they hurried to a waiting SUV.

Also waiting was Bill Christeson of Kensington, Maryland, who said he has followed Manafort to several court appearances and has been hoping to see the longtime lobbyist prosecuted for decades.

"Show us your bracelet!" Christeson shouted before throwing a Russian flag at Manafort and calling him a "traitor."

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni did put out a statement shortly after the indictment was announced.

"Mr. Manafort is confident that he will be acquitted and violations of his constitutional rights will be remedied," the statement said.

If convicted of bank fraud in Virginia, Manafort faces up to 270 years in prison, but prosecutors say federal sentencing guidelines call for much less time: four to five years. He faces up to 15 years on the charges of filing false tax returns and up to 20 years on the charges of failing to report foreign bank accounts. Guidelines call for about eight to 10 years.

Separately Thursday, an April 4 hearing was scheduled before a federal judge in Washington in Manafort's civil lawsuit challenging Mueller's appointment as special counsel, which the government has moved to dismiss. That suit is before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who also is overseeing Manafort's criminal case in the District.

Manafort is already on home confinement and under GPS monitoring in the District. But Downing told Ellis that his client is in the process of putting together a $10 million bond package that may allow him freedom until trial.

The current restrictions, Downing said, are "excessive" and "incredibly onerous."

Ellis, a senior judge, was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
WASHINGTON - The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that he wants the panel to re-interview Trump supporter and Blackwater security firm founder Erik Prince and serve former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with a subpoena for his complete testimony.

Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., said he wants to determine whether Prince lied to the panel about a meeting last year in the Seychelles that evidence suggests was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin. He wants the panel to also speak with George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize the meeting in the Seychelles, as his reported version of events "is obviously at odds with" what Prince told the panel in November.

Schiff also told reporters that the panel should issue a subpoena for Lewandowski, who refused to answer questions about what he knew of President Trump's discussions, including those leading to the firing of former FBI Director James B. Comey and the misleading statement issued to explain Donald Trump, Jr.'s participation in a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower.

"Witnesses don't get to pick and choose when it comes to very relevant testimony to our investigation," Schiff said.

But Republicans on the committee do not appear to share Schiff's urgency, either to subpoena Lewandowski or to hold additional interviews with Nader and Prince. Rep. K. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, who is running the panel's Russia probe, declined to comment Thursday about whether he would call Nader or Prince for an interview. On Wednesday, Conaway told reporters that "I don't have a clue who George Nader is."

Nader has been cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators. They have interviewed a witness who said a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and Russian Direct Investment Fund chief Kirill Dmitriev, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, was set up so that the incoming Trump administration and the Russian government could discuss U.S.-Russian relations, according to people familiar with the matter.

Prince told the House Intelligence Committee that he had met Dmitriev in the Seychelles by chance, and that he was not representing the Trump administration.

Schiff did not accuse Prince of lying, but said the interviews were necessary "so we can determine which account is accurate." He added that the panel is waiting for Prince to provide documents to the committee they had requested.

GOP members of the committee have been pressing leaders to bring the panel's Russia investigation to a close and issue a report that Democratic members are not likely to endorse. Republican members of the panel have begun writing their report.

The committee has been struggling with the administration over certain Trump affiliates refusing to answer questions about the transition period and the administration that are not preapproved by the White House. Efforts to issue a contempt citation for former White House strategist and Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon have flagged, as Republicans back away from their earlier zeal to force Bannon to be more forthcoming under a subpoena; Democrats have argued that witnesses like Lewandowski and former communications director Hope Hicks should also be served with subpoenas for refusing to answer some similar questions.

"There is really no way to distinguish these witnesses except that some are in favor and some are out of favor with the White House," Schiff said Thursday.

Conaway refused to say Thursday whether the committee would or had scheduled any interviews beyond Lewandowski's.

Schiff also acknowledged that interviewing Nader possibly rests on securing permission from the investigators in Mueller's probe - permission the panel has not yet requested. To date, the intelligence panel has not had luck scheduling interviews with witnesses who are already cooperating with the Mueller investigation. But Schiff made a public plea for why that standard should change.

"The special counsel's obligation is to find out what laws have been broken and decide who should be prosecuted," Schiff said. "It's not the special counsel's responsibility to tell the country what happened."
RICHMOND, Va. - Amid pressure to respond to last month's school massacre in Florida, the Republican leader of Virginia's House announced on Thursday the creation of a special committee that will focus on beefing up K-12 security but steer clear of gun issues.

Speaker M. Kirkland Cox, Colonial Heights, will appoint a select committee that will look for ways to make schools harder targets, including physical improvements such as bulletproof windows. Its mission would be to come up with a package of bills for the 2019 General Assembly session.

The approach might help Cox sidestep the most emotionally charged topics - restricting guns and arming teachers - that have been thrust into the spotlight since a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

It is unlikely to fully satisfy House Democrats, who nearly took control of the chamber in November elections and last week invoked Parkland as they called on Republicans to revive gun-control bills quashed in GOP-controlled committees. Republicans said it was too late to do so.

"The Va House GOP wants to turn our schools into fortresses as secure as courtrooms and police station and the interior areas of airports just to avoid having a discussion about gun safety," tweeted Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax.

Cox's announcement came one day after Florida lawmakers passed legislation to impose a three-day waiting period for most purchases of long guns, raise the minimum age for buying them to 21 and create a program to train and arm some school employees.

Cox, a retired teacher whose party has two-seat majorities in the state House and Senate, would serve as chairman of the bipartisan panel. It will begin meeting after the General Assembly session concludes Saturday.

Cox played up the rarity of creating a select committee - the first formed in the House in more than 150 years - as an indication of how deeply he cares about the issue. Select committees cross the jurisdictional lines of established committees and are "reserved for matters of considerable significance," his announcement noted.

"We are taking a bold and significant step today to make school safety a top priority of the House of Delegates," Cox said.

Some Democrats were underwhelmed by the gesture, given that Cox declared gun control outside the panel's scope. Its work will be limited to "strengthening emergency preparedness, hardening school security infrastructure, implementing security best practices, deploying additional security personnel, providing additional behavioral health resources for students, and developing prevention protocols at primary and secondary institutions across the Commonwealth," Cox said in a letter to House Clerk G. Paul Nardo.

Those limits will prevent "more partisan issues" from distracting them from "the important steps we must take to ensure that our children are safe in our public schools," Cox said.

House Minority Leader David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, and Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Charniele Herring, Alexandria, welcomed Cox's invitation to study school safety, but said they were disappointed that gun control would not be part of the discussion.

"The issue of safety in schools is not a substitute for a greater conversation on gun violence, which is a crisis not just in our schools, but in spaces both public and private in communities throughout the nation," Toscano and Herring said in a joint written statement.

The two announced plans to hold town hall meetings across the state to discuss gun violence, and invited their GOP colleagues to join them.

"While we may have different views about how to diminish gun violence in America, there is bipartisan consensus in Virginia that we must redouble our efforts to address not just school safety, but also gun safety in America," they said.
The fate of a long-delayed road project in an area on the shortlist for the next Amazon.com headquarters has lawmakers and observers debating: What's the best way to bring development to Montgomery County, Maryland?

Some say the $142 million Montrose Parkway East project is needed to ferry thousands to the White Flint area of North Bethesda, easing congestion and paving the way to future development. Others say the project is outdated and unnecessary, paling before other pressing needs, such as new schools to address overcrowding.

The issue is set to come before the Montgomery County Council transportation committee on Thursday, when three lawmakers will decide whether to recommend moving it forward or shelving it.

The four-lane divided roadway with a bike path and sidewalk would connect two major arteries: Rockville Pike and Veirs Mill Road. It is included in two of the county's master plans for the area and has been in the making for so long that it was part of the Outer Beltway proposed in the 1960s.

Council member Roger Berliner, who chairs the transportation committee, called Montrose Parkway East "sort of an old-school project" that never gained a following among the residents of White Flint - although civic leaders in that part of the county say sentiment is divided.

Berliner, council member Tom Hucker, who also sits on the transportation committee, and council President Hans Riemer want the county to keep purchasing land for Montrose Parkway East but delay construction until 2024, freeing up $94.1 million that could be used for "higher priorities" such as schools, a pedestrian tunnel to the Forest Glen subway station, planning and design for bus rapid transit, and a northern entrance to the White Flint Metro station - considered necessary to provide access for the developments north of the station,

"Obviously if we are successful in our efforts to land Amazon, that would change everything," said Berliner, who is running for county executive. "But until then, this seems to be a more appropriate way to allocate our scarce resources."

The state of Maryland has pledged $2 billion in transportation improvements if Amazon chooses White Flint for its second headquarters later this year - largesse that council member Marc Elrich says should more than cover any road projects needed to lure the retail giant. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

"Amazon made clear they're not just looking for a road solution, they're looking to make sure there is space in schools," said Elrich, who is also running for county executive and wants the county to abandon Montrose Parkway East.

"If you're serious about the bid, we demonstrate we're serious about funding school capacity," said Elrich, noting that the school district has requested nearly $90 million more in the capital budget to handle additional students it expects over the next six years.

But council member Nancy Floreen, the third member of the transportation committee, dismissed such opposition as "typical of my colleagues."

"They seem to think Montgomery County residents only take the bus, and we don't need road improvements," Floreen said. "Every once in a while, we need to build a road."

Ilaya Hopkins, vice president of government relations and communications for the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce, called the road project a "vital east-west connection" that will literally pave the way for projects planned closer to subway stations.

Officials have struggled for years with how to best improve east-west travel options in Montgomery, Maryland's most-populous jurisdiction, which originally was planned around north-south corridors that carry commuters into Washington, D.C.

Delaying construction until 2024 would increase the cost of building Montrose Parkway East by 3 to 4 percent each year, according to a report prepared by the county.

The project includes a bridge over the CSX railroad tracks at Randolph Road, which the report says is "ranked as the most unsafe grade crossing in Maryland," and would absorb some of the traffic expected to be generated by projects already in the pipeline.

"It may not be needed today, but certainly in 2024 . . . I think we will have a problem if we don't have the road in place," county transportation director Al Roshdieh said.

Jennifer Russel, chair of the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance and a board member of the Greater Bethesda Chamber of Commerce, said delaying Montrose Parkway East could dissuade Amazon and other potential employers the state is trying to attract.

"I think this is a bad time to send that kind of message," Russel said.

Friends of White Flint, a nonprofit made up of residents, businesses and others in the North Bethesda area, usually is united on issues like which projects to pursue, Executive Director Amy Ginsburg said.

But consensus hasn't come so easily in this case, she said, in part because of concerns that the project would physically divide the Pike District from White Flint, which is slightly south and east. Some in the area also have lingering distaste from Montrose Parkway West, which was built after years of community opposition.

"We're torn," Ginsburg said. "I think if we had to say something, we're on the positive side of Montrose Parkway - but no one loves the road."

The organization issued a statement last week calling Montrose Parkway East an "important" project for the area - but also suggesting other projects, such as the northern entrance to the White Flint Metro station, that could be built using the money the county has designated.

"I'm glad people are talking about it and discussing it instead of just letting it go," Ginsburg said. "I think it's good that people are examining it and saying, 'Is this still the right fit for the Pike district?' "
A prosecutor who obtained a wrongful conviction that sent a Houston man to death row for nearly 10 years didn't just withhold evidence but also denied under oath that he had information that supported Alfred Dewayne Brown's alibi, court records show.

In a sworn statement from 2008, former Harris County prosecutor Dan Rizzo said he did not withhold telephone records that could have been aided Brown's defense. The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the statement this week.

The denial stands in sharp contrast to a newly recovered email released Friday by the Harris County District Attorney's Office that shows a detective told Rizzo about the phone records in 2003 before Brown's trial. Rizzo never disclosed it to the defense.

The new evidence sparked calls for a broader investigation into Rizzo's handling of other cases, which included the high-profile convictions of dentist Clara Harris in the death of her husband and former Missouri City Police Officer Robert Fratta, accused of masterminding the murder of his wife.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1963 requires that potentially exculpatory information  known as Brady materials be provided to the defense.

"There has to be a review of cases where Brady allegations have been made against Rizzo," said local attorney James Rytting, who represents Fratta in his appeal.

The district attorney's office was not immediately able to produce a list of other cases Rizzo worked on, but an official said they were working to fulfill the request.

The 2003 email and the later sworn statement surfaced in a federal lawsuit Brown filed seeking compensation for the nearly 10 years he spent on death row after his capital murder conviction in the 2003 slaying of Houston Police Officer Charles L. Clark and clerk Alfredia Jones. The two were killed during a robbery at a check-cashing store.

Two others were also convicted in the case, but Brown maintained his innocence, saying he was home at the time of the killing and that a phone call he made to his girlfriend would prove it. A detective found the phone records in his garage in 2013. A court overturned the conviction and the case was dismissed in 2015 after prosecutors decided not to take him back to trial.

During Brown's years-long appeal of his conviction, prosecutors said the failure to turn over the telephone record showing a call from the girlfriend's home was inadvertent. But on Friday, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg's office released the 2003 email, showing the detective who found the phone records notified Rizzo about the discovery.

"I did not (know) until last Friday ... that they could provide us call detail records for a land line for calls which are not billed individually," investigator Breck McDaniel told Rizzo in the email. "I think it is a new development."

Ogg's office forwarded the email to the State Bar of Texas for a review of Rizzo's handling of the Brown case. It was not clear whether Ogg filed a formal grievance or simply turned over material.

The sworn statement raised further questions about the handling of the Brown case.

"It's absolutely perjury," said criminal defense attorney Pat McCann, who has no connection to the case. "Mr. Rizzo has an astonishingly flexible relationship with the truth."

Rizzo could not be reached for comment Thursday, and the Texas District and County Attorneys Association declined to weigh in.

Some former colleagues defended the retired assistant district attorney, labeling him a "good man" who simply "missed some details."

"I will never believe that Dan Rizzo would ever intentionally violate the Brady rule, that he would intentionally hide evidence," said retired longtime prosecutor Ted Wilson. "Was this a screw-up? No question about it. But I do not believe that Dan Rizzo intentionally did that."

It's not clear if Rizzo responded to the email from the investigator, and the district attorney's office did not answer a question as to whether he was interviewed about the correspondence after it came to light.

Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University professor of law and criminal justice, said the case raises troubling questions.

"I think there is a credible perjury case here," he said, "even if Rizzo claims that he never read the email, because that account  failure to read an email with a subject heading related to a pending murder case  is so implausible."

Defense lawyer Rusty Hardin, a former prosecutor, defended Rizzo, saying he would have a "very, very hard time" believing the retired assistant district attorney would intentionally withhold records.

"If the person has simply forgotten something," he added, "then it's not perjury."

In any case, it appears the statute of limitations for perjury has already run out, Hardin said.

***

For years, officials maintained the records in question didn't exist.

In 2008, during Brown's many years of appeals, Rizzo signed the sworn affidavit claiming he "did not suppress knowledge of or information about a land-line call."

Six years later, he told the Chronicle it would have been impossible to get such records.

"At that time, we couldn't get phone records like that," he said. "Unless they were long-distance calls, we just couldn't get those kinds of records."

But they could  and they had.

"There can't be any questions," said criminal defense attorney David Ryan. "We've got email records kept by a third party that show that what he put in that affidavit is untrue. That's a statement under oath and that's aggravated perjury."

For Loretta Muldrow, one of the lawyers who defended Brown at his 2005 trial, the recent revelations are vindication.

"I knew there had to be more to the story," she said.

During closing arguments, Rizzo took issue with Muldrow's theory of the case and questions about line-ups and identification.

"Ladies and gentleman, if I had done just a smidgen of what Ms. Muldrow said, I should not only be fired, but I should be indicted," Rizzo said, according to trial transcripts. "So what she did to you was she lied."

Still, Rizzo could be subject to state disciplinary action. Ogg said in a statement Friday that she had forwarded the email to the State Bar of Texas for a review of Rizzo's handling of the Brown case.

A spokesperson for her office could not clarify whether Ogg filed a formal grievance or simply turned over material.

"If he's a real man, he would mail his bar card to Kim Ogg," Muldrow said.

But McCann called any disciplinary fallout, such as disbarment, "completely meaningless."

"This is a retired ADA who is drawing his pension," he said.

Attorney Rytting questioned Rizzo's work convicting Fratta, the former police officer.

"Rizzo was involved in Fratta's case, in handling the key witness, Mary Gipp," Rytting said. "I have reason to believe that Mary Gipp was pressured to testify, and that the terms under which she was pressured to testify weren't disclosed to the defense. In particular, I don't believe it was disclosed that she was being threatened with prosecution for a capital offense."

Failure to reveal dealings that could diminish a witness's credibility could also be a Brady violation, Rytting said.

In theory, that could impact not only Fratta's death row case, but also the cases of his two co-defendants, Howard Guidry and Joseph Prystash, Rytting said.

Gwendolyn Payton, a Seattle-based lawyer representing Guidry, said she plans to raise concerns about Rizzo's actions but framed them as symptomatic of repeated Brady violations under past administrations at the Harris County District Attorney's Office.

"It's not just there's something wrong with my case," she said. "There's something wrong with all of these cases."

It's not clear how the latest developments could impact Brown's ongoing civil suit against the county, city, district attorney and Houston police.

Since his release from prison in 2015, Brown has fought for compensation for the years he spent on death row. But the state rejected his request for money based on the grounds that then-District Attorney Devon Anderson never found him "actually innocent."

An assistant county attorney handling the case did not respond to a request for comment as to whether the email released last week will have any impact on how the lawsuit proceeds.

Some attorneys wondered if it could pave the way for a separate lawsuit by former girlfriend Erica Dockery, who was charged with aggravated perjury after she backed up Brown's alibi under oath.

Brian Stolarz, the lawyer who fought to free Brown, called the perjury charges against Dockery "beyond ironic" given Rizzo's 2008 affidavit. He also said he'd continue to push for Ogg's office to declare Brown "actually innocent."

Wilson, the former prosecutor, objected.

"I'm sorry, but people think he's actually innocent?" he said. "I'm not going there."

Stolarz pushed back.

"Any statement that Mr. Brown committed this crime, especially after the recent disclosure is offensive and defamatory," he said. "This shameful narrative needs to stop."
When biker Anthony W. Benesh III displayed his Hells Angels colors in the middle of Bandidos territory in the Lone Star State in 2006, he was given extensive warnings to stop.

But because Benesh ignored the instructions, the Bandidos Motorcycle Club dispatched two hit crews in March 2006 to find him and another Hells Angels member and send a message, a high-ranking ex-member of the Bandidos testified Wednesday at a racketeering trial for two former top Bandidos leaders.

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Johnny Downtown Johnny Romo, 47, said John Xavier Portillo, a national Bandidos sergeant-at-arms at the time, passed on the directive from Jeffrey Fay Pike of Conroe, the national president: Romo was to put a squad together to take out Benesh in Austin.

The hit on Benesh was just one story Romo relayed during several hours on the stand Wednesday in the trial of Pike and Portillo, who had been the Bandidos national vice president since 2013. The pair are charged in a 13-count indictment that alleges they sanctioned or ordered assaults, extortion, robbery and murder in furtherance of the clubs racketeering conspiracy. The conspiracy lasted from 2000 to 2016, according to the indictment.

Portillo, ordering that Benesh be killed, said he would take another crew to find and rub out Beneshs counterpart in College Station, Romo said.

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He told me theres two Hells Angels in Austin riding their bikes and that the (Bandidos) Austin chapter tried everything  intimidation, threats  to get rid of them, Romo testified. He said, Theres two of them, this came from Jeff Pike that he wanted them taken out, you need to get some guys that you trust. You go to Austin and Ill go to College Station.

Romo, who also was a national sergeant-at-arms for the Bandidos, said he picked two made members of the Bandidos and his own brother, Robert Romo, who was trying to join the club. They took the information Portillo had provided about Benesh, watched for their quarry for two days at his house and followed him as he went to eat at a pizza restaurant in Northwest Austin.

On a Saturday evening in March 2006, Benesh was killed by a rifle bullet in front of his girlfriend and two sons, a shot so powerful that one Austin police officer testified last week that Beneshs brain was missing from his shattered skull. A medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified earlier Wednesday that the skull had to be pieced together so she could determine entry and exit wounds.

Portillos crew left College Station once Johnny Romo informed Portillo that its done, Johnny Romo testified.

Romo also testified that the hit made him Pikes go-to person for carrying out beat-downs and other similar enforcement tasks. His jobs included revoking the patches of Bandidos members in Central American chapters during a period of infighting within the biker club, which had chapters worldwide.

Pikes lead lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, has argued that the local chapters within the Bandidos are autonomous and that Pike wielded little authority over them or their members. Any crimes they may have committed were done without Pikes approval or knowledge, DeGuerin has said.

Romo, who turned government informant, was the first to testify that Pike directly gave him orders to continue the Bandidos pattern of intimidation and violence after Pike succceeded former president George Wegers, who was arrested in summer 2005 in a racketeering case in Washington state.

Romo said the hit on Benesh was planned the same weekend of the Bandidos 40th anniversary motorcycle rally in McAllen.

About a month after the hit, Romo said, he saw Pike at a funeral for another member.

He had a big old smile, and he said, Johnny, Im very proud of you. We gave each other a hug and a kiss.

Romo proposed a new patch for a hit squad within the Bandidos called the Fat Mexican Crew and Pike approved it.

During Pikes tenure as president from 2005 until his arrest in January 2016, Romo said Pike had him go to Central America at least three times to discipline other members, and he also planned an assault on the national president of the Bandidos chapter in Australia for being disrespectful to Pike.

I just want you to take your guys, the Fat Mexican Crew, find a place where you can take care of (the Australian chapter president), Romo quoted Pike as saying. I dont care what you do, throw him in the ocean, do whatever the (expletive) you gotta do.

Romo said they went to Cancun to put a deposit for an international meeting where they could conduct the beating, but it never materialized. The chapters from Europe and Australia refused to meet, Romo said.

Romo began cooperating with federal authorities in spring 2014 after a drug arrest. He wore a wire to record Portillo and other members of the organization make incriminating statements. But Romo also withheld information that hed been involved in Beneshs killing. He didnt mention it until agents confronted him after hed already been sentenced to 24 months in prison on drug charges  far less than the 60 months he originally faced.

Romo, his brother, Robert, and two more Bandidos pleaded guilty in September to murder and firearm charges in aid of racketeering in connection with Beneshs killing and await sentencing. Romos testimony is to continue Thursday. t
Monday, March 12, will see author, Dervla McTiernan, make her welcome return to her native county for the launch of her debut novel, 'The Ruin'.

Dervla McTiernan (nee McGowan) has roots in Newtownforbes, where her father, Enda McGowan still has family.

As well as that, she's a cousin of Longford actress, Lorna Quinn, who will be a special guest at the launch of Dervla's novel.

Dervla is flying all the way home from Australia for the very special honour of launching her novel here in the county.

Formerly a lawyer, Dervla emigrated with her family to Western Australia, following the global financial crisis, where she now works for the Mental Health Commission.

She currently lives in Perth with her husband and two children, and is travelling to Ireland for a week to launch 'The Ruin'.

'The Ruin' is the start of a gripping new crime series by a brand new talent in Irish crime fiction.

The novel tells the story of Garda Cormac Reilly who, during his first week on the job, responded to a call at a decrepit country house to find two silent, neglected children waiting for him - 15-year-old Maude and five-year-old Jack.

Their mother was found dead upstairs.

Twenty years later, Cormac has left his high-flying career as a detective in Dublin and returned to Galway.

As he struggles to navigate the politics of a new police station, Maude and Jack return to haunt him.

What ties a recent suicide to the woman's death so long ago? And who among his new colleagues can Cormac really trust?

The book is gripping from start to finish. It's an unsettling crime novel, which draws the reader deep into the dark heart of Ireland and asks who will protect you when the authorities can't - or won't?

It's a topical novel that will strike a chord with readers all over the country.

'The Ruin' will be launched in Longford Library on Monday, March 12, at 7.30pm. Light refreshments will be served.
Following the havoc wreaked by the Beast from the East and Storm Emma in Longford and all over the country this past week, we take a look back at the Big Freeze of 1982 and how it impacted us all.

This is the story that appeared on the front page of the Longford Leader, edition Friday, January 15, 1982;

The threatened loss of 1.2 million worth of milk overhung Longford as the country awaited a thaw to bring relief from the freezing arctic conditions.

And although the country wasn't the hardest hit with the solid ice and snow drifts, many roads were still impassable yesterday and many homes still inaccessible by car.

In Ballymahon, a 53 year old man was found dead on Saturday morning after setting off for a mile walk home in the height of the raging blizzard on Friday morning. He was Patrick Flaherty from Clooneen.

For Charles Thompson, a van driver with Pat the Baker in Granard, the frozen conditions and feet high drifts, were more than just an inconvenience.

He was forced to spend four days in a house in Ashbourne when his bread van got stuck there on Friday evening returning from a delivery.

FEARS

Mr Thompson, who is from Finea, could not get a message out to his wife and family and there were many fears for his safety.

The roads out of the Meath town were cleared on Sunday night and he finally arrived home on Monday last, just before midnight.

The worst hit were the farmers who faced a loss of cattle along with a loss of milk which couldn't be collected by the creamery vans.

Deliveries of grain and meal were also prevented by the frozen isolated roads although the local ACOT office reported no emergency calls for assistance.

In many parts of the county, cars were abandoned over the few days and tractors became the common mode of transport  and the safest.

SUPPLIES

In Smear, North Longford much needed supplies of bread had been specially brought in to the village by tractor from Arva as the roads were un-negotiable by vans and cars.

Granard too played host to some unexpected visitors during the weekend as several truck drivers were forced to end their journeys in the town and find accommodation.

The drifts were particularly bad outside Granard and many of the roads weren't cleared until Sunday.

From Saturday morning, right up until yesterday, County Council road crews were sanding roads throughout the county. And according to County Manager, Michael Killeen, the authority was swamped with offers of help from owners of mechanical diggers, to clear the roads of deep snow drifts.

Public transport practically shut down in Longford over the weekend with all buses and trains grinding to a halt on Friday evening.

Local bus services were back to normal by Wednesday although C.I.E. was still running a skeleton train service because of the frozen rails.

HALTED

Many Longford travellers were snow bound over the weekend as public transport shut down and the roads turned into feet-deep drifts of snow and ice.

C.I.E.'s rail and bus service came to a halt on Friday evening and apart from a train run from Sligo to Mullingar on Monday, remained so over the whole weekend.

At places the tracks were barely distinguishable on the ground and at all times were covered in dangerous sheets of snow and ice.

Cavan based Wharton's travel, which runs special 'Civil Service' buses to and from Dublin each weekend, failed to travel leaving many young people in the city for the weekend. The company's Cavan to Longford service did not return until Wednesday last.

Owen Kenny from Terlicken was one of the many throughout the county who had to play host during the strong blizzard and accommodate the travellers like the innkeepers of old.

Four cars were abandoned outside his house on Friday night, the drivers unable to negotiate the steep hill on the main road.

In Edgeworthstown also, a number of cars were left to the night while passengers and drivers 'bunked up' in local homes until the harsh weather died down.

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Longford County Council Chief Executive Paddy Mahon paid tribute this week to the unsung efforts of all those involved in the emergency relief response during the height of Storm Emma.

Mr Mahon said despite the worst of the inclement conditions only hitting home last Thursday, work to combat its effects was only now starting to abate.

He conceded the Council had endured one of its most challenging and eventful weeks but one in which altruism and fortitude held sway.

The county spent six days over the last week under an orange or red weather warning as we experienced a combination of Siberian winter conditions and Atlantic Storm Emma which brought snow and blizzards not seen in the County for many years, he said in a statement to the Leader.

Mr Mahon said over 100 of the Councils own staffing roster had been out braving the elements for eight consecutive days, ably supported by many of the local authoritys 18 elected members.

Our employees were dealing with road gritting and snow ploughing, water services, emergency response, communications, taking calls from the public, liaison with the Public Participation Network, liaison with the Defence Forces and reporting to the National Emergency Coordination Group.

Throughout the event Longford County Council gritted over 350 km of roads on 12 occasions using over 700 tonnes of salt and, with the assistance of our contractors, ploughed an unquantifiable amount of snow to ensure that the County was open for business on Monday of this week.

In this we were supported by the many communities in County Longford who worked to clear snow from many of the local roads around the County.

There were compliments too aimed in the direction of the Councils water and fire services divisions in responding to requests and call outs by members of the public.

This, he said, was underwritten by a specially devised Severe Weather Committee inside the Council which met no fewer than 10 times and which was supported by the local authoritys own Information Systems team.

The Council also received excellent support from the Defence Forces in transporting HSE Staff and Carers throughout the County, in delivering meals on wheels and in clearing footpaths in our main towns.

Throughout the last week the Council was able to communicate with and update our communities with regular briefings by our communications team via local and national media, via our website, via the Public Participation Network and through social media, he said.

To emphasise that point, Mr Mahon told of how over 73,000 tweet impressions were charted on its own Twitter account compared to a more customary 2,800 weekly average.

Together with a larger than expected surge to its home webpage, Mr Mahon said the increase validated the benefits technology can bring in supporting communities with up to date information during times of crisis.

Longford County Council would like to thank and acknowledge the many groups and individuals whose efforts over this period ensured that the effects of the severe weather event were kept to a minimum, he added.

The old Irish tradition of meitheal where people in rural communities gather together in times of crisis, to support and help one another is alive and well in County Longford.

From the exhaustive and self-sacrificing evidence on show throughout the county over the past week or so, he might not be far wrong.

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Local News, Crime, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 08 2018

NYs Medicaid Program To Receive Over $450,000 As Part Of Joint State-Federal Settlement.

Holbrook, NY - March 8, 2018 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a joint state-federal settlement with the Long Island, NY-based pediatrics practice Freed, Kleinberg, Nussbaum, Festa & Kronberg M.D., LLP (Practice), as well as various current and former partner physicians of the Practice, including Arnold W. Scherz, M.D., Mitchell Kleinberg, M.D., Michael Nussbaum, M.D., Robert Festa, M.D., and Jason Kronberg, D.O. (Partners)doing business as Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The agreement settles allegations that the Practice and Partners did not routinely enroll all of their employee providers treating Medicaid patients in the Medicaid program, and instead used the Partners Medicaid provider identification numbers to bill for the treatment of Medicaid beneficiaries by unenrolled employee providers. An investigation conducted by the Attorney Generals office found that the false claims occurred at many of the practices Long Island locations. The pediatrics practice has locations in Port Jefferson, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced a joint state-federal settlement with the Long Island, NY-based pediatrics practice Freed, Kleinberg, Nussbaum, Festa & Kronberg M.D., LLP (Practice), as well as various current and former partner physicians of the Practice, including Arnold W. Scherz, M.D., Mitchell Kleinberg, M.D., Michael Nussbaum, M.D., Robert Festa, M.D., and Jason Kronberg, D.O. (Partners)doing business as Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The agreement settles allegations that the Practice and Partners did not routinely enroll all of their employee providers treating Medicaid patients in the Medicaid program, and instead used the Partners Medicaid provider identification numbers to bill for the treatment of Medicaid beneficiaries by unenrolled employee providers. An investigation conducted by the Attorney Generals office found that the false claims occurred at many of the practices Long Island locations. The pediatrics practice has locations in Holbrook Shirley , and Wading River , NY. New Yorks Medicaid program will receive $450,000 as part of the $750,000 settlement agreement.

Providers who are not properly enrolled in Medicaid before treating Medicaid beneficiaries undermine the integrity of the program and its efforts to serve our neediest New Yorkers, said Attorney General Schneiderman. Those serving Medicaid beneficiaries must be properly credentialed and thoroughly vetted prior to Medicaid enrollment to ensure that beneficiaries get the care they deserve from qualified professionals.

Specifically, the settlement agreement resolves allegations that, from July 1, 2004 through December 31, 2010, the Practice and Partners did not enroll all of their provider employees in Medicaid prior to allowing them to treat patients who were Medicaid beneficiaries. Instead, providers employed by the Practice would treat Medicaid patients and bill under the Partners Medicaid identification numbers, as if the billing Partners were the ones seeing those patients, even when they had not.

The State contends that this practice caused false or fraudulent claims to be submitted to and reimbursed by the States Medicaid program, for services performed by providers who were not enrolled in Medicaida direct violation of Medicaids regulations.

The settlement resolves allegations asserted in a qui tam action brought by a whistleblower in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The Attorney General wishes to thank the United States Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York for its assistance in this investigation.
Local News, Business & Finance, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 08 2018

Grants Provide Equipment and Training to Enhance Emergency Preparedness.

Albany, NY - March 8, 2018 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the availability of $8.5 million in funding to support emergency response teams across New York. These Federal FY 2017 State Homeland Security Program funds help support New York's hazardous materials teams, bomb squads, critical infrastructure sites, explosive detection canine teams, tactical teams, and technical rescue and urban search teams.

"Public safety is our top priority and these funds will help ensure our first responders have access to the tools and resources they need to protect their communities," Governor Cuomo said. "These programs provide some of our bravest New Yorkers with the training, support, and equipment they need to keep our state safe and strong."

The State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services manages the targeted grant program, which has distributed approximately $54.8 million to the six different specialty teams since each program's inception. All specialty teams must submit their applications for grant funding to the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services by April 17, 2018.

Roger L. Parrino Sr., Commissioner of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services said, "This annual program helps fund law enforcement specialty teams, urban search and rescue teams, hazardous materials teams, and critical infrastructure sites to help safeguard New Yorkers. I encourage the state's first responders to apply for funds to help them enhance their operational skills to protect our citizens."

Hazardous Materials Targeted Grant Program: This program will serve as a resource for 18 regional HazMat Teams, outside of New York City, to sustain and enhance HazMat capabilities to help New Yorkers respond to and recover from acts of terrorism and other emergencies. Regions can use this funding to obtain and maintain essential equipment, implement the HazMat Team Accreditation Program, conduct training and exercises, and develop and update HazMat response plans. Since FY 2008, the Division has allocated approximately $11.6 million through this non-competitive grant program.

Bomb Squad Initiative: Funding through this program is utilized to support the development and sustainment of counter-IED operations in New York State to the local 12 FBI-certified local public safety Bomb Squads. Since FY 2006, the bomb squad initiative has received $17.6 in funding through this non-competitive grant program.

Critical Infrastructure Grant Program: This program promotes a common understanding and approach to risk management as well as providing funding to support local first responder's efforts to mitigate risk and enhance protection capabilities at special event sites, which will be prioritized for FY 2017, and government owned critical infrastructure sites. Since FY 2010, the Division has allocated approximately $2.4 million to this program.

Explosive Detection Canine Team Grant Program: Funding through this program provides local law enforcement agencies with active road patrols aid to develop and enhance their explosive detection canine capabilities. Explosive Detection Canine Teams provide a visible, proactive police presence in areas of mass gathering, transportation centers and critical infrastructure sites. In addition to this deterrence presence they provide a mobile response capability for detection and identification of potential explosive device type incidents. Since FY 2009, this competitive grant program has received approximately $3.7 million in funding.

Tactical Team Targeted Grant Program: This funding is dedicated to train local law enforcement agencies with the adequate skills and capabilities to provide a safe and successful response to high-risk incidents including active shooter events and other counterterrorism missions. Since FY 2013, the Division has allocated approximately $9 million to support tactical teams.

Technical Rescue & Urban Search and Rescue Grant Program: This program focuses on the enhancement of Technical Rescue and USAR teams for local emergency responders who provide services involving structural collapse, trench, confined space, and rope rescue which help New Yorkers respond to and recover from acts of terrorism and other emergencies. Since FY 2009, this competitive grant program has received approximately $10.5 million in funding to support operations.

Applications will be accepted until April 17, 2018 at 5:00 p.m. through the DHSES electronic grants management system (E-Grants). For the Request for Applications (RFA) please visit the DHSES website at http://www.dhses.ny.gov/grants/targeted.cfm or contact DHSES's Grants Hotline at (866) 837-9133.

Congressman Eliot Engel said, "New York is the safest big city in the world, but the threat to our area remains constant. Any additional resources we can allocate to emergency preparedness are welcome and helpful, so I applaud the Governor for making these additional grants available."

Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey said, "New Yorkers know all too well the threats of terrorism and natural disasters, which is why our emergency responders and law enforcement agencies need the resources and training necessary to protect our communities and themselves in the event of a crisis. These grants will allow our state to be more proactive in preparing for and responding to all types of emergencies, and I strongly encourage emergency response teams to apply."

Congressman Jose E. Serrano said, "New York's top priority is the safety of its people and this federal funding will enhance the state's emergency preparedness. These Homeland Security grants are essential for the training and equipment of our emergency response teams with the most up to date skills and technology. I urge teams throughout the state to apply for these grants."

Congresswoman Nydia M. Velazquez said, "As a cultural and financial capital, New York faces unique security challenges and there can be no higher priority than keeping our City's residents safe from harm. Doing so requires cooperation at all levels of government and I'm proud to see these federal resources deployed for important public safety initiatives."

Congressman Joe Crowley said, "These grants will provide the funding necessary to fully equip our state's emergency response teams with the tools they need to protect New York families. Governor Cuomo knows the diverse needs of New York's emergency response teams. These heroes work every day to neutralize potential threats to our state and fortify our security infrastructure."

Congressman Brian Higgins said, "These federal resources play a critical role in equipping first responders and protecting our communities. We encourage local agencies to apply."

Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney said, "New Yorkers know all too well that we have to stay on our toes when it comes to terrorism and other threats to our communities - I'm glad the Governor is putting these funds to good use so our first responders have the resources they need. Keeping our communities safe is one of my top priorities in Congress, and I'm glad the Governor shares the same commitment back home in New York."

Congressman John Katko said, "As a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, I'm vitally aware that we must remain ever-vigilant in the face of new and evolving threats. These grants will ensure that emergency response teams receive the proper tools and training to close gaps in security and keep communities throughout New York safe."

Congressman Lee Zeldin said, "Last year, I voted to support $2.7 billion for FEMA grant programs, including the State Homeland Security Program, and we are seeing first-hand the positive effect this funding has for our local emergency services and first responders on the ground. Every level of government has the responsibility to ensure our brave first responders have the resources they need to safely and effectively do their jobs and protect our communities."

Congressman Adriano Espaillat said, "I commend Governor Cuomo on today's announced grant funding to help ensure preparedness and readiness in our ability to respond quickly and efficiently to potential risks and threats throughout New York State. The training and necessary skills required to protect our constituents are constantly evolving. It remains critical that we continue to fund programs that support innovative technology, skills development, and training on the proper use and management of specialized equipment, so that our emergency first response teams will be better equipped and prepared to respond to situations in a timely matter and save lives."

About DHSES
Local News, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 08 2018

Governor Invests $5 Million in the FY 2019 Executive Budget to Strengthen Statewide Cyber Security Protections for Elections Infrastructure.

Albany, NY - March 8, 2018 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar today called for swift passage of legislation to ensure elections are fair, transparent and free from foreign influence. Governor Cuomo and U.S. Senator Klobuchar have proposed complementary legislation in New York State and the United States Congress to mandate transparency in political advertising, require online platforms to maintain an archive of political ads, and protect elections from foreign influence.

The Governor's FY 2019 Executive Budget also includes $5 million to create an Election Cyber Security Support Toolkit and strengthen statewide cyber security protections, as well as $7 million to improve access to voting across the state by instituting early voting as well as automatic and same-day voter registration.

"Hacking violations are a fundamental crisis that goes to the bedrock of our democracy," Governor Cuomo said. "This legislation cracks down on the toxic cocktail of social media explosion, lack of protection and regulation and targeting in social media to protect the integrity of our elections once and for all."

Senator Klobuchar said, "We know Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election and that they're working to do it again. Doing nothing is not an option, that's why I'm working hard in Congress on bipartisan legislation--the Honest Ads Act and the Secure Elections Act--to ensure future elections are secure and free from foreign influence, and that's why Governor Cuomo's work to protect election security is so important. There are just 242 days until the next election, we do not have time to wait."

Strengthen Election Infrastructure

Governor Cuomo has proposed $5 million in the FY 2019 Executive Budget to implement a four-pronged strategy to further strengthen cyber protections for New York's election infrastructure:

Create an Election Support Center

The Election Support Center will leverage subject matter experts at the State Office of Information Technology Services, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, Department of Motor Vehicles, State Police, the State Intelligence Center, the Executive Chamber and the State Board of Elections, to provide technical expertise, training, and cyber security best practices to County Boards of Election. The Election Support Center will also work collaboratively with the State Board of Elections to ensure that timely and actionable threat intelligence is communicated to local election officials.

Develop an Election Cyber Security Support Toolkit

Governor Cuomo will use the proposed funding to create an Election Cyber Security Support Toolkit that will be available to State and County Boards of Election. The Election Cyber Security Support Toolkit will ensure that New York's Boards of Elections have access to threat mitigation tools such as network monitoring services, secure software and hardware products, Distributed Denial of Service defenses for election websites, and change-detection software to monitor all changes to voter databases ensuring inconsistencies and discrepancies are identified, investigated and corrected in a timely manner. This toolkit will be created and updated annually by the agencies in the Election Support Center and distributed to County Boards of Election through the State Board of Elections.

Provide Cyber Risk Vulnerability Assessments for the State and County Boards of Elections

The Office of Information Technology Services will provide vulnerability assessments to ensure election officials understand their current cyber security posture and can take the appropriate steps to remediate potential vulnerabilities. In addition, the state will offer a free hosted Disaster Recovery service to ensure all election and voter data can be recovered and restored in the event of a cyber disruption.

Require County Boards of Election to Report Data Breaches to State Authorities

To further protect the integrity of our elections, County Boards of Elections would be required to notify the State Board of Elections and the State Police whenever there is a data breach that could potentially expose private voter or election information. The State Board would also be required to issue an annual New York Election Security Report to the Executive and Legislature outlining the security landscape and actions being taken to protect elections infrastructure and voter information.

Expand Access to Voting: $7 Million for Early Voting and Same Day and Automatic Voter Registration

In addition, the Democracy Agenda includes $7 million in the FY 2019 Executive Budget to fund voting reforms, including early voting across the state. This funding will enable New York counties to offer early voting in the 12 days leading up to Election Day.

To modernize the voter registration process, automatic voter registration will streamline state services by automatically sending voters' information from relevant agencies application directly to the County Board of Elections. New Yorkers who do not wish to register to vote can simply check an "opt out" box. Additionally, same-day voter registration will allow New Yorkers to register and vote on the same day so that onerous and counter-intuitive registration deadlines do not prevent New Yorkers from having the opportunity to participate in the electoral process.

Increase Transparency of Online Political Advertisements and Protect Against Foreign Influence

To increase transparency of online political advertisements and protect against foreign influence, the Governor has advanced legislation to expand New York State's definition of political communication to include paid internet and digital advertisements, require digital platforms to maintain a public file of all political advertisements purchased by a person or group for publication on the platform and require online platforms verify that foreign individuals and entities are not purchasing political advertisements in order to influence the American electorate.
At a Glance Experts Rating Pros Easy-to-use interface

AES-256-bit encryption

Easy-to-understand subscription structure

Fast European connections Cons Office located in Canada, a Five Eyes intelligence sharing country

Canadian law can compel TunnelBear to hand over user credit card information, home address, and account associated email address

Not torrent-friendly

Typically unable to bypass Netflix region locking

Servers located in only 20 countries Our Verdict TunnelBear is likable for its quirky branding and European connection speeds, but the companys base in a Five Eye country is a concern from a user privacy standpoint. Security-minded individuals should look elsewhere for a VPN service.

Best Prices Today

Retailer Price Delivery TunnelBear $60 View

Unsure if youll use a VPN often enough to warrant paying for it, or only occasionally require the security that using one provides? TunnelBear could be the service that youre looking for.

Based in Toronto, Canada, the company has a strict no-logging policy that pertains to user IP addresses, DNS queries, or information you accessed online while connected to its servers. However, TunnelBear is obliged by Canadian law to hand over user names, email addresses, the amount of data used while accessing their servers, and credit-card information should law enforcement or a federal agency come knocking. Also, because Canada participates in the Five Eye program, this information could be accessed by American agencies, too. That said, most people will have little to fear from these circumstances. (On March 8, 2018, McAfee announced that it aquired TunnelBear for an undisclosed amount.)

Note: This review is part of our best VPNs roundup. Go there for details about competing products and how we tested them.

TunnelBear: Security, software, servers, and speed

While TunnelBears website states that they operate servers in 20 different countries, theyre not forthcoming on exactly how many servers are in their network. This makes it difficult to give a complete assessment of the companys services and for you, the end user, to know whether subscribing to TunnelBear is the best use of your money. When connecting to their servers, Mac users can expect their information to be protected by industry-standard AES-256-bit encryption, and OpenVPN is TunnelBears connection protocol of choice.

TunnelBear

You should know that TunnelBear doesnt support torrenting. If you want to hide your peer-to-peer file sharing from your ISP, use a different service. Its also worth nothing that multiple reports online state that the companys servers arent great for watching Netflix content streamed in a country other than your own. But this has more to do with Netflixs being good at region-locking their content than TunnelBear being bad at VPNs.

TunnelBears macOS app is whimsically bear-themed. Despite this, the software is straightforward and easy to use. Once installed, the app lives in your Macs Menu Bar. The options to connect, disconnect, or change servers are all controlled through a dropdown interface. The interface can also be expanded to a larger window, making choosing a server or tinkering with the services settings a little easier. The company also provides client apps for iOS, Windows, and Android hardware.

During testing, connecting to TunnelBears servers resulted in the following upload/download speed reductions versus connecting to the Internet without a VPN.

Server location Download

speed

decrease Upload

speed

decrease U.S. 9% 52% U.K. (England) 21% 62% European (Switzerland) 33% 0% Oceanic (Australia) 44% 74% Asia (Japan) 14% 77%

Learn more about how we tested VPN software.

TunnelBear: Pricing

TunnelBear offers unpaid users up to 500MB of data for free, every month. Thats not a lot of web traffic, though, so if you require a more robust plan, the company provides two different pricing tiers. Users can opt to pay $10 a month contract-free, or sign up for a years worth of service for $60, which breaks down to $5 per month. Both of these options come with unlimited bandwidth and the ability to connect five devices to TunnelBears servers at the same time. TunnelBear accepts PayPal, Bitcoin, and most major credit cards.

Bottom line

As much as we love TunnelBears quirky branding and its European connection speeds, the companys base in a Five Eye country (Canada) is a concern from a user privacy standpoint. Most customers wont be at risk, but activists, journalists, or other security-minded individuals should look elsewhere for a VPN service.

Editors note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.
Keenan Wyrobek is the co-founder of, a California company designing, building, and deploying drones that deliver life-saving medical supplies and blood to the most remote and difficult to access places on Earth. He has a background in helping develop several tech products and patents in robotics, and is now leading product and engineering for Zipline. I had the opportunity to meet Keenan at TEDMED 2017 where he took the stage to share Ziplines progress in East Africa and the vision they have for the future of their company. Following up on his talk, I asked a few questions to learn more about Zipline and the future of medical drones.

Tom Fowler, Medgadget: When did you first get interested in working with drones?

Keenan: The plan to use drones to overcome infrastructure challenges for medical deliveries came during a visit to the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania in 2014. We met a graduate student there who had built a mobile alert system for health workers to text emergency requests for medicine and vaccines. Health workers used the mobile alert system to make thousands of emergency requests, which had never before been possible to do. Unfortunately, there was no way for the government to fulfill these requests. Staring at this list of names and the medical supplies they needed to survive made the scale of the problem clear. Weve designed Zipline to solve this problem. We know who needs medicine, when and where. And now, we can get them that medicine as quickly as possible.

Medgadget: When and where was the first successful delivery of blood product by Zipline that was used on a patient? How many units of blood have been delivered so far?

Keenan: Our first blood delivery was to Rwandas Kabyayi district hospital in October of 2016. When I spoke at TEDMED in November 2017 we had made over 2,000 flights to deliver more than 4,000 units of blood. As of today we have made over4,000 deliveries delivering over 7,400 units of blood.

Medgadget: What was the biggest design hurdle you had to overcome to get where you are today?

Keenan: We discovered that building and designing the technology is the easy part. The hard part is integrating with the national health system. We have an incredible partner in the government of Rwanda and are where we are today because of their focus, dedication and commitment to excellence in health care.

Medgadget: Have there been regulatory challenges in establishing drone flying operations in different countries and airspaces?

Keenan: We work hand in hand with the federal government, the national health system and civil and military aviation authorities. It takes a tremendous amount of work and partnership and we couldnt be more pleased with the results.

Medgadget: Do you foresee Zipline expanding to serve rural areas in the United States and Canada?

Keenan: Our goal is to build an instant delivery service for the world so that every doctor everywhere has what they need to do their job. And doctors in remote areas of the United States and Canada have told us time and time again how powerful on-demand access to medical supplies would be for their patients. We are passionate about getting it done.

Medgadget: If I gave you $1 billion to develop a product of any kind, what would you create?

Keenan: Id say we created the product, its Zipline. Id use that money to expand our global reach and help save more lives. The world is big and I would use the money to enable us to scale faster into every hard to reach corner of the world.

Link: Zipline

Flashback: Vayu Drone Delivers Blood, Stool Samples from Patients in Remote Madagascar Villages
by Larissa Faw , March 7, 2018

As part of March's Womens History Month and more specifically, March 8 as International Women's Day, agencies continue to tap their internal creative teams to introduce programs to celebrate women. Heres a sampling:

New Honor Society is trying to change behaviors with the introduction of the Sorry Jar, a twist on the swear jar. The female-led creative shop wants women to place jars in their workplaces as a reminder to say what they really mean, without apologizing. They also suggest that funds collected be donated to charities promoting gender pay equality. The #notsorry campaign includes a website, where people can download labels and posters.

FCB Inferno is challenging gender bias with a game that dethrones Kings and places the Queen at the top. The agency and Unibet will introduce The Queen Rules game with simultaneous live events and tournaments on March 8th in London, Stockholm, Malta, among other locales. Rather than play games the traditional way, competitors will instead use limited-edition cards that celebrate women, drawn by sixteen female illustrators from womenwhodraw.com.

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This project started when a five-year-old girl questioned why King ranks higher than Queen in a deck of cards. "This simple, yet powerful, idea is one way of sparking conversation around the unconscious gender bias that surrounds us  because sometimes the bias we dont see, is as damaging as the bias we do," says an agency spokesperson.

All proceeds from the live events and merchandise, including T-shirts, art prints and playing cards, will be donated to HeForShe, a campaign for the advancement of women initiated by UN Women.

GroupM's Wavemaker is launching Women@Wavemaker, a new internal program to help women achieve senior leadership positions within the agency. After conducting a series of internal focus groups and surveys, the unit will concentrate on three themes - mentor, inspire and educate - lead by Camilla Bruggen from the Wavemaker global team and Emily Fairhead-Keen from the agencys UK operation. The initiative, comprising both men and women, will now find ways to support and solve these challenges. The program kicked off on a Women's Day panel discussion held at the agency's London office. The sessions have become a quarterly event.

IPG's Momentum is recognizing International Women's Day by creating a program designed to improve work-life balance. The agency's new flex work initiative will enable employees to develop bespoke work schedules structured between them and their managers. In addition, the program will introduce a freestanding robot that will enable them to be live when they need to attend important meetings but cannot physically be in the office.

Also the new MFit health and wellness program will introduce Momentum-sponsored classes, team events, activities and speakers as well as options to book personal or small group training sessions.

"Our industry is losing too many talented people to unreasonable demands that put unnecessary strain on families," says Donnalyn Smith, North American president, Momentum. "Were tapping the most advanced technologies to help meet client demands" and "were also using technology to provide our staff with the kind of support they need to thrive at Momentum."

Sense New York has been releasing illustrations of "fearless" females, including Malala Yousafzai and Billie Jean King, each day between March 1 and 8. Designed by the agency's NYC creative director Nathaly Charria, and illustrator, Alana McDowell in London, the artwork is shared across the agency's social networks and is available to download from the Sense website at www.sense-nyc.com/ celebratewomen.

"We hope other women will be inspired by the work and words of wisdom from our sheroes and will further spread the love, by sending the images to friends, family, clients and colleagues, who inspire them, and deserve to be celebrated, too," says Sarah Priestman, president, Sense New York.

As part of the "Word to Your Mother" project, agency Peterson Milla Hooks is sending handwritten notes to women who have helped members of the Minneapolis-based, female-majority led agency "better be themselves and be better for others," says an agency spokesperson.

To highlight the women at Fake Love, the Brooklyn-based experiential agency is creating a collaborative video and a celebratory newsletter. After sending out a form to the women in the company with questions related to International Womens Day, (history, relevance, thoughts on feminism, etc.) the agency used the answers to script a video that celebrates women.

Smashing Ideas is featuring women at the Seattle-based digital agency with short videos and giving them an opportunity to voice their truth in light of this worldwide holiday. The agency will debut the series across social media on Thursday, but plans to "keep the conversation going in the weeks to come," says an agency spokesperson.

VML is producing mad-libs style cards to send across the agency's 33 global offices with the goal that every female at the agency receives at least one card. VMLers are invited to write positive notes to the women at VML that they work with and admire, with each office hosting a specially-designed common area to fill out these cards. There will be collection stations and volunteers to distribute them. In addition, the microsite at https://iwd.vmlconnect.com lets workers send cards electronically.
by Wayne Friedman , March 8, 2018

Randy Falco, CEO of Univision Communications, will retire at the end of the year -- after the company said it would be withdrawing its IPO stock offering.

Also on Tuesday, Univision said it would be changing its CFO position -- announcing that Peter Lori, veteran Univision executive, would be taking the post from Francisco Lopez-Balboa, who resigned earlier this week.

Lori had been executive vice president of finance, Chief Accounting Officer and deputy CFO at Univision. He joined the company in 2005.

Just a few months ago, Falco, a former NBCUniversal executive, signed a extension to his contract, which was to go to January 2020. Reports suggests that Univision has been considering massive restructuring to reduce costs.

In a statement, Haim Saban, chairman of Univisions board of directors said:

There are multiple rumors out there and on behalf of the Univision Board. I would like to set the record straight about our CEO Randy Falco. Recently, Randy came to us and told us that he would like to retire at the end of 2018, when he will turn 65 years old, and end an outstanding eight-year tenure as the CEO of Univision.

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"Let me be clear: We at the Board of Univision have reluctantly agreed to Randys wishes out of respect and the high regard we have for him as a partner.

Saban adds that: During his time as CEO, he has modernized the Univision organization, grown earnings and reduced debt at record levels, and we could not be more pleased with his performance. We have asked Randy to work with us over the next year in restructuring the company and consult with the board on a transition to new leadership.

In 2007, Univision Communications was sold for $13.7 billion to Providence Equity Partners, TV-media entrepreneur Haim Saban, TPG Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners.
After analyzing data from eight large studies, researchers have identified certain molecules in the blood that might serve as early biomarkers for the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimers disease.

Share on Pinterest Our blood may hold early biomarkers for dementia and Alzheimers disease.

The new findings  which are published in the journal Alzheimers & Dementia  are thought to be the first to suggest that higher levels of branched-chain amino acids in a persons blood could be a marker for a lower risk of developing dementia.

Branched-chain amino acids are essential nutrients that the body needs and gets from protein-rich foods such as legumes and meat.

In their report, co-senior study author Sudha Seshadri  a professor of neurology at the University of Texas, San Antonio  and colleagues explain that scientists are starting to realize that dementia is not a straightforward disease.

In fact, they say that there is an increasing need to address its prevention and treatment with a multipronged approach.

Traditionally, researchers have mainly looked for answers in the brain  where, for instance, some hallmarks of Alzheimers disease, one of the main types of dementia, are found in the form of faulty tau and amyloid proteins.

Now, however, more of the searching has widened to include other parts of the body, such as the bloodstream, which has an intimate relationship with the brain.

It is now recognized, Prof. Seshadri notes, that we need to look beyond the traditionally studied amyloid and tau pathways and understand the entire spectrum of pathology involved in persons who present with symptoms of Alzheimers disease and other dementias.
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Naoya Sawamura, Mariko Yamada et al. The Neuroprotective Effect of Thalidomide against Ischemia through the Cereblon-mediated Repression of AMPK Activity, Scientific Reports doi:10.1038/s41598-018-20911-2

Specifically, Sawamura's research group used cerebral ischemia model rats of the cerebral artery occlusion/reperfusion (MCAO/R) to examine the effect of thalidomide on infarct lesions caused by cerebral ischemia and related intracellular signals. After performing qualitative analysis and assessments on the rats' physical movements, they found that thalidomide treatment significantly decreased the infarct volume and neurological deficits in MCAO/R model rats, and that AMPK was the key signaling protein in the mechanism through additional experiments.Moreover, to determine the molecular mechanisms of the effect of thalidomide on neuronal death, they used oxidative stress-induced neuronal cells, which were induced by administration of H2O2, as cerebral ischemia model cells. "In these cells, we found that the AMPK-CRBN interaction weakened and phosphorylation of AMPK enhanced, but thalidomide treatment restored the AMPK-CRBN interaction and suppressed phosphorylation of AMPK," explains Sawamura. "What this implies is that thalidomide regulates AMPK-CRBN interactions in cells under ischemic conditions, meaning, it can suppress nerve cell death."Further study is needed to identify effective thalidomide derivatives with fewer side effects, as well as more stability because they undergo hydrolysis spontaneously and rapidly in aqueous solutions. Nevertheless, Sawamura is excited about the future possibilities of this study."Our attention is now on the functions of CRBN as a stress response molecule. The suppression of nerve cell death by thalidomide perhaps occurs because CRBN's function as a stress molecule is somehow enhanced. We want to elucidate the response of cereblons in aging and stress models to see if decline in the CRBN function could be a biomarker for aging and stress."Source: Eurekalert
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The biggest and most robust dataset for acupuncture in chronic pain comes from a review of data from 20,827 patients, showing moderate benefit for acupuncture compared with usual care, but smaller effects compared with sham acupuncture, he writes. Importantly, it also shows that 85% of the effect of acupuncture is maintained at one year.Further evidence that sham acupuncture is linked to better quality of life compared with usual care for patients with chronic pain" should urge a more flexible approach from guideline developers," adds Cummings.He acknowledges that acupuncture "seems to incur more staffing and infrastructure costs than drug based interventions, and in an era of budget restriction, cutting services is a popular short term fix." But argues that group clinics in the community "can provide more treatment at much lower cost."Another challenge is the lack of commercial sector interest in acupuncture, he adds, meaning that it does not benefit from the lobbying seen for patented drugs and devices.In summary, he says the pragmatic view sees acupuncture as a relatively safe and moderately effective intervention for a wide range of common chronic pain conditions."For those patients who choose it and who respond well, it considerably improves health related quality of life, and it has much lower long term risk for them than non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. It may be especially useful for chronic musculoskeletal pain and osteoarthritis in elderly patients, who are at particularly high risk from adverse drug reactions," he concludes.In a linked patient commentary, Kumari Manickasamy says acupuncture gave her hope when she had exhausted all avenues offered by conventional medicine for severe pelvic girdle pain during pregnancy She points out that there are few safe options for pain relief in pregnancy, and says women with pelvic girdle pain "have to strike a difficult balance between controlling their pain and risking harm to their child."But Professors Asbjrn Hrobjartsson at the University of Southern Denmark and Edzard Ernst at the University of Exeter, argue that doctors should not recommend acupuncture for pain "because there is insufficient evidence that it is clinically worthwhile."Overviews of clinical pain trials comparing acupuncture with placebo find a small, clinically irrelevant effect that "may be due to bias rather than acupuncture," they write.
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Citing reasons for the study "Effect of Non-Ionizing EMF (Mobile Phone Radiation) on Human Health", ICMR said exposure of radio frequency radiation (RFR) emitted from mobile phone to human population have increased tremendously due to the increase of mobile phone users."The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radio frequency electromagnetic field (EMF) as possibly carcinogenic to human," said the government-funded research body under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.Though a review of international scientific data has not established conclusive evidence on the safety or risk of RFR emitted from cellphones and towers, a growing body of scientific evidences indicate the adverse health effects of RFR, which may be possible if not probable, said the ICMR.Further, as guidelines followed in India are based on data generated from Western countries, the government wants the findings from Indian population living in Indian climatic condition to develop safety standards of EMF exposures, specially of RFR from cellphones and towers."Exposure limits for RFR being followed in India are higher than several other countries as these countries have developed their own health-based precautionary guidelines," the research body said.The objective is "to study the effect of RFR emitted from cell phone on cancer , heart, reproductive organs, ear and brain related problems, if any". The ICMR has formed six study groups of three categories each for males and females based on their usage of mobile phones."Your payback is a free medical check-up by one of India's finest medical institutions," said ICMR, seeking volunteers who can spare some time to visit the AIIMS, New Delhi, for various investigations once a year.Source: IANS
With passing time, the role of a woman on the big screen has been changing constantly. There was a time when she was just used on-screen for decorative purposes, but time has changed and women have really traveled a long way along in the film industry.

They are no more the 'abala naari' who need a man to protect them, but who would ideally want a man to just be with them. She is now the woman of substance and doesn't fear from speaking her mind out publicly and stand for her rights. She still belongs to this patriarchal society, but now she is also a rebel.

It's interesting to see how with time Hindi cinema has adapted to reality and has tried to show the changing time, culture and influences. From a woman struggling to get her foothold, making it big in the big corporate world to simply bringing a story of a housewife, films have indeed changed.

From Meena Kumari to Vidya Balan, from 'Bandit Queen' to 'Lipstick Under My Burkha', the women in films are no more just a visual treat but have been playing pivotal roles creating a huge change both on-screen and off-screen.

We bring you 13 films where women were the real heroes and had a brilliant cast supporting them.

1957: 'Mother India'

Mehboob Production

Considered to be Nargis Dutt's best performance till date, 'Mother India is one such movie that actually changed the way Indian films used to portray women. A classic from the early era of Indian Cinema, this film is a must watch. Nargis plays Radha, a poor villager who has struggled throughout her life to raise her two sons. She is said to be the woman who never supports wrong and stands up for justice. Staying true to her ethics and beliefs, she ends up killing her own son just for justice. Now that's totally something!

1987: 'Mirch Masala'

Eagle

You might have not really watched this one but Ketan Mehta's 'Mirch Masala' brings in a tale of an ordinary woman Sonbai played by Smitha Patil from a village, who decides to say no to powerful authorities. You also have a story of another woman played by Deepti Naval who is the wife of the village's sarpanch. She is someone who revolts against her own husband because she wants to educate her own daughters. While this might look like a normal story to you today, this was released in a regressive time when a woman standing for her rights was a huge deal.

1994: 'Bandit Queen'

Saregama

Based on the life of Indian dacoit, Phoolan Devi, this movie literally can give you goosebumps. Played by Seema Biswas, the movie brings about the tale of a woman who fought with every man from police to goons who once destroyed her life. It's shown how she overpowers these powerful men. This Shekhar Kapoor's film was based on the biography named India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi by Mala Sen.

2000: 'Astitva'

Twitter

How about a movie that actually highlights the male chauvinist culture of our country? Well, we often use this term but Mahesh Manjrekar actually made a brilliant movie 'Astitva' starring Tabu in 2000. The film simply brings up the issue of domestic abuse, extramarital affair, that a woman is often aware of but is forbidden from talking about it. The movie introduces you to Aditi Shrikant Pandit's (Tabu) story who is trying to find her own identity outside her so-called happy marriage. Finally, she takes a bold step and moves away from her husband and son with her help of her to-be daughter-in-law, Namrata Shirodkar, who ends up leaving her boyfriend as too. Well, a win-win for both the females.

2011: 'No One Killed Jessica'

UTV

The Jessica Lal murder case literally shocked the entire nation. Based on the real-life incident, this film shows the tale of Sabrina Lal (Vidya Balan) who fights against the wealthy and influential people who were involved in the murder of her sister. On another hand, you also have Rani Mukerji who plays a journalist and helps Sabrina in every way possible. Give this one a watch.

2013: 'English Vinglish'

Eros

Some stories are just too beautiful, 'English Vinglish' falls on the list of that one. Directed by Gauri Shinde, this is an ordinary story of a housewife Shashi Godbole played by the iconic Sridevi. The story flawlessly shows how the woman who makes your house a home, is an exceptional mother, and also how a wife is looked down by her husband and kids, just because she can't speak English fluently. She is hurt like any human would be. Tables turn during her trip to the US, where she learns the language and despite overcoming her shortcomings and proving her family wrong, she still remains a wonderful homemaker like always. An impressive tale, that simply touches your heart.

2014: 'Queen'

Viacom18 Motion Pictures

Some stories give you the much required feel-good factor and Kangana Ranaut's 'Queen' totally falls into that category. The movie brings you a beautiful story of Rani who decides to take a honeymoon alone when her fiance, played by Rajkummar Rao, decides to call off the wedding. When she travels the world, she comes across different people and learns new things about life. She comes back as a changed person all set to start her life on her own terms.

2014: 'Mary Kom'

Viacom18 Motion Pictures

'Mary Kom' is an inspiring story of Indian boxer M.C. Mary Kom who won India great awards internationally. Played by Priyanka Chopra, the story brilliantly takes us through Kom's life. What makes this film special is all the hardships she went through to make it big in her career. The understanding shown between Kom's husband and her is what many need today. We also get to see how she makes a smashing comeback after her marriage and having babies.

2014: 'Mardaani'

Yash Raj Films

This is indeed one hell of a film to watch. The story of 'Mardaani' revolves around Shivani Roy a female cop donned by Rani Mukerji, who is all set to take down goons no matter what. She gets a new case where she has to fight the organisation involved in child trafficking and drugs. The performance by Rani is worthy of all the applause and praise.

2016: 'Neerja'

Fox India

This is the inspiring story of flight purser Neerja Bhanot who was shot by the terrorists and killed while she was trying to save lives of hundreds of passengers when Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked. Played by Sonam Kapoor, this is one of her best performances till the date.

2016: 'Pink'

RSE

Well, many find it kind of difficult to understand the meaning of 'No' and that's what the movie 'Pink' is all about. The movie clearly states not to judge a woman based on her lifestyle and a man cannot force a woman against her will. Amitabh Bachchan dons the advocate hat that fights for the girls in a legal battle against boys who comes from rich influential families.

2017: 'Lipstick Under My Burkha'

Prakash Jha Production

This film is an honest portrayal of our not-so-sanskari society. Alankrita Shrivastava's movie is about lives of four women living in Bhopal who have their own simple problems. The film openly talks about a woman's sexual desire and believe us, it's not a woman-oriented film. But something that even the sensible men in our society would relate with. An amazing watch indeed!

2017: 'Tumhari Sulu'

T-Series

This one is such a feel-good film that Vidya Balan will literally charm your boots off and will make you fall in love with Sulu. Director Suresh Triveni's 'Tumhari Sulu' is the story of a middle-class family which is so heart-warming that from the first frame to the last, you are totally invested in the story. The film tells the tale of Sulochana Dubey (Vidya Balan) aka Sulu who is a housewife and lives with her husband Ashok (Manav Kaul) and son Pranav. You often see her coming up with silly plans to do something or the other. One day out of the blue, she lands the role of a late-night radio jockey. Her sexy voice and her unique perspective in dealing with people's problems make it an adventurous ride until reality catches up with her. What makes 'Tumhari Sulu' so impactful is that it makes you celebrate small things in life. It teaches you the importance of accepting each other's idiosyncrasies wholeheartedly. A movie that you just can't miss.
Short clothes do not cause rape. That's not a question, there are no buts, it's not up for speculation. There doesn't need to be a debate over it. It's a full and complete statement, and a simple one at that, but as we have seen over the years, there are still people out there who don't believe it.

When people say things like 'oh, look at what she's wearing' and 'she's asking for it', it basically just promotes rape culture. And, the only person at fault in that situation is the one saying it and not that girl in a short skirt.

It's just victim blaming and I don't think I have to even explain how wrong that is. Okay, let's take into consideration that someone got molested or harassed because of their clothes. Does that apply to kids who get raped? Does that apply to the 8-month-old baby that got raped? No, right? Oh, it's almost as if clothes don't matter. See, we've come full circle.

 Twitter

I would also like to say one last thing  when people immediately blame the clothes of someone who got raped, they are also basically saying men can't control themselves at all, especially when they see skin. And, that's not right as well. No one wins in this situation  it's women's fault for dressing provocatively and it's the men who are so senseless that they have no control over what they're doing. It's 2018 and you would've thought that by now people would hold the person responsible accountable and treat the victim as the victim, but no, doing the right thing would be too much for people, right? We can't function like this.

Protesting all these stupid reasons and the people who defend the culprit by making senseless statements against the victims, male members of Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) marched wearing shorts in the streets of the capital to take a stand and make a statement.

 Twitter

The 'Rape Roko' campaign was launched by DCW after the horrific incident where an 8-month-old baby was brutally raped in January. In an attempt to raise awareness and change the mentality of people who blame the victim, volunteers marched from Mandi House to Central Park carrying boards and placards with slogans like Her clothes are not short, your mentality is and What clothes was the eight-month-old baby wearing?

'Real men don't rape', 'Its not her short skirt, it's ur sick mentality' ~ Boys & men of Delhi walk in Boxers 2 challenge mindsets which tend 2 blame and shame the rape survivor!



Join the #RapeRoko movement. Raise your voice against child rape at Centre Park, CP 8 March 9:30 am pic.twitter.com/HVMBGvMDgU  Swati Jai Hind (@SwatiJaiHind) March 6, 2018

Abhishek, a student of Delhi University, said, I am walking half-naked but society allows me to. If a girl walks in a sleeveless top, men letch at her. This is not right.

 Twitter

Another powerful placard read 'I feel safe in these Boxers. How much fabric does she need to feel safe?'

A lot of young boys came out in support and take part in #BoxerRally under the #RapeRokoMovement by the women's panel.

In a letter to DCW chief Swati Jaihind, the IMA had said: We strongly support the people's movement 'Rape Roko' launched by DCW chief to demand a robust criminal justice system which ensures cases of sexual crimes against women and children are tried by fast-track courts within six months and rapists of children are essentially accorded death penalty as a strong deterrent for others against such crimes.

 Twitter

Hopefully, this helps in bringing about the change that this country desperately needs.
Everyone in the Indian Air Force is already a hero in every sense, but for 488 people stranded in the snow in Jammu, the Air Force became a personal saviour as well.

The IAF serves and protects the country and some people got to experience that first-hand. A public relations officer (Defence) said that IAF was able to successfully rescue about 488 civilians stranded in the recent snow and cold waves in the Jammu region by air lifting them from Udhampur to Leh.

 Wikipedia

According to him, a lot of people were left stranded in the Jammu and Udhampur regions due to the recent snow in the entire northern areas of Jammu and Kashmir.

Putting the special aircraft IL-76, popularly known as Gajraj, to the best use, IAF airlifted all the people as requested by the Jammu and Kashmir government.

The PRO said, The Indian Air Force once again came to the rescue of the stranded civilians of Jammu and Kashmir state by air lifting 239 passengers on March 6, 2018 and 249 passengers on March 7, 2018 from Udhampur to Leh.

 Twitter

He added, Special arrangements were made by Air Force Station Udhampur and District Administration Udhampur for Security and Marshalling of civilians, which included women and children as well, into the technical area of the Air Force.

And, this was not even the first time, obviously. Adding this, IAF has rescued 955 stranded passengers by airlifting them from Udhampur and taking them to Leh.

Well, we salute them for saving all these people.
With Xiaomi closing in on Samsung in the budget smartphone segment and overall smartphone market, the South Korean giant is looking for ways to maintain its top position in the country. Samsung said it will be adopting multi-dimensional strategies amid intense competition in the mobile phone market.

You can expect multiple devices being launched over the year across price segments that we operate in. These smartphones will be available across online and offline channels from time to time, Asim Warsi, Global Vice President, Samsung India told IANS.

 MensXP

The decision comes on the backdrop of recent market reports saying Xiaomi had toppled Samsung to become India's number one smartphone vendor in Q4 2017.

The giant launched its flagship Galaxy S9 and S9+ devices to India on Tuesday that have several "Make for India" features such as "LTE Carrier Aggregation" to let users stream data 2.5 times faster and company's own loyalty programme called "Samsung Rewards". Samsung has partnered with telecom service providers Reliance Jio and Airtel for "LTE Carrier Aggregation" where spectrum across different bands merge into one single pipe, thus, giving users higher bandwidth, faster streaming, and downloads.

 MensXP

"We will continuously invest and expand our reach not just on the channels' part but also on expanding the after-sales service network," Warsi added.

As per IDC, for the year 2017, Samsung dominated the overall Indian smartphone market with a 24.7 percent share. And those numbers make sense given the Korean-firm has the largest retail network in India with over 150,000 touch points.

Samsung is also ambitious about the 'Make in India' programme, it plans to start export of India-made smartphones to Europe, Middle-East and Africa very soon. The company is more than doubling its production capacity to 12 million devices per month against nearly 5 million at present. The company is already producing the entire range of its devices locally (Noida), including entry-level feature phones and top-notch ones like Galaxy S9 devices.
LANSING  Health experts at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services are warning Michiganders about the potential for baby poultry to carry salmonella.

A common bacteria found in the droppings of poultry, salmonella usually doesnt make the birds sick, but can cause illness in people.

Washing your hands thoroughly before and after handling chicks and other poultry protects both you and your family from the risk of Salmonella, and also helps keep the birds healthy, said MDHHS Chief Medical Executive Dr. Eden Wells. Even handling baby birds displayed in stores can result in a Salmonella infection.

In 2017, there were 10 nationwide outbreaks of Salmonella illness linked to contact with live poultry, causing illness in 1,120 people in 48 states, including Michigan. This was the largest number of illnesses linked to contact with backyard poultry to date. Michigan reported 35 cases, nearly half involving children.

Raising backyard birds has grown in popularity over the last several years. However, certain groups have a greater chance of illness from handling live poultry or contact with areas where the birds live. Children younger than 5 years old, older adults or people with weak immune systems should not handle or touch live poultry because they are more likely to become severely ill.

Salmonella can cause diarrhea, vomiting, fever and/or abdominal cramps lasting four to seven days or more. Salmonella infections can be especially serious for the very young, the very old and those with weak immune systems.

Although baby poultry have special requirements for warmth and protection, they should never be housed indoors, particularly in areas where food or drink are prepared.

Follow these simple steps to help protect your family and others:

 Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water after touching birds or anything in their environment. Adults should supervise hand washing for young children.

 Use hand sanitizer after touching birds or their environment until you can wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water.

 Do not kiss or snuggle birds, touch your mouth or eat or drink around live poultry.

 Do not bring live baby poultry into schools, childcare centers or nursing homes.

 Do not keep live poultry inside the house where people live, eat or sleep.

 Keep live poultry away from areas where food or drink is prepared, served or stored, such as kitchens or outdoor patios.

 Clean any equipment associated with raising or caring for poultry outdoors

 Set aside a pair of shoes to wear while caring for poultry and keep those shoes outside the home.
Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson have agreed to end their bitter custody battle over their two sons, a lawyer for the actress said Tuesday.

Lee's lawyer, Lance Spiegel, did not immediately return calls for comment.

Suzanne Harris, Anderson's attorney, said the couple signed an agreement and submitted it to the court, where it is expected to be signed by Superior Court Judge Lee Smalley Edmon.

"(The filing) contains everything you could possibly think of about how to raise the children and where they will live," Harris said.

Harris said Anderson, 35, now has the option of moving Brandon, 6, and Dylan, 4, to Michigan, the home state of her fiance, rap-rocker Kid Rock.

Anderson, best known for her roles on television's "Baywatch" and "V.I.P.," and Lee, the 40-year-old former Motley Crue drummer, were married in 1995 and divorced in 1998.

As part of their divorce, the pair agreed to share custody of the children, but the actress filed a petition in 2001 seeking full custody of their sons. She claimed Lee was a poor role model and a "very angry, unstable man who presents a danger to others, particularly when he is using alcohol."

Lee filed a court declaration saying he's been sober for two years and poses no danger to his sons.
CARO  A middle school student was charged this week for making an alleged threat against a school district, and a high school student has been detained for a similar incident.

An eighth grade student at Caro Middle School was charged with one count of terrorism by Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark Reene, following an investigation on Monday.

The investigation started around 6 p.m., when Caro High School Assistant Principal Matt Branding got a text message from the mother of a student whose daughter was worried a fellow student threatened to bring a gun to school to shoot others, according to a press release from Superintendent Bob Smith.

"Accordingly, Mr. Branding contacted the police, who then interviewed concerned students, and the suspect," Smith said. "The Caro Police Department did a fantastic job and finally completed their work after midnight."

"The student making the threats will not be allowed on school property and will face appropriate and significant discipline," he added.

The youth who followed the "See Something, Say Something" policy possibly diverted a dangerous situation. The "OK-2Say" is an option for people to provide information anonymously.

"Young people are cherished treasures in our school district, and we will always take immediate and decisive action to protect their safety at the slightest hint of trouble," said Smith. "I am so proud of the students that shared their concerns, and of the administrative team that worked together quickly to investigate and erase any potential threat."

From the investigation, the student was taken into juvenile custody, and six long guns were removed from his home.

This student is being charged as a juvenile. The charge is terrorism, which carries a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Reene takes a hard line on terrorist threats because nowadays, anything is possible.

"Our schools will respond immediately and aggressively to the smallest threat," Reene said. "We live in a dangerous world, but we're going to continue to dedicate ourselves to the belief and reality that children need to be safe at home and at school."

Officials also confirmed on Wednesday another Caro student has been detained and is facing the possibility of a terrorist charge.

On Tuesday, a female high school student allegedly made a terrorist threat, and she is expected to face legal action as well.

"Based on information from students and further investigation by law enforcement, she was arrested and placed into detention to await a trial on the 20-year federal terrorism charge," said Smith. "She doesn't own or have access to weapons and I pray that it was a terrible decision."

"There are at least four teenagers detained in Tuscola County facilities facing the possibility of 20-year prison sentences for violating the Federal Terrorism Act," he added.

Smith's notice stated four teens are being detained in Tuscola County.

The first is the eighth grader from Caro, who allegedly made a threat against the school on Monday. The second, is the Caro high schooler who allegedly made a threat against the school on Tuesday. The third is Dalton Powell, 17, of Gagetown, who made a threat on Jan. 15 against Cass City Schools. He is being charged as an adult.

As of deadline Wednesday, the Huron Daily Tribune could not confirm any details with law enforcement regarding the fourth teen that Smith's statement said is being detained.

The Huron Daily Tribune does not publish the names of juveniles accused of crimes unless they are charged as adults.

Smith is encouraging all parents to have a serious conversation with their children regarding the danger of making threats in a public school.
PLANTSVILLE  Cat Tales presents the Annual Cats In The Castle, a fundraising event benefiting homeless cats and kittens, will be held Saturday, April 14, 6-10 p.m. at the Aqua Turf Club, Plantsville.

Tickets are $75 per person, $700 for a table of 10, and include appetizers, dinner, beer amd wine, desserts, silent Auctions and raffles.

For information and reservations, call 860-344-9043 or email events@CatTalesCT.org; or visit www.CatTalesCT.org/CITC

See the Cat Tales video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1-1zXrEOB4 

All funds raised go directly to homeless cats and kittens under the care of Cat Tales Non-Profit Rescue in Middletown. Guests must be 21 years or older to attend. 

Museum seeks board members

EAST HAMPTON  The Joseph N. Goff House Museum invites members of the community to serve as board members. The Museum, located on the first floor of the building at 2 Barton Hill Road in the historic Village Center of East Hampton, stands as proud testament to the communitys cultural, civic, and architectural heritage. Additional board members are needed to help plan cultural and enrichment programs aimed at adding quality and depth to community life.

The facility houses artifacts and memorabilia of Connecticuts 84th Governor and East Hampton native son, William A. ONeill. Planned events for the summer include a gazebo concert series in the village center and exhibits in the museum space, which is also available to rent for small events. Board meetings are held the second Wednesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. For information on becoming a board member, call Dean Markham at 860-918-4400.

Kenny scholarship applications available

NEW BRITAIN  The Robert T. Kenney Scholarship Program at the American Savings Foundation is currently accepting applications from current high school seniors, current college students, and nontraditional adult students enrolled in college for the 2018-19 academic year. Applications are due by March 31.

Applicants must live in one of the 64 Connecticut towns served by American Savings Foundation. Current high school seniors must be ranked in the top 1/3 of their graduating class or have a 2.5 GPA or higher. Current college students must be maintaining a 2.5 GPA or higher. The foundation accepts scholarship applications from residents of any of the following 64 Connecticut towns: Andover, Ashford, Avon, Barkhamsted, Beacon Falls, Berlin, Bethlehem, Bloomfield, Bolton, Bristol, Burlington, Canton, Chaplin, Chester, Clinton, Colebrook, Columbia, Coventry, Cromwell, Deep River, Durham, East Granby, East Hampton, East Hartford, Essex, Farmington, Glastonbury, Granby, Haddam, Hebron, Killingworth, Madison, Manchester, Mansfield, Marlborough, Meriden, Middlebury, Middletown, Naugatuck, New Britain, Newington, Old Saybrook, Oxford, Plainville, Portland, Prospect, Rocky Hill, Seymour, Simsbury, Southbury, Southington, Thomaston, Tolland, Torrington, Waterbury, Watertown, West Hartford, Westbrook, Wethersfield, Willington, Winchester, Windham, Wolcott, and Woodbury.

For more information and to apply, students and parents can visit www.asfdn.org or call the foundation at 860-827-2556.

Arts and culture commission offering grants

EAST HAMPTON  The East Hampton Arts & Culture Commission welcomes grant applications from East Hampton organizations and individuals with programs and/or projects that enrich the lives of East Hampton residents through the arts.

One of two $500 grants are available to be awarded to individuals or organizations residing in East Hampton. The commission reserves the right to award a grant to an individual or organization it determines will have the most potential impact of arts and/or culture on the town. Incomplete forms will be denied; applicants can resubmit.

Criteria for awarding grants includes the artistic and organizational quality of the organization and/or project and its likelihood of continuing viability or success, and the organizations or projects accessibility and service to the East Hampton community. Grant recipients must credit the East Hampton Arts and Culture Commission on all press releases, posters, print advertising and programs.

An interview with the candidate may be requested prior to awarding the grant. A progress update progress will be required six months post-award date and a final report will be required one year post award date.

Visit https://www.artsforeasthamptonct.org/grant for information and grant application forms. Copies also available at the managers office in the town hall and the East Hampton Public Library and Middle Haddam Library.

Spring art classes, programs available

EAST HAMPTON Epoch Arts for a wide variety of artistic classes and programs for pre-K through high school. Students can sign up for classes such as art and printmaking, 3-d modeling, improv, drawing club, film as well as new adult classes including film making and mixed media art, and two workshops in jewelry and selling your art. Full class descriptions can be found at epocharts.org.

A Summer schedule is also available online as well as events including the upcoming Mad Hatter Tea Party and Daddy Daughter Dance. To register and see all descriptions, go to at www.epocharts.org or call 860-365-0337. Classes are held at 27 Skinner Street, East Hampton and begin March 13, run for 8 weeks and end with a special share day.

Library to hold painting class

DEEP RIVER  A painting class will be held at the Deep River Library on Saturday, March 24, from 2-4 p.m. Under the guidance of local artist, Carlos Ayala, participants will learn to paint a winter wood scene. Ayala will provide all materials and instruction, but participants must pay a materials fee of $20 per person at the door.

Registration is required for this program and will be done through Sign-Up Genius, which can be accessed at deepriverlibrary.accountsupport.com or https://www.facebook.com.Places.Deep River, Connecticut.Library. Seating is limited to 20 participants. Children over 12 are welcome. For more information, call the library at 860-526-6039.
An Afghan A-29B Super Tucano attached to the Air Force's training program crashed last year due to a sudden malfunction in the engine's propulsion system, but the service remains puzzled over how best to characterize the abrupt mishap, according to a recent investigation report.

Simulating a "close-air attack" roughly 35 miles from Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, an Afghan student pilot and an American instructor pilot assigned to the 81st Fighter Squadron were flying in a two-aircraft formation on March 6, 2017, when the pilots noticed a significant reduction in propeller speed, the Air Education and Training Command investigation board report said.

The report, released Wednesday, noted the engine retained "some degree of thrust, but was incapable of sustaining level flight."

Earlier in the flight, the instructor pilot, sitting in the back seat, noticed a "fault" in the system, but continued the flight for the aircraft, call sign "Bronco 92," the report said.

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About an hour later, as the student pilot began practicing the second sequence of close-air attack maneuvers, the power management system malfunctioned, and the instructor pilot immediately initiated "Compressor Stall" checklist protocols.

"Alright, looks like we got a compressor stall or something," the instructor pilot said over the radio transmission while talking with wingman Bronco 91.

The instructor pilot cycled the power management system between auto and manual a few times before placing it in manual for the rest of the flight.

This decision did not have any apparent effect on aircraft performance, the investigation found.

In the three minutes the instructor pilot attempted the switch and "continued to balance throttle inputs with engine limits seeking maximum performance from the aircraft," the plane still didn't completely recover.

Bronco 91 called in the emergency for Bronco 92 to enter nearby Homerville Airport's airspace. The instructor pilot diverted toward Homerville in an attempt for a straight-in landing nearby.

While the instructor pilot's intent was fly straight to Homerville, "cockpit visibility restrictions from the back seat caused him to initially fly a northeasterly heading as he visually acquired Homerville in the right-hand side of his canopy," the finding said.

The report, authored by Accident Investigation Board president Col. Michael Snell, stated that this created an unnecessary delay.

"The initial heading flown to allow the [mishap instructor pilot] to visually acquire Homerville and the ensuing task saturation resulted in a longer ground track than intended," Snell wrote in his conclusion.

Both the instructor pilot and the student pilot ended up ejecting from the aircraft 300 feet from the ground a mile and half from the airport. Bronco 92 went down 5 minutes and 26 seconds after the propulsion system malfunctioned.

The instructor pilot sustained minor injuries. The loss of aircraft and subsequent damage to the property was estimated at $17.7 million, the Air Force said.

The service trains Afghan pilots on the attack plane at Moody. The training program, which began in 2015, will ultimately train 30 pilots and 90 maintainers through 2018 at the base, according to the Air Force. The Afghans have been using A-29s for close-air attack, air interdiction, escort and armed reconnaissance.

The report comes as the Air Force is planning its second round of flight tests for its "light attack" experiment, which will feature the Sierra Nevada/Embraer A-29 and Textron Aviation's AT-6 Wolverine.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are laid to rest, will soon have to close to new burials unless eligibility rules are restricted or the grounds are expanded, Army officials said Thursday.

"We are filling up every single day" at the 154-year-old historic site across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., said Karen Durham-Aguilera, executive director of Army National Military Cemeteries.

"Within the next few years, Section 60, known for the recent wars, will be closed. This is on our mind every day," Durham-Aguilera told a hearing of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel.

Section 60 would be the first to close to new burials; projections are that the entire cemetery will have to close to above and below ground interments in the 2040s, said Katharine Kelley, the cemetery's superintendent.

Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump have all stopped at the 14-acre Section 60 on national holidays to honor those who most recently made the ultimate sacrifice.

Last May, Trump stopped at the grave of Marine 1st Lt. Robert Kelly, son of White House Chief of Staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly. Robert Kelly was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.

"Without changes to the eligibility requirements and the physical footprint, Arlington National Cemetery will not be a burial option for most who served in the Gulf War or any conflict since, regardless of the contributions, achievements or valor," Durham-Aguilera said.

Each week, she said, about 150 burials take place at Arlington. Last year, there were more than 7,100.

"We can't serve the full population [that] is eligible today" for burial at Arlington, Kelley said, and the possibilities for expanding the cemetery's grounds are severely limited.

Currently, most honorably discharged veterans may request Arlington as their final resting place, but the eligibility rules are lengthy. (The list of rules can be found here.)

Veterans groups are generally opposed to eligibility restrictions to extend the active life of Arlington that would limit burials to those killed in the line of duty; recipients of the Medal of Honor and other high awards; and prisoners of war.

"We should save a select number of spaces for those individuals, but not change the eligibility rules at the exclusion of those serving today," retired Col. Keith Zuegel, a senior director at the Air Force Association, told the committee.

Forrest Allen, associate director of government relations at the Military Officers Association of America, said current eligibility rules should be maintained while options for expanding the grounds are explored.

"It is important to respect end-of-life plans for currently eligible veterans and take reasonable steps to extend the cemetery for future service members," Allen said.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., chairman of the subcommittee on military personnel, said that more than 400,000 veterans have been interred at Arlington since the Civil War, but "unfortunately, the cemetery is rapidly running out of space. If nothing is done, in a matter of 23 short years, the cemetery will be closed for new burials.

"If we're going to keep Arlington there for generations to come," he said, "we're going to have to make some tough decisions."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
Embattled VA Secretary Dr. David Shulkin has announced a top-to-bottom management overhaul of the agency, beginning with the ouster of three regional directors in charge of hospitals and clinics in 12 states serving three million vets.

The announcement Wednesday followed a second damning report from the VA Inspector General's office charging that widespread "leadership failures" at the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center "put patients at risk."

"We can do better and we have to do better" throughout the entire VA health care system of 170 hospitals and more than 1,100 clinics, Shulkin said at a news conference. "It is time for this organization to do business differently."

He was already under fire from a previous IG's report charging that he improperly billed the government for travel expenses on a trip to Europe last summer. Shulkin said he has written a check to reimburse the government for his wife's $4,132 airfare.

The White House thus far has backed him in public, but Shulkin, the only holdover from the Obama administration in the Cabinet, has claimed that White House and VA political appointees are seeking to undermine him.

"Look, Secretary Shulkin has done a great job," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday at a press briefing. She said President Donald Trump directed Shulkin to take an "aggressive approach" in reforming the VA, "and he's done that since becoming secretary."

At his news conference, Shulkin said he last spoke to Trump on Tuesday and had received assurances that the political infighting would cease.

The sniping from inside and outside the VA has been "an unfortunate distraction. Those days are over. We are all now focused on the work that has to be [done] here that's important for us to do," he said.

The message from the White House, Shulkin said, is that "I am the secretary and my job is to fix this system [for] veterans, and things that are not productive are not tolerated."

In earlier statements Wednesday, Shulkin said that he valued the IG's report on the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center while noting that the failures listed had mostly been addressed.

He pointed to the IG's conclusion that no patients had died or suffered harm despite the widespread supply deficiencies, including doctors being forced to use defective equipment for medical procedures.

At the later news conference, Shulkin said the IG's report would be used as a guideline for correcting systemic failures throughout the VA's health care system.

In a statement, the VA said Shulkin "has pledged to immediately take action and implement several proactive steps to help correct and prevent similar problems" at other VA facilities.

Shulkin is bringing in teams of outside health care management experts "to begin making unannounced on-site audits at VA facilities," the department said.

The outside auditors will also "conduct VA-wide staffing reviews, restructure logistics to decentralize accountability, and establish new control and oversight for medical center performance," including at VA headquarters, the VA said.

In addition, Shulkin said replacements will be announced in the coming weeks for the regional VA directors for the New England states; Arizona, New Mexico and southern California; and West Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C..

Michael Mayo-Smith, who was in charge in New England, and Marie Weldon, the regional director for Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, are retiring. Joseph Williams, who had charge of VA facilities in West Virginia, Maryland and Washington, is being reassigned to another post to be named later, the VA said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
The commander of U.S. Forces in Europe had to defend his strategy Thursday amid congressional concerns over a new study that paints a "bleak" picture of Russian ground units overwhelming NATO forces on the continent.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, said he is worried about a March 7 Rand Corp. report claiming that superior numbers of Russian troops and tanks on Europe's eastern flank could reach the capitals of Estonia and Latvia in 60 hours.

"The Rand report paints a pretty bleak picture and warns that NATO could be overwhelmed by superior Russian firepower in a war in Eastern Europe," Inhofe said, asking Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of United States European Command, if he agreed with that statement.

Scaparrotti disagreed, pointing to the buildup of forces under the European Deterrence Initiative.

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The Pentagon has deployed rotational forces in Europe, including an Army armored brigade combat team and a combat aviation brigade. It has also "implemented a framework battalion task force for NATO's presence in Poland," Scaparrotti said.

Also under the EDI, the Pentagon plans to beef up its prepositioned stocks in Europe so combat units will have modernized brigade sets of equipment, Lt. Gen. John Murray, deputy chief of staff for Army G8, said in a speech Tuesday.

"Our plan now is to fill out not one but two ABCTs of what we call prepositioned stocks in Europe with the most modern M1 tanks, Bradleys, AMPVs and JLTVs," Murray said.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., also questioned Scaparrotti about the Rand report.

"There are plausible scenarios where the United States could lose a war with Russia," said Wicker, who wanted to know where the report is "missing the mark" and "where you think they are accurate."

Scaparrotti said he didn't have "any argument from the basis of the report and the threat we have, particularly in the eastern borders, which is what [the report] is focused on."

"With respect to the Rand report, we have worked with Rand on this. In fact, it was 2014 or 2015 when the base report was done," he said.

"That report was also a basis from which we developed our war planning in EUCOM and, since 2014, we have come a good ways both in planning and with the posture of our forces there," Scaparrotti said.

"We have re-postured forces since the Rand study was done ... and we would fight this differently than Rand fought it," he added.

Scaparrotti did concede that there are "elements of the report that are still true today."

"I don't have all the forces I need in Europe today, and we have got to continue to invest and establish the posture that is required," he said.

Scaparrotti added, "It's difficult to give you the number of troops," but the proposed $2 billion increase to EDI in the fiscal 2019 budget would allow for the rotation of "additional forces, particularly enablers that I need."

Wicker wanted to know what EUCOM learned from the Russian military exercises known as "Zepad," conducted in late 2017.

"I was not shocked by anything I saw," Scaparrotti said. "For the most part, what Zepad did is reinforce what we believed was their direction in terms of their doctrine, their training, their modernization. They focused on command and control, from strategic to tactical, and we saw that throughout the exercise.

"They focused on both conventional and nuclear, which we expected; they focused on both offense and defensive operations; and they incorporated what I would call 'a whole-of-society approach;' they mobilized their people in some aspect," he said.

Scaparrotti added, "It helps us posture our force and train our force and also the development of our plans, obviously, so we take that very seriously. We watch it very closely, and we had a focused effort to do so."

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@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 Marine Corps marked a major change earlier this week when it opened its combat training course on the West Coast to women for the first time.

But the commandant said Thursday that the service's West Coast recruit depot will stay all-male, adding the Corps doesn't currently need another boot camp that trains women.

Gen. Robert Neller told Military.com that cost and efficiencies were major drivers of the decision to open Marine Combat Training-West at Camp Pendleton, California, to women. MCT is the first stop after boot camp for enlisted Marines who are not training in an infantry specialty.

"We recruit women from all across the country, from both east and west of the Mississippi," Neller said, following remarks at a National Defense Industrial Association event near Washington, D.C.

"And we thought it would be more cost-effective if they went to MCT after they went home on recruit leave, to go to SOI on the West Coast," he said. "Maybe their families would be closer and they could see them graduate from MCT if they couldn't get up to Parris Island."

Neller added that one of the biggest West Coast training schools for Marines is the communications-electronics school at Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center 29 Palms, California. For women entering one of these fields, it's more convenient to move from MCT at Pendleton to 29 Palms than it is to travel back from MCT-East at Camp Geiger, North Carolina.

The commandant acknowledged that "cohesion reasons" also prompted the Corps to start training men and women together at MCT.

But as to opening Marine Recruit Depot San Diego to women, Neller said the need is not there.

The Marine Corps is the only service that still keeps separate entry-level training units for men and women. All female recruits pass through 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Parris Island, South Carolina.

San Diego does have a "cadre" of female staff, including drill instructors and skills instructors, Neller noted. But he said demand for more training capacity for female recruits hasn't yet materialized.

"So we've got women, we're still trying to get to 10 percent," he said. "And until we do, Parris Island has enough capacity. Right now, for us to move a comparable operation out to the West Coast, we don't have enough depth yet."

Neller said in 2016 that he wanted to grow the proportion of female troops in the Marine Corps to 1 in 10; currently, around 8 percent of the force is female.

Not everyone buys the argument, though, that demand doesn't justify another integrated boot camp. Marine Corps Times reported this week that the Corps recruited 3,355 women last fiscal year. With just one recruit training battalion available to train female recruits, the outlet reported that annual capacity for recruit training maxes out at just 3,500.

Kate Germano, a retired lieutenant colonel who formerly commanded 4th Recruit Training Battalion and has vigorously advocated for fully integrating entry level training, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the Marine Corps could raise recruiting caps if there were more spots available to train women.

"It hasn't happened already because they don't want it to happen," she told the outlet.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Google's artificial intelligence technologies are being used by the U.S. military for one of its drone projects, causing a stir both inside and outside the company.

The pilot project with the Defense Department's Project Maven, an effort to identify objects in drone footage, has apparently been discussed within the company over the last week when information about it was shared on an internal mailing list, according to Gizmodo.

Sources told the tech news site that employees at Google were outraged the company would offer its expertise to the military for surveillance technology. Some critics said the project raised broader ethical questions about artificial intelligence and its usage.

Last fall, former Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt addressed the tech industry's concerns about collaborating with the Pentagon during a keynote talk at the Center for a New American Security.

"There's a general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly," Schmidt said. While Google says its involvement in Project Maven is not related to combat uses, the issue has still sparked concern among employees, sources told Gizmodo.

Project Maven, also known as the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT), was established in April 2017. In total, the Defense Department spent $7.4 billion on artificial intelligence-related areas in 2017, The Wall Street Journal reports.

"As numerous studies have made clear, the department of defense must integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning more effectively across operations to maintain advantages over increasingly capable adversaries and competitors," former Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work wrote in a memo, according to a Pentagon press release.

The project's first assignment was to help the Pentagon efficiently process the deluge of video footage collected daily by its aerial drones. The amount of footage was so vast that human analysts can't keep up, according to Greg Allen, an adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who co-authored a lengthy July 2017 report on the military's use of artificial intelligence.

The press release claims that Maven's first focus was to detect "38 classes of objects that represent the kinds of things the department needs to detect, especially in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria." The program now provides the military the ability to track people as they come and go from various locations, Gizmodo added.

Google has a mixed history with defense contracts. When it purchased robotics firm Shaft, it pulled the company's systems from a Pentagon competition. When it owned robotics firm Boston Dynamics, the company was attempting to make a robotic horse for ground troops, which was ultimately rejected by the U.S. Marines.

A spokesperson for the Defense Department declined to tell Gizmodo whether Google was its only private industry partner on Project Maven or to clarify Google's role in the project.

"Similar to other DOD programs, Project Maven does not comment on the specifics of contract details, including the names and identities of program contractors and subcontractors," the spokesperson said.

Christopher Carbone is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @christocarbone.
When the kids are out of school for the summer, theyre ready for fun. They want to hang out with their peers and experience cool adventures. That's what summer camp was made for.

It may not feel like summer right now, but nows the time to start thinking about registering your kids for summer camp. Thankfully, there are camps that are free or available at a reduced price just for military kids.

ASYMCA

The Armed Services YMCA or ASYMCA offers junior enlisted families the chance to participate in family, youth, and teen camps year-round at our branches and affiliate locations. ASYMCA camps and retreats provide much needed recreational and bonding opportunities for military children and families who have experienced multiple deployments. These programs are free or offered at low-cost. Camps and other programs vary by location, so check with your local ASYMCA for more details.

Camp Corral

Camp Corral is a free one-week camp for military kids aged 8 to 15. Although it is open to all military children, priority is given to children of wounded, disabled or fallen service members. The week is filled with fun outdoor activities like canoeing, swimming, fishing, arts and crafts, ropes course challenge, archery, and horseback riding. The week also encourages campers to create friendships and bond with other kids who share similar family situations.

Military Teen Adventure Camp

Teen Adventure Camps are for military teens aged 14 to 18, and they take place throughout the country at little to no cost. They include fun outdoor activities whitewater rafting, hiking, rock climbing, winter camping, backpacking, mountain biking.

Operation Purple Camp

Thanks to the National Military Family Association, Operation Purple Camp supports military children by offering a free week of camp. These camps help military kids learn coping skills and connect them with other kids going through the same things. The camps are open to all military children of all ranks and services.

Your Local Military Installation

Dont forget about the youth programs offered at your local military installations. Many bases have summer camps for kids, as well as camps throughout the year during times like Spring Break when kids are out of school. Visit our Base Guide to contact your nearest installation for more information.

Stay Up-to-Date With Military Discounts

Want the scoop on military discounts? From travel to phones and everything in between, troops, military families and veterans can stay on top of military discounts. Become a Military.com subscriber and get full access through our newsletter.
As members of Congress, oversight committees and auditors have predicted, the Air Force's newest tanker will be late.

The KC-46 Pegasus won't hit base flightlines until the latter part of 2018, the service confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

"The Air Force and Boeing will continue to execute the program to Boeing's schedule," Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Emily Grabowski said in an email. "However, the Air Force assesses first aircraft delivery is more likely to occur in late calendar year 2018."

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"This assessment is based on known risks and predicted impacts associated with airworthiness certifications and slower than expected flight test execution," Grabowski continued. "The Air Force will continue to work with Boeing to develop schedule mitigations, where appropriate, to expedite the program."

She added, "These potential delays will not result in additional program cost to the taxpayer."

Last March, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, issued a report saying the air refueling tanker would likely face more delays due to additional testing needed from Boeing Co., the aircraft's manufacturer. The plane at the time was already 14 months behind schedule.

"GAO's analysis shows there is risk to the current delivery schedule due to potential delays in Federal Aviation Administration certifications and key test events," the report said.

"Boeing must also complete over 1,700 test points on average for each month from February to September 2017, a level that is more than double what it completed in the last 11 months," it said.

Boeing was supposed to deliver the initial 18 aerial refueling planes by August 2017. With ongoing snafus throughout the program since its start in 2013, such as initial design problems in its refueling boom, Boeing and Air Force officials said the first delivery would be in February 2018 at the earliest.

In its report, GAO said the first delivery is more likely to come in October 2018, if that.

A silver lining may be that the program's total acquisition cost estimate has "decreased about $7.3 billion, or 14 percent, since the initial estimate," the 2017 report said, even though the program has suffered cost overruns -- all at Boeing's expense.

The Air Force awarded Boeing a fixed-price $4.9 billion contract in 2011. The company is responsible for any cost overruns.

In its fiscal 2019 budget request, the Air Force said it wants to purchase 15 more KC-46 refueling tankers, on par with last year's request. Boeing plans to build 179 tankers total for the service.

The Air Force hopes to retire part of its legacy aerial refueling fleet, such as the 60-plus-year-old KC-135 Stratotanker, and grow with the new Boeing-made fleet to meet its 479-tanker requirement.

The Pegasus is expected to replace some current tanker fleets at bases such as Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, and Travis Air Force Base, California.

But without a solid timeline for when the first KC-46 may be delivered, the Pegasus won't even begin to join the Air Force's fleet until at least 2019.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
It was the Big One. The Great War. The War to End All Wars.

The slaughter on both sides was so horrendous that no rational person could conceive of another such conflict. Just to make sure, they even negotiated a treaty to outlaw war forever: the now infamous Kellogg-Briand Pact signed of 1928, which was intended to renounce war, with all disputes peacefully settled in the future.

Tragically, twenty years after the end of the first Great War, the world was back at it on a scale that dwarfed all earlier wars.

Nevertheless, the First World War was the first modern war and spawned -- besides a lot of wishful thinking -- a small library of war literature. In fact, some of the best anti-war writing of any era took its inspiration from the Great War.

As always, my selections (in alphabetical order) were guided by a couple of simple criteria: 1) with so few choices, general accounts tended to trump specific studies, and 2) intelligent and engaging always trumped intelligent and difficult.

If you think we've missed something indispensable -- and surely we have -- let us know.

Top Ten World War I Books

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque Remarque served in the German army during the war and was wounded five times. Some regard this as the greatest war novel of all time. Honorable Mention: Company K, by William March.

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway When poor vision kept him out of the service, the eighteen-year-old Hemingway volunteered to serve in France and later Italy as an ambulance driver. His war-time love story is often cited as the greatest American novel to come out of World War I. Honorable Mention: To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War, by Jeff Shaara.

The First World War, by Hew Strachan The best one-volume history of the war from one of its leading historians. This is a condensed version of a larger, multi-volume project. Honorable Mention: The First World War, by John Keegan.

Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography, by Robert Graves English poet Graves' bitter account of his life has been called by scholar and critic Paul Fussell "the best memoir of the First World War."

The Great War and Modern Memory, by Paul Fussell Winner of the National Book Award and hailed as one of twentieth-century's 100 Best Non-fiction Books, Fussell challenges the way we think about the war in this landmark study.

The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman Tuchman captured the Pulitzer Prize and won international acclaim with this classic account of the opening month of the Great War. Honorable Mention: The Zimmerman Telegram, by Barbara Tuchman.

Once An Eagle, by Anton Myrer The acclaimed novel of two wars and two very different Army officers. A favorite among military professionals, it has been on the Army Chief of Staff's list of recommended reading and the Marine Commandant's Reading List. It doesn't get much better than this.

The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, by Alistair Horne A classic account of one of the battles that represents the horror of trench warfare. More than one million men died fighting for a scrap of land "little larger than the combined Royal Parks of London."

A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front, by Winston Groom Novelist (Forrest Gump, Better Times than These) and historian, Groom vividly chronicles another of the templates of trench warfare.

The World Crisis, 1911-1918, by Winston Churchill Churchill's brilliant account of the war years when he served in several capacities: First Lord of the Admiralty, an infantry commander in France, a Member of Parliament, and the Minister of Munitions. As usual with Churchill, splendidly written.

A former history professor, Tom Miller is a novelist and essayist. His reviews and essays have appeared in numerous books, journals, and newspapers, including The Encyclopedia of Southern History, American History Illustrated, the Chicago Tribune, and the Des Moines Register. He also is a former Army officer and Vietnam veteran.
By choosing the already-fielded Heckler & Koch M27 as the new service rifle for Marine Corps infantry squads, the service saved up to $24 million and avoided years of delay, top leaders told a congressional committee this week.

In a hearing on readiness before a panel of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Marine Corps brass defended the service's decision to publish a request for proposal for more than 15,000 of the M27, which is already serving as the Corps' infantry automatic rifle.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., chairman of the HASC subcommittee on readiness, expressed concern for the U.S. industrial base as the Corps prepares to make the large purchase from German company H&K.

"Do you believe the U.S. defense industrial base could support such a request and ... do you believe that issuing a sole-source contract for such a large number of rifles from an internationally based company poses any logistical readiness challenge in meeting the demand for not only rifles but supplementary parts?" Wilson asked the three general officers testifying.

Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault, deputy commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations, said the Marine Corps had held an open competition before the M27 was originally fielded in more limited quantities in 2008.

"It would cost probably ... I've seen a figure as high as $24 million, to go through a recompetition for that weapon," he said. "There's no additional requirements, it's to purchase as-is, and it's simply an increase in a quantity of a weapon."

Beaudreault said the Government Accountability Office had also completed a report looking at the Corps' request and found it "within legal parameters" to pursue the sole-source contract the service wants. He added that the Marine Corps is now in the final stages of setting a price with H&K for the lot of M27s.

"Do I think the industrial base could support those types of quantities? Absolutely," Beaudreault said. "But what we would experience by reopening a competition would be, perhaps not being able to recover the additional money that would go into the [competition] ... and probably a two-year delay in fielding that weapon to the rest of the infantry."

Commandant Gen. Robert Neller confirmed to Military.com in December that the Corps had committed to purchase the M27 for all members of infantry squads to replace the M4 carbines they currently carry. Weapons experts say the M27 is more accurate and has a longer effective range than the M4, and would place greater combat power and lethality in the hands of infantrymen.

What hasn't been clear until now is how many of the high-end rifles the Marine Corps planned to purchase. In February 2017, the service published a request for information for 11,000 infantry automatic rifles; then last August, it published a pre-solicitation for up to 50,000 M27s.

Beaudreault told Wilson the request send to industry was for 15,000 rifles, enough to equip squads, with some left over for others as well.

Neller told Military.com he was considering giving the weapon to other ground combat Marines, including artillery forward observers, fire support teams, and even engineers.

"I'm going to wait and see," he said in December. "It's not that much [money]."

The Marine Corps does expect to get a good deal on the rifles this time around. At SHOT Show in Las Vegas in January, H&K executive Robert Reidsma told Military.com that global demand for the M27 was driving down cost. The larger order the Corps is making will help too.

"Obviously, they want a bigger quantity and the economies of scale have changed," he said then. "I think it's one of the most affordable prices I've seen for the capability they're getting."

On Tuesday, Beaudreault emphasized that going with the M27 isn't just the cheap and fast choice for the Corps. It's also the best option, he said.

"The Marine Corps looked at some other options, and the M27 outperformed some of the other weapons that we're also considering," he said. "So it's a great weapon, gets great reviews from Marines, and we were very eager to try to get it fielded as rapidly as we could."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @hopeseck.
Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, returned from a recent visit to Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, alarmed that the Department of Veterans Affairs might have made a bad decision last June to replace its legacy electronic health record system, VistA, with the same commercial off-the-shelf system that the military is adopting, starting with Pacific Northwest bases.

"I came back blowing the bugle," said Roe, a physician, who saw staff at Fairchild's hospital frustrated at the MHS Genesis system in ways that recalled for Roe his experience years earlier shifting paper to electronic medical records.

In this case, however, Fairchild physicians were frustrated that only minimal patient data had transferred from the Defense Department's legacy system, ALHTA, into the Cerner Millennium architecture used in MHS Genesis.

If VA adopted the same system, Roe remembered fearing, physicians would have to spend two to three additional minutes on each patient just looking into VistA data that Roe had expected would be transferred into the new record system.

"If I don't have it all in front of me," Roe said, "you've just added another hour to my day. You ask doctors today what's frustrating them. It's the damn electronic health system. It takes part of the joy out of medicine."

Roe said he feared that a lot of the efficiency savings that VA expected to realize from modernizing electronic records would be lost by having to maintain the legacy system alongside the new system, perhaps for decades.

That's why Roe sounded retreat, he said. He's put away his horn, however.

VA Secretary David Shulkin, back in December, paused contract negotiations and plans to piggyback onto the deployment of MHS Genesis for reasons unrelated to physician frustrations Roe witnessed. In fact, Roe said, Shulkin soon reassured him that VA medical data won't face the same transfer challenges as military patient data stored on ALTHA. Shulkin told him, Roe said, that contracting officials expect to be able to transfer up to five years of VA medical records into the new system for every patient enrolled in VA health care.

"They should have everything pertinent in there," Roe said. "They will keep the rest of that information stored for legal purposes or, I guess, if they had to deep dive when somebody left information out or a disability claim that still needed to be data mined. But for the most part, if I'm a [VA] doc sitting in front of my screen, getting ready to see my patient, I'll have everything I need on one system."

Roe remains concerned that the Department of Defense will have to keep ALTHA accessible to medical staff for years longer than VA will need to use VistA, even though VA's patient base is at least twice as large.

What Roe discovered at Fairchild, however, has been well known for years among architects of government electronic health records. Since at least 2009 when the Obama administration announced plans for a virtual lifetime record system using worldwide standards, the Department of Veterans Affairs has taken more care than did DoD to collect and store medical data in a common format, compatible with popular electronic record systems in the private sector.

Defense officials knew they would face hurdles on data transfer when they signed the $4.3 billion 10-year Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization contract in July 2015, with Leidos Inc. tasked to deploy two popular commercial systems -- Cerner Millennium for medical records and Dentrix Enterprise for dental -- to modernize military health records.

"DoD does not concede this will be a problem for us," said Stacy Cummings, program executive officer for Defense Healthcare Management Systems. She acknowledged VA and DoD are modernizing different legacy models. DoD, in fact, has three legacy electronic medical record systems in AHLTA, Essentris and CHCS, each of which manages health data differently.

"As we transition to MHS GENESIS," Cummings said, "we will sunset legacy tools locally -- at each medical facility -- and once we have fully transitioned we will sunset the legacy programs at the enterprise level."

Health care providers at military facilities, meanwhile, will continue to view legacy health data through the Joint Legacy Viewer, a clinical application created years ago to allow "read only" access to medical records stored by DoD, VA and private sector partners who participate in the common data viewer.

MHS Genesis' rollout began in February 2017 at Fairchild and at Oak Harbor Naval Hospital in June. Madigan Army Medical Center on Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Naval Health Clinic Oak Harbor followed. Plans are to have the system fully deployed at these sites by 2019 and throughout the military by 2022.

Further expansion at these bases is in a planned pause, for eight weeks, while managers review more than a thousand user complaints and make necessary adjustments to enhance the system, DoD and contract officials explained.

Shulkin paused VA contract negotiations with the Leidos-Cerner team in December so the not-for-profit MITRE Corporation could study the draft contract and identify issues. Roe said MITRE made many recommendations. One would direct VA, not Cerner, to own the connection portal, or API gateway, between, community providers and insurance companies. Another would require VA to create an external panel to conduct annual interoperability assessments to judge how effective the new system is in accessing and transferring medical data.

Patrick Flanders, chief information officer for the military health system, said the requirement to keep medical records available through AHLTA, at least through full deployment of Genesis, is tied to it being "an old system" and with "poor" data.

Some of the frustration Roe heard from providers at Fairchild, Flanders said, are "part of just the growing pains" of using a new system installed at targeted sites for the purpose of achieving initial operational capability.

Adrian Atizado, deputy national legislative director with Disabled American Veterans, has been studying VA plans to piggyback on the DoD plan for modernizing records, using the same contractors and architecture, applying DoD lessons learned and using the same staff that brings MHS Genesis to life.

Atizado questioned whether the piggyback arrangement can be sustained for too long if, in every region of the country, VA can transition to the new health record system faster than DoD because of ease of medical data transfer.

If VA had followed DoD's lead into Washington state, for example, would VA have to delay its own progress modernizing records at VA facilities in state while DoD paused for weeks to fix user complaints at military hospitals, Atizado asked. "And if VA doesn't rollout behind them, but in front, what will that do to VA costs?"

Shulkin was expected to announce resumption of contract negotiations soon.

Roe applauded the secretary's caution on a contract estimated at $15 billion.

"You know this is the biggest electronic rollout that anybody's ever done. Biggest in the world," Roe said. "And VA doesn't have the greatest track record of rolling big stuff out on time and under budget. I can tell you that."

To comment, write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120 or email milupdate@aol.com or twitter: @Military_Update.
A recent report from a major military support organization highlights a few surprises about our military and veteran community -- and could help spouses and military advocates have a better idea of just how to best aid their communities.

The report, released by the Military Family Advocacy Network early this month, broke down the results of a survey of over 5,600 military veterans, active duty members and families conducted last year.

So what did the report tell us about military families and veterans that we don't already know? Here are a few of the findings.

Money is the main thing

Although respondents reported some big subjects are their top concerns, like healthcare and frequent moves, when MFAN dialed down into the report, the found the real issue under each of those subjects was money.

A top problem for healthcare was paying for mental health help. A top issue for military moves was having the cash to make it through financially. Anyone who has lived a military life knows that there are hidden costs to every aspect and challenge that the military's entitlements like Tricare, BAH or DLA don't fully address. This report showed that to be true.

Base housing is OK ... sort of

While the report found that the vast majority of those surveyed live off base -- almost 80 percent -- those who choose to live on base have generally positive experiences.

The greatest challenge? Maintenance and upkeep (of course!), followed by "unfair" fees and costs.

Those who choose to live off base pointed to "personal reasons," like having a bigger house or owning a home as the primary reason to live in the civilian community.

We really like the military

The vast majority of military families, veterans and troops -- about 77 percent -- said in the survey that they would overwhelmingly recommend a military career to someone they care about.

And here's what was even more remarkable about that finding: they answered that even even though the question was asked at the very end of the survey during which they'd explored all sorts of things about military life, not all of them positive.

"Given the chance to consider and review all aspects of military family life, the response rate remained high," the report says.

Our LGBTQ members feel fairly supported

Human nature makes change hard. If you'd listened to many of the pundits and naysayers a decade ago, you would never have believe that today the men and women of the U.S. military, families and veterans would be able to handle serving side by side with members of the LGTBQ community.

And although the report shows that members of the LGBTQ community who took the survey feel more supported by the civilian community than the military community, 55 percent feel that the military community does support them.

That's nowhere near perfect, but it's definitely a great start.

We want to lean more on our civilian communities

The survey showed that military families turn to civilian based communities for support -- but that we want to do it even more.

"When respondents described the support they most appreciate, family, friends, and faith-based communities rose to the top. When they described the support they needed, they called for more networking, communication, and support groups," the report states. "Families said that when leaving service they feel as though they do not fit into the civilian world. Forging partnerships between military and civilian support systems will encourage pathways of understanding."

Hear that? Military families want community support, but they don't think they have it to the extent they need it.

To me that's a huge opportunity for spouses. With one foot in the civilian world thanks to jobs or hobbies, and one foot in the military world thanks to our lifestyle, we can be the perfect bridge.
Historian Giles Milton sat down with us before his recent talk at the Carter Presidential Library to talk about his book "Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat."

Even after the slaughter of the Great War, the British military brass still had notions about fair play in battle. Churchill had the good sense to realize that warfare was changing in the 20th century and he allowed a team of independent-minded inventors and operatives to take the battle to Hitler in new and devious ways.

Giles is a fantastic storyteller and would be a great presenter for TV documentaries (pay attention BBC). He captures the personalities of the men and women he profiles while describing the technology behind the weapons they invented and the tactics of how the were used against the enemy.

If you're an audiobook listener, Giles performs this one and most definitely has a flair for narration as well.

Watch our interview below and keep your eyes open for his new book about D-Day, due here in the States in early 2019 to coincide with the invasion's 75th anniversary.
Sudarshan Sukhani of s2analytics.com told CNBC-TV18, "For the day I have long and short trades both. IT is doing very well. Go long in the IT stocks where ever and whichever stock you like but for the day I have Infosys for long suggestion. You could actually buy the IT Index itself and then be on the side of all IT stocks. So for the day buy Infosys and also consider IT as a segment where you want to go long repeatedly."

"I have two short selling trades - one is BPCL, both the refinery companies are falling day after day. Something is going on there. That is a short sell, it is only intraday."

"Second is M&M Financial Services , financials are weak, we know the reasons why they are weak. There are lot of problems. But that is also an intraday trade, do not carry short positions tomorrow," he said.
Manoj Murlidharan of Religare Securities told CNBC-TV18, "Punjab National Bank (PNB) can be a good buy. We are expecting a trading bounce to come in the weighted average price of Rs 96.50. So simply buy 110 Call options, you get it as cheap as Rs 2. The target should be Rs 5 so that the range that we are expecting for PNB might be Rs 96 to Rs 108."

"We even like Tata Motors , we believe that this stock has potential to get into at least a 6-8 percent move. We can buy and the stop loss should be somewhere close to Rs 336 and weighted average price of Rs 374 is what we expect the stock can surge to," he said.
Sanghi Industries board has approved issuing non-convertible debenture (NCD) as part of their fund-raising plans. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Bina Engineer, the Director of Sanghi Industries spoke about the latest happenings in her company and sector.

2016 we had raised NCD at 15.5 percent for the equal amount. The old NCDs were carrying a cost of 15.5 percent and new NCDs are carrying a coupon of about 10.5 percent, she said.

Primary the objective was to redeem the debt and this is not an additional debt, she added.

Company is well-funded for the capacity expansion plan, said Engineer.

Company will generate a cash surplus for the next two years, she further mentioned.
The power minister has said that State Bank of India is "worried" about its exposure to the Mundra power projects of both Adani Power and Tata Power. He also went on to express concerns over stressed assets in the power sector as a whole. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Sunil Srivastava, Deputy MD of SBI spoke about the same.

Srivastava said that power is a stressed sector for the entire banking sector.

He further said that there is a problem related to distribution and DISCOMS' (Distribution Companies) health.

Addressing these issues in a short possible time of six months is going to be very-very difficult, said Srivastava.

According to him, there are 34 thermal power plants under stress.

DISCOMS looking at buying cheap power over exchange than honouring their contract, he added.

Srivastava also mentioned that Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) is taking time in revising tariffs.

There are still a few power plants that could be classified as non-performing assets (NPAs). However, not all gas-based power plants are under stress, he said.
Fortis Healthcare | Aberdeen Standard Investments (Asia) Ltd increased stake in company to 5.02 percent from 4.96 percent earlier via open market purchases.

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US-based private equity investor TPG Capital is looking at a possible acquisition of Indias second largest drug maker Fortis Healthcare, but awaits more clarity on the pending investigation at Fortis and the ongoing litigation between Singh brothers and Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo over the Rs 3,500-crore arbitration award, sources told Moneycontrol.

TPG declined to comment.

DNA, last week quoting sources, reported that TPG Capital-backed Manipal Health Enterprises (MHE) is close to buying out Fortis and the deal, expected to be around Rs 6,500 crore, is likely to be formalised this week.

An email and message sent to Ranjan Pai, Chief Executive and MD of Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) that operates Manipal Hospitals remained unanswered at the time of publishing this story.

Fortis spokesperson said he isnt aware of any such developments referring to the M&A talks.

TPG is one of the largest PE investors in Indian healthcare with investments in Manipal Hospitals, Healthium Medtech (formerly known as Sutures India), single specialty chains Motherhood and Cancer Treatment Services International (CTSI).

To be sure, this isnt the first time that TPG is in news for Fortis acquisition, the PE investor was on and off the deal table for Fortis buyout for at least three times in last three years. The deal couldnt be pulled off for reasons such as valuations and ongoing litigation.

TPG name has also started buzzing as Vishal Bali, the ex-Fortis group CEO is now the Asia head for healthcare vertical at TPG Growth that invests in growth equity and middle-market buyout opportunities.

Malaysia-based IHH, the worlds second-largest healthcare group which operates the Parkway Pantai chain of hospitals, was also widely mentioned in news reports for possible acquisition of Fortis.

IHH dismissed such reports.

IHH is not, nor is it close to, concluding any negotiations or due diligence or transactions in India at this point in time," said the company in a regulatory filing to the Singapore and Malaysian stock exchanges in January.

The lenders have emerged as major stakeholders of Fortis after they invoked shares pledged by Fortis promoters following Supreme Court order

The promoter holding has come down to 0.8 percent from 34 percent in December 17 due to invocation of pledged shares by lenders, now lenders account for around 41 percent of Fortis shareholding.

Yes Bank with 17 percent and Axis Bank 6-7 percent now hold the keys for any talks related to strategic sale of Fortis.

As a matter of policy, Yes Bank does not comment on client specific information, Yes Bank said in a email statement to Moneycontrol.

Axis Bank is yet to respond to Moneycontrol queries at the time of publishing.

An executive of a bank that is one among the lenders that invoked shares said on condition of anonymity that its a dynamic situation and we are waiting for the internal investigation report.

Fortis spokesperson said though there is no timeline for the external law firm to submit its report, but it will do it as soon as possible.

Fortis has appointed law firm Luthra & Luthra in to investigate into the allegations of promoters Singh brothers taking-out Rs 473 crore from the company through questionable inter-corporate deposits.
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Engineering exports, which have been recording a healthy growth, are expected to see a new high in the current financial year, a top central government official said today.

Exports from this sector have grown by about 22 per cent to USD 62 billion during the April-January period of 2017-18.

Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said the exports to developed countries are growing at a rapid pace.

Shipments to North America and Europe account for about 40 per cent of the total exports from the sector, she said.

"We are confident that, the exports will see a new high this financial year," she said at the inauguration of India Engineering Sourcing Show here.

The share of engineering exports in the countrys total shipments has increased to 23.6 per cent in 2016-17 from 18.2 per cent in 2009-10.

Teaotia said that government initiatives such as 'Make in India', 'Start Up India' and 'Digital India' would further boost the growth of industries in the country. Emphasising on the importance of the growing services sector, she made a case for recalibrating the traditional model of manufacturing led development.

Teaotia said the services sector matters greatly for enhancing competitiveness of the manufacturing sector and also accounts for a significant portion of the value added in a product.

The boundaries between manufacturing and services are "increasingly blurred, requiring us to recalibrate our traditional model of manufacturing led development," she said here.

Global mega trends such as Industry 4.0, changing dynamics of the global value chain, rise of shared economy are presenting both opportunities and challenges to the country, she added.

Teaotia said that long term enablers that focus on job creation by harnessing these mega trends and business models at the intersection of services in manufacturing will be key to future development.

Speaking at the event, EEPC India Chairman Ravi Sehgal said that the exports may reach USD 100 billion in the coming years. Czech Republic Industry and Trade Minister said that huge opportunities exists between the two countries to increase economic cooperation.
Ten years ago, a leading insurance company in the country had rejected RM Vishakhas candidature for the post of head of sales saying a woman was not the right fit for the job. Now heading IndiaFirst Life Insurance as its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, she confesses gender biases in the workplace still exist.

Despite the tough conditions, women like Vishakha have successfully scaled the corporate ladder efficiently handling roles that were considered more suited for men, particularly in male-dominated sectors like insurance.

Gender discrimination is a reality at one level where there is role discrimination. There is a belief that women cannot do certain jobs. Especially in positions like sales, I do not see many women applying to those posts neither do I see recruiters being happy considering them for these posts, said Vishakha.

Unconventional positions which were once considered a no-no for women have slowly been filled by them in the last few years. Even sectors like oil and gas and manufacturing with clear gender skew have seen a change.

Take the instance of Soumya Srikanth who is General Manager-Joint Ventures, Vedanta Cairn Oil and Gas. Srikanth started her career in the 1990s when liberalization had started picking up pace. She was a part of the oil and gas domain since the beginning of her career and dealt with critical areas of oil exploration, petrochemicals etc.

At the entry level, Srikanth said she had to work at the refineries in tough terrains. After ten years of experience at the consultancy, she decided to move to the hardcore upstream industry where she was a part of an oil and gas startup. This, she said, helped her to grow professionally since it opened an avenue to lead a business and manage the facility.

Talking about stepping into challenging roles, Srikanth explained she never had the advantage of working from a luxurious cabin, hence working out of the oil exploration and production site made her face a lot of challenges like extreme weather conditions, remote operation locations and the need to stay away from her family.

Compared to even 10-15 years ago, while senior leaders believe there has been an improvement, India still has a long bridge to cross when it comes to equality of the genders, both at home and at the workplace.

However, women from across fields have consistently try to break societal misconceptions about gender roles. In doing so, they have become idols for fellow women.

Bachendri Pal who was the first Indian woman to summit the Mount Everest in 1984 was also the first woman graduate from her village in Nakuri, Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand). She completed her B.Ed. and Master's degree in Sanskrit language.

Apart from being an inspiration for fellow climbers, Pal now leads senior corporate leaders into expeditions wherein they could use these lessons back at the workplace. As the director of the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation (TSAF), Pal is a mentor for several individuals.

The Outdoor Leadership Course (OLC) programme of TSAF draws on experience in leadership from the risky and hazardous expeditions that Bachendri Pal (the first Indian Woman to climb Mt. Everest) has led.

Pal is the Chief of Adventure Programmes in Tata Steel. Having climbed Mt. Everest in 1984, she also led an Indo-Nepalese Women's Everest Expedition in 1993 in which 18 people reached the Summit including seven women.

Will she be able to do it? is a question that women have to constantly answer, as Neelu Khatri, President-Aerospace for Honeywell India has learnt on the job in her experience-rich career. Khatri who joined the company in 2014 and was also associated with KPMG in her earlier tenure, enjoyed a 15-year-long military career, where she was part of the pioneer batch of women commissioned officers inducted in the Indian Air Force.

One challenge that I have constantly faced is that nobody took me at my face value. I always had to prove that I was capable of doing it and excel in it. It was both in the government jobs as well as in the corporate world. Somehow I had to learn to be more assertive, she said.

Khatri said that they wouldnt look at the past track record and would always come up with a thought saying will she be able to do it. However, she said that the extra aggression and confidence to prove herself helped her at the workplace.

To ensure that fellow women have a better experience at the workplace, some of these leaders have also taken steps to improve the office culture.

Vishakha said that they have the policy of replacement hiring for maternity leave vacancies to ensure that managers dont have reluctance in hiring women. Further, she said that they also have creche facilities and flexi timing to ensure work-life balance.

Having conducive work conditions are a definite plus, as Charu Jain, Software Engineer, Global Vehicle Sourcing, Uber India says.

Jain said that earlier in workplaces there were not many women friendly policies or encouragement for them to work. She recollected that even though her mother and most of her aunts had completed their post-graduation, they are home-makers.

I do believe that there are more opportunities now for women and things have improved. Earlier, there were lesser opportunities and a working woman was a big deal. Today, as a woman I do not feel any biases at workplace due to gender, she says.

Apart from her family that supported her, Jain said that she was also fortunate to have good mentors at the workplace who have been able to be a guide.

However, the general situation across India Inc does leave to room for improvement. Data from the Monster Salary Index by Monster.com indicated that the current gender pay gap in India stands at 20 percent where men earned a median gross hourly salary of Rs. 231, in comparison, women earned only Rs. 184.8.

The Women of India Inc. survey by Monster.com also showed that 32 percent women identified not easily considered for top management roles as one of the top challenges, while only 13 percent men agreed.

Several other biases also seem to exit. A spot survey by ProEves, which is an aggregator of daycares and preschools talked about biases like stereotype biases (eg: sales job is for men as it more demanding), maternal bias (expectant/working mother less committed) apart from the self-limiting biases.

Apart from that, Khatri said that inherent biases remain including the regressive mindset of people and the gender-based role definition at Indian homes across all the economic strata of the society.

Sometimes even unconscious biases creep in, which could also be a case of miscommunication between men and women. Vishakha who has worked across several insurance companies in senior roles in her two decade plus career explained that women also have self-limiting beliefs that they need to tide against. Sometimes we perceive a lot of discrimination when there is none, she added.

But many like her and Srikanth have managed to strike a proper balance which according to many is a crucial criteria. Srikanth said while her home gives her boundaries but she does not allow those boundaries to create a barrier in her career.

She calls it a fine art of jugglery. Quoting Margaret Thatcher who is her role model, she says, Rooster, maybe well crows, but the eggs still bears the chicken.
Women have been at the forefront when it comes to savings and money management. Earlier it was at homes, now they manage banks.

India's banking and finance sector has got some of the best women money managers who have gone on to build the finest institutions.

On International Womens Day, let's look at the leading ladies ruling India's finance sector.

1. Arundhati Bhattacharya

Arundhati Bhattacharya, who retired as the Chairman of Indias biggest bank State Bank of India in September 2017 after a four year stint, was the first woman chief of the bank after being an employee there throughout her career that started in 1977. After the merger of SBI with its five associates and Bharatiya Mahila Bank in April last year, Bhattacharya took SBI on a global path to become one of the top 50 banks in the world. In 2016, she was listed as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

While at SBI, Bhattacharya introduced a two-year sabbatical leave policy for the bank's female employees to use either for maternity or elder care.

With her trademark smile, Bhattacharya has survived, and managed multiple transfers, a long-distance relationship and a daughter with special needs. The retired SBI chairman has indeed been an inspiration to many for making it to the top in her 40 year-banking career.

2. Chanda Kochhar

chanda-kochhar-3_61481537

Chanda Kochhar is the CEO and Managing Director of the ICICI bank, countrys biggest private sector bank. She has also been an ICICI Bank employee throughout her career since she joined as a management trainee in 1984. She has continued to shine and beat many of her counterparts including now rival Shikha Sharma, to become the CEO in 2009.

She too has featured in The Worlds 100 Most Powerful Women list by Forbes and has been the pioneer of making the bank a household name in India.

At one of the womens conferences, Kochhar highlighted it was important for women not to give up work when they start families.

And she believes in order to survive in the workspace and at home simultaneously, a woman must Plan better, be organised. I choose to be a working wife and mother. Why should I compromise on either?

In 2016, Kochhar introduced work from home facility for women and later also extended it to men.

3. Shikha Sharma

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An alumnus of IIM-A, Shikha Sharma is a woman with great confidence and persona with underlying simplicity since she started her career with ICICI Bank in 1980. Sharma has many achievements in her kitty while at ICICI -- be it setting up ICICI Securities  a joint venture between ICICI and JP Morgan, investment banking and retail finance.

In her last assignment at ICICI, she was the MD and CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company. Since 2009, Sharma has been the CEO and Managing Director of Indias third largest private lender, Axis Bank.

She has also been part of several power lists, including the Forbes List of Asias 50 Power Businesswomen, Finance Asias Top 20 Women in Finance, and the Fortune Global and India list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business.

4. Zarin Daruwala, CEO, Standard Chartered Bank India

Zarin Daruwala, now running one of the largest franchises of Standard Chartered Bank in India, was former Executive Director and president of wholesale banking at ICICI Bank. In April 2016, she went on to become StanCharts first woman CEO.

A chartered accountant and company secretary, Daruwala was one of the top rankers in both ICSI and ICAI courses and won the President's gold medal for company secretary programme.

She was also named one of the top 25 powerful women in business by Fortune India.

5. Kaku Nakhate

Kaku Nakhate, India head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch has a very powerful personality. Under her leadership, BofAML became one of the key players in the corporate finance industry in India.

It is known that the banks balance sheets tripled within two years as Kaku Nakhate led the team.

An MBA graduate from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, Kaku started her professional career in 1989 with DSP Merrill Lynch Limited, and rose to become Head of Global Markets and spent 19 years there. In 2009 Kaku moved to JP Morgan India as Vice Chairperson in charge of equities, equity derivatives, futures and options and world securities services franchises in India.

After Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch globally in 2010, Kaku has been appointed as Head of Indian Operations at Bank of America Corporation.

6. Usha Ananthasubramanian

Usha Ananthasubramanian is the Chairman of Indian Banks Association and also the managing director and CEO of Allahabad Bank. Prior to this, Ananthasubramanian was the MD & CEO of Punjab National Bank. She had joined the banking industry in 1982 as a specialist officer with Bank of Baroda. Earlier, she has also served as Chairman and MD of all-womens Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) between November 2013 and August 2015.

7. Ashu Suyash

A lesser known face, Ashu Suyash broke many stereotypes as she took charge in a male-dominated asset management sector.

After 15 years with Citigroup, in 2005 Suyash joined as Managing director and Country Head of the asset management business at Fidelity, which was later acquired by L&Ts mutual fund arm in 2012. She then became the first ever woman head of the countrys largest asset management company, L&T Investment Management.

It was only in 2016 that Ashu Suyash took over as the CEO of the credit rating agency, Crisil in 2016 from her woman predecessor Roopa Kudva.

8. Naina Lal Kidwai

One of the known faces in the banking industry, Naina Lal Kidwai was the chairman of HSBC India.

First Indian woman to graduate from the Harvard Business School, Kidwai joined HSBC as vice-chairman and managing director at HSBC Securities and Capital Markets in 2002 and appointed the group general manager of the bank in 2006.

She subsequently took over as the chief executive of HSBC India in 2007 and chairman in 2009. Kidwai, the first woman to head a foreign bank in India, has got many firsts to her credit.

She was also the first woman president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

9. Kalpana Morparia

Kalpana Morparia is the chief executive officer of JP Morgan, India. Prior to joining JP Morgan India, Morparia had served in various positions at ICICI Group for 30 years. A law graduate, Morparia joined ICICI group in 1975 and was later elevated to ICICIs board of directors in 2001.

It has been told that Morparia was a key figure behind the reverse merger of ICICI Ltd with ICICI Bank in 2002.

Currently, she serves as an independent Director on the Boards of several leading Indian companies and ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the 50 most powerful women in international business.
Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines Vijay Mallya speaks during a news conference about the new Kingfisher Airlines service between London and Bangalore in southern India, in London September 4, 2008. Photo: REUTERS

Dutch brewing company Heineken International has proposed to increase its shareholding in United Breweries (UB) to around 58 percent, by acquiring former chairman Vijay Mallya's unpledged shares, according to an Economic Times report.

The second largest beer-brewing company submitted a proposal to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to buy seized shares under its possession and take complete control of the company.

JM Financial reportedly submitted the proposal representing Heineken, which is seeking to buy Mallya's 29.46 percent shares (which have been seized the ED due to non-payment of loan dues to banks).

If both Heineken and UB Group decide to reach an agreement, there will be no need for an open offer.

The Articles of Association prevent Heineken from buying UB shares unless it was a bilateral deal. The article states that Mallya is entitled to stay on the board of UB Group as its chairman for life and remain a non-retiring director, else he can step down voluntarily and nominate someone else.

The ED took over Mallyas shares over allegations of loan diversion and default on repayment of loan dues to banks.

Currently, each share is priced at Rs 1,020 and the ED aims to raise more than Rs 4,000 crore by selling the unpledged shares.

UB Group has been holding its board meeting in Mallya's absence, who has been residing in the UK, after fleeing the country. The Securities and Exchanges Board of India had earlier declared Mallya unfit to be the chairman of a listed company.
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22:58 That's all for today, readers. Thanks for staying on with our coverage of the day's action.

22:57 Indian captain Rohit Sharma said, We looked into what went wrong against Sri Lanka and we thought hitting back of a length was a good option. We wanted them to go after the long boundaries. I thought the bowlers executed their plans really well. We need

to improve out catching. Hopefully we won't make the same mistakes again.

22:55 Bangladesh captain Mahmudullah said, It is obvious that we did not bat well. They executed their plans well. The dot balls created a lot of pressure. I think we are just one win away from getting a boost. We're still searching for it and I think we will get it."

22:49 Man of the match: Vijay Shankar

22:32 Indias head-to-head record against Bangladesh in Twenty20 Internationals is 6-0.

22:32 Thats it! India have beaten Bangladesh by 6 wickets in Colombo. The Men in Blue have picked up their first points in this tri-series.

The next match in this series is between hosts Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on Saturday. Indias next match is on Monday against Sri Lanka.

21:02 All set! Second inning begins at R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo. India is chasing a target of 140, to pick up their first points of the series.

19:30 End of the sixth over and Bangladesh are now 44/2. They would be looking for a partnership now to help things along till the 12th or 13th over.

19:26 OUT! Tamim Iqbal falls trying one shot too many. Shardul pitched the ball short and Tamim tried to pull it to the fine leg boundary for a six but only managed to find the fielder stationed there. Bangladesh 35/2 after 5 overs.

19:21 At the end of 4 overs, Bangladesh is 27/1, having lost opener Soumya Sarkar. Shardul Thakur into the attack now.

19:20 FOUR! Spoils an otherwise splendid over from Sundar with shot, does Liton Das. Finds the fine leg boundary with ease.

19:15 That's the end of 3 overs and Bangladesh are now 22/1. They got a decent start but could have done without losing Soumya Sarkar.

19:13 OUT! Soumya Sarkar falls trying to get things moving quickly. Tries a similar shot to the one he sent for six but only manages to find the fielder at short fine leg this time. Unadkat gets his man. Bangladesh 20/1

19:12 WIDE! Unadkat seems to have just lost a little bit of control here. Sends that short one way outside off stump.

19:11 SIX! Soumya Sarkar just flicks that one from Unadkat over the square leg boundary for a massive one.

19:10 Jaydev Unadkat back into the attack for his second over. He bowled the first over of the innings, in which he conceded just 6 runs.

Sundar

At the end of 2 overs, Bangladesh are 10/0. Washingtonjust finished an extremely tight over, conceding just 4 runs, that too off a boundary off the first ball.
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Bharti Airtel shares rallied 2.6 percent and Idea Cellular gained 4.3 percent intraday Thursday after the government has approved relief package for the debt-ridden telecom sector, giving more time to operators to pay for the spectrum bought in auctions.

On Wednesday, it has also relaxed the spectrum holding limit for the telecom operators, allowing telecom companies to pay for spectrum over 16 years instead of 10 years and permitted them to hold more airwaves.

The relaxed caps on holding spectrum will help ongoing mergers like that between Vodafone and Idea as the combined entity would have breached the current limits in certain circles or telecom zones.

The revised limit for spectrum holding may also encourage their participation in future auctions.

The Cabinet yesterday approved the two key measures to facilitate investments and consolidation in the sector. These include restructuring of deferred payment liabilities of telecom service providers for spectrum and revision of limit of spectrum holding caps.

These measures are expected to increase the cash flow for telecom operators immediately, providing them some relief, the official said.

A media report indicated that these measures may boost telecom companies cash flow by Rs 55,000 crore.

The package was cleared by the Cabinet based on the recommendations of the Inter Ministerial Group (IMG) on the telecom sector.

The IMG was tasked last year to suggest policy reforms and strategic interventions for the troubled sector bruised by falling tariffs, eroding profitability, and mounting debt in the face of stiff competition from new entrant.

The Indian telecom industry, which is locked in an intense tariff war, owes a staggering Rs 4.6 lakh crore to various financial institutions and banks.

At 11:20 hours IST, the stock price of Bharti Airtel was quoting at Rs 409.20, up 1.44 percent and Idea Cellular was up 0.82 percent at Rs 80.25 on the BSE.

(With inputs from PTI)
From wrapping kids in bed to heading multi-million dollar companies  the role of women has evolved over time. One such change is their growing interest in equities, be it a mother, a housewife, or someone with a 9 to 5 job.

Now, why do we say that? There are now about 30 percent active women investors who have joined the community and the numbers are likely to grow in near future, suggest experts.

We are proud of an approximate 30 percent of active women investors. We have seen decent growth in the women investor base over the years and we believe this is going to increase further owing to the awareness about financial products and more women joining the workforce leading them to make independent financial decisions, Radhika Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Edelweiss Asset Management Limited told Moneycontrol.

Advice remains same for all women irrespective of what profession one is in. It is important to be financially independent and financially savvy. One should have control over financial decisions and spend time in acquiring skills on money managing, she said.

It is important to be financially independent and financially savvy irrespective of the nature of work you are doing or looking after your family. The idea is to make money work for you and not the other way round and for that investment in equities and mutual funds are the best bet.

Dont be in a hurry to take out money just to fill up some household expense instead give your investments time to mature and create wealth for you over a period of time.

Women have been largely playing second fiddle when it comes to investments. In fact I get some queries on tips from women too  implying they want to make some quick buck and move out.. Its good to see the trend gradually changing though, Lakshmi Iyer, CIO (Debt) & Head Products, Kotak Mutual Fund told Moneycontrol.

Avoid being short sighted when it comes to investing in equities Women have the privilege of bearing a child in their womb for 9 months. The end outcome is beautiful  though there are pains associated in that period. Pre mature birth at times gets complicated! Likewise use mutual funds as a medium for long term investments (3-5 yrs) in equities  even if it poses volatilities along the way, explains Iyer.

While pursuing their ambitions and exploring a wide range of career avenues, women are making significant contributions to the overall growth of the economy and financial well-being of their families.

Women investors are contributing around 17% of Indias GDP currently and as more employment opportunities are being lapped up by women, this percentage is all set to rise up in future, Arun Thukral, MD & CEO, Axis Securities told Moneycontrol.

Women today are not only adding to the financial resources of their families but are also playing a key role in the management of those resources, he said.

The base of women investors has grown significantly in the last two years. A lot of active interest from self-employed and professional women in equity and investment through mutual fund since the last few years as deposit rates remain low.

Significant number of women investors have jumped on the equity bandwagon over the past two years. We can say this confidently because we have seen a lot of interest from self-employed and professional women using our mobile app IIFL Markets which already has over 1.3 million downloads, Janvi Nagrecha Desai, Vice President, IIFL told Moneycontrol.

Women investors find mobile app convenient to keep a track of their investments on a regular basis. This is one trend which has picked up momentum in the past couple of years, thanks to data revolution.

From investors to fund managers -- they have done it all. Although, they are underrepresented in the fund manager ranks globally and it has been no different in India.

"While the number of women in fund management is up from last year, women managers still constitute only 8 percent of the industry and cumulatively manage assets worth Rs3065 billion, a figure that translates to about 15 percent of the total assets under management for open-ended funds, Morningstar India said in a report.

In the study, Morningstar India also observed that women managers have generated solid returns within their peer groups. As we dig deeper into the data we find that out of the total assets managed by women fund managers, 61% of the AUM outperformed the benchmark/peer group average over 1-year basis, 81% over 3-year basis and 86% over 5-year basis.

Thus, over the long term funds managed/overseen by women managers have delivered significant outperformance versus peers, highlighted the study.

What should women investors do?

Women investors should look at their respective risk profile, age and focus on asset allocation clubbed with strict discipline and schedule of investment.

The best thing to do is to Fill it.. Shut it..& Forget it. Has to be strategy to follow especially when you make equity investments, explains Iyer. Periodic review of portfolios of course should be done with your financial advisor. But, most of my wealth creation actually happened when I forgot about the investment and just let it be!, she said.

Gupta of Edelweiss Asset Management Limited advises women investors to first take advice from a Financial Advisor before making any financial decision. Investors who are looking to invest in equity markets for the first time should start investing with funds in the Equity Savings category.

This category of funds balances risk and return by investing in equity, debt and arbitrage opportunities in equal proportion. Arbitrage and debt help in providing stability to the fund whereas equity helps in capturing the upside potential, she said.

However, it is not one-time investment which most analysts recommend. They suggest women investors to review their portfolio on a periodical basis to get a clear picture of long-term wealth creation.
Om Metals Infraprojects today said it is bidding for projects worth of USD 100 million in African countries.

It is also looking to foray into the Asian and middle east markets. Om Metal Infraprojects has a diversified business across infrastructure, water and irrigation, including execution of hydro-mechanical and EPC contracts for hydropower and irrigation projects.

"We are engaged in irrigation and watershed development irrigation projects in Rwanda and Ghana in Africa. We are eyeing the African markets with more focus as we have won a couple of projects in this continent and are actively bidding for projects worth USD 100 million in these regions," Om Metals director Vikas Kothari told PTI here.

"As part of our overseas expansion plans, we are also looking at entering into the far east and middle east markets, which offers enormous potential for our expertise in infrastructure, water and irrigation," he added. The company has bagged an order worth USD 32 million for rehabilitation and completion of Kpong Left Bank Irrigation Project, in Ghana.

The World Bank funded project is expected to be completed in two years. The company is also engaged in 1,000 hectares irrigation project worth USD 17 milllion in Rwanda. The Indian government-funded project is expected to be completed in the next 12-18 months period, Kothari said.

In addition to overseas projects, the company has bid for orders worth of Rs 2,000 crore in the domestic market. The company is expected to close its order book at Rs 1,800 crore by the July-September quarter of FY19, Kothari added. In the domestic market, the company has successfully executed more than 60 hydro-mechanical contracts for hydro-power and irrigation projects across the country.

The company has secured letter of Intent (LOI) for works contract of North Koel Reservoir Project in Jharkhand. The project comprises of balance work of dam and appurtenant works aggregating Rs 38.54 crore.

Kothari informed that in terms of real estate, the company has investments in Jaipur, Mumbai and Hyderabad. We have a joint development with Mahindra Life spaces and are at advanced stages of completing the project, he said.

The company has registered consolidated revenue of Rs 283 crore in FY17 and is expecting to register around Rs 325 crore in FY18. It targets a revenue of Rs 425 crore in FY19 following execution of projects worth of Rs 800 crore, Kothari added.
Reliance Communications | In the last four months, the stock price has risen 487 percent to Rs 3.93 per share from Rs 0.67 per share on March 27, 2020.

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Debt-ridden telecom firm Reliance Communications said it has adjourned meeting of holders of its USD 300 million senior secured bonds for "want of quorum" and will now be held on March 20, 2018.

"...the meeting of the holders of US$ 300 million Notes scheduled to be held on March 6, 2018 stands adjourned for want of quorum and will be held on March 20, 2018," RCom said in a regulatory filing.

The company had called a meeting on March 6 of the holders of its USD 300 million senior secured bonds for considering certain proposals, relating to asset monetisation.

The company had issued USD 300 million worth senior secured notes, secured at 6.5 per cent and due in 2020.

A recent order by an Arbitration Tribunal between RCom and Ericsson has added to woe of the Anil Ambani led firm by restraining it from sale or transfer of assets.

RCom has approached Bombay High Court against the interim order of the tribunal.

Early this month, RCom had skipped payment of debentures worth Rs 375 crore which was due on February 7. "The company has not made payment of 3rd instalment of Rs 375 crore of principal on NCD's (non-convertible debentures) which was due on February 7, 2018," RCom had said in a regulatory filing.

It said the company is in strategic debt restructuring (SDR) invoked by JLF (joint lenders forum comprising holders of Non Convertible Debentures) and that no record date shall be fixed for payment on NCDs.
The power sector companies and the power financiers are under stress. Big banks are worried about their exposure to power companies even as large as Tata Power, Adani Power said the Power Minister to CNBC-TV18.

Reacting to this, PV Ramesh, CMD, REC said for the company per se the there was no stress on the loan books and 85 percent of their lending is to the PSU entities and none of those assets are stressed.

The company has the lowest gross NPAs among power financiers, said Ramesh.

Moreover they have made provision for some of the stressed assets, he said.
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Amtek Auto shares were locked at 5 percent upper circuit at Rs 23.80 on Thursday after Liberty House, the global industrial and metals group, has chosen as preferred H1 bidder for buying company's assets.

There were pending buy orders of 319,003 shares, with no sellers available on the BSE, at 10:06 hours IST.

With this development, Liberty House is poised to make its maiden manufacturing presence in India. The company is part of the USD 10 billion GFG Alliance and is owned by Sanjeev Gupta, a British industrialist of Indian origin.

Liberty House, part of Sanjeev Gupta's global industrial group GFG Alliance, is set to make a dramatic entry into India after being chosen as preferred H1 bidder for Amtek Auto Pvt Ltd assets which include 35 automotive component plants across India, Japan, Thailand and Spain, employing some 6,000 people, the company said in a statement.

The announcement of Liberty as the successful preferred bidder was made in the committee of creditors meeting held on March 6 and was confirmed by the resolution professional on March 7.

This business will be the cornerstone of our strategy to bring GREENMETAL to India and expand our footprint in the automotive sector worldwide. We look forward to working closely with the high calibre customer base Amtek Auto enjoys. We are very pleased to be able to secure the jobs of 6000 workers and welcome them to the global GFG family, Gupta, Executive Chairman of GFG said.

Amtek, which is one of the 12 large accounts identified by the Reserve Bank of India under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, has been facing bankruptcy proceedings over defaults of Rs 12,700 crore worth of loans.

Apart from Liberty House, American hedge fund Deccan Value had also bid for the company.

Amtek Group companies - Castex Technologies and Metalyst Forgings were also rallied 5 percent each intraday.
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Shares of Bhushan Steel and Tata Steel rose 19 percent and 2 percent respectively in the early trade Thursday as Tata Steel emerged as a highest bidder to acquire Bhushan Steel.

In a regulatory filing Bhushan Steel said that the compliant resolution plans were presented to the committee of creditors (CoC) and the resolution plan submitted by Tata Steel has been identified as the highest evaluated compliant resolution plan.

There will be further discussions with Tata Steel on their resolution plan before it will be considered for final approval by the CoC, it added.

Tata Steel had emerged as the highest bidder with a bid of Rs 35,000 crore, with JSW Steel finishing second with a bid of Rs 29,700 crore.

Bhushan Steel has an annual production capacity of 5.6 million tons, and will add significantly to Tata Steels 13 million tons. This will make Tata Steel the largest steel maker in India, overtaking JSW Steel, at least for the time being.

At 09:24 hrs Bhushan Steel was quoting at Rs 45.70, up 12.56 percent and Tata Steel was quoting at Rs 655.35, up 1.13 percent on the BSE.

Tata Steel gained 39 percent, while Bhushan Steel declined 38 percent in the last 9 months.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
Share price of KEC International rose 3.4 percent intraday Thursday as the company has bagged an orders worth Rs 1,378 crore across its businesses.

The company's T&D business secured orders of Rs 786 crore across India, Middle East and SAARC.

It railway business received four orders for composite and overhead electrification works aggregating to Rs 473 crore across India.

The cable segment of the company received orders of Rs 78 crore for various types of cables and civil business secured an order of Rs 41 crore for the construction of factory and related civil works in Andhra Pradesh.

Vimal Kejriwal, MD & CEO of KEC International said, We are pleased with the new order wins, especially in our core T&D business. With these new order wins we have further strengthened our domestic and SAARC T&D portfolio."

"With the third order win in Jordan we have further diversified our exposure in the Middle East market," he added.

At 09:38 hrs KEC International was quoting at Rs 415.15, up Rs 10.10, or 2.49 percent on the BSE.

Posted by Rakesh Patil
Singapore-based investment company Temasek is in advanced talks to sell its 18 percent stake in Manipal Hospitals, according to a report by ET Now.

Temasek bought the stake in the Bengaluru-based hospital chain from True North in September 2017. They bought the stake for around Rs. 1,400 crore.

"Temasek is planning to exit Manipal Hospitals and is in active discussions to sell its minority stake of 18% to the promoter Ranjan Pai and is expecting a premium. The firm is not keen to participate in the proposed merger plans between Manipal Hospitals and Fortis Healthcare," sources told ET Now.

"Announcements on the planned exit by Temasek and the proposed merger between Manipal Hospitals & Fortis Healthcare are expected soon if talks proceed on expected lines " a source told the channel.

Temasek declined to comment on the speculation, the report said.

Manipal Heath Enterprises, the parent company of Manipal Hospitals, is backed by TPG Capital. TPG Capital holds a 22 percent stake in Manipal Hospitals, according to the report.

Last week, DNA Money reported that Manipal Heath Enterprises will soon acquire Fortis Healthcare Ltd for Rs 6.500 crore.




MUGSHOTS.COM - ** FUGITIVE MANHUNT ** BOLO **: NAYTHAN OLNEY: WANTED OREGON MAN ELUDED POLICE FOR THE SECOND TIME IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS Mugshots.com Writing Staff. Umatilla, OR  Naythan Olney, 36, is wanted for assaulting a police officer after an incident on February 24, 2018 in which he fled a traffic stop in Hermiston in a stolen vehicle and injured a cop. He is now on the run for leading police on another high-speed chase. The Umatilla County Sheriff's Office is requesting the publics assistance in finding him. According to reports, shortly before 9 a.m. on March 7, 2018, an Umatilla County deputy was dispatched to 78626 Agnew Road in Hermiston in response to the sighting of wanted person Olney. The deputy staged in the area and waited for backup to arrive before making contact. However, while waiting for backup, Olney sped away from the residence in a stolen 2017 white Chevy Silverado pickup. The deputy tried to follow the suspect but lost him when he drove through a field. Another officer from Umatilla caught up to Olney and started another chase. This chase went down Powerline Rd. and onto I-82. As Olney approached milepost 2, he ditched the truck and took off on foot toward the Columbia River. Despite a multi-agency grid search, Olney was not found. Deputies then deployed a drone to search for Olney, but still have still not located him. The Silverado, which had been reported stolen out of Morrow County, has been recovered. It is currently being processed. Olney was reportedly wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt, a plaid shirt with the colors white, blue, green and a ball cap the last time he was seen. He is known to carry a gun and should be considered armed and dangerous. Do not approach him if you see him. Anyone with information on Olneys whereabouts should call 911 or 541-567-5519.  Your name: Your e-mail (optional): Url: Description: Mugshots.com : 165437074 All are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Published mugshots and/or arrest records are previously published public records of: an arrest, an indictment, a registration, supervision or probation, the deprivation of liberty or a detention. The mugshots and/or arrest records published on mugshots.com are in no way an indication of guilt and they are not evidence that an actual crime has been committed. Arrest does not imply guilt, and criminal charges are merely accusations. A defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty and convicted. For latest case status, contact the official Law Enforcement Agency which originally released the information. The following Official Record of MUGSHOTS.COM - ** FUGITIVE MANHUNT ** BOLO ** is being redistributed by Mugshots.com and is protected by constitutional, publishing, and other legal rights. This Official Record was collected on 3/08/2018. Last updated on 3/08/2018 unconstitutional mugshot laws, exonerations, arrest records, FBI most wanted, editorials, opinion
The government is working to amend the various Acts in order to bring in more private sector participation to develop existing and new airports in the country, aviation secretary RN Choubey said on Thursday.

He said it can be achieved through a reduced role of the airport regulator in fixing tariffs while letting the private developers monetise land for non-passenger purposes.

The government has not been able to attract private entities to develop airports. It started in 2006 with the privatisation of existing airports at Delhi and Mumbai. Hyderabad and Bengaluru are the other two private airports with GMR Infrastructure being given the mandate to develop the fifth last year.

Choubey said the government was working on a new concession model agreement  a framework that defines the incentives and freedom the private developer gets in running the airport  and the same should be out in six months.

He said the government was also looking to amend the Airports Authority of India Act to let the brownfield airport developer monetise the city-side land, something current regulations do not permit resulting in lack of private sector interest.

The Act specifically mentioned that the land usage of the city-side airport will be for passengers. After all, there is a limit to how many hotels you can build outside the airport only for passengers. There is a need to relax that. We are working on amending the Airports Authority of India Act towards that end, he said.

He said the government was also looking to amend the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India Act to encourage more private investment in both existing and new airports.

Subsequent to the amendment, the airport regulator would have no role in permitting aeronautical tariffs of those airports which have been handed to a private developer through an auction process and where the tariff is initially built into the concession agreement signed between the government and the developer.

Other ways the government is looking to attract private investment in airports is through land pooling where the land is made available not just for the airport but for a township with an airport, Choubey said.

He said another model the government was looking at was something that would work in congested cities where land availability was an issue. He said at such places, the land in the city could be swapped with land outside it to develop an airport and this could actually result in two airports.

One more model the ministry was working on would work at airports owned by state governments  there are 116 such airports -- and here the airports authority could take over the airport in 51:49 joint venture with the state, he said.

The state government provides the existing airport to the joint venture free of cost where the state government takes a 49 per cent possession. The state government funds half of the losses in first ten years but all the capital expenditure is incurred by the airports authority. So instead of the state government giving money upfront in first year, it is spread over 10 years and the airport comes into existence, he added.
20:56 That's all for today, readers. Thanks for staying on with our coverage of the day's action.

20:08 Citing TDPs exit from Union Council of Ministers, Mamata Banerjee asks regional parties to join hands to defeat BJP

West Bengal Chief Minister said, "All the regional parties should come together to defeat the BJP in 2019 (Lok Sabha poll),"

according to PTI.

"Are you (BJP) not able to hear the sound of revolt from various parts of the country? Are you not able to read the results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat? The TDP has walked out," she said.

19:51 TDP MPs thank PM Modi while resigning

During the press conference, YS Choudhary said, I don't think it's fair on our part to expect the Prime Minister to deal with these issues. It's for the concerned ministries to take up, already considerable amount of time has lapsed.

The two TDP union ministers also thanked the prime minister for the opportunity of working with him.

Ashok Gajapathi Raju, in his resignation letter expressed gratitude towards PM Modi. YS Choudhary thanked PM Modi for the experience under his guidance.

19:22 Heres a recap:

On Wednesday, Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP national president N Chandrababu Naidu told reporters that he was directing two union ministers belonging to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to resign from their posts in the Council of Ministers

Naidu, however, said that no decision had been taken yet on whether the party would quit the NDA.

The decision stems from a protest by the party against the Centres decision to not award special status to Andhra Pradesh.

Today, CM Naidu had a 20-minute telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reports suggest that he explained the reasons behind the pull out.

Following the phone call, the two TDP ministers  Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Choudhary  visited 7 Lok Kalyan Marg and tendered their resignation to the prime minister.

It remains unclear if PM Modi has accepted their resignation and forwarded them to President Ram Nath Kovind.

The two ministers then held a short press conference where they reiterated that TDP would remain part of the NDA for the time being.

Choudhary said, Sentiments of the people of Andhra Pradesh has to be addressed by Chandrababu Naidu. The decision to resign has been taken by the Chief Minister. The Prime Minister has said he is with the people of Andhra Pradesh.

18:24 Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Choudhary, who tendered their resignation a short while ago, are expected to hold a press conference in a while.

18:21 Both Union Ministers belonging to TDP, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Choudhary, have tendered their resignation.

18:10 The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) meet in Andhra Pradeshs new capital Amaravati has ended.

18:02 AP CM Chandrababu Naidu, while talking to PM Modi in their 20-minute phone conversation, explained the reasons why Telugu Desam Partys ministers will be pulling out of the cabinet, according to news reports.

17:53 The two TDP MPs in the Union Cabinet  AG Raju and YS Choudhary  have arrived at 7 Lok Kalyan Marg, the official residence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They are expected to submit their resignation, as directed by their party chief and Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, yesterday.

17:19 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Andhra Pradesh CM and Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu, according to media reports.

The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet  Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary  are expected to meet PM Modi at 6 pm today. Yesterday, they were directed by Chandrababu Naidu to submit their resignations.

14:35 Two BJP ministers resign from Andhra Pradesh Cabinet

Two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabinet in Andhra Pradesh today resigned after the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) decided to pull out of the Narendra Modi government.

Health minister Kamineni Srinivas and Endowments minister P Manikyala Rao met the chief minister at the state Assembly and submitted their resignations. They thanked him for having inducted them into the state Cabinet.

The chief minister, in turn, complimented the BJP members, saying they had discharged their duties well. Later, speaking in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, Srinivas said that his political career began in the TDP in 1982. "

My party membership registration number was 80. After serving the party for a few years, I stayed away from politics for close to three decades. I joined the BJP in 2014 on the invitation of Venkaiah Naidu (now Vice President) and became an MLA," Srinivas, who is a doctor by profession, said.

He expressed satisfaction that he had discharged his duties as a minister without a single complaint. "I felt very happy when the chief minister told me there was not a single complaint against me," he said.

14:32 Speaking to ANI, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy said, "Whosoever is ready to give 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, It will have YSRCP's support. All the options are open from our party. For us Andhra Pradesh comes first & is above all the other issues."

13:57 Chandrababu Naidu took a historical step. Why did our CM took a step back? Letter was written to him to create pressure over issue of special status to Bihar. This is much needed especially with the kind of disparities here. CM should muster up at least 1% of Naidu's courage: Manoj Jha, RJD leader told ANI.

13:53 Nitish's government has been demanding Bihar's special status for long and we've got a special package which is monetarily as beneficial as special status. But, despite this some people are not satisfied and to them I will just say that India can only grow in NDA's regime: Ram Vilas Paswan told ANI.

13:49 This country is not about two parties, India is not a bipolar country. It has a multi-party system & a strong regional party network too. There is good possibility of a third alternative or it could be the only alternative: KT Rama Rao, Telangana Minister told ANI.

13:37 "BJP made false promises to TDP to make them an ally," says Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, reports CNN News18.

13:35 Let us not get confused. When the state of Andhra Pradesh was made, the people did not want to be treated as a residue material. There were some assurances made. UPA govt made some commitments, now these commitments are the questions: Ashok Gajapathi Raju

13:31 We are asking for an appointment with Prime Minister not for having a discussion about this problem, but to handover our resignations and thank him for allowing us to work in his team: Ashok Gajapathi Raju told ANI.

13:25 "We are meeting PM Modi to hand over our resignation," said TDP minister Ashok Gajapathi, reports CNN News18.

13:06 TDP Madhya Pradesh CM Ramesh arrived at the Parliament wearing t-shirt with 6 demands for the state of Andhra Pradesh printed in it, reports ANI.

12:56 After TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu directed its ministers at the Centre to resign over the special category status row for Andhra Pradesh, JD(U) Pavan Verma is now demanding a special category status for Bihar, reports CNN-News18.

12:45 After TDP, now BJP's ally JD(U) joins 'Special Status' bandwagon, reports CNN News18. 

12:19 BJP ministers quit from Chandrababu Naidu's cabinet amid tussle with TDP over special status

Two BJP ministers resigned from Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Thursday, a day after Telugu Desam Partys chief Chandrababu Naidu decided to pull out his two ministers from the Union Cabinet.

BJP ministers, K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao, submitted their resignation to the speaker.

Top government sources said that there is not much left to speak to Naidu. Rajnath Singh is not planning to reach out to him anymore. Amit Shah will later decide on party level regarding BJP next step, but as far as government is concerned, TDP is on way out, they said.

Read the full report here.

12:11 Lok Sabha has been adjourned for the day. The Rajya Sabha proceedings will resume at 2 pm.

12:08 TDP ministers to resign from Cabinet post at 4:00 pm today, reports CNN News18.

11:24 Other parties who are sympathetic to our cause have also started protesting on various issues but in support of us. Next step is coming out of the Cabinet, after FM Jaitley's statement yesterday: Jayadev Galla, TDP told ANI.

11:12 What Arun Jaitley spoke yesterday is not good. You are holding hand of the North Eastern states but not Andhra Pradesh's. You are giving industrial incentives to them, not to Andhra Pradesh. Why this discrimination?: CM N Chandrababu Naidu said in state assembly, reports ANI.

11:11 Our ministers in central cabinet and BJP ministers in our cabinet have resigned. However, these ministers worked good in the state. They brought considerable reforms in their departments. I thank them for their services: Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu said in state assembly, reports ANI.

10:50 Amaravati: BJP's Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao resign as ministers from Andhra Pradesh cabinet, reports ANI.

10:47 What crisis? This is like match fixing. They are still pretending to withdraw (from the alliance). What would happen if 2 ministers resign? If you are serious do it seriously: Renuka Chowdhury, Congress leader told ANI on TDP-NDA rift.

10:41 Our two ministers in the government will be resigning today. No one from AP was willing to bifurcate, all resources related to generation of employment were in Hyderabad, bifurcation was not done in an unscientific way & injustice done with the Andhra Pradesh: Srinivas, TDP memeber told ANI.

10:34 Even before TDP, Uddhav Ji had clarified his stance. 2 ministers from TDP are about to resign, BJP should've thought about it. Former NDA leaders had kept the alliance together. Now it's overconfident. 2019 will be challenging for BJP: Manisha Kayande, Shiv Sena told ANI.

10:31 Whenever you seek time from PM Modi and BJP President Amit Shah they meet. If all states demand special status it would become very difficult for the government: Union Minister Ramdas Athawale told ANI.

10:30 It is not good that TDP has decided to breakaway from with NDA. Want to appeal to AP CM N Chandrababu Naidu that he must think over this decision once again for development of people of AP they should stay with NDA: Union Minister Ramdas Athawale told ANI.

10:16 It's the decision we took after Arun Jaitley's statement yesterday. When we're asking for our right it can't be rejected. Alliance is still under negotiation. We don't want to make it a political fight between TDP-BJP but a fight for the state: Ram Mohan Naidu, TDP MP told ANI.

10:09 BJP Ministers in Andhra Pradesh cabinet submitted their resignation in the CM office in Amaravati.

10:04 Central Ministers Shri Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Shri Y S Chowdary will make statements in the Parliament, reports CNN News18.

10:03 Shiv Sena had expected this. Other parties have walked out of NDA too. Allies no longer have good relations with BJP. Gradually their grudges will spill out & eventually they'll walk out of alliance: Sanjay Raut, Shiv Sena told ANI.

09:44 Yesterday afternoon Congress President Rahul Gandhi had joined the protests at Jantar Mantar demanding "Special Status" for Andhra Pradesh. "It is my belief that if the opposition stands united on this issue, we can force the BJP Govt to do justice to the people of Andhra," Gandhi said.

09:30 TDP pull-out of Modi govt too little, too late: Congress

The Congress on Wednesday said that the TDP's decision to pull out of the NDA government at the Centre was "too little, too late" as it "has done nothing" to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh in the past four years.

"This is too little and too late. The TDP has been an ally of the BJP for four years now and has done nothing to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh," senior Congress leader from Andhra Pradesh and former union minister M M Pallam Raju said.

His remarks came soon after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu, in a late night press conference, announced that his party's two central ministers -- Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology Y S Chowdary -- would resign from the government on Thursday.

09:25 At a press conference on Wednesday, Finance minister Arun Jaitley had said that giving special status to Andhra Pradesh was impossible now. He said such a category did exist when the state was split in 2014 but since the implementation of the 14th Finance Commission recommendation, such a treatment is now constitutionally restricted to just the North Eastern states and three other hill states.

For special category status category states, the Centre meets 90 percent of the funds required in a centrally sponsored scheme as against 60 percent in case of normal category states. The remaining funds are provided by the state governments.

For Andhra Pradesh, the Centre committed to giving 90 percent of the funds, equivalent to special category states, through other means like external agencies, Jaitley said, adding that the Union government was even willing to accept the state government's suggestion of routing such funds through NABARD.

09:21 "It's a crucial time. We have to stand, we have to fight, we have to get it done," TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu had tweeted on Wednesday.

09:19 YSR Congress chief Jagan Mohan Reddy has extended his support to TDP for demanding the special category status for Andhra Pradesh, reports India Today TV. Reddy suggested that TDP should move a "no trust motion" against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

09:14 "It is not a good move but unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances we're stepping down as ministers. Our President said that we will continue to be a partner of NDA. We are most likely to meet PM also," says YS Chowdary, Union Minister, TDP, reports ANI.

TDP

MP and Union Civil Aviation minister

Ashok Gajapathi Raju seeks appointment with Modi to resign, reports India Today.

09:06 Centre went out of its way to help Andhra: BJP after TDP pull-out

The BJP rejected Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu's charge that the Modi government neglected the state, saying the Centre not only fulfilled all its obligations but also had gone out of its way to help the state.

BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao said the Modi dispensation worked to ensure that Andhra Pradesh got full resources in infrastructure and industrial sector after the bifurcation of the state.

09:05 Naidu's decision comes after a protest by the party against the Centres decision to not award special status to Andhra Pradesh. Naidu said that he had even tried to call Prime Minister Narendra Modi to inform him about the decision but said the latter did not come on the line.

Desam

TDP

Andhra

TDP

Chandrababu

Naidu

Naidu

Two union ministers from the TeluguParty () will resign from their posts today,Pradesh chief minister andnational president Ntold reporters on Wednesday.had, however, added that no decision had been taken yet on whether the party would quit the NDA.
It's been almost 4 years since Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated into two states and Telangana was formed. Ever since, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government in Andhra has been demanding the Centre to grant it special status. Here's a look at the sequence of events leading to the weakening alliance between the TDP and the BJP.

June 2014: Andhra Pradesh is bifurcated on June 2 - under the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act - and Telangana is formed.

Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra, which now falls under Telangana, remains the joint-capital of the two states for the next 10 years.

TDP forms the government in Andhra Pradesh, while the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) forms the government in Telanagana.

October 2015: Foundation is laid for Amaravati to be developed as the new capital for Andhra Pradesh.

January 26, 2017: People hold protests demanding special status category for Andhra.

February 1, 2018: While delivering his budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley does not talk about granting the special status.

February 4, 2018: TDP says alliance with BJP will continue, but their demand a special package to Andhra Pradesh would remain.

March 5, 2018: Members of the TDP and its rival party YSR Congress protest outside parliament to press with their demand.

March 7 2018: Jaitley says giving Andhra Pradesh special status is impossible, but Centre is willing to give funds equivalent to special status.

Jaitley cites 14th Finance Commission recommendation, which says special status category is Constitutional only for North Eastern states.

Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu asks TDP MPs to resign from the Union Cabinet.

BJP members Dr Kamineni Srinivas and Pydikondala Manikyala Rao resign from Andhra cabinet.
The night life of cosmopolitan India thrives in restaurants and bars with bright lights and loud music. These high-end restaurants employ able-bodied personnel, popularly known as bouncers, to ensure the safety of their customers from miscreants and potentially tense situations. (Reuters)

Mehrunnisha Shokat Ali is a female bouncer in New Delhi at Hauz Khas villages Social. Smashing every stereotype of this society, Mehrunnisha is a strong, determined employee, who ensures the safety of female customers in the restaurant. (Reuters)

Her sister, Tarannum, followed her lead and now works as a bouncer, too. Together, the sisters are breadwinners for their family of seven. Working in restaurants and as private security for big personalities like Priyanka Chopra, both of them bring home Rs 30,000 per month. (Reuters)

Mehrunnisha comes from a conservative Muslim family, originally from Saharanpur, and was never encouraged to work by her father. She dreamed of joining the army or becoming a police officer, but did not pursue it, fearing him. (Reuters)

After her father lost a lot of money in business, Mehrunnisha had to take up this job and she could not be happier. I am very proud of what I do, it's not an easy job. Taking care of people, especially women in a club, is a very big responsibility." (Reuters)

Aware of the challenges that come with a bouncers job description, Mehrunnisha spends a significant amount of time in the gym, working out with her sister, to build her strength and stamina. (Reuters)

Not only is she determined, Mehrunnisha is actually quite good at her job. One of the many female patrons of Delhi Social said, If I come here and I see a female bouncer, I feel a lot safer. Mehrunnisha is pretty kick-ass. (Reuters)

Even her employer, Social's owner Riyaaz Amlani, sees her as a fierce, determined woman. We decided to employ women to make sure that women customers too felt safe, and we found a great match in Mehrunnisha. She has helped defuse innumerable alcohol-fuelled quarrels. (Reuters)

Over time, balancing her 10-hour-long shifts along with her family, Mehrunnisha has become an expert in breaking up bar fights, frisking female customers, and uncovering illegal drugs. (Reuters)
The first AC Mumbai Western Railway local train

People commuting on Mumbai locals will now receive immediate medical support from railway staff who are being trained to provide first aid services to passengers, reported Hindustan Times.

National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) will train railway staff including ticket checker, station managers, and even the cleaners and shoeshine workers.

Over 1,019 Central Railway staff have already received such training and are currently posted at various suburban railway stations.

The basic first aid treatment will help commuters during any medical emergency. We aim to train all the railway staff, which will prove to be a boon for people during golden hour, said SK Jain, divisional railway manager, CR, told the paper.

Such trainings would help reduce the time gap to recieve first aid in cases of accidents.

The personnel are being trained to provide Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), treat bites, foreign body obstruction, soft tissue injury, poisoning, bleeding, burns and cuts. Necessary treatments will be given to commuters who fall from crowded trains and require immediate medical assistance.

The move taken by the railways is welcome, as it was urgently needed. However, in case of accidents, the railways generally enlist the help of outsiders and not its own staff. The railways should use their own staff for assistance in such cases, Lata Argade, Vice President, Railway Pravasi Mahasangh, told the paper.

The Emergency Medical Rooms (EMR) are also introduced at a number of railway stations in the Central and Western Railways. More EMRs are veing constructed at the Sion, Vikroli, Panvel, Kalwa, Ulhasnagar, Bhandup and Diva railway stations.

The Railways has also introduced one  rupee clinic at the suburban railway stations to assist passengers.
Ananth Kumar: Often considered to be the man who built the BJP from the scratch in Karnataka, Kumar passed away on November 12, 2018 after battling lung cancer for months. (Image: Creative Commons)

Attacking the Congress for stalling parliament proceedings for fourth day in a row, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar today said the Opposition was running away from debate fearing "skeletons of banking scam of yesteryears could tumble out of its closet".

He said the Centre had been ready for discussion on the banking irregularities in both Houses of parliament from day one, but the Congress kept changing its stand and sought debates under different rules.

Kumar said the opposition party was "scared and helpless" after witnessing a series of election defeats in some states.

"Congress is not ready for debate because it is scared that many skeletons of banking scam of yesteryears could tumble out of its closet. Therefore, they are running away," he told reporters.

"We are ready to discuss from day one, which they did not expect from us. The banking irregularities, if anything had happened, must have took place during the Congress time. Congress leaders are linked with the Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi case," he alleged.

The Union minister said the Congress had become "intolerant" towards parliament, democratic process, people's mandate and even BJP's victory.

Congress was ready for discussion in parliament before its president Rahul Gandhi returned from his Italy trip. Now, it has changed its stand and putting pressure to debate the issues under a different rule, he said.

"The reason for this is their defeat in the recent polls in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura among others," the BJP leader said.
The desecration of statues of leaders continued today with busts of Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar being found defaced in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, respectively.

A 42-year-old man, Dinesan, was arrested in connection with the defacing of Mahatma Gandhi statue in Kannur district of Kerala, police said.

Police said he was mentally unsound and later released on bail.

Gandhi's bust near the Thaliparamba taluk office was found defaced in the morning with its spectacle carving damaged and a garland on it seen lying nearby.

Meanwhile, at a residential locality in Chennai, a bust of Dalit icon B R Ambedkar was found with paint smeared on its face and head. The bust is placed inside a structure covered with a grill in a residential neighbourhood in Tiruvotriyur in North Chennai. Police assured the agitated local people that action would be taken against the culprits.

"Based on a complaint from the local people, we have registered an FIR and two special teams have been formed to trace the culprits," Deputy Police Commissioner G Shashank Sai said. More police pickets have been posted in the area for maintenance of law and order, he said. A series of incidents of desecration of statues of various leaders, including Ambedkar, rationalist E V Ramasamy "Periyar" and Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, have been reported from different parts of the country over the past few days.

The incidents began after a statue of Communist icon Vladimir Lenin was pulled down in Tripura after the BJP's victory in the assembly elections, ending 25 years of Communist rule. The incidents in Tamil Nadu were triggered after BJP leader H Raja had in a Facebook comment indicated that Periyar's statue would meet the fate as that of Lenin's statue. However, facing flak from political parties in the state, he later deleted the post and blamed his social media administrator for the lapse.

He also expressed regret for the comment.

Meanwhile, superstar Rajinikanth today described as 'barbaric' Raja's comment but said the issue need not be 'magnified' further as the BJP leader expressed regret.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had yesterday strongly condemned the vandalism and warned of stern action against the guilty.
The Ghaziabad district administration has identified land for two dumping grounds in the district and plans are in the offing to install electricity generation plant there with the help of the civic bodies including Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam (GNN) and Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA).

Both the developmental bodies are mulling over the possibilities to install electricity generation plant in Galand village.

District Magistrate Ritu Maheshwari said that 35 acres land in Galand and 21 acre land in Mohammadpur Amad Baghpat village in Modinagar tehsil have been identified for setting up dumping grounds. Maheshwari said that land for dumping ground in Galand village of Hapur district was earlier decided where the GDA and GNN will install power generation plant.

In Mohammadpur village, Waste to Energy Plant will be constructed with the financial grant of other civic bodies of the district, which they are getting from state government.

For this, Arcadis company has been given an assignment to prepare the Detailed Project Report (DPR).

The pollution control board, forest department, GDA, GNN and the advisory company have approved the land for erecting the Waste to Energy Plant in Mohammadpur, the district magistrate added.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

India has banned Tibetans from holding a rally with the Dalai Lama in New Delhi this month to mark the 60th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, officials said on Wednesday, as it tries to improve fraught ties with China.

Relations between China and India have been tense in recent months after their troops faced off on a disputed part of their border. China was also angered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's February visit to Arunachal Pradesh, also claimed by China.

Senior officials in the foreign and interior ministries said exiled Tibetans would not be allowed to hold a rally in the capital, but could do so in the northern town of Dharamsala, where a Tibetan government in exile is based.

"We don't want Tibetans to hold big anti-China protests in New Delhi because it creates a bit of diplomatic tension between India and China," said the senior foreign ministry official.

"It's a very sensitive time for India and China ties and we want to ease tensions."

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a news briefing on Thursday that there was a "pressing need" for China and India to resolve a lack of mutual trust.

Authorities in India and Nepal have previously banned protests against China by Tibetans during sensitive times, such as visits by Chinese leaders.

China took control of Tibet in 1950 in what it calls a "peaceful liberation" of the remote, Himalayan region.

An uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet erupted in 1958 and troops crushed it the following year. The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled from the crackdown and was granted asylum in India.

The Dalai Lama has lived mostly in Dharamsala, where his supporters run a small government in exile and advocate for autonomy for Tibet by peaceful means.

An interior ministry also said the Tibetan rally could not be held in New Delhi.

"The Dalai Lama's followers can host events, hold protests - but only in Dharamsala," said the official, who also declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"We have limited them this time."

Dorje Gyalchen, a representative of the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, confirmed that the venue for the gathering planned for New Delhi would be changed.

China considers the Dalai Lama to be a dangerous separatist and has piled pressure on foreign governments to shun him. India allows him to pursue his religious activities in the country and to travel abroad.

Tens of thousands Tibetans live in 39 formal settlements and dozens of informal communities across India.

Rights groups say the Chinese government tramples on Tibet's religious and cultural traditions, charges Beijing denies.

A Tibetan man in his forties died on Thursday after setting himself on fire in Ngawa county in southeastern China's Sichuan province, according to advocacy group the International Campaign for Tibet.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the group's account. The Ngawa government did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

The apparent self-immolation, which came as the annual meeting of China's parliament is underway in Beijing and just prior to an anniversary of a Tibetan uprising on March 10, 1959.

Rights groups say there have been about 150 self-immolations by Tibetans in China since 2009, with the last reported case in December 2017.
N Chandrababu Naidu | Andhra Pradesh | Total cases: 3 | Serious IPC: Nil

Two BJP ministers resigned from Andhra Pradesh cabinet on Thursday, a day after Telugu Desam Partys chief Chandrababu Naidu decided to pull out his two ministers from the Union Cabinet.

BJP ministers, K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao, submitted their resignation to the speaker.

Top government sources said that there is not much left to speak to Naidu. Rajnath Singh is not planning to reach out to him anymore. Amit Shah will later decide on party level regarding BJP next step, but as far as government is concerned, TDP is on way out, they said.
In a first, the new Nagaland government headed by NDPP leader Neiphiu Rio will take oath at a public function at the Kohima Local Ground today.

The venue holds significance as the announcement of Nagaland's statehood on December 1, 1963 was made from here by the then president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

The Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), in alliance with the BJP, will take over the reins of the north-eastern state with the support of 32 MLAs.

The alliance has chosen senior NDPP leader Rio as the chief minister.

Governor P B Acharya would administer the oath of office and secrecy to Rio and the 11 ministers at the main rostrum of the ground, in the presence of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP president Amit Shah, official sources said here today.

The state had invited the common people to the ceremony through newspaper advertisements issued by the Department of Information and Public Relations, they added.

The swearing-in ceremonies in the state have so far been high-profile shows at the Darbar Hall of Raj Bhavan, with VVIPs, VIPs and top bureaucrats in attendance.

The newly-mandated alliance government, comprising 32 elected members of the NDPP, BJP, JD(U) and an Independent, however, has decided to take oath before the public.

Rio will be assuming the charge of Nagaland chief minister for the fourth time. He had served his three previous terms between 2003 and May, 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was reportedly requested to grace the swearing-in ceremony as this was the first time the BJP had won 12 seats in the state, had expressed his inability to attend it, a source in the Raj Bhavan said.

NDPP secretary general Abu Metha said Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu and Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma were also expected to attend the ceremony.

As the swearing-in ceremony would be held at the Kohima Local Ground, the stretch between the Y-junction and the DC office was repaired to ensure a smooth commute, sources said.

The district administration and the police had made adequate security arrangements and traffic had also been streamlined for today's ceremony, they added.
N Chandrababu Naidu | Andhra Pradesh | Total cases: 3 | Serious IPC: Nil

TDP leader Y S Chowdary today said he and his colleague Ashok Gajapathi Raju were stepping down as ministers but would continue to be part of the NDA, a move that was necessitated by "unavoidable circumstances".

Likening the decision to an unfortunate divorce, Chowdary, the Union minister of state for science and technology, said he and Raju, Union civil aviation minister, would continue to work as parliamentarians for Andhra Pradesh.

Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's announcement last night that his leaders would exit the cabinet came a few hours after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Centre can't offer special status to Andhra Pradesh, but would offer a special package with equivalent funding.

"We will be happy when marriages happen, not when divorces happen. It is not a good move, but unfortunately due to unavoidable circumstances we had to take this move. We are stepping down as ministers, but our president has said we will be continuing as part of NDA," Chowdhary told reporters. The beauty of democracy, he said, was to bring unanimity and make everyone happy and this was the BJP's responsibility.

"When they are in responsible positions they will have to balance such things and during the process of balancing they will have to face such situations." Adding that Raju and he would continue to work in their personal capacities as parliamentarians and exert pressure to achieve their demand, he said, "All parliament members will work for this. We hope we will succeed in getting special status..."

The TDP has 16 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Asked about Congress president Rahul Gandhi's offer to give special status to Andhra Pradesh if the party came to power, he said it was a hypothetical situation. According to TDP MP Konagalla Narayana, Naidu waited for four years and the decision to withdraw the party's ministers was an outcome of his losing patience.

"The chief felt that during a fight for special status, it is not right to have our members in their cabinet. So he took this decision... now if they don't act, this agitation will be intensified," Narayana said. Another MP, Naramalli Sivaprasad, added that the BJP had considered them smaller all these days but would now understand their strength.

Naidu had said yesterday that the TDP joined the NDA government only to protect the interests of Andhra Pradesh following its bifurcation but claimed the Centre was taking unilateral decisions without thinking about solutions to the state's problems.

The chief minister said he tried to speak to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over phone "as a courtesy" to inform him about the decision to pull out of the NDA government. "It is my responsibility as a coalition partner to inform the prime minister about our party decision. My OSD spoke to his OSD but the prime minister did not come on line," he said.
You cannot fly to the Sun but your name can travel through its atmosphere. NASA has invited people from around the world to submit their names to be placed on a microchip aboard its historic Parker Solar Probe mission launching in summer 2018.

In 2017, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced its plans to launch the worlds first mission to the Sun. It will plunge through the Suns atmosphere, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions, and your name will go along for the ride.

Submissions will be accepted online until April 27, 2018. Here is how you can get the hottest ticket this summer without standing in line:

Go to http://go.nasa.gov/HotTicket

An online form will appear.

Fill your first name, last name and email id and click Submit.

Its done. Your name will be included in a memory card that will fly aboard Parker Solar Probe spacecraft.

NASA said that understanding the Sun has always been a top priority for space scientists. Studying how the Sun affects space and the space environment of planets is the field known as heliophysics. The field is not only vital to understanding Earths most important and life-sustaining star, it supports exploration in the solar system and beyond.

The US space agency also claimed that the mission will travel closer to the surface of Sun than any spacecraft before it and ultimately providing humanity with the first-ever close-up view of a star. Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington said, This probe will journey to a region humanity has never explored before and added that this mission will answer questions scientists have sought to uncover for more than six decades.
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Even as Donald Trumps rhetoric to slap reciprocal tax on bike imports to US reaches a new high, Royal Enfield is busy setting the stage for adding yet another bike to its US line-up.

The Eicher Motors-controlled Royal Enfield will launch the Himalayan, a middleweight, adventure (off-road) motorcycle, in the US next month. This will be Enfields fourth model launch in that country after Continental GT, Classic 500 and Bullet 500.

The launch coincides with US President Donald Trumps series of criticism against Indias policy to slap 50 percent customs duty on fully imported bikes. This is even as the US charges zero tax on bikes imported and sold in that country, as per Trump. The actual tax on imported motorcycles in the US ranges between 3-3.4 percent.

Late last week, Trump warned of a reciprocal tax that will charge products to the same extent as US-made products get taxed in markets outside the US. Trumps tweet mentioning 50% tax defined Indian government customs charges on imported bikes.

At around $4,499 or Rs 2.92 lakh the Himalayan sold in the US is 75 percent costlier than its counterpart in India. The Himalayan will also be the cheapest Royal Enfield to go on sale in the US. The Bullet is priced at $4999 while the Classic 500 range starts at $5499. The cafe racer-inspired model Continental GT is the costliest from the Royal Enfield stable priced at $5999.

Royal Enfield Continental GT 650

Royal Enfields line-up remains largely unchallenged in the US as Harley-Davidson, the worlds most recognised cruiser bike company, has products mostly in the 800cc category and above where their starting price is $8699. Only the Harley-Davidson Street 500 (priced at $6899) comes closest to a similar spec Royal Enfield but is priced way above than its Indian counterpart.

Royal Enfield is keen to exploit this space in the US market catering to needs of customers who want to use them for everyday commutes rather than leisurely weekend rides of Harley Davidson range.

Unveiled late last year, Royal Enfields twin new offerings Interceptor 650 and Continental 650 will be its first major upgrade, targeted at matured markets such as the US and Europe. These two models that have been developed at a UK Technological Center, will be manufactured in Chennai like the rest of the range.

Royal Enfield North America controls 75 dealers based in the US, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Royal Enfield has been building its dealerships in the US from scratch since the past three years. In US the brand has about 50 exclusive dealerships alongside a few hundred multi brand stores.

Royal Enfield and Austrian street bike company KTM are the only two brands that manufacture bikes in India to be exported to the US. KTM, which is 48 percent controlled by Pune-based bike specialist Bajaj Auto , exports the KTM RC390 and Duke 390 to the US. Both these bikes are manufactured at the Chakan plant based in Pune of Bajaj Auto.
IMA Ponzi scheme case: A multi-crore scheme run by Karnataka-based I-Monetary Advisory (IMA) and its group entities allegedly duped lakhs of people by promising higher returns using Islamic ways of investment. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is currently investigating the case and has filed at least three FIRs. (File image of the CBI headquarters)

The CBI today moved the Supreme Court challenging the acquittal of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the sensational 2008 twin murder case of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj.

The move by the agency came months after Hemraj's wife had in December last year approached the top court against the Allahabad High Court verdict of October 12 last year acquitting the couple.

The CBI filed an appeal challenging the high court order acquitting the Talwar couple, CBI's spokesperson said.

The high court had freed them of the charges on the ground that they could not be held guilty on the basis of the evidence on record.

A CBI court at Ghaziabad had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013 in connection with the case.

Before the high court's order came, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were serving their life sentences in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail.

Fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars' Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45-year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.

As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over a shoddy probe into the case which was making national headlines, the case was handed over to the CBI on a recommendation by the then chief minister Mayawati.
Ravi Shankar Prasad

The government proposes to set up an arbitration council of India which would grade institutions involved in alternative dispute resolution involving commercial issues, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.

He said with India attracting investments, it was essential to provide for a reliable platform, which includes arbitration, to handle commercial disputes.

After the Union Cabinet last night approved the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Bill, 2018 to encourage institutional arbitration for settlement of disputes, his ministry would take the bill to Parliament in the ongoing Budget session.

The amendments will facilitate speedy appointment of arbitrators through designated arbitral institutions by the Supreme Court or a high court, without having any requirement to approach the court in this regard, he said.

The amendment also provides for creation of an independent body -- the Arbitration Council of India (ACI) -- which will grade arbitral institution and accredit arbitrators by laying down norms and take all such steps as may be necessary to promote and encourage arbitration, conciliation, mediation and other alternative dispute resolution mechanism.

The ACI chairperson will be a person who has been a judge of the Supreme Court or chief justice or judge of any high court or any eminent person.

It is proposed to provide that the time limit for arbitral award in other arbitrations will be within 12 months from the completion of the pleadings of the parties, he said quoting the decision of the cabinet.

The arbitrator will be protected from suit or other legal proceedings for any action or omission done in good faith in the course of arbitration proceedings.

Another law ministry proposal cleared by the Cabinet yesterday relates to commercial courts.

According to the amendments approved to the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts Act, the specified value of a commercial dispute will be brought down to Rs three lakh from the present Rs one crore.

Now, commercial disputes of a reasonable value can be decided by commercial courts. This would bring down the time taken from the present 1,445 days in resolution of commercial disputes of lesser value.

The amendment also provides for establishment of commercial courts at district judge level for the territories over which respective high courts have ordinary original civil jurisdiction -- the cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and state of Himachal Pradesh.

The introduction of the pre-institution mediation process in cases where no urgent, interim relief is contemplated will provide an opportunity to the parties to resolve the commercial disputes outside the ambit of the courts through the authorities constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act.

It will help in reinforcing investors' confidence in the resolution of commercial disputes, an official statement issued by the law ministry said.

The law, once passed, will be given prospective effect, so that the authority of the judicial forum presently adjudicating the commercial disputes is not affected.

Increase of foreign direct investment and overseas commercial transactions have further contributed to a significant increase of commercial disputes.

Ease of doing business is an index of the World Bank which refers to the dispute resolution environment in a country which facilitates the investors in deciding for setting up of and operation of a business.
That's all for today, readers. Thank you for staying on with our coverage of the day's action.

Hasin Jahan, wife of bowler Mohammed Shami, has filed a domestic abuse case against the bowler and accused him of fixing matches. On Wednesday, Jahan alleged that Shami was having extra-marital affairs.

Jahan

named a Pakistani woman and claimed that Shami accepted money from her under the influence of an England-based businessman. Shami on the other hand dismissed all the allegations and told ANI,

"Hasin (wife) and her family have been saying that we will sit and talk out all issues, but I don't know who has been misleading her. As far as allegation of compromising my performance playing for the country is concerned, I would rather die than do something like this."

President Ram Nath Kovind said on International Womens Day it was high time we listen to "voices of our daughters" and change the mindset which hinders giving equal rights to women.

He also called for bringing in composite development of the country. Speaking at a function organized on Thursday, the president said discriminating between men and women was essentially a problem of mindsets.

Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was booked on Thursday following a complaint for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of the Muslim community by giving "provocative" statements on the Ayodhya issue.

"The complaint against the spiritual guru, who has been trying for a solution to the Ayodhya dispute through mediation, was filed by Salahuddin Affan, secretary of the city-based Darsgah Jihad-O-Shahadat (DJS)," Moghalpura police station Inspector R Devendar said.

Fresh violence erupted in Muslim neighbourhoods of Sri Lanka's central district Kandy, where communal clashes destroyed more shops and homes, as a worried President Maithripala Sirisena divested the law and order portfolio from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The communal violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Indian Ocean island nation has not subsided despite a state of emergency and a heavy deployment of troops in the riot-hit district.

Anti-Muslim riots, since Monday, have damaged several homes, businesses and mosques. The violence erupted after the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has told the Supreme Court that Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were wrongly cleared in their daughter Aarushi and their domestic helps murder case.

The investigating agency said that the Allahabad High Courts conclusion about there being no evidence to prove the Talwars guilty was wrong on "many counts". Thirteen-year-old Aarushi was found with her throat slit in her bedroom, while their domestic help Hemrajs body was discovered the next day on the terrace of the building where they lived in Noida.

Launching an attack on the BJP, Congress President Rahul Gandhi said there is a general atmosphere of "intimidation" in India where "nasty form of politics" of dividing people are being played to win elections.

"If you ask me what am I proud about my country...it is the idea of plurality. It's the idea that people in India can say anything they want, do anything they want and they won't face any problem and that is being challenged...," he said.

foeticide



Narendra

Modi

foeticide

NNM

Beti

Bachao

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programme

Prime Ministersaid on Thursday that femalewas a matter of "deep shame" and mothers-in-law should take the lead to protect the girl child. Speaking Rajasthan during the launch the National Nutrition Mission (), the PM announced the expansion of the '

"Everyone is equal. It is important that girls get access to quality education, just like boys. A daughter is not a burden. Look around us, see how girls are bringing pride and glory to our nation," Modi said on International Women's Day.

BJP workers led by the party's state president Dilip Ghosh were stopped by the police when they tried to enter the area where the vandalised bust of Jan Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookherjee is located.

A large posse of policemen in riot gear with a water-canon put up a blockade preventing them from moving forward. Police said 59 BJP workers including two women were arrested for violating law. Mookerjee's bust was vandalised on Wednesday by a left wing group "Radical" in protest against pulling down of communist icon Lenin's statue in Tripura.

The Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the Centre for coming out with a bulky affidavit of over 700 pages on the issue of inadequate facilities for children living in orphanages and child care institutions and said it cannot waste everyone's time.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, Kurian Joseph and Deepak Gupta said this when the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) came up with an over 700-page document. "Why do you file such a big affidavit," the bench asked the counsel representing the Centre.

BJP president Yeddyurappa today lashed out at the Siddaramaiah government over deteriorating law and order in Karnataka and said the chief minister was running the state like 'Tughlaq darbar" ahead of the state assembly polls.

His remarks come a day after the state's most senior anti-corruption officer P Vishwanatha Shetty was hospitalised after he was stabbed repeatedly at his office in Bengaluru.

18:36 Sebi

IRF

FPIs

In order to attract more foreign funds, markets regulator Sebi today decided to allocate a separate limit of Rs 5,000 crore to FPIs for taking long position in Interest Rate Futures (IRFs).

Currently, the foreign portfolio investor (FPI) limit for government securities is fungible between investments in securities and investment in bond futures.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said that female foeticide was a matter of "deep shame" and mothers-in-law should take the lead to protect the girl child.

The prime minister was in Rajasthan to launch the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) and announce the expansion of the 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme.

Doklam

There have been no new developments at the face-off site with China in Doklam and its vicinity and status quo prevails in the area, V K Singh, minister of state in the External Affairs Ministry said today.

"Since the disengagement of Indian and Chinese border personnel in the Doklam area on August 28, 2017, there have been no developments at the face-off site and its vicinity. The status quo prevails," Singh said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha.

17:44 Vistara to start international flights from second half of 2018

Vistara plans to start international services in the second half of this year with a fleet of 22 aircraft and the first overseas flight will be to South East Asia, a top airline official said today.

The full service carrier, which currently has 19 planes, would be getting the 20th aircraft this month, according to its CEO Leslie Thng.

A joint venture between Tatas and Singapore Airlines, the airline is discussing plans for raising funds with its promoters. (PTI)

17:28 The Parliamentary Panel on Energy has tabled its report on stressed power projects in the Parliament.

The panel has analysed 34 stressed power projects with outstanding debt of Rs 1.74 lakh crore. The 34 stressed projects have a capacity of 40,130 MW. The reviewed projects include those of Adani, Essar Power, Jindal India, Lanca, Monnet Power and Jaypee Power.

The panel has said that the commissioned power plants are on the brink of becoming non-performing assets (NPAs) and have a capacity of 1,000s of MW.

It has also said that simply applying RBI norms mechanically will push power plants into further trouble.

The report has suggested that revisiting the National Electricity Policy to take ground realities into account.

17:12 Deloitte pays UK women 43% less than men, Barclays 48%

Deloittes UK division said its female staff are paid 43.2% less on average than male employees - one of the wider gender gaps reported so far, reports Bloomberg. Law firms Linklaters and Pinsent Masons have reported that female employees earn 23% and 22% less on average, respectively, than their male colleagues, while EY reported a gap of 20%. Barclays said that its corporate and investment bank paid female staff an average of 48% less than male employees.

16:54 Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Andhra Pradesh CM and Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu, according to media reports.

The two TDP ministers in the Union Cabinet  Ashok Gajapathi Raju and YS Chowdary  are expected to meet PM Modi at 6 pm today. Yesterday, they were directed by Chandrababu Naidu to submit their resignations.

16:54 IBBI seeks public comments on draft norms for regulation-making process

In a unique move, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) has put out for public consultations draft norms for governing "the process of making regulations" under the insolvency law.

Public comments have been sought on the draft 'Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (Mechanism for Issuing Regulations), Regulations, 2018'.

The IBBI is implementing the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) which provides for market-determined and time-bound resolution process.

According to the board, it is proposing to "make regulations to govern the process of making regulations and consulting the public". (PTI)

16:43 Maharashtras economy expected to grow 7.3% in 2017-18: Economic Survey

Maharashtra's economy is expected to grow by 7.3 percent in 2017-18 over the previous year, the Economic Survey tabled in the state Legislature today said.

The Survey report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly by Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, while in the Legislative Council it was presented by Minister of State for Finance Deepak Kesarkar.

The growth of 7.3 percent (in 2017-18) is against the 10 percent growth projected during 2016-17, the survey said. (PTI)

16:32 Vodafone, Idea will benefit most from spectrum payment time extension: Report

The Idea-Vodafone combine will benefit the most among established players from the government's decision to allow a longer tenure to telcos to pay for spectrum bought in the auction, a Deutsche Bank report said today.

In its latest report on the relief package for telcos cleared by the Union Cabinet last evening, Deutsche Bank said: "Idea/Vodafone mergeco benefits the most among the larger players as the extension of tenor would lead to 30 per cent lower annual instalment on spectrum for the mergeco which has the highest leverage among the larger players."

The government, last evening, offered some relief to financially-stressed telecom sector, allowing telcos to pay for spectrum over 16 years instead of 10 years and also permitted them to hold more airwaves. (PTI)

Indian Steel Association has raised concerns that the US move to raise import tariffs will encourage surplus nations to divert their steel exports to consuming nations like India affecting the local markets, reports PTI. "Tariffs by the US will inevitably encourage steel-surplus nations to divert their exports to vibrant consumption centres like India and distort our domestic markets considerably," ISA said.

16:12 Karti

INX

Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, moved the Delhi High Court seeking quashing of summons and all proceedings initiated by the Enforcement Directorate in the INX Media money laundering case, reports PTI.

RCom's

The Bombay High Court has dismissed Reliance Communications (RCom) plea against an arbitration court order that barred the telecom operator from selling or transferring its assets without the tribunals permission. The company intends to file an appeal against the interim order of the Bombay High Court, an RCom spokesman told Reuters.

Infraprojects

336cr

Realty firm Prestige Group has entered into an agreement to acquire 80% stake in Sterling Urban Infraprojects, which holds land parcels in Bengaluru, for a cash consideration of Rs 336 crore. Sterling Urban Infraprojects owns around 59 acres of land at outer ring road-Sarjapour, Bengaluru. "The company intends to develop commercial office space with over six million square feet of developable area," Prestige Estates Projects said in a BSE filing.

Larsen & Toubro moved the National Company Law Tribunal seeking higher priority in getting back Rs 900 crore in dues from debt-laden Bhushan Steel which is undergoing insolvency proceedings. The engineering and construction major has asked NCLT to acknowledge it as a secured creditor for Bhushan Steel, reports PTI.

Tata Steel had said in yesterday's statement that it "has received a formal communication from the resolution professional (RP) of Bhushan Steel Ltd that it has been identified as the highest evaluated compliant resolution applicant to acquire controlling stake of BSL under Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) of the IBC, as decided in the meeting of CoC of BSL on March 6.

Niche bike maker Royal Enfield forayed into a pre-owned motorcycle segment with the launch of first such store 'Vintage' in Chennai, reports PTI. The 'Vintage' store is a new format dealing exclusively in pre-owned, refurbished and restored motorcycle segment and would serve potential Royal Enfield customers looking for quality tested and certified-pre-owned motorcycles.

The resolution plan for debt-laden Jyoti Structures, which is in power transmission, distribution and EPC projects businesses, has been submitted to the creditors committee which will take a final call on it within a couple of weeks, sources told PTI. "A group of high net worth investors led by Netmagic founder Sharad Sanghi has finally negotiated the resolution plan with the Committee of Creditors on March 5 at Mumbai," sources said.

"The final resolution plan is being circulated to the lenders for their approval and tentatively the Committee of Creditors will take a final call on the resolution plan by the third week of March," they said. Under the resolution plan, the investors will pay 50% of the total debt over 15 years, sources adding.

The Supreme Court restores the marriage of Kerala-based woman, Hadiya, who first made the news over allegations of being a victim of love jihad, reports PTI. The apex court set aside the high court order annulling Hadiya's marriage but allowed the National Investigation Agency to continue its ongoing investigation with regard to alleged offences.

Weaker foreign demand drove a bigger than expected drop in German industrial orders in January, data showed, suggesting that busy factories in Europes largest economy could shift into a lower gear in the coming months, reports Reuters.

Extended factory closures after Christmas and New Year holidays also played a part, with commentators cautioning against reading too much into one months data. Contracts for Made in Germany goods fell by 3.9% on the month in January after surging by a downwardly revised 3% in the previous month, data from the Federal Statistics Office showed. The reading was the weakest since January 2017.

14:21 Adani

Ent

Adani Enterprises is looking at new options to refinance debt for its coal terminal in Australia after struggling to attract lenders wary of its controversial Carmichael mine project, reports Reuters. Adani Abbot Point Terminal Pty (AAPT) launched a loan of up to A$500 million ($391 million) last August to partially refinance A$580 million due in October. After seven months, IDFC Singapore, the arranger for the loan, has yet to receive any firm commitments, despite offering a generous 200 bps margin over the bank bill swap rate and the option to commit in dollars or yen, sources said.

NDPP leader Neiphiu Rio was sworn in as Nagaland Chief Minister by Governor PB Acharya at a public function in Kohima. This is Rio's fourth time as the chief minister of the north-eastern state. BJP's Y Patton was administered oath as Deputy Chief Minister by the governor. Ten other ministers were also administered the oath of office. They include five from the BJP, three from the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party, an independent and a JD(U) MLA.

Kannur

A bust of Mahatma Gandhi was found defaced in Kannur district's Taliparamba town, police told PTI. The spectacle carving was damaged and a garland on the statue was lying nearby, an official said.

Midcaps

underperform

The market is holding on to its gains as the Sensex is up more than 150 points. Banks and auto stocks are trading higher while metals and pharma are down. Amtek Auto is locked at the 5% upper circuit after Liberty House emerged as preferred H1 bidder for the company's assets.

Prez

Wickremesinghe

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena replaced Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister amidst fresh violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Kandy district despite imposition of nationwide emergency, reports PTI.

Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) was sworn in this morning as the new minister in charge of the police. Wickremesinghe's 11-day tenure as the law and order minister was marred by racial tension in the central district of Kandy since Monday.

13:34 CCI

penalises

InterGlobe

SpiceJet

The Competition Commission slapped a total penalty of more than Rs 54 crore on three airlines - Jet Airways, InterGlobe Aviation and SpiceJet - for unfair business practices with respect to fixing fuel surcharge on cargo transport, reports PTI. Passing an order on the same complaint for the second time in nearly three years, the watchdog has directed the airlines to cease and desist from anti-competitive practices. A fine of Rs 39.81 crore has been imposed on Jet Airways while the penalties on InterGlobe Aviation and SpiceJet are Rs 9.45 crore and Rs 5.10 crore, respectively, according to the CCI.

TDP's

Chowdary

TDP leader YS Chowdary said he and his colleague Ashok Gajapathi Raju were stepping down as ministers but would continue to be part of the NDA, a move that was necessitated by unavoidable circumstances. Likening the decision to an unfortunate divorce, Chowdary, the Union minister of State for Science and Technology, said he and Raju, Union Civil Aviation Minister, would continue to work as parliamentarians for Andhra Pradesh, reports PTI.

315cr

The government has sought Parliament nod for additional cash spending of Rs 85,315.30 crore in the current fiscal, of which 70% is earmarked to compensate states for revenue loss on account of the GST roll out. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal moved the fourth batch of Supplementary Demands for Grants for 2017-18 in the Lok Sabha.

India will invite initial bids for a stake sale in state-run carrier Air India in the next couple of weeks, Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Choubey said in a speech at an air show in Hyderabad.

000cr

L&T Finance Holdings has raised almost Rs 2,000 crore from preferential allotment of shares to its promoter Larsen & Toubro (L&T). L&T Finance Holdings said the capital infused by the promoter will help fund the growth of its focused lending businesses - rural finance, housing finance and wholesale finance, and further strengthen the capital adequacy of the company.

"The company has today completed the preferential allotment to L&T of 10.78 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each at the issue price of Rs 185.51 per share. Through this issue, the promoter has infused additional capital amounting to Rs 1,999.99 crore," L&T Finance Holdings said in a BSE filing.

11:56 Bandhan

Bandhan Bank will launch an up to Rs 44.73 billion initial public offering of shares on March 15, in what will be the biggest ever initial share sale by a local bank. The Kolkata-based bank and its shareholders will be selling up to 119.3 million shares, or about 10% of the post-issue share capital of the bank, in a price range of Rs 370 to Rs 375 each in the IPO, according to a prospectus and public notice on Thursday. The bank will sell up to 97.7 million new shares in the IPO that will close for subscription on March 19. International Finance Corp, part of the World Bank Group, and IFC FIG will sell 21.6 million shares.

Coincheck

Japanese authorities ordered two cryptocurrency exchanges to suspend operations as part of a clampdown following a massive hack that saw thieves steal hundreds of millions of dollars in virtual currency, reports AFP. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) said in a statement it had ordered FSHO and Bit Station, exchanges based in Yokohama and Nagoya, to temporarily halt their operations for a month from today.

The agency alleged that FSHO "does not have a proper system to monitor trading and has not given training to its employees," while an employee of Bit Station "diverted digital currency deposited by clients for his personal use." Authorities also ordered five other exchanges, including Coincheck, to improve their business practices. The hack of Coincheck - resulting in the disappearance of NEM cryptocurrency worth $530 million - was one of the largest of its kind, and prompted authorities to search the firm's office last month.

11:48 Sensex

Benchmark indices gained strength amid volatile trade, with the Sensex trading around 100 points higher. The gains are led by index heavyweights HDFC, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries and Infosys that are up over a percent each. Midcaps are off the day's lows, with the Nifty Midcap index trading mildly lower.

11:13 Bharti

Airtel

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel said its board of directors will meet on March 12 to consider fund raising opportunity for the company. Airtel said its board will meet to "consider inter-alia, enablement from board to opportunistically raise funds, including by issuance of secured/unsecured, listed/unlisted, non-convertible debentures, bonds or such similar debt instrument (s) either denominated in Indian rupees or in foreign currency".

10:57 RCom

300m

Debt-ridden telecom firm Reliance Communications adjourned on Wednesday a meeting of holders of its $300 million senior secured bonds for want of quorum. The same will now be held on March 20. The company had called a meeting on March 6 for considering certain proposals relating to asset monetisation.

Dawood

Farooq

Takla

Fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's aide Farooq Takla, wanted in connection with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, was arrested in New Delhi by the Central Bureau of Investigation after he arrived from Dubai, the agency's spokesperson told PTI.

Mustak Mohammad Miya alias Farooq Takla, was at the immigration office of the Indira Gandhi International Airport when a CBI team arrested him as an Interpol Red Corner notice had been issued against him. He was arrested at the Delhi airport and will be produced before a designated court later today, the CBI spokesperson said.

A curfew in the Sri Lankan town of Kandy will be temporarily lifted on Thursday, following days of violence against members of the minority Muslim community by Buddhists. The Kandy area was quiet on Wednesday night and early on Thursday, the military told Reuters.

The situation is improving and there have been no major incidents of violence reported in the last 12 hours, said Major General Rukman Dias, the army commander in the area. Dias said the curfew was likely to be re-imposed in Kandy in the evening.

China will make a necessary response in the event of a trade war with the United States, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, while warning that such a war would only harm all sides. Especially given todays globalisation, choosing a trade war is a mistaken prescription. The outcome will only be harmful, Wang told Reuters.

Some countries, including Mexico and Canada, may get exemption from Donald Trump's new aluminium and steel tariffs on national security grounds, reports PTI. These exception, could be based on America's national security interest, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said, days after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross insisted that there was going to be no country specific exemptions.

Japans economy expanded more than initially estimated in the last quarter of 2017, thanks to an upward revision of capital expenditure and inventory data, confirming an eighth consecutive quarter of growth, reports Reuters. The economy grew an annualised 1.6% in October-December, versus the preliminary reading of a 0.5% expansion, Cabinet Office data showed.

underperforms

Benchmark indices were off their opening highs despite positive Asian cues. The Sensex is up more than 100 points while the Nifty Midcap is trading flat after opening a percent higher. The PSU Bank index turned negative, falling half a percent on concerns of NPAs in the power sector.

Chinas exports unexpectedly surged at the fastest pace in three years in February, suggesting its economic growth remains resilient even as trade relations with the United States rapidly deteriorate, reports Reuters. Chinas February exports rose 44.5% from a year earlier and 11.1% in January, official data showed on Thursday. Imports grew 6.3%, the General Administration of Customs said, down from a sharper-than-expected 36.9% jump in January.

L&T Finance Holdings board has approved the price of Rs 185.51 per unit for the Rs 2,000-crore share sale to its promoter L&T on a preferential basis. The approved price includes a share premium of Rs 175.51. The capital will be used for various purposes, including to fund business growth, strengthening capital adequacy and general corporate purposes.

21bn

For private equity (PE) investments in India, year 2017 was a milestone clocking $21 billion, the highest yearly value, across 735 transactions, the sixth edition of Grant Thornton's The Fourth Wheel 2018 report states. "The year recorded a 54% jump in values at $21 billion in 2017, despite a 24% decline in volumes. This indicates significant jump in average deal sizes," it said

The report reveals that 2017 saw six $500 million plus investments compared to only three in 2016. It witnessed 25 investments valued between $100 million and $400 million compared to 19 in 2016, signalling the revival of big-ticket investments and larger stake acquisitions.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved a new scheme worth Rs 1,151.80 crore to provide subsidised farm machineries to farmers in Delhi and adjoining states to address stubble burning and curb air pollution in the national capital. The new central scheme will be implemented for two years.

Out of the total approved funds, Rs 591.65 crore will be spent in FY19 and the balance Rs 560.15 crore in the next financial year, an official statement said. The new scheme 'Promotion of agricultural Mechanization for in-situ management of crop residue' with 100% central share will be executed with the Delhi government along with neighbouring states Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana.

08:29 GST Council may further delay rollout of e-way bill by 5-6 months

The GST Council meeting on Saturday will consider proposals to further delay rolling out the e-way bill system by five to six months and levy GST on a concentrated form of alcohol. The 26th GST Council meeting will also try to reach a consensus on simplifying tax returns. The GST Council meeting is expected to make it easier to explore consensus on technical issues relating to tax rebates that are proving to be a stumbling block in simplifying tax returns, sources told Mint.

Bhushan

Amtek

Two of the high profile auctions under National Company Law Tribunal took a definite step towards culmination on Wednesday. While Tata Steels bid was formally identified as the highest evaluated compliant resolution for Bhushan Steel, Liberty House was chosen as the preferred H1 bidder for Amtek Auto. To read the complete story, click here

The US trade deficit swelled in January to its largest level in nearly a decade as oil prices rose and the world's biggest economy sold fewer aircraft, government data showed. In the first month of the year, the US trade gap rose 5% over an upward-revised December to $56.6 billion, its highest level since October of 2008. This put January up 16.2% over January of 2017, with exports trailing imports.

Commerce Department figures showed January exports fell 1.3% to $200.9 billion, the largest decrease in 16 months, as aircraft exports decreased in value by $1.8 billion and international sales of industrial supplies like crude oil and other chemicals fell by $1.3 billion. Imports were unchanged at $257.5 billion, which is still 5% over their level in January of 2017.

telcos

In a bid to provide relief to financially stressed telecom sector, the Cabinet on Wednesday allowed telcos to pay for spectrum over 16 years instead of 10 years and permitted them to hold more airwaves. It also relaxed caps on holding spectrum, helping ongoing mergers like that between Vodafone and Idea as the combined entity would have breached the current limits in certain circles.

The spectrum cap relaxation would also help billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio to acquire spectrum of Reliance Communications in certain bands. An official statement issued after the Cabinet meeting stated that the government will receive Rs 74,446.01 crore more as a result of deferring spectrum payments till 2034-35.

07:32 TDP

BJP

The TDP on Wednesday night decided to pull out of the NDA government at the Centre and asked two of its ministers in the Modi government to tender their resignation on Thursday, but kept the door for ties with the BJP ajar. The TDP took the painful decision in the interest of the state as it was left with no other option, party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said.

The two ministers in the Modi government are Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Minister of State for Science and Technology YS Chowdary. In a tit-for-tat action, the two BJP ministers in the Naidu government - K Srinivasa Rao and T Manikyala Rao - too announced their decision to quit.

aluminium

BlackRock

When it comes to betting on Asian equity markets this year, it seems all roads lead to the White House. As regional markets continued to suffer the consequences of Donald Trumps proposed steel andimport tariffs, fund managers likes Helen Zhu and Janus Henderson Investors Wee May Ling expressed concern that trade tariffs could broaden to other sectors, reports Bloomberg That, in turn, could lead to a further deterioration in the US-China trade relationship and impact stocks across Asia.
Margret Thatcher, the first woman to govern the United Kingdom, once said "if you want something said, ask a man, if you want something done, ask a woman." However this is easier said than done. Report after report and survey after survey point to the ugly truth that gender equality is still some distance away.

A recent report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed that 10-year progress made towards gender parity came to a grinding halt last year. India is now ranked below countries like Bangladesh, China, and Maldives when it comes to gender equality.

Apart from facing discrimination at the workplace, women are harassed on the streets and online. A survey by charity Actionaid showed that 80 percent of Indian women face public harassment; that is four out of every five women in the country.

Online abuse is equally pervasive; one in every two women living in Indian cities suffer abuse and harassment online according to a latest survey.

A latest survey by Truecaller shows that 78 percent of women receive blank phone calls with sexual content, another 82 percent receive unsolicited videos and pictures with sexual content. 11 percent of these calls are made by stalker and only 3 percent of these calls are from a person known to them.

So how do women cope with this? Only 10 percent of women file a police complaint against their harassers, 7 percent resort to naming and shaming the spammer on social media.

The women who on work on farms, land for them is not just an asset but an opportunity to build a life for themselves and their family. However, the reality is not so pleasing to the eye. Women make one third of the entire farm workforce, but less than 10 percent of them own that land. Rest of them are either salaried labour or part of the household who owns the land.

However, the law suggests otherwise. In a historic decision last year, the Supreme Court made it mandatory to give equal rights to women in terms of inheritance. However, Allahabad High Court ruled that agricultural land rights are a state subject which leaves women and their land rights in a grey area.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Alan Mamedi, Co-founder & CEO of Truecaller, and Swati Chaturvedi, Author and Senior Journalist at The Wire spoke about ways to tackle online and mobile harassment faced by women and Sathya Raghu, Co-Founder & President of Kheyti spoke about the vulnerability of women in the agri sector and their right to equal inheritance.
China's foreign minister urged the United States and North Korea today to start talks as soon as possible, stressing that "the sincerity" of all parties to solve the nuclear crisis would be tested.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi cautiously welcomed Seoul's announcement that Pyongyang had offered to hold denuclearisation talks with the United States in return for security guarantees.

The North also agreed to hold a historic summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April.

"The Korean peninsula issue has finally taken an important step in the right direction," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of annual parliamentary session.

"These initial steps must be followed up by corresponding and concerted efforts by the parties. We call on the parties, particularly the United States and the DPRK, to engage in dialogue sooner rather than later," he said.

But Wang issued a word of caution, noting that breakthroughs on the North Korean nuclear issue had collapsed in the past.

"Of course it takes more than one cold day to freeze three feet of ice," he said.

"Despite light at the end of the tunnel, the journey ahead won't be smooth. History has reminded us time and again that whenever tensions subsided on the peninsula the situation would be clouded by various interferences," he said.

"Now is the crucial moment to test the sincerity of the parties to solve the nuclear issue.
US President Donald Trump is set to sign a controversial executive order imposing a hefty 25 per cent import tariff on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium, a move which America's top trading partners said would attract retaliation.

Trump's plan for stiff and sweeping steel and aluminium import tariffs would face retaliation from America's top trading partners, the European Union and China.

More than 100 Republican lawmakers implored President Trump to drop his plan and urged him to focus on unfair trading policies of China.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox Business late last night that Trump would sign the executive order later in the day.

The new tariffs would go into effect in 15-30 days, he said.

"The proclamation will have a clause that does not impose these tariffs immediately on Canada and Mexico, and it's going to give us an opportunity and one of the best guys in this administration, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer the opportunity to negotiate a great deal for this country," Navarro said.

"And if we get that, then all is good with Canada and Mexico," he added. "We're going to open this up for our allies to just see if we can work through this problem," he said.

Yesterday, 107 Republican members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the president expressing concern about broad tariffs and calling for him to focus any action on unfair trading partners, like China.

"We are writing to express deep concern about the prospect of broad, global tariffs on aluminium and steel imports. Because tariffs are taxes that make US businesses less competitive and US consumers poorer, any tariffs that are imposed should be designed to address specific distortions caused by unfair trade practices in a targeted way while minimising negative consequences on American businesses and consumers," the lawmakers said.

"We support your resolve to address distortions caused by China's unfair practices, and we are committed to acting with you and our trading partners on meaningful and effective action. But we urge you to reconsider the idea of broad tariffs to avoid unintended negative consequences to the US economy and its workers. We are eager to work with you in pursuing a workable, targeted approach that achieves our shared goal," they wrote.

In the letter, Republican lawmakers outlined several recommendations to hold countries accountable without disrupting the flow of fairly traded products that American manufacturers rely on.

However, according to The Wall Street Journal, at the White House yesterday, aides began preparations for the ceremony ushering in a turn in trade policy that could recalibrate relations between the US and its allies and trading partners.

"We are definitely going to end up with these tariffs," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox Business and "we're going to roll this out very, very quickly."

"The president understands the economy. He understands business. He is looking out for American companies and American workers with trade deals that are just not fair," he said.

The prospect of approaching tariffs has set off furious lobbying from governments around the world, who have tried to sway the administration with offers of friendship and threats of retaliation, The New York Times reported.

Yesterday, the European Union released a list of American-made goods it would penalise if the tariffs went through.

China, which ranks 11 among the largest sources of US steel imports, cautioned that it was prepared to "make an appropriate and necessary response" should the United States impose the tariffs.
The Google doodle for this year's Women's Day shares twelve unique stories from artists around the world.

The stories are a series of comic strips that appreciate the daily struggles of women, and the solidarity they have in the face of such struggles. They come with the hastag "HerStoryOurStory"

Two such stories are from India. Aarthi the Amazing by the artist Isuri is based on a day in the life of Aarthi  a single fisherwoman with two children. She starts off her day by catching the largest fish she can find after which her children wake up and she lights a lamp for the gods.

This is followed by her cutting and drying the fish, milking the cows, sending her kids off to school and making baskets to hold her wares to sell off to the market. At the market, she finds that she falls short of the money she needs.

A trader at the market offers her money for cleaning up his shop, after which a careworn-Aarthi returns home by sundown. Aarthis children tell her stories, as she gets ready for the next round of fishing at the crack of dawn.

Other stories talk about parenting, depression, coping with ones struggles, and finding ones self.

Another story by Pakistani artist Saffa Khan appreciates how her life growing up in Pakistan was a happy one due to the safe and loving environment given to her and her siblings by her mother.

The first official womens day was celebrated on March 8, 1910 at an International Woman's Conference to become "International Woman's Day."

The Soviet Union was the first country to make International Womens day a holiday after women gained suffrage in 1917. International Womens Day is taken up as an official holiday, or a holiday for only for women in several countries across the world.

The United Nations officially adopted International Womens Day in 1975.
The super yacht Indian Empress, owned by fugitive Indian businessman Vijay Mallya, is seen berthed beneath Fort St Angelo in Valletta's Grand Harbour, Malta, December 9, 2016. Fugitive Indian businessman Vijay Mallya said on Friday that his Twitter account had been penetrated by a hacking group called Legion, which posted links to what it alleged were details of Mallya's bank accounts, offshore investments and luxury cars. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi - RTSVEVL

Dark times for the self-proclaimed king of good times, Vijay Mallya, are far from over. Now, his luxury superyacht worth USD 93 million has been impounded by the authorities in Malta over non-payment of salary dues to the crew.

Port officials in Malta boarded 95-metre long Indian Empress on Tuesday restricting its movement from the port as part of legal actions taken by the crew, reported The Guardian.

The 40-member crew which includes people from multiple countries have not received a salary credit since September last year. Incidentally, this is when Mallya had abandoned the vessel.

Some of the senior crew members said Mallya owed them up to USD 92,000 in unpaid wages. Danny McGowan, strategic organiser of the maritime union Nautilus International said that with surmounting unpaid salary, the crew were left with no choice but to seek the help of law.

McGowan further said the members of the crew gave multiple chances to Mallya to pay the wages, though, the opportunities were largely ignored by the liquor baron.

The Isle of Man registered yacht has been impounded in a maritime lien which gives the crew claim over the vessel to the value of the unpaid wages.

This is, however, not the first wage dispute Mallya is facing. Employees of now defunct Kingfisher Airlines had also accused Mallya to have not paid their wages after the carrier went bankrupt.

Mallya fled the country 2016 and since been living in his USD 16 million mansion in the UK. The Indian authorities have been making efforts to extradite him to India so that he can face trial in loan fraud and money laundering cases amounting to USD 1.4 billion.

Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April 2017 and has been out on bail on a bond worth USD 903,500. The next hearing in the case is expected to be in April.
Iron & Steel | Imports from China, 2019: 4 percent. (Image: Moneycontrol)

The White House today said that some countries, including Mexico and Canada, may get exemption from Donald Trump's new aluminium and steel tariffs on national security grounds.

These exception, could be based on America's national security interest, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, days after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross insisted that there was going to be no country specific exemptions.

Last week, Trump told that he has decided to impose a 25 per cent import duty on steel and another 10 per cent on aluminium.

This drew sharp reaction from the European Union and countries like China.

Trump insisted that steps like this is necessary and the US would overcome any trade war as a result of this because it has a USD800 billion trade deficit.

Canada has said that such an import tariff is unacceptable.

However, White House said that its northern neighbour would be exempted from such a new import tariff.

"We expect that the president will sign something by the end of the week and there are potential carveouts for Mexico and Canada based on national security and possibly other countries as well, based on that process," Sanders told reporters.

"That would be case-by-case and country-by-country basis, but it would be determined whether or not there is a national security exemption," she asserted.

The president, she said, has been very clear that he wants to address the trade imbalance that the US has with a number of countries.

He feels that the US has been taken advantage for far too long and he's not going to allow that to continue under his watch, she said.

In a tweet, Trump said that China has been asked to develop a plan for the year for a USD 1 billion reduction in the trade deficit.

Sanders said the administration had conversations with officials last week.

"We're going to continue those conversations with them," she said.

Responding to a question on global reaction, she said Trump has been talking about this for a long time.

"It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Other countries have created unfair trade policies for decades that have harmed our national and economic security," she said.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena today replaced Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the law and order minister amidst fresh violence between majority Sinhala Buddhists and minority Muslims in the Kandy district despite imposition of nationwide emergency.

Ranjith Madduma Bandara, a senior politician from Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) was sworn in this morning as the new minister in charge of the police.

Wickremesinghe's 11-day tenure as the law and order minister was marred by racial tension in the central district of Kandy since Monday.

Muslim owned businesses and religious sites came under attack from majority Sinhala mobs, forcing the government to enforce curfew.

The Sri Lankan government yesterday suspended internet services and blocked access to social networking websites and messaging platforms like Whatsapp in the riot-hit areas.

Following the incidents of violence, President Sirisena on Tuesday declared a state of emergency and deployed police in the area.

A daytime curfew was relaxed today in Kandy where three people were killed in riots.

"In accordance with the people's request to remove the curfew for a short period to attend their essential activities including purchasing of food and other items, President Maithripala Sirisena has decided to remove the curfew from 10:00 am and re-impose at 6:00 pm in the Kandy district," Director General of Government Information Sudarshana Gunawardhana said in a statement.

The leader of the main Tamil party TNA R Sampanthan questioned the inaction of law enforcement authorities in response to the attacks on Muslim establishments.

Speaking in parliament, Sampanthan, who is also the leader of the Opposition, said such incidents are clearly unacceptable and is indicative of sense of impunity.

"People seem to have the confidence that they can engage in such acts and that the arm of the law would not reach them; that the Rule of Law would not be enforced against them," Sampanthan said.

Kandy, the country's second largest with a population of around 125,000, is an important religious center for Buddhists, and is home to numerous monasteries and temple complexes.

Sinhalese Buddhists make up about 75 per cent of the population in Kandy.

The violence in Kandy reportedly triggered by an isolated incident on March 4, when a taxi carrying four Muslim men collided with a van driven by a young Buddhist man, according to local police.

The Buddhist man was assaulted with an iron bar and succumbed to his injuries in hospital, police confirmed.

The four Muslim men have since been arrested and remain in police custody.

Tensions between Muslim groups and the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community in the country have escalated since the end of the civil war in May 2009.

In 2014, violence directed against Muslim minority groups broke out in the southwestern town of Aluthgama, following a rally by hardline Buddhist nationalist monks, resulting in the death of at least three Muslims.
Washington: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks at the 2017 Atlantic Council-Korea Foundation Forum in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017. AP/PTI(AP12_13_2017_000095B)

Washington's top diplomat Rex Tillerson today said the United States was "a long way from negotiations" with North Korea, which this week made a shock offer to discuss denuclearisation. Tillerson, who is in Ethiopia on his first-ever Africa tour, said the signals from Pyongyang may be positive but stressed negotiations with Kim Jong Un's regime were not going to happen soon.

"I think as President Trump has indicated, (there are) potentially positive signals coming from North Korea by way of their intra-Korean dialogue with South Korea," he told journalists.

But "in terms of direct talks... we're a long way from negotiations, we just need to be very clear-eyed and realistic about it," he said.

He said a first step would be "talks about talks" to see if "conditions are right to even begin thinking about negotiations." Details are still sketchy, but South Korea announced Tuesday that the North had stated there was "no reason" to hold on to its nuclear weapons "if military threats towards the North are cleared and the security of its regime is guaranteed".

The North is open to "frank" talks with the United States on denuclearisation and would suspend missile and nuclear tests while dialogue was under way, the South's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong said after returning from a meeting in Pyongyang with Kim.

President Donald Trump welcomed the offer as "very positive".

However his Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told Congress he was "quite skeptical" and Vice President Mike Pence said the US position towards North Korea would not change "until we see credible, verifiable, and concrete steps toward denuclearisation."

China today urged the United States and North Korea to start negotiations as soon as possible, while Japan has warned it could be a ploy to play for time, and urged "concrete" steps from Pyongyang.
Producer Riza Aziz (L), and cast members Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie arrive for the U.K. Premiere of "The Wolf of Wall Street" at Leicester Square, London January 9, 2014.

Producers of the 2013 blockbuster Wolf of Wall Street have agreed to pay the US government USD 60 million seeking withdrawal of a civil litigation for forfeiture of assets.

Red Granite Pictures Inc. (RGP), which was co-founded by a stepson of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, was another party in the lawsuit filed in the central district of California.

The deal not just covers the forfeiture claims over the rights of movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio but also RGPs interests in two other pictures, Daddys Home and Dumb and Dumber To, a Bloomberg report said.

The lawsuit was filed in connection with the multi-billion dollar fraud conducted at the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). The US alleges that assets worth USD 1.7 billion were acquired in the country from these funds which were stolen from 1MDB. The Justice Department has filed over two dozen asset forfeiture lawsuits against multiple entities in the matter.

The assets which were subject to scrutiny, according to the lawsuit, include some prime location condos and penthouses and a Bombardier jet.

Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, a central figure in the scandal, allegedly orchestrated the scandal, however, he has publically denied that he was any way involved with the 1MDB after its inception in 2009. Riza Aziz, Najibs stepson, is a friend of Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low.

Last year, Low was also accused by the US to have conspired to partly finance the USD 2.2 billion acquisition of Houston-based Coastal Energy in 2014 using the 1MDB money.

He partnered with Compania Espanola de Petroleos SAU (Cepsa) to buy Coastal Energy for a total purchase price of USD 2.2 billion, the government said in a lawsuit.
TORONTO (March 7, 2018) - We are proud to announce the successful establishment of a direct connection between M3 MortgageBOSS and First Nationals MERLIN platform.

Over 4000 M3 MortgageBOSS users can now take mortgage applications, pull credit bureaus, and submit the complete application directly to First National.

First National joins a growing community of BOSSConnect participants offering brokers more options, more convenience, more efficiency and more opportunity.
Toronto-based mortgage investment corporation Mortgage Company of Canada has announced on March 5 the appointment of Faheem Tejani as its new President.

Associated with BMO Capital Markets since 2000, Tejani has served in increasingly senior positions within the organization before joining Mortgage Company of Canada. During his run at BMO Capital Markets, Tejani has provided growth and financing strategies to corporations globally and has raised over $15 billion, including for companies within the financial services industry in Canada.

Tejani is also a Chartered Professional Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario.
A Toronto home owner and a former Wall Street trader-turned-broker have taken the first step in likely establishing Bitcoin as a viable method of selling residential real estate in Canada.

Derryn Shrosbree, who owns 6 properties, has placed his Mississauga condo for sale for 35 Bitcoin, which was worth $445,000 at the time the unit went up in the market on late February. Shrosbree has previously discussed the idea with several other agents, but only real estate agent Brett Starke seemed to understand the significance of listing a propertys sale price in Bitcoin.

Its the first Bitcoin sale (of a condo) thats been done in Toronto, period, Starke told the Toronto Star. Its definitely the first in Ontario thats been listed for Bitcoin.
Midland County Sheriffs Office

An Odessa man was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly sexually assaulted a teenager, according to court documents.

Alfred Lee Rice Jr., 29, was being held Thursday on a $100,000 bond for a second-degree felony charge of sexual assault of a child.
A recent prostitution operation resulted in 62 arrests, including seven that were made in Midland for online solicitation of a minor. The other arrests from the 15-day operation were in Odessa, according to a press release received Thursday from the Odessa Police Department.

Of the arrests, there were 18 felony charges and 50 misdemeanors, according to the release. The prostitution operation  called Operation Gauntlet  used online advertisement postings, texting and phone calls during three phases. In all, undercover officials received 12,329 total incoming messages and chatted with 1,361 unique phone numbers.

Cpl. Steve LeSueur, public information officer for the OPD, said targeting technology isnt new for his department.

Weve been doing this for a long time, LeSueur said. We know this is an issue. We know how these predators work. Thats what they use.

The prostitution operation was from Feb. 16 to March 3 and included local, state and federal agencies. Among those assisting were the Midland County District Attorneys Office, Midland Police Department, Midland Fire Department and Midland County Sheriffs Office.

The vast majority of arrests took place in Odessa, LeSueur said. But we definitely couldnt have done it without the assistance of the MPD and the Midland County Sheriffs Office.

Midland County District Attorney Laura A. Nodolf said the operation was another fine example of law enforcement agencies collaborating in efforts to stop human trafficking and people who target minors.

Those arrested in Midland County on second-degree felony charges of online solicitation of a minor under 14 years of age were: Eduardo Galvan, 25; Wesley Nickell, 57; Alex Olivas, 38; Seth Patin, 30; Randall Sparkman, 40; David Williams, 43; and Sebastian Zapata, 22.

The arrests came after Phase One of the operation, which was a two-day child predator sting. Undercover chatters posted online advertisements and communicated while posing as 13-year-old females. They responded to 6,095 incoming messages from 330 unique phone numbers during that part of the operation, according to the press release.

Sgt. Steven Sanders, who oversees the Crimes Against Persons Unit of the MPD, said the department agreed to be involved in Operation Gauntlet because it wants to get child predators off the street. He encourages parents to be vigilant with their kids online activities.

Children who have electronic devices, who can access the internet, need to be monitored closely, he said.

Later in the operation, phases two and three also involved online postings and undercover phone communication.

In another part of Phase Three, undercover officers posed as human trafficking buyers in an effort to rescue victims and as human trafficking victims in an attempt to be solicited for sexual conduct. Law enforcement officials also conducted a search warrant at the Lucky Spa massage parlor after an undercover officer was solicited, according to the press release.

The three phases resulted in Odessa arrests for felony charges of prostitution  enhanced, aggravated promotion of prostitution, sexual performance of a minor under 14 years of age and prostitution  solicit person under the age of 18, according to the press release.

Misdemeanor charges included prostitution and display of harmful material to a minor. There was one outstanding warrant for the latter charge, according to information provided to the Reporter-Telegram.

Other agencies assisting with Operation Gauntlet included Texas Department of Public Safety, Andrews Police Department, Abilene Police Department, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

----

Phase One was a child predator sting over the course of two days. The suspects are listed below:

Online Solicitation of a minor under age 14, 2nd Degree Felony

Sebastian Zapata, 22

Eduardo Galvan, 25

Randall Sparkman, 40 (Sparkman is a registered sex offender.)

Alex Olivas, 38

Seth Patin, 30

David Williams, 43

Wesley Nickell, 57

Sexual performance of a minor under age 14, 1st Degree Felony

Osvaldo Sifuentes, 46

James Lambert, 23

Display harmful material to a minor, Class A Misdemeanor

Juan Raigoza, 24

Phase Two sting focused on buyers. The suspects are listed below:

Prostitution, Class B Misdemeanor

Robert Loysoya, 59

Johnny Bryant, 31

Cody Pendergrass, 31

Jonathon Kirkman, 46

German Ortega-Ortega, 30

Omar Reyna, 43

Eduardo Ibanez, 31

Sterling Fincher, 26

Nikolos Robinson, 37

Raefael Hernandez, 43

Stephan Punch, 51

Ariel Portillo, 25

Fabian Hernandez, 34

Aram Barrios-Hernandez, 42

Oludayo Olanyinka, 37

Jared Cunnigham, 34

Bill Oneal, 45

Jason Page, 44

Daniel Okunola, 39

Brandon Moore, 31

Aaron Mata, 26

Raymundo Gonzalez, 43

Luis Casas Jr, 25

Timothy Hicks, 45

Kurtis Shaw, 18

Stanley Daniel, 21

Prostitution Solicit Person under the age of 18, 2nd Degree Felony

Alfredo Garcia, 25

Eric Gesch, 43

Christian Love, 21

Alex Brito, 27

Peyton Coffman, 24

Phase Three involved human trafficking victim recovery and a buyer sting. The suspects are listed below:

Prostitution, Class B Misdemeanor

Patricia Chapman, 46

Ashley Hernandez, 24

Kami Martinez, 19

Alexus Phillips, 22

Kalleigh Tyler, 25)

Dwight Thomas, 28

Keith Davidson, 48

Hamza Kechah, 38

Ahlieya Caudillo, 19

Adrianna Alcorta, 22

Jasmine Miles, 18

Tashonda Caraway, 22

Tiara Runels, 24

Desirey Carrizales, 22

Young Yu, 49

Prostitution, Class A Misdemeanor

Rachel Tate, 31

Prostitution - Enhanced, State Jail Felony

Ding Bing, 52

Prostitution solicit person under the age of 18, 2nd Degree Felony

Lloyd David, 28

Aggravated promotion of prostitution, 2nd Degree Felony
Law enforcement has identified human remains found in Plano as Christina Morris, a 23-year-old who was last seen in 2014.

Plano Police Chief Gregory Rushin confirmed the identity of the remains at 4:30 p.m. Thursday during a press conference.

"Our hearts are irreversibly broken," Morris' sister Sarah Estes said at the news conference, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The remains were found in a wooded area south of Taylor Boulevard, the Dallas Morning News reported. The area had been searched for Morris in the past.

READ MORE: Reward increased to $6,000 for leads in 1982 Travis County murder of 19-year-old woman

Morris was last seen in a parking garage at Plano's Shops at Legacy on Aug. 30, 2014, the Morning News wrote.

Enrique Arochi was an acquaintance of Morris who was last seen with her before going into the parking garage, CBS stated.

"Arochi told police he didn't park in the same garage as Morris, but when police showed him surveillance video of his car driving out of the same garage, he admitted he did park there, according to the station," CBS wrote.

Arochi was ultimately arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping. He was found guilty in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison, WFAA added.

Fernando Alfonso III is a digital reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on twitter at @fernalfonso.
The Spitfire Grill has a tall order to fill this weekend.

The musical about a woman trying to restart her life after a prison stint by working as a waitress at a small diner in Wisconsin is looking to cook up some interest in the performing arts returning to MacMurray College.

This is the first time theyve done a musical at MacMurray in, I think, 5 years, said Christine Smith, the schools new performing arts director. Its definitely bringing back musical theater to Mac.

Band, choir and drama revivals also are in the works, she said.

Ive been working with (English professor) Jeannie Zeck, Smith said. Shes been doing some storytelling things here at Mac  storytelling and improv. Theyre trying to bring forms of art back to MacMurray now.

While the school once had a strong tradition of theater and music  a choir alumni group revived the schools annual Madrigal dinner, a 30-year tradition, in November after a 20-year hiatus  various programs fell by the wayside over the years.

Thats changing under the current administration, including President Mark Tierno and Provost Beverly Rodgers, Smith and Zeck said.

We have a fairly new administration, Zeck said. It supports the performing arts, understands how important they are to helping students integrate into American culture and adulthood. If we can get students performing and going to poetry readings and plays while theyre students, then theyre going to be much richer when they graduate.

The communities in which they live also will be richer as the students share their experiences with their children and neighbors, she said.

To say this production might have a little bit of pressure on it above and beyond the usual opening-night jitters isnt much of a stretch, but Smith and Zeck believe Spitfire Grill has the ingredients for success.

It has a very endearing storyline, Smith said.  Its a small town and everyone is gossiping about (main character Percy) and why shes been in prison.  Its really a show about redemption and renewal, rebirth.

Smith gave me the script and I really liked it, Zeck said. Then I heard the music and was really enthralled. It was thumbs up from the beginning.

Smith described the music as just haunting, saying its very folksy with a guitarist, a violinist and Smith on piano as accompaniment.

The small cast the play requires also helped, but the seven cast members involved in the production have been nothing but enthusiastic, Smith and Zeck said.

Its not class-related at all, Zeck said. All of the students are busy with classes, some are student-athletes. Theyre still finding time to rehearse.

Smith agreed.

This group has been excited since Day 1 about this show, she said. Every night theyre excited.

The Spitfire Grill will be staged at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Marian Chase Schaeffer Theatre in the Jenkins Education Complex on MacMurrays campus. Tickets, which are $5, are available at the door. Reservations may be made by emailing Zeck at jeannie.zeck@mac.edu.

Angela Bauer can be reached at 217-408-2057.
To the editor:

If the eloquent and passionate Parkland, Florida, students speaking on national television are representative of the majority of American students, this country will be in very capable hands when their generation is governing the USA. Some of them will be old enough to vote this November; others can vote in another year or two. I hope they will become informed about all sorts of issues and then make intelligent decisions.
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 []
Dr. Randy Smart Mark Twain Health Care District Executive Director View Photos

San Andreas, CA  As a sea of looming national challenges continues to threaten rural health care a Mother Lode health care district is charting new waters as a key local player.

Mark Twain Health Care Districts (MTHCD) new partnership with Dignity Health, part of which pends voter approval on the June ballot, includes a transfer of nearly half the two entities co-owned assets, as reported here. The district will be on the receiving end of about $6 million upfront after meeting its contractual obligations  with millions more to follow under other agreement terms.

In an interview with Clarke Broadcasting, Executive Director Dr. Randy Smart describes the prevailing new feeling in the district office is something akin to a kid waking up on Christmas morning.

For the first time in our history  and our history started in 1946 we will be financially positioned where we can actually go out and do so much more in this county, Smart enthuses. Prior to this the only thing we could really do is pay some utilities at the hospital and participate a little bit in the hospital management. But for the first time in our history  we will actually have a revenue stream and some money in the bank  and all of that we want to put back into the community.

Strategic Planning In The Works

On Friday and Saturday district staff and trustees will be participating in a two-day strategic planning meeting, where Smart says they will be talking about various existing and new ways to improve rural health here in the Mother Lode. The first rule, he says, will be not to compete with other services in the county but to address needs not being adequately addressed.

There are gaps in behavioral healthsenior livingdental care and these places where people really need help  and particularly when you look at low-income, Medi-Cal, Medicaid  these people have very few choices that are not that good, Smart confides. Honing in on that thought, he continues, If we fill gaps in a smart way, we can even generate even a little more revenue and do more. So [what the two-day meeting will be covering] is how to do that, where to do it, how to be responsible about it, and what kind of outcomes we would look for.

Beyond being an advocate, Smart says the district is adapting to a new mindset. As he explains it, I think of it being a leaderbeing the tip of the spear where the health care districts can start collaborating with public health and social services  like child advocacy. So we can collaborate, lead the waybring people together. These collaborative and collective solutions are so much better than going alone.

New Offering For Victim-Witness Youth

A perfect and timely example of this is a brand new partnership the district has struck with Child Advocacy Counseling Services, run through grant dollars by Calaveras Countys Resource Connection. The program provides a sensitive interface for families and children who are victims or witnesses of crimes  or perhaps in some way abused  or even suffering psychological issues as a result of a trauma such as a motor vehicle accident.

As Smart explains, We have a multi-purpose facility that we purchased in Valley Springs that has maybe about 4,500 square feet  and we were able to lease it to this organization at a really discounted rate because it is something we can do as a public agency. Further describing the new space, he says it has been configured into a youth-friendly environment with a playroom, television and superhero murals. It also discreetly houses all the appropriate amenities such as video equipment and one-way windows that are necessary to effectively conduct sensitive interviews and examinations, such as for evidence collection.

These are really vulnerable patients and people who, if you [handle their situations] right, they can still have a really rewarding and successful life, he emphasizes. And if you do it wrong, they can become psychologically traumatized for the rest of their life. Smart states happily, From what I understand, this may be the only rural county in the entire state that has a facility like this so we are super-excited about it. Even while the partners are planning what may be a grand opening sometime in May he surmises the district will probably find other ways to work together because the facility is such a positive.

Rural Health Care Struggling

On the other side of the rural health care coin, according to Smart, is that health care industry officials are projecting upwards of 400  roughly a sixth  of rural hospitals to close within the next ten years. Too, around 20 percent of the physician workforce across the nation has dropped out of rural health care. Since less than a fifth of the national populace lives in a rural area, he says federal and state emphases remain primarily focused on delivering adequate urban health care.

Smart calls the situation very alarming, and something that the community really needs to know more about. He remarks, The system is not stable, it is in trouble and it is going to take a really focused and committed effort to prevent closures and a worsening of access and services.

In California, laws passed in the 1980s requiring costly seismic upgrades to health care and facilities are going into enforcement in the next two to 12 years. If not somehow amended, the unintended consequences may be the demise of many more that are financially struggling. MTMCs seismic liability is $12 million  probably one of the lowest in the state  and that is a huge amount of money for us, Smart states. However, he is optimistic that the district will be able to somehow deal with the expense.

A Brighter Local Outlook

Ending with another first for MTHCD, Smart shares that the districts loan approval for its long-planned Valley Springs clinic is close to being finalized and momentum is otherwise gaining for the estimated $5.4 million project.

Plans are for the district to operate it in alignment with Mark Twain Medical Center but it will be independent. Consultants have been lined up to help figure out how best to maximize services and revenues. The clinic itself will feature 15 exam rooms, five doctors offices and treatment and x-ray rooms along with state-of-the-art state equipment.

We are fortunate that there is huge community support with supervisors, economic development  it is kind of morphing into a health care campusdeveloping a health care hub in Valley Springs, he states. Plans are to begin construction by late this summer and have it ready for a grand opening sometime next summer. (To view a conceptual drawing, click into the image box slideshow.)
Congressman Tom McClintock giving House Floor speech View Photos

View Video

Washington, DC  Mother Lode Republican Congressman Tom McClintock is voicing opposition to President Donald Trumps call for new tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.

On the US House floor today he gave a speech entitled: Snatching Scarcity from the Jaws of Abundance. Reading from it he stated, There is no more perfect way to turn abundance into scarcity than by levying a tariff on imports. Yet, that was precisely proposed for steel and aluminum. By slapping a tariff on foreign steel imports, the amount of steel Americans can afford will diminish as the price rises. So too will the price of everything we make from steel from cans to cars.

Trump is planning to impose a 25-percent tariff on imported steel and 10-percent on aluminum. McClintock argues that the idea this will save jobs could backfire as workers in other industries reliant on these items could be forced to implement layoff or raise consumer prices to offset the tariffs.

McClintocks entire tariff speech can be viewed in the image box by clicking on play video.
Police fatally shot an armed robbery suspect, who appeared to fire at officers from inside the trunk of a car, during a brief but tense standoff Tuesday night in San Franciscos Mission District.

The deadly exchange of gunfire came shortly after police said two armed robbery victims flagged down uniformed officers around 10:35 p.m. at 20th and Capp streets.

Officers said they quickly found the suspect vehicle, a black Honda Civic, one block down Capp Street near 21st and ordered everyone out.

The driver got out of the car and was detained at the scene, police said, but the officers soon noticed that the cars trunk was ajar and someone was inside. More police arrived and surrounded the vehicle.

Witnesses described hearing officers command the suspect in Spanish to surrender while speaking over a megaphone.

Several residents in apartments along the block captured cell phone videos of the encounter. In the videos, a police officer is heard ordering the suspect out of the trunk before a single shot rings out. Seconds later, a barrage of gunfire begins and bullets are seen ripping into the rear of vehicle.

One witness caught the incident on video in close-up detail. The suspect is seen pushing the trunk open and firing at least two shots at police before officers return fire.

The witness declined to give his name to The Chronicle at the scene Wednesday morning but said he sold the video to KPIX-TV for $200.

After the shooting stopped, police found a third suspect, a woman, alive inside the vehicle. The man in the trunk, who was not immediately identified, was pronounced dead at the scene. No officers were injured in the shooting.

Police said they found a handgun in the trunk of the vehicle and investigators were interviewing the surviving suspects and other witnesses.

Capp Street was closed off at 21st through Wednesday morning while investigators processed the scene.

Dozens of police evidence markers covered the street, many marking shell casings. Some residents reported broken windows near where the shooting happened.

The barrage of police gunfire startled many of the residents taking cover inside their apartments.

My first reaction was making sure my friends and neighbors were OK, said a 24-year-old man who lives on Capp near 21st but declined to give his name. I just heard it escalating and then all the shots.

The shooting is being investigated by multiple agencies, including the SFPDs Homicide Detail, the San Francisco district attorneys Independent Investigations Bureau, the San Francisco Department of Police Accountability, the SFPD Internal Affairs Division and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

The incident marks the first fatal officer-involved shooting in San Francisco this year, though police were involved in a February shooting where the suspect was uninjured.

That man, Joel Armstrong, a 31-year-old transient and murder suspect, was holed up inside an RV on a residential street in Mission Bay when the shootout occured.
Amazon is officially changing the home selling game.

Apart from delivering everything from liquor to laundry materials to food, the company is now selling a prefabricated tiny home, which they can deliver straight to your door.

SO INSPIRING: Texas tiny home for sale just the start of one man's incredible dream

According to the Amazon listing, the 320 square foot shipping-container "house" was manufactured by MODS International and is a fully-furnished including a bedroom, shower, toilet, kitchenette, living area, heating and air conditioning, and more.

The MODS International company got its start after the president, Doug Larson was working to assist New Orleanians after Hurricane Katrina.

According to the website, the construction crews were living in motorhomes during the rebuilding efforts, and when he returned home he noticed a shipping container that was about the same size and shape as the RVs they'd been living in. Shortly after, he began building temporary homes inside the containers and MODS was born.

The MODS 40-foot tiny house is listed for $36,000, plus about another $3,800 for shipping, but if you're looking to downsize this could be a great choice (and you don't even have to pick it up).

Take a look through the gallery above to see other cool tiny houses.

Daniela Sternitzky-Di Napoli is a digital producer at Chron.com. You can read more of her stories here and follow her on twitter at @Dani_DiNapoli.
Jack Plunkett/INVL

Houston is sending its entrepreneurial movers and shakers to SXSW to promote the city's startup community and build relationships that could help lure those lucrative venture capitalists.

Two of the city's entrepreneurial organizations, Station Houston and Houston Exponential, have teamed up to create #HOUSxSW. The week-long campaign will bring 22 influencers and innovators to Austin, where they'll overlap with the conference's Interactive, Film, Music and Convergence tracks.
For more than a century oil and gas pipelines were built beneath the United States with nary any notice from the public.

But pipelines executives lamented Wednesday that since the rise of the "Keep it in the Ground" movement, projects were being delayed by a rising tide of protests, litigation and vandalism.

"The level of intensity has ramped up," Kinder Morgan CEO Steven Kean said Thursday at the CERAWeek energy conference hosted by IHS Markit. "There's more opponents, and it's more organized."

Speaking onstage with fellow pipeline CEOs Kelcy Warren, of Energy Transfer Partners, and Russ Girling, of TransCanada, Kean recounted how a group of environmentalists closed the valves on their pipeline network in the western United States in what appeared to be a coordinated effort across multiple states.

Another activist tried to drill a hole in one of Energy Transfer Partners' pipelines, Warren said.

"Talk about someone that needs to be removed from the gene pool," he said.

In a move to shore up public opinion, the typically media-shy Warren said he had increased Energy Transfer's presence on social media platforms.

"There's lies being told about our company that we have to police," Warren said. "All of us have to bear that cost."

The anti-oil movement is already having an impact on development in the United States, Girling said. But he argued it had done little to slow construction on a global level.

"As we have stalled development, others have taken up the slack," he said. And in other countries, "we're seeing less care to the environment and human rights."
San Antonio chefs have made several cooking appearances at the prestigious James Beard House in New York through the years, but three local chefs who thought they were joining that list now are shocked to discover they never were booked to cook.

Chef Michael Grimes, who co-owns Southern Grit Flavor with his wife; Elisa Trevino; Stephen Paprocki (Texas Black Gold Garlic); and Tony Hernandez (Bliss) were sure enough that they were cooking there that the San Antonio Express-News ran a short story about it on mySA.com and in print Feb. 28.

Then they discovered earlier this week none of it was true.

READ ALSO: 3 S.A. chefs earn James Beard Awards semifinalist nods

"Simply put, they were duped," said Izabela Wojcik, director of house programming for the James Beard Foundation. "They were never on the schedule, and there wasn't ever any official talk of them being on the schedule."

Wojcik read the mySA.com story and contacted the chefs to try to figure out what was going on.

Grimes said he and his wife were contacted by New York-based business owner and food marketer Kara Kenney in January about a series of chef-driven "Texas Takeover" events at a few New York restaurants May 3 through May 5. The events would focus on introducing Texas tastes and ingredients to a Manhattan audience.

Kenney represents Nectar Girl, a Dallas company that makes organic juice mixers, and said she discovered Grimes through a family contact and his "Source to Course" online video series spotlighting South Texas farmers.

The highlight of the trip was supposed to be an exclusive May 3 dinner at the Beard House that focused on a Cinco de Mayo-themed menu. Grimes contacted Paprocki and Hernandez to see if they were interested in accompanying him  and of course the answer was yes.

"Every chef dreams about this," Grimes said.

Grimes said Kenney told him the Beard opportunity opened up after a chef canceled due to family obligations, and they would be booked as replacements. After what he cited as "many emails and phone conversations with Ms. Kenney," Grimes notified the Express-News Feb. 23 that they were "good to go" on the Beard House dinner, and shared the planned menu.

READ ALSO: Some of S.A.'s top chefs show off wild burger creations

The one major problem was that none of these plans ever reached Wojcik, and she booked the real replacements for that dinner without ever realizing the San Antonians were options. The Beard House hosts about 200 events each year, and Wojcik is responsible for booking all of them and has the final say.

Kenney said she discussed the possibility of plugging the San Antonio chefs into the May 3 date with a volunteer member of the Beard House programming committee. The volunteer instructed her to file a formal proposal, which Kenney claims she was about to do when Wojcik contacted the local chefs and her, informing them the spot had been filled.

Still unclear is how Grimes and the others could have thought a proposal was a final booking.

When asked, Kenney said: "I'm not interested in getting into a he said, she said. It's not that at all. I don't appreciate the innuendos of any of this. There is nobody to blame. There was a cancellation that correlated with what the chefs were doing anyways.

"This was being put together as a replacement option. Unfortunately, the proposal wasn't submitted, but we were in the process of that."

Grimes said Wednesday in an emailed statement that Kenney "is now trying to back peddle" and maintained that in several emails and phone calls, she "continued to fabricate the illusion that the James Beard Dinner was scheduled" and not just a proposal.

Neither Kenney nor Grimes would share their correspondence with the Express-News.

"This was a pretty unusual situation," Wojcik said. "I've spent more time talking about a dinner that isn't happening than the 200 that are. I don't believe that any of this was malicious though, and it was all done with good intentions."

Wojcik also said the door remains open for Grimes, Paprocki and Hernandez to get an official invitation someday, and she bears them no ill will.

As for the trio, they have canceled plans for the New York trip. Grimes said in his statement that they are completely severing ties with Kenney over the mishap.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Beard House did officially announce a dinner featuring three San Antonio chefs scheduled for April 21. Chefs Johnny Hernandez (Grupo La Gloria), Elizabeth Johnson (Pharm Table) and Steve McHugh (Cured) will be in the kitchen as part of an event titled Savoring San Antonio, which will celebrate the the city's tricentennial and its recent designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.

cblount@express-news.net
Under the towering palms at the McNay Art Museum, the Express-News brought together 29 food and drink purveyors and around 400 guests Wednesday night for its Top 100 Tasting Event celebrating the launch of the 2018 Top 100 Dining & Drinks guide.

The Top 100 guide, with more than 20 newcomers to the list this year, celebrates the citys top restaurants, bars, breweries, distilleries, wineries, bakeries and coffee shops.

A 104-page book packed with color photos and the closely watched list of the citys Top 10 restaurants, the guide rolls out to subscribers in Sundays newspaper and will be available for $6.95 at mySA.com/shop.

At Wednesdays event, ticketholders were invited to choose their favorite food and cocktails. Sichuan House won the crowd with a spicy dish of pork belly with crispy steambuns, garlic, peanuts, fried shrimp and a Sichuan-style wilted kale salad.

Rosella at The Rand took the crowds vote for top bar, driven by a bright red cherry vodka sour cocktail garnished with citrus.

The Taste Team of Emily Spicer, Paul Stephen, Chuck Blount and Mike Sutter also chose its favorites. This time, the critics agreed with the crowd for best overall dish, giving the nod to Sichuan House for its layers of texture, spice, flavor and an intangible appearance factor we can only call curb appeal.

Critics declared Hanzos Shiso Thursty the best cocktail of the night. With pineapple-infused rum, nigori sake, falernum, lime, shiso leaf and a dusting of cinnamon, tasters commented that it tasted like apple pie in a glass  but the cocktail was balanced and steered clear of being too sweet or cloying.

The beauty of declaring a single category winner is that everybody else gets a silver medal by default, right? And the food and beverage teams brought their best games.

Top 100 newcomer Kings Hwy Brew & Q brought smoked pork belly tacos, while fellow newcomer Krauses Cafe & Biergarten soared above the brat-and-cabbage stereotype with a bright halibut crudo.

First-timers Toro Kitchen + Bar doubled down with sliced-to-order jamon Iberico and massive pans of paella, and Little Gretel made the trip from Boerne with savory Moravian cabbage soup.

Cured and Downstairs (at the Esquire) played a game of dueling charcuterie displays  a game where everybody came out a winner. And Smoke Shack brought brisket Frito pie that hit all the important notes: smoky, cheesy, fatty, beefy and crunchy.

Seafood had its night, too, with a spread of freshly shucked oysters from Southerleigh Fine Food & Brewery (teasing to its upcoming oyster bar at The Pearl) and a trio of ceviches from seafood dynasty El Bucanero.

Botika at The Pearl served its glass noodle salad in a tiny Chinese takeout box with chopsticks, and River Walk standard bearer Acenar loaded pork and chicken into fresh lettuce leaves.

Myrons Prime Steakhouse brought a fresh take on steak: tiny medallions of filet on a Gorgonzola-stuffed tomato. And the Culinary Institute of America - San Antonio found a new way to use jicama: as a crunchy wrap for a bite of fresh tuna.

To keep the party hydrated, craft beer came from Freetail Brewing Co., Alamo Beer Co., Weathered Souls Brewing Co. and Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling.

Hill Country winemakers as wide-ranging as Lost Draw Cellars, Wedding Oak Winery and Kuhlman Cellars brought bottles for sampling. And High Street Wine Co. showed guests how to pair sherry with nuts.

Cocktails came courtesy of the co-sponsoring San Antonio Cocktail Conference from The Bar at Bohanans, Peggys on the Green, Rosella at the Rand, Juniper Tar and Hanzo. And Edwards Ridge Distillery brought handcrafted spirits to craft four cocktails of its own.

For mid-event pick-me-ups, Brown Coffee Co. and Whats Brewing Coffee Roasters poured coffee and coffee drinks.

What say we do this again next year? Time to scout the next Top 100.

Features editor Emily Spicer contributed to this report
MILFORD  School officials have released instructions on how to register your child for kindergarten, a process that will take time and effort  and a computer.

The kindergarten registration process is now open online for children who will be attending Milford Public Schools in the fall.

Children who are at least 5 years old on or before Dec.31, 2018 can be enrolled in kindergarten for the 2018-19 school year. Officials say that the registration process requires the completion of a registration packet and making an in-school visit appointment. Both of these operations must be completed online.

Parents who dont have access to a computer are instructed to use one at the Public Library.

Parents will be directed to access the registration link that will appear on the districts website home page at www.milforded.org, and then enter the required information to begin the process. Officials warn that parents must read the instructions first before they begin their online registration. It will take approximately 30 minutes to complete the online registration materials.

Upon completion of the registration packet, the parent is then automatically directed to an online scheduling system where they will reserve their registration appointment for the school visit.

At the school registration appointment, parents will meet with staff to complete the validation process while their children visit with a selection of teachers, school nurses, and other professionals.

These short visits with your child will give school officials the chance to meet their new students while making sure that any services that might be needed are in place when the school year begins, said spokeswoman Kathy Bonetti.

Parents can expect these appointments to last for about 20 minutes.

For documentation, parents will need the following papers. Its suggested that parents also have this information with them when they begin the online registration process.

Required documents include:

a certified copy of your child's birth certificate (with raised seal)

homeowners must have a mortgage or deed or tax bill for the residence

renters must have a lease or rental agreement signed by the landlord and including the landlord's contact phone number

two recent utility bills in the same name to the same address (landline phone, water, electric, gas, oil or cable tv)

a copy of the students latest physical exam which must have occurred within the past 12 months and the childs immunization record.
Pearland City Council has announced plans to draft an ordinance to repeal annexations totaling 1,900 acres that had sparked a lawsuit from residents and a warning from Brazoria County's district attorney regarding an altered document.

The annexed area to be covered through the proposed ordinance is on two tracts - Area A and L - that the city moved to acquire ahead of a law that went into effect Dec. 1 that would have required the residents' consent to be annexed. Many residents and business owners in those areas have protested being forced into the city.

City Council on March 5 unanimously approved Councilman Tony Carbone's motion that the city prepare a draft ordinance.

"I'd like to make a motion directing staff to proceed to prepare an ordinance repealing the annexation ordinance of areas A and L," Carbone said at the meeting, "along with developing a transition plan ending the city's emergency services in the city's (extraterritorial jurisdiction)."

The council will discuss the matter at a March 26 council meeting where a first reading of the proposal will be read, city spokesman Carry Capers said.

The city in November approved annexation of the tracts as well as Area C, an undeveloped area that covers 20 acres north of McHard Road.

Capers released a March 6 statement regarding the possible repeal that said that after the annexations occurred, "questions were forwarded to the City regarding certain procedural elements of the annexations."

Capers' statement went on to say that, "Despite the City's substantial compliance with applicable annexation procedures, the City Council, rather than engaging in a prolonged dispute on this matter, on March 5th requested staff to prepare an ordinance for future consideration to repeal the annexation for two of the three annexation areas (Areas A and L)."

"We're just ecstatic they finally came to their senses about stuff that was going on," said Caye Hauser, who owns a home in Area A - a mostly residential tract that is south of Shadow Creek Ranch between county roads 564 and 48. "We're just a little hesitant till it's a done deal."

In February, Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne warned the city in a letter that city staff had mishandled a government document related to Area A when the number of acres was changed from 885 to 895 after Mayor Tom Reid had signed the ordinance.

Hauser filed the complaint that prompted Yenne to investigate the matter.

"A record signed by the mayor was altered after execution, you can't do that," Yenne said of city officials in the Feb. 1 letter. "The procedure that was used by Pearland was not lawful. I strongly encourage them to take an assessment of their polices and conduct an internal investigation about what happened."

Dennis Coker, Pearland city attorney, called the incident an mistake and attributed it to a typo.

Residents in Area L have filed a lawsuit against the city, said Michele Falzon, who owns commercial property in that area, which consists of 1,002 acres northeast of Texas 35 between Dixie Farm Road and County Road 29.

Hauser and other property owners there claim the city did not follow proper procedures in notifying residents and surrounding school districts about the annexation plans.

Area L includes the privately owned Pearland Regional Airport and approximately 80 homes. The airport has tenants and businesses including several flights schools, airplane and helicopter maintenance shops and 20 full-time residents who live in homes or condos.

Repeal of the annexations may end city fire and emergency medical services to the areas, Capers said.

City Council has said that that because county residents in the ETJ do not pay city taxes, the emergency services are too costly for the city to continue to absorb.

Most in the county's unincorporated areas rely on Brazoria County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement.

Area C was not included in City Council's request for repeal and is the only area that would remain in the city out of the inventory it initially had sought to annex.
The Trump administration will initially exclude Canada and Mexico from stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, an exemption they would lose if they fail to reach an updated NAFTA agreement with the U.S., White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Wednesday.

The two nations won't be subject to tariffs on their steel and aluminum if they sign a new North American Free Trade Agreement that meets the satisfaction of the U.S., Navarro said, adding that other American allies could use a similar system to ask for an exemption.

If NAFTA talks fall through, Canada and Mexico would face the same tariff as other nations, expected to be 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.

"Here's the situation, and the president has made this public," Navarro said. "There's going to be a provision which will exclude Canada and Mexico until the NAFTA thing is concluded one way or another."

The decision-making process regarding the tariffs has evolved and more changes could be made before President Donald Trump formally approves them. China on Thursday vowed to retaliate, its most forceful comments yet on the threatened tariffs.

"A trade war is never the right solution," China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing. "In a globalized world, it is particularly unhelpful as it will harm both the initiator and the target countries. In the event of a trade war, China will make a justified and necessary response."

Earlier Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the tariff plan would feature "potential carve outs for Canada and Mexico based on national security" considerations and also possible exclusions for specific countries.

Australia is among those making the case for exemption, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop citing her nation's status as a "close ally and partner" in a Sky News interview on Thursday.

"While the news is encouraging, our efforts are ongoing," Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said in a reply to emailed questions on Thursday about Huckabee Sanders' comments. "We are leaving no stone unturned to secure Australian exports and the jobs they support."

Negotiators from the U.S., Canada and Mexico wrapped up the seventh round of NAFTA talks this week in Mexico still hoping for a breakthrough on the biggest sticking points. The president hinted at the tariff incentive in a tweet earlier this week, without elaborating on how the trade-off would work.

Trump's plan to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel triggered threats of retaliation from trading partners including Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Lawmakers of his own Republican Party have been turning up the pressure, warning of severe political and economic ramifications and the potential for a trade war from such broad-based measures.

Navarro, the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said in an interview with the Fox Business Network on Wednesday evening that Trump would sign the tariff proclamations at at 3:30 EST Thursday in the Oval Office, surrounded by workers in the steel and aluminum industry.

But a person familiar with the planning said that the president would likely not sign on Thursday because lawyers needed more time to polish the details and finish the paperwork. The White House schedule released late Wednesday didn't list a tariff announcement for Thursday.

The threat of retaliation over the tariffs, which the International Monetary Fund has warned could eventually damage growth, is already rising. Besides China, the European Union has said it would respond with its own 25 percent tariff to hit $3.5 billion of American goods. The bloc is targeting iconic U.S. brands produced in key Republican states on a range of consumer, agricultural and steel products, according to a list drawn up by the European Commission.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in an interview on Wednesday, said he recognizes the risk of retaliation against the U.S. for steel and aluminum tariffs but he still believes the move will benefit American workers.

"We are the freest trader in the world, hands down," Navarro told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. "All we get for that is a half a trillion dollar a year trade deficit that offshores our wealth, offshores our jobs."
If you don't like President Donald Trump's position on a particular issue, just wait a day. It may change.

It's always suspicious when a federal agency quietly makes a major policy change and does not put out a news release about it. That's what the Interior Department did last week.

Handing another win to the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew a ban related to importing elephant trophies from Africa. A March 1 memorandum, written in dense legalese, said the government will now allow hunters to receive permits on "a case-by-case basis" to bring tusks and other body parts back to this country.

This is notable because Trump chastised and then overruled his own political appointees at the department, led by Secretary Ryan Zinke, when they unveiled plans last November to lift restrictions put in place by Barack Obama. The president called the hunting of elephants for sport a "horror show."

Just last month, Trump told Piers Morgan that what his team did last year was "terrible."

"I didn't want elephants killed and stuffed and have the tusks brought back," he said.

Stories started trickling out this week as reporters discovered the memo that had been entered into the public record.

The NRA has been aggressively challenging the 2014 ban on elephant trophy imports from Zimbabwe and Zambia in court, and the D.C. Circuit ruled in December that the Obama administration didn't follow proper procedures related to soliciting public comments when implementing it.

The Trump administration cites this finding as the justification for its policy change. But The Hill notes that Fish and Wildlife is simultaneously withdrawing other findings related to trophy hunting that stretch back to 1995. So that spin doesn't necessarily pass the smell test.

The population of African elephants, the world's largest land mammal, has declined from 5 million to 400,000 over the past century. That's why they've been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1979. These are incredibly smart creatures and really amazing to behold up close.

In an apparent effort to minimize press coverage, the Trump team at Interior initially tried to push through the rule change last November during the week before the Thanksgiving holiday.

But they didn't count on blowback from the right. Many conservative elites are against the senseless and barbaric murder of elephants, the symbol of the Republican Party, and they successfully used their platforms to get the president to overrule his subordinates and both of his sons. Most prominent among them were radio host Michael Savage and Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

Once again, these same thought leaders swung into action when the word got out about what Interior was doing:

"Please @realDonaldTrump, stick with your good instinct on this. We do NOT want to reward animal poaching. You will alienate independents & conservationists! #RespectAllofGodsEarth ," Ingraham tweeted.

Speaking for the first time about the Interior memo, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted at her Wednesday afternoon briefing that the president's views have not changed since November. She cited the litigation as the reason for the change and then referred specific questions about how the relaxed rules will work to the department. "The president has been clear what his position is, and that has not changed," she said. Asked if he thinks there should be a permanent ban on imports of trophies, she ducked and repeated herself. "President Trump's position on trophy hunting remains the same," Sanders said.

When I followed up with Interior, spokeswoman Heather Swift replied with a one-sentence email: "Secretary Zinke is 100 percent in step with the president's position on the issue."

"Zinke recently told people privately that Trump has called him several times to discuss what to do about elephant trophies," the AP's Michael Biesecker notes. "Zinke is an avid hunter who after arriving at Interior last year ordered the arcade game 'Big Buck Hunter Pro' to be installed in the employee cafeteria at the agency's Washington headquarters. . . . In June, the department removed longstanding protections for grizzly bears near Yellowstone National Park, a step to potentially allow them to be hunted. The Fish and Wildlife Service also quietly began issuing permits in October allowing African lions killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia to be imported."

Bottom line: This is the latest illustration of the imperative with this administration to watch what officials actually do, not just what Trump says or tweets. The case-by-case standard means that officials could grant no permits or approve all requests. Officials at Fish and Wildlife say that applicants will need to meet conservation and sustainability requirements. (Advocates of big-game hunting argue that revenue from trophy permits helps preserve habitats, but many experts disagree.)

As always, the devil is in the details. The number of approved permits may not be known publicly for a while. It's conceivable that Trump will do nothing as his political appointees clear the way for hunters to practice what he thinks is "a horror show," especially if it means not running crosswise with the gun lobby. If Ingraham isn't drawing his attention to the matter on her Fox show, which he watches, the inconsistency between his rhetoric and reality could be out of sight and out of mind.

Savage, a syndicated radio host and the author of several best-selling books, took credit last night for Trump appearing to once again overrule his political people at Interior. "I felt that someone had punched me in the gut when I saw that the ban . . . was secretly lifted," he wrote on his blog. "I felt betrayed. I had spent a dinner talking to the president about environmental issues, and especially this, and this is what happened anyway. Well, they didn't do it secretly enough, because I found out about it and I brought it to [my] audience. I made it clear that this was a red line that could not be crossed . . . I explained that the root of 'conservative' is the same as 'conservation' and the two do not need to be diametrically opposed."

Savage said he sent Trump an article he wrote on this subject with the message, "Mr. President, you are just plain wrong."

"People in the administration told me personally the president received this information," he wrote. "I have a voice that was heard and was listened to. And it's important because, who else will speak for these animals?"
Democrats cheered Tuesday's primary elections across Texas, where more than 1 million of the party's voters cast ballots - the biggest number in more than a decade. And a new class of rising stars emerged, among them Rep. Beto O'Rourke, now the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate challenging Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

But the results also foreshadowed the unresolved identity crisis facing Democrats nationally as the primary season kicked off, leaving that coveted blue wave a real but still distant possibility.

One bitter U.S. House primary that drew the heavy-handed involvement of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headed to a runoff with standard-bearers for the party's establishment and liberal wings suspicious of each other and feuding over how best to take on President Donald Trump. In another House primary, the liberal message of little-known former math teacher Mary Wilson carried her into a runoff with a higher profile, better-funded candidate.

These squabbles, while at times seemingly parochial, could have sweeping implications for the future of Congress and the political soul of the party as it barrels toward November and then the 2020 presidential election.

At issue are vexing questions of ideology and style, forcing Democrats to decide whether to embrace or reject the outsiders who are driving the party hard to the left on issues such as universal health coverage and free college tuition.

Reactions among top Democrats to the tussles on Tuesday and to what may lie ahead range from roaring encouragement to unease. While there is widespread optimism about the record number of Democrats running, there are concerns that the infighting could end up distracting from the goal of hobbling Trump.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. - whose supporters are a force in many races and still fuming over his defeat in the 2016 Democratic presidential nominating contest - welcomed vigorous primary debates as a means of turning out an enthusiastic coalition of the party's voters this fall.

"It's very clear that the momentum is in strong opposition to the Trump and [House Speaker] Paul Ryan agenda," Sanders said in an interview. "At the grass-roots level, you're seeing young people and working people getting involved."

Democrats in red states that were won by Trump two years ago are far more muted about that call by liberal voices for the party to tack further left this year. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is one of them.

"I'm worried about this: Can we all unite together?" Manchin said.

That question remains unanswered in Texas' wealthy 7th Congressional District, where seven Houston-area Democrats squared off Tuesday and the two top finishers- corporate attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher and liberal activist and writer Laura Moser - will compete in a May 22 runoff.

From the start, Fletcher was the type of contender whom national Democrats have been seeking out in districts they need to win to take back the House. She is an able fundraiser, supported by abortion rights groups including Emily's List, and has a business background that could appeal to swing voters. Yet Moser, who is well-known in the Trump resistance movement and was endorsed by Our Revolution, an advocacy group founded by Sanders, plowed forward regardless.

Then the DCCC sprang into action as Moser ascended, issuing an unusual memo that cast her as out of touch with Texas and too liberal to beat Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, this fall. Instead of crippling Moser's bid, the DCCC intervention gave her more attention and enraged her supporters.

"Being in the national spotlight was unexpected," Moser said in an interview. "I'm running a local race, and when something like this goes national, it has its challenges." She said her approach to politics - "plain-spoken and forthright" and linked to the women's movement and anti-Trump organizing - is reflective of scores of Democratic primary campaigns this year.

Wilson, the former math teacher and political neophyte in Central Texas's 21st Congressional District, raised only $40,000 last year but won more votes on Tuesday than Army veteran Joseph Kopser, who raised about $700,000 and was endorsed by prominent local Democrats and newspapers.

Former congressman Steve Israel of New York, who chaired the House Democratic campaign arm, said the Texas episode should be a learning experience for the party.

"If you do put a thumb on the scale, you want to do it artfully," Israel said. "Bottom line, you want to win. If we want to have a check and balance on President Trump, we just have to win in purple districts."

The unbridled energy among Democratic voters was also evident late last month when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was denied the endorsement of her state party. More than 54 percent of convention delegates backed a Feinstein challenger, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, who has Our Revolution's support and has championed a proposal that would expand Medicare to the entire U.S. population, putting him at odds with Feinstein, who has been wary of the cost of such a change. Despite the snub, Feinstein is pressing ahead.

Illinois has the next round of primary elections, on March 20, followed by Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio on May 8. Pennsylvania, Georgia and others will vote later that month.

Republicans, meanwhile, have cringed as primary insurrections they would rather have avoided keep popping up across the map with varying degrees of success, all as the party navigates the frenzy around Trump.

"There is a populist mood in both parties, and it hasn't abated," said David Axelrod, a onetime adviser to President Barack Obama.

The GOP is trying to figure out just how far Trump's overhaul of traditional Republicanism should go as the party aims to protect its 24-seat majority in the House and two-seat majority in the Senate. The defensive mood of Republican voters as Trump deals with a string of political controversies in Washington, plus a spate of GOP retirements, has left many lawmakers on edge. In several crowded Texas primaries Tuesday, most Republican candidates competed over who was closer to Trump in spirit and on the issues.

In Illinois, primaries on both sides are riven by tensions over wealth and the insider-outsider dynamic, underscoring how the lines are being drawn this year on those fronts as well as on ideology.

Gov. Bruce Rauner, R-Ill., a moderate, has been busy fending off firebrand state Rep. Jeanne Ives, R. Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire who is friendly with the Clinton family, has spent millions in his primary race against state Sen. Daniel Biss - a 40-year-old math professor who has attracted strong support from liberal activists - and Democratic businessman Christopher Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy.

"Republicans and independents and even some Democrats want an outsider," Ives said in an interview. "This is going to be a change election in Illinois, since we missed the tea party movement." Ives added that she would "be much more aligned" with Trump, although her campaign has struggled following her use of television ads that have been called homophobic and racist for how they portray transgender people and immigrants.

Down ballot, Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill., one of the last House Democrats opposed to abortion rights, has watched as his challenger, Marie Newman, has become a cause for the left nationally. Speaking Sunday on WGN radio, Lipinski railed against "those who want to have a tea party of the left."

Problems for the GOP elsewhere echo the issues that have gripped the party dating to the 2010 election cycle when "the Republicans released the tiger" in primary races and saw some incumbents toppled, said Democratic strategist Robert Shrum.

The recently announced Senate primary campaign by Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, R, against Sen. Roger Wicker, R, is problematic. Wicker, who has been a loyal supporter of Trump's agenda, has the president's support, but his polished demeanor and ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has made some GOP consultants nervous.

McDaniel came close to beating Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., in a brutal 2014 primary race that defined that year's GOP civil war. He said Monday, after learning of Cochran's decision to resign April 1, that he is "focused on my campaign against Roger Wicker, but all options remain on the table."

Trump's alliance with incumbent Republican senators who have backed him and his policies - in Mississippi and in Alabama's special election for U.S. Senate last year - complicates McDaniel's chances of stoking voters' wrath about Washington in general and becoming a right-wing sensation. So does the ouster of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon from Trump's circle. Months ago, Bannon had grand ambitions to mount an assault against Republican incumbents and boost outsiders, but incendiary comments in journalist Michael Wolff's book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" led to his fall and the fizzling of his primary efforts.

"Republicans know that if a candidate is on a seek-and-destroy primary mission like Bannon was promoting, the end result is you elect a Democrat and get destroyed," said Josh Holmes, an adviser to McConnell.

Nevada Republican businessman Danny Tarkanian, running against Sen. Dean Heller, R, has seen his campaign fade as the president's clashes with Heller over policy have subsided. Arizona has also seen its Trump-style candidates looking at uncertain paths in the race for the seat held by retiring Sen. Jeff Flake, R. Early polls in Arizona's Aug. 28 Senate primary show the establishment-backed front-runner, Rep. Martha McSally, ahead of state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has sought Trump's support, and former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"I do wonder about where the party will end up," Flake said in an interview. "The goal has to be to win the general."
London

A former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by a nerve agent in Britain this week, British police said Wednesday, heightening suspicions that the episode was an assassination attempt and that Russia was responsible.

The development forces the British government to confront the possibility once again that an attack on British soil was carried out by the government of President Vladimir Putin, which Western intelligence officials say has, with alarming frequency, ordered the killing of people who have crossed it. Prime Minister Theresa May and her Cabinet held a meeting Wednesday of the government's emergency security committee to discuss the matter.

"This is being treated as a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent," said Mark Rowley, Britain's chief police official for counterterrorism and international security.

The former spy, Sergei V. Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, "were targeted specifically," Rowley said. He refused to say what chemical was used, or even whether investigators had identified it.

In 2006, a Russian court convicted Skripal, a former colonel in Russia's military intelligence, of selling secrets to the British. In 2010, he was released from prison and sent to Britain as part of an exchange of imprisoned spies.

On Sunday, he and his daughter became severely ill at a mall in Salisbury, England. They lost consciousness and remain in critical condition. Some of the emergency workers who went to the scene also became ill, and one police officer is hospitalized in serious condition.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement.

Skripal has lived quietly and openly for years in Salisbury. But in the past two years, his brother and his son both have died in what family members have called mysterious circumstances.
The school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that claimed the lives of 17 children and educators has sparked a renewed interest in gun-control legislation in statehouses across the country.

Just this week, Florida legislators approved the state's first major gun-control package in more than 20 years, defying opposition from gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association. Gun-control opponents like the NRA often argue that most gun-control laws aren't effective because criminals "don't follow gun laws." They point to high rates of gun violence in places with strict gun laws, most famously Chicago, as evidence for this claim.

But that argument overlooks the simple fact that firearms travel easily over state and municipal lines. A Washington Post analysis of five years of gun-trace data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives bears this out: From 2012 to 2016, more than a quarter-million firearms were purchased in one state and used in a crime in another. Those guns typically flowed from states with lax gun laws to those with more strict regulations. And in a number of states, including Illinois, California and New York, at least half of the guns used to commit crimes were purchased out of state.

When a firearm is recovered from a crime scene, law enforcement can request a trace from ATF to identify where the gun was sold and who bought it. Each year ATF releases summary reports detailing, at the state level, where crime guns were recovered and which states they originated from. It defines these "crime guns" as "any firearm that is illegally possessed, used in a crime, or suspected to have been used in a crime."

Nationwide, most crime guns are purchased in the same state they're recovered from. In 2016, for instance, of the 211,000 crime guns for which ATF was able to identify a purchaser and a dealer, more than 150,000 were bought in the same state in which the crime was committed.

But that's not the case in every state. In five states and the District of Columbia, out-of-state gun purchases accounted for at least half of all recovered crime guns from 2012 to 2016. In New Jersey, 79 percent of recovered guns were purchased out of state. The rate was 70 percent for New York, 60 percent for Massachusetts, 53 percent for Hawaii and 50 percent for Illinois.

Out-of-state crime guns tend to be purchased in states adjacent to where they're recovered, particularly if those neighboring states have looser gun laws. To see where these interstate crime guns are disproportionately likely to be purchased, we can look at the rate of guns trafficked out of state per 100,000 people. This is preferable to using raw numbers of trafficked guns because it corrects for population differences between states.

There's a wide variation in rates of gun trafficking between states. Places like Mississippi, West Virginia and Alaska, which have some of the most permissive gun laws in the country, exported more than 200 crime guns for every 100,000 residents between 2012 and 2016.

Compare those figures to ones from a state like Connecticut, which exported 13 crime guns per 100,000 residents, or New York, which exported 15 crime guns per 100,000. In short, a gun bought in a place like Mississippi or West Virginia is more than 10 times as likely to be used in an out-of-state crime as a gun bought in Connecticut or New York.

But we're still only looking at half the picture. To get a more complete sense of the interstate flow in crime guns, we can compare the rates of gun imports and gun exports in each state.

Some states in export more crime guns, per capita, than they import. On net they are sources of crime guns. Others import more than they export. They're net magnets.

There's a substantial correlation between the strength of a state's gun laws and whether it's a net importer or exporter of crime guns. States like California, New York, Illinois and Maryland have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. They're also magnets for crime guns purchased out of state.

From 2012 to 2016, for instance, 2,930 crime guns found in other states were traced back to New York, a rate of about 15 crime guns for every 100,000 New Yorkers. But over the same period, 17,229 crime guns were recovered in New York and ultimately traced to purchases in other states, a rate of 87 crime guns for every 100,000 New Yorkers. On net, the state imported more than 14,000 more crime guns than it exported, for a net rate of 75 imports per every 100,000 New Yorkers.

The implication is that would-be criminals in New York (and states like it) are traveling across state lines to find more favorable gun purchasing environments. Or, it could be that gun traffickers are buying guns out of- state and bringing them into places like New York to sell. Most likely a combination of both factors is at work.

Research has shown that the overwhelming majority of guns used in crime were initially purchased lawfully. But through loss, theft and other channels, those guns make their way into the hands of people who use them for illegal purposes.

Researchers have found that a number of state-level policies are correlated with reductions in the diversion of guns to criminals: state licensing requirements for dealers, regular inspections of dealers, mandatory reporting requirements for loss or theft, background checks on private sales, and permit requirements to buy firearms, to name a few.

But these maps and figures underscore the shortcomings of writing gun policy at the state level. Strict gun laws in one state can only do so much if there is a more permissive purchasing environment just across the state line. Certain policies, such as universal background checks or permitting requirements, would be much more effective if they were implemented nationwide.

Despite overwhelming public support for policies like these, Congress hasn't enacted any new gun-control legislation since 2007.
The Pentagon has added Niger, Mali and parts of northern Cameroon to the list of areas where U.S. troops receive imminent danger pay while deployed, a move that reflects the evolving dangers in West Africa and follows the death of four U.S. soldiers in Niger last year.

The decision was outlined in a memo signed Monday by Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The decision was backdated to June 7, meaning the families of the service members killed in an ambush in Niger and their fellow soldiers will receive back pay for their deployment.

The pay - $225 per month deployed, or $7.50 per day for partial months - was approved as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reviews final drafts of an investigation of the Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. The final report is expected to be released this month, detailing what went wrong and recommendations for change.

Killed in the battle were Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, 39; Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, 35; Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29; and Sgt. La David Johnson, 25. Black and Wright were elite Green Beret soldiers with the elite 3rd Special Forces Group, while the other two fatalities were conventional soldiers deployed with their unit.

The danger pay issue has been scrutinized in the aftermath of the ambush, in which a force of about 50 armed militants attacked a unit of 11 American and about 30 Nigerien soldiers. U.S. troops deployed in Algeria, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Tunisia and Uganda already qualified, according to Pentagon pay guidelines.

Troops in Niger, Mali and northern Cameroon previously qualified for $150 in "hazardous duty location pay." That incentive for U.S. troops was reduced to $100 with the approval of imminent danger pay to meet a Pentagon cap on the incentives when combined.

The issue came up at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, with Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., asking why Niger and other countries in the area did not qualify while other nations like Algeria and Egypt did. Marine Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said a packet submitted to the Pentagon several months ago was still awaiting approval.

Waldhauser was not aware at the time that imminent danger pay for Niger already had been approved, the New York Times first reported Wednesday.

The countries were added to the list as West Africa grapples with militants who have re-branded themselves as Islamic State-West Africa. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) also has had a presence in nations including Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Mauritania. Waldhauser said that AQIM groups have consolidated into a group with a new name, Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), and move freely around northern Mali.
Thousands of residents in the Greater New Haven area woke up to power outages and closed roads Thursday, after 4 to 13 inches of snow fell Wednesday and overnight, according to the National Weather Service.

At 6:30 p.m., The United Illuminating Co. reported 8,300 outages. .

Director of Emergency Operations Rick Fontana said New Haven experienced severe winter weather Wednesday, between 5 to 10 p.m., which included thundersnow, a rare storm with thunder and lightning that also drops snow.

He said there have been 64 wire calls, 39 of which involved power loss. At one point, 1,997 customers were without power, according to Fontana. He said Wooster Square and Fountain Street are the two main areas still experiencing power outages.

Ian Guthrie, who lives on Court Street in New Haven, said Thursday morning that he hadnt had power since 8 p.m. Wednesday. He said he lit 35 tealights, strategically placed around his apartment, before going to bed.

There was a really big bright flash, right past the train tracks. Then the street light started blinking red and then went out, Guthrie said.

More for you Connecticut utilities: Power restoration process will be a...

When Guthrie went to bed Wednesday night, the temperature in his apartment was 66 degrees, but upon waking up discovered it had dropped to 58 degrees. He said he was on his way to find some place warm, and that had Wi-Fi, to get some work done.

Dana Durant, who lives on Olive Street, said he lost power around 9 p.m. Wednesday, but it came back on at 3 a.m. He said he snuggled up with his dog under an extra quilt, as it was starting to get cold in (his) apartment.

Durant said he read with a flashlight before going to bed and woke up around 3 a.m. when his kitchen lights came back on.

Fontana said the parking ban in the downtown area has ended, but the residential ban  cars can only park on the even side of the street is still in effect until 8 a.m. Friday.

Were doing this for almost an additional 24 hours, so we can get good headway in the smaller residential streets. I think it will make a huge difference, he said.

Residents experiencing a snow-related issue are urged to call the Emergency Operations Center at 203-946-8221 instead of 911, he said.

Fontana said the goal is to have most of this wrapped up Friday, but power outages may still be problematic.

Director of Public Works Jeff Pescosolido said snow plows were in a push back operation to open up intersections and areas that now where they had issues, such as downed trees or low hanging wires.

Assistant Fire Chief Mark Vendetto said all on-duty personnel are out making sure the streets are passable and identifying any problems with wires, hydrants and trees.

Police Sgt. Dana Smith said there were only 12 motor vehicle accidents between 6 p.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday, with minor to no injuries. He said police also responded to 402 calls, none of which were major.

As of 6:30 p.m., UI was reporting 19 customers without power in Ansonia, seven in Derby, 187 in East Haven, 703 in Hamden, 253 in Milford, 276 in New Haven, 141 in North Branford, 117 in North Haven, 65 in Orange, 1,001 in Shelton, 37 in West Haven and 557 in Woodbridge.

Milford Mayor Ben Blake said his city had a significant number of downed trees as a result of the storm, causing a number of outages across town.

Last night, UI (The United Illuminating Co.) had over 1,700 Milford customers without power around 11 p.m. but that number has since been reduced, he said early Thursday. UI and the city continue to make safe those utility lines at issue; at this point, theres still a few hundred Milford homes without power. The city continues to work to clear our roads and sidewalks.

In Hamden, town offices delayed opening until 10 a.m. to provide for storm cleanup.

State police on Thursday said that during the duration of the storm, from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 7 a.m. Thursday, troopers responded to 1,526 calls for service. There were 166 accidents without injuries, six accidents with injuries and 565 motorist assists on state roads, state police said.

The Clinton Crossings Premium Outlet also delayed opened at noon Thursday due to the storm.

As of 6:30 p.m., Eversource was reporting 380 customer outages in Bethany, 237 in Seymour, 94 in Cheshire, 989 in Branford, 4,775 in Guilford and 3,009 in Madison.

Dispatchers from the Connecticut State Police in Bethany and Westbrook said there were no major accidents overnight, just a lot of downed trees in wires.

The state Department of Transportation said Route 42 was closed in Bethany at both Cook Lane and Horseshoe Drive due to a fallen tree on wires. In Seymour, Route 115 by Colony Street and Route 313 by Warren Road were both closed due to a downed tree in the wires. In North Branford, Route 22 at Forest Road was closed because a fallen tree in the roadway.

In Shelton, Route 108 was closed between Oak Avenue and Wooster Street, and in Madison, Route 1 was closed at Lovers Lane, all due to downed trees in wires, according to the DOT.

North Haven Police tweeted about a large tree down, with power lines, on the Hartford Turnpike near the entrance to Route 15. Drivers were advised to avoid this area.

Bradley International Airport remained open throughout the storm, but more than half of the flights were canceled Wednesday, spokeswoman Alisa D. Sisic said.

Today, were continuing our cleanup efforts, she said Thursday.

Flights were still impacted Thursday morning with approximately 30 percent of the departures canceled.

However, this afternoons schedule is on track with only a small number of cancellations and delays, Sisic said.

Passengers are advised to contact their airline regarding their individual flight itineraries and any potential rebooking options before heading to the airport.

Gov. Dannel Malloy announced early Thursday that all state offices had a one-hour delayed opening due to inclement weather conditions. Non-essential, first-shift employees had to report to work one hour from their normal reporting time, according to a press release.

As the clean-up from yesterdays winter storm continues, we feel that its best to delay the opening of state offices in order to allow crews a little extra time to plow the roads and parking lots, Malloy said in the release. We encourage everyone to exercise extreme caution while driving. We especially want to thank our hardworking state and local plow crews who have been working throughout the night to clear the roads across our state, as well as state and local emergency personnel and first-responders.

This story will be updated throughout the day.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- In Venezuela, getting sick has never been more deadly.

Medicines from antibiotics to chemotherapy drugs have become increasingly scarce here in recent years. Public hospitals ask patients' families to supply bed sheets and syringes. HIV patients have gone months without their drugs, and transplant patients have died without the immunosuppressants they need after surgery.

But the country is now experiencing a crisis in one of the most basic medical necessities: blood.

Lower oil prices and populist policies championed by the late Hugo Chavez and continued by his successor, President Nicolas Maduro, have plunged Venezuela into a spiraling economic emergency. The health system, which is also plagued by mismanagement and corruption, is crumbling.

Late last year, the situation turned so dire that blood for transfusions and surgeries was in critically short in supply at public hospitals. In January and February, medical workers say, the scarcity paralyzed most public blood banks, forcing patients to wait for urgent procedures and prompting doctors to advise families to try to acquire processed blood from private clinics.

The problem, according to doctors, is not so much a lack of donors as a shortage of the seven reagents that test donated blood for infections. Those reagents, which the Health Ministry and the Institute of Social Security import to distribute to public institutions here, are priced in dollars, making them expensive in the local currency, the near-worthless bolivar.

Without the reagents, blood can't be used.

On a morning in late February, Roselvia Escobar showed up at Jose Manuel de los Rios, the public children's hospital in Caracas, to beg for help finding blood for her 22-year-old son, Cesar, who needs three transfusions a month.

Cesar was diagnosed at birth with thalassemia, a blood disease. If he doesn't get the transfusions, his heart or nervous system could fail and his bones could become deformed. The family was unable to secure blood from December till February, when they got just one unit.

"He's in bed, drowsy, inactive and terrified," Escobar, said. "The right to live doesn't exist in Venezuela. You just pray to God your loved one doesn't die."

This week, Venezuelan patients received rare good news - a nearly two-month supply of reagents arrived at most public hospitals, purchased by the Health Ministry and the Institute of Social Security from laboratories and organizations abroad. The Pan American Health Organization said that a separate, donated batch will be sent to the country in the coming weeks and should last an additional month.

But doctors call those deliveries short-term solutions to a long-term problem. Facing uncertainty, many patients' families have resorted to buying processed blood from private clinics, which acquire reagents from laboratories here that import them at black-market dollar rates. The official rate is largely inaccessible to private companies.

Carlos Maldonado, 40, bought blood from a private clinic for his father, who was admitted to Caracas University Hospital after being diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in January. It cost Maldonado nearly two months' worth of wages.

"Thank God we could afford it," he said. "We all hope he won't need more transfusions."

But not all private clinics are selling blood. Some reserve their reagents exclusively for their own patients, unless public blood banks call directly and offer other scarce products in exchange for them.

In any case, in a country where 87 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, most families can't afford to pay what the clinics charge for usable blood. The Health Ministry and the Institute of Social Security did not respond to a request for comment.

"It's an unimaginable situation," said Maribel Melendez, secretary general of the Venezuelan Society of Hematologists, which represents most public blood banks nationwide. At the worst point in the shortages -- mid-December to late February -- 70 percent of banks had no usable blood, she said.

For some patients forced to wait as their families and doctors scramble to get them a supply, the blood has arrived too late.

In mid-February, a teenager caught in a gunfight died at the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas because no blood was available. Six other patients died in the hospital this year for the same reason, according to a hematologist there who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid government reprisals. The hospital had no blood reserves from December to March.

At the internal medicine unit of Caracas University Hospital, four patients have died this year for lack of blood, according to a medical resident there. In February, five patients in critical condition were still waiting for blood.

Carla Tovar was nervously praying as she held her sick daughter's hand at the children's hospital in January. Fernanda, 9, frequently needs transfusions following chemotherapy treatment for her acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

A week earlier, Fernanda needed an urgent transfusion but the hospital had no blood. Tovar took her by bus to a private clinic two hours away, where her husband works as a security guard. The clinic offered to do a transfusion for six months' worth of minimum wage. The couple borrowed from friends and relatives to pay for it.

"If she needs another transfusion," Tovar said in tears, "we have no money left."

Four other mothers in the waiting room that day were desperate to find blood for their children.

Doctors later told Tovar that Fernanda did need another transfusion. After five days of begging for a unit at multiple hospitals, a public bank gave Tovar one.

"They said I was lucky," Tovar said.

"That's how the system takes care of Venezuelans these days," she said. "It needs to end."
RICHMOND, Virginia - Despite a ban on raising political cash during Virginia's legislative session, a state delegate headlined a fundraiser last weekend for a political action committee that has backed him in the past.

Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, was one of two featured speakers at the Together Virginia PAC brunch at a community center in Arlington. The PAC, which aims to "connect rural and urban perspectives," donated a total of $7,000 to politicians last year, including $500 to Rasoul.

Rasoul's photo appeared on solicitations for the event that said the PAC would use the funds raised to back Democrats across the state and to support projects such as Democratic Promise, an initiative run out of Rasoul's office.

State law prohibits members of the General Assembly from soliciting or accepting contributions for themselves or "for any political committee" during the session. The lone exception is for legislators raising money for federal campaigns, so the ban does not apply to the two Republican delegates and a Democratic state senator running for Congress this year.

Violators are subject to a civil penalty equal to the amount of the prohibited contribution or $500, whichever is greater. Enforcement falls to a commonwealth's attorney. Arlington Commonwealth's Attorney Theo Stamos said she was unfamiliar with the matter and could not comment.

"He knows you're not supposed to be raising money during session. Period. Hard stop. End of sentence," said House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. "The fact that he would do this - he should know better than that. Apparently he doesn't."

Rasoul said he attended the event as a guest and made a $100 contribution. Tickets ranged from $25 to $1,000 per person.

"I'm a guest at a PAC's fundraiser, willing to talk about how we connect with different folks," he said. "I'm guest at lots of different things. But I'm not asking for funds - myself - for the PAC, nor am I raising money myself."

Chris Marston, the Republican Party of Virginia's general counsel, disagreed. He noted that legislators are prohibited from raising money for any political committee, not just their own. And he disagreed with the notion that Rasoul could be considered just another guest.

"If his picture and name and title are there [in ads for the event], there's a pretty good case that that constitutes soliciting," Marston said.

Jonathan Berkon, a lawyer at the Perkins Coie political law group who represents Virginia House Democrats, said in a statement that lawmakers are not restricted from appearing at "events, even fundraisers, to discuss important issues to the Commonwealth. If Sam did not solicit any funds at the event and was simply part of a conversation about how to engage citizens across the Commonwealth, that fully complies with the law."

Together Virginia is a new PAC created by Stacy Snyder, an Alexandria ceramics artist who grew up in Blacksburg and is looking for ways to build bridges between the state's deep-blue urban areas and its bright-red rural regions.

It is a theme that Rasoul often hits upon. In 2016, he scolded fellow Democrats for losing touch with the white, rural and working-class voters who propelled Donald Trump to the White House.

"I wanted to support a very nice woman who's got this little PAC," Rasoul said. "She's doing the urban-rural divide, which I think is great."

Headlining the event with Rasoul was Jason Kander, a Democrat and former Missouri secretary of state who speaks to Democratic groups about how to pitch progressive values in red states.

"Proceeds will be used to help initiatives in VA like Democratic Promise!" the group wrote on Twitter. Rasoul retweeted the message.

Rasoul said Democratic Promise is a not a PAC but an initiative run out of his office to connect constituents with government services, such as helping veterans and seniors obtain benefits or helping community groups apply for grants. He described it as more philanthropic than political.

But the outreach does have an explicit political goal, as stated on Democratic Promise's website: "We want to help rebuild trust in the Democratic Party by actually helping people in our community."
President Donald Trump's economic advisers defended U.S. plans to impose steel tariffs while leaving the door open for exempting some countries and downplaying the fallout of a possible trade war.

The president plans to sign orders for the new steel and aluminum tariffs at 3:30 p.m. EST Thursday, a White House official said.

"We are the freest trader in the world, hands down," White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. "All we get for that is a half a trillion dollar a year trade deficit that offshores our wealth, offshores our jobs." America's trading partners are "getting the better part of the deal," and have no incentive to get into "any conflict."

The U.S. may exempt countries from the duties based on national security considerations, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday. She didn't elaborate on how those determinations would be made and didn't answer when asked which countries would qualify.

"There are potential carve outs for Canada and Mexico based on national security and possibly other countries as well. That would be a case-by-case and country-by-country basis," Sanders told reporters at the White House.

Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is among those making the case for exemption, citing her nation's status as a "close ally and partner."

Raising tariffs leads to "a race to the bottom," she said in a Sky News interview on Thursday. "What we want to see is a continuation of U.S. leadership on open, liberalized trade and investment."

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi vowed a "justified and necessary response" to any efforts to incite a trade war, saying it would hurt both the actor as well as the intended target. Wang, speaking at a news briefing on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing Thursday, urged the U.S. to work with China on a mutually beneficial solution.

Top administration officials blanketed the airwaves on Wednesday in defense of the plan that's been criticized by Republicans, widely panned by corporate America, shaken global financial markets, and prompted the resignation of Trump's top economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

Deflecting the criticism, Trump hinted Wednesday that his restrictions on trade could run even deeper, citing China's alleged theft of intellectual property. The U.S. is said to be considering clamping down on Chinese investment and imposing tariffs on a broad range of goods to punish Beijing over unfair intellectual-property practices as part of an ongoing U.S. investigation ordered by Trump.

"The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!," the president said in a tweet.

The U.S. trade deficit widened to a post-recession high in January of $56.6 billion as exports declined, figures that could bolster Trump's argument that the U.S. is losing in global trade. China accounted for almost half of the shortfall in a separate measure of the deficit in goods.

Republican lawmakers are pressuring Trump to at least curtail the tariffs by exempting certain products or nations. Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees trade issues, Trade Subcommittee Chairman Dave Reichert and 105 other GOP lawmakers issued a statement on Wednesday warning that broad tariffs could cost jobs, increase prices for consumers and hurt U.S. manufacturers.

The U.S. economy will enjoy a "tremendous spurt" in growth if the president follows through on his plans to cut taxes, deregulate industry, unlock U.S. energy resources and crack down on trade, Navarro said.

Meanwhile, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the consequences of the U.S. imposing tariffs would be "serious" and could likely trigger a trade war that would be detrimental to global growth.

European Council President Donald Tusk said he opposed Trump's earlier comments that trade wars are good and easy to win. "Trade wars are bad and easy to lose," Tusk said at a press conference in Luxembourg.

The threat of retaliation and escalating tit-for-tat penalties damaging growth around the world is already rising. The European Union has warned it would respond with its own 25 percent tariff to hit $3.5 billion of American goods. The bloc is targeting iconic U.S. brands produced in key Republican states on a range of consumer, agricultural and steel products, according to a list drawn up by the European Commission.

"The idea of more protectionism makes us very nervous," Vanguard Group Chairman . William McNabb said Thursday in an Bloomberg Television interview in Sydney. "A big concern that the investment community certainly has expressed is that it becomes a little bit of a snowball in terms of protectionism."

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in an interview on Wednesday said the Trump administration is prepared to suffer retaliatory blows against the U.S. for steel and aluminum tariffs, but won't flinch from the fight to make sure American products are treated fairly in international trade.

"Our objective is not to create a trade war but our objective is to make sure U.S. companies and workers are treated fairly," he said by phone. Trade is a cornerstone issue of Trump's economic agenda, along with tax cuts and deregulation, he said.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also signaled the administration is open to exempting countries besides Mexico and Canada, which is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.

"The president indicated that if we can work something out with Canada and Mexico, they will be exempted. It's not inconceivable that others could be exempted on a similar basis,"Ross said in an interview. "Whenever there's a big change -- an unexpected change -- you have to expect some sort of a negative reaction. Let's see how things come out over the longer term."

Trump announced the planned tariffs on March 1, after a Commerce Department investigation found that imports of the metals pose a risk to national security. The probes were authorized under the seldom-used Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, that gives the president broad powers to impose trade restrictions on domestic security grounds.

Allied nations argue that they should be allowed exemptions, and the U.S. penalties should be focused on curbing China's excess industrial capacity from flooding the world market.

--With assistance from David Westin Kevin Cirilli Toluse Olorunnipa Jennifer Epstein Shelly Hagan Margaret Talev Jennifer Jacobs Jason Scott Keith Zhai Jeff Kearns and Haidi Lun
Outgoing Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza was accused of derailing an educators career while leading the San Francisco school system after she confronted him about "inappropriate flirtatious conduct at a work conference, according to a now-settled lawsuit.

Victoria Chavez, a former assistant superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, accused Carranza in 2015 of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. Lawyers representing the San Francisco Unified School District, working on behalf of Carranza, denied the allegations.

The lawsuit first was reported Thursday by the New York Daily News. Carranza accepted the job of New York City schools chancellor this week after 18 months leading Houston ISD.

The Houston Chronicle has reached out to Carranza for comment. Houston ISD Board of Trustees President Rhonda Skillern-Jones declined to comment when asked if the board was aware of the lawsuit before Thursday, adding, "It's not relevant to us."

READ ALSO: Carranza says opportunity, not Houston angst, led to NYC job

Chavez filed the lawsuit in May 2015. Litigation was ongoing in July 2016, when Carranza was named the lone finalist for the HISD superintendent position. A notice of settlement was filed in the case on Aug. 1, 2016. HISD trustees officially hired Carranza on Aug. 18, 2016.

Chavez's lawyer, Moira McQuaid, told the New York Daily News that she was "surprised to see that Carranza had gone to New York." Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a spokeswoman for New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, told the newspaper that the allegations were "completely false."

In her lawsuit, Chavez said she spotted Carranza flirting with a female employee who worked for another school district at a February 2013 education conference in Los Angeles. Carranza was married at the time.

Chavez said she told Carranza about what she saw. The lawsuit does not offer any additional details about the nature of the conversation Chavez said she saw.

Even though Chavez did not report to anyone in the upper echelons of SFUSD other than Carranza what she had seen, on information and belief, Carranza retaliated against and subjected Chavez to a hostile work environment following Chavezs observations of his flirtatious conduct towards a female colleague, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit also claims that Carranza placed Chavez under higher scrutiny for work-related travel and passed her over for a promotion after the conference.

Chavez said she interviewed for a new job, during which Carranza warned her to have a "Plan B" in case she did not get the position. Chavez said she got in a car accident days before the interview and had a concussion at the time, hurting her interview performance.

READ ALSO: HISD holding off on naming interim superintendent

When she did not get the position, Chavez lost her job as assistant superintendent. Chavez took a job at the district as a general education teacher at a much lower salary after Carranza and others at the district did not help her find alternatives on the administrative level, the complaint states.

The lawsuit was filed against the San Francisco school district, and Carranza was not named as a defendant. Available court documents provide little documentation to substantiate or refute the allegations against Carranza.
A handful of areas along the Texas coast are experiencing high levels of fecal bacteria ahead of the spring break holiday, though several popular destinations are in the clear, monitoring by Texas Beach Watch shows.

Those headed to Texas beaches for spring break should be wary when choosing where to swim.
Lawyers for two former top Bandidos Motorcycle Club leaders suggested Thursday that a key government witness lied about the ex-bosses ordering the killing of a member of the rival Hells Angels so he can get a shorter sentence for his own involvement.

Johnny Downtown Johnny Romo, a former sergeant-at-arms for the Bandidos national chapter, stuck by his testimony from a day earlier that former national vice president John Xavier Portillo relayed orders from then-national president Jeffrey Fay Pike to kill Anthony W. Benesh III.

Romo, 47 and of San Antonio, testified Wednesday that he and his brother were part of a crew that went in separate cars to Austin to commit the killing in March 2006, and that Portillo took a separate crew to College Station to hunt for another Hells Angels member.

RELATED: Affidavit: Driver picked up escaped inmates with child in car

During his second day on the stand Thursday, Romo added details, including that his brother, Robert Romo, 45, used a hunting rifle with a scope to kill Benesh. Romo also said that his brother was made a member of the Bandidos quickly after the killing.

Under cross-examination by Pikes lead lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, Johnny Romo acknowledged that Pike never said a word to him about Benesh.

Jeff Pike never gave you any orders to kill Benesh, did he? DeGuerin asked more directly.

Personally, no, Romo answered.

Romo also acknowledged to DeGuerin that there are occasional disagreements among the more than 100 Bandidos chapters and that its 1,500 members sometimes keep information from each other. DeGuerin argued that local chapters are autonomous and Pike didnt always know what members were doing, and that he did not approve of drug dealing or sanction other illegal conduct in the club.

RELATED: Teen trapped in Alamo Heights cave

DeGuerin and Portillos lead attorney, Mark Stevens, also hammered Romo about shifts in his story about the killing. The lawyers also challenged his earlier testimony that he was a chosen enforcer and bodyguard for Pike and had gone to Central America to carry out his orders of intimidation on dissident members of international Bandidos chapters.

For instance, Stevens questioned why Romos crew stopped at a pay phone to call Portillo when members of Romos hit squad had throw-away cell phones with them.

That doesnt make much sense, does it? Stevens argued.

Stevens also peppered Romo with questions like why there were was little or no discussion beforehand about who would shoot Benesh. Romo also said he did not know who brought the rifle or what was done with the murder weapon or other evidence.

Romo also testified Thursday that his brother was made a member of the Bandidos quickly after the killing.

Late Thursday, DeGuerin played a 20-minute jailhouse video in which agents placed Johnny Romo in the same room with his brother, who had invoked his right to a lawyer. The pair discuss the killing, and Johnny Romo tells him the orders came from the higher-ups while his brother says he doesnt recall details. Johnny Romo also said that he had to make a choice: Though he was very close to Pike, Romo chose his family instead and agreed to cooperate. Romo also says the pair may get lesser sentences for cooperating. The video ended with Robert Romo dropping his request for a lawyer and agreeing to talk.

You believed it was only going to be beneficial for you two to point the finger at someone else, Jeff and John, didnt you? DeGuerin asked Johnny Romo.

Just to tell the truth, Romo testified.

The Romos were among four Bandidos who pleaded guilty in September to Beneshs racketeering murder and await sentencing.

The slaying is just one in a string of racketeering crimes by the Bandidos that prosecutors allege Pike and Portillo, who was vice president from 2013 until January 2016, directed, aided, or sanctioned.
Raymond R. Gonzales overcame many barriers when he and his brother built Gonzales Garage on the West Side.

His children said he knew how to take any limitations and turn them into opportunities.

Gonzales died peacefully at home March 1, surrounded by his family. He was 94.

Gonzales grew up on the West Side during the Great Depression. He saw his mother struggling to provide for him and his four siblings on her own.

At the age of 13, Gonzales and his older brother started working for their uncle, Charlie Rosencranz.

They would go and live on ranches (in Helotes) for weeks, pitching tents and digging water wells, said his daughter, Consuelo Connie Martinez.

During World War II, Gonzales enlisted in the Marines as soon as he became old enough. He became a tank mechanic.

His ship was one of the first ones to land in Nagasaki after they dropped the bomb, said his son, Raymond Gonzales.

More Information Raymond R. Gonzales Born: July 28, 1923, San Antonio Died: March 1, 2018, San Antonio Preceded by: Wife Eva Gonzales; parents Epifanio and Josefina Gonzales; brothers Luciano "TK" Gonzales and Alonzo Garza Survived by: Daughter Consuelo "Connie" Martinez and son-in-law Flavio; son Raymond Gonzales and daughter-in-law Leticia; brothers Gilbert Gonzales, Charlie Gonzales and Joe Gonzales; sister Mary McGinnis; nine grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren Services: Visitation followed by a rosary at 6 p.m Friday at Mission Park Funeral Chapels North, 3401 Cherry Ridge Drive; graveside service at noon Saturday at Mission Burial Park North See More Collapse

In 1946, Gonzales left the military. He married Eva Garza a year later.

Gonzales and his brother Luciano TK Gonzales, also a new veteran, went into business together, fixing cars out of their mothers garage.

Through word of mouth, the business grew and the brothers built a shop on Culebra Road.

Later the brothers opened a muffler and tire shop across the street from Gonzales Garage.

Not only did Gonzales serve the community, but many of his customers came from Kelly AFB and St. Marys University, his children said.

After his wifes stroke in 1977, Gonzales used his mechanic skills to modify his wifes car so she could drive, his daughter said.

The doctors said she lasted 29 years because she had a good nurse, my father, Martinez said. Theirs was an incredible love story.

The brothers retired in 1985, splitting up the properties between them.

One of the buildings became a flea market, where Gonzales sold surplus military items.

On Saturdays, he pulled out the Round Table, and longtime customers gathered for barbecue and catching up on neighborhood goings-on.

The retired guy who couldnt smoke at home, he did it there; and the guy who couldnt eat fat, he did it there, at the Round Table, Martinez said about the weekly get-together.

But what amazed me most about my dad was that he succeeded when so many things were against him, Martinez said.
courtesy, Eric Draper

Gov. Greg Abbott highlighted the results of the Democratic primary for Bexar County district attorney -- and the specter of George Soros -- in fundraising emails sent Wednesday.

"George Soros racked up another big win last night," reads one of the emails. "After the liberal BILLIONAIRE poured nearly $1 MILLION into a Texas district attorney race in Bexar County, Soros' hand-picked candidate WON his primary election by a staggering margin."
The woman who admitted to driving drunk and plowing into a young couple's car, killing a man and his unborn baby, is likely to learn her punishment before the week ends.

Shana Elliott, a 22-year-old former Texas State University student, pleaded guilty to intoxication assault with a vehicle and two counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle Monday.